#now that you know. you can imagine the Crisis i went through during the last arc of ORV lmao

[bidokja]

i want to say I showed up at that Uriel v Castiel poll when it said “less than one minute remaining” but we did it

I WAS CELEBRATING AND THEN I SAW THE FINAL COUNT OF VOTES WAS 4949 AND I AM. HAUNTED. NO ESCAPE. MY OWN PERSONAL HARBINGER.

[certifiedlovergirlsstuff]

Hiii! Could you imagine one where the reader finds out she's pregnant during one of Spencer's missions and when he comes home she has a crisis and ends up feeling ill and Spencer doesn't know how to help and the reader doesn't know how to tell him she's pregnant. (Both are already married)

i took this opportunity to set my pregnant!reader series into the future cause i already planned for them to have another child. request is tweaked justttt a little.

“my dear sweet penny, can you hit me with a bus? i want this misery to end.” you’ve been hit with the worst stomach bug or flu or just something that’s been lasting since spencer went on his case, five days ago.

your mom took your daughter for the day when you realized you weren’t getting out of bed anytime soon and you called in your reinforcement of one penelope garcia. the case ended yesterday but the team had to stay an extra day due to weather in their state, so penelope has been keeping you company for the past two days. it was nice to have an adult conversation instead of bluey and the same princess movies.

“okay, if you’re pleading for death that means it’s time to head over to a hospital. i don’t want spencer to hypothetically bite my head off if something happens to you.” her bright blonde hair was your shining sun in your darkened bedroom. and her jewelry were loud gongs with each step she took. “i hate to sound like a bitch but can you like, be the opposite of yourself today?” moaning and groaning as you tried pushing off the tossed sheets.

“yeah, you need a doctor. cause and i quote ‘penny if i even say to change yourself i’ve been abducted and that’s an alien.’ hopefully they can give you good drugs.”

at the hospital they took some blood, made you pee and just did a bunch of other check ups when it was shown you were sick with anything. so after an hour or so your doctor renters the sterile room with his clipboard and a poker face. “well, you’re not sick, but you are pregnant. we’ll get an ultrasound in here to check on the fetus.” talk talk talk and then he left again, leaving you and penelope open mouthed shocked.

“holy shit,” breathing out as your hand rubbed over your still small belly. “i told spencer i couldn’t keep my hands to myself.” telling that to the ceiling.

“oh, i’ll have another godchild! i’m so happy to live vicariously through you.” penelope stood at your side and smiled down at you. you turned your head towards her, “you know when they’re older, you’ll be our go-to babysitter then. so just be prepared for that.”

with the ultrasound done they confirmed you were almost done with your first trimester and that left you a bit shocked. you were three months pregnant but didn’t know, now you understand how some of those other ladies feel. but you were excited for another, but then you were done, seriously.

you tried calling spencer after leaving but his phone when to voicemail, but you didn’t think anything of it. probably feel asleep or out doing something with his team. so when you arrived to your mom’s place you were a bit surprised to see your husband holding your daughter and swinging her around.

“you’re back!” penny the first to speak and move further into the home. spencer and anna both turned their heads and smiled at the bright lady. “auntie penny!” your annabeth squealed with an arm out.

she happily took her from spencer’s hold and moved her away so you could talk with spencer. his puppy eyes and downturn mouth made your heart soar, oh how he’s gonna get you into so much trouble.

“you feeling better? your mom said it’s been a week.” pulling you into his hold, cheek pressed into his chest as his palms rubbed over your shoulder blades and spine. you sighed, “yeah, penny took me to the doctor. turns out i wasn’t sick… i was- i am pregnant.”

spencer’s hands stopped and leaned back, “what?” his brows raised into his curling locks. “how far along?” “three months…” biting into your bottom lip as you watched him go through his mental calendar. you both knew your period was irregular, that’s why you didn’t think anything of it.

“so it must’ve been sometime after annie’s fourth birthday,” spencer came to the conclusion. leaned in to peck your forehead, “are you okay with another?” always making sure you were okay with the decision.

you smiled up at him with a twinkle in your eyes, “absolutely.”

[tinytalkingtina]

Cool Whip

Rating M | WC 1330 | Ao3 link

Tags: getting together, first kiss, innuendo, bisexual steve and eddie, eddie speed-runs a sexuality crisis, inappropriate use of whipped cream, fast burn (these two have never gone slow in their lives), fade to black

Written for the STWG July 28 prompt "Oh. Oh."

Steve stared at Eddie in complete silence.

Eddie fidgeted under his gaze. “So. Perhaps. In this instance, giving into the gremlin that lives inside my head was not the best choice I could have made,” he said sheepishly.

“Really Edward. You don’t say.” Steve was still holding the incriminating weapon, had been since he confiscated it. Every so often he twirled it around in his hands.

“What if you uhhh, did it back to me? We’ll be even?” he offered. “Come on, it’s fine, I won’t even fight you on it!”

“Can’t do that because we’re at my house, not yours, and this was my last pair of clean pants and underwear. So, unless you want to walk around like Winnie the fucking Pooh for the rest of the night, maybe we don’t spray whipped cream down your jeans too.” 

Steve ran an agitated hand through his hair. “I’m going to go take a shower and wash this shit off of my junk now, ‘kay? Just put the ice cream back in the freezer, we can do a movie night together another time, I guess.” Disappointment was written all over his face. Oops, Eddie didn't realize how much he must have been looking forward to watching Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

As Steve turned around to go, Eddie knew he should let him. Unfortunately, Nosnum Eidde, the impulsive gremlin living in his brain, was still firmly in control.

“Wait, let’s not waste it. Let me clean you up!” He blurted out.

What?

“What?” Steve was staring again, this time with eyes wide in confusion.

“Let me…clean up the mess I made. On your body.”

“Eddie I really can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”

It did sound like a joke didn’t it. But if it was a joke, why was the thought sending sparks of lighting along his spine. 

“I don’t. Don’t think I’m joking right now,” Eddie said slowly. “Give me a minute here.”

It wasn’t like his brain had a perfect track record when it let Nosnum have the wheel. Like those times it had told him that he could climb the tallest tree in the trailer park without getting stuck at the top, or point out how hypocritical O’Donnell was acting during class without getting detention. 

But it had also gotten things right on occasion. And with Steve standing so close, it was busy pointing out things Eddie hadn't thought about before: like for example, when Steve chewed on his lips in agitation, they became invitingly plump. And, despite the growing damp spot on the front, those jeans were still hugging Steve's ass perfectly. 

Perhaps most importantly, he wasn't rushing forward to punch Eddie's lights out for insinuating, well. He just stood there with a faint blush coloring his cheeks. In his house, a place currently unoccupied by anyone else, not even Robin. While wearing a shirt that was just on the wrong side of too tight with his hair coiffed for a night out and oh my G-d—

“Steve…was tonight supposed to be a date?” Eddie was shocked the question fell out of his mouth so steadily.

The blush on Steve's face grew darker. “I mean, sort of? Was getting mixed signals from you but—yeah.” He shrugged. “We haven’t been able to hang out one on one since I figured things out. Thought I’d see how tonight went before making a move.”

“Oh. You. You had a plan to seduce me.” Eddie wheezed a little. "You like me like that?"

“I uh, kind of put two and two together about a month ago. Had a really long talk with Robin, and turns out apparently normal men don't want to, you know, make out with their guy friends. Or imagine Harrison Ford holding a whip when he’s all sweaty and—wait, what about you, Mr. 'Propositioning My Friends To Use My Mouth?’ How long have you known?"

“About five minutes consciously.” Eddie said in a strangled voice. “Maybe ten if we consider what I did to your pants subliminal foreplay.”

Steve snorted. The gremlin in Eddie’s brain was convinced this made him even more attractive. Huh, maybe this had been going on for longer than he had realized, if a snort could set him off.

“Not really sure what submarines have to do with Cool Whip, but yeah we can probably count that. Welcome to the ‘part gay’ club man! You’re taking this really well, no offense.” Steve pat him on the back, the brief contact sending more sparks through his veins.

“Yeah, in 1985 I’d probably be doing something destructive right about now.” Eddie agreed. “But the me of 1987 can’t really muster up the energy for another panic attack after finding out about inter-dimensional portals or. You know. Everything else that happened.” Wow, real smooth Eddie, way to kill the mood of whatever fever dream was happening right now.

“Besides,” he tried for a joke. “1987 Eddie has a high school diploma. My brain’s so full of facts there’s no more room for anything else unless we shove it into my mouth and—“ His eyes widened as he caught up with what he was saying. He ducked to hide behind his hair. “Uh, what I mean was, um. Yeah I’ve got nothing to say for that.”

Steve gave another adorable snort and walked closer. “We may have to work our way up to that one, but maybe I could give your mouth something else to put its lips around instead?”

“Dude that doesn’t even—what, do you want me to vacuum seal your mouth with mine? How would we, wait, please tell me that isn’t the secret move you pulled that had all the cheerleaders in school losing their minds over?” Eddie squeaked out.

Steve blushed again even as he laughed. “First of all I only ever actually dated like, three people in high school, I wasn’t as big a slut as rumors made me out to be. And okay that might have sounded better in my head, but in my defense I kind of can’t think of anything but kissing you right now.”

Eddie rapidly nodded his head. “Yes, that’s. We should do that. Please.” After a slight roadblock in which both of them on autopilot tried to take the lead and grab the other’s face, they finally managed to actually press their lips against each other.

And oh. Oh. 

Look, this was far from Eddie’s first kiss. But this was the first time someone still wanted to kiss after seeing him eat eggs with maple syrup on them. Or who knew he secretly slept with his childhood stuffed animal. Because Steve wasn’t angling to get cheaper weed, or trying to get back at his parents by having Eddie knock on the door in his ripped jeans for a date.

Steve knew Eddie’s whole sordid history, and kissed him anyway, holy shit.

The kiss itself was short and relatively chaste. But after they stopped, Steve didn’t immediately lean out of Eddie’s space. Instead he gave the tip of Eddie’s nose a quick peck before resting their foreheads together. A giggle bubbled up out of Eddie’s chest.

Steve rapped his knuckles on Eddie’s head. “Everything okay up there?”

“You like me. Steeeeve Harringtonnn likes me!” Steve smiled softly at him as he cupped Eddie’s cheek in his palm.

“Yeah, I do, you big dork. And I’d love to continue this, but because someone sprayed whipped cream onto my junk, I need to go shower it off before it gets even crunchier because wow, this is uncomfortable.”

Now it was Eddie’s turn to blush. “Sorry about that again. But if you want maybe uh, maybe I could join you and actually help clean it off?”

Steve smirked. “I think we can work something out, yeah. Come on.”

Running up the stairs while Steve tightly held his hand, Eddie decided that perhaps this time, his brain might have had the right idea after all.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Later that evening:

Eddie: "Wait, I was flirting with you the entire Spring Break from hell wasn't I."

Steve: "That was point #1 on Robin's 'Eddie is into you' list."

Eddie: "In hindsight this does explain why she kept saying I could be myself around her last week. I used the opportunity to give her a 2 hour long intro to metal music lesson."

Steve: "Yeah, she said I still owe her for that."

@augustjustice @stellarspecter Come get your fast burn Steddie!

[judysxnd]

Hi, could we get an imagine where Pedro gets self conscious of the age gap with y/n and had been weird distant with you. Maybe he read an ugly article that said that he was too old for her and didn't really say positive things.

Once you fount out you reassured him and made him feel really love, Idk something fluffy.

Thanks love your writing

I know it’s been little more than a week since I published anything! I’m trying my best! It’s a busy period. And thank you! I hope you like it 😋

——————————————————————————————

You knew that making your relationship go public would be risky. It always is. Living in this world where you are being watched almost 24/7 doesn’t help hiding or keeping anything private. That’s actually what happened with Pedro. You were both seen on the beach one weekend, holding hands and kissing. At first you were both upset, it was a private beach, you were alone, at least you thought you were, but somehow, people knew.

Since this day, it has been tough. Paparazzi were already following both of you before, but now, they are way more, and it’s getting difficult to leave the house. As they are more, they are also very aggressive verbally as they are trying to get any information, especially on the age cap. Yep, this is their main goal, they want to know everything. You are in your late twenties, Pedro in his late forties.

You both knew what would happen, it can be pretty shocking, a big age gap like that. You tried not to think about it, just focusing on your careers and yourselves. But it wasn’t easy denying this part.

Unfortunately, it was harder for Pedro than for you. He has been working very hard to get where he is now, and he doesn’t want anything to jeopardize that. He doesn’t think it will ruin his career or yours, this is the last thing he thought, but it can have consequences psychologically. The harassment, the articles, it’s all they can talk about. Maybe it’s because it’s new, in a few months they will forget about it, but until now, you had to go through it all.

Pedro was on his computer, scrolling through the news when he saw an article about both of you. “Is star Pedro Pascal having a midlife crisis by dating celebrity Y/n L/n?”. He felt a knot in his stomach. He couldn’t stop reading the title. He knew he shouldn’t be reading this, but he couldn’t help. He had to know what they were saying. So he read the article. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard or seen before, but it was being repeated so much that he was starting to believe it. Was he really too old for Y/n? Was he just distracting himself? Did he deserve you? He suddenly got overwhelmed with thousands of questions, but was interrupted when you got home.

“Hi baby” you joyfully said as you entered the kitchen where Pedro was. He quickly closed his computer, putting a small smile on his face.

“Hey” he simply said. You started to walk towards him, but he got up, holding his computer to put it on the table in the living room. You were confused. You waited a few seconds for him to come back, but when he didn’t, you went in the living room.

“Are you okay?” He was sitting on the couch, going through his jacket to find his cigarettes.

“Y-yeah, I’m just a little tired. I’m smoking one and I think I’ll go lay down”

“Do you need anything? I can make you some tea, if you need medication I have some” you said, getting closer to him, touching his arm.

“I’m good thank you” he said, barely looking at you as he stepped outside, lighting his cigarette. He sat down on the couch, arms crossed, wondering what was going on with him.

You decided to let go for the day, maybe he was just really tired. Unfortunately, next morning, you woke up to an empty bed, even an empty house. He simply texted you that he had to go to set really early this morning, and that he will probably be home late too. There was definitely something going on. Even during the night, he didn’t stay close to you as he usually does.

That’s when you remembered. His computer. He closed it very quickly and tried to put it away from you as soon as you got home. You need to find it. You went to the living room where you last saw it, nothing, there was only yours. You checked all the drawers in the bedroom, nothing. He wouldn’t have taken it with him, he never takes his computer on set with him. You checked all the places in the house, even in the bathroom.

“Come on!” You yelled, getting very upset. You had some emails to check on your own computer, so you grabbed yours that was in the living room. When you opened it, there was a page open. It was an article about you. “What the hell?”

You didn’t remember looking at anything on internet, but it was possible you did. When you opened your mail, you realized that it wasn’t your computer, it was Pedro’s. Ironically, you both have the same computer, and he must have grabbed yours instead of his. You went back to the article, and read it. You felt awful. How could people say that about him? There is so much more about him, and about your relationship. They don’t know anything. More upset than before, you closed the computer, grabbed your keys and left the house.

A few hours later, you arrived on the set where Pedro was filming these days. After being guided by an assistant, you arrived to the latest room where they were filming. You saw Pedro on his phone, sitting in his chair, focused. He was alone, except from a few people re arranging the set.

“Pedro” you called him, as you were behind him. He got a little bit scared, and quickly turned around.

“Y/n? What are you doing here so late?”

“Well, you texted that you were finishing late, so I thought you might not have time to eat, so.. I grabbed your favorite food” you said, showing the big brown bag you were holding in your right hand. You could tell that he was nervous. “Also, I wanted to talk to you” he simply looked at you and nodded.

“Let’s go to my trailer” you smiled and followed him.

After setting the food the table, Pedro started to eat, but you didn’t.

“You know I love you right?” You simply said out of the blue. His mouth full, Pedro looked at you, nodding. “I saw the article on your computer” you said grabbing some fries. Now he was confused, and frowned. “You took my computer instead of yours” you smiled. “I know we basically agreed not to be official, but it happened without our consent, but now it’s done, and.. and we knew what would happen.. we don’t have the choice to live with it, but we have the choice to ignore it” you stared at him “it’s not true what they say, and we both know it”

“I know” he said “but it’s just.. they say it so much, so many people are saying it, there has to be some truth in it if so many people think the same thing” you hold his hand

“No! They just don’t understand. That’s their job to say shit like that. It doesn’t mean it’s true. Don’t doubt yourself, us, we are real, this is true” you said putting your right hand on his cheek, still holding his left hand.

“I’m sorry”

“Don’t be. It’s completely normal. Remember how I felt when the article about me being pregnant got published a year ago? Just because I gained a little?” You both laughed “it’s not true. They only see two people with different ages loving each other and it’s scaring the shit out of them”

“I love you so much” you both smiled. Pedro started to lean in to kiss you. “I don’t know what I would do without you” he whispered right before kissing you passionately.

“And I love you more” you said after you parted “but now let’s eat because I’m starving and it’s getting cold” you both laughed and went back to your food.

You finished eating, and stayed with Pedro as he finished filming what he had to for the day, and got home with him. You both slept better, cuddled up, like you usually do.

[eightyonekilograms]

The parallels between finance and various engineering disciplines are always fascinating to me. It's uncanny the degree to which you can model finance as a complex distributed system like a power grid, including (or even especially) in how it breaks down. The breakdowns in finance are increasingly system accidents: the obvious failure modes are handled by regulations and safety systems, but the remaining ones are caused by emergent behavior in the interconnections between parts that often nobody even knew were connected. And a lot of times the safety systems for the well-understood failure cases make the unknown ones worse!

At dinner last night @keynes-fetlife-mutual's roommate brought up a point about the GFC that I hadn't realized: part of the problem was that various European banking regulations had created a huge demand for AAA-rated assets, via the perfectly understandable public demand that things like pension funds and only make extremely safe bets so retirees don't suddenly lose all their money. But there are only so many AAA assets around! And the vacuum ended up getting filled by sketchy American mortgages that were laundered through securitization and money markets until nobody realized what they were anymore. But to be clear: if American mortgages hadn't filled this demand for AAA assets beyond the realistic supply, something else would have, and would've blown up a different way.

To this I added the point that the in, which is what we saw when Truss became PM: to make a long story short, the chaos occurred in pension funds when the BOE raised rates and looked poised to raise them a lot more, and suddenly these funds were out of cash. Which is really counterintuitive! Pension funds should benefit when rates go up. But these funds had hedged themselves so much against interest rate downside risk that when rates when up, even though their future asset value was excellent in the long run, in the here-and-now they had no money. Again: safety systems causing problems. It's similar to that issue last year when commodities prices went way up, and refiners/miners of some metal, (maybe aluminum, I can't remember or find the link) were screwed because they had again hedged against downside risk and now a bunch of banks were making margin calls on them. This all turned out to be fine, I assume because capital markets gave them bridge funding on the promise that "hey, we benefit from these high prices, we're good for it", but you could imagine a scenario where this price spike occurred during a liquidity crisis where there was no easy capital available, and then these producers would've been strangled to death by their own safety nets.

I don't know much of the details, but there's an emerging discipline of study about the extent to which safety systems against small-scale accidentally inherently make large-scale ones more likely because it increases the risk of cascading failure. This is something that keeps cloud computing operators up at night, since disks and NICs and power supplies die constantly and you have to make that invisible to consumers, but these failover mechanisms are very likely to take down entire datacenters if they just plow ahead with whatever they're doing. It's wild to me that finance faces the exact same dilemma.

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers #323: The Crossing Line Part 5: ONE WORLD'S NOT ENOUGH FOR ALL OF US

September, 1990

GROUND ZERO! Guest starring ALPHA FLIGHT

Aw geez.

Alpha Flight is looking pretty chipper considering Canada is exploding behind them.

Plus, the Avengers have mutated into giant disembodied heads.

I guess the People's Protectorate don't get to be giant disembodied heads.

Last time in Avengers:

THE AVENGERS NUKED CANADA.

Well, more specifically, Peace Corpse nuked Canada by setting up a fail-safe that went off when the Avengers punched the two ringleaders in the face and disconnecting them from the missiles.

But Captain America has been bungling this entire The Crossing Line incident. Spent more time fighting their Russian counterparts instead of the terrorists who hijacked a nuclear submarine. And then he played hardball during a hostage crisis and got Stingray shot in the head. And then the thing with the failsafe.

Dammit, Cap, you got Canada nuked!

So... What's the book about now? Giant disembodied atomic heads?

Okay. So.

The Avengers didn't get blown up.

Can you imagine?

Captain America, Red Guardian, Vision, Vostok, and Peace Corpse minus the two main dudes are floating in a mysterious, speckled void. The cheetah dimension, perhaps.

Weirdly, Vostok's sensors read the cheetah as biologically active.

That's unsettling.

Fantasma telepathically contacts Cap and reveals that she, Sersi, and a whole bunch of civilians are in a fire dimension. Sersi is having to strain her powers to not only shield the group from the fire but also to keep the temperature within her shield bearable.

Because. Heat. It goes to where there's less of it.

Also, Sersi and Fantasma are the only woman of their respective groups and they've been forced together by circumstance and so they've decided to spend the time being catty.

Weird flex, writer Fabian Nicieza.

When Sersi tells Fantasma to ask Cap, telepathically, whether there's any way he can get them out of the fire dimension:

Fantasma: "Calm yourself, Eternal!"

Sersi: "Don't talk to me that way, you haggling witch!"

These two have barely contributed to the plot and now this.

Fantasma manages to contact Shaman who knows what's going on because he fucking did it. He did the thing that's going on.

When Cap et al fucked up so bad that they nuked Canada, Shaman turned his mystic pouch inside-out.

And apparently his mystic pouch was just packed with dimensional planes.

Then he pulled the pouch inside-inside-out, slurping up all those dimensional planes and also the explosion and also a chunk of Canada.

He's just kind of floating over a hole where the town was.

Annnnd. He can't... quite... just put everything back. So easily.

He needs the peeps inside to draw the various dimensional planes together, for reasons. And quickly because the mystic pouch warranty didn't cover this and it may just break.

What the hell is this plot? We started off with a airport paperback Cold War thriller with a hijacked submarine and now everyone got sucked into a pocket dimension.

Meanwhile, in the cheetah dimension, thin air starts shooting lasers at people.

Vision can just intangible but he notes that he still feels it passing through him, which means those lasers are packing a lot of power.

Cap tells Sersi and Fantasma that he doesn't know how long he can hold out in the cheetah, laser dimension.

Sersi: "Wouldn't the colloquial response be 'welcome to the club'...?"

Fantasma taps into Sersi's mighty psychic powers (even apologizing for how it's going to hurt like hell) to search the pouchaverse for more of the missing peeps.

And she finds another group, in a dimension of water.

Quasar and Crimson Dynamo float above the waves. Crimson Dynamo's armor is running low on power. And Quasar is having to focus on keeping the place lit up so they can see if anybody starts drowning.

Because, yeah, dimension of pure water doesn't have any light.

Puck, Perun, Diamond Lil, and Box sans his armor are treading water. Also, Tyrak and Orka are here. They're just vibing.

Fantasma projects an image of herself to team water world. She fills them in on the mystic pouch stuff and that they need to find a dimensional nexus that connects the planes.

Tyrak has some opinions to share about that.

Tyrak: "Why should we Atlanteans believe you? We can survive here -- we will wait until this nuclear squall clears and then we --" Perun: "Look around, you scale-infested oxygen-deprived lobotomzied minnow! The skies are black, the water purple! We are not on Earth! I will gladly fight you til eternity's end, Tyrak, but if you ever want to see your home again -- you land -- your loved ones -- we will have to work together! Do you understand cretin?!" Tyrak: "What must we do, woman?"

Hah, Perun is fun.

That string of insults was something else.

Meanwhile, in the energy dimension, Vostok finds the Box armor. He's able to use his synthezoid powers to interface with the systems to maneuver it.

Meanwhile, the rest of everyone, in the desert dimension.

Guardian is leading a huge pack of civilians, U-Man, and Stingray. And nobody is doing well. U-Man is dehydrating fast. STingray has a concussion, and the civilians are getting exhausted from marching through the desert.

Fantasma psychically projects to Guardian and tells her she needs to get everyone to the desert plane's nexus so she can reunite with everyone. And Guardian passes the info along to everyone else that they now have a concrete destination.

Guardian: "The Russian woman -- Fantasma -- she told me we have a chance of finding the others and a way out of here. But we have to go back. I'll fly ahead, you lead the others." Stingray: "The fact that I'm operating with a major concussion doesn't matter to you?' Guardian: "No. Just do it."

Ha.

But this has been such a trying day for Stingray. He didn't even want to be here and all he's gotten is grief.

Back in the energy dimension, Vostok turned the Box armor and maybe some other parts, I dunno, into a neat looking spaceship.

Team energy dimension is feeling worn down. They've been traveling in the direction Sersi told them for almost two days.

But when Sersi contacts them again, she tells them it's barely been five minutes on her side. So I guess time is flowing differently in different parts of the mystic pouch pocket dimension.

In order to get the energy and fire dimensions to touch, Shaman has to compress the energies of the pouch. "Both physically and spiritually."

Which means he's gotta scrunch the pouch in his hands.

Yes, really.

Sersi has to open a gap in her force field to let the tether from the Box Ship in. She warns everyone to get back but the nearest people still get badly burned by the heat that comes pouring in even that small hole.

As badly strained as Sersi is, she can't pull the ship through the vortex by herself. She asks Vision to help her.

Vision: "To do so would require I solidify my form. To solidify my form would subject me to the potentially terminal ravages of this environment." Sersi: "I know what I ask of you, Avenger! It is no less than we have all had to give!" Vision: "I am well aware of that and am acting accordingly."

And he do. He suffers from cosmetic damage to his synthetic skin but they get the ship through. Vostok warns that he won't be able to maintain this construct much longer in this heat but Sersi tells him that won't be a problem for much longer.

So the heroes get everyone aboard the Box Ship and next travel through the portal to the water dimension.

Vostok reshapes the ship again to be more of an open boat so they can fit more people on board.

It was an entire town that got slurped up in this mess.

As he helps people out of the water, Captain America marvels. But doesn't Captain Marvels.

Captain America: "Even Tyrak is helping! Our differences -- the angers we just recently had -- all put aside for the sake of survival."

I feel like that's the thesis of this story.

Peace Corpse thought the only way to bring the world together and Fix Everything was to spark another world war. Because Peace Corpse is dumb.

But by having three different superhero teams and a squad of named Atlanteans all having to work together to survive this madness, the comic says 'maybe there is a better way than Peace Corpse's stupid dumb idea.'

Although, uniting the world for survival is what leads to Ozymandias Watchmen and his giant octopus psychic alien scheme so bear in mind that no idea should be taken to extremes.

New problem though. Vostok is worn out, I guess, and Box pilot Madison Jeffries says he can't fly the Box armor with so many people.

He can turn the armor into a flying chair, a la Metron's Mobius chair, with a tether that everyone can hang onto.

But there will be no protection from the void.

Captain America: "Sersi -- can you provide a protective sheath -- similar to the field you recently erected -- around each of us individually?" Sersi: "And still telepathically scan for Guardian's nexus? I believe I can, Captain. Just be certain my funeral is a lavish one upon your return to Earth."

I love that Sersi sass.

'I'll die for your cause but my funeral better kick ass.'

And with new Eternal lore, she'd pop right back up so she could personally make sure they don't half-ass the event.

The amazing chair and its trailing tail finds Guardian's group and all the people in the bag of holding are finally together.

So Shaman can finally start letting some people out. But first he has to put some land for them to stand on. And then Guardian insists that the civilians be rescued first.

Oof.

That first group of civilians released is almost immediately skeletonized by the radiation. Including an on-panel child death, geez.

When Shaman slurped up the land, the people, and the nuclear explosion, that meant he slurped up the radiation too. And it's apparently not a problem inside the bag for whatever mystical reasons or because of different laws of physics.

But back on planet Earth, that much radiation kills people dead. And Shaman can't sift the radiation out from all the people. That'd be crazy.

Since that's not bonkers enough, a giant, naked and conjoined Prokvitch and Strokov show up, promising to help everyone return to Earth.

Captain America: "Why do you want to help us? If you return us to Earth now, not only will the radiation kill us, it will also poison the planet!" Combine: "Yes... we know."

I suspect that these dudes that planned to start a nuclear war on purpose are, in fact, assholes.

Also, remember when this was an airport paperback political thriller plot? Now we've got enormous conjoined dudes with cosmic swooshes covering their junk.

What a weird situation.

Anyway, more tales of The Avengers Crew

This time starring John Jameson, aka the former Man-Wolf.

Fun fact: Werewolf just means manwolf so Man-Wolf is just a werewolf. But specifically a space werewolf tied to a hunk of shiny mineral.

John is enjoying his life as the Avengers' pilot, enjoying an automated ride on the secret Avengers subway that goes from the Subbasement to the sub bay.

But when he arrives back at the Subbasement, he is shocked - horrified, even! - to find the moon-stone that turned him into the werewolf Man-Wolf!

So, obviously, he picks it up in disbelief and it jumps on his throat and turns him into Man-Wolf again. And he gets the zoomies.

Man-Wolf zooms through the Subbasement and mauls each member of the Avengers Support Crew that have gotten these little back-up stories.

Jarvis. Michael O'Brien. Fabian Stankowicz. Peggy Carter.

I thought that two of those people were already dead but whatever. They get to be mauled. We're not leaving people out.

And then a voice sounds out through the Subbasement, commanding the Avengers Crew.

Voice: "Arise, Jameson... Carter... O'Brien... Stankowicz... Jarvis... Scurry out of your cubby-holes... Come out to the courtyard! Ah! Like dutiful little zombies they come! Hear me, you five! Now that I've tricked you into revealing each darkest secrets... Your guiltiest fears, you are in my power forevermore!"

The back-up plot thickens. Next time, apparently, we'll learn what the heck is going on.

And next week, we're doing another Avengers post. So you don't even have to wait two weeks. Ain't that grand?

Follow @essential-avengers. Like and reblog. Comment. Hit the bell icon. Send me money. Pledge your fealty to the Wasp. All hail the glow cloud.

[myrskytuuli]

The promised military post.

Last weekend I spent three days doing a military introduction course for women hosted by the National Defence Training Association of Finland. The aim of the course was to give an overview of what military service is like in practice, for women who are on the fence whether to apply for military service or not. Since my biological clock is ticking, and I have a friend currently doing her military service, I got reccommended this course, which I galdly took in order to put to rest whether I should still quickly shoehorn myself to apply for the women’s voluntarily service or not, before I age out. 

(note that politically I still believe that mandatory service should be upheld for both sexes. Even after chosing not to serve my time, I do politically belive that someone should show up at my door and force me and every other woman in Finland to do some kind of crisis training service akin to what men have to do. but I digress.)

Great course. 100% reccomend MPK courses for anyone who is interested. Absolute kudos to everyone involved in creating and running it. Got exactly the experience I was looking for, and very amazing experiences and skills to go with it. They gave you a intense, full-packed, cut-through of the entire first three months (alokasaika) of the army experience. Obvioulsy in order to actually become somehow good at all of the things we went through, you would need the three months of repetition you get with actual service, but we compared notes with my friend and we did pretty much try everything you do during alokasaika.

Foot drills. making your bed. Taking care of your equipment. military rank and discpline. how to clean and oil your AR. Survival skills. Setting up a camp. how to handle a grenade. How to handle a shoulder-fired missile. How to use and set up military communication equipment. How to move with an AR. How to move in a formation. How to basically move as a soldier without fucking everything up. How to do basic emergency care on battle wounds. How to crawl to foxhole without killing yourself. How to spot an enemy from foliage. How to shield yourself from artillery. How to crawl without fucking over your AR. (How to create a parasocial relationship with your AR who is also your wife) how to shoot your AR without your shitty breathing technique getting in the way of your shot. etc. If that sounds like a lot- It’s because it was. we had a minute timetable and the only breaks were to eat and the couple minutes to drink water from time to time. The weather was abominable, so we were doing all of this while most of the time it was either raining sleet or hailing.

I really liked it. I love new experiences and this definitely was one. most of the skills were appliable to a life outside of military too. Outdoor survival, emergency care, how to use a compass, etc. not going to lie, learning how to use several different pretty gnarly weapons was cool too. Obviously I’m not good at any of them, but I have the knowhow in how to use an AR, grenade and an anti-tank missile. Not saying I would hit anything, but I know how to get all of them to work. And now I know intimately all the ways I’m very bad at shooting an automatic rifle. It’s hard you guys. (I don’t have the upper-body strenght)

Not a big fan of the army base life. Fuck foot drills, I understand why they exists, but fuck them. The same thing with all the army base decorum. as a teacher I genuinely do understand why you need to keep big masses on tight lines when moving from place A to B, but doing foot drills at 6 in the morning is just...well it just is. Doing foot drills 6 in the morning for a several months? Yeah, not sure if I have the headspace. Lot of things were annoying, and I would be lying if I said they weren’t a big reason for my decision to not apply. I can imagine that things that are kind of annoying now would become big fucking breaking points when you do them for a year. Like keeping count of all of your zippers being closed and your collar turned 24/7. But the real issue was that I simply do not have the physical stamina. If I wanted to keep up, I would have to not only keep up, but be better than the 18 year old men who I would be surrounded by and who would set the pace, and sister I was already struggling with the young girls. Yes, obviously, if I was very motivated I could spend the summer getting into shape before stepping into service next year, but I do not have the motivation to put mysefl through an extreme fitness glow up. And I’m still not sure if that would help at all with my knees, which were the real breaking point for me several times while crawling on the frozen ground.

So, I’ve given up the idea of doing a year of service. Maybe, if i was 7 years younger, I would have the fitness and the joints to do it. If I could travel back in time, I would probably tell myself who has just returned back from London to spend a year doing the service, because there are genuinely so many usefull skills you can pick up, but not now. I’m looking forwards to starting a new life in a new city with hopefully new academic ambitions and I don’t want to postpone those plans.

Anyway, super happy I went. Absolutely drained when I got out. (Three days non-stop physical activities, sleeping on frozen ground, doing those physical activities ankle-deep in snow, getting woken up for emergency drills when you sleep, you know, draining stuff) Had to really properly recover afterwards and caught a flu from being soaked most of the weekend, but you know, fun. I had fun. There is genuinely a part of me that is now very sad that I’m not doing the full service. the camradery of our group was amazing, and you do miss it. There were so many skills I would want to be actually good at. And you know. I wouldn’t want to be useless in a case of invasion. But for now, I have to be realistic and try to live my life and realise that I probably wouldn’t make it to the end of the service anyway, and even if I did, it would probably be like trade school where I would have been better off doing something else with the time anyway.

[ayellowcurtain]

If so, I would love to read something about Simon comforting and talking to Wille while he's having an anxiety crisis.

-

Simon decides to stare because Wilhelm doesn’t seem to care, his eyes glued to the old carpet beneath their feet. He looks like a completely different person from last year, with sharper edges, shorter hair, a more serious, fitted look overall. Wilhelm had a situation during class, and Simon wanted to come and check on him. The shortness of breath is gone and he looks ok, as okay as he can be after everything, Simon assumes. They haven’t really talked during the holidays or on the first few weeks back to school. The one time they tried to do it, it didn’t last long. It was right when Wilhelm came back, he was even more anxious than he is now, at least he was trying to talk that time, but then they quickly moved to talk about them, and there was little to no conversation after that. It was a one time mistake, and Simon is trying as hard as he can to keep the little friendship they’ve managed to keep after the leaked video and the “break up”.

It’s not hard to know why Wilhelm has been like this, but Simon just wants to shake him and tell him Eric is gone and there’s nothing he can do, unfortunately, and that he needs to get back to the surface. At this point, Simon is sure Wilhelm would do anything to bring Eric back if he had that choice.

For the past few weeks, he and Simon have been watching each other from a distance, Simon always feels Wilhelm’s lingering, sad eyes on him, only looking elsewhere when Simon looks back at him.

He’s been using a lot of Eric’s clothes since he came back, a few days later than anyone else. Felice was the one to explain the oversized clothes to him - and Sarah and a bunch of girls - and nobody is saying anything about it. Knowing a little bit of Wilhelm, Simon gets all the points he’s trying to send by doing that. Obviously, he misses his brother terribly, Simon can’t even start to imagine the amount of pain and grief he’s feeling. But by wearing Eric’s clothes, Wilhelm is also making his mom and August’s lives worse by reminding them of how terrible they were and how Eric would have felt about it. By the way that he’s acting, it’s clear he blames them for his brother’s death even though one thing has nothing to do with the other.

Simon scratches his temple, unsure if he should tell Wilhelm this, but it feels like Eric is who gets through Wilhelm's cold, sad skin.

“I’ve met Eric.”

Wilhelm looks up at him in a split second.

“What?”

“Yeah…” Simon coughs, squeezing his own hand, “Once, when he came to visit you.”

“Oh…” Wilhelm is not so interested again, looking back down, a little more aware that Simon is still sitting across from him, though.

“We talked briefly. He was very nice…”

Wilhelm nods his head, holding his own hand too, but it’s not enough so he crosses his arms, each hand squeezing his opposite elbow.

“He’s always been a lot nicer than me.” Wilhelm tries to fake a smile, struggling to swallow down his tears. Before Simon can get closer and give him some type of reassurance, Wilhelm changes the subject completely. “I miss you.”

Simon closes his mouth, pressing himself down to sit more firmly on the chair Wilhelm offered him.

“Wilhelm…” Wille rolls his eyes, his walls quickly build back up high and strong just because Simon calls him by his name.

“I know. Everything went to shit. I just thought you should know anyway. It’s not often that I can bluntly slip out my thoughts these days. Eric was helpful with that too.” He gets up with a gentle slap on his knees, walking to the door, but he leans with his back against it instead of opening it and inviting Simon to leave him alone.

He seems to stutter with his thoughts and decides against it, crossing his arms tightly against his chest.

“You can talk to me…” Simon tries, even though it’s clear they’re not there yet. Maybe they’ll never be because their break up wasn’t their choice, more like a compulsory decision made by others again and again. Simon is trying to move on, and Wilhelm will never be okay with it. So they’ll just have to live like this. Until Wilhelm is forced to get in a relationship with someone…the thought makes Simon get up too, adjusting his flannel, thinking about leaving…

“How is it? With the guy…what’s his name?” Wilhelm frowns, he’s curious, not even in his bad phase he can be petty.

Simon exhales a fake laugh, shaking his head, looking out the window.

“Everyone is talking about it.” Wilhelm insists.

“Yeah, because I’m now some type of…fucking social media star? That wasn’t my decision.”

“It wasn’t mine either.” Wilhelm stands away from the door, his whole body tense again, in survival mode even though they’re not fighting and he doesn’t need to stand his ground.

Simon has to take a deep breath in and out to not fall for the trap they’re setting for themselves. Wilhelm is clearly different, in pain, and Simon is just worried, wanting to be of any help since it seems like Wilhelm has closed everyone else off completely, giving them empty, ceremonial answers like the king-to-be that he is.

“How was Christmas?” Wilhelm asks after a few minutes of just them calming their nerves not to start a fight they don’t want to have. Simon still lingers everytime he remembers that day, on saying that to Wilhelm before the holidays. He couldn’t say anything else, but after spending months and months revisiting that exchange of words, Simon knows he sounded hurt and like that was their end…forever. He tries to think of what the right answer would be right now because he doesn’t want to be fake or misleading.

They’re very different. At the same time that Simon feels like he knows Wilhelm like the palms of his own hands, he looks at him and he’s a completely different person, with his whole life drawn for him, and Wilhelm is not thinking about changing that course as of right now, it seems. Simon remembers about that morning, about how warm it was under the sheets, with Wille’s shy but curious, warm hand caressing his ribs and belly, how the sunlight felt nice and warm even though it was probably freezing outside. Simon misses Wilhelm more than he’s willing to admit to anyone, even himself. But sometimes it physically hurts.

“Didn’t even get a simple sandwich for breakfast. I’ve seen better days.” He gets up too, knowing they’re ready to walk on that thin line that made them end up in bed last time they talked weeks ago so it’s better to leave before that happens again. Wilhelm steps aside like opposite magnets. They know they should keep a distance from each other if they’re trying to keep this conversation going.

“Will you let your hair grow out again?” Simon twirls on his heels when he reaches the door, looking at Wilhelm again, seeing a glimpse of the old, shy and playful Wille back, caught back by his question.

“You don’t like it short?”

Simon shrugs because apparently Wilhelm will always be the most beautiful man he’s ever put his eyes on.

“I like it anyway. But longer fits you better.”

When he opens the door, the same pale hand, with long, curious fingers appears on the painted wood, gently closing it back, aware that there are two bodyguards outside.

“Are you really dating?” He whispers so the people outside can’t hear, and Simon has to force his eyes to stop staring at his lips, looking into his soft, loving eyes instead.

“No. But I will, eventually. And you will too and we should prepare ourselves for when that day comes.”

Wilhelm looks down and steps back like he’s giving Simon space to leave or offering him an end to them, again and again and Simon wishes it was that easy.

“It’ll make him pay for what he did, Simon.”

Simon looks at him, wanting to kiss his whole face to push all this anger and pain away from Wilhelm in hopes it’ll heal him back completely.

“You don’t have to and you know I don’t want you to. It’s done, there’s no going back.” Simon bites the inside of his cheek, squeezing the door knob with his fingers, forcing himself to go to his room already. “Take care of yourself? Please?”

He can see Wilhelm’s jawline getting tense as he nods his head, turning back to face his window even though Simon knows he’s about to cry and fall apart once he’s alone. The three words dance in his tongue again and he leaves before he can say them.

[crabussy]

jon sims ? for the ask game :0

– Overall opinion of them oh he is SO. I want to put him through the horrors but his eyes are so big and wet and wobbly like a jumping spider's so I feel too guilty to. I liked him so much that my brain went "ok. this thing is mine now" and now we have a jon headmate. help me

– Gender/sexuality headcanons the eye perceived his gender a bit too hard and obliterated it. now he is No Gender All Archivist. archivegender. when you ARE the archive. (he/him nonbinary with a pinch of they/theminess)

– Favorite moment in canon SO MANY. I love it when he tells infuriating jokes during the eyepocalypse (eye spy..... LITERALLY EVERYTHING.) I also fucking love it when he allows himself to drop the professional facade and be vulnerable, especially with a certain mahhtin.

– Favorite moment in a fanwork timetravel fic where after everything's settled, future jon turns up to the archives wearing a floral skirt and past jon malfunctions for ages trying to comprehend what just happened. gender crisis ACTIVATE! BITCH!!!!!!

– Favorite line, in canon or otherwise again SO many but it's gotta be every single time he sighs. he is SO TIRED. SO TIRED DO YOU HEAR ME. you could get me to listen to a recording of 1000 random people sighing and I'd be able to pick out a jarchivist sigh instantly. iconic

– Characters I love seeing them interact with MARTIN OBVIOUSLY. I also love his dynamic with daisy and also georgie <333

– Last thing before sleeping headcanons this guy analyses literature for fun. he will buy books instead of getting them from the library so that he can ANNOTATE THEM and MAKE NOTES. and he does this before sleeping because he is INSANE.

– Sleeping habits headcanons he has hilariously patterned pyjamas. used to just be stripes but after he stopped being a stuck up academic and started being a freaky little academic he started wearing the following: - wizard patterned pyjamas - monster patterned pyjamas - eye patterned pyjamas (it's only natural) - etc. He also snores. snork mimimi and so on and so forth. poor martin imagine sharing a bed with someone who SNORES and SLEEPS WITH THEIR EYES OPEN and SLEEP TALKS (I also hc that he sleep talks. he cannot shut up or he will die)

– First thing after waking up headcanons he takes advantage of his freaky sleeping habits to stare at martin without martin noticing. homosexual behaviour

– Favorite locations headcanon he LOVES hikes. he's a super fast walker so likes to hike alone, amongst coniferous forests and country trails. He teases martin for liking retro stuff sure but we all know this guy loooves vintage shit. antique stores are his favourite thing ever

[mishasminions]

The Last Time I’ll Write a Long Post About Supernatural (15x18-15x20)

15 YEARS OF WATCHING THIS SHOW. 11 YEARS OF RUNNING A BLOG ABOUT IT. IT’S BEEN QUITE A RIDE.

[15x20 Speculation + evidence at the bottom]

First off, I just wanna come clean and say, after all these years, I still think they should’ve ended at Season 5.

If you’re going to come at me with “Then why’d you stick around to watch it if you didn’t like it?”, your question is immature, and the answer is simple: I just want to know what happens next (I also love the main characters and their actors too). You can watch a show and still think it’s shit.

Call me a clown, but despite all the disappointment and trust issues that this show has given me, I would still look forward to the day where it might just turn itself around and bring back the quality it once had, or realize the potential of each story it was trying to tell, or at the very least, do justice by my favorite ship.

Never happened.

They’ve had a few good episodes here and there. I can’t imagine the SPN Universe without The Man Who Would Be King, The French Mistake, and Scoobynatural. Seasons 6-10 were enjoyable at times. I blocked out most of 7 & 11-15. 

If you’ve been following this blog since its heydays in 2010-2014, you’d know I’d try my best to defend Destiel and this show’s decisions regarding it no matter what.

Because you know what, as a CONCEPT, this show is good. If you take a look at all the worlds its storylines have birthed in fanfiction/fanworks, you’d see how much Supernatural has wasted its own story arcs. The writing got shittier as each season progressed, and they’ve obviously given up in production as well because the quality in the execution has noticeably gone down too, but if you take a step back and take a look at the bigger picture, you’ll see that this show still tries to make sense of itself.

[If you’re still following this post, please bear with me, I know this is long, but I just want you to understand how jaded and pessimistic I am with regards to this show, so maybe you can buy into whatever hopeful thing I’m about to say later on.]

SO LET’S TALK ABOUT DESTIEL

Never in my wildest dreams did I think that they would give us Castiel’s “I love you” speech. To the point where, if I weren’t so desperate for it, I would argue that it was completely out of character for him to word vomit the way he did (but I’m not gonna diss on that right now because I’ll take what I can get).

I’ve valued every meaningful and obscure exchange that Dean and Cas have had in the earlier seasons, and I was willing to accept their relationship as just that--undefined, without any clear boundaries as to what they really are. And I think that was beautiful on its own.

But now, they’ve chosen to define it.

After they’ve driven every possible wedge between Dean and Castiel in seasons 11-15, to try to explain away their feelings as something they offer to a collective.

Dean can’t mourn and pray for JUST Cas, he has to mourn and pray for EVERYBODY--even Crowley, even some chick he just met, because god forbid he cries about just the guy who has given up everything for him--that would be “too homo”.

They’ve even set Cas on a path to abrupt fatherhood just so he can care about something other than Dean. Make it seem as if Dean wasn’t his purpose through and through.

And after all these years of this stupid show trying to deny it, they choose to acknowledge it at the worst possible circumstance, at a time where they’ve been so far apart, that it seems so foreign for them to suddenly come together.

But here we are. And they’ve chosen to tell us.

Chosen to tell us that everything that Castiel has done leading up to his death, he has done it because he was IN LOVE WITH DEAN WINCHESTER.

Chosen to tell us that the ONE THING THAT WOULD MAKE CAS HAPPY IS DEAN WINCHESTER.

Chosen to tell us that BEING WITH DEAN WINCHESTER is something that CAS WANTS BUT KNOWS HE CAN’T HAVE.

And they’ve also chosen to tell us nothing about how Dean feels.

Sure, finding out your angel made a deal, the stipulations of said deal, his newfound happiness philosophy, his long-winded monologue of why he loves you and why you’re worthy of his love, and to top it all off he tells you that being in love with you is enough to make him happy while he subtly hints that he’s always wanted to be WITH you romantically, was a lot to process in the 5 minutes after you’ve just had an existential crisis.

It’s whatever, right? Let’s culminate 11 years worth of tension and feelings in 5 minutes. Let’s waste the entire episode with cringey expository dialogue, and irrelevant sequences. The whole season was a waste anyway.

You know what Supernatural? FUCK YOU FOR THAT. They deserved better. WE deserve better.

And I would love nothing more than to hurl every possible insult your way,

But for the last time, I’m going to HOPE that you’re finally going to try to make it better for the fans that stuck by you all these years.

No more baiting new viewers, no more placating casual viewers, no more excuses. 15 years. Bring it home for the people who have actually been around.

SO HERE’S HOW I THINK 15x20 IS GONNA GO

There’s two ways this series is gonna end. Horribly or Spectacularly.

First let’s all take into consideration what Andrew Dabb says about it:

So, let’s start with

ENDING HORRIBLY

In this scenario, Misha is telling the truth about his last day of filming being 15x18. His “camping trip” during the last few days of filming 15x20, was actually a camping trip. He doesn’t go to Vancouver to shoot.

Jensen wasn’t “being careful” during the zoom interviews that it was just him and Jared quarantining for the shoot, it really was just him and Jared (althought most of these were done pre 15x19) Supernatural isn’t smart enough to do misleading PR, and they’re once again oblivious to the potential of their own story.

Misha hasn’t posted a “Goodbye Castiel” tweet because he’s probably saving it for last episode or he forgot because it was overshadowed by the Destiel trend that night.

So what we get is:

Sam and Dean are on the road again, up against the monster of the week. Only their world no longer has actual Supernatural beings anymore, so the monsters they’re fighting are humans.

Humans end up killing the Winchesters (despite having gone up against literally every powerful being imaginable INCLUDING God himself). Dean and Sam end up in heaven and relive their greatest hits.

Meanwhile, Castiel rots in The Empty because he died after realizing that he was happy and gay. Jack doesn’t bother rescuing him—his surrogate dad, the guy who made this specific deal to spare him—even though it was so easy for him get Cas in and out of The Empty when he had a fraction of the power that he has now.

Dean never speaks of Castiel’s confession because despite all the hints of a profound bond in the earlier seasons, and the fact that Dean has never cared for anyone (who isn’t his actual brother) as immensely as he does Cas, Supernatural just can’t have its main macho character be “suddenly bisexual” because that would hurt the male ego or some shit.

His heaven would probably be living happily ever after with his family. “Family” meaning Mary and John Winchester--two of the shittiest parents ever (but they’re not going to include them in this episode like they were supposed to because of Covid) and Sam.

Sam also gets a dog. As usual.

I wouldn’t put it past Supernatural to do this. After everything they’ve pulled, this would be right up their alley. I actually expect this ending.

Anyway, onto the next possible ending

ENDING SPECTACULARLY

In this scenario, Supernatural tries to stick the landing, and Jensen’s whole “It didn’t sit well with me at first, but then I took a step back after talking to Kripke, and realized that I had to view it from an audience perspective, I am now really excited about it” (DC Con 2019) anecdote about his thoughts on the final episodes, were actually about Dean potentially ending up with Cas. (Which would totally make sense because Jensen at first didn’t see Dean as anything but hetero, but as of late, he has been throwing in Destiel jokes of his own, so he seems to have warmed up to the idea)

Backed with Misha’s tidbit (DLConline 2020) that he and Jensen had conversations about Destiel, and that they wouldn’t have gone through with it if Jensen wasn’t onboard with it, but Jensen didn’t push back at all. (Why would they need to check with Jensen if it was just Cas going all in?)

Robert Berens (writer of 15x18) also wrote the script at the beginning of Season 15, but made Misha privy to the concept a year prior (Season 14), so they went into this season knowing about Destiel going canon.

This one’s a reach, but this scenario also supposes that Misha was lying about his whereabouts during the filming of the final episode, and him saying that 15x18 was his last episode is part of the diversion to avoid taking away from the weight of Castiel’s death.

And that Supernatural is actually self-aware of its own material (similar to how they have wrapped things up in the past—lots of expository dialogue, poor execution, but fulfills the story arc)

Since Season 15 is basically a Meta Season (Chuck/God as a writer, pretentiously calling out how he created the worlds, its characters, and basically invalidating the past 14 seasons), and 15x19 is supposedly the finale for Season 15, written by two of the worst Supernatural writers, Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Leming (Bob Singer’s wife), then we can assume that 15x19 is where the shitty writers kill themselves--as Chuck, of course.

So we get a badly written episode that produces a bad ending, or as Becky put it, “All action, and no Cas”

So we get the bad writers season ending at 15x19.

And 15x20 is where Sam and Dean write their own stories, and where the cast had a hand in pitching ideas for it.

Dabb has mentioned that 15x20 (Act Two) is a SERIES finale, where they try to resolve the characters’ journeys.

Because as everyone has acknowledged, Supernatural isn’t about the story, it’s about the characters.

So here’s what we can get out of it:

With no more Supernatural beings left to fight, Sam and Dean are in a stalemate. They’ve resigned themselves to fighting to the bitter end, but the “end” has passed, and they’re still standing.

So they try to figure out who they are now, and what they want out of the life they still have.

Sam still wants a normal apple pie life. Before Dean dragged him out of college to go hunting with him, he had a whole life planned out for him. Become a lawyer, settle down with a nice girl, and get a dog. He gave all that up because they had work to do, but now the work is finished, he can finally go back to wanting that for himself again.

Dean finally realizes his self-worth after Cas saves him again. His prayer to Cas in purgatory may have helped him come to terms with his anger, but the whole “you’ve done everything you did for love” speech finally put him in his place, and he learns not to hate himself anymore.

But of course, he cannot fully reconcile with himself if he doesn’t get Cas back, and tell him how he feels.

Because Dean actually wants something for himself this time. Something he knows he can finally have if he can just salvage it.

So maybe this time around, with the help of Jack (off-screen), Dean saves Cas. Grips him tight and raises him from perdition.

They bypass The Empty deal by turning Cas human, and he lives the rest of his days with Dean.

Dean and Cas know they deserve to be saved, and they know that they deserve to be happy.

(Wishful thinking, maybe they kiss a little)

Anyway...

I’m just saying, there’s NO WAY that they’d have Cas go through that whole rushed speech, if they weren’t going to do anything about it later on.

But again, after 10 years of disappointment, I wouldn’t put it past Supernatural to pat themselves on the back and say, “Okay, we sort of gave them what they wanted. We’re good now”

If that’s the case, Supernatural, I’m sorry I wasted my time on you.

Here’s to hoping 🤡

[yeetlegay]

I respect and support your TW request and therefore: tw alcohol/drinking

Watching ep13 the moment I came back from party was certainly a decision. Was it good decision? Yes, tumblr didn't have time to spoil things for me. Was it bad decision? Yes, I forgot how taking shots and drinking redbull vodka turnes me into emotional mess and therefore I had the urge to cry constantly throughout the episode.

Sad meow-meow Vegas (affectionate) shot me right through the heart. Poor child Pete and his identity crisis and complete dissociation from humanity was a knife through my lungs. Pete knocking out our meow-meow (again, affectionate) and then desparately trying to escape knocked me out. And Pete deciding to lie to Porsche oh god… Our sweet child has been through a lot. The scenes in which we see them missing each other and then having brief reunite at the back of Yok's bandaged my wounds and made me feel all emotions known to human kind. I felt like I went through 25 divorces in span of 10 minutes. And finally, Vegas and Porsche (ah yes I got what I wanted during the Tawan era, I know it's not fully my deranged ship that sank before it sailed, but I am more than satisfied to see them work together and Porsche being like allow me to slap some sense in you) running away on the bike and Kinn and Pete running after them just made me so sad… KP are in a messy place because Porsche is going through a lot and VP are in a messy place as well because their relationship is scandalous because of minor/major family things and on top of that they are both trying to figure themselves out as individuals and as a couple, accept that what they feel is valid and solve childhood trauma at the same time. I just want to pat all of their heads and tell them it's going to be okay, they'll figure it all out.

Lestat will now proceed to rest in a dark coffin until ep14.

REDBULL VODKA??? GWORL. I had to go to a party last night and act like a human being for like 5 hours straight so I feel your pain DEEPLY.

I’m not gonna lie, the Vegas and Porsche scenes kinda hit??? I like them as bitchy reluctant allies so much (although I still think Porsche deserves to know what Vegas did in ep 4 - maybe Vegas will admit it and apologize in the finale when they’re on their little murder mystery adventure?). I can imagine post-canon when VegasPete are an item and everyone comes to the main house for scrabble night or smth and Porsche and Vegas just bitch at each other the whole night while Kinn and Pete roll their eyes.

Everybody is just going through everything at once Lestat, I wanna give all of them a bear hug (or a head pat for Pete since he’s sore from the torture and all :/)

[pracstyles]

Love is only for the brave

Imagine: After the irrelevant chaos held by Candace Owens of him wearing the dress, Y/N helps him and proves that you have to be brave for each other when you are in love.

A/N - It's an old topic to discuss about. The whole thing is outdated now to talk about but I wrote this months ago but never finished it. Also, even if the whole Candace Owens thing is not there, the toxic masculinity and misinterpretation on feminism is still there which I would like to highlight in this imagine. Hope you enjoy!

Warning - lots of crying, hate and toxic comments, insecure!harry

___

The door clicks after her as she enters the apartment, her one hand carrying the entire bag of papers, a pile full of script she decided to bring back home to read, too lazy to do it on the set. Other than that, she was missing her boyfriend. The moment her watch showed nine o'clock, indicating she was done with her day at the set, she had rushed out of the set they've been working on.

The third reason being that she quite remember arguing with Harry about the positions she always wants to have sex in. While she wants to do it, Harry is somewhat reluctant about her getting hurt. So, during her lunch break, she'd make sure to question every query through the internet. Luckily enough, there were several opinions about it and she found out the conclusion.

“Baby, I am home!” She shouts happily through the exhaustion. A glimmer of smirk comes on the side of her lip as she shouts again in an amusing tone. “With answers!”

In other, usual days, Harry Styles would never dare to keep quiet when he hears his girl’s voice. Today, Y/N feels something wrong.

The whole place is cascading with silence. For a second she thinks he has gone out. The thought instantly worries her as to why hasn't he texted earlier to tell her that he would be gone out late. She hastily put her bags on the side table beside the entrance and walks in, her eyebrows furrowed together. Where is he?

Passing the hallway attaching the living area and their shared bedroom, she reaches in front of the door, almost lifting her hand to twist the knob when her ears pick on a wet throaty sob, followed by another sound of cry.

No doubt, the other side of the door is Harry. She even can feel the pain in his cry, he’s hurt, badly. She senses outrage as her mind dampens with anxiety not knowing who dares to distress him. The last time she had heard this much pain through his voice was when his stepdad passed away. That time she was in no place to blame anyone and prefer to give Harry every amount of care. But now, the thought of him undergoing the same squirms resentment inside her.

She didn't waste any time to open the door, the only barrier coming between them. Her heart almost tugs into half seeing the love of her life, sitting on the carpet near the bed, his head hidden between his palms. He let out another cry and then silences himself with quiet sniffles.

“H.” His uptight shoulders loosen instantly when he hears her voice.

His arms fall down that was initially wrapped around his body protectively and he automatically speaks. "They are talking stuff about me." Harry murmurs.

"Baby, what are you talking about?" Y/N sits down beside her boyfriend who sniffles, shaking his head while looking down at his lap. She bits her lips clearly not okay how shaky he looks. "Harry, tell me what stuff?"

Harry breathes and stifling a sob he spills. "They didn't like the dress that I wore."

Normally she is the one crying over everything and nothing, every crisis that ever happened to her, Harry's arms always had found her body to wrap, to soak in every sadness from her but now she is the one required to give comfort. Shuffling herself more closer to him, Y/N reaches for him and strokes her thumb on his tear-stained cheek. "You went online?"

With a nod, Harry responds to her. He feels guilty. He was strictly told not to go on social media the moment the photo shoot would be out for the world held by vogue. His manager, PR team, and even his mom asked him to keep his distance as the shoot was controversial enough to affect his career. So, Y/N made him stay away from all the comments being passed for a week. Until she chose to go to work this morning compelling Harry to check Twitter.

Seems like all hell broke loose after that.

"Oh, Harry." Y/N sighs, slumping her shoulders. Harry lays his head swiftly on her shoulder as her fingers started combing his soft curls. They both stay cuddled into each other arms, sitting on the floor of their bedroom.

"There is this woman." Harry begins slowly. "Candace Owens. She criticized the shit out of me." He chuckles softly.

Holding him, she pulls him apart to focus her eyes on him. "Who is she?"

"I don't know much about her but got to know she is an author and activist."

"That's why I told you not to open those apps for few days, didn't I?"

"Curiosity got the best of me, I guess." He whispers. Rubbing his cheeks with the back of his palms, he glances at her taking a long breath. "What should I do?"

"Have you talked to Jeff about this?"

"He said to ignore these comments."

Licking her lips, she asks, tilting her head in familiarity. "Well, can you ignore them?"

Harry's eyes again teared up. "I think I can't."

"Show me," Y/N says. Kissing his forehead, she smiles sadly at him. "If you can't ignore then share it with me. Show me what she had said."

He nods at her words. He feels fortunate to have her. With a lot going on, he always knows he will have Y/N along to support him. At last, she is one of his biggest supporters.

Grabbing his phone from the nightstand, he hesitantly passes it to his girlfriend who gives him a reassuring glance before unlocking his phone to see the first thing that pops on the screen; the twitter statement made by Candice Owens. Harry must have put down the phone after reading this, feeling low enough which made him cry.

"There is no society that can survive without strong men. The East knows this. In the west, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. It is an outright attack."

"Clothes don't define how strong a man is. Clothes simply shouldn't define your gender." While she is nodding reading the words, she scrolls down to see the opposite.

"It screams gay to me. What is happening to this world? Men trying to be women? Go out and work. Leave this to women."

It is then when one reply catches her attention. It says. "Wait so Y/N let her boyfriend wears the gown and had no problem with it? Dude, she ain't getting it on the bed then."

Following comments are either of people supporting Harry or standing Candice's statement about how he has influenced the wrong description of masculinity. Disgust crawls upon her, watching the audacity of this woman not only circulating false reality but changing the whole meaning of feminism and masculinity.

"Ugh! What the fuck?" Y/N finally groans, looking up after skimming through the replies under the tweet. Harry sure had predicted an outburst, a hug to comfort but not her walking on him. He stares as she tosses his phone on the bed angrily and dashes out of the room. He doesn't move though, thinking Y/N has left him.

While Harry thinks worst out of the situation, Y/N is fuming. She is seeing red. Digging her phone from her bag, she calls her manager instantly.

"Hello?"

"I am posting about Harry on my social media." It isn't her telling the manager but instead making her statement clear.

"Didn't you two determined to keep your relationship private?" Her manager's voice comes in an alerting tone.

"Not after what people is saying about Harry online."

Of course, her manager knows it. Hell, everyone working in the movie with Y/N is dreading to ask her how she feels about her boyfriend wearing a dress but they decided on the contrary.

"Be careful, Y/N. You know you shouldn't be getting into any feud when we are so close to finishing the movie. It can damage the ratings once it get released." Her manager sighs on the other side. "I'm just saying you have to be careful with your words. Protect your boyfriend but don't forget about your reputation."

"I will try to be as polite as I can. Good night." With the last farewell words, Y/N's mind knows what to do next. It has to be done. Not for Harry but to clear the stigma.

---

The next morning, Harry wakes up with red swollen eyes, hair scrambled with knots, and throat aching from the crying the previous night. But the other thing that comes to his attention is him resting on the bed when he clearly remembers falling asleep on the floor.

That means only one thing. Y/N had helped him to bed. That means one more thing. She is still here. His heart is beating fast. He is unsure whether she now thinks of him as a joke like others.

Taking a deep breath, he walks over to the bathroom and decided to clean himself up good to face the consequences. He's afraid to do so but as long he wishes Y/N to be his side, he can handle anything. He relatively recalls the day, when he came home to her, a contract in one hand telling her about how he got into a Vogue photoshoot. According to him, this was something big for not only him but for the world to face as he would be dressing up in a gown. Not to forgot he was terrified of her reaction too, of what she'd think. His face went priceless when she smiled at him, later dedicating the whole night for the big opportunity landed on him.

"You don't think of me as some mad man wearing dress at all?" Was his trembling words when she had stepped in the kitchen with wine glasses.

"You're only a mad man in bed, baby. In a positive way, of course." Was her answer with a shrug and a proud smile.

So, how can he think of her not supporting him now?

Harry carelessly gets out of the shower, rushing to wear his clothes as he wants to check on her. He is convinced Y/N couldn't just stop supporting him.

When he strolls out of the bedroom, he then smells a delicious aroma filling the whole hallway of their apartment. A smile tugs on his lips, surprisingly a cheerful one that had gotten away since the night.

He finally finds her. Swaying her hips, she is mixing something in a pan as she cooks something while dancing to whatever the radio's been playing.

"Y/N." That makes her turn around and Harry sighs in relief seeing his love happy and not what he was imagining earlier.

"Baby, good morning to you too." She grins radiantly at him.

"I am sorry for yesterday." The words came out faster Y/N could blink. She creases her eyebrows together, very confused as to why he is apologizing to her.

"Why are you sorry?"

"For crying like a baby yesterday. You came home tired and then you had to babysit me." Y/N sure felt her chest tightens at his words. Does he thinks she feels obliged to take care of the person she is in love with?

"It wasn't me babysitting you, H. You needed comfort yesterday. You've done the same for me too, right?" When Harry nods, she continued. "None was your fault, Harry. You did something which you felt comfortable doing. If few people don't seem to appreciate this then it's on them."

"You don't think of me as a fool?"

"Why will I think of you as a fool, baby?" Y/N walks near him.

"Me wearing dresses, painting nails, and wearing jewelry...you never thought of it as extra?"

She shakes her head and then looks straight into his eyes. "What do you think of yourself when you wear these things? Normal or extra?" She asks calmly.

"Normal."

"And how long it's been since we are together?"

"Three years." His answer comes out fast.

She sighs, glowing. "Yes, three years. So, why the fuck will I feel your dressing sense extra when I never once complained about it."

Silence quoting in the kitchen, she snickers. He watches her while she chuckles at his dumbfounded reaction, returning to her work. His head starts bobbing in understanding. The words of his girlfriend explored his mind further. If someone close to you gets affected by your real normal self then the person is not your loved one.

His mom always loves him, so does his sister and his friends. Y/N loves him.

He smiles to himself. She truly loves him. She would never leave him alone.

Suddenly his phone rings breaking him out of his thoughts. Seeing how gracefully Y/N dances on the song currently playing on the radio he quickly walks out of the kitchen to attend the call. Turns out that the call is from Jeff.

He quickly picks up, thinking what provoked his manager to call him this early in the morning.

"You know you should marry Y/N right now or I'm fretting someone else will."

"What the fuck, Jeff? What are you talking about?" He questions.

"Just open insta and Twitter to find out, mate." With that Jeff quickly ends the call, leaving Harry to do the task. He sits on the couch, glancing over Y/N who is cooking breakfast for them.

Sighing to him, he gathers enough courage as he doesn't want another episode happening like yesterday night, he taps the Instagram icon.

He is left bewildered, as he stares at the photo. With the same rush of excitement, he quickly exits the app, opening twitter where his face gives the same reaction.

His eyes blink back few happy tears. He makes a run towards Y/N and carefully tugs her body around his arms. She squeals at the immediate weight lift and laughs, throwing her head back.

"Something happened?"

"Yes." He simply replies. Plopping her down, he is quick to taste her lips. He grabs her jaw and pulls her impossibly close enough, relishing her body heat and fragrance.

"Seems like something good happened." She hums, chuckling as she pulls apart.

"You, baby. You happened and it is more than good."

And yes, Jeff's warning of marrying Y/N stays in Harry's mind. He was in rush the next day to find a ring, a perfect fit for his lovie. In their love, she is the brave one and he is glad she is his.

[starsstruck]

strange phenomena; part one.

what happens when we meet again? you and harry have barely seen each other in almost a year. two ex-lovers find themselves in the same snowy town by strange chance, both looking for something they can’t seem to figure out. cafe run-ins, old love letters, and bittersweet nostalgia. 

pairing: harry x reader warnings: language, slight mention of sexual content words: 13.3k

series masterlist

an: thank you for being patient with me. this is just a little story from my little heart shaped brain. thank you to @sunflowers-styles​ for beta-ing and being supportive and the overall best 💌 i hope everyone enjoys and please do let me know what you think ! happy reading xoxo 💌

There was something unsettling about not having a schedule.

Your entire life, you had been told that you weren't supposed to  quit a job without having another one already lined up, and you had been able to keep up with that. Until now.

The impulse to leave the office that left you frustrated, tired, and overworked had been bubbling up inside of you for years, and it was only a mere couple months ago that you finally snapped.

Snapped, grabbed your things, and quite literally ran away. Call it a life crisis, maybe considered somewhere between a quarter and a mid, but there was something about simply leaving everything behind that took a temporary weight off your shoulders.

Which is how you ended up in a little town in eastern France, staring out the window of the café where you sat and watched the snowfall that had just picked up again.

There was an emptied mug on your side, crumbs of a delicious pastry sitting on a plate, and a blank page in your worn notebook. You had everything you needed to work: your favourite playlist softly playing in your ears so you wouldn’t get too distracted by conversations around you, not one but two notebooks filled with a year's worth of thoughts, and warm clothes that wouldn’t leave you with indents in your skin after sitting for too long.

But apparently that didn’t necessarily mean that you would be making much progress. 

Five days since you had gotten to Annecy. A friend of yours had moved out to the old tourist town a number of years ago after meeting her partner, and they were nice enough to let you stay with them. Five days of trying to work and still no progress.

You had daydreams of sitting down, words easily flowing as you would fill pages until the sun set. But it was only five days, a little leeway was okay, wasn’t it?

That idea of a bit of little leeway, however, was constantly being bullied by the big label of unemployed. You knew very well, soon the need for a job would be coming back and all those daydreams would have to go back on a hiatus.

But here on the fifth day, after picking at the crumbs of your long gone croissant, you decided to pack up your things and call it a day. That was the one thing you were able to do – tell yourself that today nothing would be done and that was okay, instead of spending the rest of the hours until midnight forcing yourself to do something.

So you buttoned up your wool coat, wrapped on your scarf and stepped out into the light snow to trudge back to your temporary housing.

Harry had seen you the second time you were there.

You were a creature of habit - just as he was apparently so - and you seemed to always return to the same café, the small but warm La buvette du marché, tucked away in the old town.

He nearly fell over his feet when he saw you sitting in the corner, earbuds in and eyebrows furrowed so deeply he could see the creases in your skin, even from the distance he stood away from you.

He left in a hurry, in a panic. He told himself that he had likely imagined it, maybe he was still jet-lagged, maybe his mind was tricking him, maybe it was some odd lucid dream during an afternoon nap.

But then he saw you again, on the fifth day as you packed up your things in a huff and hugged your coat tighter around your chest. You looked too wrapped up in your own thoughts to even notice anyone else around you, except for the quick smile that you shot to the older woman behind the counter before you were walking out into the darkening street.

Harry couldn’t help but slightly spiral a bit more. He tried to recall any mention from remaining mutual friends, or even acquaintances, about you coming here, but couldn’t remember. He even considered calling some, but decided against it in a quick grounding moment when he realized that it would seem far too odd.

Even more so, he couldn’t believe that you found yourself in the small town at the same time as him. In the same place. At the same time.

It was all too familiar.

He took that as a good sign.

The seventh day – now a week in – you were back at the café.

This time you had managed to scribble down some ideas. Last night you had barely slept, tossing and turning as you tried to force your brain to come up with something, anything.

Just as it always went, as you were falling asleep it seemed like you had an idea going but unconsciousness soon took over and you were left with bits and pieces to pick up.

Today, you hadn’t gotten something to eat right away and instead told yourself that once you got a good chunk of work done, you would treat yourself to something sweet and a little break.

Harry, by not so much of a coincidence, was also back.

He liked the small town of Annecy, winter was a bit of an off season no matter its proximity to the Alps, and it was lowkey enough to where he could easily keep a low profile and go as he pleased.

He walked over to the same café in the late afternoon, hoping that maybe maybe you would already be there. It was making him nervous. But maybe you wouldn’t be there, and that would stress him out even more because maybe this was all a dream?

But there you were, twirling a black pen between your fingertips as you subconsciously chewed at the inside of your lip. He could tell by the way your chin was slightly protruding, and the way your lips moved lightly. He almost hated himself for being able to notice such a thing.

This time, you were the one to look up at him.

And lucky for him, or maybe unlucky he wasn’t sure yet, he was already staring back at you.

He could see a flurry of thoughts filter through your eyes. Your eyebrows unknotted for a moment, before furrowing even tighter this time with your mouth slightly parting and then closing.

He tried to smile, finding himself shuffling closer to you as he tried to recall how to use his feet and his voice. Calming down just the slightest bit when you offered him a tiny wave, he took that as all he needed to keep walking the path that led to your table.

And then he was standing a mere few feet in front of you.

When you spoke, it made it all that more real for Harry.

Obviously, you were physically there in front of him, something he couldn’t have imagined happening to him now, but the quiet “hi” that escaped past your lips made blood rush to his ears.

He cleared his throat – he didn’t really need to, he just felt he could use the extra second – before repeating the greeting back to you. “Hey…”

You couldn’t break his gaze. Seeing – and hearing – the hesitation in him, you almost wanted to tell him to leave you alone and try and forget this had ever happened. Maybe leave for some place else.

But you really didn’t want to do that.

“What,” the word was a puff of air. He felt out of breath. “What are you doing here?”

What were you doing here?

“Working,” was all you said, wincing slightly at the way the statement sounded. You felt like your heart was about to explode, like all words seemed to escape you and that the floor was about to crack open and swallow you up.

He only stared at you.

You sat up straighter, lifting a hand from where it was resting on the table to motion to the empty chair across from you. “You can have a seat – if you’d like.”

It was like he was on a three second lag, staring at you for a moment too long before reacting to your words. With a quick nod, he sat himself down across from you, bag falling to the floor near where yours was. He kept his coat on.

“Nellie’s really letting you work from here?”

You didn’t miss the slight pettiness of his words.

Shaking your head, you decided to ignore it and instead rolled your lips into your mouth before glancing back up at him. “No, I uh – I quit.”

His eyebrows shot up so quickly, the sudden change in his expression nearly made you flinch. He quietly kept his eyes on you for a moment longer, as if you were about to tell him that you were joking.

“You did?” He finally said, and if you paid close attention, which of course you were, you could see a little quirk in his lips. “You really quit?”

Unable to help the small chuckle that left your mouth at his reaction, you felt the beginnings of a smile pulling at your lips. “Yeah,” you said softly. “I did.”

A smile was pulling at Harry’s mouth as well – you could tell that he was trying hard not to with the way his lips slightly pursed and he bit them together. But he couldn’t help it.

“Well,” he cleared his throat once more and leaned back in his chair, making himself more comfortable. “Good for you.”

Another silence came over the two of you. Your right hand was pinching the skin of your thigh through your trousers to ground yourself, to remind yourself that Harry was really sitting here in front of you. Out of anywhere he could be.

Everything about him was so familiar. You recognized his coat, the dark green that you knew was so warm to be wrapped up in. His hair looked longer since the last time he was in front of you, but it also sat slightly messy and unstyled over his head. He was nervously twisting the few rings on his fingers – most of his fingers were bare which was something you hadn’t seen in a while.

Even the way he watched you, his steady stare that seemed to speak to you without needing to say any words, left you to be speechless. 

Of course, you had thought about this moment over in your head countless times.

You fantasized about him showing up at your door, late at night and begging you to talk to him. You thought about running into him when you were out for errands, and would ignore him altogether. You thought about him calling you or what would happen if you called him, what you would talk about and everything he’d tell you. You had dreamt of everything that could possibly happen, but now you sat frozen.

“So uh,” Harry’s voice broke you out of your reverie. “If you quit, where aboust are you working now?”

You bit your lips together. “I’m not…working anywhere. Working for myself, I guess.”

He gave you a surprised look once more. “Writing?”

You only nodded, unable to help the smile that was building on your mouth. And Harry couldn’t help but mirror it.

He took a moment to take you in, closer this time. You were dressed warmly, a thick purple sweater hanging off your shoulders that hit fairly low on your hips, over loose black trousers. The lavender made you glow – he decided it was his new favourite colour on you.

You had a different pendant hanging off your neck, and he could see a second chain hidden beneath the collar of your sweater. A series of pens were in front of you, and he knew that you had been toying with them based on how they were haphazardly thrown over the tabletop. You kept slipping in your bottom lip between your teeth, something he couldn’t help but watch as every time it brought his attention back to your mouth.

He shouldn’t be thinking about your mouth.

“That’s great to hear,” he nodded after another moment too long in silence. “I mean, you know I’ve said this before so I’m not going to say it again but –” he cut himself off, already finding himself rambling. “It’s good. I’m glad that you’re doing it.”

You chuckled again, and he felt himself melt a bit deeper into the chair across from you. “I’ve really barely started but. Thank you, Harry.”

It was the first time he’d heard you say his name in so long. He liked hearing it, he missed hearing it.

“’Course,” was all he said. “I’m happy to hear that you’re writing.”

Another silence when you simply nodded.

“Why did you come here?” He spoke softly, the somewhat elephant in the room getting aired as you briefly averted his gaze.

“Wanted to get away,” you said honestly. “And Eloise offered for me to live with her for a bit, so it was an easy decision.”

“Easy,” he mused, repeating the word as he momentarily pulled at the sleeves of his sweater. “Taking some time to relax?”

“Something like that,” you paused, thinking of how to ask him the same thing. “How about you – are you passing through or…?”

He lightly shook his head, drumming his fingertips over his thigh. “I’m here for some time.”

“Oh,” you closed the notebook in front of you, leaning your forearm over it. You opened your mouth to say something else, but you seemed to not remember how to form words. He jumped back in.

“I’m here writing as well actually – or trying to.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Album?”

“Yeah,” he rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, leaning forward in the chair again to rest his forearms over the tabletop, similar position that you were sitting in as you both lent forward. “Been trying to get it done for far too long now.”

You remembered – you remembered in your last weeks together his frustration over his inability to be happy with what he was creating for his third album. You held your lips closed with your teeth for a moment, unsure of which thread to follow. He continued once again after you didn’t say anything.

“I’m here alone,” he paused. “Staying in a small place just outside of town.”

You couldn’t help the quiet scoff. “You’re never alone.”

He laughed to himself. “I am this time.”

You both felt like you were circling around the same thing. You were the first one to voice it. “So you decided to come… here. To Annecy.”

He looked at you dead in the eyes, as if challenging you. “Yeah, I did.”

Another silence fell, this one seeming to be heavier than all the other one’s combined.

“It was –” Harry finally broke the silence after what seemed like ten minutes. You wished your brain was working at the moment. “It’s really nice seeing you.”

You gave him a gentle smile. “You too.”

He tucked his feet under his chair, ready to push back from the table and stand. He was ready to leave the café, think about this moment every hour of the days to come until he managed to let it go. If that’s what you wanted.

But you didn’t.

“I’ll leave you to it. I don’t want to keep you from your work for too long,” he sounded nearly remorseful as he blindly reached for his bag at the floor, not wanting to look away from you.

“Wait –” you said way too quickly, but you didn’t care. “Stay – if you want.”

He paused every movement he was making, glancing up at you with a growing grin. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you nodded, familiar warm feeling spreading through your chest when his expression eased. “We barely caught up.”

Harry slowly leant back into the chair, nodding with a hint of a smile playing at his lips. “Okay – I’d like that.”

He unzipped his jacket then, resting it on the back of his chair and pushed the sleeves of his sweater up over his elbows. Leaning forward again, this time not to stand but to take a peek at the mug sitting in front of you.

“Did you want another?”

“Still working on this one,” you smiled in thanks, grabbing the cup with the lukewarm coffee to take a little sip.

Harry quickly had his own coffee in front of him, clutching the little mug in his hands as if it would act as some kind of buffer between the two of you.

“I hope you stormed out of that office,” he told you, after once more asking if you had seriously quit your job.

“Wasn’t that dramatic, unfortunately,” you laughed, also wishing that you had the guts to cause a scene and walk out of work. “I gave my notice, had a very civil last chat with Nellie and that was really it. Can’t really afford to burn any bridges.”

Harry didn’t want to comment too much on your recent unemployment, the emotionally exhausting nature of your previous job being a hot topic of conversation when the two of you had been together. He decided it was best to bring up at a later time, if he had the opportunity that is.

“What are you working on now, then?”

You mindlessly picked up a forgotten pen, twirling it between your index and middle finger a few times before letting it fall back down. “What I’ve always said I would.”

“Book?”

You shrugged, not wanting to think about the implications too much. “Something like that.” 

He wanted to ask you about it further, but you easily changed the subject. “How long have you been here then?” 

“Just over a week now,” he took another sip of his coffee. “And you?” 

“A week,” you tried your hardest to stop the way your lips started to curve upwards, at the fact that you had both come around the same time. He seemed to be thinking the same thing, as a little nervous chuckle escaped his mouth. “How is the album coming?” 

His laughter died down. “Not well,” he said honestly. “Nothing really since…” Nothing really since we were last together. 

You nodded, knowing what he was about to say. “Keeping myself busy - I was actually filming for a movie the last few months.” 

“I read that,” you nodded, not realizing you were admitting to slightly keeping up with what your ex was up to. 

Another silence came across the two of you when you both took big sips of your drinks, you finished off the rest of the now cold coffee that had completely lost its charm. 

“You look good,” your voice came out a little quieter. “Rested.” 

You swear you saw a little pink hit his cheeks. “Thank you,” he hummed in response, having a thousand compliments ready for you but none of them found their way past his lips. “Are you allowed to tell me I look good?”

It was a cheap shot, but he took it.

You paused, a small smile pulling at your mouth. “Friends can compliment each other, no?” 

Friends. 

“Of course,” he hid his expression behind the mug that he raised to his mouth. “In that case - you look good - incredible even.” 

He added the second part on a whim, still staring you down as you refused to break his gaze, never one to back down from a subtle staring contest. 

A small sliver of silence passed, before Harry cleared his throat. 

“I hope I’m not keeping you,” he murmured, watching your hands fiddle with the pens that rested more or less untouched on the surface of the table.

“You’re not,” you shook your head. “I’ve barely gotten anything done either way. If anything, I’m distracting you.”

Harry bit his lips together. He was never one to complain about how much you distracted him. “You’re always a welcomed distraction,” he leant his forearms further over the table. “Not so much progress here either.”

“I have a hard time believing that,” you laughed lightly when Harry raised his eyebrows, giving you an incredulous look. “You were constantly writing. Never met anyone with so many filled notebooks.”

“I guess but I – I couldn’t make anything out of it, you know? I don’t know if you remember,” he glanced up as you gave him a little nod. How could you forget about any moment spent together. 

“Still feel just as stuck.” His brows knotted, staring at the table for a few seconds before glancing back up at you. “Sorry, for unloading this on you.”

“No, no it’s okay,” you offered him a sympathetic smile. “It’s okay if it takes you a little longer – if it takes a few tries.”

He forgot how much comfort he could get from your smile. “Thank you,” he murmured. “Feels like I’ve exhausted everything – like there are no words left for me to write.”

You couldn’t help what you said next. You didn’t mean to make it about yourself, you didn’t mean to even say what you did. You simply could not help it.

“Ever write about me?”

Harry stared at you for a few seconds. “You seriously…” he trailed off, eyes slightly wide on you. You had an apology ready on the tip of your tongue when he spoke again. “Filled countless books about you.”

You knew he wrote to you, leaving you little love notes or poems in your home or hidden amongst your things for you to find. Sometimes romantic, sometimes a little more explicit. But for whatever reason, you never imagined him writing a song about you.

He kept speaking in your silence. “You can’t be that humble – you can’t believe that I would never even think about writing about you.”

You didn’t know what to say. “I guess …I don’t know.”

Maybe you had been more successful that you’d thought in pushing memories of him away.

“To be honest, I uh,” now he was the one finding himself at a loss of what to say. “I didn’t want to put out something that was so personally about you. Wanted to keep you to myself.”

He lifted his eyes from the table, meeting yours before quietly murmuring. “Still do.”

A thick silence settled this time. You watched every small twitch in his demeanor – the quick bite of his lip, the bob of his Adam’s apple, the way his eyes flicked around your face just as you were sure yours were doing right now.

And they were, he was analyzing you, making new notes of your every feature that he could see for the thousandth time. He finally broke the silence, his voice sounding so loud all of the sudden.

“Come see what I have written.”

It was less of a question. Whether showing you old writing was really the only intention of the invitation was lost on you - and on Harry as well -  but neither pondered on it too much.  

You hadn’t said anything right away, but he was already reaching back to grab his jacket that was resting over the back of the chair. Slowly, you mirrored his actions and quickly began to pack up the pens and journal that had sat untouched for a good part of an hour.

Once you both stood wrapped in your coats and scarfs, with bags pulled over your shoulders, he met your gaze once more. “You coming?”

“Yeah,” you offered him a tentative smile. You realized you were nervous. Sitting with him in a public café was one thing, but spending time with him alone? That was something completely different that you weren’t sure you were prepared for. “Are we walking?”

“If that’s alright,” Harry nodded. “Staying just up the hill.”

And then you were off, following him in the thickening coat of snow that covered the yet to be plowed streets. Walking side by side at a safe distance, the falling snow hit you from every angle as the wind seemed to be starting to pick up.

Hugging your arms around your chest, you walked in silence for most of the trip.

At one point you were trying to move out of the way for a group of young school kids that were walking by, speaking far too fast for you to catch any words of their french as they excitedly bounced through the snow. Your foot caught on a lift of the sidewalk that was buried under the snow, giving you a momentary loss of balance.

Harry, however, was quick to notice. He had his arm looping through yours before you even realized you were tripping, as he held you upright and close against his side.

He knew that you were watching him, he could feel your eyes burn into the side of his face but he kept his gaze forward. The small kink in his lips gave him away though, when instead of pulling away you cozied yourself a bit more into his side and kept your arm tightly looped with his.

The rest of the walk was spent like that as you both trudged up the hill, out of the hub of the old town and out to the residential area. He quietly led you to his temporary housing, pulling out his set of keys from the inner pocket of his jacket and undid the front door of the building.

Walking up only one flight of stairs, you were soon being ushered inside a nice little apartment that could only be described as a character home. It was neat and cozy, just eclectic enough with tiled kitchen walls and different patterned rugs.

It was exactly the kind of place you had stayed in last time you were here.

“Let me turn the heat up,” Harry muttered, as you both shook off the snow from your hats and hair, hanging up the dampened clothing before warming back up in the apartment.

“Something to drink?” He called from the wall where he was presumably adjusting the heat, as you curiously glanced around the space he was staying in.

“What’ve you got?”

You easily found the kitchen as it was right after the hall from the door. A couple cups sat in the sink but it was otherwise clean. Harry joined you, standing across from you as he went to grab something from the fridge.

“”Have some mulled wine ready to be heated,” he pulled out a thermos.

“That sounds good,” you spoke quietly as you watched him work around the kitchen, grabbing a saucepan to heat it up.

He seemed to be stalling – you supposed you were as well. You didn’t know what you were doing here with him. You saw two possible outcomes, maybe three, but you didn’t know which one you were the most okay with.

Harry felt as though he had either been far too quiet, or was rambling too much. He wanted to ask you everything and find out absolutely everything and anything that had been going on in your life in the past ten months. He needed to calm down.

He heated up the homemade spaced mix, adding in a generous amount of the red wine. After a little moment while you distracted yourself with texting Eloise, you saw him pour a generous amount into each mug before turning off the element on the stove.

He handed you one of the mugs – a painted yellow ceramic one – settling to lean back against the counter across from you while you gripped the handle of your cup. 

You lightly blew on the smoke billowing out from the top, holding the mug out to him in a quiet cheers before each taking a sip.

It was still too hot, but you both seemed to be stalling from whatever was about to unfold and you took any chance to distract yourself that you could. The drink had been a good idea, and was already warming you up – probably both by the liquor and the temperature of the beverage

“Good?” Harry broke the silence, after swallowing another sip of the drink. He had one hand resting over the ledge of the counter, elbow bent with a relaxed shoulder while the other hand held the mug. You wondered if he really was relaxed or just appeared to be – you seemed to be having a hard time reading him at the moment.

“Really good,” you nodded, occupying your mouth with the beverage as you found yourself at a loss of what to say at the moment. “Thank you.”

Conversation seemed to be flowing so nicely in the café, but now it was like you had no idea how to be around each other.

Harry was nervous. When he made the offer to show you the countless unseen songs about you, he hadn’t really thought it through. It had seemed like the right thing to say, and he really did want to share that with you, but things were just so … uncertain.

He could tell, by the way you kept one arm crossed around your front with the other’s arm elbow perched to keep the mug by your lips, you were uneasy. He didn’t want you to be that way, he wanted you to be nothing but comfortable with him.

“So where is that writing you were bragging about?” Your smooth voice broke him out of his daze, as he lifted his eyes back up to see you peering at him from behind the mug.

Rolling his lips in against his teeth, the corners of his lips perked up both at the way you were looking at him and to mask the slight pit of nerves that suddenly appeared. “Give me a sec’”

Leaving his mug with you in the kitchen, he made his way to one of his bags where he knew was packed a series of old notebooks – all taken with him for any kind of inspiration.

Flipping through them, unable to help the way he suddenly grew anxious over the idea of showing these to you. Especially out of the blue. Especially after this sudden reunion.

Deciding what to show you and what not to, he triple checked that he had grabbed the right book before making his way back over to you. He found you exactly where you were previously, mug in one hand with the other holding your phone, quickly typing something with just one thumb.

At the sound of his footsteps, you placed your phone down on the counter and glanced up at your ex. Finding his place across from you in the kitchen, he extended the notebook out towards you. It was clearly worn in, little scribbles of words across the leatherbound cover.

You recognized it. From being perched over his lap, tucked in his bag, next to him on the nightstand. You knew it. 

“This was from that winter – actually think I filled it the last time we were here.” His voice was low, nearly distant as he tried not to look at you.

He didn’t know why he was sharing this with you now – maybe he felt like he needed to prove something, maybe he just missed you.

Wordlessly, you grabbed the worn book from him and tentatively opened it in your palm. Glancing up at him, he was clearly nervous and doing his best not to watch you read his every thought about you.

His eyes were cast to the side, looking out the window as if watching the heavy snowfall. With his arms now crossed over his chest, the thick knit of the sweater he was wearing bunching under his arms, you realized he looked more than nervous, almost worried.

You wondered if this was all a terrible idea.

Having not realized that you were still watching the profile of his face, looking at the way his eyes flicked from the window and down to the untouched mug that sat still on the counter. He grabbed it in a hand, the soft clink of the rings he had on against the ceramic being the only sound in the room.

You were sure he could feel you watching him, so much confirmed when the next place his eyes moved to were your own. Neither of you spoke, instead watched each other closely from either side of the small kitchen.

His expression was practically unreadable to you, something that you didn’t encounter often. You briefly thought he was upset with you, before he muttered. “Going to make dinner, if you’d like to stick around for some.”

Slightly surprised by the offer, even though you realized that when he had invited you to trudge up the hill with him to read a few half finished songs that probably wasn’t the complete intention.

Nodding, you answered with a low “thank you,” as he turned his body around and left the kitchen, no doubt searching for something elsewhere and leaving you to read alone.

Finally flipping open the book to a random page, turning a few pages until it looked less like a mess of scribbles and you could pull out several coherent sentences.

You found a small date written at the top of the page, and realized that this had been right in the middle of your last vacation in Annecy together.

You had to read over every word three, four times, before your hands moved without thinking and you were flipping the page to find more. Laying the spine of the notebook down against the kitchen counter, you leant over above it, completely captivated.

It was all so overwhelmingly beautiful. You didn’t realize that a small puddle of tears was gathering on your waterline until you blinked, and a few of them escaped and slid over the tops of your cheeks. Maybe this hadn’t been a good idea.

It was everything you remembered about being with Harry. Everything you remembered about the last time you were together in the little French town. Every ‘I love you’, every stolen kiss, every touch and feeling shared. It had been the happiest you ever remembered being.

It took you months to forget, or maybe not forget but not think about. And in a flood of it all coming back, you couldn’t help the tears that seemed to come flooding out as well.

Shutting the notebook a bit too quickly, you remained in your hunched position as you sponged at your tears with the back of your hand, wiping them away the best you could. You hadn’t thought about the reality, that there was no possible way you’d be able to handle reading everything that Harry had to say about you.

“Done already?” Harry’s voice startled you, not having heard him rejoin you in the kitchen. You quickly blinked your eyes, knowing there was no possible way to hide the fact that you had been crying but you hoped it wasn’t too obvious.

“No, I –” you cleared your throat lightly, turning around to look at him. You didn’t know what to say to him.

You watched his eyes scan your face, expression softening slightly before offering you a small smile. You assumed the whites of your eyes were reddened, and the skin surrounding was damp and still shiny from the little spill of tears.

He didn’t ask you anything else, and instead grabbed a pot from where it sat cleaned next to the sink and brought it over to the stove. “Do you want to chop the vegetables?”

Nodding with a murmured agreement, he handed you what needed to be cut along with a cutting board and a knife. You were grateful that he glossed over the topic, and now you found yourself biting back a smile. Spending time with him in such a mundane way was comforting. He put on some music, a soft background song playing while you both started to cook in a smooth harmony.

Conversation was light. He asked how living with Eloise was, you asked how long he had been in town for.

It wasn’t until you were both sitting across from each other with steaming bowls of soup and warmed bread, each having poured a generous amount of wine into your glasses that conversation got a bit heavier.

It started when you asked if he had been out to the lake yet, even though the cold weather obviously meant swimming wasn’t much of an offer. 

It ended, however, with a heavy silence when you both started to recall the last trip to the lake. Nearly a full year ago now, it was the second day of March and your last weekend away in this undisturbed paradise. The air was still very much crisp and carried a winter bite, and on a barely warm night, the two of you had the terrible idea of taking a little night dip. 

After about thirty seconds in the cold water, you couldn’t bear it and had to step out into the even colder air. After shivering back to your rental, you had drawn a burning hot bath to enjoy together and both decided that you would come back during the summer months to fully benefit from the lake and hikes.

But then you weren’t together over the summer. 

Harry had immediately noticed your change in demeanor at the bittersweet reminder of the memory, silently cursing himself for bringing the conversation that way. He had hoped that it would maybe spark something in you, some kind or romantic nostalgia, but instead it seemed to just upset you. 

A crushing silence had fallen again, and at least you had dinner to distract yourself with. Harry instead decided to change the conversation again, asking if Eloise still had those two little grumpy cats, and if you were enjoying staying with them. 

You were lightheartedly laughing again by the time you were clearing the dishes, both the wine and Harry helping in the warm feeling under your skin. Your cheeks had been rounded with a smile and your mind a bit fuzzy, intoxicated not as much by the liquor but more so by the loving feeling around you. 

It was quiet when you came back to the rental outside of town, the tiles of the floor cold under your feet after you had peeled your socks off. The rain had only increased in your short trip out to the nearby Monoprix, picking up what you needed to make a nice hearty soup for dinner as well as a bottle of wine. 

After getting far too wet on the walk you had gone on during the afternoon, initially wanting to go hiking but the weather got in the way. Harry had stuck back while you grabbed your groceries and a fresh baguette as you had finished off the one you had during breakfast. 

Hanging up your damp coat and taking off your too itchy sweater, you called out Harry’s name after placing the groceries down on the counter of the little kitchenette. 

A faint reply was heard, as you followed the sound of his voice to the closed bathroom door. He told you to come in, and you were met with a warm steamy bathroom and your partner relaxing into the back of the tub. 

“Didn’t feel like a shower,” he murmured as you smiled down at him, eyeing over the bubbles that covered the surface of the water. 

“Hi,” you whispered, leaning down to press your lips to his in a quick greeting as he extended his neck out towards you. “It’s still dreadful out - you have the right idea taking a bath.” 

You sat down on the edge of the tub, feet flat on the tile of the washroom floor as your upper body twisted to gaze down at Harry. The weeks so far spent in the small French town were like taking a break from reality - time was still and you could spend all the time you wanted wrapped up in each other. 

“Missed you,” he murmured, wet hand raising from under the water to grab at your wrist. Pulling it towards him, he pressed a light kiss over your pulse point. You let your hand fall over his shoulder when he let go, when he instead decided he wanted to feel your lips on his again. 

You easily complied, bending lower once more to slot your mouth over his with a lingering touch as he sighed over you. “Lips are cold.” 

You chuckled an apology, shifting yourself closer to him as you still balanced on the ledge of the tub. Your hand wrapped around his neck, feeling the damp strands between your fingers as one of his hands grabbed a light hold of your arm.  He traced a pattern over your bare arm, before shifting his arm around to the small of your back. 

You remained like that for a moment, sharing sweet kisses laced with soft affirmations of affection, hands not wandering further from light grasps over each other’s bodies. 

Though at a sudden move, a not so light move, an unattractive squeal left your mouth when your boyfriend hooked a hand under your bent knees and gripped you firmly, pulling you over the edge of the tub and into the water with him. You giggled his name after recovering from the initial shock, the heat of the water a sharp contrast to the chill in your bones and the sudden movement had your head spinning just the slightest bit. 

You surprisingly didn’t mind all that much – in fact you didn’t mind at all. Wet clothes could be dried, and the way he held you so tightly and gazed down at you so lovingly you didn’t even realize that you were fully dressed in the bathtub. 

Harry held you tightly, your legs now resting over him with his arm still under your knees as you found your place in his lap.

“My clothes are all wet,” you bit your bottom lip down, eyes catching Harry’s with a gleam as you rested your cheek against his chest. You looped your arm tighter around him, easily supported against his frame. “Could’ve given me a little warning.” 

“Thought you liked spontaneity,” his mouth sought out yours again, this time landing a peck just over your cupid's bow. “And you just seemed so cold.” 

You laughed over him and he pulled you even closer, as the water seeped through your clothes. You lifted your upper body a bit, not minding the way your shirt clung to your body as you brought your other hand to graze along the top of his cheek. “Really missed you.” 

“Wasn’t gone that long,” you whispered. “Picked up some more bread - the woman at the bakery recognized me.” 

You could feel the hum from his chest before you heard it, as he stole another quick peck from your lips. “Becoming a true local, aren’t you?” 

“Guess I am,” you mindlessly trailed your fingertips over his features, tracing the curve of his lips as he spoke. 

There was a small pause, a quiet comfortable silence. “What d’you say we stay a little longer?” 

You didn’t really need to think about the offer that much. “How much longer?” 

Harry shrugged, although knowing you both had responsibilities that were eventually needed to go back to. “Maybe a few more weeks?” 

“I’d love that,” you pressed your lips to his, knowing that you’d eventually work out the details later. 

He muttered something against your mouth, something you couldn’t quite catch as he returned your kiss. His hands wandered under your shirt, quickly pulling the soaking material from your body and throwing it with a wet slap to the tiled floor. Another problem to be dealt with later. 

Your lips parted as his tongue grazed over yours, a soft hitting of teeth when you tried to reposition yourself over him. His lips slid down your chin and your jaw as you brought your legs to straddle him, the growing uncomfortable heavy corduroy of your pants needing to be the next thing to be taken off. 

A soft curse escaped your lips both at the feeling of your lover’s hands on you and at the cool air, when he tugged your bralette over your head and again threw it somewhere to be immediately forgotten. His hands cupped your breasts, warm and wet and pulling deliciously at your nipples while his mouth sucked over the sensitive skin of your neck. 

“Help me get outta these,” you whispered into the air, one of your hands fumbling with the button and zipper of your trousers while you held onto him for support. 

After much moving around – splashing water, and slipping over the smooth bottom of the tub –  the heavy material was tugged off your legs and thrown over the edge of the tub. Finally feeling his skin completely against yours, you repositioned yourself over his lap with a leg on either side of his as your mouths met.

You sank into his arms as he whimpered your name, holding you tightly around your hips. One of his hands wandered lower, brushing lightly over your underwear covered heat.

You were both incredibly hot - from the water and from the increasing tension - as you blindly grabbed at each other in quick desperation. 

Your hips pressed over his, while his lips were wandering over the damp exposed skin of your chest, and he moaned lowly against you, “love you close - love you everywhere.” 

He raised his swollen mouth from your skin, pressing his words over your mouth. “Gonna spend the rest of my life with you like this.”

“You should stay the night.”

You turned your head towards Harry from where you were carrying over the stack of dishes. “What?”

“Snow hasn’t stopped,” he motioned to the closed window. “And it's getting late. Better idea for you to stay tonight.”

You only stared at him with your mouth slightly parted as if to speak, but didn’t know what to say. You figured that you hadn’t really thought this through, and it wasn’t completely crazy that it was a better idea to wait out the night out here with Harry.

“Not stay the night stay the night,” he continued, easily noticing the little lift in your lips.

“So it was only ever about the writing then?” The teasing tone in your voice was evident, though Harry couldn’t help the way his heart skipped at the possibility of you wanting to be here with him just as much as he wanted you.

“I think it’s always good to hold out some hope.” He answered, watching your eyes linger on him for a moment longer before glancing away with a small chuckle.

“I know you’re right,” you hummed, turning on the tap to begin washing the small load that needed to be done.

“About holding out hope or staying over?”

Biting your bottom lip between your teeth, you watched him approach you from the corner of your eye before answering. “Both.”

He tried his best to hide his smile when he joined your side by the sink, each settling in without much discussion of you as the washer of the dishes and him as the dryer. “So you’ll stay?”

You didn’t think about it too much. “I might need a shower,” you started, keeping your eyes on the soapy water that you pulled a ladle out of. “And to borrow some things.” 

“Still have the same face cream,” his hip bumped yours – almost so lightly it could’ve just been him readjusting his feet. ”Welcome to anything you’d like, always are.” 

This time it was obvious that it was on purpose. Not so much of a bump but a nudge, a slow one as he leaned his body closer to yours and rested against you for a brief second. 

“I’ll hold you to that,” you said lightly as your agreement, trying not to think too much about sharing a bed with your ex.

The quiet that came when you worked through the dishes together didn’t last all that long before Harry asked.

“Been seeing anyone?”

You glanced at him briefly. A cheek was half lifted, the hints of a smirk forming on his lips as he eyed you.

“Why’re you asking?” You countered, the answer to the question obvious.

“Why do you think,” he let out a chuckle, although was unable to help but feel a little anxious at the answer to the question, especially in your silence.

“There was one,” you spoke slowly. “A friend set it up – a double date. Saw him one more time after and that was it.”

“That was it?” Harry repeated your words, clearly looking for more of an explanation.

“Haven’t seen him again,” you turned off the tap, wiping your hands on the dish cloth hanging off a hook before facing Harry. “And you?”

“Twice,” he said – if you were going to be honest so was he. “Different person each time.” 

“Busy boy,” you mused, trying not to wonder how long after you split it had been, or how recently. 

His smirk had died down, meeting your eyes earnestly. “Never saw either again. You're a hard one to get over.”

His words hit you hard in the chest, like a little stab of a knife deep and sharp. He had spoken lightly, but you didn’t miss the slight clipped tone of his voice. 

“Did anything… happen with the guy?” He asked immediately after, not giving you much of a chance to react to his confession.

You only bit your bottom lip down, holding your mouth shut. The soft lights from above seemed like they had dimmed, the space around you feeling smaller and more intimate.

He took your silence as the answer, a pit of jealousy building at the mere thought of someone else's hands on you. 

“Just a kiss,” you told him, barely able to recall the short end of date kiss shared between you and the man you hadn’t even thought about. “On the second date.”

Harry only hummed, arms crossing over his chest as he leant his hip against the counter. The dishes were nearly done and long forgotten by now.

“D’you wanna see him again?”

“Harry –”

“If you haven’t seen him since then it doesn’t sound that way,” he mused, cutting you off with his petty rambling. “Especially now that you’ve come here.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Wasn’t like what?” His tone was quiet, but as you looked up to see him again his eyes held something more, begging for your attention.

“I just wanted –” Stopping yourself, you couldn’t continue. I just wanted to stop thinking about you. Instead, you spoke a quiet “I don’t know.”

A heavy silence surrounded you for the millionth time that day. It had only been a few hours since you’d run into each other, since he’d invited you up and you’d easily agreed. You only looked away from him when his touch was felt over you, glancing down at the hand landing over yours on the counter, resting his palm over your knuckles.

His thumb softly brushed the skin. “Why did you come here?”

Harry couldn’t help but ask you again. He knew why he had come here, and he had a growing suspicion that you had come for the same reason – you were both just too stubborn to say anything.

“I told you, Eloise offered –”

“You could’ve gone anywhere though, I didn’t even know you were close with her.” Harry again, couldn’t help it.

You knew very well what he wanted to hear.

After a moment in silence, he spoke quietly and earnestly. “Did you miss us?”

You had to look away. You could feel his eyes burning into the side of your face, able to hear the heavy swallow in his throat before he spoke once more. “Did you miss me?”

You watched his hand lightly rest over yours, the way neither of you moved but once and a while there would be a small flinch or twitch of muscle as if the need to grab onto the other rested right below the surface.

“Of course I did,” his hand held yours a little tighter when you spoke. “We were good.”

“We were,” Harry repeated, quietly pondering on the past tense of the sentiment.

The decision to invite you up had been innocent at first, or so he wanted to tell himself that, but having you here with him was something he’d never thought to experience again. He asked you the same question once more. “Is that why you came here?”

Daring a few more steps towards you, the hand that was not over yours raised to brush its knuckles under your cheek, before grabbing a hold of your jaw. You were watching him closely, needing to swallow a thick gulp of air when he neared you.

Deciding not to answer him, as you both seemed to be aware of the true answer, you avoided the question entirely. “Is that why you came?”

You dropped your eyes down to his mouth when the corners of it quirked up, quickly looking back up to his eyes, almost hoping that he would avoid truly answering just as you had.

“It is, yeah.”

His earnestness shouldn’t have surprised you. You felt his words before you even processed them, momentarily reveling in your closeness. You were sure you were going to start crying again if he didn’t say anything else.

“Remember last time we were here,” Harry said, again quickly changing the subject. His hand that rested over yours moved up, sliding over the bare skin of your wrist before looping around to hold the counter behind you. Keeping himself impossibly close, he kept speaking at your nod. “Remember one of the first nights, in the park by the lake, the dancing, what was that called?”

“Bal musette,” you said without having to think about it all that much .

“Yeah,” his lips curved to a wider smile at the memory. “All the men wanted to dance with you.”

“They were all in their eighties,” you hummed, letting yourself lean into his touch over your cheek.

“Still,” he grinned. “We were good.”

You remembered the cool air, not quite spring yet but the ends of winter were apparent. Harry had held you close, he always did. It had been an evening of uncontrollable laughs, interlocked hands, and stumbling home in a rush. The late dinners, the indulgence in delicious chocolates, the walks by the lake; it was all too good. The entire time really, was a blissful month.

You knew it, you both knew it. Right now, neither of you could even remember what had led to a break up in the first place.

He was all around you, his arms keeping you in while the tip of his nose nudged your cheek and his face grew closer to yours. There was only a soft orange glow in the room, hitting off the top of his features in a way that drew you in. So close he became a blur to you, something you hadn’t experienced in nearly a year.

But it was when he tilted his chin down that you processed what he was about to do, that you let your head fall to the side in a quick move to avoid his kiss, only a brush of his cheek over your jaw being felt.

Harry let himself fall forward, his forehead landing on your shoulder as he let out a quiet chuckle into the crook of your neck. Neither of you moved from where you were, still standing pressed to one another with his chest pushing against yours and his arms on either side of you.

Moving your head back, you couldn’t help the breathless laugh that blew through your nose, not doubt tickling the skin of his neck.

“What was that,” you hummed quietly.

He tilted his head slightly, lips brushing over the skin of your neck. “Sorry,” he spoke, although he didn’t mean the apology all that much. He had wanted to kiss you; he still does. “Felt right.”

It was overwhelming, being close and personal with you once more. Harry moved his nose to the column of your neck, smelling the familiar comfort of the perfume that lingered on you.

“Felt right,” he repeated, voice muffled from his mouth resting over your neck. He didn’t miss the way you tilted your head again, this time not to avoid his touch but to allow more space along your neck as he pressed the lightest of touches onto the sensitive skin. “Didn’t it?”

He also didn’t miss the soft hitch in your throat, breath getting caught when he let his lips linger. Getting lost in you for a moment, when you lifted a hand to his shoulder, and wrapped your arm around him in a desire to keep him close. His lips pressed harder, parting to allow a quick lick of his tongue over the familiar skin. You sighed softly above him, feeling everything at once in a breathtaking moment.

But then you found your breath again, and spoke his name quietly before shifting away from him. “Harry –”

“I know-”

He sighed, a deep pull of air through his lungs when he pulled away from you. Just enough to meet your bewildered eyes, just enough that he could see every detail on your face without having them blur. “Let’s get to sleep, yeah?”

You only nodded, peering into his eyes as if it would help you read his mind. His gaze flickered away from yours, falling to the spot of floor between your feet before willing himself to move away from you. “We’ll feel better in the morning.”

You had no idea what he meant at all, but only watched him walk away from where he had just been. The quiet music that had still been playing was abruptly turned off, the lack of sound making the rapid beating of your heart that much louder. Taking a minute for yourself, you slowly followed him out of the kitchen.

“D’you mind if I shower?” Your voice sounded foreign to yourself, after an uncomfortable silence settled in the apartment.

“Go ahead,” his voice was distant, and you simply made your way to the washroom for a quick shower before likely not getting any sleep through the night.

Seeing the array of his toiletries laid out over the countertop was once more far too familiar, most of them being the same ones you had seen nearly everyday. Helping yourself to them since you were here for the night, you did your best to scrub off what makeup you had one before getting into the shower.

“Hey,” Harry’s voice suddenly invaded your senses, as he nudged the door open just as you were about to pull your sweater up over your head, hand stuck halfway up your chest.

Immediately dropping your hand back down as the knit fell back over your body, you saw Harry's eyes raise up to yours through the mirror. “Sorry,” he spoke quietly. “Just bringing you some clothes that you can sleep in.”

“Thank you,” you only looked at him through the mirror, watching as his eyes fell back down to where your hands were still holding your sweater by your hips.

Another moment too long passed with neither moving or saying anything, and just as you parted your lips to say anything, Harry cleared his throat. “I know, I know.”

He sighed, as if you had been about to scold him for lingering again and shut the bathroom door behind him, leaving you alone once more.

You showered as quickly as you could, washing your body and keeping your hair out of the water. You tried your best not to think about the way Harry’s eyes had slowly dragged over your body, even your sweater covered one. You tried not to think about the way he smelt the same, or the way his hands felt so good around you and the way he had wanted to kiss you. Or the way his lips felt so familiar over your neck, that if you hadn’t stopped him there might not be a wall separating the both of your right now. 

And it didn’t get better when you came around the corner dressed in his clothes, sweats bunching at your ankles and the crewneck looking warm around you. You shot him a nervous smile from where he was already in bed, placing your belongings next to the bag you had on the floor, before turning back to glance at Harry.

“Well come on in,” he smiled, trying not to let his gaze linger on you for too long and lifted the corner of the duvet up on the other side of the mattress. With the sleeves of the crewneck pulled over your palms, you tentatively slid in on the bed, trying your best to maintain as much distance as you possibly could.

Harry turned off his phone, placing it on the table next to him before leaning over to shut off the only source of light.

You rested on your side, daring to face Harry as you hugged the pillow under your cheek. “It was a nice surprise seeing you today,” you started, not wanting to go to sleep on an awkward note. 

He faced you when you spoke, mirroring your position from the other side of the mattress. “What are the odds that we both came back here,” he posed it less of a question, more as a quiet wondering. “Would never have thought -”

Humming in response, you didn’t know what the odds were really. Must have been pretty low, and the fact that you were both here and now found yourselves sharing a bed was not at all where you thought you’d end up when you got up this morning. 

He turned from his side to his back, looking away from you and instead chose to stare up at the ceiling. The urge to be close to you was strong, and it felt incredibly odd to not be near you as you both went to sleep together. 

“Goodnight,” you spoke quietly. You shuffled down the mattress and rested your head over the pillow. There was no way you were going to sleep tonight.

“’Night,” Harry hummed from the other side of the bed, lying just as stiff as you were.

You rolled onto your side with your back to the man you couldn’t believe you were sharing a bed with once more. You begged your mind to turn off, to let sleep take over your body so that it could be morning, and maybe everything would make sense in the morning.

But instead your mind wandered to every possible thought regarding Harry, and you rolled onto your back to stare at the ceiling. Trying your damn hardest not to pay attention to Harry’s breathing, or his own shuffles on the bed.

You didn’t know how long it had been, but you were starting to grow hot. Sticking a leg out from under the covers didn’t help much, and then you couldn’t stop thinking about it. You couldn’t stop thinking about Harry – about how you felt with him, about how he made you feel when you had been together. In and out of the bedroom.

Rolling onto your stomach for the thousandth time, hoping Harry was asleep so he hadn’t been hearing your constant shuffling, you squeezed your thighs together and cursed yourself for thinking what you were while lying in a bed with your ex. Wasn’t so much arousal, but just… neediness.

Not only could you not stop thinking about every touch you shared, the linger of his hands and his lips, but you couldn’t take your mind off of every single word you read in his old notebooks. It was haunting you nearly, an old ghost that was sitting on your chest and leaving you heavy hearted. 

It was when you rolled from your stomach to your back again with a quiet sigh, that Harry muttered against his pillow with a low voice, “stop movin’ around.”

Slightly embarrassed that he had obviously been awake the entire time as well, you rolled your head to the side to see him over the space of the middle of the mattress. “Sorry – can’t sleep.”

He did the same, turning his head so that your eyes could meet in the nearly completely dark room. “Me neither.”

You simply looked at each other for a moment, trying to let yourself relax enough so that you could eventually drift to sleep before Harry spoke again. “It feels odd, doesn’t it? Sleeping but not being close.”

You nodded, realizing he couldn’t really see your movement before speaking. “Yeah – I can’t relax.”

This time there was no pause between words. “Come here,” Harry said quickly.

“What?”

He shuffled closer to the middle, closer towards you. “Friends can cuddle, can’t they? Just – come here.”

You didn’t think too much of the offer..

You moved away from the very edge of the bed, closer to where Harry layed. He extended an arm out, wrapping it around your shoulders as you came closer and pulled you in to lay next to his chest. Tentatively raising your hand, you laid it flat over his chest before sliding it around him as you hugged him from the side.

It felt nice – normal even, being in his arms. He let out another sigh, murmuring a quiet “goodnight” before settling back down into the mattress.

You felt his hand fall lightly over your shoulder, fingertips brushing on the fabric of the borrowed jumper. You were hyper focused on your breathing, trying your best to steady it in a lame attempt of getting your heartbeat to calm down. But when you realized Harry’s heart was beating just as fast, you relaxed even more against him.

Sleep came slowly, but it eventually did come. At one point Harry moved positions, just the slightest bit, but just enough that he was able to push a leg against yours. Slowly moving your own legs, you let him rest his calf over yours with the small tangle of your legs. That was the last thing either of you remembered before falling asleep.

The morning held a bit more tension.

Harry woke up before you, and spent far too long contemplating on whether he should get up or not. So long, in fact, that you had woken up and made the decision for him. While he feigned being asleep, you quietly shuffled out from under the covers. 

Following the sound of your footsteps to the washroom, he heard the door close behind you and the quiet hum of the tap after a moment. He wondered if you would leave immediately.

Getting out of bed himself, he first went to go adjust the thermostat as the air was far too cold after being out of the cozy warmth of the bed, and went to go turn on the kettle.

You were by his side moments later, each sharing quiet “good mornings” while he tried not to stare at the way your eyelids still drooped down and the way you pulled the sleeves of his jumper over your hands.

He knew the offer of coffee would get you to stay for a cup, but by the way you had rushed back to the bathroom with your clothes from the day before told him that you weren’t planning on sticking around for too long.

By the time you reappeared by his side, you were dressed just as you had yesterday. He knew he’d find the clothes you’d borrowed folded over his bed. You seemed fresher faced than last time, even catching a whiff of his lavender scented moisturizer that you always used to borrow.

Biting his lips together to hide his smile at the fact you had in fact taken your liberties with his toiletries just as he’d offered, he quietly prepared you a cup of coffee while your attention was drawn down to your phone.

You mindlessly answered texts, none of them that urgent that they required your full attention as you still couldn’t help but pay close attention to Harry’s every move.

“Sleep okay?” He finally broke the silence.

You paused, needing to clear your throat before answering. “I did, yeah.” Only after he had invited you to lay peacefully in his arms. “You?”

“Did as well,” he hummed, filling the two mugs with the wonderful smelling coffee. “A lot better after you stopped moving around.”

“Sorry again,” you suddenly felt hot at his mention of your irritation – at the reminder of how incredibly needy you had gotten for him to even lay a hand over your own. Taking the mug of coffee as a welcomed distraction, you cupped it in two hands to bring it up to your mouth, blowing over the hot liquid.

He dropped the subject, though, as he mirrored your action and you both took a moment to let the coffee stall the inevitable goodbye that was about to be shared.

“What’re you up to today?” 

He thought it over for a second, not actually having planned all that much. “Need to grab a few things from the store, otherwise not a whole lot.” He thought aloud. “And you?” 

“Driving to Aix-les-Bains with Eloise, some store over there she wants to see.” You had just seen the text from your friend, deciding to not answer all the ones questioning what had happened with Harry. 

You both took big sips of the still too hot coffee. “No writing today?” 

“Not that I’ve been that successful,” you mumbled into the mug. 

“You’ll find it,” he affirmed. “I know you will.” 

Your chest warmed, not from the heat of the beverage but from the sincerity of his statement. You hid your face behind your mug, taking a nearly too big sip that you nearly choked on. 

“Thanks again, for letting me stay and for… everything.” You placed the mug by your side, the caffeine suddenly making you nauseous. The words you had read in his old notebook still haunted you. 

Harry realized that you were about to tell him that you were leaving, and a small bout of panic rose through his stomach. “Of course -” 

He watched, dumbfounded of what to say, as you walked from the kitchen to where you had left your belongings and started arranging them in your bag and put your phone into the pocket of your trousers. Harry couldn’t stop watching every small move you made.

His eyes followed you around the kitchen, mind racing to find anything to say to you anything that would at the very least have you coming back to see him.

“Can I see you again?” He suddenly blurted, voice louder than it had been before, making you stop in your movements and turn to face him.

Your mouth parted and for a moment he thought it was forming into a ‘yes’, but it never came. And he didn’t realize that it never came because his attention caught on something else. Something that had been hiding beneath the tight knit of your sweater yesterday, something that he had forced himself to forget about.

He moved without realizing, taking the two small steps needed to stand right next to you. Noticing his sudden action, you turned yourself so that your body faced his with a small crease of confusion forming between your brows.

He couldn’t help it. Reaching out to where the small locket rested below your collarbones, he caught your attention with the small tug of the chain.

Oh.

Remaining quiet, you watched his focus fall to the necklace that had never been taken off. His bottom lip fell with a quiet exclamation, one you couldn’t hear no matter how close you stood. He turned it over in his hand, briefly wondering whether it was too far to open the little locket.

“Couldn’t take it off.” You said, as he remained quiet due to his current fascination.

You both watched as he toyed with the light metal in his fingers. Grazing over the small flat pearl that graced the front of the pendant, seeing it just as he’d last remembered it.

He had once again found himself standing desperately close to you. If he had moved closer while looking at the jewelry, he wasn’t sure. But when he let it fall back against the light purple knit of your sweater to meet your gaze, he realized that he could see every twitch of your eyes when they moved to gaze up at him.

His hand didn’t fall far, landing with a light touch over your wrist just as he had the night before.

“Give me a shot.”

You tilted your chin up, his words settling in with a flip of your stomach. “You said it yourself – we were good.”

“I know,” was all you could muster, the clear confidence in his words making your heart beat a little harder.

“And I’m having a hard time remembering what went wrong,” a humourless laugh shook from his chest, as he kept his eyes focused on the little locket that had been gifted to you nearly a year ago. “And seeing you here, out of all places. I can’t be the only one.”

“I know,” you repeated, very aware of the intense emotion that had been clouding your mind in the past twelve hours. “You’re not the only one.”

He lifted your wrist that he held, gently placing your arm over his shoulder to move in closer to you. You didn’t object, sliding your palm over the crook of his neck. You were unable to help but take a quick look at his mouth, at his lips that hovered so close to yours.

“Give us a shot,” he whispered, breath hitting the inside of your wrist when he titled his chin towards your arm. His lips skimmed the skin, pressing feather light kisses over the inside of your wrist. With the same light pattern of kisses on the inside of your forearm, he moved his lips away to instead focus on your face.

Placing his hand under your jaw, a similar position that you held him in as he seemed to be moving ever so slowly. Tilting his jaw up towards you, he let his lips skim so slightly across your cheek, so light you nearly thought you had imagined it. Just as he had last night, his nose brushed over your own first while he took a moment to savour you.

Waiting for any sign of hesitation on your part, which never came, he let his lips slowly fall over the corner of your mouth. Wet trail of touches that moved away from your lips and instead over to your cheek, he took a moment to hold you against him.

He whispered something over your jaw, you couldn’t hear him. With your eyelids fluttered shut and your head spinning, all your focus was set on what his lips were doing rather than what they were saying.

This time it was you, who slid your hand to the back of his neck with a much firmer grip. It was you that led his mouth to capture yours.

It was just lips on lips at first, a quick kiss that lasted barely a second. You pulled away before he could even have a chance to react, a small smile curving at your lips when you glanced up at him.

His hand slid up your arm to hold a tight grip around your back, while the other circled to the back of your neck, thumb brushing over your skin in soft circles. He pulled you in again, both relaxing into the kiss as his lips eased over yours.

Kissing him was everything good you remembered. The way he gripped you tightly against him, the soft touch of his lips, the way your name was rolling off his tongue in a quiet incredulous breath. 

His mouth was warm, inviting, fitting so perfectly over yours as you tentatively parted your own lips to invite him in for more. Your free hand joined the other around his neck, letting his tongue graze against yours as you tasted each other for the first time in nearly a year. It was all the same – like no time had really passed at all.

Feeling his hand circle around your hip, holding you close as a quiet moan rumbled from deep in his chest. You couldn’t help the content sigh at the sound, completely melting into him. He was pressing tight against you, mouth completely capturing yours while your breathing mixed and lips dampened. 

Your chins hit awkwardly when you tilted your head to the side and he went to lightly suck over your bottom lip. Though you didn’t mind the slight sting of his chin knocking yours, in fact you found yourself welcoming everything about him. 

It wasn’t until you realized you were sharing heavy breaths, and when your lips had been growing more and more desperate for the other that you needed to separate for a quick deep breath of air. 

He breathed your name with a quiet smile tugging at the corners of his mouth that was easily heard in his voice. “We’re still good.” 

Your head was spinning. His head was spinning. Nothing seemed to be real, at the moment but at the same time everything seemed far too real. 

Just as he leant in again, searching for your lips once more, you slid your palm down from his shoulder to the center of his chest and pushed yourself back an inch. “Harry…”

You wanted to feel his mouth on yours again, you really did. You just couldn’t bear to think what would come of it – you couldn’t revisit all the pain that you had managed to push away. 

He shook his head, not believing you were about to turn him down again. Especially after that. He knew he shouldn’t be upset with you about it, he knew it was completely valid on your end but in this moment he felt like everything was coming crashing once more.

When he heard the quiet and pained tone in your voice, he bit his lip down – his lip that could still feel the whisper of yours – and shook his head in disbelief.

“We shouldn’t.” 

A sharp pain came from your chest as Harry seemed to deflate against you. “If you don’t –” he had to look away from your heavy eyes as he spoke. “You can’t kiss me like that and then push me away.” 

He was right - of course he was right - but you were so incredibly confused and couldn’t seem to process a single thing that you were feeling. “I’m sorry,” you whispered, neither of you moving. “I didn’t mean to…” you didn’t know what to say, because you really did want to kiss him. You still do. “I’m really sorry.” 

Harry shook his head. “Don’t be sorry –” he sighed, hands falling from your body.

When he didn’t say anything else, you slowly dragged your palm over your forehead, feeling the sudden tension of the situation manifest in a growing pain in your head. “We can’t keep living in the past.” 

He hated himself for the sliver of hope he felt when you said ‘we’. 

“We were so fucking good,” he knew he needed to stop entertaining the topic but he really couldn’t help it He knew you saw it too. “We were a team, we were solid. I just don’t know,” he cut himself off, running the back of his hand over his mouth.  “I don’t know.” 

A thick moment of silence passed – you couldn’t bear it. “It’s too…” you had to take a deep breath as you felt a sob build in your chest. “It’s too painful to go through this again, Harry – this has been the hardest year of my life I can’t –”

You need to cut yourself off, shoulders shaking as you kept your eyes glued to the floor. “I should go.”

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

You mentioned Tom’s “mental breakdown” during the Chamber of Secrets fiasco 1.0 - can you explain?

So, a relevant post. A different relevant post. And a third relevant post.

Now, with that out of the way, let's begin.

Tom and the Last Name Riddle

Fandom, aside from me, generally accepts that Tom Riddle went into Hogwarts knowing or at least suspecting he was a pureblood and that, more importantly, his Slytherin peers knew he was the Heir of Slytherin.

Dumbledore implies this in that he tells Harry that Tom Riddle was universally admired, had goons among his Slytherin peers, and was clearly the ring leader of these Slytherins who in time would become Death Eaters 1.0.

I don't believe any of this.

Tom Riddle enters Hogwarts with the last name Riddle and no idea of his history beyond being born on the floor of an orphanage: his mother dying in childbirth.

Dumbledore knows that at least one of Tom's parents is a pureblood, related to the Gaunts due to that being the only surviving family with traces back to Slytherin, but he doesn't inform Tom of this.

Tom can, and probably does, try to insist that he might be a halfblood to his Slytherin peers. But he's a dirt poor muggleborn with a poor accent and the last name Riddle. He doesn't look like any of the old wizard families (remember he looks like his father) and even if he was a halfblood he must be a bastard.

Point being, I doubt his peers were very impressed.

I think what happened was a young Tom beat them into submission when they tried to haze him, probably terrifying the shit out of them, and ultimately as Tom calmed down and Hogwarts kept going they tolerated him.

He's useful to have around, but the moment Hogwarts ended, they dropped him like it was hot. And, Tom going through Hogwarts, knows that this is exactly what's going to happen.

Tom thus goes through Hogwarts thinking he's a muggleborn, being muggleborn in every way that matters, and resenting everyone around him because of it.

The Blitz

Adding onto this, WWII is ongoing, London is being bombed extensively while Tom is in school. Muggle children are evacuated from London and as summer approaches Tom is unsure if a) the bombs will stop, b) he has anywhere to go back to.

He begs to be allowed to stay over the summer and is summarily denied.

Whatever faith Tom Riddle has in the Wizarding World shatters, and I don't think he ever recovers it.

The Chamber of Secrets

At some point, Tom through some reference or another, finds out what his talent really means. He realizes that Dumbledore had lied to him, or, at the very least, kept vital information from Tom.

Given the timeline of events, I'm going to imagine this is sometime after third year. And remember, this isn't exactly relevant information that comes up all the time.

Harry only hears about this in his second year because of the Chamber of Secrets fiasco and Voldemort himself being a parseltongue. I imagine it's at best a throaway line in a few books unless you're specifically looking for information on the Founders, and even then that it's a genetic trait is probably passed over much of the time.

It would not surprise me if Tom didn't stumble on this information for quite some time.

Well after he's been boiling in rage for a while.

Tom has a family, he has a lineage, he has blood that in many ways is purer than anyone's in this school. And Dumbledore deigned not to tell him, when he knew exactly what Tom would be entering into.

Tom at first has visions of glory.

This is great, he can tell everyone! He doesn't have to be Tom Riddle anymore, he's a Slytherin, and no one will disrespect him ever again. So many doors will open.

And then he realizes, it changes nothing.

Tom Riddle is still poor, his last name is still Riddle, he still lives in a muggle orphanage. For all Malfoy's talk, it's not blood he respects, it's money.

And if Tom wants to be Voldemort then Tom Riddle cannot be a parseltongue.

Something in Tom breaks.

He desperately starts searching for the Chamber of Secrets, probably happens upon it by happenstance, and has the same realization there.

He has found this great, wonderful thing, he is important and destined for greatness. And yet, he is not, because he is only Tom Riddle and inside these walls will only ever be Tom Riddle.

He snaps.

The Mental Breakdown

I always view the Chamber of Secrets fiasco as, well, a mental breakdown. Not much planning involved, no actual end goal, just a Tom Riddle who's having the world's largest identity crisis, who has been sent back to his possible death multiple times, and who now realizes he'll never escape his origins deciding something must be done.

"Something" is releasing the basilisk, murdering all the roosters, and painting the walls in blood.

He watches the students run around in terror, feeling very important, very much like the Heir of Slytherin. LOOK, TOM IS IMPORTANT TOO!

And then someone dies and reality crashes back down.

They'll close the school, Tom will be sent home to the war, and nothing has changed. He's the same as he ever was, still Tom Riddle, and with the looming possibility of Hogwarts closing... he feels so small.

Tom desperately uses Hagrid as a scapegoat, closes the chamber, and never reopens it.

Then of course, life continues to be terrible as he finds out the truth about his family and exits Hogwarts only able to get a job at Borgin and Burkes.

But such is life for Tom: Despair.

[ckbookish]

BATMAN BINGO MASTER POST 2020

1 "I thought you were dead.": I Still See Your Ghost 

Today was just not Dick's day. First he overslept his alarm and was late to work. Amy had been less than impressed at his tardiness... Then He had bungled what should have been an easy take town... But the straw that broke the camel's back was Tim. Dick had forgotten to call Tim. 

2 Friendly fire: Fratricide 

Jason was pissed. No, Jason was enraged. Yeah, he was enraged at the whole mess his family-- if that’s even what they were to each other anymore-- had gotten him in. It was meant to be a simple night. Break in. Torch the drugs. Maybe shoot a couple of people and go home. But no, Batman heard about his plans and decided that arson was too extreme. “Someone could get hurt.” Well someone had gotten hurt, a lot of someones. 

3 Hypothermia: Weekend Commute 

Dick Grayson makes his way home during the first snow fall of the year, when he finds himself confused and cold, miles from home.

Chapter two Bruce's perspective.

4 Superman: Bringer of the Dawn

The Aftermath of when the Joker shoots Dick.

or

Where do you go when your family tells you to get out?

5 Shot: The Gratitude Trap

Bruce finds himself in the dark, a place he never thought he would be when it came to Clark Kent and Dick Grayson. Yet here he is digging for answers, because he is too scared to pick up the phone and call. 

6 Two-face: The Better Choice 

How do you reconcile the man who was once your friend with the monster he has become? Bruce reflects on how the man he once called his best friend changed. How could the man who helped him foster Dick, hold that baseball bat? 

7 Drowning: Omori’s Law

Deep in the sewer's under Gotham, Batman is trapped. There is no back up, no Robin. He is faced with the single truth that he tried to teach each of his partners... You have to save yourself. 

  8 Found Family: A Restoration from a Resilient Heart

Dick just wants to not be alone with the shadows in the house. Bruce doesn't realize he has lived with them for far to long, and maybe he doesn't have to anymore.

9 Adoption: The Irrefutable Truth

When he reached the reception, he found himself looking around a fairly empty room. There were a few call girls in the corner filling out forms, an older woman holding a dog, a kid that looked about twelve and a middle aged man who looked like he was ready to cry. He knew no one. Dick was about to turn around and head back to his desk when the on duty officer called out to him. Officer O’Conner was one of his fellow rookies, he had a thick accent. Dick thought he might be from Louisiana. “Grayson! Why didn’t you say your brother was coming to see you?” Dick looked at him with his mouth slightly open. There was no way he heard that right. “My what?” 

10 Bruises: Mr. Wayne

Tim is new to this. He's only been Robin for a little over six months. It was going well. But now he was going to be fired. Batman wouldn't want a partner who got caught at school with a black eye. Would he?

11 Bruce is dead: You Have One Saved Message 

Gotham gossip columns spread lies and smear good people's names. But yet Damian can't help but think maybe this mornings article was true.  That despite all his claims of being the true son of Bruce Wayne, he was in fact the only unwanted one.

12 CPR: Vital Signs 

Robin wakes to find him and Batman in an exploded factory. With Batman injured and the building burning around them, Dick struggles to get them both to safety.   

13 Dad:  Storge 

Bruce could have sworn his spirit had left him momentarily.  The sudden hollowness that filled him couldn’t be explained in any other way. 

 “Your dad must have his hands full with you.”  Elizabeth Ribbons leaned forward and patted Dick’s shoulder, as he reached for yet another slice of cheesecake from a passing waiter’s tray.  

Bruce fixed his eyes on the ice sculpture that hid him from view.  It suddenly seemed like the most interesting design in the world.  The soft lines of the ice on the otherwise insignificant over sized swan seemed like a lead shield...  Because Dick would read it easily in his expression. He wanted to be Dick’s dad.  But he wasn’t. 

14 Stealing the Batmobile: T-Minus Six Hours

Some days Tim is sure that he’s gonna be killed. Usually it’s some luck shot or near miss that made his life flash before his eyes. Not today though. Today he was positive Bruce was going to kill him. Yes, today was the day that Timothy Jackson Drake was going to be put down. He’s not sure that even Nightwing could save him. He was going to go down in history as the first sidekick to be murdered by their mentor. Because the Batmobile was definitely not where he’d parked it.

15 Wayne Enterprises: Amidst the Absence of Meaning 

Bruce is worried. He's running on less than three hours of sleep, and way too many cups of coffee. He had messed up. That much was obvious. The question was would Dick forgive him?

A gruesome night on patrol bleeds into Bruce's work day and now all he can wonder is if this is the thing that will push Dick over the edge? Had he finally seen to much pain?

16 Ransom: Sum of My Worth

The ring of the phone seemed to echo through the manor’s still too quiet long, winding halls, and everyone present collectively held their breath. Bruce lunged for the phone.   

17 Secret Injury: Hiding in Pain Sight

“What?” Dick asked sharper than he meant to. He was tired.

“Nothing.” Tim said with a small smirk. “Heavy is the head.”

Dick closed his eyes, glad that Tim couldn’t see them. He was so sick of this. Tim, Jason, Damian and Cass all didn’t think he was good enough, well Cass hadn’t said that, but Dick could read her. They didn’t think he was up to the job. Well they didn’t need to tell him that. He knew it.

18 Superboy: An Interlude in Breathing 

Tim looked out over the water in a daze. Bruce and Dick had gone somewhere below deck and he was alone. Well there were strangers on the ship mingling and talking excitedly--but Tim gave them no notice. Instead he watched the water lap up against the hull and crash down back to meet the dark, cold waters. They were far enough out that he could no longer see the shore. It was just endless expenses of sea and sky. Something tickled his neck and he started, only to realize he had been crying. It was only a tear slipping under his collar.

The days after the battle of Infinite Crisis

19 Betrayed: Smother

She took another drag of the cigarette, letting the smoke roll in her lungs for a long moment before allowing it hiss out between her teeth. The screams from the warehouse weren’t completely muffled by the distance, or the walls. Perhaps she was only imagining them. But then, sounds like that, she didn’t think she could dream up. She jumped after a particularly high pitched yelp. “Get a grip.” She dropped the cigarette and pulled out another. Her hand shook as she lit it. “It’s just some random kid. He’s not--” She bit back a sob. She didn’t deserve to cry. She had no right to tears, not when it was her fault.   

20 Crowbar: Breaklights

The mail fell to the ground and the paper smacked the tiles hard.  The sound in reality couldn’t have been all that loud, but it seemed to echo around the entryway.  Bruce didn’t look at the dropped bills and the invitation to a fundraiser for the new Gotham women’s shelter.  He was too fixated on the small stamp with the queen of England's head on it.  Wolverhampton.  

The large envelope was far heavier then it should have been.  Bruce could feel bile crawling up his throat.  

He had forgotten.

21 Deathstroke: Debts and Dues

There were some things that were never pleasant, getting caught in the snow without socks, losing your keys, and not being able to remember the name of a song. Having a gun pointed at your chest, Dick felt, qualified as extremely unpleasant. He stood stock still. The barrel of the gun was still hot, it burned slightly as it dug into his sternum. Even with his uniform he could still feel the heat left over from previous rounds fired. He didn’t flinch. He couldn’t flinch. “Move.” “You know I can’t.” Dick wondered if Slade had the guts to do it.   

22 Mission Gone Wrong: Murmur in the Quiet Hours

Superman? Clark froze. He knew that voice. But-- he had never heard it sounding so sad. Was that-- no. Clark dove for his phone, still on the counter from when he got home last night. The screen was black. Dead. Clark swore and dropped it. He was in his coat and shoes before it hit the counter top.   

23 Kidnapped:  Chum 

Dick trumped through the leaves, stopping his feet roughly. He relished the sound of the crunch beneath his shoes as he tread on the brown, dead leaves before him. He felt rather justified in his satisfaction. After all the world had taken so much from him, why wouldn’t he do his best to crush it in return. The woods were cool and as he went deeper into them they grew darker. The sun had long set, and the sky was quickly vanishing as the trees grew thicker. Wayne Manor was far behind him. He was never going back. He hated those pristine walls, those old floor boards. He hated the quiet. He hated the stuffy furniture and the rules and the vases and pictures. He hated his new guardian and that… that… Dick couldn’t remember what Alfred was called, but he hated it. The bag on his back felt heavy. It had everything Dick owned in it. Well and a toothbrush that Alfred had given him. But he didn’t think that was really stealing. 

24 Riddler: Seeking Silence on Shortwaves

Normally Dick would be happy to listen to Tim talk. In fact, Dick thought it was one of his favorite sounds in the world. Tim rarely allowed himself to be excited about things. Hearing him speak so freely and openly to Bruce and him about his plans was refreshing. Dick only wished it wouldn’t be at the cost of his life.

Batman hadn't always been so strict about talking unnecessarily over comms. When it was just two of them it hadn't mattered, their walkie talkie system had always worked. But now that Nightwing and Robin were in Gotham, it seems insane that they never realized: if only one person can talk over the radio at a time... how could they call for help?

25 Mr. Freeze: Glimpsing the Sun While Trapped in the Rime

He almost called Bruce between his fourth and fifth class. He pulled his phone out, leaning against his locker, and half dialed his number when a warm hand fell on his shoulder. “Hey.” Dick spun around and blinked back black spots as his body protested the sudden movement. A blaze of red hair filled his vision and Dick felt a small fire build in his chest. His face split into a wide smile.

After a run in with Mr. Freeze Dick finds himself feeling odd at school, but he can't go home, not when Barbara's asked him to drive her to Betty's party after school.

[smellsfaintlyofvanilla]

Hi, I have this super specific idea so feel free to ignore this one lol. So basically, Annie and the reader have been dating for a while, like at least a year. And the reader is in the survey corps right, so during one of the missions she ends up getting injured in an explosion and she's like all burned up and covered in injury's that'll scar really bad. And so the reader gets taken to a hospital or med bay or whatever, and she's been out for days, and like Reiner, Eren, Mikasa, etc. are all there, ya know her little gaggle of friends. And like she's been unconscious for days but sometimes she'll wake up for a few minutes and pass out again. So when Annie gets the news and comes to see her she like starts to wake up, and when she's coherent Annie is holding her hand and says "I'm glad you're alive" or something, then the reader just kinda stares at her for a minute and says "are you one of my friends from the cadet corps" and everyone's shocked and Annie kinda runs off. And ass the reader gets better she's allowed to walk around town and shit as long as someone's with her because she he's trouble walking, and she like can't hold things in one of her hands without shaking like she's about to fall apart. She basically hos no memories of absolutely anything so if someone says that their friends she just believes them and wants to be with them, which is a contrast to how she was in the cadets because she was always super short tempered and would pick fights with everyone, but she always had a soft spot for Annie and would follow her around and shit while being an ass to everyone else. So now she has no memories, blind as shit, can barely walk, and is super kind and polite to just about everyone. And like she insists on Annie seeing her and wants to go with her wherever she goes and is all smiles and happiness while Annie is kinda having a crisis. Because they were both very closed off people and they opened up to each other and built unwavering trust and loyalty but now one of them doesn't remember, Annie wants to help her but at the same time she feels that it's for the best if they stay apart, uh spoiler they don't stay apart it's just gonna take time. I'm really sorry this was so long dude. Also please tell me this made sense I haven't stopped think about this for days

I- It’s a little confusing but I think I get it.

Let me know if I get anything wrong!

I also included a lot of platonic AruAni because it’s cute.

Unbearable

(Annie Leonhart x Reader)

AU: Canon

Warnings: Implied season 3 spoilers

Category: Both angst and fluff (somehow)

Summary: After getting seriously injured in a mission, Annie’s s/o doesn’t recognize anyone, and is left very weak. Still, Annie and her S/O stick together through the recovery.

Words: 5.5K

It’d gone wrong. It’d all gone horribly wrong.

A freak accident—only preventable by, perhaps, closer gear inspection, but it was far too late for that. The damage had been done.

The most recent Survey Corps mission was just concluding, and you managed to call yourself one of the lucky ones who survived this far. Erwin led the charge back to the walls at full speed, having completed the objective by the skin of his teeth, but an abnormal titan was tagging dangerously close behind.

The towering beast approached closer and closer, until it kicked the horse you were on, sending you and it abruptly flying through the air and away from the Scouts.

It took you a minute to regain your senses and realize the gravity of your situation. Your horse lay dying 40 feet away from you. Clearly, it would be of no help. The abnormal lurched towards you unnaturally, and your eyes widened in fear.

A quick movement of your upper body caused a jolt of pain to shoot up your chest, and you were positive you must’ve broke a few ribs when you collided with the dirt.

Still, you had limited time before the monster reached you, and you weren’t about to die that easily. You bore the pain in your chest as you stood up straight, beads of cold sweat rolling down your face as you surveyed your situation to find the easiest way out.

You were too far from your horse, and the rest of the Scout formation, and you were in no shape to run. Your head turned towards the walls, and an idea popped into your mind—you were going to scale the wall.

You broke into a quick sprint before you shot your ODM gear into the wall, flying towards it at lightning speed. Your back took the brunt of the impact, and you groaned in pain.

Still, it seems as if the abnormal wasn’t going to let you get a moment’s rest, as it caught up to you and tried to jump and grab you, but narrowly missed your boot. The rush of adrenaline kicked your body into gear as you shot the grapple of your ODM gear onto the ledge of the wall and hauled yourself up, a garrison soldier helping you before turning to man one of the cannons.

You stood up triumphantly on the wall, the titan below you still trying in vain to reach you. You could hear the distant shouting of a commander—and what you could out assume was the foreboding shout, “FIRE!!!”

And that’s where everything went wrong.

The cannon, no more than three feet to your right, exploded into a supernova of sparks and flames, and the last thing you saw was fire as blinding pain shot through your body.

And then it all went black.

---

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but only family members are allowed to see her at the moment, you’re going to have to wait until she’s discharged.” The poor receptionist sighed, staring up at the distressed woman in front of her.

“I don’t care if ‘only family is allowed’! I’m her girlfriend, I should be allowed to see her!” Annie shouted, dressed in a simple white hoodie and grey pants. An outfit too casual for her to wear outside in most occasions, but when she heard the news of your admission to the hospital, she didn’t care to change.

“I’m sorry, there’s really nothing I can do-”

Annie leaned in closer, grabbing the receptionist by the collar of her shirt and pulling her in, a dangerous look gracing her face. Her voice came out in a threatening growl.

“Look, I’m a part of the military police, so if anyone asks, I’m just her older sister,” She glared daggers the woman, who shook like a leaf at the intimidation, “Got it?”

The woman nodded urgently, sweating bullets at this point, and Annie was thankful the intimidation had worked. “R-Room 302...”

She didn’t bother letting out a response as she ran to the wing of the hospital you were in. She didn’t know quite where the room was, but she would find out soon enough.

After a painful few minutes of searching, her eyes found the plate outside of a closed wooden door, the number reading “302″.

She walked up to it, and took a deep breath in before twisting the doorknob and pushing her way into the room, but her eyes widened in surprise and she gasped at the sight.

She knew it was bad—after all, nothing good ever came out of being so close to an explosion like that—but she couldn’t have been prepared for what she saw.

You were laid down on the bed, clearly unconscious, and sweltering burns covered at least 60% of your body, especially your right side. Many limbs were elevated and covered in taunting white casting, and you let out shallowed, labored breaths.

She mentally cursed the primitive healthcare the Eldians seemed to have, and the lack of a doctor in the room. She was no professional, but you definitely didn’t look to be in a state to be alone.

She though you were alone, that is, until her rationality returned to her and she noticed many figures in the room, though none bore the staff uniform.

They seemed to notice her before long, and a few stared at her quietly with pity in their eyes. She scanned the faces that surrounded her; Eren, Mikasa, Armin, Sasha, Connie, and Reiner were all present in the room.

“What in...” Her voice came out short in her throat; the words were just as powerless as she was, “What in God’s name happened to her...” It was hushed, almost husky, and it sounded like she was about to cry. Maybe she was, but she didn’t notice.

Mikasa seemed to be the first one to speak up through the heavy silence, stepping forward to grab Annie’s attention.

“It was on the recent scouting mission yesterday. She narrowly escape a titan by climbing over the wall, but one of the Garrison’s cannons blew up.” Mikasa looked to the side, clearly troubled by the situation as well. “Of the four people caught up in the explosion, she’s the only one still alive.”

Annie didn’t process quite what Mikasa had said at first, her mind was more focused on a pressing question that suddenly arose in her mind.

“The only one still alive?” She echoed. “Why did you phrase it like that?”

Mikasa sighed, covering her mouth with her scarf—something she often did when she was troubled. “Well, the doctor is doing all he can at the moment, but she’s been drifting in and out of consciousness nonstop for the past hour. Even when she is awake, we can’t seem to get a coherent response out of her.”

She froze.

Her eyes moved back to your battered form. She hadn’t taken in exactly how bad it was until now. Shattered bones, burnt skin, compromised organs—you were nearly unrecognizable. Not in the way that you were scarred beyond recognition, but in the way that she never imagined to see you in such a state. You looked like you had, quite literally, went through hell and back.

She let out a pained sigh, slinking down in a chair next to the bed and staring at the floor in defeat. She reached out and grabbed your limp hand at your side, running her thumb delicately over your burnt hand, as if the slightest mistouch would cause you to shatter like delicate porcelain.

“Please...” She knew you couldn’t hear her, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to pretend, for a brief moment, that you could, and that you’d bounce right back up. But, you stayed limp on the bed, unmoving. “Please wake up...”

The others were able to read the room and came to a silent consensus, filing out of the room wordlessly.

She continued to hold your hand, sitting silently on your bedside for hours.

You never regained consciousness once.

---

Dreams flashed through her mind, the inner turmoil she faced was too fierce to not have such vibrant, nonsensical dreams. Dreams of you, spending late nights with her, or eating with her in silence. Dreams of your broken and bloodied body being sent flying from a hellish firework of flames. Dreams of visiting a newly dug grave. Dreams of—

A loud banging startled her out of her sleep, and she opened her eyes with a start, the dreams stopping abruptly as her brain pieced together the fragments of reality. Right, they were just dreams.

The banging—what was it? She looked around for a source. Nothing had fallen, nothing had moved, the room was still.

*BANG BANG BANG*

She jumped at the loud so, before facepalming internally. Of course someone was knocking on the door, what was she thinking?

A quick glance at the clock showed the time; 3AM. What is going on?

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she threw on some sweatpants, just presentable enough to answer the door.

She twisted the knob open and was greeted by...

“Armin?” She slurred, confusion and tiredness laced her voice.

“Annie...!” He had a strange look on his face, like he was in a hurry. Yet, it didn’t look like desperation, nor was it excitement. “Y/n woke up!”

---

She had never run faster. She didn’t care about leaving Armin in the dust at her front doorstep—hell, it didn’t even process until minutes later that she didn’t even close the front door. She just ran, ran, ran all the way to the hospital.

She made it to your room again, panting and desperate to see you again.

She went inside, and an immense wave of relief and joy washed over her face. It was true, you were conscious. Sitting up in the bed, talking to someone at your bedside, likely a nurse or a doctor.

Her loud footsteps and heavy breathing brought the attention of both you and the staff member to her, and you locked eyes with her.

She froze. There they were. The beautiful E/C eyes she had fallen in love with, and the same ones that filled her vision when she first awoke next to you in the morning. Except, something was off. She couldn’t quite place it, but there was disarray in your eyes. A storm.

She paid no mind to the rotten gut feeling, though, and rushed by your side to grip your hand tightly. A spark of sympathy arose in her chest when you whimpered in pain at the motion, but that was the last thing on her mind. Tears of happiness sparked in her eyes and threatened to roll down her cheeks.

She bowed her head—a sign of vulnerability that only you were ever able to see.

“Y/n, I...!” She choked out through the tears in her eyes, the back of her throat tightening with emotion, “I’m so glad you’re okay...”

You didn’t embrace her, you didn’t squeeze her hand back. No, you were still. Still as you were when your battered body was first admitted to the hospital. She looked up at you, and the same misguided look was in your eyes.

“Sorry... do I know you?”

---

She slammed the door behind her, locking it as she slid down the wall of her house, sobs wracking her body.

Her mind had neglected to process it until just now, but the truth was inescapable; you didn’t know who she was anymore. You didn’t know anyone or anything anymore.

Amnesia.

She couldn’t bear to see you like that. Seeing you so physically broken was bad enough, but seeing you confused and lost, years of memories and connections and friends just out the window? If there was a god, he sure as hell must’ve hated you.

She had no idea what to do. You weren’t going to just magically remember her. No, the Y/N she knew and loved all those years was gone. You were just a blank slate. She no longer meant anything to you, she was a stranger in your eyes.

She laid down to go to sleep, but she couldn’t even bring herself to close her eyes. She didn’t sleep that night.

---

She chose not to get up the next morning. She stayed in bed, staring at the empty space next to her where you usually slept. She wanted you to be right there next to her. God, she wanted you back.

She would’ve stayed in her depressed, hibernated state for hours, or even days, had someone not stopped by to check on her.

She figured it would be Armin. The sympathetic blonde man would always stop by to check on her. Not just now, but throughout their days as cadets. He was always the second person—after you, of course—to check up on her and ask how she was doing.

But when she opened the door and saw Mikasa, she was a little confused.

“Mikasa, what are y-”

“Y/n wants to speak with you.” She stated flatly, and Annie physically recoiled at the mention of your name.

“She... what?” Annie muttered, confusion enveloping her tone.

She understood the statement, on a surface level at least. But she didn’t understand why. Why did you want to talk to her? She meant nothing to you. What was there to talk about anymore? You probably didn’t even know her name.

She complied silently, though, and before long, she had trudged herself all the way to the hospital.

302. Such a depressing number to her now. But it was unavoidable. You were on the other side of the door, awaiting her for some odd reason.

She pushed the door open, and her eyes met yours silently. You were sitting up with your hands folded neatly in your lap. Your eyes followed Annie as she wordlessly shut the door and took a seat next at your bedside.

“Annie.” The blonde women flinched at the sound of her name, eyes staying fixated on anything but your face. “Annie.”

She finally shifted her head, meeting your gaze. There was a pitiful look tracing her features. It would look like indifference at first glance, but being so close to her allowed you to notice small features on her face, like her sunken in eyes, and her lips, tucked into a frown slightly tighter than normal.

She looked like she was about to cry.

You moved your arm slowly, wincing internally as your wounds burned and ached, and took her hand in your own, rubbing your thumb over the back of her hand in a soothing manner. Annie didn’t want to enjoy it—she knew this wasn’t the you she had fallen in love with—but she couldn’t stop herself from remembering the simpler times, where small affectionate gestures like this were normal to her.

“Mikasa told me just about everything I’ve forgotten.” You finally spoke up. “About the Scouts, about the accident, about us.” A painful silence filled the room for a moment following the word ‘us’. Surely, it meant more to her than it did to you.

“Annie.” You squeezed her hand despite the pain shooting up your arm, and your hand trembled involuntarily. “I know I don’t really know you,” You chuckled lightly, “or anyone for that matter, but I want to spend more time with you. We can just restart, fall in love all over a-”

“No!” She snapped, the sudden outburst causing you to jump. Her distressed eyes softened when she saw you, almost as if she thought you were made of glass, and that you would break at any moment. “No... please...”

She stood up abruptly, dropping your hand to lay dormant by the side of the hospital bed. “You don’t even know me! What’s the point?!”

Despite her angry appearance, her bottom lip trembled, and her voice shook as she spoke. Pricks of tears appeared at the corner of her eyes, but she wiped them away desperately.

“You forgot me, so I’ll forget you in return.” She turned towards the door, grabbing the knob firmly. Despite her desperate need to get out of the room, her hand trembled and shook, refusing to turn the knob.

“I’ll...” A small sob wracked her body. “Find someone else...”

---

Contrary to what her heart truly desired, she refused to see you. She forced herself to cut off all emotional ties to you—after all, you didn’t even know her. It was painful to even speak to you. Somehow, the loss had felt like you truly had died in the explosion. Sure, you were physically here, but all that was you was gone.

It was Armin who finally brought her out of her depressed slump. He saw the state of her after weeks of staying huddled up in her room. It was so unlike Annie. Her room was a mess, and so was she. Her hair was unkempt and unbrushed, and she hadn’t even showered at all. Clothes lay scattered across the room, and the trash can in the corner of the room had started overflowing.

It wasn’t a pleasing sight, but he couldn’t blame her.

He had offered to meet him at a local café to talk—albeit, after she showered. She hesitantly agreed, and went into the bathroom to get ready. While she showered, Armin absentmindedly picked up some of the scattered clothing, putting it in it’s proper place, and even emptied the trash can for her.

He saw the slight shock in her eyes when she came out, surprised, but internally grateful for his help. She didn’t show it verbally, but she gave a thankful nod, and he understood.

---

Armin brought the cup to his lips, the steam flowing from the cup blocking his face as he sipped his tea silently, and Annie took another bite of her glazed donut.

“So, Annie.” He turned to face her, setting his cup down. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

She sighed internally. Nothing yet had been spoken, but she knew it was about you. Her silence beckoned him to continue.

“I... No, we all noticed how you’ve been recently, and we understand it. Who knows what you’re feeling right now...” His sympathy went mostly unappreciated. She really didn’t want to be reminded of the depressive state she had fallen into.

“It’s completely up to you, but... we think it would be better for you if you decided to talk to her again.” Armin didn’t need to say who this ‘her’ was. Annie already knew.

She raised an eyebrow and considered his statement for a fleeting moment, but regained her stance. She wasn’t going to talk to you. No convincing from her friends would change that.

“See, the thing is, Y/N has been discharged.” He spoke, bringing the cup back to his face to preemptively fill the silence he anticipated.

No amount of emotional cover-up could hide the shocked look on her face. Part of her was ecstatic, deep down. She was glad you were well enough to leave. But, the other part reminded her that associating with you would only bring her more hurt.

“But, there isn’t really going to be any recovering from what she experienced, unfortunately.” He brought the cup back down onto the table, now empty of all it’s liquid. “So, the doctor advised that she be under careful supervision from someone at all times.”

Annie wasn’t stupid. She knew where this was going.

“So,” he huffed a breath of heavy air, “We decided that if anyone was going to take her in, it should be you, Annie. We want to take her back to live with you.” She could feel her jaw slack at the proposal, and a full-fledged war had just started in her mind. She registered he was still speaking, but was too conflicted to listen.

Once again, part of her mind was desperately trying to reach you. To take you in and care for you, and to ensure you have a safe and comfortable recovery with her. She could restart with you, and make new memories with you, and everyone else.

But she understand it would be painful. Unbearable, even. She might as well be taking care of a stranger. You didn’t act like Y/n, you didn’t look like Y/n, hell, you hardly even knew who Y/n was at this point. It would just hurt her even more, all she needed to do was get away from you—!

“Annie...!” Armin spoke firmly, slightly leaned over the table as if he had been prying for her attention for a while now. He reached across the table to grab her hand, causing her to gasp. His hand was warm. It reminded her of you.

“I know what you’re thinking.” His voice was soothing and inviting, and she was reminded once again of what great friends she had made in the 104th.

“You think it’s gonna hurt, and it will, I’m sure. I understand too. She doesn’t quite act like she did before, we all noticed. It’s...” He paused, leaning back in his chair and looking to the side. It had hurt him, too. “Strange. To see a friend like this.”

He leaned forward, pulling his hand away to place it back on the table. “But you have to do something! Separating yourself from someone you care about so deeply isn’t good for you.” He brought his head up slightly, staring daggers into her eyes. “And don’t lie to me. I know you still care about her. You wouldn’t be so conflicted if you didn’t.”

Tears pricked at her eyes once again. She didn’t want to get emotional, and certainly not here of all places. But she knew he was telling the truth. She still cared, and it wasn’t good for her to ignore you.

“Besides,” He stood up, turning to leave. “She misses you too, Annie.”

---

She made up her mind that day. She was gonna bring you back home.

It wasn’t easy. Both the emotional aspect, but also cleaning up her filthy room in such a short span of time. Still, she prepped it perfectly for your arrival. She cleaned up the room, organized her things, made the bed, and even bought a second pillow—surely, you two couldn’t share just the one.

Picking you up from the hospital was bittersweet. You managed to stay standing, although only with the help of a wooden cane. Your hand gripped the handle tightly, and you leaned a large portion of your body weight on it, just to not fall over.

You had changed out of the raggedy hospital clothes, finally getting to wear something comfortable after so long, but even with the cloth, the purplish-redish burn scars coated much of your body. It reached from the very fingertips of your right hand, all the way up your neck and part of your face.

Still, you smiled weakly and brought your hand up to wave at her.

She approached you hesitantly, but as soon as you tried to stumble over to her, she rushed up to support you with an arm around your shoulder.

“Easy, now.” She muttered. “You should be careful.”

“Right,” You chuckled nervously. “Sorry.” You breathed out a sigh of relief, having seen the outside for the first time in weeks. It didn’t stop the stone walls from towering forebodingly over you, though, but you felt at least some freedom.

“Where are we headed?” You sighed, and started walking. Annie guided you for the most part, but you managed to get your injured legs to cooperate, somewhat. You hand trembled as it gripped the cane, and even step on uneven ground caused you to stumble, but Annie’s grip kept you upright.

“We’re going...” She hesitated. “Home.”

---

Early morning birds chirped their greetings through the open windows, and the sun shone rays of dawn down from the sky. A typical wake-up call to her.

That, and your snoring.

She opened her eyes and stretched, easing up the tension in her muscles, which had laid painfully dormant for the past eight hours. Yawning and rubbing the sleep from her eyes, her attention shifted to the mass attached to her side.

Your arms were wrapped tightly around her torso, and your head was buried in her chest. Despite having lived with you for a few weeks now, she hadn’t gotten used to the change. In the past, neither of you really cuddled in your sleep. You gave sweet goodnights and passed out on opposite sides of the bed just like that.

It was a welcome change, though, and seeing you tucked so comfortably into her side brought a smile and blush to her face. She ran a hand through your messy h/c hair, smiling softly as you stirred in response to the affection.

“...Mm?” You let out a groggy noise, having been woken up a little earlier than you were used to. Annie was always the morning person in the relationship.

“Good morning.” She cooed, removing her hand to sit up and get out of bed. Once she tried to stand, though, she felt a frail hand tug at her wrist. You grip was weak as a result of your injuries, and she could very easily wiggle out if she wanted to, but she faltered.

“C’mon...” You muttered, face down in the blankets, still halfway asleep. “Can’t you stay a little longer?”

Annie huffed in defeat, climbing back into the bed and shuffling back under the cotton sheets. You were back at her side in an instant, and she smiled once again. Even after everything, you were still just as cute as always when you were sleepy.

“We can’t stay like this for very long, you know.” She sighed, placing a warm, calloused hand on your back.

You groaned in annoyance at that. “Why’s that?”

“Armin and the others invited us out to get lunch. It’s been a while since the Survey Corps has had a day off.” She looked to the side before muttering quietly. “I also have to go to work with the military police... I’ve used up all my paid leave.”

“Oh... yeah, we should probably get ready.” Contrary to your tone, you were actually quite happy. Annie had been quite a bit overprotective of you since your injury, so you hadn’t gotten the chance to get out much. You couldn’t blame her much, though. You could hardly walk, eat, or do just about anything without assistance. You were glad she took good care of you, but it got a little overbearing sometimes.

“Let’s get up, then.” She said, slinking out of bed. You watched wordlessly as she slipped out of her night clothes into something more presentable, sliding her shirt over her head effortlessly. You couldn’t help but blush as your eyes trailed down her toned stomach.

She looked back at you with an unamused expression as she slid on a plain white shirt. “You shouldn’t stare, Y/n.”

“R-Right.” You looked away flustered. You had only technically known her a few weeks now, but man were you lucky.

Annie’s warm hand enveloping your own brought you back into reality, and you accepted her help wordlessly as you got out of bed.

She helped you out of your clothes and handed you something nice to put on for the day. It was a comfortable ritual the two of you got into, helping you get dressed in the morning.

She sat you down in one of the chair’s in her room, ordering you to stay put while she went to the military police mess hall to pick up breakfast for the two of you.

She came back into the room only a few minutes later, carrying two trays of food, and sat them down in front of both of you. It was a boring meal, typical of any military ration, but you didn’t complain.

“So, Annie,” She looked up from her food, still digging her fork into the baked potato on her plate. “Tell me a story.”

She smiled longingly, staying silent for a moment as she recollected her memories for a good story to tell. Ever since you lost your memory and started staying with Annie, you often spent mealtimes getting her to tell stories about you, her, and your other friends. About what happened in the 104th, and the Survey Corps, and sometimes, you’d ask Annie about her childhood and time before the military. She seemed very hesitant about the last one, but she still told you bits and pieces. You could easily infer that she didn’t have a very pleasant childhood, so you didn’t push the subject.

“Well,” Annie finally spoke, swallowing a gulp of water from her glass, having seemingly found a story she felt like telling. “One time, in the 104th, Sasha had managed to convince you to steal food from the pantry with her.”

You listened intently as she continued recounting the events, a sad smile on her face. “So you and her snuck in late at night, but Shadis heard both of you because of how loud Sasha was. So then, you two had no where to go but a tiny cramped pantry in the kitchen, and then—”

*CRASH*

You sat there like a deer in headlights as the glass shattered into hundreds of transparent shards on the floor, startling Annie out of her nostalgic trance.

“Y/n!” She exclaimed, standing up from her seat swiftly. She spotted the broken glass, mixed with the water it had held, and looked back at you. Once she pieced it together, she facepalmed.

“Y/n...” She sighed. “How many times do I have to tell you to not to try and pick up things right now...”

“Sorry,” You muttered. “I just wanted to see...”

Despite the severity of your injuries, you were quite stubborn. No matter how much Annie insisted that you not hold things in your state, you did so anyway. It seldom worked, since, like now, you always dropped it within seconds.

“It’s... It’s fine,” She sighed, leaning down to carefully pick up the larger fragments of glass. Once she got the larger pieces, she dumped them in the trash and knelt down in front of your chair on one knee, grabbing your hand in her own. “But you need to remember, your injuries haven’t healed yet. Nowhere close. I know you hate it, but you need to let your body rest.”

You nodded sorrowfully. Yet, despite how much you promised, you knew you’d never really stop trying to push your body. Even if your skin was scarred, and hands were shaky, and the muscles of your legs atrophied and partially-paralyzed, you would never stop trying to live a normal life.

Annie had finished sweeping up the smaller shards of glass in the dustpan, and dumped it into the trash can, before returning to the table.

Silently, she grabbed her glass, still half filled with water, and brought it up to your lips. When you had first started living with Annie, you were a little embarrassed about having to be fed like this, but you had long since gotten used to it.

Once the glass was empty, she sat it down on the tabletop once again, and checked the time.

“Shit, we should get going, it’s nearly time.” She sighs, grabbing your cane from it’s spot leaning against the wall and handing it to you. You thank her and, with her help, stand up from your spot. Her arm slinks around your waist, allowing you to lean half of your body weight on the cane and the other half on Annie.

As you made your way out of the building and down the street towards the restaurant, you finally broke the silence.

“Annie?” You asked, quietly. There was an uncharacteristic sadness to your voice.

“Yes, darling?” She inquired, keeping her eyes glued on the trail in front of you.

“How come you still take care of me? Even after the accident, you still stick with me. Why is that?”

Annie chuckles dryly. She doesn’t want to tell you that it’s still a sore subject for her, so she answers honestly.

“It wasn’t so black and white, really. It was pretty upsetting to see someone I loved so much not even recognize me at all.” Her eyes bore into the pavement below her feet. “No offense, of course.”

“None taken.”

“But a friend of mine talked to me about it. And I realized there would be no point in running from it. I decided that if you didn’t know me, I would make you fall in love with me all over again. Plus,” She looked to the side, a faint red blush on her cheeks. “I didn’t want you to feel lonely...”

You giggled at her embarrassment, opening your mouth to say something, but she cut you off quickly.

“We’re here.” She stopped in front of the doors, and you easily spotted Mikasa, Armin, and Jean already sitting inside at one of the tables, exchanging lighthearted banter.

“Hey Annie.”

“Hm?” She turned the knob of the door, stepping foot into the bustling room.

“Thanks for taking care of me.” You sighed, a small smile gracing your lips.

“Of course.” She smiled in return. “I’ll always be here for you.”

“Oi!” Jean shouted from across the room, and Armin immediately tried to shush his yelling, but he wasn’t phased. “Annie, Y/n, hurry up!”

You and Annie giggle at his boisterous attitude, walking over to find your seats.

“It’s been a while since we’ve seen you, Y/N.” Mikasa smiled warmly, tucking her scarf around her neck.

You smile at the three of them, looking so happy and peaceful. You’ve missed it.

“Yeah,” You laugh. “So, what did I miss?”

This feels badly written but I can’t place it, I dunno.

Probably ‘cause I wrote the first half like a month ago and only finished it today lol.

And no I totally didn’t reference someone else’s fic in this haha nope