#and if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills

[bird--egg]

I think maybe I’ve been falling for a long time

[daenerys-targaryen]

How does one cope with all of those extreme emotions inside them?

one doesn't cope with it

[martyrlamb]

✶ when the clock strikes / leon kennedy

pairing: leon kennedy x gn!reader

summary: you’re starting to think a certain agent might be faking his injuries to see you.

tags: sfw, pure fluff, a bit of angst as a treat, love at first sight basically, silly workplace love story, nurse!reader, 1 year post re4r!leon, no use of y/n, extremely mildly passively suggestive, leon takes his shirt off twice (woohoo!), kissing, swearing, leon is awkward as hell, you are too though so it’s okay, description of bruises, cuts and a muscle knot (not detailed), medical talk, slight mention of gore and blood, reader has a backstory, reader has a mother.

note: i blinked and suddenly there were 8k words in my doc idek how that happened. im actually so nervous to post because this is my first one shot ever!! my cherry has been popped… but also apologies if things are kind of all over the place bc im still trying to get the swing of it all. trying to write in the present tense was like being beat over the head repeatedly so im sure theres many grammatical mistakes in that department

word count: 8.5k (got possessed sorry)

Everyone thought you were crazy when you accepted the offer. 

It is crazy—but you aren’t stupid. You knew what you were getting into a long time ago as a nurse; people get hurt, and then you save them. Clockwork.

Years ago, you started studying to be a nurse in some middle of nowhere midwestern school. You remembered the rolling hills and the ungodly heavy blankets of snow that fell during the winter months, the fallen leaves that the snow covered. It was all so peaceful for a while… until the outbreak.

You never saw it coming, no one did, really. At least, you hope no one predicted the atrocities that were about to be witnessed by thousands of innocents without warning.

Gnashing teeth and hands with dried blood that streaked down arms like veins plagued the memory of that point in your life. It was surreal to believe that you got up that morning and made your breakfast like any other day, you slid your shoes on and grabbed your keys, and then your foot hit the front porch and the trajectory of your life changed permanently. 

The virus started as a woman with red-ringed eyes and pallid skin that reflected off of the blinding overhead lights—she looked visibly ill. That’s all that mattered at the time. You were actually the one who situated her and her husband in their room, he smiled at you and thanked you for your time and you scribbled down notes before hanging the clipboard and leaving the room for the doctor. The screeching horror music plays when you get to this part of the memory.

A type of calm before the storm. You hold your breath every time.

A few hours later people started screaming, and someone—something ran out of that room and wrenched its grip on the first person it saw. Blue scrubs dyed a nasty crimson, like crushed raspberries on cloth. The next part is a blur of running, watching your coworkers die, and using your medical expertise to help anyone who needed it. People were hurt. You saved them.

Like you said, clockwork. You try not to think about it too hard.

By the time help came, you had cramped a large handful of survivors—albeit, injured survivors—into a small house that was a mile or two from the hospital. Your quick thinking protected many people that day, and your skills were recognized.

A week prior, you were a simple nursing student who was lucky enough to be placed in a hospital, and by the next Sunday, you were being offered a position as a medic with the Anti-Umbrella Pursuit and Investigation Team. You finished your schooling, you got your specialized training, and now you’re on your way to your first assignment out of the country.

So, granted, maybe you are a little crazy for accepting such a prestigious and dangerous position after your humble beginnings. Your mother never ceases to remind you of this, with what little information you were allowed to tell her.

Iceland? she said, pulling her lips into a line. Are you crazy?

You begin to think that you are now that you stand in front of the base, arms tucked around yourself and teeth chattering as a sergeant points you around like one of his troops. Between the hustle and bustle of agents hurrying around and the amount of civilians sitting beneath the large, brown medical tent, you understand why they needed all the help they could get.

Things in Iceland were bad apparently; Umbrella thought the remote location would protect what little was left of them, and their research, from being exposed. Unfortunately for them, (and fortunately for everyone else) the AUPIT caught wind of what was happening and vowed to put a stop to it. You, freshly out of training, were sent to help with the sudden influx of displaced non-combatants and wounded agents.

Within the hour of the helicopter landing, you settle in and pull your cold weather scrubs on. 

There aren’t many other nurses—only two—and neither of them seem to be very fond of you. The head nurse is older and straight-laced, following procedure, not mingling with you unless she has to. You don’t think you’re ever going to be put on a shift with the other nurse, but they spare you a few ireful glances. It’s  like they could smell the fresh blood, and the scent made them turn their noses.

Nonetheless, you weren’t there to socialize, so you rolled up your sleeves and did your job, trying to ignore the passive aggressive looks being thrown at you from left and right. This kind of mutual ignorance worked for about three days, until you were placed on the night shift… every single night. 

Before you came along, it was determined that the night shift could be manned by one person, as injured civilians were sent to the safehouses by nightfall and nearly all of the agents were either out on work or taking a much needed rest. There was no reason for both nurses to be awake when one could conserve their energy and rest while the other worked. So, most nights you spent alone, sitting by the fire in the back of the tent as you waited for the sun to come up.

One of those nights crept up on you again. You bounce your foot against the ground until your ankle aches, sitting in a lawn chair next to the fire with a wool blanket draped over your shoulders. Nothing chirps in the distance like the environment you’re used to, the only noises that float through the air are the wind rustling bare-armed bushes and your own breathing. There was a rip in the tent whistling, too, but you’d be damned if you let the incessant noise drive you insane. You were scared of the eerie silence for the first few days, but that quickly became replaced by the complete boredom that followed it.

You blow a raspberry as you spin a pen in your ungloved hand, fingers numb and stretched stiff with cold. I’ve ought to ask someone for a book, you thought to yourself, or a new job. You immediately push the second contemplation out of your head like it was something dirty and sat up a little straighter; your annoyance made sense, but this is what you wanted to do with your life. You want to help people in need.

Not that there were many people around.

In the distance, like divine intervention, you hear the crackle of wheels against snow, and a black mini-van rolls to a stop in front of the tent. A scuffle inside ensues for a moment, then the doors open and a man comes hobbling into the shelter with his arm over another man’s shoulder. 

You nearly fall out of your seat with how fast you stand up and stride over to the men, assisting the injured one onto a cot. 

“What happened?” you ask, pushing a cart of equipment to his bedside.

The uninjured one remarks from beside you, “Some snow gave way and he went down this hill with some pretty nasty bushes at the bottom.” His voice is quick and clicky. He looks young.

Clearly, they’re two agents, judging by the leather holsters strapped around their waists and shoulders. You purse your lips and place a lantern on the cart, gently inspecting the injured agent. There’s thorns lodged along the entirety of his left side, looking a bit like a child’s crude attempt at art with toothpicks and styrofoam.

He grunts when you gently lift his arm to check underneath, and you mutter an apology before you turn to the other agent. “I can take this from here.”

The agent nods and spins on his heel, disappearing into the darkness once he stepped out into the open air. 

You turn your attention towards the man in front of you and pull on a pair of gloves, the latex makes a sharp snapping noise when you let go. His intense gaze follows your movements with great intrigue—or suspicion… you couldn’t really tell. You pick up a pair of tweezers and set them on the cart. You also finally got a good look at the wounded agent.

Blue eyes that strike down what little defenses you have and brows that spend their time permanently creased, almost erasing the space between them while he inspects you. His ability to make you feel thoroughly grilled with a simple fixated stare would have made you squirm years prior, but now you merely stare back with your eyebrows lifted. The blonde—possibly light brown haired, the darkness didn’t give much way in the form of colour—man averts his eyes first, as if he is caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

You’d be lying if you said he wasn’t attractive, but that’s not your focus right now.

“How are you feeling?” you ask, flicking on a flashlight to check his pupils. Healthy, good. He squints at you through the beam.

“Like I fell into a thorn bush.”

Looks like someone feels funny. You deadpan at him, unamused with the sarcasm while you try to help. Your expression beckons a better answer and he backpedals.

The man’s head bobs subtly, like a scale in his mind is weighing his thoughts on either side, and then he says, “I’m just fine.”

“Are you dizzy? Nauseous?”

“Fine.”

“Okay,” you reply, blowing out a not-so-inconspicuous huff of annoyed air that swirls above you in the cold. The agent raises his brow at your reaction but doesn’t seem too keen on speaking on it. “I’ll try to be as gentle as I can, but it’s going to be a lot of poking and prodding.”

He lets out another grunt that could have possibly been an Mhm… but you aren’t sure. You hold the tweezers between your fingers and begin to pluck them out, placing them on the metal pan on your cart. Clink, clink, clink. They fall from the tweezers with tiny noises.

To your surprise, he doesn’t writhe or make much noise, only occasional grunts and sighs and Shit’s under his breath when you pull at particularly deep thorns lodged in his arm. 

Even for an agent, his arms are an impressive size, which means a lot more surface area to extract from. Not that you really mind, as you would have helped him either way, but surely you would feel differently if you were in his shoes.

However, the silence is… awkward; sitting there with your face inches from his huge arms—he could definitely feel your breath fan across the surface with how his skin dances with warmth and goosebumps and you do not want the attractive agent to focus on that. So, you break it with a question.

“You weren’t wearing a jacket?” A valid query, all things considered.

He blinks at you like it was obvious. “It came off.”

“Oh,” is all you say until you extract the last thorn from his arm and begin to slide the leather shoulder holster off of him. “I just need to take this off.”

He frowns slightly, and you realize his brows had been furrowed this whole time because that was all his face seemed to know how to do. When his expression changes, you stop.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Taking it off so I can look under your sleeve.”

“Why?”

“You could’ve pulled something and I need to bandage you,” you pause. “Is that okay?”

Maybe you wrongly assumed that he had done this a million times. Don’t get you wrong, you know how resilient agents had to be and how good they were at their jobs, so it isn’t like you thought he got hurt often… But with a short glance into his eyes, you could tell he’s a hardened delegate with years of experience under his belt. Wasn’t he bound to need help occasionally?

The man gives you a slight nod and shrugs off the holster; it falls to the bed with a soft thud from the weight of the knife tucked into the leather. 

His muscles tense under your fingers when you roll the black sleeve over his shoulder. The feathered, pale edge of a bullet scar peeks out from beneath the dark clothing and it makes you wonder how he managed to get it. A mission? Probably. It looks old. You’ve seen scars of all kinds at that point, and each of them held a story that ended in pierced flesh. 

They remind you that they will never not be where they came from—your own scars will never not be where they came from. You shake the thought out like a stubborn rock in your shoe.

“Lucky you, it doesn’t look like you pulled anything in your shoulder,” you comment under your breath.

“If this is luck, I’d like to see what happens when I get unlucky.” For the first time, there’s humor in his tone—so faint you nearly miss it, but it makes you chuckle. When he isn’t huffing out responses, his voice almost sounds kind.

You rotate his shoulder slowly and inspect the length of his side, finding fewer thorns than the amount anchored in his arm. Still, your lips press into a line, pitying the fact that his bare skin will be exposed to the frigid, below-freezing air so you could remove them.

“Well, you should’ve knocked on wood,” you reply, “I’ll need you to take your shirt off so I can get the rest of the thorns out and check your ribs.”

Silently, the man hikes his shirt up and over his ribs for you, snaking his arm out of his sleeve and then laying on his side. 

As he comes down, stretching, he groans. You see his muscles tense under his skin when he inhales, the dips and divots of his torso flex involuntarily when the squall of air nips at his newly exposed skin. The surface holds blossoms of red and deep purple that litter themselves across his ribs like splotches of messy watercolor dripped onto paper. Scarlet scratches bleed pebbles that drip onto the fabric of the cot. 

You suck in through your teeth as you inspect the area. Even without the damage from the thorns, it doesn’t look good.

“Not good?” the agent questions as if he could read your mind. From over his shoulder, he turna his head to look at you.

“Not good. You bruised your ribs, I’d be surprised if one of them wasn’t broken.”

“I didn’t hear a crack.”

“It should be monitored for a day or two, at the very least.”

“I have to get back to work.”

“Look, I understand—“

“I’ll be fine.”

You sigh softly and remove one of your gloves to rub your face in exasperation. Unfortunately, this wasn’t your first rodeo with stubborn patients, so you slide on another glove and begin to pluck at the thorns in his torso. “You won’t be doing much work if you permanently damage them.”

He twists his head away from you again and grunts softly, muttering a short, “Okay.”

How articulate. You guess he doesn’t get paid to talk to people.

“Okay? As in…?”

“As in, fine,” he replies, then pauses for a moment as if to prove a point. “But I’m sure you have better things to do.”

You laugh at this, then stifle it into your elbow so he didn’t think you were laughing at him. He still rolls over a little to look at you, confusion laces his eyes that dart around as they go from your face to the rows of empty cots behind you. Busy? You begin to laugh again.

He can’t be serious, you think as you fan your face. You let your laughter dissipate like it was being dissolved into water. “Sorry… no, you’re right,” you snort, “I was drowning in work before you arrived, agent.”

“I’m sure,” he chirps back, the ghost of a smile haunts his lips.

“I think I can squeeze you in, though. Might have to clear some of my schedule, but… I’ll make it work.”

The pleased look that graces your face is involuntary. You find it endearing how worried he is about becoming too much extra work for you and the other nurses, despite the fact that there isn’t any reason to gather that he would and—believe it or not—it’s your job. 

The agent lets out an amused breath through his nose. “Should I be flattered?”

“Oh, of course.”

You place the last of the thorns onto the metal pan and tend to his wounds with gauze and bandages and nimble fingers that have done this hundreds of times before. Sometime along the way his body relaxed—just a little—and you think he fell asleep until he sits up like a puppet that had his strings yanked and puts his shirt on properly.

The sudden movement makes you blink, and he stares at you for a long pause filled with dead air and an expectant look in his eyes. That damn rip in the tent whistles. 

Finally, his eyes flicker down to your badge, then back to your face. “I’ve never seen you before.”

“I started here not too long ago,” you inform him honestly, a little embarrassed to admit your newbie title to a seasoned employee of the organization.

He doesn’t say anything else, so you take the reins.

“Well, I think we’re set,” you say, rolling the latex gloves off of your hands. “Let me know if you need anything, Agent…”

You never asked him his name?

“Leon Kennedy,” the agent, now with the name Leon Kennedy pinned to his face, finishes for you. 

His name twirls around your head and makes you dizzy to think about. I should have known, you think to yourself once he bids you farewell to report to his superiors. 

From what little time you spent at the base prior to meeting Leon, you had heard whispers during dinner drift from mouth to ear of the elusive agent. That he was a man of few words (immense understatement, you consider it more socially awkward, but true); that he had half of the base swooning every time he walked by (you don’t want to comment on this); and that he was immensely attractive (that is also true). You have to admit… you see why he had such an air of intrigue around him. To be so quiet after such successes he’s accomplished—people were on the edge of their seats trying to figure him out.

You also had to admit that you weren’t immune to it either. 

During your meals and breaks you found yourself playing Where’s Waldo? with Leon, attempting to catch glimpses of him in his natural state to confirm or deny these claims. Which was impressively difficult for absolutely no reason other than that he did it for his own benefit… the motive for this was lost, and still is, on you.

The few times you did spot him, he had the same clenched jaw and furrowed eyebrows. He never stayed in the same place for very long and frequently you only spotted him—or rather, his broad shoulders and white-knuckled fists as they turned corners and disappeared to do whatever he did all day. Important agent things.

Regarding your coworkers… it hadn’t improved much, either. The head nurse, who you later learned was named Winona, loosened up on you a bit—which was practically nothing when both she and the other nurse had been so cold to begin with. However, your determination to help those around you seemed to impress her… most days.

(Peeks of Leon’s ashy blonde hair stolen from cracks in the tent. His fur-lined coat hangs off of his sizable frame, enveloping his arms in the thick fabric—it makes them look even bigger. Not that you care, per say, but—

“You aren’t getting paid to stalk agents,” Winona jeers, jolting you back to Earth from your subject of stolen attention. You swear she smiles at you wryly. “Should’ve tried for one of their jobs if you wanted to do that.”

She turns on her heel and goes over to a trio of injured civilians with her cart, the knot of hair tied taut at the base of her neck stares you in the face. You’re left hot faced and embarrassed for the entirety of the next check-up with your patient.)

The endless night shifts never seem to cease rolling in and you’re afraid it’s begun to catch up on you. By the end of breakfast, when you could finally drag your corpse-like body to your quarters and into your bed, your head drooped comically into your bowl of oatmeal and some of the newer agents had a blast laughing at you. Whatever, assholes.

(You were deeply embarrassed.)

So, you opted for allowing a short nap in here and there during your shift—ten minutes at most—whenever your eyelids began to feel itchy and weighted and you couldn’t help but close them. You really couldn’t. Being sat by the fire with a hot drink made you so warm and the sounds of blowing wind lulled you to sleep in the darkness under the moon.

Truly, a terrible work performance from you, but no one was around to see and surely you’d be awoken by even a hint of an emergency. 

Tonight, you count sheep with your wool blanket tucked up to your chin and your head lolls against your shoulder like it’s about to fall off its hinges. One, two, three. They mock you as they hop into their pasture and curl up into white, fluffy spheres, falling asleep within the warmth of their home. 

From a distance, your ears almost register the sound of footsteps that approach the tent, crushing the crunchy top layer of snow under their feet as they stop in the entrance. It isn’t enough to completely wake you until they clear their throat and say, “Hello?”

Your eyes snap open and you turn your head so fast you think it might go flying across the room. Really smooth of you, considering Leon is the one to get your attention. By the smug look on his face and slight chuckle that wracks his frame, you know he isn’t fooled with your act awake performance.

He stands there, towering and rigid, unlike the night you first met him, with his palm outstretched flat like he’s trying to show the world something. 

“Oh, hey, what do you need?” you reply quickly, standing from your chair as you let your blanket fall off of you.

Leon glances at his hand and then at you. “I, uh, got a papercut.”

“A paper cut,” you repeat, just to make sure you heard him right.

“Yeah.”

You stare at him for a moment, mouth agape as his words register as something he was actually saying to you.

“Well, get comfortable, then. I’ll patch you up.”

In reality, you’re terribly confused about a special forces agent needing first aid for a paper cut, but how could you complain? He needs help and you’re there to offer it. 

The blonde sits on a cot near the fire—not before picking up your blanket from the ground and placing it back on the chair, though—and you situate yourself on a stool facing him. 

You take Leon’s hand in yours gently and inspect the wound. It’s fairly shallow, but placed in the center of the webbed skin between his index finger and thumb. Tough spot. When your digits graze his rough knuckles he inhales sharply and you glance at him due to the sudden motion.

He doesn’t expect a reaction from you because he pauses for a second then asks, “You think I’ll live?”

“I dunno,” you answer, sucking your teeth. “Could be a close call.”

“Yeesh.”

“I know. My condolences.”

“For myself?”

“Uh-huh.” You turn his hand over so his palm faced the sky. “This’ll sting.”

When you disinfect the injury, Leon’s face twitches into itself but he keeps quiet, opting to focus his gaze on your face while you patch him up. You try not to shift under the intensity.

“What made you want to do this?” he queries, his voice cuts through the silence and startles you a bit. Leon looks pleased with himself and you roll your eyes.

“You’ll laugh.”

“Why would I do that?”

“It’s corny.”

Admittedly, it was—the original story as to why you wanted to be a nurse. You’ve had people laugh at it before and you mostly don’t want to repeat history with someone you find rather charming, but something in Leon’s face softens and he shakes his head briefly. 

“Try me,” he challenges.

“Oh, fine.” Like there was a fight put up when you relent, smoothing a bandaid over his cut. “You know those things you’d fill out as a kid? Where it’s like, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

Leon nods.

“Every single time, I would write superhero,” you laugh sourly because you got used to other people laughing when you said this, but he listens as if you’re the only sound he’s ever heard. “I’d draw myself with a little cape and all that. Then at a certain age the teachers start telling you, pick a real job, pick something that exists. And, I dunno, I thought: there are real superheroes. They save people every day because they want to.”

“I mean, I always knew I didn’t have all the right assets to be the one rescuing people from burning buildings and punching the bad guys. I wanted to help people when they couldn’t help themselves, you know? I can't carry the weight of the situation—it’s just not in my nature—but I can carry them. That’s why I started doing this, I guess.”

The look he gives you when you finish speaking is indescribable. He gazes deeply into your face like he’s trying to find a new feature he missed the first time. Something akin to pulling apart your mind with his eyes as if it’s clay made for the shaping and a load of a melancholy that’s too heavy for him; like he’s asking you, how do I carry it? Tell me how to carry something like that. 

Your hand still lingers in his, over the bandaid you placed on him; you slide yours so the curves of your thumbs interlock and you grip the hilt of his palm. A hidden embrace.

Leon’s eyes dart toward your hands and he makes no effort to remove you from his grasp, his fingers relax against your wrist. He feels your heartbeat. You feel his. When he looks up again, all he sees are your eyes. 

You don’t know why you went on that anecdote in the first place, not really. Only that you were finished patching him up and wanted—needed—him to linger for a bit longer.

“What about you?” you ask, voice hushed close to nothing.

“I wanted to help people, too.” He sounds uncharacteristic—sheepish? “That’s it… I can’t follow up with something as articulate as you.”

“It matters just as much even if you can’t express it,” you assure him, your head tilts. 

Leon clears his throat and nods, slipping his hand from yours and looking anywhere that isn’t you. You created a shadow in front of his face, back facing the fire, but you can see the subtle dark tinge of his cheeks when he avoids your eyes. He chooses to look at his feet. There he goes, being endearing again, you think.

The harsh edges of his face are lit up with an orange glow, darkness shoots somewhere in between in a soft gradient, and he looks positively ethereal. If you reached out and cupped his face, you know it would be warm to the touch like laundry right out of the dryer. It makes him look all the more delicate and this feels more natural than the pointed looks and pinched expressions he usually wears.

You look back down at his hands. You’re trying to memorize the way they felt against yours (coarse and hot to the touch) and you get the picture of how hopeless you are—even an idiot could see you have a crush on him. 

That doesn’t stop you from protecting your pride and you keep it to yourself. You stand up to put the disinfectant supplies and box of bandaids away without a word. 

Leon stares at his hand like it’s missing a piece.

You have your head buried too deep into the cabinet to think much about that. Screaming at yourself was an understatement for what you’re doing in your head… a better description would be begging the floor to swallow you entirely with one gulp.

Surely, Leon has someone at home. He’s an attractive, intelligent man with an arguably stable job that pays him oodles more than he would ever need; not to mention how well-built he is, but again, for what seems like the millionth time you push this thought to the back of your mind. You could not focus on that.

“Are you okay?” his voice carries from the cot.

You take a moment’s breather and shut the cabinet door. “I’m good. How are your ribs?”

“They’re good.” Leon pauses, then adds. “Thanks.”

The shake of your head comes faster than your words; muscle memory. “It’s what I’m here for.”

“You do a good job.”

“I’m just a medic.”

“A good one.”

As you utter your gratitude for his comment, you hope he couldn’t feel the heat radiating off of your face from so far away. You weren’t one to get shy from such simple words, but you find your eyes glued to your boots because of his gentle bonniness. Damn you, you curse at him in your head—it held no weight.

The blonde stands from the cot and walks over to you. He bends slightly to catch your eyes in his. “I have to go now, but... yeah. Thank you.”

“Of course, Agent Kennedy.”

“Don’t start using formalities now,” he half-laughs, half-breathes. His face contorts when he stretches back, and his hand came up to massage his right shoulder—you even go to comment on this movement, being a medic and all, but he beats you to it with a smirk. “Stick with Leon.”

And then, in a few strides, he’s gone as fast as he came. 

Your entire body deflates when you let out a guttural sigh. How come every time you watched his back, you were left reeling?

Unfortunately for you, that blasted man had ingrained himself into your head, sitting pretty in your thoughts as snug as a bug in a rug while you tried to do your job, or attempted to focus on anything other than your feelings for him. On the contrary, he returned to clearing out Umbrella facilities for the time being, which meant he was out of the base for days, or even weeks, considering he was one of, if not, the best agent they had. This saved you from the embarrassment of being caught trying to catch glances of him from inside the tent or during meals. 

This, however, did not stop you from daydreaming when work got slow. 

You wondered how someone like Leon behaved domestically, if he was completely different outside of the AUPIT, or if he was still just the sweet, reserved man who needed your aid often. Did he have any pets? What music did he listen to? You guess you’d have to ask him later, but you imagined that the pieces would fall into place and suit him. They’d be so perfectly Leon that when he told you, you would think to yourself, huh, why didn’t I think of that?

The amount of daydreaming you did was not lost on Winona, and occasionally she snapped her fingers in front of your face and grumbled under her breath, “I’ll kill that boy.” With no real threat to her tone. 

Please, you can’t help it. He has arms with the muscle definition of a god and he told you-you were a good medic; you were a goner before you even realized it.

On the other hand, your family never let up with their pleas for you to return home, despite the fact that it simply wasn’t possible unless you had a very good reason for it. Which you didn’t, and you didn’t want to—people just didn’t get it through their heads that, yes, your job was difficult, and yes, patients got on your nerves sometimes, but no, you wouldn’t trade it for the world. This meant more to you than anything else you could fathom. You knew the fear these people felt first-hand, and you knew they needed a saving grace; just like you had.

(“Just come home,” your mother coos into the phone, her voice static-y and chopped from the poor signal. You could imagine her face right now, all worried and exhausted like you’re a child balancing on a wet playground. “There’s a hospital not too far from here… I’m sure they’d take you.

You promptly spend the next hour explaining to her that it isn’t that simple, even if you wanted to, and you remind her every few minutes that you aren’t going to leave, either. You’re happy, all things considered; which is why you make the executive decision to leave out all of the bad parts of your work so far.)

As for the efforts against Umbrella, you hear whispers of successes during dinners and fewer agents appeared at the medical tent’s door in need of assistance than when you arrived. So, you think things are going rather well for your organization. Less tired eyes and solemn faces; the fight wasn’t over, but everyone could rest a little easier with every night that passed. 

And yet, those damned night shifts. You swear Winona and that other medic were scheming against you for no reason other than pure spite, on the basis of simply because they didn’t feel like doing it. It has to be funny to them by now, seeing you half-asleep at breakfast and looking all mussed at dinner because you woke up ten minutes prior. You let them laugh all they wanted because frankly, you began to enjoy the night shifts. The world went to sleep, and you enjoyed some peace and quiet.

You kick your feet up onto a stool and drape a blanket over your legs, book in hand. The soft sounds of Icelandic pop music crackles out of the radio and floats throughout the tent. You mouth the noises of the songs, unsure of the lyrics, but you’ve heard it so often by now, you could recognize the tune from the first few beats. You scat a few of the instruments, tapping your foot along. You don't notice the figure that stopped in the doorframe. 

“Enjoying yourself?” Leon. You shut your book and turn to look at him, embarrassed. “I always feel like I’m coming at a bad time.”

“Never,” you reply with a haste that humbles you further. Worried about his sudden appearance in the medical tent after being gone on agent duties for nearly two weeks, you ask, “Are you okay?”

The corners of his mouth upturn and you barely see a flash of uneven teeth between the slit it creates, cute. This distracts you from how smug his face is. “I think I have a fever.”

“A fever this time?”

“Yep.”

“Make yourself comfortable, Leon.” 

A paper cut, then a fever. You begin to think of his inability to soothe his minor maladies as an excuse to visit the tent. Your stomach flutters at the thought, but you have to make sure… just in case he’d fallen ill out there in the cold. 

You find the thermometer and placed it in his mouth gingerly. It hangs crooked from the corner and he watches you with a certain keenness that makes you smile. After a few minutes, you check his temperature: 98.7. An amused hum escapes your lips without meaning to.

“Dying?” 

“I don’t think you have a fever,” you answer, using the back of your hand to press against his forehead and cheeks. The first cheek is cold, then the left cheek warms under your skin—Leon’s expression falls bashful. “But if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were looking for reasons to come see me.”

It’s his turn to hum in thought. “Maybe.”

“You could just come talk to me.”

“You’re on the clock,” the blonde reminds you, grunting. In a swift movement, his hand presses into the curve of his neck and he rotates his right shoulder, face straining.

You see an opening. “That I am. What was that?”

“What?”

“Your shoulder.”

“I was stretching.”

“Does it hurt?”

Leon grumbles a response under his breath, unimpressed that you might have found something you could actually treat him for. You raise your brows. “I’ll take that as a yes. Let me see.”

“It’s fine.”

“Agent Kennedy.”

He pretends not to hear you.

“Leon.”

“Fine,” he gripes like a child being forced to get a shot and maneuvers to lay his stomach flat on the cot, his back faces toward the ceiling. He takes off his brown, fur-lined jacket and discards it onto the next cot over. You get a whiff of musk and cinnamon from the breeze it makes.

The shirt that clings to him left nothing to the imagination—a tight, black compression shirt stretches snugly over his muscles. You spread your fingers like fans to warm them up, then begin to run them over his shoulder and along the meat of his back. 

You tsk, full of knots. This man needs a masseuse. You make a mental note to refer him to a good one you knew. 

With the issue at hand, though, you find an impressive knot in his shoulder, which is likely the cause of his discomfort. 

You huff, your work cut out for you. “There’s a big knot in your shoulder, Leon. How are you living like this?”

“I wake up and roll out of bed.”

“I need to get this out.”

Leon turns his head, his cheek presses to the cot. He gives you a look that says nothing short of, are you serious?  You smile as sweetly as you can at him, an attempt to coax him. To your surprise, he averts his gaze fast and relents. The blonde agent sits up and shrugs his shirt off. It’s tossed next to his jacket.

Under the fire light and the dim glow of lanterns that hang in a line down the center of the tent, strings attached to the ceiling, you see the way chills prickle over the surface of his skin. Goosebumps, like rolled carpets being kicked open, unfurl down his arms rapidly and he lays down on his stomach once again. 

Your face burns in the dark—you’d be surprised if you aren’t glowing like one of those lanterns from the amount of heat it exudes.

You use a dollop of skin cream to keep the area relaxed and pliable as you work out the knot with your fingers. You push it in the right direction until you got it in a better spot, then you knead it firmly. It crackles within his body.

“Fuck…” he groans in relief, nestling his head into the fabric of the cot as he sighs. “They teach you massages in nursing school?”

“That might be just a learned from life thing,” you state in total honesty. You wipe the excess lotion from your hands on a rag. 

Curiously, he peers at you from the corner of his eye. “You have someone back home you do that to?”

A laugh falls from your lips, though your face feels even hotter than before (if that is even possible). “No—not at all.”

Leon lets out a pleasant hum and sit up from the cot. Good, he says without saying it. 

He snatches his shirt and tugs it over his head; you pretend to make yourself busy so you have somewhere other to look than at him. You hear him sigh with great reprieve as he rolls his shoulder back and forth, it must’ve felt like a freshly oiled hinge.

He comes up behind you, his shoulder skims the back of your neck when he peers down at what you were doing on the counter. Which is a whole lot of nothing; moving cotton swabs from one container to the other, counting how many rolls of gauze you had left for the hundredth time. Mindless hand ministrations to distract you from the heart that pounds in your chest.

“Is this what you do all night?” he questions, mildly amused.

“Sometimes.”

“Must be glad I showed up.”

“Something like that,” you tease, glancing up at him with a coy smile.

You watch his withstraint break a little inside of him. He inhales sharply, losing the words you said somewhere between your eyes and your lips—he couldn’t focus with your faces so close to each other and neither could you. Leon reaches for the hand that rested on the other side of you and drags you in between him and the counter, twirling you to face him. Then he pauses and appears lost, like he doesn’t know which way is left and right.

Maybe he doesn’t know what to do, you think. You don’t really know either, so you go on about what you do know.

“You should probably use kinesiology tape on your shoulder,” you comment, suddenly becoming hyper-aware of all of your limbs. His eyes don’t leave your lips. You’d be a liar if you say yours left his.

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.”

The man’s body heat radiates off of him and it’s magnetic, pulling you closer, away from the bitter cold. Your breath hitches. His hand hovers over the curve of your neck, then it decides to rest on the side of your jaw, thumb pressed against your flushed cheek. You remember the texture of his warm palm, coarse and calloused from years of wear.

You try to memorize every fine line and crease that scuffs your face as he beckons you to close the gap with the slight tilt of his head. I’d make a terrible agent, my resilience is slim to none, you theorize when your body moves before your mind does. His mouth hovers over yours, his breath traces your cupid’s bow. You close the distance enough that your lips graze each other until someone clears their throat from a few feet away.

Winona stands like a judgmental statue, thin brows raise expectantly. You, and Leon, jump away from each other. It rocks the counter with a loud clatter that echoes. 

“Agent Kennedy,” she acknowledges him first as a sign of respect. He nods back awkwardly. “You two look like you’re  enjoying yourselves.”

Neither of you talk for a moment and you find  yourself desperate to create any word that could explain what that was. Leon’s eyes dart around the room.

Finally, something solid comes to your tongue. “I’m sorry.”

And then she laughs in both of your faces. Her hand waves like it’s fanning your words away from getting inhaled. You and Leon glance at each other, brows knit in honest confusion.

“Kids,” she exhales. “Stop distracting my medic, Kennedy.”

Then he speaks, but it sounds more like a nervous cough. “Yes, ma’am.”

Winona shoos him with a gesture of her wrinkled hand and he musters a sheepish, apologetic smile for you as he hurries away from the tent. You don’t make much of an effort to move as you prepare your ego for the chew out it’s about to receive.

“And you. Try to keep the fraternization out of the tent.” With that, she continues past you to search through some files, snickering to herself and shaking her head.

You aren’t about to push your luck. You get to keep your job and ego intact, and that’s enough for you. So, you whisper a quiet, “Yes, ma’am.” And go on with your day.

The encounter with Leon left you feverish and all tingly in every limb whenever it crossed your mind over the following days. You saw him out and about around the base, and during meals he offered you frail waves that faded in a breath. 

Truth was, you’re too afraid of rejection to ask him about that night—go figure. Maybe you’re a cliche. Maybe you’re both cliches. Who cares? Well, you do, and you thought the ruffled, pink-tinted expressions on Leon’s face whenever you crossed paths meant that he did, too, but neither of you made a move to approach the other. You questioned if you would rather be told that his only plans for you was a short work fling with no strings attached, or if he felt the connection that you did. A terrible predicament, really, and soon your desire for a straight answer outweighed the fear of hearing something you didn’t like. 

When you went to find him in the meal tent, sitting alone in one of the back corners, he wasn’t there. Okay. You waited, then decided to check the nooks and crannies of the base where you knew he hung around, and nothing. Leon vanished into thin air the moment you gathered enough courage to speak to him. Somehow you thought he read your mind and planned for this to happen, just to be able to tease you without being present. But that was simply ridiculous. He had to go to work, just like you had to do yours.

A week went by, then two; no sign of Leon’s reappearance cropped up and you began to worry you wouldn’t get the chance to speak to him at all. The only reminder that soothed you was the fact that you knew the organization was on the home stretch for completely wiping Umbrella’s power in Iceland. This reassured you for many reasons. Mainly, that you’d be able to sleep in your bed again at a proper time that didn’t leave you exhausted; but you also found comfort in the idea of finally getting a word with the blonde agent that clung to your brain like a disease once everything was over. 

Of course, you had fleeting thoughts that he died and you’d forever be left wondering about what could have been. But, that was just ridiculous—he’s Leon Kennedy, the agent that saved the president’s daughter from certain death. So, you chalked it up to your anxiety being built up as doubt about the succession of the mission began to be put to an end. That yes, you would all return home soon, and no nothing terrible and tragic would happen just as you were about to win.

Eventually, you all received the verdict of the mission. Success. The sun shone through the clouds brighter that day, in ribbons of gold that elevated all of your senses to something dreamlike. Another catastrophe prevented. More people saved—clockwork. To say you were pleased with the conclusion of your first ever out of country operation would be an understatement; you were ecstatic. 

Still, you find yourself fretting over that thing with Leon as you help pack up the equipment in the medical tent.

Winona, who has grown increasingly engrossed in your love life, gives you a knowing look when your lips tug downward and you send a pointed glance toward the entrance of the tent for the tenth time in the last hour. She tsks and shakes her head. It gains your attention. 

“Just talk to him,” she insists, shoving a couple boxes of bandaids into the case. She’s unimpressed with your antics and just wants you to get a move on. 

You sigh and preen your hair like he’ll walk in at any moment. “I haven’t seen him.”

“Hopeless,” she grumbles in response. “Hopeless. If you won’t do something about it, stop looking at the door like a kicked dog and help me.” Winona retreats further into the tent and you succumb enough to follow her.

You must glower the whole time because she won’t stop sending you dirty looks while she tapes the cardboard boxes with a tape gun. Her movements are threatening. You try to fix your expression when the line of spokes reflects off of the bright horizon outside the tent as it slices the tape.

After the innards of the tent are packed into a dozen or so boxes, you’re the person left to pick them up one by one and drop them off with the rest of the cargo that needs to be shipped. Your back is sore from the sorry excuses of beds you have and your arms ache from hours of cramming things. Kicking snow with each shuffled step, you heave out a lengthy sigh and pause to breathe. There’s a reason I’m not an agent.

“Need a hand?” Leon asks from behind you. You’re wondering how he’s always sneaking up on you.

Still, you nod and can’t help but be relieved. “Please.”

Like it’s filled with air, he takes the box from your hands and cocks a barely-there grin at your awed expression. Smug and content, he marches ahead with you in tow. You don’t really know what to say to him, if anything at all. 

You walk alongside him for the first time in the daylight, and you take in his features now that they aren’t muddled in the darkened firelight or blurred by distance. He’s chiseled, sunken cheeks and high cheekbones with that intense look on in his eyes—but there’s something else—boyish, is what you think. Soft jaw. Moles and freckles litter themselves across his face. 

Leon is beautiful and you would like to kiss him right now.

He stops at the drop off point, places the box next to the others and turns to you. Suddenly, he looks nervous and you feel some resolve escape your mind. He’s about to ask you something. He opens his mouth, rosy lips parting and you break—you pull him behind a tall stack of boxes and kiss him.

The collar of his jacket is clutched between your fingers in a moment and your lips are on his; the fur tickles your skin. His lips are chapped and cold but you create warmth within him, you could be a summer’s day in this frigid air. His hands come to your waist, then your hips and his fingertips make indents when he holds you tight like this was always supposed to happen. When you part, you’re both breathless.

He searches for his words again, the question he was going to ask. “Would you—dinner? On me.”

You hum in faux thought and peck him on the lips again, then again, and a third time for good measure. He smiles into the last one.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t start that by saying you stubbed your toe and needed my help.”

Leon chuckles. “I thought about it.”

He pulls you in again, tongue grazing your bottom lip. You lean in further, desperate for connection until you both go slipping like baby deer. The thin layer of snow on the ground left everything icy. He tumbles into some supplies and you land on top of him. You’re both laughing into each other’s mouths. You’re both happy.

You chime together, like clockwork.

[chronically-ghosted]

can you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills?

rating: T (this is the tamest thing I’ve written in years)

pairing: dieter bravo x f!reader

word count: 8K

summary: a year into secretly dating, you are overwhelmed by your feelings for Dieter Bravo, confident and resigned to the fact that he doesn’t feel the same way. But on Oscar’s night, drunk on sparkling wine and a terrific win, Dieter gives you a reason to doubt your fears. 

warnings/tags: age gap, self-aggrandizing rumination on our public vs private personas, a stupid amount of kissing, angst but soft angst, angst that is resolved, this is very different from anything i’ve done recently, and there’s no smut? just kisses? What have you become Taylor? one very very very soft Dieter, waxing shamelessly poetic about being in love and being loved by Dieter Bravo 

a/n: this comes from the same request by two of my LOVELY followers ( @tvversionperson and @bitchwitch1981) from my 100 followers event: “I’m not drunk. Can a drunk person do this?” “You’re not doing anything.” “But… I sent you my love. Did you… did you not get it?” with Dieter Bravo. this is so wildly different from anything i've done before, i'm flinging this into the internet like a goddamn trapshooter of emotional angst

shout out to @iamdesibell for the visuals of Dieter at the party. She spoils me with all of her incredible Dieter artwork.

🤍Masterlist

Every artist knows it's about the looks. The aesthetics of it all, the internet’s new favorite buzzword. Increasingly too often, the merit of the artwork is equated to the moral merit of the artist; it’s not so much about selling the image you create, it’s about selling the image of yourself. Does the artist fit into the image of what the masses imagine when they hear what the artist offers? Can the artist balance both the expectations and provide something new? When is the right time to break the mold, and be different, or when is it best to follow the crowd? Keep your head down and make more content than art. When does the aesthetics of a thing matter more than the thing itself?

For Oscar’s night, often there is nothing more important than the look of things. The elegance. The allure but approachability of the stars. Beautiful but obtainable. Handsome but effortless. But beneath all the veneer, all the lights, and gold and glitz, there is a yearning, an animalistic hunger, for a quite literal shiny object waved in their faces to clamor and push and shove for. The beauty is a mask that covers fragility and fear and anticipation – and that mask must remain firmly in place, no matter the outcome. Remember, they’re watching, always watching, and you cannot want a thing too much, lest you become conceited or conniving. You cannot love in a way that scares them.

And sometimes, you think you love him in a way that scares yourself.

His warm palm grips yours over your knee. He, along with the other nominees, wait patiently as the names are read allowed from the gilded stage. His face, a mask – of curiosity, of wonder – but only you, perhaps because you are so close to him, can see the fraught want in his eyes. You know how much he wants this, how much you want this for him. He wants it so much he’s trembling. Microscopically. Barely at all, barely a flinch of genuine human emotion, it makes you sick. Because Dieter, the Dieter you’ve come to know in the past year, is so wonderfully unpolished, such a sterling testament to the beauty in the raw, it makes a spot behind your sternum ache to watch him hold himself back. 

You want to give him a smile of encouragement, to kiss his knuckles and soothe his hammering pulse with your thumb, but you can’t. You can’t even look at him, any movement immediately flagged by the cameras. Always watching.

But behind the rows of seats, they can’t see your clasped hands. Can’t see his tapping foot. They can’t see how much he wants, how much he loves. As the names are read aloud for the category of Best Actor, you lift your thumbnail to the meat of his palm, between his own thumb and index finger. Gently, softly, quietly, so as not to startle the molecules of air around you, you draw a heart in his skin. 

But by his rigid posture, you’re not sure he registers it. You can’t tell if he knows you’re there at all. 

It began a year ago. 

After a truly spectacular break up that left you bereft and aimless, you decided to quit. Quit it all. Quit and start over doing the one thing you actually had passion for: screenwriting. Was it risky and dumb as hell at your age? Absolutely. But it didn’t matter if you never ended up writing for a big Hollywood film, you told yourself, as long as you were writing, that’s all that mattered. 

So you quit writing articles about car insurance, packed up everything, and moved to the City of Angels. 

Two years later, you were still earning your dues. Still working from the bottom of the barrel up, climbing through muck and verbal abuse and emotional exploitation and the very dredges of the industry. 

You tried to focus on your craft, on getting more than just getting coffee for the actual writers, but after multiple days spending nineteen hours on your feet, the capacity to be creative so rarely comes, your brain often sizzled and fried like the back end of a janky, unreliable toaster. The production company you worked for had just purchased the rights to a popular novelist’s book for a film adaptation. The party you were at was more of a “pat yourself on the back” sort of thing for the director and novelist to rub elbows while surrounded by beautiful people. Attending mind-numbing parties for the sake of building connections was one thing. You could actually have fun when you wanted, but this? This self-indulgent, ego-driven, flattery bullshit, when all you wanted to do was sleep?

You watch as Eliot Baker, friend of the director and whose house is currently being trashed by a bunch of dangerously drunk and high animals, steps up onto his kitchen table. His pupils nearly dilated to the size of quarters, he holds up a baggy of white powder.

“Anyone interested in Colombia’s finest, please join me in the bedroom. Beautiful women, please stay.” 

The three shots you had done earlier had done nothing to dull your irritation, now amplified by the grating cheer that goes up from the crowd. Coke rarely puts you in a better mood, but at least it’s better than sulking by the stairs. Eliot leaps off the table and leads a gaggle of giggling women, and men with their hands all over their sparkly asses, down the hall and you try not to roll your eyes, your feet all but dragging beneath you. 

Then someone catches you by the elbow.

And you wonder how a homeless man got past security. 

A comically large green beanie on his head, a blindly yellow hood zipped up over what perhaps had been a white t-shirt – you are immediately arrested by his dark, soft eyes. Thick, furrowed brow. He hasn’t let go of your elbow. 

“That guy is a fucker,” he tells you with vehemence. 

“What?” He could have asked you your name and you would have said the exact same thing.

“Baker,” he sneers over your shoulder at the small crowd tumbling through the open door, Eliot’s too blue eyes watching like a farmer counts cattle to the slaughterhouse. “He laces his shit. Makes you too fucked up. He’s the kind of evil fucker who roofies drinks.”

The stranger looks at you, the twist of rage around his mouth fading, eyes softening again, as if he is worried about you.

“Don’t go in there,” he says. 

His warm hand is still around your elbow. 

“Okay,” you say because you haven’t come across anyone this earnest, maybe in your entire life, and certainly not since moving to LA. 

He blinks, as if surprised, and slowly withdraws his hand. You stare at each other for perhaps too long before he jerks his thumb over his shoulder.

“Wanna smoke some weed?”

The cool night air of LA always surprises you. It’s never cold, no, but the chill is noticeable, tangible, always right at the back of your neck when you least expect it. You stifle the urge to shiver as the man slides the glass door behind him, immediately deafening the party inside. You hadn’t realized it had been so loud until there is blissful silence, the sound of blood rushing in your ears replacing the trance music and the dull hum of overlapping voices. 

The man straight off the set of The Big Lebowski unhurriedly digs around in the pocket of that obnoxious hoodie for a bit, as if he could lose an item in that small pouch. 

He finds what he’s looking for with a grin on his face, and when he brings both the lighter and blunt to his lips, you realize his left arm is in a cast. 

He sees you eye it, managing to light and hit the blunt with one hand before pocketing the lighter and offering the smoke to you. The browns in his eyes are overcome by the darkness surrounding you on the back porch overlooking the valley below, the skyline of Los Angeles winking in the far distance. 

You notice something, not writing or words on his cast, more like a dark blot, but you don’t ask him about it. Most people in this business you’ve found are only on for the cameras and when it comes to personal, quiet moments, the less personable they have to be the better. You feel like you’re already pressing your luck by getting a few free hits off this guy so you wait your turn, ready to be as silent as he wants it to be.

Which apparently isn’t very much at all.

“How’d you end up here?” He asks with genuine interest and just a touch of weariness. 

You shrug as you take the blunt from him again. “My boss is here to schmooze his new writer. As his assistant, I think I’m contractually obligated to be around him more than his own shadow.”

“You’re a PA?” He asks, voice strained and full of smoke, before he puffs out the side of his mouth. A considerate smoker, then. 

“No,” you shake your head. “I’m whatever is lower than a PA. I think an actual bottom-feeder in a fish tank has more power than me.” 

“So you’re new to the scene?” 

You scowl, one arm tucked around your waist, the other tapping on your thigh. “Yeah, if two years is still new.” 

He frowns. “What are you trying to break into?” 

His fingertips brush yours over the next exchange and maybe it’s the earnest look in his eyes, or the bizarre fact that he actually smells good despite looking like he’d raided a garbage can, or maybe it’s the weed finally hitting, but you are honest with this complete stranger.

“I wanna be a screenwriter.” 

Maybe it’s the drugs finally hitting him too, but the glossy shine to his eyes doesn’t seem to be from boredom as you explain to him the past few years of your life, starting from the breakup in Boston to getting a very specific brand of q-tips from a drugstore on the other side of town for your boss at midnight. 

“I know I have to pay my dues, and I don’t mind that, but I just want to do something that matters, you know?” The unexpected chill of the night air curls around your neck as he listens intently to your uninterrupted ramble for ten minutes. “I don’t even care about big movies, or the awards, I want to write something that touches just one person. Give them something to think about for years to come. Comforts or encourages them to do the thing they’re scared of doing.” You feel heat climb up your ears as he watches as though you’re the most fascinating thing in the world. “It’s silly. It’s just a job, and I know I should treat it like that . . .”

You trail off, waiting for him to admonish you, but instead he grins. A smile that widens his whole face. On someone else it might look condescending, but he’s grinning wildly as he slides the joint back into his mouth with two fingers and leans back on his heels.

“So you’re a little dreamer, huh?” That faint blush now beats a harsh red. Fuck, you knew you sounded like an idiot – always opening up too soon and too fast to strangers who don’t really give a fuck. You were just supposed to have a conversation with this nice, albeit weird guy and go on your way and – 

He cocks his head as he looks at you, takes in your beet-red ears and cheeks and that smile falters.

“You know that’s not a bad thing, right? The world needs more dreamers. People, who despite all the bullshit, continue to believe they can be happy.”

“You could also call that being delusional,” you mutter as you take the halfway-spent joint from him when he offers. 

One of those thick eyebrows jerks as though thinking of a funny joke. He shrugs, his mouth twisting down in a disbelieving smirk. “Personally, I like to call it whimsy.” 

Whimsy? Who talks like that?

You fight a giggle and find him looking at you again, that smile smoothed out and warm again. One glance and you snort loudly, then bust out laughing. 

Those magnanimous eyes glitter as he watches you laugh yourself silly. 

“Child-like, wondrous whimsy,” he teases and you laugh harder as though he tickled you. Another snort explodes out of you and you clap your hand over your mouth, finally hearing the noises you’re making and mortified beyond reason. You glance over your shoulder, worried someone else might have heard your donkey laugh. In fact, you wish anyone other than the gorgeous man standing next to you had heard it. 

But if he finds it unpolished or annoying, he doesn’t show it. He just rolls on his heels, grinning and looking overly pleased with himself. When the giggles subside, you bite your lip at him.

“Can I ask you something?” 

“Fire away, Pistol Pete.” 

“How’d you break your arm?” 

He looks down at it as he forgot it was there.

“Uh, it’s a long story.”

He finally pulls it out of the sleeve of his jacket. Your mouth drops.

You can’t even tell what medium had been used, either paint or sharpie or something else entirely, but the cast is a mosaic of some of the most gorgeous artwork you’d ever seen. Birds in gold and blue hues, flowers and leaves in stunningly rendered detail, the curves of anonymous noses and lips and teeth and earlobes – all wound together in collage by someone with an eye for detail and a precious reverence for the mundane. 

But for all the artwork, designs you fully believe should be in a museum, you realize no one has signed it. Maybe only twelve year olds sign each other’s casts, you think harshly to yourself. Grow up.

But still, the sight makes you a little sad. 

“Did you do these?” You ask quietly.

He nods, turning his arm to give you a better look, as if eager for your approval. You think you see the horns of Goya’s El Gran Cabrón before he pulls his arm back. 

The man hasn’t answered your original question, watching your face for every microexpression. Finally, you do glance up and he has his bottom lip in teeth, as though preparing to be scolded. 

At that moment, you want nothing more than to kiss those plush lips. You swallow, feeling rather lighted-headed and capable of making terrible decisions, so you take a clear step back. 

“I got daydrunk and fell in my pool wrong.”

You frown at him. “That’s not a very long story.”

He drops your gaze, suddenly bashful, and shakes his sleeve back over his cast. “Yeah, well, I couldn’t come up with a better story that makes me look really cool, or makes you laugh, so I went with the lame truth.”

You don’t remark that it sounds like he wanted to impress you so you go for the easy alternative.

“Why would I laugh at you?” 

He flops his arms in half-shrug. “I don’t want you to laugh at me. I just want you to laugh. I like your laugh.” 

How does someone who wears their heart so openly on their sleeve survive in a place like this? You want him to swallow you down so you can count the rings in his stomach, learn his history like oak trees. 

“Who are you?” You blurt out, your mouth full of cotton and brain somewhat disconnected from your brain stem. 

At that, he laughs. “Gimme your number and you’ll find out.” 

His smile elongates the longer you stare at him. “It’s not a line. I mean, it is, but not like that, if you don’t want it to be. This fucking industry is built on who you know and I know a couple of people to know. You can call me if you have any questions or need a reference.” 

The whiplash between flirty tease and professional contact is jarring. Your fingers shaking from shock, you take your phone out of your pocket and hand it to him. 

He taps away, bobbing his head to some tune only he can hear, before lifting it up to his face and snapping a selfie – tongue out and eye squinting into the flash. 

He tosses your phone back and you learn his name for the first time. 

The shock wears off immediately and you roll your eyes.

“Okay, my turn.” 

He digs into his back pocket and slides a bright pink 2007 motorola flip-phone into your outstretched hand. 

Full – chock full, in fact – of surprises. 

“I’m not gonna get tracked,” he says seriously, eyes narrowed. “You really should think about giving up your iPhone. All kinds of bad vibes.”

You eagerly look forward to him explaining the Big Foot Conspiracy and his theories about the magic silver bullet. 

It takes you a second to type out your name with the multiple buttons, some old sense memory from seventh grade coming back like a grumpy, displeased ghost, but finally, you snap the phone together and toss it back to him.

With the nub of the smoking joint poking out of his mouth, he frowns when he looks at the phone screen. 

“Dolly Parton?”

You pluck the joint out of his mouth, a surge of playful confidence keeping your eyes locked on his. You nod. “Since we’re doing the whole fake name thing . . .”

You want to wink, with your hand on your hip, so clever to have figured out his little game, but when he continues to frown, that rush of bravery fizzles out.

“But the name I put in your phone is actually my name?”

You chuckle, surprised and confused he’s still committing to the bit, a little frustrated at this point because you are actually starting to like this guy and . . .

Unless . . .

“You’re actually Dieter Bravo? The actor? Three-time Emmy nominated actor Dieter Bravo?” 

He loops his finger through one of the free-roaming curls from under the beanie and twists it. “That’s what it says on my underwear . . . when I remember to wear it.” 

The blush on your face now scalding, you dart across the space between you and him and snatch his phone back. You can literally feel the shameful heat in your spine, your lower back, as you delete Dolly’s name and frantically type in your own. 

“I’m so, so, sorry. I was just trying to be funny. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you but it’s dark and, um, you don’t look like I thought you would and I-I had no idea – I’m so sorry –,”

“Girlie, take a breath,” he chuckles and strokes your fingers as they tremble over the keypad. “I’ve never seen someone so stressed out after smoking half a joint before.” 

You’ve gone stock still as he bleeds the panic out of you with just his touch. You watch as his warm hand, dwarfing yours in size, slowly moves up to your wrist, your pulse point. His thumb presses into the vein and gently rubs. You can’t help the sigh that eases out of your throat as all the tension in your arm collapses into that one focal point, that one place he presses against you. You inhale, not realizing you had stopped breathing for a second and he releases gently, the ache in your body left over from the rigidity gone. 

A brief dark haze passes over his eyes when you sigh, but gives you space easy enough when you settle. 

He takes the phone out of your limp hands and reads what you’ve typed out.

“Cute name. But I think I’m still gonna call you Dolly.”

Humor is your gut instinct. Defuse a situation or calm your nerves, sometimes the best you can do is crack a (often poorly timed) joke. You feel all fluttery inside, partially because you’d been talking to Dieter “I know people who know people” Bravo all night and partially because you’re about 86% sure he’d been flirting with you. And so, without thinking, you say:

“Because of my massive tits, right?”

His eyes flit up from his phone screen to, presumably, your tits. Which are very much not Dolly-Parton-comparable. 

But he grins. He actually giggles, pressing the back of the hand holding his phone against his lips as if trying to hide his smirk.

“Yeah, that’s definitely it.” 

It is the kind of laugh that you know he’s laughing with you and not at you and he’s still staring when his laughter subsides. 

He is still staring at your tits.

Just as your face flushes what feels like the hundredth time tonight, he glances up at you. He offers you the last puff, you shake your head, so he sucks in down before flicking the nub over the railing of the patio. His hands sit heavy in his front pocket, the frown on his face contemplative, eyes searching the horizon.

“I think you’re going to text me . . . on a Tuesday,” he says, like he’s divining portents from the shapes of the clouds. 

You swallow, trying to purge yourself of this whiplash embarrassment, but you can’t quite decide what exactly to make of this man or this conversation. “What makes you say that?”

His smile is so genuine it rattles something inside you. “It’s my favorite day of the week.” 

This feels too good, too real, too intense, too fast. It was a quiet, but familiar story passed around in writer’s rooms or on the back lots of sets: an older man seduces a young girl, promising the world, and then offering nothing once he had gotten what he wanted. 

You beg your heartbeat to slow down. 

But Dieter Bravo doesn’t seem capable of that, not with his honesty, his open heart, but then again none of them ever do. 

That’s the whole point. 

“So, um, I should go. My boss is probably out back, breaking things, pissed off because I’m not behind him with a fresh macchiato.” Your phone feels absurd in your hands, as if it now carries something vital inside of it. “But, uh, thank you – for everything. The smoke, the advice, listening to me ramble endlessly –,”

“You weren’t rambling,” he says, arms crossed and finger tugging at an errant curl again. “You were talking about what makes you happy and I was listening. I like listening to you.”

You wanted to believe him. You really did. 

“I’ll call you sometime, okay?”

He nods, raising a hand in a wave, but as you turn away, something final, the last piece of the puzzle, pops into your brain.

“Why me?”

Dieter looks at you, big brown eyes confused like a puppy whom you scolded for chewing on your shoe. 

“What do you mean?”

“There’s gotta be at least fifty people here. Why did you stop me from going into Eliot’s room? 

Dieter shrugs, that easy smile returning. “You looked like the only other person who didn’t want to be here. And you’re really pretty,” he adds casually and your heart launches itself into your throat. “I’ve got a thing for really pretty girls. Gets me into a lot of trouble.”

There comes that heat, that flare in his gaze that makes you wonder how someone like him fucks, all proof necessary that he has a working cock, and he’s not some mystical, Willy-Wonka-esque Ken doll. 

It’s a look that makes you wonder if he wants his cock in you. 

“Good night, Dieter.”

“Night, Dolly.” 

Weeks passed and immediately you were so drowned in work, Dieter Bravo occasionally slipped your mind, falling back on your list of things to do when a deadline was approaching.

But when a contract for a position in a new writer’s room passes over your desk, you pause, and immediately think of him. The offer is unbelievable. More money than you thought possible working as an underling. The channel set to produce was the real deal, likely to order more seasons if the first went well. 

“Saw your writing,” your boss told you by way of explaining your dreams falling directly into your lap. “Good work. I sent some of it off, and the studio came back with this. Don’t take too long signing the dotted line, okay?” 

You nod, dumb-founded as he walks off, and you glance back at the contract.

And, despite your almost desperate elation, something felt off. But you didn’t know enough about the industry to confidently say if this is a bad deal or not. 

So, with a glance down the hall, you call the only person you know who would.

He is immediately livid. Not that you haven’t called, of course, but that someone has clearly tried to take advantage of you. 

“Do not take that deal. That corporate bullshit means they’ll own your IP for years to come. I can’t believe they’d do that to you. Stay right there and whatever you do, do not sign that. I’m calling someone at the studios.”

“Yeah. Uh, okay, Dieter, I won’t,” you murmur, half-expecting your hand to burn if you picked the contract up again. “But, um, thank you, for being honest with me. It felt weird, but I didn’t want to pass up an opportunity and I was freaking out that this was the only one I was gonna get but I didn’t want to be rash,so I, um, . . .”

You trail off, the sudden silence on the other line only making your panic and shame more pronounced. You cringe inwardly – Dieter Bravo had better fucking things to do than console a baby screenwriter out of her first mistake – and Jesus, if there was ever a chance he was going to sleep with you, it’s long gone now – it must be, no one willingly sleeps with someone so goddamn gullible.

“Dolly?” His voice is quiet, but with a certain edge that makes you picture that implish little smirk. “Do you know what day it is?” 

“No?”

“It’s Tuesday.” 

That phone call turned into a new job with a female-led production team, thank yous over drinks, late-night dinners at obscure and dark Chinese food restaurants, movie nights at your shamefully small apartment, and then . . . a kiss.

Which led to all the rest. 

A year later and you’re so in love with Dieter Bravo, you crank up Beyonce’s Countdown and belt it from the top of your lungs every time you hear it on the radio. 

There’s a new irritant, a new agitation that can only be soothed by him. He’s remade you, changed you, reformed your very being to be missing a piece when he’s not around. He’s made space for him inside you, there was no life – not a real one, not a happy one – not before him and there won’t be anyone or anything after him. No one else fits with you anymore. Ever again. 

Your blood runs hot over the ridges of his fingerprints, stamped deep on your soul and your bones.

Trouble is, he’ll never know.

“And the award for Best Actor goes to . . .”

His grip is almost painful and you return it with everything you can, your jaw drawn tight.

The pause feels like it lasts forever.

You hear his name and you think for a second you’ve blacked out, that you’ve somehow missed the moment, or you’ve somehow slipped into a pungently real dream. 

And the crowd erupts.

The spotlight finds him in the crowd and you’re being pulled into his chest. 

The cologne he wears costs more than your car payment but the instant you’re crushed up into his silken shirt, it’s him. Beneath all the layers, beneath the veneer, the man with the green beanie and fervent yellow jacket is still there. Somewhere. You love them both.

“You did it, darling, you did it,” you whisper into his ear and that’s all you can say before you know you have to tear yourself back, because every second you linger on him, the harder it becomes to quell this rising tide inside you that increasingly tastes like salt water whenever he’s around. It’s become so obvious his name resides in the cup of your mouth. 

But when you do pull out of his embrace, in the ringing shout of the crowd, the sparkle of the spotlight, his hand lingers on your elbow, and in a space of a heartbeat that lasts impossibly longer in your memory, you’re met with such a look of profound regret you feel it take up room in your chest. 

And in an instant, it’s gone. Grinning broadly, he drops your elbow and moves on down the line, cheered on by his peers, the white light from above illuminating his broad back, the bits of gray becoming ever more present in his beard. You cheer and you cheer and you cheer and you hope it’s from all the cheering that your voice grows hoarse and the tears start to trickle out of the corner of your eyes. 

You’re trembling visibly as he accepts his award, showing just the right amount of awe, and appreciation, and excitement. He glances up into the spotlight and there’s the real Dieter for just a split second before he humbly gawks at the golden statue in his hand.

The clock begins.

Make your speech thoughtful and poignant – relevant to what is close to people’s hearts right now.

Be profusive with your thanks. Better start with that, actually. Lower yourself at the height of your glory.

Mention family, friends, names and faces that the masses don’t know because it makes you appear connected to a reality those watching on the television can only speculate about. Say something kindly about how this means so much to you.

Cry a bit, but not too much. Keep your voice steady but with tears in your eyes. Cut yourself off, the emotion too much, and say thank you again. 

And anything more than three minutes, they start to play you off. 

You’re mentally going through the notes on a potential acceptance speech his PR manager gave him on the drive over, but in the end, it’s clear he doesn’t need it. 

Dieter’s speech is excellent. 

Really good. Really, really, really good. It has a flare of genuinity, but not the bite of vulnerability that makes people uncomfortable. 

He’s been practicing for weeks now, editing as he talks, in the mirror, while driving home from the grocery store, before he goes to sleep. Tonight’s speech, a compilation of all that you’ve listened to time and time again, is the best version of all of them. 

He’s soft when he needs to be and excited when he can. He’s onto the gratitude bit, going through the director, the writers, the cast and crew, even his costar, whose beautiful face is shown on the twenty foot screen above the stage, joyful tears in her eyes. And as the applause dies down, his big hand dwarfing the tiny metal statue, his fingers flexing, Dieter’s back goes ridgid, his eyes downcast. A smile slips out infinitesimally. 

Dieter clears his throat and looks up.

“And there’s someone else I’d like to thank. This, uh, this one goes to all the little dreamers out there. Working nine to five, to make your dreams happen. We did it, baby, couldn’t have done it without you.”

He stares into the camera and you swear, you fucking swear, he’s looking right at you. 

It’s a drowning sort of wave, this focal point that draws you down into him. It’s all consuming and it’s tender and it touches places you didn’t know could go this warm and what else could describe this but love? You resent the Academy, this place, these people for keeping him away from you. You think you’ll claw out the eyes of anyone who tries to separate you again.

You are crying – for your industry friend, his guest at the Oscars, so sees the cameras and the glitz and the glamor. 

You’re crying because you’re in too deep. 

The rest of the night is dipped into a champagne glass and swirled fast, catching like lighting in a bottle.

Gold dust falling fast, dizzily. 

Bubbles, glinting green and pink in the light, rising and winking out of existence.

Golden bubbles in your drink, in your mouth. Your throat. Your stomach. 

You feel lighter than air. 

With him, you feel as bright and as strong as diamonds. As timeless and luminescent as pearl.

As beautiful as gold. 

When the door finally shuts behind you in a darkened apartment, you’ve entered a secret, separate realm of domesticity: mismatched shoes, coffee creamer flavors you don’t like, and shampoo bottles that take up too much space in your shower.

It’s quiet here, blue and shadowed. The girl who left here hours ago to get ready in a hotel halfway across town forgot to leave on a light, rushing out in her haste. 

Behind you, you hear him snicker, his tongue behind his teeth, champagne bubbles still in his nose, as he hangs his silk jacket on your coat rack, right next to your muddy raincoat and baseball caps faded with sweat. 

“We gotta be quiet,” he hums, wobbling a bit as he toes out of his expensive loafers, pushing them near your off-brand birkenstocks. “Nala’s gonna hate me forever if we wake her up now.”

He is, of course, referring to your tabby cat, who hates everyone who isn’t you, and has a distinct requirement for twelve hour naps with no interruptions. Dieter swears he’s going to wake up one morning with that cat flexing her claws against his throat.

It takes you a moment to recognize and comprehend how your lives have melted together, how extracting you from him and him from you would be akin to destructive alchemy, the process of deconstructing two things causing both of them to oxidize and reduce to flaky rust. You’re drunk and you’re a little dizzy and you’re swaying slightly because your feet hurt but you are too consumed by introspection on your own feelings, what it means to love something other than yourself, to do anything about it. 

You’re so far gone from your own body you float, untethered and lost in thought, right up until the moment his arms come around your waist and he pulls you into his chest, like slipping on a beloved coat. 

“I think I can buy you for a quarter at Coney Island,” he murmurs into the nape of your neck like he is reciting Neruda’s poetry. You stifle a smile, your hands gripping around his elbows, as he sways with you. He does this a lot; thinks one thing, then two, then three, and by the time it comes out of his mouth, it’s nonsensical to anyone not strapped into his train of thought. 

“Try again, darling.” You stroke his cheek with your thumb, his chin tucked over your shoulder, ear pressed to yours. “I think you missed a couple of steps.” 

Your voice is gummy even to your own ears, the endless drinks at the afterparty stitching your syllables and consonants together into some freakish creature. He’s slightly blurry in your eyes, his presence overwhelming all of your senses as they try to keep you upright. 

He chuckles and presses his face into your neck in what you believe is an attempted kiss. 

“I mean, you glow,” he admits quietly to your skin. The grin falls from your face when your heart constricts. “You fucking shined tonight and I couldn’t stop thinking how beautiful and sweet you looked. Sweetness I wanna lick up.” He chuckles again, this time through his nose, laughing at his own absurdity. “And then I remembered cotton candy is sweet too and you can buy cotton candy at Coney Island for a quarter and. . . I think I can buy you for a quarter at Coney Island.” 

He scrapes the back of your neck with his teeth as he nudges you forward down the hall, not sparing an inch between your bodies. Which makes for a disastrous time, both of you drunk, his socked feet slipping on the wood, and your heels and dress tangling up together. 

“Baby, wait–,” 

“We’re almost to the bedroom, we can make it–,”

“Not if we break our necks first. Gimme a second, I’ll just–,”

You slide out of his grasp, inching down the wall and tucking up the truly insane amount of tulle they managed to stitch into your dress. You feel like you’ve been digging for five minutes before you find what you're looking for.

You stick your heel in the air and fiddle with the clasp around your ankle, drunk and working in near total darkness.

Dieter huffs and slides to the floor next to you. He watches you struggle for a minute, nearly swallowed up by the layers and layers of tulle, before he squeezes the air with his open hand.

“Gimme. We’ll be here all night.”

You pout visibly and awkwardly rotate until your foot is in his lap. His fingers are warm as he plucks at the clasp.

“I am perfectly capable of getting dressed on my own.” You toss your hair indignantly. 

“Yeah, but you’re always going to need my help to get undressed, right?” He smirks, eyes bleary, as he slides the heel off your foot and takes up the other one when you don’t move. 

Always, he said. 

Forever.

He’s being so soft, so gentle.

He sees the red marks left behind by the straps of your heels and frowns, displeased. Slumped over in the hallway of your tiny, pathetic apartment, his top few buttons of his pressed dress shirt hopelessly gone, tonight’s bow tie slung around his neck like a tipsy snake, Dieter gives you a foot rub by way of kneading out your pain. 

He kisses your ankle with such reverence, adoration, the liquid in your mouth vanishes and ends up in the crotch of your tights. 

You’re both too drunk for an actual fuck (“don’t make fun of my whisky dick, baby, it makes it sad,”) but you don’t want to be anywhere else but in your bed with him when you do sober up. So, you let the tulle drop, Dieter giggling as he gets hit with an avalanche of dress and you both clamor over each other to stand up. 

Towering over you and smelling like rich, warm, leather and splash of something spicy, he raises an eyebrow at you. You scrunch up your face, your twisted-up mouth betraying the stern look in your eyes, and put your knuckles to your hips. He matches your stance, this town ain’t big enough for the two of us . . .

“You’re in my way,” he grumbles, his mouth twitching. 

“Maybe you’re in mine.”

“Well, then it looks like we’ve got on our hands a good ol’ Mexican standoff.” 

“By all means, pardner, stick ‘em up.”

You eye him like PopEye, cheek full of nothing but air, your one eye all squinty. At that, he completely breaks, going red as he laughs. You hold the pose for a second longer before you collapse against him, laughing until tears run out of the corners of your eyes. You press your forehead into his chest, his heartbeat like a homing beacon, as he nuzzles the back of your head, giggles escaping occasionally on puffs of air. 

“That’s it!” He says after a moment of silence and tosses his hands into the air. “I’ve had enough! I can’t do this anymore!”

Without warning, he bends down and hauls you over his shoulder. He continues his tirade over your brief gasp of surprise – “Dieter!” – his finger indignantly in the air as he marches off towards the bedroom.  

“I can no longer date a girl who is funnier than me and so goddamn, fucking pretty. Who let you do that, huh? Who taught you how to be so fucking adorable? Answer me, you sexy, little weirdo.”

He tickles you enough just to make you squirm before dramatically tossing you onto the bed. You assume your best heart-broken divorcé pose, hand draped over your forehead, one leg tucked under the other. 

“Think of the children, honey! Nala needs a father’s influence, a lonely girl trying to survive in a man’s world! You can’t shoulder me with the responsibility of single motherhood!” You sit up, eyes fluttering up at him. “Everything I learned, I learned it all from you!”

Smirking, he kneels onto the mattress, your body folding back as he hovers forward, his nose inches from yours. You fight the shiver that arches up your body every time he gets that look on his face. He’s got your sanity between his teeth. “That child loathes me, darling,” he purrs. “She’s better off with you. She looks far too much like the milkman to be mine anyway.”

Your fake gasp is buried beneath the lunge of his mouth over yours. His hand cups your cheek as his mouth seeks out all its favorite places against your lips, your skin, your jaw. Your fingers dig into his wrinkled, once-starched shirt, the heat of his skin pricking your fingertips.

It’s right there, that knife edge between starting something there’s no going back from, no alternative path that ends in anything other than him buried deep inside you, filth that still makes you blush pouring from his mouth into your ear. A part of you, the part of you that’s been stalking behind every smile and touch he sends your way all night, the part of you that every nerve sing for him, is begging you to continue. To touch him in the right places that make his eyelids drop, mouth wrench open, to take on the animal that’s gnawing at you both. 

But you don’t. You can’t.

The simple fact of the matter is – you’re exhausted. You know he is too. The Oscar statue sitting on your entryway is a culmination of dozens of exhausted nights that finally paid off. 

He sighs when you pull back, there is no anger on his face, no disappointment that you’re ending things here. There’s only . . .

“You looked really, really pretty tonight,” he confesses to your nose with a smile. “Thanks . . . for coming with me tonight. You make everything better.”

You tuck his hair over his ear, feeling whole and small beneath the gentle search of his gaze. His hair is getting long and you love it, but you don’t want to nag him about it. The universe has finally balanced itself with him in between your legs, the foundations that make up the galaxy all settled in right here. 

He takes it one step further, reaching back behind him to the comforter you keep on the end of the bed that inevitably gets kicked to the floor every time he stays over. You’d pick it up and put it back every day of your life without complaint if it meant him in your bed until the end of time. 

Dieter tosses the blanket over both of your heads and crawls back in between your legs, elbows tucked by your ribs. All the champagne in the world couldn’t give you this same warm, bubbly feeling in your chest as his weight sinks into you.

He’s submerged you both in another realm, a deeper one than the one before, and in this one you have to whisper, even though the only other person in all of existence is inches from your nose. 

“You’re drunk,” you murmur, hushed. You can barely find the outline of his chin, his lips, his nose. The steady drum in your chest misses a beat as you consider where he might be looking on you. 

He awkwardly tugs your knuckles from both hands beneath his head, kissing them gently before allowing them to quietly slide into his hair. He’s so warm, nearly completely invisible to you in the blackness, the weight of his broad chest threatens to choke the air right out of you. But this exactly is how you want it to be. You want to be overwhelmed by Dieter Bravo.  

“I’m not drunk,” he tuts, a soft slur still tucking his words together. 

You reach down just inches to his temple, following the lines of his body that swear all lead to you, to find the arch of his cheek. He closes his eyes, lashes fluttering like butterfly wings against your thumbs. 

“Could a drunk person do this?” He asks quietly, as close as he could come to indignant in this special, dark little world. 

You wait, for a sloppy kiss, for something hard to tap against your thigh, but nothing comes. In fact, he doesn’t move. 

You inhale as best you can, grinning, ready to start another proverbial sparring match with him.

“You’re not doing anything, Dieter.”

His eyelashes stroke your thumbs again, a kitten lick, as he opens his eyes. 

“I sent you my love. Did you not get it?”

All in the air in your lungs is purged in a heavy gasp as his words impact your chest the way comets collide with meteors. 

He says your name, concerned by the wounded noise you just made, and when you don’t answer, he leans back, tugging the blanket as he goes.

It’s not until you’re looking up at him in your bedroom, his face blurry and your cheeks cold, that you realize you’re crying. 

“Dolly, what did I do?” He sounds so concerned, so visibly shaken, you can’t help but cry harder. He only touches your wrist, as if he’d been banished from your body. 

If you hadn’t had so much to drink, this wouldn’t be happening or at least you’d be able to get it to stop, reign in those explosive feelings that you had kept for so long deep and buried until he came along with a match in the dark. 

You take a deep breath, eyes locked onto the ceiling, hands clenched in fists. You know he can feel the tension in your forearm beneath his thumb making circles inches below your pulsepoint. You thought you never, ever wanted to have this conversation, but now you understand this has been the only thing that’s been on your mind for months.

“You don’t mean that,” you croak into the darkness. You feel small and foolish, embarrassed for having a body that produces emotions. 

“Don’t mean what, darling?” He’s still talking quietly, but firmer, providing a hook onto which you can grasp and fight the current in your mind. He knows this feeling, anxiety, and he hates how it looks on you.

“That you love me.”

Your words ring in the air, like the distinctive pitch of singing glass. You swallow that choking knot further down your throat and, wrenching your gaze down from the ceiling, finally look him in the eyes.

It’s the same look he blinked at you from the seats, there and gone so fast you partially convinced yourself you’d imagined it: profound, deep regret.

“You think I don’t love you?”

His tone makes you instantly feel guilty. Did you miss something? What if he texted it to you and you didn’t see it? Or wrote it in a note . . .

“You’ve never said it. At least not to me.” 

And his face crumbles.

He slides off his haunches, feet dangling over the edge of the bed, his big shoulders curved. 

Slowly, as if believing he has no right to, he touches your ankle, where he had rubbed away those painful marks in the hallway. He shakes his head, smirking darkly at himself.

“At the risk of sounding like a dramatic fucking actor, I didn’t want to put you in harm’s way.”

You sit up, unable to help yourself from curling up next to him, his grip adjusting to your thigh, instantly finding the heat of it beneath all the tulle. Cutting right to the core of you. 

He gets this furtive glance when he’s thinking about something unpleasant, his eyes darting rapidly back and forth, as though unable to choose the right course of action. How much does he say, how much does he give away?

He rubs your dress material between his fingers.

“I’m older than you,” is how he starts. When your mouth twists open, ready with a litany of reasons why you don’t care, why no one should – reasons you’ve already said to him a dozen times – he meets your gaze and silences everything in your head. “And it’s not me they’re going to come for.” 

The weight, the finality to his voice shoves that knot right back up your throat, your eyes hot and tight.

“I . . . I didn’t say it, outloud, because then we’d have to do something about it. I don’t want to keep us in the dark, but . . .” he swallows as if choking too. “But after the dox two years ago and then the incident in Austin, I feel like I’ll be putting you in physical harm when they find out we’re together. And I would literally rather die than have anything happen to you.”

He kisses your temple, the touch a consolation. 

You don’t want to turn away, you want every kiss he gives you, but all you can feel are the studio’s words, the words of your managers, pressing down on you:

You know how some fans get. For your safety, let’s give it two years. 

We’re happy for you, we really are, but you can’t be seen together too much. Minimal instagram, rare public appearances. We’re just trying to keep up appearances until the fans settle. 

Appearances.

Aesthetics.

Image.

You’d happily kill anyone who tried to take him from you. 

But you know he’s right.

“It has nothing to do with how I feel about you, what I feel for you,” he promises, voice warm, dipped in honey. “I just . . . I can’t lose you.”

“Then can you say it just this once? Just to me?” You try to smile but the tightening of your skin only spills the tears. “Please, Dieter, I won’t ask again. I have to hear it once from you. After that, I promise I–,”

His great warm palm covets the back of your neck, rolling you into him like melting chocolate drips onto the floor. He stops, inches from your mouth, so close you can feel your neutrons mix with his.

“I love you.” 

Earnest, genuine, real. 

A green beanie and a yellow jacket.

Chinese food and dreams of a better life. Of a happy life.

You steady yourself, your spinning world, against his hand around your cheek, clutching onto his wrist like it’s the last great lighthouse at the end of the world.

You open your eyes and, yes, yes, there is adoration in his smile, in the way he watches his words soothe some ache inside of you with joy.

“I love you too,” you tell him, in case it wasn’t obvious. If somehow he couldn’t smell your obsession for him. “I love you,” you say again, firmly. 

It’s an inevitable sort of fall, his mouth into yours.

Like neutron stars collapsing together, alone and quiet in the far reaches of space.

Like the stone bones of an ancient church cracking and tipping into the sea as time and erosion eats away at a once great monument.

Like the spinning metal within a compass, never failing to find north, to find home.

When you awake next to him the next morning, warm in a way that goes behind physical body heat, he kisses your nose.

I love you, he tells you, with his words, with his body. With the dozens of ways he’s been mulling over in his mind to keep you safe and make you his for everyone to see.

I love you, he tells you that morning. 

And every morning after that.

[joshlmbrt]

Landslide SIDE B - SAD ENDING.

w; NOT A FIX-IT FIC - BESIDES MAX, character death.

playlist; atlantis - seafret, when it’s cold i like to die - moby, landslide - fleetwood mac

an; very sorry for this one please forgive me.

— Climb a mountain and you turn around and if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills well, the landslide bring it down. 

The screeching seems to get louder, making you wince and pull Dustin close. Eddie stands in front of you both, arm lifted and shield lifted in front of his chest as some sort of protection. 

There’s a bang that comes from above your heads making you all let out a yelp. “Go,” Eddie says, turning. “Go!” You push Dustin towards the living room, following behind him. You can feel Eddie’s boots scrape against the back of your ankles, but you don’t seem to care. 

When Dustin makes it to the rope, he’s quick to climb up it. Eddie helps you lift from the ground, looking back over his shoulder. You climb the rope, grunting when you hit the mattress. You stand and look up at the ceiling, watching as Eddie’s ringed fingers grip the rope. 

He stops. 

“Eddie!” Dustin yells. “Eddie, come on! Let’s go!” But you can see what Eddie’s thinking before he even does it. He looks back, as he shakes his head. 

“I’ll buy us some time.” The rope is sliced, and Eddie disappears. 

Dustin can’t stop screaming for him and it breaks your heart. You walk towards a chair and drag it over, stepping onto it and gripping onto the rope. 

“No… No, what are you doing?!” Dustin’s hands wrap around your leg. 

“I’m going to help Eddie, Dustin. You better stay here. I mean it,” You look down at him. “It doesn’t matter what happens. Stay here. I want you safe.” 

With that, you drop to the ground, yelling out in pain when you land on your arm the wrong way. It’s throbbing and you can’t move your fingers, but you need to help Eddie. He needs help. You stand from the ground, making your way outside. 

Only, when you step onto the ground, the smell of a sterile environment meets your nose and bright lights blind you. You squint your eyes, lifting your hand that wasn’t injured to cover your eyes. 

Then you hear it. The beeping of a monitor. 

You drop your hand slowly, eyes landing on a hospital bed. This is the first time you’ve been to the hospital, even after the mall incident, you didn’t go. 

You don’t want to be reminded of the thing that altered your thoughts about death. 

You look down - you’re still in the green army vest that you’d guys bought from War Zone and your jeans were still covered by dirt and stained with blood. You don’t know how you’re here, you don’t want to know. 

When you look up, you meet face to face with Vecna again. 

Your heart drops and you shake your head, stumbling back when he places a foot forward. Your hand searches behind your back and you open the heavy door, running out and down the hallway. 

It was a ghost town. 

Papers and clipboards strewn around on the floors, some doors cracked open with light that stretched along the linoleum. 

You hear your name in a low, growl that stretches out at the end. Goosebumps raise across your skin and finally you feel your feet lifting from the ground as you run towards the door. 

Your hands push the door open and your eyes land on the tower of bodies that had been under Vecna’s curse. Stretched jaws, rolled eyes, and bloodstained cheeks makes your breathing stop. 

Max. 

You see Max. 

She was okay - for now. But if he digs his claw into her head, it’s over. You didn’t want it to be over for her. 

“No!” You scream. “No! Let her go! Please! You…You can have me instead! Just let her go!” 

His hum is something close to a grumble, head slowly turning towards you. Max drops to the ground, tears falling from her cheeks. You step back a bit when he starts to make his way towards you. 

Your eyes lock with Max’s. She shakes her head. A small ‘no’ releasing from her mouth. You give her a shaky smile, nodding your head.

There’s something holding your wrists and ankles in place, something tightening around your neck. You can hear Max calling your name, it almost sounds echoey, like she was in a dream but disappearing from it. 

A tear slips out from your cheek, fists clenching at either side when his claw nears your face. 

“It’ll be all over soon.” 

— And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills well, the landslide bring it down. 

Dustin screams and turns away when he sees your body drop to the ground, his voice raw from the screaming he had done when he saw your body start to lift from the ground. 

He couldn’t find Eddie’s walkman, and even if he did, he doesn’t know if he had Fleetwood Mac. 

He hadn’t promised to stay on the other side, dropping down when he thought you had run outside. But when he’d dropped down on the ground and saw you standing at the door, unmoving, his heart dropped. 

He kneels by you, pulling you close as he sobs against your shoulder. His hand grips at your arm. You were limp in his arms, the blood on your cheeks stained his shirt. 

He can hear footsteps come up behind him, his sobs doing nothing to cover them up. 

“No.” It was Steve. He feels your body slipping from his hands. 

“No! Stop!” Dustin sobs, his grip growing tighter on your arms. He feels a hand on his shoulder, gripping softly. “I… No, she’s not… I don’t want…” His chest was heaving and another sob was stuck in his throat, the rawness of his voice made Steve ache even more than he was. 

“Dustin…” Steve whispers. Dustin shakes his head, lip quivering as he looks back down. It takes a moment, but the sob breaks free and he’s leaning into Robin when Steve pulls your body away from Dustin. Robin wraps her arms around Dustin, eyes remaining on Steve. Nancy rubs at Dustin’s back. 

They couldn’t bring themselves to look at you. This deformed body in front of them wasn’t you. That's not who they wanted to remember when they thought of you. 

Steve’s tears drop onto your cheeks as his eyes stare down at you. He wanted to look away but couldn’t. 

His hand tangles into your hair when he pulls you into his chest, rocking his body side to side as he holds you. The talk he was going to have with you, the love he still has for you makes his heart hurt with the realization you’ll never be able to feel that love. Or reciprocate. 

It really was the end. 

He didn’t know what happens when you die, he didn’t really want to know - the fear of what comes after. But he hopes you found your dad. The healthy version. 

And he hopes you can hear his voice again and not just feel the three squeezes of his hand to remind you he did still love you, no matter what. 

He hopes you’re listening to him play Landslide on the guitar as you sing with him. 

— The landslide bring it down. 

[aliteral-ghost]

This is the gift I made for @calilk for the @mcytblrholidayexchange! I hope you enjoy it!

I was asked for some identity reveal shenanigans and I hope I was able to convey it well! It's Joe and Cleo-centric with a little hurt and a lot more comfort! You can read the whole thing here or on ao3 here.

Beta'd by the amazing @iwillstealyourjawbone!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cleo knows Joe for a whole decade before they even begin to think about whether or not he’s actually human. No one on the Hermitcraft server really is, as far as she knows, but Joe is mostly unassuming and Cleo hasn’t known a human in so many years that she just figures that they all have their quirks. Until one day, when they’re prepping for HHH, and Cleo realizes a trait that Joe Hills has that no one in her many years of existence has had. 

“Joe?” Cleo asks. “Why can't I see your eyes?” Joe blinks, or at least they assume he blinks, from behind the glasses that are perpetually covering his eyes.

“Well, sorry, I didn't realize it was a problem! I can fix that right away.” Eyes appear as a sort of halo around his head, all staring at Cleo. She flinches suddenly at the amount of them watching her.

“No, no, that's fine, Joe. I really don't need to make eye contact…” The eyes disappear as quickly as they arrive, flickering out with a snap of static and sudden rush of air pressure. Cleo's ears pop, or at least they try to, one of the eardrums slightly too rotten to be able to flex that much. They manage to get it to go back to normal with a little fiddling, then smile at Joe again. “Well, shall we? There are hermits to be helped.” 

Or harmed, or hindered, or hugged, or any other verb that starts with ‘h’ that Cleo can think of. It varies wildly through the weeks depending on who needs help, but Joe always knows what they're going to be doing. Even when there isn't really going to be a plan, Joe always knows.

Cleo doesn't really care, though. That's just Joe Hills, in his infinite quirks. They're friends for a reason, of course.

After the helping (holding Tango at swordpoint until he lets them place snow), Joe and Cleo find themselves sitting at the top of Cleo’s castle, watching the sun go down. Predictably, the rest of the hermits were about as flaky as pumpkin pie crust, and it was a monumental task for just the two of them. Tango was grateful at the end of it all, of course, which always feels good, but Cleo’s fingers are practically falling off from the cold, wet snow, and Joe seems like he’s on the verge of falling asleep. 

Neither of them are talking, Cleo making mental notes of all of the things she still has to finish in her base, all the armor stands she wants to fill the rooms with, and Joe staring into the sun. Or, at least, Cleo thinks he is. She can’t see his eyes. His glasses always seem to be reflecting just right. 

It’s not like that’s the strangest thing about Joe, either. Occasionally they will find him just slightly too transparent, or working on something while floating at a strange angle, but that’s always been chalked up to the Joe Hills difference. She’s never thought that it might be because Joe isn’t human.

“I’ve been thinking about your question,” Joe says eventually. It takes Cleo by surprise, not because he’s been thinking about a question she posed, but because he sounds melancholy about that thinking.

“Which one?” Cleo asks. In theory, they know. They both know what question he’s been thinking about, but neither of them really know how to go about saying it.

“About my eyes,” Joe hiccups, a little sort of half-laugh, half-sob, clearly exhausted. “Do you know what I am, Cleo?”

That gives Cleo pause. Sure, she has theories, but the rule of thumb on the Hermitcraft server is always to keep theories to yourself. Never assume. “You're human?” She doesn't mean it to sound like a question.

“I'm a monster,” Joe sighs, nearly deflating. “My kind has done so much harm to the players… I've done so much….”

“If you're a monster,” Cleo says, not sure what they're talking about but just wanting to make things better, “What does that make me? My kind is constantly trying to kill us.”

As if on cue, a zombie groans from somewhere outside, and shuffles closer, as if sensing them through the walls.

“That's different,” Joe says. “You're cognizant. You're you. If you saw my true form… I wouldn't be allowed around here anymore.”

“I may not know ‘your true form,’ or whatever,” Cleo retorts, a little indignant, “But I know you. You're Joe Hills, from Nashville, Tennessee, you like helping people in that strange way you do, and you would never want to hurt any of us.”

Joe curls up like they’ve done hundreds of times before, head on Cleo’s thigh, shoulder pressed firmly to their side. It’s habit, at this point, more than anything, and he eases into a fitful sleep before long. Cleo doesn’t follow suit, counting his breaths and trying to ignore how Joe’s form shifts and morphs in his sleep. It wouldn't be polite to stare.

She doesn’t look up, but if they did they would see a massive halo of eyes, shimmering in every color of the rainbow. They’re not watching Joe and Cleo, instead staring off into the distance, watching every move of the other beings on the server, protecting them.

The next time someone asks about Joe–Gem catches Cleo after one of their Secret Life sessions, eyes wide with curiosity–they just smile. “That’s just how Joe is,” Cleo says. “That’s how he’s always been. Not much more about it.”

“But–” Gem starts, still full of questions.

“It’s the Joe Hills difference,” Cleo insists. “It’s really better if you don’t think too hard about it, anyways. You'll just end up with a headache.” She doesn’t say any more than that, even when Gem keeps pestering her. It’s not their business to share, and if Joe ever feels like telling the other Hermits, he will. They won’t pressure him, they know that, everyone is far too polite to even think about it.

“Okay,” Gem says, sounding like she’s mulling it over. “The Joe Hills difference.” She doesn’t ask any more questions, and Cleo goes about her day, happy that she'd been trusted to protect their friend’s privacy.

[sleepyheadgallavich]

Oh, take my love, take it down Oh, climb a mountain and turn around And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills Well the landslide will bring it down

inspo

[hunterssm00n]

Paranoia

Yandere! Sheriff OC

A little bit older / A black leather jacket / A bad reputation / Insatiable habits / He was onto me, one look and I couldn't breathe...

*cw include stalking, yandere behavior, abuse of authority, obsession, and dark themes* MDNI - 18+

♡˚₊‧ ୨୧ ‧₊˚ ♡

hunterssm00n © All rights reserved by me. I do not allow this work to be used or adapted in any way without my permission.

It’s below twenty this morning; cold, but beautiful. The sun rising over the hills reflects off of the ice that covers nearly every surface outside. The light makes everything look like it’s sparkling- like the inside of a winter wonderland snow globe. Kelli, unlike most people who live around here, loves the winter, so this weather doesn’t bother her. Quite the opposite; she looks forward to this season every year. She thinks the snow is magical.

The snow is also all-telling.

Footprints are easily visible in the white flakes on the ground. You can see where someone has been, where they’ve stepped, if they’ve walked around your house, around your car, to your bedroom window to peer inside.

Maybe most people don’t think about it that way. Maybe most people aren’t paranoid like her. But then again, maybe most people don’t have a reason to be, like she does.

She notices the second set of tire tracks immediately, upon walking out her front door. She knows he’s been here; he’s here every night. During the night she thought she’d heard his vehicle outside; the low idle of the engine almost like comforting white noise in the background. She’d been too exhausted to really react- her new job quickly taking its toll on her daily life. Working in a warehouse makes her ready for bed by eight thirty every night like an old lady, and once she’s asleep she sleeps like a rock. But the thought had been in the back of her mind nonetheless: He’s here. He’s watching.

Kelli checks, and the double check the lock on my front door, turning the door handle about ten times before she’s comfortable walking down the steps towards her car. The second thing she notices is the footprints. She sees them leading from the tire tracks to her front steps, pausing there, and then walking sharply to the left. She knows if she looks at them more closely, and follows their trail, that they’ll lead to every window, pausing there as well. And the back door. And the basement window. If she looks extra closely, she may even see gloved handprints on the window sills, gently having rested there the night before, mere hours ago. The thought gives her shivers, and it isn’t from the cold. She walks quickly towards her car, paying close attention to her surroundings all the while. The thought that he may still be here somewhere, watching, always watching, makes her spine tingle and the hair on the back of her neck raise.

She doesn’t know exactly how this started; what she did to capture his attention. And, evidently, his obsession. She goes to work, the store, the coffee shop, and barely anywhere else. Most of the time she hides away in her little house, the only place she feels like she can truly breathe a sigh of relief. But somehow she's piqued his interest, and he’s been following her ever since.

This has been going on for a few weeks now- enough for it to become part of her routine. She’ll be in her home at night, winding down from the day, and she’ll see lights appear at the end of her driveway. Sometimes they don’t come all the way down; they sit for a few minutes before reversing and driving away. But Kelli always knows that they’ll be back, at some point. While she's lying in bed, sometimes before she falls asleep, she’ll hear the crunching of snow and gravel under tires as the car approaches. If she's already asleep, sometimes she'll wake up briefly, by some sort of sixth sense maybe, letting her know that she is not alone here; that there’s someone outside. The beams of light sweeping over her curtains before going out look like that of a passing vehicle on the road, but her driveway is long, so the house is not right next to the road itself. Instead it's tucked a little ways back into the trees; perfect for her to hide. And, evidently, perfect for someone else to hide, too.

He hasn’t gone any further than parking in the driveway and walking around her small house, peering in the windows. But she wonders how long it will stay that way. How long before he gets a hold of her house key, and makes a copy? How long before he decides to see if one of the windows will open, so he can slide in? The answer to that, is that even after two weeks, things have been steadily escalating. And it's not like she can call the police. They'd laugh her right off the phone if she told them that it's their sheriff who is stalking her.

His name is Sheriff Ray Donnovan; mid forties, law enforcer of this small town, and her stalker.

Even when she tries to tell someone, they’ve all just chalked it up to him being ‘a good cop’; ‘looking out for his town’. Plus, your house is on the main road anyways; he’s probably just parking in your driveway to watch for late night speeders. They overlook the fact that the sheriff doesn’t normally work nights; being of a higher rank, wouldn’t he pick a better shift than the graveyard one? And why, if he’s been working all day, is he parking in Kelli's driveway like a traffic cop trying to meet his monthly quota? Doesn’t the sheriff have better things to do? Also, wouldn’t he first ask to use her driveway if he was going to be hiding there to catch unsuspecting drivers in the wee hours of the morning?

She knows better. A good cop doesn’t come to someone’s house at night while they’re asleep (or while he thinks they’re asleep), and park outside in their driveway all night. A good cop doesn’t memorize someone’s schedule so that he happens to run into them in random places, multiple times a week. A good cop doesn’t walk the perimeter of someone’s house every night, without being asked, to look in their windows and try to find weak points of entry.

You’re just being paranoid, they tell her. He’s a good guy; he’s an upstanding citizen. He’s the sheriff, for chrissake.

She shakes her head to clear the swirling thoughts, and open her car door. Being late to work won’t fix anything.

♡˚₊‧ ���୧ ‧₊˚ ♡

This is an original work of mine, as are the characters.

I do not own the song ‘My Oh My’ by Camilla Cabello. The above picture is from pinterest and there’s a link attached to the original post.

[crowleys-scarf]

Day 6 of GO playlist analysis

Landslide - Fleetwood Mac

This is a song about change. It is one of the sadder ones on this playlist. I added it for the chorus because I think it encapsulates the the fear of change present in aziracrow's dynamic. Fear of asking for more, but also fear of loss. They certainly have built their lives around each other and their specific dynamic.

Lyrics:

I took my love, I took it down I climbed a mountain and I turned around And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills 'Til the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky What is love? Can the child within my heart rise above? Can I sail through the changin' ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I've been afraid of changin' 'Cause I've built my life around you But time makes you bolder Even children get older And I'm getting older too

Well, I've been afraid of changin' 'Cause I've built my life around you But time makes you bolder Even children get older And I'm getting older too Oh! I'm getting older too

Oh-oh, take my love, take it down Oh-oh, climb a mountain and you turn around And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills Well, the landslide bring it down And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills Well, the landslide bring it down Oh-ohh, the landslide bring it down

[yuniemaki]

we never got to say goodbye (i'll see you soon)

Rating: G Series: Honkai Star Rail Pairing: Serval/Cocolia Tags: Grief/Mourning, spoilers for Belobog arc Word count: 1k

Crossposted on AO3

Summary:

Serval’s hand stops, lingering on her name. “But this isn’t goodbye, is it?” she whispers, “It’s just a ‘see you soon’.”

In which Serval visits Cocolia's grave and reflects on the loss of a dear one.

Beyond the gates of Belobog, the cold is harsh and unforgiving.

Serval trudges through ankle-deep snow, wrapped in three layers of thermal wear. The icy wind whips at her blond hair, throwing her tresses into a frenzy, and flings snow onto her goggles and mask. An endless field of white stretches out before her, framed only by towering iron gates and mechanical remnants that matter no longer.

Even after the Stellaron’s destruction, the Eternal Freeze remains. 

You don’t need to go, Gepard had said, it’s over. 

“I have to,” Serval mutters to no one, stubbornly placing one foot in front of the other. I have to see the place Cocolia took her final breath— 

There. A silhouette in the blinding white, unmoving in the sweeping winds of Jarilo-IV. Serval quickens her pace, stomping through the snow until she reaches the metal wreckage lying at the peak of a snowy hill. The raging blizzard has long swept away all traces of battle, and the Stellaron has long been sealed by the trailblazers. 

But there, snuggled in its center, within the loving arms of this wreckage… lies a single tombstone. 

Serval doesn’t know what she expected. Perhaps a foolish part of her hoped to see Cocolia again, even if it’s just an echo. Perhaps she thought some piece of Cocolia lived on in the snowstorm. 

Or perhaps she still believed Cocolia would wait for her.

Of course not. After that day, there was no place in the Supreme Guardian’s heart for her, for Serval. Despite the cold, Serval perches herself on a small metal platform, staring at the tombstone now covered in snow. It's funny how she had an entire speech planned for this moment, including a long portion where she'd intended to yell at her grave. Yet when she's finally here, standing where Cocolia did before she left this world— Serval can't say a single word. It all clumps together into a thick lump in her throat. 

She manages a, “You know, Coco…” before her breath stutters. It has been years since she even uttered that nickname. Her eyes sting with tears.

They are two halves of a whole. If they were born in seasons, Cocolia would be born in winter, and Serval in summer. Where Serval had the passion to start new things, it was Cocolia who would see them to fruition. It was Cocolia, all those years ago, who forced Serval to go through with her rock’n’roll dream. To start a band, to run a gig. It was Cocolia who gifted her the guitar of her dreams, who turned her ideas into reality. And Serval loved her for it. 

But when she became the Supreme Guardian— 

A pause, in which Serval struggles to compose herself. “I… I still don’t understand what happened to you. I thought…”

I thought sealing the Stellaron would bring you back. 

Serval laughs, as bitterly as the blizzard bites at her fingers and toes. “I keep telling myself I’m over you, but how can I be? We shared everything. Until—”

She tears up at the memory. 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Cocolia, the newly appointed Supreme Guardian of Belobog, was seated in a chair far too large for her, with the light of day at her back. Serval, smartest of the Silvermane Guards, was standing before her, livid. “You cannot do this,” she’d said, “Cutting off the Underworld like this… we’re dooming half of our people to die!”

“You dare to question my decision, Serval Landau?” 

Cocolia’s voice. So uncaring, so dismissive, it felt like a spear of ice piercing through Serval’s heart. Before she took the mantle of leadership, before she entered Qlipoth Fort… Cocolia had been different. She had been warm and tender and full of life.

“We are meant to protect the people,” Serval declared, “How is this—”

“This is our only option,” Cocolia had cut her off, swift and harsh. “And nothing will change my mind.”

“What about the Fragmentum? Shouldn’t we be fixing that instead of dividing our people?”

“The Fragmentum is the very reason I’m closing off the Underworld,” the Supreme Guardian had replied, rising to her feet. In her eyes, Serval saw nothing but ice, as cold as the Eternal Freeze. A chill had run down her spine. “We are done here.”

Serval took a step back, shivering. “Why, Cocolia… why have you grown so cold…?”

Something flared in that icy gaze. A hint of regret, perhaps. “Serval Landau… you were my most cherished friend.” Cocolia turned away, facing the light of her window. Serval remembers this clearly, for she looked nothing short of being a goddess bathed in wintry light.

Yet her next words would slip into her like a knife between her ribs, lodging into her heart like a shard of glass: “But there is no place for you in this new world.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“It’s like becoming the Supreme Guardian robbed you of life,” Serval whispers, shaking the memory off with a sigh. “I just…”

What is the point? Serval doesn’t know anymore. She stayed in Belobog for Cocolia, because Cocolia was still here, even if the Supreme Guardian wouldn't see her. It brought Serval comfort, at least, to know that Cocolia remained in Qlipoth Fort, watching over Belobog. But now she’s gone.

Serval reaches up, rubbing the tears from her eyes before putting her goggles back on. “Bronya found… the guitar,” she chokes out, “The one you made for me.” She lets out a hollow chuckle. “I can’t believe you kept it, you sentimental idiot.”

The tombstone does not answer.

She unhooks the strap, taking out the silver guitar. “I took it back to Neverwinter… gave it a little tuning.” Serval takes off her gloves, wincing as the freezing winds snap hungrily at her fingers. “It still works.” She strums the guitar, and smiles at the familiarity of the crisp, nasal tones it produces. 

“Remember our first gig? You were so nervous about being the bassist…” 

But we had so much fun, in the end. 

Serval strums out a tune, the first song they’d ever played together. She remembers looking back to see Cocolia strumming the bass guitar, a radiant smile on her lips. She remembers how the theater’s lights had shined, just for them, and all the magic they made that night. How the crowd had roared and cheered, how Cocolia’s breath had been taken away. How they'd danced into the night, hands entwined, and laughed till dawn.

How Cocolia had shyly pulled her close while she fumbled for the keys to their room, and pecked her ever so lightly on the lips. 

So much hope. So much life. 

Robbed from her in a single day, when she lost her daughter and her joy. The mantle of Supreme Guardian and its forbidden knowledge sank into her heart like a shard of ice, seeping away the warmth in her eyes.

Serval thinks about the possibilities often. If only she’d been more persistent. If only she’d tried harder. What if she’d written letters to Cocolia after being fired, instead of starting her own workshop and closing her heart away? What if she’d continued pursuing her study of the Stellaron in private? Could she have found a way to save Cocolia? Could her sacrifice have been avoided? 

Does any of this matter? She is gone.

The dead do not come back.

“I came to tell you something,” Serval finally says, clutching the guitar tightly in her bare hands. The cold has wormed its way into her fingers, and she can barely feel them. “Coco, I'm leaving. I don't know how long I'll be. So I thought I'd visit you first, because…” Her voice trails off. She bites back a sob.

The howling wind whips her hair into a frenzy. Serval stays motionless before the tombstone, like a piece of discarded metal.

“We never got to say goodbye, Cocolia…” Serval lays the guitar in the snow, running a hand across the tombstone. Snow falls away to reveal a simple epitaph, for such a complex woman. 

Here lies Cocolia Rand, 13th Supreme Guardian of Belobog.

Serval’s hand stops, lingering on her name. “But this isn’t goodbye, is it?” she whispers, “It’s just a ‘see you soon’.”

She gets to her feet, staring at the wreckage embracing Cocolia’s grave. It reminds her of a cradle, like a mother sheltering her innocent babe. 

Cocolia gave her life for Belobog, but this sanctuary means nothing to Serval now. To let go, she must leave Belobog. Leave Jarilo-IV. If she travels with the Astral Express, studies the Stellarons— she might yet find the answers she seeks. And perhaps, someday, she will find the strength to return to the land Cocolia so loved, more than she ever loved Serval herself.

Serval musters up a smile, and gives the tombstone a wave. “So… wait for me, okay? I’ll see you soon, Coco.”

I’ll see you soon.

[chronically-ghosted]

dieter bravo x masterlist

[xx.masterlist.xx]

[Series]

🤍Recovery Road

status: complete

rating: Explicit 18+

summary: (AU) Dieter Bravo is on his last chance. Six months out of a two year stint in rehab, his marriage on the rocks, and his starlight fading, he reunites with an old director friend on a project that might save his career and his personal life in a single go. Enter Natalie Lorraine, his new enigmatic co-star. Together, they go on to lead a film that comes to define a generation – and are both mysteriously absent the night the film receives an Oscar for Best Picture. Their reasons for missing such a landmark event are their own. Amidst affairs and acrimony, the temptation of relapse, and the intoxicating allure of wanting what you can’t have, Dieter and Natalie have become a ticking time bomb, primed to explode.

[Oneshots]

you can never keep a soul (18+) A storm and a dead phone leaves you at the front door of your uncle’s mansion in LA. Thing is, you haven’t seen each other in over a decade and neither of you quite remember the other one looking like that. But what’s one night gonna do? Well, as it turns out – as Dieter spirals at a breaking point in his career and you’re so lost in life you can’t see up from down – a whole fucking lot. 

Little Monsters (18+) **100 follower event** A phone call home to your family has you missing them desperately . . . especially your husband, who always knows exactly what you need.

can you see my reflection in the snow covered hills? (T) **100 follower event** a year into secretly dating, you are overwhelmed by your feelings for Dieter Bravo, confident and resigned to the fact that he doesn’t feel the same way. But on Oscar’s night, drunk on sparkling wine and a terrific win, Dieter gives you a reason to doubt your fears. 

delicious (T) **100 follower event** in order to make a fundraising event bearable, you and Dieter take edibles. When the event runs long, your only chance to make it out alive is to find something to eat. 

Bite Me (T) Halloween 2023! before a Halloween party, you and Dieter show off your “communal” costumes.

i crawl home to her (18+) **Merry Thanksgiving Nonsense 2023** you bring dieter home to meet your family over the holidays.

Stay Gold, Baby Boy (18+) six months into your friends-with-benefits situation, you institute a new game. A gold star on the board every time Dieter is a good boy. Today, he gets bingo . . . for wearing real pants. 

stay sexy and don't get murdered (18+) Trapped behind a secret wall to hide from a murderer, the close proximity forces you and Dieter to confront feelings you rather bury underneath your case to prove your favorite neighbor didn’t commit suicide.  (This is the Only Murders in the Building smut fic in the chaotic stylings of Dieter Bravo.)

fade into you (18+) **1K Follower Celebration** counting down the days until the new baby arrives, you’re already wound to a breaking point. Fortunately, Dieter is as good a husband as he is a father. 

[Drabbles]

Vampire!Dieter (T) you're a journalist and you finally get to interview the current generation of the Bravo Hollywood Legacy.

[wellthebardsdead]

The loved & the forgotten pt16

Part 15 here

———

Vivienne: *hidden from prying eyes with the ring of khajiiti, only his under cloth and Kaidans cape covering his blood soaked skin as he runs through the bulwark and out into the ash wastes, covering his mouth as he sobs, feeling disgusting from being touched by a man who’d used him so viciously in the past, feeling disgusting for being used at all and daring to find love thinking he’d ever be worthy of it, and feeling disgusting as the blood painting his beautiful body dries and sticks uncomfortably to every crevice it can* I need- I need to be clean I need a bath I need to be clean- *chokes in a mouthful of ash as he hyperventilates as a panic attack wracks his body and the sounds of his loved ones calling his name ring in his ears* I need to be clean in- *coughs and sobs as his foot finds clay amongst the dry earth* wh-what?… *looks up slightly to see a small stream, babbling down the hill from a waterfall tucked away behind rocks and trees* … *walks to it and gasps softly, seeing it forming a large pond, filled with giant lotus leaves and blossoms towering taller than even Kaidan, and the water itself, guarded by the cliff face and towering trees, free from ash fall and so clear he can see goldfish the size of his head swimming beneath its surface* … *drops the invisibility and sheds Kaidans cloak and his under cloth before stepping in and shivering at how cold it is, reasoning it must come from the snow near the Skaal village* f-fuck… *wades his way in and slowly stares down at his reflection rippling in the crystal clear surface… his reflection… his face, stained with blood not his own* …I’m not Vivec… but… who are you?…

*meanwhile*

Kaidan: *standing with the group by the abandoned farmhouse theyd first met captain Veleth at* The suns going down he’s only got my cloak and his spear he must be terrified out of his mind and he’s caked in blood! Predators will hunt him from all the way across the island if they catch a whiff of him!

Taliesin: kaidan he’ll be okay we’ll find him-

Kaidan: There’s werebears on this island! Dragons to- where’s miraak?

Miraak: *suddenly flies overhead on sarhrotaar followed by other dragons loyal to him*

Taliesin: searching by the air…

Veleth: it’s no good us searching as one group. I’ll lead my men past the standing stone and see if he went that way.

Kaidan: *sighs* okay, Tali, you’re with me.

Taliesin: *nods sadly just looking so tired and worried* okay.

Kaidan: hey… *gently strokes his cheek* we’ll find him…

Sero: I’ll stick with inigo and Lucien so they don’t get lost. Solstheim is even more dangerous after dark.

Kaidan: Aye, we’ll meet back at the bulwark in 3 hours. Everyone keep a torch spare in case you get lost so miraak can find you yeah?

Everyone: *nods*

???: If we may, we’d like to help too.

Everyone: *turns to see nerevar & voryn both approaching, dressed in their armour and looking more suited than everyone (except teldryn) to handle the islands elements*

Kaidan: oh I- I don’t mean to ask for your help again sir but, we really need it.

Nerevar: *nods* no no please it’s no burden we… We knew him… when he was Vivec… I know we did not have a chance for proper introductions before and time is of the essence now but, I am Indoril Nerevar and this is my husband, councillor and guard, Voryn Dagoth.

Voryn: *nods* …He’s calming down…

Taliesin: what?

Vivec: oh he’s attempting to scry on him but it’s as if somethings blocking him… he’s calming down then?…

Voryn: …I hear water… search near water.

Kaidan: …Were on a focking island.

Taliesin: *slaps his arm* They’re trying to help!

*an hour later*

Vivienne: *scrubbed himself clean all over, quietly hiding away amongst the lotus leaves and flowers as he hears dragons fly over head, too fragile and tired to fight, too scared to face his friends, too ashamed to face his beloveds, and too cowardly to face the beautiful mer from his memories of vivec* … *looks at the golden hue casting over the rocks and trees, blanketing the ashy landscape in long shadows and a fiery sunset as the sun gleams its last light* … *sighs and turns back to the waterfall and flowers, gently patting the fish as they swim up to him and away again, not noticing the two figures casting a shadow by the stream as they follow it all the way up to his little hiding place…*

Voryn: *gently pulls nerevar behind a rock* stay here, I’ll speak with him-

Nerevar: Ryn… please… *holds his hands gently in his* let me try…

Voryn: … *sighs* okay… I’ll wait here…

Nerevar: *gently kisses his helm where his lips would be and steps out, approaching cautiously trying not to make too much noise, only to audibly gasp as he takes in the vision before him* gods…

Vivienne: *a good few hundred years younger than him, his body smaller and slender in build but still fit and somewhat muscular, like a well toned dancer. His clean white hair falling into damp curls and waves over his shoulders and face, and his blue and gold skin sparkling in the water, looking like a painting come to life as he stands amongst the water flowers* …huh? *ear twitching hearing nerevars awestruck whisper*

Nerevar: *bends down a little, hands up where they can be seen, wanting to appear as friendly and non threatening as possible* Vivienne?…

Vivienne: *spins around, eyes wide as he backs up in a panic, clinging to the wet rocks near the waterfall* g-GO AWAY! L-LEAVE ME ALONE!! *screams and tries to claw his way out of the water but can’t get any grip*

Nerevar: *immediately backs up seeing he’s still in shock* easy, easy shhh shhh… *removes his sword and shield and sets them down* shhh, im a friend-

Vivienne: NO YOURE NOT!! *sobs* shaking his head* You’re here to punish me for what I did to azuras shrine! For what I did to boethias shrine! You’re here because you think I’m Vivec! I’m not Vivec! I’m not a monster I’m not! I’m not him! I wasn’t the one who killed you it wasn’t me! Please just leave me alone I won’t bother anyone I won’t! I won’t ever bother anyone again please- p-plea… *looks up feeling a warm towel suddenly wrap around his shoulders to see nerevar standing in front of him, still in his armour but unarmed* I…

Nerevar: I brought some clothes you can wear… im sure you’d like that more than your partners cape yes?…

Vivienne: *visibly trembling and staring up at him as vivecs memories flash through his mind* v-vivec is sorry…

Nerevar: I… what?… *looks down at him confused*

Vivienne: v-Vivec told me he’s sorry for what h-he did to you- I promise I’m n-not lying- im not crazy or a liar he told me himself in a dream please b-believe me- I don’t want to be sent back to work in a-a b-brothel I don’t want to be in jail again.

Nerevar: shhh shhh. *pats his hair gently seeing another panic attack starting up* you’re not in trouble, you’re not crazy either… I believe you…

Vivienne: wh-why? I sound I-insane it doesn’t sound real I sound like I’m lying…

Voryn: *steps into view holding a warm blanket* I have the clothes ready…

Nerevar: *smiles back at him then looks back at Vivienne* because someone else close to me experienced the exact same thing…

[changelingsandothernonsense]

This one is actually a question from @paraparadigm to me but it's just so good that I think it'd be a fun ask chain. Already sent it to a few unwary adventurers, but especially with your archaeology take, I think this'd be a fun one to hear from you about!

You are in charge of designing a new TES V location. What will it be? Imagine that resources, models, and modding capabilities/skills are no impediment. What do you feel is missing world-wise in the game, and what sort of place would you make? Feel free to adapt as a writing prompt as well =)

I have a bone to pick with parts of Solstheim and Eastern Skyrim because of one simple reason. (not a new area I know but just a general issue about it that bothers me).

Volcanic ash appears in snow, ash in general does, but it's meant to alter the colour of the snow.

The last one is from the 2019-20 Bushfires (I lived in the middle of that, it was a time and it wasn't my first time in the fire line) showing the effects of the smoke and ash had on the mountains in New Zealand 4157.41 km away. Ash and smoke travel far. I want that reflected in the landscape. Red Mountain has been erupting magically for the last 200 years, there has to be evidence of that in Skyrim and Solstheim. So I would change the colour of the snow and ice from Dawnstar-Windhelm-Winterhold and the Velothi Mountain range. Make it have a brown/grey/pink tinge depending on how close to the border you get.

Solstheim I want mixed, the island is still pretty far north and should be cold. I don't mind the lower section of the island being ashlands but the north needs to have ASHY SNOW. Solstheim should be completely covered in it. The snow should be orange-brown.

I think that the icefields near the Skaal Village should reflect how much the environment has changed between Bloodmoon and Dragonborn.

There should be surface ash every time that volcano erupts right across the island. I love the ash storms and mod them to make them more oppressive (having experienced my share of both ash and sand storms, that shit is blinding).

My issue is not enough ash, I want more ash physics, let it get in your hair, more ash build up in some of the buildings, even some remnants along the border. Refugees' Rest should look more devastated, and expand the graveyard. I want evidence that it's actually a Dunmer gravesite and that people still travel there to remember their loved ones. I want evidence that they tried to inter their dead traditionally, but ultimately had to bury them in above-ground cairns (originally used as burial mounds). I want the Nordic tradition to slowly encroach on the refugees, they need to use that graveyard. I also want the Gray Quater to be expanded, it's a slum that's confined to like two alleyways, make it larger. More dunmer flair, add their own marketplace. I want them to look like they tried to make it their own over the last 200 years.

So more little fixes, I also think Raven Rock should be expanded, with more evidence that the Redoran just built over the old Imperial settlement. My, my maybe I want a bit of a Tel style of settlement (as in man-made hill settlements with a lot of layers, as opposed to shroom towers in the Morrowind sense). The ash compacts quite a bit and preserves the underlying structures. A Redoran building with a reused Imperial floor. More ruined buildings and settlements, make it look like the Redoran tried to expand but each event from the Argonain Invasion (it happened, Lleril Morvayn did many a thing, respect that man!) to the crumbling of the Bulwark, to just every time Red Mountain erupts should cause a similar effect to what we see in-game (everyone just lives within the safety of the Bulwark). Just, more evidence that they tried, because Morvayn really did). I want more NPCs to have fled Windhelm and ended up there as well. I want interconnectedness. I also would live to see a gradual improvement of the settlement if you do all the quests to help them out. Particularly if you open the mines. More money is coming in, let the EEC take a renewed interest in the Ebony flowing out of it.

I also want more trade to take place between Tel Mithryn and Raven Rock. They should have fixed that pier, the sea should be used to transport goods moreso than braving the ash. Neloth can't get his fancy teas without trade.

[habits-white-rabbit]

Bruno Bucciarati // Landslide - Fleetwood Mac

And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills, well the landslide will bring you down. Oh the landslide will bring it down.

[romanoffsbish]

Landslide

Natasha (G!P) Romanoff x Fem!Reader

This one is smut free, focused on domesticated bliss only 🤪😂

Last one in this little series, unless someone had a really good pitch for a song. 👀

Symphonic Journey (Short Series)

Natasha smiled up at you from over her book while she lied in your shared bed. You were sat at the vanity, using your skincare items as if they were your lifeline.

"You know, this line here I name after you." You muttered, as you caught on to her staring through the mirror.

"Oh yeah, why's that?" She amusedly questions you with a knowing smirk, as she flips to the next page in her book.

"It's my worry line, grown rather prominent since I'd met you." You deadpan, as you begin to use your rose quartz roller to "ensure maximum absorption" as you would say.

"Ah, so it shows a life lived then." She quips, as she suddenly appears behind you, and lifts your face by your chin to place a kiss to your lips.

You sigh, melting completely into the kiss, and then she pulls back with the special smile reserved just for you upon her face.

"Yeah, a beautiful one at that." You conclude, as you turn back to finish up your routine, while your gorgeous wife makes her way to the bathroom to get herself ready for bed.

—————————————————————

I took my love, and I took it down.

I climbed a mountain and I turned around,and I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills.

‘Til the landslide brought me down.

—————————————————————

"Y/N/N, I don't see why we can't just homeschool them, or maybe just wait another year..." Your wife pouts, as you two lay facing one another in bed.

"Darling, Niko and Eli haven't stopped talking about wanting to make friends for the better part of six months. They need the socialization, and if I'm being honest I need the brief period of silence."

"Dahlia will still be here, so why not just keep all three at home." She whines like a petulant child who didn't get there way.

"You know, I'm considering enrolling Dahlia into a preschool, maybe you too..." You chuckle out, and she groans against your chest as she pulls you close.

"Natty, Dahlia is going to enjoy the one on one, plus, she's pretty independent and as of late she naps a lot. Get some sleep now, we have a busy morning ahead of us." You tiredly murmur, placing gentle kisses to the top of her head, and lightly scratching your fingers down her arms.

—————————————————————

Oh, mirror in the sky. What is love?

Can the child within my heart rise above?

Can I sail through the changin' ocean tides?

Can I handle the seasons of my life?

—————————————————————

"Tasha, my love, did you make the twins lunches?" You call down to her from upstairs, and she stares down at the mess currently occupying the counters.

At the silence, you knew something was up, so you straightened Nikolai's shirt out, and placed the perfectly packed backpacks upon their tiny bodies.

"Cute." You mumbled out, as your tiny creations were stood before you in their first day outfits, nearly being swallowed by their 'big kid' bags.

"I'm not cute mommy, I'm beautiful!" Niko says, you smiled at him, and nod in agreement.

"Yes, mommy's beautiful babies..." You coo

"Now, let's go find mama, I'm kind of worried about her." You mumble out, and they giggle as they follow you down the stairs.

As the lot of you stumbled into the kitchen you were met with a rather amusing sight. Natasha had somehow slathered jelly every possible place besides atop the bread.

"Detka, this jelly won't spread over the peanut butter.”

You held back a laugh at your wife's expense, then made your way over to save the day. Their lunchboxes were rather hilarious to look at, it's as if everything you'd said had left the assassins mind.

"Well, my darling..." You begin, as you move in for a forehead kiss, prodding your tongue out lightly to lick at the strawberry jelly residing there.

"I had purchased the squeezable jelly for you, but it seems you found my bonus jar... So, there's like a whole science to this, first get rid of the knife and grab a spoon. Stir the jelly up until it's less coarse, and then slide it onto the empty slice of bread, versus over the peanut butter."

Natasha watches you with clear intentions, trying to 'perfect' the recipe, as she began mirroring your movements for the necessary second sandwich. You swiftly cut your sandwich diagonally, placed a kiss to her cheek, then readjusted the snacks in their bags when she wasn't looking.

Your younger daughter had yet to wake up, so you swiftly ran up the stairs. Seeing her peaceful face led to you just scooping her up, and holding her sleeping form against your chest so that she could continue to rest. You were pretty certain she was going through a growth spurt as she'd been snacking nonstop, and actually taking her naps, so waking her up wasn't exactly a necessity. Plus, cuddles had become harder to come by as of late, so you'll take it wherever you can get it.

"Okay everyone to the car, it's time to go." You shout, unintentionally disturbing Dahlia, who lightly shifts in your embrace, but thankfully remains asleep.

—

Natasha felt the tears she'd been fighting flood out of her eyes as your twins giddily made their way into the classroom with their teacher; not even sparing their mothers a simple glance back. Their innocent excitement had truly filled her heart with joy, but it also saddened her immensely to see this new chapter beginning.

Your hand landed on her shoulder, spinning her around, pulling her in for a reassuring hug, and allowing her tears to soak into your shirt.

"Oh, my darling, it's okay..."

"They're growing up so fast Y/N/N, I just wish it would all slow down." She sobs against you, before pulling back and taking your hand into hers.

"No you don't, because this is going to be an exciting time for all of us. I promise you after their long day, they'll come running out to see you." You relay as the both of you return to the car, the somehow still sleeping three year old hanging off your hip.

An indignant sigh falls from her lips, and your heart honestly cracks at her sheer reluctance in letting go. You wholeheartedly understand that she's not used to this sort of white picket fence lifestyle, and that entrusting her children to absolute strangers is rather daunting for her, but you just want her to see it from your side.

"I'm going to get them, this was a bad idea." She quietly mumbles, but you catch her hand and spin her against the car before she can.

An unintentional moan tumbles passed her lips at the impact, and your eyes widen in amused shock before you simply brush passed it for the time being.

"Natty, you're being ridiculous, they're fine. Tony already vetted this place before sending Morgan here, and we have access to the surveillance. Our kids have been trained by the best spies on the planet in defense, they're highly capable of finding an escape route, and they have a direct link to Wanda who we both know would be here in a snap." You relay with an air of humor present in your tone, as you run your fingers through her hair, slightly massaging her scalp as you feel her slowly relax against the car.

"This right here is the normalcy that they crave, the part where they trade their PB&J with some kid for their Twinkie. Where they get to surround themselves with other kids their ages, and learn how to be their own people. Learn to regulate their emotions when faced with the obstacles that kindergarten brings."

"Obstacles?"

"Yeah, like who gets to be the dad during house, or who gets to be the dog in Monopoly Jr, and trust me, the list goes on." You laugh out, as your wife's face looks utterly confused, and you lean forward to peck at her lips until the frown flips.

"Wouldn't the boy just play —."

"Ah-ah Natty, due to society placing dad's at the top, everyone wants to play as the dad. Also, most of the boys seem to avoid playing house in favor of other activities, our little man tends to be the exception, but he usually plays the role of Eli's dog soo...."

"I'm sorry detka, it's just so hard to let go... Also really hard to keep up as well."

"I know, it's never easy... But look on the bright side, we'll have more alone time" You playfully quip as you point to your daughter that remains fast asleep in her carseat.

She sighs rather dramatically once you pull away from her body to climb into the drivers seat, as she continues to lean against the car for a brief moment. Glancing longingly at the door in the hopes that the twins would come bounding out in search of her, but it never happens. Once she enters the car, you watch as she curls into her seat and solemnly watches the city fly by. Without a word, or glancing over you'd simply interlocked your hand with hers to offer the silent comfort she needed.

Domesticity had always been a foreign concept to the spy who'd only ever lived a life full of constant change. Turns out, raising three kids with the woman you love comes with nothing but change, and it was the first time that something like this absolutely terrified her...

—————————————————————

Well, I've been afraid of changin'

'Cause I've built my life around you, but time makes you bolder ;

Even children get older, and I'm getting older too...

Oh! I'm getting older too...

—————————————————————

When you were nearing your exit you'd realized that both of your girls were now sleeping. The blissful silence inspired you to continue driving around to get some errands taken care of. By the time Natasha had actually allowed you to leave the school it had already been 9AM, and since Kindergarten is only four hours, going home wouldn't be worth it now.

In the hustle and bustle this morning you hadn't exactly eaten breakfast, so you found yourself in the McDonald's drive thru after running through the post office. As soon as the machine had crackled your daughters head flew up and she tiredly murmured: 'Chiten nug peas' before swiftly slipping back to sleep.

You chuckled at her abundant hunger that apparently transcends consciousness, and then ordered lunch for the three of you before driving off to enjoy it at the park.

Once you'd arrived, 'Lil 'Dahl had finally gained a semblance of consciousness.

"Mommy! Park!" She squealed, wiggling around like crazy against her seats restraints.

Natasha jumped awake at the sound of her shrieking, taking in the scenery, then lazily reaching into a bag to take a fry from both containers.

"Hey!!"

"It's called the 'sad mama' tax." She lowly whimpers, with a pout to rival your toddlers.

"Then I get one of your nuggets, because I didn't sign up for four children." You quip, then immediately got out of the car with bags in hand and approached a set of tables.

Natasha jumped out with a genuine smile upon her face as she grabbed the giddy toddler from the backseat, and met you under the sun to enjoy the afternoon with two of her favorite girls.

"Sometimes I wish I could just freeze moments like this." You murmured as you watched your toddler happily playing with a stray cat.

"You mean like a memory?" Your wife laughs from behind you as you sat up against a tree.

"No need to be a smartass Natalia." You grumbled, attempting to move away from her but arms secured you in place.

"To answer your question, yes, I do wish I could freeze these moments and keep you all trapped in bottles on my shelf."

"Natty, that's just.. Not what I meant at all." You nervously chuckle out.

"I'm sure Wands could help me do it, stop you all from changing..."

"Growing is a part of life, and it's a rather beautiful part."

"Change was never something that represented good for me, it almost always came with loss, and I don't want to lose out on anything else."

"Darling, if you run from change you'll actually miss out on a lot more than you think. We can hold our babies as close as we want, but eventually they will become their own people, and it's our job to ensure they have the most enriching route possible. Our fear can't be an excuse we use to hold them back, we just have to acknowledge that it's all one big learning game, and face the mishaps as we go. Holding them back would only lead to resentment."

"Also, let us not forget, had your favorite coffee shop never closed, you and I wouldn't be sat here right now having this discussion in the first place. Change can be a wonderful thing Natty, you just have to open your mind to all the possibilities."

Your wife tightens her hold around your waist as you two watch your daughter playing and she lets your words sink in. Gentle fingers grip at your chin, turning you to face her, then she places a lingering kiss to your lips.

"You're right, everything you said, thank you for being my stable base." She confesses against your lips, and you smile at her words.

"Now, if only you could say that after a fight then you'd avoid so many sleepless nights on the couch." You quip, laughing boisterously at the sound of her groans as you stand up.

"Moment ruined." She grumbled, then you aggressively pulled her to her feet, causing her to stumble into you, and suddenly your lips were pressed to hers.

"Guess what..."You whispered into the kiss, she hummed against your lips in response, clearly no longer interested in much else.

"It's time to pick up the twins." Her lips were ripped away from yours so fast you hardly registered the loss.

"Dahlia!!! Time to go!!!" Your wife shrieks as she scoops her up, and flies her laughing form back to the car.

—

Natasha made certain you were at the front of the crowd waiting for the class to be let out. Her body was buzzing, unable to remain still as she watched the door with clear intent. You watched in amusement, having not had the heart to inform her that they were released by means of a roll call to ensure safety.

The doors swung open, and Natasha's eyes widened, but narrowed rather quickly once she saw the clipboard. Shockingly, no complaints were muttered, and you were hopeful that the action had actually helped to quell any of her remaining anxieties.

"Parents of Jack Quenton."

"Who's last name starts with a Q?" She quietly grumbles from beside you, causing you to stifle a laugh in favor of nudging her side, and she simply shrugs her shoulders unapologetically.

"Parents of Athena Quill."

Her eyes widen at the second option, and this time you have to fake cough to cover yourself.

"Parents of Nikolai and Eli—."

"Here!!" She shouts, then the teacher looks up to her with eyes prepared to scold, but decided against it once she registered who your wife was.

The twins ran out in a rush, practically jumping into your wife's arms, and you chuckled as you approached the teacher.

"Those two were rather great today, here's the 'homework' for the weekend, it's really just a fun way to get me acquainted with them." She gently relays to you, and you thank her before wandering off to find your missing family.

Approaching the car you noticed everyone buckled up and ready to go, and the smile on your wife's face truly melted your heart.

"Mommy!!!" All of your kids shriek as you get behind the steering wheel of the car, and you turn to face them with a wide smile.

"My babies!!!" You shriek back enthusiastically, then settle in for whatever stories are about to come flying out of their mouths.

"I made a new friend! His name was Kaleb, and he tolded me that he liked my mohawk, then we played with some blocks. Thank you so much for helping me make it."

"Of course baby..." You coo, then turn to Eli to open the floor for her.

"Oh my goodness mommy, guess what! Our classmates thought I was lying when I told them that the Black Widow was our mama. I was sad, but since she was still outside for so long earlier I gotted to prove it to them. They were so shocked, treating us like we were cellebwitties! One boy even gave me his snack for free. Then my best-friend Lindsey asked if she would come to her next birthday party, I said maybe. I had such a great day!” She speedily rambles on, honestly scaring you as she nearly forgets to breathe, and you listened intently before passing back a juice pouch to all three of them, before driving off.

Your wife's eyes were brimming with tears as she listened to your daughter speaking about her as if she had hung the stars and the moon. Deep down she still struggled with the title of hero, but seeing your daughter animatedly describe her as such clearly warmed her heart.

The drive home was lively for all of ten minutes before the entirety of the backseat fell asleep. Natasha reached out to take your free hand, lifting it to her lips to place a lingering kiss to your knuckles, before linking your hands and settling it atop her lap.

“I told you they would be all over you my darling…”

“Yeah… Thank you detka, for helping me through today…”

“No need to thank me baby, it’s what I’m here for, I think we balance each other out well.”

—

As Natasha went to crawl into bed she found a few tiny bodies had made their way into her spot while she had been in the shower, and she pulled her phone out to snap a quick photo. Dahlia had taken up residence on top of you, with her tiny arms wrapped around you and her face was buried in your neck. Niko was in his signature position, with his body splayed out wildly, and his feet managed to land on her pillow. Then she found that Eli was laying on her side, head on her mama's pillow, and hand delicately placed in yours.

The sight caused her to audibly awe, as she set her new lock screen then leaned down to kiss your forehead. You instantly hummed at the contact, not even opening your eyes, but instead pouting your lips. A light chuckle fell from her lips before she happily obliged, firmly placing her lips to yours, and an endearing smile erupted on your face as she pulled away.

“Looks like we have a few visitors.” She whispered from above you, and you gently nodded in acknowledgment before tapping her pillow, narrowly missing your daughters head.

Natasha got the hint, as she gently crawled into bed, gently moving the twins over just enough so that her arm can protectively fall over all of you. You gently raised your arm, laying it over Dahlia’s back as you interlocked your fingers with hers.

“Forever…” “…Always.”

Natasha’s heart was full as she realized that no matter what life might throw her way, or however much might change, in the end she’s reassured that the abundance of love she’s blanketed in will remain the same.

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3,274 Words.

Taglist:

@toouncreativeforausername @lostremind @my-skeleton-hats @battleg03 @fxckmiup @meurgen @hp-and-mcu @kjyarukivo @d14n4ol @inlovewithfaberry @yeux-sur-la-lune @youralphawolf72 @beenicejoy @lissaaaa145

That’s a supposed wrap on this little family besties 🤪

[kaleighfratkins]

why don't you take this love, take it down, climb a mountain and turn around, and see my reflection in the snow-covered hills, and maybe you'll calm down