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stillalivebydemand893 · 4 days ago

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That Night, That Lie, That Fucking Kiss.

part 1

Story:A year of almosts. One lie. One kiss. One night where heartbreak spills over and nothing is left unsaid.

18+ angst,smut,kinda fluff ?!🫣

“Remind me again why you two are still fighting?”

Julia didn’t even glance up from her magazine. Just flipped a page like your slow emotional disintegration wasn’t unraveling right next to her.

You sank into the couch.

“Because he’s a fucking asshole.”

The second the words left your mouth, regret hit you in the face.

“Ah, shit. Sorry, love.” You rubbed your temples. “Forgot for a second he’s your brother.”

Julia shrugged without missing a beat.

“Don’t apologize, babe. I love him, but I also know he’s emotionally constipated and has the communication skills of a broken toaster. He growled at my boyfriend last week.”

You tried to laugh. It got stuck somewhere between your teeth and your guilt.

You hated this.

You hated the radio silence. You hated the tension.

You hated Erik for kissing someone else like he didn’t spend the last year calling you Peach like it meant something.

But most of all? You hated that you still missed him.

“So?” Julia raised an eyebrow. “What did my disaster of a brother do now? Give me a reason to slap the shit out of him.”

You swallowed the lump in your throat.

“I waited for him at the pub. For two hours. No text. No call. Nothing. I thought maybe he’d gotten mugged or died or choked on a goddamn vape cloud.”

Julia winced.

“And?”

You clenched your jaw, forcing the words out like they were shards of glass.

“I went to the studio. To check on him. And there he was making out with Jessica.”

Silence.

Julia blinked once. Twice.

Then:

“NO. FUCKING. WAY.”

She sat up so fast her magazine flew to the floor. “THAT MOTHERFUCKER”

She looked around like she was ready to summon Satan .

You shook your head.

“I’m not even mad that he forgot about me.”

(Lie. Massive lie.)

“I just… after everything that happened with Jessica last year? The crying, the spiraling, the ‘I don’t even know who I am without her’ bullshit?”

A memory hit you like a punch to the ribs,Erik drunk, sobbing into your lap while you held him like maybe if you were soft enough, you could put him back together. The way his lips crashed into yours that night. The way he never mentioned it again.

“You’re still in love with him,” Julia said softly, like she wasn’t kicking the already shattered glass of your heart around.

You didn’t answer. You didn’t need to.

She exhaled.

“Have you even talked to him since?”

“It was a screaming match,” you muttered. “And then nothing. I’ve been avoiding him.”

“I miss him, Jules.”

You said it like a confession. Like a sin.

She wrapped her arms around you, tight.

“You wanna go shopping? Sephora's got sales and I'm emotionally prepared to blow my paycheck on lip gloss.”

You gave her a weak smile.

“Thanks. But I think I’m just gonna go home and cry into my blanket .’’

You kissed her cheek and headed for the door.

Your phone buzzed as you stepped outside.

Erik:

“Peach. Please. Talk to me.”

You stared at the screen like it might burn a hole through your palm. Typed. Deleted. Typed again.

Nothing.

Buzz.

Erik:

“Please, Peach. Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking.”

Your heart felt like a fist.

You finally texted back:

“Busy.”

Then you threw on your headphones and drowned yourself in MCR like it was 2008 and everything still hurt but at least the eyeliner was good.

The Ghost of You played on repeat, and you welcomed the spiral like an old friend.

Why do I ruin everything?

Why wasn’t I enough?

He kissed you once. That meant nothing.

You thought it meant something because you’re desperate.

You’re a placeholder. A maybe. A convenience.

You’re never the choice.

Your chest felt like it was full of shattered glass.

You didn’t cry. Couldn’t. You just lay there on your couch,body stiff, mascara dried, your brain looping the same memory over and over like a cruel home movie:

His hands. Her mouth. That laugh. That kiss.

And then the knock.

Not gentle.

Not curious.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

You didn’t move.

But your body knew.

Only one person knocked like that.

Like he was ready to fight for his life,or rip yours apart.

“Peach. Open the door.”

You didn’t answer.

He opened it anyway.

He stormed in like a fucking hurricane.

Rain still dripping from his hair, jaw locked, chest heaving like he’d just run through hell.

Erik.

Wrecked. Wild-eyed. So goddamn beautiful you hated him for it.

“You’re not doing this.” His voice was sharp, breathless.

“Not again.”

You stayed under the blanket. Silent. Fragile.

He ripped it off like it insulted him.

“I’m not letting you disappear into your own fucking head again.”

You sat up slowly. Black mascara smeared under your eyes. Your fists clenched so hard your nails dug into your skin.

“What the fuck do you want, Erik?”

Your voice was cracked. Tired. Dangerous.

He moved toward you. And for a second, you thought he might back off.

He didn’t.

“I want you to scream at me. Hit me. Fucking do something. Just don’t sit there like I never mattered to you.”

You stood up, legs trembling but rage giving them fuel.

“I think we screamed enough, don’t you?” You turned away.

Headed for the kitchen like that would stop him.

“I’m done.”

Your voice cracked on that last word.

He didn’t move. Just watched you with bloodshot eyes, leaning against the counter like he was seconds from collapsing.

“I said I was sorry. I’ve said it, like, thousand fucking times. I can’t read your mind, Peach”

“STOP CALLING ME THAT!”

You spun, shoving your palm against his chest.

Too close. Too hot. Too fucking much.

He grabbed your wrist.

His grip was firm, shaking.

“And why the fuck shouldn’t I? Why are you acting like a brat.”

He dragged your gaze back to his, voice low and mean and wrecked.

“You want me to stop calling you that? Fine. But don’t pretend you don’t still want me to say it like you’re mine.”

You couldn’t breathe.

Your body gave up before your mouth did,knees slamming into the kitchen floor like your grief finally dragged you down. You folded in on yourself.

And Erik followed.

Dropped beside you. Wrapped his arms around your shaking frame and pulled you into his lap like he needed you there to breathe.

Two broken people, tangled on a cold kitchen floor, ruining each other softly.

“Why would I stop calling you Peach,” he whispered against your hair, “when you’re the only good fucking thing in my life? The only thing I can’t stop thinking about. The only one who makes me feel like I’m not completely fucking lost.”

You looked up at him. Eyes raw.

“I love you.”

It fell from your lips like a wound.

“And it’s tearing me apart.”

You buried your face into his chest as your voice broke open.

“When I saw you with her, I shattered. I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. How am I supposed to just be your friend when all I want is to hold you until everything stops hurting?”

You tried to pull away.

“You’ll be better off without me. You and Jessica.”

“Don’t say her fucking name,” he growled, pulling you tighter, refusing to let you go.

“That’s it? You say your pretty little heartbreak speech and run again?”

You froze.

His voice wasn’t soft anymore. It was breaking.

“I can’t do this, Erik,if you wanna stop being friends, then fine. I’ll figure it out. Just don’t keep showing up like you love me and leaving like you don’t.”

He grabbed your hand and slammed it against his chest.

His heartbeat was brutal beneath your palm.

“You feel that?” he rasped.

“You fucking own this. Every beat. Every goddamn day, I wake up thinking, Is she okay? Should I call her? And then I don’t, because I think you hate me. Because I think I ruin everything I touch.”

“Erik, I didn’t mean-”

“And then you say you love me?”

He laughed bitterly.

“You say that like it’s supposed to fix me.”

That one hit you like a slap.

You shifted in his lap, trying to crawl away,hide, run, vanish.

His arms locked around you.

“Where do you think you’re going? I’m not done.”

His voice was rough, wrecked, devastating.

“You think I didn’t try to stay away? You think I didn’t try to protect you from me? Because I did. Every day. I kept thinking,how could I hold something this good? How could I be trusted with her when I can’t even trust myself?”

“Erik, stop-”

Your voice broke, hands on his face, desperate to shut him up before he shattered for real.

“But I couldn’t stop.”

His forehead pressed to yours.

“I couldn’t stop needing you. Wanting you. Hating myself for both.”

And then he kissed you.

Hard. Starved. Reckless.

You moaned into his mouth, clawed at his shoulders, kissed him like it was the last thing you’d ever get from him. He pulled you tighter, mouth hot and furious against yours, hands gripping your thighs like if he let go, he’d die.

You dragged your nails down his neck. He groaned against your lips.

This was war. This was grief. This was everything you’d swallowed, everything you didn’t say when you should’ve screamed.

His hand slipped under your shirt, rough palm on your waist, and it made you gasp.

“You drive me fucking insane,” he whispered into your mouth.

“But I can’t let you go. Not again.”

Your tears burned as you kissed him back, frantic, furious.

You shook your head.

“I don’t know how to do this.Us.”

“Neither do I.”

And then he kissed you again.

It was still happening in every breath, every drag of teeth, every desperate, bruising kiss that said I hate that I love you louder than words ever could.

Erik groaned into your mouth like the taste of you physically wrecked him. His hands were everywhere,sliding under your shirt, gripping your waist hard like he was daring you to vanish again.He was dragging you down harder into his lap.

You gasped, fingers fisting the collar of his soaked shirt, yanking it like it offended you just by existing.

He pulled away for a split second, panting,forehead pressed to yours, eyes dark and hungry and devastated.

“You ruin me,” he breathed.

Then he kissed you again before you could say anything back.

This time it was harder. Hotter. His mouth crashed into yours, tongue sliding past your lips with no hesitation, like he owned you,like he always had. Your thighs tightened around his hips as his hands roamed, palms rough, movements frantic like he was trying to memorize you all over again.

You whimpered into his mouth, and he growled,a low, guttural sound deep in his chest, possessive and way too full of want.

“Say it again,” he murmured, voice rough against your mouth.

You blinked, lips kiss,swollen and trembling.

“Say what?”

“That you love me.”

He said it like a dare.

Like a threat.

His mouth was on your neck before you could respond, biting, sucking, marking. You gasped, hips arching into him on instinct.

“Say it, Peach.” His voice dragged across your skin, hands under your shirt now, one dragging up your spine, the other gripping your thigh so hard it bordered on pain.

“Say it while I still remember how to stop.”

“I love you,” you whispered, wrecked and breathless, like you were admitting a crime.

“Erik, I love you.”

His mouth was back on yours before you finished the sentence, swallowing it like he needed it to live. Your hands tangled in his wet hair, pulling him closer, pulling him deeper.

Tongue against tongue.Heavy breathing. Moans caught between kisses .

The taste of him was still familiar,mint, cigarettes, and rain. But this wasn’t slow. This wasn’t tender.

It was needy. Desperate. Too late and not enough at the same time.

You rocked against him, friction building, your bodies locked in this furious rhythm of take and give and please just don't stop.

He pulled back just enough to look at you.

Eyes wild. Lips wet and red. His jaw clenched.

“I swear to god, you ever try to walk away again”

His voice broke.

You grabbed his face, kissed him again,hard. Messy. Tongue slipping into his mouth with a moan you couldn’t hold back.

“Then don’t let me.”

You were begging now. You didn’t care.

“Hold me here. Keep me. Please.”

His grip tightened.

“I’ll fucking ruin you.”

“You already did.”

And he kissed you again.

Like this was war, and you were both willing casualties.

Your clothes were a blur.

Fingers hooked under your shirt, Erik yanked it over your head. His mouth didn’t stop,pressing hot, open kisses along your jaw, your throat, your shoulder. Every touch was like a firestarter, like he was trying to burn you in with his lips.

You gasped, body arching into him, legs tightening around his hips.

“Fuck,Erik-”

He growled low in your throat, pulling you tighter against him until there was no space left. His shirt was next, soaked and clinging, and you tore it off ,you couldn’t stand the barrier.

Muscle. Ink. That little scar near his ribs you used to trace when he let you stay the night.

You pressed your mouth to it. Bit it.

He hissed through his teeth, grip bruising your hips.

“You’re gonna drive me insane.”

“You already did,” you whispered.

And then his mouth was on your chest, teeth scraping, tongue swirling over your nipple, hands dragging up your thighs and under the waistband of your shorts ,he had every right to be there.

You moaned, breathy, needy,and he swallowed the sound with another kiss, deeper this time, sloppier, your spit mixing, his hand slipping between your legs like it belonged there.

“So fucking wet,” he growled against your mouth.

“You’ve been like this for me the whole time?”

You nodded, biting your lip, forehead pressed to his.

“Don’t tease me, Erik. Not tonight.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

And he wasn’t.

He shoved your shorts down, fingers curling into your panties and dragging them aside, the pads of his fingers brushing through your slick, teasing your entrance,slow, deliberate.

“You still want me to stop?” he asked, voice so low it vibrated in your ribs.

You looked him dead in the eye.

“Touch me or I’ll fucking scream.”

He kissed you again,fast, messy,then slid two fingers inside you, curling just right, dragging a cry straight out of your throat.

Your nails dug into his shoulder. His mouth was back on yours before you could say his name again, moaning into the kiss as your hips rolled into his hand.

“That’s it,” he whispered. “Just like that, Peach. Take what you own.”

You were panting now, body grinding against him, aching and so close already it was humiliating.

He pulled back, eyes wild.

“I wanna fuck you so bad it physically hurts.”

“Then do it,” you breathed. “Wreck me, Erik. I don’t care. Just,don’t leave again.”

His eyes went dark.

He lifted you,effortless,and laid you flat on the kitchen floor, pulling his jeans down with one hand, never breaking eye contact. His cock was hard, flushed, leaking at the tip,and your body clenched at just the sight.

He lined himself up and paused.

“Last chance.”

“Do it.”

And then he was inside you.

One brutal, delicious thrust, burying himself to the hilt. You cried out,back arching, nails scraping his skin. He groaned like he’d been punched.

“Fuck,so tight,God, you feel like heaven Sweets .”

He started to move.

Slow at first, dragging every inch of himself out before snapping back in, the wet slap of skin on skin echoing off the kitchen tiles.

Then faster.

Rougher.

His hips smacked into yours as you held on like he might disappear again if you didn’t anchor him to you.

His hand found your throat,gentle, but possessive. His forehead rested against yours.

“Yours” he whispered.

“Mine’’

He kissed you then. Deep. Starving. Full of every word he couldn’t say.

You clenched around him, crying out again, hips stuttering.

“You gonna come for me, Peach?”

You nodded, tears mixing with sweat and spit and breath.

“Do it,” he growled. “Come on my cock, baby. Let me feel you lose it.”

And you did.

With a broken cry, your body shook, walls pulsing around him, dragging him over the edge seconds later. He cursed, thrusting hard once, twice, then spilling inside you with a sound that wasn’t just a moan,it was a fucking confession.

He collapsed over you, chest to chest, heart to heart. Breathing like he’d just survived something catastrophic.

Because maybe he had.

Because maybe this was the beginning or the end or both.

And still,neither of you moved.

Because for once, it didn’t feel like someone was leaving.

#erik campbell fanfiction #erik campbell #erik campbell final destination #final destination #erik campbell x reader #final destination bloodlines #erik campbell smut

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prisvvner · 4 days ago

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✫・゜・ ☆ﾟ. ʜᴀɴᴅʟᴇʙᴀʀꜱ & ʜᴇʟʟꜰɪʀᴇ

─── pairing: biker!ryomensukuna x mechanic!femalereader

─── synopsis: you used to run tokyo’s streets. now you build the monsters that do. but when a rider in black shows up on a hayabusa with eyes like blood and a smirk like a loaded gun—something starts ticking again. something you swore you buried.

─── content: 5.4k words, street racer au, strong language, swearing, mention of hidden trauma, street culture

─── author's note: ahhh i couldn't wait anymore to post this hehe <3 this is part one of the series, so buckle up and enjoy! i had so much fun writing this :* btw if y'all like this and want to be added to the taglist, just comment on here or send me a message

⊹ ࣪ ˖ masterlist ⊹ ࣪ ˖ part one ⊹ ࣪ ˖ part two

The sky is still bruised in tender shades of lavender and rose, colors bleeding across the horizon like the fading fingerprints of some restless god, half-remembered and unwilling to let go. Tokyo lies beneath you in a fragile pause, caught in that brief, sacred moment between the weight of night and the pulse of dawn—when the city hasn’t yet stirred, but something ancient hums beneath the silence. It’s a breath held, a secret waiting to spill.

You slide open the narrow window of your studio apartment with a faint creak, the hinges stiff with age, groaning like they know every restless night you’ve spent awake. The air sneaks inside in a cool whisper, carrying the smell of wet asphalt, faint ozone, and the lingering ghost of burnt fuel from last night’s ride. You slip barefoot onto the fire escape outside, metal cold and slick with dew beneath your toes. It bites at your skin, a familiar sting that feels more like a handshake than a warning, sharp and real.

The fire escape’s metal ribs curve and twist, rusty and rough under your grip, but steady as always. The world below is still draped in shadows, buildings long and lean against the early light, their rooftops spiked like the jagged teeth of a sleeping beast. Somewhere far off, a siren wails briefly, fading into the city’s slow awakening. But up here, everything is quiet. Almost holy.

You pull your shirt tighter against the chill, the fabric soft and worn—threadbare at the collar, carrying the faint smell of motor oil and cigarette smoke. In your hand, the chipped black mug feels like a small furnace. You cradle it like a talisman, the bitter, scalding coffee inside burning away the last sticky clinging of sleep. No sugar. No mercy. The steam rises in lazy tendrils, blurring the edges of the sharp skyline, curling upward like smoke from a forgotten fire.

You light a cigarette with a flick of your wrist, a habitual dance you don’t really want but can’t seem to stop. The flame briefly illuminates the hardened lines of your fingers, the scars beneath your nails, silent stories written in oil and sweat. You inhale slowly, the smoke filling your lungs like a secret you’re keeping from the world. It’s harsh and bitter, a burning echo of last night’s road and the machines that never quite quiet.

Below you, the city stirs as the first tendrils of light spill across the streets, catching the wet pavement in shards of pink and gold. Neon signs flicker dimly, their colors bruised and faded from nights spent screaming in the underground veins of Tokyo. The sharp scent of rubber and gasoline rises from the gutters, mixing with the faint salt of early rain. Somewhere close, a bike idles, its low growl a promise of power and speed, an unspoken challenge in the morning stillness.

You’ve been running on fumes since 8PM. Last night, a Ducati was dead weight, cold and stubborn like a beast that refused to bow. But you tore into it with grit and grind, knuckles cracked and slick with oil, hands moving in rhythm like a dark lullaby to steel and fire. From the first spark to the growl that finally tore through the silence, you pushed it past the edge—past broken, past tired, past everything that tried to hold you back.

When the bike roared to life, you weren’t just fixing a machine. You were staking your claim on the night.

By 2:30AM, the city was a neon blur beneath you—purple and orange streaks slicing past shuttered storefronts and sleeping cars. The Ducati’s engine sang under you, a low, hungry growl that matched the fire in your chest. Tokyo’s veins were your own, every turn and straightaway a shot of adrenaline straight to your spine.

The exhaust burned hot behind you; your breath cold in the night air. The road was empty, but your heart hammered like the bass in a street race. Speed wasn’t just a rush—it was a goddamn lifeline.

By the time you eased back into the gritty glow of your garage, your muscles screamed and your skin still tasted of gasoline and midnight air.

Your gaze drifts downward.

There, nestled between cracked sidewalks and chipped concrete walls, lies your kingdom.

BLACK DOG PERFORMANCE.

The letters on the worn sign above the bay door flicker with neon lights—magenta and cyan, fractured and buzzing in a slow, electric heartbeat. The paint is chipped, flecked with rust like dried blood on steel. Whoever expects perfection here clearly doesn’t know you.

This place isn’t clean. It’s not polished. It’s raw. Unapologetic.

You built it that way.

BLACK DOG snarls at the world like a beast unchained, scars and all. The scent of oil and burnt rubber clings to every inch of it, the sharp tang of sweat and motor grease hanging thick in the air. This garage is more than just a workspace—it’s a cathedral carved out of grit and gasoline, a sanctuary for those who live fast and bleed slow. The kind of place where broken machines aren’t just repaired, they’re resurrected. Beneath your hands, cold steel and shattered dreams find a new voice, growling back to life in furious roars and snarls that echo through Tokyo’s underbelly.

Your hands.

Calloused and steady, scarred from years of wrestling engines back from the brink.

You—Black Dog—the whispered legend in every back alley and midnight meet-up. The fixer, the ghost, the mechanic who can coax the deadliest beasts of metal and rubber back onto the streets like new, only faster and meaner.

You built this empire when you were just seventeen, ripping your dreams out of the cracked concrete with nothing but stubborn grit, stolen tools, and a defiant heartbeat that refused to quit. Back then, no one believed you’d last a year. Hell, most thought you’d be crushed under the weight of the city before your first gearshift. But here you are. Years later, the streets themselves seem to bend toward you. Now, they line up outside your bay doors, hungry for the chance to put their broken machines in your hands. Because when Black Dog says it’ll run again? It doesn’t just run. It dominates. When Black Dog says it’ll scream faster than anything else tearing up the night? You’d better believe the city’s about to witness a new kind of chaos.

You take a long drag from your cigarette, the smoke swirling around your face like a smoky veil, tendrils curling into the early dawn air. Your eyes drift up, tracing the jagged skyline where the first pale fingers of morning stretch and crack the dark like fractured glass. The city breathes slowly beneath you, caught between sleep and the relentless rush ahead.

You breathe it all in—the quiet hum of possibility, the electric promise pulsing in the stillness, the recklessness stitched deep into every nerve, every heartbeat pounding with the thrill of what’s to come. This moment, this calm before the storm, is yours alone.

The day hasn’t started yet.

But when it does?

It’s going to have to catch you.

You flick the cigarette away, watching the ember arc through the blue-tinted dawn like a dying star shot from your fingers. It falls slow, then sputters out on the cracked concrete below with a hiss, swallowed by the cold. The air stings your lungs—sharp, bitter, real—and it sobers the last edge of the adrenaline still ghosting through your veins from the ride.

You slip back in through the window, pulling it shut behind you with a snap that rattles the thin walls and echoes like a gunshot in the quiet.

Your apartment above the garage is barely more than four walls and a bed, but it holds the war trophies of a life lived fast and without apology. Scattered mechanic’s manuals stained with grease and ink, half-crushed energy drinks, a cracked burner phone that refuses to die, and a battered leather jacket thrown over the back of a metal chair like a knight’s armor after battle. The air smells like sweat and steel, coffee grounds and fuel. Home Sweet Helhole.

But there’s no time to linger. The city’s heartbeat is rising, thick with heat, horns, and hunger—and it’s already calling your name.

You shrug on the jacket, faded black leather with the frayed collar and the crooked patch over the chest that reads BLACK DOG in rough, blood-red thread. It’s stiff from rain and wear, stitched with stories no one will ever hear. You slide your fingers across the collar once, then grab your keys from the hook by the door, their metallic clatter echoing off the silence like a starter pistol.

Your boots hit the floorboards hard as you move down the narrow stairwell. The buzz of the fluorescents overhead stutters in rhythm with your steps, tired lights in a building that never sleeps. The metal stairs creak with familiarity, like an old friend nodding good morning.

At the bottom, the bay door is already cracked open—just a sliver—but it’s enough. A beam of pale light slices through the cavernous dark like a scalpel. Beyond it, the street glows with early neon, the colors soft but bleeding in electric blue, heat-lamp red, the heartbeat pink of Tokyo's underbelly waking up.

Inside, BLACK DOG PERFORMANCE exhales.

You feel it before you see it. The slow, warm breath of machines asleep but dreaming. The scent of hot metal and burned rubber hangs in the air like incense. Every surface glints with the potential for violence: wrench sets gleaming like surgical tools, socket heads lined up with military precision, shelves sagging with parts salvaged from wreckage and rebirth.

The garage is a sanctum carved from concrete and conviction. It hums, alive and holy, every exposed beam and oil-stained floorboard vibrating with memories. This is where machines come to be resurrected. This is where you make the dead run again.

And there it is.

The Ducati.

Last night’s beast, still warm.

It sits low and lethal on its rear stand in the far corner, shadows slipping off its sleek, charcoal frame like smoke. The rain from the night ride has dried to a delicate crust of grit over the paint, streaks of road dust clinging to the fairings like warpaint. Its belly pan still glows faintly from the heat. The chain hums faintly as it settles, the residual energy twitching like a coiled snake still dreaming of motion.

You ran her through hell last night. Three hours in the city’s underbelly, burning through tunnels, dodging night-shift semis, racing ghosts down the Shuto Expressway. The tires are still warm, the rear worn just a little more flat, the edge feathered from hard corners and tight exits.

She didn’t complain once.

Your hand lifts, fingers brushing along the Ducati’s fuel tank, just once. The touch is reverent, intimate.

You whisper, “Still alive, aren’t you?” and the silence answers back like a purr.

From the shadows near the main bench, a voice murmurs—low, calm, familiar.

“Shake, shake.”

You smirk, turning toward the work light above the long steel table.

“Inumaki,” you greet him, stepping into the halo of harsh white. “You’re up early.”

He doesn’t look up right away, just nods, sleeves rolled past his elbows, grease already staining his hands. He’s hunched over a disassembled VFR engine like a surgeon elbows-deep in a heart transplant. A cigarette dangles from his mouth, faint smoke curling in the air above his head, the scent not tobacco, but something stranger, softer. Seaweed. Tuna. Wasabi.

“Onigiri,” he mutters, voice flat but amused, that familiar deadpan that somehow says everything.

You roll your eyes, toeing a rolling stool toward him with the side of your boot. “Clutch acting up again?”

Inumaki shrugs—his universal language for yes, but it’s complicated. You both know what needs doing. You always do.

The two of you fall into the rhythm without a word. The bench lights cast harsh shadows across your faces, and the tools start to sing. Ratchets click. Torque wrenches groan. The city continues its slow crawl into day, but in here, everything’s sharp and simple.

This place is yours. These machines are yours.

This life is yours.

And out there? The streets are waiting.

They don’t know it yet, but today?

You’re going to make them bleed.

You sling your leg over the rolling stool like it’s a Harley and glide across the oil-slick floor with practiced grace—this is your kingdom, and every bolt, stain, and dent knows your name. You twist with a lazy flair and kick the socket drawer open with the heel of your boot, tools rattling like coins in a gambler’s palm.

“Didn’t I tell you to bed the clutch plate last time?” you say, voice casual, not even glancing up. “Not rip it out like it owes you money and ghosted your sister.”

Inumaki doesn’t flinch. Just exhales like the moments beneath commentary. “Mentaiko.”

You scoff, grabbing a 10mm socket and a torque wrench, flipping both in your hands like twin knives.

“Yeah? Tell that to the gearbox that sounds like it’s been chewing cinderblocks and shame.”

You nod toward the mangled innards of the Honda VFR in front of you. The side casing’s off, the clutch is toast—plates blackened, the basket chewed to hell, springs warped like a bad joke. Someone clearly mistook ‘torque spec’ for ‘guess and pray.’

You shoot him a sharp look over your shoulder.

He’s chewing on his cigarette like it said something rude about his mother.

“This is why I don’t leave you alone with wet clutches. No finesse. You treat it like it insulted your drift lines.”

“Shio,” he mutters.

You snort, arching a brow. “Don’t ‘salt’ me, grease monkey. This thing’s one bad downshift from painting the pavement with transmission teeth.”

Still, your hands are already working—fast, sure. His, beside yours, are rougher, rawer, but learning. You lay the plates down in a neat stack like cards in a gambler’s spread.

“Listen,” you start, tapping the inside of the casing with your wrench. A hollow thunk answers. “No preload on the push rod. Again.”

Inumaki tilts his head. The universal ‘I knew that.’

“Then why the hell didn’t you fix it?”

He just grins around the cigarette and hands you the replacement friction plates like it’s some sacred ritual.

You take them with a roll of your eyes. “Ketchup,” you mutter, throwing his language back at him.

Sometimes you wonder if apprentice is even the right word for Toge Inumaki. Stray you fed once and now refuses to leave feels more accurate. You found him elbow-deep in the guts of a stolen GT-R, spark plugs in one pocket and a busted knuckle dripping blood onto the timing chain like it was some kind of offering. He had rewired the ignition harness using speaker wire and pure gall. Instead of calling the cops or walking away like a sane person, you tossed him a rag and said, “Wanna learn how to do that without catching fire?” He’s been here ever since—silent, stubborn, chewing on a cigarette like it’s a nervous tic, talking in rice ball ingredients like you’ve got time to play charades with a damn carburetor. But the kid gets it. Clumsy with finesse, yeah, but fast. So fast. You show him once how to gap plugs on a rotary engine and the next day he’s porting an RX-7 like he was born doing it. He’s got the hands for this life, raw and reckless, and more importantly, the brain. He just hasn’t realized how rare that combo is in this scene, where most punks think horsepower fixes bad driving and confuse nitrous with a personality.

You’ve had others roll through BLACK DOG PERFORMANCE, flashing egos louder than their exhausts, asking for twin turbos on stock internals or trying to shove VTEC into anything that breathes. They burn out. They always do.

But Inumaki? He stuck. Quiet as a socket wrench, always watching, always just one job away from getting it perfect. And with the underground circuit heating up, more runs going down along the docks, more late-night test pulls echoing down Shuto, more grease-covered kids whispering about sleepers, traps, pink slips, your garage has become a nucleus. You’ve got R34s, Supras, Evos lined up like soldiers.

You don’t just fix machines here; you tune soul into them. And Inumaki’s becoming a part of that. Not a sidekick. Not a little brother. Not even a friend in the soft sense. But he’s yours. He’s BLACK DOG. Even if he never says it.

The music overhead kicks up, a bass-heavy trap remix pulsing through the rafters. The kind of beat that makes engines throb in rhythm and your boots tap the concrete without permission.

The garage breathes. Lives. Fluorescents flicker overhead, casting electric halos across engine bays and exposed wires. The air is a mix of burnt clutch, spilled fuel, brake cleaner, and old vinyl. A familiar perfume to anyone who speaks fluent octane.

You glance over your shoulder.

The R34 Skyline in the next bay catches your eye. Deep black, matte finish, gold Volk TE37s. A goddamn beast. Beside it, a Supra Mk4 with its hood off and wires spilling like veins. The kind of cars people dream about. You build them. You bring them back from the brink.

You stand up and inspect the Skyline’s front fender, run your fingers across the paint like checking for a pulse.

“This thing’s running lean at 7K. Probably the MAF again,” you mutter to yourself.

Then louder: “Inumaki! What’d I say about the fuel mapping?”

He doesn’t glance up. “Kombu.”

You scowl. “It’s not ‘kelp,’ dipshit—it’s detonation. If this baby pings at top end, we’re gonna melt a piston, and then I’m gonna melt your face. We’ve got a race in three nights. You wanna be the guy telling the crew we grenaded a Skyline because you couldn’t tune an air-fuel ratio?”

He raises a finger like a peace sign. “Tuna.”

“Blame the ECU again and I swear I’ll flash it with Windows 95 just to prove a point.”

He shrugs, utterly unbothered, and goes back to torquing bolts.

There’s tension in the air. Not between you two—but outside. In the city.

You feel it in the texts lighting up your burner. Half-coded messages from racers and riders pinging like a sonar.

Midnight soon?

Shuto clear.

Pachinko front lot @ 2 AM.

It’s all whispers, all oil-slick rumors of something big happening soon.

“They’re saying Zenin’s crew might show up for this one,” you deadpan, staring at your phone. “And if that happens, we’re gonna need everything we’ve got tuned to warfare.”

Inumaki looks up from the VFR.

“Shake?”

You nod grimly. “Yeah. That Zenin.”

They’re not just racers. They’re yakuza with engines strapped to their egos, and if they’re coming back into the underground scene? Something big is shifting under Tokyo’s streets.

You turn, slapping a rag against your palm.

“Finish the VFR. Torque to spec. No shortcuts. We’re not just tuning—we’re going to war.”

Inumaki flashes a grin and dives back into work.

You pace across the shop floor. Past the bikes, the cars, the piles of parts that look like chaos but are organized in your head like an engine schematic. There’s a half-gutted Evo X in the corner. You pop the hood, check the AFR, mutter, “Boost is too hot. I need a lower IAT.”

“Inumaki! Where’s that front-mount intercooler kit from last week?”

“Tuna mayo,” he calls.

“I swear on every JDM god, if you shoved it behind the scooter engines again, I’m installing it on your spine.”

There’s a thud. A pause. Then he shuffles back holding the FMIC like a cat bringing home a bird.

You smirk. “Good boy.”

This—this right here—is home. Not some white-walled apartment. Not a neatly made bed or a cup of green tea. No. Home is the smell of high-octane fuel and sweat. Home is tools in your hand and music on the speakers and Tokyo whispering secrets just beyond the bay doors.

BLACK DOG PERFORMANCE isn’t just a garage. It’s a haven. A temple. A battlefield.

And you?

You’re its priest.

Every machine here has a story. And every racer who walks through that door leaves a little blood on the floor and a little legend behind.

The races are coming.

And when the streets call?

You’ll answer.

One rev at a time.

By noon, BLACK DOG PERFORMANCE is buzzing like a hive on nitro.

The bay doors are rolled open, letting in a wash of humid Tokyo heat and the distant growl of traffic. The scent of grease and gasoline hangs thick in the air, mixing with the occasional waft of sweetbread from the convenience store down the block.

You don’t get time to smell it, though. You’re too busy juggling torque specs and ticking clocks.

Another Civic rolls in, this one low-slung and angry, rattling like it’s got secrets. Its owner jumps out the second it parks, barely killing the engine.

“Is this where the Black Dog works?”

You raise a brow from behind a welding mask, sparks flying from the angle grinder in your hands. “Only on days ending in Y. You got a problem or just wanna gawk?”

“I—I heard you’re the only one who could tune my K-series. Everyone else said it was fried.”

You set the grinder down with a clang. Pull off your gloves. Step closer.

“Pop the hood.”

The guy obeys instantly. You run your hands along the valve cover, check the plugs with a flick, scan the wiring loom with a narrowed gaze.

“She’s not fried. She’s been abused.”

He blinks. “You can fix her?”

You grin—sharp, smug, just this side of dangerous. “I can make her purr.”

By two, the shop’s full.

The Supra guy came back with his cousin’s RX-7. A biker gang from Yokosuka rolled in asking about exhaust baffles for their Hayabusas. Some rich kid tried to bribe Inumaki with sushi to “make his GTR sound like a demon.” He left with a politely written intake checklist and the very real fear that you were going to reprogram his entire ECU in binary if he asked again.

A salaryman in a wrinkled suit stood by the waiting area holding a rusted old Ducati Monster like a dead pet. You took one look and told him: “I’ll resurrect her. But she’s gonna come back meaner.”

He looked like he wanted to cry.

The phones ring nonstop. The worklist stacks up like invoices in hell. But you?

You’re in your element.

You bark torque numbers over your shoulder while bleeding brakes on a Celica. You balance throttle bodies with one hand and sip canned coffee with the other. You’re already three steps ahead of every request.

Compliments fly, whether you acknowledge them or not.

“You did the black Evo down in Shibuya last week, right? It sounded like a damn thunderstorm.” “That twin-turbo 350Z on IG? That was you?” “She’s the only reason my RX doesn’t rattle apart at redline.” “Heard she rebuilt an R1 from the frame up in three days—blindfolded.”

You just keep working.

Inumaki trails behind you like a silent specter, catching your tools before you even ask, communicating entirely in his strange little language and well-placed grunts. The two of you are a rhythm, a machine inside the machine.

Even the customers notice.

“You two… like, telepathic or something?” one of them wonders, watching you toss a wrench backward without looking, and Inumaki catch it in one smooth motion.

You don’t even answer. Just smirk and slam the hood shut on the Civic, toss the keys to the wide-eyed owner.

“She’s ready. Don’t redline her until she loves you.”

By seven, the sun’s low and bleeding across the sky in streaks of rust-orange and violet.

The last customer rolls out with a roar. The garage falls quiet.

Inumaki’s got grease on his jaw, sweat on his collarbone, and dark circles blooming under his eyes. He’s halfway through wiping down tools when you toss him a towel.

“You’re done.”

He pauses, blinks.

“Go,” you tell him. “You’ve earned it. That Ducati needs a new clutch hub, and I need someone semi-conscious to order parts tomorrow. Go before I bolt you to a dyno and make you do cardio.”

He hesitates like he wants to argue, then just offers a small, sincere “Salmon.”

You ruffle his hair on the way past. “Get outta here, rice ball.”

The door clangs shut behind him.

Silence.

Finally.

You lock up the front, flick the shop lights to low, and roll your sleeves back up. A single halogen lamp flickers on above bay three, painting the floor gold.

In the corner sits the project.

An old 1970s Nissan Fairlady Z. Body stripped, frame clean. All matte primer and raw potential. You’ve had it under wraps for months, waiting for the right parts, the right mood, the right silence to get it started.

Tonight feels right.

You walk over slowly, reverent. Pull the sheet back. Run your fingers across the fender like a promise.

“You ready, girl?”

No answer, of course.

But you swear you hear the city outside hold its breath.

You grab your welder, flick on your favorite playlist—old punk, rough and gritty—and lower your goggles.

And then you begin.

Piece by piece.

Bolt by bolt.

Until the night swallows the noise and your work becomes the only thing left awake.

The clock just hit midnight, the halogen hum above bay three is the only thing singing, casting a sharp white glow over the skeletal frame of the Fairlady Z. Sparks fly in bursts like angry fireflies as your welder hisses to life. The smell of scorched steel and burnt ozone coils in the air. You pause only to wipe your face with the back of your glove, leaving a smudge of sweat and soot across your cheekbone.

It’s muscle memory now. You don’t think—you move. Spot weld. Clamp. Adjust. Torque. It’s a rhythm deeper than breath, older than scars. And somewhere between tightening the subframe bolts and prepping the rear diff, your mind slips sideways.

Backwards.

To the old roads.

Shuto Expressway. Bayshore Route. Spiral ramps and narrow cuts through the city’s underbelly. Midnight lit by taillights. Your first drift was at thirteen. A hand-me-down AE86 your cousin said was too beat to survive another race. You proved him wrong by redlining it through the mountain curves until the tires screamed like demons and the tach needle danced past sanity.

You lived for that chaos. For the smell of rubber and rain. For the thunder of engines echoing off tunnel walls at 2 AM. For the moment right before the turn where time cracked open and you could hear your heart louder than the exhaust.

You learned how to heel-toe before you learned how to flirt.

Learned how to rebuild a carb before you learned how to lie.

From thirteen to seventeen, you were a ghost in the Tokyo underground—known only as Black Dog. No decals. No sponsors. Just a matte-black Silvia S13 with mismatched body panels and a growl that made people part like water when you showed up.

You could still feel the wheel under your fingers sometimes. That twitch of oversteer, the moment of surrender before the tires caught again. That was freedom. That was everything.

Until—

Your hand stills.

The torque wrench slips slightly.

You blink once, sharp, like slicing a memory in half before it finishes bleeding.

You don’t go there.

Not yet.

You exhale slow. Metal cools under your palm. The garage is still again. The kind of still that feels heavy. Pressed-in.

You start reaching for your tools again when you hear it.

That sound.

Low. Throaty. Not the frantic whine of a wannabe. No, this is deeper. Confident. A howl, not a scream. A beast purring just below redline. It echoes through the side alley like it owns the concrete.

You straighten up slowly, pushing the scratched visor of your welding mask up to your forehead with the back of a gloved hand, sweat and grease clinging to your skin like a second layer. Your heart's already beating with that old rhythm—steady, low, but ready to spike. The rhythm you thought you’d buried years ago under layers of oil-stained routines and the kind of peace only a roaring engine can offer.

Then it happens.

Twin LED beams cut through the haze clinging to the inside of the garage windows, piercing the fog like wolf eyes in a snowstorm. The silhouette that follows is as sleek as a shadow with intention—a black Suzuki Hayabusa, rolling up slow and smooth like it owns silence. Every part of it is murdered out: fairings, rims, frame, helmet. Even the tire walls look darker than they should be, like the road itself tried to cling to the thing. There’s no badge. No decals. Just matte black skin over something clearly monstrous underneath. The engine hums low and intimate, the kind of purr that makes mechanics flinch and thrill in equal measure.

It doesn’t park. It arrives.

The Hayabusa halts just outside the open bay of the back entrance, the idle slowing into something hypnotic—less a sound and more a warning.

You stay rooted where you are, half-lit in the orange glow of a hanging bulb, standing beside your Fairlady Z like a sentry. One hand braced casually against the fender, the other curled without thought into a fist at your side. Not out of fear. Just reflex.

The rider doesn’t dismount right away. Just sits there, one gloved hand drumming the throttle in a rhythm so subtle it almost sounds like breathing. A tick. A pulse. A message in Morse code if you were the paranoid type.

Then— The kill switch flicks with a practiced motion.

Silence drops like a guillotine.

The man peels off the helmet in one smooth motion, revealing a head of dark pink hair, tousled and wild like a flame caught in the wind. It shouldn't fit, shouldn't make sense with the blackout look of the bike—but somehow, it does. The strands catch the low shop light and turn into pastel fire.

Then you catch his eyes.

Crimson. Bright, sharp, unapologetic. The kind of red that doesn’t just see, it dissects. Judges. Memorizes. There’s something surgical about his stare, like he could tear down the entire garage with his gaze alone and rebuild it just to see if he could do it better.

Tattoos crawl up his throat and across his jaw, black lines thick and vicious, looping like the coils of a serpent, bold as war paint. The ink over his neck wraps like a collar made of smoke and spite. It snakes across the hollows of his collarbones, disappears beneath a zipped-down leather jacket that fits like sin.

He’s artfully feral. Clean but dangerous. A contradiction dressed in blackout gear and arrogance.

You’ve never seen him before.

But you’ve felt people like him before. Out there, on the edge of midnight highways. In the split second before two engines scream in harmony. In the half-second glance exchanged at the start line before the lights go green.

He tilts his head, eyes still locked on you, expression unreadable. Like he’s already done the math on your top speed, your breaking point, your favorite gearshift pattern.

Like he already knows your name, even if you’ve never heard his.

You narrow your eyes, wipe your hands on the rag tucked into your waistband, slow and unimpressed. You nod toward the open bay with your chin.

“If you’re here to show off,” you break the silence, voice dry as gravel and twice as sharp, “you’re about five years late and two turbochargers short.”

A smirk tugs at one side of his mouth, more fang than friendliness.

He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to.

He just swings a long leg over the Hayabusa and plants his boots on your turf like he’s been walking on it for years. Like this place—your place—is just another stop on his map.

You watch him approach, something cold and old stirring at the base of your spine.

You don’t know it yet, but something’s shifted.

A new chapter, loud as a rev limiter, just dropped into gear.

And it’s not just the night that’s watching anymore.

It’s the street.

And the street is starving.

tag-list:

@dahliadaenerys @greenday-bingus

✧･ﾟwritten by @prisvvner ⊹ dividers by @cafekitsune ⛓️ do NOT repost, steal, translate, or claim as your own. 🖤 reblogs are love — theft is not. 🏍respect the grease and the grind.

#sukuna x reader #ryomen sukuna x reader #biker sukuna #mechanic reader #jjk #jjk fanfic #jujutsu kaisen #toge inumaki #ryomen sukuna #sukuna #ʜᴀɴᴅʟᴇʙᴀʀꜱ & ʜᴇʟʟꜰɪʀᴇ

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lost-and-ephemeral · 1 year ago

Text

Series: In Her Shadow, pt.2 (ft. main trio)

Part 1 | Part 2

Slowly but surely she replaced you in his heart.

Pairing: Xavier x reader, Zayne x reader, Rafayel x reader (seperate)

Tags: angst, hurt no comfort, reader is not MC, breakup

A/N: I recieved a lot of comments and request asking me to continue, so here we are! I've tried my best. Ty everyone, I appreciate every message, even if it would be hard to mention every single one of them in this post. Also, if you want to be tagged in future fics, let me know!

-`♡´- MASTERLIST -`♡´-

Rafayel

You began to notice that Rafayel was spending less and less time with you, choosing his bodyguard over you.

It wasn't obvious at first, yeah, but as time went on, everything became so noticeable that you couldn't ignore it anymore. Especially when he forgot about your plans with him and didn't even consider apologizing for it.

The smell of someone else's perfume in his studio, the way Rafayel would leave you at home and take her to all the important events because "you probably don't like spending time among journalists and annoying guests." It seems that he didn't even notice the moment when you were completely estranged from each other.

And all your attempts to talk to him about it ended with nothing.

"She's my bodyguard," he'd say. "No wonder I take her everywhere I go. Is there anything wrong with that?"

Yes, a lot of things were wrong.

But he was completely unwilling to notice it, and you were tired of collecting the shards of your broken heart from the floor day after day. Those warm feelings that brought a sense of lightness and happiness in your heart suddenly turned into pure torture.

You had to end it all, even if it'll hurt so much.

When you arrived at his studio this morning, you came face to face with "Ms. Bodyguard" herself. She was just about to leave, and didn't even hesitate to embrace your beloved. Right in front of you.

Maybe you would've exploded from all these negative emotions, if you had any strength left to be mad or to cry. But there was only emptiness in your heart.

You became strangers to each other.

"I'm breaking up with you," you said without any regret and pushed him away as he tried to hug you. "I don't want to be a second choice after your precious bodyguard."

"W-wait, why? What... But I didn't do anything!" he replied confused, apparently not realizing how much he's been hurting you all this time.

"Maybe that's the point. That you'd do anything for her, but not for me."

He looked at you with the same confusion in his eyes, trying to figure out if it was a joke, but you continued before leaving this place forever.

"You were everything to me, Rafayel. But for you, I was just a small episode of your life. I'm tired. You've been spending all your free time with her, like I didn't exist. It'll be better this way. Goodbye."

No matter how long he was calling your name, asking you to stop, to come back and talk with him, you didn't.

Zayne

Loving a cardiac surgeon with his busy schedule is hard.

But it's even harder when he no longer cares about your existence and spends a significant amount of time with his childhood friend.

After Zayne forgot about your reservation at the restaurant, making you feel like you were the last fool in this world, some more time has passed.

Yeah, he apologized. No, he didn't start spending less time with his "friend".

It's hard to count how many evenings you spent alone when he stayed late at work for her or was invited to a "friendly" dinner with her. But it happened often enough so finally your love turned into suffering.

At first you tried to convince yourself that you're too jealous and he's just happy to finally reunite with someone close to him from his youth. You care about your friends too, don't you?

But it only got worse.

All your plans were constantly adjusted to his friend's wishes. She wants to take him to a cafe at the same time you were planning to go to the cinema? "Sorry, love, let's reschedule our date for another day". You've made him his favorite dinner? Too bad, his friend already brought him dinner at work and he's not hungry.

Eventually you started feeling like he stopped enjoying your time together and just continued to exist in the same apartment with you out of habit.

Talking didn't get you anywhere, because Zayne didn't notice how much he was hurting you (or he simply didn't want to notice it) with his actions and only distanced himself from you even more.

At some point you felt like he put an ice wall around himself again.

He stayed late again this evening, completely forgetting his promise to spend time with you. You packed your things with tears in your eyes, ready to say goodbye to life with Zayne once and for all.

And he showed up at the doorstep of his apartment just as you were ready to leave.

"What's going on?" his voice didn't betray a shred of emotion. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to leave you and your lovely friend together so I don't have to be an unwanted addition to your life."

Zayne was taken aback at this statement and was about to say something, but you interrupted him.

"You were the one who brought happiness and comfort into my life. You were the one who made me feel loved and wanted. But now I realize that I wasn't good enough for you. Goodbye."

You walked away and closed the door behind you, leaving him all alone.

Xavier

Before, you without a doubt would've said that your relationship with Xavier was the ultimate dream.

But now it wasn't actually true.

Yes, your beloved still showed care and attention every spare minute he had. Just not to you. It seemed as if his colleague started to occupy his every thought.

During dinner, on a walk, after missions. He was always talking about her, how strong she is, and how lucky he is that she chose him as her partner. His eyes were shining with delight you had never seen before.

You were happy for him, but only until it crossed the line. Only until you started to feel like he was in love with her, not with you.

One day you found yourself completely miserable. Xavier texted you that he would be late because they had "decided to celebrate another successful mission". Except that you were usually the one he shared his joy with. But things have changed.

Even though you were the brightest star in his world, you were inevitably lost behind the glow of the Moon.

You were trying to be better, to be more interesting. Trying to reach an unattainable ideal. But you couldn't. After all, maybe you were never meant to be together if it turned out like this. Maybe you weren't enough for him.

You couldn't remember the last day you didn't cry. Sometimes alone, sometimes locking yourself in the bathroom after another conversation about this "super-strong collegue". But Xavier didn't seem to notice it at all.

"I thought maybe you'd be interested to know what happens during missions," he said when you brought up this painful topic.

And, yes, you were interested. But all you heard was, "She took down that Wanderer so easily, I couldn't take my eyes off her." Or, "she's so good with her weapon, it's amazing."

He distanced himself from you so much that you hardly spent any time together.

He wasn't even home the day you left.

Xavier sent you a message saying he'd be late again. As usual, with her. Even though he promised to have a movie night and you had already prepared everything you needed for it.

Maybe it's even better if you don't see the look in his eyes the moment you tell him you're breaking up with him. You packed your things and left a note on the table, next to the snacks you bought.

"Maybe in another universe I would be worthy of you so you could look at me with the same adoration. I can see that you enjoy spending time with her much more. And we should break up so you don't torment my heart anymore. Goodbye."

You glanced around his apartment one last time before leaving it forever.

♡ tags: @skyowlz @prettytemis @aishasreality @randompersonwhoexist @kreishin @reni502 @moonyzstarz @chin-chii

#love and deepspace x reader #love and deepspace #love and deepspace xavier #love and deepspace zayne #love and deepspace rafayel #rafayel x reader #zayne x reader #xavier x reader

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theonottsbxtch · 8 months ago

Note

HEAR ME OUT 🙂 charles x pianist!reader where he’s like writing/composing a new ep and his producer is like “omg you should totally do a duet with (reader) 🥰” and uh yeah just anything related to that

i can already envision a scene where charles spends most of his time in the dark alone in the studio with his piano but reader is ofc there…

go for any trope you want 🙈

MY MUSE | CL16

an: im sorry this is so long istart writing and then i can't stop. btw i want everyone to know that i was listening to that's not me by skepta and jme while writing this. completely different vibes. SEND MORE REQUESTS IM BORED HOUSESITTING FOR THREE WEEKS

wc: 7.8k

dedicated to @iamred-iamyellow & @iimplicitt

The studio was thick with the scent of aged leather and dust, the faint glow of a single, dimmed lamp casting long shadows across the hardwood floors. Charles sat hunched over the grand piano, its black lacquer surface reflecting the soft light in fractured shards. His fingers hovered above the ivory keys, trembling with a kind of frustrated anticipation, but no sound came. The room seemed to echo with a deafening silence, broken only by the faint ticking of the clock on the far wall—an incessant reminder of time slipping away.

He had been here for days, isolated from the outside world during the off season. The once-comforting walls, lined with shelves of dog-eared books and musical scores, now felt like the confines of a cage. His last piece had been a masterpiece—a soaring composition that had flowed from him like water, effortless and pure. It was the kind of music that haunted you long after it ended, the kind that etched itself into the soul of anyone who heard it. But now, the notes eluded him.

Charles ran his fingers through his dark, curly hair and let out a low sigh. There was a pressure building in his chest, like a wound slowly tightening, pulling him apart. For the past week, he had been locked in this room, trying to capture the essence of something even greater than the last, but all he had managed to conjure was noise—fragments of half-formed melodies that crumbled before they could take shape.

He stood abruptly, the sudden movement causing the papers on top of his piano to rustle, brittle with neglect. The room was stifling; the air was thick with the remnants of burnt-out candles and sleepless nights. He paced to the window, pulling the curtains aside to reveal the darkened Maranello streets below, slick with the remnants of a recent rain. The city outside moved on, indifferent to his struggle, its distant hum a reminder that time had no patience for his creative paralysis.

He pressed his forehead against the cold glass, his breath fogging it up in shallow bursts. What was missing? What had he lost in the months since his last piece? It felt like chasing shadows, reaching for something just out of grasp. Every melody he tried to shape slipped through his fingers like grains of sand, and the harder he tried to hold onto it, the faster it dissolved.

The clock struck three in the morning, the chime echoing through the stillness of the room. Another night wasted. Another night consumed by the weight of his own expectations. He turned back to the piano, his eyes heavy with fatigue but burning with a quiet, desperate need. He couldn’t leave. Not yet. Not without something to show for the hours he’d lost.

With a sigh that felt like surrender, Charles sat back down at the piano, his fingers hovering over the keys once more. He could feel the cold beneath his skin, the way the silence seemed to press in around him. His hands shook, not with nervousness, but with exhaustion.

And then, in the quiet, a single note broke the silence.

It wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t the haunting, ethereal sound he had been searching for. But it was something.

His gaze fell to the pile of sheet music he had scribbled on throughout the night. Inked lines of failed ideas, crossed out again and again. With a final resigned sigh, he stood up, the bench scraping the floor, the sound too loud in the empty space. He began to gather his things, shoving crumpled papers into his bag alongside notebooks, headphones, and his laptop. The familiar weight of them didn’t bring comfort; instead, they felt like reminders of the failure he was starting to carry with him. This was meant to be a hobby but it was haunting his every move.

As he turned to leave, keys jangling in his hand, a soft sound reached his ears—a distant, faint melody. He paused, his hand hovering over the light switch, ears straining to catch it. It was coming from down the hallway, barely perceptible at first, but unmistakable—a piano, its notes drifting through the quiet night like a whisper.

Charles hesitated for a moment, then slipped into the hallway, drawn toward the sound. He moved slowly, the dark corridor seeming endless, the music growing clearer with every step. It was beautiful—achingly so. Each note was delicate yet certain, as though whoever was playing knew exactly what they wanted to say. The melody swirled and climbed, creating something ethereal, something that made his chest tighten in a way he hadn’t felt in weeks.

He stopped outside one of the smaller practice rooms, the door slightly ajar, a soft glow of light spilling from within. The music filled the narrow hallway, surrounding him, pulling him in. He stood there for a long moment, his heart beating a little faster, a strange mix of awe and envy twisting inside him. This was what he had been trying to create—the same kind of raw emotion, the beauty that lingered long after the sound faded.

But it wasn’t his.

Charles leaned against the wall, just out of sight, listening as the music flowed through the cracks in the door. The player inside didn’t falter, didn’t stop to wrestle with the notes. It was effortless, pure. He didn’t dare move, didn’t dare interrupt, afraid the spell would be broken if the other person realised they had an audience.

The melody soared, and for a brief moment, Charles closed his eyes, letting himself be swept up in it. It reminded him of why he had started this in the first place—of the nights when music had been his refuge, when it had felt like an escape, not a burden. He could feel the heaviness in his chest easing, just slightly, as the music wound its way through the silence.

But as beautiful as it was, it also stung. Whoever was playing had found what he had been searching for all this time—something he had lost.

The music came to a soft, gentle end, the final notes lingering in the air like a breath held too long. Charles stood there for a moment longer, still leaning against the doorframe, waiting for something—he didn’t know what.

When the quiet finally settled again, he stepped away from the door, not daring to break the fragile stillness with the creak of the floorboards. He glanced back one last time, his fingers curling tight around the strap of his bag. For a moment, he considered knocking, stepping inside to see the person who had played with such grace. But something held him back.

Instead, he turned and walked down the hallway, the echo of that haunting melody still playing in his head long after the door to the studio clicked shut behind him.

His following morning came in fragments—a bleary haze of sunlight filtering through half-closed blinds, the distant hum of traffic muffled by the walls of his apartment. Charles stirred, his body sluggish and heavy with the weight of too little sleep. He lay there for a long moment, eyes closed, trying to hold onto the remnants of the dream he couldn’t quite remember. But it wasn’t a dream that lingered in his mind.

It was the melody.

That same haunting, angelic piano from last night, curling through his thoughts like a whisper. He could still hear it—those delicate notes weaving together, the way the melody had seemed so effortless, so perfect. It had been circling his mind from the moment he left the studio. Now, it played softly in the background of his thoughts, no matter how hard he tried to push it away.

Charles groaned, rolling out of bed and dragging himself into the shower. The hot water did little to shake the fatigue that clung to him, nor did it drown out the persistent tune echoing in his head. His mind kept returning to the small, dimly lit room where the mystery pianist had been, to the way her fingers had danced across the keys as though they had always belonged there.

He towel-dried his hair, staring at his reflection in the foggy mirror. Dark circles under his eyes, a face hollowed by days of restless nights and creative frustration. He had some sort of media training today—something important. A meeting he couldn’t afford to drift through half-awake. But even as he dressed, pulling on his usual team shirt and straightening the collar, his thoughts were elsewhere.

The city outside was awake, the streets buzzing with life as he made his way through the crisp morning air to the Ferrari HQ. His coffee sat untouched in his hand, the steam rising in lazy spirals, but he barely noticed. The melody from last night played on an endless loop in his head, the memory of it clinging to him like a ghost he couldn’t shake.

The office was a blur of familiar faces, bright smiles, and too much energy for this early in the day. Charles moved through it all, barely fully acknowledging Carlos, the world around him dull and muffled. The media manager was already waiting when he arrived, tapping impatiently on the table as Charles sat down for their first meeting.

But even as they discussed plans, upcoming shoots, and expectations for both his and Carlos’ media presence, Charles wasn’t fully there. He nodded in the right places, offered half-hearted responses, but his mind kept wandering back to that melody. The notes haunted him, pulling his focus away from everything else, as though they held the answer to something he was desperate to grasp.

“Charles, are you listening?” Carlos’ voice snapped him back to the present.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled, though his eyes betrayed him. He scribbled something on the notepad in front of him, though the lines didn’t form words—just scattered shapes, like the music notes he couldn’t get out of his head.

The meetings dragged on. Through every discussion, every pitch and presentation, Charles felt the same distraction pulling him away. He couldn’t let it go. The melody. It had stirred something in him—a frustration, yes, but also a strange kind of inspiration. There was something there, something unfinished, and it gnawed at him.

By the time the last meeting ended, Charles felt hollowed out. He hadn’t contributed anything meaningful to the discussions, not really. His mind had been elsewhere the entire day, replaying those fleeting notes over and over again. It was maddening.

He needed to know. Needed to find out who had played it, and why that music—the music he hadn’t written—felt so much like it belonged to him.

Without thinking, Charles pulled out his phone and dialled his producer’s number, pacing back and forth in the hallway outside the conference room as it rang. It was late afternoon now, the sky outside tinged with fading light. He knew he should be focusing on his own work, or on getting back to the studio, but the compulsion to solve this mystery was stronger than his exhaustion.

The line clicked, and his producer’s voice crackled on the other end. “Charles, hey. What’s up?”

Charles leaned against the window, his forehead pressed to the cool glass. “I need to ask you something,” he said, his voice low, edged with impatience. “Last night, around 3 a.m., there was someone in one of the smaller studios, playing piano. Do you know who it was?”

There was a pause on the other end, the faint sound of papers shuffling. “3 a.m.? You sure?”

“I’m sure,” Charles replied, closing his eyes. The melody drifted back into his mind, as clear as if he were still sitting outside the door, listening. “It was… incredible. I couldn’t stop listening. I need to know who it was.”

Another pause, then a small chuckle from his producer. “Ah, that must’ve been the student. Yeah, she’s been coming in late at night to practise. Studies music at the university downtown. Doesn’t perform much, though—mostly keeps to herself.”

Charles’s heart skipped a beat. The name felt unfamiliar, but it already held a weight to it, like it was connected to something he hadn’t yet fully understood.

“She doesn’t perform?” he asked, brow furrowing. It seemed impossible—someone with that much talent, hiding in the shadows.

“Nah,” his producer continued, “she’s a bit under the radar. Not really into publishing or performing her work, but, man, she’s got something special. I didn’t realise you’d heard her.”

Charles was silent for a moment, processing the information. The melody. He could see it now—something just out of reach, like the missing piece of a puzzle he hadn’t realised he was trying to solve.

“You know,” his producer said, his tone shifting slightly, “you’ve been stuck for a while, Charles. Maybe you should try working with her. See what happens. It might help you find what you’re looking for.”

Charles swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. The thought of it—composing with someone else, with her—made something stir inside him. Could it be the answer to breaking through this creative silence he’d been drowning in?

“I’ll think about it,” he muttered, though the decision was already forming in his mind.

As he hung up the phone, the melody returned, softer this time, but still persistent. And now, it wasn’t just haunting him—it was pulling him forward.

_________________

The studio felt different tonight, as though it had shifted in his absence. The air was cooler, the lights dimmer, casting long, quiet shadows over the floorboards. Charles stood in the hallway again, just as he had the night before, but this time his heart beat with something more than exhaustion or frustration. There was an anticipation simmering in his chest, a tension just beneath the surface.

He hadn’t come to compose tonight. Not really. He had come for the music. Her music.

The name felt strange on his lips, unfamiliar, yet full of significance. He didn’t know her, had never spoken to her, but her music had already gotten under his skin. It haunted him still, drifting through his mind in fragments even after the long day of meetings, pulling him back here.

He moved quietly down the hallway, the same path he had taken last night, his shoes barely making a sound against the worn floor. As he neared the smaller practice room, the faint sound of the piano floated toward him, delicate and clear, weaving through the quiet.

There it was again—the same effortless, angelic melody that had captivated him before. But now, listening to it a second time, Charles felt something deeper stirring. The way she played was different tonight, more intimate somehow, as if the music had softened, becoming something even more personal. He stopped outside the door, just as he had before, leaning against the wall and closing his eyes.

For a long moment, he simply listened. The notes seemed to dance in the air, spinning and intertwining, building toward something both beautiful and fragile. It was mesmerising.

But then, the music stopped. Abruptly.

Charles’s eyes snapped open, his pulse quickening in the sudden silence. Before he could move, a voice broke through the quiet, soft but teasing.

“Mama always said it’s not nice to lurk.”

His breath caught in his throat. For a second, he didn’t move, caught off guard. The door was still ajar, the light spilling into the hallway, and from inside, he could make out the silhouette of someone sitting at the piano, her back turned to him. She hadn’t looked up, but she knew. She had known he was there the whole time.

Heat crept up his neck, but before he could stammer out an apology, she spoke again.

“You coming in, or are you planning to stay out there all night?”

Her tone was light, amused even, but it was an invitation all the same. Charles hesitated for a heartbeat longer, his hand tightening around the strap of his bag. Then, without thinking, he stepped forward, pushing the door open a little wider.

The room was small and softly lit, just as he remembered, the grand piano dominating the space. She sat at it, her posture relaxed, fingers still resting lightly on the keys. She turned her head slightly as he entered, giving him the faintest glimpse of a smile.

“Sorry,” he said quietly, feeling a bit ridiculous for standing outside like that. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You didn’t.” She shifted on the bench, making space beside her. “Come on, sit.”

Charles’s throat tightened, but he nodded and moved toward the piano, his steps feeling oddly tentative. He hesitated for a second when he reached her, unsure if he should really be sitting so close. The bench was narrow, and he could already feel the warmth of her presence.

She looked up at him with raised eyebrows. “I don’t bite.”

With a small chuckle, he slid onto the stool beside her, the space between them barely a few inches. It was strange, this closeness—to sit here with someone he didn’t know, yet felt connected to through the music that had haunted him for days. Their shoulders brushed lightly as he settled in, and for a moment, the silence between them felt heavy, loaded with expectation.

She glanced at him, her eyes glinting with something unreadable. Then, without a word, she placed her hands back on the piano, her fingers moving over the keys with an effortless grace. The melody returned, soft and slow, and Charles felt his breath catch in his chest again. It was different this time—gentler, more deliberate, as though she was playing just for him.

The room seemed to shrink around them, the air thick with the quiet intimacy of the music. He watched her hands move, the way her fingers danced across the keys with the kind of fluidity that only came from years of dedication. The melody wound its way through the air, filling the small space between them, and Charles found himself leaning in, just slightly, drawn to the sound and to her.

“You play like it’s the easiest thing in the world,” he murmured, the words slipping out before he could stop them.

She smiled, a soft, almost secretive smile. “It’s never easy,” she said, her voice low, her eyes still on the piano. “It just looks that way.”

She played a few more notes, then paused, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. “What about you? You’ve been in the studio night after night. What’s haunting you?”

Charles let out a breath he didn’t realise he had been holding. “I’ve been stuck,” he admitted, his voice quieter than he intended. “It feels like everything I try to create falls apart. Nothing compares to what I’ve done before.”

She didn’t respond right away. Instead, she played another soft chord, the sound hanging in the air between them.

“Music’s strange like that,” she said after a moment, her tone thoughtful. “It comes and goes. Sometimes it’s easy, other times… it slips through your fingers.”

Charles nodded, feeling the weight of her words. He had been trying so hard to force the music out, to create something that could match his last piece, but all it had done was elude him.

The girl beside him shifted slightly, her shoulder brushing his. “Here,” she said, moving her hands off the keys. “Play something.”

“What?”

“Anything,” she replied, her eyes meeting his for the first time fully. There was a challenge in them, but also an understanding. “Show me what you’ve got.”

Charles swallowed, feeling a sudden surge of nerves. But her gaze was steady, encouraging, and without thinking too much about it, he let his hands find their way to the keys. The notes that came out weren’t perfect—they were hesitant, half-formed. But they were honest. He played softly, the melody faltering at times, but it was real.

She listened, her head slightly tilted as she watched his fingers move. Then, without warning, she joined him, her hands moving gracefully beside his, adding harmonies to the melody he had started. The sound shifted, growing fuller, more complete. The music filled the room, and for the first time in what felt like forever, Charles didn’t feel the weight of his failure pressing down on him.

Together, they played, their hands moving across the keys in tandem, creating something new. Something neither of them could have done alone.

When the last note finally faded into the quiet, Charles sat back, his heart pounding. She turned to him, her eyes soft and knowing.

“See?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “It’s easier when you’re not alone.”

For a moment, they sat in the quiet, the echo of their shared melody lingering in the air like the last breath of a long-forgotten song. Charles stared at the keys, feeling the warmth of the music still buzzing in his fingertips. He hadn’t felt like this in weeks—maybe longer. There was something about the way she played, the way her music had melded so effortlessly with his, that made the creative block he’d been wrestling with seem almost insignificant.

He turned to look at her, realising for the first time how close they were, their shoulders still brushing lightly. Her eyes were fixed on the piano, her fingers resting gently on the keys, as though she was waiting for the next melody to arrive. Her presence, though quiet and composed, carried an intensity that matched the music she played—an unspoken understanding of the way music could consume you, take you apart, and put you back together.

“That was…” Charles began, but the words caught in his throat.

“Different?” she offered, a slight smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

“Yeah.” He let out another breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. “It felt… easier. Like it wasn’t something I had to force.”

She tilted her head slightly, her gaze thoughtful. “Music isn’t something you’re supposed to wrestle with. It’s like water—it flows when you stop trying to hold onto it so tightly.” She shifted her hands off the keys and folded them in her lap, her eyes now fully on him. “You’ve been pushing too hard. I could hear it.”

Her words were soft, but they carried something that made Charles pause. He had been pushing—straining against the silence, desperate to capture a piece of the magic he’d once had. Every night in the studio had been a battle, and he hadn’t realised until now that the real fight was with himself.

“You’re right,” he admitted, running a hand through his hair. “I’ve been trying so hard to top what I did last time that I forgot why I was doing it in the first place.”

She leaned back slightly, still watching him, her expression unreadable. “What was your last piece?” she asked, her voice curious but not probing.

Charles hesitated. The memory of his last composition—an orchestral piece that had been his most successful work to date—felt distant now, like it belonged to someone else. It had been raw, emotional, inspired by something deeply personal, but the success that followed had overshadowed the joy he’d felt when he created it. Ever since then, he’d been chasing that same feeling, trying to recreate the magic, only to fall short.

“It was…” He trailed off, searching for the right words. “Something personal. It came easily back then. But now it feels like I’m trying to catch lightning in a bottle, and I’m just… stuck.”

She nodded, her fingers idly tracing patterns on the piano’s surface. “I get that. Sometimes the more you want something, the harder it is to find. That’s why I don’t perform much.” She smiled faintly, almost to herself. “There’s less pressure when no one’s watching.”

Charles studied her for a moment, sensing the layers beneath her calm demeanour. She spoke with such ease about the creative process, but there was an edge of vulnerability there too, a reluctance to expose too much of herself to the world.

“Why don’t you perform?” he asked, curious now. “I mean, with the way you play, you could easily—”

“Because I don’t need to,” she interrupted, her tone gentle but firm. “The music is for me. It’s not about the audience. It’s about…” She hesitated, searching for the right words. “It’s about connecting with something deeper, something that doesn’t care about applause or recognition.”

Her words hung in the air between them, and Charles found himself nodding slowly, understanding exactly what she meant. In a way, she had found a kind of freedom he had lost along the way.

“That’s why you play at night,” he said, more a statement than a question. “When no one’s around. It’s like…” He trailed off, trying to find the right analogy, “…the world doesn’t exist.”

She smiled at that, a real one this time, her eyes brightening just a little. “Exactly. It’s easier to lose yourself when there’s no one expecting anything from you.”

Charles sat back, processing her words. For so long, he had been weighed down by expectations—his own, his producer’s, the fans—and it had drained him. Maybe that was the problem. He had been writing for others, forgetting that the music had always been something he did for himself first. Something he loved.

She nudged him lightly with her shoulder, breaking his thoughts. “You know,” she said, a playful lilt in her voice, “you could try playing like no one’s watching. Even if they are.”

He turned to her, raising an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she said, leaning in just a bit, “you’re too worried about what people think of your music. But here”—she motioned to the piano in front of them—“there’s no audience. Just us. So why not stop thinking so much and just… play?”

Charles blinked, the simplicity of her suggestion hitting him harder than it should have. She made it sound so easy, but maybe that was the point. Maybe it was supposed to be easy.

Before he could respond, she slid her fingers back onto the keys, playing a few soft chords that hummed through the air like the beginning of something new. Then she glanced sideways at him, a small, teasing smile tugging at her lips. “Come on. Share the bench again. Let’s make something together.”

A spark of excitement flared in his chest. Without another word, Charles moved closer, their knees brushing as they both settled into position, fingers poised over the keys. This time, he wasn’t overthinking it. He wasn’t wrestling with the music. He was just… there.

She started first, her melody soft and fluid, and Charles followed, instinctively matching her rhythm, letting their sounds merge and flow together. The music wasn’t perfect—it stuttered at times, shifted unexpectedly—but it was alive. It had a pulse. It breathed with them.

And for the first time in what felt like forever, Charles wasn’t haunted by the silence. He wasn’t weighed down by the pressure of creating something great. He was just… playing. Creating. Feeling the music as it moved through him, through them both.

As their hands danced over the keys, weaving together something raw and beautiful, he realised something that felt both terrifying and thrilling: maybe this was what he had been missing. Not perfection. Not even recognition. Just the simple, undeniable joy of creating with someone who understood. Someone who could make the music feel real again.

When the last note faded into the quiet, Charles turned to her, his heart still racing.

“I think,” he said softly, his voice barely above a whisper, “I need to stop chasing what I’ve already done and start finding something new.”

She nodded, her eyes bright and knowing. “And maybe,” she said, her voice equally quiet, “we can find it together.”

The last note lingered in the air between them, and Charles felt something warm and alive settle in his chest. The music they had made together had been unlike anything he’d played in so long—imperfect, yes, but honest. Real. The creative block that had suffocated him for weeks was finally gone, or at least, it felt that way in this fleeting moment of clarity.

She glanced at him, her smile soft but distant. She seemed different now, as though the music had taken something from her as well. Before Charles could say anything, she pushed herself up from the piano bench, her fingers lingering on the edge of the keys for just a second longer than necessary.

"I've got to go."

Her words were quiet, almost an afterthought, and they hit him with an unexpected force. She didn’t give him time to respond, to ask anything, to even say goodbye. She simply gathered her bag and moved toward the door, her steps quick and purposeful.

“Wait—” Charles started, rising halfway from the bench, but it was too late.

She turned to him for a brief moment, a smile that was part mystery, part something he couldn’t quite read crossing her lips. “Don’t stop playing, tesoro (treasure)” she said softly. “You’re closer than you think.”

And then, before he could find his voice, she was gone, the door clicking shut behind her with an eerie finality.

Charles stood frozen for a few long moments, staring at the door. His mind raced. He didn’t have her number. He didn’t know where she lived, where she studied, or how to reach her. She had slipped away like a melody in the night, as effortlessly as she’d come into his life.

With a sigh, he sank back onto the piano bench, running his hands through his hair. The room felt strangely empty without her, the space they had shared now echoing with the silence she left behind. But something inside him had shifted. The music they’d created still hummed in his veins, and the weight of doubt that had plagued him for so long felt lighter. Almost like it was dissolving, piece by piece.

He placed his hands on the keys, the cool touch of ivory grounding him, and began to play.

At first, the melody was slow, almost tentative. It mirrored the notes they’d played together, but now it began to morph into something new, something entirely his own. As his fingers moved, the music unfolded naturally, effortlessly. It was as though every piece of frustration, every sleepless night, every failed attempt to capture the right sound was now fueling something greater. Something real.

The notes swelled and cascaded, filling the room with a rich, haunting melody that seemed to flow directly from his soul. It was raw, brimming with emotion—a reflection of everything he had felt, everything he had fought against. But now, there was no more fighting. The music came freely, weaving together in ways that felt effortless and inevitable.

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Charles wasn’t thinking. He wasn’t chasing perfection or wrestling with expectations. He was simply… playing. The music poured out of him like a long-held breath, each note sharper, more vivid than the last. The emotions he had buried—frustration, longing, even joy—flooded into the sound, and it consumed him.

His hands moved faster now, the melody becoming more urgent, more intense. He didn’t know where it was going, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t about the destination. It was about this—this pure, unfiltered moment of creation.

And then, without warning, a tear slipped down his cheek.

Charles barely noticed it at first, too wrapped up in the music, but soon another tear followed. And another. He wasn’t sobbing—there was no sadness in it. Instead, it was an overwhelming sense of release, of joy, of finally breaking through. The music swelled, the room vibrating with sound, and Charles felt it wash over him. A catharsis he hadn’t known he needed.

When he hit the final chord, it echoed through the room, ringing out long after his fingers had stilled. The silence that followed was profound, heavy with the weight of everything he had just poured into the keys.

Charles sat there, hands trembling slightly, staring at the piano in disbelief. A shaky laugh escaped his throat, followed by a deep, breathless exhale. He had done it. He had finally played something worth keeping.

No—it was more than that. He had played one of the best pieces of his life.

For a long while, he just sat there, his hands resting in his lap, feeling the weight of what he had just created. Tears still clung to his lashes, but his chest felt light—lighter than it had in months. Maybe years.

He wasn’t just crying because of the music. He was crying because, for the first time in a long time, he was truly happy.

Charles leaned forward, resting his forehead against the cool wood of the piano, letting the last remnants of tension drain from him. His breath was steady now, calm. The room was bathed in a kind of quiet peace he hadn’t known in so long. He had no idea where the girl had gone, or if he’d ever see her again. But somehow, it didn’t matter.

The music was enough.

What he didn’t know—what he couldn’t have known—was that she hadn’t really left. Not entirely.

Outside the door, hidden in the shadows of the hallway, she stood, her back pressed against the wall. She had stopped as soon as she’d heard the first notes drift through the air, her hand hovering over the door handle but never turning it.

She had listened. Every note, every chord, every emotion Charles had poured into the piano, she had felt it too. Her heart had raced with his, her breath had caught in her throat when she’d heard the moment he broke through the wall he had been fighting against.

She smiled softly to herself, her hand finally dropping to her side as the last note of Charles’s masterpiece echoed through the studio. She had heard something in his playing tonight that she hadn’t expected. Something raw and powerful.

She turned to leave, her steps soft on the floor, leaving the sound of his triumph behind. Maybe she would come back one day, maybe not. But she knew this much—he didn’t need her anymore.

He had found his music again. And that, in itself, was enough.

As she disappeared into the night, Charles remained at the piano, still catching his breath, unaware of the quiet presence that had stayed with him until the very end.

The following days felt surreal, like a dream Charles was reluctant to wake from. After that night in the studio with the girl, his life had been interrupted by a trip to Silverstone to try out the tyres for the new season. The track buzzed with its usual energy, but no matter where he wandered, Charles’s thoughts always drifted back to her and the music they’d played together.

He had left the studio that night haunted by the memory of her delicate touch on the keys, the way their melodies had intertwined as though they’d been waiting for each other all along. He carried it with him over to England, through busy track meets and silent hotel rooms. Late at night, when sleep wouldn’t come, he would close his eyes and hear her music, as if it had lodged itself permanently in his mind.

It wasn’t just the music, though. It was her—the quiet way she had smiled at him, the lightness in her voice when she teased him, the sense of understanding that had passed between them without needing to be spoken.

Now, as Charles stepped back into the familiar silence of the studio late at night right off the plane, he felt a quiet anticipation coiled tightly in his chest. The lights were dim, the air cool and still, and for a moment, it felt like time had paused. The room was empty, and there was no trace of her—no soft melody floating through the air, no sound of delicate fingers dancing across the keys.

Disappointment stirred, settling somewhere deep. He’d been hoping, perhaps foolishly, that she’d be here. That they could pick up where they’d left off. He made his way to the piano, where the polished surface glinted in the low light, as inviting as ever.

And then he saw it—a small note left on the piano bench. His pulse quickened as he unfolded it, her handwriting instantly recognizable, though scrawled in that same casual, hurried way:

"Play with your heart, tesoro."

A soft smile tugged at his lips. The simplicity of the message was so very her. It was a whisper, a reminder of what mattered. A push, gentle but certain.

Charles set the note aside and sat down on the bench, the studio eerily quiet around him. For a moment, he just sat there, the weight of the piano keys beneath his fingers, the faint memory of their music hovering in the air. Then, without thinking too much, he began to play.

The melody started slow, almost hesitant, each note like a thought he hadn’t quite formed yet. But as he played, the music unfolded into something deeper, something more intimate. It wasn’t complicated or grand—it didn’t need to be. It was soft, heartfelt, like a quiet conversation spoken in a language only they understood.

He let go of the pressure, the constant need to craft something perfect, and instead just let the music be what it was—a reflection of what he felt, of what had been buried deep inside him since he’d met her. The music filled the room, curling into the corners like a secret. And for the first time in what felt like months, he felt at peace.

As the last notes lingered in the air, a soft sound broke the quiet. Applause—light, slow, and warm.

Charles turned, startled, and there she was, standing in the doorway, her silhouette framed by the dim light from the hallway. She was watching him, her hands clasped softly in front of her, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips. Her eyes sparkled with something tender, something familiar. She’d been listening, perhaps the whole time.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” Charles murmured, his voice softer than the room itself.

She took a few quiet steps toward him, her gaze never leaving his. “I didn’t want to interrupt,” she said gently, her smile deepening. “It was beautiful.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The room felt suspended in a kind of stillness, the last remnants of his melody hanging between them, but no words were needed to fill the quiet. She came closer, and Charles shifted slightly on the bench, instinctively making space for her. She sat beside him, their shoulders brushing softly in the small space, the warmth of her presence settling something inside him.

“Play it again,” she whispered, her voice low, like a secret shared just between them.

He hesitated for a second, but then his fingers found their way back to the keys, this time slower, more deliberate. The music that spilled out was softer now, more intimate, as if shaped by the quiet weight of her sitting beside him. She watched as his hands moved, her gaze gentle, and as he played, the world outside seemed to melt away, leaving just the two of them and the music between them.

After a few moments, her fingers joined his, their hands moving together over the keys with a quiet ease. Her touch was so light, so effortless, and the sound they created was simple yet achingly beautiful—a melody that spoke of longing and connection, of words unspoken but deeply felt. There was no rush, no urgency in the way they played, only a slow unfolding of something real and fragile.

Charles stole a glance at her, his heart tightening. There was something unspoken in the air, something that went beyond the music they shared. He could feel it in the way she leaned in ever so slightly, the way her breath seemed to sync with his, the soft, steady rhythm of their playing.

When the last note faded into the stillness, neither of them moved. They sat there, shoulders barely touching, the silence around them thick with the weight of everything unsaid. Slowly, she turned her head toward him, her eyes soft, her smile quiet but full of meaning.

“You played with your heart,” she whispered, her words echoing the note she had left for him.

Charles’s throat tightened, the room suddenly feeling too small, too full of everything he hadn’t yet said. He turned toward her, his voice catching in his chest as he whispered back, “You make it easier.”

Her smile deepened, and for a moment, there was only the soft rise and fall of their breathing, the music they had created still lingering in the air around them. It felt like something had shifted between them, like a door had been opened that couldn’t easily be closed again.

And as they sat there, side by side on the piano bench, Charles realised that the silence no longer felt heavy. It felt full—of possibility, of something quiet and beautiful, waiting patiently to be discovered.

Together.

Charles’s heart raced, the air between them thick with anticipation. They sat in a charged stillness, so close their breaths seemed to mingle. The soft light of the studio flickered gently against her face, casting shadows that made her seem almost otherworldly. Her lips parted, just slightly, as if waiting for something—an unspoken invitation.

Before he could think too much about it, before doubt could creep in, Charles leaned in.

At first, it was tentative—a brush of lips so light it felt like it might disappear if he wasn’t careful. He kissed her softly, testing the moment, unsure if he was crossing some unseen line. But then she responded, her lips pressing back against his with the same quiet hunger he hadn’t realised was burning between them all along.

The kiss deepened, their soft breaths mingling in the quiet. A slow, intoxicating warmth spread through Charles’s chest, pulling him further in. He cupped her face gently with his hand, his thumb brushing against her cheek as their lips moved together, tentative but growing bolder with each passing second. Her hand found his, her fingers slipping between his, and she pulled him closer, as though the space between them had become unbearable.

Suddenly, the kiss wasn’t soft anymore—it became something more urgent, more passionate, the weight of everything they hadn’t said spilling over into the kiss. Charles felt his pulse quicken, his mind lost in the warmth and closeness of her. He slid his hand to the back of her neck, pulling her in deeper, their lips moving together in a rhythm that felt as natural as the music they had created moments ago.

She shifted slightly on the bench, her body pressing closer to his, and the heat between them grew. The world outside seemed to vanish, leaving only the two of them in the dim, quiet studio, the echoes of their kiss the only sound. The softness of her touch, the taste of her lips—it was all intoxicating, a crescendo building within him.

Charles could feel his heart pounding in his chest, and he didn’t want it to stop. He could have stayed in that moment forever, lost in the intensity of her kiss, in the way her hands tangled in his hair, in the way she fit so perfectly against him.

But then, as though sensing they were both on the edge of something overwhelming, Charles pulled back just slightly, his lips still lingering close to hers, their breaths mingling in the stillness. They were both breathing harder, and for a moment, neither spoke.

Her eyes fluttered open, her gaze locking with his, wide and full of something unspoken. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips slightly swollen, and Charles had to fight the urge to pull her back into another kiss.

“Tesoro” she whispered, her voice soft and a little breathless, as though she couldn’t quite find the words.

He smiled gently, his thumb brushing over her lips before he let his hand fall away, resting on the piano between them. His heart still raced, but there was something peaceful now, something right. He hadn’t felt this in so long—this connection, this ease.

“I need to thank you, angioletto ” Charles murmured, his voice low and full of emotion.

“For what?” she asked, her eyes searching his, a quiet vulnerability in her gaze.

“For inspiring this,” he said, his words soft but heavy with meaning. “For inspiring me.” He gestured toward the piano, where the notes of their shared music still seemed to hover in the air between them. “That song we played together… I never would have found it without you.”

Her lips parted, a soft smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, but her eyes shimmered with something deeper, something that mirrored what Charles was feeling.

“You’ve helped me more than you know,” he continued, his voice barely above a whisper. “Before you, I was stuck. I couldn’t write, couldn’t feel the music anymore. But playing with you—it’s like something clicked. You brought it back.”

She looked at him for a long moment, her smile growing, but there was a quiet tenderness in her expression, as if she understood all the things he wasn’t saying. Slowly, she leaned in, resting her forehead gently against his, and they stayed like that, breathing each other in, the world softening around them.

“I’m glad I could help,” she whispered, her voice a soft caress against his skin.

Charles closed his eyes, letting the moment settle between them, the weight of her words sinking in. He had been searching for something—chasing it endlessly, driving himself to exhaustion in its pursuit. But sitting here, with her, with the music they had created still vibrating in the air, he realised he had already found it.

It wasn’t just the music. It was her. She had become his muse in more ways than one.

He pulled back slightly to meet her gaze once more, his eyes searching hers for a long moment. And then, without another word, he kissed her again—slowly, tenderly this time. It was a kiss filled not with urgency, but with gratitude and something deeper, something unspoken but undeniable.

And in that kiss, Charles knew he wasn’t just thanking her for the music. He was thanking her for being the spark that had reignited something inside him, for being the light in a place that had felt dark for so long.

When their lips finally parted, he rested his forehead against hers once more, the two of them still breathing each other in, their hearts in sync. The studio was quiet now, but it wasn’t empty. The music they had shared—the connection they had formed—lingered in the air like a promise.

And for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Charles felt whole.

send me a message if you want to be on my perm tag list <3

#f1 #f1 imagine #f1 fanfic #f1 smau #charles leclerc x female reader #charles leclerc angst #charles leclerc x you #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc fanfic #original character #formula one x reader #ferrari formula one #ferrari formula 1 #ferrari #charles leclerc #logan sargeant #williams racing #carlos sainz #teacher au

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peerlesschrysanthemum73011 · 2 months ago

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Sooo, a random au elaboration nobody asked for!! Go Mirror AU!! (cause i suck at giving names)

So, how would this work? The original concept was that Sy was a broken shard fragment that had been flowing along a river for who knows how long. He has barely any consciousness, and somehow barely just makes it into land. He is in a forest and is unable to do jack shit, and he has no system available to help him.

He hears a rustle from the bushes, and out comes a three-horned centaur, basically the regular centaur, but with an extra horn. These species in particular are fond of nature but unfortunately are mute. Sadly, Airplane wasted another opportunity for lore in favor of porn, so he doesn't know the exact reason they are mute. (and because of this, he realizes he's in PIDW) Anyways, this kind centaur picks Sy up and takes him to his studio Ghibli cottage.

Shen Yuan is then brought into a sort of blacksmithing room, and he slowly freaks out because?? He's going to be melted or something!! The room becomes hot from the heat of the furnace, and oh no, Shen Yuan is gonna die!!!! Slowly but surely, he loses consciousness...

When he wakes up, he feels...refined? He wouldn't know how to explain it, but he feels fancier somehow. He manages to somehow look at himself, and holy cow, he had a massive glow up! He was carved into an exquisite hand mirror!! Shen Yuan is picked up by the centaur and is held out to another centaur.

And oh! the male centaur is gifting the other hand mirror Shen yuan as a courting gift!!! How cute and romantic!! The other is happy, and despite both being mute, the other centaur envelops the other in a hug. She(??) accepted!! They spend their days together, being flirty and romantic that makes shen yuan feel like a third wheel.

Out of boredom, Shen Yuan decides to give them names. For the male centaur, he chose the name Bluebell, since they can represent gratitude and everlasting love. For the female(?), named them Columbine, because he simply felt like it was right.

Shen Yuan stays with them awhile, peacefully living each day to the fullest. Although he can't do much, just being around them brought Shen Yuan peace, and a bit of nostalgia. One day, Bluebell and Columbine leave for what felt like weeks. Shen Yuan gets a little worried, but he's simply a mirror. He can't do anything. Just as his anxiety spikes, the couple return, and oh, in their hands lies a baby.

Shen Yuan feels so, so happy for them.

And of course, their daily lives continue, with an adorable addition. Shen Yuan makes sure Columbine looks as pretty as usual, reflects the baby's appearance to entertain it sometimes, watches as the family gathers around the table to eat. And he thinks a year has passed.

Of course, good things aren't made to last forever.

It's the middle of the night, and Shen Yuan is about to doze off, but a sudden boom jerks him awake. The hazy blue night has turned into a blaze of flames, and he hears explosions going off. The couple is gone-and the baby is beginning to cry. He hears the shouts of people- cultivator's? Columbine bursts into the house, running to grab the baby, and Shen Yuan realizes he's going to be left behind and die. But Columbine also grabs him, and they rush out of the house.

Where is Bluebell? Shen Yuan wonders, but taking a look at Columbine's state, her(?) hair dirtied and matted, body covered with scars, and one of their antlers are broken. After running for some time, they reach some sort of cave, hidden by vines and bushes, he places the baby there, along with Shen Yuan. She gives her baby a final kiss, and places what looks to be a qiankun pouch? And then she leaves.

Shen Yuan wants to help, is desperate to help, but he hears the steps of people and fear instantly envelops him into a hug. Somehow, a rush of adrenaline and the need to protect the child gives Sy the ability to temporary hide the child (basically reflecting the empty cave). A slash from a sword cuts the vines that were hiding them and in comes a cultivator, disappointed that the only thing hiding in this cave is a hand mirror.

Beside him, Shen Yuan sees it. Columbine's dead body, lying on the ground. In the cultivator's left hand is Bluebell's head.

#svsss #mirror au #scum villian self saving system #ren zha fanpai zijiu xitong #this is just part 1 for now #i'll write more later #shen yuan #Can the centaur couple be considered as ocs???#completely forgot to mention this is backstory stuff

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writerinlearning · 6 months ago

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𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐘𝗼𝐮𝐫𝐬 | Part. One.

plot: after playing on the Orpheum stage and being saved by Julie from Caleb’s curse, Luke looks for reader, determined to tell her how he feels, but he wasn’t expecting to find her in a hospital bed, fighting for her life.

pairing: ghost!luke patterson x molina!fem!reader | julie molina x cousin!fem!reader

show: julie and the phantoms

warnings: mentions of car accident, drunk driving (please, never drive while intoxicated), blood, hospital

word count: 4,5k

author’s notes: english is not my first language, apologies for any mistakes. this is the second version of this fic. first version has been unpublished. reader is julie’s cousin on her father’s side, and she can see the boys too. i used the song heart like yours from the if i stay movie. this fic is also sorta based on said movie. there’s a second part planned for this fic.

luke patterson masterlist || part. two. || main masterlist

Los Angeles, 2020

Playing the Orpheum was everything Luke expected. Except for what came after. As soon as he got off the stage, Luke went to find Julie, Alex, and Reggie, to celebrate, but most importantly, he wanted Y/N to celebrate with them. Imagine his surprise when he got told that she wasn’t backstage after the show, nor was she home when they returned to Julie’s place. They looked for her all night, to no avail, and Luke kept on looking for her in the morning, until Julie showed up to the studio with the bad news.

Luke never thought he’d hear those words in his life, but as soon as the words leave Julie’s mouth, his entire world comes crumbling down. Y/n had gotten in an accident on her way back home from the Orpheum after Julie and the Phantoms’ performance last night. Her car had been hit by a drunk driver speeding down the opposite lane, his vehicle diverting onto Y/n’s lane before the collision. It had sent Y/n flying in the driver’s seat, hitting her head badly against the dashboard whilst the windshield shattered when her car rolled over on the hood, sending shards of glass everywhere. And when the medics got to the accident scene, Y/n was already fighting to stay alive. She was barely breathing as they extracted her from the broken vehicle and carefully placed her onto a stretcher, putting an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. Blood was dripping from the large cut that began on her forehead and went down to her left cheekbone, pieces of the windshield stuck into her collarbones and arms. The medics had hauled her into the ambulance and, as soon as the back doors had been closed, the vehicle sped down to the Los Angeles Community Hospital, the closest from the accident scene.

When Julie woke up that morning, after playing the Orpheum, she hadn’t expected to see her father with his head in his hands, and his cell phone unlocked in front of him. Her brother, Carlos, wasn’t around, and she found it strange that he was nowhere to be seen. Sunday was usually family breakfast, and it was important to them since her mother passed away.

She then spotted Reggie, who had a habit of joining the Molina family for breakfast, even though he couldn’t eat anything and was only seen by Julie and Y/n. He loved being in their presence, and when he noticed Julie standing in the room, his face fell; he was anticipating Julie’s reaction to the news her father would soon break to her. And he had every right too, for as soon as Ray noticed his daughter and the words fell past his lips, Julie fell to her knees on the wooden floor of the kitchen, taking her head in her hands while letting out soft sobs. Her shoulders were shaking, and Reggie wanted nothing more than to hug her, the one he had come to consider his sister, but decided against it since he knew it’d look weird to Ray, if his daughter were to hug the air. Hopeless, Reggie watched as Ray stood from the chair he was sitting on and crouched down beside Julie, holding her tightly in his arms, Carlos erupting from the living-room to join the rest of his family.

Julie only finds the courage to go into the studio after midday, the memories of playing and singing with both her mom and Y/n being too painful. She doesn’t know what happens next, but Luke has the right to know. And yet, to Julie it felt like the story was repeating itself, except this time, an accident would take her cousin away from her, and not an illness. She doesn’t want to put Luke through the same pain she’s had to go through, after losing her mom, but someone has to tell Luke about Y/n, about what happened to her.

Julie knows the lead guitarist has a thing for her cousin, but as far as she is concerned, he’s never acted on his feelings because he is a ghost and Y/n, well, she is very much alive. Luke thought it would never work, so he kept his feelings for himself, but it never stopped Julie, Alex or Reggie to tease poor Luke whenever Y/n entered the garage with a bright smile on her lips, ready to watch them rehearse.

When Julie breaks down the news about her cousin to him, Luke is frozen in place, the sole of his feet glued to the ground and his face void of all emotions as he tries to process the heart-wrenching truth. Y/n, his Y/n, had been in a car accident and is now fighting for her life that was hanging on a thread. His hands begin to shake, and he has to turn them into fists to control himself. A single tear rolls down his cheek, escaping the corner of his eye, and although he’s a ghost, he could swear his heart was frantically beating under his ribcage. He wants to scream, to turn back time and let Y/n know how he feels about her, that he would find a way to break away from Caleb’s curse before it’s too late. Somehow, he did find a way last night, but he couldn’t tell Y/N. He couldn’t tell her because a stupid drunk driver had run into her car and she was now fighting for her life. Luke lets out a shaky exhale, his feet moving of their own accord towards Julie.

“Where is she?” He asks the girl, voice trembling and barely above a whisper.

“She’s been transferred to the Los Angeles Community Hospital.” Julie answers, swallowing the growing lump in her throat. “Tío Antonío called dad… said she is stable for now… but she is in a comatose state, and they don’t know when or if she’ll wake up…”

Luke slowly nods his head, the world surrounding him falling apart as Julie’s words echoes in his mind. Last night had probably been his last chance to tell her how he felt, but he was so preoccupied about fighting Caleb’s curse and playing the Orpheum to cross over, that he didn’t even get the opportunity to talk to her. It was his only regret from last night, not being able to speak with her.

Julie tries to reach out for his hand, hoping to bring him comfort, but Luke poofs away right in front of her, leaving her standing in the middle of the studio. A sigh stumbles past her lips, and she wipes away the tears that have involuntarily fallen down her cheeks. She knows where Luke is headed, but she cannot find the strength in her to go and visit her cousin as well. And who could blame her, when the Los Angeles Community Hospital was the same one in which her mother passed away only a year ago.

“You okay Jules?”

Julie lifts her head up, her eyes locking with Alex’s, who’s standing in front of her with his brows pulled together in concern. She exhales a long and slow breath, closing her eyes for a brief instant as she pinches the bridge of her nose to gather her thoughts. Alex doesn’t know about Y/N yet; no one has told him.

“Y/N’s in the hospital…” Julie tells Alex, nervously playing with her fingers. “I just told Luke… He’s gone to see her, I think. Some drunk driver crashed into her car last night, when she was on her way home from the Orpheum–”

“Y/N’s in the hospital?” Alex asks her as if he’s misunderstood her. “Is she okay? Oh my god! Are you okay, Julie? Shit, I– I’m sorry, oh my god! I’m–”

Alex’s words come to a stop when he feels a pair of arms around his torso, and when he looks down, he sees that Julie has wrapped her arms around him for comfort. He can only understand her pain; but he can never know how it truly feels to be afraid to lose your cousin, barely a year after losing your mom. He was the one to die first in his family, so he had no idea what it was to lose a family member.

Julie lifts her head when she feels Alex’s arms around her shoulders, and she gives him a broken smile as the two stay surrounded by the silence in the studio, grieving out their emotions..

—

Luke paces inside the hospital’s hallway, eyes glancing back and forth between the floor and the little window on the door numbered 316. The whiteness of the walls, the scent of the morphine and all sorts of medicine make his stomach churn, nose scrunching up in disgust. Had he been alive, he knows he’d have thrown up on the floor right here and there.

He watches as nurses travel back and forth between patients’ rooms, some being in a hurry while others take their time, but his gaze always comes back to the two nurses in Y/N’s room. He can see them through the round window on the door; they’re chatting together before they begin to explain to Julie’s father the state Y/N is in, as her own father is away on a work trip and still trying to find a flight back home to be with his daughter. Ray Molina is the only relative Y/N has right now, thus making him her legal guardian until her father comes back to Los Angeles.

Gnawing on his lower lip, Luke glances at the clock hung on the wall at the floor’s entrance, and he lets out an exasperated sigh. All he wants is to be by Y/n’s side, hold her hand and tell her everything that has happened after playing the Orpheum. He wants to tell her how he feels about her; he wants to see her smile and kiss those pink lips of hers. Now that he is able to touch Julie, he firmly believes he’ll be able to touch Y/n as well. And he couldn’t wait to tell her all about it; to hold her in his arms and run his hands through her hair as she rests her head in his lap. Even if she’s the only person able to see him, aside from Julie, they could have a perfectly normal relationship. Well, not quite normal, but they could do what any living couple could.

Luke is quickly pulled out of his reverie when the sound of three voices and a door creaking open reaches his ears. He lifts his head to see Ray greeting the two nurses with a wave of his hand before he lets out a long and heavy sigh. Luke waits for what seems to be hours, before Ray retreats to the elevators, probably to get himself something from the cafeteria. The guitarist takes it as his opportunity to enter Y/N’s room without anyone noticing the door opening and closing on its own.

With his feet deeply anchored to the ground, he is met with the beeping sound from the heart monitor connected to the girl lying unconscious on the bed, covered in bandages and stitches. Y/N is hooked to a breathing machine, thinner tube into the breathing tube going down her throat. A cannula is wrapped around her head; the two little tubes sticking into her nostrils to help her breathe. She has a feeding tube linked to the crook of her arm, through which Luke guesses she’s receiving liquids and nutrients to keep her hydrated and healthy until she wakes up from her coma. If she wakes up. Luke can see that other IVs and wires are connected to her body, but he has no idea what they are for; he just knows they’re here to keep her alive for as long as she has the strength to fight for her life.

He finally finds the strength to move from his spot after what seems like hours, and he pulls a chair closer to her bed before he sits down on it. His hazel green eyes fall onto the bruises scattered across her paper pale skin; on her collarbones and upper-chest, as well as on her arms where the IVs and wires are stuck into her skin. He notices the stitches on her face, from her forehead and down to her left cheekbone, dried blood sticking at her hairline. A large bandage has been wrapped around her head, and Luke recalls one of the nurses telling Julie’s father that Y/N had hit her head pretty hard against the dashboard of her car upon impact with the drunk driver’s vehicle.

Luke swallows the lump in his throat, the tears brimming his eyes now rolling down his cheeks to end their course on his thighs. He leans over the mattress, gently grabbing Y/N’s left hand in his right one, feeling the coldness of her skin against his own. His hand not falling through makes his heart flutter, that is if he still had a heart beating, but he isn’t in the right mindset to enjoy the little change. Instead he finds himself rubbing his calloused thumb against her knuckles, feeling the cuts on her skin under his touch, while he brushes his left hand through her hair in a gentle way. He begins to softly hum the melody of a song he’s been working on for the past week. He still hasn’t told anyone about it; he wants it to be a surprise to the person he’s writing it for. It isn’t finished yet, but it brings him a sense of comfort as he watches Y/N’s chest heave up and down with the help of the breathing machine. He wants to speak to her, let her know he’s right beside her, but his voice gets caught up in his throat as he lets out a shaky sob, removing his hand from her hair to put it over his mouth.

She looks so peaceful, lying there and tucked under the bedsheets, but he knows she isn’t asleep; the IVs, drips and wires are a clear sign for it. But he tries to convince himself as she’s indeed sleeping, and that she’s about to wake up to give him her most beautiful smile, the same one which had him fall deep down the rabbit hole the first time she had ever smiled at him. But then again, things do not go the way Luke wants them to go. The heart monitor’s steady beeping sounds increase in a more erratic one, Y/N’s body beginning to shake and spasm uncontrollably. His eyes widen in panic, body jerking back at the sudden change in the room, and he frantically looks around for anything.

Just then, the door opens and Ray rushes forwards. Julie is there too now, and Luke can see how she doesn’t dare to step past the door frame. She stays in the hallway, hopelessly watching her dad pushing on a red button on the remote by the bed. Luke stands still, his mind blank and empty of any thought. He’s only pulled out from his stoic state when Alex poofs right beside him and tugs at his arm to take him out of the room, just as nurses rush inside to care for Y/N.

The minute he’s out of room 316, Luke falls to his knees and takes his head in his hands. He can still feel Reggie and Alex beside him, but he doesn’t have the heart to ask them to leave him alone. He needs his friends, and as much as he wants to be left alone, he knows he needs them to stay here; to keep him grounded.

—

A month goes by, and still no improvements to Y/N’s state. Her father has managed to come back from his working trip, and he’s spent as much time as he could by his daughter’s side; Ray only taking his brother’s place when Antonío had to deal with urgent matters at work. Sometimes, when they aren’t at school, Julie and Carlos would join their father at Y/n’s side, and they would tell their cousin about their day. Julie also speaks about the band, and how they managed to get a record deal a week after playing the Orpheum.

Luke, however, spends each of his days at the hospital. He tries not to ditch rehearsals with the band, but Julie, Alex, and Reggie know what he’s going through, and they always understand when sometimes he doesn’t show up. During the month he spends at the hospital, Luke witnesses Y/N’s heart stop twice, and the fear of losing her grows stronger whenever he steps past the door frame. He always brings his song book and guitar with him, working on his song to change his mind. Today is no exception.

Luke carries his guitar case in one hand, opening the door numbered 316 before stepping inside the room and closing the door behind him. He knows Julie is still in high school, and that Carlos has a baseball practice with his dad and Reggie, probably. Alex is probably off somewhere with Willie, having found him again on Hollywood boulevard two weeks after playing the Orpheum, and now they’re seeing each other in secret, hoping that Caleb never finds out about it. Luke also knows Y/N’s father wouldn’t be here today, having been held off at work for something important. So, besides the nurses that drop by once in a while to check on Y/N’s vitals, he’s completely alone with her.

He sits down in his usual spot, on the chair pulled by the hospital bed, and he places the leathered guitar case as his feet, opening the latches to take out his praised instrument. He begins to tune it, remembering the day he had heard one nurse telling Ray that Y/N could still hear people talk next to her, which had, for a short moment, brought a smile to Luke’s lips. He shakes his head at the thought, leaning down to grab his song book and opening it to a page at the end. His messy handwriting litter the paper, but in big letters at the top are written the words “HEART LIKE YOURS”.

It’s the song he’s been working on, without his friends’ knowledge of the song ever existing. It’s the song he’d planned to reveal to everyone by singing it to his special someone; his Y/N. He doesn’t know when or if she’ll wake up, nor does he know if he’ll ever have the chance to tell her the song is for her, but he’s finally finished writing and composing it the previous night, and he wants her to hear it at least once. Luke gently plucks the strings of his instrument, a soft sound echoing inside the room. He knows he won’t be visible to anyone who might come inside upon hearing the music, since Julie isn’t singing with him, but he doesn’t care in the slightest. He has to tell Y/N how he feels about her, even if she may never wake up, and the best way for him to express his feelings is through music.

“Breathe deep, breathe clear,” Luke begins to sing softly, silent tears rolling down his cheeks. “Know that I’m here. Know that I’m here, waitin’.”

His voice waver a little, and he closes his eyes for a moment, inhaling deeply to once again focus on his song. His fingers keep on delicately strumming the strings of his instrument, the sound of his voice soft and echoing around the room; the sound of the heart monitor muffled by the melody he’s producing.

“How could a heart like yours–” Luke sings the chorus, his hazel green eyes now focused on Y/N, “–ever love a heart like mine? How could I live before? How could I have been so blind? You opened up my eyes. You opened up my eyes…”

Luke pours his feelings into the song, meaning every word he sings to her as more tears cascade down his cheeks, but never once does he begin to sob. If Y/N is even able to hear him, even in a coma, he’d go through with his song, wanting her to know exactly how he feels; how he feels about her.

“Sleep sound, sleep tight–” Luke begins the second verse, eyes glancing down at his song book for a second. “–here in my mind. Here in my mind, waitin’. Come close my dear, you don’t have to fear. You don’t have to fear, waitin’.” He swallows the lump in his throat, keeping on strumming the strings softly while he takes a deep breath. “I’ll see you soon.”

He whisper-sings the pre-chorus and stops his strumming. He lifts himself from the chair and hovers over Y/N, his tears hitting the pillow under her head while he swings his guitar behind his back. Luke closes his eyes, leaning down to press his lips against her forehead as more tears roll down his cheeks to end their course on Y/N’s cold skin. When he sits back on the chair, he begins to pluck the strings of his instrument again, picking up the song where he stopped it, and his wavering voice joins the melody to sing the chorus, his eyes never leaving Y/N.

“Hold fast, hope.” He reaches the bridge, sniffling. “All your love is all I’ve ever known.”

And yes, her love might only have been platonic towards him, but it’s all he’s ever known, alive or dead. Back in the 90s, he wasn’t much into the dating thing, and he’d rather focus on the band. Though he did have a fling with Alex, it didn’t last long and the two remained friends from that time onwards, and Sunset Curve had never been better. Well, until him, Reggie and Alex died from bad hot dogs in 1995. So yes, Y/N’s love for him, however platonic it is, it’s all he’s ever known, and he’s afraid to lose her. He’s afraid he’s been too late to admit his feelings.

“How could a heart like yours,” he sings the last chorus, thinking back to all the memories he has of her. “–ever love a heart like mine? How could I live before? How could I have been so blind? You opened up my eyes… you opened up my eyes…”

Luke’s fingers keep strumming on the strings as he sings the outro, inhaling sharply as he ends the song with one final melody. He wipes the tears on his cheeks with the sleeves of the plaid jacket he’s decided to wear today, putting his cherished instrument back into its case, followed by his song book before he closes it. He glides the chair against the tiled floor, making a terrible sound as he pulls it closer to Y/N’s bed. The guitarist takes her left hand in his right one, and he begins rubbing his sore thumb against her knuckles in circles. Luke then leans his forehead against hers, closing his eyes as he lets out a shaky breath.

“I love you, Y/N.” There. He finally said it, though he wishes it was under other circumstances. “I’ve always loved you…” His voice wavers. “The way you smile, and crinkles appear at the corner of your eyes. Or the way you’d jump around, listening to the Sunset Curve demo after it brought me, Reggie and Alex back to the studio… I remember when you got mad at us for ditching Julie on the night of the dance, and I had never felt so mad in my life, or afterlife–” Luke chuckles. “ –before. You stayed mad at us for three whole days, until Julie pleaded with you to forgive us like she did. We even had to sing a song to convince you.”

He pauses, leaning back into the chair to take a look at her peaceful state. Her hair lays around her head like a halo on the pearly white pillow case, her body carefully tucked under the bed sheets as her hands rest on her stomach. Luke can see her breathing pattern with the up and down movement of her chest, and the steady beeping of the monitor to his right lets him know that her heart is still beating. There’s a ray of the sun that peaks through the half-opened curtains in the room, casting its light on her serene frame, and she looks even more like an angel.

“I, I–” He stutters, his voice breaking. “I know you’ve been fighting so hard to stay, and as much as– as much as I want you to keep fighting for your family, for us, I–” A pause, followed by a deep breath. “I’ll understand if you want to let go. I promise to keep an eye on your cousins, for as long as I shall walk this Earth as a ghost…” A sob rips from his chest, but he’s the only one who can hear it. He reaches for her hand one last time, and then– “You can let go now…”

Luke says as his voice wavers, breaking down completely. He lets go of her hand to bury his head between his knees after pulling up his legs against his chest, finding himself in some kind of fetal position on the chair he’s been occupying for the last month. He can’t bring himself to look at her again, not when the beeping from the monitor grows louder and faster. His breath gets caught up in his throat, and he feels like drowning whenever a hiccup rips from his chest. His grief grows heavier, but he cannot find the strength to leave the room knowing it’ll be the last time he’ll ever see her. He knows there’s a slim possibility for her to become a ghost after she passes away, but he doubts she has any unfinished business to keep her on Earth.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there, crying and unable to move from his chair, but the sun has settled down behind the horizon when he finally looks up. His ears catch on to the steady sound of the monitor, and his brows furrowed in confusion. Didn’t it grow faster just a few minutes ago? He glances at the clock above the hospital bed. 08:15 pm. He’s stayed here too long, he needs to get back to Julie’s garage; let his bandmates know where he’s been the whole day, even if they already guessed it.

Reluctantly, he motivates himself to rise from his chair, picking up the leathered guitar case at his feet in the process. Slowly, he makes his way towards the door, and when his hand reaches for the metallic doorknob, he looks over his shoulder one last time.

“I love you, Y/N.”

His words come out as a whisper hanging around in the pristine white room. His mind becomes overwhelmed with memories of Y/N, of her smile, her laughter, and of the sound of her voice, so much that he fails to notice the monitor picking up, and the muffled coughs that come from the bed.

“Lu– Luke?”

The guitarist stops dead in his walk, halfway through the door frame, as a hoarse voice reaches his ears; a voice, however muffled it was, he thought he would never hear again.

#jatp #julie and the phantoms #luke patterson x reader #julie and the phantoms imagines

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zeroseuniverse · 5 months ago

Text

Colors Of Hope

Word Count: 1.3K Summary: “It’s not that simple,” he said quietly, his eyes meeting hers. “This place, these walls—they’re more than just paint and stone. They’re proof that beauty can exist even here.” “Beauty doesn’t matter if you’re dead, Sunoo.” Pairing: Sunoo X Fem Reader

Disclaimer: Please be aware that this is apart of the from the ashes series. This series will have aspects of violence, weapons, angst, blood, injuries, killing, and will heavily focus on oppression and segregation of mutants, Look after your mental state if any of these make you uncomfortable please.

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She crouched low, her fingers brushing against the cold asphalt as she inspected the latest find—a piece of polished glass, still intact despite its jagged edges. She slipped it into her satchel alongside bits of wire and scraps of metal, treasures that might serve her community.

Navigating the crumbling maze of the city required skill and silence. Her steps were careful, her breaths shallow as she avoided the shadows that hid both predators and prey. It wasn’t until she rounded a corner that she noticed something strange—a faint burst of color cutting through the monochrome.

Curiosity outweighed caution. She crept closer, her pulse quickening. What she found left her breathless.

The studio was tucked into the shell of an old warehouse, its walls painted with vibrant murals that seemed to glow even in the dim light filtering through shattered windows. Images of soaring birds, blooming flowers, and outstretched hands formed a kaleidoscope of life and hope.

She stepped inside, her boots crunching on broken glass, and froze. Someone was watching her.

A young man stood in the doorway, his head tilted slightly, a smudge of blue paint on his cheek. His dark eyes flickered with surprise, but not fear.

“You’re the first person to find this place without an invitation,” he said, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “Did the colors give me away?”

She straightened, one hand instinctively hovering near her belt knife. “Kind of hard to miss the rainbow in a city of gray.”

Instead of retreating, the man stepped forward, his smile widening. “I suppose subtlety isn’t my strong suit. I’m Sunoo.”

She hesitated before answering. “Y/N.”

Sunoo gestured to the room around them. “Well, now that you’ve found my little sanctuary, would you like a tour? Or are you here to criticize my color palette?”

Despite herself, she laughed, a rare sound in this world. “It’s bold, I’ll give you that.”

She followed him deeper into the studio, marveling at the sculptures made from twisted metal and shattered glass, the paintings that transformed discarded scraps into masterpieces. For a moment, she forgot about the dangers outside, lost in the beauty Sunoo had created.

But the world didn’t let anyone forget for long. The first time she brought Sunoo something—a handful of colorful shards she’d found near an abandoned train yard—she told herself it was nothing. Just something he might find useful. But when she saw his face light up as he turned the pieces over in his hands, she felt something stir within her.

“These are perfect,” he said, his voice filled with awe. “Do you know how rare it is to find glass like this?”

She shrugged. “It was just lying around.”

He smiled at her, warm and genuine. “You didn’t have to bring it, though. Thank you.”

That was the beginning of their exchange. Over time, her scavenging runs became as much about survival as they were about finding materials for Sunoo. In return, he started leaving small paintings or sketches for her to find—a flower tucked into her bag, a sunrise etched onto a piece of scrap wood.

“You should try painting sometime,” he said one day as they sat together, watching the light shift across the murals.

She shook her head. “I don’t have the time. Or patience.”

He chuckled. “That’s what you think. But art doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to mean something.”

For the first time in years, she wondered if there was more to life than just surviving.

Sunoo’s studio became a second home, a rare refuge from the unrelenting hardships of the city. She found herself returning often, drawn by Sunoo’s warmth and the vibrant world he created within those crumbling walls.

One day, as she brought him a bundle of old wiring and a cracked mirror, she noticed the strain in his features. He hadn’t greeted her with his usual teasing smile, and his brushstrokes were slower, less confident.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, leaning against the table piled with half-finished sculptures.

He hesitated, his fingers gripping the brush tightly. “I heard rumors yesterday. The regime’s been cracking down harder on anything they think spreads... hope.”

Her stomach tightened. “Hope?”

He nodded, setting the brush down with a sigh. “Art, music, stories—anything that reminds people there’s more to life than fear. They’re calling it ‘subversive.’” His gaze fell to the mural he’d been working on, a depiction of hands reaching toward a glowing light. “It’s only a matter of time before they find me.”

Her voice hardened. “Then you need to be ready to leave. This place isn’t worth your life.”

“It’s not that simple,” he said quietly, his eyes meeting hers. “This place, these walls—they’re more than just paint and stone. They’re proof that beauty can exist even here.”

“Beauty doesn’t matter if you’re dead, Sunoo.”

His lips pressed into a thin line, and for a moment, she thought she’d pushed him too far. But then he sighed, leaning back against the wall. “Maybe you’re right. But leaving this place feels like giving up.”

“You’re not giving up,” she said, stepping closer. “You’re surviving. And you can keep creating somewhere safer. The people you’ve inspired—they’ll remember. And they’ll keep fighting.”

For the first time, she saw a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. “You really believe that?”

“I do,” she said firmly. “And if you don’t, I’ll make you believe it.”

The regime’s crackdown came sooner than either of them expected. Sunoo’s studio wasn’t just a hidden sanctuary anymore—it had become a beacon for the community, a place where people dared to gather and dream.

When patrols began sweeping the area, she knew they were running out of time.

“We have to go,” she said, her voice urgent as she packed his tools and smaller sculptures into a bag.

Sunoo hesitated, his gaze darting to the murals that covered the walls. “I can’t leave them behind. If they destroy this...”

“They’ll destroy it whether you’re here or not,” she snapped. “The only way to save any of this is to save yourself. You can start again, Sunoo. You can rebuild.”

His shoulders slumped, but he nodded, his resolve crumbling under her words. “What’s the plan?”

“We’ll take what we can carry,” she said. “The rest... we’ll have to trust the people you’ve inspired to remember. To keep it alive.”

As they worked quickly, packing supplies and dismantling portable pieces, they heard the distant rumble of boots on the street outside.

“They’re close,” Sunoo whispered, fear flickering in his eyes.

She grabbed his hand, squeezing it tightly. “Then we move now.”

She led Sunoo through the city’s twisting alleys, her familiarity with its hidden routes keeping them one step ahead of the patrols. The bag of supplies weighed heavily on her back, but she didn’t slow down, her grip firm on Sunoo’s wrist.

When they reached the edge of the city, where the rubble gave way to the overgrown remains of a park, she finally let them rest.

Sunoo collapsed onto the ground, his chest heaving. “We made it.”

“For now,” she said, scanning the area for signs of pursuit. “But we need to keep moving. The safe house isn’t far.”

He looked at her, his expression a mix of gratitude and exhaustion. “I wouldn’t have made it without you.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” she said, her voice soft. “I believe in what you’re doing, Sunoo. That’s why I couldn’t let them take you.”

For a moment, they sat in silence, the weight of everything they’d left behind settling over them. Then Sunoo reached into the bag he’d insisted on carrying and pulled out a small, rolled-up canvas.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“A piece of the mural,” he said, unrolling it to reveal a fragment of the hands reaching toward the light. “I couldn’t save it all, but I couldn’t leave this behind.”

Her throat tightened as she looked at the painting. “It’s beautiful.”

“It’s a reminder,” he said, his voice quiet. “That even in the darkest places, there’s always something worth reaching for.”

She met his gaze, and for the first time, she let herself believe that maybe, just maybe, they could find something more than survival in this broken world.

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muzaktomyears · 8 months ago

Text

Yoko said to me: ‘I was told John was in danger in New York’

Elliot Mintz was the friend with whom John Lennon and Yoko Ono spent some of their most private moments. Now he has written a book in which he reveals what went on after the former Beatle was murdered in 1980

John Lennon and Yoko Ono in New York on November 26, 1980, just days before his death

Part of me started to wonder if perhaps I’d acted rashly. My mother had heard a radio report about a shooting on 72nd Street. The Lennons were not answering their phones. The Dakota operator had hung up on me. Was that enough to send me racing to the airport to catch the last flight to New York? But then I saw a flight attendant exit the cockpit, tears streaming down her cheeks. As she hesitatingly made her way down the aisle, I reached out and touched her arm.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “They killed him,” she answered, gulping back a sob. “They murdered John Lennon.”

For a long moment I found it impossible to process what I’d been told. And then, like a flash fire in the brainpan, the horror of what happened exploded in my consciousness. “John is dead,” I whispered to myself. My best friend was gone. My heart began to race, I found myself gasping for air. I literally doubled over in pain as my whole body absorbed the shock.

Lennon, Ono and Elliot Mintz outside the Mampei hotel in Karuizawa, Japan, in 1977

I don’t know how long I sat, crumpled in agony, but eventually I regained a modicum of composure. I realised I had to marshal my thoughts and plan what to do once the plane touched down at JFK. I needed to pull myself together, bury my grief, and be strong for Yoko and Sean.

I had seen John just a few weeks earlier, in New York; he and Yoko and I had spent a long evening at the Dakota listening to their soon-to-be-dropped Double Fantasy album. At around two in the morning I said my goodbyes. John walked me to the door.

“Remember,” he cautioned me, “walk on the side of the street where the doormen are. Don’t walk on the side of the street next to the park.” “John,” I said, “I grew up in New York. I know how to walk in this city.” That was the last time I saw him.

Lennon and Ono at home with their son, Sean

By the time I got to the Dakota, at around 7.30am, at least 5,000 people had gathered on 72nd Street. At the request of Richie De Palma, Studio One’s office manager, a couple of officers helped me across the police cordon. Suddenly, I was face-to-face with the crime scene: there was blood on the pavement as well as shards of broken glass from a window shattered by one of the bullets.

I rode the elevator to the seventh floor. The Lennons’ housekeeper, Masako, let me in. It was clear she’d been crying. “Yoko-san in bedroom,” she said in broken English. “Door locked.”

I paused at the closed door, then gently knocked. “Yoko, it’s Elliot,” I told her softly. “I’ll be right outside until you are ready to see me. I’m not going anywhere.”

After about five minutes, I saw the door open a crack. I stood up and peered inside the bedroom, illuminated by the big-screen TV, which was showing live local news footage of the Dakota. Yoko had been watching, with the volume off. Even though the windows were shut and the shutters closed, I could hear the music from seven floors below. The sound of mourners on the street singing John’s lyrics would fill the apartment for days to come.

Lennon surrounded by fans in New York in August 1980

Standing by the bed, wearing silk pajamas and a kimono, Yoko looked incredibly frail. I reached over and gingerly put my arm around her. She touched my face, then crawled back into bed.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked her. “There’s nothing anybody can do,” she weakly responded. “Have you eaten anything? Can I bring a cup of tea?” “Elliot,” she answered, “your presence is comforting. You don’t have to say or do anything.”

I sat down in my usual spot, the white wicker chair, and we both watched the images flickering on the TV. For a while, my eyes wandered around the room, eventually settling on John’s bedside table, where I spotted a pile of books — it was an eclectic stack, to say the least, everything from The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir to Your Child’s Teeth: A Parent’s Guide to Making and Keeping Them Perfect by Stephen J Moss. Yoko’s reading material was similarly varied.

Suddenly, a picture of the suspect appeared on the screen. Yoko sat up and stared intently at the mug shot of the assailant; she seemed both mesmerised and repulsed — and deeply confused — by the face of the man who had murdered her husband.

The following weeks were a blur. I spent a lot of them downstairs at Studio One, joining a staff of four or five employees, fielding a never-ending barrage of phone calls. At one point early on, an assistant held out a phone for me. “He says he’s Ringo Starr,” she whispered. Ringo was calling from a pay phone and wanted to make a condolence call with his girlfriend (now wife), Barbara. I ended up sneaking them into the building through a back entrance.

“I know exactly how you feel,” Ringo told her when she greeted him and Barbara in her bedroom. “No, you don’t,” Yoko replied, “but I’m grateful you are here.”

One evening, just a day or two after John’s murder, I returned to the apartment to find Julian Lennon sitting alone in the kitchen. He was now 17 and had just flown in from London by himself to pay his respects. (He told me later that the flight was filled with passengers reading papers covered with headlines about his father’s killing.) John and Julian had made some repairs to their estranged relationship, but Julian had practically no relationship with Yoko or with his half-brother, Sean.

“Would you look after Julian?” Yoko asked me. “It’s so depressing here. Take him around New York, show him different places.”

She was asking partially as a kindness to Julian but also as a mercy to herself. Yoko was in no condition to deal with John’s grieving teenage son; she could barely handle her own child’s grief. Sean reminded her so much of John, she found it painful to be in the same room with him, so he and his nanny were dispatched to the Lennons’ vacation home in Florida.

Police outside the Dakota, the apartment complex where Lennon was killed

I found the idea of sightseeing with Julian a bit odd, but we ended up spending a day together, culminating with a trip to the viewing deck atop the World Trade Center. It was one of the few pleasant interludes in an otherwise unbearable stretch of misery.

One of the other assignments I took up around this time was reading through the bags of hate mail. The most worrying ones were flagged for further investigation by law enforcement and shared with Yoko’s private security, who started pinning the names and descriptions of the senders on a bulletin board at Studio One.

I was always running into bodyguards in the kitchen. The irony was impossible to miss: this house built on love and peace was now filled with guns. At one point, even I started carrying a snub-nosed .38 revolver in an ankle holster. I was also provided with a bulletproof vest. One of the few times I recall willingly slipping into it was when a man fitting the description of one of the assailant’s fan club letter writers was spotted on the street outside the Dakota.

He was a tall, young, otherwise innocuous-looking fellow. I approached him carefully and asked him for the time. When he lifted his wrist to look at his watch, I could see under his jacket what appeared to be the butt of a gun.

I quickly returned to the Dakota lobby and called the police. They arrived in minutes, pushed him against a wall, discovered what was indeed a weapon, and hurried him away.

Julian Lennon, Ono, Mintz and Sean Lennon at the dedication of Strawberry Fields as a memorial to Lennon in New York in 1984

Nearly as shocking and upsetting as the dangers that were swirling outside the Dakota were the perils lurking inside. Yoko would learn that some of her most trusted confidants were scheming against her. By far the worst offender was an assistant named Fred Seaman, a trusted aide who, earlier in the year, accompanied John on a trip to Bermuda — the trip on which John wrote many of the songs for Double Fantasy.

Incredibly, almost immediately after the murder, Seaman began smuggling shopping bags stuffed with private papers from the Lennon offices and residences — including five personal journals that John kept hidden under his bed — hauling them uptown to the apartment of his accomplice, Robert Rosen, as part of a scheme to write a tell-all book. We eventually got the diaries back, and Seaman ended up pleading guilty to second-degree larceny.

Yoko found herself surrounded by traitors. Whom could she turn to? For a while, she leaned on the companionship of her friend and interior designer Sam Havadtoy, who not only moved into the Dakota but began sharing a bedroom with Yoko, although not the one she had slept in with John. This struck many on her staff as curious. Although Havadtoy was undeniably charming, appeared to have Yoko’s best interests at heart, and was terrific with Sean, he was also a gay man.

Yoko continued to grow more and more wary of just about everyone around her. I don’t know if I ever fell under Yoko’s suspicion but I do recall one moment when she and I came dangerously close to a serious argument, after I implored Yoko to let me conduct a radio interview with her and Sean to dispel some of the more outrageous rumours being spun about the Lennon family following the publication of Albert Goldman’s book about John, like the notion that he was an abusive husband and father (who once allegedly kicked Sean across a room); and that he was a drugged-out recluse, possibly schizophrenic, and an enthusiastic devotee of Thai prostitutes.

“I’ve never asked you to comment about any of the other books, but this one we can’t ignore,” I told her. Yoko paused for a moment, then responded. “Let me check with my advisers,” she said, meaning her team of tarot readers and numerologists.

Mourners at a vigil for Lennon shortly after his death

I’d never expressed scepticism about Yoko’s mystical beliefs but for once, I pushed back. “Yoko, let me ask you something,” I said. “If these advisers are as good as you believe they are, why is it that none of them saw what was going to happen to John? Why was there no warning?”

Yoko’s answer astonished me. “Elliot,” she said, “how do you know I wasn’t warned? Did you ever ask me if there were warnings?”

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll ask you: Did any of your advisers warn you about John being in danger?” “Yes,” she answered. “I was told he was in danger in New York and that he should be removed immediately. That’s why I sent him to Bermuda over the summer … But I couldn’t keep him away forever. He had to come back at some point.”

I was speechless. “Look, Elliot,” Yoko went on, “you know how John felt about his own safety. We talked about this at our kitchen table when your friend [the actor Sal Mineo] was killed. John said, ‘If they’re going to get you, they’re going to get you.’ It didn’t matter what my advisers told me. He didn’t believe in bodyguards, he wouldn’t put up with them. He wanted to be free.”

(source)

#john lennon #yoko ono #elliot mintz #removed the photo of mdc because fuck that

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weirdstrangeandawful · 13 days ago

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I am sending a message to inquire cautiously about this dog of yours you mentioned??

Ah. Beastie MacStomachOnLegs...

Her real name is Laurel and she is, unsurprisingly, a Labrador retriever. We got professional studio photos of our family done once and the ones of her turned out, well, better than expected given that she went absolutely bonkers over a rubber chicken, flipped her water all over the floor, and generally nearly trashed the studio and refused to stand anywhere near us for a photo

She is terrified of everything including wind and rain and waves and nail clipping but she has no self-preservation whatsoever. But she loves the vet (they have snacks). The vet looked us gently but firmly in the eye when she was one year old and said 'you need to get pet insurance or this dog is going to cost you a lot of money' (the vet was very right). She has one (1) instinct and that is to Eat. There are two other instincts present (drag dead birds out of the bushes and swim) but eating things usually surpasses both of those. She can be outside and fast asleep but the second she hears you put a cutting board down on the counter, she is sitting at your feet, staring.

A selection of things she has eaten and shouldn't have:

The ear and part of the tail of soapstone panther statue (she was a tiny puppy then too and smaller than the panther)

Far too much river grass which probably would be fine in moderation but moderation is not a word she knows

Pieces of coyote skull lying by the side of the road

So. Much. Goose. Poop.

And entire dead blue jay that came back up intact and identifiable

Shards of broken plastic

Shards of broken plates

Large bites of a toboggan

An entire shirt (and the usual several socks, underwear, toques, etc)

Large chunks of most of her toys

Pieces of a child's boot that she took off said child's foot (related to the aforementioned toboggan incident) as well as various other footwear

Parts of her beds

Parts of the couch

Not eaten but she went through a sticking her tongue in electrical outlets phase

She has somehow yet to have a major medical incident as a result of any of this. The worst she has gotten is eye infections which we assume are the result of the dead birds (yes, I are aware of bird flu. Unfortunately she weighs about as much as me and is very quick about darting over to grab the dead bird before I even notice it. Working on that).

I've tried training her to do some tricks and she knows a few (circle, paw, double paw) but in general she is too stupid. She is a retriever who doesn't retrieve unless she's in water (luckily she lives on a riverbank)

In her natural habitat:

Generally doing things the hard way:

#she was actually the family dog before I left #so she lives 3500 km away from me #but I spent years with her including lockdowns so I still consider her my dog #especially since I don't have a dog of my own right now because I rent and am not allowed pets #she's one of the only reasons I still have regular contact with my parents #and the only reason my brother and I ever even exist in the same room #sir beastie macstomachonlegs #dog #labrador retriever

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calvin-pascal · 7 months ago

Text

The hollow silence of the studio apartment felt so fucking heavy. The mattress was bare, a slab of indifferent gray in the middle of a room that felt more like a prison cell than a home. Boxes were everywhere, piled high against the walls, stacked without purpose or care, symbols of the life he’d torn apart just to get here.

He’d sold his restaurant, his life, left behind everything he’d built, partly because he believed in the version of the future she painted for them. Now she was gone, and he was left here, drowning in the remnants of a life he didn’t even recognize anymore. All that remained of her was an ivy plant in the corner, an ironic reminder of her touch, as if she’d left a scar on this unfamiliar apartment.

Its green leaves, so vibrant and alive, fueled nothing but rage. She’d picked it out, brushed her fingers over its leaves, talked about how it would bring life to the place. He could still see her standing in the greenhouse they visited, making promises with her hands, promises that were empty. He realized he hated that plant—hated its mocking, lush green, hated the way it seemed to thrive while he wilted.

A blur. A hand full of terracotta, the weight of it solid and cold in his grip. A strange, bitter satisfaction twisting in his chest as it hurled against the wall. Clay and soil rained down, a shrapnel of earth and shards scattering across the floor. The plant lay broken, its roots exposed, leaves limp and smeared with dirt.

The apartment felt darker, colder. She had left him like this, raw and exposed, roots torn out of the ground, and abandoned in a city that wasn’t his home.

#calvin 004

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surplus-of-sarcasm · 1 year ago

Note

Hi!

I loved reading the snippet “I Do” alot!

I was wondering if you could please continue? if you want to!

Love your writing as always!

Never forget to stay hydrated!

First up tysmm anon for the ask, and the super sweet ask! Please stay hydrated too < 3 I'm saurrrr sorry this is ridiculously overdue, a lot of stuff just came up. Enjoyy < 3

I Do, Part 2

Part 1

TW: Blood, (failed) murder attempt, minor violence, angst, knives

If the hero hadn't been preoccupied with the current situation, she would've taken the time to admire the stunning interior of the villain's mansion; sleek marble floors and dark plush carpets and wooden furniture that was the perfect mix of refined and simple.

But it was impossible to focus with the criminal's hand in hers, feeling like a shackle around her wrist, the grip firm even if it didn't hurt. She wanted more than anything to rip her hand away, but until she knew her way around this place, she would have to humour him. It was still difficult to try and memorise whatever she could of the place when everything looked the same, a lengthy corridor that never seemed to end, but she would have to try.

The villain led her up a staircase and finally stopped at one of the many doors, twisting the doorknob with his free hand. "This is your room, and anything in it belongs to you. If you need something, ask any of the servants you see outside. And don't even think about trying something stupid, alright?" The villain's eyes narrowed, his gaze wary and mistrusting as he let go of her hand and walked out of the room

At least he was away from her, the weight of his hand against her sweaty gloved one finally having been lifted. She slammed the door, not caring if it potentially annoyed the villain. She pulled off the lace gloves, looking around the room to notice it was huge. At least in comparison to the one in her studio apartment. It had a pair of half-open French doors and pots of roses on the edge of the balcony, a four-poster bed with silk sheets, and a small, crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling. It didn't make sense how, instead of a cell or something of the sort, she'd been given this room, especially when she noticed how infuriated the villain had been with her getting him locked up.

Maybe this was temporary. Give her all this luxury for a fleeting moment just to take it all away. An old, but effective way to punish anyone, and she truly wouldn't put anything past the villain.

She wasn't going to stay quiet about it, though. If the villain was playing the long game, she wasn't giving him the chance to go through with it. Her mentor had always said that the best way to get rid of a problem was to get rid of the source.

It didn't take a genius to figure out what "the source" was.

Still ruminating over exactly how she would re-enact her plan, the hero's frankly poisonous chain of thought was swiftly broken by a knock on the room's door. “What do you want now, Villain?”

“I'm not. . .” a timid voice called out, “the Master said to tell you that dinner is ready downstairs, ma'am,” a servant continued hastily.

And just before she would readily decline, the heroine realised she was absolutely in need of any chance she could get to be in close proximity with her nemesis-turned-husband.

From the second she'd signed that contract, she'd essentially agreed to swallow her pride and step on her desires till they shattered into a million, almost negligible shards like glass. . .

She walked down to find the villain at the head of the table, his simple choice of a graphic t-shirt and a pair of pale blue shorts strangely disconcerting. “There's clothes up there, you know,” he mused, gesturing to her wedding dress.

The heroine nodded offhandedly, giving the villain a response of sorts, so she didn't risk aggravating his ire already, but not one too entirely enthusiastic that it wouldn't seem believable.

Still, the way the hero was barely picking at her food wasn't lost on the villain, his lips curling into a half-annoyed, half-amused smirk. He stabbed his fork into a piece of steak on her plate and ate it. “See? Not poisoned.”

Admittedly, the hero almost felt like laughing at the villain's antics, but him being mildly amusing for a moment just wasn't going to erase years of accumulated hatred. And she wasn't entrusting her fate to the villain's mood.

When he turned around, the heroine had slipped a knife up her sleeve, as slowly and carefully as she possibly could within the given time frame, and it was only her luck the villain had decided he was done and was already getting up.

Adrenaline coursed through her veins, and her pulse hammered under her skin, leaving her feeling as though the force of it was enough to tear through flesh. The fear weighed down on her like a cinder block, leaving her moving as though the world had suddenly turned into molasses.

Her knife was inches away from Villain’s back, just one movement of the wrist, and all this hell would be over. She struck fast.

But his reflexes were faster.

His hand snapped onto her wrist with a vice-like grip as he turned to face her, a calm, unreadable expression painted across his features as he tossed the knife away from her hand. “Didn’t I tell you not to think about trying something stupid?” he hissed, voice eerily cold.

The hero didn’t hesitate to aim a kick to his shins, the momentary shock giving her enough time to force her way out of his grip. She tried to reach for a knife on the dining table, but her enemy was right behind her, pulling her back by the dress. Letting out a frustrated snarl, the hero clawed at his arm, thankful she’d kept her nails long, sharp enough to draw blood. She knew the scratches felt like nothing to a man as robust as the villain, but she needed a moment, just enough to finally pick up a knife off the table.

And the villain seemed to fancy the same idea, a blade clutched furiously in his left hand, a sickening smile on his lips. He pulled her up to his chest, and anyone who didn’t know better would’ve thought the gesture was intimate, so the knife softly pushing into her neck and drawing a thin streak of crimson down her skin was an ugly paradox. The hero still had her own blade pressed to the villain’s side, a matching carmine just starting to stain his dark t-shirt. “What’s stopping you? Go on, darling, push it all the way. Break your little code for once, might even be fun,” he crooned, the same damned grin drawn across his lips.

The hero swore, her form convulsing so vigorously with adrenaline and rage that she hadn’t even noticed the villain had lifted the knife off her neck as she pulled hers outward, having barely grazed the criminal’s skin.

She was surprised he’d simply let her leave, running up to the bathroom in her room, cleaning up the blood on her neck. She can’t stand the dress anymore, throwing it off and being left with a tank top and a pair of shorts underneath. She was furious with herself for hesitating. Her ticket to freedom was almost between her fingers, and she’d thrown it ungratefully in the ocean, just because of a few manipulative words from that bastard. She felt as though she’d forgotten how to breathe, anger and pain and despair building up in her lungs and forcing all the air out.

A knock on the door pulled her swiftly out of her reverie.

“Come in.”

It’s the villain. The expression on his face was a mix of resigned and irritated.

“What do you want?” she thundered.

The villain let out an exasperated sigh, fidgeting with the ring on his finger. “With this lack of pressure, I wouldn’t be surprised if you die from a tiny wound like that.” He almost took a step forward, but he went back on it, realising he’d probably just aggravate her even more. The man wasn’t dumb.

She noticed that blood was still snaking down her neck, so she pressed harder at his comment. “Why do you care? You’re the one who gave me this?”

The villain rolled his eyes, giving the hero a look one only reserves for a petulant child. “I told you before I’m not looking to mistreat you. But I never said I’d let you irritate me as you please and get away with it unscathed. But I’m not here for this. I’m here to tell you that tomorrow, there’s some stupid event I’m meant to attend with my civilian identity, and I’m supposed to bring you with me. News travels fast, and sooner or later they’ll find out I’ve married someone. I don’t want them thinking I’ve got anything to hide.”

“I don’t understand why you’d come here and tell me this yourself. Don’t you usually send one of your many servants to do this?”

To the hero’s surprise, the villain’s lips curved into a wolfish sort of grin. “Because one of my many servants would be too scared to tell you that I’m not going to let you mess this up. That if you push me hard enough, you’ll regret it. So for tomorrow at least, you’re going to have to pretend you tolerate me. Put on a show for these people like you do for the public.”

All the hero did in response was give him a blank look. For now at least, she would have to play along.

“There’s painkillers in this drawer, by the way,” he said, gesturing to the drawer of her nightstand before walking out.

The hero collapsed on the bed, exhausted and relieved to be alone for now. This was going to be a whole lot more difficult than she thought.

You can’t win every time, the hero had come to learn. There are times when fate will twist against you, but it doesn’t mean that all is lost. A drawn out fight was never a surefire sign of defeat; it just meant that it would take more perseverance, more withstanding to win. If she had to turn her nerves into steel and her heart into ice and her face into a mask, then so be it.

Tagging for the part 2 : @hufflepuffwritingstuff2 Le Taglist: @larinzz @syberianjade @lateuplight @altu-interactions @enbious-prince @astr0-mj @thelazywitchphotographer @a-fucking-simp-00 @addictedsandwhichaki @justalittlecorrupted @quaggasus @adamswrongchild @vernilliom @mothmancommitsarson @starssabove @kurai-hono-blog @talkingsperm @muffinrebel44 @sunnynwanda @annablogsposts @cardboardarsonist @itsmyworld23 @onlywhump @m3rakii @crotchgoblin69 @wtfevenisausername @pendarling @avloki-pal @kaiwewi @those-damn-snippets @genuinelythioehat-is-whump @ghostofnorth @dragonmine-24 @detectivepetrichor @orangeduckweed @red-is-the-reputation4444 @alexii117 @prophecies-bestowed-upon-ye Wanna be on the taglist? This'll take you there!

#hero x villain #the little gremlin answers #natalia's writing #fiction #hero/villain #writers on tumblr #female writers #tw minor violence #tw blood #tw knives #angst #forced marriage #heroes and villains community #creative fiction #anon ask

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all-about-kyu · 2 years ago

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Summary: n/a Pairing: n/a (background of Yungi, and ot8 x bunny!reader) Tropes: hybrid au, dragon au Genre: n/a Rating: PG Warnings: n/a Word Count: n/a Note: CTASF masterlist Note 2: shout out to @sanjoongie for building this absolutely phenomenal universe with me <3

𝕳𝖔𝖓𝖌𝖏𝖔𝖔𝖓𝖌

Time manipulation

He can’t do it for extended amounts of time but can for a few hours or so

It takes a toll on him but it is very helpful when he wants to get some extra work done

It’s also just nice to freeze time to catch up on sleep or spends some extra time with the thunder

He likes to pause time for moments like they do in book and movies

He’s reclusive (affectionately) but he absolutely is a hopeless romantic for those kinds of things at the end of the day

𝕾𝖊𝖔𝖓𝖌𝖍𝖜𝖆

Whhheeeeewwww our icy boy

He can freeze/cool anything instantly

Which can get really fun really quick

But he also can’t always control those icy shards from showing if he’s not in the best mood

If someone in the thunder is sick he’s always right there with a nice cold glass of water ready to give

Often helps cool San off by conjuring some ice and placing his hand where San will feel it

𝖄𝖚𝖓𝖍𝖔

Shadow manipulation

He’s so precious about it

He uses his shadows to cover Hop’s eyes during a scary or gory scene in a movie that he knows she won’t be able to stomach

Or if Mingi isn’t around to bend the light, he’ll create a sort of shade to block a bit (or all) of the light if it’s shining in someones eyes

He and Mingi work together on the light-shadow things since they’re two sides of the same coin (he wouldn’t have it any other way)

𝕾𝖆𝖓

Fire to Seonghwa’s ice

It’s not just fire though it’s also heat

Which can also be fun since it incorporates a lot of different things

He does have a bad habit of letting smoky tendrils or burn marks showing when he’s not in the best mood either

Before hops came along he was the only one who could get Seonghwa out of his icy moods

Sometimes he burns his food at restaurants to get a free meal (which is hilarious cause he's living more than comfortably and doesn't need free food)

𝖄𝖊𝖔𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖌

Mineral manipulation

It’s actually very helpful in his line of work

Something small is missing in the decor? He’ll just conjure up a few stones!

Also very helpful for Hop’s jewelry shop if she’s in a pinch (she won’t let him just make them all for her)

If he knows the mineralogical makeup of the stone (he has a cheat sheet on his phone), then he can make it!

He knows some better than others though

𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖎

Light manipulation

He’s a sunny person as it is, but his light manipulation is very helpful to those around him.

Him manipulating light and Yunho manipulating shadows was like a gift from whatever higher power there is

They’re literally inseparable (especially with them being boyfriends)

He often bends the light in his lecture hall and office so it’s not blinding his students or himself as he teaches

He’s also very handy when there’s a power outage and they need to see!

He can just conjure some up at any point he needs

𝖂𝖔𝖔𝖞𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖌

Electricity

With Wooyoung’s personality, electricity just makes sense

He has a little quirk with accidentally sending small electrical pulses into electronics

He’s broken a few speakers at the dance studio like that…

But it also helps him in the process!

If something’s stubborn, he’ll shock it, and sometimes it’ll fix itself from that.

He does accidentally strike people with small lightning bolts when he’s mad at them though (and he shocks Yeosang for fun sometimes)

𝕵𝖔𝖓𝖌𝖍𝖔

Flora/ plants

We’ve already seen a bit of this in Liquid Gold, but he can create any flora he can think of

There are some plants that are considered “wives’ tales” like the mentioned ‘pregnancy prevention whatever flower’

Others are more practical, like interior decorations cooking herbs or healing elixirs

He also just likes the coziness that his magical element brings with it

He’s made several different vital things for the thunder (mostly that tea for hops)

He likes to make teas for the thunder based on what flora he associates with them and stores them in little satchels in the kitchen with each person’s name on it (he has threatened to make Wooyoung poison ivy tea before)

Networks: @cultofdionysusnet @kwritersworld @k-vanity

Tag List: @sanjoongie @jaehunnyy @ericssmile @anyamaris @almondmilkeu @shinestarhwaa @northerngalaxystar-blog

#ctasf #cultofdionysusnet #kvanity #kwritersworldnet #ateez fanfic #ateez x reader #dragon!ateez #ateez headcanons

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obsidiancreates · 1 year ago

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One Undead To Another (Chapter 17)

Henry feels like an idiot.

He examines Shawn’s broken apartment window. It took him until after leaving the voicemail to finally realize what he’d seen a whole day before. Broken apartment window, oh, Shawn might’ve just broken it with some dumb stunt, cracked door is because it’s a crappy old yoga studio or whatever it was.

Except this is a case. And Shawn is hiding something.

There’s blood on one of the shards of glass still in the windowpane, dried and probably useless– no way they can match the DNA to any of the bodies as burnt as they are.

He could still write it off as Shawn having done something dumb and shattered the window. But as Henry opens Shawn’s broken door, a much more worrying picture starts to paint itself in Henry’s mind.

Part of the state of the place is just how Shawn lives, but Henry sees disturbances in the carpet in front of the couch– flattened, pressed-down fibers, in an imprint about the size of a body.

Shawn’s bedroom door is cracked. Shawn’s bathroom door is cracked. His sink is cracked! Someone tore through this place like a hurricane and left a message.

… And Shawn slept in the Psych office. With Gus, Juliet, and Lassiter all there too.

Henry checks the bed, and– yes. There. A little bit of dried blood, just a little, on top of the covers.

Broken window, cracked doors, blood on the covers, all of them sleeping in one place, the detectives being more defensive of Shawn than usual, Shawn’s empty eyes–

“Aw, kid.” Henry steps back. Maybe he won’t find anything damning about Shawn’s bike after all. “You got kidnapped again, didn’t you?”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pain in his neck. Held, cradled, pressed against freezing skin. His blood clings to the inside of his veins as it’s sucked out. He feels every last dreg being dragged out of his body. The cold seeps in as the blood seeps out. Pain, pain, pain–

He bites deeper into the warm flesh in his mouth. Relief, such incredible relief. No more pain, no more pain, no more pain…

No more pain. Nothing when Lassie hits him, nothing when he dives away from the car, nothing when he cracks his sink with a frustrated slam of his hand… it’s fun. It’s nice. It’s good.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“It’s all good.” Shawn wakes up with a start, tumbling off the couch and looking up as Gus, phone stuck between his shoulder and his face, closes the office door. He has a black vinyl bag in one hand, the office keys in the other. He moves right through the office to the back door, locking it like he locked the front. Shawn didn’t see Gus lock the front. He just knows he did. God, being Psychic is subtle sometimes. It’s like that thing where you hear about a type of car, and then start noticing it everywhere– but instead of cars it’s supernaturally gained knowledge.

His mouth waters as he hears faint sloshing in the bag. Gus comes back into the main room, and Shawn sees the logo stuck onto the vinyl– a pair of lips with fangs and a drop of blood hanging off the mouth corner. Cliche, tacky, and he thinks he’s in the right considering it to be a little bit offensive to him.

“Just, forget about it. Pretend I was never even there.” Gus hangs up the phone, blushing– Shawn could swear he hears the blood rush up into Gus’s cheeks, and his vision tunnels. His mouth waters and his lips part and he can see the pulse of the veins in Gus’s neck.

The bag is shoved into his hands. It makes him blink, the tunnel vision falling away and shifting.

Flash, film grain, shaky cam from a downward angle, Gus is awkwardly flirting with a woman in a tight leather harness who pulls her own blood drawing supplies out.

“If you’re really curious, I’m an attentive teacher. I used to be in nursing school so I can totally guide you on drawing blood.”

Shawn blinks. “Please tell me you didn’t force yourself to draw someone’s blood all on your own.”

“I don’t wanna talk about it, Shawn, just drink it so you don’t drink me.”

“I’m literally in your debt forever.” Shawn pulls out the bag and just– bites. He doesn’t even know what happens in the moments between grabbing it, still warm as it is, and it being already halfway empty.

Gus gags.

As soon as the bag is empty, which is in only seconds, Shawn looks up at Gus. He tries to ignore the almost transcendent euphoria slowly soaking through him, forcing himself to focus on the outside– namely, the fact that Gus might be about to vomit on the little carpet they recently added to the sitting area. “Dude! Why did you watch?!”

“You didn’t give me time to leave the room!”

“You could’ve turned your head or, just closed your eyes, man!”

Gus tsks. “Look, are you feeling better now?”

Shawn licks his lips. Gus stifles a gag.

The euphoria is fading, slowly, and even still god it feels good. He feels fantastic, unstoppable, top of the world–

“I think so. My voice is fixed up, at least.”

“Thank go– uh, gosh. It was terrifying before!”

“I don’t know that it was that bad.” It was. It is. Gus saying it outright hurts.

“It absolutely was! You sounded like a demon Shaw–” Gus looks Shawn in the eyes and sags a little. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine–”

“No, Shawn, it’s not. If this happened to me–”

Flash, grain, footraces so fast you miss them if you blink and stupid contests trying to lift the Blueberry and years passing and passing but the two of them never changing–

“–I would hate you pointing it out all the time.” Gus’s brow creases. “Shawn?”

Shawn’s mouth parts, awareness trickling back. His face feels like it’s showing confusion. He’ll run with that. Confusion and a joke, anything to ignore that vision and how fun it all seemed. “Gus, if you were a vampire you’d never leave your apartment again.”

“Honestly, I might ask you to stake me. After I ask Father Wesley about if that disqualifies my soul from Heaven.”

“Dude, I could never stake you. How can you even suggest that?”

“You’d have to, Shawn! I’m not built to be a vampire!”

“No-one is, man! That’s why it’s a curse or whatever!”

“You know what I mean!”

“Gus, you and I both know that just because we understand each other, doesn’t mean we’re making sense."

“Tsk!”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Karen really shouldn’t be going through her Head Detective’s desk. And she isn’t, technically. She’s just… looking over the evidence box McNab put there before Lassiter and O’Hara went to the scene of the drowning.

“What are you looking for, Detective?”

She’s not ignorant. Her best detectives calling out sick the day after a group of suspects are found dead in their own burnt-down mansion, Henry going on some little ‘quest’ of his own flashing his badge around at shops on the way to said mansion according to a series of complaints, Shawn being mysteriously absent the last few days except for a surprise drop-off of a kidnapper…

Something suspicious is obviously going on. This is why she always hesitates sending anyone from this particular unit on undercover operations.

The journals Lassiter is holding onto look like little more than charcoal at first glance, but as she snaps on a pair of gloves and carefully opens one, there’s a shocking amount still legible towards the spine and center of the pages. They’re all handwritten, and the yellowing going so deep into the pages means they’re all old. She checks the stability of each one first, making sure none of them will crumble in her hands, and when none do she tries to make out the writing.

The penmanship is sloppy, the ink is faded, and the writer is using some kind of shorthand. It’d take days at the least to decipher this notebook, and based on her brief overview of the others they aren’t much more promising. As far as she can piece together in this moment, it’s mostly a travel log of some kind, but an old one- older any of the suspects were. Something that belonged to other victims in other areas, maybe?

… Other victims. Of course.

She puts the notebooks away. She has some calls about cold cases to make.

#psych #psychusa #psych usa #psych 2006 #fanfic #my attempts at fanfic

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natty1730 · 1 month ago

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Ch 2: Fractured Reflections and the Promise of Summer

🫀Dinner and Diatribes🫀

The discomfort returned with Antonina the following day, a muted discord that colored the otherwise soothing rhythm of her diminutive flat. Sunshine streamed in the window, illuminating dancing dust particles suspended in the air. Still, the usual sense of peace it brought was blunted. She found herself staring at herself in the bathroom mirror, her own peculiar eyes-the identical dark, shadowy hue to those of her father–seeming to pose so many questions she could not articulate

Was she looking at him differently, or was she finally looking at something that had always existed, just at the edge of what she could see? Their shared interests, the cerebral intimacy they had always enjoyed, now felt… different. His zealous interest in beauty felt less like admiration and more like a value by a collector. His fussy nature in the kitchen, once a comforting ritual, now triggered brief visions of something darker, something fussy concealed. The scent of metal. It kept returning to her unbidden, a ghostly presence in the air. She had always assumed it was just a scent she associated with his working with some specific art supplies, perhaps, or some odd ingredient in his fancy cooking. But now, a shard of something cold and primal pierced the edges of that rationalization.

Her phone rang, breaking her daydreaming. A text from Julia, her loud and always cheerful roommate: "Party tonight! Last hurrah before summer freedom! You ARE coming, right? Don't go all hermit on me!"

Antonina fought with a small smile. Julia was the polar opposite of her stiff seriousness, a whirlwind of vivid color and infectious laughter. Julia had been at the center of bringing Elara out of her shell, drawing her into the social scene of NYU.

Part of Antonina longed to escape into the safe solitude of her studio, to lose herself in the calming chaos of her paintings. But another part, a recently awakened hunger for something… regular, perhaps, pushed her toward acceptance. The idea of weeks stretching out ahead of her with nothing but her disturbing thoughts for the company seemed heavy.

"Yeah, I'll be there," she texted back, adding a hesitant smiley face.

The day crawled by, filled with the anticlimactic tension of the last school day before the summer holiday. The air in the art room buzzed with a mix of anticipation and relief. Antonina found it hard to focus on her final critique. Her mind constantly reverted to the broken image of her father, and the unsettling questions turned over in her mind. That evening, the small apartment throbbed with laughter and music. Julia, a vibrant splash of neon amidst a backdrop of sloppy attire, embraced Antonina so tightly that she nearly knocked the breath from her. "You made it! I was starting to think you'd vanished into one of your charcoal sketches."

Antonina smiled faintly, feeling the same shyness amid unfamiliar faces. Julia was a natural social butterfly, gliding effortlessly through the throng of people, pulling Antonina behind her. "Antonina is Liam, Chloe, and oh! You haven't met Andrew yet, have you?" Julia's eyes danced with mischief as she took Antonina to a young man leaning against the window, a quiet onlooker amidst the revelry. Andrew Waters. Antonina's heart jumped. She had glimpsed him in some of her art history classes – his thoughtful remarks, the furrowed brow of concentration, the warm smile he bestowed when their eyes met seldom. He was a pleasant gentleman with a modest mind by whom she was utterly enchanted. He turned as they approached, his rich brown eyes clashing with hers. A smile, warm and pleasant, creased his face. "Hey. You're in Professor Mallory's Renaissance course, aren't you? Antonina, isn't it?" A rosy flush appeared on Antonina's face. He remembered her name. "Yes, that's correct. Andrew." Her voice was softer than she'd intended, almost drowned out by the noise around them. "Julia's been telling me you're a wonderful painter," he said, his gaze direct and flattering. "She exaggerates," Antonina protested, her lips playing with a small smile.

Despite the discordant atmosphere, they could talk since the relaxed rhythm gained control. They discussed their love of art, difficulties with specific techniques, and hopes for the future.

Andrew used forceful, efficient language when he expressed himself candidly. Antonina was unwinding; a tension that had been present for a moment dissipated as she listened to what they had to say. The longer the evening, the more Andrew drew Antonina, who was captivated by his kind heart and thoughtful words. He did seem to care about what she had to share, her paintings. She felt a flicker of something like normalcy for the first time in a long time. This rapport was not mediated through the distorted and sometimes brutal prism of her relationship with her father.

But even as she giggled at one of Andrew's snide quips, a shadow fell into the edge of her mind—a bright, fleeting image of her father's piercing gaze and the haunted scent on the air. It was a fleeting intrusion, a reminder of the life she had left behind, a world that was fast becoming increasingly at odds with the easy friendships she was finding now.

The summer lay ahead of her, a blank white canvas filled with the promise of freedom and the looming questions regarding her history. With Andrew standing by her side at the window, viewing the lights of the city glitter like distant stars, Antonina grew more and more disturbed by the possibility that the fragile hold on normalcy she was struggling to gain was as ephemeral as the blooms in her father's st ll lives, which would wither under the suffocating crush of a reality that she could now only dimly see.

#dinner and diatribes #hannibal lecter #hannibal #hannigram #hannibal the cannibal #hozier #will graham #nbc hannibal #oc x canon #my ocs

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flamingoofeathers · 2 months ago

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–𝙤𝙛𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙮

pairings: Moose x Tala (OC)

summary: “Someone told Director Collins I’m competing in ’The Streets.’”

genre: angst, fluff, hurt/comfort

series; wc: 4.3k

main masterlist series masterlist

𝗧𝗔𝗟𝗔'𝗦 𝗠𝗢𝗥𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗛𝗔𝗗 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗘𝗗 𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘 𝗔 𝗗𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗠.

The kind that made her cheeks warm just remembering it. The night before, she and Moose had shared a moment—a real moment. It wasn't flashy or dramatic. Just quiet, honest, and a little 𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘤.

Now, as she stepped through the front doors of MSA, that memory still echoed in her chest like a secret song.

But her smile vanished the second she saw the crowd.

Students were huddled outside one of the rehearsal studios, murmuring, phones out, expressions tense. Tala picked up her pace, shouldering her way through until she reached the doorway.

And froze.

The room looked like a 𝙬𝙖𝙧 𝙯𝙤𝙣𝙚.

Glass crunched under her sneakers as she stepped inside. The mirrors lining the wall were smashed, shards scattered across the floor. The overhead lights were shattered—some dangling from the ceiling like they'd been ripped down. Spray paint covered every surface in harsh, slanted letters. Furniture was overturned, broken. A deep red "X" covered the back wall.

And scrawled above it, in thick black strokes:

"𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗬 𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗘𝗘𝗧𝗦."

Tala's breath caught.

She scanned the room and found him.

Moose stood near the far wall, shoulders hunched, hands in his jacket pockets, his face pale under the flickering light. He looked like he hadn't moved in a while. Like he was still processing it all.

Without thinking, Tala rushed over to him. "Moose, are you okay? Were you here when this happened?"

He turned slowly, his eyes meeting hers. There was a flicker of something in them—shock.

"I'm okay," he said softly patting her head.

Before she could press him, the door slammed open again.

Director Collins strode in, his steps echoing through the ruined studio. He stopped short, eyes widening as he took in the damage.

He moved slowly through the destruction, his jaw clenched.

Then, turning to the crowd outside the door, his voice rose: "Does anybody know who is responsible for this?"

No one answered.

They didn't have to.

The message on the wall said it all.

Collins followed their gazes. When he saw the words, his face darkened.

He turned back toward the students, voice sharp and final. "This school will not be associated with these competitions. Is that clear?"

Tala felt a chill go down her spine.

Collins' voice thundered now. "Any future involvement by our students in The Streets will lead to immediate 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝘂𝗹𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻."

She looked at Moose. He was already looking at her.

The fear between them didn't need to be spoken.

"And anyone with any information," Collins added, sweeping his gaze across them, "is expected to come forward."

Then he stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

A tense silence hung in the air until one of the assistant instructors barked, "You heard him. Get this place cleaned up."

Slowly, students started to move—quiet, shaken, stepping over glass and splinters.

"𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘢 𝘥𝘰?"

𓆩❀𓆪

The lunch bell rang like an afterthought to the tension brewing all morning. The MSA crew had agreed to meet during the break in their usual rehearsal studio — not to dance, but to talk. To figure out what was going to happen to them, to The Streets, to everything they'd been building outside the school's walls.

Moose sat on one of the tables glancing at the door every few seconds. Fly paced. Kido leaned back in a chair with her arms crossed, while Fly and Monster murmured to each other.

But one seat stayed empty.

Tala 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗱.

Instead of heading to the studio, Tala slipped through the quieter back corridors of MSA. Her feet moved on instinct, taking her somewhere she used to feel calm — the theatre.

Her chest still felt heavy from what she'd seen earlier. The studio trashed. Moose's face. Director Collins' words. Her mind spiraled with the same question over and over:

𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘧 𝘸𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥？

She pushed the theatre door open, expecting the usual silence, the faint scent of sawdust and old velvet. She just wanted to move, start early on her solo, breathe a little.

But she wasn't alone.

Director Collins stood center stage, arms crossed, posture tense.

Tala froze. "Sir—I'm sorry. I didn't think anyone would be in here."

Collins didn't smile. Didn't blink. "No problem, Miss Gonzalez," he said coolly. "You're exactly the person I was looking for."

A chill crept up her spine. "Oh—umm. What can I help you with, sir?"

He walked slowly toward the edge of the stage, voice calm but tight. "A little birdie told me..." he leaned back against the platform, eyes sharp, "you're competing at 'The Streets.'"

Tala's heart stopped. "What?" she breathed, her voice barely above a whisper. Her head shot up. The blood drained from her face.

"Is that true?" Collins asked, straightening up.

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Her lungs squeezed. Her throat closed. "I—I—" She stuttered, hands trembling by her sides. The walls felt like they were caving in. Her vision swam.

Tears welled in her eyes.

Collins let out a short, dry scoff. "You're a good kid, Miss Gonzalez," he said, pacing down the steps toward her. "Believe it or not, you're one of the top students here."

She looked up at him, desperate for mercy.

"That's why I'm not expelling you." He stopped in front of her. "But you're out of the school play."

The words hit like a slap to the chest.

"No," Tala whispered, her voice cracking. She turned after him as he walked away. "Please, you can't—this is all I have—please."

"I don't want to hear it, Miss Gonzalez," Collins snapped, already halfway to the door. "You're out."

He didn't look back.

The door swung shut with a hollow echo.

Tala stood there in the quiet, her chest shaking, the tears falling freely now. Her legs gave out, and she sank to the floor of the stage she once dreamed of owning. Her hands covered her face, sobs breaking loose, drowning out the silence.

The theatre had never felt...𝙨𝙤 𝙘𝙤𝙡𝙙.

𓆩❀𓆪

Moose was moving 𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 now.

He'd checked every hallway between rehearsals, glanced through the glass panels of her classes—empty. No Tala. He tried the courtyard where she sometimes lingered after lunch, sitting with a sketchbook and earbuds in, legs curled beneath her. No one. Not even a trace.

He rushed to the side dance studio—the one with the warped mirror she never liked but always used when she needed to be alone. Nothing. It was like she'd vanished.

But Moose knew her better than that.

There was one last place.

He jogged down the back corridor and reached for the creaky theatre door. It groaned open slowly. The room was still. Empty.

But the stage lights were on.

"Tal?" Moose called, his voice echoing across the seats.

Suddenly, the lights flickered off. Then back on. Then off again.

He squinted upward, confused. His eyes landed on the sound booth tucked at the back of the theater, high above the seats. A figure sat slouched in the chair, a hand lazily playing with the lighting controls.

Moose let out a soft, relieved laugh. "Of course," he murmured.

He took the aisle steps two at a time and pushed open the narrow stairway door. It groaned open with a metallic creak. At the top, he eased into the small booth, grinning.

"Tal', I've been searching all over for you," he said, stepping inside, leaning casually against the edge of the control panel. "You didn't show up at the meeting, and I got worried."

The girl didn't speak.

She didn't even look at him—just kept fiddling with the light switch, her long hair falling over her face, hiding her completely.

"Listen—" Moose tried again, glancing down at the stage as the lights kept flickering off and on. "You're kinda making this look like a haunted house."

Still no answer.

"Tal?" he said, now his voice softer. Concern rising.

He stepped closer and gently reached out, brushing her hair from her face.

What he saw made his breath 𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵.

Her eyes were bloodshot. Tears streamed silently down her cheeks. Mascara had streaked dark lines down to her jaw. She stared blankly ahead, not seeing him, not seeing anything.

"Tala," Moose whispered, crouching in front of her, his hands steadying her arms. "What happened?"

She didn't respond.

"Tal, talk to me." He took her hand, gently pulling it away from the controls. "Please."

Her fingers went still.

Then, finally, she looked at him.

The moment their eyes met, she broke.

A sob tore out of her chest, and she collapsed forward. Moose didn't hesitate—he caught her, wrapping his arms around her trembling frame. She gripped his shirt like she was holding on for dear life, her whole body shaking with grief.

He held her tightly, whispering into her hair. "It's okay... I got you. I'm here."

Minutes passed in silence, only the sound of her crying filling the booth. When the sobs softened into quiet sniffles, he gently pulled her back just enough to see her face. He cupped her cheek, wiping away the tears still falling.

"What's going on?" he asked, voice quiet, searching her eyes.

"I'm off the play," Tala whispered, her voice breaking into a shaky, hollow smile.

"What?" Moose said, stunned. "Why? What happened?"

She rested her hand over his where it cradled her face, grounding herself. "Someone told Director Collins I'm competing in 'The Streets.'"

His face changed—confusion, anger, disbelief. "Who would do that?"

"I—" Her voice cracked again. "I don't know."

A long pause.

"Without this play, I'm 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴, Moose," she choked out. "It was everything. It was my ticket... my future. Without it, I go 𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲."

Her tears returned, threatening to overwhelm her again.

"Hey, hey." Moose pulled her back into his arms. "Don't say that."

He held her as she cried again, hands stroking her back gently. "We'll figure something out, okay? I promise. I'm with you no matter what."

She clung to him, barely holding herself together.

"I mean it, Tal. I don't care what Collins says. You're not alone in this."

He pressed a kiss into her hair.

And in that booth above the silent theatre, where dreams had just been broken, Tala let herself believe—for just a second—that maybe not everything was lost.

𓆩❀𓆪

The MSA crew was 𝗻𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲.

After Director Collins' announcement, fear settled into everyone's bones. No one dared test the threat of expulsion. And so, one by one, they all quietly stepped back.

The crew's usual courtyard spot—wedged near the trashcans, where they'd once laughed so hard it drew stares—was now empty. Like it had never been theirs. Like they'd never existed.

They all still saw each other. In passing. In classes. On the street.

But not Moose. Not Tala.

It was like they vanished.

The truth? They hadn't gone far. Most days, they drifted together through the ghost halls—those quiet back corridors of MSA where they'd first met. Some afternoons, they curled up in the sound booth above the theatre, safe and unseen.

Tala even met Camille—Moose's oldest friend. She didn't come by often, but when she did, she and Tala hit it off instantly, especially when it came to roasting Moose.

"So let me get this straight," Tala said, grinning. "You wore fingerless gloves in middle school. On purpose?"

Camille burst out laughing. "And he called them his '𝘥𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘨𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘴'?"

Moose turned, eyes wide with faux offense. "They gave me grip!"

"No, they gave you audacity," Camille shot back.

Moose groaned, burying his face in his hands. "Why do I tell you people anything?"

"Because you love us," Camille and Tala said in unison, high-fiving immediately after.

"I regret ever introducing you two."

In those moments, Tala felt... okay again. Her world still had cracks. But Moose made it feel whole.

𓆩❀𓆪

The sky was deep blue by the time Moose walked her home.

They took the long way, feet scuffing on cracked sidewalks, hands almost brushing. By the time they reached her front porch, the laughter had faded into a soft, comfortable silence.

Moose stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. "Well, I guess I should—"

"Want to stay for dinner?" Tala interrupted, hopeful.

Moose blinked. "Oh. Uh—I—really?"

Tala giggled at how flustered he was. "Come on," she grinned, grabbing his arm and tugging him toward the door. "You're not getting out of this."

The moment they stepped inside, she called out, "I'm home!"

A voice responded almost instantly. "Hey, sweetie."

Her dad stepped around the corner, dish towel over his shoulder.

"Hi, Dad." Tala leaned up to kiss him on the cheek. Then she motioned beside her. "Dad, this is Moose. Moose, my dad."

Moose quickly stepped forward, offering his hand. "Nice to meet you, sir."

Her dad shook it firmly. "So this is the Moose I've heard all about."

Tala's eyes went wide. "Daaad," she groaned.

Moose laughed nervously.

"All right, all right. Dinner's almost ready. Go do... whatever teenagers do these days."

With a wave of his hand, he shooed them off.

Tala led Moose up the stairs with a casual "C'mon," glancing back only once to make sure he was following. He was — but his steps were a little slower, his eyes wide, taking in every unfamiliar detail.

"I can't believe I'm here," Moose muttered under his breath.

"What?" Tala asked, unlocking her bedroom door.

"Nothing—just," he looked around, "your house is nice. I wasn't ready to be pulled in like I belong here."

She chuckled, opening the door. "Well... you kinda do."

Moose blinked, trying to play it cool. "Oh. Right. Yeah. Totally."

She stepped into the room first. "Okay, don't judge. I didn't expect company."

Moose entered behind her, his hands in his jacket pockets like he wasn't sure where to put them. "This is way cleaner than my room. Mine looks like a sneaker tornado."

Tala laughed, sitting on the edge of her bed. "I believe that. You seem like the type to own twelve pairs and wear two."

"Hey," he said, smirking. "It's part of the style."

"You got a lot of style," she teased, "for a guy who got flustered over dinner."

Moose held up a hand. "In my defense, I didn't think I'd be meeting your 𝘥𝘢𝘥 today. I thought we were gonna vibe in the theatre, not... you know, 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘳."

Tala smiled softly. "You handled it fine. He liked you."

"Yeah? He didn't threaten me or anything."

"He saved that for dessert," she deadpanned, making Moose chuckle.

He looked around her room—his gaze landing on a sketchpad on her desk. "You draw?"

"Sometimes," she said with a shy shrug. "Mostly for costumes. Or just stuff I dream up."

"That's cool. You got hidden talents, huh?"

Tala tilted her head. "I guess. You've got some too."

Moose raised an eyebrow. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. Like... you're a way better dancer than you pretend to be. You hide behind all that goofy charm, but you're sharp. Smart."

He blinked, surprised. "No one's ever said that before."

"Well, I notice stuff," Tala said with a soft smile.

Moose rubbed the back of his neck, eyes dropping to the floor for a second. "You're making me blush, Gonzalez."

"You? A street dancer with a million fans on the sidewalk? Blushing?"

"Don't let the hair fool you. I'm soft," he said, giving her a playful wink.

She giggled. "I know."

There was a pause, but it wasn't awkward. Just comfortable.

Moose glanced back at her. "So what do you do when you're not acting, dancing or sketching?"

Tala leaned back on her hands. "Not much, honestly. I just hang out here. Sometimes I write. Watch old dance movies. Talk to the ceiling."

"The ceiling?" he grinned.

"Yeah. It's a good listener."

Moose nodded. "Well, I'm honored to be upgraded from ceiling to dinner guest."

Before Tala could answer, her dad called from downstairs. "Dinner's hot!"

Tala stood and offered him her hand. "C'mon, Mr. Sneaker Tornado. Let's eat."

Moose took her hand, letting her pull him up. "Lead the way, Miss Sketchbook."

𓆩❀𓆪

The table was already set when Moose and Tala walked in. Tala's dad was setting down a bowl of roasted potatoes, and the smell of garlic and spices filled the air.

"Smells amazing," Moose said, sliding into the chair Tala motioned to.

"Glad you think so," her dad replied with a grin. "I had to bribe the oven with a prayer and a promise."

"So," Tala's dad said, taking a sip of his soda, "how'd you two meet?"

"In the hallway," Tala said, reaching for a spoonful of rice. "He was doing a pirouette and almost took my head off."

"I was not doing a pirouette—" Moose protested.

"You were."

"I was warming up!"

Her dad laughed. "You threatened her life with breakdancing. Impressive."

They all chuckled, and for a moment, the room felt easy—comfortable.

Then her dad nodded Moose's way. "Alright, now tell me. Moose? That your real name or did you lose a bet?"

Moose smiled sheepishly, lowering his fork. "No bet. It's a nickname... from when I was younger."

Her dad leaned in, clearly interested. "Let's hear it."

Moose rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, I had this big, poofy hair that just kind of floated everywhere—especially when I ran. A few kids at school started calling me 'baby moose' because apparently, I looked like one trying to learn how to walk. It stuck."

Tala's dad let out a big laugh. "That's fantastic. Moose. I like it. Beats my high school nickname by a mile."

Tala groaned, already bracing herself. "Dad, don't—"

"I won't, I won't," he said, still laughing. "You've suffered enough."

He reached for the breadbasket and gave Moose a nod. "So, you go to MSA too?"

"Yes, sir. I'm in lighting design. Theater tech stuff, mostly."

"Lighting, huh? That's cool. You're the guy setting the mood without being in the spotlight."

"Exactly," Moose said. "I like creating moments, but I'm good staying behind the scenes."

"You good at it?"

"I... I'd like to think so," Moose said, scratching the back of his neck. "I've been doing it for a few years. Got a few shows under my belt."

"Hmm," Tala's dad nodded thoughtfully, then turned to his daughter. "And this is the friend you've been talking about nonstop for the past week?"

Tala dropped her fork with a clatter. "Daaaad—"

Moose's face went a little red, trying—and failing—not to smile.

Her dad grinned at both of them. "What? I'm just making conversation. I like to know who's hanging around my daughter."

"Do you interrogate all of her friends like this?" Moose asked with a laugh, trying to hide how nervous he still kind of was.

"She's never brought anyone home before," her dad said with a shrug. "So yeah. This is a rare opportunity."

Moose blinked, glancing at Tala, who quickly looked away and focused intently on her potatoes.

"I'm honored," Moose said softly.

There was a beat of silence, warm and comfortable.

Then Tala's dad added casually, "So, you dating my daughter or what?"

Tala nearly choked on her water.

Moose froze, eyes wide. "I—uh—I mean—uh—"

"DAD!"

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding!" her dad laughed, raising his hands in surrender. "Look at your faces!"

Moose shook his head with a breathy laugh. "You almost gave me a heart attack."

"Good. Keeps you on your toes," her dad said, reaching for more bread. "I like you, Moose. You've got a decent head on your shoulders."

They continued to chat and eat, stories flowing around the table like a warm current. When the last bites were taken and forks rested on empty plates, Moose stood to help clean up.

"I can—"

"Nope," Tala's dad cut in. "You two go enjoy the evening. Guest room's clean if you want to stay."

Moose hesitated, looking at Tala, who was already looking at him with hopeful eyes.

"I'll text my parents," he said, pulling out his phone. "Thanks for dinner, Mr. Gonzalez."

"Anytime, Moose."

Tala grabbed Moose's sleeve, tugging him toward the stairs before her dad could say anything else.

As they disappeared down the hallway, her dad just shook his head, smiling.

𓆩❀𓆪

Back in Tala's room, Moose plopped down on her bed with a full stomach and a sleepy smile, rubbing his hands together. "Okay, that was officially the best meal I've had in weeks."

"I'll let my dad know he's been promoted to your personal chef," Tala said, kicking her door shut gently behind her.

Just then, Moose's phone buzzed. He checked it, then turned the screen toward her. "They said yes. I'm good to stay over."

Tala's face lit up like someone flipped a switch. "Yes!" she grinned, bouncing once on her toes. "Okay, wait right here!"

Before Moose could even answer, she had already sprinted out the door.

He blinked, still clutching his phone. "Okay... I guess I'm waiting here."

A minute later, she returned, slightly out of breath, holding a folded T-shirt and an oversized hoodie. "Here—my dad's stuff. Should fit... well, sort of."

He took them with a grateful smile. "Thanks. Hopefully I don't drown in them."

She chuckled and pointed down the hallway. "Bathroom's the same one you passed earlier—left side."

Moose gave her a salute and headed off to change. When he returned, Tala was already back on her bed, legs curled beneath her, scrolling through something on her phone. She looked up and stifled a laugh.

The clothes were definitely roomy. The T-shirt drooped slightly over one shoulder and the hoodie sleeves extended well past his hands. The sweatpants were cinched tight but still sagged a bit at the ankles.

"Oh my god," she said, covering her mouth, "you look like you shrunk in the wash."

"I feel like I did," Moose said, tugging the sleeves up. "I'm about one scarf away from starring in a holiday commercial."

Tala giggled, patting the space beside her. "Well, at least you're cozy."

He plopped down beside her, grinning. "I'm practically wrapped in a family heirloom."

They sat in an easy silence for a moment, the kind that didn't need filling. Outside her window, the quiet hum of the neighborhood at night filtered in—distant cars, a soft breeze.

Moose flopped onto the beanbag on the floor.

"So uh... what do you usually do after school? When you're not sneaking into sound booths."

Tala grinned. "Honestly? Mostly dance. Or just... lie on my bed with music blasting and pretend I'm in a music video."

Moose's eyes lit up. "Okay, that's kinda relatable. Do you ever do the fake interview thing too?"

Tala gasped. "You do that too?!"

He laughed. "Absolutely. Hairbrush mic and everything."

They shared a real smile then—unfiltered and genuine.

𓆩❀𓆪

Later that night, back in her room, Moose sat on the edge of her bed, flipping through one of her old photo albums. He paused on a picture of Tala as a little girl, front teeth missing, proudly holding a small theatre trophy.

"You've been acting forever."

"I had to," she said from her desk chair, spinning slightly. "Acting was the only way to not disappear."

He looked up. "You're the last person who could disappear."

Tala stopped spinning. "You say that like it's easy."

"It's not," he admitted. "𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝗶 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝙮𝙤𝙪. You don't have to fight to be noticed with me. I notice you even when you're not saying a word."

She swallowed, moved. "You always know the right thing to say."

"I just say what 𝙞 𝙛𝙚𝙚𝙡."

They locked eyes. The quiet in the room was suddenly loud with everything they weren't saying.

And then—suddenly—a song started playing from Moose's pocket. A romantic, slow tune with soft piano and a breathy voice singing about forever and first love.

Moose froze. "Oh my god."

Tala blinked. "𝘋𝘪𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘱𝘰𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘵 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘮𝘦"

He fumbled for his phone, cheeks pink. "I swear that wasn't planned. That's — Camille sent me a song. I didn't even press play!"

Tala just raised a brow, her smile teasing. "Sure."

But instead of turning it off, Moose hesitated... then looked at her.

Like he always did in these strange, perfect little moments, he reached out and gently took her hands in his.

"Come on," he said, standing and pulling her with him.

Tala laughed, a little unsure. "Moose—"

"It's 𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙙𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙣𝙤𝙬," he said with a grin, holding her hands steady. "Don't ruin the streak."

So there they were, in the middle of her bedroom, slow dancing to a cheesy love song that neither of them had chosen. His hoodie sleeves kept slipping over his fingers. She kept accidentally stepping on his socks. It was awkward, clumsy, a little ridiculous.

But it felt 𝙧𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩.

Tala shook her head, smiling at him as they moved gently to the beat. "We must look so dumb right now."

What she didn't know—just outside her room, across the hallway—her father stood leaning quietly against the doorframe. The door had been left slightly ajar, and he hadn't meant to intrude. But now he couldn't look away.

There they were—his daughter and the strange boy with kind eyes and oversized clothes—dancing like the world didn't exist outside that room.

And for the first time in years, he saw Tala as someone who was no longer lonely. No longer hiding.

His chest ached in the best way.

He smiled softly to himself, then turned and walked away down the hall, whispering under his breath:

𝘗𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘺 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘬𝘪𝘥. 𝘋𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘬 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵.

author:

this is just a filler chapter (4k words for a filler chapter) until we go back to the ending of the movie.

still not sure whether to continue this until step up: all in or not. Probably will though but eh.

#flamingoofeathers #x reader #moose #moose x reader #step up #step up 2 #x oc #step up 3d #step up all in #step up revolution #dance #dancing #hiphop #the streets #street dancing

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