you are love itself (君は愛そのものだ)
cw. fem!reader, childhood friend au, established relationship, love as worship, love as a choice, reader has a defined devil fruit ability
pairing. portgas d. ace x reader
synopsis. his skin is dotted in stardust.
notes. a 1.3k look into those short moments of privacy you have with ace on the moby. i got the title from 'therefore you and me' after rewatching this amazing asl brothers animatic for the billionth time. cover comes klimt's the kiss (1908).
Everything is made of stardust; the stars that made Ace are simply visible to the eye.
They couldn't be contained in the depths of his body like the rest of the world's inhabitants. It's scattered all across his skin in a beautiful display, matching the skies they fell from. Isn't that something? You brush a hand against warm skin in awe. It's all right there. The stars themselves rest upon his skin, how beautiful is that? How could anyone want someone like that dead?
When you were children, Ace told you he would bring you the moon.
What do you need the moon for when you've been touching the stars since you were 10?
Straddling his lap, you can't help laughing as you think you'd been fighting a losing battle from the start. From the beginning, you'd been drawn to Ace and his stars and you wanted to follow where they'd go for the rest of your life.
"What's so funny?" Ace murmurs into your shoulder.
"I think I was born to love you." It is the only plausible conclusion for you to reach after 10 years of loving the same person. For the half of your life you've known him, you've chosen Ace from day one. You will continue to choose him for the rest of the life you have. You chose to chase him all around Mt. Corvo, you chose to be his friend, you chose to join his crew and your heart chose him even if your head had been slow to realize. "We don't need to find the One Piece," you murmur as you lead a trail of kisses from his shoulder to Ace's cheek. "I already have everything the world has to offer right here."
You feel Ace stiffen beneath you before he laughs sheepishly, "I think you need to have your eyes checked if you think that."
"Hey," you lean back so you can see his face. Your brows are furrowed sternly but your eyes sparkle with mischief and your lips stretch into a challenging grin. "I have better eyes than you, I can see the soul."
Ace snorts but his voice is light and as warm as the smile painting his face, "souls of the dead, yeah." Smiles suit Ace more than the frowns that were once commonplace when you were younger.
"That still counts," you protest with a chuckle. He doesn't have to believe he's worthy of it, you'll tell Ace all the same. You cup his face in your hands and enjoy the vibration of his mellifluous laughter under your fingers tips as you squeeze his cheeks. "There's a lot you can learn about this sort of stuff when you can see the dead." How the soul carries its wounds even after death. How the soul carries the essence of everything that makes something itself. How love can carry on beyond the grave.
You've seen it countless times by now in your truthfully short time of being a power holder.
The spirit of a man who wanted a few berries to leave as a surprise his husband could stumble upon to brighten his day.
An elderly woman dancing in the town square, seemingly alone following the steps she took with her lost love long ago. Unbeknownst to her, however, her love danced with all the same as they did once a long time ago.
Pods of orcas full of members past and present, refusing to part from their birth pod even in death.
How beautiful it is, a love like that.
Even while deceased, they choose to remain by their beloved all the same.
Whenever it is Ace's time, he'll take his stars with him and they will rest on his skin just as they did when he was alive. But I'll make sure you're so happy you won't want to stay, you vowed when you partook of the sea's cursed fruit. You carry this vow even now. Ace will die a happy death but more importantly, he will live a long and mirthful life.
(You can tell for as sure as your eyes are dry; the urge to cry and scream in mourning and warning nonexistent. Still it's your heart's desire that you go first so you don't ever have to risk the day you know death will come for Portgas D. Ace.)
"You know what I think," you cease your pinching, letting your lax thumbs stroke his face. Dark eyes look up at you like you're a dream and gold like sunlight rests in your chest. It's light yet heavy and even if your heart is calm, its rhythmic beating tells you something precious. And he's so, so precious. "I think that when people move on, they're reborn as someone else. Then they get to live life all over again. And one day, that's gonna happen to us."
Then you'll cease to be the 'you' you have been and so will he.
Maybe that time, you'll be raised in separate seas and there will be no trio of brothers you'll latch onto. Maybe he'll be born somewhere in Paradise but I'll be from the West Blue. Or maybe he'll be a fishman. Or a giant!
Maybe next time, Ace will be a short girl with firey auburn hair and chocolate brown eyes with the disposition to match. Or he'll be a scarred and gruff dragon moray eel fishman who is an overt romantic.
Maybe next time his stars will follow him as the marker that ties him to his previous life. Then you'll recognize him the moment you see him. But even if I don't, I'll love you then too. You don't need reminders of who he was to make you want him again.
Whatever the outcome may be, you will embrace it wholly.
"Whenever that happens, I'm gonna find you and I'm going to love you all over again. You can be a girl or a giant or a fishman." Or maybe he'll be the tiny human and you'll be the giant. It will be nice being taller than Ace for once, you tell him as much with a laugh. There's a spot of wetness at the corner of his eyes that you wipe away instinctively. "Or… maybe this world runs in one big loop and we get to be us again but that time we get to make different choices. Do the stuff we didn't do last time. But regardless of all the different things I might end up doing, the one thing that is gonna stay the same is that I'll choose you all over again."
There's a pause before Ace ducks from your gaze with a wet laugh, forehead pressed against your shoulder again. The unmistakeable feel of warm droplets subsequently follow. "Thatch must be cutting onions," he chuckles weakly. "Sorry."
"Dummy," you wrap your arms around his shoulders and inhale his scent. There's a natural sweetness to it you can't explain; it's sweet but there is a peppery kick. It's been that way since the first day you met him. I love him, I love him, I love him. The sentiment echoes throughout your entire being. "it's okay to cry."
"Would you really want me again?" His voice is soft and unsure like a young bird who doesn't know if it can trust its wings.
Who else would I want?
Why would I want anyone else?
I've known you for 10 years, Ace. There's nothing about you I don't want.
"Over and over again," you kiss his temple once, twice and then a third time before you lift his head and kiss the corners of his eyes. "It's you and no one else."
A noise of surprise escapes you when Ace's lips press against your own but you relax a beat later, humming tenderly. You relish every sensation, how his arms wrap around you tight and how his fingers gently dig into your back. The taste of salt on your lips is akin to the ocean and your heartbeat reverberates throughout your chest.
Yes, it's telling you something precious.
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WujiWatch: CQL Rewatch Episode 23
Long time, no WujiWatch! But I’ve been reading Catching Chen Qing Ling and it’s put me in an analytical mood about The Untamed again. Picking up where we left off...
Episode 23 has at least two iconic Wangxian scenes: Lan Wangji’s visit to a recovering Wei Wuxian’s sickbed to play Clarity, and the “I am not Wen Ruohan” conversation on the same clifftop where they will meet again in the last moments of Wei Wuxian’s (first) life. One thing I didn’t realize until this rewatch is the way those two scenes are tied together; that the second one picks up, thematically, where the first one left off.
The Clarity scene is interrupted by the screams of Wens being rounded up (and perhaps killed on the spot) and the shouts of their pursuers. Wei Wuxian immediately looks disturbed and asks what’s going on; Lan Wangji says, “they’re hunting down the rest of the Wens” and looks not disturbed at all. I am very good at interpreting Wang Yibo’s microexpressions by now, and this dude is 0% bothered. That is especially striking since the very next scene is all about (among other things) Lan Xichen being very disturbed at the prospect of murdering Wen civilians. By this point in the drama, Lan Wangji has made some progress toward moral nuance—but it’s all specifically Wei Wuxian-focused. His view of the rest of the world is still very black and white. The Wens are bad, so it’s appropriate for bad things to happen to them. End of story.
That’s how the Clarity scene ends, and then, as mentioned, we have the scene where 3zun and Jin Guangshan debate the treatment of the surviving Wens. After that, we have the clifftop scene—and what I’d forgotten is that the first line of dialogue in this scene is Wei Wuxian asking Lan Wangji, “What do you think of the people here [in Nightless City]? Who is good and who is bad?” The fate of the defeated Wens is still very much on Wei Wuxian’s mind. And it’s still a matter of no concern for Lan Wangji: he ignores Wei Wuxian’s question. He doesn’t want to talk about the larger events happening in Nightless City – he only wants to talk about, and help, Wei Wuxian. This foreshadows the scene in the rain at Qiongqi Dao – the moment when the hero of the common people looks at a group of starving, abused civilians and says to Wei Wuxian, in effect, Let them die—because otherwise, I’ll lose you.
(One other note from this episode that passed me by in every prior viewing, although maybe everyone else knew it: Lan Wangji knows the Yin Tiger Seal is made out of Yin Iron, very early on. In the clifftop scene, Wei Wuxian admits the sword he found in the Xuanwu Cave was made of Yin Iron and that he refined the Yin Tiger Seal out of it (albeit in one of his bullshit “What if I told you…” phrasings), and Lan Wangji confirms that he knows by asking, “Since you knew it was Yin Iron, why did you use/refine it?” While everyone else in the drama is resorting to innuendo and suspicion—and while Wei Wuxian is denying it to everyone else—Lan Wangji knew the truth all along.)
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Prompt 20 - Hold
@rosekillermicrofic September 20, word count 484
Previous part First Jegulus part
Sirius ushered the final customer out of the door and locked up. Together, they all helped clean the café so they could go relax in Regulus’s newly furnished flat.
“Come on then, let’s see this life-changing video then,” Regulus said from James’s lap. While there was adequate seating for a small gathering, there was not enough for nine people. So on the sofa was Regulus sitting on James, Barty on Evan, Sirius and Remus on cushions on the floor, Pandora on a footstool and Monty on Effie's lap in the armchair. It was all very cosy.
“Oh, yeah,” Barty said, as though it had slipped his mind as if it would.
He pulled out his phone, loaded up the video and gave it to Regulus to hold. Regulus pressed play.
Regulus’s eyes widened in shock as he watched the video. He watched it a few times before handing it to Sirius with a shaking hand. Sirius snatched the phone from Regulus and looked at the screen.
“Oh my gods!” His mouth hung open as he stared at the screen.
“Fuck you burger face!” Barty heard for the tenth time in the last few minutes.
“Did you really do that?” Sirius’s voice cracked. Barty nodded, and before he knew it he had both the Black brothers hugging him bone breakingly tight.
“Alright, alright, I get it you’re grateful,” They pulled back and he met their eyes. “That bitch deserves everything she gets,” He said vehemently. He ended up being hugged again. The phone got passed over to Effie and Monty. Barty heard their gasps then peels of laughter as they watched it again.
Poor Evan ended up a bit squashed when the rest of the room tried to collectively hug Barty. “Enough, go hug each other,” Barty snapped, having had enough of the physical contact.
They ate Chinese food, bought by Effie and Monty to say thank you to everyone for their parts in the Pettigrew issue, and Monty snuck Barty an extra fortune cookie for the video. He and Sirius both asked if he would send them the video so they could rewatch it themselves.
“I’m so putting this on the internet,” Sirius beamed when the video transferred and Barty could hear his voice cursing Walburga for the umpteenth time. “Hey, Barty, could I have a word, in private?” Sirius asked once he’d put his phone away. Barty narrowed his eyes, but let Sirius lead him into Regulus’s kitchen.
“What do you want?” Barty asked. He really had no idea what Sirius could want from him.
“You have a van, right?” Sirius asked.
“Yes,” Barty said uncertainly.
“Don’t suppose you fancy a bit of breaking and entering of Grimmauld Place, do you?” Barty felt like all his Christmases had come at once.
“Fuck yes!”
“Good, I think Regulus has been parted from his books for long enough,” Barty was liking this idea very much.
Next part
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Hi Lexi!
I kind of read about your break and the fear of your hyper fixation going away. Just wanted to say that I've been through the same thing 2 months ago. I couldn't write anything at all for 6 months. I had the inspiration but not the motivation. I had stopped reading fanfictions as well even from friends. I feared that the one thing that helped me through a hard time was leaving me, which was my hyperfixation that lead me to write. I didn't want to lose it, but I felt like it was. I was ready to make a post about me just simply quitting writing because my fingers didn't cooperate.
It wasn't. I just needed a break. A long one. One day I just rewatched stranger things, and I started reading old fics, ones that I read that made me get into writing for the Fandom. I did things I did back in May 2022. Even lighting candles of the scent I used back then. Music as well.
After that, one day I sat down, and the words came through by themselves. It's not in the magnitude they were before. That I know. I'm not the same person from 2 years ago, but just because you cannot write now, doesn't mean you won't ever be able to.
It will get better, you just need to find that love again, however you find it necessary to do so 💓 I just simply went back in time.
You don't have to answer this, I just wanted you to know that I understand your fear, but just because it's not as intense, it means that is gone. 💕
You'll find your way back! Just give yourself time, all that you need! Be it weeks, months or a year, just don't beat yourself up for it. You are human after all 💖
i love to hear this! it’s so hard to pin point why i started writing in the first place, but i think i had a lot of feelings to process back then… and now that i’ve said them, my brain is empty? who knows!
i will say my job has been making me especially miserable lately, but i’m officially putting in my two week resignation notice tomorrow! i’ve decided to quit nursing entirely and i got a job teaching math and science for middle schoolers, which is so exciting! it is a huge change for me, but i think it will be a good thing and hopefully put me in a better mind space to enjoy hobbies again💛
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