#literally sobbings... found family hurts me but its something i wish was talked about

[flashdoesahundredyarddash]

some people keep saying that bart being hal and barry's child is a bad idea (I mean I really get the idea cuz hal's always away for space missions and barry would end raising him alone for most of the time + hal's commitment issues)

but idk I still can't help myself like It's really cute I like giving my otp a child

😭😭

I LIKE THIS IDEA. Honestly, I feel that as they first start to date, and a good point with Hal's commitment, Hal doesn't exactly see himself as a father? (<- Also I feel this is exactly him though. And not to mention how much I HATEEEEE that they gave HalCarol a kid because none of them would ever actually want a baby because they're so cooped with work and wanting to make it out for each other rather than always forcing themselves to marry, even with Carol wanting to move progressively with a relationship.)

Back to HAL, I mean he's great with taking care of kids and getting along with them, but I don't think he could want kids. This goes with Barry as well (<- They both are deadly afraid of committing to something that means they could lose someone), he's great with goods but he feels he couldn't be a good dad because of Dawn and Don scolding him from the future. Then again if they both had to take care of a kid (such as Bart, which I think is cute but Max is also the caretaker for him ngl... I think they would be great with Wally TOO because of Brave and The Bold shenanigans. One of my favorites <- Hal calling Wally son when he had the green lantern ring :((( )

BUT YES, I think they would be good as caretakers in a way that makes me emotional. Because they would want to try again with what they lacked during their childhood growing up...

[x1702x]

For Honest favourite characters asks: Do 3, 8, 11, 13, 18 and 43 for Gehrman! Open the floodgate

Wanting to make me cry as always? yep.

3. What first drew you to this character?

Gehrman drew me in mostly because I found him endearing, just an old geezer telling you what to do, I enjoyed hearing his dialogue, his voice is calming to me.

8. Does the character’s looks/design matter to you?

His design is very solid, I like how peaceful he looks hunched over with his cane and then suddenly kicking your ass, besides, HIS HEIGHT? How did all thay hide so casually in that chair?? Grandpa go take ur meds

11. How did you “fall in love” with this character?

My liking of Gehrman grew once I figured his background, I pity him a lot, you see, I've mostly dealed with old people in my life, I used to take visits to my great uncle's residence and I grew fond of the people there. Many are there alone without their family visiting or any grandchildren, I liked talking to them and hearing stories of their lives, being their "surrogate grandchild" in a way.

But since he passed, I believe 2019, I stopped going there since I wasn't a visit anymore. But I had fun there and made acquaintances with some old ladies :) It was nice to see Old people have fun and be so alive.

A year ago my drama club used to take its classes at an eldery center, they were very polite to our group and loved seeing us act, we gave them many laughs and joys. I don't usually cry much about things unless its something i resonate with, and Gehrman just hits different, he's lonely and his only company being the doll (The literal living image of Maria) whos a constant reminder of someone that isnt there with him, you know, it sinks someone down. Ive known people like that, which i think is the main reason I sob over him and yadda yadda. Hes just full of pain and it hurts my soul.

13. If you could draw effortlessly and as much as you wanted, what scene (s) would you draw for this character?

Perhaps something with Maria, tender at most. I dont know, but I want to see him happy. I really do.

18. Do you prefer to see this character suffer or know peace? Angst or comfort? Both?

Peace. He has struggled for long and the way he ends in the game is tragic, no ending will bring him or anyone peace, the moon presence lurks and still wins, you become her surrogate child, another puppet, or continue Gehrman's suffering.

I really wish people saw further than the stereotype they so wrongly put on him of "Creepy old man" Its VERY incorrect and really dims his potential. He's more than "some weirdo stuck on Maria's backstory" He was the first hunter!! He literally made a deal with an eldritch being for hunters to have a respite, brushing aside his life. Hes literally stuck in a nightmare! Aghh,,, sorry im ranting too much but I just appreciate him a lot like errm thats my GRANDPA ur talkin shit about ermm.......

[lovsome]

I hope you can talk to them soon. I've taken many meds that made me feel icky, but I eventually found one that works great for me. SSRIs don't get along well with my brain (except for Wellbutrin), so I took tricyclics. Specifically Anafranil for depression, anxiety, ocd, etc. Don't give up. I know it's annoying but you'll find the right fit, pinky promise. In case you need antipsychotics, Latuda or Invega are good ones. I know you have it in you to keep living. One day, life WILL be beautiful for you. It took me years to get to a stable place, but the important thing is I never gave up. Fight for what you're passionate about. What brings you joy. The things you love. Even if it seems insignificant, it makes you smile. Lately, I've been enjoying things from when I was a kid. Carebears, stickers, toys, w/e haha. It makes my inner child happy. What makes your inner child happy?

im so glad to hear you found a good fit for you 🥺 i try to think that im gonna be fine one day and the thing that keeps me here the most is the fact that i dont want to hurt my parents and my grandparents and ruin their lives but my soul is just crushed. and i cant talk about it without literally sobbing and feeling physically sick, so i avoid doing that even though i really wish i could just do it.

i feel you about the little things from when you were a kid! lately ive been a lot into sylvanian families, they are soo cute. i even bought one last week.. as a little treat. also ive been crocheting little frogs but even that i know is a way to keep my brain occupied 🫠 i am also very much into cute stickers and just anything that reminds me of when i was little. it seems silly but you’re right, buying those kind of things helps to feel a little less heavy. mainly though i think painting is what is keeping me here but at the same time i know its not really because of my passion for it but because making something makes me feel like i have some worth as a person… its like i have to always be doing or making something otherwise im worthless lol

[stormkobra-5]

Heya its me again um you can completely ignore this request if its too much but um

Can i request (only if you are able to) the moonknight boys helping y/n grieving over losing a family member

I lost a family member today and would like some comfort you can ignore this request if its too much

Sorrow and Solace

Pairing: Moon Boys x Reader

Fic Type: Drabble

Summary: When you lose a family member, the boys are there to offer you any comfort they possibly can.

A/N: I'm honored you came to me of all people, nonnie. I hope I can write something good enough for this situation and helps you, buddy. I'm so sorry for your loss. I wish you all the love and comfort in the world.

Rating/Warnings: Dealing losing a family member (unspecified), processing grief, hurt/comfort

It was Marc fronting when you got the call.

He walked into the kitchen to find you holding your phone in a daze, frozen as your mind tried to process what you'd just heard. It was painful, this searing, dull grief. It rose up in your chest unexpectedly, like it had been an animal lying in wait, and lunged for your heart, tearing with icy claws.

Marc noticed your stance immediately. "...Babe? Everything okay?"

You didn't respond immediately, still processing the information. The loss of a family member is a life-changing event, and it surged up out of nowhere. You stagger into Marc's touch when he tentatively reaches for you. "...Baby? You okay?"

You burst into soft sobs, falling into his chest. He held you tightly and close, prepared for some unseen threat. "Hey, hey... Sh, sh, sh..." Rocking you in his arms, he maneuvered you to the couch, bringing you up onto his lap and cradling you in a snug embrace. With a glare that could have killed, he eyed your phone, which was laying on the floor where you'd dropped it, as if it were an enemy.

"Oy, what's happening?" Steven roused himself in the headspace clumsily, tripping over Jake. Their alter cursed in Spanish, trying to wrestle Steven down in their roughhousing way of communicating-- honestly, they were like rowdy misbehaved toddlers, and that was the very last thing you needed right now.

"Guys," Marc said softly as he rubbed your back, trying to hide his irritation. Once they heard your quiet sobs into his shoulder, felt the tight grip of your fists in his shirt, they immediately sprung to their feet and raced to see what was wrong with you.

"You wanna tell us what happened, mi vida?" Jake whispered softly in your ear as he took control of the body, brushing strands of tear-dampened hair out of your face. He pressed soft and tender kisses to your jaw, your temple, your forehead, trying to coax you into telling them what was wrong.

"I-I... um..." You tried to wipe your tears away with a shaky hand. "I-I just got some bad news..."

The boys stiffened, starting to understand. "You wanna talk about it?" Marc offered gently.

A part of you, in your grief-stricken mind, was comforted. It was rare for the boys to co-front, stubborn as they were-- literally, it's-my-turn-with-the-body kind of arguments have occurred and now they stick to a strict fronting schedule-- so usually they now only co-fronted if something extremely dire was happening, and the fact that they considered your well-being in that category was flattering.

"I-I just... um..." You swallowed hard, trying to manage to speak through your sobs enough to translate the reason for your current state. "I just found out that I lost somebody... I just lost somebody in my family."

Steven was the one who fronted then, mouth forming an 'o' of realization. "Oh, love..." He pulled you in to his embrace, kissing the top of your head and cradling you close.

They didn't want to say it's okay. They know that right now, it's not, it's far from, and instead of trying to push your feelings away, they think that you should perhaps let them process. Maybe its okay isn't what you need to hear, but maybe just a shoulder to cry on until it is okay.

"We're here for you, darling," Steven said, kissing your head. "We're right here for you."

Jake fronted, grabbing you by your waist and lifting you up a bit so that he could look you in the eyes. "What do you need us to do, mi vida?"

"Just..." You sniffled, falling back into him. "Just hold me for a little while, okay?"

"We can do that," Jake assured you, rubbing up and down your back. "We're gonna help you through this, mi vida."

Marc switched to the front, readjusting your position so that you were kind of laying on him across the couch. "We're gonna be here for you every step of this process, baby."

"Whatever you need, we're here, dove," Steven added, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

And they held true to that. They made sure that you remembered to eat, but if you couldn't stomach it, they made you drink water-- you drank so much water, it probably more than made up for all the tears you were shedding. They made sure you slept, and they called your work to get you a week or two off to process things more clearly. They stood by your side at the funeral, offering condolences to family members and respect for who was lost.

Every night, or really, any time you cried, they held you in their arms and lulled you to sleep. Sometimes they would sing or read to you, or try to make you laugh. And the day you finally smiled again, you don't think you'd ever seen them beam brighter. "Life keeps going, love," Steven told you one day, "It might hurt sometimes, and it might be hard, especially losing someone; but it keeps going. It doesn't wait for us. We'll meet everyone we've lost again one day, don't you worry. In the meantime, though, we have to stop and smell the roses, so to speak. Smile. That’s what we’re put here to do, innit? To love and laugh?”

“I know,” You said as you held onto him as if for dear life, nestling your head in his sweater-clad chest. “Thank you, guys. For being here for me.”

“Always,” Marc answered into your hair. “Now and forever.”

“We’ll never let you go through anything alone, mi vida,” Jake promised, pulling a blanket up over your shoulders. “You’re never alone. Remember that.”

————————————————————————

I hope this has comforted you, nonnie. I hope you do okay, and just remember we’re all here for you.

[thestarrynightslover]

You and Me

Pairing: Jay Halstead x Reader

Word count: 2,649

Warnings: Angsttt, slight swearing, mentions of harassment and violence (all show-like, tho).

Summary: Jay and (y/n) were trying to navigate their secret workplace romance when an unexpected event agitates their feelings about it.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the One Chicago shows, or its characters, also not associated with it in any way or know anyone involved with it.

A/N: No, I am not very sure of what exactly this is, sorry! I think it turned out kinda messy but, being honest, I just really wanted to write their interactions within that kind of angst! 

Anyways, I hope this isn’t too bad and I am very sorry about dropping this kind of imagine instead of something good enough to help us heal from the finales.  

(y/n) = (your name) (y/l/n) = (your last name) (y/n/n) = (your nickname)

| masterlist |

It had been about 20 minutes since you finally convinced Kevin that you were okay and that he should go home when you heard someone knock on the door. You knew it was him. It had to be him. You needed it to be him. So you quickly moved to open, after checking the peephole. As soon as there was a hint of an opening, you felt Jay’s arms around you, his breath on your neck, and his voice cracking with concern.

"Oh my God, baby, I was so worried about you!" He sounded absolutely desperate, his arms enveloping you in just the way your own despair required him to.

"I know, I know... I just... I-" You tried to let out but couldn't continue because you'd started sobbing. Around Jay, it was inevitable for you to put your walls down. And, almost as soon as your tears started to fall, your boyfriend brought you even closer; holding you tightly by the waist with one arm, the other stroking your hair.

"Shh, it's gonna be okay, princess. You're okay now." He told you, but the truth was he wanted to cry as well. Not only had those past days been pure agony for him — a lonely agony —, but, also, because, even with you like that, you both knew that Jay wouldn't be able to keep a promise to stay the night if he got a call from work. Because no one knew that he needed to stay by your side. That you needed him there. Because no one knew how much all of that was hurting him, too. Because no one knew anything.

"I'm just- I just came so- so close this time, you know?" You tried to let him in on how you were feeling, pulling away a little so you could see his face better.

"I know." He replied, letting out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "And it all happened so suddenly, I felt so stupid, powerless..." Jay confessed, as he remembered the operation that’d gotten you abducted, leaving the entire team with no clue on how it happened. 

But, for your boyfriend, it was pretty clear, though: the two of you were covering one side of the building and, afraid you might get upset with him for hovering, he didn’t have your back the way he should have. It was his fault that it all happened to you.

"Jay... That wasn't your fault, okay?” You stated firmly, as if you knew exactly what he was thinking. “None of us could've guessed that it would turn into something that, um, bad..." You said, not being able to stop the shiver that ran through your body, which made Jay go back to holding you close.

"Still, I should have done a better job at protecting you-" He started to mutter quietly in your hair, but you stopped him with a disapproving look.

"Stop, okay? Just stop! I'm a cop too, I have been a cop for about the same time that you have and I never needed or had a boyfriend protecting me in some special manner on the job!" He just stared at you, shock and hurt in his eyes.

"I know that, okay? I do know that." He told you quickly, as his hands went up from your sides, in a sign of surrender. "And I'm sorry if it came across as if I thought any differently. I'm sorry, baby. It's just that-" He paused for a moment, looking so hurt while sighing deeply, "It was really hard to not know what was going on with you, even after you went to the hospital... I mean they called Kevin to go stay with you in the hospital!" Another sigh, this time, an annoyed one. "And, seeing that, I guess that I just- I just wished that none of it had happened?"

"Jay..."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't be saying this right now. I'm making this about me, when it's actually about you, geez." He reprehended himself while pinching the bridge of his nose.

"No, no! It's okay. Because this is about you, too. And I'm glad you're telling me how you feel." Hearing that, he just looked at you and wondered about how on Earth he had managed to snatch someone like you. "First things first: what happened to me wasn't your fault. I don’t say this often but: as great a partner as Kevin is, I love working by your side. And, I do it without any fear or concern because I know you'll have my back. One hundred percent." You assured him while giving his hand a gentle squeeze, "now, the second thing: you do know that they only called Kevin because he is my partner, right?"

"I, uh, I do know that," yet another sigh.

"Okay, Jay. I love you and I really need you right now. But, if you don't stop sighing and just say what you wanna say already, I will kick you out of here." At that, he couldn't help but to let out a soft chuckle. God, you loved his smile.

"I don't wanna upset you with this. Especially now. But, I guess, I just would have liked to be the one they called." Seeing the instant frown you made, he clarified: "Not as your partner. As your boyfriend."

You had to admit that, even though you knew going public with your relationship was something Jay thought a lot about, you weren't expecting him to say that at all. Not at that moment, at least. And, being the not-so-calm person you were, the conversation quickly took a turn.

"What the hell? I just got back from the worst moment of my life and you wanna use that- pry on that to pressure me into going public?" God, that was harsh. You knew as soon as the words left your mouth. You regretted it as soon as the words left your mouth. But you didn't dare to open it again, as you watched his face go from hurt to annoyance and then a hint of anger.

"You're kidding, right?" You didn't answer. "Please, tell me you're kidding?"

"Babe, I'm-"

"You're what? You're sorry? Because, man, that shit you just said? That hurt!" He stood there in silence for a moment before continuing: "do you have any idea of what these past days were like for me? You think I'm bringing this up now just because I wanna shout to everyone that you're my girlfriend? Claim you as mine or whatever bullshit reason you think I have for wanting to go public?” You still couldn’t say anything, so he went on, “well, it's not any of that. I'm talking about this because you were missing for two entire fucking days that felt like forever to me, but I couldn't tell anyone how I'd die if anything happened to you because, hey! I was respecting your wishes! I felt guilty about the operation and thought that the least I could do was keep my pain all to myself. Which is kinda funny because you're always telling me not to bottle up my emotions!" By then you were crying, just because you were too mad at yourself for making him feel like that, and he paused but only to take a breath: "But, you know that all of that wasn't even what hurt the most? The worst part was when I got a text from Burgess on the chat group saying that they'd found you and had taken you to Med, but that we could continue doing our surveillance on one of the offenders because Kev was already on the way there!" He shouted this time, which made you wince a little — even though he looked more hurt than angry, really. Running his hands through his hair, Jay completed: "and, now, that I'm finally able to be with you- to- to know for myself that you're okay! You suggest that I was-" He couldn't even finish the sentence, which showed even more just how distraught he truly was. "I guess I just- I just can't believe that you don't see that all I wanna do is be here. With you. Taking care of you. Which is all I wish I could’ve done at the hospital, too…"

"I know, Jay." You whispered with a weak voice. Unsure that he'd heard you, you tried it a bit louder: "I know, Jay. And, trust me, I am so sorry for what I said! I don't- I just… I just wish it didn't have to be this complicated…" You knew what that sounded like. And, God, you were terrified about it. How could not you find anything good enough to say?

"Maybe I shouldn't be saying this… Maybe I shouldn't be trying anymore…” Because it sure looks like you gave it up, he wanted to add, "but I- I need to at least ask. Why does it have to be so complicated?"

"Jay, babe-"

"No! Don't do that! Don't try and stall me with that soft tone! I just wanna know why!"

"You know why, Jay!"

"I don't! I really don't! Or have you forgotten that all you did so far was give me half-ass excuses about privacy and being shy?"

"Okay! You wanna know why?" You half-asked, half-barked at him, "it's because I am scared of what will happen! That's why! Throughout all of my career, I've had to prove myself, then I got this sort of arranged job at Intelligence which not only threw all of my hard work to hell but, also, never lets me rest because it never really feels like I'm a part of that so-called family you guys have! And Voight? Every single day I still feel like he's testing me! Giving me the silliest assignments and being overly mad whenever I get the lead on a case! But, somehow — as messed up as it may sound —, I don't wanna lose that job! I don't wanna risk going back to the unit I came from, where I was constantly harassed and intimidated!" You blurted it all out, only stopping to take a breath while Jay simply stood there looking completely shocked. "And you, Jay, as great as you are — and you're literally the best thing that's ever happened to me —, you can very easily put all of that at risk." Now it was your turn to sigh. You could only hope that you sounded as defeated as you felt: having to give up the guy who was probably the love of your life just to not go from one toxic work environment back to an even more toxic one. Your mouth tasted sour after that realization, which just made you remember how sweet Jay's always was.

"You never told me any of that." He muttered quietly, pulling you out of your thoughts.

"I know and I'm sorry. I just… Thought it would get better. Eventually."

"You know I could have helped, right?" He stated sadly, then adding with a shred of hope: "You know… Maybe I still can?"

"Jay… Let's just not make this harder. Please."

"Just hear me out for a second: you are a part of our family." At that you just scoffed and looked the other way, making him pull your chin to connect your eyes again. "You are. I said I was going crazy with you missing but they all were too, including Voight."

"Yeah, right."

"It's true! Why would I lie to you about this? He looked truly haunted and, if I'm being honest, I think he just hoped he wouldn't get too close to you, to keep his head on straight in case something like this ever happened." He gulped harshly before continuing, "in case something worse happened. I think he simply can't handle losing anyone else, (y/n/n)."

"Y- you really think that?" You asked him and, you'd be lying if you said that you didn't get just a little hopeful.

"I do, darling," he told you in a soft tone. "And I'm not making excuses for him here or anything, okay? I'm just tryna tell you that we can deal with Voight. We can deal with rumors. I swear I will fucking kill anyone who dares to even touch your name on that stupid department!"

"Jay!" You started to reprehend again, even though you knew that he was just trying to lighten the mood. "That is exactly the kind of stuff you can't even think about doing after we go public!" You told him while spatting his arm.

"Ouch! Wait a second, did you really just say after we go public?" The way his eyes twinkled at that moment was enough to get you to agree with anything he wanted, really.

"But, hey! Don't get all exci-" You couldn't finish your sentence as he had already swept you off your feet and started kissing you all over. It hurt a little, due to your bruises, but it's not like you actually gave a damn about it.

"Don't get excited? Lady, I'm already over the moon!" He told you with the biggest smile you’d ever seen.

“Oh, God. You look so damn cute right now!! I can’t believe that I-” You cut yourself off because your voice started to crack while a big amount of sorrowful tears rolled down your cheeks. Seeing you like that, once more, made Jay start panicking a little, scared that maybe you were backing down on your relationship again.

“Baby? What’s wrong? Talk to me, please, (y/n/n).” Hearing the confusion in his plead sort of brought you back to say:

“I- I just can’t believe that I said the things I said to you! I hurt you! I hurt you in the kind of way I was scared you were you gonna get hurt when it seemed like I was gonna-”

“Don’t you dare complete that sentence, okay?!?” He half-asked, half-begged you, letting on so much heartbreak, “first of all: nothing could have ever hurt me in the way you being gone did. No matter how hard you might have tried, you just wouldn’t be able to get there, girl.” He said more casually, shrugging his shoulders in a way that made you crack a small smile. “And, second: I don’t want you thinking about me, in any way, when you're out there in the field. You just can't, love."

"I know, but at that moment, I-"

"Look, princess, you need to promise me that you will try your best to never do that again, okay? Because if you do, if the people we chase see any weaknesses they'll take advantage of it. And, then... But I know it's hard. You're the first thing on my mind whenever something goes south too, but I just- I love you too much to face the idea of losing you! So you need to promise me that you will keep your head one hundred percent focused on whatever is at hand, please, babe!" He begged you with such urgency in his voice that new tears started rolling down your already marked face.

"Oh, Jay... I love you, too, okay? More than anything in the world! But you know that, when we're in that kinda moment, our minds sometimes just wonder..." Seeing his concerned expression, you decided to add: "However, if you promise me you'll try your best to focus on your work, in the same way, I'll promise it too." At that, he gave you a cheeky smile.

"Deal. Now let's get you in bed cause it's been a long couple of days, detective." He said, picking you up one more time and carrying you to your bedroom.

"Oh my God! Jay, put me down!!" You squealed out, though you didn't really want him to put you down, ever.

[finn-ray-nal-beads]

A Tight Squeeze

A/N: You all can blame @contesa-lui-alucard for this monstrosity... I literally am in love with this character now and I will never stop... I slept on him SO hard and I REGRET IT! Thank you for the inspiration and this fic is so self indulgent I wish Pat was my true baby daddy... Enjoy loves!🖤

Warnings: tw: pregnancy, tw: pregnancy kink, obscene amounts of marital fluff and love, tw: breeding kink, tw: unprotected sex, tw: doggystyle, tw: very slight edging, tw: body image, tw: slight depression (regarding body image and self esteem), lots of fluff (because Pat is fluffy), tw: daddy kink, tw: hair pulling, creampies (I mean when am I NOT doing a creampie?) a smidgen of Dom!Pat because I CANNOT control myself

(PLZfor the love of Satan lmk if I miss a tag or TW... I am only human and I make errors all the time)

“Goddammit!” you practically cried, seeing the thousandth piece of clothing you owned barely fitting around your new curves. The look of defeat and sorrow running across your pretty face from the mirror as you twisted and turned to somehow wish the new poundage away.

“Honey?” a sheepish voice called from the kitchen in your quaint home, his heavy footfalls coming steadily as he padded back to your bathroom.

His precious features gracing the floor-length mirror as he crowded the edge of the molding on the frame of the closet.

He gasped slightly, surveying the scene before him. His cock stirred in his jeans as he appraised your body, the new planes from the growing baby inside you making you glow with an effervescence he had never seen before.

His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he caught his breath, your tits plunging out of the small tank top, bouncing as you frustratingly tried to pull it over your growing bump, to no avail as the bottom half and your belly button poked from under the hemline.

The leggings barely fitting on your thighs as they clutched onto your globe of an ass. He wished on all the stars that you couldn’t fit into your underwear and had forgone them all together so he could rip the seam and go to town on your backside.

“Pat,” you whined his name, running your hands over your belly, clearly upset you had a dwindling wardrobe as the days progressed.

“I need to get some new stuff honey,” your pretty lips going into a full pout as the tears rolled down your cheeks. You never had any reason to feel as unattractive as you had just now. He had never given you any indication he didn’t think you were the most beautiful creature on this planet. In fact, when he and you had found out about the baby, he was completely overjoyed and more touchy than he had ever been in the years he’d been married to you.

His feral instincts had kicked into hyperdrive when he became a father-to-be. Making sure you were well taken care of in all aspects including but not limited to cleaning, cooking, foot rubs, nightly baths, and of course reading poetry to you and your unborn son as he grew bigger and bigger.

He loved every detail of it. The gross and good parts, and ebbed and flowed with every single mood swing and nauseous feeling you had. He was the perfect husband, and here he was, looking at you as if you were the most gorgeous goddess he had ever seen. In fact, you were to him, no matter how many times he had been in utter disbelieve that you gave him the time of day let alone let him fuck you three or more times a day.

“Okay baby,” he cooed, coming over to wrap you in the biggest hug he could, rubbing your back as you sobbed over this minor detail in your pregnancy.

He hushed and rocked you, petting your hair, while you inhaled his fresh scent, rubbing your face in his cotton t-shirt as he whispered the sweetest nothings into your ear.

“It’s gonna be okay honey,” he murmured, “you still look absolutely perfect to me my sweet love,” the words making you tear up even more as he kept with his praises.

“You’re absolutely amazing,” his chorus kept going, the baby suddenly joining in the party as he kept talking, “we both think you are, mama,” the sobs catching in your throat as your son kicked a series in your stomach, his low baritone only encouraging the movements as he kept on.

“In fact, I think mama could use a nice bath and something sweet to eat… What do you think?” he arched back to see your head pop up from its place, his precious smirk making you smile with glassy eyes while you nodded.

“That’s exactly what I think too,” kissing your forehead with the lightest effort, “okay, go get out of these, and I’ll get it going for you, deal?” his eyebrows raised as he ran a hand over the expanse of your bump, cradling underneath while you wiped your cheeks off with your hands.

He kissed over your face before heading to the bathroom to run the tub, the lavender scent emanating as the water filled the basin.

You struggled out of your clothing, cursing the companies who made your clothes as you did so. You felt like burning them in a fire or ripping them to shreds but settled on maturity rather than violence as the clothes weren’t the issue.

Your body ached from the weight of everything. The baby of course wasn’t your average-sized fetus, being that his father was a whopper when he was born. You never assumed, however, that he could be as heavy as he felt the more he grew inside you. And you also didn’t take into account the toll his size would take on yourself as the months dragged on. But willful ignorance is what you went with, and with that came karma in its truest form.

No matter how much you hurt and complained, you loved your boys, size and all, and you knew you wouldn’t do this for any man except for your precious Pat.

He was truly just the best partner in every sense of the word. And this simple gesture of making sure you practiced some self-care was his way, amongst many, of showing you how much he appreciated the sacrifices you were making for him and your growing family.

You waded into the steaming water, the enveloping hug of warmth shrouding your emotional state into numbness as the floral notes caressed your senses. This was heavenly, you thought, submerging your body as far as possible into the water, the top of your belly poking out like a small island in the ocean as you relaxed.

You closed your eyes, trying to take in the serenity, rubbing slow circles on the sides of your taut stomach as the baby relaxed within you.

Your meditation was so deep after a few minutes, you never heard Pat come in to check on you.

His hand found the exposed skin, calloused fingers enveloping it in a heated touch as he whispered to you, “how are we doing now mama?” he cooed, his soft smile in the warm light bringing you to tears again.

He was the sweetest thing on this planet. You hoped to any entity that was listening that your son had his perfect features. Those golden eyes, his soft lips, the freckles that speckled his body, his calm demeanor.

“Better,” you whispered back, unconsciously pushing your body into his touch, “thank you, daddy,” smiling at his sweet face.

“Good,” holding his gaze for a moment to peer at your perfection for just a second longer, his smile widening as yours did too.

“When you’re ready to get out I’ll help you get all lotioned and dressed… I’ve got one of my shirts and sweats out for you babe,” his lips pressing against your forehead again as you exhaled a relieved sigh.

“We’ll go get you some new stuff in the morning,” rubbing the top of your bump as you smiled brighter and brighter, “that okay?”

You nodded, peacefully, not wanting him to leave this spot until you were finished.

___________________

You spent about twenty more minutes in there until the water became too cold, his cue to get you and little man from the tub.

He helped you get dried off, making sure to gingerly rub your skin before grabbing the lotion from the cabinet. He knew you liked the lavender scent, so he had picked up a bottle when he was at the store earlier in the month. The fact that it was just about gone being an indication of a good purchase on his part.

He rubbed your relaxed muscles, making sure to massage the cream into every crack and crevice he could reach for you, the primal instincts rising within as he ran his hands over the curves and dimples on your skin.

He tried to shake the thoughts, thinking of the task at hand, but being hopelessly derailed after you let out the fifth or sixth moan in pure bliss.

He snapped then, the ambient lighting in the room looking so good on your naked body as you laid out perched in the best way for him.

“Pat?” his sudden stop causing you to look up from your spot, the pillows you had stacked so you were comfortable during his massage able to push you to see his looming body over your belly.

“What’s wrong honey?” gazing at him in the warm light, his hair tousled from the work he had been doing, his lips quivering as he gulped a dry swallow upon seeing your eyes meet his.

“I need you to get on your hands and knees and arch that perfect back of yours before I paint my jeans,” his tone deep enough to cause a stir in your nether regions.

Your eyes dilating immediately upon his sudden domineering behavior, “like this baby?” you made a show out of it all, wiggling your ass as you crawled up the bed, gripping the sheets in both hands as your back arched just the way he liked it.

“Such a good fucking mama,” he cooed, the sounds of his pants unzipping and the clang of them on the floor, coupled by the bed creaking slightly from his weight on the edge, “back up to me honey,” his hands gripping the sides of your hips as he helped you ease your body to meet his.

His tip barely touching your ass, causing a hiss to leave his chest, and a moan to leave yours upon feeling his pubic hair graze your mound.

“I’m gonna destroy this pussy of mine,” he growled, his voice getting deeper and deeper as he grabbed and rubbed his tip in your wet folds, “fuck this wet little pussy until you can’t take it anymore,” gritting as your hole sucked the head in, your warmth coating it so perfectly.

“Fuck Pat,” you whined, his hold on your hips bruising as he stilled his tip for a moment or two before sheathing it to its base, “y-you’re s-so f-fucking b-bi,” not able to even finish as he plunged even further, pushing your hips so you both let out a chorus of groans.

“Y-you t-take t-this b-big c-cock of m-mine s-so w-well m-mama,” he gasped out, picking up his pace as he fucked further and further into you, his hand pressing into your lower back as you arched more and more.

“I-I’m s-such a g-good g-girl,” you mused back, “I-I l-love p-pleasing m-my b-baby,” feeling his dick harden even more in your squelching cunt as he plummeted further into your hole.

“S-such a g-good g-girl,” he recanted, “k-keeping m-my c-cum s-so g-good,” speeding up even further, your moans picking up as he found your G-spot.

“Y-you l-love b-being all f-full of m-me,” the slaps of sweaty skin and balls hammering the room as the moans turned into feral screams.

“I-I l-love c-carrying y-your b-baby P-Pat,” the tears streaming as you felt the shroud of warmth begin to expand from your cunt to the rest of your body.

“T-that’s f-fucking r-right y-you d-do,” he growled, his teeth snarling as the sweat dripped in a waterfall from his short locks, the songs of your cries opening his senses to overdrive as he watched you writhe under him.

“Y-you c-cum on t-this m-monster c-cock of y-yours,” he grunted, feeling your walls vibrate around him and your screams emanate. As a last-ditch effort, he moved his hand on your back to grab your messy bun, pulling the hair to cement your rapture.

“F-fuck P-Pat!” you came, and you came hard. The damn breaking to coat his dick in your sweet sticky release wave upon wave, the wet sounds sending him over the edge as he pummeled the last of his efforts into your spent pussy.

He grit his teeth again, pushing in two more times before emptying his large load into your occupied cunt, the overload spilling out in a thick mixture while he pumped lazily in and out, musing at the sight.

He pulled out slowly, holding your hips so you could relax a little bit before guiding you to the side and surrounding your body with an abundance of pillows once more.

“So much for a bath,” you sighed and laughed, fanning yourself in a sweaty haze.

“I’m sorry honey,” he chuckled too, grabbing a towel to wipe you and then himself off, “I wasn’t even thinking about it… I just got too riled up from the clothes you were wearing earlier, and I…” he trailed off, watching a smile creep over your face as he talked.

“Really?” your curiosity getting the better of you, “you liked me in those clothes?”

“Ummm,” he sheepishly blushed, “y-yes?” itching the back of his head trying to avoid any eye contact with you.

“Well....” you adjusted as the baby began to make himself known for the night, “I guess I know what I need to do in the future,” winking as he found the other side of the bed, curling up to run his hand over your belly.

“Honey,” he whispered, “you don’t have to be doing anything for me to get turned on by you… I’m just in love with you either way,” his admission making you misty-eyed while you felt his light touches on your skin.

“But I have to admit… I really like this kind of look on you,” gesturing to all of your figure from head to toe.

“Well, you made me this way,” inching in to kiss his plush lips, him returning as you both pecked each other for a few seconds.

“I’ll keep you this way if you want me to,” his voice barely loud enough for you to hear, “keep you all knocked up and gorgeous for as long as you let me,” his words going straight to your cunt again as he kissed you again and again.

“As many times as you wish… Daddy,” winking and kissing him deeply, a smile inching over his lips as yours met.

“I love you,” his faint words cutting into your soul as if he was saying it for the first time.

“I love you,” returning it with a smile and a nuzzle into his neck as you began to drift off together in sticky paradise.

___________

Well... What did we all learn today? That I have a total fucking issue with not being his baby mama and that I have staples that I stick to and will not waiver from in my deepest darkest fantasies... Goodnight everyone I love you and I'll be crawling back into my festering hole to think about what I have done.

Oneshot Taglist: @maybe-your-left, @safarigirlsp, @clydesfavoritegirl, @thepalaceofmelanie, @hopeamarsu, @caillea, @historyandfandoms50, @mariesackler, @millenialcatlady, @thepriceofstars, @roanniom, @kathorax, @driversmutbucket, @clydes-hole, @xxcatrenxx, @paper-n-ashes

(Plz lmk if you would love to be added/removed from the taglist... Thank you all for the love and the support for this absolute garbage)

[m-aster-of-spinjitzu]

golden power; never wielded

my first work for @ninjago-angst-week! prompt - abandoned (16/08) Lloyd's never known what it's like to share his heart with another, linking two lives together as if one had found the melody to their chorus, now a song in perfect harmony. If he’d always felt like he was invisible; wondered if there was something fundamentally wrong with his inability to touch others’ hearts, then, well, that was no one’s business but his own. Of course, that was before he quite literally fell for someone - the first person, actually - who seemed to care. Of course she was too good to be true. Or, the S8 angst I've been wanting to write about 'game of masks' and the aftermath. trigger warnings - suicidal thoughts, brief mention of implied self-harm, not really a warning but it talks a lot about loneliness. "How did you know?"

"It's an Oni Temple. It's safe to assume that only an Oni could take it."

"No. How could you know that I was part Oni?"

How could you know that I was part Oni?

The question repeated itself in his mind, echoing into the blizzard.

Sometimes, he wondered what would've gone down at the temple if he hadn't been so observant.

Well, he thought bitterly, probably not the temple itself.

The walls collapsing, he'd caught a glimpse of his terrified face as the room filled with swirling inky blackness, freezing him to the bone.

But the real pain came from her words.

Ah. Your emotions. You can't get rid of them, can you?

No, he'd wanted to yell, staring listlessly at the shaking grey semblance of sky.

He'd always felt like he wielded the element of light; invisible, trapped behind a barrier that no one cared enough to break. Isolated; locked away from the world. Longing for - yearning for - a single soul to want to know his heart. Pain that almost felt tangible, bleeding into every motion, every day.

Everyone else seemed to find it so easy - so effortless - simple as breathing, taken for granted like it was ingrained into their bones. Everyone else seemed to have given away a little piece of their heart - to their parents, friends, or lovers.

The fact that his was, and had always been, entirely whole?

He was either cursed, the venom from the Great Devourer passed down to him, or there was something fundamentally unlikable coursing through his veins.

By this point, he assumed it was the latter.

Maybe, if anyone had ever cared - wanted to know him - he'd never have felt like it was pressing down on his chest like a casket; a useless block of ice that no one wanted, not even the unfortunate owner it'd been given.

If no one would know his heart, he'd thought, grabbing a forgotten map, he'd strike fear into theirs - until they knew what it was like to sob into invisible barriers, to gaze upon the world with a weary eyes and a heart heavy with the knowledge that if they vanished, no one would even notice.

He'd realized far too late that he had unleashed an evil that couldn't be controlled - or one that could only be controlled by his- by someone else that had sunk beneath the darkness until no light remained-

He'd escaped from the crumbling casket, energy and eyes blazing - only to find that Har- she'd already escaped with the mask.

The Oni Mask of Hatred.

As they had steered the boat through the river, her sweet smile hiding lie upon lie, he'd thought it was somewhat ironic - two lovers, seeking a literal manifestation of hatred.

He'd laughed bitterly; no mirth in the sound.

After his first crush had - well, literally tried to crush him, he didn't think that this day could get much worse.

Until she dropped him into a contraption that was the stuff of nightmares - leaving the others with a seemingly impossible choice.

He'd wanted to yell, scream, that they should save his mother - he'd hurt enough people over the course of his short life, as evidenced by the grief-stricken orphan yelling a foreign language right in front of him.

I'm the expendable one! Maybe she was right - it was my fault the Serpentine were able to release the Great Devourer. And it took thousands of lives - but never the life of the one who was to blame.

He'd grabbed the vengestone bars, the faint sense of numbness they brought a welcoming relief from the storm of emotions that- he honestly had no clue what to do with.

i could drown, he had thought briefly, fleetingly. what if i drowned and i never hurt anyone again-

you have  a responsibility, even though you've pretty much failed to uphold it so far

"Clotho venge! Clotho decer! Clotho haeed!"

Shoving the thought to the back of his mind, he'd gripped the bars tighter, ignoring the sting of the metal against skin.

If anything, he'd welcomed the sting.

Any pain was better than the agonizing reminder that his heart was, and had always been, entirely whole.

He didn't even realize he was trembling until he heard his father's voice echoing from the vortex.

His father hadn't asked to be bitten by an evil snake, the venom coursing through his veins for years upon years. He hadn't asked to be dumped at a boarding school for bad kids, spending what he had left of his childhood hiding in empty classrooms or yelling empty threats as his classmates snickered.

Against all odds, they'd been reunited. Evil snakes, Fangblades, even Jade Blades - none of it had stood between them.

Just when he thought they might have a future - he might have a- a family - the Cursed Realm decided to curse them all.

His father with imprisonment, him with a life devoid of a father he'd loved, at the end.

Now H- she wanted to resurrect him?

His father had been so much more than the Oni blood in his veins. So was he.

But if he was completely Oni-

Lloyd didn't like their odds. He kind of hated them.

"Clotho venge! Clotho decer! Clotho haeed!"

---

A few chaotic hours later... they'd won? They'd won.

The Sons of Garmadon (he'd always thought the name was kind of ironic - he, the only son of Garmadon, wasn't in their crazy biker gang) had been imprisoned by courageous, if a bit overzealous, taser-wielding policeman.

Ninjago was celebrating - everyone was; he should be, too.

Should he really revel in their victory, though? It was his fault that she'd been able to snatch the last mask, all the safeguards the Oni had put in place practically worthless because of his stupid feelings-

H- Harumi had been thrown in one of the police vans.

"You're right - this isn't me," she'd started, her meekness almost convincing him that she really was the girl he'd fallen for - the girl who'd been forced into a mask she never wanted to wear, but someone who still cared about the world... and- and about him.

"Stop."

He'd cut her off, the venom in his tone surprising both of them.

"Save it for someone who cares," he'd forced out, the hurt welling up his chest almost as painful as their unceremonious descent into the jungle, (the descent she'd orchestrated, he'd thought fleetingly, squeezing his eyes together) unable to believe that this- this liar was the same sweet girl he'd fallen for.

With that, he slammed the door of the van, locking her in - wishing that locking his memories away could be easy.

She'd never cared about him; simply needing to use him as if he was nothing more than the power he wielded.

He watched one of the policemen drive her away, the tired-but-enthusiastic cheers of his teammates nothing more than background noise; static.

Vaguely, he realized that his heart wasn't quite whole - he'd given a piece of it to someone whom he had thought would link theirs together in harmony, the melody to his chorus; what he'd been searching for ever since he'd woken up screaming in a 'boarding school' that seemed more like a prison.

She'd taken more than what he'd given - draining the light from his entire being as if she was the Overlord, stealing his golden power without a shred of remorse.

That failure was practically painless, compared to her-

An almost unfamiliar emotion slowly stated to replace the ache in his chest that he'd grown used to for all those years; it'd become comforting, even. Watching the world go by with a heart that seemed more like a curse, he briefly, fleetingly, wondered if he'd be better off without one.

If there was ever a problem that presented itself to Nya while she worked on the Bounty, she used to joke that it'd be easier to just dump their entire hard dive into the sea.

Destruction seemed to be easier than fixing, he conceded - the van now just a glimmer of bright light; one of the many that made up their vibrant city.

"How did you know?" he heard, yet again wondering how he felt so disconnected from his own role in the memory.

How had she known? 

The whisper of a voice long gone bled into his consciousness, his hands shaking at his sides even as the city celebrated.

Why had he even asked that?

Plastering a smile on his face as he walked over to his teammates, the question repeating itself in his mind, echoing into the blizzard.

FSM - she didn't need to be leader of a biker gang to know that.

Who could ever give their heart - the epitome of human connection; golden power all on its own, albeit of a different kind - to an Oni?

Maybe he wasn't the one trapped behind an invisible wall, built on tears and loneliness and yearning and heartache and a lone question - why? Why could no one seem to look past the cage he felt himself trapped in, observing the world rather than playing a part in it.

He hadn't been a- abandoned by everyone, he realized, a weary sense of clarity and shadowed eyes not sure to accept it or push it into the back of his mind like the hours he'd spent there, as if he'd ever want to have hurt his teammates like he did, the twisted ghost-

He trailed behind his teammates as they sang - horribly off key, his mind pointed out, forcing a small smile onto his face - lost in the figurative blizzard, despite the fact that the sun's rays had only vanished a few hours ago.

If no one would know his heart?

FSM - could he really blame them?

(if you read this far, thank you so much, you’ve made my day:D)

[chaseatinydream]

pirate king (27) || atz

You’ve learned that Hongjoong’s determination knows no bounds.

Because a week after that terrible little fiasco, he and Yeosang have gotten straight into planning how to slip into Nassau once again.

“Are you serious?” You had asked them, leaning over the map that they’re studying as you brought their dinner to them, Seonghwa’s masterpiece, beef stew. Hongjoong takes the bowl from you gratefully and starts to shovel the food down his throat, never once looking away from his map.

It’s a map of Nassau Island, with several navigational notes to it that you don’t understand, talking about tides, depth of the ocean and what not. Yeosang is pointing out a patch of map off the eastern coast of Nassau that is painted a darker blue than the rest.

“We could drop anchor here.” Yeosang says, gesturing to it. “And have two people take a rowboat out to the beach that Chin Hae and Wooyoung swam to the last time. They could retrace their steps from there.”

Captain nods as he studies the map intently, but his brow is furrowed. “I worry about the tide, though. It should be coming in, but anything could change.”

Yeosang shrugs, taking his meal from you with a grateful smile. “Thank you, Chin Hae. We can’t really do anything about the tide, since nature itself controls it as it will, but that’s a risk Seonghwa will have to take.”

Hongjoong nods once. “It’s final. This is what we’re going to do..” The navigator gets up, rolling the maps and tidal charts up, before giving you a quick smile. “I’ll go over the plan with Seonghwa, then. See you, Chin Hae!”

His fingers grasp yours as he leaves. Ever since the two of you had brushed death hand in hand, you find his fingers have instinctively begun seeking yours. It’s cute, the two of you are almost like twins now, two people cut from the same cloth.

The door swings shut behind you, and then you and Captain are the only two people left in the cabin since the time the crew discovered you are a woman.

Your captain looks at you for a moment as he unconsciously flexes the fingers of his right hand, the one he had crushed after San had told him of Yeosang’s condition.

It occurs to you that since waking up, you haven’t apologised to him yet.

You muster up all the courage you have in you, bowing before your captain deeply.

“I’m sorry, captain.”

Hongjoong must know what you’re apologising about, because his face stiffens a little. Then it relaxes, ever so slightly as he reclines in his chair, San having healed the damage done to his back during the week you were unconscious.

He opens his mouth to speak.

“I don’t accept your apology.”

Your heart stops in your chest. He doesn’t… accept your apology? You lift your head just a little to stare at him, and he gazes back it you, green eye firm and unyielding. When he speaks again, his voice is gentle, a little sad, a little hurt.

“I need to know why you lied to me, lied to all of us. I could have understood if you’d told us you were hiding the truth from us because you were afraid that we would leave you behind if we found out about your identity, but after you became part of our crew, there is no excuse, Chin Hae.”

All sorts of emotions swirl in you, the most prominent one guilt. You’ve hurt your captain, lied to the crew, and now you need to give them an explanation, except that you have none that makes sense.

“I…” You begin hesitantly, fingers fiddling with the hairpin at your belt. Its touch is cool and comforting, even if the man who gave it to you hasn’t said a word to you since you woke up. “I was afraid at first. Afraid that if you found out who I was, you’d leave me behind. But as I started to grow closer to all of you…”

The words choke in your throat.

Hongjoong’s expression is soft as he urges you to continue. “Go on.” The dam in you breaks, tears slipping past your eyes as the feelings that you’ve kept in so long spills out of you.

“I didn’t know how you’d react! I saw how all of you trusted me as one of your own and I was so afraid what you’d do if I told you I had been lying to you the whole time! I didn’t want you to be hurt, I didn’t want you to hate me! I just wanted to keep being Chin Hae, your crewmate! And now, everything has changed!” A sob leaves you and your eyes squeeze tight, unable to look your captain in the eye. You don’t want to see the look on his face as he tells you that this is a stupid reason, that you should have just come clean at the start.

But he doesn’t.

There is silence for a moment, then the scraping sound of a chair behind pulled out. You hear soft footsteps on the cabin floor approaching you, and for a moment, you’re actually afraid that your captain might hit you.

Instead, two warm hands come to rest gently on your shoulders.

“What has changed?” He asks softly. You look up in shock to see your captain’s faces mere inches from yours, so close that you can count the stitches on his eye patch. You’ve always wondered why your captain needs an eye patch, just like how you’ve questioned why Wooyoung always wear shirts with longs sleeves even on the hottest of days and why he wears shackles around his wrists like a slave. But this isn’t the time for those questions.

“I don’t understand-”

“Nothing has changed.” Your captain tells you firmly, not a trace of doubt in his voice. “You are Choi Chin Hae, you are and have always been since the day I gave you that name. You are still part of the Treasure, part of my crew, one of my family. Even if you are a woman, a clay one, instead of a man of flesh, neither of those things change for me.”

Warm tears run down your eyes. You finally have something you had been searching for your whole life, a family who loved you like no other.

“Why I wish you had told us earlier… is because we could have protected you better, made your life easier on this ship instead of having you live a lie.” Hongjoong says honestly, his hands are gentle as he squeezes your shoulders. Something in his voice cracks. “I regret, with every fibre of my being, being unable to protect you from that commander back in Nassau.”

You don’t understand your captain. He was getting whipped within an inch of his life because of you, and the thing that weighed most heavily on his mind was being unable to protect you?

“I’m… sorry, captain.” You manage to stutter, still utterly in shock. But your captain shakes his head, his green eye staring at you meaningfully.

“I believe that apology is better saved for someone else, Chin Hae.”

You immediately know who he’s speaking about. Your fingers touch the silver sea flower wrought into the head of the hairpin.

“I will.” You tell your captain, determined to make amends. Even if he doesn’t forgive you for betraying him, you still owe him an apology, at the very least. “But I’m still sorry for causing you all this burden, captain.”

Hongjoong laughs, stepping back as his hands fall from your shoulders.

“Didn’t you hear what I said to Seonghwa the last time? I want you to tell me all your problems, burden me with everything, share life with me and the crew. We’re a family.”

The tears that slip from your eyes, this time, are ones of happiness.

“Yes, captain.” You manage choke out, and before you’re overcome with emotion, you move for the door, intent on finding the head gunner. But when you’re out of the cabin, stepping onto the main deck, a call from your captain makes you whirl back to look at him.

“Chin Hae?”

You’re a little confused by what he wants to say. He seems to be pondering something, rolling the thought around in his mind. You prompt him, curious about why he seems to be so hesitant.

“Captain?”

Finally, he smiles, and your breath catches in your throat from how it highlights every part of his face even in the gloom of his cabin.

“Call me Hongjoong.”

And with that, the door closes in your face with a soft click.

A happy laugh leaves through your tears. The words seem almost instinctive to you now, more free on your tongue than they have ever been. Before, you had been part of the crew, but now, you are part of the family.

“Of course… captain.”

A light feeling blossoming in your heart, you wipe the tears from your eyes and look up to the sky with a smile.

And you see a dark shape in the rigging, swaying back and forth with the wind, looking utterly alone.

Concern wells in your chest. San had told you that Wooyoung had been been remaining in the rigging for the past week you had been unconscious, only visiting your bedside once. During that time, he had refused his meals, snapped at everyone who had attempted to talk to him and had literally drunk himself half to death. In fact, he probably would have, San had told you grimly, if he hadn’t gotten into a massive fist fight with Jongho.

The maknae had tied a rope around Wooyoung’s waist, picked him up and thrown him into the sea to sober off. After that, the gunner had stopped downing alcohol like he was trying to drown himself in it, but it evidently wasn’t enough to stop him from separating himself from everyone like he had the plague.

Worse of all, Yunho had confided in you, eyes worried, that Wooyoung seemed to be regressing back into the behaviour he had exhibited when he had first come to the ship. He had ignored Hongjoong’s orders, which simply doesn’t happen on this ship, and had even refused to speak to Yunho or Yeosang.

Lonely, afraid and terrified of interacting with anyone around him.

You need to apologise.

Crossing the main deck, you make your way to the foremast, climbing up to the forecastle deck. The dark shape above you continues swaying precariously in the ropes above, uncaring of anything below it.

You exhale deeply, trying to muster up the courage to speak.

“Wooyoung!”

The dark shape jerks, almost tumbling out of the rigging, to your horror. But his hand flashes out instinctively from years in the ropes, gripping tight onto the sheets, and he rights himself, glancing down.

His eyes meet yours for a second, and in that moment, your heart shatters.

You honestly don’t know what you were expecting when you met him face to face again. You remembered, more than anything else, that his face had been the last thing you’d seen when you slipped into your tangle with death itself, streaked with tears and grief. You couldn’t exactly recall what he’d said or you’d said, but you had seen his face in your dreams more times than you could count.

But in none of them had he looked like this.

The person staring back at you looks like a man haunted, as if he’s just surfaced from a terrifying nightmare, trapped in the shadows of his own mind, desperately wondering if he’s still merely wandering about in the darkness. His normally immaculate purple hair is mussed, as if he hasn’t bothered with it for weeks, and his mouth hangs open in shock.

Then he smooths it over the best he can, but you can see the wounded, terrified look in his eyes right before it slips away behind his mask. Hiding his true self in front of your eyes.

“I’m coming up.” You call, and you don’t think you’ve seen him more panicked your entire life.

His eyes fly wide in horror and he opens his mouth to protest, but then immediately shuts it before a word can escape him, much to your confusion. You place your hands on the rope, the thick lengths twisting under your grasp as you begin to haul yourself up.

It’s been a long time since you’ve touched the ropes, but you’re sure it’ll come back to you soon. You’re just not sure whether it’ll come back fast enough to catch Wooyoung, who’s scurrying away from you up the mast like a terrified monkey. Honestly, your limbs are still weak from your long bedrest and you doubt that you can catch the man who’s practically lived in the ropes for half his life, but you need to at least make an effort for all the pain you’ve put him through.

“Wooyoung, wait!” You shout, chasing him up as fast as you can. He doesn’t look back once, scrambling as fast as he can to avoid you at all costs. But there’s only one way he can go, and that is up. Eventually, he reaches the top of the mast, and there’s nowhere else for him to go. His eyes widen as he realises this and he glances at your approaching figure like it’s the devil itself come for him.

Then his eyes flicker to the side and you gape, a swear starting to emerge from your mouth. “Wooyoung, no-”

But it’s too late. He’s already jumped across the rigging, catching onto the ropes of the main mast and hiding from your sight behind the wooden pillar.

“Are you serious, Wooyoung?” You grumble, grabbing a rope from the side and swinging across to him. The wind and warmth of the sun caresses your face as you grab onto the ropes of the main mast, barely catching a glimpse of his eyes as he leaps to the mizzenmast.

Honestly, if you follow him again, he’s probably just going to jump into the ocean to avoid you and you’ll never get to apologise to him. Then a dumb, reckless plan pops into your mind and you start climbing higher and higher, as fast as you can.

“Do you trust me?” Wooyoung had asked you once.

You had replied with a joking ‘not at all’, but deep in you, the words still stayed the same, no matter what had happened between the two of you.

With my life.

“Wooyoung!” You call, and from your time together in the rigging, learning about the way each other thinks, moves, breathes, he can sense something in the air. One eye peeks around the wood of the mast, only to widen in horror as he sees you stand at the highest yardarm, arms outstretched, only holding on to a single length of rope in hand.

It’s a trick that the two of you had developed, before the mission, before Nassau, before any of this had happened. It had just been the two of you, you resting against him in the crow’s nest, your intertwined hands in his coat pocket for warmth as you had watched the sun vanish behind the sea and the stars twinkle to life in the night sky.

You want, for a moment so desperately it hurts, to return to that time.

“No, don’t do it-” You see him begin to shout in raging alarm and panic, but you simply grin at him, wild and breathless from the sheer stupidity and recklessness of what you’re about to do. You’ve never done it from this high before, but you place your faith in Wooyoung, closing your eyes.

“Catch me.”

With that, you jump.

Wind rushes past you for a second as you seems to hang in free fall, but you’re not the least bit scared like you should be. In a single breath, something warm slams into your body, sending you flying backwards. Strong arms wrap around you, one around your waist and the other catches the rigging behind you. Your entire body jerks as you come to an abrupt stop, tangled in the ropes and in Wooyoung’s arms.

His body is warm against yours, pressing you to him. For a moment, relief sags in you.  

Your eyes fly open, only to see Wooyoung’s eyes staring straight into yours, pupils still dilated from fear.

Then his mouth opens, and from incensed look on his face, you’re about to get a tongue lashing.

“What were you thinking-” He rants, furious at your actions. But you aren’t paying attention to his scolding, instead, your eyes flicker over the sickly, bloodless pallor of his face, the way his jawline looks too sharp from lack of proper eating, skin stretched over his bones, how gaunt he looks with sunken cheeks. There’s a healing bruise on his cheekbone, still fresh, put there presumably by Jongho.

Your heart breaks clean in half when you study the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, as if he hasn’t slept the entire week, how the white colouring of his skin makes them look like dark bruises.

“And do you know how dangerous that little stunt was? What would you have done if I hadn’t gotten to you in time? I can’t believe-” His words are cut off in a breathless gasp as your hands reach up to cradle his face gentle, thumbs brushing the soft skin under his eyes. He stares at you with wide eyes, terrified but so desperately unwilling to pull away from your touch, a war raging in his heart.

“You haven’t been sleeping well?” You murmur softly, tracing his cheeks and for a second, in a moment of weakness, he gives into your warmth, pressing his face into your hand. For a while, everything is right again with you and him, two people seeking comfort in each other.

That’s what the two of you have always been, a refuge for the other.

Then he catches himself and yanks himself from you, clapping one hand over his mouth, turning away so that you can no longer see his face.

“Go.” You hear him choke out, the words muffled by his hand as he sits down on the yardarm, unwilling to look at you in the eye. But you’ve had enough.

“Stop running from me, Jung Wooyoung!”

He seizes up at his full name. Nobody on board this ship calls him that, aware that his family name isn’t a real one. It’s something Hongjoong gifted him with when he had become one of the crew, a precious treasure of incomparable worth to him. But when you use it, he knows you understand the weight of it.

Having a name, when before you had none.

You see him shake his head and bury his face in his hands, knees curled up to himself. He doesn’t want to speak.

Crossing over to him, you crouch before his form. Initially, you had thought he was angry at you and merely didn’t want to talk to you out of fury at being lied to like that, but now you feel like it runs so much deeper than that.

“Wooyoung, talk to me, please.”

He shakes his head again, a little more frantic this time. You hear a sob torn from his chest and the sound of pain, anguish, agony makes yours ache in return.

“I’m begging you, Wooyoung. Please. Please talk to me.”

He remains completely still apart from the silent cries you can hear trapped in his chest. You’ve never seen him this vulnerable before, like a child who wants nothing more than to run to his parents for comfort, but doesn’t have any.

Someone who doesn’t know how to be told that it’s all going to be okay.

You rack your brains furiously for what happened to make him like this. Back and back and back, to that moment in the captain’s room, to when Wooyoung looked at you with eyes burning with ice cold fury. You see his lips move, and then you remember what he had said to you.

I wish… I wish you had died that first battle after Raguza... I wish you had never come to this ship.

“I didn’t mean it…” You hear Wooyoung’s soft whimpers as his body is wracked with the force of his sobs. Your heart breaks as you finally realise why he’s afraid of speaking to you any longer, why he won’t look at you in the eye. “I never wanted for any of that to happen… I never wanted for you to get hurt like that…”

A tear escapes you, a single drop rolling down your cheek.

He blames himself for what you had done.

Then you move forward, arms wrapping around him. His entire body stiffens in shock at your touch and he tries to shy away, but you cling to him, unwilling to let him go this time. Your chin rests on his shoulder, so close to him you can hear his heartbeat in your ears.

“I forgive you, Jung Wooyoung.”

“Don’t-” He chokes past tears, and another shudder runs through his entire body. “Don’t forgive me.”

You smile at him fondly even if you know he can’t see it. “Then you forgive me for lying to you.”

“I don’t blame you for that.” He sniffs, wiping his eyes but face still hidden in his arms. “You had every reason not to tell me. I had no right to say anything like that to you.”

“If you don’t let me forgive you, Wooyoung, I’m going to jump off the mast right this second.” You tell him, pulling away. Wooyoung’s hands rush to grab your wrists, pulling you tight to him, his chains jingling in your ears.

“Forgive me, forgive me-” He chokes out, wheezing from the heart attack he has almost gotten. You laugh, curling yourself into his chest where you’ve always sat before as you watch the sun begin to set before your eyes, turning the sky golden and blue.

This time, you take his hand in yours and place it in your pocket.

“I do.”

[i-prefer-the-term-antihero]

Additionally, your thoughts on Dracula and Adrian from the Netflix adaptation of Castlevania? I find Dracula really tragic, and the ending scene of Season 2 crushed me because I was not expecting Adrian to cry. He’s usually so stoic and calm that I didn’t think he would weep, I expected him to just shrug it off like heroes usually do, but no, when given time to process everything, the first thing he does is break down into tears. Sypha was right in calling him a brooding teen in an adult body.

Ohh man. If you just take a look at my writing blog (or anywhere I post my fanfiction) it’ll become pretty clear pretty quickly how I feel about them XD So far all my Castlevania fics have been about the Tepes Family. Adrian and Drac are my favorite characters in the series!! (Though I do love pretty much all the characters in it.)

YES YES YES!!

They did an incredible job making Drac sympathetic and tragic. I don’t know if you know anything about the games, and granted, they couldn’t put a lot of story stuff in the games, but (at least as far as I’m aware) in most of them it’s like “ya, he was an evil dude who did evil things because he was evil.” So it actually would have been pretty accurate to the source to make him just an unsympathetic, irredeemable villain, but they didn’t and I LOVE them for it. Playing Symphony of the Night (Alucards game) after watching the series l was almost longing for that Drac I know and love from the series, (though it’s fun to see evil Drac too).

As I’ve said, I adore redeemable villains, and they did an amazing job with him, to the point where pretty much everyone in the fandom adores him, which is extremely tough to accomplish—even if you write a redeemable villain well, often large parts of the fandom don’t see it and hate the character. I knew that the point was that they were going to defeat Drac but I have to say, especially since I originally knew nothing of the games, I was hoping they’d save him by the end.

I think the fact that he liked and was kind to Hector and Isaac was evidence that he wasn’t too far gone. I mean, the only two people he genuinely trusted and liked in his court were human…that’s so interesting, I wish it was at least talked about, either in the show or in the fandom. I think he actually liked humans, partially or especially because of Lisa, he just...was so angry, and needed someone to blame. He probably ultimately blamed himself for not being there to save her, and it was just easier to blame the humans he once hated/didn’t understand, even if in reality he didn’t hate them as much as he thought he did...

Doing more thinking and research into the show for my “If These Walls Could Talk” fic I recognize now that symbolically it made sense even within the show that he died when Lisa died (which I can explain more about if you want but id probably end up going off on a long tangent so I’ll save it)...but I still thought practically, in the show, he could have still been redeemed.

Omg I LOVED that. The longer I take to sit with it, the more I realize just how much I loved that they put him crying instead of shaking it off.

It’s very interesting that Drac and Alucard are more openly emotional characters. I might be totally wrong, but as far as I remember, they (...and Lisa when she dies, and probably Isaac in a flashback), are the only main characters we see openly cry. It’s a pretty bold move to make any of your characters emotional like that, but especially your villain, and your bold handsome hero. It’s sooo easy to get emotional characters and emotions wrong…or just offputting to some people...but more on that later.

I think Adrian and Drac are both rather sentimental, in an odd way. Much of Drac’s motivations in the show and even in the games (the times his motivations are explained) had to do with his wives (yes he was married before Lisa in the games...unless Lament of Innocence was retconned...) which is interesting. So many of his decisions are based on emotion. He lets Lisa in just because he likes her, he goes to war with the world because of Lisa, he sits in his study mourning her loss, he let’s Alucard kill him… I also notice very often he digs his nails into his palms until they bleed, presumably because if he didn’t he’d hurt someone else (in the scene where he hurts Alucard, he does this). His sentimentality doesn’t diminish is power as a villain, which is SO difficult to accomplish.

 I am emotional myself so I absolutely love to see emotional characters, but for most people, seeing even a normal character be emotional diminishes them in their eyes, or makes them whiny, so making your villain even a little emotional, and having that not take away from the audiences perception of their power as a villain is sooooooo hard to do, and I applaud them for making a so well-beloved, and still villainous and intimidating, but also emotional (at times) villain.

For Alucard. I don’t see any problem with him being emotional, but it makes even more sense if he’s a teen in an adult’s body—which was indeed portrayed quite well.

Yes that was interesting when he cried when drawing his parents!! I wasn’t expecting that when I saw him drawing them. I was enjoying and intrigued by his story so much, then when he started crying I was caught off guard—but in a good way. It really made me feel for him, and understand that he was still grieving his mother, and that knew the gravity of what he was currently doing.

I think it’s kind of important to show that kind of thing in a situation like this. It’s easy to think Alucard hates his dad, and they need to show the emotion of the situation to make it clear “no he doesn’t hate his dad, this actually breaks his heart, he just knows he has to do this.”

I loved when he was telling Trevor and Sypha about how much the world would lose by killing Dracula. It’s really interesting that he hides his emotion with them, and that Trevor and Sypha are so stoic. The son of Dracula isn’t the guy you expect to be the only hero who cries.

In “For Love” when Trevor’s like “Don’t get weepy about it” I was sitting there, sobbing, like “No, please get weepy about it! Let the boy cry for goodness sake!! Give me some emotion!!” But I too was not expecting him to cry like he did, and in grieving the death of his parents...

I knew the crying scene was coming because I’d seen pictures of it on here and pinterest, but I had no context for it. In the end it wasn’t just the weeping itself that made the scene so impactful, it was everything surrounding it. I didn’t know it would happen when he was completely alone (and would be for the foreseeable future), and in grieving his parents, or about the ghosts/flashbacks before it (cementing his grief), or that it was literally the last scene of the season, or that there would be no music for both the scene and the credits thereafter.

And that was what really got me.

Because, firstly, we never got to see any flashbacks to his childhood, and that was what I was begging for the entire series (and hence why its what I write about). To finally get it, and it not to just be something the audience gets to see, but something Alucard himself is seeing... a happy memory he’s seeing when he knows that is completely gone, he cannot hope to have it again, and for him to now be in his father’s place…that’s heartbreaking. Like just having your character cry—let alone those kinds of full-on sobs—is painful enough, showing a son grieving his parents is a particularly heart wrenching kind of sadness, but showing that he is haunted by memories of those parents he lost—not only lost but one of which he killed, and, if SOTN is canon for the show, the other of which he could have saved—of a happy childhood, and he is alone with these memories for the foreseeable future...that is truly heart wrenching.

Also the scene with Trevor and Sypha in the wagon earlier in the episode was super sweet, they could have easily put the Adrian crying scene earlier, and had the Trevor and Sypha scene be the last scene of the season (and Trevor’s game actually does end with them looking into the sunset, so ending with the last scene of “For Love” would be accurate as well), and left it on a positive note, and the audience would have been left with a completeness. But they made a conscious choice put his crying scene last, and it was so powerful, because it made you remember that at the end of the day, he isn’t just our bold handsome hero, he was a son who lost both his parents, and that, to him, this isn’t really a triumph, but a loss. It also kinda confirmed that Drac wasn’t an "evil guy, end of story". That there was reason to grieve him, and to show his son grieving, and to leave it there because of it. It was a personal gravity too

In the end, it was the lack of music in the scene, and even more so during the credits, so theres only his tears, and all you are left with in the end is this amplified emptiness that really did me in. I think I literally sat there, tear tracks on my face, my mouth open when I hit the credits.

Playing Symphony of the Night after watching the show is really interesting in exploring his character. I knew there was very little story, so I wasn’t expecting much from the story, but I actually found that I was beyond excited whenever there actually was some story, and the few lines they did say are stuck with me.

Maria comments early on that Alucard’s not very good at talking. At first I just chalked it up to...weird translations or whatever. But the more I played the game and the more I thought about him in the show...I think she’s right. He’s not very good at talking, yet if and when he does talk he’s quite eloquent, and precise with his words. (This actually makes him a somewhat difficult character to write). I wonder if perhaps this has some connection to his emotionalness. He’s very careful with what he says, and this may spread to what he does—such as being careful when he shows emotion. I’m curious why he’s like this. It could just be his nature, but I wonder if as a kid he was ever hated because he was a vampire—maybe people made fun of him, and he cried, and they made more fun of him because of it—and he learned both to hide his emotions, and that he had to be very deliberate and show people he didn’t mean any ill will with his words. (And he looks older than he is so people might call him immature for acting his mental age). All very speculative, of course. But it’d be fun to write about!

Also, another thing from SOTN that is related to this topic, there was a fight that really struck me (enough I actually wrote a fic about it (inverted recurrence)). SOTN takes plays 300 years after the events of The Netflix Series (aka Dracula’s Curse). Most of the bosses don’t seem to have a lot of meaning story-wise, they’re just there for you to fight. The other day I (Alucard) walked into a boss room...and there were Trevor, Sypha, and Grant (who was omitted from the Netflix series). They were fake versions of them, of course. And there’s no dialogue in the fight so maybe I’m just speculating, but what struck me was that the fact that Dracula could use them against him probably means he still cares about them, even after 300 years. It probably also means that they’re some of the only friends he’s ever had. Granted, he was asleep for a good chunk of those 300 years, still. It goes back to that sentimental-ness I was talking about earlier.

I few years ago I watched the Gravity Falls commentaries, and from them I got a lot of the writing advice I still think about and use today. Alex Hirsch said something on this subject which I really liked which is “Hold your tears.” When a character cries they’ve broken, that’s as far as they can go. So if you make a character cry when the audience themselves doesn’t feel the weight of the scene, or it doesn’t feel like the character has broken yet, it can feel like too...much/cheesy, and distance the audience. especially with cartoons where the way it’s drawn can actually affect your sympathy for the character (it can look weird or accentuated).

They did such an awesome job with this by literally holding his tears until the very end. I don’t know how other, non-emotional people felt about it, but Ive don’t know if I’ve ever seen tears used so well in a show, pack such a punch. To have it not just be a part of the scene but literally the focus, and at the end...it was powerful.

Sorry for the long response, and more importantly, I’m beyond sorry for taking so so SOOO long to respond. I hope you enjoy my response, if you see it <3

P.S. For anyone else who made it all the way to the end, I actually have a Castlevania sideblog now: @symphonyofthewrite !! I’d be beyond happy to recieve asks like this over there, if you’d like to hear more of my thoughts!!

[hurting-fictional-people]

Ball

CW: burning/branding, noncon/dubcon touching and kissing, mention of past torture, vomit mention (it doesn’t actually happen), implied noncon

Before

Her dress was beautiful. Made of emerald green silk that complemented the red of her hair, a V neck descending to the middle of her breasts, a flowy skirt that lightly touched the ground, a tight bodice. Her hair fell down her back in loose waves, only half of it pulled up and braided with tiny pearls that sparkled when the light hit them. She knew she was stunning. It was hard for anything to feel good at the moment, but being pretty again was almost nice.

“Have I told you that you look dazzling tonight, precious?” Blake whispered, lips touching her ear, hand brushing the small of her back. She held back a whimper.

“We are going to play a little game tonight, Kiara”, he declared, grinning. His expression would be childish if his eyes didn’t gleam with wickedness.

“Wha-what are you talking about?”.

His smile widened as he opened a drawer and pulled out something that looked suspiciously like a fireplace poker, but with a larger tip. She started shivering when he placed its tip among the flames of the hearth and winked at her.

Kiara tried to take a deep and calming breath, but all she really did was bite her lip till she felt copper coating her tongue, hoping it would help her keep her face from frowning.

“Please” she mumbled, her voice so low she doubted he could hear it. But he did. He always did.

“You look pretty when you try not to squirm” was all he said, chuckling softly, pressing his hand against her back. The touch wasn’t especially harsh, yet her breathing hitched and she tried to arch away from him just to stop when she heard him tutting. “Remember our game, sunshine. I would love to meet that sweet brother of yours, but I don’t think you would like our get together as much as I would”.

She scanned the room as discreetly as she could, desperately wishing for someone to see the fear and hurt in her eyes, but the only looks she received were aimed straight at her boobs.

They had just got to the party, but she already felt faint.

“Let’s go greet some of my business partners, shall we?” Blake said gleefully. Kiara tried to focus on not passing out as she let him push her towards a group of men in front of the drinks table.

He was almost jumping up and down when the iron turned red. She was almost vomiting when he showed it to her. The tip of it was shaped like letters. Kiara started begging as soon as she realized what was going to happen.

“Please, please don’t do it. I promise I’ll do anything you want, just- just please don’t”.

Blake didn’t even bother responding as he opened the chain that kept her ankle linked to the wall. She was suddenly yanked from the corner in which she’d been sitting and dragged to the middle of the room. He dropped Kiara right where his center table usually stood, and she understood then why he’d moved it away. She wished she didn’t. She tried to run, but before she could take even a step away, he grabbed her by the waist and pushed her stomach against the ground.

It had been a while since she’d tried to fight him, but looking at the burning iron turning crimson among the flames, she screamed and thrashed, panic making tears fall down her cheeks and turning her movements desperate.

“Stop it, Kiara” Blake bellowed, annoyed. She couldn’t see his face with hers pressed to the ground, but she recognized the tone. He sat on her back, putting all his weight on her till she couldn’t breathe. “Hold still or it’ll be worse”.

“Ple-ease! Blake stop, please, please, p-please”.

“Hold still for me, my precious”.

“Blake!” exclaimed a tall man with blond hair “It’s been too long, my friend”.

“It really has, Andrew”, Blake said, grinning as he shook the man’s hand with the one that’d been pressing against Kiara’s back. She held back a relieved sigh when he took it away.

He proceeded on greeting each one of the men there, commenting on their families or hobbies. She kept her eyes on the floor, wishing to disappear. Unfortunately, neither her stillness nor her wishes kept her from being seen.

“And who is this kitten?” asked the one named Andrew. She only knew it was her he was talking about because suddenly Blake was back at her side and his fingers grazed the bare skin of her back right above where the fabric of the dress ended, right before where the burn started.

“This is Kiara”, Blake said, beaming. “The love of my life”.

She smiled too, hoping it looked real. Knowing it didn’t.

“Nice to meet you, sweetheart”, said another one of his friends, one with a long black beard and malice in his eyes.

“Well, I don’t think she is very pleased with you, Blake”, remarked Andrew, narrowing his eyes with amusement.

She went instantly rigid and forced her eyes to wrinkle and her smile to widen. “I’m sorry, I’m just tired. The ball is absolutely lovely” she stated, willing her voice to sound sweet but firm.

“I’ve been keeping her awake a lot these last nights” Blake joked, winking. All of the men laughed, and she let out the breath she'd been holding ever since he tightened his grip on her waist.

Blake had done a lot to her already. Whipped, drowned, kicked, punched, choked, chained, starved. She’d lost count of all the torments she’d faced, but he had never burned her before. So, when he tore the back of her shirt open and pressed the scorching iron to her lower back, there was nothing she could’ve done to prepare herself.

It was a literal hell. There was no thought, no scream, no tears, no nothing in the world. It was only pain. So vast, so deep, everything faded away.

She went limp at some point. Maybe she passed out, but she couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t be sure of anything but the blazing pain. When she came back to herself, her head was on Blake’s lap, and he ran his fingers through her sweaty hair. Her entire body trembled, and she was in so much pain all she could do was cry soundless tears. Kiara didn’t try to pull away or ask what he’d done. Didn’t have the energy to do anything other than weep. Not even sob, for when she did, her body moved, and it burned.

“So precious” Blake purred, fingers tracing the shape of her ear. “You were so strong for me, my little sunshine”.

“Please”, she moaned weakly. Kiara didn’t even know what she was begging for, but it hurt and she needed it to stop, and she hated his voice and his words and his hands touching her.

Blake chuckled. “Please what, precious?”.

“It hurts”.

“I know it does. It will for some time. But it was so worth it. I truly loved your little noises of pain. They were everything” he said as if that should appease her somehow. If anything, it made her cry harder.

“Please, make it stop” she sobbed, wincing when the movement sent a new wave of pain through her body “Please, Blake, make it stop, I can’t, I can’t take it. Please.” her voice was low and hoarse from screaming, and it hurt to even speak, but her back was pure agony and she couldn’t think right.

“Let’s talk about our game, and then I’ll make it stop” he assured. She closed her eyes and nodded, even though she knew whatever game it was, she was probably better off with the burn.

There were at least three hundred guests at the ball, scattered around the penthouse. People flirted and laughed, chatted, and joked. Kiara used to adore parties. She loved to dress up, feel like a goddess, and spend an entire night drinking and dancing. She would have loved that ball if it weren’t for her captor by her side and the dizziness making her vision blur.

She had to stay awake. Had to resist the burning pain that spread from her back to her entire body. Kiara had never been a good actress, but fear was as good a fuel as any. The smile she glued on her lips was kind and dumb enough to keep most people away, the wrinkles she forced her eyes to form hid the pain behind them and added up to the pleasant expression. Her back was as straight as a stick, but that had nothing to do with the act.

“Drink up” Blake ordered, extending a martini glass to her. There was nothing she could do other than nod and take the glass, taking a small sip hoping it would be enough to please him. The pain only increased with each passing minute and she worried she might vomit at any time.

His dark eyebrows shot up, the warning there so clear she shivered and took a longer sip. Blake continued to stare, though, so she gritted her teeth and drained it. He smirked.

“Good girl” he praised, then brushed his hand against her burnt back and took her to another group of people. She breathed in deeply and smiled through teary eyes as she was introduced to a bunch of new people. One lady came in for a hug, and she clenched her teeth so tightly to avoid screaming she was sure the woman heard it.

“Tonight I’m throwing a ball”, Blake said, playing with a strand of her hair. “You are going to be my date”.

“You burned me” she hissed furiously “Why would I ever go to a ball with you?”.

“It’s cute how you can’t even talk above a whisper and still has the nerve to defy me” he sighed playfully. She hated that she knew his moods just by hearing him sigh, but she did. “Now, back to what I was saying. You are going to be my date, and I’ll introduce you to all of my friends as my gorgeous, loving girlfriend”.

Kiara would have laughed, weren’t it for how bad she was hurting and how feeble she felt. Still splayed on her stomach on the ground, limbs heavy and shaky, she could only snort to show her exasperation.

“You see, I found a charming little house on a really cozy street last night. I even took a picture of it, let me show you”. She opened her eyes to find a cell phone in front of her face, and in it a picture of a two-story house made of red bricks, with plants by the windows and a low white fence in front of it. Dread filled her as she stared at the picture, at the house she knew all too well. “It’s really pretty, don’t you think? I thought about buying it, but the owner might not want to sell it. Maybe I should just kill him and take the house”.

“Please”, she choked out, “please don’t hurt him”.

Gritting her teeth against the pain, she rolled to her side so she could look him in the eye. A cry escaped her lips when her back shifted, and a tear slipped from her eyes, but she only stopped when she could see his face. Her head was still on his lap, but pride was something she hadn’t known for a while now.

“Play the sweet obedient girlfriend at my ball and your brother will be left untouched. Fail, and I’ll decide if I shall bring him here to make you watch as I kill him or if I’ll force you to do it yourself”.

“I’ll do anything. Just, just please leave him alone” she promised, “I’ll go to your ball, pretend to b-be your girlfriend, as long as you don’t come near him”.

“We have a deal, then”, Blake said with a smirk. His hand found hers and brought it to his lips. He placed a chaste kiss on her palm and then started playing with her fingertips. “Do anything and everything I tell you to, and I’ll keep my distance”.

Kiara nodded, and when he helped her to stand up, she leaned into him, letting Blake support her weight while he rubbed something soothing on her back with far more force than needed. She shrieked against his shoulder and clutched his shirt while he tended to her burn, thinking of her brother the whole time, promising herself she would not let Blake near him. She would die before she let him touch Arthur.

“You seem kinda pale, love”, said an old lady, squeezing Kiara's hand, “do you need to go outside for a bit?”.

One look from Blake and she knew what she had to answer. “Thank you, but I really am okay. I think I overdid it on the makeup. It’s my first ball, you see? I wanted to look nice”.

“Oh, I get it” she giggled, patting Kiara’s shoulder. Even that sent a twinge of pain down her body. She smiled rigidly. “Especially with such a handsome boyfriend, eh? Gotta always look pretty for your man”. She grimaced internally but barely registered what the woman was saying as she swayed slightly.

Kiara really needed to sit down. She could feel the bandage stuck to the blazing skin of her back, the burn at the precise spot for the dress to cover it perfectly and for Blake to casually touch it at any time just to watch her trying to conceal a gasp or to remind her of what was at stake if she did as much as annoy him. It was getting harder to stand upright, smile, and talk as if there was nothing wrong. She felt her skin clammy and her legs trembling. If she didn’t sit in the next few minutes, she might actually pass out right there.

She took one step towards Blake, but even that was too much, especially with the high heels he’d made her wear. She stumbled and would’ve fallen down if he hadn’t moved so fast, catching her before anyone noticed what had almost happened.

“I need to sit”, she breathed, letting him support her weight. He held her by the waist, and his entire arm pressed on the burn. Kiara bit her already bruised lip and buried her face against his shoulder to muffle a pained whine. “I’m feeling faint”.

“People are looking at us” he crooned, low enough that only Kiara could hear it “I guess you just don’t love your brother as much as I thought, since you are doing such a poor job as my girlfriend”.

She closed her eyes and counted ten seconds to collect herself, hugging Blake as if he was someone she didn’t feel disgusted by. When she moved away, everyone was staring at them.

Kiara cleared her throat and straightened up. She wrapped her arms around his neck, forcing herself not to flinch as he held her tighter.

“I’m sorry, baby, I’m just so nervous”, she said, quietly enough for it to sound like she was addressing only him, but high enough for everyone close by to overhear. She looked up through her lashes and smiled timidly, then moved closer and kissed his lips. Blake stiffened for a moment before opening his mouth and kissing her passionately. Kiara had intended for it to be just a brush of lips, but she couldn’t back away now in front of everyone. He tightened his grip on her back and she moaned softly against his mouth, the sound swallowed by him before anyone else could hear it. When he finally let her go, she couldn’t bring herself to smile anymore, so she looked away from him, to the crowd watching them shamelessly. She gave them an embarrassed nod and started towards the tables.

Blake caught her hand a moment later and changed the route to the gambling area. Kiara shuddered but didn’t complain. As long as she could sit, she would do anything.

“Nicely played, sunshine” he mouthed into her ear. She pretended not to hear it.

Blake sat down at a poker table and pulled her onto his lap, forcing her back to press against his stomach. She bit back a cry and tried to think of her brother as she was introduced to more of Blake’s friends.

He started playing, and she pretended to not be in pain, or scared, or despondent. She pretended she wasn’t sitting on the lap of her captor, her torturer, the man who had taken so much from her. Who had taken everything from her.

As he went on chatting, gambling, and laughing, she pretended there wasn’t a burn crossing her lower back with his name on it.

[jj-ktae]

·19· Immersed - Prompt Game -

Title : Immersed Pairing : Park Jinyoung x Fem!Reader Genre : Romance, fluff, kinda explicit  Words : 1895 Summary : Sequel to Intoxicated | The morning after. Prompt : N°47. “How drunk was I?”

 PROMPT GAME - MASTERLIST -

Immersed

You open your eyes to a sunlit room and familiar bedding.

Your head is a mess of realistic dreams and improbable memories. Flashes of Jinyoung coming in the middle of the night, confessing and caressing your face appear behind your closed eyelids. 

It had to be real.

You blame the confusion on your hazy state, but the moment is cut by the same person who was previously kissing your face in your so-called dreams.

So it wasn’t a dream.

“Up already?” He asks, his steps feathery as they allow him to come closer. He sits by the bed and raises a hand to put your top’s strap back on your shoulder. “It’s still early.”

You rub the sleep from your eyes. The previous night is long gone and so are the worries coming along with the beginning of a new story; Jinyoung is your boyfriend again. 

Rare are the moments when Jinyoung is so bare. His eyes are shining, his smile is pure and his body relaxed. He looks so appeased, now.  “You look tired” is all you can utter as an answer.

To this he acquiesces, his brows raising swiftly. “I couldn’t sleep,” He replies, his face naked of any inquietude. “When you fell asleep I could only observe you and then morning came.”

He waits for a reaction, anything that could ring the alarms of a potential regret on your side. He doesn’t want you to come back to your sense and utter words he wouldn’t bear hearing twice.

Instead, you nod. Jinyoung is in front of you, content and almost beaming. He doesn’t know you wouldn’t bear spitting the same horrendous words twice either. You see it, how his pupils brush the edges of your body, from your forehead to your legs, comfortable under the fluffy blanket.

He must have been suffering so much.

“You should be resting, what were you doing?” You try, yawning and stirring. You’re not a mess though, you’re exhausted and your eyes burn but it doesn’t matter.

Jinyoung is here.

“I rushed to the bakery and got some of your breakfast favourites. Your fridge is empty so…” He is walking on eggshells, he doesn’t want to invade your private space so soon but he doesn’t know how else he should act.

He has always been this way with you. 

“I haven’t been doing the groceries for a while now.” A month to be precise. Going back to a solo life turned you into an uncaring person, someone who is too upset to be cautious about healthy diets and self-care.

“How come…?”

He wants to hear it. Jinyoung hopes, he hopes so hard that you will be sharing the same struggles. if only you knew how he lived without you. Rich or not it doesn’t matter; when you feel empty from the inside, nothing matters.

And you do, you say exactly what he dreads yet wishes to hear. These words confirm your feelings. Because if you were hurt it means you cared.

He hates to feel his stomach churn when you speak, he feels selfish and like a jerk, but he can’t do anything about it. 

“Because there was no point trying so hard without you.”

You’re destroying your own property. What you worked so hard on building crumbles like a sandcastle, fragile and threatening to break. You missed him, so much it was pointless forcing life into your body.

Jinyoung wants to sob, he wants to yell and thank the skies for allowing such a miracle to happen but he knows better than to act like a fool.

Why should it matter? His brain screams and manoeuvres his body on its own. He pulls you into a hug before you can ask what is wrong and sighs, he sighs so hard he almost becomes breathless. 

“I’m here now. If you let me be here you won’t have to try so hard. I promise.” 

Your worries are no strangers to him. There is this lingering thought, the one screaming about his family situation, the one you told him about last night, the one which is responsible for such a dramatic moment when it could have been much simpler. 

“No matter the outcome, I will never make you regret taking me back. I’m sorry you’ve been under so much pressure but I promise- hell I swear it will be worth it.” 

It makes you smile. The smile which holds feelings; the one you save for Jinyoung only. It was a terrible mistake, leaving Jinyoung was a terrible mistake.

“I’m sorry for being so stupid. I know I told you this last night, but you look like you need some confirmation that I still want this. I still want you, Jinyoung.” It’s a simple sentence but he needs to hear it. Reassurance is nothing but a luxury he can’t afford, right now. 

It has the perfect effect you think. Jinyoung’s face lights up, like the sun found his face and his instilling life onto his skin, turning the pale hue of a restless night into golden halo and pink mist.

“I love you. I love you so damn much.” 

It is useless to speak. Jinyoung doesn’t need to hear more anyways, for his hands are already grabbing your shoulders to pull you against him. He picks you up like a rag-doll, your weight nothing compared to what he has been carrying for the past month. 

You are not going to change your mind. You do want him back into your life. 

Jinyoung never really thought about when he became so dependent on someone’s attention and affection. He never pegged himself as the fool, the one living through the eyes of his lover. He has always been acting upon reason more than passion and would curse at whoever was to look pitiful for such mindless matters.

Here he is though, thankful for your heart and feeling privileged. He takes nothing for granted though; he is willing to fight for both his professional and personal future. If he can’t have both he already knows which one to leave behind.

And it’s definitely not his personal future.

You part from him between snuggles, almost tearing yourself and already craving the touch of nascent facial hair.  “You have to promise me though-”

“Yes. I promise. I will talk to my parents. If they can’t understand though, don’t blame me. Don’t give up on me for something even I would give up anytime.”

He hides his face into your neck, not strong enough to look into your eyes. The sword of Damocles feels heavy over his head. 

You grab his head, stopping his worst attempt at being manly. 

Your hands find his face, soft fingers cupping and framing his delicate face with a tenderness he was dying to experience again. “I won’t. No matter what, I won’t. I know you’re scared and you might even think I can break up with you anytime but I get it. I understand. I will not leave.”

Jinyoung feels a weight being lifted off his chest. Like someone literally took the stress, the apprehension, the inquietude and threw it away.

So he smiles, so bright his eyes transform into slits and dig wrinkles by their corners. His happiness is as stunning as his whole existence.

He doesn’t speak; dialogue is unnecessary when he can touch your scalp and tilt your head, words are bothering when they prevent him from kissing you the way he does, speaking is futile when his tongue can draw the feelings into your mouth.

You let him be, you heart hammering warnings of exalted bliss as he kisses you senselessly. 

It makes you groan, his warmth tickling your muscles and waking up your body. 

You grab his wrinkled t-shirt, craving the contact and yearning intimacy just as he pulls your top’s straps down. He lets his fingers dance on your skin, forming a path of goosebumps in their wake and drawing desire so easily it hurts you almost viscerally. 

He releases your mouth, his own reddish and swollen with neediness as evident as his affection. “I love you more than a month ago. I need you even more.”

The kisses are messy yet unhurried. Jinyoung takes his time through disorder, lips unable to follow a simple task and too eager to feel more. He sighs, his lips wandering freely over your own until they clamp around your tongue to suck on the flesh. 

It makes you shiver, jolts of electricity hitting your nerves so strongly it makes you jump against him, limbs uncontrollable. Jinyoung halts when he feels your nails scraping his nape. The feeling is still intact, it turns off every last bit of control he has.

It is now or never. He doesn’t want to jump on you, not right now, not when he wants to hear about a month he wasn’t part of; not when he wants to see his reflection in your iris. 

“Let’s eat.” His will power is stronger than he thinks when he finds the courage to strip himself off your presence, his hands leaving your skin and mouth turning cold from what is left of your essence on his fleshy skin. “Eat something and tell me about you. Tell me what you have been up to. I want to know everything.” 

You look disappointed but recover quickly, skin still on tenterhooks. “Alright..” You acquiesce, avoiding his prurient gaze. 

“Come on, I got you too much as usual.” Jinyoung explains, hand clasped around s in a possessive manner. He doesn’t leave your side, even when you gasp because there are way too many things on your minuscule table. 

He shrugs, not the least sorry. This is nothing, he could buy you a whole island if you asked. “I’ll bring what’s left to the office, don’t worry about the waste.”

It is foolish but it doesn’t bother you. Unconsciously you missed the feeling of intense and unshakeable love, the one responsible for Jinyoung’s folly. It screams comfort, it flatters your ego and makes you laugh, taking Jinyoung aback. 

“I’m glad to have you back.” You utter, happiness almost breaking into sadness. How could you think about living without him?

Jinyoung breaks into giggles, embarrassment blent with bliss. “Sit down, sugar.” 

The nickname blooms scarlet onto your cheeks; Jinyoung rarely uses this word unless he wants exclusive domination. And oh god how he loves the feeling.

Yet you cannot give up on a few retorts. “You were less of a show-off last night when you came, completely intoxicated.”

Jinyoung is too euphoric to take offense. He scoffs, instead. “How drunk was I? I remember everything, I don’t think I was that wasted. You’ve seen worse.”

“I had never seen you cry.” You conclude, making his face fall. It brings back memories of sorrow from times when he couldn’t accept his fate. He swallows heavily, the sound too loud and you can see it in his eyes, the silent plea.

Please don’t ever make me feel this desperate again.

“Alright,” You conclude, pulling on your joined hands to find your couch. A cup of coffee which you know must be your favourite is placed into your hand by your boyfriend who wasted no time letting your hand go to pull on your knee and stick your bodies together. 

“I’ll be fine as long as you stay next to me.”

And he kisses you again. 

[idio-cies]

JATP- Wake Up Dissection

“Wake Up” is structured like a conversation between Julie and her Mother. 

Not only did her Mother (I think we are all agreed on Rose here?) write it for her, knowing that Julie will have a tough time, but she left gaps for Julie to fill. Julie is Rose’s legacy, by Julie filling in the gaps, she is continuing the memory of her mother. This is what Julie realises; she can keep her mother “alive” with music- which figuratively is what Luke, Reggie and Alex experience, and also how Julie “awakens” them in the first place is by playing their music. Anyway. This is about JULIE.

Just a PSA. Wake up is the first song I listened to before I watched the show so I could see if I wanted to watch it or not. Madison absolutely blew me away with her vocals, she has that raw talent that you just can’t autotune to make it that way. That is what had me sold, along with the meaning of this song etc. The raw piano throughout this is one of the reasons why I love this song as well.

This song is so emotionally driven and deep. I have seen people compare it to Unsaid Emily. They do contrast, but mostly point out how Unsaid Emily is possibly more upsetting. Wake Up is emotional, because the journey Julie has in this one song counteracts the sadness, it is meant to make you feel warmer and happier because that is literally what it’s doing for Julie; it is revitalising her!

Anyway the song!

The feel of the keys- She does this in her audition as well, showing how emotionally painful it is.

The piano in this is just beautifully powerful, if you could imagine listening to this as an instrumental, you can almost imagine that the sun is rising… it starts off like nature is waking up, it really is special. Julie’s expressions are so key as well.

“Here’s the one thing that I want you to know, you got someplace to go”- this is her mum telling her that she has talent and that she can see her going far in this pursuit of music. Her Mum is giving her advice in this song. Julie is focused on her mother’s words

“Life’s a test, yes, but you go toe-to-toe”- This is pretty self-explanatory. You take life one step at a time, even if it is cumbersome. Julie smiles a little at this, it’s a little bit of rhetoric, as she knows life is tough. 

“You don’t give up, no, you grow”- Julie did give up, she was very close to giving up all together because it was too much for her. But Rose here is giving her that little extra push and love telling her that she will be alright and it’s all part of life. 

“And you use your pain, ‘cause it makes you you”- The expression “it's not what the pain is, it’s how you deal with it” comes into mind. How one responds to pain is what determines what type of person you are. Julie did run away from it, she wasn’t yet ready to face it and move forward. She was letting grief rule her, but Rose here is telling her that pain; adversity can be a blessing. It can make you stronger and brighter. Also look at Julie’s expressions here, she is thinking it over and considering them. She is listening and feeling her mother’s words

“Though I wish I could hold you through it”- This is where it is most prominent (other than the fact that Rose left this song for Julie in the first place) that they all knew her mother was going to pass away. So it was a terminal illness. She is sorry that she is going, but she is trying to give her life and a meaning to keep going in response, because she knows what talent Julie has, and knew how Julie would respond I imagine, hence why she left the song for her. Julie looks up at this point and this is where she chokes up a little. This phrase has a deep connection to when Julie is outside the Orpheum and asks for Rose to hold her and tell her everything will be okay.

“I know it’s not the same, you’ve got living to do, and I just want you to do it” I like how straightforward Rose is though. She knows that physically being there is what is wanted, but she is hoping to get Julie to realise that wallowing in her grief will not allow herself to live a good life that she is destined to have, which is what she needs. 

“So get up, get out, relight that spark.” - Julie suddenly becomes very serious and determined in this moment. She got the heartwarming speech, and now she is being told directly to literally “get up”. This just speaks a lot to me. I’m a lucky person who has a good relationship with my mum, I know not everyone does. But you know when you go through pitfalls throughout life, whether its a scrape of the knee when you’re young, a breakup or fallout, a depressive episode, or not knowing where life is headed for you and you just have a sob and  you wish for your mum (or dad) to be there to just give you a hug and give soothing words, then when you’ve calmed down they tell you that you can continue because they know you are capable, but they urge you on so you realise that for yourself. I can’t imagine losing that. My mum lost her mum last year. They had a rocky relationship to begin with, but ended up with a good relationship and ever since then I realised how much pain my mum must’ve been in, so I very much bawled at this song. 

That little soothing and then the short words of “get up, get out” is what Julie needed. Julie clearly had security from her parents, but she needed a bit more of a push. Interestingly the “soothing” words is the approach that her Dad tries and probably Mr. Turner, which she did not appreciate. Julie also pointed out how she felt everyone around her treated her life she was about to snap. They were being too soft on her, so this little push is what she needed.

“You know the rest by heart”- Rose knows Julie is talented, and that Julie will know what to do when she comes to it. This is the turning point.

“Wake up, wake up if it’s all you do”- I identify this as referring to depression, something that you will no doubt feel when a loved one passes away. Sometimes it’s very hard to just wake up and get out of bed, so the fact that Rose tells her to “wake up if it’s all you do” is something that speaks to me, and also links to when she was saying about taking things a step at a time. 

I need to go off a minute on the cinematography here! First we get the piano which is Julie’s instrument that she inherited(?) from her mother, and the fact that we see it in the dark, and as it progressively gets lighter is another symbol of saying “This is a reflection of Julie” and how the light is coming back into her. 

Then a totally different angle with the sun rising as it literally lights the room. Julie literally reawakens the room with her music. She brings life back into the room (remember when she talks to Emily about how magical and good the studio is). This angle as well makes it look like Julie is some kind of avenging angel. It is meant to isolate her, but it does the exact opposite. You have absolutely no feeling of isolation or sadness. If there was this angle at the beginning then yes it would, but the addition of the sun makes it warm and welcoming.

“It’s not what you lost, it’s what you’ll gain raising your voice to the rain”- It’s all about the strength that Julie will gain from her loss. “Raising your voice to the rain” Is such a beautiful line for many reasons. There is a metaphor of whatever Julie creates, is beautiful. I also interpret: Rain can be loud, and metaphorically speaking when you are “grey” or a “clouded mind” you are depressed and that can make your head feel loud and this line is saying to go above that. “Raising” as the sun is raising is very significant. It is “relighting” Julie and that she is the sun breaking through the “rain”. The Sunrise is also symbolic for new beginnings as well. But the rain can be a good thing; it means there is life and nourishment. Julie has found life to herself after the rain, as sun and water are needed in order for a plant to GROW. I mean the plants are literally all behind Julie...

Also I can’t help but think about how the sun and rain work together in this, and there are A LOT of rainbows in this show. I mean I know we have Alex, but there is only one around him and that’s his bracelet which is meant to tell us “This dude’s gay” the other rainbows are something else. 

“Wake up your dream and make it true”- telling her to re-establish her dream, and go for it.

“Look out, look inside of you”- repeat, but this is where we see Ray along with “It’s not what you lost” and I just love that they added her family in. Ray was the one who didn’t want to push her, but was always there to encourage and support her. I added this in with “It’s not what you lost” because I think you can also associate it to her family. He lost too and he was losing another part of Rose with Julie and the instruments and he didn’t want Julie to hurt anymore. He must’ve been so proud of her to just sit at that piano.

“Relight that spark, time to come out of the dark”- a variation of what Rose has already said to Julie, but really hammering home the constant symbolism of Julie being the “spark”. Again, I like how straightforward she is being “Time to come out of the dark”. It’s been a year at this time with Julie and she is at a crossroads, but the song isn’t pushing her so far, it’s literally just like giving her the matches and she’s the one that needs to take one out and light it. 

“Better wake those demons, better look them in the eye”- trample on those demons girl, you’ve got this. I can’t tell whether this is Julie, or Rose. I think it’s Julie considering the rest of the verse. This is ironic. You would expect demons to be “awake” at night, but this song is talking about coming out of the dark, so she is basically bringing light to her flaws/pain, not letting them haunt her and owning them.

“No reason not to try”- she shouldn’t hold herself back because there shouldn’t be anything hindering her. Look at her though! She is enjoying this so much.

“Life can be a mess, I won’t let it cloud my mind”- It is literally Julie’s response to what Rose was telling her about life being a test etc. Julie is embracing it now and she will stand up to fight.

“I’ll let my fingers fly”- I like this. Julie is linked to butterflies (another rebirth symbol), but also with music much of it comes from your fingers anyway by playing instruments or writing music etc., so I just thought this was cute.

“And I use the pain, ‘cause it’s part of me. And I’m ready to power through it”- again responding directly from what her mother told her to use the strength from pain as it makes her who she is. Also just look at how much power and emotion she is putting into these lyrics. She knows she is ready to go forward. She arrived at that herself, she could’ve stopped, or not responded, but she knows. 

“Gonna find the strength, find the melody. ‘Cause you showed me how to do it”- Her mother is within her, she is the one who taught her, but ultimately Julie will ride to her own beat, carrying the memory and legacy of her mother. 

Repeat of the chorus, but she looks up again on “you know the rest by heart”, however, this time it’s  as if she was saying thank you with power and strength under her belt. Julie completely gives herself over to the music as well

I also like that they included Carlos also admiring Julie, he clearly was also proud of her for picking up music again, and I just… I know there wasn’t terribly much with Julie and Carlos but it just shows you how much he looks up to her. Plus, this probably makes him reminisce about his mother in the best possible way as well. Carlos and Ray are kind of the same in this instance, though I would argue to say that Ray was more emotional, Carlos is just more content. 

“So wake that Spirit, spirit”- I do think this is ironic, because of the Phantoms, as well as it being Julie’s spirit inside of her. Julie did ignite the guys’ spirits, metaphorically and physically. Listening to their music is what brought them back, but their spirit for music and being able to connect was also reignited. I mean she literally rises up like a “spirit” in this moment...

“I wanna hear it, hear it” At this point Julie looks up, like she is singing so loud, she wants her mum to hear it. I think these are Rose’s words once again and is the reason Julie is belting up.

“No need to fear it, you’re not alone” Definitely Rose’s words, another reiteration of what has been said previously. Julie has always had the support of her family and Flynn, but she also now has the support of the guys who were the ones who also prodded her to reawakening her music (Luke says about how playing music made him feel alive again and any musician would revell in how it would feel to get it back. This is what gets Julie thinking and what she feels during this song), and literally supported her on stage for the sake of supporting her (see bright performance).

“You’re going to find your way home”- the reassurance of Rose’s words at the beginning after telling her to get up and get out there. There is also a safe space for her to reside

This moment is just so powerful, she has fully succumbed to the music. The sun behind her with the plants and the glass. I just can’t help but feel like this is a sense of refraction because of when I was talking about the rain and sun making rainbows, but anyway. This scene is just beautiful because you just know that they are telling us that she has awoken and that her voice is a gift. That Julie is the light shining as well. It changes angle, and it was not until the third time I watched this song did I notice you see tear stains. She’s smiling, but those tear stains just tell me of the journey she made solely through that song alone, how she would’ve been crying because of the pain but also just crying from elation and figuring out what she has to do with her mother’s gift to her of music. 

This last chorus has “when you feel lost, relight that spark” and I just find it interesting that it pans to Luke with “when you feel lost”. This is important as he felt lost when he regretted running away, and how Julie and Luke’s story are connected in a similar way. Julie “lost” her music and Luke “lost” his chance at repair. But anyway, it’s still all the same message of “you will find your way back, just believe in yourself and your ability because you have the power to be great.”

How she ends it though, is just pure joy. As she should, she is clearly proud of herself as well, and I can’t imagine how much relief she must have felt after she took that stride. 

I also think that having the guys standing behind her with the light is meant to signify how they are behind her; they are a part of her support and will help her in her path to greatness.

Madison is amazing and I still can’t believe this is her first time acting. She executed it perfectly, from the emotion in her face, body language to her voice.

And then it reveals that Rose left a message for her. “Julie, you can do it <3  Love, Mom” and that is where you wail. Her mother believes in her so much and it’s honestly just so beautiful.

This has been my dissection of “Wake Up”

I hope I haven’t broken too many people

[generallynerdy]

Maybe it does all add up to a single hush (Kanan Jarrus/Cal Kestis)

Summary: 15 years after the Fall, 10 years after the death of Caleb Dume, Kanan Jarrus and Cal Kestis find each other again.

Warnings: Jedi: Fallen Order Spoilers, Implied/Referenced Character Death, cursing, brief suicidal ideation/thoughts Word Count: 5,143

Author’s Note: the effort I had to put in not to make this another series...I had to stage an intervention for myself. Anyway, I love Cal and Kanan’s dynamic, whether as partners or as friends, and an Idea struck me that wouldn’t leave. Also, idk how old most people think Cal was when the war ended based on JFO clips, but I always just kind of went with him being the same age as Kanan at the end of the war bc I love them and I need them to know each other. The title is from the poem “So They Say— They Finally Nailed— The Proton’s Size— & Hope— Dies—” by Rosebud Ben-Oni.

Read On AO3

*

When the hard part is over, Cal returns to Bracca, his new lightsaber tucked under Cere’s old robe that still smells like the Temple, with the intention of burning Prauf’s body.

Caleb still had his own robe. He kept it in the deepest part of their shared closet, bringing it out only on the worst days. If Prauf saw it, he never mentioned it, and both boys were grateful for it. There was a lot he didn’t mention.

Cal thinks, sometimes, that Prauf knew who they were before. After all, it’s hard to look at two abandoned kids in the wake of the Clone Wars that can survive being riggers and not think of the thousands of Jedi younglings that died on Empire Day. It’s even harder to ignore two lightsabers and one ratty, brown robe.

Maybe Prauf wasn’t sure.

But he had to be, on that last day, when they found that fighter. When Cal caught him with the Force. He knew then, maybe before. But he still took care of them.

Maybe he knew when the Empire showed up, when Caleb heard the roar of a TIE Fighter and looked instantly to the redheaded boy beside him like he was about to die before his eyes. Maybe that was the moment he put it all together. Or was it his last moment? When the world began to go dark and both Cal and Caleb lashed out in fury at his killers with matching, bright blue blades—did he know? Did he know that he died for the children of an already dying Order?

Standing over the bonfire, Cal holds the Holocron in shaky hands.

Did Prauf know his sacrifice would save the life of every child just like them?

Cal moves away from the flames to the gap in the ground that they’d held Caleb over, his calloused hands clawing at the Ninth Sister, who clutched his throat.

Deep in Cal’s heart, he knows half the reason he beat her was for his best friend. He’d almost given in to rage but stopped himself at the memory of him. Revenge is not the way of the Jedi. But justice is. And so is survival, these days.

Caleb’s lightsaber fell long before he did. When he did fall, he went screaming bloody murder, the noise echoing in the silence that rang in Cal’s ears.

Standing at the edge now, Cal almost considers simply...stepping off.

He can survive it. He has before. And what’s to say that Caleb isn’t waiting at the bottom?

Caleb...used to like animals, he remembers. He preferred them to plants, which are unreadable if you don’t have practise with them. Animals, like people, are complex but tell you in simple terms what they want and what they don’t want. Cal has always been better with plants. They’re simple, grounding, natural. Caleb used to tease him for it.

The only plant he ever managed to grow on this place was a seedling in a boot filled with dirt he kept in their room. It had been making good progress in their last weeks, enough that he’d actually felt some semblance of hope.

And then...and then he’d lost everything. Again.

The Holocron burns in his hand, reminding him that there is more in store for him than an endless chasm. Hundreds of thousands of Force-sensitive children are depending on him now, him and the Mantis crew.

Cal lets out a shaky breath. “I couldn’t save you,” he whispers to the wind. “But maybe I can save them.”

On the way back to the Mantis, he turns around to go find the robe and the plant in its boot. The robe smells like blaster fire and the plant is wilting but both are comforting: one because it’s familiar and the other because it’s not quite gone yet.

*

Kanan changes his name.

It doesn’t feel right, hearing his given name from anyone that isn’t Cal or Prauf. The first and only time it happens, nausea sinks in and he quickly makes the change.

Some days, he wants to go back to Bracca. Some part of him still hopes Cal survived the Inquisitors, that he’s waiting for him back at what used to be home, but the logical part of him knows that he’s not. Kanan surviving was a miracle, a fluke, and those don’t happen twice. Sometimes he wishes it had never happened at all.

He managed to save his lightsaber, as broken to bits as it was. It and the necklace Cal gave him are all he has now.

Kanan doesn’t let himself grieve, as much as he knows he needs to. He hardly did it before, on Bracca, but now he won’t allow even a tear. Surviving is the only thing on his mind, though for what he doesn’t know.

When he almost loses that little piece of metal on a string, though, he breaks down sobbing.

It’s the stupidest thing, really. All those lessons on attachment are lost on him now, as he cries over the rusted symbol of the Jedi Order on a piece of scrap metal that Cal had put on a cord for him. He keeps it close to his heart, hanging off his neck every hour of every day if he can help it, and getting that close to losing it is the last straw.

He knows now, why he’s surviving. Because Cal would want him to.

Meeting Hera is a relief. She’s kind but curious, which is more of a bane than it should be.

(Painfully, he’s reminded of himself as a youngling. His Master always said his frequent questions were what drew her to him.)

She’s the first to know about his past, both as a Jedi and a rigger on Bracca. He doesn’t think to mention Caleb, doesn’t think it would matter to anyone, not until after a mission gone bad.

Hera is putting bacta on his wounds and graciously ignoring his constant wincing when she sees it.

She points to the cord after examining what hangs on it for a minute. “For someone who’s trying to be discreet, you wear a lot of Jedi stuff.”

Kanan snorts. “Yeah, well, I won’t get rid of this one.”

“It’s important to you,” she points out. “Can I ask why?”

He hesitates, swallowing roughly. “My best friend gave it to me...on Bracca, befo-before the Inquisitors caught up to us,” he admits. “He didn’t make it.”

Her eyes are full of empathy, something she never lacks. “What was his name?”

“Cal,” he says, voice quiet. “Cal Kestis.”

“If you remember his name,” she promises, “he’ll always be with you.”

It’s not so much a Twi’lek belief as it is her own but it reminds Kanan of Grey more than anyone else. His buir. The clones subscribed to many Mandalorian beliefs, including the echoing of remembrances for the dead. Before the abrupt end of the war, little Caleb used to say his every morning with his Master and buir.

So, he decides to start again. It’s difficult, at first, to even get through the first names, his oldest names.

“Depa Billaba,” he says through tears in the quiet of pre-dawn, “Grey, Styles, Prauf...”

He stops.

It’s hard to think, even harder to say, but he knows he needs to. He needs to tell himself the truth, needs to accept the truth.

“Cal—”

He sobs, shaky and painful. His throat burns just like it did when he fell down the chasm on Bracca, screaming his head off, part out of fear for himself but mostly for fear of what was happening to Cal above him. It hurts to speak it into the world, into the Force and those marching on. Cal is among them now, he knows. He just...has to admit it.

“Cal Kestis,” he finally says, the admission wobbly and half-hearted.

He never loses the necklace again.

*

They’ve finally settled on Bogano, after wiping every trace of it from Imperial data servers. The Holocron is safely locked away in the Vault, guarded by their crew and the Binog, fondly called ‘the big guy,’ mostly by fault of Greez.

Though mostly self-sufficient, occasionally some of them will leave the planet for supplies they can’t make themselves. While off on supply runs, well, they can’t help it if some Imperials just look like easy pickings. Apparently, slavers get the same treatment because Merrin ends up a figure in some sort of oral tradition of a Tatooine family, which Cal finds hilarious. Cere is not so amused and grounds them—literally, in that they can’t leave Bogano—for over a month.

Cal spends most of it repairing old platforms and ziplines, not to mention entertaining the Boglings.

They’re fond of him, for some reason, and BD-1, who loves to run around with them while Cal works. One in particular, named Rabid by Merrin after she stole her entire plate of food, is especially loveable.

Cal snickers as he pulls Rabid off his shoulder. “I have to finish this, then I can play.”

Rabid is not pleased with his answer, nibbling at his trousers.

“Rabid,” he chides, ignoring her in favour of his work. He laughs again. “I used to know somebody who would’ve loved you, annoying as you are.”

BD, who has taken Rabid’s place, beeps curiously.

Cal’s face falls a little. He pauses in his work. “Oh. I guess I’ve never told you about Caleb, huh?”

The little droid shakes his head.

Cal never intended to talk about Caleb to anyone, really, but it all comes pouring out. He tells BD and Rabid all about his old best friend, his confidant. The story is a long one, reaching from the creche all the way to Bracca and its bitter end. By the time he’s finished, his voice is quiet and hesitant, his grief echoing through.

Rabid curls up in his lap, nudging his hand, while BD sits in front of them, tilting his head.

A little light on the side of his scope says that he’s recording. He does that a lot, Cal knows, for prosperity, just like he was programmed to. Cal doesn’t mind, really.

When he finishes, BD gets his attention by chirping.

“Huh? You have something to show me?”

BD’s projector whirrs to life and a blue image appears. It’s Cordova, again, but not a video this time. It’s only a holo, of him and another Jedi—Master Jocasta Nu, Cal realises. Master Cordova is dead asleep on her shoulder and she’s leaned over to kiss his brow.

“Oh,” Cal breathes out, something jarring in his chest.

BD-1 thinks that he and Caleb were—well, were like that.

“I—” he pauses. “I dunno, buddy. I never asked him if...but I think…”

Well. It’d be a stretch to say Cal loved him, but he certainly cared for him more than he ever did anyone else. When they were thirteen and stupid, he might’ve said he had a crush on him. After the Fall, on Bracca, he just...didn't think of it. Caleb was all he had and he clung but he never...thought about what it was, thought about what they were.

It hurts to think of now, all that he missed.

“I don’t know if I did,” Cal tells BD quietly. “But I think I- I think I could have.”

BD asks about Caleb a lot, after that. Maybe he can tell that talking about him makes Cal happy. The others know about the one he lost but they don’t ask. They all have their demons and Cal’s are just...just too great to pile on another person. BD, though, is a little easier. All he wants is to see Cal smile again.

*

“What’s this?”

Kanan doesn’t think to look up at whatever Ezra—the newest addition to the Ghost crew—has swiped from him, until he notices a weight missing from his neck. His head snaps up to where a cord hangs from Ezra’s hand.

“Give that back,” Kanan growls, not meaning to be so aggressive.

Ezra’s eyes widen. He holds it out immediately, dropping it into Kanan’s open hand. “Sorry,” he mutters, watching curiously as Kanan puts it back on.

Almost by instinct, Kanan tucks the piece of scrap metal back under his shirt and breathes out a sigh of relief. He goes back to his datapad. Then, a moment later, when he notices the entire room is still silent, he looks up. Sabine and Zeb have joined Ezra in staring incredulously.

“What?” Kanan asks, his voice back to normal.

“I’ve never seen you that mad before,” Sabine admits with a half-shrug, though her eyes betray her concern.

Zeb nods, arms crossed. “And I’ve never seen you without that thing on your neck.”

“Yeah, you even sleep with it!” Ezra adds. “What’s up with that?”

“I—” He goes to make an excuse but stops, his hand fidgeting with the necklace.

“You don’t have to…” Sabine starts to say, but he shakes his head.

He sighs. To be honest, he’s surprised Zeb and Sabine haven’t asked before. “My best friend gave it to me.”

Ezra immediately sits down across from him, eyes wide. “Another Jedi?”

Admittedly, the kid is a lot like he used to be: always asking questions, always pushing. It’s going to get him in trouble someday but for now, it just gets him more stories out of Kanan, stories about the Jedi.

“Yeah. Yeah, another Padawan. We grew up in the Temple together.” He smiles, a fickle and fleeting thing. “He was picked by a Master before me, so we were separated...at the end. But I found him again, on the planet he was last assigned. He gave me this.”

Ezra’s face is bright, curious. Sabine, on the other hand, looks prepared for a gut-punch.

“What happened to him?” she asks quietly.

Kanan exhales sharply, ruefully. “Inquisitors. After 5 years of nothing, they came out of nowhere. I never saw what happened to him. For all I know, they still have him.”

“Oh,” Ezra says, his face falling.

“You know, Zeb,” Kanan begins, not wanting to make things any sadder, “his Master was a Lasat.”

He scoffs. “No way.”

“He was, swear it on my life!” he claims, raising a hand. “First time I saw you, I thought Master Tapal came back to haunt me for being a bad influence.”

Zeb snickers. “Bad influence? You?”

“Eh, a nudge here and there. We were not good kids.”

He tells them a few stories before Sabine and Zeb are called away by Hera and Chopper, leaving Ezra and Kanan alone. Ezra makes to follow them but stops, his expression cautiously blank.

“What is it, Ezra?” Kanan asks, already knowing that he’s brimming with curiosity.

“You said he was...your best friend?”

He frowns. “Yeah, ever since we were kids. Why?”

“I dunno. The way you talked about him just reminded me of my parents,” Ezra admits hesitantly. “Sappy. Did you—?”

Kanan sighs, touching his necklace again.

He had always been more reckless than Cal, back then. He threw himself into everything, into every situation. No matter the problem or the person, he was all-in. No matter what. And that included Cal. Once he took that step, he was karked. Before he knew it, he was hanging onto the redhead’s every word.

Cal was...different. Kanan had known that for a long time but the war only brought it out.

Kanan had a stupid crush, that was all. But on Bracca, it was everything and more.

He’d known then, known for a long time. Cal had never seen it but he didn’t have to. Kanan was fine the way things were. It didn’t feel right, bringing things up after...well, after. So Cal never knew.

(Sure, he could see the past of things with a single touch of his hands but he’d always been pretty oblivious.)

“Love him?” Kanan asks, raising an eyebrow.

Ezra nods.

It’s without hesitation that he answers. “I did.”

When they go in search of Master Luminara, Kanan’s kids buy him a precious few minutes to search for a Cal Kestis in the prisoner logs. He’s not there, of course, but Kanan thinks he prefers that to a death certificate.

*

“Ho-oly shit,” Greez says over comms one day. “You guys better get up here.”

Cal shares a look with Cere, following her out of the workshop with BD on his shoulder. Merrin has already teleported to Greez’s side when they arrive, lightsabers in hand. Greez passes the young man—not so young anymore, Cere has commented teasingly as he desperately shaves away any trace of his age—a pair of electrobinoculars.

Squinting through the scope, he spies a trail of smoke on the horizon attached to a ship.

“Kriffing hells,” Cere says after she gets a look.

In all their 10 years here, no one has ever landed—or crashed, for that matter—on the planet. The few ships that have come into orbit were Imperial and always quickly dealt with before word could get out. This one, however, isn’t exactly your standard Imperial cruiser. And it’s wrecked.

“Looks like a modified VCX-100 light freighter to me,” Greez says. “It’s a nice ship.”

Merrin rolls her eyes. “Are we waiting for them to come to us?”

“Looks like we don’t have to,” Cere declares, still looking through the binocs. “They’re headed this way, six hostiles. Three humans, a Lasat, a Twi’lek, and a droid.”

Greez laughs. “A Lasat? We’re kriffed.”

“Says you,” Merrin snorts.

“I’m with her,” Cal agrees, a cocky smile on his face. “Merrin and I will take the Vault. Cere, Greez, take home. BD will lure the big ones our way.”

“You got it, kid.”

Cere puts a hand on his shoulder before he can follow Merrin—more or less, seeing as she just teleports everywhere. “Be careful.”

The worst part of intruders is that even the hypothetical good ones can’t know Bogano is here. They’ll have to knock them out hard enough for their memories to be spotty and dump them in a nearby system if they’re smart—and they are.

Cal slips on his robe, a gift from Cere, and flips the hood up, making for the Vault.

If these visitors think they can take the Holocron, they have another thing coming.

*

“Are you sure we can find help here?” Ezra asks for the third time as they approach the massive building in the distance. “It looks...deserted.”

Hera sighs for the third time. “Scanners said there were signs of life here in a higher concentration than the rest of the planet. It’s worth checking out.”

Sabine gestures through the mild fog. “There’s buildings up ahead.”

“Good, let’s head there,” Kanan says, a cautious hand on his lightsaber.

Hopping across platforms is a pain, but they all manage to make their way to what looks like a residential area. A small path digs into the ground, leading deeper inside the planet’s crust. With a look at her second in command, Hera starts toward it. However, she stops when Kanan freezes.

“Do you feel that?” he asks suddenly, squinting as he looks into the distance.

Something is...tugging at him. Something in the Force is insistent that he go...that way. The feeling of incompleteness settles inside his chest.

“No…” Ezra replies uneasily. “What is it?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know.” After a moment, he decides. “I think I should go this way. You guys go on ahead.”

Zeb scoffs. “I’ll go with you. We don’t know who lived here. Could be Inquisitors for all we know.”

“They generally prefer places with lava,” Ezra counters.

The group splits, with Hera leading Sabine, Chopper, and Ezra into the abode. She and Sabine have their blasters raised, while Ezra keeps a hand on his lightsaber. Chopper is always ready to give someone a nasty shock.

“Anyone home?” Sabine calls.

There’s no answer.

They come across a small kitchen and dining room, where two chairs are pulled out. Over one hangs a small, ratty brown robe with multiple blaster burns.

Ezra plucks it off the back of the seat. “Woah, cool,” he breathes. “Very Jedi-like, huh?”

“Leave it, Ezra,” Hera chides fondly.

“You’d best,” says another voice.

All three of them jump as a lightsaber hums to life. Double-bladed, the weapon burns bright white throughout the room, illuminating its bearer, a woman with dark skin and hair, and her companion.

“Inquisitor!” Ezra cries, lighting his own.

The lightsaber wielder’s friend fires off a blaster right at Hera, who’s shoved out of the way by Sabine. Chopper shrieks, his head spinning.

“Look out!”

On the surface, Zeb follows Kanan to the edge of the platform. There, they find a zip line, which they intend to brave before a series of chirps stops them.

Zeb yelps and lifts his rifle when a droid appears, only stopped by Kanan’s raised hand.

It’s...a buddy droid.

“Hey, little guy,” Kanan greets cautiously. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

He beeps excitedly and backs away, indicating that they should follow. With a single leap, he attaches himself to the zipline and whirrs as he zooms all the way down.

“Don’t tell me we’re following the droid,” Zeb groans.

Kanan just smiles. “We’re following the droid.”

Using the Force to balance himself, he leaps atop the zipline and begins to tiptoe his way down. Behind him, Zeb sighs but reaches up to grab the line, following right after him. They land on a platform a good distance away, where a small slope is guarded by two statues; the beings depicted are of an unknown species, one lost to time.

“I don’t like this,” Zeb says as soon as he hops onto the grass. “It’s like the start of a bad horror holo.”

Kanan snorts. “If that were true, it would be raining tookas and massiffs.”

The buddy droid whirrs loudly to get their attention and bounces his way up the sloping path, on top of which sits a fluffy native creature. Kanan doesn’t know what they’re called, but this one is adorable. She chirps at them, much like the droid did.

“Oh, you’re a sweet little thing, aren’t you?” Kanan coos, moving to meet the creature and let her sniff his hand.

She makes a happy noise and nudges him.

“Ugh,” Zeb mutters, “more things.”

The droid and the creature lead them to the entrance of the massive, ancient building that had caught Kanan’s eye from the crash site. He steps in front of Zeb, placing his hand on the runes in the rock as the Force sings. This isn’t what’s calling him, but…

“Something is here,” Kanan whispers.

“I hope it’s not something that wants to eat us,” Zeb says long-sufferingly.

The slab of rock retreats into the space above, leaving an open tunnel of sorts.

“Karabast,” the Lasat curses, “I hate Jedi stuff.”

Kanan rolls his eyes. “C’mon.”

It’s a tight fit, but the two squeeze their way through, Kanan leading the way. They exit into a large cavern filled with a few inches of water, just enough to be annoying. Standing in the midst of the cave is a figure in a brown robe. The moment Kanan spots him, he draws his lightsaber and stands in front of Zeb until he can ready his rifle, too.

“You are not meant to be here.”

Kanan frowns. “The Force says otherwise. Who are you?”

“The guardian of this vault. You need to leave,” the figure says.

From underneath their robe, they draw a very familiar weapon. With a snap and a hiss, two blades of yellow light appear. Kanan lights his own lightsaber in response but it’s too little too late.

A green smoke encompasses Zeb, who yelps as he’s flung across the room by a pissed off Nightsister—which makes zero sense because they’re all supposed to be dead.

Kanan makes for his friend, interrupted only by the mysterious guardian rushing at him.

“Where did you get that lightsaber?” the faceless figure hisses.

And, well, Kanan doesn’t know how to answer that question except with another question. “Where did you get yours? ”

Back in the residential platform, Hera leaps in between Ezra and the lightsaber-wielder. “Wait!” she cries.

Both stop, staring at her like she’s crazy.

“That’s a healed kyber crystal, isn’t it?” Hera asks, pointing to her white blade. “You’re not an Inquisitor. You’re a Jedi.”

The woman lowers her lightsaber just slightly. “I was.”

“I’m one, too!” Ezra chirps, popping out from behind Hera. “Er. I’m training to be one!”

Her eyes widen. “A Padawan? Who’s your Master?”

Before he can answer, Hera speaks for him. “Kanan Jarrus. But his name used to be Caleb Dume.”

“Caleb?” she asks, her voice hushed in awe. “Depa Billaba’s Padawan?”

She nods.

Abruptly, the woman turns sharply on her heel, raising her comm unit to her lips and rushing out the door. “Cal, they’re non-hostiles, non-hostiles! Don’t hurt your boyfriend!”

“What!?” Ezra and Sabine cry at the same time, the former’s voice cracking.

Without another word, they follow her and her friend outside.

*

Merrin has the Lasat out of the Vault long before Cal gets his opponent to the entrance, admittedly. Lightsaber to lightsaber combat is significantly more balanced than Nightsister magick against a bo-rifle, poor guy.

Still, Cal pushes the intruder to the top of the Vault’s slope, the man just on the edge of slipping.

That’s when Cere’s voice crackles through the comms.

“Cal, they’re non-hostiles, non-hostiles! Don’t hurt your boyfriend!”

Hand grasping the intruder’s shirt, holding him above the edge, Cal freezes. He meets brown eyes and suddenly can’t breathe, gaze drifting to the cord around the taller man’s neck. His gloveless fingers just barely skim the material, Force signatures exploding in front of his eyes.

And suddenly, he can see it. He can see himself, painstakingly painting that symbol onto the metal and bartering for a cord. He sees an older Caleb sobbing in the quiet of an unfamiliar room, clutching that necklaces like a lifeline.

“Did you—?”

“Love him? I did.”

A shaky breath passes his lips.

“Caleb?” he asks, voice breaking on the name that’s so unfamiliar on his tongue.

The grip on his wrist loosens.

Kanan hears the woman’s voice, clear as day, but he almost doesn’t believe it at first. He almost doesn’t believe when he hears that whispered question. Caleb. It’s the name of a stranger and yet—yet when that robe’s hood slips off to reveal red hair and bright green eyes, he feels like he’s never known any other name.

“Cal?”

The Force wasn’t calling him to the Vault. It was calling him to its guardian.

Silence falls, the rest of the world fading away. All they’ve been through, all they’ve seen, and it all stops in this moment. It all adds up to this.

Cal lets go of his shirt, letting him balance precariously at the top of the muddy slope down from the Vault. Neither of them speaks—neither of them knows what to feel, except bright, unparalleled joy.

Cal doesn’t let himself flinch when Caleb reaches, his fingers just barely skimming his cheek.

He doesn’t get much further. Green smoke encompasses his body and before Cal knows it, his best friend is being flung from the Vault entrance to the platform beyond, screaming as he goes. The platform beyond, where the Oggdo used to reside, is covered in flowers. It was there that Cal planted his little sapling in a boot and there that the plant spread, covering almost every inch of land with budding blue and yellow flowers.

Cal whirls around to see Merrin, her eyes glowing green.

“Merrin, no!” he protests, eyes wide with desperation. “That’s Caleb!”

Merrin’s glowing fades as she glances at the nearby Lasat and her friend’s horrified face. “My mistake,” she says in that tone that says she knows exactly who he is.

(They were taking too long to speak, in her opinion.)

Cal huffs at her before getting a running start toward the entrance, using the Force to balance himself as he slides down that muddied slope, sailing right toward Caleb. Near the end, he leaps into the air, propelling himself a mere few feet from his collapsed companion.

“Caleb!” he cries, stumbling the last few steps and falling to his knees, where Caleb is face-down in the damp grass, his hair-tie mysteriously missing.

Caleb is—well, he’s okay. He’s just...wheezing with laughter.

He pushes himself up on his elbows and flips over just as Cal makes it to him, his chest heaving with the effort. And still, he laughs, a half-mad sound.

“Are you o—?” Cal is cut off by his own yelp when Caleb flings himself up from the ground and pulls Cal with him.

He embraces the redhead, dragging them both to their feet so he can swing Cal around. Cal shrieks and hitches his legs up on his hips, as difficult as that is with the man’s height—the bastard, he grew. He reaches desperately for Caleb’s shoulders to hold onto when they spin, completely unaware of Cere and the rest of Caleb’s group appearing on the platform.

Finally, Caleb stops, looking up at Cal with shining eyes and a smile that could kill a man. Cal leans forward, letting his forehead fall against his and breathing out a sigh of relief.

“I thought the Inquisitors had you,” Caleb whispers, a thousand more words in the back of his mind, too many to count.

Cal’s eyes well with tears. “I thought you were dead.”

Caleb has always been more reckless than Cal but the latter was the one to hear his words echo through that necklace, an admission years too late. It’s because of that little echo that Cal buries a hand in the hair that falls to his shoulders and pushes his head upward, meeting him in a searing kiss.

Out of shock, Caleb both squeaks—adorable, Cal thinks—and clutches the back of Cal’s shirt for a moment before dropping him. Luckily, his instinct has him landing on his feet.

The drop pulls him away and, looking up, he sees Caleb looking shell-shocked.

He just grins, grabs the taller man’s shirt, and pulls him in for another kiss, this one saying much more than the first. Caleb plants his feet and buries a hand in Cal’s hair for good measure.

They both ignore Greez cackling in the distance and Sabine’s whispered: “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck —”

Because in that moment, all is right with the galaxy. Cal’s flowers are fully grown and blossoming beneath their feet, Caleb’s robe is waiting for him in the other room, and they have each other again.

And that’s all they’ve ever really wanted, isn’t it?

*

River’s Tags: @hahaboop & @mystoragehatesme

Masterlist

[forkanna]

WARNING: Very N S F W. Includes sisterly incest, cunnilingus, anal play, tickling, foot worship, and as you probably expected... food kink.

Notes: HAPPY CORONATION DAY! I've been hanging onto this since I posted chapter 5 both because I wanted to make sure it was just right, and I thought it deserved to be released on an important day in the fandom's history: the date Elsa was crowned Queen of Arendelle in 1844. (We know this thanks to some smart cookies on Reddit haha)

So I know this should technically be from Elsa's POV if I continued to follow the convention I set up for myself, but I decided to keep writing it as Anna. It's been her story from the beginning and it should end as her story. Plus it's an epilogue, so it doesn't have to follow the rest of the fic's format! So there! AHAHAHAHA… I don't know, I'm tired.

And YES, this is the end. No sequels, no Epilogues-To-Epilogues; the MSB grand finale. I know a lot of you may have not seen my mention of an epilogue in the notes for last chapter, so hopefully you'll see this! If any of you want to continue Elsa and Anna's story in your own spinoff fanfics, be my guest (but please credit me); otherwise, I consider MSB to be at its natural ending. Hope you all enjoy the last slice!

In all seriousness, thanks to everyone who has waited this long for what is essentially a one-off smutty fic about D*sney sisters to be finished. I owe so much to this story; it changed my life in a very literal, very unexpected way. Elsa and Anna's true love thawed my jaded heart and encouraged me to keep writing, even when I was sank deep in the darkness of a miserable life, and to explore who I am in ways I never felt brave enough to do. I'm in such a better place now than when this began. It's been a pleasure being part of this fandom, and hopefully I will continue to enjoy it for a long time to come.

Until we meet again,

Jessex

[AO3] [WATTPAD] [QUOTEV]

                                                 EPILOGUE

                              Min Søsters Bursdagsmadrass: Anna

                                         ~ Five Months Later ~

Okay, okay, not quite five months have passed since we saved our kingdom from my sister's magic. Closer to four-and-a-half. But the time has flown by so much that it feels more like a week.

Kristoff and Sven came galloping up to the gates just as we were exiting. The ice boy was a lot less shocked that I was arm-in-arm with Elsa than I expected; probably because he pretty much already caught us in flagrante delicto before. He tried to offer congratulations, and I gave him a big hug to cut through all that awkwardness.

Olaf showed up not long after. Well, we came across a puddle that used to be Olaf; I'd know that carrot nose anywhere. Before I could start sobbing, Elsa calmly created a little ice-flurry and rebuilt him as easy as if she were breathing; he was disoriented, but didn't take long to be back to his cheerful self, hugging us and congratulating us on figuring out that we belonged together. That made sense the more I thought about it. Seriously, why wouldn't our snow-baby always know his parents should stay together?

Naturally, there were a few people who came to the levee that didn't condone our love. I wish I could say differently. Most of them were either too afraid to speak out against us — probably because my sister was some kind of ice witch, that tends to make even the bravest of men need a change of underwear — or they were genuinely happy we were happy, and summer was back. But one or two tried to shame us. Didn't go well, considering we were the monarchy and surrounded by supporters. More insisted we needed a king, at the very least for the purpose of heirs. I tried to tell them that Olaf was our heir, which got a lot of weird looks, but Elsa insisted that it was our decision if and when we crossed that bridge. I guess that's why she's the queen, right? I mean, can you imagine me as the queen of Arendelle? No way!

Hans was tried and convicted of treason against the kingdom. I didn't even go; I didn't want to look at him again if I could help it. But I watched from the castle walls with my sister as they led him away to a ship bound for the Southern Isles. We figured his family would make sure the sentence was severe if they wanted to maintain a good trade partnership with Arendelle. Plus, we wouldn't have to deal with him still being in our home. Win-win.

We also shipped old Weaseltown out. He can peacock-strut and backstab on his own turf.

Everything flew by a lot faster after those first few days. Kristoff was our new icemaster general — totally a real title, thank you — and Olaf's cheery presence got everyone used to the idea of magic. The people slowly grew to accept that their queen had a queen of her own. At first, we tried not to be too open with our relationship, but even though everybody thinks of me as the free spirit, it was Elsa who decided we should begin taking walks through the kingdom, hand-in-hand. At first, we got a few stinkeyes, but little by little, they saw we were happy, and not hurting anyone with our taboo love, and… it just became normal, I guess.

Which is fantastic! I mean, if they didn't I would have bought a whole collection of lutes to start smacking them with, but that didn't turn out to be necessary. Good thing; a co-queen shouldn't brawl with her subjects. Looks kinda bad.

As we hit the middle of December and the weather was turning colder without my sister's influence, I started scheming. We had enjoyed four wonderful months of getting to know each other all over again. Even though I'm basically a big ball of libido, somehow Elsa convinced me that we shouldn't just start banging each other's brains out every day. How dare she! But I have to admit, having that sex-free courtship time was somehow a magic all its own.

Because we were behind. By thirteen years. I found out just how well-read my sister was, since she had ploughed through book after book when she wasn't trying to practice controlling her magic. That was something we had in common, since I was often equally bored; it turned out we had read a lot of the same books, and we could compare our thoughts and feelings about them over many, many cups of tea. She never did start talking to paintings like I did, but when I introduced them to her, at least she was bemusedly giggling behind her hand instead of openly mocking me, or telling me I needed medical attention. And we went horseback riding, and swimming, ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. Started going through our parents' things at last, painful though it was. Learned about the kind of adults we had become since we last knew each other as children.

And kissed, sure. Just because we didn't start rolling around in the bed sheets right away didn't mean I was going to let us be complete prudes.

However… my sister's birthday was fast approaching, and I knew I had to do something big. Maybe in a literal sense. So the scheming turned to plotting, and the plotting turned to planning. And then the plans got put in motion leading up to her big day.

                                                      ~ o ~

"Alright, alright, Olaf! I'm going!"

"Sorry, Elsa, but there's no time to waste!" I could hear him replying to her from the other side of the door. I could just barely see her slippered feet and his snow stumps through the crack underneath. So weird doing that from the inside this time… "I guess. I've never had a birthday, but Anna told me this is your biggest one yet, and we got a schedule to keep!"

"Okay, little guy," she laughed at him easily. Even though I couldn't see, I could just picture her petting over his head. "Thank you."

"Yep! And oh, I was supposed to do something else, it was… yeeeessss! Anna told me I should 'get lost for the rest of the day'. So I guess my question is, does that mean until sundown? Or midnight? And how lost do I have to get? I can get lost just in this castle, it's so big, but she was pointing at the gates when she said it…"

"Tell you what. Why don't you go pay Kristoff and Sven a visit? That should be far enough."

"But I won't be lost if I know where I'm going," he told her in a patient tone, as if she were the one who was missing something instead.

"My mistake," she laughed fondly. "Just have a little adventure outside of the castle and we will see you in the morning."

"Okie-dokie! Have fun, don't do anything I wouldn't do! Or do, because you're not me, so you should be doing things I wouldn't do? Maybe? Especially if I'm going to be getting lost and you don't need to be lost. I don't know if that's exactly…"

He was still talking by the time his voice started to fade around the corner. The rest of the sentence was cut off by Elsa knocking on my door.

"Go away, Elsa," I called back at her in an exaggeratedly pouty tone.

"Anna," she sighed. "Yes, I know I was the one saying that to you for a decade of our lives, but this joke is starting to get a little old now."

"Whaaaaaat? No, I don't think so."

"It's officially old as of today. Now, may I come in, or will you be coming out?"

"Think we both already did that last part," I giggled. "Did you, um, prepare?"

"For the love of- yes! Though I don't know why, I let Gerda bathe me thoroughly, and now I am standing outside your door, scrubbed raw and regretting that I listened to her, because you are being a pain in the-"

She didn't finish that thought because I unlocked the door just then. But I didn't open it for her. I was too busy scampering across the floor of my chambers to stand by the bed, grinning from ear-to-ear like a loon. And don't judge, okay? I'd been planning this for a long time.

"Um…" The door creaked open, and one of her baby blues peered around the inside of the darkened room. The sun had already set, so it was only the moonlight and the single candle on my bedside table providing illumination. "A-Anna?"

"Please enter," I said in a pretentiously royal tone.

"Oh, your robe is like mine," she said with a small smile as she eased the door shut behind her.

"Yep! Silk, from the East! I mean, you fill yours out a little better — especially up top. But that's one of the gifts. And I figured, hey, might as well get one for me, too!"

Barely glancing down at the blue silk covering her sizable assets, she shook her head with a small laugh. "It's very nice, thank you. But I thought I told you I didn't want you to make a big deal about my birthday; we should be focused on the Yule festivities for the kingdo-"

"No, no, no," I teased her with a wave of my index finger, bouncing on my heels excitedly. "This is the first time in thirteen years I have been able to celebrate this with you. Give me this one, okay?"

"When can we stop saying the number thirteen and start really enjoying our lives again?"

"When it's been fourteen years. Now… can you take that robe off and hop up on the bed for me?"

Oh, that shrewd little smirk that blossomed on my sister's face. It was both breathtakingly beautiful and super sexy. She was all the time, anyway, but there were moments that it stood out a lot more. "Ahhhh. So that's what all this is about, is it? You think tonight we are going to break our courtship."

"Mmmmaybe. But even if we don't, I still want more with you tonight. If that's okay," I added hastily, fidgeting with my hands behind my back.

"I see." Elsa stepped forward to smooth her hands up and down the green silk covering my chest, teasing her fingernails over my neck. Definitely not making it any easier to stop my lady parts from launching a hostile takeover of my brain, I can tell you! "And… this is very important to you, isn't it?"

"Y-yeah." Clearing my throat, I said, "And I understand why courting was important to you. And it's been great! Really, I loved getting to know you all over again, and we have been having so much fun. But… maybe just a little playing tonight? Please?"

As she glared across into my eyes, I brought my thumb and forefinger up between our faces, half an inch apart. That was all it took to make her burst out laughing.

"That little, hmm?" she finally chuckled as my cheeks burned. "Okay. I assume once I am in position, you will tackle me on this bed?"

"Yeah. Well, not 'tackle', but I'll join you. I just want you to feel how soft it is first."

That got Elsa's eyebrows raising in slight surprise. "Soft, hm? Did you get yourself a new bed for my birthday?"

"I dunno, did I?" I gasped. Hoping my acting skills were at least good enough to hide how excited I was.

Not quite. But at least Elsa hadn't fully figured out my cunning scheme. She pointed at my face and hissed under her breath, "There had better not be anyone hiding in here."

"Hiding? Wait, why would I stick anybody else in here and then tell you to take off your clothes?"

"How should I know? Sometimes you have a really strange sense of humour, Anna."

"Not that strange! Surprise creepy people sounds plain old mean!" But before she could say anything else, I placed a hand over my heart and raised the other one. "I do hereby solemnly pledge that nobody is going to jump out of the wardrobe at you. Or anything else like that."

"Fine, I believe you," she laughed as she stepped from her slippers and let the silk fall from her shoulders, exposing her smooth, pale back. Even now that we had been going for walks and rides, she was still white as alabaster, despite the alternating tans and sunburns I had.

"Mmm…"

"Again, my birthday seems to be full of gifts for you," she accused playfully with a little glance over her shoulder at me as she approached the bed, moving to climb atop it. "Little pervAAAHHH?!"

SPLAT.

Nope, I definitely couldn't hold back anymore. I wrapped my arms around my middle and burst out into gales of laughter, shaking all over and trying my best not to fall down. "ELSA! Your face — you should see your face!"

"I'm- what is- ANNA!" my poor sister finally burst out as she slipped and slid everywhere, defiling all my hard work. "What is the meaning of this?! What IS this, where did- is this CAKE?!"

Cackling and bouncing up and down as I clapped my hands, I finally crowed, "YES! Isn't it incredible?! Doesn't it look just like my bed? I mean, it did before you jumped on it, but even still, the rest of it!"

God, she looked hilarious. I was laughing, but was doing my best not to actually point at Elsa while I did it. And anyone would have laughed; her face covered in so much chocolate and frosting, a huge chunk falling from her chin to splash onto her right breast even while she blinked at me in wonder. Never had our regal queen looked so un-regal.

"You… made… a bed-sized cake… just to play this prank on me." She scraped some of the frosting from her eyelids and flicked it away, turning slightly so she could kneel on the layers of confection. That only made me laugh so hard I snorted like a pig. "This is… I have no words. I literally have no words, I could never have anticipated this."

"Aww, don't be grumpy," I teased breathlessly as I got rid of my own robe, dropping it right next to hers. "Just because I got you good this time! You freaked out, it was the most amazing thing I've watched in my whole life!"

"Yes, well, the show is ov- Anna, what are you doing now? Don't tell me- are you going to jump into this cake with me?! That's insane!"

I hesitated. "Well… I was before you called it 'insane'…" But then I approached the edge of the bed, hands on my hips. No way was I going to chicken out that easily. "This wasn't just a prank. I really wanted to do this for you."

That finally got her to laugh, and when she started she found it hard to stop. I laughed with her, watching her slap her caked thigh a few times. But before I could join her on the bed, she suddenly breathed, "Insane… but beautiful. I've never seen a woman more lovely in the entire world."

My heart skipped over a beat, and I hoped she couldn't tell how hard my nipples were in the low light. "Ahhhhh, now you're just lying. We both know you own a mirror."

"Nice try," she laughed, biting her sugar-coated lip for a moment to weather my counter-compliment. Then she tilted her head slightly while asking, "Why? This is the strangest surprise I have ever received — and that includes that certain birthday of yours. But I can tell it means a lot to you, so could you help me…?"

Great. Now I had to actually face the music, and it was going to take a lot of exposing of feelings. So I took a deep breath before throwing my inhibitions to the wind... and letting my knees sink into the cake.

"That is so wrong," I groaned, feeling one of my eyes twitch.

"I know. But once you get used to it, it's… still wrong, but interesting." She was leaning slightly on one arm, moving her legs out to one side. Always so ladylike, even in a big mound of baked sweetness.

"So here it is," I sighed. "You and me, even when we were really little… chocolate was our soft spot. We could never resist it. And especially after my birthday, when we bonded over it again… I knew your birthday had to be something big, since I could finally celebrate it with you. Something that mattered to both of us. And fun! I thought fun was really important, too. Took me a while to figure out just how I wanted to do this, but once I had this idea, I just… I knew. This was the only thing that would be good enough."

Though she had been listening with a small smile, my last sentence wiped it away. Why? What did I say wrong? Her cake-slicked hand lifted to caress my cheek.

"Anna, anything would have been good enough. Even if this had turned out to be a normal bed, I would have been so happy. How much you spend, how much you plan these gifts, it's sweet but you don't have to go to so much trouble. Don't you know my favourite gift is you?"

My lips only got the chance to part very slightly — when she booped me. She booped my nose with frosting on that finger. The Queen of Arendelle, everybody.

"You little stinker." But her words kept me from retaliating. "You… you mean that, huh? That I'm enough?"

"I do." Her lips pecked mine. "You always have been. I'm just sorry I wasn't able to show you until these past few months. But now, I get to make up for lost time."

Sliding closer, I whispered, "Same here."

And that was as far as I could get before I was attacking her mouth. Elsa welcomed me gratefully, humming as she pulled my body closer. I knew she was getting cake all over me, but I had kind of resigned myself to that when I concocted this whole crazy scheme. Literally concocted.

Which was what she asked about next. "How long did this take to bake?"

"Oh, a couple of days. The trick was keeping the parts we already made fresh so they wouldn't spoil before we finished the rest of it. Kristoff helped me with that, grabbed me a few blocks of ice; normally I would ask you to do it with a little magic, but I mean, since it was a surprise for you that would have been pretty stupid."

"Yes, I suppose so," she giggled, rubbing her fingertips against each other experimentally. "Smooth frosting… buttercream?"

"Of course! And I wanted to add a bunch of berries, but then it wouldn't have looked like my bed, because I don't normally have a bunch of berries on it." While Elsa laughed again, I slipped my arms around her waist. "And yeah, I know you still think it's weird I wanted to be in a cake like this. Plus it's a big waste of food. But for just this one birthday, the first one since we reunited, I wanted to give you something so big it was literally all around us. Like we're part of the cake instead of just the other way around."

Her voice was so gentle and warm when she responded, "I believed you the first time, Anna. But thank you for elaborating. I love knowing how you think, how your mind works. My amazing, clever sister."

Again, we kissed, deeper and longer and with no inhibitions. We tried to restrain ourselves when we were out in public, of course, but alone in my room? Nobody looking over our shoulders? Free as wild horses.

By the time we came up for air, I was no longer the clean one because we had been rolling around in the cake-bed. Sure, I still felt guilty for putting the castle cooks through so much work just so we could wreck it, but at least Kristoff and I gave them a hand — and I gave them the day off once they were through. Anyway, basically the only places where chocolate and frosting hadn't accumulated multiple layers was our faces, because they were so close to each other that nothing could get in between them.

"Are we supposed to be eating any of this?" Elsa laughed, running her finger through some on my shoulder.

"Well, yeah. I wouldn't have done this if it was just for show; this might as well have been a big frosted mud pie." Then I held up…

"Anna, where could you possibly have been hiding that?!"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Elsa merely blinked at me for a few seconds until I caved. "Okay, I had it in my butt."

"What- that sounds incredibly painful!"

"No, no, I was just clenching my cheeks on the handle. Obviously! Like I used the handle outside your door that first time. Come on, do you really think anybody would stick the pointy part into anywhere that sensitive?"

"Well, it is you," she laughed as she reached for the fork. Our fork. "Though I suppose I admire the control you have over your muscles back there." Then she hesitated, her brow furrowing. I could figure out what was holding her back.

"I also took one of Gerda's very thorough baths," I informed her to put her fears at ease. Which made her finally take it with a slight shake of her head. "Oh — and I helped one of the servants mop the floor before we got started in here. Trust me, when I say you can eat off the floor, I really mean it this time."

"You really have thought of everything; such attention to detail. It's almost a little scary."

"Love makes you a little scary sometimes, I guess."

"I guess." Then she slid the fork through some of the cake that we hadn't already rolled in, bringing it up to my lips. "After you."

"Oh! Wait… you first, it's your birthday."

"Diving into it counted as me going first," she chuckled. "Besides, I tasted a little on your lips once they caught some from my lips. Go on." And since I had no argument against that, and she was looking at me with those bemused, insistent eyes, I took the bite into my mouth.

"Ohmyghob, ibzo goob!"

"Anna, manners." Which I could appreciate the irony, since there were very little manners involved in rolling around in a giant cake. Probably. Maybe they do that more often in Corona…

"You have GOT to try this," I gushed once I had swallowed, grabbing the fork and scooping up another big bite for my sister.

"Can't I have a different fork?" But I wasn't budging. And she knew how important that particular utensil was to the both of us. "Gerda bathed you the same way she bathed me, didn't she?"

"It was like standing in a geyser."

"Fine." She accepted her first proper bite. Her blue eyes slid closed in ecstasy as she hummed her approval, eventually nodding after she had chewed for a moment.

"Amazing, right?" All she did was nod, raising a hand to give the okay symbol. So I helped myself to another bite, clutching my hand to my chest as tears welled up in my eyes.

Seriously, it was that good. Best cake I ever had in my life, up to and including the one with my sister's extra frosting.

"Okay," Elsa panted a couple minutes later when we had eaten our fill for the moment. "I was teasing you before, but I take it all back; I do want to live here and sleep here."

"Surrounded by layers of chocolatey goodness?" I giggled as I flopped onto my back, spread eagle in piles of sweet perfection. It was like Heaven, or Valhalla or whatever you believe is the good afterlife.

"Exactly. Fun and function." I glanced over to see she was lying on her side, propped up on one elbow so she could look down at me with a smile full of so much affection that my heart skipped a beat. "So very you."

At first all I did was chuckle a little and smile up at her. But then when she leaned down to kiss my chest, I let my eyes fall closed as a little sigh escaped my lips. "Mmm…"

"You were after something like this, I believe?"

Opening my eyes again, I was just in time to see her tongue slide across the meat of my right breast, the one closest to her. The track of freckled skin she revealed by cutting through the chocolate confection gleamed from her saliva, and it was somehow both offensive and arousing at the same time.

"Y-yeah. Something like that." I cleared my throat and caressed along her back, through cake and hair. "But you don't have to. If that whole courting thing is so-"

"We can take a break," she interrupted with an impish smile. "One night, for both Yule and my birthday. And for you, because I know how hard it has been to keep your hands off me."

A blast of air exploded from my lungs as she licked again. "HAH! W-wow, somebody's conceited in here, and I think her name rhymes with… with, uh…"

"With what? Jelsa?"

"No, that's not a thing."

I was still trying to think of a rhyme for her name when she found my nipple, and my squeal blasted every thought out of both of our minds. My chest was a feast for my sister for the moment as my conscious thoughts faded, simply letting her enjoy me. Because I enjoyed it just as much. A few times, she hit the nerves just right that I twitched, digging my nails briefly into her back and making her hiss in response. Some extra added fun.

Then she started moving down my stomach. I knew where she was going; this wasn't our first time trying this particular activity. But the butterflies were as fresh as ever, and my thighs tried to trap her head there.

"Oh, not tonight?" she purred.

"Reflex," I panted shortly, trying not to laugh at the cake all over her face now. Because even though it was funny, it also wasn't… since she was about to go to town on me.

Oh, she did. She really, really did — and it blew my mind so much more this time, somehow. Maybe it was because for the past few months, I only had that fork handle for company in my bed. Being pent up and needy tends to make the release ten times stronger, you know.

"Elsa!" I whined after a few hours. Okay, it was probably a minute or two, but it felt like so long! "You're really… how did you… get this good?!"

By the time she came up for air to answer me, she was gripping my ass cheeks to hold my pelvis closer to her face. "You're worth trying my best for, Anna. And… I may have practiced on an ice-replica." When I laughed at that, a frosting-smeared eyebrow arched. "Ooh…"

"What?"

"Oh, nothing. Your backside is so firm, and I felt it flexing in my hands. Powerful."

"Y-yeah, I exercise a lot. Could probably pick up a gold coin with it."

"Really?" I felt her poking around back there, and I clenched — again, reflex. "Wow. Do you think… you could squeeze this?"

Before I had any chance to ask a question or protest, I felt a finger sliding between my cheeks. What in the fjord was Elsa doing?! It felt wrong, and disturbing… and hot? Was it hot somehow?! Maybe, but only because it was her, and she had already been going down on me, I'm pretty sure; if anybody else had tried that, especially when I wasn't already chomping at the bit to get off, their hand would be kindling for the fireplace in the corner.

So don't let anybody tell you Elsa is a prude who would never do anything like that. That whole regal facade is just a smoke screen. She can get just as wild as me.

"Wow, your muscles really are strong," Elsa breathed in honest surprise, not just teasing me. "I'm impressed."

Freya, I tried so hard to hold it together. To control my reaction. But as she dragged her finger back from my crack, brushing the little forbidden spot that I had been trying not to think about, I shivered and let out a little moan. Dooming myself.

"Anna?"

"Yes! I m-mean, hello, yeah, you can… you can start back in on the goods now! Remember my goods? Right there in front of you?"

"No, wait. Did you enjoy…?" Probably trying to spare me some embarrassment, she didn't finish the sentence. Instead, she raised her frosting-covered finger and flexed it in my field of vision.

"Oh, did I really get cake in there, too? Sheeze, we've really been going crazy!"

My nervous laughter made it way too obvious I was just trying to distract my sister. Why was I so bad at that sometimes? She looked at me suspiciously for a moment, then glanced at the finger, then back at me.

"Anna-"

"Please, can we not-"

"Anna, it's okay. If you want me to leave that alone, I will; I was only asking how you felt about it. That's all."

Though her words didn't dial back my embarrassment, it soothed away the anxiety spike. "Oh. Well… no, I didn't mind that much. Not really. It's just because… like, after all you've been doing to my clit and tits, I'm kind of sensitive… everywhere. So it was pretty interesting, but I would never ask you to do it again! That's too big a favour!"

Elsa thought that over for a moment, and I finally started to relax. Then she kissed my inner thigh. "Just relax, my love. My Lord Anna." I groaned, thinking back to the coronation ball. Even though it all worked out okay. "I'll take care of you. And all you have to do is ask, and I will stop or change what I am doing. You can always talk to me, alright?"

"Okay," I said, completely relieved. My queen was so sweet to me, always taking care of me as much as she could. Making me feel safe.

Well, I did feel a little less safe when she started kissing closer to my behind. And then when I felt two thumbs pulling the cheeks apart, I wriggled all over and gasped out, "WHOA! Elsa, are you- you're not gonna-"

"Just going to try to get the cake in here," she laughed softly. "Unless you have objections."

Did I? The whole thing was too weird to have any objections. And while I was still trying to come up with one, I felt that wriggling tongue press somewhere I had never wanted or needed it to go. Was Elsa really doing this? She really didn't mind? We did enough wrong and taboo things already that this just seemed like one step too far! But the way she was going at my ass suggested she didn't agree.

And it was… different. Not good, not bad; just unsettling even while it was stimulating. When she was still at it a minute later with no signs of stopping, one of my hands started trailing the handle of that trusty fork down my stomach. Maybe, if I could take care of the main attraction, a little sideshow in the back room wouldn't be so bad.

"Mm?" she hummed, tongue still sliding over my taut skin. She must have seen my fingers moving, because she drew back with a chuckle. "Oh, did you need me to move along?"

"Y-yeah, Elsa, I… we could try that again later, but right now I'm…"

With a solemn nod, she went right back to going down on me. Who could complain about a girlfriend like that? Just takes care of my needs without any complaint. What an angel.

"Oh ffff- MMM!" Yeah, I had to scream into my hand to let out some of my energy. Luckily, it wasn't the one holding the fork or I might have stabbed myself in the face. A minute later, I gasped, "Elsa! I'm almost there! Almost there!"

My sister did not slow down until I actually was there. It felt like she had six tongues instead of two — which she might actually have been able to pull off if she used her ice powers, but I didn't feel her mouth get any colder. I came so hard and shook all over, and the whole time Elsa just held onto my hips and devoured me like I was the best cake she had ever tried. Which was probably how she felt.

Once my heat faded, she lowered me into the cake again and smirked. "That happened awfully quickly for someone who didn't like me playing with her a little lower than usual."

"Y-yeah! Well… you… let me get pent up for multiple months!"

"That is fair. I hope my apology was satisfactory."

Pretending to think real hard about it, I screwed up my face and tapped my chin. Elsa laughed. "Weeeeeelllllllllll… on one condition."

"What condition?" She started when I moved to pin her to the bed. "Oh!"

"This one." My chosen target was her neck. She shivered a little when I ran my tongue along it, enjoying the rich chocolate mixing with the light purity of her skin. I wanted to eat Elsa whole.

"Anna… you… make it hard to breathe."

"Elsa…"

"N-no, I… I'm really-!"

With a shock, I realized she meant the way my hand was pushing into the middle of her abdomen. "OH! Shit, Elsa, I'm sorry, I didn't mean-" As she took a deep breath, I caressed her side. "Better? Man, I am just really dumb sometimes…"

Elsa pulled me down into her embrace. "We already covered that. You are not dumb. You have never been dumb."

"You sure? I mean, not that I'm trying to argue with you, but you keep saying that and then I keep doing dumb things."

"Because you're excited. I am, too; I've just had a lot more practice... controlling myself."

For good reason. But since she wasn't judging me, I pushed myself back up to begin devouring the cake covering her ribs and stomach. She giggled a couple of times, and I smiled at the way her abdominal muscles flexed under my lips, bumping up against my nose. I could have kept eating off her and exploring her for hours and never got bored. Not once.

"Mmhhh, this really is so good," I sighed as I got closer and closer to the finish line. "The cake, you… who could ask for more?"

"I'm glad you… approve." But I could tell she was nervous. Why? It's not like this was the first time we had done anything like this; just the first in a little while.

"Elsa?" She didn't answer right away. Watching her bite her lip and look anxious was cute, but I still prompted her, "Hey. You okay?"

"What? Oh… yes, I'm fine." My face must have looked extra unconvinced, because a second later, she relented. "I'm still a little afraid of losing control of my powers when I…"

"When you what? Oh, wait, you're- right, got it, you don't need to explain. But hey, even when you've done that before, all you did was give me a little extra blast of snow. I don't mind a cold cake."

Tittering the slightest amount, despite the fear in her eyes, she reached down to run her fingers through my sugar-matted fringe. "Neither of us do. And I know you're probably right, but I can't help but worry I will hurt you for a third time. I don't think I could take that."

"Me, either. But you won't. I hear you, I do, but I know you have a handle on this now. You've been doing so good! Nobody in Arendelle is scared of you anymore. So just… let me do the magic this time."

That was that. Even though she was still biting her lip, her brow still creased, she didn't protest further as I kissed the inside of her thigh, devouring the frosting I found there. But I still didn't like that she was wound up so tight. So I figured hey, why not try to loosen her up?

"So, if I get a couple of fingers in you and really start going to town… does that make this pound-cake?"

Oh, now she looked mad. I barely had enough time to register the movement before her foot was pushing into my face, trying to shove me off the bed entirely.

"Hey, whoa whoa, Elsa! Come on, I'm sorry!"

"Why don't I believe you?" she demanded in a would-be stern voice. The answer might have been because I was laughing up a storm. But I caught sight of her smile, which told me she was just trying to mess around with me. One of the many things I had been missing over the past thirteen years.

"Truce! I'll keep my corny jokes to myself if you don't shove me the rest of the way off this bed!" Really, I already had to whip one leg back and brace against the floor to keep from falling as it was. But she slowly began to relent. "Thank you."

"I ought to put my finger back in your 'fork holder' for that one," she grunted.

"It was one time! I don't go around carrying forks back there all the time, you know!"

"Actually, no, I don't know that. Because I never inspect the back of your dress when you are casually walking down the halls."

"You could, though…" As she just shook her head at me, I decided to get a little more playful.

"AH! Not my feet — don't bite my feet, you know how ticklish iyyyahahahhaaaa!"

Too late. My teeth were nibbling all over her chocolatey toes in retaliation for almost being knocked on my butt. The way she began kicking was extremely dangerous, but at least now my childhood memories were intact; I remembered learning by watching our father that you had to hold her leg steady when you tickled her, or you were asking for an eyeful of flailing heel.

"STOP!" she cackled. "I'm- I am about to ruin this cake! Anna!"

Right away, I broke off with a laugh. No matter how much fun I was having, it wasn't worth ruining an entire cake-bed by making her wet herself. "Okay, okay. Yellow frosting is as bad as yellow snow, I guess."

"You… monster!" But she was still laughing a little, cheeks flushed, chest rising and falling in an attempt to regain her breath. Which looked like she had been doing something else.

Flawless. I was head over heels, alright.

"Sorry. But do you know how cute you are when you get tickled?"

Clearing her throat, she pushed up onto her elbows before answering me. "That is… because I didn't get to run around outside the way you did. Not after my ninth birthday. So my feet are…"

Oh. Well that was a sad reason for them to be extra sensitive. But I decided to simply kiss the one I had been attacking and say, "Perfect. You were gonna say 'perfect' right? Because that's the only answer I'm accepting right now."

Shaking her head a little at me, she let out an exasperated sigh that was followed by a small smile. "You're too kind to me."

"Nah. Just know you deserve the best."

Again, I kissed, and she hummed as her smile grew. When my lips parted to let my tongue slide between two of her toes, she rolled her eyes and pulled her foot away. "Fine, I get it, you love every inch of me."

"Glad we got that straightened out. Now, I have my eye on a couple of pastries… one sec."

Her hand raised up to rest on the back of my head when I attacked her chest. I figured she would probably appreciate having some time to recover before I went back between her thighs. The sounds floating out of her lungs were every bit as enthralling as if I had gone straight for the crux of her thighs, of course, but at least this way I could enjoy my cake a little longer.

"You are… so persistent." I switched to the other peak, my hand wrapping around the mountain below and kneading just enough to add pressure and pleasure without causing pain. "Mmmhh, and I almost want to ask if you have been practicing on someone else!"

"Maybe I made an ice-replica," I shot at her as I moved back down. Her grin was so huge. "Okay, I'm ready. Let's do this."

"You make it sound like you're about to go cliff-diving!" she laughed.

"Oh, I am. I'm about to dive down deep into your sound."

Elsa's lips parted, probably to reprimand me for another corny line. But all that came out was a moan when I pressed my mouth tightly against her soft folds through the frosting and chocolate. And I intended to clean every speck of that from her by the time I was finished.

My Elsa. My queen of snow and ice, grace and beauty and power. The only woman in the world. My mind and heart were full of desire for the goddess I was making writhe with my every teasing touch. And it wasn't just that she was the most beautiful girl in Arendelle, not that she had given me an orgasm so recently. This was about way more than repaying a debt or physical beauty; it was my sister. The one person who had always been a part of me, and who always will.

"A-Anna!" she gasped — well, she had been doing that for a couple of minutes, but this one was louder and stronger. Somehow, I just knew what she meant. "I'm… I'm still scared! I love you!"

I loved her, too. But I wanted to show her in some way besides slowing down to tell her with words. So I moved one hand from her hip to push our fork into hers, which had been clutching uselessly at another pile of birthday cake. And wow, did she respond! My hand was caught with the fork between our fingers, and it was such a tight grip that I felt like she would never let me go again.

Which did as much for me as I might have been doing for her.

There was more snow this time. Somehow, I had kind of expected that; I mean, when you tell an ice witch that she shouldn't hold back with her power, you're going to get more power. Makes sense, right? But even while I was still feeling her flesh pulse against my lips and tongue, her juices running down my chin, tiny pinpricks of cold were dusting my back in the spots that weren't covered by chocolate.

"Oh," I panted when I finally came up for air, satisfied that she no longer needed little licks for little aftershocks. "Snow! See? I told you everything would be fine. And this isn't even that bad!"

Though of course, we were both looking around at the winter wonderland filling the room. It was only a couple of inches deep, but spread over that large an area it still added up to a decent amount.

"It's… a lot," she panted. "But at least there aren't any… nothing dangerous."

Scoffing, I crawled up to lay my head on her shoulder, curling my entire body around hers as tightly as I could. Needing to be that close to her now. "Dangerous? You? Come on, you're a big pussycat."

"We both know… that's… a stretch." Finally, she cleared her throat and simply took in a couple of deep breaths so she wouldn't be so winded. Then she turned to look into my eyes with a smile full of afterglow and affection. "Thank you. For that, for all of this; for my perfect birthday night."

"Yeah. You got it. I'm always going to show you how much I love you, no matter how big I have to go to get the point across."

"Anna, you don't have to. I already know." We shared a firm kiss. Then she crinkled her nose. "Oh, that's… did you really enjoy me adding that to your cake? It's so strange."

"Maybe I wouldn't have if I didn't know what it was," I admitted with a giggle. "But knowing? Oh yeah. Totally hot."

"If you say so." Then she suddenly looked horrified. "Oh no — my lips have- you were kissing-"

"All I tasted was Sister-Queen and cake," I headed her off before she actually said it out loud. "Don't have to make it even more gross. Seriously, you didn't run away from my butt? I thought that would be a fate worse than death!"

"No, no," she reassured me, completely contented now that we had both enjoyed ourselves and could relax. "I wasn't lying for your benefit; it wasn't that bad. Especially when mixed with chocolate cake. Though I agree with you about my essence on this subject; probably wouldn't have enjoyed it not knowing what it is, or by itself. Well…"

Running my index fingertip in small circles on her stomach, I prompted, "Well?"

"I could try it by itself. Maybe. Someday."

"Go ahead. I won't… well, I might judge a little, but since we're already sisters who knock boots, it's not gonna hold a lot of water."

"Mmhmm. I suppose that's a valid point."

"Ohhhhh, I just wanna lay here forever!" I burst out as I curled even harder around Elsa, and she laughed again, nuzzling into my hair. "Though I do have another bath ready in the next chamber. I'm no doctor, but it's probably not the best idea for us to leave cake in some of the places we have cake right now."

Nodding, she whispered, "In a minute. This is so comfortable. Actually, I'm surprised we're not sinking all the way down to the floor."

"Oh — yeah, that's because we took a bed-sized wooden box and made the cake on top of that. Like, it's pretty much a bunch of little cakes smushed together in a grid pattern to make one huge sheet cake, and then we just put the icing all over it and down the sides with the right colours and patterns. So it looked like a real bed, with a quilt and all."

"Clever," she chuckled, scratching at my rib cage just enough to prompt a giggle from me before she stopped. "Really, I was flabbergasted at first, but now I really admire all the work you did for this. Because it turned out to be a lot of fun."

Her praise made my heart glow. "It did, didn't it? Chocolate cake slumber party. Go me."

We both fell into the kind of comfortable silence you can only have with family. Lover, sister, friend… Elsa was all of those things to me. And we had beaten all the odds and found our way back to each other, and we were alive, and our lives were wonderful. There wasn't much else I could ask for.

"I love you, my Anna," she breathed into my hair before rolling over to prop herself up on her elbow and look at me. I mirrored the gesture, gazing into her eyes.

"Love you, too, Majesty. And I always will."

Elsa kissed me hard and long, and held me close for such a long time that time itself ceased to hold meaning. Definitely not your run-of-the-mill anniversary of being born, but I finally knew: what we had? Different-good. The best kind of different a princess could ask for.

                                                      ~ Takk for Reisen ~

[adashelbysgirlfriend]

Polly’s Daughter - Headcannon

request ; Hey! Would you consider making headcanons for being Polly's lost daughter and how she would react to the daughter just appearing one day telling her that they just told Polly that she's dead to keep her away? And how Polly would react and treat her afterwards + how the rest of the family would? 💜

i think this is a genius idea tbh; mainly because i refuse to believe in a world where Anna Gray isn't alive. I just need Polly to be happy? i don't think thats asking too much. So yer, thank you for this - you've fuelled my domestic fantasy where Polly has a full family and is never sad again. This one also hits hard for me because my mum was adopted as a baby, and I've always grown up wondering who my biological grandma is - so however you are and wherever you are granny i hope youre rocking on and having a good old time!

i kinda wrote this from like the readers point of view? i don't know why i just liked the flow better that way. Anyway, i hope you like it! and NEVER hesitate to send in a Polly related request because i ADORE the woman. Iconic. 

i feel like she’d grow up dreaming of a your mum coming to find you 

because you were a few years older than 

but with every birthday and Christmas without so much as a card, it would kinda harden you into hating Polly for leaving you like that 

being moved to Australia and completely giving up on her ever trying to find you 

trying really hard to not repeat your mothers mistakes

being as responsible as possible

finally ending up with a family that keeps you around long enough for you to build up some sort of trust system and being a second mum to their other kids

you'd found out your mother was looking for you and freaked the fuck out

shock turned into anger

the woman who left you, didn't love you like any decent mother would, now wanted to meet you on her terms

absolutely not 

no way

especially when you heard that the Tommy Shelby of Small Heath was the one putting feelers out for you 

but being brought up in the care system (or lack there of it) had made your mind somewhat deviant and street smart 

you also knew quite a few undesirable members of society, some of which had a level of power

it wasn't hard for them to formulate a fake paper trail 

and just like that, Anna Gray was officially dead

you stayed in Australia but never felt settled again after that 

as you got older, became an adult, the earlier anger turned into hurt

why had she left you?

why did she want you back?

i feel like these emotions would brew for a while but it would take a personal event to make you finally snap and want to go find Polly

you’ve always been careful with sleeping with men and not becoming a mum yourself so young but like you end up a month late for your period and are convinced   you’re pregnant

queue storm of Angst 

never feeling so close to understanding your mums decision as this

you go to the doctors and you aren't, but it sticks with you

or maybe its just when you have to leave your new family and move out alone, you realise how hard it is to be by yourself in the big city and also how much you need family

you go to Birmingham a month later

youre SHIT scared

and not just because youre well aware of the status your mothers family has

massive fear of rejection 

youre well aware of the time thats passed in-between her looking for you and you actually showing up

 what if she doesn't want to see you anymore?

what if she does but youre just not what she expected and she doesn't want to know you?

standing on her doorstep for like a good half hour before knocking

which alerts the boys that something fishy is going on 

her coming to the door and you just standing there like a lemon with no clue what to say even though you've been literally planning this moment for as long as you can remember 

finally getting the words out and making Polly the speechless one

she definitely doesn't fully believe you 

she wants too, with her whole heart, but she doesn't think its possible for you to be alive so she thinks its some sick joke by one of their enemies 

she definitely slaps you

you slap her back obviously 

she's crying and shouting and you’re crying and shouting

everyones confused

Tommy and John coming out to break up whatever going on

“who Tommy?! who would send some whore and have them to pretend to be my Anna?”

“Oh IM the whore? who left who? i can't believe i even bothered coming all this way, all you've ever been is a disappointment, i wish i was dead so i never had to meet you “

Tommy and John feeling like they are watching Polly fight with Polly 

“Pol, its her” 

“How! How can i be her Tom?!”

“Just look at her Pol” 

“Holy shit Pol, its definitely her” - John ever so eloquently adding in his two cent 

ending up inside with Polly

the lads being nervous to leave you two together just incase you fight again but her sending them away

as soon as you start talking instead of shouting, she can take a proper look at you 

and bOY do you look like her

it makes her feel warm and violently sick all in one

she probably actually has to excuse herself to vomit

she just needs to hold you 

its a bit uncomfortable and awkward at first but then it all hits you at once and you can't stop yourself from sobbing 

she's sobbing too 

fuck me man everyones sobbing tbh

just sitting like that for hours, until you have no more tears to cry

“well lass, you’re far too skinny” 

feeding you 

drawing you a bath

putting the fire on for you 

making sure she sets up a bed for you so you’re comfortable and i don't mean calling the maid in to do it, she wants to do it by hand so she knows its perfect

it taking a long time for you to trust her fully 

but Polly literally doing everything she can to show you she will always regret losing you that day

finding out it wasn't her fault

“I didn't want to lose you, you or Michael, they took you away but i never ever stopped loving you. I thought about you every morning when i woke up and every night before i went to sleep, even after i thought you were gone’

meeting the boys properly 

Tommy is cautious of you at first, not wanting to see Polly hurt but he grows to trust you and love you in his own nonchalant  way 

John and you being a comedy double act, you get his respect from day one for straight up fighting Polly fucking Gray in the street, and everyone else enjoys seeing him be torn apart by your humour 

Arthur sees you as his little sister, would protect you with him whole life

Michael doesn't really remember you that well, but you grow to become siblings again

Ada has you over for sleepovers at least once a week, and youre even trusted to look after little Karl for her, she loves you and is the big sister you never thought you needed, but she also respects you for what you've been through and is always checking in and making sure youre okay and reminding you that youre part of a family now

Finn is probably the first ti accept you because its Finn guys, what an angel we STAN 

it definitely takes a while, but youre glad of the day you stepped foot on Polly doorstep

and none of them can imagine life without you now.

[starrynite7114]

Snapshots: the only exception

A/N: SO, I didn’t think I was going to be able to post this as quickly as I did, but when the muse hits, it hits. This update definitely went a different way than I had intended too, I hope you all enjoy it! 

I am going to try and work on an update for Distraction, if not, snapshots will be updated again by the end of next week or maybe even sooner!

Love you all! Thank you for showing snapshots so much love!

You sighed as you walked inside your hotel room. Being in New York was lovely but you missed California. It was April and spring was just making its way through the city. You loved the weather, but you wished your better half was here to enjoy the weather with you. It’s been two weeks since you went to New York, leaving Angel in Santo Padre. You two FaceTime everyday, but it just wasn’t enough. You missed Angel terribly and you were so thankful that you were coming home tomorrow.

There was a knock on your door, which startled you. Rafael was out and about with a fling of his, so who was at the door? You haven’t even ordered room service yet. 

Walking over to the door, you looked through the peephole and you found Jake, holding pizza and beer. Quickly, you opened the door and he greeted you with that usual warm smile of his.

“Hey,” he greeted.

“Jake,” you returned his smile. “Come in! What are you doing here?”

“Rafa told me he ditched you, so I figured I’d bring you some food and beer. You fly out tomorrow right?”

“Yes, thank god, I miss California.” You closed the door, following Jake to the table you had at the corner of your room. You sat on the chair across the window, the intoxicating smell of the pizza overtaking your mind. “Oh god, that smells so good.”

“Figured I’d show you how pizza should actually taste.”

You laughed. Jake used to speak about New York fondly. He wanted to leave San Diego and move back to New York where he spent his undergraduate college career. Jake wanted you to move to New York, knowing your company would gladly transfer you over. But there was just one problem, Angel.

Jake let it slip to Angel, which you’re quite certain was on purpose, that you were thinking of moving to New York. Angel looked at you from across the room and you knew Jake told him. The way his face changed, taking a swig of his beer as he kept his anger at bay. 

It was an epic fight between you two and was the beginning of the end with Jake.

---------------------

“So when were you going to tell me you’re moving?” Angel questioned once you two were all alone in your apartment. 

You sighed, cursing Jake’s name under your breath. “Angel, I’m not moving.”

“You sure? Pretty boy is already picking out the patterns of your plates.” 

This was not what you needed right now. Angel wasn’t going to talk to you with everyone around. Jake had to leave since he had some family brunch in the morning and his apartment was closer to his parents place. As soon as Jake was out of the door, Angel was itching to speak with you. There was no way you were going to move away, not from him. San Diego was acceptable, but across the country, that wasn’t acceptable. If he had to kill Jake, he would, if that meant you were staying beside him, he would do it. He was never a selfish bastard, but as of late, he felt you slipping away and he couldn’t handle that. 

“It’s a process, but you know I would talk to you if I decided to move.”

“So now it’s a process but you just said you weren’t moving.”

“Angel, I don’t want to argue about something that may not even happen and honestly doesn’t even concern you.” You realize your mistake as the words came out of your mouth. Angel’s face changed from anger to shock to disappointment, it was so quick that you were surprised that you caught those changes.

“What’d you just say?” He asked after a long period of silence between you.

“I didn’t mean it,” you immediately answer. “I just,” you sighed. “I don’t want to move, I can’t even imagine being without you, but,” you made eye contact with him then. “I love Jake and if he ends up moving, I would want to be with him.”

Angel’s heart clenched hearing your words. It was the day he feared. It barreled towards him like a truck going down a hill and it hurt. He was crushed.

“Then go be with him.”

Angel didn’t know what else to say. He couldn’t handle this. He did what he thought would be best, he walked away. He always thought you were his exception, the one who was never going to leave him, the one that would always be by his side. 

He was wrong.

---------------------

“Do you ever wish you could turn back time and move with me?” Jake questioned.

It was going to sound terrible, but Jake always hoped that it wouldn’t work out with you and Angel. That you would wake up one day and realize that Angel was not the one for you. It was awful of him, he knew that, but you were his exception. 

As cliche as it sounded, you were the only girl who didn’t fall for his charm, for his infamous looks. The only reason he was able to score a date with you was due to his persistence, otherwise, his looks don't matter to you. His personality had to win you over. 

You opened the pizza box, unsure of how to answer the question. There were times before you got with Angel that you regretted not moving with Jake, especially when Adelita came. You should have just moved with Jake, someone who loves you and took care of you. Someone you clicked with so well and made you smile during an awful day. 

But at the same time he wasn’t Angel. You couldn’t do it. No matter how hard you tried. You almost did it, especially since Angel avoided you like the plague, but you couldn’t move away. But there was a part of you that still believed it was a good idea. You could further your career in New York. When you were younger, it was your dream to move to New York. But when you actually came to New York with Jake to just test it out, you were miserable. You missed Coco, Gilly, Rafael and most of all, you missed Angel. When he found out you went to New York, he reached out to you with a simple message,

‘Couldn’t even say goodbye?’

And it pissed you off. Instead of texting him you flew out a week early and gave Angel a piece of your mind.

“Y/N?”

You shook your head. “Sorry! Zoned out, what was your question again?”

“Do you wish you could turn back time and move here?”

“No, I’m very happy where I am,” you confidently told Jake. This was what you always wanted, to be with Angel. You weren’t missing out.

“I never truly understood why you were so willing to give up everything for Angel. He seemed like a good enough guy, but I always thought you would just,” Jake chuckled and shook his head. “I thought you would wake up and realize that you didn’t belong in his world.”

“Excuse me?” 

“Come on, you’re an intelligent young woman who has an amazing career ahead of her. Being the girlfriend of an outlaw biker with a shady job isn't exactly ideal for you.” As nice as Jake was, you knew that he had some type of superiority complex when it came to Angel. For Jake, Angel was never going to be able to give you the life you deserved. Though, he obviously didn’t understand what type of life you wanted, but Jake felt that on paper, you two were the perfect match. While he did bow out, you knew that Jake was bitter. It was the reason you two never really stayed in touch. 

“I think you should go,” Jake wasn’t worth your time. You completely lost your appetite after his words. After your interaction 2 months ago, you thought that maybe, just maybe, Jake moved on. But you assumed wrong.

“Y/N, I’m,” 

Before he could apologize, you cut him off. “Don’t, you don’t mean it, let’s not kid ourselves.”

Jake sighed and nodded his head. “I’m just looking out for you, Angel is eventually going to break your heart.”

“I’m good, I don’t need anyone looking out for me.” 

Jake stood up and left your hotel room. You frowned, opening one of the Redd’s Apple Cider he brought for you and chugged it. Jake was wrong. You didn’t care what Angel did for a living. You didn’t care that he was part of a gang of some sorts. Angel was Angel and the MC was basically family to you. Everyone always had an opinion on things they don’t know about. You weren’t going to pretend the boys were saints, but you also weren’t going to cast a bad light on them. They were humans, we all made mistakes. 

You hated the fact that you started crying. Jake’s words didn’t matter to you, but you hated it when they put Angel down. Angel was an amazing guy regardless of his occupation or affiliation. This was the man that stayed up with you during your first heartbreak, running to the store to get you ice cream. You were 16 years old, the time of your life where puppy love existed and broke your heart so thoroughly. 

“I can’t believe I’m crying,” you cried out as you sobbed harder. You felt like an idiot. You should have known that Nathan was going to break your heart. It was his literal MO, but like every other girl, you liked to believe that maybe, just maybe, you were the exception.

“Baby, it’s okay, I understand why you are,” Angel rubbed your back as you laid on his bed. His mother had just dropped off some cookies, giving you a kiss on the top of your head since it was the only thing she could kiss with Angel hugging you tightly. 

“How can I be so stupid?” You sounded dramatic, you knew it. You felt like the characters on a teen drama. 

Angel chuckled. “Baby, you’re not stupid. Believe me, you’re far from that.” 

You remained quiet, wrapping your arms around Angel’s middle. He laid his cheek on top of your head as you listened to his heartbeat. You don’t know what you would do without Angel. He was your best friend and you couldn’t even imagine a life without him. Angel was the exception, every other man in this world was trash, but him. 

“I want ice cream,” you stated, breaking the silence between you two. 

Angel chuckled and kissed the top of your head. “We don’t have any, I’ll go to the corner store real quick.”

“What, no way, it’s dark outside.”

“Anything for you.”

If you were being honest, the people in society that were considered odd, outcasts, were the greatest people you knew. You may be biased but you’ve been part of the so-called normal world and it was overrated. 

Your phone rang and you immediately picked it up knowing it was Angel. You smiled when you saw Ares’ nose on the screen as Angel pretended to fight your puppy for screen time. Ares looked at Angel, giving him some evil type of eye while Angel playfully rubbed his face before moving the phone so you could only see him. 

“He’s such a hog,” Angel playfully rolled his eyes.

You laughed. “You’re such a dork, how was your day?”

“Good, can’t wait till you come back tomorrow.” Angel smiled. “We ain’t leaving our apartment for a least two days.”

You laughed once again, Jake’s stupidity was out of your mind. “Sounds like a promising weekend.” 

“Have you been crying?” Angel frowned, noticing your puffy eyes. 

“I just miss you,” you feel your eyes welling up again.

“That’s true, I miss you too baby, but I call bullshit.” You hated that Angel knew you so well. He was such a drag at times since you couldn’t lie to him well. “What’s going on?”

“Jake just dropped by.”

“What did that motherfucker say?” Angel could feel his blood boiling. Jake was so fucking lucky that he wasn’t there with you, otherwise he would have beat the shit out of Jake.

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.” 

“You’re crying, it’s obviously something.” Angel was hoping that after numerous talks you two have shared, you wouldn’t close him off. “Talk to me, mi dulce,”

“Nothing, it’s stupid, I don’t want us to waste our time on him.” 

“Nice try, now spill it,” Angel moved away from Ares as the dog kept trying to see you. He walked in his room, closing the door behind him. “What did pretty boy say?”

“He just asked me if I had a change of heart about moving to New York.” 

Angel sighed, shaking his head. That was a difficult period for him. When you two got into an argument regarding this possible move, Angel couldn’t bring it to himself to speak to you. You fucked up, not him. You’re the one who decided to leave, you’re the one who broke the promise. 

You and Angel had promised one another that no matter what, you two would never leave one another. It seemed like such a juvenile promise, but after losing important people in your life, you and Angel leaned on one another. If you two could control it, you would never leave one another, that was the deal. And you broke it. That’s why Angel was so upset. 

No matter the rule, the stipulation, the situation, you and Angel were the exceptions for one another. 

Your commitment to one another ran deep. You two established a foundation for your friendship that eventually blossomed to a relationship. You knew it was somewhat cliche however, you figured that’s why it worked. You two have always been committed to one another, your relationship just evolved into the next chapter in your lives. 

“I still haven’t forgiven you for that,” Angel was joking in some ways, it was his way to deal with pain. But he really hasn’t. 

The cut was deep. 

“I know, I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you,” you gave him a small smile.

“So what else did he say?” 

Your tears spilled then, remembering his words about Angel eventually breaking your heart. You’re working on your insecurities and it’s not like you believed his words, but many people have expressed the same thing. 

Angel was going to break your heart. 

But you knew he wouldn’t. You were confident he wouldn’t. 

He was the exception to all the men that have come and go in your life. 

Angel Ignacio Reyes, Secretary of the Mayans Santo Padre Chapter, was the love of your life and he would always be there for you. No matter what anyone else in this world thought. They didn’t know anything about you and Angel. 

“Baby,” Angel grimaced, seeing the tears in your eyes. 

“It’s stupid, I know I shouldn’t cry about anything Jake said, but I hate it when people put you down.” You explained.

“Fuck them, I don’t give a fuck what they have to say.” Angel seethed. He was going to kill pretty boy. “What did he say Y/N?” He didn’t care about his words, but it obviously upset you and that made him care.

“He said that you were going to end up breaking my heart and we weren’t compatible.” Saying out loud made you feel more of an idiot, but you couldn’t help it.

Angel sighed, running his fingers through his short hair. This motherfucker was really trying his patience. Who the fuck did he think he was?

“Do you believe him?”

“Of course not,”

“Then what’s the problem? People say things all the time. He’s your ex-boyfriend, he’s obviously upset because of what happened. Who cares what he says? I love you and his issues are the least of my concerns.” Angel hated that Jake was trying to undermine your relationship, but he was glad you weren’t falling for Jake’s charm. Jake has always been on Angel’s shit list, but now he’s on a whole different level.

“I know, he just got to me. I hate it when people talk about you and the MC since they go with the status quo.” 

“Baby, not everyone likes us, you can’t get offended about things you can’t control. What matters is us, Jake is just pissed cause he’ll never have you.” Angel was trying his best to help you feel better. He knew you worried about trivial things you couldn’t control, but that’s why he was here, to help you out. “I think you just miss me so much that’s why you’re emotional.”

You laughed making Ange laugh as well. “I love you, I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”

“I love you to mi Dulce,” Angel walked out of his room and almost tripped over Ares. The dog glared at him and stood on his hind legs. Angel wrapped an arm around Ares, picking him up. “This brat is out of control.”

You laughed again. “He just misses me.”

“You okay?”

“Yes, I just needed to hear your voice, thank you for calling me.”

“Anything for you, sleep, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

You two said your good nights. You placed your phone down and opened another bottle. You were definitely thankful for Angel. As lovely as New York was, you couldn’t wait to get home to Angel.

---------------------

“Fuck,” you moaned out as Angel continuously pounded into you.

You got back to San Diego around 6 in the evening. After dinner, Angel took you home to his apartment and the next thing you knew, you were a moaning mess on the bed.

“Baby, fuck, you’re so wet.” Angel slid in and out of you easily, he fucking loved it. “I fucking missed this pussy.”

You just moaned, scratching Angel’s back.

He slowed down, straightening his back. Looking down at you, he watched as you bit your lips as he slowly slid out and slid back in at the same pace. You whimpered, begging for Angel to speed up.

“Nope, you’re gonna take what I give you baby,” Angel bent down to take a nipple in his mouth, biting on it gently. 

“Angel,” you whined.

“That’s right, who does this pussy belong to?”

“You,” breathlessly, you replied to Angel. 

You can feel your orgasm building as Angel continued his torturous pace. 

“Angel, please,” you begged, grabbing his arms with your hands, softly squeezing it.

“Anything for you,” he increased his speed, capturing your lips before he pulled back, pushing your legs back. 

“I’m coming,” you moaned as Angel bent down to bite your neck, the spot he knew that always got you. “Angel!” You screamed out knowing his neighbors were definitely getting an earful of your screams. 

You two have been at it for hours and you’re pretty sure this wouldn’t be the last round.

Angel groaned as his thrust became shorter and finally, he released inside you. You love feeling his release, especially when he pulled out. Angel kissed you once again before he slowly pulled out, the friction causing you two to moan. He laid beside you, taking you into his arms. He kissed the top of your head as you wrap your arms around him.

“You’re too good at this,” 

Angel chuckled. “It’s not that hard.”

“You’d be surprised, none of the guys I’ve slept with has been this good,” you paused. “Or intense.”

“Well, I’m in love with you, we’re not fucking. We’re making love.” Angel was never into sappy shit, but it was true. Sex with you was just so much different. It sounded so fake, but it wasn’t. That’s why he couldn’t get enough of you. He tried to memorize every reaction you had, it was his favorite thing to do. Watching you come undone just further motivated him.

“You’re so romantic.”

“To you I am,” Angel ran his fingers up and down your side. “Has Jake tried reaching out to you?” He saw your phone lit up a few times, Jake’s name popping up on the screen. He trusted you and he wasn’t going to snoop, but he was still curious what the mother fucker wanted.

“Yes,” you grabbed your phone before returning to your previous position on Angel’s chest. Handing your phone over to Angel, you changed your position slightly so you could see his reaction. “Nothing too great.” 

Angel looked through the message and there were no replies from you. The messages were from Jake, apologizing and reasoning with you. 

He placed your phone on the stand beside him. 

“What you gonna do?” Angel questioned.

“Nothing, I’m done with him.”

“That’s it querida? You don’t want to put pretty boy in his place?”

Putting Jake in his place was low in your to do list. If anything, you didn’t care much for Jake, and you haven’t in so long. People like Jake, they wanted to apologize because they were notorious for being the “good guy”. Everyone had to love him. But at the end of the day, even the so-called good guys aren’t that great. You weren’t going to give Jake the time of day, just because he meant well doesn’t mean it was going to be received well. 

“I don’t really care what happens to pretty boy,” you placed a kiss on his chest. “Got everything I want right here.”

You were always so good for Angel’s ego and self-esteem. You were his only exception, the person he would go through hell and back and even consider living the life he built so hard to have. The MC would always have a place in his heart, but at the end of the day, you were his heart.

Angel smiled down at you, kissing your forehead. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”