#there are fated mates on the list and I also write a story where soulmates exist but hear me out

[atalienart]

Well... what can I say :|

[whalyrae]

THE OLD GUARD - CHAPTER 4

"We don’t get a say on how it ends, we never have. But we can control how we live."

Summary : You are a powerful witch, cursed and hurt through ages. Owner of your esoteric shop, you were resigned to live this lonely life when the powerful magic of soulmates and fate came to you.

Pairing : poly BTS x reader (she/her)

Genre : soulmate au, demons bts au, witch y/n au, fluff, angst, eventual smut, polyamory relationships

Status : In process

Word Count : 5k

Warnings : eventual smut, angst, mention of depression, death, suicide, past trauma, violence, blood, past (sexual) abuse, past torture, PTSD, scars, self harm, and more.

Tag list : @blackrockshooter780 @babyymeme @starrlo0ver @suckerforv @mushroom-main @m1sss1mp @prettydancingdamzel @i-have-no-life-charlie @avadakadabra93 @veronawrites @kawaiikpoplover268 @didi-9310 @ghostlyworld @carolinexkpop @gooooomz @00ihatesnaku

A/N : After months of struggling with life, health, mental health issues... I can FINALLY POST AGAIN !! This chapter was really hard to write (I cried a little at the end ngl :D), I have constant writer block, constant impostor syndrome... I have the perfectionnism trait but in a toxic way really TT.TT Don't hesitate to like and reblog !! Also don't be afraid to leave a little comment or if you have any questions, here or in anon in my inbox !! they are really really welcomed, I love reading all your impressions and thoughts !!

Also thank you so much !! I was inactive for a very long time and I still got daily alerts with people who liked/kudos the chapters and the story :(( I can't express (yeah i'm an author and i can't express through words LOL) how much i'm grateful :(( ♥♥

ps : ah and sorry if there is any mistakes or anything it's almost 2:30am when I post this and I had an really emotionnal day fgkfdhlfk LOVE YALL MUAH ♥

Playlist link : The Old Guard Playlist

Masterlist | ao3 | wattpad

Chapter 3 // Chapter 5

☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ 

She was wondering whether it would be better to ask Handong to stay with her. She had assured her that she would handle the situation and that Handong could go home. She knew that Gahyeon would need her at their coffee shop. 

However, now that she was in the living room of the seven boys, her soulmates’, after bringing one of them in an utterly unconscious state for a reason as unknown to them as it was to her, she was starting to regret this decision.

She couldn't understand what had happened with Jin the moment their eyes met. She couldn't say anything, the words were stuck in her throat as they stared at each other without a word. He parted his lips as if he wanted to say something, but just like her, nothing came out. 

He'd known she was his soul mate, of course he could feel it. Just like her. But had he recognized her? Did he know that the two of them were the firsts of their soulmate bond to meet, long before any of the other six were born? She couldn't be sure and didn't have time to find out. 

She had seen his features contort in pain, and without a word, he had collapsed. Luckily, Handong, who had seen them, was able to catch him in time, preventing him from falling to the ground and potentially injuring himself. 

Thanks to a spell that increased her strength tenfold, she could carry him without Handong’s help and any difficulty to the place where he lived with his mates. But she couldn't stop herself from hurrying, worried sick about him.

And that's where she is now. Jungkook helped her carry Jin to the living room, laying him on the sofa. While Yoongi woke up Taehyung and Namjoon. Jimin and Hoseok hurried to get a damp cloth on Jin's forehead. 

Namjoon and Taehyung stormed into the room, not hiding their surprise at seeing her there in total panic. 

However, they didn't ask any questions. Yoongi probably had to explain to them what happened and what was going on. 

She was standing in front of the sofa where Jin was lying, staring at the unconscious demon, his features distorted by pain. The sight of him was enough to make her stomach twist with soreness. 

"Hey, Noona..." Jimin's soft voice startled her. He was standing next to her, a comforting smile on his lips, "Everything’s going to be fine, don't worry..."

She didn't even know what to say. She didn't dare to look him in the eye, or any of the other boys. The guilt she'd been carrying around with her all these centuries was only getting stronger. 

She could hear voices behind her, probably the boys talking amongst themselves, or maybe they were trying to talk to her. She didn't know. Nothing around her was clear and precise. Her vision was blurring, her heart rate had been racing for a while and she was getting worse. 

She gasped when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned round abruptly, facing Namjoon. The other boys were behind him, except for Yoongi who was next to Jin. 

"Hey," he greeted her with a gentle smile, "don't worry, everything's going to be fine,” he repeated Jimin’s words, “You're having a panic attack, I'm gonna help you, okay? Look at me."

His voice was soft and reassuring, it had a calming effect on her. His presence and warmth invaded her whole being, despite the anxiety attack she was having. 

She raised her eyes to meet him. Slowly, he tells her to take long, deep breaths. The first time, she breathed in and breathed out. Then a second time. And a third. 

Finally, her breathing returned to normal and her heart rate calmed. Seeing this, Namjoon gave her another smile, his fingers caressing her shoulder to calm her down. 

She had the strange impression that Namjoon probably possessed some kind of power capable of influencing the emotions, feelings, or even bodily reactions of the people he touched. Or maybe it was just the soulmate effect. 

"Feeling better?" 

"Yes... Thank you..." She replied with a small smile, seeing Hoseok approach her with a glass of water. "Thanks… and sorry, I wish we'd met under different circumstances..."

"Don't worry sweetheart, I'm enchanted to meet you." 

Hoseok gave her a big, bright smile, which he succeeded in communicating to her. 

"I guess you guys have questions... and why did I show up with Jin in this state..."

She turned her attention to Jin. A wave of emotion suddenly washed over her as she realized that yes, he was there, in the same room as her. Her soul mate, the first to cross her way, the one she'd lost so suddenly and brutally centuries ago. A mixture of joy, sadness, guilt, and apprehension. 

"Do you know what's going on with him? And why is he in this condition?" Hoseok asked curiously, taking back the glass she'd just drunk in one long sip.

She bit her lower lip nervously. She had to tell them. Jin was their soulmate, just like he was hers.

But where to start?

"Come on, settle down here."

Yoongi straightened up to install her on the sofa, right next to Jin still unconscious. He'd then sat down next to her, while the others had taken seats in front of her, Namjoon and Hoseok on the low table, the maknae on the floor, clinging to each other.

The sight made her smile gently. But quickly the smile disappeared, replaced by apprehension. The words just wouldn't come out of her mouth. She knew that the moment had come, that once she'd told them everything, they'd hate her, reject her, and she’d lose the people she'd waited for all her life. 

"Noona... I can smell your fear all the way up here..." murmured Jimin, her eyes landing on him with surprise, "I'm an empath, by the way..." he explained with a shrug. 

"You don't have to be an empath to sense the fear radiating from her." chuckled Taehyung, teasing his companion who gave him a nudge on the shoulder, "Oops, sorry sweetie." 

"I know that from the moment you will know the whole story, you'll never want to hear from me again and I... argh that's the last thing I want," she admitted with a sad smile. The events of the last few days had paralyzed and overwhelmed her in some ways when it came to making the right decisions, and she was extremely upset with herself about this.  

"But I think I need to stop being scared, and selfish like I have been."

"We could never hate you," Hoseok said firmly, the others all giving signs of approval, "no matter what you've done." 

"Tell us all the horrible things you ever did, and let us love you anyway."

She recognized Namjoon's words. And she wasn’t surprised that he could quote Edgard Allan Poe, considering the circumstances of their first meeting. 

She couldn't deny that his words made her feel a tinge of comfort, because he was sincere, and every one of the other boys thought so. 

But they didn't know the whole story yet, so the chances of them thinking differently once they knew the whole truth were pretty high. 

"Where to start..." she took a long breath, "Jin... I met him before I even knew I was immortal. That was... uh... it seems like an eternity now, at the beginning of the 15th century."

She expected the exclamations of surprise that followed. 

"Wait... you mean you and Jin hyung..." Jungkook fell silent to think. 

"Why didn't he ever tell us about you then? And why have we never met you before ?” asked Yoongi skeptically, "You're our soulmate, his soulmate, how could he..."

"It's more complicated than it sounds..." she sighed, scratching the back of her head nervously. "I always knew I was a witch, my mother was a witch herself. I lived in a village in France during the period when the witch hunts began. It was also during this period that the Malleus Maleficarum was written." 

"I know this book," Hoseok sighed loudly as he shook his head, visibly annoyed, "this pile of garbage written in the late 15th century, which supposedly explains what a witch is, how to recognize one, interrogate them, and kill them."

"A load of bullshit yeah," Namjoon added with a chuckle, "I rarely waste my time reading books, but this one..."

"Tell me more !" Jimin exclaimed, "I read it too, well, not all of it, it's so... misogynistic and sexist!" 

"I... was one of the witches who had to go through all the torture and experimentation to write this... book or whatever it is. And most of the women who suffered all that crap were just ordinary mortals," she admitted with a little restraint. 

Horrified exclamations were heard from the maknaes and Hoseok. Yoongi and Namjoon closed their eyes for a few seconds, repressing the anger rising within them. 

Talking about these events did not leave her indifferent; these memories were among the worst she had ever known, and she still sometimes had nightmares about them. 

She remained silent for a few moments, before finally speaking up.

"That's not the point. Jin is the point. When I met him, he was a merchant passing through the village." A small smile appeared mechanically as she recalled this memory, "It was love at first sight. Of course, it was. He knew I was his soul mate, but I... I didn't even know what a soulmate was. He taught me. He taught me so many things..."

She turned her head towards Jin, still unconscious beside her. Oh, how she'd missed him. He hadn't changed a bit. 

"I immediately sensed that he wasn't human, just as he'd guessed that I was a witch. So much better in a way, it made things easier."

Delicately, she let her fingers stroke his forehead, brushing aside a few strands of hair, a tender smile on her face.

"He stayed in the village after that. I had taken over the bakery from my parents who had passed away from an illness a few months before I met him. We weren't the richest, but we were happy.”

The other boys couldn't contain the grins on their faces. Of course, this story was beautiful and worthy of a fairy tale. But they all knew that fairy tales were only fantasy stories. The reality was not nearly as lovely. 

"We lived... two years like that before everything went to hell."

She felt her hands tremble as she recalled what she was about to say.

Jimin sensed her nervousness, fear, and sadness. He left Taehyung and Jungkook's embrace to kneel before her, gently taking her hands in his for comfort.

Her gaze met his, and he offered her a gentle, reassuring smile. But she couldn't relax.

"The witch-hunt had begun and was becoming increasingly virulent and violent. The villagers had always thought it was strange that I hadn't suffered the same illness as my parents. I knew the rumors about Jin and I. But until now, we'd managed to keep a discreet, almost unnoticed presence. Until she came along."

Jimin squeezed her hands a little tighter as he felt her anger rising. 

"That demoness... came to our village, supposedly a cloth merchant. She fell for Jin. Was it love, or just a physical attraction? I don’t know. She succumbed to his devastating charm, like so many others before her." She chuckled, imitated by Yoongi. 

"As you would expect, Jin did nothing but ignore her and rebuff her advances. She didn't appreciate it at all… I learned later that this half-succubus demoness was renowned for finding prey and not letting go until she got what she wanted."

"A real nasty leech..." muttered Jungkook.

She noticed, however, that Namjoon, Yoongi, and Hoseok expressions had changed. They had exchanged glances, seeming to pass a message to each other that she didn't understand. She decided to ignore it for the moment.

"Things got worse after she arrived, after Jin's rejection." She took a long breath. "She's the one who delivered me to the villagers, who exposed me. When we realized her plan, that she was planning to take Jin with her by force, by any means necessary, we wanted to run away. We'd go to Asia, or America, or wherever, to another continent, away from her, away from all of this. But that demoness had planned everything… We were young, unaware, and inexperienced, unlike her. I was barely 25, and he was 23... we just wanted to..."

She paused to calm herself, her heartbeat quickening again. Fortunately, Jimin was able to calm her, just by being here, his soft hands on hers, and she was grateful for that. She thanked him with a small smile, which he returned by stroking the back of her hand with his thumb. How could a demon be so angelic? 

"She specialized in memory magic..."

"Oh, I'm getting the hang of it..." muttered Namjoon, clenching his jaw.

"That bitch…" added Yoongi, making her huff.

"The villagers arrived in the middle of the night. We didn't see it coming. The demoness took advantage of this moment to attack Jin and cast a spell to erase me from his memory. The last time I saw Jin was before they put a bag over my head when he was unconscious in her arms." 

She lowered her head, and it was only when she felt Jimin's soft hand on her cheek that she noticed a tear had rolled down. 

She knew what the demoness had done, she knew that she'd erased Jin's memory, simply because she'd come to see her a few days later in the cell where she was being held captive. She explained everything, adding that she had offered to give her over to the Catholic order of Dominicans who wrote the Malleus Maleficarum. Which happened, the day after she came.

"When I finally escaped... After several months," she continued anyway, her voice trembling, "I looked for him, I... crossed France from top to bottom, and Europe... I looked for him everywhere, for many years... I never found him... until now..." 

Jimin's hands gripped hers a little tighter. She looked up at him, then at Yoongi, who had moved a little closer to her. Their shoulders were touching, his way of showing her some comfort. 

"So that's what happened..." muttered Namjoon, who had straightened up, his eyebrows furrowed, looking thoughtful.

"I hate humans..." blurted Jungkook as he hugged Taehyung tightly, his companion nodding in agreement. 

"And so, you thought we'd hate you, or I don't know what other nonsense might go through your little head when we know the truth?" Yoongi asked, holding back a laugh. “I don’t see why. I mean. It’s genuine, really.”

She arched her eyebrows in confusion. She thought that it seemed logical. She hadn't been able to protect Jin, she’d left him in the clutches of this demoness who'd probably done a thousand and one things to him that she didn't even want to think about. She hated herself for it.

"Hyung." Hoseok sighed, shaking his head, "stop."

"I failed to protect him, he's my soulmate and... I abandoned him and..."

"You didn't do any of that, Y/N."

Namjoon approached her. He took Jimin’s place and knelt down facing her, placing his hands on hers. 

"You're both the victims. You've met someone stronger, older, more experienced than you and she took advantage of it. You did everything you could. You did your best. You could never be blamed for that. We could never blame you for that. ."

"And Jin hyung won't blame you either, I'm sure," Hoseok added with a small smile. "When he will regain his memory, when we will give him back what that demoness stole from him, he'll be the happiest man in the world to have you back with him, with us. Believe me."

She pressed her lips together, not wanting to cry, not yet. 

Yoongi wrapped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her closer.

"It's over now," he whispered against her hair, "you're not alone anymore, you won't be. We've found you, you've found us." 

She couldn't hold back the few tears that had started to fall. How could she not break down, after all those centuries spent alone, thinking that her soulmates didn't want her, living with the guilt of having abandoned the only soulmate she’d ever known. 

They said the same things as her friends when she told them everything a few days ago.

None of them thought for a second that what happened to Jin and her was her fault. 

That feeling of being understood, of not being judged, of being accepted despite her past mistakes and scars.

That feeling of being in the presence of her soul-mates. 

She hadn't felt so at peace in what seemed like an eternity. Ever since Jin and her were separated.

°°°

"Noona... I have a few questions..."

"Here we go... the kid and his questions. Wait, I'll get you an aspirin and a big glass of water."

Jungkook glared at Yoongi, who had gotten up to go into the kitchen, a sneer on his lips.

Jin still hadn't woken up, but after a simple soothing spell and an herbal ointment she’d carefully placed on his temples, he was calmer, his body more relaxed.

She hadn't wanted to stay, not wanting to risk another attack if Jin woke up again. She learned through Yoongi about the migraine attacks he'd had since the day she met Namjoon. 

But the boys convinced her to stay. Namjoon and Hoseok had disappeared into their library, explaining that they were going to rummage through their books after a potential counter-spell. She wanted to go with them, but they insisted she stay with Jin and rest. 

It didn't take long to realize that Jin's seizures had a direct link with her.

As her soul mate, and despite his forced amnesia, his subconscious knew who she was. But it wasn't strong enough to bring back the memories the demoness had made disappear. Well, they hadn't disappeared, technically; she'd just hidden them very well somewhere in his psyche.

her scent on the clothes of Namjoon, Yoongi, Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook had been the trigger for his subconscious to awaken, for his memories to struggle, to resurface and make Jin realize that yes, he did know her, as his intuition suggested. Yes, the person on the hill was her, yes every memory he thought belonged to someone else was his, and that the blurry person sharing them with him was none other than her.

The migraines, the loss of consciousness... were only signs that his body, mind, and soul were fighting to bring his memories back to where they belonged, to finally give him back what that demoness had stolen from him.

Or at least, that's what she’d come to conclude on hearing Yoongi's explanations.

"Ask me anything Jungkook, don't worry," she replied with a small smile, still sitting next to Jin. 

Yoongi had returned with some drinks (no aspirin, to Junkook's great relief) which he gave to the three maknae, still sitting opposite her, and to her, then sat down on the coffee table. 

"I was wondering, how did you find out that you were... immortal? I mean, what does that actually mean?"

She'd been expecting this question. Even for demons, immortality was still a rather vague concept. Nobody is immortal. Demons and vampires aged slowly, very much more slowly than human beings. But they weren't really immortal. 

"I died for the first time after the Malleus Maleficarum experiments, they sentenced me to be hanged to death, like all the witches at that time." 

She heard the exclamations of surprise from the maknaes. Yoongi remained silent, listening to her attentively. 

"I actually died that day. Except... except a few seconds after I took my last breath, my heart started beating again, and I came back to life."

None of them could believe their ears. Yoongi couldn't hide his surprise either, and she knew that a thousand questions were forming in their heads. 

"The second time was a few days later. At a bonfire." she continued, bowing her head, "The thing is… I feel all the pain, all the way to death. But for some reason, I live again and again. No matter how people try to kill me, no matter how I die, my wounds heal themselves, my organs reform." 

"Is it due to a spell?" finally asked Yoongi with his eyebrows furrowed, "or maybe some kind of witch, a hybrid with a phoenix..."

"I think you're going a bit far, hyung..." Taehyung chuckled slightly. 

"Hey, every proposition can be plausible, gamin."

She couldn't hold back a smile. It was obvious that they'd known each other for several decades now, that they'd been through a lot together. In a way, she was relieved that at least they hadn't had to go through all that alone. 

"I've never known the reason, or why I became like that," she finally continued, scratching the back of her neck, "I just am. Several times I thought I wouldn't get up this time from certain injuries, especially during the wars, but I always got up again. And just like that, more than 600 years have gone by." 

"Maybe it's just that fate didn't want you to die before you met your soul mates, who knows." Yoongi chuckled, shrugging. 

"If you think the universe and destiny are that kind of romantic..." Jungkook rolled his eyes.

"I'm tempted to believe that theory, it's much sweeter and more romantic than a curse put on you..." added Jimin with a little pout. 

"Sometimes things just happen, and they're impossible to explain. Even for creatures like us." she let go with a sigh and an embarrassed smile, "In any case, I've stopped looking and obsessing over it, I've just accepted it."

"Still, it must be painful to die, over and over again..." Jimin cocked his head to the side, feeling a wave of sadness as he thought of all she'd had to go through in her long life. As an empath, his reaction hardly surprised her.

If they knew. She didn't want to dwell on how some humans and even other creatures had taken advantage of her immortality to put her through the many horrors she’d experienced. This wasn't the time to talk about all those things.

“Our pretty soulmate is strong and courageous.” Yoongi finally broke the silence after a few seconds, “She’ll talk about it when she feels ready.” 

She bites her lips. She wanted to tell him to not call her pretty, but she felt that it was destined to fail. Yoongi seemed to be stubborn, maybe a little too much. 

“Do you guys think Joonie and Hobi will find something ?” Asked Jungkook, looking at Jin with worry. 

“For sure they will!” exclaimed Jimin, “Namjoon has books that are centuries old and unique, Hobi and him are the most intelligent demons ever! They’ll find something, surely!”

Jimin was passionate, his trust in his partners was blind and absolute. It was probably the same for all of them, she was sure about it, but Jimin was the one who showed it the most. 

“In the worst case…”

“Taehyung don’t start…” mumbled Jungkook, as the others sighed. 

“Let me finish! In the worst case, if we don’t find anything for Jin hyung, the solution is simple, very simple. We’ll create new memories, so many new happy memories all together!”

“If something was robbed from you without your consent, I think you'd like to have it back. Don't you think so?" Yoongi asked, his voice softened as he ruffled Taehyung’s hair who nodded with a sad pout.

He was just as worried as the others. There were so many unanswered questions, so many theories without explanations, so many problems without solutions yet.

“Namjoon and Hoseok always find a way to resolve problems, you should be used to it now.” 

That voice startled all of them. All five heads turned to the sofa beside Yoongi and her. To everyone's surprise, Jin was staring at them, or rather, at her. 

“Jin you’re awake !”

While the younger hurried towards their eldest, their faces racked with worry and relief, she reflexively stepped back.

She couldn't get very far, as her back bumped into a chest. She turned to face Yoongi, who placed his hands gently on her shoulders. He could read the stress and apprehension on her face. He couldn't imagine what she must be feeling right now, coming face to face with the one she'd lost centuries ago. 

"Where are you going like this?" he asked at first in a slightly teasing tone, before he leaned towards her and whispered, his voice softening, "Relax, everything's fine."

She opened her mouth to reply, but no sound came out. She'd spent her whole life looking for Jin and his other soulmates. Now they were all here. They were all in the same house. Everything still seemed so unreal that she didn’t know how to react or what to do. 

“Y/N ?”

She froze when she heard her name coming from Jin's lips. The others in the room gave him a surprised, confused look.

"Hyung, do you..."

"Remember her? Us? Unfortunately not, I don’t. But I heard you guys talking earlier, I wasn't totally unconscious. Thanks for the herbs, by the way, they really appeased my headache."

Her eyes widened at his words. Had he heard everything? Did he know the whole story, just like his other soulmates? In a way, she didn't know if she could handle a new explanation, which was a bit of a relief. On the other, she was concerned about his reaction, since he was the one who was affected. 

Jin straightened up to sit on the sofa, helped by Jimin. Yoongi was still standing behind her and gave her a gentle nudge, so that she didn't push herself aside. 

Jin's eyes landed on her. For a moment, he said nothing, just looked at her. She could feel the stress twisting her stomach, her legs going limp as cotton. She felt weaker than she had ever felt before. 

"Can you come a little closer, please?" 

Jin's voice was soft; she perceived no anger, no resentment on his side. He had kept his comforting aura, the same one she'd known so long ago, the same one that had reassured her countless times. 

She soon faced him and lowered herself slightly to be at the same height as him. 

How was someone supposed to react to finding their soulmate and youthful amnesiac love, lost in tragic circumstances centuries ago? 

She was torn between tears of joy and relief, but the guilt that consumed her seemed to be the most dominant feeling at the moment. 

"Jin I..."

She pursed her lips. Her voice trembled. For sure her body would betray her right now. 

Jin offered him a tender smile and shook his head. 

"Shht, it's all right." he murmured his words as he gently grasped her hand, "come here."

Without waiting for a response from her, he pulled her against him and wrapped his arms around her. 

At first, her eyes widened in surprise. Quickly, she couldn't hold back any longer. Her arms followed and she hugged his waist as if her life depended on it. 

"I know what you're thinking," he began, his hand running gently through her hair, "I'm not angry or anything, how could I be? It was never your fault, nor mine." He paused before letting out a small sigh, she could hear all the pain, the sadness in his voice, "I'm sorry... I'm sorry you've had to carry this burden all alone all this time…"

Her whole body was shaking. His voice was shaking, as if he were holding back his own tears. She was fighting inside. She was fighting herself not to break down. But her traitorous body still betrayed her, and she couldn't even control her tears, which had started to flow uncontrollably. 

But his words. His words resonated not only in her heart but in her entire soul. She didn't know how much she needed to hear those words from him until now. 

"We'll find a way, and everything will go back to normal, it will be even better, I promise."

After all these years, these centuries of living with the weight of guilt, the weight of regret, the feeling that she'd never be able to meet her soul mates... she felt all this weight recede, making way for a quietude and lightness like she'd never known before. 

An eternity of torment, torture, and pain was finally over. 

It was as if she'd been deprived of oxygen all her life, until now, as if her breathing had been cut off, and now she was finally getting it back. 

And even though she was currently crying her heart out in Jin's arms, she could also feel Taehyung's warm, reassuring hand on her back, Jimin's, Jungkook's, and Yoongi's presence in the room, Namjoon's and Hoseok's, even if they weren't in the same room with them. 

Her cries were no longer cries of sadness. There was only relief, and it was becoming more of an evacuation from all that time of pain and isolation. 

All those smells, all that warmth that invaded her body at that moment, brought her calm and relief she'd never be able to explain, not even in a day, a year, ten years, or even a hundred years.

The reunion with Jin that day, feeling him against her again, as well as having the presence of her soul mates around them, those who were destined for her. After all this time where her heart and soul had been crying out for help, she had finally been heard. 

The darkness was finally disappearing, as the clouds and obscurity finally allowed the sun a chance to shine.

And despite her tears, she couldn't help smiling, because at last, she knew that happiness really was within her grasp.

[obeymeluv]

Red String of Fate

Something a little different! Drabble lead + headcanons! I really like the idea of being connected to someone, so have this~

Also: very long, so I only did a few of the brothers. I tend to do them in order but I tried to jump around for variety’s sake since I published a partial post the other day.

Features: Lucifer, Mammon, and Asmo (short-ish, but for a reason. Makes sense when you read the lead-up),

I have to get to bed. Need to get up early for studying + a morning class. Really love this idea so I’ll be working on something unique for the rest of the bros :)

Casual conversations about soulmates and bad dates inspires Asmo to find your one true love. He swears up and down there’s a book that can do it. Being a lover of love and feeling like it’s his duty to see you off into the best of hands—the hands made to hold you!—he sets out to find the book. Legend says Cupid pricked his finger while writing out love lists with his enchanted quill and threw the dirty pages away, deeming them unusable. Instead of being discarded, they were salvaged by another and turned into a book that would answer any love-related question the reader had.

All it would cost is a drop of blood.

Cupid, who was very serious about his task of uniting hearts and forging bonds, felt insulted by the book. He felt cheapened and could not see the joy it would bring before his arrow was destined to arrive. In a fit of rage he threw it from the heavens, assuming it would disintegrate before landing in another’s hands.

He was wrong.

The book circulated for centuries, making its way through humble and haughty, poor and princely. Some say it even inspired the most romantic of playwrights. It was kept by a family of matchmakers for generations before their home was pillaged and burned by a spurned heart. Traded out of guilt or in a desperate moment for silver or food (Asmo didn’t remember which), it ended up in the hands of a scholar. He sat with his crush and read the book, the two asking it hundreds of questions and finding themselves quite content with each other.

After the two got married, they were convinced it was a lucky charm of sorts and passed it along to their friends. Once those friends found their true loves, it started a chain of giving. When one family had all of their children married off, they would pass the book on to someone else. The book spent a fair amount of time collecting dust when one person lost their soulmate too soon and didn’t open it for about five years, convinced it would stay blank. A new love came into their life and they were so moved by the magic, by the joy, that they donated the book to a thrift shop.

Asmodeus lost the history after the thrift shop. Too many people went in and out of it, too much time had passed. All he knew is that it ended up in the hands of a witch who made serious money off of love potions and romantic divinations. One of her grandchildren—a quarter succubus and three-quarters human—had donated it to RAD’s library.

He should’ve just texted his friends about the damn thing instead of researching it like Levi does his events. Should he be proud of all the effort? You could be, but he was kind of put off by all the work. It was shabby and beaten, hardly bigger than a typical planner. Definitely unassuming and definitely looked like it’d seen some things. Asmodeus was expecting something gorgeously gilded and velvet.

Hopefully a peek into your future would make up for all the disappointment. “I bet it’s me.” he touched a finger to his soft lips with a giddy smile, little ring glinting in the light. He practically skipped out of the library and back to the House of Lamentation. At the very least, he’d get to go on and on about how he found it and how grateful you should be that he cares for you so much to do so!

Asmodeus whisks you away into his room, the bed already set with pillows that were both aesthetic and luxurious. Nothing too out of the norm for him, but he wanted something that complimented the romantic undertones of this little endeavor. He coddled the two of you in a plush pink blanket before cracking it open and guiding your finger along the edge of the page. The red soaked in, ink blossoming in a faint pink that turned a brilliant scarlet.

The book grew warm, almost burning as the scarlet began to sear and shimmer on the page. You heard him hiss and grabbed the book as he started to squirm and scoot out from under it. You’d barely grabbed the book when pinky-red smoke exploded violently in your face. It didn’t burn or have a taste but it was surprisingly thick.

“What? No names!” Asmodeus had finally swatted away enough of the smoke to see a blank book. “It’s supposed to be names!” he scowled, kittenish fangs threatening to poke at his lower lip.

“Maybe there’s been a revision,” you blinked distractedly, talking more to yourself than him. Nope, still there. You wagged your finger at Asmodeus, showing off the bright red string tied around it.

His oncoming rant receded immediately, eyes shining a gorgeous and unmistakable pink. “Let’s see where it goes!”

To Lucifer:  

He’s in the middle of doing paperwork (shocker) when he finds a vibrant red string tangling in his pen and catching on the lines

Tries to shake it off (very undignified, glad no one saw it)

Puts his pen down to pick at it and untie it. When that doesn’t work, he slips the opposite glove off with his teeth and lets his demon aura come out just enough to turn his fingernails into claws

That didn’t work either

Physically tries to pull the string off and begrudgingly stops when he realizes his finger might come off first

A huffy, annoyed man

Takes an awkward pic with his D.D.D and sends it to Diavolo, wanting to know if it’s a prank

Diavolo swears it’s not and Barbatos suggests it could be the red string theory, that thing some humans believe in.

Could it be true? Does he have a soulmate? Could he, being a fallen angel? Demons had soul mates?

All the questions swirl and he just leans back in his fancy padded chair to absorb it all. There’s something beautifully sad and...comforting...at the thought of demons having a soulmate, someone made just for them

Lucifer doesn’t really think that a soulmate’s at the end of the string, but he tells himself it’s a walk for the sake of his health, to stretch, and sets off to find the string

The eldest is quite surprised to run into you and Asmo, the string clearly tied around your finger.

“A bit overboard, don’t you think, Asmo?” Lucifer’s a little aggravated by it. What is this, a set up?!

His little brother swears against it, holding up a beaten book not even Mammon would waste money on.

Apparently, the string disappears when the soulmates touch their fingers together. Lucifer rolls his eyes and tries to soften his scowl as he presses his finger to yours.

You’re both surprised when the string thickens until it resembles a ribbon, kinking in the shape of a heart before disappearing in a burst of pinky-red smoke that has your fingers tingling

Lucifer says nothing, silently stunned and heart yearning at the tingling in his finger. It’s warm, like your love.

To Mammon:

IS IT ONE OF THE WITCHES?! IS THIS A TRACKER?!

First reaction: “OI! What the hell?!”

Also shakes his finger

Immediate second reaction is to chew on it and try to get it off

Ends up sucking on his tender finger like a baby because he basically chewed on himself instead of the string

Texted all the sorcerers and witches he knew. They all deny hexing him or mentioning him in potion-making.

He’s surprised to find he can still move around with the string. It’s not straining or limiting him, so he goes in his closet of magical seals, peeling a few back to reveal a sizeable hoard of stuff he’d stolen over the centuries (including some stuff he had on him from the Fall).

He tries daggers of all sizes and types. They don’t cut the string, either

When nothing seems to work, he marches towards the source, wrapping it around his fist with a grumble.

He pulls on it at random just because it’s a minor inconvenience and he couldn’t get it off.

Mammon notice that it runs under Asmo’s door and he yanks on it really hard, hoping he’s tearing thread off of a sweater or something. Annoying ass little brother!

When you yelp he freezes. Brain hasn’t quite kicked in yet and he yanks it again to check the reaction. Another yelp, and a thick thud behind the door.

Sounds like you’re involved somehow. Oops.

Turns out you had a hard time coming out of the room because he wound the string too quick (and weren’t strong enough to tug it back to yourself)

Asmo’s in the middle of lecturing him as he squishes your poor little face, scowling and lamenting that MAMMON is your soulmate. MAMMON, of all people, who’d been smacking you against a door for the last few minutes!

Now Mammon’s interested and needs the story

Gets a biiiig shit-eating grin when he realizes what’s happened.

Takes your hand with his usual fanfare of ‘’Course I would be! I’m their MAIN man! Their BEST man!”

The string seems to tie your hands together for a brief moment before exploding in a burst of smoke and Mammon’s still grinning like an idiot.

He doesn’t let go of your hand

To Asmodeus:

He’s waving that smoke away when he feels a new, subtle weight on his finger

Whatever it is, it’s flitting and ticklish. He can feel it catching on some of the fashion rings he wears

Asmodeus doesn’t know whether he wants to purr or squeal. He did something that hurt your human ears though.

Didn’t realize it hurt your ears until after the noise bottoms out to a lower pitch, and immediately cups his hands over yours ears, sliding them up into your hair while he showers the crown of your head in apology kisses.

Makes a video clip to send to the bros in a group chat and has to redo it several times because they can’t really hear his words over the smug purring and clicking

It warms his heart to know he has a real soulmate. Asmodeus really struggles with the concept of genuine, non-sexual love.

He figured the most he could ever get was platonic love or brotherly love, but this is a whole new thing for him and he’s honestly blown away

For a brief moment he feels like Heaven’s Jewel again, so treasured and special. It almost makes him cry

He’s lowkey crying.

100% takes advantage of the fact that your fingers are tied together until you touch fingertips. You guys giggle quietly and cuddle close as he loops the string around his finger so you put your arm around his neck

“You don’t need a string to make me touch you, you know.” you tease him, wrinkling your nose in that cute human way you have

“I know,” Asmo gives you an Eskimo kiss that turns into a few butterfly kisses on your mouth, leaning over you and into you.

Totally uses the string as an excuse to cuddle you and turn down any activities the bros want you to go to. (”Can’t, they’re kind of tied up.”)

Let this baby bask in his sure thing, okay? He really needs it, and you know he’s good for it

Gives you hand kisses and cuddles into you

Gets the bright idea to try to bottle the smoke that’ll erupt when you touch fingertips. Sacrifices his most beautiful perfume bottle to immortalize this moment

Catches the littlest bit, so thin that he has to hold it up to the light to see it.

Complains about probably swallowing most of it during that attempt

Is now even more shameless about demanding his cuddles and attention because you guys are destined lovers.

[dayseternal-blog]

Bunny-Hoodlum's eblogs of your posts actually got me wondering: what's your top 5 fanfic?

TUMBLR DESERVES TO KNOW, DAYS

HMMM!! 

After thinking about this ask for probably too long, I think I have different Top 5s, like within different categories.  And like bunny, my faves are influenced a lot by who was writing when I first entered the NaruHina fanfiction world because they made the most impact on me in developing my own style.

I’m sorry, this is super long, like, I have a problem.

🙌🏼My Top 5: Best Characterization, Plot, & World🙌🏼

All of the following just set the bar really high when it comes to creating a living, breathing main character.  The storylines are daring and fresh.  Side characters are treated with careful attention.  Each chapter brings something important and new.  There are no wasted words.  The world the characters live in is vibrant and necessary.  Basically, these stories deliver in a way that I could never hope to even try to emulate.

Btw, these all have a strong or healthy dose of AnNGgSssT.

💯 “Tainted and Possessed” by cafrye017 - Demons/Angels AU. Multi-chapter, Incomplete. Rated E for a lot of things.  Adventure, Drama, Action, Eventual Romance. - Naruto, enslaved by the Sanctified for his Forsaken blood all his life, learns that he holds a power great enough to one day change the system, but he’s not on this journey alone.

💯 “Common Side Effects” by @katarinahime & “Medicated” by @szajnie - Crime/Modern AU. Multi-chapter, Incomplete. Rated E for a lot of things.  Drama, Action, Romance. - Naruto and Hinata, in a struggling relationship, must confront the pain inside before they can love each other.

💯 “Powerless” by @bunny-hoodlum - Mystery/Crime Modern AU.  Multi-chapter, Incomplete. Rated E for a lot of things.  Drama, Action, Eventual Romance. - His family’s past can’t be taken at face-value, and it comes clawing back to hurt him in ways that are out of his control.  DELETED FIC.

💯 “A Place in the Sun” by ihaveastorminme - Canon-Divergent AU. Multi-chapter, Incomplete Forever. Rated E.  Action, Romance. - Naruto realizes that he’s not enough to love her.  He’s not enough to save her, either.

💯 “Stolen Beginnings” by @utsus - Mystery/Crime Modern AU. Long One-Shot/Incomplete. Rated M.  Drama, Action, Eventual Romance (?). - Naruto always covers his tracks, not realizing he’s leading Hinata down the wrong trail.

Yeah.  Those five are the strongest I’ve ever read in technical composition.  The characters have depth, the plot is gripping, and the setting is alive.

❤️My Top 5: I Just Love Them So Much❤️

These next five are ones I’ve reread and practically studied!  I’ve taken pieces of these stories and pocketed them as essential to how I write characters, scene transitions, descriptions of smut, emotions of falling in love, etc.!  If these writers have ever read my stuff, they’ll be like, hey 😠 is she copying me?😠.  And the answer is, yes 🙇🏻‍♀️, yes I am 🙇🏻‍♀️.

These 5 stories align best with what I personally like, so basically, these are all the foundations of how I attempt to write:

💖 “Unless the World Were to End” & its successor “21 Days” by @bunny-hoodlum - Modern AU.  One-Shot & Multi-chapter, Incomplete.  Rated E for smutttt.  Drama, Romance. - Anonymous internet buddies decide to meet up IRL and give each other their first times.

💖 “Serenity Prayer” by @katarinahime - Modern AU.  Multi-chapter, Incomplete.  Rated E for a lot of things.  Drama, Romance. - When their fairytale endings smash to ugly pieces, Hinata and Naruto help put each other back together.

💖 “Love and Water” by nineetaaaillled - Canon-Divergent AU.  Multi-chapter, Incomplete.  Rated E for smut.  Drama, Romance. - The hardest part isn’t acknowledging that he’s in love, it’s believing that he can be loved.

💖 “Made in Heights” by @utsus - Spy AU. Long One-Shot/Incomplete.  Rated E for smut.  Drama, Action, Romance. - Hinata is definitely skilled enough to infiltrate the highly secured Uchiha party and steal sensitive intel that will save lives.  It’s just a matter of making it out alive.

💖 “Lady Usagi” by @mmmbuttery - Canon-Divergent AU. One-shot.  Rated G.  Drama, Romance. - A quiet girl working in an inn meets a noisy young lord, but all is not as it seems.

No matter how many times I read these, they never lose their shine.  I can always fangirl over those 5 (6) favorites.

🥵My Top 5: Favorite Smut Stories🥵

because yes, this definitely needs its own category, it’s very important.  I would put “Unless the World Were to End” in here, but also that’s just a general fave, so I won’t include that one on this list.  My favorite porn with plot, here we gooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

😳 “Side Effects” by Cheating Death - Modern AU. Multi-chapter, Complete.  You can easily skip the rape and non-con without compromising the plot, the author warns you before it happens. - When Naruto and Hinata decide to participate in a high-paying clinical study, they wind up signing up for much more than they bargained for.

😳 “Money Shot” by callmesenorita - Modern AU. Multi-chapter, Complete. - When Naruto meets Hinata again, he can’t help comparing her to his favorite cam girl. 

😳 “Out With the Old” by agitosgirl - BDSM Modern AU. Two-Shot, Complete. - A poor submissive meets a new Dominant to take care of her.

😳 “Shinobi Passions” by HoneyWriter78 - Canon-Divergent AU. Multi-Chapter, Incomplete. - When a mission takes a surprising turn for the worse, only Naruto can help her through the night...

😳 “Ghost (touch)” by @linisen - Soulmates/Modern AU. One-shot. - A soulmate AU where you feel where the other person is touching their body and thinking about you - like a ghost touch.

Hmm maybe honorable mentions would be “Timer: Naruto Edition” by funkychicken67, “Differences” by EroPrincess, “Secrets of the Hidden Leaf” by Sessakag (wait, does that one even have a plot), and “I’m in Here” by @bunny-hoodlum (hmmm actually that’s definitely porn without plot lol).  There are tons of really good NaruHina smut fics, so this was hard.

✨My Top 5: Best of 2020✨

The stories of this past year that really, really made me look forward to checking the AO3 update list!!  Like, there were a ton of new stories last year, and I didn’t get to read a lot of them, and especially for the long multi-chapter ones, I just didn’t have the emotional capacity to start them.  But out of what I did get to read, the following were the most memorable and left an impression on me (pretending to exclude @bunny-hoodlum​’s “Territorial”, because that’s just starting to feel unfair of me if she’s in every list lollllllll).

💫 “Still Falling for You” series, especially “August” and “October” by @chloelapomme - Various AU based on the NaruHina2020 Prompts. One-shots and Multi-chapters, Mostly Complete. Various Ratings and Genres. - August: Despite differences in cultures, appearances, and current occupations, Naruto will always feel at home with Hinata.  October: Hinata has an unhealthy obsession.  Naruto does, too...

💫 “A fate worse than death” & “A risky bet” by Caelestia - ABO Canon Universe. Two-Shot, Complete. Rated E. Romance. - Improperly socialized for his inner Alpha as a child, Naruto struggles with the intimacy of his mating bond.

💫 “Harbinger of Light” by @mysterious-crimson-lotus - Canon-Divergent AU. Multi-chapter, Complete. Rated T. Action, Romance. - Hinata is his light in the middle of the war.

💫 “As Luck Would Have It” by @vegebulsoup - Modern AU. Multi-chapter, Complete. Rated M. Romance. - Two strangers wake up naked together in Las Vegas with no memory of the night before.

💫 “Come and Find Me When the Weather is Fine” by @badluckbrebis - Modern AU. Multi-chapter, Incomplete. Rated T. Drama, Romance. - When she comes back for a wedding, years later after moving abroad, Hinata catches Naruto’s attention...but is he ready for a relationship?

AHHHHH I’M FINALLY SATISFIED WITH MY ANSWER.  This took me sooooo long to put together because I kept rereading 🥺 all the stories I clicked on 🥺.  Time to go to bed.

[tillthelandslide]

Made to Love

Author's Note: Hello to all of you beautiful and wonderful people. I hope your day is going well. After having a whole day of writer's block, I listened to Made to Love by John Legend and this wonderful idea came into my head so I wrote it down. I hope you liked this and I'm thinking maybe I could do a part 2 if you guys like it?

This is set in a utopian world, not ours just so you know.

Tag List: @harrysthiccthighss @thereisa8ella @magdelen69 @henrythickcavill @hc-geralt-23 @kissthatlifeaway @darkbooksarwin @august-w-princess @speakerforthedead0 @pixie1484 @constip8merm8 @tigerbroadwaybaby @agniavateira @summersong69 @aestheticallywinchester @stephartrave @al-wiisa @henrycavillfanpage @intenselikes @anat2507 @ellixthea @aguspalazzo @1ookatthestars00 @wintersoldierslut @michelehansel @cavill-sass @thecavillstache  @xelizabethvalentinex @sesamepancakes @tumblenewby @thefangirlsblog @sugermelonwater

(if you would like to be added to my tag list, feel free to message me, if you are new to my blog then I post Henry Cavill fanfics and make   Henry Cavill fake Instagram posts, my requests are open so feel free to request anything  and I will try my best to make your vision come to life. Edit: requests are still open but there might be a delay as I am working my way through the current ones and all other stories I am writing)  

Growing up you were taught the laws of the world you lived in. You were taught that every person around you had different morals and different beliefs. But one thing everyone agreed on was the existence of soul mates, two people linked by destiny, made for each other, two people bound my fate to be together until death do they part. You were taught that you could tell who your soulmate is purely but the feeling you got. You were told that your soul mates aura would match yours and the closer you were to each other the deeper you would feel, the more intense your feelings would be, as if amplified by the other person. You were also taught that as you grew up you would get visions of your soul mate. You wouldn't see what they looked like or where they lived but would see visions of what they were like, what they did in their spare time. You knew yours was an actor (although how famous you didn't know), you knew he enjoyed video games just as much as you did, he grew up reading fantasy books just like you, you could feel that family was important to him, he had brothers but you weren't sure how many. You could also feel each other's emotions when you were apart, a constant reminder from destiny that you had to find each other to live in peace, to live in paradise with each other. The piece of information that made it difficult in finding him was that he was an actor, he was always travelling and was always filming. This made finding him difficult because you were a singer, a famous one at that, you were constantly on the road, never in the same place for more than a couple of days at a time.

But you were currently on a break from your life on the road, you had told your fans that you were going to take a hiatus and lots of them encouraged you to find your soul mate, because they wanted you to be happy.

One of the fundamental laws of soul mates was the push and pull dynamic, the more someone would push their soulmate away. the more they would find themselves needing that person. There were people who ignored these laws, and lived their lives running from destiny. Soulmates who were yet to find each other were allowed to carry out temporary relationships with non-soul mate individuals, named "betas" but were forbidden to marry them or reproduce with them. Again there were those who hated these laws, those who married non-soulmates to spite destiny.

As for you, you had a few relationships with betas, but they never satisfied that of your deepest desire. It was fun getting to know betas and you found yourself loving them, but not in the way that soulmates would love each other. Eventually the relationship between betas would come to an end when the other found their soulmate. But you were yet to find yours so all of your beta relationships had ended because they had been successful in carrying out the law.

So here you were, alone in your house in London, what was the point of a break if I can't even find my soulmate? you thought. You were beginning to lose hope, maybe you had done something to spite destiny and this was its way of punishing you.

You had begun to feel ill, your mother bringing you some soup in hopes you would feel better. Your mother was one of few individuals, who destiny had granted multiple soul mates, this only happened to people whose original soul mate had passed, destiny would grant them another if they had successfully carried out the law of soul mates in all its glory. And your mother had, she had found her soulmate when she was 21 and had gotten married soon after, having 4 beautiful children (you included) before sadly her soul mate (your father) and passed. Destiny had decided that she carried out the law so well that she deserved another one.

To say it irked you was an understatement, you were happy for her, sure, but there she was having had 2 soul mates and you were yet to find yours.

"He's on he's way dear" she said, as she was leaving your home.

"I don't know ma" you frowned, rubbing your forehead I wish this throbbing in my head would stop for christ sake you thought.

"He is, my love. Now rest and get better, I have to meet Derek for lunch" she said referring to your step farther.

"Have a lovely day ma" you said, making her smile and leave you.

Your head throbbed again, making you have to close your eyes as you felt like you were going to faint.

"What in the world?" you said, your hand coming up to rest against the wall to stop yourself from falling.

Sit down love you heard his voice in your head say. Oh yeah, another side effect of not finding your soulmate was having this kind of connection with them, they could communicate with you, through your mind. It sounds ridiculous but it's true, it takes practice to successfully send a message to your soul mate, apparently it becomes painstakingly easy when you've actually met them.

"You're not helping me" you chuckled out, crashing on your sofa.

You need to rest, your making me feel nauseous his voice said again

"Oh thanks love. Sorry to be such a pain" you said, sarcastically.

Sorry love you heard him chuckle

"It would be a lot easier if you were here dickhead" you laughed, joking with him, your eyes still shut. An image flashed in your mind... A lot of green, that's all you could see for miles.

"What are you doing?" you laughed, talking about the vision you got.

Walking Kal

"all I can see is green, like for miles?" you asked, and you heard him chuckle. He didn't say anything else and you sighed, resting your head against your sofa.

Wish I could help you. He sounded sad and he felt sad too, you could physically feel him frowning, but you knew it felt worse for him, that's how it worked. You were feeling dizzy, which meant he was feeling it a little too.

"Would be so much easier if I knew where you were." you said, your cat jumping up to sit on you.

Y'know how it works love, can't tell you that

He was right, another stupid rule was that if one soulmate attempted to send a message containing information about where they were or where they lived, the information would be corrupted, all the other would hear is muffled speech.

"I'll leave you to it then my love" you said quietly.

Okay love, rest well. Get someone to come round and look after you

"I'll try." you said. You managed to open your eyes, the world spinning a lot less now, the same throbbing in your head like someone was constantly playing a drum in there. You picked up your phone texting your best friend.

"Hey. Not well. Please come save me 😂" you typed, short sentences will have to do you thought.

"coming" was all you received back. Your friend arrived 10 minutes later, as she lived close by. She let herself in calling your name, to which you just groaned.

"Oh c'mon you big baby, it can't be that bad" she said upon seeing you.

"That's easy for you to say. You don't have what feels like someone kicking your head in every 2 seconds" you said, groaning when she tried pulling you up from your seat.

"We're going for a walk, the fresh air will do you good." she said, forcing your shoes on your feet.

"Really? I'm not well" you pouted.

"C'mon you need air" she said, pulling you up and to the door.

You began walking, every few steps you had to stop and shut your eyes, your vision became blurry and your head pounded and pounded with every step. You could see green again, a park?

"Hey it's okay, I've got you I'm here, Cmon sit down" she said, leading you to a bench.

Another vision: a bench?

Another one: two women?

Another one: a dog jumping excitedly

What was that?: An American Akita?

"This isn't working" you groaned loudly, your vision coming back to you, you looked around you, you were in a park, surrounded by green.

"Oh my god" you said, your head pounding, like a drum getting louder. You stood suddenly, your feet hurt but they carried you forward, you didn’t want to be walking but your body had other plans, your legs hurt... Everything hurt.

What's happening? You heard him say

You were falling, falling, your head throbbing more than ever, just as you were about to hit the ground, you felt something soft... Hands? You opened your eyes briefly, two blue eyes, the left had a bit of brown in it

 And then? Nothing.

The next thing you know, you were lying on the pavement, your head no longer hurt... That's good you thought. You opened your eyes, seeing the same blue eyes, your heart felt like it exploded, your back shooting up from the ground on its own accord, turning to look at the man.

"Oh my god" you cried, he was here, you found him.

"Told you to rest, love" he said, somehow making a joke out of it, but he had tears in his eyes too. You wrapped your arms around him, him pulling you to his chest.

"It's okay I've got you love, I've got you" he said, hugging you like he was never going to let go.

"You found me" you said, pulling back to look into his eyes.

"I found you alright" he said, nodding as tears fell from his eyes.

"Henry" you said, suddenly knowing his name as if you'd always known it, you knew everything there was to know about him, and he you.

"Y/N" he uttered, his hand grasping your face tightly in his hand, bringing it closer to his so he could finally kiss you. His lips were perfect against yours, it was everything everyone told you it would be, nothing but heightened emotions, destiny and fate.

"I love you so much" he uttered against your lips.

"I love you too" you replied, pulling back from the kiss.

"How's the head?" he said, his fingers rubbing at your temple.

[thorne93]

The Stars Made Us (Part 2)

Prompt: In this world, you’re one of the “lucky” ones who got a soulmate, but what if the universe gives you more than you bargained for?

(Prompt challenge – You live in a world where your soulmate can write on their skin and you will get the writing on your own and vice versa. Where they can wash away the ink on their own skin, however, the writing is forever scarred onto your skin until you meet face to face)

Word Count: 1436

Warnings: angst and language throughout

Notes: This was supposed to be for @sorryimacrapwriter​​ and their challenge like a year ago, I think? I still loved the prompt though and have been working on this story for quite some time. This aesthetic was made by @dontshootmespence​​, thank you so much! Beta’d by @like-a-bag-of-potatoes​​, couldn’t have done it without you, as well as @carryonmyswansong​​ and @arrow-guy​​ and @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo​​

Also, I’ve never really liked the whole soulmate AU thing idea, but this felt so right and it was amazing to write. I hope y’all love it too!!

~~~~~~~~~~~

When you woke up in the early afternoon, your parents greeted you with a bit of a chuckle.

“Stay up too late with Jenny?” your mom asked with a teasing smirk. It was a habit of yours and Jenny to probably stay up way past your bedtime, but so long as it wasn’t a school night, your parents never cared.

“Actually… I.. uh, have some news,” you announced as you grabbed some bacon for a BLT that they’d made for lunch.

“Oh?” your dad asked, his eyes still on his laptop. “What’s that?”

“So… Jenny was kind of joking around last night and said that I should try to write on my arm, you know… to see if I had a soulmate…” you began explaining, twisting your fingers around nervously as you sat at the table.

Your parents just looked at you curiously.

“Well, so I did. I wrote something on my arm, and I waited to see if someone would write back… and they did,” you said, showing them your arm. They saw the ‘Happy Birthday’, and the ‘Hi there’, with a smiling face.

“A soulmate?” your dad echoed, looking at your arm inquisitively.

“We’ve never had soulmates in the family, have we, dear?” your mom wondered as she looked over her cup at her husband.

“Not that I know of. Well what do you know about that?” he mused. “I don't see any more marks on your arms, did your mate not write back much last night?”

“No, we actually emailed. We thought it would be best if we reserve our skin.. You know, we don’t want a bunch of… tattoos of each other unless they’re meaningful.”

“Sounds sensible,” your mom noted with a smile. “So what do you know about them?”

“He’s a grad student. He’s 21. He graduated from Harvard at 16, and get this, he’s into psych. He studies it.”

“Graduated at 16?” your dad asked. “Are you sure this guy isn’t pulling your leg? What if he’s some bum?”

“If he is some bum, he’s got a great education. We stayed up all night emailing, and he’s quite well-read.”

“That sounds fantastic, honey. And, did you get his name?” she asked, a bit nervous.

You shook your head. “No, we agreed it wasn’t safe.”

“Good girl,” your mom commended.

“He’s 21, hmm?” your dad hummed. “Isn’t that a little old?”

“Oh, Anthony, don’t pretend like that’s some big gap. You and I have five years between us,” your mom reminded as she got up to pick up the kitchen.

“Yeah well we didn’t meet in high school either. We were adults.”

“I’d hardly call us adults. We were 23 and 28.”

Your dad just shook his head. “You just be careful, kiddo. Soulmate or not, there are weirdos out there.”

“Of course, Dad,” you said.

Well, that was out of the way. Your parents didn’t seem to be too upset, which was good.

You went upstairs to your room and sent an email to X.

“My parents know about us now,” you wrote.

“Do they approve?”

“They’re worried you’re a liar and a weirdo, lol,” you confessed with a smiley face.

“They might be right ; )”

“I reminded them that we won’t ever swap information until one of our names shows up.”

“Of course. As tempted as I am to meet you like a normal person, I don’t want to tamper with fate.”

“I feel the same. And your parents? Have you told them?”

“My parents have died. Happened a few years ago.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. That’s awful.”

“It’s sad, yes, but don’t let that bring down your mood, please. I miss them terribly. I bet they would’ve loved to meet you.”

“I would’ve loved to meet them.”

“Speaking of, we need to get registered.”

Registered? For what? A marriage license?

Then it hit you.

“Oh, you mean the soulmate registry?”

“That’s the one. Do you have access to it?”

“Yeah, I can just drive to it. It’s at the clerk’s office, right?”

“Yes, it is. Oh, I need to go, Y/F/I. I’ll talk to you later. Feel free to send me emails throughout the day.”

“Will do, X. I’ll go to the registry on Monday, after school.”

“Looking forward to it.”

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

The following afternoon, you went to the county clerk to file for a soulmate. You arrived at the building, stood in line, and finally, it was your turn. You were greeted by an older woman with a permanent scowl on her face.

“Can I help you?” she asked evenly.

“I, uh, I need to get registered for a soulmate?” you said tentatively. You had no idea how this part of the process went.

She eyed you up and down. “Very well, come with me.” She turned around and started to walk away from the counter and you looked around to see if you were supposed to follow. Since no one seemed to be stopping you as you inched towards the small opening in the counter, you went ahead and followed her.

“Do you have a driver’s license?” she asked once she reached a little podium against a wall.

You didn’t answer, instead you quickly searched your purse and wallet to retrieve the ID. She took it from you but before she did anything she asked you to show you the markings.

“I got these, on my arm,” you informed as you pushed your arm forward, your arms exposed.

“I’m just checking to make sure they aren’t tattoos,” she mused as she eyed them and scanned them with a small device that emitted purple light, you assumed it was a UV light or some form of it. “Alright, that all looks good.” With that, she turned to a computer and pulled up a file, scanning your driver’s license that filled out a bunch of forms and blanks - your name, age, social security, birthday, address. “Now, I need to document your markings. Put your arm right here,” she instructed, pointing to what looked like a small x-ray machine. It had a flat platform, a light, crosshairs, and an overhead lens. “Hold still,” she ordered.

You did your best to keep still as she pressed a button and the image was snapped.

“Did you write anything to them?” she asked, her voice stern.

“Yes, I wrote a few things,” you said, explaining everything you wrote and where.

“When did the markings appear? I need the date and time,” she informed.

“Alright, you’re officially in the system. Do you know their name?”

“No, we’ve only emailed and I refer to him as X?” you said, unsure.

“Good. I’m not sure if you know this or not, but we tell everyone who gets a mate: it’s never good to meet them before your time.”

“I’ve heard,” you noted quietly.

“It usually ends in an untimely death, and you don’t get another mate. No one has ever had more than one mate, even if their first one dies.”

You nodded. It made sense. The universe designed one person to fit your soul exactly, they couldn’t do that with two people, it would be crazy.

“No, yeah we agreed not to give any personal information away,” you confirmed.

“Good. Now, whenever your mate comes in to get registered, neither of you will be notified.”

You frowned for a moment. “So what’s the point in doing this?” you wondered.

“In case anything happens before you two meet, you can be notified. If you need a donor, your mate is notified. It’s mainly for record keeping, but just in case, they’re basically added to every In Case of Emergency list you have.”

“Really? Okay,” you said, a little more interested.

“Well you’re all set. Here’s some information for you,” she informed as she handed you a pamphlet. It said: So now you’ve got a soulmate, what this means for you.

Inside were several Do’s and Don'ts.

Do tell people you have a mate, so they don’t think you’re covered in tattoos of random words.

Don’t get the name of your soulmate before it appears on your skin. Their name and current location will appear when you are needed most by them.

Do be sure to include that you have a mate on any legal forms.

Don’t request a new mate.

… on and on it went. It made you smile and laugh at how… old it seemed to be.

Before you knew it, you were back in front of your computer screen, sending an update to X. He said he was busy today and would have to go to the clerk tomorrow.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[signofwolf]

Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas – book review

Series: Throne of Glass #7 Genre: YA, Fantasy Theme: Fae, magic users, war Warnings: mentions of torture, imprisonment Star rating: 0,5/10

Why did I pick this up?: I wanted to end this horrible series once and for all.

[Heavy spoilers ahead]

To make myself clear, before this book I quite liked this series. It wouldn’t place in my top 100 books, not even close, but it was a pleasant pageturner to listen to in audiobooks when working.

Language

Let’s start slow. I lack the words to express how much I hate the words ‘male’, ‘female’ and ‘mate’ after this series. Not even gonna try to express my trauma. But these 3 gems aside, Sarah J. Maas needs a dictionary. Or compress her work to a manageable size. Everything sang, Everyone melted, Every man roared, Every woman trembled, Everyone was unleashing themselves at least once a chapter (number of chapters: 122) ). And now I know definitely too much about Yrene’s ‘womb’. I know so much…

Dynamism

I thought that was a book about a war with heavy action content. Oh boy, I was wrong. This 984-pages monstrosity has maybe 5 pages of action. If you squint.

Every sequence, where by design action should take place was followed by one of two scripts:

Few sentences of action and then a few pages long internal monologue. Often repeated with the same character after the next few sentences of action, or with the next character and then the next (sometimes the first character made a second appearance and then everything would go all over again). And the word ‘character’ used in these sentences is not because I’m rambling. This book is written that way!

Few sentences of action and then action stops, and we are graced by a few pages long conversation. In the middle of a battle. Or spying. Or in Erawan’s chambers, when his castle is going down, and he is running up the stairs...

Time

Leaving alone the fact that apparently all series took less than a year (till this book I estimated the plot for about 3 years, Wiki told me it was 2, but Maas knows best), because that is a can of worms in itself. Time in this one? I honestly have no idea. There were many ‘few weeks of travel’ parts with two main groups of POVs. Personally my only time indicator was ‘Orynth won’t fall till Aelin gets here’. But nothing just fit. And I saw Lost Song when in the last episode we as the audience realized that our two POVs parallel storylines are in reality millennia apart. Lost Song made sense.

Emotional loading

… there wasn’t any. Really, it was like reading a milk label. Every time the scene was potentially emotionally impactful, Maas went ahead to overexplaining EVERY. GOD. DAMMED. THING. And it was abso-fucking-lutely everything. ‘Emotional dilemma? Let’s current POV explain it! 2 pages should be enough… Damn maybe it wasn’t enough. I know! I’ll switch POVs and explain it through the other character!’ <= My impression of Maas’ thought process. I’m fairly sure that the record was 7 POVs explaining the same thing in the row, but I was blacking out a little, so I cannot be sure.

And if that wasn’t enough, this book had a second way to defuse tension: random-plastic-repetitive-badly_written-smut. Really badly written and really repetitive. How could you not feel the spicy bits, when Manon (cruel, self assured 100+years old witch-queen) reacts the same in bed as Elide (20years old, virgin, ex-slave). And the rest of them were the same, there weren’t ANY distinctions.Just copy-paste.

The next point in current case: Someone died, it was impactful, I really liked the character, so I got sad. But then 2 of our characters came out of the room with a body, and after a paragraph of grieving they started making out, and then I was regaled with 2-pages-long description of melting cores. That was the place then this book stopped being badly written, and started being distasteful.

Characters

Remember when I was writing about switching POVs (which is 15(!!!) In the whole book. Oh and an omniscient narrator in places when our current POV was grieving too much to overthink something, but Maas still wanted to inform us about something)? They were all savagely murdered in the worst way: character mutilation. Somewhere between books our maybe-not-that-original but colorful and interesting characters became carbon copies of each other. I have no idea how many times I didn’t realise there was a POV switch. The only indicator was a change of pronoun, or when Maas was telling us the name of a current narrator. These were the only ways. And if you can't distinguish if you are in Dorian’s head or in Manon’s, that is the sign of a really BAD writing.

Romance

…there wasn't any. In all this book there wasn't any naturally progressing romantic scene. There were Maas’ endgame pairings which were sexing or pinning. As the author Maas loves to write about soulmates. And it’s not a bad thing itself. When I want some fluffy story I often tag ‘soulmates’ in AO3 and voila, +10 to good mood. But God above, it is not cute when every pair you write about are ‘true mates’ just BECAUSE. It is the only way Maas sees a relationship, as a fated pairing, written in the wake of the universe by the God himself. There is no choice, nor the work to put in it. They are the author's OTP and that means that they are perfect and they should have children right now. Point in case:

Guy was treating a girl like a shit on his sole, including throwing her naked out of tent, on a snow, with their friends present, all the while abusing her verbally in a worst way. But it’s okay, because when she almost died he realised his mistakes and apologised. Two scenes later, he was forgiven, because... fated mates?

The pathos

I know that many people don't like this type of scenes, but it's not my case. I’m reading by picturing images and not repeating words. I like sequences that I can imagine to be grand and glorious, even if they are a little corny. That said, the pathos scenes were the most disappointing ones for me. Maas likes to write parts that are more picturesquely exalted than logically possible [point in case: meeting of 5 armies/forces in the random patch of sand in Empire of Storms, and it being painted as ‘an Aelin’s great plan’. I laughed myself silly at that. But not taking logic and all the plot holes into consideration that was a nicely looking scene. In Kingdom of Ash that wasn’t the case. I would say that the author wanted to paint us a renaissance painting every 20 pages or so. In my opinion, every time she failed miserably. Each and every of those scenes was or to farfetched to be even remotely realistic, and evidently written only for a sake of the picture, or just plainly stupid.

Example, and it’s so priceless a scene, that I just need to share it: Battle of Orynth, 25th day or so (time in this book doesn’t exist), the 13. sacrificed themselves (like thousands before them but hush). And then, time stops: grieving Manon is going through the city, they open the gates for her (yes, the siege is still on), she goes to the place where they died, after her come out all of our main heroes, and half the city itself with ‘flowers, rocks and precious possessions’ and they lay it there in a tribute to these brave (evil till 2 months ago) witches. I honestly can’t remember when was the last time I saw such an abstract scene. It’s a material for an essay in itself. No, I could not take it seriously.

Additionally, it's hard to make an impact as every damn sentence is grand and lofty. In the end it became truly pathetic, Aelin vs Maeve was unreadable.

Character deaths:

Let's make a quick count: main characters in a series at the start of KoA: 12 secondary characters in a series at the start of KoA: 20ish minor and total background: a lot more

Death count: main: 0 secondary: 3 minor: 2 (11 if we try very hard)

Resurrections: 1 (possibly 3, but not gonna analyze it)

Did you feel emotions of this impossible war against this all-encompassing, all-powerful, invincible, immortal, cunning Evil with armies from 3 continents and 2 worlds? No? Me neither.

Oh well, but there were a lot of deaths of ordinary soldiers. I’m quite certain that all of Terrasen’s army was at least twice brought back to life for them to die in these numbers.

Logic or lack thereof

Oh, and let’s not forget about the Deus ex machina army of unbeatable, magical elves on wolves, from legends, living for the past thousands of years in the unreachable lands of the north, because they managed to run from the surprise attack 10 years earlier. Did I mention that they came from portals, which the whole book was telling us were impossible to make in this scenario? After the previous saviour army was already fighting there for a day? And that Aelin didn’t know they would come for sure (how did she contact them again?)? Even though they were waiting in the full armours for these portals? Ah, and also: that army didn’t do anything. They just came and fought for maybe 4 minutes. And there were just so many things like that!

And if we’re on the topic of armies I present you: ‘My favourite absurd-list in the series: allied armies’.

(As a comparison, in A Song of Ice and Fire by J.R.R Martin, in 7 kingdoms of Westeros, at the peak of war there were 7 forces present, but not all were even engaged in a war.)

First the ones that made sense:

Armies of Terrasen’s Lords (counted as one, not gonna nitpick)

The Khaganate army (also counted as one)

Galan Ashryver’s armada

Whitethorn fraction

Rebel Ironteeth witches

…should Dorian be counted as an ‘army’?

And there were some that did not:

Ansel of Briarcliff’s army

The Silent Assassins

Mycenians

Wild Men of the Fangs

Army of magical elves on wolves

And the ‘I don’t even know’ category:

Crochan witches

Overpowering and overreaching

Section title tells it all. The stakes were too high. I was honestly waiting for Aelin to become Super Saiyan and start to throw planets at Maeve and Erawan. I won’t spoil if this happened.

In my opinion it could be a really great series, if our list of villains ended with Arobynn and King of Adarlan, and the list of Aelin titles with an assassin and a princess. We could have had two main fight plots: one emotional with Arobynn, when Aelin would have to face a damage he had done to her, and overcome it. And the second one, with freeing Terrasen from Adarlan’s rule. That’s it. There was an asshole, power hungry king, who feared magic and wanted to rule the East part of a continent. A lot of plot, but not so much that we stopped to care, or didn’t have time to cover everything. We could really get to know what Terrasen and his people were like and not JUST GET TOLD that it was ‘the greatest place in the world’ every damn 20 pages.

Plus…should Dorian be counted as an ‘army’? It's a REALLY valid question.

Climaxes

IIf I have to write a list of things that disappointed me in this book, this review would be thrice its current size, but one of the worst grievances I have is the complete lack of acknowledging the plotlines that had been started. This book series has overall 4 372 pages (not counting novellas) and 12 main characters (still not gonna address this). All of them had their storylines and arcs but if they weren't tied up in the previous instalments they wouldn’t be in this one. I get it, Maeve and Erawan got beaten (in an extremely unsatisfactory way) but they were only a background in this series' plots.

Aelin Well, Aelin was one of 3 people (+2 paragraf-long insertion from Nesryn and Chaol) who got their own POV’s after the battle (second was technically Rowan, who was ‘Aelin’s POV outside of Aelin’.The third Dorian, who got almost a full two pages). And from this we got that: she got crowned, Aedion got his bond and that Maas have no idea how the city looks after weeks of siege. In her case what angered me the most was ‘Terrasen is my home’ subplot. Only in this tome we read at least 3 times that Aelin will be okay with dying, if only she gets to see Terrasen one last time, or if she get to die on Terrassen soil. But you know what? Maas forgot to write the scene where Aelin actually ‘comes in’.

Mannon Didn't get her own POV after the battle, but here’s what we’ve got: She is going to the Wastes with Croachans and Ironteeth. Whait. What? Yes, that was the ending of this 500+ years of feud. They fought together and they decided to unite their two species, completely forgetting more than half a millenia of slaughter. I can only hope that there were at least some talks behind the scenes… NO! F*** NO! This isn’t how it works!

Rowan, Dorian, Chaol, Yrene, Lysandra, Aedion, Lorcan, Elide, Nesryn, Sartaq Lived happily ever after

Secondary minor and total background characters Survived (I acknowledge that they would be ignored in most books’ epilogues, but this abomination is almost 1000 pages of nothing!!).

Good Scenes

That saying, this book actually had 4 good scenes:

Crochan witches go to war - gathering-forces-to-fight trope, which is my *love-always trope* so I’m not even sure if it was relatively good, or if I’m just a slut for this trope. It was still only a paragraph long though.

[recurring] The children’s tale Aelin repeated to herself to remember who she is.

‘Lorcan Lochan’ - the only marginally funny scene in the whole book

I actually found Darrel making Evangeline his heir charming. Even if circumstances were far-fetched at least.

But the words crime of this book? It was agonisingly, mind-numbingly boring. If the overexplaining and repetitions were to be taken out I highly doubt that there would be 300 pages left.

For these 33 hours of audiobook I suffered through I give it half a star. Because Abraxos exist.

Please see my garishly accurate cover on my instagram! You can also like it there :D

instagram | goodreads

[diyeoracha]

IwaOi Master Fic Rec List (50+ Fics)

Hello! In celebration accumulating over 190+ bookmarks on my AO3 account featuring IwaOi and Iwaizumi coming back into the manga (and for his (almost) birthday), I decided to create a masterlist of all of my favorite fanfictions in order to keep myself organized as well as contributing to more traffic on those works! I decided to split the works up by my own self-imposed genres, such as angst, coming-of-age (or the childhood-friends-to-lovers trope that we all love which depicts how their relationship changes as they grow up and will mostly be canon-compliant), and alternate universe. With the revival of Iwaizumi in the manga, alternate universes will be broken down into adulting AU where he and Oikawa’s diverge differs from in canon and actual, legit AU where there’s basically no volleyball.

I’ll include the title, link, word count, fic summary, and my own commentary (mostly for my own personal entertainment). While the AO3 fandom has been going strong since 2014, I personally have only been reading IwaOi fics for about 3 months, so I will most likely be recommending some cult-favorites, especially since I’ve been reading my fics by sorting through the tag with the most kudos.

My absolute favorites (or the ones where I personally push onto my IRL haikyuu friends) will be denoted with ♡ in increments of 1-3 with 3 ♡ being an absolute must-read. Fics marked with a * indicate that Iwaizumi or Oikawa or both are professional athletes because that’s honestly my Favorite Trope. This is incomplete as I got distracted while re-reading a lot of these and have only gone through half of my bookmarks, but feel free to check my own page here for the rest of them! This took me about 9 days to compile (aka this was in my drafts for about 9 days) but I do hope you guys enjoy reading these and leave comments and kudos!

Adulting AU 

*♡♡Thirty Years and Change (the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad)

Word count: 19k

Summary: It’s July 10th, 2024, and Oikawa Tooru is an Olympian. His smiling face airs on an NHK promo every 45 seconds. He’s captain of the national men’s volleyball team, reigning star of the professional leagues, and he hasn't spoken to Iwaizumi Hajime in two years.

Thoughts: THIS IS IT. THIS FIC IS GOD TIER. They’ve been separated but now are falling back into old habits and there’s a confession on the line? Akaashi is in here and he’s pretty funny. I reread this all the time.

*♡♡♡the courtship ritual of the hercules beetle

Word count: 66k

Summary: Tooru is pretty sure he could manage the mating habits of a mosquito. It’s the mating habits of people he can’t seem to get right.

Thoughts: Absolutely the best IwaOi fic I’ve ever read. I’ve reread this about 4x and I always pay attention to a new sentence or detail that leaves me breathless. The characterization is pretty spot on, and I have to admit that this fic made me appreciate IwaOi a little more. I’ve cried countless times too. A cult-favorite but it doesn’t have nearly as many hits as it deserves.

♡days fall away

Word count: 17k

Summary: Except now he’s back home, so close to his old haunts and to Oikawa himself, and it's—weird.

Thoughts: They’ve separated for a bit but now they’re back in the same city and learning to be around each other again. Cue teasing from the biological and Seijoh family

it's been so long (nobody knows me the way you do)

Word count: 8k

Summary: Tooru hums, only half-listening. Somewhere along the way, Hajime’s palm has settled itself over the curve of Tooru’s cheek, thumb tracing over the line of his jaw.

Thoughts: They’re living together post-college feat. snapshots from their lives before getting together and their Seijoh team! It’s really soft but it manages a humorous tone as well.

Time

Word count: 5k

Summary: When they're twenty-three, their story only begins.

Thoughts: A piecewise fic told from Oikawa’s point of view. The tone is almost chatty but it really fits the pacing of the work as you get snippets and sentences of their relationship throughout the years

♡Almost a Stranger

Word count: 16k

Summary: Iwa-chan's leaving Japan. Tooru's not sure he can forgive him, but he's not going to admit his long-held feelings, either. A trip to Miyajima complicates everything.

Thoughts: They go on vacation right before Iwaizumi leaves Oikawa for a year. Oikawa ponders their relationship.

where fireflies never die

Word count: 4k

Summary: >>Oikawa: Hey Iwa-chan >>Oikawa: Did I ruin it?

Thoughts: Oikawa is a mangaka and basically writes his best selling series based off of him and Iwaizumi. This was pretty angsty ngl with a lot of introspection and second-guessing.

In the Business of Love

Word count: 22k

Summary: Meet Oikawa Tooru: He's a best-selling shoujo manga artist, a hardcore romantic and you won't believe where he's getting his lovey dovey fodder from...Enter Iwaizumi Hajime: He's Oikawa's best friend, a realist who also happens to be a wedding magazine writer despite not believing in romance...

Thoughts: Mangaka Oikawa but this is basically a rom-com lmao

Alternate Universe

Even Heroes (have the right to dream) 

Word count: 20k 

Summary: Oikawa Tooru, ace reporter of the superhero beat of Asahi Shimbun, hates superheroes. Or maybe he just hasn’t met the knight one yet. 

Thoughts: Superhero-hiding-his-identity-Iwaizumi and begrudging Oikawa? Sign me up. This fic spent a little more time on worldbuilding than eventual romance, but it is still absolutely unique and entertaining

The secret omega

Word count: 17k

Summary: Iwaizumi’s annoying as fuck best friend. Who absolutely, definitely, no matter what, cannot find out that Iwaizumi is an omega.

Thoughts: A/B/O dynamics where Iwa is the omega and Oikawa is the alpha. 90% plot building which is pretty nice.

Conquering the Great King

Word count: 105k

Summary: Oikawa's lips twitched into a smirk and he brought them hovering just over Iwaizumi's, "One time thing, Two time thing, what's it matter as long as it's not a Relationship thing?"

Thoughts: Malicious and flirtatious Oikawa meet immovable object Iwaizumi. They’re businessmen trying to navigate friends-with-benefits and love all at the same time. A+ sex scenes tbh. 

♡Infinite Risks

Word count: 8k

Summary: “It’s my fate,” Oikawa responds slowly. He’s crying.“It’s too lonely,” Iwaizumi’s heart sounded broken. “And I’m not there with you. Not really.”

Thoughts: Edge of Tomorrow AU!!!!! Please watch Edge of Tomorrow first because it’s truly a brilliant movie that I wholly enjoyed and this fic reflects that. This also made me really sad so Beware

*♡Something Like Us

Word count: 28k

Summary: Friends since childhood, Oikawa and Iwaizumi now live together, both playing for the National Team. It's no secret that athletes who are bonded perform better. So if the two of them happen to bond...It'd be for the good of the team, right?

Thoughts: ABO dynamics (and somewhat canon-compliant) as they’re roommates, on the national team, and try to navigate being “fake” mated while harboring feelings

And All the Prince’s Men

Word count: 65k

Summary: “Father only loves that which he owns, and I am the one thing that can never truly be his.”

Thoughts: Royal bastard son Oikawa and his servant Iwaizumi. An enthralling read and universe. The romance takes a secondary seat here as it focuses more on plot and world-building. 

♡long nights, no peace

Word count: 18k

Summary: It's the steady knowledge that Iwaizumi Hajime will always be someone that he can rely on, that no matter what the world throws at the two of them, they share in a piece of each other's soul.

Thoughts: Pacific Rim! AU. Otherwise known as my favorite types of AUs because they’re basically soulmates (platonic or not,, but they’re not platonic here)

♡(sing with me) A Song of Conquest and Fate

Word count: 26k

Summary: When Seijou receives a missive from Aobajousai to discuss a potential peace, its emperor Oikawa Tooru could not have foreseen the series of events that would follow.

Thoughts: Warring states/historical fantasy AU. The world building is amazing and this author has great control over her language use

Cotton Breathing

Word count: 13k

Summary: 

Thoughts: Long-distance and summer only but childhood friends Iwaoi!!! A dreamy summer piece and reading it almost makes me feel like I’m in a Studio Ghibli movie because of the mood it puts me in

Similar Creatures

Word count: 53k

Summary: "What's your name?" "Whatever you want it to be."(Or, Oikawa gets directions from an attractive stranger on a street corner.)

Thoughts: Iwaizumi is an escort and Oikawa needs a fancy date

Space

Word count: 44k

Summary: Tries not to think of his rooftop garden, or the apartment he used to inhabit, or Hajime’s broken expression on the night they whispered their goodbyes before Tooru’s launch, attempting to push it all to the back of his mind behind visions of this alien world terraformed

Thoughts: Oikawa’s in outerspace. They’re separated. This left me feeling pretty empty ngl.

♡here comes your man 

Word count: 8k

Summary: Iwa-chan, it reads, Have a good day today! Good luck! <3 <3 <3Suga chokes. It’s hard to imagine anyone calling the scowling and fierce Doctor Iwaizumi “Iwa-chan.” But marriage probably comes with all sorts of liberties.

Thoughts: Doctor AU where Iwaizumi and Oikawa’s relationship is pondered by Suga

In the Telling

Word count: 6k

Summary: Muggleborn Iwaizumi could not be less impressed with pureblood Oikawa Tooru.

Thoughts: Harry Potter AU where they’re in the same year and aren’t really friends but are also friends

♡♡The Loyalty of A Traitor

Word count: 76k

Summary: Iwaizumi Hajime was an undercover officer with a single objective: Infiltrate the Seijoh Syndicate of the Yakuza and tear them down from the inside out. His primary target was the boss, Oikawa Tooru. The job itself was simple enough, until Iwaizumi got in too deep and absconded not only from the mission, but from the city itself.

Thoughts: Oh fuck this was Good. Yakuza boss Oikawa???? Disgraced Iwaizumi??? Do they fall in love (again)?

and suddenly, we were traitors

Word count: 17k

Summary: "sorry, it's just... you’ve been amazingly kind to me these past few days. ...but i'm still not sure who you are.”

Thoughts: The amnesia fic this fandom needed

Trial by Fire

Word count: 78k

Summary: (lawyer!AU - in which Iwaizumi loves his objections, Oikawa is beautiful, and they have more chemistry than two opposing attorneys probably should.)

Thoughts: Hot

dear diary, i met a boy

Word count: 15k

Summary: Iwaizumi's first impression of his upstairs neighbor involves getting woken up at two in the morning to the sound of Oikawa singing along to trashy pop music. He'd thought it would get better, but it all just goes downhill from there.

Thoughts: Model Oikawa and salaryman Iwaizumi meet and try to make it work

on shipwreck shore

Word count: 8k

Summary: “I’m going to murder you in cold blood and feed you to the basilisks,” Iwaizumi says conversationally.“You can’t do that, I’m your boss,” Oikawa sings, positively sparkling. “Also we’re partners, which means,” he points at Iwaizumi and leans in, “you’re stuck with me.”

Thoughts: Detectives but they’re actually funny

♡Lockdown

Word count: 72k

Summary: Within the first few months of his stay, Oikawa gets caught up in a war between cellblocks, becomes a prime target, and must decide just how far he's willing to go to protect Iwaizumi Hajime.

Thoughts: Orange is the New Black AU!!! Im a sl*t for tatted Iwaizumi

an allegory of all the things we could’ve been

Word count: 16k

Summary: “I don’t know anything about some red string,” Iwaizumi murmurs into the cracks of Oikawa’s skin, “or even about lifetimes or fate. But no matter where you are, I’ll find you. Gods or otherwise.”

Thoughts: Reincarnation AU throughout the timelines. A good soft read that leaves you sort of empty

Angst

Timeless (We Have 30 Days)

Word count: 12k

Summary: Or AU where you're branded 50 days before you die. But Oikawa doesn't tell anyone so now there's only 30 days left.

Thoughts: Ahhhhhhhhh tears

the weight of water

Word count: 6k

Summary: “Again,” he says, the smallest tremor in his voice, and Oikawa blinks at him a moment before smiling, soft and sweet. “Iwa-chan,” he replies, and Iwaizumi closes his eyes. “Again.” “Iwa-chan.”

Thoughts: Death fic 

open when

Word count: 1k

Summary: Iwaizumi knew it was coming, but it still hurt. It still hurt when he opens one letter and drowns it in the tears he cannot keep at bay.

Thoughts: It takes only 1.6k words to make me cry

Canon Compliant/Coming-Of-Age

♡♡i sing the body electric

Word count: 8k

Summary: It was never part of the plan, falling in love with his best friend, but then again, most things in Iwaizumi’s life that involve Oikawa rarely unfold the way he thinks they will.

Thoughts: A beautifully introspective piece told from Iwaizumi’s point of view. It’s wholly intimate and it toes along the lines of pining and soft angst. It’s told in snippets from their lives growing up together. 

♡we can do better than that

Word count: 16k

Summary: Oikawa and Iwaizumi go on a road trip during the summer after their high school graduation. It doesn't go as expected, but maybe that's not such a bad thing after all.

Thoughts: There’s a lot of character analysis and it takes a step away from the casual banter they’re always portrayed to have and focuses on the intricacies of their relationship. The tone is almost a little more melancholy. (also they have to share a bed! trope)

♡when it starts to rain, they go inside

Word count: 33k

Summary: “Where?” starts Iwaizumi.“My parent’s old lakehouse, silly, didn’t you hear me the first time?”OR: Oikawa takes Iwaizumi to his lakehouse for two weeks, post-graduation.

Thoughts: Oh This Is It IwaOi stans. This fic really solidified my own headcanon for Oikawa (spoiler alert, OP isn’t too fond of Oikawa but she fleshes out his character and his idiosyncrasies so well that you can’t help but be drawn into all of his imperfection) and this fic respects Iwaizumi as well. It has absolutely great characterization and the fic ends on an ambiguous note. 

to be first, to be best

Word count: 26k

Summary: Hajime is apparently something of a masochist, and as he stares down at the tie-dyed AREA51 T-shirt in his hands, he thinks “I’m totally in love with this asshole, aren't I?”

Thoughts: College roommates trying to navigate having feelings for each other while also dating others and not realizing that they’re jealous? A cult favorite.

♡things that change, things that stay the same

Word count: 8k

Summary: Oikawa realizes he's in love with his best friend; it sucks for a while. (But only a while.)

Thoughts: Ahh a slow burn featuring daily moments between Oikawa and Iwaizumi, and Oikawa starts to notice the little things. This was a cute read because Oikawa just comes off as wonderfully earnest. My first Iwaoi fic! And a great one because it really set the standard to how I interpreted their relationship.

it’s better than words

Word count: 3k

Summary: [ or : oikawa makes iwaizumi participate in three bonding activities for new friends, and iwaizumi just wants to know why oikawa's being so weird about this]

Thoughts: Soft pining, fluff, banter, and whispered confessions. This fic really nailed the banter of high school students really well.

♡shiver

Word count: 16k

Summary: Oikawa was always the brave one. Hajime just followed two paces behind.

Thoughts: Oikawa falls first and but Iwaizumi realizes his feelings later on! So soft, so slow burn, so much pining. We get to see their relationship through Iwaizumi’s eyes and actually read him analyze his own feelings.

♡we shine like diamonds

Word count: 26k

Summary: "You know Abe-kun from class?" they snicker, hands cupped around their mouths like they're passing along a filthy secret. "I hear his older brother is... gay."

Thoughts: Character analysis, homophobia, and coming of age makes a good and angsty iwaoi fic

terrarium

Word count: 11k

Summary: At this point, is he really happy with just staying best friends forever? Will he be writing journals and collecting rocks forever (he will, he knows, but that is aside from the point)?

Thoughts: Oikawa has a terrarium and names all of the rocks he puts in (that Iwaizumi gave him) “Iwa-chan #_”

Chasing Paper Suns

Word count: 10k

Summary: Post-high school, Oikawa makes it to the national volleyball team but Iwaizumi doesn't. The next three years become an exercise in growing up without growing apart.

Thoughts: This was pretty sad tbh. Of what it means to grow up together and then suddenly having to adjust to living without each other’s presence.

with every second that you could give

Word count: 9k

Summary: The journey of Iwaizumi and Oikawa going for gold.

Thoughts: Of growing up together, making decisions for each other, and wanting to be together

Only the jellyfish know

Word count: 6k

Summary: Their third and final year at Aoba Jousai has come to an end, and the guys decide to go to the beach the day after graduation.That day, the ocean water is salty, the watermelon is sweet, and the people are sweeter.

Thoughts: Established relationship

Smut

strange.

Word count: 1k

Summary: "god, i fucking hate you."oikawa smiles, cause he knows it's not true. he knows iwaizumi loves him, knows iwaizumi adores him. but he plays along."i hate you too,"

Thoughts: It’s hot

Say My Name 

Word count: 2k

Summary: “Hey, have you ever tried saying my first name?” Iwaizumi blurts, and the thought jumps out of his subconscious only after he's posed the question.

Thoughts:

No Touching Allowed

Word count: 10k

Summary: “You’ve got one rule,” Iwaizumi winks at him.

Thoughts: ExoticDancer!Iwaizumi and stressed out/repressed businessman Oikawa also an AU.

Honorable Mentions

things wikipedia doesn’t tell you

pillow

Phone Home

Share my life, it’s yours to keep

in progress to you

no sleep in the city

The PDA jar

Kissmarked

[atruththatyoudeny]

Monthly Reads | July 2019

Happy 28th! Sending out all my love to the authors and artists in this fandom! ♥ Here are all the fics I read and loved this month:

The sanctity of patience | scrunchyharry | historical - arranged marriage - royalty - 22k When young Lord Harry was chosen by King Louis of Bavaria to become his husband and prince consort, Harry thought all of his dreams had come through. His illusions came crashing down when he understood it meant living in isolation in the alpine castle of Neuschwanstein with a husband who turned out to be far from what he had hoped for. His illusions vanished, Harry will have learn to appreciate what has and even, perhaps, fall in love with his imperfect husband and his castle.

The Charles Compass Trilogy | SadaVeniren | fluff - humour - 8k Louis Tomlinson is a successful writer who rents a beach house on the Cape to try and finish the final book in his successful Charles Compass trilogy.

Stealing Flowers | lululawrence | mutual pining - humour - fluff - 4k The one where Louis pines after the Sexy Stranger on the Subway and almost asks him out. That's when the strange posters start showing up around Brooklyn.

If You Wanna Try Me On | zimriya | The Devil Wears Prada AU - boss/employee relationship - 18k To be fair, Harry’d been half asleep when Niall convinced him to put in his CV in the first place. Like, Harry wants to be a proper serious journalist--he’s not about to give up that dream in favour of becoming a personal assistant at a fashion magazine, or...whatever. Harry’s not actually all that sure what Tomlinson Styles even is, beyond his ticket to fame or any of the other things Niall’d spouted off at him, but when he shows up for the interview and is unceremoniously shoved into an office with the Tomlinson part of that equation, all Harry can really think about is that he would like to be a Tomlinson-Styles. ...or the Devil Wears Prada AU that no one wanted. Sort of.

Play Me A Memory | jacaranda_bloom | strangers to lovers - kid fic - emotional hurt/comfort - fluff - 27k Louis lives with his nine-year-old son Jake in a peaceful beachside community on the east coast of Australia, working as an entertainment coordinator at the local five-star resort. Harry is a recluse who lives on millionaires row and writes musical scores for blockbuster movies. When the roots of a wayward willow tree create havoc at his home, Harry is forced to stay at the resort while repairs are carried out. Cue matchmaking storms, muffin preferences, laughter, love, and a whole lotta music.

No Love Like Your Love | Rearviewdreamer | a/b/o - enemies to friends - exes to lovers - soulmates - soulbonding - 43k When it comes to saving the world from itself and convincing rich CEOs of environmentally harmful companies to go green, there's nobody better than Harry Styles. That is, until Louis Tomlinson, his ex and former Alpha, is involved.

Not (heart) Broken | glitteredcurls | soulmates - superpowers - mild hurt/comfort - 14k Every person is born with a unique, personal Ability and a soulmate. Abilities are developed from birth and treasured as parts of each person’s personality, while a soulmate is somewhat of an intimidating prospect; the minute two soulmates are in contact with each other, their powers are voided, only to be reinstated when they regain their distance. How is Harry, a young healer, supposed to feel about the possibility of losing his helpful healing Ability with one look of his unknown soulmate? He figures it can’t be too inconvenient. Until Harry meets them and, well, it kind of is...

Fall in love with the moon (and everything beautiful) | louistomlinsons | fluff - light angst - anxiety - friends to lovers - 10k Louis and harry work in a bookstore together and harry tells dumb jokes and they fall in love

There You Are | lovelarry10 | stripper/exotic dancer - mutual pining - angst - divorce - cheating - emotional hurt/ comfort - 82k Harry’s entire life has fallen apart - in one night, his carefully planned future is suddenly uncertain. Then he meets Louis.

Tiptoe Through Our Shiny City | graceling_in_a_suit | inspired by Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist - miscommunication - mistaken identity - strangers to lovers - famous/non famous - 8k Where’s Fluffy Announces Secret London Show TONIGHT!' Harry stopped breathing. “Pinch me, Niall,” he mumbled. The story of how Harry sees his favourite band live for the first time, and maybe falls in love along the way. AU Loosely inspired by Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. Loosely.

You Have to Retreat to Advance | 2tiedships2 | a/b/o - fake/pretend relationship - strangers to lovers - 18k The one where Harry is expected to bring his longterm omega to the company's mountain retreat. Since he hadn't told anyone that they'd broken up months ago, he now has to find someone willing to play the part.

Shine On (You Crazy Diamond) | larrymaybe22 | 1970's - glam rock - famous/not famous - strangers to lovers - hurt/comfort - angst - substance abuse - alcohol abuse - internalized homophobia - homophobic language - slow burn - 58k The year is 1974 and Britain’s glam rock scene is in full swing. Enter Louis, a broke and dejected student who finds himself on a tour bus of all places, working as a roadie for the enigmatic “womanizer” Harry Styles. Along the way, Louis discovers the cruelty of fame and that maybe there is more than meets the eye beyond the curls, cocaine, and crazy suits.

Could you love me anyway | SadaVeniren | canon compliant - post-The X Factor era - bdsm - bad bdsm etiquette - dom/sub - under-negotiated kink - subdrop - kink negotiation - mildly dubious consent - 13k Harry and Louis begin playing ping pong during the X-Factor Tour. It quickly gets out of hand.

Easier | allwaswell16 | a/b/o - soulmates - soul bond - exes to lovers - getting back together - angst - fate - destiny - 6k The last person Louis wants to see is his ex-boyfriend who also happens to be his soulmate.

Hot Buns | Snowy38 | TV show - hate to love - angst - drama - emotional hurt/comfort - 51k “You can call me Harry if you like.” “Is that your name?” Louis checked. Harry smirked. “Actually, it’s Harold but I hate it. I hate everything about my life but what do you care?” Louis licked his lips and caught his knees up under his arms. “I care enough to get you out of the gutter, mate,” he accused softly.

I'm Tripping Over Your Every Single Move | lookingfortherainbow | meet-cute - first dates - pining - fluff - 6k Harry is the local swimming star athlete and Louis is the lifeguard that turns Harry into a fish out of water.

The Aurora Zone | Anonymous | blind date - enemies to lovers - 19k The one where Harry is busy crossing off his bucket list while Louis is busy falling for the guy he's supposed to hate.

I've spent a lifetime running (and I always get away) | Anonymous | first meetings - fluff - 5k The eruption of an Icelandic volcano (the name of which Louis decidedly cannot pronounce) really shouldn't be the catalyst for a relationship with a boy he's only just met. Or // the one where Louis and Harry share the back of a car, a cramped bed on a dingy, highly unsafe boat, and their adoration for art (and perhaps each other).

Haunting Beauty | 4ureyesonly28 | 1980's - ghosts - fluff - 6k It’s 1988. Harry has just finished his first year of teaching English and looks forward to a relaxed break. Louis is a poltergeist and has different plans for Harry’s summer.

Meet Me in Montauk | make_this_feel_like_home | Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Fusion - amnesia - strangers to lovers - lost love - angst - 84k The one where Harry has amnesia, Louis can't handle the pain and Lacuna Inc provides a unique service: the ability to erase a person from your memories.

Two to Tango (series) | rainbowslovehl (Larrymateforlife) ➊  Put Your Best Foot Forward - fluff - meet-cute - ballroom dancing - 6k Louis loses a bet and has to go learn waltz. Harry is the guy who won’t stop stepping on his foot. ➋  Af-fur-mative - fluff - 1k Harry is anxious about the first meeting between his moody cat and Louis.

Uni AU (series) | lightswoodmagic (sarah_writes) ➊  This Might Tickle - Larry - fluff - 4k Louis' been admiring Harry from afar until they become study partners for their first year anatomy class. ➋  When You Smile - Ziam - fluff - 2k Liam’s never seen Zayn smile during classes, but a trip to the zoo for their studies helps him see a lot more. ➌  The Doppler Effect - Larry - Halloween - fluff - 2k There's only one person who figures out Harry's Halloween costume ➍  A Work of Art - Ziam - smut - 4k Zayn meets Liam before he realises he’s the life model for his extra credit class. ➎  My Favourite Word - Larry - fluff - fake/pretend relationship - 3k Louis’ ex boyfriend won’t leave him alone, so Harry steps in.

With Words Unspoken | Anonymous | 1960's - 1970's - strangers to lovers - Louis is 49 - Harry is 47 - mentions of past divorce - fluff - fate - sexual awakening k The one where Louis is lost, Harry is an excellent tour guide, and age is no barrier to finding the love of your life.

Whipped Cream | writingstylinson | hearing impaired - pining - 24kk Harry isn't focused on anything except growing his online photography business and keeping his service dog at his side. It's important since he's always being undermined due to his deafness. The last thing Harry needs are his client's brother trying to convince him to go out on a date with him.

[let-it-raines]

Not Your (soul)Mate {1/?}

Killian Jones doesn’t like the idea of soulmates. He sees how happy his friends are with theirs, but he still doesn’t like the idea, not when he’s found love and lost it time and time again only to still not know his sign. He has no markings on his skin, no voices in his head, but then one day he meets Emma Swan and everything changes. Because, well, he may not have ink on his skin to tell him who to love, but the very first time that he hears Emma’s voice he knows that she’s the one for him. Then again, that could simply be his desire talking. After all, for every word she speaks, he becomes aroused. 

It’s not the worst thing in the world to be incredibly attracted to a beautiful woman, but things aren’t that simple when she doesn’t have any interest in being his soulmate. 

He’s screwed. And not in the good way. 

Rating: Mature (mostly for jokes now and for...other things later)

A/N: Hello, friends! It’s me coming at you with more words! This time they’re of the supernatural variety for @cssns with *gasp* a soulmate fic. It’s a fun one guys. Seriously. It’s an absolutely ridiculous concept (soulmates + aroused by each other’s voices), but I’m having fun writing it! I’ve got eight chapters written so far, and I’m itching to share them with you! 

A special shoutout to @captainsjedi for her incredible artwork and for being my number one cheerleader as these words were dragged out of me. I feel super honored for her to have made this art for my story! And thank you to the organizers for doing such great work! So, everybody ready? 😁

Found on AO3 | Here |

Tag list (let me know if you want to be added/removed): @dreameronarooftop15 @searchingwardrobes @nikkiemms @resident-of-storybrooke @tiganasummertree @wellhellotragic @bmbbcs4evr @onceuponaprincessworld @jennjenn615 @mayquita @captainsjedi @teamhook @kmomof4 @ekr032-blog-blog @superchocovian @ultraluckycatnd @artistic-writer @cs-forlife @andiirivera @qualitycoffeethings @thejollyroger-writer @jonirobinson64 @mariakov81@thejollyroger-writer @xellewoods @cssns

-/-

One.

Two.

Three.

It’s the pattern he keeps tapping against his thigh as he sits at his desk, the clock on the wall ticking loud enough for him to hear. If he’s busy enough, it’s silent. But when he has time to idle and not focus on something in particular, when he’s anxious to get to go home, he can hear each individual tick as the seconds and minutes pass by. He’s always been sensitive to sounds, the quietest of whispers sometimes equivalent to yelling directly in his ear, but over the years, he’s learned to block the sounds out, to control how voices and taps and screeches affect him.

His clock is driving him insane.

He wants to go home.

And it’s not because he hates his job or anything. Sure, some days it’s like actual torture, nails on a chalkboard multiplied by at least seventeen, especially with the sensitivity of his ears, but most of the time he enjoys designing boats, ships, and the like. He enjoys working with Liam every single day and getting to draw up someone’s dream vessel like he often did as a child when he had nothing more than a pencil and a notebook of battered paper. Really, his job is a way to make his childhood dreams become a reality but in a financially responsible way.

For him. Not for the people who buy custom boats.

He likely wouldn’t enjoy it if he didn’t make any money. Designing boats is a hell of a lot of fun, but he does so enjoy having an apartment (some of the American terms have integrated into his vocabulary by now it seems) to go home to and food to eat. Honestly, he likes tea far too much to not be able to afford it.

How stereotypically British is he?

It doesn’t even matter. He likes tea, and he won’t let anyone try to convince him otherwise. His cabinet in his kitchen keeps him supplied with caffeine, and if it’s all arranged by size of bag and flavor, no one has to know that. He doesn’t live with anyone, so it’s completely fine.

Liam would make fun of him for ages if he knew of all of Killian’s little tendencies and specificities on how to run his life. Liam already has too much fun teasing him about the binders and books on his shelves in his office, but really, of all of the places to be organized, why not in the office? It’s not his fault that Liam lives in a disorganized mess.

Once a Navy man, always a Navy man doesn’t quite hold true when it comes to one half of the team at The Jewel: A Boating Design Company. He was never sold on the name, but it was Liam’s idea so he went along with it. And the odd name hasn’t seemed to keep any clients away, so it’s obviously worked out.

He still wants to go home.

And technically he could. Technically he’s a boss here and could go home whenever he wants, but he doesn’t like to leave before six. It’s bad business, and it’s never a bad thing to keep his mind focused on work. He’s always got a million thoughts whirling around in his head, and focusing on work keeps him grounded.

But today is a different day. Today is difficult for him. It’s an anniversary of sorts, but it’s not the good kind. It’s not roses (or sunflowers because in his opinion, roses are overrated) and wine and beautiful jewelry over a nice dinner with small servings when all people really want is to sit at home and eat pizza on the couch. No, it’s an anniversary of loss.

Of loss that’s not as final as death, and yet it still has its own particular sting that tends to linger. It’s a loss in his life that he’s felt many a time, but this one, this particular woman, well, her loss stung the most.

Her loss stings the most.

And it’s all because of the universe and its twisted sense of fate. He doesn’t mean that in a “weird shit happens” kind of way. He means that in the universe is a piece of shit that has lives decided before the people who live them are even born. It doesn’t matter what you do or how you live. The universe is always standing at the plate ready to throw a curveball and strike you out.

One strike.

Two strikes.

Three strikes.

You’re out.

Soulmate.

Or soul mate with two words. The universe has everything predestined, but apparently, they couldn’t decide on words in dictionaries and whether or not it was one combined word or two separate words. And that’s just scratching the surface of language and grammar, and he only speaks English and a tiny bit of French. Things just get more complicated when you move beyond that.

But that’s not the point. He can worry about grammar on another day. Right now he’s thinking about the unfortunateness of soulmates (soul mates…nope, he’s just going to decide it’s one word for him) and just how completely screwed up it all is.

No one really knows how the human race figured out that there are two people who are perfectly matched up in every single way. It doesn’t mean there aren’t fights and arguments and petty squabbles over who did the dishes or turning the air conditioner up too high. It simply means that somewhere out there, there’s a person who, when it counts, matches up to you so well that the universe has decided to they are your person.

They are the Christina Yang to your Meredith Grey.

(Yes, he’s watched Grey’s Anatomy, and no, he is not ashamed...of seasons one through six. It gets a little murky after that.)

But what happens if your soulmate dies? What happens if you never meet them? What happens if you fall in love with someone only to find out that their sign or their mark or their soul doesn’t at all match up with yours? What happens if you love someone so deeply that you don’t think your heart can take it anymore, and they leave you because the words written across their ankle are not also written across yours?

What happens if you don’t have words written at all?

He doesn’t. He doesn’t have the words. He doesn’t have any kind of indication as to how to find this so-called perfect match of his. He has no idea.

And he doesn’t need to ask the question of what happens when you love someone who is not your soulmate because he knows. He knows that the love can be real and deep and true, and yet the moment that person finds their matching mark, suddenly things start to crumble and fall apart. Questions begin to be asked, and there are no answers. There are no answers that are correct anyhow. It’s as if you’re taking one of those standardized tests where all four answers are correct, but you have to choose the one that’s the most correct.

Bullocks.

That’s the most ridiculous thing in the world, and yet he’s taken the standardized tests. He had to, but that’s really not the point.

(Also, he wonders if soulmate magic is real, are other types of magic real? Is Harry Potter based off of something true? Could he have gone to Hogwarts?)

Milah found her soulmate, and it wasn’t him. She loved him, but she let him go. And he cannot begrudge her for it. No, she’s doing what will truly make her happy, and he wants her to be happy. She deserves it.

He just wishes that it had been him.

The universe apparently had other ideas.

And four years later, he still doesn’t know his mark.

Four years later, he still loves her even if he shouldn’t, even if he knows he should have moved on.

Liam could hear Elsa’s thoughts at night when he was lying down to sleep. It wasn’t in his dreams, though he has heard of those, but simply once the darkness fell outside. They’d known each other in their thoughts since they were children, a love predestined and predetermined that found its way to life despite the countries that were spread out between them. He’s always been jealous of his older brother for a lot of things, but knowing who his love is and getting to know her for his entire life, that may be the thing which fills him with the most envy.

He’s not even sure that he wants to know who his soulmate is, but when he thinks of his brother and the happiness of his life with his wife and his children, he wonders how two people so genetically similar could have such different paths in life.

Robin’s had been a simple tattoo on his forearm. He knew that all he needed was to find his match, and even though it took into his mid-thirties, he did.

Mid-thirties are truly not old – especially since he himself just turned thirty five – but in a society that is obsessed with love and procreation, Robin might as well have been a lonely elderly man with no chance at love…and Robin’s a man. It’s much worse for women, which is fundamentally unfair. But he’s a designer of boats, not a designer of the universe, so he can’t exactly fix that.

Will, well, Will’s soulmate sign is one that Killian is rather fond of if he’s honest. He found Belle because he’d started spending time in a library, and whenever he would touch certain books, fingerprints would start glowing. They were small, dainty things, so he knew that they weren’t his. But the prints glowed, and as he moved throughout the library, he noticed that every book had fingerprints that glowed. And thus he found Belle, the librarian, and even though they don’t seem to match up, they do.

Everyone he knows is living life with someone they’re supposed to be with, happiness and issues all combined, and he’s…not.

He doesn’t think his life will suddenly become perfect if he were to meet this mystery woman. He doesn’t. His life is wonderful. He loves his friends and family. He loves his job and his hobbies. He loves his life.

Today is simply a hard day.

Today is simply a day of loss.

But tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow he’ll go back to normal, and he won’t feel the loss of his love so much.

As much.

“Hey, did you get the Santos order?”

“Shit,” he mumbles, jumping in his seat at Ariel’s voice. He knows that she likely spoke at a normal volume, but he wasn’t focusing and had zoned out. Her voice startled him. It doesn’t help that she takes pleasure in annoying him. “Sorry, love. You surprised me.”

“I knocked three times there, Jones,” she sighs, walking into his office and dropping a note down on his desk. “I know it’s late in the day and all, but you’re really zoning out.”

“That is the pot calling the kettle black, A,” he laughs, rolling forward in his chair to look at the note she has, her chicken scratch written across the notecard. “You zone out at lunch thinking about how someone invented the fork.”

“It’s true. You’ve got to think about things like that. You okay though? You’ve got that pensive, brooding look all over your face.”

He scoffs and rolls his eyes before looking up at her and stretching his hands up behind his head, the small ache pleasant. “I’m going to fire you for someone who doesn’t know me as well.”

“My severance package would be fantastic, so you can go ahead and do that. But I also know you’d be lost without me, so that’s not going to happen. No one else in the world knows which pens of yours not to use.”

“That can be taught.”

“Yeah, but no one else is going to accept your weirdness.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. Anyways,” she sighs, sitting down in the chair across from his desk and crossing her leg over her knee, “Eric and I are having a dinner at our house on Friday night, and you’re coming.”

He raises an eyebrow while he tries to keep his lips from curling up into a smile because he knows exactly why they’re having a dinner. She’s been his assistant for three years, and somewhere along the way she became one of his closest friends. She also drives him mad with how she doesn’t listen to him at all.

“Are you not even asking? Just demanding?”

She shrugs and flicks a speck off of her pants. “I’m telling you. It’s at seven, lots of our friends are coming, and you will be there if I have to drag you kicking and screaming.”

He hums and taps his fingers against the desk, the sound of his clock no longer in his earshot. “Fine. I think maybe I can be persuaded by some free food that I know is really a dinner party to announce your pregnancy.”

Her lips part, jaw nearly dropping, before she snaps it shut and gets up, walking over to him and knocking him upside the head. “You’re an asshole. That’s supposed to be a secret. How the hell did you know?”

“This note that you just gave me has baby names and a gynecologist appointment on it and not the Santos order.”

“Pregnancy brain is a real thing,” she huffs before slapping his head again and walking out of the room.

“Congratulations,” he shouts, leaning forward in his chair and smiling to himself. It’s a day of loss, but not everything is bad. It’s also a day of life.

He does spend the night drowning himself in a glass of rum, but it’s just the one filled a little too close to the brim. And he doesn’t spend entirely too much time thinking about Milah and all of the women and heartbreak that have come before her. He only spends what he would consider an acceptable amount of time, and if it was most of the night, no one has to know that but him.

Those are the perks of living alone.

Well, that and eating food in nothing but his boxers while watching reruns of whatever the hell he wants.

The Office.

It was The Office. He spends far too much time watching The Office and also…in his office. But that’s something else. That’s work, and it’s not filled with quite the same amount of comedy. Though he is thinking about putting Liam’s stapler in some jello. That’s not as funny in real life, but he’s not exactly sure if he’s desperate enough to wrap up Liam’s entire office in wrapping paper.

It’d have to be some birthday paper or something. It’s April, so Christmas paper likely wouldn’t work. Of course, it’s April, so Christmas paper would likely be on sale. This is sounding better and better, but he’s not going to do it. He’s going to keep on going with his life and make sure that Ariel isn’t setting him up on a date at this dinner party he’s been at for thirty minutes like he’s pretty sure she’s doing with her friend Jane.

Amazingly enough, the existence of soulmates does not keep people from setting him up on blind dates.

You’d think there would be at least one perk.

Besides the whole perfect match thing and all.

That’s supposedly a perk.

“Would you excuse me for just one minute, love?” he asks Jane, flashing her his most sincere smile and squeezing her shoulder before walking toward his brother who is talking to Will and Robin in the corner of the backyard.

“BJ,” Will greets, grinning from ear to ear as Killian shakes his head.

“You cannot call me that, Scarlett,” he groans. His protests don’t matter at all, but he can hope. He can hope that one day one of his friends will listen to him.

It’s a pipe dream.

“Well, baby Jones isn’t quite as funny as BJ.”

“You have the humor of a fifteen-year-old lad.”

“At least I’m not boring like you,” he scoffs before he takes another sip of his beer. “How’s your little date going over there?”

“So you can tell that it’s a set up?”

“Little brother,” Liam sighs, clapping his hand down on his shoulder, “you scratched your ear enough times for us to know you were nervous. Plus Ariel told us. She was practically jumping out of her skin with excitement.”

“Younger. I’m younger, and of course she did. Jane is…she’s a nice woman, but I’m not really in the mood for another date.”

Suddenly his head starts pounding, sounds muting for a moment before he hones in on a laugh, a laugh that has his skin heating and gooseflesh rising over his arms as he only focuses in on it before all of the other sounds come back to him, the laugh fading into the background. He doesn’t know what the hell just happened, but he’s not going to focus on it when he’s got to deal with his brother and his best mates being undeniable assholes.

Tuning things out has always kind of been his thing anyways.

“It doesn’t have to be a date,” Robin helpfully supplies, “but I think the lass likes you, so I’d turn her down easy.”

“There’s nothing to turn down.”

“She might not know that.”

“Anyways,” he sighs, crossing his arms over his chest, “how long do you think A is going to drag this along until we get to eat dinner?”

“I’d say until she finishes talking to her friends over there.” Liam points to a group of women standing on the other side of the deck. He recognizes Ariel and her friend Mary Margaret. He’s been to her house and met her husband. David? He thinks his name is David and that he’s a detective. And obviously he recognizes his sister-in-law, but he doesn’t recognize two of them. One of them is tall, her legs stretching on for miles, and she’s got straight brunette hair that falls down her back with the tips of it covered in red. The other woman is shorter, but not necessarily short, and her blonde hair is pulled up into a ponytail so that he can see the openness of her dress as it dips down her bare back and rests just above the curve of her waist. He doesn’t know her at all, and he wonders how. Ariel may simply work with him, but she’s made him such a part of her personal life that he feels like he knows all of her friends.

Then again, he didn’t know Jane, so obviously she has several friends she wants to announce her pregnancy to that he’s never met. They’re all ships passing in the night.

Of course, it’s not quite night yet and they’re definitely not ships, but his point still stands.

Or sails.

He can design a ship that would work for this purpose.

He has too much time on his hands.

All of the sounds mute again before the same laugh as before comes back, but this time he knows exactly where the sound is coming from. It’s coming from the blonde who’s talking to Ariel, and he can feel his skin heating up again, the flesh pricking and hair rising across his body as a shiver runs through him. He knows this feeling. He knows it well. It’s the start of something that he usually finds pleasant, but it’s not something that he finds pleasant while standing in a public place with all of his friends around.

Will may have the humor of a teenager, but apparently Killian has the uncontrollable sex drive of one.

Shit.

This is not good.

He needs to think of the government or his grandmother or people who think Hawaiian shirts can be worn to the office as casual wear when they live in Maine because his jeans are rather tight and he’s afraid that nothing can be hidden when he’s feeling a little excited.

Or a lot excited.

When he should not be excited at all.

Oh hell. He’s aroused. He’s not excited. He’s aroused, and there is absolutely no reason for it. Does he even need a reason? Probably not. Still though. This is a problem he doesn’t really want to have right now at his assistant’s barbecue to announce that she’s created a spawn of her loins.

Those are the only loins he should be thinking about.

Not Ariel’s loins, though. That is…this is all too much for him.

“Hey, lover boy,” Will whistles, and suddenly the laughter is fading away so that he can focus on the sound of Will’s whistle and the wind that’s causing the leaves on trees to rustle and mix in with all of the conversations that are happening, “you’ve got to stop staring at Emma or she will kick your ass all the way back to England.”

Emma.

“Who is that?” he ponders, reaching to scratch his beard. He should have shaved this morning, but he didn’t have time to clean his scruff up. “Emma? You said her name was Emma?”

“Aye,” Will confirms, his fingers tapping along the glass of his bottle and picking up the condensation. “Emma Swan. She lives with Belle. I’m bloody terrified of her sometimes, but she’s fun.”

“Why are you terrified of her?”

“Because she’s a cop. A detective, I think, and I’ve seen first hand just how good she is at kickboxing.”

“Why? Did you beat your ass for saying something dumb?”

Will rolls his eyes as both Robin and Liam chuckle, even if they try to muffle the sound. “I may have said something a bit unsavory one night, and she may have literally kicked my ass for it. But I’m on the straight and narrow path now.”

“Huh. So she did what we’ve all been wanting to do for years now. I like her.”

“Why don’t you go talk to her?” Liam prods, wrapping his arm around Killian’s shoulder and slapping him harder than he should. “Are you scared to talk to another girl? Is this going to be like teenage Killian who can’t flirt with more than one woman in a day without being terrified of having to do it again?”

“Sod off.”

“I’m telling you,” Liam starts, but Killian moves out from under his arm and walks away from the group of them so that he can go inside and get a glass of water, not really interested in hearing Liam teasing him about his childhood. It doesn’t bother him, but he’s heard it all before and doesn’t really need to hear about it again. It’s still been A Week, and there’s only so much teasing about his relationships that he can take when he’s still mourning the loss of one.

Once he gets into the kitchen, he grabs a cup off the counter and fills it with ice and water from the fridge, the sound of the ice machine drowning everything out so that he doesn’t hear someone come in behind him. He doesn’t hear her, so he’s got no idea that she’s within a foot of him when he turns around and hits her shoulder, the cup of ice cold water in his hand spilling all over the front of her dress.

Of Emma’s dress.

Of Emma’s white dress.

Because it’s the woman who he was just admiring who he spilled a drink on.

“Holy shirt-balls that’s cold.”

He wants to laugh at her words, at her The Good Place reference, but then it’s happening again. His skin is heating, his temperature rising by several noticeable degrees, and he can feel the hair on his body begin to rise while his jeans tighten. How are his jeans still tightening? His erection can’t get any worse.

Holy shirt-balls indeed.

What the hell is happening to him?

“I’m sorry, love,” he stutters, trying to focus his hearing so that everything won’t be so heightened, but then his eyes glance down at the way that the material of her dress is clinging to her skin, the edges molding to her breasts, and everything gets worse. So, so much worse. He loves women. He’s never denied that. But hell, he should not be having this kind of reaction. This is not some kind of bad porn movie.

This is not some kind of raunchy romantic comedy either.

This is his life.

She’s got fantastic breasts.

Nope. Nope. Nope. He can’t be thinking that. He shouldn’t be thinking that. Something is happening to him, and he needs it to stop.

“I mean, I would say it’s not your fault, but you did spill the water on me,” she laughs, grabbing onto her dress and squeezing the water out a bit as she makes her way further into the kitchen to grab a towel and wipe herself down.

“Yeah, sorry about that. Again. You’re Emma, right?”

She’s still dabbing at her dress when she looks up at him and raises an eyebrow. Her cheeks are flushed red, and he’s not sure if it’s from spending the evening outside or from the embarrassment of him spilling water on her. But she’s got these beautifully flushed cheeks and light emerald eyes that can’t seem to focus on him, her gaze constantly changing.

With how uncomfortable his jeans are right now, he’s honestly kind of wishing that he had ice water dumped on him.

Seriously. What the hell is happening to him?

“Um, yeah. How do you know that?”

“Will told me. I’m…we’re old friends. Killian. Killian Jones.”

“Emma Swan,” she sighs, continuing to dab at her dress while he looks away. He has to look away or he’s going to do something inappropriate by anyone’s standards. Something is happening to him, to his mind and his body, and he needs it to stop right now. “You know, if you wanted to talk to me, all you had to do was introduce yourself, no spilled water involved. And if you wanted to see my tits, well, I should warn you that I carry around a gun for a living, and I don’t take too kindly to things like that.”

“I can promise you that wasn’t my intention.”

“Then why aren’t you looking at me right now?”

“Swan, if I’m honest, it’s because I can see both through and down your dress, and it’s not proper to look no matter how much I want to.”

Holy shit. Why did he just say that?

“Is it hot in here?” Emma asks, changing the subject, and he has never been more thankful for anything in his entire life. Though, really, if she could stop talking, he would be thankful for that too. Her voice is focused in his ears, every word reverberating and spinning around so that he can focus on nothing but her. It’s like her laughter earlier. His body instinctively tuned into it, focused on it, and it caused this same feeling of arousal to base itself at his spine.

And every word she says, makes it worse.

Fuck.

He somehow knows what’s happening, his brain instantly making the connections, and if he could walk out the front door and have never come to this party, he probably would.

Emma Swan is mostly likely his soulmate if the way his senses are picking up are any indication, and every word she says gives him the most inappropriate erection.

Her voice arouses him, and it’s not in a normal way.

Of all the soulmate signs, why this?

Couldn’t he have gotten a damn butterfly tattoo right above his ass instead?

[vulpesmellifera]

Vulpes’ Mystrade Recs

For @inevitably-johnlocked

I have a lot more than these but I don’t have the time today to add more. I hope to begin organizing them so that it is easier for readers to find what they’re looking for. This list is only a start! There are many more deserving fics and authors who will show up on this list in the future. Enjoy!

Happens in BBC Sherlock Canon as far as I can tell, but is not necessarily canon-compliant

Hope by sandwastesinthevoidofmychest. Mystrade. Teen. 5,222 words. My heart died reading this one, though it did restart. Mycroft suffers an acid attack, and retreats from public scrutiny.

Out of the Ashes by wendymarlowe. Mystrade. Explicit. 34,679 words. A tale of post-Reichenbach Mystrade. I loved it! It also includes some casefic.

The Sheltering Tree by Mottlemoth. Mystrade. Explicit. 89,113 words. I think this is the sweetest story Mottlemoth has written so far. I just adored it. 

Darlin’ by Mottlemoth. Mystrade. Teen. 2,295 words. Mycroft is injured, and when he wakes in the hospital, he finds out that he’s married to Greg Lestrade.

Breaking Point by Hastalux. Mystrade. Mature. There’s a terrorist attack and Mycroft is caught in the middle of it. Greg refuses to leave him there. 

Memoranda of Understanding series by mydwynter. Mystrade. Explicit. Good god, I need to reread this one. I just remember loving it, and just being blown away by how good it is.

As The Stars of Heaven: Holmesian Reproductive Strategies by Tammany. Mystrade. Teen. 24,342 words. Mycroft decides he wants a family. Greg is sort of jealous. Well, really jealous. 

At Least There’s the Football series by sheffiesharpe. Mystrade. Explicit. It’s popular for a reason, y’all. Truly awesome domestic bliss and a wonderful romantic partnership between Mycroft and Greg.

The DI and the Spy series by chasingriver. Mystrade. Explicit. I’m pretty sure January of 2018 was me having just discovered Mystrade and devouring the big time popular fics. This one was super sweet and funny.

Fire and Ice series by kazvl. Mystrade. Explicit. This one is soooo good. There’s drama and angst with a wonderful storyline that diverges from post-Reichenbach canon in a believable way.

East End Boy by Mottlemoth. Mystrade. Explicit. So my headcanon is generally that Greg is someone who married a woman but was always gay (I know bisexuals exist; I am one, thank you), and when I read this I was like “YASSS! Thank you Moth!” because not only did it meet my headcanon, but the story is one of the best ones I’ve read, hands down.  

To All the Lovers in the House Tonight by kedgeree. Mystrade. Mature. 15,950 words. Greg always gets his man, doesn’t he?

The I Know the Steps Series by stardust_made. Mystrade. Explicit. 37,394 words. This is great - Mycroft and Greg come to know each other - first from Mycroft’s POV, and then Greg’s.

like a moth to a flame by egmon73. Mystrade. Mature. 12,343 words. Greg realizes that he’s attracted to Mycroft. How can he be 52 and just now attracted to a man???

Sweetheart by janto321 (FaceofMer). Mystrade. Explicit. 1,312 words. Mycroft thought it would just be sex between them.

Taking His Time by sanguisuga. Mystrade. Explicit. 8,040 words. Mycroft didn’t quite expect these developments with Greg Lestrade.

Damage Control by TheDevilsFeet. Mystrade & Johnlock. Explicit. 46,679 words. Mycroft and Greg go on a drive to extract Sherlock from a precarious situation. It has some very awkward moments, but they get to know each other better.

Sinking the Land by emungere. Mystrade. Explicit. 34,302 words. It started with random cock sucking. And then it gets even better. So good!

Beyond These Games by recreational. Mystrade. Explicit. 37,736 words. Greg wants to know about the man behind the voice. It gets complicated.

Mister Big series by L_Morgan. Mystrade. Explicit. 41,007 words. This is one of the sweetest Mystrade fics out there. And not fluffy sweet…just sweet. Well done.

Virtually Perfect by Random_Nexus. Mystrade. Explicit. 19,680 words. A great Mystrade fic! I’ve reread this one when I needed a pick-me-up. Mycroft and Greg meet over the internet.

Cracks in the Ice by Mice. Mystrade. Explicit. 31,739 words. This is fantastic. It takes Greg and Mycroft from pre-canon to post-Reichenbach, and the ending is such a surprise.

And the Law Won by MofBaskerville. Mystrade. Explicit. 10,531 words. Mycroft has had a less-than-stellar experience with relationships, and breaks it off with Greg before those things can come to past. Greg isn’t happy about it.

Out of Thought by green_violin_bow. Mystrade. Explicit. 89,323 words. A fabulous love story wherein a disbelieving Mycroft is pursued by a besotted Greg.

The Habits of a Lifetime by out_there. Mystrade. Explicit. 54,234 words. One of my very favorite Mystrade stories. Mycroft is dealing with the aftermath of Sherrinford. 

The Sad Divorced Bastards Club by out_there. Mystrade. Explicit. 19,987 words. Greg invites Mycroft to join a club. Mycroft accepts. I love out_there’s work!

Finding a Way series by MuchTooMerryMaidean. Mystrade. Mature. 116,152 words. This one is a difficult but wholly worthwhile read. TW for rape and rape recovery. I think this is a really important piece, though, the most genuine treatment of the topic in the fandom that I have come across - how rape impacts a person, but also the people around them. It also explores identity, politics of sex and gender, family relationships, and so much more. I’ve reread it twice now, and will probably reread again.

Take Care of Me (Scenario 52-B) by Aelfay. Explicit. 10,788 words. Need some hurt/comfort Mystrade in your life? Here ya go!

Please, Please, Please series by Sunnyrea. Explicit. 180,302 words. Mycroft begins courting Greg, but nothing is ever easy. Great story!

A Sense of Home by snorklepie. Explicit. 50,401 words. Greg pursues Mycroft. He also decides to get his life together. 

AUs

Soul Mate by Mottlemoth. Mystrade. Teen. 4,068 words. Remember up above when I said The Sheltering Tree was the sweetest thing Mottlemoth ever wrote? I was wrong. It’s this soulmates AU. 

Cold Hands, Warm Heart by chasingriver. Mystrade. Explicit. 51,553 words. Mycroft gets forced into a family ski vacation. The ski instructor is hot!

Pater Noster series by manic_intent. Mystrade. Explicit. 26,551 words. Good Omens AU! Mycroft is a demon and Lestrade is an angel. Things get tangled from there. 

True Minds series by green_violin_bow. Mystrade. Explicit. A Jane Austen Persuasion AU! Need I say more?

The North Wind’s Lord by Mice. Mystrade. Explicit. 7,931 words. An AU where Greg tries to find out why the winter won’t stop. Mycroft is an out-of-sorts sorcerer. 

A Safe Prisoner of His Fate by out_there. Mystrade. Explicit. 33,812 words. Young Mycroft is the captive of a dashing pirate. Yes please!

Bonfire Heart by JessieBlackwood. Mystrade. Mature. 44,075 words. Greg is a surgeon, and Mycroft is a pain in the arse. Excellent story!

Magical Realism or Sci-Fi in Canon

The Tenth Muse by Vulpesmellifera. Mystrade. Explicit. 25,365 words. Post-Reichenbach, magical realism, diverges from canon, and includes a side of Johnlock. Mycroft doesn’t deduce like Sherlock - he sees things. Creepy things. 

Time Slips by mezzo_cammin. Mystrade. Explicit. Mycroft will do anything to save Greg’s life, even if it means making deals, and messing around with the space-time continuum.

Xmas Tales

A Christmas Carol by Mottlemoth. Mystrade. General. The funny part of this was that I was working out a Christmas Carol Johnlock version with my BFF, and I discovered this story and was all like “BFF! There’s a Sherlock fanfic of A Christmas Carol, but it’s a Mystrade.” And then I liked it so much I decided to abandon my version. Which is okay, because I moved on to fics for which I have a greater urgency to write later on.  

Thawing the Ice Man by sanguisuga. Mystrade. Explicit. 5,681 words. Mycroft and Greg get stuck at Baker Street one night and have to share a bed. It’s Christmas!

So Full of Light by mydwynter. Mystrade. Explicit. 21,450 words. One of my favorite Xmas fics. Mycroft and Greg grow beards for a cause. And beards are hot. 

For Services Rendered by Mottlemoth. Mystrade. Explicit. 10,582 words. Greg runs into someone at A&E on Christmas Eve. 

The Christmas Spirit by ByrnTWedge. Mystrade. Explicit. 59,916 words. Inspired by It’s A Wonderful Life! Mycroft decides people would be better off without him, but interference by a miscalculating angel leads him to someone who wouldn’t be better off without Mycroft.

Tinder: A Christmas Tale by green_violin_bow. Mature. 8,860 words. This is excellent - Mycroft and Greg ‘accidentally’ match up on Tinder. 

To Capture Light by Vulpesmellifera. Teen. 4,891 words. Post season 4, Mycroft has isolated himself in a Canadian chalet to deal with the personal consequences of Sherrinford. An unexpected visitor pops up on his doorstep. 

Fideles by Anarfea. Mature. 4,744 words. I really liked this one. Greg’s wife is cheating, and Greg goes out for a walk. He meets up with Mycroft, and they sit for a drink. Maybe more?

Sickfics

Woes of the Pharynx by Vulpesmellifera. Mystrade. Gen. 844 words. An ailing Mycroft gets a little TLC from his detective inspector. Humorous ficlet. Promise it’ll make you smile!

Flu Humbug by Hastalux. Mystrade. Teen. 2,750 words. This could have gone under Xmas Tales, too, but here it is! Mycroft has the flu, and Greg gets creative in his care.

PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF A LINK DOESN’T WORK THANK YOU.

[blueandgoldoffice]

any good soulmate fics? i’ve read a few but i love them x

Soulmates are my JAM, friend. There are lots and lots and lots of good ones. Make sure you read and review. Happy Reading! Thanks! ❤ Jandy

This is a gigantic list - so it’s going under a Keep Reading Tag. Enjoy!

@bughead4days​ has written several: Black and White -  Tattoo  - Bruises - I Feel You -  Mind Reader - Necklace - Half Tattoo - TiMer

Your Eyes Look Like Coming Home (series) by @lana-luthor​ (2 fics - T)

Summary: People spend their whole lives waiting until the day they can see the world in color; the day they finally meet their soulmate. Sometimes it takes years, decades, nearly lifetimes until you meet that one special person. Unless, of course, you’re Betty Cooper and Jughead Jones who have both seen the world in color since they met each other when they were two years old. Everyone always says that they’re so lucky to have met when they were so young, that they have their whole lives to be together and in love. There’s just one teeny tiny problem. Betty and Jughead hate each other.

I’m half doomed (you’re semi-sweet) (series) by @juggydunes​​ (2 fics - T)

Summary: “Every person has two dates on their wrist. One is when they die and the other is when they find their soulmate. What happens if both dates are the same?”

What Does Shakespeare Know by @typing123​ (3 fics - T)

 Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Summary: AU where you can hear the songs your soulmate listens to.

Call Me A Safe Bet  by @anactualcaseofthetruth​ (14/? - M)

Summary: “Even though scientists are still quite baffled after multiple millennia of medical and technological advances of exactly how the soulmarks work, there has been enough research and study that we now know when and how to expect them… There has yet to be one soulmate coupling occur before the female has experienced a menstrual cycle and the male to begin producing sperm. In short, soulmarks have never appeared before entering puberty…There are many, many more cases in which two people have insisted they are soulmates only to not mark with one another. All in all, only about 3% of couplings are correct in predicting they are soulmates before marks form.”

  ***Betty Cooper is four years old when she meets Jughead Jones. She knows he is her soulmate, he’s not so sure.***

if i told you who i am (can i call you baby?) by @thetaoofbetty​ (10/10 - M)

Summary: Gasping, Jughead Jones sits up in his bed, blindly reaching for his phone, trying to silence the blaring alarm that had jolted him out of his dream. Frustrated and running a hand through his hair, he turns off his alarm, flopping back on his bed with his arms behind his head as he stares at the ceiling and exhaling slowly. He knew the possibility of the dreams would start after he turned eighteen but he’d never thought they’d be starting on the morning of his birthday. Great, he thinks, gritting his teeth, I already hate my birthday and now I’m getting prophetic dreams about my soulmate, a girl I’ve never met and may never find. Or, in other words, Jughead knows he’s got a soulmate and he’s going to do whatever it takes to find her and win her heart.

Meet Me In the Sky by @curlsandcrown (2/? M)

Summary: Betty and Jughead meet on a flight as seat partners heading to a convention but it turns out they’ll have a life changing discovery instead of just a trip to Australia.

Crowns and Ponytails by @alexintheskyy (2/2 - G)

Summary: Soulmate: your other half, the one who inspires you to be the best version of yourself and embraces all of your flaws just the same. The one person you can’t live without that you will carry with you forever. But how does one know who their soulmate is and how can you know for sure? Luckily, there are soulmarks. Little ever-evolving hints appearing on one’s body at random times, disappearing and being replaced by new every once in a while. If you follow your hints correctly and fall in love with the right person, your soulmate’s name will appear on your body and remain there permanently. Betty Cooper was determined to follow each of her soulmark hints down the correct roads and that, one day, those roads would lead to the boy next door. Jughead Jones, the boy from the wrong side of the tracks, definitely thinks that fate has made a mistake in pairing him with the perfect girl next door.

What a Catch by @bugggghead (2/2 - NR)

Summary: Veronica pushes Betty to put herself out there, so when a cute stranger spills coffee on her, she agrees to a date. Little did she know, that fateful decision would change the course of her life.

Black Light by @darknessaroundus (1/1 - G)

Summary: William H. Baylor invented the black light in 1932. At the time he wasn’t sure what purpose it would serve. He speculated that it might help authenticate paintings, but beyond that he wasn’t sure.

It Doesn't have to be a Scary Situation by @typing123 (1/1 - T)

Summary: In a world where the first thought your soulmate thinks about you is written on your skin on your fifteenth birthday...Betty Cooper freaks out.

Colors of the Heart by This_is_my_canoe (1/1 - G)  

Summary: “I love you, Betty Cooper.” The words are whispered like a prayer, and Betty feels them warm her skin. She thinks back on all the times he was there for her, even when she pushed him away, even when she was in love with Archie. So, she replies. “I think I love you too.” And that’s enough, at least for now.  or “Colors represent the people that mean the most to you. Betty recollects on how she found hers, and how she eventually admits to loving Jughead.”

*Note - this one is just a giant block of text - but it’s really great. Give it a try. It’s really great.

Skin to Skin by @burgerheadjones (12/? - T)

Summary: Jughead Jones doesn’t know how the crimson crescents ended up on his palms.Betty Cooper is clueless when it comes to the messages on her arms. Soulmate AU where all the little marks and injuries belonging to Betty and Jughead start finding themselves on each other’s skin.

The Girl From the Journal by @juggieheadcoopers (6/?)

Summary:Jughead Jones has been writing about a girl he has never met before, but when he leaves his journal at his favorite coffee shop one day, an unsuspecting young woman finds it without knowing that the stranger who wrote it was actually writing about her

I Found You (chapter 3) by  Jodygoroar (1/1)

Her by BabyAce is a great story that plays on the part of the trope that has a phrase your soulmate says to you tattooed on your body. It’s really great. More like a Jughead stream of consciousness.

The Exception Not the Rule by pressdbtwnpages (1/1 - G)

Summary: Betty Cooper doesn't believe in soulmates.

Crescent Palmed Girl by @tory-b (1/1 - M)

Summary:Betty Cooper is a nurse at a Psychiatric Hospital. Jughead Jones is one of her patients. He disappears without a word and she ends up with the journal he's been writing to his soulmate.

eyes wide open by @aswellingstorm (1/1 - T)

Summary: “when you can’t sleep, your soul mate can’t either. so the next time you’re laying awake, know that somewhere, someone else is laying awake too.” an au where once you turn 17, you can’t get a wink of sleep unless you’re with your soulmate. the system is pretty flawed, so jughead jones is adamant that there’s no way on earth he’s lucky enough to have betty cooper as his soulmate.

simmer down and pucker up by @santiagone (2/2 - T)

Summary: “Betty,” Jughead interrupts. His voice is lower now, and the resignation might even be scarier than the yelling. “We’re not soulmates. We can't.” And therein lies the crux of the problem.

Just Like Broken Glass by @aswellingstorm (3/3 - M)

Summary: Soulmate AU (inspired by silentpeaches): Where you have the name of your soulmate can appear on your body randomly, at any point in your life. Jughead Jones swears he doesn’t have a soulmate and Betty Cooper for the life of her, cannot think of a single person in her life named “Forsythe”.

Written on My Arm by @typing123 (1/1 - G)

Summary: The first words his soulmate are ever going to say have been scrawled on his arm since the moment he was born. He's had practically his entire life to prepare. And he's still blown out of the water.

save that heart for me by @elizabethbettscooper  (1/1 - G)

Summary: But Betty’s mark is small, black and white on her wrist, just over the thin skin where her pulse thrums. It looks like an old, circular typewriter key, and the letter in the middle is a lowercase ‘j’. She isn’t actually sure how she feels about soulmates, but she’s pretty fond of the mark. She imagines it probably belongs to someone bookish, someone who will understand her. Actually, she knows exactly who she thinks it belongs to, but it doesn’t matter.

You're Ingrained In My Skin by @curlsandcrown (1/1 - T)

Summary: In the middle of a major war, Betty meets a pilot who will change her life forever.

Behind The Mask by @futureheartswithbooks (34/40 - M)

Summary:  Starting Sixth Year was meant to be the same as starting any other year a part from the apprehensive of discovering your soul mate, but with the disappearance of Jason Blossom looming overhead, this year would not be like any other. Yet, for Betty Cooper, she also had the complication of sifting through the lies of Archie Andrews and attempting to work out just what was going on between her and Jughead Jones, the Serpent Prince.

Snakes and Crowns by @cooperandjonesinc (13/13 - E)

Summary: Betty Cooper just can't seem to fit in at Southside High. It's run down, everyone seems to hate her just on principle, and the people who are running the Red and Black don't want her help at all. To make matters worse her recently divorced mother is trying to find her 'soulmate' by going to conventions and touching as many hands as possible. Betty doesn't even believe in soulmates anyway. Just because some people's nervous systems happen to sync up when they touch for the first time doesn't mean they're soulmates destined to fall in love. Right?

When the Moon hits your Eye by @typing123 (1/1 - G)

Summary: Betty and Jughead find out they're soulmates when they're five years old.

[emilx311]

Senju Tobirama has two names, one known only to a handful of people. Turns out, this can make finding your soulmate a bit difficult. 

Written for MadaTobi week prompt Soulmates. Tobirama's second name here is Tetsuo which means (according to the list I found) wise hero or wise man. To make it easy to read I tried to stick to Tobirama for the most part, but anytime Tetsuo is used it is referring to Tobirama. 

If you enjoy my fics please help support my writing! 

There was something very few people knew about Senju Tobirama. Well, really there were many things about the younger Senju brother that were not widely known, but the most important one was his name. Not his everyday name, that one had spread well beyond the boarders of fire country attached to tales of his battle prowess, his invented jutsus, his various feats, and monikers such as ‘the white ghost’. No, it was his true name that remained a secret.

Many had forgotten, but the previous lady of the Senju, Butsuma’s soulmate, was a Hatake and the Hatake could be a superstitious people. They believed that names had power and so every child of the clan was given two names. The first was their secret name, their true name. This name was a secret, given only to those closest to the person. The second was their everyday name, the name the general public would know them as. Though she had left her clan to help her husband and soulmate lead his, the lady Senju held on to some of her traditions. When each of her sons were born, she carefully selected two names for them. In their public names she followed the traditions of the Senju. In their private ones she followed her heart. When they were alone with her, she would use only these private names, would remind her children of the power they contained and why they should take such care with them.

Hashirama had always been a true son of the Senju. Though he respected their mother and her traditions he did not believe in them. He remembered and guarded the name she had given him as a gift but saw Hashirama as his name. After she passed, only his brothers would use his other name and soon even they began to stop. Soon it was all but forgotten, used only as an occasional loving nickname.

Tobirama was his brother’s opposite in many ways and this was among them. He had taken after his mother the most, both in looks and temperament. He listened with awe to her stories and committed them and her beliefs to memory. He’d never seen “Tobirama” as anything more than a cover, a shield created to protect his true self. Tetsuo was the name he regarded as his for it was the name his mother had given to him out of love.

Tobirama was a duty. Tobirama was having to be the spare heir. Tobirama was having to be his father’s soldier. Tobirama was having to fight and kill. Tobirama was stomping his emotions down so they would not get in the way of what had to be done. Tobirama was the aches of wounds and bruises and hours spent training and pushing himself to be better.

Tetsuo was none of those. Tetsuo was the joy of reading, of experimenting, of learning and creating. Tetsuo were the secret soft smiles he saved for his brothers, Touka, and later Mito. Tetsuo was wiping away his brother’s tears and whispered words of apology and forgiveness in the night. Tetsuo was drawing up drafts of treaties he wasn’t sure would ever be signed and plans for a village he doubted would ever exist. Tetsuo was promises to do all he could to help make Hashirama’s dreams a reality. Tetsuo was being able to let his guard down. Tetsuo was playing with and teaching the clan children. Tetsuo was carefully bandaged wounds, and kind words, and warm eyes.

Tobirama was the face he presented to the world, but Tetsuo was his heart. However, Tobirama had not only embraced the name his mother had given him, he had also embraced her warnings. Tetsuo was vulnerable in a way Tobirama was not, not only to spirits but to other humans, and so he kept Tetsuo tucked away. Only when he was alone, or with the small handful of people he trusted completely, would he allow Tetsuo to emerge.

His soulmark did not help in this regard. He’d kept it hidden since it had appeared, a task thankfully made easier by the fact it was on his upper thigh. It wasn’t that he feared he would never meet his mate, nor was it because he was ashamed of having a male’s name. He also did not suffer from the common fear in shinobi that their match would die before they could meet. He did not agonize over the possibility it could be a civilian. No, in these ways he’d been luckier than most. He’d known who his mate was since the moment he’d first seen the elegant writing sitting starkly against his pale skin. Madara was, after all, a rather unusual name.

No, Tobirama hid his mark precisely because he knew who it was for. He didn’t want his father to know he was matched with an enemy. Didn’t want to hurt Hashirama even more by revealing his soulmate was the boy Tobirama had been forced to part him from. He didn’t want to give Touka anything more to worry about-especially not something that could distract her during a battle. He assumed Madara was doing the same since the other never said anything. He continued to fight Hashirama and only ever glanced at Tobirama when checking on his younger brother. So, though deep inside Tobirama Tetsuo mourned for the chances lost, he forced himself to push past it and put such things out of his mind.

And then everything changed. Tobirama, who was always, always, Tetsuo deep in his heart, found himself with the perfect opening to kill Izuna. And yet, as he lined up his strike, all he could think about were whispered promises to his brother in the dark, were the documents and plans he had drawn up in case of the impossible. His brother’s stories about Madara echoed through his mind and the mark on his thigh seemed to burn with possibilities he’d never been able to let go of fully. And so, instead of following through, Tobirama moved his sword so it ended up clashing off Izuna’s. His rival stumbled back, well aware of just how close to death he had come.

The rest of the battlefield had gone silent. All eyes were on them, including their brothers’. They had all seen where Tobirama was aiming, had all seen the inevitable end, and they had all seen Tobirama change his strike at the last possible moment. After a few seconds that seemed to stretch on for eternity, the silence was finally broken by Madara screaming his brother’s name as he rushed over. He was shaking as he checked Izuna over, and the relief on his face when he found no serious wounds made Tobirama’s heart clench. His shocked, thankful gaze met Tobirama’s for a second before Hashirama sensed his opportunity and rushed over to ask Madara for peace once again. And this time, this time with his little brother alive in his arms only thanks to a Senju’s mercy, Madara said yes.

Things moved quickly after that. The treaties Tobirama had so carefully written and rewritten were brought out and signed. And, when Hashirama managed to talk Madara around to creating the village they’d dreamed about as children, he was prepared and dumped all the plans and schematics he’d painstakingly researched and created in front of them. Hashirama had blubbered about how he was the best brother ever, and even Madara had seemed impressed. Construction on the actual village started soon after, and in what seemed like the blink of an eye, Konoha had started to look like a proper town. Hashirama had never been so happy, not even the day he’d met Mito, and Tobirama shared hi brother’s joy. It truly was an amazing achievement���and yet he couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed. Even as their clans had settled together into peace and they learned to work together, Madara never approached him to talk about their bond. He tried to put it out of their mind and focus on his work (and there was always so much work that needed to be done) and he was, for the most part, successful at doing so.

Madara could barely believe that this was real some days, felt like he’d been living in a dream since that fateful battle. His heart had all but stopped in his chest when he’d seen Tobirama line up his strike, but then the Senju had changed course. Instead of being dealt a fatal wound Izuna had walked away with nothing more than a bruise. And then they had actually managed to create peace between their clans. He and Hashirama had been able to make all their childish dreams into a reality better than anything they’d ever imagined. Konoha was beautiful, everything he’d ever wanted and so much more. And, this too, he had Tobirama to thank for. Madara was slightly ashamed to admit that he’d never believed Hashirama when the other had told him, had sworn, that Tobirama also wanted peace. The younger seemed so cold, so quick to fight, so willing to kill that he’d been unable to trust the other could ever truly want peace. He saw now how wrong he had been.

It had been Tobirama who had written the original drafts of the treaties they had signed. Treaties that were truly fair and equal, that left neither clan weaker than the other. It was Tobirama who had done the practical research they’d needed. Tobirama who had drawn up blueprints and plans they were able to construct off of, plans that had clearly taken years of work to create and refine. He thought of Tobirama slaving over books since they had all been children in order to give his elder brother a real chance to see his dreams though and was forced to admit that he’d been wrong. Tobirama did want peace, Tobirama did support their dream and was willing to work harder than anyone to see it through. And, after realizing all this, Madara began to wonder what else he was wrong about when it came to the other man.

The answer that that, as it turned out, was just about everything. As the village grew, Madara had gotten into the habit of watching Tobirama. At first, it was simply because of curiosity. He had wanted to see what the other man was actually like. He was surprised to find himself more and more entranced the more he saw. He was less surprised to realize how wrong most of his impressions of the man were. Tobirama could be cold yes, but more often than not it was not malicious. He was a busy man and he preferred to get straight to the heart of things. But he was always warm to those he cared about. He always had a smile for the Senju children that flocked to him, and later, for the children outside the Senju that began to join them. He was beyond patient with them. Madara had seen him teaching a group of them some basic Katas once while visiting the Senju compound, carefully explaining and kindly correcting them. He was also always willing to answer questions, no matter who they were from.

Tobirama was fierce, but Madara saw more and more that this did not mean he craved fights. He would not allow others to walk all over him, he stood his ground when challenged, but he never started confrontations himself. Well, that was not quite true. If he got wind of someone bullying another, especially if the victim was one of those he considered his, he would seek out and ‘correct’ the behaviour. But, without his old prejudices blinding him, Madara was able to see that this did not make him quick to fight, but rather, quick to protect. And that, well, that was something Madara could respect.

The more Madara watched, the more he could understand the traits he’d once been reviled by. This included the other’s tendency to go straight for the kill in battle whenever he could. Tobirama like to nip things, especially problems, in the bud and make sure they would not be repeated. Going for the kill meant he took out a threat permanently. It meant that the enemy would not be able to hurt him or his, meant that someone else would not have to deal with it later on, meant that he did not need to fear an attack by an enemy he’d thought down. It was not that he was a monster trying sate his bloodlust, it was that he was taking the quickest and most efficient root to protect his side and end the battle.

The longer Madara watched and the more he saw the more he understood, and the more he understood the more he found himself unable to look away. Before he knew it, months had passed and Madara realized he had fallen in love with Senju Tobirama. For anyone else this would not have been a problem, but Madara was an Uchiha. A clan of fire users, they burned with all the passion of their jutsu. And they believed very strongly that their largest passion should be reserved for their soulmates. It was unheard of for an Uchiha to look elsewhere while their match still lived, and Madara knew his did. The ink over his heart was still as dark as it had been the day it first appeared; Tetsuo spelled out in neat, efficient strokes. And Madara did yearn for him, for this mysterious man that had been made to fit him perfectly in a way no other could, but he was not here! There was no one among any of the clans to join Konoha baring that name and Tobirama was right there!

Tobirama was right in front of him, also still lacking any sign of a match, and Madara could see so clearly all the ways they would fit each other. A year ago he would never have believed it, but he knew now that Tobirama would be able to match him passion for passion. He could, and did, stand his ground unflinchingly even when faced with the worst of Madara’s tempers. Tobirama was intelligent, hardworking, and beyond dedicated to the causes and people he considered his own. He cared for their village and all the people in it just as much as Madara did. He was also strong, able to go toe to toe, and occasionally even beat, Izuna and hold his own against Hashirama or Madara himself. It didn’t help that the Senju was absolutely beautiful. Lean and pale he was like moonlight given form, except for the twin gems he called eyes. So, Madara found himself caught in a sort of limbo where he watched and wanted from afar, almost wishing that his mark would fade so he would be free to approach. The whole thing left him feeling guilty and wrong-footed which was in turn making him even more irritable than normal. This, ironically, ended up being what brought everything to a head.

It was a lovely day and Hashirama had decided that his brother and best friend both needed to relax. To this end he had wheedled, and nagged, and begged, and pouted, until they had both agreed to come with him to the onsen after work. Tobirama, as was his habit, made sure that the towel around his hips was secured in such a way that it covered his soulmark. While he did this every time he visited the onsen it was especially important this trip since the two people he was with were also the last two people he ever wanted to see his mark. Hashirama would cry and try to push them together, and Madara…well, just because Tobirama had forced himself to accept that Madara didn’t want anything to do with him or their bond didn’t mean that he wanted to hear the other man say so.

“Oh hey, Madara, I don’t think I’ve ever seen your soulmark before!” His brother was exclaiming, peering intently at the Uchiha’s chest. Tobirama was quite surprised since he had assumed that Madara would have found some way to cover or hide his mark as Tobirama did. He was also confused; this was not how his brother would react to seeing his name on the other. He’d been so certain, the Uchiha’s handwriting even looked the same, but maybe, maybe he’d been wrong? Maybe there was another Madara out there, or, maybe he had a broken bond. Maybe he was matched to Madara, but Madara wasn’t matched to him. “Have you found them yet?” Asked his oblivious brother.

“Obviously not!” Madara snapped. “I’ve asked around, but apparently there is no one named Tetsuo anywhere in Konoha”. Tobirama stumbled and almost fell as he walked towards them, much to their obvious surprise. He didn’t really care though, not when he was able to catch sight of Madara’s chest himself. It was there, written as if by his own hand in black ink above the other’s heart. It was there and it explained everything.

“Tetsuo” he whispered, almost reverently. He then followed that up by facepalming and saying, “I am such an idiot!” He’d assumed that because Tobirama was the name used most often it would be the name on his mate’s mark. That had become especially true after Hashirama met Mito and she’d had his common name on her. In hindsight it seemed obvious, of course the mark would read Tetsuo! The marks were linked to their souls, to their purest essence and, at the core, he’d always seen himself as Tetsuo, not Tobirama. Mito’s mark had read Hashirama because that was the name his brother saw as his, not because it was the one more commonly used. And of course Madara had never approached him, he had no idea that he had a name other than Tobirama, let alone that it matched his mark and that they were soulmates!

“Tobi-Tetsu-oh, OH!” Hashirama exclaimed, looking between the two of them in shock. He hadn’t even thought, but yes, now that he looked again that was definitely his brother’s handwriting and Tobi had always been so careful to hide his mark, even from Hashirama! He hadn’t realized at first because, like his brother, he’d expected the name written on his match to be Tobirama. “Oh, I’m so happy!” He cried, tears dripping down his cheeks.

“What?” Madara asked, glancing between the two Senju. “What are you talking about? Have you both gone crazy?!” He ignored the thought in the back of his mind, the idea that they were reacting like this because they knew who his soulmate was. He also ignored the hope, worry, dread, sorrow, and longing churning inside him. That, at least, seemed to bring them back into reality. The brothers exchanged a look.

“I’m just going to um…go somewhere that is not here” Hashirama finally said, all but fleeing. Madara was getting even more confused and now he had only one possible source of explanation.

“What the hell Senju?” He demanded, placing his hands on his hips and giving Tobirama a look which clearly conveyed, ‘explain now’. Unusually for him the Senju seemed to fidget under Madara’s glare. He looked hesitant for a moment before seeming to reach some sort of decision.

“I’ll explain, just-not here” he said. Madara finally remembers that they were in the changing room of a public onsen clad only in towels and had to agree that was fair. The two quickly changed back into their clothes and then Tobirama grabbed his hand and they disappeared. They reappeared in the living room of a house Madara had never seen before.

“My home” Tobirama answered his unspoken question. “Please sit, I did promise you an explanation”. Madara follows the suggestion while Tobirama stays where he is, leaning on the wall facing Madara and still fidgeting. The silence stretches on before Madara makes a pointed ‘well, get on with it’ gesture. Tobirama takes a deep breath and does.

“As you likely guessed by our reactions, Hashirama and I know who your soulmate is” the younger Senju starts off with, and Madara swallows. “I will tell you who it is, but there are some things I have to explain to you first.” Madara is surprised, but nods, willing to listen. Perhaps his soulmate has health issues, or is on a long-term undercover mission?

“The Hatake, like every other clan, has certain traditions and beliefs not well known outside the clan. One of these is that they give every child two names. They believe that true names hold power, so all children on their blood are given an outside name they can use instead of their true name” Tobirama explains. Madara is confused, while interesting this history lesson on the Hatake does not seem particularly relevant. “What many forget us that our mother, Hashirama’s and mine, was originally a Hatake. She gave up much from her clan when she wed father, but she did not loose the beliefs she had been brought up with. So, when she had her children, she gave us each two names.” Here the Senju pauses and seems to brace himself before starting directly into Madara’s eyes.

“Tobirama is not my name, not really. It is my outside name, the name I was given to shield my true name so it could not be used against me. My true name, the mane my mother gave me out of love, is Tetsuo, and I am your soulmate” he confessed.

Madara felt as if he couldn’t breathe. He was frozen to his spot, unable to react and unsure how he would even if he could. Emotions flew through him, there and gone only to be replaced a moment later. Shock, he’d found his soulmate? Anger, his soulmate had been in front of him, had known all this time, and had done nothing?! Relief, he’d found his soulmate! Confusion, his soulmate was the man he loved? Awe and wonder, Tobirama was Tetsuo, was his soulmate. The man he loved and his soul’s match were one and the same!

“Madara?” Tobirama’s concerned voice finally roused him back to reality. He blinked his eyes a few times and was surprised to feel a few tears escape. Tobirama (his soulmate!) was crouched in front of him, face twisted in worry with an arm reaching out for him, but now quite touching. “Madara?” He asked again.

“I’m okay” Madara assured him, “just surprised. But-” here he hesitated, but he needed to know. “But if you knew we were soulmates-you do have my name, don’t you?-why didn’t you say anything before now?” His heart pounded in his chest and he held his breath, waiting for the answer. Tobi-Tetsuo looked embarrassed.

“I, well, to be blunt, I thought you weren’t interested” he explained. Madara blinked, rather taken aback, and Tetsuo rushed to elaborate. “I do have your name, always have. During the war I assumed you would never be able to want a Senju and then when peace came and you never said anything, I figured it meant you weren’t interested in me, so I tried to respect that and stay away. I never even thought that the mark might read Tetsuo, never imagined you might not know.” By the end he was blushing adorably and Madara’s heart was swelling with happiness and hope.

“You want this? Want me?” He has to ask, has to be sure.

“More than anything” Tetsuo whispered, voice thick with emotion, and Madara can’t resist anymore. He grabs the man he’d been loving from afar for months and drags him into a kiss. Tetsuo responds enthusiastically, and doesn’t protest even as Madara drags him closer and closer until he’s sitting on the Uchiha’s lap.

“Mine” Madara whispers reverently once he’s finally pulled away from the other enough to speak. “My soulmate”. Tetsuo beams at him.

“Always” he swears and, for the first time, Madara feels complete.

[fangirlfanwritings]

Jasper Hale Request

Can I request a Jasper Hale imagine. Reader was one of the New borns he let escape Maria. He never thought he’d hear or see her again. Until she shows up at the Cullen’s frantic, because she stumbled onto the plot against Bella in Eclipse. She can show her thoughts and read others by touching them. When she shows up she refuses to speak to anyone but Jasper, she grips on to him showing him everything. He always loved her and couldn’t get over seeing her again. Thanks :)

Can you do a Jasper imagine in which you are the love of his human life( and then he goes to war and becomes a vampire) and reader is also turned into a vampire and they both meet together 200 years later in Forks only to realize that they are soulmates please?

AN: I mixed these two together so details aren’t exact to either story!

“Are you sure you have to go?” You held onto him and griped his coat fiercely. “We could pack our bags and run North.”

“My fate and yours will be much worse if I am caught fleeing my duty to the South.” He pulled back and looked down at you. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Don’t go lying to me, Jasper Whitlock.”

“I am not. I’ll write you every chance that I get; it’ll be like I never left.” With a final embrace and kiss you watched him walk away with his bag over his shoulder as you looked at the simple and small engagement ring that sat on your finger.

The letters came to you, a few each month. Then one every month. Your heart pounded as you waited for the next letter to arrive.

Now that Jasper was training the vampires for Maria’s army he kept his writings to you a secret. He knew if she found him writing to you she’d stop at nothing to get you out of his head and out of his heart.

The night came where Maria commanded he kill a large group of her soldiers. One of them, who he knew was too good to kill, he spared. “Run. Run as fast as you can and as far as you can. And take this.” He pulled a letter from his coat and put it in the vampire’s, John’s, hand. “Find Y/N. Watch over her for me. Go!”

******

Hundreds of years had passed but here you were, looking the same as you had in 1863. A young man had come to you with a letter, the last one you got from your fiance. You offered him a place to stay with your family until he could find his own in town. The week after he moved from your house you sat alone in front of the fireplace with a book. Two men rushed your home, looking to rob from your family and take your life. John stormed in, just after the man’s blade pierced your stomach. You saw darkness rushing towards you as your life seeped out until it was replaced with a burning pain that stemmed from your forearm.

He had left you a year after you turned and you set off on your own, which is how you’ve been since 1864. You searched for Jasper all around Texas and tried to follow whispers you heard but it got you nowhere. Last you heard the woman he had worked for, Maria, and her army had been killed. You had spent every year since sulking and looking for somewhere or someone that would fill the hole in your heart that he left.

You were drifting through Portland when you heard about a local place vampires went to at night. With nothing to lose you made your way there. You ignored the loud music and walked through, looking around at the people around the dark alleyway. As you walked your hand ran into the bare arm of a vampire in front of you and glimpses of a red haired woman flashed before you. You saw the man before your and this red headed woman turning people around the city and showing them their targets. The faces of the people they were going after flashed before you. A brunette and her mate were at the top of their list. The family of the vampire flashed before his memories and at the end you saw the familiar face of your Jasper.

The small town of their residence popped into your head through his brain and you turned on a dime and set your course to Forks, Washington.

You ran up to the house and were met at the top of the driveway by 5 vampires. “I am Carlisle. What can we help you with,” the older blond said.

“I need to speak to Jasper. He is part of your coven, is he not?” They looked around at each other before the man spoke again.

“He is, but he’s not here at the moment.”

“Then I will wait for him.”

“We are his family,” the woman next to Carlisle said. “You can tell us if it’s important.”

“I will only speak to Jasper.” Not one minute had passed before you heard the roaring engine coming up the driveway. As the car parked you watched as the man you had known and loved over 200 years ago stepped out and looked at you.

“Y/N?”

“Jasper.” Your heart sped up and you felt as though you had seen him just the other day. He was in front of you in a second and pulled you in for a hug. His body felt familiar against yours and you placed your hand onto his bare arm, letting the memories of your life flow into his mind. You saw his life as you showed him yours and you felt the connection you two had come back to life with a fiery glow.

[littlewriterling]

i uhhh kinda maybe went through all your wip stuff just now and if you're okay with posting it, i'd love to hear about the mythology around soulmates and the stars!!!

Uhhh, yes please! 

I didn’t actually have any of this written out, it was just sort of … floating around in my head, so forgive me that this is kinda long and rambling, and took a long time to get all written out (I really hope it makes sense ^^*)

So. I really love the stars. I wanted to write a story where stars take an important part in the whole going-ons. I also love mythology and soulmate au fics. So it’s basically a mess of putting this all together and hope for the best. It’s not at all fleshed out, with probably a lot of plot holes, but ehh. I’m a plantser, so I got time to figure it out as I go along.

But the basics is this: 

It’s not a very old world. The gods haven���t been for all that long (only like, two to three thousand years), so they’ve got a lot to learn still. 

Magic is kind of the essence of all life (except that of humans… but I’ll get to that), and it has existed long before the gods ever came into being. 

There are ten main gods (think Olympians), and a lot of others, smaller ones. Two of those are the Fates, a pair of twins that have a very strong bond, they’re the gods of good and bad luck respectively, rebirth and old age. 

All that is great and stuff, but now there are these gods and goddesses, and as time goes by, they get kinda bored. 

So they start making the most ridiculous challenges, such as who creates the best living beings out of whatever they have at hand at the time, and like this a lot of creatures “get made” and come into existence. 

Humans are a special case, because they’re the only ones who somewhat look like the gods themselves (there was injured pride at play here, narcissism, and other petty things that we know from the Greek Mythology) — and because humans do exist now, the gods can’t just have them walk around on earth being all brain- and soulless. (Not that animals and the other creatures are soulless, mind, but humans are just kinda peculiar, right?)

They refuse to “infuse” humans with magic as such (as many of their other creations are), because they already look like gods, they don’t need their abilities, too. So instead they give them souls. 

Only they mess up a little in the process (how exactly that works I still gotta figure out, lol), and it’s not quite … complete. 

So that’s where the Fates come into play. They’re not all-knowing, but given their knowledge of luck and the life-death cycle, they’re the ones who can make the best estimate at who belongs together. And to make it easier for the humans to find each other (because the gods quickly realised that these “incomplete” humans quickly become a complete mess), they put the soul marks (which I still need a better name for) on their bodies, and, additionally, in the night sky. 

So when the Fates decide on who belongs together they kinda weave these soul marks (and stars) into existence. This can either happen on the day you are born, decades before even your grand parents are born, or maybe just when you grow older and go through a certain life changing event that makes you a “perfect fit” for someone else. And still, not everybody has a soul mate (or Kindred, as I like to say), and not every soul mated pair is going to have a love story — just because you’re gonna play the most important part in someone’s life doesn’t mean that can’t be in the role of their greatest enemy (yeah, even the Fates got bored of this whole shebang after a while; they need some entertainment. Also, sometimes they just make plain mistakes). 

So idk. There’s also this whole concept of how each Kindred pair has some kind of guardian god to watch over them, but that’s not really fleshed out yet; I just know who I want to be my MCs’ guardians, no idea about the how or why of it.

Uhhh, was there something else? 

Ah yes, there’s also the fact that the night sky basically changes every night, except for the brightest stars, which kinda symbolise the main gods and magic in general, and for the “milky way” equivalent, which consists of all the soul mated pairs that are no longer — you don’t just disappear when you die, you just “relocate” (to the Underworld), and therefore your stars kinda do the same. There are a few exceptions to the rule, of course, like, most of the time the Fates actually pay attention and will notice the kind of person you are and how you deserve to be “treated” by them, and well… bye bye.

There are also quite a few funny rules and restrictions in place about soul mates, what they are and can do to each other, and about magic in general, but going into those would definitely go over the limits of this post. Which already is ridiculously long, holy hell. 

Hopefully informative, though. Did this cover what you wanted to know? If not, feel free to hit me up again! I’m always willing to babble on about this :D

(Disclaimer: this is a very good example of me just making stuff up as I go along. When I read this ask I literally just realised that I put the whole soulmate thing in there because I wanted to read something like that, and I never actually thought too much about the why or how of it. So I had to figure some things out and this clusterfuck just happened.)

(Other disclaimer: tag list under the cut, and also a thing about what I imagine for the soul marks that might be interesting, copied word by word from my own brainstorming notes.)

Taglist: @iveldi 

( always feel free comment or message me if you want to be added / removed

The soul marks, you find them on the unlikeliest of places on your body. Like tiny spots on/under your finger- and toenails, or maybe some freckles on your cheek, the spots in your eyes. Maybe there’s a stretch mark, or a scar, where a shooting star passed by. It all has the possibility to be a soul mark and generally it’s said that the more ‘same constellations’ you find, the stronger your bond will be, which can be true for both lovers and enemies. Some marks fade over time, some reappear somewhere else, some accumulate in so many places you can’t even count them. It depends, really, and there are a lot of stories about what means what. 

[imaginethatawriter]

WIP I have stored away

I feel like this is something interesting for people to see. I have a lot of ideas and most of the time they just sit in my folders waiting for me to get back to them if I ever do. This is also a reminder to everyone who’s thinking of starting writing that you should always write your ideas down no matter what they are. Even if you never end up writing them at least you have them. 

Have fun reading through these things. Some of them belong on other blogs. Some of them were never meant to see the light of day. But here they are. 

Unnamed Stephen Strange x Reader 

This is an enormous piece of writing that started out as an imagine for my best friends birthday. But looking back at it a couple months ago I saw how open ended it was and I decided I wanted to continue it and make it into something longer. 

Rough Summary: You move to New York in order to pursue your acting career on Broadway but you end up running in to an old school mate Stephen Strange. Except he is a very different man from the young boy you knew in school. You find yourself drawn to the man despite his attempts to distance himself from you. After digging further into the reason for your connection you’re told that Stephen Strange may be your “soulmate” or whatever the cosmic equivalent of that is. Yeah right. You’re just trying to act on the big stages, not get caught up in life and death situations. 

8662 words 

Nearly Fully outlined

Unnamed Jim Kirk x Reader

This is one of those ideas that just kinda came to me. I watched Star Trek: Beyond and fell in love with Kirk again so my mind quickly came up with a nice little self-insert story where I could be the hero and get the guy. But it developed further to the point where I felt like I should write it down. I’m actually pretty proud of the idea for this story and I want to eventually go back to writing it. After all James T. Kirk is fine as hell. 

Rough Summary: You’re part of a patrol ship that keeps out of touch colonies safe from harm. It’s a pretty boring job and nearly nothing happens until your fellow patrol ships begin disappearing one by one. And then your ship is next. It’s only by the fate of the stars aligning just right that The Enterprise arrives in time to save you a small number of your crewmates. Unfortunately for you this is only the beginning of the rest of your life. Now including adventure, injury, and a very dashing Starfleet captain. 

686 words

Half outlined

Rebel Barber Cassian Andor x Reader

If you’re not at least a little familiar with this piece then you haven’t been around my blog very long. I started writing this when Rogue One first came out and it’s probably one of my most fully fleshed out story that I’ve ever planned but never actually finished. There are a few parts on my blog already. Once again this is another story I’d love to get back to eventually. 

Rough Summary: Being the medic for the rebel forces is a job that simply never get’s boring. From treating the common blaster wound to giving haircuts no day is quite the same. But when Captain Cassian Andor becomes a regular in your makeshift barber’s chair you find yourself pulled into a plan that you can’t begin to understand.

8991 words

Fully Outlined

Unnamed Peter Parker x Reader

I think I was sitting at work with nothing to do except a couple pieces of empty paper when I wrote the idea for this one. It’s a fun idea, but not really fleshed out. It’d be fun to actually do but it’s not on my priority list. 

Rough Summary: Reader is a high school student who works closely with Pepper Potts as an assistant to get a feel for the business world. When Pepper Potts has Tony Starks child the reader is the only person Pepper trusts as her emergency babysitter. It’s a good thing the reader used to babysit her neighbors kids a lot. Along the way you make fast friends with Peter Parker, Tony Stark’s protege and biggest fan. But Tony Stark’s baby is somewhat of a liability and it shouldn’t be surprising that you find yourself, the baby, and Peter Parker kidnapped and held for ransom. 

No words

No outlines

Only vague ideas

Unnamed IkeSen Story 

If you don’t recognize the name of this one then you definitely are not in the circle that involves this fandom. It’s an otome game that I got into less than a year ago that has a lot of compelling characters and stories. So this was my attempt to write something for the small fandom. I even made a completely separate blog for this story because I was actually going to finish it and I knew the people that follow me here would have no interest in this fandom. And maybe some day I will. But for now it will remain in the work in progress folder. 

617 words

Fully Outlined

Unnamed Frank Castle x Reader

 I don’t really have any background for this. It was a request I started to write a very very long time ago and then I did a purge of all of my requests so i could stop stressing. Which is why this was stopped half finished. And it may very well stay that way. 

Rough Summary: Frank Castle is doing his usual thing taking down drug rings and taking breaks by taking down dog fighting rings. He’s in the middle of breaking apart another crime syndicate when he finds you as a hostage. He rescues you, but you had things under control. Clearly. 

280 words

Unnamed Poe Dameron x Reader

I was supposed to write this in honor of the release of The Last Jedi but I never quite got the motivation to actually come up with anything. This is the most abstract and incomplete a WIP that I have. I tried to brainstorm some ideas so here they are. 

Reader is from a farm planet where everyone kinda just minds there own business until they get the distress signal. Reader joins in and goes with a small group of people to find the new Resistance.

Reader is part of the small remaining resistance, but she is very much in shock and doesn’t believe that she belongs in the group. She’s a regular grunt who can kind of fly a ship but she doesn’t excel in anything. She ends up brushing shoulders with Poe a lot on the Falcon and while rebuilding the resistance. The story would basically follow her and poes budding romance while the resistance takes down the First order

Nil x Reader (Horizon Zero Dawn)

This story is for such a nonexistent fandom and from so long ago I literally had to look up the name of the character it was supposed to be for. This is a story that I started writing a long time ago during a very bad writers block spell for me. It’s purely self indulgent and will never see the light of day. I have over a thousand words of this story written but I never bothered to write down an outline so I no longer remember what it was supposed to be about. But I’m including it to show that even if you don’t ever intend to show it to the world, you can still write it. Write for yourself because it’s fun. Not because you’re going to get a bunch of notes or because it;ll make you popular. Write it because you want to.