#i listened to this on repeat for an hour today | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

scuderiahoney · 1 day

Text

Every Second

charles leclerc x reader

masterlist

summary: the world is ending. you’re right where you belong. 2.6k words

warnings: major character death (apocalypse au, everyone dies), charles & reader have a daughter, talks of death/afterlife/end of the world, it’s mostly sad not gonna lie

a/n: had this idea a LONG time ago, finally finished it today. loosely based on the music video for Older by 5SOS. see also: Till Forever Falls Apart by Ashe & FINNEAS and I Know The End by Phoebe Bridgers. you get the vibes.

The world is on fire.

For once, you mean that literally. You’ve been saying it for years, in reference to politics and pollution and the general temperature of the planet. But now, the world is literally on fire.

Charles is pacing laps around the whole apartment. He’s unable to sit still, even now. The tv is on, the volume low, photos flashing by on the screens. There’s a countdown, ticking along at the bottom of the newscast, telling you exactly how many minutes you have left before the whole thing falls apart. You’re not sure how they seem to know. You won’t take the time to find out.

The next time Charles walks by you, you reach out and grab the sleeve of his sweatshirt. He stops in his tracks, and your fingers brush against his skin. He doesn’t look at you, hasn’t for hours. He stared at the ceiling, now. He’s angry, you can tell. It’s eating him up inside.

“Amour,” you say, calmly, quietly. “You will wear a path in the carpet.”

The irony of what you’ve just said doesn’t hit you until he lets out a bitter laugh. You realize, then, that by tomorrow there will be no carpet. There will be nobody to see the path he’s worn. Everything around you will cease to exist.

It’s funny, the end of the world. It doesn’t feel like you thought it would, though you’re not sure you spent much time devoted to the thought. You had worries, sure, but they always seemed so distant.

“We should wake her,” he says, voice thick with emotion. “I want… every second.”

“Okay,” you agree. “Okay, I’ll get her.”

“No. Not- I’ll go with you,” he says, twisting his hand to grab yours, then repeating, “I want every second.”

You stand up from the couch. He keeps your hands linked as he follows you to your daughter’s room. She’s asleep in the crib, barely one year old, head full of dark curls and a smile that bears his dimples. She looks peaceful. For a moment, you hate to disturb her. It’s the last time you’ll pull her from her crib. You understand, now, why he wanted to come with.

Charles walks over, reaches in with one arm, and scoops her up. It’s only then that his eyes meet yours, as he cradles her to his chest. The two of them make such a perfect picture. You’ve seen it before, after races when he’s tired and sweaty but always wanting to hold her, when he gets back from long trips and she clings to him for hours, when he gets her up in the morning and brings her to your room to wake you up.

He swallows tightly as she shifts in his arm, pressing her tiny round cheek to his neck. You tug on his hand, lead him back out to the living room. He squeezes so hard you think your fingers might fall off.

It won’t be long now before your daughter is fully awake. She’s already beginning to wiggle slightly, her eyelids fluttering. You don’t dare to try and let go of Charles, but you head for the kitchen and start warming up a bottle for her.

It’s what you’d do any day. It’s odd, because the apocalypse is breathing down your neck but your baby still needs to be fed. Other things, you’ve chosen to neglect- the trash will stay in the overflowing can in the kitchen. The mail will go unopened, bills unpaid. There’s a layer of dust on the fireplace mantle that will stay there until the mantle itself ceases to exist. You warm up your daughter’s bottle, though, and try to listen to the sound of the microwave instead of the sound of your husband’s crying.

She’s awake, now, and tugging at your hair with tiny fingers. Charles untangles your hands and wraps his arm around your waist instead, uses it to pull you into his chest. His grip is so tight it would almost be claustrophobic on any other day. Today, if you could melt yourself into one person with him, you would.

The microwave beeps, and you both jump. You grab the bottle, turn to your husband, your daughter. She’s yawning, her head on his chest, her hand still caught in your hair. She doesn’t know. She won’t ever know. There are so many things she won’t get to learn. You’ve dreamt of this your whole life- of love, a family, people to call your own and a home to spend your life in with them. In the end, your time has been so short lived. There are only so many minutes left. The clock on the TV counts down, and your chest aches with every second. You will lose them today.

Charles seems to sense your train of thought. He leads you back to the couch in the living room. He half sits, half lays with your daughter, legs up on the sofa, and holds his other arm out for you. She’s beginning to fuss, because she’s hungry- the most simple of human predicaments. When you sit down, he pulls you into his chest, to face him, your back to the tv. Even on the last day, he will try to shelter you. He curls his arms around you and your daughter while you hold the bottle to her mouth.

“My girls,” he says, voice barely a whisper. “My beautiful girls.”

You’d thought, when you had gotten pregnant, that Charles would want it to be a boy. A mini him, someone to teach karting and racing and follow in his footsteps. But before you even found out, he’d been insistent it was a girl, that she was going to be just like you, that he was going to be wrapped around her finger, same as he was around yours. And when she was born, his dark hair and your eyes and the tiniest fingers you’d ever seen, Charles had bawled his eyes out, holding her in his arms, pressing sweet kisses to your forehead.

He’d been so excited, told you all of his plans. There’d been days on the boat with her, days in the water, days at races with giant headphones to protect her ears. Her father had doted on her and loved her, had talked about her every chance he got. She was going to grow up with all the love the world could possibly have to offer and then some, surrounded by it, bathed in it.

It’s not fair. You’ve had years to live, you’ve gotten to be your own person, but she’ll never get that chance. You suddenly feel short of breath, chest tight, heart racing. Charles feels it and wraps his arm tighter around you. You stare at your daughter’s face, her tiny eyelashes, the little slope of her nose. She deserves so much more time. You rub your finger over her cheek as she drinks the bottle.

“S’not fair,” you mutter, blinking back tears.

“I know,” he says, murmuring the words against your forehead. “It’s not.”

There’s so much more you could say, but the words won’t come. How do you put that into words? The terrifying, all consuming fear of what is coming. There’s no stopping it now. Maybe it’s not worth dwelling on.

“You know,” you say with a sniffle. “She’ll never have to be afraid.”

Charles nods. “Nobody will ever hurt her.”

You reach out and hold her hand, her tiny fingers in yours. Her skin is so soft, unmarred by the world. She will never face heartbreak. She will never lose anyone. She will never have to worry. She’ll also never make her first friend, or have her first love, or her first job or first car, or… the nevers pile up and weigh heavy on your chest. The whole weight of the world is on you.

You press your cheek to Charles’ chest and let the tears flow. It’s silly to hide it. He holds onto you tightly.

There can’t be much time left, now. You can feel the seconds slipping away like grains of sand through your fingers. You have this uncontrollable urge to kneel on the ground and try to scoop them all up. The bits and pieces of your life together with him. You want to hold it all close to your chest, try and shelter it from the impact.

“The wine,” Charles says. “The wedding wine.”

You’d saved a bottle. It was meant to be opened on your tenth anniversary. It’s in the cupboard in the kitchen, a white bow around the neck, a label with a photo of the two of you custom printed by a friend. You’ve been married for three years now. At the time, ten years had felt so far away. Now it slips through the gaps in the cupped hands of your heart.

Charles passes your daughter into your arms and stands up. You cradle her to your chest and press your lips to the top of her head. You whisper to her, remind her how much she’s loved, how much you care for her. Charles returns with the bottle and two glasses, and the corkscrew you’d been gifted as a wedding present. You try not to dwell on it, try not to think about his brothers giving it to you, engraved with your new last name and with a note to accompany it- When you argue, or feel sad, or happy, or anytime, stop and share a bottle of wine together.

You take their advice- of all the times to take it, now feels like your best bet, though you’ve lived by little things like that your whole relationship. When Charles was gone for extended time periods for races, he always returned with a special bottle of wine, always made sure to set aside his first day back just for you, and eventually, for your daughter too. It was one of the things that bothered him most, he’d told you- he never felt like he had enough time. Stretched too thin between all the things and people he loved, everything that’s important to him. He pours you a glass of wine and hands it to you, and you wait while he pours his own. You clink the glasses together and take a sip. It tastes the same as it did on your wedding night, and fresh tears fill your eyes. All your family and friends, there to celebrate the two of you, and now it all comes to an end.

There are picture frames on the wall behind the couch. You stare at them, the tears in your eyes blurring the photographs, but you know what you’d find there. The wedding photo, when he’d kissed you for the first time as your husband. There’s the photo of the two of you on his first day at Ferrari, smiling bright and wide and happy and not having any idea how important you’d become to each other. There are family photos- just the three of you, and ones with your extended families, too. There are landscapes from your vacations together, pictures of you with friends out at parties, your whole lives, hanging up on the wall. All the photos will be destroyed, soon, along with the rest of the world.

Your daughter is dozing off against your chest. You turn to try and take a peek at the countdown on the screen, but before you can, Charles grabs your head and holds, firmly. It can’t be long now. Sometime this morning, just after sunrise, you think they said on the news last night. There’s sun filtering in through the curtains. Your breath gets caught in your chest. The dawn of a new day, of the very last day.

“Hey, hey,” he murmurs, lips against your forehead. “Don’t panic.”

“The world is ending, Charles,” you choke out, voice frantic. “We- we’re going to-“

“I know,” he mumbles. He knits his fingers with yours, right on top of your daughter’s back. “I know. Stay with me. Feel me? Feel her breathing? Just stay right here, my love. You are safe here.”

You’re not, you’re the least safe here that you’ve ever been, but you know what he’s trying to say. You feel the soft rise and fall of her back beneath your hand, feel the way he squeezes your fingers. Stay here. Stay with me. You take a deep breath against his neck, wondering if you can breathe in enough of him that he’ll be a part of you forever. Forever. What does forever even mean, now?

“It’s not enough,” you mutter. “It wasn’t enough time. We deserved more time.”

He nods, and when he speaks, his voice sounds raw. “It wasn’t. We did. But it never would have been enough, my love.”

“If you had more time,” you start, and you hear him choke on a sob. “What would you do with it?”

He’s quiet for a moment. There’s a million different options, a million different answers, a million things still left to do. You wonder if he’s thinking of the same thing as you, though.

“I would spend it right here,” he says, and you fall to pieces. “Right here, with you in my arms, and our daughter with us, and I would tell you how you are the love of my life and- and how I will find you, in the next life, and we will spend forever together. Over and over and it will never be enough,” he sniffles, his tears falling against your forehead.

“Give me a million more years, and I would like to spend them all with you,” you tell him, voice thick with your tears. “Every second.”

There’s a loud noise from somewhere outside. Your heart should be racing, but it isn’t. Charles wraps you up closer, pulling you around your daughter, trying to cradle both of you in his arms. This is it. If there’s anywhere you’d want to spend your last moments, this is the place.

“I will see you soon, my love,” he says into your skin.

Neither of you are religious, and you haven’t talked about your thoughts on the afterlife in any serious sense, but in that moment, you believe it, and you know he does too.

“Nothing could ever keep me away. We said forever,” he adds.

“I love you, Charlie,” you say, leaning up to kiss him. “Forever and ever.”

As the world falls apart around you, you bury your face in his neck and let it happen. There’s nothing you can do, now, except spend every second with him, with your daughter. All the seconds you have left.

…..

The Ferrari factory is bright and shiny, full of people who stare in awe. They have a new driver today, a new prodigy who’s meant to bring victory back to Maranello. You’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of it, by the people staring, by the buzzing underneath your skin. It’s too much, but you can’t back out now. You’re being lead through the crowd, and you hope you don’t look as terrified as you feel.

“Oh, and this,” your new team principal says, “is Charles. Your race engineer. You’ll be working very closely together.”

Charles turns around, eyes already sparkling. He grins, a dimple divoting his cheek. He’s cute. He gives you a warm feeling in your chest, like something familiar. When he shakes your hand, you swear you feel a spark. You’ve never met him, you’re almost sure, but it feels like you know him, or maybe, like you used to. It’s the strangest feeling, but it’s a comfort in this sea of strangers.

“Welcome to Ferrari,” he says, and it’s the millionth time you’ve heard it today but you could cry, still. For some reason, it means more coming from him. “You’re going to love every single second.”

Taglist: @4-mula1 @celestialams @struggling-with-delia @lovekt @i-wish-this-was-me @forzalando @iloveyou3000morgan @callsign-scully @arian-directioner @racingheartsposts @sakuramxchii @mynamejeff5 @c-losur3 @casperlikej

381 notes · View notes

haikyu-mp4 · 21 hours

Text

Just Dance

word count; 1307 – gn!reader, talk about sexual activities but no descriptions

Your neighbour, Kuroo Tetsurou, wasn’t a nuisance all the time. Mostly when he had friends over. It was never quite clear what they were doing, but when did men ever need a reason to be loud?

However, you had the worst day at work today and listening to two men knock into stuff, pant and groan was not making it any better. Usually, you assumed they watched sports or played video games, but you weren’t sure what it sounded like this time. This friend was the loudest one, you had met him a few times already after he eagerly introduced himself in the hallway.

Now, you had enough. You made your way across the hall and left three knocks on the door, tapping your foot as you waited. A low headache was squishing your brain and the hallway felt smaller than it really was.

“Hey, hey, hey! It’s the neighbour!” A shirtless Bokuto opened the door, and you shouldn’t be surprised that he was so sweaty after all those sounds. Still, it made you a bit flustered, so you looked past him and tried to remember your words when you noticed Kuroo come up behind him. He still wore his work shirt, but the top buttons were undone and the tie hung loosely around his neck. Sweat covered the part of his neck that you could see, and the shirt clung to him in the most attractive way.

He looked hot.

So now you were scrambling for words as you looked between the two, wondering if you weren’t Kuroo’s type at all. Had they been… playing around… with each other?

Kuroo didn’t seem to understand exactly why you were so flustered, leaning an arm on the door frame and throwing you that classic smirk that reeked of mischief and charm. “Hey, kitten. What’s up?”

You looked from one man to the other and back, repeating this process a few times before settling with looking at your feet. “I’m sorry for disturbing your… activities. I was just wondering if you could keep it down,” you asked, voice a little shaky when trying to choose a word to describe what you assumed they did.

Kuroo frowned, taking note of how your hand came up to massage your temple. “Don’t say sorry, we’ll try to keep it down. Are you okay?”

Bokuto looked between you two and wiggled his eyebrows at his best friend, making said friend give him a look that said not now, go away. He did as he was told, turning around and leaving, but not without letting him know “I’ll set up for another round.”

Your cheeks flushed a deeper red, taking a step back. “Don’t worry, you two have fun,” you said before turning around and running back to your own apartment, swiftly closing the door behind you.

Kuroo was left in confusion, staring at where you just stood and replaying the moment in his mind once or twice before the colour drained from his face. He turned to Bokuto with a hand in his hair and a dramatic gasp. “She thinks we’re fucking.”

Standing in the living room, Bokuto was stretching his thighs to get ready for their next round, a preview of Black Mamba by Aespa playing on the TV when he bursts out laughing at Kuroo’s realisation. They were practising Just Dance because Kenma and Akaashi realised they liked teaming up with each other and challenged the leftover duo for their next game night. Such an innocent activity turned into a devastating misunderstanding.

Thankfully, they seemed to get the message and kept the noise to a minimum for the next few hours, letting you take a much-needed nap. When you did wake up, the headache was less prominent and more of a foggy haze that you would try to fix by drinking a glass of water or two.

While you were gulping down the second glass, there was a knock on the door. You wipe your mouth with the back of your sweatshirt and put down the glass before walking to the door. When you were almost there, the person on the other side knocked again and you huffed out a “Coming, coming,” before flinging the door open.

There stood Kuroo, a crooked grin under his nose and two boxes of takeout food from the closest Chinese restaurant. The second the smell wafted into the apartment, your stomach growled loudly. You had gone straight to bed earlier without eating and the hunger didn’t hit you before now. “Sounds like I came just in time. Care to help me eat all this food?” You opened the door wider and gestured for him to come inside.

“Come right inside, kind sir.” Kuroo had put on a sweatshirt over his messed-up shirt and switched to sweatpants, but your eyes still stuck to him like he wasn’t wearing clothes at all. Maybe he likes men and women? That would still give you a chance!

The two of you had eaten dinner together several times before, and it always came with loud laughter and some silly movie like 21 Jump Street. This time, you were not being as loud. “Sorry about Bokuto. He gets pretty loud.” Kuroo suddenly said after swallowing a piece of chicken. You chuckled under your breath.

“I didn’t mean to intrude on your business,” you excused yourself, glancing at him only to look back at your food when you saw that he was staring at you like he wanted to say something he shouldn’t. Kuroo who was usually so good with words wasn’t sure how to approach this. He put his food on the coffee table in front of the couch you two shared.

“We were playing Just Dance,” he blurted out, laughing nervously like he wasn’t quite sure. You stopped eating, almost spitting your food back out before forcing it down and putting the rest on the table like Kuroo did. Holding your hands out between the two of you, you made a weird face.

“You don’t have to lie, Kuroo.”

The man finally gave up, laughing loudly as he couldn’t quite believe he was in this situation. “In many ways, I wish I was lying! Bokuto and I were challenged to a Just Dance competition with our friends this weekend and wanted to practice.”

You started laughing with him, one hand covering your mouth. “Are you serious? I thought you guys had sex!” you admitted, letting your shoulders relax as Kuroo seemed to do the same.

“I know!” he groaned. Your laughter slowly blended into each other and you were left with soft grins on your faces. You licked your lips and leaned back, realising you had been leaning forward on the couch.

Kuroo seemed to do the opposite, leaning forward with one hand supporting him on the couch between you two while the other went to the back of your neck, quickly pulling your lips to his so he didn’t have to figure out what to say. You understood loud and clear and returned the emotions as you moved across the couch to straddle his lap instead.

That weekend, you laughed even more from Kuroo’s couch as you watched the guys dance. They were all pretty nice, and you were happy to get to know them. Kenma even asked you to do a duo with him, and Akaashi complained that he was replaced when you two beat everyone’s scores.

Everyone was having fun as Kuroo wrapped an arm around your waist, making some pouty comment about you not dancing with him yet and you just kissed the pout off his face followed by an evil laugh.

“Can you believe I thought you and Bokuto were fucking?” you giggled.

Why was it suddenly so quiet?

Oh, everyone was staring at you. They didn’t tell Akaashi and Kenma about that. How funny!

masterlist

#haikyu x reader #haikyu #haikyuu #hq x reader #fanfiction #haikyuu x reader #hq #haikyuu fluff #haikyu fluff #haikyuu x you #kuroo x reader #kuroo tetsurou #kuroo tetsuro x reader

42 notes · View notes