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#i just keep posting old stuff because i haven’t had time to draw lately sorry
thwackk · 1 year
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blah blah , old green lantern design for hal i did for an old au idea
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wutheringmights · 3 years
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Can I be greedy and ask for all of the boys ? And any characters you have strong opinions on? Pretty please? With lots of cherries and chocolate on top? ( for the ask meme ofc)
Anon, I'll finish up all of the boys in the Chain just for you. And trust me, I have an Infinite Amount of Strong Opinions. You have no idea how Opinionated I Am.
If anyone is coming in late to this, here are the boys I have done already and a short summary of my thoughts (click the hyperlinks to get the full Opinion):
Warriors: he's best when he's the trashy anti-Link, and I like him so much
Twilight: kind of boring, but I have a soft spot for him anyway because you never forget your first
Wind: should have been aged up a little so that he can have that identity crisis I'm craving
This... gets long. Really long. 3-hours-of-work-long. Before you read, please note that even when I speak negatively about something, it’s not to diss anyone who does like the thing. I’m not vague posting or being passive aggressive. This is all written in good humor and good faith. 
That being said, let’s a-go!
-Sky-
What I love about them: He has one of the best character arcs of all the Links. I love that he starts off being lazy and kind of a jerk, but grows as a person because he wants to save his friend. And I love that he's truly the most courageous Link. He has no other successful hero of past or legacy to lean back upon to reassure him. He walked into that fight with Demise with no assurance from anyone that he would succeed. Yet, he does it anyway. Because he's a true hero and someone had to be one. And he's rewarded with a curse that he does not initially take seriously. He thinks he's saved everyone, yet he's cursed his spirit, possibly his bloodline, and his entire legacy of the kingdom of Hyrule into a doomed cycle of destruction. All because he dared to face evil incarnate. I love him.
What I hate about them: You know how I called Twilight boring? I should have saved that critique for Sky. LU Sky is actually the most boring interpretation of his character. All of his negative traits? Gone. All of his positives? Also gone. He's the blandest version of himself, and like Twilight, I now feel like I gotta add some spice to him to make him more interesting while still keeping him recognizable. Even so, he's still one of my favorite Links.
Favorite Moment/Quote: When he kicks Twilight's ass at sword fighting. That's stuff is *chef's kiss*
What I would like to see more focus on: You would think that there would be more angst out there about him realizing that he's actually been cursed, but it's still kind of hard to find. He's the Cursed Knight! The beginning of a terrible legacy! Imagine meeting a bunch of heroes for the first time, and instead of being relieved at having someone who understands your experiences, you're filled with horror at realizing that your victory was a false one. You didn't win. Your spirit will never be at rest. Imagine dealing with that realization for the rest of your life. You could never be at peace.
What I would like to see less focus on: I love that he loves his wife, but he's more just the fact that he's married, y'know? I would like to see a little less blind devotion to Hylia and Zelda, and more complicated feelings about being manipulated into being the hero.
Favorite pairing with: Sun/Link/Groose OT3! I have no reasoning behind this other than I like Groose and Groose definitely had a crush on SkSw Link.
Favorite friendship: I won't answer Groose again even if I want to, so I'll say Warriors. I cannot begin to describe how elite this friendship would be if you gave it a chance. They're just two boys dealing with unique positions of leadership and responsibility. They would probably even bond over being shitheads at different ends of the shithead spectrum. It's so good, okay?
NOTP: Ghirahim. I'm not too adverse to this one, but the ship hinges on whether you can redeem Ghirahim or not. In my opinion, Ghirahim is awesome because he's such a fun villain. Redeeming him ruins the fun.
Favorite headcanon: I have a whole life story planned out for Sky. Basically, he lives to be close to 500 years old by the power of the Triforce. He is the Link throughout the Era of Chaos who banishes the Dark Interlopers to the Twilight Realm and seals the Triforce in the Sacred Realm. He actually seals himself in the Sacred Realm as well to keep the Triforce safe, and he fought Ganondorf in when he broke in. Sky, like Time and Wind, does not get a happy ending.
-Four-
What I love about them: Four is origin of the heroes of Hyrule being known for being children. What a legacy to leave behind. He's such an interesting case of an incarnation of the Hero's Spirit, too. He fought Vaati, and he did his job so well that Demise's next incarnation had to be Ganondorf. Four did his job the best out of everyone, and it came at the cost of creating a magic sword that changed him permanently. I like to think that the Four Sword was not meant to split him, that it was a mistake he made with the design. And it's sad, isn't it? You made a defective sword, and like any good sword, it has a symbolic double edge. It gifted you with so much, and yet he can never be the same again. And his story is never well-remembered because it is overshadowed by the Links who fought the King of Evil. He's does so much, yet his legacy is underappreciated.
What I hate about them: I want to prepare you for this Opinion, because I know it's unpopular. Are you ready? Okay. I don't like the Colors. I'm sorry. I want to like them, but they don't interest me at all. Because they are parts of Four’s personality, they have to be one-note archetypes which does not make for exciting storytelling. I also haven't found a fic yet that has been from Four's POV that did the internal monologue of the Colors in a way that wasn't a pain in the ass to read. Maybe if someone can figure out how to do the Colors in a way that doesn't feel like a drag, I would like them more. But in the end, I think Four himself is more interesting than the Colors.
Favorite Moment/Quote: The fact that he didn't want to touch the Master Sword because he doesn't trust magic swords. That is every I need to know about his opinion on his own adventures.
What I would like to see more focus on: I want more of Four as Four. It's getting harder to find content of Four being his own person first and the Colors second.
What I would like to see less focus on: Four being the Colors first and his own person second. There is something about viewing Four as this cover identity for the Colors that doesn't feel right. There's a balance that needs to be strike between his ability to split, how that affects his every day life, and his own identity of being Four. I think I may have read one fic that hit that sweet spot for me, but still.
Favorite pairing with: Shadow. I'm such a sucker for befriending and falling for the enemy. That is all.
Favorite friendship: Dot! Their friendship is super cute. I like the idea of them being super close when they were younger and struggling to keep the friendship going as they age due to how much their paths in life diverge.
NOTP: This isn't necessarily a Four or an LU problem, but people who ship the Colors together? Bro. C'mon.
Favorite headcanon: I'm torn between two different Four and the Master Sword headcanons. On one hand, Four thinking that the Master Sword is just legend until he meets Sky and everyone else is just a fun idea. He sees the legendary sword for the first time and his mind is blown. On the other hand, I also like my Four with a side of hubris. What if he had the option on his quest to draw the Master Sword himself? What if he could tell that if he did that, the consequences would be terrible. He's not sure what would happen, but he knows it would be terrible. So he decided to make his own sword instead to disastrous results. Wouldn't that be tragic or what?
-Time-
What I love about them: Last winter, I did a two hour powerpoint for my friends about the Legend of Zelda timeline. During that powerpoint, I was rating every iteration of Link. What I said about the Hero of Time then holds true to my thoughts of LU Time now. Time is the original Link, more so than Sky in the lore and Legend/Hyrule in real life. Every other hero is a reflection of him. So the fact that his story is about the loss of childhood and the tragedy of that is incredible, and you can see those themes reflected in every other game. Moreso, he’s the only Link with a confirmed tragic ending. Not only does he end his life unsatisfied, but his adventure is failure on every timeline. In the adult timeline, Hyrule is swallowed by the sea. In the child one, Ganondorf returns again. In the fallen timeline, Hyrule fell. I like the idea since that the games themselves are the legends that are past down about each hero, Hylians have also remembered Time as a tragic figure. Yet, they also remember that the happy moments for his life come from small acts of kindness. Even someone as sad as him finds joy in helping others, even if it’s just to small deeds that will not be heralded as grand heroic quests. It’s beautiful.
What I hate about them: This is more about Mask than Time, but Mask is not an adult in a child’s body. He did not rewind time in Termina enough to be considered mentally an adult. He’s a young teenager at best, and that’s me being generous. He is a child who was forced to be an adult and despite the gods being done with him, he cannot conceive of ever having a childhood again. So he can say all he wants that he’s an adult, but he is not. That’s just what he thinks he is.
Favorite Moment/Quote: Anytime we get a flashback to him being a younger adult is great. I want to see more of his in this his early adulthood.
What I would like to see more focus on: I think I just want more of Time being... not a bad leader, but being an imperfect one. I honestly think he’s only the leader because he’s the oldest and enough of the heroes recognize the title of Hero of Time. But he is not the leader type, and he is struggling to keep it together and has to defer to Twilight and Warriors for help a lot. 
What I would like to see less focus on: I’m not the biggest fan of Dad!Time for any of the Links. He’s not emotionally ready for it. And I think he defaults to treating the boys like adults because that’s how he wanted to be treated when he was their age. 
Favorite pairing with: Malon. He has this great partnership of equal respect with her and it’s just. So good.
Favorite friendship: Linebeck. I know. This exists only in my head. But if these two ever meet, you cannot convince me that they would not get along swimmingly. It would be so good (once Linebeck gets over his crush on Time and stops hitting on him, of course).
NOTP: Child Timeline Zelda. Let me explain: I fully believe in Bi Time supremacy, and when in OoT, he definitely had a crush on Sheik. However, one of the worst parts of rewinding time and being in the child timeline is that Zelda is a completely different person now. They may have been friends in the other timeline, but her life experiences are completely different now. She is not the same person as he once knew. And it’s tragic to know someone as who they could have been, not as they are.
Favorite headcanon: After Termina, Time spent a lot of time with the Nabooru because out of everyone he knew, she’s the only who took him seriously even as a child. She has big older sister energy, and he considers her a part of his family. However, being treated as such made it easier for him to ignore his issues and put off his healing process by a few years.
-Legend-
What I love about them: Veteran of Heroes! What a freaking title. I love that he keeps on finding adventures, and that he keeps hustling. Even if he complains about never getting a break, you can tell that he loves helping others. He loves being on the road, never settling down, and finding adventure after adventure. Honestly, if any of the Links had a calling to be a hero, it’s him. Is he tired? Sure. Is he a little jaded after having saved Hyrule and a bunch of other kingdoms multiple times? Yes. But at the end of the day, he likes being a hero. This is who he is. His complaining is not genuine; he just plays the martyr because, at this point, he’s earned the right to.
What I hate about them: If you can’t tell by now, I have a, uh, different interpretation of Legend from popular canon. Fandom Legend is not right to me. He is unrecognizable. It is hard to write him because I feel like I have to balance what other people think Legend should be versus how I think he is. The people who are big Legend enjoyers probably feel the same way about my version of Warriors, and that’s fine. I’m not going to gel with every character and I don’t expect everyone to gel with how I see characters either. It’s goes both ways, y’know.
Favorite Moment/Quote: I like how subtly he tried to approach the Wolfie problem at first, trying to ask questions and get more proof before confronting Twilight. It’s a good touch.
What I would like to see more focus on: If I had to choose one thing, it’s this one throw away line about him never wanting to settle down. I’m telling you, folks! He likes his lifestyle! And did you see him when he does presenting the origins of the hero? He’s not bitter about being a hero! Legend is moody, but he is not angsty about the whole hero thing. Have fun with him please!
What I would like to see less focus on: If you can’t tell by now, Legend is my least favorite Link. There is a lot I want to see less of, but just to name one thing, it’s the headcanon that Fable is his sister. I live and die by common born Link, and whether he’s a legitimate heir or the royal bastard, I am more than bored with the persistent Prince!Legend content.
Favorite pairing with: Marin. It’s a good tragic story and I like it well enough. She’s cute, and he’s cute with her.
Favorite friendship: Warriors. I’m with everyone else on these two have peak sibling energy. They tease and pick on each other, but only they are allowed to mess with each other. They’re each other’s bully, and it’s always good to see.
NOTP: I do not have enough energy to have a lot of strong opinions about Legend’s romantic relationships, but I will mentioned that I have lost a lot of love for Ravio recently and am liking seeing him with Legend less and less. I have no better reason for this than the fact that I finally played ALBW and hate how many of my hard earned rupees he’s taken from me by withholding important, lifesaving items. Rat bastard.
Favorite headcanon: Remember my headcanon about him being the coolest bad boy folk hero on the block because everyone thinks he kidnapped Zelda? Yeah, I still stand by that one. I did good there.
-Hyrule-
What I love about them: If there is any Link that I would call a gutter rat, it is this one. I struggle a bit to talk about Hyrule since his games gives us so little, but in the end, I always fall back on him being a hero of the people. He is the one who has nothing and relates the best to people who are at their lowest. Yet, he is still a hero. He earns the right to be a hero because he helped Impa in her time of need. He’s selfless and competent. Even if he never got a traditional education, I bet he’s wicked smart too. He is the Link that symbolizes all of the parts of the Triforce the most. And, god. I cannot talk about him without mentioning the blood sacrifice part of LA. It’s such a cool concept, and I cannot imagine what it must be like to go from being the rough and tumble, win-at-all-costs fighting to protecting yourself first because if you don’t, the consequences are disastrous. It’s paradoxical, and it must be such a different mindset to fall into. But it must also be a blessing in disguise since now he has a reason to finally care about himself.
What I hate about them: Who started the Hyrule is innocent headcanon? Come over here because we need to exchange some words. If there is anyone who would be a realist and know how the world works, it’s this guy. And while we’re here, who came up with the Hryule is always lost headcanon? I also have some words for you. And you know what? WHILE WE’RE HERE, who let him be named Hyrule? I’m have more than choice words for you. His name scheme is the bane of my existence and the express reason why I don’t write him more. God.
Favorite Moment/Quote: That one panel where he takes utter delight in Warriors hiding from his scorned lovers? That is a central pillar in my understanding of Hyrule.
What I would like to see more focus on: Again, his relationship with other people. Even if his games are lacking in NPCs, we know from lore that he’s a good guy who will jump in to help others. He must know plenty of people, and I want to see who exists in his world with him. 
What I would like to see less focus on: I have an on-going joke with my brother that certain characters are Catholic, even if Catholicism does not exist in the world of the thing we’re watching or playing. Of course, we’re not being serious. we’re just joshing around. So imagine the gut punch I feel whenever I see people say Hyrule is Christian and realize that they’re being serious. I just can’t take it seriously.
Favorite pairing with: Aurora. It’s cute and I’m a sucker for that hero and royalty dynamic, especially when the hero is a peasant. It’s so cheesy, but I love it.
Favorite friendship: Legend. But not the way everyone else pairs them up as the grumpy one and the sunshine one. I think of it more as them being the pinnacle of boys being boys. They’re shitheads. They do stupid shit together. They both have a dark sense of humor. They joke that they’re practically the same person sometimes.
NOTP: uhhhhhhhhh.... Is he paired with anyone else?
Favorite headcanon: I love the idea that he just likes his way of life and refuses to accept anyone saying otherwise. Legend wants to teach him to read? Sorry, but he’s never had to read before in his life so he’s pretty sure he’ll never need it anyway. Want to participate in the treasured Hylian tradition of piercing your ears when you come of age? Why would he ever do that when a monster could rip those earrings off? He’s stuck in his ways and it frustrates everyone else to no end, but he has no interest in ever changing.
-Wild-
What I love about them: When I was 9, I spent my time online on Legend of Zelda forums. I remember one of my forum friends saying that they wanted a Legend of Zelda game where Link lost. And I think of that friend whenever I think about Wild. BOTW Link is the best Link that has ever been. He is the epitome of every trait we associate with any Link. He’s smart and sassy. He’s hard working and kind. But underlining all of that is the fact that he’s still the one who failed. If Demise’s Curse in SkSw is the set-up, the Great Calamity is the payoff. And I haven’t even talked about how confirming him as being non-verbal before the Calamity does so much for his characterization. I don’t even know where to start or how to articulate it. By game storyline alone, Wild is one of my favorites.
What I hate about them: You guys knew this one was coming, but I’m going to have to say it anyway. Fandom Wild.... not good. I’ve said it for half of these boys so far, but god is it true. I have a way I see Wild that is rarely done in the fandom. Fandom Wild has a lot of the traits I also see in Wild, but to all of the extremes. I will mention one thing in particular as being a pet peeve, and it’s how some people headcanon him as always being nonverbal. I know what they’re trying to do, and I think they’re on to something, but they’re also missing the point of what BOTW Link’s character arc is. I just wish more people would forget fandom and work more off of the games for how to characterize him.
Favorite Moment/Quote: Weirdly enough, my favorite moment is when he got mad at everyone for making fun of his Gerudo outfit, so he dumped Goron Spice in his cooking. It’s encapsulates a part of his character I think a lot of people forget about.
What I would like to see more focus on: I think he has a really complicated relationship with his past. He said himself that his old self felt like a different person, and I think that should be explored a lot more. That idea actually fascinates me so much that instead of CTB, I almost wrote a character study fic about Wild. His emotions are not as simple as feeling guilty about letting his friends die and not preventing the Calamity. His emotions would be so complicated and because I don’t have the time to explore it, someone else needs to do it for me.
What I would like to see less focus on: There is a weird fascination with Wild having memory loss and essentially being like a kid again. And this feels infantilizing to me. It honestly bugs me a lot every time I see it.
Favorite pairing with: I can’t decide between Zelda, Mipha, and Revali. They’re all different dynamics and they’re all good.
Favorite friendship: Paya. I firmly believe that Paya is Wild’s best friend. I am the only one in the world who believes this. But I am also the only one in the world who is correct. 
NOTP: Wild is good with everyone. Good for him!
Favorite headcanon: An essential scene of my Wild character study I will never write is one where his horse dies. He goes into shock and walks back to Kakariko to talk to Impa. But once he goes to her, he breaks down in tears and has an absolute melt down over the horse. And Impa sagely says, “It’s not about the horse, is it?” She’s implying that he’s actually mourning the loss of his friends, Hyrule, his life, everything-- but through his tears, he keeps tell her that she’s wrong. He barely remembers them. He doesn’t know them. He doesn’t have any feelings about them. He just really loved that horse. But Impa refuses to listen to him, just repeating over and over again: “it’s not really about the horse.”
And that’s it! That’s all of my opinions! I know a lot of my opinions are polarizing, but everything I said is in good faith, and I am not trying to diss anyone for how they approach these characters.
I welcome you to send me your Opinions on the Links, even if it’s just to disagree with me. I’m cool with it, and I like knowing what everyone else thinks!
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Grandparents Day
Hi!!! Sorry for posting it then deleting it, I decided I didn’t want to post it now I want to! So sorry about that haha:) this is just the styles family going to the park and visiting the grandparents! I hope you enjoy 💕
Today Y/n and Harry are leaving their cozy cottage and scoundering out into the real world, leaving the home-y confines of their cottage and going to visit the grandparents for a late lunch.
They are having a picnic out at the park, Harry offered to host it at their cottage and have it out in their backyard- claiming the flowers and plants would make great scenery, But the family had denied. They said the four needed to get out and see more people than the customers at the farmers market.
The couple of course agreed, renting out a park pavilion for the day and packing up their contribution of the picnic foods. “Come on, my love, mummy made sun tea!” Harry coos, holding Violet's hand and hoisting her up into her booster seat.
“Yummy!” She cheers, letting Harry clip her in the seat securely. Harry buckles it right under her chest, making sure the big buckle is positioned correctly. “Comfy?” Harry questions, holding a thumb up for her. She smiles widely, showing her small baby teeth and sticking her tiny thumb up for him. “Good!” She cheers, Harry smiling and softly tickling her belly, kissing her cheek then brushing his hand from her hair to her cheek, softly giving it a pinch before he shoots her a wink, softly closing the door.
Y/n walks out, the picnic basket in her hand along with Forest laying in her arm. “I’ve got that, sunshine” Harry hums, pushing up his glasses and grabbing the picnic basket from her hands, the kids diaper bag balanced on top of it. He places it in the back, Y/n thanking him and buckling Forest into his bus seat.
**
“Come on, sweet pea. Let’s get you out of the bus!” Harry coos, pulling Violet out of the bus seat and resting her on his hip. He circles to the back of the bus, grabbing the diaper bag and the wooden picnic basket, heading toward the big pavilion entry. Y/n walks a couple steps ahead of him, guiding the way while he hauls the food behind her.
“Hello!” Harry’s mum greets, making the man look up with a smile. “Hi!” He sings, his wife offering her a polite smile while she deals with a slightly fussy Forest. Y/ns parents greet them, the styles family making their way over to the picnic table. “Go see nana!” Harry coos, letting Violet slip down from his hip and land on her feet, padding away on the concrete flooring to go visit her grandparent, getting her cheeks pinched and dollars slipped to her behind her parents backs.
They all finally greet each other, laughs and conversations laying over the other until they all settle down and take their seats on the old red chipping bench of the picnic tables. Harry pulls Violet on his lap, making sure she’s not running off and getting lost. (She likes to do that when they go off to the park- which isn’t often.) Harry slides her plate toward her, the girl's sippy cup full of sun tea, balanced between her chubby hands.
“It's time to eat, sunshine.” Harry announces to violet, pulling her next to him on the picnic table bench. She stretches her little neck to look at the array of food everyone had brought. She makes quick grabby hands for the fruit sandwiches Harry hand prepared for the outing. Harry catches her in the act and grabs her hand before she can shove a bite into her mouth, pulling her hand away and kissing the back of it, shoving an orange baby spoon in her hand instead. He puts a small portion of summer pasta on her plate, the girl forming a tight pout on her lips before she stabs the pasta and shoves it in her mouth angirly, mad her daddy didn't let her have dessert first.
“How is the farm?” Anne asks while she holds Forest, holding a sleepy baby in one arm and feeding herself with the other, something the youngest parents out of the group have mastered.
Y/n finishes her bite, wiping her mouth off on the floral printed napkin before answering annes question. “Everything is good. We sold a bunch at the farmers market a couple weeks ago.” Harry nods along, serving himself while everyone passes the bowls and plates of food around, complimenting each other on their dishes quietly. “We’re thinking of getting some bunnies. Violet would love it.” Harry adds, violet instantly snapping her head up at the mention of adding the fluffy white animal to the family farm. “Bunnies?!” she asks, making the group laugh.
“Yep,” Harry says, licking his thumb and rubbing red sauce from her face, the little girl's face scrunching up while she pushes his large hand away. “You're gonna eat them?” Y/n’s dad asks, the family shaking her head, violet getting visibly upset by the questions. They dont eat bunnies! Bunnies are for petting and loving. “No, just have them as pets. We dont eat meat, we haven't for a while.” Harry informs, violet being his little sidekick and nodding along to every word he has to say.
“So are you getting them?” Anne asks, Violet looking up at Harry with so much hope. She loves bunnies, she draws them all the time, it's just one big circle, a smaller one for the head, then four tiny ones for the feet and a happy face made with two dots and a curved line but it's a bunny to her and she loves it. “...yeah,” the father slowly nods. Y/n gives him sharp eyes. They were supposed to surprise Violet and Forest with the new addition to their farm, even though forest wouldn't be that enthusiastic, he's only four months old.
“What about preschool? Are you going to send her to preschool?” y/n’s mum barges into the conversation, always nagging at her daughter to get the kids out. They do get the kids out, just not often. They have playdates and go to the park to socialize with the other kids but they are usually inside and if they do leave they stay together, no disturbing the people around them.
“Were still deciding on whether to homeschool her or send her to Harry's old preschool.” Y/n answers her nons nagging questions. She would love for Violet to stay with them, it's not like she wants to go out and see all these kids, she's a very antisocial toddler. She is shy and nervous around new people, if it's not her mummy, daddy, and little brother she usually doesn't prefer to be around them for long periods of time.
“Just let the kid breathe! She probably wants to be with other kids ever not and then, you know.”
Y/n tries not to get frustrated but she doesn't need people telling her how to parent, especially when they dont know how her child feels being around people that arent her immediate family.
Y/n sighs, rubbing her eyes. “Violet doesn't like being around other people for a long time. I dont want to send her away for three hours a day to a place where she isn't comfortable. Especially when we are already teaching her stuff at home and she is doing great.” she argues back, harry pulls a hand on the small of her back and rubs softly. He knows she gets annoying about things like this, she is usually a very zen person.
Harry 100% backs her up on this. He knows how anxious his little one can get when she is around new people- or people who aren't her parents. Why would they send her off to a preschool when they can teach her ABC’s at home, how to write her name, counting, and even more that they teach at a preschool. They can have one on one time with their child when the teacher wouldn't be able to focus on just one child at a time. They even get to teach her more about the animals, show her what noises animals make and what colors they are up close and personal.
“I think it would just be nice for her to make some friends,”
Harry senses some trepidation, and he doesn't want Violet to watch her mumma and grandma to get into a disagreement. Not that it would get ugly, Harry just prefers his kids ears aren't around bad language, and when a disagreement happens the adults tend to get loose lips.
“Hey, are you done? Let's go play, you can eat this on the swings.” Harry grabs a fruit sandwich, picking the girl up and excusing them while he walks into the wood chip filled playground. Violet munches on her desert when she slides down bright yellow slides with Harry, sitting on his lap while they both sing out “weeeee!”
Y/n helps everyone pack up, throwing away paper cups and plates in the big rusty trash cans that they had in the pavilion. She watches Harry and Violet chase each other, watching them closely since Violet happens to be a very accident prone (almost) two year old. She keeps to herself while she stuffs drinks back in blue coolers, stuffing their tupperware back in their picnic basket and leaving the sun tea out because they had seemed to enjoy that.
While the rest of the crew cleans up Harry chases Violet around the playground, the black floors being filled with wood chips that were once stuck on little ones shoes, or maybe some naughty kids were bringing them up on the jungle gym to play around in them. “Hey, watch your step, pumpkin!” Harry yells before Violet misses her step and falls over a big black chunky step, falling right into the wood chips. Cries instantly fell from her mouth, she was just trying to run down the playground steps but her chubby legs couldn't keep up.
“Hey,” Harry pouts, sitting on the black step and pulling her onto his thighs. “Are you okay, sweet pea?” Harry asks, dusting off the debris on her knees and hands. She huffs as she cries, her bottom lip poking out while tears roll down her cheek, her nose and cheeks growing pink and hot from her crying. Harry gives her a big pout when he sees her knee bleeding, He hopes she doesnt have a splinter.
“Lets go get you clean your boo boo’s up” Harry mumbles, pulling her up to his chest and kissing all along her hair line, letting her cry in his neck. He walks back up to the pavilion in search of the diaper bag, they have a first aid kit stashed in there, it's a necessity when you have a bambi-like toddler.
y/n watches Harry set down a crying violet, fishing for a first aid kit. “What happened?” she sighs, handing the little girl her sippy cup. Harry glaces up at his wife for a second before looking back down at his toddler, preparing to clean her boo boo’s. “She fell,” he cleans her cuts up only making her cry more, her hands were only scraped, but she had a small cut on her knee. He adds some neosporin, patching on a baby shark bandaid before kissing over her cut.
“All better?” the girl huffs, wiping her tears. She looks at her knee, holding up two fingers like she's going to pinch something, Harry laughs. “Lets go sing baby shark somewhere else, your nana might give me a boo boo.”
Y/n laughs, Harry kissing her and Forest's head before they sit on the park bench together, their singing still heard.
The grandparents all swarm over the free child, watching him sleep peacefully. Y/n laughs awkwardly, hoping that Harry would be back soon to distract them or so Violet could play with them. “Are you putting this one in pre school?” Y/n scoffs at her mothers nagging, surprised it's only been an hour of hearing nagging about their kids.
“He's a real momma's boy. He's gonna be a heartbreaker.'' Robin laughs, making Y/n smile and laugh, her boy isn't dating because no one's ever gonna be good enough.
They decide to join the rest on the playground, the men playing with violet- or Harry pushing Violet on the swing while the men talk to him. Anne and Y/n’s mom join her on the park bench, the small boy finally waking up from his long nap. They talk about the farm and the kids while the sun sets, loud giggles from violet fill the park while Harry pushes her higher and higher. “It's beautiful out,” Anne says, looking up at the glowing sky, a painting of orange, purple, and blue framing the cloudy sky.
“It is,”
Hiii!! I hope you enjoyed reading part three!! I’m sorry for being a tease and posting it then deleting it. I was in my teasing era. Anyways, thank you for everything, you have all been so fucking amazing, like it shocks me how sweet and supportive you all are, thank you!!! It means so much!!! I love you all. My requests are open, I’m currently writing part four and then I will be putting out a blurb about when y/n was pregnant with Forest after part four is out. Thank you for everything!!!
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izzabeean · 3 years
Text
Chapter 11 : Apprehensive
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SUMMARY
You never thought it would be this hard to open up.
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pairing : ushjima x f!reader / oikawa x f!reader / iwaizumi x f!reader
genre : angst + fluff
word count : 2,376
content : profanity
tags :  alternate universe - college/university, post-break up, friends to lovers, pining, slow burn
a/n : Hello! Apologies for this late post. Everything has been a bit hectic lately and I’m struggling to keep up with work and my free time. I have started to slack a bit on my writing. It’s a bit on the shorter side but here is the next chapter!
Because I’m new to this and have bit more off than I can chew, I’ve noticed some timeline errors when writing this chapter. I couldn’t just let it go and had to go back to correct them. 
For those who do not wish to re-read chapter 8 (I understand, it’s a hefty one), please note that at the beginning of the chapter, Y/N and Iwaizumi have a heart-to-heart. Originally it jumps to the same day, but that is an error on my part. The rest of the chapter actually takes place later in the week. So Y/N has spent almost a week at Oikawa’s apartment. 
I appreciate you all for tagging along for this ride. I definitely have been aching to write about Hanamaki or Matsukawa, but will once this series has been completed! Thanks so much xx
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Walking into the empty corridor, you blink at the torn-up flooring exposing the bones of the apartment while noticing dust in the air from the sunlight trickling in through the living room window. Living here for almost four years gave you the alone time you needed. But now it felt foreign. The familiar serene getaway from the pressure of your parents breathing down your neck was now emanating dark energy. A place once full of bright memories seems to turn into the last place you wish to be.
“What is?” Iwaizumi exclaims, following behind you. 
“It’s just weird,” you murmur, smiling up at Iwaizumi. “I haven’t seen it this empty since I moved in.”
That day didn’t feel too long ago. 
As cliche as it sounds, it almost did feel like yesterday. Getting settled into the new space, unsure what to do with yourself in the silence of the apartment. But it wasn't long before you made friends with Oikawa who would come over to study together. He'd always bring snacks from your favorite dessert place and sometimes, if you could convince him, he would stay over to watch your favorite series. Yes, he would complain that he hated it, that it was slow, uninteresting and he's seen better. Then he would shut up and watch knowing that you enjoyed his company in the lonely apartment. 
Your gaze shifts to the bedroom doorway. The last night you spent there, it was with Oikawa, but before that, it was always Ushijima. Not every single night, but when he did, you felt safe pressed up against his broad frame under the covers. Thinking about it now, it makes you regret that you didn't indulge in it more back then.
When you started seeing Ushijima, he became the priority. He would come over for study dates and you'd never have to ask twice to persuade him to watch television series or movies with you. Truthfully, you miss those days. Everything was so simple and new. It felt like a breath of fresh air that you were aching to find. 
Yet here you are now just remembering what you wish to forget. 
“Are you sure you don’t want to just move in with me?” Oikawa sniggers, analyzing the janky water-damaged walls that look like they could disintegrate at any moment.
"What? You finally have the balls to say this place isn’t good enough for you?" you mock, raising an eyebrow at him waiting for his answer. 
"No, it's just…” he pauses before continuing, half-heartedly afraid he will offend you. “Old."
You roll your eyes. Yeah it's older than any twenty-something-year-old would want to live in, but you didn't care because of the location to the university and honestly, in your eyes, the apartment is quaint and homey. 
“You always have something to say. Don't you, Shittykawa,” Iwaizumi fumes, eyes sending daggers in Oikawa’s direction. 
You couldn't help but let out a snicker that catches Iwaizumi's attention, shooting you a little smile. The natural draw your body has towards Iwaizumi is intoxicating. Your entire mind turns to putty when he looks at you like all your worries will just disappear upon his gaze. Maybe that's why you unconsciously kiss him the other night. 
You don't want him to leave. You want him to stay. But how can you say that when you haven't known him for very long. The Iwaizumi now is so much different from the Iwaizumi in elementary school. Yet you wanted to get to know this person standing in front of you so much more and the limited time made your heartache all over again. 
"Are you excited to move back in?" Iwaizumi asks, his eyes still locked on you.
“Yeah,” you utter, the sound of your heartbeat feels louder than your words. “I can’t wait to settle back in. I miss--”
Ding!
The sound reverberates from Iwaizumi's pocket. 
“Shit, one second,” he exclaims, voice emitting a hint of embarrassment as he takes out his phone to read the text message he just received. “Fuck, I totally forgot. I'm supposed to meet up with some friends.”
“Oh,” you stammer. The words are laced with disappointment, but you remember you don't have Iwaizumi all to yourself. No, he isn't yours, unfortunately. And with that, you quickly switch forcing a smile to hide the gutted feeling encompassing your body. "It's fine!"
“I’m so sorry, I’ll catch up later. Just text me if you guys end up going somewhere else,” he calls out before rushing out the door.
The sound of the door shutting cues a rush of anguish flooding your chest as you wonder where he’s gone off to in such a hurry. He did say friends, but friends could mean anything including a girl. 
Oikawa continues to walk around the apartment and you feel your face pale as you wonder what he's thinking if he knows who Iwaizumi's friends are.  
Stop. You couldn't let yourself spiral into those thoughts. It wasn't like you to think this way, but you can't help yourself when you fear the same disappointment that surges you on the day you saw Ushijima and Sara together. 
Fuck. At least insurance is giving you a bit of a break with the repair costs.
“Landlord says another week until repairs are done," you finally say, breaking the silence. "Then I can start moving my stuff back in.”
“Maybe don’t celebrate just yet, knowing your luck.” Oikawa taunts.
“Oh, is it because you’re going to miss me?” you scoff, attempting to make him squirm, but he plays right into your hands without hesitation.
“Yeah right, thought you said you were sick of me," he japes, taking a swing at the words that practically stung before.
“I guess you could say that...” you breathe.
Your words taste bitter with a drop of guilt as they leave your tongue. Perhaps you felt you owed a lot to Oikawa for basically saving your ass.
With the apartment.
With Ushijima.
You look at the bandage on his face and your eyes trail down to his bruised knuckles. Perhaps you wanted to do more than just buying him his favorite drink. Yet, you didn't even know where to start or what he would want to make things even.
“I-- I’m just joking, just to clarify. Of course, I’m not sick of you,” you sigh, reverting eye contact as you muster up the courage to express your thoughts. “I’m very happy to have you.”
I don’t know what I’m saying, you think while peering at the confusion spread on Oikawa's face. You don't normally open up to him about this kind of stuff and you feel your body burning under his gaze. 
“Sorry this is a bit weird,” you exclaim as the nerves take over and you bite your tongue before you say anything else. 
“No, no, I’m interested now,” Oikawa purrs.
“Well, maybe now I don’t want to tell you!”
"Of course you do," he persuades slyly grinning.
Normally the gesture makes you recoil as you witness his flirtatious nature that you've never succumbed to because that's just how Oikawa Tōru was. But instead, it just pushes the words out. 
"Th-- thank you,” you say unable to even look up at him. “For everything. You’ve really been there for me when no one else has.” 
At first, you think he's going to laugh in your face. In fact, you expected it so, but when you trail your eyes back to meet his, he sends you a small smile. 
“That’s what friends are for, right?” Oikawa comforts.
With a deep breath, you stare into his chocolate brown eyes, drinking in his gaze and he’s giving you that look. It’s the same look he gave you last night when you were patching up his wounds. And it makes your heartthrob. 
“You’re really something Tōru. No wonder all the girls fall for you,” you tease, in an attempt to push away the flush of embarrassment from his words.
“I wouldn’t say all,” Oikawa chuckles. 
His voice is low and sultry, and you wonder what he means by that as contentment warmed you from within.
The exchange lingers but you clear your throat and turn away to walk around the apartment. The gesture causes Oikawa to shift his weight from side to side looking at your figure in the small space. 
“I think I’ve seen more than enough,” you exhale taking one last glance out the living room window. “Shall we head out?”
“Sure.”
Oikawa walks down the short hallway, while you take a moment longer to soak up your apartment.
“See you soon,” you whisper before turning your back to leave.
Just as you close the door behind you to lock up, you hit your back into Oikawa’s frame who is standing firmly behind you. 
“What’s wrong?” you ask, then peak behind his body to see Ushijima standing at the end of the hallway.“Wa-Wakkun… What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you,” he demands. 
Although you can't get a good look at him in detail, you can see his face is bandaged up from Oikawa’s punch.
“I don’t--”
“And you think I’m going to let that happen?” Oikawa rages, placing his body in between you and Ushijima. 
“Tōru, it’s okay,” you reiterate, touching his shoulder lightly to reassure it's not worth his energy. 
“Or did you not understand anything from last night?” Oikawa continues ignoring your words and shaking your hand off his shoulder. 
“Maybe we should ask Y/N instead of you making decisions for her,” Ushijima booms, remaining calm.
“Tōru, come on,” you sneer, grabbing his arm to pull him along, but he wiggles your hand off once again.
“I know for a fact she doesn’t want to talk to you," he sputters, eyes narrowing on Ushijima. 
But your patience hit its limit. This time your anger couldn't be pushed down as your blood starts to boil. And you unleashed it in front of Oikawa, stepping in front of him shooting him a furious glare.
“Are you going to fucking listen or not?”
Your voice snaps him to his senses seeing your eyes glossed over but filled with rage. 
“You don’t speak for me,” you thundered. “Let’s go.”
You grab his hand and yank him forward, walking by Ushijima ignoring him.
“Y/N, please,” Ushijima pleads.
Yet you don't turn back. You can't. It isn't in your best interest to talk it out or hear his point of view. This isn't something that can be fixed with words. He hurt you and you could not surrender what is left of your dignity. You had to move on, in your own way just as he's doing.
“Don’t fucking do that again,” you bark as you continue to drag Oikawa behind holding his hand tightly.
“That guy is basically stalking you,” Oikawa argues trying to keep up with your frantic strides. 
“So what? I can handle it myself.”
“I was just trying to help--”
“And look what happened last time!” 
Your legs come to a stop and you swallow thickly. Your voice erupts as your heart sinks at the realization of how angry and guilty you feel, of how mad you are at yourself for letting Oikawa get in the middle of your issues with Ushijima. The familiar sense of dread returns and the look from Oikawa’s shocked wide eyes make you regret your outburst.
“You got hurt because of me,” you manage to breathe, slowly sliding your hand out of his. 
But before you let go, he grabs it tight then pulls you in close, your face enveloped into his chest and his chin resting on the top of your head. The sensation offsets your frustration and anger, you hadn't known it, but once you received the warm and comforting embrace you realize it’s what you really needed all this time. 
“If we left at the beginning of the night, you would’ve been fine,” you gasp, trying to get the words out, but your voice breaks a little. Your chest feels tight like your heart is going to burst any moment now as it continues to descend deeper and deeper into dread. 
Oikawa doesn’t say a word, afraid that he’ll ruin the moment if he does. His worry grows as he takes a deep breath in expecting you to smell like nicotine or ting of smoke, from the secret you have been keeping from him. But you have this indescribable scent that draws him in closer heating up his entire body as he presses yours into his. Not wanting to let go. 
“But because I had to prove a point, we stayed,” you continue, and feel tears beginning to form, blurring your vision. “I’m the one at fault here.”
"No Y/N," Oikawa says trying to soothe you. He thinks he can forget the throbbing pain in his chest as he looks at you undone before him. "You didn't do anything wrong. I'm sorry for involving myself."
"It's okay," you say taking a sharp breath. He smells so good and his hug is doing wonders for your mental health but you pull away worried that you've overstayed your welcome.
“Why do you hate him so much anyway?” you sniffle, wiping the tears with your sleeve. 
“Mmm don’t know…” he murmurs.“I just don’t like him.” 
You frown at his reply. Does he really not have an actual explanation? 
“Well that’s stupid,” you breathe, unsure if you actually believe it. “Did he steal a girl from you or something?”
“No!” he responds, quicker than he wishes he did. He remembers when you first mentioned Ushijima’s name, there was a sparkle in your eyes he’s never seen before. At that moment, he promised himself to not get in the way and remain neutral, but Oikawa was much pettier than that. 
“Who was it?” you snort, only half sure he’ll actually tell you. 
“No one,” he chuckles. “We don’t have the same type anyway.”
“Why? I’m not your type?” 
Your voice is soft and innocent as he pauses to analyze whether you are being serious or not. 
“Kidding! Obviously,” you snarl. 
By now, there’s this ease of tension between the two of you as you lapse into silence. Nothing more needed to be said.
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franeridart · 3 years
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Anon said: Would you draw SukuFushi? (Sukuna x Fushiguro)
maybe? *thinking face* if I ever got an idea for it, why not. I find sukuna’s obsession with fushiguro entertaining so I don’t count fanarts for it as impossible haha
Anon said: I looked and I couldn't find if you've answered this already, so apologies if you did, but how do you draw your faces? I always struggle with face shape and yours are always super good with really expressive features! Anyway, thanks so much I love your art <3
HMMMMMMMM how do I do that indeed, the basics are honestly what you’d find on any basic tutorial about drawing a face (circle, cross in the middle of it, build the face around that - I really still can’t avoid that step and probably never will). As for the expressions, to be honest with you my way of going about them is thinking them up in emoji/kaomoji form first and then go from there. Emojis and kaomojis have to simplify expressions to the max since it’s such a simple format, right? But they’re still super expressive and convey exactly what they’re trying to say with one single glance, so using them as some kind of reference sheet has helped me a lot in figuring out what’s essential to express what I’m trying to say - still working on it though! I’m rarely satisfied with my expressions, they really do make or break a drawing don’t they............ you never stop learning, I guess!
Anon said:  Ahhhhhhh I just spent like hrs scrolling thru ur oc tag and they’re all amazing I love them so much but I keep confusing the everloving SHIT out of myself cuz I too have a child who is Leo and he’s literally so different from ur Leo lol. Anyway tho ur art is amazing and it honestly just makes me so happy so ty and hope have a good day!!
OHHHHHHHHHHHH MY LEO! It’d been forever since I’ve last drawn him, I kind of miss him............... glad you like my stuff, by the way! Especially about you liking my ocs, that means the world to me!
Anon said: hi there !!! i was wondering if i had ur permission to ur ur itafushi art in one of my edits ! i wanted to be sure before using it <3 total respect if its a no !! thankyouuuu
Sorry but I’d prefer if you didn’t do that!
Anon said:THERES A OCTOPATH TRAVELER LIGHT NOVEL AND ITS SO COOL BUT ITS ONLY IN JAPANEESE ! ;^;There's four stories with centered around pairs of characters and alfion is one of them !Idk if itll be transleted but i hope itll be cuz it sound awesome
OH I KNOW!!!!!!! I saw the art for the alfion one a while back, it looks so soft!!!! ;;;;; 8path is kinda niche as a game though, so who knows.............. let’s cross our fingers!!
Anon said:  hello, i am here to recc Skeletons by New Years Day because i think it might fit a few of your ships<3
Thanks anon now I’m emo ;;;;;
Anon said: bakubro gives the best hugs. kirishima is the only one who knows this. everyone is absolutely incredulous when the question "who gives the best hugs" goes around and kirishima answers bakugo. (bakugo thinks kirishima is the best but he benefits from kirishima bodily hugging him and he's biased)
Definitely!! He’s strong and warm after all, bet hugging him would feel the best.... the only one who shall ever know is kiri though, as I bet his hugs are only that nice when he really likes the person he’s hugging hahaha
Anon said: Hi! Just wanted to say that I absolutely love your JJK art! The colors and style are absolutely stunning.
Thank you so much!!!!!!! I feel like I’m mostly drawing for myself lately ngl hahaha so knowing you like it means a lot!!
Anon said: Hi!! This isn't a request I just really like your art! I found you from Pinterest on a kiribaku thing you drew! Your art is so cool! I wish I could draw like that!!! I'll keep looking for new art you've made :D
Aw pinterest.......................... glad you could find your way back here though!! And thank you!!
Anon said: This happened a while ago, but i wanted to say it anyway. I remember when I started watching jujutsu kaisen and I was looking for content arter finishing the first 10 episodes in less than a day and I found your first jujutsu kaisen post (it was posted that dame day) and i was like ???? One of my favorite artists got into jk at the same time than me!!! I just thought it was a neat coincedence to share! I really love your art too, you're amazing!! Happy New Year!!
It’s!!!!!!!!!!!! a pretty dang neat coincidence for me too, since it’s always nice to know at least some of my followers are still into the stuff I make hahahaha
Anon said: i think a lot abt ur art and how ive been seeing u since middle school and now im graduating highschool and we're still in the same fandoms, i hope this doesnt make u feel old but rather VERY cherished qwq
No anon this makes me feel amazing you’ve been around so long!!!!!!! I can’t believe you’re still here with my thank you so much for that!!!!!! I think I’m gonna cry a little here.......... ;;;
Anon said: Hi! I love your art so much!! 🥰 Have you read a KiriBaku fic called The Pit??
Probably not, haven’t been reading krbk fics in a while by now! I’ll add it to my for-later list, thank you so much for the rec!!
Anon said: can u believe that (sans sero) the entire bakusquad can be put into some form of punk/goth fashion? the realization was a galaxy brain moment for me. also realizing that tokoyami, kirishima, and tamaki are all varying levels of goth/emo (some more concerning than others)
Sero’s the hippie friend every punk friend group needs, he balances things out and that’s why he’s very cherished and necessary!!!!
Anon said: your bakugo drawings convinced me to finally start stretching my ears and tbh i'm extremely excited (i've had off and on thoughts of stretching my ears (again) before this so it's not as impulsive as it sounds haha)
Anon that’s so cool!!!!!!! I love gauges so much.....................glad I could give you the last push for it!!
Anon said: uhhhh, i love the style of that top left goge drawing dude!!
THANK YOU I LOVE DRAWING IN THAT STYLE THIS ASK MEANS THE UNIVERSE TO ME
Anon said: i sent the dragon!kiri and bakugo tug-of-waring over a piece of meat and honestly your response is exactly what i thought
Great minds!!!!!!! hahaha
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orangeoctopi7 · 3 years
Text
It’s Fine (It’s not fine)
@forduary week 1 is Hurt/Comfort. The one’s definitely more on the hurt side of things, but I promise there’s some comfort at the end!
Stanford Pines is six years old. He’s in his bedroom, reading quietly. He’s just getting to the climax of the adventure story he’s reading when his brother Stanley crashes into the room. It wouldn't normally be a problem, Ford is really good at tuning out the world around him while he reads, but Stan is complaining loudly.
“I’m booooooard!” The boy moans, grabbing onto the post of their bunk-bed and dangling off it dramatically. 
“Whaddaya want me to do about it?” Ford asks in irritation, not looking up from his book.
“Let’s go play on the beach! Or go to the comic store! Or… or something!” Stan suggests. “Anything but just sit around here doin’ nothin’!”
It was a hot summer afternoon. Ford didn’t want to go down to the beach or the comic store when he knew for certain anywhere they went today was bound to be crowded with people. He just wanted to sit and read in his room and enjoy some time to himself. 
“Can’t you go by yourself?”
“Are you kiddin’? Ma would throw a fit!”
Ford heaves a long-suffering sigh, places a bookmark to hold his place, and snaps his book shut before thumping it down on his bed.
“Well we don’t hafta go if ya don’t wanna.” Stan says lamely.
“It’s fine.” Ford assures him.
“Are you sure?”
“It’s fine.”
* * *
Stanford Pines is ten years old. He’s at recess, trying to lie low. Stan got held back for the whole half-hour because he’d been caught trying to sneak the class pet, a newt, into his backpack. This of course leaves Ford at the mercy of Crampelter and his thugs, who have little to no mercy on any given day. 
“C’mon freak, fight back!” The towheaded bully taunts him, holding Ford back by the forehead as he tries to struggle past the blocking arm for his backpack, held just out of reach. “I know I seen you taking boxing lessons back at Mel’s Gym!”
“It’s ‘I saw’ or ‘I have seen’, and just b‘cuz I’m taking lessons doesn’t mean I’m stupid enough to pick a fight I know I can’t win!” Ford protests. 
“Pfft, you’re no fun.” Crampelter scoffs, before grabbing onto one of Ford’s hands while he continues to reach vainly for his backpack. “But y’know what does sound fun?”
“Let go of me!” 
“Seeing how flexible your extra fingers are!” Crampelter starts to push Ford’s pinky finger back with his thumb, stretching it to its limit.
“Stop it! That hurts!”
But Crampelter just keeps pushing and pushing until Ford is sure some tendons are going to pop, when a shrill whistle echoes across the playground.
“Hey! Crampelter! Drop the freak!” The teacher on recess watch commands.
The bully finally lets go, and Ford stumbles to the ground, holding his injured hand close to his body.
“Here, lemme look at that.” the teacher pulls Ford’s hand away to check it. “Eh, ‘snot bleeding or broken, you’re fine.”
As they walk back from school that afternoon, Stan rants over and over that Crampelter Will Not Get Away With This, plotting various methods of revenge, most of them too fanciful to ever come to fruition.
Ford is silent the whole time, his gaze turned towards his shoes.
“Hey.” Stan suddenly stops his ranting and places a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help.”
“It’s fine.” Ford mumbles.
“I promise I’ll try not to get held in for recess again.”
“I said it’s fine.” Ford assures him, knowing that hoping Stan won’t get held back from recess again is like hoping it won’t snow in January. Technically possible, but highly unlikely. 
* * *
Stanford Pines is fourteen years old. He’s a freshman in highschool, and he and his brother are in detention after he was caught letting Stan look off his algebra test.
It’s not that Ford has anything against sharing his answers with his brother. It’s not like he has any sort of moral high-ground here. It’s just that Stan is always so carelessly obvious about it!
“I said I was sorry, alright!” Stan hisses at him, trying not to draw the teacher’s attention.
“We’re not in middle school anymore, these things actually go on our record now!” Ford hisses back. “You have to be more careful!”
“Well maybe if you would actually slip me your paper instead of making me crane my neck over your desk! Nobody’s gonna notice if you hand your test in two minutes before everyone else instead of five!”
“That’d be even more obvious! Maybe if you wore your glasses for once!”
“Maybe I would, if you could hold your own in a fight!”
“What does that even have to do with anything!?”
“You don’t wear glasses in a fight, genius! That’s just asking for them to get broken! And I know I’m always having to step in and save your skin, so why would I even bother wearing them in the first place?”
“Hey!” The teacher overseeing detention snaps at them. “No talking!”
The boys shut their yapps and go back to studying, or at least pretending to study.
“I’m sorry.” Stan murmurs, once he’s sure the teacher is no longer paying attention to them.
“It’s fine.” Ford grunts back.
* * *
Stanford Pines is 17 years old. He is begrudgingly walking down to the beach with his brother.
“C’mon Ford, it’s October, there’s only a few more days of weather nice enough to work on her left! And the dumb science fair isn’t until April!”
“I still have so much research to do before I can even start!” Ford complains. “Not to mention procuring parts, testing different models--”
“That all sounds like stuff you can do once it gets cold.”
“I should be in the building phase by then!” 
“Alright, look,” Stan jabs a finger in his brother’s direction. “If you wanna spend the last few warm days of the year cooped up in the library, that’s your problem. But I’m gonna enjoy the sunshine and the beach, and finish fixin’ up the Stan’o’war. We’re so close, I can practically taste the treasure and babes!”
“...Fine.” Ford grumbles.
“No, no. You go do your nerd thing. I’ll put the finishing touches on this thing we’ve been working on together since we were pipsqueaks.”
“I said it’s fine.”
* * *
Stanford Pines is 17 years old. He’s just come back from the most humiliating moment of his life (thus far). He confronts his brother, the offending evidence crinkling in his clenched fist. Stan tries to play it off like it’s not a big deal. Like he expects his brother to say It’s Fine.
It is most definitely not fine.
* * *
Stanford Pines is 20 years old. He’s showing his new roommate around their humble apartment.
“I really ‘preciate this, Stanford.” Fiddleford McGucket tells him for the sixth time that day. “Most folks wouldn’t offer to put their TA up in their apartment, ‘specially not when you’re lucky ‘nough to get yer own place!”
“Well, I’ll be starting the Doctorate program myself, next year! That makes us equals, in my mind.” Ford says proudly. “And I’m happy for the company! The only reason I have the apartment to myself is because my last roommate and I parted over… differences.”
“Heh, you too, eh?” McGucket chuckles. “Least you weren’t kicked out, like I was!”
“Why were you kicked out?”
“Oh, several reasons. I think the robot in the kitchen was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Ford laughs. “Well, I for one would love to have a robot that does our dishes and cleans the counters.”
McGucket grins and leans against the table.. “See, I knew we’d make great roommates!”
Unfortunately, McGucket’s leaning is more than the wobbly table can take, and it tips over on its side, scattering textbooks and papers everywhere. The two friends begin cleaning up the mess, McGucket apologizing profusely. 
They’ve almost finished putting everything back onto the table when Fiddleford picks up an old photo of two little boys standing before a derelict little boat.
“Well bless my soul! Is this you, Ford?”
Ford’s heart skips a beat. He hadn’t realized he left that photo lying on the table!
“Ah, yes, that’s me. That was the day I decided I wanted to be a researcher--”
“And lookit this little fellah next to ya!” Fiddleford interrupts Ford’s soliloquy. “He looks just like you! I can’t believe I’ve known you for three years, and you never told me you had a twin!”
“Er… it just-- it never came up.”
“How in tarnation does yer own twin brother never come up?” Fiddleford asks incredulously. “So, what’s his name?”
“Stanley and I are not on speaking terms.” Ford says stiffly. “I haven’t spoken to him since I was a teenager.”
A multitude of expressions dance across Fiddleford’s face before Ford can hope to interpret any of them. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He finally says.
“It’s fine.” Ford says tersely, snatching the photo back.
* * *
Stanford Pines is 21 years old. He’s trying to get a good night sleep before his first dissertation tomorrow. 
Trying being the operative word.
The past year rooming with Fiddleford McGucket has been great, for the most part. Ford loves spending time with an intellectual equal. McGucket accepts all of Ford’s idiosyncrasies, and Ford accepts all those of his friend.
Well, almost all of them.
It didn’t take long after they started rooming together for Ford to realize one of the several reasons McGucket had been evicted from his last apartment had nothing to do with his penchant for robotics, and everything to do with his penchant for late-night banjo playing. As much as it cut into Ford’s sleep schedule, he didn’t have the heart to complain to his roommate about it. He knew he had plenty of his own bad habits that were difficult to deal with, like his coffee addiction, his antisocial behavior, his tendency to start a project and just leave it laying wherever he was around the apartment, and his few dozen subscriptions to cryptozoological newsletters.
The digital clock on Ford’s bedside table reads 2:20 AM when the music finally, thankfully stops. He sighs and turns over in his bed, hoping to finally fall asleep.
When he wakes in the morning, groggy as a hung-over sailor, Fiddleford at least has the decency to look apologetic.
“Sorry, did I keep ya up last night? I kinda got lost in the music an’ lost track of time.”
“It’s fine.” Ford mutters as he pours himself a large mug of the strongest coffee he can brew. This is the first roommate he’s gotten along with since… since he started college. He can put up with this.
“Well, if’n ya need me to, I can start headin’ up to the practice rooms in the assembly hall fer my jam sessions--”
“It’s fine.”
* * *
Stanford Pines is 31 years old. He’s spreading thick globs of slimy aloe vera on his hands. He’s been letting his muse take control of his body while he sleeps for about a week now. Bill says he’s not used to the limits of a physical human body. He’s injured Ford’s body just about every night so far, but last night, when he picked up the hot coffee pot by the pot instead of by the handle, was the worst by far. 
“This keeps on happening, Bill. You need to be more careful.” He gently chides his muse.
“WELL HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT’D HAPPEN? WHY DIDN’T THE IDIOT WHO DESIGNED THAT THING INSULATE THE WHOLE CONTAINER INSTEAD OF JUST THE HANDLE? YOU COULD DESIGN A COFFEE POT WAY MORE EFFICIENT THAN THAT!”
Ford smiles, blushing. “Perhaps I’ll get around to modifying it someday. But for now, as I was saying, could you please be more careful with my body at night?”
“HEY, YOU’RE ACTUALLY LUCKY THIS HAPPENED. IF I HADN’T DROPPED THAT POT, I WOULD’VE TRIED DRINKING IT THE SAME WAY I DO IN MY NORMAL FORM, AND THEN YOU’D PROBABLY BE BLIND. SO WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT, YOU SHOULD BE THANKING ME!”
Ford pales. “Er, perhaps I should help you practice using my body first, just to decrease the risk of that sort of thing.”
“OH, I’M SORRY! DO YOU NOT WANT MY HELP? DO YOU NOT WANT TO ACHIEVE GREATNESS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE?”
“No! No of course not! That’s not what I meant!”
“DON’T FORGET, I’M DOING THIS FOR YOU, SIXER! I’M AN AGELESS BEING OF PURE ENERGY! THE ONLY REASON I’M HELPING YOU SPEED UP THE PROCESS ON BUILDING THE PORTAL IS BECAUSE I KNOW HOW PATHETICALLY SHORT YOUR MORTAL LIFE IS. YOU’RE JUST GONNA HAVE TO TRUST ME. OR ARE A FEW BUMPS AND BRUISES TOO MUCH FOR YOU TO HANDLE?”
“Of course not! It’s fine! I’m fine!” Ford insists, finishing bandaging his burns.
* * *
Stanford Pines is… probably 45? He’s not quite sure. He’s lost track of time after traveling the multiverse for so long, especially after the Do-Over Dimension.
He’s making his way through a crowded alien market, hoping to find something he’ll be able to use in his Quantum Destabilizer, and also hoping not to be recognized by any bounty hunters. It’s annoying, having to wear a hood and goggles and mask everywhere he goes, but that’s just the way it has to be now.
It’s fine.
It’s only until he can complete the Quantum Destabilizer. After that… it didn’t matter what happened after that.
It’s fine.
* * *
Stanford Pines is 62 years old. He’s sitting in a hospital bed. Despite what that may suggest, his life has finally taken a turn for the better. Bill is gone, Weirdmaggeddon is over, and, miraculously, no one died. Stanley was going to be ok. The kids didn’t hate him. He’s achieved his goal of destroying Bill Cipher, and survived! He’s fine. They’re all incredibly, wonderfully, fine.
The doctor is giving his vitals one last check before officially discharging him from the hospital. It’s obvious that under normal circumstances, Ford would not be leaving the hospital any time soon, but thanks to the incredibly persistent insistence of his family, and the fact that the hospital is already absolutely filled to the brim with people who were injured during Weirdmageddon, and the fact that Stanford was instrumental in stopping Bill, they’re making an exception. 
“Alright, you’re free to go!” The doctor finally says, handing his clipboard over to Ford to sign. 
“Hooray!” Mabel cheers as her uncle signs his exit papers. “Now you’ll be able to help us set up for our birthday party!” She slings an arm around his neck to hug him, completely forgetting about the thin layer of bandages around his neck. Ford can’t suppress a yelp of pain.
Mabel reels back, hands flying to her mouth. “Ohmigosh, I’m so sorry!”
“It’s fine.” Ford forces a smile.
“I wasn’t thinking!”
“Mabel, really, it’s fine.”
“Ford.” Stan says firmly. Ford recognizes the expression on his face from the last few days. It’s the look he gets on his face when he’s remembering something painful. “You gotta stop doing that.”
“Doing what?” He asks, confused.
“Saying ‘It’s fine’ when it’s not.”
Ford raises an eyebrow. “Stanley, it was just an accident. It really is fine.”
“Oh, yeah, of course this was…” Stan stammers, apparently coming back to the moment. “Mabel’s not-- this was just an honest mistake. But you say… uh, or at least, you used to say that a lot. Even when I could tell it wasn’t really fine. You gotta stop that.”
Ford shifted in his bed uncomfortably. “I’m just being polite.”
“There are ways to say things aren’t fine while still being polite.” Dipper points out.
Ford can feel himself flush. “I’m not good at that. I always come off as rude… or angry.” Saying it’s fine is just easier. He can just move on and forget about it. Control his emotions. Remove them from the equation for the time being, process them later when he’s alone, so nobody gets hurt.
Stan takes a deep breath before he speaks again. “You just gotta trust us, that we’re not gonna leave you just ‘cuz you get angry sometimes.”
Is that really what he’s been afraid of this whole time? That certainly seems to be a part of it, but not the whole. All the same, he does at least feel that he can trust his family. And he can try to be more honest with them when something is bothering him.
“I think I can do that.” he says as he gets up from the hospital bed, ready to go home.
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youtuberswithalex · 4 years
Text
Period
Summary: Swallowing his panic, he tried his hardest to take a deep breath. He grabbed a wad of toilet paper and wiped, hoping to scurry to his room and get rid of the evidence of any injury before anyone could find out, but it came back soaked in just as much deep, dark blood as before. Tears sprung to his eyes as he let his hyperventilating take over. 
“Daaaaaad!”
(Trans!Virgil; Adoption AU; Romantic Logicality, Paternal Moxiety, Brotherly Prinxiety, Creativitwins)
Warnings: Blood, periods, crying, explanation of the menstrual cycle, brief mention of sex, implied/referenced past child abuse, brief mention of past character death, Remus Antics (brief, non-graphic mention of a gory scene in an old movie)
Word Count: 2316
A/N: So, this has been a fic I’ve wanted to write for 12+ years, a fic that’s transpired fandom after fandom after fandom: an explanation of what a period is, to help others who won’t get/understand an explanation from other sources. I know this gets a little info-dump-y, but I tried to make it understandable. This fic is for you kids who are nervous about getting yours for the first time, like I was, and I hope seeing characters you love going through it, too, can help!
This is also the first fic I’m posting, I guess, of this Adoption AU I’ve had in my head for a while! I’ve got a couple other ideas in mind, including a part 2 to this focusing more on Roman and Virgil, sooo hit me up for some AU questions, if you have any!
-----
It was true that Virgil hadn’t really been feeling well in the past week.
He didn’t know what it was, but everything just felt… off. He didn’t want to socialize with anyone; being around people had been making a fire of rage burn in his chest, and the fact that he didn’t know why just made it ten times worse. He was exhausted to the point of nearly falling asleep in class, and would have slept through his alarms twice and been late if it hadn’t have been for Roman waking him up when he didn’t come for breakfast.
Speaking of, he hadn’t had much of an appetite, and he’d hardly been eating because of it. Even the idea of eating anything had made him feel a little gross. And his stomach had been cramping a lot.
Realistically, Virgil knew this was something he should tell Patton or Logan, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. It didn’t matter how many times Roman reassured him that their dads wouldn’t be angry at him for getting sick; until he saw it for himself, he wasn’t going to be able to believe him. So what if Patton was a nurse? So what if Roman and Logan had butted heads dozens of times since Virgil had moved in, and it had never dissolved into a screaming match? That didn’t mean they wouldn’t turn on him, or that he was a good enough kid to avoid getting on their bad side!
Besides, he wasn’t throwing up or running a fever! He was just going to waste their time if he said anything. They had more important things to worry about than him. It’s not like he was dying or anything.
…Or, so he’d thought, until Thursday afternoon when he went to the bathroom and found his underwear covered in blood.
Virgil almost screamed at the sight. As soon as he recovered, he frantically searched his body for any sign of a scrape or scratch that could have left such a mess. There was nothing. Maybe… Maybe it had already healed?
Swallowing his panic, he tried his hardest to take a deep breath. He grabbed a wad of toilet paper and wiped, hoping to scurry to his room and get rid of the evidence of any injury before anyone could find out, but it came back soaked in just as much deep, dark blood as before. Tears sprung to his eyes as he let his hyperventilating take over.
“Daaaaaad!”
Footsteps came rushing to the door faster than he’d ever heard in this household. “Virgil, are you okay?”
He choked back a sob. “I-I’m bleeding…!”
“Okay, it’s going to be okay, kiddo,” Patton soothed. “Can I come in?”
Virgil looked at himself, still on the toilet, and set the wad of toilet paper on the tank. He scrambled to stand and pull his pants up before whimpering out an “Uh-huh”.
Patton calmly came in and shut the door behind him. “Alright, where are you bleeding?”
“I-I don’t know!”
“You don’t know?” he asked with a frown.
“I…” Virgil picked up the toilet paper and showed it to him, lowering his voice to a whisper despite no one else being in there with them. “It was all over my underwear,” he explained. “And when I wiped, I…”
He trailed off as Patton tilted his head to inspect the blood, and then understanding faded onto his face as he looked away in thought. While it was only a few seconds, it felt like an eternity; his stomach started to cramp again, and Virgil found himself trembling.
“I-I haven’t been feeling good this week,” he admitted. “My stomach’s been hurting, and—and all I want to do is sleep, and I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to bother you guys, and I’m sorry, I should’ve said something, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to be sick, I don’t want to have to go to the hospital, please—!”
Patton shushed him and ran his fingers through Virgil’s hair. “Hey, hey, relax, it’s alright! You’re okay, Virgil. You’re not going to die, trust me. Especially not on my watch.”
He leaned over, put the toilet lid down, and gently pushed Virgil to sit on it before kneeling in front of him. He took a few seconds to chew on his lip in thought.
“Virgil,” he started, “At your old school, did your teachers ever take an afternoon to talk to you guys about puberty?”
Virgil shook his head.
Patton let out a breath and nodded. “I guess they probably think it’s a little too early to talk about it, huh?” he muttered. “Am I allowed to touch your stomach, honey?”
Virgil hesitated, but he nodded after a moment. Patton reached up and placed his hands on Virgil’s lower belly. When he flinched, he used his thumb to rub gentle circles into it.
“Okay, so, in your body, right down here, you have this thing called a uterus,” he softly explained. “When people are pregnant, that’s where the babies grow before—”
“Am I PREGNANT?!”
“No, no, no—!” Patton had to hold back a laugh, taking his hands away to cover his face for just a second before returning them to their original position. “You’re not pregnant, Virgil, don’t—don’t worry about that!”
Virgil snapped his mouth shut, lower lip still trembling. Patton offered him a reassuring smile as he continued.
“Your uterus has these two things connected to it called ovaries.” He used his two index fingers to draw out where they would be. “They hold a bunch of tiny little eggs inside of them that eventually would turn into people—but only under certain circumstances, at certain times, usually involving another person. If you were to get pregnant, you’d know, understand? It’s not going to happen randomly.”
Patton didn’t move on until Virgil nodded.
“Okay. Now, about once a month, one of these two little guys is going to let one of their eggs go,” he said, “and it sticks to the wall of your uterus. And your body goes…”
Patton threw his hands into the air and waved them around. “’Yay! We’re gonna have a baby!’” he cheered in a cartoony voice. Virgil let out a weak snicker. Patton counted it as a win.
“It starts to get ready for this potential baby by building up this lining around the walls, so that it’ll be extra protected from harm. And for a little while, if you… Ah…” Patton’s face turned red. “Do… certain things, with certain people, that egg might get fertilized, and that’s how pregnancy starts.”
“Like… kissing?”
Patton hummed. “No, you’d have to do a little more than that. More, uh… adult stuff.”
Virgil nodded, looking at the floor very seriously. “Taxes.”
It was a fight to keep his laugh in. “R-Right. Taxes.” He cleared his throat and continued. “Um, anyway, if that egg doesn’t get fertilized, your body says, ‘Oh, darn! Well, maybe next time!’, and it gets rid of the egg, and then it gets rid of that lining so it can make a fresh one for the next egg.” He pointed to the bloody toilet paper still gripped tightly in Virgil’s hands. “That’s what that blood is. It’s not a cut, and it’s certainly not an omen of death. It’s just a sign that you’re growing up.”
Virgil stared at the toilet paper for a long moment. “…Am I going to have to do this every month?”
“Well, not at first,” Patton replied, putting his hands on his knees. “This is a brand new feature in your body right now, so it’ll take a bit for it to fall into a real cycle. For a little bit, you might have a couple within a month, or you might not have it for another three after this. But, eventually, yeah, the body will balance itself out.”
“How long is that gonna take?”
“It depends on your body. If it takes a while, or it doesn’t seem like it’s going to balance at all, we can look into some options to help, like birth control or hormone therapy. Modern medicine is a great thing,” he said with a wink. “How about we save that conversation for a little later, though? See how this pans out for now?”
There was a beat, and then Virgil slowly nodded. He shifted and tipped his head away. “What do I do about my underwear?” he whispered.
Patton hummed and sat back, looking up at the ceiling. “Well… I’ll be honest, kiddo, I can talk your ear off about anatomy and the medical side of things, but I don’t have a clue about the products and stuff. How would you feel if I called Remus’s mom and asked her to come explain that stuff to us?”
Virgil wiped at his eyes. “Okay.”
Offering a gentle smile, Patton held his arms open; there was a moment of hesitation, and then Virgil leaned forward and wrapped his smaller arms around him. Patton held him tight and rubbed his back.
“Thank you,” he whimpered.
“Of course, sweetie. That’s what your Pop and I are here for,” he reassured. “And don’t you ever worry about bothering us if you’re not feeling well, okay? We care about you more than whatever silly things we might be working on. We want to take care of you, okay?”
Virgil shuddered in a manner that was suspiciously similar to that of a repressed sob; when he spoke next, his voice was tight and high-pitched. “Okay.”
They sat like this for a moment, with Patton holding his son close, rubbing a hand over his lower back, until he pressed a kiss into his hair and pulled back.
“Alright, Virge, I need to go call Mrs. Drake,” he said. “Is your stomach still hurting? Or anything else, for that matter? I can get you some medicine to help, if you want.”
Virgil nodded, scrubbing his eyes and taking a deep breath.
Patton nodded and climbed to his feet. “Okay. I’ll be back as soon as I can, promise.”
He stepped out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind him and leaving Virgil alone with his thoughts again. He was still shaking, yes, but the terror of thinking he was going to die was settling into the more manageable fear of learning a new routine…
And maybe, a little, the risk of starting to put his trust into someone.
But maybe there wasn’t so much to fear in that one.
Virgil leaned forward and finally dropped the bloody toilet paper into the trash.
----------
The front door slammed open; Logan and Roman both nearly jumped out of their skin from where they sat at the dining room table.
“Virgil, we got your little butt-diapers!”
There was the sound of a light swat, and then the snatching of a plastic bag.
“Stahp, Remus, he’s already having a hard time with it!”
Snickering echoed through the entryway as the two climbed the half-flight of stairs leading to the main floor. As Remus made a beeline to tackle Roman out of his chair, Logan adjusted his posture to be more formal and nodded at Mrs. Drake.
“Good afternoon, Alya,” he called.
“Hi, boys,” she quickly responded. “Are they still in the bathroom?”
“I believe so, yes.”
Mrs. Drake nodded and hurried off just as Roman wrestled Remus off of him. He glanced at the hallway, and then between his twin and his father.
“Wait, what’s going on?”
“Your baby bro’s anus is bleeding for the first time!”
“No, Remus,” Logan scolded. He turned to Roman. “He’s experiencing his first menstrual period. Your father called Mrs. Drake to help teach him the technical aspects of how to best handle it.”
Roman blinked and sat up straight. “Oh! Is he going to be alright?”
“Yeah, Mom brought a bunch of stuff to help,” Remus replied, waving his hand as he plopped into the open seat next to Roman. “Pads, painkillers, heating rice bag sock things, the whole shebang. And a bunch of chocolate and candy and stuff!”
“Ah, good. I’ve seen studies that dark chocolate helps with cramps,” Logan stated.
Remus sighed. “A shame. I was hoping we’d get to see Virgie’s tiny baby rip out of his stomach. Like that scene in Aliens!”
Roman let out a whine and swatted him. “Dude, that’s my little brother!”
“Oh, come on! Your other dad’s a nurse! He could stitch him back up in no time!”
“That is not how nurses work!”
Logan hummed and adjusted his glasses, turning back to the papers he was grading. “Astounding. In less than two minutes, you’ve expressed your ignorance in both anatomy and the careers of the medical field. I suggest you brush up on them both if you truly wish to study in the field of dentistry.”
“Haa, brush up,” Roman laughed.
Logan shot him a glare over the rim of his glasses; Roman and Remus high-fived.
“Do your homework, Roman.”
Roman grinned and turned back to face his homework, but his mind instead floated back to Virgil’s condition. He bit down on his lip and shifted before looking up and tapping his pencil end against the table.
“Seriously… Virgil is going to be okay, right?” he asked.
Logan let out a soft breath. “Your brother is going to be just fine,” he gently reassured. “This is a natural thing for many people who possess uteri. He might be in pain for a little while, but ultimately, he will be alright.”
“My mom deals with it every month, and she’s not dead yet,” Remus pointed out. Then, with his grin fading a bit, he added, “Our mom probably had them, too. She must’ve, if she had us.”
Roman watched him for a long moment, and then he nodded, swallowing the lump that had snuck into his throat.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay.”
---------
Second A/N:
Hey, folks-- So, as it turned out, I made a bit of a mistake in explaining this. So sorry about this! Thank you so much to @romanslunchbox​ for pointing this out and correcting me:
“ It isn’t a huge mistake. However, in your fic you stated that the egg gets stuck in the lining of the uterus. But that is only possible with a fertilized egg. An non-fertilized egg dies in the oviducts before it can even reach the uterus. After the egg dies certain hormones are released to start the menstruation about 2 weeks later (how that works is an entire shit show of hormones and stuff). It takes a while for these hormones to be released, so the uterus keeps producing more lining for the egg to get stuck in. When the uterus finally gets the signale that there is no pregnancy, that is when the menstruation starts. “
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jenivi7 · 3 years
Text
First Lines Tagging Meme
I'M SO HAPPY TO BE TAGGED IN THIS TWICE!  Thank you @ink-flavored and @clyde-side !! (I almost just did this on my own too because I love babbling about my own fics...)
Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line.
Now pinned and under a cut because it became a really long, really good introduction to me and my stories! 
Hello!
Unnecessary and overly wordy introduction/personal musings: I love opening lines so much. When I worked at a bookstore, I used to open books and hardcore judge them on their first lines. I had barely any free time to read at that point so if it didn’t grab me in the first line or two, I put it back. The first Harry Potter book is actually in my pile of really good openers. “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” (Subtle alliteration, HELLO??) So I'm super excited to see if my own first lines come even close to the standards that I apply to other people lol. MY OWN MONEY IS ON NO. I have the feeling that I'm so frantic trying to get the story down on paper before the good words disappear from my head that I'm not actually paying attention to the first line. BUT LET'S SEE, SHALL WE.
So just straight up going backwards, I've written and posted TWO BRAND NEW THINGS after being away from fandom almost entirely for 10+ years! They're drabble length but they're shiny and new! <3 (All available fics are linked!)
1. Tango:
She teaches them to dance so that they can dance with her but when Atem gets that mischievous smirk on his face and pulls Yugi into his arms, their bodies spark and the dance floor smolders at their heels.
(The fic is so short that this is a full 1/5 of it but actually, I think I crammed all the good stuff right into that first line. This already might be my favorite. Like it says there in the line itself, Puzzleshipping.)
2. No Betting:
Anzu sat at the kitchen table writing carefully calculated answers onto sticky notes before attaching them to a fourth-grade math worksheet.
(Peachshipping! This one doesn't pop off until about line five so here's the rest of that bit:)
She had the same arrangement with her spouse as most parents had. When the kids were good they were hers. When they were bad, they were his. And when they were winning at games because they picked up rules with uncanny speed and read their opponents with more insight than ought to be available to a child, they were definitely, definitely his.
3. If you wanted honesty that's all you had to say (working title):
When he realized that the figure sitting under the game shop display window and smoking wasn’t Ryou, the physical body response was as though it had discovered a coiled snake not two feet away.
(This one! It's a NEW half finished(?) WIP. I actually started this one before the drabbles but wanted to finish before posting it. Then it got out of hand, then work got out of hand, then I started a couple more projects and well. I keep putting words on it though and eventually there will be a Kleptoshipper that turns into Puzzle and Tender for your reading enjoyment. Also, fair warning - don't use song lyrics as a working title. Every time I look at the document I get the song stuck in my head.)
Now we have polished up reposts of old stories for their move to AO3, where I'll basically keep my master archive. Not full re-writes but I fixed a bunch of typos and awkward sentences and they're much stronger for it. Most of these are from a pairings contest way back when so LOTS of different pairings and lots of AUs!
4. Human:
It was like a bad noir, the thought crossed both of their minds.
(Scifi AU, Rivalshipping. That one's not bad for a first line. Actually no link at the time of writing cause the re-edit is going up in like, a half hour? an hour? a half day? It's my next project after finishing this, finishing up the edit and posting it on AO3. Now with link!)
5. Blood:
Fingers through midnight black hair, whispers in his ear, touches that sizzled along the skin, awakening nerves and senses. 
(Dungeonshipping, Pegasus x Otogi, vampires AU. Oh that’s a nice first line! <3)
6. Crazy for You:
The keys are too large and too heavy for the doctor more used to more modern facilities but she doesn't say anything, just follows the orderly as he pulls the large door open.
(Manipulashipping, Anzu x Marik, Psychward AU. Still one of my favorites from that era. Big bold warning though, THIS ONE CONTAINS NON-CON)
7. Finality:
“What are you doing here?”
“Saying goodbye.” Bakura’s translucent arms swept across the graveyard. “Is this not an appropriate place for it?”
(First two or so bits of dialogue as the first first is a generic question. You can tell this is one of the really old ones just by that but it's a sweet, sad little Tendershipper that still has a special place in my heart.)
8. Pieces of You:
Glitter caught the light, leaving shimmering trails in the air as it got everywhere.
(Glittershipping, Anzu x Kisara. Another one that's special to me. Kisara is my girl and my first writing muse. <3)
9. Cambodia:
“It was summer of fifty three...”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, it can't have been fifty three. You might be that ancient but I'm not. It must have been sixty three.”
(Jiishipping. Yes. Sugoroku x Arthur. HEY, IT CAME UP IN THE RANDOM DRAW FOR THE SHIPPING CONTEST OK. And my writer's brain hasn't backed down from a challenge yet... Another one that takes 4 lines to pop off but it's a good start. Actually, here's the rest of the bit just because I cannot get enough of these two bickering:)
“What do you mean it must have been sixty three? You don't even know what story I'm trying to tell.”
“Am I in it?”
“What?”
“So you're deaf now as well as daft? AM I IN IT?”
“Of course you're in it, y'old coot. Don't know why I'd tell a story without you in it when both grandkids are sitting here.”
10. Coffee and Cigarettes:
"Cigarettes and coffee? That's not a very healthy lunch." 
Mana crossed her legs and took a refined sip of her own coffee even as her company was not. 
(Mischiefshipping, Mana x Thief King Bakura. Oh this one I'm actually sad that it doesn't immediately sparkle in the first line cause it's one of my absolute favorites of everything I've written. And I think it's the only time I've ever written Mana but I LOVED IT AND HER. Oh no! I lied, I've written her at least one other time though I don't think that one quite captures her sheer chaos energy like this one does.)
11. A Million Missed Chances:
Somewhere along the line, someone made a choice.
(This one. THIS ONE. I think this is by far the most epic idea I've tackled. I still don't know if the sheer scale of the thing came across in the actual fic but in my head it was massive and I remember pounding away at my teeny tiny laptop late at night because the whole thing hit me maybe a day or so before the story was due for the pairings contest. We only had a week to write each fic and my really good ideas never came to me before the very last minute. T.T Conquestshipping, Mai x Valon.)
12. A Fear of Falling:
She drove.
Like she always did when something bothered her.
(Oh the first chapter on this is also one of the really ancient ones. Like one of the very first things I wrote. That first chapter really shows its age and is a little shaky but the others are better and the last one is what fits into the chorological order here. Polarshipping, Jou x Mai. One of my very first ships. Probably THE first actually <3)
13. What Our Creators Make Us:
"Well, well." The match flared, scattering dark shadows until it was blown out and the only light that remained was the red glow from the cigarette end. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again."
(Psychoshipping, Marik x Spirit of the Ring Bakura. With a bit of Bronze, Angst and Tender in the follow up. Old but I'm ridiculously proud of it, hence it's place in the master archive. Ahaha you can tell how old it is though by how clever I think I am. I thought it was funny to make my audience figure out who was talking and not reveal the characters for a good fourth to third of the fic. Ahhhhhhh. Sorry about past me.)
14. A Revolution of the Spirit:
It wasn't fair.  It just wasn't.
That they were close was understandable (you don't get much closer than sharing headspace) but that even now, after deals were made with gods, endless arguments, compromises and the ultimate guilt trip that he had only been a teenager when he willingly sacrificed himself for all of humanity, things she had only half seen and only partly understood even though they had all been there to witness, that even now Atem continued to invade Yugi's personal space as though he belonged there got on her nerves.
(Woah Nelly! That third sentence should probably be three, four and five. Even if I just split it in half we'd continue the pattern of things popping off in the fourth line. I think that's one pattern that's emerging! A really good bit takes me about four lines to set up and deliver! Oh, the challenge was Revolutionshipping, Anzu x Atem, but the fic is actually Spiritshipping, Anzu x Yugi x Atem.)
So confession time, I haven't been out of fandom completely, I just hadn't written my own standalone stories in a very long time. There are a few (ok ok more than a few) long-running rps that @miss-moberg and I have been adding to on and off over the years. I can't resist throwing in a couple of these.
15. Cafe!
The door shut behind them with the soft click of the latch and the exhale of a breath long held.
(This opening line was from December of 2020 when we rebooted a very old Prideshipper and that is a damn good opening line if I do say so myself. I can definitely see the difference now between the newer works and the older ones. I've gotten better, she's matched me pace for pace and eventually something will be finished, I'll work up the courage to ask permission to post it and the whole internet will get to see how brilliant the two of us are together.)
16. Treasure Hunt!
"Ryou, I think you're going to regret letting me tag along on your adventuring this time."  Yugi didn't bother turning away from the airplane's tiny window to see if his seatmate was paying attention.  He was more thinking out loud with his friend playing the role of a convenient sounding board.  "Because I think this trip is the only thing I'm going to talk about ever again."
(One more from RP because it's got that fun, four line punch that we've discovered is a pattern for me! Opening entry is from 2017.)
Also, in truth, my count is a little off when I say I'd been out of fandom 10+ years. I've been away from YGO for that long but I did spend a brief stint in Homestuck where I read a ton of fanfic, flirted with a couple group RPs and even wrote a tiny bit. 9 years without writing a new fic isn't as impressive as saying ‘over a decade’ but it is a little more accurate.
17. What You Will:
In the land of fair Illyria, along a small, sandy stretch of its rocky shore, a ship has come to ruin and one lone woman lies still as death among broken wood.
(The beginning of a Homestuck/Twelfth Night crossover that I'm still determined to work more on someday. It's only got a single chapter but it's magic though now I'm concerned about not being able to recapture that. Not a bad first line though. The style is so different it took me reading it a couple times before going, oh yeeeeeah, that's pretty good!)
18. Relentless:
You pull him to the deck and then across it by the remains of his shirt. Let him say one last goodbye. His ship pillaged, his crew murdered, his hands bound behind his back and at your mercy.
Funny word, that. Mercy.
(The first line is pretty decent but there's that four line combo again! Five but I could basically fix that with a comma. Featuring the troll ancestors Mindfang and Dualscar because every time Hussey introduced new characters they were instantly my favorite.) 
19. Black:
There is dark and there is dark and there is dark and then there is black. She is black. Licorice and coal. She is hate and resentment and everything that tastes bitter, the kind of black that coats the tongue like oil, drips down the back of the throat and keeps going.
(Oh wow. Am I allowed to say that about my own work? A Terezi/Vriska drabble that I'm putting as much here as I think I can get away with because it's so good that it fucks me up a little going back and reading it.)
And here it gets tricky because I think the more recent of the old, old fics are in the Drabbles and Shorts collection on ff.net and I can't see a post date. So I'll just pick a good one to end on.
20. Two Princes:
It was inevitable as the rising of Ra's chariot after a long night, as the flooding of the river banks every spring, and Atem always knew that Yugi's kiss would be as warm and gentle as the evening breeze in the summer that brought relief from the scorching day. It was.
(How about the final honor going to more Puzzle/Blind? This probably has the strongest first line of its era. Actually I'm not sure when it was written. It was just hanging out in my writing folder and, thinking about it, I probably wrote it when I was fading from fandom the first time around but still trying to hang in there. No wait! That’s too sad, we can’t end on that! Lets add one more to the list for the sake of personal narrative!)
21. Linger:
The world doesn't need him anymore. It doesn't need his sword and it doesn't need his pen.
(A tiny Princess Tutu afterward that I wrote for myself. Nice one-two punch in the opener. Also it rounds out the personal story that accidentally developed here with a line later in the fic, "Words, however, never stray far from a good writer..." Like, wait, stop. Past me, how did you know T.T)
Did that take a sudden emotional turn for anyone else or was that just me. Can I offset that a little with an honorable mention? Let’s do that while I collect myself. Here’s one more.
Honorable mention: Ryou and the Thief
There was a storm gathering and too much magic in the air. Much more than occurred naturally and magic at this level was never a good thing.
(I can’t have a list of things I’ve written without having Ryou and the Thief on it. If you click on this one though, BEWARE, it’s old, it’s silly and it has a ton of explicit gay sex that… would be written very differently if we were handling it today I’m sure! This is the first RP @miss-moberg and I ever did together and our excuse to Gemship and Puzzleship turned into us running the boys through a whole adventure based on the Osiris myth. It’s the longest thing I’ve ever completed and I’d still consider it kind of my legacy.)
And that’s the last 21(+1!) stories that I’ve written! 
The clear winner of best first line for me is 15. Cafe! It’s short, elegant and manages to contain a whole mood even without the context of what’s going on and who’s involved. (Spoilers: It’s Seto and Mokuba making an AU escape from Gozoboro.) Close second is Tango, the most recent story. It’s neat to see just how much better I’ve gotten and also really cool to see that even if the first line itself doesn’t contain a punch, it’s usually because there’s a nice, strong idea being set up and delivered in the first four lines (or so). What a pleasant surprise!
AND WOW, this whole tag thing didn't need to be so long! Or personal! Seriously, if you get this tag from me the challenge is only to list the first lines to 20 stories and maybe try to draw one or two conclusions from them. You all thought I was joking when I said I loved talking about my own writing! But actually, I guess it’s fine like this as I ended up using it as a way to re-introduce myself. Like, "Hey, I used to live here a long time ago and oh my god I love what you've done with the place!" Rather than being someone who's just popped up out of nowhere a few weeks ago to creepily bother all your best of the best creators so....
^///^ Hello!
Thanks for letting me ramble!
Tags! I think I've seen most of the authors I follow do this already but on the off chance you haven't been tagged yet: @elexica (checked your blog to see if you'd already done the tag and saw that you're another person returning to writing fanfiction after 10+ years. Same! Hello!!), @danieco, @draconicmaw, @nedjemetsenen (has someone tagged you already?) and two shots in the dark, @miss-moberg and @edmondia (I'm so sorry you two. T.T Please feel free to block me forever.) And please, anyone else who wants to babble about their own writing! Do this, it was so much fun. <3
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ghost-in-the-hella · 3 years
Note
J: “Join me for a swim?” with PriceMarsh, because I can't get enough of this ship.
Some soft pricemarsh for these troubled times. Enjoy.
---
Kate says a silent prayer before she approaches the woman sitting on the beach. She suspects that Chloe’s not the praying kind, and given the way people in Blackwell and around town never seem to have a kind word to say about her she’d be surprised if anybody else spoke to God on her behalf. And maybe Chloe prefers it that way. They haven’t talked about religion much in the few weeks of their budding friendship, but she’s pretty sure that Chloe is an atheist. “What kind of God would take my dad away when I was only fourteen?” For some people, tragedy brings them closer to God. For others, it pushes them away. But Chloe doesn’t make fun of her for being religious (unlike most people at Blackwell) and Kate doesn’t try to dissuade her from her own beliefs, so they get along beautifully. Everyone has their own path to walk in life, after all.
Kate’s path leads her toward Chloe’s slumped back and bowed head as she sits in the cooling sand and the fading light.
Chloe’s head doesn’t turn as Kate approaches, even though Kate’s footsteps in the sand aren’t exactly silent. It does raise slightly in acknowledgement, however, and Kate assumes that’s as close as she’s going to get to a greeting tonight. 
Kate’s not sure how long Chloe’s been sitting there, staring out at the slow waters of the bay. Chloe had texted her three times after midnight, which Kate of course didn’t see until she woke up at eight. Kate’s texted her five times since then at careful intervals so as to not seem too concerned, and Chloe hasn’t responded to a single one of them. She even tried calling Chloe despite phone calls not being a standard part of their friendship at this point, but she didn’t try again after it went immediately to voicemail. 
Kate’s never regretted not learning to drive so much before. It’s been sort of nice, actually, since Chloe’s got her truck and loves driving. Kate not wanting to ride the bus everywhere has been a good excuse for both of them to advance their friendship beyond “casual but amiable acquaintance” to “person I actively go out of my way to spend time with.” Today, however, not being able to drive has been a serious hindrance. It’s hard to search for someone when you’re reliant on small town bus routes and schedules. Once she started to really worry about Chloe’s silence and start looking for her, it took her nearly three hours to track her down at the beach.
She stops and stands next to where Chloe’s sitting in the sand. “Hey,” she says evenly, as if she hasn’t been clawing her hair out trying to find this woman half the day. 
“Hey,” Chloe answers without looking at her.
“...I got your texts.” Chloe doesn’t respond, so Kate continues, “I didn’t see them until I woke up; I’m sorry. I wasn’t ignoring you.”
Chloe nods thoughtfully, processing this. “My battery died. Didn’t want to go home to charge it.”
Kate can’t blame her for that. “Is it okay if I sit with you?”
Chloe turns to her then and looks at her with those clear blue eyes. It doesn’t seem fair that such beautiful eyes should have to hold such sadness. The light isn’t great, but Kate’s pretty sure she sees a smudge of a bruise beneath one, and that makes her stomach twist all the tighter. “Sure, whatever.” Chloe trains her eyes on the bay once more, but Kate can still feel them piercing her heart. 
Kate tucks her skirt around her legs carefully as she settles by Chloe’s side. The sand is damp and the warmth of the day is mostly gone from it. She looks at the woman beside her. She’s not wearing her beanie for once. She’s wearing short sleeves and her pale, too-thin arms are covered with goosebumps. Without even thinking, Kate removes her cardigan and drapes it over Chloe’s bare shoulders. Chloe glances at her in barely masked surprise. Kate thinks for a moment she’s going to object, but she just wraps her arms around herself and tugs the borrowed cardigan a little tighter around her shoulders.
Kate feels like she should say something, but Chloe breaks the heavy silence while she’s still trying to piece her words together. “Kinda late to come to the beach. Sun’s almost down. ‘Most everyone’s gone home.”
“I didn’t come for the beach. I came for you.”
Chloe’s brows lift then furrow. “Why.”
Because when she woke up to Chloe’s texts and saw how long ago she’d sent them, Kate had almost immediately gone into a panic spiral. Because Kate had texted and called and couldn’t reach her. Because Kate was terrified that Chloe was hurt and had nowhere to go and no one to talk to. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. You weren’t at the junkyard or the diner, so I thought you might be here or maybe the lighthouse.”
“Not a whole lot of places to go in this town,” Chloe says, and maybe it’s a trick of the non-light but Kate would swear that her expression softened when Kate told her she’d been looking for her. “I used to come here all the time,” Chloe continues. “My dad used to take me and my friend Max here every weekend in the summer. When we got old enough, we’d take the bus by ourselves and stay here all day. We practically lived in the bay.” She chuckles softly to herself. “She - Max - used to tease me I was going to turn into a mermaid because I spent more time in the water than on the land.”
Kate can picture that. Chloe’s got long arms and longer legs, built for swimming. Her hair wouldn’t have been blue when she was a child, Kate assumes, but Kate can imagine how it would look now: blue and purple locks flowing with the waves, fanning out around her head like a soft halo. The vivid reds and greens and blues of her tattoo extra bright against the pale of her skin, all shimmering under the water and glittering with reflected light. Long fingers cupping brackish water, lean body moving through the bay like she was born to do nothing else. “Punk rock mermaid,” Kate says a bit dreamily, already picturing how she would draw her. 
Chloe huffs a small laugh. “Nah, not when I was a kid. I was a pretty big dweeb if you can believe it. Super into science, major anime nerd, drew comics, all that stuff.”
Kate can believe it, actually, but she keeps that to herself. 
The smile that had been growing on Chloe’s lips fades away. “Rach loves swimming, too. After Max left - her family moved to Seattle; same day as my dad’s funeral, can you believe that shit? - I didn’t go swimming for a long time. Probably for the best; I would’ve just drowned myself.” She picks at the cuticles of her chewed up fingernails fretfully and Kate suppresses the powerful urge to pull her into a comforting embrace and stroke her hair like her father has always done for her when she’s upset. “But Rach is a Cali girl, so even though our bay’s nothing compared to the Pacific she just has to go swimming. Like, constantly. Day and night. The girl’s blood is half salt water, I swear.”
Kate’s got this anxious bubbling in her stomach that she doesn’t know how to quell. She knows of Rachel Amber, but she doesn’t know her. She went missing last April, three months before Kate moved into the dorms. Everything she knows about Rachel she knows from the unavoidable gossip in the dorms, the graffiti scattered around town - some of it doting, most of it unrepeatably vile, and Chloe. 
She actually met Chloe because of Rachel Amber, oddly enough. Or, more precisely, she met Chloe because Rachel Amber went missing. One day Chloe happened to be hanging up missing person posters around campus while Kate was putting up flyers for the abstinence club, and when Kate saw what Chloe was posting (when she saw Chloe’s eyes) she had offered to help her distribute them. They’d gotten to talking as they worked, and by the time the posters were all hung they’d exchanged numbers.
Kate owes this friendship (this crush) to Rachel. And Rachel’s been missing for five months now. No matter how many posters they hang, no matter how many prayers Kate sends up for this lost girl to be found, she’s been missing for almost half a year. Chloe still talks about her like she expects to see her coming around the corner any minute now sometimes. Kate doesn’t know whether encouraging Chloe’s hope does more good or more harm at this point. Women who go missing for this long, beautiful young women like Rachel Amber… Kate wants to have faith in Rachel’s safety, but her mother’s been telling her horror stories about what happens to girls like her since before Kate was even old enough to understand.
“So we go swimming together a lot. Not now, obviously. But… yeah. Total punk rock mermaids.” She scoffs lightly, but Kate can hear the sorrow in her laugh. “I… I haven’t gone swimming in months. Not since she…” Chloe sighs. She shakes her head and tries to sound annoyed rather than heartbroken. “Missed the whole fucking summer. Now it’s probably too cold to swim. She’s probably been off surfing in Cali all summer, and I’ve just been staring at the bay like she’s coming in on the next boat. How pathetic is that?”
“It’s not pathetic at all. You miss your friend.” Kate reaches out a tentative hand and is relieved 
when Chloe accepts her touch without so much as a flinch. 
“I miss the bay,” Chloe says suddenly. “I miss the way it felt to just run out into the waves and not give a fuck. I miss feeling weightless and small and like if I swam far enough I could step out into a pirate’s treasure cove, or on some forgotten island, and start a new life. I miss feeling free.”
Kate’s never been swimming in the bay. She spent her summer here ingratiating herself with the local parish, learning the bus schedule, breaking in her library card. She stands carefully, dusting the sticky sand off her skirt. 
Chloe looks at her askance. “Heading home?”
Kate shakes her head. She reaches out a hand to Chloe. “Join me for a swim?” Kate asks, and her voice hardly trembles even though she’s beyond nervous. 
Chloe stares at her like she’s sprouted a second head and then she laughs in disbelief. “Are you for real?”
“Very much so.”
“You got a bathing suit on under your clothes, Kit-Kat?”
“Do you?”
“No.” Chloe tries to leer, but it’s so uncertain it falls apart before it can look properly devious. “You askin’ me to go skinny dipping? I thought you were supposed to be a prude about that stuff.”
“I’m not a prude,” Kate protests, her face reddening. “But no, I’m not asking you to go skinny dipping. Or at least I’m not going skinny dipping; you can do as you please.” She slips off her shoes, and good Lord, this really is a terrible idea, isn’t it. She’s not dressed for swimming in the slightest. Her blouse is white, and her skirt is, well, a skirt, but it’s too late to back out now just because she’s had a sudden attack of logic since Chloe’s already taking her hand (and oh Lord Chloe’s hand is so cold and so strong and so perfect) and hauling herself up to her feet.
“Gonna be a weird ride back to campus,” Chloe says with a grin that’s building in its certainty. “Wet jeans are hell to drive in. You know my heater doesn’t work, right?”
“I’ve ridden in your truck before, haven’t I?”
“True that.” Chloe removes Kate’s cardigan and folds it with surprising politeness by her shoes before tugging off her boots and dropping them haphazardly into the sand. She empties her pockets onto the pile of clothes: a crumpled cigarette pack, some loose change, a parking ticket, a key, a lighter, her phone. Kate places her handbag beside them. “You ready to do this thing?”
Kate nods quickly before she can chicken out. “Are you?”
The smile that lights up Chloe’s face is the most radiant thing that Kate’s ever seen. “Hella ready.” Chloe reaches out her hand again, and Kate takes it. 
The water is cold, and swimming in a skirt is just as difficult as Kate feared. It’s completely worth it.
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angelruel · 4 years
Text
vintage pt.2
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      summary: the reader gets into an accident which causes her to lose her memory. as Ruel begins to rebuild their relationship and recall the good memories between them, some bad ones are restored as well and might threaten their future. 
masterlist
Word Count: 4.4 k (kind of long, oops)
       “Soooo what’s my favorite color?”
       “Easy. Blue,” he retorted while reaching over to fill in a space on the tic tac toe board that Y/N had drawn on her empty lap desk. He was the x’s and she played the o’s. It was a bit difficult for Ruel to pretend to not know all of her tricks she played in this game, but he was a very convincing loser. She had also taken the opportunity of his return to test him on some trivia of her personal likes and dislikes. 
       “Okay, here’s a good one,” she said as she filled the left hand corner on the board with a perfect circle. Ruel learned a long time ago that her strategy was to fill two corners and the center spot of the board in order to have an upper hand on winning. He watched her play the same way over again. Ruel admired her predictability and he almost felt confident enough that her tic tac toe skills returning would somehow correlate to her feelings for him to return as well.
       “Well finally a good one. Lay it on me.” He gave her his signature soft smile that he always grants her when he’s being his sweetest version of a boyfriend.
       “What’s my favorite song? Or, at least one of my favorite songs.”
       Ruel scrunches up his nose in thought, “hmmm. I’m gonna need a little more context, bub.”
       “Okay so maybe my favorite song I like to hear on a road trip. Something that gets me energized.” Ruel found it funny that she was reaching for more and more clues to jog her memory. They both knew that couldn’t she remember the last road trip she’d been on, or any of them for that matter. He was proud that she was at least in a more positive mood about not remembering things. 
       “Wait a Minute! by Willow Smith. There’s one.”
       Y/N’s happy expression dropped to a confused one. 
       “Huh? I don’t listen to Willow Smith.”
       They both just sat there for a while. There was still an apparent wall that Y/N had built up to secure herself from being hurt by Ruel since she barely knew him. 
       But the truth was that she barely knew herself.
       “Well, I guess I did listen to her music,” she dropped her head down. “I guess I just can’t remember it.” 
       Ruel used the sleeve of his sweater to wipe off the marker drawings on Y/N’s desk tray so that he could lean over it to hold her hands.
       “Hey, how about we do something else? I brought back some stuff like you asked me for.” She looked up and gave him a soft smile when he let go of her hands to grab a blue shoebox from the floor.
       “Oh, you brought gifts! Yay!” she exclaimed while clapping her dainty hands over and over. He sat the box in front of her lap on the hospital tray and she stared at it for a minute. One of the things she did remember was that blue was her favorite color. And after having a few conversations with Ruel, she discovered that his was brown. So, she assumed that the color of the box was a little nod to her. She thought that was really sweet.
       “You can go ahead,” he encouraged her. “If you have any questions, just ask.”
       She hesitated to lift the flimsy lid from the top. Partly because she was afraid that seeing the contents wouldn’t help jog her memories at all, and also because she was still pretty weak from the constant dosage of pain meds she’d grown accustomed to. 
       The first things to come out of the box were some polaroids and a bunch of little papers she grabbed that were grouped together. One of the polaroids showed a group photo in front of a campfire with little writing at the bottom that said ‘new years 2020.’ There were some post-it notes with little messages written on them in pencil. They were fading but Y/N could still make out what they said. It was a girl’s handwriting, and there was a little drawing of a pond? Or maybe a lake. 
i drew you a pond since you wanna act like a silly goose all the time. bitch.
               -y/n
       There was another one filled with words instead of a cute drawing, and she assumed this one was a serious matter.
hi, love. i left to go watch the sunrise with coco around 4 am-ish. you probably would’ve wanted to join us, but you look so peaceful when you’re sleeping. and coco said that you’ve been smothering me lately and encouraged me to sneak out. anyways, i’ll probably be back before you see this, but just in case i’m not, don’t call the cops. okay that’s all. in case i never return, i love you. 
                -y/n (under the heavy influence of stella)
       Ruel chimed in to explain. “Yeah, you used to leave me little notes like that sometimes instead of texting like a normal person.” 
       “And you kept them?”
       “Of course I did. I’m not a monster.” He joked and she playfully hit his chest with the stack of notes. Ruel scooted his chair closer to the side of Y/N’s bed and leaned in. “Lets see what else we got in here.”
       There were movie tickets, receipts from restaurants, and even old wristbands from festivals. 
       “Is this what you meant when you said I grow attached to material things?” She laughed on the outside but in reality, Y/N was so infatuated in the idea that a boy would keep a box of things that reminded him of her and their relationship. 
       “Ha yeah, I guess it kind of rubbed off on me after a while.” Ruel reached his hand into the box as well and pulled out a little beaded bracelet. It had a simple pattern of ocean blue and brown wooden beads. He played with it in between his fingers.
       “I remember this. Your cousin made it for us when you brought me to Thanksgiving. She kept running back and forth asking us what our favorite colors were. It was so cute. And she said we had to share it,” he reminisced. 
       He gave her the bracelet which she carefully placed on the wrist that wasn’t connected to an IV. There were mostly pictures in the box. Pictures of Y/N and Ruel in different settings: kissing, posing next to venue signs with his name on it, cooking, etc. She picked up one of the pictures and examined it carefully. 
       “I remember this,” she said in a nonchalant matter. Ruel looked up at her, then back at the picture in her hand.
       “You do?” 
       “Yeah, I remember that whole trip. That was a fun trip. Hmm.” She hummed to herself in bliss with a grin on her face. 
       “Tell me about it,” he grinned back at her. “What do you remember?” She looked down for a while. It was almost like the times they spent together were in secret, and too precious to share with anyone else. She felt a deep connection to someone-whoever it was to make her feel such strong emotions in just the echos of the times they spent together. Y/N began longing for the person who made her experience this type of fondness. The person she was looking for was right in front of her. Why was she holding back?
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       “Okay, how do I say this,” Y/N’s hand snaked up to her head to rake through her hair as she paced in deep thought. She took in a deep breath and turned around to look at him sitting in the hospital chair across the room.
       “I-I want this to be special. I mean, you’ve been so patient and considerate with me. You haven’t tried to rush me into anything at all. But I see the way you look when you think I’m not paying attention. You’re hurting, and I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long to finally give in. Well not, finally give in, but. You know, you know what I’m trying to say right?” She used every ounce of energy she had to walk across the room to face him. She picked him up and brought his face close to hers. 
       “I’m trying to tell you that I love you,” she whispered and smiled softly. Before she could say anything else, Y/N heard the doorknob rattle in desperation to open it. 
       She quickly threw the teddy bear back into the chair and tried to pretend that she was doing anything else. 
       Ruel leaned into the door frame and struggled to keep his balance as he carried a Taco Bell bag and two drinks in his hands. 
       “Oh, let me help you with that,” Y/N rushed over to him to grab the drinks and his eyes grew in shock.
       “Well, it’s nice to see you up and moving so much. The doctor was right, you really have been getting stronger every day.” Y/N smiled up at him with pride as they both settled the food onto her desk. “So, have you heard anything yet?” 
       “Anything about what,” Y/N mumbled in between taking bites of her soft taco. She knew exactly what he was referring to, though.
       “Oh, you know. Like when are you gonna get out of this place? I mean, with the way you’re up and walking now,” he brought his free hand up to rest on the back of her neck as he examined her face with concerned eyes. “It’s been, what, four weeks now? They said four to six weeks, but by the looks of it, you’re healing up really well. You’ve done so good lately.”
       She mouthed ‘thank you’ and gave him another wide smile. Y/N was happy that he was proud of her progress. He played a big part of her growth, though. Through the discomfort and the multiple procedures she had to undergo, Ruel was always there at the side of her bed to rely on. Whether she was up at 4 am crying because she couldn’t remember the names of her dogs or freaking out in excitement after being able to stand up on her own, he was there for it all.
       And as her strength developed each day, so did her trust and love for him. She assumed that it wasn’t the same as their previous relationship, but it was more than enough to keep them happy. He would always tell her that he loved her, but she didn’t say it back. He told her it was fine, that he knew she didn’t really know who he was and he wouldn’t hold it against her. But in return, he needed for her to accept that he still loved her as much as he did before the accident and to be okay with him loving her even if it meant that she couldn’t love him equally back for a while. 
       But after spending so much time with him, Ruel was hardly a stranger to Y/N anymore. He was a friend, a very understanding and attractive friend. She couldn’t ignore the burning sensation she felt deep in her stomach when he would cuddle up close to her on the bed during their movie nights. She couldn’t ignore the desire or the comfort she felt for him any time that he was around (which was very often because Ruel was always around). He told her that he would wait for her, that she should take her time to decide if she wanted to continue their relationship whenever she was ready. He told her that she’d just gone through a major trauma and that she needed to focus on getting better. He said he would wait for her, but a part of her feared that he was only saying this to make her feel better. She feared that he had already accepted that they were just friends, that maybe he’d already began a new romance with some skinny long-haired girl in Sydney and he was just waiting for Y/N to get her strength back so that he could go home to her. 
       “Okay, well I have to tell you something,” she finally came out with. Ruel sat up straight in his chair to give her his full attention. His eyes were fixated on her face and his hands rested in his lap. She found herself lost in thought trying to remember what she wanted to tell him but she couldn’t focus on anything but his beauty. 
       “Did they already tell you whether you’re going home or not?” he laughed a little as he went to grab his drink off of the desk. “Did I miss it when I went to get lunch?” He used the side of his jeans to wipe the water that got on his hand from the cup. His huge hand. The same huge hand that he then used to move the long strands of hair out of his face. He’d previously told her that she did not like the long hair look on him and always encouraged him to get haircuts and shave. In the moment, Y/N couldn’t figure out why the hell anyone would ever encourage him to change his appearance when he looked like that. The long hair and mustache gave him a much more mature look in comparison to the old pictures and videos she would look at of him. She couldn’t understand why anyone would want to cut the hair that she so desperately wanted to run her fingers through. She quickly snapped out of it and shut her eyes so she couldn’t look at the beautiful boy in front of her.
       “I really do have to tell you something,” she started and stopped because she was nervous. With her eyes still closed, she felt Ruel’s hand grab hers.
       “What’s going on, why are you acting so weird?” he let out a nervous laugh and Y/N realized that he was probably feeling the same anxiety as her in the moment. She knew that someone had to be the confident one in this scenario, and she decided that it would be her. She took one last deep breath and let go of it.
       “Do you remember what I told you when I first told you I loved you?”
       “Yes,” he laughed again, “Do you want me to tell you the story again?” She nodded quickly in a child-like manner and looked at him in adoration.
       “It was a little after a month of us dating and I’d just taken you home after we went out driving and just hanging out. I was almost back in the car when I saw you run out of the house, barefoot, yelling at me to wait.” Y/N laughed a little and felt the tension between the two of them begin to melt away. 
       “And then what did I do?”
       “You went into this whole speech about how you felt and how you were very scared to be vulnerable because you were afraid of being hurt. And then you said something that I’d never forget,” he looked up at the ceiling as if the answers were written on the tiles, “you told me that the fear you felt only grew as you fell more in love with me. You said you thought that it would never go away, but you didn’t want it to stop you from embracing the happiness you felt when you were with me. And then you told me you loved me, and that you were scared of me. You said that I made you wanna jump into the fear rather than run away from it. You said you knew that you loved me as soon as you felt scared. Because you knew you had found something worth cherishing. And if it ever went away, you didn’t think you’d survive it.” He looked down. After saying all of that, it still seemed like there was something he was missing. He looked as if he didn’t manage to not break her heart. He was scared too.
       “Ruel?” Y/N let her hands relax and gripped onto his tighter. 
       “Yeah?”
       “I’m scared.” She began to fiddle with his long digits and almost felt hesitation to do anything next.
       “What are you afraid of-” he began, but was interrupted by the connection of her lips onto his. He freed his hand and rose it up to the back of her neck so he could deepen the kiss. They kissed again, and again. They kissed until their faces were red and she broke away for a moment to catch her breath. She smiled at him and he looked back at her in disbelief. 
       “I love you. I really do, Ruel. And I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long but I don’t want to be just friends. I want you in my life like you used to be,” her eyes dropped to her lap and her expression changed, “before everything got so fucked up.”
       He grabbed her face again and began to pepper it with kisses. At this point, Ruel was halfway onto her bed. She brought up her dainty hands to cup his face and she gently pulled away again. Ruel hitched a rushed breath out as he pouted in confusion as to why she pulled away. 
       “Oh yeah, I’m going home today.” She smiled with her teeth and he laughed in pure bliss before grabbing her face again.
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       The boxes piled in the middle of the living room all started to disappear one by one. Y/N watched in awe as Ruel picked up every box and placed it in its proper area. Her legs swung back and forth in boredom while she waited on top of the kitchen counter where Ruel had placed her since she refused to wear shoes on the trip to her apartment.
       “You’re such a good slave,” she told him in a sweet tone as her eyes followed him across the area. He shook his head, barely giving her an ounce of the attention she practically begged for, and continued moving things around. 
        “Honey are you sure you’re gonna be okay on your own like this? You can stay back home a little longer if you’d like,” Y/N’s mother remarked. She looked at her daughter with concern.
        “I’m not alone, I have Ruel. And besides, I’ve already left the nest once before. I should be fine.”
        “Well I guess I’ll be on my way home now. Call me if you need anything. Anything.” Y/N pecked a kiss on her cheek and guided her mom outside.
        By the time she got back into the apartment, the living room was clear of boxes and she moved down the hall in search of her boyfriend. She found Ruel in her bedroom on the edge of the bed hunched over his phone. 
        “What’s so interesting?” She sat down beside him and rested her chin on his shoulder. Once she realized what he was watching, she pulled out one of his airpods so she could listen in. It was from her Youtube channel she started a few months ago. She had faint memories of vlogging herself doing normal things like grocery shopping or going to her brother’s football games. She’d only looked at a few of her storytime videos, including the one where she details how she met Ruel. This was a video she hadn’t seen before, though. It was of her and Ruel together in some resort. It looked like they were on vacation and he explained to her that they were in Amsterdam for some music festival and had decided to make an entire trip out of it since it was so close to their anniversary. They’d coordinated matching outfits for the first weekend and were posing in front of the bathroom mirror together like lovesick idiots.
        “Damn, I’m so jealous of us.”
        Ruel let out a low chuckle at her and skipped through the parts she’d recorded of his performance.
        “Yeah, most people are.” He fast forwarded to a portion of the video after they returned to the hotel. Ruel was in the shower and Y/N was laying on the bed, recently showered, detailing all of the ways she was proud of her boyfriend. He laughed when she poked fun of how he forgot his own lyrics on stage.
        “Well that was almost cute,” he added and locked the phone.
        “Hey, it’s still pretty cute,” she laughed, “You can’t be mad at me for telling the truth, babe.”
        “Babe, huh?” he questioned as he turned to face her.
        “What, is that weird? Or too soon? I mean, you call me ‘bubs’ and ‘love’ all the time,” she looked down and played with the details of her jeans.
        “It’s adorable. I love it. And I love you,” he reassured her as he cupped her face and pulled it in for a puffy kiss. She kissed him back, this time with more dominance. Y/N kissed Ruel like there was a pot of gold hidden somewhere in his mouth that she was determined to get.
        Ruel matched her energy right away. He kissed her back and gripped the back of her neck to guide her face closer into his. They adorned each other with open mouths and full hearts. As they continued, Y/N felt the urge to go further and further with him, exploring his body and getting to know him on a more intimate level. They were so good at making out, it seemed like they’d done it a thousand times before. It felt like she was kissing a lover from a different lifetime, like she’d replayed scenarios over and over which all ended with her loving him. She couldn’t remember ever doing this with him before, but her body remembered. Everything with Ruel came with such ease. Every time he touched her body, she was overcome with euphoria and only craved more. She craved being closer to him, kissing him deeper.
        “Mmm, take this off please,” she tugged on his shirt and he quickly pulled it off before resuming his actions. Y/N felt herself falling into an intoxicated state as she moaned against his mouth. He responded to her by wrapping his hand around her thigh and pulling it closer against him. They both began to move in sync with each other, both giving and taking as their bodies danced a routine they knew too well. Y/N was so distracted by Ruel that she didn’t even hear her mother walk back in through the front door. She only whined when he pulled his face away from hers.
        “Why’dyoustop,” she breathed out. She was out of breath and watched him with puppy dog eyes as he stood up.
        “Your mom is back,” he stated flatly. He was clearly out of breath too and he was trying to calm himself down so he could see what was going on in the front.
       “...so?” she gave him a blank stare and patted on his side of the bed to join her again, “she can let herself out.”
       “Don’t worry, bubs. We’ve got time,” he chuckled to himself and pulled his shirt back on over his head. Y/N sighed and jumped from her side of the bed to join Ruel in the living room.
       “I’m sorry, hun. I forgot the most important box: your things from the hospital.” Y/N’s mother placed a small box on the counter and tapped the top of it lightly, “This is what you had on you when the crash happened. There’s not much in there, just the clothes you were wearing, your wallet, your phone,”
       “My phone?” Her eyes perked up. So did Ruel’s. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. I bet there’s a bunch of clues in there to help jog my memory,” she picked up the box and skipped down the hallway to drop it off. 
       “I’m pretty sure it’s dead, so you’ll have to find a charger for it. You probably have the same kind.” Her mom gestured towards Ruel, who looked like he’d just seen a ghost. His eyes were fixated in thought, emotionless and dazed in a trance.
        “Huh? Oh yeah, probably. Sure.” He snapped out of his guilty state quickly and turned to see Y/N coming back from her bedroom.       
        “Was that it, Mom? Cause we were just about to go out and get some food before it gets dark.” They both said goodbye and hugged Y/N’s mother. Once the door was shut behind her, Y/N grabbed Ruel’s hand with a quickness. His worries were suddenly gone as she led him down the hall. 
        It wasn’t long before they’d continued right where they left off. Y/N was still indulging herself in him and embracing the comfort she felt in his arms. She gripped the fabric of his shirt into her fists to deepen the kiss and felt the vibration from his mouth into hers as he let out muffled moans. With each kiss, she found herself thinking about all of the things she couldn’t wait to do with him before another thought popped into her mind and snapped her out of the daydream. She pulled away from him and turned her head towards the box.
        “I’ve been wondering what was left on my phone,” she gestured to the dresser. “I need to plug it up so I can see what was going on before I lost my memory. It would be cool to see who I last talked to right before my life was ruined, right?” She laughed and began to sit up. Ruel grabbed her hand and lightly pulled it so she could come back down to him.
        “I thought you wanted to do this, yeah? I mean hey, this is our first official night together alone. We can look into the phone later, right?”
        Y/N nodded and laid back down next to him. “Hmmm, you’re right. This first, phone later,” she declared before connecting their lips once more. As Ruel rolled his lanky body on top of hers, Y/N couldn’t help but wonder why Ruel was so against her looking at her phone. Was there a dirty secret in there that he didn’t want her to find? She dismissed her paranoid thoughts and continued.
a/n: okay, so that’s that on that. ugh what is on that phone that he doesn’t want her to see???? i hope this makes sense, i’ve reread it so many times and it seems like crap but i’m still going to post it. thank you for the support of my page, and please send me asks with what fics you would like to see next ;)
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transsergio · 3 years
Text
Emotions That I Simply Do Not Have (Read on AO3)
Chapter 2 - I'm Not Gonna Repeat Myself Chapter 1 - More Like A Relapse
Penemily + Hotchreid / Mature / 1747 words in this chapter
As Emily and Penelope grow closer, Hotch becomes more desperate.
Three months. It’s been three months of Penelope in Emily’s apartment, Emily in Penelope’s, of spending every second that they can together. Emily is having a hard time calling Penelope everything but baby in the middle of an investigation, and Penelope’s flirting has grown stiff.
“Why could you say all that stuff before but not now?” Emily asks one night, two glasses of sparkling cider on the coffee table before them. They’re sitting at opposite ends of the couch with their legs entangled.
Penelope rolls her eyes. “I mean, I could, but it feels weird! Like, I flirt with Derek, but that’s just banter between two very, very sexy friends. It’d be like…saying you’re the same.”
“The same as Derek? I hope so. He sees a lot of action,” Emily teases. Penelope kicks her lightly, with love.
“You think you’re so cute, huh? No, not like that. You’re special, and I don’t want to cheapen what we have.”
And Emily crawled her way up Penelope to kiss her.
Still, the team was perceptive. They were picking up on the energy shift between them and pretending not to notice. Emily figured a talk was coming sooner or later, probably led by Rossi. The only one who seemed oblivious was Hotch.
That may have had to do with the texts he continued to send. They were cracked windows into his life post-Haley, and Emily hadn’t responded to most of them. She had no idea what to say, or how to reject a widow, if she was even allowed? And they kept coming in. “Seeing a movie with Jack. Phone will be off,” and “Good morning,” when they were already at their separate desks, and “Our hands touched when you passed files yesterday. Intentional?” and “Do you like champagne?” They buzzed over and over, like a form of slow torture.
The last one, “Do you like champagne?” comes on one of Penelope’s nights at Emily’s. They’re lounging in her bed, Emily flicking through a magazine and Penelope stationed over an old lap desk as she paints her nails. Emily opens the message, sets it down, and tries not to think about it. She glances at Penelope.
“Pink and green?” Emily asks.
“Yeah. I’m embracing spring themes.” Penelope waves her careful manicure. White daisies are studded with a rhinestone overtop each finger. She wiggles them under Emily’s nose. “Blow.”
“Excuse me?” Emily laughs.
“Blow,” Penelope repeats, raising her eyebrows and looking between her girlfriend and her nails. “They’re not dry yet.”
Emily sighs and lowers her magazine. “Anything for you, princess.” She delights in Penelope’s big, perfect smile, and blows a steady stream of air over her work.
“Is that enough?” Emily tugs at Penelope’s wrist so she can kiss the back of her hand. “Penelope?”
Penelope’s gaze is far adrift, and she startles back to the present. “Sorry, I just… I was thinking.”
“About what?”
“I love you.” Penelope declares it with a certainty, a finality, like she’s made her choice.
When Emily freezes in place, Penelope’s hand still in hers, Penelope tacks on, “I know it’s soon. You don’t have to say it. But I know I love you, and back then you said we don’t know how long we have, so I figured I should say it sooner, not later. Are you okay? Em?”
“Uh, yeah,” Emily nods. She lets Penelope go. “Sorry, I have something in my eye.”
Penelope looks at her. She knows better. “Are you crying, Em?”
“Maybe. Shut up.”
They burst into a fit of giggles, and Emily clamors for Penelope. “I love you too,” she says, and takes Penelope’s face in her hands. She memorizes every detail, every crease, every bit of Penelope as she holds her whole world. “I love you so much.”
Before they can take another breath, someone pounds on Emily’s door. Emily wipes her face clean and adjusts her sweatshirt. “I’ll get it. Be- be right back. Stay.”
Penelope smiles through her watering eyes. “Aye aye, captain.”
And Emily swears up and down that this better be good and not some kid on her floor playing ding-dong ditch, or she’ll have to call the building manager and tell them all about how her girlfriend loves her, she actually loves her when Emily loves her too, and these kids interrupted –
“Hotch?”
Fuck. Emily should’ve looked through the peephole. But Penelope loves her, so she forgot.
“Prentiss. May I come in?” he asks. He doesn’t allow her to answer and barrels inside. Okay, so this is worse. If he sees Penelope, it’s over. They’ll have to tell Strauss, and internal affairs, and they could both lose their jobs. Emily herds him into the living room and puts the bedroom out of sight.
“What’s going on?” Emily asks. She crosses her arms over her chest and stands rigid.
Hotch is holding a bottle of wine. He’s wearing sweatpants and a college t-shirt, and he looks hazy. “I know you’ve gotten my texts. Your phone works, I’ve seen it. You answer calls from Garcia, Morgan, Reid – why not me?”
Emily frowns. “I answer you.”
“Do you? Because I asked you a question tonight and still haven’t received a response.”
Emily clarifies, “I answer you when we’re working. I told you. What happened, happened, and I don’t want to do it again.”
Hotch wavers, not in his position, but to the point that he lands on Emily’s couch. His cheeks are bright red. “That’s what was said. But what about the signals you’ve been sending?”
Emily scoffs. “Signals, really? What signals?”
Hotch clinks the bottle onto Emily’s table. He passes over the room’s low lighting, seeming to take in that Emily only has a few lamps and her vanilla candles lit. He makes Emily wait for his answer. “You – you’ve protected me. And you realized I was gone when Foyet came. You care about me, Emily, and you proved it the night we had sex.”
“I was drunk and in a low place. That’s all it was.”
“I don’t believe you,” Hotch says, quiet. His head is bowed, and his elbows rest on his knees as he hunches over. “Haley and I never felt like that.”
“Maybe because you’ve only slept with one person since high school? And, honestly Hotch, you’re not my type. I think you experienced something new and made it more than it was.”
He looks up at her through the dark flop of his hair. “If you honestly have no feelings for me, tell me and I’ll be g—”
“I have no feelings for you.”
Hotch sighs. “You’re not going to let me finish that sentence, are you?”
Emily shakes her head. “I already know the answer.”
He leaves the wine as he stands, and hesitates in the threshold. “You’re good at your job, Prentiss. This won’t impact your position.”
“I didn’t think it would.” Emily purses her lips.
Hotch gives her a curt nod, and the door shuts silently behind him. Which would’ve been the end of it if Emily didn’t have thin walls and good hearing. The sound of someone slumping down the hall, curling into a fetal position, and trying to stifle his weeping permeates her apartment. It tugs Emily towards the doorknob, to comforting her co-worker who she admired before they shared pathetic sex.
Penelope comes to her side, still gingerly avoiding the use of her fingernails. “You and Hotch?”
Emily turns to Penelope, wide-eyed. “I, yeah, once. I was blackout drunk. I don’t remember it, I swear.”
“No, I heard. It’s okay. We hadn’t done anything yet anyway, right?”
“Not…particularly?”
“Oh no, no, no. Elaborate. Now.” Penelope insists. Emily keeps herself moving about the kitchen, making tea while she explains. She tells the whole story, including the way Penelope has always made her feel, how she hated Kevin but he seemed to make her happy, the crush she harbored for years, and the realization that Penelope was never going to return the sentiment. That Penelope didn’t have what she felt. That Penelope went to bed early that night with her boyfriend by her side, who got to make her breakfast and see her with her bedhead and know what she was like before she entered the building and binge reality shows with her late at night when she’d already left the team where they were. And Emily, evidently, lost it.
“Hotch offered me a ride back. He was tipsy, of course, so he called a cab for us. I woke up naked and he was making breakfast.” Emily says. She sips at her mug, though the drink’s gone cold by now.
Penelope waits. “And?”
“And,” Emily tenses, “I was disgusted. It was one of the worst mistakes of my life. I thought about it, and I realized I was trying to punish myself for something. For being too much of a coward to ask you out in the first place, I guess. I had plenty of time before Kevin got there. I could have tried, but I didn’t. That’s when…”
“When you came into my cave,” Penelope finishes. She traces one of the rings stained into Emily’s kitchen table. Emily wants to let her process, to think, but the terror overrides her patience.
“Are you mad?” she asks.
Penelope’s eyes are loving, but wilted. “No,” she says. “I’m sad that I made you feel like that. Before you say it’s not my fault, I get it, but still. Because I liked you too, and I liked being your friend, and I didn’t want to jeopardize us on the slight chance that you were straight as an arrow. Which you should really work on if you want our private life to stay private. You’re like, the gayest agent I’ve ever met.”
Emily snorts. “Thanks, I’ll try.”
Penelope draws Emily’s hands into hers. It’s been long enough that her fingers aren’t even tacky anymore. “I think you might’ve been punishing yourself for something else, too. Maybe you were mad about why you couldn’t have me?”
“…Yeah. Yeah, there’s that.” Emily drags her chair closer to Penelope’s. She leans her cheek against Penelope’s shoulder, and allows Penelope to lay an arm around her back. Emily says, “I would’ve had hurt, angry sex with someone regardless, but the Catholic guilt didn’t help.”
Penelope rests her chin on the top of Emily’s head. Their breathing becomes inseparable. “You know I still love you.”
“I know.” Emily worms her way closer, practically into Penelope’s lap. She doesn’t hear crying anymore.
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mcrmadness · 3 years
Text
A Masterpost: ALL MY OLD die ärzte (aka Bela&Farin) COMICS (from 2010-2011)
I’ve lately been talking about my art, especially comics, here a lot but I have never posted my OLD old dä comics here! That’s about to change now. The old ones happened in 2010-2011 when I was 19-20 years old, so they are a bit cringy now :D The scans are my old ones so don’t mind about cat hair or something like that in some of the scans. And I know: my hand writing hasn’t really changed in the past 10-15 years at all :DD
And a slash warning (do I really need that with this fandom tho..?) because I used to draw just very fluffy Bela/Farin comics and they barely have any good plots even. There’s just 4 overall in this post and they all are quite short. But at least for me it’s fun to see how far I have come and how I’ve gotten better at drawing!
Anyway, without further ado, this is where it all started:
Bela&Farin - “Du willst mich küssen”
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Simply the idea came from the fact I noticed that on the “Du willst mich küssen” single there’s only one additional song: “Die Antwort bist du”, and that one out of all the potential other songs from the studio album. (Now I’m wondering if I should try to redraw this some day to see my progress? :DD)
The rest under the cut because they get very cringy but if you want to read B/F fluff comics and facepalm at my idiotic humour, go ahead and click the read more link.
Bela&Farin - Bela will ein Baby
(eng. Bela wants to have a baby)
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This one was the first I did in German and I traumatized myself. I had just started learning German and totally failed everything and an (old) online friend, native German, wrote something that indicated laughing and I felt so insecure about my German after that that even today I have a fear of saying/writing even simple German words in front of native Germans. She anyway “beta read” the plot and corrected every faulty phrase (aka every phrase) and this is what she suggested that I’d write, and that’s what I did.
The plot shortly: Bela just wants to have a baby but he wants it with Farin obviously, so Farin says they’re both men and can’t reproduce together but Bela found a solution: he found them a surrogate mother. Problem solved.
***
Bela&Farin - “Beer Belly”
Prepare yourself for a cringe overload :)) I’m so sorry that you have to suffer through this.
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With this the idea came from the live videos I was watching back then - lots of live videos from 2007-2009 and I noticed that Bela just kept growing and losing his belly all the time. (OMG HELP I’m crying because “SQUEAK SQUEAK” XDDDDDD)
Also the ending is... I don’t know what is it. I guess I just wanted Rod ot make an appearance and didn’t come up anything better than this ::D My peak of humour is right there btw: anything that happens at the background. That shit just never gets old for me. So I find that still funny in this comic but I have no clue how a bass can be pregnant.
Also hey, I have started drawing shadows :DD
And yes, Bela actually did have a cow t-shirt like that in some of the videos and I just had to draw it! And btw, the reason for the fluff is probably because the concerts where those videos were from? It was extremely slashy, Bela and Farin barely could keep their hands off of each other so you really can’t blame me for all this. The ship just sails itself.
***
Bela&Farin - “Zucker”
(eng. “Sugar” - this one was again in German because it wouldn’t work in English. This time I think I did all the language stuff myself but I can’t remember for sure so maybe I got help, maybe I didn’t... This is the last one of these old comics and my personal favorite. You can see that my style somehow went through some major changes but I don’t know what even happened there. I can’t remember.)
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I can’t get over Farin’s hair in the last panel, I drew it so perfectly and I still don’t know how to recreate that lol. And now I’m losing it at that tiny “XD” in the grin panel because I found it so stupid looking - the first time I had even drawn a grin for him lmao. Also ignore Farin’s arm that has suddenly lost all its color. (Aka: someone forgot to color it.)
THE IDEA for this comic is simply in the name of brown sugar. At least in Finnish that is called as “fariinisokeri”, which always amuses me still after 12 years because I am a bit simple sometimes, and I figured that it can also be called “Farinzucker” in German so of course I needed to make a Bela/Farin comic about it.
The dialog for those who don’t speak German (too well) yet - Bela just goes to Farin to ask for “Farin sugar” and Farin first is like “nope” but then “jk” and they lived happily ever after. Or something.
***
BONUS:
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Something I drew with a ballpoint pen once when I was visiting my aunt and cousin and was bored and doodled this. I like drawing repeated patterns like brick walls or apparently also flowers.
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And I have no idea where did I draw this - maybe it was something to do with one course through the employment agency as I tend to doodle when in any kind of class. I feel like I had been watching “Die band, die sie Pferd nannten” prior to this, based on Bela’s looks.
And it was back in 2010, I didn’t have a smart phone yet so no internet to use for reference photos :D
***
So, back to the comics - I only made these 4 back then but before this I did draw other stuff and comics too. I drew several of them as horses when I still didn’t know how to draw humans, and I also have one of them as rats too. The rat one might work as a redrawn human comic, tho... Anyway, at some point I got annoyed because I didn’t like drawing them as horses or rats and wanted to invent a “human style” so then one night, this happened:
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The texts are mainly just me chanting how I’m dying from laughter etc. That is actually what I do when I am very insecure of what I do and then I just start openly laughing at everything and myself, that way things don’t feel as bad failures than what they actually are :D (And yeah I know the article is wrong at some point, let’s just say I hadn’t memorized all the article stuff from German yet :D I don’t know if I had even started learning German yet at that point.)
But yeah, then I did find the style and these are the next sketches from my sketchbook:
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The bottom left says “facial experessions” - and oh my god I was so damn cringe whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy---
but anyway, those were what I ended up with eventually and the rest is history. I think I’m still gonna make one post with stuff I drew in 2018 and that I haven’t posted here yet as there’s still a few of those, too.
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Note
How are your creative juices going now? Inspired again? I love whenever you post so just mentally preparing myself for withdraw ahah /// No but seriously I do love your fics. I think you should write one where Jo suspects she is pregnant again soon after having their first child and has to tell Alex
Hi! So I really wasn’t going to write anything. I was just going to thank you for your kinds words and attempt to write one of my ongoing stories but for some reason this prompt really got me inspired. So... I have have written a little something for you!
Can’t Say I’m Surprised
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“We have a problem!”
“What?” Meredith furrowed her brows as a frantic Jo dragged her into a supply closet. “What is going on?”
“I messed up, Mer. I messed up big time and I don’t even know how I’m gonna begin to tell Alex,” Jo paced back and forth between the racks full of bedpans, blankets, and betadine.
“Jo, I need you to slow down if I’m going to help you,” Meredith grabbed Jo by the shoulders, forcing her to stop pacing.
Jo let out a belabored sigh and looked down at the floor, “I messed up, Meredith. I knew I shouldn’t but I wanted it so bad, I wanted him so bad that I didn’t even stop to think of the consequences. The alcohol in my system didn’t help either.”
Meredith’s eyes widened, “Hold on. Jo, are you saying what I think you’re saying? Did you cheat on Alex?”
“What? No!” Jo exclaimed, a mildly offended expression on her face. “I would never cheat on Alex. Why would you even ask me that?”
“I’m sorry, but you have to understand what it sounded like from my end. You pulled me in here and started walking like a chicken with your head cut off talking about how you wanted someone so badly and didn’t think of the consequences,” Meredith replied.
“Yeah I see where you could’ve gotten the wrong idea from that,” Jo winced. “I didn’t have sex with another man. The problem is that I had drunk sex with my husband.”
“I’m not following here. Why is that a problem?” a confused expression crossed Meredith’s face. “He’s your husband, have all the sex you want.”
“No, Meredith you don’t get it,” Jo shook her head.
“Obviously not.”
“I haven’t been on any birth control since I had Max. I had an IUD that I got removed when we started trying. I never got it replaced. We started using condoms again, which we stopped using three months into our relationship, so we’re aren’t exactly good at using them. And a few weeks ago, I had drunk sex with my husband. I wanted him so badly that I completely forgot,” Jo explained nervously.
Meredith gasped, “Oh my God. Are you pregnant?”
“Maybe? I don’t know,” Jo leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. “I have all the same symptoms I had with Max. I’ve been nauseous, I have weird food aversions and cravings, and I’ve been getting dizzy.”
“You haven’t take a test yet?” Meredith looked at Jo who shook her head. “Well then, we’ll draw your blood right now and have the results within the hour.”
Meredith took Jo by the arm and led her out of the supply closet into and empty exam room, “Okay. I will be right back. I’m going to get the stuff to draw your blood.”
A couple minutes later everything was done. Jo was putting pressure on the needle stick as she pulled it out and laid a bandaid on it. She let out a breath, “Mer, what am I going to do? What if I’m pregnant again? It’s too soon. Max is only four months old. How do I tell my husband that we’re having another baby months after I gave birth to the first one? We’re just starting to get used to a routine.”
“First of all, you need to calm down. Let’s not worry about anything until we have answers,” Meredith attempted ease Jo’s worries. “And secondly, a baby is a good thing. You and Alex both want lots of kids, you know that. Yeah, it might be earlier than you expected, but he won’t be mad. So don’t be scared about that. He’ll be ecstatic.”
“Yeah. You’re right. He’s been trying to knock me up for years. Ever since my fourth year of residency. He’ll be happy,” Jo tried convincing herself that it would all be okay.
“Come on, let’s go. We’re going to be late for rounds. The results should be in my the time we’re done and I’ll be with you when you find out,” Meredith rubbed a comforting hand on Jo’s shoulders as they walked out into the hallway.
*****
Jo had just finished rounding on her last patient when she quite literally bumped into Alex. Alex held out his hands to steady her, “Woah, careful princess. Be glad you ran into me and not a patient.”
“Sorry,” Jo offered. “I’m just... in a rush. You haven’t seen Meredith have you?”
“Nope,” Alex shook his head. He narrowed his eyes and looked at Jo for a moment. “Are you okay? You seem... distracted. Is everything alright?”
“Yeah. Everything’s fine,” Jo forced a smile on her face. “I do really need to find Meredith, though, so I’m gonna go...”
“Uh huh,” Alex nodded as his wife ran away awkwardly.
Jo ran off to the supply closet where she and Meredith first met that morning in hopes of finding her there. She waited for a couple minutes before Meredith ran through the doors with an envelope, “I’ve got the results back from the lab. Do you want to do it or should I?”
“You do it,” Jo released a nervous breath. “I don’t think I’ll be able to open it.”
“Okay,” Meredith gave Jo a short nod and proceeded to open the envelope. She unfolded the paper and ran her eyes over the lab work with a blank expression on her face. Finally, Meredith looked up. “Well, Jo. You are most definitely pregnant.”
“Holy shit,” were the first words to leave Jo’s lips. She clasped her hands over her mouth, gasping at what she’d said. “I mean... actually, yes I mean holy shit. I’m pregnant?”
“Yup,” Meredith smiled sympathetically. “Probably somewhere around the 4-5 weeks range from your levels.”
“Freaking Karev and his weirdly fertile sperm,” Jo grumbled. “This is the second time he’s knocked me up on the first try. Except this time, we weren’t even actually trying.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Meredith laughed. “He’s been talking about all the kids you guys will have since you got married. He’s very eager.”
“Well, if he keeps doing what he’s doing, at this rate we’ll end up with like six kids,” Jo rubbed a hand on her forehead. “I need to lay down. But I have surgery in 30 minutes.”
“How about you go take a nap in an on-call room and I’ll take your first surgery. I don’t have anything scheduled until 2pm anyway and was going to see if I could scrub in with you,” Meredith suggested.
“Thanks,” Jo nodded and made her way to an on-call room. She’d been sleeping for what must’ve been an hour when she heard the door creek open.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize there was anyone in here,” the person apologized. “Hold on... Jo is that you?”
Jo turned and came face to face with her husband. In his arms was their four month old son, “What the hell? Do you do this? Take him out of daycare during your free time to hang out in the on-call rooms?”
Alex looked like a kid who’d just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, “Yeah... usually I walk around the peds wing with him strapped to my chest, but there’s a clown going around and he doesn’t deserve to be traumatized from such a young age.”
Jo busted out in laughter, “That might just be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said. You are the best dad.”
“Thanks,” Alex said, a shy smile creeping onto his face. He never planned on telling Jo about his routine of taking Max out of daycare, but honestly, it felt good knowing that she thought what he did made him a better dad. “What are you doing here? I thought you had a surgery this morning?”
“Oh... um, Meredith took it. I was feeling tired so she offered to take my surgery so I could lay down,” Jo explained.
“Are you sick?” Alex sat down next to Jo and placed a hand on her forehead.
“No. I just... didn’t sleep well last night,” Jo admitted.
“Yeah I noticed,” Alex nodded. “You were really restless all night long. You only get like that when you’re stressed. What’s bothering you?”
As much as Jo loved how attentive her husband was, this was one of those moments where she wished that he’d just turn a blind eye. Taking in the quiet of the on-call room and the calming sensation of holding her baby in her arms, Jo figured that there were worse places to disclose this information. She took a deep breath, “I’m pregnant.”
Alex raised his eyebrows and grinned, “I was wondering how long it would take you to figure it out.”
“Wait... what?” Jo scrunched her face in confusion. “You knew?”
“Of course I knew,” Alex scoffed. “I figured it out a week ago. I was trying to see how long it would take you to realize.”
Jo’s jaw dropped in disbelief, “You thought something was up and you didn’t tell me!”
“I didn’t want to freak you out,” Alex confessed. “Max is only four months old and we weren’t planning on having another until he was at least two years old. So when you started having symptoms, I kept my mouth shut because I felt bad for knocking you up again so soon.”
“I was scared to tell you because I was afraid you’d freak out that I got pregnant not even six months after having the first one,” Jo laughed. “Oh my God. We’re having another baby.”
“We’re having another baby,” Alex smiled widely and took Max into his hands. “You hear that Max? You’re gonna be a big brother pretty soon.”
“He has no idea what’s coming for him,” Jo chuckled. She reached out to stroke Max’s hair and then leaned her head on Alex’s shoulder. “I love you. I know this wasn’t supposed to happen so soon, but I’m happy about it because I know that we can do this. We can do it together.”
“Hell yeah we can,” Alex kissed Jo’s forehead lightly. “And for the record, I love you more.”
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cali-holland · 4 years
Text
Heartbreak Weather, Part Four- T.H.
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Pairing: Tom Holland X Horan!Reader
Prompt: It’s been a month, and you still don’t know what happened in San Francisco, but you know that you’re still in love with Tom. 
Word Count: 2700
Featured Songs (All by Niall Horan): Still  -   Arms of a Stranger  -  Cross Your Mind
Previous Parts: Teaser   One   Two   Three
Masterlist   Tom Holland Masterlist
*Gif is not mine*
A/N: Strongly suggest listening to Still while reading this!
~~~
November 2019
It had been one month. And it was the worst month of your life.
You had tried nearly everything to move on from Tom, to have a new life. But no matter what, heartbreak weather was your forecast for the rest of your life.
You were back in London after spending two weeks with your parents in Mullingar. You had tried to go on dates with a couple different guys that you had recently met; they were great guys, but they weren’t Tom. You couldn’t bring yourself to attempt a second date with either one. It felt too wrong to be in the arms of a stranger.
Maybe it didn’t help that you still had Tom’s things in your apartment. He had a key, and you knew he could get in if he really wanted to, if he really wanted to get his things back. His toothbrush still stood beside yours on your bathroom counter; his razor was still sitting beside the sink; his clothes were still in your drawers; his large wool blanket was still on your couch; his stained apron still rested in your kitchen; his presence was in every room of your apartment. You couldn’t get away from him, and you weren’t exactly sure that you wanted to.
It was just another sad, lonely night for you. The rain poured down outside as you laid on your couch, watching a random Netflix tv show. You weren’t particularly interested in what was playing; your mind was too caught up on Tom. You suspected your problem may have been the fact that you were using his blanket to keep yourself warm, but you didn’t really want to find a new one. It was the first thing of his that he left at your place; it was just too comforting for you, both physically and mentally.
You and Tom had been dating for nearly three months when he first brought that grey, wool blanket over. You had a rough day at school, so when you called your boyfriend to vent about it, he showed up at your doorstep an hour later with the blanket in one hand and a grocery bag of sweets and popcorn in the other.
“I was thinking a movie night might cheer you up?” He smiled as he came inside, pressing a kiss against your forehead.
“Please.” You said.
“You pick the movie, I’ll make the popcorn.” Tom made his way into your apartment, setting the blanket down on the couch. He then went to your kitchen and began to make the popcorn in the microwave. 
“Can I pick a chick flick?” You asked, already eyeing ‘A Walk to Remember’.
“Anything you want, darling.” He replied. You set up the movie and Tom came back to the couch with a large bowl of popcorn. He placed the blanket over your laps and wrapped an arm around you.
As you sat there, leaning into his embrace, you began to feel a reassurance of your feelings for him- that was the moment you knew you were in love with him. He didn’t have to buy you candy and popcorn; he didn’t have to come over to see you today; he didn’t have to sit through one of the best, saddest romance movies out there; but he did.
“Tom,” You spoke up softly, drawing his attention away from the movie.
“Yes, darling?” He asked, a small smile on his lips as he looked down at you. Your heart fluttered at the sound of his nickname.
“I love you.” You confessed those three little words that had been resting on your tongue since you two first got together.
“I love you, too.” Tom leaned down to give you a sweet kiss.
“Are you just saying that because I said it first? I didn’t want to rush you-” You started to ramble, concerned about the timing of it all. After all, you two haven’t even celebrated your three month anniversary yet.
“I’ve wanted to tell you that for months now.” He said. He paused as he took a moment to register your worries, “I promise that I love you and you didn’t rush me into saying it. I promise to love you for the rest of my life.”
“I promise to love you for the rest of my life, too.” You replied, placing a hand on his cheek and kissing him again.
Ever since that day, Tom stayed at your place more and more often. He continued to leave different things, here and there. Half the time you assumed it was just an excuse for him to keep coming back. One thing’s for sure, though, you love that blanket and you love him.
Trying to distract yourself from your own memories of Tom, you pulled up your phone and began to mindlessly scroll through Instagram. It had been a couple days since you had checked your social media, and you paused as you saw that Tom had posted a video to his account. It was just a clip of him with Harrison’s guitar, playing a song. You didn’t need to turn on your volume to know which song he was playing, but you did anyway because if there was one thing you needed, it was to hear Tom play ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’.
Actually, there were two things you needed: to listen to Tom’s playing and to actually have Tom.
Before you had time to really think about your actions, you stood from your blanket cocoon and rushed to put on decent clothes for the weather outside. With your coat, rain boots, and purse, you hurried out of your apartment and began to drive over to Tom’s place.
“What am I doing?” You mumbled to yourself as you turned into his neighborhood.
“Just tell him you’re sorry.” You said and immediately shook your head, “No, no, this is stupid. He’ll never take me back.” You pulled onto his street with a heavy sigh.
“Wait, I still have time to leave.” You pondered the thought of turning around, saving yourself from this hopeless venture. You swore your heart stopped as you parked outside of his house. You listened to the rain pouring down outside and decided it had to be done- you were here and you would apologize.
You stepped out of your car and pulled up your hood. You made it halfway to his door before you stopped and began to think of what to say exactly. You were pulled from your thoughts at the sound of Tom’s voice.
“Y/N, what are you doing out here?” Tom asked, stepping outside. Though he kept his distance from you, you could tell that he had quickly thrown on his own coat and shoes because he was still in his pajamas.
“What really happened in San Francisco? I want honesty.” You spoke up, and immediately mentally chastised yourself. You wanted to apologize, not bring up old wounds. It was too late now though; you had asked the burning question. Now, you could only hear the rain hitting the ground as your tears rolled down your cheeks.
“You want honesty?” Tom stepped towards you until he was right in front you, his hands in his pockets in an attempt to keep them warm. You nodded, your eyes never leaving his.
“Nothing happened in San Francisco. Ellie was in the city, and she came to see Harry, not me.” He began, “Ever since I discovered she is the one that Eric cheated on you with, I haven’t spoken to her. I never cheated on you. I thought of you every second I was gone.” You watched as Tom’s eyes started to brim with tears.
“When you wouldn’t answer my calls, I flew out here to see you and yes, while I was in the air, I had Harrison come check on you. I had to make sure you were okay, that you were safe, and I’m sorry I had to send my best friend in my place. I hated not being able to instantly be there with you. But then Harrison told me you left and that you never wanted to see me again.
“I thought maybe, maybe you would change your mind about me, about us, if I went to you. So I did. I followed you out to Mullingar, and do you know how common of a name Horan is out there? I know I’ve been to your parents’ place before, but you always drove because you know I’m awful at directions. I felt like a Niall Horan stalker just trying to find you in Mullingar. I’m so lost without you, and nothing showed me that more than when I was in the Mullingar, completely alone and confused without you there with me.” Tom laughed lightly. His tears were freely falling now.
“I told you then that I love you, and I’ll tell you again now. I promised to love you for the rest of my life, and I fully intend to keep that promise because I do love you. So, if honesty is telling you the truth, then I’m still in love with you, Y/N. You left me in pieces back in Mullingar, don’t do that to me now.” He finished, his lips shaking in nerves.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” You said, falling into his arms. You cried into his chest as he wrapped his arms around you; you still fit perfectly into his arms. “I’m still in love with you too, Tom. I just got so scared that Ellie-”
“I would never do that. I would never hurt you.” He replied as you pulled away from the hug. He wiped away your tears and you wiped away his. He held your face tenderly in his hands, caressing your cheeks with his thumbs. “I’m sorry for not telling you about Ellie.”
“You have nothing to apologize for. I screwed up. Take me back?” You asked, your voice falling just above a whisper. Tom nodded and leaned down to kiss you, ignoring the rain around you.
“I think we should go inside.” You laughed as he pulled away.
“Probably.” Tom grabbed your hand and led you inside. He took your coat and the two of you went to his room, so as to continue your alone time away from the other boys.
“I thought you were supposed to be off filming right now.” You inquired softly as you two cuddled in his bed, trying to regain some lost warmth from being out in the cold.
“I was, but I told my manager I needed some personal time off. I couldn’t bring myself to leave, in case you did come back. That’s why I left all of my stuff at your place.” Tom admitted. There was another comfortable silence before you spoke up again.
“How did you find the house in Mullingar?” You asked.
“Well, when I tried to find it from memory, I just got really confused. So I went to that pub that we went to for Saint Patrick’s Day and one of your school friends was there. I don’t remember which one, but he was with us for Saint Patrick’s Day, and he knew where your parents lived.”
“So you got lucky?”
“I got lucky, very lucky.” Tom replied. You watched as his smile faltered a bit. Searching of his own validation, he asked, “Do you want this, us together again? Tell me you want it.”
“I want it.” You answered, giving him a kiss. “We’ll be alright.” You watched as the sun began to peek out from behind the rain clouds, filtering into Tom’s room. You smiled softly, farewell to heartbreak weather.
~~~
Christmas 2019
“Darling, I’m here.” You heard Tom’s voice echo in your apartment from the front door.
“In the kitchen.” You called back out to him, as you pulled the small roast out of the oven.
As agreed upon last year, Tom wasn’t allowed to make the Christmas roast, but he did make a side dish. It was the Sunday before the holiday and your last night in town before you’d leave to spend the holidays in Ireland with your family.
“Smells wonderful.” Tom smiled, coming in with an opened box. He set it down on the counter and took out a bowl-shaped dish and a long, narrow dish.
“What’d you make?” You asked, greeting him with a kiss.
“Potatoes.” He replied, “They turned out better than the roast did last year, so I think I’ve improved.” 
“What else did you make?” Your hands reaching out for the surprise dish. Tom caught your hands in his and smirked.
“That’s a surprise.”
“Alright, if you say so.” You laughed. “Carve up the roast, I’ll get the salad.”
“You got it.” Tom replied as you grabbed the salad from the fridge. He cut up the small roast, serving it onto two plates, as you served the two side dishes onto the plates.
It was a small, make-shift Christmas dinner for the two of you; you both wanted to have an intimate night for the holiday without making so much food that you have leftovers for a week. After you two finished dinner, you went to the guest room to get out his gift, which you had been hiding in the one room that he doesn’t go into.
“Close your eyes.” You called from the hallway, where he couldn’t see you holding his unwrapped present.
“They’re closed.” He announced and you peaked around the corner to see him sitting on the couch, hand over his eyes.
“You better not be looking.” You said, coming into the room.
“I promise I’m not.” Tom laughed.
“Okay, you can open them.” You stated, once you had placed the gift in his lap. He removed his hand and a wide smile grew on his face. 
“You got me a guitar?” He asked, eyes wide in wonder as he traced the instrument delicately. You sat down beside him eagerly.
“Look at the bottom.” You smiled, proud of the gift. On the bottom of the guitar sat his initials with a small red heart beside it.
“I love it. I love you.” He leaned over to kiss you, mindful of the guitar in his lap.
“And now for my gift.” Tom announced, setting the guitar down and taking your hand. He brought you into the kitchen to the mystery dish. He unveiled the dish to reveal a yule log; it was slightly cracked, but it was endearing.
“You made a yule log?” You smiled. You turned to give him a kiss, but you let out a small gasp as Tom was kneeling on the floor.
“Now, I was going to put this,” Tom spoke as he pulled out a small ring box and opened it up to you. A beautiful diamond ring sitting right in the center of it, “on the yule log, but I figured you probably wouldn’t want to wear a chocolate covered ring. So that was all a distraction, and I’m sorry if the yule log is actually awful-”
“No, it’s so sweet.” You said, still fond of the gesture that he wanted to make this Christmas special.
“Well, that’s good because I’m really nervous and I actually didn’t fully prepare a speech, but the point is, Y/N Horan, I am so madly in love with you, and I want to be with the rest of my life. I know we’ve only been dating for a year-”
“Yes,” You cut him off again, “The answer will always be yes.”
“You haven’t let me ask yet.” Tom laughed. He took the ring out of the box and slipped on your finger, continuing to talk, “This is my official promise to love you for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?”
“Yes, yes.” You answered. He stood to his full height and pulled you in for a kiss.
As you listened to Tom play ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ on his new guitar while you ate a piece of the yule log, you knew you were finally completely free of heartbreak weather.
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fedeipox · 3 years
Text
The Way of Time (Rdr2 fanfic) - Chapter 8 (2/3)
I’m a little late with this, I know. I’ve been a little busy lately. University stuff.
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Part 1 here: https://fedeipox.tumblr.com/post/643045553196908544/the-way-of-time-rdr2-fanfic-chapter-8-13
Chapter 8 (2/3) - The future that awaits us all
Words: 2k
“See? We have found something! We have found a job!” she exclaimed jumping up and down as soon as they returned to the street.
“We? I have found the job.”
She stopped her jumping and looked at him right in the eye.
“Hey, if it wasn’t for me…”
“Uncle gave me the idea to take a bounty, that’s the only reason why I followed you inside the sheriff’s.”
He didn’t know why he was saying those things, to annoy her maybe, to see what had happened if she got angry. The result was one of her funny faces: she opened her mouth of a couple of inches, outraged by his behavior, and Arthur had to turn around to hide a smile.
“You are terrible! Worst than a child!” she yelled at his back.
“Oh, now I am the child” he chuckled as he started to walk away.
There was a pause and for a moment Arthur thought she had started to cry or something like that, but when he turned around he found her standing still in the middle of the road with her arms crossed on her chest.
“I’ll come with you and take half of the money” she stated.
“What?” exclaimed Arthur walking back to her.
“You? A bounty hunter?” he sneered.
“He’s just a doctor, how dangerous can he be? I’ll help you and take half of the money.”
Arthur brought a hand to his face rubbing his eyes, but unable to restrain another smile. Was it what he wanted? Did he want her to go with him?
“How do you think to do that? Uh? You can barely ride a horse and you have no strength to deal with a grown up man.”
“I can ride a horse, at least… in theory. And you’ll take care of the man. I’ll just help you as I can.”
“Which is?” 
“I don’t know! We will find something.”
Arthur didn’t want to argue there, in the middle of the street, with that incredibly stubborn girl, about bounties and money. He thought that it was better if they delayed that conversation.
“Yeah, alright. For now we better go back to Uncle, he’ll be wondering where we are.”
They walked back to the general store where they found a dozed off Uncle, with a bottle of whiskey in his hands.
“Yeah, you’re right. He was just wondering were we were” joked Emily and turning around she walked back again.
“Where are you going now?” asked Arthur in exasperation.
“To find something. I didn’t come here to do what I do in camp.”
They walked in front of all the stores of the town, looking at everything but never stopping. Valentine had nothing of a city, nothing interesting, no attraction, and Emily wondered if that was due to the fact that they were in 1899, or just because there was actually nothing there.
“You think we can visit some other town someday?” she asked to Arthur.
“I don’t know. Where are we going?” he complained.
“Like… I’d like to see Saint Denis. I wonder how it was… how it is, now.”
“It’s a city, how you expect it to be? Can you tell me where are you going?”
“Just around.”
“Just around?”
“If you want to go, Arthur, go. I know this place, I’ve been here one hundred times already. I know how to move.”
Arthur sighed but didn’t stop following her. She might know the way but she didn’t know people and how dangerous they could be. He kept her pace fearing she would have never stopped, when she did stop… in front of the gunsmith!
“What, you want to buy a gun now?” he asked half amazed, half perplexed.
“No, not really” she said, and walked inside.
“Hello, Miss. How do you do?” asked the owner.
“Hi, I wanted to know if you still have those, erm, Cattleman Revolvers you talked about” she asked.
What was she doing? Did she really want to buy a gun? Why? To protect herself of course. What had happened if she had found another O’Driscoll waiting around the corner just to hurt her or one of her friends? Obviously, she wasn’t thinking about using it, but just own it to scare the shit out of people who bothered her.
“Yes, Miss, I have them.”
“Can I see one?”
“The hell are you doing?” asked Arthur completely shocked.
As the man made a little bow and walked in the other room, Emily turned to look at Arthur who couldn’t take his wide open eyes from her.
“What happened to the ‘I don’t like guns’?” he asked.
“I don’t like them, but I have to defend myself somehow, don’t you think? And, who said I want to use it?”
“You buy a gun just to show it? That’s stupid.”
“That’s smart thinking. If people see one, they don’t mess with you.”
Arthur laughed. He owned definitely more than one, but people messed with him anyway. Or he messed with them?
The man came back with a shiny brand new revolver that he delivered to Emily’s insecure hands. She took the thing and gripped it, feeling its weight and consistency. It was incredible how something so small and useless when not charged could make her feel so different as she held it: it was like that weapon was giving her new strength, new courage, new certainties. She felt like she could walk down the road but not as a simple citizen, but as the owner of the road, or the entire Valentine.
Yes, the power of that thing was dangerous, and becoming aware of her own feelings she got scared and immediately put it down on the counter.
“I’m sorry. I-I can’t” she murmured and ran out of the shop.
Where was all that boldness coming from? First she had imposed her will on Arthur, then the harsh reply, and finally the terrible idea to buy a gun? What was happening to her?
“Hey, are you okay?” asked Arthur coming out of the shop with a slight worried face.
“Yes, I’m sorry, you were right. I shouldn’t even think about buying one of those devilish things.”
She was back to her senses. It was like Arthur had just seen another girl inside that shop, someone with darker intents, and he couldn’t tell if he liked that one better than the real one.
“Come, let’s keep walking” he suggested. 
...
Walking was a good way to clear her mind, and so she did. She tried to understand where that crazy idea had come from, but she couldn’t. She was so lost in her thoughts that she understood where she was only when she saw the well-known door of Keane’s saloon. 
“Do you want to drink something?” she asked to Arthur.
He raised his eyebrows and nodded, but without being absolutely sure about how to interpret her suggestion. They walked in the plain and modest room, with only three customers inside. One was seated at one of the tables, or it is better to say, he was laying on one of the tables, fallen asleep dead drunk - Arthur and Emily didn’t pay much attention to him - but the two at the bar where definitely more interesting. 
One was rather old, and drunk too, while the other, a little younger, with glasses and a big book opened in front of him, looked like some sort of intellectual. Emily followed Arthur to the bar, who ordered a couple of whiskeys tossing a coin on the counter, and in the meantime she listened to the mental conversation the two men were having.
“Oh, this isn’t going very well” moaned the intellectual addressed by the old man as ‘Plato’ with a gesture of desperation.
“Are you a writer, mister?” asked Emily.
“If I can call myself so, yes, I’m a writer, and it will be the end of me” he complained.
“What are you writing about?”
“Him” he harshly replied, pointing one of his fingers to the old man who now was asleep on the bar.
“Who’s this?” asked Arthur from behind Emily’s back and turning around she noticed the little glass full of amber liquid just waiting for her.
“Jim ‘Boy’ Calloway” answered the writer. 
“Who?” asked Emily and Arthur in chorus.
“The gunslinger. Fastest left-handed draw that ever drew breath.”
“You ever heard of him?” asked Arthur to Emily who shook her head.
The man started telling all the great deeds of that unknown famous gunslinger and in the meantime Emily found the courage to swallow her glass of whiskey which, as expected, made her throat burn.
“Excuse me, mister, but what’s your name?” she asked as she recovered the ability to speak.
Maybe she knew the man’s name or the title of the book he wanted to write about Jim ‘Boy’ Calloway.
“Theodore Levin.”
No, the name told her nothing. He must have been one of those poor deluded who wanted to reach fame with their writing, but that in the end history had sadly forgotten. 
“Sorry, but… I don’t understand. If you hate him so much, why are you waisting your time writing about him?”
“I wouldn’t hate him if he didn’t make it impossible for me to write this blessed book!”
Then, just like he received the illumination, he turned around on his stool to looked at the two of them.
“What?” asked Arthur.
“I am really sorry to ask, but… will you help me? I am kind of desperate, I’ve been working on this thing for months now and I haven’t took anything out of it.”
“How?” asked Emily.
How could they help him? Making up the things he had to write? Trying to take out the informations from Mr. Calloway by force?
“There’s a whole list of gun fighters” said Levin taking a couple of what looked like photographs from his bag.
“Legends, every last one. Emmet Granger, Flaco Hernandez, Billy Midnight…”
Emily took the photos the man gave her, one by one, looking at the mean faces on the black and white paper, but having no idea of who those people where.
“Black Belle.”
Emily’s heart lost a beat.
“What? Black Belle?” she exclaimed.
“Do you know her?” asked Levin.
“Of course, she’s a legend among children!”
“Children?” asked Arthur perplexed.
“Black Belle in the Forest of Berries. Never heard of it?”
But Emily stopped right away, her mouth had said too much and now the writer was looking at her suspiciously.
“Sorry, wrong person” she lied. “Anyway, you want us to find them, and then what?” she asked to divert.
“Well, ask them about him” he said nodding towards Calloway. 
“And what happens when they don’t… collaborate, let’s say” said Arthur taking another drink.
Emily hadn’t been looking at him, but she could perfectly tell he had had more than one already.
“Well, you look like someone with… experience, sir. I don’t think it will be a problem to convince them or… silence them, when necessary.”
Emily raised her eyebrows. Was he saying what she thought he was saying?
“Y-you mean…” she started, but Arthur interrupted her.
“What’s our profit?”
“Half of the proceeds once the book is published” said the writer without hesitation.
“Well, I’ll see what I can do, then” replied Arthur heading unexpectedly to the door.
“Oh, wait” Levin called out. “Get photos” he said handing an old photo-camera to Emily who opened her mouth in amazement.
“Whoah! This is… I can’t believe it.”
“And there are notes on the back of those photos, they should tell you where you can find them.”
“Well, we’ll let you know what we find out, Mr. Levin” said Emily and she shook hands with the man before she and Arthur walked out of the saloon. 
“Black Belle in the Forest of Berries? Really?” asked an ironic Arthur. 
“Hey, it’s not my fault if your ‘legendary gunslingers’ are no-one in the future.”
“For me they are no-one even now, but I guess that’s what awaits us all: become no-one.”
Emily was struck by his words, but she couldn’t but agree. As a matter of fact, she had never heard of the Van der Linde gang, nor the O’Driscolls, nor anybody else. And poor Black Belle had moved from being a famous gun fighter, to a children book heroine. What were those lives worth if no-one was going to remember them in the future?
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taeguboi · 4 years
Text
BTS HC - Lockdown
In which each BTS member lives with y/n
I’m hoping these imagines might lighten the mood for anyone who might be feeling a bit lonely right now.
Please see the end of post first if you need some context or wish to see the notes
RM
Has good balance of me time and us time
steps back when you both need space
sitting in the back yard on some chair reading a book
taking in the sun
The restrictions don’t hinder him from making sure you both get plenty of sun and fresh air
it isn’t much but in week 1, he gave the back yard a little tidy up
turned it into a place to chill out
so there aren’t any flower planted or decor
but it makes all the difference
there’s chairs, a table and a parasol
to you, this is perfect
Spot of tea under cooler weather
or orange juice under the sun
Board games at the table in the back yard
you tried cards once out there but even just the slightest breeze...
“Goddammit!!!”
The card games are for when it rains
or for when neither of you quite feel like going out today
He swears you’re cheating at UNO
you swear he’s just really bad at it
turns out he keeps saving those wild 4 draw cards too long
which you gather over his last 3 rage quits 
because he just slings the cards, revealing them to you
“You play it too safe” you tell him
so he plays it a bit less safe
“Yes! Finally I won!”
“OH! Look at that!” you smile
he smiles back because of how proud you...
“...it’s sunny again!”
‘Goddammit y/n...’
Shopping trips together
not so helpful when the rules get stricter
“One adult at a time please...”
oh dear
who goes in?
so you go in
“Crap! Namjoon has the shopping list!”
this period of time really shows how you complete each other
pretty much every day you each think
“what would I do without him/her?”
Random talks
he tells you about this one book he read
and now you want to read it
so you do
and you can’t take your eyes off it
you find a new love for reading
so sometimes when you both need me time
you remain in the same room, just reading a book each
Every day you feel enlightened
almost sad at the thought of going back to normal life
because you won’t have as much time for yourself
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Jin
Everyone is suddenly having the time to cook from scratch
imagine Jin’s frustration since he did this all along
so when certain things he usually gets aren’t in stock
“Oh for crying out loud!”
you sometimes have to calm him down when shopping
and since only 1 adult in at a time it’s like a really awkward phone call
you’re just stood outside alone like
“For Christ’s sake Jin! Calm down!”
but he makes every meal taste great anyway
“Sorry it doesn’t have the usual...”
“Jin, please!” you reply
because it’s still really yummy because
“you’re still the best cook in the world, okay?”
“Okay fine...” he sighs “Thank you”
can I just add here food is the only time you both get hysterical at each other
He still low key hoard particular ingredients when he FINALLY can get them
and you have to explain how irrational he’s being
“We don’t need SIX tubes of tomato puree!”
“Jin... How are we going to use up all THIS fruit and veg before it goes off?”
But he’s not selfish, no
if he’s in a shop and sees someone elderly, he helps them out
“Would you like me to reach that for you?”
“Do you need any toilet paper? There’s 2 packs left - here”
“Here’s my number; let me know if you need me to run any errands for you”
ahh you’re lucky to be living with such a gentleman
Daily walks in the park to feed the ducks
“This is the best kind of exercise” he tells you “...relaxed and where you can connect with nature”
some of the ducks at the beginning of the lockdown are a bit nutty
Jin may or may not be low key scared of that one goose
“I swear it’s giving me the evils”
it may or may not have chased him the second day in
“Wahhhhhh!!!”
*Jin running away in the distance*
You cooked for him that evening
“Honey, I don’t know how to put this...”
“Aw sweetie it’s okay about what happened in the park; I mean you were the one holding the bread and...”
“oh no no” he replies. “this meal is awful”
r00d
but it’s okay
you knew the minute you offered to make dinner it wasn’t going to turn out well
so you both agree the kitchen will be his space to work his magic in during lockdown
and he somehow gets better than he already is at cooking
just woowwww
foodgasm
but neither of you get podgy
Lazy exercises together
chair exercises watching the tv
small periods of jogging in the woods
“oh wow, what’s that?”
you come across some random squirrel
and all of a sudden trips to the park for that daily walk 
it turns into a nature watch
bird watching
luckily he forgets about the angry goose
Sometimes talking about what you miss
and then promising to do all of those things when everything is back to normal
so many plans
and it helps you both stay optimistic
because you just created a bunch of stuff to look forward to
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Suga
Late night movie marathons
and accidentally getting into a routine of late mornings late nights
Cooking together
because neither of you want to do it
but someone has to
can’t live on instant food for all this time
Night time walks
less people, less danger
please don’t yell at me if we’re not supposed to do this in real life I haven’t actually been out that late during lockdown hahaha
it’s only around a few blocks
but deep talks, you know
There may not be much room in the back garden
but you have a ball and a hoop
basketball together
he teaches you to shoot better
“yes! I did it!”
*he hugs you from behind*
sorry that was gay
He’s actually quite chill about the whole lockdown situation
almost like he forgets the circumstances sometimes
“I think I might nip down to _____’s house today...”
“Uh, Yoongi, remember?”
“Oh yeah”
Detective series marathons too
the two of you trying to figure out whodunnit
sometimes even low key bets or light arguments if you disagree
a mildly sore loser when you’re correct
smug af when he is correct
Evenings lounging in the back yard with the drink of your choice
some quiet music on 
random hypothetical conversations and questions about life
“what if...”
“what happened to...”
“don’t you think that cloud looks like a goldfish?”
Board games that keep the brain stimulated
why is he so good at scrabble
you can’t recall a game you’ve won
but no monopoly
not after the last time
“I want a divorce!”
“We’re not married”
“Yet”
tbf you might as well be an old married couple
because there’s those films you just watch over and over
close to unlocking the power of mind reading
“want a cup of tea?”
“omg I was about to ask that”
Some days you get on each other’s nerves a little though
so you each occupy yourselves with little chores
and even though you weren’t in the mood to do anything together
you’ve just made the house look great in a day as a team
and you’ve got everything you need just in time for dinner
“I’m proud of us”
“I’m proud of us too”
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J-Hope
Picnics in the back garden
much better than one in the park though
there’s no packing involved
there’s cushions
sometimes low key fine dining
your favourite is the one evening picnic the other day
you had been shopping alone for the essentials
and he wanted to surprise you
he had set up a makeshift table out of a few old crates
did the cooking
the pasta dish was lovely
there was even dessert
okay the dessert was M&S
fairy lights
seriously you swear you weren’t out for that long how did he manage all of this so fast?
wine
staring at the stars
and there were blankets too
dozing off until early hours of the morning
finally coming indoors at like 2am
sleeping in til noon oops haha
then binge watching some random show together 
and now it’s your new favourite
For some reason you have a big stock of popcorn
watching any old crap on the TV as an excuse to eat it
like there’s 3 films on this afternoon that sound shite
but you’re going to watch them all anyway
and the third one is actually really good
more popcorn more films
“we should probably go out at some point...”
whoops it’s been like 4 days now
and now it’s raining damn
fuck it, you go out anyway
dancing in the rain in an empty park
followed by shivering on the walk home
he gets in the shower first
but then runs a lovely hot bath for you
candles, bubble bath, the works
just so you can have some relaxing time to yourself
so thoughtful
lockdown doesn’t mean needing to compromise on showing you love each other
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Jimin
You’re not quite sure how you got pulled into this
but Jimin decided to make use of his YouTube following
Virtual dance classes
and fun little exercise sessions for all the family
He does the dance classes solo
but he loves to flaunt you to the world even in lockdown
“Today joining me for this session... my lovely significant other, y/n!”
at first you felt uncertain and a little conscious
but thanks to Jimin your confidence grew
He helps you stay positive during a tough time
and you even feel like your self improvement has been going amazingly well
he even inspires you to make your own channel
to show the world what you love; [insert hobby/interest here]
people love the both of you
they go to Jimin’s channel to keep fit and happy
and your channel just fills them with joy
But not everything revolves around the virtual world
Care packages for all of your friends
food and other essentials get mailed to the ones that lost their jobs
and for the ones still working, a bundle of stuff for their mental well being
and a little drawing with rainbow colours in each
and a positive message
Woolly jumpers, cushions and hot chocolate
sweater paws
Sometimes in the evening you doze off
like you fall asleep just as you are
and you wake up to the smell of food and a blanket over you
Sometimes you miss your friends
and Jimin hates to see you down
so he organises a big surprise
his hands over your eyes as he walks you into the living room
“surprise!” you hear over the laptop
and then Jimin hands you some gifts 
he asked them all a few days ago to send you something meaningful
and your heart just melts
and you may or may not cry a little in front of your friends on the video call
you just have to do something in return so
You make the living room all nice whilst he’s making a video in the garden
wow you’re actually quite proud
the lighting is just right
the improv decor is actually somewhat aesthetic
“Honey, why’s it so dull in here..... Woah, what’s this?”
“Dinner’s ready” you smile
and you have a gift for him too
you can’t wipe the smile off his face when he sees it
a scrapbook of memories between you and him
which you look through after eating
“We’re going to make more memories like this once this blows over”
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V
Lots of online socialising
Calls with his friends 
which you always end up being a part of in the background with your commentaries
Cute online double dates with Jimin and/or your best friend
Will try everything and anything to kill the boredom
“look what I found in the bargain bin at the supermarket!”
“Tae, I’m not really sure I’m in the mood to take up crocheting...”
but actually it turns out to be more fun that you thought
he has his little ways of making everything fun
one day you guys just find some random paints in a cupboard
and WOW
he’s so good at it
such beautiful landscapes
Makes sure that you both maintain some sort of routine
“best make sure we have an early night lovely”
“why? it’s not like there’s much to do tomorrow”
but no matter how sceptical you may be at times
he’s determined to be your sunshine
he helps you stay sane
makes everything sound productive
“because tomorrow we are going to make a playlist for when we walk, feed the ducks, go shopping, learn how to make a new dish...”
makes you a cup of tea just because
or breakfast in bed
the perfect companion
caring about even the people he can’t physically be with
“we haven’t heard from _____ in a while; we should drop a phone call or something”
but it isn’t just a phone call
it’s also a letter in the mail a few days later
plus a painting for the close friends
Dressing up really formal for a home date
3 course meal, courtesy of the microwave
then a slow dance in the living room
always the romantic
“tonight was amazing... will I see you again?”
“you are terrible Tae, you really are!”
such a joker
he keeps you smiling through it all
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Jungkook
Tries to get you to go on daily jogs with him
“Can’t I just walk?”
“Come on, y/n; get those endorphins running through you!”
you try like once
*wheezing*
nope
Nintendo switch
Not that I have one welp
I can just imagine it okay
Lots of active games
thrashes you at Wii Sports Tennis
but you whoop his ass at Bowling
he does most of the shopping
so that he can go for a jog first
and also so he’s not out too often in any one day, two birds one stone and all that
Doesn’t quite always get the shopping list right….
“Jungkook?”
“Yes?”
“I wrote 1-2 bananas… You’ve brought back 12”
blames your handwriting
Small bits of banter like this keep you both sane
and he eats all those bananas in like 2 days
“What? There was no cereal in the shop”
someone teach this boy to cook please
*brings back like a crate load of instant noodles*
at least it means you’ve come up with something to pass the time
teaching Jungkook some basic meals
maybe beginning with breakfast first thing in the morning wasn’t the best idea
“Jungkook! I said keep an eye on it!”
“I did”
and he literally just watched the bacon burn instead of regularly flipping it over
bless
Singing to you whilst snuggling on the couch
bliss
meme-y dances before bed time
like you’ll be sat in bed maybe watching tv / reading
and something moves in the corner of your eye
oh my word Jungkook
*insert all the meme-y dances you have even seen him do*
the biggest dork
can’t stop laughing at his own silliness afterwards
jumps into the bed and puts his head on your shoulder
falls asleep like this quite fast
well you aren’t surprised since he’s always so energetic
Small campfires in the back garden
the best marshmallows you’ve ever had
and it’s so much fun
campfire stories
usually people have a guitar around the fire
not Jungkook though, no
*serenades you with a ukulele purposely singing out of tune*
has you in stitches
people in the neighbouring houses hear the laughter and some think it’s insensitive to be laughing so much
but seriously, if you can’t laugh, what can you do?
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So I thought I’d make a post around the strange times many of us are living in. Whilst I get that some readers may not be in a situation like mine (UK) so a quick bit of context for you even though I made the location / country ambiguous in my writing. The circumstances explained in the imagines though are of course based on my experiences in England.
Right now, we are limited in what we do; only essential shops are open, (supermarkets, pharmacies, etc,) the country is being advised to go out as little as possible, (only for food shopping, medical reasons and exercise,) social gatherings aren’t allowed, our death rate has been increasing due to the virus (even our prime minister has it,) and our NHS is overwhelmed - currently more than 10,000 being treated as I’m listening to the news and writing this note. 
I hope everyone is staying safe and doing the right thing by staying indoors and maintaining social distancing.
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