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imthebadguyyy · 3 years

Note

Not sure if your request are open, but I thought I’ll give it a try x love the way you write so I hope you’ll do it.

With Daniel Ricciardo where you are on holiday (somewhere with a beach) and you were playing never have I ever with your friends, and one question was “you ever had sex on the beach?” And you drink as to say you did, but Dan doesn’t, so all your friends start teasing him, after that he’s really mad at you and doesn’t speak to you all night and just stare at you, when at the and of the night you were in your room, and had enough of they way he was treating you, you had a heated discussion, and the result of that is that he takes you to the beach and a lot of smut happens and he says “who fucks better” or “who shag you’ll remember now? Me or the other guy”

I don’t know something like that, please make it super long, super angsty and super smutty, hope it makes sense 🙊

A/N - The way I screamed at this request because YES oml. I hope this lives up to whatever you wanted, and thank you so much 🥺🤍 (also super smutty? You're speaking my love language)

Rendezvous

Pairing - Daniel Ricciardo x Reader (fem!littlemix!reader)

Summary - A game of never have I ever with your friends in Amalfi reveals some information about yourself that just does not sit right with Daniel. He decides to prove to you just how good he is at his job.

Warnings - smut, jealousy?, possessiveness

Dating a Formula 1 driver meant that your boyfriend was away most of the time, while you were away touring or recording with the girls. So when an opportunity like summer break came along, the two of you decided to go on a holiday to Italy with some of your friends, to take full advantage of your time together. It had been a tough year, with Daniel finding it difficult to adjust to the McLaren car, and you adjusting to not having Jesy in the band anymore. To cheer the both of you up, you had planned an eight day vacation to Italy, the Amalfi Coast in particular, along with Michael, Jade, and a few other friends.

It had been three days of sun, sand, wine, romantic sunsets and a massive Italian villa Daniel had rented for the whole time you were there. To be very honest, the whole vibe of the Italian house and beach made you want to permanently move there, but you decided to keep that conversation in mind for later. Maybe one day the two of you would end up living in a villa in Italy. But for the present, you adjusted your sunglasses on the bridge of your nose, and basked in the rays on the Sun on the golden coast of Amalfi. The boys had wanted to go out on a yacht, so you had simply rented one, and here you were on the deck, sprawled out on a lounge chair in a black bikini and yellow bikini kimono margarita in hand, while your Roman God of a boyfriend sipped beer and played a game of soccer with Michael.

Jade was lounging on the chair next to yours, in a white bikini, reading a book and sipping her champagne. When you had asked her if she wanted to go on vacation with you guys, she had immediately agreed, and the two of you had excitedly fine tuned the details of the vacation. Perrie and Leigh had wanted to come, but they had babies to look after (yes I added them just because)Bopping your head to the addictive beat of My Heart Goes by Becky Hill, you glanced over your shoulder to see where Daniel was, spotting him near the wheel with his beer, his blue patterned swim shorts complementing his extremely well toned body and his abs. Letting your eyes take in the glorious sight, your lips involuntarily ran over your lips, a short gasp leaving your mouth, earning Jade's attention almost at once.

"Enjoying ourselves are we?" her cheeky comment made you look up at her with a start. "Hell yeah I am" you replied, eyes following Daniel's movements as he raised his bottle for a sip of his drink. "Well earth to Y/N! Let's not get drool on you babe" Jade replied, smirking when you blushed. "Oh shut up. It's not my fault he looks that damn fine every single day" you mumbled, taking a sip of your green apple margarita to try and cool the sudden frustration you were feeling. "I'll give you that one hun. Well, I need a refill, I'll be back in a moment. Try not to jump your boyfriend while I'm gone" she said, earning a playful smack from you as she passed. When she had gone to the lower deck, Daniel passed the steering wheel to Michael, walking over to you, a broad grin on his face.

"Hiya doll! You having fun?" he asked, motioning for you to move and sit on his lap. "Yeah I am, the view here is to die for!" you replied with a smile, standing up so he could sit on your seat and you could sit on his lap. "The water is beautiful today" he agreed, running his fingers over the waistband of your bikini. "Yeah it is, but that wasn't the view i was talking about. The one I liked is right her" you purred in his ears, as his fingers gently moved the kimono you were wearing away from your legs. "Which view did you mean baby?" he mumbled back, lips close to your cheekbone, his warm breath hitting your cheeks. "You. Better than any beach, and any sea" you mumbled back, tilting your head back so he could rest his lips on your neck. "I'm honoured, but the real view is you my darling. Especially in that bikini, mmm, you look so gorgeous. And have I told you that you look best when you've got the most minimal of clothing on?" "You may have mentioned it" you replied, feeling goosebumps break across the surface of your skin, as his hands inched their way towards your thighs, his thumb pressing into your waist, when he tilted his lips up, pressing them to yours, his other hand reaching up to caress your neck, before tightening around you neck, his pointer sliding up to your hair. You kissed back, hands finding leverage on his body, one on his toned thigh, just on his tattoo, the other on his broad shoulder, gasping when his fingers tugged at your hair, forcing your mouth open, so he could push his tongue into your mouth. Moaning softly, he pulled you closer to him, something that seemed impossible, considering that you were already on his lap, but you moved even closer to him, moving your legs so you were straddling him, kissing back with just as much urgency, as your tongues battled for dominance.

But before you could do anything else, someone cleared their throat near you, making you pull away hastily, chest heaving, to find Jade looking at the both of you, a smirk on her lips. "Well, well, well, would you look at this! I told you not to jump him here, yet, here we are" "Oh shut up" you mumbled, burying your face in his shoulder, making him smile back at Jade. "Spoilsport. What do you want?" he asked her, moving so you were sitting sideways on his lap instead. "I came to say we're going to play Never Have I Ever, so come back down and have sex later" she said, running back away before you could say something to retaliate. Sighing, you stood up, extending your hand to Daniel, as he pulled himself up too. "Don't worry babe. I promise I'll make it up to you later, I really will" he mumbled against your ears, pressing a kiss to the outer shell of it, before leading the both of you downstairs.

⑁✧✡︎♡

Settling down in a circle, your group of seven pulled out bottles of chilled beer, as you settled in front of Daniel, your back pressed to his front. "I'll go first" Michael piped up, smirking.

"Never have i ever gone skinny dipping" he asked, earning a chorus of "oohs" and "good one" from your group of friends. Exchanging a glance with Jade, the both of you raised your bottles to your lips, sipping the cold beer.

"You've gone skinny dipping?" Michael asked you in shock, not expecting you and Jade to have been so bold. "Yeah we did, during tour actually. Dont blame, blame Don Julio" you replied.

"Alright, never have i ever thought a friend's baby was ugly" Daniel chimed in, making you laugh and shake your head. Much to your surprise, everyone except yourself and Daniel.

"You guys really are bitches" he murmured from behind you, tracing a pattern onto your exposed skin.

"Oh fuck off mate" Michael replied, before Jade intervened. "I have a good one, never have i ever had sex on a beach"

Her sentence was met with smirks and curious looks, everyone's jaws dropping when you took a sip of your drink, flushing at the surprised stares. "Y/N, you've had sex on the beach?" Jade asked, shock written on every inch of her face. "Yeah baby, you've had sex on the beach?" Daniel asked, voice slightly lower than usual.

"Well, um, yeah, in a way i guess. But it doesn't really count because the guy was such a mess and i don't think he had any idea what he was doing, and i really don't think it counts. Whose next?" You answered in a rush, feeling your boyfriend tense up behind you.

"Wow Daniel, looks like you missed your chance" one of his friends chimed in, missing the strained note in Daniel's laugh. You didn't.

For the rest of the game, Daniel remained extraordinarily silent, asking a few more questions and taking occasional sips of his beer, but he was quiet, and that was odd in itself.

After about half an hour, it was decided it was getting slightly chilly and it was probably best to go back to the house. Following Daniel to the top deck, you watched as he turned to face the waters, back towards you, muscles tense and taught.

"Is everything okay?" You asked, nervously fiddling with your fingers. "Mmhmm" was his reply. Frowning slightly, you walked forward, gently touching his arm. To your surprise he drew back, walking to the left side of the yacht, leaning on the railing, eyes locked on yours, a strangely intense look in his eyes.

"Was it that stupid question?" You asked, the answer suddenly clicking in your mind. "You bet your ass it was" he growled, the tone of his voice sending goosebumps shooting through your body. "It was just a stupid question, and i already told you, it was a bad experience! Are you jealous of a guy who never made me even feel good?!" You asked, voice raising slightly.

"Yes i'm jealous. The very thought of another man touching you, let alone naked, makes me want to break something, and now i find out you've had sex on a beach, and i know you've had ex boyfriends but it doesn't make it any less infuriating. Only i can touch you, only i can make you feel good" he growled, eyes darkening when you whimpered softly.

Sauntering forward, he grabbed you by the waist, pulling you into him and yanking your head back. "Only i can touch you here" he mumbled, tracing your neck, "and here", he continued, tracing your collarbone and moving towards your chest, "and here" he continued, rubbing your breasts through the material of your bikini, making you moan softly above him, as he continued to trace lower, tracing your stomach and thighs.

"And most importantly, only I can touch you here" he growled, hand sliding down into your bikini bottoms, cupping your pussy, earning a gasp from your lips. Slamming his lips down to yours, he slid his middle finger along your slit, feeling your wetness grown on his finger, before shoving his tongue into your mouth, and pushing his middle finger into you.

Moaning, your hips involuntarily jerked upwards, a moan of desperation leaving your lips when he pulled his finger out of your pussy and sucking on it, eyes still looking deep into yours.

"Please" you whispered, feeling the wet patch grow in your bikini, mind fuzzy and slow, pussy throbbing at the sight of Daniel sucking your juices off of his finger.

"Please what?" He asked, leaning back against the railing, looking at you expectantly.

"Please, just touch me" you whispered, feeling your arousal dripping down your leg.

"Not now sweetheart. We're gonna wait till we're back home, and then i'll take you to the beach, and i'll fuck you so good you'll forget that you even had sex on the beach with someone else before me"

☾⑁✧✡︎♡

The yacht trip back was tense, as you sat beside Jade, foot bouncing in anticipation, while Daniel sat with Michael, occasionally throwing a look your way that had you squirming. Brushing off Jade's concern, you forced a smile onto your face and took a shaky sip of your cocktail, feeling your heart rate increase when Daniel walked by you, hand brushing against the wet spot in your bikini.

When you guys reached the shore, the both of you bid your goodbyes to your friends, and walked up to your room, the tension palpable.

Pulling off your sundress, he pressed his lips to his neck, licking all over the exposed skin, before sinking his teeth down into the spot where your neck and shoulder met.

Sucking a dark hickey onto your neck, he picked up the discarded dress and caught your wrist in a tight grip, mumbling a soft "come on", and leading you down the stairs, sliding out the back door.

Inhaling the smell of the salty air, your lower lip quivered in anticipation of what was to come. Leading you to a secluded spot on the beach, he slammed his lips to yours, dropping the dress in his hands onto the sand, forcing your head up with his hands. "You shouldn't have gotten your nails to look so pretty today baby, they're gonna be ruined when you scratch them down my back" he groaned, pushing you down onto the dress he had layed out. Shedding the tank top he had pulled on, he sunk down onto his knees.

Kissing your neck again, he continued sucking the skin, creating a sort of pattern onto your skin, hand reaching around you to unhook your bikini top, dropping it next to you, capturing your nipple in his mouth, sucking the sensitive bud while he fondled with the other one.

Your moans of "oh, oh my god, oh fuck Daniel" were lost in the breeze that was picking up softly. Kissing lower, he let his tongue circle your belly button, smirking when goosebumps broke out on your skin.

Leaning down lower, he inhaled the scent of your arousal, moaning as his cock hardened against his swim trunks.

"You smell fucking delicious my love, can't wait to taste you"

Moaning at his words, you felt your breath temporarily being snatched from your body when his tongue prodded your entrance, running a finger up and down your slit, his beard brushing against your thighs, the burning sensation making you feel lightheaded.

Pushing his middle finger into your slit, he groaned at the wetness collecting on his finger, your warm walls clenching on his finger, as he pushed his ring finger in as well, the cold metal of his 'lets fuck' ring pressing against your walls, a broken moan of "Dan!" leaving your bruised lips.

He moved his fingers up and down, before switching to a scissoring motion, making you see stars as he let his thumb press down on your clit. Panting, you let out a "fuck! fuck daniel, oh shit don't stop!" whimpering when he groaned against you, the vibrations adding to the intense pleasure gradually coursing through your body.

Replacing his thumb with his tongue on your clit, he sucked the bundle of nerves onto his tongue, as he let his lips enclose around the bud, sucking on your clit, "oh fuck! fuck! fuck dont stop! Oh my god that feels so good oh-" your moans spurring him on as the knot in your tummy tightened, the pleasure intensifying when he grabbed your clit in between his teeth, letting it rest in between his teeth, before flicking it with his tongue.

"Fuck fuck fuck... please" you can't help but beg, even if you know he’s gonna give it to you either way because he never broke his promises of delivering to you endless pleasure "let it go, my love, cum for me" he mumbled, biting your clit gently, you slowly released onto his tongue with a throaty scream of his name. His fingers slow down but guide you through the pleasure wave, lips leaving soft kisses on your sore pussy.

"Such a good girl for me, hmm?" he mumbled, leaning up to capture your swollen lips in a heated kiss, but not before you caught a glimpse of his lips shimmering with your juices.

Moaning at the taste of you on his tongue, you bit down on his lower lip, finding stability on his broad shoulders.

Whispering a soft "please" you looked into his eyes, your desperation for him to just fill you up taking over your body at an alarming rate, clouding your senses and leaving you almost numb to anything but the pleasure Daniel gave you.

"Want me to fuck you like the bratty slut you are?" Daniel asked, lifting your chin with his pointer, knowing full well your mind was too far gone to form a proper response.

"Yes.." the soft whisper was all he needed to slip out of his colourful swim trunks, lips meeting yours in a kiss, before growling"i'm gonna fuck you till you're so far gone you won't even remember your own name"

He smirked against the skin of your chest, your heart doing a little jump in anticipation. Your mouth dropped wide open when Daniel delivered a rough thrust and pushed into you, a gasp of surprise leaving your lips. Grabbing both of your legs, he pushed them over his shoulders. Before you could process the tingles of pleasure that were beginning to take over your body, Daniel started off rough, hips slamming into yours earning a flurry of moans and groans of his name from your lips, the crown of his cock repeatedly hitting that spot in you that made you clench around him harder and harder.

Your nails scratched along his back, his previous comment ringing in your mind as he dropped his neck into the crook of your neck, his god forsaken beard adding to the realms of pleasure Daniel took you to. His teeth sank in the soft skin where your neck met your shoulders and he sucked on it, roughly. A series of "oh fuck, fuck daniel, oh my god don't stop please!" left your lips like a mantra, your pussy repeatedly clenching down on his cock.

“Do you like that baby? tell me, baby, i wanna know how fucking good i'm making you feel. Did he make you feel this good when he fucked you on a beach?” He growled against the skin of your neck while leaning a little back to look at you. You could barely hear him, an odd ringing in your ears, eyes screwed shut while your legs started to give in and shake. "Tell me darling, who fucks you better? Who will you remember wrecking you on the beach, me or that guy?" he growled, delivering a slap to your ass. His smirk only grew when you muttered incoherent strings of "you, only you Daniel, only you fuck me this good" as a response, not able to think straight. Raising himself slightly, he settled back on his knees, temporarily slowing down the speed of his thrusts.

“Oh fuck, Daniel! you moaned, spurring him on. Having you all spread for him, fucking you like there was no tomorrow and making you feel the way you were feeling was the biggest turn on for the Aussie man, groaning as he thrusted faster. Although he knew that only he could make you feel that good, take you to that special corner in heaven, the thought of your stupid ex made him want to remind of you that very fact.

"Dan, Danny, please" you moaned, when his tattooed hand reached your nipple and tugged harshly. They were both very sensitive to the touch, and you couldnt bring yourself to stop him because the pleasure was so good, and he was so good at pleasing you by touching you in the right places. Smirking, he pinched the sensitive nub between his fingers before lowering his torso and taking it into his mouth, looking right into your eyes as he sucked on it,making a big show of moaning around it, the vibrations on the overly sensitive bud making you scream. Enclosing your nipple in his teeth, they grazed at the sensitive skin and you gasped, scratching the skin of his back even harder, hearing him groan.

“come on baby, come for me" he mumbled, before moving back to knees and thrusting in harder a couple more times. Your back arched and you held onto his broad shoulders for leverage and stability, before the wave of pleasure washed over you as he followed by releasing into you with a deep groan of your name a couple of seconds after. Your legs remained loosely wrapped around his waist as he kissed your cheeks and lips, too tired to move, as he gently pulled out of you.

Lying down next to you, body partially on the golden sand, Daniel turned to you, before saying"so now you've really had sex on the beach" earning a breathy laugh and a punch on the shoulder from you, the proud smirk on his face growing.

"Oh shut up" you mumbled, looking up at the sky, still in a state of post orgasmic bliss.

"Bless Jade for asking that question, best sex of my life" daniel said, earning another short cackle from you. "Are you saying sex isn't great with me otherwise?" You asked, a teasing glint in your eyes.

"Oh hell no, sex is always great with you" he smirked back, rolling back on top of you.

"Want me to prove it again?"

"Daniel, i'm going to bed, or we'll both get sand in places there's never supposed to be any in" you mumbled, standing up on shaky legs.

"Careful baby, can't have you falling and injuring yourself" daniel said, reaching forward to scoop you up in his arms.

"Well one thing's for sure" you muttered later that night, curled up in bed. "Whats that?" Daniel asked sleepily, rubbing his eyes. "We should always plays never have i ever"

☾⑁✧✡︎♡

a/n - omg im so sorry this took so long!! i really hope you like it. thank you for reading, feedback and comments are always appreciated !! 🤍🤍

tags - @maxverstappenx

a/n - if you want to be tagged for a fic, lemme know!

#daniel ricciardo x reader smut #daniel ricciardo x reader #daniel ricciardo imagines #daniel ricciardo imagine #daniel ricciardo blurbs #f1 smut #f1 imagine #f1 drivers smut #f1 drivers imagines #f1 drivers x reader

644 notes · View notes

latte-fairytaekwoon · 3 years

Text

𝚂𝚎𝚡 𝚃𝚊𝚙𝚎 (𝙺𝚒𝚖 𝙷𝚘𝚗𝚐𝚓𝚘𝚘𝚗𝚐 & 𝙲𝚑𝚘𝚒 𝚂𝚊𝚗) 𝚁𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚍

𝙿𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐: 𝙺𝚒𝚖 𝙷𝚘𝚗𝚐𝚓𝚘𝚘𝚗𝚐 (𝙰𝚝𝚎𝚎𝚣) × 𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛 (𝙵𝚎𝚖𝚊𝚕𝚎) × 𝙲𝚑𝚘𝚒 𝚂𝚊𝚗 (𝙰𝚝𝚎𝚎𝚣)

𝙶𝚎𝚗𝚛𝚎: 𝚂𝚖𝚞𝚝, 𝙵𝚕𝚞𝚏𝚏.

𝚂𝚞𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚢: 𝚆𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚘 𝚋𝚛𝚘𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚗 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚏𝚒𝚕𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚎𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚛𝚜, 𝙷𝚘𝚗𝚐𝚓𝚘𝚘𝚗𝚐'𝚜 𝚗𝚎𝚠 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚓𝚎𝚌𝚝 𝚛𝚎𝚚𝚞𝚒𝚛𝚎𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚊𝚜𝚜𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚐𝚒𝚛𝚕𝚏𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚍 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚐𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚙 𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚜.

𝚆𝚘𝚛𝚍 𝙲𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝: 𝟻𝙺+

𝚆𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜: 𝚅𝚘𝚢𝚎𝚞𝚛𝚒𝚜𝚖, 𝚜𝚎𝚡 𝚝𝚊𝚙𝚒𝚗𝚐 (𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚜𝚎𝚗𝚝), 𝚎𝚡𝚑𝚒𝚋𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚒𝚜𝚖, 𝚖𝚊𝚕𝚎 𝚗𝚒𝚙𝚙𝚕𝚎 𝚙𝚒𝚎𝚛𝚌𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜, 𝚘𝚛𝚊𝚕 (𝚖𝚊𝚕𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚏𝚎𝚖𝚊𝚕𝚎 𝚛𝚎𝚌𝚎𝚒𝚟𝚒𝚗𝚐), 𝚜𝚙𝚊𝚗𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐, 𝚙*𝚜𝚜𝚢 𝚜𝚕𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚒𝚗𝚐, 𝚍𝚎𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚍𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗, 𝚞𝚗𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚝𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚜𝚎𝚡 (𝚊𝚕𝚠𝚊𝚢𝚜 𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚝𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗), 𝚌𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖𝚙𝚒𝚎, 𝚅𝚘𝚢𝚎𝚞𝚛! 𝙳𝚘𝚖! 𝙷𝚘𝚗𝚐𝚓𝚘𝚘𝚗𝚐 × 𝙳𝚘𝚖! 𝚂𝚊𝚗 × 𝚂𝚞𝚋! 𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛

𝚃𝚊𝚐𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚝: @seacottons @multidreams-and-desires @yunhofingers @yunhoiseyecandy @little-precious-baby @galaxteez @deja-vux @brie02 @couchpotatoaniki @rvse-miingi @daniblogs164 @a-soft-hornytiny

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The young female looked at the male in front of her in an appalled manner.

"Umm.....what?" She could not believe the words that just came out of his mouth.

Her boyfriend however didn't seem bothered by her reaction nor did the overly enthusiastic smile on his face brush off.

"How do you feel about helping me make a sex tape?" He repeated his previous request.

The girl raised an eyebrow at him, wondering if perhaps he was still drunk from the previous night in which he and some of the other members decided to act like dumb teens and got wasted in their dorm, resulting in him drunk calling his girlfriend and her coming over to help out the oldest and the tallest member control the other 6 men who were going berserk.

"When did you even get an idea like that?" She questioned him.

"Last night actually."

She threw her hands up and huffed.

"That's it. I'm not letting you anywhere near any alchohol for the next year." She swore to herself.

"Awww Y/N, baby, come on, don't be like that. Hear me out."

Taking one of her arms, he pressed her body against his, both of them still warm given it hadn't been long since they got out of the comfort of the bed. With one hand caressing her lower back and the other running itself through her hair, Hongjoong began to lazily press kiss across her jaw, knowing fully well it was a weakness to get her to give in.

"Think about how pretty you'll look. I'll edit it so you look even more beautiful. It'll be like one of those romantic adult films we watch together, and I know for a fact you like watching the explicit scenes."

Y/N let out a soft and shy giggle at being called out like that. She had often wondered, even out loud, how actors could actually go forth with such erotic scenes. She had to admit she admired their courage for doing them so effortlessly.

"Are you sure it's not something you wanna film to take with you whenever you're oversea? Watch a replay of you fucking me dumb?"

Now it was Hongjoong's turn to blush red. Y/N noticed how he swallowed hard, meaning there was something else.

"Hongjoong..... you were suggesting that you film us having sex...right?"

Hongjoong's eyes began to waver nervously.

"Well um...I was actually thinking more along the lines of....... someone else.....fucking you.." He stammered the last parts out.

"Are you serious?!" Y/N pushed him off her in a horrified manner, her hands fanning her face as she felt herself getting hot all of a sudden.

"Come on. You're acting like it's illegal or something. No one else besides us, and I guess the third person, will know about it." He tried to convince her.

"It's not illegal but it is insane. Who did you even think would agree to something like this?" She crossed her arms, waiting to hear what brilliant idea he came up with.

"I was hoping one of the guys would be a willing-"

"No way! That'd be even more embarrassing! It already gets awkward whenever one of them accidentally walks around with no shirt on around me, how could I possibly look at them in the face after we fuck?"

Not willing to listen to her crazy boyfriend, Y/N picked up her bag and reminded him to drink lots of water before sauntering out of his room, waving goodbye to Seonghwa who was in the kitchen and leaving before Hongjoong made things more embarrassing for her. Slumping down on the kitchen table, Hongjoong had a huge pout on his face.

"Lover's quarrels?" His same age friend asked as he began rinsing the dishes.

"Something like that." Hongjoong sighed.

"Whatever it is, I'm sure you two will figure it out. One of you ends up giving in sooner or later." He assured him.

Seonghwa was indeed right. Even if either one of you said no at first, you'd always, always, end up giving in just to try something new. That thought made Hongjoong lighten up and he began to think more about how to put his plan in motion. Firstly, he needed to pick one of the members who not only would be comfortable doing something like that, but would match the needed sex appeal.

"Jongho is out of the question. He's never even dated anyone." Hongjoong began thinking, evaluating in his head all his possible candidates.

"Mingi isn't a good choice either, he already has a lot to deal with so I'm not even going to bother with him."

Hongjoong then thought about Yeosang. He was good looking, but the problem was Yeosang was extremely reserved, not to mention he and Y/N weren't very close to each other. It would be bad chemistry. And his roommate and best friend Wooyoung was a strict no.

"I already know that little brat has a little crush on my girlfriend. If anything letting him fuck her would be like giving a little kid a candy shop all to themselves. I need someone who has absolutely no romantic inclinations so afterwards everything can go back to normal."

Turning his head, Hongjoong scanned Seonghwa up and down. He seemed like a possible choice. He was tall, very handsome, he and Y/N got along very well, in fact he was the one closest to her besides him. He knew for a fact Seonghwa was not innocent or pure in the slightest bit. And he'd be very professional about it. It seemed there was no question about Seonghwa being the best candidate.

"Wait! But they're close. What if this plan backfires and I accidentally ruin their friendship?"

Hongjoong groaned as he realized this was proving to be a lot harder than he thought. His mind then thought about Yunho. Yunho would be perfect in the more erotic sense given his size. He was tall, lean but well built and with defined muscles. And it'd be pretty interesting to watch and see if his girlfriend would be able to take a monster cock like that cause Yunho was definitely packing a lot.

Getting up, Hongjoong seemed decided as he walked down the hallway to have a little chat with his favorite donsaeng. Just before he could knock on the door to his room, it actually opened by itself, or more like, someone else came out right at that moment. It was none other than San, whose recently dyed blonde hair was messy. His skin had somewhat of a glow to it even if he was suffering from a major hangover. He was completely shirtless, his honey abs looking amazing as usual. The sweatpants he was wearing were hanging low on him, the V line near his pelvis poking out. And to top off the visual, his nipples were sticking out due to the piercings that he had recently gotten, a naughty secret that he had kept well hidden for a while til Wooyoung ratted him out. Hongjoong had never actually seen them, but now that he did, a light bulb went off in his head.

"Hyung.....my head is killing me." San groaned loudly, one arm weakly holding him steady against the doorframe.

That tiny sound that came out of the younger male's mouth sealed the deal for Hongjoong. San was absolutely perfect.

"Sannie....... when you're feeling better, Hyung wants to talk to you about something."

✎﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏

"You're looking especially lovely tonight my dear." Hongjoong looked at his girlfriend who was sitting patiently on her bed, wearing a cute off white two piece lingerie set.

"You always say things like that whenever I'm going to suck your dick." She pointed out, although it wasn't meant to be ill intended.

Hongjoong simply continued to have that suspicious smirk plastered on as he finished setting up the last camera, having placed several ones on different parts of the room to capture different angles of the scene that was about to take place in those 4 walls. On a small stand, he had already installed his laptop so he could monitor more closely all the shots being taken and to start or pause anything if needed. Glancing at the time, he knew it was only a matter of time before their guest arrived.

"You're taking awfully long for someone who was aching to get their dick wet." She snorted, wondering how on earth could Hongjoong be so calm and collected.

Hearing a knock on the door, Y/N raised an eyebrow as she was not expecting anyone, but it seemed Hongjoong wasn't fazed at all. He actually sprinted out of his seat in lighting speed to open the door.

"Yeah but it's not my dick that's getting wet." He sent her a wink.

Before she could even ask him what he meant, San was already being dragged inside the room. He too looked puzzled when he saw his older friend's girlfriend on the bed wearing something so daring.

"Wow! Ok! I take it I got here too early?" San asked as he covered up his face with his hands.

"No San, you're not early. You're right on time actually."

Slumping an arm around him, Hongjoong pulled him into the center of the room.

"He's the one getting his dick wet."

Once she realized what was happening, Y/N grabbed a pillow and chucked it at her scheming boyfriend.

"Kim Hongjoong! You liar! You told me that we were going to be filming a sex tape between ourselves!" She exclaimed.

"A what?!" A confused San shouted, now more embarrased than ever.

"I knew that if I told you both what I really wanted you here for neither of you would agree and would probably think I'm weird or something." Hongjoong tried to explain himself.

"Oh I don't think, I know you're weird, wanting one of your members and your girlfriend to fuck each other just so you could make a porn out of it."

San reddened furiously at her words, eyes looking everywhere but at Hongjoong or Y/N. By now he had already opted for just staying quiet as he listened to the couple banter back and forth amongst themselves.

"What made you think San, out of all people, would want to even touch me?"

That caught said man's attention.

"Wait, hold on. What's that supposed to mean?" He squinted at her, eyes narrowing into slits. Y/N could feel the immediate change in his demeanor.

"Well you know just that.....it's you we're talking about San. Do you know how many girls thirst over you? Why would you even bother looking at someone like me when you look like that?" She gestured at his body and face, trying to get her point across.

San felt somewhat offended by her statement. She made it out to be like he was superficial or that he only cared about looks. Moreover, he didn't like hearing her talk about herself in that way. Brushing past his Hyung, San came to stand in front Y/N, eyes peering down at her. Feeling the intensity of his stare bear down on her, especially given her state of near undress contrasting his full dressed self made her feel self conscious. When she tried to cross her arms to cover herself, San was having none of that as he suddenly gripped her wrists and held them in front of her face.

"And do you have any idea how many of us have checked you out even though we know that you belong to Hongjoong? Do you think some of us didn't feel bad when we found out he decided to take you for himself?"

His admittance not only shocked her but her boyfriend behind them, who had thought only one member had been disappointed when they announced that they were dating. Noticing her shocked expression, San leaned in and smiled at her innocently.

"Don't worry too much about me though, I was mostly disappointed at the fact that I might never get a chance to tap that cute ass of yours." He expressed with no hint of shame whatsoever. San drew his gaze down to fully look at her, admire her silhouette for the first time ever since he walked in the room.

"But now that I know Hyung wants someone to fuck his girlfriend...well.... it'd be my pleasure." He let out a low chuckle before pulling her against him, hands caressing the sides of her torso. Taking one of her hands, he brought it up to his face to place kisses on her palm. Turning to the man that was forgotten for a minute, San raised an eyebrow.

"Tell me right now if there's anything you definitely don't want me to do, otherwise I'm going to have my way with her as I like."

Hongjoong thought about it for a second, wondering if there was something he did not want.

"You're absolutely not allowed to leave hickeys on her. I don't mind you leaving red hand prints or even cumming inside her since that can be cleaned up or will fade in a coupe's hours."

Moving back to go sit on the chair next to the laptop, Hongjoong leaned back and stared at San with a warning glare.

"But I want absolutely nothing that will last for days. That's only for me to do."

San scoffed at how silly Hongjoong sounded, but nodded nonetheless. Meanwhile Y/N looked back and forth at their exchange with fascination. It was arousing hearing them talk about her as if she was nothing more than a mere sex object, and she was loving it.

"Oh and San? Remember I'm going to film this. Try to make it as interested as possible. I mean... if you can that is." Hongjoong smiled slyly, sending challenge to the younger member.

"Oh trust me. I'll fuck her like she's famous." San bragged.

Y/N watched as San began pulling his shirt over his head. Raking her eyes over his arms, abs and chest, they widened considerably when they saw the metal piercings on his nipples. One hand actually came to clasp around her open mouth, she was that surprised.

"Remember I told you not to baby him too much cause he's not actually a baby?" Hongjoong snickered at her reaction, actually finding it funny.

"Hey if it diverts attention from you, I don't care."

Pushing her back until they were right next to the bed, San cupped her face and leaned in, lips nearly kissing hers.

"Are you all right with this?" He wanted to get her consent before anything else.

Letting out a hum, Y/N wrapped her hands on the base of his neck.

"Fuck me like I'm famous." She repeated what he said before.

"Ok."

As soon as their bodies and mouths connected, Hongjoong's finger pressed record so as to not miss anything. Sitting back, he decided to enjoy the show, a satisfied smile on his face after seeing that everything had gone according to plan. Their lips molded perfectly against each other's, their makeout session rivaling those of some of the biggest and steamy ones they'd see on tv. Tracing the outline of his lips with her tongue, Y/N successfully managed to get San to allow her access into his mouth. Her tongue settled against his and vice versa, muffled humming adding to the intensity of their kiss. San couldn't keep his hands off her lower back, eventually placing them right on her ass. Hongjoong inwardly patted himself on the back as he had deduced before that San was more of an ass man and now he was getting confirmation of it as he watched his hands cup and harshly squeeze his girlfriend's cheeks.

Not wanting only him to have his fun, Y/N thought it would be a good idea to test just how sensitive his nipples were. Sliding a hand up his torso, it pressed itself onto one of his pecs. She grinned when San emitted a whimper in her mouth when she pinched on his nipple, making sure to twist some of the piercing around.

"Oh my-" San groaned when her mouth detached itself from his in order to give attention to his nipples. He was whining and whimpering each time her tongue flicked around his buds and letting out choked gasps when her teeth would softly tug at them.

"Enjoying your new toy?" Hongjoong piped up, reminding them both that they were being watched.

"Just as much as you're enjoying me wreck your girl." San spat back at him, hissing when he suddenly felt Y/N sucked onto one of his nipples.

"Please. I've barely seen any action yet."

Hearing his taunting words, San pushed Y/N onto her knees, bringing her face close to the tent in his pants. Tilting her chin up, he rubbed his thumb across her bottom lip.

"You have really pretty lips. All plump and pink.... I wonder how they'll look like if they're red, swollen and stuffed with my cock."

Making a quick work of his zipper, San pulled his jeans down along with his underwear, letting out his cock that was thick and well above average in length. Y/N licked her lips when she saw that the tip was glistening with precum that had dripped out when it was freed from its confinement. San was definitely bigger than Hongjoong, she wasn't going to deny that. She began to wonder if she could even fit that entire thing in her mouth, but she for sure wanted to try.

"I think the little cockslut is eager to suck you off San." Hongjoong sat up straighter in his seat, eyes focused on every detail in front of him.

"Is that right?"

Y/N exhaled softly when she felt San slap his cock against her cheek, running the tip on her cupid's bow.

"Go ahead. Just try and see if you can take me." He shot her a cocky grin.

Wanting to wipe that grin off his face, Y/N inserted the tip inside her mouth, keeping eye contact with San the entire time. She first tested the waters by slurping his head, indeed getting a reaction out of him since his thighs involuntarily shuddered. Feeling motivated, she slowly took more of him into her mouth, inch by inch he was slowly stuffing her full. Her cheeks hollowed out to help her fit him better, but still she gagged slightly when she felt him hit the back of her throat. Nevertheless she was proud of herself at being able to stuff his cock in her.

"Holy crap Y/N, are you trying to prove something?" Hongjoong stared in shock and arousal at seeing his significant other with another man's cock down her throat.

"Yeah, prove that she likes my cock better than yours." San gloated as he pulled her off his length only to stuff it back in and causing the female under him to let out a choked out gasp followed by a line of drool spilling onto the floor.

Grabbing her hair and pulling it up into a makeshift ponytail, San used it to keep her head up as he began a pattern of pulling out slowly only to force himself back inside her. He loved watching the messy scene in between his legs. Spit running down Y/N's chin, the corners of her eyes stained with tears, her muffled whines that were muted every time his shaft filled her mouth, the way his leader was sitting just a few feet away watching as his precious girlfriend was getting face fucked by someone else, San was enjoying it too much. His head was thrown back as he kept forcing his cock deep in her mouth, the loud slurping sounds of her swallowing around him complimenting the hisses and groans that were being exuded from his lips.

"Fuck! Oh my- are you ok with me cumming in your mouth?"

Judging by the way Y/N moaned around his organ and her hand cupped his balls to fondle them, San was taking that as a green light. Releasing her hair, he held onto the back of her head and pushed himself forcefully to and fro in her wet cavern, using it as leverage to help him reach his climax. Through shattered breath and clenched teeth, San's cum poured down her throat, hips stuttering and bucking further up to help him ride out his orgasm. When he pulled out, Y/N immediately gasped for air, her hair in complete disarray, lips darkened and wet with saliva.

"If that isn't one of the hottest images I've ever seen." Hongjoong added his input. He always did love seeing what a mess Y/N turned into after getting her pretty and delicate face fucked and abused.

Y/N smiled over at her boyfriend, looking at the tent in his pants before sending him a flirty wink accompanied by a swipe of tongue across her lips.

"You can suck him off after I'm done with you baby, but right now, I want you focused on me." San made her turn her attention back to him as he lifted her off the floor and set her on the edge of the bed. He showed no hesitation as he practically ripped her underwear off her body before tossing it behind him, making sure it landed on Hongjoong's lap.

"Jerk yourself off with that in the meantime cause you're not getting her back for a while."

Toying with the fabric in his hand, Hongjoong sneered at the younger male.

"Trust me, I have more self control than you'd think." He assured him.

"Let's see about that."

Getting down on his knees to be at eye level with her wet and shining folds, San dived in and began consuming her taste. His tongue moved languidly around her slit, savoring her taste on his tongue. Y/N's hands gripped and clutched the blanket underneath her, causing it to wrinkle up from how hard she was tugging at them. Her breath hitched whenever San gave all of his attention to her clit, sucking on the sensitive flesh until it began developing a slightly reddish tint. Her lips were also becoming engorged as San continued his assault on her mound, face practically buried inside her thighs. All throughout it, Hongjoong just took in every sharp intake of breath and every scrunched up expression Y/N made. It gave him joy to know she was definitely enjoying herself, her pleasure always been something he took into consideration.

"Good to see you know how to eat a girl out Sannie. I was afraid I was going to have to step in and show you why rapper are superior." He couldn't help himself but boast, after all, he had pride in being able to get a girl to cum multiple times with just his tongue.

Ignoring the older man's words, San gripped her thighs to hold her down. His tongue sped up as it slurped and slithered all over her heat, applying just enough pressure with his broad strokes across her labia folds. The girl on top of him tried to move his face away from her body as she felt the blood rushing down to her legs, face becoming heated as she knew she would burst any moment. She blamed Hongjoong for this, having spoiled and played around so much with her pussy that she was overly sensitive whenever she received oral sex. The fire pooling in her lower abdomen was about to explode.

"Ah! San- please!"

Muscles tightening and her upper body writhing, Y/N couldn't hold back as she began pumping out her orgasmic juices, her back falling back on the mattress while her mind blocked out anything that wasn't the immense feeling that was taking over her senses at the moment. San lapped up her juices generously, feeling smug about getting her to cum, although he knew it wouldn't be the only time she would be doing that. Sitting up, he allowed her to catch her breath and regain her senses before he continued with what he had in store.

Hongjoong looked with curiosity as San made Y/N sit back up and turned her over on all fours. Hongjoong couldn't stop the laugh that escaped his lips.

"You're gonna fuck her doggy style? Can't you be more creative?"

San didn't let his words deter him, he simply unclipped Y/N's bra and removed it from her body.

"I told you I was gonna fuck her like she's famous and that's exactly what I'm going to do."

His hands roamed across her body, caressing the curves and dips of her hips as he pressed his erection in between her ass cheeks. Y/N pushed her ass further back, impatient at the thought of having her hole filled up by him.

"See? Even she wants to be fucked like a little bitch in heat."

Y/N couldn't suppress the moan escaping her lips at being degraded like that.

"Wow, you're such a whore." Hongjoong mused when he heard her reaction.

"You offered this whore to your friend now suck it up and watch him pound my pussy." She giggled softly.

"Oh baby, I'm not just going to pound this pussy. I'm aiming to destroy it."

Lining himself against her hole, San slowly sunk his length deep into her walls. He felt as if he was being swallowed by her warmth that it took everything in him not to start fucking her right then. He made sure to give her time to adjust to his size.

"Hyung do you not fuck her enough? She's unbelievably tight and she feels too good." San grunted, dick twitching inside her as it ached for any sort of movement.

Hongjoong did not hide his displeased face.

"I fuck her quite often thank you very much."

San clicked his tongue in a cocky way.

"Whatever you say."

Y/N cried out in a high pitched tone when San suddenly pulled out only to plunge himself back into her. He set a merciless rhythm as his cock tore her walls open, stretching them as far as they could go, a stinging yet delicious burn heating her up. Strangled noises proceeded to spill forward from her throat mixing in perfectly with the sound of their skin smacking against each other. Shifting angles so his dick could hit against her g-spot every time it was shoved inside her, San's skin was already emitting that after sex glow, sweat beads forming on his temples. He looked completely focused, eyes trained on her ass cheeks that bounced with each of his thrusts. Unable to resist the urge, he brought one hand up so it could slap her skin.

"Oh s-shit!" She exclaimed, the force and unexpected smack on her bum nearly had her upper body collapsing on the bed.

"Can you smack her a little harder?" If Y/N wasn't so caught up with San fucking her so harshly, she would have noted the nearly sadistic tone in her boyfriend's voice.

"Just tell me if I can't take it baby." San caressed the patch of skin he had just slapped.

"Trust me, she can. She enjoys a little pain every now and then." Her boyfriend dished on that dirty little secret.

One slap was soon followed by several more. San made sure to alternate between each of her butt cheeks. Y/N's wailing began to get increasingly louder and frantic, her ass stinging every time San's hand smacked it, making a majority of it turn a deep red color. But he made sure that it wouldn't leave any bruising or anything of that sort remembering Hongjoong's previous rule.

"Damn you're so fucking loud."

The shocked gasp coming out her mouth was half muffled when San pushed her head against one of the pillows, effectively burying her loud mouth into the sheets.

"San didn't you said you'd fuck her like she's famous? Then why cover up her screaming?" Hongjoong pondered, one hand rubbing at the top of his thigh.

"Scream? You wanna really hear her scream?"

Yanking her back up from her hair, Y/N only managed to catch her breath for one second before she felt herself flipped onto her back. The intrusion of San's large cock was just as seering as the first one but it was welcomed nonetheless by her walls fluttering around his cock. One of her legs was thrown over his shoulder, his brutal pace heightening the build up in her stomach. Her fleshy mound was extremely swollen and had a pinkish red tint to it. Knowing how vulnerable she was, San licked his fingers before taking them out of his mouth only to have them come down on her clit.

"Oh-oh fuck!" Y/N threw her head back on the pillow, eyes shut tight with tears staining the corners of them as she felt slap after slap on her throbbing and pulsating pussy.

"You like that you little whore? Yes you do, you clench around me every time I do this." San smirked when he placed one final blow on her tender flesh that was responsive to any of his touches.

Y/N was starting to see white flashes of light in her vision, unable to hear or feel anything that wasn't the grazing inside her wetness. With whimpered crying, her arms and upper body writhed uncontrollably as San's hips continued jolting up into her, shaky breaths and pants keeping her from forming any coherent words as her juices poured out of her body. Feeling her heat cover him completely, San trailed not far behind her as his cock twitched and his seed painted her insides.

"Ah fuck!"

He jerked himself until he made sure to fill her to the brim, not satisfied until he had spurted out the last drop of cum he had in him to release. When he pulled out of her hole, he let out a groan of accomplishment as the white and milky like secretion seeped out of her hole, some of it glistening against her folds.

"You capturing that well Hyung?" San turned to Hongjoong.

"Oh trust me, it's all coming out beautifully." He answered as he looked at the computer screen, fingers working unbelievably quick to make sure to save the raw video in his files.

Getting up to go clean himself up on the bathroom, San picked up his clothes that were discarded on the floor. Before he could walk out the door, he was about to ask Y/N if she wanted to join him but she was already busying herself by kneeling in front of her boyfriend.

"Aren't you going to get cleaned up?"

Humming softly as she began undoing Hongjoong's belt, Y/N replied with a mischievous smile.

"Maybe later. Right now I gotta take care of my handsome man, after all, he's been sitting here with a hard ass boner." She chuckled as his dick sprang free.

"God, I love you so much baby."

808 notes · View notes

softly-savage-mint-yoongi · 3 years

Text

Blindfold

Blindfold Yunho x f.reader Genre: Smut Words: 3.8k Warnings: Not really any warnings but we’re into blindfolding and major teasing here, folks. Birthday sex.

Authors Note: I hope that writing this will quench my thirst and make him stop haunting my dreams. Please suffer with me.

March 23rd. A day you’ve had marked with three red ‘x’’s on your phone calendar for a month. A day you have thought about since Valentine’s Day, after your wonderful, loving, perfect-to-you-in-every-way boyfriend told you about something he would like to try. The conversation had been innocent enough, although there was some irony in it’s exchange, during post-sex cuddles on your bed.

He was all giggles, with soft hands and warm skin, voice lower than usual and just as tender. You could feel the gentle tickle of his lips at your hairline as they moved to form words. Easy words that spelled out his curious desire, “Maybe someday we could try blindfolding.” Those six simple words, spoken with a tangible smile and blushing cheeks, had you pulling your head back from the comfort of his neck to watch his face. Yunho was grinning, somehow shy after all this time, and proud of himself nonetheless. You smiled right back at him with your lips pressed to his chin when he playfully lifted his lips too high for you to reach in your position cradled against his chest. “If you want to blindfold me I would let you. I trust you.” you assured him, but he let out a soft laugh. He swallowed audibly under your full attention, clearing his throat to speak even softer, “Not you…” You said nothing, needing a moment to understand, “I want you to blindfold me.” Realization hit you, and a gut punch of arousal along with it, “Oh.” With your palm against his chest, you forced yourself up at the same time Yunho let you push him onto his back. You wasted no time in straddling his lap. You leaned forward, stretching yourself to place your hands over his eyes with a giggle. “I didn’t mean we had to do it right now!” he laughed, grasping your hands and removing them from his face to kiss your palms. Placing your hands on his stomach, you rolled your hips over his growing length, “Perhaps not, but I still want you right now.” His hands were already gripping your thighs the moment you moved against him. With a bite to his smirking lips, he followed your motions with actions of his own, “As you wish.”

So here you were, after careful planning and orchestration. Without letting them know the details of your plan, you made sure to enlist Hongjoong and Seonghwa’s help, or at least tell them you were trying to make plans for the evening on Yunho’s birthday. You didn’t expect any promises, but Seonghwa did text you this morning to tell you they would try to get him out on time.

You fold and unfold the long piece of silk in your lap, running your fingers over the smooth fabric and appreciating the pink color you chose. It matches the rest of the lace babydoll and panties that cover you.

Part of you is slightly nervous, while the other reminisces about all the reasons you shouldn’t be. Yunho has never been one to make you feel anything less than comfortable or wanted in your relationship, and sex between you is not new.

Perhaps your nerves are born of performance? You must be feeling this way because he specifically wanted this and if you don’t make it great for him then it will be a failure. Yunho has said the same thing to you many times, when he feels nervous about performing for his fans.

Just as you shake your head with resolve to make this wonderful for him, the bedroom door opens and you jump.

There he is, stopped in his tracks, standing with his hand still wrapped around the doorknob as he stares at you sitting there at the end of your bed.

“You’re home.” is what you say, trying to rebound off your surprise. You must have been so lost in thought you didn’t notice the sound of his arrival through the apartment. You don’t miss the way his presence seems to add a fond sense of ‘home’ to the room.

He gulps, an easy smile raising his cheeks. His duffel bag is tossed to the floor in front of the dresser and he closes the door, unzipping his training jacket until that too, is tossed to the floor.

“What’s all this?” he asks, standing in front of you. He dips low to capture your lips in a greeting, waiting for your answer when he regains his full height.

You goad him with a grin, “Why don’t you hurry up and shower so you can find out?”

Yunho’s brows lift momentarily as he turns toward the hamper, smirking back at you as he begins to undress. He takes a peek at your face with every piece that comes off, eating up the way your eyes ogle him in silence.

He checks just once more before ducking into the bathroom, making sure you’re staying put there on the bed.

You refuse to let your thoughts consume you anymore, enjoying the pleasant buzz that sizzles on your skin, left in the wake of his staring. Although it’s new, you were certain he would love this piece on you, having mentioned the few times you’ve worn lingerie, that he loves you most in soft colors that compliment your cuteness. Babydolls are your personal favorite, and he has agreed prior that they’re best for ease of access when he wants to fuck you while keeping something on.

You’re both laughing when your eyes meet after his shower. The unspoken acknowledgment that he’s probably broken a record for his shower time is funny to both of you.

He doesn’t bother with anything more than a towel around his hips, and you pluck it from his grip as soon as he is within reach, “You won’t be needing that.”

He smiles at you, allowing you to tug him forward onto the bed. Yunho’s fingers busy themselves with touching and pinching the lace that delicately hides your skin from him. He lifts the hem in his fist, watching it nearly float back down around you with a sigh.

He definitely loves it.

“I love this on you,” he admits a moment later, his eyes seeking yours. The tone of his voice always melts you like this- when it’s full of love and ardor.

You gesture towards the headboard, allowing him a moment to get comfortable in your requested position before you straddle him. He hisses at the contact of your covered heat against his length, half hard since he came out of the shower from anticipation alone.

Yunho reaches up, collecting you by the nape of your neck and urging you down so he can kiss you. His lips move against yours exactly how you like, slow and building. He does this sometimes, when he wants you to be putty in his hands- not that you ever resist.

Except, today you have to take some control. Pushing past the bubbling nerves in your gut, you lean back. He chases you- leaning forward and consuming you, adamant that he isn’t finished sampling you.

It pulls a gentle moan from your throat when he moves his lips down to it. He holds you in place, caged against his body with his own arms clutching you to him. Your eyes pop open, remembering not to get pulled under the waves of euphoria with him just yet. Today is about his pleasure.

“Yunho,” you say, but it comes out as a whine.

“Yeah, baby?” he coos back, still working his mouth against your neck.

A deep breath leaves you, “Stop for a second.”

Immediately he sits back, with eyes full of concern. He searches your face for any sign of discomfort, and his expression morphs into confusion, followed by realization a moment later when he notices the length of silk in your hands.

You lift it up between you, bashful and smiling. You’re eager for his reaction, and your boyfriend doesn’t disappoint.

“Is it my birthday?” he wonders aloud.

You snort a laugh at him, taking a playful swat at his chest, “It is, you dork.”

He gives you a dazzling, heart-clenching, silly grin at your response, “Oh, yeah.”

“Now sit still, please.” you instruct, unable to hide your growing smile at his immediate and eager obedience.

He waits, eyes closed, but unable to help the way his length twitches against your core as you wrap the silk over his eyes.

“All good under there? Can you see how many fingers I’m holding up?” you ask, not bothering to hold up any at all.

“No, but I can feel both your hands on me so nice try.” he says, and you can hear the shit-eating grin in his tone.

He earns himself a swipe of your tongue over his neck at his snarky remark, and the resulting sharp inhale you’re rewarded with is enough sweet justice for you.

He’s smiling when you pull away, tugging here and there to make sure it isn’t too tight nor too loose. He groans when you give him no warning and take his face into your hands, kissing him deeply.

You don’t stop your attention, kissing him until the sound of your lips feels deafening in the silence of the room. His hands grip your waist, gently rocking you back and forth along him in tandem.

It’s enough, you decide, when you break for air and he’s panting with flushed cheeks and heated skin. “Are you going to be okay, baby?”

He swallows thickly, then smiles, and you resist the urge to coo at the way his cheeks look rounder with the blindfold over his eyes. “Keep going.”

“Of course,” you comply in a sultry tone, “Just relax.”

He does as you’ve asked, allowing you to rise from his lap and push his legs apart further. He bites his lip with anticipation- feeling your weight dip the bed between his legs.

You enjoy the opportunity to tease, letting out huffs of your warm breath to ghost along his fully erect cock. He remains still and slack-jawed, awaiting your every movement. Unwilling to waste the moment, you admire him briefly- reclined on your bed, naked in all his glory. Yunho is gorgeous, but knowing he is just as beautiful beneath the surface makes your chest swell with great love.

The sight before you is something you aim to burn into memory for every sleepless, needy night that you miss him. His abs are taut, strained with anticipation and heavy breaths. His arms rest at his sides, feigning relaxation as his fingers dance with a stray thread on the blanket beneath him. His mouth is open just slightly and his brows are knit together in valiant concentration.

The part that pulls a low hum of appreciation from your throat is his full erection. Thick, red and leaking onto his abdomen, you’re spurred into action with the desire to see him a mess.

The first touch you deliver is a kiss, just on the edge of his hip. Slowly and deliberately, you firmly plant wet, open-mouthed kisses lower and closer to where he grows desperate for you. You’re paying attention to his reaction with every ministration and you must admit you are quickly becoming intoxicated with this game.

The power you feel, and how his every tiny reaction drives the spike of arousal deeper into your veins. He holds his breath, knowing the next place your lips will find is his cock if you keep going. With a tactical pause, you skip over it, smiling at his flushed cheeks, and let your lips flutter over the top of his thigh instead.

Yunho releases his held breath with a long and dour groan.

“Please don’t tease.” he whispers quietly, gasping when you suddenly rise up and lave the flat of your tongue around his left nipple. His hand jerks up with the desire to touch, but he resists. You didn’t ever tell him he couldn’t, but let him decide on his own what he wants to do. After all, this is about his pleasure.

The next moment you’ve swooped back down, gently taking the head of him into your mouth, and he reacts with a jerk of his hips and a loud moan. Garbled sounds of pleasure drop freely from his lips, his head thrown back as you take him as far back as you can.

The wet slurping is an erotic audio that pours heat into your own cheeks, and you can imagine that Yunho must feel like that sound is surrounding him with the subconscious focus of his ears.

“Oh, fuck baby… mmm, fuck.” he whines quietly when you use a hand to pump the base of his length that you can’t fit comfortably. He raises a hand again, and you watch as he bites his lip and resists the urge to tangle his fingers in your hair- instead balling a fist and settling it back at his side.

You continue like this for several minutes, switching your rhythm and pattern here and there to stroke or suck him the way you know he likes. When his breath is coming in ragged pants and his thighs begin the slightest tremble, you slow, and eventually release him.

Yunho’s protest is audible, and you cup his cheek at the adorable way his lips are pouted open and his brows are strung together with his plea.

“I want this to last.” you assure him, “It’ll be worth it.”

“Kiss me then,” he barters with you, breathless. His request is one you can comply with, planting a kiss directly to his lips and he tries so hard to kiss you into submission with his plush lips.

“That’s not fair,” you coo.

He smiles, shaking his head and leaning forward, “You’re not being fair.”

Leaning into him, you make sure to wrap your arms around his neck and whisper directly into his ear, “Don’t act like you didn’t want this.”

The resounding moan he tries to suppress is not lost on you, and he settled back with the clearing of his throat.

Straddling his thigh, you settle yourself in a comfortable position to kiss across his chest. Your mouth works higher until you’re biting gently at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. He moans softly in reward, finally allowing himself the pleasure of your skin beneath his fingers, pacified with touching your thigh where it rests.

Your hand reaches down and you let your fingers wrap around his cock again at the same moment you gently suck on the place you’d just bitten. Your boyfriend is louder now, letting a throaty moan peel from his lips with your fist around his aching length.

He hisses when you repeat your marking a little higher, just below his ear. Yunho’s hand grips you tighter, letting it roam beneath the pretty lace, toward the fullness of your ass and digging his fingertips in to urge you into motion upon his leg.

“Fuck.” he whispers lowly on a breath as you set a rhythm with your fist once more. His head falls back against the headboard, his hips softly canting up with every pump.

As if he had intended it that way, his throat is now conveniently exposed for your lips and teeth. You want to make excellent use of his generosity, but the ache of emptiness in your cunt demands more attention.

Wordlessly, you sit up, shimmying yourself out of the matching panties and letting your knees settle on either side of his hips. Every rustle of fabric and movement you make is one that Yunho absorbs with great anticipation.

He doesn’t know exactly what you’re up to yet, but he can smell your perfume and your sex and feel your proximity over him. With wandering hands, he reaches out, tentatively, catching the left side of your waist first. All it takes is a simple swipe of his thumb and the comforting palm of his hand for him to realize exactly what part of your body he is holding, even through the lace.

That notion makes you softer for him, smiling sweetly at the dusty rose on his face as he reaches up to palm your breast. His free hand slides to your back, pulling you closer so he can attach his tongue to the nipple he’s found budding beneath the fabric of your lingerie.

The friction and heat makes you whine, admittedly turned on more than you thought possible with the addition of a simple piece of silk around Yunho’s head.

He spoils you with his hands now, roaming all over your curves, mostly followed by his mouth. He’s still short of breath, but smiles nonetheless when he locates at first your nose and then your lips with his own kisses. He doesn’t try any tricks this time.

His kiss pauses immediately when his hands, having wandered down and beneath the lacy fringe, find you bare. He groans at the feel of your skin, audibly basking in the pleasure it gives him to glide two fingers through your wetness with practiced ease.

Yunho dips one long digit into your heat, eating up the sound of your cry. Your hands hold him at his neck and his shoulder, leaning into his frame to stay steady. His face is less than an inch from your shoulder, and he takes advantage of the proximity to turn his head and capture the side of your neck with his mouth.

A second finger joins the first, gliding through your wetness and creating obscene squelching sounds with every thrust into your pussy. You’re beginning to lose yourself, completely indulged in the feeling of him absolutely everywhere.

He loves it just as much, groaning at the sounds you’re making just because of him.

“Does that feel good baby?” he suddenly asks, and the tone of his voice is absolutely sinful.

“Yes.” you whimper into his ear.

He grunts, “I’m gonna come if we keep playing like this.”

The admission is a tempting offer, but you don’t want to end the fun too early. Instead, you think it best to ask him, “What do you want me to do?”

He leans back again, reclining against the pillows, and you allow him to guide you now by feel. To do what he wants with you. “Why don’t you have a seat, baby?” he coos mischievously.

Teasing him further, you take advantage of the position and settle your core over his abs. He makes a sound in his throat akin to a growl and grabs your bottom with both hands and pulls you back into an upright position on your knees.

He kneads the malleable flesh for no longer than a second before he sits up straighter and tells you, “Sit on my cock.”

The dirty words leaving his mouth send sparks up your spine, and you do as you’re told. He’s already got one fist around the base of himself, aiding you in sliding down along the length he’s presented you with.

Watching his face contort with pleasure as you sink over him is by far one of your favorite parts of sex with your boyfriend. He’s so expressive, and the breathy moan that spills from his mouth when you’ve settled completely sends you halfway to heaven already.

Yunho is completely flushed, now. With the rosy tint creeping down his neck to his chest and the two small blooming violets you’ve given him, he adjusts to wrap one arm around your waist while the other is propped behind him on the bed so he can stay upright.

You set to work immediately, rolling your hips over him to a rhythm you can both enjoy. He’s panting again, stimulated to sensitivity from the restriction to his vision.

Mewling sounds leave your mouth, hanging open as you continuously spear yourself on his length. He gives a particularly hard thrust that sends you toppling forward onto his chest. As if he intended it that way, he naturally holds you against him and scoots down the bed- enough to plant his feet firmly so he can rock into you with more strength.

This position is your favorite and he knows it. The sound of your cries amplify with the angle of his cock into your depths, and the sounds are diving right into his ear. You’re rapidly approaching your orgasm in this position.

He grunts, baring his teeth as he thrusts into you roughly. “Fuck, Yuyu… oh my god, fuck, yes.” you breathe the words against him, and he delivers you a loud, rewarding groan.

“I can’t, oh fuck this is so good.” he praddles desperately, slowing to flip you onto your back.

He rips the silk away from his eyes, not bothering to toss it from his hand as his gaze finds your face. The mutually fucked out expressions you share spurs him on, working quickly to push your knee up to your shoulder as he drives his cock deeper into you.

The wildness in his eyes catches you off guard and he can feel your walls tightening around him. Yunho immediately places his thumb on your clit, sending you rapidly spiraling into euphoria. He wants to feel you come undone around him.

The added stimulation sends you over the edge and you seize up, crying out his name in a high-pitched moan.

He follows you on a ragged breath a moment later, unable to withstand the pleasure. He slows, thrusting steadily at a declining pace and strength until he’s spent, leaning over your frame with a blissful expression.

It takes several moments for you both you regain your breaths, and when Yunho finally slips from your core and rolls onto his side, you think he is simply stunning. You stay in your position for a few seconds longer, spying him as he throws his arm over his eyes and smiles.

“Mmm, baby, you’re amazing. That was...” he pauses to mull over choice words “Incredibly hot.” he breathes, slowly regaining a normal heart rate. You stir at his praise, finding enough strength in your jellied limbs to pull yourself against his chest.

“Did you like it?” you wonder, just to confirm what you already know.

He exhales a soundless laugh, lifting his arm just enough to grin at you, “That was some of the best sex we’ve ever had. Top three personal favorites.”

It’s a running joke between you to sometimes rank the best sex you’ve had together, and you giggle at his opinion, pleased with yourself.

“I put so much work into that, I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

He removes his arm finally, placing it around you instead. He squeezes you just enough that his lips can reach the crown of your hair. “Thank you.”

“Happy Birthday baby.” you finally say with a kiss to his lips.

It isn’t until four days later, the next time you see the rest of his group, that you’re made privy to the fact that he told them- in great detail- about the birthday gift he received from you when Wooyoung makes a joke about using the tie Yunho is wearing as a blindfold.

Your boyfriend fails to meet your sharp gaze when you look at him immediately after. It’s fine, you tell yourself. You’ll get your revenge.

“That’s alright,” you assure the group. “I’ll just have to use handcuffs on him next time, too.”

You keep a stone face until you catch Jongho’s head whip up at your statement, and the look of pure horror on his face sends you into a fit of laughter.

#yunho smut #ateez smut #ateez fanfiction #yunho x reader #ateez x reader #jeong yunho

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blissfulparker · 3 years

Text

Wipeout⇔ Surfer!Dad!tom

Parings: surfer!dad!tom x surfer!reader

Summary; You and Tom spend your whole relationship in the water. Surfing under the summer sun and competing in summers biggest surf competition. To a surpise, you and Tom take on the biggest challenge nature could throw at you. A baby.

Wc: 9k

Warnings: mentions of insecurities durning pregnancy, fluff

A/n: I know this isn’t a birthday themed fic for Toms b-day but I hope you all enjoy! My little spin on a summer fic with dad!tom 🥰

June.

The summer breeze rose goosebumps to your skin. Your hands coming up to rub your arms as the water was only a bit colder today.

it was summer, the best part of the year when you lived with a beach in your backyard. Spending your whole life surfing you now prepared for the summer tournament that happened only weeks away from now. Surfers, fans, media come in from nearly all over the world just to compete.

To feel a wave under their boards and the adrenaline that rushes through your blood when you finally get on top. The same competition that lead you to Tom, Tom who was now your boyfriend of two years. At first, you laughed at the boy.

Pale, shy—yet so cocky and from London of all places. The most water they got is from the sky. You wanted to laugh with your friends for how confident he was acting, little rain boy wanted to have a chance in the big ocean and he did. To your shock, he scored better than you and scored to be in the top 10. Your laughs stopped after competition and maybe it was the slight momentary enemy thing or it was that deep blue bikini that made him find you after the games and get you out for a drink.

That drink was truly a shared basket of fish and chips as you talked more and more about each other. Pale, rainy London boy ended up being the best thing that ever happened to you.

“You wiped out twice!” He sits atop his board and your hands rub over your face.

“Maybe because I’m distracted!” You splash water in his direction. His toned abs always tanner during g this year and it was hard for the both of you to control yourself. “I’m just tired, stressed.” You shrugged it off truthfully.

“You fell asleep at 8:00 last night, grandma.” He teased and you rolled your eyes.

“Competition stress.” You point to him and he shrugs. If he’s honest, within the two years he’s known you, two years he’s loved and wondered where you had been all his life, he knew your stress. When you were stressed you oftentimes took long showers or wrote in your journal for hours on end but this time your stress was sleeping early/in late and a few times he’s caught you throwing up. All under the name of stress.

He didn’t push anything though, reminding you that he is there and you could tell him anything. But nonetheless, he left you be and just kissed your cheek and told you everything was okay.

“Race you to shore and whoever gets back inside first gets the leftover chicken from last night!” He starts to swim and you quickly flatten yourself on your board.

“What are we like five?” You call out but still push yourself to go faster. Pushing yourself to race him to shore.

Even though Toms board was definitely double his size, he still beat you into the house, already washed off and reheating the leftovers for lunch. After a morning swim you always had lunch before you went off to work where you would teach little kids how to surf. No matter what, you were always around the water.

“So I was checking the competition list this week, checking to see if there’s anyone new…” he trails off on a story. The two of you share the chicken and fries before you suddenly get a disgusted taste in your mouth. The chicken suddenly becomes sour in your mouth but you force yourself to swallow, Tom notices the change and he stops everything to make sure you’re okay.

“Darling, what is it?” He has a worried look but you shake your head.

“Nothing—it’s nothing. I-I just think this part of my chicken was a bit undercooked and it grossed me out. It’s nothing.” You smiled at him and he waited a second before continuing his story.

But that wasn’t the end of it, the next bite even more sour and this time you drop your fork and open the trash can to spit it out. The spitting then followed by spitting up all of your breakfast and lunch. Tom quickly coming to move any stray hair and rubbing your back as he tried to not throw up himself.

When you were done, he quickly closed the trash can lid and got you into the bathroom where he assembled the toothbrush for you.

“Peaches, I know that you told me not to worry but this is the third time this week.” He folded his arms as he leans against the wall.

“I’m fine.” You say through a mouth filled with toothpaste. Spitting into the sink and rinsing your mouth while also splashing some water over your face. When you look back up, just a bit, your eyes flicker to the untouched box of tampons.

One week late wasn’t so bad, one week late was just some built up stress and every women had been a week or two late before. But before tom can take notice in your distraction, you turn around to him who hands you a towel.

“But you’re not fine.” He argues a bit gently, not wanting to offend you.

“Tom, in school I would throw up during exam seasons all the time. It’s just stress okay? Better than losing hair or breaking out I guess.” You try and joke with him but he doesn’t exactly laugh. Just stares at you worried and you push back a few of his curls.

“Hey, look at me,” you tell him and his eyes meet yours. “I’m fine, seriously! Just a bit of stress and nothing the ocean water and you can’t fix.” You kiss his cheek and he finally smiles.

“Can you go see a doctor? For yourself and if not for yourself then for me, I want you to do good at competition and you know they won’t let you compete if you are sick in anyway.” He rubs up and down your sides and you sigh. Hating the doctors but you agree.

“Okay, okay. I’ll make an appointment but they will just tell me I just have butterflies.” You tell him and that’s when he grows a smirk.

“Aw, babe, I didn’t know after all these years I still gave you butterflies!” He teased and you rolled your eyes playfully nudging your body against him. Both leaving the bathroom, your eyes flicker over to the untouched box to tampons that just taunt you one last time before tom shuts the bathroom door. It was possible, you just didn’t want it to be possible just yet.

“I should’ve canceled, I should be there!” Tom speaks through the phone. You sat in an empty, cold doctors office waiting for blood results to get back.

Despite Toms over worrying, everything was fine. They couldn’t find anything physically wrong with you and agreed when you mentioned how it was just anxiety and nerves. Yet they still had to run a blood test to make sure it wasn’t anything they missed and couldn’t see with the naked eye.

Meanwhile tom had to be the most dramatic person out there. You always told him if he was not a surfer he would be an actor. It was impressive how every single night before bed he had a new condition to diagnose you with. Some so severe and outrageous you had to remind him that this wasn’t 1600s England and that you didn’t have the plague. That things were just from stress and if it was a stomach bug then let it run through.

Yet he would rant to you nearly every single night about how he’s always loved you and hated that this was the way to go. Always with that you would smack him with a pillow and tell him to go to sleep and with that he would kiss your cheek and hold you tight as he fell asleep.

“Tom, it’s fine. Seriously! They said they couldn’t find anything wrong, you’d be wasting your time to come here. The most you’d get out of this visit is maybe a sticker. Does Tommy want his girlfriend to bring him back a sticker?” You used a baby voice and you could practically hear him going red.

With a scoff he replies, “Ugh, no. What am I like five?” He pauses for a moment. “But what kind do they have? Were you able to check?” He asked in more of a quiet voice and you laugh.

“No clue. But the nurse told me the best thing I could do is just drink some tea and rest. Maybe they have some spiderman stickers or Sofia the first stickers.” You fiddle with the loose thread on your pants. Ending with a joke to calm both yours and Tom's nerves.

With a smirk, Tom Says, “you’ve been drinking some British tea for awhile—“ he jokes and you quickly cut him off.

“Tom!” You say and as if it was a sign, the nurse comes back in with a clipboard and a gentle smile. “Hey, I’ll call you back, the nurse has my results.”

“Wait! Before you go, ask them to check for tapeworms—“ before he could finish you hung up.

“He’s just dramatic.” You laughed a bit and the nurse laughed along before taking a seat across from you. She clicks her pen which makes you nervous for some reason.

“So your blood came back fine, everything is okay. I just have a few little things such as are you on any birth control?” She asked and you shook your head.

“Oh no, um...haven’t been for a while. But my boyfriend and I use protection and we’re safe. We only used planB once and that was a year ago.” You tell her but she looks up at you. Nodding as she purses her lips.

“Condoms only go so far sweetheart. We just have to ask patients who we find to be with a child incase of any birth control so we can remove it immediately, the birth control, I mean, remove that immediately.” With child. You were with a child. Pregnant. Your heart nearly falls out of your chest and the nurse says a few more things but they don’t register.

“Y-You mean there’s a baby inside of me?” You don’t know what color you look right now but you would assume pale, or green with the feeling of vomiting and this time not from slightly uncooked raw leftover chicken.

“Yup, about one month along it looks! We still will want to run more tests and…” she talks more and more but you don’t listen. Your brain foggy, you don’t know if you’re going to pass out or throw up or shit everywhere from how nervous you were. Hell, even all three seemed like an option as she talked. “So I’ll leave you to tell the important news?” She asked. This was apart of her regular day to day, she probably had hundreds of girls like you come in. Clueless and thinking of a stomach bug and then finding out they are pregnant.

“Y-Yeah.” You try to form a smile.

“Perfect, just meet me up at the desk whenever you’re ready. There’s a bathroom down the hall if you are feeling queasy and of course, help yourself to as many waters in the mini fridge in our waiting room. Congratulations!” She says before she turns out and all you hear is the door click shut. The white noise of the light and the taps of your fingernails against the cool metal bed.

You know it was professional and sweet of her to allow you space to call your significant other but you only stare at Tom's contact. Staring at the word ‘Tommy’ with almost all the heart emojis and his contact pictures of him with the biggest smile.

You have no guts to tell him right in the moment, but rather get off of the paper coated bed and grab your things to leave. Setting up a new appointment with your doctor to see more into the baby. Pregnant, with child, before competition. You and Tom were going to have a faimily.

July.

Tom still hadn’t known the news. It had only been a week but the guilt still ate you alive.

You didn’t want to worry or stress him. You yourself still tried to wrap your brain around it. A baby, every breath you took, every bite of food you ate, every drink you swallowed and every step you took there was a baby you shared it with.

You think about how every time tom had wrapped his arms around your waist this week he gently touched over the baby. Kissing your lying lips, you hated yourself for it.

As for competition, your mind nearly forgot. Still getting in the waters everyday with Tom but this time a bit more cautious. Everytime Tom worried for you, you quickly would cover his worry up with either a joke or kisses.

As for the throwing up, morning sickness was something that came in and out. You started hating the smell of bacon tom cooked in the morning but just waved it off. He noticed your decline in caffeine and beers and wines but you just told him the best athletes only had what’s best for their body before performing.

Tom believed all of it. Every single white lie you told—even though you hated yourself for telling them— believed them.

“How ya feeling?” Toms lips met your forehead as you cuddled up on the couch today. Extra tired and almost positive the baby was screaming at you for rest. You cuddled a bowl of popcorn and a water bottle.

“Mmh, just fine.” You give him a smile as his lips come down to meet yours.

Stealing some popcorn from the bowl, he heads over to the kitchen to prepare dinner.

“I’m thinking we do shrimp tonight?” He looked over and you made a face.

“Ew, no.” You shake your head and he gives a furrowed brow look.

“What? You love shrimp!” He responds and you feel yourself growing hot. Hiding deeper in the Blanket and not wanting to show your face.

“Well, I’m just not in the mood for it tonight.” That was another thing, lots and lots of emotions. Luckily Tom had plenty of emotions to match.

“Okay...tuna?” He offers and you shook your head. “Steak?” Once again and no. “Chicken?” No. “Okay, love, you’ve gotta help me out. I know you’re not feeling well but I’m helpless in here.” He says and your eyes start to water. He notices and immediately comes over.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he comes in front of the couch and crouches down to you. “What’s wrong?” He stroked your cheek and you shook your head.

“Nothing, it’s nothing.” You sniffle. “Seriously, I’ll help you. I’m thinking pasta.” You smiled and he did too.

“Yeah that’s not too bad.”

And so you two made and ate dinner completely normally. No tears from you, no sickness from you. Tom only talked about the waves out today and how much you would’ve loved it. Now you two spent time washing up.

“You think that one girl with red hair will be there like last year? She was so annoying.” You laughed as you got excited again for competition. Tom grew tense as you mentioned it. You noticed that. How he didn’t talk much about competition anymore. It went from the only thing you two talked about to now nothing. You knew how excited he was, the both of you were but suddenly it was like that excitement was put in a box to rest.

“Yeah...she was.” He kinda laughed but then just washed harder at the dish.

“Everything okay? You’ve kinda stopped talking about competition.” You put down your plate and that's when he took a deep breath.

“It’s nothing, I promise.” He tells you, pressing his lips into a lying smile that you knew.

“Baby, you can tell me anything you know. I’m always here for—“ and with that, he cut you off and told you the words you hated to hear.

“I-I took you out of the competition,” Tom sighed, dropping the dish rag on the counter in defeat. He watches as your face goes from annoyed to shock. Anger builds behind the eyes he find peace in. “It was wrong me me to do so—“

“damn right it was wrong of you to do so!” You slam your hand on the counter. “W-why would you?”

“You were sick! You were so sick for so long and what was I going to let you do? just make yourself worse—“

“it was the stress! I told you it was the—“

The built up ignored tension between you both finally caused him to snap.

“Is your period being late stress too?” His words caused the room to be silent. You take a sharp breath as you stare at him with anger but not at him anymore, at the fear of your new life.

“I’m just late, it’s normal for a woman like me to be rhis stressed and late...” you trailed off and this time he had the red face.

“Bullshit. What happened at that doctors appointment.” He demanded. You didn’t say a word at first which only angered him more. “Damnit (y/n)—“

“I’m pregnant.” You finally cry out and he knew his thoughts could be true, he knew they had to be but the moment those words left your mouth his whole body froze. He went pale with fear and shock, his hand no longer gripping the counter out of anger but out of support in case he passes out. The tears that left your eyes were uncontrollable as you let out a sob, the first sob that snapped tom back into reality.

He didn’t think twice, his arms supportively wrap around you as he tells you sweet nothings to try and calm you and himself.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He mumbled into your hair. You swallowed hard as you pulled back, your face wet with tears and you sniffled. His thumbs come up to wipe away each tear and each trace of mascara.

“Because I wanted to be normal still! I wanted to compete, I wanted to surf! I can’t surf anymore tom, i'm going to be a mom and I won’t have time for surfing.” You sob more and he only pulls you back into his grasp.

“I’m so selfish and stupid to even think to compete but I just want to n-not—“ you can’t even spit it out anymore.

“Who said you can’t surf when you’re a mom?” He moved back to hold your face. You didn’t look at him, he wasn’t going to force you to either. This was your decisions right now, he just wanted to listen.

“When you’re a woman and a mother, everything is for your child. You will have time to surf because you’re a dad but no one wants a mom to do anything but take care of their kid and I’ll love this baby so much, I will, but don’t want to lose myself. I’m young, you’re young and you’re about to be the next big thing.” You punch his shoulder playfully trying to lighten things up. “I—i-W-we’ll—“ you start again and he shakes his head.

“Don’t even say it. Sweetheart, you’re having a baby, our baby. I will make sure you still surf, when it’s safe, Of course. I-I don’t even have the words right now, my heart is racing, feel it.” He placed your hand over his chest to feel his pounding heart. “You will be (y/n) Holland, the infamous surfer that beat Tom Holland twice last year and you will be the mother to our kid. Their badass mom.” He cracks a smile as his hand goes to your stomach.

A shared moment where he only touches the stomach as he learns about it. You look at him softly and he looks at you as if you were the entire world. As if he was a little kid at sea world for the first time, he looks at you with beauty and hope and a hint of thankfulness

“For a minute,” you speak again. “I thought you were completely calm about this.” You chuckle and he shakes his head.

“No, I actually think I’m going to throw up.” He held his breath for a moment before he moved to the trash can and emptied his worried stomach.

This time it was you rubbing his back and wiping his mouth. Maybe you wanted to roll your eyes at the Irony but you just knew he loved you.

Holland. He used the last name Holland on you for the first time you’d ever heard it. He said it so confidently as if you two were already married. Holland. You can get use to that.

Day of competition

there was this sort of shock in everyone’s face as they watched you walk in shorts and a tee. Joining the crowds of people instead of getting ready for the waves of water.

This year was no wetsuit with your board, slathering sunscreen on your face as you got ready but rather taking a seat in that sand just like everyone else. Carrying a baby no one knew about except you and Tom and a few friends and family.

Your body was warm with nerves, hundreds of cameras here usually captured the sea, interviewing the surfers afterwards. Although it was not like Hollywood, there was no TMZ or dailymail, but there was enough interest and news casters to tilt their heads for why they infamous (y/n) (y/l/n)—soon to be (y/n) Holland—took a seat with the friends and family. Cheering on from the sand.

“Hey.” Z snaps you out of your constant looking around, how your eyes never focused on one thing.

“Ease up a bit, babes, no one even knows.” She knew, you knew you had to explain to her when you were sitting out. Just as Tom explained to his brothers and the two of you both would explain to his mother after competition. For he knew the women would get so excited she would explode

“Right.” Was all you said as you started clapping with the rest of the crowd when the games begun. It would be a moment for them to get to tom, they always let the younger ones go first, you and Tom were in that fine middle where you had to wait just for the middle of the games.

“Do you want a boy or a girl?” Z asked with a hint of excitement to her voice. She kept it quite enough to where it was just you.

“I’m okay with either.” You didn’t ever care much for gender, although a girl would be nice to balance out the male testosterone you’re always around. “A girl would be nice though.” You smile at Z.

She gives a smile back, leans back on the towel as she soaks up the sun. “And Tom?” She asked and you shrugged.

He had talked about almost everything but a boy or girl, when you asked if he cared he told you,

“as long as they have two arms, two legs, a torso, a head, comes out of me with no trouble, then it’s a perfect surfing buddy.” You quote him exactly, smiling at his words from a few nights ago.

When he found out, his hands never left your stomach, even though you reminded him the baby was only the size of a grape. That well...it was just a bunch of cells forming up in the moment that couldn’t exactly kick for it had legs the size of your pinky nail. He still waited, he waited and waited, you didn’t even know what he was waiting for at one point for he would pause between his words at the baby or when he asked you a question he looked down at your stomach as if they would reply for you or before you.

“I know hes nervous as hell, but he’s so excited, I know it. The other day Harrison told me he cried when he told him. Tom, crying.” Z laughed a bit and you did too.

“If you think I’m the emotional one...turn on coco or inside out and see what happens to that man.” You chuckled as you turned your head back to the waters to watch tom with a smile on his face blow a kiss in your direction before getting on his board. Paddling out to the sea you watch him get ready to take the first wave, the crowd goes wild and your hand rests over your stomach.

This time, next year, you would sit on these sands with a smaller version of the two of you.

August.

Being early in your pregnancy but far enough to show was not as glamorous as people made it be.

Your shorts no longer fit, shirts started to get loose at the top and tight at the bottom and for the love of heaven you slept so much. Tom liked the idea of endless naps, somedays you wondered if he was the pregnant one instead of you. As he slouched around, ate just as many snacks as you and started to even complain about some of the same things you did.

Maybe it was the impact your moods had on him or the fact he stopped drinking caffeine since you no longer could have it and he didn’t know what his life was before morning coffee was with you. He was almost the same as you were durning the pregnancy.

“What are you doing?” Putting on a bikini for the first time since you told Tom. For the first time in about a month. You didn’t like the fit much anymore, the bloation you constantly had and the extra weight you now carried in your thighs, arms and breasts made you insecure. The top that used to fit perfect now had you grunting to tie. But you had to wear what you had to wear to get you in the water.

“I’m coming with you to the beach.” You say innocently and he shakes his head.

“You’re not picking up a board, you know that. Besides, the waters have been rough lately, there’s that storm coming in and one hard wave can hit you and I don’t want that to happen.” He exaggerates and you look at him with a dead stare.

“Tom, I haven’t touched the water in over a month, I’m pretty sure my skin cells are changing because of it.” You exaggerate as well and he comes up to you.

“Well, I’m not letting you in the water. It’s too dangerous.” He was serious, at first you thought he was just being dramatic, he was still going to let you swim but he was 100% serious.

“Tom, you’re kidding.” You scoff a bit and he shakes his head.

“I’m sorry darling, I know a lot is happening—“ he starts and you move back.

“The doctor said I am healthy enough to be physically active and I—“ before you could finish he cut you off.

“The doctor said you could do some squats, leg workouts, lift a 5lb weight, that was the type of exercise he said. The waters are too dangerous, please don’t argue with me.” He pleads but your emotions get the best of you. Anger starting to build and your body heating up.

Tom had learnt one thing so far; don’t upset the pregnant women and that’s exactly what he did.

“You’re telling me to not argue with you when you are the one holding me hostage in my own home? God, Tom, I have a life still too! A month ago you said you understood what it was going to take and now you’re treating me the way I specifically asked not to! I’m getting in the water, I haven’t been in the water for months it feels like and that’s all I know—“ your rant continues but Tom isn’t looking at you anymore. He’s looking at your side view in the mirror.

Your bump is showing, the bump he swore he could kinda feel but not see was now showing. Almost like it grew overnight.

“Fuck, Tom! Look at me while I’m—“ you start to yell again but he steps closer.

“Look.” He stares at the mirror and comes closer to your bump.

“Oh my…” you see exactly what he’s seeing. The small curve outwards that is your swollen stomach. Your bump.

“May I?” He asked and your mood went from angry to overfilled with happiness. Your eyes starting to tear ss you nodded.

“Tom, it’s your child too, you can touch.” You told him and he did. Your hand even went to your stomach as you rubbed over the bump that was barely forming.

“It’s like it happened overnight.” He laughed a bit and you did too.

“I swear it wasn’t there last night when I got out of the shower. I swear.” You let a few tears fall and he peppers soft kisses.

“I’m sorry.” He gently stroked at the stomach and you sniffled.

“I’m sorry too. I know you just want what’s best for us but I’m just…” you sniffle some more not being able to finish.

“I know baby, I know.” He gets up and wraps his arms around your back. Pulling you in for a hug for you to cry on his chest. So emotional over everything but he was right there. Right there with you.

“We can call the doctor about you surfing, we can call him right now if you want. But I just can’t lose you.” He gives a smile and you nod as your lips meet with his.

“C-can you order the chicken from the place I like?” You finally regain your composure and he nods.

“Of course, anything else?” He looks down at the stomach and you shake your head.

“No, not for now.” You smile down at the small bump forming. “Wait!” You stop him as he’s leaving to grab the phone. He turns to face a guilty looking you, “and mozzarella sticks.” You rub your stomach and he nods. With a faint smile he goes,

“always.” As that was your constant craving. Leaving you in the room for a moment and coming back to see you dressed back ins sweats and a tee shirt, Tom smiled and gladly cuddled up next to you, rubbing and talking to the bump about the future. Maybe you couldn’t surf, but you had Tom right by your side.

December.

Christmas cookies and sweetly salted popcorn occupied your side as you spent a snowy Christmas in London. No beach, no blazing sun even during the day, Tom took you home where you were now five months pregnant.

Heavily showing and to even think you wanted to go surfing months ago was laughable. You hated getting up to shower somedays for it was too much work.

“Darling, Angel, my pretty girl,” Tom sat next to you nervous with his next words. “I know you’re pregnant but there are only so many Christmas cookies.” He told you and you smacked his shoulder.

“Thomas, she’s pregnant! She’s allowed as many cookies as she wants besides there are more in the oven but pregnant women gets first pick as she is carrying my grandchild.” His mom immediately came to your defense. Taking so much good care of you while you were here, Tom doesn’t even think he got this much affection as a sick child.

“I wasn’t saying it’s a bad thing for her to eat cookies, I just want one!” Tom defended himself and you handed him a cookie and you felt your baby kick.

“See? They don't even want you stealing our cookies. I’m eating for two, I’m eating for your baby. You eat a lot by the way! Remember that summer you went through the whole fridge in a week? Yeah, now I’m eating for a tiny version of that! And myself! It’s hard out here for me and what did you do huh? Take two minutes!” You snatched the cookie back from him and rubbed your stomach. His brothers stifled a laugh and Tom grew red in embarrassment.

“I last longer than two minutes.” He says is a mumble.

Rolling your eyes, You rested your head on Toms shoulder and moved his hand over to the kicking stomach. “She says thank you.” You smile as you take a bite from the cookie.

“A she?” His mom perks up and the rest of the family does.

It was a mistake, you and Tom had a battle of the sexes. It seemed as if you didn’t want to know the gender right before your winter holiday. Or really the gender at all. The gender was available for you guys now but you both didn’t see it as a big deal. The baby’s room would be filled with ocean themed toys and a gentle blue wall Anyways. And besides, whatever they decide to be they would make the perfect surfing buddy. Although it was still fun to think of, You thought a girl and Tom swore a boy.

“No, mum, we still don’t know I promise. (Y/n) is just messing around.” He swore and the family relaxed again.

“He’s right, I am just joking. Tom is probably right with his assumption, thinking it may be a boy. With all this moving and eating, just like Tom.” You poke his cheek and Tom again flusters in embarrassment.

“Hey, I have a fast metabolism.” He told you and you kissed his temple.

“I know baby, I’m just teasing you. My man knows how to stay fit and sexy.” You playfully rub his stomach and suddenly the stifled laughs from the boys turn into disgusted noises.

There was everything to indicate a boy, well, mostly just a gut feeling. Tom's mother described her pregnancy with Tom to you and it was nearly the same. A baby boy, you could see that. You would need another fridge and a lot more paper towels assuming the babe will be like Tom and eat yet spill everything. You liked the idea of a boy. Plus, Tom had been playing a stupid game where he asked the baby questions making it kick for an answer. When Tom asked if it was a boy or girl, it kicked the moment he said boy.

The ding of the kitchen timer went off, more cookies fresh out of the oven and Tom was quick to jump up.

“Let me help m’lady up.” He grabs your hands and you grunt as you stand up. You walk with Tom at your side and once you are alone eating more cookies in the kitchen your hand rubs over your stomach as you feel the baby kick in excitement.

“Off the topic of gender, I think they miss the ocean. They kick so much just when I sit in the bath like they are having fun in the water.” You mention water and you feel a kick. They couldn’t understand, but they could hear and a smile rose to yours and Tom's face.

“Then they’re just like their mama.” He leans in and kisses your cheek.

“Who knows, maybe once we get back I’ll get in the—“ before you can finish your sentence about surfing, a sharp kick to your bladder causes you to hunch over with a pained face. Tom worried as he held you panicked but you got back up with a deep breath.

“Nevermind, little one didn’t like that idea.” You hold onto his arms tightly.

“Everything okay? Just a bladder kick?” He panicked and you just nodded.

“Yup.” Your face scrunches up again. “Just the bladder.” You suddenly have the urge to pee. “Now shoo, I’ve got to pee.” You tell him and he looks at you in confusion.

“You just peed like—“ you give him a look making him think about how he’s finishing his sentence. “Right, my darling.” He moved out of your way to let you go. Snatching one more cookie from the tray, he smiled as he thought how next year at this exact time, you would be holding a little baby.

April.

One week. You were one week late and as any normal pregnant woman would be resting in bed and rubbing over her swollen belly and anticipating the child’s arrival. Although that was not what you were doing.

Against Tom's wishes, you went back to work to see the kids start up their surfing lessons. Although there would be no swimming for you, no waves for you just yet, seeing the kids happy to be there was something that sparked joy to your heart always. Helped ease your nerves and turn them into excitement.

“Mrs. (Y/l/n)-Holland, look what I learnt how to do!” One of the kids calls out. You had a smile for not only did they call you by both yours and Tom's name, but that they had always been excited to show you new things.

“That was amazing Ryder!” You clapped at the boy who did a handstand. He had a big smile with teeth missing. Your hand went over your stomach again, an aching pain that was noting but a false labor.

The doctor said it was fine. Women always experienced this right before birth and just take a deep breath but don’t waste your time rushing to the hospital just for them to send you home.

It was normal to be late and that you had a stressful year so it was okay. The doctor mentioned that you still felt contractions which meant you were close. But when it was Tom, every slight indicator of pain you felt meant a freak out where he rushed around the house to get the baby bag and try and get you in the car when in reality, you just had to pee.

“T-That’s really cool.” You wince and the boys face goes from excitement to worry. Within the luck, Tom comes jogging from the parking lot with lunch for the two of you. Hoping to get in the water with the kids and keep an eye on you.

“Hey Angel.” He kissed your cheek but noticed your pain. “Everything okay?” He panicked and you nodded.

“Yeah, yeah, Ryder here was just showing me how he can do a handstand now—“ you can’t even finish as the pain was strong.

“(Y/n)?” Tom needed to be calm, your face scrunched up as you held your swollen stomach. “Darling, Angel, pretty girl, look at me.” He used all the pet names you liked and you looked up at him with worry in your eyes. “I think it’s time for us to meet the little one.” He nods with a trying smile and you feel an even sharper pain.

“Mmh, I can’t do this.” You breath heavily as you hold onto the stomach. “Yes you can, if you can surf a wave that is 12 feet with no wipeout then you can birth our baby.” He promised and also got the little boy who was so excited to show you his new moves a moment ago to run and get another adult.

“Tom, I-I can’t.” You felt yourself tearing up and he shakes his head. Your heart pounding and mind swarming with worried.

“You can, you will. You are the strongest women I—“ before he can start his motivational speech you cry out in pain.

“Get me in the goddamn car!” You cry and he nods and gets you up before anything worse. He rushes to the hospital as quick as he can, holding your hand and trying to not crash as you hold your stomach and scream.

When he gets to the hospital, he’s still in a wetsuit. They take immediate action into getting you into a room where you are laying with your legs up waiting for a doctor. Holding Tom's hand as you cry.

“Uh sir?” The doctor walks in and looks at the man in the wetsuit. “We’re going to have to ask you to put on scrubs...helps prevent any ourside clothing germs getting on the baby...are you wearing anything under that?” She asked and he immediately started unzipping.

“Jesus tom, not here, she wants you to get changed in the bathroom.” You shake your head as you run your hands over your face. In pain but want to laugh at your worried boyfriend for how he was acting in the moment.

“Right! Right!” He quickly changes from the wetsuit into the scrubs. The doctors look at him funny but let it go as you’re clearly in pain and needing the baby to be out.

“You got this love, you’re doing so good—“ he starts again but you don’t even want to hear it.

“was this really worth two minutes! I’m getting my fucking tubes tied!” You scream at him and he flushes a deep shade of red as one of the nurses giggles.

After one more big push you heard the sound of a cry filled the room. For just a second, all the pain you felt went away as you see the body of your baby, baby boy. You both were right, a beautiful little boy.

“A boy.” Tom breathes out in awe.

“Dad you wanna come cut the cord?” He looked at you for approval and you nodded. He cut the cord with shaky hands, couldn’t focus for the life of him as he just stared at the boy. You only got to hold him for a second before he’s taken off to a bath. Tom following them before they bring him back in a bundle of blankets.

“Oh my…” you hold the beautiful boy. His little lips open just a bit to make a sound while his eyes flutter to adjust to the light. “Look at him tom.” You feel yourself cry and Tom does too.

“Wow, look at you.” He touched the boy's cheek who immediately tried to take the finger into his mouth. “You did that.” He tells you as the two of you admire it.

“We did that.” You tell him and he smiles a bit. “Although yeah, it was mostly me.” The boy stares hard at Tom, Tom who was still in just swim trunks and scrubs.

“Hey, I ate a lot with you during this pregnancy. Even had my own morning sickness.” He teased and you only laughed.

The room going silent for a moment. Hearing the little cooes of your boy as you held him. Toms finger tracing over his cheek when you finally spoke, “Caspian.”

Tom had mentioned how he liked the name for a boy, more than once. It had connections to the water and to Europe so the child would have a bit of both. You had to admit to yourself that you liked it but just wanted to stick with a more casual name. But looking at how he looked at you the moment you said that name, you knew it was the one.

“Caspian?” He repeated and you nodded.

“Caspian Holland.” You told.

He smiled as he kissed your forehead. “Holland? Just that?” He asked as well and you nodded.

“Yeah, yeah just like that.” You smiled. A perfect moment in the perfect situation was interrupted by a small nurse who held a tee shirt.

“Uh sir?” The nurse looked at the two of you and both of your attentions were caught. “So unfortunately we have to ask you to wear a shirt, we got one from the lost and found for you hoping that it would fit.” The shirt read “I’m not as fun as mom” and Tom's face dropped. A proud smirk rises to your face as you look at Tom who’s flared his nostrils just a bit to show his embarrassment.

“Yeah Tom, put on the shirt.” You encouraged and he looked at you. His eyes telling you that you’re going to regret that but you can’t wait 15 years into the future to tell your son.

Sighing as he took the shirt from the poor nurse and sat back down on the chair in a huff.

“You’re never letting me live this one down are you?” Shaking your head you look back down at the boy,

“no, I don’t think we will.” You brought your dry cracked lips down to the boys forehead, you had no water within the past hour and screaming with crying seemed to make you as dead as possible. “Caspian. Caspian Holland.” He whispers again. “Thank you.” He looked at you and you furrowed your brows.

“For everything.” After months of no surfing, months of pain and aches, instead of saying anything back you looked at him and said

“sushi.” Was all you said and he furrowed his brows.

“W-what?” He questioned.

“I need sushi, please.” You sigh and he smiled. Months of being unable to eat any fish that was all you wanted in the moment.

“One California roll coming up.” He kissed your cheek and then the boy's cheek. Calling in the nurse, sending for a California roll and tuna.

Caspian was sleeping soundly in Tom's arms while you ate and rested. Everything was worth it, from the moment he stepped on a plane one summer to Hawaii he knew it was worth it for he found a family in the end.

June.

Once again the sand was squishing under your toes. Feeling each and every grain as you held your baby boy tightly bundled in blankets against your chest as you walked out to the beach. He was freshly bathed, you and Tom took turns. You were so eager the moment you were cleared to get back in the water after birth that the day the doctor cleared you for physical activity, you did it.

But tonight wasn’t you getting in the water, it was you greeting Tom and telling him to come back inside.

“Dinner is done.” You call out to him as he jogs back to the two of you. The baby boy cooing as he sees the ocean and his fathers dripping wet figure coming towards them.

“Hey, look who’s out.” He immediately leans in and kisses all over the pretty baby boy's face. “My sweet boy is so fresh and clean.”

You and Tom had argued about who he had looked more like,You or Tom. he had Tom's nose for sure and his big brown eyes that you knew were going to be trouble. If you had a hard time saying no to Tom when he batted his lashes and gave a glossy look, it was going to be impossible to say no to your beautiful boy.

“He just took a bath. But it wasn’t the ocean.” You smiled and Tom pressed a kiss to your face too.

“Mmh, did you?” He looks at the boy who was yawning in his mother’s arms. “Want to swim a bit?” He asked and you shook your head.

After birth, Tom did a lot of the work. He loved it too. He claimed you needed rest, in which you did, but you would often find him just sitting in the nursery staring at the baby boy. Telling him stories to sleep and kissing his face. He would let you surf, bathe, sleep, all while he took care of your beloved boy.

“No, I’m so tired I think if I use my legs any longer they will snap.” You give a pout and Tom immediately kisses it away.

Tom started to gather his stuff, the beach towel and the bag he normally carried and the moment he started to pack up your baby boy let out a wail.

Within the two months of his birth, you were able to identify each cry. When he was hungry it was more of a gurgle, when he was sleepy it was more strained and forced, when he craved touch it was a whimper sounding cry and then there was this. He was simply upset something did not go his way. May you or Tom stepped away for a moment, the bottle gone too early, but now it was his father packing up his stuff that makes him scream a cry that makes heads turn.

“What’s the matter bubs?” Tom pouts as he sets the stuff down and comes over to him.

Once the stuff is set down the cries settle just a bit, settle enough until tom takes him out of your arms and presses him up against his body.

Still wet from the surf, you both think the baby liked it. While Tom occupied little Caspian, you picked up the towels and his bag for him and once again the boy let out a wail cry which made you and Tom furrow your brows.

“I-I don’t know what it is. I-I changed him and I bathed him and he was perfectly fine and—“ you start to panic and as you panic you drop the stuff which calms his cries. Tom immediately took notice and grew a smile that made his heart flutter in his chest.

“(Y/n),” he stops you and you look up at him with a worried look as if you’ve done something wrong. “He wants to stay. He wants to stay on the beach.” Tom says in a calm voice and the boy was now only cooing in Tom's arms. He bounced gently but mostly cooed as his daddy smiled at him.

“H-He knows we’re leaving the beach.” You sigh and come over to the boys. Petting your sons head as he relaxes in his fathers arms.

“Like I’ve always said, just like his mama.” Tom smiled up at you and you caught his lips for a kiss. “Well…” you rub your hands on your thigh, wiping off the sand you got stuck all over your hands. “Since Caspian always gets his way, I better bring dinner out here.” You smile as you poke at the sweet boys face and Tom moves and has a serious face.

“(Y/n), no, you can’t just whip out your boob in front of—OW! I’m kidding!” You smacked his arm for the stupid comment he made that at first had you worried.

“I hate you. I’m bringing out the dinner.” You start to walk off and he smiles.

“You love us!” He shouts back.

“Just Caspian! You? Not much you. remember...you’re not as fun as mom!” You call out to him, sending him a wink and he wants to say something back but he holds his tounge.

Looking down at the baby boy he says, “when I teach you how to surf I need you to beat mums ass a few times while you’re out there. Just for her little comments.” Tom spoke to the boy and he cooes. “Atta boy.” With that he plots down on the sand towel.

Setting caspian down on the towel for just a moment so he can strip from his wetsuit and be closer to him. You come back out balancing the plates of food for you and Tom as you seat next to them and eat. Leaning your head on Toms shoulder and kissing at it.

You never knew that one competition, one amateur British boy and one shared basket of fish and chips could lead you to the best moments of your life. Could lead you to the best family you’ve ever had.

Please leave feedback! It helps me grow as a writer and lets me know what more you want to see!

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theotheroccassionalfanficwriter · 3 years

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CAN I JUST SAY THAT YOUR WRITING IS AMAZING????? Its so detailed with a great flow and filled with so much emotion I LOVE ITTTT!! You got me lying in bed tossing and turning with “in pursuit of knowledge” 🥰🥰 that’s my favourite one I really hope you continue it!

Can I request one of the upcoming chapter to explore more on how Zhongli and reader first meet and what are the other things they did that made him fall for them more and more each day? Zhongli doesn’t seem to be the kind that falls in love at first sight so I’m interested to see how the reader seems to have slowly crawled her way into his stone heart UGHHH ❤️❤️😩😩 It can be filled with fluff or with smut, up to you! Thank you so much ❤️

Thank you! You can keep on tossing and turning then with this! I also head canon that when it comes to love, Zhongli wouldn't fall in love at first sight but instead he'd be like a snail. The entire time I'm writing this I thought long and hard on how to proceed because I couldn't decide on a satisfactory way Zhongli would meet reader. I already knew that it would be a speed run of Enemies to Friends, and slow burn Friends to Lovers. So I wanted their first meeting to be seemingly unremarkable to Zhongli.

In Pursuit of Duty

Summary: The simplest of things can lead to the greatest moments of our life. Meeting you was Zhongli's greatest fortune.

There were a few mortals in Zhongli’s life, both as an Archon and on the few occasions he mingled with humans, that were able to capture his attention or even his praise. And in all of his life, mortal and divine, no one was able to capture his enmity in the way you did.

“Would it really matter what Rex Lapis thinks if we entered and fucked around the domain in Guyun stone forest?”

Zhongli blinked, aghast at your tone as Childe covered his mouth to stifle his laughter.

“What?” You asked the two of them as if you had not merely suggested tampering with the seals of Guyun Stone Forest.

“The entire place is home to the fallen gods” Zhongli reminded you “a graveyard for those who died in the Archon War”

“It’s been decades, they should be already on the reincarnation wheel at this point” You waved his worries off, sending Childe to another fit of laughter while Zhongli felt indignant “‘sides Rex Lapis is busy doing fuck knows what he probably wouldn’t even notice if one of the seals got messed with unless one of the dead Gods decide to fuck shit up”

Zhongli, who was very much Rex Lapis in disguise, very much noticed it and though he was the one who orchestrated this whole scenario, felt no less than pleased with the attitude you were having.

“The dead still deserve to be respected!” Zhongli insisted as he blocked your hand from reaching towards one of the seals.

“You stick in the mud! You make it sound like I’m defiling their graves or something!” You whined “Besides the Heavens must be willing if they had a stray seal plaster itself on my face!”

“It was a ruined seal. The divine powers had long since dwindled from it. Thus, the Heavens had no hand on it” Zhongli stubbornly insisted as he moved to block your path.

On the side, Childe was still laughing loudly.

“That’s it! Fight me you bastard!” You shouted as you took a few steps back and summoned the elements to form your weapon, a spear.

And really, it was almost funny in hindsight, how you would choose his weapon of all things. The one weapon he was best at among others but right now, in this moment, Zhongli had felt more than annoyed.

“Very well” His spear, dragon’s bane, at his side “I accept your challenge.”

There were a few opponents in his life that gave Zhongli a thrill of the battle. Ever fewer were able to make the gears in his head turn as quickly as it did when facing you, each strike of your spear was clearly aiming for his life, and yet the look in your eyes didn’t carry a single thought of murder.

It was frustrating. It was Confusing. It was, most of all, fascinating.

Fighting you brought him back to the days before the Archon Wars, where the Gods of Liyue were at a semblance of peace. It made him remember the joy of fighting someone your equal, it made his blood rush in a way that it had almost forgotten. And Zhongli was starting to see that beyond your heretical ways, behind your annoying mask of affability, was someone who can walk in the path of the divine.

‘No, you would walk in it for the sake of your knowledge’ Zhongli thought as he blocked your attack and moved his feet to kick you in your stomach.

“This ends here” Zhongli declared as he summoned a steele behind your back.

The sound of your back hitting it rang loudly in the air but the look on your face was something he would never forget in a long while.

You spat out blood, shakily standing up from your position, “You win this round! But I swear on Rex Lapis’ six pack abs I’ll find a way to replicate that fucking seal!”

And then you were gone in a spark of electro.

The peaceful sound of waves remained in the air that somehow hung heavy. Childe had stopped laughing and was looking confused as he mused, “That’s the first time in a long while I’ve seen them look like that.”

Zhongli paid no attention to his words and instead picked up the abandoned seal and returned it to its proper position.

“Interesting” Childe muttered, softly and slightly ominous to Zhongli’s ears.

What he found interesting was something Zhongli wisely decided to not entertain. He really hoped that today would be the last time he’d ever have to be in the presence of Childe’s...friend.

For his part, Childe had no regrets in introducing Zhongli to you, or rather having Zhongli experience the misfortune of knowing you. From the moment Childe had met you again, he knew that his life would be thrown out of whatever carefully calculated plan Pulcinella had made. And it was one he was happy with, if the rumors in Snezhnaya had him part of the chaos then you were chaos incarnate.

It was precisely the reason why Childe had brought Zhongli with him when meeting you in the Guyun Stone Forest.

“A friend of mine, an expert in the ways of the divine and assorted knowledge, would lend us their skills in challenging the...impossible, shall we say” Childe said on the way “Most of their thoughts are heretical, almost, but well no one has ever said it wasn’t effective in reaching the desired result.”

“Ah, a researcher from Sumeru then?” Zhongli had asked, the light in eyes glinting in interest.

“Of sorts” Childe answered because as much as you stayed in Sumeru, most of your knowledge had come from your own experiments and cases from clients seeking answers the divine could not give.

This was why you were almost heretical.

“I must warn you that for them the sacred can be profaned and the profane can be sacred” Childe added as they reached the shores of Guyun Stone Forest, and found you basking under the gentle rays of sunlight in front of the Domain.

Zhongli stared at you, the sight of you head looking up with your eyes closed as it felt the warmth of the sunlight. Geo crystalflies surrounding you as a light breeze had the ends of your hair fluttering in the wind.

“Who is that?” Zhongli asked.

“My friend, the infamous Xiézhihuā Mìngfù of Liyue” Childe answered.

In that exact moment, you slowly opened your eyes, lashes fluttering softly as you blinked. The wind blew and a rain of leaves fell on you, gentle and calm as you stared at them.

Like an ill-fated omen, Zhongli began to notice you on the streets of Liyue Harbor. Rumors and words of your deeds would reach his ears, on occasion some of your cases would be told in the tea houses.

“Miracle” a few bystanders would say.

“Heretical” the few devout traditionalists would mutter in hushed tones.

But all agreed that you were a genius. An innovator that brought changes like a storm. You gathered envy and admiration in your wake, foreign nobles and dignitaries seeking you out for consultations or to ask for your help. And yet, for all of your infamy and prestige, Zhongli often found you amidst the crowd of orphans or Liyue’s slum dwellers.

Sometimes, Childe was with you, other times it was Director Hu and her friends, the second young master of the Feiyun Guild and the exorcist. In one memorable moment, Yanfei. But more often than not you were by yourself, answering questions from children with a pleasant smile and mischievous glint in your eyes.

It was such a huge contrast from the one he first met that it made Zhongli pause and observe you from afar. Enough times that those around him would say, “No need for alarm, Mr. Zhongli. Xiézhihuā Mìngfù is honorable.”

It was those words that made him ponder. For all of your borderline heretical actions, miracle works that trespass on the Divine, the entirety of Liyue agreed that you were honorable.

It wasn’t until Childe had asked for his help did he cross paths with you again. Weeks of avoiding you to maintain peace were all for naught when he found himself in your presence once more. A jar of osmanthus wine on your hand and an ingratiating smile on your face, you offered it to him and said, “Osmanthus wine, I’ll give this to you so don’t be a stick in the mud!”

In his youth, he would have immediately brawled with you. But now, Zhongli settled for drinking a cup of tea with contempt as much as the act could convey. Your laughter, melodious, rang in the private room of Liuli Pavillion.

“Aiyo! What a tough crowd!” You said as you sat opposite him and placed the bottle in the center of the table, “Then shall we begin anew? My birth name is a secret, my courtesy name is a secret, my title is Xiézhihuā Mìngfù! Xié for Heretic, zhi for knowledge, and huā for flower!”

“What kind of introduction is that?” Childe teased as he began his battle with chopsticks.

“An unforgettable one!” You replied, sending a wink to Zhongli who merely pursed his lips.

“I am Zhongli, a consultant for the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor.”

You smiled and decided to leave the matter at that, somethings could not be forced. So you retreated and decided to just straightforwardly tell him your intentions.

“I’ve heard that Mr. Zhongli is knowledgeable in Liyue’s history.”

Zhongli could sense your sincerity, it placated him a bit, made the dismal first meeting a little bit better. So he tries because he is magnanimous and there was no reason to burn a bridge, “I am merely remembering what others have forgotten.”

He looked at you in the eyes, drawn to the way your eyes burn bright with curiosity. It reminded him of Guizhong so he shakes the thought away because the dead and the living must not be compared. But as the conversation grows long, the topics eventually shift from the job to everything else, Zhongli can’t help but notice your innate desire to help those who are unfortunate.

Somehow it made him understand why you were seen as honorable. It wasn’t until all of you were facing unknown danger did he realize what it truly meant when used on you.

The case you were asking was slightly connected with Childe’s job for you. The case was about the sudden deaths of several brides that were kidnapped and found dead at an abandoned temple. No one had reported it to the Qixing until one of the victims involved was a distant relative of a Qixing who was to be wedded to one of the Szehnayan Merchants.

Childe had taken the chance to offer aide, calling for your help as one of the known detectives of Fontaine. It had surprised Zhongli, and made him respect you but all of it was quickly thrown away when you had given him a cheeky wink and said, “I can even tell how big a man’s dick is.”

“Shameless” He had admonished and yet he was unaware of the small smile he wore on his face.

The investigation led the three of you to a small village in the mountain, with a local shrine that was dedicated to an old god that even Zhongli had never heard of. The three of you had pored over legends passed down by mouth, discussing and comparing with the records found in Liyue’s public library and scholars. Childe, through his seemingly endless funds, had paid for information on every victim so far that wasn’t in the packet given by the millelith. Zhongli, with his seemingly endless connections, had talked to everyone and anyone that had studied Liyue’s countless lores and legends. And you had talked with the family of the victims, investigating the crime scene and connecting everything that could lead to an answer.

That was how Zhongli found you, messed up clothes and tired eyes poring over documents in the middle of discarded papers that laid on the dark wood floor of your secluded residence in Minlin.

“Have you not slept?” Zhongli asked, frowning as he made his way towards you.

“Not yet” You answered as you got up and discarded the paper you were reading to go to your wide cork board that held all the relevant information you had, “I’m close to figuring out what sort of deity or demon we’re going to fight.”

“What about the reason?”

“Solved it ages ago” You answered carelessly, pointing at the left corner of the board.

Zhongli went over and flitted through the papers on that side until he found what he was looking for.

“A vengeful bride?”

“Mn” You replied as you removed a pin and replaced the paper with an old newspaper clipping “There was a record of a previous incident however the Ghost of that time was listed as defeated. The stories all claim that the ghost was of savage rank, and disappeared after letting go of their obsession.”

“Then it returned?” Zhongli turned to you, alarmed and visibly frowning.

“No.”

You sighed and rubbed your aching forehead, “This was a man made disaster that went out of hand, I’m sure that whoever started this is probably dead. Chances are the first death awakened a sealed something” You looked at him, eyes serious “I’m figuring out just how old this thing is and what exactly are we going to face.”

“...The older it is…”

“The harder it would be to defeat it. Liyue’s lands are drenched in blood. Old grudges mixed with new ones from the Archon Wars. With cultivation clans dying out and having a single yaksha around, the karmic cycle of Liyue is already out of balance” You revealed and Zhongli was amazed with your discovery.

“Is there anything Rex Lapis could do?”

“...Fixing the karmic cycle? None. Solving this? His dragon qi would only end up being corrupted or he’d be punished by the Heavenly Dao. Time has changed a lot of things, but the rule that the Gods may not interfere with the mortal realm remains true.”

Both of you remained silent, You stared blankly at your board while Zhongli watched you. The heavy air from your words made your heart heavy, and Zhongli could see it. The fear that lingered in your eyes, the firm determination to save lives.

It left a ripple in the calm waters of his heart. A small unnoticeable ripple.

“Is it worth it?” Zhongli asked “Is it worth betting on your life to save the common people?”

You smiled at him, almost pitying, “To an adeptus like you, the amount of times mortals would bet on their lives to save others must be few, but Zhongli...I am the sort to always think that the common people are worthy.”

At that moment, Guizhong’s words echoed in his mind.

“Let me help you.”

A red sedan trudges up the mountain path, intending to pass through the temple. Behind the bridal sedan was a short entourage carrying three chests of dowry. In front of the sedan, were two people beating drums to celebrate the auspicious day.

Zhongli, Baizhu, and the Fatui disguised as locals were on alert as it watched the ominous trees of the mountain road. You sat inside the sedan, meditating in lotus position. Chongyun and Xingqiu were waiting in the temple where the zombified bodies of the previous brides were found. You had advised Ajax to not participate in the inevitable battle. Ensuring the possibility that his abyssal powers would react badly with ancient powers. With all of the preparations, you hoped that the odds would be in your favor.

You sighed softly, eyes opening as you felt the air change. You readied your weapon as soon as you heard the sounds of fighting.

The door opens and you throw out a talisman. In a quick move you stepped out, geo shield forming around you as you began plucking the strings of the Guqin. You looked at your enemy and found your heart easing up.

What stood before you was neither an ancient deity or demon, but rather a ghost on the verge of breaking through the Malice Rank.

“Don’t fear! We can subdue this one!” You informed your party, as you played the Sound of Vanquish.

Vines subdued the ghost, wearing the red robes of a groom. The Fatui began surrounding the ghost. Nine stone pillars acted as the foundation of the seal, pulsing with geo energy.

You felt rather than saw Chongyun come close, allowing you to draw upon his yang energy to balance out the pure yin energy of the ghost. Xingqiu stood on standby ready to recite the incantation for parting in case the seal fails.

The final notes of the song lingered in the air as Zhongli walked towards you, eyes never leaving the ghost, “I thought it was a bride.”

“A minor mistake” You replied as you played Inquiry.

‘Who are you’

The ghost didn’t answer.

‘Who are you’ you repeated the question.

‘Kill me’ it answered.

Your hands stilled in the air. You sighed and looked up from the strings and found yourself staring straight at the eyes of the ghost. Stunned at the mixture of emotions in its eyes.

“...There is no need to surrender to despair, your soul can still be saved.”

The ghost gave a mocking smile, “So what? My Chang’er is gone. We can never meet again in this life or the next.”

Zhongli’s eyes widened at the implication, just as Chongyun let out a small gasp. You felt your heart turn heavy even so you soldiered on, there was a need to find out the cause of this tragedy.

“Then tell me, why did you kill those women?”

“They deserved it!” The ghost screamed in anger, “They killed her! They killed her like she was nothing! Chang’er was innocent! They knew she was innocent and still-”

“You could have reported to the Millelith!” Chongyun said.

Cold mocking laughter rang loudly in the air, in it you could hear the bitterness of defeat and anger.

“Would it have done anything when the person behind this is an official? You’re too naive, boy!”

You closed your eyes, took a deep breath and decided to shield Chongyun from one of the dark sides of Liyue.

“Are you really forsaking salvation?”

“Yes.”

Zhongli watched as you walked towards the ghost and asked its name. He watched as the ghost whispered its name and you nodded before raising your hands, your index and middle finger pointing towards the sky, while the rest were closed.

Light gathered on your finger tips, the air charged with spiritual energy that was not of Celestial origin. It was an ancient divine power that Zhongli used to feel before he ascended to the peak of cultivation as a dragon.

With one downward stroke, the light slashed through the ghost. The light was so blinding that Zhongli had to shield his eyes as he watched the ghost turn into dust, its soul scattering to the wind. Your back stood straight, your hair gently fluttering.

Even though you were expressionless, Zhongli felt the heaviness of your heart. Despite that your eyes remained strong, unyielding as righteousness burned in your eyes. He watched as you strode in Ningguang’s jade chamber, as you reported your findings.

He accompanied you in going back to the village where it all began as you read the Liyue Qixing’s edict. He watched as you went beyond what Childe asked and went to the unmarked grave of Chang’er, offering incense on the blood stained stones of the temple.

He went with you as you sat on the highest mountain peak in Bishui, looking at the horizon with a blank look in your eyes. He didn’t speak and instead poured you a cup of osmanthus wine and silently waited.

“...Sometimes, I wonder if I can remain in the path of righteousness” You spoke, “I can never understand the hearts of humans, how could they easily ruin someone’s reputation, ruin someone’s life because of greed? I can’t understand why there was a need to go as far as scattering the soul?”

You cried without any tears, and Zhongli remained silent, unable to answer something he had always witnessed in his long life.

“Have you changed your answer?” He asked as he stared at his cup of wine.

“No” You replied and Zhongli could hear the self-mockery in your tone, “Even if one day I find myself in unbearable pain, I’ll never stop believing that the common people are worthy of saving.”

You looked at Zhongli, solemn in your bearing as the sun disappeared in the sky “Zhongli, no one has the right to decide on the outcome of human lives. Be it human or adepti.”

Zhongli thought back to the case, the sad story of two lovers who parted eternally because of jealousy and greed. The greediness of an official’s son for a woman who had no affection for him, the jealousy of the ladies over the popular young scholar. The selfish righteousness of the village folk that stoned an innocent woman to death over ruined reputation.

Zhongli thought of his contract. He wondered for a moment what you would say to him if knew that he dared to bet on the safety of Liyue and its people.

He closed his eyes and drank the wine that still tasted as he remembered.

“I pray that your heart remains in paradise.”

You toasted him and smiled softly. Zhongli vowed to never forget how beautiful you looked in that moment, with the slight smile gracing your lips as you drank the osmanthus wine.

The moon was beautiful that night.

Zhongli watched from afar as Osial rose. His thoughts echoing to the oath you swore that day in Guyun. A part of his heart felt sad and yet in awe of what you had accomplished.

He watched as the Millelith, Adepti and Fatui worked together to evacuate the civilians. He watched as humans and adepti fought together to bring down Osial once more. He felt proud and relieved at the result, glad at the knowledge that Liyue had no need of him anymore and yet a part of him felt trepidation.

The knowledge that the Age of Archons was drawing to a close. He thought of you, a beloved child of the Heavens, who could boldly declare that the Gods can be wrong. He thought of the words you spoke that night.

He thought of the days he spent with you, the rare times he went along with your tricks and harmless schemes. The easy way the two of you became friends. You were the first person he had easily became friends with, he mused at how quickly his dislike of you melted into fondness.

The way his heart had pinched when you said he wasn’t fun. The elation from being one of the few people you found interesting. He thought all of this as he handed his gnosis, as he kept his reason a secret. He thought of this as he looked around Liyue that had no need of him anymore, he thought of you as his feet automatically walked to where you were.

He stood away from you, watching as you cared for the wounded and then silently left. He spent the aftermath ruminating on his decision, on his actions while silently watching your actions with Childe during the last week of his stay in Liyue.

He waited for you to come to him, and ask him the question he could not answer. He steeled his heart and yet when you came to him, you didn’t ask and instead began talking about your recent adventures, asking him of his days and Zhongli didn’t know what to feel.

He knew that you knew nothing then. That you remained unaware of the truth but he let himself believe that you didn’t mind. So he spent his days with you, silently caring for you, protecting you in his own way.

He let himself bask in your vibrant presence, allowed himself to savor the feeling of watching you walk the path of righteousness. He unknowingly and willingly let you walk inside his heart, step by step, with each moment you spent helping others.

The days spent by your side, knowing the parts of yourself that no one else knew was the closest he felt in being mortal. It was so easy to forget that you remained ignorant when he spent his time worrying about your ability to be where chaos was, when his heart was easily influenced by you.

But now, in the privacy of the Dwelling in the Clouds, Zhongli watched as you grew disappointed. Your soft laughter filled with heartbreak and weariness broke his heart for reasons he couldn’t understand.

He regretted not telling you the truth when he had the chance.

He hated how he had no right to wipe away your tears even though he had spent countless nights and days warming your bed.

“Zhongli, I hate how I can understand why you did it” Your voice was so soft “Really, as an Archon you are undeniably good, you are peerless in that regard.”

He closed his eyes and readied himself for your next words.

“But I can’t call you a good person. Human lives aren’t something you should bet on so easily, no matter how careful you are” Your disappointment, your grief, and your weariness were all visible in your tone and body language.

He remained where he stood, watching as you descended. Each step breaking his heart as he slowly understood what you meant to him. He cried silently as you disappeared below the clouds and slowly sank on the ground.

For the first time in his life, Zhongli didn’t know what to do. There was no one he could turn to. He dreaded going back to a cold empty house devoid of you. He feared going back to the days that were dull, to a time where you did not exist in his life.

Where the sound of your voice was not commonplace, or the comforting scent of your magic that lingered in the space you occupied.

Zhongli laughed, loud and unrestrained, mocking himself for his stupidity. He hated how he didn’t realize it sooner, if he did then perhaps things would not turn out this way. He cried with all of his broken heart as he remembered the loneliness in your eyes.

He drank his sorrows away and as daylight broke through the clouds, he stumbled his way home. To the place that was devoid of you who he loved.

He fell on his bed that still smelled like you and silently cried himself to sleep.

He was already missing you dearly.

You stared at Zhongli, eyes distant as he stood in front of your door. A distant part of you wondered if things could be fixed, if the two of you could move forward from this pain.

But the rest of you were waiting for further disappointment, you knew the bone-deep pride of Gods. You understood that there was a bigger chance that Zhongli would cease contact with you, no one can easily put down years of habit and thought as a god so easily.

And yet as Zhongli stood beneath you, looking up to you. You couldn’t help but hope.

“...I can’t apologize for what I did” Zhongli began, “I don’t regret doing it the way I planned but I regret that I didn’t think of another way to test my people.”

You remained silent.

“I asked you once if the common people are worthy, the truth is I don’t know whether I find them worthy or not...but with you…” Zhongli trailed off, he felt that his next words were heavy.

He was afraid of laying his heart bare to you. The deepest parts of him that he didn’t fully understand, “I know that your life alone is worthy. I am a being born from rock, gaining humanity through cultivation. My heart is made of stone, softened by the dust. I don’t know if I would ever understand what being human means and everything it entails…”

You stared at him, unmoving, silently and patiently hearing him out.

“But I know that the only way I can keep on being with you is by changing this stone heart. So please, let me walk by your side, protecting you and your belief.”

Zhongli bent his waist, solemnly asking for your forgiveness and acceptance. He heard your footsteps coming closer and swore to himself to accept whatever the outcome would be.

“Stand straight.”

He stood and then he found himself in your embrace, your familiar scent filled his nose and Zhongli gently and firmly hugged you back. He held you fearing that all of it was an illusion.

“Let me learn how to be good while staying by your side” He whispered.

“I was afraid” You replied “of how easily you can decide on the outcome of your people’s life and death.”

You hugged him tighter, “I know that you still have secrets that you can’t tell. That even as you live as a mortal, the consequences of your actions as an Archon is something you would live with for the rest of your life. So I won’t judge you for that but Zhongli, I can’t be with someone who can easily bet on other’s life.”

“I understand.”

He thought of your words in Qingyun Peak, your confession that night in Minlin. He thought of the day he met you. He thought of the words he said in that temple ruin.

Zhongli understood what it meant to walk by your side, to take the same path as you did. He knew that from this moment onwards he would never be able to untangle himself from you.There was no room for anything else in his heart that was filled with you. It would always remain with you even if one day his entire being ends up in the abyss.

‘As long as your heart remains in paradise, I don’t mind letting myself fall into the abyss.

#zhongli x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact zhongli x reader

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mk-wizard · 3 years

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Hellboy Films: Why animated did better than live action

Hello, friends

Many of you may not know this, but out of all the superhero comics, Hellboy is my favourite. What can I say? As a little girl, I was a misfit, so a misfit hero like Hellboy was right up my alley and the concept of someone being born to be bad to turn out so good because he had a loving father to show him the way is beautiful. My introduction to Hellboy was the first live action film in the 2000s and at the time, I liked it, but then I started reading the comics. Once I got to know the real Hellboy and series, the more I fell in love with the comics yet at the same time, the more I go to not like the live action films and not just because I found the sequel and reboot in 2019 bad. There are many problems with the three live action Hellboy films which rub me the wrong way and not simply because they are live action. Most superheroes started off as cartoon drawings, but were well done in live action, but Hellboy missed all the notes. Now as a mature adult woman who is experienced at storytelling as well as analyzing, I rewatched some of the live action and I took time to watch the animated films. The difference in quality is night and day (no pun intended and I will give links to the animated films because they are stunning). I will now tell you all where the animated films went right and how live action went all wrong.

1- Hellboy’s design was better in the animated films. - I am more than willing to be forgiving when it comes to taking artistic liberties. Sometimes, the results can be beautiful, but in the case live action Hellboy, it was all wrong and I have to blunt, we can do so much better with graphic design now than just simply taking a tall buff man, putting make up and props on him. I hate sounding mean, but both versions just look like a guy wearing a cosplaying as Hellboy. It would have been much better if Hellboy was completely and entirely CGI or perhaps even an elaborate puppet costume like the ones used in the Jim Henson films. It may sound like enough to give the hero red skin, a stone hand, horns, a tail, cloven feet (which are covered), amber eyes, pointed ears and be very tall. He STILL looks too human compared to the comic and compared to what movie makers can do, it’s lackluster.

Now, we turn to the animated version which did more than just the obvious. Hellboy isn’t inhuman looking just because of the said traits before. He is inhuman because of his proportions and shape especially his face. It is a confirmed fact that he is not just not human. He is ugly and animalistic looking. His features are the combination of a satyr and gorilla especially when you look at how thin his legs, jaw, shoulders, posture and so on. Also, his eyes aren’t just amber. He has no pupils, no schlera (the white part) and no irises. The entire eye is nothing, but amber which makes them disturbing to look at. He cannot simply cover his face, tail and hand, then simply blend in. He cannot even wear most human clothes hence why Hellboy is always shirtless and his hooves are exposed. In other words, animated Hellboy looks like Hellboy.

2- The animated plot was clean, to the point with no filler. - While I admit the first live action film kept it pretty simple, I find that it still had a lot of filler and too much subplot. If you ever read a Hellboy comic, you will know right off the bat that Mike Mignola is a master at the art of pacing without fluff. Yes, he respect that character development and buildup takes time, but he doesn’t drag things. Ever. And he does not make everything so angsty either. Yes, he hints that the characters have issues, trauma, emotional pain and at times, depression, but he did so without making them into whiners. For the most part, the cast and hero would pick themselves up and do what they had to like adults. If anything, they were also each other’s emotional support and they don’t hate people. The animated version captured that completely and even showed us that the cast did not consist of malcontents who played the “poor me” card to death. In the beginning of Blood and Iron, Abe, Liz and Hellboy were happily talking about a bakery they had found once which reminds us that with all their hardships they do seek and accept joy in life even from something as simple as good pastries.

Moreover, the plot of the film was to the point with some amount of subplots, but without getting complicated and without the subplots contradicting each other. Everything had a way of coming together neatly and even though we did sometimes get surprises, they didn’t feel like filler. They felt like things that were always there, but now, we are aware of them. Most importantly, there was no cheap or silly selling point tactics like relationship drama or the stereotypical father-son bickering (more on this later). Hellboy is not that kind of story.

3- The subtle messages and morals in the animated films were deeper and better. - Being the mature adult I am now, I can say that the first Hellboy really was just Beauty and the Beast while using the Hellboy cast instead and it presented in the message in all of the outdated and bad ways. Don’t get me wrong, I find the idea of Hellboy falling in love romantic and I admit that underneath all of the darkness and action, everything about Hellboy comes back to love. However, it is not romantic love where the end all be all is to be accepted by humanity by getting into a relationship with a human, then turning into a handsome prince even if only metaphorically. The deeper and more important kind of love Hellboy tries to teach is self love how you are regardless how strange people deem you. If you have done something with your life and made something of yourself, then it is ok to be you and are already more loved than you realize. The other kind of love that has always been important to the series is family unity. You see, Hellboy, Liz and Abe are like siblings to each other and Prof. Bruttenholm is an incredibly loving father figure to all of them namely Hellboy who he raised since he was a baby.

He made the big red guy into the man he is today. In fact, even as an adult, Hellboy and Bruttenholm are a very sweet and kind father and son duo. They are not at each other’s throats, they don’t snark at each other or are incapable of agreeing on anything. There is no spite, there is no anger, there is no resentment and there is no ingratitude. There is only love and honestly, THIS is the love that ought to be showcased more in the films.

With that all said and done, the animated films also had their subtle deep messages which we not only understand clearly, but we also appreciate more. In the first movie Sword of Storms, it was all about finding a balance between persevering and knowing when to let go. In other words, keep doing what you must if it is still relevant and making a difference, but if it isn’t and is the reason you’re stuck, by all means quit. There are many roads to closure. In the second one Blood and Iron, it was clear from the beginning that the message was to not underestimate the elderly. They may not be as strong as they once were, but their experience and wisdom gets them and you out of tough spots. They have been through everything before and know what to do. By all means, aid them and help them, but don’t treat them like helpless babies. I also have to say that when I look at the messages the two animated films were telling us, they are not only clearer, but pretty underrated ones too. In the case of the live action films, the messages were muddled if not done before.

In short, I look at the animated films and I’m impressed. If another live action Hellboy does come along, I hope that this time, it will be done right and I really don’t want to see relationship, gore fests, snark or family drama again. Of course, this all my opinion and I would love to hear all of yours.

Thank you for reading and stay safe.

EDIT: Wouldn’t you know it? I forgot the link to all things Hellboy Animated. Here it is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellboy_Animated

#hellboy #mike mignola #abraham sapien #liz sherman #abe sapien #professor bruttenholm #kate corrigan #roger #dark horse #comics #animated #film #movie #love #quality #demon #half demon #hero #superhero

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the-al-chemist · 3 years

Text

When Stars Ignite - Chapter 50

HPHM Rockstar AU

A/N: David Willows and Amelia Booth both belong to @that-scouse-wizard

General Warning: This whole fic has a general warning of being NSFW / 18+. We will give specific warnings for every chapter in itself, but several adult themes will be more or less present in every chapter, may it be explicitly or in mention. These include sexual topics, drug abuse, (ab)use of alcohol, smoking and a whole lot of cursing.

Specific Warning: Language, Alcohol Use, Discussion of and Allusion to NSFW topics.

~~~

Find the masterpost here, the previous chapter here and the next one here. The songs featured before every chapter can be found on this pretty badass playlist here.

~~~

This work is a collaboration with @lifeofkaze

Taglist: @slytherindisaster @night-rhea @carewyncromwell @thatravenpuffwitch @anthamariemayfair @whatwouldvalerydo

And your shoulders are frozen

Cold as the night

Oh, but you're an explosion

You’re dynamite

Your name isn't Rio, but I don't care for sand

And lighting the fuse might result in a bang-b-b-bang, oh

~ The Arctic Monkeys - I Bet That You Look Good on the Dancefloor ~

The bar tent had grown hot and stuffy. Artemis had long removed her jacket, and she was now feeling the heat even in the flimsy fabric of the dusky pink playsuit Andre had given her. From her position at the bar, she saw Merula make her way outside, most likely for a cigarette and a breath of fresh air. Artemis couldn’t say that she blamed her for wanting that. She excused herself from Andre and Charlie, the latter of whom was now rambling, having been somewhat tipsy after they finished watching the Wurzels, and was now several more drinks down the line.

The chill of the night air was a welcome change, and Artemis savoured the sensation of the gentle breeze lifting the loose ends of her hair off her bare shoulders. She saw Merula leaning against a fence, and walked towards her, grateful once more for her wellies as she trudged through the mud.

“Mind if I join?” she asked her. Merula shrugged and said nothing. Taking that as an affirmative, Artemis leant against the fence next to her and started to roll a cigarette. “So, what’s the deal with you and David Willows?”

She had asked the question in a breezy enough voice, but Merula’s response was as frosty as ever.

“There’s no deal, Hexley,” she muttered, looking out across the grass.

“Right. I just assumed that you two were… well, y’know.”

“I know. We’re not. That would be breaking the rules.”

“Of course,” Artemis nodded. “Ethan’s rules. No Fleetwood Mac shit.”

“Exactly.”

“But David is only temporary, isn’t he?”

“And?”

“Well, once he’s not part of the band anymore, you’re free to do whatever you want with him. As long as he agrees to it, obviously,” Artemis grinned and Merula raised her eyebrows. “I think he’d probably agree to anything where you’re involved.”

“Great. Thanks.”

“Oh, come on. You must’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

“Looking at people doesn’t mean anything,” Merula shook her head. “But, yeah. He’s made a few comments that make me think that maybe… I dunno. It’s stupid.”

She looked straight ahead and drew on her cigarette. Her cheeks were a little pink, despite the cold night air. Artemis smirked.

“You like him, don’t you?” she asked. Merula’s cheeks flushed even more.

“Fuck off, Hexley.”

“Oh, shit. You really like him!”

“What are we, thirteen? Who talks about this stuff like that?”

“Sounds like someone’s avoiding the subject.”

“No shit, Sherlock. Funnily enough, I don’t want to talk about this crap with you.”

“Fine,” Artemis shrugged. “Who do you talk about this crap with?”

“No one. I just don’t talk about it,” Merula bristled. Artemis frowned at her, and Merula sighed. “Why do you care, Hexley?”

“Because, I know how shit it is not having anyone to talk to, and I thought that maybe you might want to have someone to do that with,” replied Artemis. Merula blinked at her. “I’m just saying that the offer is there.”

The two of them stood side by side in silence, both smoking their respective cigarettes, goosebumps starting to appear over their bare arms and legs. Eventually, Merula’s voice broke through the soft quiet.

“Thanks.”

She spoke so quietly that Artemis thought that she’d imagined it at first. She looked across at Merula, who quickly averted her eyes.

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m just so used to doing everything alone, at least in my personal life. I mean, there’s the band, and there’s Orion but otherwise…” Merula half-laughed. “Well, let’s just say that it’s easier not to get attached to people. It’s not like you can sustain anything when your life is mapped out years at a time and with touring.”

“Is that the only reason?” Artemis asked, pointedly, and Merula shook her head.

“I mean, most people don’t stick around anyway. I learnt that very early on. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah.”

“The more you let people in, the worse it is when they inevitably want out.”

Artemis nodded. She exhaled, and shivered a little.

“I just don’t know with David,” Merula continued. “I’ve sort of gotten used to pushing people away before they can get close enough to… It’s a hurt or be hurt thing, and I’ve always been okay with that but now, I don’t know. I don’t want to hurt him, but I know that only makes it easier for him to hurt me.”

“Who says either of you are going to do anything to hurt each other?”

“Don’t be a twat. Everybody hurts. What? Why are you laughing?”

“Sorry,” Artemis tried to stifle her giggles. “It’s just that I thought you were in Equinox, not R.E.M.”

“Fucking great.”

“No, really. I’m serious. Yeah, everyone can hurt people, but not everyone means to hurt. You just have to find the people who are… decent, I guess.”

“Yeah, but how do you tell who is decent and who isn’t?”

“I dunno,” Artemis frowned. “You’re asking the wrong person, Merula. I suppose… well, you just look at their words and their actions, and whether those things tally up, and whether they make you feel happier than they do scared.”

“And then what?”

“Then you just hope for the best.”

“Oh, well, that’s just fan-fucking-tastic. Thanks for the advice.”

“I don’t know what else you want me to say. It’s the thing about trust, isn’t it? You don’t know if it’s deserved, you just do it. And it’s scary, and it makes you vulnerable, but you do it anyway.”

Merula fell quiet. Artemis couldn’t tell if her words had helped or made things worse. A thought struck her, and she started to chuckle again.

“What’s so funny now?”

“Nothing,” Artemis said through her quiet laughter. “I just always thought you were gay.”

Merula sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Why do people always think that?” she asked.

“I don’t know, you just give off that kind of vibe.”

“A vibe.”

“Yeah, like a gay vibe. But you’re not. Gay, I mean.”

“No. Not exclusively, anyway,” Merula said, and she narrowed her eyes at Artemis. “Are you gay?”

“Not as a general rule, no.”

“I thought you didn’t give a shit about rules.”

“I don’t, but this is one rule I’ve never really thought about breaking,” Artemis paused and tilted her head to one side. “What do lesbians actually do, anyway?”

“I am not having this fucking conversation with you, Hexley.”

Artemis grinned, and looked back across the tent-filled field, now lit by strings of fairy lights and the ends of cigarettes. Festival-goers in colourful outfits and varying states of intoxication were mingling around, their voices floating through the cold night. Artemis' smile widened as she picked out a familiar shock of red hair making its way through the crowd towards them.

“There you are,” Charlie said, louder than was strictly necessary, as he staggered over to the fence where Artemis and Merula were standing. “What have you two been talking about?”

“Lesbian sex.”

“Oh, right,” Charlie raised his eyebrows and leant against the fence next to Artemis. “Well, don’t mind me. Do carry on.”

Merula and Artemis exchanged dark glances, before Charlie leaned over Artemis’ shoulder and took a puff of the cigarette she was raising to her lips.

“What are you doing?” Artemis asked him. “You don’t smoke.”

“I’m not smoking.”

“I think you are.”

“Nope. Not smoking, just sharing,” Charlie leaned over to take another drag. Artemis moved her cigarette away from him, and he took hold of her wrist to keep her hand still. “Sharing is caring, Artemis.”

“Fine,” Artemis rolled her eyes. “Do you want me to roll you your own?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I gave up smoking,” said Charlie, looking earnestly at Artemis, and taking another drag. He blew the smoke into her right ear, and she shoved him gently away from her. He stumbled and grabbed hold of the fence behind him. “That was very unkind.”

“So was blowing in my ear.”

“There’s nothing unkind about blowing.”

Merula groaned and stubbed her cigarette out on the fence.

“Nah. Fuck this,” she muttered, and stood up straight as if to leave the pair of them. “Thanks for the chat, Hexley.”

“Any time, Merula,” Artemis said, wriggling away from the arm Charlie was draping over her shoulders.

“Merula, don’t go,” Charlie said, and then hiccoughed. “I have to tell you something really important.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

“You are my favourite Powerpuff girl.”

“Go fuck yourself, Weasley.”

Artemis watched Merula walk away, before pursing her lips and looking at Charlie out of the side of her eye.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Am I not your favourite Powerpuff girl?” Artemis asked him, and he grinned sheepishly.

“No, you’re just my favourite.”

Artemis chuckled, and shook her head. Lifting her gaze to look at him properly, she cocked one eyebrow.

“Sounds like someone wants to keep sharing cigarettes.”

“Me? Never,” Charlie hiccoughed again. “I didn’t know that you and Merula were good friends.”

“We’re not. We just smoke together sometimes. And we have some stuff in common, I guess.”

“Hm. Resting bitch face.”

“I don’t have resting bitch face!”

“You do. You - hic - have it right now.”

“This isn’t resting,” Artemis said, pulling her cigarette away from him. “This is active.”

“Like a volcano.”

“Yeah. Sure,” Artemis smoked, and offered her cigarette to Charlie again. “Why are you out here anyway?”

“I came to find you.”

“Why?”

“For a chat.”

“Fine. What did you want to chat about?”

“I had a joke. And I thought you’d think it was funny.”

“Probably not. I don’t think you’re funny.”

“Liar,” Charlie poked her nose, and she batted his hand. He grinned and used his forefinger to push the tip of her nose upwards like a pig snout. “You always - hic - laugh at my jokes.”

“Well, someone has to,” Artemis grabbed Charlie’s fingers and dragged them away from her face. “Go on, then. What was the joke?”

“I don’t remember it.”

“Brilliant. Have you thought about getting into stand up comedy?”

“I’d be fucking great at stand up comedy.”

Charlie stood up straight as if to demonstrate, and promptly lost his balance. He tripped backwards and landed back against the fence, his hair falling over his face. Artemis smirked.

“I think you maybe need to go back to the yurt,” she told him, and Charlie slammed his palm to his forehead.

“Yurts. Fuck. That’s it! Yurts.”

“Yurts,” Artemis repeated, mocking his now pronounced Devonshire accent. In retaliation, he prodded her between the ribs. “Ow, Charlie! Piss off!”

“Yeah, but the yurts.”

“What about the yurts?”

“My joke!” Charlie grinned. “You know what they say about having sex in them?”

“Not a clue. What do they say?”

“It’s fucking intense.”

Charlie’s mischievous smile grew wider, prouder. Artemis blinked and kept a decidedly straight face.

“That’s a shit joke.”

“You’re a shit joke.”

Artemis allowed herself to laugh, and Charlie busied himself with attempting to blow his hair away from his face. Artemis watched his efforts, and after the sixth unsuccessful attempt, threw down her cigarette, stamped on it, and moved closer to him.

“For fuck’s sake,” she said, rolling her eyes and pulling a pin out of her hair, which had started to fall down around her shoulders. She reached up and pushed Charlie’s hair back from his face, and pressed the pin into it. “There you go.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“No, it’s a secret. Like the smoking. That’s a secret, you can’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t, don’t worry.”

“Good, or I’ll tell everyone your secret.”

“I don’t have a secret,” Artemis laughed, her heartbeat speeding up nonetheless.

“Yes, you do. I know your big secret,” Charlie smirked.

“What’s that?”

Charlie beckoned her closer, and she leaned in towards him. She could hear her pulse in her ears.

“You’re not as tough as you like people to think you are,” Charlie whispered, his breath hot and cider-scented as it brushed past her face. Artemis realised that she was standing very close to him - too close to him - and she took a big step backwards, wrapping her arms across her chest and shivering involuntarily as the cold enveloped her. “Are you cold?”

“Um, yeah. A little.”

“You can have my jacket, if you like.”

“No. I’m fine.”

“No, you’re cold. You just said you’re cold. Have my jacket.”

“Then you’ll be cold.”

“I don’t mind,” Charlie started to take his leather jacket off, swaying as he let go of the fence. “I have another jacket. It’s made of beer.”

“Seriously, Charlie, I’m… You can keep your clothes on,” Artemis told him, laughing as she watched him struggle. “I’m done smoking anyway. Let’s go back in and then neither of us will be cold.”

“But-”

“Come on. Let’s go inside. I want to dance.”

“We can have another drinking race.”

“I don’t think you need to drink any more,” Artemis said, putting her arm around his back to help steady him as they trudged back through the mud to the bar tent, Charlie pulling at his jacket and trying to wrap it around her. “What are you doing? Stop that.”

“No, Artie, it’s warmer inside the jacket.”

“I don’t care.”

“What would the penguins do?” Charlie asked her, and she laughed again.

He was leaning on her quite heavily now, and she had to make a conscious effort to stay upright. Luckily, the bar tent was only a few metres away. However, when they reached the door, the bouncer took one look at Charlie and shook his head.

“Nah. No way, mate. You’ve had enough for one night.”

“I just want to get him to sit down and have some water,” Artemis told the bouncer, wishing that Charlie would at least try to act sober, rather than using her to support his weight.

“He’s not coming inside. Sorry, love.”

“You should do as she says. She looks sweet but she is scary when she’s angry,” Charlie said, bringing his hand to Artemis’ chin and squashing her cheeks with his fingertips. “I mean, look at this little bitchy face.”

“Shut up, Charlie. You’re really not helping.”

“Yeah, I cannot let him back in,” the bouncer folded his arms across his chest. “Take him home and-”

“Is there a problem here?” Andre stepped out of the bar and looked between the bouncer, Charlie and Artemis with pursed lips.

“Charlie’s drunk-”

“Pff. Lies.”

“- and he’s not allowed back inside,” Artemis explained. “I’ll take him back to the yurt and come back after.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Andre asked, eyebrows raised. “No offence, darling, but I don’t think you’ll be able to get him all the way back to the campsite. He’s too heavy.”

“Fucking rude,” muttered Charlie.

“He’s not going to make it back by himself, Andre. He can hardly stand.”

“I know, sweetie. I was thinking that I might be able to take him on my way back.”

“You’re leaving, are you?”

“I am. Not alone, either,” Andre winked. “Just let me find my friend and we can deal with Weasley.”

Once Charlie had been safely escorted away from the bar by Andre and his well-muscled “friend”, Artemis returned inside. The tent was heaving, but despite the number of faces in the crowd, she struggled to find one that was familiar.

The only people remaining at the table reserved for the Equinox entourage were Merula and David. Artemis smiled to herself as she saw the way they were sitting close together on the bench, deep in conversation, their postures mirroring one another as they looked into each other’s eyes. No. She couldn’t disturb them. Not now.

There was no sign of Lizzie, KC, or Murphy anywhere, but she thought she caught a glimpse of blue hair on the dancefloor. Looking closer, she could see that Skye’s face was very close to that of Erika. No disturbing them, either. At the bar, there was Orion, but Artemis would have rather not gotten into a conversation with him. It would have felt like a betrayal to Lizzie, somehow.

She pretended not to have seen Orion, and went over to the other side of the bar, slipping through the crowd to the front of the queue.

“Hi,” said the person next to her, who she quickly recognised as David Willows’ sister. “It’s Artie, isn’t it?”

“Artemis,” she corrected her. “And you’re Amelia, right?”

Amelia nodded, and smiled brightly. She was almost as short as Artemis herself - almost, but not quite - and had dark brown hair that had been tied up into two messy buns high on either side of her head like a bohemian Princess Leia. There was something carefree and genuine in her smile, and her posture as she leant on the bar was one of someone who was confident and at ease being in her own company.

“David says you’re one of the best pyrotechnicians he’s ever worked with,” Amelia told her, after ordering both of them drinks. “He also said not to tell you I said that, but a compliment’s a compliment. You might as well hear it.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Artemis nodded. “Do you do anything to do with music, or-”

“No. I’m on a gap year at the moment. Just finished a degree in horticulture, and I needed a break, y’know? So I packed up my shit and went travelling.”

“Where have you been?”

“Oh, here and there. Started off with a bit of interrailing around Europe between college and uni. This year, I did six months working in Australia and New Zealand, and four backpacking through South America.”

“Impressive,” Artemis said, raising her eyebrows and taking a sip of her whiskey and coke. “Did you go with friends, or…”

“Interrailing, yeah. The rest I did by myself.”

“That’s brave.”

“I guess. I dunno. I did Camp America a couple of times at uni so I sort of knew what I was getting myself into. Gymnastics camp. Absolutely mad,” Amelia laughed. “But, yeah, I was shitting it when I left to go to Colombia with just a backpack. You get used to it pretty quickly, though, and you make friends while you’re travelling. You ever done anything like that?”

Artemis shook her head. She’d left places with nothing but a rucksack before, but it was hardly by choice.

“I mean, there’s touring, but that doesn’t really count.”

“No, I guess not. How long have you been touring with Equinox?”

“Only a few months. I joined for the U.K. leg.”

“Oh. So you don’t know the band too well, then?”

“I dunno,” Artemis frowned. “The thing with touring is that everyone’s living in each other’s pockets all the time. You get to know people pretty well pretty quickly.”

“That makes sense,” Amelia cast a look over her shoulder in the direction of the band’s table, where her brother now had his arm draped across the back of Merula’s chair. “What’s she like, really?”

“Merula? She’s alright.”

“She comes across as being… Well, a bit of a bitch, to be honest.”

“That’s just the way her face looks,” Artemis smirked, but Amelia didn’t smile back. “Nah, Merula is actually not that bad once you get to know her. She just acts very cold towards people until she gets to know them, that’s all.”

Amelia made a doubtful sort of noise, before shaking her head.

“Hm. Maybe I’m just being overprotective,” she said, finishing her drink. “My brother has a track record for picking women who are basically arseholes.”

“Well, I didn’t say Merula isn’t an arsehole,” Artemis grinned. “She’s sarcastic and a bit spiky, but she is actually a decent person. And she does really like your brother.”

“Did she say that to you?”

“No, but I can tell. She likes him. A lot. Do you want another drink?”

“Sure, but…” Amelia paused and looked around. “Won’t your boyfriend be wondering where you’ve gone?”

“He’d have to exist to do that.”

“What?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Amelia tilted her head to one side. “I thought the guy from before, with ginger hair and the-”

“Charlie? No,” Artemis laughed out loud. “No, we’re just friends.”

“Okay. I just assumed the two of you-”

“Drink?”

Artemis ordered another pair of drinks, making her own a single. She wanted to drink more, but her head was already feeling a little fuzzy from the heat and the alcohol.

“Do you have a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend?”

“No. I find that being in a relationship ties you down,” Amelia replied. “The way I see it, I’m free to do whatever I want, and go wherever I want, whenever I want. It’s great.”

“Good for you.”

“It is, but you wouldn’t believe it from the things I get asked all the time. Honestly, every single family party, it’s like ‘when are you going to settle down?’, or ‘have you met anyone recently?’, like the only thing that matters in my life is finding another person.”

“Maybe they just worry that you’re lonely.”

“No, it’s not that at all. It’s because I’m a woman. They never ask David those things, and he’s single, and older than I am, too. It’s bullshit,” Amelia sighed. “Just because I’m a woman, they think my only purpose is to fall in love and live happily ever after. That’s so fucked up. Like, I’ve achieved so much and done so much in my life, and I’ve got so many other things that I want to do and will do, why would my happiness and my whole future be dependent on anyone but myself? Why is that the only thing that makes my life and my story worthwhile?”

Artemis nodded. Amelia had a really good point. There were other things in life that were just as important - if not more important - than finding a soulmate, if soulmates even existed. It was interesting, though, talking about it with Amelia.

As for Artemis, she had always been dependent on herself alone, but she’d had no choice but to be this way. Amelia had her family behind her, she had friends, and an education, and skills. She had chosen this life, and she clearly loved it. Artemis couldn’t say for sure whether she would have felt the same if their positions had been reversed.

“Do you never get lonely?” she asked out loud, before she’d even realised that the question had formed in her head. Quickly, she sipped her drink, and regarded Amelia over the top of her whiskey.

“Not really. I mean, my family and friends are only ever a phone call away, and you can get internet pretty much anywhere these days. Besides, I make new friends everywhere, or at least just chat to people who have really interesting lives,” Amelia smirked. “And don’t get me wrong, I do still date and hook up with people, it’s just casual, no commitment involved. The rest of the time I have a very decent vibrator, and that’s much less whiny than a boyfriend or a girlfriend would be.”

“You are actually really selling this.”

“Thanks. I can send you a link to the website I bought it from, if you like. It’ll change your life, seriously.”

The two of them continued to chat as they finished their second round of drinks. Meanwhile, in the corner of the room, David and Merula were getting cosier and cosier.

“Looks like we’re going to have to keep entertaining ourselves for the rest of the night,” Artemis said, as the two of them watched David whisper something into Merula’s ear. Amelia raised her eyebrows.

“I’m flattered, Artemis,” she grinned, “but you're not really my type. I prefer blondes.”

“That’s fine. I prefer penises,” Artemis shot back. Amelia laughed, and Artemis scanned the room. “What about her? She’s very blonde. Pretty, too.”

She nodded across the dancefloor to a girl with a willowy figure and straight white-blonde hair that fell to just above her shoulders. Amelia followed her line of sight and nodded, smiling.

“She is.”

“Come on, then,” Artemis said, putting her glass down. “Let’s head over there.”

The pair of them danced across the room, close to where the blonde girl was with her friends. It didn’t take long for Amelia to strike up a conversation with her, and not a lot longer before the pair of them were dancing together. They danced closer, and closer, and their faces drew nearer until their lips locked together. Artemis smiled. Her work here was done.

She turned back to the bar, and felt a pair of eyes settle on her as she emerged from the throng on the dancefloor. She looked across the bar and saw who it was: a tall man with dark hair and high cheekbones. She made eye contact, and he smiled at her. He was good-looking. Very good-looking, in fact.

Well, she thought, Andre had said not to waste the outfit. So, she made her way over to the bar to let the handsome stranger buy her a drink.

#when stars ignite #hogwarts mystery #hphm fic #hphm #hphm rockstar au #artemis hexley #charlie weasley #merula snyde #Amelia booth #besties collaborate

26 notes · View notes

oreo166 · 3 years

Text

Avatar Hot Take #2

Time for another topic that might fuel some backlash and more controversy.

The amount of negative flak given to Aang for kissing Katara when he shouldn’t have in the EIP (Ember Island Players) episode -- compared to how much given to Korra when she first kissed Mako in the SoC (Spirit of Competition) episode -- is ridiculous:

Now let me give y’all a disclaimer right now: I am NOT saying that kissing Katara was the right thing for Aang to do at the time. In fact, I agree that it wasn’t.

With that said, however, nor was kissing Mako the right thing for Korra to do.

Yet why do I see many people calling Aang “selfish”, “entitled”, and even “ab*sive” for his error in the EIP episode? Heck, I’ve seen comments go far enough to imply that Aang should’ve been punched in the face! So would anyone mind telling me exactly where the frick all those kinds of comments are for Korra?

And no, what Aang and Korra did in the EIP and the SoC episodes respectively were not different. They were anything but different. Let’s examine the context of the specific scenario of each of the two episodes, shall we?:

EIP Scenario:

Aang asked Katara if she really meant what she said about seeing him as a “little brother” even though that’s what her actress said. Even after she replied that she herself never said so and only her actress did - implying that she did NOT see him like a brother - Aang still replied, “But it’s true, isn’t it?” Plus, he didn’t even say it with an angry or explosive tone; rather he said it with a clearly saddened yet calm one. This implies that if Katara had bluntly said that she had no romantic interest in him, Aang would’ve ultimately been fine with that.

Aang mentions to Katara the time when they previously and mutually kissed during the Invasion (and yes, it was mutual since Katara kissed back). He also told her that he thought they’d start dating each other by then. However, he acknowledges that they still weren’t together regardless. And Aang was still obviously broken-hearted yet calm when saying all of this. And to be honest, many hints were shown of Katara having at least some romantic interest in Aang such as Katara’s previous cheek kisses she’d only ever given to Aang; her suggesting the idea of kissing in the Cave of Two Lovers; and etc. So Aang really wasn’t wrong to believe that she wanted to be with him.

Afterwards, Katara solemnly says, “Aang, I don’t know.” Aang then asks, “Why don’t you know?” Katara explains, “’Cause we’re in the middle of a war, and we have other things to worry about. This isn’t the right time.” “Well, when is the right time?” Aang asked. “Aang, I’m sorry, but right now, I’m just a little confused,” Katara said as an ultimatum. So right here, Katara doesn’t say that she doesn’t want to date Aang at all. Rather, she doesn’t whether she actually will be able to or not since they were fighting in the war, and Aang still had yet to face the firelord. And at the time, neither Katara nor Aang knew how much longer the war would last, nor did either of them know if they’d still end up alive by the end of it. Aang, however, didn’t understand that. Rather, he started growing impatient, for he wanted to get a clear and direct confirmation from Katara herself if wanted to be with him or not -- which wasn’t exactly what she gave him.

And as we all know, Aang non-consensually tries to kiss Katara afterwards; she immediately pulls herself away from the attempted kiss, shouted at him for it, and stormed off. This part doesn’t need any explanations.

SoC:

Korra told Mako, “Save your breath. You’ve already made it clear how you feel about me.” “No, I haven’t. What I’m trying to say is as much as you drive me crazy, I also think you’re pretty amazing,” Mako replied. So right here, it’s blatantly made clear that Mako likes Korra back.

“So you do like me?” Korra asked. “Yes,” Mako sighed with uncertainty, “but I like Asami too. I don’t know. Things are complicated. I’m feeling really confused, and -- .” Then, as most of us know, Korra interrupted Mako with a non-consensual kiss, yet Mako kissed back regardless. Bolin, seeing it all, broken-heartedly runs off bawling. Mako and Korra blow up into an short argument about it, and Mako storms off as a result. So basically, what made Mako confused was that he romantically liked his girlfriend at the time, Asami, and Korra; he didn’t know he should’ve decided what to do about that.

So in both scenarios, Katara and Mako, at the very least, reciprocated Aang’s and Korra’s interests in them repsectively (even if it possibly was to a lesser extent). And yes, Katara DID develop romantic feelings for Aang. Hints proving so existed, as subtle as they may have been. However, Katara and Mako also explicitly said that they were confused, yet Aang and Korra still kissed them regardless. So really, there’s nothing that suggests that Korra kissing Mako in the SoC episode was more okay than Aang kissing Katara in the EIP episode.

Heck, I’d even argue that Korra’s kiss was actually even worse than Aang’s. Like I said before, Mako was already dating Asami at the time -- and Korra knew that herself! And while albeit Korra really was seeing mostly as a platonic hangout, she was technically dating Bolin as well; therefore, she ended up ripping Bolin’s heart when he saw her kiss his brother. It doesn’t matter if Mako kissed Korra back unlike Katara with Aang. You don’t kiss someone who already has a significant other. So if any of you anti-kataangers really want to preach about consent, then you ought to be talking about Korra more.

Now let me get one more disclaimer out of the way: I’m NOT saying all of this to bash on Korra or her relationship with Mako! Just like Aang — who angrily called himself an idiot after realizing his mistake of kissing Katara at an inappropriate time — Korra realized her mistake very soon after. In fact, we even get to see Korra apologize to Bolin for breaking his heart. For me to bash on Korra and her relationship with Mako, I’d have to end up bashing on Aang and his relationship with Katara — and that’s DEFINITELY NOT the purpose of this post.

TL;DR: Cut the double standards! Either bash on both Aang and Korra for their inappropriately-timed kisses or don’t bash either of them at all!

#avatar the last airbender #atla #aang #katara #kataang #aang defense squad #the legend of korra #tlok #korra #mako #makorra #again NOTHING AGAINST EITHER KORRA OR MAKORRA!#avatar fandom #avatar fandom discourse #avatar fandom crit

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pinkt3aa · 2 years

Text

video game fun

ryusuke minami x reader 𖤐

contains-no pronouns used for reader, weapons, mild cursing, 774 words

Your phone remained bare no matter how many times you looked for a text or call from ryusuke.

He said he’d come see you today but remained quiet when you tried to text him about his whereabouts. Which worried you in the least since it was raining hard. Just as you were going to send him a message that you were worried about him since the rain hit down hard a knock was heard on your door.

At first you debated on getting it till a second knock followed up leading your curiosity further as you rushed to the door and opened it. There stood a drenched ryusuke with his clothes and long hair clung onto his wet figure.

Letting him in you shut the door behind and crossed your arms, “Y’know you shouldn’t be walking in the rain like that you could catch a cold”. Your voice was worried and it put a smile on his face to his face.

Pulling your hips he brought you closer to him and despite his wet attire you put your arms over his shoulders. “Oh so you’re worried about me since my phone died” he chuckled leaning into your lips.

“Someone has too plus I was texting for the past hour worried” you smiled pecking his lips once more before dragging him over to your room.

Settling your self onto your bed you watched as ryusuke pulled off the wet hoodie making some of his shirt ride up and toss it into your laundry bin. In that split second his shirt came up your eyes soaked up his abs like he was a piece of eye candy even though you’ve seen his abs a million times once more.

As he climbed onto the bed beside you, you rested your legs over his and handed him an Xbox controller as a knowing smirk played across both of your lips. Almost everytime ryusuke came to your house in some way you’d always end of up playing mortal kombat.

When he heard you got an xbox he gushed about the game and how good his friends told him it was. And unexpectedly one day he showed up to your house with it. With no further questions you both quickly ran to your room to play the new game.

Picking your character you chose Scorpion. The character had helped you win a lot of fights you just couldn’t say no. As for your boyfriend he picked Mileena claiming she was too badass to loose.

“I swear you’re going to be wiped out the second the game starts”

“Rather cocky aren’t you” you scoffed. When it came to other things you and Ryusuke always tried to agree to things but when it came to challenges you both were sure competitive. When the group would have challenges everyone would fall out quickly leaving you and ryusuke to compete for the win.

‘FIGHT!’

Spamming the keys of your controller you were first to get a hit. Quite a few actually making ryusukes character loose a tad bit of health. He was quick to strike back though by slashing your character with the blades on her knuckles but you sent out your metal rope pulling her in and sending a uppercut her way and backup hits.

Looking toward his health bar ryusuke started to get nervous and spammed his keys making his character repeatly kick you into the air and than punch you as you landed to the floor. Now you had less health than him and resulted to your only option so early in the game.

Pressing two keys down you did your final move, your metal rope had a dagger that pierced right into ryusukes character and Scorpion pulled the chain back. “GET OVER HERE!!”

Turning to you ryusuke sulked, “you really had to do me like that this early in the game”

“You made it hard not to” shutting down your controller and placed a big smooch on his cheek. Pulling you into his lap you maneuvered around so your legs were straddling his legs. He remained quiet with his eyes on yours than he put a hand pointing to his lips earning a confused look from you.

He continued to point to his lips till you finally got the message. A loud ‘oh’ escaped your mouth than your smooched his lips even saying ‘mwah’ after you did.

“I never would’ve thought you guessed I wanted a kiss you took forever” he laughed

“Says mr pointy here I shouldve slapped your lips instead” you huffed over exaggerating for the fun of it

“Yeah yeah I’m sorry” he said kissing your face

#beck x reader #ryusuke x reader #ryusuke minami x reader #ryusuke minami

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zaffrenotes · 3 years

Text

[TRR: WD106] Avoiding A Blunder

Summary: Prince Liam has to fill in for Crown Prince Leo, and Murphy’s Law is put into motion at the end of his trip. Chaos ensues, condensed Wacky Drabble style. Fic Rating/Warning: M; alcohol consumption, minor health/medical emergency, anxiety/angst Author’s Note: All main characters belong to Pixelberry/The Royal Romance, I’m just borrowing them * Fictional versions of IRL individuals are included with affection; any other characters mentioned in this piece are my creation * This is my submission for @wackydrabbles Prompt 106: You’re gonna get us busted! * You have @the-soot-sprite and @ao719 to thank for this ridiculousness, lol - Soot reblogged a photo, Betsy sent me this request

and...this is what my brain came up with (PS - thank you both for the movie discussion) * For the purposes of this story, Triydalia is a fictional country that shares a border with Thailand * Word Count: 1999 😅 (7 minutes reading time)

Taglist (if your name is crossed out, I'll tag you in the comments): @/ao719 @burnsoslow @gkittylove99 @neotericthemis @ofpixelsandscribbles @rainbowsinthestorm @superharriet @/the-soot-sprite @choiceskatie @jaqren @aestheticartsx @bbrandy2002 @dcbbw @gnatbrain @jared2612 @kingliam2019 @ladyangel70 @lovingchoices14 @nestledonthaveone @princessleac1 @queenjilian @sfb123 @texaskitten30 @theroyalheirshadowhunter @yourmajesty09

Liam was used to filling in for Leo at a moment’s notice; participating in conference calls with ambassadors for early morning updates when Leo overslept, and attending meetings with ministers when Leo went AWOL. He’d grown accustomed to his brother’s antics, but he wondered how Bastien managed to keep his position, when he’d lost track of Leo’s whereabouts countless times.

While Leo spent more time avoiding his duties as Crown Prince of Cordonia, Liam dutifully took on the extra responsibilities in stride. It often meant partitioning his already packed schedule to sit in on vital cabinet meetings or dining with visiting dignitaries, but sometimes Leo’s vanishing acts gave Liam the opportunity to travel.

Though their ambassadors handled the majority of day-to-day relations with other countries for trade, Constantine preferred to meet face-to-face when he could. One such time, a lingering cough turned to walking pneumonia, restricting Constantine to as much bed rest as possible. It also meant sending Leo to Japan for a meeting with the Prime Minister in his stead.

It would have been fine, if Leo hadn’t pulled another one of his disappearing acts.

A week later, Liam was seated on the royal jet on his way back from Tokyo, navy attache with espresso brown leather trim in the chair next to him. Across from him, Maxwell chatted with Anya over various Thai dishes. On the other side of the plane, Drake was in a heated discussion with leggy blonde Anitah while the ladies’ petite friend Donna observed in silence, fighting back a grin. “You’re an imbecile if that’s your opinion,” Anitah declared, raising her hands up in the air. “Are you sure that’s the hill you wanna die on?”

Drake smugly sipped from the crystal tumbler in his hand. “I’m right and you know it.”

“What are you two talking about?” Liam asked, relieved to think about anything other than what was in the bag and why it was so important he hand deliver it to his father.

“Fight Club being a better cinematic masterpiece than The Princess Bride,” Drake replied. “You guys agree, right? If you could only watch one movie for the rest of your life, you’d want to watch Tyler Durden fight the system instead of some…” he paused to sneer at Anitah, who crossed her arms and stuck out her tongue at him, “...story about a swashbuckler rescuing a princess? She’s not even a real princess!”

“Fight Club is such a guy movie though,” Anya argued, turning in her seat to face Drake. “Princess Bride appeals to men and women, with a much larger audience.”

“Okay, that’s two for Buttercup,” Drake sighed. “Maxwell? Li?” He looked at his friends expectantly.

“Fight Club, definitely,” Maxwell said, nodding his head. He’d spent the better part of the trip doing everything to get into Drake’s good graces after the octopus incident on the first night in Tokyo.

Before Liam could respond, a commotion from the front of the plane made everyone’s heads turn, where a pair of Kings Guards and two flight attendants were seated near the galley. One of the guards slipped into the cockpit, rushing out a moment later in Liam’s direction, as the jet slowly tilted to the right. “Apologies, Your Highness. Do you or any of your guests happen to speak Triydalian?”

Anya slowly raised her hand. “I knew a bit when I was a kid, but I haven’t used it in years.”

The guard motioned for her to join him. “Please come with us, miss. The pilots need a translator.”

“Is everything alright, Remy?” Liam peered past the guard, eyes widening at the sight of the other guard and one attendant hovering in front of the other attendant in a chair.

“We need to land the plane, Sir,” Remy answered, ushering Anya up from her seat. “Ramona passed out. She’s breathing but unresponsive.”

Twenty minutes later and after a jarring landing, they’d arrived at a small airport in the Republic of Triydalia, at the edge of one of the country’s many jungle forests. Calling it an airport was generous - it was more of a cleared dirt path in the middle of the jungle with a shack for an airport tower, and a man that looked like more of a hunter than an air traffic controller. After a choppy conversation that required pantomiming and hand signals, Anya left with Remy and the man from the tower to fetch a tribal doctor, while Anitah and Donna assisted the other member of the cabin crew to look after Ramona. They were warned to remain as quiet as possible and to stay inside the jet.

Minutes passed by in tense observation; Anitah and Drake continued their debate in low whispers, growing louder as they defended their choices. Liam could see the pilots discussing something pointedly as they checked readings on the instrument panel and worked on calculations. One of them stepped out, claiming that he needed to stretch his legs, and walked cautiously down the runway. When he returned, the other pilot joined him outside, despite the original warning to stay inside. Liam peered out the windows and checked his watch, worrying about Anya and Remy, along with his father’s instructions to avoid delaying their return.

While the remaining guard headed towards the back of the plane to pace back and forth for the eighth time, Liam took it upon himself to speak with the pilots. The air was thick and stifling the moment he stepped outside. Around them, there was nothing but green, green, and more green from the wilderness that surrounded them, abuzz with tropical birds and insects. At his side he carried the blue attache, remembering the promise to his father that the bag wouldn’t leave his sight. He spoke in a hushed tone when he approached the pilots. “You’re doing more than just stretching your legs, aren’t you, Captain?”

Both men grimaced slightly. “Yes, Your Highness. Even if we pulled back to one end of the runway, we’re still at least five hundred feet short of clearing takeoff.”

“What if we worked to try and clear the brush on either end?” Liam offered, looking off into the distance.

“There’s no way to clear out the trees, even the young ones,” the co-captain answered. “We might be able to take off if we could drop some weight, but the larger concern is the longer we wait, we increase the risk of encountering someone who doesn’t want us here.”

Liam nodded gravely; months of civil unrest in Triydalia meant rebel groups assembled faster than the government could contain them. There was no guarantee of anyone’s safety, stranded on a remote runway. There was no telling what was wrong with Ramona while she was unconscious, and therefore no way to treat her without the aid of a doctor. Ensuring the safety of the crew and his friends could have been avoided altogether if Leo didn’t constantly opt out of handling the duties of his station. In that moment, Liam abhorred the never-ending list of responsibilities thrust at him as a result of having to pick up the slack for his brother, knowing if their roles were reversed, Leo would manage to find a way to leave Liam to solve problems on his own.

“Could you excuse me for a moment?”

He’d barely finished asking the question before walking into the tall grass by the edge of the runway. Ignoring the pilots’ calls to return, Liam sprinted into the dense greenery, dodging between vines and scanning the ground for tripwires until he could no longer see the plane over his shoulder. When he finally stopped running, he bent over, hands on his knees as he gulped in air. Liam looked down at the blue bag in his hand, wondering what on earth was so precious to reduce him to a courier.

Shaking the bag did nothing; it felt practically empty, though he could tell something was inside. He couldn’t open the bag to check, since Prime Minister Abe and his father were the only ones with keys, and PM Abe handed him the sealed bag when they parted ways. Liam wanted to throw the infernal “murse” the ladies had good-naturedly teased him for into the bushes. Perspiration dotted his hairline, and he let out a primal scream, before taking slow, deep breaths to quiet the worrisome thoughts racing in his head and bring his heartbeat down to normal.

Cursed courier bag in his right hand, Liam braced his arm against his torso, pinning it in place with his elbow when he bent his other arm up towards his face. Curling his fingers into a relaxed fist, he pressed his lips against his thumb, thick brows furrowing in thought. All around him, wild birds called to one another amidst the chittering clamor of insects hidden in the foliage. He was so busy running through scenarios in his head that he didn’t hear the quiet click of a camera, turning to look up only when he heard a branch snap in the distance.

“Watch it! You’re gonna get us busted!” Donna hissed to Drake. She pocketed her phone, elbowing Drake in the ribs as they crouched behind large leaves. She ticked her head in Liam’s direction. “Go get your boy, none of us are safe out here.”

After some coaxing, Liam headed back to the plane with Donna and Drake, walking briskly through the jungle, eyes trained to look for anything out of the ordinary. Liam was alarmed when he heard and then saw the engines running, until Drake explained the pilots were burning off fuel to lighten the plane. They’d begun to walk up the steps, when Maxwell popped out above them. “Whoo!” Maxwell exclaimed, digging for another snack from the container he cradled in his arm. “Feels like a sauna out here!”

“Lower your voice, Maxwell! Please!” Liam seethed. His features pinched together in disbelief. “Are you...eating? Now?”

“You know I stress snack,” Maxwell replied, shrugging his shoulders. He shoved another cookie into his mouth.

Liam’s eyes lit up and he took the stairs two by two, knocking on the cockpit door before swinging it open. “What if we unloaded whatever’s not bolted down? The decor, dinnerware, the food and drink?”

“That...would certainly help,” the captain replied, looking back over his shoulder. He turned to his co-pilot. “It could be enough to get in the air after burning off the excess fuel.”

“You heard the man, Maxwell,” Liam said, offering his friend a nervous grin. “Get Drake to help you start unloading the plane. Has Ramona’s status changed?”

“Donna found the first aid kit just before she took off with Drake to go after you. Anitah found some smelling salts that gave her a rude wakeup call. Turns out her insulin pump shorted and she just needed some juice.”

Several more minutes passed as the group removed whatever they could from the plane, leaving piles of cookware, food, throw pillows, and even seat cushions to lighten the load. Drake whined when they gathered up the liquor, but he stuffed a bottle of whiskey in a cabinet by his seat. They’d nearly finished when Anya and Remy returned, running on foot. “That thing better be ready to take off!” Anya hollered, motioning for everyone to board. “Rebels on our tail! Time to go!”

Everyone scrambled back onto the plane; Liam relayed the urgency to depart to the pilots, who rapidly went through their flight checklist. Remy pulled Anya up onto the steps and they all clamored to buckle into their seats, the sound of gunfire in the air as the jet rolled forward and lurched up into the air, barely clearing the canopy.

Adrenaline pumping and breaths shallow, Liam looked around at his friends and the crew, thankful they were safely in the air again.

Liam thought he was having a stroke at twenty-four when he saw the contents of the bag. Constantine smiled with glee at the small gold cat, one paw raised.

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luverofralts · 3 years

Text

Arkhelios University

Roman had numbly let Abe lead him upstairs and helped him change into his soft, warm pajamas before they continued their talk. Roman still had trouble feeling warm even in the heat of the desert they lived in, which worried Abe. Was something wrong, or was he just too upset to be discussing the fears that had completely paralyzed his life?

“Are you feeling any better?” Abe asked, wrapping his arms around Roman to transfer both heat and comfort to him.

Roman nodded and curled even to closer to his fiance.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “This is nice. I’ve been so busy running away from you, it feels like forever since we’ve been this close.”

“We can always be this close,” Abe replied. “Just don’t shut me out of your life again. We’re a team.”

“You don’t understand how strong the nightmares are,” Roman insisted, shaking his head. “They feel real. They probably could be real.”

“What happens in them? I know how intense they get. You’re not exactly easy to sleep beside when they happen.”

“I see Adrian a lot,” Roman admitted. “I don’t think it’s actually him, but we talk a lot about things. About what happened. About the kids. I would much rather imagine him ending up in some version of an afterlife than being trapped in my nightmares though. I hope if there really is some place where ghosts can be summoned from...I hope he’s at peace. The version of him that I talk to isn’t. He’s angry or frustrated most of the time, but we usually end up saying more in my dreams than we ever did while we were married. I feel like I barely knew him, but I still miss him. I know that’s not what you want to hear.”

Abe couldn’t agree more. The last thing he wanted was to hear about Roman’s grief for another man. Abe was raising that man’s children though, and Roman clearly still had conflicting feelings about him. Abe didn’t like thinking about lying in bed next to Roman while he spoke at length to his ex in his dreams. Was that wrong of him, or fair? He didn’t know what the etiquette of dream conversations were exactly.

“No, I’m not thrilled, but I don’t think that’s fair to you either,” he admitted. “That can’t be all you see though. You wake up screaming in terror most nights. The conversations can’t be that bad.”

“You die in most of the dreams you’re in,” Roman said, a bit too casually for Abe’s liking. “You die in different ways, but the end result is always the same. I can’t save you.”

Abe hugged Roman even tighter.

“Those are just dreams,” he assured him. “Dreams aren’t real. What happened with Adrian’s death was real, talking to him while you’re sleeping isn’t. These are just the same type of nightmares that Theo gets about the dark. They can’t hurt me.”

“You almost died. For real,” Roman stated bluntly. “I’m not sure if you remember. Just before our contract expired, a void carried you off, the same as Adrian. You almost died.”

The blood froze in Abe’s veins. He froze in that moment, afraid to hear the truth when he already had an idea of what Roman meant.

“I fell. That was the day I fell, right? I lay out in the yard for several hours, and woke up to Theo trying to convince me not to die,” Abe replied. “You mean that was real and not some hallucination?”

“Yes, very real,” Roman confirmed, looking upset. “I...how do I explain it?” He paused for a moment, considering his options. “You know how I teleport compared to how magic users teleport?”

“You find portals, cracks in the dimensions and slip through,” Abe supplied helpfully. “Ulyssa vanishes, like she blinks out of existence for a second. I hate having to hitch a ride with her or Wanda. It’s jarring and you feel weird after.”

“Yes, I find portals that can open to where I need to go,” Roman agreed. “There is a fabric that binds the world together and weaving through it can take us places in an instant. It also means that if you have the skill, you can sneak behind that fabric, and find the purest form of the universe that holds up the world we live in. There are corridors and secret pockets everywhere that can be explored. You can see the most amazing or terrifying things in it that you could ever imagine. It’s the natural realm demons inhabit. A place so cold, the environment has shaped its inhabitants to adapt to it. Humans can’t survive in it. They’re not made to withstand the bone chilling cold or the empty void that feeds on their energy. It’s a relentless, constant drain of energy. The demons have adapted, resorting to bartering for energy from humans to fuel their lives, but humans don’t have that option. The void takes and takes from a human, until they don’t even have the energy to shiver from the cold. You’re bled dry before you can freeze to death. It’s a horrible way to die.”

Abe didn’t know how to process this information. He was pretty sure that his face would show Roman his horror even if he didn’t have the words to express it.

“I know,” Roman agreed. “That was my reaction too. It’s a lot.”

“And someone isn’t traveling within this reality anymore, but is trying to open a connection straight from that unlivable void to here,” Abe worked out. “Those connections are exposing people to the “home world” of demons, but not actually opening a proper connection to it.”

Abe closed his eyes, and tried to place this information in the context of what he remembered of what had happened to him. He already knew the answer before he could ask the question.

“Your mom’s trying to escape, isn’t she? She’s trapped in one of those pockets, and is trying her best to make an exit from it.”

“Do you remember what happened just before the deal ended?” Roman asked cautiously. “I never knew if you did. I was hoping that you wouldn’t remember anything about it. You were in pretty bad shape when I found you.”

“When you found me?”

“I heard you, clear as day,” Roman said. “I was just finishing some dishes, and then I heard you speak to me, as clearly as if you were standing beside me. You asked me to help you, do you remember? I went through every portal I could find that felt like you, following our connection. I don’t think you’d actually punctured through to where my mother is sealed, but she was close. She was closer than I thought she ever could get. As soon as I held you, you were protected by my immunity to our surroundings. Our connection shielded you like the genetic markers the kids inherited from me shielded them. I was strong enough to hold her off, and try to heal some of the damage to you, but just when I needed it most, our connection broke. The deal ended, and I couldn’t use it to shield you any more.”

Roman stared pleadingly at his fiance, trying to urge the severity of the situation.

“Without the deal, I couldn’t track you to where you’d been taken. Without the deal, I couldn’t transfer any immunity to you. I’m so desperate to make another deal with you because it is the only way I know of to save you. I couldn’t save Adrian, but now that I know that this can happen again, I won’t lose you too. I can’t.”

“She’s lashing out at people in your life, isn’t she?” Abe whispered in horror. “For revenge?”

“For an escape,” Roman corrected him. “She knows that she could take control over me before. I’m a lot harder to find these days though. I think she’s trying to find me by finding the people I care about. Any one I have a connection to that she can exploit. If she can find them, she hopes to find me.”

“And take control over you again?” Abe gasped. He’d tried to repress everything his future mother in law had been able to do. Roman had lost countless days, possibly even weeks when his mother had taken direct control of him as a teen. He didn’t remember what she’d made him do, but he could only assume that some of his many scars had been made during that time. “Can she make you free her?”

Roman shook his head and gave Abe’s hand a reassuring squeeze.

“I’m pretty underwhelming at both magic and anything relating to demonology,” he assured him. “I don’t have the skill to do it, even if she was controlling me. She’s not getting out anytime soon. I’ve been practicing my skills, and have been assured by qualified people that I’m not talented enough to worry about. She can’t just take control of me even if she was standing beside me though. I’ve been learning some things.”

“Learning?”

Roman tried not to look too proud of himself since he’d been lying to Abe for a while about it, but he felt like he deserved at least some credit for taking such initiative.

“I’ve been attending some seminars,” Roman boasted. “I’ve been taking lessons too in self defense and defensive magic. All the times that I came home with a black eye or bruised arm, I was learning how to defend myself. To defend our family. My instructor said that I’m ‘probably not going to get myself killed.’ It’s the nicest thing a magic teacher has ever told me. The demonology teacher said the same thing pretty much. Well, and some more comments about my family. My mom is not popular in certain crowds.”

“That’s amazing!” Abe exclaimed, relieved to not have to wonder if Kamalani was really in control of his fiance or not. “If you had just told me about all of this, I would have been really proud of you. I know how school wasn’t the easiest thing for you, and it sounds like you managed not to fail or run away from a class you found difficult. Even Lucy would be impressed that you weren’t also expelled somehow. Why didn’t you just tell me?”

Roman looked uncomfortable with the question.

“You know why. You don’t really approve of me embracing my heritage,” he replied slowly. “I was afraid that you would be afraid, or disgusted if I tried to be more like my family. I know that you’re afraid of my mom escaping, and even more terrified of Theo and I using any of her powers. I wanted to be able to protect you without also worrying about what learning new abilities might mean for us and-”

Abe kissed his stubborn fiance before he could continue his sentence.

“I was afraid a long time ago,” he assured Roman. “I was a kid, and a new father, and I’d basically just lost my dad to the kind of monsters you only see in movies. It was a lot to handle at first, but things have changed. I mean if we constantly have to keep ahead of Theo’s growing abilities, it probably doesn’t hurt to try to develop your own. Last week Lucy was telling me all about a suspected werewolf mauling over breakfast, like it was nothing out of the ordinary. Things are different now that we’re not teens constantly thinking that we’re about to die. I’ll try to be more supportive in the future if you promise not to keep hiding the things you’re exploring.”

“It’s a deal,” Roman said with a laugh, before he remembered that nothing had changed at all for them. Abe was still helpless against any future attacks and Roman had just promised to destroy the only hope of getting his ability to make deals restored. “What do we do now? I don’t know how to protect you and...something just feels wrong about this. It’s too easy to just blame my mother for everything. There’s something else at play here. She’s involved in some way I’m sure, but something feels wrong. The cards lately have been uncertain, and when I was near Kaeileen, her reading was exactly the same as my own. Exactly the same, Abe. It means something.”

“Like what? Kaeileen is conspiring with your mother?” Abe asked skeptically. “Wasn’t she the one who tried to kill Kaeileen? What possible reason could there be for those two to work together? I think they each have a pretty good reason not to like each other. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“No,” Roman said, deep in thought. “It doesn’t. Now that you mention it though, I think I have a better question to ask. I’ve never given it any real thought before, but it’s so obvious. How is Kaeileen alive?”

“Because she escaped from...oh, you’re right,” Abe said slowly. “If I understand this right, your mom put her outside of the realm a human could survive in. Is it even possible for a human to open a rift from there back home?”

Roman shook his head. Suddenly he couldn’t feel the cold that had engulfed him anymore. How had he missed this? No wonder the cards were tying the two of them together. Either she had the answer to helping Abe survive, or she was the one Roman had been looking for. The dangerous threat that kept him up at night.

“She was the one who taught Theo how to teleport,” Roman groaned. “She apparently was following him around while you were busy, and the way that Lucy just felt compelled to propose out of nowhere? She either knows something, or she’s behind something, Abe.”

“Kaeileen?” Abe asked doubtfully. “I really don’t think she’s capable of whatever you’re thinking. Lucy would have realized something by now.”

Roman bolted from the bed, his mind already frantically trying to piece together the clues he’d gathered.

“How do we confront her?” he wondered, pacing the floor. “We can’t just let her know that we know. She could be dangerous. Should we ask Lucy to ask her some questions? No, too risky. Maybe if I asked her out for coffee to talk. She keeps trying to befriend me for some reason, she’d probably agree to coffee.But what if-”

“Roman,” Abe interrupted before Roman dashed off to do something stupid. “Roman, stop. We need to be careful in the very unlikely case that Kaeileen really is behind some plot. You’d better have some pretty strong evidence to go after Lucy’s fiancee. Besides, she won’t answer any of your questions if she is innocent and you’re trying to burn her at the stake for imaginary schemes. We’ll put our heads together and work out a plan.” He extended his hand towards Roman. “Together. We’ll figure this out together.”

Roman took the offered hand excitedly. Things were a lot easier when he didn’t have to hide things from Abe.

“Together.”

#sims 2 #arkhelios #arkhelios university #Roman Bellamy #abe chun #sims 2 pictures

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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The different aspects of Miyako’s personality and character arc

Miyako is a character where there’s just a lot going on with her in general, and asking different people to summarize Miyako in one phrase could feasibly get you some very different answers -- “the computer nerd girl”, or “the one who keeps talking about boys”, or “the one who panics all of the time”, or whatnot. Given that there’s so much to unpack at once even from her base profile, ironing out the full extent of her character arc can get a bit tricky, and there’s a lot going on with it. So, given that: Who is Miyako, anyway?

Miyako’s background and personality

Miyako is a character that I think is best understood by understanding what kind of person she is, and the personality and mentality she goes into the story of 02 with.

An interesting background story behind Miyako’s creation is that she’s based off a real person -- more accurately, a certain assistant producer on the series (whose identity has remained undisclosed, presumably for privacy reasons) was used as a reference for her behavior and actions. Although Adventure and 02 have a philosophy of portraying realistic human behavior in general, this level of specificity is a unique designation to have, and series director Kakudou Hiroyuki has referred to this a few times over the years -- it seems she’s the only of the Tokyo Chosen Children to have such a concrete single-person reference, and it’s also the reason her blood type of AB and star sign Gemini were given in 02 episode 25 (the other kids don’t have mentioned birthdays or blood types to prevent personality restrictions via horoscoping, but a real person having Miyako’s personality, star sign, and blood type wouldn’t make that as much of an issue). Even Volcano Ota himself confirmed Miyako’s resemblance to her upon hearing it after the fact! Indeed, a lot of 02 fans (especially adults) have admitted that Miyako’s probably one of the most relatable people in the cast, namely because her gushing about things she likes and panicking at things that overwhelm her is...well, a bit too uncomfortably on-point at times.

(And especially since so much about Miyako’s character has to do with how happy she makes everyone around her, it’s not too hard to imagine that the staff was so fond of her real-life inspiration that they wanted to pay tribute to her in such a way...)

Still, Miyako is a fictional character, one with her own backstory and interactions in 02′s story, and said backstory is such: she comes from a family that runs a convenience store in Odaiba, and is the youngest of a family of four siblings. Running a convenience store on a small island means that Miyako has probably seen a lot of the island’s residents, and her family also has various levels of connections to the other kids’ families (her older sisters Momoe and Chizuru are friends of Daisuke’s sister Jun, and Chizuru is Yamato’s classmate). Moreover, she’s befriended her nine-year-old neighbor (one who otherwise has trouble socializing with his peers) to the point of regularly going over to do computer repairs for his family. She’s also worked in the computer club under Koushirou, and even before the series has started, she looks up to him and adores him in a way not entirely unlike how Daisuke looks up to Taichi -- and although it’s unclear whether or not she started after the beginning of 02, 02 episode 29 reveals that she helps Yamato with his band.

The pattern here is that Miyako is extremely sociable, and one who actively pokes her nose into nearly everything so she can help out. This makes her a very different sort of Mom Friend from Sora -- both of them are Crest of Love holders for good reason, but in Sora’s case, she was compulsively going out of her way to help other people to the point of exhaustion, and her character arc was about trying to find a way to detach herself from obligations and do something for herself. Miyako is the complete opposite -- she’s the kind of extrovert who actively enjoys poking her head into other people’s business, picking up a bunch of peripheral hobbies so she can do something useful for everyone and go I’M HELPING!! If you actually look closely at those hobbies of “computer programming and hacking”, “hardware tinkering”, and “sound engineering”, other than vaguely being related to computers, they are completely different skillsets, and every single one of them is one Miyako’s depicted employing in order to help someone else out. (Koushirou is never really depicted as having super amazingly high technical skill and most of his unique talent comes from being a thorough analyst, but in contrast, while Miyako is established as being good at even hacking in Diablomon Strikes Back, she doesn’t really seem to have a huge propensity for deep analytical thought.) It’s hard to tell if she has any personal preference for any of them as much as she basically turned herself into a jack-of-all-trades so she could do whatever job was necessary for someone else.

If we’re to believe the official 02 site, Miyako’s been a bit pampered by her family -- as the youngest of four siblings, she’s the “baby of the family”, who hasn’t had to live with a ton of responsibility for others. This means that, much like Mimi, she seems to have been raised surrounded by a ton of affection, which is why she herself is such an openly affectionate person who’s open-minded towards trying all sorts of things, and why she’s used to wanting to help others by actively throwing herself into situations -- but it also means that, being the youngest of a family who is now in the situation of being the oldest in a new group, she ends up in Jou’s situation of suddenly being faced with the pressure of the concept of proper responsibility for others.

As far as Miyako’s general personality goes, she is constantly overflowing with affection and cheer and a desire to dote on everyone -- but the flip side is that she’s also aggressive. She has zero sense of restraint. (If you ever get around to listening to the Japanese version of 02, Natsuki Rio’s performance is energetic and over-the-top in almost every way imaginable to the point that you get the impression of Miyako as someone who doesn’t easily run out of batteries -- at least, until things start getting really serious.) When she loves something, she’ll gush about it as if there were hearts floating around her (and, depending on the level of closeness, even jump in and physically hug them), and she has no qualms against physically manhandling if she feels she needs to, and if she dislikes something, she will make it very clear (including yelling very loudly about it). You could argue that she’s actually closer to the archetype of the brash shounen protagonist than Daisuke himself is!

In fact, Miyako and Daisuke have very similar temperaments -- pure-hearted, but also rough around the edges -- but can be distinguished by the fact that while Daisuke is actually deferential and somewhat lacking in assertion, Miyako is actually aggressive, and while Daisuke’s “honesty about his feelings” is mainly because he’s too simple-minded to be any good at hiding anything, Miyako’s honesty is because she has no brain-to-mouth filter, and everything she’s thinking comes out of her mouth before she can control it -- in other words, Miyako has a huge case of foot-in-mouth syndrome. She doesn’t want to be insensitive, but it keeps coming out of her mouth before she can control it -- and even worse, her emotions are prone to taking control of her, and she is very prone to getting overwhelmed and collapsing into a massive panic.

If you think about the two archetypes of “girl who takes care of everyone” and “aggressive action girl”, Miyako has a tendency towards both at once, and moreover there’s an extra nail in it -- most “action girls” in the latter category would be portrayed as badass, put-together characters with a cool personality, but Miyako is a mess. She’s prone to panicking, all over the place, and her tendency to get in-your-face is not exactly in the most dignified manner. And as a result, a huge part of her character arc (as we will be going more into detail about below) is that she’s aware of this and doesn’t like this about herself -- because she doesn’t want to be insensitive or rude, and in fact she wants to be someone who can better help and take care of others, but, in her mind, her own personality keeps getting in the way.

Miyako in 02

After fully becoming a Chosen Child in 02 episode 2, it only takes one more episode for Miyako to bring food for everyone, as if to say “Right! I’m going to be working with everyone now! All of you are now my new best friends!” (”Bringing food for people” is one of Miyako’s many ways of showing love, given that she returns from Kyoto in 02 episode 34 and immediately hands off souvenir yatsuhashi to Koushirou.) And with that, Miyako settles into the archetype of the group’s “mood maker” -- someone whose role is to keep everyone in emotionally high spirits by influencing everyone with cheer and energy. 02 episode 5 features the debut of her famous “Digital Gate, open! Chosen Children, let’s roll!” catchphrase -- this and her other famous “Bingo!” catchphrase establish her as the only of the Tokyo Chosen Children to have a catchphrase (at least, in the Japanese version). Because catchphrases are fun.

As much as everyone (especially Daisuke) is a bit blindsided by her behavior at first, they eventually come to embrace the positive effect she has on all of them -- Daisuke very genuinely asks her for “the usual cheer” in 02 episode 10, and, all the way in 02 episode 22, this is such an agreed-on and established role that they’ll still wait on her to do the honors even when they’re in a hurry. So in other words, it didn’t take long for Miyako to go out of her way to shower everyone with cheer, and it didn’t take long for everyone to answer to that cheer and appreciate her for it.

The flip side of this, however, is that Miyako doesn’t start off being very emotionally equipped to handle this -- right off the bat in 02 episode 2, she says that she’s not inclined for fighting, and in 02 episode 4, she refers to it as being “like an adventure game”. That is to say, she’s not at the point where she’s able to handle the full gravity of what she’s just involved herself with (Daisuke reminds her that she’d panicked earlier, but she just blows it off). She’s handling it so cheerfully now because the series is still in its early stages, when she can enter and exit the Digital World at will, and she’s capable of treating it like this.

So when the stakes do get higher, she’s the first one to take the stress hard. As mentioned before, she’s the youngest in her family, now recast as the oldest in this group -- but unlike Jou, who consciously knew this fact and took stress onto himself because of the responsibility this entailed, Miyako seems to repeatedly forget that she’s the oldest in this group, and the events of 02 episodes 9-10 (when Agumon is kidnapped) cause her to break down from stress and have to take a time-out. (Which everyone allows her to do, because this is not a series where people are pressured to fight if they’re not emotionally ready for it.) Miyako comes to terms with the fact that the stakes are going to keep escalating, and she can’t just gloss over everything with cheer -- and she does manage to pull herself enough to bring Yamato into the fray at the end of the episode, but this continues to be a recurring theme for the rest of her character arc.

While we’re discussing these early parts of the series, one thing I want to briefly address is the part where Miyako infamously calls a lot of people hot. (Although, not as many as the fanbase would love to make you think; it’s only four people in total.) This tends to get her pinned as some kind of flirt whose head is only filled with being hot for people, but while she’s certainly a bit on the shallow end at this point of the series -- dealing with that being what this character arc is about, after all -- this trait of hers tends to get exaggerated by a lot of people in the audience as if she’s completely lacking in common sense. Miyako’s ridiculous (and we love her for it), but she does have some degree of grip on herself! Context is important here -- she might show a crush on someone, but at no point in the series itself does Miyako show any indication of seriously thinking of full-on dating.

For Miyako, who’s accustomed to just blurting out the first thing that comes to mind, commenting on someone being hot is like commenting on the weather -- she means it as a compliment, but there’s no evidence she thinks she has a chance with any of them, let alone wanting to try dating. This is especially when you take into account her self-esteem issues that we learn about later in the series, and also...well, the fact she’s only twelve. (Remember: even Daisuke’s thing for Hikari comes out as a lot of unfocused affection, and it’s unlikely he’s seriously considered the concept of following that up with a serious relationship -- any serious prospects of romance or dating are not going to be on the table for these kids for a while.) Miyako has also been accused by some of being abysmally shallow for still complimenting Ken’s looks in 02 episode 9 (after it’s already apparent he’s the Kaiser), but although she certainly is a bit shallow at this point of the series, she’s not that lacking in common sense; Iori got in on it too in this scene, and both of them were doing it to tease Daisuke more than they seriously wanted to compliment the Kaiser all that much. So in essence, it’s just “Miyako has eyes” -- she still completely agrees he’s their enemy and she’s not going to judge him any better for his looks, but she also doesn’t see this as a reason to lie about the fact she thinks he’s visually good-looking, especially if it’s to tease Daisuke about it.

In any case, 02 episode 14 digs a lot more into Miyako’s stance on herself regarding others -- in 02 episode 6, Miyako met Mimi for the first time, and latched onto her for their similar dispositions and her looking up to Mimi for being beautiful, amazing, and cool (and she should, because she’s right). 02 episode 14 adds another layer to this, however, when Miyako spends the duration negatively comparing herself to Mimi. At first it starts off as simply just shallow jealousy for Michael giving Mimi more attention, but as the situation with Digitamamon escalates, Miyako spends a prolonged period of time trying to figure out Mimi’s behavior of pure-heartedly choosing to trust Digitamamon despite everything, against Miyako’s insistence that Digitamamon’s behavior proves that he was untrustworthy the whole time.

Mimi and Miyako’s stances are both on extremes here -- Mimi’s pacifistic tendencies are causing her to let her get beaten up by Digitamamon despite the fact that “appealing to people’s hearts” has never really been demonstrated as a good way to get Evil Rings off (to be fair, this is probably the first time they’ve made an attempt at this with a Digimon that can still talk coherently with it on), but Miyako’s acting as if this retroactively proves him to be untrustworthy even though she knows that the Evil Rings are tantamount to brainwashing. Nevertheless, Miyako acknowledges that her own stance was borne out of her being shallow and judgmental, especially since the discussion between Mimi and Digitamamon brings out a question about the meaning of the “true self”.

Miyako, at this point, is confronting everything that’s bad about herself -- that she’s shallow and not as much of a “good person” as Mimi is. But the Crest of Purity -- once meaning “lack of malice” back when it applied to Mimi in Adventure -- now has a secondary meaning of “not lying to oneself” (the dub translation of “Sincerity” is not actually that off in this sense), and it also means that Miyako is not going to get anywhere pretending or forcing herself to be someone she’s not. The secondary Digimental arc has a recurring theme of understanding that there are still things you need to learn and improve on in order to do better, and this is Miyako’s version of it -- she will have to acknowledge all of the bad parts of herself before she can get anywhere and become a kind person like Mimi is -- and, indeed, becoming less shallow and judgmental and not jumping to conclusions, and learning to reach out to more substantial cores of the problem, ends up becoming a major part of her character arc in the latter half of the series.

This episode also implies one more thing, even if she doesn’t realize it yet at this moment: the path to her becoming a less shallow and more considerate person is not going to involve trying to force herself to be like Mimi, but rather in a way that’s closer to her “true self”.

Miyako’s first major turning point is in 02 episode 18, an episode that’s said to have such a profound impact on her that even Natsuki Rio testified to having to alter her Miyako performance thereafter.

Back in 02 episode 10, Miyako first started to realize that this whole experience of fighting as a Chosen Child was a lot more stressful than it seemed at first, and reacted badly to it. Here, the ante gets upped even more -- the kids decide to make use of their summer break and organize a Digital World stakeout, and, eventually, Hikari accidentally becomes indirectly responsible for tipping Miyako over the deep end by making an implication that they need more “determination” to the point of refusing to leave until they’ve beaten the Kaiser. (Remember that Hikari can be terrifyingly assertive as long as it’s not something to do with herself.) For Miyako, who’s never had the same experience of being in the Digital World for a prolonged period of time the same way the Adventure group has, this is terrifying, and she tries to “get herself together” over the night -- only to completely overshoot it and go into the complete other extreme. As much as this ends up being one of Miyako’s peak hilarity moments, it’s most certainly representative of her being under a huge amount of pressure and stress, and it’s effectively her “peak worst” moment -- which results in Hawkmon ending up having to cover for her, and getting injured in the process, and Miyako immediately realizing how badly she’d messed up.

Miyako is thus forced to face a major consequence of her behavior: if she doesn’t manage to figure out a way to get herself under control, other people will be hurt, and as someone who wants to do her best for other people, that’s one of the worst possible outcomes for her.

In addition, it’s also important to point out Hikari’s role in this. The Jogress arcs have yet to set in, but the series still gives you a little preview of what’s to come eventually, such as the insight we get about Daisuke and Ken’s initial attitudes towards each other in 02 episode 8, and Iori later personally witnessing (and being very disturbed by) Takeru losing his composure in 02 episode 19. In this case, we see a bit of what Miyako and Hikari’s opposing personalities can offer for each other (especially since the later 02 episode 31 more heavily involves Miyako returning the favor in the other direction) -- Hikari correctly identifies exactly what it was that set Miyako off, takes responsibility for it, and even decides to make sure Miyako and Hawkmon get proper alone time so that they can figure things out. In general, everyone in the 02 team is understanding of Miyako’s antics and doesn’t hold any of it against her because she’s doing her best, but right now, Hikari may be the only person in this group who can actually proactively do something about it, because Daisuke’s not assertive enough to step in, Takeru has a tendency to dodge things whenever they get awkward, and Iori’s holding himself back too much for the sake of manners (especially in the presence of Miyako, who’s the oldest one in this group). But while Hikari does have an emotional repression problem, she’s perfectly capable of holding herself together and putting her foot down when it comes to other people, and because of this, she’s the one who’s able to understand what exactly is going on with Miyako, and how to adjust the situation around her to make things easier for her.

Miyako and Hawkmon have a proper heart-to-heart, and we see more of Miyako’s self-hating tendencies going on here -- she refers exactly to her problems with impulse control, and even labels herself a “bad partner” as a result. But Hawkmon reassures her that she’s fine the way she is, and it ties into how a larger theme of her character arc will involve her learning to find better ways to channel the qualities she already has, rather than trying to force herself to be someone she’s not.

Once the Kaiser is defeated, the second half of the series is where we start to see Miyako’s growth start to really kick in. In 02 episode 24, there’s a short blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene where Miyako suddenly takes Daisuke and puts him in charge of taking care of the Punimon. Why is this important? Because two episodes prior, Daisuke had been running around in circles like an idiot due to having been third wheeled by Takeru and Hikari, and the moment Daisuke started exhibiting similar signs this time, Miyako personally stepped in and gave him a job to do -- and her actions of keeping an eye on them and her conversation with Takeru and Hikari indicate that she did it exactly because she figured that he would like it. Or, in other words, Miyako correctly identified Daisuke’s need for validation and purpose, and became the first person to proactively do something to address it -- Hikari and Takeru had generally been dodging it awkwardly for the duration of the series, which had only really been making it worse, and, in the absence of another crisis to take care of or someone like Ken to fill the void in Daisuke’s life, Miyako was able to properly figure out exactly what he needed at the moment as a stopgap, and thus is starting to settle into her proper role of understanding what others need in terms of emotional support and actively working to address it.

Since the second half of 02 is dedicated to Ken slowly establishing his place in the group, 02 episode 25 is dedicated to Miyako tussling with her conflicted feelings on the situation -- she’s just as open-minded and pure-hearted as Daisuke is, but the one thing that’s bothering her is that she’s a little more doubtful than he is in regards to whether Ken’s heart is really in the right place with all of this. She says, outright, that she believes he’s learned his lesson -- in a way far more firm than Takeru, Hikari, and Iori are about it -- but that one thing about him having potentially killed Thunderballmon in cold blood doesn’t fit the optimistic image she’d like to have of him.

Daisuke is more practical-minded than she is and is more willing to accept that there might have been a good reason -- especially since he himself starts to consider in this very episode that killing an enemy may be necessary if it’s the only way to prevent more victims -- but Miyako is more emotionally oriented and just can’t accept the idea of doing this at all. Both the internal debate over accepting Ken and the internal debate over having to potentially do a kill tear her apart over the course of this episode, and Miyako finds herself constantly waffling back and forth between the two positions. It’s not just her expressing minor doubt; she actually agonizes over this for the duration of the night and the next day, to the point she even considers asking him about it (and eventually can’t bring herself to).

It’s also made a prominent point that Miyako’s prior attraction to Ken in 02 episode 8 was not the reason she wanted to be optimistic about him -- remember, back in 02 episode 14, she completely admitted that she judges people by appearances, but at this point she’s well past that! Miyako takes this entire issue of whether Ken should be considered a friend very seriously, and that’s why it torments her so much over the course of the episode.

Eventually, all is resolved (at least, for the time being) when it turns out that Ken has been dealing with non-sentient Dark Tower Digimon, and Miyako takes this as sufficient evidence that Ken has changed -- the morality debate about killing comes back in full force in 02 episode 43, and Ken himself ends up just as shaken about it, so the important part is that she understands that he’s trustworthy and wants to put faith in him. Attention is also given to Miyako deciding she’ll now call him by given name (”Ken-kun”) from now on -- even Daisuke himself won’t start calling him “Ken” regularly until 02 episode 39, but Miyako starts slowly inserting given-name basis for Ken into her vocabulary from this point on until she finally commits to it fully in 02 episode 30. This is a proactive and conscious act on Miyako’s part that she actively wants to get to know him better and consider him a close friend, and it’s because of this that she ends up one of the only people who never gets habituated into surname basis with him by the time everyone’s come to properly befriend him.

So, at this point: Within only one episode (and, in-universe, one day), Daisuke and Miyako landed on the same page with their ideological stance towards Ken. They’re both open-minded and forward-thinking, and have an interest in becoming his friend (the next person to show active and open goodwill towards him, Hikari, won’t do so for another 9 episodes). However, despite their surface temperaments being somewhat similar, they have some differences in their priorities and way of approaching things, and it means that each of them ends up reaching out to Ken in ways that the other isn’t as good at. Daisuke, being the very practical and simple-minded sort who doesn’t overthink things or get caught in arbitrary philosophy, is the one who most proactively reaches out to Ken and most famously connects with him the most due to Ken very badly needing guidance in how to move on forward and stop getting fixated on his past. Miyako, on the other hand, being very much the type to consciously think about things (to the point of sometimes thinking about too many things at once) and focus on “how do I most show my support for someone right now?”, puts her priorities on checking on Ken’s current emotional state and actively attempting to glean his feelings and position. 02 being a series about relationships and what people can provide for each other, this ends up reflecting on their roles in the group as a whole -- Daisuke becomes the person who can pull everyone forward in determining the best thing to do, whereas Miyako fills in the parts his rough-around-the-edges demeanor doesn’t quite cover in terms of supporting everyone emotionally and keeping them together.

And thus, Miyako resolves to “wait” until the day Ken will join them -- that is to say, she takes the stance that Ken deserves proper space and to come on his own terms. It’s an interesting inversion of the usual roles you’d expect from Daisuke and Miyako at this point -- and, again, since 02 is about relationships, “each character’s approach towards the new kid and how it impacts them” reflects a lot about their own characters. For Daisuke and Miyako, who were open-minded towards Ken early in the game, you can already see the impact on them -- the necessity of reaching out to Ken causes the normally deferential Daisuke to become more proactive and put his foot down, whereas the normally uncontrollably in-your-face Miyako comes to understand when something needs to be handled delicately and starts getting a better grasp on the concept of restraint.

Which means that Miyako’s actions regarding Ken in the following episodes are significantly more passive than Daisuke’s are, but it’s clear that she’s still supportive. Moreover, it’s also important to establish that she and Daisuke aren’t fighting about this or anything -- Miyako does want Ken to come around eventually, so she doesn’t stop the more proactive Daisuke from reaching out to Ken in an important way, but she instead exerts her position in ways such as joining in with the others reminding him that Ken might have gotten a bit emotionally overwhelmed by the Jogress (and thus that it’s understandable that he might need some time to parse this before pushing the issue further). The way Miyako words this statement so casually can easily be a distraction from the fact that she is completely correct -- as we see later, Ken did emotionally freak out the moment the incident was resolved and had to go home to think about this. Scatterbrained as Miyako may seem, as the series proceeds, it turns out that she has a natural propensity for empathy that means she’s capable of making perfectly correct readings of the situation, even without her thinking that hard about it.

Not that she’s correct all of the time, though. 02 episode 30 has her attempt to get Ken and Iori to hopefully be a little less tense around each other end in complete disaster (although to be fair to her, it’s not like she and Daisuke were particularly forceful about it, it’s just that their plan was so poorly set up that it was too easy to read the motive behind, and it’s ultimately thrown off because -- as Daisuke correctly points out -- the two are being really childish about it.) But in response, Miyako takes direct action and responsibility to fix the situation when Ken continues to refuse to help despite how badly the situation is escalating, and when she finally reaches him, she gets frustrated at the fact he’s being so stubborn, smacks him, and personally drags him back over. Miyako cared a lot about this, she had wanted Ken and Iori to get along for no reason of personal benefit to herself but more because she cared that much about the group’s dynamic and friendship, and she’d held herself back so much because she was worried about him, but here he’s taking all of that and still giving them all the cold shoulder when everyone is in grave danger, and all of that frustration causes her to break down at once.

And note Ken’s reaction -- he’d been holding off on the grounds that he was being a burden on everyone’s friendship, but he sees Miyako distraught and upset and calling him an idiot (i.e. his whole pretense of not hurting others has clearly not worked here), and his “idiot...?” comes out flustered and off-guard, and he shows no resentment towards her thereafter and comes quietly with no protest, even holding a hand to the place she’d smacked him as if mulling in agreement that he deserved that. So, again: Even when Miyako is coming to all of these conclusions in a haphazard manner, it doesn’t change the fact that her readings of these situations are often completely correct.

02 episode 31 is another landmark episode in which we get a lot of insight into Miyako’s current feelings regarding herself in comparison to others, and what she’s trying to achieve at this point in the series. Daisuke makes an offhand remark at the beginning of the episode about Hikari being more “kind” than Miyako (”kind” having a double meaning of “gentle” in Japanese, so Daisuke’s mainly referring to Miyako being such a rough and belligerent person). The way Miyako takes this statement indicates that Daisuke had accidentally just hit a very deep-seated complex within her -- Miyako had never liked the fact she was aggressive and belligerent and in-your-face (remember, back in 02 episode 14, she was constantly negatively comparing herself to Mimi for not being as good of a person as her, and now this has extended to Hikari, who “keeps so much inside”.). As the crisis in the episode escalates, Miyako continues to fall victim to her foot-in-mouth syndrome, saying things and instantly regretting it, because she sees herself as making the situation worse -- and especially when it comes to a situation also involving Ken, whom she’s actively trying to reach out to right now. Her frustration at the fact she can’t see what Ken and Hikari see is because, unable to understand what they’re talking about or what their feelings are, she’s basically a sitting duck who can’t do anything while things are getting worse for them.

Which ultimately results in Miyako completely losing her marbles and Hikari having to smack her out of it -- again, recall that in 02 episode 18, it was shown that Hikari is one of the few people who has enough assertiveness to be able to rein in Miyako’s behavior, and even outright admits that Miyako is a bit of a handful. Miyako, as it seems, had been carrying a complex that Hikari had been thinking of her badly for all of this -- but Hikari then proceeds to reveal the flip side of all of this: she’s also conversely jealous of Miyako for being able to express herself so clearly and easily, because she herself is the type who compulsively represses her own feelings about herself, which is why nobody had been able to properly reach out to her for the duration of Adventure and 02.

For someone who had spent so much time considering herself a “bad person” and a “worse person” in comparison to people like Mimi and Hikari, that someone considers her qualities outright enviable is a huge deal -- it’s not that Miyako’s an objectively worse person than all of the other people who aren’t as rough or in-your-face, but rather, that those qualities can bring out positive things in their own way. And, immediately after that, we see one of those things -- she makes Hikari laugh, thanks to her antics. Of course, it involves Miyako being a bit all over the place and making a lot of mistakes, but even she admits “I guess it is funny.”

And there’s another thing to this, too: Miyako continues to end up with foot-in-mouth as she casually refers to things like the Evil Ring and Ken being the Kaiser with zero fanfare, before realizing seconds after that she probably shouldn’t be doing that in front of him, but, once again, even without her realizing, her evaluation is not incorrect -- although the fact he’s extremely out of it doesn’t make that clear quite yet in this episode, Ken is not the kind of person who’s touchy about acknowledging that he was the Kaiser, and, by his own statement in 02 episode 23, his stance is that he wants to “accept everything about it”, take responsibility, and move on. So here we are with Miyako, who just casually tossed that statement out like it was no big deal, has accepted his past with no lingering grudge against him, and even made a casual evaluation about him presumably having the same resilience he had as the Kaiser, which, again, is completely accurate. All of this is exactly the kind of attitude that Ken needs to be surrounded by right now, and Miyako had just touched on this without even thinking that hard about it, and also is still making it clear she doesn’t want him to feel bad about it...

And so, the episode’s climax has Miyako finally attaining the solution to the question of reaching out to Hikari, the one that nobody had been able to successfully accomplish throughout Hikari’s childhood of never expressing herself properly and the majority of Adventure and 02: to get Hikari to stop being so passive and accepting her inevitable fate because she doesn’t want to burden others, someone as aggressive as her will need to reach her and yank her out, and hit all of the exact points about understanding that someone will be there for her and that she should not accept this defeatist mentality. Hikari is unusually, unhealthily passive, and Miyako, being outwardly aggressive and someone who never hesitates to be blunt about things, is the best person to yank her out of this; it was never a sign of her being a “bad person”, just something she needed to channel in the right direction.

At the end of the episode, we’re also reminded once again that this is a series about relationships, so this kind of growth is important to everyone’s relationships with others as well -- thanks to Miyako’s efforts, Hikari is finally able to speak honestly with Takeru in contrast to her way of leaving off in silence with him at the end of 02 episode 13, and Miyako herself is happy that she’s finally gotten to have a better understanding of both Hikari, whom she herself had been unsure about the position of earlier, and Ken, whom she’d been worried she hadn’t been reaching out to in the right way.

While Ken was out of it during said episode and unable to coherently respond, we do get confirmation that he himself has hopped on the train of respecting Miyako’s intent well enough that he doesn’t hold anything over her -- during 02 episode 33, a mere three episodes after she’d personally slapped him in the face and two episodes after he’d practically seen her at her emotional worst, he still takes it upon himself to personally deliver Poromon to Kyoto and trust her to handle the rest. This isn’t that particularly interesting by itself, but moreso in terms of the context this is in -- this is a point where Ken’s still at awkward arm’s length with a lot of the team (including even Daisuke, in some ways), and he’s seen Miyako do all of the above messy things only not too long ago, but he still is comfortable enough around her and trusting enough in her abilities that he’s okay with casually approaching her and saying “you got this.” So it’s working, all things considered!

We also learn that Miyako had trusted Koushirou with Poromon during her trip to Kyoto, which says a lot about the fact she trusts her senior that much -- and, on a meta level, seems there specifically to facilitate the existence of the above scene (it would have been very easy to save time by just having Poromon accompany Miyako from the get-go and ending Ken’s involvement in the episode at his conversation with Koushirou...).

The following episodes also meanwhile establish that Miyako’s relationship with Hikari has been improving a lot -- with Miyako now actually understanding what Hikari needs, she’s much more proactive in reaching out to Hikari, and it’s even said directly by Iori in 02 episode 36 that their relationship seems to have gotten much better now. And, once again, Miyako’s antics are depicted as making people laugh -- note her and Hawkmon’s over-the-top advertisement performance doing so for everyone in the vicinity.

Which is also reinforced, again, in 02 episode 38, when this even spreads to Ken himself, in a moment that’s said to be particularly unusual and portrayed as one of the first times Ken has been able to be truly carefree in a long time. Again, the point here is: Miyako’s “all-over-the-place” nature brings joy to other people, and that “she makes people laugh” is continually reinforced as a symbol of this over the course of the second half of the series.

Beyond that, the visit to Ken’s house kicks off with Miyako noticing the picture of Osamu and asking about it, to the point she’s shown leaning over and staring at it for quite a while -- Koushirou had allegedly informed her about it earlier, and a whole point is made that she’s the one very prominently wanting to understand more about Ken and his background.

Also, Miyako reminds us all that she still does think Ken is attractive, but it’s a huge contrast to her behavior from back in 02 episode 8, when she knew nothing about him except that he was some celebrity genius boy -- she got completely worked up about it, moped about it for a whole day, and even dragged the fixation into the next day when she started aggressively confronting Daisuke about it, but we’re here 30 episodes later with Miyako actually considering him an important friend that she respects the feelings of, and she simply casually tosses out the statement of him being cute in her usual “like it’s commenting on the weather” manner, with no extra weirdness about it.

We close up some of the threads of Miyako's character arcs when Miyako herself is forced to confront the possibility of fighting an enemy to the kill in 02 episode 44, and Silphymon is eventually forced to kill LadyDevimon to save Miyako's life. Miyako’s emotional reaction is given the most attention here, since she herself had fixated so much on the horror of potentially killing Golemon back in 02 episode 25 -- in fact, everything Miyako does in this episode is about her emotional empathy and empathy for others, in that she rails on LadyDevimon for being a “coward” who hurts other people. Eventually, it’s once again the assertive Hikari who’s able to get her back on her feet by putting it in a way she can understand -- they were not doing it out of a callous and cruel intent to kill, but to save the exact victims that Miyako herself wanted to prevent.

And, even to the very end of the series, Miyako continues to channel her proactivity into emotional awareness first and foremost -- 02 episode 46 has her take the lead in the Dark Seed roundtable, and it’s implied that she’s doing this mainly because she knows this is a very personal issue for Ken to have to witness. In contrast to the way she frantically started spitting out potentially insensitive things in front of Ken in 02 episode 31, here, she outright says that she doesn’t want to make him feel bad about this (and, fortunately, he understands perfectly well that she’s trying). Even all the way to the very end in 02 episode 50, she’s the one who first brings up the question of the issue, because of how emotionally invested she got into this and her high level of awareness as to how deeply this impacted Ken.

In 02 episode 49, BelialVamdemon presents everyone in the team with a potential deep-seated desire that none of them want to admit, and in the case of Miyako’s, it ends up being a rather tame thing in comparison to Iori and Takeru’s more severe family issues, Hikari’s desire for WORLD PEACE!!, and Ken’s complicated feelings about punishment and forgiveness. In Miyako’s dream world, she’s just eating cake, and it says a lot about the fact that were it not for the fact that she overthinks things and often gets easily stressed, she’s fundamentally fairly free of deep-seated issues in a way not entirely dissimilar to Daisuke’s simple and pure-hearted way of life.

The thing that causes Miyako’s issue is often misinterpreted to be about her selfishly wanting everything to herself, or the idea she’s fighting for attention with her siblings, but Hawkmon actually says what the real problem is in direct words: her crowded family is “noisy”. Or in other words -- Miyako, being the overly empathetic type and someone who easily succumbs to stress, is just really overwhelmed and stressed because of everything around her.

An interesting thing about Miyako’s “illusion” is that it’s the only one that in itself starts making its victim feel lonely and sad even before it’s taken away or dispelled -- Takeru and Iori had to have their happy images pulled away from them, Hikari had to have Tailmon clarify that everything is fake, and Ken had to have Wormmon personally chase the image of his brother away. But in the case of Miyako, all Hawkmon has to do is ask if she’s happy right now, and she’s quick to admit that she’s not. It’s just that everything was stressful and overwhelming and there was so much to deal with all of the time, and for once she wanted to be able to enjoy a little peace, but she loves her family and she loves everyone around her and she doesn’t want to be alone, and she’d rather have them back even if it’s stressful. Miyako’s love for others is so strong that even an illusion supposedly made to cater to her won’t make her happy if everyone’s gone.

Miyako also takes the moment to realize that for all Hawkmon’s been going out of his way to be steadfast and loyal to her, she hasn’t been doing enough to understand her own partner in turn, and there’s still a lot more she can do in terms of thinking of others.

Miyako after 02

As per Spring 2003, once Miyako graduates elementary school and moves to middle school, she continues trying to be helpful to her juniors -- she joins the computer club and once again ends up under Koushirou, and now outright makes music for Yamato’s band (some creative differences aside). It’s also interesting to note her attitude towards her other friends when she tries to recruit them into her music unit -- she snarks at everyone right up until she gets to Ken, who declines politely, and in exchange, she just can't bring herself to be mean to him and simply apologizes for asking too much. It’s ambiguous whether this is because she’s still trying to have a heightened level of consideration around him (this is still only four months after 02′s finish, after all), but it seems she’s still concerned about the idea of handling him overly roughly, and is able to exercise a proper level of restraint about him.

Which brings us all the way to Kizuna, a whole eight years later where we have to fill in a lot of blanks about what’s been happening in the meantime, but the official website establishes that she’s now pursuing a degree in computer programming at an engineering university, and is now on study abroad in Spain (implied to be Barcelona, given details in both the movie itself and the drama CD). Pretty ambitious stuff!...or at least that’s the first impression one would get, until it turns out that she’s getting her flighty personality enabled by the local culture. As we learn in the drama CD, she’s absolutely taking the time to milk this entire situation so she can play around -- and, in accordance with how she was established to be an important factor in bringing Hikari out of her shell, it’s rubbing off on Hikari, too.

In addition, Miyako is still working under Koushirou despite their educational careers having completely diverged, this time as his assistant in terms of managing the Chosen Child community. Interestingly, her specific job seems to be consultation, and people come to her for “advice and stuff” -- meaning that it’s very likely that a lot of new Chosen Children who are having a hard time adjusting to life with a partner are coming to her for practical and emotional advice, and she’s still continuing to channel her ability to be emotionally aware and supportive of others.

That is to say, until she gets a mysterious request from a certain Menoa Bellucci. We learn later that Menoa’s motive was to obtain the list of international Chosen Children, meaning that she most definitely was not approaching Miyako for emotional help, and with that, Miyako decides that she doesn’t want to do this and dumps it on her seniors...

...but then picks it back up with zero hesitation the moment her friends present her that exact same job, and not only is it just “zero hesitation”, Ken even comments on how “fast” she arrived to do so! (This was also before Iori came up with the plan to infiltrate Menoa’s office; there wasn’t any indication Miyako’s computer abilities would be particularly necessary at the time.) On top of that, the drama CD gives us full context as to why she was so willing to dump this on her seniors in the first place -- she had wanted to see her friends so badly that she practically invented D-3 gate exploitation so she could hang out with her friends despite technically being in another country, and even wanted to invite them to come visit her, and eventually they’d all made an organized plan to meet up in New York. In other words, her loyalty to her friends is still stronger than anything else -- remember, she’s the kind of person who was picking up tons of jobs specifically so she could help her friends in the first place.

On that note, Ken’s ability to be casual with everyone besides Daisuke has noticeably improved, and that’s especially prominent with Miyako, whom he proactively converses with in a way that wouldn’t have happened back in 02, and, likewise, in contrast to the sense of distance she’d still been maintaining with him back during the final arc of 02 and Spring 2003, she has no qualms about handling him as casually as she would anyone else.

Which eventually leads us to...

This is a recurring theme on this blog, but every so often I have to draw the distinction between creative concepts “in meta” (i.e. the way the audience will read it, in relation to franchise standards and other real-life factors) and said concepts “in-universe” (i.e. with audience factors completely removed, whether there’s a presumable logical reason for these events happening in-universe, and whether this is reasonable behavior to expect out of the characters). This blog is largely dedicated to the latter, but the reason why I have to keep drawing this distinction in the first place is that I get the impression that the staff behind Adventure and 02 really did not pay much mind to the former part as part of their dedication to the latter. And, I mean, part of the reason I respect the writing of Adventure and 02 so much is how uncompromising they were in terms of not really pandering to what a fanbase might expect, which allowed the story to retain a lot of creative integrity that it wouldn’t have otherwise.

But every so often you get something like this that makes me want to just bang my head on the table and scream, I swear, I get what you guys were going for, but I am begging you, please think a little harder about how people are going to read this!! In general, I do think there’s something that’s not very good about disregarding your audience completely, because if you’re trying to say important things and those things are going directly over your audience’s heads (this is a kids’ show, for goodness’s sake), you can’t call that good communication, and it’s not like you can blame the audience for getting blindsided or being upset, and this is before we get into what they just dropped on the global audience that was presumably full of young girls interested in STEM fields who were hoping to see them go all the way with that, or the feelings of those who are bothered that one character has to be singled out to be defined solely by her relationship to others, and I mean -- to be fair, with a character like Miyako and the tons of things going on with her, there was probably no outcome they could come up with that wouldn’t be reinforcing some negative stereotype (believe it or not, there are people who have conversely mentioned identifying deeply with Miyako’s personal story and the meaning of this ending to them, and have also expressed discomfort about some of the comments the fanbase has made over the years), but at the same time, holy hell, they really went for the one that immediately looks the worst on its face...

...That aside, I will reiterate that this is a blog and analysis meant for that latter category of “analyzing things in-universe”, and making good-faith assumptions that there was a reason for everything (and, I’ll be quite honest, reading everything the staff has said about the characters, including Miyako, there is no indication that they didn’t treat every single one of them with love and zero intention to curse any of them into a horrible fate). We can debate whether this was a good or bad choice in the context of real life, or how much they really should have thought this through more or considered alternative ways to do this, in another place and time (it’s been done by many other people, myself included, in the last 20 years, and it will most certainly continue after this, and probably should continue). It’s not like I’m necessarily giving my blessing to every single creative decision in Adventure or 02 in running this blog, it’s more of the attitude of “now that this decision was in the series, can we figure out what that was intended to mean?”, and that’s going to apply to this one too. And so, we’ll proceed with the analysis.

In any case, here’s the first thing to start with, which may surprise some people to learn: at no point in the epilogue is the word “housewife” ever used to refer to Miyako. The only words that Takeru uses to describe her are: that she is married to Ken and is a mother of three. Not only that, post-02 materials that have referred to the epilogue and Miyako’s part in it have also avoided using that word -- the Character Complete File and the Animation Chronicle only reiterate the same points of “married to Ken” and “mother of three children”, and practically go out of their way to avoid insinuating that being a stay-at-home housewife is the main focus of her life right now. It would have been so easy to say it outright if they’d wanted to, but they didn’t, and they consistently don’t, to the point the omission is almost suspicious. And, indeed, if you want to believe the Character Complete File, Miyako is not a full-time housewife and is simply not working at the time of the epilogue due to maternity leave because the third child had recently been born. So it’s completely within the realm of possibility that she’s still working! In that case, why is something that could easily be a big deal left ambiguous like this?

If you look at the way the epilogue presents its information, there’s a certain pattern: what information is emphasized and what information is given little attention or omitted has very little to do with “how curious the audience would be about it”, but rather “how relevant it is”; just because a certain piece of information is omitted doesn’t mean it necessarily isn’t true. For example, Sora; she’s married to Yamato, but despite how much the audience would probably consider that as vital information, it’s left for you to infer from the visuals and an oblique comment that Sora’s daughter is a “dependable older sister”, and even the question of whether Sora did succeed her mother in flower arrangement is left up in the air despite that also probably being a question the audience is curious about (and in fact, a few flower branches are clearly visible in the front, implying very heavily that, whatever happened, she’s at least still maintaining her roots with her family instead of violently cutting it all off). But we do learn about the fact that she went into fashion design, which is something that’s not an expectation that was placed by her family but rather something she presumably decided on herself. Hence, presumably why that’s the part emphasized, and moreso than her marriage to Yamato -- said marriage is of course an important part of her life, but it’s not as prominent as the fact that she has her own independent career, especially since her entire character arc was about doing things that she wanted for herself instead of doing things for others. That is to say, compared to their own individual ambitions, Sora and Yamato’s love life is “an important part, but not the important part.” This is especially when you add the context that Takeru is delivering abridged single-sentence “catch-up” descriptions of his friends on their behalf (possibly to the world, if this is part of his novel), and so, it begs the question: what would each of these characters want to be most remembered for accomplishing?

(And if you think I’m being tinfoil hat about this, remember that a constant theme with this blog I’m running is that “being annoyingly subtle and relying on ridiculously oblique messaging” like this permeates the entirety of 02 in general, and it’s definitely not the only time they’ve used this kind of technique to communicate details that are too consistent and on-the-nose to be passed off as coincidence. As far as assuming that this series follows rational storytelling logic goes, we are far past that point, and in ways that extend far beyond this epilogue.)

So we look back at Miyako, and the hobbies she’d indulged in and what purpose they were for, and her personality, and the fact that the main point of her character arc was about her complex that she would never be a good enough person who could properly emotionally reach out and take care of others -- in some ways, her arc was the opposite of Sora’s, in that while Sora’s was about not being as beholden to others, Miyako’s was about how to become someone who can better support others -- and once we apply the above question, there lies the answer to why the priority and emphasis given to her future in the epilogue is “Miyako is the kind of person who prioritizes taking care of and supporting her loved ones more than anything else.”

This is especially because (in an epilogue with not very many lines, so every bit of information becomes vital) the lines we see Miyako and her family exchange are representative of a lot of what that character arc was about. According to her son, Miyako is still her panicky and emotionally messy self, even when in the role of the matriarch of a large family who’s responsible for taking care of all of them. She did not ever become the ideal “gentle” and “mature” kind of person that she considered Mimi and Hikari to be and negatively compared herself to. However, her family responds by cheerfully laughing, which is -- most likely not coincidentally -- the same thing that was shown to be the positive flip side of Miyako’s over-the-top personality back in 02 episodes 31, 36, and 38, in that it brings joy and cheer to others.

If you do want to take the Character Complete File’s statement at face value, the fact that she’s on self-imposed maternity leave means that it’s very likely she wasn’t on a salaried job and was instead freelancing, or at least was involved with something that didn’t require constant commitment. Considering the fact she’s consistently portrayed as an impatient sort who gets bored easily, she probably would prefer something more flexible like freelancing or at least not being tied to a single thing; even looking back at her completely disparate hobbies back when she was a kid, when she was basically jack-of-all-trades-ing to fit whatever people needed her for, she never really came off as someone who could commit very easily to a single form of work, but what she did have commitment to was other people, especially her friends and family. If you (or, perhaps, Takeru) were to ask her during the time of the epilogue “what are you up to right now?”, it’s not really that hard to believe that gushing about her lovely family would come before everything else; not to say that everyone else here (especially her own husband) isn’t presumably devoted to their own families, but Miyako’s the type to have that much higher sense of pride in what she does for those she cares about than she would have particular attachment to any kind of work. Look at her behavior during Kizuna; she’s pursuing a degree in computer programming and thus is still aiming to be a busybody with a high level of skill, but when given a job by a stranger, she immediately dumps it off on her seniors so she can be with her friends, then happily accepts that same job again when the same friends present it back to her.

So, in other words, the conclusion is: the biggest priority and most important thing to Miyako in regards to her future is that she finally became someone who could properly support others around her, even in spite of her personality that would suggest otherwise.

In addition, the fact that she has three children might initially come off as a little in-your-face or overkill, but remember that Miyako came from a family with four siblings, and 02 episode 49 had her say outright that she does treasure that – or, in other words, being part of a big family surrounded by affection and love is something she considers to be a valuable part of her life (especially since the age gaps between the three children imply a reasonable likelihood of actual family planning, moreso than even Miyako’s own).

Incidentally, this is just a bit of a personal note, but one might notice that I’ve also never actually used the word “housewife” to refer to the epilogue’s depiction of Miyako in the course of writing for this blog, because of how little evidence we have that she is one – being on temporary maternity leave still being a very viable and, given the post-02 materials we now have, arguably heavily likely interpretation, it’s not like you’d necessarily call someone a housewife if their break from work is only temporary, even if they’re a freelancer. Given the above circumstances, perhaps something like “family matriarch” would be more accurate…

#digimon #digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #inoue miyako #miyako inoue #kizuna spoilers #shihameta

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