Feelings Thawed
Character; Cater Diamond
Content; Fluff, gender-neutral reader, pining, ice skating (to various degrees of success)
Word Count; 650+
Author's Note; This is a present/thank you to my mutual @i-like-forgs. I hope you enjoy this ice skating scene with Cater, and that you get to skate soon!
As a reminder, do not put my work — or others for that matter — into AI as it steals. Link to Masterlist
The brisk wind bit at your nose, and you pulled up your scarf, trying to keep away the offending wind. Around you it was a winter wonderland, all made possible in the temperate conditions thanks to Cater, who was filming you skating around on the frozen pond’s surface.
“You know,” you hollered, making sure that you caught his attention, “you should join me! It’s fun!” You came to a stop by the pond’s edge, where Cater was standing with a large thermos.
Cater just shot you a wink, handing you the thermos. “This is for you though, silly!”
He was deflecting, you could tell; behind that bright and cheery smile that he always seemed to wear around others, you knew when there was something off with Cater. You accepted the thermos though, and took a sip of the spicy apple cider, still piping hot.
You gave him a look and pulled lightly on his coat sleeve. “Yes, but it’s more fun with others, come on Cater!” You stepped back onto the ice, and slowly skated near him, waiting with an eager smile.
He looked at you, and then back at the ice, but he stayed standing in the light snow, shooting you that smile. “But I can’t take photos if I’m out there with you!” He scratched at the back of his neck.
Liar. “Cater,” you looped back around and stepped onto the bank, balancing on your skates, “do you not know how to skate?”
Cater’s smile turned sheepish, and his ‘ahahaha, looks like my gig is up’ chuckle made its appearance. He had been found out. “Never got the chance to,” he hid his face slightly in his scarf, either to keep the cold at bay or to hide that his cheeks were turning pink. “So I’d just slow ya down.”
You took his hand into yours, “Well, I could teach you if you wanted. Just a warning though, you’re gonna fall on your butt a lot, might get a few bruises.”
Cater looked down at your entwined hands. Mittens and gloves separated your skin from touching one another, but Cater could swear that he could feel the sensation nonetheless through the layers of fabric.
“You would? Even if I pull you down with me?”
The last question wasn’t just about the ice skating; Cater didn’t want to force you to do anything that you didn’t want to… and that included being his friend. His heart seemed to whisper stronger emotions though, but he didn’t want to ruin what the two of you had.
You walked him out to the ice, and the both of you swiftly fell down on the ice, hard. But you just laughed and got right back up again, “Well, we did just fall. There isn’t anything scary about falling down; yes it stings and might leave a gnarly bruise, but in order to move forward we have to fall and get back up. So yes, is what I guess I’m saying.”
Cater looked up at you, the sun illuminating you and the snow glittered behind you. You were holding your hand out again, waiting for him. And Cater took your hand.
It took him a while to get the hang of it, and he fell down quite a bit, but every time he fell down you helped him back up. And by the time that the sun was setting in the west, the both of you were cold, and both were going to wake up tomorrow with some bruises. It was fun though, which is all that mattered… but that whisper in Cater’s heart was by now singing, and maybe he would listen to it, but for now, he was happy with how the way things were, and he wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world, especially with how much you had smiled today. Your smile and knowing that you had fun with him was enough.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Tags; @eynnwwyjth, @ithseem, @krenenbaker, @silvers-numberonefan, @twistwonderlanddevotee, @xxoomiii
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Hulijing headcanon!!!
It is always attached to Li Lianhua and doesn't like being separated for too long unless Li Lianhua gives it specific orders to stay and behave.
It takes about a month before hulijing is comfortable being left alone with Fang Duobing without whining and crying for Li Lianhua or being on the lookout waiting for him.
Which is also why Fang Duobing extra dislikes A-fei cause it takes a mere week before hulijing is sitting in front of him begging for ear scritches something it does not do with Fang Duobing enough.
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Honestly Ben 10 is probably one of the most based science fiction series out there by sheer virtue of it having the balls to showcase any alien concept it wanted to no matter how ridiculous, and whenever someone is like “there’s no way in Hell that could ever be scientifically feasible”, it dared to look them in the eyes and go “Yeah, well, this is a world where magic and superpowered mutants also exist. What are you gonna do? Cry about it? You grown ass adult who’s expecting scientific feasibility out of a cartoon meant to sell toys to preteen boys that has lore so inconsistent it’s almost impossible to tell what’s canon and what’s non-canon? LMAO loser.”
I mean OS had it all- obviously aliens but not only that, at minimum 10 of them; mutants in daily life across at least America, no doubt in other places too; magic, albeit one without a system beyond ‘there’s a spellbook and some charms’. The shift to purely alien in AF makes the wonderful nonsense sci-fi stuff into frustrating logic trees of ‘how does xenobiology get this powerful’ which I had definitely fallen into. Ben 10 is unabashedly science fantasy, so why not go the full fantasy and bring back mutants and magic, haha!
Admittedly a good implementation of magic in a series tends to follow a magic system, which I’m not especially great at coming up with, especially in comparison to speculative biology which come with pre-established rules. But hey, I don’t exactly expect it to be fleshed out, at least not as well as the alien aspect of Ben 10; even then, there’s only so much fleshed out, it’s to tease us into making lore for it lmao-
To be fair though, Ben 10 itself had to whack itself on the cheek in order to be reminded of its magic and especially mutant parts, which unfortunately in the latter case was central to major retcons so…
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Hannah was waiting. Watching her mother’s eyelids. When Eva spoke at last it was with two voices. Like two people were talking at the same time, saying the same thing, one a fraction of a second behind the other.
“He give me such a time. Such a time. Look like he didn’t even want to be born. But he come on out. Boys is hard to bear. You wouldn’t know that but they is. It was such a carryin’ on to get him born and to keep him alive. Just to keep his little heart beating and his little old lungs cleared and look like when he came back from that war he wanted to git back in. After all that carryin’ on, just gettin’ him out and keepin’ him alive, he wanted to crawl back in my womb and well . . . I ain’t got the room no more even if he could do it. There wasn’t space for him in my womb. And he was crawlin’ back. Being helpless and thinking baby thoughts and dreaming baby dreams and messing up his pants again and smiling all the time. I had room enough in my heart, but not in my womb, not no more. I birthed him once. I couldn’t do it again. He was growed, a big old thing. Godhavemercy, I couldn’t birth him twice. I’d be laying here at night and he be downstairs in that room, but when I closed my eyes I’d see him . . . six feet tall smilin’ and crawlin’ up the stairs quietlike so I wouldn’t hear and opening the door soft so I wouldn’t hear and he’d be creepin’ to the bed trying to spread my legs trying to get back up in my womb. He was a man, girl, a big old growed-up man. I didn’t have that much room. I kept on dreaming it. Dreaming it and I knowed it was true. One night it wouldn’t be no dream. It’d be true and I would have done it, would have let him if I’d’ve had the room but a big man can’t be a baby all wrapped up inside his mamma no more; he suffocate. I done everything I could to make him leave me and go on and live and be a man but he wouldn’t and I had to keep him out so I just thought of a way he could die like a man not all scrunched up inside my womb, but like a man.”
Eva couldn’t see Hannah clearly for the tears, but she looked up at her anyway and said, by way of apology or explanation or perhaps just by way of neatness, “But I held him close first. Real close. Sweet Plum. My baby boy.”
Long after Hannah turned and walked out of the room, Eva continued to call his name while her fingers lined up the pleats in her dress.
“What’d you kill Plum for, Mamma?”
Sula (1973), Toni Morrison, pages 71 - 72.
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