#oppressions don't just disappear because you don't see them

[bloomingbluebell]

would REALLY love for people to not start rambling about politics and then get surprised/upset/disappointed when i walk out after a certain point

i'm tired of having to correct people and STILL getting shut down

[weareuniqueandimportant]

EMPATHY GLAMORIZATION IS NOT ABOUT EMPATHY BUT SUPERIORITY TORWARDS APATHETIC PEOPLE BIGOTRY TORWARDS THEM TYPICAL BIGOT EVIL. SIMPLE AS THAT. IF YOU SEE THEM AS LEFTIST YOU'RE NO LEFTIST YOURSELF. HORRIBLE. THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE ONLY EMPATHY AND BAD TO THINK EVERYTHING YOU DO IS SUCH ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY'RE CLEARLY BEING APATHETIC IF ANYTHING WHEN THEY DO THIS...

COMES TO SHOW BIGOTRY TORWARDS CRAZY AND DISABLED PEOPLE ASWELL AS PARAPHILIA PEOPLE ISN'T TAKEN AT ALL THE SAME AS SEXISM RACISM AND QUEERPHOBIA... OR PERHAPS... LIKELY... THEY ARE ALL THE BIGOTED THINGS EVIL AND TAKE NONE THAT SERIOUSLY... BELITTLING DOWN THEIR PAIN AND DAMAGE...

[headspace-hotel]

Many people, especially USAmericans, are very resistant to knowing the plants and living according to the ways of the plants. They lash out with a mix of arrogance and fear: "Don't you know what bad things would happen if we lived a different way? There is a REASON for living this way. Would you have us go Back—backward to the time without vaccines or antibiotics????"

Ah, yes, the two immutable categories that all proposals for change fit into: Backward Change and Forward Change! Either we must invent a a futuristic, entirely new solution with SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY that further industrializes and increases the productivity of our world, or we must give up vaccines and antibiotics and become starving illiterate medieval peasants.

Every human practice anywhere on Earth that has declined, stopped, or become displaced by another practice, was clearly objectively worse than whatever replaced it. You see, the only possible reason a way of life could decline or disappear is that it sucked and had it coming anyway!!! Pre-industrial human history is worthless except as a cautionary tale about how miserable we would all be without *checks notes* factories, fossil fuels and colonialism. Obviously!

Anyway, who do you think benefits from the idea that pesticide-dependent, corporate-controlled industrialized monoculture farming liberates us all from spending our short, painful lives as filthy, miserable peasants toiling in the fields?

First of all, I think it's silly to act like farming is a uniquely awful way to live. I can't believe I have to say this, but the awful part of being a medieval peasant was the oppression and poverty, not the fact that harvesting wheat is a lot of work and cows are stinky. Same goes for farm labor in the modern USA: the bad part is that most people working farms are undocumented migrant workers that are getting treated like garbage and who can't complain about it because their boss will rat them out to ICE.

Work is just work. Any work has dignity when the people doing it are paid properly and not being abused. Abuse and human trafficking is rampant in agriculture, but industrialization and consolidation of small farms into gigantic corporate owned farms sure as hell isn't making it better.

Is working on a farm somehow more miserable than working in a factory, a fast food restaurant, or a retail store? Give me a break. "At least I'm not doing physical labor in the sun," you say, at your job where you're forced to stand on concrete for 8 hours and develop chronic pain by age 24.

When you read about small farmers going out of business because of huge corporations, none of them are going "Yay! Now that Giant Corporation has swallowed up all the farms in the area, we can all enjoy the luxurious privileges of the industrial era, like working RETAIL!" What you do see a lot of is farmers bitterly grieving the loss of their way of life.

And also, the fact is, sustainable forms of polyculture farming that create a functional ecosystem made up of many different useful and edible plants are actually way MORE efficient at producing food than a monoculture. The reason we don't do it as much, is that it can't be industrialized where everything is harvested with machines.

Some places folks are starting to get the idea and planting two crops together in alternating rows, letting the mutualistic relationship between plants boost the yields of both, but indigenous people in many parts of the world have been doing this stuff basically forever. I read about a style of agroforestry from Central America that has TWENTY crops all together on the same field.

Our modern system of farming is necessary for feeding the world? Bullshit! Our technology is very powerful and useful, but our harmful monocultures, dangerous pesticides, and wasteful usage of land and resources are making the system very inefficient and severely degrading nature's ability to provide for us.

What is needed, is a SYNTHESIS of the power and insights of technology and science, with the ancient wisdom and knowledge gained by closely and carefully observing Nature. We do not need to reject one, to embrace the other! They should be friends!

Our system thinks land is only used for one thing at a time. Even our science often thinks this way. A corn field has the purpose of producing corn, and no other purpose, so all other plants in the corn must be killed, and it must be a monoculture of only corn.

But this means that the symbiosis between different plants that help each other is destroyed, so we must pollute the earth with fertilizers that wash into bodies of water and cause eutrophication, where algae explode in number and turn the water to green goo. Nature always has variety and diversity with many plants sharing the same space. It supports much more animal life (we are animals!) this way. The Three Sisters" are the perfect example of mutualism between plants being used in an agricultural environment. The planting of corn, beans, and squash together has been traditionally used clear across the North American continent.

And in North America, the weeds we have here are mostly edible plants too. Some of them were even domesticated themselves! Imagine a garden where every weed that pops up is also an edible or otherwise useful crop, and therefore a welcomed friend! So when weeds like Amaranth and Sunflower pop up in your field, that should not be a cause for alarm, but rather the system of symbiosis working as it should.

A field of one single crop is limited in how much it can produce, because one crop fits into a single niche in what should be a whole ecosystem, and worse, it requires artificial inputs to make up for what the rest of the plant community would normally provide. The field with twenty crops does not produce the same amount as the monoculture field divided in twenty ways, but instead produces much more while being a habitat for wild animals, because each plant has its own niche.

[byproducts-of-my-imagination]

Star Platinum Stalking (He Means Well!)

Stands are manifestations of the user’s desires right?  Haha I feel like Star would be much more forward than Jotaro, only because he knows no shame.

I’m writing with Part 3 Joot in mind

Stalker Star Platinum and Jotaro x reader 

There it is again.  Out of the corner of your eye, you see movement, you see it... or him?  A large purple-skinned man.  He disappears every time you so much as blink, but you figured out recently that if you pretend like you don't see it and don't directly look in its direction it will stay.  The first time you saw it, you thought you were going crazy.  The second time too.  And the third.  The fourth time you spotted a flash of purple you were forced out of denial.  The feeling of eyes on you gets more and more oppressive every day.  There’s faint chill shuddering down your spine, but something else accompanies it, a sense of familiarity.  It's been a week, and you finally decide to voice your concerns so at least someone knows something when you inexplicably get kidnapped.  On the way home from school, you bring up the topic.

"Hey Jojo?  I think I have a stalker…" Jotaro adjusts his hat, and spares you his signature stoic look.

Jotaro’s mind is racing.  He feels like he's back on the trip to Egypt, paranoia taking over.  Anyone and everyone is a threat and possible stand user.  How could he be so foolish to think that he was safe after he killed Dio?  Who is it?  Who found out?  He was so careful to hide his feelings.  Jotaro Kujo doesn't need love.  Jotaro Kujo doesn't need a weakness like that.  Women are annoying bitches that's all.  Every last one of them.  But he looks at your bright eyes and finds his heart clenching.  Squashing the feeling, he vows to catch whoever is stalking you.  At the very least, he will protect you.  If he can't give you love, he'll make sure you’re safe.  

"I'll keep you safe."  And that’s the end of it.  You wonder if Jotaro just wants to shut you up so you stall a bit out of nervousness before speaking up again.  

"I know this sounds crazy… but I keep seeing a large purple man out of the corner of my eye"

Of everything he was preparing himself for, this came out of left field.  

"Jojo?" You look back at your friend, who has come to a full stop.  

"Yare yare." he pulls the brim of his hat lower and pulls out a cigarette.  The pieces have come together.  After all, the saying that stands are a manifestation of the user's desires aren’t based off nothing.

"I'll take care of it."

[im-not-your-nice-jewish-boy]

we've got long memories

I am not the least bit surprised by any of the tidal wave of antisemitism the left has spewed since October 7th. Every single post saying Hamas did nothing wrong; every single targeted attack on my fellow Jewish people on this site; the number of people who proudly paraded misinformation and disinformation to the extent of funding organizations actual Palestinians have said outright don't help them in any way just because it's against Israel which means that it must be good. None of this is surprising to me.

Now, maybe you could say that I'm a cynical bastard, and you'd be right. But you'd also completely be missing why I'm a cynical bastard. I learned this from my mother, who was beaten up just for being Jewish as a child. I learned this from family who disappeared between my ancestors fleeing the countries they came from and looking to see who made it with them. I learned this from the story of one of my grandfathers picking a new birthday because his birth certificate had been burned when the Shul was destroyed so he had no idea when it was. I learned this from people using "Jewish" as an insult in school and watching a girl I knew break down in tears because people were calling her a Jew when she wasn't. I learned this from holiday after holiday that repeated the same verse of people trying to destroy us and us celebrating our survival.

We remember these things because the rest of the world is very good at deliberately forgetting them.

"It's not that bad because it happened to the Jews. It's not an actual problem because Jews are white anyway. Was the Holocaust really even so terrible? Why do you want to be oppressed so badly if not to use it as a weapon against people who you're oppressing yourselves?"

Some variety of every single one of those is something I've seen in recent memory.

So, dear Passionate Goy Internet Leftists who have spent the last few months attacking and accosting every single Jewish person who dares to speak on the issue in any way that doesn't make them a Good Jew?

My dear friend, just know that we will remember you. You can try to go back to normal. You can try to just sweep it under the rug. You can try to act like it was all just business as usual and there was no harm done to any "Good Jews" and just to the "Evil Zionists" (both of which deserve their own rant post and have multiple of them from people a lot smarter than I am).

We will remember what you did

You will never be able to make us forget you calling for our deaths

And most of all, we will outlive you, just like everyone else who ever bayed for our blood

[nanaskzz]

DAWN ─── Felix has always shown himself to be the most perfect boyfriend, and he proves himself even more so by comforting you in an existential crisis during the night.

TWO o'clock in the morning and the beautiful view of Seoul city at this time is definitely rewarding to watch. The lights bring an inexplicable nostalgia and, at times, some kind of comfort. You wanted that comfort now. Feeling embraced by the simple and banal beauty of life. You've always been the type of person to enjoy moments, but ~right now~ you wanted to disappear.

Your leg swings frantically up and down as you try to lean back in the chair on your living room balcony. It's no use. ~Why is there no point?~, You think. Beautiful views have always made you feel at home, so why doesn't it work now? Maybe it was her worries speaking louder than her feelings. But then you remembered him. You needed ~it~, not just a simple view that continues to shine even if ~its~ shine fades.

Felix was extremely understanding, always prioritizing your feelings, often above his own concerns. You were everything to him, he needed you. And that meant that when you weren't okay, he wasn't okay either. He felt like he needed to take your pain away, pass it on to him, and protect you from all the evil the world pressed upon you. You don't know exactly how it happened, your fears externalized as anxiety. It was as if the small stresses throughout the week triggered a major crisis.

You weren't exactly worried about the root of the problem, but rather the need to feel his arms surround you and sweet words come out of his mouth, wishing for your good regardless of the reason for your evil. He was in the next room, sleeping, oblivious to all his pain. You didn't want to wake him up, he was also going through a busy week due to his comeback with the boys.

You shrank into your seat, wanting the tightness in your chest to stop and your breathing to stop betraying you, failing over and over again. Tears fell uncontrollably down his face and without realizing it, oppressive thoughts took over his subconscious. ~It's your fault, try harder. Weak, get up~. It hurt. It hurt to know that she couldn't count on herself because she would fall apart instantly.

You listened, but ignored the footsteps that silently approached you. Warm, soft hands carefully run down your back, up to your shoulders, caressing them so subtly. Your hair instantly stood on end, you couldn't explain if it was due to relief or more nervousness. Lightly Felix's fingers traced under your chin, where he lifted your face, making you look directly into his eyes - which had such a worried gleam.

No words needed to be said, he just engulfed you in such a comforting hug. That was all you needed to break down once and for all. Loud sobs left your lips, which you struggled to hold back. He stroked your hair, whispering words of comfort into your ear, just as you wished.

─── It's going to be okay, baby. Shh!... I'm here with you.

He speaks softly. You deeply and slowly inhale the scent of the shampoo from his freshly washed hair, making you feel safe and comfortable in your arms. He had this dominance over you, your muscles instantly relaxed just by smelling him and hearing the sweet and, at the same time, deep tone of his voice. You slowly began to calm down, breathing more normally, but you still felt your eyes burning.

His thumbs wiped away your tears as he lightly pulled you away, only to look into your eyes again. He takes the elastic from his own hair to tie his own, which was a little messy from the previous agitation. Felix brushes away the small strands that still rest stubbornly in his eyes. Your eyes closed to appreciate even more the affection that he, without any request, kindly distributed over you.

─── You're going to be okay now, I'm here.

─── ... I'm sorry for keeping you up, I know you're busy this week.

You feel embarrassed, sniffling and looking down at your hands. He holds your hands when he sees you scratch your palm with your nails in a sign of nervousness.

─── I do not care about it. You are more important, my love.

You stare at him, still feeling worried and guilty. He sighs, his heart hurts just seeing your red eyes and slowly breaks when he sees the pain that settles in them. He hugs you again.

─── I would stay by your side until dawn if it meant you needed me until then.

With him by your side, you would be fine.

ⵌ series masterlist

[crushribbons]

𝓈𝒾𝓁𝓀

summary: The years have been exceedingly kind to Garreth Weasley.

cw: 6.8k words, s m u t (18+ ONLY), bridgerton girlies this one's for y'all!, oral sex, penetrative sex, slight fix-it because ominis and anne are married because i love them, semi-public-ish sex, i don't know what year it's supposed to be and i refuse to choose one, fem reader. reqs open, put some filth in my inbox!

a/n: i sowwy xx laney

It was unclear why the Ministry of Magic felt it necessary to hold an annual gala for its employees; surely, the money could be put to better use. But another year had come and gone since her protestations of the last one, and her boss was very eager to know why the top-performing Auror never made an appearance at the time-honored event. So, as snow began to fall in gentle wafts from the night sky, she had forced herself into a borrowed dress of her friend Natsai’s before she had time to decide to stay home for another year. 

After checking her reflection in the mirror above her mantle and being satisfied with the way her curled hair framed her face, the witch took a deep breath, which was hard to do in the restrictive corset that Natsai had also leant her. 

“I’m not wearing that,” she had balked when her friend held up the lace and silk monstrosity. 

“You have to! It maintains the shape of the dress,” Natty insisted. “Come now, that gown was my mother’s, and she wore it to her first ball, where she met my father. It is imbued with good luck already.”

The darling story did nothing to persuade the stubborn woman with her arms crossed in front of her. “And if a troll should barge in and attack the gala? How will I fight it off if I’m confined to a straitjacket?”

“You are impossible,” Natsai declared, and left the dress laid over an armchair and the corset in a crumpled heap on the floor as she turned on her heel and clipped back through the front door. 

“Thank you!” her friend called meekly after her. It was so typically kind of Natty to lend her a dress with such a precious history without a second thought. The dress was a spectacular beauty: light violet silk hugged her torso and spilled down over voluminous netted skirts. Lace of the same color lined the neckline that swung low across her chest and shoulders, leaving her arms almost bare, and small satin violets were embroidered around the neck and hemline. It was easy to see how Mr. Onai had fallen in love with the professor after seeing her in this.

However, as the dress restricted her movement so much so that she could hardly clamber into the toilet that hid the entrance to the Ministry, she cursed Natty’s kindness under her breath. The apparating process had been hell, as it already gave the traveler the impression that they were being smothered without also wearing a bone-crushing corset, and the ride down and through the floo fireplace disoriented and oppressed her further. She tumbled several meters past the grate and into a pair of feet. “Oof.” The wind was knocked out of her, but she rolled over with as much grace as she could summon. A hand belonging to the owner of the pair of feet reached out and pulled her the rest of the way up.

“Ominis!” she breathed in intense relief. “Thank God that you’re here!” The slick Gaunt smiled in his gentle way when his wand passed in her direction and he identified her. 

“You look lovely tonight, madame,” he said, with a gentlemanly bow and an affected French accent on the final word. She fought the urge to roll her eyes.

“Clearly, you’ve lost your knack for truth-telling,” she replied. 

“Is it just you this evening? Haven’t you come with anyone else?”

The worst part of all of this. She’d really hoped to just slip in long enough for her superiors to notice that she had come, then disappear the rest of the evening. Especially because Sebastian decided to schedule his convenient trip to Albania during this very week. She’d begged and pleaded with her coworker and friend to escort her to the gala, promising that they would be in and out in a matter of mere seconds, but he’d waved her off and insisted that this trip was of utmost importance. Their boss, Melodia Thistlewit, didn’t just hand out promotions, after all, and Sebastian was certain that this scouting trip would secure him one. 

The witch continued to curse every horrible word she knew at Sebastian as she now faced down the prospect of walking into the large ballroom that Ministry workers had transformed their central atrium into. “Just me,” she told Ominis, but then a thought occurred to her that could save her from certain embarrassment. “And are you alone, as well?”

“Don’t sound so happy at the idea of my solitude,” Ominis drawled, although his smile was still in place. At that moment, a slender woman with pale skin and chocolate hair brushed into a beautiful updo appeared behind Ominis and took his arm. 

She couldn’t find the space to be disappointed that she couldn’t poach Ominis as her own date when she looked at the couple in front of her, staring adoringly at one another. “Anne! You look so wonderful!” Sebastian’s sister blushed as she always did when complimented. Her dress was emerald green, matching the cravat Ominis wore against his all black tuxedo. They made a lovely pair.

“Yes, she does,” Ominis hummed. Anne looked ready to sink into the floor under the weight of the praise from her husband and friend. 

“Thank you. You’re too kind!” Anne looked behind her as if expecting to see someone there. “Didn’t my brother come with you?”

She sighed and shook her head. “No, he preferred the company of Albanian dark wizards,” she replied and Anne grinned knowingly. Sebastian didn’t hide the fact that he was married to his work.

“Well, he’s missing out on a nice evening. We’ll see you in there?” Ominis asked as he held up an arm to escort Anne into the throng of party-goers. The Auror was left, standing alone, watching hundreds of couples shoot out of the fireplaces and giggle to each other as they stood and brushed the soot off the other’s clothes. Though it had been the only career she’d dreamed of having since her days at Hogwarts, being an Auror was not without its disadvantages. The work was exciting and invigorated her to no end, but there were often long hours of tedious research and documentation before she was able to leave the office. And when she went on expeditions, it was cutthroat. Sebastian was one of the only people she trusted to have her back, even though he’d failed in that regard tonight. 

It had become commonplace for her to glance up at the calendar on her desk while she worked, do a double-take, and realize that it had been an embarrassing number of months since she’d gone to dinner with anyone. The streak continues, she thought as she gritted her teeth and finally began making her way into the ballroom. The shiny marble floor clicked underneath her heels, and she felt a little wobbly. Hoisting her numerous skirts until they floated above her ankles helped her awkward gait, and she wove in and out of the people dancing and chattering, champagne glasses tinkling softly in toasts all over the room. Silk skirts and starched trousers intermingled and a light strain of musical laughter floated through the revelry.

As a house elf carrying a tray loaded with flutes passed her, she reached down to snatch one and quickly take a gulp of it. Champagne was going to be a necessary social lubricant this evening. She was acutely aware of the many glances she got from men as she passed by. Natty had chosen a beautiful dress for the event, but it also showed off far more of her clavicle and décolletage than she was accustomed to showing. She was fairly certain she saw Leander Prewett stop talking to the short, middle-aged witch he was having a conversation with to gawk at her from across the room. He looked ready to start pushing through the crowd to make his way over to her. She didn’t much feel like talking to someone from the office of Muggle Relations; truthfully, she respected their work but found it terribly dull. Leander had once trapped her in the hall with a story about a rogue Puffskein that had fluffed its way through Hyde Park, spooking two Muggle children. “Couldn’t you have just told them it was a baby rabbit or something?” she’d asked. The look of smug satisfaction had slid off Prewett’s face as he considered this.

“Uh…well, I mean, it is standard practice to obliviate…” he’d muttered.

She wove through six couples that were waltzing to the tune the enchanted instruments were playing from the conjured stage at the front of the room. Many murmured “excuse me!”s and “pardon”s got her safely to a table tucked against a relatively deserted wall, and she leaned up against it, sighing in relief and scanning the room for any sign of Anne and Ominis, or the encroaching Prewett. It was then that she noticed the table she stood next to held still more glasses of champagne. She quickly downed the rest of the glass she still held and picked up another one. 

From across the room, Melodia Thistlewit caught her eye and raised a glass. “Fuck,” muttered the Auror as she put on a painful fake smile and responded in kind. If she didn’t engage herself with someone else soon, Melodia would certainly drag her into the center of the gala and parade her around to anyone with a pulse. Glancing around again, desperate to see the Gaunts and run to the safety of their conversation, she noticed a man standing on the other side of the champagne table, alone. She ducked down out of sight of Melodia, who was just under five feet tall and could not see well over the large crowd in the ballroom. 

“Alright, I know this is strange, but I really just want to avoid talking to my boss so if you could pretend that we are deeply engaged in some riveting bit of gossip for the next few minutes, I’d appreciate it so much,” she said as she sidled up to the man she’d spotted. She spoke in a low and commanding tone, as if negotiating hostages away from him. Her eyes were fixed on the spot of the room where she was sure she’d seen Melodia, but she startled and spun around when the man exclaimed her last name in a jovial tone and said, 

“Are you trying to kidnap me? What’s going on here?!”

Garreth Weasley was beaming at her. She hadn’t even registered that she knew the stranger haunting the only other empty part of the room. He’d been in her year at Hogwarts, though she’d rarely had occasion to get to know him. The realization that she knew him at all, however, was enough to make her stand straight back up and feel relief wash over her.

“Weasley! I’m so sorry, I had no idea that was you! What are you–” The question regarding his reasons for being at the gala died in her throat as she took in his appearance. In almost ten years since leaving school, she hadn’t given him a single thought, and she saw now what an utter waste of ten years it had been. Weasley was tall, taller than he’d been even in seventh year. His broad shoulders were prominent under the white dress shirt and vest he was wearing, his bowtie and collar loose despite the party having just begun. A worn tuxedo jacket was slung over one arm and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing freckled and distractingly well-muscled forearms and hands. And his hair was fiery as ever, still growing in unruly curls that hung down into his eyes and over his ears. He was grinning the devilish grin she remembered from many ill-fated potions experiments.

“Look at you, all grown up. And top Auror as well!” he crowed. She blushed darker red than his hair.

“How did you know that?”

“Everyone here knows that.”

Forgetting herself, she gawked at him. “You work here?”

Garreth raised a hand to his heart, feigning a grievous injury. “You wound me,” he mocked, but the smile never left his lips. Always good mood Garreth. “I just started a few months ago, in the Improper Use of Magic department.” When he caught the still-shocked expression on her face, he acquiesced with a chuckle. “I’m only joking. Can you imagine? Me? Trying to stop anyone from doing something improper?” He reached forward and pinched her on the upper arm playfully. Why such a simple act caused electric sparks against her skin that traveled through her entire body, she had no idea. 

She cleared her throat and took another sip of champagne. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to imply that you couldn’t work here! Only that I thought you’d never be caught dead doing something so…sanctioned.” Garreth broke into a raucous laugh that, if she’d still been concerned with anyone else at the party, she would have been nervous would attract attention. Instead, she basked in the sunshiney feeling that his laughter brought and felt herself and her nerves melting away like ice cream on a summer’s day. 

“Unsanctioned is the only way I know how to operate!” he quipped, and then his green eyes fell from hers to the dress she was wearing, and she caught him falter and trip over his next words slightly. “Y-you look gorgeous tonight, Merlin’s sake.” Her heart pounded in her chest and she wondered if Garreth could see it beating from the huge expanse of skin that Natty’s dress revealed. “How long has it been?”

Too long, she wanted to say. Entirely too long and I’d like it never to be this long again. His boyish good looks had matured so much better than she ever would have guessed. Rather than tell him that he, too, looked like sex wrapped in silk, she sputtered, “Nearly ten years, I believe. How is your aunt? Dear lady.” 

He smiled appreciatively at the question. “She’s wonderful, thank you. Actually, she’s the entire reason I’m here tonight. Had an extra invitation and she wasn’t exactly about to take Professor Sharp.” The image of the two kind but stiff-upper-lipped teachers arm in arm on the dancefloor made the two of them giggle, Garreth leaning in conspiratorially to grumble in a poor imitation of their potions professor, “Why, Matilda, you dance divinely.” She covered her mouth with her hand to stifle laughter as he did the same. 

“Well, I must say hello to her before the night is over.”

“I’ll see that it happens.”

The two lapsed into comfortable small talk as they continued scanning the room, making remarks about anyone they recognized from school. “My God, that can’t be–it is! Prewett!” Garreth exclaimed, but before he could wave and shout for Leander to come join them, she grabbed one of his arms in a death vice and pleaded with him not to.

“Noooo, not Prewett, not right now,” she begged, and Garreth looked down at her in surprise, his gaze then drifting to where her hands were wringing his arm. She flushed and dropped it quickly, hoping she hadn’t been too familiar with him. “He’s just so dreadfully boring and I am having so much fun right now,” she explained in hushed tones. 

“I’ve never been one to prevent a lady from having fun,” Garreth muttered, so lowly that she almost missed it. She would have noticed the heat growing in her chest at being tucked away so close to him, but at that moment, she saw that Leander had caught Garreth’s call after all, and she groaned as she saw him making his way over to the both of them. 

She cursed. “Prewett’s coming over. Ooh, he’s going to ask me to dance.” She looked up pleadingly at Garreth and begged, “Please don’t let him, Weasley. I have two left feet and frankly, so does he.” He gave a winning but somewhat awkward grin back.

“Where’s your escort for this evening? Surely, such an accomplished witch didn’t attend alone…?” His question was open and hung between the two of them as she stared into the depths of his eyes. They reminded her forcefully of sunlight filtering through the canopy of trees in the Forbidden Forest, green and gold and endless. 

“I tried to arrange one, but couldn’t.” She also tried to inject a tone of disappointment into her words, but couldn’t. Sebastian’s trip to Albania was now possibly the greatest thing that had ever happened to her, and she made a mental note to bake him a cake or something to thank him for the enormous favor he’d done her by fucking off for the week. 

Leander was almost upon them now, so she did not have time to react when Garreth slid his hand around her waist and pulled her gently so her back rested against his chest. “Prewett! How are you!” he cried when Leander finally stood before them. The stuffy Muggle Relations officer looked between the two of them with confusion. 

“Nice to see you, Weasley.” He turned his attention to the Auror and started to ask, “Are you–” but Garreth interjected loudly over top of him,

“My love, you must say hello to Aunt Matilda soon or she will be in a right state.” 

Her stomach flipped in a perfect circle and her head spun as she tried to make sense of what Garreth had said, but there was no time to process as Garreth bid the bewildered Leander goodbye and tugged her by her waist away from him. “You’re welcome,” he muttered into her hair as they squeezed through the crowd and found refuge near a table of desserts. Ah, he’d been trying to prevent Prewett from asking her to dance. That was all. 

“Thank you,” she said with a small smile, too embarrassed at her body’s reaction to his few featherlight touches to make eye contact with him. Wetness was pooling between her legs by the second, and visions of Garreth pressing his mouth to her ear or running his fingers over the ribbons that laced her dress shut were flooding, unbidden, into her mind. My love. Fuck, it had sounded all too lovely when he said that. She needed a breath. “The champagne is making me a bit light-headed. I think I’ll step out for a moment.”

Garreth didn’t miss a beat. “I’ll join you. If you fall down, I can catch you,” he winked, and she wanted to groan in defeat. 

It’s not the champagne, you infuriating delight. It’s you. “Alright.” The redhead trailed behind her as they slipped from the cavernous room into an empty hallway. Lamps lined it, flickering softly and providing only dim illumination without the daylight that usually filtered through from the atrium. She rested her back against the wall and took a deep breath, hoping Garreth couldn’t tell how silly and flustered she looked. A man she hadn’t seen in a decade pops back into her life, and half an hour later she could think about nothing but him taking her clothes off. And vice versa. 

Next to her, Garreth was talking, and she only realized this in time to hear the tail end of what he was saying: “...mind-numbing. I’m glad for my own loudmouth sake that I didn’t land in an office. I’d drive everyone up the walls.”

She laughed. “You’d do wonderfully here, Garreth. We could always use clever people like you.” She didn’t expect his cheeks to turn pink at her words, but they did. He waved her off and looked bashfully down at his drink.

“Potions is my lot in life for now, and I’m quite happy with it,” he said. “Although…” He tapped his chin and she found her eyes sliding out of focus as they gazed dumbly at his soft, pink lips, also splashed with freckles. “Mr. Pippin has been considering opening a shop in London and having me run it. Perhaps I’ll be seeing more of you then.”

Oh, he’d probably be seeing too much of her. She wracked her brain for the name of a potion that she could believably purchase once a day.

They stayed in the hallway, chatting aimlessly, for what felt like hours. Every time Garreth launched into a new story about the unusual and zany clientele he catered to in Hogsmeade, she was sure that she’d hear the sickening sound of the music halting or the magnified voice of the Minister thanking everyone for attending the gala. But neither came, and as the hours ticked on, she found herself falling into dangerous infatuation with the Weasley boy who’d once set his own hair on fire at six o’clock in the morning.        

His tuxedo jacket was thrown carelessly on the ground, and they’d long since slid down the wall to a seated position. The witch was trying her best not to crease Natty’s gown as she told Garreth the story behind it.

“It looks as though it was made for you,” he murmured when she had finished, and felt the silk of the skirt between two of his fingers. They’d each had three glasses of champagne at this point and were working on their fourth, and she couldn’t recall if his hair had been that tousled when they’d first run into each other, or if he was just running his long fingers through it quite a bit. And his bowtie had most definitely still been on his neck, but it was now cast down beside the jacket and the stiff collar of his shirt was open to expose a kissable swathe of neck. Her body felt hot, uncomfortable as it was from the corset, and even more so due to the looks Garreth kept giving her as they talked, an uncharacteristic darkness in his gaze.

“Thank you,” she whispered back. Absently, she ran her hand along the neckline of the dress, feeling the delicate lace that lined it while she took a sip of champagne. Over the rim of her glass, she swore she heard Garreth make a low, choked sound in the back of his throat. “Mm?” She lowered the glass and cocked her head at Garreth inquisitively, looking much more innocent than she felt.

He turned to face her directly, and she inhaled sharply when she saw the way he was staring her down. Like a man who hadn’t drunk water in eons looking at an oasis. Come to think of it, she hadn’t “drunk water” in eons either, and the thought made her want to burst. “Stop that,” he said, glancing down at where her fingers were still trailing over the lace lining. His voice was hoarse. 

Her fingers dropped in dumb obedience to her lap and she set the glass aside. Before she could speak again, Garreth’s fingers replaced hers, ghosting over her neckline and making her skin burn in their wake. “So pretty, so fucking pretty,” he muttered under his breath. She decided then and there to wear that dress every single day of her life. 

“Garreth,” she breathed. It seemed impossible to misread the way he was touching her, his fingertips just missing contact with her breasts as he played with the lace. But her nerves were alight and she had to be sure. “Garreth, what are you doing?”

In answer, he trailed one finger up from the lace, over her cleavage and neck and crooked it under her chin, lifting her face to him. She felt exposed in the most wonderful way as he thickly said, “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me?” His eyes had lost all trace of humor. “Letting me see you in this…this fucking scrap of fabric? Merlin’s beard, you were always beautiful in school, but I never…I didn’t know how…” He trailed off and her cunt pulsed and begged for him, her body moving closer to his in unconscious desperation. 

“What about you?” she whispered against his lips. Heat was rising in her chest once more. “Teasing me senseless for most of the night? You’re no cherub, either, Weasley.”

“A cherub, no,” he agreed, his signature smirk appearing briefly before the lust in his eyes won over. “I’d actually like to do some truly hellish things to you.”

“I bet they’d feel heavenly, though.”

They both snapped at the same time. Garreth buried his hands in her hair, upsetting the updo that Natty had painstakingly helped her pin, and groaned while she clutched him by his vest and pulled him to her lips. The kiss knocked the breath out of her. Tiny, whiny moans escaped him when she began fumbling around the buttons on his shirt. “Off,” was all she could huff out before she dove back to his mouth. Garreth somehow managed to laugh while still kissing her.

“Right here? Like this?” he panted, glancing around the hallway, still empty but only steps away from the bustling party. 

They stopped discussing logistics for a moment to resume their fevered pawing at each other. Garreth’s hands wove back into her hair and pulled her with force against him, and she obliged by crawling the last few inches that separated them and onto his lap. The voluminous dress pressed and bunched between them, causing an irritated grunt to spill from Garreth. “Decide where you want to go now, angel, or I’m laying you bare on the carpet right here and ruining this gown.” She moaned with need, pleasure building in her core and spreading through her entire body at his touch. He kissed her like he’d been waiting to do so for a thousand years. His lips were every bit as soft as they looked, and he tasted like champagne and peppermint, a slight spice on his tongue that made her go mad with craving.

“Anywhere,” she whined, and meant it. The hallway was lined with closed offices, so Garreth pulled her up to stand on wobbly feet and they ran down the hall, trying every door to see if any happened to be unlocked. She would have used alohomora, but breaking into someone’s office for what promised to be a highly illicit act (if Garreth’s dark emerald eyes and the large bulge pressing against his trousers were any indication) just felt too indecorous. If a door happened to be open, however…it was practically an invitation.

It took turning down two more hallways, one stairwell, and yanking on probably twenty doors to find one that finally, blissfully, turned under Garreth’s hand. Mere seconds later, he had cleared every possession from the poor Ministry employee’s desk with a sweep of his arm and threw her onto it. “Gods, I’ve not been able to think about anything except this since I saw you,” he slurred through kiss-swollen lips as he grasped her shoulders and ran his featherlight touch down her bare arms, sending a cold shock through her body. He moved in between her legs and pressed himself, as best he could with the gown still on, against her. She could tell even with all the fabric that his cock was impressively hard and that she would certainly feel this in the morning. 

“Fuck, yes, you will, you naughty little thing,” Garreth breathed against her teeth. For Merlin's sake, she’d said the last bit out loud. Oh, well. “If you don’t, I haven’t done my job.”

With this, he dropped to his knees in front of the desk and grabbed as much silk and netting as he could, shoving it up around her waist. She clutched at the silk as best as she could and fought to remain upright, but once Garreth had pulled her undergarments down so they pooled around her ankles, the feeling of his hot breath against her core had her arms going slack. She slumped against the desk and felt his fingers grip her by the thighs.

His muffled voice reached her buzzing ears through layers of fabric: “Bury me here, darling, promise you will.” A wretched cry tore from her throat as Garreth laid his tongue flat against her cunt and began moving it in circles, alternating light flicks and kisses against her clit that had pleasure ramping up wildly inside her stomach. She reached forward, desperate for something to steady herself with, and made contact with his strawberry locks. Using them as leverage, she yanked him closer to her until nearly his entire body was engulfed by her dress.  

“Garreth,” she moaned. The pleasure was making her stupid, and words were taking extra long to form in her brain and exit her mouth. “How did we never do this back at–”

“It doesn’t matter now,” he panted, coming up for air and replacing his tongue with his pointer and middle fingers. He drew fast, hard patterns over her clit and her back arched. “Not thinking about back then because I have you now, and I never want this to end.” He was so genuine and earnest, his eyes pleading with her to let him stay in this position forever, that she pulled him up by his shirt collar into another kiss. The taste of herself on his lips made her blush prettily.

It was all happening so fast that it made her thoughts rush in a frenzied whirlwind around her head. She didn’t want it to end either, but what it was, she wasn’t quite sure. Would they go their separate ways again after tonight? Would she find herself staring glumly at that pesky desk calendar on Monday, starting the count over from zero? Was it a terrible idea to fuck him anyway? Her drunken mind produced one coherent thought: Who cares?

As Garreth ghosted his lips over the shell of her ear, whispering pure filth while he began undoing the laces of her dress, she wondered if perhaps she had been gifted with a touch of legilimency. Hadn’t she envisioned this very moment earlier while fighting to stay prim and proper against his flirtiness? Never again, she decided, would she doubt her excellent instincts. The dress fell away from her shoulders and chest, leaving her in only her corset, gown and undergarments discarded on the floor. “Oh, for fuck’s safe,” huffed Garreth as he noticed the corset. “You don’t need to wear one of those.”

He said it in such a matter-of-fact tone that she colored and muttered, “I don’t ordinarily but…it maintains the shape of the dress.” She glanced sheepishly up at him and he rolled his eyes. 

“That gown should thank its lucky stars that it ever graced your body. My God, you’re just…” He trailed off, taking in every inch of her that was exposed to him. She was quickly losing her capacity for embarrassment or shyness as her need for him to ruin her overtook everything inside her.

“Take this off and fuck me, Weasley,” she tried to order, but it came out more as a breathless plea. Despite this, Garreth obeyed. He turned her over so her hips were digging into the front of the desk and began haphazardly yanking at the ribbons restricting her torso. The corset fell away after a few seconds, and she barely had time to crane her neck around and see that he was shedding his dress shirt, vest, and trousers with the urgency of a madman before he placed one strong hand at the base of her neck and directed her to bend over the desk. She tried to protest, having very much been looking forward to seeing his cock freed from its restraints, but she found the protests dying in her throat as she felt it.

Holy fucking–! Every impure word and expression she knew flooded from her brain and out her mouth as he pressed his hard length against her ass and bucked his hips involuntarily, groaning with the effort of holding himself back. “How does it feel?” he rasped against her ear, leaning over her to do so and inadvertently making his cock brush against her dripping wet center. She cried in shocked pleasure, and more incoherent begging and pleading followed. “Are you ready for me, darling?

“Yes,” she half-sobbed, half-demanded. She didn’t think she could hold on much longer. Garreth ran his hands down her bare back and rested his forehead against the back of her head, sparing one more second to worship her before he braced himself on her waist and pushed into her. 

Their moans intermingled deliciously as he fully sheathed himself inside her. He was fucking huge, and she gritted her teeth against the initial stretch. After a moment, he asked if he could move and she nodded, not trusting herself to speak. His cock dragged against her walls, lazy and heavy, stoking the fire inside her and causing obscenities to fall from both their lips.

“You do feel fucking heavenly,” Garreth panted, picking up his pace after a few languid strokes. He flattened her more completely to the desk and moved his hands to her ass, kneading and using it to pull her harder back onto him. Sweat was beginning to pool on the back of her neck, and she felt a drop of it drip from Garreth’s hair onto her spine. “Shit!” he spat. “I’m not going to–fuck, not gonna last long. Are you close?”

Questions? At a time like this? He expected too much of her. She moaned vaguely, trying to indicate that she was close. He picked up his pace even more, fucking her in a ravenous way she’d never felt before, hitting deep and high points that made stars burst across her vision. Her fingernails dug into the mahogany desk in front of her, curls of wood left behind in long trails as her fingers curled. Through their frenzy, she managed to ask a question of her own that had been burning in her mind since she saw his shirtsleeves rolled. She tossed it over her shoulder with a grin, panting: “Does it have…Are there freckles on your–?”

Garreth’s hips stuttered as a hysterical laugh cut through him. “Plenty of time to find out for yourself, darling,” he retorted, and snaked a hand around to her clit. The second he applied pressure there, she found herself coming. Her orgasm rolled over and through her and burst out of her like she’d been filled with an uncontainable light. She cried Garreth’s name, tears rolling down her face, and felt herself clamp around him.

“O-oh, fuck.” He faltered, not expecting the silken sensation of her to take his breath away. “Where do you want me, sweetheart?” 

She was still caught in the arms of ecstasy, and only had the energy to pant, “Inside.” That was everything Garreth needed to be pushed over the edge. He came with a strangled yell and fell on top of her, filling her completely. With his last remaining strength, Garreth rolled off of her and laid next to her, on his back. The desk was far from comfortable, but at the moment, it felt like a king-sized bed at the finest hotel.

They caught their breath for several minutes. She tried to make sense of it all; Garreth Weasley, who gained a reputation in sixth year for being a wildly damp kisser, had just given her the best sex of her life and she was ready to beg for more. Her heart hammered even as her breathing returned to normal, because she was very sure now that she could fall for her old classmate. Not to even mention his godlike sexual prowess.

Her face was still pressed to the desk, and as she waited to regain the ability to walk again, Garreth’s cum dripping steadily down her thigh, she turned her head to the side. The man was still panting, propped up by his elbows and staring at the ceiling in disbelief. Her gaze wandered southward and she couldn’t help but smile. It sure did have freckles, and even while softening was larger than any other she’d ever taken. Sighing, she turned her head the other way and caught sight of one of the pictures that he had thrown to the ground when clearing the desk.

It was a picture of her. 

The confusion made her bolt upright. She rubbed her eyes with the palm of her hand and crouched down to pick up the photograph in its brass frame. There she was, smiling and laughing with her arm around Ominis Gaunt and–

“Oh, shit!” The frame clattered from her hands and Garreth sat straight up, startled, as she frantically raced around the room, taking in its contents. A bookshelf, filled with books by and about famous dark wizards. Several stained tea cups that needed to be taken home and washed. And worst of all, a gilded name plate cast onto the ground that read “S. Sallow, Auror.” 

“Fuck! Fuck, oh no! How did this happen?!” She wailed, clasping her head in her hands. The scratches she had left in the desk glared back at her, their position making it far too obvious as to what had been done atop the piece of furniture. She snatched the ball gown from the ground and dug around in the skirts for the sewn-in wand pocket. When her fingers brushed against the yew wood, she pulled her wand free and frantically cast Reparo! at the desk. The scratches stayed resolute. She swore and cast the spell a second time, again to no avail. 

“Er, it’s not really broken,” Garreth chuckled, watching her efforts as he yawned happily. He was reclining, his long legs stretched in front of him and arms clasped behind his head, showing off his toned chest and stomach. She wished he would have a smidgen of decency. Not because his body wasn’t spectacular, but because she found herself frustrated and turned on almost immediately. And now was not the time, not when they’d just accidentally fucked on top of Sebastian’s desk and left undeniable evidence that someone had done so.

“But this is–!” She began, but Garreth had spotted the nameplate and reached down to grab it.

“S. Sallow,” he read, then thoughtfully put a finger to his chin. “Hey, that’s not ‘Sallow’ as in–”

“Yes, EXACTLY as in Sebastian Sallow! I can’t believe I didn’t read the doorplate before you opened it!” she yelled. They’d been so blind with desire that she hadn’t even noticed they had landed in the Auror offices. Sebastian had told her that he was leaving his office door unlocked so that she could access any files he had while he was away. She wanted to sink into the ground. Her own office was just the next door down. 

She could feel her hair falling free around her shoulders in her upset state and remembered with a jolt that she was naked. Snatching her undergarments from the floor, she began to pull them back on, but Garreth leapt into action when he sensed that clothes were entering into the equation once more.

“No need for that!” He shushed her frantic rambling that Sebastian was going to notice and he was going to put two and two together and wrapped his arms around her. “You can tell him that you, uh…” He squeezed his eyes closed while trying to come up with a believable lie, and she melted a little against him, recalling how he used to do the same thing in their shared classes when he was called upon unprepared. His eyes flew back open. “I’ve got it. You can sit that fantastic little cunt on my face.”

She spluttered, not sure if she was more indignant or approving of the proposal. “And how is that going to help this situation?” 

Garreth grinned. “This won’t seem like such an ordeal when I’m finished with you.”

When he was right, he was right. It took no more convincing for her to push him down onto the soft carpet and swing a leg over the side of his face. He ate her out like it was his last meal, which, she reasoned, if Sebastian ever figured out what they had done in his office, it may be. 

They stayed in Sebastian’s office and did all sorts of things that made Garreth turn the portrait of Anne that Sebastian kept on his bookshelf facedown for several hours more. It wasn’t until they were lying on top of the violet gown, legs tangled and whispering to one another while she ran her fingers through his hair that Garreth shot straight up and cried, “Aunt Matilda probably had to go home without me!”

She tried to stifle laughter at his genuine alarm. “Weasley, I’m sure she can make it there just fine without you.”

“You haven’t seen how she can put away champagne when it’s free and offered to her.”

They both laughed, and Garreth leaned over to kiss her, sweet and soft. “When can I see you again?” he murmured. He suddenly looked lost, like he wasn’t sure what he’d do next depending on her answer. It charmed her to no end.

“I’ll need an escort to this gala next year, I suppose.”

“And in the meantime?”

She smiled. “I’d like someone to go to dinner with.”

masterlist

[brookghaib-blog]

Whispers of the past pt.8

Pairing: Hoshina Soshiro x reader

Summary: 10 years ago, Y/N went missing after being attacked by a kaiju, now working by Gen Narumi's side as his secret weapon, she hides herself in hopes that one day she reconnects with her first love, Hoshina Soshiro.

pt.7 - pt.9

Y/N's pov:

The dim light of my apartment cast long shadows across the room, a soft reminder of the life I’d built in the time since I had left Soshiro. We sat on my worn, comfortable couch, an untouched bottle of whiskey and two glasses between us. The air was thick with unspoken words and heavy with the weight of our reunion.

I stared into my glass, the amber liquid swirling around as I tried to steady my racing heart. Soshiro was here, with me, after all this time. The shock of our meeting at the bar lingered, and I felt both relieved and terrified by his presence. I could feel his eyes on me, filled with questions and emotions I wasn't ready to face.

"It's hard to believe we're here," he finally said, breaking the silence. His voice was soft, tinged with the same disbelief I felt.

I nodded, my fingers tracing the rim of my glass. "I know. It feels like a dream."

The silence stretched between us again, thick and uncomfortable. I could sense Soshiro's struggle, his need to understand why I had disappeared and what had happened since. I braced myself, knowing that the truth would shatter the fragile peace we had found.

"Y/N, I need to understand something," he said, leaning forward, his eyes searching mine. "Why did you join the Defense Force out of nowhere? And what happened the day you disappeared?"

I felt a shiver run down my spine, my heart pounding in my chest. The questions I had dreaded were finally here, and I knew there was no turning back. I took a deep breath, trying to gather my thoughts.

"I… it's complicated," I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

He reached out, placing his hand over mine. His touch was warm, grounding me in the moment. "Y/N, please. I need to know. I need to understand what happened to you."

I looked into his eyes, seeing the worry and concern etched into his features. I knew he deserved the truth, but the fear of his reaction gripped me tightly. I took another deep breath, steeling myself for what was to come.

"Soshiro, there's something you don't know about me. Something I’ve kept hidden for a long time," I began, my voice trembling.

His gaze never wavered, his hand squeezing mine gently. "Whatever it is, we'll face it together. Just tell me."

I nodded, tears welling up in my eyes as I prepared to reveal the secret I had carried for so long. "I joined the Defense Force because… because I turned into a kaiju," I said, my voice breaking. "I work under the name Chisuka now."

The words hung in the air, heavy and oppressive. I saw the shock in Soshiro's eyes, his mind struggling to process what I had just revealed. "You… you turned into a kaiju?" he repeated, disbelief coloring his voice.

I nodded, tears spilling over and running down my cheeks. "Yes. It happened the day I disappeared. I didn't want to leave you, Soshiro, but I was so scared. I didn't know how to face you, how to tell you what I had become. I don't even know how it happened, they are investigating me but there's still no conclusion...Soshiro I'm sorry...I'm so sorrry.."

His expression softened, a mixture of confusion and deep sympathy replacing the initial shock. "Why didn't you come to me? Why didn't you let me help you?"

"We have talked so much about joining the Defense Force, we hated them so much, the kaiju's...and I didn't even understood my body, what if I had killed you, at the time I didn't know the danger, so I ran...I tried to live as much as I could...I thought about you every single day, but ... " I said, my voice trembling. "I thought you’d be better off without me. And I couldn’t bear the thought of you seeing me like that, of seeing the monster I had become."

He shook his head, his eyes filling with unshed tears. "Y/N, you could never be a burden to me. I love you, no matter what. I wish you had trusted me with the truth."

The sincerity in his voice broke something inside me, and I sobbed openly, the weight of my secret finally lifting. "I'm so sorry, Soshiro. I was just so scared."

He moved closer, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me into a tight embrace. "It's okay," he whispered, his voice soothing. "I'm here now. We’ll figure this out together."

I clung to him, my tears soaking his shirt as I buried my face in his chest. The warmth of his body, the steady beat of his heart, all grounded me in the reality of his presence. For so long, I had carried the burden alone, but now, with Soshiro by my side, I felt a glimmer of hope.

"I’ve missed you so much," I whispered, my voice raw with emotion.

"I’ve missed you too, Y/N," he replied, his voice thick with tears. "More than you could ever know.".

The night deepened around us, the city outside falling into a hushed, tranquil silence. Inside my apartment, Soshiro and I sat close, talking softly. We spoke about everything and nothing, our conversation flowing naturally as we tried to make up for lost time. He held me close, his arms wrapped around me, and I leaned into him, finding solace in his embrace.

Our words were interspersed with moments of silence, where we simply held each other, basking in the warmth of our reunion. During one of these silences, Soshiro tilted my chin up, looking into my eyes with a depth of emotion that spoke volumes. Slowly, he leaned in, pressing his lips to mine in an emotional, lingering kiss. My response was immediate, my lips soft and yielding against his, as if we were pouring all our unspoken feelings into that one moment.

We pulled back, breathless and overwhelmed. The intensity of the kiss left us both trembling slightly, but it also solidified the connection we had rekindled.

“Please don't ever let me go again” I whispered, my voice filled with raw emotion.

“How could I” he replied, his own voice thick with feeling. “I never stopped thinking about you.”

For a moment, we simply gazed at each other, the weight of our shared past and uncertain future hanging in the air. Then, abruptly, Soshiro stood up, a sudden thought piercing through the haze of our reunion.

“I need to make a phone call,” he said, his voice urgent.

I looked at him, confused and a little hurt by the sudden interruption. “What? Who are you calling?”

“I’ll explain later,” he replied, his tone gentle but firm. “I just need to do this.”

Without waiting for my response, he stepped into the hallway, pulling out his phone. I watched him, my heart pounding with a mixture of curiosity and unease. His conversation was brief and hushed, his voice barely above a whisper. When he hung up, he took a deep breath before returning to the living room.

I was waiting for him, my expression a mix of curiosity and concern. “Soshiro, what was that about?”

He shook his head, offering me a reassuring smile. “Nothing to worry about. Just something I needed to take care of.”

I didn’t press further, though my mind buzzed with questions. Instead, I stepped closer, wrapping my arms around his waist. “I’m just glad you’re here.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised, his hand gently stroking my hair. “Not this time.”

We stood there, holding each other, the world outside forgotten. Our kisses grew more fervent, more desperate, as if we were trying to make up for all the lost time in that one night. The intensity of our emotions swept us up, and before long, we found ourselves moving toward my bedroom, our need for each other eclipsing everything else.

In my room, we fell onto the bed, our lips never breaking contact. The passion between us was overwhelming, a fire that had been reignited after being smothered for so long. We explored each other’s bodies with a reverence and urgency that spoke of our deep, abiding love.

Every touch, every kiss was a promise—a vow to never let go again. The world outside ceased to exist, leaving just the two of us in our bubble of rekindled love and desperate need. Our clothes fell away, and we moved together in perfect harmony, our bodies speaking the words our hearts couldn’t fully articulate.

When it was over, we lay entwined, our breaths mingling, our hearts beating in sync. Soshiro held me close, his hand gently stroking my back as I nestled against his chest.

“I love you, Y/N,” he whispered into the quiet of the room. “I always have, and I always will.”

I looked up at him, my eyes shining with tears and love. “I love you too, Soshiro. More than words can say.”

As I nestled closer to him, I couldn’t hold back any longer. “Soshiro,” I began softly, my voice tinged with the weight of my insecurities, “I thought you were with Captain Ashiru. I saw you two together and thought I had lost you. It broke my heart.”

Soshiro tightened his hold on me, his breath warm against my ear. “Y/N, you’ve always been the one I loved,” he confessed, his voice thick with emotion. “Mina and I are just comrades. My heart has always belonged to you.”

His words washed over me like a soothing balm, and I felt tears well up in my eyes. “I was so sad, Soshiro. I thought I had lost you forever.”

He kissed the top of my head, his lips lingering against my hair. “You haven’t lost me. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

We held each other close, our shared pain and longing blending into a profound sense of relief. As the night wore on, we talked about everything—our dreams, our fears, our past. The intimacy of the moment was overwhelming, and eventually, we fell asleep, entwined in each other’s arms.

--

Morning light filtered through the curtains, waking me gently. I reached out for Soshiro, but my hand met cold sheets. Panic gripped my heart as I sat up, my eyes scanning the room. He was gone.

Before I could fully process his absence, the door to my bedroom burst open. A team of Defense Force soldiers stormed in, their guns trained on me. My heart pounded in my chest as I threw the blanket over myself, trying to make sense of the chaos.

“Don’t move!” one of the soldiers barked, his voice cold and authoritative.

I could barely breathe, my mind racing with fear and confusion. “What’s going on?” I stammered, my voice shaking. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Captain Mina Ashiru and Soshiro enter the room. Mina’s expression was stern, her eyes filled with a mix of determination and pity. Soshiro’s face, however, was a mask of cold indifference.

“Soshiro, please, you have to believe me,” I pleaded, my voice breaking. “I’m not a threat. I’m working for Narumi. I haven’t done anything wrong!”

Mina’s gaze softened slightly, but she remained resolute. “Y/N, we have to follow protocol. You’re a kaiju, and we need to ensure the safety of the public.”

Tears streamed down my face as I turned to Soshiro, desperation clawing at my heart. “Soshiro, you know me. You know I wouldn’t hurt anyone. Please, don’t let them do this to me.”

Soshiro’s eyes were cold and unyielding, a harsh contrast to the warmth I had known. “You should have thought about that before becoming a kaiju,” he said, his voice dripping with disdain. “You’re a threat, and you need to be contained.”

His words cut through me like a knife, and I felt my world crumbling around me. “How can you say that? After everything we’ve been through, how can you just stand there and let this happen?”

He stepped closer, his expression hard. “You made your choice, Y/N. Now you have to face the consequences. It’s not my problem anymore.”

The betrayal was too much to bear. I sobbed uncontrollably, my body shaking with the force of my emotions. The soldiers moved in, securing my hands with cold, unyielding cuffs.

“Captain, please,” I cried, turning to her as a last hope. “You have to understand. I’m not a danger. I just want to live my life.”

Mina’s expression remained stoic, though a flicker of empathy crossed her eyes. “We’ll investigate, Y/N. If you’re innocent, we’ll find out. But for now, we have to follow procedure.”

As they led me away, my heart shattered into a million pieces. The man I loved, the man I had trusted with my life, had turned his back on me when I needed him most. The weight of his betrayal crushed me, and I felt a hollowness settle in my chest.

In the cold, sterile light of the Defense Force facility, I sat alone in a cell, my mind replaying the events of the morning over and over. The love we had shared, the promises we had made, all seemed like a cruel joke now.

As the hours passed, I clung to a single, fragile hope: that somehow, the truth would come to light, and I would be vindicated. But for now, I was alone, my heart broken and my spirit shattered, betrayed by the one person I had thought would always stand by my side.

--

Narumi's pov:

Weeks had passed since Y/N’s arrest, and the tension within the Defense Force was palpable. The morning sun cast long shadows as I made my way to the meeting room, flanked by my team. My mind was a storm of anger and confusion. Y/N had been one of my most reliable officers, and the accusations against her felt like a personal betrayal.

I pushed open the door to the meeting room, my eyes immediately locking onto Ashiru and Hoshina. They sat with their teams, their faces a mix of determination and fatigue. The air was thick with unresolved tension.

"What's the meaning of this?" I demanded, my voice echoing in the room. "Why is Y/N still detained? You know she's my officer and has been working under my supervision."

Mina met my gaze, her eyes hard. "Narumi, she’s a kaiju. We can't ignore the threat she poses."

"A threat?" I scoffed, my anger barely contained. "She’s done nothing but help us! She was fully integrated into our operations and followed every protocol. You’re accusing her without any concrete evidence."

Soshiro’s expression remained cold, and I turned my gaze to him, the anger in my chest flaring. "And you, Soshiro. You were the one who pushed for her arrest. You betrayed her trust."

Soshiro’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t look away. "She’s a kaiju, Narumi. She’s manipulating you and everyone else."

I slammed my fist on the table, causing papers to scatter. "Manipulating us? You’re the one manipulating this whole situation! She told you the truth because she trusted you, because she wanted to be with you. And how did you repay that trust? By throwing her into a cell!"

Soshiro’s eyes flashed with anger. "I did what I had to do to protect everyone. She’s dangerous."

"Protect everyone? Or protect yourself?" I shot back, my voice dripping with disdain. "She’s been nothing but loyal, and you threw her to the wolves the moment you knew, did you know I many times she ran away from you by the fear of you not accepting her? You tell her you love her, she feels save, tells you the truth,and guess what, she was right. This is exactly why she keept hidden, why the hell did you pursue her, she was already comming to terms with you away from her, you appear, make her all happy, all happy family shit, then you call your little girlfriend to arrest her. Arresting her, in her house, in her bed, where she feel asleep, with you."

Mina tried to interject, her voice calm but firm. "Narumi, we have to be cautious. We can't take any risks with a kaiju in our midst."

"Risks?" I laughed bitterly. "The only risk here is the one you’re creating by not trusting your own people. Y/N has done nothing but prove her loyalty. If you had taken the time to understand her situation, you’d see that."

Soshiro stood, his face a mask of barely controlled rage. "You don’t understand, Narumi. You weren’t there. You didn’t see what she’s capable of."

I took a step closer, my fists clenched at my sides. "And you didn’t see how she struggled to keep her humanity intact. You didn’t see the pain she went through because she loved you. She trusted you, Soshiro."

The room fell silent, the weight of my words hanging in the air. Soshiro’s expression faltered for a moment, a flicker of doubt crossing his eyes.

"I know she’s different," I continued, my voice softer but no less intense. "But she’s still Y/N. The woman who fought alongside us, who saved lives, who wanted to be with you despite everything. And you threw that all away."

Mina sighed, her shoulders slumping slightly. "Narumi, we need to follow the protocol. We need to ensure that she’s not a threat. You can talk all you want, but she has no legal document of working for the Defense Force."

I turned to her, my anger giving way to desperation. "Then let me talk to her. Let me prove to you that she’s not what you think she is. Then you will ler her go, and she won't ever seeyour faces again, I'll make sure of thart. "

Mina exchanged a glance with Soshiro before nodding reluctantly. "Fine. But we’ll be monitoring everything. If there’s any sign of danger, we’ll act."

I nodded, my heart pounding in my chest. This was my chance to prove Y/N’s innocence, to show them the woman I knew, the woman I trusted.

As I left the room, Soshiro’s voice stopped me. "Captain Narumi" he said quietly, "be careful. She’s not the same person you remember."

I didn’t turn around. "No, Soshiro. She’s exactly the person I remember. It’s you who’s changed."

With those words, I left, determination burning in my veins. I would prove Y/N’s innocence, no matter what it took. I owed her that much, and more.

[anarchotolkienist]

Nationalism troubles me a lot.

Like as a matter of course and fact I take it as obvious that nationalism is an invention of modernity and of liberalism, that nations do not exist, and that their creation will always be genocidal or aspiring towards genocide as the natural end point of their political existence. It's an effort to match the territory to the map and not the other way around and that it therefore should be rejected.

However - if we accept that the invention of nationalism applied not only to the perceived own nation which needed defining and defending, it also created other nations. To take just one example, French nationalism created the Basques and the Bretons, foreign nations who were a threat to the integrity of the french national state and that needed to be utterly culturally assimilated into frenchness, needed to disappear as distinctive cultures (not as political/legal entities, which is a project of the imperial and medieval state before it, but as cultural entities). This causes massive oppression and discrimination against all Bretons and all Basques under french control along national lines, and in fact to some extent gives them shared national interests across class and other political/religious/social lines - the ending of that oppression. Therefore it arguably creates a Breton, say, nation that actually exists because there are actual shared interests here. Multiply these examples across the globe.

However, I don't know how to deal with this at all. The kinds of liberatory nationalism produced by the above dynamic has rarely if ever worked even as a stopgap, and usually just produces a new national state that goes on to try and exterminate or assimilate it's own national minorities (think of the place of Arab Jews after Arab Nationalism broadly succeeded, despite being early contributord and inventors of that project, or the treatment of Irish Travellers by the Irish Republic, or the 'successful' Vietnamisation campaigns carried out on indigenous peoples to the north of Vietnam by the Communist Party following independence, or Breton nationalist collaboration with the Nazi occupation in exchange for a promised Gautelier of Brittany that never materialised, Norwegian nationalism that as soon as they got independence from Sweden pursued extremely brutal Norweiganisation campaigns on the Sámi, and on and on and on), while also creating a new National Culture that extinguished local culture, dialect, traditions...

Therefore, it's clear to me that nationalism isn't a workable solution to the problems supposedly adressed by it, but I frankly don't know how you can struggle on behalf of minoritised peoples and their culture(s) without either being some kind of a nationalist or without the liberal appeal to a seat at the table of the imperial national project. It depresses and troubles me deeply, politically, because I don't see any way out. I worry that liberalism let the national genie out of the bottle and the only thing that can happen now is another two centuries of rolling genocides.

[invested-in-your-future]

I feel like people wouldn't discriminate openly again after the War. Maybe shops refusing service but they aren't going to imprison people just because they are Faunus. The world has rejected that.

I am sorry but that's naive.

That's now how racism works - bigots don't just shrug and become good when they are told "racism bad" (despite that being the only thing shown happening in the MilesWBY canon, with Yang telling someone racism bad).

Discrimination has layers, and levels of intensity - and people "feeling" that way don't just disappear - they adapt and they prod over and over again to see what's "acceptable" currently.

Sure, smaller discrimination cases will happen, but that's not the "end".

Discrimination always longs to reach its "greatest hits" - there's a reason why lots of ideologies of oppression resort to "Hey, do you want to go back to the Good Old Days when X?"

Smaller cases of intolerance not getting a pushback are treated as "acceptable status quo" - and the bigotry takes a step forward and escalates onto bigger ones.

And before you know it, you have dehumanizing language, restrictions, rights being taken away, laws being walked back upon and repealed.

It's all about moving the window of what's "acceptable" - we have seen it in our world over and over again (for example - the surge of racism and authoritarian surveillance after September 11)

Think about it - in the show, with Volume 3 one of the four largest huntsmen academies got assaulted by White Fang.

Of course, it's not just them, but that only means different people with different prejudices will focus on different parts of what happened - to some, Atlas would be at fault, while to others - Faunus would be at fault.

Discrimination of all kinds would absolutely escalate - bigotry twists facts to its liking to "prove itself right" - mistrust spreads, and tragedy births propaganda.

And yes - White Fang is not the whole species, but to bigots, that wouldn't matter - it's an age-old tradition to take the examples of worst-of and use them as stereotypes, broad brush strokes, and all.

Destruction, discrimination, AND war are largely cyclical in no small part due to complacency and ignorance.

Need I remind you that even in "present-day Remnant" Atlas (and especially Schnees) had literal slave mines? Remnant is nowhere near close to getting rid of the uglier parts of its past.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the show is that there never were any real consequences or shockwaves from what happened at Vale - not just in terms of kingdom relations and tensions, but also in terms of Faunus rights, mistrust, and overall chaos. In a way, the show ended up making Fall of Beacon feel smaller than it actually was because of that.

The shockwaves of what happened at Beacon SHOULD affect all four main leads in different ways due to how the event connects to them as people.

It robbed us of the arc about Ruby dealing with the realities of the world and her idealism as the world around her falls apart and everyone she knows is hurt (and few of her closest friends are dead)

It robbed us of the arc about Weiss having to face the oppressive privileged nature of her family and things in her life she took for granted.

It robbed us of the arc about Blake having to face the increasingly hostile world around her as she struggles to find her path and face her own indecisiveness and hypocrisy.

It robbed us of Yang having to deal with the fallout of the tournament and the uncertain chaotic reality of the world around her as she's searching for a goal of her own.

It's one of the first things I thought about when I started outlining my plans years ago. There are multiple avalanche effects planned out for more than one part of the setting and characterization of the leads.

[justabigoldnerd]

Hey y'all, in just two days it'll be Grief Month, so I've decided to compile a list of things that people who haven't experienced the loss of a close loved one might not think about when writing grief in fiction.

*eye twitches*

This is definitely a healthy way to cope probably

ANYWAY (below the cut because TW for death and grief)

Absence. You notice what's *not* there anymore, and you notice it *loudly*. This is the big one that I don't see in a lot of media. The space just feels empty. Devoid. For a real life example, I had a beloved cat who would literally scream for attention because he didn't understand how to come up and ask for it. When he disappeared, I couldn't stop thinking about how quiet it was. Something was very obviously missing. So, make your characters notice the lack of the person they're mourning. A lag in conversation where they would've added a quip, the kitchen being silent when it was always bustling, a character who always left the TV or radio on passes and suddenly there is no show or song playing quietly in the background. The quiet, the absence, it's oppressive. It makes you want to cover your ears. Oddly enough, sometimes that helps. A song that covers this well is "Through Me (The Flood)" by Hozier.

Memories. This one seems obvious, but it's not just crying in bed to a photo of them. It's *avoiding* photos of them, reminders of them, rooms they've been in, places they've frequented. Everything that reminds you of them feels like it's tearing your body in two with rusty shears. I once locked myself in the middle bathroom of my house because being in any other room reminded me too much of my dog who had passed suddenly at 9 months and I had a panic attack fueled by memories of her. I couldn't even sing or dance anymore for a long time because that's what I was doing with her just the week before she passed. I've only recently been able to look at photos or videos of her again.

Time. In mid September, it will have been two years since my best friend, that 9 month old pup passed. I am still reeling with grief. Your body is a clock and it *will* remember when your loved one passed, even if your mind doesn't. You'll start to think of them more often, you'll start going through the cycle of grief again and you won't know why, until it hits you. It's that time of year again.

Blame. Irrational blame, specifically. You'll blame yourself, others, "if only I had been quicker", "if I had known", "if they'd have just locked the door like I kept telling them to", "if they paid closer attention", and even "If they'd have *cared* this wouldn't have happened." It's wrong, it's bitter, it's hurtful, but it's a part of that grief.

Keepsakes. Not your father's watch or your grandmother's blanket (which are still perfectly lovely and valid!), but the pants with holes in the ankles from my late dog's teeth, or the glasses with a crack splitting one of the lenses from where she grabbed them and took off. I was so angry at her for it at the time. Now they're some of my most prized possessions. I could never get rid of them. They still have her marks. In that same vein is the amount of stray hairs of hers I would find. I kept them all. Sometimes I would just sit on the floor and pick up her fur. The day I realized her fur had stopped showing up on my clothes, I sobbed.

Love. We all know the quote. "What is grief if not love persevering?" As beautiful as it is, I call bullshit. Grief is selfish. It takes all the love you have inside of you and covers it in cement because if it can't have it, no one can. It prevents you from loving. In fact, it made me hate one of my dogs, Petunia, for a long time. It wasn't her fault. She is a beautiful, sweet, sensitive little flower and I do love her now. But grief made me look at her and feel so much rage. Because that was supposed to be *my* pup, not this new thing. I still can't love in the same capacity that I loved Giz (my 9 month old pup, my best friend, my world). I love my dog, the dog that chose *me*, Laika, in a different way. She wormed her way past the walls that grief had built up and made a home in my heart. But Giz lives there too. Laika is my girl, but she'll never be my Giz.

That's all I can think of right now. I might add more as the month wears on and I remember things. Hope this was at all helpful and not just. Idk. Sad.

[wumblr]

there's this sexual fantasy of the social climber, right? like, in the fantasy, you don't only want to meet someone who's perfect for you, you also, additionally, want them to have the resources to make all of your problems disappear or substantially improve your enjoyment or quality of life

and i would like to point out the recuperative effect this has. much in the same way that the long-shot hope for winning the lottery someday keeps people clocking in to work and participating in upholding status quo, the idea serves to redirect people who otherwise might be looking at routes of escape

of course i've just described everything from fifty shades to pride and prejudice all the way back to at least chivalric romance if not scheherazade too. and i don't know if it says something inherent about human nature as much as it says something about the human response to oppression

unfortunately the fantasy that could actually provide a route of escape is collectivization. so you see the way that this fantasy is recuperative. by excluding every other member of your class from it. it says you, by nature of being so exceptional, deserve to be swept off your feet. that is the unspoken undertone this fantasy whispers in your ear

and while i am saying that i understand this urge, it's been here for thousands of years, and i've engaged in the fantasy myself -- to be honest, i also think it's responsible for some of the greatest evil in the world. you throw another under the bus because you believe yourself to be more deserving than th--

[void-thegod]

I've experienced many forms of oppression.

Being treated differently by white folks.

Being treated differently by brown folks.

Being treated differently by men, by women, by queer people.

Being treated differently by abled and neurotypical folks.

I'm treated differently for being male.

That's not 100% my fault.

I'm treated differently for being a trans male.

That's not 100% my fault.

People will literally side eye me or not get into a relationship with me bc I'm trans.

We've all experienced that, if we were unfortunate.

I've heard cis and queer women of color talk Hella shit about cisgender men.

Real bad. Almost as bad as the shit I've heard from men about women.

These perceptions -- both of them -- affect how I'm perceived. By those I want to be friends or romantic partners with.

Stack on the fact I'm brown, neurodivergent af, and conventionally attractive.. I've had A TIME.

SO: Imagine how I feel ... this aspect of my oppression and experiences being denied by my own community?

By others, period?

People who would easily accept that I face all the other forms of oppression and fucked up experiences bc of something I can't help..

Denying that I experience fucked up stuff for being a man and a trans man, at that?

I am one of those trans guys that "always knew"

I grew up as a butch/stud lesbian. Basically as soon as I could say what I wanted to wear. So.. elementary school.

And I SAW.

I saw how everyone was treated differently. Based on skin color. Perceived attractiveness or intelligence. Based on body type. Based on sex and gender. Based on whether they were normal or not.

And I experienced all that shit.

Am still experiencing it.

What do I get?

What do I get for knowing myself and staring into the fucking Abyss?

Ignored. Hassled. Called a narcissist.

Because I've seen what I've seen and I'm speaking on it.

It's not right.

Trans men experience so much shit.

You don't see us. You don't hear us.

And when we disappear you don't give a fuck.

PS: if you read this far and still have the gall to say some stupid monkey shit to me I will just block you. I'm done.

[neb-art-zeke]

hiiiiii! Please tell us more about Relonoth if you don't mind 👀

How old is he?

What is his DnD alignment?

What's his tent in the camp like?

Does he have a partner(s)?

Hey @razrogue! Thanks for your interest in my TAV!

So fore warning, I'm not as knowledgeable about the larger DnD/Forgotten Realms lore and I've never played the previous Baldur's Gates so a lot of my knowledge comes from just playing Baldur's Gate 3. Also like many of my OCs, he goes through constant change as my knowledge of the lore expands and new ideas in my mind surface. With that being said:

Background: Relonoth is the son of a Seldarine Drow father and a Human Druid Mother. Relonoth lived with his mother and father in his mother's tribe for the first 12 years of his life where he learned the basics of living in the wild before she was killed fighting alongside his father during an attempt of his father’s life by Lolth's Drow. Not wanting to endanger the tribe further, Relonoth's father would take him far away from the tribe where they traveled aimlessly for several months. One day, they managed to stumble upon some helpful monks who were on their way back to their monastery. Sensing the torment inside both Relonoth and his father, the monks invited the two to journey with them back to the monastery to find inner peace. Relonoth and his father spent 7 years learning the ways of the monks and spent one more year traveling with each other after before deciding to continue on separate journeys. Before departing, they promised each other they would reunite for a single week at the place they left every 7 years to share with each other their monastic journeys. BG3 takes place 2 years before another reunion. Some of Relonoth’s experiences and adventures include finding his mother's old tribe, fighting in an underground martial arts tournament, mentoring other young monks, learning the way of the four elements from ancient beings, and putting stops to deadly conspiracies, but his greatest adventure takes place during BG3.

Name Origin: I found a Drow etymology naming convention sheet online and the name roughly translates to "Wind's Path" which I thought sounded cool. The in-lore reason I developed after was that his father named him that name because he wanted his son to have the freedom to become anyone he wanted in his life (Free like the Wind).

Age: 67 (as of BG3 - looks about 33 because of half elf aging)

DnD Aligment: Neutral Good (as a nomadic monk, he'll find himself helping the less fortunate and oppressed and generally respects the rules of the lands he comes across but still has his principles of freedom and choice which sometimes clash with more strict rules of some kingdoms. His nature of helping people and quickly disappearing in a gust of wind after earned him the title of The Wind Walker.)

Tent: His tent is very simple. Being nomadic, he likes to carry light but he's known to collect a few things from his travels and keeps them in his tent space (i.e. small gifts from his friends, rocks and feathers of birds from the different lands he visits and small things he thinks his father would like to see during their next reunion)

Romance: Karlach (I like to imagine that after finding a solution to her infernal engine problem, the two escape Avernus and continue traveling the world with Karlach wanting to experience the grander world after spending years in Avernus and Relonoth wanting to continue his monastic journey with one he loves. She even gets to meet Relonoth's father during the reunion. Really want to get a comic commission of this lol.

[true-blue-sonic]

WAIT I MEANT TO SAY ESPILVER 38 ESPILVER 38 NOT 40 either or idm

38. …because they’re running out of time.

Espio hates to say that Eggman is right in anything, but the concept that they are about to be destroyed does seem rather likely with a giant, coiling sun sinking down towards the planet.

It's not real; it's even more twisted that they know it's an illusion, yet droplets of sweat have long gathered on Espio's brow and the chameleon's chest heaves at the oppressive heat in the air. No doubt that factoid will bring Eggman even more joy. Silver's much worse off with his long pelt, but it doesn't seem like the hedgehog noticed; he's madly discussing with Knuckles and Amy, after their pleas for their rookie to retreat and come back have fallen on deaf ears.

"It's all up to the rookie now," Silver speaks into the communicator, swallowing.

"The chances of success are miniscule. It's a desperate long-shot!" Tails' voice crackles from the radio, a wave of grim looks and gasps going through the assembled members of the Resistance. Amy whimpers, Knuckles tenses, and Espio can only grimace.

Checking if his own communicator is off and Silver has disconnected from the radio before saying anything Espio gestures for him to come over. His poor psychic is panting, Espio presumes from the stress and the heat alike. "Do you think he can...?" he murmurs, Silver's face twisting with worry... but a nod follows.

"Yes. I believe in him. We all do."

Espio does too. The awkward red wolf Knuckles had scrounged up from the streets somewhere has amassed quite an impressive record in three days' time.

And still, he can feel the heat of the sun scorching above them, the ball of fire slowly but surely sinking down onto the world and a splotch of red on Eggman's towel jumping ever closer.

"Where's Charmy," Espio whispers, a flicker of cyan directing him to Vector holding the bee close while glaring a hole in the army of Phantom Ruby clones lurking at the edge of the battlefield. At least they've relented in their attacking, though the chameleon figures Eggman mostly ordered that to ensure the Resistance ample time to wallow in their despair.

"Don't," Silver murmurs, their shoulders brushing together. "We must have faith, Espio."

"What chance do we have against that? What can de Rookie do?! Tails said the chances of success are miniscule!"

"Espio," his beloved whispers, pressing his head in the crook of the chameleon's shoulder. A purple arm slings around his body, holding him close; Espio doesn't care anymore who sees them like this, not with the air growing heavy and burning while the Resistance stands frozen and gaping at the sun above. "We gave it our all for so long. We must keep believing," Silver adds; and yet his eyes are wide, hands clinging onto Espio just a bit more tautly than normal.

Espio wants to say that he's right. He wants to trust Silver, to share in his faith that the rookie can somehow make things right. But the splotch of red on Eggman's tower has disappeared, and the sun has only grown larger.

"Silver."

The word slips past Espio's lips with surprising steadiness, the chameleon jolting at it as Silver perks up an ear. "I..." follows a whole lot more awkwardly, Espio's eyes trained somewhere between the sun and the ground. But they're running out of time, and he wants Silver to know...! "Thank you, for being at my side these past six months. You've been invaluable to the Resistance," he whispers; and after swallowing and tensing and deciding that if there's ever a moment to say this, it'd be now, he adds: "And to me. I don't know what I would have done without you here."

Silver nods shakily. "That... Yeah. Same. Thank you, Espio." And then he rams a kiss against Espio's muzzle that honestly hurts more than it is romantic, yet a watery smile forms on the chameleon's face at it all the same. His own kiss is light and gentle in return, Silver mumbling something back that he can't make out as their foreheads press together.

They stand like that, side-by-side, staring helplessly at the descending sun as Eggman cackles and counts down...

Until burning heat falls away into nothing and pleasant chill takes its place, until a canvas of coiling reds and yellows turns to stormy grey, until the sun has been replaced by a falling star of ruby. And as Knuckles cries out in surprise and the Resistance takes to cheering, Espio gladly grasps the chance for a better kiss this time, in the whirlpool of delight and stupor and Silver melting against him with a heave of relief that nearly knocks the both of them off their feet.

They made it.

[ikemenomegas]

Omega!Fukuzawa x Alpha!Reader

Maybe Every After

For the record Fukuzawa is a zaddy and I don't think anyone is going to argue with me on that. But he wasn't always a zaddy! You have to grow up a lot to earn the title and Fukuzawa had a lot of growing up to do even in his thirties.

Meet cute?-

Fukuzawa met the person who would become his Alpha at some stuffy local function he attended because of his status as one of the five greatest swordsmen.

While they hit it off well, commiserating over the oppressive self-congratulatory nature of these kinds of events, it was not love at first sight. Fukuzawa was able to carry on pleasant, engaging conversation with them

Fukuzawa was by turns a little awkward, eccentric, curious, and the sense of duty, justice and good judgment that characterizes his throughout his life permeated the conversation, leaving a lasting impression on you

Fukuzawa's work and his superiors are all top secret, but despite that, he does not try to make himself come off as an enigma and his intentions and ideology are largely transparent, which in the time of the Great War, the first ability war, and with Fukuzawa's position being what it was, was surprising and refreshing

You meet with him a few times as new friends in between whatever it is he does when he's not with you

Some time after those meetings begin would be around the time that he is ordered to begin assassinating war-hawk ministers

You see him change as those assassinations pile up and see him apparently lose the feeling of rightness that was in him when you first met at that party

He disappears soon after resigning his position in this mission, cutting himself off from the world that had descended into the misery and chaos of war, from the deaths he had caused, and from you, the person who had become important when he was still young and full of naive idealism

Meet again-

It's by chance you meet again when he is spending his work hours as a bodyguard.

Or maybe it's not chance. It's a certain circle of people that can afford the services of someone as skilled as Fukuzawa, as much as he tries to keep apart from those kinds of people. His reputation took a hit after he left his government position, although you don't know the circumstances around his departure, but people say it's because he isn't a patriot. The word makes you disappointed. The are parts of every war that are not about patriotism, where blood is no longer spilled for the love of one's country but because there are those who have lost their way.

Reconnecting is hard but maybe because you understand the rumors this way, it is not as hard as it might have been. Fukuzawa Yukichi is loyal, that you have known almost since you met him. He is loyal to the people who walk down the street and do not know him, he is loyal to all the people of the nation who make their way slowly through life alongside him, he is loyal to some ideal of justice that you don't necessarily understand but that you believe in too. You see sometimes the pain that the rumors cause him, but you believe in him, whatever that might mean, and so he lets the pain wash over him and away in the truth of his intact honor

It comes up at some point that you are still not a mated Alpha. There is no one else waiting for you as your tea times meeting with Fukuzawa continue. It just hadn't felt right, somehow, to try and make that kind of connection in the years that have passed. The great war turned everything upside down, including something inside of your good and most principled friend.

One day, he'll tell you about it, about what turned his heart inside out, but that is many years in the future

For now, you're the one who asks him if he wants to meet and restart first

He seems tired and you're surprised that he accepts, but he does. Once. And then twice. And then a third time. And it's almost like it used to be, even though you're both older and a bit more jaded, maybe with a few more hard edges. The meetings extend longer, and become more frequent. It is no longer tea on his days off or when he has time between jobs. There are late night meals after his employer dismisses him and lunches on the occasions he is released early. On one memorable occasion, you find yourself taking an early morning walk through a dew studded garden watching the sun rise pink and cold after a night on which you could not sleep

One thing led to another-

Eventually, Fukuzawa asks you to be his heat partner. It's a bit of a surprise and something that makes you nervous since Fukuzawa effectively ignored you for years.

You had once slept together in what was essentially a platonic way, or perhaps some kind of experiment. It was fine, oddly peaceful, especially at the end when you just passed a bottle of water back and forth, but you'd sort of wordlessly agreed to not do it again

He tells you he's sure though. His heats aren't frequent because he's on suppressants, but they do happen, and this is one of the different things. Fukuzawa seems to want, to have a restlessness that is more apparent to you, lingering beneath the surface

You already suspect it's the loss of purpose, the loss of public reputation somehow which had carried with it its own sense of purpose. He's a famous swordsman, one of the best in the country. Even a tame wolf desires to hunt.

So you spend his breakthrough heats together.

And you remember why the two of you never had sex after the first time. It makes you wonder if you remember the "silent agreement" wrong, or if he remembers it differently, and reminds you why you didn't dwell on it.

It's not earth shattering, the sex that is. It's just heat sex, just making sure he gets off so that he can sleep through the intervals between his body temperature spiking. Except you're in his home, the gauzy curtains drawn, scent patches off, and it's disturbing how clear the memory of the last time overlaps with this one, even after so many years.

It's like being in the middle of a monsoon storm, pressure and torn leaves, and summer heat and all. And while you thrust into his wanting body, he watches you. The heat-haze is obvious and his eyes are half-lidded in the associated exhaustion, but he tracks you when you lean back to swipe the back of your hand over your forehead and there's something hungry in his gaze when he looks down to where you're connected

You remember the first time and how intrigued you'd been by this particular mannerism of his, how he keeps his eyes open. He had been watchful and curious even as you'd laughed with him over your shared fumblings. His gaze had been heavy and consuming when he'd shown his aikido skills, at your request, and tumbled you from over him to pin you to the floor.

This time there's a lot more kissing because if you're close to his face, you don't have to see his eyes, but the way Fukuzawa opens his mouth for you with trust like you've been doing this for years makes the strategy nearly futile.

You have to work right after that first heat tapers off so he's still in his nest when you're putting on your shoes, weekend duffel in your hands.

It's late afternoon going on evening so the apartment is dark. His hair is splayed out on a pillow. You're satisfied though that he has pre-made meals in the fridge and you've changed out most of his nest bedding so he can rest in a clean spot after you've gone. Fukuzawa's not saying anything, watching while you rub a sore spot on your neck, which makes him smirk. You're convinced this will be another scenario just like last time where you don't talk about it, when he speaks up, stopping your hand on the doorknob. "Same in three months?" he asked instead. Despite the stab of apprehension, you smiled. "Same in three months," and left to catch a flight.

You don't let it get quite that long before you contact him again. You don't see him, but you text him and he texts back, which is at least a relief that he's not going to vanish again into whatever new twilight he inhabits.

It's the same in three months, apart from the weather outside. His eyes, blue like steel and watching you while you bring him over the edge, the sense of being in the eye of a summer storm, that feeling of trusting familiarity when you lick into his mouth and catch the sound he makes when you crook your fingers inside him. It's the same how it's only his response that changes when you kiss him later and are more gentle about it, running your teeth against his jaw before going to cradling his head and kissing the corner of his mouth.

There's laundry in the machine and porridge on the stove. Fukuzawa's heat had settled sometime in the very early hours of the morning and the two of you were more or less clothed for the first time in days. Fukuzawa was however leaning in the door, watching you put shredded seaweed, pickled plums, and katsuo tronçons on small plates already laid out on a tray. You glanced at him from the corner of your eye, watching him almost lazily watch you. But, you paused in using a pair of chopsticks to pluck out a single ginko nut from a narrow jar. There was something almost tense in his posture. He was barely out of the thick of heat and you could see the faint tremble in his wrist before he folded his arms to hide it. You checked the pot with the still yet-to-boil rice and then ducked under his jaw to brush your nose against the scent gland there. The way he shivered, still sensitive, was almost enough to make you feel bad. "You should go lie down," you murmured, smiling in apology, "I'll bring the tray over." He hesitated, but then nodded. Something pulled at you behind your navel, similar to that familiar sensation when you had worked him through the heat. Only this time, out of the haze, you followed it and followed Fukuzawa to his nest. Its fresh linens were soft and sweet smelling as you guided him into it. He sighed when he was lying down again, a long exhale that gave nothing away. He was just watching. You tucked a blanket over his hips and let your hand linger a touch too long, feeling like you were falling into his eyes. He made no sound when you pulled away and did not return until the meal was ready. Although you did stand in the doorway he had just vacated, leaning so you could see Fukuzawa, loosely tied deep blue and light grey layers of his yukata falling half open as he rolled over to keep you within line of sight. He ate every bite of food, still maintaining that tense, anticipatory silence. You didn't remember this from the first time. His gaze only flickered from the tray and your hands to your eyes when you accidentally let out an encouraging rumble as he ate and immediately felt heat flash up your neck, mortified. The corner of his mouth twitched as he brought his chopsticks to his lips and nibbled at a bit of fish. You've read romance books, once or twice, seen the pervasive tropes pop up in just about every drama, imported or otherwise. People talk about finding someone that you feel you've known your whole life as something magical. No one talks about how unsettling it can be, how it could get all consuming all too quickly. It's disturbing in some way, the way you can sense the ease with which that could push into entitlement, envy, or just an endless fall. That is why after the first time you and Fukuzawa Yukichi had slept together, passing a bottle of water back and forth after and watching the rim indent into one another's lips when you took a mouthful, throats flexing to swallow, you had never spoken of the event again. You had never invited it happening again, and up until now neither had he. There's something at the bottom of that drop. There's always a hard landing. Somewhere. It felt too easy, being with him. You had fallen in as friends harder than this, feeling out the edges of one anothers' code and ethics, where you could push boundaries into asking about personal and professional interests. Although you never touch them, you knew where one anothers' cracks were.

Just as you never asked him directly about the things he had done in the war, about his suddenly cold reception among the circle you'd met in, he never asked you how you really felt about those people. He never asked if your heart too had broken somewhere during the Great Ability War. The stifling feeling of knowing both too much and too little about someone who trusted you far too much for what you knew suddenly stole all the moisture from your throat. A sip of tea helped, but Fukuzawa's posture had gone back to that waiting. Master swordsman: master at reading any opponent. You told yourself heavily that you were perfectly willing to continue being his heat partner, at least until the way you two distinctly did not push boundaries bored him. He had a competitive spirit to a point. There were goalposts that only he could see, standards to which others were not often held. Stagnancy had never quite suited him. Stillness did. Was that what was at the bottom? Was it the stagnant life of saying nothing and doing nothing and keeping a status quo? Or was it blissful stillness, knowing nothing would catch you and nothing needed to?

It takes almost a year for either of you to bring it up and it's only at the cusp of realizing this is becoming an unhealthy new normal that it happens. It is still incredibly difficult to broach the fact that the physical intimacy makes you feel like strangers but every conversation in between makes you feel like you could get to know him forever.

It's around this time you finally start to really talk. You know how you can know someone for ages, and even be really close to them, but there are long stretches of time where you don't talk about anything important because you're afraid of making the other person do emotional labor for you, and you don't know if they'll mind? That's the first year Fukuzawa and his Alpha have after he comes back.

He acknowledges that you've done things rather in reverse order, as far as the typical trajectory of reconnecting with friends goes. You start to date, more or less, making time to see one another every week or every other week as your schedules allow.

It's a bit strange, to suddenly realize the ways in which you both have changed. Fukuzawa is as principled as ever, but he's unmoored now, without the ties he severed to the military police and the mission it brought. You are somewhat more stable, older and more settled into your own career, but heavier in your soul, sadder. Yokohama is reviving, black towers and tidy apartment buildings rising on the horizon, but it took too much to get here, too much blood before the nation sickened of it.

Fukuzawa won't let you court him.

You're in one of the old cafes that survived all the conscriptions. The owner's son moves around with a tray and a flour dusted apron and the atmosphere is oddly cheerful, despite the recently terrible weather. The last of the summer storms are making a good showing this year and it's limited the places you and Fukuzawa can go. Museums, restaurants, the occasional wander around a particularly well constructed public part of an office building - usually places near your work or his.

You'd tried other things, shopping for food or clothes and paying maybe too much attention to his preferences. You'd tried things like flower viewing or afternoons trying wagashi in specialty shops. While Fukuzawa had seemed to enjoy them and settled easily into the traditional etiquette sometimes called for in these places, he never acknowledged that these might be early attempts at courting.

When you spent time in his apartment he let you scent items in his nest while lounging around or before his heats. If he was at the little rooftop house you were living in, he would sometimes choose one pillow or blanket to curl around and carefully leave it on your spot on the couch when he left.

You looked at him over the rim of your mug and one of his brows went up. When you said nothing, he looked away, tracking the movements of people on the street.

You still partner him when his heat hits, but the sex is worse, as far as that unsettlingly settled intimacy goes. It's wonderful, he's wonderful. Sex itself is not that interesting as a rule, and you're both too aware of the delicacy of the situation to attempt anything like adding toys during his heat or a simple scene to the build up or cool down. But every time after, you want to stay longer.

Fukuzawa shifts his nest, ever so slightly because he is picky about it, but enough so that he can always see you as you move about his home when you need to get food or nesting materials for him, so that you don't have to anxiously flit between the stove and the door in order to sate the need to know that he is safe and comfortable in the aftermath.

You think it's going to end, that the pained distance Fukuzawa now puts between himself and the world is going to pull taught against the growing need to be around one another, to care beyond the dedication of a close intimate friendship.

Everyone can see it-

And then he accidentally adopts a super genius.

This is one of the funnier things that's ever happened to your friend since you've known him and you make sure he knows you think so once or twice.

Once Ranpo is secure in his place as Fukuzawa's ward a few years later, you come up with a way to let Ranpo know he's the best thing to ever happen to your mate and also that you will never ever get tired of imagining the look of shock you know took over Fukuzawa's face when all four and a half feet of teenage whoop-ass came banging through the door of that office.

But that's years from now.

Ranpo peers up at you when you meet Fukuzawa for lunch and a film a week after he's started tagging along with your friend

The boy isn't very tall, but he's got a maturity to his features that you chalk up to either the orphan thing or the child genius thing. He had taken one look at you, seated at the back of the restaurant away from the windows, and it felt like someone crowding into your space even while he touched neither you nor Fukuzawa. You are perhaps overly sensitive of other people's attention. It's another thing that makes being with Fukuzawa comfortable somehow. He's observant, but not oppressive with what he does with that information. Only the second time you'd met he'd helped extricate you from an incredibly uncomfortable conversation with a junior minister in the local commerce department. Now the kid looks at you and at Fukuzawa and pouts impressively. "You're single." He says it like an accusation and an assignment and you could almost laugh at Fukuzawa's wide eyed expression if it weren't for everyone three tables deep around you staring. You raise an eyebrow at him. "He's allowed to be single," you chide, reminding yourself that you are talking to a child still. It's a bit funny, you admit, smiling when the boy glares at you. The waitress comes over when you beckon, bringing tea for Fukuzawa and a sweet layered sort of beverage for the kid. Fukuzawa had told you about the boy's obvious sweet tooth and even though he huffs at you, he takes the tall glass eagerly, poking a straw through the layers. "Does it bother you?" You can't help it. Fukuzawa had said the child was a genius, observant to the point of misunderstanding, his incredible intelligence looping in on itself and making the rest of the world occasionally incomprehensible. It seems unlikely for a child to hold the kind of incredibly conservative prejudice that says omegas should be mated, but he seems put out. Ranpo sulks behind a menu before saying, "I'm never wrong." The meal is quiet, and gradually people stop looking at your table. Fukuzawa excuses himself on the walk to the theater to purchase something from a convenience store. It's there you lean up against the mouth of an alley and look down at the kid. He's really short, you worry someone isn't feeding him enough and the realize that Fukuzawa is going to be that someone. "We're not together," you said. Ranpo looks up at you, clearly still sulking. "You don't have to lie to me," he says, but he sounds a little uncertain. "We're not together in the way you would understand it," you say, "or the way most people understand." Ranpo sees your emotions in your eyes, and suddenly wishes he didn't understand. Your gaze is filled with longing, but he doesn't know how you can't see it's for something you already have. Almost. "He's ashamed of something," Ranpo says quietly. You hunched over a little. "I know. Adults are often ashamed of a lot of things though." He looks at you and wonders what you're ashamed of. "You should probably ask him about this one. He's not very good at saying what he means, but most adults aren't." You're laughing when Fukuzawa reappears.

To everyone's surprise, he actually sits through the movie, happily demolishing the little fortune you'd bought him in caramel popcorn and boxed candies, even if he complains about figuring out the plot five minutes in when you leave

Ranpo doesn't parent trap you two exactly, he doesn't have quite that level of interest in involving himself, but Fukuzawa is good to him, and he sees you often and you are good to him too. Neither of you always understand what he understands, but you show him kindness without ulterior motive, you try and show him how to safely exist around other people.

Fukuzawa is asked to be a bodyguard for Mori Ougai and something about engaging with that man, even though he can't tell you about the job itself, makes him tell you, in a desperate whisper under the moonlight, that it was him who assassinated the war hawk ministers during the peace debates. It's him who is bloodying his blade for something he hopes will be better, even if it turns his stomach, even if it means he doesn't know who he is anymore.

"I know who you are." Fukuzawa tenses in your arms, and you think frantically that you have certainly made a mistake. But you don't take it back. You don't want to. You do know who he is, your friend. You know how lonely what he's done has made him. Only you didn't know what he had done. Now that you know, it doesn't seem to matter. It's distant, the way all bloody things are distant when you don't see them. You've never had all that fond a feeling towards the wealthy people that profit from the abject misery of others. All the hunger and desperation in the world are distant, abstract concepts to them. Why should their deaths not mean the same to you? Of course, you can't say this to your friend, your sometimes lover, lying in your arms. The moonlight drops over his cheeks, turning them pale. His eyes are closed for once, his face turned into your neck, as though he is afraid of what he will see in your eyes. You understand it was not simply one or two storybook villains. There is no human in the world who has done only bad their entire life. Fukuzawa was not prone to exaggeration, even if drama appealed to him. It seems likely he meant it literally when he speaks of wading through blood to put an end to those who whipped up the populace into a frenzy, who wanted for the death never to end. "I know." You stroke your thumb near the corner of his eye, brushing your cheek to his brow, pressing a chaste kiss to the curve of his cheek. "Honor doesn't always mean doing the honorable thing," you say softly. "It means making difficult choices. You regret having to make it, but do you regret the outcome?" He is quiet for a long time. You know he hasn't fallen back asleep, despite the languid warmth between your bodies. He's quiet for long enough that your heart rate returns to normal and you rub your knuckles up and down his back. An occasional burst of deep, faint purring lets you know this is at least appreciated, if not necessarily something he thinks he deserves. You've taken to sleeping together at this point. The mounting danger as different organizations wage new war across the city drives you both to it. Besides, it is simply easier to manage an antsy teenager if you're in the same place, wherever that might be, rather than passing him back and forth like the result of some amicable divorce as you both work to keep him safe and out of the hands of those who would use his intelligence. "No," he says, as you knew he would. "There is nothing to be attained in the way of peace by letting war simply continue until each side is beaten into exhaustion. Withdrawing with our strength intact is the only thing that would save the nation and its people." He says it like he's said it to himself many times. He goes nearly limp in your embrace, pliant as he nudges against you until your forehead is pressed to his. You wonder though- "Is this the first time you've said it out loud?" "What I did is a secret few are aware of." "But the investigations..." "They won't find me," he said, but you felt a shiver go through him, felt gooseflesh rise on his arms. If they did, it could open the possibility for those people to be made martyrs. It was natural for him to be afraid. "They won't," you said lightly. You didn't know what you could do to make that true, but some things needed to be said aloud. "If they catch me, I'll face whatever is decided," he said quietly. "But I won't get caught." "You saved a lot of lives." He sighed. "I know." You rubbed slow circles over the middle of his back. "The sword isn't meant to be used like that. They had lives, families, I-" he swallowed "-I ended that. I enjoyed it. And I have to live with that." His eyelashes too were silvered in the moonlight. "You have to live with it," you agreed, even as he flinched, "but you don't have to punish yourself for it every time you live." You pretend not to feel the wetness on your clothing as Fukuzawa shudders into your collar.

Forever love-

You're truly together and officially courting by the time the Agency is three years old, which is the first more calm year since the Agency opened. Turns out opening a business is a huge pain in the behind and that an ability user Agency with less than half a dozen workers, two of whom are genius teenagers who have totally reasonable problems with authority, is an even bigger pain.

By the time the Agency is four years old, you're mated to Fukuzawa, your mark on his shoulder and his on yours. Ranpo grouches something terrible that the two of you could only get your shit together before he turned eighteen, but he's not a legal adult yet, so you get to officially be one of his guardians for at least a few years. Yosano thinks Ranpo is being ridiculous, but she gives you the biggest bouquet of flowers for your and Fukuzawa's home and insists on choosing the restaurant where you all celebrate.

It's been a very long road. You've known Fukuzawa Yukichi for almost thirteen years, an unexpected friend you made in your adult years now your mate. Now someone who you feel, finally, you've started to earn the feeling you've know them all your life, even though you're still learning about him.

He takes you to his home near Osaka, to his family home on Kyushu. He meets your parents, who consider him a bit quiet, but very dutiful. You meet Natsume-sensei, once, and receive his very feline brand of approval and a quiet gift after your official mating. Fukuzawa takes you back to places he particularly enjoyed during those failed months of courting him. You spend season after season getting to know him, pushing boundaries, debating over philosophies, arguing over interior decorating, agreeing over meals.

Your mate, your partner, a soulmate if you have ever believed such a thing, let alone that it would come to you. You're watching white strands of hair like starlight shoot through his natural grey. The wrinkles around his eyes are deepening. It takes him longer to get up from bed than it used to. His silences are longer, but so are the times when he just looks at you, looks and looks like he can never get his fill. His voice is still strong, but you can feel that layer of age crackling under it. And you love him.

You love the man he has grown into, the one who can bear the weight of hard choices placed upon his shoulders, the one who can bear happily having people who work alongside him. You love his patience with Ranpo and his encouragement of Akiko. You love how he holds his hand out for you if you fall behind on your walks, or how he comes to you and stands close enough for his scent to wrap around you while you point out some small natural beauty.

Love can be horribly consuming, it can stagnate where it was once immediately comfortable or grow jealous at its own ease, unsure if it is charm or affection that ties you together. It can grow desperate and possessive. There are still things that can be so hard to say, old things that left old wounds that are still hard to talk about, but there's something to be said for age and wisdom.

Things aren't perfect, love should not be perfect, and something in you delights in knowing that with Fukuzawa it will always be incomplete. Things will not grow still, there will never be a moment there is nothing to know about him. You have grown into yourselves, the both of you, and this is the love you will grow old with.