#having something tangible to look at or hold to remind them that someone cares is Big

[byanyan]

how do you best like to be loved?

craft me a cunning creation

ㅤthe power of 'i made this for you' is enough to make your heart ache in the good kind of way. the knowledge that someone sat down, and, with you in mind, they Created. they painted, they knit, they sculpted, they folded. they Created for you. it is something tangible. something that will remain when they have to leave for the night. something that lingers. you can look at it, touch it, and you can know that you were cared for enough to inspire creation. you were the source of someone wanting to make. you were, and you are, and you have proof of it. you have proof that they think of you, proof that they thought. and you're worth it, love, you're inspirational. i hope you have an entire shelf or bookcase filled with proof of being thought of and remembered. filled with tangible evidence of consideration.

tagged by:ㅤthe ever lovely @gnarledbite ♡

[konigbabe]

Leon S. Kennedy headcanons

Random headcanons of Leon S. Kennedy that's been stuck in my head for what feels like forever. There's a small NSFW section under the divider 18+.

Pairing: Leon Kennedy x gn!reader

Word count: 1.2k

Tags/warnings: fluff; established relationship; smut; oral sex; gender-neutral reader; no y/n

masterlist • navigation • faq • AO3

He loves kissing.

This man is so touch-starved that kissing is sacred to him. He loves kissing; lives for it – but only with the right person. Someone who holds his heart in their hand. Soft kisses, unhurried and so indulgent. Leon’s kisses are a devotion of their own; they don’t necessarily lead to something more. He just enjoys the feeling of your lips on his. Knows when to add the right pressure, when and how to use his tongue…

He’s also a really, really good kisser (don’t fight me on this); loves to bite your lip as well.

His love language is physical touch.

(–or acts of service.)

Anyway; Leon adores physical touch whether it's inside or outside the safety of your shared space. If you join him on missions, you’ll always find him close – his hand brushing yours, palm on your back guiding you forward, making sure you're always within his line of sight. And if you ever get hurt, his hands gently grasp your body, checking to make sure you're okay.

At home, he just loves to touch you randomly – kiss on your temple carrying multiple meanings (‘thank you’, ‘you’re welcome’, ‘I love you’, ‘good morning’ and so on), arms sneaking around you to enclose in a bear hug. Or having his exhausted body to just lay on top of you, using you as his own personal pillow…

He struggles with the L word.

The words “I love you” lingered in the back of Leon’s throat for a long time; not because he wasn’t sure of it but because once spoken, they become real and tangible. Acknowledged. Something he can’t take back.

He secretly enjoys cooking and has a few signature dishes that he’s really proud of.

Leon isn’t really a chef. Often opting for rather simple meals but even those bring him joy. Solace lies in the simplicity of it all. As a man who has had little control in his life since childhood, the act of cooking provides a sense of control and satisfaction that he rarely experiences elsewhere; having his own space, doing something so insignificant that it becomes significant in its own way.

He’s definitely someone who would say something along the lines “Made with love, not skill.”

He’s a workaholic.

Leon cares about you; loves you. There’s no lie in the fact that he wants to spend every second possible with you. Every fibre of his being yearns to be close to you, to protect you from harm. However, as a seasoned agent, adrenaline courses through his veins. It’s a part of him, as natural as breathing. He craves the thrill of danger, the rush of a mission, even though it tears him away from you. Leon’s already learned to accept that his calling for epinephrine is as much a part of his as his love for you.

He has a bit of a sweet tooth and loves all kinds of desserts.

Leon's sweet tooth is undeniable. He simply cannot resist the allure of sugary treats, and desserts hold a special place in his heart. From gooey chocolate cakes to creamy fruit tarts, he loves them all. He is not shy about indulging in his favorite treats, often having multiple servings or even ordering dessert before his meal.

He’s a romantic at heart.

Love letters that tug at your heartstrings, make you feel as if he’s by your side instead of fighting the infected and all the bad guys that team up on him. Testaments of his affection towards you. Morning messages a gentle reminder that he’s still here for you, whenever you need him. He believes that every moment in a relationship should be cherished, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, and he relishes in each one spent with you.

He let’s you braid his hair.

(He’s blond; I stand firmly by his game's looks.)

Sitting on the carpet, back comfortably resting against the sofa cushions as you throw your legs over his broad shoulders, feeling the taunt muscle underneath your thighs. Letting out soft sighs of contentment as you gently thread your fingers through the silky hair; braiding the sides or simply brushing it clean. His fingers wrapped around your ankle, drawing lazy shapes over the thin skin there while enjoying the tender scrape of your fingernails against his scalp.

He's socially awkward.

Outside the people that know him or the people he's forced into close proximity with (*cough* Luis *cough*), Leon is not a social butterfly. Not big on conversations, rather short and snappy answers. Oftentimes at a loss for words. Socializing exhausts him. His desire lies to be left alone; or with one person at a time but it has to be someone he's already familiar with.

He loves cuddling more than sex.

Don’t be fooled, Leon’s definitely sex-crazed around you. Loves to be buried deep inside you; feel your warmth, the velvety squeeze when his cock hits that sweet spot inside – but cuddling makes him happier. It’s his way to show you how devoted he is to you. That feeling of emotional security provided by your cuddles gives him pleasure far greater than the way your body responds to his cock.

He’s a switch.

Leon’s a curious creature – relishing in both submission and domination; intrigued by the duality of power exchange. While the daddy/mommy kink doesn't quite capture his attention, that doesn't mean he can't submit to your every whim, yearning to appease your deepest desires. The mood of the moment guides his actions, emotions dictating the course.

Leon’s a foreplay master and a teaser.

Absolutely addicted to the way your body reacts to his touches, to his kisses. Some days, he’s even capable of making the foreplay longer than the actual sex; having you writhing, begging with teary eyes to finally put his cock inside you. Leon’s certainly going to tease every cell in your body, setting it on fire, letting it burn until you’re nothing but a mere ember.

He loves oral.

Receiving or giving — he doesn’t really hold a preference. It’s not important whether he’s the one on his knees or you; Leon is someone who finds his own pleasure deep within yours, just feeling you react to his tongue, to his fingers. This goes the other way around, having your lips around his cock, feeling the tightness of your throat…makes him a mess.

He’s an ass man.

Leon can't help but love ass in every way imaginable. He runs his hands over the supple globes of your flesh, his teeth sinking into the softness. Pressed tightly against him, you can feel his hard cock straining against the fabric of his pants, yearning to be set free. He stares at it, touches it, spanks it, and bites it every chance he gets. It's predictable that he'll have you in various positions, pounding away while admiring your delicious curves - doggy, reverse cowgirl, and so much more.

He’s loud.

(– and he moans.)

There’s no denying that Leon will grunt, growl, groan, whimper and moan during the whole night. Very expressive nature. He’s not really extremely loud to the point someone might hear you through the walls; yet the room is always filled with the sounds of his own pleasure, only adding to that fire deep inside you.

[wordsofhoneydew]

happy wednesday <3

thank you to my lovelies @anincompletelist @suseagull04 @itsmaybitheway @eusuntgratie @heysweetheart-writes @rockyroadkylers @magicandarchery for tagging me !! your snippets were absolutely scrumptious

i started my first song fic!! so i’ll be sharing a longer snippet than i usually would:

+

Henry is walking back now, taking careful steps around the crowd of dancing people as he tries not to spill the tray of shots he’s holding. A high pitched giggle escapes his lips as he sets it down on the table in front of Alex, but Alex never strays his focus away from Henry’s face. The way his blue eyes gleam reminding him of the water at his father’s lake house back in Texas— dark and all consuming—as he looks back at Alex so intently. He could get lost in them forever.

just another blip in my heart:

He’s laughing at some suggestive joke Pez makes, head tipped back and smile completely unguarded. The sheen sweat on his cheekbones makes his skin glow under the luminescent lights of the bar, as if he was sculpted by Michelangelo himself. And Alex just watches him in quietude, utterly infatuated with Henry’s natural beauty. It makes his heart clench in his chest; knowing that he can’t have him, that Henry doesn’t feel the same way as he does.

So he looks away begrudgingly, grabbing another shot and downing it without a flinch or grimace, hoping that the buzz under his skin and the raucous music will eventually drown out the thoughts of the pretty blond man in front of him.

Then Nora is grabbing Alex by his wrist and pulling him up to the dance floor. He bites back a groan as he gives in to her, and places his hands on her waist.

“What’s up with you, Alejandro? You’ve been sulking all night.” Damn Nora’s perceptiveness and ability to read right through him. He thought he did a fair job at hiding the looming feeling of dejection that comes to him whenever Henry’s around or weighing heavily in his thoughts.

”Nothing.” Alex catches a glimpse of Henry watching them and turns around so that his back is facing toward him. Out of sight out of mind.

Nora looks over his shoulder as she continues to dance, a knowing smirk spreading across her lips. “Oh I see, still pining over Henry?”

Alex rolls his eyes as he tries to keep up with the pace of Nora’s movements. “What d’ya think?” he practically grumbles. “It’s not like I can turn off my feelings like a fuckin’ light switch.”

“Loosen up, man. Or just talk to him. That white boy is literally in love with you, stop being a coward and just go for it.”

A coward. That’s exactly what Alex is, and if it means it will protect his heart from inevitable rejection, then so fucking be it.

“I need another drink.” He mumbles, not caring whether Nora hears or not.

The night fades away into Alex stumbling through the front door of his apartment, still buzzed with adrenaline and alcohol running through his system.

After a much needed shower and change into a comfortable pair of sweats, the fuzziness subsides, his feelings begin to feel tangible, more real. His mind replays the events of the night; prim and proper Henry loosened up after a few drinks of gin and tonic, how he swayed his hips subtly to Get Low and smiled to himself as other people gyrated against each other. He recalls how they caught each other's eyes every so often, then noticing how Henry quickly averted his eyes every time. Tonight he was beautiful and glowing, and absolutely captivating in the way he just was—In the way he always is. Alex misses the person he was before he found himself enamored with Henry; gregarious and the life of the fucking party. Now he’s stuck in an endless loop of pining after someone he can never have and convincing himself he’s over it.

sometimes I think of calling you up:

Alex is sprawled out on his couch with his TV playing something he could care less about. As suspected, the effects of alcohol can only do so much to drown out the despair of unrequited love, his mind no longer buzzing from the sound of club music, but circling around only one person’s name over again. Henry Henry Henry.

+

@agame-writes @affectionatelyrs @absolute-audacity @anchoredarchangel @bitbybitwrites @saturntheday @cha-melodius @clottedcreamfudge @daisymae-12 @dumbpeachjuice @everwitch-magiks @firenati0n @nocoastposts @littlemisskittentoes @inexplicablymine @junebugclaremontdiaz @ninzied @rmd-writes @orchidscript @myheartalivewrites @i-am-freyja @hgejfmw-hgejhsf @getmehighonmagic @happiness-of-the-pursuit @tinyarmedtrex @gayrootvegetable @violetbaudelaire-quagmire @captainjunglegym @sherryvalli @alasse9 @read-and-write- @sparklepocalypse @songliili @sunnysideprince @priincebutt @bigassbowlingballhead @o0anapher0o

[bala5]

The Cedar Waxwing symbolizes for us the need for change and movement to find the nourishment we need in life. Their sense of community and desire to share the fruits of their labor with one another, reflects our desire to engage our creative nature and joy in making something tangible for others to experience.

Spiritual and Magical meanings of encountering a Cedar Waxwing. Cedar waxwings play an important role in nature by helping to pollinate trees and plants. As totem animals, they remind us to enjoy life’s simple pleasures and to take time to appreciate the beauty around us. In addition, cedar waxwing spiritual meaning can teach us about balance, patience, and self-reliance. May you find peace and solace among the cedar waxwings. the cedar waxwing is often seen as a symbol of balance. This is because these birds are known to live in harmony with their surroundings. In addition, cedar waxwings are thought to possess great patience and fortitude. They are also considered very self-reliant, which is another important trait to embody. They often appear during turmoil or strife, reminding us to remain calm and find our inner center.

The Celts hold the cedar waxwing in high regard, seeing it as a symbol of hope and rebirth. In particular, they believed that these birds represented the spirit of hope and that the waxwing was a messenger of new beginnings. In some Celtic traditions, this bird is seen as an omen of bad things to come; however, this is typically only when the waxwing appears in large numbers. When this happens, it is often seen as a sign that something big is about to happen, either good or bad.

In Far Eastern cultures, the cedar waxwing is often seen as a symbol of good fortune. These birds bring luck and prosperity to those who cross their path. In addition, the cedar waxwing is also associated with longevity and wisdom. It is believed that these birds can help us to tap into our inner wisdom and to live a long and prosperous life.

The cedar waxwing is also seen as a symbol of friendship in many cultures. This is because these birds are known to be very social creatures. They often travel in flocks and are always seen working together. This makes them the perfect symbol for those who value friendship and teamwork.

The cedar waxwing also has a special place in Greek mythology. In this culture, the cedar waxwing is seen as a symbol of love and affection. This is because these birds are known to mate for life and to care for their young diligently. Additionally, the cedar waxwing is also associated with the Greek god Dionysus, the god of wine. These birds are often seen drinking fermented fruit in mid-flight and seem to have a great appreciation for all things sweet and delicious! Overall, the cedar waxwing has a special significance in many different cultures. Whether you see this bird as a symbol of balance, patience, or self-reliance, there is no doubt that the cedar waxwing has much to teach us.

When you look at the Waxwing’s head, it appears as if masked, another allusion to confidentiality with some mystery and the art of disguise thrown in for good measure. For nesting, Waxwings prefer the Rowan (Mountain Ash). The Rowan Tree represents courage, wisdom, and protection. A hardy Apple tree is the Waxwing’s alternative settling spot, indicative of health, happiness, and love. When the trees are close to water, it’s even better. They need plenty of water for processing the sugars in their diet. Sometimes the Waxwings gather overripe berries, becoming intoxicated and unable to fly.

A central message from the Waxwing Spirit Animal focuses on generosity. Ask yourself if someone in your life is genuinely in need. Alternatively, consider a charitable cause you can get behind in the way of support. Remember, giving is not always a matter of money. Time helps, extra hands help, your skills can help. The rewards from such efforts don’t have a price tag; they are priceless. Speaking of gifting, Waxwing Spirit Animal instructs taking an inventory of items you have but no longer need or use. If it’s sat on a shelf for six months without a thought, find a new home graciously. An extra benefit here is removing clutter and opening your space to the flow of positive energies. Third, Waxwing Spirit Animal reminds you to give means receiving as well. Many people find it hard to accept help. Pride or embarrassment gets in the way. However, the Universe values YOU too. Be thankful no matter how small or large the gesture.

Finally, the Waxwing Spirit Animal challenges you to take time in introspection. What masks do you wear in your life, and why? In Shamanic traditions, costumes transform. In other settings, they can deceive or protect. You should remain aware of the masks you don, checking for good intentions.

Words by Kimberly McGrath

[obstinatecondolement]

I know that a lot of people, for sure myself included, can be careless about repeating things we read briefly somewhere, at some point, that we never fact checked and then still feel comfortable just presenting these things as fact, but... I don't know, I guess it's very shocking to me to see that kind of carelessness from someone who is making the kind of videos James Somerton makes, with costumes and lighting and animated credits, because I still have this very misguided trust that people would hold themselves to higher standards in that kind of context than they would in an off the cuff social media post or in an irl conversation with a friend.

But, I mean, I think it's fair to say this was not just carelessness and was an intentional abuse of that trust and the associations audiences have with the aesthetics and video making choices he was using.

He wasn't just some guy making an unscripted TikTok with no professional quality audio or video equipment and no plan beyond taking his phone out of his pocket and shooting off an aggrieved hot take: he was lying, or at best implying a much higher level of research and care, and he thought he would get away with it.

Which is scary and, maybe misguidedly, I still feel like that is not a thing most people who wanted to be video essayists would intentionally do, but it does remind me that the unintentional misinformation created and spread in good faith by people who didn't mean to do or contribute to harm is also harmful and being sceptical and conservative in what you share and repeat is still important even if every single person who repeated something untrue believed in good faith that it was real. And I think that is a much bigger phenomenon than the James Somertons of the world and one that causes a lot of material harm on a scale that he couldn't top if he'd tried.

By which I don't mean that he shouldn't be criticised or that what he did wasn't an appalling betrayal of huge numbers of people that also caused real and tangible harm because... look over there at this other thing! But I do think it's a good opportunity to remind myself that if there was a higher baseline level of scepticism from audiences of internet creators when they tell them unverified things that just feel or seem true, he would never have even had the chance to get away with what he did.

So... let's not let the next guy get away with it.

[altijd-november]

The End (and a new beginning)

"You need to kill me."

Vox is suddenly in front of Echo, who is sitting on their bed in Crowley's flat.

"I- What?"

They blink a few times.

"Hold on. Who are you? How did you get in here?"

"None of that is important, just do it."

Echo sighs, looking exhausted.

"I am not going to do it if you don't tell me."

Had you asked them a few months ago, they would've been shocked at just the thought of killing someone, but now? With everything else what did it even matter?Vox rolls its eyes.

"I'm Vox. I am a part of your soul that you cut out with Death's scythe. I can fly through walls."

"You know what? I'm not going to question any of that. Why do you need me to kill you?"

"Because I'm ruining your life."

"Is all of this," they wave around, accidentally hitting a wall - Ow! -, "your fault?"

"No. I did anger your sister by being mean to the little one and almost killed Jay."

Echo's eyes flash red for a second. "You did what?"

"It's fine, I didn't actually do it."

Echo's nails dig into the palms of their hands as they try to stay in control of their emotions. "You're doing a pretty good job at getting me to kill you."

"Great. Let's get this over with."

Echo gets up and crosses their arms in front of their chest.

"How would I do that?"

Vox isn't exactly tangible. Maybe Hellfire? But there's no way Eric will give them some. They can ask Dad, but he'd freak out. Or at least the old Dad would. He would've been here by now, probably saying something about running of without saying goodbye. Echo shakes their had to clear their thoughts, but one stays behind, clinging to them.

Abby would be so worried and disappointed.

Abby isn't here. Don't think about her. Just figure out what to do with Vox. As usual, Echo's brain does not listen to then. Instead a memory floats up, from when they read The Picture of Dorian Gray. What would happen if they kill Vox? Would the rest of their soul die too? Echo doesn't want to kill their soul, even if it's its darkest part.

"Hello?" Vox waves its hand in front of Echo's face. "Are you listening?"

"Yeah, yeah. Of course.

"Vox raises an eyebrow. It reminds Echo of Crowley.

"I- I can't kill you."

Vox sighs. "Yes. You can." He talks to Echo, like they're a small child not listening to a parent. "I just told you how to."

"I won't kill you."

"Yes, you will." Vox's eyes turn fully black.

"I. Won't."

"I'm a bad person. I hurt your family. You should hate me."

"Don't get me wrong, I despise you for what you've done, but you are a part of me. I can't just kill you. My family would be so disappointed."

"Your family," Vox says, "does not care about you. They hurt you too."

"They try their best. I'm not killing you."

"You have to."

"Why?"

"It's your fault I exist. Your duty to fix it."

"D'you think I could just put my soul back together again?"

"Why not? Just hurry up."

"Okay..."

Thinking about what Dad told them about how angels self actualise, they close their eyes and concentrate. They imagine their soul as a shimmery thing, broken, and picture two pieces reattaching, slowly growing together again. "Grab my hand."

Vox's ice cold hand finds theirs and they focus again. Nothing happens. "I don't think I can do this."

"You have to. Figure out what's wrong and fix it."

"It's not that easy!" Echo snaps.

"Maybe you should've thought about that before doing it."

"I don't even remember any of it! How am I supposed to fix it, if I barely know what happened."

"Quick recap: you reached through time and space and stole Death's scythe, cut your soul in three and passed out."

"Wait- in three? So there's more of me running around?!"

"Oh yeah, I think they got kidnapped into a time loop for a while and then were sent to kill God, accidentally ended up at Lucifer Morningstar's and had a mental breakdown."

"We need to find them."

"We?"

"Yes. Where are they?"

"Uhh..." it looks around, "hiding in the penthouse."

"Shit. I can't go there."

"Why not?"

"I ran away. I can't just show up randomly."

"Well then we'll have to make sure we don't get caught."

It's surprisingly easy to get in unnoticed. They don't see or hear a sign of anyone, it almost seems entirely empty. It makes Echo sad. Some part of them had assumed that everything would be just like they left it.

They found Ekho hiding in a bathroom. It took a long time to convince them to come out of it and follow them to Echo's room. That too is empty. Except for 508 pounds of glitter. Tears spring into Echo's eyes. "Jay..." They let their fingers run through the mountain of glitter.

"Whatwhatwhat exactly are you going to do?"

Echo takes a deep breath. "Hopefully put us back together."

"Will it hurthurthurt?"

"Hopefully not."

Vox sighs impatiently.

"Okay, here we go."

Echo takes both of their hands in theirs. They try again and this time the cores of the three beings melt together. It hurts badly. By the end Echo is crying from the pain, and is alone. They fall asleep not much later, lying on the glitter and dreaming of home. It's the first time they sleep in a while.

[farity]

Hail to the King, part 2

Pairing: Aegon Targaryen and OFC

Summary: Modern AU with High School QB Aegon and new student OFC

Part 1

Warnings: Parental death

Against his (questionably) better judgment, Aegon asked.  “Where is your mom?”

Liv was looking down at the sweater and said something, so quietly, that he couldn’t make out what it was.

“What?”  He felt cold trickling down his spine, and realized it was fear.  He really didn’t want to know the answer.

“Dead.”  

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

Maybe if he didn’t move or say anything, she’d just go away.  Because nothing good was going to come from him saying something.

She looked up, eyes swimming in tears, and punched him in the chest.  “She’s dead, you asshole, and this is all I have of her!”  She punched him again in the shoulder, and he wrapped his arms around her.  He didn’t know if it was to stop her, not that her punches hurt much, or to comfort her.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I-”

“Fuck off!” she screamed, struggling to get free of him, but her foot slipped against his and she started to fall.  Instinctively, Aegon tipped her weight to him and sat down, taking her with him.  

She was sobbing loudly, and Aegon fucking hated it when girls cried.  Mostly when they were fake-crying trying to stop him from leaving them after he’d fucked them.  This was different and the hot, searing feeling of shame began to spread through him.  He began caressing her hair, whispering as he tried to calm her down.  “Sshhh, I’m so sorry, sshhhh.  Please, please.”   He didn’t know what he was pleading for, but her grief was so tangible, so different from his when his own father had died.  He hadn’t been close to his dad, and while he had felt badly for his mother, his death hadn’t impacted his life much.

Liv stopped resisting and simply let herself rest her head against Aegon’s shoulder as the sobs continued.  She was sitting on the floor between his knees, still holding her mom’s ruined sweater.  He was warm and solid and she had to remind herself that he was an asshole and she hated him.  It had been so long since anyone comforted her.  She looked after people, she made sure her dad ate and slept after her mom had died.  She made sure the bills got paid, dad’s shirts were dry-cleaned, and his favorite soda was stocked.  

Aegon stayed like that, almost cradling her, until he felt her breathing go steady and her sobs became fainter and fainter.  “Please don’t hate me,” he said, surprising himself.  He kissed the top of her head, the sweet, fruity smell of her hair making him smile.  “Don’t hate me,” he whispered again, and kissed her temple.  When she raised her face to his, he didn’t think, he simply pressed his mouth to hers.  Softly, he brushed his lips over hers, tasting her tears.  

* * * * * 

He’d started kissing her hair, and she’d let him, tired of crying, tired of being there for everyone else, tired of the tough front she had perfected.  For once, she just wanted to feel and let someone else take care of her, at least for a few minutes.

Much to her surprise, he was gentle, and when he wrapped his arms around her, he simply felt good.  He kept murmuring soothing words, probably just wanting her to be quiet, but at the moment, Liv didn’t care.  When he kissed her temple, she tried to remember the last time she’d been this close to a boy and couldn’t remember.  Amidst the sorrow and anger, she began to want, and when she felt his lips on hers, she didn’t want to stop.

He tasted like cinnamon gum, and he didn’t immediately stick his tongue down her throat as she had imagined he would.  He was gentle, and while he had one arm wrapped around her back, his other hand was on her cheek, fingers ghosting along her skin.

Liv ended the kiss and pulled back, completely confused.  Gone was the hostility and the arrogant way he’d looked at her since that first day.  “What are you doing?”

Aegon shook his head slowly.  “Fuck if I know, not-Olivia.”  But he looked at her mouth, and leaned in again, brushing his lips against hers once more.  “Apparently I have a thing for being smacked around by you.”  She smiled, and he kissed her again.  “For the record, I am really sorry.  I would never have, uh-”

“Fucked with my laundry?”

He had the grace to wince at her question, and nodded.  “yeah, not my best moment.”  His eyes widened for a split second and he added, “I may have an idea regarding the sweater.”

* * * * * 

His idea entailed trusting him with her mother’s sweater, but since it also involved Dany, whom Liv had come to know was super responsible, she felt a little easier about it.  In any case, the sweater was ruined so it could only get better.

The first time Aegon had brought her over for dinner with his family, Liv had realized just how much he had warned his family to not mess with her.  His mother, Alicent, caught herself almost asking questions more than once, and his brother kept smirking at him and kicking him under the table.  His sister, Aegon had warned Liv, was a little strange and tended to say random things, but she found Helaena sweet, even with her obsession with insects.  “A king is nothing without his queen,” she murmured before taking a bite out of her piece of bread.

“So,” Aemond, the youngest sibling, said, drawing a worried look from Aegon, “since this is the first time he brings someone to dinner, I should ask you, Blond girl, what are your intentions with my brother?”

Helaena burst out laughing and Alicent shook her head, while Aegon stared daggers at his brother.  “I don’t know about her intentions, but mine are to hide all your electronics if you keep this up, nerd.”

“Graduating one semester early,” Aemond boasted, “and already getting college credit.”

Alicent looked at her youngest child with pride.  “Liv, is that short for Olivia?”

“Here we go,” Aegon smiled at Liv.

“My name is Elizaveta,” Liv said, “my mom was Russian, she met my dad when they both worked at the embassy in D.C.  She hated the thought of people calling me ‘Liz’ so she decided it would be ‘Liv’.”

“That is lovely,” Alicent said warmly.  “Maybe next time we have dinner, we can invite your dad?”

Aegon looked at Liv, mouthing I’m sorry.  “Sure mom, maybe next time you can invite Mr. Cole?  Ow, Aemond, what the fuck!”

“Aegon!”  Alicent hid her blush behind a reprimand for her oldest child.  “Language!”

“I need that ankle to play football!  Sorry, sorry,” he held up his hands.

Helaena leaned in toward Liv, “does your father disapprove of cursing?  Because Aegon curses a lot.”

* * * * * 

He could feel his heart beating in his throat as he handed the bag to Liv.  Dany had told him it was as if nothing had happened, or rather, “it looks like no moron ever fucked with it” but that meant nothing to him until Liv approved.

Liv took a deep breath and reached into the bag, pulling out the sweater.

Aegon’s foot was tapping a crazy beat as he waited, watching her examining the spots where the pink stains had been.  She looked up at him and he swore the world went still.  A small smile appeared on her face and she threw herself at him.  “Thank you, thank you.”

He wrapped his arms around her, “I only fixed what I fucked up, Liv.”  But he’d take the hugs, and the kisses.  

“Come on,” he said eventually.  “Cole’s joining us for dinner, should be very interesting.”

[security-chief-odo]

What Was and What Should Be

Dean Winchester X Castiel

• • •

Description: Post 15x18 - Dean can't escape the presence of Castiel's absence. Not to worry, this isn't depressing just a bit angsty. Dean’s POV.

AKA I project onto Dean to deal with my own feelings about death and loss

• • •

Cas is gone. That’s the only way I can speak of him in the present tense.

He was beautiful. He was kind. He was the best man Dean had ever known. And now he only was. He will never just simply be again.

The hardest part of someone being gone though is that you still see them everywhere. Not in reality, not some kind of hallucination or vision but something far more painful and far less tangible.

They still exist in every memory and even as you make new memories, their absence feels more present than you could have been in that moment.

I still see Cas. Not every day like it was at first, but still his absence often feels more present than my own presence.

I see him in the little head tilt Jack does that reveals a curiosity I couldn’t even imagine. I often wonder if he learned that from Cas or if it is some kind of painful coincidence, like one last cruel joke from Chuck.

I see him in the fluffy tousled hair of a stranger. I can’t help wondering if that stranger's hair would feel the same as his once did. I can almost feel the way his hair moved as I ran my fingers through it.

I will never quite feel that again.

I see him in old flip phones, his old one is merely a relic now.

I see him in songs I used to love, but can barely listen to now.

I see him all over that damn bunker.

Hell, I see him in the trees on the road. The sapling apple trees seem so pure and will grow to be nearly as beautiful as he once was. The damn walnut tree I see every time I return home down Route 36 with its gnarled and twisted trunk shaded by its vivid green leaves. He deserved more shade from this world. I wish I hadn’t let him become twisted by this life, or by me.

I see him in the mirror every time I smile. I’ve always smiled, but he changed it. There was a softness to it that had never been there before and there’s a sorrow to it now that will never quite fade.

I see him at the bottom of every beer bottle. I remember when he would drink by my side. He wasn’t drinking to forget like Sam and I had learned to do over the years. He was drinking to create new memories. Ones with us. Ones with me.

I see him in every burger. One bite and I can't escape the vision of him scarfing them down next to me in the car.

That damn car. Baby holds every memory that haunts me. The good, the bad and the ugly.

When I look at her now, I still see her holding him. I see every fight, every several days long road trip, every victory and every loss. I see us. Nothing felt quite as right as him sitting in the back seat, watching over me. I was only checking behind me for cars, not the monsters of my past.

I see him now every time I turn my head because my world doesn’t feel as safe as it did before.

I see him on every hunt. I didn’t get the closure of watching him lose the life in his eyes. There was no body left to burn. Each monster I kill, every hunter who I see die just reminds me of what was missing. Cas left behind nothing but his absence for me to carry.

I see him after each hunt too. I see him as I wash the blood out of my clothes. I could never get his blood out of that old jacket as I desperately tried to erase his death. I could never bring myself to throw that jacket out either though. Sometimes Sam tries to help me out and will hang it up with the rest of my clothes. It never stays up for long.

I see him in the late n ights, curled up on my bed, in the bunker or on the road. I hold onto that jacket as I cry. I hold it tighter to get to sleep knowing I don’t have my angel to watch over me. He will never hold me again.

I see him in Sam’s knowing eyes. There’s a softness there that almost feels like pity to me. It eats me up inside when he feels like he has to take care of me. He’s supposed to be the little brother. It’s my job to protect him from this kind of pain.

I see him in Sioux Falls. I hate that he didn’t get to know Claire for the woman she’s become. She deserved a father and he deserved that apple pie life. I see the eyes that I know she got from Jimmy, but to me will always belong to Cas. I know he would be so proud of her if only he had forgiven himself before he was taken from us.

I see him in the woods. This feels more like Purgatory than those woods ever could, knowing i may never see him, but knowing i will never stop seeing him.

Screw that. I don’t know when or how, but I know where I will see him again. We will be together in heaven. It’s where Cas belongs, deals be damned. He was an angel. He was my angel. He will be in heaven or heaven simply cannot be. He was my family, my everything, and I never got the chance to tell him.

Each time that I feel his hair in my hands and his head on my chest, I know that I will hold him again. Each time I hear it ringing in my ears, I know that I will hear him say “I love you” again with a look so soft it could break my heart all over again.

I see him everywhere that he was and I know I will see him again one day, and not as a was , but as an is

• • •

Sorry if this one hurts. Let me know if you’d like to be added to either my general taglist or the one for this pairing!

[xylaes]

November DWC Day 1 - Neglect

Warnings: Small mentions of alcoholism, drug use, and a lil’ bit of body horror

Companion piece to Garren’s Day 1 found ---> HERE

If someone had asked Xylaes five years ago where he thought he would be right now, the answer would not have been still living and working in a brothel. He had big plans to reunite his family, buy a house together, and live happily ever after. Yet the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, as they say. Honestly it was the story of Xy’s life up until this point, and he shouldn’t have expected anything else.

It had been done before, he had heard about it and seen it with his own two eyes: Taking a soul out of the Shadowlands and implanting them back onto Azeroth. It wasn’t an easy process, nor was it cheap, but Callia would have been worth it. He could have his wife back, they could have their son and be a real family. Unfortunately, the missing piece of the puzzle was the most important: Her willingness. Xylaes knew a part of her yearned for that lost life, but she was never one to fuck with fate. Her time on Azeroth was over, and she would not go back.

After the Shadowlands closed up, losing his wife for a second time broke him in a different way than it had before. Back then he had something very tangible on which to take out his rage: They had stolen her life, so he would steal theirs, and he did just that. But now that it was her own decision to remain behind? He had nowhere to put that anger except towards himself.

He found comfort in the bottle as he had before, and alcoholism was one of the first bad habits to return. He couldn’t remember much from those first two months after the Shadowlands portals were closed. It was always easier for him to drink away the pain rather than wallow in it. Because of this, he began losing regular clients and quickly found himself walking on very thin ice with his employers. Thankfully they were friends and understanding of his situation, but there were moments when he probably should have been fired and thrown out onto the streets.

He had blown all of his savings on drugs and gambling within half a year; money he had been saving up to buy himself, and his son Garren, a new home. All that hard work so quickly and so easily gone. For a while, he had found it difficult to even look at Garren. So much of him resembled Callia, and Xylaes found it too painful of a reminder of what he had just lost…again. Their relationship suffered; Xylaes often canceled plans or just completely neglected to show up at all. It wasn’t what he wanted, this wasn’t how things were supposed to go at all, but the depression had taken hold and he found it difficult to do just about anything.

It wasn’t until he woke up behind bars, bruised and bloodied, bleeding from a hole in his thigh, and missing three fingernails on his right hand with zero collection of how any of this came to be that he decided he needed to get his shit together. Again. There was a threat of more prison time and a steep bail set, but for some inexplicable reason, Xylaes had people in high places still on his side that cared about him. He was embarrassed and ashamed, Callia would have detested this version of Xylaes. He owed it to her, and to Garren, and mostly to himself, to pull himself together and become the father that Garren deserved, and the friend that those who stuck by his side deserved.

The following years were spent in and out of rehab, going to plenty of therapy, and making amends with all of those whom he had wronged. While not once did he regret reuniting Callia in Maldraxxus, he could admit that maybe he shouldn’t have gotten so attached again. He often wondered how she handled their separation, if she was just as angry or sad, and how she coped. On occasion he would sit in the portal room in Orgrimmar, staring at the empty space where the portal to Oribos once was, willing it to open again. It was a dream he needed to let go of and start focusing on his future, but for a man like Xylaes it was always difficult to let go of the past.

These days life was more stable. He still lived and worked in the brothel but his debts were all paid and he was now over a year sober. The temptation still remained, but had to admit that he felt healthier now than he had in a while.

Light had just begun to peek through the cracked curtains to his room when he heard a soft rapping at his door. With a squint, he glanced over to the nude feminine figure still sleeping next to him, and then towards the door. No one was supposed to bother him while he was ‘working’, so whatever this was must be important. With a grunt, he rolled off the bed and pulled on his robe before cracking the door open just enough to slip out and shut it behind him, talking in a whispered tone, “What do you want?”

The guard looked up at him and then towards the steps, “Umm…your son is here? Says he messaged you like…an hour ago.”

Xylaes wiped some of the groggy out of his eyes, staring blankly as the words processed through his mind. He hadn’t checked his comm since yesterday evening. “Wait, he’s here? You let him in here? Fuck sake.” He was already halfway down the hall when he waved at his room, “Can you tell her an emergency came up?”

He had taken care not to fully disclose his profession to his son, leaving the details vague and maybe a bit misleading. He had told him the name of the place in case of an emergency, that thought immediately made him hurry faster down the steps and into the lobby. “Garren, what’s wrong?” It took him a split second to notice the suitcase and a wide-eyed Garren looking around the place while slowly making connections in his head.

“Ohh, no. Nothing’s wrong. I ummm…I need a place to stay. Can I stay …here with you?” The words trailed off near the end of that question, still a touch uncertain as to what ‘here’ was.

“No.” The response was a little more aggressive than anticipated, and Xylaes quickly tried to soften his tone into something more reassuring. “I mean, you would need to work here to…” He waves a hand, that was NOT going to happen. “How about you meet me over in the Legerdemain Lounge, grab yourself a coffee, and we’ll figure something out, okay? Okay.” He shoved some change that was in his bathrobe pocket into Garren’s hand and practically shoved him out the door towards the Lounge. “I’ll be right there!”

“Shit..” he grumbled under his breath, although there was also some giddy anticipation there beneath the shock. His son came to him for help, that was a first! He rushed back into his room and tossed on some clothing, grabbed his comm device, and made for the door. There were two people he knew he could ask a favor of; as much as he detested asking for help, he knew he didn’t have much of a choice at this moment. His kid needed a place to stay and he did not currently have the money to make that happen, but he knew someone with extra rooms, and right here in Dalaran to boot.

He sent off a quick message to Fio as he made his way to the lounge, “Garren showed up at the Moon needing a place to live, do you have an extra room he could use until I figure something else out?”

@daily-writing-challenge @garrennorassin @fio-renze​

[flowersonline24]

How to Preserve Birthday Flowers for Long-Lasting Beauty

Bright, beautiful, and bursting with joy - birthday flowers are the perfect way to show someone you care on their special day. Whether it's a vibrant bouquet of roses or a charming arrangement of daisies, flowers have the power to convey love, admiration, and well wishes like no other gift can. In this blog post, we'll explore everything you need to know about preserving birthday flowers for long-lasting beauty. So let's dive in and discover how to keep those gorgeous blooms looking fresh and fabulous for days to come!

The Significance of Birthday Flowers

Birthday flowers hold a special significance in our lives, symbolizing love, happiness, and celebration. They are not just a beautiful gift but also a heartfelt gesture that can brighten anyone's day.

Receiving birthday flowers shows that someone took the time to select a thoughtful present and convey their warm wishes through nature's vibrant creations. Flowers have a way of lifting spirits and spreading joy, making them the perfect accompaniment to any birthday celebration.

Each flower carries its own meaning and symbolism, allowing you to personalize your gift based on the recipient's preferences or personality. Whether it's elegant lilies for sophistication or cheerful sunflowers for positivity, there is a bloom for every birthday boy or girl.

The act of gifting birthday flowers transcends words, expressing emotions that words alone cannot capture. It creates lasting memories and serves as a tangible reminder of the love and care shared between friends, family members, or partners.

Types of Flowers that are Perfect for Birthdays

When it comes to choosing the perfect flowers for a birthday celebration, there are endless options to consider. Bright and cheerful sunflowers can bring a sense of joy and happiness to any birthday party.

Alternatively, elegant roses in various colors symbolize love, admiration, and appreciation – making them a versatile choice for birthdays.

For those looking for something unique, exotic orchids can add an element of sophistication and beauty to any birthday bouquet.

Lively daisies or vibrant lilies are also popular choices that can brighten up the recipient's day with their charming appeal.

No matter what type of flower you choose, each bloom carries its own special meaning that can convey your heartfelt wishes on this special occasion.

Tips for Choosing and Buying Birthday Flowers

When selecting birthday flowers, consider the recipient's preferences and personality. Think about their favorite colors and flower types to create a personalized gift that truly resonates with them.

Choose blooms that are in season for a fresher and more vibrant bouquet. Seasonal flowers are also usually more cost-effective, allowing you to get the best value for your purchase.

Opt for long-lasting flowers like lilies, roses, or orchids that will continue to bloom beautifully even after the celebration is over. These varieties can bring joy for days to come.

Consider adding greenery or filler flowers to complement the main blooms and add depth to the arrangement. This mix of textures can enhance the overall aesthetic appeal of the bouquet.

Don't forget about presentation! Select a reputable florist or online Birthday Flowers Shop London that offers quality arrangements and reliable delivery services to ensure your gift arrives looking stunning and on time.

How to Properly Care for Birthday Flowers

When it comes to caring for birthday flowers, proper maintenance is key to ensuring their longevity and beauty. Start by placing the bouquet in clean water mixed with flower food to provide essential nutrients. Trim the stems at an angle every few days to allow better water absorption.

Remove any wilted or drooping petals and leaves to keep the arrangement looking fresh. Keep the flowers away from direct sunlight, heat sources, and drafts as they can cause wilting and dehydration. Change the water regularly every 2-3 days to prevent bacteria growth that can shorten their lifespan.

Mist the petals lightly with water using a spray bottle to maintain their hydration levels. Avoid placing the flowers near fruits or vegetables as they release ethylene gas which can speed up wilting. With these simple care tips, your birthday flowers will stay vibrant and beautiful for longer!

Methods for Preserving the Beauty of Birthday Flowers

To prolong the beauty of birthday flowers, consider drying them. One method is air-drying, where you hang bouquets upside down in a dark, well-ventilated area. Another technique involves pressing flowers between heavy books to flatten and preserve them.

For a more modern approach, silica gel can be used to absorb moisture from the blooms gently. This method helps retain the shape and color of the flowers effectively. Alternatively, try using glycerin to replace natural sap with this preserving agent for supple petals.

Freeze-drying is another popular method that maintains the texture and color of flowers remarkably well. By freezing them first and then slowly removing ice through sublimation, your birthday blooms will last longer than traditional drying methods.

Experiment with different preservation techniques to find what works best for your specific floral arrangement. Each method offers unique results that can enhance the longevity and beauty of your cherished birthday flowers.

Creative Ways to Display Preserved Birthday Flowers

Looking for creative ways to showcase your preserved birthday flowers? Why not try making a floral shadow box display? Simply arrange the dried blooms in a beautiful pattern inside a shadow box frame, and hang it on your wall as a stunning piece of art. Add a personalized touch by including photos or small mementos from the birthday celebration.

Another fun idea is to create pressed flower bookmarks. Pressed flowers can add a delicate and elegant touch to any reading material. Choose colorful petals that complement each other, press them between sheets of paper, laminate for durability, and voila! You have unique and practical keepsakes to gift along with books.

For those who love crafting, consider making resin coasters with embedded birthday flowers. Pour clear resin into coaster molds, add dried petals or tiny blooms, let them set, and you'll have gorgeous custom coasters that will impress guests during gatherings.

Get creative with your preserved birthday flowers – whether framing them as artwork, incorporating them into functional items like bookmarks or coasters, there are endless possibilities to enjoy their beauty long after the celebration has ended.

Conclusion: Celebrate with Everlasting Blooms

As you celebrate birthdays with beautiful flowers, remember that with a little care and attention, these blooms can last for a long time. By selecting the right type of flowers, properly caring for them, and preserving their beauty using various methods, you can enjoy their splendor well beyond the special day. Whether it's a bouquet from a birthday flowers shop in London or handpicked from your garden, these everlasting blooms will continue to bring joy and memories for days to come. So go ahead and adorn your space with preserved birthday flowers to keep the celebration alive!

[craftyinfluencerfun]

Dashing Valentines Day Gifts To Tell Your Love

Introduction

Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and love is in the air! It’s that time of year when we express our deepest affection for those who hold a special place in our hearts. And what better way to show your love than with a thoughtful and heartfelt gift? Whether you're celebrating with a significant other, family member, or dear friend, finding the perfect Valentines Day Gifts can truly make their day extraordinary.

In this blog post, we'll explore the importance of showing love through gifts on Valentine's Day. We'll delve into traditional gift ideas that never go out of style and also uncover some unique and creative options that are sure to leave a lasting impression. So get ready to ignite those sparks of romance or shower your loved ones with adoration – because we've got all the dashing Valentine's Day gift inspiration you need right here!

The Importance of Showing Love on Valentines Day Gifts

Valentine's Day is a special occasion to express your love and affection for that someone special in your life. While love can be shown through words and actions all year round, this day holds a unique significance. It is an opportunity to go the extra mile and make your loved one feel truly cherished. Giving gifts on Valentine's Day has become a tradition that symbolizes love and appreciation. These gifts serve as tangible expressions of the emotions we hold within our hearts. They have the power to convey our deepest feelings when words fall short.

But beyond material value, it is the thought behind these gifts that matters most. The effort you put into selecting a gift shows how much you care about understanding your partner's desires and preferences. It demonstrates your willingness to go beyond expectations in order to make them happy. Valentine's Day gifts are not just gestures; they are symbols of commitment, loyalty, and devotion. They remind us of the bond we share with our significant other and reinforce our connection on this special day dedicated to love. So, whether it's a handwritten letter expressing heartfelt emotions or an extravagant surprise, remember that every gift has its own charm when it comes from a place of genuine affection. Take this opportunity to show your love in ways that will be remembered forever!

Traditional Gifts for Valentines Day Gifts

Valentine's Day is a time to celebrate love and express our affection for those who hold a special place in our hearts. And what better way to do that than with traditional gifts that have stood the test of time? These classic gestures can show your love and appreciation in a timeless and elegant manner. One traditional gift option is flowers. Whether it's a bouquet of roses, lilies, or even daisies, flowers are sure to bring a smile to your loved one's face. They symbolize beauty, romance, and the fragility of love – perfect sentiments for Valentine's Day.

Another tried-and-true gift idea is chocolates. Who doesn't love indulging in some sweet treats? From heart-shaped boxes filled with an assortment of delectable flavors to personalized chocolate bars featuring your loved one's name or heartfelt message, there are countless options available to satisfy any sweet tooth. For those who appreciate fine craftsmanship and sentimental value, jewelry is always a hit. A delicate necklace adorned with their birthstone or initials can be worn close to their heart as a constant reminder of your love. Or perhaps a pair of earrings that sparkle like their eyes when they see you. If you're looking for something more practical yet still romantic, consider giving them something they've been wanting or needing but haven't had the chance to get themselves - maybe it's that book they've been eyeing, or that gadget they've been drooling over. In conclusion... Oops! Sorry about that slip-up! We should never use "in conclusion" while writing blog sections without concluding them fully. But fear not! There are plenty more unique and creative Valentine's Day gift ideas waiting for you in the next section. So stay tuned!

Unique and Creative Valentines Day Gifts Ideas

Looking for something out of the ordinary to surprise your loved one this Valentine's Day? Skip the traditional roses and chocolates and opt for unique and creative gifts that will truly make their heart flutter. Here are some ideas to inspire you: 1. Personalized Love Letter: Instead of buying a generic card, take the time to write a heartfelt love letter expressing your feelings. Add special touches like using scented paper or sealing it with wax. 2. Customized Photo Book: Compile all your favorite memories together in a photo book filled with pictures, quotes, and anecdotes that celebrate your relationship.

3. Experience Gift: Create lasting memories by gifting an experience rather than a physical item. Plan a romantic weekend getaway, book tickets to a concert or sporting event they've always wanted to attend, or arrange for a couple's spa day. 4. DIY Coupon Book: Design a coupon book featuring personalized vouchers for things like breakfast in bed, a home-cooked candlelit dinner, or even chores they hate doing that you'll take care of. 5. Subscription Box: Surprise them with monthly deliveries tailored to their interests - whether it's gourmet snacks, wine tastings, or self-care products – there’s something for everyone! 6. Adventure Date Jar: Fill up a jar with different date night ideas on popsicle sticks – from trying out new restaurants to going hiking or having movie marathons at home – let fate decide what adventure awaits next! 7. Handcrafted Jewelry: Show off your creativity by making custom jewelry pieces such as bracelets or necklaces using meaningful charms or gemstones symbolizing love and affection. Remember, it’s not about how much you spend but the thoughtfulness behind the gift that counts most on Valentine's Day! So go ahead and surprise your partner with something unique and creative that truly reflects how much they mean to you.

Conclusion Valentine's Day is a special occasion to express your love and affection towards your loved ones. And what better way to do that than with a thoughtful gift? Whether you opt for traditional gifts or unique and creative ideas, the key is to choose something that truly reflects the depth of your feelings. By selecting a Valentine's Day gift that resonates with their personality, interests, or desires, you show them just how much they mean to you. From classic options like flowers, chocolates, and jewelry to personalized items or experiences tailored specifically for them, there are endless possibilities when it comes to finding the perfect gift. Remember, it's not about the price tag attached but rather the sentiment behind it. So take some time to think about what would make your partner feel loved and appreciated. Consider their hobbies, passions, or even inside jokes that only the two of you share. In this digital age we live in today, buying Valentine's Day gifts online has become increasingly popular—and convenient! You can browse through countless options from the comfort of your own home and have them delivered directly to your doorstep. Just be sure to order early enough so that it arrives on time! Ultimately though, no matter what gift you decide on this Valentine's Day—whether it’s traditional or unconventional—it is important above all else to remember why you’re giving it: because love should always be celebrated. So go ahead and make this day extra special by choosing a heartfelt token of affection for your beloved.

[walkeddeath]

“It was my fault. I should have known better.”

there's the soft patter of rain on the window, the lights are off, and gen hasn't been able to sleep and it seems like he hasn't either. it's been hard to find lately, but she isn't complaining. there's also no complaint over reassuring him of whatever is haunting his head, being that light for him that she knows he needs, a rock that he can tether himself to. whatever she can do for him while he goes through the self mourn process, of life before and whatever is after, and she'll keep reminding him of it even if she has to a thousand more times, she'll do it. one day they'll tell him why she's so intense about staying, about not giving up and not letting him give up either. it's not time yet, gen doesn't know when that time will be, and for now it doesn't really matter. 

it takes effort for gen to not respond on impulse. she's trying to be patient, he deserves to be able to vent, but there's a part of her that wants to yell at the entire universe. it's no real surprise to her that he's blaming himself for the accident, she knows him well enough to know that he'd blame himself for grass growing too slowly, and not in an annoying way. in the way that makes her want to dig into his head and clear out every bit of misplaced blame someone instilled in him. it's a useless wish, she knows it won't go away quickly and without hiccups. it's a long term damage that she refuses to be fatalistic about and say he'll never move past it, and it's what she holds on to to keep from going too hard on the positivity train.

they turn and look up at him, finding and grabbing for his hand gently, lacing their fingers together. with her other hand she reaches for the lamp on her side of the bed, clicking it on and sitting up. eye contact isn't sought out, but gen still focuses on him, reaching out to brush her fingers through his hair. it's slightly selfish in nature, she's needed reminders that he's tangible.

 he hasn't opened up much about the incident and she really can't blame him. it's a tricky thing to deal with. you died and came back and there's something wrong but you don't know what and nobody can tell you, they never will, and you just have to deal with it. that feeling that you don't belong anymore, that you shouldn't have come back, and nobody can understand but hey at least you're alive.

it's not a foreign feeling to gen, she's been there done that and has the souveneir tshirt. it's the second thing that keeps her from being too intense, from wanting him to just get over it. the likelihood that he never truly, fully, completely will is frighteningly strong and while she doesn't want to scare him with it, they know it's a possible inevitable truth he'll potentially have to face.

he won't be alone if he does, she'll be there, hand outstretched for him to hold on to. until then, the hand is still reaching out, but not in a demanding way. it's in his control if he takes it or not, and she does hope that he does. that in his quest to be some bullshit sense of strong and not needy, he won't push them away and refuse to let her help. if he does she'll fight it, of course she will, he'll hopefully realize it sooner rather than later. gen knows that the aftershock is harder to deal with while still stuck in a constant back and forth between home and hospital, a constant re-ripping and sewing of still tender stitches, and no answer as to why the came back part happened. 

"Buck, listen to me, it was a freak act of nature. there was no way for you to know, like, you can't really plan for getting struck by lightning. nobody blames you for what happened, and like before y'even say it like i just...  i don't fucking care if you believe me or not." she sighs and closes her eyes, the frustration isn't for him, it's for whatever told him he wasn't worth the effort. wasn't worth being loved. They know part of the whatever, but thinking about that will just get her worked up. gen doesn't know if it comes across as such but her tone is soft, non confrontational, just tinged with tired.

" like, please know i'm not mad at you for thinkin' it, like i know it's easy to blame yourself but like, buck please listen. i'm not lying. the only thing any of us were worried about was if you'd make it back to us or not. like, shit, nature is the one t'blame. the universe. fuck it, blame fate for deciding you were gonna be up on that ladder. just not yourself. 'cause you can't control the weather, you didn't ask for what happened. and i'll shut up soon i just... you had no idea and it's okay. not everything really can be blamed on somethin'. you don't gotta take the blame for every little thing."

[no-droids]

Beginner’s Luck

Part Twelve of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 14.6K

Warnings: 👀👀👀 SMUT.  Oral sex (male receiving), cockwarming, sexual acts in public, the use of blasters and other canon-typical weaponry

A/N: Twas the night before Mando season 2, and all through the house—NO IM JUST KIDDING SDKSFKSVS anyways I am so sorry for not being here for basically all of last month but I could not miss this incredibly momentous occasion for anything. Merry season 2 my lovely baby yoditos

***

“Well,” a modulated voice gruffs expectantly from behind you, clearly tired of waiting.  “Turn around, let me see.”

“No.  I look ridiculous,” you sulk from the corner of the hull, refusing to do as he says.  You thought this was stupid from the very beginning and openly told him so, but you’re also a complete pushover for him with just enough backbone to be frustrated when you inevitably give in.  “And don’t you ‘sweet girl’ me, it’s not gonna work this time.”

“Sweet girl,” Din’s deep voice lulls through the helmet, raspy and soft.

Fucking fine, if he’s gonna twist your arm about it.  You spin around with a deep frown and a chrome visor stares back at you as you waddle forwards, and you don’t even need to look at the kid cradled in his forearm to know he’s smiling toothily as you clunk and rattle.  Once you’re standing directly in front of them both, you blow the stray hair out of your eyes and plant your hands on your hips, just waiting for the inevitable response.

Only, you don’t get practically any response at all from him.  He stays perfectly still and says absolutely nothing, and though the baby’s mouth falls open with happiness and he reaches for you, he doesn’t make a sound either.

“I told you,” you grumble after a few moments of pained silence.  “I look ridiculous.”

Still, nothing.  You purse your lips, shifting from side to side uncomfortably, and eventually your suspicion grows and festers until it finally bursts forth.  Oh for the love of Maker—

“I know you’re laughing under there,” you accuse with a growl.  He doesn’t move a single muscle but you don’t buy it, not for a single fucking second.

Then suddenly the helmet glances away from you and stares purposefully at the wall of the hull as the kid starts giggling, and you knew it.  You fucking knew he was laughing.

“You look great,” comes tightly through the modulator after a moment, and you pull your lip up into a snarl, vindicated in your findings but not happy about it.

“Is that how this is supposed to protect me?”  You wave your arms, hearing them squeak and clank like you’re a droid that hasn’t been maintenanced in centuries.  The rough metal jerks up and smacks your chin with the shoulder movement and you grimace.  “Make the bad guys laugh themselves to death?”

“It's bad,” Din finally turns back to you and admits with zero shame, and your cheeks burn at how stupid you must look right now.  “Way too big.”

“Too big?”  You blink at him.  “That’s your criticism?”

When he presented it to you, your first impression was some sort of brown paint—but no.  It’s fucking… rust.  It’s damaged and scraped up and it looks like it’s been through the ringer and back, and not in a way that gives it character.  There’s almost a literal hole in the fucking chestpiece and it’s dented so much that it actually creates more than enough space for your breasts, what the fuck happened—?

“You’re telling me you went from this—”  You ask pointedly, knocking your knuckles against the ill-fitting piece of metal and feeling it wobble against your chest, “—to that—” you tap the pristine, gleaming armor strapped to his body that easily costs more than probably quadruple your entire life, “—without any go-betweens?  It’s missing one of the shoulders, Din.”

He ignores you, flipping the chestpiece over your head with his free hand and letting the metallic clatter of it meeting the floor behind you ring out through the hull.  “I’d hoped at least something would fit,” comes his filtered sigh.  “This planet isn’t nice.”

That sobers you up a bit, and you feel your heart thump painfully.  “Are we on Corellia?”  You ask without thinking.

“No,” he tells you immediately, quelling your panic while pulling off your one singular pauldron.  “Tatooine.”

You’ve never heard of it, but from the grave undertone of his voice, you know the drill.  Different setting, same kind of people.  Smugglers, rogues, criminals—the type he’s used to being around and knows exactly what to expect out of them.  You always feel safe when he’s with you, but when he leaves?

“Oh,” you say, because you don’t really have anything else.  It’s quiet for a little bit, but then he continues on before you can come up with something to fill the sudden uncertainty on your end.

“I know someone here,” Din murmurs, bending his knees and sinking down to start undoing and pulling the shoddy thigh braces off your legs.  “Someone… nice.  It’ll be safe as long as nobody sees me leaving or coming back, and the kid would be happy to see her.”

Your eyebrows pull inwards, something… unfamiliar settling inside you.  Din doesn’t have friends, he’s made it clear that he doesn’t really like anyone that he knows well enough to introduce you to.  Even when he’s lowered himself in front of you and is technically undressing you, you feel a spark of… no, not jealousy, that’s crazy.  But for real, who is he talking about?

“Why can’t me and the baby just lay low somewhere remote like normal?”  You ask instead, but he shakes his head.

“No such thing,” he grunts, pulling off the other thigh brace.  “Tuskans or Jawas will find you even in the middle of the Dune Sea.”

“I like Jawas,” you blurt, having had many positive experiences trading with the little creatures on Arvala-7, but his helmet immediately tilts up to pin you in place and you shut up, feeling the tangible unamusement radiating from the thin blade of the visor even when the kid starts giggling again.  “I mean I… don’t like Jawas?”

Din sighs and rises back up to his full height, finally handing the baby over to you now that you’re not weighed down by that ridiculous getup anymore.  “You can either stay with her while I get the quarry or run the risk of pirates finding you drifting above the atmosphere,” he reasons bluntly, not mincing words.  “But it’s not a good idea to be stuck on the surface without protection, someone will find you.”

You bite your lip, hugging the kid closer to your chest for a second.  “Okay, that’s fine,” you murmur quietly after a moment.  “We can stay with your… friend.”  

You clear your throat and move to let him pass by to get to the cockpit, except Din doesn’t take a single step.  You blink up at him and after what feels like an eternity of no response, the helmet slowly tilts sideways at you and… oops.

Was that not subtle?  You didn’t know what to call her, genuinely, that’s why you hesitated.  You didn’t want to use the word acquaintance, it felt too detached for the fact that he said the kid would be happy to see her again.  That’s what’s called a friend, right?  

Maker, why are you being so weird about this?

Thankfully, you end up getting away with it.  After a few painful seconds of looking at every single thing in the hull besides him and humming a song you make up on the spot, Din slowly walks past and disappears up into the cockpit.  You take a deep breath and gently rub the baby’s ears between your fingers as the Crest powers up with a ferocious rumble beneath your feet.

***

It’s bright.  Fuck, it’s so bright here.  You hold the kid to your chest with one hand and shield your eyes with the other as the ramp slowly descends, dust immediately kicking up around it.  Din’s palm is resting against your lower back and his thumb gently brushes back and forth, but your heart decides to drop the very moment his hand does, and as soon as the ramp clanks against the landing platform, he’s striding down into the blazing hot desert sun without you.

Something in your chest squeezes and whispers to you that he probably doesn’t want to touch you when he’s about to see an old friend again, so you wait a few seconds of space before descending down the ramp behind him, not really knowing how you feel right now.  But you’ve barely taken a single step to follow when a woman’s voice screeches out from across a vast distance.  “Oh no, no no no—don’t you even think about it!”

Din slows to a halt at the end of the ramp and gives whoever it is a small nod, nothing beyond it, and if you weren’t purposefully looking at him for cues right now, you’d probably miss the greeting entirely.  You stand on your tippy-toes from behind his cape as a fiery little middle-aged lady in a mechanic’s jumpsuit marches up to him with an attitude that more than makes up for the height difference.

“You’re not allowed here anymore,” she pokes his chestplate brazenly with one hand and props the other on her hip, clearly not excited to see him.  “Not after the ruckus you caused last time, no sir, not on my watch.”

“That won’t happen again,” he gruffs shortly, not providing a single thing beyond it, and you blink.  What… what happened last time?

“It sure won’t!”  The strange woman agrees shrilly, crossing her arms and widening her eyes until she looks a bit like she’s been out in the suns too long.  “I’m still recovering, Mando!”

“I compensated you,” he reminds her, a quiet edge of frustration beginning to creep into his voice.

She suddenly narrows her expression at him, going from manic desert lady to sharp and discerning skeptic within a split second.  “How much do you think my life is worth?”

Din takes forever to respond, seeming to either be choosing his words very carefully or grinding his teeth under the beskar in frustration.  Probably both.  “I brought my ki—”

“You bring trouble!”  She bursts out, stomping her foot on the dusty landing platform and holding her ground.  “I don’t care how cute your little one is, go park your ship on some other poor soul’s hangar bay!”

He doesn’t say anything back, staying completely silent while you stand there awkwardly and wait for his response, and it’s almost like you… forgot.  How quiet Din can be, how unnervingly little he can choose to offer to conversations until he deems the information absolutely necessary to provide.  He allows you to forget that reserved nature of his.  He talks to you.  He never used to at the beginning, but somewhere along the way it just became increasingly common to hear his voice, both with a high-pass filter and blissfully without.  Now though, there’s just too long of a weirdly tense pause in the reunion for you to handle without doing something about it.

So you step out from behind him with the child in your arms, giving her an apologetic smile with as much friendliness as you can possibly put into an expression.

“Hello,” you greet her gently, musically, lifting the baby’s hand to give her a companionable three-fingered wave from the both of you while he coos.  “I promise I’m not trouble, but he did bring me along this time.”

Din and the woman simultaneously turn to look at you; her like you’re just as strange and jarring of a sight to see on this planet as the tiny unnamed boy in your arms and him like your voice by itself is enough to loosen his shoulders.  Though neither one of them ultimately respond to you, you can tell by the way his fists unclench that you’ve at least helped him relax, even if the frizzy-haired lazy otherwise ignores your introduction entirely.

“Now just what in Maker’s name are you doing with a poor little stowaway like that?”  She faces him and pokes his armor again.  “You runnin’ a charity out of that battered piece of junk you call a ship?”

“Three hundred credits to let them stay with you for a week,” he turns back to tell her, cutting directly to the chase.  Alright, so you don’t really understand their relationship at all at this point.  He said she was nice?  And yet he’s already bribing her that handsomely?

“Five hundred,” she immediately shoots back, and your heart sinks.  Fuck, there’s no way.  There’s no way he would spend that much, you’re going to have to find somewhere else to stay.

But… he doesn’t respond.  Which you now remember with a jolt of surprise, means confirmation.  Not wasting words agreeing, he’d say something back to her if he had an issue.  Maker, five hundred credits.  You’re starting to wonder if he’s really able to make any money at all doing this, or if the job is just… fitting for him, so he continues to do it.  He’s spending more and more credits on you every single time you turn around, and while you don’t feel great about it, you know Din well enough to know he’s stable and independent enough to make the decisions he wants to make.

So you just stand there and hold the baby to your chest, unsure of your place, while Din eventually turns around to face you.

Sometimes, if you’re being honest, you almost find yourself wanting to… do soft things with him that you know you shouldn’t while other people are around.  Granted, he’s never told you not to, but the last thing you want to do is undermine his reputation by unintentionally revealing his gentler side.  You want to give him a hug and maybe hand him the baby to say goodbye, but you don’t know if that’s how he wants to present himself to company right now.  Unfortunately, that ends up translating into you just looking at him and awkwardly waiting to see what he does.  Your feelings won’t be hurt if he just takes off without another word now that you know that that’s his intent—you promise, they weren’t hurt the first fifty or so times he’s done it.  You understand him, it’s alright, he doesn’t need to—

But then he leans in and lowers his voice until only you can hear it.

“I’ll be back soon,” he tells you, and you feel warmth creep into your chest.

You understand him.  Which is why you feel like you could almost burst with how much he didn’t have to say that but chose to do so anyway.  You already have a solid time frame—a week—which is more information than you usually get, and it’s such a small thing.  It’s insane; if you made a list, you’d have 1) talking to you, 2) knowing his first name, and 3) seeing a glimpse of his forehead as your top reasons why he might care just as much about you as you care for him.  That’s insane.

He takes a second to reach a glove out and rub the baby’s ear as he makes his adorable little baby noises up at him, before the helmet tilts back up just slightly to look at you.  

“Be safe,” he waits for you to whisper back.

And you think now is finally the time to go, right?  Except he waits just a few precious seconds more, just holding there, silently.  Maker, you don’t want to miss him, why is he doing this to you?  You’re trying to play it cool, see-you-later’s have been commonplace between you for nearing a full year now, so why does it feel like now is the first time he truly doesn’t want to go?

You hold the kid with one hand and start to reach for him the split second he turns to walk away, and you quickly drop it as the dry wind snaps through his cape.  He leaves and doesn’t look back.

Still, you watch him disappear, until eventually you’re reminded of your host’s presence with the tap of a wrench against your shoulder.

“Hope you know your way around a hyperdrive,” the woman says with a smirk.  Maker, Din didn’t even give you her name, you’re going to have to ask.  “Gotta repair at least two of ‘em by sundown.”

You catch the hefty tool with your free hand and turn to her.  “Pre-Imperial or post?  Never done a restoration, but I’m a quick learner.”

She blinks at you like that was probably the last thing she expected you to say, but you give her the same friendly smile from before and look towards the entrance of the hangar for the ships needing maintenance.

***

So Peli is… a character.

She’s quick and entertaining and whip-smart, but you worry that if she had a whip, she might actually use it.  She’s nice—she is, but she damn near works you to the bone once you prove yourself capable.  You don’t think she expected the extent of your practical knowledge of mechanics, she went into it assuming you were going to be useless and did a hard U-turn that very first night.  You both worked together to fix two malfunctioning hyperdrives by sundown, just like she told you she needed, but then she looked vaguely surprised and nobody showed to pick up until two days later.

The second day is more hectic, and the third day is worse.  You cradle the kid on your hip while you work one-handed, smudged grease all over your forehead and sweat sticking your hair to your neck.  Using Peli’s sonic shower never leaves you feeling clean no matter how many times a day you find yourself wanting to wash the dust and grime from your body, the same way yours used to back on Arvala-7, and you immediately get why her dark hair seems so frizzy and dry whenever you step out of the stall and catch sight of the similar rat’s nest on your head in the small mirror.  Hypersonic waves dry it out more than the blazing hot suns on this planet—you look the same exact way you’ve looked for decades and while you don’t mind hard work, you can’t stand the complete lack of water on this forsaken rock.

Din was right, though.  She is nice, but in a way that she never wants anybody else to find out about.  She cooks you food every night but expects you to clean the whole kitchen after, she lets you have free reign over the caf maker as long as you remember to make enough for her, and she allows you and the kid to pass out on the beat-up sofa in one of the secluded back rooms for the time being.  On more than one occasion, when she assigns you chores that require two hands and a steady focus to complete, you overhear her babytalk behind the control panel as she bounces the kid in one arm and plays with his ears.  It fills your chest with a quiet, subtle kind of warmth, and you understand why Din trusts her with him.

At least you stay busy—which, understatement.  She works you so hard that eventually she starts handing you tasks that don’t really seem… pressing.  Replacing the spherical joints on her three pit droids, hand-scrubbing the grime off the pots and pans she uses to cook the same two meals everyday, polishing the dusty windows overlooking the landing platform even though they’re caked over with dirt not even an hour later.  You realize soon enough that she doesn’t have nearly the workload here as she claims, periodically catching her playing cards with the droids while you’re busting your ass doing chores once all the real work has clearly been accomplished, but you’re not upset.  You like being busy, it’s how you’ve lived most of your life.  However, at some point, you actually end up running out of things to do.  After that, it’s like she has to actively look for tasks she still needs completed.

One morning you find her in the parked Crest, ripping open the guidance systems paneling and talking to herself.  You sip your caf and watch silently from the landing bay, hair pulled up in a messy bun and the baby on your hip as the suns rise on your shoulders and she mutters, whole sheets of metal being tossed out from the insides of the Razor Crest.

You've also learned she responds incredibly well to the prospect of credits, so you don’t spend too much time wondering what her goal is—find something in the ship for you to fix and then charge Mando extra for the materials whenever he comes back.

Hilarious though, as if there’s anything in your ship that actually needs fixing.

You spin around with a sigh and walk back into the hangar, knowing today will probably be the first slow day in awhile.

***

A few hours later, you’re invited to play a game of Sabacc for the first time in your life.

There are so many rules—so many suits and names to keep track of, so many values to memorize, only to be forced to choose one card after every round to keep just in case the rest of them happen to shuffle at random, which occurs at least once or twice every game.  There’s too much luck involved to figure out any sort of strategy; you feel like sometimes you’re hopelessly lost and end up winning anyways or you wager nearly your entire stack of bolts on a perfect hand and then you lose the entire thing regardless.

It’s an unpredictable nightmare.  But it’s something to do, and you’ve learned that playing just as stupidly as you bet allows you to easily stay in the game.  The baby sits in your lap and plays with one of your rusty metal gambling pieces while your leg bounces, and Peli grumbles under her breath once it appears you get ahead of her in winnings.

“Beginner’s luck,” she tells her favorite pit droid quietly, who focuses its singular eye at you in a way that somehow feels unfriendly and nods on a brand new swivel, courtesy of yours truly.

You don’t argue, because there’s no point.  The whole fucking thing is luck, but there’s no point.  You know enough about this game to know that you might give something away if you speak, so you keep your mouth shut and let her fill the void.  You know how to stay silent, you’ve learned from the best.  Wordlessly drawing a card from the deck and tucking it in between two others of the same value, you decide to trade one of your other cards at complete random and hope it all just works out.

“Ship looks like it’s brand spankin’ new on the inside,” Peli mutters into her mug out of nowhere, and you pause for a moment, before silently nodding at the offhanded comment and trying not to show how pleased you are by it.  “Was falling apart the last time I saw it.”

You keep bouncing the kid on your knee and fan out the cards in front of you, hoping his big black eyes aren’t reflective enough to reveal your hand.  “I have a lot of free time.”

“I can tell,” she acknowledges, crossing her legs and leaning back into her chair.  Peli sets the mug down and sighs.  “You’re a good mechanic.  I’d offer you a job here, but something tells me you wouldn’t even consider it.”

Now, you do smile.  But it’s a hidden one.  A fond one.  One you find impossible to fight when you’re reminded of him.  You miss him and ache for him and all those collectively angsty things, yes—but mostly you’re just… able to find a bone-deep solace in even thinking about him.  Your heart tightens, but it’s far less constricting than it is a comfort, a firm embrace.  It surrounds you in its safety; Din’s mere existence is your protection, wrapping around you the same way the beskar protects him.  Nothing can touch you.  You’re safe, from all the things you used to fear and all the new things you’ve learned to fear.

No, you’d never consider it.  This planet is too much like Arvala-7, just slightly more populated and dangerous.  You love the baby.  You love him.  You’d never consider it.

“Don’t you get bored?”  She asks you with a raised eyebrow, and your smile admittedly drops the slightest bit.  “Just waiting around for him to come back?”

You don’t have to think about your answer.  Of course you do.  If you’re being honest, it does feel a bit like your life is split between worlds—one with him, and one without.  Whenever he’s not here, you’re thinking about how much you want him to come back, and whenever he is here, you’re thinking about how much you don’t want him to go.  You’ve never experienced anything like that before.  There were a few local farmers scattered far across the arid landscape of the place you used to call home, and three of your neighbors all had kids around your age.  So you experimented when you were younger, since you never had much else to do in your spare time, but you never loved any of them.  You’d always go back home and continue to do chores, continue to look up at the sky and wonder what you were missing.

“Yes,” you admit quietly.

But what you don’t tell her is that in exchange, you get to see the galaxy.  You get to have experiences you’ve only dreamed about, take care of the cutest little baby you’ve ever seen and become part of a family.  You don’t know of anything you could want more.  Adventure, companionship, pleasure, and fulfillment.  Sure, you get restless, and sure, you don’t necessarily feel good about the fact that Din seems to be your driving force even when he’s away, but you know independence.  You know what it means to live for yourself.  You’ve done it long enough that you’ll never forget how to, you’ve experienced it more than enough to know you’re happy about throwing yourself off the cliff and falling into something different.  As much as it’s new and terrifying, it’s better.  Now you have other people to live for, too.  

You marvel at the change—not just from a year ago, but from a handful of months ago.  He used to terrify you.  You used to keep your mouth purposefully shut around him because you were scared of overstaying your welcome and being dropped off somewhere equally as remote as the place you grew up.  Never could you have imagined that the fiercest guardian the galaxy has ever seen would decide you’re also worth protecting.

No, you figure, you just need to… find something in addition.  Something else to also commit to, give yourself something to do.  You can practice the new self-defense maneuvers he taught you, that’s a good idea.  But maybe you can also…

You eventually decide to prompt Peli in a change in conversation.  “Hey, can I ask you something?”

“What do you want now?”  She takes another sip of her caf as if you’ve been bothering her about this all day long, and… well, it’s times like these that you wish you had a helmet, too, if only so you could roll your eyes.

“I’ve got a few pieces of rusted metal in the Crest,” you eventually tell her, careful with your phrasing and not sure how much you want to reveal.  “They’re in bad shape, but I want to keep them.  Could I use some of your tools here to hammer out some of the dents, dissolve whatever crud is on the surface?  I saw you have a forge back there that’s barely been used, just need the metal hot enough to be pliable without sacrificing its integrity.”

She furrows her eyebrows at you.  “But I still need your help with…”

You wait, but she’s got nothing and you both know it.  Still, you keep a pointed silence and wait for it, wondering if this’ll actually work.  This is what Din does, right?  Just refuse to say anything and make the other person crumble under the crushing quiet?  Miraculously, it proves to be successful—you watch her flounder for a response, her will wavering the longer you sit there and stare expectantly at her.

“Fine,” Peli finally acquiesces, and you grin.  “But only if you win this round.  What d’you got?”

You set down your cards to reveal your hand.  A perfect twenty-three if you’ve been counting right, unbeatable unless she or any of the droids managed to get the same, and you know it didn’t happen as soon as she takes a few seconds for mental math and then scoffs.

“Beginner’s luck,” you tell her kindly, pushing all your winnings back over to her side of the table with one hand and scooping the kid up with the other, before turning around and heading towards the Crest in search of Din’s old armor.

***

It’s late afternoon on day five and you’re on your back on a creeper seat, sweat dripping down your neck as you reach up to fiddle with the engine of a T-16, a Skyhopper similar to one you built yourself on Arvala-7.  They're not space-faring vehicles, they’re only capable of reaching the upper troposphere, but owning one allowed you to develop solid flight skills without ever truly being able to leave.  Honestly, you don’t think you’ve ever despised a ship more.

You know you’ve got engine grease all over and you feel like you’re boiling in your own sweat, but you’re almost done.  After this, you’ll be able to go back to working on your side project.

As soon as you’d been granted Peli’s direct permission to do so, you mixed the chemicals necessary to eat away at everything besides the basic structure underneath, and then spent all day yesterday manipulating the metal to better fit someone your size and shape.  You slaved over the wickedly hot forge and developed a whole new muscle in your arm from hammering and reheating, hammering and reheating.  You had to repair the way the chestpiece was tapered into a concave point by folding the thin metal back in on itself multiple times, strengthening it without flattening it back into its original shape too much, and then you ended up melting down some of the extra material from the needlessly large shoulder and thigh pieces to fill in the gaps.

Granted, you still have a ways to go on replacing the crushed magnetics box that was falling off the chestpiece and filing down the rough scrapes and sharp edges, but you’re now left with almost a full set of armor that’s a uniform dull silver in color and molds way better to your general figure than before.  You’re not a blacksmith or armorer by any stretch of the imagination, but you’re good with your hands and did what you could in the time allotted.  It looks better than you ever thought it would, and without access to Peli’s enormous collection of tools and machinery, you know it would’ve been better off in the trash.

Still, you have to finish this engine first before you can rip apart the control unit wiring on the armor to see how the whole set fits together and what else needs to be repaired.  You’ve been working on it for a few hours before you hear the door to the hangar open.  Yet, when you don’t immediately hear Peli’s voice calling out to you, or anyone else’s voice for that matter, your heart thuds in your chest with sudden excitement.

“You’re back early,” you tell the engine suspended over your head, knowing he must’ve already thrown the quarry into the Crest parked outside before coming to see you.  Right on time, footsteps approach and then a boot carefully catches the flat platform between your legs, slowly rolling your seat out from under the ship until the rest of the sunlit hangar is revealed to you.

You know you must look a hot mess right now.  Your hair is a disaster and there’s not a clean spot to be found on your body—sweat glistens and pools along every curve you have and you’re probably drenching the spare jumpsuit Peli let you borrow, but Maker, there he is.  Every time you see him is like the first time all over again, except this time the Mandalorian is looming like a giant over you, the helmet tilted down and silently taking you in.

Instead of settling you, his daunting presence gets you hotter than dual suns in the sky ever could.  Fuck, he hasn’t said a word to greet you, and yet you’re already wondering if you can entice him to shove you back under here and join you.

You slowly push yourself upright and he steps back just enough to allow it, but not an inch more than that.  You have to crane your neck up to keep looking at him, and he stands close enough over you that you wouldn’t have to reach far at all if you wanted to touch him.

And it’s crazy to think that… you absolutely could touch him, if you wanted.  He radiates danger, he hunts and tracks for his continued survival, he’s probably got fresh blood staining the dark fabric of his cape and he’s so fucking intimidating—and if you wanted to, you could touch him.  

Maybe you can partially blame your sore muscles as to why you immediately drop your head back down, but mostly you just want to stare at a part of his body that happens to align perfectly at eye level.  And fuck, nothing stops you from looking.  He doesn’t help you up, but he also doesn’t move so you can haul yourself to your feet, either.  He just holds perfectly still with his body standing tall over yours, content to stay exactly like this while your hand slowly reaches out to wrap around one of his ankles.

He’s so warm, his muscles flex strong under your palm as you let it drift upwards, biting your lip as you flick your gaze back up to the chrome visor and then down again to the apex of his thighs.  Your other hand comes up to scale the beskar strapped to his leg and you roll yourself forward slightly, wondering if he’d let you…

The black fabric stretching over his crotch just barely touches your fingertips before his hand is suddenly whipping out and grabbing hold of your wrist.

You gasp and jerk your head up to look at him, somehow equally hoping that you’re both in trouble and not in it at the same time.  Din’s abruptly chest raises with a large, labored inhale, as if he wasn’t breathing at all that entire time, as if he just now remembered the setting, the fact that he’s not alone on the Crest with you right now.  Peli and the kid have to be somewhere in the hangar, you know that, but…

“We’re leaving tonight,” he breathes out through the modulator, and you have absolutely no fucking problem with that at all.  “But… shit, but…”

“But…?”  You prompt, wanting nothing more than to let your hands reach back up to his pants again, but you settle for slowly dragging one palm up his forearm as his grip on your wrist tightens.

“Fuck, I wanted to take you somewhere first,” he groans like your feather-soft touch is actually hurting him, his hands suddenly dropping yours and pushing you away to clench into fists at his sides.  “Maker—why do you always f-fucking do this to me…”

You raise an eyebrow at him this time, the curiosity starting to mix with the heat simmering down low, the kind that you'd feel even on a frozen wasteland of a planet as long as you were with him.  All at once, you decide to channel him and his trademarked silence, enthralled by the incredibly slim chance that it will work equally as well on its creator.

“…Distract me,” he finally growls out an answer to the question you never asked him, sounding frustrated with you for reasons you still haven’t figured out, and your mouth is drier than the desert outside.  Oh stars, you feel… fucking powerful.  “From everything,” he goes on, talking honestly and openly, more words given to you in thirty seconds than he’s probably offered to anyone all week long.  “Fuck, I feel like I can barely do fucking anything anymore, I’m losing my fucking mind.”

Your heart slams in your chest, wondering if he possibly feels the exact same way about you as you feel about him.  Missing you whenever he’s gone, dreading the moment he needs to leave again whenever he’s with you.  The thought alone is enough to set off fireworks through your veins, pumping hope and excitement from your fingers to your toes.

“I’m sorry,” you breathe out, biting your lip in a way that doesn’t look or feel sorry at all.

“No, you’re not,” Din grunts, before reaching out and hauling you to your feet, and even if there wasn’t a flat seat under you with wheels, it’d still be awkward and uncoordinated as fuck.  “Shit.  I… I need to clean up.  Grab your things, go tell…”

Din trails off after a second, suddenly sounding at a complete loss.  You catch your footing and stare at him as he falters.  “Uh.  Go tell…”  He gestures with a sense of finality to the control room, as if he’s actually successfully communicating with you by doing so.  “Her.  That we’re leaving tonight.”

“What?”  You ask him, thoroughly fucking confused.  “What are you saying right now?”

“The woman,” he clarifies, clearing his throat.  “The mechanic, with the… droids.  Tell her I’ll pay her before we leave, but we’re g—”

“Peli?”  You blurt, completely flabbergasted at this point.  “Did you forget her name, Mando?”

“I…” he shakes his head slightly at you, like you should already know him better than that.  “Never asked.”

“But you—?”  You blink at him.  “But you said she was your friend?”

“You said she was my friend,” he immediately points out, with—oh Maker, just biting accuracy.  It wasn’t necessarily a jab or anything, but you still feel dizzy with how fucking spot on he is about it.  Yikes, you absolutely did say that.  You forgot.

“Oh…” you mumble, at a stunning loss for a response.  “Ha.  Oh.  Yeah, huh.”

There’s too many beats of awkward silence after that, probably because he’s just so blown away by your way with words that he’s just attempting to analyze the wisdom.  Stars, you’re making a complete fool of yourself in front of him, aren’t you?

“Were you jealous?”  He suddenly asks, and you jerk upright, your heart kicking up to a gallop in your chest at the question.

“I’ll go tell Peli we’re leaving soon,” you quickly agree and go to scurry away in abrupt panic, but he catches your wrist and hauls you back before you can get far.  You run into him with a gasp and immediately start to repeat your explanation for why you very suddenly need to depart, but the tips of Din’s fingers catch your chin and force you to look up at him.

“Hey,” he cuts your rambling short with a hushed murmur and the pad of his thumb brushes down your jaw.  “Tell me the truth.”

You don’t have an answer that won’t be incriminating, and you don’t think you can get the delivery right on a lie, not to him and especially not when he’s got you so cornered.  So you just keep completely silent and look up at him like a scolded child would.  Innocent, wide-eyed and scared shitless about the unknown consequences of your actions.

His helmet slowly tilts as he studies you, watching you look up at him for help.  His fingers gradually spread out across your jaw, flattening under the curve of your throat but so gentle, so careful that you’re almost worried he actually is mad.

“I’m sorry,” you immediately offer before he can say anything, your eyebrows pulling up in the middle.  “I’m so sorry, it’s just—I just…”

His thumb carefully stretches up to brush your bottom lip, and you…  Mind blank, no thoughts.  Stars, you’ve got fucking nothing.

“I’ve got nothing,” you admit, giving up before you can even try.  “There’s no reason.  I was jealous.  It’s stupid and I wasn’t going to say anything because I know it’s stupid, and I shouldn’t feel possessive over you but I do, and it’s stupid.  I don’t want anyone else to know you the way I know you, and I’m really sorry if that makes you feel weird, I don’t want you to feel like you can’t have—”

Your chin lifts slightly with the gentlest movement of his hand and the subtle pressure is enough to cut your mindless oversharing off.  Din’s voice lowers until it’s throaty and quiet.

“See that wall?”  He asks, keeping the visor pinned to you while carefully turning his hand to the right, and your whole head easily follows the movement as he guides it.  You have to blink your eyes into focus a few times, but then you immediately see what he’s talking about.  It’s a partition separating the welding room from the rest of the hangar.  He waits until you nod in the cradle of his palm, before leaning in and murmuring to you.  “If we were alone, I’d take you around behind it and show you exactly how that makes me feel.”

You pull back from him with a startled gasp just as a voice calls out from the entrance of the hangar.  “Well, look who finally decided to come back!”

Din slowly drops his arms and stares at you for just long enough to make you seriously worry that he’s going to say fuck it all and do it anyways, before finally turning around and greeting Peli with another silent nod.

She plants one hand on her hip once she’s standing right in front of him, cradling the kid on with her other arm, and you have to take a second to collect yourself now that you’re not at the direct center of his attention anymore.  “Sure did take you long enough, didn’t it?”

“I’m two days early,” he grunts in his immediate defense, but it’s like she doesn’t hear him.

“You’re leaving soon I hope,” she drawls while handing the baby over to him, who makes an adorable little happy squeak at seeing his dad again.  “You owe me five hundred credits.”

“It was five hundred for the full week,” he reminds her, and… he has a point.  Though it was never part of the agreement, you wonder if she’ll be willing to accept less compensation for having the burden of your company be lifted early.

“Five days count as a full week, far as I’m concerned,” she shoots back, and your heart suddenly sinks when Din’s shoulders tighten and he doesn’t respond.

“Peli…” you sigh from behind him before you even realize you’ve spoken aloud.

Your host quickly sidesteps your bodyguard to eye you dubiously, and at the same time, you also jolt and wonder what your goal is here exactly.  You’re ultimately just attempting to diffuse any tension sparking between them, you figure, knowing you’re probably the best mediator here.  She looks at you up and down for a long time, hard and judging, before the baby babbles something wordlessly and she sighs.

“I suppose we can just call it even,” she finally huffs, turning back to him.  “You’re lucky your girlfriend earned her keep, Mando.”

And then your jaw drops.  Holy shit, is she serious?  You assumed Peli valued credits above almost anything else, you never expected her to just… turn down the entire offer like that, so willingly.  Clearly Din didn’t either, because you both just stand there for a moment in front of her in a baffled silence.

Also… girlfriend?

Is that what you are to him?  Admittedly you haven’t talked to him about what to call your relationship, but then again, you’re a practical person and you never really saw a specific need to do so.  You care about him, he cares about you—what else is important?  You don’t need a title to recognize your value to him, and for some odd reason, calling yourself his “girlfriend” just feels like you’re a teenager again.  If you were actually looking for a different word to use instead, you wouldn’t be able to find it, but you know that one just feels… not enough.  Not old enough, not encompassing enough, not complex enough.  It’s an elementary school version of what this is.  And to refer to someone like Din as your boyfriend?  Maker, just saying it aloud would probably make his eye twitch.

“Uh.”  He stands there awkwardly, and you’re so blown away by both the sentiment and specific verbiage she used that you’re practically useless at this point.  Shit, what’s beyond girlfriend, you wonder?  Lover?  No, not good enough.  Partner?  No.  No, not wife, definitely fucking not—  “Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Peli waves him away and spins around to leave, but not before throwing one final thing over her shoulder.  “That ain’t an open invitation to come back, by the way.”

All of a sudden, you just can’t stop yourself from breaking out into a wide grin, tucking your chin in hopes that she won’t see it with her back turned and decide to pounce on the display of weakness.  The three of you watch her stride out of the room and immediately bark an order at one of her droids to get back to work, who starts looking around in desperate search of something to do, and Din’s palm finds its usual place on your lower back as she disappears.

“What a nice lady,” you offer to him, and he gives you a wordless grumble in response.

***

So it’s a couple hours later and you think the kid might actually have the right idea this time.

You find yourself wishing you had a little hover pod of your own that followed Din around, one you could close the lid on and hide in while blaster fire whistles through the air around you like the baby is currently doing.  You’re trying to listen to instructions—you’re trying, but there’s a lot going on here.  Voices chatting, guns firing, targets being pinged, a lively little band playing in the cantina next door.  

When Din first led you through Mos Eisley and inside this specific adobe hut, if you’re being completely honest, you had hoped for food.  A comparatively large restaurant, perhaps?  Peli didn’t starve you by any stretch of the imagination, but her dinners were the exact same every single night, and you’ve learned to thrive on new things.  While you didn’t necessarily think he was going to take you on a… a date, or anything, you certainly didn’t expect him to take you to a shooting range.

Well.  Now that you think about it, this might actually be a date.

Luckily you’re hidden away in the furthest firing partition from the door, but even without the near-constant barrage of gunfire to your left, the distractions are still plentiful.  The kid actually reached down and pressed the button to close his crib himself as soon as the bright beams of plasma started zooming past and reflecting in his large black eyes, and oh how you wish that were you.  You don’t necessarily feel like you’re in danger or anything, but you’ve also never seen so many guns in one place before and you’re worried you’re accidentally going to hurt someone else.

So far Din has taught you the fundamentals for any firearm—always keep the safety on until you’re ready to fire, never point at anything unless you’re a hundred percent willing to shoot it, yada yada yada—and also the safety fundamentals for blasters specifically.  So, making sure there’s no leaks in the gas cylinder when you first load it, never letting a strong magnet get near the power pack, checking the surface of your target for deflection curves if you want to prevent a ricochet, or maybe in his case, inspire one.  He’s taught you your stance, he’s taught you how to read your sights, now all that’s left is just to… shoot.

Your arms raise up in front of you and the metal feels too heavy and awkward in your hands, and you have to hold the handle in your left and creep your right index finger all the up the side of the barrel until you feel the indented safety switch.  It clicks and you reset your grip to slowly ease your finger onto the trigger, staring down the sight, right at the bullseye.  Din is standing directly behind you next to the kid’s tightly closed hovering pod, arms crossed and just waiting for you to pull it.

Come on beginner’s luck, come on beginner’s luck—

You fire, and… well.  You don’t think you’ve ever seen a shot miss its target that spectacularly in your entire life.  You’re almost surprised the beam of plasma didn’t somehow ricochet back into the booth you’re both standing in, that’s how spectacularly you missed.

“Try again.”

There’s no amusement in his voice, nothing mocking about it.  Pure monotone under the helmet, as if he was just naturally expecting that to happen.  

No, you think in frustration.  You want to surprise him again, impress him with how quickly you can pick things up, turn him on like last time.  You just fucking know that would get to him—seeing you easily hit the target dead center with his own blaster, you know that would get to him.

You adjust your aim and fire a few more times.  Miss, miss, wild miss, miss.  Fuck, so many distractions, plasma flying in the corner of your vision and an increasingly heavy gaze from behind you.  Another miss, a miss, yeesh that’s a miss—

Alright, so you're just embarrassing yourself at this point.

“I think it’s broken,” you shrug in defeat, taking a second to find the safety switch and toggle it before going to set the gun down on the raised adobe platform separating the line of booths from the targets—but then Din suddenly snatches the blaster from your grip and extends his arm over your shoulder, firing off six rounds in rapid succession so wickedly fast that you jump backwards into his rock solid chest in surprise.  He doesn’t give an inch under the collision and even wraps his forearm tight around your tummy as he hits the bullseye with such deadly accurate precision that even the char marks and the line of smoke left wafting from the target’s center are razor-thin.

“Works just fine,” he grunts, setting the weapon back down again before urging you forward a bit.  “Go ahead, give it another shot.”

But you’re on a remarkable delay, just trying to process his sheer speed, how fluid and seamless the entire fucking motion was.  Fucking Maker, blink and you’d miss the whole thing.  He waited to grab the gun from you until you turned the safety on, but then… then how did he fire it so insanely fucking fast?  That’s like five different things he had to do with one single hand within a split second…?

“I turned the safety on,” you blink down at the blaster, clearly just trying to process.

“Yeah,” he agrees blankly, as if he’s unsure as to what specifically you’re so stuck on right now.

“So how did you toggle so fas—?”

He picks it from the shelf gracefully and lightning quick—as if he just can’t help but go that speed around his weapon—and then he twists it on its side, flexing his wrist back until the barrel is pointed upwards and you can clearly see his index finger extend all the way up to the safety switch, flipping it up and down while his middle finger rests over the trigger guard.

“How in the f…?”  You mutter, lifting your hand up next to his and positioning your fingers in the exact same L shape, only the tip of your index finger barely stretches an inch shy of the switch.  “Psh,” you huff, dropping your arm back down again.  “Design flaw.”

“For you,” he acknowledges, using the trigger guard to flip it back to its proper position in his hand like fucking spinning it like that is just the easiest and most natural way to handle the deadly weapon.  “This gun was made for me, it’s a feature.  Yours would be smaller and lighter, have the safety towards the back of the chamber instead of along the barrel.”

The words and the casual display of ability cause a rush of stirring excitement to burst forth inside you, suddenly giddy at the very thought.

“Wait,” you draw the word out with a grin, leaning back into him and gently nudging him with your elbow to make sure he knows you’re only mostly joking.  “You gonna buy me a blaster, Mando?  I did earn my keep this week, didn’t I?”

“Have to find one that fits a big enough sight first,” he mutters while setting the gun down on the table, and you scoff at him as his hands come to rest on your hips.  They squeeze and try to guide you forwards once again.  “Prove that you can at least hit the target with mine and we’ll see.”

“You only get to make fun of me if you give me a real answer,” you rule, planting your feet and refusing to budge.

“Okay, but we both know I’ll make fun of you anyways,” he sighs, and you have to dig your heels in and push back into him to keep yourself rooted to the spot.

“You’re not being a very encouraging teacher,” you accuse without trying to hide your grin.  “In fact I feel very discouraged right now and I think that y—”

But then Din suddenly tips his helmet closer to your ear and lowers his voice, cutting you off.  “Did you know that gifting someone a weapon is considered a proposal of marriage on Mandalore?”

Your smile quickly drops and you gasp, wholly startled at the implication and immediately trying to spin around to look at him.  “Holy shit, are you serious?”

“No,” comes his modulated grunt, tightening his hold and keeping you firmly facing forwards.  “Of course not.  Pick up the gun.”

Okay.

Okay, so that one gets you.

You immediately start giggling, painfully aware that this isn’t the time or place for it, but that one actually fucking got you.  Din easily guides and parks your gullible ass in front of the window carved out of dried mud before picking up the blaster himself and forcing you to hold it with your loose hands, grumbling under his breath.

Shit, okay, focus.  Focus, you can do this.  You clear the laughter from your throat and suddenly get deadly serious, staring your target down like it’s personally gone out of its way to ruin your entire life.  The blaster feels cold in your palms but not when Din’s hands wrap warm and tight around the back of yours, letting you hold the gun how it’s most comfortable for you before gently settling his fingers down over yours.  His chestpiece presses tight against your shoulder blades when he guides the gun up and out, and his arms are long enough to extend yours fully even though he’s behind you and still has some bend to his elbows.  He uses his feet to kick your ankles apart until they’re shoulder-width and then you both carefully find the trigger together.

He’s quiet and slow about it and the whole thing is one giant fucking turn-on.  Maker, chill out.  Chill out, he’s teaching you how to shoot.  This is important stuff, there are people around, chill out…

Din takes a moment to aim the barrel and his hold is so fucking steady, so unwavering and strong.  You wonder if it’d be too obvious if you pushed your hips back a little, you might be able to feel his—

“Fire,” Din murmurs next to your ear, and you pull the trigger without a second thought.

The bright red plasma beam launches from the end of the blaster and hits the target dead center.  You gasp, pulling the trigger again, and unsurprisingly, it’s another perfect shot.

He suddenly lets go of your arms and takes a small step back, but the second he removes his body from yours, the rounds start bouncing wildly off the edges of the target.  Your eyebrows furrow and you try to emulate how you think the angle felt before, but you can’t find it anymore and you’re just failing spectacularly.

When you decide to pause for a second, Din steps up close behind you and wraps his arms around you once more.  You can feel the exact moment he’s locked in his aim, and you fire wordlessly as soon as you know it’s going to hit.  Bullseye, right on the nose.

This time, he lifts just his hands away from yours, staying perfectly still otherwise and you swear you don’t move a single fucking muscle in your entire body before pulling the trigger, but it still hits the far corner of the target.

“It’s broken,” you shrug once again, and Din drops his helmet to your shoulder with a sigh.  “This gun was made for you, which means there’s obviously some mod you have installed that reads biometrics and ruins the shot no matter how good it—”

“Not even close, but that’s not a bad idea,” he tells you, watching you click the safety on and set the uncooperative blaster down.  “I can’t figure out what you’re doing wrong.   Are you just distracted?”

Uh, fuck yeah you are.  So much is going on and more than that, he’s here and he’s just… fuck, you know what he meant when he said he felt like he was losing his mind.  He’s your biggest distraction, all the time.  He’s still standing so close to you and the baby is still isolated and tucked away in his hovering sphere, and you take a moment to think about it.  

Yes, it’s… it’s possible that you may learn better by example than anything else.

“Can I watch you do it?”  You ask him, and Din shrugs before reaching around you and quickly grabbing the blaster from its mud shelf.  “Wait—” you tell him while he raises and extends his arm over your shoulder, and then you wiggle sideways as much as possible in the small booth to squeeze around behind him.  He doesn’t say anything as you swap places with him and scoot up behind him, but you can tell by his body language that he’s confused.  You wonder if he liked that position and watching you shoot his gun, even if you’re complete shit at it.

He stands in front of you for a second and you give him an encouraging, “Okay,” to let him know you’re ready, but then the helmet turns back to look at the target like he’s still unsure as to what you want specifically.  You keep your mouth shut and let him figure it out.  You meant what you said—you want to watch him shoot.  You want to watch him where he’s infamous, watch him do what he’s best at and let completely loose in front of you.

As if it finally clicks for him, Din turns to face the target and suddenly throws the blaster into his left hand while reaching down and pushing a button hidden under the hollow platform with his right.  You have to lean around his broad shoulders to watch the target slide backwards on its track easily triple the distance before squeaking and slamming to a stop.  Din stretches his non-dominant hand out and subtly tilts his helmet before firing six times, easily hitting the bullseye with just as much accuracy as before, and you frown when you notice the only shots that have actually hit the target so far have all been dead center.

He sets the gun down and stands there for a second, staring across the range like it’s nothing at all to him and it’s… remarkable.  Not that he’s a wicked shot, you’ve known that the second you laid eyes on his armor all those months ago.  No, it’s just… you would think this is where he’d thrive, if anywhere.  The entire place is full of smugglers, raiders, scavengers, mercenaries—occupations that define themselves by their grit.  They’re talking as much as they’re shooting, conversing in languages you’ve never heard but suspect Din easily understands.  But instead of fitting in, he’s just… there.  He doesn’t look comfortable, but he also doesn’t look uncomfortable, either.  He doesn’t look like he’s having any fun at all.

None of this is considered a hobby to him, you suddenly realize.  It’s not fun because he’s too good at it.  This is life.  This is going back to school for the most basic fundamentals of a job he’s excelled at for decades—it’s not interesting, he’s gaining absolutely nothing from practicing.

You try to think of the last time you’ve seen him truly in his element.  You think back on all the different settings—he looked out of place on Canto Bight, got into fights on Corellia, hated Coruscant, seemed stressed on Nevarro, and even on Naboo, even in the middle of paradise, he looked unsure if he actually deserved to be there with you.  Now here on Tatooine, where he has real people that he trusts, where he’s surrounded by like-minded individuals shooting his favorite things in the world, it’s like he’s still not able to fully let go.

Is it just you, you wonder?  Does he stand out more just because you’re the one looking?

No, you think.  No.  You have seen him relax.  You’ve seen him laugh before, you’ve seen him be himself with you.  

But… only with you.  A hardened bounty hunter that much prefers the company of a young woman and an infant to literally anyone else in the galaxy.

Fuck.  Why does that turn you on so fucking much?  It’s the display of prowess, the sheer skill he’s developed, how fucking deadly he is—and how you’ve felt him use that trigger finger to trace slow circles around your clit.  The Mandalorian standing with his blaster raised has probably been the last thing too many people have ever seen in their lifetimes, and yet watching from this angle just makes you feel protected, guarded, and… so fucking horny for him.

“Do it again,” you eventually murmur, touching both your palms to his back this time just to feel it.  You want to feel him shoot, you want to feel his muscles move with it.  You want to touch how mechanically he’s able to aim, you want to know if he’s loose or tense when he fires, you just want to… feel it.

Din grabs the gun and as he extends his arms out, you slide your hands up his back to rest under his shoulders.  He’s so broad, he feels so warm and strong, and his trigger releases are so steady that nothing above his wrists move.

Shit, before he’s even finished setting the blaster back down again, you’re already scooting up behind him as close as possible and carefully slithering your arms around his waist, hugging your body tight to his back.  Din stays completely still while your mouth presses against the fabric of his cape and your hands begin to slowly slide down his stomach.

He doesn’t say a damn thing, which makes it even hotter for some reason.  There’s no warning he gives you, no low growl of your name or sweet girl being dragged through the modulator.  He stays completely silent and holds there while blasters continue to fire from stalls to your left, and it gives you the thrill of your lifetime.  Big strong man holding perfectly still for you to touch in the middle of a crowded room.

Your hand slips under his waistband and sink down low until you can trail your fingertips along his cock, hidden from sight beneath the edge of the clay shelf.  The small sound you make at feeling it already firm and at attention for you gets lost in the noise of the shooting range, but you wrap your palm around it and give it a good, slow pull upwards, feeling Din’s back expand with a breath from the sensation.

“Do it again,” you whisper into his shoulder blade, slowly playing with his cock in his pants with one hand while keeping the other wrapped tight around his abdomen.

Din immediately snatches the blaster off the platform and fires it the very moment he takes aim, and you can feel his cock pulse in your palm as he lets off the shots.  Dead center, as always, but he clunks the metal back down with a bit more force this time and then lingers his fingertips at the sloped edge of it for a second, as if he’s considering whether or not he should hold onto it.  

You’re already wet between your legs, but it gets worse the longer he allows you to keep doing this.  His skin is furnace-hot and he throbs for you, and you trail your thumb up to check—oh, Maker, he’s leaking for you, too.  You drag the pad of your thumb over the tip and gently rub the wetness along the curve of his head, before easing back down to give the shaft another slow pull.

A quiet puff of air comes through the vocal filter, but that’s all you audibly get out of him.  Still, it’s more than enough to fill you with a wicked heat and a desperate desire for more.  So you bite your lip and glance around just to double-check that nobody else has wandered over behind you and the kid is still tucked away in his crib, probably passed out in the secluded darkness at this point.  And then you barely take a split-second to consider it before your knees are bending and you’re slowly sinking down the length of his body.

Din is a fucking statue.  He doesn’t do anything to allow your wiggling underneath the raised platform anymore than he widens his stance to prevent it.  Once you’re on your knees in front of him in the dim isolation of your hiding spot though, he takes a single step forward and pins his waist to the hardened clay above your head, and a thrill skitters through you at being completely walled in on all four sides.

You reach up to hook your fingertips in his hem of his trousers and begin pulling them down, so tight and achy between your legs that you want to shove your hand down between them already.  You don’t though, not yet, because you need two hands to be extra careful in getting his cock out.  You don’t even want the fabric of his pants to touch it, you want your mouth to be the only sensation he knows here.

At the very last second, you decide to pull the waistband down far enough to let his balls rest outside the confining clothing, getting increasingly hotter at the thought that this isn’t going to be sneaky and dirty, even if you’re in public.  Din’s wide stance and the floor-length cape hide you perfectly from any prying eyes behind his back, so it’s going to be soft and it’s going to be slow and he’s going to be comfortable while you go down on him.

Your mouth is already watering, so you bend down just slightly and lift your chin to gently drag your tongue along the smooth skin of his balls before anything else.  Honestly—you don’t think he’s expecting you to go there first, because his whole body suddenly jerks at the velvet soft sensation between his legs and you let out a low hum in response.  He can’t reach you down here unless he tries to, so you scoot your knees up a little bit and just decide to go for it.  This way he won’t be able to get it confused, he won’t pull you out from under here halfway through when you suck on his balls before anything else.  This is what you want from him, what’s right here in your mouth.

You switch to the other one and Din twitches with a filtered breath, the skin already tightening up and responding gorgeously under your tongue.  His hand hovers somewhere near the raised platform above your head, fingers curling in his leather gloves and caught right between stopping you and letting you continue.  While he allows it, you ease your way up and make it just tantalizing enough to make him ache without providing any real stimulation, slowly trailing your tongue up the length of his cock and pressing plush lips to the flared head.

Din exhales a shakily while you take your time, tasting the precum as his body produces it, just kissing and licking and purposefully refusing to touch him with anything besides your mouth.  Without being able to see the rest of him from this angle, you're left to your own devices—you’re so gentle and soft about the pleasure that you start to separate the man from the throbbing erection you’re currently playing with.  You begin to enjoy yourself without thinking too much about the struggle he must be withstanding right now, you moan softly against his heated skin even though you know you’re being a tease at the worst possible moment, but no matter how you decide to take your time with it, Din continues to allow it.  He endures.  Silent, perfectly still, until you eventually decide to wrap your lips around the head of his cock and flutter your tongue up underneath it.

But then he jumps and your eyes open when a deep, unkind voice from the stall to your left calls out, “Hey, Mando!  Gonna fuckin’ shoot or just stand there, huh?”

You can hear his immediate frustration in the blaster scraping against the shelf over your head, and you moan softly around his cock the second you feel him tense and start firing.  The smooth skin pulses on your tongue and you slide your fingers around the backs of his knees, opening your throat and slowly taking him deeper.  

And, for a man that has repeatedly fired six perfect shots every single time he picks up his gun, he falters after just three this time.

The heat of your mouth must be too overwhelming.  Too fucking good, too detrimental to his focus and composure to even perform the most basic tasks he typically excels at.  Like a seasoned mathematician that suddenly struggles to count to ten, a renowned author that can’t recite their ABC’s—Mando can’t even fire a weapon right now and it’s all because of you.  

He has to keep trying though, he has to make an actual effort now that you both know someone nearby is paying at least some sort of attention to his performance.  The sound of more plasma arcing through the air over your head slowly disappears into the background in a way that it never could while you were the one firing—you’re completely hidden and safe down here, you can moan low in your throat while keeping your hands around his knees and begin to bob your head without another thought or worry whatsoever.  Handling it is all on him.  He just needs to stay quiet, be still, and shoot his gun.  It should be the simplest thing in the galaxy for him, right?

Wrong.  So wrong.  You hear the way the bolts are pinging off the sides of the target now, you listen to him grunt and let off a few more shots that also sound like they miss.  Your soft palate lifts and you’re practically drenching yourself at how wide he stretches your throat while you take him down as far as you can, and there’s a moment where you’re holding there and you think about doing something about the dull ache throbbing between your legs.  But once you pull off him for air and automatically touch your drooling tongue to your palm, you decide this is what you want more.

Your slick hand wraps around his cock and starts to slowly jerk him off while your mouth moves down to attach to his balls once more, your touch gliding strong and wet along his entire length.  Din almost doubles over into the platform, his hips stuttering up for the first time at the hard stimulation you’re finally giving him.  His skin swells and tightens in your mouth—you can feel the tension locking his thighs down, you can hear the shots above you start to decrease in frequency, and you know he’s already close.

So you move back up to suck on the head of his cock again and slowly swirl your tongue around it, continuing to use your hand to pull steady and firm on the rest of his shaft, and you just close your eyes and wait for him to give you what you want.  His firing soon stops altogether and you squeeze your finger between your thighs and press hard against your clit, just needing to relieve some of the ache.  You keep doing that, you keep drawing circles with your tongue while slowly jerking the rest of him off into your mouth, and at some point, it all just becomes too much for him.

“Shit,” Din gasps, along with the sudden sound of metal skittering against the clay above you, and your eyes pop open in surprise.  “Ah, sh—shhhhh—”

Maker, did he just drop his fucking gun?

You start to pull back, but then suddenly a trembling hand shoots down and clutches tight under your throat, hooking hard behind your jaw to make sure you stay right there.

His cock starts throbbing and he shudders, slamming his other palm on the shelf and cumming hard in your mouth.  You’re already swallowing before he even gives you anything but Maker, you’re fucking desperate for it that your hand moves to curl your fingers against the exposed skin at his hips as if that’ll somehow help you get it sooner.  The first taste of him comes as soon as you dig in and drag your nails down his flesh, and Din is helpless to do anything else besides clutch your jaw tight and gasp raggedly while emptying himself down your throat.

He shakes and shudders and you don’t spill a single drop, clutching his hips and pulling him close to keep him in your mouth, and as he slowly comes down from that plateau, you lick every inch of him clean.  His fingers gradually lose their rigidity around your jaw and eventually, his fingers drop down to press gently against your throat while his hips pull back.

He slips from your mouth and you wipe the wetness from your chin, staring up at his cock wistfully and almost wanting to keep going.  Is that fucked up, you wonder?  What would he think?

He hasn’t moved yet, why isn’t he moving?  Your job is clearly finished here, no matter what kind of way you may feel about that.  The coast must not be clear, you have to assume.  Perhaps someone is wandering around behind him, maybe he’s still being cautious about the nosy person next door—all you know is that you can tell he wants to move but he isn’t, which likely means he can’t.  You know his cock must be so unbelievably sensitive right now, but he’s not easing his body back far enough away from the shelf to tuck it into his pants.  He’s keeping it right in front of your face and expecting you to stay there until he deems it appropriate for you to get up.

The longer you wait for him to step back and let you out from under here, the more your need sparks and grows.  What would he think?  That you’re so desperate for his cock that you still want it in your mouth even when it’s soft and spent?  Maker, he’d be fucking right on the money.

At some point, you can’t stop yourself.  You lean back up to slowly take his soft cock back in your mouth, and Din nearly spasms while you slip your hand under your waistband and widen your knees.

You don’t do anything spectacular to it—you’re not that cruel—but you do hold him on the heat of your tongue and keep him there, fluttering your eyes closed as your finger finally touches your clit.  Air puffs shakily through your nostrils and you think Din is actually shaking harder than you are, his body fighting oversensitivity while yours starts the race towards bliss.  He doesn’t stop you but it also feels like he’s purposefully trying not to, like everything in him is rebelling against the wet heat of your mouth but knowing you’re only doing this because you’re so painfully turned on.  You’re doing this because you need it, in spite of the electric shocks of wicked sensation it seems to be inspiring in him.

Your finger speeds up and you start gently sucking on the warm, giving flesh, and his hand trembles as it grabs at your hair.  Fuck, you don’t care if he thinks you’re desperate—you want him to recognize it, you want him to know exactly how much you love his cock—

That thought sends a dark thrill down your spine and pleasure burns bright and needy where you’re still rubbing your clit, dropping your hips and rolling them forwards against your hand.  And oh, your only lament is that you wish he was the one doing this.  You wish Din was building your pleasure instead of letting you use his body in search of your own, you wish it was his hand working between your legs and about to shove you over that ledge, but then again.  Something about this whole fucking scene is just so… undignified.  Debased.  And you’re getting off on it, quicker than you ever thought possible.

When you cum, you’re good and you don’t make a single sound when you cum.  You squeeze your eyes shut and your entire body jolts with every single shattering wave of ecstasy, and Din tugs a handful of your hair and slowly rocks his hips once, twice, fucking your mouth while you endure wildfire burning through your veins.  By the time you finish convulsing on the fucking floor of a Tatooinian gun range, you know you can go for another and probably get it equally as quick as that one, but Din is already pulling his cock out of your mouth and shoving it back into his pants.  You’re like jelly as your elbow is immediately caught in his arm and you’re hauled up from your hiding spot, dazed and disoriented.

The chrome visor stares you down and you want to shrink in on yourself, thinking he’s going to take your happy ass back to the Crest.  You should be in trouble, you know you should be in trouble.  Leaving the recesses of your dark cubby and coming face to face with your surroundings brings a brand new clarity to light—you totally should not have done any of that.  He was trying to teach you, for Maker’s sake.  He was taking the time to show you the valuable knowledge he’s gained regarding weaponry and self-defense.  Fuck, you even told him on Naboo that you wanted to shoot a gun, and he brought you here to do just that.

Except then he just spins you around and picks up the blaster from the adobe ledge in front of you, placing it firmly in your hands.

“Okay,” he pants quietly next to your ear, breathing hard and shallow through the helmet.  “Now you should be able to focus, right?”

Fuck…  Fuck, is he serious?  You can barely hold the damn thing, you’re shaking so hard.  How does this work again?  What does this do?

“Wh-What?”  You croak—fuck, your voice is gone.  “I… I can’t—”

“Try,” he encourages, helping your comparatively tiny hands flip off the safety but other than that, stepping back and leaving you to it.  Completely and hopelessly lost, you weakly twist around to watch him stand next to the kid’s closed metallic shield.  “Hit the target,” Din reiterates with a nod, trying to catch his breath.  “You can do it.”

You look back out with unfocused eyes to see it still all the way on the far end of its track, and there’s just absolutely no fucking way.  “I… can’t.”

“Hit the target and we can go home,” he tells you, and while you don’t exactly know what home is anymore, something tells you it’s somewhere in hyperspace.  A resting baby, a metal floor, a pitch black hull, and your cheek pressed against a warm chest.

It sounds… wonderful.

Inspiring a newfound kind of desire in you, you lift your arms as best you can and work so, so hard to keep them steady.  The target is in your sights and you do your absolute best—fuck, you really do, but you pull the trigger and the shot sadly bounces off the edge.

You drop your hands, already defeated and drained.  “I can’t.”

“Hit the target and I’ll buy you a blaster,” he ups the ante, and you instantly lift your dead arms again.  Fuck, come on, come on, you can do this.

You shoot.  Nope.  So you shoot again.  And then you shoot again, and again, minutely adjusting your wrists purely based on where the bright red plasma is landing and ignoring the scope entirely.

“A nice one,” he continues over the pew pew pew of you just continuing to fucking miss, fucking miserably, over and over again.  “Expensive.  Hand-crafted, one of a kind…”

Miss, miss, miss, and—no.  Just, no.  There’s only so much glaring failure you can take before you snap.  You finally stop shooting and growl in frustration, going to slam the metal down on its resting place.  “Mando, I ca—”

“Hit the target and I’ll marry you,” he says quietly, and you freeze just before impact.

… What?  N… No…

Miraculously, you somehow manage to calmly switch the safety on and set the blaster down before turning back to see the helmet staring at you, unmoving.

You… you know it must just be a joke, right?  Just a stupid extension to the one he made earlier, it must be.  You blink dumbly at him and flick your gaze between the visor and two large black eyes staring at you from the crib, wondering if you glitched or if you’re just hallucinating.

“Uh…” you hear yourself say, even though you’ve got absolutely nothing, but Din doesn’t offer anything else to fill in the gaps of your startled misunderstanding.  If you didn’t have such a wild fucking reaction to the words, you'd probably wonder if he actually said them or not—that’s how much he gives away.  Silent, so unbelievably silent when you’re begging him to give you at least something.  Is he messing with you again?  Is he just that confident that you’re going to fail?

It takes forever for you to turn back around and face the target, but you eventually do when he refuses to elaborate.  Your heart slams in your chest and you wonder what you’re doing even attempting this.

The moment you lift your trembling arms is the moment you know your heart is pounding too fast—your finger twitches with the wild rush of blood flow and you end up pulling the trigger way before you’re ready.  You fire before you’ve checked your sights, you fire before you’ve taken any sort of aim whatsoever, you fire spontaneously enough to surprise even yourself and it—

—it hits dead center.

Your stomach drops and a jolt of some rabid feeling punches through you, you have no idea what it is.  You whip around so fast that you get dizzy, seeing him standing there, completely still.

“That was just beginner’s luck,” you quickly reassure him, suddenly feeling faint.  Holy shit, holy shit, what the fuck just happened?  “Listen—hey, no, listen, I can’t get it again,” you explain shrilly to the utterly dead silence from him.  “Look, watch this, double or nothing.”

You spin back around, well aware that absolutely nothing about what you just said or what just happened made any fucking sense at all.  Beginner’s luck when you’ve been consistently awful at this, telling him repeatedly to listen when you’re very, very fucking aware he hasn’t said anything, double or nothing on a literal proposal as if double marriage is something that actually exists?

No.  Shut up.  Don’t even think that word, don’t think about fucking anything.  Fire, fire without thinking, just lift the gun and pull the trigger—

You do, and oh.  Oh, no.

“Uh?!”  Your voice comes out on a squeak, now in a complete fucking panic.  What the fuck?  No fucking way.  Perfect, perfect, the odds are fucking astronomical—another deadly accurate shot.  “Ah, um, okay, scratch everything I said—th-third time’s a charm?”

Wide-eyed and having absolutely no clue what you’re doing at this point, you fail to see Din slowly turn his helmet down and to the right as he stands behind you.  You go to lift your arms and pull the trigger, but then he suddenly reaches out lightning-quick and bumps your elbow upwards at the very last second.  

The abrupt push causes your shot to be angled off course spectacularly and you can’t do anything but look up and gasp in horror, worried it’s going to ricochet off the ceiling and land somewhere this building isn’t architecturally designed to absorb.  There’s just enough time to wildly wonder why the fuck he did that—

—but then, like pure magic before your eyes… the beam of plasma adjusts itself in midair.  

It fucking bends.  Across the length of your entire firing lane, it curves in a downward trajectory and hits the target with absolutely impossible physics.

Your jaw fucking drops and you whip your body around in dumb shock to see Din staring hard at the closed shield next to him.

… that’s not closed.

The baby tilts his head at you and coos happily, one ear tipping up while the other tips down, and you’re completely blown away.  Not only at the entirely unexpected demon-power display, but what specifically he was hoping to get out of it.  You’re still stuck, blinking down at the adorable little goof with abilities you’ll never understand.

Only, a hand suddenly grabs yours and drags you back to yourself.

“We need to leave,” Din says quietly, switching the lid shut on the hovering crib and pushing it towards the booth’s exit while tugging you along behind him.  “I don’t know how many people saw that, we need to leave.”

Sure enough, voices in the next partition over start picking up, likely the only ones in here who had a good enough angle to watch the physically unthinkable shot somehow meet its target, and your adrenaline quickly begins pumping while you keep your head down and power-walk your ass to the door.  You don’t know the kind of consequences that could potentially arise from others witnessing the kid’s literal sorcery, but you know you’d rather not take the chance.  The voices start growing louder as you three make your quick escape, beginning to ask others around them if they just saw that, but you’re already out of the rectangular adobe structure and long gone by the time anybody steps out of their panels to hear the uproarious accusations of cheating beginning to fly.

***

Stay tuned for the next part!

[cuttoothed]

Happy Anniversary! (I'm very late, I know). If you're still taking prompts, can I request Jon and Martin one year after they land somewhere else? Thank you so much <3

(Anniversary Prompts)

I am basically always taking prompts, honestly! I still have quite a few to get through, but this one jumped the queue because I was looking for an excuse to write something for the anniversary of the finale. So thank you for the excuse! :3

*

For weeks leading up to it, Martin debates whether to say anything. Jon hasn't mentioned anything about it, and he would have if he remembered, no question, so maybe it's better not to remind him. It's not exactly a nice anniversary, even if it gave them a whole new start; there was an awful lot of blood and pain and world-shattering horror involved, and for Jon, the terrible guilty grief of visiting the Fears on a multitude of worlds. That guilt and grief still keep him up some nights (it's getting better, but Martin doesn't think it'll ever leave him entirely) so maybe it's for the best if he's forgotten.

On the other hand, if Jon does remember will he be annoyed that Martin didn't tell him? He hates to feel as if he's being coddled, and "keeping something from him for his own good" would almost certainly fall under that category. But it's not as if he'd have any proof that Martin knew. He could just claim he forgot. It would be a lie, but only a white lie—practically not a lie at all, really. (Martin knows that justification wouldn't make him feel any better in the slightest about lying to Jon.)

Really though, it is for his own good, and one of them has to be thinking about that. Jon would chop his finger off if he thought it would do someone some good (and for anyone else that would be a colorful exaggeration, but not for Jonathan Sims) but he never thinks of his own wellbeing. So Martin sometimes has to do it for him.

Anyway, he doesn't have to decide right now—it's not for weeks yet! So he puts it off, and then it's not for days, and then it's the day after tomorrow, and finally he wakes up Friday morning and he still hasn't decided. Jon's asleep when he leaves for work (the café opens at seven and much as Martin loves Jon, he's not an early riser at the best of times) so he rationalizes that he still has all day to decide.

Martin doesn't actually need to have a job, if he didn't want to. In this world, with the Beholding back on the outskirts of reality, Jon doesn't know everything anymore, but he can know almost anything if he puts his mind to it. And that includes knowing exactly where in a reel of scratch cards the winners are located. He's discreet about it, of course: never wins too big—a few hundred pounds at a time—and spreads his wins out carefully around the plethora of corner shops and petrol stations and supermarkets in London.

This leaves Jon with a lot of free time, which he spends mostly trawling paranormal web forums, looking for people he can help. He's admitted to Martin that is also serves to feed the Eye, but in a way that's not directly harmful to the other person; he's not appearing in anyone's nightmares. So far he's restricted himself to just giving advice—which often comes down to "burn that book" or "seal that object in concrete and throw it in a river, no I don't care how expensive it was"—but Martin knows he really wants to meet some of these people in person, try to offer them more tangible help. What's holding Jon back is the fear that, face to face with someone who he knows has a statement, he wouldn't be able to resist taking it. The thought makes Martin afraid for him too. So for now, Jon does his work as a pro bono paranormal consultant online.

Martin's not sure it's exactly a sustainable lifestyle, but he's not going to pressure Jon back into a regular workplace, not when he spent most of their first six months here re-learning how to be a person after being an all-powerful avatar of fear. He'll take the next steps—whatever those are for Jon—when he's ready.

In the meantime, Martin has his job at the café so at least they'll have an income if the Beholding someday suddenly decides to stop cooperating with Jon's scheme. He likes the café. It's straightforward, and the most stressful thing that ever happens is if they run out of ciabatta during the lunch rush, and by now he's pretty friendly with the other people who work there. They've even started doing a pub quiz once a week.

Besides, Martin's never been comfortable feeling as if he's dependent on someone else. Thinking back on it, that was probably the cause of at least some of his less than spectacular behavior during the apocalypse—combined with the stress of it being the end of the bloody world, of course. Not that it's an excuse, only a reason, but the fact that he's now aware of it is a good thing, he thinks. Personal growth.

But he still hasn't decided whether to say anything to Jon.

He debates it all day in his head, with such intensity that he keeps having to ask people to repeat orders and Justine asks if he's feeling all right. Then he debates it on the walk home to their cozy little flat, and right as he walks in the front door he decides, firmly, that he won't say anything.

He goes into the living room and Jon is sitting on the sofa, peering at his laptop screen over the frames of his glasses, and with his favorite mug (the one with the penguins) on the coffee table beside him. He looks up as Martin enters, his frown of concentration transforming into a smile that lights up his face.

"Hi love," he greets, his voice pure affection. "How was work?"

In that instant, Martin is filled with so much love and admiration for this man, for all he's survived and still retained his warmth and kindness, that he knows he can't lie to him. Not even by omission.

"It's the anniversary of the day we arrived here," he blurts out. Jon blinks at him. "I—I mean the day it all...you know—"

"Oh," says Jon, his expression going serious. He nods. "Yes, I know. I didn't say anything, because...well, everything's been so good here, you've been so happy, with the café and—and everything. I didn't think you'd want to be reminded."

"Oh," it's Martin's turn to say, and he feels a sheepish smile spread across his face. "Umm, same? I thought...if you'd forgotten about it, that was probably a good sign? That you weren't actively thinking about it, I mean."

Jon gives a soft chuckle and stands up, coming across the room and resting his hands on Martin's shoulders. "So we were each trying to protect the other and shoulder the burden alone, eh?"

"Sounds about right for us," Martin says, his own hands coming to rest on Jon's lower back, pulling him into a hug. "We really should work on that."

They hold each other tightly for a long time, and then pull apart just far enough that Martin can look at Jon's expression.

"Do you want to tell me how you're feeling?" he asks, because Jon doesn't always want to, and sometimes he wants to but can't, and framing it this way puts less pressure on him, lets him know that Martin is there to listen without expectation. It's something they've learned together; they've been learning a lot of things, this past year, about how to communicate and compromise and be together.

Jon frowns a bit. "Not good, all day," he admits. "I've been thinking about it a lot. Sick to my stomach, if I'm honest. It's better with you here, though—when it's us dealing with it together."

"How about we go for a walk?" Martin suggests. His feet are tired from rushing around all day, but he knows Jon won't have been out yet and some fresh air might do him good.

"That would be nice," says Jon gratefully.

They walk to the local park and sit on a bench near the duck pond, watching the ducks dabble and dive and preen. A pair of women pass them, pushing prams and chatting, and a jogger loops the pond a couple of times before heading off down another path. An elderly man sits on the next bench over, tossing sunflower seeds to a group of strutting, cooing pigeons. Martin reaches over and takes Jon's hand in his.

"I'm glad we have this," he says. It's been a year. Martin still feels guilt for some of his choices, and grief for others, but it's a beautiful afternoon and he's here, with the man he loves, and he refuses to be sorry about that. Jon smiles at him, and squeezes his hand for emphasis.

"So am I," he says, and despite everything, Martin knows he means it.

[quietlyimplode]

Based off this amazing poem by @pencap (please let me know if this isn’t ok).

(WC 3292 - warnings for red room horribleness (honestly), nightmares, discussion of pasts).

teach me to be at peace again.

(teach me how?)

unclench your fists, my lover, the war is over now.

He takes the gun gently from her, making her look at him. The gentleness of his hands on her face and the sound of her name on his lips make her breathe again, the familiar words washing over her like a song.

“You’re safe. You’re loved. It’s over.”

The nightmare recedes in her mind as she stares at him, remembering who she is, where she is, and the possibilities this world holds for her.

Natasha isn’t lost to the war in her mind, not now.

The dangers of her past, the brutality and depravity are locked away as she deepens her breath and closes her eyes.

(i’ve forgotten how to uncurl my fingers from the trigger.)

There’s a gun in her hand and two shell casings drop, hot, burning.

The sound is unmistakable and the smell of the gun powder drags her from sleep. Her ears ring and her breathing quickens. A nightmare. It was a nightmare.

Her body shakes and the images flash through her mind. Her lips turn downwards, and she bites down to draw her mind to the pain. She’s not safe, she’s alone, these nightmares will never be over.

Yelena gets up, her suppressing the urge to hide under the covers and closer her eyes, pretend that she’s just a kid with parents next door, someone, anyone to take care of her.

Her fingers tighten around the gun, the tap tap tap of the trigger as her body shakes around it.

be gentle, my lover, the war is over now.

“I don’t understand,” Tony stands, deliberately standing side by side with Natasha, as she glares at Clint. “Why are you two fighting?”

It wasn’t the loud talking that alerted him, but the breaking of the glass on the floor, an indication that someone lost their cool. He didn’t expect it to be Clint and Natasha.

“She thinks she needs to pay penance for everything’s she’s done,” he directs to Tony.

“But you don’t, ok? You don’t.”

Tony doesn’t get it, but judging from the face and snarl that comes from Natasha, he’s not sure he needs to.

“What happened?” he asks.

But neither answer.

He looks to both of them and picks up water from the table and walks out.

“Stop breaking shit and use your words,” he tells her, escaping before she throws something at him too.

“Come with me,” he holds his hand and waits.

She takes it, holding lightly.

“You don’t need to hold onto it,” he guides, “that pain, the guilt, it’s only hurting you.”

He pulls her into the room, opens the photo album they made for Steve. Tangible things he finds, Steve likes to remind himself of the past; ironically Natasha is the same.

He doesn’t know what it is about photo albums but he’s made one for her too.

“Your worth isn’t measured in life and deaths,” he opens it and pushes it into her hands. The picture of Thor surrounded by the 5 of them is the first picture, followed by Maria and Natasha dancing and Steve and Natasha laughing on the gym mats.

“In fact, and you may not believe me, your life isn’t measured at all,” he sighs, and leans back.

(i don’t remember what it’s like not to have gunsteel in my bones.)

She runs.

There’s a quite voice in the back of her head, aware, conscious. Take a break, it screams, but the overriding one says run.

She can’t stop. Not until it says to. Her lungs burn. Her legs hurt. Stop, cries the quite voice.

But it’s silenced.

The calm comes with a needle and ice in her veins.

Familiarity surrounds her as she enters the barracks. The command to present to the trainers fills her with dread but she pushes it down.

She steels her body and and her mind for all the punishment to come, the enduring of pain is the building blocks of her life.

This is no different as she stares at the man with a whip in one hand and a gun in the other.

“Failure,” he accuses.

“Why are you even alive if you can’t complete simple missions? You should have killed them all, and instead,” he rounds on her, now at her back as she suppresses the shudder, and fixes her body; “instead you left the woman and child alive.”

She had felt the command to kill, kill, kill, and obeyed it, obeyed it as always, but fought against it in her own way.

She’d killed just as commanded but they didn’t say she couldn’t leave some alive.

Yelena turns on him.

Smiles.

“Do you know why there’s stories of the winter soldier?” She wants to hurt him. The rage burning under her skin.

He doesn’t like her smile.

“Because he always left someone alive.” She finishes.

He goes to hit her with his whip, but she catches it and pulls it off him.

She’s a killer, it flows in her veins regardless of chemical compounds that flow with it.

She owes him death.

It hurts as it wraps around her arm like a striking snake but she accepts it as penance; for those she’s killed today.

More pain will come and she’ll accept that too, but as she punches, kicks and snaps his neck, the burning under her skin abates.

Yelena keeps punching as the calvary arrives and pulls her off him.

“You made me!” She screams.

“I am the product of your doing.”

The loss of control scares her, as she struggles against the men who are frog marching her to the brig.

She has no place the world, the war rages in her mind.

come home, my lover, the war is over now.

It’s a journey she’s always told herself she’d make alone.

She wasn’t ready. If she had come before, she’d need someone else.

She’s stronger now. Knows what feelings are supposed to feel like, not just a blank nothing that barely registers. She’s free to feel the place, and let it consume her.

Clint knows what this place means to her, and offered to come, but as she stands out the front, she’s glad that he’s not here.

This home.

Her first home, stands tall in the sunset. She wants to go in, but the blue sedan in the front tells her there’s people inside.

She decides against it, vowing to come back tomorrow.

.

She dreams, imagines Yelena older, her blonde hair braided, smiling as they swing together on a oversized set of swings. They’re running, hiding, it’s dark.

Yelena is crying, and Natasha wakes with phantom pain pulling at her chest. She knows she can’t keep looking for ghosts, but sometimes all she wishes is for Yelena to be with her, safe.

.

“You were here yesterday,” the little girl says, stopping her bike next to where Natasha stands.

“I saw you from the window.”

Natasha looks down at her, smiling.

“I used to live here,” she confesses.

“I live here now,” the girl replies.

Natasha nods.

The girl continues, “my moms are letting me paint my room, but I don’t know what colour.”

There’s flashes to Yelena and their fake Christmas photo shoot, putting up the tree and pulling it down on the same day, but she’d saved some of the tinsel and baubles and given them to Yelena, letting her decorate her room with them.

Melina had allowed it, told them to hide it from Alexei.

“What colour do you like?” She asks the girl.

She looks suspiciously at Natasha and hops back on her bike.

“I like purple,” she says. “Bye.”

And she rides away. Natasha almost laughs, the girls chaotic interaction reminds her of Clint.

One day, she thinks, she’ll bring him here.

.

The flight is packed as Natasha pushes her bag into the overhead compartment. Apparently everyone wants to leave Ohio.

“How are you?” Clint messages.

It’s a loaded question she doesn’t know how to answer.

“I’m ready to come home,” she decides on.

“I’m ready for you to come home too,” he replies.

There’s a pause as she realises she has a home to go to. It’s not a physical place but a person.

“Love you,” she messages.

“Love you too,” comes the reply almost immediately.

(i’m back at the place i left but home is gone where i cannot find it.)

There’s anger at the house that pretended to be a home. She waits until the occupants leave and breaks in. The day breaks through the curtains inside and it’s completely different to when they left that night.

She hates thinking of it, is only here for one thing.

She needs to know it wasn’t all a lie.

Yelena wanders into the kitchen, notes the differences. Finds the room where she and Natasha slept only to find it turned into a room for a little girl.

One wall is purple, the rest white, and the bed pink.

It’s beautiful, Yelena thinks, rage burning in her at the loss.

This is not her home.

Yelena goes to the back yard, finds the oak tree that she thinks will outlive them all.

She walks six steps towards the back fence and squats to dig, fingers almost immediately hitting a little metal box.

She pulls it out and opens it up, tentatively, breath catching in her throat as the Christmas bauble glistens is the sun. She thought everyone celebrated Christmas on the same day as they decorated.

Hadn’t understood the importance of taking things that you needed.

Natasha had though. She’d known at Christmas.

Played along, saved the small things of what she could. Then again with pictures. The half torn picture strip that she’d fought to save again and again and again.

Everything is gone.

All traces that she once lived here, that she was a part of this world is gone.

And it feels like her heart is breaking. She has no place in the world.

They tell her these words, but she doesn’t believe them as they say it.

Maybe now she does.

She’s alone.

Yelena knew what it was to have a sister, but now…

It was real.

It was real.

It has to have been.

No matter how many times they mind wipe her, put her under, sedate her, drug her, force chemicals into her body; she knows.

It was real for her.

sleep, my lover, the war is over now.

Fatigue washes over her as she tries to make herself fall back asleep. Memories float through her mind, as they turn into intrusive thoughts. She tries to override them like she’s been taught.

Categorizes her tomorrow.

It doesn’t help. It seems her mind is stuck in the past.

It perseverates on training in the red room, and her muscle spark an ache.

Deciding against pushing her sleep, Natasha stands. Maybe she can reset her brain back to sleep.

She goes to the toilet and washes her face, staring at her sunken eyes and wishes she could rest.

Moving to the kitchen, she grabs a bottle of water, and drinks it slowly. Deciding that enough time has passed she goes back to bedroom, takes a deep breath and climbs back into bed.

“Hey,” comes a quiet voice, “you ok?”

“Mmhmm,” she hums.

“Come here.”

He opens his arms and accepts her into a hug.

“Bad dreams?” he whispers into her ear.

He feels her shake her head.

“What woke you?” he asks.

She closes her eyes.

“Bad thoughts.”

“They still coming?”

Clint holds her gently, loosely, a hand moving to her wrist in a way they both know is safe, as she shrugs against him.

“It’s safe, close your eyes,” he assures.

And she does, the voices quiet as she’s lulled into sleep.

(the war follows me into sleep. i’m afraid i’ll never leave it behind.)

The cuffs lock tight around her wrist as she grabs the key with the other hand, placing it under the pillow.

Sleep will come.

All the girls from the red room know how to sleep on command. She is no different.

It’s just.

Yelena knows that tonight especially, the memories will come, they’ll wake her and she’ll have to fight for rest.

She could avoid it all together, get as drunk as she can and black out, but there’s no guarantee that she’d wake up. This solo mission in Ottawa has one objective, kill.

She’s just glad she’s not there for this anniversary. The grief feels fresh on this date, like she’s losing her linage, the only thing she has of her parents, all over again.

.

She held down.

The needle slides into her arm as masked faces look at her.

Pain radiates she feels more needles, scalpels slide across her abdomen. She squeezes her eyes closed, scrunching up her face. More hands ghost over her body as pain wakes her from her nightmare.

Sweat drips on her face and her back, as she breathes against a tight chest.

“I’m okay,” she whispers to herself. “I’m okay.”

Her wrist pulls against the cuff and she unlocks herself only to find the red rings remain. Even with it gone, it’s still there, she thinks, rubbing it roughly.

Yelena moves to the bathroom and washes her face. She feels, nothing.

Life isn’t supposed to be this hard.

kiss me, my lover, the war is over now.

She appears at the door, and Clint stands, hope on his face as he sees her. He’s missed her, and although he’s been kept busy by the two idiots on either side of him, there’s nothing like having her close, safe.

“It’s done?” he asks.

He moves closer, not too sure of how she’s feeling, he wants to just hug her, tell her everything that’s happened; the mundane life, the missions she’s missed, the shenanigans of the tower.

They have time, he reminds himself. They have time.

Natasha’s face breaks into a smile as she nods.

“Kiss me,” he grins.

Tony looks at them in surprise and Steve ducks his head away.

And she does, freely.

The hug that follows is tight and she doesn’t care that the others are watching.

“You owe me fifty bucks,” Tony mutters as Steve nods, already pulling out his wallet.

“You need to go to medical,” Clint tells her, culling her face, looking at the bruises on the side of her neck.

“Yeah Red, where you been?” Tony asks; he’s not seen her in at least two weeks.

“It’s the last of them,” she whispers for Clint.

“They’re gone, it’s gone.”

It’s joyful, the hope in her voice, and he can’t help but smile.

“Thank you,” she laughs.

He hugs her again and hopes it conveys everything in it, as she hugs him just as hard, he knows that it does.

.

Natasha changes in front of him, and he sits on the edge of the bed.

“Anything broken?” he asks, looking at the bruising that wraps around her torso.

“I don’t think so,” she replies, wincing as she pulls the cotton green top over her head.

She pulls off her pants and grabs Clint’s shorts, as he scowls and laughs trying to grab them from her.

“They’re mine!” he exclaims, but there’s no real fight as she pulls them on.

“Show me,” Clint asks as she lays down next to him.

“Here,” she points, to her neck, “he kicked me as I swept his legs. He landed on his back, and recognised who I was.”

Clint nods.

“Do you think a far ranged shot would have been better?” he asks, knowing that would have been his preference.

“No.” She holds up her hands and he realises for the first time how bruised and beat up they are, skin missing from her knuckles, bruising into her fingers.

“I got to hit him. I got to hit him like he used to hit us,” she makes a fist and examines her knuckles. “I hit him so hard, and told him just what I thought of him.”

Clint nods and pulls her closer.

“They’re gone, Clint, the whole red room, Pyotr was the last. They can’t hurt me again. I think…” she pauses as her voice catches, “I think I’m free.”

Kissing the top of her head he feels a lightness in her; he hopes to god that she’s right.

“Thank you,” she whispers, “for everything.”

When he looks down at her, she makes eye contact, her eyes glassy as she continues.

“You saved me, when I thought I wasn’t worthy of being saved, I…”

She nuzzles into him.

“Just thank you,” she finishes.

(my fingers still drip red and i do not want to stain you with them.)

They’re in lines. She doesn’t dare look across to the other girls but the nervous energy in the air is consuming.

It must be serious as Dreykov stands in front of them, his eyes surveilling them. Yelena pushes down the dread knowing that this doesn’t bode well for any of them.

“The traitor known as the Natasha Romanoff killed Pyotr Naryshkina last night,” Dreykov opens. Yelena’s heart drops.

Everyone knows Natasha now, traitor, they say.

But, she thinks that only Dreykov knows her relationship to her. It’s evident as he stares straight at her.

She doesn’t care that Pyotr is dead; in fact, she’s pleased about it, he loves using his fists to beat them, especially when when they’re placed naked in the hole.

They thinks it’s demeaning, but when you’re body and mind is subjected to their will, for years, it’s rote. She just wishes they’d stop handcuffing them.

He gets straight to the point.

“No food. No interaction as of now. Training is solo and all missions are solo with a handler. Testing is in 3 days. If you fail, you will be cut from the program.”

Yelena feels sick.

She hates it here. The resentment of life and her inability to give up, she knows is a contradiction, but it’s carried her this far. Ana brushes against her, as they march back to their individual quarters. They don’t dare make eye contact.

The doors are locked and Yelena is alone.

It’s not the lack of food. Water that comes from the tap is filtered for them to drink, it’s enough.

It’s not the solo training, with someone watching their every move.

It’s the fact that she’s alone.

Vicious thoughts plague her.

She hates Natasha. Why won’t she come?

Why won’t she save her?

Yelena punches the wall.

Frustration becomes her. She hasn’t been allowed out today, and she was relying on it. It’s day three and she doesn’t even care about food anymore. She just wants out, some interaction. Anything.

The door unlocks.

Dreykov and two trainers stand in front of her.

“Come.”

She follows them because she has no other choice.

She’s brought to the wet room and she feels the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

They inject Yelena with something and she feels her body disconnect. The feeling is always horrible, she now breathes at their command.

“Don’t fight it,” Dreykov says, as he looks at the tablet in his hand.

In all the movies she’s watched, now would be the time the hero is saved.

Help me, she thinks.

“Bring it in,” Dreykov commands.

There’s a girl, dragged by her red hair, no older then thirteen.

Yelena isn’t dumb. She knows what’s coming. She knows what they’re going to make her do, what this is supposed to represent.

A gun is placed in her hand.

Save me, she begs in her head.

Her body is not hers as she raises the gun.

.

(Teach me how to be at peace again)

All my fic.

[enamouredfae]

♡ Pick a Card ♡

What you need to know in order to be ready for the love you so longingly seek!

This reading is looking at anything you might need to heal or grow into in order to enter future relationships as your higher self. I am not looking at your future, but simply trying to guide you towards your highest good in the field of love. Many of us have internalized certain perceptions of love that we must unlearn, or have lived through difficult moments which have closed us off or made experiencing love more difficult. If you are in a toxic relationship/situation, please do not take any messages that might seem to tell you to stay in it. With this reading, I will hopefully open you up to some introspection and hopefully growth. You may very well be attracted to multiple piles and that is ok! Read all that attract you and take what resonates. Each pile has three pieces of advice, so mixing and matching is invited!

This reading is for entertainment purposes only.

This is a timeless reading for the collective, therefore it is likely that some messages will not resonate with you. Please only take the messages that do! The messages that do not, are meant for somebody else. Remember that the future is never set in stone and that you possess free will! Love you! ♡

Pile 1

Charm: Knot

1. Yang

Yang tells me that you need to learn to become more proactive in love. You cannot wait around. You must act! You need to manifest your desires into the material world by doing. It's perfectly fine to do the first move, no matter what society deems "acceptable", it is even invited with this card.

23. Peace

Radical acceptance is necessary for inner peace and in this case for a higher love. You must first love yourself fully, light and shadow self, before loving someone else in the way that you both deserve! And you deserve radical acceptance, we are all flawed and intricate people! As long as we are willing to change and grow and put in the work, past mistakes can be atoned for.

38. To be fair

This card tells me that you need to learn to be more balanced in relationships. Are you giving more than the other parties? Are you giving less? We must be fair to both others and ourselves. When someone in the relationship gives more, they may feel underappreciated which can become unmotivating, but they can also overwhelm the other person. You must learn balance.

Pile 2

Charm: Cactus

7. To the sea (reversed)

"When fishermen cannot go to sea, they stay at home and repair their nets." This is a quote from the guidebook that I had to rewrite here because it encapsulates the advice perfectly. You probably long for love like fishermen long for the sea. This card is telling me that the problem isn't coming from you, but the external world. An idea that just popped up in my head is a queer teen living in a homophobic area or with homophobic parents, so it is likely that this could be your situation. If it is, I love you, please take care of yourself, love and better days will come, don't worry! But you must wait a while longer until the external world matches your vibration, perhaps you'll have to move, wait until you're safe to go out to the sea. Until then, go with the flow.

50. No place like home (reversed)

This card seems to work perfectly with the previous one, it reminds us that what is familiar isn't always the best, because it keeps us from growing. If you want change, you can't keep going to the same things/people that haven't worked before, it's counterintuitive. It is natural to go back to what's familiar, but try something new. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Choose unfamiliar.

34. A leg up (reversed)

You are carrying the burden of your world all alone. You probably don't feel safe sharing what you feel, or are very uncomfortable with vulnerability. To be honest with you, right before writing this part of the reading, I started tearing up, you are holding in so much hurt... You need to voice your struggles, being vulnerable is proof of immense strength, believe me! I know it's hard! Start little by little with someone you really trust!

Pile 3

Charm: Star

35. Loyal Heart

Ok if one pile is ready for the beginning of a relationship it's this one. It is the perfect time for you to create loyal commitments. It is possible that you are already in a committed relationship, but at the very least you are surrounded by loyal, devoted people. Don't forget to be devoted and loyal in return!

4. Higher Power (reversed)

This card is inviting you to trust in whatever divine power you believe in, trust that the universe is divinely guiding you and protecting you. I feel like if a certain religion or spiritual path attracts or fascinates you, you should start looking into it, careful with being disrespectful or appropriating it, especially with closed practices, please do your research! But connecting to Source would be beneficial to you in the long run!

25. Round and Round

You are stuck in a cycle that you must break. Do not worry, you shouldn't feel bad, it's all part of the learning process. Remember: you've been through this before, think back on how that made you feel the previous times, are you sure you want to go through that again? Breaking this cycle is a form of self-care, and you need to care for yourself! You are subconsciously punishing yourself by staying in this cycle, try thinking about the root of why you're doing so! It could help you in breaking it!

Pile 4

Charm: "Love"

8. The tribe

You may want to find your tribe, or you have recently found it. You might feel like you finally belong, or are longing for that feeling. Whenever I get this card, I think of the astrology/witchcraft/tarot community here! It may be the same for you! You are welcome here, and hopefully, you feel like you belong! Contributing to any community that you are passionate about, whether online or in real life, will bring you great joy and satisfaction. Your tribe awaits and needs you! It's possible that that's where you'll find love as well!

6. Not for you (reversed)

Let them go. Whoever you first thought of, it's time to stop obsessing over them. "Don't chase after what flees you." I'm sure you realize this is not serving you, but how do you stop? This card is suggesting radical acceptance and surrender, that this is a sign that someone or something much better is waiting for you. I suggest reminding yourself that they aren't perfect and that you have just come to idealize them.

52. Mending (reversed)

You are very likely going through a grieving period right now. There is so much hurt and disappointment. "Heartbreak is a strange healer of souls." It may feel awful now, but trust that when you look back one day, you will see that the hurt you're feeling now, transformed you in a powerful way. This card is inviting you to accept the heartbreak and push through it, situations like this open us up to seeing the world in a new way, to growing. Better days are coming!

Pile 5

Charm: Angel

28. Building blocks (reversed)

Are you acting according to your belief system? Are you following the advice you give others? You must look carefully at your core foundation. It seems to me that you have done a lot of inner growth, but are still stuck in your old ways. Your outer self isn't matching your inner self. Start doing what you preach!

47. Go the distance

I feel like you're someone that wants love right now! For it to come fast and smoothly, like a sprint. You must learn to see love more realistically, as a long-distance race of endurance. You may be the type to immediately run at the sight of a problem. You must learn to be dedicated and work in love, it won't always be the idealized version you keep reading about or watching. Love demands work!

32. Here and Now (reversed)

You live in the past, don't you? So much regret and nostalgia... Or perhaps you live in the future? Daydreams and ambition. There is a need to learn to live in the here and now, you cannot change the past, and the future is infinite. They're both elusive, and unreliable; now is tangible, real, and full of immediate possibilities.

Pile 6

Charm: Mars Symbol

22. Blessed

This beautiful card talks about an unexpected and "unearned" wonderful event, that seems like divine intervention, a gift from the universe. The advice I take from this card is to practice gratitude because you seem to be blessed in the love department. Perhaps you already know who "the one" is for you. If you don't, trust that the universe has someone wonderful for you!

31. Why?

Ask yourself why you feel as you do about/in love? It is time for some introspection. You need to think and identify unhealthy patterns in your love life. Why do you act as you do in a relationship? Identify what in your past has caused this behavior. It won't solve the problem right away, but it's a good first step. Understanding the problem will be validating.

27. Exchanging gifts (reversed)

"Be careful what you pray for because you might just get it." You need to be ready for the energy exchange that will happen if this happens. This card talks about an imbalance between giving and receiving. You must learn that if you receive a lot, you must return a lot, love needs to be balanced. If you give more, you aren't actually in control, the other party could be consciously or unconsciously taking advantage of your generosity!

Pile 7

Charm: Eternally Open Heart Locket

17. The Fates

You must learn to accept that there are things and people you simply cannot control and change. You cannot blame yourself for things beyond your control, nor can you blame others for things they cannot control. Just be wise enough to tell the difference between things one can control and things one cannot!! If you have a tendency to mold people into your ideal, making them lose their essence, you must learn to accept people for who they are. It is not your job to change them: the desire to change must come from them, for them.

15. Message in a bottle

Try asking for specific signs from the universe, or start becoming more aware of them. Synchronicities are all around you, they're the way that the universe confirms that you're on the right path! Listen carefully to those you communicate with, they could be delivering a cledon to you. This card itself is a good sign, a favorable answer to the question occupying your mind.

9. Treasure Island

You might've already, but if you haven't, MANIFEST YOUR LOVE!! You will be greatly rewarded when you embrace the law of attraction and your intuition. Depending on your belief in how manifestation works, try being mindful of free will! If you believe that love spells on specific people are influencing their free will, then it is immoral to manifest a specific person. If you don't believe that that is how manifestation works, do as you will, just be in line with your beliefs! This card is also a great sign, you're on the right path, and have good fortune on your side. Very lucky pile!!

Pile 8

Charm: Boot

2. Yin (reversed)

You must learn to receive, only being the giver isn't good for you. You deserve to receive! Be open to embodying yin and yang equally. "You stop the flow of abundance when you constantly insist upon being the giver." Be the listener, the one that learns, the one that is being led.

33. Chaos and Conflict

You may be afraid of chaos and conflict, but you must remember that they can rid you of what's no longer serving you. Conflict also implies two sides, remember that yours isn't the only one, and conflict can lead to mutual understanding. Learn to put up boundaries, but also to respect those of others. When you finally see the potential of healing that conflict can cause, you'll be ready for mature communication in relationships.

20. Imagine

Remember that you can create what you imagine! Your imagination is powerful in manifesting your desires, but it can't do everything for you! Manifestation is work, when an opportunity arises, act! This card can also be a sign that the person you're manifesting will be entering your life soon. When they appear, don't just wait, and daydream! The imagination part of manifesting is done, now it's time to act.

Pile 9

Charm: Knife

21. Clean it up

It's time to let go and declutter your mind. Think about what is no longer serving you, about the things that only overwhelm you, and make you overthink, they aren't good for you. It might also help you to declutter in general, your house, your closet, your phone, your feed, etc. Make room for the new and the better.

48. Poised (reversed)

Think carefully, are you really ready for love right now? Because this card is telling me that you aren't. It's ok to be a "late bloomer", and it's important to be ready for love, as to not hurt the one you love, and yourself. Being single isn't a sign of "failure", it gives you the time and space to focus on yourself, on your growth, on your healing, on exploring and understanding yourself. Being single can seem like a curse, but it's a blessing, it's what you need right now.

16. All that glitters

Are you being yourself in love? Are they? Don't succumb to the power of superficiality. Either let go of the mask or look beyond theirs! "Imagine that all the glitter is gone. Would you still desire the object or person?" If one falls for the glitter, what will happen on the day they forgets to glue it on?

Thank you for reading! Love you all.♡

You can buy me a coffee if you feel called to do so! This is never necessary, but always appreciated! ♡