#this was pretty fun! you know what I’m actually considering doing this for future readers lmfao

[its-time-to-write]

I saw you asked for requests a few days ago. I was wondering if you would consider doing another part of the Kent!reader x Jamie fics.

I was thinking they do end up pregnant and its them telling everyone they’re pregnant . I can see everyone being so excited for them. And then Roy is just freaking out.

Since they’ve already discussed wanting to be together forever and have kids I can also see them deciding to get married before the baby is born in a small ceremony like Beard had.

I have quite a few requests about Jamie x reader having a kid, so if that ain’t your jam, maybe don’t read my next few posts😂 It’s totally my jam tho, maybe bc I’m suffering from baby fever again. thanks for requesting and for your patience!!

let’s fall in love for the night  

Jamie’s jiggling his leg up and down so fast that you’re surprised he hasn’t cramped yet. 

“Calm down,” you hiss, hand on his knee. 

“Can’t,” he whispers back. “Roy’s gonna fucking kill me.”  

You have no sympathy for him. “Yeah, and whose fault is that? Yours.”

Jamie shoots you a sideways glance. “Excuse me, this was a team effort.”

“Whatever,” you say. “I still say it’s your fault.”

Molly swoops by to refill your water glasses. “Dinner’s ready in a few minutes. Roy and Phoebe have been working very hard,” she says. 

She raises her eyebrows on the word very, and you’re sure that Roy’s patience is being pushed to his limits. He loves cooking and refuses to let anyone help him, but he also loves your niece and can’t deny her anything she wants. 

“Better go check on them,” she says, leaving you and Jamie alone again in the backyard. 

Jamie resumes the previous conversation and says, “Well, I wasn’t the one wearing that blue thing with the flowers.”

“Well obviously,” you shoot back, “it wouldn’t even fit you.”

Jamie’s stopped jiggling his leg and he places his hand on top of yours. “Oi. Has Roy ever actually killed anyone before, or does he just have serial killer eyebrows?”

You wrinkle your nose and ask, “Why the fuck would I know?”

“You’re his sister,” Jamie replies in Phoebe’s patented duh tone. 

“I’m his baby sister,” you say. “I’m even younger than Molly. If he’s killed someone, they’ve both conspired to make sure I’ll never find out. And hey, don’t make fun of the eyebrows. There’s a good chance this baby’s gonna end up with them.”

“Babe you don’t have ‘em,” Jamie points out. 

“I wax,” you say smugly. “Oh, Molly texted. Time to go inside.”

Jamie groans but lets you lead him to the table. 

—

All told, Phoebe didn’t do half bad. 

“Auntie, I did the potatoes all by myself,” she says. 

You look to Roy for confirmation. He grunts and gives a tiny nod. 

“Great job, Phoebs,” you say. 

Molly sets down her fork. “I’ve been thinking of changing my name back to ‘Kent,’” she says. 

“Brill,” says Jamie. 

“Fucking finally,” Roy says as he hands Phoebe some money. “For future words,” he mouths to her as she counts it before depositing what you’re pretty sure is 20 quid into her pocket. 

Molly says, “We’ll all be the Kents again,” and you can feel Jamie go stiff next to you.

“The fuck’s wrong with you?” Roy asks, and you turn to see Jamie’s gone completely pale. 

You pinch his thigh and he jumps. “Nothing,” he says hurriedly. “Well, not nothing. But, I dunno, don’t want to overshadow Molls’s good news, ya know? It ain’t important.”

You pinch him again. 

“Ok, it’s actually a little fucking important (sorry Phoebe, take it from Roy). But um, maybe you could help me babe?”

He shoots you a pleading look so you take pity on him. You’ve had more than twenty years dealing with Roy, so you’ll let Jamie slide this once.

“Right, so, we’ve been meaning to tell you- I’m having a baby,” you blurt out. 

Roy’s dinner roll gets crushed in his hand as his face goes bright red. 

“What,” he growls, and you’re not sure if you’re more terrified by the absence of “fuck”s or the fact that it was a statement, not a question. 

“That’s wonderful, love!” Molly says before Roy can say anything else. She’s not looking at him but you can practically feel him take psychic damage from the shut up and be happy you prick, message she’s sure to be telepathically sending him. 

“It’s Jamie’s, right?” she continues, taking a bite of salad. 

“The fuck kind of question is that?” you ask indignantly. “Who else’s would it be?”

“You don’t have to pay me for that one,” Phoebe pipes up. “I’ll give you a free tab of one hundred words because of the baby. If it’s a girl, you can have fifty more.”

You grin. “Sounds like a plan.”

“You’re probably going to owe her the fifty, Phoebs,” Molly says. She points to Jamie with her fork. “I mean, look at him. He practically screams ‘girl dad.’” 

“That’s- fucking- great,” Roy garbles out. “‘Scuse me.”

“We’re having a backyard wedding next Saturday, too,” you call after him. “So we probably won’t all be the Kents again.”

You wince as he slams a door from somewhere in the house. 

“He’ll come ‘round,” Molly says consolingly. “Remember how he was with Phoebe? And I was already married!”

You grip Jamie’s hand. “Molls, why can’t he just emote like a regular person? I mean honestly, did our parents fuck him up that bad?”

Molly raises a shoulder in a half shrug. “I don’t know, babe. Think he’s just like us, really, afraid of loving something so he just pushes it all away. And besides, you’re the baby of the family. We’ve always tried to protect you and keep you safe, and sometimes he feels like you’re out of reach.”

You ask, “He told you that?” and Molly just laughs. 

“Not in so many words,” she replies. “But you know how he is.”

“He’s an arsehole,” you grumble. “I’m going to go talk to him.

—

Roy is, predictably, in the backyard. Not many places for him to go and think properly. 

You find him sitting under the tree. 

“Oi,” you say, “budge over.”

He grunts and moves so you’re not quite in the dirt. 

“Can you be sitting on the ground?” he asks. 

“It’s been like three months,” you reply, “That isn’t long enough for me to get stuck places.”

Roy says, “hmm,” but doesn’t offer up anything else so you just sit in silence next to him, pressing your shoulder to his. 

“Why the fuck did it have to be Tartt?” he asks after a beat. “Could’ve been fucking anyone in the fucking world, and you fucking chose him.”

“You like Jamie,” you say in confusion. 

“I don’t,” Roy replies, “he’s a prick. And a fucking footballer. Why’d you have to go for a fucking good-for-nothing footballer? He can’t even be around for his family when they go through shit because he’s going to be busy scoring fucking meaningless goals or some shit.”

That stings for a moment, but you take a good look at Roy’s face. It’s stoic, but shit if you can’t read it like a book. Blood is blood, and you’re a Kent just like him. 

“This isn’t about him, is it. It’s about you. You think you did a shit job as a brother and an uncle so Jamie’s going to be a shit father.”

“I missed out on a lot,” Roy says hoarsely. “And before you say fucking shit, I’m not fucking crying. So shut the fuck about it.”

You grin and wrap your arms around him. “You’re the best big brother a girl could ask for. Took all my cues from you. And anyway, you’ve been there when it counts. Phoebe fucking adores you, practically attached at the hip you two. And yeah, Molls and I missed you when you were at Sunderland and Chelsea and wherever. But… you came back. We needed you, and you came back. So don’t go projecting your stupid self-image on Jamie, because he’s not like that. And you’re not either, you absolute fucking ape-armed frizzy-haired shit-faced twat.”

Roy huffs out a chuckle. “Ape-arms. Haven’t heard that one in a while.”

“Almost went with ‘camel knees.’ Haven’t used that since I was ten, but I thought it might hit too close to home these days.”

Roy laughs for real this time and tilts his head so it’s resting on yours. “Still fucking weird that my little sister’s having a kid.”

You say, “You’ll get over it. Oh, and don’t wear a goddamn T-shirt on Saturday.”

—

It’s rainy, so the backyard wedding becomes a living room wedding, because who really gives a shit? Richmond have a game tomorrow, but for today they’re in yours and Jamie’s house all dressed up (but still in trainers) laughing and smiling as Dani officiates what you’re sure is your dream wedding. 

It’s not the one you and Molly would’ve giggled about as kids when you sneaked from your bed into hers, but everyone you loves is here. 

For once, Jamie’s house almost seems too small.  

(Dani was the only person you two knew who was ordained or whatever. And hey, could you have picked a happier person for it?)

Molly and Keeley had gone out with you to find a white dress, Sam and Phoebe were the flower-people, and Roy walked you down the stairs to where Jamie was standing with Isaac by his side. 

“I’m not fucking crying,” Roy whispers in your ear. “It’s fucking allergies from being in this prick’s house for too long.”

“It’s my house too,” you remind him. 

Roy just sniffs, pats your hand where it’s tucked into his arm, and presses a kiss to your cheek.

All in all, it was pretty great. 

Gifts range from hair products to restaurant gift cards to designer baby clothes, including a tie-dyed onesie from Phoebe. 

“I have a matching one at home,” she explains. 

But now it’s the evening and everyone is gone except family. 

“Can’t believe my baby’s married,” says a beaming Georgie as she ruffles Jamie’s hair from their place on the couch.

“Can’t believe he attained his childhood goal of marrying into the Kent family,” Molly remarks. 

Jamie grins smugly. “What can I say, I’m a fucking goal-getter.”

You’re snuggled in Jamie’s arms, dress exchanged for a white sweatshirt and sweatpants set, courtesy of Rebecca. 

“I’d’ve had a poster of you on me wall if they made one, babe,” Jamie says. “Better sight than that hairy git.”

Roy just rolls his eyes and says “I’m getting another beer.”

“Can you bring me a piece of cake?” you call after him.

“Me too?” Phoebe asks, looking hopefully at Molly. 

Jamie pats your knee. “Don’t think he heard you, love. I’ll get it for ya. You too, Phoebs.” He shoots a wink in her direction, and she giggles. 

“Oi, grandad,” Jamie says, walking into the kitchen. “Did you hear your sister?”

Roy turns around from the fridge with a menacing look.  

“If she has a single moment of unhappiness, I’m going to fucking kill you,” he growls.

“Jesus, sorry,” Jamie says, hands in the air. “What’s got your knickers all in a twist?”

Fucking Jamie, never able to back down from a good squabble with Roy. 

They’re both keeping their voices down because they know if they got caught, no less than three people would be grabbing them by the ear and yelling. 

They might know this from personal experience. 

Roy says, “She’s my little sister. I’d fucking murder for her, and so would Molly. Always tried to make it easier for her when she missed our parents and shit, but it always fucking got to her anyway. Didn’t help that I fucked off to Sunderland at fucking nine, before she was even fucking born. She’s wanted a family of her own for fucking ages, and if you fuck this up for her they will never. Find. Your body.”

Jamie’s not sure Roy’s ever looked this menacing, which is saying something, because he’s Roy fucking Kent. He always looks menacing. 

So he nods and says quietly, “I ain’t gonna fuck it up, Coach. Had a shit dad too. Always wished he were around, except when he was then he’d get all fuckin’ angry and shit. But… still wanted him, y’know? Weird. Anyway, not gonna be like that with her. I want a family too.”

Roy looks straight into his eyes, looking for the barest hint of insincerity. Jamie’s gaze doesn’t waver. He’s not sure of much, but he’s sure of this. He’s sure of you. 

Roy says, “Right,” nods once, then claps Jamie on the shoulder right at his phone dings. 

Jamie pulls out his phone to a text from you that reads, pls stop fangirling over my brother. baby wants cake and so does ur mum

He smiles and tries to figure out how to balance three plates at once. 

[idontplaytrack]

Heyyy can I request something pride related?

Janis x reader

+the friend group (the plastics, Cady, Damian, and Aaron is optional)

FLUFF PLEASE

They all go to pride together like a few years post canon

Where you are

Janis ‘Imi’ike x fem! reader(ft. Damian + The Plastics)

Warnings: coarse language, fluff, a teensy bit of internalised homophobia

A few years into the future, the gang’s all together to celebrate pride

“Come on, people! We are going to be late, y’all.” Damian yells, “Out of the house, let’s go!”

“We’re literally about to leave the house.” Regina huffs, “Move.”

“We’re not going to be late.” Janis sighs, “It doesn’t matter what time we get there anyway. It’s an all-day thing.”

“Yes, Janis. It is an all-day thing. And I would very much like to be there all day.” Damian sassed.

Given the size of the group, you all split into two cars. You stayed with Janis in your own car, Gretchen and Damian sat in the back. Cady, Karen and Regina took her Jeep. But, it wasn’t like the blonde gave the gang much time to think about who took which car and pretty much once again rushed everyone into the vehicles. “My god, y/n. Stop staring at Janis like that.” Damian grumbles.

“What?” You scoffed, glaring at him jokingly.

“She can look at me if she wants to look at me. What’s the problem?” Janis chortled.

“The problem is, y’all are horny as fuck. And I’m always the one stuck with y’all’s antics and PDA.”

“Oh, please.” Janis continued, “What you do see, is nothing.”

“Believe me, I know, bitch. I walked in on y’all senior year of high school and I haven’t recovered from it.”

“That’ll teach you to leave us the hell alone.” Janis couldn’t help it but laugh.

“Your makeup looks so good, Jan.” You ignored Damian.

“Aw, thank you baby.” Janis grins. It was nothing extravagant, just the colours of the lesbian pride flag as eye makeup. Her outfit was one she’d wear on the regular— little silly but all in good fun. You and Janis were both wearing ‘I ❤️ My Girlfriend’ t-shirts that Regina got you both as a joke. Let’s just say she did not expect either of you to be so unfazed about wearing it. Especially you. Janis was out and proud. But you, you struggled with it…letting people know about your sexuality. Due to many reasons, so when the gang saw you happily put on that shirt, they were proud of you.

Once there, the bunch of you found a spot to gather at while waiting for the actual parade to start. But in the meantime, it did not take Janis all that long to get recognised by a few of the parade-goers. Janis had prepared pins for the occasion and if they asked for one, they sure as hell got one. You stood a little off to the side, watching her. But soon, she grabs you by the waist to have you beside her instead. You didn’t resist and just let it happen, since you were feeling very comfortable considering where you were. The music was loud, people were dancing, singing along, chatting and laughing. But yet, you wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Though you knew that your ears would definitely be ringing for awhile afterwards.

“Want a drink?” Regina asks while approaching you and Janis. You didn’t even notice that she’d went to mingle elsewhere.

“We’ll go get one ourselves. Where’d you get yours?” Janis scrunched up her face seeing Regina offer to share the can.

“Is it good?” You ask.

“Oh, it’s great.” She nods, “I got it right there. That stall with the green plastic sheet on their table.”

“Cool.” Janis took you by the hand and walked up to said stall to purchase the drinks. The weather was pretty warm, and humid, actually so a drink was definitely necessary.

————

Now at a quieter section of the event, Janis asks, “You okay?”

“Hm? Yeah, I’m fine.” You answered, opening the can to take a swig of the beverage. “Why’re you asking?”

“Because the weather’s crazy today and I wanna make sure you’re not gonna pass out from a heatstroke.” She tells you, holding you closer to herself as she led you to a bench.

“I’m okay. The people are really nice and everything looks like such a vibe but I’ve just never been to Pride and feel a little overstimulated to be honest.” You admit.

“Let’s just sit here for a bit, then.” She smiled, giving your hand a little squeeze. “Look at them.”

You followed her gaze which lands on Damian and Regina laughing with each other, Regina taking selfies with Damian and then Cady, Gretchen and Karen. “Is she tipsy or suddenly nice?” You bite back a laugh.

“Definitely tipsy.” Janis exhales harshly in amusement— she didn’t even chuckle. Then, the two of you just chatted for a little while, looking back at it…you weren’t even sure what the conversation was about exactly, but there was this:

“I know I’ve got my own shit to come to terms with, but I love you, and that’s the one thing I have never been unsure about my whole life. No matter where you are, as long as I’m with you, I’m so fucking happy.”

“That’s all I need to hear, baby.” She smiles brightly, “Take it easy, don’t stress yourself over it. I know you know that you’re safe with me, with us.“

You mirrored her smile, getting the urge to lean in and just kiss her. And so, that’s what you did and though shocked, Janis instantly reciprocated. And then came the squealing. No, not from either one of you— even though Janis was overjoyed to finally be kissed instead of the one kissing.

“Oh, you guys!” Gretchen exclaimed, “I got such a cute photo of that.” You turned away, hiding your head in the crook of Janis’ neck.

“Come on! Let’s go dance!” Karen cut through the silence, pulling you off the bench. You laugh, cheeks still warm but they paid no mind to you blushing. Janis followed closely behind you, hand on the low of your back. “Hell yeah, party time.”

“Woo!” Damian cheered, clinking his can with Janis.

“Could you send me that photo, Gretch?”

“Of course! I was gonna send it to you anyway even if you didn’t ask.” She nods, “There! Done.”

Janis quickly took her phone out to see the photo, but not before she took a glance at you— watching you getting twirled around by Karen. You were happy, giggling…and she was relieved to see you finally letting loose and enjoying yourself without having to worry about what other people thought about you.

“Thanks, Gretch. It’s a great pic.”

The brunette grins, “Don’t mention it. Cheers.”

“Cheers.” Janis shrugs, taking a sip and jogging up to you to dance with you. Gretchen quickly found her way to Karen, too. Regina was eventually dancing with Cady and Damian? He met a guy. (That he could not shut up about afterwards)

But all in all, it was a great day. “Happy pride, my bitches.” Regina declares as you all left the event later that day.

“Not your bitch.” Janis smirked, “I’m her bitch.”

“We know, ‘Imi’ike.” Regina had a similar expression on her face, “You’re so whipped.”

To the blonde’s surprise, she earned a shove from you. “You are too. So in love with Cady.”

“Good point.” Regina shrugs, “But that was a cute little moment at the bench.”

“I know!” The rest of them chimed in.

“Oh, by the way. I know you’ve been giving out those pins you designed.” Regina slows down a little bit to talk to Janis, “Do you have anything left? I…I want one.”

“Oh. Yeah, I have some left. I kept one for each of us.” Janis took her tote bag from you and rummaged through it, grabbing a handful of the pins she saved.

Regina took one from the little pile and told the rest of the group to wait. Eventually, everyone had a pride pin on. And Regina even suggested a photo taken together. “Okay, who’s up for some dinner before we go home?” Regina asks.

“Me!” The group chorused.

You held Janis’ hand tighter on the rest of the walk back to the parking garage, sneaking a kiss to her cheek on the way which made her giggle and kiss you back. “A little affectionate today, aren’t ya?” She teased.

You shrug, “Just felt like kissing my girl.”

Now she was the one blushing, “Not gonna argue with that, baby. I love you.”

“Guys, keep up and keep outta each other’s pants for a while longer.” Damian complains.

“Oop.” Janis cackled, running the short distance to your car hand in hand.

🏷️ Tag list

@ashecampos @auliisflower @cheesysoup-arlo @frogs00 @ludoesartnstuffs @pda128

💭 A/N

Okay, this’ll be the last fic for a couple days at least🫣 gonna stop myself from writing for awhile and just catch a breath. But I’ll be back soon with a pretty good one for Jos👀

[good-beanswrites]

I DM'd you a passage from the tarot cards fic. Director's commentary, please? ^_^

Ahh this was so fun, thank you so much!! Overexplaining details in a scene my beloved >:3

I wrote all my headcanons and assumptions as if they're facts to save myself from adding "I like to think" to the beginning of every sentence, but just know that I'm aware they don't have canon backing lol. Also my commentary mentions Fuuta and Mikoto's relationship, but the whole fic is pretty vague with it. I love keeping things at the stage of comfortable kindness, where it's easy for the reader to take things both platonically and romantically depending on what headcanons they're bringing to it. It's not necessarily catering to readers since I enjoy both interpretations -- I wrote it with both in mind, and I'll reread it differently depending on the day.

(From What's that Yugioh quote about cards)

“I'm doing this to show you how these readings are just crap. Now. First card.” [Fuuta] flipped it without any of the theatrics Mikoto had enjoyed. “Hm.” He squinted at the strange picture and read the title. “We’ve got a Four of Cups.” 

Fuuta kind of did want to cheer Mikoto up, but doesn’t like how sentimental it sounds to think of it like that. Even if he did admit to himself that’s what he was doing, he wouldn’t know how to comfort him in a nice way, so he’s just picking a distracting activity and hoping it works. Also this spread was actually drawn by me irl! I had to modify one card in Fuuta’s (not telling which one though, hehe). I did consider having Mikoto draw the Hanged Man as his last card, but that felt too forced and cheesy lol

“Reversed Four of Cups,” Mikoto said before turning his gaze to the ceiling. 

“Reversed? It’s right side up to you.”

“You’re doing a reading for me?”

“Duh?” 

It might seem obvious that Fuuta was doing a reading for him given the setup/dialogue, but from Mikoto’s pov, no one’s ever done that before. In all the years he’s been doing tarot, people really just focus on their own future and how to learn tarot for their own activities. No one’s thought to do a reading for him. He’s more surprised than touched right now, though, because of how tired he is. It’ll really hit him later that night, when he realizes that this was the first time someone did that for him. 

Mikoto bit back a comment that he should have gotten to touch the cards, if that were the case. He didn’t feel like getting into it with Fuuta right now, no matter how playful a matter it may be.

Mikoto (and Yuno) are the type who don’t take Fuuta's attitude personally. They can enjoy the back-and-forth of bickering for hours without it exhausting them. Even though Mikoto didn’t experience much during the interrogation, he’d be emotionally tired out in general. Plus, I picture the process of extracting videos to be physically taxing. Something that invades and activates your neurons would definitely leave you pretty wiped afterwards. (<- girl who has too many thoughts about how the mv machine works but will spare you the explanation)

“So… it looks like in the past… you had a lot of cups… and got a weird one from the sky. Are you religious?”

“Huh? Not really.”

“Not God then. I don’t fucking know where it came from. Maybe it’s a ‘life gives you lemons’ thing. You got too much on your plate?”

Mikoto stayed silent.

I messed myself up in this upcoming section because I was too excited about figuring out the card meanings in relation to Mikoto. I should have just looked at them as they were and guessed the meanings the way that Fuuta might. It was difficult having just read this card’s specific meaning and then trying to put myself in the shoes as someone who didn’t know it😂 I left and came back to this section a lot, I wrote the fic over a few months in between other things. It helped dull my memory on the actual meaning and get into Fuuta's character more.

Also I’m adding “life gives you lemons” to the list of phrases I use in my fics knowing it’s an English phrase/idiom they definitely wouldn't use, but I liked its exact connotation so I kept it in. It's cliche and informal and someone like Fuuta would be sick of hearing it from adults. He'd know Mikoto feels the same. I debated on giving Fuuta more lines about religion here – I do think he’s starting to consider it more at this point in time – but decided it brought the fic too off-course from where I wanted it.

“Whatever. Next card… the present. This one’s upside down to you. A knight – hey, I got a knight, too, remember?”

Fuuta actually does know that the specific term is “reversed,” Mikoto just said it, but doesn’t want to seem like he cares so he doesn't use the term. Still, he doesn’t really know how being reversed changes the meaning, so he interprets the picture normally. 

Mikoto blinked. He did remember – he was shocked that Fuuta did. That reading had ended on such a sour note all those months ago. He didn’t think the other had given it another moment of thought. There came the tiniest surge of pride that Fuuta had committed it to memory.

I wanted to play around more with memory here but could never get it to work!!! Fuuta doesn’t really have any themes around memory so it wasn’t that notable that he remembered. Mikoto’s memory has holes specifically around stressful events, so it’s not impressive he remembered, either. So… despite having the perfect opportunity to talk about cool insights/emotions, it simply wasn’t a big deal -_- It still works to reveal that they both care a lot about each other, which is why I left it as is. It was a brief moment months ago, but both held onto the memory all this time.

“Damn, another cup. Well, if it does mean life keeps throwing stupid shit at you, then yeah, this prison has been the stupidest shit of them all.”

Fuuta picked up the final card. He let out a laugh. It was something mocking, but it tickled Mikoto. “Heh, you sure are a fool. That’s some outfit. Still better than yours right now.” He flicked the card at Mikoto’s chest, where it bounced off his mangled uniform. 

As someone who is completely endeared by Fuuta’s awful laugh, I think Mikoto wouldn’t mind either if it sounded teasing/cruel. Especially after all the pain Fuuta’s been through T2, Mikoto probably didn’t hear him laugh in a very long time, and the sound can be contagious. I always wonder about Mikoto's uniform... was like that from his fight with Kotoko, or just from John wrecking his room? Is it like that all of T2, or does Es gives him a replacement? I felt like he would be cleaned up by the time his interrogation rolled around, but his album art is just as much of a mess, so I guess ratty uniform it is...

Mikoto retrieved the card. He sat up as he returned it to the spread. He studied them. 

Mikoto was enjoying Fuuta’s version of the cards, but didn’t have the energy to read them along with him. This is the first time he taps into his own knowledge of the tarot meanings and realizes what a good spread it actually is. I wanted to linger here in this moment more, but everything I wrote became too “telling.” As the fic was from Mikoto’s pov, I felt like I’d need to take the reader through what he was thinking about in the silence. That ended up defeating the purpose of the peaceful moment lol

He allowed himself a small smile. “So,” he asked, “what’s it all mean?”

Fuuta scowled. “I just told you what it meant.”

“No, now you look at the big picture.” Mikoto shook his head. “You left before I could finish your reading, but you’re supposed to look at everything together and make a plan for the future. I… I still remember yours. I was going to tell you to mind your emotions, and prepare for a big change coming quickly. But uh…” he rubbed the back of his neck. “Guess it’s a little late for that, huh?”

“A little.”

Once again wishing I could do more with memory given that Mikoto still remembers Fuuta’s exact reading after so many months, and once again leaving it as a testament to his relationship with Fuuta. I can only hope it speaks for itself when looking at the fic normally ;--; I still haven’t decided if that last line from Fuuta should be read as an angry snap or a disappointed whisper. He’s still very bitter about his situation, and the fact that Mikoto is telling him to ‘mind his emotions’ and reminding him of his pain are enough to make him lash out. At the same time, maybe bringing it all up makes him recognize that his hot temper did caused him harm, several times. He can hear how genuinely Mikoto speaks, and feels guilty for treating him so harshly then. I go back and forth depending on my own mood…

“So, to finish off my reading, what advice do you give me based on these?” 

Fuuta made a show of rolling his eyes and huffing, as if this hadn’t been his idea to begin with.

My favorite way to write Fuuta is having him do something nice, and then immediately get mad at the other person because suddenly he’s embarrassed about it.

 “This is so lame. My advice…?” He jabbed a finger at The Fool. “Don’t do anything fucking stupid in the future.”

I originally wrote out a bit of a longer speech of advice, with Fuuta mentioning how he knows school/work can be overwhelming, and this prison is overwhelming, and not to do anything in the future because there are people relying on him. Fuuta was relying on him. It was a bit vulnerable and finally explicitly mentioned his feelings towards Mikoto. I read it back, heaved a sigh, said “he wouldn’t fucking say that,” and cut it down to just this line 👍I'm not too disappointed, though, since Mikoto can see right through Fuuta (both with his people skills and the fact that Fuuta is very obvious about his emotions). Anything he would have confessed, Mikoto already knows.  

Mikoto looked from him to the cards, then back again.

“...That’s it?”

“What more do you want?” Fuuta raised his voice, and Mikoto found it in him to laugh. 

Mikoto also hasn’t laughed (genuinely) all of T2 :( This one starts off kind of forced – he had to “find it in him” to play along with the way a conversation is supposed to go. But it feels natural once he does, and the next time I mention his attitude he feels “back to his old self.” In this moment he’s considering antagonizing Fuuta by teasing his advice, asking for more, or just poking at his temper. He chooses not to. Instead of avoiding their bickering because he’s tired, he cuts Fuuta a break because he’s really grateful for the kind gesture.

“Alright, alright, I’ll take it.”

[i-looove-dillydallying]

I’m a wolfstar-shipper, but I actually really like the Tonks x Lupin pairing as a concept; it had a lot of potential that, unfortunately, was not met (though I am a sucker for tragically bittersweet endings, as well as characters who deem themselves unlovable being loved unconditionally, so kudos for that). Part of the perceived poor execution comes from the fact that the Harry Potter series is told through limited narration: we know what Harry knows, and we may be more curious about certain relationships that exist within his periphery than he is. There could’ve been an entire contextual build-up to their seemingly abrupt feelings for each other that Harry - and by extension us as readers - simply did not experience. Personally, however, I feel like we could’ve been thrown a bone regarding their developing romance here and there, considering that it has already been established just how much Harry eavesdrops. Granted, we did get Molly mentioning how people rush (romantic) decisions in trying times: “Its all this uncertainty with You-Know-Who coming back, people think they might be dead tomorrow, so they're rushing all sorts of decisions they'd normally take time over. It was the same last time he was powerful, people eloping left, right, and center...”

And now for the potential in dynamic I mentioned: after losing the rest of the Marauders, Tonks’ whimsy might have been just the thing to reawaken Remus’ playful side and create a light in the darkness of war (remember Dumbledores quote about turning on the light?), and Remus could’ve helped cultivate her mature side. As with any good ship (imo), there was also plenty of room for angst: Tonks was an auror, Remus classified as a “Dark Creature”. You can imagine the rest.

I don’t mind their 13 year age-gap as much as I thought I would (and other people seem to do), but that might just be a matter of personal taste (and my complete and utter trust in Remus as a good, if occasionally self-destructive and cowardice person). They’re both consenting adults.

What I do mind is the way Tonks’ character changed for the worse as her feelings for Lupin became apparent. What used to be a fun, likeable character turned bratty and unable to read the room (perhaps it is not the time to publicly press for a relationship label - especially with a notoriously private future partner - when he is in mourning). It has however been ages since I last read the books and God knows the films don’t do Remadora justice, so I won’t go too much into that (unintentional?) negative character arc.

As a final note I’d like to say that Wolfstar could be canon-compliant (or pretty much any Marauders-era ship involving Remus) as Remadora happens later on, and bisexuality exists. Luckily, because Harry Potter and the fanon around it are works of fiction, you can interpret the characters and their interpersonal interactions however you like, which is why I politely ask to remain civil in discussions about this post, which I genuinely do hope will occur. No but seriously. I’d love if you voiced your opinion (regardless of whether you agree with me or not) - you’ve already read this far anyway! Thanks for that by the way.

Tldr: I like Remadora conceptually because of their potential, but it (mostly) fell flat.

[tadpolesonalgae]

hey tabby! I love your works(Thankyou for writing them) and I was wondering something (this is purely curiosity, in no way am I trying to "suggest" you write something outside of your schedule or anything, since I see the 'reqs closed sign' and I respect it.)

So I recently came across 'Filthy Mongrel' and absolutely LOVED it and as far I browsed, pleasure hall is the last you've written in the au, if I'm not wrong? so I'm just wondering if that's like, the end of it or if there's more parts you've considered adding sometime in the future?

Also, I was wondering the same about 'Bruises and burn marks'(I swear I've never read an Eris fic I loved as much) if it's supposed to end as a oneshot or if you've ever thought about what happens later on in the series?

I REALLY hope I'm not being too rude asking this.

Oh my gosh thank you so much for asking about this actually!!

So Filthy Mongrel was written first and then I realised I really liked that dynamic of younger Illyrian vs. Az? Since she’s pretty cruel to him? And I find anger a very interesting motivator/emotion to write? (Hence His (Mine.) and The Other Woman readers having pretty volatile tempers 🫣)

I could talk a lot about the His (Mine.) ‘canon’ universe, but in terms of Filthy Mongrel and The Pleasure Hall which are the aus, I’ve had another au I’ve been wanting to add for a long while 🤦 I think since before the Holidays if i’m honesty 😭 It’s in my drafts and it’s called The Blood In Our Mouths And The Flesh In Our Teeth which I’ve been desperate to write since it’s about reader and Az going deeper into Illyria!

We’ve already seen how Windhaven is, and Rhys has mentioned it’s one of the more progressive camps, so I’d like to use it as a chance to wonder about just how brutal the lifestyle might be? Just how old fashioned and maybe quaint in a way too it might be?

Really just a chance to afford myself more freedom since sjm didn’t particularly touch on Illyria so there are a whole bunch of opportunities to explore!

And yes, there will probably be smut, but there will hopefully be a lot of other stuff too relating to the Illyrian’s lifestyle!

As for Bruises and Burn Marks, I have to be honest I cringe every time I reread it 😭 I don’t think I got Eris’ character at all (I mean, it’s a dark fic so obviously I didn’t, but I feel like it was just waaayyy too much? Maybe I’m being harsh though 😭) I do have a request in my inbox for like an Eat You Up fic for Eris so hopefully I’ll get the chance to do right by him when that gets written!

I would like to write a fic though where the Illyrians weren’t made no villainous though? theorising over some traditions and dress styles? I think that would be fun?

Anyway, thank you so much for asking!!! I’m so flattered when people are interested in knowing more so it’s not rude at all!!! 🧡💛🫂🫂

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

Fantasy, feminism, and philosophy

Recently, I picked up two novels published in the late 1980s by CJ Cherryh. I’ve been avoiding reading books since I finished my dissertation, as the act of opening a physical book seems a little too reminiscent of work, no matter the content - I’ve been enjoying audiobooks, but find it more difficult to listen to fiction than non-fiction, and so my consumption of published material has been skewed one way for several years.

I decided to break that cycle by returning to one of my pre-teen loves, which I read voraciously: high fantasy, the kind of novels with swords and sorcery right there on the cover, in all their pulpy ‘80s glory. I am a fast reader and can finish a ~250-page novel in an evening, given few interruptions, so long as I am hooked. I was looking for that hook.

I found it! And one other book by the same author, which I thought was high fantasy, but turns out to have a science-fiction, world-hopping backdrop. But I also am now armed with a lot more knowledge of feminist theory and the rise of women’s and feminist fiction* (well, science fiction) during the ‘70s and ‘80s, and so I found myself reading with an eye to the representation of women and a constant feminist narrative analysis going in the back of my brain (don’t be sorry; it was rad as hell). It takes a lot more for me to be satisfied with a narrative these days, and it’s not necessarily any sort of literary snobbery on my part, although I do consider myself to have higher standards now. I will read the pulpiest genre fic that I can find, but I will only truly recommend it if I find something redeeming in it - and not just plot and characters. I’m looking for a specific kind of feminist philosophy in the narrative.

Seems like a lot to ask from genre fiction, right? But to me (and to scholars in the entire discipline of English literature going back centuries), stories aren’t just stories: they’re vehicles embodying cultural attitudes and messages about the way the world works. Even a hastily-written piece of flash fiction will still contain the author’s biases and worldview in it, from the characters, the plot, and down to the words they choose to use (or avoid). Science fiction are stories (often) told in the future, but they are actually about present issues; fantasy are likewise stories (often) told in the past, but they reflect the author’s (and audience’s) view of and struggles within the present.**

And so I couldn’t help thinking, as I was reading, about my thesis’s second chapter, which was all about gender and post-apocalyptic science fiction during feminism’s second wave, because I think there’s a fair amount of those conclusions which are cross-applicable to fantasy from the same period.*** Not to put too fine a point on it, but post-apocalyptic sf is itself a fantastical narrative, and though it’s not “fantasy” as we think of the genre, it certainly draws from some of the same imaginative sources.

Some background

I’m gonna try to keep this brief, not least because others have written on it better and more comprehensively. In 17th century Europe, the Western scientific enterprise as we know it today was coalescing, and unfortunately for all subsequent practitioners of science, the values of 17th century European cismales were hard-coded into the philosophy underpinning the scientific worldview. Hence fun things like scientific racism, eugenics, devaluing animals and nature, and sexism, which keeps cropping up throughout the subsequent centuries, and is also what I’m going to focus on now.

You know what else was happening in 17th century Europe? Witch hunts. I’ll spare you a history lesson about it but in short, that’s the background cultural context of what was going on at the time. The milieu of misogyny, you might say. Carolyn Merchant, who wrote a pretty foundational ecofeminist text tracing this history, points to the writings of Francis Bacon as instrumental in advocating for “the control of nature for human benefit” in which he “used the language of nature as female to articulate an experimental philosophy that would extract nature's secrets.” (ENVIRONMENTALISM: FROM THE CONTROL OF NATURE TO PARTNERSHIP, 4).

Merchant argues that scientific discourse about nature codified the gender of nature as a female to be exploited, inviting abusive interrogation much in the same way as a torture victim on trial for witchcraft; her link between women’s persecution and the ramping-up of the exploitation of nature is echoed by socialist ecofeminists such as philosopher Val Plumwood in articulating the fundamentally misogynist underpinnings of a rationalist economics system that glorifies a separation of (masculine) intellectual reason from denigrated (feminine) bodily situatedness. Thus developed a scientific ethic that saw no problem with manipulation and use of the earth to satisfy scientific curiosity and capitalist gain within a patriarchal system of society.

Still with me? The female-nature connection in western culture is actually a lot older than 17th century, but before the industrial revolution there was emphasis on the mystery and power of nature and the life-giving capacity of women, which inspired respect or, at least, fond feelings for a “Mother Nature”. This crops up a lot in a lot of fantasy narratives, by the way, since most of them are set in a pre-industrialized past and also in some post-apocalyptic sf that assumes a catastrophe of some sort will set humanity back a millennia or two and with it will come this older worldview. Merchant argues that this older attitude served as a “cultural constraint” on the actions of human beings, since “[o]ne does not readily slay a mother, dig into her entrails for gold or mutilate her body” (Death 3). The advent of the industrial era and of scientific inquiry was made possible not just by advances in technology but in a philosophical shift in attitude to view feminine nature as inviting—and deserving—of violation by scientific and technological enterprises - which were, of course, male-coded.

Feminist critiques of (old) feminist fantasies

These two different attitudes - let’s call them the science fiction (post-17th century) and fantasy (pre-17th century) attitudes - aren’t as different as they might seem at first glance. Both adhere to an essentialist logic that is hierarchical, valuing “masculine civilization/culture” as inherently superior to “feminine nature.” I’m just going to mostly quote my thesis in the next two paragraphs here:

Essentialism understands “the feminine” as a repository of unchanging truths, determining substances, and ground of being, quite literally: it holds the historical European cultural conflation of women and nature as truth, and radical feminist political thought (and many feminist utopian fantasies) of the 1970s leaned into this binary, but flipped the moral hierarchy. Publications such as Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978) and Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance (1979), for example, embraced the identification of non-human nature and the feminine, celebrating the power of chthonic forces, the moon, fertility, and historical goddess worship. Radical, goddess, and other essentialist feminisms drew on deep ecology, following the same binary logic as Francis Bacon did, but reversing the moral weighting, holding the “male” forces of civilization, culture, and science as bad, or at least incredibly sus, given their collaboration with/outright endorsement of the systematic oppression/torture of women and the earth, if not the very reason for women’s suffering. Ciswomen’s bodies, traditionally the reason for their exclusion from cismale-only spiritual and intellectual spheres, were instead celebrated by some feminists as the ground of human life and part of the mystery of creation itself. ***

Feminist community based on an essentialist notion of cisfemale experience was and is a fantasy that, in addition to being violently exclusionary to trans and genderqueer persons and invested in creating and maintaining a distance between ciswomen and all others, at base replicates the same power structures that fuel patriarchal ideology, only with the values reversed. There is still a hierarchy in place, a flipped version of the fantasy attitude: there is the same conflation of women with nature and its consequent essentialist logic. Female empowerment is crucial to the realization of women’s full humanity, but its celebration at the expense of others leads directly to an ideology of exclusion, perpetuating the structures of oppression that make it necessary for female empowerment in the first place.

For example, some questions that bubble up when I encounter certain stories ask things like, Is this lady knight actually a strong female character, or a vehicle for a male power fantasy with a ciswoman subbed in and nothing else changed? Is this story about a witch/sorceress/magick-user main character really compelling, or is it subject to tropes from both the science fiction and fantasy attitudes, so she is either an evil conniving force to be subjugated (or romanced, depending on flavour) or a mystical feminine cipher in touch with the natural world…. or both? Both happens a lot.

In my thesis, I have a whole paragraph following those paragraphs on essentialism to disclaim that I’m not dissing the enormous contributions of many writers to fantasy whose works completely upended the hierarchical gender binary, boldly challenged gender roles, and stomped all around a genre that up until the ‘70s was almost exclusively made up of male writers. I’m convinced that we’re politically and socioculturally in those authors’ debt! I’m just skeptical of the fantasy genre because of the abovementioned history of the fantasy attitude. In my view, it takes an author who has an attitude (fantasy OR science fiction) that is consciously disloyal to its own roots in essentialist, sexist nonsense to write a narrative that isn’t fundamentally regressive.

Moar, tho…

It’s nice to fantasize about a world where the people whose gender that we identify with are pedestalized, taken care of, comforted, respected, given the benefit of the doubt, empowered, etc. Especially in this day and age when the demands of neoliberalism and late-stage capitalism pile up into an exhausting, overwhelming, threatening force against which it feels impossible to stand alone. Escaping into a world where powerful women are actually respected and can make tangible change in the world (through politics, or magic, or swinging a big sword around) is pretty great.

But it’s not wrong to demand more of our narratives. It’s not wrong to be critical of something that you love (I often joke that it’s the things that I love most that get the most harsh criticism). It’s not wrong to ask that the stories that I read articulate a non-binary, non-hierarchical society that people of all genders can move freely in, instead of being expected to act a certain way (and punished if they don’t perfectly conform).***** Flipping the gender hierarchy just isn’t enough anymore and isn’t even all that feminist, in the end.

In any case, I can highly recommend the work of CJ Cherryh; I think even thirty-five-odd years on, it still holds up because of the way she writes her characters, regardless of gender or age, as human beings and not essentialist tropes. I’m not surprised she won the Hugo, multiple times. She seems to have an underlying philosophy that values humans for who they are, not who they are supposed to be dependent on their predetermined roles in society.

What are some fantasy novels you would recommend? I’m not a huge short-story reader, and I’m a fan of wordplay and have spent the last eight years or so thinking about novels written by and for people living in the 1950s-80s. I need some good contemporary stuff! Or perhaps there are classics I am missing out on? Let me know in the comments!

PS: I’m indebted to the works of Donna Haraway, Celia Åsberg, Myra Hird, Helen Merrick, Élisabeth Vonarburg, Joanna Russ, Carolyn Merchant, Lisa Hogeland, and way too many others to list for influencing the direction of my ruminations here. Any issues are a result of my taking research on historical Canadian SF and bending it to apply to fantasy. ___

*They aren’t the same. It’s akin to assuming all Jewish people are Zionists. One is an identity category, the other a political one.

**Caveat: I’m not saying authors of sff sit down and are like “ah yes what issue griefing me right now am i going to put into this book” - it’s usually a subconscious thing. Sometimes authors do that! But it’s rare.

***Again, they aren’t the same: I’m not a scholar of fantasy, merely an observant fan who has a bit of a scholarly background in another genre literature.

**** This attitude is alive and well today in the politics of trans-exclusive radical feminists (TERFs), a subgroup of radical feminists whose reification of biological essentialism leads them to deny trans peoples’ identities. Fuck TERFs. Their philosophical worldview is warped.

******It’s also not wrong to love something even though it’s Problematic (tm), or just want to turn your brain off with a fluffy read. So long as you’re self-aware.

[choconoo]

~.* Hello, Welcome to my intro post *.~

Yellow everyone! ☹️ okie okie so I will be telling you a few things about me 🫡

Age~ I am currently 17 years old 👵🏻

Name~ I’ll be going by Moon 🌙

Pronouns~ I go by she\Her 👩🏻

Career~I’m a junior in high school 🏫

Nationality~ Honduran 🇭🇳

Language~ Fluently, Spanish and English 💫

What will I write about~ K-pop 🎶

Groups I will write about/stan~ TXT, ENHYPEN, &TEAM. 🎤

Here are some extra things to know about me~

So where do I start Hmm, okay well, I’m actually a very shy person, but I thought for the new year I should put my mind to do something, and I thought why not write as I would do it as a small hobby for the past maybe 3 years, I also like other things like

Gaming~ 🎮

Music~ 🎵

Dancing~ 💃

Psychology- 🧠

Astronomy/Astrology~🪐

Harry Potter~🪄

K-pop~ 🎧

And maybe a few other things 🤭 I have mentioned that I will be writing for K-pop, specifically TXT, ENHA and &TEAM maybe some &AUDITION too we’ll see 🙈 I’m also interested deeply in other groups such as Stray kids, bts, Astro, Treasure, and maybe a few others and I know a thing or two about some girl groups such as Blackpink, Twice, Ive, le sserafirm, itzy, dreamcatcher, new jeans, everglow, loona, Kepler, Nmixx and maybe some more underrated groups however I don’t stan any girl groups, I’ve heard some songs and I’ve enjoyed some but personally I gravitate more to the boys and their vibe. I am most comfortable writing for the 3 groups I have mentioned at the beginning as they’re my ults specially TXT, and I know them the best, I will mention my bias in each group 🙈

Hueningkai~ (Bias in TXT)

Soobin~ (Potential wrecker in TXT)

Niki, Jungwon, Sunoo and Sunghoon~ (Biases in Enhypen 🥲)

Ej, Harua (Biases in &Team)

Maki, Jo (Potential wreckers in &Team)

And if you wanted to know as well ☺️

Gaku, Yejun (Biases in &Audition) (Out of the eliminated)

And that’s pretty much it, when I say “potential” wreckers, I mean when I’m not sure whether they are, like I have an attraction to them but not sure if enough to consider them a wrecker I hope that clears up confusion ☺️ now I will mention things I am comfortable writing with and what I am not comfortable with.

Genres I’m okay with

Fluff

Suggestive

Angst (I’m not the best at it but I’ll try my best 🥲)

Fantasy

Mystery

Smut (Once I’m of age 😅 also…probably wouldn’t be good at it)

AU’s (Highschool, Soulmate, Etc.)

Genres I’m not comfortable doing

Anything having to do with rape :(

Homophobia :(

Abuse of any shape or form (Emotionally, physically, sexually, etc) :(

Some sexual kinks (Feet fetishes, anything with minors, I’m sorry I’m just not comfortable) :(

No smut for idols who are minors :(

Incest :(

Adult idol or reader with minor reader or idol situations :(

And perhaps with time I’ll add to those categories now before I finish as this is way too long, I feel like I’ll get hate and called a hypocrite for “writing smuts for idols when I’m a minor” or “oh she says she won’t write for idol minors when she’s a minor herself” now. I did not mention I’ll be writing smut as of right now, I have nothing against the genre or people who read it, this is an open platform for anyone, and I just want to try and be someone everyone can come to read a book, I know I said I have some things I’m not okay with or comfortable such as some sexual kinks. Again. I don’t judge anyone I like to think I’m a very open minded person, perhaps with time things will change, just based on my personal experience, health and happiness this is what works for me at the moment :)

Now! That being said thanks for coming by and seeing my debut *Wink Wink* I truly hope you enjoy my future projects, I come in peace 😭🏳️ I’m not looking for trouble or anything I just want to have fun!!, anyone and everyone is welcomed and I hope you enjoy 😁

Time to get my thinking cap on and get something published lmao 😂 ;)

Lots of love -Moon 🌙

[random-potat]

.:･˚₊ let's get out of here

pairings: theo x fem!reader ft. intak, and chaeryeong and ryujin of itzy

synopsis: with parties not bring your forte, trying to find a way out unexpectedly leads to meeting someone new.

word count: 1.5k

warnings: mild swearing, poor attempts at humour, alcohol consumption

a/n: ahhhh! first written oneshot and it's for theo!! hope you guys enjoy, this honestly took me a while cause although i have the plot in my head im just too lazy to actually write it lol, but worry not as i am working on future fics and ideas ৻( •̀ ᗜ •́ ৻)

Bodies. Alcohol. Sweat. More bodies. More alcohol. More sweat.

"Gross," you thought. "Clearly, parties aren’t my forte." 

You walk over to the crowd, searching for your friends, Chaeryeong and Ryujin. After what feels like being pushed over 20 times, you reach your friends.

“You guys, I think I'm going to head home." You fan yourself, acting as if you feel faint, “feeling kind of lightheaded.”

Chaeryeong turns to you, pushing you to a more quiet area. "Are you ok? It's pretty late right now. Why don't you take a nap upstairs in Intak's room? He said that none of his roommates are here right now. That way, we can go home together."

You nod your head in agreement. "Ryujin was my ride home anyway." You glance back at her, seeing her drunkenly dance around "that is if she's sober enough."

"Which way is Intak's bedroom? I don't want any of his roommates to find some random girl sleeping in their bed." 

"It's the second room on the left."

"OK, wake me up when you guys are done."

"Rest well," Chaeryeong says as you watch her head back to the rest of your friends on the dance floor.

Going upstairs was much more of a challenge than you expected. With people's bodies on top of one another and smoke fumes going through your face, it just wasn't a fun time. Nevertheless, once you make it to the top, you may or may not have forgotten which room to go to.

"Second door, second door, something. Was it left? Was it right? I have a 50% chance here. Left or right?" You looked both ways, still pondering. "Just gonna go with the right-hand rule."

You walk into the room, “Oh shit- oh, I’m sorry. I guess it was the left door." Forgetting that you were still standing there, you make eye contact with the man in front of you. “Thought this was Intak’s room. Sorry to bother you,” you say as you scratch the nape of your neck.

As he stares at you, he fails to remember that he hasn't responded to you yet. Clearing his throat, his voice begins, “uh- no, no, it’s fine. My fault for forgetting to tell Intak that I came back.”

As the air begins to get more and more awkward, you walk backwards towards the exit of the room. "Well, I'm just gonna head to Intak’s room,” you point behind you.

You turn around halfway before hearing the boy say, "Hey! you wanna head out?” Stopping in your tracks, you question him, “What?”

“Let’s get out of here,” he states more boldly. 

You turn around, eyeing him from outside of the room. “I don’t think that would be the best idea, considering we don’t even know one another.” 

He shrugs. “I mean, I'm sure you have nothing better to do. I'm assuming you came up here to get away from all the madness downstairs.” 

You stare at him with a blank expression. “That was just an idea, you don't have to. You can just head to Intak's room,” he says, panicking while moving his hands around. 

As you hesitantly walk back into his room, you inspect every single corner. Seeing posters and vinyls of rock bands like AC/DC and Queen, with little trinkets scattered around his room. Spotting an electric guitar in the corner of his room, you point towards it, “You play?” 

The boy turns to where you point, and he nods, “Yeah, I dabble. Been practicing Until I Found You on it.” 

You turn back to him, finally making your decision, putting your hand out for him to shake. “I'm YN.”  

He grabs your hand to shake and smiles, “Theo.” 

You smile back at him, “Let's get out of here.”

The two of you guys go out on a journey towards the convenience store. As you walked, you expected a somewhat awkward silence but were met with Theo giving his ear buds to you, “just for us to listen to.”

The familiar tune of Beth by KISS surrounds you. Theo says, “I'm just going on a whim that you may like rock songs.” He turns to you, “Don't think that I didn't see you eyeing my AC/DC vinyl.” 

“I will say your vinyl collection is very impressive," you reply. 

Thankful for the music in your ears, the rest of the walk to the convenience store went by smoothly. Small talk and hearty laughs were exchanged, and with the cool breeze passing by, both of you were completely unaware of the butterflies gradually forming in your stomachs. 

Reaching the convenience store, you head straight to the instant food. Grabbing some Neoguri ramen as well as some instant spicy rice cakes, your drink of choice is some good old-fashioned milk tea. 

Walking back to Theo, he shows you his items. Some jelly, strawberry milk, and honey butter chips. He looks down at what you’ve grabbed and asks, “Was the party food really that bad?”

You sighed, “If there even was food, all I saw was alcohol." You looked back in thought, "although I think I did see a bowl of something in the living room.”

After paying for your snacks, the both of you head to a nearby park to hang out.

Sitting down together on a bench and munching on your snack, the night passes by in a blur. Long conversations were held with your guys’ laughter, which could be heard from a mile away. Interests were exchanged, heavy on the topics of interest you both shared.

Finding a similar interest in Harry Potter, questions were being asked back and forth, “Ok, but no, which Harry Potter movie is the best one though?” Theo asks. “Definitely Prisoner of Azkaban, it’s also the best book, and no one could tell me otherwise,” you replied.

Finding out about Theo’s admiration for Emma Watson, you couldn’t help but tease him, “You know, if you dye your hair ginger, you might pass for a Weasley," you say, laughing as he glared at you.

Not knowing the time at all, and with the party long forgotten, your phone blows up with notifications. “I’m going to assume those are my friends." You check the time and realize that you guys have been out for nearly two hours. 

“Holy shit, yeah, we should probably head back. Intak might think I kidnapped you or something.” Theo says as he grabs all the trash.

Arriving back at the house, people can be seen leaving as they're helping their tipsy friends, with some people looking like they're going to stay back for a little bit longer. You spot your friends, looking worried, on the porch with Intak.  

They spot you, putting up their hands to wave at you. As you wave back at them, you turn back to Theo, “guess this is me. It was really fun hanging out with you tonight. Although I was a bit skeptical at first.” 

Theo puts his hand to his chest, “wow that hurt!” feigning a pained expression. 

“Hey, for all I know, you could've just come into this open party and acted like you were Intak’s friend, just to kidnap someone.” 

“Ok, that’s impossible. You saw all my pictures in my room, which happen to have Intak in them," he replies back. 

“Hey, you never know. That could all have been a front that you've planned for months.” 

“Really, YN? Maybe you need to lay off the true crime documentaries for a while.” 

Not really knowing how to leave one another, you both speak at the same time.

“I think my fri-” 

“We should prob-”

 Theo speaks first, “We should probably head inside. Are you staying over?” 

You shake your head. “Nope, class tomorrow, plus I'm pretty sure Ryujin might collapse any time now,” you say as you glance at your friends, who are now heading over. 

“YNNIE!” Ryujin screams, “i missed yuh sooooo muschhhh,” she slurred as she tackled you into a hug. “I was dancing all on the floor thing an YOU were out with a man. like whyyyy? ah we not enuf fir you?” 

You lift her up, putting your arms around her to support her weight. “Okay, now I think it's time for you to head into the car.”. 

You glance back at Theo, “hopefully I’ll see you around?” 

He nods and smiles. “Yeah, I’d like that.” 

As you watch Theo head back to his house, Chaeryeong nudges you with her elbow. “Soo, what’d you guys do?” she teases. 

“Definitely not whatever you’re thinking, that's for sure. C'mon, help me put Ryujin in the car.” 

"Oh, come one, give me the details,” she whines. You shake your head. “Maybe tomorrow morning, when you guys are both sober.” 

“Pinky promise?” 

“Pinky promise.”

As Theo walks towards the house, Intak comes into view with his dopey smile. 

“Stop looking at me like that.” 

“Like what?” Intak replies.

“Like that," Theo waves his hands, “like you’re all knowing or whatever.” 

Intak puts his hands up in surrender. "Look, I'm just saying it seems like you and YN hit it off,” he smiles again, “plus I know she’s single.” He wiggles his eyebrows. 

"Oh, shut up!”

my masterlists

likes and reblogs are appreciated ⋆˙⟡♡

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[cynicalmusings]

WAAA I HAVEN'T INTERACTED IN SO LONG!!!

life just got so busy ;=; with exams, upcoming colleges i have to think about applying, my future – it's really held me back from breathing and interacting with what i like :( BUT I AM HERE TO INTERACT ONCE MORE!!! maybe i can finally draw again bwoah, it's been weeks since I've picked up that dusty ol tablet

anyways, that writer ask game heehoo o_o : 🌈 🍉 🤍

it’s good to see you again! hopefully things will calm down soon for you.

(don’t worry; i haven’t properly touched my genshin writing in ages, so you’re not the only one who’s let dust gather in some creative areas…)

now, onto the ask game:

🌈 - is there a fic that you worked *really fucking hard on* that no one would ever know? maybe a scene/theme you struggled with?

cyno’s dark fairytale au is… pretty hard work. i love working on it, don’t get me wrong, but the elaborate writing style paired with actually having to follow a planned out storyline and make sure the plot is tight and makes sense etc. as opposed to winging funky little oneshots is quite difficult sometimes, considering i have the attention span of a hummingbird (do hummingbirds have short attention spans? they just came to mind for some reason.) i’ve also talked sometimes about how i pride myself on that 100 followers special fic, because it took time. i had to visualise the character designs and do some brief research on mask designs (primarily venetian masks), and it took me literal weeks to choose which waltz/ piece to assign to the characters that matched their personality and their scene best. then i also needed to write the whole thing up, and the level of detail in that is up there with my dark fairytale au. i’ll always be a tiny bit salty that it has below 100 notes whereas some random brainrots i slapped down on a whim get, like, five times as many, but hey, what can you do?

🍉 - in what ways has writing helped you process trauma and/or navigate through your own life?

i use writing (and reading) a lot as a sort of escape mechanism. when i’m stressed or going through a tough mental spot, it really helps to lose myself in fiction and especially in fictional characters that i like, and not have to worry about real life for a bit. call me painfully self-indulgent, but sometimes i imagine how certain characters might comfort me if i came to them with my troubles, and it actually helps me wind down a bit. i realise it’s… slightly worrying that i’m literally coming to fictional characters in my own brain for comfort instead of real people, but, uh… it’s nice, so… good for me….?

🤍 - what's one fic of yours you think people didn't "get"?

oooh…. i don’t know, actually. i already sort of mentioned my 100 followers special, and i don’t want to repeat myself, so let me look through my masterlist quickly.

…funnily enough, this isn’t actually on my masterlist, but maybe that continuation of a the kazuha royalty au i originally got as an event request ages ago. i did a touch of worldbuilding here and there and it was pretty fun, and i remember being somewhat proud of the reader’s character development; something which maybe might not have been ‘gotten’, or at least registered that much, by the audience because of the reader meaning to be self-insertion-y instead of a full-fledged character, and i definitely leaned more heavily towards making them a character of their own for that. i don’t really regret it, though, because i enjoyed writing for them and treating them like a character rather than a blank slate— to be honest, i find writing a reader with a clear personality more satisfying than one without, even if it’s not really the point. basically, i’d rather be compelled by a character than see myself in their shoes 100%, even if it means sacrificing some of that self-insertion. to be honest, i could go into a full-fledged essay (ramble) about how i write reader inserts and why and some pet peeves i have with their characterisations (or lack thereof, in some cases), but i’ll spare you poor souls for now.

[ikesenwritings]

Wounds

A/N: This was so hard to finish 🥲🥲 but I think I’m pretty proud of this one ! I hope you like it as much as I do <3 (The last bit of dialogue is a quote from a TV show called New Amsterdam according to Google! I saw it online and it just broke my heart 😭) Pairing: Mitsuhide x Reader Category: A little fluff and some angst Warnings: Brief description of injuries to the hands Word Count: 1.5k

Add. Notes: None of Mitsuhide’s route has actually happened but this takes place roughly three months after your arrival (with no looming wormhole and no idea that you’re from the future). Mostly just ramblings and thoughts from our kitsune.

Mitsuhide's POV

Oh, my little one, you wouldn't believe me if I revealed to you the truth of my feelings—that, in this moment, the feather-light touch of your fingers across my bruised and broken skin would be enough to sustain me through this life knowing I could never truly share it with you.

Your hands are quite small and unscathed in comparison to mine, but they are not without their own history of hard work. Callouses kiss the tips of your fingers in a way I wish I could. They leave a lasting impression on your person. I can only assume they were the result of you pricking your fingers with a threaded needle one too many times.

How wonderful and uncommon for someone to pursue their passions so freely in this time. So please, little mouse. Continue allowing your "rough" hands to meet mine. Permit me this one indulgence: your touch. Give me a piece of you that could have been a part of me if I hadn’t grown up in such circumstances.

Would you be so courteous, my love, as to allow me one more revelation? As of late, these meetings of ours have left me questioning my abilities. I wonder: when had this little charade of ours become a routine?

When, after I've fulfilled my duties, I find myself in your chambers?

When, after the sun has stowed itself away, I consider you to be my personal healer?

I learned to be content with loving you from a distance. So when had I become more selfish than I already allowed myself to be when I am in your presence? To have my hidden desire for you dictate my actions rather than my wit and ambition? Have I veered too off-course? Is this what you have done to me? Am I content with such a change?

I never wanted you in my world; one of violence and deception.

But there you were, rooting yourself in my life—asking if I ate my meals, if I slept, why I always poked fun at you, asking for my opinion of castle-goers that "only a kitsune would have."

And there I was, unable to shut you out, incapable of resisting you. My funny, inquisitive, fiery little mouse. If Hideyoshi was the castle charmer, you were the enchantress.

My love, you are addictive. I am seated on your futon but I am evil. You may perceive me as a good man of the Oda forces. I am no such thing, nor am I a kind man. The role of Nobunaga's left-hand—there is no one in Azuchi more suited for this job than I am… though I suppose you are aware of that and chose to ignore it, for I am seated on your futon and I am evil and this is a tender moment I will continue to relive until you refuse me at your doorstep.

I crave this. Your presence, your touch, is my drug. Like a fine herbal remedy. If I were a god, I would command that your presence never escape mine—such a glorious reprieve from my duties.

“You can’t keep doing this.”

Your words cut through the silence as easy as ripping parchment.

Oh dear, perhaps my abilities have deteriorated. I certainly wasn't expecting to hear your soft voice. Nights like these usually passed without a word—a surprise at first—I thought you'd have endless questions for me, silly mouse, what with all the regular prying you liked to do in my life.

While I've seemed to lose count of our nightly meetings, I do recall the very first. I recall rising you out of your sleep. Yes, it was quite pleasing to see that sleepy expression of yours. But I knew you could not mistake the smell of blood and sweat mixed together once you came to.

Your tired gaze had shifted from one of confusion to one of shock when your eyes landed on my forearm. Your movements were stilted as you gathered the supplies I held in my hands and started bandaging a large gash that I had sustained from a sword fight with a rebellious daimyo and his militiamen.

I recall having my subordinates spread gossip amongst the maids at the time. I planned for whispers around the castle to let you know all about my role as Nobunaga's left-hand man without much frightening detail. I was sure it would be enough to keep you at arm's length. Clearly, I underestimated you.

You can't keep doing this.

Keep injuring myself? Keep inviting myself into your chambers? These are not easy asks, little one.

But you should not hold concern for someone like me.

To have you patch my shallow wounds would be enough. I believe something as superficial has to be enough.

You can’t keep doing this.

Such simple words yield such complex feelings. Oh, how I wished everything I did was done to please you. And yet, I mustn’t allow myself such fulfillment.

Perhaps I should steer this conversation in another direction before it even starts. I assumed a face one would reserve for a child and spoke in a mock apologetic tone. "I know," I teased. "Azuchi's princess requires a proper amount of rest."

Dearest me… my silly mouse does not seem willing to converse in a light manner this night. I should smooth out the crease in your tightly-knit eyebrows, kiss your frown away. Perhaps I shouldn't.

You surveyed my now bandaged hands that remain cradled in yours. I know what you are thinking, my love. Remembering the degree of my injuries just a moment before—immensely swollen, purple, and covered in blood—you contemplated whether I'd listen to the opinions you'd been forming of me and the manner by which I operate over the past two months.

Everything you say to me holds such meaning. For you, little one, I would carve whatever you wanted to say to me into my being, carry your words with me wherever I ventured.

"Mitsuhide."

A certain urgency in that beautiful voice of yours. Need not. I shall continue to joke for your sake, though maybe it’s really for mine.

I wish to keep these meetings light, just as you are.

“My, what a stern tone. Perhaps Hideyoshi spends too much time following you around when I’m not here.”

Stay there. With Hideyoshi and Masamune and the others. Stay where it is bright, but not too bright for me.

Shall I make one last attempt at quelling your worry?

“I’m okay, little mouse. I see Iesayu has been teaching you. Your touch heals me much faster than before.”

It really does.

Then you say, “People in this castle care about you.”

Your voice comes as a whisper and you sound almost like a child consoling a hurt parent and I feel like pieces of my life could begin chipping away—as if all of the things I’ve endured, the pain and suffering associated, could be erased by your words.

It seems foolish, really.

How did I come to be here? To be in Azuchi? To be alongside Oda Nobunaga himself? To be consumed so wholly as his left hand?

“Whom may that be, pray tell?” I ask.

“Hideyoshi, for starters. And Mitsunari. Nobunaga, Masamune, Ieyasu… me.”

Yes. I now know that I am, indeed, more selfish than I’d been when we first met, for I wouldn’t have strung such a declaration from you. A declaration I was well aware of by now, but my dear, it is much more lovely to have it fall upon my ears.

There are moments where there is truly nothing to be desired, but there are times spent with you, and I come to realize that I desire things for myself much more than I let on.

You. I want you.

These are the words that should flow out of my mouth. A silly but earnest confession.

But instead, I say, “Yes, I suppose the people in this castle serve society well. They have a predisposition to care for others, even me.”

You shake your head in disbelief. Frustration, even?

“No—why are you saying that?! You walk around like you’re waiting for your last day or something. Like you’ve shouldered everyone’s burdens and you’re not sure when you might collapse but you’re willing to carry more and more.” All I hear is your anguish. “You get to be selfish, you know? You deserve a lot more than what people take you for.”

My love…

I gather you in my arms. The burning sensation of my injured hands pressed firmly on your back is an afterthought. I rest my head on your shoulder. My gaze is directed at nothing in particular, but I do catch the peaceful sway of the cherry blossoms outside your window. Such contrast from the tumult of feelings I hold for you. In this moment, I feel as though my heart could not beat any faster. As if all my energy was used to fuel the song my heart sings for you, my words come out in a strained whisper: “You have no idea just how selfish I am... you are my greatest joy and deepest pain."

And a gasp as light as the wind that blows through the cherry blossoms escapes my little one. A lovely sound to mend my wounds.

[thefanficmonster]

Casual

Ranboo x Reader (Female)

Warnings: None, unless talking about the future counts

Genre: FLUFF, Humor, RPF (Real Person Fic)

Summary: Following the arrival of the dreadful invitation to his cousin’s wedding Ranboo turns to the only cover-up he can think of to keep his still-single status hidden from his family.

Requested by Anon. Hi darling! Thank you so much for your wonderful request! I’m so glad you sent your idea to me and I’m so glad you were my first official Ranboo request. I’m really sorry it’s taken me so long to write it but I still hope you’ll come across it and read it! Love, Vy ❤

“Heyyy, so Y/N, I have a favor to ask you...um yeah, call me back, it’s awkward sending it via voicemail. Bye“

Huh - that’s the first thought that goes through my head when I listen to the voicemail left after a missed call from my best friend Ranboo. The favors he usually asks for consist of requesting assistance for his videos in which I also appear with a mask and sunglasses to keep the brand running. I genuinely have nothing against my face being shown but when I think about it, I’m honestly a bit glad people can’t identify me.

Anyways, back to the favors, Ranboo is no stranger to asking me for them but they’ve never been considered too awkward for a voicemail which is why I’m no slightly concerned. I’ve been swamped with work for school and studies for the graduation finals for the past two weeks and it seems like I’ll never get on top of it and I know Ranboo’s been in a similar situation too, so maybe he needs help with that? He’s not used to asking help for school stuff, he sometimes even has a hard time accepting it when I openly offer it to him.

I eventually sigh, decide that playing this guessing game will not get me anywhere and settle on giving him a call as I make my way home from the gym with my legs barely putting up with the task of carrying me around.

He picks up on the second ring.

“Hey! Wh-...“

“Would you pretend to be my girlfriend for my cousin’s wedding next weekend?!“

My legs take that opportunity to stop moving in the middle of the sidewalk which is luckily void of any people at the moment. It’s not my fault my body’s first reaction was to freeze up at the question that came flying at me like an out-of-control jet, almost as though he’s been dying to say it and get it over with.

“Um...run that by me again please, I think I misunderstood.“ I say, blinking blankly as though awoken from a fever dream. No, actually as though I’m IN a fever dream right now.

“Ok, now that the cat’s out of the bag, wanna grab some coffee and talk about it face-to-face. I need to see your facial expressions to gauge what response to expect.“ He says, the previous nervousness gone and his voice calm as regularly once again.

I’m this close to face-palming but I squeeze my eyes tightly shut and bring myself to utter a reply, “Our usual spot. Be there in ten minutes.”

                                                             *  *  *

“No freaking way.“ I shake my head, folding my arms over my chest as I lean back in my seat in the booth we picked when we arrived. Good thing I got an iced coffee cause even a hot one would’ve gone cold by now considering I haven’t yet taken the time to have even a sip of it. I’ve been too busy listening to the long and short of the explanation and begging speech Ranboo probably made last night to try and convince me to agree to this nonsense. “Dude, we’ve been friends since middle school-...“

“Exactly! Who else was I gonna ask?“ He cuts me off, pleading gaze meeting my unimpressed one.

I huff before continuing my previous statement, “We’ve been friends since middle school so you know my opinion on weddings.” I put extra emphasis on the word ‘opinion’, giving him the clear hint at the distaste I’ve expressed on the topic multiple times before.

“And you know we’re on the same page there but there’s no way I can avoid going unless someone kidnaps me.“ He too now gets in the same stance as me, his coffee forgotten too.

I can’t help but snort out a little laugh, “I’d be more than happy to kidnap you considering the other option is far less appealing to me.“

He, of course, rolls his eyes at me as though he didn’t offer to do the same thing so I could avoid an exam but anyways. “So you’re gonna choose to fake a kidnapping that has the potential of landing you in jail over coming to eat some great food and maybe even have some fun at a wedding with your best friend? I’m hurt.“ He says, frowning to cover up the smile that’s fighting its way onto his face.

Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes, “I’d be kidnapping you, dummy...” I cut myself off to let out a long sigh and calm down before I go off at him. His smirk isn’t helping me much with the task either. I’ve known Ranboo long enough to know he’ll eventually convince me and he’s known me long enough to know how to do that exactly. With that in mind, there’s really no point in getting so worked up and wasting my energy. And so, despite my own rationality, I cave. “Fine, but I’m not staying the whole wedding.“

His eyes immediately light up and almost makes me feel the compromise was worth it. Almost. I mean, when you’ve been best friends with someone for so long, seeing them happy is worth more to you than your own comfort sometimes.

And he knows it too. Which is exactly why he outstretches his hand for me to shake and says: “Just one dance and you’re free to go. Deal?”

I take his hand without hesitations. That’s a better offer than I could’ve ever imagined. “Damn straight it’s a deal.“

                                                            *  *  *

“How long until you kick the heels off?“ Ranboo asks, bringing me a non-alcoholic cocktail and sitting down next to me.

I take a sip and giggle, “You kidding? I already kicked them off and replaced them with flats. I need mobility if we dance. They also lower the risk of me severing off a toe of yours if I step on you on accident.”

He laughs, clinking his glass against mine before he gets a bit more serious, “By the way, thanks for handling my family’s attack so well. I know it might’ve been a bit much but you handled it like a pro. Still, I’m sorry on their behalf.”

I shake my head and wave my hand dismissively, “Don’t mention it. I’d probably react the same way if my brother or cousin brought a date to an important family event like this.” I instinctively turn to look in the direction of where the majority of his family has gathered around, chatting with guests, smiling brightly. It’s hard not to immediately take a liking towards these people. They’ve been a second family to me ever since Ranboo and I started hanging out so I completely understand why they were so shocked to see me in the role of his ‘girlfriend’.

“I’ll tell my parents the truth later, our extended family is the ones I wanted to fool to be perfectly honest.“ He looks around as do I and we catch more than a few pairs of eyes fixated on us that turn away when they realize they’ve been spotted, “Mission accomplished by the looks of it.“

I chuckle. I’ve never felt so comfortable at a wedding before. I don’t feel stressed nor anxious despite knowing that there’s quite the number of eyes on me and there are whispers going around about my ‘relationship’ with Ranboo. It’s oddly calming and relaxing to be surrounded by some familiar and some unfamiliar faces. This cocktail is pretty great too.

Speaking of which, if it had any alcohol in it I’d blame it for the decision I’m about to make but this one’s entirely on me: I tap Ranboo with one hand while taking out my phone with the other. “If we’re already the talk of the wedding, let’s give them something to talk about.“ I say as I put up my phone, pretending to be taking a selfie leaning in to give him a kiss on the cheek.

When I pull away I can clearly see that he’s still processing what just happened. I can’t help but burst out in a fit of laughter as I reach out to wipe the lipstick stain I left on his cheek. He looks like a lost, clueless puppy with the question: ‘what on Earth just happened???’ replaying in his head and it’s so freaking cute!

Wait....what was that? Since when do I use the adjective cute to describe Ranboo? Didn’t I think he looks handsome in a suit earlier too? The hell is with me today?

Then it hits me - the feeling isn’t foreign. Like, I know I’ve felt it before but I never analyzed it or even bothered to acknowledge it. But now that I do, I’m afraid of what it might be.

“There!“ I say, desperately trying to push the thoughts away along with this little firework show in my stomach, “Now you have pinker cheeks. Well, cheek, singular.“

As if snapping out of his state of confusion, he returns to Earth with a smirk, “Kiss the other to even it?”

Alright, his blush might not be even but mine now is and it’s ten times as intense and very much apparent but I don’t let the feeling shine through anything else as I proceed to actually kiss his other cheek too, wiping the lipstick stain.

“Thanks. You’re the best.” And just like that, as though it’s no big deal, he kisses my forehead.

See, that’s the thing, it shouldn’t be a big deal! It’s never been! This is far from the first time I’ve kissed him on the cheek or the first time he’s given me a forehead kiss. These are regular occurrences after years of this lovely friendship we have. Why do they feel so different now?

Then, much to my relief, the music starts and the lights turn off leaving only one spotlight for the groom and bride to have their first dance. They look absolutely astonishing and I can certainly say I’ve never before stopped to think that about any newly weds of the weddings I’ve preciously been to. I don’t know if it has something to do with the company I have for this particular wedding or it’s maybe the fact that my mindset’s changed over the years without me realizing.

Then I automatically look at Ranboo who just so happens to be looking at me too and all I can say is: my mindset hasn’t changed.

A loud applause takes over when the couple finish their dance, officially opening the dancefloor for any other pairs who’d like to occupy it and I’m happy to see how many people are eager to rush up with their partner.

 Ranboo gets up, putting the glass down and offers me his hand, “So, wanna dance? Don’t take this as a sign to leave though, we said one dance and you CAN leave, not SHOULD.” He says, giving me a warning look.

I roll my eyes and am about to give him some sass right back but he takes my hand and picks me up from my seat, leading me to the dancefloor.  And I gotta admit maybe it’s a good thing he did. If he left it to me I would’ve probably said no to the dance and ran the hell away. Why? - Cause I’m freaking terrified of this new mindset and point of view and these intense emotions I never used to pay any mind to before in regards to my best friend.

Friends don’t feel that way about friends. Friends don’t look at friends that way. What’s happening to me?

When I gotta look him in the eyes like this, not for the first time might I add, I can finally understand how the friends-to-lovers trope works: it’s all meaningless until it starts to mean so much to you. It’s all platonic until it reminds you of a romantic movie moment. It ‘best friends’ until it’s ‘I wish we were more than that’. It’s all casual, until it’s not.

And, unfortunately, it’s irreversible.

Damn do I wish I ran away now...

[magecrafts]

NEW MOOD.

RATED T FOR TEEN & UP AUDIENCES.

PART ONE OF TWO.

a/n: inspired by this post and the song new mood by lpx. i haven't written anything in twenty years and so my apologies if this is Terrible. don't worry about the mcu timeline. i'm fucking with it. and i'm also definitely not editing this bc it's two am.

kate bishop x fem!reader: after the battle of new york you made it your life's mission to kill a god. somewhere along the way you meet kate bishop and get a little sidetracked.

warnings: angst, minor suicidal ideation, unhealthy relationships, emotional manipulation.

i am not currently fulfilling requests, but any made will be filed away for future consideration.

WHY CAN’T I PUT THE PAST ON ICE?

You’re stuck in your head.

You can’t get past the bit of your history where your family died, where you stood and watched, confused and horrified and transfixed, as the Chitauri blew a hole through your life.

The Battle of New York took everything from you — your mother, father, brother, sister, grandmother. Hell, it even took your dog. For that you cannot (will not) forgive the one who brought them here, the god who opened the door and stood aside while the Chitauri wreaked havoc on the world you held so dear.

For fun.

Loki, the Trickster God, God of Mischief and all its cohorts, will die at your hands one day. You’ll have it no other way. Either you will claim his life as your own or will die trying, and you do not consider dying a consequence.

To die is only to fail at the greatest task you have ever been given, and to fail trying would be as honorable a failure as any.

You vow to spend the rest of your life hunting the second in line to the Asgardian throne. You create trackers, build beacons, fake magical events — all to draw out the god who stole your life from you.

None of it works.

It’s by chance that you find another Asgardian on Earth. A college professor in Canada, doctor of history, so embedded in the academic world that it takes you a year and a half to admit to her heritage.

Jodunn, she calls herself.

“It was cold the night I was born,” she tells you. “Cold and fraught with storms of hail that scared my father so deeply he gave me a name to rival the ice.”

“He named you after the realm of the Frost Giants.”

“It seems that way,” she says, a knowing smile inching across her lips.

Jodunn leads you to Erik Selvig.

Erik Selvig cannot lead you to Thor.

“The man’s been off-world for a while,” he tells you. “No cell reception up in Asgard, I suppose. He’ll be back, I don’t doubt it, but I couldn’t tell you when.”

Selvig can, however, lead you to the Avengers who, at first, want nothing to do with you.

Until you meet Kate Bishop and momentarily forget your grand plan to kill a god.

“I’m Kate,” she says, offering a calloused hand and a crooked grin. “Hawkeye.”

You tell her your name and she tells you it suits you and you do your very best not to look smitten as she crinkles her nose and bids you to come along.

Kate takes you to dinner because she feels bad about Stark and Rogers telling you they can’t help.

“And because you’re, like, insanely pretty and I’d totally never forgive myself if I didn’t take this chance,” she admits when you ask her what exactly the two of you are doing.

“So this is a date.”

“Hell yeah, this is a date,” she says, “but only if you’re okay with that.”

You’re definitely okay with it.

It takes you two and a half weeks to tell her you’ve never actually dated anyone before. Too busy trying to figure out how to track down a god, how to subdue a god, and how to figure out what you’re supposed to do with your life once you actually kill a god.

“So…when I kissed you for the first time last week, was that—?”

“No,” you tell her, chuckling at the emotions that pass over her face (surprise, worry, curiosity) in the moments before you speak. “Unfortunately, Kate Bishop, you were not my first kiss.”

“No, no, right,” she says quickly, shaking her head, and you start to worry the moment she crosses her arms and tucks her hands beneath her elbows. Her body language is always loud and you’ve learned it’s almost never a good sign any time it goes quiet. “Of course not, that would be…stupid.”

Kate excuses herself and it takes you two hours to find her on a bench in Central Park with Lucky asleep on her feet. She’s watching a tee-ball game from afar, squinting in the wind as the little tykes run the bases.

“Their life is so simple,” she says when you sit down beside her. “Just tee-ball games and orange slices and pizza parties. I never thought I’d envy an eight-year-old.”

“I don’t know what’s happening,” you tell her because you really don’t and you also don’t know what you’re supposed to say to a woman you’ve barely known three weeks and have just started dating. “Did I do something wrong? You closed up real fast back there.”

She doesn’t answer right away, which is fine, just looks at the leash in her hands and shakes her head and sighs and looks at you and looks away and groans in frustration, which is less fine, but all you can do is sit there and wait.

“You said something,” she tells you after a while, and when she finally looks at you she’s smiling sheepishly, and, “It was the full-naming me thing,” she says. “I had someone — there was someone — who used to do that a lot. Someone who was really important to me, who, if I’m being totally honest, is still important to me, but I also haven’t seen her in a year. She dropped out of my life like it was nothing and it took me a long time to figure out how to fill all the empty space she left behind.”

When she reaches for your hand you let her take it, trying to tamp down the pang of your heart as you work through what you just heard. Thinking about her feeling the need to run at the first sign of emotional distress is hard, thinking about her losing someone important is worse, but her fingers pushing through yours to clasp your hand is what you try to focus on.

“Okay then. Just Kate.”

“That’ll work.”

“All right, hotshot,” you say. “How about we go somewhere warm and talk about the possibility of me breaking into Stark’s archives for Loki intel.”

Kate blinks.

“Okay, fine,” you say. “How about we go somewhere warm and talk about the possibility of me breaking into Stark’s archives over pizza.”

Both she and the dog perk up at that.

SO FUCKING BAD AT CUTTING TIES.

“I’ve been doing nothing in New York for six months,” you say, almost angrily, the grit in your voice only irritating you further. It doesn’t feel good to snap and it feels worse to see the hurt in Kate’s eyes when you do. “That’s not what I meant.”

“You’ve been sleeping in my bed and embedding yourself in my life for six months,” she says. “Taking me on dates and getting my dog to love you. Shit. Even Jack likes you and he’s an idiot, but he’s the closest thing left to family I have in this city.”

It really wasn’t what you meant.

You don’t regret any of the time you’ve spent with Kate. You don’t regret your mutual love for Lucky, nor do you regret giving Jack the Asgardian shortsword Jodunn gave you to use as a bargaining chip to get closer to Loki.

Okay, that’s a lie, you regret giving the sword up a little bit because it might’ve actually gotten you somewhere and you only gave it to him because you hadn’t made any god-killing progress in months and you were frustrated and not thinking straight and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Standing stupidly at the counter in one of Kate’s big tees and a pair of her purple sweats at four in the morning, hanging your head over the sink as you wrack your brain for anything to say that won’t make this worse, only makes things worse.

“If all of that isn’t nothing,” she says, “then I want to know what you meant. Explain it to me.”

“I” — you grit your teeth, squeezing your eyes shut, hands balling into fists — “need a drink.”

“It’s four in the morning.”

“It’s four in the morning and I need a drink. Is that going to be a problem?”

“You’re doing it again.”

“What, Kate?” It comes out tired, angry, and when you round on her the exasperation is plain as day on your face. The bags under your eyes don’t help. “What am I doing again?”

The worst is how fast she closes in on herself: hugs her knees to her chest, keeps turning away, pulls her sleeves down over her hands until the only thing left for you to look at is the insecurity in her eyes.

“Reminding me of her,” she says quietly. “She was always angry before she left, like she resented me for the stability and lack of life-threatening adventure.”

“You’re literally a superhero, Kate. Isn’t life-threatening adventure your entire job?”

“Okay. Sure.”

“Don’t do that.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re shutting down.”

“Well — well, you’re being a big asshole.”

She’s right. You are.

“Yeah,” you say, “I know.” You don’t say the part about putting your only goal in life on hold to shack up with her and a golden retriever in New York City.

“I’m a second-string Avenger, okay?” Kate huffs, rests her chin on her knee, and looks at you with a sad smile. “I don’t get to do anything cool, I just stay here in this stupid apartment and wait for them to tell me they need me.”

“Kate.”

“And they never need me.”

Fuck it, you think, becuase you really don’t know what else to think, or say, so, “Fuck it,” you say, “and fuck the Avengers, too, while we’re at it. Come with me.”

“I’m the only person you know in the city and you definitely do not have anywhere else to go. And I’m mad at you.”

“Kate.”

“Sorry.”

"Don't be."

You drop to the floor before her and pull her arms from around her legs, coaxing her to sit up on the edge of the couch, which she does, if reluctantly.

“Look,” you tell her, sliding your hands into hers and pulling her forward until she’s looming right over you and trying not to let you back in, “I’m not a good girlfriend, I know that, even though I don’t actually know if that’s what I am to you, but listen — come with me. If Billionaire Playboy Philanthropist and the Ice Boy won’t put your talents to good use, let me do that. I could use an Avenger in my corner, and you’re the best there is.”

“I’m barely an Avenger,” she says, and you hate how it hurts to see how much she believes that.

It’s because they don’t know what she’s truly worth, you think, how much she can do, and how ready for the hero life she actually is. Kate can do it. She’s ready, whether they believe that or not, but hell if you’re going to keep her on the bench and waste everything she has to offer. You’re not like them — not cautious, not worried, not trying to overplan. You know she can do everything (okay, maybe not everything) that the rest of the Avengers can do. You just need to give her the opportunity to prove that. And you need to give yourself an opportunity to make up for making her feel like you’ve never wanted to make her feel. Ever.

So, “Come with me,” you say again. “Prove to them that you’re worth more in the field than you are cooped up here.”

First she looks anxious, and then her anxiety gives way to anger, anger to acceptance, and then she nods so hesitantly that you’re not actually sure it’s a nod at all until she says, “Okay. Okay, I’ll come.”

Your chest swells with relief and you straighten up on your knees so you can reach her lips and melt into her.

“But,” she says against your mouth, giving a little hiss when you tug at her bottom lip. It takes her a second to get you off of her, at which point she’s rosy-cheeked and grinning bashfully, and, “But if one of the big ones comes after me, I’m telling them you abducted me from my apartment and forced me to be your sidekick.”

“Sidekick? You?” You overdo the shock, dropping your jaw and slapping a hand over your heart, just to see her smile again. You’d do a lot of things for that smile. “You’re no sidekick, Kate. You’re a hero, and I really need one of those.”

You’ve never been good at letting things go, and you’ve never started anything you don’t intend to finish, so you’ve never let yourself start something with anyone before. Mostly because it’s never been worth it and also because you’ve never not been terrified of what would happen if someone was, in fact, actually worth it.

Kate Bishop is not a mistake, but she was an accident, and you’ll be damned if you leave her in the wreckage.

And, shit, she might actually be worth it.

I WISH THAT I COULD JUST MOVE FORWARD.

“You were there, Kate. You know what it was like to watch those things tear through the city like it was nothing.”

Kate sighs. “I know,” she says quietly, and reaches for you in the dark, finding your damp cheek and swiping at the tears with her thumb. “My dad died that day.”

“Mine, too,” you tell her for the first time. It’s strange, you think, talking about it like this, in the middle of the night with the lights off, in a shitty hotel room on the outskirts of Quebec. “Right along with the rest of my family.” You don’t have a good reason for waiting so long to tell her why exactly you’re on this mission other than you don’t like talking about your family because it still stings and you’re still no closer to Loki.

Sometimes you dream of your family in the night and wake up believing it was real and spend the rest of your day grounding yourself in the reality that they are gone and are never coming back. It’s worse when you daydream of them, when you’re conscious and know they’re gone but still find it in yourself to wish for them. Even though you know better. You can’t win either way.

At least you can’t see Kate’s face right now. You’d like to think she’s not looking at you with pity, but you’ve never trusted anyone not to pity you before.

“The Battle of New York was what made me want to be a hero,” she says. “After that day there was no way in hell I could sit on the sidelines the next time something else happened.”

She’s told you this before. At least twice. About the wall of her house, blown open, about the Chitauri headed straight for her and the arrow that stopped them. And about Clint, the second hero she ever had. Right after her dad.

“We were kids,” she says, closer now, forehead bumping against your cheek, her lips catching your jaw. “Just kids, but that day still defines so many of us. That day is the reason I picked up a bow, and it’s the reason you—”

“Are on a suicide mission to kill a god? Yeah. I know.”

Kate laughs, tucking into your side, and something changes, and it’s not something you can identify. Not yet.

It isn’t until the next day that you manage to give it an honest thought.

A suicide mission, you called it. A path to certain death.

And death has always been a possibility, you’ve always known that. Hell, sometimes you’ve prayed for it. Only when to die would be easier than the alternative, especially when the alternative is only getting farther and farther away.

You don’t know how to find a god. And, shit, even if you did? You definitely do not know how to kill one. Your life’s mission, goal, dream — whatever — is an impossible possibility. It’s the pipe dream of an angry child who convinced herself that she could undo the wrong that was done to her family.

Maybe you’ve always known that, that this whole thing is impossible. Maybe you just didn’t care. Not about wasting your life, or about dying, or about any of it. But if this is a suicide mission, you are no longer the only one on it. What happens to Kate will be on your head. Her blood on your hands.

God forbid.

God fucking forbid.

Maybe it’s because you’re running on an hour and a half of sleep, or because your vision is tunneling and you don’t know where to veer off, but you decide then and there that you cannot let that happen. Not to her.

“Deal’s off,” you say into the phone a few minutes later. Kate’s out cold, one arm hanging off the bed and the other stuffed beneath a pillow.

“What a pity.” The Asgardian’s voice hums in your ear. “I understand you and the archer have become quite attached to one another, so I suppose I understand your hesitance.”

“I’m not hesitating,” you say, “I just won’t do it. I won’t.”

“Very well.” Quiet. Then: “If you won’t bring me an Avenger, I’m afraid I must ask you to return my sword.”

Shit.

“I don’t have it.”

“I know. Retrieve it for me, sweetling, though I advise you not to cross the border if you wish to see tomorrow.”

“Shit. I mean — fuck — okay. Fine, I’ll get you the sword.”

“If the man with the mustache, Jack Duquesne, is reluctant to give it up, bring me him as well. If that makes it easier.”

The line goes dead.

You look at Kate, sprawled out across the hotel bed, peaceful as you’ve ever seen her, and in that moment you decide maybe you deserve to die — suicide mission or not — becuase who else would do something like this if not a monster?

“Hey.” You shake her gently, brushing the hair out of her face to kiss her temple. “Come on, get up. We have to go.”

“Mm—? Oh. Hi.” A yawn. “Mmkay — okay — one minute.” Another yawn. “Are we going to see your professor friend?”

“No. We’re going back to New York.”

That wakes her up.

“What? Why? You said this was a good lead, that she might know where to find Thor.”

“I was wrong.”

Kate sits up, rubs at her eyes, and looks at you like you’re the only one who has the right answers.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” she says simply, through another yawn.

“Yeah,” you tell her, “I know. But we have to go. We can’t be here. You can’t be here. Just — trust me, okay?”

And, “Okay,” she says, reaching for her bow like it’s the only thing she has faith in at the moment, and, “okay. We’re going. Let’s go.”

[arvinsescape]

okay i love the way you write the “going public” trope so i have two requests but i’ll let u pick the one you like the most!!

one: first interview/talk show together after tom and actress!reader’s relationship goes public

two: a compilation of tom and reader’s instagram stories/posts together or of each other after they go public

thank u!!

First Interviews

A/N: So I chose the first option because I've done a lot of similar tropes regarding the second option! Thank you so much for sending this in, I hope you enjoy 💕

"Okay, so they are going to ask you both about the pictures." Your agent said as she made sure you looked your best.

"I gathered as much." You laughed and your agent smiled.

"You don't seem as bothered as you usually would." She teased, she knew how much you'd liked Tom when you'd worked together on set.

"For once I'm not answering questions as a PR move, it's nice." You shrugged. You'd dated people before but managed to keep most of them private, you were somewhat glad you had considering how' they'd turned out but you'd made the decision to go public with Tom because he was different, the relationship felt different.

You'd been with him for almost six months and you'd both made the decision to stop being careful and get caught in the midst of some PDA. This time it wasn't for a PR stunt, he made you happy and you were ready for the world to know that even if it did open the floodgates for some unwanted comments.

"Okay, you're up." Your agent said as the host announced your name and you made your way onto the interview, Tom had been called previously and he smiled widely as he saw you approach, standing to being you into a hug. Placing a kiss to your cheek that sent the audience into a frenzy.

"Very nice to have you back." The host spoke, you'd done a few interviews with him over the years.

"Very nice to be back." You spoke as you took your seat next to Tom.

He started out by asking a few questions about your new project that you were going to be starring in and you answered the questions happily.

"Of course the question now on everyone's mind is are the two of you actually dating? You were spotted locking lips last week." The host asked with a raised brow and you smiled.

"Yeah, we are. I mean I thought it was obvious." You joked and the host laughed.

"You of course met on set of your last movie, who made the first move?" The interviewer probed.

"Tom did. I was way too nervous, wasn't sure if he liked me or not." You laughed.

"I don't know why, we'd already kissed before that. I thought it was pretty obvious I liked you." Tom teased and the audience gasped, almost in shock.

"You mean the two of you kissed off set, before you got together?" The host asked, eyebrows raised, this was new information, you'd not told anybody about it.

"Yeah," Tom confirmed, "so how you thought I didn't like you back is beyond me." Tom continued with a laugh.

"I thought it was a caught up in the moment thing." You threw your hands up in defence.

"Do tell, what happened?"

"Well," Tom started. "I went round to her trailer to practise some lines that we were both getting ridiculously wrong and then I don't know it just kind of happened." Tom said as he mindlessly took your hand in his, playing with your fingers.

"I thought we were just caught up in the moment, it was an emotional scene." You laughed.

"That didn't involve any kissing what so ever and I know I go off script sometimes but not so much." Tom teased and you laughed.

"Look, I just didn't believe that the Tom Holland liked me back, okay." You said and Tom smiled before kissing your cheek.

"You're too good for me sweetheart." Tom whispered into your ear and you smiled.

"So Tom, how did you find working with Y/N? She's been in this industry since she was a child, be honest, is she a diva?" The host asked with a laugh and you couldn't help but snort.

"Are you trying to get me into trouble?" Tom laughed as you playfully punched his arm. "No, she's not, completely the opposite. She's an amazing person to work with, so caring. She knows everyone's name, how she remembers I don't know, by the way! She doesn't care if you're the director or the guy who makes coffee, she treats everyone with respect and it was refreshing too see."

"I think Tom's in love." The host joked.

"Oh, head over heals." Tom said immediately. You felt your heart lift with his words, he was a complete romantic, he never passed up an opportunity to compliment you or tell anyone he loved you.

"So what made you want to go public?"

"We've been together now for six months," you shrugged in answer. "It felt right, the timing, where our relationship is, everything." You smiled.

"Do you think you'll do anymore projects together?"

"Maybe in the future, who knows. I hope so, Tom is amazing to work with, I've never had so much fun on a set where I'm tired and borderline stressed all the time, the hours for this film where so long." You answered with a laugh.

"I hope so. Working with Y/N was honestly an experience I don't think I'll ever get again, she's unlike anyone I've ever worked with, so down to earth and I'm glad I've got her in my corner for as long as she'll have me." Tom said, eyes not leaving you, the audience cooing at his words.

"I love you." You smiled, not caring who heard.

"I love you." He returned, your attentions on each other now.

"So there we have it, confirmed here first, Y/N L/N and Tom Holland."

[bcdwhcre]

Can I request Levi getting a little drunk in the mess hall (maybe a party or something with everyone?!) and forgetting his relationship is a secret, causing everyone to be shocked when he accidentally kisses you or something? Ive just been thinking about this lately and youre my favourite Levi writer!!♥️ If you want more requests my brain is full of them!!!

“Drunken Thoughts,” Levi x Reader

Summary: Levi surprisingly gets drunk one night and reveals the dirty secret you two have🤭 aka secret relationship.

Warnings: alcohol intake incase anyone is triggered by that. ⚠️end of season 3 spoilersssss!!!!!!⚠️

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.

.

The week was stressful enough and after completing their mission on reclaiming wall Maria, the scouts had made it back. At first it felt wrong for them to celebrate so it had taken them until after the memorial of their fallen members for them to finally let loose and relax a bit.

They celebrated with the best food they could have and Hange had brought drinks, making sure everyone relaxed and had fun instead of being sad about what had happened and be more positive about the future of wall Maria.

Levi had expressed to you in private that he didn’t want to go and you felt bad, not wanting to really push the topic any longer but he ended up going anyways, only because Hange forced him.

You had kept your distance away from Levi almost the whole night, it pained you to do so but your relationship wasn’t out in the open yet and you didn’t want to reveal it any time soon.

Your eyes had glanced over at him a few times throughout the night, noticing the amount of alcohol he was consuming and it had worried you a bit.

You had only taken a few drinks, trying not to rush yourself but seeing Levi down drink after drink like it was nothing had you overthinking if there was something on his mind he was trying to forget, maybe the guilt of the death of most of the scout members or maybe Erwin’s death.

As the night went on for a few hours, most of the scouts had gone through enough drinks to be up, laughing and dancing around like crazy people but it was a nice sound hearing all of them laugh and be happy.

Connie and Jean had even got up, singing obnoxiously, making the scouts continue their laughter throughout the room.

Suddenly you felt a arm wrap around your shoulders, glancing up to see Levi as he pulled you into his body.

“Baby,” He whined, making your eyes widen and you had tried to hold his body up straight.

“I think you’re ready for bed.”

He giggled in your ear, making a smile appear on your face at the amount of giggling he was doing which was rare for him to do. He had stood up straight, grabbing your hands and dragged you towards the middle of the room.

“C’monnnn, dance with me.” He started to twirl you around, grabbing your hips and pulling your body to his in seconds.

Both of your chests were pressed against each other, his face inches away and you can smell the alcohol on his breath before he had tilted your chin up, pressing his lips on yours. It was a small sloppy kiss but it had made your heart flutter, making you completely forget about the scouts in the room.

The scouts started to whistle and laugh, making you realize what was happening and you pulled back from his mouth. Everyone’s eyes were on you and it made the embarrassment wash over you, making your cheeks turn a bright red.

Levi on the other hand was giggling his ass off, watching your reaction and he wrapped his arms around your shoulders, pulling your face into his chest, stroking your hair back.

“What’s so funny? I can kiss what’s mine whenever I want.” He said out loud, making the air get caught in your throat and you started to almost choke on it.

“What’s yours?!” Hange screamed from across the room and the more you sat there, the more embarrassing it had gotten.

“Hm yes, Y/N is mine.”

“Since when?”

“Since months ago.” Levi confidently said, making you shush him from saying anymore than what he just did now.

You listened to Levi argue with everyone, hiccuping every now and then along with a little fit of giggles. He was truly acting like a child and you finally pulled yourself back into reality and grabbed onto his hand.

“Alright, bed timeee!” You said, trying to drag him out the door and surpringly he had let you.

“I’m not tired!” He began to stumble around, making it that much harder for you to walk him out the door, practically holding him up.

You had ignored his words, trying to concentrate on taking him to his bedroom without falling considering you were pretty much tipsy yourself and you were trying to carry a complete drunk. Levi kept his arm around your shoulder, his hair was a mess and the random giggles made you question what was so funny inside his head?

Once you made it to his room, you opened it up and brought him inside. You set him on the bed, watching him flop down on his back and being the dramatic baby he is.

“Levi, sit up.” You mumbled, grabbing his arm to force him up and he whined louder, making your eyebrows furrow- it felt like you were being a parent.

“I’m just trying to take the suit off, you big baby.”

“I’m not a baby, you’re a baby. Actually- make that my baby.” He rambled, making you laugh while unbuttoning his white top.

“Is that so?” You mumbled, slipping his shirt off and suddenly he had caught on to what you were doing.

“Are you trying to get me naked?” He questioned you, his hooded eyes looking up at your face but you tried not to make eye contact.

“Only to get you in bed and comfortable.”

“I think you’re trying to seduce me.”

“Levi, shut up.” You laughed again, making him pout like a child and you combed your fingers through his hair.

You had finished taking off his clothes, leaving him in just his boxers before tugging the blankets back and forced him to get underneath. You tucked him in, looking down at him and the entire time his eyes were on you.

“You’re so pretty, lay with me- please?” Your heart began to race again, nodding you head as you took off the uncomfortable clothes you were wearing and settled in bed beside him.

He moved on his side to face you, his fingers moving up to run along your face before fully caressing it. Your thoughts ran wild and you couldn’t help but think about how much of a soft clingy boyfriend he was while drunk.

“Can I get a kiss?” He kept asking you random questions, like he needed to ask for permission for stuff like that and you had gently nodded.

“Always.” You mumbled, pushing the loose strands of his hair back and he leaned over to press his lips on yours.

The mixture of the alcohol on both of your tongues made it that much more intoxicating to the both of you but Levi kept the kiss soft, like he was savoring the moment,

When he pulled back, his lips landed on your forehead before he rolled to where he was cuddling you while you laid on your back and his face buried in the crook of your neck.

Your fingers had traced shapes on his bare back, hearing a random hiccup come from his mouth and you tried to stifle your laugh, knowing he was already falling asleep and soon enough, you heard his soft snores, making you turn to kiss the top of his head.

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I wish I could experience a drunk Levi

• Main Masterlist •

• AOT Masterlist •

[babyboibucky]

Should’ve Known Better

Pairing: EB!Frank x Reader

Summary: You should have known better than to sleep with a friend.

Word Count: 3.3k

Warnings: Smut, FWB set-up, a little bit of toxic shit, angst

A/N: Frank got the most votes when I asked which other Seb character I should write for, so here it is! This is very personal to me lmfao it’s somewhat based on my own experience that really fucked me up a couple of years ago aksncajscna no but for real, stay away from the friends with benefits kind of relationship if you can’t keep shit purely sexual lmao also some guys are just fucking assholes even if they’re your friend lol

ALSO, I tagged those who are in my Everything Bucky Tag List. I’m not sure if I’ll write more Frank in the future too so I won’t be creating a separate tag list for him yet.

MAIN MASTERLIST

"Do you love me?"

It was a simple question that was supposed to make you think. Given your experiences and your personality in general, you were supposed to cringe and ignore it. Maybe even make a joke out of it, especially that it was Frank who was asking you this question.

He wasn't supposed to ask it too. He wasn't one to ask such thing, not especially with the relationship that the both of you have. It was clear from the get go that this was nothing serious.

So why was he asking it now?

And why did you respond to it right away, as if you knew your answer even before he asked?

-

"Come on, it'll be fun."

You should've said no. You should have known better.

"I'll make you feel good, you won't regret this."

It did feel good, you were going to give Frank that. Possibly the best, even. But the latter part? You weren't so sure. Were you regretting it? Honestly, no.

Maybe not yet.

You'd rather not think about it for now.

"What's there to lose? We know each other too much to develop feelings anyway, you said so yourself."

Oh there's plenty to lose. Maybe a decade's worth of platonic (was it really platonic from the beginning though?) friendship. Your self-esteem was on the line too, but you didn't know it yet. You'll get there though, whether you like it or not.

"I'm free next Friday, come over. Spend the night with me. What do you say?"

You should've said no. You should have known better.

"Next Friday. I'll see you, okay?"

You should've said no. You should have known better.

"Ugh, fine."

But you said yes because you didn't know any better.

-

That first night with Frank was something else. It was fun and he kept his promise to make you feel good. So, so good. You never thought that sex could be that fucking good. At least, not with your previous partners. Not that you had many in the first place.

But god, Frank knew what he was doing and he loved doing things to you. He loved the entire process of knowing your body, what you liked and what you loved. How you liked to be kissed and touched and fucked.

He studied your body like his fucking life depended on it and you let him. You let him own your body because you needed someone to. You needed to feel something, wanted to have a purpose even for just a short while, even if it meant being someone's fuck buddy.

You felt lost for the longest time, but as you laid on Frank's bed with his tongue lapping up your cunt, you actually felt like you belonged somewhere.

-

You weren't a booty call, definitely not. And when things escalated between the both of you, Frank was already single and had broken off with his recent girlfriend, Daphne. You weren't a doormat nor a side chick. Frank had been your friend for the longest time, one of your closest actually. He knew you the best and not just physically. Frank knew the darkest parts of you the same way you knew him like the back of your hand. He was the most open to you, he said so himself.

"I don't know what I'd do without you." he told you one time.

Frank wasn't afraid to show you his true colors; how he wasn't the kind to settle for one or how he would often end up with someone immature or toxic. He himself was toxic and for the most part, you tolerated him.

That was the mistake on your part.

You let him be himself, that's why you held a special place in his heart. Not even his past girlfriends could get rid of you. You were untouchable.

"Are you sure she's fine with us going out?" you asked Frank one time, as the both of you headed to the movies.

He scoffed, "Yeah, don't worry. I already told her you're my best friend. You're off limits." he chuckled as he placed his hand on the small of your back, guiding you inside the cinema.

"You're fine." he reassured again, this time wrapping his arm around your shoulder and then cradling your head playfully.

-

Looking back, you sometimes ponder whether the friendship was really platonic. You were sure of it when the both of you first became friends; he was a couple of years older than you. You sort of looked up to him like an older brother for the first few years of your relationship. And he was very caring too, always looking out for you.

Your other friends were the first one to notice the closeness. They often told you that Frank seemed to have a thing for you. You brushed it off though, saying that it was impossible.

His girlfriend then was an acquaintance of yours. She was nice and wasn't bothered by how Frank was affectionate towards you.

Indeed, you were untouchable. You were the best friend after all.

-

"We fought again."

You rolled your eyes at Frank as he sat across from you at a local coffee shop near your place. It was your birthday and as always, you spent the most part of it with Frank.

It was like a tradition already, to celebrate your birthday with Frank first before you went out with your friends. Or even family. It was that kind of friendship.

"I'm sorry but who are we talking about again?" you joked.

Frank made a face, "Daphne." he responded. "I just told you about her like, two days ago."

You snickered, "I was kidding. But honestly though, you have to stop flirting with other girls. It's been really difficult for me to keep track of your record, Frank. And are you and Daphne even official?" you asked, taking a sip from your cold brew.

He rubbed his chin and shrugged, "Sorta. Well, we were official two weeks ago. Now though, I'm not so sure. Here's the thing, Daphne can be really..." he said, trying to search for the right words.

You hummed and shook your head, "Immature?" you said and mindlessly scrolled through your phone.

"You should really stop dating girls who are immature, Frank. I swear to god, this is like...I don't know, the fifth time you dated someone like her? Why don't you settle for someone who actually acts her age?" you blurted out.

Frank groaned and transferred to the seat next to you, his body facing yours and his hand landing on your thigh. You didn't mind, didn't think it was too touchy or intimate for someone who was in a relationship. It was pretty common for Frank to be this touchy with you anyway, you never paid much attention to it nor given it any malice.

"We fought because of you actually." Frank admitted with an apologetic smile.

Your head snapped towards him, a scowl etched on your face. "What did I do?!" you asked in defense.

"It was my fault. Daph saw your photo inside my wallet." he said.

"You should really throw away that photo. Jesus, why do you still have it anyway?" you complained.

Frank scoffed, "That's my favorite photo of you. I don't wanna get rid of it."

That was the last day that you considered your friendship with Frank platonic.

-

Come over

I miss u xoxo

Miss eating u out

Miss ur moans, wanna hear them again

You groaned at the continuous notifications that flooded your phone. While you were at work. After that first night with Frank, he had gotten extra clingy. No lies though, it felt nice to be wanted like this.

im free nxt Sat

Yay

Cant wait to see u, missed u a lot

dude, we were at the mall together just last wk

U really dont get attached do u?

Frowning at Frank's reply, you honestly didn't understand what he was implying.

what u mean?

Nothing

Work kept you busy for the entire week, with Frank bombarding you with sweet texts. You've avoided being sweet with him, it felt wrong. You weren't an affectionate person but Frank was, it was sort of one-sided. It wasn't a big deal anyway.

No one from the rest of your friends knew what had become of your friendship with Frank. You just thought it wasn't something that should be revealed. It was like your and Frank's little secret. You had to admit, the thrill only made the sex better.

Whenever the both of you went out with other people, the tension was there and it was fun. It was fun trying to brush off the way Frank's hand would steal touches from your waist, or how he'd subtly squeeze your thigh. The looks you exchanged from across the room; how Frank's "fuck me" eyes were meant for you and only you.

Things like that made you feel a certain type of way. But you never dwelled on it, or at least, you thought you didn't.

-

"Yeah, fuck...just like that, baby."

Frank's fingers dug deeply into the skin of your ass as he guided your hips. You gripped onto the back of the couch as you bounced on his cock, head thrown back from pleasure as Frank suckled one of your nipples. You could feel each of his fingers pressing down against your skin, it's probably going to leave bruises again.

"Frank, shit. I'm close." you panted against the skin of his neck, your arms wrapping around his shoulders and pulling him close.

Frank grunted and took your face in between his palms, forcing you to look at him as he began to thrust his hips upwards, eliciting a high-pitched whimper from you.

"Wanted to see you like this ever since." he breathed out, pressing his lips against your open mouth.

"Wanted you since we met, d'you know that?" he asked, grabbing a fistful of your hair and tugging your head back so he could nibble on your throat.

You shook your head and gripped his shoulders, nails scratching at his skin as you continued to ride his cock, "God, Frank...so close." you moaned.

You felt Frank's lips curl into a smirk against your neck, his fingers gripping your hair to keep you in place as his other hand slipped in between your bodies, finding your clit and rubbing it to help you reach your climax.

Every single time he touched you, you felt like your entire body was on fire. You felt the most alive, the most free whenever Frank fucked you. Maybe because he was truly gifted in bed or maybe he just knew your body and how to make it sing.

Or maybe it was because of the way he looked at you whenever you fall apart for him. Like he only had eyes for you, like it was only you that he could see.

Sweaty bodies and hoarse voices, the smell of smoke and sex lingering in the air. It was such a familiar ambiance by now. You liked how the aftermath of fucking Frank was never awkward, if any, it was a comfortable experience with the both of you just talking casually about how each other's day went.

"So I'm talking to this girl..." Frank said, turning you around so he could spoon you. Oh, the irony of the intimacy and conversation.

"Where'd you meet this girl?" you asked.

"Tinder." Frank snorted before pressing a kiss on your nape. "No, but she's different. I don't know, there's something about her."

You merely hummed in response.

"Think I might ask her out."

The first sting. The first realization. The first denial.

You should've said no. You should've known better.

-

The art exhibit wasn't a flop, but you wouldn't call it a success either. When you got a call from the organizer asking whether they can include your paintings in the exhibit, you said yes instantly. What can you say? You were a struggling artist who was seeking validation.

But now that you stood in front of your works with barely ten people attending the one-day exhibit, you thought that this wasn't a validation. It felt like a wake up call that maybe, art wasn't your calling and that you should probably give up on your dream.

"These are amazing."

You were on the verge of breaking down when you heard his voice. Turning around, you were surprised to see Frank. He was nodding his head as he approached you, his eyes scanning each of your painting.

"What are you doing here? I thought you had work." you asked.

Frank gave you a face, "Did you really think I'd miss out on your first exhibit?" he said and pulled you into a warm embrace.

"I'm proud of you." he whispered before kissing the crown of your head.

One validation from Frank was all it took for the walls to crumble down. He was the one who had been there for you all along and that was why you completely trusted him.

Frank will never hurt you, he'll never bring you down.

Or so you thought.

-

"Do you love me?"

It was a question that was supposed to make you think. But you didn't, because even before Frank decided to ask you that, you already had your answer.

You knew your answer for the longest time now, but decided to lock it into a box that you kept in the deepest part of your heart. It remained there unbothered and almost forgotten, up until this point.

That's why it was so easy for you to respond to it without even batting an eye.

"Yes."

It was too late when you realized that you had just admitted that you were in love with Frank. But you felt like it was the right time for you to bring out the key to that box, open it and just set your truth free.

They said that the truth will set you free, but why does it feel like it only imprisoned you?

"Shit, I was kidding." Frank said, his face panicked and body stiff from your unexpected admission.

Before you could even say something, Frank let out a nervous laugh as he ran his hand through his locks. "Wow, I didn't...are you serious?" he asked again.

It took you everything to brush off the pain, "Yeah, but it's no big deal. Come on." you shook your head and forced out a breathy chuckle.

Frank heaved out a deep sigh, "Fuck, I was messing with you. Are you sure it's fine? I mean, would this change anything?" he asked.

You deadpanned, "No, Frank. It wouldn't change anything. Like I said, get over it. It's not like I'm in love with you. I just love you...if that makes sense? You're my friend." you explained, more like lied.

"Look, it's not like I'm unattracted to you. I like you, I like spending time with you. It's just that I sort of don't see myself committing to you."

It didn't sink in to you immediately, Frank's statement. You didn't pay it any mind because again, you knew Frank. He wasn't one to commit so that was fine, you understand where he was coming from. It's not like you were going to force yourself on him too. But then you accidentally glanced at his phone and saw the messages he'd been exchanging with a certain someone.

When r u coming home?

In a little while, Daph

That night, Frank's statement hit you like a ton of bricks but again, you chose to deny what you actually felt. It's fine.

You're fine.

-

You should've said no. You should've known better.

Those words rang in your ears on the day that you found out. Your body turned cold, your vision blurred and your head spun. You'd never experienced hurt and anger like this, the kind that consumed you.

The kind that made you realized and admit that fuck, you'd truly fallen for Frank only for him to break your heart.

It didn't help that you were having such a terrible day at work. And Frank was so sweet to ask you whether you wanted to meet up with him. Not for sex, but to talk. The sex came rarely recently and was replaced with wholesome trips to the grocery, shit like that.

You knew there was something special going on. Even after he told you that he didn't see himself being with you, there was something.

Apparently, that something was just an assumption. Because when you asked Frank to meet you up that night, he said he couldn't and needed to be somewhere. That he'd meet with you the next day instead, a promise.

But then you saw him post a photo of him and Daphne. And it made your blood boil.

u back together?

No. Not really, been trying to fix it but u know how it is.

if ur trying to fix it with her then im out, frank

Wait what? Hey, are u mad?

r u fucking serious? u knew i love u and u come here parading ur ex, what the fuck is that all abt?

Shit, hey. Look, let's talk later, okay? Im out, will txt u when Im free.

Frank didn't text you back for the rest of the day.

-

You should've said no. You should've known better. But you said yes because you didn't know any better.

Were you regretting it? Yes. Sometimes.

You didn't know which hurt the most, the fact that Frank kept you in the dark while he was trying to patch things up with his ex, or that he considered you his best friend and still chose to break your heart.

He knew you the best, your relationship and trust issues and out of all the people, he really had to be the one to fuck you up the most. You trusted him so much, trusted him not to hurt you. Hell, if he doesn't want to commit then that's fine. But for him to treat you like a second option? Fuck that.

For him to confuse you with his actions, the intimacy...were all of those even real? All the times he came to your support when you had no one, when he was there for you on days you felt alone. What were those? He made you feel so fucking special, like it was possible to actually turn the friendship into something more than just fucking.

All this time you thought it was one-sided because you never actually showed Frank how much you meant to him the same way he did to you. Turned out that it was one-sided, but only because you were the only one who fell.

The following day, you received a voicemail from Frank. You pondered whether you were ready to listen to it but at the same time, you wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. It was pretty stupid, he fucked you up and there was no excuse for that. But the friendship you had with him had a strong hold on you.

"Look, I'm sorry I didn't tell you. That was my mistake." he started off. "I thought that this was really just sex and having fun, but I want you to know that I like you. I really do, you're special to me. Please give me a chance to make things right. Daph and I...I want to end things with her. Please stay, I don't know what I'd do without you."

“I just didn’t expect that you’d end up falling for me, I mean shit. You know the real me, how fucked up I am when it comes to relationships. Just please...please stay?”

Did you stay? Sort of. But you kept your distance, didn't meet up with Frank after that and only responded to his texts occasionally. Did he end things with Daph?

He didn't.

He said he would but instead, they got back together.

It was fucking selfish of Frank to ask for you to stay only for him to get back together with his ex. It'd be better for him to just slap you in the face then.

Being told that he couldn't see himself committing to you but then going back with his ex was the cherry on top. God, if that didn't mess up with your self-worth.

You totally stopped talking to Frank, ignored his texts and calls. You stayed away from him, tried to get over him and eventually, you did. But you'd be lying if you said that he never left an effect on you. Because he did, Frank did a number on you and it would take you a long fucking time to completely recover from the damage he inflicted on you.

You should've said no. You should've known better. But you said yes because you didn't know any better.

And that's okay, because there's nothing wrong with taking risks and ending up in heartbreak.

You live, you love and you learn.

-

Everything Bucky Tag List:

@ddowii​ @jessou893​ @stealapizzamyheart​ @bagelofthelord​ @mxnt​ @dontputyourfckingdrinkonmytable @jeeperky​ @ohladymacbeth​ @wildflowergubler​ @supraveng​ @twinerd14​ @buckysmar @bakugouswh0r3​ @sweetcoldharmony @wintersfilm​ @charminivy​ @amelia-song-pond​ @iamvalentinaconstanza​ @mcubqrnes @i’m-squished @tcc-gizmachine​ @sipsteacasually​ @prettyintopeerpressure​ @weloveyasmin​ @est19xxshit​ @bloodhon3yx​ @dressed-in-prada​ @lizette50​ @thatfangirl42​ @sunflowerbunny2​ @unmagically​ @okiegirl24​ @sugarpunch-princess​ @enlyume​ @vvipgotbb @slimeyderp​ @lyoongx​ @just-deka​ @nobody-will​ @jaziona92 @elisebuitron​ @dpaccione​ @suvikamahes98blr​ @buckybarneshairpullingkink​ @earthtonav @x-judyjude-x​ @nani-kenobi @just-here-to-escape-from-reality @belladonnabarnes​ @iloveangstposts​ @weenersoldierr​ @asemistablehundredyearoldman​ @reidbuck​ @lizzarooni​ @girlfriday007​ @bonkywobble​ @lost-in-the-stars03​ @its-yasbxtch​ @whoth3hellisbucky​

[nationalharryleague]

Diplomacy

Pairing: Harry Styles x Reader

Genre: Enemies to Lovers Royal AU 

Word count: 12K (I may have gotten carried away) 

Warnings: Parental Death, an American writing about monarchies she doesn’t understand 

A/N: Hi everyone! I have been working on this one for a while and it’s by far the longest thing I’ve ever written and I am so proud of it (please be nice)!! I also made a Pinterest board with all the outfits from this if you want to check it out here!! SO SO SO much love to @meetmymouth​ @bfharry​ and @hardcandy-harry​ for helping me out when I needed it and being the most wonderful people in general :) As always, thank you so so much for reading!! More of my writing can be found in my masterlist and feedback/reblogs mean the world!!! 

****

Y/N knew from the day she could understand the concept of marriage that she would one day be married to the little prince with wild brown curls her mother always forced her to play with. She still vividly remembered the first time he told her that she was ugly and that he hated her. She was only five years old at the time.

Fortunately, she hated him just as much as he hated her. He was rude, somehow always sticky, and seemed to have no filter or manners, letting every nasty thing he could think of fall past his lips in daggers aimed at his future wife.

As they grew older, their animosity only grew, from petty to school yard quarrels to attacks on their personalities and who they were as people. Despite her pleas to her mother to be sent to a different boarding school than the one he was already attending, she was shipped off.

She studied judiciously, what was expected of every future queen, while she watched Harry meander through his schooling. He never seemed to listen in class, never studied, and seemed to only care about football and girls. She watched with jealousy and contempt as he flirted with every girl at their school, every girl except the one he knew he was to marry; while every boy in the school knew Y/N was off limits, direct orders from the crown.

It made her uncomfortable how much she disliked him. She was not a hateful person, having been trained well to treat everyone with dignity and respect, she was a princess after all. But something about Harry just got under her skin. She barely was able to control the instinctive eye roll whenever his name was mentioned and she often pretended to gag when discussing him with her friends, especially when one of them would inevitably call him ‘dreamy.’

The happiest day of her life was the day she watched him graduate, knowing she had been awarded years of peace without having to listen to his taunts or watch him flirt with everything that breathed. During those years, she flourished. She grew from a timid girl in line for power to a confident young woman preparing for the crown. She knew her country through and through, her constitution front to back, and had even begun studying Harry’s country as well. Whether she liked it or not, she knew she would have to pick up his slack in governing his kingdom eventually, she might as well be good at it.

Four more years of education at Cambridge, brought four more years of growth and being free from Harry, but the deal she had made with her mother was quickly coming to a close. As soon as she finished her education, their engagement would be made official and wedding planning would commence. While she was tempted to beg for some sort of delay or escape, she understood this was her duty. She owed this to her people, and soon to Harry’s as well; her mother was counting on her.

For the first time in too many years, she stood inside her former and future home. She remembered running through the halls of the massive palace under the ornate ceilings that now hung above her again; reality was sinking in. Through the massive wooden doors that sat in front of her, she knew her fate awaited; a fate named Harry. With a deep breath she steeled herself and smoothed the blush pink lace skirt of her dress, preparing to see the face that had haunted her for so long.

The first thing she noticed was the playful smirk that she associated so closely with his taunts from when they were children. It was the smirk that made her stomach drop; she could only imagine the nasty things that could come past those lips now. He had years to practice.

He stood confidently next to her mother, who had a bright and triumphant grin on her face. He was dressed in an impeccably tailored forest green suit, decorated with his coat of arms pin on the lapel. She wished for the vibrance of his green eyes to lessen but the tone of his suit only made them more intense than she had remembered.

“Harry,” she breathed, as diplomatically and with as much confidence as she could muster. “It’s good to see you,” she lied, reaching her hand out for him to kiss in the antiquated custom that always made her deeply uncomfortable. He delicately grasped her hand and slowly brought it to his blushed lips, the kiss lingering longer than what could have been considered friendly. His snake-like eyes locked with hers, still containing the mischievous glint she had nightmares about. She couldn’t help but notice the hysterically hopeful smile on her mother’s face as she watched them interact.

“It’s always a pleasure, your highness,” he hummed. He must have remembered how uncomfortable that title made her. She was honestly impressed at how he managed to lie and antagonize her in the first sentence he had said to her in over six years.

“Please call me Y/N,” she instructed as politely as possible.

“As you wish,” he said with a conniving smirk on his face. She had been with him no more than two minutes and she already wanted to run for her life. But this wasn’t about her, her country would need a leader soon, and unfortunately, that had to be her.

Her mother rushed over excitedly between the two, breaking the contemptuous silence that had built between them. “Oh children, it’s so nice to see you two back together again. I remember when you used to play when you were little. Always teasing, like you had the biggest crushes on each other.” ‘Teasing’ is a nice way to refer to torture, Y/N thought to herself, never daring to verbalize a thought like that.

“We did always have fun didn’t we, Y/N?” Harry asked her, a thin glaze of politeness coating his malice.

“Oh yes, we did. I still have a scar on my thigh from when you pushed me off the monkey bars.” Her tone was tight lipped and curt, her politeness beginning to give way to the verbal lashing she was dreaming of giving him.

“You’ll have to show me sometime.”

Y/N’s jaw nearly hit the ground. She knew he was a dirty good for nothing flirt, but in front of her mother? If her mother hadn't gently grasped both of their hands, she would have stomped out of the room. Her mother’s gentle touch brought her mind back to what this was all about once again.

“Harry is going to be staying with us from now on,” her mother interjected, clearly sensing the animosity between them. “Oh, and I nearly forgot! Harry, I believe you have something for Y/N, correct?”

“Of course.” He flashed his charming smiles at her poor mother, “How could I have forgotten about that?”

She watched him intently as he reached for the pocket inside his suit jacket, pulling out a small indigo colored velvet box. He opened the box with delicate hands to reveal one of the most gorgeous engagement rings Y/N had ever seen. A deep green emerald sat inside a ring of crystal clear diamond florets, all placed meticulously with care into a gold setting, the color of the velvet intensifying the emerald stone. “It was my grandmother’s,” he spoke softly, the first time she had ever heard him speak with any emotion or genuine feeling. “Before she died, she said she wanted you to have it. She was the mastermind of this arrangement afterall,” he said with a slight chuckle. “For formality’s sake,” he began with a sigh, “will you marry me?”

No, passed through Y/N’s head, but “Yes” fell from her lips. While her heart broke for herself and any chance she had of finding true love, the smile and happy tears in her mother’s eyes reminded her why she was doing all of this. She needs me to do this, Y/N thought to herself, my country is going to need a leader.

Their engagement was announced later that day by royal decree and their wedding was scheduled for the next month. There was no going back now.

The palace was in a flurry of planning and plotting for the big day. Y/N was rushed from meeting to meeting, instructed to make decisions about everything and anything she wanted for the wedding. She stared at floral arrangements until her eyes hurt and flipped through magazines looking at bridesmaid and flower girl dresses until her fingers felt like they were about to fall off. Unsurprisingly to Y/N, Harry was there for almost none of it. Although, she wasn’t exactly complaining about his absence.

He only surfaced when food or his suit was involved. In one vile incident, he arrived at the cake tasting with a wad of gum in his mouth, which was not only strictly prohibited for royals because it could be perceived as being too casual, but Y/N almost called off the entire wedding when she watched him stick chewed bubble gum to the bottom of a 200 year old handcrafted dining table.

“Were you raised by wolves?” she asked through gritted teeth while scolding him and desperately trying to remove the mess.

“Nannies, actually.” She knew by the smirk on his face that he wasn’t done with whatever antagonistic taunts that were planned to fall from his lips. “I’m pretty wild in the bedroom too, wifey.”

His crude comments were meant to hurt her and make her uncomfortable. He knew from their time in school together that she was constantly watched and kept far away from the gaze of any peaking boys, shining a spotlight on the massive double standard between the pair of future rulers. She wore a cloak of inexperience and innocence given to her against her will that embarrassed her to no end, and he knew that the easiest way to pinken her cheeks was to mention sex in any way. He aimed to fluster the poor girl and he got away with it anytime he flashed his dimples in a devilish smirk.

Y/N’s cheeks flushed red in embarrassment and furry before she got up from the table and stormed out of the room, muttering “pick whatever fucking cake you want,” before flying down the hallway to her bedroom and slamming the door behind her.

She felt frustrated tears pricking at her eyes as she slid down the back of the heavy wooden door to the floor below her. She let the fabric of her once perfectly steamed dress crumple beneath her and before she let the floodgates of tears open, she looked down at the dainty silver watch that sat on her wrist. You have five minutes until your appointment with the dressmaker, she thought to herself. Three minutes to cry, two minutes to change into a new dress and fix your makeup.

For three minutes, she let all her anger, frustration, and heartbreak fall out of her in loud sobs that anyone on the other side of the door was sure to hear. For three minutes, she let herself feel every angry emotion she had ever felt towards Harry. For three minutes, she didn’t care about her country or her mother needing this wedding. For three minutes, she didn’t care about anything other than her hurt. But only for three minutes.

Then she wiped the tears away, picked herself up off the floor, dressed herself in her favorite navy blue dress, fixed her mascara, and pressed a cool cloth on her cheeks to quell their angry heat. And then she went to see the dressmaker.

The only joy Y/N got out of this whole ordeal was getting to see her dressmaker, Agnes. Agnes was a kind and quiet old woman who was one of the most talented people she had ever met. The pair would sit together for hours discussing styles, the only time her schedule allowed her to relax, and the woman was in the middle of crafting the gown of  Y/N’s dreams. It was a lace long sleeved gown with a cathedral length train. The top portion of the lace was sheer, making a strapless neckline visible, before the delicately crafted lace moved crawled up Y/N’s neck into a high collar neckline. It was reserved, but elegant and unique; “just like you,” Agnes once said.

The first time Y/N was able to try the dress on was bittersweet. The dress was stunning and it made her feel like the princess she was, but she did shed a tear thinking about how this moment was tainted with Harry. She wouldn’t be wearing this dress while walking down the aisle to marry the love of her life, she was marrying someone she would consider an enemy.

She bowed down reverently when her mother placed a veil and tiara on her head. The tiara was encrusted with diamonds and speckled with emeralds that happened to match her engagement ring. The tiara was an heirloom and every woman in her family had worn it while getting married for the last two hundred years.

Her mother wept softly before her, a proud smile on her lips. “I’m so happy I get to see you in the wedding tiara before I go, sweetheart,” she said leaning in to press a gentle kiss to Y/N’s cheek. “I know you and Harry aren’t always a perfect pair and neither were your father and I, but we made you.” The queen’s eyes flashed over her face trying to take her in, “And you turned out to be my proudest achievement and the savior of a nation.”

“Thank you, Mama.” She hadn’t called her mother by that name since she was a young girl but it just felt right at that moment. She felt like a child, needing someone to take care of her while she waited for a country to fall on her shoulders.

“I will always guide you through whatever I can,” she said tenderly. “Even when I’m not here, I will always be with you.” Y/N watched as her mother’s eyes welled with more tears, excusing herself quickly before they grew more intense.

Not more than five minutes later, she heard the obnoxious whistling that she had begun to hear in her nightmares from down the hall. What she didn’t expect was for Harry to burst through the door, not only interrupting her fitting, but seeing the dress before the wedding day.

Like all members of traditional royal families, Y/N was extremely superstitious. Her heart immediately broke as she watched his eyes look her up and down, like there was a little piece of her that thought if they did everything right and didn’t break any traditional rules, maybe they would work out. What hurt her even more was that he didn’t even try to leave. He just sat down on a chair, smacking his gum, and stared at her like he was doing nothing wrong. Her eyes were still filled with tears from the emotional moment with her mother and they continued to flow, no longer out of love, but out of anger and frustration.

“Agnes,” Y/N finally spoke, voice cracking as she tried to hold back her tears, “will you excuse us for a moment?”

“Yes, your highness,” Agnes took delicate steps backwards like she was expecting a bomb to go off, before turning around and scurrying out of the room. Her instincts were correct, because at that moment, Y/N exploded.

“What did I ever do to you Harry?” she questioned angrily. “Why are you so determined to absolutely ruin my life? It’s bad enough that I am having an arranged marriage, not even one that I have the tiniest bit of say in.” She watched Harry’s eyes grow wide, like he had never expected her to stand up to him. “I have spent my entire life being watched and guarded, and avoided by every man I’ve ever gotten close to because I was already claimed by someone who wanted nothing to do with me.” She couldn’t remember the last time she had raised her voice like this at someone; she wasn’t sure if she ever had before. “You can’t even pretend that you like me or that we won't be miserable for our entire lives.”

“Y/N, I don’t want this either,” he spoke after a moment of silence, the quiet only broken by Y/N’s heaving breath. “Why can’t you just calm down?”

“Why can’t I calm down?” she repeated. “Maybe because my country is looking to me to become it’s queen. I can’t give myself to my people when I am worrying about you and your incompetence. You may not become king in your country for another 30 years; you have time to learn and grow into a ruler because you’re in my monarchy and you get to learn here first. You’re playing king with my people. Millions of people rely on us the second I am crowned and you act like your irresponsibility doesn’t have far reaching consequences.”

“I’ll be perfectly fine,” he spat back at her, rolling his eyes with his arms crossed in front of himself as he sat back in the chair. “I can’t believe I have to marry you and into this family.”

Y/N felt like she had been punched in the gut. She was stuck with this man for the rest of her life and here he was, disrespecting her, her people, and her family. “Get out,” she said under her breath. When he didn’t move from his seat, she began to yell once again, “Get out! I mean it!” She dropped her voice once again, and spoke more seriously than she ever had before. “I have never hated anymore more than I hate you, Harry. I am doing all of this because I love my country and my people, but I want you to know, I will never be happy because of you.”

For a moment, through her tears, it looked like he had been hurt because of her words, but he was gone from the room before she could confirm it.

She fell to her knees on the dress platform, surrounded by the piles of pure white fabric. She was a perfectly dressed ball of furry and sobs, angry at the world and her predicament. Leaning over and putting her head in her hands, she felt the tiara as it began to slip off her head, falling into her lap.

Y/N picked up the tiara, using gentle reverent hands, examining it closely. The tiara represented the monarchy and every female ruler in her family that had come before her. It shined and dazzled in the bright lights of the room, its crystal clear and emerald stones reflecting multi colored light onto the crisp white of the dress below her. “I’m doing this for you,” she whispered quietly to the tiara like it could answer, tears still silently rolling down her face.

***

They didn’t speak again for almost a week. They communicated solely through their royal secretaries, sending the poor men back and forth with angry messages, almost gossiping about what was happening with each member of the pair when they returned to the sender. Y/N hated Harry, Harry hated Y/N; the same sentiment sent back and forth over and over. The two were driving fast towards a brick wall, and the brick wall was their wedding.

When she woke up one morning about a week before their nuptials, there was a small envelope sitting on the ground like it had been slid underneath her bedroom door. We have to talk, was all it read. It was not lost on her that the stationary had a small olive branch illustrated onto the page.

Later that afternoon, they met in the garden. It felt like a neutral place to talk, the palace obviously being her territory. She had worn a casual flowing white dress, like she was raising a white flag; and she carefully walked with a mug of black coffee, a peace offering of sorts, careful not to get any of the dark liquid on the fabric of her dress.

She found him along a bed of purple Hyacinths, their sweet perfume enveloping them both, sitting on the soft ground dressed in the most casual clothes she had ever seen him in. He was wearing a simple lilac button up and a pair of jeans. He seemed more approachable this way, without the tailoring and the coat of arms that always sat on his lapel. The golden highlights in his curls came out in the sun and his tanned skin seemed to glow. He held a rose colored leather bound notebook in his hands.

“Hi,” she said softly, a sharp contrast to her screaming the last time they spoke. “I brought you a coffee. The nice ladies in the kitchen say you take it black.” The corners of his mouth turned up slightly and he gave her a friendly but unenthusiastic smile.

“Thank you,” he breathed, as she handed him the hot mug.

“Can I sit?”

“I’m not in charge of you,” he mumbled into the cup taking a sip. It wasn’t until she noticed how his eyebrow shot up and how his eyes had a playful gleam in them, that her offence washed away. “Of course, you can sit down.”

“What’s the book for?” she asked gently once she settled on the ground a safe distance away from him. She decided a few grass stains were worth being on speaking terms with the man she was supposed to marry.

“Um, it’s actually for you.” He reached over and placed the book in her hands. She ran her hands over her initials that had been embossed onto the leather cover. “I’ve been meaning to give it to you for a while,” he said quietly, “I remember you used to write a lot when we were in school together. I thought you would like it.” She felt a confusing mixture of thankfulness for the book, guilt for her outburst, and all the frustration that she still held towards him.

��Thank you, Harry. That was really thoughtful of you.”

A silence hung among them, neither of them sure of the next steps this conversation had to take.

“Can we talk?” Harry asked, finally breaking the tension between the pair.

“Yes, please,” she answered just as quickly as he had asked.

“I wanted to apologize for interrupting your fitting like that. I didn’t know all the traditions meant so much to you and I never meant to make you so upset.” She had never heard Harry apologize before, to anyone else, and definitely not to her.

Before that moment, she had always thought of him as an impenetrable force, wondering if there even was a soul or a conscience in his body. But here he was, vulnerability and all, offering an olive branch and an apology.

“Thank you,” she said cautiously, wading into the almost friendly waters she had never been in with him. “I’m sorry for screaming at you like that. I said some very hurtful things to you.”

“So have I.”

“I want you to know that I don’t hate you and I shouldn’t have said I did. But, I don’t necessarily like you either, Harry,” she said, deciding now was the time they needed to open the line of communication. One of them would eventually combust if they continued on with their hatred like this. “You have tortured me since we were little kids and it’s going to take me some time for me to get over that.” She watched as he nodded his head along with her words, seeming to listen intently.

“I feel like that is also something I should apologize for. No offence, but I didn’t want to get married to you either- still don’t, but I was much more of a dick about it then,” he let out a light laugh, flashing one of his famous dimples before releasing a sigh. “I took out not having control of my life out on you and I’m sorry.” She never thought she would receive validation for all the hurt he put her through for so long.

“Listen, we are getting married as part of a diplomatic partnership,” she began, “I feel like we should at least act diplomatic towards each other.”

“Does that mean that we have to be friends?”

“Definitely not. Just not enemies.”

“I think I can do that, wifey.”

***

The next week passed in a surprisingly civil blur for them both. Y/N was still in the throws of getting ready for a wedding and Harry was off doing whatever Harry usually did. She didn’t expect him to be doing much but she was just glad he was out of her hair. But when they did run into each other, usually at some sort of meeting surrounding the menu, they had a new found respect for the other.

The pair hadn’t been fighting which was nice for a change, even though it did raise some eyebrows in both of their staff. At her final dress fitting two days before the wedding Agnes had asked her if she was ready to be a married woman. “Absolutely not,” Y/N had laughed, “but it’s my responsibility to my people and my country. I have lived the most privileged life imaginable up until this point, it’s time for me to begin my duties.”

“You’re a good girl, your highness. You’re going to make a great queen when the time comes. Even with a husband you may have to wrangle sometimes.” She ended her compliments with a giggle as she zipped Y/N into the dress, and she felt her heart warm. Agnes placed the final touches of the veil and tiara on top of her head, giving her a nod of permission to finally look at herself in the mirror.

The dress fit her like a glove. The delicate lace ran the expanse of the dress, starting at the very back of her immensely long train and crawling its way all the way to Y/N’s throat, and the fitted top half gave way to a full ball gown skirt. Y/N’s eyes followed the intricate lace patterns down her arm, eyes eventually landing on her hand and the ring that sat upon it. For the first time since it had begun to sit on her ring finger, she didn’t want to throw it across the room in frustration. It really was gorgeous and the tiny inkling of respect she had for Harry now made it much less painful to look at.

Staring at the mirror, she noticed the blurring of her vision and the wetness on her cheeks.

“I really am getting married, aren’t I?” she asked with a disbelieving laugh.

“Yes you are, your highness.” Agnes looked up at her through her thick lensed glasses with a proud smile on her face. “Now, let’s get you out of this contraption so you can go rest up for the big day.” Anges’ skilled hands freed Y/N from the beautiful layers of fabric and tulle and sent her on her way back to her bedroom.

Y/N was finally almost asleep in the early hours of the morning when she heard a gentle and almost timid knock on her door. She could have ignored it, rolled back over and let her dreams take her, but for some reason it felt important for her to get out of  bed and answer the door. Her bare feet hit the cold wood floors and she tip-toed her way to the door.

When she grabbed the knob to open it, she heard a familiar voice say “don’t open the door! I don’t think I’m supposed to see you,” in a hurried and hushed tone.  

“Harry?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” His voice was gravelly with exhaustion and had an apprehensive, almost nervous quality she had never heard from him before.

“Why are you here?”

“I just wanted to talk to you.” He said it so softly she wouldn’t have been able to hear him if her ear wasn’t pressed up against the doorway. The sentiment brought a smile to her lips and she wasn’t completely sure why. She was quiet for a moment, deciding if she wanted to turn him away or not when she heard him sarcastically ask, “What? I’m not allowed to talk to my wife?”

“I’m not your wife yet,” she reminded him with a tired chuckle. “But we can talk,” she assured him. “I’m going to sit down, okay? My legs are tired from my heels all day.” She kneeled down and leaned herself up against the hard wooden door.

She had been in this same position only a few weeks before, angry at the world and wanting to kill the man on the other side of it; but here she was, speaking to him willingly, even joking with him. She listened close as his own body rested against the floor and leaned on the opposite side, mirroring her own position.

“Those heels really hurt, don’t they?” he asked, voice still hushed. If she wasn’t so tired, she might have even said she heard a smile in his voice.

“Yeah, they are like little death traps for your feet and legs.” He let out a small laugh on the other side and her lips pulled into a smile that she hadn’t given them permission for.

“How many pairs do you have? You always match your dress to your shoes so you must have a ton.”

She was gradually learning that he was much more observant than she had originally thought. He apparently wasn’t the dumb boy that she remembered from school anymore.

“Too many,” she said with a soft laugh and a shake of her head. “I’m wearing my favorites tomorrow.”

“And which ones are those?”

“They’re white, obviously; they have to match,” she smiled. “They have a green gem at the toes. They match the tiara I’ll be wearing.” She stopped for a moment before continuing on. “And your grandmother’s ring.” She played with the gold band that sat on her ring finger, still somehow dazzling in the very limited light of her dark room. “Thank you, by the way. It’s gorgeous.”

“You’re welcome. She wanted you to have it.”

“Did she really?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said confidently on the other side of the door. She imagined him nodding along with his words to emphasize his point, as he often did while speaking. “She kept tabs on you while we were growing up. She was always talking about how smart you seemed and that you would be a good queen one day. If I didn’t know better, I would say she liked you more than me growing up.” Y/N felt her cheeks heat up with the information. She was flattered by his grandmother’s opinion of her, but her heart also ached for Harry.

“I’m sure that's not true.”

“I think it was. I was always screwing up in one way or another; always creating messes that her and my parents had to clean up.” He paused for a moment and she heard him let out a long sigh. “Always running around with other girls and making the one I was supposed to marry feel like shit.”

She wished she could see his face. She wished that she could get a read on his emotions. But there was, literally and figuratively, a wall between them.

“Y/N,” she heard his voice squeak out through a voice crack, “I really am sorry for everything I’ve done to you.”

“I know. I forgive you, Harry.”

Saying those four words, lifted a weight she didn’t know she had been carrying off her shoulders. This moment felt like an absolution, a time to wipe their long and complicated slate clean. There was no better time for them to start anew than the night before they began the next chapter of their lives. But this chapter would be together, as a pair and a team.

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry too, Harry. I know this all had to happen so fast so I could take the throne, but I know you thought you had more time. I thought I did too.”

“What do you mean? Why did it have to happen so fast?” he asked.

First, Y/N was confused. There was a very obvious answer. Then her heart began to break for him. He wasn’t ready at all for what was coming. No one must have told him.

“Harry,” she said softly, “Do you know about my mother?”

“What do you mean?” From the tone in his voice, she knew he genuinely didn’t know.

“My mom-” she began gently, swallowing the lump in her throat that always appeared when she began to talk about this, “My mom is dying, Harry.” She heard a soft gasp through the door before she went on. “She’s been sick for a while, but things are getting really bad. Her doctors think she only has a couple weeks left.”

She listened to his breathing stop, like his mouth was hung open searching for something to say. He was quiet for a few moments before he landed on what seemed like the only thing he had said over and over these last few weeks, “Y/N, I’m so sorry. I’m here for you if you need to talk about all of this.”

His offer was not lost on her. The idea of Harry being someone she could confide in was a new one, but one that she would consider.

“It’s okay.” She choked out, wiping a few stray tears that had found their way out, off her cheeks. “I have had enough time to come to terms with it. But in our archaic constitution,” she said with a biting distaste in her voice, “a woman cannot become the sovereign of the country if she isn't married. That’s why this all had to happen so fast.”

“I see.”

The pair were quiet, both curled up on opposite sides of the wall; simultaneously experiencing a unique type of loneliness that only the other could understand. In less than 12 hours, they would be married, linked by an oath that neither of them had signed up for, in circumstances with responsibilities that neither of them were ready to handle.

“Harry,” she peeped, breaking a silence that hung heavy over them both, “you should go to sleep. We have a big day tomorrow.”  

She listened through the door to the rustling of him getting up off the floor beside her. “You should get some sleep too.”

“I’ll try my best.”

“So will I. I’ll see you at the altar, wifey.”

She let out a strangled laugh at the nickname he had adopted for her, her throat still tight from crying. She listened to his foot falls until they disappeared down the hallway before she mustered the strength to drag herself back to bed. Her staff was on strict orders from the wedding planner to have her woken up at 8 to begin getting ready and she wanted to get some rest before the sun came up.

And like clockwork, her curtains were thrown wide open at 8 am, sunlight blinding her as she woke up. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to her rude awakening, but soon she could make out the bustling room around her. Hair stylists, makeup artists, bridesmaids, flower girls, her mother, and some lady with an ear piece and a clip board fluttered about her bedroom with an excited chatter. Taking in the chaotic scene, it really hit her. Holy shit, I’m getting married today, she thought.

Her stomach twisted and turned in knots as the gaggle of women fawned over her, instructing her to stay still and “stop shaking” as they applied layers of makeup and fussed with her hair. Her hair was pulled into a delicately crafted low bun and her eyes were painted with neutral tones and a little bit of shimmer. Diamond and emerald earrings were threaded through her ear lobes and her fingernails were inspected to see if they needed any touch ups. Her shaky body was zipped into her dress and her feet slipped into her heels while her cathedral length veil was pinned meticulously into her hair. She was only missing one last thing.

“Your tiara, your highness,” her mother joked through the happy and proud tears welling up in her eyes. The tiara was the one last thing she needed before she was sent on her way to the cathedral. She bent down slightly, her mother delicately crowing her; when she rose, she couldn't help but grab onto her mother and hold her tight. It was hard for her not to think about the next time she would be crowned, a time when her mother wouldn’t be there to offer the guidance or support Y/N needed.

“I love you, Mama,” was all she said. It was the only reason all of this was happening. She loved her mother too much to let her down.

“I love you more, my princess,” her mother said gently, before turning away and scurrying off to do something else. Y/N tried to ignore the wince on her face when she moved too fast and the slight wheeze she made when she was speaking.

Surveying the scene around her, Y/N felt like she was about to die. Her heart was pounding hard in her ears, her palms were slick with sweat, her breathing was labored, and her chest felt tight. She had never been so overwhelmed with anxiety before. She had known today was coming her entire life, but the fact that it really was here was too much for her brain to wrap itself around.

It was like she had blacked out from fear, an hour of her life completely unaccounted for. She didn’t remember the last minute checks and touches to her hair and makeup. She didn’t remember her mother delicately resting her veil over her face. She didn’t remember getting in the car bringing her to the cathedral. She didn’t remember someone shoving a bouquet of flowers in her hands. She didn’t remember the music starting up or walking down the aisle of the giant imposing and ornate cathedral.

She was only brought back to reality when she reached the imposing altar and Harry delicately took her hand into his. His green eyes were painted with concern when he saw the worried crease between her eyebrows and the way she was chewing on her bottom lip under her sheer veil, swiping his thumb up and down her skin in an attempt to soothe her. It was the first time he had ever touched her voluntarily; it was a gentle and tender touch, full of care.  She gripped back tight onto his hand, holding on for dear life as she thought over everything that was about to happen.

They were instructed to stand forward, watching the officiant as he droned on about love and duty to one’s country and spouse, but their hands stayed clasped tight onto each other, like they were being thrown into a stormy and unpredictable sea and the other’s hand was their only life line. And in a way, they were.

When they were told to turn towards each other to begin their vows, their eyes locked and she began to really look at him for the first time. She watched his plush lips closely as he recited the words fed to him from the officiant, although she didn’t hear a single word of them. Her eyes traced his strong cheekbones and landed on his adorable button nose before returning back to his eyes. She noticed the slight blue bags that sat under them, signaling he had just as much trouble sleeping as she did.

His eyes brought her a calm that she hadn’t felt in years, silently telling her that she wasn’t alone in all of this, his warm hands still holding on to hers punctuating that sentiment. There wasn’t anyone else in the massive cathedral but the pair of them anymore, just two scared kids trying to make it through the demands weighing on their shoulders together.

Shaky hands exchanged rings, her heart stopping for a moment when the ring caught and didn’t slide onto his finger gracefully. But her heart regained it’s rhythm when she heard a light chuckle coming from the man across from her, a gentle smile that was just big enough to flash a dimple at her, signaling that it would be okay.

She recited her vows without much thought, letting ‘I do,’ slip past her lips while still entranced by Harry’s intense yet comforting gaze. She watched his strong hands disconnect from hers as he lifted the lace trimming on the veil covering her face, dark lashes flickering down to her glossed lips. She let her eyes fall closed as he leaned in towards her and rested a hand on her cheek, prompted by the officiant and clapping coming from the pews, bracing herself for a feeling of disgust she hoped wouldn’t come.

He carefully connected their lips softly with a sweetness that felt gentle, tender, and caring. But there was more to the kiss than a softness, there was a respect there as well. His hand felt secure and protective on her cheek, and he pulled away with a smile after a short time, sure not to overwhelm her. The feeling of disgust in her belly that she was waiting for never came; if she didn’t know better she would say she felt an excited flutter.

They stood on the altar for a moment and just stared at each other, excited and relief filled smiles creeping into their lips, his dimples prominent. “Shall we, wifey?” Harry beamed with a sigh, extending a hand to lead her back down the aisle, now as a married woman.

“We shall, husband,” she giggled back, cheeks still a fiery red from their contact. Calling him her husband felt foreign, but not unwelcome.

Harry held her hand tight, keeping her in the moment by the warm contact. He held her hand down the aisle and all the way back to the palace, all throughout the signing of their marriage license, and all throughout the many, many photos taken of the two and their wedding party. She found comfort in his warm touch, continuing to ground her through the chaos that unfolded around them. Even when they had briefly disconnected from each other, he was always close by, only a call of his name away.

She was shocked by how careful he was around her giant dress, taking calculated steps to avoid dirtying the crisp white fabric. He was playing the role of a dutiful husband, and was seeming to enjoy it.

They spent the next hours just following orders from wedding planners, shuffled around from place to place, constantly surrounded by people. All she wanted was a moment to speak to him alone, but it seemed far out of reach.

That moment finally came in the middle of a dance floor, with hundreds of eyes staring at them as they danced. They swayed together slowly, a gentle rock to the delicate sound of strings. “Thank you for staying by me all day, Harry,” she said quietly, hoping that no one could hear them over the music.

“No need to thank me, wifey,” he said with a chuckle, his lips grazing against her ear as he spoke. She chuckled like always at the name and shook her head.

“I mean it. I don’t think I would have been able to get through all of this,” she said looking out at the crowd watching them and the giant ornately decorated ballroom they were in the center of, “if you hadn’t been by my side.”

“I quite like it, actually. I could get used to standing with you.” He said nonchalantly, like it was no big deal, while her heart just about stopped.

She wasn’t able to answer before the music slowed to a stop and they were pulled apart by their mothers and dragged off to speak to “very important” people. He seemed just as disappointed as she was when they were separated.

When they finally found each other again, Y/N had changed. She had abandoned her massive conservative skirt of tulle and lace for a creamy silk gown that she could actually move in. It was a simple a-line v-neck dress with cap sleeves, but the back held a deep V that ended at the small of her back coupled with a loosely tied bow.

The cool breeze on her back made her feel sexy. She knew she was pushing the boundaries on what was appropriate for a princess and she loved it.

“My darling, you look gorgeous,” he said, taking her hand and spinning her so he could fully take in the new dress, mindful of her tiara and trying his best not to knock it off. Her cheeks burned at his flattery, something he could surely feel when he pulled her close and pressed a delicate kiss on her cheek.

“You’re just saying that,” she said bashfully staring down at the floor, deflecting the compliment easily.

“Wifey,” he singsonged the teasing nickname that had evolved into a term of endearment. He lifted her chin to look up at him and he looked down at her with the most honest expression she had ever seen him wear. “You look beautiful. You have all day.”

“Thank you, Harry.” She spoke quietly, barely audible, unsure what to make of her husband’s compliments. He leaned in to her, layed a tender kiss on her forehead, and dragged her across the room to the dance floor.

They stayed on the dancefloor most of the night, almost always touching in some sort of way, while dancing and celebrating with their friends and family.

And Y/N was happy; a genuine type of happiness that she hadn’t felt in a very long time. Obviously, this wasn’t ideal. She was now married to a man she knew virtually nothing about, who had been a sworn enemy of hers only a few days ago, and had only begun enjoying his company last night. But happiness isn’t linear, she thought to herself.

Their night had passed in a joyous and opulent blur that went late into the night; full of food, dancing, and a swimming pool's worth of champagne.

Eventually both of them were led, by dutiful staff as they were both quite drunk and couldn’t exactly be trusted to make it on their own, to their new bedroom, or bedrooms depending on who you asked. They were led into the massive room consisting of two separate suites connected by a dressing room of sorts in a cloud of giggles, finding themselves in a fit of laughter after passing a portrait in the hall of some distant ancestor who had an amusing mustache.

“Thank you for leading us back,” she said, trying to gain a sober composure to the men who had flanked them on their way back, “you can go now.” The men shared a look between themselves that seemed to say ‘someone should be watching them,’ but followed the princess’ orders anyway.

“I just can’t understand how he got it to curl like that,” Harry cackled, beginning to wheeze from his hysterics and slightly stumbling as he was doubled over.

“Maybe it was natural like your curls,” she suggested, through her giggling hiccups that she let return when their staff left the room. “I quite like your curls, ya know? I like it when you let them grow a bit.”

They were still holding hands, despite being alone in their new found privacy, no longer needing the support from the other to shield them from the pressure of looking eyes.

“Then I’ll have to grow them out a bit,” he said, a smile still beaming at her with droopy drunk eyes. He tugged on her hand softly, bringing her body into his and setting his hand on the exposed skin of the small of her back. His hands were warm and soft and in the moment, she never wanted his hand to move from that spot again. “I can’t refuse the princess’ orders.” His voice had dropped low, not to a whisper but to a soft and lazy volume that made her feel safe.

Their faces were close and she could smell his strong vanilla and sandalwood cologne coming off him that she wanted to envelop herself in. He looked back down at her with a face that was loving, but she attributed it to the alcohol in his system. For a moment, she was overwhelmed with adoration for this man who she had spent so much of her life violently hating. Admiring and adoring him was much easier on her soul than harboring the hatred that had eaten at her for so long.

“I have another order,” she spoke quietly, letting the words tumble from her lips without her usually logical brain’s permission, “I want you to kiss me. For real this time.”

His lips were on hers as soon as the words left her own. It was sloppy and sweet, but with a passion behind it that Y/N felt in her bones. Their lips moved in a drunken rhythm, with Harry’s aimless wandering hands sliding up and down the silk of her dress before resting on her waist and pulling her impossibly closer to him. Her hands found and twirled the few of Harry’s curls that remained after they had cut his hair shorter than usual for the ceremony at the base of his neck and sunk her fingers into it, pulling him further into the kiss by his hair.

It was not long before their tongues found each other and the kiss deepened into a desperate dance of gasping for breath and soft moans into each other’s mouths. Harry’s mouth left hers and began to press sloppy open mouthed kisses down her neck while fiddling with the bow at the back of her gown that would release it from her frame.

Feeling him fuss with the bow made her pounding heart shift from one of excitement, to one of panic. This was too soon, she didn’t know him well enough. She didn’t know his favorite color or any of his hobbies. She didn’t know how he liked his tea, or if he drank it at all. She didn’t even know his middle name.

Her fuzzy mind couldn’t deny how much she didn’t know about him or the anxiety that made her want to pull away from the man and run.

“Harry,” she breathed, voicing the apprehension and anxiety that had begun to rise in her chest, “please stop.” She had squeaked out the words, a mix of embarrassment and panic taking over her slightly slurred words.

His hands froze, pulling himself back quickly from her, a mix of worry and guilt on his face. “Did I do something wrong? I just thought…” he let his words drop off, his own fuzzy mind not sure of what to say either.

“No, you didn’t do anything wrong. I’m sorry, I just can’t.” Her cheeks grew hot and her eyes became glassy.

She was embarrassed to admit it, but the kiss on the altar that morning was the first time she had ever had another pair of lips on her own. Her entire life she had been shielded from men with any interest in her, her affection already spoken for and claimed. No man had ever held her hand romantically, or danced with her, or kissed her with the passion Harry just had.

Harry had lived a life with freedom that she had never been granted. She remembered all the times she had watched him interact with various girlfriends at school, and remembered the shame she had felt when he had ended up on the cover of tabloids after he was photographed naked and kissing a  random woman on a yacht. Every article had ended with the same line that she still knew by heart. 

“The prince is arranged to marry Princess Y/N when she comes of age in an effort to unify their countries.” 

They had lived very different lives, with very different freedoms up until this point. It was sexist and archaic and unfair, but she couldn’t deny the impacts it had on her while she was around Harry. Even though she couldn’t deny that she was beginning to feel something real for him and she believed that he felt the same; she didn’t fully trust him like that yet. She couldn’t.

“I’ve never done any of this before, Harry. This morning was my first kiss.” Her cheeks burned in a mixture of embarrassment and shame as she spoke the words. “I like you a lot, but today has been nerve wracking and scary enough. I just can’t add another new thing into the mix, especially that. It’s just all too much. I’m sorry.”

Her sheltered and delicate heart couldn’t even bring herself to say the word ‘sex’.

As he listened to her explanation, his features softened. They were no longer fearful that he made a mistake or crossed a boundary, but they moved into a soft and caring smile.

“Y/N, my darling,” he began in a soft and sweet voice, “come here.” He beckoned her with open arms to rest up against his chest again. She had curled her arms in front of herself, holding them close to her body, as she walked into his arms and let herself be enveloped by them while resting her head on his chest. “You are my wife now, but I think we both understand that we are not exactly in this position by choice. I would never ask you to do something you are uncomfortable with and I am sorry that I crossed a boundary.”

“Thank you,” she peeped before he continued on.

“Also, I heard that part when you said you liked me a lot,” she could hear the smirk in his voice, making her cheeks inexplicably hotter. “And I like you a lot too.”

The pair stood in that hold long enough for them to lose track of time, just resting against each other in silence, listening to the other’s breathing. The silence that enveloped them was comforting, but Harry eventually spoke again, inexplicably soft and gentle in tone.

“Y/N, I really want to try to make us work.”

“So do I, Harry.”

The pair stood together in their stillness and peaceful quiet, until she let out a small yawn.

Harry released her from his grasp and began walking around the room, opening wardrobes and dressers searching for something. He breathed a small triumphant noise when he opened a drawer, spinning around with a light pink and baby blue nightgown in his hands.

“Do you need any help getting out of your dress? Would I be allowed to help?” His face was so thoughtful, carefully navigating the boundaries she had made him aware of but not set in stone yet.

She took the nightgown from his hands and slipped it over her head, the silk dress beneath it. “I just need help untying the bow.” Her voice was still low, a quiet and delicate murmur.

His hands carefully untied the bow, turning around for modesty’s sake, only turning back around when he heard the silk hit the floor.

She had begun carefully removing the bobby pins that still held her bun together, causing them both to giggle when her hair was finally released into a giant poof of curls and hair spray.

She looked so sweet to him. This was the first time he had seen her relaxed like this, no longer in a fancy dress, heels, and her hair and makeup done to perfection. She looked like a real person to him, not a princess who would soon become queen.

He moved gingerly towards the door of her room, but not before pressing one more soft kiss to her lips.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, wifey.”

“Can’t wait, my husband,” she called from under the covers, watching him close the door behind him.

***

The two were sitting on a hot beach, baking in the sun when the call came.

It was day four of their honeymoon and a week after their wedding, spending their time alone together on a small island in the sun neither of them could remember the name to. It was a paradise straight out of a movie, and she swore nothing could ruin it.

They spent their days learning each other well, often joking that they should make up trivia quizzes for each other to see who knew the other best. She had learned that Harry’s eyes lit up like a child when he saw any type of animal, especially the small lizards that would run across the deck hanging off the back of their small beach house. It was also a surprise when she found out he loved to cook, whipping up a meal that could rival some of the chefs at the palace for dinner one night.

But her favorite thing she had learned about him by far, was how he sang in the shower. He had a low and melodic voice that he didn’t know traveled into the house from the outdoor shower. She would sit by the window closest to him, often pretending to write in the pink notebook he had given her in the garden, close her eyes and appreciate the man’s voice. She swore if he wasn’t a prince, he would be a singer.

In the time since their nuptials, the pair had become lovers. Always attached at the hip and sneaking kisses; they were blissfully and unstoppably becoming increasingly obsessed with the other. The word ‘love’ often played at Y/N’s lips, seeming to always be only a drink away from letting it slip out towards him.

Every day, they would walk down a short path from their house to a pristine white sand beach, picnic basket in hand, and sit. Sometimes they would sit in silence, just staring at the clear blue ocean, and other times they would talk about everything and anything that came to mind, or they would read silently next to each other. But they were always holding onto each other; sometimes it was a hand placed gently on the other’s thigh, or fingers intertwined between them.

The shrill ring of Y/N’s phone broke their fantasy while sitting on the beach on the fourth afternoon. Her heart dropped as soon as she heard it, knowing that the palace had agreed not to bother them unless the worst case scenario was happening.

She closed her eyes and braced herself, tears already threatening to breach her eyes, as she answered the phone with shaky hands. “Hello?” she choked out.

“Your highness, you need to come home.” She immediately recognized the panicked voice of her mother’s secretary on the other end. “It’s happening.”

“Okay,” she said, trying to remain as composed as possible. “We’re leaving now.”

Harry’s face held a furrowed brow and concerned eyes as she spoke. He immediately began rubbing his thumb back and forth over the back of her palm like he had done on their wedding day, but today, it did nothing to soothe her pain and anxiety.

She hung up the phone before letting out a heart wrenching cry. “We have to go home,” she sobbed. “She is dying.”

The entire journey home was silent after Y/N had composed herself on the beach.

She sat emotionless, staring straight ahead, flinching away every time Harry moved to touch her. She spoke only when absolutely necessary, but her voice brought no tone with it. She had become a shell of herself, losing the warmth behind her eyes that had begun to appear after the wedding.

She felt empty, like she had lost the ability to think, while simultaneously feeling so overwhelmed, by thoughts of her future as queen and the loss of her mother. She had become blank, inside and outside, the happiness she had begun to build for herself with Harry, melting away and leaving the hollowness of grief and dread.

It took them about twelve hours to reach the palace from the time she hung up the phone, but it wasn’t fast enough. The second she stepped out of the car, she saw the guards outside the palace dressed in their black uniforms that were reserved only for the passing of the sovereign. She closed her eyes silently, as if when she opened them up again their uniforms would turn back to their usual blue and maroon; but they didn’t, their clothing still black as night.

Her heels clicked the pavement, maintaining her immaculate posture and steely blank expression as she entered the palace, the loving man she had been excited to have a life with trailing mournfully behind her. She watched as if she was out of her body when she passed people, all now dressed in black, in the hall. They all acted the same.

First, they would give her the saddest look, silently extending their sympathies to the daughter who just lost her mother, and then bowing their heads in respect to the now reigning queen.

“I need to see my mother,” was all she said, before being led into her bedroom.

She hadn’t remembered when her father had died, too young to understand. All she could wrap her head around was that her Daddy had an accident and wasn’t coming home. But she remembered her mother’s cries, loud and earth shattering sobs that traveled up and down the hallways of the palace for all to hear.

She looked like she was just sleeping; arms peacefully crossed over her chest and eyes shut gently. But she was cold when Y/N reached for her hand. She tenderly brought her mothers hand to her lips, and pressed a final kiss to her hand, before walking blankly out of the room.

Her mother was gone. And the country fell onto her shoulders.

She heard Harry saying something as he followed close behind her. While she heard him, she didn’t process a thing he said. She stalked towards their bedroom which was unfortunately on the other side of the palace, locked in her daze. He trailed close behind her the entire way, trying to say anything that could break through to her, and stood dutifully outside the door of her side of the bedroom for an unknown amount of time after she had shut it in his face.

***

She didn’t speak, or show emotion, or allow anyone at all to touch her for three days. Only nodding or shaking her head in response to the rapid firing of questions she was asked about planning her mother’s funeral.  Harry only saw glimpses of his wife, or the shell of Y/N that she had become, usually while she shut the door to her bedroom between them.

He left his door open all day everyday.

When he awoke the morning of the funeral and found her bedroom door open, his heart jumped. He slowly walked inside to find her in a room full of black dresses. Dresses had been laid carefully over every surface for her to choose from; the dress she would wear to her mother’s funeral and her first public appearance as queen.

“Good morning,” was all he said, quiet and careful.

The person that looked back at him was someone he didn’t recognize. The light was gone from her eyes, and she wasn’t the woman he was head over heels in love with anymore. She looked like her, but emanated sadness and anxiety like nothing he had ever seen before. Dark blue bags held under her eyes from not sleeping, her hair was tied behind her head in a messy unkempt ponytail, and she was dressed in a giant and ill fitting nightgown, shoulders bent down in a fashion that made her look small. The only feature of the put together, confident, and commanding woman he was married to that remained was the bright emerald ring that sat on her ring finger.

“I can’t decide what to wear,” she said without expression, but the tears started to fall down her face before she could finish the sentence. Harry moved quickly across the room to her when he saw her knees began to shake, catching her just in time as they gave out and she fell into his arms, settling them both onto the soft carpeted ground. That was when her heaving sobs began. It was a bone rattling cry that consumed her wholly and her exhausted and hurting brain could only put together two thoughts: she missed her mom, and she didn’t want to take on all this responsibility alone.

She sobbed into his shirt, holding onto the soft and worn fabric of his t-shirt for dear life, and he held her close to his body, slowly rubbing her back and letting all of the emotion fall out of her. She cried for a long time, giving herself a pounding headache, and when the tears finally began to slow she connected her tearful ones with Harry’s ever vibrant green eyes and mumbled, “I just thought I had more time with her. And I thought we had more time to just be us.”

“I know you did, darling.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead and reveled in being able to touch her again, as his heart broke a little every time she would pull away from his touch.

“I’m not ready, Harry. I can’t do this all alone. It’s too much.” She spoke softly, shaking her head from side to side, still choking back sobs as she tried to regain her composure.

“You’re not doing anything on your own. The second we were married, your problems and responsibilities became mine too,” he assured her. He moved to grab her left hand in his own and showed her the rings that sat on their hands. “Remember these?” he breathed with a light chuckle. “You’re stuck with me for life, whether you like it or not.”

He watched as she processed the realization that he was there to lighten the load. It was like a lightbulb had gone off for her, slowly nodding along with what he said. She let her eyes fall to the dresses that surrounded her, but he gently took her chin and directed her eyes back to his. “Y/N, we are a team. I am always here for you and I always will be.”

He took a deep long breath before continuing on, “I love you.”

She didn’t think when she pressed her lips to him, she just did, desperate to be close to him again. A coldness had swallowed her for days, and his words brought back the smallest feeling of warmth, a glimpse of hope she had been desperate to find.

She had known the passing of her mother was coming for years, her illness getting progressively worse over time. She had always believed it would bring more pressure, weighing down on her heavier than ever before. But looking at their rings and the man before her, she was hit by the fact that she never had to carry the weight of the country all by herself. She had Harry the whole time. He was her partner; in life and in power.

“I love you, too,” she said after breaking the kiss, salty from all her tears. She was quiet and her voice was still shaking and unsteady from her sobs, but he was there, holding her and keeping her safe.

He held her hand, slotting their fingers together as he picked them both up off the ground and helped her pick a dress. It was a black blazer dress that fell below her knees with three crystal buttons going down the left side. Harry carefully helped her into the dress, his warm and respectful hands sliding up her bare skin as he pulled it up over her shoulders. He then sat her on her bed, and began to carefully brush out her hair, doing his best to work through knots without hurting the girl who was already hurting enough. And he held one of her hands gently while she sat at her vanity and did her makeup with her free one. He refused to leave her side.

Harry stayed firmly planted by her side throughout the entire day, not daring to leave her while she needed him. He knew that photos of him holding her hand tight during the funeral would make the press, and the photos of him wiping away her tears as they left would make the front page, but he didn’t care. She might be the queen, but she was also his Y/N.

***

Their fingers were always locked together, Harry’s thumb passing back and forth over the back of her hand in the steady rhythm he always used when she was stressed. He was there whenever she needed him, gently taking hold, to remind her that he was there and they were a team.

He cradled her hand as she crushed his, gritting through the most excruciating pain she had ever experienced. It felt like her entire body was being ripped apart from the inside out, but Harry’s hand was the light at the end of the tunnel. She was screaming and crying in the small crowded room, feeling like a science experiment as all the doctors looked on at her pain.

But it all stopped when she heard the smallest little cry.

Then shouts of “It’s a girl!”

Exhausted and elated tears flowed freely from her eyes that were locked on the slimy little baby a nurse was burredly placing on her chest. She was so small, delicate and breakable, with strong lungs that screamed out to announce her entrance into the world. And when her eyes opened for the first time, they revealed the same bright sea glass green tone that matched her father, the green she had been falling in love with and swimming around in for years.

This baby was so much more than just a little girl, not only to them, but to their countries. She would forge a kingdom united in the future, a product of peace and partnership. She was a symbol of unity and a future of kindness between their countries. She was the future.

But for right now, the tiny baby was just theirs.

She felt him press a proud kiss to her head before she connected their lips together in a tear filled kiss before they both looked back to their new pride and joy who was still screaming for all the attention.

“She’s beautiful, darling,” he whispered quietly though tears next to her, hand still grasped tightly onto hers. “You did such a good job.”

“Literally couldn’t have done it without you,” she chuckled, still staring down, entranced by the little girl who looked like her daddy.

The pair stayed with their baby, quiet and just being, long after the doctors and nurses left the room. They learned she liked to scream and sleep, about as much as you could learn about someone only hours old. But she didn’t have a name. They had been debating for the last nine months over what the little princess would be called.

“I think she should be named after your mother,” Harry would say.

“But I think she should be named after your grandmother,” She would reply.

Their roundabout banter never left the pair, only changed; from malicious and teasing, to one of loving partnership.

“So neither?” he quipped with a small smirk while holding the little girl tight to his chest.

“I guess we have to compromise; diplomatically,” she said with a giggle, alluding to how they got to this position in the first place.

“I feel like a loving marriage and a new baby is pretty good for diplomatic relations.”

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