#has this been done somewhere? i feel like it was

[wheredidhiseyebrowsgo]

Some of @render-me-usless' Fav Fics!

If you want to make me a list let me know in IM. You can do whatever you want, fave fics, fav tropes or even check out the pending asks page and fill one of those.

Where to Search for Snow by suburbanmotel

(1/1 I 8,954 I Mature I Sterek)

Stiles and his Gigantic Repressed Feelings accidentally affect the weather. A lot. Like. A lot.

//

  “It’s snowing, Stiles,” says Derek.

Stiles looks up. He nods. “Yeah. Yeah it is.”

Derek looks at him. “It’s snowing, Stiles. In your bedroom.”

Stiles and the Seven Wolves by SylvieW

(1/1 I 10,421 I Teen I Sterek)

Stiles is Snow White, Kate is the Evil Queen, and when Chris the Huntsman doesn't kill him, he runs off to live with seven werewolves.

Somewhere to Start by Lissadiane

(1/1 I 33,552 I Teen I Sterek)

Stiles has always known that he isn't quite human - the plant life that tends to sprout around him whenever he gets upset or excited gives it away. He's never really fit in among the regular people in Beacon Hills and is determined to wait it out, go to college, and find somewhere to belong. He's forced to abandon those plans, however, after he desperately agrees to enter into an arranged marriage to save his father's life.

An arranged marriage with an angry, sometimes furry dude with trust issues. It's all very Beauty and the Beast, without the singing candlesticks.

Waiting by isthatbloodonhisshirt (wasterella)

(2/2 I 81,018 I Teen I Sterek)

Not wanting to think on it too much, Stiles took a step forward and passed his hand between the bars, moving the bleeding side closer to Derek’s mouth.

“Not too close, he bites.”

Stiles snatched his hand away just as Derek had been about to lick at it. The snarl he got in response was not comforting.

“He what?” Stiles asked nervously, turning to Deaton.

The man looked a little amused. “Don’t worry, only if he doesn’t like you.”

“Well, he probably hates me, now!” Stiles insisted, turning back to Derek.

He looked extremely displeased.

Three Marks by sanam

(8/8 I 113,736 I Mature I Sterek)

"And then there was pain again, but this time it was in only three places—his arm, below his clavicle, and next to his heart, all on the left side. It felt like the skin was being sliced apart, ripped open, flayed off— And suddenly it was done. Derek looked across the room and saw the boy on the floor, looking about as bad as Derek felt."

Derek and Stiles learn that bonding is probably best done with ridiculous amounts of video games and maybe a little bit of time.

A Desperate Arrangement by mikkimouse

(25/25 I 115,506 I Explicit I Sterek)

"I'm sorry, I believe there's something wrong with my hearing," Stiles said. "Because I could have sworn you just told me you set up a betrothal agreement with the Hales. A betrothal agreement involving me. Me."

Scott smiled his easygoing smile and nodded, which told Stiles no, he hadn't misheard a damn thing.

After seven years of lengthy negotiations, the treaty between the Hales and the Argents has fallen apart and the two countries fell into war.

Months later, there's an uneasy truce, thanks to the intervention of King Scott McCall, but it won't last. In a desperate attempt to maintain the peace, the Hales sign a treaty with the McCalls to marry Prince Derek to Prince Stiles Stilinski, King Scott's brother.

In the history of the world, there have been many better ideas.

Black and Blue by charlotteinlace

(50/50 I 209,549 I Explicit I Sterek)

Stiles knows what he should be doing, finding a good Dom and seeing a few dozen therapists. But that shit can wait, right now he's got a gang to infiltrate and a murderer to find. A murderer who killed his father.

[jungkit]

yang jungwon- ache for you

jw x f!reader ☯︎ fluff, angst ☯︎ cursing, suggestive ☯︎ wc 842 ☯︎ not proofread

You considered Jungwon one of your close friends, having grown up next to each other and your families being close.

Where you were, he was.

And you hate to admit it, but over time, you grew to have a crush on him.

You can’t help it! He’s grown to be such a good person, not to mention handsome.

You’re certainly not the only one either.

It’s almost everyday you hear one girl or another talking about Jungwon.

You know they envy you for being close to him, but even so, you think he only sees you as a friend.

So, you’ve kept your feelings secret.

There have been numerous times where you’ve wanted to confess, but chickened out every time.

You can’t help but swoon whenever Jungwon talks about you to others, which is why when you hear him mention your name, you can’t help but listen around the corner of the hallway.

“She’s so fucking annoying. I get we’ve been friends since we were kids but it’s like I can never escape her. She’s always there, always clinging to me somehow, I wish she’d just back off.”

You feel your heart crack as you take in his words.

Is this how he’s felt about you all along? Or was this a recent feeling?

Either way, tears prick your eyes as you take a step back.

Without warning, someone turns the corner, coming into direct contact with you.

You look up and see Jungwon, a confused look on his face.

He sees the tears in your eyes and knows.

“Y/N…I-”

You put a hand up, telling him to stop.

Turning around, you begin walking away.

“Y/N, wait!”

His hand makes contact with your shoulder, but you shrug it off.

Making your way into the girls bathroom, somewhere he can’t follow you, you sit on the sink and let the tears flow, trying not to make any noise.

Jungwon stands outside the bathroom, trying to coax you to come out and talk to him.

Only when the bell rings do you hear footsteps leaving the area.

You freshen yourself up, splashing some cold water on your face before heading to class.

You spend the next few days completely avoiding Jungwon who is still attempting to talk to you.

Why? You’re giving him what he wanted.

He even came to your house, asking to see you but you told your parents you didn’t want to see him, to their surprise.

They begged you to tell them what happened but you refused.

Despite everything, you don’t want Jungwon getting into trouble.

Jungwon feels like his world is crashing down.

He knows that what he said was true, he did feel suffocated by you, but he didn’t go about it the right way.

He only started feeling this way recently, wanting space from you for a while.

No, he doesn’t hate you, he just wanted to spend some time apart.

Now he feels terrible for what he’s done.

He didn’t miss the side eye your parents gave him, wanting to know why their daughter refused to see him. He wanted to confess, tell the truth but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

As he lays in bed after another unsuccessful day of trying to talk to you, he thinks about the past 18 years of his life.

You’ve always been there, by his side through everything.

And now, he’s possibly ruined everything.

Jungwon reevaluates everything.

Why did he say what he said?

Because he felt suffocated by your presence.

But why?

He’d never had a problem until recently.

As he scrolls through your instagram, he looks at your most recent post.

You’re beautiful, you always have been.

Even at a young age, Jungwon thought you were pretty.

You’ve grown into an amazing, beautiful young woman.

He feels an ache in his heart at the thought of losing you.

He thinks about you, about your smile, your laugh.

Without realizing, he’s begun to ache somewhere other than his heart.

Looking down, he groans.

Now he has to go take a cold shower.

The next morning, you make your way to school, headphones in not hearing the footsteps behind you.

Jungwon throws himself in front of you, grabbing your shoulders so you stop.

Looking up at him, you try not to lean into his touch that you’ve missed so much.

“What,” you say, giving him a cold stare.

“I realized why I said what I said. It’s because I’m so infatuated with you, that I thought pushing you away would push my feelings away. I love you and I’m sorry.”

You freeze up under Jungwon’s hold, processing his confession.

“What?”

“I. Love. You.”

You feel tears begin to cascade down your cheeks, yet this time they’re not sad tears.

“Jungwon, you idiot.”

“I know,” he pulls you into a hug.

Wrapping your arms around him, you squeeze him tightly.

He pulls away, cupping your face and kissing you gently.

You kiss back, sighing in content.

When you walk into school, hands intertwined, you feel revived.

sorry for not posting for so long, hehe

tagging @pshbites cause she wanted me to ☺️

[unabashegirl]

Fragments 2 — one shot

Harry runs into Y/N in Japan. She is his ex and she is seeking closure.

Author's note: Hello everyone! I've been holding the final part bc I feel like you are all going to hate me or love me for the ending and I am scared! Please don't hate me! I hope you enjoy!

check out my patreon (starting at $2) and get full access to all chapters, various one shots like The Cover and much more :)

Please note that everything that is both underlined and italicized is from the past—they are flashbacks!

word count: 3.9K

--------------------------------

The kitchen filled with the gentle sound of slicing knives and the rhythmic motions of rice being pressed into nori. The chef’s voice was calm and patient as he guided them through the process, but Y/N and Harry remained mostly silent, their focus turned inward as they worked. The only other sound was the soft, traditional music playing in the background, adding to the atmosphere of quiet reflection.

Y/N carefully rolled the sushi, her movements precise as she tried to concentrate on the task at hand. She could feel Harry’s presence beside her, his silent focus mirroring her own. They moved in tandem, following the chef’s instructions, but there was a tension in the air, a heaviness that neither could ignore.

When the last roll was finally placed on the bamboo mat, the chef stepped back with a satisfied smile. “Very well done,” he praised, nodding to both of them. “You have a natural talent for this.”

Y/N gave a small, polite smile in return, glancing at Harry who nodded in agreement, though his eyes seemed distant. The chef clapped his hands together lightly, signaling the end of the lesson.

“I will leave you both to enjoy the fruits of your labor,” the chef said warmly. “Please, take your time. It has been an honor to teach you.”

With that, he bowed and quietly excused himself from the room, leaving them alone with their carefully crafted sushi rolls.

Y/N stood there for a moment, her eyes lingering on the perfectly arranged sushi before them. The silence that followed the chef’s departure felt louder, more suffocating. She could feel the weight of unsaid words pressing down on her, but she wasn’t sure how to break through the barrier that had formed between them.

Harry was the first to move, picking up a pair of chopsticks and carefully selecting a piece of sushi. He looked at her then, his gaze searching, as if trying to find something in her expression. “Shall we?” he asked, his voice soft but carrying an undertone of uncertainty.

Y/N nodded, reaching for her own chopsticks, but her hands trembled slightly as she did. She felt his eyes on her, watching, waiting for something—maybe for her to say the words that neither of them had yet found the courage to speak.

They ate in silence, the sushi as perfect as the chef had promised, but it was difficult to enjoy it with the thick tension in the air. The music played on, soothing and distant, a stark contrast to the storm of emotions swirling inside her.

The silence between them grew unbearable, stretching out like an unspoken challenge neither of them wanted to confront. Harry set down his chopsticks, the clatter against the plate louder than it should have been in the quiet room. He leaned back in his chair, his fingers rubbing at his temples as if trying to ease away the tension that had built up over the course of the afternoon.

Y/N noticed his sudden stillness, her heart rate quickening as she sensed the shift in the atmosphere. She watched him, her chopsticks frozen in mid-air, her breath catching as she waited for him to speak. There was something in his eyes—something dark, conflicted—that made her stomach churn with a mix of fear and anticipation.

Harry finally met her gaze, his eyes filled with a depth of sorrow that she hadn’t seen before. His voice, when he spoke, was strained, as if the words were being torn from somewhere deep inside him. “I guess it’s time to tell you”

She blinked, her chest tightening at the seriousness in his tone. “What is it?” she asked, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.

He hesitated, his hands trembling slightly as they rested on the table. “The reason I distanced myself,” he began, his voice cracking with the weight of what he was about to confess, “was because I… I did something.”

Y/N’s breath hitched, her mind racing as she tried to comprehend what he was saying. “What do you mean?” she whispered, dread settling in her stomach.

Harry looked away, his jaw clenched as if he could barely bring himself to continue. “I cheated on you,” he finally admitted, his words laced with a deep, agonizing guilt. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did. And when I realized what I’d done… I couldn’t face you. I couldn’t look you in the eyes knowing how much I’d hurt you.”

The world seemed to tilt beneath Y/N’s feet, the shock of his confession hitting her like a physical blow. Her heart shattered into a thousand pieces, each one cutting deeper than the last as she struggled to process his words. She could barely breathe, the pain in her chest so intense that she thought it might suffocate her.

“You… you cheated on me?” she repeated, her voice trembling with a mix of disbelief and raw, searing hurt. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you just pushed me away?”

“I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting you more than I already had,” Harry confessed, his voice heavy with regret. “I thought if I distanced myself, if I just… distanced myself, it would be easier for you. That maybe you could hate me and move on, without having to see my face and be reminded of what I did.”

Tears welled up in Y/N’s eyes, blurring her vision as the reality of his betrayal settled in. “So instead of being honest with me, you let me believe it was something else—something I did wrong?” she asked, her voice cracking under the weight of her emotions. “You let me think I wasn’t enough for you?”

Harry winced, the guilt in his eyes deepening as he heard the pain in her voice. “I know I messed up, Y/N. I know I made it worse by not telling you. But I was scared. I was a coward.”

Y/N’s hands shook as she wiped away the tears that had started to fall, her heart breaking all over again as she realized how deeply he had hurt her. “You should have told me,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “You should have let me decide how to feel, how to move on. Instead, you just… left me in the dark.”

She walked through the living room, her steps light and tentative as if trying not to disturb the heavy silence that hung between her and Harry. He was seated on the large, plush sofa, a thick blanket draped over his legs as he stared intently at the flickering screen of his laptop. His eyes were focused, but his posture was rigid, every line of his body radiating a cold detachment that Y/N found hard to ignore.

“H,” she began softly, her voice breaking the silence like a tentative knock on a closed door. “I was thinking of making some hot cocoa. Do you want some?”

Harry didn’t look up from his laptop, his fingers tapping away at the keyboard. “No, thanks,” he replied curtly, his voice devoid of warmth. “I’m busy.”

Y/N’s heart sank at his response, but she tried to keep her tone upbeat, forcing a small smile as she turned towards the kitchen. “Okay, Just let me know if you change your mind.”

She busied herself with the cocoa, the rhythmic sound of the milk heating and the clinking of the spoon against the mug providing a small, soothing distraction. She could hear Harry’s muffled voice as he spoke into his phone, his words barely audible over the hum of the appliances. The conversation was brief, and when he hung up, he remained seated, his focus returning to the laptop.

As Y/N walked back into the living room with her steaming mug, she hesitated for a moment before taking a seat at the opposite end of the sofa. She tried to find a comfortable position, but the distance between them felt insurmountable.

Harry,” she said after a few minutes, her voice trembling slightly as she attempted to bridge the gap. “Can we talk? I feel like we haven’t really spent any time together lately. So, I was planning perhaps we could spend the weekend at my parents cabin outside of the city. I’ve already asked for the keys”.

He glanced at her briefly, his expression impassive. “I can’t this weekend,” he said, his tone clipped. “I’ve got a lot on my plate. Maybe later.”

Y/N’s smile faltered, but she nodded, trying to hide her disappointment. “Alright”.

She took a sip of her cocoa, the warmth of the drink contrasting sharply with the chill she felt in the room. The silence stretched on, punctuated only by the soft clacking of Harry’s keyboard and the occasional rustle of his papers. Y/N watched him from across the room, her heart aching as she saw the man she loved becoming more and more distant.

Time passed slowly, each minute dragging as Y/N tried to fill the silence with small, meaningless activities—flipping through a magazine, tidying up the living room, adjusting the throw pillows on the sofa. She would glance at Harry every now and then, hoping to catch his eye, to see a sign of the warmth they once shared. But each time, she was met with a cold, unfeeling stare.

Eventually, she stood up, unable to bear the distance any longer. She walked to the window, looking out at the city lights that seemed so distant and unreachable. Her reflection in the glass was a stark reminder of how far apart they had grown, and the sight of her own lonely figure only deepened her sense of isolation.

Y/N took a deep breath, gathering her courage. “Harry,” she said softly, her voice trembling with the effort to keep it steady. “I know things have been hard lately, but I miss us”.

Harry’s eyes opened slowly, and he looked at her with a mixture of fatigue and frustration. “I don’t know if we can fix this,” he said quietly.

The sadness in his voice cut through Y/N like a knife, and she could feel the tears welling up in her eyes. “But I’m willing to try. For us”.

Harry looked at her, and for a moment, she got a glimpse of his old self. But then, he closed his eyes and pulled away slightly, the emotional distance between them reasserting itself. “I don’t know if I can,” he said softly.

“I know,” Harry said, his voice thick with emotion. “I was wrong, and I’m so sorry. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. But I need you to know that it meant nothing. It was a mistake—a stupid, drunken mistake—and it never changed how much I loved you.”

Y/N shook her head, the ache in her chest almost unbearable. “But it did change things, Harry. It changed everything. You broke us… and you broke me.”

Harry’s eyes filled with tears, the sight of her in so much pain almost too much for him to bear. He reached out, wanting to comfort her, but Y/N flinched away, the hurt too fresh, too raw.

“Don’t,” she whispered, her voice trembling as she pulled back. “You don’t get to touch me, not after this.”

The rejection hit Harry like a punch to the gut, but he knew he deserved it. He had made his bed, and now he had to lie in it. “I’m so sorry, Y/N,” he repeated, his voice barely holding together. “I wish I could take it back. I wish I could undo everything and go back to the way things were.”

But Y/N could only shake her head, the tears streaming down her face as the reality of their situation sank in. The man she had loved so deeply, the man she had trusted with her heart, had betrayed her in the worst possible way. And now, there was nothing left but the broken pieces of what they once had.

Y/N sat there, tears streaming down her face as she tried to come to terms with the bombshell Harry had just dropped on her. Every part of her wanted to scream, to throw the pain back in his face, to make him feel even a fraction of the hurt he had caused her. But all she could do was sit there, numb and hollow, as the man she once loved shattered everything she thought she knew about their relationship.

Harry’s own tears were falling now, silent and slow, as he watched her break before his eyes. He had expected anger, yelling, even hatred—but this quiet devastation was worse. It was the kind of pain that didn’t have an outlet, that didn’t have a voice. It just lingered, suffocating them both in its grip.

“Say something,” Harry finally whispered, his voice cracking under the weight of his guilt. “Please, Y/N… anything.”

But what was there to say? What words could possibly convey the depth of the betrayal she felt? Y/N looked at him, really looked at him, and saw a man who was just as broken as she was. The realization hit her like a tidal wave—he was drowning in his own regret, but that didn’t make what he did any less unforgivable.

“You want me to say something?” she finally replied, her voice eerily calm despite the chaos inside her. “Fine. I loved you, Harry. More than I’ve ever loved anyone in my entire life. I would have done anything for you, given you everything. And you threw it all away for… what? For a night of wild sex?”

Harry flinched at her words, his heart twisting painfully in his chest. “It wasn’t worth it,” he choked out, his voice barely above a whisper. “I know that now. But at the time, I was just… lost. I was struggling with the pressure, the expectations, and I messed up. And I hate myself for it every single day.”

“Good,” Y/N said sharply, her eyes blazing with the anger she had been holding back. “You should hate yourself. Because you didn’t just hurt me—you destroyed me. You made me question everything, made me question if you ever loved me”.

Her words sliced through Harry like a knife, each one cutting deeper than the last. “I loved you.” he whispered desperately. “I love you. I was the one who wasn’t enough. I was weak, and I let my insecurities and fears ruin the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Y/N’s tears fell faster now, the anger and heartbreak swirling together in a storm she couldn’t control. “You should have come to me,” she cried, her voice breaking. “You should have trusted me, talked to me, instead of turning to someone else. We could have figured it out together, Harry. But you made that impossible.”

“I know,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “And I hate myself for that, too. But I can’t change what happened, no matter how much I want to. All I can do now is tell you the truth, no matter how much it hurts, and hope that someday you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

Y/N shook her head, her heart splintering with each word he spoke. “Forgive you?” she repeated, her voice hollow. “How am I supposed to forgive you when you’ve taken everything from me? You were my safe place, my home… and now, I don’t even know who you are.”

She glanced around the small entryway, her eyes lingering on the few personal items she had packed—clothes, a few cherished mementos, and the essentials she needed to start a new chapter.

The decision had been a long time coming, but today, she had reached her breaking point. She had given everything she had to make their relationship work, to bridge the emotional chasm that had grown between them, but Harry’s coldness and distance had eroded her hope. She was tired of fighting alone, tired of trying to hold onto something that felt like it was slipping through her fingers.

She had just finished dragging her suitcase down the stairs when she heard the familiar sound of the front door opening. Her heart sank as she realized that Harry had returned from the studio earlier than expected. The footsteps grew louder, and she braced herself for the confrontation she had been dreading.

Harry stepped into the hallway, his face lighting up with a mixture of relief and exhaustion as he saw her. “Y/N,” he said, his voice carrying an edge of surprise. “Going on a trip?”

The sight of him, looking worn out from a long day at the studio, only served to amplify the emotional storm inside her. She took a deep breath, trying to steady her shaking hands. "I'm leaving.”

Harry’s expression shifted from confusion to alarm. “Leaving? What do you mean? Where are you going?”

Y/N reached for her suitcase and gave it a resolute tug. “I’m leaving. I can’t do this anymore. I’m tired of fighting, tired of trying to make things work when it feels like I’m the only one putting in any effort.”

Harry’s face fell, his exhaustion giving way to a wave of panic. “Y/N, wait. Can we talk about this? Please?”

She shook her head, the tears she had been holding back finally spilling over. “I’ve tried, Harry. I’ve tried to make us work, to be the person you need. But I’m exhausted. I deserve to be loved, to be with someone who truly wants to be with me”.

Harry’s eyes widened with hurt and confusion. “Please, just give me a chance to explain.”

Y/N took a step back, the weight of her decision pressing heavily on her shoulders. “I’ve heard all the explanations I need,” she said softly, her voice breaking. “The truth is, I’m done trying to fix something that feels broken beyond repair. I’ve given everything I have, and I just… I can’t keep doing this.”

She reached for the handle of her suitcase, her hands trembling slightly. “I just want to be loved, Harry. I want to be with someone who sees me and values me for who I am. And right now, that isn’t you.”

Harry’s face contorted with anguish, the pain of her words cutting deeply. “Y/N, please don’t do this,” he pleaded, stepping closer but stopping when he saw the resolute look in her eyes.

Y/N took a deep breath, her resolved unwavering. “I can’t stay here and keep hoping for something that may never change.”

She turned to leave, but Harry reached out, grabbing her arm gently. “Just give me one more chance,” he begged, his voice filled with desperation.

Y/N looked at him, her heart breaking at the sight of his tear-streaked face and the raw emotion in his eyes. “I deserve more” .

With that, she pulled her arm free, her heart aching as she walked out of the apartment and down the stairs. Every step felt like a small victory and a deep loss at the same time. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she took one last look at the building, at the life she was leaving behind, and then stepped out into the evening air.

The room fell into a suffocating silence, the air thick with the unspoken question hanging between them. Y/N could see the desperation in Harry’s eyes, the plea for a second chance, but all she could feel was the overwhelming ache in her chest, the knowledge that nothing would ever be the same again.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” she whispered, her voice trembling as she tried to hold herself together. “I don’t know if I can ever look at you and not resent you for it”.

Harry’s face crumpled at her words, the pain in his eyes almost too much to bear. “I understand,” he said softly, his voice filled with sorrow. “I won’t ask you to make any decisions. I just needed you to know the truth. I’ll accept it even if it means letting you go again.”

The finality of his words hung in the air, a bitter reminder of how far they had fallen from the love they once shared. Y/N looked away, unable to meet his gaze any longer, the tears blurring her vision as the reality of their situation crashed down around her.

In that moment, the sushi on the table, the music playing softly in the background, the cozy warmth of the restaurant—none of it mattered. All that existed was the chasm between them, the deep, irreparable wound that no amount of apologies or regret could ever heal.

She stood up from the table, her movements slow and deliberate as she gathered her things. Harry stood up as well, his face pale and stricken with anguish. “I know that I am supposed to let you go. But please don’t go” he begged, his voice cracking. “I can’t lose you again”. Harry had hoped that this time around things would’ve ended different than that day at the apartment. However, it seemed like he was reliving it.

Y/N took a deep breath, the finality of her decision weighing heavily on her. “I can’t” her voice cracked as tears streamed down her face. “I can’t keep doing this to myself. You have to let me go”. She walked towards the restaurant’s exit, her heart heavy with the sadness of the parting. As she reached the door, she turned to look back at Harry one last time, her eyes filled with sorrow and a lingering love that could never be fully extinguished. “Bye H”

Harry watched her, his own tears falling freely now. The pain of her leaving was evident in every line of his face, but he made no move to stop her, knowing deep down that he had lost her.

Y/N stepped out into the cool night air, the city lights casting a gentle glow that only served to highlight the deep darkness she felt within. She paused for a moment, looking back at the restaurant where they had just shared their final, heart-wrenching conversation. Despite the sadness that still clung to her, a part of her felt unexpectedly lighter.

The weight of the past seemed to lift from her shoulders, replaced by a newfound clarity. She realized, with painful but liberating honesty, that her worth was never in question—it was never about her. She had finally found the closure she had so desperately sought. As she walked away, she felt a quiet confidence settle within her. She knew now that she deserved to be loved deeply and genuinely, and that there was someone out there who would truly appreciate her for who she was.

As she disappeared into the horizon, Harry stood alone in the doorway, the ache of her absence a stark reminder of the love that had slipped through his fingers. Of the only person that loved him with honesty.

part 1

[yuri-is-online]

I'm taking a break from making Yutu asks and giving you a jade ask:

Most mer people expect humans to be either helpless or just a little ok when it comes to dealing with bodies of water.

Basing Yuu off of my experiences today, Yuu would not be most people. I come from a province that is full of rivers and waterfalls. When you first step in the water you'd let out squeaks and screams because the water is VERY cold. Cold enough that people stick full watermelons in and when they later crack them, they've turned into sorbet.

Today I went to a water resort that's based in a canyon. I was wearing high heeled sandals and started wading against the stream (yeah I know, pretty dangerous) I fell into the water twice but i still consider it a win since the first time I was dragged in when I was pushing a bench swing and the second time was when i tried sitting on an unstable swing (both were within 2 hours and both times my head stayed above water) my pants still tore from the water pressure

When jade first finds a waterfall on a hike with Yuu, he feels content with setting up a cute picnic. Yuu on the other hand asks jade to hold onto the food, as they eat to swim first. Jade is confused. What swim? WHERE?! Yuu then, fully clothed, walks into the water. Jade wants to scream. Sure they're at the bottom of the waterfall but that's still a lot of water pressure, some merfolk have drowned trying to swim against the stream. Yet Yuu just stands there, in the water, completely unaffected (adjusting to the temperature). Then they JUMP into the fucking water and start swimming to the other side of the stream. Jade loses his mind and starts yelling for them, he even puts his head into the ice cold water and screams hoping they'd hear him. When Yuu surfaces on the other side they look at him in confusion

"what's wrong, jade?"

"WHAT'S WRONG??? PREFECT WHAT ARE YOU DOING? DONT YOU KNOW HOW DANGEROUS THIS IS?"

"what??? I'll just swim back and forth a few times! It's been a while since I've done this"

"AND WHAT IF THE CURRENT CARRIES YOU SOMEWHERE ELSE? WHAT WILL YOU DO?"

"....I'll stop??? With my legs??? I'll just stand????"

Jade is stunned

Legs. Yes legs. Humans had legs. Merfolk don't. That's why they can resist the current.

That day jade returns looking a little gaunt, which is something that worried Azul for what discoveries his friend had made

-Grim OB Anon

You know Grim OB anon you bring up a really good point with this concept: the way humans interact with water is probably a relatively foreign concept to the Octatrio. We know from Book 3 that NRC has a swimming pool they use for classes, but swimming isn't the only way humans interact with water. The three of them have never seen a water park, and it sounds like a concept that they would brush off as being silly. Why wouldn't humans just swim if they want to have fun? There's all sorts of things you can do to have fun under water, just ask they'll show you.

Jade has a calm facade, and the only time he really is comfortable breaking it is when he's excited. We've only ever seen him upset a handful of times, it's a very intense emotion on him. If this was any other human he would find it funny, but it's you so he doesn't find it funny at all. He's terrified and you are-

Fine. You are confident and radiant surrounded by water and standing up against something that is genuinely dangerous. He still asks you to come to shore, hiding his fear under a faux pout. You scared him, prefect, after he went so far out of his way to do something nice for you. Really the least you can do is just stay with him and let him take comfort in your presence.

[linos-luna]

Cameras 🔪

Yandere!Han x Reader

Warnings: YANDERE, violence, toxic behavior, manipulation, spying, 18+

———————————————— •

You sit at your desk, staring down at the open notebook, your fingers tracing its edges, but your mind is somewhere else. The house is quiet, a little too quiet, and that familiar, uneasy feeling creeps over you again. Lately, it’s like someone’s been watching you, even when you’re sure you’re alone.

You try to shake it off, just like you’ve done every other time, telling yourself it’s nothing. But deep down, you know it’s not just paranoia. The little things have been adding up. Your stuff is always out of place, your jewelry box lid half open, a photo frame slightly crooked. And Han… well, you had mentioned it to him once, but he brushed it off.

"You're stressed, Y/N," he had said with that charming smile. "You need to relax."

That smile you love. Now it just feels off.

Your eyes drift to your bedside lamp. Something flashes, just for a second, but you see it. You sit up, heart skipping a beat as you reach for the lamp. Unscrewing the lampshade, you freeze when you see it. A tiny, blinking red light. A camera.

What the hell??

Your pulse quickens as you stare at the small device in your hand. Why is there a camera here? Who put it here?

But you already know. You just don’t want to believe it.

Your breath comes in short gasps as you tear through your room. Behind the framed pictures, inside the air vents, even inside your stuffed bear. More cameras. Everywhere.

You feel sick. How long has this been happening? How much has Han seen?

Without thinking, you grab your phone and dial Han. The anger in your voice barely masks the fear. “Han, we need to talk. Now.”

It doesn’t take him long to show up. His face is full of concern—or is it something darker? You can’t tell anymore.

“What’s going on?” he asks, stepping inside like nothing’s wrong. Like he hasn’t been invading every second of your life.

You hold up the camera, your hand trembling. “Why are there cameras in my room?”

For a split second, something flickers in his eyes. And then, just like that, his mask drops. The concern fades, and what’s left makes your stomach twist.

“I did it to protect you,” he says softly, stepping closer. “You don’t understand. I need to know you’re safe.”

Your breath hitches in your throat. You want to scream, to cry, but all that comes out is cold, hard disbelief. "This isn’t protection, Han. This is control."

His eyes darken, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "You don’t get to walk away from me."

Your body tenses as he steps closer, too close. His hand shoots out, grabbing your wrist before you can react. Pain surges through your arm as his grip tightens.

“You’re mine, Y/N,” he growls, his breath hot against your face. “No one else will take care of you like I do. You don’t get to leave me.”

A wave of panic crashes over you, but underneath it, anger is building. You twist your wrist, trying to pull free, but his grip only tightens. The pressure makes your vision blur with tears.

“No, Han…” Your voice trembling with fury. “Y-you’re sick!”

Without thinking, you drive your knee up into his stomach, hard.

He lets out a grunt, doubling over just enough for you to yank your arm free. You stumble back, heart pounding, adrenaline flooding your system. But then Han straightens, his face twisting with rage.

Before you can react, his hand swings out, slapping you across the cheek. Pain stinging in your face, knocking you off balance. You crash into the dresser, books and other nicknacks scattering to the floor. Tears rolled down your cheeks as you whimpered a bit in pain.

He’s standing over you now, breathing heavily, his fists clenched, but then something shifts in his expression. His eyes soften, a flicker of regret passing over his face as he takes in your terrified look.

“Baby, I’m sorry!” Han pleads, his voice breaking. “Don’t cry, please! I-I didn’t mean to hurt you!”

The room spins as you force yourself up, your legs trembling beneath you. Your hand brushes against the dresser, and you grab the nearest thing, a heavy lamp. Without a second thought, you throw it at him.

It misses, crashing into the wall behind him, but Han still flinches, staggering back as he dodges. His eyes widen, and for a moment, you see hurt flicker there.

“Y/N? W-why are you trying to hurt me?” His voice trembles, and you pause, your heart pounding in your chest.

“You’re the one getting violent!” you shout, the words tearing from your throat.

For a split second, he looks like he’s about to cry, and something inside you twists painfully. He just stands there, staring at you with those sad, broken eyes, making your heart ache.

He’s manipulating you. You know it, you *know* it, but that pang of guilt creeps in anyway. You have to shake it off.

“Stop it, Han. It’s not working. Not this time.”

As soon as the words leave your mouth, the softness drains from his face. The mask drops, revealing the cold, eerie calm underneath.

“Y/N…” he says, his voice unnervingly steady. “You know I love you. Everything I do is because I love you.” He takes a step closer, his eyes darkening. “And I’ll do anything for you.”

Han’s words hang in the air, thick and suffocating. His eerie calm sends a chill down your spine, but your legs won’t move. His eyes bore into yours, dark and unwavering, and you realize with a sickening jolt that there’s no reasoning with him. He’s beyond that now.

You back up slowly, your heart pounding in your chest. “Han… stay away from me.”

But he doesn’t listen. Instead, he takes another step toward you, his voice lowering into something soft, almost tender. “I’m the only one who can protect you, Y/N. Don’t you see? No one else will love you the way I do.”

You feel the wall press against your back, cold and unyielding. There’s nowhere else to go.

“Please, Han,” you whisper, your voice trembling. “Don’t do this.”

For a moment, his face softens again, but you know it’s a lie, just like before. He closes the distance between you in two long strides, grabbing your arms and pinning you against the wall. His grip is bruising, his breath hot and uneven as he leans in, his eyes glinting with something dangerous.

“Why can’t you just be mine?” he whispers harshly, his fingers digging into your skin. “Why do you have to make this so hard?”

Panic surges through you, but your body feels frozen. You struggle against his hold, but he’s too strong. His hands move to your throat, not tightening, but just enough to make you realize how helpless you are in that moment.

Your vision blurs with tears as you gasp for air, your body trembling under his hold. This is it, you think. It’s the end. You close your eyes in defeat, bracing for the inevitable as his hands apply light pressure to your throat.

But then, just as quickly as it started, the pressure eases. You blink in confusion, feeling his grip loosen. When you open your eyes, Han’s expression has changed… his face etched with guilt, sadness pooling in his eyes.

“Baby…” he whispers softly, his hands still hovering at your throat, but no longer squeezing.

Your heart pounds in your chest as you watch him look down at his own hands, as if seeing them for the first time. Tears start to roll down his cheeks, silent and slow, before he suddenly pulls you into a tight embrace.

“I-I’m sorry…” he sobs, his voice breaking.

His arms wrap around you, almost crushing you against him, and the sudden shift feels jarring. You can hear him weeping, his breath catching between sobs. The warmth of his body, the way he clings to you, it's so different from the rage that had consumed him moments ago.

You stand frozen, your body still shaking, unsure of what to do. Was this another trick? Another way to manipulate you, to pull you back into his control? Or… was he actually genuine this time?

It was hard to tell, and that terrified you the most...

[n0tamused]

Hello! I wanna send a req if u don't mind! Separate hcs/headcanons for Blade & Jing Yuan with gn!reader where the reader is being dense when another man tries to flirt with them. That's all & thx!

Contents: fluff, gn reader, hope you enjoy! Sorry for the long wait

Jing Yuan:

-The General of the Luofu and his lover are what people see as an example of a stable relationship, considering just how long you’ve been together, and not just as romantic partners either. Jing Yuan trusts you without a doubt, and you trust him all the same in equal measure, if not even more.

-Trust is not something either of you debate, and you are both happy to know of one another’s ability to trust and rely on the other, but that same trust can, in no way, be applied to the people outside of the relationship - strangers especially. 

-From this, there were a few instances where a stranger might have tried to approach the General, even if you were nearby, sputtering flowery words or playing with the locks of their hair. Jing Yuan never entertained such actions, brushing them aside and making clear mention how he “had to return to his beloved” before leaving the person aside. He knows how many people swoon over him and makes it a point to give you even more love to reassure you that he’d never look at any of them as fondly as he looks at you. You’re the only one that has a place in his heart. 

-But what Jing Yuan is not exactly fond of experiencing is you going through the same thing. Even from afar he can see how your lips press into a thin uncomfortable line, your eyes gazing at this stranger in caution, unblinking with unease. He sees you try, and vaguely hears as he approaches, how you try and get out of the conversation without making much of a fuss, and although you are firm too - the other is way too stubborn to back off

-The large hands of Jing Yuan find their way onto your sides, and he’s now peering at the person over your shoulder with that coy smile on his face. He doesn’t look threatening per se, but one would have to be a fool to not understand the mistake of their doings now

-He greets the person just as amiably, asking you what is going on, a curious little cat he is, he wants to know. But he doesn’t linger, he knows you want to get away, just as much as he wants to remove you from this situation. He tells the person something rather cryptic, rather poisoned honey for words, and the person understands - that much he makes sure off before he politely excuses you both away

-The General isn’t someone people fear and he doesn’t ever feel the need to present himself as a figure that needs to herald any unease of fear. He only dislikes his partner being put in such an unfavorable position and he will use his vast vocabulary to hide little threats for such behavior skillfully. His partner’s comfort is up on his priority list and he doesn’t play around with that

Blade:

-Blade is not one to beat around the bush or pray for forgiveness from anyone he might offend with his bluntness, and he certainly keeps this demeanor even after forgetting certain things due to Mara or Kafka’s Spirit Whisper

-As a lover he is rather distant and although he cares somewhere deep down in his old, scarred heart, a stranger wouldn’t be able to guess you’re even friends out in the open world. He doesn’t like standing in one place for too long, and if there’s intel that needs to be gathered or something that needs to be done, he puts a reasonable distance between the two of you as well, safety reasons mainly come to mind, but a part of him doesn’t want you to be involved in this business anyway so subconsciously he is trying to distance you from the operations as a whole. He tries and he fails, but he tries again next time and fails again.

-He always has an eye out for you, like a sixth sense ingrained into his mind.

-Along the lines of his work he vaguely does remember a few bold individuals that have tried to “hit on him”, but they were either not completely sober or were easily ignored. He wasn’t the person to entertain any flirtatious remarks and he isn’t the easiest person to approach. He scares people easily, so he doesn’t have much of a problem with people getting in his way just to say his eyes are pretty or something else.

-You, on the other hand, are not nearly as blunt or scary as he is, everyone’s aware of that. 

-He doesn’t waste time either. Once he senses you may be uncomfortable by another person’s approach to you, he’s already stepping in and making the person scurry off with a few rash choice of words that definitely sting at best. 

-Similarly to Jing Yuan, he values the peace your own peace of mind brings, and he doesn’t play around when it comes to your comfort. If someone disturbs you, he will make sure they stop and never do so again.

-He’s rather protective of you, even in those moments where he seems to forget the connection you two share.

-Just imagine: You’re talking to this unpleasant stranger, alcohol is clinging to them like perfume and they’re talking about how they’d love to invite you over for dinner, but suddenly they look over your shoulder where Blade is now taking a step towards you. He seemingly appeared out of thin air, merged from the crowd and he’s wearing the darkest of expressions, but he is unbothered truly. You don’t have to look behind you to know it is him either, he radiates that certain atmosphere that is hard to mistake. “Is there something wrong here?” he asks plainly, stiffly even, the question more pointed to you as he glares the stranger down. The stranger, unsure if this was alcohol's doing or reality is quick to scurry away with plenty of excuses bubbling up to their lips and farewells. 

Ⓒ n0tamused. Do not repost, translate, edit, and/or copy any of my works. Likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated.

[hatsukeii]

think fast / childhood bsf!tsukshima kei x reader

genre(s): childhood best friends x soulmates???? past lives and normal people by sally rooney coded im a sally rooney MEATRIDER!! angsty, gut-wrenching longing, bittersweet / hopeful ending so it's not all bad!! nostalgia is going to carry this fic so hard it's going to be a fun, fun time...

warning(s): eventual smut!! all characters are aged up to 21!!MDNI (at least up until the observatory)!! wrap it before you tap it!! (sorry kids), female leaning anatomy because smut but pronouns are gn all throughout and honestly you could read it as gn anyways:)) dead dad warning (my dad is NOT dead this was just convenient to kick off the thing), i fw the timeline of the world??? pretend flip phones were still in use in like 2012 or something idk

wc: ~6.3k

tldr; time has a way of reminding Kei of its presence, and its escape. you are the reminder it has been sending to him for six years.

Fate: A power believed to cause and control all events, so that one cannot change or determine the way things will happen. 

It is a sunny afternoon when you step foot into Sendai, Miyagi. A beautiful day of golden warmth beaming onto petals of pink, red, and white, wrapped in coffee-stained newspapers and tied together with a spool of twine. The bouquet lies on browning grass, a contemptible reminder of the time that has passed since your last appearance here, six years ago, and you crouch down to the ground. Now face to face with the engraving of a full name on a slab of polished granite, you hesitate. Your father lived in a language that you can no longer speak, died in a country you no longer call your home. When you whisper blessings and apologies at the gravestone in broken Japanese and slurred syllables, you sound like a stranger. A stranger who sits in a graveyard at noon, with nothing but a bouquet from the nearby florist in hand, and a promise, stuttered out in half-decent Japanese, to return again the next year. 

When a second bouquet falls to the ground behind you, and you turn around, Tsukishima Kei thinks this is what English speakers like you would call fate. He’s a little taller now, and bulkier too, and you have to crane your head higher than you remember just to meet his eyes. You don’t recognise the glasses he dons anymore, the black rectangles from his teenage years swapped out for rounded squares and silver frames. But he has a towel in his hand, a towel that has his initials poorly stitched into the corner with red string. You wonder if the matching one he made you, eleven years ago, is collecting dust somewhere in your dormitory, halfway across the world. 

“You’re back.”

“It’s been a while, Kei.”

You can no longer differentiate Japanese syllables clearly, and your statement jumbles into nonsense in your head. Kei hears the English woven into your accent in the way you roll your tongue like foreigners do, and in the odd intonations that don’t exist in your mother tongue. You don’t even remember your father’s dislike for white flowers. London has truly done a number on you. 

“Why? Why now?”

You bite your nail, a persistent habit that Kei frowns at. He picks up his flowers, and steps towards the gravestone, just close enough for your knee to brush against him for a moment. The bouquet in his hand is wrapped in plastic and filled with red and pink, the white from your own sticking out like a sore thumb when he places his flowers gently on the grass beside yours. He tosses the towel in his hand, opening it up against his palm, and you take it from him. If you cannot get the language right, or the flowers, this is the least you can do. Cobwebs stick to the fabric as you sweep at the granite slab, watching soot and dust fall to the grass. The curves and dips of the gravestone are familiar once again, and you dig the towel into every nook and cranny. You feel Kei’s body shift, before his knee is touching yours and his face is finally level with your peripheral vision. He glances at you, waiting. His knees bounce in anticipation. 

“Never had the chance, college has been a lot.”

Your phone rings as you finish cleaning. The ringtone is familiar, unchanged from when you used to have a flip phone, in fact. Kei hums along to the jingle for the four seconds that the call is left unanswered, before it cuts off into a flurry of English. He catches something about research, and a thesis, his shabby English unable to fill in any more than that. He’s never known you were interested in research, let alone what it is that you’re researching. All he’s known is your aspiration of becoming a librarian when you were six, and his promise to borrow books from you for the museum that he swore he would one day work at. Now, he works at the museum, sorts antique scripts and yellowed books into cabinets and display shelves. He does not borrow books from you. Now, you talk, but nothing makes sense to him.

You end the call, mumbling foreign curses as you shove your phone back into your pocket. Clicking your tongue, you turn to Kei, who stares at the flowers on the ground. He pushes his glasses up when they slide down his nose, and you resist the familiar urge to nag him about buying the right frames for his face. 

“Yeah, college has been mostly phone calls like that.”

He nods, a half-hearted chuckle huffing from his nose. He’s forgotten what it’s like to sit at a graveyard with somebody else, the annual reminder of a lonely death replaced by another this year as you dust off his towel, and drop it onto his thigh. He swipes it from his leg, folding it into quarters and sliding it into his pocket. 

“So you choose to come now, without a word? Not even a heads up? Six years after leaving?” Kei’s voice rises at each question, the same way it did six years ago when you broke the news of leaving Japan to him. This hurts him to ask, that much you can still recognise.

“I would have come sooner if I had the chance. I’ve missed everyone so much.”

You pluck a petal from a white flower in your bouquet, then another, until all that remains is the naked bulb, and scatter them onto the ground beside you. Perhaps the next person that’s been buried under six feet of dirt used to have a liking for them. Kei remains unmoving, throat bobbing as he swallows thickly. His knee stops bouncing. 

“How long will you stay for?”

“Today, then Friday and Saturday too. Flight back is Sunday night.”

Six years of waiting, and this is what it amounts to. A weekend and a bit. Despite that, Kei still thinks this must be fate, in all the languages that it exists in. Six years of life, and love, and hurt, all to be condensed into four measly days. Yet as Kei pushes himself off the ground, dusting his trousers off, he still thinks that this unlikely, yet conveniently timed visit must be the answer to his pleas for your return. That this must be some heavenly reward, good karma for visiting your father’s grave annually on your behalf. You watch him turn to leave, and he calls out to you as he walks away from your father’s grave. 

“Everyone’s at Hinata’s old place tomorrow. You should come by if you can.”

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Change: to replace (something) with something else, especially something of the same kind that is newer or better; substitute one thing for (another).

All it takes is one coincidental exchange of panicked glances at the first throw up of the night for you and Kei to leave together. Hinata slurs a drunken farewell, tries to embrace you as you slip your sneakers on at the door, and you make a note to yourself that you really do not miss most of the people here, spare for the volleyball team. Kei waits at the door, holding it open for when you finally shake Hinata off of your back, and step through. The night is chilly, the warmth in your skin from the indoor heating system emanating into the midnight air. You kick rocks along the pavement as you walk, scattering pigeons that remain awake and active at this time, and Kei smiles at your antics. You still hate birds, and you still remember the trick he taught you when you were nine for chasing away pigeons that flocked around you for food. 

“Who are you staying with?”

“My mom’s.”

The road leads the two of you to a high school. Kei has not come back to Karasuno since graduation. You squint in the dark, scanning the school, and you don’t recognise the new building that stands in place of the old auditorium. He watches you crouch at the plaque next to the front gate, tracing the letters engraved on it with the pad of your thumb. Some part of him blames Karasuno for being a bad place to you, the other parts blame himself for not being good enough to outweigh it.

“It’s changed.”

“Everything has.”

You rattle the locked entrance, the chain and padlock hitting against cold metal. It won’t open, so you look up through the gap of the gate. Six years ago, on that rooftop, was where you stood over a cold lunch box and emptied convenience store drinks, back against the wire fence, saying to Kei, I’m leaving tomorrow. On that day, you had packed yakisoba for his lunch, and nothing for yourself. He could barely respond to your announcement, only dropping his chopsticks and asking you, why? You told him something along the lines of being an expat, and a better school for what you wanted, all in the fluent Japanese you once spoke. Nothing made sense to him anyways. 

When you turn back to him, his hands are in the pockets of his jacket, and his nose is red from the cold air. You stand beside him, staring aimlessly at Karasuno from outside its barriers. 

“Do you still play volleyball?” 

“Yeah, Sendai Frogs.”

You hum, and then wonder why you only asked tonight, and why you’re surprised. He shrugs, clouds of white puffing from his mouth when he breathes out. He tries to blow a wisp of hair away from his face, and you suddenly realise that his hair has grown too, along with his height. It fails, and he tries again. You reach up to swipe at his bangs, before running your fingers backwards through his hair. It parts itself as you lift your hands from his head, and falls into place neatly. A cold breeze whizzes by, and undoes your work, sending strands of gold into his face once again. You snicker a little.

“You know, you could ask my mom to trim it for you like she used to.”

“Nah, I prefer this.”

It isn’t until you turn to look at him properly that you see how much time has passed. He likes his hair longer these days, the choppy hairdo of his teenage years now nothing but an old preference, and you wonder if he is still a loyal customer of your mother’s salon. When he pulls his hands from his pockets and blows hot air into them, calluses line the bases of his fingers, the blisters of his high school years hardened by trials of time and effort. There are bags under his eyes, eyes that are now a little rounder, and softer too. When he speaks, monotone and tired, you realise his snarkiness has dissipated into general frustration. You stare until his eyes dart to you, and turn away quickly, ashamed. Leaving Karasuno has taken your hand and led you to a purpose that you never knew you were capable of. You wonder what the hell it has done to Tsukishima Kei. 

“It looks good.”

He breathes in sharply, then exhales with a huff, shoulders relaxing as he stuffs his hands back into his pockets. You suddenly realise that your fingers have gone numb from the cold of the night, fingertips tingling like a million frost-bitten needles poking into your skin. You also stuff your hands into your pockets, rubbing your fingers against each other to generate some heat. Then, Kei’s looping his arm around yours, and pulling you away from Karasuno High School. He keeps on his straight path, and you stumble along behind his leaping steps. When you round a corner, the night breeze grows into something less imperturbable, and more vicious, pushing the two of you forward from behind in slashes of cold. The sea is near. 

“Is this the beach we used to go to?”

“You still remember it.”

He drags you down a flight of stairs to Fukanuma Beach, and the misty sea air rushes to your head. When he leads you to the shoreline, you hesitate. The sea has been off limits since the two of you were five, a regulation put in place in remembrance of the Great Sendai Earthquake. An earthquake that saw Kei and yourself hunched beneath the same table in the middle of class, huddled next to each other as you cried for your parents. Now, in your final years of college, as the water slips beneath the soles of his shoes, pushing and receding in layers of aqua and bubbles of white, it seems that time has slipped by just as easily too. Time, that saw the fading of the earthquake’s devastation, despite the loss of thousands, including your father. Time, that frayed the string connecting yourself to Kei as you moved through life halfway across the world from Japan. Time, that passes through you like sand spilling between your fingers on a beach you once thought you knew, but has changed like the unprohibited water that seems to push further up into the shore at each tidal wave. 

“They lifted the ban?”

“A few months ago, yeah.”

You step into the next wave that fizzles into foam, and the water crashes into the toe of your shoes. Crouching, you push mounds of wet sand into a cylinder, flattening the top and pushing divots in equal intervals. Kei joins, moulding shorter ones beside your own and drawing windows into the side. You finish, and he stands, smiling at the creation. You cover the top, afraid he will stomp on it, a trademark of Kei’s whenever you built sandcastles with him in childhood. Instead, he laughs, and walks further into the water. When you get up to join him, the hems of his trousers are soaked, shoes also covered in a sheen of wetness. You hop over the castle, and the next wave that comes sends its foundations crumbling back into the sea. 

“We used to do that. You’d destroy it every time.”

Kei chuckles, and looks back to see the half destroyed castle. Clicking his tongue, he returns to the rubble, and you watch his hands push mounds of sand towards what is left standing. 

“I’d always build a better one for you afterwards though.”

He dusts his hands off when he finishes, and the waves fizzle out just before they hit the two-tiered sandcastle. You sniff, holding your arms close to your chest. When Kei looks up, he feels like the summer of being seven years old again, smiling at you with his missing front tooth when you sniffle and laugh at the improved castle he’s put together for you. Now, it is winter. He only grins with the corners of his lips. You only sniff because it’s cold. 

“Kei.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s really been a while. How have you been?”

He steps over the castle towards you, careful not to break it. Your hair blows in your face from the beach breeze and your eyes squint from the sand that flies into the air, and Kei takes it all in when you’re face to face with him. When he opens his mouth, some selfish part of him thinks about casting his words into shackles of regret, so heavy that they weigh you down and keep you in Japan, in Sendai, on this beach, somewhere close to him.

“Do you want to stay the night? Like you used to?”

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Nostalgia: A sentimental longing, or wistful yearning for a return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.

Kei does not take you to his family house. He leads you up stairs that make no sense, and hallways that stretch on forever, until you finally reach his flat. He wipes his shoes on the doormat, throws his keys into a glass bowl upon entry, and hangs his jacket on a hook mounted to his front door instead of the coathanger that used to stand beside it. You look around, searching for the shells you once collected in a jar for his tenth birthday. When your eyes land on a jar filled with conches and cowries, you let go of a breath you were unaware of holding. They sit on the top of his bookshelf, above textbooks and file organisers. A knot forms in your throat at the realisation that the jar sits alone in its compartment, with nothing beside it. You’ve done the same to the jazz vinyl Kei gifted you at the airport before your departure. You don’t realise that he’s disappeared somewhere as you stare at the shells, until a shirt and a pair of shorts are thrown into your chest. He stands at the entrance to a hallway, donning sweatpants and an old hoodie, one that’s clearly a size too small. The pocket is lousily sewn on, a result of a mishap that occurred when you had borrowed it once. He doesn’t know that you spent the night learning to sew fabric just to fix it.

“Change. It’ll be more comfortable.”

You scurry through the hallway to his bathroom, pulling the shirt and shorts on hastily, before balling up your clothes and returning to the living room. Kei sits at his couch, now bound in leather instead of fabric, and clicks at the television. You join beside him, legs splaying across his own subconsciously. He doesn’t move. He stops at a movie, one you’ve seen hundreds of times before at his old house. It drones on in the background as he watches in silence, his arms now draped over your knees. The first time he watched this movie, it was in his old home, cross-legged on the carpeted ground with you on the couch behind him. Your hands used to press into his shoulders from above, shake them whenever your favourite scenes came on, squeeze them when you laughed until tears rolled from your eyes. Now that his new flat lacks a rug, he’s willing to settle with your legs on his own. Flashing lights illuminate the dark room in sequences that you can still recall perfectly from memory. He watches the movie. You watch him. 

“Have you been doing good, Kei?”

Turning to you, he pushes his glasses up into his hair, leaning further back. You shuffle closer, legs bending as your shoulder digs into the leather couch. A strand of blond falls into his face, and you lift his glasses to tuck it back, before smoothing your hands over his mess of hair, combing and pushing with your fingertips.The words from the television melt into gibberish when he hums in satisfaction, what is unspoken between you two is more glaring than ever.

“I’ve been okay.” He cuts off, then finds himself thinking of what to tell you first, amongst the recollections of life that rush through his head. “Started working at the museum a couple years ago.” He wishes that you still remember the building, where the marble floors squeaked beneath your slippers, and glass panels lined the walls, hiding away treasures and artefacts that have withstood centuries, maybe even eons of erosion and weathering.

You nod, mind filling with the many museum visits you had with him there. He’s always liked the dinosaurs more than the shells. When you breathe out a chuckle, he knows you’re recalling the time he almost pissed himself at a life-sized, moving tyrannosaurus rex model. 

“What about you?”

“Research. I’ve been doing research about…” you sign in the air, searching for the Japanese words that have slipped from your mind. Surrendering, you whip your phone out, searching for a translation. 

“Archaeology?”

“Yeah, that. No more librarian dreams for me. More dinosaurs, though.”

A smile finds its way onto Kei’s face, one that softens his cheeks and flattens his eyes into crescents. He wonders if amongst the silver plaques and digital displays, your work is engraved in there somewhere. If each time he explains something to some bright-eyed child, who scuttles around the museum as you and him once did, he is unknowingly speaking in your language, translated until he can decipher the thoughts that run through your mind in your research, your memories, your dreams too. 

“Maybe it’s in the museum somewhere. I’m willing to bet.”

“I hope it is.”

Your conversation fizzles back into silence, and the characters on the television do too. The two on the screen sit in a field, mere inches apart. The two of you look at each other, your knees now leaned into Kei’s chest and one of his arms draped along the back of the couch. When he pulls his glasses back to his eyes, and studies you all over again, it hits him that you really haven’t changed all that much, even after your six year separation. Six years older, with the exhaustion of a functioning adult, but you still gnaw on your cheeks, and tilt your head as you ask questions. Six years apart, and you are still you, who taught him to build sandcastles, and introduced him to his favourite movie, and fixed his hair whenever it stuck up in stubborn peaks of gold. When you let your eyes close, and drop your head onto his shoulder, you wait for lost time to tick backwards, until you’re on the rooftop with him once again. In this version of time, you blush when you tell him that you’ve chosen to stay in Japan instead. Pushing your head further into the crook of his neck, Kei’s chin reaches over to rest on the top of your crown. The credits of the movie roll in the background, and you mumble into the skin of his pulse. 

“Can you take me there? I’ve missed it.” Your words send vibrations down his spine, sending his head into a frenzy as he pushes his hands against the couch harder. 

“The museum?” It will be closed for the weekend, but Kei nods anyway. He’s sure he can find his way in through the back. Maybe he’ll take you to the fossils again, let you run your fingers along smooth amber and stone engravings. Perhaps he could show you the new exhibitions, ones that you won’t miss this time, as you have for the past six years. For now, he thinks he will let you sleep on his shoulder, listen to your soft snores, tremble at every hot breath that fans onto his neck. 

The credits roll to the end, and come to a stop. Kei removes his arm from the couch to grab the remote from his coffee table. He rewinds the movie to the start.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

思慕 [しぼ, shibo]: yearning; deep longing, especially when accompanied by tenderness or sadness.

On the final night of your stay, you learn that Kei still giggles when he breaks rules, as he drags you through the back entrance of the closed museum. He maneuvers through hallways of antique paintings and repurposed junk, slips into dark stairwells illuminated by the flashlight of his phone, traps your wrist between his fingers and chuckles to himself, shaking his head as he takes you higher, and higher, and higher. You’ve lost count of how many flights of stairs have gone by when he taps his keycard against a sensor by a backdoor, and pushes it open. The museum observatory, once a mess of bamboo scaffolding and green covers, now allows silver moonlight through its glass dome, boasting billions of iridescent stars nestled in a blanket of hazy midnight. A decade of your anticipation has resulted in a circular space, hundreds of plush recliners lining the circumference of the room, and you wonder how many eyes have watched the stars from those seats before you ever had the chance to. When Kei leads you further into the observatory, you step foot onto the north star plastered on the ground in the centre of the room, where nothing but a telescope remains in a ten-foot radius. He takes a spot on the ground, back pressed against the cushioned edge of a seat.

“I figured this is the best spot. Better than any of the seats, actually.” He plants his feet on the ground, bending his knees and spreading them just wide enough for you to sit in between. You cross your legs, wagging them up and down as your hands hold your shins, and he lowers his legs, stretching them out in front of him. Leaning back, your spine hits a spot between his ribs, the same way it did when you were thirteen, and fourteen, and fifteen, staring at stars from the grass of his backyard. You pity the visitors that have yet to discover the simplicity of stargazing from the ground, hands pushed into the ground for stability, dirt and moisture seeping into the fabric of clothing. Pushing further into him, his breathing is heavy against your back, chest rising in rhythmic ups and downs. For what feels like hours, you sit in silence, eyes trained on your fingers that pick and fiddle. At the realisation that you haven’t looked at the stars in years, something bubbles in your stomach, pervasive, relentless. When you finally loll your head backwards to fall on his shoulder, and the tip of Kei’s nose grazes your cheekbone, you wonder how long he has not looked at the stars for as well. 

“Why’d you stop calling?” His sudden question sends a haze rushing into your head.

You swallow thickly. If the passage of time were a sin, you’d burden it with all your explanations. Telling him that now would seem like some lousy excuse.

“It stopped going to your line a year after I left.” You pause, searching for the right words to use amidst the sea of Japanese and English that you must now sort out. “I only stopped trying after another month, the voicemail just said your number was no longer in use.” 

Kei wishes he could dig his fingers into his chest and rip his heart out. If only he hadn’t stupidly broken his phone that night, five years ago during volleyball practice. If only he had checked his pockets before entering the court, just as he has done hundreds of times before. If only he had this, if only he had that, he might just torment himself for the rest of his life. His breath hitches, shoulder freezing rigid. Time does not differentiate between the knowing and oblivious. It slips and leaks beneath the noses of all that it encompasses, and it is but the cautious few that know to grab it, and join in on its journey. He knows now that he is not one of them, not after he’s cursed at the passage of time over and over and over for his own blunder.

“I broke my phone in a game. Got a new one so the number changed as well, fuck me.”

You laugh dryly into the empty observatory. The occasional twinkling of the stars above do nothing to make his explanation any easier. You think you’ll blame it all on doomed fate that you’ve spent five years trying to find somebody that felt the same as Kei did, to no avail. Blame it on cursed luck that you’ve clawed and grabbed at anything familiar enough, archaeology, jazz vinyls, old DVDs of the movie shared between two, all to remind yourself that he too, was once within grasp. You say nothing, because you don’t see a reason to. Instead, you push your head into his neck, drown in the scent of his cologne, ease yourself into his now grown body. You don’t see him wipe a hand across his mouth, then rub his eyes with pinched fingers. 

When Kei decides to speak again, it is what feels like another hour later. He’s readjusted his posture about fifty times by now, arms removed from the ground and draped over your shoulders. The sensation of your hair against his skin is suddenly more prominent than ever when your hands find his own, holding them closer to yourself.

“If I didn’t find you at the grave, would you have looked for me?” His question is heavy, weighing his chest down as the words leave his throat in a hesitant cluster. You turn to look at him, and your eyes linger on his own when you squeeze his hands once, twice, then a third time. 

“I’ve been looking for five years. Nobody else could take me home.” Your heart rushes to your mouth at your confession, and the bob of Kei’s throat does not go unnoticed. One of his hands comes up to hold your shoulder, pushing it towards himself until your body twists, rubbing against his. You let go of him, pressing your fingers into the ground between his legs instead, and he breathes out shakily, his windpipe suddenly cleared of its uncertainty.

“You’re leaving tomorrow.”

“Yes, I am.”

His fingers slide down to grab your wrist, before going numb completely. His unoccupied hand peels itself from the floor and settles on the side of your waist. Your mouth goes dry when Kei breathes, hot and heavy, his eyes travelling to every inch of you. A bout of heat rushes from his chest to his head, and his legs, and his arms too. The air between the two of you is thick, and it sends your head into a feverish blur. The ground collapses beneath your knees as they shift to press into the floor, and you come face to face with Tsukishima Kei, who prefers his hair parted in bangs on the sides of his face, and wears silver frames instead of black ones. Tsukishima Kei, who has been visiting your father’s grave on your behalf for six years, and still plays volleyball even in his adulthood. Tsukishima Kei, whose eyes are finally finished with their ventures across your figure, that is pushed up against him on the ground of an observatory, and is learning whatever he can about you when his fingers tighten around your wrists and he kisses you without a warning. 

Once, at the young, innocent age of seven, Tsukishima Kei kissed you in this museum. You had run a little too fast, stepped on your loose laces and fallen onto the ground face first. You sulked at a bench facing some random painting of melting clocks, red dots scattered across a purple patch right beneath your eye. When he kneeled in front of you to grab your face, and pressed his lips onto the bruise for a fraction of a second, he must have kissed the pain away, mending the leaking capillaries beneath your skin as he separated from your cheeks with a pop. Now, he pulls against your wrists to push himself closer, traps you in the embrace of his legs around the back of your thighs, wheezes and stutters against your lips at the lack of oxygen in his lungs. His head is running in circles instead of straight paths, and everything is spinning. When your hands reach to grab at his shirt, and palm at his chest, he pulls away only to rip his glasses off and toss them to the ground. Beneath the glow of the moon from above, everything but your flushed cheeks and swollen lips is a blur. You take half a breath in, before it is interrupted by Kei’s palms pulling you in by the sides of your neck, and his mouth on yours again. At seven years old, he ripped bruising pain away from your face with a kiss. At twenty-one, he forces his pain, and grief, and regret rushing into your heart by pushing himself against you, fingers tangling themselves into your hair as he kisses you, desperate, almost distressed. Every tug at your lips is a confession left unspoken, every time Kei opens his mouth apologies spill out into you in choked groans and sighs. At the sensation of his hand leaving your neck, your arm searches for him aimlessly, before he’s palming at you through your pants. He swallows your sudden gasp, and your fingers grip his wrist until your knuckles go white. 

“Did you ever like me?” You can do nothing but choke out a question against his lips, one you’ve pondered about, day in and day out, since your departure from Japan.

By the way that Kei nods frantically, you’re certain that this is what six years of separation has amounted to. 

Sparing no time, your fingers tug at the hem of his boxers, pulling them down just enough to release himself from the fabric constraints. He does the same, hands roaming until they find the waistband of your pants to push them down, fingers tugging your underwear to the side with a flick. He grabs you by the waist beneath your shirt, yanks your body towards him until something feels right and he can’t help but let out a trembling sigh into your shoulder. And when you finally begin to sink yourself onto him, agonisingly slow, you wish that you had never left Japan in the first place. Your eyes roll to the back of your head, and you wish that you could spend the rest of your life in this observatory with Kei, your hands wrapped around the back of his sweat-slicked neck. 

When he pulls you down to push further, more pervasively, you fall into him, head hanging over his shoulder and arms squeezing around his neck. His inexperienced hands rock you back and forth against his hips, pulling a flurry of gasps and moans from your throat. He lets himself learn how you taste when his teeth tug at the hem of your shirt, pulling it down to expose your bare shoulder. His lips latch onto your collarbone, biting and sucking a trail of red marks up to the side of your neck. You shudder at his advances, and he studies the way your walls flutter around him, the erratic pulses that draw stars around his head, how your nails dig into his shoulders, and send his mind into a senseless orbit. 

When he pushes and pulls at you a little harder, you whimper his name into his ear, reduced to nothing but a babbling mess that nibbles at his neck and kisses up his jaw feverishly. First friend, first kiss, first love. The notion that this is another first that Tsukishima Kei has brought upon you sends your mind spiralling. He should have been your first prom date, first roommate, first dance too. If only you hadn’t left him first. You push your head off his shoulder, hands moving to hold his face instead. A wave of pleasure washes over you when his palm presses against your stomach, and you hang your head low again, a shaky sigh released from your chest. 

When you look up, there are tears in Kei’s eyes. He rolls his head back onto the plush seat behind him, hands lifting you off himself fully, just to push you back onto him again. You collapse into his body, palms pressing against his heaving chest. 

“I- fuck! I fucking loved you! I still do!” He speaks it into the glass ceiling as one hand reaches for his face. He wipes his palm across his eyes, only for more tears to form. They are uncontrollable, relentless as he turns his head away from you. He isn’t sure how he will live again tomorrow, not when he’s finally come to a reckoning with the pang in his chest at every thought of you. He thinks he could die the second you step onto that flight back to London, ripped away from him once again. The reality that he cannot stay buried inside you for any longer than the next couple of minutes haunts him to no end, the idea of being separated from you a second time unbearable to even imagine. When he turns back to see you, head on his chest and fingers gripping the fabric of his shirt, he decides that reality can wait until he’s finished with you. 

“I love you too- shit, Kei! I never stopped!”

You rut against his hips senselessly now, chasing some unfamiliar high as your vision fades to black and you scream his name until your throat goes hoarse. Kei barely gives you time to breathe, before he’s coming undone from right beneath you, shuddering and groaning as you relax against his body and go limp. He holds you against him, one hand pushing your head against his chest and the other wrapped around your back. He tucks your damp hair behind your ears, places kisses along your temple so he can hear the hums of satisfaction that sound from your curled lips. 

“Can you stay forever?” He mumbles into your hair, and you turn to press your ear against his chest. His heart pounds as he pushes his cheek into the crown of your head, and your hands crawl up his chest to wrap around his neck. When he looks up through the glass ceiling, the stars have not moved one bit.

“I’ll find you again, wherever you are.”

Time may slip away from Tsukishima Kei like petals that fall off the buds of flowers, water that seeps beneath the soles of his sneakers, stardust that hovers above the atmosphere. Yet he has learned that it has a way of always coming back to remind him of its presence, and its escape. You are the reminder that it has been sending to him for six years.

author's note:

ERM! never writing nsfw again that's for sure but this piece defs had some stuff that i was very, VERY proud of coming up with!! sorry to my minor moots who probably won't read this in its entirety bc of the big MDNI warning... but I honestly don't know how to feel about this piece as a whole... i was super excited to write it but i think i got a little impatient towards the end esp since im always writing at like 3am LOL but i hope you guys liked it anyways!!! i tried really hard to make the dynamic work and i hope it did!!!!!

also ps they exchange numbers again js a little extra bonus that i didn’t get to put into the actual thing

anyways tags!!

@staraxiaa @chuuya-brainrot @akaakeis @laughingfcx @writingsofanomnivore @t0rchknight @bailey-reeds @wyrcan @hiraethwa @fiannee @catsoupki @anonymity-222 @wishi-selfships @kuroppiii

ok love u guys thank u for being patient

[noonaishere]

Online/Offline [C.S] - ninety | it’s a coniferous forest there’s so much pining

San watched y/n as she slept on the couch. Yunho had long ago gone to his room to update his friend on what happened and go to sleep, but y/n had fought sleepiness like a child waiting for Santa Claus until she finally nodded off by accident. He wondered if she was just over excited from everything that had happened or if maybe she was too worried from having to be around her stalker for most of the day to be able to sleep. But she was asleep now, features relaxed and beautifully peaceful.

“Can I ask you something?” Wooyoung asked.

San motioned for him to follow him into his room where he sat on the floor next to his bed and invited Wooyoung to join him.

“I don’t want to wake her up. What is it?”

“I’m really glad that Quack messaged you when she did. Yunho and I were running over, but you were much faster than us.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you run from the café?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a good thing you’re so athletic.”

San exhaled a laugh and nodded.

“So was it your fast feet or your love for her that carried you?” Wooyoung said and laughed quietly.

San glared at him, unimpressed.

Wooyoung laughed a bit too loud before quieting himself again.

“Please don’t say things like that in front of her.”

“Why not?”

He stared at him again.

Wooyoung shrugged. “Just tell her you like her.”

San shook his head.

“Why not? If you like her, just tell her you do.”

“What? And take the advice you gave Minsoo?”

“Who told you about that?”

“Seonghwa hyung.”

Wooyoung narrowed his eyes at San. 

San smiled.

“Well, I guess you could try that way. She might find it funny.”

He exhaled a laugh. “Maybe.”

He folded his arms and leaned back against the bed, thinking. They sat in silence for a few moments while he processed what he was feeling. Wooyoung played with the hem of his sleeve as he waited for San to say something. 

“I thought he was really going to hurt her, Woo.”

Wooyoung looked over at him.

“All I could imagine was… him dragging her off somewhere and…”

“Kidnapping her?”

“Yeah.” San put his face in his hands and inhaled, trying to steady his nerves. 

Wooyoung inhaled and nodded. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

When he felt more composed he pulled his hands away. “I know she said he’s already hurt her, and he has, but all I could think of as I ran towards them and he wouldn’t let go of her…”

“Was all the worst possible shit that could happen?”

San nodded.

“Yeah, I understand. But… what does that have to do with asking her out?”

He sighed. “I don’t know… I just needed to tell someone.”

“What about telling her?”

“I almost did on the way over here, but you heard her.”

“She’s surprisingly hard-headed when she puts her mind to something.”

He nodded again.

“She’s got that only child attitude… She understood how dangerous it was, though.”

San turned to him.

“I know that her brushing it off when you asked her why she didn’t tell you made it seem like she didn’t, but she really did.”

He turned away.

“San-a--”

“What would you or Yunho have done if I didn’t show up? She could have been kidnapped.”

“Try to get her away from him. I don’t know if we could have fought him like you did, but we would have stopped him from taking her anywhere. We were in a public place and Yunho is at least as tall as Byungchul is.”

San looked up at the ceiling and sighed.

“So just tell her.”

“That I like her?”

“Yeah.”

He turned to Wooyoung for a moment before looking away again. “I don’t know.”

“Why?”

“...I don’t know.”

Wooyoung watched him quietly.

“There’ll be the court case. And… I don’t know. I don’t even know if she likes me as more than a friend.”

“You can ask.”

San shook his head.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Maybe… maybe it’s not good to pine after people for months.”

“Or years, even.”

San turned to him.

“Mountain of Namhae.”

He sighed heavily. “What if… what if I’m no better than Byungchul?”

“We both know you’re not--”

“I’ve also been following her for forever. Probably longer than him. But I’m worse, I had the opportunity to tell her and I didn’t. I’m like a stalker.”

“Okay, it’s not like you found out who she was on purpose, San. You met her in real life by accident.”

“I don’t know.”

“San. She can’t be mad at you when she’s the one who moved here, came into the café, and then applied to work there. You were there first.”

“But I shouldn’t have kept it from her.”

“Maybe.” Wooyoung sighed. “Listen, I can’t make you do anything, but I think you should tell her.”

San nodded but didn't say anything.

“San-a, it’s just…” 

Wooyoung wanted to tell San that he knew for a fact that y/n liked him, but as he opened his mouth to say it he had a sudden flash of realization: telling him would mean selling out Yeosang, and that would mean y/n couldn’t trust Yeosang with a secret. And, if Wooyoung told San what he knew, that would mean that San couldn’t trust him with a secret. And then no one would trust him ever again. He didn’t want to screw over his own friendship, definitely, and he knew Yeosang would be pissed at him if he destroyed his oldest friendship. All he could imagine was chubby-cheeked, child Yeosang, crying because he missed his best friend from before he moved… and then maybe adult Yeosang punching him in the face for the first and last time and never speaking to him again.

He sighed.

“What?” San asked.

He shook his head. “This whole situation.” He rubbed his eyes. “I really don’t think she’ll think you’re like Byungchul if you tell her you’ve been following her; it’s not like she’s an unknown streamer, her best friend is in JUPiTER, for fuck’s sake. There are tons of people who watch her streams.”

San shook his head.

“What ‘no’?”

“It’s not just that.”

“Then what else is it?”

San sighed.

   previous | main cast | masterlist | next

a/n: Oh San and his many secrets of varying sizes. What do you think the other one is?

Send an ask or leave a comment if you want to be added to the tag list! 🧋 Any comments, reblogs, or asks are appreciated! I love talking with you guys and seeing what you’re saying about the chapters, it keeps me going 🥰

@rachs-words • @stayatinykatsy • @dinossaurz​​ • @conwunder​ • @tinyelfperson​ • @anythingrelatingtojinyoung​ • @jaytheatiny​ •

[basilone]

71) a crucifix and a thigh tattoo for whoever strikes your fancy!

Thank you very much for sending this! 💙 When I saw it, I immediately went "this is a John Brady thing" and that naturally led to a "Brady as tattoo artist"-AU that I didn't even know I needed until I had it. 😂 Soooo. I'm sharing the goodies.

“That looks really blasphemous.”

John exhales softly as the latest line, by some miracle, still ends up looking straight despite her snicker of amusement. “What does?” he asks, wiping at her skin just to check. Yeah. Straight line. “Stop moving, Maddie”– he adds, tapping her hip in warning –“unless you want these flowers to look wonky.”

“Sorry,” she says, booming her apology around the shop with all the aplomb of a woman who’s never been quiet a day in her life. Her next words are slightly quieter. Reserved only for him, if he listens closely enough. “Your necklace. It was on my thigh.”

He grunts, squinting at the rest of the linework that still needs doing. “And?”

“Crucifix on a demon? I’m surprised I didn’t catch fire.” She snickers again, louder once more, nodding at her leg. “See what I mean?”

John glances down, sighing as he realizes his gold chain has indeed escaped his shirt. Half his crucifix is dancing a slow pattern on her thigh, almost as if it is following the lines of the many peacock feathers that adorn the demonic figure he has painstakingly tattooed on her. He’d laughed when she’d first shown up with the idea for it – something from a French illustrated dictionary of demons, fine-lined and intricate – and the flowers he is crafting on her skin now flow forth from the topmost feathers well enough.

“I see it,” he says, mouth quirking around a smile he can’t bite back. “You should really get that angel done on your other thigh, Maddie”– he bows back over his work, not bothering to tuck his necklace back into his shirt –“instead of relying on me to save whatever’s left of your soul.”

“Oi!” Her indignance is a playful bark, as is the tease that follows. “Do you treat all your very beautiful paying customers like that, John?

“I’ll let you know,” he says evenly, starting work on the next petal, “once I find one.”

Maddie’s groan thankfully is not accompanied by any further movement on her part. He smiles to himself as she taps the table twice. You win, she says without speaking. Concedes her defeat more easily than he would, though he has a hunch she’ll try and find something else to win over him before the session’s done.

She always sits without complaint. Marathons a tattoo session the way Bucky Egan marathons baseball reruns, which is as admirable as it is mildly terrifying. He knows to clear his schedule for her. Gets Evelyn to run out for lunch and dinner, in the rather vain hopes that the girl will somehow find her voice somewhere between all the order mix-ups. He hasn’t had to threaten Maddie into eating in the shop since that first session when she’d almost fainted, with Buck’s mild tsk sound the only warning John had gotten just in time.

“You still good?” he asks, all the same, even though it hasn’t been twenty minutes since he last asked. Taps a pattern of don’t lie to me on her lower belly, just above her waistband. “Feeling okay?”

“Peachy, John,” she sighs, head tipping back onto his table when he wipes the excess ink off her skin. “I like this area a lot, it’s a fucking good ache you’re giving me. Don’t know what the heck Max was complaining about”– she continues, obviously remembering Maxine’s loud bitching session on Lottie’s table as well as he does –“because it ain’t as bad as the one you tried on my foot.”

“The one you almost kicked me in the nuts about some four times before Lottie finally quit laughing herself sick and took pity on me,” he grumbles, holding her steady on his table with one hand splayed out on her stomach. “I think Buck’s still got a photo of it that he’s keeping as blackmail material.”

“Blackmail material for you or for me?”

“Me,” he answers, shrugging as he dots a few short lines at the heart of her new flower. “Buck’s not that mean about you girls.”

“Unless your name is Lottie and he’s stinkin’ mad at you.”

John lets out a snort. Leans his arm on her and bends over the last line, which he has planned to sweep up to her ribcage. “They’ll make up. Last time she punched him before they made up and he got weirdly proud about that.” He rubs a small circle on Maddie’s stomach as he hears her sharper breath intake. “Breathe it through, Maddie,” he murmurs, keeping his voice soft and his touch even softer amid the sharp needle punctures, “that’s it. Good. You’re doing great today.”

She sounds almost drowsy. “Yeah?”

“Like a real angel.”

“Means a lot, John, comin’ from a Catholic and all. You’re still trying to balance my scales, huh?”

“Well,” he remarks, working as quickly as he can in the area he knows aches the most, “I’d have you know angels aren’t like those Cupid garden statues you keep thinking I’d tattoo on you. Real angels are beautiful and terrifying at the same time.”

“How does that work?” she asks, softer-voiced than he’s ever heard.

“They exist so close to God that the human mind cannot comprehend what it sees. We know there’s beauty in that – in the colors of a gemstone, the glowing coals of a fire, whatever they are likened to – but also a deep and strange sense of being other, of a sort? They do introduce themselves with be not afraid,” he remembers, as lost in his knowledge as he is in the very last of this line on her skin, “and I believe at least one prophet saw many eyes and many wings.”

Maddie’s voice doesn’t rise above a whisper. “Maybe you should draw a real angel on me after all, John. Just to be sure.”

“Next time I will,” he promises, and tucks his crucifix back into his shirt.

[cloudyydraws]

more mario and luigi doodles but i took their mouths away

+ extra unfinished stuff under the cut

[inkly-heart]

please don’t be sad little sprout, you are loved 🌱 🖤

🌱

[coolnonsenseworld]

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

----

I'm catching up with comms so in the meantime here is a page from KF 2022 PDF, which I drew to substitute for a NSFW post!

I hope you will have a great Monday <3

52 weeks of KICK Fridays - what is it?

It's 3 PDFs made out of my Patreon content where I published Klance each Friday (Kick Fridays) since 2020. You can buy them by lowest price Patreons could pay each year to see it (1/month) on my shop (payhip.com/mezzy). I publish something for each sold PDF 💞

[omaano]

I wish I had pushed the angle on this one a little more to match what I'd imagined for this scene from the end of chapter 14 of Mand'alor Cabur by @nautilicious but at this point stubborness has kicked in and I've dug in my heals so this is what I'm working with! In other news I've picked my birthday project for this year, and in my post-vacation optimism I see a chance to get this at least to a lines-and-flats (and maybe even some lighting???) stage by the end of next week, which would be very great for me! That is if the green background doesn't completely sabotage me in the process...

[chloecherrysip]

Mario watching his and Luigi's commercial in Punch-Out Pizzeria

[lesbianaelwen]

I was wondering who kipperlily was reminding me of, and I finally remembered last night—ocean from ride the cyclone. as in, yes, these morals are fucked but also this is a child. it is the moral duty of the adults around her to foster better morals and traits like compassion and empathy. I can’t blame her for being so primed to be taken advantage of; that being said, if/when that influence is removed and if she is given a chance to change, that is on her.

in a meta sense, brennan has established that there is a difference in the teenage villains he creates, and the vast majority of them are not pure irredeemable evil—they were influenced/groomed into their role and given external support/the ability to be free from that and change, they take it. how I’m seeing it, that’s being set up for at least a few of the rat grinders.

[rubenesque-as-fuck]

Anyway I got notified that I'll be getting a nice $$ bonus from work today and I wish that I could celebrate with someone in a way that didn't just feel like obnoxious bragging. Like beyond the financial aspect, it's just nice to be recognized for good work and I actually feel... good?? about this job??

But it feels so silly to say I want to celebrate when I just got back from what felt like my first real vacation in a very long time and am doing cool comic con stuff this weekend and am scheduled for a new tattoo next weekend. I am already doing lots of things to try to make myself feel good! It feels selfish to want more!

But I guess even with all of that, there's just still a hunger for external validation from trusted sources. Will I ever grow out of wanting someone to be proud of me?