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lowkeychenle · 8 months

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Within the Piano Keys [ZCL] (M)

Description: For as long as you could remember, Chenle has been your neighbor and childhood best friend. That is, until one day he disappears without a word...or so you thought, since your mother hid all the letters he sent you.

Genre: Fluff/Angst/Smut triple threat ygm

Content Warnings: This fic contains letters from Chenle (purely fictional duh) but does mention things about the graduation system/the Dreamies going through a rough time just FYI! Just a brief mention. And also, smut. this has smut, but it's soft and cute smut because why not.......so literally that's it I think? Who I am these are some light content warnings

Word Count: 7,707

Pairing: Zhong Chenle x Reader (feat (briefly) Jeno & Jaemin, mentions of Mark and Jisung)

Juliet's Masterlist | Requests

Author's Note: This gif actually kills me someone send 911 emergency services sos zhong chenle is killing me AGAIN

The ghost of the past will always find you.

There’s no outrunning destiny. Who and what you were made to be. And you sure as hell love to try—pushing yourself to change as much as possible to keep Fate on her toes. Sometimes, it’s inevitable. Sometimes, people are placed on the Earth with a specific purpose, and you were sure yours was him. At a mere seven years old, your life changed forever—in a way you never saw coming. When you think about it, you don’t think Fate saw it, either.

Because you met him then.

You remember the day in vivid detail. The soft, sweet melody of the piano drifting through the house, up the stairs, and beneath your bedroom door where you stand, looking for your butterfly hair clip you adore oh so much.

When your frustration reaches its peak and you sit down with a huff on the edge of your bed, you hear it. Your heart seems to beat along with the music, every key pressed making you wonder just who is playing downstairs.

It’s from Phantom of the Opera, a song titled “All I Ask of You.” The melody is full, transcending your body into peace the moment you realize what it is.

After taking a deep breath, you hesitantly make your way down the winding, spiral staircase, fingers tracing along the railings as if they’re too delicate to actually hold on to. Your steps echo downward, but as the young boy comes into view, you stop.

Not even your noisy intrusion breaks him from his music-induced trance. His entire body moves along with the sound, his eyes closed as he presses each note with perfection. His black hair is a bit longer than it probably should be, with a middle part to expose his forehead. His defined brows are furrowed, and even at his age, you’ve never seen someone look wiser than this boy does right at this moment.

You feel the song in your bones, deep within your soul in such an existential way, you aren’t sure if you’ll ever feel anything like it again. A silly, juvenile thought. You don’t know it right now, but you’d feel like that every time you were around him.

As the song comes to a close, he holds out the last note, inhaling deeply as if he hasn’t been breathing the entire time.

His eyes flutter open, warm brown irises immediately meeting yours. You hadn’t expected such depth, but you’d learn eventually never to expect anything with him—in the end, you would only build yourself up to fall…over and over and over again.

Here you stand, locked in a metaphorical embrace with a kid who can’t be any older than you, yet he seems…different. Like he’s seen enough in his lifetime to age him beyond physicality.

That was the day you started to believe in fate. The day he left was when you stopped.

Hours turned into weeks, and before you know it, the boy next door became your friend. Most times, you’d sit on the bench while he plays piano and watch incredulously. His musical talent always astounds you—he can sing, play instruments, write songs and compose them.

Sometimes, he’d ask you to sing the songs he played, and even though you felt nowhere near as talented as him, you did what he wanted. He’d join in with you occasionally, your voices blending together seemingly effortlessly.

Those weeks turned into years—two kids learning more and more about each other. He’d become more than a friend. You were twelve years old when you realized the connection you had with Chenle. When everything pieced together, and you understood that some hearts, some souls, are much older than you could ever fathom. Your heart, you were sure, stretched beyond your years, and your soul was kindred with Chenle’s in a way that could only mean you’d known each other in a past life. Slowly, slowly, slowly…he was everything, all at once.

“You’ve almost got it,” he whispered to you, adjusting your ring finger on the keys. “Just gotta move over a little bit more.”

You pouted. “My hands aren’t big enough, Lele.”

“Stop that.” He chuckled, shaking his head and nudging your shoulder. “That mindset is gonna keep you from learning.”

“Well, if my mindset doesn’t do it, the arthritis at a young age will,” you snipped.

His eyes sparkled with humor, crinkling at the edges as his smile widened. “You’ll get it eventually. Keep trying.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll tell you that you suck and you should never play again.”

You snorted. “Promise?”

He held up his pinky. “I’d never lie to you.”

You looped yours with his.

“You’ll get it.”

Chenle never gave up on you. He kept pushing you to be the best you could be, and you gladly followed his direction. You never quite got as good as he was with the piano, but you’d gotten decent at least. The two of you would hang out every day, spending every waking, free moment together until your mom told him it was time to go home.

You’d never thought about love and what it meant. For you, loving Chenle was as natural as breathing, and as time went on, it only got easier.

You turned fourteen before Chenle. If you had known this was the beginning of your last year with him, you would’ve appreciated it more. You would’ve told him all of the things lingering on your mind—how you loved him, so purely and genuinely.

Just days before your life blew up in your face, you almost told him.

He sat next to you on your bed, arm wrapped around you as you rested your head on his shoulder. The soft golden light of the lamp illuminated him gently, and the movie playing in the background edges you closer and closer to sleep.

“Do you ever think about…life?” he asked.

“Hm?” You scrunched your nose, your half-asleep state not registering what he meant.

“Like…what your plans are. What you want to do and who you want to be with.” His thumb brushed your skin soothingly. “We have to figure it out soon, don’t we? We’re almost adults.”

“You’re not tired?” You sat up and rubbed your forehead.

“Nope.”

“Well.” You sighed and ran your fingers through your hair. “The only thing I’m certain about when it comes to the future is that you’ll be there. So, it doesn’t matter what else happens.”

He smiled softly, the slightest shade of red tinting his cheeks. “Even if the world ended?”

“Even if the world ended.” You confirmed.

A few months later, the world did end. At least, yours did.

He was gone.

His mom left shortly after him, but she told you what he was doing—how he was going to pursue his music career in South Korea. He was going to be an idol, and he was leaving you behind to do it.

Your world ended, but his got to go on without you.

At twenty-one years old, you’re still not sure where you went wrong. Chenle left, but his memory plagues the very walls you live within. You keep up with him, with his group and all of the things they’re doing. Even though you’re not with him, you watch him grow and grow into a more confident version of the young boy you knew.

Seven years without him should have been impossible, yet here you are: alive, well, and watching any and all Chenle related content. You haven’t heard from him, not once. Assumingly, he’s incredibly busy. Even then, you wonder occasionally if you ever cross his mind, if he ever thinks of the love he left behind.

Ever since, you’ve been sensitive over the summer months. A part of you is missing, and until you see him again, you’re unsure if you’ll ever find it. Has he changed? Is he still the boy you loved?

On days where thoughts of him overwhelms you, you like to walk the trail behind your house. It takes you through a wooded area, and the other end brings you to the end of your street. On your walk back, you see an unfamiliar car outside of Chenle’s family’s home. Curiosity gets the better of you, and you stand there to watch.

The door slides open, and you hear an unfamiliar laugh. Frowning, you cross your arms over your chest. Who the hell would be at Chenle’s house?

When the first person gets out of the car, your heart stops in your chest. You’re about eighty percent sure that’s Lee Jeno, light hair reflecting the bright sunlight above. If that’s Jeno, then—

You feel a sudden urge to run into your house, slam the door, and lock it behind you. Several other people are in that car, and if they’re here…one of them is Chenle. Your Chenle, who isn’t really yours. Not anymore.

Jaemin gets out next. His roots are dark, nearly overshadowing the pink hue on top of his head. He swats at someone behind him, laughing, and as that person comes into view, your heart stops. It shreds itself to pieces.

Jeno notices you first, a slight frown gracing his face before Chenle’s gaze follows his line of sight. When he sees you, you instantly see the recognition on his face.

Seven years is a long time. Hell, even though you’ve seen all of Dream’s content, you’re still shocked to see how different he looks. His face is more defined. He’s grown a bit taller, too.

He sees you. He’s looking at you for the first time in years, and all you want to do is forget all this time of no contact, all the ways the two of you hadn’t reached out to each other. A lump forms in your throat, and before you do something stupid, you let out a shaky breath, turn away from him, and make your way into your house.

You shut the door behind you, your back thudding against it. Glancing over to your right, the grand piano—old and loved—is blurred by your tears, and for the briefest of moments, you swear you see your younger self sitting there, endlessly playing the songs Chenle taught you before he left.

A knock sounds, and each one echoes throughout your house, feeling like a hole-puncher on your heart. You’re barely able to breathe as you prepare yourself to be face-to-face with Chenle for the first time in almost a decade—for the first time since he up and disappeared on you without a word.

“(Y/N)?” His voice. So familiar but so distant, all the same as it was.

You don’t answer. You can’t.

“I’m coming in, okay?”

You brace yourself against the solid wood of the piano, doing your best to calm yourself. The last thing you need is to make a fool of yourself in front of him.

A hesitant creak fills your ears, and the tap of his shoes on the hardwood flooring has your eyes clenching shut.

“Why’d you run off like that?” he asks, voice so soft that it’s barely audible.

“I didn’t.”

“You still sound the same,” he says it quietly, as if he’s the only one meant to hear it. He raises his voice so you can hear him. “It’s been a long time.”

You scoff, whipping around to face him. “It’s been a long time? That’s all you have to say to me?” Anger bubbles in your gut, quickly replacing the hurt lingering.

You have to stop yourself from admiring him at a time like this. His oversized T-shirt somehow compliments him in the best ways, his hair is a tinted shade of purple, and when his fingers run through it, you have to look away. Sure, you should’ve expected to see him again at some point, but you never imagined you’d feel the same. It’s a bit different now that you’re older. You’re able to see him in a different light.

His eyes widen and he recoils. “I…I’m sorry, I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say. It’s not like there’s a textbook on how to do this.”

“What are you doing here? Why now?” You cross your arms over your chest, doing your best to avoid his eyes.

“We’re here on a schedule.” He slides his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants. “I told them about you, in case you were wondering.”

“Oh, right.” You let out a sarcastic laugh. “I suppose that makes it all okay, right? You tell your friends I exist and that’s supposed to change how you up and left me without a word?”

He frowns. “Without a word?”

“Yeah, Chenle. Without a single fucking word.”

“That’s not true.” His tone sharpens to match yours. “I wrote to you. A lot. And if you didn’t want to read them, that’s on you. That doesn’t mean I left without a word. There were a lot of words, actually.”

“Why didn’t I get them?” Your voice drops into a whisper, moving one of your hands to touch your forehead.

“I…I don’t know. I didn’t know your address so I sent them to my mom, and she told me every time she gave one to your mom—”

A jolt of electricity rages up your spine, and you immediately turn away from him and run up the staircase. Your mother’s out of town for the week. If she’s been hiding letters from you, they’d be in her room somewhere—and you’d tear that place apart if it meant you had all those words.

“Where are you—hey!”

You’re already in your mom’s closet when Chenle follows you in.

“You shouldn’t be in here—”

“Says you,” you interrupt him, mindlessly shuffling through anything that looks like it could hold letters. “How many?”

“What?”

“How many did you send, Chenle?”

“Um.” He pauses, shifting on his feet. “I don’t know. A few? I stopped after a while because I didn’t hear anything. Figured you didn’t want anything else.”

“My God,” you mutter, blinking rapidly to fight off the tears. “And you swear your mom gave them to mine?”

“I—yeah, she didn’t have a reason not to.”

“And my mom had a reason not to give them to—shit. When did you send the first one?”

“(Y/N), it was seven years ago.”

“Was it right when you left or afterward?” You haphazardly dig through the closet, searching high and low.

“I left it here. I told my mom about it after a week or so. What the hell is going on?” Chenle runs his fingers through his hair again, gulping. “We really shouldn’t be in here.”

Your heart sinks. There’s nothing in here. You’ll never find Chenle’s letters, and the mystery will always be just that.

“I…I’m so sorry.” You drop your head into your hands. “I’m acting like an idiot right now.”

“Don’t be sorry, I’m just confused. This whole time, I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me…that’s why I haven’t been back in a while.” Chenle takes a step closer to you, reaching out to touch your arm. “I would never leave you.”

You finally look at him. Really look at him. The worried furrow to his brow, the slight downturn of his lips, concern clouding those beautiful irises of his. Standing in front of you is the reason you are who you are today.

“You just…Okay, I need a while to figure all of this out.” You glance up to the ceiling, closing your eyes and taking a shuddering breath. “Can you go? I don’t really want to see you right now.”

Hurt plays out on his face, but after he blinks a few times, he nods slowly. “Yeah. Sure. Um, I’ll see you later. If it helps any, I probably could’ve tried to call or something.”

“We were kids.” You sigh. “It wouldn’t have changed anything.”

You say that, but it would have. The entire trajectory of your life may have changed if Chenle was still in it back then. As much as you want to be pissed at your mother for hiding things from you, maybe she was right.

Chenle takes his bottom lip between his teeth, looking you over one more time as he nods. “Right. I…I’ll see you around.”

Before you respond, he’s turning away from you and disappearing down the hall. You feel a lot of things—overwhelmed, confused, sad. But you also almost feel naive for listening to him—for believing that your mother hid things from you. Your brain stops being logical when Chenle’s around, and you know it’s a mistake to bring him back into your life. The hurt has passed, but that doesn’t mean it won’t rear its ugly head if you’re in such close proximity to him.

You go back downstairs to grab your phone, and the first thing you do is dial your mom’s number. She picks up after the first ring.

“Hi, honey! I was about to text you. New York is fascinating! You’d love it—”

“Did Chenle write me letters?”

“Oh.” She clears her throat. “Where is this coming from?”

“He’s here,” you mutter. “He told me he sent me letters, mom.”

“(Y/N), you have to understand where I was coming from.”

“Where are they?” You slap your hand to your forehead. “Where?”

“He still left, you know. I understand he’s important to you, but he still chose a career over you. And you would’ve thrown everything away for him without a second thought.” Your mom takes a deep breath. “You needed to live your life for you.”

“Where are they?” you repeat. “If you threw them away, I will never forgive you.”

“Of course, I didn’t throw them away. They’re in my closet in a little gold box on the floor. When you read those…don’t get any ideas. He lives far away and he’s even less available for you now than he was before.”

You hang up without saying another word and run back up the stairs. It takes you only a few seconds to find the box she told you about. When you open it, your breath shudders at the stack of letters in there. Some are aged and crinkly, but the ones toward the top are newer. Your hands shake as you grab them, mouth dry as you see the dates listed across the front of the envelope.

You start with the one on the bottom, the oldest, and ever so carefully opening it. Blinking back tears, you take in the painfully familiar handwriting that belonged to your Chenle.

(Y/N)

This is probably the worst way to do this, I know. I’m leaving to follow my dreams, and while I wish I could take you with me, it doesn’t make sense. Your mom would never agree to let you come. Thinking of going through all of this without you scares me more than I care to admit.

I don’t have a phone yet, but as soon as I get one, I’ll send you a letter with the number! It’ll be nice to hear your voice again. I’m writing this early, so I actually spoke with you earlier today, but it’s funny how quickly I miss you.

You’re probably going to be really mad at me, and that’s okay. I deserve it. The reason I didn’t tell you isn’t very simple, but I hope you understand it. Saying goodbye to you would feel so permanent. Goodbye itself is too permanent for my liking, so I’ve never liked them.

If I looked into your eyes and told you I was leaving, I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to go. Or that I’d sneak you with me in my carry-on. I didn’t want to hurt you. You mean so much to me, (Y/N). I don’t ever want to make you upset, and I know you’ll eventually understand why I had to do it this way.

Just know I’ll be thinking about you every day. You’re the reason I’ll have the strength to get through this training period.

Talk to you soon,

Your Chenle

You trace your finger along the bottom of the page. Face wet, you clear your throat as you delicately set it aside to grab the next one. According to the date on the envelope, it’s from a few months after the first one.

(Y/N),

These past few months have been so hectic. I think I almost died a couple times, but here I am. I debuted last week! I’m in a group called NCT, but I debuted in the sub-unit NCT DREAM. It seems surreal, and it happened so much faster than I thought.

I think you’d like the other guys. They’re nice and loud and friendly. Honestly, they seem like they’ve been working together for a little bit of time already, so I’m the newest one here. I heard someone say they’d been training for a while…

Anyway, I said in the last letter that I’d give you my phone number. I realized after I left that you didn’t have one either, so…I’m not sure how that’ll work. And I wasn’t expecting a response to these at all, but if you want to write back, it’d give me something to look forward to after all this hecticness.

But yeah…honestly, I was a bit worried about moving here and being in a group. I’ve been learning a lot of Korean though, and another member named Jisung has been helping me a lot. He’s a few months younger than me, can you believe it? Everyone treats him like a baby, but I think he likes it. I told them about you, and they all kept teasing me.

Maybe they just don’t understand. You’re my favorite person, of course, I’m going to talk about you and tell them stories about all the fun we had.

Sorry this one is a bit long. I hope you’re not too mad at me. And I also hope that you’re keeping up on me. I think you’d like Chewing Gum…

I’ll talk to you soon! I’ll write my number down at the bottom of the page.

Your Chenle

You have to take a break. You rest your head back against the wall, closing your eyes and imagining how hurt poor, young Chenle must have been when you never responded to his heartfelt letters. You don’t know much about Jisung—besides the obvious, public information—but you’re happy someone was good and helpful to him.

After that, you wonder what it would’ve been like to be there for him through all of that. Based on what you know about his group, he’s been through a lot of ups and downs over the years. You wonder if he wrote about some of the harder things, too.

You read another one that’s about their promotions, how he’s getting closer with the other members. Then one about how he performed with twenty-two others. The next one you grab is dated from 2019. You open it.

(Y/N),

I didn’t think this year would be as hard as it has been. We all expected it, you know? We knew it was going to happen, but it doesn’t change how scary it’s been. I’m sorry it’s been a while since I’ve written. Maybe you just throw them away at this point, which is fine, but I wish I could hear from you. Especially at a time like this.

Dream has a graduation system, and Mark’s been gone for months now. Things have been continuing ‘as normal,’ but without Mark, we don’t really feel complete as a group. We see him as often as we can, but performing without him is…it feels wrong.

I wish I could see you. You’d make everything better in an instant, just like you always did. Sometimes, I feel terrible because the others get sad about the situation, and I can’t figure out any good words to say. You’ve always been so good at comforting others, I wish you were here to help me.

It’s been two years since I’ve seen you. That’s so weird to think about, because I swear I still hear your voice in my head. Your encouraging words, how you always believed in me. I need that now more than ever.

I’m not sure if you know much about Mark, but he’s our rock. We kind of fail to function without him. But in the spirit of missing both you and Mark, I’ll tell you a little story about what happened when I asked Mark for advice.

I asked him about you—about what I could possibly do to make all of this up to you since you deserve it. And not hearing back from you makes me think you might hate me.

Anyway, his question in response was interesting. He wanted to know what you were to me. How I felt about you. At first, I thought he was crazy. I mean, it was obvious—you’re my best friend. I can’t live and function without my best friend.

He asked if that was all.

I vividly remember scrunching up my face and pushing his shoulder. Not too hard, by the way.

But the more he told me about what it felt like to be in love, everything clicked into place. I’m in love with you, (Y/N). I have been for so long that it started feeling like second nature instead of a conscious idea.

I guess it doesn’t matter now. Maybe I’ve failed you too much for it to mean anything to you.

Loss sucks. Losing Mark in Dream has sucked, losing you before I even realized the extent of my feelings sucked, but at the end of the day, I have to keep pushing forward. I’m sorry for any hurt I may have caused, because this situation with Mark also made me realize how much it must have hurt you for me to up and disappear the way I did.

I’m so, so sorry. I hope you can forgive me.

Your Chenle

You wipe angrily at your tears, unsure if you should be mad at yourself or at your mother. She stole this from you. Chenle figured out his feelings for you long before you figured out yours for him, but it feels like a new revelation—to know he felt the same way, even after years without you.

You remember this time where Mark had ‘graduated’ from NCT Dream. And because you knew Chenle well, you could tell he was struggling, even when he put on a happy facade. He needed you, and you weren’t there for him.

No matter how much it hurts, you can’t stop. You grab the next one. His writing became less frequent after that. He wrote to tell you when NCT Dream became a fixed unit, and how happy he was to be reunited as seven. The next was from their first full album. You find the last one, surprised to find how recent it was. There was a large gap between this one and the one before it.

The letter was addressed from a few months ago. The one before had been from two years ago.

(Y/N),

I’m sorry it’s been a while. Honestly, we’ve been so busy, I’ve barely even had the time to sleep. I got news today that we’ll be going to China for an event. I’m coming home, but I figured I should tell you in advance. Give you some time in case you really don’t want to see me.

I still think of you every day. All I want is to hear your voice again, but I won’t ask you to do something you don’t want to. If you have no intention of seeing me, that’s fine. I know I messed this up, but I figured it wouldn’t be right to give up when I’ll be so close.

We’ll be arriving in the next few weeks. I wish I could give you more detailed information, but I won’t even know it until the day of.

If this is it for us, thank you for the time I had with you. I love you, (Y/N). No matter what, that’ll be true, but this will be the last thing I send. I hope you understand.

Love,

Your Chenle

At this point, you’re bawling your eyes out. You aggressively wipe away the tears, cursing yourself for not knowing about these damn letters. All the pain you could’ve helped him through, all the hurt it could’ve saved you from.

You sniffle, grab your phone, and dial the number at the bottom of the second letter. It’s been years since he gave it to you, so there’s a good chance it’s different now. But you don’t exactly feel like going over to his house while his friends are there and making a fool of yourself.

“Hello?” That’s definitely his voice.

“Chenle,” you breathe out, closing your eyes. “My Chenle.”

“Yeah.” His tone softens. “Yeah, yours. Always yours.”

Running your fingers through your hair, you sigh. “I found them. All of them. I’m so fucking sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he says. “It’s not like you even knew about them. Give me one second, I’m gonna go upstairs. Jeno and Jaemin are still here.”

You nod even though he can’t see you, and you hear him say something to the other guys. They reply, and then you hear the tell-tale sound of the stairs creaking beneath Chenle’s feet. Once he makes it up to his bedroom, he closes the door behind him.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “That’s a lot to read all at once.”

“I don’t know. I’m so mad, Lele. How could she hide those from me? If I’d known you didn’t just leave me, it would’ve hurt so much less. And seeing all this pain you went through all by yourself…I’m so sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” he tells you. “We know the truth now. I don’t want you to hate me.”

“I could never hate you,” you whisper, burying your head in your palm. “Not even if I tried.”

There’s a brief silence, only filled with the sounds of you sniffling and Chenle breathing. He’s right next door, but the idea of being with him is too real. You need time to process all of this, and bringing him around while you do isn’t the best idea.

“You said you loved me.”

“Love,” he corrects you. “Present tense. I never stopped.”

“I kept up with you.” You play with the seam of your jeans. “With everything you did with Dream and all the accomplishments you’ve had so far. I’ve been so proud of you with no way to say it.”

“I almost stopped writing letters. Mark convinced me not to give up, but after seven years I was pretty sure you wouldn’t change your mind,” he admits.

“If I’d been receiving them I would’ve called you the second you gave me your number.”

“That’s what I’d been hoping for.” Chenle takes a deep breath. “We have to go soon for a schedule, but can I come see you later?”

Later wasn’t really definitive. The thought of him in your house and in your space is scary, terrifying even, but this is Chenle. The boy who used to play piano with you and sing to his heart’s content. From what you’ve seen, this version of him doesn’t seem too different than that boy.

“Please,” you whisper. “Will you be hungry? I can make you something.”

“It’ll be late. Don’t worry about me. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

Not too long after your conversation, you hear the three boys clamber into the van. You try to busy yourself throughout the day, cleaning in order to distract yourself. Eventually, you sit down at the piano and play whatever song comes to memory. One of the ones Chenle taught you back when he was here.

You taught yourself a few of Dream’s songs as well, like Rainbow, My Youth, Puzzle Piece, Teddy Bear, and most recently, Like We Just Met from their newest album. You play the last one, the darkness cascading around you as the sunset fades away from view. It’s only you and the starlight now, a gentle melody flooding through the air around you.

The door creaks open, and Chenle walks through when you’re almost done with the song. You stop playing, standing up to greet him. There’s an odd moment where you stand there staring at each other, admiring the way the starlight reflects off his skin. His eyebrows are furrowed, like he’s trying to decide what to do next.

You don’t hesitate anymore. Moving forward, you wrap your arms around him and bury your head in his chest. He immediately reciprocates, shaky breath passing by his lips as he holds you closely. His heart thrashes, the sound more than similar to yours.

“I missed you,” he says.

“I missed you, too,” you reply easily, tightening your grip on him.

You pull back slightly to look into his eyes, wetness gathered beneath them. With shaky hands, you reach up to wipe it away. His gaze travels over your face.

“You love me.”

He nods hesitantly, palms pressing into the small of your back. “Always have.”

“I’ve always loved you, too.” Before you talk yourself out of it, you’re on the tips of your toes to kiss him. It starts gently, your mouth barely brushing his before his breath catches in his throat. Then it’s real—he pulls you flush against him, lips fitting with yours like he’s made for you.

You move your hands from his cheeks to his hair, leaning into him. His fingers latch onto the fabric of your shirt. Next thing you know, he’s walking you backward until he’s pressing your back into a wall.

“We have so much to talk about.” He rests his forehead on yours. “So much air to clear up.”

“Yeah.” You nod, but your stare is focused directly on his lips.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” he warns you. “I don’t get to come here often, so unless you were to come to Korea, we’d pretty much never see each other. My schedules are so packed, I’m practicing all day and half-dead by the time I get home. I can be a real asshole when I’m tired, and sometimes I might take jokes too far. This life is not easy, (Y/N). I need you to know what you’re getting yourself into.”

“What am I even doing here?” you ask. “I can come with you.”

“I can’t ask you to give up everything you have for me.” He shakes his head, tucking your hair behind your ear.

“You’re not asking. Chenle, I spent years thinking you were gone without a word. All I want is to be with you as much as possible.”

“At least think about it for a little bit first, okay? I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret.” He gulps. “That goes for a lot of things.”

“I’ve had seven years to think about all the things I wanted from you.”

��You can’t say things like that,” he mutters.

You’re painfully aware of what it feels like to have him pressed against you, warm in all the right ways and, despite being so thin, he’s firm to the touch. The ache you feel to be closer to him is overwhelming.

“I spent years thinking everything was a lie,” you tell him. “That I couldn’t possibly have mattered to you if you could just disappear without a word.”

His fingers play with yours, discomfort at the idea plastered across his face. “Never. I never would’ve done that. You’ve always meant so much to me.”

“I’m just happy I finally get to tell you all of the things I wanted to tell you after I found out you were gone.” You give him the smallest smile, and he reaches up to trace along your bottom lip.

The simple touch sends sparks flying down your spine, and you’re sure you’ll crumble to dust right at his feet from the forceful impact of it. An odd tug occurs in your chest, one that has you questioning if you’ve ever experienced it before. It pulls you toward him, and despite being flush, your mind dips to dangerous places that could get you so, so much closer.

You’re not sure what’s gotten into you, but this is Chenle. Your Chenle. And if you’re having these feelings for him, there’s no need to hide it.

“I…” you trail off, clenching onto the fabric of his shirt, right above his heart. “Do you feel it, too? Everything is…different now.”

“Under other circumstances, I’d say different is bad,” he whispers. “But there’s nothing bad about the way you’re looking at me.”

His arms wrap around your waist tightly, and simultaneously, you both lean in until your lips are locked in a gentle battle. The warmth of his touch finds your hip, where your sweater rose up enough to reveal your skin. You let out a shaky sigh, and he squeezes you.

“Come upstairs with me?” Your invite is airy, suggestive, and he analyzes you while his gaze darkens.

“If that’s what you want,” he says.

“Is it what you want?” You tilt your head at him, voice quiet since he’s so close.

He pauses and wets his lips. “Of course, it is. I just don’t want you to regret anything. Losing you once was enough, and I refuse to go through that again.”

Instead of answering, you intertwine your fingers with his and lead him toward the stairs, through the blackness of the night casting through the windows. You take one step at a time, your heart thundering and blood pulsing through your veins. One look at your shoulder, and for a second, you almost swear you see the younger versions of you and Chenle sitting by the piano. Caught up in the music. In each other.

He follows you, entranced by the way you move and how you’re so willingly guiding him. Everything happens in slow motion for you. Too fast but too slow at the same time, somehow the moment you’ve waited for your entire life while simultaneously the thing that’s scared you the most.

Your Chenle.

He said it himself. Why is it so foreign to think about? That maybe, even after all this time, he loves you even an ounce of how much you love him? Endless devotion with no contact. But he did the same—he waited and waited for your response much like you waited for any contact from him. You were both physically and metaphorically in the dark.

The door to your bedroom creaks as you push it open, embarrassed by how little it’s changed since the last time he was in it. The walls are still the same color, faded and paint peeling in some of the corners. Your bed has been swapped from twin-sized to a queen, but everything else is virtually untouched.

No more words are spoken.

They’re not needed.

You don’t need anything. Not when you have him.

He presses your body into the mattress, climbing over you gently. His touch is tender, sweet, not too much pressure. You’re halfway certain you’ll wake up from this dream any time now, and you’ll once again be without him. Without his touch and his love and his truths.

Kissing him is like touching the sun. It burns, nearly enough to make you combust into flames, but magnetic. He is your sun, and you are the Earth. You revolve around him.

Normally, anyone else taking your clothes off would make you nervous, but you know you’re in good hands with Chenle. Your shirt is tossed aside first, his mouth instantly dipping down to explore every inch of exposed skin. His tongue drags along the swells of your breasts, over your collarbones. He nips, teeth leaving shallow indents on your soft flesh.

Your whines are soft, delicately slicing into the silence of the air. The first time he hears you, he freezes, his eyelashes fluttering against your neck as he takes in the way you sound. Quiet cries of ‘more’ escape you while your hands explore beneath his T-shirt.

Never before in your life have you wanted someone with such despracy. Your body aches for him, and the tug in your chest that pulled you closer to him has finally revealed how. As his fingers pop the button on your jeans, you lift your hips.

He pulls his lips away from your chest, gaze honing in on yours. There’s something swirling around in his irises, and you’re sure yours reflect the same. He doesn’t have to ask the question on the tip of his tongue. Not verbally. You nod, guiding his mouth back to yours.

The heat of his touch dips dangerously low, past your jeans and the hem of your panties. You gasp, appreciative of how he catches the sound. You’ve been touched before, but nobody has ever compared to the way he feels. When you’ve met your soulmate, nothing could be better.

He rubs slow circles on your clit, eyes hazy from knowing he’s the one who made you feel this way. Normally, you’d need more. A simple touch wouldn’t be enough to have you squirming in someone’s grasp, but there’s so much more behind his movements than lust.

And he takes it a step further, sliding his long fingers inside you. His gaze focuses on you the whole time, watching your face for any sign of discomfort as he thrusts his hand. He nudges your sensitive bud with the heel of his palm every time he’s knuckle deep.

Your stomach feels elastic, as if you’re stretching a rubber band, and it’s taking everything you have not to let it snap back. It’s too good. Too intoxicating. Too early for it to be over. He swallows your short moans, picking up his pace. You lean up, yearning for his kiss. He doesn’t need to ask, and the second your lips meet, you tighten around him, and it’s over.

Warmth spreads all over your body, your insides boil, and butterflies swarm deep in your stomach. Your eyes shut, and your head falls back against your pillow. He kisses all over your face, humming quietly.

He pulls away from you to help you remove the last of your clothing, the fabric of your panties sticking uncomfortably until he tugs them down your legs.

You reach down to feel him through his pants, unable to stop the shuddering breath that escapes you when you touch his length. He grinds into your hand, taking his bottom lip between his teeth.

Finally, nothing separates the two of you anymore. The tip of his cock presses against your entrance, the initial pressure already making you crave more. You need all of him, so you wrap your legs around his waist and dig your heels into his back to tell him to push in further. Your whole body tingles with pleasure, the type enough to make your toes curl, and your chest heaves as you adjust to his size.

His forehead drops against your shoulder, grasping one of your hands in his own to squeeze. He takes you slowly, his throbbing length stretching you to your limits and rubbing your walls perfectly. You were made for him, you’re certain. He fits so well, so completely, there’s no other explanation for it.

He curses under his breath, eyes threatening to flutter shut from the pleasure. Sweat clings to you tighter than Chenle does, but you relish in the way you react to him. His eyebrows pinch as he looks at you for any sign of discomfort.

His name slips past your lips. In that moment, you truly become his, and he becomes yours. Bodies meld together, each one of his thrusts sliding so pleasantly inside you. There’s no sound from either of you besides the brief exchange of names, moans from both of you, and the slick of your wetness.

He kisses you, thrusting at a steady, mind-crumbling pace. His chest brushes against yours, breathing uneven as he clenches the bedsheets next to your head. You quickly realize you could do this forever. The feeling of him so deep inside you would never subside, and you find yourself never wanting to separate from him.

Starlight gleams off his skin, the blue shine accenting the sheen of sweat clinging to him. His muscles contract as he holds himself over you, and his hair hangs over his eyes. All you can do in your current state is push it back, basking in the softness of it.

Picking up his pace, he slides one of his hands down your body, his thumb connecting with your clit. You’re a moaning mess, clinging to him as the familiar sensation returns to the pit of your stomach.

His trembling breath fans across your ear as he leans close. You’re unsure of how to handle all of the pleasure, your body spasming. He presses a kiss on that sensitive spot.

“I love you,” he whispers.

And that’s all it takes to have you shatter around him, your back arching as you grip onto his shoulders for dear life. He moans loudly, hips stuttering as your walls clench. When he spills inside you, it’s as if the last piece of you two finally comes together.

In bliss, you tell him you love him, too, over and over.

He kisses you passionately once more before gently pulling out of you, reassuring you that he’ll be right back so you let go. Grabbing a towel from your bathroom, he cleans you up, gaze drinking up every part of you. Once he’s finished, he crawls next to you in bed, pulling you to his chest.

You’re still certain you’ll wake up, and all of this will have been a dream, but until then, you’re going to enjoy it. Burying yourself in the warmth of his chest, you hum in content when he pulls the blankets over the two of you.

Finally, he’s here.

He’s no longer a memory trapped within the piano keys in your foyer.

He’s your Chenle, never to leave your side again.

#nct dream #chenle #nct imagines #nct #nct dream smut #nct scenarios #nct smut #chenle smut #chenle fluff #chenle angst

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anxious-witch · 6 months

Text

Inertia 7

Summary: Newton's first law expresses the principle of inertia: the natural behavior of a body is to move in a straight line at constant speed. In the absence of outside influences, a body's motion preserves the status quo.

Jan choose a direction of his life the moment he walked out of his parents house and cut all contact with them. He didn't want anything to do with them, or God anymore. Even his soulmark he wished he could leave behind. But when Nace Jordan joins the band, with a mark matching his own, can Jan keep going the same way he did? Or will the force make him change a direction?

Pairings: Jan Peteh/Nace Jordan

Warnings: None, I think? Please do tell me if I'm wrong I'll edit ot immediately

Notes: AO3 link

urprise! Early update of the last chapter. Thank you everyone who made it this far, especially people who consistently commented throughout. I have several things to say before you jump right in.

1) I am aware JO didn't actually preform at the EMA, but since this is already and au and I really liked the concept of the scene, it is here. Just roll with it 2) There will (hopefully) be two fics following this one, one with the focus on Bojan and the other on Kris. I am not sure exactly when I'll be writing and post them though, since December is quite busy, but until then, at least this is finished.

Anyway, this part is pretty much all fluff and very cheesy at the end, but I figured we all deserved it after all the angst

I believe that witness is a magnitude of vulnerability. That when I say love what I mean is not a feeling nor promise of a feeling. I believe in attention. My love for you is a monolith of try.

The woman I love pays an inordinate amount of attention to large and small objects. She is not described by anything. Because I could not mean anything else,

she knows exactly what I mean.

Once upon a time a line saw itself clear to its end. I have seen the shape of happiness. (y=mx+b) I am holding it. It is your hand.

What Space Faith Can Occupy By TC Tolbert

Jan wondered if light green walls of the therapist's office were suppose to somehow elevate the space. Made it seem more colorful.

Personally, it only reminded him more if a hospital.

Still, just as in all previous sessions, he had to remind himself he wasn't there just for himself. Kris had been genuinely worried after his breakdown. Jure and Bojan didn't know about it, but they likely suspected something had transpired.

He would need to tell Bojan about him and Nace eventually. But that, at least, was a problem for future Jan.

There was also Nace to think about. In the past three weeks, there had been slow, almost painful progress made between them. Still, he was trying. That counted for something, right?

He turned his attention back to the matter at hand.

His therapist was a young woman, Jan would guess somewhere in her thirties. She hat jet black hair and looked perfectly put together. She reminded him of Kris in that regard.

Which made sense, considering he only got a spot so quickly due to Kris' connections. Jan really, really didn't want to think about how he managed that.

"So, Jan," Nina said, "do you want us to continue on where we stopped last time, or do you have something from this week you'd like to discuss?"

Her voice was unkind, or even cold, but Jan still had to force himself to talk sometimes. His trust issues weighted heavily on him in moment like these.

"Well, no. Except that Nace and I actually went to play basketball, but I mentioned we will last week anyway."

Nina patiently waited for him to continue. When he didn't, she spoke again.

"How was it?"

Jan sighed. It was awful. Jan felt genuinely bad for even going along with it, considering how much Nace hated any sport that you had to play with the ball. It ended when Nace didn't manage to catch the ball one time Jan threw it. It hit him in the face and made his nose bleed.

Jan supposed there was a metaphor there somewhere.

"It wasn't great. Nace is...really bad at basketball."

She quickly wrote something down and Jan tried his best not to feel judged.

"And how did you feel about it?"

"Shitty, I guess. I didn't make him play, but it kind of felt like I did."

Nina tapped her pen to the notes.

"From what I have here, it seems Nace usually initiates these activities and they seem to be activities you like. Am I correct?"

Jan shrugged.

"Yes."

"And what do you think about that?"

How many times could she ask him that? Wasn't she supposed to tell him what to think about that? Jan felt increasingly annoyed.

"Why do you keep asking that? If you want to say something, then say it."

She pursed her lips.

"I am not here to tell you how to feel, Jan. I am here to help you verbalize it."

That was the dumbest fucking answer he ever heard.

"I already said I feel bad about it. What more do you want me to say?"

"Have you thought about doing the same for him?"

Jan paused. He haven't. Or well-he had, but he wasn't really sure there was an activity Nace liked that they could do together.

"I don't know if we have anything in common. Other than music, I mean. I know he is trying, but maybe this wasn't a good idea, after all."

Nina nodded, his face neutral. Always so goddamn neutral.

"Have you talked to him about it?"

"What, and break his heart? He'd just try even harder. I don't-"

I don't know what to say to make him give up on me. Jan clenched his teeth.

"I think you should consider trying one of his activity. Surely, there is something he likes that you don't hate."

Jan took in a deep breath. He was fighting the urge to mess up his nails even more, but if he started bleeding during practice again, even Bojan will notice.

"I guess. But that doesn't solve the main issue, does it?"

Nina sighed.

"Alright. How about you think about it, and we talk about something else for the rest od the session?"

Jan agreed and they moved on, but the thought stayed with him. Was he simply not putting enough effort?

The question haunted him enough for him to drive to Nace's apartment few hours later. He only sent him a text asking if he was home, and once he got a confirmation, he sat in the car and drove here.

It was probably rude, but Jan figured that if Nace had an issue with him being rude, they wouldn't be here in the first place.

It wasn't until he rang the doorbell and heard the barking did he remember Nace had a dog. Ollie.

He knew that, of course. It was just that the two of them usually met outside of Nace's apartment and several times they came here, Ollie was being babysat by Nace's sister.

Well. Jan supposed it was bound to happen to or later. If Ollie hated him, did that mean he was immediately disqualified from soulmate status?

Nace opened the door, trying to keep Ollie from rushing into the hallway. Jan felt caught off guard, despite the fact that he was the one who rang the doorbell.

Nace was wearing a tank top. Had Jan ever seen him in one before?

"Please get in before he runs out, I don't feel like trying to catch him."

Jan quickly stepped into the apartment and Nace closed the door behind him. The Nace carefully let Ollie come closer.

Jan kneeled down, offering his hand for him to sniff at. He liked dogs well enough, but he was always at a bit of a loss on what to do with them.

Cats you had to build a bond with. Usually just being in their general vicinity was enough at the start. You let them come to you. Even if you offered them treats, you had to leave them at the same distance at first.

Dogs? Dogs were unpredictable. They could love you or hate you your smell. Or whatever it was that they could feel around you.

"Dogs can always tell if a person is good or bad", his brother used to say. Jan, who had dogs both love and hate him for no clear-cut reasons over the years, couldn't quite agree.

Dogs could feel something, certainly. But that something was only a first impression and they choose that intangible thing as a base to be loyal or not.

Cats, at least got to know you first before making any judgments.

Ollie sniffed his hand and cocked his head to the side, as if trying to gauge if he was alright or not.

"Hello," Jan said awkwardly.

Ollie came closer, nudging his snout against his hand and Jan carefully petted him on the head, waiting to see the reaction. When he started wagging his tail, Jan felt relieved.

Nace's dog hating him wasn't something he wished to deal with. There were plenty of other things that made him want to turn back and run away.

"He seems to like you," Nace said softly.

One bad call he share with his owner, Jan thought grimly as he stood up.

"That's good. I think we should talk."

Nace sighed.

"As much as I love how direct you are, that sounds very ominous."

Jan simply took his shoes off and shrugged off his jacket.

Ollie followed them as they went into the living room. Jan wondered if they were creating some sort of bad karma for the place, having all their fucked up conversations here.

Or perhaps he spent too much time around Bojan and his superstitiousness was starting to rub off of him.

"Do you want something to drink first or-"

"How about we just get this over with and then after you can offer me stuff if you want me to stay?"

Nace awkwardly sank into the couch, far enough that Jan would have to stretch to be able to touch him, despite his long arms. Was it for his own comfort, or for Jan's?

They were closer physically since they talked the last time. Sitting closer, hand brushing against each other, squeezing each other's shoulders on occasion. That sort of thing.

Now, though, there was no of that. As if Nace was already getting used to the distance. Which Jan supposed was fair, even if he felt a familiar burning at the soulmark.

Before Jan could say anything, though, Ollie jumped on the couch and attempted to nuzzled at his chest. Jan felt thrown off balance a bit as he petted him, which only prompted Ollie to settle in his lap.

"I don't think I am doing this whole thing right," Jan confessed, not taking his eyes off Ollie.

"Could you please be more specific?"

Jan scratched behind Ollies ear. Matej's dog liked that. Ollie made a content sound so Jan continued.

"You keep putting so much effort into liking things that I like and trying them out. And I-I mean I can do it too, but I don't know if it's even right. Like, shouldn't we already have matching interests? Is it even healthy if we both have to change?"

He took his hands off Ollie and clenched them in frustration. He hated how his tongue always felt like lead when he was supposed to talk about these things. He harshly pulled at his hair and tied it back with the tie around his wrist.

"This works like any other relationship would, Jan."

Jan scoffed.

"Does it? I don't remember any of my friends tailoring their interests to fit me."

Nace took in a deep breath. Jan learned he always did that when he was frustrated, like he was stopping himself from saying anything before he was ready.

"Really? Kris never tried listening to metal for you? He knows you favorite brand of tea on accident? You always keep ear plugs in your car if he gets overstimulated because, what? You did that before you were friends?"

Jan felt speechless.

"That's-

"Different? Yeah, of course it is, because this is Kris we are talking about."

Nace sounded resigned. Hurt, even. Jan slowly looked at him, but now it was Nace avoiding his gaze. He was staring at his hands, his expression troubled.

"I don't mean to say discard your and Kris' friendship. I think it's amazing you have him, but I'm jealous. Not because I think there is anything going on, but because you seem to allow others to get close to you while keep me at arms length. And I don't know what to do at this point to change your mind."

Jan's heart squeezed painfully. He never heard Nace so resigned. He was always the one to try and find a solution and not give up.

He gently set Ollie on the couch, despite his small, protesting whine. Then he stood up sat closer to Nace. Close enough that their shoulders touched. This time, he was the one to take Nace's hands in his.

"I'm sorry. You are right."

Nace's head slowly rose, like he barely dared to be hopeful and look at Jan straight on.

"I was, well I am scared. We said we'll be friends, but I don't think I can be your friend. From the moment we met, I kept you at arm length and for one single moment I didn't, we ended up hooking up. You terrify me, Nace."

Nace's breath stuttered. Jan leaned his forehead against Nace's and closed his eyes.

"I had all but convinced myself everything about soulmates was bullshit, that all that was stories and people kept confirming them because they were desperate for it to be true. But that was all it was, a placebo effect. And then you came along. Shattered everything I thought I knew."

For a moment, there was silence. Then Nace's hand touched his neck, just a bit below the soulmark. Jan took in a deep, shuddering breath.

"May I?"

"Yes."

The first time Nace touched the soulmark, Jan was too terrified to even appreciate the sensation. But he did now. The feeling was warm and safe. Jan expected his heart to race, but instead it calmed down, as if soothed by Nace's touch.

Something about a gesture made something deep inside him uncoil and words just started pouring out of him.

"When I was fifteen, I started secretly listening to metal. The first time I did, I felt so guilty, I ended up crying and not allowing myself to eat for a day, as a penance. For weeks, I had been worse off than if I had never listened to it. It took me months to gather the courage to try again."

Jan hoped Nace would understand he was saying. He wasn't sure he could say it outright. Nace hummed.

"You are afraid, but you also know that doesn't mean this is bad because you are afraid."

Jan nodded, but Nace didn't say anything immediately after. When he finally spoke, he didn't say what Jan expected him to.

"When I was twelve, I was bullied a lot because of my weight. I remember being terrified of going to school. The only place I felt safe in was the church, because nobody bullied me there. I felt safe. Even if the conditions and rules weren't perfect, it was still better."

Jan opened his eyes, almost indignantly.

"I am not a church."

Nace cracked a small smile.

"No. But you are a safe space, even if the conditions and rules you impose aren't perfect."

Jan's answer was to kiss him. Not roughly, like he did before, but softly and slowly. Giving Nace time to pull away.

He didn't, instead he kissed him back and pulled him closer. One of Jan's hands curled around Nace's nape and the other reached for his wrist. He knew exact moment he touched his soulmark, because Nace shivered.

The only way Jan could describe the feeling was that the bond between them sang. Like the world slightly tilted and found a perfect balance.

Like they were perfect together.

Jan had to pull back from the kiss, fighting a near overwhelming fear that washed over him. Nace didn't let him go far this time, instead pulling him in a hug.

"It's okay."

Nace's voice was soft, and he was warm and comfortable and it was almost unbearable.

"I know it's fucking okay," Jan said, his voice breaking.

He buried his head in Nace's chest and hope he didn't feel the tears soaking his shirt. Nace didn't say anything after that, he simply held him as he cried.

Until the tears dried out and the fear slightly pulled back. Still, some doubts remained.

"What if the rules and conditions can't be improved anymore? What if this is just...who I am?"

He pulled back a bit, to study Nace's face as he answered. Unexpectedly, Nace grinned.

"Well, if a church gets a new priest-"

Jan rolled his eyes at the awful joke.

"You've been hanging with Bojan too much."

Nace was still grinning.

"A priest can also recommend new way of worship-"

Jan groaned loudly and pushed Nace back, so he landed on his back, laughing openly. He had a beautiful, infectious laugh that Jan couldn't help but laugh along as well.

"Please don't use church metaphors anymore. They are awful."

Nace stretched his arms over his head, exposing his muscles and tattoos even more. Jan couldn't help, but let his gaze linger on them.

"Make me."

Jan was never the one to avoid temptation. And Nace had always been so tempting. Almost like a red apple in a garden without color. Jan leaned down and kissed him again.

Nace melted into the kiss and reached out to him again. His hands reached Jan's hair and Jan tense slightly, but Nace gently pulled at the tie, until his hair spilled from the ponytail.

Jan was distracted enough by the kiss to let him. He wanted Nace closer and-

They were interrupted by a loud, insistent whine. Jan pulled back enough to look in the direction it came from, finding Ollie looking at them with the saddest expression he could possibly muster.

Nace burst out laughing, his whole body shaking.

"I think he doesn't like me hogging his new favorite."

Jan chuckled, sitting back up. He held his hand out and petted Ollie gently, immediately receiving a lick on his hand.

"Maybe I could have some sort of tea, if the offer still stands," Jan said, not looking away from Ollie.

"It absolutely does. I have mint tea Kris mentioned you liked."

Traitor, Jan thought, giving away my secrets.

"Nace?"

"Yeah?"

"Which one is your favorite?"

Jan turned his head to look, catching a surprise that flitted across his face before it melted in a soft smile.

"Probably chamomile."

Of course. The calming thing one always drank when they felt unwell to soothe and comfort. It fit him.

"I'll remember that."

With that Nace went into the kitchen, and Ollie brough Jan a ball he could throw for him. Jan took in a deep breath, feeling as if he just climbed a mountain. Whatever happened after this, he had a feeling he could handle after.

As terrifying as it could get.

Jan was nervously tapping his fingers against the wheel, resisting the urge to bite his nails. It was not a smart thing to do while driving.

"Are you really not going to tell me where we are going?"

He chuckled a bit at Nace's pleading tone. This really was an unusual role reversal for both of them, wasn't it?

"I told you, it's a surprise."

Nace huffed and settled back in his seat. Jan sneaked a glance at him when he stopped at the red light. Nace had his arms crossed over his chest, his warm brown jacket tightly wrapped around his biceps.

"One would think I am taking you to get shot," Jan teased, turning his gaze back to the road as the light changed to green.

Nace laughed at that, at least, his shoulders relaxing.

"No, I just-I am not used to surprises. You barely gave me any hints on what to wear!"

Jan smirked.

"I said wear something comfortable that you don't mind getting dirty."

He could feel Nace's unimpressed stare on him.

"Very helpful."

Jan chuckled and took a left turn, parking to the side. Nace immediately started glancing around, trying to gauge where they were. Jan couldn't help but think it was kind of cute.

He unbuckled his belt and got out of the car, waiting for Nace to do the same. When he did, he led him to a nearby building.

Nace was frowning, trying to piece together what they were doing. Jan decided to take pity on him.

"It's a pottery class."

His head immediately snapped towards Jan, his eyes widening.

"You are taking me to a pottery class??"

Jan swallowed, growing nervous all of a sudden. Did he misjudge? Did Jure mix something up?

"Jure mentioned you wanted to try it since your sister did pottery. I thought..."

"No! I mean, yes, I love the idea!"

He sounded so eager, so terrified that Jan would change his mind and snatch the offer away from him. Jan felt bad. Was he truly treating him in a way that made him think he'd play him like this for a joke?

"Alright then. Let's go."

There were people inside already, and their teacher quickly introduced himself. He gave them instructions on hand-building techniques with clay, saying they need to get used to that before they can move to the pottery wheel.

The process was messy and Jan underestimate just how bad he was at shaping the clay. When Nace looked over and saw his wonky cup, he doubled over laughing.

Jan side-eyed him, before taking a bit of clay and smearing it over Nace's shirt. Nace gasped.

Then he grabbed a piece of clay and smeared it over Jan's cheek. Jan slapped his hair away, trying to rub it off.

"If this gets into my hair Nace, I swear-"

Nace laughed again and someone shushed them.

"Can you two please let the rest of us work?" A blond man left of them said.

He was short, with blind hair just below his ears. He was frowning at them intently, reminding Jan of an annoyed cat.

His tall, tattooed friend-or partner, how could Jan know, really-gently pulled him by the sleeve.

"Lovro, com'on. They are just having fun. Look at this."

The man, well maybe even a boy, with how soft his features looked, immediately turned to the other man. He looked at him like...oh.

Jan looked at Nace, who was clearly eyeing the situation, seeing if Jan could handle it or if he needed to get involved.

Jan was hit by the sudden realization of how much he had come to care for him. Despite all the back and forth and his own grievances, he was-

He stopped his thoughts before any bigger words came to mind. It was still too early to think that. But maybe it wouldn't be, eventually.

Jan never thought of himself as someone who could settle down and yet that spark of hope still lived, nestled deep in his chest.

Maybe.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Nace asked, titling his head to the side.

Jan shook his head.

"Nothing. Let's try to shape these into something decent before we do that...wheel thing, yeah?"

Nace smiled, like a sudden light igniting in the dark.

"Yeah."

As Jan tried to save his clay cup, he suddenly felt bolder. He could ask, right? At worst, Nace will refuse, but when did Nace refuse him before? Jan cleared his throat.

"You could...come over after, if you'd like. You didn't meet Igor yet."

He didn't look up as he asked the question. It would be easier to take a no when he didn't have to worry about which expression he was making.

"You want me to come over?"

There was that tone again. Like Nace was shocked by this. Like Jan wasn't trying to do better for weeks now. He supposed he'd just have to keep trying.

"If you'd like to, yes. I did get some chamomile tea recently."

He sneaked a glance in Nace's direction. His eyes were soft and his mouth was lightly open, as if in wonder. Jan's heart started beating fasted.

"I would like that," Nace said quietly, looking directly at him.

Jan had to look away, but he couldn't help but smile slight. There was slight fear in his stomach still, but there was no ringing of the church bell, or an urge to reach for a necklace that wasn’t there.

He was still himself and he was still in control of it all. Simply taking steps in the right direction. It had been as if he was in inertia for very long time. After being stuck for so long, it was hard to get back into motion, but once he did, he knew it would get easier.

All he had to do was keep moving.

All Jan could hear was a drum of his own heart as they waited for the host to announce them. Thud. Thud. Thud.

It was finally time for them to preform at EMA. To try and get chosen to represent Slovenia at Eurovision. The importance, the fragility of the moment made all the colors more intense, almost as if they were in new, swirling patterns.

Jan took a look at his bandmates. Each of them in a different outfit that fit them perfectly. Bojan, in his loud combination of green shirt and pink pants, that he somehow managed to pull of regardless.

Kris, in a gold sleeves shirt and lighter pink pants that match. Of course-Kris always knew how much attention to draw to himself. Not too much and not too little.

Jure, with sky blue button up that perfectly fit his sunshine personality and darker purple pants for contrast.

All of them looked amazing, really. But it was Nace that Jan couldn't look away from.

Nace, who finally wore color. A purple suit with a silver shirt underneath. The suit had intricated details that made Jan want to run his fingers over the material and feel it's shapes.

When he arrived, he was always pale beige in their mix of chaos and color. Slowly but surely, that changed. And here they were now.

Jan shuffled closer to him, almost as if pulled by an invisible force. He could feel it, but he found it more comforting now, rather than scary.

"Ready?" He whispered, smiling at him.

"Ready," Nace answered, briefly brushing his hand against Jan's.

"And next up, we have Joker Out!"

They stepped on the stage as the people clapped and Jan could feel the adrenaline fully hitting him. He couldn't concentrate on whatever Bojan briefly said before he started singing.

All Jan could focus on was playing. His fingers slid over the strings just as perfectly as they did the very first time he nailed a song when he was sixteen.

Everything else faded away, like looking at the world through a sort of fog. Only music existed. Even Bojan's singing was slightly muted in that moment. Like Jan was alone with his guitar.

Then his gaze slid to Nace and he found him already looking in his direction. Nace, who still had the ability to be in Jan's bubble that one else could touch.

He didn't mind the company, though. Not anymore.

He sent him a little wink and watched as his cheeks turned slightly red. Then he turned back to the audience and took a deep breath. Then let the bubble snap and all the sound and sensations rush back to him.

Because there was never really a need for the bubble at all. Not when he was at the safe space.

There was no divinity here. None other than the music itself, that they shared with the audience.

When they played the last note, there was a thunderous applause and part of Jan already knew. He could feel it in their bones that they won.

The knowing of being at the right place, at the right time. With just the right people, too.

The rest od the night passed in a blur. Jan knew he talked to people, but later he'd be unable to recall what he said. He'd remember the high of the announcement that they won and all of his friends rushing into a group hug.

It wasn't until they all changed back to their everyday clothes and were waiting for Bojan in the cold, that the realization finally started to sink in.

"We won," he whispered into the night air.

"We did," Kris said, smiling.

Whatever makeup they put on him made him look more ethereal than usual. He looked more content than Jan had seen him for awhile.

"What is Bojan doing for so long?" Jure wondered, his eyes lingering on the doors they all cane through.

It was odd. As much as Bojan paid attention to his looks, he never took this long.

"I'll go check," Jan said, getting to his feet.

Jan felt slightly guilty, over how little he talked to Bojan outside of the practice in recent weeks. Being caught up in the whole soulmate dilemma, he didn't take the time to pay as much attention to his friends.

Well, that was another thing he could start fixing now.

He found Bojan in the changing room, completely dressed, but staring off through the window.

"Bojan? Is everything okay?"

Bojan flinched, as if woken up from a very deep sleep. He blinked at Jan, confused.

"Ah, yeah! Yeah, I was just a bit lost in thought. Did you guys wait for me for long?"

Jan stepped closer, putting his hand on Bojan's shoulder. Bojan leaned into the touch, breathing out slowly.

"Are you sure you are alright?"

"I-" Bojan bit his lip, his gaze jumping around the room almost frantically, never staying for long and completely avoiding Jan's face.

"I just...this is a lot. It feels enormous. And of course, of course I am happy we won. It just feels like we set a new course all of a sudden, if that makes sense. Like it feels like my life already changed."

Jan pulled him into a hug. Bojan took in a sharp breath and then relaxed, hugging him back. They just stayed like that for a moment.

"I know. It's terrifying but it's going to be okay. You have us, alright?"

Bojan's arms tightened around him for a bit.

"Yeah."

They were silent for a bit and Bojan already pulled away from the hug when Jan spoke again.

"I actually owe you an apology. With how I reacted when you brought up soulmates for all these years."

Bojan shrugged.

"It's fine. I figured it was a sensitive topic."

Jan shook his head.

"Yes but it's not an excuse. I am sorry, Bojan. You were allowed to be excited at prospect of meeting them without me putting you down for it."

He rubbed tips of his fingers against the nail of his thumb. Resisting the urge to mess it up more.

"I won't say I completely understand, even now with Nace. I still very much love being independent from him. But I am saying I understand more."

Bojan smiled, reminding Jan that if Nace was the light in darkness, Bojan was certain a sun, his rays bringing about a new day.

"Thank you for saying that. I am excited to meet her, one day. Whenever destiny decides we are ready."

Jan rolled his eyes, more for the dramatic effect than anything else. That was still extremely cheesy, but it was very on brand for Bojan.

"Sure, lover boy. Now, can we go before the rest of them freeze outside? It is December, y'know?"

Bojan laughed and grabbed his bag. He dramatically pointed to the door.

"To wherever destiny may lead us!"

Jan cracked a smile, unable to keep up the brooding persona.

"To whenever destiny may lead us," he repeated quietly.

Then he stepped over the threshold after Bojan and for the first time in many years he knew everything would be alright. As long as he had his family, soulmate included, by his side, everything would be alright.

No matter the challenges that awaited them.

#my writing #joker out #jance #inertia

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nellie-elizabeth · 2 months

Text

Grey's Anatomy: We've Only Just Begun (20x01)

And we're back! Crazy that this is the 20th season. I saw that Station 19 is ending after this season, which means Grey's has a very solid chance of outlasting another spinoff! Let's dive right in.

Cons:

I am still repulsed by Jo and Link, I cannot help it. They just do absolutely nothing for me and it feels like such a forced, lazy writing choice. I think part of it is just that Jo and Alex, and Amelia and Link, both felt like real, organic, interesting romances to me that were earned over a long period of time, and this is just like... eh, throw the leftovers together I guess.

My Owen and Teddy dislike will never go away, but in this episode it wasn't so much that they annoyed me as that the storyline felt completely unnecessary? Teddy collapsing and needing emergency surgery and potentially dying felt like even more of a lazy tacked on drama for the cliffhanger last season than I'm used to with this show.

Pros:

The good news for the future of this show is that I do continue to be interested by our intern characters, our new crop of leads. Jules and Blue with their awkward, hostile attraction and connection, Adams and Simone with their obstacles as they continue their burgeoning love story, Yasuda with her career doubts and anxieties. And in even more good news, Nick is leaving the hospital: I'm annoyed that it's to go be with Meredith, who deserves better than that stick in the mud, but at least that means he hopefully won't be around as much anymore.

This show is famous for its ridiculous disaster scenarios, and I like that it knows how to have fun with them and also comment on current events. The self-driving car malfunctioning and slamming again and again into the ambulance was a wacky scenario but also a believable extrapolation from stuff that's happened in real life, and it also gives an new and interesting challenge to several of the characters. I like that Adams and Simone have to make some of their own tough calls in the ambulance where they're trapped, but also have Meredith and Bailey outside guiding them through. Kind of a poignant metaphor for the current direction of the show, in a way: these characters we've been with for decades at this point are still around, and can still be depended upon, but the new kids have to forge their own path as well. I'm glad the patient in the ambulance survived, as did the guy inside the test car: a stressful and bizarre day of work, but ultimately a win, which I think everyone needed.

In Teddy news, as I said I was a little underwhelmed by the existence of this plot thread to begin with. But I did appreciate Winston being calm under pressure and totally handling the situation, saving her life and also steering Owen away from the midst of everything, encouraging him to get some rest. I also like Owen and Amelia having this steady friendship after all the tumult of their past relationship. Seeing her there for him during a difficult moment was great.

I love the role Meredith has in this world, now. She is a steadfast presence, and if this show continues for another decade to come, I hope Ellen Pompeo is willing to keep coming back for a couple episodes a season, so her presence is still felt. We're setting up an interesting plot that can develop in the background: Catherine Fox wants Meredith to drop her controversial takes about Alzheimer's research and go where the funding is, and Meredith actually seemingly agrees to this. She'll take the party line and stop making controversial waves for Catherine to deal with. But... she hands her research off to Amelia, so that it can continue in secret. This is really intriguing, and I actually got a little emotional thinking about Amelia and Meredith working on this project together!

We end with Teddy waking up, thank goodness, Link and Jo sharing a romantic moment (no thank you), and Richard going to an AA meeting to recommit to his sobriety - good for him! I'm excited to see where the show takes us next; there are always enough characters and stories going on in this show that it keeps me hooked, even when some of the characters are... not my favorites. We'll see which way things go from here!

8/10

#review #grey's anatomy #grey's anatomy review #greys anatomy #greys anatomy review #grey's abc #greys abc

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wanderingblindly · 8 months

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For the director's cut, even though I don't really know what a director's cut is, I wanted to know about "All the stars I cannot see" because I love soulmates aus but they tend to be all really similar and I loved how you spun the feelings about having a soulmate

I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THIS FIC THANK YOU FOR ASKING

Re: why it might not feel like a normal soulmate AU

That's probably because it actually wasn't one originally! I had written and outlined a good portion of the fic, but I just couldn't find the... oomf. That last little detail that would make it all fall into place. I kept asking: What is it that brings them back together after Charles breaks it off??

And then I saw the prompt list for Lestappen week and realized that I could spin the prompt into a "reluctant soulmate" idea!!!! Everything fell into place from there -- Charles, sick of feeling like a burden to everyone fate brought into his life, and Max, believing that fate will only do him harm.

Other insider information about the story:

I originally wanted to have an underlying motif of "Native vs Learned Language" tied throughout it, but I couldn't quite get the storyline to move in a way that worked out.

I chose to have only Max and Jos communicate in Dutch because it both showed a familial tie and highlighted how talking with Jos isolated Max (since no one else around them speaks it). I then wanted to have a culminating moment where Max put his foot down and fought back against Jos exclusively in English, as a metaphorical end to their father/son relationship. I have an excerpt of the planned scene below!

"Get out of my room.” Max spoke lowly, his eyes turned towards the floor and his feet together. “Wat zei je zojuist tegen me?” The anger in Jos’s voice was clear, nearly shaking with it as he stepped deeper into Max’s small driver room. Max spoke Dutch privately with family. “Get out of my room.” Max repeated, glaring up through his lashes and separating his feet – strengthening his stance. “I said, get the fuck out of my room.” He spoke English for work.

I ended up replacing this climactic route with the quali crash/concussion/Charles's panicked confession :)

Overall, I was heavily inspired by the song GODDAMMITALL. I listened to it on repeat the entire time I wrote this piece, as I tend to do. It's really where I got the idea of Max feeling fundamentally broken, unlovable in a cosmic sense. It's also where I found some of the imagery that kicked this fic off (the childhood rooftop scene, specifically).

This was an insanely long "behind the scenes" peak, but thank you again for asking!!!!!

#Ask me :)#All The Stars We Cannot See #Lestappen #This fic was so difficult for me to write #mostly because i couldn't figure out what the emotional peak would be #but I'm generally pretty happy with the results #and always astonished at the reception #directors commentary

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bombingqueen · 8 months

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Season 2 and 3: The Winchester's and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Demon Deals

Season 2 rating: 9/10

Best episodes from S2: Simon Said, RoadKill, and AHBL I & II

Worst episode: Hollywood Babylon (Just boring)

Season 3 rating 6/10

Best Episodes from S3: No Rest for the Wicked and The Kids Are Alright

Worst episode: Red Sky at Morning (just boring)

Sterling K. Brown is amazing his role as Gordon Walker is great.

I wish the special children plot line lasted longer. I believe so much more could have been done with them.

Ellen and Jo are not the best written characters on a re-watch. I liked them first time but not anymore.

Love episodes with 'human' monsters

Law enforcement episodes are some of my favorites

Dean doesn't have the best mental health in season 1 but in season 2 and 3 he has really started to derail. Couldn't keep his father save and he might lose his brother to an undetermined future.

Sam does stupid shit when he is emotional especially when Dean is involved.

Bella Talbot is a Boss Bitch. I like her more this time around.

Ava is adorable even if she turns into a little serial killer. "I just helped steal some dead guy's confidential files! I'm awesome"

I want to know the story behind 'funky town' Did happen before Sam went to Stanford or when he started hunting with Dean again?

Honestly, Gordon acting like Dean wasn't gonna hunt his ass down for murdering Sam is hilarious

Sam always blames himself for situations out of his control. Makes me sad.

I'm pretty sure that the hotel in Playthings is an Antebellum home.

2.12 Everytime I watch Nightshifter, I can only think of this:

2.12 Dean is such a simple man :" I like him. He says okey-dokey." What a fuckin dork. I love him.

2.12 Sam is so exasperated and bitchy this episode

2.12 Victor Henriksen was short-lived. Would've have been nice for the boys to have an ally in the feds.

2.12 The ending is amazing

Sam continues to believed that he can't be saved

Jared Padalecki is amazing and terrifying in 2.14 Born Under a Bad Sign

2.14 Demons really be trying to make the boys divorce

2.14 The Jo scene is so uncomfortable and the actors did amazing job of portraying it

2.14 I literally read a fanfic where Dean was in the place of Jo. It was some good shit not gonna lie

2.14 I'm pretty sure Meg was shocked that Dean would literally help his brother get away with murder. What's one more crime?

2.14 I have to give it to Meg. She was really trying to get Dean to turn against Sam and kill him. Hell, if she stopped possessing Sam after using his body to kill Dean, Sam would have embraced his dark destiny

Poor Sam. Dean knows what Madison meant to him in more ways than one

Wish we saw more of the lawyer and Deacon from 2.19 Folsom Prison Blues

2.19 Dean having fun in prison and fitting is so well is such a vibe. Sam's being disturbed by it was amusing.

2.20 Even in a world where they were never hunters, Dean still becomes an alcoholic

2.20 Wincest fics having DJINN are my favorite. Good shit right there

2.20 Dean wants Sam to be happy but not at the expense of losing their relationship with one another. Bruh, that shit is depressing.

Aww! Sam is Azazel's favorite

Andy is me in AHBL

Sam flexing his leadership skills in cold oak. Feel like a proud momma

Sam's first death hits hard. The relief on his face when he sees Dean coming for him. The last thing before death he sees is Dean allowing him to let go safely. And Dean just holding onto his world with desperation as his soul dies along with Sam.

Sam finding out about Dean's deal is heartbreaking. He was taken from his brother by a demon, finds out about his demon, he was killed violently, and then he is resurrected only to find out his brother sold his soul. Poor Sammy.

I forgot how shocking Sam's descent into savagery is. Blood thirsty little giant. Don't blame him though. I would be pissed off to if I was stabbed in the back literally and metaphorically

John really climbed out of the bowels of hell, saved his boys, and yeeted to Heaven

Dean becoming catatonic after Sam's death is so sad; his entire world just ended. Family may not end in blood but he is sole survivor of his own blood

Jensen Ackles flexing his acting chops with his emotional scenes begging for his brother to be okay and then having a monologue over his corpse is so fuckin good. Makes me cry everytime.

Demons calling Sam the Boy King or any alternative will never not be cool but it will continue to be funny

I like episodes involving their childhood and baby Dean tried so hard for Sammy

I actually didn't care for blond Ruby the first time I watch the series but I like her more during the re-watch. She is awesome and snarky

As much as I like Bella, she is fuckin dumb for stealing the colt like what the hell man. She reaped what she sowed right there

I used to find mystery spot funny but is more depressing than anything. Sam was barely holding on to his sanity and his moral compass was derailing fast

The way Dean begins to become more unhinged as his deal grows closer made my heart hurt

Lilith poked a goddam bear torturing and killing Dean in front of Sam's face. Gotta give her props; she had fuckin balls considering Sam's future. Guess Lucy didn't give her the memo or just didn't care since he was stuck in the cage. Having Sam Winchester on your ass is probably worse than facing Dean. Unhinged Sammy is somethin else

#Observations and opinions from seasons 2-3 #samdean #dean winchester #sam winchester #the epic love story of sam and dean #wincest

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poorlittlegreenie13 · 2 years

Note

Modern Jo/Maybelle thoughts?

THANK YOU FOR ASKING, I HAVE A CLEAR VISION

This is part one, part two is here

This got ridiculously detailed… sorry

My vision is that they start off as neighbors in an apartment building.

Jo lives alone because Greta recently moved in with Carson, and Maybelle lives with her kids so Jo just assumes she’s straight because guys come to her apartment a lot.

But one day Maybelle knocks on Jo’s door early in the morning, dressed in pajamas, holding a baby & is like “Gosh I’m so sorry to ask you this but my hot water isn’t working and you seem like the handy type, would you mind taking a look at it?”

JO IS IN LOVE.

And she is the handy type so she’s like, of course, anything for this woman 🫠

Maybelle’s apartment is so cozy and warm Jo would be looking around like she’s stepped into Oz (ha)

Maybelle just worriedly paces around the bathroom rocking the baby while her other kid, a little boy, runs around the apartment like a maniac.

Jo’s like… are you okay?

And Maybelle gets so sad and tearfully explains that she’s gotta make breakfast and get the kids to school and daycare, and then she needs to take a shower and get ready and she can’t be late to work again because if she gets fired it’ll be a huge problem for her family.

Jo’s lesbian brain is like… must make nice girl stop crying.

So she fixes the hot water pretty easily (because I believe in my heart that she could fix anything she set her mind to) and Maybelle is soooo pleased but she’s still running late

So Jo, who just really wants to help, nervously asks if it would make things easier if she watched the kids while Maybelle showered?

Because she presents as so butch & masc, she doesn’t want Maybelle to get creeped out.

But sweet Maybelle just grins and hands Jo the baby, thanking her profusely.

Jo finds herself with a sleeping child in her arms and another child running around her ankles.

She’s chill about it though, I think she would be able to earn the respect of kids yk what I mean?

Maybelle gets out of the shower and comes into the kitchen in a fluffy bathrobe with a towel on her head, taking the baby from Jo and kissing her head, and then kissing Jo’s cheek without thinking about it.

Jo is blushing smiling and kicking her feet (metaphorically)

Maybelle is just smiling at her.

“Well now you’ve gotta let me make you breakfast!” she says, expertly balancing the baby on one hip as she starts to cook scrambled eggs.

Nobody has made Jo breakfast in a loooong time

I cannot overstate this, Jo is in LOVE with this woman

After that morning, things seem to break in Maybelle’s apartment more and more…

Jo always fixes them for ber

Maybelle always kisses her cheek and thanks her

Maybelle also starts bringing Jo over leftovers from her cooking because she’s pretty sure Jo eats takeout every night & Maybelle wants to make sure she’s getting hearty meals!

(those meals are made with love)

Jo is so fucking flattered

Maybelle loves making Jo blush, she thinks it’s so cute

Jo buys Maybelle’s little boy, Tommy (I am making that name up) a birthday present & Maybelle makes her sit down and eat a piece of cake with the family

One night Maybelle shows up at Jo’s door looking a little bit embarrassed and she’s like “Tommy really wanted you to join us for a movie night. We’re watching Wall-E!”

Jo just smiles at her. “Tommy did, huh?”

Maybelle smiles at the floor, then looks back up at Jo, blushing herself. “Well, we all like having you around, Jojo.”

Jojo 😭 Jo would be SOLD

Maybelle sits next to Jo on the couch, the baby in a bassinet next to them, Tommy on the floor.

Halfway through the movie, Maybelle’s head would drop onto Jo’s shoulder.

Jo would freeze. Because she still thinks Maybelle is straight and really doesn’t want to ruin their friendship.

But Maybelle just looks up at her with wide eyes and says “Do you mind?”

Jo shakes her head quickly. “Course not.”

Maybelle smiles, snuggling up to Jo. “I’m just so darn tired,” she murmurs, bringing an arm around Jo’s waist. “And you’re so cozy.”

Gay panic. Gay panic.

Jo can’t move, it’s like when a cat falls asleep on you. She tells herself Maybelle probably doesn’t get a lot of sleep and is just taking advantage of the quiet moment.

But against her better judgment, Jo lets her arm settle around Maybelle’s shoulders, pulling her closer.

Live Maybelle reaction: 🫠🫠🫠

When the movie ends, Tommy jumps on his mom to wake her up.

She laughs and hugs him and for a second they’re all cuddled there on the couch, and it’s the first time Maybelle hasn’t felt alone as a mother in a long time.

She sits there for a second longer before making herself get up & put Tommy to bed. It’s second nature for Jo to watch the baby at this point.

Once he’s asleep and Maybelle carries the baby to her bedroom, looking over her shoulder and waiting for Jo to follow.

Jo feels like she should probably go home but is not about to turn Maybelle down.

“She’s asleep,” Maybelle says, setting the baby into her crib next to the bed and turning to Jo. She smiles and says, “Thanks for keeping me company.”

Jo is like “I like keeping you company!”

Maybelle smiles. “Don’t you ever get lonely in that big apartment all by yourself?”

Jo scoffs, and though she’s never really thought about it before says “All the time.”

“You could stay here sometimes,” Maybelle says, biting her lip. “If you wanted to.”

“With you?” Jo asks.

Maybelle nods, smiling sheepishly. “I told you I like having ya around. You’re a lot better than any man’s ever been.”

Jo basically never leaves after that.

They never officially start dating, it just kind of happens.

When the kids are at school/daycare the next day, Maybelle stops Jo in the doorway as she’s leaving, laughs nervously, and kisses her on the lips.

Jo is so surprised she forgets to kiss back.

Maybelle just laughs at herself, high pitched and nervous, and shuts the door in Jo’s face.

After a few seconds of standing there like an idiot, Jo knocks and the door flies open, Maybelle practically jumping into her arms as Jo actually kisses her back <3

I am going to do a part two, this ask awakened something in me.

#aloto fanfic #a league of their own #a league of their own fic #aloto #aloto series #a league of their own series #jo de luca #jo and Maybelle #maybelle fox #jo x maybelle

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livvyofthelake · 10 months

Note

yea i DO want an in depth explanation of how everyone relates to kit and ty

well this could be the longest post ever….. i talked about some of them already but i’ll give you some of my favorites rn and then probably go into the rest later <3

first i wanna talk about margaret of the map of tiny perfect things fame, i put her at the very beginning and the very end like bookends because that movie is about a timeloop and i thought it would be fun to like. begin and end the same you know… and then of course she’s just like ty because of how she let herself fall into that time loop as a metaphor for grief because she had this inability to let go of her mother and would have rather lived the same horrible day over and over again if it meant she didn’t have to live in a world without her mom. and she would have just made the map with mark and looked for all the small perfect moments within that day because she was too afraid of the bigger picture of life…. and then of course the whole movie is about mark trying to find a way OUT of the loop and he’s the one that helps her see the beauty in the ever changing nature of life and she’s only able to break the loop once she learns this…. like yeah well that needs to happen to my buddy ty!!!

another favorite is zombieland, i’m literally always saying that kit could do zombieland…. the thing about columbus zombieland is that well he’s a loser with no life and then it’s the end of the world and he survives by isolating himself from everyone. but he’s still trying to make it back to his family in ohio for one last chance at not being alone, and then he can’t do that but he finds a new family with tallahassee and witchita and little rock…. and well kit lovesss isolating himself as a way of protecting his heart but he still wants to be able to someday have a family, and he DOES now because he has tessa and jem and mina and jace and all the blackthorns…. also if you’ve seen the zombieland movies you’ll know that when columbus proposed in the sequel witchita immediately just left because she’s afraid of committing and her primary goal through the whole franchise has been to protect her sister so she used that as an excuse to run away from him… like. whatever. and then they killed a bunch of zombies together!!

little women is there because a) i was including as many things as i could think of that had multiple versions of the same characters. and b) because laurie’s whole deal is that he is so desperate to be a part of the march family that he would have married literally any of those girls. i’m not of the mindset that laurie only married amy as a consolation prize for losing jo, because i think he only wanted to marry jo because she happened to be his best friend and he wanted to be a part of her family. i think that laurie and amy were in love but i also think that it’s not like soulmate shit or anything they’re in love because they chose to be in love. i love amy’s speech in the 2019 adaptation about how she doesn’t think love just Happens and that if you just pick someone and commit to them that’s love enough to be meaningful. and i think her and laurie chose each other out of knowing that they wanted similar lives and could give each other something the other wanted and yes they loved each other as friends before they loved each other as more but it’s not necessarily a romcom situation with them. like they were in love but not because of some out of their hands fated romance deal you know. and i think there’s a similarity there to how kit and ty chose each other more so than it was fated. i know i’ve said a lot about them being like dated to be together although i don’t believe i’ve ever used that word. but i always mean it in the sense that they initially just picked each other and now they’re always going to be pulled together because of that. wow i just went on forever with this one huh ok moving on

some shorter explanations: twilight is there for the same reason little women is i think bella has the same thing wrong with her that laurie does. ari and dante get to be there because well we were all 15 together simple. allie and will get to be there because she’s the reincarnation of king arthur and we’ve all already established that kit is shadowhunter king arthur. do revenge is there for the toxic girl best friend-ism. enola holmes is there because it would have been wrong to not include literally the only sherlock holmes related media i have seen. benjamin is there because well he’s just like ty fr. handsome devil is there because when i watched that movie i saw my pal eddie dating amber be super annoying and i was like well i think he has kit herondale swag. and that was that i didn’t think about it beyond that. tangled is there for obvious reasons. fear street is there because sam and deena are insane about each other and also divorced and in a life threatening situation and also in love and well that is going to happen to ty and kit in twp

#who’s even left oh my god i’ve been typing forever…#oh of course the red white royal blue guys are there just because of the ring/key exchange thing that made me insane #we have all been here for any explanation we would need for that though.#asks #timeless video

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feral-teeth · 4 months

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Hi! If you're feeling it, List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! get to know your mutuals and followers

I answered a different ask before this, so I wanted to use this one as a deep dive into my interests!

Thank u for asking, btw! It rlly means a lot <33

Click on show more to see my answers!

Follow my letterboxd if you like movies as much as I do!

Part 1 - Favourite movies

1) Favourite movies

Saltburn - cinematography is stunning and the symbolic metaphors… wow. It really is easy to edit because the movie is just so damn stunning and has extremely powerful and beautiful shots.

The dark and twisted and sexy themes are right up my alley and I loved the ambiguity of Oliver as a character. He was the Minotaur of the labyrinth and he became king of the castle that placed him there. And we never saw it coming, or at least Felix’s family didn’t.

But Saltburn was always waiting for him, it never belonged to that family anyways. It was always just waiting for its next host.

My favourite vampire movie that doesn’t have any supernatural elements to it. But you could feel the vampire lurking in the shadows, around every corner once he entered Saltburn. He killed all of the other hosts, drank their blood until they run dry.

And it finally belonged to him.

Midsommar - this movie lulls you in with a sense of safety and you fall right into the pit filled with a glowing light that never goes away like the sun in Midsommar.

You feel happy for her in the end, she’s smiling right? You feel like his boyfriend deserved his fate in the end.

Sadly, she’s gone from one manipulator to another. But at least she’s happy. Girl power!1!

Rise of the Guardians - this story takes you away and makes you feel like a kid again when watching. It makes you recall times in your childhood when you wished that Jack Frost could come and give your town a fresh layer of snow so that you could have a snow day off from school. Magic and fantasy will never be lost in my heart, especially when I’m watching this movie <3

(Also always had a crush on Jack Frost tbh)

How to Train your Dragon- feeling like you don’t belong? Like the black sheep of the family ?and then creating a whole new way of living that makes your lives easier? It’s giving neurodivergent people who struggle to survive in a world not built for them, so they create their own worlds or fix things in the one that we have to make it easier for everyone, but especially those with disabilities.

That might just be me though, and the dragons are super cool! I really wish I could ride a dragon. I remember having dreams of riding a white dragon in the sky after I watched the movie when I was younger. I also wish I could have a family like Hiccup and Astrid, to find somewhere that I feel like I belong. I guess I am going to have to create that space, or hopefully find it soon.

Little women - Jo March and this movie has my whole heart and inspired me to write and play and to care about my interests and to look at the world through the lens of a child and have fun whenever I can. I love stepping into this world and to live in the fantasy of what creativity can bring.

Mamma Mia - this movie is my childhood. It’s what started my dreams of travel and having a beautiful relationship with friends and to find the loves of my life. The setting in Greece is stunning, and it makes me yearn to see the blue azure waters in person one day. To see the architecture, to walk among all of the footsteps that make its way across the roads made of stone. I love the soundtrack and no offence to ABBA, I only listen to the Mama Mia version of their songs because the voices from characters in the movies remind me of how much fun they had. I want to have my wedding there, right where Sophie did. I want the dance parties and the breaking out into song and the raunchiness and fun vibes they had. Please send these good vibes to me, universe.

Mamma Mia here we go again - I love watching Donna fall in love with each man, and the music doesn’t hurt either. It’s just an overall fun time, and to see the main trio that I fell in love with as their younger selves and seeing more of that dynamic is so so fun. Also this movie is just so wistful for me and makes me wish I could live in the 70s. The outfits in this movie are so much fun too, and I will be taking inspiration on my next rewatch and go shopping soon.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire - very gay, beautiful striking movie that makes me feel things I can’t put into words. Heartbreaking and yearning that is far too relatable. Love and heartbreak, especially sapphic heartbreak is history repeating itself. I wish to love as strongly and as madly as they do. But please don’t give me the heartbreak, please let me stay with the lover I am given.

La La Land - a beautiful soundtrack, this made me fall back in love with music and lighting design and colour and the movies. I need to create or be in movies as soon as I can. This movie showed the both negative and positive sides of that world, but I still crave to be apart of that world. I need to live and breathe in it. I need to be an actor. Please, it’s all I’ve ever dreamed of when I was younger. I also need to be a musician, to create songs and compose lyrics that will bring others to tears and create an impact through my music like music does to me. I hope the universe is on my side with this one, I think I wouldn’t be able to breathe if I never ended up doing what I wanted. I would never be able to live without music and performance.

Honourable mentions:

Luca

Call me by Your Name

Impractical Magic

The Holiday

Howl’s Moving Castle

Parasite

Totoro

Kiki’s Delivery Service

Secret Life of Walter Mitty

If I could step into movies, I would

If you made it this far, follow my letterboxd!

If you read this far I love you.

Please let me know if you like any of these movies or if these reminded you of any you liked! I love any suggestions <3

#get to know me tag #wiggog-y-hecox #about me #fave movies of all time

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joannasteez · 3 years

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Oh Frank request! Could be soft or smutty but like you know how he has his Henleys he loves what about you wearing them. When’s he gone because you miss him and he catches you sleeping in one? Or he knows how much you love them so he buys some for you but you still just end up stealing his? Idk anything with this man and his beloveds shirts will bring me joy. K bye 🥰💖

—“I think I know my Frank request -- Frank comes in late at night after an awful day and sees you sleeping? He snuggles you, which makes you wake up, and you share some sweet kisses? Ugh this probably sounds dumb so feel free to alter the prompt to however speaks to you. 💜🌿— @rae-gar-targaryen

A/N: The two request were pretty similar so I decided to mesh them together!!! Naturally I turned this into something much more than what was asked because……. Well…… I cant help it.

WARNING: NSFW at the end!

Tag-list: @rae-gar-targaryen @sadthotsonlylove @straightestgay-voice @moonofheroin @herefortheart @sesamepancakes @nightlywords7 @write-fromthe-start @allaboardthereadingrailroad @appropriate-writers-name @generic-posts @nutterbu @my-rosegold-soul ……slashed through @’s mean your blog didn’t show up!

𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐈𝐎𝐔𝐒 𝐅𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐔𝐑𝐄

...all warfare is based on deception...

War was the worst thing he knew, everything he hated. Then it became the best thing he had, nearly everything he loved. Then it was the only thing......Idle. War was, is, always would be idle. An unceasing cycle. Men killing, men stealing, men defying the limits of their goodness. Dancing graceless beyond the safety of moral thresholds, fading to become one with the furthest reaches of malevolent shadows. It was easy. War like this, colored in darkness and sinking in bottomless sin, was terribly easy. It molded and bathed its doers, melted crimson hell into their veins till the smell, touch, taste of it was all they knew. Till they loved it.

But this war? This clash of tender touches and bruising kisses he'd been in, was like nothing he'd seen. Felt. Heard. It'd been too long. Time gave perception hell, blotted and blurred his, rendering it to total annihilation. But it did that to everyone, struck them with grief, marauded them of truth, only then to place before them a towering foe. It just so happened that deception was Frank's formless, faceless adversary. Because that's what all this was right? The possibility of having, holding, full possession of intimacy. Complete fondness for another. Dare he even think... love unconditional. 'Yeah fuck that', he thought. He was right to struggle, be at war with this, with you. Give you longing stares that contradicted the soulless touch of his fingers, because you were duplicitous. And so was your tenderness...

...the gentle rain of breath falling from your lips to his skin, so soothing...

...warming kisses that melt the stinging ache of blue lesioned muscle...

It was all a lie. You were going to sink the knife into him any day now, prove he was unworthy of all this affection. Up and leave on your own or by force of the deathly chaos clouding him. Pack your bags and change your locks, or be packed away by a damn bullet.

Those thoughts were months old now though. Long gone.

...the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting...

Waving white flags isn't Frank's thing, never would be. He's a 'to the death' sort of soldier.

But you-

You started wearing his shirts. His henley's.

He'd known then, he was losing the war, that maybe the deception was an illusion of his own making, conjured up by fear, because hope was too big a thing to grasp at the time. Too large to hold and too heavy to carry. But it'd felt so good to fail, be trodden upon by your patience. A quality that made you picturesque. Like paintings of old, the way they sit and wait for wondered eyes to come and admire. They know the beauty they possess, the stunning ways of their marred nature, they're just waiting for you to realize it too. That it's inescapable.

He'd came to your place one day, saw you shaped in the softly sewn cotton blend of his shirt, same as he can see it now, and had felt completely arrested. Subdued by a heavy intensity drowning his limbs, awakening his purpose. Revitalizing it. He'd been doing it for some time, erasing the grime from the streets, ridding the earth of scum too unworthy of life to even breathe. It was bad to some, evil, but to him it was necessary. An action taken to garner peace, for the greater good of the city he called home. But it wasn't just that anymore, it was you now too.

Purpose, it felt, feels like goddamn, God given purpose .

Roaming about your apartment in his clothes, sipping away at a stained coffee mug, fingering the pages of an old, worn novel, it all meant something. That when people stare fondly at roses, they place in them all the love they have to give. That when we look to the stars, a sense of our wonder shines through with every twinkle. We give our hope to futures unknown, to tomorrows we cant even see. It's not love he feels, at least he doesn't think it's love, but when he comes to you, sees you stretched out along the sheets, looks to you with wonder the way we do the sky, wearing things that belong to him, hope twists sharp in his chest. Rips into him possibilities that feel a little ways away from not wanting to be without you. It's too complex a thing to put into words, maybe one day he can muster the courage, flatten the tip of his tongue to the roof of his mouth before laying it down. Utter the beginnings of a four letter word that feels dangerous and all too like forever. Un-surety is a state Frank's been in for a while, but he knows you in this moment, it's something he wants to protect.

"You just gonna stand there?"

Your words make him move. "Forgot you were a light sleeper".

His voice is a midnight blue. Dark with staggering depth, littered with specs of starry warmth.

You roll around, shuffle up against propped up pillows, blinking away weariness. He forgets sometimes, complicated isn't just his M.O. Life's got that unearthly way about it for everyone that comes into it. The way it trudges you through a flood of grime, smatters you with light, but never enough to blot out the murky darkness. Shatters your resolve, you're nothing but flattened cracked pieces of glass. Hardens your instinct, now you're partially made of steel, or at least something like it. You stopped sleeping heavy a long time ago.

"Go back to sleep". A command. Soft, but still a command. He can't help himself. Heavy, red stained hands peeling away layers of black. You've been trying to get him into wearing other things, but never having specified a color. Coming back washed in blood seems to be his way of compromising.

"Cant now. You woke me up".

He prioritizes the shower over extending to you a proper greeting, but with good enough reason. Waiting with as much patience as he has for the umber of his eyes to return. Subdue the rough, hellish black that tends to appear, takes over in his time of vigilantism. You don't deserve soulless eyes, so he tries never to give them to you.

He's surrounded by old wall tiling, a slightly chipped, tawny brown organization of squares. It's not old to you though, "it's seasoned Frank", you’d told him once. The rushing of water, raining down like winter morning snow on the skin. Hell's kitchen swirling down the drain. Vindication, in this cozy little bathroom, it all feels like vindication.

The peripheral sight of him bombards the flit of your eyes over small letters. Morrison's about to give a deep ass metaphor, something to do with armless-ness and parental negligence, but Frank strides out the bathroom. Body a canvas of harshly scattered indigoes, accented by splotches of sangria. A stark swatch of mauve coloring the pale apple of his cheek. And then here comes the mumbling, "had a shirt in here", thick fingers rummaging through a draw he kind of just took over one day. "Where's my damn shirt". You're not really sure how it happened, one day miscellaneous things rested idle there, and now they lay else where, a small sea of black clothing items rolled up military style and tucked away in their place.

He turns, settles his stare on you shirtless, somehow towering the length and width of the bed. 'It's his shoulders', you think. The way he squares them, it makes him look bigger. 'His eyes'. Those bad boys could make anybody feel small. "Is that my last shirt?"

Your eyes roll back to your book. "Hi to you too".

"Hi". It's more of a grunt than a greeting, but with Frank those tend to be one and the same. "Is that my last shirt?"

"I don't know, maybe". You look down on the slightly baggy top. Feigning confusion. "Is it?"

"Where's yours?"

In the garbage...somewhere taking up space in the closet...on the rack at a good will... on someone else's back. There's a bunch of answers you could give. "Stop asking me things you know the answer to".

He settles for a tank top. "The point of me buying you your own was so we don't have to share".

"I didn't ask you to do that".

He sighs, comes over to you and leans up against your nest of pillows, a quiet battle of adrenaline and fatigue ensuing, warring through his hard body. Makes it uneasy to settle amongst the softness surrounding him. But you mediate, swinging a leg over his waist, straddling built denim clad thighs. You stopped trying to figure out the jeans in bed situation a while back, it's better for your mental that way. "Look", you start, "There's a science behind this that you're missing Frank. I can't wear them unless you've already worn them. Your scent is vital to my relaxation process".

He gives you this mix between a scoff and a chuckle. "It's soundin' like you're pushing obsessed sweetheart".

"Maybe", you tease. Feeling the rough indentations of his hands smoothening over your thighs, slowing up the curve of your ass, till they're at your waist. Prompting you to come closer. A sly grin manifesting itself over your lips. "But I don't hear you complainin' about it".

Realization piques now that you're closer to him. The circling of mauve on his cheek wasn't there the last time you saw him. About three weeks ago. "Rough night?"

"Yeah somethin' like that".

You hum, work your way out of worrying about new bruises and into something much less fretting. Everything about Frank is hard, rigidly defined, but the tinged pastel pink shaping his every word with a cupids bow, is soft. Accessorized by a slim crimson slit. He gives you a hum of his own, pulsing bass reverberating under your touch as you draw him in at the nape of his neck, meeting his lips. A kiss that feels all too much like a war truce, calming silence amidst the mayhem of your lives. The slip of his tongue working in tandem with his mouth, peace in times of raised hell. He likes to hold your face, feel your jaw move against stout fingers. Buttery skin and the faint taste of coffee. A shiver quickening up warm to redden his ears, hearing the fervid twist of your lips. And when you catch his tongue, pressure it with your own for a lush little suck, he groans. Chases you for more as you push away. Leg swinging over and off the bed, moving onward to the bathroom.

'Whose obsessed now' you think. The slightest sigh escaping him as he loses you in his hold.

You're on a little mission of your own it seems to him, the clattering of bottles sounding, mumbles of determination sounding with them till it's all drowned out by the steady rise of a thumping bass. Groovy melody from next door bleeding through your thin apartment walls, saturating the small insignificant cracks, till it's all he can hear. 'Some of the greatest to ever do it', he thinks. 'Earth, Wind and fuckin' Fire'.

It's rare you see him like this. Laid back, subdued, a little bop of rhythm dancing his head, ticking his socked feet. "First Wutang and now Earth, Wind and Fire?", you smirk. "Might have to keep you around a little longer with all this good music taste".

You come back to him with a jar in hand, wrist unscrewing the top. Eyes devoutly attentive to his cheek. 'Old family recipe", you whispered to him once, voice rousing his gut to tense in the dead of the night. A foreign tenderness melting into him as you smeared the cool salve over purpled contusions.

"Is that how this is workin'? You keeping me around".

A finger of yours dips into the creamy white of the jar, applying it to the area thats bruised. Mirth widening your lips. "Don't tell me you thought it was the other way around".

He remembers the first go around of you doing this, tending to hour old wounds, a bit of your lip tucked between your teeth, his marred body seeming to be your top priority. Touch new and feeling all too familiar at the same time. Sinking his heart a little similar to when he's about to pull a trigger, not breathing, fear and excitement, this unusual concoction. And maybe it's why he warred with you, fought against you for a time, because you scared him, forced his heart to race and his skin to tingle. Because maybe just maybe you were a new beginning? Because beginnings were just as scary as endings and he'd felt the ending of a thing before. The tear of his heart beneath a steel blade of impermanence. The comfortable crushing weight of something familiar lifting, stopping sudden, leaving nerves split raw. His body shaking and shivering, turning cold from the frozen bitterness of never having what he loved again.

"It's a good song". His voice wavering, eyes wandering else where about the room. Hesitation, it weakens even the deadliest of men. "We uh", he looks to you. Umber eyes beautifully vulnerable. "We used to sing to it all the time".

Whats that famous expression?... Whats understood doesn't have to be explained. You know the we, because it's apart of him, always will be. But who knows, maybe you can be a version of that we. Someday.

You smile, screwing up the jar and leaving it on the small nightstand. "I can't imagine you singing along to this".

"Then what huh", lip twitching to reveal a lopsided grin. Heavy eyes trailing along the curve of your lips before they bore into yours. His thick fingers pulling you to him again. "What'chu imagine me doing"

It's better to show than tell, though words and tongue are just as useful at times, your mouth catching his in another heated kiss. This one all swirling tongue and tensing teeth. 'You could kill a man with a tongue like that you know that?', he'd said once, looking down on you from a standing position. Chuckle breathy, trying to mask the flustered rush of his blood. Frank's a grunter, a groaner, emits rough, gravely noises into your ear every chance you give him, the one he gives you now is drawn as you lead a hand of his to the wetness pooling at the center of your thighs.

"Here?", voice teasing. Lips sucking hard at your pulse, maneuvering you to lay along the sheets with his body following, fingers bypassing thin panties to circle lazy at your awaiting clit. "Feels like you need me here".

If nothing else his touch is never faint in moments like these, unless of course he wants it to be. It's better to say that he's meticulous, knows every inch of you like an across the ocean desert, has memorized the way pinching at your clit makes you gasp. That when he licks up the side of your neck just right, your chest draws up, back curving into a delicate arch that pronounces the rounded swells of your breast. Something he can appreciate, even when the sight is covered by a knitted button up. He's a damn menace when he's in the mood. "Gimme those eyes sweetheart".

Dilated and low sitting, they meet his. Blood running warm and swift, legs reassuring the length of time passed since you last seen him with a tingling that comes just before the ache. You want to plead a little, part your lips to ask for it nicely, but he's a lot more generous tonight, doesn't make you work for it. No, he gives it to you good, smears two fingers in your wetness before digging them slow into your pussy. "That's it, take it easy for me". You've never heard a calming thunderstorm till Frank, the way the words fall from him. Fingers stretching, pulling back just to delve in further, applying a tolerable pressure as they open you up. "Let me in".

Let me in... the way he says it. God like he fucking means it.

"You look like fuckin' heaven girl". His middle and ring fingers stroking deep, curving just right, nestling against the spot that makes you breathless. Eyes a useless tool for vision as they roll. "Damn beautiful".

You feel hot in the sweater you love, skin sweltering, but when you go to fully take the damn thing off, he's telling you to leave it on, so you manage by simply roughing it up instead. Fingers twisting and pulling at the hardened peaks of your breast. Hips canting to meet the wet dip and dig of his digits. It's persistent, hard strokes against the desperate pulse of your pussy, he won't let up and if he does, you'd consider killing him. He takes your mindless chant of cursing as evidence that you're close to your well awaited bliss. Absolutely amused with every "fuck", and "yes", thats said. The way you can only rely on those two things to express just how good those thick, war torn fingers feel deep inside you.

A hand of yours journeys down to hold at his wrist, knowing the tell tale signs of an approaching orgasm and feeling every bit of it. But if you had just a little more awareness you'd think to apply pressure, tell him to let up a bit but you can't. "You gonna give it to me?" He asks as if he'd actually need confirmation, like you weren't tightening up around him more every second. Dripping against your freshly laundered sheets. Giving him the look of a woman whose nearing the borders of heaven. "You gonna let me have it?" But this time you answer, moan a "yes" that settles way down into the pit of his belly. Births something raw, something desperate, a roughened neediness to see you coat his fingers, feel you constrict to your limit.

"Soak my fingers good". He's not Frank if he doesn't command something, drive your body to follow the order of his words. And you do just that, shuddering and whimpering as you go taut. His fingers slowing, thumb easing a soothing pattern onto your slit as you roll through the clouded haze. His tongue licking into your mouth, rolling into a kiss. "Atta girl".

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ravencromwell · 3 years

Text

“The Truth About Monsters” by Nikita Gill

The truth is this: every monster you have met or will ever meet was once a human being with a soul that was as soft and light as silk

Someone stole that silk from their soul and turned them into this

So when you see a monster next always remember do not fear the thing before you fear the thing that created it instead.

--source

#poetry #Nikita Gill #every time! I read this. I keep thinking of a Le Carre anecdote someone--I think it was you #Jo? told me. about us getting this lovely chapter with a character thinking all these humane. wonderful things and then! he gets a knock #on his door. and it's the protagonist come to make him a terrible person and simultaneous cannon fodder in an endless spying war. and just.#this encapsulates the slow. unspeakable horror of monstrosity and the way it spreads. like any parasite or disease. better than anything #I've seen in a long time. that metaphor about souls as light as silk! is playing on some deep-seeded primal horror: of metamorphasis and #irreversable change. the same horror that fed into changelings so long ago; the same horror we see in accounts of war and deeply broken.#traumatized people. the same horror grief now evokes for me. because I will never entirely go back to the unscarred person I was. and #again. it's the idea of that beauty of silk both being transmuted into monstrosity. but also existing alongside it. free for the plundering

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littlewomenpodcast · 2 years

Text

Little Women 2019 ending making mockery of Jo and Friedrich

There is a whole chapter in little women 2019 film guide where Gerwig said she wanted to make the umbrella scene overly romantic in order to make mockery of the novel.

That is why millions of people buy her fake narration of the story that Jo should have been single or be with Laurie.

I personally find it incredibly unethical, combine that with her racist quotes on Friedrich´s nationality and even here in Finland we got newspaper headlines that Greta Gerwig shows how marriages in Little Women are a joke (you´ll find internet filled with these headlines, 2019 film was heavily promoted with them).

As everyone should know, Friedrich is based on Alcott´s first love philosopher Henry David Thoreau and Laurie her ex, Ladislas Wisniewski.

In her journals Louisa writes about her belief of reuniting with her loved one in the afterlife. Henry had a habit to carry an umbrella. In the novel, Friedrich tells Jo that he is going to the west. In one of the Alcott studies “West” was presented as a metaphor, as a time and place that divides Louisa of her loved one, and only can they reunite again in death.

For example in Moods, the first LMA novel, Henry and Louisa metaphorically re-unite again when Sylvia and Adam die together. In “Work” LMA´s last novel, they re-unite once again once Christie and David marry, and he passes away in the war (and she subsequently believes they shall meet again in the afterlife). Louisa May Alcott believed in re-carnation and that we live multiple lives. In her journals and letters she writes about receiving her “award” in the next life (love and children).

It´s pretty harrowing stuff but also shows how lonely Louisa was, and that is not something to make fun of.

...............

Quotes on Louisa´s loneliness, desire to marry/find love and re.carnation can be found from Caroline Ticknor´s biography of May Alcott and Collected letters between Louisa May Alcott and Maggie Lukens. They also include markings from her diaries.

#little women #greta gerwig #jo march #friedrich bhaer #little women 2019 #anti little women 2019 #saoirse ronan #louis garrel #unethical #jo x friedrich #anti greta gerwig #fake news

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clare-with-no-i · 2 years

Note

whenever ur ready to give us the goods 🤲🤲🤲🤲🤲🤲 pretty white smile directors cut 🤲🤲🤲🤲🤲🤲🤲🤲 xo suze

hey bestie @thequibblah <3 ty for this / sorry in advance for how long it’s going to be, I’m sure

EDIT: oh god I was right this is a novel. oh my god can i shut up ever in my entire life

The Idea

So, the original conceit of pws was really about digging into the harsh, unpleasant realities of Lily’s life at Hogwarts, and I prepared to do so by making her a little bit more grey and brusque—that’s where the beginning note comes from, actually. I wrote that before most of the story was finished. Looking at it now, I don’t think it even comes into play that much in the finished product, because I spent a lot of time considering and reconsidering what this piece might mean and what messaging I wanted to get across.

I kept coming back to this one core concept, though: if I, as a Jewish person, were reading a piece about a character experiencing anti-Semitism, would I want it to be this dark, claustrophobic trauma porn that fundamentally changes a notably good and positive character? No, as a matter of fact. I wouldn’t. It’s one of those moments where the trope/the idea didn’t really fit the character or the setting, so I ended up abandoning it; and I’m glad I did! I think this is both more of an honest portrayal of Lily—something that could easily fit in my versions of canon—and it’s more of a well-rounded account of dealing with prejudicial thinking and ostracism. Like, yeah, Lily’s situation sucks (duh); but to deny her pockets of happiness and the opportunity to feel safe and loved, and to act accordingly? Not really my game.

Also, this was supposed to be 3k words. tf. I have no self control. chronic not shutting up disease wins again ig

The Motifs

So, to get into the story itself, we see two primary themes introduced in the first section:

That Lily still feels a connection to non-magical education, and that she wants to continue to teach herself disciplines like biology (and later psychology, literature, etc). This also introduces the recurring motif of ‘things lily learns through Petunia’s textbooks.’

Predator/prey imagery, and metaphors about animals. This is the biggest one IMHO, but that might just be because it’s the original motif I based the story around. Kit / Moonpuup labelled this lily “Lioness Lily” and I absolutely love that hehe

The Blood Prejudice

One day, on the walk to Hogsmeade, a Ravenclaw girl recounts loudly the story of her father rejecting a muggle-born apprentice for his archive of European wand-makers.

Not because he’s prejudiced, she disclaims loudly, but because it wouldn’t make any sense. Muggle-borns didn’t grow up with family heirloom wands, with an appreciation for the art. How could they be expected to properly account for their history?

Fitting in the different ways through which dynamics of oppression make themselves known (like this type of gross rationalization) was really important to me throughout pws. The pervasiveness of prejudiced thinking is so often that it’s easily ‘justified’, and can be masked and reframed as harmless.

There are also two mentioned incidents of a muggle-born-owned establishment being burned down or having the glass of its windows shattered; I intentionally wanted that to be reminiscent of things like Kristallnacht and pre-Nazi Germany. That’s one thing I’m pretty consistent about—I lean into the real-world parallel of Nazism, because @ Jo if you’re going to write a fake Hitler you might as well actually invest the reader in the precipitating events

She will let them walk away with her lips sealed shut, will listen to their jibes and their slurs and their cheap jokes without doing a single thing, because it serves her better to smile with pretty white teeth and let them think that her smile grew blunt-edged, that she hadn’t spent years in the mirror sanding down sharp enamel, practicing bloody-lipped grins in the mirror.

Because she knows that it’s only prey animals who mistake themselves for predators, not the other way around.

This was one of the first things I wrote in pws. I love the (metaphorical) idea of Lily sanding down fangs in the mirror and practicing something docile and unassuming like her smile, trying to tamp down the part of herself that wants to fight back. It’s a bit brutal and a bit shocking as an image, but it felt really emotionally authentic for her in this moment. Also, the teeth and smile motif follows for the rest of the story, and it’s the basis for the title.

Kisses him and thinks, I’m no better than that scientist. I want to surround myself with people who will always scope out the threats. People who will always draw first.

Having Lily get a muggle-born boyfriend was also important to me; not so much because he’d be some sort of foil character for James, but rather because it shows a lot about 1) companionship amongst people who feel targeted, and 2) Lily’s priorities at this point. She states directly what she wants out of a relationship—someone who understands her feelings, someone who grew up experiencing the same things she does.

It’s not that she wants refuge, she just wants solidarity. This changes as she grows; as she gradually allows herself to consider the possibility that safety might be possible to some degree.

First James Appearance :) :)

The transfiguration scene was really fun. Not only because I got to introduce little bits of canon like James’s talent for Transfig and Lily’s competitiveness with academia, but also because you see their belief systems but on display in this small, microcosmic interaction: Lily making a joke about how people want her dead (coping mechanism, you might say?) and James reacts disproportionately because he’s not used to being blasé about these things; he’s still, at this point, very black-and-white on what is and isn’t acceptable.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

I loved writing this, and I loved calling back to it. Fun fact - I had the callback written first, the scene where they’re making out and James saying he wants to take care of her causes the hierarchy to move around in her head. But after I wrote that, I was like: that is such a great, concrete image, and not only is it something that Lily could learn about in a muggle textbook, but it is also so deeply connected to dynamics of privilege and their complexities. I loved that it made it possible to attack hierarchies of privilege in a multifaceted way; there are some people who have blood privilege but not economic privilege, and vice versa, and other combinations thereof. Some people have needs of safety fulfilled but not esteem, or belonging. Some people have all of them - James included.

They were born in self-actualization, never worried for a second about things like safety or belonging. They sit prettily at the top of the pyramid, soft-palmed and smiling. She knows they will never recognize the calluses on her hands; the scars and the tears from sixteen years spent climbing.

I loved these lines. I loved describing something as ‘soft-palmed,’ not only because (as the CT discord girlies know) I love hand imagery, but as well, because it calls back to this aristocratic idea of softness and atrophied muscle as symbolic of wealth; the less manual labor you had to do, the more wealthy and soft you looked.

Sirius being…Sirius

Sirius’s scene was a bit of unexpected humor. I thought a lot about how I wanted the romance between James and Lily to come about, and the main thing I concluded was that I wanted it to be sort of lackadaisical, a little nonsensical and unplanned. I wanted it introduced in moments that Lily was not expecting, AKA she had not planned for, and I wanted her not to make sense of it internally. She spends so much of this fic being intentional, and observant, and I really found it enriching to make James this thing she hadn’t seen coming, and that threw her off from her survival mode.

Plus, this scene gave me the opportunity to say:

James talks slow and easy, the master of his speech, like he owns language in its entirety. If he slips up or stutters, it’s because he wants to; to make the other person feel comfortable, to lower himself like how he shrugs his shoulders down to direct the younger students, ducks his head. A man of the people.

I mean. that’s just Him, right?

Religion and The Bathroom Scene

maybe, she thinks, some part of her has always been wired to be incompatible with the church. Maybe the space in her body where faith was supposed to be stored was filled with magic instead.

Lily’s relationship with the church and religion was super fun to play around with in this fic. She’s not disdainful about it, and she doesn’t begrudge her family their faiths, but she lacks this intrinsic sense of belonging to it; further, she feels actively rejected by it. I think it’s a feeling that a lot of people can relate to, the isolation of not believing what you think you’re supposed to believe.

But I did want to keep her connected to her family. Again, it was important for me to give her reprieve, and give the reader time to take some breaths.

Before I get into the bathroom scene, there’s a little idiosyncrasy I want to point out: Lily’s description of colors. She called leaves ‘red-yellow,’ and sunlight ‘yellow-orange,’ and the light in James’s bedroom ‘red-gold.’ This was intentional! I felt really inhabited in her narrative voice in pws, and it came to me that this is a small quirk of hers, an intentional rejection of convention—a fun little rebellion for her to partake in privately. There are definitely words in the English language that describe those colors, but I really enjoyed the idea that Lily has her own creative classifications for them, and that she can sort of play around in her head to describe things in a manner that befits her. Like, she fits in some space between her two worlds, so other things (colors included) now exist in dichotomy, as well. This was sooo tiny and inconsequential but I just loved adding it.

anyway.

I had someone in the comments point out that they enjoyed that it was girls who attacked Lily and not boys, and I was like!!! Yes!!! Women get overlooked as perpetrators of harm so often, especially women in positions of privilege like straight / cis / white women. It was important to me that this attack be committed by women, and that we don’t know their houses (Pendita Parkinson, maybe, but not the others).

She knows she’s not quick enough, and she should be collapsing and writhing until they inevitably kill her, but instead, in a way it never has before, magic explodes out of her and reverberates around the room, sending the girls sprawling and throwing their wands against the walls. She sees Pendita’s snap in half.

A few things here: first, having Lily stop an Unforgivable was something I’d planned since the beginning; yes you all guessed it, I wanted to set up the Voldemort Halloween moment! She has that power! That untapped inherent magic that, if she wants to, she can weaponize! Second: I wanted to call back here to when Lily joked with James about people wanting her wand snapped, and what that symbolism means. To snap Pendita’s wand, ostensibly do this thing that bars her from magic, felt like a good way to give Lily this unexpected agency.

Instead, Lily walks over to the row of sinks to wipe the blood from her mouth and fix a pretty smile in the mirror. In her reflection, a teenage girl wears messy red lipstick and too much blush on one cheekbone. Shaking hands brush crimson hair back and off of her shoulders. She pushes the door open with one hand, grabs her wand in the other, and makes her way back to Gryffindor Tower.

This is one of the moments where the title comes in full-force: Lily turns these injuries on her face—the blood on her lips from being punched, the redness that’s going to be a bruise from being slammed into the wall, the way her hair was pulled—into some facsimile of beauty. Blood becomes lipstick; a bruise becomes blush. We see violence and femininity, the ways they can be confused and intertwined.

Loved having her say ‘I am the rapture.’ Fuck yeah you are.

What Do You Like About Me?

This entire scene was just realization after realization. And, like, you’d think she would know already that he liked her—for fuck’s sake, Sirius told her! But in pws she is so focused on getting through the day that she just has not developed a sense for people genuinely wanting good things for her, and maybe wanting her as a result; it is so foreign that James could be in love with her that it takes him drunkenly saying you know what I like about you? To make her think, YOU LIKE ME??

“I like that you let people think you’re not dangerous,” he murmurs, and she stills. “It’s like…it’s like you’re a cat, and you let people pet you—er, sorry, this is an odd metaphor, I guess, I don’t even know what that means—” he clears his throat, “—but you’re like this cat that everyone thinks is so cute, but then you still have fangs and claws. And you know how to use them.”

having James just…See Her in this way was the big thing for me. He is not put off by how dangerous she is. He does not begrudge that she hides this danger; he's beginning to understand the necessity of it. and he likes her for it all the more.

She wants to keep talking to him. She wants to know what else he likes. She wants to tell him every little thing she likes about him, all the things that are only at this very moment forming speakable words in her mind, after seven years of silent accumulation. She wants to keep being seen like this; to show him that she sees him, too. Even if she always used to pretend to look away.

This is the first time that Lily articulates a genuine, non-survival-based want. She just wants something to have it. And what a freeing thing, right?

Also, the entire conversation is left up to her: he doesn’t say here’s what I like about you. He asks a question, and he lets her lead. God the power dynamics between them are so FUN and so HEALTHY I love Jily

Dating James and Feeling Safe

Having James get into a fistfight with Slytherins over her is soooooo not new (shoutout tmwysl, it is my Bible) but hey if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. It also is so good for serving up the idea that Lily is jarred by this new security she feels, and there’s that instinct of hers to reject it and go back to warrior mode. I think it’s also emblematic of who James is when they start dating: too quick to engage, too sure that just because he believes the right thing, it should always be acted on.

But then, flash-forward, in the next scene (four months later approx) Lily describes him as:

the exquisite peak of humanity: holds himself back when he’s angry, thinks through his every move, makes existence look effortless and facile. Mammalian instincts curbed but not scrubbed from existence.

So, you see? He’s LEARNING. OR she’s just seeing him through rose-colored glasses. Or some combination thereof.

“James,” Lily says through a kiss as she parts the sides of his button-down, “leave it. You can take my shirt off later. Just, let me—”

I wanted to engage Lily’s survival instincts with her sexuality from the get-go, so this scene was really important to me. The idea that she not only feels the need to perform femininity and harmlessness in her daily life, but then she also feels compelled to perform femininity in a sexual setting insofar as the need to sacrifice her own pleasure to focus on James, felt vital to the narrative. As I’ve come into adulthood, I’ve thought a lot about what conditioned instincts women experience during intimacy: to be smaller, to divert focus, to not be ‘difficult’ or ‘needy.’ I suppose there’s something to be said for the fact that Lily’s taking some sort of initiative here, with him, but in a later paragraph, her narration elaborates:

The first time they get to this point, Lily sat herself in his lap and curled her fingers into his hair, pressed herself down on him at every possible junction. Focused on drawing gasps and groans from his throat, reached down to place one hand on his beating heart. It was strong and fast beneath her palm. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. She wanted so badly to feel it jump, to know that it was because of her.

She is invested in his experience not just as a willing and enthusiastic partner, but more so as someone desperate to feel sexual and wanted; insecurity masked by overcompensation, as though this experience is another in which she’ll have to calculate and prepare. It actually takes James’s articulation that he wants to take care of her that allows her to somewhat let go of that. Hoping this doesn’t come across as a ‘boy teaches girl sex’ moment but more, like…being safe in an emotional and interpersonal sense, where you can begin to let down those barriers.

Also, I believe one of my favorite and most symbolically loaded lines:

So she tips her head back and bares her neck, expects to feel teeth. Shivers when she receives lips instead.

In pretty much all things in pws, Lily is teeth; wanting to bite his neck, smiling and imagining fangs. James is lips, softness and whispers. he has a lot of the spoken dialogue in their interactions, which I did intentionally. she bares her neck to him, this incredibly vulnerable part of herself, and he chooses a path of affection and gentleness.

The “I Love You”’s

A fan fav I did not expect:

Because wizards have always understood that magic is wonderful, but they always seem to forget the other side of the equation: that wonder, in itself, is magical.

Yeah, I’ve always been really tied to the idea that Lily refuses to be ashamed of her muggle background, and there is so much about her upbringing that she wishes would be recognized in the wizarding world. And I think that we kind of forget, reading about a world with a concrete magic system, that so much of the real world is so magical. Love is magic. Happiness is magic. Wonder, of course, is magic.

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

The TS Elliot quote was something I’ve read before but popped up recently on The Internet, and I was like oh. ok this is amazing and fitting for the scene - how the idea of telling James she loves him is, in some way, the end of the world as she knows it; and so is letting that love in, receiving it. Also helped that I literally made her whimper. I love being the arbiter of what people do

Again, I wanted to take these really significant moments in their relationship and sort of…either not mention them at all or turn them on their heads. We never get a quoted dialogue “I love you” from Lily, but we get the moment it happens, and we get how she feels and how she processes it—which, in this version of her, felt much more important to get across.

Also, the last line:

So she does. She does, she does, she does.

To write something that repetitive and that short felt almost whimsical, which I really liked, as though the narration itself is sort of giggling. It’s almost childlike; and I found that to be a real comfort—that she’s healing her inner child here, letting those giddy moments arise and giving credence to them. It’s like—squee! she does love him! she does she does she does!

Final Section: Harry

When I first wrote this scene, it went in a different direction. Lily was not as fond of James’s “no fangs” comment, and she was sort of looking to Harry as her one living relative who might get where she’s coming from. But then, as the story evolved, I completely reclassified how I think she would feel about the interaction: not resentful of James, but glad that their son will be raised in a household that is so steeped in goodness, that has both survival and leisure as normal.

I wrote the ending lines pretty much write after I wrote the beginning - which, I think, is pretty obvious, given the number of parallels between them. I was really worried that people would be freaked out by Lily mentally encouraging Harry to engage in violence, but as I refined more aspects, it felt so fitting and undeniable: she will teach him how to survive. He will have to learn, because people want him dead just like they wanted her dead, if not more.

Other Stuff

I said in the notes of the story, and I still believe it, that this is first and foremost a story about safety. But even past that, it’s about what safety might mean for a person throughout their life; does it mean freedom from harm? Does it mean intimacy without embarrassment? Does it mean belonging to someone, have someone belong to you in turn? That’s sort of what I was thinking about as I wrote.

An unspoken theme here is the ‘fight or flight’ instinct; but, as I have learned, it’s actually fight, flight, freeze, submit, attach. You see Lily do all of those in pws. She fights, she runs away, she freezes, she submits, and she attaches.

I enjoyed writing pws so much! I love Lily so much and am so protective of her as a character, so to really nestle into the hardships of her life was tough but ultimately rewarding.

YEAH that’s about it, love u thank u mwah

#my stuff #pretty white smile #director's cut #i am so embarrassing this is genuinely multiple thousands of words for an 8k story #and i'm sure i forgot stuff too! tf!

24 notes · View notes

oneirataxiahiraeth · 3 years

Note

Can I request a Kai Parker smut when the reader is Bonnie's cousin and the reader sees through the things that Kai has done.

Dudeeee I actually had a this whole concept already in my drafts!!! Sorry it’s taken me a while, I’m a very indecisive person so this was written over and over again LMFAO

Pairings : Bennett!Reader X KaiParker

Warnings : angst., some more angst, angry Bonnie, Kai Slander, mentions of blood/violence/gore, mentions of murder, language, smut, not proof read

Requested : ;) I originally based this off of POV by Ariana Grande but I made some tweaks to it so yeah

Word Count : 7k

Your head was light and brain struggling to make any connections to the rest of your body. Your back rested against the dining room chair as you let whatever Jo fed to you get mushy in your mouth. Caroline had fed you some of her blood but your headache remained. Everything about today had went south and now everyone was just waiting on the edges of their chairs for something to happen and just wrap up the gift of shittiness to this very bad day. Unfortunately for you, you just so happened to be the fucking bow.

"I thought I told you to stay away from her!" Bonnie snapped in the living room at the brown haired siphon. You couldn't hear the arguments happening in the other room solely because you were too busy being coddled by Jo and Caroline to make sure you wouldn't be able to hear the scolding Kai was receiving in the other room.

Bonnie never saw what you did whenever she looked at him. In her mind, you were just another one of his victims. He couldn't have had any good intentions with you. Kai Parker never had good intentions of any kind. He's selfish, and evil, and cruel, and there's no way in hell she was going to let him keep ruining your life after what happened today. Everyone knew who he was and what he did, everyone saw how dangerous he could be... except you just refused to acknowledge it. Truthfully, she didn't know whether to direct all her anger at him for hurting you or put all her disappointment on you for letting it get this far.

"Bonnie I swear, it's not like that! I never meant to hurt her, it just happened and I couldn't control it-"

"I swear to god I will kill you right now, and I wouldn't even need magic to do it." She growled.

He couldn't understand what made her so angry. Obviously he never meant to siphon so much out of you, really he didn't mean to siphon you at all. He was just planning on telling from Bonnie and the bracelet you gave him with a bit of your magic in it for emergencies and hoped the whole spell would work out fine.

"It was an accident!"

"Like hell it was!" Everyone stood around... watching... waiting... hoping. Hoping he would step out of line just once so they could rip his head off. "Nothing with you is an accident, Kai!"

"I would never intentionally hurt her, Bonnie! Believe or not I'm still capable of human emotions!" He scoffed, nothing the vampires surrounding him ready to pounce at any given moment, and with his anger levels rising they were about to have a field day.

"Of course you would, Kai! You hurt everyone who's close with you! Whether it's literally or metaphorically you always find a reason that benefits you, that justifies you hurting someone else! That's just who you are! You want nothing good with her, Kai! She's a good person, just leave her alone!" Bonnie growled, but Kai wasn't going to give in so easily.

"I've changed, Bonnie!"

"Changed into what? An even better liar? Because for an actual second there, Kai, I really believe you stayed in mystic falls just to live the life you never got to!" She fired.

"That's-"

"You know, if you wanted to make us even considering liking you, you should've moved. Far, far away from here, somewhere where you can't fucked up our lives enough for us to continue to have another fucking reason to hate you!" His shoulders dropped, hurting filling him to the brim. Usually he wouldn't let things like words get to him. She was upset with him, people say things they don't mean when they're upset... only she would've said this even in her happiest moments of life. She did hate him, and she had every reason to.

"She makes me a better person- When I'm I'm with her I want to be a better Person, Bon!" He defended himself. He knew the real reason he was with her, to him it was quite obvious. She made him feel as though the world wasn't out to get him. She could stop a nightmare before it even began with just a breathing the way she does. She made the best cupcakes, even though her cooking skills were mediocre, magic could fix everything. She made him smile without even doing anything just from the warm giddy feeling in his body when he's around her. Y/N Bennett... she was the only person to exist to make Malachi Parker feel like he deserved to live.

"Bullshit! You're just using her-"

"It isn't like that!" He snapped, causing the argument to halt for a few seconds.

"Really? Then tell me, Kai. What is it? Is it because she's my cousin? Is that why you're interested in her? To get back at me in your own disgusting twisted way? Or is it because of the blood? I bet her Bennett blood would come in real handy just in case-"

"No! I wouldn't do that to her-"

"Or is it because you're just so desperate for someone who actually feels like a friend that you decided to keep her around? Hmm? Maybe it's because after 18 years holed up in that prison word, you finally came to the realization that there is no possible way you could ever be loved. That you deserve to be alone for the rest of eternity. But all of a sudden, here she is, Precious y/n Bennet, the only person who is willingly to search for even a shred of good in you!" She spat. Everyone around watching guards fell as the watched Kai slowly become less tense. His shoulders falling slowly, the will the defend himself leaving his body along with his will to live, embarrassment and anger rushing through his veins, but a small part of him kept him in the room and not on his way back to his apartment. "Let me tell you something, Kai. Maybe this you can finally get it through your head." Bonnie feeling confident enough to take a step towards the stunned looking Siphon. "Not even a Bennett witch is strong enough to fix the broken, unlovable, vile person you really are. And if you truly, by some fucking miracle have a beating heart in your chest, if you've actually let her change you for the better, then you know she's better off without you. We both know that you don't deserve her in any way, shape, or form... so just let her go. Find someone else to ruin and leave her alone."

It felt as if all the oxygen in his body had left. His heart stopped pumping blood through his veins, and slowly and painfully he felt as if he was desiccating on the insides. He hadn't even noticed the tear that had escaped while he was being scolded.

Both you and Jos head turn as you hear a muffled scream that sounded like it came from Bonnie. You tried to stand by Jo eased you back down, shaking her head as if everything was all right. You couldn't hear much of the conversation going on in the other room, but you knew if it was enough to make Bonnie angry then it was never good. And Bonnie in their with Kai... was enough to make her wanna take out the entire town of Mystic Falls.

"I feel fine Jo, I'm good." You reassure her, standing on your own again against her advice.

She knew what was going on in there... they've been going at it since before you even regained consciousness. She wasn't worried about you not being able to stand on your own, she was worried about you overbearing the heavy conversation happening in the other room.

"Maybe we should head to a clinic or something, you did hit your head pretty hard!" She tries quickly but you shaking your head.

"Caroline gave me her blood, I'll be fine." You responded, looking to the blood who seemed to be in total shock and not at all paying attention to either of you. "I think I'm just going go home and sleep, promise I won't do anything to crazy." You sent Jo a soft smile, tilting your head at Caroline in confusion but ultimately ignored it. Maybe it was some weird vampire sensory thing.

"You should take the back door!" Jo tried again, just to keep you from walking back into the living room.

"I would..." you narrowed your eyes at the dark haired doctor. "But my keys are by the front door." You spoke, walking towards the living room before Jo could make any more excuses. You caught on fast, but really you did just want to go home.

"Wait No-" Jo stood quickly, Caroline finally snapping back into consciousness. By the time she could truly think, you were already walking through the doors leading into the living room. There was still a bit of your blood on the carpet, you knew Damon was going to bitch about that later so you figured you get out why you still could.

Well... that's what you were planning to do before you stopped just to notice all of the eyes planted on you. You first assumed that it was just them just surprised at your speedy recovery... but the tear running down your boyfriends cheek made you rethink a bit. Kai never cried. No matter what or ho he was feeling, there was not a thing in this world that he would ever let get to him. Maybe he was just so worn out from the spell too that he didn't even feel himself tearing up. The whole room felt tense, and even Jo and Caroline looked like this in the Kitchen.

"What's going on?" You felt your own body tense a bit as Kai's eyes fell down to the floor.

"nothin'" Kai mumbled, voice shaky. Your eyes narrowed with obvious disbelief. His voice was kind of small, and he couldn't even look at you. He had so many thoughts racing through his head he had no idea what to do.

"Why don't i believe that..." you spoke, mostly to yourself. "I was just about to head home." You mentioned wearily. "Are you coming or are you just gonna stand there awkwardly?" You asked, half joking and half wanting to know what had him so actually upset.

"Uhm," he spoke looking back up, eyes immediately attracted to Bonnie before looking back to you. He felt her glare burning into the side of his head, her whole rant repeating itself in his mind over and over again. "Yeah, yeah, I'll drive." He nodded, turning around just so he wouldn't have to look at you again. Before he could walk, Bonnie had grabbed his arm. Rather tightly, and oddly to be honest. She usually avoided any sort of interaction with him, so even an arm touch was a weird sight to you.

All she sent was a simple look that seem to have him shaken down to his boots before she let him go. Her eyes falling back to you. She sent a smile, before just walking away. Not a word. Just silence. It was weird, no one else had much to say either, just weird looks on their faces and more silence to give. You ignored them though, just wanting to get home.

"Uhm, okay." You responded to the silence, shaking out the bad feeling from your mind before walking through the living room. You grabbed you jacket off the couch before walking over to Kai. You reached your hand up to touch his arm but he shrugged you off, walking towards the front door without even look at you. Was he mad? What could he possibly have been mad at you for?

You pretended to not noticed the coldness and just follow after him out the door. He got into the car, barely even waiting until your door was fully closed before taking off out of the driveway. He needed to get you home. To stop himself from doing the right thing and letting you go because he didn't want that. He wanted you, for as long as he could manage to keep you in his grasp. It was selfish of him, but everyone already knew what he was like so he didn't really care. He's happy with you. Happy with his life with you. Happy with his life around you. Happy with himself with you.... why in hell would he ever give you up?

Bonnie was right though, letting you go wasn't about his happiness. It was about yours. And as selfish as he was, your happiness would always come above his own. He made sure of that everyday. He didn't eat until you did, he took shorter showers so you could have more hot water, or he'd just wait until you were done and take whatever was left. You wanted- deserved a life without him and all the despair and pain that follows him around. You didn't deserve to be woken up in the middle of the night because he was restless. You didn't deserve to be distanced from all your friends just because you liked him. If living the best life you could meant leaving him behind, he was fine with that. He was fine with that for you. He was fine with you being happy even if it meant he would've been miserable for the remainder of his life.

"Kai, you need to slow down!" You spoke up, hand moving to his thigh as you noticed his hand clutching the wheel so tightly. "Your going 70 in a 35" it was late and no one was out on the streets, he didn't care how fast he was going.

"It's fine, y/n." He muttered, eyes not leaving the road. There were no deer out in this time of the year, there was no danger of hitting much of anything.

"No, Kai, it's dangerous." You responded, "slow down, please."

"No." He needed to get you home. If he slowed down, that gave you more time to talk. More time for him to think, more reasons to flood his brain on why you were better off without him.

"No? Kai, come on, seriously you need to slow down." You scoffed, not amused by his resistance. "I'd rather not die in a car crash before I'm old enough to run for president."

"Could you stop talking? Like just for a moment!" He huffed.

"Wha- I- no! What the hell is wrong with you? Slow the car down, Kai!" His eyes rolled, momentarily forgetting just how persistent you could be. "Kai!" Your hand moving from his thigh as you contemplated jumping out of the car just to see what he would do. Maybe after you break probably every bone in your body he'll slow the fucking car down. "Stop the damn car." You spoke but he ignored you, hoping you would just stop talking to him.

Instead of you stopping with the chat, he felt himself stomping on the break as your seatbelt came undone. Your body moving forward fast, colliding with the dashboard, and knocking the absolute wind out of you. He unbuckles his seat belt quickly, looking over to you. You were fine, your boobs not so much, but it wasn't unbearable. You let out a deep throaty couch, opening your car door. You only unbuckled your seat belt to get him to slow down, put the fear in him that you were going to jump out.

Well... it sort of worked.

"Y/N, what the hell?!" He growled, following you out the car. You were leaned onto the car trying to get some air into your king as the adrenaline started releasing through your body. "What the hell were you going to do? Jump out of the fucking car because I was got a few miles over? You could've gotten hurt! Hurt worse the just hitting the dashboard! What if another car was coming? You could've gotten ran over, and killed! Then you'd wake up with a craving for an AB positive juice box!" He scolded you as if you were a child.

"I wasn't actually going to jump out, asshole! I just wanted you to slow the damn car down! And if you would've done it, instead of being a dick then we wouldn't be having this conversation!"

He mumbled something under his breath that you couldn't quite make out and you finally managed to stand straight again. "Are you okay?" He sighed.

"Are you?" You shrugged. "You haven't looked at me since we left the house, you won't talk to me, practically told me to shut the fuck up, and then you yell at me like I'm kid."

"I didn't mean to yell at you. I just didn't want you to get hurt." He frowned a bit.

"I'm fine. But I'm not getting back in that car." You spoke.

"What? Why?"

"Tell me what Bonnie said to you that has you so upset." You demanded, his heart pausing for only a moment as you stated into his soul.

"What?"

"I might be a little be slower at picking up on the clues but I'm not stupid. What did she say that has you so deathly terrified to even look at me?" You asked. "Did she put a spell on you or something-"

"No, it's nothing, y/n, just drop it and let's get back." He shook his head.

"If it was nothing then you wouldn't mind telling me."

"It's none of your business."

"Seeing as your my boyfriend and she's my family, in some weird way, whatever beef you two have is my business."

"Leave it alone."

"No" You shook your head, crossing your arms over your chest even though it hurt a bit.

He wanted to yell, but he knees you still wouldn't give up. He didn't understand how you could be so annoyingly persistent still after he's shot you down so many times. It was like you knew you were getting under his skin yet you kept digging. Purposely trying to draw out some reaction just for your own amusement.

"Why don't you give up?" He groaned. "Why do you even care? Why can you stand there and look at me like that with no guilt at all?!" His foot colliding with the car tire. He hated how much every fiber of his being was pushing him to do the right thing for once. "How can you stand there knowing everything I've done and still sleep in a bed with me? Do you not care?" He wanted to stop but nothing was letting him.

"What're talking about?"

"I killed people! My own family, y/n! I hurt Bonnie! I hurt Damon! I hurt Elena, and then just because I thought you were pretty I hurt you too! And still, you refuse to see any of my faults in actions that I take pride in!" He yelled finally. It didn't phase you. You encourage him to let any emotions he was feeling out all the time. He was angry right now, and you were fine just seeing how angry he really was.

"You're not that person anymore, that's why. I trust you."

"Well you shouldn't." He shook his head. "I will always be that person!"

"You may feel like that person but your not!" You defend him against himself. "You've made a lot of progress, you know that. And I could sit here and dwell on the shit you've done in the past but if I did that to everyone, I'd have no one." You sighed, not understanding why he was bringing any of this up. What did Bonnie say to him?

"I left Bonnie in a prison world to die!"

"And you helped me get her back!"

"I tortured your best friend!"

"You wouldn't be the first-"

"Stop doing that!"

"What?"

"Making excuses for me! There are none! I'm a bad person, y/n! You aren't, this whole 'fix me' doll relationship isn't going to last because of that! Because you deserve better than me! And if I let this go any further, then that means I haven't changed. I'm not better than I was, I've just had you to keep me from making any stupid decisions-"

"Kai stop-"

"-and one day you're going to realize that this was all a mistake. That maybe there isn't something that can be redeemed in my cold unloveable heart. And when that day comes, I'd rather not wake up and see the pure and utter hatred you've developed for me just like the rest of the people in my life."

You felt your lungs stop filling with air. It was hard to get any in, you were just breathless. How were you suppose to breathe after that? Now you had a decent idea of what that conversation he had with Bonnie was.

"No. You don't get to do that, you can't push me away. I'm not here because your a chore Kai, I care about you, and I want to be with you-"

"Do you seriously have no respect for yourself?!"

"Do you?!"

"No! Because all my respect goes to you! Everything I have goes to you! And because I respect you, and because you are literally the only thing on earth that I actually truly care about I have to do this-"

"No you don't-"

"I'm br-"

"No your not!" You groaned, covering you ears as if that would effect the outcome of this situation.

"Stop being so stubborn."

"Kiss me."

"No,"

"Just do it, Kai! Kiss me, and we can make up and forget this whole conversation!"

"How can you seriously fucking stand there and act like I'm not going to ruin your life. I murdered my own siblings in cold blood. And I'd do it again, y/n. I don't feel bad, I never felt bad. I've done so many bad things and your standing here looking at me like I'm a fucking Saint who deserves the happiness you give!"

You remained silent.

"Is that what you want? To see how bad I can be? To wait for the day where you can see Malachi Parker in action? Be there when he finally breaks?! Again!" He scoffed and you shook your head, but no word escaped. "You know what" his eyes set on you, desperate to make you see what everyone else sees when they look at him. "Maybe i can get to your head, if I let you in mine." He spoke walking to you, hands on your temples before you could even move.

You tried to break from him hold be you weren't nearly as strong as he was. He was mumbling something under his breath and soon your whole body became numb. Your mouth feel open as you let out groans of pain as bloody images fill your head, and guilt and remorse and hurt filled your heart. Screams and cries ringing in your mind, but none you've ever heard before. People you've never seen crying, and struggling to run from you. Only it wasn't you they were running from. It was Kai.

His memories flooded your brain all at the same time. You had no idea had to process everything you were seeing. All the pain in your chest amplifying somehow with a deeper emotional pain. But most of that wasn't yours either. It was his too. Loneliness and Exhaustion. Hate and Longing. It was overwhelming along with the pictures and sounds running amok in your head. Soon pictures of Bonnie had flashed through your mind, and Jo, and Damon. Blood, and more blood, nothing wasn't covered in blood, and with every passing second the pain in your chest worsened. Cries of his name, and blood curdling screams filling your head, some of which belonged to you. That was when you felt the worse pain. Hearing your own screams caused a panic, and seeing your own body covered in blood, watching your body fall just earlier as your head collided with the end table. Sheer panic and anguish for some reason. But the last image to intrude your thoughts seemed like a not so distant memory of his. One of you. Even if your head wasn't being taken over you wouldn't have remembered because in this moment he wasn't with you. He was sitting across the grill watching you dunked your fries into a strawberry milkshake with a huge smile on your face in front of your friends. You seemed happy, and it was like you were witnessing someone come back to life. First grief hit you hard, then relief and joy, and then reality set in and it was like you realized that it was all just dream and that person was still dead and never coming back and you were never going to be happy again.

He tore his hands away from you, allow you to steal in some oxygen and you went dizzy, using the car for support so you wouldn't collapse on the ground. Your chest heaving as you tried to reel in your mind what you just saw, what you felt, what you heard. All of his memories. All of the bad things he's ever done, or things he would consider to be bad. But in his mind, it was only reason that you would probably be more inclined to leave him for.

Through every memories you were overwhelmed with emotions. Whatever you could feel you felt. You didn't know which emotions were yours or his. You couldn't separate the feelings. But in some weird way you could tell that the pain and anguish churning in your gut was his. You didn't know his family well enough to have regrets, or remorse... that was all him. All the fronts he put up... all those emotions exposed everything.

"Get in the car." He spoke softly, helping you off the car so he could open the door. "You don't need to say anything, I'm taking you home and then I'll be gone." He spoke as if he knew that you wanted to be nowhere near him.

Instead, you just wanted to give him a hug. That gut wrenching pain he felt still lingering within your body. Tears streaming down your cheeks but not because of what you saw, but how he felt. Every one of your friends have done things of equal evil status. Judging him for things he obviously did regret and feel everyday wouldn't be fair to him. And whether you felt like that because you wanted to be fair or because you were in love with him was a mystery to even you.

You didn't speak, you just sat in the car staring ahead of you. Trying to determine how you really truly felt. Why was him seeing you so bad that he felt he needed to include that memory in his mind torture. You barely felt time move as he flew down the road at the same speed as before. When he parked in front of the apartment the two of you shared, he decided he would just stay out and drive all night. He didn't know where to go. He knew you probably wouldn't want him around. You stared blankly at the red bricked building with the dim lights hanging from the walls.

"Y/N." He spoke softly, not wanting to look at the tears running down your cheeks.

"Kai." You returned, voice soft and brittle unaware of how vulnerable you sounded to him. "Why do you consider meeting me a bad thing?" You asked, not a single other word coming to mind.

"I don't regret meeting you. I regret putting you in this position in the first place. And if I didn't insert myself into your life then-"

"Then you wouldn't be breaking up with me on the side of the road. Leaving me alone to spend the rest of my life wondering what I did wrong to push you away. To wonder why my love wasn't good enough reassurance-" you rambled not sure why everything was coming out of your lips.

"then you wouldn't be crying right now. Then you could've avoided all of this." He sighed in response. He hated when you cried, if it was anyone else it would've been annoying. Your tears always were the one thing that could truly break him into pieces. "When I met you... when I met you, I was so sure that you were just going to ignore me or hate my guts. I fucking left your friend in a prison world to die, y/n. I tortured you, yet you still see me as someone who's able to be redeemed. You SAW what I did, and your still defending me!" His own tears starting to pool. "I d-don't want you to hate me... and I don't want to do this... but I do want to be happy and I don't think you could ever really do that until I'm out of your life." You silently shook your head as you tried not to let your own tears keep falling. Your heart clenching in your chest, breathing getting harder to achieve.

You didn't speak.

You couldn't.

Pain hitting you harder as each second passed. You didn't know how to respond to be truthful so you just unbuckle your seat belt. You sniffled, waking the tears from you cheeks only to has fresh one replace the one you wiped away. Kai still refused to look at you, maybe you finally did she was shitty person her was. And how stupid you were for being with him. You opened the door, getting out quickly hoping he follow you but he didn't. You were still a bit dizzy from him flooding his memories through your head. You're steps were slow and wobbly and you were bound to fall in seconds but you just kept moving. To any who didn't know what you've just been through, you were just so drunk sorority girl trying to make it to the door.

Kai watched you struggled for a second, knowing you could hold your own, but he didn't want you to. He got out of the car, not even caring about locking it behind himself. His feet carried the rest him over to you. Almost as if his body was acting on instinct to help you. His arm wrapped around you, your sweet scent immediately wafting into his nose causing a tear to slip down his cheek. He ignored it, helping you, and you just let him. You didn't feel like fighting. You just wanted his touch on your skin, so you allowed him to help you.

Many thoughts flooded your head. He was as bad as everyone said he was. But you he'd never hurt you, in any way. He wouldn't hurt anyone else because that would hurt you. He was good because he wanted to be, but only for you. No one else has ever really given him good enough reason to be good. You knew he wasn't the same person that he was, and tonight just cleared it all up. It didn't stop you from loving him. It just gave you all the more reason to. You've seen your best friends do worst than him, who were you to cash him out for something he's going to feel his entire life?

You didn't speak the entire way to your front door. He unlocked the door for you, hoping you would just be able to walk and get some rest on the couch or something.

You had other plans.

You stood straight on your own, looking back to the brown haired siphon who realized he was just fooled into a trap. Your hands reached for his, taking his hand in yours quickly before he could walk away.

"Y/n, please, it's easier this way just let me go-"

"You showed me your worst moment so I want to show you my best." You spoke. Eyes dead set on his, hands gripping each other's, neither one of you wanting to let each other go. "Please." You let out a small breath.

"This is going to make it a lot harder-"

"That's the point, Malachi." You sniffle, holding in a tiny laugh.

"Okay." He whispered, preparing himself for the rush of emotions and memories flooding through his head like he did to you. You pulled your hands from his, placing them on each of his temple before beginning the spell.

It wasn't long before he felt your presence in his mind, his on thoughts being taken over with your own thoughts. At first it was a horrible feeling watching every time you were happy, knowing he was never going to be able to see that from you again. Not if he kept his promise. He wouldn't to push you away, his chest light and full with joy and a love so over it was almost crushing. He watched as memories of times you spent with him. From your first date, to that one joke he cracked the made you laugh when he first kidnapped you just to torture you for practice. He watched as he teased you, to the first time the two of you had sex, to the first I love yous, and he felt how warm inside it made you at the fact that he never over used the words. You knew he loved you even when he didn't physically say those words. You felt his love every time you were around him, and that was enough for you.

He felt a soft smile forming on his lips but he could tell if it was from your happiness or knowing how much he really meant to you. Memories of late night cries, and arguments ending in angry sex, and sneaking out of classes, and talking trash about your friends even though you would never said something too horrible about them.

You liked who you were with him. You loved who you were. And he felt all of that, he felt how much love you held for him, how much pain you were in to think about him leaving. And eventually that strong happy, lovely, calm feeling was stripped away from him, leaving him empty for a moment before he felt you hands against his cheeks.

You were holding his face, staring straight into his eyes, both of you almost to the point of sobs. You were praying to god that you're plan worked. The hell were you going to do if it didn't?

"Don't leave me, Kai."

"Y/N-"

"I'll follow you to the ends of the earth, Kai. Let me love you, please." You pleaded, bodies moving closer together without each other even realizing. It was natural for you to be close with him, you never questioned it.

He didn't want to say no. But he owed it to you to say no.

"You saw what I did-"

"And you saw how much I love you-"

"You watched in first person how I killed four of my siblings-"

"And you watched from my point of view how badly I fell in love with you."

You just wanted to kiss and make up. You would fall apart if he left you alone. Especially if he was doing it for your own 'happiness' because that meant he thought you weren't happy with him. It was upsetting and slightly insulting, because you were the happiest you've ever been with him.

"I just want to do the right thing, baby." He whimpered quietly, you're heart nearly breaking in a million pieces. His tearing streaming quickly, mentally slapping himself for being so weak for you.

"Then stay... stay and make me the happiest person in the entire world. We could graduate together and get a small house in the suburbs, or- or we could leave. Right now. Travel all across the world, experiencing so many different things together." You offered meaning every word.

At some point in the silence that seemed to last for forever, one of you couldn't take it anymore. You didn't care to pay attention which one of you, but your lips connected, smooshing your faces together to be as close as possible. Tears mixing on each other's cheeks, his hands down on your waist pulling you closer into him as you both made you're way inside your shared home.

He used his foot to kick the door closed, being careful to touch you oh so gently. You were a fragile peace of glass to him, the most beautiful sculpture who had no business being with him. He did nothing to deserve you, yet you felt he deserved you more than anyone in the world. You wasted so many years on him tonight, and for some reason you didn't care anymore. He was here, he was on you, his hands, his lips, your minds in sync for each and every single one of your next moves.

Clothes slowly being tossed the the floor as you both backed each other to your bedroom through the dark apartment. By the time you reached the bed the only thing you had left were you bra and underwear, along with his shirt and boxers. Neither of you had even bothered to pull apart for a single breath. You allowed him to gently lower you on the poorly made bed.

"Mmh, w-wait-" he mumbled against your lips. Youre legs parting for him to slip between which he did without thinking. "This is wrong-"

"No, it's not?" You spoke in confusion. "I love you, Kai. I don't care what Bonnie said, because she doesn't know what this feels like." You shake your head.

"Find someone else to ruin and let her go" Kai quoted, your grip on him tightening. "I don't want to-"

"Maybe I want you to ruin me. To fuck up my life. To fuck up my morals just because I love you. I want that, Kai. I want every bit of it. I want this love that consumes me from the inside out, and I want to be able to go against everything I believe for you. I. Love. You." His hands traveling down your waist, as you let out a sigh.

"I love you." He mumbled. "I love you so fucking much." His lips came down on your collarbone, fingers slipping under you panties waistbands before snapping his fingers to get rid of them. You felt the cold air against your slick heat, the warmth from his own body radiating into yours. His hips grinding down into your, his hardon pressing into you causing a light whimpering as you felt the butterflies raging into the pair of your stomach.

"I just wanna be with you, baby." You let out a soft moan, urging him on as he nips and sucked red marks onto your skin.

You used your own magic to undo the threads of his plain blue shirt as you dragged your hand down his back. The fabric slipping down his arms which he didn't mind. He was too focus on your warm skin under his tongue. His teeth grazing across your skin, coming closed with a tiny pinch every time. Your chest heaving into his from the closeness, and heat of it all.

"Tell me to stop” he mumbled against your skin, hips grinding into your heat as you let out needy moans.

“I need you, Kai, please.” Your lip caught in between your teeth, as the cloth of his underwear separating the two of you disappeared. “I want you so bad.” You whined, fingers digging into the soft warm skin on his back.

You felt his hard on slipping between your slick folds as he rocked his hips back and forth. He wanted to feel you, he wanted you to feel him. He never wanted to leave your side, or go a moment without feeling your warmth. He loved you with every fiber of his being, and there was no possible way he could truly explain that to you.

“Please-” you pleaded before he slowly pushed himself into you. Your mouth hung open as his length filled you to the brim, the tip of his cock hitting that hot spongy spot in your cunt so well you could help but moan. He always did fill you up perfectly, almost as if he was made for you or vice versa. “Oh my god.” You whined, hips grinding into his as his hips set a steady pace.

Your legs resting around his waist, as you let out small breathy moans. He was fucking into you hard, but it still felt amazing. He wanted to take his time with you and you felt it. Your body tingling, mind focused solely on him and everywhere your skin touched his. You felt his lips connected with you neck, continuing to suck soft bruised on the skin, placing a soft kiss after each one whispering a single ‘I love you’ each time. His hands left your waist, traveling up your beautiful naked body, taking all the warmth he could, until he traced your hands to his back. He pulled the off, even though he enjoying the sting of your nails digging into his skin, pinning your hands down above you head. His hands flat onto of yours, fingers intertwining as his lips found yours again, your kisses sloppy and slow. The sound of skin on skin filling the room as his pace quickened earning louder breathier moans from your pretty little mouth.

You felt a bubbling heat in the pit of your stomach signaling you were close to your high. Eyes struggling to sty open, as your boyfriend fucked into you so lovingly. It became harder to do anything other than focus on the feeling of him hitting so deep into you he’s almost hit your cervix. The kisses became harder to return and nothing but the sound of you filled the room. He watched in complete awe as you as you slowly began to fall apart. You were the most beautiful creatures he’s ever laid his eyes on, and he had you here underneath him on your way to this euphoric high that he him caused. His name coming out of your mouth in quiet moans and pleads and warning of you about to explode all over his dick. You were all he’s ever wanted out of life, and now he had you and there was no one and nothing that would take you away from him except for death itself.

You were his and that was final.

“Open your eyes baby, look at me.” He groaned as he felt your cunt convulsing around him so tightly.

You struggled with the actions, your eyes focusing on his eyes as you cried out in pleasure. “I’m so close, Kai, fuck, I’m going to cum.” You whined and he nodded watching as your breathing got heavier.

“Cum for me, baby, cum all over me.” He urged you on, feeling his own high approaching.

You felt something inside you explode, a loud moan his name escaping your lips, all your juices spilling onto his hard cock a he continued fucking you through your high. You body jolting and shaking around him, as he went faster, eyes rolling to the back of your head as you realizing you weren’t done yet.

“So close.” He mumbled, hands squeezing your so tightly you felt as if they were going to break. You ignored the pain of having your hard crush and just let out absorber moan from another orgasm building quickly.

“M’gonna c-cum again!” You warned, strained voice loud and needy.

“Me too baby” Kai moaned back, watching your eyes squeeze shut again taking in the way your body shook around him. “Let go y/n, I know you want to.” He spoke out of breath.

You felt his thrust getting sloppily, but he tried keeping up the pace. His own body stiffening as his cock twitch in you as you clenched around him again. Both of your falling apart with loud moans, and whimpering of each other names, lips coming together again as he spilt every last bit of his hot cum into your beautifully worn out cunt.

Neither of you spoke any words. Just your reveled in each other’s tongues, allowed you naked bodies to somehow merge into one. You felt a sudden tiredness take over you as it did the same to him.

“I don’t want to let you go.” He whispered into your lips.

“Then don’t. Let’s stay this way forever.” You hummed, squeezing his hands in yours.

“Deal.”

#wattpad #aesthetic #teaser #the cw legacies #vampire diaries #damon salvatore #kai parker smut #stefan salvatore #malachi parker #kai x reader #kai parker #cobrakai1972

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jockpoetry · 3 years

Note

supernatural sees women as a tool for development and strengthening of narratives/motivation and dean sees his body as a tool. is that anything?

When I saw this ask I really made the 🥴in real life. So, yeah anon, I do think there’s something to this.

Quick Disclaimer before I actually launch into my thoughts™: A lot of my read of Dean stems from my experience as both an oldest daughter and a transman. Being the oldest daughter was an experience I lived for many years, but I am also a man. I wasn’t raised as a man, I wasn’t socialized as a man, and even though once I came out upon reflection my masculinity was obviously there. Like I was a man™ before I knew I was a man. Even when I actively tied my identity to femininity for a long time! A lot of my prideful moments were based around statements like: “I was the only girl who (fill in the blank).”

So I am just putting that out there before I launch into my spiel about Dean/Gender/Tool because they all interlock for me.

I am also going to apologize in advance because I know this has fully gone off the rails and I’m not even done writing it yet. If this is incomprehensible ! Well, happens to the best of us.

First off, most importantly I guess before we discuss womanhood and Dean and the way both are utilized on the show I need to say that I personally don’t subscribe the whole Dean is female coded thing.

It’s a read I can absolutely understand. But for me..he’s not.

He’s a hypermasculine man to the point that when (and because he is written as a punchline, as the stupid™ brother, as the whore™, as the mother/father™, as daddy’s blunt instrument™, etc) Dean deviates from the pre-accepted definition of hypermasculine it’s Wrong.

It’s Instantly Feminine.

I think the internet has made the world very black and white, or blue and pink maybe. This point, I think, colors a lot of these discussions. Dean cooks, he cleans and so therefor he’s female coded. When that really just feeds back into the whole toxic masculinity loop. You can’t be masculine and cook and clean and cry. That’s for feminine people only.

I get the argument! I do, I just think that Dean’s actions are not inherently feminine, it’s just in the vacuum of Female and in the Absence of Traditional Masculinity it makes sense to assign him female coded and move on.

IN FACT the way that Dean is the action hero of the show, the Masculine™ one on the show - but he cries, and he rages, and he cooks (Again and Again) and cleans (Again and Again). The fact he’s macho and confident but he has so little self esteem. Is frankly insane to me. You have this blaze of glory character who is so depressed that they have him kill himself. Twice. In explicitly “I hate myself, I hate hearing all the things I hate about myself, I want to destroy myself” ways.

On just a regular ol’ network show that is just ungodly bad at times. They let their Male Hero cry - all the time (if I linked every example of this the essay would be...longer than it already is, but just take my word for it). Dean tears up and grieves and shows more than just Angry Horny Violent™ (he shows plenty of that, don’t get me wrong) but he’s Emotional (Again and Again and Again). In many different ways!

I mean, beyond even just tearing up, they make their Male Hero™ face sexual violence in pretty, uniquely horrifying - and queer! - ways.

Let’s make it clear, they did a lot of this unintentionally.

Or they do it as a joke.

Off of dean for a moment to say women are plot devices in this show. I could probably count on one hand female characters who have sincere depth to them that have roles outside of progressing plot, filling a filler episode, and who are still alive. Like even characters such as Charlie who are wholly developed, and interesting, are only remembered/mentioned/utilized to progress plots or fill an episode out - and then she dies. For pain™ for plot™ for no other reason than to traumatize a character.

Which let’s also make it clear Dean’s trauma is also only used as a plot device (as is Sam’s but in a different way, and Cas’ trauma is a whole other barrel of fish we’re not gonna dive into right now). Like wholesale full stop they don’t actually care about what happened to him. Unless it’s relevant in an episode.

Oh that boys home he was left at when he was 16 for months? Sure we’ll sprinkle that in in the back half of the series. Oh he was covered in bruises and said it was from a hunt (when it’s clear contextually they were from his father but saying the fantastical but true is easier than saying the uncomfortable but true). As Dean says though the story became the story, he was sixteen. He just went along with what John said.

We only see Dean ever truly rage at John, by the way, when either Dean is dead (when he’s between life and death and he rages at John, right before John “apologizes” for traumatizing him, for putting too much on Dean’s shoulders, and fucking dying) or John is dead (the Djinn episode where Dean is straight™ and John is dead™ and he goes to his grave and just yells and rages like he should have to his father in the real world).

Dean’s trauma from being both tortured and torturer in hell? Yeah, we don’t talk about that after it’s Relevant™. Even though it’s clear - especially in the demon!dean, mark of cain era, all those years later - Alastair still has his hooks inside of Dean. I stopped watching originally after s8 ended. I was fed up with the show, and with this whole renaissance I’ve been doing a rewatch and I’m into season twelve now and it really has never come up again.

Even when he had the mark of cain and he was tasked with questioning and accused of torturing it was “the mark has changed you” and not “you were victim and victimizer in hell for forty years, which is longer than you’ve been alive on earth” (and, was about as long as he wound up living. Which is desperately sad.

Because we talk about Sam’s desire for a “normal” life but, Dean wanted out too. He was tired in the first few seasons of this show, he never had a chance to taste freedom (we don’t count the boys home, because that was a different kind of regimented life, and it was a false freedom) the way that Sam did in Flagstaff with Bones or at Stanford with Jessica. Love for Dean is sacrificing, it’s putting himself/his happiness/his well-being last.

Because Dean only knows love in the context of violence (like all of these fun examples, for starters) is a phrase that I’ve said a lot both in private chats and on here, and I absolutely think it goes to him being a tool (a blunt instrument, a plot device, so both textually and metatextually) instead of a person. Which Cas sees Dean’s shame/guilt and sees that side of Dean because he touched his soul, and saw more than just the Righteous™ man, more than just the tool, he saw A good man, not a machine.

On the other side though you have how “bad guys” view Dean: Desperate, Sloppy, Needy, Dean’s hole (Again), which is again so wildly counterintuitive to the story of a Macho Man Hero™. You’re using vocabulary that is both queering him and feminizing (and I know this a meme format, but sincerely it is done in a derogatory way it is feminizing. It’s breaking him down to bare parts, to a sloppy hole).

My whole rewatch I have been absolutely fascinated by how identity and free will is utilized/conceptualized on this show. Castiel has been my main focus, but Dean and how he is framed by himself and others is...fascinating - and frustrating. The writers inconsistency lends itself not only to this unintentionally queer character, but also one that again is incredibly easily read as a non-traditionally masculine character.

As a feminine character.

This show has so few female characters that of course it had to foist the roles/behaviors/plots that a female character might have onto a male character. Which I think is part of why reading Dean as trans (either transmasc, or transfemme) is so easily done like.

Half of these are shit posts, but you can find trans allegories/textual evidence in this show again, again, again, again, and again. And this is unintentional, they don’t want you to look at Dean and see woman, former future or present. Like a lot of these I’m sure are punchlines for them, because women/queer folk are punchlines to them.

Sometimes the only women in an episode are random witnesses who get two sentences of dialogue, and then the main guest character is a man. Who flirts with Dean, and Dean is receptive to it.

They paint themselves into a corner, there are female Rabbi. So easily could Aaron have been a woman instead of a man, but they made the choice to play up the HaHa Dean & Men card.

Because, again, Dean has filled the slot of Woman™ of Female Lead™ and the flirting would’ve been straight if Dean was a woman. It’s a plot device, they needed to have the guest character be disarming, be cute, make the main character flustered.

It’s just the main character is a man, because they’re allergic to women. But they still need those female plots, tools of femininity, to move their show forward. I mean I am a big subscriber to transmasc Jo (no idea if anyone else is with me on this one, but let me explain). Jo is in love with Dean (concept) not Dean (actuality). Which, we’ve all had our eggs cracked by someone like that. We were in love with them until we realized we just wanted to be them.

He loved her like a little sister, she loved him like a lost idol. He’s a golden calf and she dies for him, because she believed in him, she was the original character dashed at the altar of the Winchesters.

I fully believe if she had lived and if this show had a crumb of actual good writing Jo could have been a deeply compelling transmasc character. But I also think she’s a fascinating inversion of Dean. Dean is a Masculine Character who subverts Toxic Masculinity, Jo is a Tomboy™ she’s not your (if you take it straight, literally and metaphorically) average female love interest. She’s angry, she’s not soft at all, all edges and corners and thorns. She isn’t helpless, she’s stubborn but not in a “you’re going to get punished for this” way. She’s right when she’s stubborn. She’s helpful, she’s a martyr.

I could do a whole other essay just on Jo (and Ellen, and Ash, what a fucking trio!) but needless to say Jo was one of the first...plot device feminine tools sacrificed to this show. She was a regular, she was unique, she was an engaging character, and she still died (to progress the plot? no. for man pain? yeah, for like three episodes maybe, and then it’s forgotten just like the rest of Dean’s trauma, as we mentioned above).

Dean and Women and Love is a very interesting tool used too because. Boy they sure try to make Dean love women and it fails in small ways, and in big, meaningless, failed het domesticity (again) ways. Not to mention whatever Lust (in the form of a woman) having no effect upon him, when they could have used that moment to assert his Masculinity and Heterosexuality. He behaved normally? And...also...whatever the fuck the Adios thing was!

Like they have these opportunities to make him Traditionally (toxically) Masculine, but make the choice to...not? To soften him. Because it’s a tool. He’s their female lead, textually he had to take on the role of mother(/father) to Sam, but...I mean this is a million miles long already. I know, but we absolutely can’t not talk about his Paternal/Maternal behaviors. (Which appear again and again again and again, outside of his relationship with Sam even/especially). He’s the mother hen, sage, safety net, beacon, home to so many side characters they meet.

I mean in many ways Jody is also a Dean comparison. Lost her family. Found a new family. She is non-traditionally feminine, but easily flustered and Silly™ (let’s just drop the entire sex talk over family dinner scene with Alex and the boys and looking to them for help, even though she was already a mother, and she’s a cop, and a hunter and this confident no nonsense individual.... She’s not). We are meant to see her as this hard ass, but she makes extra food for the boys to take back to the bunker. She’s deadly in a fight, but also still easily overwhelmed and put into damsel mode, and she cares so much even in the face of adversity.

It’s also fun to see how Jo | Jody are reflections of Dean at different points of his life. Younger, cocky | Older, settled.

Even when the text tries to tell us that he’s not.

When it reminds us that he’s violent. That he is his father, even if he says that Sam is more like John (which was reflexive, which was angry because of Adam and how Sam was behaving like Dean in that episode, and yes there are parallels to be drawn between Sam and John, the show barely dives into them). Instead we’re told that Dean is John (Again and Again and Again and Again).

So intensely that a fanfictionalized version of the Winchester Gospels makes it an entire fucking musical number.

And yet, despite the texts insistence to make Dean Macho Man Father Reborn™ We get this Dean who is silly (and directly compared/contrasted to the female character in this scene), soft, in heels, nagging, and... Sully (you know Sam’s imaginary friend who has the same Haircut Dean has, who is a softer, shorter, friendlier, campier, version of Dean who was a replacement For Dean until the real one let Sam back in? That? Sully?) it’s hard to take them seriously.

Hell, even when he was A DEMON? What did they do? They had him sing off-key drunken karaoke, they had him doing this ! Like that’s your hero, unhinged, free to be as bad as he could be, and you put him in a cowboy hat in a romance with the king of hell.

The Female Lead, everyone. Who’s biggest betrayal(s) comes at the hands of his love interest (again, a man even though it was an angel who could’ve taken any vessel! who could’ve been recast, who canonically dies admitting his love to Dean - that one), who he tries so hard to be loyal to.

The contradictions of his character are laughable. He is so emotional, but if he is engaged about his emotions? He shuts down, or he’s exasperated about being asked about them. It really is Female Lead/Only Here For The Plot disease, because everything is more important than him. How’s he doing? Doesn’t matter outside of the context of how x character is doing or that y character is dead. Or his emotions only matter if they’re done in penance.

They also really do frame him as Pretty Boy™ in a violent way, or in a derogatory manner. They’ll give us homoerotic shots like this or these and never really acknowledge how these are gay shots. Sorry the gun scene is a a straight up sex scene, the beer sip spilling out over his mouth is oral, the scene where Cas fills up Dean’s glass with whisky is also a sex scene, they do this shit on purpose but accidentally queer it up. If Dean was a woman these scenes wouldn’t even matter. They’d be passing moments, but because he is not just a man but A Man™ they’re insane to see.

Not to mention all of these scenes and all the ones I haven’t linked where Dean dresses up. He performs masculinity, but he performs femininity too. He’s a plot device that is slotted in to whatever role they need. He’s Super Straight Butch Man™ but coaches the lesbian on how to successfully flirt with a man. He’s Action Hero™ who sits through a montage with the same lesbian and yays and nays her outfits, and enjoys himself.

Fuck he loves dressing up, he feels better in these costumes because performing a character is easier than being himself. Because who is Dean? He’s a tool, both textually and metatextually. It is exactly how the women and because of the women on the show that Dean is the way that he is. If there was a more steady female presence Dean would not be half as much of a plot device or half as camp/gay/feminine/non-traditionally masculine/queer coded as he is.

In conclusion....

#dean winchester #supernatural #spn meta #spn #gender #anon #replies #messages #my writing #ANYWAYS PHEW okay anon i don't know if i even fully got to your point but i woke up at like 3:30 to this ask and i've been fixated on it #HOPE THIS IS EVEN JUST a little bit coherent #the way i meant for this to talk so much more about transness and eldest daughter syndrome and just FORGOT #oops #oh well

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excavatinglizard · 2 years

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⭐⭐ Double star for the fanfic director's cut, please! How about something from your most recent fic, and something from the fic you personally like the most? (Optional third star: a turn of phrase you really loved, or a reference/detail you're not sure your readers noticed/fully "got.") Thank you in advance!

Thank you Em!!!

So, my technically-most-recent-fic is not published, because it was part of a nano challenge I did with a handful of other people from the uss mckirk server, and the last posted one is just, fluff. Not much there to talk about other than the fact that they love each other and keep loving each other for a long time.

I’m just going to count Dog Days of (Space) Summer as my most recent fic because there is shit to talk about in there 😂

Clothing and vulnerability! I mentioned it in the most recent part of it, but I’ve been using clothing throughout the entire set of comics as a repeated image/metaphor.

Both Jim and Bones wear layers upon layers of clothing, covering and hiding themselves, keeping their scars (mental and physical) hidden away. Jim’s jacket doesn’t appear much beyond the first page, and he’s a lot less careful when it comes to keeping his outer layers around him—but there are still constants, and the jacket is coming back, I promise. Bones is a little more obvious, with the helmet (almost) always on unless he’s purposefully showing vulnerability (or trying not to puke his guts out). BUT if you look, on pages where it’s just him and Jo, there is no other armor. The cover page of section three is… well, it’s basically a description of the entire part.

a) the helmet coming off, but bones is shadowed and Jim isn’t there

b) Jim, bringing his layers back around him to protect himself until Jo arrives and he decides to offer her comfort instead

Next: fic I like most! Ahhh that’s hard 😂 I guess, the fic that I’m currently most proud of would be Hold On To Each Other

I mentioned in the notes that I ‘put more of myself than I meant to’ into it. This is a story about Jim dealing with the after-effects of dying in Into Darkness, the survivors guilt and fear and feeling out of place in his own body. But underneath it’s more about running away, which is where I come into it, I guess.

I’ve been moving around my entire life, and I headcanon that Jim didn’t spend a lot of time in one place, between Winona and Tarsus and Frank, but especially afterwards when he wasn’t even sure what counted as ‘home’ anymore. That’s what I was trying to get to come through, a little. The way that kind of thing can make it so hard to feel at home, to believe that where you are is actually going to stay. The way, sometimes, it’s easier to just leave again instead of having to go through the motions and the effort of making connections and a place to call your own.

Is it possible to be homesick for a feeling? For the idea of a place?

Finally, detail I don’t think people noticed (although who am I to say)

This is from chapter five of my longer mckirk fic, and I have two things to say about it (although it’s really about the chapter in its entirety)

Jim flashed a grin and twisted to show off the back. “Well, I found it in the closet, and I figured you wouldn’t want to. Besides, you have to admit, Bones: I look great in heels.”

“Sure, Jim,” Leonard chuckled, getting his voice back under some semblance of control. “Just don’t come crying to me when you break your neck.”

“Not like I’ve never worn them before.” Jim waved him off.

1. The Jim I write and draw isn’t cis. He just doesn’t exist in my head that way, and Gaila lets him borrow her dresses and stuff when he has days where he needs it at the Academy (although it isn’t that often, which is why Bones is surprised). At the end of this fic, Jim DOES in fact convince Uhura to teach him how to do eyeliner like hers, and he loves it.

2. This chapter was inspired by The Penumbra Podcast and every time I remember this I end up laughing at myself.

#my writing #‘long post’#star trek #lizardsasks #thank you so much!!#I didn’t even mention my MCD fic I dreamed about last night! because it hurts me and there isn’t enough of it yet to talk about!#fireinmywoods

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oswinpond · 4 years

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Even after the new film, which certainly popularized Amy/Laurie in a way I’ve never seen before, I keep hearing a lot of the same old arguments: “Laurie never stopped loving Jo”, “Laurie didn’t really love Amy”, “Amy was a second choice/consolation prize”, “Jo should’ve been with Laurie” etc. And a lot of these people claim this is book canon. As I’ve just reread the book, I’ve got a lot of thoughts on all of this...

(Note: This is all purely based on book canon.)

In the book, after Amy harshly scolds Laurie, he decides to go back to London and work for his grandfather to better himself. At first, he thinks he’s doing it for two reasons: Amy despises him and that hurts him, but also the idea that if he does something “splendid” Jo may love him (or at least respect him, as Amy put it).

So Laurie decides to write a requiem for Jo “which should harrow up Jo’s soul and melt the heart of every hearer”. But he can’t come up with anything because he keeps humming the dance music reminiscent of the Christmas ball in Nice which he spent devoting himself to Amy all evening. So then he tries to compose an opera with Jo as his heroine, but it doesn’t work. “He wanted Jo for his heroine, and called upon his memory to supply him with tender recollections and romantic visions of his love. But memory turned traitor; and, as if possessed by the perverse spirit of the girl, would only recall Jo’s oddities, faults, and freaks, would only show her in the most unsentimental aspects.”

Jo no longer fits as his heroine, no matter how hard he tries. So he gives up on that, and his imagination promptly comes up with another heroine for him without even trying:

“This phantom wore many faces, but it always had golden hair, was enveloped in a diaphanous cloud, and floated airily before his mind’s eye in a pleasing chaos of roses, peacocks, white ponies, and blue ribbons. He did not give the complacent wraith any name, but he took her for his heroine and grew quite fond of her, as well he might, for he gifted her with every gift and grace under the sun, and escorted her, unscathed, through trials which would have annihilated any mortal woman.”

While Laurie doesn’t realize it, the woman he’s imagining is Amy. Amy with the blue ribbons in her golden hair, who put roses in his buttonhole, who he watched feed the peacocks in Paris, and who he first saw again in a carriage drawn by ponies. It’s also a little prophetic, as he does escort the real Amy through future trials. (Bonus: at the same time, Amy spends her time sketching some faceless man who clearly resembles Laurie, but she doesn’t realize it either.)

Contrary to what some in the fandom would claim, Laurie isn’t at all forcing himself to love Amy just so that he can be part of the March family. He doesn’t even realize that she’s become the “heroine” in his story, that she’s the woman he’s fantasizing about. He thinks he’s doing this to improve himself for Jo, but it’s Amy that’s inspiring him.

And then Laurie realizes that his feelings for Jo are disappearing:

“Laurie thought that the task of forgetting his love for Jo would absorb all his powers for years, but to his great surprise he discovered it grew easier every day. He refused to believe it at first, got angry with himself, and couldn’t understand it [...] Laurie’s heart wouldn’t ache; the wound persisted in healing with a rapidity that astonished him, and instead of trying to forget, he found himself trying to remember. He had not foreseen this turn of affairs, and was not prepared for it. He was disgusted with himself, surprised at his own fickleness, and full of a queer mixture of disappointment and relief that he could recover from such a tremendous blow so soon. He carefully stirred up the embers of his lost love, but they refused to burn into a blaze: there was only a comfortable glow that warmed and did him good without putting him into a fever, and he was reluctantly obliged to confess that the boyish passion was slowly subsiding into a more tranquil sentiment, very tender, a little sad and resentful still, but that was sure to pass away in time, leaving a brotherly affection which would last unbroken to the end.”

This passage alone pretty much puts to rest the idea that Laurie never got over Jo. He actually got over her so easily and quickly that he felt disgusted with himself, thinking this made him fickle. His romantic feelings are gone, and soon will leave only a “brotherly affection” when the last of the hurt is gone as well. Maybe he got over her so easily because he simply mistook his strong bond with her for romance, or maybe it was just a rash and immature first love that was never going to last long anyways, or whatever else... point being, he got over her.

And Laurie was actually trying, and failing, to rekindle any love for Jo (unlike his unconscious growing feelings for Amy, which he wasn’t pushing for at all). As a last ditch attempt to revive that love, he writes to Jo asking if she was sure about her refusal, and when she responds that she absolutely could never love him that way, he accepts it without sadness or complaint this time. He’s already over her, so there’s nothing to be heartbroken over. That was his closure. He takes off the ring she gave him and locks it away with her letters, and that’s that.

And that’s when he’s ready to open his heart to Amy. He starts corresponding with her so often their letters are flying back and forth constantly. He wants to go back to her, but he doesn’t want to until she asks; she finally does after she hears about Beth’s passing, and Laurie immediately drops everything to go to her “with a heart full of joy and sorrow, hope and suspense” (and this is after he knows she’s turned down Fred, so we know what he’s hoping for now). Amy is his first priority after Beth dies, even though Beth was dearest to Jo. Laurie meets Amy in Switzerland and, without saying anything, they both know their relationship has changed.

They spend weeks doing everything together and spend all their time out at the lake. Despite the sad tidings, they wind up being their happiest together in Vevey. They both know that they’re in love with each other without even having to say it (they really seem to develop an unspoken communication at this point). And while Laurie knows that she’ll say “yes” to his proposal, he’s still nervous so he puts it off to enjoy his time with Amy in Switzerland. He imagines proposing to her in the chateau garden at moonlight, but instead blurts it out while they’re on a lake in the middle of the day:

Feeling that she had not mended matters much, Amy took the offered third of a seat, shook her hair over her face, and accepted an oar. She rowed as well as she did many other things; and, though she used both hands, and Laurie but one, the oars kept time, and the boat went smoothly through the water. “How well we pull together, don’t we?” said Amy, who objected to silence just then. “So well that I wish we might always pull in the same boat. Will you, Amy?” very tenderly. “Yes, Laurie,” very low. Then they both stopped rowing, and unconsciously added a pretty little tableau of human love and happiness to the dissolving views reflected in the lake.

And there’s so much to say about this little scene. While he had to beg and argue with Jo just to finally accept her firm “no”, he just has to ask a simple question with Amy and he gets his simple answer because they’re on the same page. The rather blunt metaphor of rowing well together, even when he uses one hand and she uses two, is all about how despite their differences they work. They keep time. And it calls back to Jo’s talk with Marmee where they both agree that Jo and Laurie never would’ve worked, in part because their similarities would clash horribly in a romantic relationship (but mainly because , y’know, Jo never once felt a single shred of romantic love for Laurie).

Now, I can understand where people come from thinking Laurie was “replacing” Jo with Amy with lines like "Laurie decided that Amy was the only woman in the world who could fill Jo’s place and make him happy”. I get how this can be interpreted as Amy filling in for what was meant to be Jo’s place in his heart. But it makes a lot more sense in the context of Laurie’s speech to Jo towards the end when he explains his feelings:

“I never shall stop loving you; but the love is altered, and I have learned to see that it is better as it is. Amy and you changed places in my heart, that’s all. I think it was meant to be so, and would have come about naturally, if I had waited, as you tried to make me; but I never could be patient, and so I got a heartache. I was a boy then, headstrong and violent; and it took a hard lesson to show me my mistake. For it was one, Jo, as you said, and I found it out, after making a fool of myself. Upon my word, I was so tumbled up in my mind, at one time, that I didn’t know which I loved best, you or Amy, and tried to love you both alike; but I couldn’t. And when I saw her in Switzerland, everything seemed to clear up all at once. You both got into your right places.”

Laurie didn’t settle for Amy. Amy took Jo’s place in the sense that they swapped places in how he saw them, from romantic to platonic for Jo and vice versa for Amy. And those wound up being their “right” places. He believes he was always meant to fall in love with Amy and see Jo as his sister, and that he would’ve gotten to this point naturally even if things had played out differently.

I’ll admit I wasn’t a fan of how the 2019 film portrayed Jo in this situation, because in the book she was absolutely thrilled for Laurie and Amy, and is happily surprised when Marmee tells her she’d been hoping for them to fall in love. But in the film, they take her sadness over her loneliness too far IMO, and make it seem like she was actually bitter over Amy and Laurie being together, which unfortunately fuelled the “Amy stole Laurie from Jo” crowd a bit. And after her conversation with Marmee where she admits that she only wants Laurie because she longs to be loved, and Marmee points that “that isn’t the same as loving”, this makes movie!Jo seem “silly and selfish” as book!Jo puts it (because in the book, that was only a “what if” she entertained and never wrote any letter).

Anyways, to conclude on all of this, when Amy and Laurie are married at and home, we get the thoughts of other characters on their relationship, and the unanimous opinion is that they’re completely in love and happy with each other. Jo herself insists that their happiness will for sure last, and notes how proud Laurie seems to be to call Amy his wife. Laurie, meanwhile, can’t stop talking about Amy through to the end (and Amy is clearly just as smitten). I dare you to read the last half of Part 2 and not find Amy and Laurie adorable together.

And to hammer that last nail in the coffin on Jo/Laurie as a romance, we get Laurie meeting Professor Bhaer. It’s specifically noted that while Laurie is suspicious of Bhaer and notices his interest in Jo, it was “not of jealousy” but a “brotherly circumspection”. Amy even asks him if he’s at all jealous and Laurie tells her “I assure you I can dance at Jo’s wedding with a heart as light as my heels. Do you doubt it, my darling?” and it says that Amy’s “last little jealous fear vanished forever”. Laurie actually winds up happily supporting Bhaer once he sees he’s a great guy for his sister Jo, and suggests to Amy that they should try to help them out as a couple.

So no, Jo never loved Laurie romantically, Laurie absolutely did get over Jo, Laurie and Amy are so happy together it’s almost obnoxious, Jo is pro-Amy/Laurie and Laurie is pro-Jo/Bhaer, and Amy wasn’t a second choice, she was Laurie’s “meant to be” by his own words.

#amy x laurie #laurie x amy #amy march #laurie laurence #little women #this wound up way longer than i intended #oops #so i added a read more #anyways all this to say that laurie and amy are OTP and laurie and jo are brotp #and jo and amy are my favourite sisters and their relationship is amazing

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