#honestly nearly wept when i first read this

[theshotsheardacrossworlds]

Midwinter Snapshots

Little holiday-themed snapshots of Agi and Gale; Annie and Halsin; Octavia, Halsin, and Astarion; and Freya and Astarion. Mostly SFW except in a few spots.

Gale Dekarios, Professor of Illusionary Magic at Blackstaff Academy, felt like he was having a heart attack.

Again.

She asked that I grade term papers in the kitchen while she bakes all sorts of delights for the upcoming holidays. Of course, when I’m finished with these…papers…I’ll be making some Dekarios family treats. Our first Midwinter together, and by next Midwinter we’ll have our little one with us…

“My darling wife,” he pleaded, running a hand through his graying beard. “Please, if you need something off a higher shelf, then ask. Or better yet, use magic! I get so nervous when you use your stepstool.”

His wife giggled and continued to the highest step. “Love, I’m not about to bother you when you’re grading papers. Besides, these Midwinter cookies aren’t going to bake themselves!” She reached for more cinnamon and climbed down without incident. Though there could’ve easily been an incident!!!! “Honestly, the way you’re acting, you’d think I’m dying and not pregnant.”

Just three more papers. Three more. Then I can get all the things she needs and make her sit down for a while! Gale shook his head, chuckling. “Dearest, I’m aware you’re not ill. I simply worry about you and the baby. While half dwarves aren’t too rare, I’ve read a lot about potential complications—”

As she sprinkled cinnamon in the batter, she rolled her eyes. “And what did Halsin say the last time I saw him? ‘All is well with both of you.’ The midwife here said the same thing.” She scooped the batter into balls and placed them on the baking tray before putting them in the oven. “Everything is okay.” Agnes went to sit next to him and placed a hand on his thigh. “We’re fine. Ooh!” Her eyes widened.

Oh no. Oh fuck. Gale’s heart began to race. “What is it? Is something wrong?” Please, not her or the baby. Please. He searched her face for any sign of discomfort but only saw a quickly growing smile.

“Here!” She grabbed his hand and placed it on her belly. “Do you feel it?”

“Feel wha…OH!”

Is that…

Is that our baby?

Did our baby just kick my hand?

I think it did!!!!

“By the gods, that’s our little one!” he exclaimed, brown eyes twinkling. “Hello, Baby Dekarios!” Another kick!!!!! “What a glorious Midwinter gift, my little love!” More kicks!!! Our baby is certainly very active, which is a sign that he or she is healthy and hopefully happy. Glancing at his wife’s face, he was met with such radiance, such joy…my wife. My love. My everything. “I love you, Mrs. Dekarios. You’re giving us the most beautiful gift anyone could give.”

She shook her head, her hand now resting on top of his. “No, the best gift I’ve ever received was you, Gale love.”

He ended up finishing his grading after he wept for several minutes.

***

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Midwinter, everywhere you gooooooo,” Anais sang softly as she pulled cheddar biscuits from the oven. Biscuits are looking amazing. Halsin requested some after I made them for our not-so-little Harvest Festival a few months ago. This is our first Midwinter together, and I want it to be perfect. She hummed the rest of the song, letting the biscuits cool. “Biscuits done. Cookies and honey cakes are done.” She checked off other items that she either did not get to or thought it would be too much for him. “Just need a few more potatoes and then—”

“And then we eat, praise Silvanus!” Halsin boomed, opening the door to their cottage with a basket full of potatoes. “Is this enough, my heart?” He placed the basket on the table, reached her in two strides, and kissed her passionately.

The potatoes or…? Moaning into his mouth, her free hand caressed his cheek. “More than. You hungry, love?”

“Always.” His smile was very nearly a smirk. The biscuits then caught his attention. “My love, they smell divine.” He grabbed her ample behind and gave it a squeeze. THAT WINK?!?!! How dare he wink in such a sexy way at me!

Anais wrinkled her nose and giggled, swatting his hand playfully. “Naughty man! Dinner first, then dessert. Wait, more like dinner first, then I’m playing some Midwinter carols on the piano for us while you whittle, and then dessert.”

With one more squeeze, Halsin kissed her cheek. “As you wish, my heart.” He sat at the table and poured himself some wine. “I’m glad my hibernation was not so long that I missed Midwinter with you, though I had no idea just how much you enjoy it. It’s a delight to see.”

Oh good, I’m glad he doesn’t think I’m bloody nuts. I just really love Midwinter! And decorating for Midwinter. And cooking all the Midwinter foods. Baking all the Midwinter treats. Going to all the Midwinter festivals. “And it’s a delight that you’re putting up with my Midwinter madness, love.” She laughed as she fetched the marinated pork from the icebox. Halsin didn’t want one, but it’s my kitchen, which he said I could make however I wanted. “I have a pot of boiling water on the stovetop if you could cut and boil the potatoes?”

“Of course, just as soon as I get a preview of our feast.” He rose with a growl, stood behind her, and wrapped an arm around soft belly. His hand traveled beneath her dress, his fingers dancing on her underwear. “You smell so good, my heart. More alluring than usual…”

Fuck it, might as well tell him. I had planned something for later, but alas, I think he already knows. The nose knows! Oh gods, I sound like Da. Giggling, she leaned her head against his. “My beautiful bear, we’re having a cub. Morelle told me this morning while you were out with the children.”

For as long as she lived, Anais Wildheart never forgot the look on her lover’s face when she told him that his Midwinter gift would arrive in spring.

***

“Aw, look! Everyone’s done such a fantastic job with the festival.” Octavia exclaimed as she, Halsin, and Astarion took in Moonrise’s first ever Midwinter Festival. The first of many, we all hope. Even Astarion. Mostly.

“Yes, yes. Children are happy, it’s cold as fuck, and I want some hot spiced wine.” Astarion said with an eyeroll, though she knew he was pleased to be out with her and Halsin. They insisted on having the festival open every night until midnight just for us.

Halsin laughed heartily. “I wouldn’t mind some myself, lover. My heart, would you like some as well?”

She shook her head. “Hot chocolate for me, thanks love.” As Halsin went to the refreshment tent, she found herself admiring the vampire. It’s not sunlight, but at least he’s out in the moonlight and lanterns of the festival. And gods, does he look handsome.

“You’re staring, Octavia darling.” Shit. “Like what you see?” He asked with a smirk, his fangs peeking through. “Because I certainly can’t blame you!”

“Oh good gods,” she coughed a laugh, rolling her bright blue eyes. “Yes, I was, if you must know, because you’re very handsome and I love you.” Bending down slightly, she pressed a kiss to his lips. So. Cold. But. Worth. It.

A high-pitched giggle escaped him. “Aren’t you the sweetest treat! I love you too. Always, dearest. You and our beloved Halsin.” That they also found love in each other, in addition to what they both feel for me, makes me happier than I could ever express. “Speaking of…WHERE’S MY BLOODY SPICED WINE?”

Octavia laughed and hugged him. “Astarion! You are too much! He’ll be back shortly.”

“Dear heart, patience!” Halsin laughed, returning with their drinks. I spy with my little eye some peppermint bark too. “Two mugs of hot spiced wine, and hot chocolate for our lady. I also bought some peppermint bark to share.” The three walked to a bench and sat down, enjoying their drinks. They chatted for a while, but at some point, Octavia was caught in the past. Me and Mum walking through the city. Light snow falling. Hot chocolate. Smells of cinnamon and spice. People watching and shopping. Skating. All the lights.

“Octavia?” Astarion whispered. “Are you alright, darling?”

She blinked and glanced between Astarion and Halsin, both of whom appeared worried. “Oh sorry, was miles away.” She patted Astarion’s thigh. “I’m okay. I was just thinking about when Mum and I would go to the Midwinter Festival in Baldur’s Gate, sipping hot chocolate…it was lovely.” Smiling, she gently kissed her lovers’ cheeks. “And this is lovely.”

The three sat in a pleasurable silence for a few moments until Halsin spoke. “It is lovely, my heart.” He pressed a kiss to her hair. Which Astarion still insists on styling and braiding every morning for me. “Happy Midwinter, my loves.”

Astarion nodded, raising his mug. “Happy Midwinter, darlings. I love you more than you’ll ever know.”

Her tail swished as she blinked back tears. “I love you too. Both of you. Happy Midwinter! Now,” Octavia took a piece of peppermint bark. “Time for more chocolate!” YUM. YUM. YUM.

***

Lady Freya Wildheart glanced down from the balcony to revelers dancing below. Mum got a great turnout for the Midwinter Ball with lots of money being raised for rebuilding Baldur’s Gate. Not only Wildhearts from all over the realm but also guests from Waterdeep (Hi Gale), patriars, and other dignitaries. She hummed along to the waltz when she felt an arm snake around her waist. She wrinkled her nose and smirked. “That was an awfully short trip to the bar, love.”

Astarion sniggered. “While your mother has excellent taste in alcohol, the line was simply too long! Besides,” his features softened. “I missed you.”

They shared a brief kiss, and then she giggled. “You know, I could just take you to the wine cellar…”

“Is that so, darling? Well, I wouldn’t be opposed to that. For now though,” he eyed her playfully. “I must drink you and your gorgeous dress in.” Both hands presently rested on her wide, soft hips.

She giggled more. “Sir, you’re the one who made this dress. You’ve seen me in it many times already.” I can tease too! I totally can!

“Madam, I wish to see you in it many, many more times after this delightful ball. Gods, I’m good!” He laughed, giving her a quick peck. “It fits you perfectly. You look divine, dear.” As her cheeks burned, he smirked. “Just the reaction I positively adore. I take it you like your dress then?” There was a hint of self-doubt in his ruby eyes. With every garment he made for her, he was always slightly nervous. He wants to please me, and frankly, he should know by now I am very easy to please!

Cupping his face in her hands, she smiled warmly. “Of course, I do. It’s by the far the loveliest dress I’ve ever worn…because you made it. Do you know what I love most about it?”

Astarion raised an eyebrow. “Do tell, sweetness.”

He won’t expect this. Grinning, her hands moved from his face to her sides. “Pockets! Pockets for snacks!”

Stepping back, he sighed dramatically. “Not the embroidery that took me days! Not that I made your already magnificent bosom look even more magnificent! Not even the draping of the dress that flatters your voluptuous curves! No, it’s the fucking pockets.” He sounds angry, but he’s not. He finds this all very funny. I hope. He shook his head, his eyes twinkling. “Don’t worry, my sweet. I’ll put in pockets when I make your wedding dress.” YES!!!!! He reached for her left hand and rubbed his thumb over the engagement ring, a small smile tugging on his lips. “I was thinking the same silhouette with lace sleeves. You can’t possibly have a wedding dress without lace. What do you think?”

“I think it sounds amazing already, Star.” I love you. I love you. I love you. A new song began to play---one of her Midwinter favorites. “Dance with me?”

With his most charming grin, he bowed to her. “Lady Freya, it would my honor.” He then offered his arm to her. As they descended the grand staircase, he whispered, “I’ll always dance with you, my love. Always.”

[astarionancuninslittlelove]

I asked for some prompts and got some responses, so this is one from @mrman24 who suggested a Trans/nb Tav wholesome coming out moment!

I would like to thank him for the inspiration and insight on this! 💖

Read on below:

Perfect, Every Time

These past few weeks running around the wilderness and “killing baddies” as Karlach liked to say, had been good for me—really good for me. For one of the first times in my life, I just felt like me. I hadn’t really thought of people’s perception of me for those few weeks. We were focused on our quests and on survival. Everyone at camp began to build bonds with each other, and it was heartwarming to see. It first began with impressing each other in combat or in strategy, but as the nights passed on campfire after campfire, we learned more about each other, and there was something I had to say, but I couldn’t find the words or the courage to do it. So I kept my mind on the quests and the survival—at least I tried to.

When we made it to Sharess’ Caress, Astarion had the idea that we should all book rooms for no other reason than to finally sleep in beds. Oh gods, how we missed beds. We had been sleeping on bedrolls on the cold ground for what felt like an eternity now. The owner looked at us very oddly when we mentioned that we only wanted the rooms and not the extra…services the rooms came with. But the look of confusion turned to glee when she saw the pouch of gold hit the counter.

Astarion, Wyll, Karlach, and I stayed in one of the rooms whilst Gale, Minsc, Jaheira, and Shadowheart stayed in another room. Halsin preferred to be back at camp in the great outdoors. There was only one bed in each of the rooms, that we would have to fight over or all cram into, but we didn’t care honestly. We were just excited to be indoors.

While I was getting ready for bed, I gazed upon my reflection for the first time in weeks, and my heart had immediately sunk. Who I saw in the mirror was not who I felt like. I saw breasts, long hair, and curves where I did not want them. I looked in the mirror and wept silently.

Astarion crept up behind me and nearly gave me a heart attack.

“Why are you crying, little pup?” He asked gently.

“I just—,” I stopped myself, “It’s hard to explain.”

“I know I’m not the brightest…but I can try to keep up?” He chuckled to himself.

“How I look is not really how I feel,” I began.

He stayed silent.

“I feel masculine, but I look feminine and get addressed as such, and it kills me,” I said.

“How would you like to be addressed?” Astarion asked genuinely. I had never heard him talk so softly and sweetly. Normally with him, there was always a punch line just around the corner, but none came.

I was stunned for a moment. No one had ever asked me that before. It felt simultaneously exhilarating mixed with the potential of swallowing me whole. I didn’t know where to begin.

“I…” I said, formulating my response, trying to articulate my thoughts as I felt a sob tear through my throat, “Want to be addressed as he/him. I am a trans male, and I always have been,” I said, exhaling feeling like I could pass out. The words left my lips and they didn’t feel real. It was something that I had always felt inside, now hung in the air with my words. I felt free as well as absolutely petrified.

“Okay,” He said, smiling, “I can do that.”

“You can?” I asked, biting back the tears.

“Well, but of course. It is no problem,” He said lowly, almost in a whisper as he came over to wrap me in his arms.

He wrapped himself tightly around me as tears after tear leaked from my eyes. It felt like they would never stop. There was only one other person on this planet in that moment that had known what I was keeping inside, and I was glad it was Astarion. His embrace and his acceptance felt more beautiful than I could ever begin to describe. He soothed the fear, rejection, and insecurity out of me in that hug.

It wouldn’t be the last time that I felt those feelings again, but it felt like it by the way he held me tenderly.

I calmed down and looked into his eyes, now fully as who I was, “Thank you.”

“Would you like me to stand with you while you tell the others? Or would you like to take your time with this?” He asked.

Ugh. I didn’t even think about the others. I was going to have to do this potentially every day for the rest of my life—coming out.

But Astarion’s response warmed my heart, and I felt the gusto to keep going. Our companions were all friendly and understanding, but it would feel much better having Astarion by my side. It was still mortifying.

“Yes, I would like that.”

“Before you tell them, do you have another name you’d like to be called?” Astarion asked.

“I like Tav still,” I said, “Thank you for asking.”

I began to walk out of the bathroom, as he grabbed my arm.

“Wait,” He said, getting serious again.

“What?”

“I want you to know that this doesn’t….scare me off,” He said.

“I know, and I am glad for that,” I said.

“No, I mean yes, that way, but I mean… physically. This doesn’t change the way that I look at you. You are still…perfect every time. And you will continue to be for me…if you would still like to be with me,” He stumbled over his words.

“Oh,” I said, smiling happily.

“Well?!” He asked, his voice getting panicky.

“Yes, of course I would still like to be with you. If anything, I feel our bond deepening even more now,” I said, kissing him.

“That’s my good little pet,” He said cheekily.

I rolled my eyes, and my cheeks flushed.

As I told our other companions that were staying in the room with us, their responses were similarly as heartwarming and supportive.

“Soldier! I cannot tell you how proud I am of you!” Karlach exclaimed, pulling me into a hug. She had been big on hugging ever since Dammon helped her, but it was nice either way.

Wyll said, “I am relieved that you trust us enough to tell us something like that. We have your back regardless, always.”

I felt like I was levitating above my body or living in a dream as this all was happening. It didn’t feel real…to finally feel so free. The people I cared most about in the world accepted me. I knew that wasn’t going to be the case with every person, but it didn’t matter to me right about then. All that mattered was them. They welcomed me and loved me no matter who I was, and there’s peace in that.

After the night died down, and we were getting ready to sleep, Astarion said, “I have something to ask you.”

“What?” I asked.

“Can I PLEASE help you pick out a new wardrobe? Or wait, maybe I can put something together for you. You do know that I have the best taste out of everyone here, after all.”

I smiled brightly, “Sure, I’d like that.”

[cleopatrachampagne]

man, i’m rewatching the following, as i do every six months or so for the nostalgia of it all and it really does seem to get worse over time but in reality i just think other media has gotten better or at least i’ve had more access to diverse media that has raised my standards significantly and now representation has improved so much that as an adult i’ve forgotten what it was like to be so starved for it that i didn’t care about quality.

the majority of the characters and media that i was obsessed with as a young person were villains and i assumed that was because i just didn’t know any better but the core of the problem was that the protagonists in nearly everything were generic wasp dudes and the heroes aside from him had to fit neatly into archetypes that served his story. every “good” woman was constrained by the need for her entire being to fit his romantic interests, every poc, disabled or gay character had to be the after school special or the token friend to exist as evidence he was so good that he was totally not racist and nice to the weirdos / down with the homos. meanwhile, the villains got plenty of attention yet got to do and be whatever the fuck they wanted because they were the bad guys. when i look back at my old fandoms and ships and all that it’s basically a “psycho lesbian” trope collage, along with some gnc villains and the big bads’ murderous girlfriends sprinkled in. like, the hunger games is probably the first time i can remember reading an appealing, relatable (in the sense of being flawed and unlikeable in many very real ways) female protagonist with dimension outside of romantic intent and outside of books or horror the situation was ten times as dire.

of course i hated claire and loved emma when the following first aired; claire got zero personality outside of being an object for the leading men to fight over while emma got to have a pixie cut, a personality and kill anybody who gave her shit over it. two main villains with loads of screen time were a compelling, human, multi-dimensional gay couple when that simply wasn’t even a concept in mainstream media only a decade or so ago. i actually wept when korra and asami openly got together because i was so in love with azula and ty lee who got to be subtly sapphic due solely to the fact that they were evil and here two heroic ladies were as a couple in the sequel to the original show. like, it’s odd that i never put two and two together about the fact that villains were appealing because they were intense, flawed, diverse and often gay and lesbian coded people, not because i was irredeemably awful.

i’m wearing a weathered slytherin scrunchie gifted to me eons ago on my wrist while taking a break from a passion paper on protecting endangered tarantulas for the field i’ve been pursuing for years as i type this and quite honestly i can’t help but wonder for the first fucking time how much of my lasting affinity and compassion for the dark side despite having long grown out of my teenage edgelord phase is because during my formative years i may have always rooted for the heroes but i only ever got to see myself in the villains.

it’s kinda sad that it turns out that my entire adolescence had been some scooby doo shit in which fred rips off the monster mask and it turns out my morals were never faulty; the morals of the culture i grew up in were.

(except fred is kevin bacon in this case i guess?)

[saeyoungs-sunflower]

hey there! hope you've been keeping up well! just another person who dropped by and found your blog recently and read A Piece Of You and I loved it so much!!!! I love your writing so much, the way in which you write feels so precious and powerful and your delving into zen as a character is just perfect!

read all the way up to chapter 4 and I was a bit sad to see that chapter 5 hadn't been up yet (no pressure!) I was just wondering if you'd be willing to spill the beans on how the story progresses and in which direction you were planning on taking it in and ofc if our babies end up together in the end!

sorry I was just so captivated by this story and couldn't help but inquire about it, your writing is incredible and such a delight to read!

thanks for writing for us :)

hello hello!!! first off, i am SO sorry it has taken me this long to reply!! thank you for your patience <33

secondly, i seriously seriously appreciate your kind words and your love for APOY🥺 it's my little baby and seeing somebody enjoying it absolutely makes my heart soar. i appreciate your words so much you have no idea!!💛

so...to answer your question...it's kinda complicated hahaha! i wish i had the kind of brain that could dedicate itself to more than one project at a time but it can't unfortunately. once something else comes along that needs doing first, writing takes a back burner, and when you're at uni those things don't stop coming hahah, which is why there are such huge gaps of time between chapters. also to be completely honest, lack of motivation plays a huge role too. i go through short bursts of motivation and it's just hard for me to keep momentum going on things. so short answer - yes i will finish it. long answer - i can't say for sure when that will be but i am determined to finish it at some point, but school has to come first! however, i do have the story planned out (have done for like 5 years hahah) so if you didn't want to wait, i can send you the general gist of what will happen!! i am happy to do that if you wanna know :)

that being said though...this particular ask has taken me so long to reply to because i didn't want to leave you empty handed. so...stay tuned for an update tonight☺️

it makes me sad that you guys who send these kind of asks or send me love will never see just how much joy they bring me (message for my fbi agent - if you could send me the footage of me squealing and grinning when i read one of these messages that would be great) but i hope it comes across just how grateful i am!!! i appreciate your kindness soooo much thank you thank you!!

i hope you have an amazing day!! thank you again for your support!!🥰🌻

(also i'm not sure if it's a typo but chapter 5 has been up for a while!! before you sent this ask for sure. i'll double check the links now but chapter 6 is going up tonight! unless you're coming from ao3 which numbers the chapters differently lol. but yeah check if you've seen chapter 5 yet, and if not then waheyyy you get two chapters tonight instead of one hahaha :'))

[moregaythanyourealized]

Love at First Write (Part 2)

Norman Osborn x Fem!Reader

drip

drop

The inconsistent noise of leaking pipes was all you could hear. No AC, no bad jokes, no nothing. The room was small, dimly lit. It looked like the type of place a girl like you would go to get gutted. All it adorned was a bed, small bookshelf, a ladder that went into the ceiling, and thankfully, a toilet.

The ladder was rusted and creaked with the weight of Norman climbing down from wherever he previously was. His sleeves were rolled up past his elbows and he gave you wicked smile.

“What do you want?” The question came out so quietly you were quite sure you’d said it at first,

“It’s not what I want. It’s what you know.” As he stepped closer you noticed he was holding a wash cloth. Sitting down on the bed next to you he spoke softly,

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, honestly. The other guy just gets in the way sometimes.” He dabbed lightly at the now dried blood that covered your lower face. When you winced at the pain he gently placed his hand on the back of your neck and drew you in closer. There was a clear difference when you talked to Norman rather than the Green Goblin. Norman was gentle and brought you food, he’d read you poems and try to find solutions to the problem you were both currently in. Norman was sweet.

The Goblin was not. His temper was much shorter, you could always tell when he walked in how he would treat you. He’d push you around and threaten you one minute before kissing your to you and trying ti touch you the next. It was aggravating. He’d play tricks on you pretending to be Norman so you’d get close with him, let him touch you. It made you sick. You made yourself sick as well. You had a crush on Norman from the beginning, any sane person would dump those feelings in the garbage after being kidnapped and locked under the basement of an abandoned mansion where no one can hear you scream. Your feelings only seemed to blossom. Neither of you had to worry about the world under here and it made you more passionate, more bold.

It all happened during Normans last visit, he had brought a book of poems and let you listen and mess with his shoelaces,

“My tale was heard, and yet it was not told. My youth is spent, and yet I am not old. I saw the world, and yet I was not seen. My thread is cut and yet it was not spun. And now I live, and now my life is done.” He paused and let the book settle in his lap so he could play with your hair,

“What does the poem mean to you, y/n?”

“I think it means that the author had a life of being forgotten and pushed to the side, and now before he is to be executed he is finally feeling he has done something right by the world.” Norman raised a brow,

“So you know the history of this story? Smart girl-“

“Has anyone reported me missing yet? Does anyone care that I’m gone?” Norman didn’t speak, he picked at the floor. Sitting up you held him by his shoulders,

“…Do they even realize I’m gone?”

——————————————————

That was a week ago. Now that you realized no one cared you were gone your attitude on Norman changed. You asked him more questions about Gobby and any upcoming plans. Things became sickly, you felt different. He let you out of the basement today to shower, the sunlight hurt your eyes but you nearly wept when you saw the nice clean rooms outside the grimy place you had been. Two weeks since he’d taken you. Two weeks with no friends or family worried. But, they couldn’t of just forgotten about you? You had things to do, what about your co-workers? Your thoughts consumed you, Norman caught on and out a loving hand on your back,

“If it makes you feel better, Peter talked about you this morning while with Harry. They weren’t worried of course but, you know how boys are.” Nodding you followed him up the stairs.

The bathroom was old and had fancy tiling along with cute light fixtures, the house was probably built in the 40’s or 50’s. Norman handed you and towel and while you waited for him to leave he just sat there. You felt shy under his demanding eyes and turned your back to him a bit,

“You can go now, Mr Osborn.”

“Go? And what if you tried to escape? I couldn’t let my little journalist get out. We know how much you love to talk.” Tired, frustrated, and wanting nothing more but to shower you began to pull of your shirt and pants. Norman took a deep inhale when you took your bra off, and even though you were facing away from him he could practically feel your soft skin beneath his hands. Taking off your last garment you opened the shower curtain and stepped in, glad that there was now barrier between you and your capture, who was growing more brave by the minute.

The water turned in and warmed up. Oh my god, it felt so good. Grabbing soap you watched as dirt ran off your body and down the drain. Once your body felt clean you decided to clean your hair,

“Norman, there’s no shampoo!”

“My apologies, it’s on the counter. Here let me help.” You yelped and covered yourself as he stepped into the shower stark naked, bottle in hand.

“What are you doing?!”

“Helping.” He moved the shower curtain out of his way and looked you over. He glanced at your eyes and saw the flushed expression. He tentatively let his hand rundown your waist and pulled you close,

“You’re mine after all, I would be neglecting my duties if I didn’t take care of you.” He tilted your head back and let the shampoo run through your hair, his fingers delicately massaging it. You sighed at the feeling and leaned back into him. This was terrible, and wrong, and,

“Mmmm right there.” Oh. Did you say that out loud? His teeth cut into your shoulders causing you to gasp arching your back a little. He pushed you away from him and backed you under the water to wash out the soap. When you opened your eyes he was out of the shower and drying off. Leaving you wet and confused. Taking the towel you rubbed your body down and winced as your hand ran over something. A bite mark? That bastard! Norman was waking out the door whistling and hopping down the steps. Half naked you called out,

“Where are you going?”

“Home!”

“What about me?”

“What about you?” Though he was at the bottom of the steps he still stared you down and made the words fall short on your lips,

“W-well, aren’t you gonna…fuck me?” Your captor only laughed and did up his tie,

“Soon enough, Starlight.”

[hlizr50]

Thank You for Saving Me

One of my first. One of my faves.

Spoilers for From Blood and Ash and A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire

Casteel wants to address a few of Poppy's scars that they don't usually talk about

Read on AO3

The room was dark, but he wasn’t bothered. Casteel’s Atlantian heritage meant that he could see anything around him that he cared to notice. He should have been trying to sleep, as Poppy had rolled over to do. She’d said as much not long ago, before he’d successfully distracted her with his lips, his hands, his tongue… all of him.

He grinned to himself, shaking his head. He loved that she found it so difficult to resist him. Surely she knew how easily he unraveled at even the slightest thought of her. That was why he couldn’t help himself tonight. Even though they were to begin the journey across the mountains in a few hours. Even though they were aching and weary from the battle with Duchess Teerman’s regiment.

Casteel leaned his head back against the headboard and cast a sidelong glance at her – the way her hair fell across her shoulders and back, a sharp contrast to that alabaster skin. So soft. So perfect. He let his gaze drift down, eyeing the faint, thin marks that tracked back and forth across the tender flesh of her. His eyes narrowed.

He had never been anything less than completely sincere when he spoke about her scars. He needed her to understand how special she truly was, working against the years of venom that the Duke, Lord Mazeen, and the rest of the treacherous Ascended had used in an attempt to poison her soul, to dim her light. Her scars were beautiful, if only one entry in the long list of things he admired about her. But these long, thin, nearly invisible lines were not the jagged tears from Craven claws and fangs. No, these told a story of a fortitude he understood completely yet could also barely comprehend.

The two of them had rarely discussed Duke Teerman’s “lessons” since Poppy had finally admitted to him that the Duke had beaten her, likely for years. In fact, the last they’d spoken of it was during their journey from New Haven, and that was a lifetime of realizations and confessions from where they lay now.

Married.

And not for the sake of mutual benefit from the power of being Atlantian royalty, but for love. Real, true love. And he needed her to know how he felt – about all of her scars.

“How many times do I have to tell you that it’s creepy when you watch me sleep”

Casteel chuckled. “Well you’re obviously not asleep, so I don’t believe your question really applies.”

“Whatever,” she sighed. “It’s creepy when you stare silently at my back when I’m awake, too.”

“Alright, I’ll accept that,” he answered. And then he reached for her, trailing a calloused fingertip over where the cane had bitten her and swearing to himself when her muscles tensed. “When I realized what he had been doing to you it was all I could do not to kill everyone in that Gods-damned castle.” He moved his fingers up and down the length of her back. If his attention on those particular stripes made her uncomfortable he wouldn’t force his touch. But this conversation was important. He needed her to know.

It was quiet for a few moments, and he wondered if Poppy had somehow drifted off to sleep.

“When did you know? For sure?”

“That day with the priestess, after I prevented her from striking you. I could’ve killed her, too, honestly. But there were too many things that came together… too many signs.”

Poppy rolled over to face him, clutching the blanket over her chest. “Like what?” her emerald eyes shone with surprise.

“Please, Poppy. Did you truly think you were even remotely convincing even one of the many times I asked and you denied it?” the prince laughed humorlessly.

“You always let it go!”

“There was the first time he had me summon you. You and Tawny were both… distraught,” Casteel took a breath. If only he’d known right then, maybe he could have spared her – at least that final lesson. “Then you were holed up in your room for two days. And then there was the night I found you on the Rise. The way you winced when your back hit the wall… when I implied I might report you, and you told me I didn’t know what he’d do, before you could reign in your emotions.”

He reached for her again. Gathering the blanket around her body he pulled her into his lap, tucking her head beneath his chin.

“But it was that day with the priestess. When she said you’d grown fond of the cane. When it was painfully, heartbreakingly clear that you were accustomed to her striking you. And when I asked you point-blank if he hit you… all the color drained from your face before flushing deep red…” he pulled back so he could look her in the eye and let his fingertips caress her cheek. “My heart could have shattered in that moment. I knew what it was to be trapped, knew the shame and the fear of being helpless and not understanding how someone could take such delight simply from causing pain to someone else.”

Casteel planted a kiss on her forehead before pulling her close again. He ran his fingers idly through her wine-red locks – a favorite past-time of his. He loved her hair. It had been so unexpected the first time he saw it; red hair to match the fire within. But the fire had cooled tonight, and he might have thought she’d dozed off if it weren’t for her hand gently stroking his arm.

“Sometimes Lord Mazeen was there,” she offered quietly, and the prince stilled. Of course he knew that, but she had never been so open with this part of her. “He was there… that last time. He… he liked to watch.” Casteel’s chest rumbled with a barely-contained snarl. He had always been so glad – he would even say proud – that she’d hacked the Lord to pieces.

But Gods what he’d give to have the chance to go back and end that monster himself.

“That day… he stood in front of me. I tried to be as modest as possible, as was expected of me. But I had to brace myself on the desk, so I would lean on one arm and use my other arm to cover as much of me as I could. He bored into me with those haunting, hungry eyes as he moved my arm and held both of my hands on the desk so he could see… all of me.”

Casteel could barely breathe, and he clutched his wife tighter to his chest. Had he known that? He wasn’t sure. He knew that the Lord sometimes joined the Duke in his sadistic practice. He remembered Spessa’s End when Poppy had raged against Duchess Teerman’s insistence that the Ascended had been protecting her.

‘Is that what the Duke was doing when he took a cane to my back simply because I breathed too loudly or didn’t respond in a way he found appropriate? When he put his hands on me? Allowed others to do the same?”

He knew that they’d hurt her, but her admission had completely…

Gods, it tore him to pieces.

He felt soft fingers curl around the back of his neck and let out a breath. Her touch grounded him, pulled him back.

“Poppy… I –“

“I think Lord Mazeen was the first one that really made me realize that something was wrong – that their explanations and expectations didn’t make sense. How could my purity and isolation be so important when I saw what was in his eyes… he would have taken me if he knew he could get away with it. He leered at me for… for years!”

He pushed her shoulders back from him gently so he could grasp her face between his hands. He brought his lips to her forehead before leaning into her gaze.

“The Ascended are monsters, make no mistake. But THOSE two… There is not a word strong enough. They were EVIL, Poppy. They hurt you. They tormented you. They took pleasure in knowing that they could do anything they wanted to you for the most miniscule fucking reason and you had to sit and take it. I would burn the entirety Solis to the ground if it meant I could have saved you from that.”

Poppy smiled then. Gods, somehow she still smiled and it knocked the wind from Casteel’s lungs. Her eyes were luminous with unshed tears as she lifted her hands to cover his.

“How many times have you told me that you had hoped to sweep in dramatically and rescue me? After fighting Craven, after Lord Chaney or Duchess Teerman? But don’t you see?” The tears slid soundlessly down into her smile. “You did rescue me. You saved me from the priestess, from the Duke and Lord Chaney. You saved me from a lifetime of ignorance, of being used as a pawn to force an entire people into submission.  You saved me from a life of solitude, of never knowing pleasure or love.”

She released her grip on him and reached a hand to move a stray lock of his dark curls out of his eyes, while he used his thumbs to wipe away the dampness still staining her blushing cheeks.

“You weren’t too late Casteel. You saved me. You did.” And then she pulled his head toward her and pressed her lips to his temple. “You’re my hero,” she whispered, and began to pull away. He wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and held her against him, foreheads touching.

“I know that the scars he left on you are not the obvious ones. They are not many, and they are not easy to see, but they are there. And they are beautiful, all the same. You are so strong, Poppy. So brave. I cannot begin to comprehend your ferocious need to explore, to learn, to live, all in spite of them. You had every reason to cower, to slip into a meek existence, but instead you dreamed and you learned and you fought. Every day I am staggered by who you are, and I don’t think there will ever be a moment when I am not in awe of you.” He could feel burning in his throat and his eyes. His voice was hoarse. He so rarely wept, but he couldn’t help but be overwhelmed. “These scars may be my favorite, the most stunning. The Craven scars are a symbol of your blood, your heritage, your survival. But these? They are a testament to your bravery and fortitude. They show the world that you have faced pure evil, looked it in the eye, laughed, and dared it to try again.”

Casteel scooped her from his lap and laid her back on the bed before sliding down under the blanket to face her. He wrapped his arm around her and let his fingers feel the velvety skin of her back, searching for those thin lines.

“I don’t want you to feel fear or shame when my fingers find them. I want you to feel strong and brave and powerful, knowing that you beat them – that they are dead and you are living your fullest life. Can you do that for me, Princess?”

His breath hitched when she smiled softly again before wiggling closer to him, burrowing as far as she could into his chest. Would he ever be able to see her smile and not come undone?

“I think I can do that,” she murmured against him. He smiled and kissed the crown of her head. He breathed her in and allowed his body to relax around hers. Contentment wasn’t something Casteel was accustomed to feeling, but this was the closest he had ever been to paradise. The silence was comfortable, wrapping around them like a cloak in winter. He sighed deeply and felt her head turn slightly against him. And then soft full lips pressed to his chest. The gesture was pure and innocent and earth-shattering.

“Thank you. For saving me,” Poppy whispered in the dark, almost too quiet even for his ears. He didn’t know if he could draw her any further into him. But he would keep her tightly cocooned in his arms, knowing that having her there is what held him together.

And he wondered, truly, if it hadn’t been she who had saved him.

[downondilaudid]

High as a Kite

After a stressful case reader unwinds in her own unique way, unfortunately, the BAU is called in on another case. Spencer doesn’t seem too fond of the reader’s stress reliever.

A/N: This is very poorly edited. I just got into a massive fight with a few friends. So now I’m very sad, and just wanna sleep. But fuck them. Like that one vine says, I don’t need friends, they disappoint me. Seriously, FUCK THEM. I still love them doe, i have too, they’re the only friends i have.

Oh also, I wrote this in first person, instead of my usual second person. Let me know if you like it or not! <3

Requested: Yes

Prompts: None

Word Count: 2.9K

Warnings: (Unprotected)Penetrative Sex, a DASH of angst, drug use, let me know if I missed anything.

“He rarely smoked, but once in a while, like now, when his world had been shaken, his woman nearly killed in front of his eyes, and he’d watched a house consume a man and spit him out, he figured a drag or two were appropriate.”

― Christine Feehan, Safe Harbor

Relaxing after a case was one of my favorite things on the planet. Especially when it ended well, I had been able to watch as the little girl who had been stolen from her family, ran to her parents, her little arms wrapping around their legs. Seeing the love and adoration in the parent's eyes as the wept and held her made me want to have a child of my own.

Spencer and I had been together for a little over a year, but I doubt either of us are ready for children. Our job alone is stressful enough, in fact, it’s how we met. I worked as a technical analyst under Penelope Garcia. I will say my job wasn’t as strenuous as Spencer’s, but it’s not exactly ideal to look at dead bodies all day.

We all have our own peculiar ways of unwinding, Spencer loves to sit and read a few books, Hotch heads home to spend time with Jack, and Emily is always down for a drink. I, on the other hand, would much rather smoke a bowl than read a book. It was my own way of unwinding and allowing my brain to cleanse itself of the horrors of the world.

My pink pipe was packed with weed, a matte black lighter in my hand. The weed burned in the small bowl, crisping to a dark black. My finger released the carb of the pipe a couple of times, allowing the smoke to fill my lungs.

The haunting voice of Lana Del Rey filled the room. Her voice alone is smooth as honey, but listening to her while high is an ethereal experience. I could only imagine what Spencer would do if he could see me now, probably ramble off the statistics of marijuana addiction. But I could definitely say I wasn’t addicted, it was just an easy way to relax.

I took another hit, watching as the smoke tumbled from my lips. My stomach rumbled, causing me to giggle lightly, here come the munchies. Usually, I didn’t have the biggest sweet tooth, but when I’m high I can’t get enough sugar.

My hands pulled open the pantry, hips swaying lightly to the music.

Suddenly the music was gone, replaced by an annoying buzzing, “Ugh, you’re fucking kidding.” I groaned. I let the pantry fall shut, making my way over to where my phone sat. I had an inkling who was calling me, but every ounce of my body was praying I was wrong. Unfortunately, I was not, as I had one text from Hotch and a missed call from Spencer.

As if on cue, my phone buzzed in my hand, Spencer’s name illuminating the phone. Quickly I answered the call, pulling the phone up to my ear. “Hiya Spence.” 

“You get the call?” Spencer questioned, his voice cracking slightly, it was obvious he hadn’t used it in a while. He had probably been reading ever since he got home.

I giggled lightly at the sound of Spencer’s voice, taking a moment to admire the perfect way it croaked. “Mhm, can you pick me up?” 

There was no immediate response, it was obvious there was something off, Spencer could tell. I never asked him to drive me anywhere, I was always the one driving. Especially due to Spencer’s hatred of automobiles. 

“But don’t you usually pick me up?” he questioned. 

“Spencer, that last case… I’m literally the definition of exhaustion, can you please, just this once?” I was hoping that with the use of his full first name, he would understand the seriousness of my question. There was no way I was driving to work, with Spencer in the car, while high. 

Speaking of, I still had zero idea how I was going to act sober in a room of profilers, granted, I had a lot of practice of acting sober in front of people, just not at work. Unfortunately for me, the best two words to describe myself while high were, giggly and horny. Oh, and hungry, who doesn’t get the munchies?

Spencer sighed on the other end of the line, “Of course, Y/N.” He paused for a moment, a slight hesitation in his voice with his next words. “Is-is everything okay?” 

“Oh, totally, the case just got to me, that's all!” My reply was all but convincing, it didn’t help the awkward silence made me giggle, which I quickly stifled with my hand. But to Spencer, I’m sure it sounded like a muffled sob. At least he’d buy it, right?

… 

I hopped into the car, looking too giddy to be dealing with another case, “hey.” 

Spencer turned his head to look at me, his eyebrows furrowed slightly, and his tongue peeking out between his pink lips. “Y/N are you sure you’re okay?”

I rolled my eyes before playfully glaring at Spencer, “yes, now drive, baby.” I reached out, grabbing the gear shift, and shifting the car into drive. 

The car rolled slightly before a startled Spencer slammed his foot on the brake, “Y/N what the- my foot wasn’t even on the brake! Do you know how many accidents are caused a year due to pedal error? Sixteen thousand, and that’s just in the U.S.”

I know it was inappropriate, but during the whole lecture he was giving me I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his hands. They were so perfect, long and thick, the number of times that I’ve come undone on those hands is immeasurable. I shifted in my seat before meeting his eyes. Honestly, I hadn’t comprehended a word he said, something about cars?

Spencer shifted the car back into park, turning in his seat to lean towards me. His eyes scanned me up and down, and not in a good way. “You’re acting strange. You’re overly bubbly, especially considering we have another case. You aren’t thinking rationally-”

A gasp left my body once I realized what he was doing, “Spencer Walter Reid, are you profiling me? We agreed not to do that!”

Despite my yelling he kept speaking “and you were too focused on the movement of my hands to retain a single word I told you.” He reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone. 

“Spencer, what the fuck are you-ow!” A blinding light clouded my vision, causing me to recoil further into my seat. 

A scoff left Spencer’s mouth as he turned off the flashlight. “You’re high,” he stated, “what did you take?”  

“I’m not-” I quickly stopped my sentence once I saw the glare Spencer was sending me. “Okay, I just smoked a little weed. Seriously, it wasn’t a lot.”

Spencer unlocked his phone, pressing a few buttons before opening the “W-what are you doing?” I asked, although I already knew the answer. 

“Calling Hotch” Spencer replied, his voice even yet stern. It was somehow scarier than his occasional outburst.

“What? No, Spencer!” I reached over the console, latching my hands onto his phone, before pulling back. Sadly, the phone stayed rooted in his large hands, and with a swift tug, he had the phone back in his grasp. 

Spencer glared harsh daggers at me, before looking back down, and continuing to type on the phone. “Y/N, you’ve already pushed me far enough. Sit down and keep your mouth shut.” 

I fell back into my seat, pouting and crossing my arms childishly. The faint sound of ringing broke the silence, stopped by the barely audible voice of Hotch over the phone. 

“Hotch, Y/N can’t come in, she’s sick. I think she has a fever.” The lie tumbled easily out of his lips. 

My head whipped towards him, my eyebrows raised in amusement. “Thanks, I will.” Spencer ended the conversation, this time setting his phone in the cupholder in the console. 

I giggled lightly, “what would I do without you to save my ass?” 

He didn’t respond, instead putting the car in drive, this time with his foot on the brake. Silence filled the car, Spencer opting to focus on the road, and me fidgeting with the hem of my skirt. 

“Spencie, are you mad at me?” I asked, resting an elbow on the console between us. 

It was obvious he was frustrated, I would be too, but how was I supposed to know we’d get called in on a case? “Yes, Y/N” he answered, his words punctuated and his jaw clenching, accentuating his razor-sharp jawline. 

There was something about angry Spencer that sent shockwaves to my core, leaving me squirming against the leather of the car. Eh, what the hell, might as well go for it, I can just blame it on the cannabis. 

My arm reached across the console, my hand landing on the top of Spencer’s thigh. I watched him visibly jump at my touch, he obviously wasn’t expecting it. “Are you sure it’s just anger?” 

He sighed loudly, one of his hands leaving the steering wheel to remove my own from his leg.

…  

“Please Spencer, just really quick? It’d help you relieve some stress!” I cried as I walked through the door. 

Another angry sigh left Spencer’s mouth, he seemed to be doing that a lot. “Y/N, you’re under the influence, I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

I almost laughed at his statement, it was perfectly logical of him to think that, and utterly sweet. But he was my boyfriend, my love, I would fuck him in whatever state I’m in. “Spence, I can promise you you’re not taking advantage of me. We’ve had sex countless times, I’d have sex with you even if I was sober, have you seen you?” I paused for a moment before adding onto my sentence, breaking the slight tension with humor, “yourself, not you, that doesn’t sound right.” 

Spencer chuckled to himself, rolling his eyes as he reached for his belt. “Hell yes!” I cried as I began to undo the buttons of my blouse, quickly shedding it. I could’ve just left the blouse on, but Spencer was a tits man through and through. 

As soon as I heard the clinking of his belt colliding with the floor, I ambushed him, immediately letting my lips find his. The kiss wasn’t rough, nor was it gentle, it was somewhere in between, a perfect balance. I pulled away, biting down lightly on Spencer’s bottom lip. 

My hand slipped into his unzipped pants, palming him lightly. It was the most heavenly sight on earth to watch his head fall back, and a low moan tumble from his lips. “Fuck, Y/N” 

Nodding my head I giggled, “yes, please fuck Y/N.”

Spencer tilted his head back up, laughing lightly at my comment.

I pulled away from him, grabbing the hem of my skirt and shimmying it up over my hips. Spencer’s eyebrows raised, a look of amusement on his face. “Please” I begged.

“Alright, turn around, over the table,” Spencer commanded, his voice low and demanding.

A giggle passed my lips as I turned around, making my way over to the table. My top half pressed against the table, my body resting against my forearms. I could hear Spencer’s footsteps as he crossed the room, stopping behind me. His large hands wrapped around my hips, pushing my skirt higher up my body. “Do you know how irresponsible it was of you to try and come into work while under the influence?” 

His hand left my hip coming back down onto my backside, the impact causing me to cry out. “Spencer!”

His hand raked up my side, grabbing a fist full of my hair. “I-I didn’t have a choice.” I stuttered out as one of his fingers hooked onto my underwear, pulling them to the side. 

“You did have a choice, you chose not to inform Hotch, leaving me to save your ass. Do you understand how detrimental the consequences could’ve been if something were to go wrong?” Spencer’s fingers ran through my folds, spreading around my arousal. 

“Fuck” I moaned out, using my forearms to push myself back against his hand. “Better hurry this up, Spence, we don’t have long.” Spencer shuffled behind me before I felt the head of his cock brush against my core. “Fine, if you’re so impatient.” He grunted, pulling back on my hair, and pushing his cock into my folds. 

He was quick to set a rough pace, pulling out and pushing back in, using the hand in my hair as leverage to pull me back in time with his thrusts. “Yes, Spencer, fuck,” I groaned out. 

“You know,” Spencer started, pausing to roughly thrust into me, sending my body forward against the table, the edge digging into my thighs. “If you wanted a stress reliever, you could’ve come to me. Sex releases endorphins and other hormones, the same way exercise does. Particularly, oxytocin, commonly referred to as the “love hormone.” 

I moaned against the table, my body beginning to falter as my orgasm approached. “Fuck, Spencer, mhmm, yes.” 

With every thrust, I could feel the strain of Spencer yanking my hair back, which would definitely leave a crick in my neck. But I was enjoying myself too much to tell him to stop. I could practically feel Spencer’s anger with every obscene smack of our sweaty skin. It was what I was hoping for, a good fuck, and for Spencer to be able to release his anger before heading back to the BAU. 

Surprisingly, Spencer released his vice grip on my hair, easing the tension on my neck, allowing my face to fall forward and my cheek to squish against the table. He planted his forearm beside my head, leaning over me so his chest was pressed against my back. “How good would you feel if I allowed you to come right now?” To add to the pleasure, Spencer’s hand resting on my hip wormed its way around my body, two of his long digits beginning to rub circles around my swollen bud. 

A sob racked my body at the added pleasure, and my eyes rolled into the back of my head. I could feel my legs starting to tremble as I held back my release, almost as if my body knew I couldn’t let go until he gave me permission. “Please, please?” I begged.

“Say it. Promise me you’ll come to me next time you need to relieve stress.” Spencer growled, his voice cracking, signaling he was close too. 

The desperate sounds of our moans and the musty smell of sex filled the room, drowning out my senses. I was too lost in the euphoria to reply, instead, I deliriously rutted my hips back as an attempt to feel him deeper. 

Spencer let out a groan before burying his head deep in the crook of my neck, moaning out “promise me, Y/N.” 

“I promise, fuck, please, Spencer?” The words tumbled almost incoherently out of my lips, barely comprehensible. 

Nodding his head against my skin, he placed an open-mouthed kiss to my neck before moaning out “come, come with me Y/N.” 

And just like that, I was sent headfirst into a trembling, teeth-clenching orgasm. My back arched, uncomfortably pressing my breasts even further against the table. My vision went white, and my legs threatened to collapse. Spencer had stilled, burying his cock deep in my cunt, lewdly moaning out my name, and a series of various curses. An unfamiliar warmth coursed through my body as he filled me up with his seed. Leaving me to grin like a Cheshire cat, caked in sweat. 

The two of us laid against the table, deep pants leaving both our mouths. Spencer pulled out, tucking himself back in his pants. “Thank you” I giggled, pushing myself up from the table, and shuffling my skirt back down my legs. 

When I turned around I was met with the sight of a sweaty Spencer, running his hands through his tousled hair. “You look fine, Spence.”

I could tell Spencer was trying his hardest to contain his smile, probably wanting to stay mad at me. But as soon as his eyes met mine, his face broke into a soft smile, my own following suit. I took a step forward, wrapping my arms around his torso, and letting my head rest against his chest. “I love you” I murmured against his shirt. 

His arms wrapped around my back, pulling me closer to him, “I love you too” he replied, placing a kiss to the top of my head.

“Okay, I have to go,” Spencer said, letting his arms fall back to his side.

I pulled back, unwrapping my arms from his body. “Don’t forget your belt,” I nodded towards his belt that was left discarded on the floor in the midst of our frenzy. 

“I have an eidetic memory, Y/N, remember?” Spencer joked, snatching his belt from the floor, and looping it back through his pants. 

Rolling my eyes with a laugh I replied, “that doesn’t mean things can’t slip your mind, Spence.” 

“Actually-” he started.

I cut him off by opening the front door, “bye, have fun, I love you!” 

Spencer laughed, pecking me on the lips before heading out the door, looking over his shoulder to call out, “we’ll talk more about this later, Y/N. Don’t think you’re off the hook just yet.”

“Shit.” I groaned, letting the door fall shut.

Taglist: @pinkdiamond1016 @gubler-squad @garcias-batcave

[yeojaa]

called a thousand times.

prompt:  “did you miss me enough to drink or did you drink enough to miss me?”   (orig.)

this drabble is more an exercise in catharsis and serves as my first (!!!) jin piece.  i dedicate this to my loves @jinsearthh​ and @seokjinssi​ lmao.  enjoy!

pairing.  ksj x reader.  rating.  general.  tags.  angst.  but like, not really terrible angst.  just semi-bad angst.  wc.  1.8k.

The call comes in the dead of night while you’re curled up in linen sheets and comfortably drooling into an unbelievably worn white plush.  It buzzes loudly in your ears, vibrating obnoxiously against your pillow.  Sleeping with your phone in bed is a bad habit you’ve never really been able to break.  

You’re barely awake - caught in that strange in-between land of lucidity - when you hazard a glance at the time and number.  2:47 AM.  Far too late for you to be receiving calls - especially from contact you don’t have saved. 

“Hello?”

“Hi.”  It’s a voice you’d never expected to hear.  A voice you haven’t heard in forever, clear as bells through the phone line.  “It’s Jin.”

You’re wide awake now. 

“Hello?”  It’s terribly jarring.  It jolts you straight up in the bed that hasn’t felt his warmth in close to three years, every notch of your spine electrified by the simple sound.  It rings, bouncing around in your ears.  

You should reply.  You don’t know how.  

“Are you there?”  Uncertainty and something else - something heavy and medicinal - coats syllables and turns them into molasses.  It drips off each vowel, rounding each consonant.  Your entire world feels like it’s spinning, tilted on its axis by this strange happening. 

“Jin?”  It doesn’t sound how it should - wishful and more than a little surprised.  It trips heavy off your tongue, splitting the darkness with the radiance of your hope.  

He laughs on the other end.  You realise now why he sounds different, the familiar squeak of his amusement dulled by liquor.  He’s drunk or at least, on his way to it.  The telltale signs are there:  the faintest hiccough after every second inhale, the vaguely nasally first syllable, the dulling of his rain-streaked laughter. 

“It’s me,”  he confirms, far more comfortable than he should be.  The relief practically radiates through the phone, further severing the strings that bid you back to bed.  “I didn’t know if you’d pick up or if you even had the same number still.”

At least he’s honest, you think. 

The conversation is carried on like there’s nothing at all strange, as if he - Kim Seokjin - hasn’t just called up his ex-girlfriend at quarter to three in the morning. 

“How are you?  Did I wake you up?”

You know your silence is rude.  It’s stifling in a way that even he can’t combat, sitting stony between you two as you try to wrap your mind around the current situation.  

“Hello?”  He repeats, vaguely uncertain but not otherwise bothered.  That bothers you. 

“Why did you call?”  You can’t help the question.  It pierces the quiet before you can catch it, disappearing into the night like a thief.  It takes with it all of your turmoil, tucking years of hurt in its pockets to wear on its sleeves. 

That seems to catch him off guard.  He inhales once - a sharp thing, right through his front teeth.  

“Ah, yeah.  I—“  You wonder whether he’s even given this any thought or if he’s just been driven to it by the beguiling hand of liquor.  You wouldn’t put it past him, though he’s never been one to drink himself into bad ideas.  He was smarter than that. 

He pauses.  It’s long, drawn out, punctuated by city sounds you assume come from 27 floors below his apartment.  They’re muffled and unrecognisable, the din of Yongsan-gu too faraway.  

“I… was thinking of you.” 

There’s a strange confidence to his response, a self-assured calm that feels like moments before a storm.  It eases uncertainty over your limbs, still wrought with sleep and sluggish.  He shouldn’t sound this way after so long, as if he’d never left.  A part of it feels nice, warm and welcomed into the cavity behind your ribs, tucked neatly alongside the organ that stutters because of him;  the other feels like a knife to the heart, slotted right between the vulnerable spaces you’d shown him.

You echo him in uncertainty.  “Thinking of me?”  

“I wanted to apologise.”

Now that’s the last thing you’d expected.  

“Apologise for what?”  Not that there aren’t so many things Jin owes you - so many I’m sorrys that would never make up for the rivers you’d wept, the nights you hadn’t slept.  

“How I left things.  How we left things.”  Something not quite a laugh comes, dresses his words up prettily like a sinner in his Sunday best, eager to learn and repent and do better.  “I know I can’t undo the past but I’m sorry for the ways I hurt you.”

It’s so vague even you aren’t sure what he’s referring to.  The brief but blinding relationship you’d had with him?  The heartbreaking, determined way in which he’d broken up with you?  The months thereafter when he’d still warmed your bed, where the strange in-between was no longer between awake and dreams, but love and not-love?  The pieces he’d left you to pick up yourself when he’d disappeared, seemingly out of the blue? 

“I still think about you a lot.  I miss you.  I wanted to make it right.”  When he backtracks, you realise he’s far smarter than you give him credit for.  “—Try to make it right, that is.”

“Why?”  You should demand more.  You know you should.  Yet this is the only thing that comes, dripping like the tears that line your lashes, glittering jewels that you’d trade for even an ounce of understanding. 

He hesitates.  There’s a clinking glass, ice, and then a thick swallow you can hear quite clearly.  “Why?  Why what?”

“Why did you leave?”  You’re really trying - holding onto composure with a white-knuckled grip that leaves your hands bleeding - but it’s futile.  The grief is too much - a thousand pound weight that splits the frayed edge of your composure in a clean line.  “Things were…”  Weird, strange, undoubtedly a bad idea, as messing with your ex tended to be.  “Things were okay, I thought.  And then out of nowhere, you were gone.  You stopped calling.”

For three long weeks, you’d jolted awake at 3 AM, waiting for the dedicated ringtone to alert you of his call.  It never came.  You’d waited even longer after that, though you’d learnt to turn your phone to silent.

Months turned to years and then one day, nearly four months later - there he was, displayed as a missed call at just after midnight.

You’d blocked him then, for your own sanity.  And then another six months after that, you’d unblocked him.  A moment of weakness you’d all but forgotten about until now.  You’d figured it wouldn’t matter - that there was no way he’d contact you again.  So much time had passed and he was Kim Seokjin;  you were nothing but a small blip on his radar - a tiny ink splatter on the story of his life.

“You blocked me.”  Or not.  

You tuck this knowledge - his knowledge - away into the manila folder you keep stored away in a dusty cabinet, covered in yellow tape that reads Do Not Open.

“Before that.  Three years ago.”  

“I honestly… don’t remember.”  The answer stings, candour a struck match to your already miserable nerves.  “It was bad timing, I think.  We were on the phone one night.  I was heading back from filming and I just remember being so mad.”  That doesn’t surprise you.  Jin’s temper rages like a wildfire before burning out like a match.  Intense but short-lived.  “You were having a bad day, too.  You’d started your new job and you were stressed out about something not working.”

You recall it clearly - can call to mind exactly what brief you’d been working and how that night had felt awful.  You’d hardly slept, almost pushed to tears by the frustration you’d felt.  For the life of you, though, you can’t recall an argument.  You’d been happy to hear from him - found solace in the sound of his voice, even as you’d worked through pages that made you want to tear your hair out. 

“I remember you were dismissive and it just…”  You imagine he shrugs, those impossibly wide shoulders of his rolling beneath something soft and sleep-appropriate.  His brow’s probably knit, little dent forming between them as always happens when he’s faced with discomfort.  “I didn’t want to deal with it.”

It’s an honest answer, which you’re grateful for.  It sheds light where there was one.

But it also hurts far more than you’d expected, stirring to life an ugly aching sob in your chest.  One night.  One night was all it’d taken.  The realisation is sobering in its pain.

“And… now you want to apologise for that?”  It doesn’t make sense.  Not to you, at least, who holds three long years of unrequited love for a man who’d thrown you away over nothing.

“I want to apologise for a lot of stuff.”  Things he doesn’t seem ready to articulate just yet, either due to his inebriation or contrition.  “I didn’t think you’d pick up, so I’m kind of still working through it in my head.”  You can hear his smile, turned playful by alcohol.

It’s like waging war when you speak - your heart against your head.  “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“But… I miss you.” 

I miss you too, you almost say.  

“Did you miss me enough to drink or did you drink enough to miss me?”  Comes hushed instead.

Jin isn’t ready for the conversation.  You know he isn’t - can tell by how he inhales shakily, knocks back another drink that rattles ice noisily.  “That’s not fair.”

“You’re not fair,”  you return in a voice that’s meant to be scathing but seems to have found itself at the bottom of his glass, wet and diluted.  “You’re calling me because you feel bad and for whatever reason, you think I’m going to make that go away.”  

He’s not wrong - you would, in a heartbeat.  But there’s a very big difference between would and should and you’re doing your best to learn what that is, even if it hurts.  

“What do you think’s going to happen after I forgive you?  Are we just going to go back to our lives like nothing happened?”

“If you want.”

You laugh, a sound that’s brutalised by your own sadness and barely sounds like anything at all.  “And what if I don’t want that?  What if I want you in my life?”  

Another pause, another drink.  There’s a part of you that worries for him.  

“You know that’s not an option.  Not right now.  We’ve got so much happening right with our comeback and then enlistment and…”  It’s a cop out.  You can see it from a mile away, a red flag raised to mock you as Jin speaks.  “I can’t give you what you want.”

“Then neither can I.”

tag list.  @neverthefirstchoice​​ @youwannabelostandnotbefound​​

[officialyourdailyinspiration]

Devotional Hours Within the Bible

by J.R. Miller

The Visit to Nazareth (Luke 4:16-30)

Christ never forgot the place where He had spent His childhood years. We are not given many facts of His life there. Nothing indicates that there was anything unusual in the story of the thirty years He spent there. The more we think of His life at Nazareth as simply natural, without anything unusual - the nearer shall we come to the true picture of the boy and young man - who grew up in the lowly village of Nazareth. Our passage today tells of His visit to His old home after He had been away for many months.

"He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up." It was not an easy place for Jesus to visit. Everybody knew Him. He had lived there for thirty years. He had been playmate and schoolmate with the children of His own age. He had been a carpenter, doing work for many years in the shop and about the town. The young men of Nazareth thought themselves as good as He was, and were not in any mood to receive instruction from Him. It is easy for us to understand the prejudice and envy with which people listened to Jesus, as He spoke to them that day in their synagogue.

There are some lessons to be taken, however, from our Lord's example in thus going back to Nazareth. One is that we ought to seek the good of our own neighbors and friends. Many young men go away from plain country or village homes, and in other and wider spheres rise to prominence and influence. Such ought not in their eminence, to forget their old home. They owe much to it. It is pleasant to hear of rich men giving libraries or establishing hospitals or doing other noble things for the town in which they were born. Among our first obligations, is that which we owe to our old friends and neighbors .

Another lesson is, that as young people - we ought to live so carefully that when we grow up - we may be able to go back to our old home and, in the midst of those who have know us all our life, witness for God. There are some men, good and great now; who's preaching would have but small effect where they were brought up - because of the way they lived during their youth. Sins of youth - break the power of life's testimonies in later years. A blameless youth-time, makes one's words strong in mature days.

"And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath Day, and stood up to read" (Luke 4:16). Here we have a glimpse of our Lord's religious habits. From childhood, His custom had been to attend the synagogue service on the Sabbath. Here are good shoe prints for young people to set their feet in. The time to begin to attend church-is in youth. Habits formed then - stay with us all our life. If our custom is to stay away then from church services, we will be very apt to keep up that custom when we get older. On the other hand, if we go to church regularly from childhood, the custom will become so wrought into our life - that in after years we shall not incline to stay away. And the value of such a habit is very great.

"He opened the book, and found the place where it was written." The book was part of the Old Testament. Some people have the feeling that the Old Testament is dry and uninteresting. But we see here what precious things Jesus found in it, that day in the synagogue. The passage which He quoted drips with the sweetness and tenderness of divine love. It is a great honeycomb of gospel grace !

Some men were about to tear down an old frame house, long unoccupied. When they began to remove the outer boarding, they found a mass of honey. As they removed the boards at different points they discovered the whole side of the house, between the weather boarding and the plastering, was filled with honey. People regard the Old Testament as an old, worn-out book, a mere relic of old ceremonial days. But when they begin to open it - they find honey, and as they look into it at other points they find that all the passages, in among the histories, the chronicles of war, and the descriptions of ceremonial rites - are full of sweetest honey! Here is a bit of dripping honey-comb, and there are hundreds more, which are just as rich. We do not know what we lose - when we do not study the Old Testament.

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed ." These are the special classes of people - to whom Jesus was sent. What a picture this is of humanity! Some people ridicule what the bible says about Adam and Eve's FALL. They tell us there never was a fall, and that the world is all right. They talk eloquently about the grandeur of human life. But this eighteenth verse certainly looks very much like the picture of a very bad ruin. Read the description - poor, prisoners, blind, oppressed. There is not much grandeur in that. Anyone who goes about and looks honestly at life - knows that the picture is not over-drawn. On every hand we see the wreck and ruin caused by sin. Then suffering and sorrow follow, and hearts and lives are crushed and bruised!

But there is something here a great deal brighter than this sad picture. Light breaks on the ruin - as we read that it was to repair such moral desolation as we see here that Jesus came. He came "to preach good news to the poor; to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed." He saw in all these ruins of humanity, something that by His grace - He could make beautiful enough for heaven and glory. Christ is a restorer. There are men who take old, dimmed, effaced, almost destroyed pictures - and restore them until they appear nearly as beautiful as when they first came from the artist's hand. So Christ comes to ruined souls, and by the power of His love and grace - He restores them until they wear His own beauty in the presence of God!

"To preach the acceptable year of the Lord." For the Jews this "acceptable year" closed with the condemnation of the Messiah. Jesus stood on Olivet and looked down upon the city and wept over it and said, "If you had known, even you, the things which belong unto your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes!" (Luke 10:42). When He spoke these words, amid the rush of tears and with loud outcry of grief, "the acceptable year" closed. After that - the doom hung over the beautiful city, which in forty years burst upon it in all its woe and terribleness. This is history.

But there is another way to look at this matter. There is an "acceptable year" for each soul. It begins when Christ first comes to us and offers salvation. It continues while He stands at our door and knocks. It closes when we drive Him away from our door by utter and final rejection - or when death comes upon us unsaved and hurries us away forever from the world of mercy. Since the past is gone and there is no certain future to anyone, the "acceptable year" to us all is NOW. Shall we allow it to pass and close - while we remain unsaved?

"Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." Seven hundred years before, had the words been written. Now Jesus reads them and says to the people: "I am the One to whom the description refers! I am the One the prophet meant!" The whole Old Testament was full of Christ; and the New Testament is full of fulfillments of the Old Testament.

It is pleasant, too, to take this particular passage and show how Christ indeed fulfilled in His life and ministry - the mission which the prophet marked out for Him. He preached to the poor, He healed the broken - hearted. Wherever He went, the sorrowing and the troubled flocked about Him. As a magnet draws steel filings to itself - out of a heap of rubbish; so did the heart of Christ draw to Him the needy, the sad, the suffering, and the oppressed. He was the friend of sinners. He brought deliverance to sin's captives, setting them free and breaking their chains. He opened blind eyes ; not only blind natural eyes to see the beautiful things of this world - but also blind spiritual eyes to see spiritual things. Then He lifted the yoke off the crushed and oppressed, inviting all the weary to Himself to find rest. His whole life was simply a filling out of this outline sketch !

They "rose up, and thrust Him out of the city, and led Him unto the brow of the hill… that they might cast Him down." Their envy grew into murderous rage. We see first, the danger of allowing envious feelings to stay in our hearts; they are sure to grow into greater bitterness, and may lead us into open and terrible sin. We should instantly check every thought or motion of envy, anger or hatred - and cast it out of our heart.

This act shows also the natural hatred of God which is in human hearts. We talk severely of the Jews' rejection of their Messiah - but this opposition to God is not exclusively a Jewish quality. Is it not the same with all of us? So long as the divine teaching runs along in lines that are pleasing to us, we assent, and applaud the beauty of God's truth. But when the teaching falls against our own tendencies and dispositions and opinions - we wince, and too often declare our disbelief. They tried to kill Him; is not the rejection of many people now just as violent? They would kill Him if they could!

His word was with authority. His words are always with authority. We remember how all things hearkened to His words and obeyed them. Diseases fled at His command. The winds and waves were quieted and hushed at His word. The water changed to wine at His bidding. The dead in their graves heard His call and answered. Evil spirits owned His lordship. Nothing for a moment resisted His authority. Shall we not take Christ's Word as the rule of our faith and of our conduct? Shall we not yield to His authority?

[solomontoaster]

Terror Bingo Masterlist

I’m honestly really glad I did @theterrorbingo​ this year, because I’d been too anxious to last year, and it was so much fun!!! 

I got three bingos and only three prompts remain unfilled, (though Pen Pals and Cairn both have WIPs). The full list of fics and other fills will be below the cut below!

Keep reading for the full list, presented chronologically:

Carnivale: Carnivale made in Animal Crossing! Featuring myself as James Fitzjames and Tom Hartnell, and @myfavoritedemons​ as Francis Crozier, with a full photoshoot and a short video.

Go for Broke: a beauty grows unplanned, Solomon Tozer/James Fitzjames, g, 2k  

It had been distraction and a need to get as far away from the Admiralty as possible after his meeting there that had led James on his meandering walk, which had ultimately deposited him in the heart of London’s Jewish quarter. Then curiosity had led him into one of the shops and the next thing he knew he had made two extremely impulsive purchases for Solomon.

--

Or, local goy James Fitzjames wanders into a shop selling Judaica, makes impulse purchase for Jewish boyfriend.

Hammock: autumn afternoons, Francis Crozier/James Fitzjames, g, 2k, also for Trans Terror Week

The plan to spend some time out in the country for James’ health had been Francis’ idea initially. Then James had mentioned it off-handedly to Will during a visit and the next thing he knew Will was sending him information about a little house on the edge of a quiet village where James and Francis would have neighbors “of like mind.”

Dining Room: how good it is, Solomon Tozer/John Irving, g, 1k, also for the Festival of Lights Fest

It was the first night of Hanukkah and Daniel was watching very intently as Solomon placed the candles in their menorahs. The first was the one he’d purchased for the first Hanukkah after Daniel had been the born, a relatively simple line of silver pomegranates, and the second, more recently purchased menorah, was shaped like a pirate ship. That one had been all Daniel.

Autopsy: trembling and cold, Tom Hartnell/John Irving, t, <1k

“Just hold my hand, please.”

That had been what John had asked of Tom when Tom had found John so distraught he could hardly move after they’d made their way back to Terror following the horrors of Carinvale.

Free Space: The Ross Antarctic expedition’s 1842 New Years festivities as created in Animal Crossing, feat. myself as Miss (James Clark) Ross.

I hardly dare speak the words: who will come and go with me, Solomon Tozer/James Fitzjames, t, 12k, also for the Festival of Lights Fest

Since gifting Solomon the candlesticks and a menorah—which he now understood could also be called a hanukkiah—James found himself encompassed in Jewish life in a way that he hadn’t quite expected. Once they’d talked that first night, it was as though an entire new side of Solomon emerged from hiding. James’ days were suddenly filled with half hummed, half muttered prayer, as Solomon tried to recall prayers he’d barely thought about since he left home.

Holystone: not every wave is a tidal wave, John Bridgens/Henry Peglar, g, 1k, also for Bridglar Week

Henry’s eyes slid shut and he sunk a bit deeper into the water.

John had secured this room for them as soon as they had disembarked from the Enterprise. It was small, but the bed comfortably fit two and Henry had nearly wept in relief when John told him they would be able to get hot water brought up so he could have a bath.

Frostbite: past empty lots and early graves, Frederick Des Voeux, t, 2k

Lady Silence paused, briefly, looking deeply unsettled, and then began walking again.

“Wait…” Fred tried to scramble to his feet to follow after her, but he couldn’t get his feet under him and he collapsed with a sob.

Then there was a tug on his sleeve, and Fred looked up to see Lady Silence standing over him.

I’m hungry and I want to live: lord have mercy on the frozen man, James Fitzjames/John Irving, t, 12k, also for the John Irving B-day Celebration and Terror Rare Pair Week

James had fallen, quite literally, into the 21st century, when a patch of rotten ice had given way underneath his feet as they were scouting for leads.

--

Join James Fitzjames and John Irving as they navigate trauma, recovery and how to find their place in a new century.

Call in the Night: no one alive can always be an angel, Frederick Des Voeux/Leopold McClintock feat. Thomas Jopson, t, 3k

It was hard to believe he'd made it home to England, that he had lived to sleep in a real bed once more and be fussed over by his family. It was harder still to feel that things might return to some semblance of normal. What could normal be after the horrors they’d seen? That out of 129 men, only three had returned, Fred, Crozier and, by some miracle, Thomas Jopson as well.

Denial of Feelings: now once more ashore we’ll go, Solomon Tozer/John Irving, t, 3k

When Solomon had returned from the Arctic in 1849, he’d never imagined he would go back. Apparently, the Arctic was to be his lot in life. No one wanted to hire a disgraced marine, particularly one who had been publicly dismissed for mutinous acts, but the whaling captain who’d eventually hired him had only cared that Solomon knew how to handle himself in Arctic waters. Solomon had returned to work under that same captain year after year every whaling season since.

Fever: of arrivals and strangers, Francis Crozier/James Fitzjames feat. James Clark Ross, t, 2k

It was truly horrible timing—James’ first command following their return from the Arctic coinciding with Francis falling seriously ill. He didn’t think he’d ever been so grateful for a short command.

--

Francis falls ill while James is away at sea, but his illness might not be exactly what he's made it out to be.

[thelibranarchives]

For @giucorreias Flufftober 2020 Day 2 prompt- Ink.

Draco's eighth year seemed to have a strange routine attached to it. His mornings began with Finnigan banging on his door and yelling, 'Wakey, wakey, ice prince,' which served its purpose mainly because it was infuriating. Weasley would be walking to the showers by the time he got out, towel around his neck. Dean Thomas then threatened to scrub the boys' backs if they "hogged the stalls." Longbottom and Blaise met them at the entrance to the common room where the girls also waited impatiently.

After breakfast the mob exited the great hall together but broke off into pairs or trios. Weasley and Finnigan, Blaise, Thomas and Longbottom, Pansy, Ginevra and Millie, Daphne and Lovegood, Granger, him and Potter. The afternoon groups were different depending on the classes they had but Potter was always with him.

Evenings in the common room included homework interspersed with quidditch discussions, exploding snaps or occasionally, hair styling competitions between Millie and Lovegood. Drunk nights saw Pansy forcing a game of Truth and Dare on them all and everyone falling asleep in front of the fire. If sometimes his head fell on Potter's shoulder, who always sat next to him, or on his lap, Draco pretended to be ignorant of it.

He therefore had little to no time to think about the skull on his arm. During the three instances that Draco did, Potter caught his hand and stopped him from scratching it raw. 'Your marks don't define you, Draco,' he had whispered, eyes serious and worried. Draco was reminded of those words each time he had looked at his mark from then on.

It was a quiet evening some ten days before Halloween. Most of the eighth years had gone to the Black Lake or Hogsmeade or were just wandering the castle, taking the evening off to themselves.

'Thomas?' Draco called, unable to sit still any longer. He had been observing that mark on Thomas' right arm for about a week now and he had to find out about it.

'Yes, Draco?' Thomas asked from where he was reading something over Finnigan's shoulder.

'What's that on your arm?'

Thomas froze like he had been Petrified, one hand slapping over his mark.

Finnigan looked at his friend, raising an eyebrow. 'Are you hiding something from me?'

'What? No, no. I-' Thomas stuttered.

Finnigan turned fully in his seat, eyes narrowing at Thomas' hand before quietly wrenching his fingers away one by one.

Draco craned his neck too, excited and eager. It was a simple tattoo of a fox sleeping curled up, it's tail tucked in with its hind legs. Decorating its head, almost as if it was a crown, was a small flame.

Finnigan stared at it for quite a long time before scrambling into Thomas' lap and pulling him in for a hug. 'Dean,' he choked out.

Thomas awkwardly rubbed the back of his head and Draco looked away from the intimate moment. straight into the green eyes of Harry Potter, who had apparently sneaked up to sit behind him on the couch and watched the whole scene.

'Finally, huh?' he laughed, prompting Thomas to blush and burrow his head into Finnigan's shoulder.

He wrapped a hand around Draco's neck and pulled him back, resting his chin on Draco's shoulder and exhaling loudly, 'Ah, young love!'

Draco wriggled free and slanted his eyes at him. 'You are not old, Potter.'

Potter winked at him, and then his expression became somber. 'You know, Halloween's coming up.'

'Yes?' Draco said hesitantly.

'I have permission to go to Godric's Hollow that night,' Potter continued, looking at him meaningfully.

Draco got it after a moment. 'You want me to come with you?'

'If you don't have plans,' Potter mumbled, glancing down at his hands.

That was how Draco found himself walking down the path to the castle gates with Potter, ten days later, just as Hogwarts got ready for the evening feast.

Godric's Hollow was abounding with activity when they arrived, both of them stumbling and nauseous from their apparition. Potter led them to the statue of his smiling parents first. His expression softened and he lifted a hand to their faces before dropping it to his side as if it was dead weight.

Draco hesitated before slowly taking Potter's hand in his and squeezing it. Potter immediately laced their fingers together and wiped away the tears with his other hand. Draco pulled him forwards and they walked towards the cemetery, passing the Potter's home towards which Potter had looked at with such yearning that Draco wanted to wrap him up in his arms until the grief disappeared from his shoulders.

They spent nearly forty minutes in silence beside the graves of James and Lily Potter. Their hands were still entwined even as Potter cast an Orchideous, placing the bouquet on the tombstone. Draco didn't notice when the tears had started to fall but once he heard the sniffle, he stopped resisting. Potter buried his face in Draco's neck as they embraced and wept like a child as Draco rested his chin on top of his head.

'Last year, I was too numb to feel anything,' he said, voice garbled. 'Ron had gone off, Hermione was angry and I-' his voice cracked, 'I was so lost. I couldn't ask either of them to relive those moments again. I couldn't come alone either. I'm sorry.'

Draco knew he was supposed to say something consoling but the nagging feeling that they would be insufficient kept any words from coming out. He found Potter absently thumbing the scar on his hand. He stared at it once, twice and decided.

'Potter,' he said, pulling away and standing up. 'You know muggle London, don't you?'

Potter stood, dusting his trousers, a question in his eyes. 'Yes.'

'Can you take me to a tattoo parlour, then?'

'Why?'

Draco didn't reply. He silently held out his hand and wriggled his fingers when Potter didn't take it. He rolled his eyes at last.

'To raid it. Why would anyone go to a tattoo place, Potter?'

Five minutes later, Draco felt accomplished at having shoven Potter into the chair and threatened him with a body bind if he moved.

'What of your father do you cherish the most, Potter, other than the mop on your head?' He asked.

Potter stared at him. Draco leaned forward and traced Potter's scar with his forefinger. 'You can have good marks on yourself too, you know,' he said.

Potter stared at him some more before smiling tiredly. 'Get out, Draco.'

'Where have you been?' Weasley demanded as soon as they entered the common room.

Potter looked up and only then seemed to realise how much time had gone by. 'Sorry,' he said, rubbing his neck, looking sheepish.

'Potter's tattooed now,' Draco revealed, responding to Potter's glare with a smirk. 

'Don't tell the others,' Potter had asked.

As if.

Honestly, Draco didn't intend to. But then Potter refused to show him and he had to play dirty of course.

Potter didn't stand a chance against the grabby hands of his friends. When his shirt was unbuttoned and his still red chest and shoulders exposed, Draco could only stare. His gaze was held by the mark over his heart.

'Harry!' Granger exclaimed, awed and momentarily speechless. She traced the otter on his left shoulder even as Weasley hugged him, kissing his forehead, eyes teary at the sight of the terrier on Potter's right shoulder.

'Are they Sirius and Prof. Lupin, Harry?' Lovegood asked, pointing at the dog and wolf on either side of his waist.

Ginevra gaped in awe at the picture on his heart. 'It's beautiful, Harry,' she said.

'A stag and a baby deer, how cute.' Pansy's voice didn't have the usual steel.

'Surrounded by a wreath of lilies,' Millie added.

'And not just any lilies,' Longbottom explained. 'They are dragon lilies, often mistaken for the garden variety for how similar they are. They also..'

Longbottom went on but Draco didn't hear it. He recognised those flowers. His mother loved to garden after all. Hearing it confirmed from their resident Herbologist made him snap his eyes to Potter's wonderfully blushing face.

When Draco couldn't sleep that night, he took out some parchment and dipped his quill in the ink. Potter was sleeping peacefully when he left the note on the table next to his bed. Draco couldn't help but smooth Potter's hair and graze his knuckles on his cheek. He returned to his room feeling inexplicably light and elated. His sleep was uninterrupted.

I'm sorry. For everything.

[angelicmichael]

Imminient Annihilation Sounds so Dope, Chapter Three

Michael Langdon x reader

Summary: After realizing your stuck as Micheal for a couple more hours, you decide to do everything in your power to ruin his life

Words: 3.9k+

A/N: Remember, three more chapters of this are already up on AO3 if you would like to keep reading :) reblogs and likes are always appreciated! I feel like this chapter is super long but oh well haha

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

“Girls! It’s time to wake up”!

You mumbled profanities under your breath as you pushed your covers back and sat up in your bed. It took you a second for your brain to start properly working and for you to realize the events that happened yesterday..

Your eyes adjusted to the darkness as you reacquainted yourself with you and Mallorys room. Everything looked exactly the same.. strange. You put your hand under your pillow to see if Micheal had left your phone in its usual spot and you smiled. Atleast he has the decent the leave your phone in the right place.

The room was nearly pitch black execpt for the little bit of sunlight that escaped from the two windows in your room. The little bit of sunlight that escaped from the window allowed you to see that Mallory was just re entering the room, most likely coming from the bathroom.

“(Y/n), you know we can’t sleep in”.

Mallory said softly, staring at you for a couple of seconds before turning around to face her closet.

It was just now starting to register in your brain that, that was actually Cordelia’s voice that you heard ealier. The same voice that had waken you up. And Mallory was in your room, talking to you as well. Did this mean that everyone was actually alive?

“Mallory”?

You said suddenly, your voice disrupting the thick silence.

“(Y/n)”?

She looked at you casually over her shoulder.

“Your Alive”!

You exclaimed and shot right out of your bed like a rocket. You hugged Mallory so hard you two nearly fell over. You were smiling so big that your cheeks hurt and you could hear her laughing. Words could not describe how happy you felt knowing that your best friend was still alive.

“Of course I’m alive! What’s gotten into you”?

She asked and your smile started to fade. You stopped hugging her and made her sit down on her bed next to you, since her bed was in closest proximity to you two.

“I.. Well, there’s not really time to tell you anyway. We should be downstairs with everyone else before Cordelia gets upset”.

You said, hoping with your whole heart that she would buy the excuse. You even started to stand up when Mallory gently put her hand on your arm to stop you.

“Cordelia can wait, can you please just tell me what’s wrong”?

Mallory pleaded. You sighed and then sat down with her.

“Can I ask you something”?

Your voice was shaking. Mallory nodded her head quickly.

“Yeah of course you can”.

Her voice was deeper than it normally was and hushed. One of your favorite things about Mallory was how easy she could pick up on your emotions, it was almost as if she could read your mind, since she seemed to pick up on how nervous you were. You honestly wouldn’t be surprised if she could since her powers were so advanced.

“Is everyone okay? Um.. is anyone missing? It’s really important that everyone is here”.

You stated. You knew how weird it must sound to ask these questions without any context.

“Yeah, everyone’s here. No one left yesterday, you were here. Don’t you remember”?

“No I don’t”.

You admitted. Staring at the ground in shame.

“Mallory, I switched yesterday”.

You knew that she would know what you meant by ‘switching’. You turned your head back to look at her and her frown quickly turned into a wide smile. Her soft brown eyes grew wide with excitement.

“I’m so excited for you! How was it? You have to tell me everything”!

“I will but not right now. Cordelia’s expecting us downstairs-“

“I’m not letting you leave this room until you tell me every last detail. If Cordelia really wants us she will come get us”.

“Fine you win”.

You rolled your eyes and she giggled. She made it very clear that no matter how many excuses you made, she was not letting you escape without a explanation.

To be honest, you couldn’t put your finger on why exactly you were trying to avoid telling Mallory who your soulmate was. If it came down to it, you would trust her with your whole life. You knew deep down that she wouldn’t judge you or hate you for something that wasn’t in your control. You guess you felt embarrassed and ashamed. You knew all of the trouble this would cause if anyone execpt Mallory found out.. and you wish you could just have a happy ending like most people did after they switched. You were going to get anything but. Your coven was actively at war with Micheal, it was either your coven killed him or he killed you guys. That’s how everything would end. You and Micheal could never end up together. You couldn’t imagine a scenario where you and Micheal could even have a happy ending. You swore Micheal being your soulmate was some kind of a messed up joke.

“You okay”?

Mallory asked you, quickly drawing you from your thoughts.

“Yeah. Just fine. So, what do you wanna know first”?

“Everything”!

She said rather loudly.

“Okay, okay. Well, first of all, it’s a male”.

“Ooo. Okay. What else, tell me you atleast got his name”.

Mallory pleased.

“I did, but.. it’s not good news Mallory”.

Your throat started to grow rather dry. You turned your body to face Mallory more and you gently took her hands into yours. Her eyebrows furrowed and she got a rather confused look on her face when you suddenly blurted out his name.

“Micheal Langdon”.

You said his name clearly and loudly, making yourself jump a little in the process. The bedroom, which previously felt calm, still, and peaceful now felt dark, bleak and even grim. It was as if just saying his full name brought about negative energy. You looked up to meet her gaze.

“What?”

“It’s Micheal Langdon, Mallory”.

Your throat was dry and slightly hoarse when you spoke. You studied her carefully, terrified of what her next move would be.

Her confused expression stayed the same but you noticed by how fast her chest was rising and falling that she was starting to breathe faster.

“So that means-“

“-He was here yesterday, yeah. I was in Los Angeles yesterday. In his penthouse”.

You finished her sentence for her.

“His penthouse? He lives in a penthouse”?

“Yeah he does”!

You two broke into laughter, loud laughter. The past couple of weeks the whole coven was focused on being quiet and staying hidden, but you didn’t care at this point. You really didn’t care about anything, right now you were lost in the moment of gossiping with your best friend. You missed this so much.

“It doesn’t look very temporary though. I think he’s staying there since Ms. Mead died, but after yesterday I’m not so certain that she actually died”.

You finished.

“What? You think he brought her back somehow”?

You opened your mouth to respond but hearing the door open and hit the wall made you lose your train of thought.

“Is there a reason why you two aren’t downstairs with everyone else”?

Cordelia said tightly. It was obvious she was cross by the way she spoke and opened the door. She didn’t look too upset though, her posture was straight and her arms were hung loosely at her side. You were the first to break the silence.

“Actually, yes. There is. You should sit down too Cordelia”.

Her gaze shifted between you and Mallory in a curious manner.

“Is everything okay? What happened”?

Her demeanor switched entirely. Her voice turning from being cold to soft and understanding. She quickly sat down on the other side of you.

You started to feel the nerves creep back in. Atleast with telling Mallory the news, you knew she would be understanding and wouldn’t turn hostile. However, you really had no idea how Cordelia would react. You hoped that she knew where your loyalty lie, that you wouldn’t go run off with Langdon just because he was your soulmate.

“So.. I switched yesterday”.

You started, your voice soft. Cordelia smiled and then sat on the other side of you on you and hugged you. You were the first to pull away from the hug.

“But. That’s not it.”

You hung your head low so that you wouldn’t have to watch her reaction.

You sat there breathing. The words were on the tip of your tongue, itching to be let out but you couldn’t say it. You felt so ashamed to even admit who your soulmate was. Before you knew it or you could even stop yourself, you felt your breaths deepen and your eyes water. You were fucking crying, great. It’s not like you could easily hide this either since you were sniffling and gasping for air.

You felt Mallory’s small hand gently rub your back as you felt Cordelia’s fingers lift your chin up so that she could make eye contact with you.

That made everything worse. Atleast with your head down you could pretend no one else was there execpt you, and you could wallow in self pity and be depressed with yourself about this god awful news. But, exposing this to your supreme? To your coven? What if they thought you were a traitor? What if they kicked you out and left you to fend for yourself as Micheal came and obliterated you into fucking nothing as they all watched from the safety of Robichaux’s.

The more you thought about it, that was probably exactly what they were going to do. Mallory was only being supportive because she was your friend. Even though she was destined to be supreme, she didn’t rule the coven yet, and Cordelia still got to make the major descisions. Kicking you out and letting Micheal end you seemed like what would be best for the coven. After your stunt yesterday, you seemed to put a giant target on your back and you knew Micheal would be back to get revenge at some point.

Cordelia took you into her arms and you wept harder than you were before. You made a mental note to get a glass of water after this, since you were more than certain that you would be dehydrated from all this fucking crying. After about a minuete or so of this, when you finally stopped crying hard enough to stop gasping for air - you spoke.

“I-it was Micheal Langdon”

It came out as a mumble at first.

“What was that”?

Cordelia asked softly. You managed to unglue yourself from her clothes so that you could face her and actually see her face when you admitted who your soulmate was.

“It’s Micheal Langdon. That’s who my soulmate is”.

At first she didn’t seem to have a reaction at all, and then when her expression finally changed, she looked rather confused and almost in disbelief. She stood up from the bed and took a couple steps away from you. Your stomach dropped, this is exactly the reaction you had feared most.

“What? Micheal Langdon? Are you sure it’s him (y/n)”

She speaked fast and her voice was hushed. Mallory still sat beside you, being your silent ally, with her hand still placed on your back.

“Yes I’m sure-“

Before you even fully finished your sentence, Cordelia was already talking.

“HOW are you sure”?

She asked. You couldn’t decide whether she was angry or not at this point. It seemed she was still just trying to gather information.

“I got onto his laptop and I saw his name on a email. And honestly, all the stuff in the room kinda gave it away too”.

“What was in the room?”

“Candles, a upside down cross, and a pentagram”.

You said and by the end of the sentence you were laughing from the sheer ridiculous of it all. You could hear Mallory giggling as well. However, Cordelia was not laughing at all. In fact, she looked mad that you two were laughing.

“I would love to hear you explain what part of this is funny to you. This is no laughing matter”.

Cordelia said in a cross tone but you could tell she was trying not to smile and stay serious.

“Mallory, would you mind going downstairs and supervising the girls for me”?

“Of course”.

Mallory said and quickly left the room, shutting the door behind her as she left. You knew Cordelia most likely did this to talk to you alone. Your guessing she thought that you weren’t taking this situation too serisouly with Mallory here.

“I’m sorry for laughing, I really don’t think it’s funny. I’m just so thankful that everyone’s okay, I mean yesterday I was so certain that when we switched, that he would automatically kill all of you or do something horrible.”.

You admitted and it was as if you saw a weight lift from Cordelia’s shoulders as you explained your point of view and where you stood in this whole situation.

“it doesn’t matter to me that he’s my soulmate, I could never be with someone as despicable as him. Even if he didn’t declare war on our coven”.

You continued, trying to make it crystal clear where exactly your loyalty lie. You guessed that’s why Cordelia was so tense. Maybe she thought you would run off with him.

“As much as you say that it doesn’t matter that Micheal is your soulmate, it does matter. It’s going to hurt you when he dies, espically if we kill him and you have to witness it. Even if you don’t have emotional feelings, it will still affect your soul and your wellbeing. Trust me”.

Cordelia said and you couldn’t help but frown. Well shit.

“So.. what we do? I mean.. I’m happy that Micheal didn’t leave a trace here but I can’t say that I did the same”.

You said and Cordelia started to look confused so you quickly continued.

“After I figured out that I switched with Micheal, I figured that he killed everyone at Robichaux’s so.. I figured.. in order to get revenge I should do as much damage as I could”.

You swallowed and you saw Cordelia’s mouth open. Perhaps it was to start talking or because she was just shocked that you would do this?

“So, by reading his emails I found out that he was holding a cooperative meeting that night so I attented-“

“The cooperative?”

“Yes. It’s the illumanti, believe it or not”.

Cordelia nodded in understanding.

“No, I believe you. Continue”.

“So, I went and I cancelled it. I cancelled everything, I told them that the apocalypse was called off and that I.. well actually Micheal.. resigned. And then, these strange men came up to me after the meeting and were talking about Ms. Meads body”??

“Ms. Meads body? She was burned at the stake..”

“Yeah.. I don’t know. But I called off whatever they were doing with Mead too. And then, I wiped his laptop and phone clean so that he wouldn’t have contact with anyone”.

You said solemnly. As stupid as it sounded, and you would never admit it to Cordelia but you almost felt bad.

Micheal came into your world and didn’t do anything at all. He even left your phone under your pillow where you always left it for heavens sake. And then you literally ruined his whole world as payment. You were sure that as you and Cordelia spoke, he was working on fixing everything and plotting your death but.. still.

You couldn’t help but think that maybe if you had left things alone and just stayed in his hotel yesterday like he said, maybe things could be different.

It was tempting to think like that but you couldn’t. Even if you didn’t tamper with his life, that didn’t change that he was the antichrist. It didn’t change him or who he was.

“Well you did good. I’m proud of you (y/n) but it won’t be enough. Micheal is going to continue his plans so, for starters, we’ll have to call the council and determine a new plan because, this isn’t going to work. We can’t have you be here if he comes, or were going to have to change our plans entirely”.

“Do we have to kill him”?

You kind of blurted it out, you didn’t even think about it before you said it out loud.

“The council will help determine a new solution, but yes (y/n), I think that’s still going to be our plan. Trust me, I would never resort to this first. I tried to offer him help in the past but he refused. I just - I don’t know how many other options there are besides ending his life”.

Cordelia explained and you nodded.

“Yeah. I know”.

“I need to go and tell the girls that there needs to be a council meeting as soon as possible”.

Cordelia said, quickly leaving the room.

The rest of the day following up until 7 pm, which is when the council meeting was held, was rather dull. As normal.

The rest of the girls in Robichaux’s were expected to continue working on their skills but because of the unexpected circumstances you had found yourself in, you were supervising over them and helping when needed.

Cordelia would normally have you practicing with everyone else but she figured that now since Micheal was your soulmate, there was no way that she would have you go up against Micheal directly.

Even though, you were still uncomfortable with not knowing what your future held, you were thankful you wouldn’t have to hurt Micheal. Even though, you defintly still thought he deserved it, you just didn’t want to have to witness or be a direct cause of it.

~

It was 7 pm. Dinner was finished and all of the girls that were not a part of the council had headed back up to their bedrooms for individual recreation time. Normally individual recreation time didn’t exist. After dinner typically included getting back into practicing magic for a couple of hours but Cordelia made this brief schedule shift to make sure that no one would over hear the meeting.

You were sad to watch Mallory leave the living room and head up the stairs to your room, you didn’t want to go through this alone. You trusted Cordelia though, and the rest of your sisters. Since the former council members were murdered, Cordelia herself and fellow Robichaux members were put on the council instead. Mallory lingered on the stairs, sending you a supportive smile as she climbed up the rest of the remaining stairs and went back into the safety that was your shared bedroom.

You sat in a black chair before the council, which were all seated at a table in front of you. Cordelia, Zoe, and Queenie were all members of the council. Madison used to be a member but you heard that it was only for a very brief time. By eavesdropping you had learned that Madison was a member of the council before she died, but after micheal brought her back she vanished. She never returned to the coven so her council role was revoked. You knew that Zoe and Queenie kept in touch with her though.

The living room was kept dark and dim, with the fireplace lit, providing a nice ambience with the occasional crackling log. This helped soothe you and calm your nerves.

“So.. we have come up with a descision (y/n), and we would love to propose it to you”.

Cordelia spoke. You knew that they had talked about the situation before you were invited to sit down with them but the fact that they had already came up with a descision? You didn’t know whether to be impressed or maybe.. a little offended that they had decided so quickly.

“I’d love to hear it”.

You said optimistically. You saw them all exchange nervous looks with eachother. You took a deep breath in. This could not be good. Queenie had a emphathetic look on her face as she took the next turn to talk.

“So.. There’s no easy way to put this but.. Girl.. your gonna have to date Micheal Langdon”.

“What?! Excuse me”?

“(y/n)-“

“Cordelia”!

You exclaimed, hoping that maybe she could provide a explanation or to admit to you that this was all just a joke. There’s no way you would date Micheal in ANY universe. Even if someone paid you to do it you don’t think you would really consider it.

“We wouldn’t ask you to do this unless we thought there was a better option (y/n). And, we don’t need you to really date him. We just need you to pretend you like him so that you can get close to him and make him vulnerable”.

Cordelia said quietly.

“You basically you want me to seduce him?! That’s not any better than fake dating”!

You exclaimed and then Zoe butted into the conversation.

“Cordelia’s right but Queenies bullshitting you. The whole point of this is for you to pretend that you like him, get on his good side. And then when he’s vulnerable - we can ambush him”.

You tried to speak but you stopped yourself before any sound actually came out. This proposal didn’t sound too bad.. you would just have to make sure you didn’t get attached.

“And when the time comes to ambush him, well make sure that your away from Micheal”.

Cordelia added.

“Okay.. I can get onboard with that execpt, I ruined his life. I cancelled his big apocalypse plans, crashed his Cooperative meeting and I wiped both his phone and his laptop. He’s not going to want to have ANY kind of relationship with me. I’m probably his #1 target”.

You said, shaking your head. How would this ever work?

“But (y/n), your forgetting one very important thing. Your soulmates. Even if he swears that he hates you with every fiber of his being, he won’t. Not when you two meet in person. After switching, you two share a very strong bond. He’ll be naturally attracted to you”.

Cordelia said, reassuringly. You let out a shaky breath you weren’t even aware you were holding.

“Okay. But what if your wrong and he kills me? And what if I get attached”?

Cordelia softly smiled and shook her head. She got up from the black chair to walk up to you.

“He won’t. I promise. If we weren’t absolutely certain of this then we wouldn’t have proposed this plan. Please (y/n), you are the best hope this coven has. Mallory isn’t strong enough to take Micheal on and neither am I. And, knowing the kind of person he is and what he’s done should be enough to keep you from getting attached. You know how it will end”.

The last sentence seemed to stick with you because of how ominous it sounded. If this ‘soulmate bond’ that Cordelia speaked of was real, it truly sounded like a double edged sword. It would be the thing that would keep Micheal from hurting you but what if you actually fell in love with him? And then your coven would just end up killing him.

“I’ll do it. For the coven”.

You couldn’t stop thinking how the hell you were going to pull this off? You never were the flirtatious type but you would have to try. Perhaps even die trying. You Just hoped that Mallory was awake so that you didn’t have to sit alone with this information

[stoplookingatmeblog]

twenty-one

1.

It was around that time that all my friends went to work in different chapters of what you can call ‘the filming industry’. P-G shot beer adverts which used some kinds of robotics to get the right shot, flip the bottle right, and then slept with this girl who offered him a paid internship in managing pretty much everything on sets of a bunch of movies, ads and whatnot. My own mother, finally getting out of the convenient but unemancipated housewife life, got a job in supervising the shoot - making sure the costumes were right, the scenography, all that stuff. It was pretty much, you could call it, the time of Life On Set Then - everywhere you went, ads, movies, Netflix series, all of it wrapped up in fake police ‘do not cross’ kind of tape, horses and knights from our beer-bottles riding the streets, and the catering busses with food that was (mother told me) ‘absolute horeshit’. Whatever. The time was of living in a reality created for money, by money, with money, because of money, giant heaps of money, distributed unequally (of course) to all my student friends who didn’t even need the money except for that feel of ‘life on their own’.

I didn’t have a job. Before not working, I worked a couple of cafes, restaurants and the like. That was the vibe. I hated it. Each time I began working in one of these places, I ended up sleeping with someone (first time a guy, and then a girl or woman that was honestly too old for me) and that I hoped marked the end of relationship with gastronomy for me. So I didn’t work, deciding not to decide what to do next, not putting myself on the road to one kind of future or another. I didn’t want life to go anywhere directed. I thought about writing but then I thought about the seriousness and stiffness of writing, whether or not it’s a purely natural act, all that, and decided on trying to squeeze the last drops of childhood (it was adolescence, but adolescence is really a final sigh of childhood) and live what was left of the kid-life to the fullest.

I was twenty-one years old. 

A group of friends convinced me to go with them surfing (on my parents’ money), to Victoria, a place which location doesn’t really matter, except that I thought, and still do, that the spot is an actual a piece of heaven on earth. A nearly imaginary point on the increasingly smaller map of this melting planet. My age, too, was melting away like icecream - not having a job and surfing in Victoria, like a teenage pimple, some place that popped up and presented itself in its complete and vulgar form and purpose that you initially didn’t believe and then wept after at that airport because you could never come back. It was an actual speck of heaven on the map. 

Even though everyone was younger than us - four of us, me, P-G, J, and Stone (the last one, a tired intellectual I could never get tired of, except you could see he was really both bored and exhausted by being born and living as himself. And his nickname surprisingly not derived from the astronomical amounts of weed he smoked but his actual god-given surname (which he thought of changing, because of his father) - even though everyone who came to Victoria was younger than us by something like three or four years, we surprisingly didn’t have trouble at least getting along, and at most sleeping with girls there. It was even more grand in that way, even if absolutely not true, when you saw yourself in their eyes as someone older and somehow experienced, who somehow kept going on, and somehow knew what was going on. The same lie made most of us, (excluding me, as I mentioned) get a job around that time. In movies and advertisements, with no creative input or control, but like actors that nobody knew about, playing their own invented parts backstage.

I was twenty-one years old and completely aware of both how small and how big that was. I knew about the kinds of things I probably should be doing and that’s why I sometimes did them, for a minute putting my feet into that creek too, but most of the time staying at the bank and just watching. I knew what being twenty-one meant, so I decided to sit back and watch it.

My friends all surfed a lot, which would normally bother me because I did it only for the first week of our month-long stay, but quickly dropped it and decided to stay at the beach and read, and drink and look at some really beautiful girls who passed me by, and for once enjoy that stranger-life. By the second week, after seeing in a restaurant a shirt with a ‘SeXsurfing ‘00’ inscription on it (‘00 being the year we were born, which made us inspect our parents’ lifelines to check for the possibility that at that time some of them were in Victoria), and in the twenty-one-year-old drunk epiphanius inspiration, all four of us decided that we would lead the ‘SeXsurfing ‘21’ lifestyle, not thinking about the ‘42 and the ‘63 and all that shit. 

I wasn’t the most successful one when it came to girls, but I can say that the stories I had with them were the most absurd and worthy of telling. Even though it was J who (and he too asked himself why in the world that was) was able to talk with someone new every evening, somehow perhaps betraying my unwanted by nonetheless existing monogamous attachment, I slept with only one girl over the course of the last week, picking her up (or perhaps her picking me up) through a conversation about our shared borderline-sociopathic or rebellious outlook on reality. That was very twenty-one. 

Our first meeting (like every meeting since) was going to one of the three tourist shops on the beach and stealing something. And that too was very twenty-one. We were rich enough (our parents were) and far away from home enough to do all that. And we were both young and beautiful enough to want a mugshot we could keep from an arrest by a Victoria Police County Jail or whatever it might have been called. We were never caught but we did steal something every day, and then get drunk in the evening, and then fuck in the night. While my friends had these singular, although beautiful, encounters I would drunkenly burst into the closed restaurant with my temporary girl-friend, steal absolutely vile icecream from the fridge, and then play chess with her on the hotel rooftop at four AM. 

The four of us were twenty-one years old and born in the year 2000 which in the same way made sense - our lives were easy to calculate, clearly-definededly started, and even if they had to end with no thing coming back or being repeated, the twenty-one points we scored didn’t mean anything except the joyride and experiment, and meaningless game that it was. We were taking our shot at living, taking our shot at playing, and even when we didn’t win, it still didn’t mean anything. We lived on our parents’ money, or on advertisement money, or cafe-sleep-with-someone-there-and-then-leave-because-you-don’t-need-money money, all of it a mystification, but that those twenty-one years led to nothing we suddenly did not care. 

Well, and then being woken up by the police, although surprisingly not because of the icecream dream but for the crime of sleeping in a hammock on the dunes which (I learned) was territory of both the military and part of some natural park.

What made me go home with something in the end were the conversations we had at that time, and in particular the conversations with Stone. Like me, Stone had a feeling of injustice done to him by his family, not having a real father and hanging down on the tired gray hair of our housewife mothers and all, and it made us connect on a level we didn’t with either P-G or J, who were most often busy surfing or thinking about the jobs they had or would one day have, and the girls they met that weren’t my girls so I didn’t care that much.

Stone kept affirming that both of us (although him in particular) were in possession of superior intelligence, which I instinctively tried to discourage him from saying (because I didn’t like sucking my own dick like that), but nonetheless accepted as at least potentially or partially true. In my case, it was not intelligence that me connect with Stone but some kind of a shared understanding of what was going on, that we were twenty-one and what that meant, like a filthy two-pigeon flock of pigeons flying above the waves, knowing the fact of the creature swimming underneath the surface. I thought, and still do, it had to do largely with coming from an unhappy or non-existent family, which really makes you understand that all you do, with even the most meaningful and beautiful things, is just this game that you play but holds no particular meaning beyond it. That and that love, no matter how beautiful or true, can slip away from you like shit. 

‘It is completely lonely’, he said one night as we chugged down the bottles of beer drunk rich kids left behind running away from the police - bottles half-empty to me and I think half-full for him, but I still haven’t quite figured that one out, ‘Because you never really see things the way the rest of them do, and each conversation almost the same, you begin to think the only way to be is to be alone’

I agreed. I usually did, being aware that he was slightly more intelligent than me.

‘Back when I was in the Institute, they told me I would have problems with getting out of relationships with people what other people get from other people because what I want is to be understood and that is problematic when you think you want it but also think it’s impossible to ever understand anything’

I too thought you could never understand anything, but had a sense he perhaps only said it to keep me on the same page. Stone chugged down another half-full beer and kept talking. I stayed silent, in part because I would probably say the same things he did.

‘When I was seventeen and worked in a factory, I gained a sort of awareness of how my life would look like’

‘What kind of a factory?’, I asked

‘A cake factory, I would work in the hot section and pull out cakes out of the oven and then fill some of them with cherry, and some of them with apple-cinnamon. And then, because I was seventeen and my work was fundamentally illegal you could say, they’d let me work in the cold section in the night, and I applied sugar coating on these doughnuts, you know’

‘Yeah’

‘And then wrap them up in plastic covering, you know’

‘Yeah, yeah’

‘when the coating was dry, and send them to another section of the factory. And so over and over.’

‘So, what does your life look like because of that, do you think?’

‘I don’t know…’, he took a puff from one of the cigarette butts we found that night in the ashtray, ‘... I guess working in the factory was a kind of almost psychedelic experience that really made me aware what my attitude towards suicide is. You’re young, and you step into that thing, and you do those things because you want to, you don’t need to. Well, you might need to but the need is still your choice, it isn’t honed into your life like… Like I recognised at some point that each cake I filled with the stuffing or coated was an expression of the same kind of thing I did when I smoked weed (a lot), or drunk (a lot) or had sex. That, ultimately, I would never be able to not think about it.’ 

‘I mean, I think the position we are in - if I understand you correctly - of being relatively well-off - I mean our parents - would make you unable to really plunge into anything that you’re doing, right? Because you ultimately don’t have to do anything, like, really, like here, you always sort of treat it as a game’

‘Not even a game’, he said, and the sun was already slowly creeping up the mountain in front of the shop where we were sitting, ‘But just not a challenge. Because of our intellect, both yours and mine, the only challenge you really face is whether to continue being or not, and the rest is just, you know, stuffing these cakes. But that decision, you know The Myth of The Sisyphus?’

I did.

‘Yeah, so that decision you have to and always will have to make fundamentally alone. And so either go and work - work in any kind of way and do those things and hand them over to others to complete them and you don’t really ask questions (but we can’t do that, neither you nor I) or you step out of the factory and face the living sun, like you’re definitely going to feel after we leave this place, and decide whether you’re more happy alone or with others, or whether you want to keep on handing things to others or not, and all that.’

‘I mean this is the reason I think people shouldn’t have children - I’ve written a piece about it, you should definitely read it - because it’s kind of like juggling with a hot potato and handing it to someone else, so that they have to confront these questions, instead of you, but what you really do is give up.’

At that point I don’t think I understood his cake factory metaphor or didn’t want to believe that I did in the fear that it wasn’t very profound.

‘So what do you think you’d like to actually do?, if you could pick anything at all?’

‘I don’t know’, again inhaling another cigarette butt and handing one to me. And the sun almost rolled its own boulderous weight to the top of the mountain. ‘I think I would like to have a family, especially since meeting May (he was the only one of out SeXsurfing quartet with a girlfriend), I started thinking that maybe I can, and I’m recognising this, give someone something that my father never gave me, hoping to do it right this time’

‘Yeah, I mean that’s literally the ending of my book - have I told you already I’ve written a book? - that the main character thinks he can do it right this time and he of course fucks it up, but I don’t know if I still think that. You know, life is sometimes surprising.’

‘Exactly’, he exalted the smoke, and the sun, previously rolling up the mountain to sunrise, seemed to have fallen back again to the bottom of the mountain, and began its journey anew. 

‘I mean, when I was seventeen I worked in a factory…’

‘What kind of a factory?’

‘A psychedelic cake factory’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I worked in this factory and I worked in the hot section and my job was to take the cakes out of the oven and then pump them full of acid, or pot, or sex, or anything you could get your hands on. I guess it was illegal, but then again I was seventeen so my work was all fundamentally illegal.’

‘Where did the cakes later go?’

‘Later? Well in the factory I sent them to another section that I never really saw, but later later to homes, parties, rich people who really wanted to try the kind of stuff their kids were taking, I guess’, he chuckled, ‘It’s interesting, I wonder if my father ever tried one. Maybe in some alternative universe or something. Maybe he ate it and became like me, and dropped everything and went to work in a factory and in that reality they stuffed the cakes with shit like cherry and coated them with sugar, you know, maybe that was the right reality, and later he dropped that job, and went outside of the factory, and made the choice and threw himself under a bus or something.’

‘The right reality. 

Maybe.’

2. 

Lou from the restaurant (the SeXsufring tshirt we found was in that restaurant) was the kind of man you’d always want to be. We travelled to him for dinner hitchhiking from the beach, in twos, usually P-G and J, and then me and Stone, around seven, or all together if we could sit in the trunk of the car when we travelled in one of the rich-kid rented cabrios, and you would feel the day (same day, every day) a winding road under our feet (like gods, treading on forever) cutting through the mountains and the sunset rolling his boulder somewhere and when you finished eating you’d lie down on the warm good night asphalt with a can and listen to music on one of our phones and wait for someone to take you back to the beach. 

But gods that we were, Lou from the restaurant was the kind of man you’d always want to be. It was always a show, too. He would come by people’s tables (our table in particular, because he knew and we knew), this enormous older man dressed in a white sweaty shirt with eyes that looked blind but saw everything, and told us stories about all that he knew, which was pretty much the town, and the town hall, and the restaurant, and everything. And the girls also came there to eat, and everyone too. And everyone knew Lou from the restaurant.

I always ordered things I could not afford because P-G and J were always happy to lend me money, so I ate octopuses and steaks, and everything was everything you’d ever want to eat. There were half-blind, strangely-speckled cats that roamed under the tables, not even expecting guests’ dinner cat-food enjoying the company, like we did, and there were kid cats and mother cats and they would fight on the backdrop of the white-painted summer trees, and some girls would say the cats’ were really poor and imply their lives were wretched and miserable to which I would reply with something like natural selection and they would say that’s a horrible thing to say and then all of us would bite into the steaks that Lou brought us. 

After P-G  asked him to tell us his version of the legends we heard of from the girls, about his old restaurant, and how someone ruined it and how the paradise moved from Victoria to this new town (I don’t know the name, but it was simply Lou’s town), and it seemed like god himself was telling us the story, dusting it off, driving away the spiders and the snakes, an old book or a chapter in a book that everyone on the beach talked about but it seemed nobody actually heard. Except the four of us.

‘Well so you know I’m really electrician’, he began, ‘but at one moment I tell my wife - let’s build restaurant. So I go to the town hall, here’, and he pointed to a building not ten meters away, ‘and the auction close at 12, I go in at 11:56 and the price is 12000 and I go in and say 60000. So I get the restaurant and everyone crazy and angry at me but I have it.’, I cut out the portion of the steak and chewed on it orgasmically. Everything Lou cooked was good as hell. ‘So I build restaurant…’

‘But not here, right, on the beach?’, P-G, who heard most versions of the story interrupted

‘Yes, the beach. So I build restaurant and first year I make so much money I put it in…’, his broken eyes and mad half-blind english were both looking for the word, ‘like bags, plastic bags, trash bags, and it is so much I count it then in winter, because I have no time in summer. So it is good, so much money, going great. And then in year two thousand and… two thousand just, maybe, I go away for holiday and they call me “your restaurant is destroyed”, I say “no you’re kidding me”, and they say “no, no, they burn restaurant down, come back”. So I come back, and true, the restaurant is destroyed, and you cannot build it again because the law that was there changed so you cannot build now.’, as he was telling the story, Lou’s eyes stayed monotonously bland, bright and staring somewhere beyond. A true restaurateur, he never stopped looking at what was going on at the other tables so at that point he stood up, saying ‘I finish the story in moment’, and went to take care of something in the kitchen.

Then when he finally came back, he said:

‘So where was I now tell me.’

‘Your restaurant was burned down when you were out of the country’, I reminded him

‘Yes. So I move here and build new restaurant, and it is small but people come like before and they even fight for to eat, and they ask “you finished already, let us eat”, and my restaurant again now is doing well, very well, and people come, and still I don’t have space, but people come’

‘And is it going better or worse than in the previous location?’, P-G asked

‘No, there there was more money but here is good. Very good.’, he waved his grubby big hand at all the tables packed with people, girls, others like us. And he laughed with his tongue flying up and down in his mouth in a way some people find repulsive, but to us it was Lou from the restaurant, and Lou from the restaurant could honestly laugh in whichever goddamn way he pleased. 

‘Ok, I’m sorry but I have to go again, the people’, he pointed to the kitchen, ‘don’t know what they do’

Our twenty-one year old quartet replied ‘of course, of course’, in unison and for a while we sat there chewing our steaks, and fish and octopus, and another steak, silently, only saying a couple of words of admiration for Lou from the restaurant, the man you’d always want to be.

‘There are snakes and scorpions here’, P-G told me one time we went to the more rocky part of the dunes near where our tent was pitched. ‘So we have to be super careful, especially during the day. In the night they sleep in their wretched little caves or among the rocks, they won’t bother us in our sleep.’ 

But they will bother us when we’re awake, or when we think we are, but are someplace else, like Lou from the restaurant who went for holidays. You stop paying attention to what is slithering or crawling in the sand and one time as you are looking for a nice and fresh cigarette butt lost in the sand, BAM, and you are dead, like that (Lou’s grubby old hand falling down on the wooden table with a thud).

We were twenty-one years young and on holidays from either a job in advertising or not yet having a job in advertising, and there were girls and waves, and sand, and scorpions, and it was all a joyride so we didn’t really think about that. Well, to be honest, not much could go wrong - another day, like groundhog day, would be more or less the same, always better and better and better. And the shrinking, melting map - warmer and warmer and warmer. 

The worst that could happen, we knew, was the police coming in and chasing us away from the dunes (because it was both military grounds and a national park at the same time). But that wasn’t that bad, after all, it was police in paradise, and we felt so much love for them as we did for the scorpios and the snakes and it was just impossible for them to not love us back.

Well, hen one day it happened. It was after I woke up with her, for the first time in two weeks sleeping in an actual bed, but more importantly for the first time in perhaps a year sleeping with a warm body next to my heart, next to me, in my hands, falling asleep with my lip still in her teeth. I woke up in the morning and having the bare level of awareness of my state, that I must stink and will not be fun to be around in the morning (although the fresh air made hangovers impossible - what can I say, it was paradise), I decided to go back to the our camp on the dunes and sleep off the night in a hammock I usually inhabited. 

There were usually some locals (working in restaurants and the shops I stole flip-flops from) who like devils crawled out in the night and tried to party with the twenty-one year old us, drinking our booze and smoking our smokes, so when the white-poloed guy woke me up like bad sunrise saying ‘Police, wake up, police’, in sly english and a broken smile, my instinctive reaction was to reply with a classic ‘Shut the fuck up, you’re not police’, but after seeing one of them who definitely was police, with a uniform and gun and all, I complied with their request for my ID and let them write me a pink slip of paper demanding a fine so astronomic that none of them could not possibly believe I’d actually pay it. A younger policeman (also not uniformed) asked me what happened to my neck and, explaining a bruise that could only look like a love bite (and indeed it was), I replied that I was bitten by a wild animal (and indeed I was). He said that with that bruise-like love bite and a half-unbuttoned shirt I looked like a ‘star, rock star, you know’, and we both laughed, and I decided none of it was that bad after all. He looked like a ‘star, rock star, you know’, as well, slightly unfashionable but at the same time completely incredible in bluish sunglasses, a pink polo shirt and slightly silver but naturally black hair. In Victoria, the snake, too, was quite handsome, and what he ruined, at the end of the day, was only an hour of my sleep.

I met Lou from the restaurant - he saw some creature, and its wretched work, destroying his restaurant, but his bright, half-blind, all-seeing eyes burned with nothing but love. And mine, slowly but surely, started to shimmer with it too. The days, or the same day, grew brighter and brighter, and the nights drunker and drunker and the driving drunk on the beach got faster and faster, and more and more people fitting into one car, with no winding-road end in sight.

3. 

There was no hangover in Victoria, but going anywhere in the morning was especially difficult, as if the gravitational force doubled, or thriced, or quadrupled.

Stone, who had an admirable ability to make contact with any kind of an alien species of a person (that I really envied), found himself one night in a conversation with a russian maths student (the Russian started university well before the usual age, he was like 17), and when the next day we asked what the two talked about Stone only said ‘I think we are a week away from merging the theory of relativity with quantum mechanics. But give me another bottle and it will be one day.’

The Russian, Stone told us, was one of the ‘exceptionally intelligent’ ones (which Stone, had the habit of identifying and cataloguing into his set of people ‘worth talking to’). The Russian was younger than us - perhaps sixteen or seventeen, as I mentioned which really gave everything he said an additional benefit of seemingly prodigy-like, but also made Stone wonder whether he was a kind of a father-figure to the exceptionally intelligent maths student, that considering leading Stone to the two days later declaration that it was undoable, stemming from Stone’s own desire to redeem his father’s abusive absence et cetera et cetera. 

The Russian was so socially inept, that even I was doing quite well (it was not superior intelligence, that barred me from connecting with others, as Stone asserted). A prodigy, the Russian spoke not just maths and Einstein, but quite good english, french (from my limited knowledge I could confirm also quite good), spanish and bulgarian (which I had absolutely no idea about but he sounded possessed and speaking in tongues when he presented his abilities to us). He could play giftedly most instruments you could think of, but playing, he said, never really excited him. He was one of those kids who know and can do so much they would really rather not do it at all.

Because of our groups’ incidental and unexpected but intense interactions with girls, the Russian treated us with an unjustified reverence, but it was not any kind of envy, with a mind like that you don’t really envy anything except being able to rest from what’s in your head and for once have a good night’s sleep. There is a scene in the movie Beautiful Mind where the main character, a schizophrenic, lays out to a girl he likes, very systematically, astrophysically like, why she should sleep with him. I bet that’s what the Russian would do too in the future.

There is another scene in a movie - Interstellar where a group of astronauts looking for humanity’s potential new home (the map contracting, the world getting small since the year ‘00, now twenty-one, then ‘42 then ‘63, warmer and warmer and warmer), the group of astronauts lands on a planet, of constant, unending sea, sees in the distance what they think is the great mountains of a new found land. After a couple of minutes of advancing towards the mountains, Matthew Mcconaughey says in hollywood style ‘these are not mountains. These are waves’ and the four astronauts have to flee the slowly approaching catastrophic demise of the wave, which, due to a fucked-up gravity on the planet, rose to that catastrophic height. 

At six AM, after one of the exceptionally drunk nights, with the sun already in full swing, and the alcoholic gravity fucked-up in their heads, Stone and J went to catch a wave bigger than at any time of the day. 

While I was sleeping off the night in the hammock, with God knows what dreams, or maybe even no dreams at all, and P-G tossing and turning in the tent, and Stone and J surfing the morning wave, the Russian sat solemnly and alone on the sunrise beach and looked up at the starless sky, wiped clean by one gigantic white star which at that point (he knew, we didn’t know) was so big and close to the contracting map that it sucked out some of the time and some of the space from the air, making the tide rise more than at any time of the day. He knew why that was and we didn’t know but we were looking at the same thing, the earth getting warmer and warmer and warmer, and the wave growing higher and higher and 

And we would sometimes go away from Victoria, to a nearby town where the waves were always bigger and we marvelled at how they whip-cracked, splash-fell and rocked against the concrete-lined shore and drowned the air underneath with all their might, worked it into white foam. He knew and we didn’t, and while we lay down with girls looking into the stars and talking about constellations (only to then laugh about how drunk and absurd it is to think three stars can possibly represent the shape of a great bear or big dipper or any kind of stupid shit like that), The Russian tried to crack the code written in the stars. Looking for a new home for us. The four of us walked the shore and wondered about the origin of colorful pebbles spat out by the lapping magnificent waves, and he could probably tell us everything about each of them, trace lines from each falling star to each stone we cast mindlessly into the sea.

He could explain the shifting realities when the morning came, and why, at seventeen, you have to do certain things and not the others, and now, too, why we did all those things, why we worked in psychedelic factories and sung our hearts out to the bass of the speaker. Why we ran after girls beach-length and back, why we hitchhiked to Lou’s restaurant, why we came to Victoria in the first place, why we had jobs in advertising, why we were twenty-one, but Stone was right about one thing - the Russian was ‘fundamentally alone’

There is another scene in Interstellar, the next one after the giant wave, where Matthew Mcconaughey comes back to the spaceship waiting in the orbit of a water-mountain-these-are-not-mountains planet, discovers that time, tied with an invisible string to the fucked-up gravity) passes differently on the surface of the planet, in its orbit, and in general completely differently back on the contracting earth’s map where he left his children. How old were at the time he left in that movie - I can’t remember, let’s say twenty-one. Having spent only half an hour on the surface, he now plays the received messages from back home and sees his children’s lifetimes growing older and older and older and finally sees them surpassing them in age. He breaks down in tears and I suppose you could say he, too, was ‘fundamentally alone’

The Russian, Stone told us, was taught privately by a tutor who’s line of mathematical origin could be traced all the way to Gauss or someone. He could speak Einstein, french and spanish, and although his tongue got tied in human conversations, one day, as we drank beer on a small patch of grass in front of the local hotel, he proclaimed there was something very important we wanted to tell us. Concluding that the Russian was most definitely possessed by something (you could tell when he spoke bulgarian), we all decided listening would do no harm but at worst would be so incredible that we would not believe it. 

‘You guys are now young and strong and you surf and all, but seriously, you have to do sports’, he began, ‘I don’t mean just any sport but something that really puts weight on your muscles. Like rowing or pumping on the bench, you have to train and now prepare for the rest of your life. And cardio, too, it will save you from heart disease and such.’ - and you can imagine mine, our surprise and feeling of absurdity that a being like that was uttering sentences such as these at that moment. 

And that was it, the only normal set of words he ever uttered in front of us, which in his mouth was not normal at all - this man, trained by Gauss himself, had one recommendation to us and it was to do sports because it will help us to stay healthy in the future. 

In space, the state of weightlessness makes the unused muscles grow weak, and the astronauts have to use the special gym machines installed on their spaceship so that their bodies don’t entropy, and heart is a muscle, too, I think, and I wondered, briefly, after what the Russian told us, if it too can die with no gravity. And it seems that time is a muscle too. It contracts and then it unfolds, it squeezes and releases and lets you breathe and suffocates, and ultimately things seem neither good nor bad but just what they ended up being. Time can definitely die away and fall from you like a dead leaf. Or it can end up a pretty stone under the feet of a giant wave. You don’t feel how it squeezes and unfolds, how it lays you down in a warm bed in the arms of someone you didn’t ever know but who reminds you of everything. 

Matthew Mcconaughey - seeing messages from the future, past, present, now, never, always, and breaking down into tears, his heart breaking from weightlessness.

I was twenty one and I knew what it meant. 

And in a year I would be twenty two, and in another year twenty three, and in three years twenty four. And the astrology girls, going with us skinny dipping in the midnight water, they will disappear somewhere under the waves and start slowly fading away from our lives like an unused muscle.

J loved quoting this one scene from Matthew Mcconaughey's first movie: 

‘You know what I love most about college girls? I get older - they stay the sameeeee age’

And each time he said it, he laughed with the greatest, purest laughter you could find on this now planet.

4. 

‘And I got caught one time’

‘For what?’

‘Well, maybe two, but only one time involved the police. Second time. And that was me trying to steal an album, well, it was called Steal This Album’ - I was lying, although I did also steal that album, but having trouble with the police was for an attempted theft of headphones though that didn’t sound as sexy. And for some reason which made me feel real good I was flirting with the most beautiful girl under the good sun by us recounting our thefts both real or invented.

We both quickly settled that we had some borderline immoral thread running through our veins but drew the line at actually killing someone. We were rich and young enough to say those things and be all sexy about it. We knew we didn’t have to steal but arranged we should do it together and some point (‘ok, why not tomorrow?’) and it was beer first, and then flip flops the next and then another day a pink swimming mattress from the backseat of some rich and young and abandoned rented cabrio. And we took it swimming, drunkenly in the night. Rich and young, and full of stars.

We stepped into the calm sea, small waves, shallow, and took off our clothes, most of them, and took our pink stolen mattress against the waves, her covering small breasts with only her hands, our sociopathic personalities meeting somewhere under ridiculous notions of astrology. We kissed, and that was that. 

The mattress lay once again abandoned (has someone left the rented cabrio just as we left the shore?) where our friends would say it was ridiculous to steal it. We only stopped kissing when she said we have to look for the damn pink abandoned thing (apparently it was rented by one of her friends) after which we dived deep into the shallow sea.

I remembered all those things other than sex best. The kiss in the sea. The conversation about stealing shit, the hand covering breasts. And after sex, the interruptions of it by my taking sips from a big bottle of booze, and playing chess on the rooftop of the place we stole from. 

‘And I got caught one time’

‘For what?’ 

‘Stealing mattresses, and flip flops, and beer, but it was good, the time I did treated me well’

‘How long were you in for?’

‘Hmm I don’t know, around eight decades’

‘Woah, how old were you when you got caught?’

‘Like, twenty-one’

‘Shit, but you say it was good?’

‘Yeah. It was good life’

[kumiwrites]

such is life

Kuroo Tetsurou is not normally someone who dwells on the past, but he finds that tonight, he can't quite shake the way it haunts him.

Or—

Nostalgia is a funny thing.

Pairing: University!Kuroo Tetsurou x Reader Genre: Angst Words: 1945 Warning(s): Mention of sex, heartbreak, nostalgia AO3 Link

A/N: Honestly this is just a super self-indulgent fic I wrote because I’ve been feeling super nostalgic about life, especially after finishing Kimetsu no Yaiba. I hope you enjoy!

           The clock on his phone flickers to 2am, and Kuroo sighs softly.

           Tonight is one of those sleepless nights where his mind refuses to power off and it always leaves him thinking about unnecessary things. He settles for scrolling through his photos, though Kuroo knows it’s a bad idea. He’s never been one to delete photos, so there are plenty of memories that are waiting for him in the depths of the album.

            As if on cue, a familiar smile—one that he hasn’t seen in person since the last day of high school nearly a year ago—comes onto the screen, and he taps the face. The image enlarges, and he’s met with a photo that used to be his wallpaper.

           His arm is wrapped around your neck lazily, and your back is pressed to his chest as you snap the photo of the two of you on a date. His chin rests on the top of your head, and the gentle smile you give to the camera is one that he’s found himself on the receiving end of for as long as he’s known you.

           Kuroo finds himself smiling at the photo, and he swipes across the screen, losing himself in the memories that each picture brings to mind. He’s normally not a nostalgic person, but somehow, you’ve changed that about him.

           He’s always been a calculating person. Volleyball blessed him with the ability to learn how to read people, and nearly every move he made for years of his life was thought out and meticulous. But something about you lowered his defenses. With you, he tried to keep it at bay—he couldn’t figure you out completely. You scolded him whenever he tried to analyze you and pin down exactly what you were thinking, but it didn’t stop him from trying when you refused to talk about things.

           He’s about to lock his phone when he comes across a photo of you together on your first date. His eyes linger on your face—the two of you were second years, and after much pestering and a whole lot of persistence, he had gotten you to say yes to going to a dessert café near the school.

           Almost as if you knew he was thinking of you, his phone rings, and the number is one he recognizes immediately. He wonders, briefly, if he should just pretend to be asleep and deal with it in the morning. But he’s already feeling so nostalgic, and he wants to hear your voice.

           “Tetsu?”

           “Yeah,” he replies softly, his breath hitching in his throat. Nobody calls him that anymore.

           “It’s been a while,” you continue, and he finds himself melting for the sound of your voice the way he used to. “I was thinking about you and wanted to see if you were up.”

           He hesitates for a moment, wondering if this is a good idea, but he can’t stop himself. “I was, too.”

           You let out a soft laugh, and Kuroo’s heart flutters in his chest. It’s a warm sound that he’s found solace in time and time again. “Nostalgia’s a funny thing, huh?”

           “Definitely,” he replies.

           “How was your first year?” you ask, and he can hear the sound of fabric brushing over the microphone as you shift positions.

           “Tiring is probably the best way to describe it,” he tells you, pressing the phone to his ear as he uses the pillow to prop it up.

           “I’d say the same,” you sigh. “It’s weird not seeing you in classes.”

           High school feels like it was a different life—as if he were peering into someone else’s world for a brief moment. “It was pretty lucky that we were in the same class for all three years at Nekoma.”

           You hum in agreement. “If you hadn’t befriended me in first year, I don’t know if we would’ve become as close. I was pretty hard to deal with in second year.”

           Kuroo laughs. Just as he’s about to reply, he hears an unfamiliar voice from your end of the call.

           “Still awake, [Name]?”

           “Yeah, I’m just talking to Kuroo. I’ll go to bed soon.”

           Kuroo’s heart sinks. He isn’t sure if it’s because you drop the affectionate nickname you’ve always called him by, or because he instinctively thinks that you’re with him.

           “Sorry, Tetsu. That was my roommate, he just got home from the library.”

           “No worries. I actually have to go—early morning practice.”

           Why is he lying to you?

           “Oh, well we should catch up sometime soon.” Your voice shakes a little—if he didn’t know you the way he does, it would’ve gone unnoticed.

           He wants to scream and cry, all at once. “Yeah. We can grab coffee at our usual place or something.”

           Our usual place. The little café where you went on countless dessert dates together, where he had held your hand for the first time as the two of you left the shop. Where he had kissed you once, because there was whipped cream smeared on your chin and he wanted to see how flustered you’d get if he licked it off and delivered it back to you. Where he had seen you cry once after a particularly difficult week, and you let him feed you forkfuls of cake as you wept into his shoulder. The little, quaint café where Kuroo first told you that he loves you.

           “I haven’t been there in a long time,” you say with a soft sigh, the mention of the place bringing to mind the yummy desserts and perfectly brewed coffee. Kuroo can tell you’re just as reminiscent of those times as he is, but he can also tell that the tone of your voice is off—he wonders why.

           Just as he’s about to pull the phone from his ear, he hears a soft hiccup. Ah—that’s why you sound off. You try to play it off as a cough, but he recognizes the sound—he’s always recognized it.

           His heart softens, and he feels the tears come to his eyes, too. He can’t help but wonder if you still cry the same way he’s always known you to cry—if you were still an ugly crier. He’s always thought that your crying face was a precious one; one that made him want to destroy whatever was hurting you, but at the same time, some twisted part of him really did like that you’d only really let yourself be vulnerable like that in front of him. He then wonders if that’s still the case you for—if he’s still the only one to have seen that side of you.

           With that in mind, Kuroo can’t quite stop himself from telling you how he feels right now, and he wholeheartedly believes that you’ll scold him for it.

           “I’ve missed you.”

           He can hear the hiccup catch in your throat, as if it knows that now is not the time. You’re quiet, but he knows your mind is flipping through all the different reasons why he’d say something like this to you, and what you should say back.

           “I miss you too, Tetsu.”

           He laughs softly, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his palm. It doesn’t do anything to stop the tears, but he can pretend it helps.

           “I wish I could get a Tetsu hug, but I guess this’ll have to do for now.”

           He wishes he could hug you, too.

           “Good night then, Tetsu.”

           He lets out the breath he had been holding. “Good night,” he replies softly, and the phone beeps once, signalling the end of the call.

           There’s a soft pitter patter that echoes in his chest, as if to remind him that he still feels empty, incomplete. It started the day you told him that you were accepting your offer to Kyoto University, mere days after he had told you he was accepted to UTokyo with a sports scholarship that would leave him paying next to nothing for his schooling.

           Who was he to beg you to reconsider? To stay with him, and go to UTokyo? Not Kuroo Tetsurou—no, he wouldn’t have dreamed of doing such a cruel thing. The two of you made a promise, at the beginning of your third year, that you wouldn’t change your plans for each other. That no matter what, you would make only the best of choices for your futures.

           But Kuroo didn’t realize, when he had intertwined his pinky with yours in that innocent promise, that you were the most important part of the future he envisioned. That he had never truly believed the two of you would go your separate ways after high school, leaving behind a love that still made his head spin.

           The melancholic look on your face that day is still burned into his memory. The sadness in your eyes despite being able to study your dream program at your dream school, the gentle smile tugging at your lips as if to reassure him that this was okay—all of it weighed down on him heavily.

           “Two hours is a long way to commute for a student,” is what you had said to him. He agreed, that it’d be impossible to manage a long-distance relationship alongside his volleyball practices and studies. Even if you were the one who did the commuting, he’d likely be too exhausted by the time you arrived after classes to even spend enough quality time with you to make the trek worth your while. And Kuroo was nothing if not practical, so with a hoarse voice, he had been the one to save you from saying the words, “We should break up.”

           The two of you sat in your favourite café—in the booth where everything had started nearly two years ago—and held each other’s hands as the tears came quietly. The desserts were left untouched in front of you as you sat in quiet turmoil, your occasional hiccup being the only sound that disrupted that silence. Without so much as touching the order, he laid down a few bills and walked you home, never once letting go of your hand. Your parents had been away on business, meaning there would be nothing to help distract you from the heartache once you went inside. When you reached your doorstep, neither of you wanted to part ways just yet, so you invited him into the familiar home to spend the night.

           It wasn’t the first time he’s woken up with you in his arms, but it was certainly the last. He remembers the way the sunlight made your hair shine like liquid gold, tresses resting peacefully on his bare chest as your limbs remained tangled in one another. A soft kiss to your forehead was enough to stir you, and he let you wake slowly as he recalled the sleepless night. Part of him wished he could record your soft mewls—sounds he’d never heard fall from your parted lips until that night—and keep them forever, but he knew that a video wouldn’t do you justice. Making love to you was special, and it deserved to exist as a treasured final memory of his time with you.

           He finds himself scrolling through his photos again until he lands on the last photo taken of the two of you together. The image of you peacefully asleep with your head on his chest and his hand buried in your hair brings back more memories, and if he tries hard enough, he swears he can smell the lingering traces of you.

           It’s enough to break his heart all over again, and Kuroo lets it.

[just0nemorepage]

Uprooted || Naomi Novik || 435 pages --------------------------------------------- Top 3 Genres: Fantasy / Young Adult / Romance

Synopsis: Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.

Her people rely on the cold, ambitious wizard, known only as the Dragon, to keep the wood's powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman must be handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as being lost to the wood.

The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows - everyone knows - that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia - all the things Agnieszka isn't - and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.

But no one can predict how or why the Dragon chooses a girl. And when he comes, it is not Kasia he will take with him.

Finished: August 19th, 2020.

Progress: 12 / 10. 120% COMPLETE.

My Rating: ★★★★★. [5/5]

My Review: [Under the read more - NOT SPOILER FREE]

Okay, I really want to write the review for this one but I honestly am having the hardest time figuring out how.

The beginning sort of got off to a rocky start – Sarkan was insufferable, and I was absolutely NOT there for the casual shrugging off of attempted rape.

But like… the attempted rapist was killed, and Sarkan went through some pretty deep character development, so, that’s a thing.

I also don’t know how I feel about Agnieszka and Sarkan being a thing together, what with the age difference (17 versus well over a century old). Those sexy-time scenes certainly rustled my jimmies (for like, days lmao) (and that was the first time I've EVER read a female orgasm described, and done with just a hand no less!!), and how protective he was over her really made me melt – but, man, still. The age difference just didn’t sit right. I think that’s probably the biggest complaint I had with the whole book.

Now, with that said and out of the way… ……. the REST of the book spoke to me. My god, it hit me right in my soul. Everything about the mood and setting and aesthetic for this book were just a friggen HOME RUN for me, particularly that last chapter where everything came together, oh my god.

I just – okay, I’m going to spit my thoughts out like normal.

Agnieszka basically saying “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” when Sarkan tries to tell her to stay and fix the tower, and making a life and job of her own cleansing the Wood. How she clearly misses him, but doesn’t pine after him or even ask him to come back, and lives a full and complete life entirely on her own. How she came into her own by the end and is no longer awkward and self conscious, but confident and self-assured and respectful and oh my god her COTTAGE.

The witchy feel of the whole damn story. And not just any witchy feel – but green witchcraft, stuff centered around trees and nature and growing things. And she is BAREFOOT the whole time she works and does her magic.

How her inherent talent for folk magic and healing and natural clumsiness and gift for foraging all just fed naturally into her end role as the Wood’s caretaker.

The story of how the Wood got corrupted in the first place – boy I feel that. Female rage, man; this illustrated it so damn well. And how the one responsible for it all was given a respectful and dignified ending to her story, rather than a tragic one. (Which sort of also leads into the underlying plot point that seemed to tell male entitlement to go fuck itself for the entire story.)

THOSE WOOD PEOPLE. Oh man. I could read a whole book centered around them. AND KASIA. I ADORED KASIA, and EVERY DAMN THING about her. She fucking TACKLED A HORSE. And she’s training to become a knight??? FUCK YES. And her friendship with Agnieszka?? I nearly wept with joy at its depth and realism.

And I don’t know if this is actually more commonplace than I’ve seen, but this is the first time I’ve read a Polish-themed fantasy! I’m half Polish, and never really learned much about it – so this hit an innate feeling of home in an entirely different way, too. (AND, the author, as a first-generation American from Poland, looks kind of like me!)

I don’t even know what else there is; I feel like there’s definitely more that I loved, but I can’t remember specifics. I got out most of what I wanted to say. I know the plot and pacing felt good, the dialogue and characters all felt very real, and those descriptions... felt like artwork.

I just… if I ever wished I was a fictional character and living a fictional life, it’s Agnieszka’s. I don’t know how to get that across as strongly as it feels. But… it’s there.

I’m going to be recovering from this book hangover for a while LOL.

[astoldbycrimson]

Bring Me Back to Life

Summary: You and Din were always protecting each other. It’s never a conscious thought, just a natural instinct at this point.

Pairing: Mando/Din Djarin x f!Reader

Warnings: injuries, mentions of violence, angst, and sweet fluff

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 4.5 | Part 5

———————

The concept of love, for many, was a myth that traversed the galaxy. In a time when there was war and carnage, it was a tale long forgotten, written in a language that no one could understand. Death, chaos, and destruction were all some people knew. Din Djarin had been no different. 

He watched as the Empire destroyed his home and wept as he was hidden within a storage cellar. He was helpless as the droids brutally ripped his parents away from him. They nearly took his life too… While the Mandalorians had shown him mercy and raised him as one of their own, the stories of love had died with his family. All those feelings had been lost in the shadows of his mind, buried deep until he eventually forgot where he’d hidden them. 

But then you came along. First, you were just the kind waitress in a cantina on Dathomir. The one with the interesting eyes and pretty smile. And then, deep in the woods of your homeland, you saved his life for reasons he didn’t understand. Your powers were unlike anything he’d ever seen. Somehow you’d managed to talk your way onto the Razor Crest. And slowly, with minimal effort, you mapped out his mind and found each piece he’d buried so long ago. 

While your life hadn’t been without pain, you knew love from the moment you took your first breath. Your mother treasured you more than the heart in her chest. Your father had broken the old jedi way just to bring you into the world. Love was everywhere you looked. Sometimes so abundant that it suffocated you, like when your mother had passed and your village had wept with you. But you never forgot what love felt like. Not like Din did.

Boarding the Razor Crest had been a massive change for you. The air wasn’t filled with the love you had grown accustomed to. Instead it was filled with deafening silence. It smelled of blaster fire, sweat, and blood. And the taste it left on your tongue was incredibly bitter. Never before had anything left you feeling so cold and lonely. It took over a cycle for the stale air to clear. Then love surrounded you once more and that warmth had finally enveloped Din too.

You reminded him every day of just how real love really was. He felt it when you cooked him a hot meal. When you smiled at him so sweet with nothing but adoration in your eyes. Din felt your love when you’d remove his helmet with the utmost care, as if it were made of glass and one wrong move could destroy it forever. When you kissed with such fervor that you stole the air from his lungs. You sang the tales of love so beautifully. Everything was foreign, but with your help, he slowly came to understand.

Love did not come without a price, however. You became reckless as your feelings clouded your judgment. Din was your priority, so you repeatedly put yourself in harm’s way to ensure his safety. In your mind, it was your job to protect him, no matter the cost. Even if it meant you drew your last breath.

You weren’t alone in that feeling. Din, the normally calm and collected veteran hunter, was ready to throw himself between you and the first sign of danger. Even if he knew you could handle the situation, he was unable to stop himself from taking a hit or two. And it was for that very reason that Din was now in near critical condition.

Fortunately you had ended the fight rather abruptly upon seeing him wounded. You had used far too much force to ensure the ending was swift and absolute. Had he been conscious to see it, you’d likely get a scolding. Because you shouldn’t use your extra abilities unless the situation demanded it. He’d come to know what happened to most of the jedi. Din didn’t want that to happen to you.

The fight had left him unconscious and bleeding. He didn’t hear the curses you muttered in your native tongue, even though he’d come to recognize a few from your frequent use of them. Din didn’t hear you whisper that you loved him and to hold on. But you managed to get him back to the ship in record time. Now he was sprawled out your shared cot, seriously wounded but breathing. 

Given your massive overuse of your force abilities, you only had enough energy to make him stable. You’d have to stop the bleeding without using the cauterizer… you feared your shaking hand and his inability to guide you would’ve wounded him worse. So, unfortunately, you had to rely on the old fashioned medkit to treat his wounds until you fully recovered. 

You carefully stripped him of his armor, taking note of where the wounds were on his body. You applied bacta spray to the more pressing ones and bandaged them accordingly. Then you cleaned up the lesser scrapes and cuts, leaving them to air and heal on their own. 

Once every injury was addressed, you washed the blood and dirt off him. Then you dressed him in fresh clothes and set his helmet beside the cot. The wounds wouldn’t heal perfectly overnight, so you’d be required to keep him off his feet for at least a day. You pressed a kiss to his cheek, grabbed his hand, and waited by his side until he stirred.

You stayed there for hours, struggling to stave off your own exhaustion. When you’d start to nod off, you bit your cheek to jolt yourself awake. And you kept his hand in yours, not only to calm your nerves, but so you’d be alerted when he finally stirred. 

Unfortunately, you didn’t last more than 13 hours before your body slumped and you succumbed to your own exhaustion. So Din woke first, brown eyes fluttering open to find you asleep beside him. It would’ve been cute if you hadn’t looked as though you had just fought a war by yourself. There were bags under your eyes and bruises littered your exposed skin. You were still dressed in your dirty clothes, caked with grime and blood.

He immediately tried to sit up, worried about all the blood on you. But the groan that escaped his lips and the sudden jolt of your arm awoke you instantly. It took you a second to find your senses before you were standing and ushering him back onto his back.

“Shh, mulovda, you’re fine. I’m here. Just relax,” you whispered reassuringly. 

“(Y/N)… are you okay?” Of course the first words he uttered would be to ask about your well being. 

“Din, I’m fine. You’re the one who nearly died.” Honestly if you weren’t so worried, you’d be rolling your eyes at him. 

“You…” a groan as he adjusted his position on the cot, “…look terrible." 

A sigh left your cracked lips before you laughed softly. ”…Thanks, Din. You really know how to make a girl swoon.“ 

He chuckled, but it made him stiffen at the pain. "Kriff, (Y/N). Don’t make me laugh.”

“Sorry, used up all my pity when I played doctor last night. You brought that upon yourself for insulting me." 

”…I didn’t mean it like that, (Y/N/N).“

A smile tugged at the corners of your mouth. "I know. You just really set yourself up for that one… How are you feeling?” Your face turned serious as you raised a hand to rest on his cheek.

You noted how he instinctively leaned into your touch. “I’m alive. Been through this and much worse before. How long have I been out?" 

"I lost count after the first 10 hours… Maybe half a day?”

He hissed through his teeth as he tried to rise. Your gentle, but firm hand on his chest kept him down. 

“That’s way too long. Let me up, I need to get us off this planet." 

Your tone was sweet, but stern as you spoke, "Din, we’re safe. They are all dead. We can stay at least another day. Right now you need to rest." 

He was silent a moment. "They’re all… dead?”

“Yes, dead. We’re safe now.”

You sensed the tilt in his head before he opened his mouth. “…How’d you manage that, cyar'ika?” The way he said your little nickname was accusatory. Borderline patronizing. “I remember a very different situation before I blacked out.”

“Your memory is failing you, mulovda. We were doing fine before you tried to play hero. You must’ve hit your head pretty hard,” you laughed as you carded your fingers through his hair. 

“…You’re lying.”

You tilted your head to the side. “Am I? Last I checked you couldn’t read minds, Din.”

He could tell when you lied. Your face was convincing enough for most, but Din knew you better than that. He wasn’t the most social of creatures, but Maker was he observant. He was ready to fight you on it, but he couldn’t deny that he enjoyed the attention you were giving him. So, for now, he’d let it go. 

“Now that you’re awake, I’ll make us a hot meal.” You went to walk away, but a hand circled your wrist.

“The food can wait. I think you should take a minute to wash up, (Y/N).”

You sighed. “Do I really look that bad?”

“…You’re beautiful, cyar'ika. You just… take care of yourself for a minute, okay? I can wait a little longer.” It was obvious that he meant what he said, which had you flushing lightly. He was always so thoughtful when it came to you.

Denying his request would only cause trouble and a shower sounded wonderful after your day. “I’ll just be a minute… promise me you won’t leave this cot, Din.”

Of course he had planned on sneaking up to the cockpit while you were distracted. But you knew him… too well, at times. So he let out a typical Din sigh and nodded. “…I promise.”

You were true to your word and kept your bathing brief. Honestly, you were far too tired to even think of taking a long shower anyway. So you scrubbed off the dirt and grime before washing your hair. Then you were out and in a clean set of clothes, making a hot dinner for your Mandalorian.

It didn’t take long before he was shoveling his face full of your food. Before you, he never got to enjoy the taste. Eating was a necessity, not a luxury. And time was something he didn’t have a lot of. But with you preparing most of his meals, he tried to give himself a moment to really taste the unique blend of spices. To savor his meal for as long as his hunger would allow. 

You, however, were savoring the moment. While you couldn’t see the face he was making, you knew it was a pleasant one. He always seemed to enjoy the food you made. Always grateful for a meal made with love. But you were just grateful to have another moment with him. Thankful to still have someone to cook for. To kiss and hold and love…

Din had come into your life seemingly out of nowhere. Just a Mandalorian that had stumbled upon your father’s cantina. At first he was just a way off your planet. To hone your skills and maybe make a name for yourself. But he quickly became so much more. He made you feel things you’d long forgotten. Had you thinking that maybe fairy tales existed here amongst the stars, on a ship with a Mandalorian named Din Djarin.

And now… now he was practically your world. A beautiful untouched planet that you had been fated to collide with. He didn’t know it, but he saved you in so many unspoken ways. You’d survive if he hadn’t made it, but you know you’d never feel alive again…

“…Why aren’t you eating?” Din had stopped his consumption long enough to eye your untouched plate. 

“Hmm?” You were quickly brought back to reality. “I’m sorry, just a little dazed, I suppose. Please, don’t stop on my account. There’s plenty more after you’ve finished that." 

He set his plate on the table beside him and reached for your cheek. As if he had been reading your thoughts, he said, "I’m here, cyar'ika. You saved me… like you always do." 

"No, Din, it was you who saved me.”

———————

@spacegayofficial @killtherandomness @thatguythatsshy @emyyjemyy @gothtechie @pandaperson51 (thanks for your request!)