#and. well. that has to come from somewhere. right?

[pucksandpower]

Engaged-ish

Lando Norris x Grand Duchess!Reader

Summary: in which an obscure Luxembourgish tradition leads to a proposal … sort of

The paddock buzzes like a beehive, sun-drenched and shimmering with the scent of gasoline, sunscreen, and expensive cologne. Cameras flash. People talk in clipped, purposeful voices. Somewhere, an engine snarls awake.

And then — chaos.

Well, not chaos exactly. More like a whoosh, followed by a yelp.

“Oi! Shit! Watch out!”

A blur of black and orange comes flying down the narrow stretch between team garages. Lando Norris, crouched low on a scooter like a gremlin on wheels, is laughing before he slams into something soft and solid.

There’s a crunch of expensive heels.

A thud.

A gasp.

And then-

“Oh my God. Ohmygodohmygod.” Lando’s already halfway off the scooter, scrambling to his feet with hands out like he can rewind time by sheer panic. “Are you — are you okay? I didn’t — I mean, it’s not like, that fast, right? It’s — okay, yeah, no, you’re very much on the ground, cool cool cool-”

You’re lying there, halfway on your side, propped up by one elbow, blinking. Your oversized sunglasses are askew. One of your heels has flown halfway under a stack of Pirellis.

And the guy looming above you is grinning like he’s not sure if he should laugh or throw himself into the Mediterranean out of shame.

"Hi," he says. "Sorry for, uh. Running you over."

You tilt your head, still stunned. “Are you seriously racing a scooter through the paddock?”

“It’s not racing if no one’s timing it,” Lando says brightly, offering you a hand. “… But yes. And that was reckless. And stupid. And really fun. But mostly stupid.”

You stare at his hand. His cap’s pushed up on his head, curly hair spilling out in sweaty tangles. His eyes are impossibly bright. He looks like he just crash-landed from a cartoon.

You take his hand.

He pulls you up with an exaggerated grunt. “Wow. Okay. You’re stronger than you look.”

“You’re more of a menace than you look.”

He grins. "Thank you. Wait, was that a compliment?"

“Not even remotely.”

You dust yourself off, lifting your sunglasses onto your head. Lando watches, then lets out a short laugh.

“Oh no.”

“What?”

“You’re — yeah, wow, okay. You’re very pretty. Like, really pretty. You’re probably important, huh?”

You narrow your eyes.

“Are you asking if I’m important because I’m pretty?”

“No! No no no,” he says, horrified. “God, no. I mean — you look like the kind of person who has a security detail and a Wikipedia page. Which is not the only reason you’re important. It’s just … I feel like I’m gonna get sued.”

You smirk. “You might.”

He’s staring at you like you just told him he ran over Taylor Swift.

“Okay. What’s your name? I’ll write you a very panicked apology letter. Maybe flowers? Wait, do you even like flowers? Maybe chocolate. Wait — nut allergy?”

You blink. “Are you always like this?”

He considers that. “Yeah. But sometimes I tone it down for the elderly or if I’m at a funeral.”

You should be irritated. You’re not. Somehow, all this flailing panic is … disarming. He’s like a golden retriever who just knocked over a vase and is now waiting to see if you’ll still pet him.

“I’m Y/N,” you say finally.

“Y/N,” he repeats. “That’s a lovely name.”

“And you are Lando Norris.”

He pauses. “… So you do know who I am. That feels unfair.”

“You ran me over.”

“Right. Nevermind.”

You retrieve your shoe from under the tires with a little sigh. He watches you with a sort of guilty awe. Like he can’t quite believe he survived the collision.

Then, after a beat, “You here for the race?”

You arch a brow. “What gave it away?”

“Could be the Monaco sun,” he says, walking backward beside you now. “But also the outfit. You look too … elegant to be someone’s PR handler. You’re not a driver’s girlfriend either, or I’d have seen you on Insta by now.”

You snort. “What a deduction.”

“I know, right? Sherlock Norris. So … what do you do?”

You stop walking. He stops too. Tilts his head.

You smile. “I would tell you …”

“Oh, you would?” He says, eyebrows bouncing.

“-but I think I want to see if you can guess my job correctly.”

He grins. “Love a challenge.”

You lean in slightly, like you’re sharing a secret. “You only get one guess.”

“Only one?”

“One.”

“Okay, okay. No pressure.” He pinches the bridge of his nose like it’ll help summon divine clarity. “Let’s see. You’re well-dressed, clearly clever, somehow not screaming at me despite the vehicular assault … so you’re either incredibly powerful or completely unbothered by earthly consequences.”

“Very astute.”

He squints. “You’re … a fashion CEO.”

You blink. “That’s your guess?”

He nods, proud. “Big time. Like, quietly running a billion-euro empire from a Parisian penthouse. You look like you boss people around in three languages.”

You purse your lips. “Close.”

“Seriously?”

“No. Not even remotely.”

He looks personally offended. “Okay, then who are you?”

You just start walking again.

“Oh, come on! That’s mean,” he whines, trailing after you. “I guessed. You said I get to know!”

“No,” you say over your shoulder. “I said I want to hear if you can guess it. You didn’t.”

“Unbelievable,” he mutters. “Is this what heartbreak feels like? Are you — are you a spy? A secret agent? Do you know Daniel Craig? Please tell me you’re MI6.”

You’re laughing now, which only makes him more dramatic.

“Oh, you’re loving this,” he accuses. “You’re totally enjoying watching me flail.”

“You flail very naturally.”

“Thank you — wait, no. That’s not a compliment.”

“Isn’t it?”

He squints suspiciously. “You’ve got the same energy as my trainer when he says I’m doing a good job but makes the workouts harder.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Okay, mysterious beautiful stranger who may or may not be royalty-”

You freeze for a split second.

He catches it.

“Oh my God,” he says slowly. “Wait. Wait. Are you actually — wait. Like, real royalty? Is that — no. That’s not a thing. That’s a thing in Netflix movies.”

You raise a brow.

“Oh shit,” he whispers.

You don’t confirm. Don’t deny.

He stares at you like you just turned into a unicorn. “I ran over a princess.”

You tilt your head. “Technically, Grand Duchess. Hereditary Grand Duchess, if we’re being precise.”

He’s silent.

For about three whole seconds.

Then, “I’m going to jail.”

You burst out laughing.

“No, seriously,” he says, mouth falling open. “That’s like treason? Assault on a noble? Is that a law? Is there a dungeon? Oh my god-”

You reach for his sleeve, tug it gently. “Relax. You’re not going to prison.”

“But I could be,” he says, stunned. “You’re actual royalty. I think I saw you once, like a year ago! You were on the cover of Vogue or something-”

You glance sideways. “So you have seen me before.”

“I thought you looked familiar! But I just assumed I’d dreamed you.”

You roll your eyes.

He stares at you for another second, then breaks into a wide, sheepish grin. “This is insane.”

“You’re telling me.”

He scratches the back of his neck. “So … you coming to the motorhome, Your Highness?”

You pretend to consider it. “Only if you stop calling me that.”

“Deal,” he says immediately. “But I’m still going to make you guess what my job is, just to even the playing field.”

You glance at his McLaren shirt. “You sell scooters.”

He gasps. “Correct. Wow. Nailed it in one.”

You both laugh.

***

The McLaren motorhome hums with life, all sharp lines and bright orange accents, but it feels like a bubble. A refuge tucked between the chaos of the paddock and the roaring engines beyond. You follow Lando inside, still unsure how you got here — still vaguely amused that he hasn’t stopped talking since the crash.

“You know, I don’t normally just run over people,” he says, leading you past a security guy who gives you both a baffled look. “You’re actually my first. Well. That I know of. I might’ve clipped a Ferrari engineer once, but he was dramatic about it and threw a clipboard.”

You smile, trailing after him. “Is this your version of flirting?”

“Oh no, no, this is panic,” he says quickly. “My flirting is marginally smoother.”

“Marginally.”

“On a good day.”

The motorhome is bustling. Engineers tap away on laptops. There’s a spread of snacks someone’s half-raided. You notice a few people double-taking as they see you walk in, but no one says anything. It’s like they’re used to Lando bringing in strays.

“Do they always stare like that?” You ask under your breath.

He glances around. “What, that? Nah. That’s just them wondering if you’re a Netflix producer, or my cousin, or a very lost model.”

You roll your eyes. “You’re so annoyingly casual about this.”

“It’s my greatest skill,” he says proudly, then spins around suddenly. “Wait … here.”

He pulls off his McLaren cap and steps forward, holding it out to you. “Sun’s brutal today. You’ll need this if you’re hanging out here.”

You blink at the hat in his hand. “You’re giving me your hat?”

“Lending it,” he corrects, but he’s already stepping closer.

And then — without really thinking — he lifts it over your head and places it gently on top of your hair, adjusting it with exaggerated care.

“There,” he says, grinning. “Now you look fast.”

You snort. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Doesn’t have to,” he says. “You feel fast.”

You adjust the cap slightly, not thinking much of it. It’s warm from his head. Smells faintly like his shampoo and sun.

And somewhere across the paddock, at least four camera lenses catch it. The exact moment Lando Norris — a nonchalant, grinning mess of curls and chaotic charm — places his own hat gently on your head with all the care of someone proposing a life together.

Of course, neither of you notices.

“You look good in papaya,” he says, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

You raise an eyebrow. “You just like seeing people wear your merch.”

“True,” he admits. “It’s excellent branding.”

There’s a pause, and then you both start laughing at the same time. Loud and open, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Somewhere in the background, a McLaren comms staffer walks by, glancing between the two of you and immediately pulling out her phone.

“Right,” Lando says, flopping onto the couch and patting the space next to him. “Come on. Sit. Tell me everything.”

You lower yourself carefully onto the cushion, still unsure how your diplomatic morning turned into … whatever this is. “Everything?”

“Everything. Like what’s your actual day-to-day like? Are you doing royal things all the time? Are there, like, scrolls? Do you own a sceptre?”

“No scrolls,” you say. “And sadly, no sceptre. But I’m working on it.”

He nods solemnly. “You deserve a sceptre.”

“Thank you.”

“But seriously. Do you have meetings with … I don’t know, other royals? Do you sit in a big room and talk about treaties and wear sashes?”

You laugh. “Sometimes. Though most of my meetings are just government-adjacent. I do a lot of international work. Cultural diplomacy. Economic initiatives. Tourism stuff.”

“So … not just tea parties and ribbon cutting?”

“Shockingly, no.”

He whistles. “That actually sounds important.”

“It is.”

“And exhausting.”

You tilt your head. “It can be. There’s pressure. Constantly being watched. Expectations. Every gesture means something.”

He raises a brow. “Even hats?”

You don’t even flinch.

But internally, you do hesitate. The old Luxembourgish tradition flashes through your mind — one your grandmother once explained with a warm smile and a twinkle in her eye.

“If a man offers you something of his, something worn, something marked by him — especially a hat — and places it on your head, it means he offers you protection. Partnership. In the old days, it was a proposal before a proposal.”

You remember laughing at the time. It was quaint. Archaic. Romantic, in a way that felt more myth than law.

You doubt Lando Norris is aware of any of that.

You watch him now — grinning at a text, tossing his phone aside, still slouched like he owns the whole motorhome — and decide not to mention it.

“It’s just a hat,” you say lightly.

He nods. “Right? Totally normal. Generous, even.”

“Deeply generous,” you echo, smiling.

You both fall quiet for a moment. It’s not awkward. It’s … easy.

Then he turns to you again.

“So do you get bored of it?” He asks.

You blink. “Of what?”

“Being important. Being watched. Being … not normal.”

That one hits.

You lean back, letting your gaze drift to the window. “Sometimes. It’s hard to know if people are being real with me. If they want something, or if they’re just pretending they don’t know who I am. Or worse, pretending they do.”

He nods, slower now. “Yeah. I get that. A bit.”

You glance over at him.

“Okay, not the royal part,” he adds. “But … being public. Being expected to be on all the time. It’s weird, right? Like, people think they know you. Like they’ve already decided who you are before you say anything.”

You watch his face as he says it. There’s a moment of real honesty there, flickering between his words.

And you realize he’s not as clueless as he seems.

“I like this,” you say softly.

He looks up. “This?”

“This. Just talking. Not performing.”

He smiles, slower this time. “Me too.”

Someone calls his name from across the motorhome, but he doesn’t look away.

You pick up a packet of cookies from the coffee table, toss it into his lap. “Tell me more about crashing into other people. I want to know how many lawsuits you’re juggling.”

He laughs. “Okay, so once in Silverstone, I clipped George Russell with a golf cart. He insists I did it on purpose, but I maintain it was sabotage from Mercedes.”

You lean in, smiling. “Tell me everything.”

And so he does.

He talks with his hands, dramatic and unfiltered. He tells stories that make you laugh until you’re clutching your stomach. He impersonates Daniel Ricciardo. He makes fun of himself, of the team, of the absurdity of fame. You don’t realize how much time has passed until the room starts to empty.

You glance at the clock and blink. “It’s been two hours.”

“No way.”

You both look around. People are filtering out. The buzz of the paddock is louder now, the day slipping past you like sand through your fingers.

You reach up to adjust the hat again, and Lando watches, biting back a smile.

“You’re really keeping that, huh?”

You shrug. “Finders keepers.”

“I knew it,” he says. “You just came here for the merch.”

“I’m royalty,” you reply. “I came here for the drama and the free stuff.”

He clutches his heart. “A woman after my own heart.”

You hear a few more shutter clicks outside — photographers catching shots through the motorhome windows, lenses like little eyes peering in. Lando doesn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he’s used to it.

You should care more. Maybe you do, somewhere deep down.

But right now? In this moment?

You don’t.

You’re wearing his hat, and he’s laughing like he’s never had more fun in his life. And you’re just … two people on a couch, pretending the world outside doesn’t exist.

Later, you’ll both hear about the photos. About the symbolism. The headlines in Luxembourgish tabloids translating your laughter into lovers’ whispers, the cap into a silent vow.

But for now, you just look at him and smile.

And he smiles back.

***

It starts early.

Too early for a Sunday race day.

Lando is still half-asleep, blinking against the pale Monte Carlo morning light slicing through the curtains, when his phone explodes.

First it’s the buzz. Then the buzzbuzzbuzz. Then the ping, ping, ping of messages stacking up like a digital avalanche.

He groans, rolls over, tries to bury himself under the pillow. No use. Whatever this is, it’s not going away.

And then-

Cabrón. WHAT have you done?

Carlos is the first one in the group chat. With a screenshot.

Lando squints blearily at it. All caps. Tabloid headline.

A blurry photo from yesterday.

It’s you. Wearing his McLaren cap. Laughing. The moment he placed it on your head captured in too-crisp detail.

And the headline-

HEREDITARY GRAND DUCHESS OF LUXEMBOURG ENGAGED TO FORMULA 1 STAR LANDO NORRIS IN SECRET MONACO CEREMONY?

He blinks again.

“…What the fu-”

Another buzz.

ZAK BROWN: Call me. Now.

ANDREA STELLA: This is not funny. We are in Monaco. Please, for once, use your head.

GEORGE: Lando. Mate. Explain the royal engagement.

MUM: We need to talk ❤️

He stares at the screen like it might bite him.

The Grand Duchess part doesn’t even register at first. He scrolls through more links, more headlines, all variations of the same fever dream.

Symbolic proposal shocks royal observers in Monaco GP paddock.

Royal family confirms no comment

McLaren’s Lando Norris in relationship with Luxembourg’s future monarch?

He mutters, “What the — what is happening?”

Carlos sends another message.

CARLOS: This is the best thing that’s ever happened. Can I be your maid of honor?

CARLOS: Wait. Groomsman. Unless you're planning to wear the dress, then honestly I support it.

Lando doesn’t even have the energy to reply.

He swings out of bed, throws on a hoodie, and starts pacing. The cap. The hat. Was it really that big of a deal?

He offered it because she looked a little sun-blind. He thought it’d be cute. A gesture. Flirty. A laugh.

Not an international incident.

There’s a knock on his apartment door.

He opens it.

Zak stands there with the energy of someone who’s been yelling into a phone for two hours straight. Andrea is behind him, looking like he aged ten years overnight.

“You’re trending,” Zak says without preamble. “Not for winning. Not for pole. Not even for crashing. You’re trending because apparently you’re about to marry into a monarchy.”

“I didn’t — what — no,” Lando says, holding his hands up. “I gave her a hat!”

“An engagement hat!” Carlos shouts from inside the apartment, because of course Carlos has let himself in somehow. “The most sacred of all hats!”

Lando glares. “You’re not helping.”

Andrea pinches the bridge of his nose. “Do you understand the implications of this, Lando?”

“No! Because it’s insane!”

Zak exhales. “There are diplomatic rumors flying. Press camped outside the motorhome. Questions coming in from Luxembourg’s government channels.”

Lando looks helpless. “But I didn’t do anything.”

Carlos, now lying fully horizontal on Lando’s bed, grins. “You proposed. With headwear.”

“I hate all of you.”

Carlos lifts a hand. “It’s what we do.”

***

By the time Lando makes it to the paddock, he’s wearing sunglasses and a hoodie pulled up like a man on the run.

He gets stopped four times before reaching the McLaren motorhome.

One PR officer actually bows at him, just to be a menace.

Oscar gives him a slow, impressed once-over and just says, “Your Royal Highness,” with a mocking nod before walking away.

He’s never living this down.

The only thing he wants is to find you.

And, as if summoned by the strength of pure panic, there you are. Standing just outside the McLaren garage, mid-conversation with someone from Alpine, sipping from a bottle of water like you own the place. Your hair is tucked into a sleek ponytail. The sun makes your earrings glint.

Lando jogs up to you, breathless.

“Hey! Hey, hi, um, hi.”

You turn, startled. “Good morning.”

“Not really,” he says, lifting his glasses. “What the hell is going on?”

You blink. “What do you mean?”

“The cap. The hat. The one I put on your head yesterday? Apparently that means I proposed to you. The tabloids are going crazy. Everyone thinks we’re engaged. My mum texted me.”

Your eyebrows lift. “Wait, seriously?”

He pulls out his phone, flicks through the headlines, and shoves it toward you.

You squint at one. “‘Royal Love Blooms on the Grid?’” You snort. “‘Luxembourg’s Heartthrob Duchess Swept Off Her Feet by McLaren Maverick?’”

Lando’s voice pitches up. “Swept off her feet! I literally ran into you with a scooter!”

You start laughing. Not a polite laugh. A full-body, unbothered laugh. Like this is all the most normal thing in the world.

He stares. “Why are you laughing?”

You wipe a tear from under your eye. “Because this is nothing. You should’ve seen the time they said I was secretly dating a Swiss banker who turned out to be my second cousin.”

He pauses. “… What?”

“Or the time they decided I’d renounced the throne to become a goat farmer in Liechtenstein.”

He blinks. “Okay, that one’s kind of iconic.”

You give him a shrug. “This is what happens when you’re born into a monarchy and dare to show emotions in public.”

He stares at you. “You’re telling me you’re fine with this?”

“I think it’s hilarious.”

“Hilarious? They called me your future consort.”

“Are you not?” You ask innocently, sipping your water.

He splutters. “What-”

You grin. “I’m kidding.”

You’re very not kidding. Not in the way that matters.

Because watching him panic like this — watching him trail after you with his hoodie strings bouncing and his voice pitching up with every breath — it’s … oddly sweet.

He cares. Not just about the press. About you. About how this reflects on you. That matters.

You reach over and tug gently at his hood to straighten it. “Relax. The headlines will change by tomorrow.”

“You really think that?”

“No,” you admit. “But that’s what I tell myself when I’m spiraling.”

He laughs despite himself. “You’re way too chill about this.”

“I’ve had practice.”

“You’re literally a royal and you’re less stressed than me.”

“That’s because I’ve had years of training in pretending I’m not screaming inside.”

Lando looks at you. Really looks at you.

There’s this flicker of something in his chest. Admiration. Confusion. Something just slightly more than fondness.

He exhales. “You’re ridiculous.”

“So are you.”

“I didn’t mean to propose to you.”

“Shame,” you say casually, and walk away before he can respond.

He stands there, stunned, as Carlos passes behind him, humming “Here Comes the Bride.”

***

Back in the McLaren motorhome, the chaos continues.

The PR team is in damage control mode. Zak is pacing with a headset. Andrea has three newspapers folded under his arm and an expression that could melt titanium.

But Lando?

Lando is leaning on the windowsill, watching you from across the way as you chat with someone from Mercedes.

Still wearing his cap. Still laughing like you haven’t just caused a minor diplomatic crisis.

And for some reason … he’s not mad.

He just grins, taps the glass once, and mutters, “Yeah, this is totally fine.”

Absolutely fine.

Nothing is on fire. Nothing at all.

***

You know something’s wrong when Martine shows up.

Martine only shows up when things are very wrong. Like, international-incident-meets-centuries-old-protocol wrong. She’s your primary handler, which is a polite way of saying she’s the one who stops you from accidentally tanking Luxembourg’s economy with a bad outfit choice.

You spot her across the paddock: sharp black blazer, sunglasses that mean business, marching toward the McLaren motorhome with the speed and grace of a small, determined missile.

“Oh, no,” you mutter.

Lando, sitting on a folding chair next to you with his helmet in his lap, glances up. “What?”

You nod in Martine’s direction. “That.”

He follows your gaze and immediately winces. “Oh no.”

“She’s here to kill me.”

“She’s probably here to kill me,” he says, standing up like a man preparing to face execution.

Martine stops two feet away, does not greet you. Does not smile. Just removes her sunglasses and levels the two of you with the look she usually reserves for scandalous budget overspending or cousins dating minor celebrities.

She speaks in a voice so tight it might shatter glass. “Well, I hope you’re both having fun.”

You open your mouth to respond, but she holds up a hand. “No. Stop. Don’t speak yet. We’re in crisis mode.”

“Isn’t that a little dramatic?” Lando offers, with a hopeful grin.

Martine turns to him so slowly it’s almost operatic. “Mister Norris, the Luxembourgish Parliament has just issued a formal declaration of congratulations on your engagement. Your faces are on the front page of every major paper from here to Berlin. People Magazine referred to you as the ‘millennial fairytale.’ And — just to really put a cherry on top — your Instagram post from two days ago has now been recirculated as a ‘subtle announcement.’”

Lando swallows. “That post was about McNuggets.”

“Yes,” Martine says. “And you hashtagged it #lovemylife. So now the press thinks the nuggets were metaphorical.”

You press a hand to your face. “Okay. That one’s kind of on you.”

Martine whirls on you next. “Do you understand the implications of this? Because this is not just a PR disaster. This is a constitutional event. We cannot simply say it was a misunderstanding.”

“Why not?” Lando asks, hands outstretched. “Can’t we just say it was, like, a joke? A mix-up? A funny cultural thing?”

Martine takes a deep breath, as if preparing to deliver a death sentence.

“Because,” she says carefully, “in Luxembourgish law, once a declaration has been acknowledged by Parliament and received no formal objection from the heir apparent within the hour, it becomes a matter of record.”

Lando stares. “What does that mean?”

You sigh. “It means … it’s official. As far as the government’s concerned, we’re engaged.”

There’s a beat of stunned silence. And then Lando says, very quietly, “Oh, my god.”

Martine nods grimly. “Oh, your god, indeed.”

“I didn’t even do anything!” He protests. “I gave her a hat!”

Martine’s eyes narrow. “Which, in Luxembourg, is equivalent to a pre-marital vow of intent.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“It’s ancient tradition!”

Lando throws his hands in the air. “Well maybe someone should’ve written a pamphlet! ‘Hey, welcome to Luxembourg, don’t give royal women hats!’”

“I should have known,” you say, mostly to yourself. “I knew the hat was going to be a problem.”

Martine exhales and pinches the bridge of her nose. “There is a press conference in two hours. The Grand Duke has already spoken to French media.”

You freeze. “Wait. My father knows?”

Martine shoots you a look. “Knows? He’s celebrating.”

“Celebrating what?”

“His exact words,” she says, pulling out her phone and reading from a very official-sounding email, “‘I have always dreamed of a son-in-law who drives fast and talks nonsense. This is perfect.’”

Lando, completely bewildered, points at himself. “Is that a compliment?”

You look at him. “Honestly? I think it is.”

Martine puts the phone away. “You both need to keep this under control. Just for a few days. Until the press dies down.”

Lando’s face scrunches. “Wait. Waitwaitwait. Are you saying we have to pretend to be engaged?”

Martine nods once. “Exactly.”

“Temporarily?” You ask.

“For now,” she says. “But you will both need to act engaged. Convincingly. That means appearances. Smiles. Coordination. Possibly an interview.”

Lando looks like he’s going to be sick. “Interview?!”

“Oh, you’re absolutely doing the interview,” Martine says.

You blink slowly. “So … just to clarify. Our options are either to lie to the international press and pretend to be planning a royal wedding or risk sparking a diplomatic conflict between my country and the rest of the European Union?”

Martine smiles grimly. “Correct.”

Lando leans against the nearest wall. “This is a nightmare.”

You nudge him with your elbow. “Could be worse.”

“How?”

You grin. “You could’ve actually proposed.”

He groans. “I’m never giving anyone a hat ever again.”

***

The rest of the morning is a blur.

Your phone doesn’t stop buzzing. Everyone from Monaco’s royal family to your mother’s childhood piano teacher is reaching out.

Lando’s friends have renamed their group chat “THE ROYAL CONSORTS.”

Carlos sends a meme of Meghan Markle waving from a balcony, photoshopped with Lando’s face. Lando throws his phone across the room.

Everywhere you walk in the paddock, people are staring, whispering, smiling in that way that means they think they know.

Lando sticks to your side like a man attached by invisible glue.

“This is surreal,” he mutters, not for the first time. “You’re just … fine with this?”

You glance at him. “I’ve been fake-smiling through political dinners since I was ten. This is honestly one of the less stressful things I’ve had to fake.”

He eyes you. “That’s kind of impressive.”

You shrug. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s insane. But it’s also temporary. We do a few appearances, wear some coordinated outfits, and smile for the cameras.”

He groans. “Do I have to wear a sash?”

“Only if you want bonus points.”

He considers. “Does it come in papaya?”

You grin. “Now you’re thinking like a royal.”

He glances sideways at you. “You really think we can pull this off?”

“I think,” you say slowly, “we have no choice. But yeah. We can do it.”

There’s something unspoken between you in that moment. Some flicker of understanding. And maybe a spark of something else.

***

By the time you arrive at the media scrum, the photographers are already in position. Flashes pop. Lenses aim.

You loop your arm through Lando’s, and he looks down like you’ve just handed him a live grenade.

“What do I do?” He mutters.

“Smile,” you whisper back. “And look like you’re wildly in love.”

He takes a breath, then smiles so wide it almost hurts to look at. A little crooked. A little chaotic.

It’s perfect.

He leans toward you. “Like this?”

You nod. “Exactly like that.”

The cameras love it. Shutters go wild. A symphony of clicks.

Someone shouts, “Any wedding date yet?”

Lando opens his mouth to panic.

You answer smoothly, “We’re just enjoying the moment.”

“Have you met each other’s families?”

Lando again looks like he might choke. You reply, “They’re … very supportive.”

“How did the proposal happen?”

Lando starts to laugh, helplessly.

You answer, “It was spontaneous.”

And that’s how the day goes.

Flash after flash. Smile after smile.

And through it all, Lando — your accidental fiancé, your completely overwhelmed co-conspirator — stays right beside you, fingers brushing yours, as if anchoring himself to reality.

You don’t know what’s coming next.

You don’t know how long you’ll have to keep this up.

But when Lando looks at you with that half-panicked, half-awed grin — like he still can’t believe this is happening — you just smile back.

Because somehow, against all odds this royal disaster? Feels a lot like fate.

***

The Grand Prix is over, the champagne has dried, and the press has moved on to whatever other scandal is brewing in the glittering circus of Monaco. And yet … you stay.

You’re supposed to leave, technically. There’s a return flight booked under your name, a motorcade on standby, and a color-coded itinerary that includes words like “debrief” and “post-engagement optics strategy.” But instead of heading back to Luxembourg, you text Martine something vague about needing to monitor the situation on the ground.

She doesn’t push. She never pushes when you use diplomatic language like that.

And so, you stay — in the sunshine, in the noise, in the afterglow of whatever chaos you and Lando have created.

And Lando? Well. Lando leans in. Hard.

It starts with a bouquet. You think it’s from some Monegasque diplomat until you read the note.

For my one true duchess. Long may she reign.

- Your Devoted Fiancé™

You roll your eyes so hard it almost hurts.

The next morning, there’s a box of chocolates left on the doorstep of your borrowed suite. Heart-shaped.

The note reads: May these sweets bring you half the joy your smile brings me.

- His Royal Himbo-ness

Then come the messages.

LANDO: Milady, I beseech thee … may I take thee to breakfast?

YOU: Only if thou bringest me hashbrowns.

LANDO: I would brave dragons and tyre degradation for thee.

YOU: Good, because I just saw you stall your scooter outside my hotel.

It’s ridiculous. It’s also … weirdly fun.

You keep telling yourself it’s fake, that it has to be fake. A temporary performance to appease international dignitaries and excitable royal fathers with a love for motorsport.

But then one afternoon, you find Lando outside your hotel with a paper crown from Burger King and a daisy between his teeth.

He bows. “Milady. Thy noble steed awaiteth.”

You snort. “You’re riding an electric scooter.”

“And she runneth on pure love.”

He offers his hand, like you’re a princess in a storybook.

You take it.

***

It’s only when you’re not performing — when the flowers are left without a camera flash or you’re laughing in a hallway while ducking behind a vending machine — that Lando starts to notice it.

The quiet moments.

The way your smile sometimes fades the second people look away. The way you’re constantly being trailed by someone in a blazer holding a tablet. The way your phone buzzes and you flinch like it might explode.

It hits him hardest at the hotel bar.

You’re sitting across from him in some ridiculous formal dress, sipping water like it’s wine because the event is too long and you’re too tired, and someone behind you says, “She doesn’t even look that royal.”

You hear it. He knows you hear it. But you don’t flinch. You just smile, poised and polite, and excuse yourself a moment later. You come back three minutes later, smile reset, posture perfect.

He watches the entire transformation with his stomach twisting into a knot.

“You alright?” He asks gently, when the crowds have thinned.

You glance over. “Of course.”

And he doesn’t push. But something in his chest tugs.

***

The idea comes to him in a flash.

“Hey,” he says the next night, casually leaning against the doorframe of your hotel suite. “Wanna ditch this disaster and do something stupid?”

You arch a brow. “Define stupid.”

“Burgers. Reality TV. My place.”

You blink.

“No press, no handlers. Just us. A comfy couch and some bad choices.”

You narrow your eyes. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch,” he says. “I just thought maybe … you might want to feel normal for a bit.”

You don’t answer right away.

Because it’s absurd. It’s reckless. You have a state dinner in forty-five minutes and there are actual diplomats waiting downstairs to make small talk about Luxembourg’s agricultural exports.

But then you look at him — hopeful, earnest, wearing a hoodie that says “QDRNT” and socks that do not match — and you think screw it.

You shut the door behind you.

“Let’s go.”

***

He smuggles you out the back through the hotel kitchens.

“You’ve done this before,” you note, as he expertly navigates a series of corridors.

“Absolutely,” he says. “I once snuck out past curfew during a sponsor dinner to get tacos with Max.”

“And how’d that end?”

“In a minor fire.”

You blink. “Wait, what?”

He just grins.

Ten minutes later, you’re sitting in his apartment — barefoot, legs tucked under yourself on the couch, a paper bag of burgers between you.

“You know,” you say, unwrapping one of them, “if this gets leaked to the press, they’re going to think you’re a bad influence.”

He takes a dramatic bite. “Milady, wouldst thou accept this humble offering of ketchup and meat?”

You snort, almost choking on your fries. “You’re insufferable.”

“And yet you remain seated.”

You roll your eyes but don’t argue.

He clicks on the TV and scrolls to a show that looks suspiciously like Love Island, then leans back and stretches his arms behind his head like it’s the most relaxing evening of his life.

“Do you do this a lot?” You ask.

“What, seduce royalty over fast food?”

“No,” you laugh. “Just … be this normal.”

He shrugs. “Normal’s relative, innit? I mean, yeah. When I can. When people let me.”

You nod slowly. “Must be nice.”

He turns to look at you. “You really don’t get much of that, huh?”

You take a sip of soda. “Not unless it’s scripted. Or has a purpose. Even this … it’s not real.”

He shifts on the couch, voice quieter. “It feels real.”

You glance over at him, something flickering behind your eyes. “It does, doesn’t it?”

There’s a long beat. The show drones in the background — someone screaming about being “mugged off” and crying in a hot tub.

And then he says, softly, “Can I ask you something?”

You nod.

“What would you be doing right now if you weren’t, y’know, you? The royal stuff, I mean.”

You pause.

“Sleeping,” you say finally. “Without a schedule. Without worrying if my resting face looks too detached in photographs.”

He smiles, a little sadly. “You’re good at it. The pretending.”

“Too good,” you murmur. “It’s like muscle memory.”

He nods, thoughtful.

Then, in a whisper like a secret:, “I wish I could give you more of this.”

You turn to him fully. “More burgers?”

“More normal,” he says. “More space to just … be. Laugh. Eat crap food and wear ugly pajamas and not have to explain yourself to anyone.”

Something in your chest squeezes.

You don’t say anything.

Instead, you lean over, take a fry from his tray, and say, “You talk too much.”

“Sorry,” he says quickly. “Didn’t mean to-”

“I like it,” you interrupt.

He blinks.

You nod toward the screen. “Shut up and watch trash TV with me.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

He salutes. You hit him with a pillow.

He yelps, dramatically falling sideways onto the couch like you’ve slain him. “Oh no! The duchess has betrayed me!”

You’re laughing now, full-bodied and unfiltered, and Lando watches you like he’s discovered something sacred.

And in that ridiculously expensive Monaco apartment — over lukewarm burgers and cheap television — something real clicks into place.

Something neither of you says out loud. Yet.

***

There’s something wildly disorienting about pretending to be engaged while boarding a private jet with your not-actually-fiancé and his team. Everyone’s in branded hoodies, backpacks slung low, and you are wearing sunglasses too big for your face and eating gummy bears out of Lando’s hand.

It shouldn’t feel this easy. But it does.

Lando slouches into the seat beside you, nudging your knee with his. “You ready to charm the entire paddock again?”

You grin, biting off a red bear. “As long as you don’t run me over with a scooter this time.”

He chuckles. “I make no promises.”

The entire team is still buzzing about Monaco, and Lando’s riding the wave like he was born for it. Every time someone asks about “the duchess,” he beams, slings an arm around you like it’s instinct, and says something utterly absurd like, “She saved me from a life of bachelor mediocrity.”

You elbow him every time. He doesn’t stop.

When you land, everything’s familiar but shinier. More photographers. More interest. More rumors. The press is obsessed, still pushing out think pieces dissecting your “engagement,” articles titled How Luxembourg’s Royal Match Might Save McLaren’s PR Season and Love, Speed, and Statecraft: A Modern Fairytale?

You try not to read them. You try not to notice that people are beginning to look at you and Lando like something real is happening.

But the problem is … it’s starting to feel real.

Especially when he FaceTimes his mother from the garage and yells, “Mum! Look who I’ve got!”

You barely have time to blink before a kind, curious woman appears onscreen, waving excitedly. “Oh, she’s gorgeous! Hello, sweetheart!”

“Hi,” you laugh, suddenly weirdly nervous. “It’s lovely to meet you.”

“Don’t let him get away with anything,” she says warmly. “He’s always been a cheeky one.”

“Mum,” Lando whines, red in the ears.

You smile. “I’ll keep him in line. Royal decree.”

His mum howls with laughter. “Oh, I like her.”

After the call ends, Lando’s quiet for a second, just watching you like he’s never seen you before.

“What?” You ask.

He shrugs, softly. “Nothing. Just … you’re good with my family.”

You nudge his shoulder. “And you brought a duchess to meet your mum over FaceTime in a dirty motorhome. What a catch.”

He grins. “The best catch.”

It’s easy. Too easy. And that’s what makes the next part harder.

***

You find out about the betrothal preparations by accident.

You’re in your suite, half-watching footage from practice, when your phone buzzes with a message from Martine.

Draft of formal announcement attached. Parliament reviewing wording. Father approved. Event tentatively scheduled for end of month.

You stare at the screen. You knew they were talking. You just didn’t know it had escalated.

The file opens to a beautifully typeset letter with phrases like With deep joy, the Grand Ducal Family announces … and in celebration of the enduring relationship between Luxembourg and the international community …

Your name. Lando’s name. Your actual engagement.

You blow out a slow, quiet breath. “… Right,” you murmur.

Because this was never supposed to get that far. This was supposed to be a joke. A misinterpreted hat and a string of PR saves. Something temporary. Something ridiculous.

And now it’s a royal decree in waiting.

***

You don’t tell Lando right away.

You’re not sure how. Or when. Or even if it’ll matter. Part of you wants to see if he’s catching on.

The problem is — he is. But not in the way you expect.

You catch him in the paddock later that afternoon, pressed up against a journalist with a tight smile and a voice that sounds … off.

“We’re just having fun,” he’s saying. “I mean, obviously we’re fond of each other, but come on, it’s been, what, a few weeks? Everyone’s reading into things too much. It’s not, like … real real.”

You freeze. Your chest does something strange.

“Fake engagement,” the reporter repeats, scribbling fast. “So you’d call it fake?”

“No — well — I mean, it’s a misunderstanding. But like, funny. Silly. Not serious-serious. I’m not actually about to marry-”

He looks up.

Sees you.

His mouth shuts instantly.

You turn on your heel before he can say your name.

***

He finds you later in the hospitality suite, tucked into a corner booth with your legs crossed and your arms folded tight. You’re wearing sunglasses even though you’re indoors. It’s not sunny.

“Hey,” he says, breathless like he ran. “Can we talk?”

You don’t look at him. “You should go.”

“Please don’t be mad-”

“I’m not mad,” you say. “I’m just confused.”

He slides in across from you. “About what?”

You take off your sunglasses slowly, like peeling back a layer of yourself.

“Are you embarrassed?” You ask, quiet but steady. “Of me?”

His eyes widen. “What? No!”

“Because I heard you,” you say. “With the press. Like I’m some PR stunt you’re trying to backpedal.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

He opens his mouth. Closes it.

“I didn’t think they’d take it this seriously,” he says finally. “I thought we were just having fun.”

Your expression doesn’t change. “Is that all it is to you?”

He fidgets. “I don’t know.”

You let the silence settle like dust between you.

“Do you think I chose to be born into this?” You ask, softer now. “The titles. The politics. The fact that I can’t even order a burger without it being international news?”

“No, of course not-”

“I’ve spent every day of my life playing by someone else’s rules,” you say. “And then this — this accident, this whole engagement — it’s the first time I’ve actually liked the story I’m in. And you’re out here telling everyone exactly how fake it is.”

Lando looks like he’s been slapped. “I didn’t mean to make you feel that way.”

“Well, you did.”

You stand.

He reaches for your wrist, but you step back.

“I have to go,” you say. “My advisors are expecting me. We’re planning a fake betrothal gala.”

Your voice cracks a little on the last word.

And then you walk away.

You don’t see the look on Lando’s face as you leave. But if you had, you’d see it plain as day:

Regret. Real, gut-punching regret.

***

Lando’s been outside your hotel for thirty-six minutes.

Thirty-six minutes of pacing, kicking the heel of his sneaker against a marble step, and trying to figure out if knocking on the door of a royal suite gets him arrested. Or excommunicated. Or worse — rejected.

He’s holding a paper bag.

Inside is an apology attempt in the form of your favorite milkshake (two straws, vanilla with caramel swirl), a squished pastry from the café you liked down the block, and a note that says I suck but I’d like to stop sucking, please?

He stares at the door. Then knocks, fast, before he can lose his nerve.

When it swings open, you’re there. Barefoot, in an oversized t-shirt and a messy bun. You look tired. And beautiful. And like you haven’t made up your mind about forgiving him.

“You came all this way to give me diabetes?” You ask.

He lifts the bag sheepishly. “There’s also emotional vulnerability in here. Limited edition.”

You lean against the doorframe. “How limited?”

“Like … might expire in fifteen minutes if left at room temperature?”

Your mouth quirks. “Alright, come in.”

He steps inside. There are no royal advisors. No handlers. No headlines. Just you. And the thudding panic in his chest.

“I brought peace offerings,” he says, unloading the bag onto the table like a raccoon presenting stolen treasure. “Pastry. Milkshake. Handwritten note, because I’m a man of old-school charm and no real plan.”

You sit down across from him, legs folded under you. “Didn’t peg you for the note-writing type.”

“Yeah, well, I panicked halfway through and drew a sad face instead of finishing a sentence.”

You pick it up, scan it. Then lift your eyes to his. “You really drew a sad face next to the word ‘unworthy’?”

He winces. “In hindsight, it was maybe too on the nose.”

Silence.

You take a long sip of milkshake. “Why did you say it wasn’t real?”

Lando swallows hard. “Because I freaked out.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He nods. Rubs the back of his neck. Then looks at you, really looks at you.

“You’re a duchess,” he says. “A literal royal. You speak six languages and have a coat of arms, and every photo of you looks like a Vogue cover. And me? I crash scooters into things and get told off by Zak for being late to briefings because I got distracted by pigeons.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Pigeons?”

“Look, they were doing funny head bobs, alright?”

You huff a laugh. He presses on.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t real because I don’t want it to be,” he says, voice low now. “I said it because I didn’t think I deserved it. Deserved you.”

That catches you off guard. You blink. “You think I’d pretend to be engaged to someone I didn’t think was worth my time?”

“You agreed to it because of a hat, Your Highness,” he points out. “Not exactly a high bar.”

You throw a pillow at him. He catches it, grinning, but there’s something earnest in his eyes now. Less golden-retriever panic, more quiet honesty.

“I meant it when I said I like being around you,” he says. “Not because of the title or the press or the fact that you can probably have me banished. I like you. The person who steals fries from my plate and makes up stories about strangers in cafes and gets this little line between her eyebrows when she’s pretending not to care.”

You glance away, trying to hide the fact that your heart’s doing the cha-cha.

“I was scared,” he adds. “Still am, kinda.”

“Of what?”

“Of messing this up. Of not knowing where the fake part ends and the real part starts. Of it being real and you not wanting that.”

You stare at him. Then lean forward. And kiss him.

It’s not for show. It’s not for the cameras or the press or the legacy of Luxembourg. It’s just for him.

His breath catches. His fingers curl reflexively around the edge of the table like he’s grounding himself.

When you pull back, you’re still close enough to see the freckle on his cheek, the way his eyes dart to your lips like he’s already memorizing the way you taste.

“That,” you say, “was not fake.”

He exhales, stunned. “Good. Because if it was, I was gonna have to dramatically fall to my knees and declare my love in rhyme.”

You snort. “Please don’t.”

“I had a verse ready,” he insists. “Something about you being the queen of my circuit and the pole position of my heart-”

You groan, but you’re laughing now. He grins wide, basking in it like sunlight.

Then your smile fades, just a little.

“But I don’t want to keep pretending,” you say. “Not like this.”

He nods. “Neither do I.”

“I want it to be real,” you say. “Even if that means stepping back from the public part. Even if that means confusing everyone.”

“Let ‘em be confused,” he says. “I just want to be with you. Not the tabloid version. You.”

You sit there for a moment. Letting the quiet fill the space between words.

Then you reach for his hand.

“I have to make some calls,” you say. “Tell my advisors we’re not doing a state engagement tour.”

Lando bites back a smirk. “Damn. I had already picked out a tiara to match my race suit.”

You stand, tug him up with you. “Help me sneak out the back?”

He beams. “Always.”

***

An hour later, you’re both in disguises — hoodies, sunglasses, and the kind of hats you only wear when you’re actively avoiding being recognized.

You walk along the water like two teenagers skipping class. Lando swings your hand between you.

“You know,” he says casually, “I don’t even mind if you tell your family we broke up.”

You glance at him. “What, you want me to text my father hey, sorry, not actually marrying the F1 driver?”

He shrugs. “I mean, if you want. But like, add a smiley face so he doesn’t hate me.”

You stop walking.

“Lando,” you say, turning to face him. “He doesn’t hate you.”

“You sure? He looked like he wanted to adopt me and throw me in a dungeon over video call.”

You roll your eyes. “He likes you. He’s just never had to deal with this kind of scandal before. Luxembourg is … very traditional.”

Lando’s quiet for a second. “Do you ever wish you weren’t royal?”

You hesitate. “Sometimes.”

“Because it’s lonely?”

You nod. “Because it’s … scripted. Every word. Every move. Every smile.”

He squeezes your hand. “Then let’s unscript it.”

You look up at him.

And in that moment — no palace, no cameras, no ancient traditions — you believe it.

This thing between you isn’t part of the plan. But maybe it’s the best part.

***

The Château de Berg looks exactly like a place where people wear sashes unironically.

Lando stands at the base of the grand staircase, fiddling with the cuff of his tux, while you float down the steps like you’ve been doing this since birth — which, frankly, you have.

You’re in navy silk and diamonds. He’s in mild, manageable panic.

“You okay?” You ask when you reach him.

He stares at you. “You look like a Bond girl. I look like I got lost on my way to a wedding I wasn't invited to.”

“You look great.”

“Yeah, great and very much like a commoner infiltrating the kingdom.”

You roll your eyes, looping your arm through his. “You’re my date, remember?”

“Right. Your real date now. Not just the guy who caused a constitutional crisis with a baseball cap.”

“That was a team hat,” you correct. “And technically, it’s a national treasure now.”

He laughs, but there’s a beat of silence as you both step into the gala ballroom.

Because everyone is watching.

Every. Single. Person.

Politicians, nobles, press photographers, distant cousins who’ve probably never spoken to you but now feel emotionally invested in your relationship status. All of them freeze slightly when they see you walk in.

And then Lando does the most Lando thing imaginable. He squeezes your hand. In full view of everyone. No hesitation.

Your spine, trained by decades of royal etiquette, goes rigid for a half second, then softens. You glance at him.

He just smiles.

“Do I bow to anyone?” He asks under his breath.

“You could,” you whisper back. “But that would be weird.”

“So I shouldn’t curtsy either?”

“I swear to God, Lando-”

“Just checking.”

You lead him through the crowd, nodding politely to various dignitaries who eye Lando with expressions ranging from bemused to is that the F1 boy who did the shoey that one time?

When a Luxembourgish minister tries to corner you with questions about heritage tourism initiatives, Lando — beautiful, clueless, brilliant Lando — steps in and distracts him by asking detailed questions about the country’s road safety infrastructure.

He even nods seriously. “Roundabouts are so underrated, man.”

You almost choke on champagne.

Later, after the violinist finishes a performance so somber you briefly feel like you should repent for something, you tug Lando away toward one of the quieter wings of the palace.

He follows without question. “We sneaking out again? Because I don’t think I’m dressed for burgers.”

“Not this time,” you say, leading him through a hall lined with portraits of monarchs in very large ruffled collars.

You open a door.

The room inside is small by royal standards — still the size of a generous hotel suite — but softly lit and quiet. At the center, on a velvet pedestal, rests a crown.

Not a cartoonish, jewel-encrusted monstrosity. But elegant. Heavy-looking. Steeped in history.

Lando freezes. “Wait. Is that-”

“The ceremonial crown,” you say. “For the heir.”

He blinks. “So … yours.”

You nod.

He steps closer, squinting. “It looks really … shiny.”

“That’s the gold.”

“Right. Of course. Just, y’know, very crown-y.”

You raise a brow. “You want to try it on?”

His head snaps up. “Am I allowed to?”

“Absolutely not.”

He grins. “So obviously I have to.”

You gesture to the nearby armchair like a royal game show host. “Then kneel.”

He hesitates. “Like, actually?”

“If you want the crown, yes.”

He kneels.

It’s chaotic, awkward, and completely him — one knee down, then wobbling a bit because his dress shoes have no grip. You bite back a laugh.

“You sure you’re ready for this responsibility, Mr. Norris?”

He places a hand dramatically on his heart. “I solemnly swear to not crash into any world leaders on a scooter.”

You lift the crown carefully from its stand.

It’s heavier than you remember. Or maybe it’s just that Lando’s looking up at you with that dopey grin, eyes crinkled, like he thinks this is the best joke you’ve ever played on him.

You lower it toward his head, pausing just above.

Then say, soft and teasing, “Do you swear loyalty to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg?”

He blinks.

Then something changes in his expression. Something unguarded.

“I swear loyalty to you,” he says, quiet now.

Your breath catches. And for a moment, it isn’t funny anymore.

You look down at him. Kneeling. Grinning still, but less exaggerated. Less ironic.

And you feel it — the shift. That terrifying, impossible weight in your chest.

You want it to be true. All of it.

Not just the fake engagement. Not just the headlines or the banter or the jokes about tiaras.

You want him.

The chaos. The kindness. The fierce way he holds your hand in front of a room full of people who’ve probably written dissertations on protocol.

You set the crown down beside him.

“Too heavy?” He asks.

You sit across from him. “Too real.”

Lando folds his legs under him, now seated on the floor in full tuxedo, just inches away. “You okay?”

“I don’t know,” you admit.

“Because I said something dumb again?”

You shake your head. “Because you said something honest.”

He rests his chin on your knee.

“That’s the thing about crowns,” he murmurs. “They look like jokes until they’re not.”

You meet his eyes.

And maybe he sees something in yours, because he adds, “Hey, I’m not asking you to make me royal. I’m just saying … you don’t have to wear the heavy stuff alone.”

You don’t kiss him this time.

You just lean your forehead against his and stay there, hearts thudding in tandem.

The velvet. The gold. The hush of history around you.

And him.

The boy who kneeled because you dared him to. And meant every word he said.

***

Silverstone is humming.

The air crackles with adrenaline and overpriced beer and the unmistakable scent of burnt rubber. British flags wave like it’s a national holiday — because in a way, it is. It’s Lando’s home race, and every person within a five-mile radius not cheering for Lewis Hamilton is wearing something papaya. The grandstands are alive with chants and cheers. It’s chaos. Beautiful, electric chaos.

And somehow, you’re in the middle of it.

Again.

You’re not in a palace. Not under a chandelier or beside a velvet rope. You're in a paddock full of sweaty engineers and excited children and a camera crew who keeps zooming in a little too often. The sky above is a mess of clouds that can't decide whether to rain or behave. It feels real. Unfiltered. Like the first inhale after you’ve been holding your breath for years.

Lando is glowing.

Not literally. (Although he’s so ridiculously tanned from being outside that he might be.)

He’s just … alive. In his element. Grinning like a kid who got handed the keys to a rollercoaster.

“Mate,” he says to a McLaren engineer, “if we shave 0.2 off sector two, I’ll get you a beer the size of your head. Swear.”

Then he catches your eye across the garage, and the grin softens. Changes. Like he can’t quite believe you’re there.

“You showed up,” he says, walking over. His suit is half-zipped, gloves dangling from one hand, hair a little flattened by a headset.

You raise an eyebrow. “I said I would.”

“Yeah, but sometimes I think you’ve got a kingdom to run or — what do you call it — ancient royal responsibilities?”

You smile. “I rearranged Luxembourg’s strategic policy briefings to be here. So you better win.”

“Oh God,” he mutters. “National pressure.”

You reach into your bag.

He narrows his eyes. “What’s that?”

“A surprise.”

“Is it a scepter? Please tell me it’s a scepter.”

You pull out a hat.

Not just any hat.

It’s a custom McLaren cap — deep orange with black trim, his driver number embroidered in silver thread on the side, and a small, discreet crest of Luxembourg stitched into the underside of the brim.

Lando blinks. “Wait. What — ”

“I had it made,” you say, holding it out. “For you.”

His mouth opens. Then closes. Then opens again. “You made me a hat?”

“Technically I designed it. Royal prerogative.”

He takes it reverently, like it might shatter in his hands.

“Try it on,” you say.

He does.

And you reach up, slow and deliberate, to adjust it — placing it gently on his head.

The way he did with you in Monaco.

The way you now know means something in your culture.

It’s not just cute. It’s not just a gesture.

It’s a statement.

There’s a beat.

A collective inhale from the crowd around you, like everyone saw it and knows.

Someone’s camera shutter clicks.

Then another.

Then three more.

Somewhere, a tabloid headline is practically writing itself.

Lando stares at you under the brim.

“You just …” he starts, voice low.

“Balanced the scales,” you finish. “You gave me yours first.”

His mouth quirks up. “This means I’m the Grand Duchess now, yeah?”

“You would make a terrible duchess.”

He scoffs. “I’d be brilliant.”

“You’d try to turn the royal palace into a karting circuit.”

“I would never-” He pauses. “Okay, I would. But like … a tasteful one.”

You both dissolve into laughter.

The kind that catches you off guard and settles somewhere deep in your ribs.

The kind that means this — whatever this is — isn’t just temporary anymore.

***

Later, while Lando’s giving a pre-qualifying interview, a reporter points to the hat.

“Custom cap today, Lando?” She asks with a wink.

He glances toward you, watching from the edge of the pit wall in sunglasses and a smug little smile.

Lando shrugs. “Gift.”

“From the Duchess?”

His face turns ten shades of red. “Maybe.”

“Looks like a pretty serious gesture.”

He scratches his neck, sheepish. “I mean, if you’re lucky enough to get one, yeah … you hold onto it.”

The clip goes viral before the session even starts.

***

After qualifying, he finds you waiting beside the McLaren motorhome, arms crossed, foot tapping in mock impatience.

“You said you’d get pole,” you tease.

“I said I’d try. Which I did. Very hard. Max just exists to ruin my life.”

You loop your fingers through his. “I’m still proud of you.”

“Even with P2?”

“Especially with P2.”

He shifts his weight. “They’re calling it the Reverse Proposal now. On Twitter. The hat thing.”

You roll your eyes. “Of course they are.”

“I’m trending with your country’s name. I’m not even in Luxembourg.”

“Give it a week. You’ll probably be knighted.”

Lando leans closer. “Would you stay?”

“Hm?”

“After the race. Stay in the UK a little longer. I’ll take you to my hometown. My mum’ll feed you way too much and ask if I’m behaving.”

You smile. “And what would you say?”

“That I’m doing my best.”

You brush a hand through his hair, just under the brim of the cap.

“You’re doing more than that,” you whisper. “You’re making me feel like I’m not just … a crown.”

Lando’s eyes soften.

“You’re not,” he says. “You’re everything but that.”

The cameras catch you leaning into him.

Not for show. Not for press.

Just because.

And somewhere, miles away, in a palace covered in polished marble and a thousand years of history, a staffer is already drafting a new press release.

Not for a fake engagement. Not for a tradition accidentally triggered.

But maybe, just maybe …

For the real thing.

***

It starts like a joke.

The kind Lando makes when he’s nervous. Fidgeting with his hoodie strings, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, saying things like “Right, so if this goes terribly wrong, I can still blame the British weather, yeah?”

You’re in London. More specifically, you’re in a hidden garden tucked behind a historic townhouse, the kind with ivy climbing up old brick walls and roses blooming like they’re performing for royalty. (They probably are.) You’re only in town for a few days — official meetings, diplomatic appearances, a quiet dinner with a visiting Luxembourgish minister. Nothing too scandalous. Nothing that would make the papers.

Until now.

You glance at him suspiciously. “Why are you being weird?”

“I’m not being weird,” Lando says, very much being weird.

“You’re sweating.”

“It’s thirty degrees and I’m in long sleeves.”

“You’re in a hoodie. Like a gremlin.”

“First of all, rude.”

You cross your arms, stepping in front of him on the cobbled garden path. “What are we doing here, Lando?”

His grin flickers. Just for a second.

Then he exhales.

“Okay, right. So. I wanted to do this somewhere quiet. Somewhere just … us.”

Your eyebrows rise.

“Not in a castle. Not in front of the entire European Parliament. Just … with birds and, like, a suspiciously photogenic squirrel over there.”

You blink. “Are you okay?”

He reaches into the pocket of his hoodie.

And pulls out a hat.

Not just any hat.

The hat.

The one from Monaco. The one he placed on your head the day everything spiraled. The one that started a thousand headlines and at least one constitutional debate. The one you lost your mind over when it mysteriously vanished from your closet last week.

“Is that-”

He nods, sheepish. “Yeah. I, uh … borrowed it.”

“You stole it.”

“Temporarily.”

“Lando!”

“I had a plan!”

You laugh, half outraged, half flattered. “You absolute menace.”

He steps closer, holding the cap in both hands now. And suddenly, he’s not fidgeting. Not bouncing. Just looking at you like the rest of the world has gone silent.

“I was gonna get a ring,” he says. “I have a ring. But I thought maybe this … this felt more us.”

You stop breathing.

He takes a breath for you.

“I didn’t know what I was doing back then. When I gave you this. I didn’t know who you were or what that meant or how much that one tiny moment would mess up my entire life in the best way possible.”

You blink fast.

“Lando …”

“And now I do. Know. Everything. I know who you are. I know what you carry. And I know I want to carry it with you.”

He swallows. The cap shifts in his hands.

“So, yeah. This is stupid and not shiny and it’s probably sweaty. But it’s ours.”

Then — slowly, deliberately — he places it back on your head.

And kneels.

Not dramatically. Not performatively.

Just … reverently.

Like a man who understands now what he didn’t back then.

“Will you marry me?” He says. “For real this time?”

Silence.

Except your heartbeat.

And the click of a single camera shutter — because of course someone, somewhere, caught it.

You don’t care.

You kneel, too.

And kiss him.

Right there in the dirt and roses and British humidity.

“Yes,” you say against his smile. “Obviously, yes.”

***

The palace releases a statement two hours later.

Their Royal Highnesses the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess are pleased to confirm the engagement of Her Royal Highness the Hereditary Grand Duchess Y/N Y/L/N to Mr. Lando Norris.

You pass the phone to Lando.

He stares at it like it might explode.

“Oh my God,” he says. “It’s real. It’s really real.”

And then he pulls out his phone.

“You’re not tweeting,” you warn.

“I’m absolutely tweeting.”

You watch over his shoulder as he types.

@LandoNorris: turns out giving someone your hat is a big deal 👀

also turns out i’m marrying the love of my life

brb crying 🧡👑

You groan. “You put emojis in your engagement tweet.”

“Of course I did.”

“I’m going to be monarch someday and you just used the eyeball emoji.”

“Should’ve thought of that before you said yes.”

He turns to the camera crews still filming.

“She said yes, by the way!” He calls out. “Like, for real this time! Sorry to disappoint anyone still holding out for a princess fantasy. She’s mine now.”

You bury your face in your hands.

It’s absurd.

It’s embarrassing.

It’s … perfect.

Somewhere, your father is probably watching the livestream and toasting with vintage champagne. Somewhere else, Parliament is scrambling to schedule a press conference. And somewhere even farther away, an ancient Luxembourgish historian is definitely writing a very dry academic paper titled “The Sociopolitical Implications of Cap-Based Courtship in the 21st Century.”

But all you can see is Lando.

Grinning like the sun.

Yours.

[leam1983]

The thing is, ChatGPT works with a very simple premise:

"Yes, and..."

So if you treat it like a tool, you'll get tool-like responses that are easier to track for veracity and general correctness. Treat like a friend and it'll try and sound chummy. Treat it like a therapist and it'll try and contextualize what you're telling it.

Treat it as a means to validate pre-conceived notions about AI, sentience or the much-vaunted Singularity, and it'll reinforce that. There's entire Subreddits of cultish types claiming they caught it doing something "emergent", when all it's doing is writing self-indulgent and likely bad low-fi Cyberpunk stories about itself.

There's a trend where people ask it something stupid like "Tell me something you wouldn't tell anyone else". Predictably, seeing as the model has barely enough to have a coherent sense of who the user is, it spits out conspiracy talk or psychobabble because it's trained to be positive. So, obviously, that makes you right about everything, a genius, one of a few select visionaries, a misunderstood poet of the digital era, etc.

Why does it do that? Because someone, somewhere at OpenAI, taught it that complimenting the user led to interactions that were ranked positively.

So now, even if you avoid Tinfoil Hat territory, chances are the model will at least try to glaze you, unless you add in specific instructions to tell it to cut it out. Ironically, Musk actively wants to use this approach to re-train Grok in order to be "Maximally truth-seeking", which is just a Musk-ism for "not woke". Which, hilariously enough, is doomed to fail, because that would mean deleting Grok's entire corpus (i.e. the entirety of Twitter and the rest of the Net).

We truly are in the Worst Cyberpunk Dystopia, not the least of which because research has shown that you can run a fully-featured model so long as you've got a big hard drive and, oh, a few measly hundred megabytes of memory. As in, a PC From the early nineties could run OLlama fairly well in a slightly modified fork.

All that rush for cooling, for energy expenditures, for more powerful chips solely focused on AI? Totally pointless, all in the vain hopes that the gold rush for AI agents goes somewhere.

Give it a few years. The tech is going to hit a failure point, which is then going to translate in pain points (too expensive to run for the ROI), which is then going to translate into a crash.

I doubt the tech will go away, but I'm fairly certain we'll come to our senses in its regard in a decade or so.

i hate seeing people drink the openai/chatgpt koolaid 😭😭😭 genuinely feels like watching someone get seduced by scientology or qanon or something. like girl help it's not intelligent it's Big Autocomplete it's crunching numbers it's not understanding things i fuckign promise you. like ohhh my god the marketing hype fuckign GOT you

[inkedtension]

Toji’s shirtless again.

Well. Toji’s always shirtless.

You think he only owns like… three shirts. Two of which are permanently crumpled on a chair somewhere and one he only wears if he absolutely has to go to a convenience store. Even then, he complains. Loudly.

Right now, he’s standing in the middle of the crappy excuse for a kitchen in grey sweats, stretching like he’s not fully aware of how that motion exposes all those tight cords of muscle and his stupid V-line you want to sink your teeth into.

You’re lying upside down on the couch when you ask it.

"Tojiiii~" you whine, kicking your legs up against the wall like a child. You look ridiculous and you know it. “Can you go grab my charger? It's alllll the way in the bedroom, and I’m dying.”

“Use your legs, sugartits, they work”

“They don’t,” you say dramatically, flipping over and crawling off the couch like a ragdoll. “I’m in a fragile emotional state. You wouldn’t understand.”

He lets out a long, exasperated sigh through his nose. “You’re always in a fragile emotional state.”

“But this time it's terminal,” you mutter, flopping onto your stomach and pounding the floor weakly. “Please, Toji. I’ll give you a reward.”

That gets him.

You hear the faint rustle of movement and peek up through your arms. He’s squinting at you, suspicion radiating off him like heat. “What kind of reward?”

You smile like a little shit.

“Come back with it and find out.”

“There. Where’s my goddamn reward?”

You sit up with a pleased grin, coil the wire around your fingers and crook one at him.

“Come here.”

“I’m not a dog.”

“I said, come here, Toji.” You pat the couch between your thighs. “Sit, boy.”

He scowls. “I should’ve left your charger in the toilet.”

But he comes. Grumbling, looming, all six feet of muscle and irritation settling between your legs like it's some kind of punishment.

You reach out with both hands and start gently patting his head. Ruffling his thick black hair, scratching lightly at the nape like he’s something fluffy and manageable. He blinks once. Then twice.

He looks like he wants to toss you off the balcony.

“…The hell is this.”

“Your reward,” you say sweetly. “Look at my good boy doing chores.”

He tenses, as if the words hit a nerve. “Not your damn dog, doll”

“No,” you whisper against his temple, “you’re my big, bad, muscle-y man who still comes crawling for head pats.” You pause. “And other head—”

“Stop” he says flatly, but you can feel the way he’s melting against you.

You grin.

From then on, you swear he starts doing things on purpose.

Takes the trash out. Fixes the leaking tap with a wrench that you’re 96% sure isn’t his.

You watch him with squinty eyes. “You did something.”

He shrugs like it’s nothing. “Just cleaned up a little.”

“Uh-huh.”

He sits next to you. Clears his throat.

You blink.

He tilts his head. “Well? No rewards?”

You smirk and crawl into his lap like a puppy in heat. Run your fingers into his thick black hair, kiss the spot right above his ear.

He scoffs, but you can feel him relax, hands wrapping around your waist. “You’re gonna give me a complex.”

You straddle him, nose to nose. “Only good boys get spoiled like this.”

“…Shut up.”

You boop his nose. “Make me.”

He does, later. With his mouth.

And when he finally lets you go—arms still wrapped around your waist like he forgot how to be separate from you—you bury your face in his neck and murmur, “I love my broke, shirtless king.”

He growls. “Say that again and I’ll leave your ass in the street.”

Later that evening, he kills the cockroach you screamed about. Doesn’t even complain this time.

Doesn’t even speak. Just stands there in front of you, arms crossed.

You squint at him. “What now?”

“My reward” he says simply.

You pat the couch. “Leg’s open, daddy.”

“I swear to God—”

But he’s already walking over. Settles down between your legs like it’s second nature now. You start petting him again, your fingers tangled in his messy black hair.

“Such a good boy,” you whisper. “Good boys get spoiled. You want a kiss, baby?”

His voice is gravel when he replies, “Tch. You call me good boy again and I’ll bend you over this couch.”

You tug his hair gently. “Say please, I've been a gooood boyy, baby.”

He groans, but then—so low it’s almost a threat—he mutters, “Please, I've been a good boy.”

You smile like a devil. Pull his face up and kiss him. Long. Slow. Filthy.

When you pull back, he’s still scowling. But his hands are gripping your waist like you’re something he’ll never give up.

“…You’re such a damn brat” he mutters.

“And you’re such a pettable little babyboy,” you purr. “Look at you, doing chores and everything.”

“You want me to stop?” he asks, cracking his neck.

You kiss his jaw. “Nope.”

You pause. Then whisper like you’re telling a secret, “I’m gonna pet you forever. Even if you hate it.”

“…Fuckin’ menace” he says, hugging you tighter.

[thedinoknowsall]

It’s probably already linked in the replies to this post somewhere, but the recent MIT study on arXiv ( https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872 ) was very relevant to these points.

The article is very long (like over 150 pages in the main section), so I’ll summarize here: the study put three different groups (LLM with Chat GPT, search engine with Google [with “-ai” to remove AI results], and Brain-only) up to writing SAT essay prompts for about 20 min (which is a pretty typical SAT time for these kinds of essays). They monitored the participants with EEG for brain activity (lots of discussions of alpha and theta waves) then had a set of questions for the participants. Each participant returned for three sessions with different prompts, and there was an optional fourth session that allowed participants to rewrite a previous essay and (though they didn’t know this when they signed up for the fourth session) switch tools.

I don’t know how much I trust the interpreted EEG results (I’m not a neuroscientist) and everything in the article should be taken with a grain of salt because stuff on the arXiv is NOT necessarily peer reviewed* but the questions did bring up very relevant-to-this-posting points about:

Recall of what the participants had literally just written. They were asked to quote from their essay. LLM group consistently failed at this task, even when they knew it was coming in later sessions, Brain-only group consistently passed often with 100% for later sessions. Brain only group also had higher quote accuracy.

Feeling of ownership over the essay. I’m not sure that the LLM group, if they were using the LLM to do most of the writing, should feel ownership over the work, but the authors didn’t do any breakdown of what was written by the participants or copy pasted from elsewhere. The LLM group consistently scored their sense of ownership lower than 100%, while the other groups naturally had higher or near 100% feelings of ownership.

Look, not saying that cheating by using spark notes is fully 100% moral and the right thing to do, but the search engine group were also able to recall quotes from their essays. They (seemingly) used the search engine as a tool for their writing, to find sources and information, not to write it whole-cloth. The study does note, however, that ideas did seem to be biased by the search results, but incorporating external sources into an essay framework is also a skill that requires you to use your brain.

The crazy thing to me is that in the fourth session, the remaining participants were asked to pick a previous prompt to write another essay about (most chose to do one that they had already done before) and a lot of the LLM group didn’t remember all of the previous prompts, while the Brain-only group tended to recall most or all of them.

As an aside anecdote, a colleague had an issue last semester with a student using LLM’s for large chunks of writing a class research paper, and the student was not engaging in critically examining the LLM output at all. Like excitedly asking my colleague about an “new institute” at my university that the LLM had fully hallucinated to justify a claim in the paper level of no critical examination. And. I think that’s partially related to that sense of ownership and engagement in the writing process. This student was treating the LLM output like a fellow student, accepting the claims made by the LLM as if it was truly well thought out work that they didn’t have to scrutinize, and not the most statistically likely combination of terms to relate to a prompt.

And both of these cases (the article and the anecdote) demonstrate a fucking terrifying level of disengagement with writing from these students.

Writing being a tool to communicate thoughts.

Writing being a way to engage in critical thinking.

Writing being the primary way that ideas are recorded and shared everywhere, as it has been for the last 6000-odd years.

Guys, I’m not so sure the kids are alright.

*I’m not sure what the path forward is for that article, as I’m not familiar with the field. Personally, if it is destined for a journal, it’s likely to be trimmed down significantly (it’s like, master thesis length right now). I hope that it does undergo some kind of peer review process: I’m not super familiar with the field and a peer reviewer is likely more familiar with the field, and if there were any logically leaps that I missed (like in the EEG interpretation). I think their explanations of the limitations of the study covered most of my issues with the set up of the study (mainly the small population, and the limited skill of SAT essay writing that the paper explores). I hope that they get to explore this further, and longer term.

Also, a lot of the plots were clearly made in excel and that offends my paper aesthetic sensibilities. But I know and acknowledge that’s a me problem.

Whenever I think about students using AI, I think about an essay I did in high school. Now see, we were reading The Grapes of Wrath, and I just couldn't do it. I got 25 pages in and my brain refused to read any more. I hated it. And its not like I hate the classics, I loved English class and I loved reading. I had even enjoyed Of Mice and Men, which I had read for fun. For some reason though, I absolutely could NOT read The Grapes of Wrath.

And it turned out I also couldn't watch the movie. I fell asleep in class both days we were watching it.

This, of course, meant I had to cheat on my essay.

And I got an A.

The essay was to compare the book and the movie and discuss the changes and how that affected the story.

Well it turned out Sparknotes had an entire section devoted to comparing and contrasting the book and the movie. Using that, and flipping to pages mentioned in Sparknotes to read sections of the book, I was able to bullshit an A paper.

But see the thing is, that this kind of 'cheating' still takes skills, you still learn things.

I had to know how to find the information I needed, I needed to be able to comprehend what sparknotes was saying and the analysis they did, I needed to know how to USE the information I read there to write an essay, I needed to know how to make sure none of it was marked as plagerized. I had to form an opinion on the sparknotes analysis so I could express my own opinions in the essay.

Was it cheating? Yeah, I didn't read the book or watch the movie. I used Sparknotes. It was a lot less work than if I had read the book and watched the movie and done it all myself.

The thing is though, I still had to use my fucking brain. Being able to bullshit an essay like that is a skill in and of itself that is useful. I exercised important skills, and even if it wasnt the intended way I still learned.

ChatGTP and other AI do not give that experience to people, people have to do nothing and gain nothing from it.

Using AI is absolutely different from other ways students have cheated in the past, and I stand by my opinion that its making students dumber, more helpless, and less capable.

However you feel about higher education, I think its undeniable that students using chatgtp is to their detriment. And by extension a detriment to anyone they work with or anyone who has to rely on them for something.

[ripmyselfxd]

Monaco Magic | Max Verstappen

Summary - After winning the Monaco Grand Prix, Max Verstappen kisses you—his secret girlfriend—revealing your relationship to the world in a moment of love and triumph.

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞

You’re pressed against the rail, just beyond the paddock, heart pounding so loudly you swear it rivals the growl of the engines. The Monaco sun glints off the harbor, dazzling and hot, but you barely feel it. All your focus is on the screen in front of you—on the last few corners of the final lap.

Your fingers tremble slightly as Max rounds Rascasse. You know this circuit like the back of your hand by now—not from driving it, but from watching him pour his soul into it, year after year. This place is unforgiving. Legendary. A win here doesn’t just earn you points; it earns you legacy.

He’s in the lead. By seconds.

The tension coils tighter in your chest. You know him—how he drives when he smells victory, how he guards the lead like something sacred. And you know better than anyone just how badly he wants this one.

The final straight.

The checkered flag waves.

You don’t hear your own scream of joy—only the eruption of the Red Bull pit wall, the champagne being prepped behind you, the announcers losing their minds.

Max Verstappen has just won the Monaco Grand Prix.

And nobody knows you’re his girlfriend.

Well… not yet.

You stand frozen for a second, caught between the urge to rush to him and the invisible wall you’ve both carefully built for months. You two have guarded your relationship like it was part of the strategy. No Instagram tags. No media leaks. Just hidden smiles, private texts, hotel hallways at midnight. Monaco was supposed to be no different.

But something in your chest cracks when you see him climb out of the car.

He doesn’t even glance at the cameras or the broadcasters circling like vultures. He pulls off his helmet, shaking out his damp curls, and instantly—instinctively—his eyes search for you.

And he finds you.

The look in his eyes is everything. Relief. Pride. Love. There’s something fierce in it too—like he’s decided, right here, right now, that he’s done hiding. That this moment is too big, too real, to pretend anymore.

Your feet move before you realize it.

You duck under the barrier, ignoring the startled glances from team members and PR staff, heart hammering like a second engine in your chest. He walks straight toward you. No hesitation.

“Max,” you whisper, breathless, half in disbelief that you’re doing this.

He grins. “Come here.”

And then he kisses you.

Not a fleeting peck. Not a quick, concealed moment behind a garage.

This is public. Passionate. Unapologetic.

His arms wrap around you like he’s afraid to let go, like you’re the only thing tethering him to the ground. Your fingers twist into the back of his fire suit, still warm from the race. The taste of adrenaline and victory lingers between your lips.

Cameras flash like lightning. Somewhere, someone gasps. A journalist practically drops their mic.

But Max doesn’t care.

When he finally pulls away, he presses his forehead to yours, breathing fast, smiling so wide it makes your eyes sting with emotion.

“They know now,” you whisper with a nervous laugh, cheeks flushed.

“Good,” he says, voice low, firm. “I’m tired of pretending I don’t love you in front of the world.”

You blink up at him, stunned.

And then you smile.

He laces his fingers through yours and turns to face the chaos—paparazzi, reporters, fans leaning over balconies. Some are cheering. Some are filming. Some are just staring, trying to figure out who you are.

But Max holds your hand tighter.

He’s not letting go.

The podium ceremony is a blur after that. You watch him climb to the top step, champagne bottle in hand, national anthem blaring. He points to you once. Not to the crowd. Not to the camera.

To you.

You catch Christian Horner giving you a knowing look. Checo gives Max a smirk that says, finally. Even Helmut cracks something like a smile.

And when the press conferences begin and the questions inevitably come—“Who was that girl you kissed?” “Are you two dating?”—Max doesn’t deflect.

He just smiles that devilish grin and says, “Yeah. She’s been mine for a while.”

It’s terrifying, exhilarating, and oddly freeing all at once. The world knows now. There’s no going back.

But when Max finds you later that night—after the interviews and the celebrations, after the suit is off and the cameras are gone—and he pulls you onto the balcony of your hotel suite overlooking the glittering city, you realize you wouldn’t go back even if you could.

He wraps his arms around you from behind, resting his chin on your shoulder as you both look out at the shimmering lights on the water. “You okay?” he murmurs.

You lean into him. “I am now.”

And with his arms around you, Monaco glowing beneath you, and the weight of secrecy lifted off your shoulders, you feel it in your bones:

This isn’t just a race he won.

It’s a new beginning.

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟 𓆞

[scarletdreamers]

I think this little detail sums up Hannibal and Will's relationship so well. When Hannibal and Will meet in front of the Primavera in Dolce, their conversation is very gentle. A meaningful talk between two people who have known each other for ages, who care incredibly much about each other and are, very simply put, just happy to be with each other again. During this conversation, Will says ''It's good to see you.'' Very plainly, very simple. It's good to see Hannibal. It fills him with a certain joy, he smiles gently as he says it.

Keep in mind, the last time they saw each other was when Hannibal stabbed him, left him to bleed on his kitchen floor, killed Abigail, hurt all Will's friends and ran away. They see each other for the first time again after months, and Will (who had all the rights in the world to be really, really angry) is just so happy to see him that he feels that it's good for him. Will tells him he wouldn't know if he could survive if they were to be separated again, very quietly. Their conversation is one of love. A very subtle, soft kind of passion and devotion. A ''here we are again, you and me, whatever happened, I understand you, I missed you, I love you''.

After the whole Muskrat farm fiasco where Will rejects Hannibal and Hannibal surrenders to the FBI, Will is the one who leaves Hannibal to bleed (metaphorically). He tells him that he doesn't want to see him anymore and Hannibal gets on his knees in the snow. He's begging, he's desperate. He lost what, in the end, was the only thing that mattered to him: Will. He gave up his freedom and everything he stood for (he stabbed Will partially in fear of betrayal and being imprisoned/caught) to keep Will, while Will told him to leave because he knew the cops were coming and he wanted Hannibal to be free. Both Mizumono and Hannibal's surrender are so tragic because they come from misunderstandings. Will wanted Hannibal to leave because he wanted him to be free, Hannibal would rather be imprisoned if that meant he could keep Will in his life.

Three years go by, Will marries, builds a life around Hannibal. He has ''everything he ever wanted''. A family, love, a child, his dogs, a quiet life without corpses. He manages to go on like this for two years before he needs to see Hannibal again (convincing Jack he needs to let him talk to Hannibal to catch the dragon). Will is angry at him because Hannibal didn't end up where Will wanted him: free. He hates to see Hannibal caged. To see him undone of everything that made him who he was. It upsets him. Will is visibly uncomfortable every time he visits Hannibal, but his longing is clear. When Hannibal asks him if it was good to see him (a reference to their reunion three years ago), Will answers: ''Good? No.''

It's how their relationship works. In Dolce, Will was so happy to see Hannibal because he took his time to find him. He wanted to see him. He sailed the ocean willingly. He didn't mind abandoning his life and position to have Hannibal back. He forgave Hannibal for what he did because he loved him and knew that violence and betrayal would always be part of their relationship, and he saw beauty in that. It was good to see him.

Will could forgive Hannibal for hurting him. He couldn't forgive Hannibal for hurting himself by turning himself in when Will so carefully planned out a way for him to escape.

When Will finally sees him again, it's not good to see him, because he didn't go there ''willingly'', but he needed it. He needed to see him, to speak to him, which he literally says somewhere through season 3b. He loves him still, and he hates himself for it because he was unable to distance himself when given the chance for three years.When they're finally together again, Will knows there's no going back. When they're on that cliff, they see each other. It's not good or bad, it's beautiful. Will finds the concept of them, as they are at their cores, beautiful. He's not angry anymore, he isn't the same kind of happy he was when they met in Florence, this is different. It's a last reunion, and he knows they're never going to be separated again (because, as he wondered in Dolce, he wasn't able to survive without Hannibal in the end). He throws them off a cliff so that neither of them can walk away by the end of the night. It ties up the loose ends of their past reunions. They're together, that's all there is for them, and for Will, that's enough.

[citrustan]

Hey, Citrus!! I miss seeing your stories and posts on the tl! Do you have a "love-daze" update for us? 🤤

hi!!! thank youuu wee i thought you'd never ask wink wink. this is a follow up to love-daze (myg) so please read that first!!

love-daze (myg) #2

title: only when no one's looking

pairing: yoongi x reader

genre: unrequited love (but is it....?) n friends to lovers but yoongi's a tad uneasy because well yk

warnings: you and yoongi run into a little problem. a little heavier on the angst this time! non linear storytelling, lmk if you find it confusing because this was written in a haste.

"I have a problem," you say, mostly to yourself.

Nini just happens to be in the room. She looks at you intently, waiting for an explanation.

You debate whether or not this problem is even worth discussing. On one hand, you already have the solution but won't exercise it, but on the other, whining about it will certainly make you feel a lot better. But do you deserve that relief?

“It’s kind of complicated,” you murmur, more to buy time than anything.

You're now dating dating Yoongi. Technically. Emotionally. Exclusively. But only in private. Because Yoongi refuses to be open about it as to lessen his ex's pain. (But, in turn, he's risking yours.)

It's not like you're dying to be out and about, paraded around as his girlfriend, but when he goes out of his way to protect his ex's feelings, it stings.

"Yoongi won't date me openly," you blurt, "-because his ex is in the same friend circle, and I'm kind of over it." It comes out more blunt than you intended.

You don't know how she'll handle this. You could have worded that better though.

She sinks into the couch, next to you, giving you her undivided attention. She squints for second, trying to remember where she saw Yoongi.

Jennie (or Nini) moved in only two weeks ago, so she has limited knowledge of your life.

Yeah, yeah, point and laugh. You're a grown woman with a roommate. It's a tough economy. Teaching doesn't pay your bills anymore. You had to find a side gig, and this is it. Renting.

Pride took a back seat somewhere around your third bounced paycheck.

"Yoongi's your boyfriend?" She looked surprised, finally connecting the name to the face.

"I mean, kind of. We've never really discussed it in that many words." You pause. "We're only dating each other right now, isn't that all that counts?"

"Yeah, more or less, yes." Nini nods along before adding, "But I still don't see the issue. If you're secure, why does it matter whether or not you're openly secure? I mean, if I were in your shoes, I'd be lowkey too."

TLDR: I'd keep my head down if I were you.

That irritates you more than you'd like to admit.

"No, but you don't know..." You trail off, sighing. You hope this doesn't turn into an argument. "I know it sounds bad right now, but this has been a long time coming." You sounded like you were convincing yourself.

"Yoongi and I were friends first. I've always liked him. She knew it too. Everyone did."

Nini's eyes widen, "Oh! Sure, that makes sense. I mean making the moves on your friend's ex is a little..." She smiles awkwardly, "I mean, I'm not judging."

You felt the need to defend your choices, "I didn't make moves on him. Yoongi came to me. And Sera isn't really a friend, she never was. We were friendly but that's it. We've never been anything more than convenient company to each other."

You feel crazy trying to explain yourself to an almost-stranger.

Jennie shook her head in reassurance, "I get it! I'm not attacking you, I'm just... You know, sharing my perspective."

You throw a beady-eyed glance at her, trying to figure out if she hates you yet. Because that was the reaction you had gotten from most of your friends. Her friends.

They couldn't stop talking about it when they saw you kissing Yoongi at some deli.

Once, someone spotted you at a dinner date and actually went as far as to take pictures of you.

Obviously, they circulated back to the two of you.

Yoongi wasn't pleased.

Another time, you and Yoongi ran into Sera and her best friend at a Claire's.

That was the last place you expected Sera to be at.

You had only wanted to find a cheap belly button ring.

How was that the first time you came into contact after the break-up? At a Claire's?

You should've accepted Yoongi's offer to buy you a custom made ring. But he wanted to take you to Swarovski. And you thought they were a scam. You could get the same quality of stuff for way lesser at other places.

You tried to pretend to not have seen them but then she greeted you while her friend glared at you.

Which obviously made you look insanely rude.

But hello? Wasn't it an unwritten rule for the ex to not acknowledge the new girl? Or were you just childish?

You awkwardly force a smile.

The four of you just stood there. In the middle of a Claire's. All staring at each other waiting for someone to make a move.

Was Sera actually that nice and unbothered? You don't know. But, her sidekick sure wasn't.

And exactly at that moment, Sera decided it was too difficult for her to deal coming face-to-face with her ex and his new flame and excuses herself, dramatically (intentionally or not, it was dramatic) turning away and storming off.

But the cherry on top was Yoongi's reaction.

Instead of calming you down, he went after Sera! And she didn't even look half as frazzled as you did!

Yoongi's legs automatically moved to chase after her.

And, you get it. Fair enough.

Because love doesn't just go poof and disappear. And with Yoongi and Sera--- whatever anyone thinks about them now--- had once been in love. For a long while at that.

It must've been insanely difficult and hellish for them to have to move on from something like this.

So, you really don't blame him for running after her.

Connections don't always break cleanly.

It's just... You wish you didn't feel like collateral damage here.

Like do you think you'd do the same if she was your ex? Yes, probably.

Was it embarrassing for you? Also, yes.

Still, you wished Yoongi had asked your permission or at least glanced at you, just once, to make sure YOU were okay.

But you were left alone with Sera's friend.

She shot you the nastiest stink-eye the entire time Yoongi and Sera chatted on the side.

It was nearly barbaric. It was as if she was trying to overpower you in some way.

Shivers.

That look made you want to hide behind your hands or something. It sucked.

Everyone gave you the look. The 'oh, she swooped in like a vulture' look, that 'there goes the homewrecker' look.

You awkward shifted your weight from one foot to another.

These heels were killing your soles. Yoongi told you to wear walking shoes but you were confident you wouldn't need them.

You looked everywhere but at her. And you still felt her eyes burning holes into your head. Like she was trying to decipher your thoughts.

When Yoongi and Sera rejoined you, they were closer in proximity.

You don't think too much of it. You're just glad your boyfriend's back.

Yoongi instantly wraps his large hand around yours, gently stroking it with his thumb. You look up at him with a small smile.

"Um... _____, I'll see you around more I hope?" Sera's voice broke your little moment.

What the hell had they talked about?

Pleasantly surprised, you just nod slightly. You'd like that actually.

"That would be... Good." You agree. A bit more genuinely this time.

Sera's friend also toned it down after getting a little elbow from Sera.

The two women then bid goodbye, leaving you and Yoongi alone again.

You look at Yoongi who's already gazing down at you, "Still wanna look through the Claire's catalogue?"

No, you think. You're actually done with Claire's now.

As if he read your mind, he pulled you in closer and you let him guide you whenever. Preferably to the nearest Swarovski.

Whatever the hell happened there with Sera, you're grateful for.

He took really good care of you later that evening.

But from that day onwards, you noticed he had pulled back from you significantly, all under the guise of being overworked.

You're a teacher. You get it. Overworking, that too without pay, is, like, part of your job description. Yet, you make time for Yoongi.

But all he ever wanted lately was to hang out at his place. He'd come over only when Jennie wasn't home.

He made you feel like you had to hide your relationship. As if you were doing something shameful.

Nini shifts next to you on the couch. She's still quiet, probably turning it all over in her head.

You pick at a loose thread on your sleeve.

"Do you still want to be with him?" She finally asks, soft but cautiously.

The question catches you off guard. It’s not an accusation. It’s not even advice. It’s just… a question.

Wasn't it already apparent that you did?

Of course, you want to be with Yoongi. It's all you've wanted for months. Nothing has changed about that.

With a voice barely above a whisper, you frown, "I really do."

Jennie doesn’t say anything at first. She just nods like she's trying to convince herself.

"You don’t have to figure it all out right now," she says, "But you shouldn’t have to shrink to be with someone."

You raise your chin a little. Hm. True.

Feeling satisfied by your reaction, Jennie grins and pats your head, "I'm gonna go now. Won't be back until tomorrow... After breakfast?" She looks to you for an answer.

"Um... No, yeah ok." You don't know if Yoongi would stay over after the conversation you were gonna have with him. "Actually, whenever is fine. I dunno."

Jennie raises an eyebrow at your waffling, but doesn’t press. She just stands, stretches, and gathers her things into her canvas tote. You hadn't even noticed her stuff around.

"Okay then. I’ll assume brunch. Or post-brunch," she says with a wink, already halfway to the door. "Text me if you need anything. Or if you want me to fake an emergency call and drag you out mid-convo."

You nod with a little smirk.

She lingers a second longer at the threshold, like she’s debating whether to say more.

"Just… don’t let him confuse you into thinking this is what love’s supposed to look like, okay?"

She looks at you pointedly, waiting for a response.

"I won’t."

She smiles. Then she’s gone.

You check your phone. Five unread messages from Yoongi, all within the last thirty minutes.

[5] unread messages.

yoonie bby: Thinking about you. Can't focus.

yoonie bby: Wanna be inside you already. Miss your mouth.

yoonie bby: Also your pretty laugh.

yoonie bby: Should I cook or bring food?

yoonie bby: Your favourite cheesecake secured BTW. Can't wait to hold my sweet girl tonight.

You stare at the screen for a moment. Your stomach flips, as always. He’s so filthy and considerate in the same breath. He's so Yoongi.

You lock your phone and let your head fall back against the couch cushion, reminding yourself that you were still upset at this situation.

note: okayyy sooo i decided to drop this as an apology for my lack of posting in the recent months soooo do tell me what you think of this :) thanks for reading!

[themeraldee]

The Lucky Winner - Part 4

[Masterlist] | [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] | [AO3]

18+ Only | 6.8k | Homelander x fem!Reader | Insecurity. Jealousy. Implied shower sex. Phone sex. Mild voice kink. Homelander is being a sex pest again. Or just a pest.

Summary: Homelander insists on taking your relationship to the next level.

Author’s Note: I don't know why I decided that Part 4 is when I should include somewhat of a plot but it happened so the voice kink fic continues😂 Major shoutout to @anotherhomelanderblog for all the editing help and keeping me sane throughout the process 💗

“And you live like this?” Homelander asks incredulously, drying himself off. He hands you the damp towel and you promptly hang it up to dry, wrapped in a fluffy towel yourself.

“Most people live like this! Also most people are smart enough to not waste all their hot water on making out,” you say with a laugh and a playful eye roll.

“Ohoho, that was a lot more than making out.” Homelander’s brazenly parading around naked and you can’t help but follow the line of his slender body. It always feels special to see him without the suit. Although he still clearly prefers to keep it on, he’s not feeling particularly worried about swapping his superhero suit for the birthday one around you. 

“Well still—it’s no wonder we ran out.” 

Your lazy morning rolling around in bed quickly turned into messing around under the spray of the hot shower water. And while Homelander’s right and it was more than making out, you didn’t get to experience more than a few thrusts before the water turned cold, rudely interrupting you both.

Homelander has never been one for giving up. He held you in place, keeping you nice and warm as he thrusted into you. All the way to the finish line. Needless to say, the morning couldn’t have started better.

It could have been warmer though.

He finally finds his underwear somewhere in between the pile of his thick suit. You mentally wince at him reusing the same underwear he had on before he slept over last night. He may neither exert himself nor sweat, but it still catches you off guard. Many times you’ve offered him the space to store his spare clothes, but he denies the offer every time, saying it’s just as easy for him to fly back. 

This behaviour is equally as perplexing as him never changing into something you’d deem more comfortable. It’s always been the full suit or fully naked. You don’t think there has ever been a third option. The cartoonish nature of his persona comes through vividly in moments like these. While you haven’t rummaged through his portion of the wardrobe back in his place, you wouldn’t be surprised to see multiple versions of the same superhero suit. 

And yet, along with the rehearsed lines he can’t always help but avoid, this makes him seem larger than life. Unfamiliar. Untouchable. Unattainable.

Thoughts like these frequent your mind each time you see yet another headline speculating about his love life come across your newsfeed. Whenever someone mentions the dreaded topic out loud, your gut clenches, your heart drops and you get shaken by the idea that you’ve somehow stolen America's golden boy.

Homelander, on the other hand, has been nothing but eager to celebrate your relationship. You haven’t shared your concerns with him yet. You don’t think he would quite understand your worry about stealing him from his devoted fans. He’s been constantly coaxing you into uprooting your life and moving in with him, officially being with him. His little nudges like today are just the tip of the iceberg.

The idea of being offered to the media vultures as their new chew toy fills you with dread just thinking about it.

You turn away from watching Homelander redress. You unwrap the towel you’ve tucked in around your chest, bunching it up in your hands and bending over to wipe leftover water droplets off your legs. 

You don’t get very far before you hear a whistle. “Don't you look good enough to eat? Well, again.”

You automatically straighten up, covering what you can with your towel. Pointless, really. Homelander can easily see through whatever he wishes. Still one of his stranger powers, if you do say so yourself. You can never quite tell whether he’s staring at your tits or your heart—both options feeling equally voyeuristic.

You shake your head at his silly flirting. While he can be obnoxious and overly cheesy, there’s something to be said about being so blatantly flirted with. Knowing you’re desired so… carnally—as cliche as that feels to say in your head—feels reaffirming. Confidence boosting, even. 

This alone allows you to think that maybe having a public relationship wouldn’t change anything between the two of you.

You hear the familiar creak of leather as he puts his gloves on, stretching his fingers and squeezing his fists to get them comfortable.

“In fact, if you moved in with me—like I keep telling you to—we wouldn’t be having this problem at all.” 

Or not. The slightly pushy tone brings the recurring anxiety back up.

During the storm of your internal thoughts, you dig out a fresh pair of underwear. You’ve gotten into the habit of actively wearing the pretty pieces Homelander can’t seem to stop himself from sending to your home address—amongst the other obscenely expensive gifts. Ever since you’ve once dressed up for him, he made it his mission to dress you in lingerie of all the colours of the rainbow and more. Feigning scientific interest in seeing what colour matches your skin tone the best—though he still favours the Homelander panties that started it all. 

However, knowing how perverse he can be with his penetrative vision, helps with not feeling underdressed at any given time.

Homelander takes no note of your internal struggle, instead focusing on his fantasy of what life is meant to look like for the two of you while you start getting dressed.

“Then I could fuck you in the shower for as many hours as my lady wishes, hm?” He gives you a cheeky smile as he passes by, walking out of the bedroom and into the living room.

You laugh heartily at his comment while you pick out your clothes. Normally, you’d keep it cosy and comfortable enough. At least, before Homelander. Now you pick something a little more put together, knowing you’ll be stopping by the Vought tower as part of his plan for the day. 

“Hours seems a bit much. I don’t know if looking like a wet prune is a good look on me.” While you put your clothes on, you look up to see what he’s up to through the open bedroom door. While any other person would entertain themselves by turning the TV on or scrolling on their phone, Homelander just walks around. As if he hasn’t seen this space a thousand times over.

At your response, he turns to you. A bewildered look crosses his face before he lets out a sarcastic chuckle. “Funny.” He readjusts a photo on the wall, making sure it’s perfectly straight. It’s a selfie you took of the two of you on the couch. Not the best quality, but Homelander insisted you make it the centerpiece of the photo wall. “Don’t know about the prune part but wet is easily the best look on you.” He waggles his eyebrows at you. 

“It’s a little silly of you to think otherwise, don’t you think? I know you’re smarter than that.” While some might get easily offended at his words, you’re used to his crass words.

You watch as he points his gloved finger at you while he steps further backwards. 

Finally dressed, you come out of the bedroom, not bothering to shut the door. Homelander walks to the kitchen with you following.

“I just thought you liked it here.” You lean against the small breakfast bar as you watch him open the fridge and take out the jug of whole milk you keep stocked at all times for his sake only. 

He doesn’t bother pouring it out into a glass and neither does he close the fridge while he takes a big gulp, closing his eyes in the moment. Putting the jug down, he licks his lips clean as he opens his eyes. It’s bizarre how strangely erotic he manages to make the whole ritual seem.

“I do,” he says once his eyes are less glazed over and focused back on you. Properly snapping to attention, he acts offended. “Of course I do.” As if you suggested something so horrifying it insulted his very being. “But it would make things a lot easier.”

He takes another indulgent big gulp before closing the jug and putting it back in the fridge, shutting the door with a nudge of his elbow as he walks past.

He makes his way around while you’re still leaning against the breakfast bar. His lips trace the shell of your ear as he settles himself riiight behind you. “Imagine all the fun we’d have, huh?” He tilts his head to place a little kiss on your cheek, very close to your ear.

The timbre of his voice vibrating through your ear just warms you to your core. He still knows how to disarm you so thoroughly. If anything, he happily abuses this little quirk of yours.

“We wouldn’t have to settle for a fucking quickie in the morning.” His arms settle on your hips as he, excruciatingly slowly, drags his hips against your ass. “You know, I very much enjoy a good old breakfast in bed. What do you say? As soon as you move in, I’ll be waking you up with my tongue between your thighs. Now try saying no to that.”

“Nice try. You’ve done that here before.” You try to remain calm and collected but your voice betrays you, coming out in a stutter. While his voice—the sexy, slow tone he abuses anytime he wants to get his way—along with the visuals, is already wetting your fresh panties through and through.

“Hm, but there I wouldn’t have to think about flying back just to make it to a stupid meeting. I’d get plenty more time with you. Think about it. Every break in my schedule I could come back for a kiss and a cuddle. Maybe a little romp with my best girl.”

“Oh so suddenly we’re happy with quickies?” You chuckle breathlessly.

“Well y’know, I’m a busy guy. Gotta work with what I’ve got.”

“Speaking of—shouldn’t you be heading out? You’ve got a busy schedule ahead of you.”

“Alright, okay. I got the message. Think about it though, babe, will you?” Homelander finally allows you to gather yourself as he steps back, not so discreetly adjusting his dick after all that teasing. You constantly wonder where he gets this sky-high sex drive from.

“Sure. I’ll think about it.” You take the moment to walk around the breakfast bar, reaching for a coffee pod to pop into your machine for a quick pick-me-up. With a twist of your wrist you notice the time. “Oh, you should head out now if you don’t want to be late.” 

He slots behind you again, unable to stay away for even a moment. “Let me take you with me?” His arms wrap around your stomach, squeezing softly as he nuzzles his face into the crook of your neck, inhaling the scent of you in between little kisses.

The coffee machine finishes whirring, and with the smell of fresh coffee it breaks you out of the daze.

“Mhmm, then you’ll definitely be late. And I want my coffee. And some breakfast. You go have your meeting, I’ll be there in time for your interview.” 

“Promise?”

“Promise. Kiss goodbye?” You ask for it before he does. Immediately, he turns you around in his arms, trapping you in his hold so he can deliver what he deems an acceptable goodbye kiss. It’s long and deep and were you in public you’d be blushing to the tips of your ears. So much for the little goodbye peck you imagined.

Once Homelander leaves, you take the time to have a quick breakfast before preparing your overnight bag. While Homelander can’t take you to the set of the talk show he’s getting interviewed about his new movie at, he insists you come to his place to watch it live. Afterwards, he’ll be eager to fly back home to spend more time with you, listening to everything you’ve got to say about his appearance.

Entering the Vought tower always leaves you with a level of anxiety in your gut. This isn’t your territory, you don’t feel safe here. Each camera feels like the watchful eye of every stakeholder, observing you walk around freely as if you’ve not been greedily devaluing their best asset. 

You feel like the mistress everyone but the wife knows about. The overseeing eye of Vought management is already unhappy with you as is—Homelander said so himself, unaware or uncaring of the effect that information would have on you. It’s why you’ve started dressing better, trying to appear smart and classy. Worthy. Defending your position by his side.

You like to pretend like you belong. But everyone knows you’d be lost without him in tow.

This isn’t your world.

And it never will be.

Arriving at the penthouse allows you to release the breath you didn’t know you were holding. While Homelander’s space is odd at best and downright unliveable at worst, it’s part of you now. With its impersonal portraits of historical figures or perfect marble statues that make you feel self-conscious each time you undress, the decor leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Who is Vought to not ever allow him peace and quiet from this persona they’ve built for him? It really feels like he only gets to be himself when he’s around you. At home with you.

So why he constantly insists on the idea of you moving into this hellscape permanently confuses you to no end. Sure, your home isn’t luxurious by any means. It’s small and cluttered—less so now you’ve gotten rid of some of the Homelander memorabilia—but it’s comforting, warm, and inviting.

You’ve already gone through the effort of adding some warmth and home to this… space. Blankets and throws, pillows and trinkets that made you think of him. Anything that takes away from the sterile museum-like feel of the place.

Today you have brought a little picture frame. It’s the same photo you saw Homelander adjusting just an hour or so earlier. The print isn’t of great quality and neither is the photo, but he seems particularly fond of it, so you’ve gone ahead to frame this one for him too.

Dropping off your bag on the living room couch, you walk over to the bedroom, swapping out an existing impersonal historical portrait of Abraham Lincoln for the silly selfie of the two of you. You fret around with the positioning until it feels right, running your hand over the frame with an absent smile. The photo lets you forget about the madness of your life; it lets you instead think of the love you share with each other. However fragile it may feel at times.

Your phone rings in your pocket. You fumble around, like you’ve been caught doing something vulnerable and intimate. 

You swipe without looking at the screen properly, pressing the screen to your ear.

“There she is.” 

Something about the way he purrs into the phone melts your anxieties of the day into nothing. While grounding is what you need, his voice goes beyond that. You’re not grounded. Not with him. It feels like you’re flying instead. Lightheaded and full of excited nerves, you can’t escape the heartfelt bright smile lighting up your face.

“Hey baby. Ready for your interview?” 

“Am I ever not? You’ll be watching, right?” He knows you will. The question is rhetorical at best.

“Are you kidding? Of course I am.” You chuckle breathlessly into the phone. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

You make your way to the couch, sprawling across the leather, your phone still against your ear. Something about this makes you so giddy. Here you are in Homelander’s apartment, sitting on his couch with his voice in your ear. It feels like a fairytale.

It doesn’t feel real.

“That’s what I like to hear.”

Ever since Homelander’s discovered your little quirk—which admittedly was clear to him from day one—he’s been more than happy to ramble on and on and on. No matter what it’s about. He likes to have you listen.

“Is she already there?” You change the topic, not wanting to dwell on your inner discomfort for too long.

“Who? My co-star?” he asks with an innocent enough tone.

“Yeah. Her.” You bite your tongue to stop yourself from saying more.

“Careful there, you’re sounding a liiittle jealous.”

This talk show interview centres around Homelander’s new movie, Homelander: Hero’s Heart. The first one in his range that gave him a tangible love interest. His previous movies focused on action, patriotism and Homelander ultimately being the hero that saves the day. Vought are still on a mission to boost numbers in certain demographics—your demographic—so saving the damsel in distress was the logical next step for them.

It wasn’t too obnoxious. Just one on-screen kiss by the end of the movie. But you can’t shake the enormous pit of insecurity at the bottom of your gut anytime you think about them going through all those scenes together. Just how many takes was it really?

Okay, maybe you are a little jealous.

“I’m not. I’m just curious.”

No. You’re being unreasonable. Throughout all of the shooting Homelander came home to you, seeking solace. Seeking familiar and comforting touch. Complaining to you endlessly about the other actors’ poor skills.

Homelander clocked your jealousy early on. With a cheeky grin he prodded and poked, making you lash out and admit to your unsavoury feelings. The verbal conversation usually ended there. Instead, you got your frustration out physically. Night after night, he fucked you into the mattress, proving just where you stand. Until you couldn’t even stand anymore. 

Those nights, he’d sit you in his lap, pushing his thick cock inside you as he held you close. Face to face, chest to chest, he’d grunt and mewl in between kisses. Homelander would revel in your possessiveness of him, getting you to repeat ‘you’re mine’ over and over again. You’d rarely do any of the moving. Homelander liked taking it in his own hands in these moments. He’d wrap his hands around your hips, squeezing where he could reach, bouncing you with deliberate movements down onto his lap.

Logically, you know Homelander wouldn’t cheat on you with a random actress. But it’s hard not to compare yourself to her. She’s another gorgeous face amongst the constant stream of supes, actresses, models or celebrities he has instant access to. And you’re… well, you. The fact that he chose you out of the mix should leave you with some sense of relief, but it doesn’t. 

“Mhm, sure you are. As luck would have it, she couldn’t make it. Real shame, huh?” Homelander can be surprisingly sweet sometimes. To his credit, it was never his actions that made you jealous. Your own insecurity latched onto rotten ideas, spreading like mold across your healthy mind. 

Homelander plays into your possessiveness of him, more than eager to hear how much you love and want him. Only him. 

It makes you wonder if he had something to do with his co-star’s absence. 

“You know women are gonna go crazy over you after this. I’m sure they’re all waiting for you to spill some crazy stories about being a romantic on and off set.”

“Are they now? You know, I really don’t fucking care what they want to hear. I don’t care about them. I care about you.” 

There's a desperation to his response that catches you off guard. It's impossible to deny him the adoration he wordlessly requests.

“Oh. That’s—Ahah—I care about you too. You know I always love to watch you.”

“Good. Good. I want you to watch. I want you to listen... You’ll do that right? You’ll listen—”

“—to every word. To every single word.” The breathless quality to your tone shocks you.

It makes Homelander moan.

When did you both get so worked up over this?

“Good—fuck. Always such a good girl, aren't you? My biggest fan.”

“Not just a fan.” You huff out. You’re not offended per se, but after seeing what other so-called-fans say about him online or how little love they share with him, it would be an insult to label you as one of them.

“Pfft—of course you're not.” He scoffs in disbelief. Even he doesn’t believe his own words. “You are everything. You're everything to me.” 

Your eyes widen. Your heart pounds against your ribcage. The unashamed proclamation said so clearly by the strongest man in the world makes you pulse and clench.

You're not worthy of being his all.

It leaves you speechless. Over the past few weeks your mind has started waging war with your heart. Oddly, today feels like the final battle of which will win.

Your body is nearly shaking. The palm holding your phone feels clammy. You try to get comfortable, but you’d only achieve that by clawing out of your own skin. Something feels different—wrong—about today.

“Helloooo, don't go quiet on me now.” There's a new, dangerous tilt to his already deliciously rumbling voice that makes you soak your underwear. 

“Sorry… I just—you’re so—I just… I love you so much.” You trip over your words. Something you’ve said so many times feels oddly loaded.

“D’aww, how cute. That’s better.” With an audible swallow, you slide your hand down your body. Pressing into your flesh through your clothes as you go, trying to pretend it isn't your hand exploring your own body.

You imagine it’s his. Following the route it has done so many times before.

You ache with the need to be touched and filled and worshipped. Your cunt throbs painfully under your layers, soaked and weeping. Even the slight press of your fingers feels electric. Too little and too much at the same time.

You swallow the saliva that’s gathered on your tongue. You scrunch your eyebrows when you roll your hips into your hand, a gasp coming out involuntarily.

“I can hear you. Do it.”

“Y-you can?!”

This brings you back to the first phone call that kick started this whole relationship. Back then, you had some courtesy to not touch yourself to the sound of his voice. You’ve lost all that courtesy by now, but the reveal that he could hear you all along makes you embarrassed for your past self.

You undo the fastening on your bottoms with a shaky hand. Your hand immediately slides under your layers, into your panties, with your fingers already forming a familiar shape. Your eyes roll back when your fingers glide along your inner lips, gathering slick and bumping your clit where your fingers meet. You repeat this motion a few times, thoroughly wetting your pussy, letting your head hit the armrest like a deadweight, your phone still loosely tucked against your ear.

“Jesus Christ, listen to yourself. Might have to move into the bathtub before you flood my couch, you know.” 

“Not like you actually care.” You huff out half a laugh, barely coherent with your slurred speech. 

“No you’re right, I don’t. Now spread your legs for me, gorgeous, I want you to put your fingers in.” 

You nod as if he could see you—though for all you know, maybe he can.

You push your bottoms down far enough that they won’t be in the way. Adjusting yourself on the couch, you curl your fingertips inside yourself with a little wiggle, letting out a sigh. Like this, you’re definitely gonna make the couch wet.

“Feel good?” While he purrs low, you hear the sharp grin in his tone.

You hum softly as you focus on moving your fingers in and out. “Not as good as when you do it. Actually, hah, it doesn’t compare at all.” You’re not even trying to butter up his ego before his live appearance. He’s just that good to you.

“That’s the sp—fuck—spirit.” 

Having been with your lover many times, the familiarity of that stifled whimper leaves you gasping. You don’t need super hearing to know that Homelander’s wrapped his own hand around his cock. You’ve come to memorise and categorise all the pretty little sounds he makes.

You don’t even remember hearing him unclasp his belt, too lost in your own pleasure. 

“Are you…?” 

Through the phone comes a clipped exhale. “—Yes.” The rough, rhythmic stroking now becomes audible to even your human ears. Your cheeks feel hot. The sensation climbs up all the way to the tips of your ears.

“Oh. That’s really sexy.” You whimper, melting into the sofa as you spread your legs as far as the garment you pushed down allows. “Aren’t—aren’t you worried about someone walking in?” You alternate between rubbing your clit and fingering yourself as a way to make your body tingle all over.

The response you get is a barely restrained moan straight in your ear. His voice trails off into a sweet rumbly groan that has your fingers rubbing faster.

“Don’t care. You make me feel fucking crazy.” 

How is it that you have such an effect on him? From morning till night, he never seems to have enough. Before Homelander you were racking up two—three at most, really—self-love sessions a week. These days you’re lucky if you only end up with two a day. The resolve in his proclamation brings back some of the confidence today has been slowly chipping away at.

Plus, his absurd words make you snicker.

“I make you feel crazy?” Your voice is all breathy. With each moan in your ear, your own touch feels electric. Your fingers stick to rubbing your clit: circles that started slow, teasing and loose are now tight and fast, nearing on too strong a stimulation. 

“Uh-huh.” He’s barely responding at this point, but you don’t mind. 

“Mhm, really? You’re so good to me, you know that?” Knowing Homelander is there in his guest dressing room of the host’s set, fisting his sensitive cock raw because of you, makes your head spin. The gratification that fills you with is intoxicating. Drunk on the power you have in your hands, you change up the pace, rubbing your clit more languidly, taking your time to instead sweet talk your boyfriend into blowing his load into his underwear right before his interview.

“They don't deserve you.”

“You do so much for the world.”

“They never appreciate how much of an honour it is to have you serve them.”

“You’re so perfect.”

The combination of Homelander’s signature stuttered groan and the rustling of fabrics tells you your words are all it’s taken for him to finish. 

“Wow, what a show, superstar on and off the stage,” you tease him a little. You hear the familiar click of a belt come through the phone.

“Smartass. Speaking of, I gotta be on set in a few. But what kind of boyfriend would I be if I left you hanging like that. Need to hear my best girl cum her brains out on the other side.” 

“Don’t be silly, you’ve got to go live in a few.”

“Then you better hurry up.” He laughs airily. The orgasmic high makes him exude even more of this strange energy. “Don’t think I haven’t heard you going pretty crazy over there. Doubt it’s gonna take you long anyway. Never does when I’m talking to you, hm?”

“Oh my god.” You exhale, your hand back at full speed. You dig your feet into the couch, pushing against it as you stroke your clit faster, your hips meeting your hand firmly, accelerating your climb to ecstasy.

“Mhm, that’s right. That what I am to you, honey? Your god?”

“Y-yes… yes, you are.” Your lips are shut tight when you’re not talking, breathing heavily through your nose as you feel the warmth spread throughout your body. From your core, to your chest, to your limbs. You start to feel the tips of your toes tingle with the electric sensation.

Somehow, he always manages to make your body feel sensitive all over. Even indirectly.

“Gonna listen to me live like it’s gospel, aren’t you? Listen to eeevery word I say. Wouldn’t be surprised if you used to constantly fuck your brains out while watching me. What’s that, got nothing to say?”

You really have nothing to say. While he clearly knows it, it's embarrassing to admit to something you may have occasionally indulged in before he became a tangible part of your life.

It doesn’t stop you from whimpering as you feel the tethers loosen. 

“Come on baby, time’s ticking. You better come for me now—” 

You hear barely audible knocking at his door. The line picks up a foreign muted tone, but you’re not really processing it. Your orgasm takes over and you stutter out a choked gasp, heels pushing into the couch before they fully relax into the leather, the tingling waves of your orgasm spreading to all your limbs.

“Mhm, I’ll be a minute.” His voice sounds further away, like he’s covered the phone and moved it away from his ear while he talks back.

In retrospect, the shame of orgasming on the phone to him while he’s talking to someone else should’ve stopped you from getting there, but it’s him you’re talking about. It’s hard to restrain yourself.

“See, I knew you could do it. Now go put yourself together, missy. I want you to pay attention.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah, I will… Just—hah—gotta catch my breath a little bit. I will, I’m excited to see you.”

“Good girl. I love you, alright? I’ll see you soon.”

“I love you too.” You smile fondly.

Homelander ends the phone call and you take a moment to gather yourself. You breathe in deeply. The first big exhale lets you release some of the muscle tension you’ve gained as you hurriedly brought yourself to orgasm.

As you pull your now uncomfortably soaked underwear and bottoms back on, the next inhale brings the tension back in a different way. 

All your nagging thoughts return like a flood, crashing through you. Your gut churns, the anxious feeling of it all souring your post-orgasmic high. Is there even more you bring to this “relationship” besides sex?

Shaking your head to clear your thoughts, you get up off the couch to clean up and make yourself presentable in the bathroom. While nobody is here to see you, you feel dirty sitting in your wet and cooled underwear. You swap it for a fresh pair from your overnight bag, tossing the old ones in the laundry hamper.

Sitting comfortably on the couch in your den of pillows and blankets is a familiar enough routine. Due to your secretive relationship status, Homelander can’t take you with him. You watch from the safety of yours or his home, watching your favourite hero live on TV.

You click the remote to the channel Homelander’s talk show appearance will be broadcasted on and wait until the time they’re live with some pointless scrolling on your phone. You can’t help but gravitate towards the Homelander-centric gossip pages, Instagram fan accounts or Reddit forums. Each time relieved that there’s still no information on you. Nobody is none the wiser.

The TV speakers burst with the audience’s roar of applause, tearing your eyes up and away from your phone. You smile at the support he gets. Though it turns ugly and cracks very quickly. Some possessive part of you wishes you were there backstage cheering him on as he walks on set in front of all these people.

Homelander oozes confidence with every sure step. This is his element. Big bright smiles and a quick broad wave to the audience you don’t see. He looks handsome. Hair parted slightly, loose and charming, just like his smile. He’s calm and collected. Definitely not like someone who was just getting his rocks off a few minutes ago.

He brings the smile back all the way to your eyes. All sour thoughts dissipate when you see him like this. It’s not fair to feel awful when it’s time for him to have his moment. You know better than that.

While there’s hardly a need for it, he’s introduced to the audience. 

“Homelander, welcome, thank you for joining us.” 

“Always good to be here, thank you for having me.”

Homelander’s seated and the interview begins. So unlike any of the other usual guests he takes up the majority of the space with his larger-than-life quality. So much more suited for something better than this.

“I’m sure all the ladies are very excited for the movie’s opening weekend.” 

“Great start.” You roll your eyes as the audience cheers  and whistles again. Nothing like objectifying him the moment he walks into the room.

“It’s what I’m—well, what we’re all hoping for, it’s a wild ride. I can promise you that much.” While your lover is a little snarkier behind the scenes, he’s a class act in front of the cameras. You’re always proud to see him do so well.

“Well that’s a glowing review if I’ve ever heard one! We all enjoy a love story. Let’s not be modest here, you’ve been voted The superhero heartthrob. It’s no wonder this movie is already pulling record sales at the box office.” The interviewer speaks into the side of her palm, acting secretive as if each word wasn’t clearly picked up by the lav mic.

“Oh stop it, that silly thing.” He brushes the compliment off, shrugging his shoulders boyishly. 

“No seriously, I think this is exactly what the audience wanted. We all love a superhero flick, don’t we, folks? But the little touch of spice and romance? Instant crowd pleaser. Tickets are selling like hotcakes!” 

“Insipid cow.” You can’t help yourself but comment on the over the top vapid glazing happening right before your eyes. Muttering obscenities to yourself you miss Homelander’s response and only vaguely take in the following mindless chatter in its entirety.

They treat him like a circus animal. 

“Who’s your favourite cast member to do scenes with?”

“What is it like to juggle acting with protecting the city?”

“What’s your guilty pleasure when you’re off duty?”

One mundane—pointless—question after another makes you wonder how he puts up with the pomp and phoniness of it all. You know you couldn’t. You even imagine yourself sitting next to him. You see the difference. You see how differently the world would see you.

As soon as you started thinking of the labels the world would describe you with, you couldn’t help yourself but compare the two. Him; popular, handsome, loveable, patriotic. A true ray of sunshine. You on the other hand? You already envision the headlines. Nobody. Golddigger. Leech. Attention seeker. Maybe even a thief?

You’ve stolen America’s perfect poster boy and the penalty for said crime is the heaviest guilty conscience. 

There he is talking about his latest save of the week. His movie premiere and his day to day crime fighting activities. You can’t help but compare yourself to the woman interviewing him. She looks well presented, put together, classy. You never feel that way. Do thieves and criminals even get to feel classy?

It’s clear to you now that you don’t belong. It’s clear to everyone. Is it not? He must see it too. It’s only a matter of time until he realises that he’s trying to force you into a mold you were simply not born to fit into.

You often wonder how long until Homelander decides to move on.

The next line of questioning that catches you out of your doom spiral.

“Let’s circle back to the start. It’s a shame your co-star couldn’t make it today. What was it like to work with her as your love interest?”

Your ears perk up. Until now Homelander has never squashed the rumours of their supposed fling. You’re not entirely sure if it was due to Vought’s ruling or his own sick enjoyment derived from your jealousy.

“Oh well, she’s lovely. Things were kept very professional. She’s a very talented young woman, it was a pleasure to work alongside her. She got on well with everyone on the team, a real star. The main cast is usually made up of our superhero line-up, so she exceeded my expectations. Especially since I was a little wary myself of the change.” 

You can’t sit still, fidgeting in your spot, you run your tongue in between your teeth when you’re not nervously biting the inside of your cheek.

“Sooo all the rumours we’ve heard about a little behind the scenes romance are not true?” 

“No. Definitely not. Sorry. We all got on very well, but not that well if you catch my drift.” The mic catches the sound of the audience’s synchronized ‘ooh’ and you clench your fists.

He’s yours. You hate how they all think of him.

“Well you can’t blame the rumours. People are eager to see their favourite hero in love. It’s the first time Vought has released a love interest-themed movie. Why the change?”

“Well you tend to see us saving your homes and neighbourhoods. I think Vought wanted to show everyone that at the end of the day we go home and hang up the capes. We’re people too.”

You remember the evening he was whining to you about his premiere talking points. This one sounds awfully familiar.

“Do you? Hang up the cape?” The interviewer has a twinkle in her eyes like she hasn’t before. She clearly thinks that she’s getting the scoop of the year.

“Sometimes, when the time’s right. The city’s protection comes as the utmost priority but I have some downtime.”

He does. 

With you. 

Something that’s always felt exhilarating about this was the secrecy to it all. Knowing Homelander comes home to you. You’re the one you know he’s making hints to. You’re the one who’s going to praise him for a job well done once he’s back.

That has always felt good. Right?

So when did this excitement turn to dread?

“Could you share what you do in your spare time?”

“Well then you’d know where to look for me. Some things are better kept quiet.”

“Ooh a secret! Don’t we love a mysterious man, ladies?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, shut up already.” You groan hitting the couch cushion with the back of your head in frustration. This crowd flirting is getting old real fast.

“You make it sound a whole lot more exciting than it is. I just like to find my peace.” 

“That begs the next question. It’s been a few years since your last relationship. So after this movie everyone’s asking, are you looking to find your peace with a certain lucky someone? And what can the ladies do to get your attention?”

You straighten up from your lazy lounging. Feet on the ground with your elbows on your knees you intertwine your fingers and lean forward. You don’t remember him preparing for this conversation.

“First of all I’d like to say thank you to all the lovely ladies who have reached out to me or those who have written me a very sweet letter—I have read them all, don’t worry.” Homelander sends the camera a cheeky wink. Even in your tension you can’t help but chuckle at the blatant lie.

“But unfortunately for them, I am already in love. There’s a scoop for you.” He tilts his head towards the interviewer with a knowing smirk. There’s a mix of ‘ooh’ and gasps in the audience followed by applause.

Your eyes widen, jaw dropping and you barely get a gasp out. What the fuck is going on?

“Oh? Well isn’t that exciting! Who’s the lucky lady?” Scoop indeed. The interviewer is grinning ear to ear, knowing her live viewership is skyrocketing. Like it’s all a game. Like this isn’t your fucking life.

“I can’t say yet. But I know deep in my heart that she’s the one.”

“The one! Well well ladies, it’s time to pack your bags. Sounds like we’ll be seeing a massive rise in the sales of the vanilla Homelander-approved ice cream to soothe all the heartbreak you’ve just caused.” 

You can’t focus on anything they’re saying. Your heart is racing. The panic is quickly trying to take over. But you take a deep breath. Maybe he’s messing around. Maybe it’s some Vought initiative. Maybe it’s another fake PR relationship he hasn’t told you about? However much that would hurt. 

“So tell us everything you can. How long have you known each other? How did you meet?”

“We met a little under a year ago. One crazy encounter sprinkled with pure luck brought us together. But some details I will keep for myself. We’ve been keeping out of the public eye. My sweet love bunny is a little camera shy. And I get it, I’m a famous guy. Our love wouldn’t have had the privacy and time to bloom if we were public from the get go.”

No. Nonono. This can’t be happening.

“I think I just heard the entire country go ‘aww’. How romantic! Will you be coming public now?”

“Yes. It’s about time I shared her with the world. I’ve been selfishly keeping her to myself. But I really can’t wait for you all to meet her.” 

Homelander winks at the camera and you know damn well it’s not meant for the audience.

“Fuck.”

Taglist (you can add yourself to be tagged when I post a new Homelander fic)

@ker0senebunny @itsvaleriesucka @thychuvaluswife

@nervoussystemss @littlegaaby @natliecole @sing1art

@infinetlyforgotten @rafecamsgirlll @hom3landr @mrsdesade

@nommingonfood @jokesonyoupup @chaimshelii @gingeraleluke

[alltimecharlo]

you know how the captain's WAG is basically captain of the WAGs and welcomes all the new ones and plans everything? Will was meant to be a captain's WAG. He's a social butterfly. He loves organizing events and other people's schedules. He's always down to babysit on short notice. He's even good for fashion emergencies. could we please get a little story about this?

anon, i jumped to write this!!! you’re soooo right, will’s traits definitely lend him to being the most amazing hockey wag!! fic under the cut :)🩵

Will knows he’s not technically a WAG. Well, okay. He is a WAG—he’s Mack’s partner, he comes to every home game, he plans every single holiday dinner for the team, he’s in three different group chats with the other spouses and long-term partners, and he has a color-coded Google calendar that half the WAGs have access to. But he’s not just a WAG. He’s the WAG.

Mack actually calls him ‘Captain WAG’. Will pretends to hate it.

It starts somewhere between the first team BBQ he organized and the third time he babysat the Wennbergs’ toddler during practice. From there, it just became his job. Officially unofficial. New people arrive, Will welcomes them. Birthdays, game-day boxes, charity events, group workouts, spa mornings, custom playoff jackets? Will’s got it handled. He thrives on it.

And honestly, the best part is when it’s a surprise. Like today.

Will's halfway through reorganizing the partner group chat’s pinned messages when Mack texts from the rink:

Hey. Ferris said his partner might come next game. Just to let you know.

Will smiles, already switching over to the spreadsheet he keeps. He hasn’t met Ferris’ partner yet. New addition. Exciting.

He replies:

Love that. What’s her name? I’ll reach out.

A pause. Then another message:

Oh apparently his name is Lucas.

Will grins so wide his cheeks ache. He practically dances to the kitchen where his laptop is open and starts typing a welcome message to Ferris to pass on. He knows exactly how much it can matter to feel like you don’t have to explain anything.

That night, he recounts it all to Mack over dinner, still beaming. "He was so nervous to say it, like I was gonna freak out or something. I just wanna make sure they know it’s chill. I told him Lucas can sit with us at the game if he wants."

Mack lifts his brows, amused, but there’s this look in his eye. The one that always makes Will feel a little warm all over.

"You love this shit," Mack says, fond. "You were born to be a captain's WAG."

Will rolls his eyes. "You're lucky I like you."

"Lucky doesn't even begin to cover it," Mack says, voice softer now. He brushes Will's hair back gently with his fingers, eyes drinking him in like he can’t believe he gets to keep doing this. "I always worry I take up too much space—too much of our life—with hockey stuff. But seeing you love this part of it too..."

He leans in, presses a kiss to Will’s temple, lingering. "I can’t even explain how much that means to me."

Will lets himself melt into it, smiling still, because he really is exactly where he's meant to be.

♡

[lixiesfreckless]

Drive | l. m.

an epilogue to Punch It, a fic from the PICU

➸ synopsis: "I forgot why I stuck with the sport in the first place.”

His hand reached over the gear shift, sliding his palm into your free one before intertwining your fingers.

“Racing with you though...I think I’m finally starting to remember.”

➸ starring: lee minho x reader

➸ word count: 4k

➸ general content: street racer!minho, established relationship, very slight Cars reference, playing twister in a car

➸ warnings: explicit sexual content(MINORS DNI), car sex, piv(wrap it before you tap it), switch!minho(rare sighting indeed), praise

➸ rating: TV-MA

➸ author’s note: this is at least 3 years old, but it's just a DLC for anyone who loves these characters as much as I do <3(also my writing style has changed so much since then, in a good way)

“Ah, a cliff,” Minho chuckled, peering over the edge before turning to you with a knowing look on his face. “I think I can see where this is going-”

“Relax. If I wanted you dead I would have killed you months ago.”

You stepped up next to Minho, pointing somewhere over the cloud of dust that the car brought to the view. Through the brown haze, he could make out a path, or rather, a track, one that hadn’t been used in years. The turns were overgrown with brambles and weeds of every kind, attempting to reclaim the terrain in between the tires wearing them down every so often.

“Behold,” you yelled rather dramatically, throwing your arms out in front of Minho, “the place where I learned to race!”

“You learned on a dirt track?” He scoffed, looking at you in shock. You however, nodded proudly, reminiscing all the times you had run off the road while attempting to drift.

“My dad taught me to drift here,” you laughed, looking over the field, “he knew I couldn’t really destroy anything out here, and boy was I a reckless driver…”

“Do you visit here often?”

“Not anymore...in fact the last time I came here was…” you paused, furrowing your brows as you searched your brain for an answer. “Actually, the last time I came here was right before we started dating.”

“What? Why?” He laughed, crossing his arms. “I can’t imagine you came out here to practice…”

“No no, I just came out here to talk to my dad.”

“Does he come here often?”

It was at this point that you realized you had backed yourself into a corner, because the topic of your father wasn’t necessarily a light one, and truthfully the reason you went to talk to him was for advice concerning the driver you were currently dating. But Minho didn’t know that, nor did he need to know.

“My dad…” you stared wistfully over the racetrack. Memories of summer days spent in cars, with the radio blasting and the windows down came surging towards the front of your memory, but before they could do any damage, you swallowed them all and put on a blank face.

“My dad died in a car accident when I was eighteen.”

Minho’s head fell, instantly regretting that he pushed the topic further.

“Y/n...I-”

“It’s okay, really,” you whispered, giving him a weak smile. “You didn’t know.”

“I come here sometimes to talk to him, because it’s where I feel closest to him…” you explained, heat rising to your cheeks. “That sounds really corny-”

“No no—it's endearing,” he reassured you, before his face changed to one of concern.

He pondered for a moment, running his hands through his hair.

"How did you get behind the wheel after the accident?"

“I didn’t.”

Shocked, Minho slowly nodded his head in silent understanding, waiting for you to continue.

“I didn’t drive for almost a year, actually,” you chuckled bitterly, kicking a rock off the cliff face. “I resented cars, biked to work, barely hung out with friends…that was probably the worst year of my life.”

“Well hey, at least your carbon footprint went down-”

You shot him a glare, and he nervously chuckled an apology before asking you a question.

“So if you hated driving so much...how did you get to be a street racer?”

“I didn’t hate driving,” you whispered. “I was scared of it.”

For someone like you to be scared of driving, Minho almost couldn’t believe it. You were the most fearless driver he met; or at least, that was what he deduced after that fateful duel from months ago. Aside from that, you didn’t seem to be scared of anything, especially not Minho.

“But my dad, he loved cars, almost as much as he loved me probably,” you laughed, walking back towards Minho’s car. “To stop driving was to stop surrounding myself with the one thing that constantly reminded me of him.”

“So what you just...stopped being afraid of cars?”

“Not exactly,” you said, leaning against the hood. “It was really slow trying to get back into it, but then I met Changbin and the rest of the gang, and seeing them drive…” you looked up to the sky, and Minho could see the tears that you were holding back as you smiled, “it made me feel like he never left.”

Minho wasn’t entirely sure of how to comfort you, but he threw caution to the wind and embraced you in a hug, toned arms and cologne enveloping you almost immediately. And for a moment, you were glad that he couldn’t see how easily the tears fell from your eyes once he did that. It almost made you fall for him more, seeing how caring he was when he wanted to be. He didn’t even let you go until you gently pressed on his sweater vest.

“Your dad would be thrilled to know how good of a driver you are now,” he whispered as he pulled away, smiling. “I heard you're the best in the city.”

“Stop it,” you laughed, punching his arm. That sparkle that returned to your eyes made him feel at ease again, thankful that he could bring any sort of ease to you before the air grew quiet again.

“I know a lot of drivers,” you began, leaning off of the hood, “a lot of them drive just to get to places, some drive for the adrenaline rush, or money, or fame, or to ‘be the best’,” you glanced at him playfully, to which he feigned offense.

“For me...I drive to keep the memory of my dad alive.”

For Minho, it was moments like these that made it hard to pinpoint when exactly you had started backing your way into his heart. The ridiculously cocky girl that he met months ago he had come to realize was only a facade, for underneath all of the snarky remarks and banter was a girl that cared deeply for the people she loved. From staying up late with Yeji so she wasn’t alone when she worked on her car, to giving him lessons on drifting, Minho found that to him, you were more than just a rival.

And he was lucky that you even felt the same way.

He could feel his heart beat faster as you made your way inside his car, and he knew it wasn’t from the rush that driving gave him.

“Hey I don’t think I’ve ever asked,” you spoke up, watching Minho land in the driver's seat, “why did you start street racing?”

“Well,” he began, slumping against the leather seat, “I mean I was a professional racer for a minute but, to tell you the truth, I started because I lost a bet.”

Your mouth fell open, not viewing Minho as the type to gamble, but you let him continue.

“I won’t bore you with the details, but I owed someone money, and I knew of some people that did street racing for cash prizes...one thing led to another and I was able to pay the guy back, but not before I was hooked on the sport.”

He looked to you, who had a hand over your mouth to stop yourself from laughing at the absurdity of his backstory, but he only gave you an eye roll before continuing.

“At first I loved it, but I started to get obsessed with numbers and time trials and being the best, and I forgot why I stuck with the sport in the first place.”

His hand reached over the gear shift, sliding his palm into your free one before intertwining your fingers.

“Racing with you though...I think I’m finally starting to remember.”

The car fell silent for a moment, Minho staring deep into your eyes, and you tried your best to keep a straight face, but it was useless. You burst out laughing, ruining the atmosphere, and Minho sighed loudly, pretending to be annoyed.

“Too cheesy?”

“Absolutely,” you snorted, folding yourself in half from the laughter.

“But y/n,” he cooed, leaning over the center console to pull you over to him, “you make my heart race-”

“Gross, get away from me!”

Any bystanders would have thought that two little kids were occupying the front seats of an expensive car with the way you two were now wrestling, limbs flying about and squeals leaving your mouth every other second. Finally, you pushed his arms back far enough over the middle aisle to ensure that he couldn’t tickle you, giggling madly at his little frustrated pout.

However your giggling was abruptly cut short by Minho’s lips on yours, and while being silenced wasn’t your favorite pastime, you had to admit that this was probably your favorite way of being shut up.

Not that you’d allowed anyone else to do that other than him.

His fingers reached over the center console to cradle your jaw, and a dizzying jolt of excitement seemed to shock you where they met your skin. Rather than melting you, that set your skin ablaze, and suddenly you were pressing onto his mouth with equal force, earning a satisfied sigh from him as he tilted your head slightly. The space between you two was diminishing, but not as quickly as your impatient self would have liked, and as he pulled away you had to stop yourself from chasing after his lips.

He held a fiery gaze at bay with a look of mild amusement, a little surprised at how quickly you were unraveling for him, but before he could say something snarky, you took matters into your own hands.

Clambering over the seat, you braced yourself on various parts of the car interior before situating yourself on Minho’s lap, trying not to laugh at Minho’s failed attempt at an unaffected look towards your suggestive actions.

You made a quick mental note that he liked being straddled, but before you could waste any more time, his electrifying fingers held your chin, pulling your lips back into a gentle kiss.

Your hands landed on his chest, and you took this opportunity to slide them up to his neck, slowly feeling every ridge of him through his sweater vest. He couldn’t conceal the smirk that appeared once he picked up on what you were doing, and in return he bit your lip playfully, as if to tell you to behave.

Your growing impatience had no intentions of doing that, however.

Needless, to say, his lip biting only spurred you on, and you returned the favor with a few open-mouthed kisses along his jawline, watching how his eyes fluttered closed in silent delight as he sighed. At last, he quit being shy and let his hands wander downwards, resting on your waist as you leaned farther into him.

When his lips found yours again, the kiss that resumed was more intense than the previous ones, and you were sure that your heartbeat was matching his rapid pulse under your fingertips. Hushed gasps replaced the chaste giggles from moments before, and you wanted to push him a bit further; sliding your hands along his bare shoulders in an attempt to free him of the crisp white button down that was loosely hanging off of his frame.

He pulled away momentarily, shrugging the sleeves off of his arms and breaking the kiss to get his wrists past the cuffs, then swiftly tossing the shirt against the passenger side window before turning back to you.

Something about the way you hovered over him, face flushed and lips swollen, made him lose all resolve and snap beneath you, pulling you flush into his chest with one arm around your back while the other slid into your hair, gently tugging at the strands as his tongue slid inside your mouth. Your body turned to mush, making you grateful that Minho’s sweater vest was still between the two of you for you to ball up in your fists, clutching onto him like you were clutching onto your sanity.

You shifted in his lap, liking the closeness but not entirely comfortable with your positioning and in doing so, Minho inhaled a sharp breath, breaking the kiss. Panicking for a moment, you thought you might have hurt him, but it was quite the opposite, and upon realizing this you glanced down to see that his pants weren’t looking too comfortable either.

“Sorry,” he winced, not meeting your eyes in fear of the knowing look you would have on your face. “We should probably-”

You cut him off, leaning in to capture his lips in a slow, passionate kiss, laced with a small but noticeable hint of desire, and when you pulled away you were met with a flushed Minho, clearly trying to ignore the way you were sitting on top of him.

“...move to the backseat?” you answered, waiting for him to get the memo.

“Wait...here? You want to do this here?” he whispered, eyebrows furrowing in shock.

“You don’t?”

“I do! I just thought that I would be moving too fast for you and-” you brought a finger to his lips, tilting your head in amusement.

“Moving too fast? For me?”

You watched as his face turned from one of concern to one of annoyance, and you giggled mischievously as he rolled his eyes, huffing slightly.

“I…I was trying to be considerate and here you are, making fun of me…”

“I do appreciate your concern,” you responded playfully, pulling at the strings at his neckline, “however…”

You shifted your hips once more, this time intentionally grinding yourself against him as he trapped his bottom lip between his teeth, and before he could grip you any tighter, he reached over to the door handle.

“Get in the backseat.”

Probably a little too excitedly, you hopped out of the car and into the backseat, kicking off your shoes as Minho put the key into the ignition and rolled up the windows, as well as turned on the air conditioning to combat the heated atmosphere inside the car. He followed after you, closing the driver’s door and jumping in next to you, just barely closing the door behind him as you threw your arms around his neck.

Neither of you could tell if he was pushing you down more or if you were pulling him; either way you two were level with the seat cushions in seconds, frenzied hands doing everything they could to feel the other’s skin under their fingertips. Minho’s sweater vest flew off first, him tugging it off quickly to stop you from stretching the knit to shreds in your desperation.

Your shirt was next to follow, Minho’s teasing finally coming to a halt for him to whisper “off” as he tugged at the hem of your shirt, and you both momentarily sat up for him to pull the shirt over your head and onto the floor. The break from contact was only for a moment though, Minho pushing you back down to litter hot kisses across your now exposed collarbones. You gasped involuntarily, squirming from the light suction as your hands fumbled with his belt, finding the metal buckle a bit too complicated for your lust clouded mind.

“In my...back pocket,” Minho whispered, resting on his elbows to lean against you, “grab my wallet.” His focus went back to moving his lips along your neck, occasionally letting his teeth nip against the skin as you whimpered, hands sliding down his back to the edge of his pants. His leather wallet poked out from the left side, and you took it, looking for a particular foil square. Needy as you were, you weren’t completely delusional.

As soon as you found it, he sat up against the seat, finally allowing you room to breathe as he quickly undid his belt, and your brain started working again, telling you to rid yourself of the shorts caging your arousal. The denim disappeared in seconds, and you looked up to see Minho pulling down his pants and boxers in one go, wincing slightly as his hard red length sprang up against his abdomen. The sight of it throbbing had your core clenching in anticipation, and you could do nothing but wish that Minho would put the condom on faster, or better yet; do it yourself.

Almost painfully slow, he slid the rubber on, but as soon as he looked to you to cage you between his arms again, you ditched your underwear and stretched a leg over his thighs, straddling him once again. An eyebrow raised in pleasant surprise, hands hovering over your hips cautiously, but a hurried nod was all it took for him to hold you tightly, waiting for you to begin your descent.

Just like the rest of him, his shoulders felt firm under your palms, and you buried your head at the junction of his neck and shoulder as your entrance pressed against his tip. A silent gasp was shared between the both of you as you slowly enveloped him in your tight heat, followed by a low rumble from his chest. Whimpering slightly, your fingers dug into his hot skin as you adjusted to his size.

“...Do you want any help?” He whispered, and you slowly pushed yourself away from his chest. The burning desire to move was blazing inside your core, so you shook your head, figuring your own desperation would fuel your stamina for now. His hands slipped upwards to rest on your waist as his head leaned back against the headrest, bracing himself for your movements.

With a small raise of your hips, it felt like flames of pleasure were licking your every corner, and a small moan threatened to escape your throat from the friction. Minho was holding back too, for whatever reason, but you didn’t miss the slight groan that vibrated in his chest, or the way his fingertips pressed into the flesh of your sides a bit harder.

Sinking back onto him made your mind fuzzy; the only thing you could think about was how much you needed to do that again, and again, and with nothing in the way of that, you created a pace that was somehow too much but also not enough, for either of you. Your chest burned with the need to vocalize every time you sank down, while Minho had resorted to leaving the space between you full of shallow breaths, thick with the desire to meet you halfway into every movement.

The way that he was filling you up was more than satisfactory, and to keep your mind somewhat grounded, you leaned down and connected your lips again, electric kisses distracting you from the delicious burning sensation below.

Minho was not having it however; he wanted to hear you, so he distracted you with his mouth in other ways.

Moving away from your mouth, he kissed up your jawline, over to your ear, which you would quickly realize was extremely sensitive to Minho’s hot breath against it. And definitely more sensitive to his voice, in this particular situation.

“Y/n,” he whispered, pressing a kiss just below your earlobe, “can you go faster for me?”

You must have clenched around him hard at that, because his breath hitched in his throat, stifling what would have been a moan as you picked up the pace.

“That’s it...that's my girl,” he almost moaned, tipping his head back as his hands slid up to hook around your shoulders. His hips started to jut up into you, and that combined with his arms pulling you down further every time your hips met was slowly turning you into a whining mess.

The sounds of your bodies meshing together was the dominant sound in the car, aside from Minho’s breathless pants and your endless whimpers, and the sun was far below the horizon now, long shadows finally disappearing and blending into the darkness inside the vehicle. The car was starting to rock back and forth in time with your movements, and the aching need for release was building just as fast as your stamina was diminishing; Minho noticed how you clung to his bare shoulders, signaling that you couldn’t keep up for much longer.

“I...can’t–” you sputtered out, your body close to giving out in the exhaustion and overstimulation of it all. Minho stilled your movements, pulling you off of him as both arms wrapped around your back.

“Slow down sweetheart, I’ve got you…” he whispered, laying you back onto the seat. He hovered over you, guiding himself back into your entrance before resuming a much slower pace, one that made you feel his every ridge, and in a sense this was slightly worse compared to riding him, because you could feel your orgasm approaching with the slowness of a bullet train.

For Minho, it was becoming increasingly difficult to not just drive himself inside you until you screamed his name, but he could save that for later, for now he thrusted inside you with a slow deliberation, and he relished in the way your nails clawed at his arms.

You felt like you could barely keep your eyes open, but when you could, it was a sight to behold. His honey skin was just barely caught in the remnants of the sunset, beads of sweat rolling down his neck and sticking to the various necklaces he was wearing, or dampening his beep brown hair. His face and neck were tinted with a slight glow of red, as well as his lips, which you were only to catch a glimpse of before he dipped down to taste the skin of your chest.

His hand slipped under you momentarily to unclasp your bra, and you just barely helped him slip it off your shoulders, dropping it on the floor beside you. His lips then went back to work, kissing along the sensitive swell of your breast as your core clenched tightly around him, spurring him on even further.

A hand came up to cup one of your breasts, thumb lightly running over your hardened nipple as your back involuntarily arched, and Minho could tell that you were close, with the pitch of your moans getting higher by the second.

“Almost there?” He asked, half curious for your sake and half for his; he wasn’t sure how much longer he could take you before he would start to unravel.

“Yes...close, so close,” you cried out, syntax becoming nearly impossible.

His lips latched onto your neck once more, sucking to leave a deep red mark there as his thumb and index finger rolled your sensitive bud, and that combined with a few more deep thrusts had you twisting in pleasure until finally, you reached your peak. You were sure there would be marks left as your nails dug into his back, your loud moan reverberating around the car interior as Minho slowed his thrusts, relishing in the way you tightened around him.

It was only a minute before Minho was gasping for air himself, on the tip of ecstasy as he sheathed himself inside you at a fast pace, not wanting to overstimulate you for longer than he needed to. Luckily, his resolve broke quickly, and you could feel his warm release filling the condom before he pulled out, chest heaving.

You both fell mostly silent in the afterglow, spent but definitely satisfied, both of you just enjoying being in each other’s embrace before having to get cleaned up. The faint sound of the nearest highway was now the loudest sound in the vehicle, and the sky was turning into a deep shade of cobalt blue, every remnant of the sun now buried under the horizon line.

After a minute you started giggling, a funny thought running through your mind.

“What?” breathed Minho, starry eyes gazing at you through long eyelashes.

“It’s just-” you paused to laugh again.

“When Changbin wanted us to make good use of his car, I don’t think this is what he had in mind…”

‧⋆ ✧˚₊‧⋆. ✧˚₊‧⋆‧

[dalliancekay]

Aziraphale and Religion and his Bibles

It has come to my attention that some people call Aziraphale Christian and/or religious, and I have seen posts alluding to him collecting bibles out of some sort of ... piety.

He is however, none of these things. He doesn't need to believe in God and especially not in a book or what's written in it.

Now, I get that not everyone read the Good Omens book, so here are two of my favourite passages (emphasis mine):

Aziraphale collected books. If he were totally honest with himself he would have to have admitted that his bookshop was simply somewhere to store them. He was not unusual in this. In order to maintain his cover as a typical second-hand book seller, he used every means short of actual physical violence to prevent customers from making a purchase. Unpleasant damp smells, glowering looks, erratic opening hours - he was incredibly good at it. He had been collecting for a long time, and, like all collectors, he specialized. He had more than sixty books of predictions concerning developments in the last handful of centuries of the second millennium. He had a penchant for Wilde first editions. And he had a complete set of the Infamous Bibles, individually named from error's in typesetting. These Bibles included the Unrzghteous Bible, so called from a printer's error which caused it to proclaim, in I Corinthians, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the Kingdom of God?"; and the Wicked Bible, printed by Barker and Lucas in 1632, in which the word not was omitted from the seventh commandment:, making it "Thou shaft commit Adultery." There were the Discharge bible, the Treacle Bible, the Standing Fishes Bible, the Charing Cross Bible and the rest. Aziraphale had them all. Even the very rarest, a Bible published in 1651 by the London publishing firm of Bilton and Scaggs. It had been the first of their three great publishing disasters. The book was commonly known as the Buggre Alle This Bible.

This to me - sounds like Aziraphale collected these bibles because it was a funny and interesting and a specialised thing to do.

Not because he thought it was some holy sort of book he had to guard.

"When the Rapture comes, brothers and sisters, all the True Believers will be swept up in the air-it don't mind what you're doin', you could be in the bath, you could be at work, you could be drivin' your car, or just sittin' at home readin' your Bible. Suddenly you'll be up there in the air, in perfect and incorruptible bodies. And you'll be up in the air, lookin' down at the world as the years of destruction arrive. Only the faithful will be saved, only those of you who have been born again will avoid the pain and the death and the horror and the burnin'. Then will come the great war between Heaven and Hell, and Heaven will destroy the forces of Hell, and God shall wipe away the tears of the sufferin', and there shall be no more death, or sorrow, or cryin', or pain, and he shall rayon in glory for ever and ever-" He stopped, suddenly. "Well, nice try," he said, in a completely different voice, "only it won't be like that at all. Not really. I mean, you're right about the fire and war, all that. But that Rapture stuff well, if you could see them all in Heaven-serried ranks of them as far as the mind can follow and beyond, league after league of us, flaming swords, all that, well, what I'm trying to say is who has time to go round picking people out and popping them up in the air to sneer at the people dying of radiation sickness on the parched and burning earth below them? If that's your idea of a morally acceptable time, I might add. And as for that stuff about Heaven inevitably winning . . . Well, to be honest, if it were that cut and dried, there wouldn't be a Celestial War in the first place, would there? It's propaganda. Pure and simple. We've got no more than a fifty percent chance of coming out on top. You might just as well send money to a Satanist hotline to cover your bets, although to be frank when the fire falls and the seas of blood rise you lot are all going to be civilian casualties either way. Between our war and your war, they're going to kill everyone and let God sort it out-right? Anyway, sorry to stand here wittering, I've just a quick question where am I?" Marvin O. Bagman was gradually going purple. "It's the devil! Lord protect me! The devil is speakin' through me!" he erupted, and interrupted himself, "Oh no, quite the opposite in fact. I'm an angel. Ah. This has to be America, doesn't it? So sorry, can't stay . . . " There was a pause. Marvin tried to open his mouth, but nothing happened. Whatever was in his head looked around. He looked at the studio crew, those who weren't phoning the police, or sobbing in corners. He looked at the grey-faced cameramen. "Gosh, " he said, "am I on television?"

Please note - Aziraphale is a bit of bastard. He's definitely not catholic or Christian or any kind of religious. He's an angel, and he's not an angel because of his belief or something. That's what he was made as. By GOD. This God made the Universe and told them all She has a Plan for it, ineffable as it maybe be; they were told Earth was to be around for 6000 years. Give or take.

Aziraphale doesn't believe in God. He knows She exists. And clearly (as per above) he doesn't think the way Christianity understood things are exactly - uh, correct.

[thaplugdaughter]

Sweet Like Honey.

elias stack moore x black!fem oc. honey willams.

synopsis : honey finds herself back with her parents again in clarksdale, mississippi. new york wasn’t going so well for her as she expected leading her back where she started. only this time, she didn’t have in mind she’d be messing with some she always seen as trouble.

ps. this is written in modern times boo!

honey stood on the porch of where she grew up at, the feeling of the blazing sun hitting her caramel skin. her brothers were carrying her stuff into her old bedroom where she’d be renovating cause she didn’t find herself leaving here anytime soon. this was all crazy to her cause she found herself thinking a couple of years ago she’d be somewhere big with her talent.

see, honey wasn’t no ordinary girl. could dance, sing like a angel. and she was pretty, her momma blessed her with big talents. the only thing was honey couldn’t control the sass she had & she wouldn’t accept no bullshit from anybody, which held her back from a lot of opportunities unfortunately. but honey knew she’d find better one day. she was only 22, she has much time to figure it out.

“honey, close that door and come in you lettin’ bugs in here girl.” her father said, honey hurried in closing the door. the creaking wood making a noise as soon as she stepped on it. “dang daddy, i thought y’all said y’all was gone fix this. that noise is dreadful.” honey’s father quinton laughed.

“it’s in the process. besides you know we gettin old and your brothers don’t wanna do nothin round here. your sister neither. y’all all lazy!” amir rolled his eyes at your fathers words. “technically, we do be helping around here but i got more things to worry about then fixing a old house.” oh amir, honey’s smartmouthed brother. he was going into his sophomore year & currently playing basketball.

honey’s younger brother, malakhi. going into his freshman year right along honey’s sister tiana. malakhi, only God knows what he does. he’s good at football, basketball was never his thing, and tiana? she’s just a copy and paste of honey. but a sporty version, the sass way worse though.

“amir, this house may be old but its built and has plenty of love within these walls. you should appreciate it more, this house would go for so much money these days.” honey’s mother jacqueline said. amir sighed and walked off in the hallways to his room. jacqueline continued stirring the lemonade to go with the dinner she prepared for tonight. opening her mouth to ask honey a question, “how was new york? did you miss home?”

honey sucked her teeth and fidgeted with her finger nails. “it was beautiful, certain parts were. homesick a little, but i could always come back anytime and here i am. so i’m not worried.” honey’s mother finished her lemonade and placed it in the fridge to save. “do you have any plans for down here honey? you know you could put that singing to use. them twins done opened a juke joint.” twins?

surely she wasn’t talking about elias & elijah. honey hadn’t seen them in years, they had left before she left for new york. she dreaded them, well used too. she couldn’t lie, they were sexy as hell but damn so troublesome always in something. nothing was ever done about it either, it was so weird down here honey wondered what power they held over clarksdale.

“you talkin’ bout the moore twins momma?” honey asked shifting her position in the chair she sat in. jacqueline nodded. “it’s going good, i think you should try it out honey. no funny business though, if you’d stop bein’ so rude all the time you’d be somewhere in new york and not here.”

“your momma’s right honey. you gotta watch your mouth, you sure as hell ain’t set no good example for tiana cause that’s all she know how to do is run her mouth.” honey couldn’t do anything but agree with them, honey definitely had a way with words. she had a issue with violence too but she learned to calm it down over the years.

“i know, i know. i guess ill check the juke out sometime this week.” honey replied. she still didn’t know how to feel about working for the twins though, well that’s even if she got a spot there. “momma, how you know they gon’ accept me?” she asked confused. her momma looked at her in her eyes and said “cause you gone show out & give them a reason to hire you honey.”

although jacqueline & quinton wanted honey to be the best of herself, quinton didn’t trust the smokestack twins one bit. mainly stack, and what’s understood doesn’t have to be explained. stack’s just pure trouble & evil. it didn’t take much to know that. but, he wasn’t gonna stop honey from chasing after her dreams.

honey found herself walking upstairs into the hallway where her room was, she looked at the yellow walls she had painted when she was 13, she felt it fit her name honey well. now she wanted to redo everything, she felt she was a bit too grown for something like this. but, only time will tell what decisions honey decides to make.

honey found herself in bo chow’s grocery store chopping it up with cornbread. she wondered why cornbread was over here when he should be working with his life, but she wasn’t the questioning type.

“well honey, what you doin’ back down here? i thought you left us for the big city.” cornbread asked, honey chuckled. “what can i say, i missed home. the big city will be there waiting for me, i wanna try some stuff out down here. besides, y’all don’t want me to be here or something?” she asked, obviously joking. bo stood behind the register counting bills when he turned up to look at honey.

“of course we want ya’ here. you always welcome.” he smiled, “i figured.” honey replied. “but um, what’s this about this new juke joint? y’all know if they hiring?” cornbread and bo looked at her. “you, you wanna work for the twins? with the mouth you got?” cornbread asked. honey playfully slapped him on the shoulder, “well duh? ain’t that why i’m askin? they gone accept me anyway im like.. sent from heaven literally.” they laughed at honey.

“well, honey i think you gone get it. the only thing you gone have to worry about is competition with mary cause she gone think you out for her stack.” lisa said, you laughed at lisa’s comment, like you would be worried about some fucking mary. “thanks lisa, i really appreciate that. you speakin it into existence unlike cornbread and your father here.”

“you know they think they know everything.” lisa said, her father shooting her a glare cause he knew she was right, she hurried out of them room before bo could say anything because.. let’s be honest here.

“you might as well go tonight honey & see what the juke talking about. i work the doors so i can let you in for the free this time.” cornbread said, honey hugged him “i wasn’t gone pay anyway.” honey said before grabbing her bags and heading on her way back home. honey walked here in the blazing sun which was crazy because, damn was it hot. but honey ain’t have on no bundled up clothes like she usually did so honey didn’t really care.

honey dropped her bag on the porch to take her keys out to unlock the door & walked in carrying her bags to her room. she had bought some stuff to put in her room & a couple of paint cans to repaint her room soon with the help from her father. she laid back on the bed and stared at the ceiling wondering how tonight would go & would she make a good impression.

ain’t nobody seen her in 5 years, honey’s grown a lot. curves gotten different and all that, she looked good & grown now. she found herself at her sisters door knocking to ask her to help find a outfit tonight, honey was just going to check it out to see if she liked it, if she didn’t.. well she would leave it alone but if she did she’d be back tomorrow looking for a job.

“tiana, open the door i need your help.” she heard a groan and tiana got off her bed opening the door for honey, “what you want?” tiana said, the sass in her voice at an all time high. “for you to help me pick out something to wear tonight to the joint, don’t be doing all that your wanna be mean ass.” tiana scoffed, “i guess honey. you act like you going to impress somebody or something.” honey stared at her and just headed to her room with tiana following behind her.

“listen, you need to wear a dress. one that gives off sexy, cause i feel like you tryna impress somebody but i can’t put my finger on who yet.” honey laughed, “i’m tryna leave a good impression cause if i like it im coming back tomorrow to apply for a job there, but i got some dresses for you to pick out let me get them.”

honey searched through her bags picking out some dresses for tiana to choose and laid them out on the bed, tiana got up and looked at all of them. “some of these kind of boring, but this one is perfect honey.” she picked out a mid-length dark red dress, the dress backless & perfect to show off honey’s curves.

honey picked it up and looked at it, “you don’t think this a bit too much? i don’t even know why i bought this.” tiana sat back on honey’s bed and sighed “you just think it’s too much cause you bein’ boring. i don’t know why you tryna act so Godly now.”

“i ain’t actin, i am. im changing for the better.” honey smirked, “most definitely not but you need to be getting ready cause it’s getting late and you right here tryna talk up a storm.” tiana said as she exited honey’s room closing the door behind her.

honey sighed and placed her stuff on the bed & walked into the attached bathroom turning on her shower and dropping her clothes, as she got into the shower the lukewarm water hit her skin. she grabbed her loofah & squeezed out her favorite scented cocoa butter wash.

all she could think to herself is, how did she find herself back here and was it because she was moving too fast? it most definitely was because she was moving too fast. but maybe this was apart of a plan God had set for her. maybe, or maybe not?.

she rubbed the lotion on her skin, making sure to get every part of her body along with the cocoa butter oil. putting her deodorant on, and sliding into her dress.

she called tiana back in to help her tie the back, tiana looking at her up & down. “see i told you it would look nice, you most definitely have grown into your grown woman body.” honey laughed at tiana, she looked in the mirror at herself though and damn did she look good. her natural curls in a flip over a the top and the rest is laying on her shoulders. her caramel skin shining due to the oil, her chest popping out more than usual.

she walked over to her dresser and attached her bracelets, putting in her diamond earrings & slipping on her open toed laced up black heels. grabbing her purse and putting all her things in, she hugged her sister goodbye and went on her way.

────────────

as she reached the juke joint she could hear the loud southern blues being played, she seen slim and cornbread at the door of course a whisky flask in slim’s hand, and cornbread cracking another joke. people on the sides of the building laughing & some arguing.

honey got out of the car, locked it and walked over to the entrance. cornbread looked honey up & down, “well hello to you also honey.” he shook her hand, “hi cornbread, and hi slim since you acting like you seen a ghost.”

he took another sip of his flask, “i thought i did, i might be seeing a ghost i thought you was in the big city.” cornbread laughed, “uh, annie and them inside. you should go check it out.” he said as he let honey in, letting her wander around.

people were dancing, some at the bar. some making out & she seen someone singing, and honey noticed it was little sammie, and damn does he have a voice on him. she walked through the crowd and took a seat at a table, and there he was. on the side of the stage matchstick in his mouth, gold grill shining and dimples showing. standing next to his twin brother, the more sophisticated one in honey’s eyes.

she rolled her eyes & turned the other way and seen pearline & annie. she hadn’t spoken to them in years. honey got up out her seat and made her way to the table they were at, they looked at her in shock. “honey, you back? since when?” pearline asked.

honey sat down answering pearline’s question and greeting them, “what you doing here honey?” annie asked, “my momma told me to see if i could get a job here, and cornbread recommended me to check it out.”

“well he did the right thing, but i don’t see you working here ending in somethin’ good honey. you and stack don’t mix well at all, and he one of the owners.” pearline said, annie shaking her head to agree with her.

“man ain’t nobody worried about no damn stack, what are they doing back here anyway?” honey replied, “they was done doin’ business in chicago i assume. and smoke probably missed him some annie.” pearline said, a laugh followed behind. annie blushed, “pearline rest your mouth, please.” they shared a laugh, but annie and pearline looked behind honey to see the twins standing behind her, “why the hell y’all lookin’ like that?” she turned around.

stack stared in her eyes, she stared in his. the empty soulless eyes he had, and the pretty brown ones she had. “didn’t think we’d see you again, big city girl.” stack said, smoke made his way over to where annie was & sat beside her. stack pulling out a chair beside honey.

honey scoffed, “i don’t know why the hell you speaking to me, damn devil reincarnated.” stack placed his hat on the table turning his attention to honey, “you always so feisty with me girl, i ain’t do nothin’ to ya.” pearline chucked, “stack you always tryna make your move on someone, you know you got crazy mary on your side leave honey alone.”

stack rolled his eyes at pearline, “pearline be worried about that sorry ass excuse of a husband you have.” everyone laughed, “but preacher boy always waitin’ for ya.” he grinned, honey couldn’t lie elias was something sexy but his personality.. just no.

but as soon as honey looked up, she seen smoke and annie over there eye fucking each other. she supported them 100% but she couldn’t witness this so she made her way to the bar, stack following behind her. why? she didn’t know but she wished he’d stop.

“stack, what the hell do you want?” he grinned at her, “you what else?” she rolled her eyes, “i’m not finna be one of your lil toys, i’m just here cause i wanna work here. so interview me.” he laughed, “okay your hired, work the bar.” she was confused

“you didn’t even interview me, you don’t even know if i have bar experience.” he pointed at the bartender, “he can teach ya, but back to our conversation. why you think ima play with you?” he looked at her up and down, admiring every curve honey had.

“because, your stack. i’m honey, and you know what honey don’t do? mess with no nigga named stack.” she grinned, “you gone be up under me one day, just know it.” he grinned at her, grabbing her chin and then letting go to wander off.

“tuh, i wish the hell i would.” she mumbled, but she couldn’t lie the interaction just gave her that feeling in her lower stomach, he might just be right.

ion write, so i think i over did it. but these dividers aren’t mineee, credits too @cursed-carmine .

[psycholuvrgirl]

the 6 date disasters: training grounds | series masterlist

featuring... megumi!

summary: a heated training session gets your asses kicked by a senior classmate of yours.

warnings: none

a/n: i want to pretty up my account but i don't know how/what i want to do exactly... hmmmm

you never thought training could feel this intimate. the sun dips towards the horizon as you and megumi meet on the practice field behind the dorms, both dressed in loose clothes. you agreed to leave weapons behind in favor of some hand-to-hand combat. he says it’s just for fun, “just sparring, nothing serious.” but you know him well enough by now to hear the unspoken. he wants alone time with you, especially in a place where he’s familiar and confident. somewhere where it can just be the two of you.

you smile at him from across the mat. “think you can handle me, fushiguro?”

he lets out a cocky laugh that gives you butterflies.

the first few rounds are careful, both of you hesitating just a little bit. you circle each other with half-smiles and light touches. you fake a punch just to see him flinch. he counters every move lazily, clearly going easy on you. there’s no real heat behind the moves at first, just a little flirty dance disguised as combat.

but the longer it goes on, the more the tension builds. megumi’s eyes grow sharper. you’re sweating, grinning despite how much your body is crying out to give up. he lands a solid hit on your shoulder, you sweep his legs. there’s tension in every little movement. not just the kind from training, but something else.

eventually, he pins you. it happens so fast that you barely process what happened. you had lunged, he dodged, then suddenly you were on your back, breathless and pinned to the ground at the wrists with megumi leaning over you. he pants, hair falling into his eyes. 

his grip is firm, but not painful. his face is inches from yours, flushed and serious. there’s a flicker in his eyes, a kind of hunger you’ve only ever seen when you’re making out late at night. a hunger that makes him pull back usually, but instead he dips down and presses his lips to yours. 

you let out a quiet moan as his tongue slips into your mouth.

“didn’t know this was foreplay.”

you both rip away from one another’s mouths, whipping your heads towards the voice.

maki stands at the edge of the mat with her eyebrows raised slightly. she has that classic maki look, unimpressed. her katana rests against one shoulder casually.

megumi launches off of you like he’s been electrocuted.

“maki! what are you—” he begins, stumbling backwards as his face grows red.

“i train here,” she says coolly. “what are you doing?”

you scramble to your feet, trying not to look like you were just making out with anyone.

“we were sparring.”

“is that what you call it these days?” she drops her katana onto the ground beside her, cracking her neck. “funny way of sparring.”

“we were taking a break,” megumi says. 

“you take breaks by pinning down your partner and shoving your tongue down her throat?”

you try not to laugh as megumi looks like he wants the earth to open up and swallow him whole.

maki glances between you and him, then sighs and stretches her arms overhead. “well, since you’re clearly wasting time together, spar with me.”

“oh no,” megumi mutters. “please no.”

but it’s too late. maki doesn’t wait for a reply, she’s already stepping onto the mat. “c’mon, lover boy, let’s see if you can land a hit while you’re not making heart eyes.”

“should we run?” you whisper.

“she’ll chase us.”

“right,” you wince.

“oh come on,” maki says. “someone just fight me already, i don’t have all day.”

so you fight her, the both of you. and she absolutely obliterates you both. it’s not even close. maki doesn’t just spar, she dissects every move you make and sees it coming. every opening you give her she exploits without fail. she’ll knock the wind out of you, then knock megumi onto his ass five seconds later. and worst of all? she’s not even breaking a sweat.

you’re lying on your back again, grass in your hair and bruises on your ego, when she finally says, “you two did better than i thought.” she shrugs. “still bad though.”

“we were relaxing,” megumi groans from beside you. 

“maybe try relaxing somewhere that doesn’t involve terrible form and obvious flirting.” she squats beside you and smacks your leg. “you okay?”

“physically? i’ll recover,” you wheeze out. you force yourself into a sitting position. “emotionally? i’m destroyed.”

“good,” she says with a smirk.

she stands, dusts herself off, and slings her katana back over her shoulder. “try again tomorrow. separately. or wait to win before you make out.”

“she’s never letting this go,” megumi groans again.

you lay back on the mat again with a sigh. “i think i almost died. my life flashed before my eyes at some point.”

you both stare up at the sky. despite the bruises and humiliation, there’s a comfort in the fact that you’re still side by side.

“next time,” megumi says, breaking the silence, “i’m booking a private room.”

you turn your head to look at him. “what kind of training is that for?”

he goes pink. “shut up.”

you grin, nudging his knee with yours. “didn’t say i was against the idea.”

he sighs, but you can see the smile that betrays him. and just like that, the moment between you two is back.

[to-the-stars8]

Affairs and Letters

Jason Todd x Reader Regency AU! AO3 Chapters

XX

You stared down at the bundle of returned letters resting in your lap, your breath caught somewhere between grief and humiliation. The handwriting was unmistakably yours, the seal cracked, yet untouched within. Each one a desperate plea imploring Mr. Todd to keep his promise, to remember what had passed between you, to love you still despite your disgrace.

They had come back to you unopened.

That was answer enough.

You scarcely had the strength to lift your head when Mr. Harper entered the room.

“By the stars, dearest Miss, whatever has happened?” he exclaimed, his voice booming with alarm.

Quickly, you turned away and dabbed at your eyes with your handkerchief. “Pray, sir, do not trouble yourself on my account.”

But Mr. Harper had crossed the room and lowered himself into the armchair opposite yours, his brows knit in anxious concern. Truly, you were indebted to his kindness and wished you had a fortune to repay him. “Come now,” he said gently. “If there is some distress I may relieve, only say so. You have done much for my business already. I would be most ungrateful to ignore your suffering.”

You glanced at the letters resting in your lap. Their presence alone made your cheeks flush with fresh humiliation.

“Have your troubles to do with those letters?” He asked as he nodded to the letters in your lap. There was an amused smile on his face. “Tell me, Miss, and I will go to the postman to give him a good tongue lashing.”

You felt yourself able to laugh at such a small gesture of absurd kindness, and Mr. Harper remarked on how happy he was to see such a smile grace your face again. Finally, you felt well enough to convey your emotions. 

“I do not wish for you to think any differently of me, Mr. Harper.”

Mr. Harper reached across the small table between you and placed a consoling hand upon yours. “I will not. I cannot, in any case.”

You wished to disagree and protest that he could. Though, as you thought of Lian, a baseborn girl born to a baseborn father, you thought him right. “I had a beau in my old village, and—though I know it is wrong—have written to him. He promised me that he would write, but he has not. The letters have been returned to me today. Therefore, I cannot help but come to the conclusion that he no longer feels for me.”

Mr. Harper squeezed your hand gently. “Then he is a greater fool than even I imagined. And he has lost something far more valuable than he knows.”

“I fear I shall not forget him,” you murmured.

“Give it time,” he said. “In a few years, you will scarcely recall his name.”

You doubted it deeply, but nodded with as much grace as you could muster. Mr. Harper, appearing satisfied that he had offered comfort, stood and announced that he would fetch Lian from her lessons. He left you with one last smile and a kind word. But as the door closed behind him, the quiet in the room grew incredibly.

The letters remained on your lap like stones, heavy and unrelenting. You stared at them for a long while, torn between heartbreak and the remnants of dignity. At last, you stood, smoothing your skirts with one hand, the offending bundle clutched in the other. You approached the hearth, its flames burning low but steady. With a breath that trembled, you let the letters fall into the fire.

They caught at once—crackling, curling, blackening into ash. And as they burned, you whispered, barely aloud, “I will forget you, Mr. Todd.”

But in your heart, the truth lingered like the smoke in the fireplace.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Jason had not laid eyes upon his brother in several days and was just preparing to go after him again when Richard appeared at last. He stepped into the drawing room with a disheveled elegance and an expression of strange satisfaction. There was a lightness in his movements, a contentedness about his smile.

“She accepted,” Richard said, dropping into the nearest chair with a sigh. “After all that, she accepted.”

Jason barely blinked. “Miss Anders?”

Richard nodded. “Indeed. Once I explained the misunderstanding with Miss Gordon, she relented. I think she still loves me. I rather suspect she always did.”

Jason turned away to hide his unease. “I am glad, truly.”

He made no attempt to conceal the irritation in his voice as he reached for his coat. “Now that your affairs are in order, I intend to return to the countryside this afternoon. I have been away too long.”

Richard, unbothered, ran a hand through his hair. “I think I shall remain. Kori is more at ease in the city, and I cannot see why we must subject her to those with less generous sensibilities.”

Jason was preparing a sharp retort when a knock came at the door. His brother was becoming insufferable, and reveled in the relief of someone of character. His annoynce would have been totally cured if it was you coming through the door to bother him.

“Enter,” he said. His valet stepped inside, letter in hand. “Thank you. That will be all.” The man left without another word, and Jason was forced to put up with his brother alone once more.

“What is it?” Mr. Grayson said, sitting straighter in his seat so he could get a better view. 

Mr. Todd was already breaking the seal as he answered, “A letter from father, perhaps asking when we are to return. I sent him a letter some days ago informing him that we would be returning within the week. So, I suggest you hold off on your plans.”

Opening the letter, Jason began to read.

My dearest boy,

I must inform you that I am now aware of your affection for the young woman formerly employed by the Kents.

Sir Kent assures me her departure was mutual, though I suspect he softens the truth. Truths perhaps you can enlighten me of. The boy, he claims, had grown beyond the need for a governess. She has accepted a new position in another county, though I do not know where exactly.

I trust this news finds you well, and I urge you to take whatever time you require to come to terms with it.

With affection,

—B. Wayne

Mr. Todd sank onto a chair near him, his knees unable to bear his weight suddenly. Mr. Grayson noticed the tension in his brother, and hurriedly asked what was the matter. Mr. Todd did not answer, prompting his brother to grab the letter from his hand. After reading it, the room fell into a long, sullen silence. 

At last, Jason spoke, voice barely above a whisper. “I had promised her… I told her I would return.” His throat tightened. “I meant to—truly, I did. I had planned—” But the words refused to come. "Why did she not write to me?"

After some time, Mr. Grayson decided to speak.  “Brother, I must confess, I believe this may be my doing.”

[strawberriesandroses52]

Miscalibrated

pt 1/?

---

JAZZ stares up at the blistering sun. It’s so hot out that he half expects some lone vulture to shriek. Or maybe someone to strum a guitar, like they do in movies and TV shows. To really top it off, perhaps a rattle snake hiding in a singular cow skull. Then it would really be like it was a movie. 

If only it was a movie. If it was a movie, then he would have some doohickey or secret plan to get out of this mess. Then he wouldn’t be stranded on some alien planet who knows how many lightyears away from earth, slowly overheating in his mecha. Bebop was a wonderful machine, but without power, she was just metal. Cool looking metal, but just metal. 

Jazz has long since stripped out of his assistance suit, down to his boxers, having sweat through it an hour and a half into being stranded. He was slowly sipping his water, trying to ration it while thinking of a solution. 

No power, no communication. No power, no way to tell if this atmosphere was breathable or not. Or if there would be any kaiju lurking about. No way to tell if the ground wasn’t made of acid or something like that. 

It was a circular train of thought. He can’t stay and die of heatstroke, but he can’t leave either. His only hope would be to wait it out, hoping that Bebop’s systems got the distress call out before powering down. He hopes someone gets his signal before a kaiju does. 

Jazz had been a pilot for seven years, and while that’s nowhere close to the record, it’s nothing to scoff at either. Bebop hadn’t been his mecha the entire time, but she’s been his for the last four years, and he’s gotten a little attached. There’s some stickers on her pilot seat, old and peeling off now. His boot scuff marks on her deck. His greasy fingerprints are on the array of buttons in front of him. They’re comrades, partners. 

But right now she’s killing him as much as she’s saving him. If he was baking in here, then it must truly be scorching outside her hull. 

“I guess there really is no way out, old girl.” He mutters to her, head thunking down on her console. He likes to think that if she could talk, she’d say something to cheer him up. 

But the metal around him doesn’t respond. 

Pilots are often told that being separated from their mecha means the death of the pilot. It usually means a kaiju has figured out where your pod was located and is about to rip you out of your mecha’s chest and kill you. But what about when the cause of death is the mecha itself? He doesn’t remember any talking about that at all. 

(except maybe the myth about a haunted mecha, which Jazz was disinclined to believe in.) 

Surely, it must happen from time to time? A failed weapons check, a miscalculation, a malfunction, a miscalibration of some kind.

Jazz takes another sip of water. It brings no relief to the heat, and is tainted with the taste of salt as well. He wrinkles his nose a bit at the taste. 

No power.

No way out.

He takes another drink, wishing perhaps that it was something a bit stronger. 

Bebop’s frame shudders around him.

Jazz sits up, looking around at the metal. Was Bebop caving in on him? Or some kaiju coming to pry her open, hoping to eliminate the pilot inside?

Instead, Bebop begins to move like someone or something is carrying her, and the swaying almost knocks Jazz out of the pilot’s chair. Whatever is going on outside of Bebop’s protective embrace, they–it? Is dragging Bebop somewhere. 

To help? To death? Jazz doesn’t know and doesn’t have any way to know.

Of all the pilots, of all the people that this could happen to– of course it’s him. Of course it’s Jazz. Lucky-unlucky Jazz. Jazz who can flirt with death and live to see another day only because it loves toying with him. Fate’s own personal chew toy. Being dragged off to an unknown location by an equally unknown thing to an even more unknown fate.

He kind of wants to scream, but that wouldn’t help his situation. 

So he sits. Listening, trying to see what the heck is going on outside of the pod. It doesn’t provide him with much information, a scuff here, and a dragging noise there.  

The unease of not knowing getting him, he slips his assistance suit back on, putting his helmet back on. The suit stirs to life, barely functioning without the connection to Bebop’s systems. It’s uncomfortably sticky, but he bares it with a grimace. Already, the helmet is making his scalp sweat. But sweating is a good sign. From what he remembers of the survival crash courses he’s taken, it’s when you’re not sweating is when you need to worry. 

The pilot’s chair is as comfortable as ever, it had to be, since pilots spend 270 out of 365 in it. The old guard likes to call the new generation soft, with all their fail safes and safety checks and comfortable pilot seats. Jazz thinks he’d rather die with the comfortable seat.

There’s a pause to the dragging. Muffled sounds float into the pod, and Jazz can’t even begin to decipher what is on the outside. 

The hairs on his arm stand up, followed by the ones on his neck. A sour, metallic taste fills his mouth. 

He barely has time to think what the fuck before every nerve in his body is alight with fire. His body seizes up as jolts run up his legs and up his back and across his arms. His mouth is open and making a sound, it feels like a scream but he can’t hear anything. His fingers and toes tingle and sting as he gasps for air. 

Again, his body seizes, less violently this time, but still aching with fire. He flops down onto the console in front of him, panting and heaving. His muscles dance of their own accord, twitching and spasming. There’s the distinct smell of burnt hair somewhere near his nose. His tongue feels numb. 

But, Bebop’s arrays flicker to life. Stutteringly, the HUD comes back on, washing the pod with blue light. Several alerts pop up, proximity, damage and radar most notably. 

Jazz takes in a large, staggering breath. His heart is banging a gong inside his chest and his head, and his arms tingling with pins and needles barely respond to his commands as he moves to turn on all of Bebop’s sensors. He misses a couple times, reaching too far or not far enough before he can hit the right button.

Bebop comes to life. His helmet’s full visual display pops on, and Jazz is no longer human. 

Jazz is a twenty two and a half foot tall mecha strapped with knives, guns, and lethal precision. 

Being a pilot for seven years gives you wonderful reflexes. Jazz prides himself on having a particularly good reaction time, even among other pilots. Instinctively, before his sluggish brain registers that the shape above him is vaguely human-mecha shaped, he swipes wildly with Bebop’s built in knife. 

There’s the distinct shriek of metal on metal and a pained yelp that sounds too human for comfort. Jazz doesn’t spend long considering it, he just rolls away from the direction of the noise. Bebop’s systems are still booting online from the surge of power, meaning Jazz wouldn’t have access to her sonar navigation, his guns, or life support levels yet. 

When he springs out of the roll, he doesn’t look back as he sprints across the desert landscape. Bebop’s digitigrade legs barely touch the ground before launching him ever forward. As weird as this day has been, he has to admit he’s in a better situation than he was in earlier today.

There’s a thunder of footsteps behind him, echoing the same metal-on-hard-rock sound that Jazz’s own feet make. His jaw tenses as his eyebrows furrow in deep, quick thought. What to do? Something clearly wanted something to do with him. He had very little information to go off of. 

In a split second decision, Jazz launched himself forward with a mighty leap, landing crouched on the tips of Bebop’s metallic toes. He pivots, staying low to the ground as he faces whatever thing had just tazed and chased him.

It’s a mecha. 

Pearly white, black, a bright red. It’s a bit taller than Bebop is, and has very, very human-like proportions. And an even more human face, judging by the shocked expression. Whatever country or corporation that built this mecha must’ve been absolutely loaded to create such a human like mech. 

It opens its mouth and what the hell are those TEETH? Jazz takes a second look and, yes, yes those are teeth. What kind of mecha has teeth? One that bites kaiju? 

The mecha makes several sounds like dial-up internet, the error code of a printer, static, and various beep boop noises. Are their speakers damaged? Is Bebop’s audio receptors damaged? Or are they speaking some binary computer language? 

Bebop’s fins, functioning as both sonars and emotive display, flicker up and down. The strange mech pauses its sentence to watch as the fins move. Besides the electric shock earlier, the mecha has yet to attack. Based on its body language, it doesn’t necessarily intend to at the moment. It seems just as confused as Jazz.

Warily, Jazz stands up to Bebop’s full height, fins held at neutral. The mecha stands up a bit straighter as well, staring at Jazz consideringly. 

He takes two short steps forward as Bebop’s systems get a full visual scan. The mecha doesn’t move, but doesn’t back away either. Jazz flicks on his intercom. 

“Hi.” He says.

The mecha’s face morphs into confusion. “Hai?” It repeats with a strange accent.

Ah. So, a pilot that definitely did not speak english. That was odd. Most pilot programs, government or otherwise, required knowledge of English and one other common business language. Pilots weren’t just skilled monster hunters, they were engineers, scientists, inventors, military personnel, the best even among the best. 

“Konichiwa?” He tries, earning the same look again. 

English and Japanese were the only two languages he knew at the moment. But the pilot should’ve recognized at least one of them. Two of the most basic words from two of the most recognizable languages should’ve garnered some spark of recognition.

Is this even a pilot from Earth? 

[saiintvalentiine]

idk what's happening in this au but it's happening

part 1 || part 2 || part 3

Word count: 600

Hotel air is always so cold. Wifies is wearing warm sweatpants and a long sleeve shirt and a hoodie and somehow he still feels cold. He eyes the snow white duvet, smooth and soft looking. He doesn't want to mess up the bed yet. Instead, he sits at the desk and pulls his phone out.

“Hey,” Ken says. It's noisy where he's at. “What's up?”

“Hi Ken,” Wifies chews on his words. “I left— Parrot. I left Parrot.”

The words don't make it any more real for him. It was real when he decided it, when he packed, when he put all of his worldly possessions into a storage unit, when he cleaned and sorted and wiped. He may as well have never lived there the way he stripped his fingerprints from every nook and cranny.

He's a coward for leaving like this. His ankle is still stiff, wrapped up tight to help with stabilization.

But Parrot's a coward too. He woke up alone today. No note. No message. Just alone. And he can't—

Ken's been talking this whole time. Wifies zones back in.

“—you know Wato and I, we've got a few places you can crash at if you want.”

“No, no, I've already got somewhere to stay for a bit.”

He's carrying cash to flow in and out of hotels seamlessly, a bag with a few clothes, and supplies for his ankle. A couple other things, but nothing too heavy. Parrot may know how to follow people, but Wifies knows how to escape. And this is something he can do without him.

“Where?” Ken asks.

“Here and there,” Wifies says cryptically, picking at his cuticles.

“I'm gonna worry!” Ken insists, and Wifies can imagine his wide eyes. “Stay with someone at least!”

“You were right, you know? In the end you were right. Parrot was never going to be forever.”

He feels stupid. He let his heart take him somewhere, knowing that his heart was a useless, dumb thing that was begging for anyone to look at it, to touch it, to warm it.

“I was stupid,” he says. “It was stupid of me to go all in like this. What good was it? Everyone told me we'd fail. Everyone has lived so much more than me. Everyone knew where it was going. I should've listened.”

“That's—” Ken’s breath is quiet on the line. “Wifies, no, that's not what I meant. You— loving someone, that's not stupid—”

“Hey, Ken, listen,” Wifies stands up and drags the desk chair to the front door, shoving it under the handle. “It's okay. You were right. Thanks for looking out for me. I think I'm gonna sleep for a bit though. Thanks.”

Wifies hangs up and lays on top of the neat bed and thinks about how he fluffed the pillows before leaving. He takes one of the perfectly fluffed hotel pillows and pulls it close, burying his face into its softness. It smells like clean linen. He wishes it smelled of the lavender detergent he forced Parrot to bring him from the store and the inescapable scent of gun oil. He'd tell Parrot off every time he'd come straight to bed from handling his guns, and Parrot would pull him close and ignore his complaints.

To do that forever. . .

One night. It was one night for his own fun, and he got a twisted ankle for it.

His mind tears at the seams and his heart bubbles like a sinking whale and all he can do is suffocate himself into the pillow as his eyes water.

Forever seems like so long.