#i will never be able to find out settings i like

[candylix]

great minds think alike | bang chan

A sequel to blow my mind, read that one first! Pairing • Chan x GN!Reader Summary • After failing your test, you decide to go to the library to study. But when you get there, you see Chan. He wasn't the reason you failed, but he definitely didn't help. You said you weren't going to read his mind again, but after the first incident, he hasn't left your thoughts. It couldn't hurt to see what he's thinking about this time, right? Genre • college au, fluff, smut WC • 2.6k Content • sequel to blow my mind, no pronouns used but reader does have a vagina and breasts, mind reading, dirty thoughts about: asking you out 🥰, public sex, groping, thigh grinding, clit stimulation. Chan has an exhibitionism kink. Indented paragraphs indicate what's happening in his mind and not real life.

You really needed to bring your grade up. Normally you do alright, but that score was going to plummet your GPA. You never expected cheating to backfire so hard... but how could you possibly predict that the person you were mind reading would be thinking about sex the whole time?

This time, you'll be prepared the right way. You carry your textbooks and notes to the school library, and you're going to buckle down and study.

You enter the library with your foolproof plan in mind. You even set your timer for an hour, so you know when to take a break after all your hard work. But you freeze when you get to the tables and see a certain man already there.

Chan is studying too. You can feel your heartbeat thumping in your chest. After the test, you caught yourself thinking about him all the time. When you saw him, you felt butterflies in your stomach. You wanted to be around him, but you felt too anxious to say hi.

Safe to say, you've formed a little crush on him. It was embarrassing to admit to yourself, because you know how it happened. You read his mind, saw him fuck you on the desk, and now you want to hold his hand and kiss him.

Before you can even think rationally, you find yourself walking over to his table.

"Hey, mind if I study here?" you ask, mentally punching yourself for breaking the plan this easily.

He looks up, startled by the sudden intrusion, but his shock fades into a smile when he sees you.

"Go ahead," he responds. You pull out the seat across from him and put your stuff in front of you, as if you'll actually be able to get any studying done.

"Did you see your test score yet?" he asks.

"Yeah... let's just say there's a reason I came here to study."

"I didn't do too well either. Not bad, but not good."

"What happened?" you ask. You know what happened, but you want to see what he has to say.

"I, uh," he starts, and you see his cheeks start to flush. "I got a bit distracted."

'A bit distracted' is the understatement of the century.

"I hope I don't distract you, then."

He laughs nervously at your comment.

"Well, um, I'll get back to studying then," he says, and hides his face behind his laptop.

You open your textbook and think about studying, but you know you wont be able to resist peering into his mind. With the way he reacted, you know he's going to think about something interesting.

While pretending to read the book, you focus on him, and his thoughts gradually fill your head.

'Ok, Chan, focus. You can do this. Just... read your notes... focus... it would be rude to leave, right? I'm not gonna be able to focus like this.'

There was a small part of you that thought he didn't actually have feelings for you, and that he was just a pervert. But from the way he's struggling to study because you sat at his table, you can tell he really does like you.

'Do you want to go for coffee after this? No, that's stupid, it's too late to get coffee. What about... Wanna go see a movie sometime? That's stupid too. Ugh. How do you ask someone out without being cringy? Maybe I should buy some flowers? No, I'd have to carry them around all day like an idiot. This is too hard. I should just jump into a volcano. That would be easier... But this is such a good chance. I have to say something before I miss another perfect opportunity...'

His thoughts are racing a mile a minute, trying to figure out what he's going to say to ask you out. He said something about missing another opportunity... how long has this been on his mind? You feel heat rise to your cheeks as you think of every time you talked, wondering when he was thinking of asking you out. There have been a few times where he looked like he was going to say something, but just kept quiet. Was that him chickening out? Maybe you should put him out of his misery and ask him to dinner.

You tune back into his mind, just in time for him to imagine a scenario involving you.

He's sitting in the library across from you, exactly how you are now, but he's wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses. "Hey babe, why don't you stop what you're doing and take a ride with me tonight. I'll make it worth your while." He winks, and a motorcycle comes crashing through the wall to stand next to him. He takes a seat on it, and you run up to get on behind him. He revs the engine a few times to look cool. You wrap your arms around his waist, feeling his six pack through his shirt. Then he rides the motorcycle out of the hole in the wall and into the sunset.

You can't stop a chuckle from escaping your lips.

"What are you laughing at?" he asks, cocking an eyebrow.

"Um, nothing. Just remembered something funny my friend said earlier," you lie.

You both go back to 'studying'. That was a close call. Not that he would ever guess what you're doing, but you did want to see where that fantasy was heading. You don't have to wait long before another one starts again.

You're both sitting in the library. He clears his throat, and you look up at him. "Sorry to interrupt, but... would you want to... maybe... go out with me?" he asks. "No." You say flatly. Then you take your textbook and smack him across the face, before leaving the room. 'Chan, that would never happen,' he thinks to himself. The daydream resets, and you're back where you were before, sitting across the table from him as if that never happened. He suddenly stands up, grabbing your attention, and walks over to your side of the table. He sits on your textbook, forcing you to look up at him. "We're done studying for today. I'm taking you out for dinner." "But-" "No buts. I won't take no for an answer." "I guess I have no choice then," you say, giggling. He fixates on your smile, they way you look at him, your lips... and everything freezes.

Chan buries his face in his hands. He wanted to be a cool, suave ladies man, but even in his imagination he loses his composure when you smile at him.

It's cute to see him like this, reminding you of when you read his mind during the test. The first thing he did was imagine holding your hand. It's possible that his feelings have gotten stronger since then, because now he's struggling just to ask you out in his romantic fantasies.

He's still sitting on the table in front of you, and he takes your hand, pulling you up to your feet. His other hand cups your cheek, and guides your face down to him. Your lips press into his, and you melt into the kiss. He breaks the kiss, and looks into your eyes. "Let's take a rain check on dinner," he says, and his hands move to the bottom of your shirt. "What are you-" you start, but he lifts your shirt up and over your head, throwing it to the side. He unclasps your bra and throws it somewhere as well, and he drinks in the sight of you. "Chan, we're in public. Someone might see us." "Good, let them. I want everyone to know these," he says, grabbing your tits, "are mine." With one hand on each breast, he massages them, and kisses you again. His thumb grazes over your nipples, and you moan into the kiss. You can feel him smile, and he pulls at your nipples while he gropes you. His hands travel down your stomach and to your waist. He's quick to unbutton your pants and pull them down. He massages your ass over your underwear, and his thigh parts your legs to rest itself under your cunt. You gasp, and he slips his tongue in, deepening the kiss. You roll your hips, rubbing your pussy on his muscular thigh. He grabs your waist to help guide you on him, and you continue grinding on his leg as the feeling in your pit starts to build. "Not so shy anymore, huh?" he teases. "You want everyone to see you humping my leg." You roll your hips against him faster, trying to feel as much as you can between multiple layers of fabric. He watches your breasts bounce as you buck against him, and he sits there mesmerized at how good you look when you're fucking yourself on him.

Your alarm goes off. You both jump in your seats. His daydream instantly vanishes as the noise brings you both back to reality. You scramble to shut it off.

"Sorry, I forgot I set that alarm." "Oh... Does that mean you're done?" he asks. He looks at you with sad puppy dog eyes.

'Shit. I was too busy being horny that I completely forgot to ask. Ugh.'

You decide that if you want to go out with him, you're going to have to ask him yourself. "Actually, I have something I wanted to ask you," you say, and he instantly perks up. Your feel your heart beating, and you hesitate for a moment. You know he'll say yes, but you still feel nervous all of a sudden. Asking someone out apparently doesn't get easier even if you have nothing to fear. Finally, you make yourself say the words.

"Do you want to go out sometime?" He pauses, and starts overthinking about what you could possibly mean. "Um... like you want to hang out? Like a friendly 'go out'?" "More like a date 'go out'."

"Oh... OH. Yes!" He coughs, trying to sound nonchalant. "Yeah, let's go out sometime."

He can't hold back the grin that forms on his face. "Actually, I was going to ask you the same thing."

"Really?" you say, feigning ignorance, "That's crazy. I didn't know you were interested in me."

"Yeah... I've liked you for a while," he says shyly, and his cheeks turn pink. God he's cute.

"In that case," you start, walking around to his side of the table and grabbing his hand, "there's something I want to do." You pull him up to his feet, and lead him to the bookshelves. You walk into an empty aisle near the back. "I really want to kiss you." His face turns bright red, and you can hear the thumping of his heartbeat. "O-ok," he stutters. He's completely different from the Casanova in his daydreams, but the juxtaposition is very endearing.

You cup his face and lean in for a kiss, and he kisses back softly. He doesn't know where to put his hands at first, but he rests them on your waist. Gently, you push him back against the bookshelves and press your body into him. He melts into the kiss, and his confidence grows enough to lower his hands to your ass.

For the first time, his thoughts are completely silent.

You're the first to break the kiss. "Do you want to go a bit further?" you ask. "Further...?" he asks, and when your hands leave his face to travel down to his hips, his eyes go wide. "What if someone walks in on us?"

"Then they'll know I'm all yours," you whisper. With the way you're pressed up against him, you can feel his erection forming. If his daydreams didn't convince you of his exhibitionism kink, this sure did.

He nods his head, and you lean back in for another kiss. You palm his crotch, and as you slowly stroke his bulge, you feel him harden under your touch. He grabs your hand, stopping it in its track. "What's wrong?" you ask. "Sorry, I just..." he hesitates for a moment, but continues, "I want to be the one touching you." You remember everything he's fantasized. That is what he likes. "Go ahead," you say. He turns you around so that your back is on his chest, and he brings his hand between your legs. He kisses your neck while he rubs you, and you lean your head back into him. His hand moves into your pants, and he feels the wet spot in your underwear. He moves it aside, and his fingers circle your clit. When he finds a spot that makes you twitch, he presses into it, rubbing it harder and faster until your body rocks into his hand. His other hand snakes under your shirt to grope your breast, and he plays with your nipple. He rubs it and pulls at it, earning a moan from you. The fingers on your clit stroke you faster, and you can hear how wet you are as he moves in and out of your folds. The sensations from your breast and your core has you bucking wildly on him, and your ass presses against his dick. He buries his face into your shoulder, dampening the moan he lets out. He grinds into you from behind, with no rhythm in his movements.

You can feel your orgasm building, and you can't control how you hump Chan's hand while he continues his brutal pace against your cunt. He works his fingers, caressing your folds and rubbing a sensitive spot. You writhe under his touch, and you know you're close. You feel the dam burst, and he continues to rub circles around your clit as you buck into his hand, riding out your high. His hand continues to hold your pussy as he humps your ass, feeling his own orgasm building. He moans, and his pace slows down as he finishes on you. You're both breathing heavily, and he takes his hand out of your pants.

You both lower yourselves to the ground in exhaustion, and you turn to face him. He leans back against the bookshelf. "You don't know how much I wanted to do that," he finally says, and you have to stop yourself from saying yes, you did know.

"Me too," you admit.

As much fun as it was peeping into his thoughts, the real thing felt way better.

"Do you... want to make plans for our date?" he asks. You completely forgot about that in the heat of the moment. "Maybe we should get cleaned up before we think about next time." "Oh, right. Do you want to come to my dorm to shower?" he asks, before adding "Just to get cleaned up! I didn't mean- unless you want to-"

"Yes," you say, answering his question before he overthinks and uninvites you. "I don't want to have to go home like this."

"Yeah, um, alright. Come with me."

You go back to the table to get your stuff, which thankfully is still there, and he leads you to his dorm.

You didn't end up studying, but you did end up with a boyfriend, and that's more important anyways.

Although he would argue otherwise.

EPILOGUE:

You're chilling in Chan's room while you wait for your final grades to show up on the school website. You check your phone, it's finally the time they said it would be posted. You both open the website.

"Yes!" he yells, "I got a 93%!"

You wait for the page to load, and when you see your mark, you breathe a sigh of relief.

You barely passed, with 1% over the failing grade, but a pass is a pass nonetheless. Your GPA fell significantly after you started dating Chan, but it worked out in the end.

He looks at your score.

'Wow, what a terrible grade.'

He looks back at you.

"Hey, you passed! Great job!" he says, and gives you a high five.

[foldingfittedsheets]

I’ve been fired exactly once in my life. In my early twenties I was working at a pizza place. The pizzas were artisanal, thin crust and personal. They’re a huge chain now but when I first started the company was in its infancy. It was the wild west of management, and the core investors would frequently stop by to check on things. One of these people was this round little man with rage issues. A knock off Danny Devito with no charisma at all.

His favorite thing to do was to come in on a Friday or Saturday night. We'd be at our stations: taking orders, making pizza, manning the oven, finishing orders off, running the cash register. He'd shove his way onto the line and start rearranging people. "You, get off orders and work the cash register, you come over and make the pizzas!" With a line of customers snaking out the door he'd throw off all our grooves and rattle us.

Then, inevitably, a mistake would happen.

When it did he'd call the person over and say, "Hey c'mere. You're fired." Just like that. No inflection, just a flat "You're fired." It was absolutely a power kink, and because of his involvement the average turn over was three months. You were a veteran at five months.

One night there was only three of us manning the front. I took an order than went to the cash register to ring them out before I made the pizza. This horrible man watched that then called me into the back. I didn't know if I was about to be fired. But I wasn't. In fact, he had one other move besides firing people. He yelled.

In the back he absolutely lost his mind screaming at me for being on the cash register. I'm talking veins popping, spit flying, red with rage, this man just started bellowing nonsensically about where I should be and how I was just such a failure. It was truly like his brain had shut off, nothing he was saying even made sense. I stood there in the face of this tirade for a minute and then set a record for being the first person to ever cut him short by bursting into tears.

He instantly stopped yelling and it was like Jekyll and Hyde. He was remorseful and consoling, deeply embarrassed by my display of emotion. All my male coworkers just took the abuse but faced with my weeping he about faced and instantly backed off. I went outside to cry and when I came back in he pretended it had never happened.

That was the state of things. The investors knew they desperately needed to keep this man out of the stores, but they couldn't just give him the boot. They needed to move him aside and fill his position with someone. The store manager was this lovely woman who had hired me on the spot at my interview. The entire staff adored her. She was the best fit to get this roided out investor out of the stores for good.

Her replacement was this man called Anthony. He was instantly loathed by the entire staff. Condescending, critical, and lazy he started off his reign by letting go a core lead who "back talked." He spent a whole morning berating the opening crew because the closing crew (who had sold 100 more pizzas than we were even supposed to have on hand) had forgotten to windex the doors. He left the entire crew to close without him while he flirted with a girl who wasn't his pregnant girlfriend. He hired his roommate to replace the lead he fired and even that guy hated his guts.

Our antipathy toward him made him paranoid and resentful and one by one he started finding excuses to fire the whole staff, certain that if he could clean house he'd be able to do the job. My time came, and he sat me down with his boss, my former manager. She cried as he announced I wasn't personable enough and used too many pepperonis.

I looked at her, the woman who had trained me on how many pepperoni to use, but she said nothing. What could she say? He was the boss now and had determined I was going to be let go regardless. Too many in this case was seven. Seven pepperonis on a personal pizza. The correct number was five according to him, which is one pepperoni per slice, and one in the middle.

I sat there for a moment, taking it in. I smiled at my old manager, obviously miserable. I looked back at him and said, "You're a terrible manager, you're doing the worst imaginable job." I outlined some of the things he'd done so she could hear them, then I stood up and left. I made it to the back room before I started crying.

I found out later through a bus boy that he replaced the whole staff with college kids who had such limited availability that the store couldn't run, then quit three months later leaving the whole place in shambles. Most of the old staff returned, but I'd moved onto the sex shop already and was enjoying a job with significantly less risk of being fired on a whim.

However I do have to disclose on job applications if I've ever been fired. I always says yes and list the reason as, "Excessive use of pepperoni." It has never failed to get a laugh from my interviewer.

[azrielbrainrot]

I Laugh Like Me Again... She Laughs Like You - Part 6

Azriel x Reader

Description: Azriel would give anything to hold you one more time.

Warnings: Violence, Torture, Gore

Word Count: 5550

Notes: This took me a bit longer to write than I anticipated but I wanted to make sure not to forget any details. Hope you enjoy!

Part 5

The sun was already shining high in the sky when you finally stepped out of the dungeon. Feyre had arrived with Cassian and Amren a few minutes earlier, ordering her mate, you and Azriel to go and get some rest while they took over for a few hours. Rhysand could only use his daemati powers for so long and the strain was starting to become visible on his face, so she likely could feel his fatigue through their mating bond. His efforts were starting to be in vain anyway, you needed to wear Norris down a lot more physically before his mental walls would start giving in.

You didn't want to leave at first, completely unwilling to take your eyes off Norris for even a second, but both you and Azriel had been forced to go take a bath and eat something, maybe even get some sleep and only come back later in the day. Logically this made perfect sense, but you'd rather stay with him until he told you everything you wanted to know. You believe them all to be more than capable of handling this but you also know Norris, if anyone could find a way to escape from the Night Court's dungeons it would be him.

Still, you knew it was going to take a lot longer than a few hours to crack Norris so you needed to keep your strength, you wouldn't be any help at all if you exhausted yourself. Apparently the same wards around your memories were also present in Norris' mind, meaning Rhysand was only able to knock him out in the forest but not read through his thoughts, the same way he wasn't able to reach your memories before. This meant he was the one in control of said wards, both his and yours. Amren was quick to explain that since they had been done with the help of a witch's tool, he had to have it with him to keep up his wards since it wasn't his own magic that was keeping them in place.

It also explains why he risked becoming your handler even though letting you know him could lead to this exact outcome. He needed to strengthen your wards every once in a while to make sure no memory slipped through them. Unfortunately, even without his checkups the wards were strong enough that simply time wouldn't give your memories back in full, at best only letting you see some fragments. There was also no way of knowing what they could do to your mind when left unattended so your only option was to keep pushing him until he told you everything you needed to know.

The tool he used couldn't be far, he either had it on his person or hid it somewhere close before meeting you in the forest. You've searched through his belongings more than once, as did everyone present in the cell, including Azriel's shadows, but came up empty. He likely had a powerful glamour cast on it, one you had to make him break. Getting your hands on that tool meant you could break both the wards around his mind, which would grant Rhysand access to any and every piece of information he wanted, and the wards keeping your memories hidden inside you. One simple object could set you free.

Azriel winnowed you to the middle of the mountains surrounding Velaris, right behind the House of Wind, making sure no one in the city could see your bodies drenched in blood but unable to winnow you straight home. Having a house protected by wards that didn't allow for any winnowing, even by its inhabitants, was really good in theory, you've never seen a safer place really, but in practice having to fly up every time was more than annoying, especially when you don't have wings of your own.

The air was strangely awkward around the two of you since you hadn't spoken a word to each other after the short argument in the forest. Most of your annoyance had worn off at this point, got redirected at your smug handler chained up in the dungeon, but you still wanted him to be the one to come to you and explain himself. His attitude earlier had seemed completely different from everything you'd experienced until then, you know there's a reason for it but you're too prideful to ask him about it.

The only plausible reason you could think of is that he's been using you to get to an assassin with a higher up position in the guild, but something told you immediately that wasn't the case, it seems like a part of you balked at the thought that he'd betray you like this. Even putting your annoying phantom feelings aside, it didn't make sense considering the High Lord has followed his word on letting you help in interrogating Norris. Your mind was fresh out of ideas, and much too tired to analyze that small argument. He'll tell you what happened eventually, and if he doesn't… Well, then it's a good thing you didn't get your hopes up even more.

“I'll fly you up to the House,” his voice was scratchy from not being used in so long, making it deeper as he almost whispered beside you, not wanting to disturb the quietness in the mountain. Azriel had done most of the cutting and breaking but he hadn't even asked Norris any questions, content in letting you and Rhysand take over the interrogation while he carved out Norris' skin. You can't be sure if it was because of your fight or just the grueling last few hours but he didn't seem to be in the best mood anyway.

You nod up at him, simply walking closer and letting him pick you up into his warm embrace, strong hands careful as they handle your body. You've only flown once - from what you can remember at least, you can't imagine a version of yourself who wouldn't ask her husband to take her flying regularly if he had wings - and, given the circumstances, you didn't really have the chance to stop and truly enjoy the moment. It would be the same now, even worse given the fact that you'd rather not deal with the shadowsinger, but the breeze hitting against your tired body sounded heavenly, and so did the big bathtub and soft mattress waiting for you up in your room. There was also no energy left in your body to even try to argue with him, if there was you would have been using it on your handler.

His body relaxes slightly when you simply slip your arms around his neck, his wings stretching and flapping a couple of times as he got ready to take flight. He looked like he was expecting you to refuse, as if there was any other way to the House besides flying and he wasn't the only Illyrian here.

The actual flight doesn't take long, within a few moments Azriel is gently setting you down back on your feet at the top of the stairs, hands lingering on your body as if moving on their own, a habit he can't quite break himself out of. You meet his eyes, briefly wondering if you should say something, debating if you have enough patience in yourself to extend a small olive branch to the male who is covered in the blood of your enemy.

He beats you to it, looking down before speaking as if he couldn't hold your gaze for top long - yet another way he's acting out of character. “You're free to do what you want. I'll meet you in your room and fly you back to the dungeon when it's time. I won't bother you before that.” The professional, detached tone in his voice makes your annoyance want to rise up but you swallow it down, realizing how tired you really were as soon as you had stepped foot inside the house.

“Alright,” you tell him before turning around and walking straight to your room, never looking back to see his reaction or the way regret flashes in his eyes as he watches your every step away from him.

Azriel stayed true to his word, only coming to check in on you right before it was time to return. You can't even be sure if he stayed in his room the whole time, if he truly spent these few hours resting as he was ordered since there was no sound coming from his room or around the house at all. Curiosity had gotten the best of you a couple of hours ago, when you woke up from your nap feeling strangely alone, like a piece of you was begging to go find him. This feeling was clutching at your heart for long enough that you actually considered going to find Azriel, but held on since you didn't fully know your way around the house and you had no idea where he could be. You didn't really know what to say either.

Luckily it wasn't long until you heard his footsteps getting closer to your room before a soft knock sounded at the door. He always does this, makes sure to let himself be heard before knocking. Sitting up at the edge of the mattress, you call out to him, wondering if he'll tell you anything now or simply fly you back to the cells.

As soon as his form comes into view you can tell he hasn't slept much if anything at all, dark circles prominent under his eyes. He's at least taken a bath, the sullied leathers were now replaced with new ones, the stench of blood not clinging to him anymore. You're wearing some yourself, your old ones as you've been told. Your clothes were ruined and putting them back on would defeat the purpose of the bath you took earlier, but it feels weird to wear a version of what you always see Azriel and his family in. He takes notice of this as well, hazel eyes raking over your form, lingering around your waist long enough for you to start feeling self conscious, standing up and taking a step closer to him almost involuntarily.

“Is anything wrong? I thought you left them for me to wear.” Since he had given you the leathers along with your old belongings you had assumed you were allowed to wear them, but, at this point, these clothes were more his than yours. Maybe he was scared you'd ruin them and he'd lose his memories of you.

“No, that's not it. They're yours,” he assures quickly, eyes widening slightly before a conflicted expression takes over his face. “The buckles are done wrong,” his observation makes you look down at yourself, there were more straps and buckles than necessary for any piece of garment and you'd taken a bit longer to figure it out than you cared to admit, apparently you should have taken even longer.

Your fingers reach for the straps around your waist, tugging at the leather before he continues, “I can help you with them. They can be hard to put on if you're not used to it.” When you look up from the confusing clothes and your eyes move to meet his, you find him watching your hands hesitantly, his own flexing at his sides. You end up agreeing without even thinking it through, something you almost regret when he walks closer to you and suddenly all you can see and smell is Azriel.

He looks into your eyes before reaching out to the buckles around your waist slowly, giving you a chance to push him away, almost expecting you to. You drop your hands at your sides awkwardly, not knowing what to do with them or yourself when he starts working on your leathers. Expert fingers undo the buckle before pulling on the straps, unexpectedly tightening your armor in the process which pulls a startled gasp out of you. His hands move to grab your waist, surprised by your reaction. Wide hazel eyes meet yours at the sound, a heat spreading within them the longer he holds your gaze, hands frozen around your waist.

All your senses are overwhelmed with him so close, staring down at you like that. The only thing you can think of is the kiss you shared a few nights ago, your entire body begging to repeat the action as he looks down at you with the same passionate look he had worn then. He seems to be reminded of the same, perhaps of similar moments from your previous life, even more scandalous ones surely.

Thankfully, some of your common sense finds you before you could do something stupid like pull him down to you and taste him again, the thought making you look away from him and clear your throat, hoping he breaks from the spell and lets you pretend it didn't happen. This prompts him to keep buckling the leathers, with an urgency he didn't have before, and you look down with him, following his movements even though your mind isn't actually registering any of them as you try to calm your breathing and not think of the way his hands feel around your waist. You'll likely need his help fastening everything tomorrow as well.

“These are meant to cross so the leathers are molded to your body and there are no openings,” he tries to explain as he finishes and moves back, but you can tell he's as affected by your little moment as you were.

You nod at him, “There were a lot of straps, I wasn't sure which ones belonged where. Some of them don't even look like they have a purpose,” you finish as you play with the straps around your wrists, the ones you really couldn't figure out.

“Those are for your gloves,” he explains, a somewhat endeared look crossing his face. “I didn't think you'd need them but you can put them on. Though I'm not sure how they will behave with your powers now.”

“Did I not have these powers before?” You hadn't thought of the possibility but if the spell could erase your memories maybe Norris could have found a way to give or take powers. Just the thought of it brings a chill down your spine.

“You did, but you've gotten a lot stronger,” there was a hint of pride in his words, though the somber meaning hung between you. No matter how hard you practiced and how well they could have trained you here, the results wouldn't be as fast or maybe as clean as the ones resulting from the guild's harsh training. The guild had no problem pushing you past your limits, you either adapted and got stronger or you'd die and be replaced. You suppose you never had to use your powers to torture people before either.

“When this all ends we could spar together,” you sound hesitant even to your own ears, “Maybe I'm even stronger than you by now.” You haven't talked about what will happen after all of this, you can't know for sure what you'll want to do when you recover your memories. You also keenly aware you had just been telling yourself you wouldn't make it easy on him, but ended up seconds away from kissing him and inviting him to spar with you as soon as you saw him.

“I'd like that,” he nods, a reddish tint rushing to his ears. He makes it unbearably hard to even remember why you were upset with him in the first place. It takes everything in you not to lean into his genuineness and forget it ever happened. You bite your lip and give him a small nod of your own, “Are you ready then? We should go.”

“I wanted to talk to you before we left,” his voice takes on a serious tone, regret peeking through every word.

“Maybe this is not the right time. They're probably waiting for us,” you offered, not really sure how to go about having this conversation after what had just happened, even if the curiosity was killing you. It was clear you couldn't keep a level head when it came to Azriel.

“No, I can't…” he cuts himself off, closing his eyes and letting out a sigh, a heavy sound coming from deep in his chest as if he’s been pushing it down for a long time. He looks scared somehow, his wings pulling in tighter to his body and his shadows crawling up his shoulders as if comforting, or even encouraging him. You let him find his composure, find the right words to explain the situation. This feels bigger than a silly argument when adrenaline was pumping through both your veins and that gnawing feeling in your chest comes back, getting stronger with every breath, making you think this might be something he's carried on from the time you were still married.

Azriel opens his eyes after a few moments, the emotions swirling in them enough to make you breathless, and reaches his hand out to yours, waiting for you to accept it and then squeezing it tight as if he needs the reminder that you're real.

“I need you to know I wasn't trying to keep any secrets from you or order you around as you said,” he starts lowly, shiny hazel eyes alternating between watching your hands clasped together and staring deep into your eyes, “We've had this conversation many times before. I know you don't remember but I need you to know I never meant to make you think I want to have any sort of power over you.” He brings your hand up to his chest then, spreading your palm right over his beating heart as he continues, eyes never straying from yours, “I know you can handle yourself, and I know you want to be there when Norris tells you everything. I wasn't trying to keep you away from the dungeon because I didn't think you could handle it.”

“Then why?” Your voice is but a whisper, not wanting to disturb the vulnerable moment.

“I never let you see me down there before, know the monster I have to become. You tried, many times, but I never allowed it. I've always been too afraid of what your reaction would be,” he presses his hand down on yours a little harder as his heart beat picks up, “It would kill me if you were ever scared of me, if you couldn't love me anymore after learning who I am. I was so scared of losing you. Scared that you would ever look at me with fear in your eyes instead of love.”

You let your gaze fall to the way he presses his and your hand to his chest, letting his heartbeat lead yours. It takes a moment for you to process his admission. From what he told you before you thought you had been open with each other throughout your marriage, but it seems there were parts of him he kept hidden even from you, especially from you.

Moments like these always leave you in a weird position. You can't speak for the old version of you, as much as you want to believe that you wouldn't leave him, would never feel scared of him, when your love for him transcended your memories as if it was written down into your bones, the truth is you don't remember her at all. Maybe she would have been scared, maybe his worries hadn't been completely unwarranted then. The thought leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.

You turn your hand around, your palm no longer pressed against his chest in favor of holding onto his hand, your other hand joining in as you massage the rough skin and let them fall between you two, needing something familiar to ground yourself while you think of what to say. You twist his wedding ring around his finger once, closing your eyes at the tremble that runs through him at the motion, the way even his wings droop to the floor. The fact that he lets you touch him like this makes things so much harder sometimes.

“I've seen a lot of monsters. You're not one of them, Azriel. Far from it,” you start carefully, “and… I'm not sure how I was like before, if seeing you down there would have really been too much for me to handle but if I truly loved you like I think I did, then I know it wouldn't have mattered. There's nothing about you I see as unlovable.”

“Loved,” a broken mumble between you, not a question. This makes you look up at him. You want to deny it, tell him you still love him, but you can't make sense of the feelings inside you, can't say for sure what will happen to them when you regain your memories. Most of all, you don't want to hurt him, give him hope when he already lost so much, when you already hurt him so much.

You drop his hand, taking a small step back. “I'm not the same person you used to know, and recovering my memories might not bring her back either. Most of what's left is just my body.”

“It doesn't matter,” he says so matter-of-factly it almost makes you want to believe him.

“Azriel-”

“No,” he brings both of his hands to hold onto your face gently, giving you no option but to look into his eyes, “I love you. That didn't change when you died or over the century that followed, when I didn't think I would ever see you again. It didn't change when I saw you in the townhouse or even when you stabbed me. And it won't change whether you get your memories back or not, if you choose to stay or not.”

“I don't love you,” the words stumble out desperately, tears gathering in your eyes, “I don't even remember you, Azriel.”

“That doesn't change it either,” he smiles, thumb caressing your cheek softly. You know he means it then, know there's no way to change his mind even if for his own good. You can only pray to the Mother that your memories don't give you any unpleasant surprises. You're trying so hard to keep his heart safe, why must he keep offering to rip it out of his chest for you?

His expression changes abruptly as you're lost in thought and soon after you feel a presence in your mind before Rhysand's voice comes through. I hope I'm not interrupting anything. Azriel's hands drop from your face then, a scowl overcoming his features. You can only imagine the words he's throwing at his brother in his mind, but Rhysand's voice returns, noticeably more amused, Our break is over. It's time to meet them back at the dungeon. I take it you'll fly our captive back? The answering growl that comes from the shadowsinger actually makes you hide a chuckle behind your hand. His gaze softening once again when he notices the gesture.

Despite the timing and the way he insisted on addressing you as “captive” to rile Azriel up, you could actually thank Rhysand for breaking you away from the moment. He's right, you've rested more than enough and it's now time to go back and finish what you started. You only have the luxury of dealing with your marriage after Norris is gone and you could actually remember your husband.

The flight to the dungeon is a lot easier this time as your prior annoyance was replaced with strangely welcomed awkwardness and a tinge of bashfulness. As much as you tried to deny it, you can't pretend Azriel's admission hadn't made your heart want to leap out of your chest. You don't think anyone could have remained impartial to such a confession, especially coming from a male like Azriel, but as soon as you step into the dungeon, you feel yourself morph back into the cold assassin. You could even feel Azriel's mask fall over his face as well, ready to resume what you'd started before.

This same routine is repeated for a few days, slowly but surely wearing the formidable assassin down. It wouldn't be long until Rhysand or Feyre could read through his mind completely even if he didn't willingly tell you anything. This sentiment was felt among all of you, it's like you could all taste how close he was to breaking.

You came back from one of your mandatory breaks to see Cassian leaning by the cell door, arms crossed over his chest, glaring at your prisoner as Amren stood in the middle of the cell covered in blood, a wicked grin on her face as Norris looked the most unsettled you'd ever seen him. She was told to hold back in the first days but since Norris insists on resisting, Rhysand had allowed her to toy with him. You truly hope you never cross her, just the thought of the things she could do makes every hair on your body stand.

Everyone stays in the room this time, knowing it's only a matter of time. Azriel takes over once more, every slash of his knife meant to give Norris unimaginable pain, completely focused on making the short remaining of his life as miserable as he can.

The difference between the male who had confessed his undying love to you, held your hand as if you were the most precious thing in this world, and the one expertly carving out your former handler's body was almost unbelievable. Azriel's face showed nothing but anger, and even then you knew it wasn't even a quarter of the seething fury burning inside of him. This wasn't your doting husband, this was the Spymaster.

You feel Rhysand's dramatic show of power before you see him walk into the cell, hands in pockets as if he was walking into his kitchen instead of a seedy dungeon reeking of blood and sweat. He passes by you and joins Azriel in tormenting Norris, letting sharp black talons run across the mental walls he's been so desperate to maintain. The smirk on his mate's face, who leans against the table calmly by your side, tells you they might even be teaming up on him.

Fatigue was starting to eat away at everyone the longer you spent inside the windowless cell, but, as Norris smirks lessened and his bared teeth stopped being enough to hide the obvious grunts of pain, his skin paling considerably as his blood pooled at his feet, it was clear that you were on the right track, only needed to keep pushing.

Your handler had started answering more questions too, if only to keep you distracted and away from any blades long enough. It's hard to believe that the male you've been frightened of for a century is the same one chained in front of you. If it weren't for the stubbornness and the pride he's managed to keep somehow, you wouldn't have believed it at all.

“This whole mission was a gamble. We couldn't know for sure if they'd written you off their wards even if they thought you were dead. When you walked in so easily I thought it would be a piece of cake from there. Seems I was wrong.” You had guessed as much. At the time, being sent to an unknown place on such short notice seemed strange and sloppy for how usually crafted the guild's plans were, but knowing what you do now, it makes sense. Not only were you written into the wards as he said, but if it hadn't been for the strange nostalgic feelings inside you, Azriel would have let you escape, you would have even killed him to do so.

“The spell should have sealed your memories and feelings tight,” Norris continues as if sensing your thoughts, “I'm not sure what is trying so hard to claw its way out from behind those walls.” He tilts his head to the side and pauses as if he found the answer and that self-assured smirk reappears on his lips. The sight makes your skin crawl, your powers reacting with you and sending an icy chill into the room. Temperature dropping as his smirk only widens even more and Azriel looks at you with a worried expression before catching himself. “Maybe I just messed up the spell,” he dismisses.

“What do you mean?”

“It is a tricky spell,” he shrugs nonchalantly, knowing that's not what you asked. Azriel moves before you, Truth Teller slashing across his skin for the millionth time, but Norris seems intent on keeping at least this last piece of information to himself. There's more to this, you know there is, but the interrogation moves on to matters of the guild. Rhysand is still worried that they will come for you now that you've deserted, and that they will bring harm to his beloved court.

Within the next few hours, Norris' healing stops being able to keep up with his injuries, even his voice losing strength. It seems like he was focusing the remaining of his energy on keeping his mental walls safe, but it's not long until you see Rhysand's smirk grow, a satisfied wicked thing on his face.

You watch as Norris' head goes limp, unfocused eyes dropping to the ground as the High Lord searches through his mind, probably making it as unpleasant as he possibly can. Your heart starts beating faster in your chest, anxiety building up at the thought that this could have all been for nothing, that Norris might not have the answer after all. You feel a hand on your shoulder but don't even have the mind to look back and check who is trying to comfort you.

When he finally steps back, he simply gives you a nod and a breath of relief escapes you as you stare back into Norris' eyes. You watch Azriel and Rhysand share a look in the corner of your eye, never daring to look away from Norris' defeated face. Within moments everyone starts clearing out of the cell in silence, leaving you and your shadowsinger standing over the prisoner.

It's only when Azriel's hand reaches for yours, tugging on it to get your attention that you look away. His eyes don't give away much and he doesn't say the words, but as he places Truth Teller in the palm of your hand, you know exactly what he means. He nods at you once and drops your hand, taking a step back and giving you space.

You look down at the dagger in your hands, the same one you had held to wound the male who now handed it to you, the one you'll now use to set yourself free. Describing the feeling running through your body is impossible, you always thought you'd die in the guild, as an assassin. Never even dared to think you could be more, never thought it would be possible to get out alive and find a life for yourself. You thought you'd be scared at the prospect but you can only feel excitement and relief.

Not wanting to waste any more time, you walk to Norris and pull on his hair to lift your face to his, so he can see all the hate and anger in your gaze before you stab the knife through his right eye slowly, making sure to get it through his brain, deep enough that no amount of healing or any trick he might have had up his sleeve would be able to save him, and twisting it around. You don't move for a few moments, listening for his heartbeat and paying attention to the blood seeping out of the wound. It's only when you're sure he's dead, that his heart is completely quiet and enough blood has poured out, that you pull the knife out with a squelching sound, flicking it down to get rid of most of the blood and any pieces of flesh stuck to it.

You hesitate for a moment before turning back, meeting Azriel's eyes. As much as you'd told him there was no need for him to worry of your opinion of him changing after witnessing what he did to Norris, of ever being afraid of him, you had hypocritically been scared of letting him see you like this, of seeing the cold blooded killer you had become, so far detached from the wife in his memories.

All your worries are proven baseless however. The only thing you can distinguish in his eyes is relief, at having the answer to getting your memories back and having the person responsible for your pain killed. You can't help the smile growing on your face, not caring for how it must look against the blood covering most of your body, and wrap your arms around Azriel's neck, pulling him down into a hug as a sigh of relief escapes you, tears rising to your eyes and flowing down your cheeks. His arms come around you immediately, tightening his grip on you and burying his face in your neck, tears of his own wetting your skin.

You're finally free.

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[ros3ybabe]

🎀 Overcoming Gym Anxiety 🎀

I got asked about this through my inbox by @sxfiaaa so I figured I'd make a post about it and hopefully help a lot of people with something I too used to struggle with!

🩷 Wear Comfortable Clothing

We've all seen the beautifully dressed people on Tiktok, Pinterest, etc in their matching sets and cutr gym clothes. If that is what you're comfortable wearing to the gym, do it! Wear it, and be confident in it! If you're more of a loose clothes/sweatpants/baggy shirts or hoodie type of person, do that! Wear whatever you feel comfortable (and cute) in, because the better you feel going into a workout, the more you'll be able to focus on your workout!

🩷 Know What You're Doing When You're There

This just means go in with a plan! You don't need to know how to use every single machine or do every single exercise known to mankind. Scroll tiktok or pinterest for some workout videos for inspo (please make sure the video you get inspo from shows proper form!!! Proper form is so important for being safe!!)

If you know you can go certain days of the week, make a workout split to follow that! EX 3 day split: Monday - Leg Day, Wednesday - Upper Body, Friday - Full Body

OR, if you just want to go do cardio, then plan for that! I didn't know how to use a treadmill, but I went to the gym at my university and stood on the treadmill til I figured it out!

🩷 Remember This

No one is going to look at you and judge you or think mean things about you. Everyone is at the gym for the purpose of bettering themselves and their health. If you find people giving you occasional glances, maybe it's because they don't recognize you from the gym (or they do recognize you from somewhere else), maybe their admiring your outfit/physique, maybe their avid gym goers who are watching your form and technique, or maybe their just zoned out and you happen to be in the line of sight.

When I'm at the gym, I look around between sets and take note on other people's form to see if maybe I should tweak the way I do a certain exercise, or I'm admiring another girls outfit or physique because there are a lot of beautiful women at the gym. Sometimes, I'm thinking "dang, they're lifting so heavy, how cool!" or "wow, their form is amazing, they really know what they're doing." I've never thought bad abut someone at the gym because why would I?

🩷 Don't Be Scared To Ask For Help

if there an exercise you really want to do but don't know how and videos aren't helping, ask someone around you who isn't in the middle of an exercise and looks like they may know. The guy at the gym doing upper body who has good biceps may be the right guy to ask about upper body exercises. The girl doing impeccable Bulgarian Split Squats might be the right person to ask for help with those types of movements. Just make sure they aren't in the middle of an exercise, because that can cause some unwanted issues, especially if they're mid-rep, that can turn into a safety issue.

People love to help people, especially at the gym. If you politely ask for help from someone, they may take it as a compliment that you think they look like a person who is knowledgeable on working out. I'd definitely be so flattered if someone asked me for help or advice at the gym!

🩷 Random Advice:

remember your why! no matter how anxious you are, remember why you're going! what are your goals, what do you hope to achieve, how proud will you feel after?

start small if you have to! if it's really anxiety inducing to start working out, make it your first goal to at least step into the gym. then 2nd goal, walk around the gym to get a feel for it. 3rd goal, maybe 5-10 minutes on a treadmill, and then keep building momentum each day.

be careful with the hours you go! there is such a thing as peak gym hours. It varies by place, but a lot of gyms are busy between 2pm and 6pm I've seen. I personally love going to the gym super early morning, it's a little less busy and I'm a morning person so it works out for me! If you can only go during peak hours, bring a friend or keep your headphones on and do your thing!

Bring a friend! If you're really anxious about going alone, bring a friend with similar goals! Sometimes it can be a lot nicer to learn something new with a friend then try and learn it on your own! Plus, it's like extra motivation and accountability!

Have a motivating pre workout routine. Play some music while getting ready, prep your bags, prep your playlist, get your workout itself figured out, and just keep yourself excited to go! I love blasting high-energy music that makes me feel like a baddie on my way to the gym.

I hope this was helpful!! My thoughts were everywhere but I tried to convey them as best as possible! I'm happy to answer any questions or offer more tips and advice, don't feel scared to ask! <3

til next time lovelies 🩷

[joelmillerisapunk]

Beach Daddy III. I can do it with a broken heart

Rich daddy!Joel x F!reader

Series Masterlist • Masterlist

Wordcount: 12,532

Summary: After a day of emotional turmoil, you find solace in a chance encounter with Joel, who invites you to his secret deck.

Warnings: 18+, Joel and reader get closer, Todd does fuckboy things, reader really goes through it in this one, it's like a lil baby soap opera up in here for everyone.

Notes: Welcome, welcome, dear friends. Sorry this is so long. I never know where to end the chapters 😂 so I just add more. Your comments, asks, and reblogs are always so welcome! I appreciate everyone who's in this with me.

You walk out of Amorebelle with light pink clothing bags weighing down each arm, wearing a new outfit. You can't remember a time when you've gotten this many new clothes at once. You also find it hard to wrap your head around the fact that these clothes cost more than you make in an entire year.

The saleswomen Jane and McKenzie won't let you look at the price tags, but as they're ringing up your picks, you catch a glimpse of the total on the computer screen. You can't help but wonder how you'll ever be able to pay Joel back for this shopping trip. 

You also can't help but wonder how often he does this for women.

Jane, who's worked at the shop the longest, had recognized him when you walked in the door. You don't have time to contemplate this because you notice a maid you recognize from the yacht. She makes her way to you and starts relieving you of your bags. You make sure to keep the bag with your dress and shoes for the evening.

"Miss, I was told to take these to your room on the ship while you are at your appointment," the maid tells you.

"What appointment?" you ask her, confused.

"You have an appointment at the salon three stores up.”

"Did Joel set this up for me?" you ask, feeling even more surprised.

"Yes, ma'am," the maid says with a smile.

You're glad that the boutique you've been shopping in has a shower where you're able to rinse off before this appointment. They must be used to sandy beachgoers coming in right before a night out.

You make your way up the street and stop at the salon with floor-to-ceiling glass windows. From the outside, you can see the row of chairs, each in front of its own mirror.

You walk in, and the man at the front desk assures you that you do, in fact, have an appointment, full hair, and makeup, which is all prepaid.

The receptionist walks you back to your stylist, an attractive man whose hair color matches yours. "What do you have in mind today, sweetheart," your stylist asks you.

"I'm honestly not sure. Can I leave it up to you?" you ask.

"That's my favorite request," he says as he runs his fingers through your hair. "Your natural coloring is gorgeous, obviously, I am not going to touch that. So, I'm thinking a quick trim and a blowout."

He has your hair and makeup done within an hour, and you barely recognize yourself in the mirror. You're amazed that your hair is perfectly smooth, with not a single strand of frizz to be found. You gently run your fingers through your hair and can't believe how soft it is.

"What do you think?" the stylist asks you. He hands you a small mirror and turns you in the chair so you can get a better view of the back of your hair.

"Is this really my hair?" you ask, holding up the smaller mirror.

"Of course, sweetheart. You look amazing," he says with a smile.

"I didn't know I could love my hair this much.” You admit.

"So, go enjoy it!" he says with a huge smile.

"I will. I love it. Thank you so much," you say enthusiastically.

You walk out of the salon's front door in your midnight blue silk dress with shining hair, and you feel amazing. For the first time since the breakup, you feel like you can do a whole lot better than Todd.

"All I can say is wow," says Joel. He's been waiting for you outside of the salon.

"I hardly recognize myself," you say with a laugh.

"I wasn't commenting on the dress or your hair. I was impressed by your confidence. It looks good on you darlin," Joel says, looking you up and down unabashedly.

You feel your cheeks get hot. You don't understand how Joel always says exactly what you need to hear.

"But, I do have to admit I was right about that dress; it does look amazing on you," Joel says with a wink.

"I don't know how to thank you–" but Joel cuts you off before you can finish thanking him.

"Please, you don't need to finish what you were about to say. You deserved it. Simple as that."

"Okay," you say with a smile. "Well, then I just want you to know that today has been the best day I have had in a long time." You like that Joel isn't the kind of man who gives gifts because he likes the praise that follows.

"The restaurant is just a few blocks over. I can call for a ride," he says, pulling out his phone.

"Yeah, we could get a ride over," you say and grab his phone. "But, it's such a beautiful night; why don't we walk?" It is a beautiful night, but if you're being honest with yourself, you want to walk to soak up as much time alone with Joel as you can.

Joel smiles and offers you his arm. You notice his new suit jacket goes perfectly with your new dress. You bite your lip to keep yourself from asking if he picked it on purpose, but you secretly hope he had.

"This town is beautiful; I'm surprised that it isn't busier," you say, looking up at the bistro lights strung across the streets in a zig-zag pattern. The light is just barely fading, and the cool breeze catches the slit in your dress, making the end lightly flutter around your ankles as you walk.

"It is a well-kept secret," Joel says.

"For the rich and famous?" you ask.

"Well, kinda, but the locals who live here are what make this place so amazing. The restaurant we’re headed to has some of the best food I've ever eaten. But the chef is just a local man who perfected his art form. Never went to culinary school; just cooked because he loved it."

"How do you know all that about him?" you ask.

"My family has vacationed here for as long as I can remember. When I got tired of listening to my parents argue, I would go exploring the island. I’ve gotten to know a lot of the locals over the years," he explains.

You walk up to a building with a large illuminated sign reading The Coastal Hibiscus. The restaurant has a large deck area with a perfect view of the ocean. As you make your way up the front steps, you drop your hand from Joel's arm, not wanting Sarah to get the wrong idea.

You arrive at the restaurant last, finding the entire party already seated. As you enter, the conversation slows, and Todd's gaze locks onto you, a sense of satisfaction washing over you from the look on his face.

Only two seats remain, so you sit between Alison and Hudson. Joel takes a seat directly across from you, next to his daughter.

"I love that dress on you, by the way." Alison says with a little smile.

"Thanks," you reply as the waiter distributes menus.

"Where did you take off to? I haven't seen you since you went with Sarah's dad to find the dolphins," Alison asks.

"Oh, we never found them, so we just drove around for a long time looking for them," you lie, staring intently at the menu. You don't want to share the details of the intimate day you spent with Joel.

"That's too bad," Alison says, joining the group's conversation about where everyone plans to 'winter' that year.

You continue to look at your menu, overwhelmed by the number of choices. Finally, you look up to see Joel staring at you. You silently mouth 'What should I get?' across the table.

He smiles at you and mouths back 'The lobster.'

When the food arrives, you're grateful for his suggestion. His choice is amazing; the lobster is cooked so well that it feels like it melts in your mouth.

You sit peacefully sipping a glass of wine and listening to the group's conversation, stealing glances at Joel. The waiter brings around dessert menus, and you order a slice of cheesecake, one of your favorites.

A few minutes later, the waiter sets a piece of cheesecake in front of you, and placed delicately in the whipped cream is a stunning cushion cut diamond engagement ring. Your breath catches in your throat, and your heart stops. As you try to make sense of what's happening, you hear Todd whisper angrily to the waiter, "No, not her!"

No one seems to notice the mix-up, and a few seconds later, the engagement ring cheesecake is placed in front of Sarah instead. Her small squeak alerts the rest of the table to what's going on.

"Sarah, will you make me the luckiest man in the world? Will you marry me," Todd says, down on one knee next to Sarah.

"Of course, I will." Sarah immediately answers. She jumps up and hugs Todd, all the while letting out ear-piercing squeals.

You look across the table and see Joel's eyes locked on you. Did he see them place the ring in front of you and your reaction to it? 

The restaurant feels like it's closing in around you. You have to get out. You quietly slide your chair away from the table, leaving your ringless cheesecake untouched, and walk out into the open air. You start walking toward the ocean; the water has turned from a vibrant blue to an ominous black. The glassy surface reflects the light of the moon, which sits alone in the sea of darkness. 

You continue walking, your feet aching in the heels, but to your relief, you recognize the yacht docked in a nearby marina. The crew must have sailed over to this marina to drop off the rest of the group while Joel and you were in the shops. So you make your way towards it. However, even before you reach the docks, the tears have already started falling down your face. You wipe them away quickly, not wanting to stain your new dress. The sound of footsteps behind you has you hurrying to the yacht. Whoever is following you, you do not want to speak to them–not now.

Not even if it's Joel.

—

 "Todd, I'm so glad we finally get to spend some time together. It seems like I barely get to see you anymore. I'm so sorry I've been so busy," you said, smiling at your fantastic boyfriend. You really missed him, but with graduation so close, you had to put all of your efforts into studying.

"I'm glad you finally found some time for me," Todd said in a flat tone. You guessed you deserved that, but the comment still stung.

"Where do you want to go eat? I heard there’s a great new sushi place just a few blocks over," you said, trying to switch the mood to a more positive one.

"Yeah, that works," Todd muttered as he pulled out his phone to send a text.

You started walking over, but you couldn't help but feel like something was off, and you relaxed as Todd's fingers locked with yours.

"So, how’s work going?" you asked. Todd had graduated with his Bachelor's degree the year before and started working for his dad's financial firm after that.

"It's been great. You would not believe some of the people I help with their investments. Every single one of them was a millionaire before they were thirty. That is going to be me; just you wait."

"I know you will be, Todd," you said as the hostess showed you to your table. "If anyone can make it happen, you will."

"It wouldn't hurt to have a rich wife. Then, we'd become millionaires together," Todd said and smiled at you. He had always been so proud of the fact that you were working towards being a lawyer. You were so relieved that he recognized your time studying was for your future together.

The waiter walked over to your table and asked if you were ready to order. Todd ordered multiple plates of sushi, and then the waiter turned to you.

"I'll have an order of the California rolls and a water," you handed the menu back to the waiter and looked up to see Todd with a strange expression on his face.

"California rolls?" Todd asked as the waiter walked away.

"It's the best deal on the menu. I'm saving for my books. I don't know if I’ll be able to qualify for another loan," you said, slightly defensive. You knew Todd hated how cheap you were, but you had to be if you were going to be able to afford to put yourself through school. You knew he didn't understand; his dad paid for his education.

Todd pulled out his phone again and sent another text. You tried not to let it bother you; it was probably something for work.

You spent the rest of dinner talking about the different investments Todd was making on others' behalf and how one of his clients had just purchased their first private island.

"I'm going to run to the restroom before we head out," Todd said and got up, not realizing he had left his phone sitting face up on the table.

As soon as he walked away, his screen lit up with a text message. All you could see from where you sat was the contact name, 'Her.' Your heart sank.

The screen went black, and you took a deep breath. Todd walked back from the restroom, smiling at you.

"You ready to go?" he asked you as he made it to your table.

"Absolutely."

"Why don't we catch a movie?" Todd asked, grabbing your hand again as you walked out of the restaurant.

"Sure. What do you want to go see?”

—

You slam the door of your room and rest your back against it, catching your breath. You had to get away from whoever was following you out of the restaurant. You can't face anyone after witnessing Todd's engagement to someone else. You take a few minutes to catch your breath, and when a soft knock on the door vibrates your back, you ignore it. The person doesn't knock again.

Your dress clings to your sweaty body, and you want nothing more than to take it off. You slip off the midnight blue silk gown and drape it over the chair in front of the vanity. Noticing the pink garment bags already hung neatly in your closet, you secretly wish that you fit in this world, this world of money. But you know deep down that you don't.

You walk past all of the new clothes and throw back on your usual attire of shorts and a T-shirt; you can't get comfortable in the fancy clothes. You make your way over to your bed and throw yourself on the comforter. Burying your face in the pillow and let the tears come. You cry until your eyes burn. You sit up in bed and wonder where everything went wrong with Todd and you. You had truly been in love with him. You had planned a future together, and even though he never spoke directly of marrying you, you always assumed it would happen one day. So when the waiter placed his engagement ring in front of you perched on a pillow of whipped cream, it hurt even more.

Your roommate had been suspicious of Todd cheating on you for months before you read that text. You went on pretending your relationship was stable, even though deep down, you suspected him, too, especially after the incident at the sushi restaurant.

You didn't confront him about the text until weeks later. He denied everything at first, saying it was his father's receptionist. She was a bitter older woman who was not the kind of woman you wanted to cross. He put the receptionist in his phone as 'her' as a joke.

You knew he was lying, but you were okay to keep on pretending. That was until you caught him texting 'her' again, right in front of you. Then, you exploded, and you got into your worst fight. He finally came clean that it was a woman he met at your birthday party. 

He swore he wasn't cheating and that she was just a friend. You promised that you would work it out even if he was cheating on you, but he wasn't interested in that. He was no longer interested in you. He broke up with you the very next day.

With the memories replaying in your mind, you jump out of bed and run to the balcony. You breathe in quick gasps of the cold sea air. You just realized that you had invited Sarah to your birthday party. Todd had met her there, and they had been in contact ever since. Sarah told you that she'd been dating Todd for four months, but your birthday party was eight months ago. So Todd had been pursuing Sarah for eight months while he was still pretending to be faithful to you.

'It wouldn't hurt to have a rich wife; then we'd become millionaires together.' Todd's words ring through your memories. He hadn't been talking about you becoming a lawyer and the two of you becoming wealthy together. He had been talking about marrying Sarah, an heiress. This had been his plan all along. 

This night of realization has your head hammering, and you need to calm down. So you walk back into your room, slip on your shoes, and walk out your door. You’re going to go out to the bar on the deck and make yourself a drink. The lights on the deck are already out, but you quickly realize you’re not there alone.

"Oh, Todd!" Sarah moans.

"You are so damn sexy!"

Two shadowy figures are pressed together in the pool, waves rippling around them, and you quickly realize you have just interrupted Sarah and Todd's after-engagement celebration. You immediately freeze on the spot.

Their moans grow louder, and you try to retreat before either of them sees you. Unfortunately, you don't notice the lounge chair behind you in the dark and topple over it in your rush to get away. You land flat on your back, and all the air is knocked out of your lungs.

"What the hell? Who's there?" Todd's voice yells behind you.

You pray it’s too dark for them to see or recognize you. Then, you start crawling back towards the door, and as soon as you think you are out of sight, you stand up quickly and run. Once you get through the door, you keep running down the hall, the tears stinging your eyes. You are humiliated, heartbroken, and defeated.

You get to a set of stairs and immediately start climbing as many floors as you can. You have to get as far away from the pool as possible. It’s  bad enough knowing Todd is sleeping with Sarah, possibly for eight months, but to see it first hand is too much.

You end up in front of an elevator, and just as you stop to catch your breath, the doors slide open.

"Hey darlin? Are you okay?"

It's Joel. All you want to do is to run into his arms and feel his warmth surround you. But instead, you simply nod and turn to walk away. How could you possibly explain what you just witnessed? Sarah is still his daughter.

"I don't believe you. Somethin’ is wrong. I came to check on you earlier.”

—

Joel hands you a glass of red wine, and you follow him out onto his private deck. The elevator has led up to his room, and Joel, noticing your state, invites you up.

You lean over the railing and swirl the wine in the glass.

"Do you want to talk about what happened?" Joel asks with a note of concern in his voice.

"Nothing happened; I was just tired," you reply.

"You were so tired that you ran all the way back to the yacht?" Joel asks, clearly not believing you.

You don't say anything and take a small sip of your wine.

"And in the hallway just now? You seemed pretty upset," Joel says.

"I promise, I'm fine, but thank you," you say, trying to muster up a small smile.

Joel does not look convinced, but he lets the topic go. You both stand looking over the ocean for a long time in complete silence. The yacht has left the small island, and so the waves are bubbling lazily behind the propellers.

"When do we make port again?" you ask, finally breaking the silence.

"Tomorrow," Joel replies.

"I’m gonna miss you, Joel," you say quietly.

"What are you talking about, darlin?" Joel says as his eyebrows knit together in concern.

"I'm going to catch a flight back to New York tomorrow.”

Joel stares at you for a long time after saying that you’ll be leaving when you get to port the next day. Or at least you hope you will be. You don't even know where you will be, let alone if there is an airport or a ticket home you can afford.

"I would really hate to see you go, darlin," Joel says with a serious look on his face.

"I think it's for the best," you answer softly.

"The best for you?" he asks. You stay quiet for a long time. Are you deciding what is best for you and/or running from your problems?

"I don't know… " you answer truthfully.

You take another small sip of the wine Joel had poured you and watch the liquid as you swirl it around in your glass.

"You know wine always tastes better in the sauna," Joel says, watching you.

You turn to him, "That does sound nice, but I’m sure the staff who work the spa have already gone to bed."

"Well, good thing the sauna is in my bathroom," he says as the corners of his mouth ease into a smile.

"You have a sauna in your bathroom?" you ask, impressed.

"Of course, so what do you say?"

"I'm not really dressed for a sauna," you gesture down to your shorts and T-shirt.

"I have a robe that you can borrow unless you'd rather go without." Joel winks and starts walking away to grab the robe.

"So what else do you have up here all to yourself?" you ask, liking the distraction from the mess of a night you've been through.

—

You walk through a large sitting room, a bedroom with the biggest bed you've ever seen, and then finally to the bathroom. Joel calling the tub in his bathroom a soaking tub is an understatement; it's more like a small swimming pool sunken in the middle of the floor.

"You can get changed here." Joel leads you into an extravagant walk-in closet, complete with a large vanity table and chaise lounge. He hangs a white cotton robe on a hook next to the door, making it the only garment in the empty closet. You realize Joel's room must include his and her's closets, but Joel has no use for this one.

You undress down to nothing and slip the buttery soft robe over your skin. You could live in this robe. There are definitely some amazing perks to being rich. You walk out of the closet, and Joel is waiting for you in a matching cotton robe.

"See, it's a perfect fit," he says.

"I don't even want to know how much one of these robes costs," you say. 

Joel laughs a little at your comment. "The sauna is through this door here," Joel says and pushes the door next to him open, holding it for you to enter first.

You don't know what you've been expecting when Joel had said he had a sauna in his bathroom, but the sauna you walk into is more than you could have ever imagined.

Every inch of the room is covered in light wood. The benches look as though they conform perfectly to your body and are accented with white pillows. The steam is warm and envelops you as soon as you walk into the room. However, the most breathtaking part of the sauna is the floor-to-ceiling window. It makes it feel like the sauna is open to the ocean itself, and the dark water reflecting the dim light of the room is extremely romantic.

"How do you ever leave?" you ask after a few speechless seconds.

Joel laughs again and takes a seat in the center of the bench, staring out into the dark water. You sit next to him and realize you might be too close, so you try to scoot away subtly.

"I don't bite, darlin."

You laugh awkwardly but remain close enough to feel the heat of his body next to yours. You close your eyes and try to let go of the evening. You think about watching the dolphins swimming in the cove while Joel sits next to you on the jet ski.

"You look like you're feeling a little better," Joel whispers.

"I am. This is exactly what I needed." You pause for a few seconds and add, "You keep saving me today."

"You've saved me on this trip too. Can I tell you a secret?" he asks, leaning in closer to you.

"Of course," you answer, and your heart starts beating faster.

"The rest of Sarah's friends drive me insane."

"That's your secret?" you bump his shoulder with yours. "That’s a really weak secret. They drive me insane too."

"If that’s not a secret, then tell me a better one," he says.

"What kind of secret?"

"Tell me why you’re leaving tomorrow?" he asks and looks into your eyes.

You pause, considering if you should tell him the truth, but he is getting Todd as a son-in-law. So you choose a different path.

"I can't afford to stay," you say finally. Taking Joel's silence as confusion, you elaborate, "I'm completely broke. I've put all of my money into school. I work as a bartender and live off of my tips and ramen noodles."

"I'm sorry, but I don't understand why that means you need to leave tomorrow," Joel says somberly.

That’s a fair point; Sarah and her father have paid for absolutely everything.  It isn't costing you anything to stay on this once-in-a-lifetime vacation. You need to come up with a reason to leave before he sees through the holes in your story.

"I have to get back to New York, get ready to move to Cambridge, and find a job there before the semester starts. I only have a few weeks of living costs saved up." This is partly true; you do need to do all of those things, but going back early would actually complicate things for you. You can't move into your new apartment in Cambridge until two weeks before the semester starts. So going back early would just mean you'd sit in your old apartment with nothing to do. Plus, if you went back early, you would have a few more weeks of expenses to take care of, and you already quit your job.

"What if I could help you find a new position in Cambridge?" Joel asks.

"What do you mean?" you ask, surprised.

"I have some connections in Cambridge; if I helped you get a few interviews, would you be able to stay longer?"

You can't find any words to respond. You've been really worried about what you would do for work when you got to Cambridge. You don't know anyone there and planned on spending the two weeks before the semester handing in resumes at different restaurants.

"You would do that for me?" you ask.

"Absolutely. I’ll make some calls in the morning. You don't have to stay, but I would enjoy your company if you did. The Bahamas are beautiful this time of year. I don't want you to miss it."

"Okay, I'll stay," you say quietly. "Thank you, Joel."

You can't believe this man's kindness to you. If it's important to Joel that you stay on the trip, then you will figure out how to deal with Todd and Sarah for a little while longer.

"I'm glad to hear it," he says with a smile.

The sky starts to lighten in the early morning hours, so you stand and tell him, "I should head back down to my own room and get some rest."

"Probably a good idea," he says and follows you out of the sauna.

You go back into the massive closet and change back into your clothes, hanging the robe back on the hook. You walk back out into the main room, and Joel is waiting for you, still in his robe.

"Let me walk you down."

"That's really okay. You’ve done so much for me already," you say.

"How long will you stay?"

"I'm not sure. At least another week." You smile at Joel and walk out the door.

***

Joel shuts the door behind you as you walk down the hall. He's relieved that he convinced you to stay for at least another week, but he knows there's something else that's the real cause for you being so upset tonight.

He knows that you're not part of Sarah's usual friend group, but after talking to you tonight, he's confused about how you're even friends at all. You clearly have big goals and work hard to see them happen. Sarah doesn't have any goals other than becoming an 'influencer.'

The thought of you working at every spare moment to put yourself through school makes his stomach twist at how badly he's spoiled Sarah. You deserve so much better than to be just scraping by. He would do anything he could to help you find something better. Hell, he would have offered to pay for your tuition, too, if he thought you would accept it.

Joel pulls out his phone and sends an email to the connection he has at a law firm in Cambridge. He's done some business with them in the past and figures it would be a much better fit for you than making people drinks. With how much business he's given the firm, he knows he can at least get you an interview.

On his home screen, there's a notification of a phone call from his financial advisor, Alester, that he missed while he was in the sauna with you. Alester never calls at this hour, so he knows something is wrong. Joel calls him back immediately, waiting impatiently to hear his voice on the other end.

“Joel, I am so sorry for the early hour," Alester says.

“No need to apologize; what's going on?" He asks urgently.

“I am afraid it is not good news.”

“Just tell me, Alester," he says, doing his best not to get impatient with the man. He's worked for Joel for years, and Joel trusts him with his life. There's an infuriatingly long pause on Alester's end. He sighs before he finally responds. “Blaine is back, sir."

***

The sun is streaming through the glass doors of the balcony as you finally open your eyes. Your head is pounding from a lack of sleep and caffeine. You want to order coffee up to your room, but you need to shower too badly to wait. After running all the way to the yacht and then sitting in the sauna with Joel, you are salty with dried sweat. You probably should have showered last night, but, after reaching your room in the early morning hours, you collapsed on the bed and had fallen asleep in your clothes.

You walk into the bathroom, expecting to look like a mess from all the events of the night, your clothes are extremely wrinkled, but you are surprised to see your hair still looks flawless. "I wish I could afford to get a blowout more often," you say to your reflection, pulling on a few strands as you admire the style.

You put your hair up and step into the hot water of the shower, washing off the previous day. You stand under the steaming water until you are getting a little dizzy from the heat. As you stand there, you can't help but think about Joel. He's been so kind to you, and you can't help but wonder if there's a chance he wants more from your relationship than what one would typically expect between a man and a friend of his daughter's. You shake your head. You can't allow yourself to think that way. Joel lives in a world you know nothing about. Not only is he much older than you, he is also Sarah's dad. Besides, he can have any woman he wants. Why would he want you?

Returning your thoughts to reality, you finish rinsing your hair and turn off the water. You wrap a towel around yourself, and make your way back into the bedroom to cool down.

The screen of your phone is illuminated, so you pick it up and lounge back on the bed. You have several notifications from the group chat between you and your roommates, Aubrey and Lin. You know you need to let them know what's going on.

Aubrey: Hey? Are you still alive? We haven't heard from you in days.

Lin: Maybe she finally found herself a rebound, and that’s why she’s too busy for us. My guess is a sexy pool boy!

You: Sorry, you two. Signal has been spotty. A sexy pool boy, Lin? Is that your guess or your fantasy?

Lin: I think a sexy pool boy should be everyone’s fantasy. ‘Pool boy, refresh my drink, and while you are at it, come rub me down with some tanning lotion.’

Aubrey: Lin, you’re the reason I can’t let Gianni read our group messages!

Lin: Sorry, we aren’t as lucky as you to have an amazing boyfriend who kisses the ground we walk on. Some of us have to use our imaginations.

You: I miss you two so much! I wish you were here with me.

Aubrey: How is everything going? Is the boat as big as we are imagining?

You: Honestly, it is probably bigger than you’re imagining. It’s not so much a boat as it is a super yacht. The bathroom in my room is as big as our entire apartment, and I’m just in a guest room. I have my own private balcony! Oh, and yesterday, I got to see a pod of dolphins!

Lin: Dolphins? How cool! I wish I had a rich friend who took me on expensive vacations.

You: Yeah, it sounds good in theory, but in reality, that rich friend was the one sleeping with my boyfriend for months.

Aubrey: Sarah was the one Todd was cheating on you with?! Why didn’t you lead with that?

You: Oh, that’s not even the worst part. Todd is here on the yacht too. We had already left port when I found out, so I’ve been stuck here with him.

Lin: No way! What the hell did that scumbag have to say for himself when he saw you?

You: Well, he pretended not to know who I am, and I went along with it.

Aubrey: I’m so sorry!

Lin: Why didn’t you call him out?

You: I probably should have, but I didn’t want to make things awkward. Like I said before, I am literally stuck on a boat with these people. Plus, Sarah clearly doesn’t know. I didn’t want to hurt her.

Aubrey: That makes sense. Maybe she will dump him before things get too serious.

You: Oh, one more thing, they got engaged at dinner last night. I had a front row seat for the entire thing. And then their after party.

Aubrey: Are you okay? Do you need me to come get you? I don’t know exactly how I would find you, but you know I would figure it out.

You: Thanks Aubrey, but I’m okay.

Lin: Shit, this is really messed up. What do you mean by ‘you had a front row seat to their after party?’

You: I walked out to the pool deck and caught them having sex in the pool. Then I tripped over a deck chair trying to get out of there.

Lin: Did they catch you?

You: I still don’t know. I really hope not. I don’t know how I would show my face in front of either of them again if they did.

Aubrey: How did Todd even meet Sarah? It’s not like your social circles mix very well.

You: I was thinking about that a lot last night. I am pretty sure that they met at my birthday party.

Lin: So you're telling me when we were all celebrating you, Todd was off hitting on someone else?

You: Pretty much. I’m realizing a lot about who Todd really is. I think his whole plan was to find someone rich. I was thinking about it last night. I remember that towards the end of our relationship, he made lots of comments about how poor I am.

Aubrey: You’re not poor! You’re a college student just trying to make it through school.

Lin: Isn’t Sarah the one who dropped out sophomore year to become an influencer?

You: Yes, that is Sarah. She does actually have a big social media following. And as you both know, she comes from a lot of money.

Lin: Well, that’s pretty easy when you can buy whatever you want and post pictures of yourself on your dad’s billion dollar yacht.

Aubrey: So how long until you get back?

You: I think I’m staying another week. We’re sailing to the Bahamas. I was told that we will make port tonight.

Lin: Well, that sounds amazing. Do you know what you’re going to be doing?

You: I’m not sure yet. I’ll have to ask Joel what has been planned.

Lin: Oh, who is Joel?

You: Joel is just a friend.

Aubrey: I’m glad to hear at least you’re making friends. Then you have a way to escape from Sarah and Todd.

Lin: Me too. Any pool boys?

You: Haha Lin! Very funny. No, I have not made friends with any of the pool boys.

Lin: Well, maybe you should. There is no better way to get over someone than getting under someone.

Aubrey: I hate to say it, but I agree with Lin. Go get some! There have to be some island hotties at one of your stops.

You: I can’t believe you two. I have to go. Someone is knocking at my door. I miss you two so much!

Chuckling at the antics of your two best friends, you set your phone down on the bedside table, smiling to yourself. It's good to know that you have at least two friends you can count on for anything.

You wrap your towel tight around you and check the peephole in the door, relieved to see a maid at your door and not someone else since you're not even dressed yet. You open the door and are surprised to see she's holding a tray and a box in her arms.

"Good morning, Miss," the maid says with a friendly smile on her face.

Confused, you return her smile but look suspiciously at the items she's holding. "Good morning. I think there may have been a mix-up. I didn't call down for anything."

"Don't worry. There was no mix-up," she assures you, taking a step through the open door. "Where would you like me to set this?" she asks.

You open the door wider and let her in to set the tray down on the table. She sets the box gently on the bed and turns to exit, still smiling at you.

"Do you know who sent this?" you ask, tracking the woman with your eyes as she steps away from the bed. However, she does not answer your question. Instead, she continues to proceed to the door with a small knowing smile on her face that makes you wonder what she knows that you don't.

"Have a good day, Miss," she says, giving a small head nod as she flashes you one last grin.

"Thank you," you say and close the door behind her.

You make your way over to the tray first. Lifting the cover, you find a stack of pancakes and a side of bacon and eggs. There's also a small pot of coffee and a fluffy pastry. Your mouth is already watering at the sight of the food, and you inhale deeply, closing your eyes and imagining how good it will all taste, but you replace the cover.

The anticipation for what the box could contain is too great.

The box is tied close with a red ribbon, so you untie it and set it to the side. You remove the lid to the box and are surprised to find a white cotton robe. Immediately, a smile crosses your face, and a small giggle of glee escapes your lips. There's a small handwritten note resting on top.

Darlin,

Please meet me on our secret deck later this evening. Enjoy some time to yourself.

P.S. I wanted you to be comfortable.

Sincerely,

Joel.

You set the card down on the nightstand, right next to the little pink seashell, and you slip on the robe. It's even softer than the night before, if that's possible, and it smells like sandalwood - It smells like Joel.

The clock reads 4:30 pm before you finally get out of bed and dress for the day. You pick out a form-fitting sundress with a delicate blue shell pattern along the hemline. It's one of the pieces that Joel purchased for you at Amorebelle. You aren't used to wearing dresses, but you want to look nice when you see him.

You carefully do your makeup at the vanity table in your bathroom. As you step back and look in the mirror, you are impressed with your own appearance; you look like you belong – almost.

You make your way to Joel's secret deck. Your heart pounds against your ribcage as you get closer. You stop as you round the corner to the private location; all you can see is the back of Joel's head as he holds a phone to his ear. The muscles in his shoulders are tense, and you can tell by his low tone that the conversation is not a pleasant one.

"What do you mean he’s threatening to contact members of the family?" You hear Joel say. "He has demands now? What are his demands?"

There is a long pause after what Joel says, and you watch him running a hand through his hair; he seems to be on edge. He listens carefully to whoever he is talking to, and you consider turning around.

"We need to start protecting the family assets. I need you to review my father's will again and ensure it is airtight. He will not get a dime out of me."

You know you should turn around and give Joel privacy, but your curiosity gets the better of you when he starts talking about his family. You lean against the railing to wait, and it squeaks. It squeaks loudly.

Joel turns his head and gives you a small half-smile. He waves his hand, gesturing for you to come to join him. You hesitantly walk over, taking as much time as possible.

"I agree that's a good plan. Lock everything down, and let me know if we get any more calls from him. I'm counting on you, Alester. Don't let me down," Joel says. He hangs up the phone and sets it on the table next to the lounge chair he is sitting in. He sighs, turns to the laptop sitting next to him, and starts typing.

"Hey, I hope I am not interrupting anything," you say and slowly walk up to him.

"Darlin," Joel says as he closes the laptop and turns to face you. "You're not interrupting anything; I was just getting caught up on some work stuff."

"I just noticed you were on the phone, and I didn't want to interrupt a business call or something," you say, trying to explain why you were leaning against the railing and eavesdropping on his phone call.

"Oh, that wasn't business. I just needed to deal with some family issues," he says as he moves a white and blue striped towel and a bottle of tanning lotion off of the lounge chair next to him, gesturing for you to take a seat.

"Are you feeling better?" he asks, and a natural smile finally mirrors in his eyes.

"I am because of you. Thank you so much for sending me breakfast, and that robe was amazing. I honestly can't remember the last time I let myself lay around in bed all day. I really enjoyed it," you say and sit as gracefully as you can manage in the lounge chair next to Joel.

"Good to hear. You deserved a day to relax like that. You don't need to thank me for the robe; after seeing you in it last night, I knew it belonged to you. It looked like it was made for you, so it was only right that I send it down to you," he says.

His words make your heart beat fast again, and your face flushes. You know you are getting too close to your friend's very handsome and single father than is wise. But, when he says things like that, it is hard not to.

You think about telling him the truth about why you were so upset, but you don't want to ruin the fun you're having together by unloading about your ex-boyfriend, who is about to be his son-in-law.

"So, are you excited to walk your daughter down the aisle?" you ask, quickly trying to change the subject, so you don't blurt out your history with Todd.

"Honestly, I'm not sure if I will walk Sarah down the aisle or if she will want her mom to," Joel answers.

His response surprises you, and it must show on your face because Joel continues with his explanation.

"I was only with Marnie, Sarah's mother, for a short time. Marnie got married to someone else shortly after and had Sarah. She believed that Sarah was biologically her husband's and not mine. I didn't even know Sarah existed. She had Sarah take a DNA test when she was ten; she was linked to some of the Miller family members who had also taken the test. Only then did we find out that Sarah was mine."

"I had no idea, Joel. Sarah never said anything about any of this," you say. You feel so sorry for all of them.

"When Marnie's husband died, she told Sarah and me the truth. However, Sarah had grown up with another man as her father, and I never wanted to try and fill his place in her life. So I never really took on that fatherly role with her. Instead, I bought her everything she ever asked me for, and that was the basis of our relationship for a long time."

You sit there staring at the pain in Joel's face for a while. He never takes his eyes off of the ocean but continues to tell you about his past.

"Over the years, we've tried to build our relationship, and I take her on vacation with me every summer, but we still don't have the typical relationship you would expect. At times, Marnie and I have a hard time getting along; we don't see eye to eye on a lot of things. So I stayed back and let Marnie raise Sarah; in a lot of ways, I don't agree with how she raised her," Joel says with a sigh. "That's why you're all here. Sarah and I don't know how to talk to each other because we have nothing in common and barely any memories together. So dinner gets a little awkward without others to fill the silence," Joel says, seeming slightly embarrassed about admitting this.

"I had no idea. Sarah always made it sound like her life was so perfect."

"In all the ways Sarah measures her life, it has been," Joel says, but you aren't quite sure what he means by it.

A maid with a tray of tropical cocktails interrupts your conversation, and she sets the drinks on the table between Joel and you.

"Thank you, Molly, these look wonderful," Joel says.

"Of course, sir," Molly says with a small smile.

"How's your sister doing? I hope she's making a speedy recovery."

"She is, sir. She should be back on her feet again in no time."

"When we get back, you should make some time to go and see her. I'll tell Reggie to add some more PTO for you," Joel says.

"Thank you, sir, I really appreciate that," she says and turnsto leave.

As you observe the interaction between Joel and one of his staff members, you realize you've never seen him treat an employee poorly. However, Sarah snaps at them to get their attention, and you suspect she doesn't even know their names or anything about them. She doesn't even treat them like they're people. This explains why you never felt like you fit in with Sarah and her friends, but you feel comfortable and want to spend all your time with Joel. He doesn't look down on you for being poor, but Sarah does. The irony of it all is that the only one on the ship who knows exactly how poor you are, is Joel.

You stare at Joel, and when he finally meets your gaze, you can't help but smile at him. "Thank you for telling me all of this," you say.

"Thank you for listening," he responds simply.

"It seems like we're making a habit of telling each other all of our secrets," you say with a small giggle.

"I hope that continues."

"Me too," you answer.

"Sarah has another dinner planned on the upper deck. Can I walk you up?" Joel asks you.

"I'm actually feeling a little seasick, I don't think it would be wise for me to eat right now," you answer. You don't feel like spending another evening with Sarah and her new fiance.

"Do you need a doctor? We have a nurse on the yacht, but we'll be making port in just a few hours; I can call and have one meet us at the dock."

"No, I'm okay, really. I just need to go back and lie down."

"Okay, if you're sure. I'll walk you down to your room," Joel said, checking his watch.

"No, no. I'm fine, really."

"Okay," he says reluctantly, "but please use the intercom in your room if you need anything."

"I will, I promise," you say with a small wave and leave to slowly make your way back to your room.

You take your time moving through the ship. You don't want to run into anyone heading to Sarah's dinner, where the topic of conversation is sure to be all about her recent engagement.

You're relieved when you see that most of the hallways are completely empty, so you quickly start toward your room.

"Hey!"

You turn and see Reggie walking up behind you.

"Hey, Reggie. It's been a while," you say with a smile.

"Where are you going?" he asks.

"I'm going back to my room. I wasn't really in the mood to spend dinner with everyone."

"Well, I was on my way to play some cards with some of the crew members. Why don't you come?"

Reggie must have seen the hesitation on your face. "Come on. It's actually fun to hang out with normal people every once in a while."

You laugh. You didn't realise that Reggie thought you were just as wealthy as the rest of Sarah's friends. "Reggie, I am a normal person. Let's go.”

—

Joel makes his way up to dinner alone, silently wishing you would be joining. You're one of the only ones in the group that he actually cares to have a conversation with. However, it might be for the best that you're not coming. Joel found himself always drawn to you, and if he wasn't careful, Sarah would catch on to his interest in her friend. He knows that would not go over well.

Joel's the last one to arrive, and he takes the only seat available next to Sarah's new fiance, Todd.

"I never got the chance to congratulate you on the engagement last night," Joel says as he shakes Todd's hand. "I rushed out because I had an urgent business matter I had to attend to."

Joel hoped that would adequately explain his quick departure the night before. He feels a little guilty that he didnt stay to celebrate and instead took off after you to make sure she was okay.

If he's being honest with himself, his evening spent with you, talking in the sauna, was much more enjoyable. He probably won't be winning any best dad of the year awards, though. He already smoothed things over with Sarah this morning. He showed up to her room with a pair of diamond earrings from Tiffany's. He'd bought them for her birthday, but they were perfect as a stand-in engagement present. Once he brought out the diamond, he didn't think she heard another word that he said. He’s happy to see that she’s wearing them tonight. She truly did look happy, and Joel prayed she would be in her marriage.

"Thank you so much, sir. I hope you approve of our engagement," Todd says.

Joel almost forgot that it was customary for a man to ask for his daughter's hand to get the father's approval of the marriage. "I think you two make a great couple. I'm looking forward to having you as part of the family, Todd," Joel says and then stands up. He taps his wine glass to get the group's attention. Everyone at the table quiets quickly and turns to him.

"I want to congratulate Sarah and Todd on their engagement. May they find happiness in each other and enjoy each other's company for many years to come." Sarah's friends all clap at this statement. Once the quiet returns he starts again. “As my engagement gift to the couple, I would like to throw you two an engagement party at my home here in the Bahamas."

This announcement receives a very excited response from all of Sarah's friends. Sarah's face is beaming at all of the attention she is getting. She smiles and stands up to make an announcement of her own. Joel notices she shakes her head gracefully from side to side, causing the earrings to catch the light. She is an expert at showing off wealth; no wonder she’s doing so well as an influencer.

“Thank you so much, Daddy! I'm so glad you approve, and an engagement party will be the perfect way to announce to the world that I'm about to be married. I am so excited about the upcoming wedding, and I would be honoured if all of you were part of our wedding party." Sarah is met with murmurs of agreement from the men and squeals of excitement from the women present. She sits down with a huge smile, clearly pleased with the group's reactions. “Daddy, can you hire some professional photographers for the engagement party? I need some really good pictures to post."

“Of course," Joel says.

“I wish we could have gotten some great shots of the actual engagement, but Todd didn't think about that part of it," Sarah says, with a hint of annoyance in her voice.

“I'm sorry, sweetheart, but I told you it wasn't exactly planned. We had such an amazing day, and it just felt like the right time," Todd says defensively.

“I'm marrying a true romantic," Sarah says, resting her chin on Todd's shoulder.

“Is there anything else you two need?" Joel asks, trying his best to be supportive.

“I’ll need to pick one more bridesmaid so we have even numbers," Sarah says to Joel.

“Why not ask your old roomate?" Joel asks, confused as to why Sarah isn't planning on asking her most likable and attractive friend.

“Oh, I didn't notice that she wasn't here for my announcement. That sort of works out for the best, though. I’m going to ask someone different. She doesn't really fit into the vision I have for the wedding," Sarah says, sounding very much like a snob.

“And what exactly is your vision for the wedding?" Joel asks, annoyed with his daughter's uncouth response.

“I want everything to be glamorous," Sarah says as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I'll still invite her, but as part of the wedding party, you have to fit the aesthetic."

“That's true; it's not like she would be comfortable with the level of finery at the wedding anyway. It’s very obvious that she’s lower class. I think our guests would be able to sense that. If she can't afford to buy a new dress for her birthday party, it's not likely that she will be able to afford a bridesmaid's dress anyway," Todd says with a smug smile on his face.

Sarah giggles and then turns to talk to the woman next to her about possible venues for the wedding.

“Didn't you just meet her this week?" Joel asks Joel in a low voice.

“Yeah, Sarah told me they went to college together or something," Todd says and takes a bite off his plate.

“Then how would you know she couldn't afford a new dress for her birthday party?" Joel says with quiet suspicion.

Todd's eyes go wide in shock, and he nearly chokes on the food in his mouth. He takes a few moments to recover and then says, “I think Sarah told me that. She went to her birthday, and she had to borrow a dress because she couldn't afford a new one."

Although Joel doesn't doubt that Sarah would gossip about something as petty as not being able to afford a new dress, he finds it odd that Todd would remember something like that. Todd's reaction tells Joel that he is hiding something, and Joel's suspicion is only increased by his quick shift to join Sarah's conversation.

Do you and Todd know each other outside of Sarah?

Joel eats the rest of his meal in silence and makes an excuse about having work to do to get out of the rest of the evening's activities. Instead of heading back to his room, he goes to the captain to tell him about the change of plans. 

After Joel's conversation with the captain, he makes his way to his office, which is located a floor below the guest rooms. He thinks about going and checking on you but decides it is best to let you get some sleep.

Joel's office on the yacht is a carbon copy of his office at home. It has a large wooden desk in the center and a large dark leather armchair. The only difference is the view is spectacularly better on the yacht. A large windowed balcony sits behind the desk, so Joel can watch the ocean as he works.

Joel sinks into his leather chair and opens the laptop on his desk. A notification glows on the screen, informing him of the one hundred and twenty-seven emails waiting in his inbox. He pulls out his phone instead and finds his event planner's phone number in his contacts.

“Hello, this is Jessica of Jessica's events."

“Jessica, this is Joel Miller."

“Mr. Miller, it’s great to hear from you again. To what do I owe this pleasure?"

“I'm calling to see if you can organize a party for me. My daughter just got engaged, and I want to throw her an engagement party at my home in the Bahamas."

“Congratulations, Mr. Miller. I would love to help plan such a happy occasion. When can I pencil in your event?"

“Two days from now," he says, knowing the absurdity of the request.

“Did I hear you right? You want me to plan an entire event in two days?"

“If anyone can do it, it's you, Jessica. I’m willing to pay double."

“You have always known how to close a deal. I will have everything ready for you, Mr. Miller. Does your daughter have a theme in mind?”

Joel hates that he has to say it out loud, “She said the theme of her wedding is…glamor."

He hears a small giggle escape from Jessica on the other end of the phone, and she quickly tries to cover it with a cough.

“I know how it sounds," Joel says, embarrassed. “That’s why I am trusting you with this event. I know you will make it tasteful. After the engagement party, I’ll have Sarah talk with you about wedding plans."

“That sounds great, Mr. Miller. I will see you in two days."

“Thank you very much. Goodbye," Joel says and hangs up the phone. This wedding is going to be expensive, and Joel already expects to foot the bill for everything. Extravagant is one thing, but Sarah's taste is beyond even that.

Joel turns his attention back to his laptop screen and the blinking email notification, but he can't get you out of his head. Instead of working, he pulls up his social media pages and searches for your name. He quickly finds your social media pages. You're not very active; most of your pictures are candid shots of you and your friends, two women that looke kind and a lot more down-to-earth than his own daughter.

Joels slightly disappointed that you don't have more pictures for him to scroll through and very little about your life. He wants to know more about you, but it seems like you're very private with your online presence.

He sighs and closes the social media pages, finally returning to the emails he’s dreading sorting through. The newest email in his inbox makes his heart sink. It's from an unknown sender and contains a single sentence.

I know who I really am, and the whole world will, too, if you don't meet my demands.

—

"I am a normal person," you say again, smiling as you walk with Reggie. He raises an eyebrow skeptically at you.

"You don't believe me?" you ask.

"Right, because us normal people get invited to one of the largest private yachts in the world as guests all the time. You don't have to pretend you're not rich to fit in with the crew. They will like you because you are actually nice," Reggie says.

"I am the furthest thing from rich," you laugh.

"Oh, yeah? Prove it," Reggie says with a teasing smile on his face.

You quickly pull out your phone and find a picture of you and your two roommates in your apartment and show it to Reggie.

"What does this prove?" he asks.

"This is a picture of me and my two roommates, Lin and Aubrey; we are sitting in the living room of our one-bedroom apartment. I’m a bartender at a little dive bar, and I currently have two hundred and thirty dollars in my bank account," you say matter of factly.

Reggie's expression changes from one of teasing to one of shock.

"Are you serious?" he asks.

"I mean, I can pull up a bank statement if you really want," you say with a smile.

"Then how did you end up as one of Sarah's friends?"

"Sarah and I were roommates during our first few years at NYU. I think Sarah was placed in the regular dorm rooms to teach her what it was like to be a regular person or something," you say, only half joking. You still haven't figured that one out. Maybe her dad was trying to teach her a life lesson. "Anyway, she hated it and dropped out her sophomore year, but we remained friends and have been in and out of touch over the years. She randomly invited me on this vacation, and I accepted. I didn't expect the yacht to be quite this big, though."

Once you are done with your explanation, you are on the lowest floor of the yacht. You're surprised at how nice the staff area is. Perhaps you'd been expecting it to be like a scene from the lower decks of the movie 'Titanic,' but the lowest level of the ship looks like walking into a lobby of a four-star hotel.

You make your way into what must be the staff dining room. There’s a large group of people surrounding a circular table in the middle of a game of cards. Music is playing in the background, and snacks and beer litter the table. It looks like this is going to be the most comfortable you've been on your trip so far.

"Everyone be nice; we have a newcomer," Reggie says as he pulls out a chair for you.

The mood changes slightly as you sit down, and Reggie sits next to you. You realize you’re still wearing the sundress that Joel bought you, and you must look like you are made of money.

"Hey, I'm Max," says a man with black hair and olive skin.

"Hey, Max," you stick your hand out to shake his and you introduce yourself. 

"Nice to meet you. Tell us about yourself."

"There isn't much to tell. I'm a bartender at a little hole-in-the-wall in New York, and I'm trying to put myself through law school," you say nonchalantly.

"What bar?" a girl across the table asks.

"It's called McGregor's."

"No way! I've been there before," Max says. “You have the best nachos!"

You laugh. “Yeah, we do. I would eat an entire plate by myself if no one were watching."

You feel the entire table relax as they all realize that you aren't like the rest of the guests on the yacht.

"What are we playing?" you ask, grabbing a handful of popcorn.

"Strip Poker."

Your throat goes dry at the thought of undressing in front of a room full of strangers. You're afraid to swallow the piece of popcorn you just placed in your mouth. You look around, and everyone is still fully clothed, and your heart rate starts to slow. Max smiles, clearly finding enjoyment in your shock.

"Max, don't scare her off already," Reggie chuckles. “Do you want a beer?”

—

“You wouldn't believe what one of the 'Richies' asked me today,” Brenna says

"Oh, this is going to be good. Brenna always has the best stories," Reggie leans over and whispers to you. After a few beers and a hand or two of actual poker, everyone seems completely at ease with you.

"I was cleaning up a wine glass he'd dropped, and he started hitting on me. Obviously, he has no idea what the real world is like, so he starts asking questions as a way to talk to me."

"Oh no," Max says with a laugh.

"He asked me about living on the bottom deck of the yacht, and I tell him how it takes some getting used to because we are below the water down here. Then he asks me how we use our balconies if they're underwater."

You snort into your glass, glad you hadn't been taking a sip of the beer at the moment, or it would be flowing out of your nose. You set your beer down and ask, "Oh, please tell me you had a good comeback."

She smiles brightly, "I told him we could only use them at low tide. Then he nods and says, 'That makes sense.' I swear they are all clueless."

Brenna starts laughing, and the whole table joins in, but by the time you catch your breath, you have tears in the corners of your eyes. You have not laughed like this the entire time you've been on the ship.

"No offense; I know Sarah is your friend and all, but how do you stand spending time with them?" Max asks.

"Oh, trust me, it’s a challenge. I sneak off by myself whenever I get the chance. No one seems to really notice, especially after Sarah's engagement."

"Oh, man, her fiance is a real tool, isn't he?" Brenna adds.

"He's a social climber too, so they are actually a great fit," Charlotte says. Charlotte is one of the older staff members and hasn't said much throughout the night.

"Well, that makes sense about the fiance, but do you mean Sarah is one too?" Max asks.

They seem to have forgotten that you are there, or at least they forget that you know Sarah personally. However, you keep your mouth shut not because you want to know more, but because you are trying to act as if you don't care too much.

"I started working for Mr. Miller when Sarah and the horrible woman she has as a mother first came around. That same day, the staff was all told that Sarah was Mr. Miller's daughter and to make sure she had everything she needed. Marnie, Sarah's mother, spent the whole day ordering the staff around like she was the owner of the house," said Charlotte.

"From my experience with Marnie, that sounds about right," Max offers.

"Sarah was raised by another man by the name of Winston Radcliff. Some of the staff had been around when Mr. Miller first brought Marnie around. The rumor was that Marnie threw Mr. Miller aside for Radcliff right after she found out she was pregnant because Radcliff could offer her a better position in society."

You can't imagine someone who had the chance to be with Joel choosing another person over him. You can't help but ask, "What did Winston offer that Joel couldn't?"

"Radcliff was the next in line for an earldom. It turned out that the earldom came with a shabby little estate that cost Winston his fortune to keep standing. The marriage quickly turned sour, and when the earl died, Marnie was just as quick to get a paternity test for Sarah."

"In my opinion, Mr. Miller was better off not knowing the truth. Marnie always shows up asking for more money. Sarah has always wanted something, even though Mr. Miller buys her more than she could ever need." Charlotte says.

"Was Joel in love with Marnie?" you ask, not knowing if you really want the answer.

"No, I don't think he ever really loved her. Maybe he could have found a woman right for him if Marnie hadn't been around for the last fourteen years, scaring away every decent woman he has dated. She thinks that if she can keep him single long enough, he will fall back in love with her, but Mr. Miller will never forgive her for what she did."

You nod and turn to see Reggie staring at you with a strange, almost hurt look on his face. He turns away from you before you can ask him what's wrong.

"Well, I think I'm going to head to bed," Brenna says, and the others all stand up to follow.

"You should come play cards with us again," Max says.

"Absolutely! We are here every night, and you are welcome to join us," Brenna adds.

"Thank you. I will." You're happy to know they've welcomed you as one of them.

You say a quick goodnight to everyone and head back up the stairs to the upper decks. Reggie's room is on the lower deck, so you walk by yourself. It must be later than you thought because the lights in the pool area are already turned off.

You feel silly rushing across the dark deck, but it makes you sort of nervous being alone on such a big ship. You're careful to avoid the deck chairs this time, and you're relieved to make it to the doors leading into the guestroom corridor.

"Where the hell have you been?"

You stop dead in your tracks and don't want to turn around. You know that tone of voice from countless arguments. It's Todd, the last person on the entire ship that you want to be alone with. You slowly turn, knowing you're going to have to face him eventually.

He stumbles a step towards you, and you back up to avoid a collision if he falls.

"Are you drunk?"

"I believe I asked a question first," Todd stutters.

"I was playing a game of cards with some of the crew."

Todd laughs and rolls his eyes at you. He again stumbles a little closer, and you're trapped between him and your door. He leans forward and places an arm on either side of you, blocking your escape. You can smell the alcohol on his breath as he laughs. He's beyond drunk.

"Just like you. A yacht full of every thing you could want, and you spend your time with the help."

"Get off of me, Todd!"

"You know you still want me," Todd says, lowering his face closer to yours. You push against his chest, trying to get him off.

Todd is suddenly ripped backward, so forcefully you know it wasn't of his own doing. 

You see Joel standing behind Todd with a fist full of his shirt. “Get your ass to bed before I throw you off my ship."

[theyhavetakenovermylife]

I love your writing! Can you please write a 2003!Leo X reader where Leo shows up at their apartment injured so they bandage him up and give him some comfort (by making him lay down and relax while they ride him)👀

Injured (Angst/Fluff) (18+)

2003!Leonardo x reader

A/N: Finally got around to write something!💚 I’ve been so busy, but I hope this was worth the wait💚 Btw, I’ve just started watching the Fallout series, so I had to stop myself from going to gorish.

All characters are aged up.

Warnings: Description of wound, blood, mentioning of sewing a wound, masturbation?, stripping, unprotected sex, cowgirl position, implied orale - female receiving.

“What the hell happened?!”, you asked in a panic as you helped Leo in through your window, your body shaking at the sight of his hand, clutching his bleeding side, covering the palm of his hand in a deep red color.

“Foot ninjas”, your boyfriend muttered through gritted teeth, pain shooting across his face with every move, as you guided him towards the couch. “Wanted to get some night training in, but they surprised me. I was just lucky to be so close by”.

“Does anybody know that you’re out?”, you asked, your mind raising trying to remember everything that the turtles had taught you, in case something like this would happen. Granted, you had never thought it would happen…

“Yes”, Leo answered, his voice straining a bit, trying to cover the pain in his right side, while watching you hurry through your apartment, in order to find everything you needed. He knew very well that you were trying to keep him talking. Talking and awake. “I asked if they wanted to come along, but they said no. Probably a good thing”.

You almost fell down next to the couch, fumbling with the first aid kit in your hands, taking deep breaths in order to calm yourself. Just like Leo had taught you. And finally, you were able to open the first aid kit, feeling some form of calm wash over you, as you got to work on Leo’s wound.

You had never heard Leo make such sounds as the ones he did that night. He groaned in pain when you sewed his injury shut, his hands clutching on the couch pillows, his breathing heavy as he tried to calm himself. The pain a mutant was able to go through was still hard for you to wrap your head around. And for a moment you had to steady yourself, in order not to let your hands shake once again.

Once you had finally bandaged Leo’s wound, you helped him from your couch and into your bedroom, laying him down on your bed, so that he could relax, while you took on the task of cleaning your living room, from the red blood he had brought with him. You disinfected the hard surfaces, and took the fabric off of your couch, contemplating whether or not you should try to bleach it, or just get a whole new set. In the end, you decided to worry about it another day.

“How are you feeling?”, you asked as you reentered your bedroom, seeing Leo still laying on your bed.

“Better”, Leo smiled. “Can already feel it healing”.

“The perks of being a mutant”, you smiled, before taking a seat next to your boyfriend.

“I guess so”, Leo said, his hand instinctively finding yours, before interlocking your fingers.

You sat like this for a moment, smiling at each other, looking into each others’ eyes, before Leo's hands slowly came to your face, his thumb stroking your cheek. You instinctively knew what this gesture meant, and with a small chuckle, you leaned down, before pressing your lips to Leo’s in a soft and sweet kiss. Leo let out a small hum - a sound of joy and relaxation. Sure, his wound may have been taken care of, but that did not change his still somewhat alert stage. So to feel you like this against him, made him calm down. His breathing deeper and his touch heavier against your cheek. You had experienced Leo’s minor changes in actions before, knowing very well what effect you had on him. Therefore it did not surprise you when his small hum turned into a small churr, somewhere deep within his chest, the hand on your face getting a soft yet firm grip on the side of your face. It was almost instinctive. Sudden yet very slow. Leo was holding back, both because of his wound, but also because of you. He would never do anything without making sure that it was okay with you.

With another small chuckle, you leaned your head to the side, allowing you to deepen your kiss, Leo’s hand moving from your face to your hair, tangling his fingers with your locks. You felt Leo’s tongue glide across your lower lip, asking you for entrance, which you gladly accepted. Your tongues danced together in a sloppy dance, small sounds of joy and excitement escaping the two of you.

Leo placed his other hand on the mattress, leaning on it as he tried to sit up, your lips still on each other. But he did not get far before you pushed him back down on the bed, breaking your kiss as you did so. Leo looked up at you in slight confusion, only to be met by a mischievous smile by you.

“You’re injured”, you said, your hands finding the bottom of your shirt before pulling it off. “And it’s my job to take care of you”.

Catching on to what you meant, Leo let out a strangled noise, feeling the need behind his cloaca grow. With lustful eyes he watched as your hands moved to the zipper of your pants, before slowly taking them off. Had he not had a gash in his side, he would have jumped on you by now. Instead he settled for curling one arm up around his head, letting his other slowly run towards his cloaca as he watched you slide your pants down your legs.

Once your pants were off, your hands slowly ran from your hips up to your chest, where you let your hands glide over your bra covered breasts. Catching Leo’s eyes as you did so, he let out another wounded sound, before slowly undoing himself from his cloaca, holding his erect member in his hand while he waited for you to continue your little show for him. And you did, undoing your bra before letting it fall to the floor, so that your hands could start massaging your chest. Leo chuckled with a small smile, his hand slowly beginning to work up and down his member.

“Beautiful”, he mumbled, his voice having gone deeper and slightly raspy, making your panties more wet than they already were. “Absolutely beautiful”.

You felt pride bobble within you. Leo’s words always seemed to have that kind of effect on you. Just like you could turn him on with his, so could he turn you on. And he knew it. He could smell it, your scent strong in the air, making him just a little light headed. And he loved it. He had always loved what the scent of your arousal was able to do to him.

Your hands went from your breasts and down to the hem of your underwear, taking a hold of them by hooking your thumbs, before slowly pulling them down your hips, all while maintaining your intense eye contact with Leo. This had Leo churring much louder, with his hand quickening its motion on his erect member. What eye contact couldn’t do to this man.

You let your panties fall to the floor before stepping out of them, making your way up on the bed, stradling Leo’s waist. Having retracted his hand from his member, in order to make room for you, Leo’s hands came to rest on your thighs, needling the flesh, before letting his right hand move upwards, with the intent of cupping your sex. However, you slapped his hand away with another mischievous smile.

“I just told you, I’m the one that’s going to take care of you”.

Leo relented, letting his hands run mindlessly up and down your thighs, watching as you took his throbbing member into your hand, letting your thumb run over the tip of his head, smearing his precum around.

Leo’s brow muscles frowned as he let out a shaky breath, watching your hand do slow tugs on him, before carefully lining him up with your entrance, teasing both you and him.

“(Y/N)...”, Leo let out in a low moan, his fingers holding on tight to your thighs.

You bit your lip with a smile, knowing exactly what it was that your boyfriend wanted, making sure that you were lined up, before slowly sliding down upon him. You let out a breathy moan as you felt his thickness stretch you out, the sound of Leo’s churring only becoming stronger and louder, his hands becoming restless on your thighs once more. If it wasn’t from the wound on his side, he would have thrusted up into you. He would have pulled you down, so that you would lay flat against his plastron, where he could allow himself to pound into you relentlessly. But he couldn’t, leaving his at the mercy of you to give him needed.

“Now, lay still”, you said, already breathless just from his size, before you slowly started to rise up his member, only to slide back down on it once more, making you both moan from the small wave of pleasure. You repeated the motion, slowly increasing your speed as you went.

“Shit, babe”, Leo groaned, watching as your chest began to bounce with your movements, one of his hands grabbing one with a squish. You in turn let out a louder moan, before angling your legs, allowing you to increase your speed even further, your skin slapping against his with every bounce, the head of his member hitting the spot of your insides with ease.

With the increase of your speed, Leo threw his head back with a moan, closing his eyes momentarily at the amazing feeling of your tight wet walls around him.

“Don’t stop, babe”, Leo moaned, his eyes still closed and his face showing the relaxation and pleasure he was feeling. “Please don’t stop, (Y/N)”.

His words spurred you on, your hands coming to rest on his chest, providing you more support with each move. One of Leo’s hands found yours on his chest, stroking it with his thumb, watching your form above him, the looks he was giving you sending shivers and tingles straight to your core.

It might have been Leo’s slightly weakened state, or the fact that you made him calm down after a period of intense emotions with adrenaline rushing, but to his surprise, Leo already found the pressure build up behind his cloaca, alerting him to the fact that he was getting close. And you knew Leo well enough to know that he was close as well. From the restlessness of his hands feeling up your body, the way that his legs were moving behind you, and how his hips fought to move with you, was letting you know how close he was getting to his high.

“Want to cum?”, you asked sweetly. Leo nodded, his hooded yet lustful eyes never leaving yours. It was strange yet incredibly erotic to see him like this. Normally he was full of energy, having to use his impressive self control to hold himself back from fucking your brains out. But right now it wasn’t an option. With Leo’s wound and his body relaxing after such a high state, he did not have energy to hold back or hold his hips still, nor did he have the energy to force you down on the mattress and plow into you. He was truly at your mercy.

“Yes”, Leo almost whimpered, his fingers lightly clawing at your hips. “Fuck, yes please. I want to cum”.

The sound of Leo begging was new to you. Usually he would be the one calling the shots in the bedroom, edging you over and over again, and making you beg before he would let your orgasm take over you. But now, as your normally dominant boyfriend was begging beneath you, you suddenly understood why he wanted you to do the same usually. It felt like a powerrush. It was almost too good not to enjoy. And had Leo not been injured, you might have done it. Toyed with it, and do the same to him like he usually did to you. But you decided against it, not wishing to accidentally make his injury worse. Tonight the goal was to make Leo relax, and provide him comfort.

You leaned your face down to Leo’s, where you gave him a quick kiss, before moving your lips to neck, passing by where his ears would have been, whispering to him in a sultry voice; “Then cum for me, babe”.

And Leo did, moving his head to the side, giving you space to work your lips over his neck, while he came inside of you, his hips buckling as much as his wound would allow him to, his churrs and moans filling the room, making the excitement in your core grow even stronger.

Once Leo was calming down from his high, you moved to get off of him and lay down on the bed, letting his member slip out of you. But before you could get up from your straddling position, Leo stopped you with his hands on your waist.

“Where do you think you’re going?”, he asked with a slight mischievous glint in his eyes.

“I’m going to lay down so we can cuddle”, you said. “Just like we always do when we’re done”.

“Nah, we’re not done”, Leo said, pulling your hips back to his.

“But Leo, your wound-”.

“My wound is on my side, not on my face”, your boyfriend said, catching you off guard, leaving you stunned for a moment. He smiled at you, enjoying the look on your face, tugging at your hips. “Now, move up, sweetheart. I can’t heal without eating”.

Who would have thought that even a wounded Leo, would find ways to make you beg all night long…

[sturnsbabie]

FRIENDS- C.STURNIOLO

pairing: chris x reader

summary:in which chris and reader have always had a flirty friendship but theres more to it then just flirting. what will happen when chris confronts the girl about all the drunken hook ups they had?

warnings: swearing, slight arguing, f!recieving, p in v, fluff.

chris and y/n have been friends for three years now they met thru social media and they have always had a flirty friendship with eachother.

the two were very close some would say way too close for someone who is just friends.

they claim theyre just friends but friends dont look at friends that way nor just friends know the way eachother tastes.

they both are too stubborn to admit to eachother that they have feelings for eachother.

they have hooked up a few times here and there most of the times when they were drunk but once they were both sober. this is how it always happens they go to a party get drunk then they start making out and getting handsy with eachother til chris ends up having her bent over a bathroom sink.

they never bring up these moments to eachother. they like to keep it that way so they dont have to talk about their feelings. they both avoid doing so because of the fact that they are both scared of commitment.

everyone sees it though they can tell how inlove with eachother they are. everyone except the two of them can tell. which deep down they both know but they are too scared to admit it.

y/n was currently on her way to chris’ house to hangout. she was excited to see him as she hadnt seen him or his brothers for a week because they were in boston.

she had been waiting all week to see him. she missed his presence and hanging with him. as much as she hated to admit it she missed the feeling of his lips on hers and the feeling of their bodies being connected as one. she missed it more than she should. she knew she shouldnt feel like this because theyre supposed to just be friends.

little did the girl know that chris felt the same exact way. always constantly thinking of her lips on his and them pretty lil noises that come out of her mouth when he’s balls deep inside of her.

the girl had pulled into the driveway of his house. she parked and walked into the boys house as this was their usual routine.

chris was currently sitting on the couch with his brothers as the girl walked up the stairs into the living room.

the boys smiled instantly when they saw the girl walking over to the couch. the girl immediately went over to chris and sat down next to him and he pulled her into his arms.

“missed you” chris mumbled as he held the girl in his arms.

“missed you too” she said.

.•°♡°•.

it had been a few hours of the two hanging out and now they were currently in his room. chris wanted to talk to the girl about everything from

the hookups that they promised to not talk about to him having feelings for her.

“hey y/n?” chris said softly as they were laying beside eachother.

“hmm?” the girl said.

“we needa talk.” he said as he got up from laying on her chest.

“about what?” the girl said confused.

“what do you mean what? we need to talk about us!” he said looking at her.

“chris what us? we are just friends.” the girl said and thats what set chris off.

“what the fuck do you mean we are just friends? so all the times we have hooked up and everything that meant nothing to you!?” chris raised his voice a bit feeling hurt from the words the girl had said.

“we were drunk chris!”she said not being able to find the right words she actually wanted to say.

“oh so im just another drunken hook up to you!? thats nice to know thats how you think of me.” chris said as he got off of his bed standing up.

“you’re not just another hookup chris! stop with the fucking nonsense coming from your mouth!” the girl said rolling her eyes.

with that chris sat back on his bed inching his face close to the girls. “look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t feel the same way about me as i feel about you.” he said with his voice raspy.

the girl felt heat instantly go to her core the way he was talking and looking at her. “i cant do that.” she said scared to tell him how she truly feels about him.

“i know you have feelings for me just the way i have for you baby. its okay you dont have to be scared to tell me that.” he said as he closed the distance between the two smashing his lips onto hers.

the girl felt butterflies as this kiss was different from all the drunken ones. it was passionate filled with love and emotions.

the kiss was slow and gentle as chris pushed the girl back on the bed hovering over her and pressing his lips back on the girls.

the girl felt her core start to ache for him as she felt his errection growing against her core.

the kiss began to grow heated as chris rocked his hips against the girls causing her to let out a soft whimper into his mouth.

chris pressed a few soft kisses on her neck. “let me show you how much you mean to me baby.” he said playing with the hem of her shorts

“go ahead.”she said.

and with that chris slid her shorts off then slid her shirt off of her leaving her bare on his bed.

“so pretty baby.”he stared at her body in awe of how beautiful she was.

chris loved every part of her body. in his eyes she was the most beautiful girl ever. she was such a sweet girl, he loved the friendship she had with his brothers and the way they got along with them. chris just thought everything about the girl was so perfect.

chris slid his clothes off leaving him in his boxers as he hovered over the girl kissing her lips softly working his way down her body.

chris left soft kisses on the girls inner thighs leading up to her core licking a stripe up her wet cunt.

the girl let out a soft moan slightly bucking her hips causing chris to chuckle. “patience baby wanna take my time with you.”he said

he started to suck on the girls clit as he held her thighs down making eye contact with the girl as he swirled his tounge around her sensitive clit.

the girl ran her hands thru his hair as he started to work his tounge in and out of her entrance causing her to let out moans.

chris then attached his tounge back to her clit as he inserted a finger inside of her watching her facial expressions of pleasure.

the girl felt her orgasm growing closer and closer as she started to clench around chris’ finger.

“cum for me baby.” chris said as he added another finger starting to finger her at a fast pace.

the girl threw her head back in pleasure moaning loudly as she released all over his fingers.

chris slid his fingers out of her licking them clean as he pressed a soft kiss on his clit before hovering back over her. “always taste so sweet.”

chris reached down slipping his boxers off and pressed his lips onto hers kissing her sloppily as he brushed his tip against her entrance before pushing into her.

the girl whimpered into his mouth as he started thrusting into her as he interlocked their hands together as she wrapped her legs around his waist.

chris pressed soft kisses all over the girls face as he slowly started to pound into her just enjoying the moment,making love to her.

they held eachother close as he kept moving deep inside of her. nothing in the world mattered at the moment just the two of them.

chris rested his forehead on hers as he looked her in the eyes. “so beautiful.”he said as he started to thrust into her at a faster pace.

chris kept pressing soft kisses all over the girls face as he was balls deep inside of her hitting every inch. like her body was made just for him.

“you take me so well baby.” he said as she moaned in response.

at this point chris was taking his sweet time with her just enjoying the two of them being this close.

he kissed her softly as he started to pound into her as he felt her starting to clench around him.

“cum for me princess.” he said as he took his hand down to her clit starting to rub it with his thumb as his hips were rolling into hers.

the girl moaned his name repeatedly as she coated his cock with her cum. chris fucked her through her orgasm as she started to feel him twitch inside her hinting that he was gonna cum soon.

chris sloppily thrusted into her a few times as he came deep inside of her filling her up completely. he thrusted a few times helping him come down from his high before pulling out.

once he pulled out he laid beside the girl pulling her into his chest rubbing her back as he kissed her forehead.

“wanna go shower mama?”he asked her as she looked at him.

she had messy hair and swollen lips with a neck littered with hickeys but to chris she was the most beautiful girl ever.

“yeah lets take one” she said softly.

chris nodded and got up and picked her up carrying her to the bathroom.

he sat her down on his sink as he fixed the shower water for the both of them.

the girl sat there admiring him as he got the water ready for them. once he did that he came over to the girl picking her up and placing her into the shower.

he got in with her and held her close to him as they just stood underneath the water.

he rubbed her back as they stood underneath the water, he grabbed her chin making her look at him.

“i love you.” he said softly.

“i love you too chris.” she smiled.

chris kissed the girl softly letting those emotions show. she belonged to him and he belonged to her.

they werent just friends they were much more than that.

TAGLIST: @eupiasworld , @sturniolosloves , @mattslovelygf , @smittensturniolos , @hauntedxchris , @hearts4tatemcrae , @bernardsbendystraws , @jo-777 , @wurlibydominicfike , @meerkatzthings , @jnkvivi , @sturnzblog , @pinklittleflower , @sturnioloblogs

[aphrostarot]

A Message From Someone Who Loves You Pick a Pile

As this is a general collective reading, some things may not resonate with you or your situation. DO NOT try forcing it to fit. If you would like to book a personalized reading with me go to my profile and follow the instructions on my pinned post.

If you enjoyed this reading and wanted to support me further you can do so by tipping me in the link in my bio or by booking a personal reading with me.

Pile One:

Who are the people who chose this pile?

Seven of Water, Ace of Air, and The Fool:

You are a very optimistic person at your core. You embody all of the characteristics of a dreamer, someone who never lets the world bring them down. This is not to say that you don’t think things through or are blindly optimistic, actually, you are quite the opposite. You are a very intelligent person who doesn’t make any decisions before you think it through first. You have so many big dreams and can imagine yourself accomplishing almost anything you set your mind on. Nothing can hold you back or make you change your mind when you’ve decided that something will bring you joy. Many people would describe you as someone who is constantly smiling, always happy, and seeing the world for the good not the bad. You know that there is bad in the world, you just choose not to dwell on it.

Who is this person coming forward with a message?

Patience, Nine of Earth, and Page of Earth:

First off, I want to start by saying that for many of you, this person may be someone you knew who passed away. For others, this may be someone in your spiritual team, a deity, an angel, etc. While for some of you, this may be someone who is still in the material realm that you know. This person could be an earth sign (Virgo, Capricorn, or Taurus) or just have a very down-to-earth chill vibe. They may also be someone who is or was very interested in the Earth or space, either as a career or as a hobby.

This person is very practical and ambitious, when they are interested in something they set their mind to it and stop at nothing to complete it. They are very successful and self-sufficient because of their ability to push through all the chaos and keep at it until they see the results they want. You may admire them for their ability to almost always have a practical solution for almost anything that comes their way. They are always growing and looking for ways to grow which is something you may try to emulate.

What is their message to you?

Justice, Four of Fire, Nine of Air, and Six of Air:

You have been struggling with anxieties and fear for quite some time and they see that. They are saying to you that there are people in your life that are making you feel this despair and you need to let go of them. You may be waiting for the right moment to get revenge but, they are telling you that karma will come around no matter what, they will make sure of it, and you don’t need to worry about that. What you need to worry about right now is yourself and the energy you surround yourself with, make sure you are keeping your space and your energy clear of negativity so you can get out of this darkness you’ve been finding yourself in.

Why haven’t you been able to receive this message?

Five of Earth, Eight of Earth, and Strength Reversed:

For those of you who resonated with this person having passed away, you have been stuck in that grief that when you feel their presence trying to get your attention you ignore them because it is too hard for you to address it. This is why you have not been able to receive this message. For the other people that this person is still in the material realm, you have been feeling that loss and grief more towards yourself, and your belief in yourself. Since you have been surrounded by negative people and energy for so long, they have drained you of your energy, making you believe you aren’t worthy which is why you have been so blinded to this message trying to come through. This person has been trying to reach out to you, or maybe even has been telling you this but you have not been aware of it. You’ve been so distracted by the things in your life, maybe a hobby that you’ve been so focused on that when this person is talking to you, you may just brush them off. Or, you hear them trying to tell you that you need to let these people go because they are not good for you and you just don’t think you are strong enough or confident enough to do that or, you don’t want to cause any problems or drama so you stay in these negative relationships.

How can you better receive this message in the future?

Ten of Fire, and Messenger of Earth:

Patience is needed while you work through these messages. You have been in such a dark place and may be unaware of how the people in your life are the ones playing a huge role in why you have been in this darkness so, having this person trying to tell you to let them go comes as a surprise and your first reaction is to get defensive and shut them down. This is why you need patience, you are in such a sensitive state lately that allowing yourself time to process will really help you feel less frazzled and stressed out. It is also worth noting that you need to recognize how much responsibility it is to address the energies you keep in your life and when you start to approach cleansing these energies out of your life you need to be mature and sensitive towards others and towards yourself.

Bottom of the deck energy:

Three of Water:

The Three of Cups is the card of friendships and community, as well as celebrations and gatherings. So, having this as the overall energy of this reading is again, clarifying that you need to look at the energy you keep around you, especially in your friendships. When you want to throw a party or are invited to one, before you go or start inviting people, be careful and mindful of the people who you want around you so you don’t keep bringing yourself down.

There is a lot of Aries energy in this pile so, you could be an Aries or have strong Aries placements.

I was also getting a lot of images of bugs coming through while I was doing this reading, specifically stink bugs, so that may be a symbol for some of you.

More Specific Messages (Extended Reading)

Pile Two:

Who are the people who chose this pile?

King of Swords, Four of Swords, and Death:

You have gone through an ending of some sort in your life recently. I believe that this ending was a relationship, either a friendship, or a romantic relationship, and because of this, you have been feeling heartbroken, not knowing what happened in that relationship and why this ending happened. Because you have been feeling so upset and down in the dumps you have been giving yourself time to rest, wanting to hide away and not show your face because you know you won't be able to hide how you’ve been feeling. I was feeling very nauseous while doing this reading so, many of you may actually be experiencing physical sickness not just mental sickness because of this ending. For those of you who can’t hide away all day long and have to go out in public for work or for whatever reasons, I believe that you have been forcing a smile and pretending everything has been just fine in your life while you have actually been really struggling internally. Lots of you may be feeling like your brain has been in a fog like it’s been moving slower than usual. There was a very heavy, dark energy with this pile, I had to walk away and finish this reading another day. Many of you have been living in that darkness for quite some time now and I am sorry that you have been experiencing this, I hope that this reading can help bring some light and healing into your life.

Who is this person coming forward with a message?

The Lovers, Five of Swords, and The Empress:

I think this is why it came as such a shock to you that this person could ever do something to betray you because they are such a kind and nurturing person. They have such strong feminine energy, giving off strong maternal nurturing energy that you would've never thought that they would be the type to hurt you. I think that what you didn’t see though, was that this person was also hurting, they were going through some sort of conflict in their life when they did whatever it was that they did to hurt you. I believe they had no intentions of hurting you with whatever they did, it feels almost like it was a miscommunication between the both of you that caused this fallout. Based on the energy I am getting from this person I believe that they miss you and they never meant to hurt you. They are deeply saddened by what happened between the two of you.

What is their message to you?

Five of Wands, Three of Pentacles, Five of Cups, and Page of Swords:

Like I said above, this person is deeply saddened by the loss of you in their life and they really want to reach out to work things out with you. They may have already been trying to reach out but you have them blocked or just have ignored all of their messages. They want to get together with you and explain to you their side of the story. I don’t know if they want to start a relationship with you again, but I do know they want to talk with you to explain everything that happened. It feels to me that they don’t like leaving things on a bad note and they want to resolve these issues so that there is no bad blood between you anymore.

Why haven’t you been able to receive this message?

Seven of Wands, Knight of Swords, Two of Cups, and Two of Swords:

When you were with this person you thought they were a soul mate of yours that you two were destined to be in each other's lives forever, but then they did something that betrayed you and now you are in a state of defending your ego. Not wanting to even see this person because it hurts too much and you have put up walls trying to protect yourself from getting hurt and embarrassed like that again. However, all of that being said, there is a part of you that wants to hear this person out because you still care for this person deeply and that makes you even angrier because you wish you were the type of person who could just drop somebody without thinking of it but you’re not, you are very sensitive and this may be something you are embarrassed about. On top of all of that, you may be the type of person who doesn’t open up to someone very easily and you open up to this person only for them to betray you, which is another reason why you are not willing to hear this person out. You are very embarrassed and hurt at this moment and are on the defensive, trying to protect yourself.

How can you better receive this message in the future?

Queen of Swords, The World, and The Hanged Man Reversed:

I believe that there is a part of you that understands that this person is desperate to communicate with you and that part wants to hear them out but you are on the defensive and are letting your pride get in the way of this. What you need to do is let this go, stop letting your ego dictate your moves at this time. I know this is hard to do but once you do this you will heal parts of yourself you feel will never heal. The Queen of Swords is someone who is very good at making decisions without letting their feelings get in the way and this is something you need to embrace for you to hear this person out. You are moving nowhere in your spiritual and healing journey by letting your ego drive you in this moment and your guides are telling you here that by letting this side of you go, you will be able to move forward.

With all of the swords coming out, there is strong Air energy in this reading. So, you could be a Libra, Aquarius, or Gemini or have these placements in your chart. There is also strong Cancer energy with this pile as well so you could have Cancer in your chart or this person could also be a Cancer.

Bottom of the deck energy:

Ten of Swords:

The Ten of Swords is the card of victimization and betrayal. So, this is another confirmation that you are feeling this betrayal and feeling like a victim at this moment.

More Specific Messages (Extended Reading)

Pile Three:

Who are the people who chose this pile?

Seven of Pentacles, Seven of Wands, Six of Wands, and Five of Swords:

Right off of the bat pile three it seems that some conflicting energies are coming out for you. On one hand, you are seen as a very successful and patient person who embodies the definition of perseverance and contemplation. However, on the other hand, you are also in a very difficult place right now. Internally you are struggling. You may believe that you have to constantly prepare yourself for opposition in everything you do in life. This may be a defense mechanism that you have developed because of people in your life constantly belittling and second-guessing every step you take. However, based on the energy of this reading I do not believe you need to be defending yourself. I don't believe that there is anyone in your life at this current moment who has the intention of putting you down. But, you still feel like there is so, you are in a place at the moment where you are jumping down people's throats for no reason. I believe that you are very spiritual. You have strong intuition and you know this but you may be afraid of it, so you stuff it down and ignore it which is not helping you at all. This may be why you have been struggling to discern whether or not people have negative intentions toward you or not.

Who is this person coming forward with a message?

Ten of Wands, Seven of Swords, and Ace of Cups:

This person who is coming forward with a message for you is a mentor of some sort. For many of you this may be a deity that you worship who is helping you in your spiritual practice, for others this may be your inner child coming forward with a message for you. This person may seem like they are intentionally hiding things from you and not giving you the full picture, which is why I believe that for many of you, this is a deity that you work with. This person has a lot of love for you and is coming forward with open arms, wanting you to feel their love and warmth, but, they are also struggling deeply right now. I feel like this struggle they are facing is because of you. As I said before you are highly spiritual but you have been ignoring that side of yourself and since this person is a mentor for you, specifically in spirituality, they are struggling because you are not listening to their advice. It’s almost like you speak with them sometimes and ask them for help but you don’t actually listen to what they have to say to you and you aren’t actively working with them which is what is causing this struggle for them because they don’t understand why you are wanting to work with them when you don’t actually do any of the work.

What is their message to you?

King of Cups, Five of Wands, The Fool, and Quote:

The quote that is specific to this deck came out for you pile three. It says; “What we see in the symbology of tarot derives in large measure from our own intuition and, once revealed, reflects back upon each of us to further enrich our lives.” As I said above pile three, you are highly intuitive but you do not tap into it. Instead, you choose to ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist, and to that, this person is telling you that your intuition is not a bad thing, in fact, once you start listening to it, it will actually improve your quality of life. The King of Cups represents an advisor, someone who is very balanced between their head and their heart. This person wants you to know that they are in your life to help you, to guide you and it is time you start to actually listen to what they have to say. They say you worry too much, that you think way too much about the what-ifs, and that you are letting your ego get in the way too much when it comes to your spirituality. Instead, you need to just let go, and let your intuition guide you with the aid of this person. It can be troublesome when you have control issues to let go and let something or someone else take control but, it’s important to remember that your intuition is also a part of you. So, when you’re letting go and letting your intuition take over it is still you in control just not the part of you that over-intellectualizes everything. Overall, it seems like their message to you is to stop hiding from your spirituality and to actually start tapping into it. It’s time for you to start living a spiritually fulfilled life.

Why haven’t you been able to receive this message?

Page of Cups, Knight of Pentacles, and The Star:

I think this is where I am getting your inner child coming forward. It seems as though your inner child is the reason you are not able to receive this message and I think this is because a lot of your defense mechanisms are coming from the wounded part of your inner child. You as you are currently, are very hard-working and practical, however, your inner child is the opposite. It seems like you have some very deep wounds from your childhood that you have not dealt with which is what has been causing you to block out these messages. Since you have not healed your inner child, and instead choose to ignore that part of yourself as well, you are stuck and will continue to be stuck until you address these issues that are holding you back and making you not see these messages that are coming through.

How can you better receive this message in the future?

The Emperor, The High Priestess, and King of Swords:

What is interesting to me, pile three, is that you have control issues yet, when it comes to healing parts of yourself and working on your spirituality, you act as though it is out of your control. I know I said above that you need to give up your control issues when it comes to your spirituality and listening to this mentor but that does not mean that you just give up and do nothing. You are still in control of your life and are in the driver's seat of your life so, what this means when it comes to your spirituality and your healing journey, is you need to listen to the advice of this mentor and then make the moves for yourself. Give up your control and need to be the one who makes all the decisions. Instead, let this mentor guide you while you implement their practice and advice into your life.

Bottom of the deck energy:

Six of Cups:

The whole underlying energy of this reading is nostalgia and memories. What this confirms for me is that some healing needs to be done when it comes to your past traumas because they are what is holding you back right now.

The colors gold and purple were big with this pile so, they may have some significance to you.

For some, it may be that you should start wearing gold jewelry, or surrounding yourself with gold decor while you practice your spirituality.

Fruit was a big symbol with this pile as well, specifically red fruit. To me, this is a message from this deity that they want you to start eating more red fruit and if you have an altar for this deity they may want you to leave them some red fruits.

I was also hearing “days of the week” so, some of you may need to start scheduling times throughout the days to sit down and work on your spirituality. For some of you, this may be the only way that you will actually do it.

More Specific Messages (Extended Reading)

[chilschuck]

beach day headcanons please (any characters you’d like)!!! we were deprived of the typical anime fanservice imo

`✦ ˑ ִֶ 𓂃⊹ ohhhhhh my gosh anon i was literally SO SO HAPPY to get this ask!!! decided to stick with the usual charas you guys enjoy, plus some falin!!! hope this turned out okay and thank you so much for having me write it for you!!! <333

— DUNMESHI BEACH DAY HCS.

꒰ charas: ꒱ laios, chilchuck, falin, & mickbell.

꒰ warnings: ꒱ none! sfw + fluff with gn!reader.

꒰ wc: ꒱ 1.4k

✦ hope this turned out okay!! it was such a cute idea and so much fun that if anyone has requests for more charas, i’d be more than happy to do it!! <33

— LAIOS:

✦ We know that he doesn’t do well in hot weather, so you can imagine he’d be sporting only swimsuit trunks and flip flops for sure.

✦ Definitely enjoys being in the ocean, especially to try and cool off. You can imagine he’d be really interested in knowing more about what’s in the water around him, and probably points things out to you that he finds interesting.

✦ Be prepared for him to burn really fast, so make sure he gets plenty of sunscreen!! It’s always cute to see him walk up to you and ask for help, in which you gladly oblige. You help get those spots he can’t reach, and he does appreciate just how thorough you are.

✦ You’ll probably end up splashing him, which he’ll return in kind. Be careful what you start, because you’ll end up drenched by the end of it!

✦ A picnic on the beach with him is definitely something that happens while you’re there. Laios is so excited to share a meal with you in such a beautiful setting, and finds himself giving you that goofy grin at just how happy he is. He makes sure to pull all the stops to make this enjoyable for you, even preparing your favorite snacks.

✦ Definitely goes home with a few shells or shark teeth, if he found any. Laios thinks they’re too cool not to pick up and examine, running over to you and showing you what he found in the sand.

“You won’t believe what I found!” Laios calls out to you, jogging over to where you sat on your towel. His hands cradled something, and as he stretched his arms out to show you, a smile grew on your lips.

In his hands was an almost perfect conch shell, something he held with pride and excitement. His smile matching yours, he said your name softly. “Do you think if you put it up to your ear, you’d hear the ocean like those stories?”

You shrugged your shoulders, not able to hold back the giggle at his glee. “Only one way to find out, right? Just make sure there’s nothing still living in it.”

Laios still keeps that shell in a safe place, wanting to remember the day you spent together.

— CHILCHUCK:

✦ This man is definitely showing up in a Hawaiian dad shirt and cargo shorts. The first few buttons are undone, and he has a pair of sandals on that he insists he only saves for days like this.

✦ Chilchuck plans on staying at the spot you claimed with towels and an umbrella, a drink in hand. He’s definitely enjoying the sight of you in a swimsuit and the breeze ruffling your hair, but he’d never admit that.

✦ You try to pull him towards the water, but you only manage to get his feet wet. Chil tells you this is as far as he’ll go, but that disappointed pout on your face makes his heart race a bit. Ok, fine… Maybe he’ll go up to his knees for you…

✦ Probably spends most of his time drinking and relaxing, a hand behind his head and alcohol in the other. Very dad-like of him, you muse, which causes his face to heat up and grumbles to leave him.

✦ Ends up falling asleep, the sound of the waves and the secluded shade from the sun causing his eyes to flutter shut. You can’t help but laugh a little, returning from your time in the water to study his sleeping form. He looks so peaceful like this, and you don’t have the heart to wake him up…

✦ If you do somehow manage to get him fully in the water, be prepared for him to get targeted by the tide. Maybe you even suggest getting him a float, which he gives you that blank stare in reply.

“There, that’s not so bad, is it?” You say as he finds himself in the middle of a tube float, eyes narrowed towards you.

“This makes me feel like a kid.” Chilchuck complains, yet you see him grip onto it tighter as an incoming wave makes an appearance.

You pull it over to you, the inflatable bumping into your stomach as you give him that teasing grin. “Guess you’re stuck with me while we’re out here, huh?”

The half-foot groans, debating on whether or not he’d make it if he tried to swim back to shore right now.

— FALIN:

✦ Wears a light t-shirt and shorts, opting to be comfy! She also has a hat she wears to help keep the sun out of her eyes. If she did plan on swimming, I like to imagine she’d have a swim shirt and a one piece swimsuit!

✦ Like her brother, she was excited to see all the shells and creatures at the beach, bringing you things she found fascinating. You might even find her entranced with a sand dollar and stating how pretty it is.

✦ Walks into the water hand in hand with you, but also really enjoys walking along the sand near the shore. As the sun sets, she intertwines her fingers with yours, leading you along and watching the pinks and blues in the sky reflect on the waves.

✦ Also definitely goes on a picnic with you, the beach making her cheeks even more rosy than usual. You can’t help but tell her how cute she looks in her outfit, her hair loosely blowing in the breeze. Falin would give you a sweet smile, the same one you fell in love with.

✦ Don’t be surprised if she leads you back to the water after you make sure she’s not getting burnt, insisting that she wants to enjoy how cool the waves feel. You’re more than happy to walk out a little deeper with her, noticing how she still keeps your hand in her own.

“It’s so nice out here…” You heard her mutter, a content smile dimpling her cheeks. The sunset left a sweet gradient in her hair, something that made you unable to look away.

“It really is. Too bad it’s getting dark,” you reply, a little disappointed that the day is already over. Falin squeezed your hand, pulling you away from your thoughts.

“Maybe we should stay and watch the stars come out.” Her voice was so gentle, causing you to give her a grin of your own.

“Let’s stay a little longer.”

— MICKBELL:

✦ Like the official art we have of him swimming with Kuro, he’s definitely sporting a pair of swim trunks and flip flops, with his hair in his signature ponytail.

✦ He and Kuro are so excited to swim, and drag you along to the water as soon as you get there. Of course, Mick is either clinging to you or to Kuro when in the waves, not seeking to really swim on his own.

✦ You definitely enjoy watching them swim and play around more than you’d like to admit, especially with Mick hiding his face and complaining when Kuro decides to shake all the water out of his coat.

✦ Mick really likes finding shells he thinks look neat, and showing them off to you and Kuro proudly. Maybe you even find yourself building a sand castle, with him and his buddy watching closely and moving to help you. He’s in charge of decorating it, while you’re in charge of building it! Kuro helps dig up some of the sand to use.

✦ The three of you end up getting a sweet treat, cooling off in the shade and enjoying the time spent together. Knowing Mickbell, he’s going to lay his head in your lap as he rests after so much activity, looking up at you with that cheeky grin he usually has.

“I could get used to this!” Mickbell sighs, nuzzling into your lap as he makes himself comfortable. Kuro is watching the waves, sitting beside you as the sun begins to fade from the horizon.

“I would’ve thought you’d be ready to go home a lot sooner.” You teased him, brushing his messy bangs out of his face. Scoffing, he made sure you saw as he rolled his eyes.

“If I didn’t have you and Kuro, maybe… But this is something we’ll have to do again. Right, Kuro?” The Kobold nodded, causing a warm grin to spread on your face. He was certainly right about that.

[television-overload]

of our own making

(an X-Files fanfic)

Oh hey, look, it's that massive story I've been working on since January! I'm so thankful to everyone who has shown interest in the concept of this fic and the little snippets I've posted. You've been more help than you know. Without that support, I don't think this would have ever gotten finished.

A special thanks to @numinousmysteries who kindly beta read for me and did a fantastic job. I wanted to make sure I got this right, and she was a great help!

And now I can't wait to share this with you all! New chapters posted daily!

[Read on AO3]

Chapter 1/34 - ink and paper

How long has he been thinking about this, she wonders. What exactly is he thinking? Her mind races, trying to reconcile this Mulder whose deepest desires are spilled out here in ink on worn and crinkled brochures with the one she’s spent nearly every day with these past several months.

She'd never have guessed...

Find out if adoption is right for you! Visit us at 8080 Meadowlark Ln. Annapolis, MD “A Home for Every Child!”

Scully stares down at the brochure on the desk. One of many, which are half buried underneath a pile of paperwork from their current case. Certain words and phrases are circled in pen, underlined, annotated in the margins in the familiar scrawl she knows almost better than her own.

stability – less travel? change in division? discuss with Scully

loving home – ask Frohike for real estate agent #

The word “family” is circled three times.

She swallows with some difficulty, finding—to her dismay—that her hands are shaking. Mulder will be arriving any second, and here she is, frozen like a statue.

How long has he been thinking about this, she wonders. What exactly is he thinking? Her mind races, trying to reconcile this Mulder whose deepest desires are spilled out here in ink on worn and crinkled brochures with the one she’s spent nearly every day with these past several months.

She’d never have guessed…

“Morning, partner,” his voice calls out, and she jolts in surprise. She hears the door snick shut behind him, but she can’t bring herself to turn around. With deft fingers, she pushes the brochure back under the stack of papers where she found it, only the colorful corner of the page visible.

“Morning, Mulder,” she tries, clearing her throat. It comes out strained, but she hopes he doesn’t notice. She hides her trembling hands in her lap under the desk.

He looks down at her, half amused, half concerned. “You okay? You're not getting that stomach bug that's been going around, are you?”

“I'm fine,” she answers defensively, warning him to back off. She grabs a file off the desk in front of her with a little more force than necessary, plopping it open.

‘Okayyy,’ he mouths exaggeratedly, eyebrows raised. He sits down at his desk and leafs through some papers sitting on top, arranging them into neater stacks. When he uncovers the brochures, his eyes widen and he clears his throat, hurriedly covering them with other papers and trying to act natural.

Scully thinks about letting it go and pretending she doesn’t know what he’s hiding, but she knows she won’t be able to sleep until she finds out what’s been going on in that ridiculous head of his. 

She idly flips to the next page of the file in her hand, displaying a confidence she doesn’t feel in the firm set of her shoulders

“Doing some light reading, Mulder?” she asks, attempting to look disinterested.

His head shoots up, a look of alarm on his face. For a second he thinks she might be talking about something else, that she couldn’t possibly know, but one look at her throws that theory right out the window. He glances back and forth between her and the papers on the desk a few times before dropping his shoulders in defeat.

“I’m sorry, Scully, you weren’t supposed to see those,” he says, shuffling all the brochures into a pile while carefully avoiding eye contact. “I was working here late last night. I must have forgotten to put them away.” As he speaks, he opens the top drawer of his desk and shoves them inside, then takes a seat at his desk. His nose is buried in a file before she can even respond.

She watches him now. He is a curiosity, determinedly feigning concentration on a case she knows he finds disinteresting and a waste of time.

Typical.

“You're really not going to say anything?” she asks, arms crossed in front of her.

That rankles him. “What do you want me to say?” he asks, indignation boiling below the surface.

She looks at him incredulously, the file in front of her all but forgotten.

“You're thinking of adoption? When were you planning to share this with me?”

He sighs and shakes his head, pleading silently with her. “It's too soon, Scully. I didn't think you'd want to hear it yet.”

“But you're looking into it because…”

“It's just been on my mind, that's all.”

She stares at him, brows furrowed.

“Since when?”

Since when… Images flash of a life he didn’t recognize. His sister, alive and grown up. A quiet suburban neighborhood. Cancer Man living just down the street. A wife and kids, but not the right ones. It was wrong, all of it was wrong.

“A hallucinatory trip into an alternate universe tends to make you think,” he answers simply.

He’s looking at her now, deadly serious despite the joking tone. She doesn’t respond. Can’t respond.

“I'm sorry, I didn't want to bring all this up,” he continues. “I know it's a sore spot for you.”

It takes her a moment to conjure words from her mouth, her lips moving but no sound coming out. “I just wasn't expecting…”

“For all I know, this isn't even something you'd want.”

What does she say to that? Is she interested? 

“I– I'm not sure. I've never really considered it before.”

He waits, his eyes assessing her for some hidden meaning, some insight into her state of mind. He gets nothing. She’s totally blank.

“Well… what do you want?” He thought the question was innocuous enough, safer territory than straight up asking her if she wants to adopt, but apparently not.

She shuts her folder, abruptly standing and slinging her purse over her shoulder. “I'm going back to the crime scene,” she declares, changing the subject. “I want to see if there's anything we missed.”

“Scully…” he tries.

“Not now, Mulder.” Without even taking the time to put her coat on, she flees, leaving the door partially open in her rush to get away. Cursing under his breath, Mulder grabs his coat from its hook and hurries after her.

The elevator doors are almost all the way closed by the time he catches up, but in this case, he figures it’s worth the potential loss of a limb. He throws his hand between the closing gap in the metal doors, and it bounces back open to allow him entrance, to the extreme displeasure of one Dana Scully. He wisely stays silent in the elevator, stealing glances at her every few seconds out of the corner of his eye as they ascend. He can feel the frigid air coming off her in waves. It’s been a while since he’s seen her this annoyed with him, this eager to get away.

He won’t let her. Not this time. He’s learned from his mistakes.

In the parking garage, she's walking briskly, heels clicking on the concrete, and he has to pick up the pace to keep up with surprisingly agile little legs.

He didn’t want this confrontation. There was a reason he was keeping his research a secret. This is exactly what he was hoping to avoid, at least until the time was right to carefully drop some hints here and there. But now? There’s no carefully about it. No option to wait and let this blow over. There’s only one way out of this at this point, and unfortunately, that way is through.

He picks up the pace.

“You're the one who brought this up, Scully, I was perfectly happy throwing those brochures in my drawer and not saying a word.” 

His voice echoes in the concrete parking structure, sounding harsh even to his own ears. As frustrated as he is with her, that isn’t his intent. He only wants to know what he can do to help her, how he can help her fulfill her dreams. He lets out a breath, and with it, releases his selfish frustration. She’s still walking away at a breakneck pace, and he doesn’t know how he can get her to stop and face this. 

“If you want to talk about it, let's talk about it,” he says, pleading. “I can't help you if I don't know what you want. You want me to shut up, never mention the subject again?” he shouts, throwing his hands in the air, “Fine, just tell me. What do you want, Scully?”

“I just want to be a mom, okay?” she yells, whirling around to face him. Her words instantly silence him, and he watches stone-faced as tears spring in her eyes. “I see all these other moms out there and think… I could do that too. Why can’t I do that too?”

Well, mission accomplished. The truth is finally out there. Part of him feels bad for pushing her, but the other part knows that it was doing her no good to keep her feelings bottled up inside to deal with by herself. He reaches out a hand, intending to comfort her, his eyes softening in sympathy. 

“You could. Scully, you’d be the best mom.”

She flinches away, stepping out of his reach. “You don’t know that, Mulder. I can’t even—even my body is even telling me no. Over and over.” She resumes her brisk walk to her car, and he thinks he sees her brush angrily at her face, no doubt wiping away the evidence of the stubborn tears that have managed to escape.

He rushes to get in front of her, walking backwards so he can keep her in his sight. 

“When has that ever stopped you?” he asks. “You had cancer, and you kept fighting. You’re alive today because you refused to give up when your body quit on you. What about that?” He stops abruptly, forcing her to come to a halt before she crashes into him.

There’s no way out of this, is there? Her shoulders slump in defeat.

“You saved me, Mulder,” she admits quietly, shaking her head. “You’re the one who didn’t give up. Not me. It was only because you were with me that I survived.”

This time, when she goes to walk away, he stops her, placing a hand on her shoulder. The simple touch causes her to freeze, hardly breathing, and when he steps closer, she stays. His hands slide down her shoulders, holding her securely in place to ensure that his next words come through loud and clear.

“I’m gonna be with you here on this too, I promise.” His thumbs brush back and forth on the fabric of her sleeves, for his comfort or hers, she’s not sure. “You can still be a mother, Scully. I’ll help you.”

She shakes her head, her heart feeling like it has been ripped to shreds. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” He gives her a little shake for emphasis. She still won’t look at him. “You’ve kept me alive all these years, how much harder could a baby be?”

That gets a breathy chuckle from her, and her head falls to her chest. Groaning with the agony of this burden on her heart, she stops fighting it and leans into him. Without hesitation, he wraps an arm around her shoulder, pulling her into his embrace.

Her hand comes up to find purchase on his suit jacket, relishing in the comfort only he can provide. She’s past caring if anyone sees them like this here. Let them talk. They already do, anyway.

“Well, at least when you wake me up in the middle of the night, you’re not crying,” she speaks into his chest.

She feels him shrug, and can almost see the goofy smile she knows she put on his lips.

“Usually.”

She looks up at him with her chin on his sternum before taking a deep breath and pulling away.

“It's raining,” he says softly, glancing down at her and brushing a strand of hair out of her face. “We can go back to the crime scene later.” She nods, unsure what else to say. She allows herself to be led, his ever-present hand brushing against her back as they start toward the basement.

“Adoption,” Scully mutters to herself, shaking her head in disbelief. “I don’t know, Mulder. This—this is different than IVF. With that, all I was asking for was your…” her eyes dart around, looking anywhere but at him, “genetic material. This is something entirely different.”

He’s pleased she’s at least considering it, but she doesn’t get it at all, if that’s what she thinks.

“How? ‘Cause from where I’m standing, the process of getting a baby is a little different, but in the long run, the result is the same.”

She pauses, looking at him in confusion. “What– what are you saying?”

He runs a hand awkwardly through his hair, suddenly taking a unique interest in his shoes and the floor of the parking structure.

“Yeah, we probably should have talked about this before…”

“Talked about what?”

He sighs and guides her into a stairwell. It’s stuffy and poorly-lit with a flickering lightbulb, but here, there’s less of a chance they’ll be overheard.

“Look, Scully, I don’t know what you had in mind for my involvement beyond contributing to half the baby’s DNA when you first asked me to help you get pregnant,” he starts, fighting hard to meet her eyes instead of shying away. “But, I– I had hoped it would be a little more than ‘Say hi to Uncle Mulder,’ every couple of months.”

She blinks back at him, speechless.

“I’m sorry if that’s overstepping, I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable with all this, I just—” He takes in a breath. “I guess I got to thinking of what it might be like to have a family again.” His bout of honesty is met with a blank stare, and his nervous smile drops. “I completely misread the situation, didn’t I?” he asks, self-loathing waiting on standby. “Got ahead of myself…”

She stops him by catching his coat sleeve. “No—uh. No, you didn’t.” She collects herself, willing herself to offer him some reassurance. Her fingers release the fabric of his coat, shifting her grasp instead to his hand. “I didn’t realize you felt that way.”

He glances down at where she holds tightly to him, and his lips curl into some semblance of a smile.

“I guess they might have had a point with all those communication seminars we’ve skipped, huh?”

She chuckles softly.

“I don’t think this is exactly what they had in mind…”

With a gentle tug, Mulder leads her down the stairs, committed to holding her hand as long as she’ll let him. The air is stagnant and silent, only the rhythmic echo of their shoes clicking on the concrete steps as they make their way to the bottom floor.

She’s thinking. What she knows now, it changes everything. 

She had asked him to leave. Hid her grief from him as much as possible after her initial lapse into weakness when she came home with the news. She had almost kissed him, then, unsure of what else she had to live for. She knew she was hurting him by folding inward on herself in the weeks that followed, but that didn’t stop her from doing it. She was in a dark place, hardly able to see what was right in front of her. What she couldn’t see was that his hurt wasn’t just for her, born of some misguided sense of guilt or pity. It was his own, too.

“Mulder, all those months, after it failed—” There’s something like fear in her voice as she utters these words, or maybe regret.

“I was just worried about you.”

She squeezes his hand, feeling tears well in her eyes once more. “No, you were grieving like I was, and I didn’t notice. I pushed you away…”

“Dana…” He turns, a couple steps ahead of her, so for once it’s him who has to look up to meet her eyes. Her lip wobbles as she looks down at him, and he brushes his thumb tenderly over her knuckles. “You had to deal with it on your own, I understood that. I don’t blame you for anything.”

Those eyes. So open and honest and sad. She wonders how anyone could hurt him, could bear to break this man’s heart. How could she? 

Choking back a sob, she falls into him, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding tight. His arms encircle her back, supporting her weight, and she feels herself being lifted as he goes up a step, closing the distance between them.

His hand climbs up to the back of her head, stroking her hair soothingly.

“I just wanted to be there for you,” he mumbles into her neck.

“You were, Mulder,” she gasps between bouts of tears, finding comfort in the feel of his soft hair between her fingers. “You’ve always been there.”

He pulls back, lifting his hands to cup her face and wiping away the tears he finds there with the pads of his thumbs. 

“You don’t have to give an answer now,” he says, reassuring, “This is… a big commitment, I know, and I don’t want you to say yes just because I suggested it. I just wanted you to know it’s an option, and if you want to have a baby, I’m in. However you want to go about it, I’ll be as involved as you want. Just– let me know, anytime. Okay?”

He’s looking at her now, head ducked so those sad, puppy-dog eyes can get his message across.

She nods, holding tight to the wrists that so tenderly cup her face.

“Okay.”

~~~

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[ruershrimo]

take me back (take me with you) | f. megumi x fem! reader | chapter 6: beginning

ao3 link for additional author’s notes | playlist | prev

chapter synopsis:

'“Why else do you think I am the way I am? I may be shy and scatterbrained, or a horrible woman with a muddled sense of morality or what I think should and should not happen, when in reality it’s just what I want to happen. But this is why I’m so resolute, and so stubborn. This is why I love you so fiercely. All mothers are like that to some degree, even if my own would never let me bear witness to it.”

You haven’t told her you love her too in years.'

'And Itadori seems… like a good person. I think it’s good, that… you were able to find a friend like that.”

“It was. He’s a really, really good guy.”

“You love him a lot,” Megumi says.

---

You and Megumi set out to prevent an emergency involving Yuuji and a cursed object. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen. But at least everyone is fine in the end, even if it means you'll have to walk away from almost everything (or maybe it's the other way around).

You're going to be all on your own. Still, now it seems like this will hurt less now.

word count: ~8k; tws: none for now :)

17-6-2018 

The two of you walk down the lane. It’s midnight. There’s a loitering silence in the air, no words exchanged between you and him, and it twists your heart in brief moments of hurt when you’re not trying to keep your mind occupied with other things. Your legs move subconsciously without you caring to think of them, the route to the hospital ingrained in your mind as if intrinsically there. 

At some point, you think your hand with its sweat and its grip is going to leave imprints like a marring on his skin, but it’s of your own selfishness that you choose to hold onto his wrist anyway. 

There’s a million things you could say to him right now, things you’ll forcefully push to the very back of your throat, things you’ll keep under lock and key in a mangled mix of quiet anticipation and sombre anxieties. Right now you’re holding his wrist and that’s enough for you, to have him walking behind you if not beside, to be two people near each other— not together— in silence since any conversation is not an option; any conversation could lead to the last spark needed to be fanned into the flame for it to erupt bigger and brighter than ever before. 

If you asked about Tsumiki right now, or why either of them never bothered to speak to you since 2016, it could break you apart, of that you’re sure. And even without words it threatens to do so to you like a chandelier of melting wax candles hanging above you being suspended precariously from the ceiling or light lightning soon to be thrown down mercilessly from the sky. 

“The turning to Sendai Hospital is on the right.” 

“I know the routes better,” you let out, and rather disappointingly it sounds brasher and more derogatory aloud instead of the unobtrusive tone you were aiming for— you hope it doesn’t hurt him but then wonder why you still even cared that much about how he felt about what you said or did anyway, “I got myself accustomed to taking the one on the left that leads you through. Quick shortcut and all.” 

You’re not looking back, but the light pull of his hand from the hold of your wrist seems to suggest his slight reeling back in a small sense of surprise and an equal amount of shock, as if suddenly remembering the fact you were your own person, that you had your own autonomy as one, because somehow everyone thought you weren’t. 

It’s strange to look back at how you were before: meek, timid. Too shy to speak up. Too innocent to be angered by anything. Always dreaming, mind bleary as if on a cloud in blurred skies, hiding behind the backs of others like a petrified forest critter. 

And now you’re this— this person who frowns and disagrees and retorts at every little thing, and as much as you have to, as much as it was nearly inevitable the way you turned out, all you can think you share with the person you were when you first met Megumi and Tsumiki was your need to be useful— and even that has been exacerbated by how you’ve grown, how you’ve become this person you grew into. And a part of you— no, just you as a whole— doesn’t like yourself at all. 

Your father was right. That little girl was hopeful, obedient, kind, caring— you don’t know why even then you were dissatisfied with the way you were, or why your dissatisfaction would matter because at that time you’d cared so little about everything besides caring for people and having fun with the pair of siblings that you were so rarely bothered by it, that it was still just a slight whisper from the back of your head that could be shushed or tuned out with library visits and nights in front of the TV and the glow of old cartoons. Your father was right and this is proved even more by the fact that the whole situation just infuriates you on the surface, and just makes you feel like an empty, hollow shell left behind when you reach deeper into yourself. 

That little girl had potential, potential to be useful but kind, obedient and close to the people who raised her even if it meant abandoning her own ideals. But you’d been so devoted to them, you think, that she was killed and destroyed in the world she grew up in, and now there’s a space for her that’s left vacant due to the way she wasted away. You miss her, the girl you once were, you miss being her, how easy and lighthearted everything was and how all of you felt so content in every sense of the word. But you don’t want her back. Now that’s just what makes you miserable sometimes. 

Self-reflection just made you feel revolted by yourself. You keep your eyes on the road. 

“It’s here,” you state, pointing at the building in front of you. 

Sendai General Hospital is an institution made out of bare concrete. Its walls are yellowed and close in on its wards like a prison, coloured using old paint that hasn’t been repainted over and is as pallid-looking as the skin of the people sitting on the beds it is inhabited by. Just being in it feels like a hit to the body and the brain and the senses, too. There are old-fashioned tiles on its floors, their pale beige hue muted yet the blinding shine on them harshly mopped clean. Inside it reeks of an imminent presence of sickness or death or illnesses and conditions never to be able to be defeated and sterile sanitisers. Looking at the latex-blue curtains in it feels like a blindfold unwantedly, forcefully pulled over both your vision and your ears. 

“You and that Itadori seem close.” 

“We are,” you say, then you add, not really knowing why, “He’s my best friend.” Maybe you’re trying to make him jealous, rile him up a bit. But even then you wouldn’t want him to be riled up, nor would you be satisfied if he were to keep silent. Maybe you just wanted to hurt him, to hurt him back or something, if only for something small, even if you’d already resolved not to do so. 

You’ll make sure not to do that again, though. 

Instead he does something else, takes another route instead. “Then it seems you visit his grandfather often.” 

“Uh-huh,” you nod as the two of you enter the hospital, and you have to blink a few times as always in order to adjust yourself to the light and how it reflects off the detachedly clean floor. “My mother’s here, too.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry— is she alright?” 

“She’s okay, I… think. She… she got sick a while back and stays here now,” you explain, “Let’s not talk about that…—I mean, I… don’t really want to.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“You don’t have to keep saying that.” It just makes people feel worse. 

He doesn’t push further and you suppose that’s okay. Your chest hurts a bit, like phantom pain on a wound that’s still there. There’s not really a way to explain it but almost everything makes you feel that way these days. Everything makes you feel horrible to some degree. Maybe it’s being a girl, maybe it’s being a teenager, but it’s not quite either, you guess. 

“He won’t be here for a while,” you say, “He’s either still in the room where his grandfather is or he’s buying flowers for him.” 

“Then I’ll just contact them and let them know the whole situation first.” 

Who’s ‘them’? 

“Okay.” You turn your back on him, “—wait.” 

“What?” 

“Do you have any emergency contact or something? Like, a trusted adult who could help you with any of this? In case things go really bad?” 

“...why would you need one?” he questions. 

You roll your eyes, “Just give it to me, damn it… if there’s anything I have nowadays, it’s probably foresight for stuff like this. For emergencies.” 

He gives you the number, albeit a bit begrudgingly. Why’d he have to be so pissy about anything and everything? 

“Okay, thanks. I’m going to visit my mother now.” 

The air and the colour from it seems distant as always, the ward she was basically imprisoned in smelling of the indistinguishable mix of sanitiser and sickness. There her body chains her to her bed, and there is little she can do besides rely on and weakly cling to the nurses who assist her, a frail shadow of what she once was. 

“Hi, Mummy.” 

She turns to you, and your chest constricts. Her hair, once much longer, the type that you dreamed to have as it billowed in the wind, the type that invited you caressively to bury yourself in and take in that heady scent of roses that emanated from it— that hair is now replaced with a cloth wrapped around her head. Radiation. Chemotherapy. 

The wrinkles on her face make the difference between her now and her years ago all the more stark. Every visit you come back here, you’ve forced yourself to be acclimated to this new reality, one where she isn’t waiting at home no matter how tedious the fights get or how exhausting it was eating with someone who remained silent, someone who chose to continue suffering if it meant she could hurt and turn her daughter to guilt (as if that would change anything). At least she was there. 

Cancer is a terminal illness, especially the type your mother is facing— regardless of how much chemotherapy she would struggle through and how much you didn’t want to acknowledge a truth so plain and conspicuously bare, she would be confined to this bed until her final days, her illness like gyves tying her limbs and forcing her earthbound; the bed a cage she could never be liberated from. 

Sometimes she made it a point to you that she didn’t want to liberate herself from it anyway, and you’d never been so depressed yet irked by anything else. (You’d regret everything— not spending time with her, not appreciating her nearly enough— except for your decision to be involved in the Jujutsu world, if not as a sorcerer then as a doctor. That was, and is— your ultimatum. Your end all be all of this whole situation.” 

“Hello. Where’s that Itadori boy?” 

“Not here today, he’s still with his grandfather— maybe later.” You swing your bag over your shoulder, rummaging through it a while before pulling it out. “I’ve something for you, by the way.” 

“Oh! These,” she exclaims, and she smiles faintly, bits of colour rushing back to her face like watercolour dots on moistened paper. “I used to make them for you, sometimes. They used to be your favourite when you were really little.” 

“I know,” you explain, “That’s why I made them. I don’t like them anymore, but… I can’t remember your favourite food or if I ever asked, and I know you don’t like the food they give you here as much as… I don’t know. Your own cooking, I guess.” 

“It’s not my favourite,” she states, matter-of-factly, bluntly, “But thank you for the effort. My favourite will always be my own mother’s cooking.” 

Silence. 

“Now that I look back at everything, there are so many things I regret. Things I should have done but never did out of fear; things I should not have done and never apologised for out of pride. I’d like it if you could be different. Your grandmother went out the same way. At least, even if you had the same illnesses as we did, which I hope the genes for which have been curbed by your father’s— at least you would not leave the world with regret,” she looks down at her hands, staring down at them solemnly like a shadow, an excluded figure. “But it was a good life.” 

“...then maybe you can tell me more. While you— while we still have time. What was your childhood like? What was your mother like?” It feels strange, imposturous, maybe— to be referring to someone basically a stranger as “grandmother”, to name someone so far away from you so intimate, even if the only generation between you, tying the two of you together, was your mother’s. If you had a daughter it would be the same for her, most likely. There’s a part of you that would find honour in becoming your mother once you’d grown, but there’s a part of you that would think being such would accost you horribly, for all time. 

She sighs, “I’ll tell you later. There would be so much to say, like compressing all my words into one tiny paper. The stories have weight in them the same way letters and words in handwriting can be firm and large. But if I were to start,” she begins, “I’ll say that I was born as the daughter of two very powerful sorcerers. Now, I know how much this would sound like some nonsense spouted by your mother, but I think you should listen anyway. 

“My parents loved each other a lot, but my mother had come from an obscure clan whose name I can’t remember, but who had high hopes in them having a child with a powerful cursed technique as their last resort, since, if I recall correctly, there had been a crisis within the clan for it to keep surviving. 

“I still remember when they found out I had no cursed technique and how terrified they were. In me I had a bit more than the relatively normal amount of cursed energy most people have, and so I was expected to have techniques as powerful as they did. They loved me and treated me preciously, like a fragile object, so long as I was quiet and demure— and I guess to some extent I still was and still am today. They wondered what they could do to run from the clan, as if they didn’t have enough power when they were supposed to protect me despite my father’s bullheaded industry and my mother’s patience-formed strength. They lacked grit to grapple against them, and only in this did they lack it, I think; only against my mother’s family did they not have the ability to resolve things whether peacefully or violently. And eventually they just gave up and thought they would just… surrender me over when I entered my adolescent years. I was their daughter. I… suppose they didn’t love me enough. I know it sounds awful— thinking that they should have always protected me, through and through—” 

“No, it wasn’t.” 

“—when it could have been the clan itself that would have been mostly to blame.” 

“But they were still supposed to protect you! They were your parents—” 

“Why else do you think I am the way I am? I may be a shy and scatterbrained or a horrible woman with a muddled sense of morality or what I think should and should not happen when in reality it’s just what I want to happen, but this is why I’m so resolute, and so stubborn. This is why I love you so fiercely. All mothers are like that to some degree, even if my own would never let me bear witness to it.” You haven’t told her you love her too in years. 

“But then when I was an adult I met your father, who was a bit like a country bumpkin, but a formidable sorcerer and a kind, honest person, and I couldn’t help but fall in love with the person he was both inside and out. And for the next few years we struggled to have a child until I found out I was pregnant with you,” she continues, “Even though by that time I was well into my late thirties, we were overjoyed and decided to keep you.” 

Suddenly you wish there had been more time before things were ruined. Time for you to know her better, the beginning of your existence. You would have begged her for old photos, stories, mementos of her and your father. 

“And now the clan’s faded into obscurity, finally. The younger members left and the older ones passed away peacefully. Happy story, right?” 

“...yeah.” It all ended well, but you don’t know if you can say the same for your mother’s. At least, you hope, when she goes away, it can be swift and peaceful like the way her relatives did. 

Then suddenly there’s a buzz in your pocket. An inconvenient one, out of the blue. 

“You should go get that first,” she says. 

“...okay.” 

You lift it up to your face and feel like crushing the damn thing. Old number. Stupid number. Number you haven’t called in months because you’d given up on that bastard— oh. The two of you were working together now. 

You turn away from your mother, creeping to the edge of the room. “What’s wrong?” 

“I just talked to him, but I think it would be easier if you came back and was there with him too since you know him better than I do. And he… doesn’t seem like the brightest. He may think that it’s not important enough to hand over unless you ask him to or something.” 

You muffle your voice with your hand and whisper, “Hey, you shut up, you know nothing about him. He’s way smarter than people give him credit for. But I’m— I’m with my mother right now. Wait for a second. Just ask him to wait for me first; he wouldn’t need any of my help for all of this yet. Make a friend or get a life or something.” 

“...fine. But you’ll have to join us later. He’s bound to ask about you.” 

“Then just tell him I’m with my mother!” you snap, still whispering. 

“I’ll see what I can do.” 

“Wh— you little— oh, don’t you hang up now—” 

Weird thing is, he probably wasn’t even being so infuriating on purpose. And you wouldn’t have burst out at someone for being that way anyway. It was only because it was him, specifically. 

You’d sworn to put that past you. 

Your immaturity strikes once again. 

“If you have to go now,” your mother says, “You should. Just come back again next time. I can tell you the rest. Thank you again for the food, [Name].” She doesn’t call you ‘darling’ anymore, doesn’t she? Just your name. 

“Okay. Sorry.” 

You swing the bag back over your shoulder, wearing it this time instead of taking it off, easing your way out of the room. 

“It’s okay,” she assures you, “Goodbye. I love you.” 

“...I love you, too,” you say, but it’ll mingle with all the other sounds in the hospital, and it’ll be drowned out like a ship in the middle of nowhere, your voice soft and thoroughly soused by the cacophony of bleak noises like telephone rings and beeps from electrocardiographs outside of her deafeningly quiet hospital room. 

“Hi, Yuuji,” you greet them in the dimly lit waiting area, “...and Megumi. Sorry to keep the two of you guys waiting for so long.” 

“Oh, hey; it’s okay!” he goes, although in his voice it seems that there’s been some of his usual energy seeping away from him. “Didn’t know the two of you knew each other until just now or that you were a part of some magic curse society. Are you guys childhood friends who met because of all that cursed stuff or something?” 

“Something like that,” Megumi explains. 

“It’s a long story,” you say, not exactly denying him nor conceding his words anyway. Once again, there’s a trace of anger despite your promise to be untethered to your puerility like this. “Anyway, are you okay, Yuuji? How’s your grandfather?” 

He pauses. “Oh, about that… he just passed away.” 

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Yuuji…” you hold the fabric of his jacket (sometimes it still feels wrong to try and hold his hand— it just makes your heart ache again like a scab being clawed at) and pull him into a brief caress, patting his back as gently as you can manage. 

“It’s okay, I’ll be fine,” he smiles as you pull yourself away, “Grandpa wouldn’t want me to be crying right now anyway. So don’t worry.” 

“Okay, I won’t. But if you’re sad, just know you can always talk to me.” 

He laughs, softer than the boisterous manner he usually does so in, “Yeah, I know.” 

Megumi clears his throat, pointedly trying to make a sound, “Anyway. Itadori Yuuji—” 

“Just call him Itadori. You don’t have to be so uptight.” 

“Nah, [Name], I’m fine—” 

Megumi sighs. “Anyway, we need you to give the cursed object now.” 

“Oh, yeah, that,” you start, “So, Yuuji, do you have the thing that Megumi would have explained to you? The cursed object? We need it for everyone to be safe, and all.” 

“Yeah! Hold on, let me get it. I told you I didn’t have it already, but here’s the box,” he says, tossing it over to Megumi. 

He retrieves the box. It’s ancient and wooden, the craftsmanship behind it elite and adroit, and the paper on it has the words for a buddhist sutra written on it like an inscription. You’ve heard of it before, the kind of curse it was meant to seal, but it definitely couldn’t be— 

He opens the box. 

Holy shit. 

“Where is it?” 

“It’s empty…” Megumi panics, “Wait— hold on!” 

Things are bad— as in, they couldn’t get any worse— not only was the school doomed by the loss of its cursed object, the cursed object was Sukuna Ryomen’s finger itself. 

You blame your inadequacy, your inability to have stopped everything sooner— if not for that nobody would have gotten hurt. If not for that there wouldn’t even be a risk of anything happening anyway. You should’ve tried harder to sense it, and you should’ve focused more on it to keep the student body safe and sound. 

It was your fault. No one else was to blame but your useless self, and even if that were wrong, you’d still have the most to be blamed for. 

Megumi has a hand on Yuuji’s shoulder, keeping the other boy from moving, his breathing erratic and his eyes wide in frantic shock. 

“...well, they were saying, ‘let’s open it up to see what’s inside it tonight’,” Yuuji clarifies, standing a few centimetres away from the door, “Why? Is that bad?” 

Sasaki and Iguchi? 

The air in the hospital feels particularly chilly tonight, gooseflesh terrorising your skin all over, and for all the kinds of reasons that would cause anything like such. 

“It’s way worse than bad,” Megumi declared, fear and grim so thick in his voice they were tangible enough to be cut through with a knife. “Your friends are going to die.” 

“We’ve got to go,” you rush, “Now! Quick!” 

It passes by like a blur, as if you’re in that moment and out of it simultaneously. Your mind has been bombarded with and pressed so thoroughly onto the moment, like tissue on a wet surface, that it seems it’s being blanked out, while your legs continue to run despite your mind nearly forgetting, at this point, why you’re running— as if your legs moving so frantically to help them was something intrinsic, something you didn’t need your mind for. 

Sasaki and Iguchi are in danger. Sasaki and Iguchi are in danger. 

You didn’t know them all too well, really— just through Yuuji, and Yuuji himself wasn’t as close to the two of them, being their junior and all. And although a part of you was doing this just because you could, like the way you did when you first discovered your cursed technique, you knew that another was doing this for Yuuji. If in any way they were hurt or could not survive, he would blame himself to no end. He possessed such a kindness within him, so much that it hit the depths of your soul sometimes; shattered your heart so gently a million times over or heated it in the kindly way mothers heated pans on stoves despite the heat of it being greater than that of blue flame. If anything happened to them, no matter how much or how little he knew of them, he wouldn’t be able to live after that. 

The two of them are near the barrier separating the school from the street before you (you struggle with catching up to them— one’s a star athlete and another has been training for much longer than you, you’re sure), the gates tall and enveloped in darkness. You didn’t think much of school except for when it came to your grades and being with Yuuji, thinking of these gates— the ones that you and Yuuji use when you’re running super late— in particular as just a shortcut entrance you paid little attention to, just something treated with indifference as you passed through them whenever you were late. Yet now they echoed denial, refusal, and slim chances— it was unlikely that they’d be alright, especially since this cursed object in particular was the finger of Sukuna Ryomen. 

“Is that the building?” Megumi questions, “Where are they?” 

“Fourth floor— guh!” Yuuji seems to come to an abrupt halt, nearly slamming into what seems to be an invisible wall. A veil. 

“Yuuji!” 

“I’ll handle this,” Megumi declares, hopping onto the metal wires, more directed to Yuuji than you. So even he can tell how selfless Yuuji is, even after only having just met him. 

“I may not know those two that well, but—” Yuuji starts, “But they’re friends! I have to help!” 

“You’re staying here,” Megumi commands, “[Name], if you could— get your father or any sorcerers you know to come here and help.” 

He climbs over the gate. 

He’s going away from you again. Slipping away from your grasp. And now, all you can do is watch. There’s nothing else— nothing else you can do, at all. If you went inside now, you wouldn’t be able to help except— what?— tend to their injuries? Manipulate your own cells into weapons? The former wasn’t possible with how much you’d strained yourself from running so quickly earlier, and the latter was too dangerous: you hadn’t even started with the basics of that yet, on your father’s obstinate insistence that even if he’d let you play doctor he wouldn’t let you manipulate any of the cells in your body into any kind of usable weapon. Any simple wrong move could make things turn south in the most drastically terrifying of ways. If you went in there, you’d just die, and there’d be more casualties, more trouble, more problems caused by you and you alone. 

You can’t even call your father, either. That would always be your last resort— because even if you fought, you still needed him to rest. You didn’t want him overexerting himself by using his cursed technique at all. 

(You were selfish. You didn’t want to lose your father. You didn’t want to have to visit not one but two parents lying sick and tired and grey in matching hospital beds.) 

“Yuuji?” you start, turning to him. “You’re…deathly quiet. Are you okay?” 

His lips quiver slightly, a faint whimpering noise coming out of him. Is he crying? 

“Yuuji, look at me. Are you okay?” you ask, as gently and softly as you can right now, despite your ragged, unsteady, unathletic-addled breaths. You place a hand on his shoulder, slowly rubbing up and down from his shoulder and crook of his neck to his back. “It’s okay. …Megumi’s a good and… capable, strong person and jujutsu sorcerer. He’ll be okay, and they’ll be okay too. Just… just put your trust in him, okay?” 

“I’m sorry, [Name], but I’ve got to go,” he tells you, “You stay here, and call for help or something. I’m sorry, but I’ve just really got to do it!” 

He hugs you, quickly, deftly. And then he crosses the gate, leaving you all alone like Megumi did. You wish he’d hug you longer, that you could take care of him for a little longer— it was your last way to be useful now. 

Still, there’s someone you could call, now that you remember him.

The emergency contact. 

You snatch your phone out, resolute. 

“Hello! Gojo Satoru speaking,” the voice on the other line says. 

You’ve heard it plenty before by accident. 

When Gojo and Megumi are back, Yuuji’s in the form of a figure slung over Gojo’s shoulders like he’s been reply entrenched into slumber, his body seemingly limp and his torso completely bare. There’s barely an ounce of movement in him, except for slow exhales and inhales you can see on his chest. Sasaki and Iguchi are both nearly the same, the former covered in bruises and in a deep, panicked haze, and the latter as asleep as Yuuji seemed to be while harbouring injuries he may never recover from. 

The only non-roughed up one here is Gojo, it seems; Megumi has a stream of blood running from the top of his head in rivulets, staining his sweaty, scraped forehead. 

“Wh— you two, what happened? Why are they all asleep? What happened to Yuuji? Are they okay? What—” 

“Calm down, kid,” Gojo says, “They’ll be fine. I mean, there’s a 100% chance that your friend can be executed, but…” 

“Executed?” you almost scream, “What the hell happened? You said things would be okay!” 

“Uh-uh, again, calm down. I mean, we don’t even know when they’re gonna make him kick the bucket! He ate Sukuna’s finger, by the way.” He holds his arms up in faux surrender. 

“Gojo you ignorant slut! Don’t you fucking dare tell me to ‘calm down!’ He ate Sukuna’s finger? Why weren’t you able to stop anything? What’s going to happen to him now? You know what— give him to me!” 

“You know, it’s not like I’m scared of being hunted down by your father if you use your cursed technique— I mean, I’m leagues stronger than him— but the stuff was too strong. It’s not like you’ll be able to get rid of the finger in your little boyfriend.” 

“He’s not her boyfriend!” Megumi interjects.

“Thank you, Megumi!” Your face is going hot like a campfire fanned by the wind. 

“Oh?” Gojo adds, a teasing lilt in his voice. “Anyway, we’re going to get him to a place where we can cover everything with talismans to surround him.” 

They’re going to execute him at Jujutsu High after.  

“I’m coming with you.” 

“You sure?” Gojo asks, “Your father isn’t going to like you travelling so far away without telling him.” 

Megumi shifts, a little sombre. “[Name], you don’t have to.” 

“...I’m doing this for Yuuji, not for you.” 

“You okay?” Gojo asks while the three of you are back in the hospital. (You hate this building so much.) Iguchi’s been transferred to a ward, Sasaki having woken up and insisting on staying with him. “I’ve got kikufuku if you want some. You must be really tired since it’s so late, huh?” 

The whole situation is so incredulous you’re unsure of whether you want to burst out laughing or dismember someone. 

“...nothing. Wait, let me see Yuuji again.” 

Everyone is asleep, it seems— all except for you and Gojo. Yuuji’s been knocked out, and Megumi’s stuck in the world of his dreams. 

You can’t sleep. There’s just nothing to put your mind at rest. 

At least if there’s one thing you can do it’s this. 

Gojo picks him up by the sides of his torso (now temporarily clothed with a spare white shirt) like a child with a heavy book. “Woah— he’s pretty heavy for a fifteen year old kid.” 

You lay Yuuji face-up on the line of hospital chairs. There are thin scarlet marks right under his eyes— Sukuna’s eyelids, you’ve been told. 

You should’ve done more to protect him. 

Slowly, reticently, you kneel by the side of the chairs. You press your fingertips onto that pair of thin tiny lines. 

Nothing happens. You can’t picture his cells being able to grow back. It’s as if there’s been a slit on his face and its outline has been replaced with brand-new skin. His cells don’t budge. 

“Why don’t you help Megumi? I bet he’s got plenty of healable injuries.” 

“…I don’t think I’ll be able to help much. I could faint if I try helping him now. It’s better to leave it to Dr Ieiri or something.” 

“Pft,” he scoffs, “Shoko? She’s definitely not going to heal all of him. It’ll just be a waste of her time. You can just help him with the tiny scrapes and bruises first. And I’ll even tell her that you did it. She’s really fond of you, you know.” 

You give him a shy, modest smile. “Thanks, then.”

It’s time to get to work. 

Megumi’s skin is smooth like a baby’s just like the last time you felt it, though the frown on his face, ever-present, is bound to cause wrinkles there in less than a few decades’ time. You place your hands on him, bruised and bloody, watching in your mind and directing his cells as they work. 

Once the smaller injuries have been dealt with, you stop. “I can’t really work on the one on his head, since then you’d get another fainted person to carry around, but he should be fine with some bandages and patching-up there, because I’ve already kind of catalysed the start of that area’s healing process a little. Other than that, he should be completely fine. I’ll give it, say… two weeks or so for it to get better completely.” 

“Good work!” he smiles, the outline of his cheeks visible on his blindfold. 

“By the way, Mr Gojo…” 

“You know, I appreciate the respect you’re giving me now, but just Gojo is fine.” 

“Okay, Gojo. Do you think Yuuji will be okay?” 

“I mean, I’m pretty sure. And I’m going to ask them to suspend his sentence. I’ll just see whether he wants that or not once he wakes up.” 

“That’s the thing. I’m not sure if he even will.” 

Gojo laughs. “Don’t worry. He was really strong, and able to switch between being possessed by Sukuna and being himself at will. We haven't seen that kind of talent in a millennia! I’m sure they’ll listen to me, anyway.” 

“Thank you,” you sigh. Thank goodness. “If you need any type of payment, um… teleport to my house whenever you get inconvenient little cuts like bruises and stuff. I can help.” 

“Nah, reverse cursed technique’s got me covered.” 

“Oh, wait— I forgot about that— um… I can…”

“Just leave it to me! No payment required,” he exclaims, holding both thumbs up. “And for the record, the one who wanted to save Yuuji was actually Megumi.” 

You wouldn’t have imagined that would happen. Megumi— pragmatic, serious, unkind when he needs to be (no matter how kind of a person he actually is— no, was— at heart), different from Tsumiki in so many ways. There was no way he would have been the one vouching for Yuuji, someone he’d only just met, to be spared. 

“Really?” you ask, “I… wouldn’t have thought he was the one who would do it. I thought, maybe, you were just… really kind tonight or something…”

“Well, maybe it was because he saw how much you cared about Itadori and did it for you, or maybe he had met Itadori, liked him, and just wanted to save a good person,” Gojo suspects, “But if there’s one thing for sure it’s that your old friend saved your new one.” 

“...oh.” 

You’ll have to bring it up with him next time— maybe, if he’s still there tomorrow…

“I know you’re mad at him, but a lot has happened,” Gojo states, voice lower, softer like a schoolteacher’s, “Still, I won’t tell you that you have to give him a chance or any of that. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to thank him or anything. I’m sure he did it out of his own volition without expecting anything from you. He knew he probably didn’t deserve to if it were you.” 

You pause. “No, it’s just… I’ll talk to him again the next time I see him. Alone, most likely. And I can figure something out. I think that would be the best way to go around things. Thank you, Gojo.” 

18-6-2018 

The aftershocks are still there, although you’ve come out unscathed. 

Last night was a mingled mess, a blur. You’d tried your best to help Iguchi by the time Yuuji was placed in the room of talismans and you could come back to the hospital and visit, but in the end he still needed better help than that. His injuries were too large of scale for how you were at that moment, already tired after healing some of the numbers done on Megumi. 

(You were useless. You couldn’t help anyone. You couldn’t prevent Yuuji from being hit with such soul-striking guilt., couldn’t help Sasaki from being traumatised, couldn’t help Iguchi enough for him to be back at school soon—) 

Sasaki’s injuries were limited to bruises and scrapes, but though you could help her physically, there was nothing you could do to assist her emotionally. 

You stayed with them for a few hours in the ICU and then one of the hospital wards (a floor under your mother’s), your father calling you once the sun had risen. 

“Gojo Satoru told me about everything that happened.” 

“Yeah. I know you’ll scold me, but… not now. I’m sorry, I’m just really tired.” You hang up. 

For all you spoke of wanting to be useful, the night when your powers were needed the most was when you were at your most useless— you couldn’t help them, you couldn’t help attack the cursed spirits, and the only thing you could do was call for an adult’s help like a little, scared and helpless girl. 

You needed to train, and train harder than you had been doing for the past few years. 

There’s a knock on the door, a dot-dot-dot-dot-dot. dot dot. It’s Yuuji, you know it is. How ever could you not? 

Timidly, movements quiet like the room itself, you pull the door knob, seeing him there, relatively unscathed. You sigh in relief, a moment’s respite before you return to the panic you had been living in before since you deserve the respite less than other people do— no, you don’t deserve such a break at all, you’re absolutely sure of that, not after what you pulled, how horribly and utterly useless you were, you’ll remind yourself of that again and again and again— the heart-piercing guilt and the worry and the constant need to care for the people around you, almost like a mother, maybe, but you don’t like that thought as much as you think you should. Maybe if your own mother knew, she’d disagree— maybe she’d tell you that you should be a mother, maybe she’d ignore that you were also a child at certain times— the most convenient ones, probably. When she thinks it good that you, a child, were someone’s caretaker because women should take pride in and appreciate that, she would encourage you to be one; when she thinks it bad that as a caretaker and a so-called ‘adult’ you can have your own autonomy, agency and opinions, then maybe she’d remind you that in her eyes you knew nothing of the world. But maybe, just maybe, there was also a chance that she wouldn’t be like that in any way. 

But you wouldn’t put it past her. 

“Yuuji, are you okay?” There are questions about to spill out of you, tears about to fall like gushing rivers, but you’re just happy he’s alive at this point. 

“Yeah.” His voice is soft. Your chest twinges; it hurts like an awful, intransigent little bruise. “Hi, [Name].” It feels so unignorable, the way it’s filled with such sorrow and worry that it weighs his usually loud and boisterous voice down. 

“I thought that—” you start, lips trembling, “I thought there was a chance I couldn’t lose you. The only thing I could do was—” you sniffle, “Hope that they could delay it or something.” 

“Yeah. I’ll explain it later,” he says, his voice sincere. 

You squeeze the wrist of his sleeve. “Don’t do things like that ever again,” you plead, “Promise me that at least.” 

“I promise.” 

“And keep your promises.”

“I will.” 

“...want to come inside?” 

He walks inside, and you step back to make way for him. 

“Sorry I came so late,” he says to you and Sasaki, who shakes her head in reassurance. “Hello, Sasaki,” he greets, “Is Iguchi okay?” 

They speak for a while— you don’t feel like it’s much of your right to join their conversation, since you did nearly nothing at all when they were most in danger, so you leave them be for a while. It would be better not to bother them right now, anyway. They’ve both been traumatised until it reached beneath their bones within the past twenty-four hours. 

When you leave the hospital, Sasaki tells you that she’s going to stay. You tell her to take care, squeezing her hand one final time. 

You let her, patting her on the back. You’ll call them later— she’d given you her contact— just to check on the two of them. 

“Where’s Megumi?” you ask Yuuji. 

“Oh, Fushiguro? I’m not too sure, but that Gojo guy said he’ll be there soon.” 

“Where, though?”

Sheepishly, in peak Yuuji fashion, he scratches the back of his neck. “Actually, another reason why I came here was also because… I mean, I know you and him weren’t close, but I’m going to the place where they’ll keep Grandpa’s ashes, and I think… you know, you could come with me. I… I don’t think I’d be able to do it really well alone, even though he had definitely made it clear he seriously didn’t want me moping around after his death and all. Gojo and Megumi will probably be there, but I thought it would be better if you were there because I know you better than those two, and you’re my friend. So… could you come with me? I know that he never really showed it, but I think he had always liked you a lot. Like, he was happy we were friends and stuff.” 

“...mhm. I’ll always be happy about that,” you tell him, before pulling him into a hug. The guy must need one right now. You’ve never hugged him before. Your heart hurts. 

The air is hot and humid with the breath of summer, bundles of mosquitoes bound to be breeding new ones these next few weeks. Up in the sky is the sun, bold and bright, glaring down harshly at the two of you. 

“Before he passed away, Grandpa actually said something. He… kind of cursed me, if I’m being honest,” Yuuji starts. “He said I was a strong kid, so I should help people. And I’m going to do that. So that was why when Gojo asked if I wanted to be executed immediately or just eat all the fingers before dying, I chose the second option. I… I think I want to help people that way.” 

‘You’ve already helped people enough. You helped me,’ you almost tell him. 

You frown, because that’s the only thing you can do right now. You search for words to say the same way you do looking for dog books in libraries chock-full with those of other genres. “I’m… disappointed, I— I know I should be grateful, grateful that you’re still going to be alive and all, but… you’re still going to be in danger, and you’re still going to be executed one day. I mean, again, I know I should be happy you’re going to have more time alive and that I can still see you, but what if things don’t go as planned? What if you lose control of yourself once you reach, like, the fifth finger or something?” 

You’re selfish like that. In a way, you’re just the way your mother is. You should’ve always known— you were her beloved daughter after all, and the people you know would be loved the same way she did you since the day she knew of your existence, and maybe even before that. 

“Don’t worry,” he grins, wide as always. Even in an over-enveloping darkness he still manages to be the light. “I’ll be just fine. I’m a strong kid, after all. And we’ll always be friends!” 

Gojo asks if he and Yuuji can talk in private for a while. You wonder if this was how your mother felt as she had to give the person she loved most away (but you will have to go away, one day), because you can briefly tell what Gojo is going to ask. You wonder if she felt this twice. 

Yuuji can’t stay with you forever. In the same way you can’t remain by your mother and father’s sides for all eternity. 

This won’t be the last time you’re here, you think. For a place of death, it’s quite a bit beautiful how there’s such large masses of grass and plants surrounding it. 

Megumi nearly walks past you, his eyes on the old photographs of the deceased all around him. 

“Megumi.” 

He turns around. 

“I just wanted to thank you for wanting to save my friend, even if you may not have wanted to do it for me, specifically… um… I didn’t expect that you’d still be here. Are your injuries okay?” 

“I’m okay,” he answers you. “And also, I…” he hesitates, the first time he’s talked to you for something actually related to the two of you in a long time— nearly two years if you’re counting correctly, but the thoughts in your head are a bit too jumbled to count at the moment. “I didn’t really do it for you, though. It… it was for Tsumiki.” 

“Oh.”

“Wait! I’m sorry, that didn’t… come out right. But I should also apologise for something else. You wouldn’t have been thrown into this world anyway if not for my own demon dogs years ago.” 

“No, no, it wasn’t your fault. And I would have wanted to be in it anyway. There’s not many who can heal other people and all, so I just thought… even if I can’t do as much yet, since I don’t have reversed cursed technique and the drawbacks that come from mine are really bad, I can still help people sometimes if they’re dealing with relatively minor injuries. I can, um… make things easier for people. I can be useful like that. I’d keep to it anyway, because I’m stubborn, but… yeah. It wasn’t your fault, really.” 

“Okay. That’s good to hear.” 

“Yeah. Anyway, I’m happy to know that Tsumiki is okay.” 

Silence again for a while. The air turns a little more sombre, and a lot more awkward. 

“She is. And Itadori seems… like a good person. I think it’s good, that… you were able to find a friend like that.” 

“It was. He’s a really, really good guy.” 

“You love him a lot,” Megumi says. 

“I do. He’s a really good friend. If there’s something I’ll always know I know that, at least.” 

“I can see that. It doesn’t seem like he loves you back in the same way, though.” 

“...wow. Way to be blunt, Megumi. And yes, I do know that, too.” 

“Let’s just… change the subject.” 

“You’re the one who introduced it in the first place.” 

“Okay. How… how are you?” 

“I’m good. Wait, I think you should… go back to them. Maybe they’ll need you there right about now. He’s probably going to have to go to Jujutsu High, right?” 

He pauses. “Yeah. I’m sorry, [Name].” 

“No, no. That’s okay. I expected it. It’s just that I’ll miss him a lot,” you tell him, “He took care of me, kind of. You know I’ve always been a bit of an awkward or shy person, but he still approached me since I was new and we ended up hitting off as friends, kind of. We did a lot of stuff together.” 

Sounds pretty familiar, huh. 

“If you want I can make sure he’s safe for you.” 

“...you should be able to do that regardless of whether it’s my wish for you to do so or not…” you state, “But that would help, I guess. And I’m sorry for my attitude towards you for the past few hours or so. Thank you again.” 

“...I’m sorry I never spoke to you for so long, by the way,” he says abruptly. ‘By the way’? Classic Megumi… 

“I could tell you were. It’s… it’s okay. The two of you kind of have a habit of doing that.” 

All your rage, your loneliness, your feelings of abandonment— and this is all you can do. This is all you can say. You can only just let it go, in the end. 

“I’ll explain it all one day.” 

“You don’t have to if it’s hard.” 

He stays. “No, I will. I promise. And I promise I’ll start to talk to you again, as well. I was just… scared of a few things, maybe.” 

“That’s okay.” 

The two of you aren’t quite friends again yet, but it’ll happen soon. Maybe. And even if it doesn’t, you’re finally able to say, with an open, honest heart, that that doesn’t matter as much anymore. 

“I guess this is goodbye again, then.” 

“Not really.” 

“Oh, right— promise to keep in touch, okay? My patience is running thin with you,” you chuckle at that last part, attempting to joke and make things lighter again. 

“Promise.” 

“I’m going to go home now, by the way. Please tell Yuuji that I wish him the best and I’ll visit when I have my own money to visit Tokyo and all.” 

“I will.” 

“And help me say goodbye to him for me,” you add, “Hope that’s not too much for you to do. Sorry for the trouble. It’s just that I’d actually just about cry if I had to do it in real time right in front of him. Be good to him and be good friends, okay? Keep that promise, at the very least. That’s the one thing that I wish for the most.” 

“Bye, Megumi.” You turn back in the direction opposite of his. 

“Wait—!” 

His hand is on your wrist. Now you’re in front of him, like yesterday, and he’s holding your wrist, albeit a bit gentler than the way he used to pull it a whole eight years ago. 

His eyes are cast away from you, slightly avoidantly and in a way that’s a bit abashed. “I’ll miss you, [Name].” 

“It won’t even feel like I’m not there,” you say. Though his grip is slightly tight, he loosens it as soon as you try to slide it up, as if he’d let you be free of it if you want him to. 

You squeeze his hand instead, turning to face him. It feels warm. It feels like there’s blood coursing through you, the sensation more tender and tangible than it’s ever been. 

“Goodbye.” 

“Goodbye, [Name]. I’ll… I’ll call.” 

“Thank you.” 

Now you’re the one slipping away from his grasp. You move your hand away and walk back. The door slides open. 

2010. Springs, summers, autumns, winters. Hands on wrists, a back faced to your eyes, wide with innocence. Warmth and laughter and happiness and love. Days coloured with vibrant hues and time spent with dog books and in libraries. Frowns were greeted with smiles. Hesitance was non-existent. You didn’t feel a need to compensate for your uselessness. You were a child. You didn’t feel useless at all. You just felt this: a constant leaping in your heart, the corners of your mouth twisting up into a juvenile grin, braiding someone’s beautiful brown hair and tying it with a pretty cherry hair tie. 

You want to cry as you walk back home. 

You’re pretty sure you do. 

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[desceros]

sometimes i think about the future symphony "i should have married you" post you made and it makes me so sad but the other night as i was falling asleep i was struck with absolute agony by the awful idea of "i should have married you" because marrying her would have made her hamato and maybe just maybe then she would have been able to become a hamato spirit. and the brothers most likely would have been able to make contact with the hamato sprits like they do in the series. and because if he married her at least he would have been able to contact her spirit. hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh anyways thought i should share hope your day is going fabulously captain desceros

oh, this is awful. allow me to make it even worse :)

we’ve seen in the series that you dont actually have to have the hamato name to be ‘a hamato’ as april demonstrates. we’ve also seen varying levels of. hm. ninj-oscity? ninpo skills? from the boys. like raph and leo doing a ninja mind meld. just. just mikey.

and we’ve always seen that donnie struggles with ninpo the most.

his ninpo is mechanical. when he uses it at its most conscious level, we see it manifest as blueprints coming together. literal pieces, as if constructed with real material. when he panics or doesn’t go through this process, it’s a vague shape that isn’t as strong or as defined in purpose.

so let’s take this scenario you’ve brought to us.

viola-chan would have, unquestionably, been a hamato. and for that reason, i can definitely see her having a hamato spirit.

…..but i dont think donnie would ever be able to communicate with it.

mikey would be the most likely, since he has the strongest ninpo. but he’d be in high demand since he’s so strong, so i think it would tire him and i dont know how much time and energy he’d have to talk to anyone. not to mention the stress he’d feel when donnie would come to him like Hey Can I Talk To My Dead Girlfriend and mikey’s like…. dude i just got home from 24 hours of straight ass kicking i’m about to pass tf out.

and raph, i imagine, died not too long after viola-chan, so whether he could or not is moot.

leo. well. i dont think leo could communicate with viola-chan either. leo is rather avoidant when he feels guilty or ashamed, and (without going into too much of spoiler territory) he’d feel largely unworthy to talk to you, i think. and since we’ve seen that it takes an open heart to use the technique, it wouldn’t work.

and donnie. god. donnie would try. he would try so, so hard. he would try, hours upon hours, every free moment, banging his fists on his thighs as he’d meditate until he’d collapse. reaching out. seeking. already not as strong at this whole ninpo nonsense. unable to calm himself from the need to see you need to see you please just let me see you one last time please please please that would make it impossible to focus. he’d start thinking about tech that could bridge the gap. that’s how his ninpo works, after all. modeling his blueprint. so if he can design a machine that can talk to you. his ninpo can bring it to life.

but he doesnt exactly have a lot of time to dedicate to a personal project like that, let alone one so fucking insane in scale, so actually impossible to do. and as the time passes he grows more and more obsessed with thinking about it. yet simultaneously more and more sure it’ll never happen. i feel like his last moments, alone, bleeding, staring up at the rust-colored sky, he’d be smiling. because of course he he has some kind of death drone army set to go the moment his ninpo cuts off, and it’s one last middle finger to krang. …but also i think he’d be a little relieved. hoping his spirit will find yours and lavi’s.

(do they? who knows. no more hamato exist in that timeline to find out.)

[vivalas-vega]

new perspectives // part eleven // jake 'hangman seresin x reader

boy oh boy -- I've been working on this part since I posted the last one (and mind you... this version of it I wrote and completed within the last three hours - there's about 10,000 additional words with different versions of this) - I just could not figure out how to continue it and I don't know if I'm happy with it fully but here it is !! this one is more focused on Rooster and Jupiter and their friendship because I haven't gone as in depth with it as I would have liked in past chapters. as always - please let me know what you think !!

new perspectives // part eleven // jake 'hangman' seresin x reader

prologue - one - two - three - four - five - six - seven - eight - nine - ten

add yourself to my taglist

word count: 4.1k

warnings: mentions of war (but nothing too detailed), mentions of gunshot wounds (again, nothing too detailed), slight suggestiveness at the end

The stars above Rooster, twinkling and shining, served as some kind of mockery as he sat on the beach and looked for constellations, though he wasn’t finding any because he wasn’t trying very hard. He wished he could be in his jet right now, wished he could feel the controls in his hands and see the earth below him because maybe then this wouldn’t be so scary, maybe he wouldn’t feel so helpless. 

There was just enough alcohol coursing through his veins for the weight of his emotions to get on top of him, but not enough to forget what he’d heard entirely. He knew what his job was right now. Your last request of him, bestowed not too far from where he was sitting with that sweet smile of yours and eyes full of stars, had been replaying on a loop for the past few hours. Take care of them for me, take care of him. You knew they were equipped to handle this, their lives weren’t all that different from the one you were currently living but there was one key difference that was not lost on anybody… while they were too high above the chaos to truly see, you were down in the middle of it all. While they may have been equipped to handle a friend's deployment, they weren’t all that prepared to think of you as the boots on the ground.

Take care of them for me, take care of him. You knew eventually things would catch up, that the reality of your absence would set in and that when it did they’d need you… and the next best thing was Rooster. You were always thinking eight steps ahead, it’s what made you a good friend and a good doctor, but right about now Rooster found it infuriating. You saw those eight steps ahead, you saw this getting on top of everyone at one point or another, and you made it Rooster’s problem. You knew Jake wouldn’t be able to offer much through his own worry and you wouldn’t have expected him to, but you expected it of Rooster.  

He found himself wishing you’d never connected, never bonded. He wished he hadn’t played Drops of Jupiter that very first night, hadn’t harmonized with you and pulled you out of your shell simply because he couldn’t help himself. He wished he hadn’t offered to tour houses on your behalf, hadn’t spent countless hours working alongside you to bring your vision to life. He wished you’d never looked his way because you saw him in a way that was terrifying, you understood him and you pushed him. You pushed him further in his rekindling with Maverick, and you pushed him right into Eliza’s arms because you knew what he needed and what he wanted.

He wished he’d never realized his infatuation with you wasn’t romantic, because maybe if he’d chalked it up to being an asshole with secret feelings for someone who belonged to the man who saved his life he wouldn’t be sitting here right now with worry eating a hole through his stomach. Maybe he would have distanced himself from you, kept things cordial and casual to protect his own heart, but he did realize. He did see that it wasn’t romantic and it never was, he was simply misreading his own emotions because he’d never had a friend like you before. He’d never admit it in the light of day because he found such terms ridiculous but you were his platonic soulmate, through and through. And right about now he wished he’d never figured that out.

He wished none of it had ever happened, because here he was sitting on the beach feeling so utterly helpless because you’d bestowed an impossible task on him and he couldn’t even be mad at you because he’d heard it. One minute he was telling you he loved you, on his way back into the bar to give you space with the man you really needed, the next you were under fire… and you seemed calm. In the face of it all, your tone hadn’t changed, your disposition hadn’t changed. You’d told Jake you loved him without an ounce of fear or apprehension in your tone and hung up, because this was a common occurrence for you now. In the face of it all, you were fine, and here he was sitting on the beach struggling to keep it together.

Except, he didn't wish any of those things at all because you were you, and he couldn't imagine not having you in his life. And so he was trying, because that’s what you’d asked of him. If you could do the impossible, if you could save lives with those two little hands of yours under gunfire or worse, he  could keep it together. He could do what you asked of him. He’d remain calm and collected, his usual goofy self to keep the anxiety at bay the best he could, because that’s what you needed. You’d asked for them, but really you’d asked for yourself. You needed to know Rooster was looking out for them so you didn’t have to worry, because you had enough to worry about. 

And that’s exactly what he did… he went back into the bar and got Jake a fresh drink, set him up in front of the dartboard with Coyote. He’d filled everyone in on what happened. She’ll be fine, this is her life now and she’s Jupiter. She’ll be fine and so will we because she doesn’t want us spinning out, she wants us here having fun with each other so that’s what we’re going to do.

And then he’d lingered, made sure everyone made it home safely and wandered out onto the beach to look at the stars and feel everything he knew you didn’t want him to. “There’s only so much you can ask of me, JJ,” he whispered to himself as he took in the mass of twinkling lights above him because he was choosing to believe you were under this sky too, and though you couldn’t hear him, maybe you could feel it. You could feel that he was keeping up his end of the promise, and that you needed to keep up yours. 

“I know I haven’t talked to you in a while dad, but… well, if you’ve been paying attention I don’t need to fill you in,” he started, openly talking into the night air because this was what he did. When it all got to be too much, when things started to get on top of him he looked to the sky and talked to Goose. “I don’t know if you’ve got any connections up there, I hope you didn’t use them all up sending Hangman after me and Mav but… she needs to come home. Please don’t let what happened to mom happen to Jake,” he said, choking on his words before clearing his throat. “Please don’t let what happened to Maverick happen to me. She’s my best friend, and I… I can’t lose her. Jake can’t lose her. None of us can.”

He was pleading because he knew he was right, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to uphold his promise to you if you didn’t come home. He wouldn’t be able to take care of Jake, or Coyote, or Phoenix… he wouldn’t be able to take care of himself. You swooped in as this mysterious old friend of Hangman’s and won everyone over in the course of an evening, and you only grew more important with each passing day. They’d all been friends before you, but in the wake of you they became a family. You were the glue, you were the last to join the group but you became the nexus, and if they lost you he didn’t know what would happen. He didn’t want to find out.

So he let himself cry, let a few tears slip before saying goodbye to his old man and packing it down. He couldn’t let himself spiral any more than he already had, and he couldn’t have you coming home to realize he hadn’t kept his promise when you’d kept yours. He spent the next day and a half being Rooster, he was goofy and borderline annoying but he kept everyone together, he made sure everyone kept their spirits high and their worry to a minimum, and he made sure Jake got out of bed. He did what he could, and in the end it was everything because there the squad was with beers in their hands and smiles on their faces as they watched Jake kick Coyote’s ass, because even though he was falling apart and he didn’t know if you were even alive, he’d never give anyone the satisfaction of ousting him at his own pool table.

“Any word?” Bob asked quietly to Phoenix who shook her head and when he let out a relieved sigh the few people in hearing distance snapped their attention to him, varying degrees of disbelief and disgust on their faces. “If she were dead we’d know by now.” he supplied, and while his lack of tact was surprising, Bob was always mindful of what he said and how he said it, this served to ease people’s nerves. He was right. If you were dead, Jake would have been notified by now and none of them would be standing around the bar.

“We’ll know when we know,” Rooster said before walking down to the bar to get a fresh drink but something stopped him in his tracks, a brief flash in the distance beyond the windows that had him questioning his grip on reality because it was gone just as quick as he’d seen it… but he could have sworn he saw you. He tried to push past it, blame it on fried nerves and too much on his plate but he couldn’t. He had to be certain so he pushed past those doors and tentatively stepped out onto the beach, “way to go, Rooster. You’ve officially lost it,” he muttered to himself as he peeked around the side of the building but he hadn’t lost it. He saw what he saw, and he stood there gobsmacked as he got full sight of you, your body facing outwards towards the ocean with your hair messily strewn across your shoulders and donning a standard issue uniform… minus the top which left you in a tight tank with a concerning amount of gauze wrapped around your arm.

“JJ?” he asked, approaching slowly and you startled, jumping as you turned to face him and he could see it clear as day. You were scared, and while the appropriate assumption would have been everything you’d gone through, maybe the story linked to those bandages, he knew you well enough to know that wasn’t it. There was something else keeping you outside the bar instead of reuniting with your family.

“Roo,” you started, but you didn’t have anything else to say so it fell flat. There were tears in your eyes and you looked relieved but that fear was just under the surface and his steps were fast to close the distance, wrapping you up in his arms as carefully as he could and he was almost taken aback by the way you gripped onto him, latching on with seemingly no intention of letting go.

“How long have you been out here?” he whispered into your hair and he felt you shudder beneath him.

“A while,” you answered, and he realized that shudder was a humorless laugh. “I didn’t… I don’t know why, I just couldn’t-” you tried but your voice was thick and you didn’t need to say anything more. He understood. He knew coming home would be difficult for you, especially under these circumstances, and he didn’t need you to explain that you weren’t out here because you wanted to be, but because you felt like you couldn’t go inside.

“I know. You’re home and that’s what matters,” he pulled back to look at you but he didn’t go far, keeping his grip firm on you because he had a feeling it was what you needed. Much like the way you’d loop your hand through his when you were telling a story, so animated and excited you could barely get the words out fast enough, because you needed the physical tether. You needed to feel grounded so you didn’t get swept away by whatever it was you were saying or thinking. 

“I uh…” you shook your head and cleared your throat. “I got evacuated, by the time this healed and I was cleared I’d be going home anyways,” you said, nodding to your shoulder. “I didn’t call and I-”

“Stop, you had bigger things going on,” Rooster said, cutting you off entirely. He had tears in his eyes looking down at you, your hands gripping his arms so tightly and your features so soft and vulnerable in stark contradiction to the khaki pants and clunky boots and suddenly he felt selfish. “Let me go get Jake,” he started, beginning to pull away from you but he stopped when your brows furrowed. “You don’t want me to?”

You shook your head, “no… no I do, I just… god, I keep doing everything wrong,” you sighed. “I signed up to go to war without so much as a heads up, I told you first, I… I couldn’t even call to tell him I was okay before just showing up and standing out here lost in my own thoughts for half an hour,” you let out another humorless chuckle. “I keep doing this wrong.”

“You’re doing the best you can. You know he doesn’t expect anything from you, right? He doesn’t have some grand idea about how this would go, he knows this isn’t going to be like your reunion at his tap out or at your match day,” he said and you smiled sadly.

“I forgot I told you those stories,” you said. 

“That’s not what he’s expecting, he’s… you know, he handled it better than I thought he would but he hasn’t been okay and that’s just because all he wants to know is that you are. He wants to know that you’re mostly in one piece, and he wants to hug you the way I am right now- well, okay… maybe not the way I am because it has been several months since you left and I would imagine-” he started to joke and you let out a laugh… a real one, and you went to push his shoulder, disentangling yourself from him but it only served to make you wince.

You shook your head when his eyes widened, “it’s okay, just sore. You’re right… will you- will you go get him? And be cryptic,” you said, referencing the way Jake had called Rooster out minutes before your call disconnected. “I don’t know if I’m ready for everyone yet.”

“On it,” he replied, already moving to head inside.

“Wait, Rooster?” you called and he stopped, turning to face you. You gave him one of those blinding smiles, one that felt like a glimpse of the you before you left, the one that didn’t wear standard issue khakis and clunky boots, the one that wasn’t harder and shaper, and the one that hadn’t confessed to him you didn’t know if you were okay. You gave him that smile that was so you as you ran and jumped into him, squeezing him so tightly it sucked all the air from his lungs and he laughed as he caught you, twirling you around. “Thank you.” 

“What for, JJ?” 

“For being my person.” 

“Thanks for coming home,” he replied and you gave him one more squeeze before dropping down to the ground and he gave you a nod before disappearing inside. You resumed your earlier pacing, already feeling lighter after seeing Rooster and for as selfish and awful as you felt for always getting this wrong with Jake, it took the edge off. It made seeing him feel less daunting, and while you’d spent the previous half hour working yourself into a tizzy about how he would react or what he would say you now felt silly. Rooster was right, all he wanted right now was you, just like you wanted him. He wouldn’t be mad at you for not calling, he wouldn’t be mad at you for having a reunion with Rooster first, he would simply be your Jake. 

“What the hell is so urgent with your precious truck? I don’t even want to be here but you made me and now you’re ruining my streak,” you heard Jake complaining as the door to the bar opened and you couldn’t help but chuckle as you waited for them to round the corner.

“Okay, first of all, it’s not a truck, it’s a Bronco,” Rooster corrected, “and once again you might not want to be so hard on me when you see what it is,” he added and you couldn’t fight the smile on your face. You weren’t okay and you knew that, but you would be because you had them. You had your people and you were home, and that’s all that mattered.

“What does that- what the fuck?” You’d walked closer, not wanting the distance to be any further than it already was when he rounded the corner and he nearly walked right into you. “Jupiter?” he asked, blinking in surprise and simply staring at you because he couldn’t be certain what he was seeing was real. 

“Hey you,” you replied, ignoring the single tear that streamed down your cheek and you let out a laugh as he crushed you in a hug, lifting you off the ground and forcing your legs around him to keep your balance. 

Rooster stood and watched for a moment, soaking in this moment of unbridled joy between his two best friends before taking his leave. “So much for it not being like the tap out,” he said and you mouthed thank you to him over Jake’s shoulder as he went back inside. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, one hand firm on your waist and the other cupping your thigh as you pulled back slightly to look down at him, to commit that beautiful face of his gazing up at you with pure adoration to memory.

“It’s a long story and I… I’m not ready to talk about it yet,” you answered and he nodded, slowly lowering you to the ground to cup your face and press a kiss to your forehead.

“You don’t have to, not until you’re ready, I just…” he pulled back to look at you again and the emotion in his eyes cracked your heart wide open, and with it the flood of anxiety and uncertainty you’d pushed aside. “I was so worried something had happened.”

“I’m so sorry, Jake,” you started, that single tear giving way to an onslaught and his face crumpled at the sight. “I should have called, I should have-”

“Hey, no no no… that’s not what I meant,” he said, trying to reassure you as he smoothed his hands along your back. “I’m just so happy you’re home,” he said, trying to quell your tears but it was no use. He finally got a chance to really look at you, to soak you in and his heart broke when he noticed the bandages around your arm and you started to shake your head.

“Come on, come sit with me?” you asked and he nodded, catching one of your hands as you walked further out onto the beach and sank into the sand and he looked at you expectantly, waiting for you to find the words. You didn’t know if you were ready to talk about it yet but you needed to, and you knew he wouldn’t be able to let it go no matter how hard he tried to be supportive. “What you heard… we got ambushed, I’m still not entirely sure what happened but uh… it wiped most of the camp out,” you said, voice shaking and Jake tried to keep his feelings off his face as you spoke. “My call to Rooster saved my life, anyone that was near the command center-” you cut yourself off with a shake of your head and he squeezed your hand in reassurance. “I did what I could, I tried to get to as many people as I could but there wasn’t enough time, or enough hands and I got caught in the crossfire,” you said, gesturing to your arm. “It was a lucky shot, if you could even call it that. I’ll be okay, just not cleared to work yet which is why I’m home. It’ll be another few weeks before I am and at that point my deployment would have been over.”

“J, I’m so sorry…” he started, his hand gently cupping your arm just beneath the bandages. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” he said, pulling you into him and you moved into his lap to wrap your arms around him more easily, not paying any mind to the way you felt your stitches tugging.

“I’ll be okay. I can’t… I don’t think I can tell you any more, not right now.” You pulled away to look at him seriously, “it’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just… things are different over there, I was different over there. I did things and I saw things I can’t begin to unpack right now but I want you to know that I plan to set something up at the hospital, a specialist to talk to so I can sort it out. I just… right now I really need everything to just go back to normal.”

“There’s no rush, sweetheart. You’ll tell me when you’re ready and if you never do, well… that’s alright too, as long as you talk to someone. All I cared about was you getting back home to me, even if Rooster had to get the first look at you,” he teased and you pouted.

“In my defense he wandered out and found me, that wasn’t intentional,” you protested.

“Yeah sure, whatever… the pornstache is your person and I just have to deal with that.”

“He might be my person but you’re the love of my life, you know that right? You are who got me through everything over there, and you are who I thought about day in and day out.”

“Oh yeah? And what exactly is it you thought about?” he asked, that famous smirk of his playing on his lips and you rolled your eyes.

“The audacity to call Rooster pornstache when you are trying to put the moves on your wife who just got back from war!” you laughed and he shifted you in his lap, pulling your leg to the side so you were straddling him and the contact on your core elicited a reaction that completely undercut the way you were trying to tease him.

“You did say you wanted everything to go back to normal,” he muttered, letting his lips trail along the column of your neck and he was right… you did want everything to go back to normal and this was something you’d thought about every moment you could while you were gone. 

“This is utterly indecent,” you sighed, feeling him growing hard beneath you and you pushed him back because if he kept going you’d scandalize the beach. “And mind you we are both in our uniforms right now,” you added.

“Yeah, by the way? This is super hot,” he said, letting his eyes trail over you appreciatively. “You’ve got a real Lara Croft thing going on right now and I’m into it.”

“Lara Croft!” you laughed, “she never even wore pants.”

“Please let me objectify my super hot, super tough wife in peace, thank you,” he said, and as you stared down at him you realized you hadn’t kissed him yet and you couldn’t believe you’d overlooked it. You pressed your lips to his softly, all pent up love and emotion but quickly it turned hungry… all tongues and biting lips as you gripped his biceps. 

“Take me home then, objectify me all you want, Lieutenant,” you said, pulling away to catch your breath and his eyes darkened as he was quick to stand pulling you up with him and you couldn’t help the squeals and laughter falling from your lips as he hurled you over his shoulder. You felt everything in your life right now was unsteady, you had no idea to come back to civility after what you’d been through but you had the tools to do it the best you could, and more importantly you had Jake who was everything you needed him to be and more. 

There wasn’t any sort of guidebook you could follow, and you didn’t know if this was how your return should have gone. You thought maybe you should be more damaged, you shouldn’t be laughing as your husband ran across the beach with you in tow, or maybe that’s exactly what you should have been doing. You didn’t really know, and you didn’t really care because you were home, and whatever came next you’d handle as it came with Jake by your side.

taglist: @mamaskillerqueen @clancycucumber230 @the-romanian-is-bae @alldaysdreamers @zzsloth @emma8895eb @novagreen04 @classyunknownlover @purplevortexx @mamachasesmayhem @ohgodnotagainn @smoothdogsgirl @swiftsgirlfriend @memoriesat30 @the-fandom-ness @midnightmagpiemama @charles11700 @angelbabyange @wildxwidow @sp1rit-realm @alluringshawn @taytaylala12 @starcatcher48 @buck-nasty @misshoneypaper @4evinlovewithfictionalmen @devil-angel-winchester @mamamaystbr @callsignspirit @thegodessc @failuretothrivestuff @olliepig @cruelmissdior @underaveragefangirl @grxcieluvr @amatswimming @camilaricci @nolita-fairytale @dempy @pinkpantheris @aviatorobsessed @tiredqueen73 @pona-pura-vida @binnieslove @nik2blog @waklman @abaker74 @halstead-severide-fan @percysaidnever @memeorydotcom @eli2447 @dumb-fawkin-bitch @toobouquet @a-v-a123 @rae-you-gotta-be-kidding-me @86laura11 @justenoughmadnesss @yoonbutterfly @mariaenchanted @boisewaffles @shanimallina87 @djs8891 @Genius2050 @stargazer-88 @chloeforde @kmc1989 @casa-boiardi @lostinwonderland314 @elenavampire21 (if your name is struck through, it means I couldn't tag you - so sorry!)

[kyupidos]

04/28/24’s delivery 🏹✉️ twisted wonderland

and, here’s to you!ヽ( ･∀･)ﾉ_θ彡☆Σ(ノ `Д´)ノ,ヽ( ･∀･)ﾉ_θ彡☆Σ(ノ `Д´)ノ ;; summary. ‘a date, for a kind thing they did for you.”

characters. savanaclaw , octavinelle : ruggie bucchi , jade leech ( separate ) ;; romantic . 🖇️ tags. reader is gender neutral ( you/your ), reader may or may not be yuu ( up to the reader ), pre-relationship, romantic fluff

📡 _a/n. well, this is a little short..sorry for the late-ish update y’all, was busy praising my sebek nesoberi that i finally got 🙏🙏

r. bucchi

— oh wow, how ruggie would appreciate a buffet styled dinner date.. and to think he was getting it because he helped you out on some important assignments you missed out on because you were rotting sick in bed!! to have been able to have racked up this kind of debt for you to get this sort of pay…wait hey, did you think he liked you? oh, he doesn’t, not like the food he eats somehow tastes better when he’s eating with you, and it’s not like he’s oddly nervous whenever you near him. ..on obvious lie on his end—he knows full well he likes you, but he’s not sure he’d be able to provide for you, so he lays a little low until he can assess.

— so to know you invited him on this kind of dinner date, to a buffet? safe to say he’s stoked if nothing else. he’s just about ready to eat whatever comes his way, but at the very least he’d like to cater to you. this is a date after all, and he’d hate to ruin the chance you gave him. so take a seat at your table, he’ll bring him and yourself whatever foods may suit your fancy, and do his best to impress you since you’re the one paying for this. he wouldn’t want to disappoint, or take advantage of this in an unsavory manner ( obviously he’s still gonna eat as much as he can, what’d ya expect? ).

— once you get back to your dorms, nearing the dead of night around a little around when one would usually eat their dinner, expect him to invite you over to savanaclaw for said dinner, something he was ready to prep just for you. after all, while a buffet is nice, a homemade dinner is equally so, if not better given it was made from the heart of people you know.

j. leech

— after scaring some delinquent classmates off your tail with his scary ( not yet ) boyfriend attitude, you took it upon yourself to ask jade on a date to go mountain hiking—and who was he to refuse? after all he’s head over heels for you, and he’s been looking for a well enough opportunity to go on an outing for you; he would never decline a chance like this. if you hear his little giggles as he comes to find you didn’t stand him up, don’t point it out. not like he’s hiding it, but he might end up a little shy over it. give him a bit to settle into his usual confident mereel self.

— he wouldn’t want you to trip and fall on your hiking date, so he requests you hold onto his hand ( he knows full well you can handle yourself, he just wants an excuse ). either way he does his best to care for you, especially if you only asked to go mountain hiking because you knew it was something that’d make him happy. he might scold you a bit if he found out, not to mention if you happen to be inexperienced. but he won’t chew you out too harshly, because he’s enjoying the time he’s got to spend with you, and he’s hoping you feel the same.

— once the sun is set, finally the two of you go back, visiting jade’s room, which is surprisingly empty, leaving the two of you to bask in each others silence. just lay there for a little with him, and rejuvenate as you settle down into some light conversation after a nice afternoon mountain hiking date.

[nerdierholler]

IT'S DONE! I made a book! I never thought I'd ever be able to make a book. Sure mistakes were made but it was still a fun process and I learned so much from making this first one.

This a binding of The Wayhaven Chronicles IF but with my personal Detective's choices included and the resulting text smoothed out to read more like a novel.

Honestly, I thought something like this would be way beyond my skill set but it wasn't as scary as I thought once I got started. Definitely check out @renegadeguild for some book making and typesetting guides and their discord is super friendly and helpful as well.

If you want to learn from my mistakes I'll go into some trials and tribulations under the cut.

I'm not sure how well this book will hold up long term but that's ok! It was more about learning and I'll make some adjustments and try again with the same text probably.

Typsetting

Margins - need to make them bigger. I mostly read paperbacks so I was going for that format with narrower margins but then when I ran into paper problems, I didn't have a ton of room for trimming.

There was an option on the imposer to add dotted lines to the center fold and I clicked that but they're visible still even after binding. Could be that I needed to sew my signatures tighter and that would help but regardless I don't think I need them in the future so I'll be skipping that feature.

The font was intentionally small, along with the margins, because I was trying to minimize the number of signatures I was dealing with for a first project. I'll bump it up in the future.

Paper (so much wrong)

So the grain should run parallel to the spine but I couldn't find short grain paper. I read at some point that someone recommended using sketch books instead because that should be the right grain. It was not, at least not what I bought, so it still ended up going the wrong way.

The sketch note book I bought had perforated pages. It made them easy to get out but I didn't realize that the page widths were inconsistent until everything was printed out. The paper width varied by at least 1/8 of an inch. I wasn't planning on trimming my pages but my top was super uneven because of this so an attempt at trimming was made. It could have gone worse (there was no blood) but the trimming could have been a lot better too.

Should have just used printer paper. The results would have been the same.

Making Book Cloth

Used the Heat and Bond method with some spare fabric and it worked pretty well. The problem was when it came to adding backing. I'd read tissue paper or even plain paper so I grabbed some piecing paper that was close at hand. That was a mistake. It was good quality fabric so it was thicker already and the paper backing made it too thick. I could barely fold it over and it kept wanting to flip up. It's the spine fabric and I'm still concern it's going to do this in the future.

Used tissue paper for the marbled looking fabric and it was much easier to work with.

Book Board

Not measuring right was all on me. The rice box worked in a pinch but I think it will be prone to bending. Got me the experience I needed be wouldn't be my go-to material for a project of this size.

Glue

I used Elmer's All Purpose and it got the job done but, again, probably not going to hold up the best long term. However, I'm glad I didn't buy PVA and basically waste it on this project. Elmer's was good and cheap enough for practice. I'll be getting some PVA for future projects.

[talkfantasytome]

Glasses

A teeny, tiny drabble so that I could participate and do something for @nestaarcheronweek despite my crazy, hectic life. I've always imagined that Nesta wears glasses for work or reading or something, and that it drives Cassian absolutely nuts. I wish I had more time to make this more, maybe some day, but for now, I give you Cassian appreciating Nesta in glasses. 💕

Am I still good to swing by to bring your key back?

Yep! Working from home and have no more meetings today. Come by whenever you want, no need to knock.

Cassian smiled at the words flashing across his screen as he reached the windowed door that revealed the doors to the two apartments in Nesta's converted townhouse. Nesta had already told him twice that he could come by any time after noon today, but he let his nerves get the better of him and he had to check just one last time. Even if he was already on her street.

"How are you already here?" the silky sharp voice of his girlfriend asked, carrying easily down the stairs as he opened the door to her apartment.

Cassian chuckled, closing the door and locking it behind him. "Couldn't get to you fast enough, sweetheart," he called up as he began to climb. It was a steep staircase. And dark. He hated it. Nesta could really hurt herself on it, and that was something he wouldn't be able to handle. Cassian dreaded the day he got a call telling him she'd fallen down these damn stairs.

Reaching the main floor, he set the keys down on the tall table in front of him just as a large, cream furball let out a loud hiss.

"Even after feeding you for a week, you still hate me?" he muttered, bending down to see if Ataraxia would sniff at his fingers. The furry little beast lifted his nose up and sauntered away from Cassian like a little prince. "Your cat is a spoiled brat," he said, walking down the small hall toward where he knew Nesta would be working in her large living room.

"As he should be," she replied.

Cassian walked into the room and suddenly the world felt lighter as he laid his eyes on his girlfriend for the first time in a week. Staring intently at the computer screens in front of her, all he could really see was her delicate frame and the golden brown hair tied back in her typical coronet style.

He took a step toward her, going to give her a quick kiss on the cheek, and then paused in his tracks as Nesta turned in her chair to look at him.

There, resting on top of her perfect nose, was a pair of rounded-square glasses in a dark frame. They weren't exactly hipster glasses - too small for that - but they were a similar shape that sat perfectly in Nesta's face.

Nesta was always the most beautiful woman in the room, always sharp and stunning and obviously intelligent. So Casssian wasn't sure exactly what it was about these glasses, but they took his breath away. Perhaps he was more attracted to librarians than he realized. Or maybe it was just Nesta, looking absolutely stunning in everything, and adding new fantasies about glasses Cassian never thought he'd desire.

"Wh…what are those?" he asked like an idiot, pointing to her face.

Nesta let out a small laugh. "My glasses? I wear them for work. They're just blue-light lenses, they keep me from getting a headache when staring at a screen for a long time."

"They're-"

"A necessary nuisance."

"-phenomenal." Nesta blushed at Cassian's last word, turning back to the computer screen.

Cassian wanted to riot, just as he always did when Nesta looked away from him. It should be illegal, for him not to be able to look upon her face. But especially now. Who knew wen he'd get to see her in glasses again? He needed to find a way to save himself from this withdrawal, and he knew just the thing. "Don't you get a lunch hour?" he asked softly, stepping closer to Nesta and leaning his chin on her shoulder.

"Yes…" she answered slowly, turning her face to look at him.

He grinned. "Great. So why don't you log off but keep those glasses on and join me in the bedroom?"

Before Nesta could answer, Cassian left a kiss on her neck and sauntered to the back of the apartment, smirking as her heard soft footsteps following him.