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wife-of-all-dilfs · 6 months

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the five stages | f. odair

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summary: a journey back to a golden period of time of polaroid pictures, white knitted sweaters, and lively sea-green eyes. why? because in the present, those same pair of eyes are ruthlessly unrelenting and you have no other chance of their escape.

pairing: finnick odair x fem!reader

warnings: heavy angst, vomiting, implied smut, depression, maggots, hallucinations, relieving fluff, mild horror. I don’t want to spoil the story too much, so I won’t be adding any more warnings, sorry y’all. this could be very triggering so please read at your own discretion. some descriptions are quite graphic!

notes: I’m super proud of this one—it’s sorta based off “little talks” by of monsters and men and “on the nature of daylight” by max richer. this fic probably won’t get many views, so I’ll be incredibly grateful for any—if any at all—type of engagement! <33

word count: 8k

The bedroom was cold; dark; empty. Empty even though I still resided in it.

My alarm had gone off two hours ago, yet I hadn’t moved an inch. When I finally turned my head to the side, I found that the space beside me was vacant. Cold; dark; empty—I reached out my hand anyway.

Thirty minutes passed before I wrestled myself out of bed and started making breakfast downstairs. The otherwise warm and flavourful plate of fruit-filled yoghurt and scrambled eggs on toast left my mouth feeling dry and my throat lodged.

It used to be one of my favourite meals. At least, when he was around.

Dishes were piled in the sink, dirty and untouched. I sat on the couch, pondering whether today was the day I would finally get to cleaning them. It wasn’t. I couldn’t. We always did that together. I wondered—if I left them in the sink long enough, would he return? Even just for five minutes to help me put them away? One month and seventeen days had passed, and yet I still entertained this thought religiously.

I wasted an hour running circles round the same contemplations before deciding fresh air, as cliché as it was, might do me some good.

Grey clouds concealed the sun’s warm golden light when I stepped outside, but that was fine—I didn’t like anything golden anymore. But he would want me to leave the house at least once a day, so that’s what I would do. I would go down to the beach beside our—my house and feel the sand collect between my toes as I walked to the water’s edge.

But wasn’t that where he was when it happened? Wasn’t he in water? Didn’t those things pile on top of him? Didn’t they sink their fangs into his neck and tear at his flesh until he was blown to…

Bits of egg, yoghurt and stomach bile sat at my feet. My legs buckled, and I collapsed to the ground in a sandy, tear-stricken heap. Since my lower body had refused to cooperate any longer, it took me until midday to crawl back up the dune and to my front doorstep.

Fuck. I needed to rest.

“I need you to rest, sweetheart.”

“I told you, I’m fine,” I whined. “I’m not sick.”

Finnick placed a bucket on the ground beside the bed. The room smelled of lemon disinfectant—a joy I often found in being sick… That is, if I were sick, which I was not. I must have drunk spoiled milk or eaten something bad during breakfast. Nevertheless, Finnick was not having it.

“You’re throwing up everything you manage to get down, and you’re shivering like it’s the middle of winter,” he said adamantly, tucking the comforter up to my chest. “It’s summer, and you’re very much not fine.”

I sat up, ready to heatedly debate the subject, but the room began swirling, and my ears were hissing like a staticky television channel without a signal. A quiet whimper buzzed in my throat as I hunched forward. Damn him, I was sick.

The mattress dipped as Finnick sat beside me. His hand was on my back, rubbing it soothingly as he used his other hand to tuck away the curtain of hair concealing my face. I huffed, half in annoyance, half in an attempt to suppress the nausea rising in my throat, and then sunk back against the pillows.

“Not sick, she says,” he jested, smiling down at me. I rolled my eyes, though unable to hide the weak, betraying smile creeping across my lips. “Close your eyes, sweetheart,” he said, a gentle command. “I’ll see you when you fall asleep.”

The wooden flooring welcomed me with hard, cold arms as I hauled my sandy body through the front door. Images of fangs, bloody flesh, and panicked sea-green eyes flooded my mind.

More breakfast, more bile. No lemon disinfectant.

My knees were folded beneath my body; my body was hunched over my knees. I was sobbing now, so hard that I threw up again (was there even anything left in my stomach at this point?), creating a thick puddle of vomit and tears beneath me. Cries and gasps for air bounced around the house. To call me a mess would be an understatement. I was a disaster. A disaster wrapped up in an unmendable tragedy with a ragged, threadbare ribbon barely holding me together.

And in case I wasn’t aware of this fact, the floorboards were so shiny that they mirrored a reflection of myself. My hair was a being of its own, all wild and unkempt, and my face was another story entirely—a red, blotchy thing I wasn’t too interested in delving into.

But the most unsettling aspect had nothing to do with me, it was that there was someone else in the reflection. Two green balls of light were glowing above my head.

Dishevelled golden hair…

Dimpled cheeks…

My forehead was pressed to the floor as I screamed.

“I don’t want to make you sick as well,” I said, contrarily enjoying the feeling of Finnick’s skin warm against mine, hot blood flowing through his veins.

A day had passed since I first became unwell, and the sickness had continued to wreak havoc inside me.

We were both under the thick covers, our limbs tangled together as he held me atop his chest. (my body didn’t register the scorching summer temperatures. I actually felt as though my core temperature was a few degrees below freezing. Meanwhile, Finnick was characteristically toasty warm. It was perfect for me, but not so much for him, evident in the beads of sweat collecting on his forehead. Nevertheless, he made no complaints).

My body rose and fell with each breath he took. I was trying to inhale whenever he exhaled in a weak attempt to prevent the festering sickness in my body from entering his, and though it was a futile gesture, I did it anyway.

“In sickness and health, remember?” he said.

I smiled. “We’re not even married.”

“Yet, you mean,” he countered. “I plan on spending the rest of my life with you, sweetheart. You know that.”

My heart fluttered at the thought of spending an entire lifetime with him—waking up in each other’s embrace each morning, the warm sunlight peeking through the blinds of our bedroom; Finnick calling me “Mrs. Odair” or “My wife” at every opportunity because doing so made us both giggle like two moronic, love-struck teenagers; and being unable to prevent the deep smile lines on both our cheeks as we age, a constant display of our perpetual happiness.

“Sixty more years of having and holding you,” he continued with a gentle musing in his tone. “For better or for worse... For richer or for poorer.” He then stroked the side of my face and brushed away the sweaty strands of hair sticking to my forehead. “In sickness and in health…”

“…Until death do us part,” I finished, my voice slow with fatigue.

Two fingers sat beneath my chin and tilted my head upward. My eyes connected with Finnick’s. They were soft. Heartfelt.

“Not even then. I’ll love you beyond the grave,” he murmured. Then his lips were slowly curving into a pensive smile. “When we’re both ghosts and haunting the next owners of this house.”

I was now smiling, too. “I’d hoped you would say something like that.”

How could he lie like that? There was no we. There were no next owners. There was only me, alive and alone in a comatose house. And mind you, I was sane enough to know that it wasn’t actually his ghost haunting me, though I wish I weren’t because having that knowledge was even worse. It meant he was truly erased from existence.

“Go away,” I whispered to the reflection on the floor.

He didn’t. His vacant green eyes kept staring down at my crumpled figure.

I shot off the floor and spun around, hot tears streaming down my face. “Go away!” His face remained expressionless. He looked like himself, only colder. “You said sixty more years! You said we’d be together!” I mindlessly picked up and flung a small picture frame at him, only for it to pass through his body and shatter on the floor behind him. “Why did you lie to me?!” My voice was frayed with fury, though underlined with grief.

He said nothing, did nothing. All he did was watch.

My legs buckled, and I was on the floor again. I was whispering, half-sobbing, the same question over and over until the words slurred together. “Why’d you lie? Why’d y’lie?” The only time I stopped was when my tongue grew too heavy to move anymore.

To my surprise, he eventually came and sat beside me, remaining cold and silent—as I too had become.

Glass fragments from the picture frame were scattered across the floorboards. The photo within had fallen out and, ironically, drifted towards me. I didn’t bother acknowledging him as I moved onto my hands and knees and began crawling forward—my palms slicing open and blood seeping out—until the photo was in my hands. My shins had granules of glass pricking into them, but I couldn’t feel the pain; all I could do was stare at the memory in my hands.

The picture had been taken in District Thirteen, a day before he signed up for… the mission.

I was drifting in and out of sleep when a sudden bright flash lit up my eyelids.

“Oops.”

Heavy eyes fluttering open, I was met with a small camera pointing down at me, which was being held up by a lengthy muscular arm, which was connected to an even more muscular and broad shoulder, which was connected to—okay, sorry, I think you get it.

“Finnick!” I shrieked, pulling the covers over my naked figure.

He laughed, the vibrations rumbling deep within his chest, beneath my ear. A soft whirring sound accompanied the polaroid sliding out of the camera, its black film hiding the doubtless embarrassing picture beneath. He placed the film on the sheets beside him, letting the photo develop in darkness.

“I was supposed to cover the flash,” he said, still chuckling.

I rubbed my eyes, which were twinkling with little sparkles of light. “I think you blinded me.”

“Lucky you,” he jested. “You’re finally free from my repulsive exterior.”

I started to reach for the picture beside him—“You’re an idiot”—but then he was rolling us over until his arms were pillared on either side of my head and he was hovering above me.

His hair was a mess, a testament to the night before (and very early hours of the morning), and he was sporting a beautiful, lazy grin. “Yeah? Well, you’re engaged to an idiot,” he said, tilting his head in an arrogant manner. “So what does that make you?”

The sea-glass ring hugging my finger gleamed in the lamp’s dull light as I reached out to touch his face, my fingertips brushing along the edges of his pronounced jawline. Tangled strands of hair and a beaming smile were reflecting back at me in his eyes. No one had ever loved anyone as much as I loved Finnick—disregarding the one exception that was staring down at me.

“Blinded by love,” I whispered.

Brief yet poignant emotion trickled through his features, his eyes. Then, like a flick of a switch, he covered it up and lowered his face into my neck, groaning the words, “So corny.”

My fingers were tangled in his hair, holding him close to me. “Liar,” I laughed. “You loved it.”

“I love you, which is why I put up with your corniness,” he murmured into my skin.

Even after all this time, my heart still leapt whenever he said those three words, even when he was being a jerk about it. I kissed the top of his head. “I love you, too.”

We laid like this for a short while longer—Finnick keeping his face buried in the warmth of my neck, his arms curled beneath my body; me playing with the golden waves of his hair that were somehow softer than my own. He was so heavy on top of me that it was starting to become difficult to breathe, but in no universe would I ever tell him to get off. It was a blissful sort of suffocation.

A sort anyone would snap a picture of just to keep as a reminder of how beautiful it feels to be smothered with love. With that being said, the picture that lay awaiting beside me was brought back to mind.

“Oh no,” I moaned, picking it up and taking a short glance at the developed photo. I covered my face with my hands, repeating the words, “Oh no.”

The photo was plucked from my fingers, and Finnick began humming contentedly to himself.

In the photo, my face had been nuzzled into his bare, muscular chest, eyes closed in sleep-drunken serenity, hair thrown over my shoulder and spilling across the pillow. My hand rested on his contoured stomach with just enough of my upper arm and low light to conceal my breasts. Finnick had a delicate hand draped over my waist. He was gazing down at me with a smile that was just… full of pure love.

I had to admit—it was a beautiful picture. Despite my initial disapproval.

“Beautiful,” I heard him echo my thoughts, his eyes still scanning the photo. Then his brows furrowed, and his head slightly inched forward as though he had just noticed something peculiar in the picture. “Oh, and you are too, I guess.”

My head tilted back against the pillow with an abrupt laugh. I shook my head, looking back at him. “I hate you.”

“Liar,” he said, leaning in closer.

His lips were on mine for what must have been the millionth time in the past few hours. The bedside clock announced that breakfast was soon approaching, though it was clear neither of us would make an appearance within the next hour (or two).

“You love me,” he whispered as he slid inside me.

And I did.

I really did.

The muscles in my cheeks were straining due to how hard I was smiling.

It wasn’t my idea to keep a picture of us half-naked in the entryway of our home. He always was a bit unusual like that. Completely unashamed of who he was and how he acted. Sometimes a little too boisterously, but that’s what I loved so much about him—how confident he was in his love for me, so much so that nothing else mattered, no one else’s opinion.

God, I love him so much.

Love…?

Wait.

That’s not right.

Shouldn’t it be “loved”?

And why was I smiling? I didn’t have anything to smile about anymore. He was gone. Our wedding never occurred. Our faces never wrinkled with smile lines. Our clasped hands never weathered with age. He was gone.

The polaroid slipped from between my fingers. My hands were covered in glass and blood, blood that had painted a dark red splotch in the middle of the shiny film. Figures.

After a short while of staring blankly at the scattered debris decorating the floor, I finally found it in myself to start climbing back onto my feet. My straightened legs wobbled and ached beneath me with the little energy I had. That’s what happens when you can barely stomach food anymore: no energy, always sleeping, always swamped by nightmares or bittersweet memories—at this point, they were one and the same.

Not a strand of gold or a fleck of green was in sight when I glanced over my shoulder. For now, at least. He liked making an appearance once or twice a day.

Pieces of glass crunched beneath my bare, stinging feet as I made for the stairwell. A mess for another day, I reasoned. Just like the dishes. Sticky red footprints stamped each wooden step I ascended, growing less prominent as I reached the second floor.

After taking a right down a short hallway, the encompassing walls littered with magnificent seashells and dried ocean flora, I turned the knob to the furthest room and entered. The floor was landscaped with mountains of clothes which drenched the room in a familiar, all-consuming smell. The scent kind of reminded me of receiving a warm hug, albeit from someone you know you should let go of in more ways than one.

His hair, golden and tousled, caught my eye as I passed the wall of string-hung polaroids in our… sorry, my bedroom. His smile was all dimpled and brilliant, and he had his tanned arms wrapped around my middle. Just moments after the picture was taken, he had tackled me into the water and rightfully earned a smack on the back of the head. In turn, he did it again.

But before that, we were both looking into the camera with the most joyful expressions—huge grins, bright eyes. Frozen in time.

I never let myself look too long at that picture anymore. And I never, ever looked into his eyes. Green used to be my favourite colour. I didn’t have a favourite colour anymore. It was safe to say I didn’t have a favourite anything anymore; everything favourable was a reminder of him.

I picked up a white knitted sweater off the ground and tugged it over my head, staining it with splotches of dark red. Knowing him, he would wear it regardless—whatever was mine, was also his, and was equally the same in reverse, even things as grotesque as blood.

Well, he would have worn it, I should have said.

The sweater had been specifically tailored for him. I remembered how the soft sleeves hugged his arms so well that every fluid curve of his biceps was visible, similar to a building wave before it crested. On me, the sleeves swallowed my arms whole, which I liked to think in their own unique way had also been unintentionally tailored for me, like someone out there knew one day I would need some way to drown in him when he was gone.

Finnick’s fingers tugged at the silk ribbons, unwrapping the opulent gift box that sat on our dining table. Capitol devotees would send extravagant parcels weekly, turning up in abundance on our doorstep. Sometimes Finnick didn’t even bother opening them; sometimes we opened them together just to get a good laugh out of whatever ridiculous item was inside.

He never, though, opened the perfume-scented letters marked with lipstick stains.

“Oh,” I said in surprise as he lifted the lid. Inside was a folded piece of fabric, knitted and cream-white and intricate, though still simple. It was soft to the touch; thick enough to retain warmth. I held it up with two hands, admiring the hand-sewed threads of cotton. Whoever’s handiwork this was, it was nothing to laugh at.

Holding it up to Finnick’s torso, I smiled and said, “Try it on.”

“What?” He shook his head and smiled quizzically. “No.”

“Yes. I think it will look good on you.” I pressed it further against him with conviction. “Try it on.”

He tilted his head and exhaled deeply through his nose, giving me a begrudging, squinty-eyed look. From that, I already knew I had won him over, and watched as he snatched the sweater from my grasp and tugged his shirt off with one hand. I averted my eyes, feeling the tips of my ears flush with heat—we’d been together for over a year now; you would think I’d have grown accustomed to seeing him shirtless.

His head slipped through the neckline and he pulled the sweater down his body. I was right. It looked really good on him. Perfect, actually. The measurements were so precise that the fabric sloped off his shoulders like a compact mountain of snow. The thick-knitted collar dipped into a deep, uneven neckline that partly revealed his chest and made his neck look like a strong, contoured pillar. He looked at me expectantly, as though to ask, “Well?”

“It makes your neck and shoulders look really nice,” I blurted out, instantly cringing inside.

His expression contorted into something of amusement and surprise as he took a slow step towards me. “My neck and shoulders, huh?” he said, grinning devilishly. Oh, now I’d done it. Leave it to me to rocket Finnick Odair’s already atmospheric ego. “Anything else?”

I began backing away, but his prowling strides were so long that the space between us only shortened. When my backside hit the edge of the dining table, I knew I was done for.

“You know,” I began, avoiding his unrelenting stare. “I think it was just a momentary lapse of judgement.” He was closing in now, placing his hands on either side of my body to trap me in place. “It—It actually looks terrible on you,” I said, feigning sincerity and adding a little nod to help further my case.

His eyelids drooped as he gazed down at me, lips curving into that seductive smirk he had mastered long ago. “No takebacks,” he purred, voice low and gravelly. Dear God, I could only pray I wasn’t going to melt into a puddle on the floor. He always did this—took every opportunity to flirt and render me a stuttering, bashful mess. It was his favourite game to play. “This is now my new favourite shirt. All thanks to you, sweetheart.”

But, given the right timing and ever-wavering amount of confidence, I liked to play too.

I inhaled deeply, hoping my voice wouldn’t betray me. “Maybe you should take it off then,” I said, cocking my head to the side. “So you don’t ruin it.”

His mischievous expression revealed his next words before he even spoke them. “Maybe I will,” he said, and then he was tugging his sweater over his head, and I was tearing off my own. As his hands slipped beneath my thighs and lifted me onto our dining table, I prayed the wooden legs wouldn’t collapse under the weight of our next actions.

My fingertips ran over the soft, rippling patterns on the knitted sleeves, my arms crossed in a self-soothing manner. After that day, the sweater had become a sort of good luck charm—or so we agreed upon as we lay panting on the tabletop. He started wearing it to a multitude of events and parties in the Capitol (basically any place in which he needed a pick-me-up, a reminder of what he had to come home to, who he had to come home to).

He even wore it the day we got engaged.

So many happy memories were associated with this one white sweater. So many times, those cloud-soft sleeves were wrapped around my body, suffocating me in the scent of him—if nothing else, at least that remained.

The last time he had worn it was the day of the Reaping for the Quarter Quell; the last time our lives were ever semi-normal. I had fought tooth and nail to reach him before he was escorted onto the train, despite being ordered, “No goodbyes,” by one of the Peacekeepers. In modest terms, I had significantly decreased his chances of reproduction.

When I reached Finnick, he had brought me into a kiss so harsh and fervent that my lips were bruised the next day. He then yanked off his sweater, leaving his upper body completely exposed to everyone around us in complete disregard for his trauma-induced fear of doing so, and shoved it into my hands.

I had just stood there frozen in bewilderment, watching as he called out, “I love you, sweetheart!” Two Peacekeepers were forcing him onto the train, but he too fought for the last word. “Don’t forget—I’m always with you!”

That statement had never been truer than it was now. For better or for worse.

My vision unblurred as I returned to reality. Dismal, grey light was peeking through the shutters that formed the balcony doors, the daylight hours seeming to tick away at a snail’s pace. I used to wish for the days to be longer, for time to move slower, so I could savour the moments I had of happiness and sunlight which used to be plentiful.

Why do wishes only come true when you grow to desire nothing but the opposite?

Slothfully, I crawled onto the unmade king-size bed, my limbs crumpling and balling to my chest as the side of my head hit the pillow. The imprint on the mattress beneath my body didn’t match my own. It was much larger and broader. How long would it take for the springs to forget his body weight and recoil back into place as though he never existed at all?

I inhaled the sweater’s scent with every breath I took (and I tried not to wonder how long it would take for his scent to disappear as well) and hugged my arms around my waist. No pain was worse than the fleeting moments I forgot the embrace was my own and not his.

Hours passed, and so did the evening. A beautiful orange sunset hadn’t slipped through the shutter’s cracks because the clouds never dissipated. Night-time brought no consolation either. Not even the stars or moon made an appearance. Everything that once gave me a shred of optimism was hidden behind a veil of gloom.

I knew tomorrow wouldn’t be any different—the weather, my mood, his absence. Because the end of autumn was closing in, and the days were becoming bleaker. Trees would start shedding their leaves; the leaves would start to die.

I hoped I would too.

I was still curled up on my side, my body aching with stiffness, when my face began scrunching into this ugly, twisted mess of despair. My tears were slow yet heavy, synonymous with the day I had incurred.

But then something strange happened.

Someone called my name.

No. That couldn’t be right. I was the only one who occupied a house in the Victor’s Village; the others had either relocated after the war or were… dead.

But there it was again—my name, distant and eerie, yet spoken with a tone people often used to beckon over and aid a frightened, injured animal. My vision blurred, both from tears and concentration on the voice.

“Hey.”

I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment my surroundings transformed into a kitchen, just that they had and that I was no longer in my bed but standing upright.

Ahead of me, in the distance, the sun was beating down on the crystalline water, and white frothy waves were cresting on the smooth, golden sand. It was a perfect day; not a cloud was in sight. The only blemish that smeared the blue sky was the reflection staring back at me from the window I gazed out of.

In my hands was a soup bowl and a damp dishrag.

“Sweetheart?” That once distant voice, concerned and beckoning, was standing right beside me.

Blinking, I snapped out of my daze and turned away from the window.

He stood tall beside me, despite being half hunched over the kitchen sink and scrubbing the last of the few dirty dishes stacked neatly on the bench top. His head was turned towards me, his enamoured sea-green eyes peering into my own as though he was searching behind them for what troubled me.

“Hey,” he spoke softly, standing up straight. His touch was warm and gentle as he reached for my hand, leaving soapy bubbles on my palm and fingers. “Where’d you go?”

Three odd things seemed to occur at once: first, I flinched away from his touch, overwhelmed by its paradoxical unfamiliar familiarity; second, I felt an inexpressible relief from seeing him standing before me, seeing his cheeks painted with a soft pink hue as though blood-red roses were hidden just beneath his skin.

The third was an onset of disorientation. I couldn’t tell you why I felt disorientated standing in my own kitchen with the love of my life, just, simply, that I did. There was an answer—it was close by, right under my nose, yet unreachable. We did this every day, didn’t we? We would eat meals together and then wash up together. So, why did I feel so unsettled?

I shook my head, dispelling the confusion that muddled my brain. “Sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t know what happened.” I laughed uneasily, without a hint of mirth.

He laughed too, not to poke fun or because he found my obvious turmoil amusing, but rather to comfort me, so I would feel less alone in my unease. “It’s alright,” he said gently.

Neither of us addressed what had happened; we simply resumed our routine of washing and drying in domestic silence. And as seconds turned to minutes, and as the sky remained sunny, I found myself smiling. All that mattered was that he was standing beside me and that the sun was beaming in the sky. So, I kept smiling.

After I finished drying the last dish, we began placing the plates, bowls, and an abundance of cutlery in their assigned drawers and cupboards, weaving past each other and giggling anytime we got in one another’s path. I was carrying a stack of white plates, eyeing the high cupboard they needed to go in, but before I could even attempt straining onto my toes, the plates were out of my hands and taken into another much larger pair.

The smell of sea salt and expensive cologne wafted from behind me as he towered over my shorter frame and placed the plates in the cupboard.

“I could have done that,” I said, smiling as I turned around to face him.

He had a playful glint in his eye. “Yeah, right. What are you, like, four feet tall?” he joked.

It was an extreme exaggeration since I was no way near that height, but I suppose everyone was miniature in comparison to him, being over six feet tall and all. I feigned open-mouthed offence, to which he gave the side of my head a quick, playful kiss of apology.

He then leaned against the counter with crossed arms. “Plus, when was the last time you actually put these dishes away? I’m surprised you even remember where they go.” He was grinning at me in a teasing manner, but every ounce of humour had drained from my body.

My eyes drifted to the floor.

Well, that was the question, wasn’t it—when was the last time I put the dishes away?

I couldn’t remember. In fact, I couldn’t remember what had happened this morning or the day before. Hell, I couldn’t even remember what we were doing before the dishes.

To be standing in a room, in a place you call home, and have a sense that nothing is in its right place, even though that is where everything has always been, is a disconcerting feeling beyond belief. To be perplexed by your own state of being—your existence—is even worse. I could almost describe it as a nauseating bout of vertigo.

My hands found the counter’s edge behind me, and I exhaled a shaky breath.

He stepped in front of me, one large and gentle hand reaching up to cup my jaw. “Are you okay?” he asked, his forehead wrinkling with shallow worry lines as he inspected my face. I hated that. I hated that I worried him so much. Sure, partners were supposed to lean on each other for support in a relationship (as he too did with me when needed), but I always felt so guilty doing so. Hadn’t he already suffered enough… pain in his lifetime? Who was I to cause him any more?

A sunbeam suffused the room, oozing across his face. The illumination lightened his eyes into a refreshing mint green, though, in contradiction, unearthed a pain that had been previously been concealed. Pain from what, I wasn’t sure. From concern regarding my unusual behaviour? Maybe a thought that was troubling him? Or perhaps he too was enduring a spell of confusion and had an inexplicable feeling that he was out of place.

Whatever his pain regarded, seeing it had rattled the deepest structures in which held my mind together.

It was then that I suddenly realised I hadn’t answered his question, so I gave him a wan “I’m-not-too-sure-myself” smile and then began slinking back to the sink window.

He followed behind me. I could feel him staring into the back of my head, could feel his brows draw together and his lips pull into a tight line, patiently waiting for a further explanation, though I wasn’t sure I could offer him one.

I hadn’t noticed before, but on the windowsill was a small picture frame containing a polaroid picture of us in bed—I was lying on his chest, half-naked and asleep, and he was looking down at me, smiling fondly yet with a sort of mischievous knowability. Running down the middle of the protective glass was a small, jagged crack.

I plucked the frame from the windowsill, inspecting the picture in my two hands. It seemed to uncover a place in my mind—once clouded by disorientation—I’d forgotten. Whether this place was real or imaginary was beyond me, but the fear I felt upon its recollection was incandescently genuine.

“Do you think,” I spoke tentatively, “people can have nightmares while they’re wide awake?” My thumb ran over the crack.

I might have heard him inhale a quiet, sharp breath, but it also could have just been the waves breaking on the distant shore. “Like a flashback?” he asked, an unidentifiable unease in his tone.

“No, not exactly.” I searched my brain for the right words, the right way to tell him how I was feeling, but it was difficult when I could only conjure vague fragments. And it was all I could do to tell it to him elliptically, as I knew saying the words in any other manner would shatter my heart.

“I had this vision,” I began, my words apprehensively staccato, “where I was somewhere else.” My eyes flickered over the picture. “Somewhere… bad. Everything was grey and heavy, and I was alone. Sometimes you were there, but you—you weren’t really you anymore.” I paused and looked up to find him staring at me in the reflection of the window. He looked pained; it was then suddenly hard to recollect a time when he didn’t. My throat started to constrict. “You were gone and…” my voice quietened to a broken wisp of wind, “you were haunting me.”

The room was silent.

He said nothing in response

The transparency of his reflection in the glass was so familiar—so haunting—and it was like another forgotten matter had been dredged from the depths of my mind. Stinging tears brimmed my waterline, and, due to my inability to bear the sight of his translucent appearance, I forced myself to turn around.

I glanced up at him, smiling weakly as I whispered, “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head as if my need to apologise was nonsensical (even I was unsure of what I was apologising for), and he then pulled me into a tight embrace. His chin rested atop my head; my face was buried in his chest, and his arms held me like I was some dilapidated structure that relied on his support to remain upright. Part of me knew this sentiment was correct.

I expected his next words to be ones of consolation or reassurance, maybe an “I’m right here, sweetheart” or an “I’ll never leave you”. Instead, I felt his head turn and heard him say, “Think it’s going to storm?”

With a sniffle, I turned my head towards the window. The arms wrapped around my body tightened as if he somehow knew I would need the extra support. Because when I saw the wall of dark, opaque clouds rolling through the sky towards us, an unshakeable dread zapped through my heart.

My hands clung to the fabric of his cream-white sweater, which then brought to my attention that an inexplicable tingling sensation was spreading down the fingers of my right hand, numbing them.

Lightning flashed on the horizon, and the once serene waves began cresting violently on the shoreline. The dread grew.

Before my attention could drift too far, my name was called again.

I looked up to find those green eyes gazing down at me, swelling with tears. He was crying. Why was he crying? And why was his hair wet? His usually golden strands had darkened to a deep brown and were drenched with cold water that dripped onto my cheeks, and his hair was swept haphazardly across his forehead, a reflection of someone who had just endured an intense storm or had just been fighting for his life against a swarm of—of—

No.

My own eyes began to burn.

“It’s killing me to see you this way,” he spoke, every second word breaking and wavering in volume.

The world seemed to tilt on an axis. Return did the disorientation, ravaging my mind more violently now. “What do you”—My chest was rising and falling with heavy breaths—“What? What do you mean?” My lower lip was quivering, and my eyebrows were scrunched together in confusion. His words replayed in my head: It’s killing me to see you this way.

It’s killing me.

His hair was dripping—no longer with water, but with a thick, red substance that both dripped down and clotted on his skin. He didn’t look pained anymore; he looked like he was in pain.

It’s killing me.

But that can’t be right, can it?

It’s killing me.

Why?

It’s killing me.

Becausemy Finnickwas already dead.

I staggered backwards and out of his, no, this imposter’s arms. He stared at me as blood streamed down his forehead, pouring over his eyelashes and down his cheeks. I was going to be sick. This had to be some sort of cruel joke, a newly invented punishment from Snow. But that wasn’t right either: Snow was dead too.

“F…Fi…” I tried saying his name, my top teeth prodding the inside of my bottom lip, but I couldn’t make a sound.

He took a step towards me, and I almost stumbled onto the floor. “Remember what I told you?” he asked, though it sounded more like an urge.

I frantically shook my head. No, I didn’t remember. I didn’t want to remember anything.

Something dark and mountainous appeared in my peripheral vision, and an odious smell singed my nostrils. My head snapped to the left. Stacks upon stacks of plates and bowls mounded the kitchen sink, each crawling with maggots that were falling to the floor in white, wriggling heaps.

Nausea boiled in my stomach; horror brimmed my eyes.

I quickly turned away, my eyes meeting green again. His face was no longer stained with blood, and his hair was dry, shiny, and golden with life. I was as speechless as my face was drained of blood.

He took one more step toward me, but this time I didn’t back away, either frozen with fear or desperation for one last experience of closeness with him. My heart thrummed as he reached out to cup my face. It isn’t him, it isn’t him, it isn’t him, I repeated madly in my head. Oh, but it felt so much like him when his warm hand met my skin.

“I told you I’m always with you, sweetheart,” he murmured. And I knew engaging with him, in whatever form he took, affirmed my mental unwellness, but I couldn’t stop from leaning into his touch anyway. “Remember that.”

My cheeks were wet with tears. “I love—”

A bolt of lightning flashed, and thunder boomed throughout the house.

I was back in my bed.

My eyelids were heavy with sleep as they fluttered open. I felt detached, destabilised, and unsure of my existence in the world for I wasn’t sure which of the twoI was currently in. Real or fake?

A few minutes went by before I managed to get a grip on reality, which, in fact, was the real one. The Somewhere Bad. I pinched the corners of my eyes, not only finding them damp with fresh tears but also realising that my right hand—previously tucked beneath my head—was numb.

None of it had been real…

The entire time, my body was trying to alert me, to save me from the inescapable heartache I would feel upon waking. He hadn’t held me in his arms. He hadn’t cupped my cheek nor helped me wash the dishes. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t anywhere (not even in his own marked grave because there was nothing left of him to be buried).

Even despite seeing the familiar tall outline standing in the doorway, his features illuminated with each flash of lightning, I knew it wasn’t really him.

Rain was pummelling the roof, almost loud enough to subdue the perpetual rumbling of thunder (apart from the one sky-splitting thunderclap that had woken me). In another time, I would’ve been scared—of the raging storm, of my phantom lover who was watching from the shadows of our bedroom. But not now.

In recent months, I had found that no emotion, not even fear, surpassed the soul-crushing realisation that you have irretrievably lost the one thing you lived for.

On a defeated whim, and for the first time since his death, I let the singular, weighted word breeze past my lips.

“Finnick.”

It was a trembling plea, a desperate beckon.

And he indulged.

His footsteps were silent as he walked towards the bed. I couldn’t see his legs from my position, prompting me to wonder if he even had legs at all. Or did he only have legs when I could see them? That would then insinuate that if I couldn’t see him at all, he didn’t exist.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? In my case, the answer was simple: no, it didn’t.

It wasn’t really Finnick. It wasn’t even his ghost. It was my mind.

He reached the bed’s edge, and I scooted over to my side of the mattress, allowing him enough space to lie down on his. His weight neither dipped nor shook the bed as he laid down and turned on his side to face me. His eyes were sad, and I’m sure mine were too. We stared at each other for a long, long time, long enough for my fatigued body to start playing tricks on me.

If I focused hard enough, I thought I could hear the sound of his breathing (the wind was picking up outside), feel the warmth of his skin spreading onto the sheets (the remnants of my own body heat were left behind each time I moved), and smell the musky scent of cologne and sea-salted hair (the sleeves of his sweater were tucked beneath my nose).

Maybe for a moment—just one sickly, self-indulgent moment—I could pretend it was really him.

I inhaled deeply through my nose. “You really weren’t kidding when you said you would haunt the next owner of this house,” I whispered as light-heartedly as I could, my voice obscured by the heavy rain pouring onto the roof.

He smiled, and it was one of the most heart-wrenchingly beautiful things I had ever seen. I think I might have given him one in return, though I couldn’t be too sure because the concept of smiling had become so foreign. The last time I was truly happy was… the last night we spent together. In each other’s arms, safe and warm and together.

And then he was gone. Just like that.

Cressida, whom I had only spoken to once in Thirteen when the war ended, was the one to tell me how it happened. Katniss was too personal, too close to him; Peeta’s instability rendered conversation futile. So, I had asked Cressida to tell me every detail—every expression on his face, every word he screamed. I don’t know why. Maybe it was so I could cling onto those last few minutes where he was still alive and breathing, despite dying and bleeding; or so I could replay the moment over and over in my head, as if somehow, someway, I could change his fate.

“He talked about you all the time,” she had told me. “Actually, I don’t think he ever spoke of anything but you. No one minded, though. While we were out there, no one ever really smiled, but every time your name was mentioned, Finnick would get this great big grin on his face, and it was impossible not to look at him and start smiling as well.

So, we all started asking questions about you: ‘What colour is her hair? Her eyes? Where did you meet? What are her hobbies?’—just to see him smile… A week passed, and it was like we all knew you inside out. It was all we could do to hang on to some shred of happiness, even if it meant talking about a girl who, to all of us, was a stranger.”

I was inconsolable after that.

She kept talking, but my sobs had drowned out most of her words, so much that I had asked her to retell me everything later in the day, despite inducing the same outcome. So, she told it to me again, just as she did the day after that and the day after that and so on until I returned home to District Four.

“He also spoke about how you never felt comfortable living in the Victors Village. He had this idea that the two of you would move somewhere far away, outside the borders of District Four, though he emphasised remaining by the sea was very important—something about how you looked while swimming during sunset and the water was all sparkly around you.”

At this point, she had been holding my hand, knowing full well how debilitating it was for me to hear. Then she had spoken with a quiet incredulity and a facial expression to match, as though she’d never encountered a love like ours before. “He wanted to build a house for you…”

He wanted to build a house for you.

And now he never would. Our love was too ephemeral for that to happen; destined to remain history; to be a memory.

Finnick's eyes stared into mine, the green hue now a dark grey from the overshadowing dimness of the room.

“I would’ve gone anywhere with you,” I whispered to him, placing my hand on the sheets between us. “I would’ve travelled thousands of miles away from this place. Would’ve lived in solitary, just the two of us, for the rest of our lives.” A warm tear tickled the bridge of my nose. His eyebrows scrunched together in shared anguish. “God, Finn, I miss you,” my voice broke. “I miss you so much.”

I contemplated crying, sobbing, screaming, or begging for him to come back, but I was just too tired. All my energy had been spent on grievance throughout the following day, and my eyes were growing heavier by the second as my body was sinking further into a state of relaxation.

Between slow blinks, I watched Finnick’s large hand move to rest atop my own, and at that point, I knew sleep would soon catch me because I swear I could feel his warm touch.

Images flashed through my mind—incomprehensible and melting together, yet somehow still graspable.

Sky blue water rippling with calm waves, the surface glittering in the setting sun. A white stonewall cottage fronted by soft, white sand and tall palm trees. Two plates of fruit-filled yoghurt and scrambled eggs on toast. Three pairs of footprints in the sand, one larger, one smaller, and another between them so delicately tiny I could fit them into the palm of my hand.

Sea-green eyes above me. Golden hair tangled between my fingers. Finnick standing in the wooden doorway of our white stonewall cottage wearing a cream-white sweater and rolled-up slacks. Finnick grinning deeply and then throwing his head back with laughter. Finnick standing in front of our bed, taking my hand in his and guiding me towards him. Finnick. Finnick. Finnick. Finnick. Finnick.

Finnick holding our child.

I was between worlds now, both indistinguishable from the other. My eyelids were drooping, and I was quickly growing insensate. Just before my eyes closed completely, I saw Finnick’s—he who wasn’t really my Finnick—lips move. It wasn’t in my bleak reality in which I heard him speak, but rather in my mind, and God, did his words offer the sweetest relief.

“I’ll see you when you fall asleep.”

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minshift · 10 months

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scenarios to script with your s/o ﹒⊹⏖﹒

(s/o = significant other)

wearing heels but your feet start hurting so you s/o carries you on their back on the way home

during the winter you get cold hands so your s/o warms them up with their hands 😭

them leaning down to tie your shoe whenever they notice its untied

playing a video game with them but you werent that good so they helped you by putting their hands on top of yours and clicking the controls for you 😵‍💫

them blow drying your hair for you after you shower

on stage and your in ear monitor falls out and your s/o fixes it for you

doing a special stage with your s/o and you two keep winking and giggling at each other

pictures of you two on an aquarium date going viral for how cute you two are 😭

them doing the thumb thing whenever you guys hold hands aaa

whenever your in a crowd with them they hold your hand so you dont lose each other

you and your s/o going to the beach at night and the sound of the waves crashing and the full moon and the wind blowing through your s/o's hair and they whisper "i love you" 😭😵‍💫😪😪😪😪😪

super long hugs where they wont let go for a long time

if they have pets they call you their pets mom/dad/parent

alwayss remembers to send good morning or goodnight texts

there arent enough seats in the car so you sit on your s/o's lap during the car ride (i think this is illegal but its fine..😭)

you two have insta fan pages for each other

whispering, giggling and holding hands under the table during boring interviews

when they move past you and put their hands on your waist to move past

they always say i love you before leaving the house to go somewhere

a fan asks what your s/o's lock screen is and they shyly show that its a picture of you two

whenever you have a shopping spree your s/o always asks you to do a fashion show with the clothes you bought

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blood-orange-juice · 7 months

Text

Inspired by a discord discussion.

I keep seeing characters from snowy places portrayed as unbothered by cold or missing it, and every time I remember that it's completely counterintutive if you didn't grow up in freezing temperatures

So I thought I should write this post.

We are very bothered by cold. We are way more bothered by cold than southerners. Being bothered is what keeps you safe. Warmth is a resource.

There are few lucky people who simply never get cold (mostly guys of endomorph body type) but it's not a given and generally northerners start to complain and wear warm coats at the tiniest hint of cold.

Humans can only adjust up to a certain threshold.

For example, Irish and British winters allow you to ignore weather almost completely (you'll be miserable but you'll probably live), so there's a culture of stoicism, not heating your house above 16-18°C (60-65°F), wearing shorts and sandals (and a Very Big Scarf) when it's snowing and all that.

(I quickly got used to leaving the bathroom window open at 4°C when I was living there. who cares really)

So there's a common misconception that you can do the same with even colder weather.

However, once you are past that adjustment threshold (for most people it takes as little as -5..0°C/23..32°F lasting for more than a month per year) there can be no special built-in resistance to that type of cold (unless you are a yogi or a Taoist monk), instead you learn a bunch of behaviours that help you. You start to preserve warmth religiously.

You also start to differentiate between types of being cold and avoid some of them (some build up over time and it wears you down, so it's best to avoid them entirely). Anything that drops your core temperature (this is noticeable long before you start shivering, shivering is the equivalent of fire alarm) is a huge no. Fingers getting a bit numb from building a snow castle is nothing major though.

It can be hard to unlearn that even if you moved to a warmer place years ago.

Stoic northern characters who have moved to a warmer country are very likely to Complain About The Cold.

They'll start wearing coats at higher temperatures than southerners (because, well, the weather might get worse, or you might stay outside longer than you planned, or move less).

They'll get cold hands more often because their body panics at the tiniest signs of cold and diverts blood to the centre (my first impression of the Irish was how warm everyone was when we shook hands. I'm the same now).

Most will heat their houses to the point where it's possible to walk around in a t-shirt no matter how cold it is outside (those who don't will comment "thank gods that people don't do that in your country, I hated it back home").

They'll whine at +5°C (40°F).

Apart from heavier clothes they'll have a bunch of weird habits like Walking Really Fast when the weather is bad (it's for when you don't want to wear heavier clothes).

They might have a fondness for scarves and good winter shoes (warm shoes and a warm hat are even more important than a warm coat. the lack of hats in fantasy upsets me. scarves are less important but they are pretty).

When locals get surprised they'll reply with "yes, but this is *damp* cold, *dry* cold is different" (it's more complicated than that but this answer usually stops further questions, so we go with that).

It's not like they are actually less cold-resistant, they just take cold more seriously.

At the same time they can be weirdly unbothered by things that freak some of the southerners out because they know how their body deals with low temperatures and which things have no consequences.

(it's not something that you learn from books, it's practical knowledge of what you personally can get away with. for example, I often get completely numb thighs during winter walks, takes an hour to start feeling anything when I get home. but I know it's all right as long as my feet are warm and my core temperature is within normal range)

They also won't suffer consequences when it gets truly cold, while more nonchalant southerners won't notice when they get borderline hypothermic or just cold enough to get sick.

They'll probably consider -30°C (-22°F) exciting. It becomes enjoyable again, because the outside world is now a death zone and there's some macabre fun in resisting it. Oh, and your eyelashes get covered in frost and it looks dope. What's not to like.

Kids will make a point to eat ice cream outside in -30°C (no, they won't get sick from it). I can't explain it, it just works like that.

Generally people from colder countries are not bothered by cold if they can return to a warm place soon enough, it's the prolonged exposure to cold (even mild) they are worried about. Going out for a smoke without a coat is common.

If they are still in a cold country, it's also a bit different from what you expect.

There's a trope of drinking to keep warm. It doesn't work like that. You can drink alcohol to feel warm but not to keep warm and it's an important difference. When it's cold your body's proper response is to constrict blood vessels and to divert blood flow from extremeties to slow down the loss of warmth. Alcohol reverts that.

This means it's perfectly appropriate to drink eggnog or mulled wine at a fair (when you are supposed to get to warmth soon enough, so the illusion of not being cold is not harmful) or hard spirits when you get back from the cold (it will help you warm up faster), but not if you are staying in a cold place. During a hike through winter woods a thermos with sweetened tea and fatty food are your best friends.

Some won't know it and get drunk and frostbitten/hypothermic. People are stupid.

Food gets weird, fats start to seem even tastier than usual. People in Antarctic expeditions are known to crave sticks of butter. In certain weather sandwiches with frozen lard are delicious.

Anything can and will be made into tea.

Some tropes I personally disagree with.

Pain. Pain levels depend on the weather. Cold eases any kind of external pain (cuts or burns) but makes worse anything internal (broken bones, cramps, most headaches).

Hypothermia feels nothing like peacefully falling asleep. It's the most miserable state I've ever experienced, psychological trauma doesn't even come close.

Well, maybe there are people who do fall asleep but other people I've talked to seem to share my experience.

I'm not sure how exactly it works, I think it messes up your self-regulation, since most chemicals in your body require a certain temperature range to work properly. Basically you become Not Yourself. Your emotions go whack (usually it's either extreme self-pity or extreme anger). It feels awful. I hope you never get to experience it.

Most of us don't really miss cold.

Well, some perverts do, but there's a general consensus that cold is awful.

We do miss some things that only happen during cold days though. The stillness and the quiet or how pretty snow looks. How bright the stars are on a clear night. The colour of sunsets and twilight sky when it's freezing.

(in my opinion, the best experience happens around -5°C, it's already pretty but the world is not a death zone yet)

There's also an appreciation of contrast with things that are Not Snow.

Walking from the cold into a greenhouse with orchids.

Watching a blizzard rage outside your window while you sit in warmth with a cup of tea.

Jumping into a lake straight out of a sauna (then going back. do not do that if you have a heart condition).

Fireplaces. Holiday food. Mulled wine. Saffron in pastry.

There's also a lot of beauty in the world that is frozen. I keep stumbling upon the fact no one around me shares these experiences anymore and it saddens me.

The xylophone sound of first ice being broken by a passing boat.

Sea moving under the ice — when it's not too thick it rises and falls like some large animal breathing.

The whale-song-like sounds of ice cracking on large lakes.

There's a very special mood of waiting for first snow. The world is too cold and dark without it and then you wake up one night from the sudden quietness (snow muffles all sounds) and you know it's there even before you look out of the window,

There's the exhiliration of spring. The moment when the wind starts to have a scent — thawing snow smells a bit like watermelons but clearer. Winter smells like nothing at all.

The first tiny yellow flowers in mud. They are our hanami.

(I don't think anyone in Europe truly appreciates spring if they are not from Nordic or Baltic countries)

There's a certain attunement to the scent of ice too.

Like that barely perceptible tingle in the air in late September, long before you can see any ice.

I feel the scent of ice when there's wind from the right part of the Atlantic. No one ever notices but it's there. I love it.

It's nostalgic in a way.

But it's never missing the cold itself for me. For very few people it is, I think.

This is, of course, personal perspective and my experience is not universal. I'm a person from continental climate with harsh winters and hot summers and a city dweller with occasional visit to country houses and a tiny bit of mountaineering experience.

An indigenous person from a place with barely any summer or a character from a fantasy everwinter country will probably differ from me.

There are, after all, simply people who genuinely love cold. A lot of them. It is, however, not the default northerner's experience.

But hey, it's still more complex than it's usually written.

If you want to read something focused on winter descriptions, there's Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg.

It's hauntingly beautiful prose and the main character is from Greenland.

‘It’s freezing, an extraordinary -18 °C, and it’s snowing, and in the language which is no longer mine, the snow is qanik – big, almost weightless crystals falling in stacks and covering the ground with a layer of pulverized white frost.’

And then there's Moominland Midwinter. I think it gets better when you read it as an adult and it's probably still the best thing I have ever read about winter solstice.

Anyway.

I think we need more good winter stories.

#'the centre of the universe is always warm' says one of our poets #and I still live by that #writing #snow

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homunculus-argument · 1 year

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I was born and raised American, but with everything that's happened over the past few years I've been considering moving to another country. but I don't know if this is just "the grass is greener". Not sure if this really fits with your blog, but as someone from Europe what's your attitude towards living in the US?

I've visited there a handful of times and most of my thoughts are "damn bitch, y'all really live like this?" People in Finland like to complain about the climate, the taxes, and how stingy the welfare systems are (if you currently rely on them) or how costly they are (if you're currently not relying on them), but honestly most of the time that's because people are used to having it so good, or don't really have a perspective of how bad everyone would be doing without the infrastructure that everything runs on.

Sure, nowhere is perfect, and there's always room for improvement, but honestly the people I've met in the US only really seem to think that their system is good because they've never been anywhere else and don't know any better.

Mostly it's stuff that you'd never think about if you hadn't been to both places, like being able to trust that tap water is drinkable or that you can safely walk/bike to wherever you need to go. The US really doesn't have the kind of ability to just hang out in public places, just walking to the town and sitting on benches. Having public parks and libraries isn't really the same if you can't just walk there, and you genuinely need a car to go anywhere.

I moan and lament a lot about how the winters here are hard to endure - at the darkest time of the year the sun rises at 9 and sets before 5 pm - but I wouldn't move from here just because of that, mainly because of how reliably everything is structured here. Sure, it's all run with funds from relatively high taxes, but that is a self-feeding loop on its own. The tax-paying workforce isn't a disposable resource that's wrung dry once and tossed out when it's broken, but even when you're just another cog in the machine, you're one that's maintained, not replaced if broken.

I had a lot of breakdowns when I was younger, largely due to depression and other mental issues I had due to the undiagnosed ADHD. When I started breaking down at work in my old factory job, they couldn't just fire me on the spot because of the workers' union fought tooth and nail to make sure that you can't throw people out for getting sick, and mental illness is treated no different from other health issues. I was allowed to take two years off work in order to study into a career I thought would fit me better. That didn't turn out well either, but I was still allowed to bounce back and forth between odd jobs, sick leave, and studying - all on government pensions during the spots when I wasn't working a wage - until I found the right diagnosis, the right medications, and the right job.

It's not a hyperbole to say that I owe my life to the ample and studry social welfare systems that Finland has in place. Sure, you're just another brick in the wall, a cog in the machine, but if you keep breaking down, it takes a long time until they completely give up on you if you can somehow make them believe that you're trying, because it's cheaper for the tax system to figure out how to make you fit into the machine than just toss you out. A human being is an expensive investment and if getting you to the right job, education, diagnosis, medication or even arranged housing is what it takes to get your ass back into the workforce, they'll at least try.

I'm perfectly happy to pay the taxes here to fund the system that helped me onto my feet when I was in no condition to function, and to support the people who never do recover, find their place, or be able to support themselves on their own. And I can live with the peace of mind that even if I fall apart again, that safety net is still there. It's brutal, pragmatic, and regards your health and welfare as a means to an end - to get you working and paying taxes again - but they still do prioritise your welfare. Cogs are cheaper to maintain than replace.

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shurisasthmaticgf · 3 months

Text

boyfriend enrichment activities: lando norris x black! fem reader

summary: you and your boyfriend spend a much needed day at the beach.

warnings: swearing

author's note: i thought of this after going to the beach and seeing a guy dig a hole in the sand for a solid four hours...so thanks to that guy for the inspo! as always feedback is highly encouraged and greatly appreciated.

a day at the beach was something that you'd been needing since the start of winter, and now that it was finally beach weather you couldn't wait to enjoy the sun with your boyfriend. the two of you had been working hard, lando was training hard as the season was in full swing while you were balancing your new job and travelling on weekends. although your job was much less physically demanding, you were still exhausted and in much need of a relaxation day.

you both spared a day between race weekends to run off to the beach for the first time in a long time. most times you'd plan everything down to the type of bottled water you'd bring in your cooler but this time you decided to forget the itinerary and just take a few things.

lando carried your oversized beach bag that brought an ache to his shoulder by the time you made it down to the water from the parking lot. meanwhile you carried along your favorite tiny cream colored Jacquemus bag that only fit a pack of tic tacs and a mini lip gloss. in one hand you held your phone and the other a small shovel and bucket set you'd gotten at a store right by the beach.

when the two of you finally found a good spot you laid down a outdoor blanket and your towels on top of it for a softer surface to lay on. you immediately began putting on sun cream, applying it liberally and rolling your eyes when it left a slight white cast against your brown skin. you didn't even have to ask before lando took the bottle and began rubbing the lotion onto your back, brushing your box braids away from your back first. when he was finished you did the same for him and just like that he was gone, running out to the water eagerly as the scorching hot sand burned the bottom of his feet.

you did enjoy the beach and as a kid you spent hours making sandcastles, finding seashells, swimming out to a sandbar for sea biscuits, or playing some ball game with your cousins on the sand during family vacations. however, today you just wanted to lay out and soak up the sun while watching your boyfriend frolic in the sea.

nearly half an hour passed before you felt fat drops of salt water fall onto your face. when you opened your eyes you saw your boyfriend's face mere inches from yours, his curls now dripping onto your skin. you pushed his face lightly with a laugh, "get your soggy ass away from me!" he shook his head and flung salt water onto you earning a screech followed by giggles. you passed him one of the towels from your bag and said, "here dry yourself with this." he wrapped it around himself and sat beside you, "the water is quite nice, it cooled the bottom of my feet after running out there." you hummed as you read the book you brought with you. lando simply watched you but you could tell he was itching to do something, he just didn't know what.

you watched as he eyed your beach bag then unclipped the claw clip from the side of it. he opened and closed it then smiled to himself before using it to sift through sand to find shells he thought you'd like. one by one he began lining them up on your thigh, but you didn't mind, he was in his own world while you were immersed in your book. eventually, gathering shells also grew boring and you'd dozed off with your book beside you and your beach hat covering your face. so, lando took to the sand once more but this time began digging a hole a few meters away from the spot you set up.

there was no telling how long you slept since you didn't know when you dozed off, but when you woke up lando wasn't beside you. grabbing your sunglasses you looked up from where you'd been laying and you nearly choked seeing the gigantic hole he dug in the sand. he noticed you staring at him and beamed, "look at the hole i dug." something about seeing him proud of this stupid sand hole he made just made you laugh even more so when you looked at the children's plastic shovel in his hand.

by the end of the day he was fast asleep and slightly snoring on his towel. you'd gotten him to take a walk with you to take pictures for social media and tried to show him how to balance rocks in a stack which he failed at miserably. the two of you also used the two buckets you had to try and see who could build the best sandcastle. you won with a quite impressive masterpiece but only because your boyfriend built his too close to the water and it got ruined by a large wave that ran right into it as he finished. however, the highlight of your day was finding a horseshoe crab and naming it Persephone then running over to show it to lando thinking he'd find it cool.

he did not find it cool.

he found it rather uncool.

so much so that he ran away screaming for you to put it down as you tried to bring it closer to him.

you smiled at the memory as you gazed at your sleeping boyfriend. after snapping a photo of his sleeping form you slowly you inched closer to him and pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek. lando's lip twitched into a sleepy smile and you placed a hand on his head, softly grazing his ear with your thumb. your shadow blocked his eyes from the sun as he slowly opened one and looked up to see you with your knees drawn to your chest, your face resting on your thighs. you shushed quietly and said, "go back to sleep, we don't have to leave yet." he let his eye fall back shut and you looked straight ahead at the sea. the turquoise expanse of the sea blurred into the sky's cerulean blue flecked with silvery clouds in the distance drew your attention with passing moments. you let out a soft sigh, smiling to yourself at how corny and cliche this moment seemed to be, yet it was all you needed after all this time. 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆝⋆.˚ 𓇼 ⋆｡˚ 𓆞

callmeyn

liked by landonorris and 934,293 others

callmeyn my job is just...beach ⛱

view all 10,543 comments

alexandrasaintmleux pretty girl <3

⤷ callmeyn that's all you mama 🩵

⤷ charles_leclerc stop flirting with my girlfriend

⤷ callmeyn OUR girlfriend 😒🖐️

⤷ charles_leclerc i didn't agree to that-

⤷ alexandrasaintmleux too bad 😇

f1 it was all too much for little lando norris 🥺

⤷ callmeyn LMAOOOOO

username1 lando finding a horseshoe crab is so on brand 😭

⤷ callmeyn girl please i found Persephone and this man ran away from me yelling "no please!" when i picked her up and tried to show him 💀

mclaren why is my driver standing in a ditch? 🤨

⤷ callmeyn i woke up from a nap and there it was...him standing in it.

⤷ oscarpiastri i could dig a deeper one

⤷ alex_albon i could out dig both of you

⤷ maxverstappen1 i'd win hands down

lilymhe omg the little shells are so cute! 🤭

⤷ callmeyn ikr :(

username2 NEVER DIG STRAIGHT DOWN AT THE BEACH!

⤷ callmeyn don't worry pookie he knows, he just chose to do it anyways! 🥰

username1 stanley yelnats ahh 💀

⤷ callmeyn STANLEY YELNATS- you just unlocked a childhood memory omg

username3 why does my boyfriend do the same thing...

⤷ callmeyn ✨boyfriend enrichment activities✨

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆝⋆.˚ 𓇼 ⋆｡˚ 𓆞

landonorris

by callmeyn and 785,997 others

landonorris use protection

view all 5,325 comments

mclaren ...p-pardon?

username4 WHAT IS THIS CAPTION 😭

username5 Y/N MARRY ME PLS I HAVE A MANSION AND MANY CARS 🙏

⤷ landonorris so do i, try again

⤷ username5 i'm not afraid of horseshoe crabs😈

⤷ username6 HELP HE BLOCKED ME AND I HAD TO MAKE A NEW ACCOUNT 😭😭😭

⤷ callmeyn UNBLOCK HER RIGHT NOW @/landonorris

oscarpiastri you do know you have the option to leave captions empty right 😐

⤷ landonorris i'm advising the public to use sun cream?

danielriccardo wait that's a nice ass sandcastle-

⤷ landonorris why thank you

⤷ callmeyn i'll let you have it since yours got washed away by the ocean at the last second 😁

⤷ f1 oh this is awkward...

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆝⋆.˚ 𓇼 ⋆｡˚ 𓆞

the end.

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a-boca-do-inferno · 3 months

Text

cold, cuddles & tickles (caesar x human!reader) [request]

summary: Caesar and you share a moment on a cold winter’s night.

warnings: mild angst, fluff

words: 0.9k

Caesar stared ahead with a frown, leaning forward as the bonfire crackled quietly. It’d been a tough winter. He watched over the sleeping colony, his mind wondering about strategies to keep everyone safe during those times. You took a furtive look at him from behind a tree, noticing how exhausted he appeared. Strolling in the direction of the fire, you extended your arms in front of you to warm yourself, taking a seat beside him without a single word.

The ape king briefly acknowledged you, green orbs scanning your form in the darkness, observing how the glow of the flames created shadows over your delicate features. He was surprised to see you awake at this hour, but kept it to himself. The silence was only filled by the sound of wood burning up and some owls up in the trees surrounding you.

“Hungry?” You finally sign, eyeing him carefully.

You were not really big talkers, neither of you, nevertheless you cared for him in ways the other apes probably didn’t—maybe it was a human thing, casually asking questions like if he’d eaten or drunk water. You were aware Caesar was always busy and would use that as an excuse to neglect himself, sometimes, and it worried you. The ape, to his credit, simply glanced away, his expression solemn as he shook his head. Despite being leader of the colony, he knew you of all people wouldn’t fall for the usual lies. There wasn’t much food to go around those days and he’d been skipping meals for others. He let out a weary exhale and rubbed his temple, his attention drifting back to the fire.

“Don’t do that.” Though your hands are firm and sharp, your gaze remains gentle. “Gotta eat. Can’t lead apes weak.”

His eyes fall downward once more. You’re right; apes do rely on him to be strong. The responsibility was a constant weight on his shoulders, so hard to carry at times. Caesar takes a deep breath and nods, looking up at you again with a faint, tired smile. “You know me… too well.”

“That’s not a flex.” You snort, gesturing towards your backpack on the ground, next to your feet. You sigh and reach out to grab an apple, gently taking it towards his mouth. Fortunately your farming skills had come in handy, even through the cold season. You managed to grow a few crops with Maurice last week. “Bite.”

His ever serious look gradually softens as he chews on it without much ado—he was pretty hungry, after all, although the king would never admit it out loud. The fruit tasted sweet on his tongue, a familiar feeling he hadn’t indulged in for a while. “Thanks”, the ape signs after he swallows, finishing his humble meal. Hesitating for a second, he rasps, “It's hard… being the strong one. Sometimes.”

“I know.” You murmur gently, coming closer to bring him into a warm embrace. You pet his head, adding with a dry tone, “you think you’re super ape.”

The king lets out another shaky exhale, burying his face in the crook of your neck almost instantly. Your bond with him had always been a special one, with no need for definitions; and so whenever you two were alone, physical touch came naturally. He was used to it. “Wish I didn’t… have to be”, Caesar coos, his arms holding you tight.

You open your mouth to answer him, but his nose finds the nape of your neck and you squirm in reflex, chuckling under your breath. You both exchange an amused look and you shrug, trying to play it off. “I’m just cold.”

Caesar can’t help but snicker, letting a rough palm trace your skin stealthily. “Ticklish?” He gestures with a smirk before rubbing the same sensitive spot again, this time on purpose.

You squeak and eye him warningly, albeit there’s a smile on your lips. “Hey!”

The ape king laughs at your reaction, his grin growing wider at the sounds you make. He continues to tease your ticklish area, now more soothingly. “That was cute.” He signs, clearly amused.

“It’s not cute. It’s torture! You’ll wake the others like that, Caesar, stop...” You struggle between quiet giggles, wrestling with him lightly, but he’s obviously much stronger and overpowers you effortlessly.

“Then stop making… cute sounds”, he laughs along with you, a deep, unusual noise coming from the normally stoic ape.

You cupped his face as you brought your foreheads together and his nostrils flared in response, signaling he enjoyed the contact. Caesar stopped his tickling crusade and shut his eyelids immediately, his nose skimming against your jawline, eager for your touch. There was pause until you heard another uncommon sound from his mouth; a shy yawn. You shot him a playful look and the ape grunted in silent disagreement, similar to a stubborn child.

“Go to sleep. I’ll keep watch.” You purr, leaving a tender kiss on his cheek.

Caesar stays unmoving, reluctant at your request at first. It’s true you kept watch occasionally, even under his counter advisement, however right now he just felt like being with you for a while longer. “Later.” He mumbles in your ear, staring at you intently.

You wanted to protest, yet you let it go that one time, cuddling closer as you both looked at the fire. Soon the sun was coming up and another day—thankfully warmer than the last ones had been—would start.

#caesar x reader #pota x reader #planet of the apes #planet of the apes x reader #dawn of the planet of the apes x reader #rise of the planet of the apes x reader #war for the planet of the apes x reader #rise of the planet of the apes #pota #caesar

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fatesundress · 1 year

Text

⭑ made with love. draco malfoy x reader

summary. it's winter, you’re sick, and draco is extremely rational a terrible, doting mess about it.

tags. fluff! so much fluff! married couple, gn!reader, lots of banter, post-hogwarts with one fleeting mention of the war, draco's anxiety is whetted by a common cold, he basically treats the reader like they hung the moon in the sky and also have the power to yank it down at any given moment. he's very grumpy. but so so in love.

note. my sweet anons!! i tried on three separate occasions to write the requests in my inbox but sometimes i need to be in the depths of hell (ovulation week) to manage smut. i'm sorry. i've made some progress i swear! but the draco hyperfixation came out of NOWHERE and unfortunately i had to indulge in it. also thank you so much for 200! :’)

word count. 1.6k

You are deplorable.

With a fever temperature of 40° and explicit instructions to stay in bed, you’re discernibly not in bed when he makes it home from the apothecary, a jumbled mess of the blankets he’d swathed you in left in your place. Your slippers are absent. Your slippers — in two feet of snow. Your coat is gone too, at least; ridiculously thick and unnecessarily long, though now he’s thankful for it.

Draco paces. Then he sets the Pepperup Elixir over a flame at his desk to keep warm, pours two drops of Sleeping Draught into a mug for your tea, and paces again.

He should have insisted on binding rings for your wedding, he thinks. Something to trace you in emergencies. There’s little to do without them as you’ve evidently either taken the Floo or Apparated, and, in truth, he can’t remember the last time he’s been this nervous. In school, perhaps? During the war? You have him comparing his nerves over a bad cold to those he felt during war. The insanity of that is actually not lost on him, if that counts for anything.

But you are deplorable, and his. His almost as much as he is maddeningly, irremediably yours.

How he allowed an aliment like this to infect him goes against all evolutionary sense. It’s a fever of its own. Incurable despite knowing its cause, and probably festering worse than yours.

And then the fireplace hisses and out you stumble with soot on one cheek and frost on the other, the neck of your coat zipped up to swallow half of your face. In an arm shoved deep in your pocket, a bag swings from the puffy coat crease of your elbow, and Draco baulks. It’s a muggle grocery bag — translucent enough that he can see the square imprint of your favourite sleepy-time tea, a chocolate bar, cans of what he thinks are soup, and — a lemon? Yes. A big miserable lemon that you’ve deigned was worth almost killing yourself over.

Draco does not hear whatever excuses escape your chattering teeth as he plucks your hand from its pocket, puts the bag down, pulls off your coat while you slap at his hands and insist you can do it yourself, and only because he thinks you’d hex him to oblivion if he tried, leads you with a hand on your back to the bedroom rather than hauling you into his arms and carrying you.

“A lemon,” he says, and is aware by the severity of his tone he might as well be saying a gun, or a missile, or a milk crate of Living Death cartons. “You forayed into a snowstorm for a lemon. Do you think I’m incapable of reading a grocery list? I just Flooed —”

“I got more than a lemon,” you huff in a weak voice.

It is appalling that that’s what you take from his admonishment.

Your snow-soaked slippers are tossed aside as you tumble into bed. Draco bundles you in blankets and holds his wand out to take your vitals. You roll your eyes all the while, but once the cold wears off he’s sure you’ll be burning hotter than you were this morning.

He shakes his head. “Lemons are common stock in apothecaries, you know. The shavings are essential in Weedosoros antidotes.”

“Yes, but they’re always so dry.”

“And chocolate — they sell it at Téa’s across the street for the magizoologists. Did you know that?”

“Hmph. No Cadbury, though.”

“And I’ve already warmed the Pepperup and poured you Sleeping Draught, despite your urgency for this —” He pulls the box of tea from your grocery bag, impressed with an image of a little bear with a red nightcap, a steaming cuppa, and a plate of biscuits — “Inarguably superior muggle panacea —”

“I never claimed it was a panacea —”

“Of which we should have distributed to St. Mungo’s en masse. In fact, I should owl them now so they’re informed the Sleeping Draughts are ineffective by comparison —”

“You’re insufferable —”

“Imagine all the orphans without rest —”

“Actually ridiculous —”

“You’re ridiculous. And I hate this bear. Look at his hat. Bloody Gryffindor.”

“Do you know what the wizarding world is lacking? — If you’re concerned enough to make a donation, Mr Malfoy?”

You think it’s hilarious to call him that. He does well not to mention you are, by law, also a Malfoy, and his money is your money to donate as you please.

“What is that?”

“Soup,” you say. “Canned soup — canned with love.”

“We are lacking soup canned with love,” Draco repeats, just to be sure.

“Yes.”

“I’ll be sure to write the Minister.”

“Do.”

“Only if you stay in bed.”

“Hmmm… mmmm… well. Hm.”

“Incorrigible,” he mumbles, brushing the damp from your face before getting up to fix your tea. (He kisses your cheek for good measure, big sop that he is. You do well not to mention it.) “Don’t move or I’ll cast wards on the fireplace.”

“Oh! Cast wards on the doors, too. I might go for a walk.”

He glares at you from the archway. Your answering laugh is broken by a coughing fit, and you look reluctantly glum when he raises a told-you-so brow.

Draco mutters about how ridiculous you are through the kitchen and back, as he steeps your tea, heats your soup, unstoppers the Pepperup Elixir, pours it in an old shot glass from a trip to Italy (you have no graduated plastic cups lying around), squeezes the big stupid lemon in your tea, carries it all to your bed on a tray and realises, still muttering, that these are a lot of steps. But Draco balances the tray without an utterance of magic. It’s rather impressive. You should be sorely sorry.

You are, instead, asleep.

You’re splayed across the bed like something Baroque, limbs fascinatingly posed: half under the blankets and half stubbornly poking out despite his fervent tucking, head nuzzled into the pillow with a slight frown. If Draco were any better with a camera he’d take a picture. Instead he takes careful steps to your bedside, placing the tray on the nightstand and sitting as close as he can manage without disturbing the (once more, revolutionary) arrangement of your legs. It feels criminal to wake you. His fretful anger that you’d gone out in the cold is whittled to a humiliatingly thin and empty husk, and all that remains is mushy adoration. Damn you for that; you look ridiculous anyhow.

Draco kisses your cheek again. Your nose. Your forehead. He traces an invisible portrait of your face with his fingers, as if he’s ever drawn anything better than nasty stick figures on crumpled parchment in school. You, though, he thinks he knows well enough by memory to try.

You stir, not too far from consciousness that it’s a challenge to find it again, but far enough to be audibly vexed by his summons to the surface.

Draco means to berate you in that way he's so good at — chin pointed and scowl permanently etched — but you grumble with a sick, hoarse voice and he falters in a pathetic display. “You forgot your love-suffused muggle soup,” he whispers, one hand cupping your cheek.

“Ugh.”

“Heinous, I know. Sit up for me?”

“Magic word.”

There’s his scowl. “Alohomora.”

“Not that magic word.”

“Imperio.”

“Unforgivables, Draco Malfoy?”

“Hmm, Locomotor Wibbly?”

You sink further into the bed, pulling the uppermost blanket over your head inch by inch.

“Please,” he says, with profound displeasure.

You sit up and smile.

Draco sighs and lays the legs of the tray out over your lap. You regard his service with sleepy content, one of your hands travelling to his face in what his heart surges to appreciate is an honest thanks after his several near-heart attacks, and then your gaze finds the medically expert Pepperup in an Italian shot glass and it falls.

You groan. “Draco…”

His name says, quite plainly, please don’t make me.

Draco has enough self-respect to at least deny you this. “Wards.”

That says, quite plainly, I was not joking about the fireplace.

You look as though you’re contemplating the severity of two horrors, but it passes fleetingly, with one curse under your breath and a sour expression as you down the shot of Pepperup like… a shot. Burning Ogden’s that scrunches your face up until you shake it away with a blagh noise.

Come to think of it, Draco's choice of glass is much more appropriate than some medical cup.

“Better?”

You shudder. “I will be.”

“Good. Have your love soup and stupid lemons.”

And then, when he isn’t expecting it, your hot palm finds the place it left off; Draco’s healthily warm, sharp cheek, the soft fuzz of hair beside his ears before your fingers card through the longer strands and you hum like he’s your favourite thing to hold onto.

He melts, eyes fluttering shut. You’re sick, and wholeheartedly deplorable, but you’re safe, and it’ll be alright.

“Draco?”

“Mm.”

“The soup.”

He opens his eyes. “The soup?”

“You know it was canned with love.”

“I trust you wouldn’t have bought it otherwise.”

“And,” you say, thumb flush over his bottom lip as you smile a groggy, self-satisfied smile, “it was made with love, too, right?”

He rolls his eyes, and kisses you nonetheless. “You never cease to ask absurd questions.”

#draco malfoy #draco malfoy x reader #draco malfoy x you #draco malfoy fluff #draco malfoy imagine #draco malfoy fic #draco malfoy fanfiction #harry potter fanfiction #wizarding world

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ellethespaceunicorn · 1 year

Text

Touch and Go: A Detective's Romance

Rating: Explicit, 18+, Minors - DNI

Pairing: Walter Marshall x Detective!Female!Reader

Fandom: Night Hunter

Word Count: 3.3K

Summary: What happens when a touch-starved detective who isn’t well-versed in human interaction meets their match?

Warnings: touch starvation, awkward conversation, unprotected p-in-v sex, creampie, crying during sex

A/N: It’s apparently winter in this story, damn Minnesota weather. Honestly, I was watching the movie while writing so it ended up being snowy. Unbeta’d, we die like people who tried their best.

Dividers by: @firefly-graphics

Support/Reblog banner by me

Cover Art by me

My Masterlist

It’s not like you never noticed your fellow officer. Of course, your attention has been pulled to Detective Walter Marshall once or twice, or several times throughout your time working together. Damn, ok the man was a presence. His very existence should have a warning label on it.

Not that he’s a bad person. Far from it, in fact. You thought the world of him. Not that you’d admit it, but you found his grumpiness endearing. His monosyllabic responses to questions made it a bit hard to get to know him. You weren’t exactly an open book yourself. But you forced yourself to try and get to know him.

You didn’t make it a habit to get to know people very often. You had trust issues, and rightfully so after what your ex-partner left you with. A broken heart and a fractured view of your self-worth. You hadn’t even let anyone touch you in so long. A handshake here or there, maybe a pat on the shoulder but nothing more.

And now here you were, a touch-starved mess who had grown to be a bit more than interested in another detective. You wanted to make him smile and that was a foreign feeling to you. So, you started with an olive branch.

Asking if he wanted a coffee on your way to the break room. After the fifth time, he relents, requesting a cup of black coffee with three sugars. While you’re there, you pick up a granola bar from the cabinet. Handing him the paper cup of coffee, you also pull the treat from your back pocket and toss it on his desk.

He tilts his head like a giant puppy at the snack.

“Humor me and eat something. I’m curious if you’re eating enough if I’m being honest.” You bite your bottom lip unconsciously, and the beginnings of a smile appear on his face as he rips open the bar and takes a bite.

Chewing slowly and staring at you, he seems to look right through to your soul. You look down at your feet to break eye contact and he clears his throat, getting your attention back.

“You know, I actually love food. I love to cook almost every night.” As the words come out of his mouth, it’s like they’re fighting their way out. As if each syllable is a punch to the gut.

“I love food, too. But I hate cooking,” You suddenly had a very dry throat, so you sip a bit of coffee before speaking again, “I’m not inviting myself over or anything, but if you’d be up for it sometime...I, uh...yeah.” You look everywhere but him as you trail off.

“Yeah, that’d be nice. I normally eat alone. Be nice to have someone...there...to eat with.” It’s like speaking makes him physically nauseous, the way his jaw tenses like that.

“Well, I’m free most nights, so...just let me know.” You move to turn and leave his office, but he stops you with an offering.

“You wouldn’t happen to be free tonight?” He’s even surprised by his question but plays it off by folding his hands on his desk and maintaining eye contact.

“Yes. I’m free.” You know you sound desperate but at this point, this is the most contact you’ve had with the man since you’ve been here so who cares? Well, you do, but you can worry about that later.

“Good. Yeah. So, uh, I guess come and grab me when you’re ready to go. You can follow me to my place. Sound good?”

“Yeah, that sounds great. Um, I’m gonna leave so I don’t say something embarrassing. I didn’t mean to say that out loud. I just—”

Walter cuts you off, saving you from yourself. “Don’t do this a lot?”

“No, I don’t. Been a long time and I don’t want to fuck this up, ya know? Not that playing it cool was ever my style. Why start now, right?” You surprise Walter by laughing at your self-deprecating joke and he follows suit.

The little duck of his head doesn’t stop you from seeing the way his eyes crinkle at the corners. When he picks his head up again, a broad smile is painted on that normally glum face. If you had 1% less control over your face, you would have drooled.

This man should smile more.

And you know you hate being told to put on a smile but fuck, his face was made for it. You realize you’re still looking at him and a faint rose-tinted blush dusts across his cheeks and the tips of his ears.

You should not be allowed to be that adorable.

“What?” Walter’s question brings you back to where you just said that sentence out loud.

“I think I just called you adorable. So, I’m gonna see myself out and try not to throw myself into traffic on the way to my desk. I’ll be back when I’ve calmed my brain down a bit.” You wave awkwardly and exit his office before you can notice the smile inching back over his features.

You spend the next two and a half hours hoping you didn’t make a complete ass out of yourself in front of the only man you’ve talked to in the last few months that wasn’t a delivery driver or your boss. The only person who you’ve talked to for more than a few minutes about something other than work.

When 5:30 p.m. comes around, you gather your things and drag your feet to Walter’s office. He’s already standing, putting away some files in his desk drawer, looking up when he hears your polite throat clearing.

“How do you feel about Spaghetti Bolognese? I have a recipe from Jamie Oliver that I’ve been meaning to try out.” He says, putting on his parka and moving toward you where you stand in his doorway.

“Um, pasta is life. Pasta with meat sauce? Even better.” You brighten at the mention of a familiar dish, your previous nerves all but forgotten.

“Great. Shall I help you with your coat?” He hinted once he realized you weren’t moving toward the exit.

“Uh, yeah. Thank you.” You set down your purse and handed over your fluffy overcoat.

Walter holds it out for you as you back your arms into the sleeves. As it comes to rest on your shoulders comfortably, his hands smooth over the fabric that covers your forearms, your hands ending up in his for a moment.

You freeze at the sudden contact but if Walter notices, he doesn't make a big deal out of it. He just squeezes your hand quickly and hands you your purse so you can walk out together. You are grateful to be among the stragglers leaving the office so that you don’t draw too much attention.

Walter walks you to your car and has you put in his address to your GPS, ‘just in case you get lost’ he jests before heading to his truck. As you watch him walk away, one thought comes to your mind.

Is this a date?

You park behind Walter’s truck in his driveway, climb out of your car, and crunch through the snow behind him. In your clumsy state, your foot slips, and strong arms catch you so that you don’t completely bust your ass on the unforgiving ice below.

This time when he touches your arms, you are beyond grateful to be able to pull yourself upright again. Once you’re stable, Walter keeps one of your hands in his until you make it to his front door. He lets you walk in first, turning on the light to the short hallway after you chuckle in the darkness.

Walter takes your coat and hangs it up with his, your wet boots left by the door. Walking into the kitchen, he pulls out a bottle of red wine and two glasses. Opening the wine, he pours each glass and brings them out to where you are standing in the living room. Handing you a glass, he raises his own.

“Shall we toast to something?” Walter smiles softly, expectantly waiting for you to suggest what to salute.

“To...being pleasantly surprised that you still wanted to cook for me despite every awkward moment I’ve had since earlier today. You are a gentleman and a scholar and I'm gonna shut my mouth and drink this wine before I just...keep talking.” You cringe inwardly before looking back up at Walter.

He is watching you with rapt fascination, a slow smile forming. “Let’s toast to practicing human interaction. I’d say we could both use some assistance in that area. We’ll help each other, deal?”

“Deal.” You tap your glass to his and take a sip of the now-aerated wine. Your cheeks warm at the blackberry finish of the cabernet sauvignon.

Maybe there is something to the whole liquid courage thing.

Dinner turned out lovely. You were pleasantly surprised that Walter could cook. There were moments watching him cook where he didn’t have to measure things, or he added a little extra of this or that. He didn’t use a recipe while making the garlic toast like it’s a staple of his repertoire or something.

Sitting on his couch with your feet tucked up under you, you look around the living room at the lack of family photos or little touches that scream Walter Marshall. Not that you would have any idea of what those little touches would be. It just doesn’t feel like a home. It feels like a house, just a house that someone lives in.

When he comes back to the couch with freshly poured wine, you accept your glass with a smile, and he returns it.

“It is a Friday night. We are enjoying our second bottle of wine. You made me a delicious dinner. And I still can’t figure out if this is a date, Walter.” You fiddled with the glass in your hand, looking into it as if the answer was inside the wine.

Walter’s thumb and forefinger on your chin have you looking up at his face. “I’ve used almost every excuse to touch you tonight. I kept talking to you earlier when you thought you’d lost me. I feed off your awkwardness because you say what’s on your mind without a filter. I’m not exactly one to speak a lot but I enjoy talking to you. Because you make me feel like I’m not alone.”

Unshed tears gather at the corner of your eyes. You swallow the lump in your throat, clearing it loudly before you speak. “Can you tell I’m touch-starved because you are too?”

At his quiet nod, you take his wine glass and set both of your glasses on the coffee table. You lean forward, your elbows on your knees. He watches as you have a silent moment with yourself, going over different scenarios before you reach a consensus with yourself. You look back up to him and your face softens.

Reaching out your hand, you intertwine your fingers in his curls. As he turns his head to push it further into your hand, his breathing picks up. He grabs your fingers as they migrate to his jawline.

“I want...I need more than this. I'd like to say I could wait, but all I can think about is kissing you until you can barely breathe.” Walter forces the words out, his breathing in time with yours. Erratic.

You climb into his lap, one hand still in his, the other hand fisting his wool jumper. “Then kiss me until I can barely breathe. Fuck breathing. I just need you.”

No sooner are the words out of your mouth, than Walter’s lips are on yours. It’s like he was starving and the breath from your lungs was the only meal he’d had in weeks. You could feel his hunger as he licked the seam of your lips, letting him in was the only option.

As your tongues fought for dominance, he took the lead in a way you couldn’t ignore. His arms wrapped around you, pulling your torso flush to his. You felt so small yet so special as he held you. So new yet so treasured as you broke the kiss and rested your forehead against his to calm your nerves and catch your breath.

A moment passes between you where you both just breathe. Until you lean your head back, locking eyes with Walter again, and you nod. He understands your non-verbal request, picking you up and walking toward his bedroom. Kicking the door behind him, he lays you down in bed and gets to work undressing you.

You lift your hips as he pulls your jeans and underwear down your legs. You remove your top and bra, and he watches as your body is exposed to him. He stands to make quick work of his jumper, and you salivate at the sight of his hardness through his boxers when his jeans are pushed down his legs. His hefty dick springs up against his abdomen as his boxers are removed.

Your hands roam over his hairy chest as he climbs onto the bed. With a hand under each knee, he pushes your legs back as far as they will go. He admires the shiny wetness that your pussy leaks. Shifting closer, he pushes the head of his dick through your folds and groans.

He looks up into your eyes and asks silently if he can continue. When you nod, he enters you and your body accepts him fully. Allowing you to get adjusted to his size, he wraps your legs around his waist and pulls out until just the tip remains inside you before he slams back into you. This time you both groan, you at the fullness, him at the tight squeeze.

“Fuck, you feel amazing. But please, keep moving.” Your words are all he needed to begin an all-out assault on your cunt.

If it had been a while for him, you’d be none the wiser with the stamina this man possessed. He held your legs open while he fucked into you. He allowed you to just take it as he did most of the work. You could hardly keep up with his thrusts as you melted beneath him.

“You’re so fucking close, just let go for me. I can feel you squeezing my fucking cock. Be a good girl and come for me.” While he whispered in your ear, he ground his pelvis into you to stimulate your clit and G-spot at the same time.

When your resolve finally breaks, you try and hide your face in Walter’s neck to no avail. He tangles a hand in your hair and pulls you back so he can watch your orgasm play out on your face.

“Don’t hide from me when I’m making you come. I want to watch you fall apart under my hands. You are so fucking gorgeous when you come for me, girl.” He talks as you come down from your orgasm and the warmth that spreads over your body is palpable.

“Thank you,” You blurt out before you can stop yourself.

Walter all but runs with it. “Fuck yes, you fucking thank me for your orgasm. That’s my good girl.” He pulls out, turning you on your side and sliding in behind you. Entering you again, he reaches a hand around to play with your clit. Circling your nub, then flicking it to keep you stimulated enough to come all over his fingers.

You come for a second time within a few minutes, and he fucks you through it. Your words are clipped while you try to thank him once more and it just comes out as breathy whispers.

Your moans are music to his ears and he pistons in and out of you. As your walls massage his cock, he starts to falter in his movements. You reach back to grab his hand, lacing your fingers together before pulling your hands to your chest.

Getting the message, Walter wraps his other arm around you to pull you even more impossibly close to him. He slows down his pace, dragging out your moans as he unhurriedly moves inside you. He leans into your ear and speaks softly.

“You have no idea how much I needed this. How much I wanted you. I didn’t know how to talk to you. Fuck, you feel amazing. Need you every day, girl. Just like this, wrapped up in you. I won’t last much longer. So perfect.” He babbles near the end, whimpering your name. He latches onto your neck as he stills inside you.

His teeth nip at you and his tongue soothes your skin as you feel his cock twitch and paint your walls with his spend. You can hear him groan in your ear as his arms hold you tight. You haven’t felt this safe in someone’s arms since you were little. You don’t notice you’re crying until Walter wipes away the tears that fall down your face.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“If you’re about to apologize for crying in front of me, please don’t. You deserve to express your emotions no matter who is around. Least of all, me.” He places a kiss on your neck, attempting to soothe you.

“Fair. I haven’t been held or even touched in so long and it’s a little embarrassing that my first reaction is to cry.” You sniff, rolling your eyes at yourself.

“Don’t be embarrassed. I know that’s easier said than done. But trust me, we just experienced some intense sex. And it was emotional for both of us. Trust me. Can’t you feel how fucking hard I am still inside you?” He moves his hips just slightly and is rewarded with a shiver going down your spine.

“Walter...please.” You let your whimpers be heard and you get what you want.

He moves to his knees while keeping you on your side. He pushes your leg up to a 90-degree angle and leans forward to fuck into you. The sound of slapping flesh fills the room as well as Walter’s grunts as he buries himself deeper inside you than before.

“I’m gonna...please, don’t stop!” You reach up to hold his cheek in one hand and he shuts his eyes at the contact. When they open again, his pupils are blown wide.

“Not stopping until you come again for me, girl.” The hand on his cheek migrates to his forehead to wipe away sweat-slick curls from his brow.

“Come with me, Walter!”

“Ugh, fuck!”

The hold you have on your orgasm falters and your walls flutter around him, his hands curl around your thigh as his hips pound into you one last time. As his cock spurts inside you, your cunt continues to milk him until he softens and is released from your hold on him.

He collapses next to you, wrapping an arm around you and pulling you close. You reach an arm across his chest and settle in to catch your breath. Looking up one last time to Walter’s face, you’re pleasantly surprised to see a smile on his normally grumpy face. His eyes are closed, and you feel at peace knowing you are the cause of that serene expression.

“Stay with me tonight.” You’re startled by his words, but you can’t deny the smile that crosses your face.

Leaning up to kiss his stubbled neck, you revel in the grunt that follows. “Good night, Walter.”

You feel him kiss the top of your head, nosing at your hair. “Night.”

You fall asleep with your hand in his chest hair, your legs tangled together. You are held, you are safe, and you couldn’t be happier. Talking about what all this means could wait until the morning. For now, you bask in the feeling of warmth that this man and this moment give you.

Touch and Go: The Morning After

A/N: Shout out to @sillyrabbit81 for her Detective Grumpypants Spotify playlist which helped me so much in writing this.

**Tag List**

@brattymum96 @ambinxe @avengersfan25 @kebabgirl67 @thabiddie23 @astheskycries @enchantedbytomandhenry @rebelangel1102 @peyton-warren @geralts-yenn @raccoon-eyed-rebel

Let me know if you wanna be added (or removed) 😁

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millersamour · 12 days

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different devils (series prologue) - joel miller x f!reader

“We’re all in the same game; just different levels. Dealing with the same hell; just different devils.”

Word Count: 3.2k

Pairing: joel miller x f!reader

Series Summary: You're one of Jackson's longest, and most reclusive inhabitants. You're Tommy's patrol partner. You raised an adopted son. Now spending every day doing what you can to keep the devil at bay. Until Joel Miller shows up, with a fourteen year old, and the same kind of demons.

(collage made on pinterest)

Series Warnings: set during outbreak, violence, descriptions of body mutilation, use of weapons, reader is 21 in prologue but 34 in main story, age gap (joel is 56), eventual smut (will tag accordingly), darkish! joel, reader is also a violent survivalist, reader has a similar joel/ellie dynamic with an oc!, raider/cult subplot, typical disturbing stuff in media about zombies/apocalypse situations

Prologue Summary: After nine years of surviving the apocalypse you meet some people who offer you the chance to start over.

A/N: straight up no joel in this :/ sorry lol, this is just character plot because i love angst and slow burn!!!! we support traumatized morally grey fmcs in this house <3

Prologue

March 2011

You had been tracking a doe for about an hour when you heard the sounds. Deep gurgling and clicking echoing from somewhere you couldn’t see.

Fuck.

The deer seemed like a lost cause if there were any more than a single one of those unforgiving creatures lurking nearby.

With one last glance to the deer, its light brown fur shining in the morning sun, you tucked the bow underneath the thick leather strap of the quiver at your back and made quick work of climbing a thick tree.

You watched the creature below from about twenty feet in the air. The deformed body weaving between the trees, dragging its feet through the wet vegetation. Growths emerging from its skull covered any trace of its former humanity. Bright fungi absorbing the very idea that this thing had ever bore resemblance to a person. The bow in your grasp followed its movements as it veered left, and thankfully, away from your campsite.

Not wasting any arrows today.

With a sigh of relief, which sounded more like a huff of annoyance, you surveyed the area a final time before deciding to make your way back to Leon. You dismounted the tree, landing the last few feet with a thud and took off back into the thicket.

Rope and sticks had been used to hold up what had once been a tarp, now just a small sheet of plastic, to create a makeshift tent. It was completely useless against the cold but it had kept you dry from the torrential downpour that had plagued your travel the last few days. The first signs of spring were always welcome after months of cold and snow, but you couldn’t deny the pang of guilt you felt after surviving another winter.

Leon was awake now, nursing a small fire. He grinned as he watched your form emerge from the treeline. The early morning gave you a respite, where it could just be you and Leon. Not what you had become part of.

“Anything good?” He asked, eyes trailing from your face to glance at your empty hands.

“No” You shook your head. “Damn clicker came outta nowhere and spooked the deer I spent an hour tracking” You huffed, slumping beside him.

Grimacing, he handed you a thermos and you sipped. Warm water flooded your mouth and sternum as it landed in your empty stomach. You hummed, savouring the temporary warmth and handed it back to him. He pulled a small bunch of cloth from his backpack and you grimaced at the only remnants of food you had left.

It had been almost six months since you and Leon had been on your own and almost a full two years since you’d left the QZ.

You had only been twelve on outbreak day. But you could recall those memories like it had been yesterday. Stepping off the school bus, doing homework, and eating dinner with your parents, before heading off to bed. You remembered the soft pink of your bedroom. The quilt at the foot of your bed. The toy rabbit you’d slept with since you were born.

But the sounds of alarms and glass shattering and screams had woken you. 1:02 AM flashing bright green on your alarm clock. You had crept downstairs. The noises outside drowned out by the fear of what would be waiting for you.

Standing at the bottom of the stairs, you saw the pool of blood first. Crimson leaking into the cracks of blue kitchen tiles, staining the grout. You had hesitated before entering, not knowing what you would see once you turned the corner and passed the door frame.

Her hair was splayed on the floor like a halo. Strands matted with blood. Her body, stiff in death, looked like she had been knocked back, like someone had shoved her. Peeking around the corner, you saw a huddled form leaning against the fridge; its white exterior marked with streaks of red, fingerprints smeared across family photos and a drawing you had made for your father’s birthday.

Quietly you had called out.

“Dad?”

The hunched form had looked up at the sound, neck craning in an unnatural way. Strained breathing, like someone was trying to speak with lungs full of water, and growling sounds punched passed his lips. Sounds you had only ever heard in nature documentaries, sounds of pained and hungry animals who relied on teeth and claws and blood to survive.

Suddenly everything was happening to someone else. Like you were watching your life unravel from someone else’s eyes.

It wasn’t you when your dad slowly rose to his full height, his hands and mouth covered in your mother’s blood. It wasn’t you when he lunged forward, hands reaching for your small form. It wasn’t you who ran away, taking the stairs two at a time while he slipped in what was left of your mother; still warm. It wasn’t you who had thrown open your parent’s bedroom door, slamming it behind you. Who had searched in the dark, for salvation, for safety, for something that could keep the monster at bay.

The banging on the door was only getting louder, and you had hoped this was all some kind of nightmare. The kind where you woke up crying and your mother would be there to stroke your hair and sing until you drifted back into a peaceful slumber.

But it was real and you had found the bat that your dad had kept stuffed in the closet.

Your small fingers clenched around the handle and you struggled to keep yourself upright. The image of your mother, her soft skin and dimpled smile flashed against the images of her broken body, of her abdomen peeled open. You could still hear the strangled breathing of the creature outside the door.

No longer your father, only wearing his face.

You pushed your back against the wall, feeling the reverberations through the wall as he slammed his body against wood. It was cracking and wouldn’t hold for long.

It wasn’t you who had watched the door splinter. Who watched him shove his mangled form through. Left shoulder broken. Arm dangling loosely at his side. It wasn’t you who struggled to slow your breathing as his unseeing eyes stared into the darkness, streetlights peeking through the blinds to illuminate his grisly appearance. But it had been you. It had been you who had clenched her jaw, teeth grinding against teeth. Tightening your grip and stepping behind him as he wandered into the center of the room. It was you who heard the floorboard creak and had raised the bat before he even turned around. It was you who had swung and swung and swung. Until what had been your father no longer was.

Just a bloodied heap on the ground.

You had been found a few days later, hiding in your closet. Bat sticky with dried blood, still clenched in your hands. They had taken you, kicking and screaming, to what would become the Phoenix QZ, and your home for the next eight years.

Movement startled you from the memories you pondered often, trying to conjure images of birthday parties and the photographs that lined your childhood home. But, all you were left with was the weight of two corpses and the shame of survival.

Andy came through the tree line. His blonde hair stuck to his forehead and his smile bordered on feral. You had to stand to see what he was holding in his hand.

Rabbits.

“Little early for your ass to be up, isn’t it?” You chuckled, walking over to examine his prize.

“Early bird gets the worm” He grinned, holding the rabbits higher up. “Just taking a page from your book”

He wasn’t wrong. In the last six months, you had been almost solely providing food for the four of you. Feeding Leon had been no problem, it was something you’d been doing for the last five years. But, Andy and his brother, Warren, hadn’t been pulling their weight. And you often had to remind them that they begged for your help and you had offered it to them, if they helped keep Leon alive.

The commotion must have alerted Warren, because the older brother emerged from his own makeshift shelter.

It had been a while since you’d caught anything substantial. Relying mostly on birds, fish, and other small wildlife to feed yourselves. But with spring slowly making its appearance, you knew there would be animals everywhere in the coming weeks.

But rabbits, especially three of them, were enough to excite the four of you. Grinning at each other for the first time in weeks.

Andy and Warren were whopping, hollering expletives in excitement. You moved to grab Andy’s arm, needing to shut them both up. But movement to your left had you throwing yourself out of the way.

The clicker.

Fuck.

You should’ve killed that stupid fucking thing when you had the chance. It was on Andy before you even had the opportunity to scream. It grabbed at his chest, seeking grip wherever it could find, and sank its teeth into the skin of his throat. They fell forwards together, limbs tangling together, wrestling for purchase.

Warren came from behind, the branch in his hands colliding with the side of the monster’s head, sending it flying off of Andy. He slammed the wood into its skull, watching as it twitched and went limp against the wet ground.

Andy lay on the ground, clutching his chest and reaching towards his neck. His eyes locked with yours. Panic stricken, wild. You knew that he was dead. They all were. As soon as one of those things got a decent grip, it was over. But that didn’t mean it was okay. It had been almost nine years, and everyone still fought like hell against the inevitable.

Warren was crouched beside his brother, trying to stop the bleeding. He pulled off his own shirt and you winced, seeing the scars that littered his back. The same ones on both Leon and yourself.

With a hand on your bow, you pulled an arrow from your back and gently nudged Warren’s foot with your own before taking a step back.

“Warren” You warned, your voice low.

He jolted, eyes leaving his brother to meet yours, glancing between your face and the weapon in your hands. His hands pushing wet, bloody fabric into his brother’s wounds.

“I..I can’t… what?”

“We have to do it and leave” You glanced over your shoulder at Leon, who had stepped further back, watching with a frantic gaze. “We can’t stay here. Warren, none of this is fucking easy, but Andy’s gone.”

The older man, only twenty-three himself, looked back towards his brother. Andy’s breathing was shallow, ragged. He had already lost so much blood.

It never took long.

Warren’s body shook as he sobbed, as he understood what you meant. You had to put Andy down, and you had to do it quickly. But his shoulders slumped and he shook his head.

“Warren..” You warned again. “You need to step away from him..”

He huffed, breathy and wet, and crawled away from the fading remnant of his younger brother. You didn’t have to look to know that Leon was gone, probably behind a tree, hands over his ears. It was the plan. When shit hits the fan, get low and stay low. Until you call it clear.

You sighed, stringing the bow. You aimed, closed your eyes, released a quiet breath and let go.

Andy lay limp on the ground and you hoped that wherever he ended up, it was better than this.

Shaking your head, you whistled your signal to Leon and set your bow against a stump. The teenager came peeking out and your heart clenched at the tear tracks carving through the dirt on his face.

“Look out!” He screamed suddenly, eyes flicking behind you.

Before you could even register, the side of your body made contact with the ground. Looking up you saw Warren, huffing, eyes red rimmed. He held the branch again. You threw up your arms, ready to deflect the fatal blow, but it never came.

The deep cut of a shotgun rang out through the air. And you caught the way Warren’s eyes widened and then rolled to the back of his head before he slumped to the ground beside you. Scrambling, you sprang to your feet and launched yourself towards Leon.

“Easy there little lady” an unknown voice spoke up, shotgun in hand. “I’m not gonna hurt’cha, I just need you to put your hands up”

The sound stopped you in your tracks. You could see Leon with his arms already in the air.

Another rule: do everything you can to not get shot. Smart kid.

You twirled back towards the man with a smirk.

“You just killed my buddy there, not sure if I should trust you”

The man with the gun tilted his head slightly, confused, but kept his gun trained on your form. He was older, probably mid fifties, with dark skin and dark hair that was peppered with greys.

“He was going to kill you” It came out unsure. He was right, but why?

“Occupational hazard?” You quipped back.

He sighed and looked over his shoulder. Fuck. You were hoping you could distract him long enough to either get the gun, or at least to get Leon out of here. But if anyone else showed up, you were screwed.

“Maria!” He called out. “Over here!”

A woman came from behind him, presumably Maria. Her eyes widened at the sight. The clicker, Andy and Warren, Leon and yourself. You were almost twenty-one, but the hunger made you look closer to Leon’s age, only fourteen himself.

Maria tapped the man on the shoulder and jerked her head, needing to speak to him. He nodded and refocused his gaze on you.

“Don’t. Fucking. Move.” He grunted.

You nodded, looking back at Leon and offering a small smile. They didn’t seem like raiders, or slavers. They looked clean and well fed. They didn’t look FEDRA either, but you weren’t about to test the limits of their mercy. Either way, they would either kill you or they wouldn’t. For Leon’s sake, you hoped whatever happened, if it came to it, it would be quick.

They spoke a few feet away, glancing back towards the two of you every couple seconds. The man struggled to force his gaze away, turning back to the woman and grimacing at the words coming out of her mouth.

“Maria-” He went to grab her arm but she slinked away and came to stand before you.

She offered her hand. You hesitantly accepted, coating her fingers in dirt and blood. She barely spared it a glance before rubbing it into the denim of her thigh.

She smiled gently. “I’m Maria, that’s Elton” She said, motioning to the larger man behind her. She seemed tough. You felt more comfortable under her gaze, more than anyone who had looked at you in the last two years.

You offered your name and turned towards the younger boy. “That’s Leon” You motioned for him to come over.

He took a few hesitant steps before lacing his fingers through yours and reaching his other hand towards Maria. She took his hand, shaking it. Anyone else could have missed it, but a flicker of something, maybe longing, passed over her face when she locked eyes with Leon.

“Are you related?” Came from Elton.

Leon’s hair was lighter than yours and his features were still coated in a thin layer of baby fat. So, most people believed that he was your brother, half at least, and you never corrected them. But, something in Maria’s eyes and the way she watched you, made you want to be honest. You shook your head.

“Known him since he was eight, been taking care of him ever since” You didn’t often talk about Leon’s biological family. They were FEDRA officials, but when rations started dwindling a few years after the outbreak, they didn’t hesitate to drop the youngest of their children off on the steps of the QZ’s orphanage. Where you had been for the last three years.

“How old are you?” Maria asked, glancing between the two of you.

“I’m fourteen” Leon blurted, looking up at you with wide eyes. You squeezed his hand twice. A signal you had first used in the orphanage, after you’d been beaten for stealing or for lying. Leon would sit beside you and read, occasionally squeezing your hand. You’d squeeze back twice if you wanted him to keep reading, three times if something was wrong.

“I’m twenty-one” You speak, not meeting Maria’s eyes.

“What are you doing out here?” Elton’s voice came over Maria’s shoulders again, kinder. You realized that the two of them had to be related. Father and daughter maybe?

“It’s a really long story” You try, unsure of how to explain the last decade of your lives.

“Give us the short version” Maria tries, placing her hand on your shoulder.

“We..um..we escaped raiders before the winter…” You fumble. Yes you had been with raiders, not exactly prisoners, but these two didn’t need to know that. Not yet. Maria’s eyes softened and she looked back at Elton, who’s face betrayed him at that moment. You could tell he was confused. Not many people survived the winter the way you had done.

“You’ve been living out here?” He asked, glancing between the makeshift shelters and your bow, the only real weapon you had.

You nodded. “Here and there, I tried not to stay in one place too long…”

They both nodded, movement was essential. Unless you had the means to defend yourself and your camp, it was better to stay out of the way. You’d learned that when the Phoenix QZ tore itself down.

“Where are you from?” The question came from Leon. You know that he noticed their clothing, their guns, the way they seemed sated and well-fed. Leon always noticed details, things that a lot of other kids deemed unnecessary.

“We come from a community”

“A QZ?”

Elton laughed at that. “Jackson’s not like a QZ. Sure we got walls and jobs, but ain’t nothin like one of those prisons”

“Jackson?” It was your turn to ask a question.

Maria nodded. “We’re a community that helps each other out and keeps each other alive. As long as you earn your keep and stay out of trouble. You could come back with us.”

“And we should trust you? Why?” You had reason to be defensive, to be unsure of what these strangers were promising.

“You’ll just have to find out.” Maria smiled, looking back towards Elton.

For the first time in a while, you felt something like hope. That you had survived the last year for a reason. That Leon could finally have a real home.

“Take us there”

You felt Leon’s grip tighten. You squeezed back twice.

Thanks for reading!! Please like/reblog if you enjoyed <3

#joel miller x reader #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller #joel miller x you #joel x reader #joel tlou #joel miller tlou #fanfiction #joel miller everyday #i love that old man‼️

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slu7formen · 9 months

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icy nights | cedric diggory x f.r

cedric invites you to go ice skating on christmas night, and how could you say no to him?

warnings: kissing, just pure fluff. <3

reminder: english is not my first language so I apologize for any spelling mistakes.

“Where did you even get those?” you asked Cedric as he closed the front door behind him, the yelling and laughing of the people at the living room now becoming a barely mumbling as you both walked.

Cedric was holding two pairs of ice skates, one for you, one for him. He smiled as he talked. “My older cousins. They were the ones allowed to go ice skating during the holidays while I just watched them from my room because I was too young and I could get hurt. Now they get to watch”

You laughed as you kept walking, hands deep inside your pockets as you looked up at the sky. Despite being late at night, the stars were enough to light up the sky along with the moon.

Cedric’s house was a comfy place to spend Christmas at. It smelled just like the perfect amount of pumpkin and gingerbread, with the fire and those amazing cookies that Cedric’s grandma made and basically forced you to eat more than once. His family was nice, more than nice actually, really sweet and caring, and it made you feel like part of the family too, despite only being with Cedric for a few months.

His house was small, but it was located at a rural zone, and it had such a landscape that every time you looked at it when you woke up, the soft sun and orange dawn would take your breath away. Also, it had a lake, one in which him and his cousins would swim during summer and now, skate on during winter.

Only this time, it was just you and him.

“Do they fit?” he asked as he finished tying your laces, and placed one of his hands on your calve as you shook your foot, smoothly drawing circles with his thumb.

“They’re a little big, but it’s fine” you answered. He nodded once, then sat at the bench next to you.

“Let me put on mine” he said as he took off his shoes. “Have you ever ice skated before?” he questioned.

“No” you replied as you looked at him. You loved how soft yet smooth and marble looking skin looked tonight. His cheeks were red, as always, but it contrasted perfectly with the pale color of his face. His lips, plumped and pink, weren’t even dry because of the freezing weather. Unlike yours, you had to apply lip balm every five minutes.

Truth was, Cedric looked good at all times, but something about this particular night that made your tummy flip in a different way whenever you looked at him, almost as if it was the first day you met, in which you felt the exact same.

Winter just went so good with him. The turtle neck, the long coat, almost brushing his ankles, the ridiculously long scarf and his black jeans. His ears were red because he refused to wear a beanie, so you wore it instead.

Cedric thought it looked cute on you. After all, your cheeks were just as red as his and the soft cream colored accessory on your head that combined with your outfit just made you look like a tiny marshmallow to his eyes. He loved it.

“Okay, slowly” he pointed out when you almost fell once you stepped into the ice. You gripped his hands tightly as you closed your eyes even tighter. “Okay, honey, you have to use your eyes” you heard his laugh ring in your ears.

“How can you do this so easily? Skating backwards!?” you panicked. Your feet were moving smoothly along the ice, and you could stay like this forever, if it wasn’t for the fact that the reason why you were moving forward, was because your boyfriend was pushing you towards his body, that kept moving back and back and back.

“It’s easy, you’ll see” he tried to sound as calm as possible to calm you down. After a few seconds he decided to let go of your left hand slowly, to which you didn’t complain as much as he expected you to. “Open your eyes”

You shook your head.

“Come on” he smiled “I won’t let go of you”

He could never let go.

You both stopped your slow skating as you opened your eyes, looking down at your feet. The fact that the only thing that was holding you to the ground was a thin and sharp piece of shiny blade was what made you the most nervous. Staring off wrong would definitely make you fall to the ground and have the worst embarrassment from your life.

“H-how do I do this? I feel like I’ll fall”

“You won’t fall” he laughed out loud. “Merlin, you are so cute” he muttered almost to himself, but he knew you heard. It made your cheeks redder. “Just go slow, I promise I won’t let you go”

You nodded as he took the initiative, smoothly sliding his thin skates through the ice, which made a satisfactory sound anytime the blade cut the thick layer of frozen water.

You then started to do it on your own without even noticing. The cold wind of the night hit into your face sharply, but you didn’t care. Cedric held your hand as you started to go faster and faster, almost as if you tried to race your boyfriend.

“See? You got it!” he encouraged you. “Can I let go now?”

“No! You promised you wouldn’t, Ced!” you yelled as you abruptly turned around. The sudden move made you both trip in your own feet and soon, you fell to the ice.

Your butt hit the hard surface as Cedric slightly groaned when he hit his forearm, but quickly started to laugh.

“I’m sorry” you giggled.

“It’s fine, honey”

He sighed deeply as he let himself fall in the cold ice, coat getting wet and a deep freezing breeze brushing his head and neck. You imitated him, laying next to his body as you felt both sensations, the coldness of the ice and snow, and the warmth of his body.

The sky was shiny, just as every night that you saw this past week that you slept at Cedric’s house. However, seeing it from the middle of the lake, staring directly at it, was completely different than looking at it from a window.

This was much better. It was like your eyes weren’t big enough to look around you, but everything was at your sight. The leafless trees, the house yellow lights, the big and white moon as the stars shinned around it.

You suddenly felt out of breath at such beauty.

“It’s beautiful” you whispered.

“It is” Cedric agreed.

Only that he wasn’t looking at the sky. He was looking at you.

You turned your head when you felt his eyes on you. You thought his words, and hid your face in the thick layer of your coat to prevent him of seeing your poor red face. He laughed as he put his forearm over his forehead, really looking at the sky this time.

“I’m really glad you’re here with me” he said. The tip of his fingers touched yours, laying on the ice and wetting your fingertips.

You gripped your hand around his index finger, holding tightly. He secretly loved it when you did it.

“I’m glad you’re with me too” you answered, then turned your head to him, so you could live this moment one last time before getting back inside, as you promised Cedric’s mum you would so you wouldn’t get sick. “Merry Christmas, Ced”

His dimples showed when he smiled at you again. “Merry Christmas, baby”

#cedric diggory #cedric diggory x fem!reader #cedric diggory x reader #cedric diggory x y/n #cedric diggory x you #cedric x y/n #cedric x you #cedric diggory x female reader #cedric #cedric x fem!reader #cedric deserved better #cedric imagine #cedric diggory imagine #cedric x oc #cedric x reader #cedric diggory blurb

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callsign-rogueone · 6 months

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nothing burns like the cold - r.g.

what's supposed to be an ordinary afternoon sparring with your friend goes wrong in an unexpected way. words: 1.4k 🏷: one incredibly mild Iron Flame spoiler (Ridoc's signet), she/her reader, very brief description of friendly sparring, no real physical injury, nothing too bad... both of you have Feelings and need to talk about them, Ridoc being sad deserves it's own warning, wingwoman Violet to the rescue! this can be read as a standalone or you can consider it a way-back prequel to hey roomie, my poly Ridoc/Sawyer/reader fic (more of that trio coming soon, by the way!)

Ridoc’s fist lands against your ribs, and you don’t know how to describe what happens, other than cold. Coldest shower of your life, bucket of ice water over your head, jumped into the river in late December cold, that shocks your senses and has you crumpling to the mat beneath you.

Your friends gasp, at your side in an instant.

You’re indoors, but your shirt is soaked like you’ve been out in the rain for twenty minutes, and your hair is dusted with… snow? You blink the wet flakes from your eyelashes, stunned.

Rhiannon helps you to your feet, and you wrap your arms around yourself, shivering.

Sawyer removes his flight jacket, draping it over your shoulders. The fabric is warm with his body heat, but it doesn’t do much to fight the chill you feel around your heart; the way the wet material of your clothes clings to your skin.

“I’m so sorry,” Ridoc breathes. “I had no idea that was going to happen.”

You still haven’t said a word, your entire body trembling — you’re in shock, unable to process your friend’s words.

“Get her into dry clothes,” Bodhi instructs quietly. “She should be fine in a few hours.”

Rhiannon nods, leading you out of the gym and toward your room.

Ridoc stares at his hands, at the frost that still coats his fingertips. You should be fine? Gods, what had he done?

Now he knows how Sawyer felt when his metal-bending signet manifested and he nearly skewered his sparring partner. But that’s the operative word — nearly. He’d definitely hit you with… whatever this is.

“You’re an ice wielder,” Dain answers before the boy can ask, dry and straightforward as always. “Professor Carr can explain.” He takes a few steps toward the door, realizing that Ridoc isn't following him; the younger boy is still stuck in place, silent.

“She’ll be okay,” Violet promises, touching a hand to his arm.

Sawyer offers some encouragement as well: “She knows you didn’t mean it.”

That’s not what he’s worried about.

————————————————

You aren’t at dinner that night, nor at evening formation; he doesn’t see you until breakfast the next day.

Your heart aches as he takes a seat clear across the table from you, as far away as he can be.

Violet comes to sit at your side instead, not mentioning yesterday’s events, but she gives you a soft smile that says I’m glad you’re okay.

You return it, though it doesn't feel as genuine as hers— the cold feeling is long gone, but it’s been replaced with something else that feels just as terrible.

You push the feeling down, waving Sawyer over to sit at your other side and extending him his flight jacket with a soft smile. “Thank you. That was really sweet of you.”

“Of course,” he says, reddening slightly as he puts it back on. He looks like he wants to say something else, but he quiets when he sees you glance at the other end of the table, deflating when you realize Ridoc is already gone.

Ridoc continues keeping his distance. You stand between Rhiannon and Sawyer at morning formation, and sit with them during Battle Brief, Ridoc at the end of your row, uncharacteristically silent.

You don’t see him that afternoon; you haven’t manifested a signet yet, so you aren’t attending Professor Carr’s class. You choose to sit in the study room instead, a textbook in front of you that you hardly touch; you can’t bring yourself to focus.

It’s getting dark out before dinner these days, the winter solstice approaching quickly. It’s supposed to freeze tonight, you’d heard someone say this morning. How ironic.

You sigh, curling up in the chair and tucking your legs to your chest, trying again to start the reading you’d been assigned.

“Mind if I join you?” Violet asks, a matching book of her own in her hand.

You smile softly, gesturing to the chair opposite you.

She sits, but doesn’t take out a pen or paper. “Don’t take it personally,” she says quietly, being mindful of the few other students across the room. “It really spooked him when… that happened. I think he’s afraid he’ll hurt you -- or someone else -- again if he gets too close.”

You’re silent for a moment, your chest aching at the idea of Ridoc, warm, happy, confident Ridoc being afraid, feeling guilty over what had happened by pure accident.

“I talked to him, but I think he needs to hear it from you,” she says gently, opening her book and starting to read, ending the conversation there.

You gaze down at the text, not reading the words -- instead thinking of what you could say to him to make him feel better, to get him back into your life again.

“The truth,” your dragon suggests. “The whole truth.”

————————————————

As soon as Sawyer sees you, he knows what you’re here to do. He excuses himself quietly, mumbling something about forgetting his book upstairs before he shoves everything into his bag and practically bolting away — not subtle at all.

Ridoc blinks in confusion, looking up to ask his friend what the hell that was, but he falls silent when he sees you.

“Hi,” you say quietly.

You could nearly cry at the sound of his voice as he responds, speaking to you for the first time in two days. “Hi.”

You pause, just looking at him for a moment. He looks like he hasn’t slept well for a few nights, his usually vibrant curls and glowing skin flat and dulled. A few of his cuticles are bleeding — he must have been picking at them as a nervous habit.

It hurts you to see him like this.

“You can do this,” she encourages. “Speak from the heart.”

From the heart, you say to yourself. It should be easy enough to say the things you’ve wanted to tell him for weeks.

He speaks before you can, but remains seated, making no move toward you. “I’m so sorry,” he says quietly. “I know saying it won’t change anything, but I really am sorry.”

You smile at him softly. “It’s okay. I’m fine, really. I slept it right off.”

You’d looked and felt so cold yesterday, but here you are, healthy and smiling, not mad at all.

“I’m still sorry. It was an accident, but if I had hit any harder, or hit you somewhere else, I don’t know…” he chews his lip, clearly still upset. “It scared the crap out of me, seeing you like that.”

You slide into the seat next to him and take his hand gently, interlocking your fingers. The warmth of your skin comforts him — that, and the fact you’re still willing to touch him after the other day, when that same hand had nearly frozen you to death.

“I never want that to happen again, especially not to you,” he says softly, gazing at your hands. “I really like you, you know.”

“You like everyone,” you say, not quite following. “That’s your whole deal. You’re easily the most likeable and easygoing guy in the quadrant.”

He cracks a smile, and you feel every ounce of stress melt from your shoulders at the sight of him happy again. “I’m glad you think so, but that's not what I meant.”

Your breath catches. Is he saying what you think he’s saying? He can’t be.

“I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you.”

You blink at him once, twice, letting out a shocked laugh.

His face falls, and he pulls back, starting to gather his things from the table. “Forget it.”

“No, hey, I’m sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you,” you say quickly, reaching for his hand again. “I was laughing because I came here to say the same thing. I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you, too.”

“Really?” he breathes, starry-eyed.

“Really,” you confirm. “I have been for a while.”

“Can I kiss you?” he asks, maybe a little too eagerly.

You smile. “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

His lips are on yours before you can blink, soft and plush and perfect. He lifts his other hand, settling it on your waist ever-so-gently, stroking over the slightly tender spot in your ribs in a silent apology. The warmth of his palm against your side soothes the ache, relaxing you completely.

He pulls back after a moment, gazing at you softly.

“I think I’m more than pretty sure after that,” you breathe, stunned.

It’s his turn to laugh as he presses another soft kiss to your lips. “Me too, princess. Me too.”

#ridoc gamlyn #ridoc gamlyn x reader #fourth wing #fourth wing x reader #mine #I personally am considering this officially #Ridoc Sawyer and Princess #bc of those interactions with Saw... sweet bb

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justsomerandomfanfic · 4 months

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Just Keep Breathing - Garfield Logan X Female Reader

Title: Just Keep Breathing

Garfield Logan X Female Reader

Additional Characters: Cyborg (Mentioned), and the other Teen Titans (Mentioned)

Requested by: Anon!

WC: 2,491

Warnings: Panic attacks, thoughts and mentions of home invasions, nicknames, brief mentions of blood, brief mentions of knives, violence briefly mentioned, crying, mini angst, and fluff

You had been having such a good dream, something involving unicorns, amusement parks, and cheese for some reason, but a lovely dream nevertheless. You didn't want to get up from your bed, the many blankets and your favorite comforter were perfectly wrapped around your body, engulfing you in your own personal cocoon of warmth and happiness. You sighed, shutting your eyes briefly, snuggling yourself further, deeper, into your blankets. Yeah, this was heaven. It was nice to be able to huddle up in your warm blankets - especially during the harsh winter months in Jump City. You could stay in bed forever...

But you really needed to go to the bathroom.

You huffed, slightly annoyed, you really just wanted to get back to sleep; maybe try and get back into that dream of yours. But, the bathroom was calling your name. Reluctantly, you pushed the blankets off of yourself, immediately shivering as the cold air hit you. Quickly, you shuffled on the green bunny slippers that your boyfriend, Garfield, had gifted you, so as to not let the cold hard floors bite your bare feet.

Slipping out of your room, you shuffle down the hallway, still a bit groggy as you rubbed an eyelid with the palm of your hand. Thankfully, the short trip to the bathroom was easily done, ever since you installed auto-sensing lights near the floor; no more stubbing your toes on the corners of the walls anymore. Thank you, Target.

You began to hum some song that was stuck in your head - some song that you heard on the radio a couple of times, but never really got around to Shazaming - as you washed your hands; rinsing off all the soap before turning off the faucet. Drying your hands, you paused. Outside the door, you thought you heard something. Turning your head, you stared at the bathroom door - which was thankfully locked - trying to stay as quiet as possible to try and see if you could hear that sound again. Maybe it was just your imagination? Probably not the best night to have watched a horror movie… But you really wanted to watch 'IT' from the late eighties.

Anyway, you knew that sometimes, at night, your brain could play tricks on you; when it's bored. You tried it once, staring at your own reflection in the mirror with the bathroom light off. Your face morphed and shifted into something disturbing... It was spooky, you'd give it that, and you never did it since then. And you've heard of the 'Bloody Mary' challenge, you were never trying that.

Though, this time, you felt a shiver run down your spine. You continued to listen, your ears straining, until you heard something again. You let out the breath that you were holding, your hands beginning to fiddle with each other as you continued to stare at the door.

Your mind raced, not knowing what to do. You doubted that you could face whatever or whoever was out there. You didn't know what they wanted, why they were in your apartment, or if they had some sort of weapon. For all you knew, they were looking for you... Maybe... You didn't want your mind to wander and freak you out even further, but it was sort of too late for that. After a moment, you grabbed the door handle, unlocking it with a twist. Slowly twisting the door handle further - so that you could easily open the door if needed - you pressed the side of your face against the door, listening.

You then froze, pure terror filling you and bubbling in the pit of your stomach as the door handle twisted slightly in your grip. You didn't know if that was just you - your grip slipping slightly - or if there was actually someone... Right, outside your door. Immediately, you locked the door, your heart racing a million miles per second as you ran a hand through your hair. Glancing around the room, you tried to look for anything that you could possibly use for protection - as a weapon - but it was hard to fully think, or fully understand your thoughts.

You were scared. You were scared that whoever was in your apartment was going to get you. If there was someone out there, they probably would search all the rooms before finding the bathroom door locked. They would surely try and get in. They would punch, kick, and slam against the door until they brutally forced it open. And, there was no escape. Your bathroom was small. Just a toilet, sink, and tub tightly placed together in a tiny room that you were convinced used to be a closet of some kind. There wasn't even a window.

You weren't like the supers of the world. You were just a regular human being. You had a regular job, and had a regular life. You paid your bills and you went out to hang with your friends sometimes. You weren't like Garfield. Garfield. Your eyes widened as you raised your arm up. On your wrist was a communicator that Garfield gave to you; Cy had created it for him to give to you. It was in case anything bad were to happen or if there was an emergency, Garfield was just one push of a button away. All you had to do was call him, and he'd be right there.

Regret swirled within you. You had wished you did take Garfield's - and the team's - invitation on having a slumber party at the Tower. But, you weren't really feeling up to socializing, you had a long day of work before meeting up with Garfield and his friends. You just wanted to go home, eat, and rest. But now, you were really regretting not staying at the Tower. You could've been watching some movie, eating popcorn with everyone, before cuddling up with Garfield for the night, right about now.

Right now, you really wished to be anywhere else.

Staring down at your communicator, you pressed the center button, only then did you feel that your heart was racing a million miles a second. With one tap, the small screen lit up, a tired-looking Garfield appearing in it. "Y/N?" He mumbled groggily through the communication system, rubbing his eyes with a curled fist. "It's four in the morning. What's up?" He yawned, and the moment you heard his voice, you felt the tears well up in your eyes; just hearing his voice made you feel so much better, but you were still scared. When he noticed the distraught look on your face, he became more awake, concern clear in his expression. "Hey... Hey, Y/N. You okay, babe? Why are you crying?" You tried to calm down, you tried to speak, but no words were coming out; your panic only rising. Becoming more worried at your worsening condition, he continued, albeit somewhat frantic, "Hey, okay, babe. I'm coming right over, uh, stay right there." As quickly as he said those words, he hung up the call.

You dropped your arm, but not before trying to rub the racing salty tears from your cheeks. Stepping back, you tried to calm your racing heart. Blinking, you looked up at the ceiling light; blurred from your watery vision. Your heart felt as if it was pounding against your ribcage, threatening to break out of your chest and escape - or explode, or implode. Your body began to feel extremely cold as you stepped into the dry tub behind you. You clenched your clammy hands, your fingers tingling. Sliding down against the tiled wall, you raised your knees to your chest, curling your arms around them.

And though you felt cold, you also felt incredibly warm. The panic crashed down on you like a rough ocean wave, crashing down on you so strong that you couldn't breathe. It felt as if you were drowning. Tears kept flowing freely from your eyes, rolling down your cheeks and onto the tub below you. Your body shook violently, and your breathing grew irregular. You began to hyperventilate as the images flashed through your mind. A mysterious figure lurking in your apartment. Hiding in your closet, waiting to pounce. The blood on his knife as he slashed. The cold, hard floor as you bled out. Your mind was racing with so many horrible 'what ifs and maybes' that you didn't hear the apartment door opening, and closing.

Garfield carefully entered the quiet and dark apartment - in his cheetah form. A bit much? No. He didn't know what he was going to be facing. He needed to be prepared for anything. He surveyed the room, his green eyes narrowed as he searched room after room. A dreadful thought scratched in the back of his head; what if some villain found out about you? As he searched your apartment for anyone, he prayed not. After checking each room, under the bed, in the closets, behind curtains, everything... He walked up to the bathroom door. Shifting back, turned on the hallway light, absentmindedly adjusting the string of his purple hoodie before he gentle knocked on the door.

"Babe... You in there?" He juggled the doorknob, it was locked. He knew you were in there,he could hear your muffled crying. With no sound of you opening the door, he pursed his lips before getting an idea. Shifting down into an ant, he crawled under the door. Upon reaching the other side, he shifted back, his green, worried eyes immediately finding your huddled figure in the bathtub. Crouching down, he placed his hands on the tub's rim, his heart feeling as if it was physically breaking upon seeing you so distressed. "Oh, baby, what happened? Are you okay? Are you hurt?" Garfield asked softly, yet quickly - though his voice was slightly muffled from the ringing in your ears as he reached out with a hand to run his fingers through your damp hair; brushing it away from your face and behind your ear. You sniffled loudly as you attempted to answer.

"I-" A sob escaped your throat and you tried speaking more clearly. You wiped your nose with the back of your hand, "I-I'm not hurt." You then spoke, your voice was shaky and uneven.

Garfield nodded, his hand falling from brushing through your hair to cup your wet cheek, brushing the tears away with the pad of his thumb. "Alright, that's great. Uh, can you tell me why you’re crying?" He then asked, watching as your eyes flickered around the bathroom before landing on him.

You shook your head quickly, "No," Your soft voice cut him off, "Please-" You sucked in some air, but for some reason your lungs felt extremely dry; they seemed to burn. "I- I can't breathe."

Garfield's eyes widened as he nodded, mind scrambling slightly as he went straight into action. He knew the moment he saw you that you were suffering through a panic attack; he had them sometimes too. "Okay, uh, here," He paused, standing to slip into the empty bathtub beside you, Immediately as he did that, you latched onto him, your fingers gripping onto the soft material of his purple hoodie. "Okay, I know that this is scary. But you can get through this, babe." He spoke as reassuring as he could, his arms wrapping around you, "Here," He took one of your hands, placing it on his chest, right above his heart. "Can you feel how my heart is beating?" He asked softly, smiling gently down at you. You blinked, nodding silently. "We're gonna try and match its rhythm, okay?" Garfield asked, still holding your trembling hand in place. You nodded again, and he nodded back. "Okay, babe, breathe in," Garfield slowly started to inhale and exhale as you watched, following his example as best as possible.

After a few minutes of just breathing and sitting silently, you pulled away from Garfield, wiping your eyes and attempting to compose yourself once more. "I'm sorry, Gar." You whispered, your eyes focused downward. "I thought someone broke in… I-I was freaking out over nothing."

Garfield almost pouted, his green eyes softening as he reached out to cup your cheek once more, lifting your eyes to meet his. "You have nothing to apologize for, babe," He murmured, pressing a kiss to your forehead. "Everything is fine. You're okay." His emerald eyes were filled with so much love and concern that it made you melt inside. "Do you need anything else? Do you want water? Like, dude, I know that when I have my attacks, I always want water after. The same with ice cream. Do you want me to go get you some? Or stay here?-" Garfield asked, but you cut him off, leaning forward and kissing him on the cheek softly.

"Stay with me?" You asked, and Garfield couldn't help but sigh; he practically had hearts in his eyes - smitten by your touch.

"Of course, babe," He leaned over to kiss you one last time before pulling away, “Anything for you.” You leaned your head on his shoulder and closed your eyes. He kissed the top of your head before resting his chin there. You both sat there for a good minute or so, before Garfield began to feel uncomfortable; his side oddly pressed against the tub’s wall. "Well, I don't know about you, babe, but I think sleeping in your bed might be more comfortable."

You let out a laugh, "Are you judging the comfortability of my tub?"

“I wouldn’t dream of demeaning your lovely bathtub, my dear.” He chuckled, standing, and offering his hand out to you; you took it, "My lady," He made you laugh once more with the terrible attempt he had of a posh accent.

"Why, thank you," You curtsied before you both stepped out of the empty tub and out of the bathroom.

Hand in hand, you and Garfield headed to your bedroom, where he helped you climb into bed, crawling under the blankets after you; wrapping his arms around you, he dugged his head in your neck. "I love you, Gar," You spoke softly, only for Garfield to pull away from you slightly, just enough to let his eyes meet yours.

"I love you more, babe," He jokingly argued, unable to look away from you, he felt his cheeks burn slightly just by being in your presence. “Incredibly more.”

"Yeah, yeah, I know, you're a big sap," You giggled, resting your head on his chest - you could hear his heart beating - "But, I love you more."

The room then fell quiet, Garfield listened as your breathing slowed, and evened out. “Impossible..,” Carding his fingers softly through your hair, he turned to press his lips to the top of your head, a small smile growing on his face. "I love you more." He muttered softly before he drifted off to sleep, hoping to see your smile when he woke up.

---

Main Masterlist | DC Masterlist

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