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auras-moonstone · 8 months

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how you get the girl — ethan landry

word count: 3,654

pairing: hockey player!ethan landry x fem!reader

summary: because of ethan’s reputation as a man-whore, y/n doesn’t believe he wants a serious relationship with her. so, ethan and chad make a list so that he can get the girl.

warnings: fluff.

author’s note: i’ve been reading lots of hockey rom-coms, so i needed to write about it. i’m obsessed with ethan as a hockey player😫

ETHAN DIDN’T KNOW HOW BADLY HIS ACTIONS WOULD COME BACK IN THE FUTURE TO BITE HIM IN THE ASS. Being captain of the Blackmore hockey team and certified pretty boy, girls were practically—and quite literally sometimes—throwing themselves at him, and he would lie if he said he didn’t love the attention. It would be easier and shorter to name the girls he hadn’t hooked up with than naming the ones he had. That gained him the reputation of being a playboy, and he didn’t mind being called that, to be completely honest. Or at least, he didn’t until Y/N came into his life.

She was Tara’s best friend, and since said girl started dating Ethan’s best friend, Chad, the four of them began spending lots of time together. At first, the boy flirted with Y/N because hitting on attractive girls was like second nature to him, but then he got to know her better and the unexpected thing happened—Ethan was swept off his feet. But his reputation was his karma, and Y/N didn’t think he was being serious with her. She would laugh and brush it off because no matter how gorgeous Ethan was, playboys weren’t Y/N’s type, so she would decline every attempt of him to make her go out with him.

“Why not? Just one date” Ethan said on his fifth attempt of the day. They were on the Blackmore hockey rink, and instead of using his break to drink water and rest, Ethan went to talk to Y/N.

“Exactly. You want just one date, get me inside your bed and tomorrow you’ll move onto some other girl. I really like you” she said, and before he could smirk in victory she added. “But why ruin the friendship we have for sex? Besides, one night stands aren’t my cup of tea.”

“Then let’s make it an every day thing” Ethan said.

“Nice try, Eth. We know you don’t do repeats” she stated.

“I could!” he argued. “And besides, I’m not asking for sex—I mean, at the end of the date, if you want to, I’m not gonna reject the offer—, I’m done with hook ups, I want something more.”

Y/N laughed “Okay, try it, but not with me. I’m sorry, Eth”

The girl stood up and made her way towards the exit of the rink, leaving a disappointed Ethan behind. She would lie if she said she didn’t want to try things with him, but the truth also was that she didn’t trust him when it came to relationships and she didn’t want to get her heart broken by him.

Chad got off the ice to find his best friend sitting on the bleachers, gaze fixed on the stairs, looking like a sad kicked puppy. It’s not a sight seen often, Ethan was usually an over-energetic puppy, always happy and with a smile on his face.

“Hey, man. What’s wrong?”

“Y/N rejected me.” Ethan played with his hockey stick, not wanting to meet his best friend’s eyes.

“I’ve never seen you like this after a rejection” Chad frowned.

“Well, not to brag, but it doesn’t usually happen.” he said, making Chad chuckle. “But it’s different this time. Y/N is not someone I want for one night, or for something casual. I want everything with her.”

“Wow” Chad took a breath, shocked by the confession. “And she said no?”

“She says she doesn’t want to ruin our friendship” Ethan said.

Chad scoffed “Why would that happen?”

“She doesn’t trust me and thinks I’m not boyfriend material. I really am serious about her, Chad. I swear. I would never hurt her. I wish she could read my mind”

“Don’t you dare give up, then. Words aren’t enough, show her you really like her”

“How?”

Chad smirked. “Grab a pen and a napkin, we are going to make a list so you can get the girl.”

one: get her favourite coffee

ETHAN WOKE UP A BIT EARLIER THE FOLLOWING DAY TO GO TO Y/N’S FAVOURITE COFFEE SHOP AND GET HER ORDER. He convinced Tara to drag Y/N straight to class, not letting her get the coffee, and to text him once they were in the classroom. Once he got the text, Ethan entered the class, all eyes on him, and set the cup in front of Y/N with an adorable grin.

“Good morning. You look gorgeous as always” he kissed her cheek and simply left the room.

Y/N stared at the drink completely astonished, ignoring the glares coming from the female population and the smirk her best friend was giving her. There was something scribbled with black sharpie—it was simple, but it made her stomach combust. Have a great day, beautiful! Love, Ethan. And three hearts poorly made—which she thought was utterly adorable—next to his name.

“You got him in a leash” Tara laughed.

“Don’t be silly, we know what he wants” Y/N brushed it off.

“Come on, Ethan doesn’t do romantic stuff for anyone, not even to get laid.”

“It’s just one coffee, Tara. Let’s not be dramatic.”

But Tara knew, and Y/N too, that the little gesture was a lot when it came to Ethan Landry. Yet, a coffee cup wasn’t enough to gain the girl’s trust.

two: show her you’re interested in her interests

WHAT IS THE THING Y/N ENJOYED THE MOST? EASY: BOOKS. Ethan knew exactly which one he should start with. In fact, he had bought it the first time Y/N mentioned it. He didn’t know what it was about, but he was sure it was a rom-com that referenced other rom-com movies.

“Ethan!” Chad said in a loud voice, startling his friend. Ethan looked up to find his best friend, Tara and Y/N staring at him. The latter had her mouth wide open.

“What?” he asked absentmindedly. He had been so immersed in the book he hadn’t heard them arrive.

“We called your name countless times, man.” Chad laughed.

“Sorry” Ethan closed the book and looked at Y/N. “Um, I may have a man-crush on Wes Bennett.”

Y/N chuckled, sitting in front of him and ignoring the way her heart was beating rapidly. She wanted to take a picture of Ethan with the book and set it as her lock screen “Welcome to the club.”

“I can’t stand it anymore, I need them to kiss. I need Wes to get the girl” he groaned.

A grin took over her features “Which part are you at?”

“They are going to hang out at Michael’s house” Ethan replied, which made her smile wider. “What’s that smile for? Oh god, what is going to happen?”

“I’m not going to spoil it! Just want to say… buckle up”

“You can’t say that! I can’t continue reading until tomorrow, I have a test!” Ethan panicked.

“Look at you, invested in a rom-com” Chad bumped his shoulder.

“I just wanted to see if it lived up to Y/N’s hype” Ethan said, making her turn into a blushing mess. “It does.”

“You aren’t even finished” Y/N rolled her eyes playfully. “Did you know there’s a sequel coming? And its playlist isn’t very optimistic”

“What?! You just ruined my day. I don’t want to read it anymore” he crossed his arms.

Wanting to mess with him, Tara grabbed the book. “So you wouldn’t mind if I-“ she stopped talking when the boy took the book from her hands.

“Yes, I would mind”

“Wait, are you annotating it?” Y/N said when she saw the colourful post-its.

“Yeah, it’s pretty fun. Anyways, I have to go to class, see you later at practice?”

“See you” Chad said. Before leaving, Ethan kissed Y/N’s forehead.

“What is going on with him?” Y/N asked.

“Showing you he’s serious about you. What are you waiting for, Y/N/N? I thought you liked him” Chad said.

“I do, a lot. But I’m not sure I’m really what he wants. What if he’s just interested because I’m the only girl who has rejected him? What if I finally say yes and then that interest is gone? How am I supposed to recover from that?”

“Y/N…”

“There’s nothing I’d like more than to call him mine, Chad. Trust me. But being just another girl on his list would kill me. I don’t want to lose him, okay? I don’t know if I’m willing to risk our friendship.”

three: woo her with your hockey skills.

WHEN PRACTICE WAS OVER AND CHAD AND ETHAN DIDN’T LEAVE THE RINK, Y/N WAS CONFUSED. The boys skated towards the bleachers Tara and her were sitting in and smirked at them. Chad grabbed a bag from a corner and gave it to them.

“Put the skates on, ladies”

Y/N wanted to laugh when Ethan grabbed her hands and guided her around the ice, but she thought it was so cute that she didn’t have the heart to tell him she knew how to skate perfectly well.

“Okay, I think you’re ready to do it on your own, but go slowly” Ethan said as he finished explaining her how to slide in the ice.

“Losers don’t do it slowly, Landry.” Y/N scoffed.

“You will hurt yourself, Y/N/N. Don’t be stubborn, it’s dangerous.” Ethan sighed.

Y/N smirked “Oh yeah?” she skated flawlessly towards a corner, and came back with a winning smile. She even did a little spin to show off.

“H-how?” he asked breathlessly, frozen in place with a look of shock.

“Took skating classes when I was little” she explained.

“Why didn’t you tell me? I was blabbering instructions like a fool”

Y/N shrugged “I couldn’t, you looked so excited”

“You’re evil” he shook his head as he let out the cutest laugh Y/N had ever heard. God, her infuriation was just getting worse with every little action he did. She didn’t know how much longer she would be able to contain herself. She needed him to stop.

So her face turned serious “Ethan…”

Ethan fluttered his eyes close and then looked at her with pleading eyes. “Please don’t. I know what you’re going to say. Just hear me out. I know that my reputation is horrible, and I get why you don’t trust me. But I have never been more serious about something the way I am about you. I really wish I could erase every hook up, but I can’t and I don’t want my past to define my future. I know it’s hard to believe, but I haven’t been with anyone since I fell for you. I haven’t even thought about anyone else since I fell for you. I want to keep showing you how much I like you.”

Y/N was speechless. He had known Ethan long enough to know he was being serious and completely honest with his words. Maybe she had judged him too much, maybe he had truly changed. And now that she thought about it, she hadn’t seen him with a girl in ages. Maybe diving into a relationship wasn’t the safest option, but it was worth the try.

four: get her flowers

DURING HER LUNCH BREAK, Y/N WAS SURPRISED BY THE HOCKEY PLAYER, who on one hand was holding red tulips and on the other one food. Like always, his presence brought attention and whispers, but none of them cared. Something had shifted between them since that afternoon at the rink, and they both could feel it.

“Thank you, Eth” she smiled gratefully. “You know, I had a feeling you would bring me lunch, so instead of bringing mine, I brought yours. I owe you flowers, though.”

“Thanks” he laughed. “Do you like them?”

“They are beautiful” she nodded, her cheeks the same colour as her flowers.

“When you get home, you should look for the meaning of red tulips” he winked.

For the rest of the day, Y/N had been in a haze. Every time Ethan crossed her mind, blush appeared on her cheeks and the corners of her mouth lifted up.

“My god, was I that annoying when Chad and I started talking?” Tara asked when they entered their dorm.

“Yes, you were, T.” Y/N chuckled, remembering her best friend’s love-sick smile every time Chad texted her. “You still are, by the way.”

“Anyways, I love seeing you like this. And I’m glad you’re willing to give Ethan a chance.”

“Me too. I’m not going to lie, I’m a bit scared that he’ll get bored of me, but I’m really determined to risk it.”

“He’s not going to get bored of you, Y/N/N. He doesn’t like you because he’s into the whole ‘Only girl who had ever rejected him’ thing. He’s into you because you don’t see him only as a hot hockey player, but you also see how sweet and caring he is. You’re not interested in using him to become popular, you see that he is much more than his popularity. And that is why he likes you.”

“Well, shit. Now I feel bad for rejecting him multiple times.” Y/N slumped to the couch.

Tara laughed “Don’t. It’s understandable why you were cautious with your feelings. He knows that he isn’t a saint. By the way, did you know that Chad and him made this list with things to do to win you over?”

“Really?” Y/N laughed. “That makes sense, he’s being really sweet this week. Well, more than usual, because he’s always super sweet.”

“I found it on their fridge, they are so silly. It’s called ‘Ethan and Chad’s infallible list on how to get the girl’. I took a picture”

Y/N took Tara’s phone and laughed at the list. There were a couple of items crossed out and with a tick, and the one that said ‘Woo her with your hockey skills’ had a little note to the side that said ‘Backfired. My girl is a skating genius, made me look like a fool’, which made her laugh. Then, on the ‘Give her flowers’ there was an explanation note that said ‘My pick: red tulips. Means declaration of love’.

“Fucking hell, he’s so… ugh! I really want to kiss him”

“Lucky for you, that’s item six” Tara said over her shoulder.

“The thought of them brainstorming and writing this down is adorable” Y/N laughed.

“It really is” Tara nodded. “You should wear Ethan’s jersey to the game tomorrow. You don’t know how many times he told us he has dreamt about it.”

Y/N smiled, her heart fluttering. Ethan had shown her how much he liked her, and she thought it was time to show him how much she liked him. “You know? That’s an excellent idea.”

[💖]

five: publicly state you’re only into her.

ETHAN KNEW THE BEST TIME TO EXECUTE ITEM FIVE WOULD BE THE NIGHT OF THE GAME. The ideal scenario would be to get that puck on the net and dedicate it to Y/N, and if he wasn’t that lucky, he would settle with blowing kisses and winks at her. Though when he went out on the ice rink and he caught sight of her, his mind went blank, his body stopped working for a couple of seconds and if it weren’t for Chad steadying him, he would’ve collapsed to the ice.

He quickly skated towards her seat, which was in the first row, right behind the glass. “Beautiful, you can’t just come here in my jersey without any warnings. You want me to have a heart attack?”

A sweet laugh bursted out of her “Sorry. Red tulips are your way of declaring your love, I thought wearing your jersey could be mine.”

Ethan’s breath hitched “Um, I’m about to jump up this glass so that I can kiss you.”

The girl shook her head and laughed “After the game, pretty boy. If you win, you might get an extra reward.”

And hell if those words didn’t encourage Ethan to play his best. The game was brutal, both teams were acing it and the match was about to end in a tie, until Ethan scored the winning goal a few seconds before time was over. The Blackmore bleachers erupted in screams of triumph, and the players united for a group hug.

Tara and Y/N instantly went looking for their boys. The last one scowled as she saw a puck bunny making sexy eyes at Ethan and she clung to his arm. The boy couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable, he pulled his arm away, only for the girl to find another way of touching him.

“You have been acting so hard to get lately. Don’t you think a winner deserves a kiss?” Y/N heard the girl say.

“You’re absolutely right. Now, back away so I can kiss the hell out of him.” Y/N said, throwing daggers at the girl, who looked at her in a mix of surprise and annoyance. “And can’t you get a hint? He’s uncomfortable.”

Ethan gaped at her. She had never looked so hot—standing there with his number on the back of the jersey that fitted her like a dress, knee-length boots that weirdly turned him on, and with a scowl on her face as she got all territorial on him.

“And who are you?” the puck bunny scanned her up and down with a frown.

“His girlfriend. Now, can you leave? I have to congratulate my man” she said harshly. As soon as she said that, Ethan was sure he was about to drop onto his knees and let her do whatever she wanted to him.

“Girlfriend?” Ethan smirked as the puck bunny left. “I like the sound of that.”

“Good” Y/N smirked back, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Now, are you ready to cross out items five and six? You know, one bird two stones.”

“Hell yes”

Their lips moved hungrily, and the kiss was way too heated and inappropriate considering their surroundings. But they couldn’t stop it, their desire was diesel and they had been playing with fire for months.

“I promised you a reward if you won, right?” Y/N said against his lips.

“Isn’t this the reward? This is more than I could’ve asked for. You, finally being my girlfriend and kissing me while wearing my jersey.” his eyes were dark and lips swollen. His beauty was out of this world.

“You scored the winning goal, babe. You deserve a special reward” she licked her lips. “Let’s go to your car.”

He nodded eagerly, and as they reached the car, he dared to ask “What do you have in mind?”

She opened the back door. “One kiss isn’t enough. How much time do you have until you have to go to the bar with the guys?”

“What guys? What bar? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” he acted clueless and she let out a giggle. “In fifteen, but they’ll survive if I arrive a bit late. I want to be with my girl for a while.”

“Okay, then get in the car so we can make out.” Y/N bursted out laughing as Ethan carelessly threw himself on the backseat of his car. “You need to learn about the art of subtlety, Eth.”

“Oh that’s rich coming from the girl who attacked me in the middle of the arena.” he said grabbing her waist to guide her to his lap.

“Attack you? That’s not what I did” she scoffed.

“Yes you did. You attacked me with a kiss and then you led me to my car to corrupt me” Ethan said in a fake innocent tone.

“Corrupting the former man-whore?” Y/N arched an eyebrow.

Ethan’s eyes darkened “You’re right. Maybe I am the one corrupting you. I mean, you couldn’t even wait for us to get home to attack me again?”

“You’re insufferable. You’re so lucky you’re hot.”

“I am hot?”

Y/N nodded, looking at him. His muscled arms were spread on the top of the seats, grin plastered on his face and cheeks still rosy from the cold temperature of the arena.

“The hottest. And the best thing? That you’re mine.”

“Just yours, love.” he smiled sweetly, resting his forehead on hers.

“That list of yours is pretty… infallible, right?” Y/N joked.

“I can’t believe you know about the list” Ethan hid his face on her neck.

“You sticked it on the fridge and Tara took a picture” Y/N replied.

“Fucking Chad” Ethan groaned. “So, what do you think?”

“Well, it worked, right? You got the girl.”

“Yes, I did” he smiled hugging her tightly. “Should I do one on how to keep the girl?”

Y/N laughed “I don’t think you need that. Rumour has it, she’s totally in love with you.”

“Oh yeah? Lucky me, because I’m totally in love with her too.”

#ethan landry #ethan landry fluff #ethanlandry #ethan landry x you #ethan landry smut #ethan landry x y/n #ethan landry angst #ethan landry drabble #ethan landry fic #ethan landry x reader #ethan landry oneshot #jack champion #jack champion x reader #jack champion x y/n #jack champion oneshot #jack champion imagine #jack champion fluff #jackchampion #jack champion fanfic

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dreamgrlarchive · 1 year

Note

Dear dream girl, I really want to be my dream girl but I don’t know where to start. I feel unmotivated most of the time and I only get a burst of motivation at like 3 am. I just what to glow and radiate good energy for myself and find/do what I like

Oh, So You Wanna Be a Dream Girl? 🎀

starting your dream girl journey

Congrats on choosing yourself and your tiara; I am so proud. Prepare to not be liked, to be judged, and to stand out. It’s lonely at the top.

*this guide is for starting the process, not reaching the end result because my version of my own dream girl is inevitably different than yours. bare in mind i’m not holding your hand. i’m nudging you in a good direction.

what is a dream girl?

a dream girl is a girl that has finally fallen in love with who she sees in the mirror. she’s the girl that she can depend on. she has her desired look and she’s on the path to self actualization actively. she’s aware of her branding. she holds herself to the standards she holds other to; and they are HIGH. her self worth isn’t contingent upon a love interest, amount of money, or social status. she’s simply that girl.

do some healing.

yes, i said it. healing. like i’ve said before, you cannot put glitter on literal garbage. that’s not even the slightest bit appealing. you’re gonna journal about your childhood, your biggest influences in life, your biggest fears and how you feel life has treated you. this calls for shadow work. shadow working really helped me figure out some of my toxic traits and how some of the things that were considered normal to me as a child have affected me in the long run. you’re also gonna write hypothetical letters to your loved (and not-so-loved) ones, including yourself. let it all out. say everything you want that person to know. around you or not, dead or alive. prepare to clam up, cry, get angry, feel anxious. good. you should. you feel clammy, hot and sometimes pain when your body is fighting off and healing from a physical sickness. now you’re dealing with the developmental, mental, and emotional parts. you’re doing yourself a disservice choosing to stay the same toxic, nasty, mean, or victimized person you’ve always been.

what do you want?

before you can start to even do the smallest improvements, you have to have a clear goal. or else you’ll just be running around in circles (heh) over grandiose blurry wishful thinking. ultimately resulting in you giving up and choosing to be basic bc it’s easier. what do you want out of life? how do you want to be treated? what do you want to do? what makes you happy? and most importantly, how do you want to feel? see, it’s more than just the frills and glitter. you have to know what you’re trying to get to, internally and externally.

grab a diary, adorn it with pretty little details and commit to it. pair it with your fav writing utensil. outline all of your goals. every single last one of them. you can categorize them, scale them from short to long term, easy to hard. it doesn’t matter. do absolutely what you want to do to make a concrete record of your goals that’s digestible for you.

what are you going to do?

*fabulosity by kimora lee simmons*

compare your dream reality to the one you’re currently experiencing. what is she doing that you aren’t? that’s it. do that. anyone can read blogs about the process and other people success stories but those posts aren’t gonna change your life unless you get up and go for what you want. i don’t know what exactly you desire out of life. you do. so you have the instructions for this journey. the first part was easy, this is simple but not nearly as effortless. it’s up to you and not anyone else. you teach others how to treat you. improvements you can make include better: hygiene, self talk/treatment, outward energy, work ethic, discipline, health, consumed content, relationships, looks, habits.

the work

it’s time to apply yourself. get up everyday and actively work towards your goal. be kind to yourself. take yourself to the doctors. get active. eat right. find your passion. DO THE HEALING.

everyone’s journey is SO different so i’m just going to do a quick rundown of the importance of each of the ten facets of your dream girl journey (that build upon each other. ie; looks do not benefit you when your hygiene is insufficient):

*these facets are loosely based on maslow’s hierarchy of needs

health - are you taking care of yourself? please treat yourself how you would your loved ones. you’ll be surprised how physical issues manifest mentally, and vice versa. get adequate sleep. take baby steps if need be. some of these adjustments may be huge to you. be gracious with your journey.

consumed content - everything you engage in is your diet. the company you keep, food you eat, music you enjoy. you get the idea. do you feel light and ready to take on the day? or do you feel drained and sick more often than not. make some adjustments wherever you see necessary.

hygiene - extremely important. stick to a routine for your hygienic needs. you should have rituals you engage in everyday. don’t forget that your health and hygiene go hand in hand. oral and feminine hygiene is so crazily important. please don’t neglect yourself. i talk about my routines in detail here.

habits - daily habits are so crucial to your lifestyle. adjust these and consciously break your bad habits by supplementing your life with equal and opposite habits.

self talk/treatment - simple. be kind to yourself. hold yourself accountable for flaws and mistakes while loving yourself enough to be patient with the journey of improving.

outward energy - be very aware of the vibes you’re permeating. again this is so a huge determination of how you will be treated and how you will live your life.

work ethic/discipline - it’s gonna take serious accountability to escape the desire to stay comfortable. you have to tell yourself that you deserve *your desired end result* so you will *make specific change/adjustment.* it’s that simple (again simple doesn’t mean easy).

relationships - if you don’t like the way you’re treated by those in your life, those relationships need to be reevaluated. you can make some trims on your circle, have some honest conversations, or adjust your behaviors (because sometimes, YOU are the problem).

passion and career - in order to feel fulfilled in life, we all need a purpose. discover yours. incorporate your passion into your daily life.

looks - develop your signature and hone in on it. looks are very important to your perception (self and public). check out this guide to help with this part. however you wanna feel is how you should display yourself.

be a dream girl!

you’ve discovered all the facets of creating your dream self and reality. now it’s time to apply what you’ve learned. start showing up in life in the fashion you want to be seen in.

that’s it! the rest is up to you!

- xoxo, dreamgrlarchive 🎀

#dream girl journey #my posts #dream girl cultivation #dream girl wellness

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gleamingyu · 11 months

Text

hits different.

part I of the midnights series. inspired by taylor swift’s midnights. part II

pairing: music-producer!seungcheol x lawyer!fem!reader [exes-to-lovers]

genre: romance. slight angst. drama.

warnings: she/her pronouns for reader (but no specific physical characteristics). mentions of a pretty rough breakup. slight angst. some light cursing. mentions of death (jokingly though). terrible knowledge of law stuff (thank my brief interest in htgawm). yearning. loads of miscommunication. slow burn. cheol & reader are both stubborn. mentions of drinking. alternating povs. lower caps intended [if there’s anything i missed, please let me know!]

word count: 4.7k

notes: this is the first part of a new series i thought of! this is also my first time writing (or more like, finishing writing) something, so please be kind! any comments, reblogs or likes are welcome. and thank you to whoever decides to give this a chance :)

summary: still recovering from a not-so-fresh breakup, seungcheol leans on his friends to get back on his feet. it turns out to be much easier said than done, especially when his record label recruits the help of a law firm to deal with a recent scandal, which just so happens to be the same firm his ex works at. just his luck.

if anyone could see the scene in front of mingyu, they’d be severely concerned, much like he is at this very moment.

seungcheol is quite literally buried under a pile of blankets on his bed, the only visible part of his body a tuft of his dark brown hair. the floor of his bedroom is covered in clothes and empty food containers, and the air feels so stale and hot, it’s taking everything in mingyu not to gag. there is no light coming into the room except from the lightbulb shining in the hallway where mingyu is standing, and… is that… phoebe bridgers he can hear playing from somewhere?

mingyu glances down at his feet where kkuma, seungcheol’s devoted dog – and only girl who’s ever truly loved him, according to him – is sitting staring right back at him, a look on her fluffy face that mingyu swears looks just as depressed as her dad.

“this is way worse than i thought,” mingyu sighs, finally stepping into the bedroom. “okay, enough of this!”

mingyu grabs the blankets on the bed and pulls them away, revealing a very aggravated seungcheol. “what the hell are you doing?!”

“i’m not sure yet, because this,” mingyu gestures around the room, “is a lot. but it starts with you getting your ass out of bed and into the shower. immediately. this place smells like there’s a corpse somewhere in here.”

“yeah, it’s me. i’m the corpse. or i wish i was, because that would mean i’ve finally died,” seungcheol groans, turning away from mingyu and effectively shoving his face into the bed.

mingyu sighs, turning around to start collecting some of the dirty clothes on the floor. he finds himself regretting not calling jeonghan or joshua to come with him, because seungcheol might have been more easily persuaded to stop moping with them around. the reality is, they all thought seungcheol was doing better; he was back on his grind at work, finishing several albums he had been producing for, he was making progress in his jiu-jitsu classes, and he even joined the rest of the guys on their trip to australia last month, with minimal persuasion from his friends.

looking at the shell of a man laying on the bed in front of him, mingyu realizes he should’ve asked. he should’ve asked his friend how he was really doing, what he was feeling, what he could actually do to help him move past this.

better late than never.

“listen,” mingyu starts, going to sit on the edge of seungcheol’s bed but reconsidering. who knows when he last changed these. “i’m sorry if we haven’t really been there for you. i know a thing or two about breakups and heartbreak, so i guess i should’ve figured you weren’t alright, not like you said you were. you don’t have to keep all you’re feeling locked up. you can talk to us.”

seungcheol’s head moves slightly to the side, peeking at mingyu from the corner of his eye. he sighs, and turns on his back. mingyu tries not to cringe at seungcheol’s sullen face, his eyes red and still wet, as if he was still crying when mingyu arrived at his apartment.

“don’t beat yourself up, gyu. believe it or not, i was actually doing better. but a few days ago, i … i was cleaning around the closet by the entrance and …” he pauses, and mingyu thinks he might burst into tears. seungcheol breathes in however, closes his eyes, and continues. “i found one of her old hats. you know, the yellow crochet bucket hat she always used to wear in the summer? i bought it for her birthday when we had just started dating and … i don’t know, i just broke down. it hit me again that we’re over. like really.”

you and seungcheol broke up … four, five months ago? seungcheol shakes his head, he feels like time hasn’t passed the same since. days pass him by where he just goes over and over your last conversation – which was more of a fight, really – and he always ends up regretting everything he said that day. regrets resenting you for always working late, for never asking him to accompany you to firm events… regrets accusing you of some unspeakable things.

looking back, he can’t believe how big of an idiot he was. no wonder you left and didn’t even bother to come back to get your things. you left everything behind, all your clothes that still smelled of the lavender detergent you used to buy, your makeup haphazardly thrown into one of the bathroom drawers, the cooking books you always bought “for inspiration” but never, ever actually opened… and the yellow bucket hat you got from seungcheol for the first birthday you spent together. seungcheol had left everything where it was, a tiny part of him hoping you two would work this out somehow. but weeks went by with no word from you, and when he had tried reaching you, he came to the grave conclusion that you had blocked him on all platforms, cut him off from your life like a dead limb. back then he thought he deserved it. he still does.

“i’m sorry, hyung. i really am,” mingyu shakes seungcheol from his reverie, reaching a hand to pet his shoulder. a beat passes between them. “have you tried… calling her again since?”

“no. i don’t know what good it would do,” seungcheol sighs. “even if she answered, i doubt all the apologies i could offer would fix anything. i said some pretty fucked up shit.”

“yeah, i know. if you remember, i was there the next day ripping you a new one,” mingyu teases, desperately trying to cheer up his friend somehow. he swears he can see seungcheol’s lips twitch a bit. “but who knows… now that you both had some time to yourselves, you might actually be able to overcome this calmly. and if… if it doesn’t work out in the end, at least you’ll both have some closure.”

closure. that’s a funny word, because seungcheol wants the furthest thing from closure. he wants you back in his bed and your arms around him, he wants your indie artists he’s never heard of playing around the apartment in the morning, he wants your laugh echoing in the halls. he wants you.

he knows that the only way this ending could even be a possibility would be if he actually took mingyu’s advice and called you up, but another part of him is terrified of the other possibility: the one where you pick up and tell him to go to hell and fuck himself and never call you again or show his face around you. so for now, seungcheol opts for a third option: emotional limbo, with a side of trying-to-move-on.

he gets up from the bed and asks mingyu if he could help him straighten out the place. mingyu, bless his sweet heart, of course says yes and gets to work after sending seungcheol to clean himself up. just as he’s about to close the bathroom door, he hears mingyu’s exasperated voice.

“oh, for the love of god, where is that god-awful music coming from?!”

seungcheol can’t remember the last time he laughed so heartily.

the bar you find yourself in is bustling with people, laughter and cheerful conversations filling the space. you’re only half listening to whatever topic your two best friends, yunjin and chaeyoung, are discussing – something about “that bitch” in yunjin’s department at work that’s been giving her a hard time – instead reveling in the pleasant buzz of the champagne you’re nursing.

it had been a while since you were able to enjoy a nice evening with your girls. the past few months had been filled with endless meetings, client-induced headaches and sleepless nights, but thankfully, today you had managed to finally strike a deal for one of the firm’s most important clients (to be read as filthy rich), which you had been working towards all these months. naturally, upon hearing the news, chaeyoung and yunjin had begged you to join them at a bar in the city, “to celebrate your newfound freedom.”

you splurged on a bottle of champagne for the three of you and decided that tonight, you were going to have fun. you were going to relax, enjoy some drink, and catch up with your friends who you hadn’t seen in weeks.

and you will not, under any circumstances, bring up seungcheol.

you like to believe that in the last two months you had gotten better at shutting out any thought of your ex-boyfriend. in the days – more like weeks, if you were to ask chaeyoung and yunjin – following the ugly breakup, you were quite the literal mess. finding yourself alone and with nowhere to go, considering you had left the apartment you shared with seungcheol with nothing but your work stuff (how on-brand for you), it wasn’t surprising that your mental and emotional health had taken a massive hit. thankfully, at the insistence of yunjin, you agreed to crash at her place while you put yourself back together and took time off from work – something you had never done before.

to the surprise of your friends, it only took you two weeks to go back to work and start looking for your own place. two weeks after that, you were moving into a new apartment and claimed that you were feeling much better since the breakup. or at least starting to. chaeyoung and yunjin didn’t want to argue with you on this – even thought they 100% believed the front you were putting up was a load of crap – but in the end, they didn’t even have to, because the first time you went out with them again since the breakup, you had your first meltdown.

but was it really your fault that the man sitting two seats down the bar from you had ordered whiskey neat, just like seungcheol always used to? and was it really your fault that he was wearing a maroon leather jacket similar to the one seungcheol always used to wear in the fall, which you absolutely adored?

could they really blame you for bursting into tears right then and there and wailing about how much of a jerk seungcheol was for never understanding your dedication to your work? how much of a hypocrite he was for expecting you to just dip from the office when he suddenly had some free time, when he had never done so for you?

that night, chaeyoung and yunjin quite literally dragged you back to chaeyoung’s place and held you while you cried yourself to sleep, and in the morning, when you had embarrassingly admitted that “no, you weren’t really doing fine,” they held you again and offered soft-spoken words of support, opting to keep the classic we told you so in their thoughts.

four months passed since that incident and now, you could confidently say that you were truly feeling better. you weren’t quite over seungcheol per se; there were nights when you still thought about the smell of vanilla that filled the room whenever he was fresh out of a shower, the way he always got so giggly when you brought home a tray of cherries… yeah, you still found yourself missing him terribly sometimes. but the more time passed, you realized that seungcheol hadn’t tried reaching you at all in the months since the breakup, and so you thought he might be moving on as well.

it is true you had blocked him on all social platforms for weeks after you stormed out of your place. but on a particularly bad day, when all you did was cry and cry and cry after him, the thought of calling him up and asking him to go back to how things were crossed your mind, and you unblocked his number. unfortunately, your pride had set itself in your way, convincing you that it was seungcheol that needed to make the first step, considering he was the one who quite literally cornered you into a fight. so you didn’t call and instead prayed to whatever forces exist in the universe, that seungcheol would try your number again.

he never did.

“soooo, cheers to the lady of the hour! finally free from the clutches of corporate law!” yunjin cheered, clinking her glass against yours and knocking you out of your reverie.

damn it, seungcheol, i said i would not think of you tonight!

“yes, cheers!” chaeyoung joined in. “how do you feel? are you going to get a big ass bonus for the amount of time you put into this asshole?”

chaeyoung was probably right, you probably did deserve a huge ass bonus for the deal you pulled for the client you were handling. when you were in law school, you had never imagined yourself working for sleazy, corporate pigs who behaved like none of their actions would bite them in the ass eventually, and expecting others – like yourself – to clean up after them. but, as your boss grimly explained to you the day you had complained about your client, everybody has to start somewhere. “and junior partners don’t get to choose cases, sweetheart.”

life at the firm wasn’t always terrible. you were lucky enough to be part of an amazing team, and the firm worked with plenty of influential and big personalities, so you almost never had to worry about your income. but sometimes, some of the people you were asked to represent brought you to the brink of just quitting your job altogether.

“i just feel relieved,” you say. “if i had to hear the incessant whining and nagging of that idiot for one more day, i might have gone insane!”

“well, thank god you’re a stellar lawyer and managed to get rid of him,” yunjin teases, taking a sip of her drink. “do you already have anything else lined up?”

“god, no! i have a few days off just to take care of paperwork, maybe help out some of my colleagues around the office… but nothing big for now, thankfully.”

“oh, that’s amazing! which reminds me, this means you can actually join us on that weekend spa trip we were talking about last week,” chaeyoung happily suggests, as she’s already pulling up the website of the spa retreat.

“i guess a spa day would be nice,” you say, looking over at chaeyoung’s phone. you feel your body already going lax at the thought of a hot stone massage.

“oh, that would be so nice!” yunjin pouts. “we haven’t gone on a girls trip in so long! i miss going away, just the three of us… do you guys remember that trip we took to croatia two years ago? that was the best one we ever did, i swear!”

while chaeyoung joins yunjin in reminiscing about all the trips the three of you took over the years, you feel your phone buzzing in the pocket of your dress paints. pulling it out, you see an email notification…

“oh, no…” your voice trails off, reading over the email you had just received.

“what? what’s the matter?” yunjin asks, her conversation with chaeyoung coming to a halt.

“my boss just emailed me. he wants me in the office tomorrow morning. some big case that just came in,” you explain, already feeling a headache coming in.

“but tomorrow’s saturday,” chaeyoung frowns.

“i know… i know.”

when monday rolls around, seungcheol really wished that he had died before mingyu had found him the week before.

the day started normal enough. he woke up at 5 a.m. and took kkuma for a walk in the park near his apartment building, just like every morning. by 8 a.m., he was already set up in his studio inside the PLEDIS building, ready to work on the tracks he was supposed to finish mixing by the end of the week. seungcheol liked the buzz of the label, people from all different departments running around trying to stay on their schedules; it motivated him to also do his part diligently, and reminded him that he was extremely lucky to be doing one of the things he loves most: music.

seungcheol should’ve guessed something was up today the moment the clock struck 11 and jihoon, the other in-house producer of PLEDIS, and one of his oldest friends, hadn’t come by his studio. he and jihoon had known each other since their college days, having met in an audio engineering class they apparently shared, and had been friends for 8 years now. during their last year of college, they were recruited by a record label that was just starting out (which became the PLEDIS of today), and despite all warnings from their families, they decided to take a leap of faith together and join the company. it all worked out for the better, it turned out, as PLEDIS only grew and soon became a household name in the music industry.

as the only producers that have stuck around PLEDIS since the beginning, they developed several… traditions, or rituals over the years, one of which was jihoon’s 11 a.m. coffee run, which they’d spend sharing ideas and notes over each other’s work, and, if jihoon was in a particularly good mood, engage in some office gossip (not that either of them would ever admit it). today, however, jihoon is a no-show and seungcheol can’t help but wonder what his friend is up to.

when he shoots jihoon a quick text, asking if he’s alright, his friend only replies with a “just busy,” and tells seungcheol not to wait up for him at lunch, as he’ll probably be stuck in the studio all day. this doesn’t surprise him that much, seeing as jihoon might be an even bigger workaholic than he is, but he still can’t shake the feeling that something must be up with his friend. he decides that instead of going out for lunch, he’s gonna pick up some takeout and join jihoon in his studio. he wouldn’t be able to rest easy knowing his friend will go a day without eating anything.

once lunch hours begin, seungcheol takes a quick walk two blocks down the street to the restaurant mingyu works in, who’s already waiting for him with the food seungcheol had requested for him and jihoon. on his way back to PLEDIS, he texts jihoon again, just to make sure he’s still in the studio, but there’s no answer, and now seungcheol is seriously starting to get worried. he jogs the rest of the way until he’s back inside the building, and takes the elevator to the 6th floor where jihoon’s studio is stationed.

walking up to the door that reads UNIVERSE FACTORY, he stops in his tracks when he hears more than one voice from the other side of the door. he easily recognizes jihoon’s voice, but the other voices – two other men and a woman – are harder to make out. except… except the woman’s voice is eerily familiar, and without a second thought, seungcheol grips the handle and swings the door open, four pairs of eyes whipping in his direction.

his eyes land on jihoon, who looks like he wishes he was anywhere else in that moment, and then scan the rest of room, recognizing mr. han, their CEO, and… you. it’s you.

seungcheol feels like he’s going to faint. mr. han does not look the least bit happy about seungcheol’s intrusion, and he really wishes the man would slap him just so he can know for sure if he’s dreaming. if you’re surprised to see seungcheol, your face shows no sign of it, and seungcheol can’t help but stare at you. you look so beautiful, so put together; your make-up is soft, almost unnoticeable, your hair pushed behind your ears, and you’re wearing a dark green suit… oh, how he loved you in green.

you were the picture of grace and professionalism and he was… not. he really wishes he hadn’t come to the studio in sweatpants right now.

“mr. choi, what a… surprise,” mr. han exclaims, standing up from his seat, you and the other man – who seungcheol has no idea who he is, but he knows he doesn’t like the way he’s standing so close to you – following suit. “i didn’t know mr. lee was expecting you,” mr. han continues, glancing towards jihoon, who turned red as a tomato.

“i wasn’t, actually,” jihoon squeaks, avoiding both seungcheol and mr. han’s gazes.

“i apologize, i was… i was just bringing jihoon some lunch. i didn’t know there was… a meeting happening,” seungcheol says, looking towards you, and he’s almost thrown back by the way you’re just… staring directly at him.

mr. han sighs, but remembering the situation, he quickly puts on a polite smile as he turns towards you and the other man. “mr. choi is one of our other in-house producers. mr. choi, this is mr. jeon and miss L/N. they’re helping us with some… legal matters.”

so that’s why you were here. and who the other guy was. but what legal matters? and why was jihoon involved? and why didn’t he tell seungcheol?!

before seungcheol can ask more questions, mr. han gestures towards the door he came through and says “now, if you don’t mind, you can come back in a few minutes, mr. choi. we’ll be done soon.”

soon. soon, his ass!

seungcheol had been pacing the hallway outside jihoon’s studio for the past 20 minutes (he checked, he wasn’t exaggerating!), trying very hard not to eavesdrop through the door, and thinking of every possible reason why jihoon would need legal help and why you would be here.

jihoon was definitely in some kind of trouble. for the CEO to be involved as well, it for sure must be something that could affect the whole label. seungcheol just can’t understand why jihoon wouldn’t tell him if he had any kind of problem. they were colleagues, but most importantly, they were friends. he would’ve dropped everything to come to his aid.

now, when it comes to you… seungcheol knows you’re a lawyer, obviously he does. he met you when you were halfway through law school, and he was there for every failed and aced exam, for your graduation (he was so proud of you that day, it was the first time you’d ever seen him cry), for every measly job you had before finally securing the one you currently held at one of the top firms in the city. he also knows you’re a damn good lawyer, seeing how hard you work and how dedicated you are. he supposes it’s not surprising you were chosen to represent jihoon in whatever mess he got himself in.

he feels bad now that he remembers how he held these things above your head during your last fight. how you were working late so often, how you never asked him to join you at office parties, despite how eager you always were to go out with your coworkers for drinks, how you always asked him to wait for you outside the office building, as if you didn’t want people to know you had a partner...

he knows that both of you were to blame for how things went down between you, but since he started the argument in the first place, he thinks he could’ve brought all this up in a better way, at a better time.

his thoughts are interrupted when the door to jihoon’s studio opens again, and he finds himself regretting waiting in the hallway because now he has to face you again and he’s not ready and he doesn’t know what to say and he still looks like a hobo and –

“mr. choi!”

he looks up to see who he imagines is your colleague – mr. jeon – step towards him, as you and mr. han step out after him, discussing something. you glance once towards seungcheol before turning back to the conversation, and seungcheol feels his heart clench.

“mr. jeon, i’m sorry once again for interrupting your meeting,” seungcheol says, extending his hand to shake mr. jeon’s.

“don’t worry, no harm done at all. i’m actually glad you stuck around, because i had something to ask you. seeing as you and mr. lee are close, would you be available for a short talk with us, sometime in the next days? we’ll have to build a strong case for mr. lee and, well, some insight from his colleagues would be very helpful,” mr. jeon explains, fixing the thin-rimmed glasses perched on his nose.

seungcheol is taken aback by the man’s soft tone. his sharp eyes and cold look on his face made him look pretty intimidating, but his voice is the complete opposite, putting seungcheol weirdly at ease.

“o-of course, anything for jihoon,” seungcheol quickly replies. “can i ask, though, what exactly does he need help with?”

“plagiarism.”

“PLAGIARISM?!”

“you’re being sued. for plagiarism.”

“yes.”

“and you just found out last friday.”

“yes.”

“last friday when we all went out for barbeque and you didn’t even think to mention it? not even once?!”

“will you stop pacing and sit down? you’re making me even more nervous than i already am,” jihoon sighs, dropping his head in his hands.

seungcheol sighs as well, muttering a sorry, and sits down on the couch opposite jihoon’s chair.

jihoon continues. “i didn’t mention anything because i didn’t want to piss on everyone’s good mood. it was joshua’s birthday… besides, i didn’t know all the details of the situation at that point. i thought it was another baseless accusation, you know? but they’re serious about it. they wanna take me to court.”

“what? that’s insane,” seungcheol says. “i feel weird even asking, but did you even plagiarize?”

“no! of course not! i don’t even know the people!” jihoon exclaims, flopping down on the couch next to seungcheol. he lets out a long groan. “this is just what i needed.”

seungcheol pats his friend’s back, thinking of some encouraging words. jihoon was the most talented and creative guy he knew. to think that someone would accuse him of using somebody else’s work was a concept seungcheol couldn’t even entertain.

“don’t worry. that jeon guy looks like he’s already got a game plan.”

“and Y/N,” jihoon says.

silence falls around the two of them, until jihoon stirs from the couch, sitting up to look at seungcheol.

“are we just not going to acknowledge her or what?”

“no! that’s not what i…” seungcheol sighs, hanging his head. “i just wasn’t expecting to see her. i don’t know how to feel.”

“that’s understandable. you guys haven’t seen each other in a while, right?”

seungcheol shakes his head. “did she… did she say anything to you?”

“oh, no. she was super professional, went straight to business. but…” jihoon trails off, debating whether he should say what he was thinking.

“but? but what?!” seungcheol grabs jihoon’s shoulders, shaking him a little.

“but i think she was just as rattled to see you as you were. her hand kept shaking while she was writing, after you left. i guess she was just better at hiding her surprise,” jihoon continues. “now let go of me, you animal!”

seungcheol sighs. could it be that you were just as much of a mess inside as he was? the hopeful part of him thinks you might have thought of him all these months, just as he thought of you. the other part of him thinks your hand might as well just have been shaking from anger.

“you know, this might be a good thing,” jihoon says, getting up and sitting back in front of his computer.

“what, you getting sued and her being around?”

“yeah. maybe this way you’ll finally grow some balls, put your pride aside, and actually fix things,” jihoon deadpans, and seungcheol knows the conversation is over.

yeah. easier said than done.

#📁 lexie.works #🌙 midnights #seventeen #choi seungcheol #choi seungcheol x reader #seungcheol x reader #seventeen fanfic #seventeen imagine #svt au #seventeen angst #seventeen fluff

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fairlyang · 4 months

Text

Let you break my heart again 🕷️

you are in love with your best friend

w/c: 999

pairing: miguel o’hara x reader

tags: kinda angst? you’re so in love, he doesn’t feel the same, heartbreak, shitting n crying, slightly delusional

notes: the grip this song has had on me the past two weeks- this idea came to me last week I just HAD TO-

part two

You had been feeling down the entire day since you saw Miguel post the new girl he had been talking to and calling her his girlfriend with today’s date on the caption.

Him calling you a couple hours after asking if you wanted to go to a party with him only added salt to the wound.

You have been hopelessly and desperately in love with him since your freshmen year of high school.

8 years.

8 years of silence.

8 years of torture.

No one even looked his way in high school because he, alongside you, were known as the science nerds of the school. You obviously didn’t care, if anything it made falling for him that much predictable.

At least for anyone with eyes and good at deciphering body language.

Which Miguel wasn’t.

Somehow he never realized and you never had the balls to confess your love to him.

After graduating high school he had quite possibly the biggest glow up (unbeknownst to you he had turned into spider-man) and first semester of uni changed everything for him.

He had girls eating out of the palm of his hand and practically falling to their knees for him as if they hadn’t been using him to do their homework just a few months back.

Miguel didn’t seem to care or see through all the girl’s intentions.

Meanwhile you had liked him when he would wear nerdy little crewnecks and those thick glasses that had now been long abandoned.

You liked him when he was getting brutally bullied and were the only one to ever stick up for him, but it never going well for either of you.

You liked him when he was going through a hard time with his mom and relied on you heavily for nearly everything.

You liked him when the revelation of who his father was, tore him up to literal pieces.

He was always in your head. Whether it be daydream, hearing someone talk about him, or actually dreaming about him at night.

Only in your mind can you pretend that you’re his girlfriend. That he likes you.

That you’re his first and only choice.

That you’re the only one he wants.

That he’s just as in love with you as you are with him.

He had taken over all your thoughts possible and it never got any easier.

You thought you’d get over it after sophomore year but it only grew as he ended up being your only friend throughout high school.

Nothing was more heartbreaking than having to hear him talk about all the girls he would go out with, or fuck.

The worst was when you’d actually go to parties with him. You’d end up almost throwing up or crying in the bathroom after seeing yet another new girl grinding herself against him or a girl making out with him.

It never ended up being less heartbreaking. You had luckily made a few friends who tried their best to help.

Peter B and MJ.

Somehow you befriended them your first year of uni and all four of you became a little group. They were your occasional saviors when you’d find yourself sulking over Miguel being with another girl.

They’d always try to distract you and cheer you up.

Or if they were the ones to spot Miguel fooling around they’d turn you to the opposite direction to avoid your heart from crumbling again.

You felt as if you were being entrapped.

It was almost as if Miguel subconsciously knew what he was doing.

Because when he grew bored of a girl all of a sudden his attention would be fully on you.

Buying you food, getting you cute little plants, helping you study.

It was an endless cycle of pain and heartbreak then yearning and being enamored by him.

Right now was pure heartbreak and misery.

You had been crying for hours on end now and just let your sad playlist loop.

All you were wishing for now is that one day you’d stop falling in love with him.

That somehow your feelings for him would wash away and you’ll never have to deal with this heartbreak ever again.

But it’s been long now. These feelings weren’t going to disappear.

And he wasn’t going to magically fall in love with you.

Especially because he’s always been the one to let anyone and everyone know that you were only his best friend. And nothing more.

But the way he’d wrap his arms around you, leave kisses on your forehead and cheeks just boggled your head.

The way he would just stare at you when you were rambling about the newest science news you’d heard about.

The way he would hug you tightly at the most random times imaginable.

The way he’d willingly put his jacket on you if it were too chilly outside.

The way he would get so overprotective when a guy asks you out.

So you were always questioning what he really thought of you.

He never made it easy to decipher any of his feelings unless he was telling you up front, which he almost never did.

As more hot tears fell down your face, you could only pray that someone will like you like you like him.

It felt like such an impossible ask.

You loved him so much and you could practically feel pieces of your heart breaking. Why couldn’t he just reciprocate your love?

Why did you have to torture yourself like this?

Why is the only time you’re truly happy (besides when you’re with him) is when you’re dreaming about actually being with him?

Why is it so hard for him to romantically love you?

Why does it always have to be platonic?

Maybe one day you’ll be able to get over him and these feelings won’t be as strong.

Maybe one day you’ll find someone that’ll know how to take care of your heart and return your love.

Maybe one day it’ll be him.

#miguel o'hara #miguel ohara #across the spiderverse #miguel ohara imagine #miguel o hara #miguel ohara x reader #atsv miguel #miguel ohara oneshot #miguel ohara x y/n #miguel ohara fic #miguel ohara x you #Miguel ohara angst #miguel o’hara fic #spider man 2099 #Spotify

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lostryu · 7 months

Text

i need gay rights because literally not a single self-proclaimed cis/het 'ally' understands the alienating experience that comes with being the only gay person in the workplace.

i am a gnc butch lesbian. i use he/him pronouns. when i came out to my manager regarding my pronouns (i had been an open lesbian since the moment of my hire), she told me that she supported me, but she could not enforce or ask our clients to use the correct pronouns for me. she told me it was something i would have to learn to deal with. she never uses the correct pronouns for me unless a person from a different department (who also happens to be LGBT+) is present. she is our HR in addition to manager.

none of my coworkers in my department ever remember to use my pronouns. if i remind them, they go over the top with the "im sorry's" and the "im still learning" and "you know i try my hardest's!" and "i swear im not homophobic!", it has been over 6 months since i came out. if i say nothing, they continue to use she/her (unless that other lgbt+ person from the other department is present, then they miraculously get it right).

sometimes they call me 'girl'. they always flounder and correct to "man-boy-uh youknowwhatimeanright". they laugh it off. they never bother to ask what terms i am comfortable with, or if i even cared in the first place. they don't care about my gender, they never bother to ask. somehow the subject gets changed every time i try to tell them, or set a boundary.

once in a while in a slow shift, the conversation will hop to our dating lives. somehow, it always jumps to how men suck and how dating a woman must be so much easier. they wish they could be gay and not straight. every time, they'll stare at me expectantly, like i am an animal at the zoo. no matter what i say, positive or negative, i must be lying. i cannot be that happy in my relationship, or if i have any issues, they must be minor. if i say 'why don't you try dating a girl then' to their remarks, they'll laugh, say something like "there is no way i possibly could" with that special tone of disguised disgust.

i am a prop, at work. they tell me about how much they love their kids. how they could bring anyone home and they wouldn't care. "they could be black, brown, or purple," they'll say "it could be a woman or a man! I support gay rights!" Then they will talk about how hungry they are, and how they will be going to Chick Fil a for the 4th time this week. 'as a treat'. it is thursday. they talk about going to Hobby Lobby again for christmas decorations, or another sale. sometimes i think i can taste blood.

its june. they talk about the pride parade and how excited they are to see the queens and their 'funny costumes'. they talk about how fun it is to go and watch, how they like the free things the corporations hand out. they don't want to bring their younger kids though. they're not old enough. they do not know that the first pride was a riot. they do not know what happened during the AIDS crisis, how many died. they don't really care when i try to tell them, they'd rather focus on the fun parts of the parade. the spectacle.

i wear a pronoun pin, to make it easier. still somehow no one can get my pronouns right. a client notices it. commends me for "being brave" and "coming out." she never uses my correct pronouns. i stopped wearing the pin after the 11th person asked me if my name on my name tag was my real one, and after the 45th person went out of their way to use incorrect pronouns every sentence. my manager, the HR, did not care.

i need gay rights, but somehow everything got resolved when they allowed us to marry in 2015. to our allies, the work is done. somehow i am left more alone than when we started.

#lost.txt #lesbian loneliness #like idk how to describe it but it sure is loneliness and alienation #somewhat of a vent post #like yes we have made it so far #but our 'allies' have grown very complacent #in their own support and ideology #reminder that being gay is still considered spectacle

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vidavalor · 7 months

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Ah, I remembered!

My question was: what are your thoughts on Crowley saying ‘I lost my best friend’ when he’s directly talking to Aziraphale’s non-corporate ghost in season 1? I always thought that line was strange. Is it that he can’t say ‘I lost you directly’ because others might be listening?

Hi @procrastiel ooh, nice! I *love* this scene so I'm super happy to share an opinion on it. Thank you. :)

Meta on the meanings behind what they call each other, what they intentionally *don't* call each other, how they actually said they loved each other and came up with a shorthand for it in 1941, and why they still don't just use those damn words already...

This goes everywhere, just FYI lol. I think I started with "no nightingales" and took a scenic route through 1600, 1941 and bits of S2 before coming back to the scene you asked about but I've been told it makes sense. Thanks for indulging me. :)

There are certain things that Crowley & Aziraphale feel that they can't call one another and can't say to one another directly. It's not just because they could be overheard if they're in public, though that's always a concern. They don't say them when they're alone, either.

It's because it hurts too much.

They've always tried to be optimistic about surviving Armageddon and being able to be together somehow but they're terrified that they won't and the odds, in their minds, aren't great, being that it's the whole will of God and all. As a result, they've lived their whole relationship expecting it to end in tragedy. They could both live for all of time, forced apart by Heaven and Hell. One of them could die and leave the other alone for eternity with nothing but the memory of the other. Meanwhile, in the now? It's not a great situation, either.

They can't really be together. They are together but not openly and they can't promise each other everything and they absolutely would if they could. Heaven and Hell could literally murder them if they got caught together so they have to be careful and keep it a secret. This means that even as the human world they live in opens up and starts to change to a point that queer humans like them are living more open lives with one another, Crowley and Aziraphale still cannot at this stage in the story.

So, it all becomes then an unspoken question of: what would make this easier? (As if it could ever really be made easier?) They don't wish to cause each other any additional pain. What would make it easier, they think, is if they don't say certain things so that what they can't have now or what might be lost to them in the future is and will be easier to bear.

This is delusional but they're doing it anyway because it gives them some measure of control over things they can't totally control.

They think it is easier to deal with not being able to be together if they just never say directly aloud what they are in terms that are surface-level undeniable. They speak in a coded language with one another and they say all the things in those words. But the doublespeak gives them some cover. Not to ever deny any of it but it softens the edges of it.

It's also because they live with the fact that they can't fully be together but they also both are fundamentally optimists and want to think that maybe, someday, they could find a way to have what they want to have with one another. That's also why they don't say the things fully. A part of them thinks that if they just don't right now and they wait until some time comes when it seems like they could have a life together, then they still get to have those moments. They're almost saving some of it for a life they hope they get to have but aren't sure if they will.

As a result, they are romantic as all fuck towards one another but they don't use words like romance or love aloud. If they do find they have to talk about it, they've shorthanded it in a way that they both understand because it's based on their past together. We already can see bits of it uncoded-- nightingales, dining at the Ritz-- but there are more than that that we can see if we deep dive a bit here so let's do that...

What's evident in the scene in 2.06 wherein Crowley decides to try to abandon the doublespeak is how deeply ingrained this way of speaking is for both of them. Also, how they don't abandon it when they're alone (the 1967 scene also illustrates this.) Crowley actually reverts back to their doublespeak *three sentences* into his proposal. He doesn't get much further than establishing that they've both been on this planet for a long time before he starts evoking coded messaging. He flicks his hands between them during the "you and me" line in a way that is echoing how Aziraphale gestured at him to mean "couple" in 1941. He winds up using coded language all over the place, peaking with the "no nightingales" moment that is actually coded language twice over because of "nightingales" being their word for romance and the asking Aziraphale to listen for birds evoking the Job minisode and the moment in the courtyard when they came up with the doublespeak.

Part of why Crowley can't get through the proposal without it is because he doesn't want to do it like this. Both the doublespeak and the idea of someday loosening it a bit mean things to them. They like their private language. Maggie and Nina are not exactly correct in assuming that they never say how they really feel. They're not wrong, either, but they're not fully right. Crowley and Aziraphale do talk. They just do it in a way that hurts them less because they can't bear to hurt each other because they're batshit crazy in love with each other. Maggie and Nina are correct in saying that Crowley and Aziraphale don't say how they truly feel if saying how you truly feel means using traditional language but they are wrong to say that they don't express these feelings at all because we have literally been watching them do so this entire time.

Notice how Crowley, even risking more with breaking their code in 2.06, still doesn't say some things. Amazing how he said all of that and he didn't say I love you, isn't it? He could have. He is, in what else he's saying, but the words they don't say are still there on the table. Aziraphale, later in the scene, almost does. He almost does because he is a mess over the situation and he wants to give Crowley something but then he doesn't and he spits out a self-aware I forgive you instead. That horrid, complicated version of it that he's used before and is code they both kind of hate. He's angry that this is all happening the way it's happening because it's taking some of the things they leave unsaid for hopeful, better days and it's saying them in a less than ideal moment.

That they both leave out that I love you, though, is the most I love you thing they could have possibly done.

They think it will be easier to not be free to be together and unafraid in the present-- and to maybe lose one another in the future, if they eventually have to-- if they pretend they're not a team or a group of the two of them and one way to do that is to never say words like the one we were all silently screaming at Crowley to say in that scene in 2.06 lol: "couple."

Are they a couple? Yes. Are they lovers? Yes. Are they partners, the term Nina used? Yes. Do they refer to their relationship using any of the terms in this paragraph? Oh God no...

That is why Crowley freaks out when Nina tries to get him to use uncoded, normal, human person language to help her understand what Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship is. She calls them partners and this is Crowley:

We're in agreement with Nina then when she responds with:

Nina isn't wrong here. She's just from a different world than Crowley. Nina lives in a world like ours in the year 2023 and she's puzzling Crowley and Aziraphale out through that filter. She doesn't know at this point that they are an angel and a demon who could be murdered by Heaven/Hell for being together. Her best rationale for why she's never seen Crowley and Aziraphale in her cafe together and didn't know until this week that the bookseller has a fella is her theory that Crowley is married and that he and Aziraphale are having an affair. To her, it explains why they've got chemistry for days but they're secretive. Crowley denies that-- defending Aziraphale's honor like the good old fashioned lover boy he is :)-- but the reason why he quickly denied that he and Aziraphale are partners, even if they absolutely are, is twofold. They are used to hiding it, it's dangerous for them to get caught out, and he probably feels uncomfortable with the idea of telling someone what they are exactly without talking with Aziraphale about it first-- that's all one reason.

The other reason is that he and Aziraphale don't use that word. It's not that it's an inaccurate one; it's probably the most accurate one, actually. They have a word, as we'll see, but partners isn't it because partners is the same thing as a couple and these are embargoed words to them. They don't use those phrases, even if that's what this is, just as they don't say I love you because if they don't call it love directly, they'll never lose that love, in their minds. If they don't know what it's like to hear the other say it, they don't ever have to bear the pain of never hearing it again. Better to hold those words back and only use them if they ever can somehow really be fully, openly together without fear. If Crowley doesn't use those words with Aziraphale, then he's not about to use them with the Coffee Shop Human he's only just recently met.

Along these same lines, they refrain from traditionally romantic terms of endearment on the surface. No my love, no darling, no sweetheart. Angel was there at the start and it stays because while it's always really angel (romantic), it's also angel (species/occupational), so it works well enough with their code. But its equivalent in reverse is Crowley. It's intimate, in the sense that only Crowley and Aziraphale know what it means. Only they were there in Job's courtyard. That's the coded layer of it-- it's Crowley's name to everyone else on the surface but it's that and a pet name to Aziraphale. It's why Aziraphale just calls him that constantly. Crowley changed his name to something only Aziraphale also really understands, making the use of it by Aziraphale then a way of expressing affection. When Nina asks them both separately about their relationship, both Crowley and Aziraphale actually revert to using what they call one another in an effort to explain it, even though they know that it doesn't translate fully in human terms without more words. Crowley says Aziraphale is an angel he knows; Aziraphale says:

Ironically? They are actually making it all *more* intimate by speaking in their own, private, coded language. They can't give each other everything but this they can, right? The language is their own, little world and not being able to explain their relationship to humans that well in 2023 doesn't mean they don't know what they mean to one another, which is more important. Since they can't make each other promises of forever that they can't keep and they can't have a life in the present that they'd choose for themselves, something they can do is use their little language to be sweet towards one another and they do. By having to work a little harder at conveying meaning through doublespeak, they wind up with something ironically actually at least as romantic as the traditional words, if not more so.

Anyone can call a lover darling and it can be lovely but can just anyone make my dear fellow romantic? Aziraphale can. This one was all him. He loved standing there in front of a dozen deadly human soldiers in the Kingdom of Wessex in 597 A.D., getting away with a pet name under the guise of stealing the "old sport"-style of male, moneyed, British speak and turning it romantic. This scene is great with the pet names because it opens with Aziraphale being a bit of a tease with "is that you under there, Crawley?" which he only does so that Crowley will roll his eyes and correct him. Aziraphale loves that Crowley changed his name to something coded between them based off of the moment they started their doublespeak. It was very romantic and this scene shows that Aziraphale sometimes, in earlier days, would call Crowley the old name just to get Crowley to correct him, which is all just a coded way of getting Crowley to say that, yes, he still feels the same way and yes, he still wants Aziraphale to call him that. This same scene, a few sentences later, then has Aziraphale's my DEAR fellow-- heavy emphasis on the 'dear'-- which is then answering Crowley's admission by just skipping any and all of Crowley's names entirely lol and calling The Black Knight my dear in front of a bunch of bloodthirsty soldiers and mercenaries.

The my [] fellow is perfect in their little language because of how it sounds all "I say, old chap!" on the surface but contains words that are romantic to them in their doublespeak. It's intentional that it's *not* "old chap" or "old sport" that they appropriated for their own purposes, it's my [] fellow. Fellow as in human, which is how they see their relationship (because it is) and that's something that comes up when Crowley uses a variant of this in 1941, which we'll get to in a second. My adds an intimate element to it of admitting that they are each other's in whatever ways they can be.

Aziraphale, like we said a moment ago, will sometimes sauce Crowley with the pet names a little and he does in S1 when he calls Anathema my dear when reassuring her in a scene in which he and Crowley are having a playful coded argument over Crowley's driving. Aziraphale miracles a bike rack onto the back of The Bentley and unnecessarily codes the word "bicycle" ("a perfectly normal velocipede"), smirking when Crowley grumbles "bicycle" at him. It's joking with him a bit at the lunacy of their little language *in* their little language. (Crowley playing back during this sequence is also calling Aziraphale angel (romantic) in front of Anathema, which was also a strategic decision to signal to her that he might look like a murder hornet but he's really just long-suffering gone on the sunshine-y one. Very we're just an old gay married couple, hen. We won't hurt you. in tone.) Anyway, Aziraphale using my dear with Anathema-- and his little smirks towards Crowley around it-- was really just underlining the way he uses my DEAR fellow with Crowley by using the same core phrase with a human in normal, uncoded, human conversation.

Other than this and the big one we're going to get to, there are really only two other things we've seen them use to refer to one another. In S1's Eleven Years Ago/2008, there's the moment when Crowley and Aziraphale have arrived back at the bookshop and Aziraphale is flirting with Crowley and says this, tongue firmly in cheek:

I mentioned this in another post about the wall slam in Tadfield but this is a very much intentionally blasphemous specific sexual request that is more at home in the sex meta post you all have me working on lol but for the purposes of this conversation, "foul fiend" is Bible for "wicked demon", so this is Aziraphale just kind of flirtily, jokingly calling Crowley a wicked demon in the one area in life where Crowley would probably happily own that description lol. It also has the other layer of humor in it in that Crowley calls Aziraphale angel (romantic) all the time, more often than he uses Aziraphale's actual name, and you'd think he wouldn't want to because Heaven hasn't exactly done right by Crowley and he's not especially fond of it. By calling Aziraphale angel with love behind the meaning of it, he's calling Aziraphale a good angel. He's saying that Aziraphale is what an angel is *supposed*to be, something that Aziraphale struggles with. It's both sweet and reassuring at the same time. As a result, Aziraphale has never just started calling Crowley "demon" for the same reasons-- he thinks if being a demon is being demonic and truly evil, then Crowley is a terrible demon because he's a lovely person. He is, however, positively wicked in bed, and Aziraphale likes to mock their whole situation with blasphemous Bible innuendo when requesting a little hellfire.

The other thing to briefly mention before we get into the friend discussion is a scene not long after the one we just talked about, when they're both smashed in the bookshop in S1. When he's drunk and attempting to say "bouillabaisse", Crowley gets distracted staring at Aziraphale for a moment and calls him baby before going back to his attempts at saying a word (in French, their romance language, per S2) and we get the "fish stew-- anyway!" segue back into the rest of the scene. Aziraphale was too drunk to notice enough to react so this opens up the question of whether or not the rules can get slightly more lax in bed. Does Crowley call Aziraphale baby in more intimate moments or does he just want to and it slipped out when he was drunk? It's a fairly normal phrase so it both would and would not be a surprise either way but it's still something of a question mark by the end of S2.

But there's one thing that they use that pertains to your question from the Discorporated!Aziraphale scene (told you we'd start to get here eventually lol) and that's how they use the word friend.

The rules of their language apply-- what is said on the surface is what one of the meanings of what they are saying is. It has to be what it sounds like on the surface to also be a coded thing. Aziraphale is Aziraphale's name and angel is what he is and Crowley is the name Crowley chose for himself. That angel and Crowley have hidden meanings-- that angel is given a tone that turns it from referring to Aziraphale by his species and more into angel (romantic); that Crowley is the name everyone calls Crowley now-- from angels to demons to humans alike-- but only Aziraphale knows that it's an in-joke referencing Crowley having to playact at being demonic and evil to hide his truer, sweeter nature... this is what makes these terms acceptable in their mutual language. My [] fellow is then also meeting the rules of the language because of the humor of taking a non-romantic phrase and using it for this romance of theirs that they don't refer to as one. It sounds like a perfect common thing for British men of any kind of relationship to use in conversation on the surface but it's romantic to them underneath.

So when they say friend, by their own rules of this language, it has to first contain the surface meaning. It has to be true on that level to reoccur in their language. So 'friend' does mean 'friend' in a friendship sense. They are friends. They are good friends-- best friends. Using the word is an admittance that they are each other's closest friends, which is both lovely in its own right and healthy in a romantic relationship. You want to be friends with your romantic partner. It doesn't mean you can't have other friends, of course, but if you're not friends with your partner, it's not really going to be a terribly satisfying relationship and since that is what they are-- the longest-running of long-term relationships lol-- that they are friends is important and a good thing. It's also a big deal for them to admit to it, since they are actually *supposed* to be mortal enemies. Their whole enemies-to-lovers thing never really got off the ground because they adored each other on sight but that they're friends despite the danger and the conflicts is a big thing in its own right.

But that's not the *only* meaning of friend to them, so let's look at how they evolved that bit of their language.

From what we've seen so far, it started in 1600 in The Globe Theatre scene with this:

In 1600, Burbage drops some human, queer coding into the secret language. Friend, the way Burbage is using it, is something that's actually implying lover. The surface word is technically related to friendship but the tone changes the meaning of friendship in this context to be that of a sexual relationship. Burbage's tone implies that he thinks Crowley and Aziraphale are fucking (which Crowley, laughing, silently agrees with is obvious, since he's been ignoring Burbage in favor of buzzing around Aziraphale and clearly trying to flirt his way into his bed).

Burbage is pissed that these two-- who, as we know, are basically the entire audience-- have been ignoring his monologue in favor of flirting with each other so when Aziraphale tries at a modicum of politeness (that somehow is even bitchier subtly than Burbage lol-- "I love all the... talking" is the best he can come up with), Burbage slings back by trying to drag Crowley into it by calling him Aziraphale's friend, with that loaded tone that makes the question really: 'and what does your lover think?'

Aziraphale gets the innuendo-- he's not exactly a novice at this in 1600-- but his immediate response is just to panic at the idea of anyone noticing him and Crowley together and, as Aziraphale does when stressed, he lies in increasingly absurd levels of untruth. (See also: the scene with Shax in The Bentley in S2, when he spirals up into ludicrously claiming to *not even know who Gabriel is* in an effort to say that he has nothing to do with his disappearance.)

Crowley is bemused by Aziraphale's increasingly desperate attempts to deny what is abundantly obvious to everyone around them and by Burbage's attempt to make a thing out of them to try to assuage his bruised ego. He chooses a little violence with this particularly amusing bit of go fuck yourself, you insecure little twerp:

Anyway lol what this scene then does is give us a moment in the story wherein we see them in a situation where friend (loaded) is defined as friend used euphemistically for lover and they both know it. This isn't coding they came up with but that they will wind up appropriating from the humans around them and repurposing for themselves, though they won't for awhile still to come yet.

What's worth noting here is that friend (loaded) in this human code is euphemistic for a pretty wide array of loaded friend relationships. There's no separation in it for friends with benefits versus someone you're seeing but aren't comfortable admitting that versus someone you've been with for awhile versus the person that is basically your secret spouse, etc.. All of these things are friend (loaded) in human code because the main purpose of it is to identify a pair of people who are involved as such without directly saying so on the surface, even if it's implied heavily via tone.

So what happens when Crowley and Aziraphale eventually decide to repurpose it for themselves?

They've got to be clear on what it means. They'll need to define it more specifically amongst themselves in order to use it.

For awhile still after 1600, they just aren't defining their relationship. They don't need friend (loaded) because they have things they call each other, right? They've got angel and Crowley and my dear fellow and the like. They're not usually around a lot of other humans together that are going to do what Burbage did and try to force a definition of it. (This changes, as we know, in the modern era-- especially S2-- but back in the day, it was true for them.) As a result, they've never had to define this and that's absolutely fucking perfect, as far as they're concerned.

Not defining this? Lovely. Yes. More of that. Makes the fact that they can't just call each other my love hurt a lot less, they're convinced. It helps now for sure and it'll make it less painful if they lose each other. They totally will not at all continue to spend thousands of years wondering what it would sound like if they said the things. They don't each have fourteen million fantasies about being able to use the traditional words and how they'd do it-- absolutely not lol. *Not* using the traditional words isn't at all making both the allure of those words-- and the ones they *do* use-- hotter and more romantic or anything. Not in the slightest...

So then we eventually get the Holy Water Arc, right, and in the middle of that scene, we see them run into a definition problem. In 1862, what actually causes them to fight isn't the holy water request. It's Aziraphale giving it all a word and that word being "fraternizing." First rule of We Don't Say It Club is that we don't say it... but it's also that if you're going to say a word that means the two of you and what you have, maybe don't use the one that Heaven would-- the one that means 'socializing with the enemy.' In Aziraphale's defense, they're both a mess and half-broken up in this scene and there's more going on it than we're going to get into here but the point is that suddenly not having a word caused big drama and caused the whole holy water conversation to de-evolve into an argument that broke them up for the eleven or so minutes that they can stay broken up.

But they still hadn't really resolved the whole holy water argument debacle by 1941, even if there is evidence in the show that they saw one another between 1862 and 1941, and the reason why they haven't is because holy water is irretrievably linked to defining what they are.

Crowley asking for it meant they had to consider what they are to one another and talk about it and 1862 proved their language didn't have words for that at the time. There is a level of panic to it because the request contains a certain level of acknowledgement about how they feel about each other. Aziraphale jumps onto holy water being a suicide pill not just because he's terribly worried that that's why a visibly anxious and depressed Crowley wants it but because if it's not what Crowley wants it for, then Crowley is saying he wants it for defense and whose defense, right? Not just his own, potentially. It's very much saying that he wants it to protect not just himself but Aziraphale from Hell and now we're talking about Crowley being willing to risk the wrath of Hell and maybe get himself killed trying to protect Aziraphale from harm and now, we're closer than ever to that I love you under the surface and they panic and they avoid it for 80 some odd years entirely until World War II...

...and then we arrive at The Blitz in 1941. We are now a scant one hundred years or so until 6,000 years being up since the creation of Earth and Armageddon was always going to happen in "*about* 6,000 years" so, for all they know, this is it... and Crowley in 1600 told you how he feels about sad endings:

So while rescuing Aziraphale is nothing new, Crowley turned up in 1941 with the intent of making a better ending, in case they had now found themselves at the start of the end of the world. They were almost out of time either way and he didn't want it all to end without them having said the things but also they didn't know *for sure* if this was it... and they still can't be together if it isn't... so Crowley can't just show up and be like so, angel, I've been meaning to tell you in the actual words for the last six millennia-- I'm madly in love with you. He has to find a way to do it in their language of doublespeak. And so, here's Crowley using friend (loaded) in front of the Nazis in 1941:

By using my friend in the church, Crowley is then actually euphemistically calling Aziraphale my lover by calling back to The Globe Theatre and stealing the human coded term that Burbage used. Crowley does not care what the Nazis think. The comment isn't for them; it's for Aziraphale. So is letting Aziraphale find out about his first name, which is also calling back to The Globe Theatre. ("Anthony", pronounced "Antony", as in Shakespeare's 'Antony and Cleopatra', the play in which Shakespeare put the love poetry he stole that Crowley wrote for Aziraphale.) So is referencing the unguarded holy water in the church, which is then trying to talk about it a little by connecting it to this romantic grand gesture here and acknowledging why they panicked over it all those years ago. It's all saying I'm in love with you in their little language in the best way Crowley can in this moment.

But what did we say about friend (loaded)? We said they have to define it, right?

Because it can mean different things. Crowley isn't wrong to use it and Aziraphale understands it the way he does in the church. He understands it to euphemistically refer to them as lovers, which they are. It's just that all of this combined with Crowley saving the books then makes Aziraphale realize that it's one thing to say my friend (loaded) but if you say it and then there's holy water referencing and then there's more of the Shakespeare scene in there with Anthony and the little "you don't like it?" pout and then there's the entered a church for you and... you put all of that together with little demonic miracle of my own and saving the books...

...and Aziraphale realizes that Crowley is taking the thing that they always were-- my friend (loaded)-- and using it in the middle of saying that he's in love with him.

Crowley is trying to give it a word.

The word he's using meets all their language rules. It's from a moment in their past. It has a true surface meaning and a loaded undertone and subtext for days. He's not asking Aziraphale to use it. He's not saying the actual thing, as that would be breaking their rules, but he is absolutely saying it in their language.

He's not asking Aziraphale for it in return. He's just saying that this could all be over soon and he needed Aziraphale to know and in some ways, it's an apology of sorts. He's sorry they fought. He's sorry they lost years over it. He's sorry for the pain of it. He was in love, you see. The sex while pining got to be a lot. All of this got to be a lot. You get it now right, Aziraphale? Yes? Good. Lift home...

The phrase my friend (loaded) takes on a different meaning after Crowley saves the books and after their conversation inside and outside The Bentley. That's the point of the two "shut up"s-- the one from Part 1 and the one right after it where Part 2 picks up. Why have this conversation twice? Because it's actually two different conversations.

The first one outside The Bentley is Aziraphale in a love stupor, just telling Crowley that saving the books was a nice thing and Crowley responding with a half-effort "shut up" while he cleans his glasses. It's the only scene in the entire series to date in which Crowley is cleaning his glasses and he is in this moment to give Aziraphale his eyes for a moment. But The Blitz, Part 2 shows us this again... and then gives us the scene in The Bentley with what starts out sounding like the same conversation on the surface to start. It is, though, not the same conversation *under* the surface...

There's a reason why Aziraphale says a second time that saving the books was a nice thing. They're now in The Bentley, which is a little more private, and Aziraphale can't let this drop because he needs to know for sure what Crowley is saying with this and if Crowley's sure he wants to be saying what it seems like he's saying. This is basically Aziraphale's version of Crowley's "are you sure? are you sure you're sure?" in the magic shop later on. Aziraphale knows Crowley just said he's in love with him but Aziraphale also knows *Crowley*, right?

He's been with Crowley for a long time. He knows him very well. He knows that Crowley is anxious and emotional and hopelessly romantic and that the world is literally ending around them as they're driving through bombs raining down over London and part of Aziraphale is thinking of the fact that even in this seemingly apocalyptic Armageddon that could be starting here, Crowley was coded in what he just did. He left the traditional words on the table. He said the things in their language and that is, in some ways, even more romantic, but he's left them the things they leave out of hope for a better future, just in case. There's a caution to that and while Aziraphale appreciates the caution, he also can sense that Crowley was nervous about doing this. He is a little concerned that Crowley's going to have said he loved him and then regret it and pull away from him again and Aziraphale can't do the first bit of the Holy Water Arc all over again. He's really wanting to start to move into a lighter era here lol. He also really wants to be sure that he's understanding what Crowley is saying entirely.

And he wants to hear it again.

If Crowley isn't going to shut down on him entirely now, Aziraphale very much liked all of this and would like more of it but he first has to be sure he knows for sure what Crowley means and he can't just ask directly or he's both saying the things they leave unsaid and he'd be undoing Crowley's effort so he has to find a way to ask without directly asking and in such a way that an already sensitive about all of this Crowley won't take offense or be embarrassed and that gives them a way back from this if Crowley shows signs that he feels like he might have gone too far.

So Aziraphale offers Crowley an out.

He tells him again that it was such a nice thing Crowley did for him. He means this and it was a nice thing but this is also saying that he heard that I'm in love with you that Crowley was saying by saving his books and that he liked hearing it, that it was nice, that it was okay that Crowley did that, but that it's also okay if he feels like he made a mistake with it.

Crowley's response to again being told that it was nice is to again tell Aziraphale to "shut up", this one a bit more emphatically than he did outside The Bentley a few moments before. It's unclear to what extent this language, at this time, is sexualized, but by 2019/S1, this back and forth of Aziraphale calling Crowley "nice" and Crowley responding with some bite is a self-parodic sex game that they're playing in Tadfield.

Much of what happens in Tadfield is playing on other parts of their story-- think about the paintball bit with the gun but now with knowledge of The Bullet Catch in The Blitz, Part 2-- and there is a big difference in the ways Aziraphale calls Crowley "nice" in 1941 and in 2019. In Tadfield in 2019, Aziraphale is literally smirking in a way that implies that this is a little game they play and he's saying a series of things that he knows will prompt this intentionally outsized reaction from Crowley, who is playing it with him. The game is likely tied *to* this bit of 1941 that we see in The Blitz, Part 2 in S2, in that it's referencing it a bit (if very obviously going in a different direction lol), but also because Aziraphale's phrasing and tone in 1941 is not smirking. It's softer and quieter and not designed, through their language, to prompt a certain response out of Crowley. It's not yet a sex game, it's still a kind of conversation they've had in the past that will serve as inspiration for said sex game in the future.

While it's a bit unclear if a version of this already existed in 1941 or if 1941 is part of the evolution to what it becomes by 2019, there's a tone to it in The Bentley in 1941 that says that, at the least, Crowley suspects that Aziraphale is trying to lure him towards sex by calling him nice and that's reinforced by the next thing Aziraphale says, which continues it, but is also doing so to provide Crowley with an out to his confession of love, in case Crowley wants to take it.

Aziraphale's out comes in the form of offering him sex, which is absolutely what this is:

Oh, gee, Aziraphale, whatever could you do in this moment here in The Bentley? You aren't at all telling him you'd do literally anything he says he wants right now, right here, in his damn car, are you?

But while Aziraphale would so absolutely yes because lawd, 1941 Crowley is sldjwkejele... look at what he's *really* saying as well...

What he's saying here is we can pretend you just did all of that for sex, if you want to. I know you didn't and you know you didn't but we are good at pretending and if you're silently having an anxiety attack behind your glasses over there, we don't have do this...

Crowley's response?

The quiet "forget it, will you?"

Meaning: I don't want to take it back. I'm in love with you. I wanted to say it. I meant to say it. Everything might be going to go pear-shaped and I wanted to have said it somehow. I don't need you to say it. I don't know what I expected but I also maybe kinda didn't want the response to be 'aww, you're sweet... do you want a blowjob?' so maybe let's just drop this. We're going to never speak of this again now. Moving onto spreading the demon drink...

Crowley turns down Aziraphale's offer to make it about sex and, in doing so, Crowley says indisputably that it's about love. If he had taken up Aziraphale's offer in that moment, then it would have been agreeing to pretend that he's never said he's in love with Aziraphale and to instead pretend that the romantic-looking things were all an effort to get into Aziraphale's pants. When he turns down sex, Aziraphale smiles softly because, to him, *this* is then really the moment that Crowley said he loves him.

Aziraphale knows for sure now what Crowley was saying and my friend (loaded) now has a definition between them that means the whole deal. Since Crowley said the thing that meant lovers euphemistically as part of saying he's in love with him, then my friend (loaded) is now forever part of the night during The Blitz in 1941 when Crowley said he was in love with him, which means that they can't use any version of friend (loaded) with each other without that being part of it. Friend (loaded) always meant lovers (sexual partners) but now it also means lovers (romantic partners) as well. It's not that they just suddenly became romantic partners because it's been a romance all along but now they're acknowledging it in a way they can't go back from and they do so by giving what they are to one another a word in their secret language.

Aziraphale then wants to return the feeling. Crowley is saying that he doesn't need him to by telling him to forget it about it and wanting to move on from it but Aziraphale can't accept that. Crowley might be right-- this could be it-- and like Aziraphale's going to let Crowley potentially soon go to his grave without telling him he's not alone in how he feels. That's not happening. However you think the events happened to give Aziraphale the opportunity to rescue Crowley from the wrath of Mrs. H-- divine fate, Aziraphale miracling the bottles broken, The Bentley shipping it and helping Aziraphale, all of the above, etc..-- he gets the chance not ten minutes later and he takes it... and, of course, what does he use?

My good friend (loaded af lol).

They've already just redefined my friend (loaded) by this point, so to turn around and use it is to tell Crowley I feel the same way. I love you, too. This is Crowley's change in expression in reaction in that above gif. It's one thing when Aziraphale volunteers to help-- that is sweet and Crowley's all eyebrows raised in intrigued surprise. His whole expression then slips from that into being stunned when he hears my good friend and he realizes that Aziraphale is now grand gesturing *him*. He's realizing that the bit in the car really was just an offer of an out, not just that plus Aziraphale saying he was uncomfortable with what Crowley had said and needing it to stay a lot more hidden beneath a cover of sex. It was Aziraphale needing to be sure he understood and needing to be sure that Crowley was sure he wanted to make this change in how they are but now that he's sure on those things, Aziraphale is actually all in for it.

Worth mentioning that my good friend (loaded) is a mashup of my friend and my dear fellow, which makes it extra sweet. Just as Crowley started this by calling back to The Globe Theatre by using my friend (loaded), Aziraphale is calling back to the my dear fellow rhythm of what he's called Crowley for centuries. It says I love you and every 'my dear fellow' was not just fondness but an 'I love you', if you didn't already know. I've loved you forever.

It's also quite literally calling Crowley 'good', which is not something that he really believes about himself but is something Aziraphale believes about him. His good friend, as in close friend, but also his good friend, as in good person. He also does nothing to discourage Mrs. H's inevitable understanding that he and Crowley are a couple. He gestures between them to indicate it. He uses my good friend in such a way that it's just the same thing queer humans of the time would have said to someone low-risk (a theatre person) in London during WW2. It's completely inverted from his response to Burbage in a different theatre in 1600, in the moment this whole friend thing became a thing for them, which is also intentional. It's telling Crowley he understood all the things Crowley was saying in the church and he feels them, too.

Then, there's this, once they're back the bookshop:

Here, we're acknowledging what friends means now by pausing and emphasizing it. "That's what friends are for" is not a phrase that would require the pause and the tone on friends if friendship was all "friends" meant to them. It's not now and this is acknowledging that.

Note Crowley's little lip twitch/almost-sad-smile at what Aziraphale is saying. It's agreement. It's assent. This is them confirming that they understand what the other is saying and giving this new word a home in their language.

This is then what they call each other now when they need to talk about it and it's my friend on the surface and it's my love underneath.

There's a sadness to it. How nice it would be to just be able to say it... It's also a moment of realizing that they aren't sure they can use this word all the time. It's good to have a word and a shared understanding of what it means and they have no desire to take back these confessions of love here but while it's lovely to have said this now, it's also a bit heartbreaking.

Aziraphale's heartbreak, his little Crowley move of putting on his (transparent lol) glasses, his brave smile, and then how quickly they both transition from this conversation into The West End, The West End and I'm a lonely G.I... and The farthing *has vanished*! It shows you how accustomed they are to burying the pain under trying to live in the moment for one another.

A few moments after this, Aziraphale will be showing Crowley some of his human magic tricks in preparation for performing on stage and when they get to the point where Aziraphale is telling Crowley about Goldstone's Magic Shop, he then tells him that it's not for him because it's "for professional conjurers only."

This is somewhat unintentional metaphor on Aziraphale's part that Crowley then acknowledges and turns into coded language in his response. Aziraphale's love of human magic is metaphorical for his love of humanity and living in a way as to indulge his humanity in a way that angels have been taught not to do. The reason why Aziraphale's love of magic is this metaphor and not, say, his love of books or music or food, is because all of the other things that Aziraphale likes about the human experiences can be dismissed by him as relating to understanding the human experience *so as to be a better angel.* He's really not a student of humanity just to learn how to better guide them. He admits to Adam in front of Crowley in S1 that he thinks that humans are the ones who get it when he tells him that he hoped Adam would be good and worried he'd be evil but that he's something better than either of those-- he's human incarnate. Aziraphale can justify most of his indulgences as being related to learning human ways to relate to them to help them-- food, books (his home and his book collection can be justified as necessary cover for his angelic embassy), music, etc.... but the love of human magic?

Aziraphale just loves it. It's for him. It's his hobby. He thinks it's a little selfish and probably a lot unbecoming of an angel. He'd completely just want this for a job and he's not supposed to want a job other than to be an angel, which is supposed to be the bestest job imaginable lol. What kind of angel wants a silly human job? What kind of angel with actual magical powers is obsessed with human magic? Aziraphale is. He's endlessly fascinated. It makes him happy. It brings him joy. It's the part of living as a human that he's done in such a way that it's just for him and in such a way that it conflicts a bit with his role as an angel. The only other way Aziraphale loves like this, in this human way? The only other thing he studies at to be a better human over being a better angel?

Crowley.

So when Aziraphale says that he can't go to Goldstone's because it's "for professional conjurers only", Crowley knows that what Aziraphale is really saying is that the shop is "for actual humans only". He knows Aziraphale is admitting that he's sometimes insecure about his ability to be human because of how his humanity is tied to being an angel. Crowley knows that they're talking about Aziraphale and his human magic love on one level but that they're also talking about them and their relationship on another level. This is Aziraphale saying that he loves human magic with a passion but he's not sure he's as good as it as he could be or as he wants to be because maybe he doesn't know everything about being a human in the way that the "professional conjurers"-- humans-- know... and everything we just said he's unsure about with relation to human magic is also how he feels sometimes about loving Crowley.

This conversation is happening in an overlapping way with their friend confessions and Crowley hears that Aziraphale is saying in there that he loves Crowley with a passion but he's not always sure that he's studied enough, that he knows enough, about being human to be what Crowley deserves. He would love to go to this magic shop but he's afraid that it's not meant for him. He struggles, as Crowley already knows, with how he's not supposed to want it but oh he wants and he can't help but love magic and he can't help but love Crowley... all of which prompts Crowley to reassure him, using a now-familiar bit of their language:

"You, my Nefertiti-fooling fellow, are about to perform on the West End stage. If that doesn't make you a 'professional conjurer'... I don't know what does."

Meaning:

You, my human-passing man, are so good at this that you fooled the Ancient Egyptian Queen. You're about to perform your human magic on stage-- to make yourself vulnerable in a way that scares humans. You are always willing to take risks like that and try something new and learn more about being human and that makes you human. It's human to not totally know how to be human, I think. You're doing all of this tonight because you love me. It doesn't matter if you're a good magician or not. This love of ours is human and you're very good at it. You love me very well. If loving me doesn't make you a 'professional conjurer'... I don't know what does.

Crowley uses my [] fellow to emphasize my friend (loaded) by using the term of endearment that Aziraphale himself started that has human connotations to make the point that their love makes them human and to tell Aziraphale that he's very good at their love.

Aziraphale, understandably melting over that:

And then? They just keep using my friend. For decades. Through S2.

What makes it work for so long is the fact that it's human-coded in origin so if they run into a situation where they need to refer to one another like this, they can use it and it doesn't get a lot of questions. After the partners scene with Nina, Crowley uses my friend without thinking twice about it, telling her that she'll be safe in the bookshop because "my friend would never let anything happen to you." Nina already gets that they're friend (loaded) and she doesn't know what using friend means to them because only they know about 1941 but it's a phrase that they can use with the outside world if they need to but that mostly stays between them because only they know that, in their language, my friend = my love.

So when Crowley says I lost my best friend in the Discorporated!Aziraphale scene in S1, he means that he lost his best friend but he *also* really means I lost the love of my life.

The first thing my best friend means is just the actual, uncoded definition-- what the words really mean as they are. Aziraphale is Crowley's best friend. Whatever else they are to one another, they've always been that. The idea that he'd have to go through the end of the world and whatever came after without his best friend devastated him. In a lot of ways, it's sweeter than saying anything else, even if they weren't in a public space, because it's saying that what he'd miss the most is just having his partner in crime in life. The other layer of it is the coded layer. Since they are a couple that uses my friend in an euphemistic way for my love, then Crowley's my best friend in 2019 is the same thing as Aziraphale's my good friend was in 1941. It is my best friend on the surface and it is that but it's also my love beneath it.

This scene is also then the same thing in meaning:

And by S1's present of 2019, they're at a point of using it in an argument, which provides them the means to talk in a way they didn't have in 1862. Yeah, they have their dramatic little breakup spats but this is actually a marked improvement over where they were before the holy water mess. So now watch this bit of the bandstand again here below for the friend (loaded)...

Remember that Aziraphale lies increasing bits of absurdity when stressed and that Crowley knows that. He dismisses what Aziraphale says with that "you doooo" when Aziraphale tries the *utterly ridiculous* "I don't even like you" lol. They're both panicked about the end of the world here in Ineffable Divorce: Round One and Crowley's trying to get them to run away again, which is a terrible idea, but in the process of suggesting it, Crowley is calling them friends (now eternally loaded, as we just spent this meta proving lol) and...

...*how long* have they been friends does he say?

So, how long have they been in love, per their language, per Crowley in the bandstand scene?

Six thousand years.

Since the start.

Vavoom. Sorted. :)

#ineffable husbands #good omens #crowley #aziraphale #good omens 2 #good omens meta #good omens 1941

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