#and i’ve been feeling profoundly guilty for it all day

[nervousyoungtwinfantasydog]

hey alexa, play “bodys” by car seat headrest

[pink-heart-jam]

This is BL challenge for you (if you choose to accept them).

1.a) Please write your top 3 or top 5 favorite tropes in BL.

b) From each trope, write at least 3 BL that you love.

(Feel free if you want to write the reasons or not of why you love them).

2. a) What is the first BL that make you want to know more about and eventually love BL?

b) What is that one BL that have a special place in your heart (for whatever reason)?

3.) Who are your top 5 (or top 3) seme & uke from your favorite BL media (can be manga/manhwa/danmei/tv series/movies)?

The BL can be in in the form of manga, manhwa, manhua, danmei, books, tv series or movies.

Thanks so much if you want to answer this long ask.

How exciting, the first ask I receive on this blog 😊 Thank you so much, this was fun!

1.a) top 5 favorite tropes: crime/Yakuza, enemies to lovers, sci-fi, school slice-of-life, co-workers. Special shoutout to my guilty pleasure: love triangles!

1.b) 3 favourite BLs for each trope mentioned:

Crime/Yakuza: Shutline, Saezuru Tori wa Habatakanai, Nights Before Night

Enemies to lovers: Semantic Error, Steel Under Silk, Part-Time Partner

Sci-fi: Ai no Kusabi, Stranger in the Mirror, Hell & High Water

School slice-of-life: Fools, Pink Heart Jam, any BL by Amamiya (I cannot pick!)

Co-workers: Doushitemo Furetakunai, Day Off

2.a) I’m pretty sure The Finder series was one of my very first BL mangas, and Ai no Kusabi was my first on screen obsession. I watched the (very low quality) original OVAs on YouTube and was so profoundly changed by it I had to immediately go search for similar stories.

2.b) Saezuru Tori wa Habatakanai, the ultimate Yakuza romance! I’ve been following this manga since the translated version started posting in 2008? 2009? so it’s been a looong journey full of frustrating hiatuses but I’m nowhere near done with it. It’s a masterpiece!

3.a) Top 5 seme: Jay (Shutline)!!!! Kwon Haebeom (Our Sunny Days), Dooshik (Pearl Boy), Togawa (Doushitemo Furetakunai), TJ (Wet Sand). Love me a gentle but unhinged daddy 😌

3.b) Top 5 uke: Kanae (Pink Heart Jam)!!! Lee Won (Roses and Champagne), Jin (Sparkling Baby), Shingun (Shutline), Haesoo (Love or Hate). All true badasses in different ways 👊🏼

[autcnomy]

I’m really fuckin angry about “Shattered.”

Lionel Luthor is like some kind of mestastacizing cancer. 

He manages to make Clark feel guilty for being loyal to Lex, and blame himself for Lana’s injuries, which are wholly an accident ultimately caused BY Lionel. 

He makes certain Lex will never trust ANY form of psychiatric care (which he desperately needs) because the person could (quite plausibly!) be tied to Lionel.  Which, whether Lex stays in the “looney bin” that he already mistrusts, or is released and then slowly erodes under the force of (justified!) paranoia, will ensure that his son has a psychotic break that’s REAL, and then externalize it onto others.

This was the perfect opportunity for Clark to come clean to Lex.  The look on Lex’s face, when Clark busted Edge’s car, is one of almost rapturous, tearful awe.  He is happy to know Clark isn’t human; he is grateful that Clark stood by him and convinced Chloe and Lana to help.  But instead Clark chooses to run.  

I also think Jonathan and Martha are the least likable they’ve ever been. Harboring Lex would not have put Clark in danger anymore than letting Lex go  Edge wasn’t even after Clark.  It seems like bad writing that they’d just stand there looking sorry for Lex and not fucking HELP him. Where the hell are their parental instincts??? I mean, even Jonathan had finally caved and accepted Lex at this point, and he just bought them their entire farm back! 

It’s also bad writing that everyone would think Lionel trying to drug his son was implausible. Like, that’s Satan’s ballsack, folks, hair and all.  Why the hell would you think him incapable of that? 

Anyway Michael Rosenbaum is the best actor on that show and he broke my heart with his amazingly nuanced performance in this episode.  I remember the “Hurt” Johnny Cash number to this day, and I don’t  care if Lionel is having misgivings while watching his only child walk around in a padded cell with the belief that he is so completely alone in the world, putting him there because that child took his own teachings and applied them TOO well.

I fucking HATE him. 

Other observations: 

1) Do we ever find out exactly how Lex “hurt” baby Julian and “caused him to die”? (I don’t think Lionel was lying about this, but I have to fucking hate him even more because he then weaponizes that childhood trauma to make Lex feel guilty and falter--”Be careful, Lex, I can’t lose another child”r ead: like you made me lose Julian and Lucas already. AGH!)  Can we also acknowledge the school belltower incident a little more because....god... “You know I cant take it when he cries, dad.”  What does that mean. Does that mean he accidentally smothered Julian? Does that mean he held him too tightly when singing a lullabye and “can’t take it” was a compassion response? Is Lex actually autistic, and did he panic because he was in sensory overload? 

2) I remember now that this episode is why I was never hugely on board with Clex. I can completely see why people ship it.  But I’ve had a longtime headcanon that, once Lucas didn’t pan out, Clark more fully became Lex’s second chance at raising a baby sibling, and Lex uses the only love language he knows--gifts--to express his need to be important to Clark.  This got even more pronounced after Helen’s betrayal, and Lionel’s (latest), and certainly was always brewing because Lex was close to Lillian, and Julian’s death had to profoundly wound her.  Lex has been carrying that guilt around for nearly two decades, and it’s VERY significant that when he was feeling the most vulnerable and afraid, his mind went to what his psyche still deems his worst and most shameful mistake. 

[i-hope-youre-hopeful]

Happy new year I guess!

As always I have too much to say. Let’s just talk about recent events and the new year if we can.

This week I had Christmas which was disappointing and stressful and basically didn’t exist but it technically could’ve been a lot worse. I spent time with my mom and with Hunter and went to the mall like 50 times. On Thursday we had the piggles Christmas party and it was so lovely and made me feel the sense of togetherness I longed for in this season, at least a little bit. We exchanged gifts and played card games and spent all night together. On Friday I saw Nathan comfort get married. I feel so weird about that but at the same time I do feel so happy for him and I wish him all the best. I got to see CCORE and that was wonderful. I danced all night, mostly alone, but I still had fun doing it. Saturday was New Year’s Eve, and I went to Kyle and Rachel’s with Sydney and Dylan and Hunter and L, and then we went to Rachel’s friend Adam’s house for a party. It was so lovely and lively and fun and we played skipbo and Jackbox and danced and drank and ate and it was great. Then hunter and I left and I met him at his house and we welcome the new year just the two of us. Then I went home.

Then today happened. I’ve been very sick today. My mom was so upset that I didn’t do what I said I would do. I don’t even know how much at fault I am. I feel guilty and sad but I won’t let it ruin my memories I hope. I just hope i am well again soon and that my mom isn’t too upset and that I do what’s right. I think I might have strep throat insanely enough. Why not I guess. Anyway I’m feeling much better now than earlier I will say that.

2022 was a big and bad and weird and wonderful year. I went to Indy and Michigan a bunch of times, I went to Wisconsin, I spent so much time with family and friends, I met new people and got to know old people better. I met Hunter and we started dating, and I’m so grateful for that and excited for what the future will have. I worked at Hopewell and saw my dad get new jobs and became a research assistant and learned so much in school and out of school. This year has been hard but it has been so very good. Thank you Father, for guiding me and growing me and showing me the way this year. Thank you for working all things out for the best, and for blessing me so profoundly.

As we begin this new year, please let us grow healthier in body and mind. Bring us health. Help us grow. Let us enjoy as many good days as possible and remember to be grateful, and let us grow from bad days and remember to be patient. Be sovereign over this year and help us remember when we’re afraid that you are sovereign. Help everything to work out the best way it possibly can, and help us to remember that you are working everything out that way. Bring life and bring it abundantly this year. I thank you for everything and I love you so deeply.

[storiesforallfandoms]

thought i lost you ~ captain jack sparrow;pirates of the caribbean

word count: 1310

request?: yes!

“Hey, I have a request for Jack Sparrow if you want to do it. Something along the lines of the reader getting really hurt in a fight or something, and it was kind of Jack's fault, so he feels immensely guilty about it. And Jack was really scared because he thought he might lose her. Then when the reader wakes up, Jack can't hold his tears because he never felt like that before, so she comforts him and eases his worries and maybe he confesses his true feelings for her and they cuddle?”

description: when she is nearly fatally injured during a fight, jack realizes he may never get the chance to confess his feelings again

pairing: jack sparrow x female!reader

warnings: swearing, violence

masterlist (one, two)

It was a glorious fight. (Y/N) was holding up well on her own against Davy Jones’ men as Jack fought the man himself. She was moving so quickly and seamlessly that it was hard for Jones’ men to even pinpoint where she was before she attacked.

Jack had gotten away from Jones for long enough to look at (Y/N). She was pulling her sword from another of the henchmen. She locked eyes with Jack and smiled. He returned it for a brief moment before his face fell and his eyes widened.

“(Y/N), look out!”

Before she could react, she was stabbed from behind by one of Jones’ men. Her eyes went wide as she fell to her knees. Jack was stunned at first, but was spurred into action when the man raised his sword again. He was quick to close the gap between them, swinging his own sword to stop (Y/N)’s attacker.

There was no time to check on her. Her clothes were already stained with blood and they had to get back to the ship. Jack picked her up carefully and raced for the Black Pearl, Davy Jones’ voice following him as he got further and further away.

His crew were waiting when he got back. Gibbs helped him to gently get (Y/N) onto the ship. Her eyes were glossing over and her breathing was slowing by the second. Jack looked around at the faces of the men who were surrounding them, frantically searching for someone.

“Tia!” he called, getting to his feet and approaching the former sea Goddess. “Tia, please, you have to help her. She was stabbed, she’s lost a lot of blood.”

Tia glanced at (Y/N) over Jack’s shoulder. “I’m not a miracle worker, Jack.”

“Please, just try,” he begged. “That’s all I ask for. Please?”

Tia sighed and looked at the injured girl again. She took a moment to consider before nodding to the two nearest crew members. “Take her below deck. I’ll need to be absolutely alone, that includes you Jack.”

The captain nodded, although knowing he couldn’t be with (Y/N) was killing him. He watched as his two crewmates carried (Y/N) down with Tia following behind them. The two men were gone for just a moment before reappearing. Jack continued to watch the door, wanting nothing more than to join them and be with (Y/N).

“Jack,” Gibbs said. “Jack, we have to go. It won’t be long until Davy Jones catches up to us.”

“Right,” Jack said, snapping out of his daze. “Right. Raise the sails!”

He used the escape as a way to take his mind off of what had happened. But it hadn’t taken long for them to flee the island, and soon, Jack was back to wondering what was happening below deck.

He was pacing when the door opened and Tia emerged. Jack looked at her, anxiously awaiting the news he was about to receive.

Tia smiled at him. “Turns out I am a miracle worker.

~~~~~~

Tia had put a spell on (Y/N) to make her sleep for about a day so she could recover. Jack was there when she woke up, apologizing profoundly for her near fatal injury.

“You have no reason to be sorry, Jack,” she assured him.

“You were out there because of me. I should’ve handled it on my own - ”

“I never would’ve let you,” she cut him off. “That would’ve been way too dangerous to face on your own. Even if you hadn’t let me go, I would’ve tried anyways. Imagine how much worst it could’ve been if you hadn’t known I was out there.”

Without thinking, Jack took her hand in his and held it tightly. He lowered his head to hide his tears, but his shaking body gave him away. With her free hand, (Y/N) cupped Jack’s face and made him look at her.

“Jack,” she said, her voice soft.

“Sorry,” he said.

“No, don’t be sorry. I’ve just never seen you cry before.”

“I was so scared. I thought I had lost you.”

She wiped a tear with her thumb. “I didn’t know you cared this much.”

“Of course I do, (Y/N). I care so deeply for you, I always have. It’s because I - ”

He caught himself then. Jack knew he had already said too much and was considering ways to get out of the situation, but he also considered the possibility of finally telling her. The feelings he had been harboring for so long, he could finally just let them out. There was always the possibility of a negative reaction, but it was better than just keeping this to himself for any longer, wasn’t it?

(Y/N) tilted her head to try and look into Jack’s wandering eyes. “It’s because...what?”

Jack sighed and squeezed her hand lightly. “It’s because I have feelings for you, (Y/N). Feelings that are stronger than just a captain and his crewmate, and even stronger than just two friends. I...I have romantic feelings for you, and I have ever since we first met.”

(Y/N) was stunned into silence. After her near death experience the day before, she was sure there was nothing that could top that shocking moment. And yet here she was, speechless because of what Jack had just confessed to her.

The longer she was silent, the more worried Jack became. Maybe it was wrong of him to admit his feelings. If (Y/N) didn’t feel the same way and knowing he did made her feel uncomfortable, she may want to leave the Black Pearl. It could cause an awkward tension throughout the ship since there was no land for possibly miles.

When (Y/N) finally spoke again, her voice was so soft that it was almost inaudible.

“What took you so long?”

Jack looked at her, not his turn to be surprised. “W-What?”

(Y/N) smiled, bringing Jack’s hand to her lips and lightly pressing a kiss against his knuckles.

“I have romantic feelings for you too, Jack. I have for so long. I thought it was inappropriate to have these feelings so I never told you.”

A laugh escaped from Jack’s lips. “How could we both be this clueless?”

“We may be smart, but we’re also pretty stupid?”

Jack chuckled again, or maybe he was still laughing from before. He truly couldn’t tell at that point. He leaned forward, wanting to kiss her, but stopped short. He realized she hadn’t exactly giving him permission for anything like that.

(Y/N) smiled and closed the gap between them, gently pressing her lips against his. The kiss felt right, like it was meant to happen. Jack cupped (Y/N)’s face gently, running his fingers over her soft skin. He didn’t want to ever let go of her. He wanted to keep her close, to keep her safe. He could never risk losing her again.

(Y/N) pulled away from the kiss to suck in a breath of pain.

“Did I hurt you?” Jack asked.

(Y/N) smiled and shook her head. “No, I just moved too suddenly. The wound may be fixed but it’s not completely healed. Tia said it could be another few days before I’m mobile again, and another while still before I’m back to normal.”

“She did the best she could,” Jack said. “I owe her the world for saving you.”

(Y/N)’s fingers lightly brushed over Jack’s face, mirroring his earlier movements. “I owe you the world for saving me. If you hadn’t been there, or hadn’t been so quick, I would’ve been done for.”

“I don’t need the world,” he told her, kissing her hand, “but if you want to repay me, you can start by letting me call you mine.”

“Oh, my captain,” (Y/N) said. “I’ve always been yours.”

[rere-the-writer]

Title- Mikaelsons and a baby

A part two to this ask

Part three

Part four - coming soon

Pairings: Poly!Mikaelson x Pregnant!Reader

Warnings: Fluff, Soft!Mikaelsons, Just a little bit of angst, Klaus and Kol threating people

You sat with Rebekah trying to distract yourself from not worrying about Davina as lately the young witch hadn't been feeling well lately. You looked up seeing Hayley leaving with Sophie and thought nothing of it.

"Hey Beka?"

"Yes, beautiful?" Rebekah questioned looking over at you seeing that you were knitting you fourth scarf.

"Is Davina okay? Marcel was asking about her earlier." You asked Rebekah watching drop her book worry came across her face.

"Also it is probably nothing but I over heard Sophie talking to Nik about completing the Harvest." You answered Rebekah startled when she suddenly stood up.

"I need to find Elijah." Rebekah said leaving making you worry as it was never good if Elijah needed to know and decided to find Kol since you were still mad at Klaus when learned what he did to Davina.

"Kol? What are you doing?" You asked him finding him in your bedroom trying do something.

"Putting the crib together." Kol said smiling up at you as you giggled seeing that it was looking more like a hot mess than a crib.

"Babe, that doesn't look like a crib." You giggle sitting next to Kol as he placed his hand on your baby bump.

"Well right now it doesn't but it will be."

"Need any hel......" You were cut off when the room shook and Kol quickly grabbed you protecting you as things fell from the wall.

"What was that?"

"Davina. She can't control all that magic she has." Kol says walking out of the room with you following worried as you mothered the girl as Kol would tease. You followed Kol but paused seeing Hayley with Elijah and as much as you knew to follow Kol. You were curious what they were talking about.

"Elijah, I have something to tell you." You heard Hayley say as you peeked around the corner knowing Elijah most likely knew that you were there.

"What is it Hayley?"

"Sophie called asking for a favor and at first I thought it was about the baby as Sophie promised me that she would help break the curse," Hayley says as she walked ahead of Elijah as he narrowed his eyes, "that Marcel put on my people for information. I didn't think nothing of it but Davina started doing those pictures of Celeste."

"Hayley, what did you do? It have better not put Y/N and the baby in danger." Elijah said walking up to the werewolf as you swallowed a bad feeling settled in the pit of your stomach.

"Sophie wanted to find Celeste's remains so I asked Y/N and went though your journals to find out where you buried her the told Sophie," Hayley tells Elijah sounding hurt as you felt sick and guilty as Elijah told you in confidence, "I know it was snoopy and I should have just asked you."

"Celeste wanted to be left in peace. When a witch's remains are consecrated, that power fuels the rest of their community." Elijah tells Hayley hurt lacing his voice while guilt ate away at you. Hayley looked down feeling terrible as Elijah walked up to her.

"She did not want to be found, she made me promise to make sure she couldn't. Not only did you violated my privacy but you have broken my promise to her."

"I thought they were just bones Elijah."

"If you truly believed that, why didn't you ask me where to find her instead of using Y/N and looked though my journals." Elijah said walking pass Hayley going to chase after you hearing you walking off.

"Baby, Y/N. Wait a minute." Elijah says gently grabbing your arm and cupped your cheek wiping away your tears.

"Why are you upset?"

"Because I helped Hayley break your promise. I know how much they mean to you." You tell Elijah as he smiled softly pulling you into a hug.

"You are too sweet baby. I am not mad at you for you couldn't have known her little plan."

"But still Elijah." You mumble against his chest as Elijah kissed your head when you hugged him. It wasn't hard to see Elijah was angry at Hayley as Kol and Rebekah could tell but Klaus wasn't surprised as you finally forgave him and told him everything.

"Elijah can we talk?"

"Just on my out." Elijah said holding your hand taking you with him for the day as Klaus followed teasing Elijah.

"You don't have to be here. You also didn't need to bring Y/N, it'll take Sophie some time to prepare the consecration."

"I have nothing but time and Y/N needs time out of the Abattoir. I owe Celeste this much." Elijah says watching you stand at the grave flowers in hand as you told Elijah you wanted to pay respects to the dead witch.

"Care to elaborate?" Sabine asked walking up to Elijah as he looked at her then back at you with a soft look in his eyes.

"Ever experience something so profoundly wonderful that when it was taken from you. Your life felt unbearable?"

"Yeah I've felt that. I have scars to prove it." Sabine says noticing how Elijah watched you as if you were the only woman in the world.

"I believe when you love someone like I had Celeste, they leave you uniquely vulnerable. Y/N has the power to hurt me like no other."

"You really love that woman don't you?" Sabine asked looking at you also as Elijah took out a handkerchief.

"I do." Elijah says walking up to noticing a tear rolling down your cheek wiping it away. Learning that Marcel took Davina to protect her from the Harvest left a hollowed feeling in your chest.

"You okay there?" You heard Sabine ask as you left at the Abattoir as the family went looking for Davina and Marcel.

"Yeah.....I....just...it's nothing."

"You can tell me." Sabine says sitting next to you as you sighed rubbing your bump.

"I feel bad for Elijah. I understand Hayley wants to help her people but it made Elijah break his promise to Celeste."

"You knew were she was buried."

"Yeah....I asked wanting to pay respects to the woman that got to love Elijah before me."

"You are adorably dumb."

"So Nik and Kol tells me." You tell her with a bright smile as Sabine could see what the Mikaelsons saw in you. You had a softness to you that drew people in, that made them comfortable.

"Where is Hayley?"

"Hanging out with her wolves." You answered Sabine watching her pull out a pendant of some kind.

"Wanna know the sex of the baby?" Sabine asked you watching you light up nodding.

"We found Davina." Kol says sitting next to you seeing you playing a card game with Sabine. You paused looking at Kol as that hollow feeling returned.

"Oh." You said in a quiet voice which Kol picked up something was wrong with you and made a note to ask you later about it. Rain poured as you stood next to Kol with Elijah holding an umbrella over you as you all watch Sophie complete the Harvest.

"It didn't work." Hayley whispered as the witches didn't wake up as the rain stopped. You bit your lip tears falling seeing Sophie cry over her dead niece.

"Shhh darling. It's okay." Kol muttered softly hugging you as you cried Elijah felt his heart break hearing your sons.

"Rebekah, you and Kol take Y/N home while Niklaus and I take care of this."

"Come babe. We'll get you and get some tea." Rebekah says as you nodded walking with her and Kol.

Bad juju is what your grandmother would say when ever you would get a hollow feeling. For the last few days witch bad juju was running a muck as Klaus and Rebekah was missing while Kol had to save Hayley and a wolf you learned named Jackson.

"Baby?" Elijah questioned finding you sitting in Klaus's art studio dress in one of Klaus's shirts as non of Rebekah's clothes couldn't fit you anymore.

"I miss them 'Lijah." You tell him as he sits next to you kissing your head.

"We'll find them baby." Elijah tells you as you nodded. It was weird to you hanging around Hayley as you had been noticing how she would look at Elijah. You hadn't noticed until Celeste pointed it out after you learned she was controlling your new witch friend.

"You're a lot cuter than what Hayley told me about you." You heard Jackson say making your cheeks warm up looking up at the werewolf.

"Well I could say something nice about you but Hayley barely said a word about you."

"So why are you out here with Hayley?" Jackson asked sitting next to you.

"Hayley's idea. She told Elijah that it would be safer for me until they find Nik and Beka."

"I see. What are you having?"

"A girl." You tell him with a smile as you two talked.

"You let Hayley take my unborn child and Queen out in a swamp."

"Firstly it's a bayou Niklaus and second it was to keep her safe from Celeste." Elijah tells Klaus helping Rebekah over a log while Kol was ahead with Klaus. After a long night in a graveyard airing out centuries of problems, the Originals were inching to have you near them again.

"She is going to upset that Sabine is dead." Rebekah said knowing that you grew close to the witch

"Yes, we should tell her later." Elijah says as Hayley met up with them to which Klaus and Kol noticed right away that Hayley moved next to Elijah.

"Hayley have you and the wolves been taking care of Y/N?" Klaus questioned there was a dangerous under tone to Klaus's voice. Hayley looped her arm around Elijah's nodding as Elijah raised an eyebrow but pushed it aside.

When they reached the wolf pack, they heard your sweet laugh and saw you standing in front of what looked like a work bench. Jackson stood behind you gently holding your hands showing you how to drill.

"Hayley who is that touching my wife." Rebekah asked lowly as Hayley looked at her seeing the blonde vampire glaring. Hayley looked at the other three jumping when she heard them growling also glaring.

"That's Jackson. Y/N and him has been getting close."

"You have told him who she belongs to yes?"

"I though her being pregnant was a clear enough sign." Hayley told Klaus not caring for his glare. Rebekah got your attention easily something her and the boys was always proud of.

"Beka!" You cried moving from Jackson throwing yourself into her arms as she held you. Hayley walked up with boys seeing you peppered Rebekah with kisses.

"Nik! You're okay!" You squealed happily giving the hybrid the same treatment as Jackson watched happy for you.

"Oh guys meet Jackson, Hayley's fiancee." You said smiling making the Originals blink confused while Hayley stared at you. While they weren't looking you gave Hayley a mischievous smirk knowing just what you were doing surprising the wolf.

"Fiancee?"

"Yeah. Some old wolf thing." Hayley answered Elijah waving her dismissively while you put on the most innocent look getting Elijah's attention. Both Klaus and Kol knew what you were doing while Elijah had no clue.

"Eli don't you think that maybe we can help Jackson move closer to Hayley or maybe help set up a cabin. So that Jackson isn't away from fiancee?"

Klaus and Kol was smirking as Rebekah stood next to quietly laughing behind her hand. They knew when you were jealous as you would get mischievous and since Hayley seemly liked Elijah, you were going to nip it in the bud.

"You're right baby. Hayley you should be getting to know Jackson and getting the pack together if you want them at faction meetings."

"Right.....Elijah or everything is fine just the way it is."

"But Hayley, 'Lijah right. If you want wolves in on the meetings it best you and Jackson unite the wolves." You tell her pressing closer to Elijah who smiled at you unaware of what you did.

"I'll even help little wolf." Klaus said throwing gas on the fire while Jackson smiled also unaware of what little plan you did.

"Okay." Hayley said sighing as you grinned feeling Elijah kissing your head telling Jackson that they needed to get you home.

"You little minx." Klaus teased sitting on the couch pulling you into his lap.

"I don't know what you are talking about." You tell him faking innocence as Kol joined you both laying his head on your belly listening to the baby.

"Don't worry darling it's our little secret." Kol tells you smiling kissing your belly as you just hummed relaxing enjoying the peace and quiet while it lasted.

[marchenkonig]

I’ve been thinking a lot about religion lately, and my relationship with it. I am not a religious person, but I was raised in a very religious household. My parents, their parents, and my parents parents were all members of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Mormons. Pretty much all the way back to when Joseph smith came up with his first get rich quick scheme my family has been part of and supporting the Mormon church. This has lead to my relationship with the religion to be super complicated in so many different ways, and has left a profound mark on me I will never shake. I’m not special in that regard, everyone who’s left can say the exact same thing. I’ve been really pondering on that lately, which has lead me to the discovery I’m posting about today.

I just want to make this clear right up front: I’m not here to insult or make fun of anybody. I felt the need to make this post when I found the Queerstake tag here on tumblr. It’s a group that profoundly saddens me. I’ve never seen a group so deeply in denial before in my life. The king and short of it is that they’re mormons who are also queer. If you know anything about mormons, you might see some conflicting beliefs in that statement. This group made me so sad, reading through their posts. So clearly so many of them hate being in the church, but have never lived a life where there were any alternatives. Posts begging the church leadership to not make them choose between their sexuality and their faith. Posts complaining about how every 6 months the leadership stands up in front of every mormon on earth in a broadcast that is mandatory to view, and condemns them and their lifestyle. Posts that start asking deep questions if the church, ones that really scrutinize it, that get so close to understanding the truth, and then miss the mark at the last second.

It really hurt me to read this because I remember being in a similar place. Trying my best to love myself in a world I felt like not only did I not belong, but also hated me. Praying to god every day to please help me understand only to be met with silence. Crying myself to sleep at night, feeling just so guilty about being who I am. Talking to people I trust only to be met with the mantra “doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith” as if I wasn’t riddled with enough self doubt at the time. Tricking myself into believing in the church because knowing god had a plan for me was much less scary than accepting that I had to figure it out myself.

And it wasn’t all bad. A sense of community I that I almost fit into, a set of rules to follow. It was even good at times. Rituals are good for anxiety, and what is prayer but meditation. Sometimes, I felt the “”spirit”” too (which is insidious for its own reasons. We’re taught that good feelings or that feeling of making the right choice is not our selves but god/the Holy Ghost telling us that feeling is correct, and not a conclusion we came to by ourselves) but of course this wasn’t the divine doing of god, it was just… people. My friends, my family, myself. It wasn’t god it was people. I get the same feelings hanging out with my friends as I did on church sanctioned camping trips. Bearing my heart out to people I love late at night is the same as bearing my testimony. Breathing exercises when I’m panicking are the same as the prayers I reflexively said any time i got nervous. And now I’m aloud to love myself and make my own decisions and know I’m the one making them instead of some outside force! And the best part of all of this? It comes without all the negative downsides and baggage the same experiences in the church gave me!

At the end of the day, I don’t know if there’s a god or not. I don’t really think about it, but I do know this. If there’s a loving being out there, all they would want is for you to be a good person. God wouldn’t care if you followed a checklist of arbitrary rules, just that you tried your god damn best to be a kind and positive force in the world, and if that’s not comforting I don’t know what is. Everything else is just arbitrary bullshit. Be who you are, you don’t need the church. I love all of you struggling with what I struggled with. You will find your people, I promise. You don’t need the church.

[incorrectbandofbrothersquotes]

You Better, You Better, You Bet - Chapter 9

As Long as You’re Mine

Ron Speirs x Juliet Fletcher

Summary: Juliet Fletcher reaches a breaking point in her life. When she is at her absolute lowest, she meets Ron Speirs, and something happens between them that neither of them will ever forget.

Word Count: 4.1K

Tag List: @vintagelavenderskies @how-are-those-nuts-sarge @iilovemusic12us @hesbuckcompton-baby @tvserie-s-world @whovian45810 @50svibes @cagzzz107 @evelynshelby @piano-isnt-my-forte​ If you’d like to be added, let me know!

A/N: Hope you guys enjoy this update!

Warning(s): None :)

Chapter 1  Chapter 2  Chapter 3  Chapter 4  Chapter 5  Chapter 6  Chapter 7  Chapter 8

AO3 link

Chapter 9 let’s go!!!

“Okay, how does this sound?” Juliet asked Ron, who sat on her bed as she put together her story of the trial. He was careful not to recline, lest he disturb her pages of notes carefully organized atop the quilt. “Meredith Fisher confessed to the murder of six-year-old Peggy Lee in front of the courtroom before her trial began. Mrs. Fisher was arrested and charged with the murder in September of last year. Her lawyer, Mr. Harvey Cooper, originally planned to plead not guilty, but in a shocking turn of events, Mrs. Fisher herself admitted to the jury she killed Peggy Lee before even opening arguments could be made.” 

“I’d read that,” Ron replied. 

Juliet huffed and looked around her room at the Blue Boar. Papers littered the floor, pens were nowhere to be found, and her typewriter was mocking her. Now that the trial was finished - with such a dramatic twist - she was hard at work, trying to ensure she reported it just right. An impossible task, it felt like.

“Okay, but would you read it because I’m your girlfriend or because of the writing?” she asked. 

“The writing,” he told her. “It’s simple, it explains everything.” 

“It feels a bit long for the lead,” she said. “Perhaps I should put the bit about her arrest in the nut graph.” 

“That does feel more like background information,” he agreed. 

She pulled a pencil from behind her ear, scratched out the sentence, and began again. “So, it’d go like this - Meredith Fisher confessed to the murder of six-year-old Peggy Lee in front of the courtroom before her trial began. Her lawyer - I’m gonna take out his name and have that later - so, Her lawyer originally planned to plead not guilty, but in a shocking turn of events, Mrs. Fisher admitted to the jury she killed Peggy Lee before even opening arguments could be made. Then I’ll go into when she was arrested, the details of the murder, then the evidence the prosecution had prepared, and finish with her sentencing date. How’s that?” 

“I think it’s perfect,” he said. 

She chewed her lip. “Should I use the word shocking? I don’t want to tell the readers how to feel.” 

“When she confessed, what was the first thing you heard?” he asked. 

“Gasps,” she answered. 

“There’s your shock,” he said. 

Juliet had to concede that point. Ron almost didn’t believe her when she told him the story. The judge had barely gotten the words “How do you plead?” out before Meredith let out a wail like wounded animal and confessed to the whole gruesome thing. She sobbed that she was sorry, but she knew she had to be punished. She wasn’t safe. And truthfully, Juliet felt bad for her. It was truly one of the most pitiful things she’d ever witnessed. 

But the one thing Juliet could never forget, the image that would stick with her for all her days, was the look on Peggy Lee’s parents’ faces. The Lees watched, dignified, proud, yet misty eyed as the person who killed their daughter begged for mercy. Their grief was profoundly felt, despite their stately manner. They said nothing. They did nothing. And they spoke to no one upon their exit from the courtroom. 

“Jules?” 

Ron’s voice brought her back to the present, his hand on her shoulder making her turn to look at him. 

“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “Just...it’s so unfair. If anyone had a right to be screaming and crying it was the parents.”

“They must be very English,” he said. 

“Oh, they were proper English,” she agreed. “Stiff upper lips and all. The mother did at one point hide her face in the father’s arm, but other than that, they were stoic.” 

“Thinking about including that in your story?” he wondered. 

“God, no,” she replied. “I’ll mention that they were there and offered no comments, but this isn’t that kind of article.” 

“Just the facts, huh?” 

“As usual.” 

“Juliet.”

“Yeah?”

“The article’s gonna be great,” he said.  

“How can you be so sure?” she asked. 

“Because you care this much,” he said. He accentuated the point with a kiss to the top of her head. “I’ve got a staff meeting. Are you alright here?” 

She nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for being so patient with me.” 

He kissed her again. “I’ll see you tonight.” 

“See you later, Ron,” she returned. 

With that, he left. Juliet started trying to condense the lead again, still feeling like it was too long. There had to be a better summary. But it was a lot to try and fit into one sentence, so she resigned herself to making it more than one line. She hadn’t chosen a headline yet, either, but she usually liked to write the article first. That way she could pick out the singular most newsworthy part and headline with that. As she organized further, the phone rang. 

“Hello?” she answered. 

“Juliet, it’s Lottie.” 

“Hey, Lottie, how are you?” Juliet asked. 

“Fine, same as usual,” Lottie returned. “Otis just rang and told me about the trial. I hope you’re hard at work.” 

“Absolutely,” Juliet assured her. “I’ve nearly got the lead down. I’ve just got to get the facts organized. I’m thinking of doing a follow up story about the shortcomings of Operation Pied Piper, since Cooper’s little tidbit did prove to be true.” 

Sad as it was, Harvey Cooper was right. There was no process for vetting the families agreeing to take the children. The committee had been in such a hurry to evacuate, they had not even considered that some children could end up in more danger than they were at home in the cities. Juliet found the whole thing fascinating, and it could open up a conversation about war time protocol - be meticulous or swift? 

“I think that’ll be fine,” Lottie said. “But have you gotten any war news? I know I wasn’t enthusiastic about it initially, but you’re the only reporter I’ve got with the Airborne.” 

Juliet bit her lip. While the prospect of war news had originally driven her to accept the Peggy Lee story, she found herself conflicted about it now. Her relationship with Ron threw a wrench in it. 

“I think it’s a conflict of interest for me to cover the Airborne,” she said. 

She could practically hear Lottie’s eyes roll. “Oh, come on, Juliet, don’t be absurd.” 

“It isn’t right, Lottie!” Juliet insisted. “I’m in an intimate relationship with one of the soldiers, there’s no freeing me from bias there.” 

“You could use it to your advantage,” Lottie said. “Obviously, you can’t use him as a source, but couldn’t he lead you to the right person?” 

“I can’t ask that of him,” Juliet said. “I don’t want him to get the wrong idea.” 

“What wrong idea?” 

It was something Juliet had already put a lot of thought into. As badly as she wanted to cover the war - and it did seem like things were ramping up even more in Aldbourne - she was hesitant. She had actually considered asking Ron for a source and then immediately hated herself for it. She would not use her relationship to get ahead in her job. She couldn’t. It just wasn’t right, simple as that.

“That I’m using him,” Juliet explained. “If I ask him to get me a source, he might worry that it’s the reason I entered the relationship, and that’s not the case.” 

Lottie sighed. “So, you just want to give up on covering the war?” 

“I didn’t say that,” Juliet returned. “I’d be happy to cover something else once I get back to London, but-”

“Forget it,” Lottie cut across her. “Just focus on the trial for now and then Pied Piper, if that’s what you want.” 

“Lottie -” 

“Good afternoon, Juliet,” Lottie said harshly, hanging up before Juliet could protest any further. 

She sighed, hanging up as well, and sitting back in her chair. She had a feeling the conversation wasn’t quite over, but she’d hear more about it on her next trip home. For now, she wanted to focus on what happened at the trial. The sentencing would be in another few weeks, so she needed to get this done. 

***

Ron was right of course. The article was published and the London Pursuit sold the most copies it had in years. It surprised Juliet a little, but perhaps people were tired of war news and what better than a dramatic murder trial for a change of pace? It was morbid, sure, but Juliet knew she’d handled it as well as she could. 

Lottie called, absolutely elated by the circulation numbers. And honestly, Juliet was thrilled too. She found Ron later that day and leapt into his arms as a display of her unmitigated excitement. She’d done it, and done it well! It was cause for celebration. So they went to London for the weekend - staying with Nancy of course, since she would have had a fit at missing an opportunity to see Ron - and they went to a nice dinner, champagne and everything. Juliet could hardly believe her luck. Everything was going so perfectly. 

And that night, as they lay together in the afterglow, she looked at his face and knew she loved him. The kind of love she read about in books and poetry. The kind that crooners sang about on the radio. She’d found it. It was scary enough to admit to herself, but she determined that she would - one day soon if the opportunity presented itself - admit it to him. 

He caught her gazing at him. 

“What is it?” he asked. 

“Nothing,” she replied. “I’m just happy you’re mine.” 

***

The sentencing hearing was not as interesting as the trial itself, but Juliet was relieved to report that Meredith Fisher was going to prison for life. There would be no chance for parole, either. So justice was served. 

However, Juliet couldn’t help but notice the look on Mr. Lee’s face. Mrs. Lee had not come for the sentencing, so it was just father. When the judge announced Meredith’s fate, Mr. Lee only closed his eyes and let out a long breath. He nodded, put a hand over his heart, and inhaled again. A single tear rolled down his cheek. It made Juliet look away so that he could have that moment for himself. To take in whatever feelings came to him. To remember Peggy and take some solace in that her killer was going away. 

“I thought I’d be happier,” Juliet told Ron as they prepared for bed that night back at the Blue Boar. “But it still just feels...rotten.” 

“Nothing can bring the girl back,” he said matter-of-factly. 

“I know,” she replied. “But I just....I suppose you’re right. What else could anyone have hoped for in this situation?” 

“Right,” he agreed. 

“I’m also grateful we didn’t have to hear that lawyer make that ridiculous argument in a courtroom,” she said. “I don’t think I could bear the looks on the parents’ faces at that.”  

“That would have been awful,” he said. 

“Even so, it feels rather anticlimactic,” she said. “Especially for the prosecution who spent months putting everything together.”

“They still got the result they wanted,” he pointed out. “So what does it matter?  

She shrugged at that. She still felt unsatisfied, as if there was something more to be done. Even though logically, she knew there wasn’t. She would write an update for the paper, and that would really be the end of it. That was when it hit her. What was really upsetting her was that now that this was over, there was no more reason for her to be in Aldbourne. Especially now that she didn’t want to cover the Airborne. It meant that she would go home to London, in turn reducing her time with Ron significantly. And that was a dreadful thought. 

***

“What do you mean you aren’t coming back to London?” Lottie cried through the phone. “What about the Pied Piper story?”

“I reckon it can wait,” Juliet said, entirely unconvincing, but she hoped Lottie was buying it. Her reasons for remaining in Aldbourne had nothing to do with her job and everything to do with the man she was in love with. “And maybe with some time, I can find my own sources on war news.” 

Lottie remained silent for several minutes. “So, you’ve just changed your mind all of a sudden about covering the Airborne?” 

“Not completely,” Juliet lied. “I...I’m just not sure I’m quite finished here. And what if there’s something else about the Peggy Lee story that comes up? I could -” 

“Give it a rest, Juliet,” Lottie groaned. “I know you want to stay for your boyfriend.”

“That’s not -” 

Lottie cut across her protests. “Please do not insult my intelligence by suggesting otherwise. You want to be near him.” 

“You don’t sound quite as sympathetic as I hoped,” Juliet said, giving in. 

“You have a life in London, Juliet!” Lottie reminded her harshly. “You have a job to do, your mother is here, and you want to put everything on hold for some man?” 

“He’s not just some man!” Juliet argued indignantly. “He’s...different from any man I’ve ever known. And what we have means more to me than anything I’ve ever known.” 

She glanced down at the necklace that sparkled against her skin. A constant reminder of how much she meant to him as well. 

“Oh, come off of your cloud, will you?” Lottie snapped. 

“Lottie,” Juliet said seriously. “The whole time I was with Arthur, did you ever know me to put him before work? Or my family?”

“No, so why is this Ron fellow -”

“Because it is different,” Juliet emphasized. “This is it, Lottie. He’s the one.” 

That seemed to stump her. “Has he...proposed?”

“No, he hasn’t,” Juliet said. “I don’t even care if he does.”

Lottie scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous, you can’t just carry on living in sin.” 

Juliet rolled her eyes. “Could you please pay attention to what's important here? There’s a man in my life who I genuinely see a happy future with and I just...I want to focus on that. Is that so wrong?” 

“I suppose not,” Lottie sighed, and Juliet inwardly celebrated a moment of victory. “But I can’t pay you if you aren’t working. At least be making the proper phone calls to follow this Pied Piper story. Conduct interviews of other families there who have taken in children from the cities. Part of the story is there if you know where to look.” 

“No problem,” Juliet said. “You’ll be glad to know I’ve already begun. I’ve got an interview with the Barnes family next week, who are housing a little girl. I’ll ask them about how the process went for them.” 

“Perfect,” Lottie said. She paused for a beat. “And, Juliet?”

“Yes?” 

“I really am happy for you.” 

Juliet smiled softly. “Thank you, Lottie.” 

***

Spring fully thawed the winter out by the time April arrived. Aldbourne was rather charming in bloom. But Juliet wasn’t sure if it was the flowers or that she was in love. She found herself humming a lot more than she used to - these days she didn’t even need food to start a merry tune in the back of her throat. She had more energy, despite spending rather long nights in Ron’s arms. And she found her enthusiasm for work - even though her priority shifted - a great deal easier to come by as well. 

The interview with the Barnes family went splendidly. They were also housing a couple of lieutenants from the Airborne, though they were not in Ron’s company. Juliet only exchanged brief greetings with them, as they were heading to work just as she was entering the house. She nearly melted at the connection they had formed with the girl - Ann - which was clear in their goodbyes to her for the day. She seemed particularly close to the tall redhead. 

Juliet told Ron about it that evening over drinks. 

“Yeah, that’s Winters and Welsh,” he told her. “Good officers.” 

“Do they spend much time here?” she wondered, indicating the Blue Boar.  

“Welsh does, but Winters doesn’t drink,” he said. “He spends most nights there with the family.” 

“I can tell,” she said. “I mean, it was seriously precious. She hugged his knees and he patted her on the head and I think I fell a little bit in love with him for a moment.” 

He scoffed. “Good luck, I think he has a girlfriend.” 

“Has he?” she questioned. 

“Yeah, the nurse,” he said. “She works for the regiment.” 

“You lot have your own nurse?” 

“She’s got some connection to Colonel Sink,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve never actually met her.” 

“And what about the other chap?” she asked. “Welsh?” 

“He’s engaged,” he told her. “Her name’s Kitty.” 

“You know that but not the name of the nurse?” she questioned. 

“I only know because Harry never shuts up about her,” he said. “The whole regiment knows at this point. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Krauts knew.” 

She giggled. “I think that’s sweet.” 

“It’s obnoxious.” 

“You mean, you don’t brag about me to the whole regiment?” she teased. “Romance is dead.”

“Sorry for your loss,” he retorted as he took a swig of his drink. 

“Not as sorry as I am,” she returned. “Now I’ll have to spend God knows how many hours in mourning.” 

“At least you look good in black,” he said. 

“My saving grace,” she agreed with a smile. She paused for a beat. “Seriously, you don’t talk about me at all?” 

“I do if you come up,” he told her.

“And what do you say?” she wondered.

“Whatever’s relevant,” he said. 

She rolled her eyes. “You’re impossible.” 

“I prefer not to broadcast my personal life,” he said. “All they need to know is that you’re mine.” 

She smiled as she leaned over to kiss his cheek. “That’s true.” 

***

April was drawing to a close. Juliet stood in her room, preparing to go and interview another Aldbourne family about their process in fostering a child from London. These interviews were restoring the bit of faith she’d lost in covering Peggy’s story because most of the families were very kind, and doted on the children. They were proud of doing what they could to ensure the future of England. And the children were mostly happy. What happened to Peggy was a tragedy and an outlier. 

She was just getting ready to leave when Ron entered her room. A grim shadow of doubt on his features made her smile disappear as fast as it had come. Something was wrong. He definitely had bad news. 

“We’re moving out,” he told her. 

She had expected this at some point, but she still blinked in surprise. Her shoulders drooped as the reality of it percolated through her.  

“Oh,” she said. “Well...when?” 

He hesitated. “This is off the record -” 

She scowled at him, momentarily offended that he felt the need to clarify. 

“Everything between us is protected, Ron,” she said sharply. “You and I are always off the record unless stated otherwise.” 

“Sorry,” he said quickly, picking up on her tone. “I know that, I just -” 

“When?” she demanded again.

“End of May,” he said. “I don’t know when we’ll be back.” 

The if hung in the air, but remained unsaid. This was it. The moment she had been dreading since she met him. Well, maybe not that long, but since they had started getting to know each other there in Aldbourne. The war was taking him from her, like it took everything. 

“I see…” she trailed off, her annoyance easing up. That was sooner than she had hoped and she didn’t want to waste any precious time being angry at him. “Um...where - wait, I can’t ask you that.” She bit her lip. “When - oh, no, you’ve just told me, that’s right -” 

“Juliet.”

“Yes?”

“Wait for me.” 

Once again, Ron failed to disappoint her. Despite all the reassurance, she worried that when they shipped out, he would take the opportunity to break it off with her. Instead, he was asking - in his way - for a commitment from her. She held his gaze for a long moment, waiting for him to say more. But he didn’t. 

“You really want to stay together?” she asked. 

“Yes,” he said assuredly. 

“Oh, thank God,” she sighed, and she threw herself into his arms for a kiss. 

He returned the kiss with enthusiasm, his lips fiery and desperate against hers. As if he were leaving the following morning instead of a couple of weeks. But Juliet wanted the intensity. She wanted to savor every touch, every kiss, every moment she had before he was gone. She also wanted to let him know that she absolutely would wait for him. She would do anything he asked of her. She just wanted him. Forever, if possible. And if the war robbed her of that, she would at least have the memories of kisses like these. Of nights in his arms. Of his unwavering dedication to her. 

***

The arrangements were made for Juliet to return to London once Ron and the rest of the Airborne were off. On his final morning in Aldbourne, they of course made love again, only it was the after that they relished even more. Juliet etched into her brain the feeling of his embrace, the warmth of his skin, the sound of his voice. She wished desperately that she could freeze time and hold onto him for just a little longer. She had found something so wonderful and now it was being dragged away from her. 

“Jules,” he said, voice low as if there might be someone listening on the other side of the door. 

“Yeah?” 

“We’re going to France,” he said. 

She blinked and adjusted her position so she could look him in the face. “France?”

He nodded. “I wanted you to know.” 

She couldn’t explain why that felt more intimate than anything they had just done in her bed. 

“Why tell me now?” she asked, curious. 

He swallowed, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, but his arm gave her shoulders a squeeze. 

“Trust,” he said. 

She pressed her lips tenderly to his chest to let him know how much she appreciated his trust. There was no longer a need to specify on or off the record. His statements were privileged. Anything he told her would remain between them. 

For a fleeting moment, she considered telling him right then that she loved him. Because if he was going to France, there was a chance he would never come back. And shouldn’t he know just in case? But her heart told her to play it safe. If she didn’t tell him now, perhaps whatever power there was would protect him enough so that she could say it later. If there were still things left to be said, hopefully that would keep him alive. 

There were no guarantees, of course. All they had was each other and their promise.

That afternoon, the trucks began rumbling out of Aldbourne. Juliet walked Ron as far as she was allowed. Her chest felt tight as the impending goodbye hung in the air. She hated this. It was too painful. How could it be that the very war that brought them together would also be the reason for their parting? What was fair about that? Nothing, that’s what. 

A kiss from Ron drew her out of her thoughts. He held her firmly against him, almost as if he were afraid she would disappear right out of his grasp. When they parted, they were both breathless. 

“Be careful,” she said. 

His eyes searched hers. “You too.” 

Her brain was practically screaming at her to tell him now just what she felt. But she was too afraid. Too afraid it would doom him. Too afraid he wouldn’t say it back. Or even worse, say it only because of the passionate nature of the moment. It had to be when they weren’t so desperate. When they really meant it because whatever was coming was not a threat. 

“I’ll write,” she told him. 

“I’ll respond when I can,” he returned. 

She nodded. Her throat was dry and thick. The lack of tears in her eyes surprised her. How could she not be crying when she could feel her heart breaking so badly? She kissed him again. Just to prolong the last moment where he was only hers. 

“Stay safe,” she told him. 

He nodded. 

With one last kiss, they said goodbye without saying it. Juliet went to the train station and headed home to London. And Ron went to war. 

[bnhablessings]

Can I request a oneshot/headcanon for Hawks x pregnant fem!reader? I was thinking of Hawks being super cute taking care of her and showing her off proudly to other hero's. this is my first time making a request, so feel free to do with this as you please lolz! also I really want the end to have reader going into labor and giving birth at the end with a very proud Hawks at her side (you get to choose the gender!)💖

It took me so long to get to this omg but I did and I hope you like it, Hon! It is past midnight and I have a weird obsession with tomatoes right now.

Warnings: Pregnancy, just a fluff overload, Profanity, All Might is retired, Dabi and Hawks are good friends AU (we ignore the manga, only happy feelings here lmao)

*I have fixed grammar issues. My brain power was not activated when writing this lol.

Words: 2438

Takami Keigo (Hawks) x Female Reader

“Isn’t she just amazing?” Hawks questions not really speaking to anyone else as he just admires the woman waddling down the hallway.

The other Pro Heroes around him stare at him with confusion. Aizawa, Yamada, Yagi, and Todoroki Enji all take a glance at each other before they wait for the woman to make her way to them. All of them but Hawks are profoundly confused.

“Uh… This was supposed to be a parent-teacher conference so may I ask why Hawks is here as well?” All Might asks.

Hawks ignores them as he watches the woman stopping for a moment to speak to a student. She looks genuinely concerned and it makes his foolish heart swell from how caring she is. Endeavor wants to slap the foolish look off Hawks face but ignores it to answer All Might.

“I apologize. We had lunch together before this meeting. He decided to follow me but I have no idea why.” The tone to Endeavor’s voice shows that he is irritated but curious as to why the number 2 hero seems to be enamored with a simple U.A teacher.

She hasn’t noticed him yet thankfully and he has proudly gotten a video of her waddling. The closer to she gets the more the expression on her face slowly turns into one of realization. The students at U.A respect and care for her so they always make room for her.

“Hey, Honey, what are you doing here?”  You ask softly as you place a hand on your very large bump.

He goes to respond when your colleague Present Mic starts to let out an inhuman sound that turns into a surprised scream. “What?! Honey?! (NAME) YOU’RE MARRIED TO THE HAWKS?!” Present Mic screeches.

You ignore the change in volume and laugh as you nod your head. Aizawa seems to nod as he pieces it together. “Ah… You did mention Tokoyami’s internship being close with your husband.”

“BUT WAIT! You’re married? All my attempts on wooing you have been in vain,” Present Mic mumbles.

Everyone seems to freeze at this but you just laugh more. “Yamada, have you not noticed my ring? I’ve been wearing it every day since working here!” You manage to say after laughing.

He has absolutely no reply but to slowly put his hands up to show surrender from Hawks’ glare on him. Without a care, Hawks pulls you to him so he can hug you with your baby bump blocking it fully. His hands go to rest upon it and he smiles widely.

“See! I told you I have a beautiful family too, Endeavor.”

Endeavor for once has to hide the smile on his face as he looks away. He replies, “Yeah. I thought you were speaking nonsense or showing me pictures of random pregnant women.”

“Nope! I can guess why you would be confused… Since I never showed her face. We have a little chickadee coming on the way!” The excitement is clear in his voice and on his face from the happy lazy grin plastered on it.

He looks at the others and bids them goodbye. “Well, I am going to steal her so she can have her lunch with me. See ya.”

~*~

“Baby, I promise, it is okay! I’ll be fine. I’ll see you later when you get home! I’m just happy you visited for lunch,” You say into the phone. Your other hand goes to your purse to look for your keys.

You hear Hawks mumble and whine on the other side of the phone but you ignore it until you find the keys successfully. “Alright, babe. I’ll be fine. I’ll text you when I reach the house. I love you!”

After hearing his ‘I love you more’ he hangs up and you smile feeling great. This is unusual since the pregnancy hormones have made you feel like shit lately. It’s all going to be worth it though.

“Hey, do you need me to walk you home?” Aizawa questions as he enters the hall.

You think for a few seconds before you ask, “Would you be willing to walk me to the station? I’ll be fine from there since I’m planning on stopping by a store! I don’t want to waste too much of your time!”

He nods and the two of you begin the walk to the station. It starts as a comfortable silence before Aizawa speaks up with a smile on his face. “You know, I had no idea you were married to the Number 2 Pro Hero. It surprised me but at the same, it didn’t. What surprised me though was seeing the way he stared at you. You have a good thing going,” Aizawa states.

It was odd for him to give his input like that but it made you feel happy to know that Hawks’ love for you was just that noticeable. Once at the station, Aizawa gives you a look, something an older brother would a younger sibling or parent would their child before giving a demand.

“Call me if anything happens. I’m on patrol for a while so I’ll be near this area. Be safe going home, (Name).”

Today has been such a heartwarming day and Aizawa’s words only bring you more joy as you bid him a farewell.

It doesn’t take long to reach the store close to your home. You salivate at the thought of getting what you crave most. An odd combination that most people would puke from but what you need to satisfy you and your baby right now, tomatoes and frosting.

You can just imagine Hawks’ disgusted look but it wasn’t the worst thing you’ve had yet. You go to turn when your baby bump hits something off the shelf. Thankfully, it was just another plastic can full of icing so it didn’t break. Now the new problem was picking up the jar.

You know it was a near-impossible feat but you try anyway. You probably look very silly trying to reach and barely scraping the can with your fingernails but you don’t care. You are determined to do it. That is until you hear an obvious cough trying to get your attention.

You give up for now and look at the owner only to smile upon seeing the man you saw earlier. “Hello, Mr. Endeavor! We’ve met officially earlier but not formally. I am Takami (Name). It’s a pleasure to meet you and I apologize if my husband gets a bit too much to handle. He can be very chillaxed but he does take his job seriously,” You ramble.

“Pleasure.”

He merely observes you with serious eyes before he bends down and picks up the icing jar. He hands it to you. “Thank you! I would’ve been in a pickle there if I couldn’t reach it,” You murmur placing it back on the shelf where it belongs.

One of his eyebrows betray his lack of expression to show his slight confusion and you laugh. “I already have my icing in this arm! The baby bump knocked over that one.”

He doesn’t say anything in reply to that. Instead, he seems to contemplate saying something. He just needs a few seconds before he decides to say it against his better judgment.

“Hawks... He’s the Number 2 Pro Hero and extremely famous. How is it I never even heard or seen you? I thought he was fibbing about having a wife since he only produced photos of your bump and not of your actual face,” He didn’t want to ask it but the curiosity got the best of him and it was unusual to him.

The question made you smile but this time with a bit of sadness. You’ve received this question just a few times before but the answer remains the same. “We try to hide our relationship and it is easy when his fans like to think he is single. It doesn’t matter but we have private social medias for our friends. We like to keep my face hidden and such.”

The atmosphere turned a bit tense and for once (actually probably like the fifth time since Hawks had been determined in making him a better Number 1 Hero) he feels guilty. Something strange feels like it’s churning in his chest and he quickly fixes it.

“He does talk an awful lot about you though. It’s clear as day how much he loves you and your baby.” It was a simple two-sentences but it brought comfort to you.

He leaves without any more words and you are brought back to your cheerful self and go to pay for the items. By the time you get home, it is already showing signs of getting dark. You are quick to send a text to Hawks and it distracts you from realizing something odd is wrong with your door. The fact that it is unlocked.

You lock your front door once inside and go straight to the kitchen to slice the tomatoes and spread icing on them. You waste absolutely no time as you have it all ready on a plate and leave the room to go change into something more comfortable.

Of course, only Hawks’ shirts have been fitting you lately and you prefer them much more than your maternity clothing. So you wear that and a pair of shorts before coming to get your treat and hopefully take a nap. That was the plan before you have a fucking heart attack from seeing a burnt toast eating your food.

“How the fuck do you eat this?” Dabi questions spitting a tomato slice out of his mouth.

Your heart is absolutely broken at the scene. You ignore the bully of a man and stare at the red and white mess on the ground. How dare he do this to you?

“Oh fuck… (Name), please don’t do this. I’m sorry. I’ll go buy you a new fucking tomato if you want. With the fucking confetti icing and shit. Just don’t cry… Or tell Hawks,” Dabi says.

It is too late though. The damage has been done as your hormones go berserk from seeing what you craved on the ground (yes your mind is ignoring the perfectly good slices still on the plate). Tears prick at your eyes and before you can rub them away or cry, Dabi brings you into a hug.

As you cry into his chest he is already on the phone with Hawks but with your uncontrollable sobs, you don’t hear the conversation. After a few painful minutes (for Dabi) he finally pulls away only for your face to be smothered by your loving husband’s chest.

He hushes you gently and rubs soothing circles on your back all while glaring at his best friend.

Dabi raises his hand in defense. “Hey man, I just came here to visit the princess with good intentions. Thanks for bringing the tomato. I owe you one.”

Another minute later Dabi presents to you a brand new plate with a tomato covered in icing. You sniffle lightly and take it before mumbling, “Thanks. Sorry for the way I acted. That was pathetic.”

“Hey no, it wasn’t Doll. I take full blame for eating your weird food. That and it is 100% Hawks’ fault for knocking you up Beautiful. Anyway, I got to bounce but are we good?” Dabi asks opening his arms for another hug.

You smile and give in. “We’re always good. Now get out of here. We’ll invite you over for a chicken wing dinner,” You offer.

He leaves with a stupid smile on his face and Hawks smiles as he can finally full-on cuddle you without interruptions. Of course, after you are done eating. He pulls you to cuddle on the couch with him, his wings stretched out and resting against the couch.

“You good, Babe?”

You nod the exhaustion pouring in on your face, “Yeah. Sorry I ended up making you come home early. I didn’t mean to get like that.”

“It’s all good. I would do anything for you and the baby. No tomato is safe from being devoured by you if that is what you desire.”

You are too tired to even give a response to that. Instead, you try and curl up into him as you make sure your bump is comfortable at the same time. His hands rest on your belly as he hums into your ear.

“What only two months left now?”

Yeah, and they are going to fly right by.

~*~

“You had to come in through the window?” Hawks asks in a hushed voice.

Dabi only smirks before his eyes fall on your resting figure. Hawks is sitting right beside you on the bed. The sweet bundle of joy he came to meet is resting in Hawks’ arms right beside you.

“Can’t impress anyone if I didn’t. All the Heroes come by already?” Dabi asks as he takes slow and steady steps to the three of you.

You smile weakly as you recall your three colleagues coming in to check on you and meet the baby (that Hawks may or may not have shoved in their face from how proud he was). Endeavor came by as well to congratulate you and Hawks.

“Yeah. All there is left now is to meet you,” You murmur as Hawks stands up.

Dabi gets a close look at the baby’s squishy face. He wants to say it’s hideous as a joke (he was planning on how to do joke about it though) but he couldn’t. The baby was actually cute. However, to his absolute horror, Hawks starts to proceed to give the baby to him.

“What the fuck. What if I drop it?”

You answer in a sleepy voice. “Drop her and I will personally send you to hell.”

“Her… What name did you guys come up with?”

Hawks answers without hesitation. “Tomato.”

Dabi physically freezes and looks up before seeing the stupid grin on Hawks’ face. He turns to you and you smile a gentle smile and give up the true answer. “Takara, it means treasure. Takami Takara.”

“I’ll take the chair. I’ll hold her while you guys rest up for a bit.”

You thank him and Hawks silently thanks him before showing off his severely bruised hand that you no doubt, destroyed when pushing during labor.

It is a pain Hawks would gladly go over again and endure for you because you are everything to him. You and your beautiful daughter mean the world to him and he would go through this life a million times if it meant having the two of you again.

[lonelier-version-of-you]

Having one of those days where I think about how profoundly fucked up Henrik’s life actually is and how much the writers piled on to him, most of which was never properly actually addressed (or some of it was outright played for laughs, like his sexual assault in series 19).

He was born to a neglectful father and a mentally ill, Holocaust survivor mother, inherited that intergenerational trauma from his mum, was sent to a boarding school in a whole other country as a child where he was canonically ostracised for being undiagnosed autistic and where he also definitely would've faced antisemitism, grew up queer at a time where homosexuality was outright illegal in Britain and considered a mental disorder in Sweden, grew up autistic at a time when next to nothing was known about autism (it wasn't even in the ICD until Henrik was well into his teens) so he just thought he was broken, was sexually abused as a teenager, had to deal with his mother’s suicide, was abandoned for months by his father (who made Henrik and Elisabet think he was dead by leaving a suicide note), found out his father betrayed the family, attempted suicide himself as a teen, came of age as a bisexual man during the AIDS crisis, attempted suicide again at uni, was taken hostage and had his life threatened, had to go home to Sweden to confront his dying father, lost a friend who was like a daughter to him, got in a car crash that could’ve killed him, had to treat his seriously injured colleagues after said car crash (including having to perform neurosurgery on one of them, when he hadn’t been a neurosurgeon in years), lost a friend who was like a son to him, lost a close friend from his young adult years in Sweden, was sexually assaulted and harassed and no one took him seriously about it, found out his son was committing medical malpractice that was killing people and had to report him for it despite knowing there was a chance he’d never see his family again if he did so, had to witness a friend who was like a son to him being hospitalised as a result of domestic violence injuries and felt guilty for not doing more to intervene sooner, dealt with his son coming back into his life which reminded Henrik of how he’d failed him, lost one of his closest friends from university, witnessed his son shooting up his workplace, witnessed another one of his closest friends nearly dying, witnessed his colleague being shot, witnessed his son being shot and dying a violent death right in front of him, had to deal with not only his own guilt about the situation but other people and the media blaming him, dealt with his daughter-in-law cutting him off from having any contact with his grandson for a long time because of this, had an emotional breakdown in the middle of his workplace, had to see his close friend undergo multiple major surgeries because his son shot her (and in fact Henrik had to operate on her himself once), another close friend he had romantic feelings for was hit by a car and then died, he discovered the love of his life was the one to kill her + had tried to kill Jac + was committing medical malpractice resulting in the deaths of numerous people, he then saw said love of his life drown himself right in front of Henrik, and instead of supporting him through this the people around him just brushed off his pain with a few cliche murmurings about how “it wasn’t your fault” because they cared more about pressuring him to take back a job he hated and that he had told them harmed his mental health, another one of his close friends nearly died, he was suddenly forced to start caring for his grandson which caused his trauma about Fredrik to resurface (although at least he did find some healing out of all of this, which you can’t say for literally everything else I’ve listed), a former colleague of his was presumed dead (although he found out she was alive eventually), a friend of his died from cancer, he went through a pandemic as a healthcare worker and probably lost a lot of patients all while likely struggling with his own OCD (he canonically has handwashing compulsions, remember...), he had to operate on a friend he saw as a son to him and said friend basically disowned him in the aftermath, he found out a man he had hired was a serial killer, he was forced to operate on his rapist twice, put his career at risk and broke the law by pushing his rapist up the transplant list just so his friend wouldn’t do it herself and put her own career at risk, found out his rapist had been going after more children and Henrik felt like it was his fault for not speaking out, opened up about his abuse only to not be believed, was forced to admit in the middle of his fucking workplace that he was raped, went through all the distress and re-traumatisation of reporting his abuser only for said abuser to die before the case ever went to trial, had to treat another victim of his abuser, had to help his friend’s son go to the police for the murder of his abuser, found out his friend had a brain tumour (the same thing his aforementioned surrogate daughter died of), was caught in a hospital bombing and could’ve died, found out a sexual abuser had been allowed to roam free and traffic children at the hospital he ran (though they never addressed how he’d feel about this for some reason except to have him brush it off with some remark about “resilience”... regardless, there’s no way he wouldn’t have felt really guilty about it), was physically harmed by a colleague with PTSD, had to confront his internalised homophobia and struggled to come out of the closet, and then, finally, even in the last ever episode of the show, one of his very closest friends died.

Oh, and I’m probably forgetting some stuff.

Especially in the final years of the show, Henrik’s name really did become synonymous with ‘trauma p*rn’. :/

[jazzistolkienfanfics]

Stress - Fili x reader

May I request a Fili x Female!Reader where the reader is starting to get really stressed and it's starting to get to her and Fili makes it all better? 

@dark-angel-is-back​ of course! i tried to give this one an actual plot rather than centring it around romance 😅

Type: Imagine Pairing: Fili x reader Summary: being the only financial support of one’s family isn’t easy Warnings: ‘shit’ Word Count: 1338 words

Y/N let herself stare wistfully at the stall of pastries in the marketplace. She was sure that her siblings would love the sweet breads and treats, and the beautiful smell overwhelmed her.

But the Dwarrowdam shook her head, slipping her fingers into her pocket and feeling how few coins were there. To put it quite simply, she didn’t have the money for such luxuries. Y/N needed to save that money for necessities.

She wandered around the marketplace, doing her best to buy the cheapest things - a new dress for her little sister, as her old one had been frayed to pieces, meat for dinner, some fruits and vegetables, and one tiny bag of sweets for her siblings. There were four people in their family - Y/N, and her two younger sisters and one younger brother. She figured the kids deserved a little something. 

Y/N’s basket was becoming heavy, but she didn’t complain. She was all her siblings had - their father had fallen in battle and their mother died of a deadly disease. Y/N could never complain, because it wasn’t about her. It was about them.

They got smaller and thinner every week, and they were suffering from it, though they tried to hide it with their chins up and happy smiles. Y/N was so proud of them, but they were too young to help her. Too young to work, nor to understand the intricacies and rules of their unfair world. 

She ventured out to the edge of the forest, bending to pick some athelas for the medicine cupboard, some herbs for dinner, and some flowers for her little sisters (she also collected one for her brother, though he didn’t like them much). By now, her basket was almost overflowiit ng, and lugging it several kilometres back home would not be an easy task.

But she thought of her poor siblings, alone at home, hiding behind the barricaded door, missing their older sister. Y/N felt so guilty for leaving them alone - she’d left for her first job far before dawn, and she’d finished her third one at sunset.

It was now dark, and Y/N’s arms were trembling with the weight of the heavy baskets. She pulled it along, having long given up on holding it in her arms, and now dragging it along the cobblestones.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

It had been a hard day.Y/N had been beaten in her second job at the forges, for dropping a hot sword on her overseer’s foot.

“You stupid girl!” he yelled, hitting her across the face/ “Why did I hire you?“

Y/N was so hungry and exhausted that she almost gave up, but she saw the wooden door of her house ahead of her. She knocked on it, whispering to her siblings, “I’m home, guys. It’s Y/N.”

They opened the door - a girl of twelve, a boy of nine, and another girl of six flying out from it, immediately taking her basket from her.

She saw the hunger in their eyes, and the familiar tear tracks.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Y/N whispered. “Here, help me make dinner.“

They did so - slicing the meat off the bones and putting them into stale bread as sandwiches. The bones would be turned to soup later.

Her siblings took the gifts, thanking her profoundly, and they ate hungrily.

“You guys get into bed, okay?” Y/N said, faking a smile. “I’ll be right there.”

The three children ran into the only bedroom, laughing and talking about the lollies they’d be able to eat tomorrow. Y/N opened the door cautiously, sitting outside on the steps. 

She lowered her head into her hands and began to cry soundlessly. Of course, making any kind of whimper would single her out as a target - and she had to be strong for her brother and sisters. How they could be so happy every day was beyond her.

Everything was getting to her. The stress, the lack of money, how alone she felt. The night was the only time when she could fall apart - because at the mercy of the darkness, nothing could hold her together.

“Excuse me? Are you alright?”

Y/N bolted to her feet at the voice, having not heard the footsteps of its owner, drying her tears with two quick swipes as she took in the asker of the question.

He was a handsome Dwarf, with long blond hair in several braids. Y/N noted that his beads were plain silver - he courted no one. He seemed the sort with a persistent ready smile, though now there was only kindly concern in those blue eyes.

“I’m fine,” Y/N lied. “Sorry you had to see that.”

“Don’t be sorry,” the Dwarf said. “And don’t apologise. What’s wrong?”

Sometimes, telling things to a stranger, who had no preformed opinions or knowledge regarding you, was far easier than telling things to your family. Y/N found herself telling him about the hardships of her life in the recent years. He listened well, and showed such believable worry and empathy that the darkness faded away.

He stared at the ground for a moment after she’d finished talking, evidently thinking about something of great importance. 

“I’m so sorry,” he said finally. “I know what it’s like to lose family. I haven’t been in the situation you’re in, but I can at least understand some of your pain. I have a younger brother, like you do - you understand how we’ll do anything for them.”

“Yeah, I do.” Y/N found herself smiling at this stranger.

He dug his hand into the pockets of his large coat, and pulled out ...

“Holy shit,” she gasped, in a display of cursing that she didn’t normally use in front of strangers, but somehow, this man didn’t feel like one. “That’s-”

“Mithril,” he confirmed, handing over the stone. It was definitely larger than her palm, though not too big to hold with one hand. The metal was silver, but hints of all the colours imaginable were also woven through it, sparkling in the firelight of the street. “Sell it to the wealthiest vendor you can find - they will give you a lot for it. Enough for you to not have to worry about your siblings again. I can find you a better job, and another home, if you wish.”

He nodded towards the dilapidated structure they stood outside of - one storey, practically falling apart. 

“Why-” Y/N stuttered, confused. “Why would you do this for me? I am but a stranger.”

“Because I believe in kindness,” the Dwarf said. “I know its effect. And I know what loneliness feels like - when all you have are your younger siblings. You deserve better than this.”

“Thank you,” she said, tears swelling in your eyes again. “Thank you so, so much.”

She leaned forward, kissing the handsome Dwarf on the cheek, blushing furiously as she pulled back. His cheeks were also dusted with red, and a wide smile had stretched across his face.

“You know,” he said, studying her, and really taking in how beautiful she was for the first time. “I’m going on a quest. 13 Dwarves so far, but they won’t mind if you joined. I’ve got a good feeling about you.”

Y/N laughed. “Oh, I’m not the adventure type. Besides, I need to look after my siblings. We’re all we have left. I’ll wait for you, though ...?”

“Fili,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it in an adorably gentlemanly fashion. “And I promise I’ll come back to you ...”

“Y/N,” she said, with a smile.

Fili stepped forward, and gave her a warm hug. “Don’t let the stress get to you, okay? Do things for you, not for them.”

He scribbled a quick note of recommendation for a better, higher-paying job, kissed her cheek, and left, humming a low, sweet song under his breath.

Y/N watched him go, clutching the mithril in her hand. And she couldn’t stop herself from grinning.

Maybe life isn’t so bad after all ...

@dark-angel-is-back​ i’m sorry if this isn’t what you wanted! i kinda got carried away ...

EVERYONE REMEMBER THAT YOU CAN SEND ME ANY QUESTION AS PART OF THE 100 FOLLOWERS CHALLENGE!

[youreacowgirllikeme]

Time Will Tell: Part Three

note: this is for @peppermintschnappss , who requested a part three (read part ONE and TWO here) so here we go, enjoy :)

words: 3k

warnings: swearing, smut

“The jury finds the defendant not guilty of the accused charges.“

Hearing the verdict felt like the biggest weight had just dropped off your shoulders, you were so relieved that you could barely make out the judge dismissing the court over the sound of your pulse hammering in your ears.

You had just won your first case for your new employer, it had been the first client you had dealt with all on your own, a case of alleged tax fraud, and you had nailed it.

With a big smile on your face, you quickly congratulated your client and, after a short talk with the prosecutor, made your way out of the courtroom, a spring in your step.

Just before you reached the door, the sound of a familiar voice behind you made you stop in your tracks.

“You did it, champ.”

Turning around, you came face to face with your colleague, but more importantly, boyfriend, Chris.

You were surprised to see him, and immediately threw your hands around his neck to kiss him, not caring about the fact that you were technically still in the court room.

“Chris, what are you doing here? Did you watch the trial?” You asked after breaking the kiss.

“Of course I did. It was your first one for the firm, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Actually, I’m here to pick you up. We’re celebrating.”

+++

“You did this all by yourself?”

You took in the living room of Chris apartment with wide eyes. He had put up a beautiful dinner table, and there was a delicious smell coming from the kitchen.

“You’re such a sap.” You said, a bit choked up. „Thank you so much, baby. “

“Only for you, superstar.” Chris replied, leaning down to kiss you deeply. You wrapped your arms around his neck and pressed your body to his. He was warm and solid, and when his hands wandered down to squeeze your ass, dinner wasn’t your top priority anymore.

"Do you think we can maybe re-heat the food later?” You gasped against Chris lips, pulling his shirt out of his trousers to run your hands over his abs.

“Fuck, yes.” he murmured, grabbing your hand and dragging you to the bedroom.

+++

“Oooh here she comes, trying for the outside jump.” Chris exclaimed, before bursting out laughing as you totally missed the hoop.

“Sweetheart, I‘m so sorry, but that was pathetic.”

You flipped him the bird, running to collect the ball and throwing it at Chris with all the force you could manage. He effortlessly caught it and shot it through the hoop like it was nothing.

“Show-off.” you murmured, sitting down on the bench on the side of the basketball court. You were done, Chris had tried to teach you his favorite game for hours now, but you didn’t manage to make any progress. You just weren’t cut out for ball sports.

“Don’t beat yourself up, baby. It took me forever when I first started playing.” Chris said, slumping down next to you and wrapping his arm around your shoulder to pull your close.

“Stop it, im gross and sweaty.” You giggled, trying to push him away, but he just laughed and pressed a kiss to your head. His laugh was your favorite sound in the world, so you stopped wriggling and leaned against his shoulder.

“Who taught you to play like that anyway?” you asked, looking up and noticing a far away look on Chris‘ face.

“My dad did.” He said, his voice oddly quiet now. “It was our favorite activity when I was a teenager.” He paused for a moment, and you decided to wait and let him speak. “For a long time, it basically was our only one. You know, with him being governor and everything, he wasn’t around a lot, or had any free time.”

“I’m sorry, Chris.” you whispered.

“It’s alright.” He dismissed you, still sounding a bit strained. “My big brother stepped up for a lot of stuff, you know. Homework, making sure I didn’t get in trouble, he even helped me with my college applications and everything. He’s an ass most off the time, but I still love him, and I’m grateful for everything he has done for me.” He chuckled. “But he can’t play basketball for shit.”

“Sounds like he and I have something in common then.” You noted, trying not to sound awkward. The topic of Chris’ family was still foreign terrain, you hadn’t met them yet, and had decided to give Chris space and wait for him to bring it up himself. You were also slightly nervous, because there was no way Chris hadn’t told them about you, his college nemesis.

Deciding to change the topic and cheer your boyfriend up, you picked up the ball again.

“Do you still have enough energy for another round, Cuomo?” You asked smugly. “If you’d rather go home and take a nap, just say so, would be totally fine.”

Chris laughed, and snatched the ball right out of your hands with ease. You were happy to see him lighten up.

“Please, as if playing against you would require any energy.”

+++

The topic of Chris childhood didn’t come up for another few weeks, you had noticed that he avoided talking about it and were wise enough not to pressure him.

Everything was going fine until Chris lost a big case for a very high-end client. The man had clearly been guilty, and not even your boyfriend had been able to get him out, despite his talent as an attorney.

It was the talk off the whole firm the next day, Chris hadn’t lost a case in ages, and never such an important one. He had been on edge ever since the trial, but it was what happened in the morning meeting that made him snap.

The reason was Smith, another associate and Chris’ number one opponent for the spot of the next junior partner of the firm. You hated the guy, he was vile and clearly only in it for the money. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and started to attack Chris during the morning meeting.

“Great job you did yesterday, Cuomo.” he snarled, his voice sounding through the whole conference room. “I wonder how many clients your incompetence will cost us. People are already talking.”

You could feel Chris going rigid beside you and carefully put your hand on his back in an attempt to calm him.

“Don’t let him get to you.” You whispered “He wants to rile you up.”

When the man continued to speak, you could see Chris’ jaw going tense, which was never a good sign.

“Seriously, boss, Cuomo is a basket case, how is he still working for us after that fuck-up? Oh, wait, I know it, I’m sure daddy pulled some strings for his little boy.”

You couldn’t prevent what was happening next. Chris surged forward with a angry growl, already taking a swing at the guy.

“Shut your fucking mouth!” he hissed, backing Smith up against a wall. He was considerably larger, and the fearful expression on the guys face paired with Chris raised fist made chaos break loose as multiple people were trying to get him away from the smaller man.

“Gentlemen, stop this!” your boss thundered over the agitated voices of your fellow coworkers “Smith, see me right away. I won’t tolerate this kind of behavior. Cuomo, take a walk and then get to work. Come to my office after you’re done tonight.”

Chris gave Smith another deadly stare before storming out of the room. You shot your boss an anxious glance, but he just nodded, signalling you to go after Chris.

You hastily followed your boyfriend, only to see him disappear into his office at the end of the hallway. Carefully, you approached the closed door and entered without knocking.

Chris was slumped in his chair, face buried in his hands. Seeing him like this made you want to go back and punch Smith in his stupid face.

“Hey.” you whispered, gently reaching out to put your hand on Chris shoulder.

He raised his head, and the look of fury and sadness in his eyes almost broke your heart.

"Fuck, I should not have lost control like this back in there.” he said “But this guy has been testing me for so long now, always with the same bullshit.”

He got up from his chair and started pacing around the small room.

“You know how often I’ve heard this crap before, Y/N? That I’m just where I am because of my family name? That my father paved the way for everything I’ve ever succeeded in?”

You swallowed, a churning feeling in your stomach. You knew exactly what he was talking about, because for years you’ve been one of the main people saying just that. You wanted to speak, but Chris interrupted you.

“Those people out there, they know nothing about me. They don’t know how it was to have a father who was absent all the time, to be constantly teased in school. To be ripped out of the life you knew to move to fucking Albany, this stupid one horse town where everyone knew your name, and go to this school full of pricks who all made fun of me and bullied me because of my family. I never asked to be in the fucking spotlight.”

By now, Chris was almost screaming, and there was a kind of emotion in his voice you’ve never heard before, he sounded desperate and sad in a way that made tears well up in your eyes.

“Still, I worked my ass off in that stupid school, and I got into Yale. Only for people to say the exact same shit about me again, and this drags through my whole life, Y/N. I can never get rid of this, I avoided politics and tried to do my own thing here, but everything I’ll ever be to people is the son of the fucking governor, who in their eyes, never worked a day in his life.”

You were frozen to your spot, just watching Chris through a veil of tears. Guilt and dread were clawing in your stomach, it had never occurred to you that all the things you said in the past had not only been far from the thruth, but had also hurt Chris so profoundly. He had always seemed so cool and unfazed during your arguments.

“Chris.” You began. “You’re more to me. You’re a brilliant attorney, the boss has talked about how great you are at the job the second I arrived here and hasn’t stopped since. Smith is jealous because he knows he’ll never reach your level, not as a lawyer and much less as a person. You are kind, and the most intelligent and dedicated man I know. You’re everything I always thought you weren‘t, and that I am one of the people who hurt you this way makes me sick. I cant even begin to tell you how sorry I am for being so shallow.”

You were crying now, tears rolling down your face. Chris looked devastated, hurrying to you to pull you into a tight embrace.

“I’ve forgiven you a long time ago, baby. You’ve been my rock ever since we’ve met again, and that makes up for every silly row we had in college.” He pressed a kiss to your hair, and you sighted, nuzzling your face into his chest, your tears soaking into his dress shirt.

“You probably have to change this.” You whispered, tugging on a wet patch on the fabric.

“I have a spare one in here, don’t worry.” Chris replied, taking your face into his hands to kiss you deeply. “We’re not the people we used to be, Y/N. Don’t beat yourself up, and I’ll try to do the same, promise.”

+++

Soon afterwards, you had to leave to meet up with a client for your current case. You had been running around the whole day without a break, and without hearing anything from Chris.

It was almost eight by now, and you were starting to get worried. Pacing your living room, you were anxiously waiting for Chris to arrive. He had told you to not wait up at the firm but promised to come to your apartment as soon as his talk with the boss was over.

The sign of the bell made you spin around and run to your door, yanking it open. Chris was standing outside your apartment, and the big smile on his face erased your anxiety in a heartbeat.

“You’re looking at a freshly promoted junior partner, sweetheart.” He grinned, and whatever he wanted to say next was interrupted by you throwing yourself at him, wrapping your arms around his neck with a squeal.

“Oh my god, baby, congratulations.” You exclaimed, pressing a kiss to his lips. “Tell me everything!”

Chris followed you into your flat, discarding his suit jacket and letting himself fall onto your couch.

“I still haven’t fully realized what happened.” He began. “I was sure the boss would kick my ass for the way I behaved this morning, maybe even suspend me for a while. But he just told me off really quickly, and then he started talking about how that case I lost was impossible to win anyway, and how good my work has been for the past years. And then he offered me the junior partner position, just like that. I accepted of course.”

He smiled, and there was a mischievous glint in his eyes. “I can’t wait to rub that into Smiths stupid face. One of the paralegals told me he got a big ass whooping by the boss after the meeting this morning.”

"Serves him right, that little asshole.” You replied, before leaning over to kiss Chris again. “I’m so proud of you, you deserve this like no one else. Now that I think about it, how does champagne sound?”

“Wow, so were going to be fancy tonight?” Chris chuckled.

“If you becoming a junior partner doesn’t call for champagne, what does?” you responded, getting up to fetch the drinks from the kitchen.

You handed Chris a glass and clinked your own against his. “To you, Mr. Big Shot lawyer.”

The champagne sent a pleasant, fuzzy feeling through your stomach, and you let your eyes fall on your boyfriend, taking in how good he was looking in the warm light of the room.

“You know, I always had a thing for attorneys.” You murmured, setting down your glass to put your hands on Chris chest.

Chris laughed, and set his glass aside as well, leaning down to whisper in your ear. “Is that so, huh? Well today is your lucky day then, I just got promoted and I’m in the mood to celebrate.”

His hot breath sent a shiver down your spine, and you tilted your head, exposing your neck to Chris, who instantly started kissing and sucking the smooth skin. You moaned softly and started to unbutton Chris shirt with shaking fingers.

“Bedroom?” he asked, and you nodded enthusiastically, taking his hand to pull him to the other room. Both of you quickly shed your clothes before you dropped to your knees in front of Chris, closing your lips around his already hard cock.

“Jesus, Y/N.” he murmured, stroking your hair as you fully took him into your mouth. “So perfect, baby.”

You wrapped you hand around the base of his length, stroking him while moving your head up and down. Suddenly, Chris hand grabbed your hair and softly pushed you away.

“If you keep it up like that, this will be over soon, and I’m not done with you, sweetheart. Get on the bed, baby.”

You quickly complied, laying down on the duvet and looking up at Chris expectantly.

He climbed on top of you and started stroking your inner thighs with his fingers, softly nudging your legs apart.

“I bet youre already wet for me, baby.” He murmured, voice smooth and dark as his fingers dipped between your legs. “I knew it.”

“Chris.” You whined at the feeling of his fingers brushing over your clit. “Fuck me, please.”

“Patience, baby.” Chris replied and continued to tease you, softly circling your bud with increasing pressure until you were sobbing, legs shaking as you fell apart under his touch.

While you were still riding out your climax, Chris slid between your legs and pushed into you. You cried out as he started to move, you were still so sensitive that you could feel yourself already approaching the next orgasm.

“Shit, baby, you’re tight, I’m not gonna last.” Chris grunted, his thrusts were already getting more erratic.

“Let go, baby.” You whispered, your voice breaking as you reached your peak again, pulling Chris with you this time.

+++

Afterwards, you laid next to each other, Chris arm loosely slung around you as you played with a lock of his hair. His blue eyes found yours, and you had to smile, your heart fluttering when he smiled back at you.

“It’s funny.” Chris suddenly said, “So many things happened today, but the only thing I care about right now is that you’re here with me.”

He propped himself up on his elbow to properly look at you.

“I would’ve never thought that this” he gestured between the two of you “could happen.”

“Not in a thousand years.” You agreed, laughing softly.

Chris face got serious, and he reached out to softly stroke your cheek.

“If you want, I’d like to introduce you to my family this weekend, Y/N. You know that I’m a private person and talking about emotions isn’t exactly my strong suit. But you make me really happy, and I want everyone to know.”

“I’d love to meet them.” You whispered, and the smile that took over Chris face made you forget your nervousness.

Everything would be fine.

[undoundue]

the adventures of the graye wizard caliban: and the curse of spotifsploitation

no matter where i start the spotify algorithm continues with nico - these days. is this the future of big data? vox radio asks, in your randomly assigned lyft lux.

"yes," i answer, "i think so. and i think it's racist. or if not racist, a deeper and more pernicious form of discrimination, one we don't have a name for yet. but consider: spotifsploitation."

"wow," says the young interlocutrix, "i've never been spotifsploited, so maybe it's not my place to say, but is it kind of like how spotify plays nico - chelsea girls no matter where my playlist starts from?"

"absolutely not," i tell her, "that's not spotifsploitation. of course someone like you would listen to chelsea girls. that doesn't say anything about society. that doesn't require Big Data. a pile of bricks and straw would make that call."

the young woman nods from behind her nonprescription glasses. "thank you, professor caliban."

"doktor caliban."

"thank you, doctor caliban."

"doktor. glottal stop."

"thank you, doctor glottal stop."

"no problem."

here the program cuts so that two men with neatly trimmed beards can announce their work bringing oat milk to lactose intolerant infants. it's said that such children grow up both more resilient and more able to empathically consider the perspective of others. well, i've only met one.

i said, "hey."

the kid looked me dead in the eye and said: "i'm sorry for your loss."

i was shaken—it was probably one of the most profoundly moving experiences of my adult life. that said, later on his mom told me he was seeing a speech-language pathologist because this was all he could say, so i'm not sure whether to count this one as a win for oat milk. sound off in the comments if you have thoughts.

back in the studio, the interlocutrix touches my arm and and asks if i want to get coffee sometime. something about her irks me. maybe it's the size of her glasses. they make her eyes look bigger, which in turn makes her look genuous and receptive to the world in all its forms. i want to grab her by the shoulders and scream: you're not genuous and receptive! i'm genuous and receptive! i'm genuous and receptive! stop copping my fucking brand!

instead i ask: "were the coffee beans ethically slaughtered?"

"um, i think so...?"

"the coffee beans were grown in l-theanine enriched soil and read victor frankl's man's search for meaning every night until they reached an existentialist-humanist (beanist) understanding of their own demise?"

she doesn't answer. i smirk. "maybe not coffee...but, you know, i'm sure we'll cross paths again."

"yeah...!" she says, and looks away.

i leave. out on the street, a guilty feeling swings in my chest like a pendulum. i look back. i keep walking. a few blocks away, outside walgreens, i take off my nonprescription glasses and throw them in the trash.

[tundrainafrica]

Title: No Goodbyes

Summary:  

"No goodbyes. We'll make it out of here. They had repeated that same promise in the forest only a few days ago over a slow conversation about how life could have been. They had repeated that same promise for years, after strategy meetings, before many missions and while they explored Marley."

Chapter 132 from Levi's POV.

Link to cross-postings: AO3

Notes: For Anyarein from AO3.

Don’t hide your fic rec behind those scratchy line things. I’m happy to receive fic ideas and asks (even if I am a little slow with them...)

Thanks for the suggestions for fics <3 ( thanks for indulging my guilty pleasure of high octane angst under the guise of a character study.)

"We've reached the end game."

If Levi hadn’t been looking at her as she said it, if he hadn’t seen the slight movement of her lips and the slight tremble, maybe he would have never heard it. Maybe that half hearted comment would have been drowned out by the sounds of her tearing bandages or the screaming pain that consumed his battered body.

That comment though was enough to send a chill through Levi and down to the bones. The biting cold felt too unfamiliar. It took him a few seconds longer to comprehend what exactly that feeling was.

Frustration. Possibly fear.

He had always been strong. For as long as he could remember, he was always able to fight whatever threats came his way. At that moment when the threats were much larger than he could have ever imagined, when he wished he were at his strongest, he was at his most vulnerable, a cruel twist of fate.

"It's too late to run away to the forest now." He gave Hange a wry smile keeping his tone and his words light, to at least balance out the sullen demeanor of his commander.

His commander. That’s what she had sounded like. With his words, he hoped she would soften her gaze and her tone. It was just the both of them there after all. He knew her inside and out, even before Erwin ever considered her as the next in line to lead the honorable survey corps.

You don't have to pretend with me. He thought to himself, hoping his intent gaze was enough for her to receive the message.

"Yeah, maybe it is..." Hange said a little more lightly as she unwrapped his bandages, a little more roughly than Levi would have liked. "I guess we’re going to have to wait a little longer huh? Before we open that tea shop..."

“Or the herb garden by a cabin.” Levi added. The pain of being so roughly handled took a backseat as Levi felt his throat catch at those words and for a few seconds he was left unable to breathe. The pain in his chest overshadowed whatever protests his body had towards Hange's touch.

From where he lay, he couldn't see Hange's hands but he could see her shoulders shake, and he could see the crown of her head as she avoided his gaze. Levi was sure, at that point her walls had completely broken down.

She was shaking, shaking so hard. Possibly on instinct, he reached out his hand a little farther to grab hers, wherever it was. He gripped it hard as soon as he found it. His own hand burned possibly from having had two of his fingers blown off only a few days ago. There were more important things to do than give his hand the respite it so tenaciously demanded of him.

He had a duty to his commander. No, to his comrade, to his best friend. To his other half.

To his other half.

“I knew you wouldn’t run away,” Levi said.

Hange looked up at him as soon as he had said those words. She furrowed her brow, wrinkled her nose and bit her lip, the result of it all being the faux serious face Levi was all too familiar with.

Hange had always been emotional but since becoming commander, she had started crying less and less. Levi had realized over time that it had never been her own constitution which had made that so. Hange had other ways of holding it in. If she furrowed her brows and crumpled her expression when needed, sometimes the tears never did come. And to the younger members of the survey corps, that unique facial expression had always looked like she was in deep thought on a new diplomatic strategy or battle plan.

Levi knew better though. He had seen that coping mechanism develop over nights alone with her.

“I couldn’t find a way to stop Eren…I can't help but think… Maybe...” She started.

Maybe if Erwin were here? She didn’t need to say it. It was in the way she looked to the side, unable to meet Levi’s gaze as if she knew what she was doing was wrong. She had promised him long before she wouldn’t compare herself to him nor would she compare their current circumstances to that utopian one she had imagined building if Erwin were still there.

Levi quickly hushed her. It was a quiet movement but it was enough to leave his chest burning. He held in a cough, not wanting to aggravate her any further.

“No regrets...” Levi said, as soon as the pain in his chest dissipated enough to allow himself a few words. His throat itched at having to hold in that cough of a while ago. “I told you before.”

“I’m not regretting anything Levi. I promised you I wouldn’t so I won’t.” Hange buried her face in her hands. “But I need to atone.”

Atone. He never believed it to be the right word. Hange had done her best. She sacrificed sleep, meals, rest, mental health days and consequently her own sanity just so things could work out.

In the end, the world had turned out to be much larger and more complex than they could have ever imagined. Hange --- hell, both of them--- the one dubbed humanity’s strongest and possibly the one dubbed humanity’s most intelligent, were left with circumstances that spelled the difference between life and death for millions, circumstances too out of their control.

And you think it’s your fault? He had seen that same flash of guilt show up during the most inopportune times, easily mistaken for a bout of exhaustion on her end and when it was just the two of them, he saw it in the way she would dip her head back up and stare at the empty ceiling, mentioning what Erwin or Moblit would have possibly said or done as nothing more than a passing thought.

But Levi couldn’t tell her off. He couldn’t tell her he hated the word so much that every time she said it, he was forced to bite his lip to keep from saying something he might just regret. Deep within him too, he felt the obligation to atone. He and Hange were the ones after all who had protected and trained Eren.

In the end it had been Eren’s choice to do what he did. Regardless, the nagging thought remained in both of their minds, was there anything they could have done for things to end up different?

No regrets. They had both agreed so many years ago.

“Atone…” The word tasted bitter to Levi but he had to recognize that both of them felt the need too strongly. “Atone after the war… You’ll have time then.” Levi’s hands continued to burn as he lightly pulled at Hange’s hand, an effort to see the face behind it. “We promised right? No goodbyes.”

                                   No Goodbyes

Ever since I joined the survey corps I've had to say nothing but goodbyes.

Levi should have sensed it when Hange had given that speech to Mikasa. Those words dug much deeper than a sermon from a veteran intended to keep Mikasa from killing him or Floch.

Somehow, he only noticed it almost a year later, the first night Hange broke down in front of him after a long meeting with diplomats discussing plans for building ports and adopting technology. During the meeting she was a commander. When everyone had left to retire to their rooms for the night, Hänge had sunk into her chair, so low Levi had feared she would sink so low into the chair she might just disappear.

I can't do this. Moblit would have known how to handle the paperwork. Erwin would have known how to get their confidence. I don't have that charisma.

Did anyone notice I was shaking? Did anyone notice I was just making things up as we went along?

Hange had done great. Yet somehow, her concession of something so unnoticeable scared Levi. That Hange who stood in front of the diplomats explaining her plans for Paradis looked too certain. As her friend and comrade, he started to wonder how much pressure she had put on herself, how much she had to butcher her on psyche to pull off such a facade so convincingly.

Just hold on long enough until the war is over. Until we can fix things with Marley.

No regrets. Levi had given that speech too many times. He was the master at imbibing it and more than anything, at that moment as he held her close and took the force of racking yet muffled sobs, he prayed she felt it too. He prayed that somehow she would imbibe it.

Until we make it out of this. Levi had said. No, we're making it out of this.

It had started with a vow not to regret. As Hange held on to him that night, pulling him closer to herself, as she gripped his shoulders so hard, his own back shook with her racking sobs. Out of what could have been desperation, Levi found himself making another promise with her.

Ever since I joined the survey corps I've had to say nothing but goodbyes. She had repeated to him back then. It had been a year since he had heard that phrase. But ever since they got back from Shiganshina, it had been meeting after meeting, mission after mission, development after development.

She had to break eventually. Of course, it would have been in front of him, the only person who probably felt the gravity of that loss so profoundly, every single loss, from their own squads to their commander. They were the only two people in the squad who were left with little to no time to pick up the pieces, having been launched quickly into seats of both responsibility and power as Paradis rapidly changed.

Levi had his own skeletons and his own emotional baggage to carry. As he watched her breakdown unfold in front of him, his heart could only clench up. He had run out of tears too long ago. His body though, that was starting to scramble for some outlet of emotion, handled it differently.

He clung on to Hange as she cried, letting the shaking motion of her body overshadow his own. No more goodbyes. I’ll be here for a long time. Levi had said.

The next morning, he had regretted those words. No one knows what will happen next. You can trust people all you want but nobody can really predict what will happen next. How many times had that lesson bit him the ass? How many times had he trusted someone only for them to be taken away from him?

It had ended a mutual promise between the two. A promise that had seemed reassuring enough for Hange to have settled in his arms that night. To placate that conflict inside him surrounding the impulsiveness of that decision, Levi only had to remember the way her body had gradually relented to the calmer and slower rhythm of his own breathing.

Levi was never the type to go back on a promise, especially on a promise made to one of the most important people to him, maybe even the most important person to him then, having lost everyone else. He was determined not to break it.

Despite all they had seen, despite their long history as soldiers, Levi and Hange had been too naive. As the situation became more and more dire, Levi would sometimes allow a few seconds a day to scold himself for even entertaining that naivete, particularly in those moments where it was just the both of them stuck in the office, late at night trying to avoid any words that could even allude to goodbyes or regrets

They made that promise in a different world. At that time when they had talked about it, they saw glimmers of hope in the rapidly progressing technology, in their world which was slowly getting larger with every late night meeting, every successful experiment.

At present, Levi was experiencing the world in a body who could barely even move. He was seeing through one eye, the other lost in the explosion. He was on a bed, prone and vulnerable and just outside the ship, he could hear the distant sounds of the rumbling destroy everything in its path and with it, any ambitions for a peaceful compromise.

Hange was the one who had spearheaded the plans for diplomacy, who had clung on most desperately to the hope that the war could all end in peace. She was still healthy and functioning. She was still fit to fight. Yet ironically, her movements had devolved into something mechanical as she cut bandage after bandage and wrapped it around his head. The view of herself she had allowed Levi to see was limited. Even during those few moments where he did get a good look at her, Levi had to risk a bout of dizziness or a headache to bend his head back to see her face. Even under the dim light, he could see they were red rimmed. Red rimmed but lifeless.

We can still make it out of this. No goodbyes. Those were the only words his mind could come up with then that could have maybe brought life back into those hazel eyes. Last time, it had worked. But back then, there weren’t colossal titans trampling the world. Back then, there were still so many other possibilities to consider.

“The bleeding has slowed for most of your injuries. I took out some of the bandages and loosened some of them so it’s more comfortable for you.” Hange said as if she were rattling out of a grocery list.

No. Long ago, Hange probably would have sounded more enthusiastic rattling out a grocery list. The person in front of him didn’t seem like Hange anymore.

“There’s a plane on a nearby port we can take to Eren according to Kiyomi. Hange continued. “We’ll be fuelling the plane and…”

“We?” Levi asked. ‘We’ could have also meant Hange, Levi and everyone else. ‘We’ could have meant Hange and everyone else without him. Somehow, he could tell by the face Hange had given him and the tone of her voice, a tone of defeat and acceptance of their grim reality that she had meant the latter.

“I saw the bruises Levi, you might even be suffering from internal bleeding. Until we can get you to a doctor…. Please stay back here on the ship…” Please don’t fight.

Levi did not have the time to argue. He had spent a second too long thinking of the right words to say as he processed Hange’s incomprehensible actions.

She was ready to die. By the time he had stumbled upon an explanation for her actions, her expressions and gestures that quickly vacillated between empathy and apathy, it had already been too late.

No Goodbyes right? He had wanted to say. Those words never left his mouth though. On their way out, he had felt arms crush him so hard, only a hushed breath was able to make its way out of his mouth.

She wasn’t crushing him. In fact, she had only been holding him a little harder. The force though was more than enough to send a crushing pain coursing through his already battered bones. The pain was stinging on the surface but at the same time piercing deep within him. It coursed through him so quickly and so violently, Levi had to bite his lip to keep from letting out a sound.

For god knows, if she knew how painful it was she might just let go.

No goodbyes. We'll make it out of here. They had repeated that same promise in the forest only a few days ago over a slow conversation about how life could have been. They had repeated that same promise for years, after strategy meetings, before many missions and while they explored Marley.

What if diplomacy did work? What if the threats of rumbling where enough to make Marley reconsider the treatment of Eldians? What if this could all end without any bloodshed?

What if maybe there was still some sliver of hope to cling to? No goodbyes. Levi only repeated that same line to himself again and again. Although she had let go for a bit, giving enough space for Levi to breathe, the knot in his throat that extended all the way down to his stomach had taken over suffocating him.

No goodbyes right? He started to scream those words in his head, still unable to say them aloud. That shouldn’t have mattered though. She usually knew what he was thinking. If he thought it loudly enough, it should reach her like it always did.

He screamed in his mind, clinging to hope that the message would reach her. His body knew otherwise. All he could do was wait and listen for what Hange had to say next.

Thank you. Hange’s last words to him weren’t words of farewell. Just like they had promised each other long ago. No goodbyes.

Hange left him alone in the plain room with only one dim light on. Levi was left with nothing much to do but stare at his plain surroundings, the only stimuli worth considering being the final words she had said to him.

Thank you for always being there. Thank you for staying with me after meetings. Thank you for letting me bounce ideas with you. Thank you for the late night conversations.

Thank you. Hange was not one for phatic expressions. At least when she was with him. Had she ever said thank you? She was his own commander, there was no need to. When they were alone, there were too many other things to discuss. Padding their heart to heart conversations with pleasantries had never seemed necessary.

She had kept her promise but as Levi lay in bed and stared at the blank ceiling, recalling the exchange of only a few minutes ago, he couldn’t help but think, he would have preferred a goodbye.

                                     No Goodbyes

Levi valued promises. He kept the promise he had made to Hange close to his heart and he felt all the more determined to make sure she kept it too.

Maybe that was what had pushed him to stand up even as his joints ached, his bones screamed and his head spun. That determination inside him only pulled him out of the bed more violently, drilling into him the possibility that maybe not doing anything could be more painful.

And it worked. When Levi was in bed, his body felt this impulse to shake his broken bones awake, to punish them for wanting to pull him back from the war. Hange couldn’t keep that promise alone, she needed his help. Omission seemed like the more evil option.

That was how Levi had found himself, walking painfully towards the voices in the other room. That was how he had found himself refusing Armin’s help, forcing his body through a crash course on relearning how to walk and sooner than later, to fight.

Fuck it. Even his body couldn’t relearn to walk and fight so quickly, he’d force it too. He had more than enough memories and experience fighting, it would be a matter of discipline more than anything else.

That was what had him testing his ODM gear with the fingers he had left. Two fingers is all I need.

Hange had kept quiet since then, not bringing up the conversation of a while ago. He could see in the glances that she snuck him while she faced the alliance as a commander that she wished he were elsewhere.

That’s a first. Levi had to note. Before, she would seek comfort in the many moments they did exchange glances. Then, she looked uncomfortable.

It could have been his injuries. It could have also been those last words she said.

She kept her promise. Yet she was starting to avoid his gaze as she reminisced of old friends, in ways that only reminded Levi of another loss they had felt long ago.

With the rumbling nearing, with the appearance of Floch and with the breaking of the fuel tank, they could not allow themselves a few more minutes to ponder that promise in silence.

Levi wasn’t there when Hange had made that decision. By the time, he was near enough to make eye contact, to get a near enough look of her expression a mixture of fear, guilt and acceptance. It was too late.

Just let me go. Will you?

We promised. No goodbyes. No regrets. Levi looked towards the ground as he thought about it. He had tried to send her that silent reminder too many times that day already. Back then, he had hoped it would reach her.

As he heard the rumbling only get nearer, he started to realize there were things much larger and more permanent than superficial and temporal promises.

A part of him could only interpret the promise they made as having been broken. For a while he wanted to say goodbye out of spite.

Levi was never the type of person to break a promise though.

“Dedicate your heart.”

I don’t regret anything but I feel like I still need to atone for it. Hange had said it so many times before during the many times they had briefly mentioned it and the few times they had analyzed it. Hange had always planned on atoning somehow, for all that chaos she had believed herself to have been to unfit to stop.

As if it wasn’t anybody else’s mistakes and selfishness that had brought upon that chain of events.

Levi allowed himself to gradually shift his thoughts elsewhere as he boarded the plane. HIs broken bones were still screaming for attention. His bruises were still sending jolts up his spine with every movement. His fingers were throbbing at the weight of the ODM gear.

Any pain, any sensation and any experience could have been more palatable, could have been more bearable than what he had felt as he pressed his hand into her heart. He couldn’t think about her anymore or he risked collapsing right there.

There was one final passing thought Levi allowed himself though as he had settled onto his seat in the plane. It was the last thought about Hange he would allow himself before he turned off all his emotions, shifting his thoughts to the larger problem at hand.

You can’t ever atone without feeling regret. Levi couldn’t help but think, despite the bond they shared that had made feelings between them flow so smoothly in ways words never did, there may have been some fatal misunderstanding between them about what those two promises meant.

[isis-astarte-diana]

Milk and Honey: Day 1

Day 1 ‖ Day 2 ‖ Day 3

Summary: “I can’t keep a houseplant alive, never mind a Time Lord.” You aren’t thrilled when the Doctor asks you to observe a wounded Missy while she heals, but in close quarters you see a side of her you’d never expected.

Warnings: Mentions of injury, blood and gore, but nothing too graphic. Sexual tension and a teeny tiny bit of non-sexual nudity. Missy is her own warning (I’m going to start using an acronym for this because it comes up far too much). SFW. Very, very soft.

Word Count: 2820

NB: This ran away from me so badly, so it will be continued! I read the whole Wiki page on Gallifreyan physiology for this. They really do have orange blood, and they really can’t take aspirin. I also took the liberty of throwing in the “only one bed” trope and making it gay.

“I don’t even know first aid.”

The Doctor scoffs, dismissing you with a wave of his hand. “Wouldn’t help much anyway. Very different anatomy.”

“Doctor, I’m serious. My Nintendogs all ran away from neglect. Every Tamagotchi I’ve ever had has starved to death. I can’t keep a houseplant alive, never mind a Time Lord.”

“Time Lords are easier. They tell you when they need feeding. Look,” he reaches out to touch your arm, his voice lowering. “I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t need to. I can’t monitor the vault all day while I’m working, and somebody has to keep watch while she recovers. Bill doesn’t have her own place and Nardole is... Nardole. She doesn’t need medical care; she’ll heal on her own in a few days. She just needs observation.”

You cross your arms tightly and throw a glance at the closed bathroom door. “Observation while she rips my throat out?”

“Don’t be like that. Missy gets on with you. Besides which, she’s in no condition to cause trouble.”

“Okay, see, that?” You point an accusatory finger at his chest, close to yours where you stand in the narrow hallway of your flat. “That sounds far too much like tempting fate.” He takes your hand in both of his. The pleading look on his face makes you soften. “What happened to her, anyway?”

“Ah. Silurians, apparently. Stabbed in the back. They fight dirty.” He chuckles. “So does she.”

“Are you sure she doesn’t need stitches, or anything?”

“No need; it’ll take care of itself. Temporal platelets. Ad-hoc regeneration.” Sensing your confusion, he explains, “surface wounds heal quickly. It’s probably already scabbed over. It’s the internal damage that takes time.”

“I just don’t know if I’m the right person to do this.”

“You are.” It’s heavy with sincerity. “There’s nobody else in the universe that I would trust.”

You scoff. “Flattery won’t get you anywhere.”

“Of course it will.” He grins and gives your hand one final squeeze before dropping it. “I’ll come and check in on you both tomorrow, alright? I’ll drop some things off for her.”

“Yeah, alright.”

He’s halfway out the door when he pauses and looks back over his shoulder. “Oh, don’t give her any aspirin. Incompatible with Gallifreyan physiology. It works like rat poison.”

“Duly noted.”

+++++

You’ve been standing outside the bathroom door for the best part of two minutes now, trying to decide whether or not to make your presence known.

Inside, over the sound of the bath running, you can hear Missy swearing. She’s always had a more colourful taste in language than the Doctor, but this is something new. There are choice words that you recognise and strange sounds you can only assume to be Gallifreyan expletives, all strung together in a near-constant stream of profanity.

You jump back when there’s a loud thud against the door. It sounds like she’s slammed her hand into it. Already wincing in anticipation, you reach out and knock tentatively.

“Missy?” Your voice is apologetic. “You okay?”

Silence. The door cracks open just enough for you to see her face, still stained with dry blood. Her eyes are red and puffy.

“Could you give me a hand?” She winces like it pains her to ask. “Please.”

You think it might be the first time you’ve heard her say that.

“Yeah, yeah, of course. What- what do you need?”

“I can’t- I’m having trouble with my laces.” A half-smile as she tries to claw back the power she’s unused to handing over. “On account of the whopping great stab wound, and whatnot.”

“Yeah, those can be inconvenient.”

She pushes the door wider and lets you into the bathroom. Your eyes are drawn to the pile of white and violet on the floor, her discarded skirt and blouse. Her cameo brooch is balanced on the sink. Its ivory face is obscured with smears of orange.

“I just need somebody to loosen them,” she continues, turning to show you her back, mercifully ignoring the way your gaze flits about the room and tries to avoid settling on her. “Unfortunately I’m very good at tying knots.”

For some reason, that makes your mouth go dry.

“I’ll do my best.”

She’s facing away from you, towards the mirror. Her hair falls down over one shoulder, already brushed conveniently out of your way. The chemise she wears is thin, pale linen, stiff and brown in places with dried blood, pinned in place beneath the corset she can’t remove herself. It curves under her bust and across her back.

From here, you can see how the knife must have entered between the laces in the small of her back, caking them with blood. The tight bow is undamaged. You begin to pick it apart, trying not to touch her, as much in modesty as for fear of aggravating the injury.

“Let me know if I hurt you.”

“Hmm.” She grips the sink, angling her body to give you better access. Drawing your bottom lip between your teeth, you focus on the knots slowly giving beneath your fingers, trying in vain to ignore her closeness and the way her hips are just barely touching your own.

You’re glad of the cacophony of rushing water from the tap. The pressure of your pulse in your throat is almost painful. Sweat beads at your temples. Steam. It’s a hot room. That’s all.

“Okay.” The laces fall slack in your hands, the bow finally coming apart. “Just- loosen them?”

“Please.” There it is again.

“This might- you know-”

“I know.”

Her hands tighten on the sink when you hook one finger beneath the first row of laces above her waist and tug, drawing slack from the loose ends, releasing some of the tension. When she doesn’t make any sound of protest, you move higher up and repeat the motion. It’s not until the entire top half of the corset is loosened that she lets out a slow, shallow breath you hadn’t realised she was holding, shifting her position.

“Okay?”

“Fine.” It comes out short. She makes an effort to soften her voice. “It’s fine.”

“I’ll carry on.”

You know that the other side will be worse. The wound is just lower than where the bow had been, and the stiff garment has probably held it closed quite effectively. Removing it is unlikely to help the pain.

Sure enough, when you pull on the first lace Missy makes a low noise behind her teeth. She’s white-knuckled on the edge of the sink, threatening to crack the cheap porcelain. You imagine explaining that to the landlord and try to hide an inappropriate smile.

“Keep going,” she prompts tightly.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

You work as gently as you can, but it’s clear that even the smallest motion is painful. By the time you reach the bottom of the corset, her breathing is ragged and her eyes are screwed shut. You feel profoundly guilty.

“Can you- take it off, or should I?”

“Could you?” She gestures to her stomach and quickly steadies herself again. “Clasps are at the front.”

“Sure.”

Swallowing thickly, you move closer to reach around her waist. The backs of her thighs press against you from the position. When your hands land on her stomach, gripping the starched material at the bottom, you can feel her four-beat pulse through the panels. Your fingers are trembling.

The hooks and eyes slide apart with a chorus of metallic clicks, leaving just the top fastenings still holding. She grunts, twitching, pushing back against you. She’s warm.

“Almost done.” It’s as much for your benefit as hers. You follow the material upwards, drawing back as if burned when the fabric of her chemise brushes your fingers, and release the final two clasps. She lets out a heavy exhale in relief, glancing up from the sink, and for a long moment she catches your eye in the mirror. Her features are strained from the ordeal, messy hair in her face, lips parted as she catches her breath. You look awestruck.

“Thank you,” she murmurs into the reflection.

You pull back too quickly, dropping the corset to the floor with her other clothes and reaching over awkwardly to turn the tap off. The bath is full.

“I’ll put you some clothes ready,” you say hurriedly, nearly tripping on the pile of laundry in your haste to leave the room. “Just shout if you need anything else.”

Back in the kitchen, you wash the orange-brown stains of Missy’s blood from your hands. When you drag them harshly down your face, trying to steady yourself with a splash of cold water, they smell like pennies.

+++++

“Don’t laugh.”

“Jesus!” You nearly jump out of your skin, dropping the butter knife you’re holding and throwing a hand up to your pounding heart. “Don’t you make any noise when you walk?”

“Not if I can help it. Which I can.” Missy pauses. “What are you doing?”

“Making toast. Pretty standard human stuff. Breakfast? Toast. Flu? Toast. Tonsils out? Toast. Mortally wounded?” You shrug. “Toast.”

“I’m not mortally wounded,” she snaps. “You have to be mortal for that. I’m temporarily, slightly incapacitated.”

“Oh, of course,” you concede, looking back at her over your shoulder. “Luckily, there’s toast for-”

Your voice catches in your throat.

She’s obviously found the clothes you set out for her; an oversized tee shirt that swamps her frame and a pair of pyjama trousers. Her dark hair falls in a thick, wet braid. With her face clean you can see for the first time where she’s injured.

There’s a graze on her cheek, spanning across her nose, pink and sore-looking. Her bottom lip is swollen and split on the same side. A long, dark scab bisects the patch of rough skin, reaching from her jaw up towards her eye. It looks like her face has been slammed into the ground repeatedly.

You’ve never really seen her without her trademark boots and careful tailoring. She’s shorter than you imagined. There’s a soft, feminine curve to her stomach that’s usually concealed by the corset, and a faint musculature to her biceps.

“You look-”

“Don’t,” she cuts you off sharply. “Don’t say it. Let’s not add insult to injury.”

“I was going to say that you look nice.”

“Oh.” Her face softens. Some of the tightness leaves her brow. “Nice is fine. You can say that.”

It’s true, but the unsaid hangs heavily between you. She looks human. Hurt and freshly showered, standing in your kitchen in a pair of your pyjamas and with fuzzy striped socks on her feet, she looks so... soft. Touchable. Loveable.

Wait, what? Where did that come from?

The toaster pops and you turn to it, infinitely grateful for the distraction. You can feel her eyes on the back of your neck.

“Anything I can do?”

“No, I’m good.” The words come out too quickly. You throw her a weak smile. “I’ve got this. Thank you. You sit down.”

“Matron knows best.”

Her fingers brush over your elbow as she turns to leave. It could be a thank you. It’s hard to say.

+++++

You’ve been to other planets. You’ve travelled in time. You’ve seen cyborgs, and dinosaurs, and aliens of every description; but nothing has ever felt more bizarre than sitting on your sofa beside Missy, having tea and toast, watching a soap opera on a Thursday evening.

She’s leaning against an armrest, two pillows propped behind her back, keeping her weight off the healing wound. Her bright eyes are fixed on the television. She’d actually requested this programme, finding the endless human conflicts relentlessly amusing.

“He’s buried under the allotment.”

"Who is? The brother?”

“Definitely.” She sips from one of your prized novelty mugs. It’s purple and shaped like a cartoon octopus. “It was his wife. She poisoned him.”

“It’s always poison when it’s a woman.” You munch at your toast. “You know, most poisoners are men.”

“Most murderers are men, love.” The endearment nearly makes you choke. “You’re privileged enough to be sitting next to one of the minority.”

“Girl power,” you mutter around a mouthful of crumbs. She laughs. There’s something warm and genuine about it that makes your heart clench. You finish eating in companionable silence, watching as Missy’s prediction is revealed to be true just before the credits roll. 

“Told you.” She leans in to set her empty plate down on the coffee table on top of yours. As she moves, she winces and lets out a soft sound of discomfort. One hand reaches back to press against the injury. You frown.

“How’s it feeling?”

“Quite a lot like I was stabbed, actually.” She rubs her forehead. “I think I need to do that thing. What’s it called? Like a healing coma, but less.” Glancing sideways at your furrowed brow, she prompts, “you know. You do it all the time. Eight hours a week, or something.”

"Sleep?”

“Sleep! That’s the one. Clever girl.” You can’t supress a shiver at the way she rolls the ‘r’. “Been a while since I’ve done that.”

“That would explain a lot.” You move the dishes, leaving them for the morning. “Just let me get changed and grab a blanket. You can take the bed.”

“Oh, no need.” She waves you away. “I’m perfectly fine here. Think I was in the desert, last time, so this is a step up.”

“There’s no way I’m leaving you to sleep on a sofa when you’re recovering from a stab wound, Missy, Gallifreyan constitution or not. Besides which, this is a particularly bad one to spend the night on. Believe me, I speak from experience. The desert may actually be preferable.”

“I’m not throwing you out of your own bed,” she snaps, so harshly that it makes you flinch. “I’m enough of a nuisance as it is.”

Here we go.

Wounded pride is something you’ve dealt with from the Doctor time innumerable, but you’ve never had to address it with Missy before. You realise how difficult it must have been for her to ask for your help with the corset and wonder how much pain she’d put herself through trying to do it alone. For the first time, you imagine the conversation she must have had with the Doctor before he brought her here. How long did she fight him on it? How long did she insist that she could cope on her own in the vault? You’d assumed that he wanted to keep her supervised in case the injury didn’t heal well, but maybe there was more to it than that. Maybe he just didn’t want her to be alone.

“We could share.”

She lifts her head, setting those ancient eyes on you. “Share?”

“Share the bed. It’s big enough. No point in one of us being uncomfortable if we don’t have to be. Bill and I share when she comes over.” You feel like you’re babbling. This may be the worst idea you’ve ever had.

“Do you?”

“Course we do. Friends do that.”

Friends. She blinks a few times.

“Well then. When in Rome, as they say.” She rises unsteadily to her feet, one hand braced on the arm of the sofa. “Although apparently, that doesn’t mean that you can crucify someone for stealing a mule. The Doctor was so cross with me that weekend.”

+++++

“You’re going to fall off the bed.”

Missy’s voice is muffled by the pillow jammed awkwardly under her cheek. She’s lying on her stomach, arms under her head, her face twisted towards you so that she isn’t leaning on the injured side.

You wince at having been caught out. You’re as close to the edge as it’s possible to be, balanced uncomfortably on your side with your back to her. Even so, you can feel her behind you; she has no such qualms about taking up space.

“I’m not contagious, you know.” In her exhausted state - she’s been half-asleep since her head hit the pillow - she actually sounds insulted. “There’s no epidemic of knife wounds.”

“Please don’t jinx it.”

She snorts. Suitably chagrined, you squirm back towards the middle of the bed, settling into your usual sleeping position. You still make sure to keep your face turned away. There’s an odd feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach. You can’t shake the idea that if you roll over and look at her face, the cuts and grazes there cast in sharp relief by the thin light of the bedside lamp, something terrible will happen.

You reach for the switch. “Light off?”

Her leg brushes against yours, warm even through the pyjamas, and your heart skips a beat. “Leave it on?” She sounds so small in the dark. You pause for a second before tucking your arm back under the duvet.

“Of course.” It sounds rough. You clear your throat. “Goodnight, Missy.”

“Night,” she murmurs back, already thick and drowsy.

Sleep comes easy to you both.

[tthael]

I apologize if you’ve already written about this before, but one thing I’ve been wondering about your Indelicate version of Eddie is in regard to his occasional tendency toward more (for lack of a better/less serious-sounding term) “aggresive” actions (e.g., throwing the lotion bottle, throwing the water, etc.) directed toward Richie. I know it was hinted at that the urges to aggress may sometimes be/have been the result of repressed or misconstrued attraction, but I’m wondering if some of it is also a result of Eddie’s injury and the related feelings of a lack of control over his own body? Like hypothetically, if Eddie were never injured or if we fast-forward to him completely healed, do you think that moments like that would still happen? Or am I just really reading too much into the fic and making up this aspect of it? Hope that makes sense - I just love your characterization of Eddie and I want to make sure I’m understanding as much as I can!

I actually haven’t written about this before, and I think that it’s a good thing that I take the time to meditate on it now, because I don’t want the idea that throwing things at your romantic partner is, like, a good thing.

So a lot of my thoughts on Eddie’s aggression derive from two specific aspects of his portrayal. The first (chronologically in Eddie’s timeline) is the portrayal of Eddie as high-strung, snappy, and verbally combative in IT Chapter One (2017).  Within the last year and a half I saw a post that pointed out that some of Eddie’s aggression--especially in interacting with Richie--probably derives from the high-stress situations of a) being hunted by an alien clown demon and b) being abused at home. I had a college professor discussing a history and trauma class point out that, “Traumatized people don’t always behave well.” There are the usual caveats that explanations are not excuses; however, I think that the constant knowledge that he has to return to Sonia’s house and the persistent alarms telling him when he has to take medication, so that even when he’s apart from her he can’t get away from her interference, means that Eddie’s under high pressure. And then you get to the point where all of the children in Derry are being hunted by an actual monster, and it’s a wonder that Eddie behaves as well as he does, because I certainly wouldn’t.

I usually like to incorporate some of book!Eddie’s dreamy introspection into his internal narrative in Indelicate, and I think that some of his pressures are relaxing now that he’s a) no longer living in a house with Sonia, b) acting specifically in ways that maximize his own agency (going where he wants with whom he wants, eating what he wants, actively rejecting much of her influence). However, he’s still got a lot on his plate, and some habits die hard. This is why I have moments of Eddie waiting with the perfect snappy comeback on his tongue, and then stopping himself because he knows it’s something he doesn’t mean. He doesn’t actually want Richie to never talk again, he loves it when Richie talks, and he’s struggling towards sincerity. I personally have a lot of difficulty letting go of the put-down jokes in favor of being sincere with the people I love, so I thought I’d give Eddie several moments of consciously choosing to be honest and kind with Richie.

The second influence on Eddie’s relationship to physically “lashing out” is his introductory scene from IT (1986), where he’s leaving home and Myra is chasing after him demanding explanations and wailing about how terrified she is. I know that there are lots of analyses of this scene and thoughts on Myra versus Sonia, and I’m not interested in those right now; however, what caught my eye was that Eddie sees Myra’s distress and his first thought is something along the lines of “you might as well hit her”--not that he wants to hit her and he has nothing to lose, but that his causing her emotional distress is as bad as physically abusing his wife. (I can’t recall at the moment whether Eddie’s section comes before or after Bev’s introduction, but I want to say that it’s before, and I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that Bev and Eddie’s very different home lives are contrasted.)

So I thought, that as a boy child without a father, raised and abused by his single mother--and considering his issues with (as I write it) suppressed gay feelings, and the sort of “glass closet” I write him with--Eddie’s concepts of masculinity are probably pretty toxic. I think that in order to maintain control over Eddie, Sonia probably got very emotionally manipulative when he resisted her at all, especially as he got older and taller and physically stronger than her, and that she probably cried out things like “Eddie, you’re hurting me, how can you hurt your mother like this?” and made Eddie feel like the abuser (which is, I’m given to understand, a frequent tactic of abusers: reversing the roles to make the victim feel apologetic and guilty). I’m specifically thinking of the way that Gillian Flynn writes manipulative white women who weaponize white women’s fragility--Adora in Sharp Objects, since that’s actually the only Gillian Flynn book I’ve read so far. I think that Eddie would be very conscious of what he perceives as his capacity to be an aggressor, and it would be one more way that Sonia could keep him docile.

Later, with Myra--and I’m writing Myra more sympathetically in Indelicate than I did in Things That Happen After Eddie Lives, so I’m not interested in getting into the “is Myra abusive?” conversation right now, because I’ve written her both ways--I think that Eddie likely had a sort of learned helplessness about his own agency with Sonia that he then transferred onto his relationship with Myra. In Indelicate, I write him with a lot of reluctance to volunteer any information towards her, or his emotional state, or to make any of his wishes known (frequently she shoots them down as too extravagant, the way that I talked about Eddie’s relationship to money and luxury and Myra refusing a larger bed).

I write Eddie as largely unaware of his attraction to men until his near-death-experience, but only because he did not allow himself to connect the dots between what he thought of as physical symptoms (tunnel vision on hot man in coffee shop = optic nerve impairment, see doctor); but I think that Eddie was profoundly aware of his unhappiness in his marriage and just tried to reason with himself that everyone felt like that, and everyone was miserable and suppressing their own wants and needs, because that’s just what marriage is, and any other approach to his marriage would make him abusive, so Eddie and Myra’s marriage was emotionally volatile and extremely stressful.

Which is to say that Indelicate Eddie is a powder keg when Richie gets to him.

Again, I don’t think that throwing things at your romantic partner is an acceptable mode of interaction and I don’t want any readers to get the idea that that’s the underlying message of Indelicate, because it’s not. The scene with the moisturizer is derived from something that happened to me years ago (I was Richie, the guy I had a crush on was Eddie) involving a wayward Frisbee; the scene where Eddie tries and fails to throw a drink at Richie is derived from an anecdote of the early days of my parents’ marriage (my mother was Eddie), one that my father’s coworkers and boss loved to talk about and his best friend still brings up when they hang out.

However, Eddie’s relationship to physicality is also deeply informed by a tumblr post I saw over a year ago that talked about how Eddie grew up being told that he was fragile and delicate and sickly, and how Richie did not give a shit about any of that and was more than willing to just grapple him. For this fic, I decided to lean into that idea: that Eddie longs to be treated as though he’s solid and healthy and strong, and he finds a lot of relief in Richie <i>not</i> treating him gently. But because Eddie is actually physically injured in Indelicate, Richie is being careful not to break him while also dealing with Eddie’s very real (and largely unvoiced) desire for physical contact. It’s not an accident that at the end of the chapter in which Richie and Eddie have a shouting match that Richie wrestles Eddie to the floor and pins him and blows a raspberry on his belly--which is incredibly juvenile at the same time that it’s a display of Richie’s physical capabilities and Eddie finds that bizarrely attractive.

So, on top of Eddie’s desire for physical contact, his extreme stressors, and his lifetime of maladaptive coping mechanisms--the other thing that I consider when I write his dynamic with Richie is that Richie is not physically intimidated by Eddie at all. This is not because Richie is stronger than Eddie (he is) or larger than Eddie (he is). This is because there was a time in which Richie and Eddie found it perfectly acceptable to grapple each other as a form of interactions, because Richie and Eddie have known each other since they were seven years old. I even like to think that at one point, Eddie was the taller of the two, because Richie hit a really ridiculous growth spurt somewhere around the start of puberty and Eddie was something of a “late-bloomer,” and Eddie silently seethed about it through their entire adolescence.

So when Richie and Eddie lash out at each other--largely Eddie, because I think Richie, with his fear of the werewolf and of losing control and hurting someone--they’re building on sort of a lifetime of informal physicality. Stitchy does something similar in their Richie/Eddie fic where elements of roleplay always appear in their romance, because they were kids who played pretend games together, and when you have a bond like that with someone, it does permanently shape what sort of interaction you do and do not find acceptable. I also included a flashback into childhood where Richie gets angry with Eddie and very deliberately and methodically pushes him down on the ground and Eddie cries, not because Richie physically hurt him (he didn’t), but because it wasn’t in good fun there, that was Richie deciding to throw him around because he knew it would upset him.

So there’s a lot going into Eddie’s physically aggressive responses in Indelicate--the toxic masculinity that dictates the way that men are allowed to express anger and the ways in which they are allowed to touch each other; the profound stress that Eddie has endured for his whole lifetime without getting many better coping mechanisms; the feeling of lack of control of his physical body; a regression to childhood habits; and a deep sense of relief that Richie (being big, strong, and a man) is not vulnerable to him in the way that Sonia convinced him she (and later Myra) were.

I hmm’d and haww’d over a scene in the most recent chapter in which Eddie strikes Richie with an open hand (it’s a little slap on the chest, and I wanted it to come across very like the sort of corrective smack to the back of the head that I can imagine any of the Losers issuing to Richie back in 1989 when he shoots off at the mouth), because that’s not something I’d be comfortable doing to a romantic partner myself. Richie thinks nothing of it and turns it into a dirty joke, but I do need to get more into Eddie’s decision to touch Richie in kind ways in direct refusal of that “you construct intricate rituals that allow you to touch other men” facet of toxic masculinity.

I know it’s a ridiculously long answer, but it’s a serious issue and I wanted to give it the greatest possible consideration instead of writing something flip. Because both the incidents you named (ones I didn’t even realize formed a pattern, to be honest) are drawn from real life, I can’t say that they’re moments that are influenced by Eddie’s physical disability, but I do think they’re more influenced by his emotional state. I also think that as some of his stressors come off his plate and he gets more comfortable having an adult relationship with Richie, he’s going to stop throwing things at him. I even had Eddie stop after throwing the water, not just because it was ridiculous but because he realized how out of line he was in that moment. Recognizing when you’re out of control in an argument is, I find, an important part of self-improvement; and learning to walk away or to reset is a valuable skill.

Thank you so much for reading!