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lokiprompts · 1 year

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A Proposal To Remember

Totally forgot about this fic - may have posted it forever ago, but forgot to add it to the master list so here it is again!

Summary: Loki proposes to you, but of course shennigans ensue.

Warnings: None I think, fluff and crack. Misunderstanding trope. Soulmate trope. Thor is a loveable idiot.

It was going to be a perfect night.

It had to be.

Loki had everything planned down to the finest details. Tonight, was the night that he was finally going to ask you to be his forever, to be his wife.

Your love story with Loki was one for the ages, a lot of love, but a lot of rough spots as well. As Loki always said, being soul mates only meant that you were bonded, it didn’t mean your relationship would be easy. Yet, the both of you stuck it out through everything. Your similarities to the God were eerie; together you worked through your mutual trauma, your shared self-hatred, and lack of love and overabundance of isolation in your lives.

Loki remembered when he first met you. Everything was black and gray, quite literally, as the world was only black and white until you met your soulmate. Then, when you finally laid eyes on your soul mate, it is like a whole new world opens up. Color booms and blossoms around you, everything smells better, and life in general is just…. sweeter. Loki was a reluctant member of the rag tag group known as the Avengers, but he was forced to play nice in order to stay out of Asgardian prison. Turns out Odin doesn’t care if you were mind controlled or not. That fact wasn’t shocking to Loki, at all.

He was there for several months, almost a year – a very long year – and he was told that there would be a new assistant to the Avenger’s starting in the tower. The team filed into the conference room and Loki took his place in the corner of the room, arms folded, scowl on his face. It was the normal, everyday gray. Then you walked into. Your hair bouncing on your shoulders with each joyful step, a big smile on your face.

The color changed for Loki first. When he heard the chirp of your voice, he swore it was the most beautiful sound he ever heard. He lifted his head up and saw you. The euphoria was out of this world. He hadn’t experienced anything like it during all his thousand of years of life. The greens and blues of the room were breathtaking. Looking down at himself, he saw his favorite shade of gray was actually a beautiful green. He looked around the room, now experiencing color for the first time. The look of shock was obvious, and it wasn’t missed by Tony.

“Trying to catch flies, Reindeer Games?” Tony grinned. That got your attention. You looked up from your stack of papers that you had brought in with you and saw the one Tony was talking to. Everything around you stopped. Your heart swelled as color filled the room like a spilled paint can. You took everything in, mouth open in awe, before you finally reconnected with the man, the God, that was your soul mate.

You smiled at him, but he frowned. Loki always regretted that part of your relationship the most. It was unsettling for him that his soul mate was a mortal and one with a simple, menial job too. All eyes were on you and Loki as the rest of the team clued in on what was happening. The pressure was too much. Loki got up and left the room.

You didn’t see him for almost a month after that. Well, outside of conference and mission meetings and even then, he refused to look at you, let alone talk to you. You wondered what his voice sounded like. Besides those brief encounters, if you could even call them that, you never saw him in the common areas. You barely knew him, but it broke your heart. It all became too much, his absence, the rejection, and the crushing loneliness one random day, you broke down and cried, right in the middle of the living room. You thanked whatever Gods there were that you were alone.

But you weren’t alone. Little did you know that Loki lingered, watching you from afar. He found himself needing to be near you, yet not being ready to be close enough for you to see him, talk to him. To see how awful he is. He couldn’t bear the thought of you figuring out the numerous monstrosities he committed. What if Stark already told you? Then he heard your tears, your quiet whimpers alone in the too empty living room.

He couldn’t stay away anymore. He couldn’t let you be in pain alone.

Loki emerged from the shadows to be by your side in an instant. At first, you were shocked, so surprised to even see him so close to you after all this time. After one long shared look, you launched yourself into his arms and he held you so close, you swore you might melt into him and become one. The rest, as they say, is history.

Since then, two wonderful years had gone by, and your relationship blossomed into something Loki never imagined he would ever have. Loki had long since decided he always wanted you in his life and tonight, he was going to make it official. But the only problem was, he had no idea how to go about it. He had minimal knowledge of Midgardian culture when it came to marriage. On Asgard, especially for a royal, it was more about obligation than love. There were more formal announcements and barely any declarations of love. But for you, he wanted to do something special. And he knew how important it was to you.

Thankfully, during your years together, you had shared some very vital information to him. Like, how you imagined the proposal and wedding since you were a child, fantasizing about all the details. It always tickled Loki how you never would have imagined your prince, would actually be a real prince. So, he had to get this right.

“There is no way I would want to be proposed to like that.” You said, with a layer of distain that made Loki’s lip twitch up in a small smile as you both watched a movie together. It amused him to see you angry, his little feisty mortal.

“What? Proposing in bed seems quite romantic. Very intimate.” He countered. You scoffed and he laughed.

“I guess I am more traditional. I feel like you need to get on your knee to really propose.” You side eyed Loki, well aware of his reputation for the fact he would never kneel for anyone, ever. His profile didn’t give you anything at all about what his thoughts might be on the subject, so you continued, “I think it should be something special, something more than a brief conversation in bed. Something truly memorable.”

Loki hummed a bit, but kept his eyes forward on the movie, filing away that little bit of information. He tried to get more information out of you, though not so obviously, when he finally decided, he was going to ‘pop the question’. Rom Coms were often played in. your shared apartment and he even asked Thor to try and get the conversation going, though, true to Thor’s nature, he almost let the true motive slip. Yet, you still gave Loki nothing.

Well, besides the fact you thought that an Affair to Remember and Sleepless in Seattle were the most romantic movies to ever exist. This wasn’t new, to Loki, though. Every time you needed comfort, every time you were sick, you would watch an Affair to Remember for it to be quickly followed by Sleepless in Seattle. It was one of those things that became a staple in your life and now, Loki’s. So, when Loki finally resorted to looking at your laptop and googling ‘creative ways to propose’ and it suggested pulling elements from your favorite movie, it was like it all came together.

And on that day, you had a feeling like something was going to happen. You woke up to the other side of your bed being empty, which wasn’t usual with Loki’s sleeping habits. But what was unusual was the note left on his pillow. You smiled as you read it. It told you that a car would be picking you up in an hour to take you on a day of pampering. Loki loved to spoil you, but this was on a whole other level. You were first treated to a gourmet breakfast, then a massage, you got your hair and nails done, your make up, and even a shopping trip to find the perfect outfit for tonight. It was overwhelming, being spoiled like that, so. you knew tonight had to be the night that Loki was going to propose.

Because the last stop was the top of the empire state building.

Your heart hammered in your chest as you stepped into the elevator, smoothing down your newly purchased outfit until you heard the ding of the elevator. You stepped out onto the observation deck of the skyscraper. There were still several people there. You smiled when you noticed that many were couples; hopefully having a romantic moment like you. Walking around, you tried to find your God in shining Asgardian armor, but you couldn’t find him. Instead you found…Thor?

“Thor, what are you doing here?” You asked, tapping him on the shoulder and he turned around with a sad smile.

“I’ve come to tell you that he’s not coming.”

“What do you mean, ‘he’s not coming’?”

Thor put a gentle hand on your shoulder, “He’s not going to be meeting you here.”

The realization dawned on you. How in An Affair to Remember, Nickie waited for Terry at the top of the empire state building, with the promise they would be together if and when they reunited. But Terry never showed.

So, you played along, feigning heartbreak, “Oh, no, is everything okay?”

Thor shook his head, “I am being serious. He isn’t coming, for real. It’s over.”

Your eyes went wide in shock, “What do you mean it’s over?”

The Asgardian put his other hand on your shoulder now too, “I didn’t want to be the one to tell you this, but I had to tell you. He doesn’t want you anymore. There is nothing left or your relationship. I am sorry.” He patted your shoulder awkwardly, then left.

Once the initial shock wore off, tears started to stream down your cheeks. Loki didn’t want you anymore. That couldn’t be true! You dug your phone out and you immediately called him, but he didn’t answer. You tried him again and again and again, still the God did not pick up and it only reaffirmed in your mind that your relationship with your soulmate was over. How did this even happen? Why did he do all of this just to break your heart? It was cruel. Eventually, you made your way back onto the elevator and rode down. You had to get back to your shared apartment and grab your things. There was no way you would be staying there tonight.

There, Loki waited in your apartment. Candles covered the entire space, along with your favorite flowers and the most amazing meal. He reached into his suit pocket and pulled out the little velvet box he has been holding onto for weeks now. Opening it up, he adjusted the ring in its box, so the stone laid perfectly for you to see. It was a custom design, truly unique like you, but he had to include an emerald. Loki’s favorite color since you came into his life.

There was a knock on the door and quickly Loki answered it, anxiety spiking that it might be you. He let out a relieved sigh when he saw it was Thor. The younger brother didn’t dare let Thor in for fear that he would somehow destroy his master proposal plan, so he spoke through a crack in the door.

“Did everything go according to plan brother?” Loki asked.

Thor grinned, rocking on his heels, “Yes. It went well. I delivered the message as requested.”

“You said the message exactly?” Loki strained, the nerves starting to get to him now.

Thor suddenly stilled, “Well, almost…”

Loki threw the door wide open now, “What do you mean, almost?!”

The thunder God patted his younger brother’s shoulder, “Calm yourself, brother. They had additional questions, so I had to come up with some things, but the message was the same! It went well, okay? Trust me.”

Loki eyed his brother skeptically, before letting his shoulders slump back and relax, “Thank you brother. I just want this to go well.”

Thor smiled, “It will, brother. You two are destined for each other. You have planned this for so long, so it can only go well! After they say ‘yes’ we shall celebrate after.” Loki whispered out another thank you, before closing the door and waiting for you. The anxiety was bubbling in his chest, and he found himself pacing in the room and nervously fixing the silverware and plates and other random things a hundred times over to make sure it was perfect. You deserved nothing less than perfect in Loki’s eyes.

The trip back to the tower was long and frankly, horrible. For some reason, you couldn’t get a cab no matter what you did. You tried calling for a car from Stark’s fleet, and no one was answering. And to make everything even worse, it started to rain. By the time you reached the tower, you looked like a drowned rodent. It took everything in you to bring yourself to your apartment door. You dreaded seeing Loki, but you wanted answers. How can you leave your soulmate like this?!

With shaking hands, you pulled out your keys and unlocked the door and stepped inside. The sight stole your breath. Between the candles to all your favorite flowers, you didn’t know what to think. But your emotions thought for you when you saw Loki standing amongst the amber lit flowers, looking dashing as ever in his all black suit. It was a sin how good he looked in a suit. When you saw your apartment, you realized this was an elaborate trick from Loki for this supposed romantic night in. It made your blood boil.

You completely missed the look of worry on his face as soon as he laid eyes on you, “Darling, are you okay?” He stepped closer to inspect you, but he only met the palm of your hand as you slapped him hard across the cheek.

“How dare you, Loki!!” You screeched, shaking your hand wildly in a feeble attempt to control the pain in your palm from slapping a God who might as well been made of stone.

It took a minute for Loki to come to his senses. This was the last thing he expected, “What? What’s wrong, what happened?” He frantically asked. The rage was burning in your eyes.

The slap wasn’t enough, so you chucked your keys at the God too and they bounced harmlessly off his chest, “You told Thor to tell me that you didn’t want me anymore! That you were breaking up with me!! What kind of sick joke is that Loki?!”

Loki rubbed his cheek, the flesh there still slightly pink from your slap,” No, no, no, Darling. That is not what was supposed to happen.” He saw you standing there, soaking wet, enraged, but still an unspoken sadness in your eyes. Even with the rain, he could tell you had been crying. Today was supposed to be happy memories, now it was all ruined and he was frantically trying to fix it.

“Thor is an idiot and he was s-supposed to say, he was supposed to tell you, tell you…”He paused and huffed, missing his silver tongue, “He was supposed to tell you that I wasn’t coming and you were supposed to make the connection to that film you love…and you were supposed to come here…”

You crossed your arms, listening to him intently. It looked like he was sincere and the tears brimming in his eyes made you believe him even more. If one thing was true, it was that Thor was a loveable idiot. So, it wasn’t that far-fetched.

“I was supposed to come here, and then what?”

You saw Loki swallow thickly, before reaching in his pocket and pulling out a black box. All breath left your lungs as you seemingly forgot to breathe. Then, you saw the God who once commanded so many others to kneel, get on one knee for you. He opened the box and presented the ring to you.

“I know we are soulmates and I know the Norns had fated us to be together, but our story has always been my favorite. Every day, every moment with you has been a dream. There were many days of my life where I never thought I would find a companionship like this, let alone a selfless love. For so long, I never felt like I belonged, that I never truly had a home in this world. Home stopped being a place when you entered my life,” A watery laugh bubbled from his throat as tears threatened to spill over, “I wanted to make this a memorable day and I guess in a way, I have succeeded, but I wanted it to be happy memories. Please, would you do me the honor of letting me make it up to you for the rest of our lives? Marry me?”

For a moment, silence lingered between you two. Your hands covered your mouth in shock, and Loki stayed on his knee, looking up with you with wide, hopeful eyes. The silence must have started to get to him as his hands holding the ring box began to shake and he shifted uncomfortably on the floor beneath you.

“I promise, I won’t let Thor be involved with any future planning.” Loki quickly added, hoping that would sway your answer. You couldn’t help but laugh at that. Then, just like at the beginning of your relationship, you launched yourself into his arms, effectively toppling over your prince as you smothered his face in kisses.

“Yes, of course I will marry you!!”

You always knew that a life with Loki would be filled with surprises.

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Unicorns 🦄: @ozymdias , @lovely-maryj, @multifandom-worlds

@buttercupcookies-blog @fictive-sl0th. @@meowmeow-motherfucker @tallseaweed @ladymischief11

#loki fanfic #loki x reader #loki x you #loki #loki odinson #loki x female reader #loki fluff #loki fic #loki laufeyson x reader #loki of asgard #loki fanfiction #loki angst #loki laufeyson #loki laufeyson x y/n #loki laufeyson x you #loki x reader angst #loki x reader fluff #loki odison x reader #loki x female!reader

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mirageindex · 3 months

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Conlang Year Catching Up

I just found out a few days ago that @quothalinguist is doing a set of daily prompts to build a conlang over the course of this year. I'm so excited! I've been toying with drafts of a conlang for ages and this structure seems like just what I need to get it finished. I want to catch up as quickly as I can and follow along. So here goes

DAY 1: Set Intentions for your language I’m making the conlang I’ve always wanted but could never find. I wanted a language made like a toy or a game, simple enough to pick up and play with but large and surprising. Something not quite like any language I might learn in school. And I wanted to be able to make weird art with it. I want to write stories and songs and jokes to share with my friends. I’ve tried this with Quenya, Klingon, Esperanto, LFN, and toki pona. But none of them have all the attributes I’m looking for. So I’ve gotta make it myself.

The language I want is:

Simple to pick up and play with, though not necessarily the simplest possible. Any eccentricities should be interesting enough to justify the extra trouble of learning them. To accomplish this the language will be isolating and analytic, much like Mandarin or various creoles or a lingua franca. The phonology will also be minimal, with a small number of sounds and syllable shapes. The romanization should be as intuitive as possible for a reader only familiar with English. I want to be able to tell somebody “say it in an Italian accent and you’re most of the way there.”

Naturalistic, or as naturalistic as can be without getting too complex to start playing with. I’m thinking of it as an “impressionistic” conlang. It aims to capture something of nature with heightened contrast and color in a few bold strokes. To accomplish this I’ll include etymologies and historical sound changes that a learner can ignore if they’re not interested. I’ll put most of the detail into the vocabulary and leave the grammar minimal.

A priori and not directly resembling any familiar language. Even though my fictional speakers are human, I want this language to be distinctly its own and not invite obvious comparisons to other languages, either natural or imagined. One problem with using a small number of sounds and mostly open syllables is that it immediately reminds people of Hawaiian and Japanese. To get around this my standard romanization will use the letters “c” and “v” rather than “k” and “w”. Spelling with “c” also gives me an opportunity to add an extra wrinkle to the constructed script while keeping things intuitive for a learner with no linguistic background.

Most of all, this language should be fun. I want to keep a light tone throughout. I want every passage to be charming to read. I want to write lessons that are a joy to browse through and play with.

#conlang #conlang year #conlangyear

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choptop-sawyer · 3 years

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Hi again 😎💫 im here to dig at ur brain again bcs i. M. Aaa sorry i just love ur stuff but. I have this kinda rly specific storyline type hc area and I'd love to hear any hcs you might get from it if its at all jr thing. But um I keep sometimes thinking back to the idea of kinda, vaguely growing up in the same area as the Sawyers, being childhood friends (and being stupid 2gether, running arount the countryside, ditching school & playing in corn fields) -

But then having to leave in your late teens to school / whatever (I mean 😎 my sappy ass also thinks abt mutual pining w Bobby but you know...... nearly unrelated.......)

Then, later on (Bobbys now Chop Top, Nubbins is..... dead I guess but also >:( maybe not, the family is up to being a mess etc) returning to town to take a break from work or whatever. N meeting up w the family again, i mean, oblivious to the bullshit they get up to but.... yk

This is a bit rambly i should probs have waited to sleep but I can't get the thought of returning to the Sawyer door wearing Bobbys tie dye sweatshirt that hr borrowed u years ago and all the impact of being a former family member bc u were also kind of an outsider or whatever but also the drama of leaving so uwu sksjd

This got so long. All i wanted to ask is: sawyer family headcanons for a childhood friend returning to town after being away for years. Rip.

THANK YOU FOR SENDING THIS god I love the image too of just standing in the doorway,, you're not home, you've changed a little bit, but you still fit into some of the old aspects you know so well they fit you and cover you.

Actually this is great because that fic that I swear exists has pretty much the same premise but!!! I can make this one less tragic than that one. 😎

(This is mostly Chop Top n you centric please don't mind)

Also this timeline is all fucky. I think that as soon as Chop came home from Vietnam the Sawyers had basically uprooted themselves and were living in North Texas because of the... Hardesty incident. But like can we pretend that that never happened they r still there in Newt? Just for this. (Hope you like it!)

Chop Top's Childhood Friend Returns

You don't think you would have turned out the way you did without the Sawyers.

They were the main element of your childhood, a mystery that you had to be a part of. A mystery, because they were closed off. Mistrustful. The sickness of small towns carried to the extreme, because they were mostly alone. The loneliness made them more miserable, the misery made them more isolated. A cycle, a legacy.

So it was a a miracle that you were even allowed to be apart of some of it, but you attribute that miracle to Bobby.

He seemed to think you were as much of mystery as what you thought the Sawyers were. Two kids looking through a small window into another world. But he liked that. He liked that you were something different, something new. From beyond that small world of loneliness that lived in the house.

You learned quickly that he had a desire for anything beyond that world. So he'd invite you out with him, when you were kids, to run free in the tall grass, when you got older, to drive with him to places unknown. He had a knack for finding these odd places, and he always brought you along with the music cranked up loud on the radio.

Bobby told you many times that he wanted to see the world. He had this lust for life that went beyond the restlessness of the young. He also said that he wanted to bring you along with him when he saw the world. You didn't ever mention how that always made your heart skip a beat when he said that.

Maybe you should have. But the past is the past and you can't change that.

You knew the other Sawyers too, but Bobby tended to avoid them sometimes. But occasionally, you got to hang out with them.

Nubbins was an enigma. You didn't think Nubbins was his real name. But that's the only one you heard from him, but the name situation was the least confusing thing. He was the most open person you knew. And yet you couldn't understand him, and decided at some point that you wouldn't ever. But he was fun. His energy was infectious, if he was filled with joy, you couldn't help but laugh with him too. That was Nubbins, so absent of any purposeful deceit that he was almost a mirror, you saw yourself around him, sometimes it was uncomfortable, but other times it was fun.

Bubba was the opposite. He seemed to be legitimately wary of you. Bobby once told you that Bubba didn't like to leave the house, ever. He stayed and did the chores. You wondered if he minded, being stuck with all the chores but Bobby said he didn't. It was comforting for him. Always having something set to do. You only saw him once. Nubbins had made him tag along when he needed him to hang some things from a tree. Bones from indeterminate animals, a clock with a nail through it. You don't think Nubbins actually needed Bubba to reach the branches (he climbed pretty well) but he just wanted his little brother to see his work. Bubba didn't make eye contact with you the entire time. He was wholly focused on his task of helping Nubbins. But he was gentle when he helped his brother, careful, and for that you liked him.

Drayton was... well. He was the one Bobby argued with the most. He was his brother, but with how much age between the two, it was almost hard to believe sometimes. Drayton was the one that everybody in Newt knew the most. People liked him well enough, but they said he was odd behind his back. He knew that. You don't think he trusted anything outside the insular world he and his family had existed in for years, and was at odds with Bobby because he didn't get why Bobby wanted anything to do with the world outside.

Oftentimes you would see Bobby after he and Drayton got into it. He'd be fuming, but he'd smile when he saw you. You'd leave with him whenever he came to you. These adventures were the most fun you had when you were there.

The other times you'd go off were when he'd convince you to skip school. Bobby never went himself. He didn't get the idea of all those kids sitting in classrooms for hours, doing nothing but writing and listening. Why do that when you can find things out for yourself? Get into some trouble? In his mind, he was saving you from a very boring thing.

You two knew the area around Newt well. The fields and the flat expanses were the best kind of playground. Your dreams were still set in them. A kind of sunshine filled melancholy.

Bobby told you things in the grass. His dreams yes, but his own thoughts. On music, on late night radio, on movies, on you. He perhaps thought of you as wonderful as voices on the radio, stars on the screen. He never told you that though. But your name was never far from his mouth when Bobby talked about the things he loved.

You and him loved each other as much as two kids who didn't know how to could. He was always on your mind now, with not much tangible objects to remember him with. A photograph taken by Nubbins, your faces blurred because you were laughing. A button, the pin on the back bent. A sweatshirt, which he tie dyed himself, and gave to you one night. The colors were faded. You never did get to return it.

The years away did nothing to lessen thoughts of him. No, they just blurred all together now, and the stream of the sunshine filled melancholy was almost endless. You needed a break. There was only one place you could think of that could help you with that.

So you came back. All things led back to this place eventually. Newt was dying, or dead. Didn't you see somewhere that when a ship went down, it took everything with it? You didn't want to stay for long. But you had to see all of them, you had to know that they were all not these strange figures you had dreamt up.

You went right to the house. You'd never actually been allowed inside, Bobby just always said something along the lines of 'Grandma and Grandpa are napping upstairs' or 'there's a mess' (never mind that he could care less usually about messes.) But you figured he had had a good reason. Maybe he was embarrassed.

When you knocked on the door, your heart was pounding. And that was all. Nothing happened, no indication that anyone was there. You waited, the sweatshirt was too hot but you didn't want to take it off.

Maybe you should come back another time. You were just about to turn around and leave when the door burst open, almost whacking you in the face. And there (you couldn't believe your eyes you couldn't this was a dream) he was.

Bobby had a hammer raised over his head, grinning, he was poised to swing it down, but then he saw you and he felt as if he was in a dream too.

It's been so long. He thought he made you up, a dream to carry him through misery, and you looked the part, even as you stood before him on the doorway. The light of the setting sun shone behind you, heat waves shimmered in the dusk, and you... you.

Facing each other, you stood, just staring. Over head the sky grew colorful, in the fields the grass whispered in the wind. Nothing had changed. Everything had changed. Bobby dropped the hammer and grabbed for your face, and he held it, fingers digging in so tight it hurt.

"H-hey you." He said, and fell to his knees, releasing your face. You numbly touched the marks his fingers left. Bobby still looked like a man who had seen a ghost.

You called his name, and his eyes looked lost, like he hadn't heard it in a long time. He looked up at you, and you could really get a good look at him. His face was leaner, he looked sickly and wiry, but his eyes were just as you remembered. You sank down to the porch to sit with him.

"Fuck... FUCK I didn't... I- I thought ya'd forgotten all about me... uh.. uhm. Fuck! I mean, r-really! Turnin' up out of the blue like you're some kinda... ghost or whatever... WHOA man... like, ya here to return m-my, my sweatshirt? You're wearin' it, you can keep it! You look better in it anyway... heh, fuck." He rambled on and on, hands tensing and twitching as if they were moving to touch you again, just to reaffirm your existence. Did he know how glad you were to see him? Did he know that you hadn't felt right for the longest time being away?

You forgot all about the sweatshirt, the hammer he had raised with a sadistic grin. You reached out and held one of his twitching hands, and he stilled and stopped talking. There was a peace now.

It didn't seem possible for your heart to feel this full. But it was. And by god, if this wasn't the best decision you made in your life to visit your old hometown, if only just for this moment.

Bobby stood, with your hand still in his, pulling you up. He smiled at you, and you knew you still loved him, and in your deepest heart, you knew he loved you too.

But this time around, maybe you and him could love each other right.

#tcm #texas chainsaw #chop top #chop top sawyer #chop top sawyer x reader #tcm 2 #texas chainsaw massacre #slashers #slasher x reader #my writing #chop top x reader #choptop sawyer

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redphlox · 3 years

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The Todorokis and the Takamis

Hello hello hello! Okay, so the fan translated chapter of BNHA 299 came out and I’m drowning in a downpour of feelings and parallels. So, below this cut, I’ll discuss parallels between Shouto and Hawks, Hawks and Endeavor, the Todoroki siblings and Keigo, and Rei and Tomie. I’ll also comment on the realistic depiction of domestic abuse survivors and dysfunctional family dynamics within the manga. Thanks in advance for reading!

The only hero Shouto probably had been exposed to as a child because he was isolated was his own dad, who abused his family. Shouto didn't want to be a hero because, as he had experienced personally, heroes were bad people who hurt their loved ones. The fire quirk he inherited from his father was something that hurt others. He had no other frame of reference for the fire quirk; his mother, who was kind and loving, had an ice quirk, Natsuo and Fuyumi had an ice quirk, and Touya (if Shouto even has memories of this) was being hurt by his own fire quirk. No wonder five year old Shouto was fearful of his left side and the thought of becoming a hero.

But that changed when Rei introduced him to All Might via a television recording she showed him in secret. Shouto learned that his father wasn’t representative of all heroes. Not all heroes hurt their families, and this meant Shouto’s fire quirk was his to use for good. He realized his dad was, ironically, a bad hero, and that it was okay to want to be a hero because Shouto would be a good one. Even if Shouto forgot this lesson in the years after Rei was hospitalized, the memory was there and rekindled during the sports festival. Shouto truly does believe in heroes because he’s seen proof of it in All Might, who indirectly saved Shouto and his belief in heroes just by being himself on that television show. Shouto also believes in heroes because he believes in himself - he’s a kind person, and he wants to be a kind hero. That’s why he chose his hero name to be his given name: Shouto.

Hawks, like Shouto, was also isolated from the world. He didn't have any interaction with or exposure to heroes except for on television. His father was physically and mentally abusive, and his mother emotionally distant as a result of domestic abuse. When Endeavor, a hero Hawks had a plushie of because his mom had given it to him in secret, indirectly saved him from an abusive household by arresting his father, Hawks started believing in heroes. They were real, and he was proof people could be saved because he hadn’t even been asking for help and Endeavor did it anyway. The plushie his mom had gotten him to play with as a substitute for not being able to go outside, the one Hawks held onto for comfort when he felt sad and alone, came “alive” and saved him.

But Hawks was still in a bad situation because his mother's mental health wasn't in the best state after years of enduring domestic abuse. Hawks’ mother Tomie learned to view Hawks as the chain between herself and the Thief Takami. She might have been stuck in a "stay together for the kid" situation, coupled with financial instability and, on Takami's part, a begrudging sense of social responsibility to help raise the kid he fathered. Tomie learned to associate Takami’s feathers with pain, and because Hawks has feathers like his father and the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree, she says, “you’re his son, aren’t you?”

But Hawks soon finds good in the world and good in himself when he saves people during that accident. By saving others, he has saved himself without even intending to. The commission essentially takes him away from his mother who, because to her mental instability due to years of abuse, couldn’t raise him or nurture him. After abandoning his name, Hawks held on to Endeavor as a source of inspiration. Hawks had an idol he could look up to and be like as he trained at the commission. Endeavor was an example of how to stay strong and never lose hope. After all, everyone knew it would be pointless to try and surpass All Might but Endeavor kept trying anyway, despite the impossibilities. Young Hawks admired that because he was stuck in a similar situation - he never even dared to hope his life would get better until Endeavor arrested Takami the Thief. So to this day, Hawks idolizes Endeavor the hero.

Hawks, as an outsider to the Todoroki family, doesn’t know what they have endured. He hasn’t been around Shouto much, but from what he has seen, he thinks Shouto admires Endeavor the hero the same way Hawks does. It’s not an incorrect statement, because Shouto does recognize that Endeavor the hero is great, but it’s not a correct statement either. Shouto has the ability to separate Endeavor from Enji. Shouto wants to see what Enji the father has the potential to become now that Enji wants to atone, and even that seems to be for his sister’s sake, for her dream of having a family. Even Endeavor thought the same thing until Shouto makes it clear he’s not forgiven.

But Hawks doesn’t know this. Hawks probably assumes that because Shouto accepted interning with Endeavor and looked at Endeavor in awe that Shouto’s relationship with Endeavor must be on the mend. That maybe the abuse is behind them and the family is healthier. Hawks himself would never reach out to his own father or be near him, so why would Shouto? The only logical explanation and evidence Hawks has is that maybe Endeavor was forgiven and completely different now. Hawks, like Dabi, has no way to know that Shouto is holding his father accountable for abusing Rei and used to burn with self-destructive hatred inside. Hawks has no way of knowing Natsuo’s turmoil or that Fuyumi shares the same feelings as Natsuo, that Endeavor has a long way to go earn a place in his children’s lives - if they even let him.

Hawks is clinging onto his faith in heroes because he still believes in himself, in Endeavor, and in heroes. He’s like Shouto and believes in heroes and Endeavor despite Endeavor’s actions as a father. Shouto knows Endeavor is a skilled hero, but also accepts that people have different roles and may be shitty at one and great at another. Shouto knows Endeavor’s ambition and dedication to a title for his work drove him to hurt his family. Shouto knows Endeavor did this because Endeavor’s entire identity is his hero work - it’s almost expected that he put his ambitions before his family. Endeavor is just now, after 20 years, realizing he has another identity and role he failed to accept: Enji the father and husband. Now that he’s reached his career goals and realized the view at the top wasn’t as great or fulfilling as he imagined, he’s trying to figure out what Enji the father can do for his family.

Just like Endeavor, Hawks’ whole identity is his hero persona, and if that hero doesn’t exist anymore, then Hawks would be lost. He’d have nothing. His whole life’s meaning - saving people - would be gone, and he has no connections to any roles (son, friend, citizen) because he’s severed ties with his parents and isn’t close to anyone. He can’t go back to being Keigo because it was too painful and hopeless being Keigo. Even if the commission is turning his back on him, he’ll still be the hero Hawks, this time on his own terms. Now that he’s free of their control, he wants to help the Endeavor he always looked up to as a sign of loyalty to him and possibly a vague way of returning the favor for indirectly rescuing Keigo all those years ago.

Rei and Tomie

Both mothers reacted similarly to their domestic abuse. Both mothers learned to associate their children with their abuser based on physical inherited traits. The Todoroki siblings each have a trait of their father’s (Touya has his eye color, Fuyumi has her red in her hair, Natsuo has his thick and tall stature, Shouto’s entire left side) and Hawks inherited feathers from his father. This fear serves as a small scaled representation of the societal stigma faced by those who possess lesser favorable quirks. These mothers learned their partner’s quirks were only used to hurt them or cause damage, and society has learned that certain quirks like Toga’s blood-sucking are inherently bad and are an indicator of morality.

Like IRL domestic abuse victims, both mothers felt hopeless and powerless in their situation. Tomie asked her partner to fix the television without investigating what was wrong with it herself first. Tomie couldn’t care for herself or her son after Takami had been arrested - she’d been told what to do for so long and relied on Takami to provide (probably because he was paranoid and possibly wouldn’t let her interact with others out of fear she’d report him to the police) that she had trouble adjusting to any other kind of lifestyle. Making decisions was a skill she hadn’t used in years. Tomie, now homeless, compared Hawks to their abuser and expected him to provide by committing crimes too, which visibly hurt her son’s feelings. Some people who experience abuse subconsciously rely on their children to step up into a sort of caretaker/parent role. This is called parentification, and it just...sort of happens. This is why it makes sense Hawks’ identity revolves around being useful and wanting to help others. He had learned from a young age that if he wasn’t helping people, he had no value.

This isn’t to cast blame or judge Tomie, but to bring awareness to a boundary issue and inadvertent role reversal some victims and their families deal with as a result of abusive households. To parallel Tomie wanting Hawks to provide for the family, Endeavor also passively let Fuyumi to step up and fill the role of her missing parents. She carried a lot of the family emotional burdens after Rei was hospitalized, takes care of the family home, visits and cares for her mother at the hospital, and looks out for her younger brothers wellbeing in every sense of the word. Fuyumi is the unifying, optimistic link between Endeavor and his family. Even Endeavor recognizes Fuyumi’s parentification, though he doesn’t call it by its name.

Rei expressed her hopelessness when she spoke with her mother on the phone about not being able to raise her children anymore, but couldn’t come up with a solution. She couldn’t raise her children anymore - and that was it. She didn’t ask her mother for help or come up with any ideas because she felt powerless. And again, this isn’t to demonize or blame Rei, but to point out that her reaction is reflective of the challenges some abuse victims face. Some people don’t know how to get out of an abusive relationship for various complicated, valid, and life-threatening reasons, no matter what logic outsiders apply to the situation. Some mothers feel trapped, like Rei and Tomie.

Both Rei and Tomie hurt their children, either emotionally or physically. In the light novels, Natsuo reveals that Rei was emotionally distant after Shouto was born, probably out of concern for Endeavor’s likely unhealthy enthusiasm to train Shouto. She was probably protective of Shouto, and inadvertently made Natsuo feel abandoned by focusing on her youngest. Like Keigo, Natsuo felt alone despite his mother being nearby physically. And also like Keigo, Natsuo eventually realized that the situation was complicated and his parents made mistakes and had issues that didn’t reflect their feelings toward him. Natsuo realizes his mother loved him still. He realizes Shouto didn’t have it better than he did because he had his mother’s attention, and Keigo realizes that even with his father gone, his mother isn’t “fixed.” Keigo recognizes that his parents had deep flaws and the Todoroki siblings recognize their parents’ too. Rei didn’t mean to hurt Shouto maliciously; Endeavor is to blame for their mother’s mental state.

It’s implied that Tomie has an alcohol problem from the bottles laying around the unkempt Takami home. She uses alcohol to remove herself from reality, to put distance between herself, those she perceives are hurting her, and to hide. Running away doesn’t necessarily mean that she doesn’t care about her son - emotions and people are complex and not always black and white - but that she doesn’t have the mental and emotional capacity to nurture him. She’s distancing herself from her feelings (probably fear, hopelessness, dread) and with that she’s also distancing from her son. This might have been going on for a while because Keigo doesn’t even consider going to his mother for comfort. He goes to his inanimate Endeavor plushie instead.

It’s also important to note that Keigo realizes that his parents’ relationship is devoid of love, and he probably thinks this is the reaso why he doesn’t receive any love from them. He wasn’t born from a loving relationship. The chapter implies he just...happened because Takami was hiding out with Tomie. Now Tomie doesn’t have an identity or will outside of hiding Takami and helping him, and Takami resents Keigo for tethering him to a person he thinks is useless and is holding him back.

In their own way, both mothers tried to console their child and ease the pain caused by their fathers. Rei did this by listening to Shouto, showing him that good heroes do exist, and reassuring him that he’s not his father. She was a loving mother, as noted by young Natsuo’s jealousy toward Shouto for “taking up” his mother’s attention. Her children are eager and willing to have a relationship with her. Tomie showed love for her son by buying that discounted Endeavor plushie in an effort to make up for the fact that Takami wouldn’t let him play outside. It’s important to note that while their family’s life was seemingly sustained by the fruit of Takami’s crimes, Tomie used what limited money the family had to pay for the toy, meaning that she wanted to ease some of her son’s pain and give him a source of strength. This was all she could manage considering the state of mind she was in. While it wasn’t big, she did the best she could, and apparently it left an impact because Hawks remembers the moment clearly.

The difference between these women and their families, which also mirrors real life, is that some work toward rebuilding their relationships and some don’t. The Todoroki’s support each other, and the Takamis are distant from each other. This isn’t to judge or blame or say one way is wrong and another is right, but to explore how this decision has and will influence Hawks and the Torodokis.

Rei has made progress in her recovery and will likely be discharged soon, if she hasn’t already been. The family continues to identify and work through issues both as a unit and individually. Shouto realizes that it’s okay to use his left side, Natsuo is holding space for his unresolved grief and calling out Endeavor, and Fuyumi is hoping to finally have a family. Together, they’ve found healing from the trauma they suffererd together. Touya being alive only adds to this family’s ability to finally be happy and whole, though the journey may be difficult and painful.

Meanwhile, the Takami’s didn’t unite to heal together. Hawks’ father went to jail, Tomie and Keigo never saw him again and don’t want to, and Tomie accepted the commission’s offer to take care of her financially if she gave up Keigo. Keigo himself became Hawks, who suspected it was his mother who leaked his background to Dabi and wasn’t surprised to find out that he was right. He’s not visibly upset about his mother leaving either, which could either be him being emotionally numb or a sign his relationship with his mother never improved. It seems like he’s holding on to the scrap of love she did give him, as seen by his flashback to her holding his hand and remembering her words to “be strong like this guy.” But now she’s gone, and like he said, his shackles are gone.

So, what does this mean? Is Hawks wrong to still believe in Endeavor? Was Tomie wrong for revealing Hawks to Dabi and then leaving without notifying Hawks first? Given these character’s complex traumas, it’s hard to say without blaming someone for how they react to their trauma. It’s hard to apply logic to thinking and feelings that have been shaped by trauma. It’s uncomfortable to sit and see people make decisions that hurt others. Sometimes there is no right and wrong, sometimes there is wrong right and right wrong, and we have to sit and watch things play out, watch people react to the world through a trauma lens.

Sometimes there’s no answer at all. I think that’s what adds a tragic touch to Hawks, to the Todorokis, to the League - they’re all reacting to their trauma in different ways, some in socially acceptable ways (Natsuo, Shouto) and some not (Dabi), and there’s no clear cut answer without passing judgment or telling someone how to react to their trauma. How does someone rewire their brain’s neuropathways from the ones formed by trauma to healthier ones, especially without professional help or even self-awareness.

It’s hard to watch all these characters suffer, especially when it hits so close to home for some of us. Let’s see what the next chapters bring! We’re not seeing the big picture just yet, and there is always time for epiphanies, breakthroughs, and change of hearts and minds.

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avengerscompound · 3 years

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The Tower: Happily Ever After - 5

The Tower: Happily Ever After An Avengers Fanfic

Series Masterlist | Character Refrence PREVIOUS //

Pairing: Avengers x OFC, Bruce Banner x Bucky Barnes x Clint Barton x Wanda Maximoff x Steve Rogers x Natasha Romanoff x Tony Stark x Thor x Sam Wilson x OFC (Elly Cooper)

Word Count: 1601

Warnings: Pregnancy

Synopsis: Almost 40 years after Elise Cooper first crashed into Natasha Romanoff outside the library at Columbia University, she and the Avengers are adapting to a near-immortal life together with their large brood of children. Yet things aren’t perfect. Life is moving on without them and they’re starting to discover who isolating being immortal can be.When Angela comes and asks Thor to take the throne of Asgard once more, the group leaves Earth in the hopes that they will find their Happily Ever After there.

Chapter 5: Farewell to Our Old Life

It was kind of strange how little there was to organize for us regarding our move. There was packing, but we couldn’t exactly hire a moving truck so it needed to fit in bags that we could carry or it had to stay behind. That was difficult. We had had a long time to collect a lot of things we considered precious to us. The glass artwork that Thor and I had inadvertently made on our honeymoon was the thing I wished we could bring the most. It would stay in the fountain in the entry and hopefully, we’d come back sometimes and see it.

Thankfully, most of our things were fairly portable. We also wouldn’t need a lot of clothes because Asgard would provide things more fitting for the palace, and it’s not like we would need any furniture. Mostly it was just personal effects and tech that Tony wanted to use there.

Other than that it was just letting the doctors know I was leaving, pulling Marya out of school, and organizing the party.

It was still leaning on the stressful side though - especially considering we were still waiting to hear what the rest of the kids were going to do.

Even though Rose and Paul had appeared closest to deciding to come, it was Billy and Teddy who came back to us first with a yes. They had also said they wanted to do a bonding ceremony when we were there, which added another level of excitement and another level of stress.

Rose and Paul came next. They said that they would try it out and see. The concern about their children’s lifespan was a big issue for them, but Paul also said he’d be crazy to give up at least trying to live on Asgard as actual royalty.

As expected it was Eddie who took the longest to decide. He really did love his job, and I think even with his talk about having children, he, Lyra, and Rory were still right into the rich, young party lifestyle. He was worried about what they’d lose going to Asgard, rather than focusing on the things he might gain.

No one pressured him though. Any questions the three had were answered as honestly as we could and if we didn’t know we’d send word back to Asgard and Loki would come and give the answers they were looking for if at all possible. Eventually, he decided that he’d give it six months for us to settle and make sure things with Stark Industries and the Avengers was transitioning smoothly given our sudden departure, and then he and his family would join us there to try it out. He mentioned maybe doing six months on each planet or returning to Earth for a month or two every year, but we were all just glad he was willing to try it out, and his delayed departure from Earth was a good idea. He even promised to come and visit when his new siblings were born.

When our goodbye party began, the whole family was excited for this new chapter in our lives and sad to say goodbye to the last.

Many of our friends were elderly or had passed on, so the party was going to be a mixture of different people. Clarke was still around, though Jax had passed a few years ago. We’d lost Rhodey and Fury, though Hill was still running the day-to-day operations of the Avengers, even in her old age, and Coulson had retired after years as successfully being director of SHIELD. Vision was the same as ever, and people often came to him for direction when it came to the Avengers. Carol also hadn’t changed though she still spent more time in space than on Earth. A lot of the people we had met that had seemed so young when we met them, were all not officially middle-aged. Even Peter Parker who was only fifteen when I met him was now pushing fifty and had a wife and daughter of his own.

They would all be at the party, including a lot of the new Avengers lineup. Most of whom were much heavier hitters than any of us, even when we were wielding Mjolnir. It was definitely going to be sad to say goodbye.

“It’s going to be okay, you know?” Wanda said, snapping me out of my mini-trance as she ran a brush methodically through my hair.

“No, I know,” I said, tilting my head back.

“Then tell your brain that,” she teased.

I giggled and leaned up and pecked her lips. “I’m sorry. I would if I could. Just hormones I guess. Feeling stressed.”

“Well, stop it,” she scolded playfully. “It’s bad for the babies.”

She began to braid my hair and I hummed as her fingertips grazed over my scalp. “Imagine it though, Elly,” Wanda said. “All the kids nearby - the new babies.”

“You’re a baby-oholic,” I said, laughing softly.

“It’s true,” she says. “I am.”

She ran a hand around my side and pressed it on my stomach. “I can’t wait to meet them,” she said. “They already have such busy thoughts.”

I looked up at her and I’m not sure whether it was the look of pure and complete love in her eyes or the way the light caught in her hair, but I was struck by how beautiful she was and how much I loved her. She smiled and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I love you too,” she said and picked up a strand of silver wire with black opal and threaded it into my hair. “All done.”

I stood carefully and straightened out the skirts on my blue lace cocktail dress. “How do I look?” I asked.

“Perfect as always,” she said. “Let's go say goodbye to our friends.”

We made our way down to the party deck where the party was only just starting up. Bruce, Steve, and Clint were all already there, but there was no sign of Tony, Natasha, Clint, Sam, Thor, or Bucky.

Some of our kids were there and their kids all played out in the garden atrium that was built on the protruding wing of the tower and the party deck opened out into. I greeted everyone and as I made my way around the room more people arrived.

Clarke came over and tapped me on the shoulder. I turned and smiled, hugging her tightly. She had aged well, not as well as I had obviously, but while her face was lined and she was a little frailer looking, she had kept in good shape and she continued to color her hair. It would be easy to think she was in her early fifties rather than her mid-seventies. Her eyes were what gave it away. What had once been vivid violet had faded to pale lavender and were slightly cloudy. They were heavily lined at the corners, the years having carved deep crevices to mark each time she was happy or sad or angry or worried. It was still my Clarke though and I was going to miss her.

“I can’t believe you’re not going to be here when these two are born,” she said, indicating to my stomach as we pulled apart. She was one of the select group of people I would be totally fine with touching my stomach unasked - but she never assumed. “Where am I going to get my baby kisses from?”

I laughed and shook my head. “I guess you’ll have to visit me on Asgard.”

“You can do that?” She asked.

“I mean… I’m the Queen. I think I can pull some strings,” I teased.

She laughed. “God, thinking of you as a Queen is such a trip.”

“Hey Auntie Clarke,” Billy said, appearing behind us. “I haven’t seen you for a while.”

Clarke hugged him and looked around. “It’s been too long. Where are those kids of yours.”

“Come on, I’ll take you to them,” he looked over at me and narrowed his eyes. “You go sit down, mom. You know you’re supposed to be taking it easy.”

“I am taking it easy,” I argued, holding up my hands. “I’m just standing here.”

“Go on,” he said. “Don’t make me page Dad Tony.”

“Heaven forbid,” I laughed and he wrinkled his nose at me and led Clarke out to the atrium. I got myself a little plate of appetizers and a glass of punch and went and took a seat.

It wasn’t long until the whole room was teeming with people. The Avengers had gotten to be a rather large collection of people since the original six had been reluctantly dragged together all those years ago. Having so many of the people who meant so much to all of us here at the same time couldn’t help but make me think about how I’d first joined this group that would one day be my family.

All those years ago I had been a traumatized woman in her mid-twenties, just trying to get by. I didn’t have many good friends, because it took a lot for me to trust people. It took a superhero to get through and with her, so many other people flooded in after. I was so grateful to them, and so in love with each of them to this day. It would be hard letting this life of ours go, but it was inevitable. I still had my 9 chosen people though, and I always would. I was glad to be taking this next step with them at my side.

// NEXT

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helaintoloki · 4 years

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Odds and Ends

pairing: Ben Hargreeves x reader, Five Hargreeves x reader

warnings: angst, some fluff, mentions of blood, death, unrequited love

notes: listen, the pairings sound odd but they make sense when you read it i promise

prompt: “There’s a time for us, it’s just not now.”

They say when you die your life flashes before your eyes; you witness the moment of your birth from an outsider’s perspective, you revisit your first steps and your first love, you remember the quiet nights of rainfall on the windows and the smell of freshly cut grass on early school morning’s. You can recall how it felt to get your heart broken for the first time and the warmth you felt wrapped in your mother’s embrace. It is quick and long all at once, like watching a movie, except everyone fails to mention what happens once the credits begin to roll. Where do you go? What do you see? What do you do?

You’d been the first to get struck by the Handler’s gunfire, a bullet flying straight through your chest and embedding itself in your heart. You died almost instantly, and despite the pure horror that struck Five at the sight of your gruesome death he could do nothing to save you as he too crumpled to the ground. It was a split second of pain, and then you were gone.

Just as you had been promised, flashes of the life you had lived pass you by with the same quick clicks of a slideshow presentation on a projector. You could see yourself nestled in your mother’s arms, the swaddle of blankets encompassing your figure shielding you from the outside world. You watched your younger self shyly display your powers to a stoic Reginald Hargreeves, seven heads curiously peeking through the crack of the door to get a look at the team’s newest edition while your mother watched on anxiously. You saw the way in which you napped upon Five’s shoulder, the rainfall pattering gently against the window as he read the pages of his favorite novel, and you relived the sadness that came over you at his disappearance. You witnessed the quiet nights of stargazing alongside Ben, experienced your first kiss again and your first time falling in love only for it to end in bloodshed and a snowy funeral with tearful apologies and guilt ridden thoughts. Everything you’d ever lived through plays out in front of you right until the final gunshot, and then everything around you goes dark. There is nothing.

You’re not sure how long you sit in the empty space where life ends and the afterlife begins, but soon enough you find yourself wandering through the doorway that suddenly presents itself to you. There are no clues as to where it might lead, but light bleeds through the cracks and beckons you to step forward before you can change your mind. You’re overwhelmed by the warmth that surrounds you the moment you step foot inside, and it takes you a moment to adjust before you can fully comprehend where you are.

The room you stand in is quiet, sunlight filtering through blinds and coating the cream colored walls in golden hues. Colorful houseplants line the shelves and photo frames fill in the empty spaces— moments from different points of time occupy the frames, stolen glances and hidden kisses and dreamy smiles. You gravitate towards the photo next to the succulent plant and gingerly pull it from the shelf: it’s a photo of you and Ben as children, and with a watery smile you bring the picture close to your chest and clutch it tightly against your heart.

“I thought you’d like it,” a voice says gently, your whole body stiffening in surprise at the sound. A single tear slides down your cheek before you can will yourself to turn around, and you nearly drop the frame at the sight before you. He’s different than you remember him, but he still has the same kind eyes and gentle smile that you missed ever so dearly. His eyes seem to sparkle at the sight of you, welling with tears as he opens his arms to you. “Hi, y/n.”

“Ben,” you whisper in a trembling voice, a choked sob escaping you as you fling yourself into his arms and hug him impossibly tight. You can feel the warmth that radiates from him almost as if he were alive, can sense the way his arms wrap themselves around your waist and squeeze you unbearably close to his chest, and you can savor the sensation of his plush lips pressing against your forehead in a tender kiss.

“I’ve missed you,” he whispers, afraid that if he raises his voice any higher he’ll disrupt the peaceful quiet you find yourselves in. “I didn’t expect you so soon.”

“I didn’t either,” you admit with a weak smile. Chills crawl down your spine as you’re reminded of your own death, but you push the thoughts away in order to make room for Ben. After all these years, you’ve finally been reunited with the love of your life, and if you’re being honest you aren’t quite sure how to act. It almost doesn’t feel real, and a small part of you is afraid of waking up and finding that it was nothing but a dream. Ben pulls your attention towards him with the careful guidance of his finger underneath your chin, his reassuring features calming your nerves.

“You’re not dreaming,” he promises you. “This is real, you’re home.”

“I’m home,” you reiterate with a tearful smile before carefully cupping his face in your hands. “I’m home.”

(Five’s body tremors in time with his breathless panting as he struggles to fight against the heaviness of his eyelids. His body is warm and cold all at once with the blood that slowly pools around his figure, and he uses some of the last remaining strength he has to turn his head and look upon your body. You lie lifeless and still, hair splayed around your head like a halo and crimson red seeping through your clothing, and a shuddering breath leaves him at the sight. His first love, his only love, the one that could have been had he not gone against his father’s wishes all those years ago, is dead, and it seemed he could do nothing to stop it. Soon he would join her along with the rest of his siblings in the quiet afterlife, and so would come the final end of the Umbrella Academy.)

“I’m so sorry about what happened to you, Ben. You were so young, you didn’t deserve it, and if I had just-”

“Hey,” he interrupts gently, “it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

“But being alone for this long...”

“I’ll admit, it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park,” Ben says with a faint chuckle, “but I’m okay now, we’re okay, and I don’t have to be alone anymore.”

“I missed you,” you profess vehemently. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he says with a careful smile, one that slowly begins to dwindle with time.

“Ben?” You prod gently. “What is it?”

(All Five had ever wanted was to keep you safe, whether it be from a scraped knee after a bout of rough housing with Diego or the end of the world, it was his job. You’d fallen in love with his brother in the wake of his absence, something Five could never blame you for no matter how much it hurt, and it was through Vanya’s book that he got a glimpse of the life you had lived without him. Your secret romance with the Horror, your descent into loneliness and isolation after his passing, your work as a nurse under the guise of a fake name so that you could use your gift without anyone ever associating you with the life you had lived as a child. You didn’t want it, and he’s sure you didn’t want this— to die such a horrible death at such a young age when you still had your whole life ahead of you. Five had lived long enough to see what the world had to offer, if he were to die now he’d have all the boxes checked on his list, but you and his siblings still had so much to live for and so many things left to do.

“I just want you to be careful,” your voice echoed in his mind, young and naive and apprehensive about Five’s plan to travel without Reginald’s permission. “Be smart about this, smarter than you usually are, and make sure you come back home.”

“You’re the genius who said we should jump. Right?” Luther. “You’re the one who got us stuck here.”

“Start small.” The voice of his father. “Seconds, not decades.”

Wait a minute, that’s it! By god, that’s it!)

“You can’t stay.”

“W-What? I don’t understand, what do you mean I can’t say?” You sputter, taken back by Ben’s blunt declaration. You were dead, where else could you go, what else could you do besides spend the rest of eternity with the love of your life?

“You can’t stay,” Ben repeats solemnly. “You can’t die yet, it’s not your time.”

“But I am dead! A bullet literally went through my heart, I don’t think you can exactly come back from that,” you protest anxiously.

“I can’t explain it, but trust me when I say that it isn’t time for you yet,” Ben pleads, gently taking your trembling hands in his own and giving them a soft squeeze. “You still have so much to do in life, so many great things. You’re going to get married, you’re going to settle down in a nice little house with cute little kids running around the place, and you’re going to be happy. So happy. But you can’t do that here, so you have to go.”

“Ben, please,” you beg through a sob. “Please, I want to stay here with you. Don’t make me go back, don’t make me leave you, I can’t.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Ben shushes gently as he cups your face in his hands and brushes away your falling tears. “Hey, it’s okay. Y/n, I promise you we’ll see each other again, okay? I promise.”

“But I just got you back,” you croak, and Ben can only offer you a trembling smile in return.

“There’s a time for us,” he reassures you, “it’s just not now.”

Ceaseless tears fall down your cheeks as you collapse into his arms, your hands clutching tightly at the fabric of his sweater the same way in which a small child would clutch at their favorite blanket. Ben is warm and safe, he is home, and your heart aches at the thought of having to say goodbye a second time— you could hardly handle the first. You had been inconsolable, your sobs had been gut wrenching for the rest of team, and if not for Allison urging you to eat and take care of yourself you might not have ever recovered from your grief. The universe was unfair and unkind, taking the person you loved away from you not once but twice, and despite how strong you wanted to be for Ben you couldn’t help but feel defeated.

“Will you kiss me while there’s still time left?” You snivel, holding on tightly to Ben’s wrist as he reaches up to cup your face and caress your cheek with his thumb. He smiles, sweet and tender, and pulls you close.

“I’ve waited seventeen years to kiss you again,” Ben professes, and without a second to waste he pulls you in close and presses his lips against your own in a long awaited kiss.

(Time is reversing. Five can feel the blood slowly seeping back into his body, bullet wounds seem to heal themselves and the corpses of his loved ones are beginning to reanimate as everything becomes undone. The pain is nearly gone, and it’s with a newfound determination that Five wills himself back onto his feet and travels back seconds in time to prevent their deaths, to prevent your death.)

You can feel yourself slipping away from him, you’re losing your grip, and despite how desperately you try to cling to him your touch is beginning to fade. Ben can faintly feel your lips against his own and knows that it’s time, but he holds onto you for just a little longer until he can’t feel you in his arms anymore. He pulls away with a bittersweet smile and releases you from his hold, eyes gazing at you for the last time.

“You get a second chance,” he says. “Make the most of it, and don’t worry about me. I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

(With a startled gasp Five finds himself back in time just moments before your deaths. Your eyes meet his his frenzied ones and you frown, gently reaching out to him.

“Five? Is everything okay?”

He doesn’t get the chance to answer before he’s disarming the Handler of her firearm, and it’s with that single act of defiance that your death is finally reversed.)

You don’t remember your death and you don’t remember your reunion with Ben. You’re none the wiser, and Five wants to keep it that way. With the Handler dead and the threat of the Swedes gone your life is no longer in danger, and he finally feels like he can breath again.

“You okay?” Your voice sounds gently, pulling the boy back to reality. He gazes upon your figure, wisps of stray hair straying from your braid and a questioning though kind smile on your face, and a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding leaves his lips at the sight of you. You don’t return his affections and you’ll never be together, but he can live with that so long as you’re safe and sound.

“Never been better,” he replies with a closed lip smile. You catch the boy off guard by pulling him into your side and giving his shoulder a tight squeeze, an act of affection only you can get away with, and after a moment has passed you release him with a small giggle.

“Come on,” you gesture as you begin to follow Vanya and the others, “we still have work to do.”

He walks beside you in a comfortable silence, and though he doesn’t know it there’s a faint voice that echoes distantly in your mind, one you can’t place but find soothing nonetheless.

“There’s a time for us.”

And there will be, but for now you’ll just have to wait and see.

#this took me two days to write #listened to the mtv unplugged version of take on me while i wrote it #ben hargreeves #five hargreeves #number five #ben hargreeves x reader #five hargreeves x reader #number five x reader #ben hargreeves imagine #five hargreeves imagine #number five imagine #the umbrella academy #tua #tua x reader #tua imagine #angst!!!

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adorehs · 4 years

Text

changing your tune

Hi I just wanted to mention that a lot of this might be inaccurate. This is based off of my time in my city's youth orchestra so while I’m sure some things transfer, but not everything. Kinda bad at the end per usual <3

Summary: Classical Musician!Y/N has created a simple life for herself consisting of herself, her music, and the boy she loves. Friends to lovers. (15.6k words)

Warnings: mostly fluff, slight angst, mentions of smut, minor character death.

“I just think I need to have a fuller tone to really get the dark undertone of the music. Like, it’s so clearly meant to be this dark, horrible travesty but if I can’t get the tone right then it’s just this light and airy travesty. But I can’t bend the note just right, my air is, like, gone,” you vent out.

Harry watches you intently from where he sat in your study with a hand holding his chin up and an elbow on his knee, “I think it sounds great.”

You look at him unimpressed, “It’s all chalumeau. Of course it sounds good, it just doesn't sound right.”

“Right, so it’s in the lower register,” he mentally reminds himself, “What’s it supposed to sound like?”

You let out a sigh and pick up your clarinet from the stand it rested on, “It sounds kind of different without my custom, but the r13 will work for now,” you mumble, adjusting the reed and ligature on your mouthpiece, a nervous tick you picked up in school.

Your eyes flicker up to Harry, waiting for his glance of approval before you start. Your cheeks expertly swell and decompress in size as you circular breathe through the measures, your mind concentrated on the smooth transitions between rhythms and the registers, cutting the triplets short as you’ve written them.

The soothing noise of your clarinet fills the large room immediately, your forte becoming all too loud to process any thoughts. The victorian-styled room had low hanging lights that streamed a warm orange tone over the patterned chairs and built-in bookcase that held hundreds of music books with etudes you’ve mastered since your youth.

Though the warm tones made the room feel homely, the curtains were drawn back and the windows were opened ajar allowing a short breeze to flow in every two minutes. You knew better then to turn on a fan around your hand-crafted instrument. You understood the fluctuation it would cause if the temperature changed drastically day by day. This is why you were careful to turn the air conditioning off before you opened the window, keeping the temperature relatively steady through the day.

Harry watched you in pure concentration- he was truly enamoured by the way you lost yourself in music. He wanted to understand what you were saying but it was hard- he enjoyed music but was completely deaf when it came to describing the mood of a piece.

He worked with numbers, and loved it. A born accountant in your presence, watching you play your clarinet with what seems to be ease. But you seemed so distant from him. A whole world away. And how was he going to sweep you off your feet when he can hardly understand your career?

Your eyebrows furrowed slightly as the technique became more difficult, effectively making you let off your clarinet and huff a breath of disapproval. Your heart was clearly pounding after the page you played at full tempo for effect, but you tried not to show the effect the music had on your body.

You reached for your pencil before erasing a note you had written and writing another one in, a higher register G#. The graphite smeared on the yellow-tinted manuscript book that sat on the music stand before you, everything shaking lightly as vigorously colored in the line and drew in a staccato articulation above the sixteenth note.

Forgetting Harry’s presence, you picked up your clarinet once again and played the same measure in sets of five, increasing the tempo by four beats each time, before deciding it is satisfactory for now.

Your face only showed a slight upturn, as you wrote in a new measure, testing how the chord would resolve with some soft air and incomplete vibrations through the wooden block. Minor chord or major? you asked yourself.

Harry’s eyes watched yours as they darted across the room from your clarinet, to your manuscript, to your metronome, which was silently flashing a red light at a tempo of 180 and a subdivision of eighth notes.

He wondered who taught you so harshly- he’d never seen someone so critical of their own work. You liked to make everything very perfect in a meticulous way- you knew just when to linger on the seventh of a chord to leave an uneasy feeling in the pit of one;s stomach and you were stellar when it came to expressing a story and emotion through your music. At least that’s what Harry thought.

“So where does your tone need to get fuller?” he asks again.

You looked up at him, slightly shocked. You had forgotten he was there, “When I get higher, like, near the F#. It has no depth to the note and it sounds like a playground piece,” you explain softly, watching as his eyes furrowed in confusion.

“So you want it to sound darker when the octave goes up?” he confirms one more time.

You nod, “Yeah. Want it to sound more emotional and thoughtful. It also makes me sound like a stylistically competent player,” your eyes flicker back to the page in an instant.

“I think your style is good. You have a good variety in the symphony, too. They’ll like this one. Get the solo down and then ask some people to come and play with you,” Harry comments, rubbing his hands on his corduroy pants as he sits back further in the chair. The heavy fabric makes a dissatisfying pulling noise as Harry moves around in the chair, resting his hands on the dark wooden arms with ornate carvings on the ends.

“I don’t know,” you sighed, “They haven’t taken my last three. If I can just make one good one, I can take some more risks and possibly compose a whole symphony,” you pause, making eye contact with Harry again, “But that’ll take years. Probably only when I retire from the orchestra.”

“They are good,” Harry argues weakly. He doesn’t know how to convince you because all he knows is that he likes it.

“Well clearly they’re not as good as you and I think,” you counter with a huff, picking up your clarinet once more before playing the same piece from the beginning.

After an overextended work week, Harry was excited to go out and have some fun with his friends. He was still a ripe twenty-six year old, working long and hard hours as a starting budget analyst, hoping to be promoted higher within the job and lighten his workload- at least that's what everyone promised will happen. Nevertheless, he still enjoyed the simple pleasures of going out and celebrating his friends.

It was an all too familiar setting- a sticky, trashed bar with little to no care given to the seats that were falling apart at the seams. He found himself thinking of the frat parties you had described to him when he asked what Greek Life was.

But, he was there to celebrate one of his colleagues' birthdays. It was her twenty-fifth, so he found himself understanding the want for a big party. The bar might have been trashed but it was large and suitable for the hundreds of people she seemed to invite.

And among the hundreds, he only viewed one. You.

You wore a dress that you pulled from the back of your closet and hadn’t seen the light of day since you were in college. You wore it to special events and networking parties, but you found it all too nice to wear to most other situations you found yourself in.

Harry had definitely forgotten your connection to his colleague, or better known as your sister. He watched as you greeted her with a wide smile and a kiss on the cheek, an awkward side hug was exchanged as everyone around you both cheered in excitement. You were pretty loved.

“Happy birthday Mon,” you repeat for the second time that day, “Hope the year treats you well.”

Your sister smiled in response, “Off to a great start,” she eyes the party reviving behind you, “I’m glad you could make it. Thought you’d have a performance tonight.”

You shook your head, “Nope. Requested this day off a year ago. Couldn’t miss my favorite day of the year!”

Your sister glances at you with a look of amusement, “Happy Monica day is your favorite of the year?”

“Yup, love happy Monica day,” you reiterate.

Monica opened her mouth to reply but was swiftly cut off by a deep British accent, “Happy birthday Mon!” you hear from behind you.

You turn around quickly, side stepping to allow Harry into your conversation. He leans into your sister before granting her a quick hug and kiss on the cheek, “How are you?” he asks, replacing your spot in front of her.

You smile at Monica and halfheartedly wave a goodbye as you slowly make your way over to the bar to order some food. You decided a year ago that you were going to stop drinking. At first, it was a hard choice to make. You were used to having a drink in most social situations, especially being a young adult working with people of all ages. It was a common scene to find you in- an after party with hundreds of musicians having a glass of champagne or white wine in celebration.

You sat yourself on a deep crimson stool, swirling slightly as you waited for your sliders to be given to you. Watching as people met and reconnected was isolating for you. You knew very few people Monica worked with and found yourself just shy of saying hi to someone who looked friendly every time you were at a gathering such as this one.

Nodding a silent thank you as your sliders were placed in front of you, your attention shifts. It was the loud talking and blaring music that made your brain want to go into overdrive, never quite getting used to noises you couldn’t control.

“Hi, Y/N,” you feel a body slide into the seat beside you. You couldn’t exactly pin whose voice it was at first listen so you shift your body towards them and slide the plate between you two as a peace offering.

“Hey,” you reply, making eye contact with one of Monica’s friends you met when she first started working at the firm.

“How’ve you been? Haven’t seen you in ages.”

“I’m alright, Louis. And yourself?”

“I’m quite alright. Been working a lot. Itching to get promoted,” he lets out a small laugh, “But who isn’t.”

You shoot him a grin, “Not sure, I love my job.”

“When’re you playing next? Love to come see you play. Haven't been to the new show yet,” he leans in towards you and takes a slider before leaning back again.

“Play Thursday to Sunday every week until November. Then we switch to Christmas ballets,” you tell him with a grin, “I recommend Thursday or Sunday, though. Best prices and best crowd.”

He nods in confirmation, “I’ll have to take Harry with me, know he’s been bugging me to go with him for a while.”

“Yeah, bring him! It’ll be fun, we can all go out after too!” you counter, dismissing Louis' comment about Harry’s insistent nature. That was just him, you thought.

“Definitely,” he agrees, “Plus it’s a nice way to unwind. I’ll definitely see if I can come soon.”

“Oh, please! I love seeing a familiar face. Feel like I play better,” you laugh, “Still get nervous, but Harry always tells me I’ll do amazing.”

“Harry’s good at that,” Louis agrees, “Always makes sure you don’t undersell yourself. And he’s right! You’re amazing.”

You feel your cheeks heat up at the compliment, “Thank you! He’s definitely everyone's biggest cheerleader,” you joke. Turning around entirely in your stool, your eyes sift quickly through the crowd in search of Harry. “See, there he is,” you chortle, “Hyping up Niall as he chugs a,” you squint.

“A beer, probably,” Louis completes for you.

You both laugh and watch as Niall shoots up from his spot on the ground in victory before immediately falling back onto the ground with great dramatics. The room roars as Harry helps his friend stand back up and walks him over to the bathroom before swinging the door back open, “Ladies and gentlemen,” he pauses for effect, “The boy lives!”

The room once again falls into a unison form of laughter as Niall appears behind Harry moments later, “Where’s the beer?” he shouts over the laughs, which quickly turn into cheers at his sportsmanship.

While Louis lets out a loud laugh at his friend's antics and moves towards the crowd to see more clearly, you looked up towards Harry. He dressed himself impressively well considering his lack of knowledge in the arts. Though he wore a simple outfit consisting of a red button up and black jeans, his confidence soared higher than anyone else’s you’d seen in a while.

His smile was infectious and seemed to fill his whole face and as his eyes raised to meet yours it grew to a tenfold. Speaking with his body language, you somehow sensed that he wanted you to get up and join him.

You shook your head with a smile and mouthed ‘I’m fine here!’ only to receive a ‘What!?’ in response. You shook your head in defeat and stood up, mouthing the same phrase only slower.

Harry replied with a look of realization and instantaneously, a pout replaced his smile. You frowned at your effect on him, not wanting him to feel upset because of you of all people.

You stood up and slowly started making your way over to him, allowing the smile to rediscover its place on his lips. He was watching you near him, when his head suddenly snapped towards a high pitched scream coming from your sister, “It’s midnight!” she shouts.

Harry chuckles at her dramatics and smiles when he feels your body press up against his side. He didn’t have to look to know it was you, he could smell your distinct perfume as you neared him and he was happy knowing you found comfort around him- though that should’ve been clear from the nights upon nights you spend together, him listening to your music and you listening to his rants.

Monica was handed a bottle of champagne and she stepped into the middle of the corner you all occupied, people filing in suit around her and forming a circular crowd.

“Hey everyone! Uh- thank you so much for coming- I mean it. It means a lot to me to be surrounded by a bunch of people I love on my favorite day of the year!” She jokes, earning some light laughs and a few words of endearment thrown back at her. “No, seriously, thanks a lot, and,” she trails off, her thoughts too blurry for her planned speech, “Here’s to twenty five!” she cheers, shaking the champagne bottle, allowing it to pop and spray all over. She quickly spins in an attempt to spray everyone, but the champagne bubbles over and only gets half the group.

You and Harry both laugh, shaking your hands to get the sticky substance off your bodies. “She tries every year and never succeeds,” you tell him.

He chuckles in response, “She gets too drunk to remember.”

“Or she just thinks that she’s sober enough to get it this year,” you laugh back.

Harry laughs and nods, “Definitely. She thinks she’s perfectly fine,” he points at Monica who is going around the circle and hugging everyone in thanks. “To be fair she looks okay,” he adds.

“She always does,” you agree with Harry.

The two of you fall silent and you stand back watching your sister make rounds. Harry’s hand creeps onto your back as he steps closer to you, bringing you in front of him. He hums along to the song you couldn’t remember the name of that was blaring on the speakers and he basks in the glory of being in your presence.

Soon enough, your sister had made her way over to the two of you, hugging you both and exchanging her thanks for coming and just as quick as she came, she left you two alone.

“So, uh,” Harry starts.

“Hey, um, I’m gonna leave. Got an early start tomorrow,” you tell Harry, pointing at the door.

“Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, you should go,” he stammers.

You smile at him, “Okay, cool. I’ll see you later?” you asked, stepping towards Monica to say a final happy birthday and goodnight.

“Yeah, definitely,” he nods in confirmation.

You wave before finding your sister and saying goodnight, then driving yourself back home.

Harry was sitting in bed with his laptop on his lap and a blanket covering his legs. He was doing some research in an attempt to find books that could teach him about music theory.

He told himself he wanted to be more involved in his friends' lives and further his education in one of his weakest subjects- music. But in reality, it was clear to those around him that he wanted to impress you and be more involved in your life and yours only. They had never seen him pick up a book on physical therapy or take a quick online course on python- he was doing it all purely for you.

He was contemplating if he should invest in a book or just take a free online course, both seemed like viable options but he wanted to optimize his time. He wanted to make it click faster.

He decided he’d try the online course and take his chances and if he still didn’t understand he would invest in a book.

So there he was on a Tuesday evening sitting in bed with his headphones in learning how basic chords were made. He wrote notes as if he was still in school and studied them after each lesson. He wasn’t fully immersed in the world like you were, but he felt as though he could carry a bit more of a conversation with you about music, especially when compared to before.

Harry was learning slowly but surely and in about a week he could, in theory, explain how to develop a minor chord from it’s major among various other basics (that you would probably think were common knowledge) but he had no recollection of learning.

As per usual, he spent every Monday and Wednesday evening with you. On Mondays, you would have movie night and on Wednesdays, he would get some work done in your office while you played. It never truly distracted him, either. Honestly, it made him feel very peaceful and he found that the routine was more about being in the presence of each other rather than making memories.

One Wednesday, he had completed his work early and as usual, he would sit and see what you had composed to help give his limited input on your compositions.

Typically, he would sit and listen silently with a slight tilt to his head while he thought up a thoughtful comment about your playing. You would always sit there anxiously, with your posture beginning to slouch since you were not playing anymore, waiting for a comment that you both knew would be neither helpful or negative.

Harry was good at that. He was good at making you feel like you were doing good with absolute sincerity and not a single waiver of his voice. His face would stay straight and he would find the good in it all. It was probably your favorite part of the man who sat with you on the particular day.

This time, unlike the last, your window was shut tight and you were trying your hardest to keep your hands steady. You couldn’t make the piece sound right. It sounded okay but that would not get you signed. It needed to be calculated and perfect in a theoretical standpoint. It also needed to be simple enough to split into parts for larger groups but difficult enough to have solo excerpts from each instrument- in case a full orchestra didn’t work.

And that was difficult to accomplish.

Harry knew that and he agreed- how could one person who hadn’t ever been signed make such an elaborate piece? He thought it was absolutely absurd that to maximize your chances you had to make the piece a combination of just about everything.

You sat with the same face as you usually did, one pleading for some sort of advice or criticism. What you weren’t expecting was for Harry to deliver.

“Think if you made it a minor chord instead of a major and ended on the seventh it could bring some edge,” Harry eventually says.

Your eyes widen slightly in confusion, “Yeah, uh, let me try that,” you stammered.

You covered what you had written with a sticky note, drawing on the new scale. You showed Harry the note and asked him if that was what he was thinking, to which he replied yes. You nod lightly and play the piece once again from the beginning, swaying slightly as you approached lyrical bits and narrowed your air stream to control your volume.

Harry nods along with your playing, pausing slightly in places he could tell you didn’t like much. Eventually, he watches as you play what he had suggested, anxiety rising up his throat in fear of not being accepted.

“Think I like it. But I need to fix some of the other stuff too,” you told him once you finished. “It would definitely feel right that way.”

Harry nodded and stood up. He rounded the long desk and joined you where you sat by the window in an uncomfortable chair made to help keep your posture near perfect. He crouched down so he could be eye level with your music and furrowed his brows.

You watched as he read the notes carefully, taking his time as he took in each technically challenging measure and the lyrically soft measures in contrast. You grew anxious for his approval so you busied yourself by taking the sticky note off of the manuscript and erasing and redrawing the notes for the new scale Harry advised you to add.

You took your time, slowly coloring each eighth note, the graphite crumbling down the page, leaving a light smear as you wiped it away with the side of your hand.

Harry looked up at you, “I think you should change this,” he points, “Make it flat and get rid of this note entirely,” he spoke slowly. You watch as his finger indicates each note and you nod along softly.

“Okay, I’ll try,” you agree.

He nods in response and rests his hand on your thigh, you hardly notice the action that felt natural in the moment.

You temporarily wrote in each suggestion and played the piece again from the beginning, a process the two of you were becoming increasingly annoyed with. As you approached the measure he had pointed out, your mind wondered: how did he know all this and why didn’t he mention any of it before?

Your air slowed down as your mind wandered and your fingers followed closely after, a ritardando, Harry noted. He hadn’t mentioned tempo but he found that bringing the piece down to cut time brought a new feeling that he couldn’t put his finger on.

Abruptly, you stopped, and Harry knew you didn’t realize. You both sat in silence for a moment before Harry stood up and moved back over to where he was sitting previously. He cleared his throat, “I’m gonna head out. Good luck Y/N,” he rushed out.

You shook your head in disbelief. You truly didn’t understand what just happened. But, you shook it off and tried again, keeping the ritardando.

Harry on the other hand, was in a state of panic. He had realized what he had done and he thought she did too, resulting in her abrupt stopping point.

Harry had begun to understand that he was in love with you. And he didn’t know until just then. But he had done everything just for you.

The following Sunday Harry finally managed to drag Louis out of his city apartment and downtown to the Meyerson Symphony Center where you were to perform Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Neither Harry or Louis have seen you perform this particular show so they were late to learn that you had auditioned for and successfully got the clarinet solo in a particular piece from the Symphony named Scherzo.

You had explained to Harry your appeal to this particular symphony- you found it to be unique of all the others that accompanied Shakespeare's work. Instead of relaying a difficult emotion or putting a satirical spin on a human issue like his other works did, you found Midsummer to be a pure romp into romance and the abnormalities of love.

And though you hadn’t been in love for a while, you found yourself feeling the emotion wholly through both the piece and music in it of itself.

Harry had read midsummer before- in fact he had seen it live with his mum and sister when he was younger, but he never understood the effect the music had on the play. He never looked into the contextualization of the play, let alone the deeper aspirations of it.

He understood music theory but he still had trouble analyzing music itself. He couldn’t pinpoint moods by just listening- he needed to see it written out which he believed hindered his ability to enjoy music to its fullest extent.

Needless to say, Harry entered the theater with Louis with a thought of determination. All he wanted was to find a way to understand the music and appreciate it as you did. They were both clad in matching suits, a simple black and white for the symphony, and made their way to the middle where their tickets directed them. Harry sat in the aisle and Louis sat right next to him, whispering in excitement of the show.

“I fucking love this story,” Louis says.

Harry lets out a quiet laugh, “I hardly remember it.”

Louis joins Harry in laughter and shrugs, “Oh well, it’ll still be good.”

Harry nods in agreement and turns away from Louis as the curtains open and the lights dim.

It wasn’t the first time he had seen you on this stage, but he found himself mesmerized as he found you with his eyes. He watched as you scanned the crowd quickly, your eyes jumping past him and Louis a few times before you recognized your friends. You shot them each a relieved smile and sat up straighter in your chair.

The conductor cast a smile at everyone before beginning the first piece, the Overture making its debut in the room. Just as Harry was used to, the melodic sounds filled the room to the brim, every last corner feeling the pure emotion that was put into the piece.

Harry couldn’t describe the feeling but he knew he was proud. He understood that watching you in your element is probably the worst thing he could do for himself, but he had to. It was pure torture to watch you fall in love with something that wasn’t him, but he loved the way it happened.

You lost yourself so easily and he felt as though you were the loudest in the room. He could hear your sound over everyone else's, your instrument being isolated from all the others in his mind. Harry could swear he had never been so proud in his life to see someone do what they love.

As the overture came to a close, his hands met in applause and he felt the need to stand up just so you would know how much he loved it. But as quickly as he started, he stopped his applause and the next piece was beginning.

No. 1 Scherzo. It was the second piece on the track and your personal favorite for reasons you would not disclose to Harry. He had heard you practice it a few times before, nodding along as he recognized fragments of the piece.

It was around three minutes into the piece when Harry learned why it was your favorite. Because it was just you. You were the only one playing- your solo bringing tears to his eyes. It was just that moment when you looked up and made eye contact with Harry, him nodding with a large grin on his face with reassurance, you’re doing amazing, it read.

When you looked back up at your music, your eyes narrowing in concentration, you failed to notice the look on Harry’s face. His phone had buzzed and he found himself confused- he was sure he put it on silent. The feeling that was elicited was nothing but good, so he decided to go check just for some peace of mind.

He stood up, pointing at his phone when Louis questioned him silently, gaining a nod of approval as Harry exited the theater in a rush.

The second he exited the room that was beginning to become overly stuffy and constricting, he took a deep breath and told himself you’re probably just overreacting.

Harry was anywhere from overreacting. It was that exact moment that he had received a text that was pushed through do not disturb. The text was from his mum and read nothing but horrible news. The five words that found themselves on his screen that illuminated his face as he stood right next to the door called him a coward. They read: This contact has dialed 999.

Harry understood the severity of the situation but he didn’t know what to do. All he knew is that she called- he didn’t know why or where she was. He didn’t know if he had to book a flight back home or not.

Just as Harry was getting up and leaving for his own agenda, you had finished your solo. You looked up once again, hearing the applause and searching for Harry once more. But this time, you found Louis sat alone with a large grin creeping across his face and his applause filling the space next to him.

You had never felt as hurt as you did in that moment. He had left you. Harry, the man you now realized you love, found something more important than you and your aspirations, and there was no physical way that it wouldn’t sting. What you didn’t know was that as your heart was breaking, Harry’s mum’s was.

It had taken two hours for someone to answer the phone. Two hours for Harry to spend most of his savings on a red eye to the London airport. Ten hours for him to touch down in London. Three to make his way to the hospital next to his childhood home.

He was distraught to say the least.

He had left without mention of what was happening, his phone exploding with texts from Louis and Monica making sure he was okay, but not a word from you. He felt betrayed, but he understood. You had things going on too and he wasn’t the center of your universe.

The hospital looked sterile, not a single thing out of place. The walls were coated in a pristine white color that nearly blinded Harry’s bloodshot eyes, and he spent a few minutes catching his breath before he asked where his dad was.

He walked sluggishly onto the elevator, the weight of reality crushing him as he waited for what seemed like ages but really was hardly forty seconds for the elevator to jolt to a stop. When it stepped off, he saw what he imagined to be organized chaos.

People were walking quickly up and down the lengths of the corridor and he found himself passing by far too many crying people to think anything good could ever happen in a hospital- not revival nor birth.

He walked the length of the corridor in silence, taking in his surroundings. He was in shock- he could hardly even process that he was in England, let alone why he was there. It was only when he stopped shortly at the sight of his mum and sister sleeping, their heads resting on each other's, that he realized the severity of what was happening.

And so, with a deep breath, he sat down on the floor before them, resting his back lightly against the leg chairs and he rested his forehead on his knees. It didn’t seem like his life that he was living- he felt like this was all a vivid dream, but it wasn’t. It was less than twenty four hours ago that he was with Louis watching your performance and now he sat with his family outside of his father's hospital room praying he would be okay.

Harry was one of hopeful thinking and that was made apparent when a doctor exited his father's room with a stack of papers.

Harry was the first to stand, followed by his mother and sister, who were unsure of when he had arrived. He shook hands with the doctor, who he learned was named doctor Wilson. He was clad in the same scrubs as every other doctor but Harry found his to be a special type of unattractive- or maybe that was his subconscious distracting himself from the situation at hand.

Doctor Wilson cleared his throat as Anne made her way next to Harry, Gemma shielding herself from the news from behind him, “So,” he cleared his throat “Mr. Styles came in about a year ago to have his lungs screened, as you may know, and he was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer,” he nodded.

“Well, Mr. Styles seems to have,” he left a pregnant pause in his sentence, “He seems to have the cancer cells spreading rapidly. We would like to put him on a self contained respirator and monitor him closely to give you some more accurate information about his cancer and give you some answers within a few hours,” he says slowly.

Harry shook his head in disbelief- his father had never mentioned cancer let alone a screening.

“Thank you doctor,” he heard Anne speak from behind him. He sent a last glance at the broken family and moved back into the room.

It was the first you had heard from him in about half a week. He had called you on Wednesday after not answering your messages asking if he will make his way over on Monday for your movie night.

“Hi,” you answer softly.

“Hey- uh,” you heard some shuffling, “Hey.”

Your eyes furrowed in confusion, “Are you coming over?”

There was a long pause on Harry’s end and you just about opened your mouth to confirm that he could hear you when he replied, “No,” he said shortly. “I- uh- I’m at home.”

“Do you want me to come over?” you asked in confusion.

“No, like, I’m in the UK,” he quickly corrected you.

Your mouth opened and closed a few times, leaving a pregnant pause on your end, “Oh,” you replied.

“Yeah, I-” you could hear a few other voices in the background and you imagined they were his mum and sister, “My dad- he’s not doing so good. He has stage four lung cancer.”

“Oh,” you let out again. “I- uh- sorry, I really just don’t know what to say right now.”

Harry let out a breathy chuckle, which you could tell had bitter undertones, “That’s alright… don’t exactly know what to say myself.”

“I- uh- I’m really sorry,” you tell him sincerely, “God I feel like such an ass,” you expressed.

Harry’s eyes furrowed in confusion and he looked up at his mum to ensure she wasn’t listening, “No need, I promise it’s fine you don’t have to say anything.”

“I just- I was so mad at you for leaving and not saying anything and ignoring me. Thought I did something wrong or you were mad at me,” you explain. “Didn’t know what was going on and I was scared that I lost you.”

“Couldn’t lose me if you tried,” Harry laughed softly, you joining his laughter momentarily.

“Are you still mad I didn’t tell you I was going?” Harry asked after a long moment of silence.

“No- not at all. Was mainly just worried,” you reassure him, “I totally understand,” but you didn’t. How could he not tell you? Did he not think you deserved to know why he left when you were playing for him?

“I’m really sorry. Kinda just fell off the face of the Earth for a few days. Was anticipating the news and trying to stay strong for my mum and Gemma,” he explains.

Before you could reply, Harry starts again, “Hey, uh, we’re going back to the hospital so I’ll talk to you later, alright?” he says quickly before hanging up and leaving you alone in your study, clarinet in front of you.

You truly didn’t know how to cope with what just happened- it felt like heartbreak on two spectrums- family and lover. But he was neither, which hurt even more.

You picked up the piece of handcrafted wood that sat in front of you and tried your hardest to pour your heartbreak into the piece- adding pain, edge, and suffering to the nearly- done piece in an attempt to exert your feelings into something productive.

It worked like a charm, which was something you felt bad mentioning. You found yourself falling in love with the piece, fractures of your heart making up every line and the composition falling right into place as your muse fell right apart across the world.

It was the next morning when you received the message from Harry: He’s gone. In his sleep. I’ll be home in a week. Gotta sort some things out. -H

Harry arrived home that following Tuesday and he was exhausted but grateful to be back to his tiny townhouse in the middle of a city with his friends surrounding him.

He felt as though coping wasn’t an option anymore- he had taken up a whole week for that and in this moment in time he felt as though he had already done enough coping.

There was a memorial service the weekend after his father died and to say Harry’s family were crushed would be an understatement.

Anne, Gemma, and Harry each had prepared a speech for the service and none of them felt as though they could do the senior Styles any justice. He was a good man and they couldn’t even begin to explain that to everyone there. Nobody could understand the pain in the same way as they did, so they did their best to remember him in the best light.

Harry was mainly happy for one thing- the following day was Wednesday. He had taken off the rest of the week so he could recover from any jet lag and start the new week back with a fresh start, so he knew that tomorrow would be a great day to catch up. With work and with you.

He hadn’t seen a single person since he was back but upholding the tradition was important to him. He favored you over most all his friends anyway, so when he parked his old car in the driveway of the large house you inherited from your grandparents, he was excited.

He knocked twice and rang your doorbell once,queuing you to open the door in shock less than a minute after. “What are you doing here?” you ask confused, pulling Harry into a long hug. You had missed him on his ten days of abstinence from you.

“Got back yesterday, can’t skip out on tradition,” he shoots you a smile, letting go of your warm embrace. You took a moment to look at him before deciding he wanted a distraction from everything going on in his life.

You open the door further, beckoning him to come in, “Well come on, I need your opinion on my piece,” you gesture towards your office dramatically.

Harry chuckles and bows in thanks, “After you,” he says with a posh accent.

You both laugh, heading inside to where your things were set up and ready to go. He sat down in the same chair as he always does and you round the desk to sit where your clarinet was standing and your manuscript laid.

“Okay, so I added, kind of a lot, while you were gone,” you warm him.

He nodded and gestured for you to play, “Well go on then. Show me what you added,” he crossed his legs and leaned back in his chair.

You glanced at Harry and your music a few times each in an attempt to correlate the two in your mind- this was your Harry and he would never hurt you. You began to play the piece that you had become sickly familiar with but Harry found himself utterly perplexed at the sound of a new beginning. You had nearly changed the entire beginning and Harry loved it.

He found it to be oddly comforting to listen to you for what felt like the first time ever but in reality it was just another sense of stability in the world you two had created- the world that was exclusively Harry and Y/N.

The moment you reached the end, a bit he had helped you with, you found yourself stumbling over your composition, making Harry's brow furrow together. You were a perfectionist when it came to music- you loved the control that came with being able to play flawlessly and change how it all came together and he found it odd that you of all people were messing up something you had written in for weeks.

“Sorry,” you let out a huff, running a hand through your hair, “I’m really stressed and it’s really making this all worse.”

Harry nodded in understanding, “You should take a break,” he tells you with full seriousness.

You look at him with a blank face for a moment before bursting out into laughter, “You can’t be serious.”

Harry looked at you confused, “I’m serious.”

“Harry this is my job. This is equivalent to me getting a promotion. I can’t stop!” you explain harshly.

Harry nodded, “I understand. Just-” he paused, “Just come with me, okay?”

“No, Harry, I can't, I have to do this,” you stood your ground.

“Y/N,” he spoke firmly, “If you hate this and want to kick me out for a week and let you compose on your own after this, you can. Just come.”

You let out a sigh and deliberated your options, “Fine. But there is a high chance you’re not showing up at my door for a week,” you point an accusatory finger at Harry.

He raises his hands in defense, “Okay, noted. Let’s go slowpoke,” he teased.

You flashed him your middle finger and a toothy grin before packing up your clarinet and setting it on your desk. You follow Harry out to his car and get in the passenger seat as he starts the car and makes his way out of your neighborhood.

“Can I ask where we are going?”

“Patience is a virtue,” Harry replied, making you roll your eyes dramatically.

“You’re so annoying,” you reply.

“You love me,” he states smugly, making your eyes grow the size of saucers.

“Not right now I don’t” you tease once you recover from your previous state of shock.

Harry shakes his head and says, “Home Depot. That’s all you’re getting out of me.”

You wondered why he could be taking you to Home Depot of all places- not getting food or going shopping to find another piece of clothing you don’t need.

Harry parked easily before exiting the car, you follow after him in a haste. You have to job to catch up with Harry who seems to be walking a mile a minute to get into the building, “What the fuck are we doing here?” you ask again.

“We,” Harry says, pointing at the two of you, “Are going to paint that white wall in your office,” he says with a smile.

Your face mirrors his, a grin of your own making its way across your face. You had mentioned to Harry months ago that you were itching to paint the room but you never made the time for yourself to do that.

This time, it was you who took the lead, teasing Harry for taking too long to make his way into the store. You find your way to the back of the store where you see a few employees mixing paint for customers and you find your way to the pantone swatches, Harry immediately picking up a brown one, “I think it’ll match the wood, no?”

You laugh and shake your head, “No I want it to be your hair color.”

Harry’s mouth opens in realization before grabbing another strip. He squints, reading the name aloud, “Werge,” he says confused.

You fall into a fit of laughter before moving down the wall to look at the blues, the color you were actually hoping to get.

With Harry’s unwillingness to be serious and your contagious laughs, it took you forty five minutes to find the color you had seen online a few months ago and had screenshotted on your phone.

You make your way over to an employee and ask for a gallon of the deep navy color, paying and making your way back into Harry’s car within a few minutes.

Your knee was bouncing in anticipation on your way home and you didn’t realize until Harry rested his palm on it, asking you, “What’s got you so nervous?” to which you reply:

“Not nervous, just excited.”

Harry chuckled and kept his hand there for the rest of the ride to your house, which you found to be far too close then you wanted it to be.

You both found yourselves in your garage loading your arms with painters tape and tarp to ensure your room is painted to perfection and not too messy afterwards.

You spilled some paint into the tray and used a roller to begin putting the fresh paint on the middle of the wall. Harry gasps when he sees the color in contrast with the wood that covered every other wall in the room, “It matches so well,” he comments, using a smaller brush to begin on the bottom strip of the wall where the painters tape stuck.

He sat on the floor, his legs crossed beneath him, and you stood a few feet to his left, the paint sitting between the two of you.

You nod, “I know, it compliments the wood really well.”

Harry shakes his head, “Not the wood. I meant it matches my eyes,” he draws out.

You roll your eyes and let out a shut up before looking at him.

“Seriously,” he persists, setting his head next to the gallon that sat on the floor.

You raised your eyebrows and nodded slowly, dipping your roller back onto the tray, allowing the residue to fall off before you rolled a bit on his face and shirt.

“What the fuck?” he laughs, sitting up immediately.

“I had to check!” you exclaim innocently. “You know, now that I look, I think you’re right. It does match, we should use more,” you conclude.

“Now that I look,” Harry starts, with an evil glint in his eye, “I think this is the color your shirt is missing,” he concludes, flinging his brush in your direction allowing the paint to fall on your face and shirt.

“Oh my god!” you shout as Harry doubles over in laughter.

You bring your brush into the paint once more, taking a threatening step towards Harry. He flinches, making you chuckle and redirect the paint onto the wall again, making him breathe a sigh of relief.

He begins again on the bottom edge and before you could think you're safe, Harry gets paint on your ankle from where he sat on the floor.

You let out a loud gasp, “This is war!” you exclaim.

“Or you can just admit that you needed a break,” Harry shrugs, “It’s quite simple.”

You narrow your eyes and look at him, “I am going to cover you in paint. It’s quite simple,” you mock him childishly.

He shakes his head with a laugh before painting the rest of your ankle, making a ring around your foot.

It had taken two hours to complete painting the wall and to complete your paint war. You and Harry found yourselves in your backyard while your sprinklers were spraying the grass.

“Best way to clean,” Harry breathed out.

“You say you’re one with nature but what are you going to say when my grass is blue?” you ask him as you scrub at your legs to get off the paint.

“I’ll say part of me is really with nature this time,” he says shaking the water out of his hair as he walks towards the hose that was attached to the side of your house.

You shake your head in disbelief, “I don’t think that’s how it works,” you say, looking at Harry as he walks towards you with the hose gushing water out.

You step towards him and let him spray you down and you watch as the paint falls off your skin and into the grass, your shirt clinging to your body.

Harry tries to keep his attention on your face and not on the black bra that begins to show from your wet shirt that stuck to your body like a second skin.

You fiddled with the fit of your shirt, trying to make sure you were comfortable, before scrubbing your arms and legs clean.

Harry and you had decided after the first hit that you would do your best to avoid each other's faces just to make everything easier when it came to cleaning.

You rinse your hair fully before deciding you're as clean as you’d get without using a proper shower (which you didn’t want to turn blue from the paint), so you stepped towards Harry with your arm extended towards him.

“My turn,” Harry says softly, handing you the hose before spreading his arms out and letting the water hit his entire body, “This feels nice,” he comments.

“You’re crazy,” you reply. Harry shakes his head and takes his shirt off in an attempt to get everything off and you almost look away instinctively- you weren’t supposed to see your friend like this.

He allows the pressure of the hose to get most of the paint off his body but he seems a bit carefree about the cleanliness of his body at this point- you’re assuming this is the distraction you both needed from your mundane lives.

Harry finishes off with the hose and you run inside to grab the two of you towels, opting to stay outside for the rest of the night.

You both sit outside on the back porch swing that sat in your yard, wrapped in towels so you don’t get too cold in the autumn air. “You were right,” you mutter, leaning your head onto his shoulder.

“About?” Harry edges you on and you can practically hear him smiling through his words.

“I needed a break.”

What felt like a year was only two months and in those two months you had accomplished what you had been attempting since eighteen. You finished what seemed to be the perfect piece from a technical standpoint.

It told a story of betrayal and heartbreak and it included a plethora of twists in tone and changes in tempo and unresolved keys to add edge and lead the listener on. The piece, in theory, was among the most perfect ones written.

At least that's what Harry told you and that's what you tried to tell yourself.

You had just finished the process of getting it all recorded, recruiting some of your friends from the orchestra to take home your manuscript that you wrote in harmonies and new melodies to.

You spent a week editing the music together, sending recordings back, asking for retakes, and adjusting volumes, tempos, and tone before you were satisfied with the music.

All in all, it was a musically complex and fundamentally difficult piece that could be extended into a show or turned into a series of simpler solos- whatever would get your music sold to a publisher, you were willing to do.

You had contacts from your previous attempts at selling your compositions, contacts that rejected you but told you to come back if you had something new. You did not take the suggestion lightly.

You had mastered an email with your pitch- stating your name and your credentials, attaching a file of the piece, along with the score which separated individual parts and showed their dynamic together. It was your life's work and a story you were excited to sell, and that is why you were particularly excited when you received an email back the following week.

The email, in short, explained that a publisher would like to meet with you and is interested in helping you publish the music and help you get on the radar of a symphonic orchestra.

You were a giddy mess leading up to your meeting, your leg shaking in anticipation and your heart beating so loud you swear you could feel it in your throat. So, when it arrived it felt surreal.

You stepped into the tall building in a haze, your hands clutching onto your score and your body clad in your favorite orchestral dress that you find to be the one you wear to the majority of your auditions. You call it your good luck charm.

The receptionist was short and directed you to the fifth floor and gave you strict instructions to wait to be called in by Flynn Bradford’s assistant. You sat in the waiting room with a warm overcoat covering your body in the meantime.

When you got called up your hands began to sweat. You find your way into Bradford’s office and with a nervous step forward, you take your jacket off and sit down on the small chair before his desk.

“Hi, I’m Y/N Y/L/N,” you introduce yourself with a handshake, Bradford immediately recognizing your name.

“Flynn Bradford, a pleasure,” he returns with a friendly smile.

He was a middle aged man with a few silver hairs peeking through, but he wore a friendly smile and seemed very composed nonetheless. He took your score and opened it immediately. He looked over it in silence for a few moments, you sitting on the edge of your seat.

“I do have to say, Ms. Y/L/N, I was waiting to meet you so I could go over this with you. I think you’re a brilliant composer,” he speaks slowly.

You swallow harshly, “Thank you so much,” you gush, “I’ve been at it since I was a kid so I’m glad you liked it.”

He nods again, sifting through the pages, “And I have to say I’m impressed by the tone in the demo and the overall markup of the piece. I think there are a few minor changes that we’d like to see done but all in all I think it’s good.”

You nod your head quickly, “Of course and I was expecting to do so. I- uh- how many changes are we thinking about here?”

“Well it’s still your piece, so quite minor ones just to increase your chances of having it sold to a school or a symphony. Or, you could keep it how it is but that might not be the easiest to sell.”

“Right, so hypothetically, if I get all the changes done and we’re satisfied within a few weeks, it can go off to you?” you ask in shock.

“It seems to be that way, yes. I’ll send you a contract and some markups once I get to talk with my team about this. It would be best to get your own lawyer to look over this for copyright purposes and to make sure you’re alright with all the fine print,” he advises.

“Yes, I will definitely do that, yeah. Thank you so much,” you reiterate.

He hums a reply and hands you back your score with a tight lipped smile, “So this meeting was a bit quicker and the other might be too depending on what you like and want. Remember all the corrections we send are suggestions so you do what you want and we’ll be alright with whatever you choose to do,” he reminds you.

You nod and shake his hand once more, leaving the building with bright eyes and a winning score in your hands.

The first instinct you had as you sat back into your car was to call Harry but you were so overwhelmed with excitement you decided that going to see him at his house would be a better idea.

After all, he deserved to be the first person to know because he helped you so much when it came to the composition of this piece.

You were smiling incredibly wide as you made your way over to his townhouse in the city. His complex was very modern, a clear juxtaposition to your victorian styled home, but you welcomed it warmly. You enjoyed the prospect of having a place to go that is more minimal in comparison to your cluttered property.

It was hardly fifteen minutes before you parked outside of his home, your car finding its normal spot in the driveway of his garage.

Your legs carried you faster than you could have imagined, rushing you to the front of his house and your hand pounded against his door with a sense of urgency.

Harry took his time making his way downstairs, a towel around his waist and an impatient girl he had hardly met waited in his bed upstairs.

He opened his door slightly, allowing his head to peek out of the small crack he created, “Hey!” he exclaimed when he realized it was you.

“Hi! Can I come in?” you ask excitedly.

“I’m not exactly decent,” his hand scratches the back of his neck, “Can you wait down here as I get some clothes on?”

“Sure, take your time,” you nod in understanding, allowing Harry to make his way back upstairs.

“Who’s at the door?” the girl asks from her spot on his bed as Harry changes quickly into some sweatpants and an old t-shirt.

“Just a friend, she should be gone soon,” he replies.

“You sure? She seemed really excited to see you.”

Harry lets out a sigh, “Logan, I promise she's just a friend. And what does it matter anyway?”

“Well I don't want to be the other woman,” she pouts, “But if you say she’s just a friend then I believe you.”

“Thanks,” he called over his shoulder briefly as he made his way back downstairs to where you were waiting on his sofa.

“So whats up?” he asks, “Want anything to drink?”

“No, I’m alright. I have some news, though,” you say, enthusiasm raising once again.

“Okay, lay it on me,” Harry joins you on the sofa.

“So I met with Flynn Bradford today,” you lead on, hoping Harry could understand what the news was.

“No way,” he exclaimed after a moment of silence. “He picked you up? That’s amazing holy shit! Congrats!”

“Thanks! You helped so much, I thought you had to be the first to know. And on Wednesday you can help me decide what corrections to add, too. This is all so exciting! It’s happening so fast!” you ramble quickly, standing up and pulling Harry into a hug.

“No you did that all on your own! I knew they’d pick you up, too. So fucking talented,” he mumbles, returning your embrace.

“Thank you oh my goodness! Okay, I just wanted to come over quick to tell you that. I have to work on some audition music so I’ll head out in a few,” you say.

Harry opens his mouth to reply when you both hear his bedroom door open. Harry’s eyes widened in realization and your brows furrowed in confusion.

“Harry?” you hear an unrecognizable voice, “You done?”

You feel tears begin to well up in your eyes as you start to realize what was happening. He was with someone. He found someone and it wasn’t you.

She walks down the stairs and your head immediately turns in the direction of the girl. You inhale sharply, trying to keep your tears in the ducts of your eyes as you see her in a t-shirt you know Harry absolutely loves.

“Hey, uh Logan. This is Y/N,” he trails off lightly, waiting for you to introduce yourself.

“Hi,” you smile falsely and extend your hand for her to shake.

“Hey, I’m Logan. You’re Harry’s friend?” she presumes, looking at the two of you.

“Yeah, we’re pretty close,” you pause, “Sorry, I didn’t know H was seeing anyone. This was kind of unexpected.”

“Oh that’s alright, I was going to leave soon anyway. Have to meet some friends for dinner,” she shrugged carelessly.

“No, no, you can stay. I feel bad. I can be out in a few minutes,” you tell her with a soft smile.

She looked at you and Harry intervened before she could get a word out, “That’s alright, you can both stay if you want?” he suggested.

“I really do have to go,” Logan trailed off.

Harry quickly jumped at this, “Oh! Sorry, love. Yeah, go ahead, don’t mean to keep you here if you need to be somewhere.”

“I’ll just grab my stuff,” she smiles at the two of you and heads back upstairs to where you assume she was staying in Harry’s bedroom.

You and Harry stand in silence for a moment, “Sorry I should’ve asked to come over. I’ll go, you can spend some time with her before she leaves,” you finally stammer with a slightly wavering voice.

“No!” Harry exclaims a bit too loudly, making you flinch at his tone. “You can stay,” he whispers.

“That’s alright, I have to practice anyway,” you say in a rush, leaving his house at once without looking back at him.

It was two days later when Logan showed up at Harry’s house with a soft smile on her face and her eyes filled with lust.

Not only two minutes after Harry opened the door, his lips were on hers and they were making their ways upstairs to his bedroom. Logan had come to Harry’s for a quick fuck and Harry was there to provide.

It had taken them a few weeks to get into a flow and get a general idea of each others bodys and needs and now that they were getting good sex, they didn’t take many moments to stop and catch their breath.

There were a few moments, though where Logan knew she fell short of your company. She could tell with a quick glance at Harry that he was a lovesick puppy when it came to you and it became more and more apparent the more time they spent together.

When they weren’t fucking, he spent most of his free time talking about you. The girl of his dreams and the funniest, prettiest, nicest, person he’s ever met.

She had her hands in his hair and he had his hands tugging on her waist when his phone began buzzing from his bedside table.

Logan sat up from where she laid, straddling Harry’s lap. He let out a soft groan and ran and hand through his hair as he checked who had called him.

His lips fell into an effortless smile as he answered your call, leaving Logan breathless and unfulfilled. She resulted in getting up from his bed and walking out of his house once she realized it was you he was talking to.

That following Monday, you watched as Harry made his way into your home, an uncomfortable silence encompassing the two of you as you sat on your sofa.

“How was your date with Logan?” you ask eventually.

“Oh, it was- it wasn’t a date,” Harry tried to describe, leaving you confused. Harry wasn’t one for casual hookups.

“Then what was it?” you ask timidly, hoping for an answer you can understand.

“Just meeting an old friend from college,” he coughs.

“A friend?” you ask confused.

“Yeah, uh, a friend,” he emphasized.

“Oh,” you let out softly, “Why’d you get back with her?” you ask.

“I don’t think the girl I like likes me back, so I wanted a distraction” he replies vaguely, turning on your TV in search of a new film to watch on Netflix.

You swallow the lump in your throat before replying, “I don’t see why she wouldn’t.”

Harry looks at you for the first time that day, “Well she doesn’t act like it at all, so I think I’m pretty sure she doesn’t like me.”

“I think you should tell her how you feel,” you shrug, “What is there to lose?”

“A person who I value a lot in my life,” he replies almost instantly.

You didn’t reply after that, allowing the film Harry chose in a haze to begin and you sink further into the sofa.

It had been an eventful week. You had sent back your manuscript twice between today and your original week and yesterday you had auditioned for the live orchestra for the annual Nutcracker production.

This had been your fifth year playing in it- you were very confident in your ability to get a spot in the orchestra- but it was the solo that brought you grief. Every year, each section had a competitive fight between musicians for the solos that are littered through the production.

You found that the busy week that had followed you around became the main reason you were able to get your mind off Harry. No matter what you did he meandered his way into your thoughts and you were beginning to feel pathetic that your mood relied on him.

It was when you came home from auditions on Tuesday evening when you got a phone call from Harry. You hesitantly picked up the phone and allowed him to speak first.

“Y/N? You there? Can you talk for a second?” he asked.

“Yeah, what’s up,” you reply.

“I need your advice. I think Logan wants to start seeing someone but she won’t admit it to me so I don’t know what I should do because I don’t want her to hold back on it just because of me,” he pushes quickly.

Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion, “Well why wouldn’t she admit she wants to see someone? She probably likes you, H, don’t worry. She’ll talk to you if she likes someone else.”

You heard a heavy sigh come from Harry’s end of the line as you picked up all your belongings from your car, your phone sitting between your shoulder and ear. “Yeah, I just- I don’t think she wants to tell me for some reason.”

What you didn’t know was that Harry was trying to prolong this call in an attempt to see if you would tell him to cut it off with Logan. It had only been a few weeks, and to be fair he hadn’t hooked up with her more then three times.

He knew he loved you but he needed confirmation that you liked him back. Logan insisted that you did but he didn’t trust her judgement as much as he trusted his own.

As you learned through numerous conversations with Harry, he is a charming man, but he is also a confusing one. He isn’t direct and he seems to beat around the bush when it comes to serious things in his life.

“Okay,” you say, confused, “Well just tell her that if she can’t be honest then she’s never going to be able to break it off with you. And if she says the same thing and you still don’t believe her just cut it off,” you advise selfishly.

You wanted to help Harry, you truly did, but you were also a human. You were selfish and needy and you wanted Harry to yourself. So, you did what a selfish, and jealous, girl would do and you hinted at breaking it off.

“Thanks,” he let out a huff of air, “Sorry, I have to sort some stuff out and I’m really stressed so I wanted your opinion about this,” he apologizes.

“It’s alright. Let me know how it goes, yeah? I gotta run some errands but I’ll see you tomorrow?” you confirm.

Harry hums in agreement and you hang up first, leaving him with the dial tone on his phone.

The first thing you do when you get in your office is check your email. You were waiting on a reply from Bradford- you had just sent in another round of corrections and asked him for minor technical critiques to finish off the piece. You were proud of where it was and you were thoroughly in love with it.

Just as you opened your laptop, you saw the taunting icon saying you have an unread email. You attempted to calm your nerves before opening it, preparing yourself for almost all senders.

But calming your nerves turned into a loud scream. Bradford had replied and informed you that he loved the piece and accepts it as your final draft. He also mentioned that he will fax over the legal documents to look over before meeting with him officially and signing all the necessary contracts.

Just as he said, later that night you received a thick stack of papers to sift off to your parents to help you look over and make sure everything was alright for you to sign.

You bind all the pages together with a few paperclips and make a quick drive into the suburbs to give your parents the good news and ask them to help you find someone to look over all the papers for you.

Your parents weren’t the most enjoyable people to live with but they were great to see in moderation. It was a large showcase of love every time you or Monica came home- they cooked, cleaned, and helped with just about everything you asked.

So, when you arrived home, you got the full treatment. Your mom had cooked a nice dinner for you all and your dad helped you look over the contracts in their entirety as you waited for dinner to be served. You deemed the papers safe and the three of you decided you could sign on them as soon as possible and get all the proper licensing.

You were overjoyed on your drive home and the moment you arrived back, you sent Bradford a quick email from your phone saying you can meet anytime to sign and that you had looked over the contracts.

The following morning, you had gotten back a response stating he was free later that afternoon and you took him up on his offer to sign on the fine Wednesday.

You met him back at his office, similar to the first time, and you had brought all the papers he had sent you, giving him a solid rundown of what you were expecting and negotiating royalties.

You had taken half an hour to settle on a final deal and Bradford had gotten the contracts readjusted for you to sign.

It was nerve wracking but exciting to be holding the pen in your hand and you signed page after page, ensuring your music could be sold and would be given proper care and proper copyright laws.

“Last one right here, Y/N,” Bradford encouraged you. Your wrist grew tired but you refused to complain considering how much you wanted this and how long you waited.

“Okay,” you grunted, signing your name sloppily and allowing Bradford to pull all the papers out from under your hold.

“So, what this all ensures from our relationship standpoint is that we are the primary distributor and we will be helping with copyright and making sure you get your money's worth,” he briefs with a chuckle. He straightens out the stack and stands up with a smile on his face.

You follow in suit and stand up at the desk, straightening out your pants, “Thank you so much,” you gush.

“Thank you for thinking to work with us,” Bradford countered, making you shake your head.

“Of course,” you say kindly, “And I appreciate all you’ve done for me these past few weeks. Been a huge help.”

“Oh it was our pleasure, Y/N. You're a wonderful artist. I think we all enjoyed working with your piece.”

You shake Bradfords hand and exchange pleasantries as you exit his office with a smile on your face.

It was the rush of relief that went through your body that helped you realize the gravity of what just happened. Your music has been sold and now has the opportunity to be in music shops, orchestras, and played all across the globe. And that was a great feeling.

It was indescribable, to say the least. It had taken over a year to compose the piece and you had multiple failed attempts prior to this one. The piece you named Domicile was quite literally a love letter to your life.

The piece went through the ups and downs of love. Domestic love, platonic love, romantic love. It was all encompassed in the piece you titled home.

Written from the back of your mind, you had no idea how to articulate how proud of yourself you were. It was self expression and it was beautiful.

Later that evening, Harry arrived at your home as he usually did. He held a small calculator and his laptop in his arm as he abandoned his car in your driveway and made his way up to your door.

He knocked before opening it, knowing you always forget to lock it when you came home from work, and he followed the noise of soft jazz down the hall and into your office.

The paint smell had finally vanished the room and he found you sitting comfortably on the floor with your legs folded beneath you. “Hey, how was your day?” He asks, walking in and sitting across from you on the floor.

“Really fucking good,” you grin, making eye contact with him.

“Care to explain?” he asks with wide eyes and an encouraging smile.

“Yes,” you say dramatically, “I, Y/N Y/L/N, am officially,” you pause for effect.

“Oh come on,” Harry groans in anticipation.

“I am officially a signed artist,” you squeal in excitement.

“No fucking way,” he says softly, “No fucking way!” he yells. “I knew you would oh my goodness! This is amazing! We have to celebrate-” he rambles on.

“Harry!” you exclaim with a giggle, “No need to celebrate this is enough!” you assure.

“No, no, no,” Harry says, “We gotta do something. Even if it’s just a dinner with Mon and I. We gotta.”

“No,” you reiterate firmly.

“Fine,” Harry says, “But you’re coming with me,” he says standing up. He extends his hand out and helps you stand before leading you to your living room.

He gently tugs your arm towards him and he presses his chest up against yours. “Play it on the speaker, love,” he whispers.

“Okay,” you say softly, pulling back and using your phone to play the symphony over your speaker system per Harry’s request.

Harry smiled at you and gently put his hand up to yours, interlocking your fingers and holding you tightly. “Dance with me?” he asks with a cheeky grin.

“Of course, sir,” you tease, stepping into his hold, his arms wrapping around your waist and your hands draped over his shoulders lightly.

“I’m really proud of you,” he whispers, swaying back and forth.

“Thank you so much,” you hum, “Seriously, you helped with so much of it. I really appreciate it.”

Harry ducked his head in a bashful manner, unsure of how to reply to your high praise, “I’d do it again if I had to.”

You shake your head, looking out the window next to you two. The sun was setting and the sky was a painting of oranges and pinks, “God, Harry.”

“What,” he chuckles, following your gaze.

“I cannot believe you’re real,” you whisper, you hand moving to meet his jaw. You graze your thumb over his skin in utter disbelief.

“Harry?” you call out softly. He was zoned out, staring at your profile.

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Course.”

“Can I kiss you?” you breathe out timidly. You don’t know where exactly you got all the courage that consumed your body at that current moment, but you were thankful for it.

Harry swallowed thickly before his eyes met yours, “Yes please,” he whispers back at you.

Your hand that rested on his jaw caressed the skin for a moment before you leaned into his warmth. Your lips met his lightly, you pulling away too quickly for his liking. Harry looked at you once more before leaning forward and allowing his lips to meet yours heavily.

You smile into his mouth, absolute joy coursing through your veins as he kissed you so carefully but so harshly. Your bodies stilled into the kiss, your mouths moving in sync slowly, absorbing every inch of each other.

Harry lets out a small groan as you grind slowly against him, his head threatening to roll back if it weren’t for your hand holding his head still.

His hands moved along your back comfortingly making your body melt into his expertly. You pull away again, Harry looking at you with dimmed eyes, you completely out of breath, “Songs over,” you whisper.

“So restart it,” he replies with a small grin.

Harry ended up seeing the full performance of Midsummer the last night it was performed at the theater. He apologized profusely and insisted he’d see the last of the show if it was the last thing he did, so you let him come and sit right in the front as he wished.

Just as the first time, he sent you smiles of luck before your solo and a few more afterwards to show he was proud of you. Just as you anticipated, he is the best person to cheer you on during a performance.

You knew Harry would be waiting for you in the lobby, so you held off on putting your overcoat on and allowed yourself to step out of the backstage area with your black dress and short heels, your clarinet and jacket in hand.

He held his arm out for you once you became close enough for him to wrap his fingers around your waist and you walked into his hold, “I got something for you,” he tells you.

“Oh yeah? And what’s that?” you ask with a smile creeping its way onto your lips.

Harry smiles at you before handing you the flowers that sat in his other hand. It was an assortment of long stem red roses, what he read to be the traditional rose to give after a performance.

“Thank you,” you whisper in awe, your eyes meeting his as he looks at you.

Harry hums in response and tugs you closer to his body before leaving a quick peck on your lips and pulling away just as fast as he approached you.

You and Harry were confused to say the least. You had both confirmed you liked each other the night you got signed but you found it difficult for the two of you to label what was going on. Harry wanted it to be exclusive and you wanted to give it a trial run to see how it would work. And though you did give it a trial run, the two of you were yet to discuss what was going on.

You assumed this would be like any other relationship you had been in- after a few months and a handful of dates, you’d consider yourselves partners- but this was vastly different. You have known Harry for a few years now and he has always been a part of your life. So what counted as a date and what was as normal?

Well, tonight constituted a date. Harry had told you before he arrived that he would be taking you out for a nice dinner after your show and to be ready for the best night of your life. You rolled your eyes at his antics and humored him by showing him the outfit you had picked out- the dress you found yourself wearing every Sunday- and a different jacket then you usually wore- this one more flattering for the body.

Harry nodded in approval at this and made his way to the theater, you asking one of your friends to give you a ride so you could go home with Harry later that night.

Now you sat in Harry’s car with his hand resting on your knee, your hand covering his as he drives you both to dinner. He was clad in the same suit he wore the first time he saw you and it subtly matched the black dress and white coat with pleats that you wore next to him.

Harry informed you when you got in the car that he would be taking you to his favorite (fancy) steakhouse in the next city over. Before you could protest her told you it was in celebration of your final performance and being signed, therefore your protests would only further encourage him.

“Will these flowers be alright sitting in the car during dinner?” you ask him.

“Not sure,” he chuckles, looking over at you, “I’ll get you new ones if they aren’t.”

“No!” you’re quick to stop him, “You don’t have to do that.”

“Well what if I want to? You gonna stop me from fulfilling my inner desires?” he asks you teasingly.

You roll your eyes at him and look out the window. The soft sounds of Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac fill the silence as Harry exits the highway and turns into the parking lot of Del Friscos, the steakhouse.

Harry exits the car first, rushing to your door so he can open the door for you. You smile at him as you step out of the car and walk in the building hand in hand.

The restaurant was dimly lit and had high, round booths around the perimeter of the room, tables with pristine white tablecloths among the center. Harry met the host with a small smile and a, “Styles, party of two,” before being led to a corner booth with you in toe.

You smile at Harry as you slide into the booth, your hands making their way to the hem of your dress and tugging on it, “This place is really nice,” you comment your voice laced with insecurity.

“Yup, that’s why we look really nice,” Harry reminds you.

“I feel like this is normal,” you chuckle, “I wear this every Sunday.”

“My girl looks this nice every Sunday and I never knew? Might have to make a pit stop Sunday nights too,” Harry compliments.

You feel the heat rush to your cheeks, “I’d be alright with that.”

Harry smiles at you as a waitress comes over and asks what drinks you’d like.

The dinner was filling and well-made, you found yourself laughing harder than you ever had and eating the best food you’ve had in awhile.

Harry held your hand as you left the steakhouse and he opened the passenger seat door for you, rushing to the other side to turn the heater on for you, “One more stop before I bring ya home,” Harry tells you.

Your brows furrowed in confusion, “Alright, where?”

“Oh, Y/N, you should know by now that if I don’t tell you it’s a secret!”

“Well it was worth a try,” you shoot him a smile, your hand finding its place in his.

Harry hums in agreement, “Just know if I want you to know, you’ll know.”

You let out a laugh at his stubbornness, “Alright sir,” you say in a posh accent.

Harry lets out an exaggerated hey before saying, “That’s what I sound like when I talk to my boss.

You burst out in laughter and Harry goes on to tell you an embarrassing story from the first time he met his boss.

When Harry’s car reverses into a spot, your eyes shoot up in surprise at your arrival at the hardly-built riverwalk in your town. It was a new location and half the restaurants were still in the process of being built but it was still a nice place to go.

You catch the door before Harry can, you send him a smug smile and take his hand as he tugs you gently towards the ice cream shop he seemed to be eyeing.

The location was dimly lit with blue tinted lights and a few wall sconces that gave a warm orange glow.

“How did you know I wanted to come here?” you asked him finally, coming to a stop and stepping inside the building.

“It’s just about the only thing you’ve talked about for about two months,” Harry teased you with an accusatory finger.

Your lips curve upwards as you exhale a laugh, “Okay, you got me there.”

Harry smirks at you as you look at the menu before you, stepping up to the teen worker who looked far too tired to be awake, “Can I get a scoop of chocolate? And he’ll have,” you point at Harry.

“Uh- I’ll have a scoop of vanilla with graham crumbs please,” Harry gives the worker a cheeky grin and wraps his arm around your waist as you wait for your cones.

You smile in thanks as Harry pays, heading out of the building almost immediately to be met with a gust of wind and a lit up river beside you.

Harry stays by your side as you both walk in silence taking in the scenery, eating your ice cream peacefully. It was a really nice way to spend your evening and you found yourselves enjoying each other's presence more than each other's conversation.

“Okay,” you swallow the last bit of your ice cream, “What’s your dream travel destination?” you ask.

Harry's eyebrows raise in amusement, “What, did you look up first date questions?”

You stifle out a laugh, “Maybe, I didn’t know if it would be awkward.”

Harry lets out an exaggerated, “Ha!” before redirecting you back in the direction of his car, “That’s cute that you care so much.”

“What and you don’t care?” you tease.

“I care just not enough to google first day questions,” he pokes your side playfully.

You laugh out a “Fine!” and redirect the conversation to your performance from earlier that night.

It was a full week apart from Harry and you were excited to reunite with him. Your week had been full with auditions for different parts in the Nutcracker every day so you found yourself unavailable to spend your Monday and Wednesday with Harry, having little to no time to yourself.

Now, the following Sunday, the only thing between Harry and yourself was your front door.

Harry was officially invited to your orchestra’s gala in celebration of completing Midsummer. You both had decided that Harry would arrive promptly two hours before you needed leave and you two would get ready together.

He was lying down on your bed as you leaned over your bathroom counter in an attempt to perfect your eyeliner, “Don’t know why you bother with that,” you hear him grumble.

You let out a chuckle and stood back to decide if it was even enough, “Me neither it’s too fucking hard.”

Harry lets out a snort, “That's what she said.”

You rolled your eyes and looked at him through your mirror, “You sure you’re not fifteen?”

Harry smiles, “You sure The Office is only for fifteen year olds?” he shoots back.

Your face matches his and you lean into the mirror once more to perfect your eyeliner before moving to your closet to change into your dress for the night, prompting Harry to begin getting into his suit as well.

Today, for the nicer event, you wore a nude dress with navy accents towards the bottom and a leg slit Harry thought made you look absolutely ravishing. And, in perfect coordination, Harry wore a navy suit with a white half-buttoned shirt underneath and his favorite red boots that reminded him of an old western movie you’d watched a few months back.

He held your hand as you stepped out of your closet and let out a dramatic “Oh damn!” at first sight before spinning you around so he can get a full idea of your outfit.

You fall into a fit of giggles and collapse into his hold and he sways back and forth, “I really like you,” he whispers.

“Yeah?” you reply with a grin, “I like you a lot back.”

“Well how lucky am I?”

“So damn lucky,” you tell him as you let out a silent giggle, “Come on, let's head out.”

The drive to the theater seemed all too short for the both of you. You were sitting in a comfortable silence enjoying each other's company on the way there, stealing a few kisses at a red light or a longing glance while Harry was concentrating on changing lanes during rush hour.

When you arrived at the hotel the gala was held at, you both found your way inside and to the tables that were set up with your names on small place cards. You both sat there in soft chatter as you awaited the arrival of your friends who were to sit at the same table.

Eventually, you were met with a crowd of people around your table and your voices raised in volume and excitement. It was merely 8:00 when your ears were greeted by the sound of a disconnected microphone.

“Hello, everyone, I’m Jordan Pennington, the conductor of the Midsummer Night’s Dream orchestra performance and I’m here to recognize each performer for their outstanding work over the course of these past months,” his voice cut through the room like glass.

Jordan then went on to state each performer and his favorite memory with them through the course of the orchestral production.

“Y/N Y/L/N,” Jordan introduced, an image of you as a baby and you now making their way onto the screen behind him, “Y/N is a strong clarinetist we are blessed to have in our group. She works very hard in the theater and outside and has recently been signed as a composer so I’m hoping I’ll be conducting her work soon,” he paused as people congratulated you. You didn’t publicize your signing, so a lot of people were in shock and impressed.

“She’s been with us for a while so we have a few good memories with her at this theater but I think everybody's favorite is just about any time Y/N brings lunch,” he pauses as everyone starts laughing. You bury your face in your hands as Harry looks at you with a confused smile.

“When Y/N brings lunch she without fail trips on one of the steps and spills something,” Jordan informs. You let out an exaggerated groan, eliciting more laughter and Harry covers his mouth in an attempt to stifle his laughter.

“Can we move on?” you call out.

Jordan lets out a laugh and obliges, moving onto the next person on his list.

You glance at Harry who is taking a sip of wine and you raise your eyebrows at him, making him nearly spit out his drink, “Sorry, love,” he coughs out, bringing you in for a hug, “Just sounds so much like you it’s impossible,” he tells you.

You roll your eyes at him and continue to listen as Jordan goes through the rest of your orchestra.

When he finishes, your food is devoured and the middle of the room is opened to allow people to dance. You glance at Harry and take his hand, reminding him of the night you first kissed, “Come on,” you mutter.

He allows you to take him to the center of the room where some of your colleagues have begun to conglomerate and dance slowly to the tune of Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud, you two joining in the mass.

Unlike last time, you knew exactly how to act, your arms immediately finding a home around his shoulders and pulling him close so your flesh is against his.

Harry smiled at this and squeezed you at the waist as a silent way of saying I love you, his head leaning in towards yours and your foreheads resting against each other.

“How is it that we always end up dancing?” he asks you.

“Not sure, I was never good at it either but here I am,” you chuckle a reply.

Harry’s eyes shoot up in disbelief, “There is no way you weren’t a good dancer.”

“Swear on it,” you say, your lips tugging upwards to make a smile.

“No. I refuse to believe that, you’re so good,” he says, his eyes shooting down to your feet and then back up to your eyes making you giggle.

“Nope,” you say confidently, “Just found you and you were good. By association I’m good.”

“So what you’re saying is you found the right partner?” he asks, wiggling his eyebrows at you.

You fall into a full belly laugh at his antics before agreeing, “I found the right partner.”

#harry styles #harry styles imagine #harry styles imagines #harry styles fic #harry styles x reader #harry styles one shot #harry styles oneshot #harry styles one shots #harry styles oneshots #harry styles fluff #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic

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fuckspn · 3 years

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fuckspn’s mini deancas fic rec

i said a few days ago that i would write a mini fic rec list, and here it is! i tried to limit it to fics i hadn’t seen on other rec lists before, but there are a few that i couldn’t resist adding even though everyone and their mother recommends them. there’s a whole section for “dean pulls cas out of the empty” fix-it fics because i know what the fuck i’m about. also literally all of these are deancas because i don’t read any other type of supernatural fic, and they all have happy endings because i’m not reading supernatural fanfiction to make myself sad.

a quick disclaimer before we start: i generally don’t like explicit sex scenes in fic unless i feel like they’re really narratively earned, realistic, in-character, and necessary to the emotional arc of the story. so while there are explicit fics in here, all but the last two on the list are sufficiently character- and plot-driven that you can skip the sex scenes entirely if you want.

Finale Fix-Its:

(they’ll never break) the shape we take by ~ME~ (Teen, 9k) Yes, this is my own fic, but listen, I wouldn’t have written it if it didn’t hit what I wanted to see in a fix-it! I’m not gonna make any promises as to whether or not you’ll like it, but I do, and that’s what matters here. Read it if you want to see basically every wrong prediction about the finale rolled up into one fic, if you wish they’d kept the Empty as a morally neutral outsider instead of a villain, or if you just like somewhat uncanny, slippery dream logic and gratuitous callbacks. Also even though idk if I’ll ever finish or publish it, I’m working on a fluffy domestic follow-up featuring, among other things, fixes for both Jack and Billie’s endings. I’m just saying that so if you read this fic you know that even though it’s not mentioned, Jack does come back and get to be a normal toddler with his two dads.

my heart a compass by lagaudiere (Teen, 10k) Again, I REALLY hope you like uncanny, slippery dream logic because that’s in this fic too! Cas POV is such a rare and difficult thing and I think lagaudiere nails it. Literally my only complaint about this fic is that at one point Cas imagines Jack having missing baby teeth at age 4 and my immediate reaction was to worry about why Jack would be missing teeth that young. This is because my brain is broken. Your brain is presumably not broken in the same way mine is, so you should enjoy this fic fine.

The World At Large by cenotaphy (General, 4.9k) This fic is so sexy because cenotaphy was like “hey what if there were actual stakes for Dean in the Empty besides the threat of losing the love of his life? Like what if he had a time limit? What if he got fucking stabbed?” and then somehow turned it into the softest little thing about how much all the characters love each other. Truly incredible artistic decisions made here. Despite being relatively short and deancas-centric, Sam and Jack get a lot of screentime here too and they’re absolutely delightful. Tbh you should probably read all of cenotaphy’s season 15 fix-its but if you’re only gonna read one, make it this. (Or Bring Home, but I’ve seen that one on so many rec lists that I think statistically everyone on Earth has read it.)

Other:

You And Your Husband by mikaylamazing (General, 17.9k) 5+1, Dean and Cas getting mistaken for a couple, 80% fluff then 10% angst that genuinely hit me like a gut punch then 10% fluff again. Dean and Cas are at PEAK old married couple in this fic. Yeah they bitch at each other constantly, but they also will tool around the country in their car like a couple of retirees and Dean will indulge Cas’ random flights of fancy even when they’re for something he hates, like the original Starbucks at Pike Place Market. (I’m with Dean on this one.)

Command Me To Be Well by prosopopeya (Explicit, 28k) Not gonna lie, this one hits the “angst with a happy ending” trope hard. The author is NOT fucking around with the warning for internalized homophobia, and I damn near cried at how Dean and Cas clearly loved each other and wanted to be together but just couldn’t because Dean’s psychological hangups were hurting them both. But not only does the happy ending come, the fic luxuriates in it—this is no band-aid slapped over the end, they genuinely fix their shit. Also, this fic has my favorite “Dean coming out to Sam” scene I’ve ever read.

Bring Up the Deep by deathbanjo (Explicit, 22.6k) Okay. Listen. Yes, this is the fic I was talking about the other day, with the tags that make it sound way kinkier than it actually is. And yes, technically this fic does contain dom/sub undertones and sex pollen. But look at me—hey, look at me. This fic owns. It’s a horror case fic, so it’s mainly plot (and three brief sex scenes, but two of those are part of the plot). The monster is genuinely creepy and creative, the supporting characters are enjoyable to read about, the setting is well-drawn, and the ending is something I’m still digesting but in a very enjoyable way. As far as the kinky tags go, the fic basically plays out like Dean and Cas (who are in an established, albeit new, relationship) are slightly randier than normal due to case weirdness: the dom/sub undertones are so light that I barely noticed them, the “sex pollen” is a deliberately unnerving plot device, and both Dean and Cas have nuanced emotional reactions to the whole situation that they are allowed to process and talk through with each other. I’ve never read A Complete Kingdom and never will, but if you’ve ever wanted a Deancas horror casefic set in coastal Maine that won’t leave you a shattered husk of a human being, Bring Up the Deep is for you!

Though The Course May Change by imogenbynight (Explicit, 51.5k) I’ve seen this one on a number of rec lists, but I couldn’t not include it because it’s just so fun. Another case fic involving Dean and Cas staying in a cabin in a rainy, semi-isolated location surrounded by colorful OCs, but this time the only horror is the prospect of fake-dating the guy you’re secretly actually in love with. It’s a delightful read.

More Than Ever by Sass_Master (Explicit, 20.2k) Canon-divergent fic from 2015 about Cas choosing to become human and Dean being a real bitch about it. It’s very fun, but I’m mainly recommending it because it’s part 1 of a series and therefore provides the necessary backstory/buildup for the next fic on this list.

You’re There by Sass_Master (Explicit, 11.5k) This is part 3 of the same series (part 2 is not required reading, it’s just a short explicit fic set in between these two fics), and while most of it is about sex, it’s also a fucking A+, 10/10, award-worthy character study of Dean and his internal relationship to his sexuality. Literally I was reading it going, “That’s it! That’s the Dean Winchester who lives in my head!”

till the juice runs by deathbanjo (Explicit, 8.4k) The epic saga of Dean’s terrible knockoff-Grindr hookups while Cas waits at home for him like if you could see that I’m the one who understands you been here all along so why can’t you see you belong w— Listen, I’ll be honest here, this fic is completely not my usual speed (lots of sex, relatively light—but not nonexistent!—romance, zero Big Emotions), so it doesn’t have much in common with any other fics on this list besides a rotating cast of fun OCs. It is, however, the single funniest fucking deancas fic I’ve ever read in my life. Fun minigame: count how many times one of Dean’s hookups is described as having messy dark hair and/or blue eyes.

#fic rec #idk how 'mini' this is at this point it's 10 fics #but that's only a tiny fraction of the amount of deancas fic i've read in the last 100 days so

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yehet-me-up · 3 years

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White Rabbit

Pairing: Jungkook x reader (gender not specified)

Word Count: 5,091

Genre: hacker!AU 🧑🏻‍💻, Matrix vibes inspo, angsty but with a happy/hopeful ending

Rating/Warnings: (M) - mentions of violence/blood, swearing, death of a family member (brother), gunshot wounds

Summary: After his brother’s murder took everything from him, Jungkook is dead set on revenge, even if it costs him his own life. But at the last moment he finds a ray of light, of hope. At the last moment, he meets you.

The blood on the wall is not his, but it haunts him just the same.

He rests in bed though he hardly feels the full meaning of the word. The blackout curtains are pulled tight, blocking any errant strands of sunlight that would seek to come in. Jungkook knows he’s isolated himself, but he can’t find it within himself to care. With a groan he turns; the mattress and bedframe whine metallically, protesting the movement. The blankets would be warm and comforting - if he had pulled them fully, properly over him. But he can’t get comfortable; he forbids it.

Revenge and retribution are the twin flames that sustain him these days. They pull him through the pit of his loss like a rope around his waist, tied behind a moving truck. Through the mire of pain all he can see is one purpose. A single goal he clings to. Perhaps on the other side of his task he’ll find peace, or at least satisfaction that justice has been done. It’s a silly hope but it’s what he has, and he’ll sink his nails and his teeth into it with all the energy he has left.

Sweat coats his back in the midst of his half-awake state. Somewhere between dusk and dawn he found an uneasy sleep. His left leg hangs over the bed, exposed to the chill in the air, on purpose. He knows if he stops searching that he’ll sink, as if through quicksand. And the thought of what he must do is far less terrifying than the thought of what awaits him if he sank to the bottom.

In sleep he grasps the fabric of his sheets with tight fingers. His head shakes from side to side, neck straining and veins standing in attention. As always his dreams are fraught with slivers - of images and memories and premonitions, or what feels like them. Sometimes he remembers them when he wakes. Other times they fade in the light of the morning.

But always he remembers the white rabbit.

At times it’s a real animal made of fur and softness that dances around his feet in his slumber. Or he becomes one himself, when he stares in the bathroom mirror after long nights of sleep deprivation; when his teeth grow and his nose wrinkles and he imagines his ears lengthening to become animalistic.

It’s important, and he knows it in his bones. But finding the murderer has dominated his mind and always he rolls his shoulders and casts off thoughts of the rabbit. It lives in the world of his mind and he doesn’t have time to wander into dreams.

A discordant beeping pulls him from the fitful sleep and he sighs. Tossing off the blankets he rolls to the side. The damp white shirt clings to his frame and his bare feet hit the hardwood floor. Jungkook runs both hands through his hair, pushing the dark strands away from his vision, tucking them behind his metal-filled ears. Rising, he gets to work.

Once upon a time he and his brother had work stations opposite each other. Computers pressed almost back-to-back to form one technological beast. Since he was seventeen he’s gone by K00KIE and after a few bumbling attempts he managed to find his stride as a hacker. Like learning a foreign language he stuttered and reached blindly for what he didn’t know for weeks before the words came naturally to his tongue. Now the internet has opened itself before him like a book held in his hands and reading is his chiefest joy.

His brother was everything Jungkook is not, and he exists now like the sun does to the moon on long nights, haunting Jungkook like a phantom limb. Less than a year separated them and they were far more like twins than just brothers. Jihoon was indeed almost brighter than the sun itself. Loud and free and unrestrained. He led them both into this world and now, left behind to pick up the pieces, Jungkook vows he’ll get them both out of it.

He stands, pressing his hands on his knees for leverage. The walk to his desk chair is only a few steps but it feels like he walked a mile. In the weeks since Jihoon’s murder he hasn’t had the energy to exercise. Or shower very often. Or even eat. Grief hangs around him like a shroud and with glassy eyes he takes in his workspace.

Jungkook lets his lids close again, dragged down by exhaustion, and he sees Jihoon sitting at his desk with a lollipop skicking from his mouth, speaking with animated hands about the program they made. How it would change the world. The cowlick of hair on his right side that always stuck up at an odd angle, and his eyes that crinkled whenever he was excited about something.

That world is full of bright color and when Jungkook opens his eyes, slowly, reluctantly, his apartment is awash in grey. Jihoon’s desk is empty. Every space is filled with piles of paper full of Jungkook’s messy writing, scrawled on every available notebook and receipt, surrounded by empty take out containers and chopsticks and energy drink cans and the stupid fucking plastic bags his grocery delivery services uses instead of paper ones.

Again his phone beeps, signalling more and more messages from his friends. A few he knows in real life, but most he only knows online. People who started out as words on a screen or lines of code traded back and forth but became the ones who know him best. They know he hurts and are trying to reach across through the digital world to catch him as he falls.

Kook, where are you? Talk to us.

Is there anything we can do? We’re here for you

If you want help, you only have to ask. To heal or… to make them pay.

Maybe he’ll let them, once it’s done. It’s a dangerous rabbit hole to walk down alone, but he won’t risk anyone else. He can’t.

None of his friends knew what he and Jihoon were working on. It was too secret for either of them to discuss online, where anyone could be listening. But in this community death means one of two things - either the government found you, or the competition. Jihoon didn’t fuck with the government, everyone knew that, which left only one option.

After he finds his brother’s killer or - fuck, killers? - perhaps he’ll be who he almost was again. Someone young and alive with the world at his feet. He could get a new apartment with a view of the park his brother loved, full of old brick columns surrounded by ivy and a sprawling network of paved pathways to walk. He could marathon anime and order from that Chinese restaurant he loves and play Tekken and create games and programs with his friends. It’s so close and yet so far from possible.

He turns his hands so his palms face skyward and gasps in a breath with how badly he wants to be freed from this. The pain and the hollow feeling in his gut and the insatiable urge to undo bloodshed with more blood spilled.

Could he do it? He wonders to his empty apartment, the darkness only lit by the glow from his computer screen. He doesn’t know what he’ll have to do, but whatever price is asked of him, he’s willing to pay.

His brother built a program that was too dangerous to be allowed and Jungkook helped him. Jihoon must have said something, anything, to the wrong people. The reckless joy that carried him through the world must have been exposed and then they came and sank their teeth into him devoured his brother whole. Jungkook helped him build the damn thing. It should have been me. It should have been anyone, anywhere else, but Jihoon.

Jungkook was down at the Seven-Eleven, getting slurpees. And when he came back, his brother was dead.

It can’t have been more than fifteen minutes but already his brother’s body was starting to cool, despite the warm blood that ran over Jungkook’s hands as he tried to stop the bleeding. He found his phone with a slick, wet hand, the one not pressing against the wound in Jihoon’s chest, and called for help.

It was too late - his brother died in his arms and the people who did it left no trace, not a scrap of a clue about their identity. The security cameras were disabled remotely. The hard drives were taken by with gloved hands, no fingerprints. In the aching days after it happened he went looking - in the back ups, and the back ups of the back ups he forced his brother to make. Always the careful one. But everything was gone. Like sand between his outstretched hands there was nothing left for him to hold.

Jungkook has a rage in him that would terrify him if he wasn’t too numb to feel. He pops the top of the Monster energy drink and downs half of it in three swallows. It’s warm and the flavor is atrocious, but it gets the job done. Ages ago he would have listened to music while he coded and while his brother dreamed of things that hadn’t yet been created. Now he sits in silence and his world is reduced to the muffled clacking of his fingers as they race across the keyboard, echoing around the now bare beige walls.

He should let people in and he should let his friends help. They’re good, many of them might even be better than Jungkook himself at tracking the bastards that did this. But letting them in is like breathing underwater. If he gasps in air he’ll also inhale water and drown. After it’s done, he vows to try. But not until then.

“Follow the white rabbit, little brother.”

The words are an echo in his mind, pinging around the lonely apartment and so clear it’s as though Jihoon whispered it in his ear. Jungkook turns, shaken and startled. He needs to get himself together. The days and weeks are blurring together and only the readout on his unused but still charged cell phone tells him where he is in the passage of time.

Sixteen days, four hours, and twenty three minutes since his world changed.

He shrugs off the strange suggestion, as always. Now more than ever he doesn’t think he should listen to what the dead ask.

Instead he picks up where he left off yesterday - or, no. It’s just after eleven at night according to his phone. He picks up where he left off this afternoon, when he finally gave into his brain’s pleas to sleep. The trail dead-ended in all the obvious places he looked. The message boards and chat rooms his brother frequented. Anyone who even whispered about ideas related to the program his brother envisioned. Rivalries and competitive streaks are a dime a dozen in his community, but every time he feels like he might have some goddamned clue it goes up in smoke.

Hours of digging tonight and he somehow strikes gold. At first he assumes it’s a hallucination or a wish so strong he’s made his imagination tangible. But it’s right there in black and white on his screen. In a buried chat room so far off the beaten path he can’t see daylight anymore - he finds a conversation. Someone describing a program and another anonymous name offering to buy at any price. It was shut down almost immediately after it was posted, eighteen days ago.

If he wasn’t already known as Kookie he might have listened to Jihoon and gone by the nickname ghost. If there’s any memory of something happening on the dark web, Jungkook can find it, and tonight he’s scented blood. Tonight he’s not a rabbit but a predator himself.

It’s only a breadcrumb, a fishing lure dangling in the water, but he grasps it between his teeth. Jungkook was always good, almost the best. Now full of desperation and reckless energy, he’s unstoppable. He pulls on the line and it unravels before him, drawing the unsuspecting fisherman into the depths where Jungkook waits. First an IP address and then he finds a text message log and then a name and before he knows it, he’s found them. Or at least where they were three days ago.

Triumph is delicious in his mouth, but it also has the same rank taste as the lingering energy drink. Jungkook blinks and rubs at his eyes. He stands and tests the cans around his keyboard for any that are full. All empty. He curses and moves to the kitchen. Opening the fridge he’s greeted by emptiness. His stomach tightens and growls, reminding him it’s been far too long since he had real food.

A plan forms in his mind, but first - he stops to smell the shirt he wears and winces - he needs a shower. And food. So much food. Enough to see him through to the end of this.

The bathroom, much like the whole apartment, is full of reminders. Razors and toothbrushes and hair gel that has no owner anymore. Jungkook avoids the mirror. He doesn’t need to see the dark stains of purple beneath his eyes or the way his skin has pulled taut over his jaw, turning it sharper than ever before. It’s bright as he pulls back the shower curtain, morning light streaming in through the window while he turns on the water.

He strips and stands naked on the plush blue bath mat. Steam fills the narrow space and hugs him. His brother used to sing in the shower, loudly, to wake up Jungkook when he’d sleep in. He breathes in the moist air and emotion clogs his throat. The urge to give in pulls at him and he reaches a hand to the porcelain sink to steady himself.

Soon.

It’s all he can promise himself and his brother’s memory. Soon he’ll get his revenge and then - well, he doesn’t know. The future used to be a wildly exciting prospect before him. It was never money or fame that thrilled him, but simply the feeling of being a part of something. Together with his brother they built a community and the world was at their feet. Now he feels unmoored, a boat that got pulled by the tide and can’t find its port again.

He’s always been soft, even in his darkness. Violence and aggression were saved for the gym or for Fortnite, not for the outside world. But now a monster has awoken in him and he can only sate it with the blood of the people who took his blood, his family, from the world. Should he get a gun? Finish this the way they started it? Or should he attack them online, eviscerate their lives with code and strokes of his mouse?

When he blinks his eyes are sluggish, and finally he moves, stepping forward into the spray of water. With a groan he leans against the black and white tile and savors the feeling of hot water caressing his shoulders and back. Jungkook runs strong fingers along his neck and massages the kinks out. He rubs sleep and exhaustion from his eyes and reluctantly washes his hair and body. Much that he wants to, he does not sink to the floor of the shower and condense into a ball.

He hates to wait, but he needs food and fresh air and a chance to think. And more importantly, he needs coffee.

The world outside his apartment assaults him with noise and movement and he curls his hands into fists in the pockets of his leather jacket while he walks. Drinking a deep breath the air cools his lungs. He knows the way to the diner in his sleep. It’s yellow and teal neon sign draws him in like a North Star. The familiar tinkling of the welcome bell alerts the waitress to his presence.

“Oh, it’s you Jungkook! I haven’t seen you in ages. I’ll be with you in just a minute, sweetheart.” She tells him with a wave and a wink. “Have a seat.”

He gives Pearl his usual tight-lipped awkward smile, even as he breathes a sigh of relief at her warm presence. Her dyed red hair and bold red lips are still going strong in her sixties, even at the early hour. She takes a couple’s order at a far table, her boisterous voice holding him the way a mother might.

Jungkook takes his favorite booth - the two-seater in the corner with the view of the river. He wraps his arms tight around his chest and sits straight in the seat, feeling rigid and off putting in the warm, cozy space. But slowly the smell of bacon and coffee and the cushion at the back of the chair pull him in. Sagging, he releases his hands to grip the empty mug between his palms.

He starts to compose a plan. Something he can do today, quickly before they escape. But then Pearl comes over and fills his cup with coffee. She slips a piece of paper onto the edge of the table, face down, like normal. Jungkook stutters and reaches for it as she bustles away towards the kitchen.

“Pearl, wait-” he chokes on the word, throat scratchy. How long has it been since he last spoke out loud? She turns and cocks a hip onto the side of the waitress stand, waiting for him to continue. “I haven’t ordered yet.” His voice is small and unsure. He notices the items listed and total at the bottom and his brow furrows. “And there’s a zero dollar total.”

She smirks and looks at him through her lashes with trademark sass. “Sweetie, you’ve ordered the same thing for years. I know you. And I also know about your brother. I saw it in the papers.” Her expression turns sad, eyes widening. “A robbery in our neighborhood? I can’t imagine. It’s so awful.” She shakes her head in disbelief. “I refuse to let you pay today.”

A smile tugs at him. “And the next time?”

The waitress snorts and waves a hand, giving him a lopsided smile that manages to be both comforting and cheeky. “Next time you owe me, darlin’.” She disappears around the corner and Jungkook laughs.

He tucks the slip into his pocket; a reminder that someone sees him. Cares about him. Remembers him. His phone weighs heavily in his jacket pocket. The notification tone is off now - not just because Pearl hates cell phones but because he’s not quite ready yet - though he knows there’s dozens of messages still waiting for him. Lifelines he could grab onto if he wanted.

The coffee warms his hands and he allows himself to look up. Through the windows he watches the river, winding its way through the center of the town and reflecting the sunlight. Movement to his right catches his eye, finding something else the sun loves two tables away - you.

Abruptly he thinks back to watching The Wizard of Oz with his family as a child. How Dorothy emerged from a grey world into full color and how it took his breath away. You rest your chin on your hand and yawn. Books are spread around you on the table. Piles of notes and stacks of plates that let him know you also haven’t slept in a while. He feels something stir inside him, long dormant. Curiosity, blooming in his veins like spring buds after a long winter of snow and frost.

He watches the fall of your hair across your forehead as you shake your head slightly, trying to stay awake. He imagines running his hand through it, feeling the soft strands. The world is hazy after so many days of insufficient sleep and you look like a dream to him. A slight flush has come to your cheeks and he wonders if it’s from the old heating unit mounted to the ceiling that’s been stuck at full blast ever since he’s come here. Or from the fleece-lined denim jacket and blue fingerless gloves you wear. Still, after what looks like hours in the warm diner.

He wonders if your studies consume your mind the way hacking has come to dominate his. From this angle he can’t see the subject or content of any of the books, but he can see your handwriting. Both precise and delicate, it fills the pages in neat lines. The world tilts as he leans up, calves and thighs flexing to get a better view, and he imagines tipping over the edge of a pool and falling into you. Like a parched man looks for water he feels drawn to you with an intensity he doesn’t understand.

He’s already been inside the diner for a few minutes, but he knows there’s still time. You haven’t looked up. You haven’t noticed him yet. He could stand now, and go. Taking his broken, jagged spirit and shattered heart and leave you in peace. Maybe today seeing Pearl is enough and maybe her voice will carry him through what he must do. He fumbles for his wallet to leave her a few dollars in tip before she can come back with his food.

But then you look up, drawn by the noise of his wallet chain scraping the wood chair. Your eyes lit by the morning sun hold nothing but innocence and kindness and he knows he can’t leave now. For a moment he imagines he could wipe his slate clean and be someone pure and good once more. Or maybe if he can’t be un-tainted by the stain of violence and death on his life, perhaps holding someone like you and kissing hope is more than enough.

He’s staring and he knows it, and so do you. With a subtle tilt of your head against your hand you smile sleepily at him. He knows you’re similar to him without ever talking to you. He knows you stay up too late and that your nights are consumed by the hunger within you. In a normal conversation he’d ask your name or perhaps buy you some coffee. But his world has been sharpened to a knife’s edge and he doesn’t have flirtation or standard social customs at his disposal. Instead, he skips the formality.

“What are you studying?”

With a smirk you reach for the book closest to you, holding it up so he can see the cover. Elementary Calculus. “I’m battling it out with some derivatives.” You sigh and rest the book back on the tabletop, holding his gaze.

“Are you a math major?”

“No, computer science.” You watch him, eyes trailing over his tattooed knuckles that hold the cup. It might be the heat of the coffee or the rays of light but he imagines it’s your touch across his skin instead. “But I have to take the last of my damn math credits to graduate. Just calculus between me and my dreams.”

He could offer to help, but in truth he was terrible at math in school. Jungkook found his way into hacking through a back door, not any formal study. “Computer science, huh? What are you hoping to do for work?”

You narrow your eyes at him, lips fighting a smile, as though you’re debating whether to trust him. To let him in. He’s nervous for the first time in ages. Pulse racing and stomach jittery with some bright feeling he can’t properly name.

After a long moment you slide out of the booth and stand. Not to leave but to close the distance and pull out the chair opposite him. You lean in towards him and he smells a hint of the scent you wear or maybe it’s your shampoo. “I have no idea what I want to do yet. Something good, hopefully.”

In a wave of lovable sass Pearl brings over his breakfast, forcing the two of you to move back. He hadn’t noticed how much he’d leaned in towards you as well. “My two favorite night owls finally meet,” Pearl says with a click of her tongue. “It’s gonna be a good day, honeys.” She walks off with a hum and the trademark bounce in her step.

You blush and look down at your hands, rubbing your thumb over the palm of your free hand. His mind is always full of questions, insatiable in his hunt for knowledge and creation. Today he wants to know everything about you. Where you go to school and how you got interested in computers. What your favorite movies are and if you’re from this city or if you moved here and what you might taste like if he’s lucky enough to kiss you, some day.

It’s easier to ask than to share, he’s found. A socially acceptable smoke screen to hide behind that conceals his nervousness when talking about himself. Without his boisterous brother beside him he feels both more mature, standing on his own, and younger. More vulnerable. To do this, to do life, alone now.

“What about you?” Your words break through his distracted mind with the soft lilt of your question.

“Oh, I’m not in school any more.”

You nod and reach back for your abandoned coffee on your table. The movement makes your jacket and your shirt ride up slightly and he sees a sliver of exposed skin along your side. Forget how long it’s been since he spoke, how long has it been since he touched someone, he wonders. Or was touched? He would normally keep desire locked inside but here in the daylight after what feels like an endless night he can’t remember how to behave properly anymore. All he wants to do is touch you, and to hear your sweet voice leading him to a kinder, more gentler world he’d forgotten existed.

“Figured it was a fifty-fifty shot since we look about the same age,” you answer, now returned to starting at him while you blow on your coffee. “So what do you do, then? I can’t imagine not having my head full of school and homework right now. Please tell me about the outside world.” You sigh dramatically.

It feels almost forbidden to speak the words aloud. To tell you about the world he and his friends live in that’s made of wires and binary in two dimensions. But it’s the truth, and he’s tired of keeping it to himself. “I work with computers too, I suppose. I do mostly programming and some… other things online.”

You raise a brow at him. “Like porn?” Jungkook’s mouth drops open, his fork paused midair and a laugh caught in his throat. Quickly you wave a hand in the air, unable to contain your own laugh. “Sorry, that’s a terrible joke. I just -” you groan and run the hand over your face. “My mother always says I choose the worst possible times to be inappropriate. But you’re cute and I’m sleepy and couldn’t help it.”

After a beat you drop your hand back to the table and look up at him. His chest is warm and other parts of him are coming to life that he hasn’t thought about in ages. Like Rip Van Winkle he feels as though he’s been asleep for years and didn’t know it. He does his best to contain his expression but if your playful smile is any indication then he knows the way he’s feeling is broadcast all over his face.

He sees you as a lifeline. A portal, like from one of his favorite video games, leading him somewhere better. There will be time later to figure out if the connection is real and not just him taking the first hand extended to him. Once you’ve both had a night’s sleep and see things more clearly. But right now he says the only thing that makes sense. The only question he can manage.

“Would you like to go out with me?” He knows he should be smoother or have whatever ‘game’ is, that his brother always talked about having. But this is what he has and he hopes it’s enough.

You look him up and down as he chews a bite of bacon. To a less caring eye someone might dismiss him because of the dark circles and the tattoos and the haunted look he sees in his face these days. But maybe you see everything he likes and everything he hates about himself from a far more charitable point of view. Maybe you’ll be nicer to him than he’s allowed himself to be lately.

“That would be great,” you answer softly, sipping your coffee. “How’s now for you?”

He blinks. “Now?”

“Well, after you finish your breakfast I mean.” Turning, you casually wave at Pearl and she lifts a finger to say she’ll be there in a moment. “I should get some pancakes myself, first.” With a shake of your head you gesture to the books. “I think I’ve earned some after an all-nighter with the devil, aka calculus.”

Jungkook nods, biting his lip to keep from grinning. “Sounds good to me.”

Pearl eventually brings you pancakes, blueberry with the fancy whipped cream she likes to keep in stock. She brings him another serving of food as well and waves him off when he tries to pay. As his belly grows fuller and the two of you talk about your favorite old school computer games he realizes it’s been over an hour since he thought of his brother. While you gather your books into your backpack he pauses, wondering if that’s a good thing.

Then you lift your hand to scratch an itch and that’s when he sees the tattoo. The gentle black outline on your neck, behind your ear; the white and pink ink. Faded a bit, not fresh. The small animal with big ears is a thunderbolt and he stops, then smiles. He holds open the door for you and tilts his head back up to the bright, cloudless sky and does something he hasn’t done fully in almost three weeks - he laughs.

Later today Jungkook will share what he knows. With his friends he trusts. Perhaps with you as well, in time. But for now he has walk to take with you along a river, and it’s shaping up to be a gorgeous day.

Follow the white rabbit, little brother. And finally, at last, he listens.

#jungkook fanfic #jungkook au #bts fanfic #bts au #bts jungkook #meant to have a Namjoon fic ready to post today but life got in the way a bit so I'm going to post this a bit early instead!

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portalford · 3 years

Text

I Can Picture You So Easily

AO3

It hits Stan at the stupidest times.

Well. That makes it sounds like Stan just forgets, when really it never quite goes away — sometimes it’s just more.

Like now.

He’s looking in the mirror — he found it tucked way, way back in a closet (and he’s gonna skip right over that because when he got here the mirror in the bathroom was broken, cracked until you couldn’t see a thing and why was Ford—nope) — and he’s trying out a new look for Mr. Mystery.

Gotta keep it fresh, right? Accessorize?

Glasses aren’t accessories, unfortunately. He can’t go without them anymore.

(Really, he needed them years ago, but he was too stubborn to admit it, or too broke, or whatever, but he’s literally tripping over his own feet now. Needs must).

Ford wouldn’t be caught dead in this getup. No sense of fashion. So that’s fine.

The glasses—

(Ford started wearing glasses when he was six. Stan had laughed himself silly when they went to the drugstore and tried on the biggest, most obnoxious frames they could find. Ma had scolded, but she’d been too distracted checking price tags to do more than scold.

In the end, they went with some cheap horn-rimmed frames that Stan wouldn’t be caught dead in even now. Old-man glasses, at six. But that was Ford all over).

—they bring some stuff up. The twin thing sucks, sometimes.

(Looking in a mirror and seeing the changes, the lines in his face, the grey in his hair — does Ford have crow’s feet now? Is his hair going silver? It was always unmanageable — is it thinning like Stan’s is now, or is it still thick and flyaway, like it was when Ford was sixteen? Did he even live long enough to get lines in his face and aches in his joints, or is he forever twenty-eight, dead somewhere in the universe?)

Time to stop thinking.

Notice the differences.

Stan’s ears and nose are bigger than Ford’s, always have been. He’s heavier and his shoulders are broader.

(Has Ford gotten bulkier, fighting to survive? Or is still he halfway to gaunt, like the last time Stan saw him?)

Definitely time to stop thinking.

Stan flashes a smile, and yeah, that’s all him. Cheerful, magnetic, and a hundred percent fake.

Time to work the crowds.

*****

There’s an ad for the nice ink pens Ford saved up to buy when he was fourteen.

Stan turns it off.

*****

Mabel finds a picture, once.

“Grunkle Stan!” Her eyes are all lit up as she shows him the torn photograph. “I found this under a floorboard in the attic!”

If Stan ever had any doubts about his poker face, he can lay them to rest now. It’s all on the ropes and his expression is perfectly level, maybe even a little curious.

Mabel is still talking. “I didn’t know there were pictures of you before you were all old! Do you have any others?”

Oh.

Stan still forgets sometimes, even after everything, that most people can’t tell him and Ford apart.

He knows better.

The young man in the photograph is unmistakably Ford, taken while he was living in Gravity Falls. He’s got his head bent over that journal of his, but the photographer managed to catch the eager light in his eye, the edge of his smile.

Stan wonders who that photographer was, all those years ago.

A tug at his shirt reminds him he’s not alone, and he definitely can’t get messed up about this picture of his secret twin brother.

Mabel’s face has fallen a bit. “Grunkle Stan? Are you okay?”

Stan gives himself two more seconds to look at the picture — Ford just looks so happy; Stan can’t even remember the last time Ford looked like that, even before it all fell apart — and turns to Mabel.

“Yeah,” he says. He smiles and ruffles her hair. “Pretty good picture, huh?”

*****

The name is the worst.

Stan never thought identity theft could involve so little fun.

Usually he can get away with just “Stan Pines,” and that’s fine. That’s his name. That’s who he’s supposed to be.

Sometimes, though, that’s not enough for whoever’s asking.

“What did you say your name was again?”

He smiles. Lays it on thick. “Stanford Pines.”

“Could you sign here?”

He does. His blocky, uneven handwriting looks even worse than usual where he’s expecting to see neat, flowing script, the way Stanford Pines is supposed to be written.

“This is Stanford Pines,” someone will say. “Mr. Mystery.”

Stan smiles some more. Yes, Stanford Pines is certainly that.

Gideon is the worst. Stanford this and Stanford that and Stan’s never wanted to punch a child so much in his life.

“Stanford Pines!”

He smiles, and he lies.

*****

Dipper halfway drives him nuts sometimes.

It’s not like the kid’s a mini-Ford — he reminds Stan enough of himself, sometimes, though Stan’s not sure that’s great either — but he’s got the brains and the stubbornness and the love of weird nonsense, for sure.

He’s also got that obsessive edge, the drive that sent Ford right off the metaphorical cliff.

Usually Mabel tags along on the weirdness hunts — they make a day of it. They go out, just the two of them, and come back laughing and joking and shoving at each other.

That’s enough of a painful reminder, but sometimes Stan will catch Mabel sitting by herself, coloring or crafting with a little less energy than usual, and he’ll realize that Dipper’s buried himself in monster theory again.

He tries to keep the kid busy with chores and hustle, but it’s a losing battle.

It was the first time, too.

*****

There’s this old song that Ford used to love when they were younger.

It’s got no words, and Stan used to make fun of it — what's the point of a song with no words? But Ford insisted it had Meaning, capital M.

It comes on the radio now and then.

Depending on how masochistic Stan is feeling that day, he might let it play.

He still wonders what Ford heard in this song, and if Ford would hear it now.

*****

He realizes, one day near the end, that he’s been Stanford longer than he’s been Stanley.

What’s the point, really? What does a name matter if it’s so easy for someone else to take your place?

(Did Ford matter so little, in the grand scheme of things, that not one person could recognize him in a place he lived for six years?

Does Stan, in a place he’s lived for almost thirty?)

If he could just stop catching Ford in his reflection now and then, that’d be great.

*****

It’s not any better once Ford gets back (once Stan brings Ford back, the ungrateful bastard).

“Stanford!”

Stan’s got a smile on his face before he even turns around, and what’s wrong with him that he’s halfway made this lie into a Pavlovian response? Someone calls him Stanford, he smiles and lies.

(Stanford — the real Stanford — is in the basement right now. He doesn’t even exist, as far as anyone else is concerned. Stan is Stanford, Stanley is dead, and Ford is a nonentity.

What a life this is).

*****

“So how was it?”

Stan grunts. “How was what?”

Ford rolls his neck, wincing a little as he works out the unavoidable crick from hunching over a drawing for twenty minutes. “Being me.”

Stan shrugs. “Wasn’t hard. We’re basically the same person, y’know.”

Ford snorts. A long time (a lifetime) ago that comment might have gotten him worked up, but he’s steadier now, softer around the edges. “Very funny. I saw your lease renewal. You didn’t even change your handwriting, for heaven’s sake.”

“Ford, I rolled up to town, said I was you, and started a tourist trap. You had a total personality transplant and nobody noticed.” Stan grimaces. That sounded really bad.

Ford’s expression has gone rueful and a little sad at the edges, but he doesn’t seem like he’s about launch into full-blown self-recrimination, so that’s fine. “Yes, well. That’s what happens when you isolate yourself for six years and your only friend erases his mind to cope with the mistakes you made.”

And that’s Ford trying to shoulder all the blame again, but Stan keeps his mouth shut. They’re both too comfortable to argue right now. “Being honest — for once — it kinda sucked.” Ford’s looking at him, open and encouraging, so Stan keeps going. “Everyone thought I was you, and it—I wasn’t. I didn’t want to be.” Stan shrugs. “I wanted you you.”

Ford smiles, and it’s a little more worn than Stan remembers, but it’s real, and it’s him. “I understand. I met a few parallel versions of you on my travels, and they were you, but — they weren’t really you.” Ford closes his journal (his new one) and sets it aside, tipping his head back over his chair. More playfully, he adds, “I wouldn’t want to be you either, Stanley.”

Stan laughs. “Yeah? Couldn’t handle the salesmanship?”

“Have more self-respect than to wear any part of your wardrobe.”

“Says the man who wears sweaters in the summer.”

Ford lifts his head and smiles, and this time it’s almost exactly how Stan remembers — quick and a little crooked. “Fair enough.” Ford stretches, rolls his neck again. “For what it’s worth, Stanley, I am glad to be back.” A wry look. “Even if it’s going to take ages to sort out the criminal record you gave me.”

Stan slouches deeper into the couch. Any further and he’s going to slide off, but that’s a risk he’ll take. “Yeah, yeah. Talk to me when you’re legally dead.”

“You did that.”

“And?”

“I legally don’t exist.”

“I was trying to learn theoretical physics at the time, Stanford; cut a man some slack.”

Ford laughs, quiet. “Did I ever thank you for that?”

Stan cracks an eye open. He didn’t realize he closed them. “What, learnin’ physics? Because I’m pretty sure that’s some of the stuff that’s not coming back.”

Ford rolls his eyes. “For saving me.”

“Hm.” Ford’s thanked him several times, but lately it’s been less Ford kicking himself and more Ford cautiously trying to engage in the old back-and-forth they used to have, and Stan can get behind that one. “I dunno. Might have to say it again.”

“You’re burning through my gratitude very quickly,” Ford says mildly, “but all right. Thank you for saving me. You knucklehead.”

Stan never got called that when he was Ford. He thinks he’s missed it, at least the way Ford says it — like it means something completely different.

“Uh-huh.” Stan’s eyes are closed again. He figures he’ll just leave them closed. “Missed you too, nerd.”

And maybe there’s something to be said for being your own person.

It feels pretty good.

#gravity falls #gravity falls fanfiction #stanley pines #stanford pines #back on the angst with a happy ending train #feat. a side of introspection and melodrama!#i love it here

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poisonedapples · 4 years

Text

Domestic Life (Was Never Quite My Style)

Summary: Even with a baby Patton who refuses to go to sleep, Roman finds himself having the loveliest night with his family.

Warnings: The song “Dear Theodosia” and one “blink and you’ll miss it” mention of parental abandonment. It’s mostly adorable fluff

Pairings: Romantic Logince, parental Royality and Logicality

Word Count: 2,522

Taglist: @noodles-07 @didyouseerichohisawrich @look-ma-im-on-tv @somehow-i-got-an-account @depressed-stressed-virgil @queen-of-all-things-snuggly @ohlookanotherdumbfanboy @jamie-writes-things @adoratato @boopypasta @omgsomeonesomewhereonearth @beyondthestacks @changeling-ash @hold-our-destiny

Notes: Happy anniversary to the best boyfriend in all the land, @romansleftshoulderpad, who has been there through everything good, weird and awful. You’re amazing, and even though my Writing Machine broke and had me change my present idea four times, hopefully you’ll appreciate some fluff nonetheless.

(Also shoutout as always to my friend Cornybird on Ao3 for editing my stuff I owe you like five squishmallows)

Roman and Logan were always the couple that no one could have possibly guessed. Roman was wild and untamed; always aiming for the best of the best, striving to conquer the impossible and prove everyone who doubted him wrong.

There always seemed to be so little time for him. He wanted to write, sing, dance, act, create, and he refused to let trivial things get in the way of that. Even as a hopeless romantic who dreamed of marriage, it seemed like his running on pure adrenaline made it impossible for him to make friends, let alone a husband.

Logan wasn’t much better. He wasn’t very invested in the arts and had (arguably) more achievable goals, but he still couldn’t stand to not be the top of his class. He wanted to be idolized. He wanted a kid who felt as helpless as he once did to look at him and get hope for the future. He wanted respect, and he was determined to gain it.

But that led to him overworking himself. Logan had a habit of working late into the night to put efficiency over self care, to drop everything that could get in his way and absorb himself in his own goals. Yet just like Roman, self isolation led to loneliness, and his personal expectations made him deem himself unworthy of a partner and family, no matter how untrue that was.

On the outside, they looked like people who were too busy and in their heads to enjoy the little things. Logan passed up warm showers and movie nights to get his ideas out on paper, and Roman passed up coffee shops and strolls through the park to create bigger and better things. But for the longest time, on the inside they were lonely. And only one person could see that enough to break through.

No one expected them to get to this point. The point where they’d been happily together for four years, Logan’s engagement ring carefully placed in the same box that Roman had given it to him in on the bedside table. But it was real anyway, and Logan was fast asleep, while Roman’s brain was thinking about too many fantasy worlds for him to calm down enough to doze off. Instead, he ran his fingers through his fiancé’s hair and watched him sleep peacefully on his chest.

Roman could have spent his entire life in that position. Just him and Logan, his adorable love looking peaceful and happy as Roman protected him from the world. If he wouldn’t be risking waking him up, Roman would also be peppering kisses all over his face, but he took a mental note to do that in the morning instead. They were going on a date tomorrow after all, and those always ended in lots of kisses and cheesy flirts Logan would roll his eyes at. But Roman thought his faux annoyance was adorable, so he used pickup lines at least three times a week.

But that was tomorrow, and tonight was tonight. And nights were a child’s favorite time to break the peace.

Roman could hear babbling from the room across from them, as well as from the baby monitor next to the bed. Patton was already squealing “dada” a little bit, and Roman knew from experience that he was getting ready to cry for them. It broke his heart every time Patton cried, so he gently pushed Logan to the bed and kissed his hair. He didn’t squirm, so Roman shimmied off the bed and smiled at Logan one last time as the baby talk got a little louder. He knew the drill by now, so Roman grabbed his guitar before he left and went to Patton’s bedroom. Music was the fastest way to get the little guy back to sleep.

Roman opened the colorful door to his son’s nursery. Only a pale blue nightlight gave light to the room, revealing a crib with a babbling baby holding onto the rails. Patton still couldn’t walk, but he was getting pretty good at standing in place, so the day would come at any time now.

Roman gave his baby a tired smile. “Hello, sunshine. What are you doing awake? Princes need their beauty sleep!”

“Dada, dada, dada!” Patton babbled, jumping as much as his tiny legs could using the spring of the crib’s mattress. Roman didn’t bother going to the crib and picking him up, though. He learned a long time ago that a rocking chair doesn’t make Patton tired anymore; he only squeals with excitement like it’s a baby rollercoaster. Roman experimented one night and played Wonderwall on his guitar as a joke when Patton refused to calm down, but it was the fastest the little guy had ever been lulled to sleep. Since then, Roman immediately picks up his guitar and lets Patton relax to that instead.

“What’s the request tonight, little buddy?” Roman asked as he sat in the rocking chair and strummed some of the strings. “Frère Jacques? Hey Soul Sister? Or do you want a song Dada really likes?”

“Dada!” Patton squealed.

“A Dada song? Excellent choice!” Roman leaned back in the chair and thought about what he may want to play. Logically he knew Patton only said dada because it was the only word he knew, but Roman liked to pretend his baby was the smartest boy in the entire world, even if his farts still scared him and he slapped his hands on every new surface he found. If he grew up to be anything like Logan, then Roman knew that he would have a bright future. “Now...what would I maybe want to play…”

Patton let go of the railing and let himself fall on his butt back to the mattress. He crawled over to his favorite stuffed frog and held onto the fur tightly, which Roman thought was objectively the cutest thing in this world. Though then again, everything Patton did was adorable. He was at the perfect age to steal the heart of everyone, and call Roman a lovestruck dad all you wanted, but his baby just blew his breath away.

“Hey, little froggy, how about we bring back an old favorite? Especially since me and Papa have been watching the Hamilfilm a whole lot!” Patton giggled in response, so Roman nodded his head. “Alright then, let’s see here…”

Roman placed his fingers on the neck of the guitar and strummed the first cord, testing out the tune. When he was satisfied, Roman strummed out the beginning notes of the song, and already Patton began to seem mesmerized by it.

“Dear Theodosia what to say to you? You have my eyes, you have your mother’s name. When you came into the world you cried and it broke my heart…” Patton shoved one of the eyes of his stuffed frog into his mouth, listening intently. When Patton was first born, all Roman did was sing this song to him. It seemed to fit so well given their situation. Logan always went on about how Patton had Roman’s eyes, even though Roman expected Logan to mention that it was obvious Patton would have some of his traits. He was half Roman after all, and Logan was hardly one for sentimentals anyway. But then again, becoming a dad had made him a lot softer than Roman could ever imagine.

“I’m dedicating every day to you, domestic life was never quite my style, when you smile…” Roman looked over at his baby. He had a little smile on his face, but Roman also guessed that was just the permanent position Patton’s face was in. He seemed like a happy baby almost all the time, give or take a few sick days and the time Patton saw a spider for the first time. “...You knock me out, I fall apart, and I thought I was so smart.”

Roman didn’t know if he was smart or not. His fiancé said that intelligence is more than book smarts and street smarts, and Roman had his strengths just like he had his flaws. But insecurity was a wild thing, and though Roman put on his best facade of greatness, he was only human, and humans have a strange perspective on self worth. Though no matter how intelligent he was, Roman had long accepted that Patton could break down any tough walls he or Logan put up. After all, it had been quite the sight to see Logan sob from happiness at holding his baby for the first time.

“You will come of age with our young nation...we’ll bleed and fight for you. We’ll make it right for you. If we lay a strong enough foundation...we’ll pass it onto you. We’ll give the world to you and you’ll blow us all away. Someday, someday…”

Roman strummed out the notes in between lyrics for longer than he had to, but it was okay when his audience was a baby who didn’t actually know the song. “Ready for one more part, buddy?” Patton didn’t respond (obviously), he only looked up at Roman with big eyes. “Good! I know it’s your favorite part.”

“I have to admit that it is mine as well.”

Roman’s strumming stopped in its tracks when he heard the familiar voice. He looked across the room to the door where his adorable fiancé stood, his hair messy and Roman’s stolen pajama shirt making him look considerably tinier. If Roman wasn’t so tired, he’d scoop Logan up and swing him around the room for being so adorable. “What are you doing awake, love?”

“I can hear you singing from the baby monitor that’s a few feet away from my face.” Roman’s cheeks flushed red, but Logan didn’t care. He walked over to Roman at the rocking chair and wrapped his arms around his shoulders, giving a kiss to the top of Roman’s head. “Did a certain little froggy decide to have a party past his bedtime?”

“He woke up, yeah. I’m trying to put him back to sleep.”

“Did you check his diaper?”

Roman blinked. “...I did not.”

Logan sighed, but he shook his head fondly at his forgetful fiancé. Roman always went to the more complicated solutions before thinking about the basics, but at least he was trying. If Patton had started to cry, Roman would have eventually realized to check those things anyway.

Logan picked up Patton from his crib and took a sniff of his diaper. He smelled clean, which was good, but putting a baby to sleep who simply didn’t want to rest was harder than having something specific to fix. Logan kept Patton in his arms as Roman strummed on his guitar again with a smile.

“I still have to finish my song, Logan. Care to join the late night party with us?”

Logan smiled. “It’s Alexander’s part, correct?”

“Don’t act like you don’t already know. You love this musical as much as I do.”

“Fair point. How about you sing to us, then?”

“Could you do me the honor of singing alongside me?” Roman asked.

Logan felt his face heat up. “...We’ll see.”

Roman didn’t push it anymore. He knew Logan didn’t like his singing voice, even if it was objectively the best thing Roman could ever possibly hear. But when Logan got some time to ease into the idea, he would eventually slide into it.

Roman started strumming again, and the song picked up once more. It was just that with Logan around, the energy of the room felt all the more alive. “Oh, Phillip you outshine the morning sun. My son. Look at my son!”

Patton smacked both his hands on Logan’s shoulder. Logan couldn’t help but laugh.

“Pride is not the word I’m looking for. There is so much more inside me now…”

Logan began to sing, and Roman almost stopped in his tracks with awe. “Oh, Phillip, you outshine the morning sun. My son.”

Patton looked up at his dad with the most adorable baby smile. At the sound of both his parents and his favorite guitar, Patton began kicking and bouncing in Logan’s arms. The song was meant to calm him down enough to sleep, but instead the little guy decided it was the perfect time of day of a dance party. The worst part was that neither Roman or Logan had the heart to argue with him.

Instead, they both began to sing together as Patton bounced and smacked his hands. “When you smile, I fall apart. And I thought I was so smart.”

The music changed a little bit, and Roman and Logan both knew what came next. It was a part that hit them both close to home, but they’d practiced that section way too many times to not be prepared. Roman took the part of Alexander first. “My father wasn’t around…”

Logan held a dancing Patton tighter. “My father wasn’t around.”

“I swear that I’ll be around for you. I’ll do whatever it takes…”

“I’ll make a million mistakes…”

Roman stood up from the rocking chair and strummed louder as he stood beside Logan. Both him and their son smiled as the two came back together for the song. “I’ll make the world safe and sound for you...will come of age with our young nation.”

Roman laid his head on Logan’s shoulder and Patton was merciful enough to stop slapping and put all his energy into bouncing up and down instead of smacking Roman in the face. “We’ll bleed and fight for you, we’ll make it right for you. If we lay a strong enough foundation...we’ll pass it onto you. We’ll give the world to you, and you’ll blow us all away. Someday, someday...yeah, you’ll blow us all away. Someday, someday…”

The two parents held the last note as Roman strummed out the ending of the song. When Roman finished with that final strum, Patton still danced until the note had become too quiet to hear. Once he stopped his bouncing, Roman set his guitar down on the floor long enough to grab Patton’s hands and make him clap. “Yay, bravo, bravo! A wonderful musician and his beautiful dancer!”

Patton squealed nonsense in response as Logan moved to steal Roman’s place at the rocking chair, being careful not to rock it in case it only riled Patton up even more. “I don’t think he’s been calmed down by your song, Roman.”

“Well…” Roman grabbed his guitar again and sat on the floor in front of the rocking chair. “That just means we have to let him dance out the energy, right? Then tomorrow, we’re absolutely recording him dancing to this. I would do it now if I wasn’t tired.”

Logan chuckled. “I will try to remind you.”

“But until then…” Roman placed his fingers back on the strings and strummed the first note. “Care for another round, my love?”

The smile Logan gave off mixed with the happiness of their baby was an image Roman swore to cherish forever. “Of course, my prince.”

When Roman began to strum, their precious baby boy started to dance once more.

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bambolae · 3 years

Text

HEADCANONS — CHAPTER I. the dolls of house beneviento.

so, everybody’s view on donna in relation to angie is very, very different. there’s a lot of interesting takes that i’ve read and discussed with friends and since the game does keep it fairly vague, i think that it’s important to establish how i view the dolls of house beneviento.

let me begin with the doll we all know and love, angie. here’s the history behind her.

angie was given to donna in her youth by her father who was a doll maker. donna has struggled with her mental health ever since she was young and she was likely selectively mute as a result. she took a very intimate liking to the doll she named angie and created a sort of persona as the doll to speak to people through her. later, after donna was adopted by mother miranda and implanted with a cadou parasite, she had part of the parasite planted within angie’s head and she is able to control angie through it to this day.

there’s a lot of questions surrounding angie’s level of sentience and how connected she really is to donna. the way that i’m portraying it is that i believe angie, alongside all of the other dolls, are extensions of donna herself. they do not have their own sentience. she has a set of dolls (angie being her main one) that represent her as a person. i’m making this clear because this is not to say that she has multiple personalities despite the dolls acting very different from one another. the dolls represent the parts of herself that she could never show from a young age and that never developed in a way that she could healthily display her emotions and thoughts without using them as a buffer. to know her dolls is to know donna.

side note: while angie is completely controlled by donna and does not have sentience, there’s still moments where angie will blurt something out that donna reacts to in an embarrassed manner. this is the equivalent of you blurting something out without realizing it LOL especially if youre somebody who doesn’t have a filter. donna doesnt have much of a filter, shes got a funnel that goes straight through whatever doll shes controlling. in VEEERY rare cases where she’s comfortable enough to talk, donna does blurt out things you’d generally hear angie say and the disconnect is kinda hilarious.

donna grew up in a very strict religious setting as one of miranda’s few “successful” experiments and subsequently one of the future ladies of the village. she was on a tight leash and it’s clear in the way she’s spoken about by miranda and the others that her mental illness was not treated well. any signs of it made her appear immature and childish, nobody took her seriously due to how she never felt comfortable speaking, and the expectations of essentially being a new prophet figure in the cult made it so that she had no childhood at all and no time to explore herself or her emotions. every semblance of emotion was treated like a problem and donna quickly learned that she could only express herself through angie without getting in trouble.

what was originally a soft blanket that comforted her and helped her with her anxiety was now a crutch. it was the only way she could speak without the fear of being shunned. angie became the truest version of herself - she is the life that donna is too scared to embrace. she is forever in mourning for her parents, her failures, herself. angie celebrates life, finds humor in things that nobody else does, says and does the things that donna would never say. everything she has repressed inside generally comes out through her.

now, some smaller details for the dolls. each and every doll in the beneviento household that has a part of donna’s cadou implanted into it was created by donna. the dolls will have the beneviento crest on them usually in the form of small buttons, embroidery, accessories, etc. she likely commissions any metal pieces from karl, but generally does it in bulk unless its a special project since they’re usually buttons, pins, brooches, and the like that are used consistently throughout her own clothing and the doll’s. many of her dolls rotate through an ever increasing wardrobe of clothes she creates for them.

her favorite dolls are regularly maintained and cleaned. angie herself is… nowhere near as grimey and nasty as she is in the game. as much as i love the creepy vibe, it makes no sense for a woman who loves a doll this dearly and clearly creates a PLETHORA of dolls herself. she is still cracked and stained from her youth before she learned the arts herself, but donna regularly cleans her and changes her into various white dresses. her hair has been rerooted as well because it… is not that hard to fix that either c’mon. it’s a curly blonde updo. she’s still a creepy little beast but she’s at least maintained.

donna can control any of her dolls and can control multiple at the same time, but the more she controls at once the simpler their actions will be. for example; if she’s fully focused on controlling angie, then the other dolls are likely idly walking around or turning their heads but they won’t do much else. she can focus on controlling one doll fully & switch between two others simultaneously before it becomes too much for her to handle. any doll with a cadou fragment implanted into them is a part of donna and will idly do things without her even thinking about it.

if you touch one of the said dolls, she’ll be able to feel it. hearing & sight are limited to the doll she has her focused on and she can’t really taste or smell through any of them which makes touch the only sense she can always feel through any doll. she has a similar connection to the mold - infested plant life in her territory where she can feel what’s going on - this makes sneaking up on her hard unless you can get through without touching one of the many dolls or one of the plants she’s connected to through the mold.

donna has made many, many dolls for the children in the village (without the cadou…. duh….) and it’s known that it was created by lady beneviento. that’s the most the village people interact with her, usually.

so, let’s go over the main four dolls that donna has fully developed “personas” for. i went over angie just a few paragraphs ago but as the “leader” of this quartet she needs to be in this roundup too

ANGELA “ ANGIE “ BENEVIENTO.

donna’s very first doll. represents her in her truest, unfiltered self. the child donna was never allowed to be, says the things she never got to say & does the things she never got to do. the doll she’s usually in control of. quote from earlier paragraph: angie became the truest version of herself - she is the life that donna is too scared to embrace. she is forever in mourning for her parents, her failures, herself. angie celebrates life, finds humor in things that nobody else does, says and does the things that donna would never say. everything she has repressed inside generally comes out through her.

GIANNA “ MRS. CHUCKLES “ BENEVIENTO.

the first doll donna created herself made in the vision of a clown from a book. the most playful of the lot, most likely to approach you to play a game with her or to crack jokes. similar to angie but with much less of a bite to her words. represents her repressed joy & humor.

LADY ELISA BENEVIENTO.

one of donna’s earlier creations made when she was a pre-teen going through one of the worst mental health lows she’s ever been through. she fixated heavily on this one to keep her occupied in her loneliness, very intricately sculpted & painted. made to look like a sad princess. she still considers elisa one of her best quality dolls, big comfort doll for her. represents her sadness, doesn’t get a lot of use unless she’s struggling with her depression more than usual.

GABRIELLA BENEVIENTO.

created in her early twenties and has debatably the best craftsmanship out of the four, only rivaled by elisa. made during a very angry time in her life after mother miranda said something to her that made something inside her snap for the first time. she stewed in her anger, isolated in her home & created a doll to cope with her emotions. she forgave & forgot but gabriella did not. doesn’t have any obvious, distinctive design but is regularly dressed in dark colors and has so many knifes under her skirt. much heavier gothic inspiration than the rest of her dolls. she’s usually the first one to attack an intruder. represents donna’s repressed anger & rage, the fight to her flight. doesn’t get a lot of use unless donna feels like she needs to be protected or you somehow managed to rile her up. extreme fear might bring gabriella out as well if she feels like she needs to attack.

#headcanon.#long post #long post /#dolls #dolls cw

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damoreyunho · 3 years

Text

Vol1 Ch1: Lights

It was a late summer's day, the blue sky above was dotted with white cotton clouds, and Hongjoong sat peacefully on a bench watching the world around him. He watched a flock of pigeons make a fuss over a piece of bread and his eyes followed them as one bird fled with it, the others following, not far behind. He could hear the laughter of families playing with their kids in the open areas of the park. From further away a faint barking sounded from the pet-friendly zone. The air was warm but not hot. A soft little breeze blew past him and some lonely strands of his hair wavered along with it.

It was the last week before summer break ended and everyone were out and about trying to make the best of their remaining free time. The city was bustling with activity as most had already returned home from their vacations. From within the park Hongjoong could barely hear the city noise. Only vaguely if he tried hard enough. On the other hand he could definitely still see it. The city. Beyond the large trees outlining the park rose tall high rise buildings. Some would probably even be considered skyscrapers. The sun's reflection on the glass covered buildings made him squint as he looked up. He closed his eyes for a moment, observing the imprints which the bright light had left in his eyes, before opening them again.

Hongjoong got up, did a little stretch and was about to move on when he noticed something. Or was it actually someone? Crouched beside a flower bed was a young man, probably around the same age as himself. His hair was ash grey with the comma style and an undercut. He was wearing a plain white t-shirt and black jeans. An also black jacket was slung over his left arm.

Hongjoong approached the stranger and stood a little off to one side tilting his head slightly in attempt to see what the other was looking at. He eventually noticed Hongjoong's shadow and stood up. He was quite a bit taller than Hongjoong, but who wasn't taller than him. The eyes of the other were a beautiful smoky grey and it was obvious that his hair color had been chosen to match the eyes. The two of them stared at each other for a moment that felt too long. Hongjoong broke the slightly awkward silence first.

HJ: "Did you find anything of interest?"

???: "Not really."

The taller man glanced down at the flowers uneasily. He seemed slightly flustered by being approached so suddenly.

HJ: "My name is Hongjoong. Do you live nearby? I've not seen you around before."

Hongjoong attempted to spark a conversation between the two of them. The stranger seemed a bit hesitant before replying.

SH: "I am Seonghwa. It is my first time here, though I guess you could say I live nearby."

Seonghwa cracked a small smile. His voice was soft and slightly deep. Even though he spoke quietly, his voice did not tremble at all. It was a voice that undoubtedly held power and probably also a certain level of authority. Hongjoong could not pinpoint which type of person he might be. Could he be a CEO for some company? Maybe he was a big politician? It would definitely be some sort of leadership role though he did not know which.

Quite suddenly it felt like something had changed within Seonghwa. His eyes which had seemed somewhat distant grew warm and welcoming. It was as if they started to focus. Onto Hongjoong to be precise.

SH: "Want to join me for tea?"

Seonghwa spoke warmly and had now turned his body in the direction of a path that would lead them out of the park. Hongjoong nodded and started to walk in the direction which the other had initiated.

──── ⋅ ☾ ⋅ ────

The two of them had found a small cafe in which they were now seated by the window. Seonghwa had tea while Hongjoong had coffee. Hongjoong was slightly worried about the silence between the two of them but he also kind of enjoyed it. There was something comforting about Seonghwa's presence. He just couldn't figure out what.

SH: "Do you go to the park often? You seemed familiar with your surroundings."

Hongjoong adverted his gaze from the street outside to the man opposite of him.

HJ: "I go there when I feel in need for inspiration. I love watching the butterflies during the summer and feeling the warmth of the sun."

SH: "Inspiration?"

Seonghwa's voice was encouraging Hongjoong to continue talking. And he did.

HJ: "I'm an artist in my free time. I like to design my own clothes and accessories."

He stretched out one leg from under the table and tilted his foot to the side. On his shoes were some writing in Hangul, hand-painted onto the sides of them. Seonghwa admired the work for some time before finally looking back at Hongjoong.

SH: "They are really beautiful. You have a unique style."

HJ: "Thank you. I also designed my own phone case!"

Hongjoong could feel the happiness within him. It was so nice to have someone listen and admire something you had put a lot of care and effort into. He held out his phone to Seonghwa who gently accepted the item with his right hand. On the case were two butterflies neatly painted in turquoise. The background was a simple dark blue, nearly black sky with a few white sprinkles for stars.

SH: "Do you like the night?"

Seonghwa's admiration for Hongjoong's work was very apparent. Hongjoong couldn't help but smile proudly.

HJ: "Most butterflies go to sleep during the night. But the stars will always be beautiful. Sadly the light from the city obscures the stars most of the time."

SH: "The butterflies may go to sleep, but this makes way for the moths."

Seonghwa handed the phone back to Hongjoong. He looked as if he was going to add something else. One short thought later he continued.

SH: "I can show you the stars. If you are interested of course."

Hongjoong stared intriguingly at Seonghwa.

HJ: "You can really do that? But we would have to leave for a place outside the city. I don't think there's enough time. I have work tomorrow."

He let out a sigh of dismay. He had seen the stars before, but he did not have a lot of money and he had to work if he wanted to save up money to travel.

SH: "It is not far from here. I do not think it will interfere with any plans you might have."

Seonghwa's voice had perked up at this conversation. His emotions were not easy to read as he did not show many expressions. During the short time Hongjoong had known him, Seonghwa had only shown his resting expression and soft smiles. His composure resembled royalty a lot. At this point Hongjoong was certain that he had met a significant person. Suspicions of him being an actor arose. Of course every muscle in his face was under control if he were an actor.

SH: "Do I have something on my face?"

Hongjoong's mind jerked back into reality. He had been staring mindlessly at Seonghwa while deep in thought.

HJ: "Ah no! I'm sorry. I was thinking about something."

He laughed awkwardly feeling his cheeks heat up. Whilst watching Seonghwa pay for their drinks, he couldn't help but notice how beautiful his hands were. They were not big but they were slender and elegant. One single ring adorned the middle finger of his right hand. Hongjoong got up before Seonghwa and headed for the exit. Seonghwa followed not far behind.

──── ⋅ ☾ ⋅ ────

The sun had set not long ago. The sky was now deep orange to the west, purple above and deep blue to the east. Hongjoong was walking along the park road beside a man he had just met that same day. Why he had agreed to join Seonghwa for a walk in the middle of the night, he did not know. But Seonghwa seemed genuine and Hongjoong disliked limiting himself because of distrust. The two of them stepped off the pavement and onto a path that would lead them into the depths of the park.

HJ: "So... How will you be able to show me the stars? The park is isolated but we're still in the middle of a huge city."

SH: "Just wait."

Hongjoong was unsure if he had heard a smile in Seonghwa's voice or it was just his imagination. He discreetly searched the other's face for any clues of his intentions but did not learn anything. Had it been a bad idea to go through with this? There was still time to turn back if he wanted to. Hongjoong's doubt made the rhythm of his walking irregular for a moment. But the moment was long enough for Seonghwa to notice. He halted and looked at Hongjoong.

SH: "It is alright. We are nearly there."

He smiled and turned his gaze from Hongjoong towards a smaller path that lead off the main path and into an overgrowth of trees and bushes. Hongjoong let Seonghwa take the lead down the path and followed behind. It wasn't long before the trees had blocked out all the city lights.

HJ: "I can't see anything."

Hongjoong walked slowly and took small steps to avoid falling over when he suddenly felt a hand clasp around his left wrist. Upon instinct he tried to pull away. The hand held him firmly but not harshly.

SH: "It is not far. I will lead you."

Hongjoong heard no concern in Seonghwa's voice.

HJ: " How can you see? And how can I trust you? We're in the middle of a dark park all alone. This feels very deceptive."

Before Seonghwa could reply, they stepped out and into a clearing. It was still dark, but it was bright enough for Hongjoong to make out the contour of a lake. Seonghwa let go of Hongjoong's wrist.

SH: "We have arrived."

Hongjoong looked up at the sky but saw nothing but the crescent moon.

SH: "Try looking down."

A smirk was apparent in his voice as he spoke. Hongjoong hesitantly approached the lakeside. He felt on edge with Seonghwa behind him but as long as he could hear that Seonghwa didn't move, he felt fairly safe. As Hongjoong neared the waters edge he saw it. In the water were countless lights. He looked up at the sky then at the water and then back again. No stars were visible in the sky, yet the surface reflected a hemisphere full of stars. Hongjoong spun around to face Seonghwa expecting him to have moved. He hadn't.

HJ: "How is this possible? How can I see the reflections of stars that aren't visible?"

His voice was filled with both awe and wonder.

SH: "The lake is filled with magical creatures that light up the lake. They feast tonight and the fires of their large ovens can be seen as the brightest lights."

Hongjoong looked at Seonghwa with an expression that told him to be serious. And for the first time since they had met, Seonghwa's composure faltered and he let out a soft giggle.

SH: "I am sorry. I do not know why this lake reflects the stars even though they cannot be seen in the sky. My best guess is that there is something in the water that allows it to reflect light in a certain way. Either that or there are insects or bugs with luminescent bodies."

HJ: "The lights don't seem to move so it's probably the first option."

The two of them were quiet and Hongjoong turned back to the water to look at the lights.

HJ: "Would you not want to see it too? Come join me."

He waved his hand in a motion that invited Seonghwa to join him but Seonghwa simply shook his head and stayed back.

──── ⋅ ☾ ⋅ ────

Besides the moon, the sky was now completely dark. Seonghwa had agreed to walk Hongjoong to his exit of the park.

HJ: "Thank you for showing me that. It was really beautiful. I had no idea that lake was even there."

SH: "The path is vey hard to find. I am almost certain that no one knows about it. I accidentally stumbled upon it when looking through the park one evening."

HJ: "What were you even looking for when we met. You were almost sitting in a flower bed."

SH: "Ah. I was primarily admiring the colourful flowers but I was also searching for something. I did not find anything though."

They observed each other shortly, before Seonghwa spoke again.

SH: "It is late. You should go home and get some sleep. I remember you said you have work tomorrow."

HJ: "Yeah. Sadly. Thank you for a nice day though."

He hesitated before proceeding.

HJ: "Do you think we could exchange numbers? I'd love to see you again."

SH: "I- Yes. I would love to see you again too. Actually. I think I will be around in the park quite often from now on. Come by and we might meet again."

Hongjoong noticed how Seonghwa avoided the question but he let it pass. He was probably not comfortable enough to share his number yet. They had just met that same day after all.

HJ: "Yes. I will definitely come by. I'll see you soon."

Both men moved but neither knew what they wanted to do. They were not familiar enough for a hug but waving whilst standing face to face would be weird too. It was really awkward but Seonghwa eventually stepped back and bid the final goodbye. Hongjoong watched him walk off back into the park. And as Seonghwa walked away he could not help but notice how beautiful he looked as the moonlight lit up his tall figure.

──── ⋅ ☾ ⋅ ────

First time posting on tumblr. Let’s see how this goes XD

↓ these are the shoes Hongjoong designed. Both in this story and in real life

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weltonreject · 3 years

Text

Juniper and the Gardener

|| Juniper “Juno” Saint Catherine is always looking to be home, always waiting for his time at work to be over, for the time of his life to finally start up again. || ~3.8k words

Buy me a coffee || Other original writing || Thesis: Lost & Stolen

It wasn’t his poorest habit, but Juno frequently slept in his work clothes. He had only three pairs of nice slacks—as well as the fault of forgetting to send out his laundry in a timely manner. To counteract his own shortcomings, he did, however, make the change over from beige to black. The undone center crease—and other telling wrinkles—were better disguised and appeared to be from a long commute rather than a restless sleep and hurried walk; fifteen blocks to save the few bucks in bus fare.

Juno had fallen asleep with his beer bottle in hand, resting upright against his hip and without a single sip taken. Stella always tasted like piss to him anyway. Juno yawned and walked the bottle to the kitchenette sink, holding it upside down as he cracked his tense neck. The same fork was still in the sink from the night before. Not washed, or more preferably, joined by any other utensil. No other meal had been served, even for one, while he was slouched against the headboard.

It was nearly eight that morning. He wasn’t late, but he could be if he didn’t hurry. He’d already been demoted once that year. The office didn’t take very nicely to having to change his name on his paycheck, so they wanted to make sure any check they did have to send to Juno whoever was for as little as possible. Personally, Juno thought his last name—Catherine—was a delightful change. He took it graciously five years ago, relishing in silence up until five months prior.

With the bottle in the sink, Juno began yanking his arms out of his unbuttoned shirt. The cuffs were tight and folded his hands into cracking claws before slipping up the sleeves. He kept his other—ironed—shirts on the tall rack by the door. He chose the slimly cut maroon shirt—a favorite—and quickly hurried it closed as he stepped in front of the cracked mirror in the room’s foyer.

Oh, did he not remember ever turning thirty. Or looking thirty. Or, more so, now looking thirty-seven. With the cuffs unbuttoned now, Juno adjusted his thirty-sixth birthday present: a gold watch with a black face and shining numbers. They stayed shined, even under the glass and with countless swipes of the hour and minute hand over top. It was the cruelest birthday joke a lover had ever gotten him, but then again, the truth always had a way of being cruel. There was nothing to fold over and tuck under with the truth stretched out so finely in front of him. Ticking ever so softly on his wrist.

Every action, from the moment of waking, was a passing of time to get back the pale, antique hallways of The Quill Hotel and back to room 516. He’d been living there for fifteen years, everything the exact the same—even the sheets. After he’d stayed two consecutive weeks, Mrs. Gregory marked the inner tag of his bedding bag and made sure the same sheets returned to his room. One time, after nursing a broken, bleeding nose while propped up on three pillows, she asked about the blood she found. The note was on the hotel’s pale lilac stationary, neatly folded on his nightstand, giving him the number of a helpline if he was in trouble.

The stain was still there, fading with every wash. It was on the left side of the bed, Juno able to circle it whenever he slept alone.

Juno locked his room—the only room still having a traditional lock and not requiring a keycard— at eight fifteen. He was due in the office in fifteen minutes. He could make it with a pace of about a minute per block, provided Miss Rosanne didn’t have any new pictures of her grandchildren at the ready at the front desk. Juno took the hallway at an angled gait, trying to cushion his footsteps.

The carpet on the fifth floor was wearing spectacularly on the edge of the landing and down each step. The carpet was teal and purple, although now mostly just brown and gray. If anything, Juno preferred the faded colors to their original dye. The bright colors reminded him of far worse days. Hurrying to his room with far more embarrassment and anxiety about who could be tracking him across the same carpet, tainting the eager footsteps echoing his own all the way into his room and back to his bed.

Purple and a warped greened teal had bloomed on his own skin too often after such tracking. They never turned such a benign brown or gray, instead looking so yellow he feared a kind of rot growing from his shame. The frayed carpet had been kind to him, leading him out the front door every morning.

“Morning, Mister Catherine.” The gardener, Landis, greeted him almost immediately. He was kneeling on the other side of the hotel’s walkway. He was laying mulch, a small towel tucked against his knees. His work trousers were torn; the work of a stubborn rose, Juno was sure.

“Morning, Mister Fern.” Juno lifted a quick hand. His watch glinted in the morning sun, like a wink from under his jacket cuff. “Beautiful day.”

“Gorgeous.”

Spring had just started to poke through the blanketing cold fronts, warmth sighing in with the light breeze. Sun had melted the heavy, thick clouds and began peaking through like water through a frozen lake. It made the long walk to Juno’s office pleasant. He didn’t even think to misread the building’s sign of Campbell & Violet as Cramping & Violent that morning.

###

No one greeted Juno as he slipped his way to his desk. It made sense, though, seeing as everyone was on the phone with clients and hospitals and insurance firms. He didn’t expect anyone to cover their receivers and mouth a delighted Good morning! to him—of course not. Those that greeted him every morning in the hotel were obligated to do so. That was part of their job, too. Saying hello to the disgraced paralegal Juniper Saint Catherine was not a part of the job description of anyone in that office. Honestly, if it had been, Juno didn’t think he would’ve taken the job.

He savored his privacy. Juno thought of it something shareable. A set amount given to him, only able to be split and handed out like the segments of an orange. He thought about never starting on the peel, back when he was in his twenties. But then where would all that bitter sweetness go? Not to anyone that genuinely mattered. The vulnerability of sharing private moments would stay in thick, calloused isolation for the rest of Juno’s life. And he’d decided, by thirty, he wanted an orange grove.

“Catherine,” Someone said, swinging around their desk to his own. They relished in his new last name far too much. Juno heard something not quite delight in the spoken soft syllables of the surname. It was something like satire, like a joke only the man could hear. “Need that filing report done by morning meeting.”

“That’s less than…” Juno checked his watch, although already certain it wasn’t enough time. “That’s less than an hour.”

“Well, what can I tell you. Should’ve gotten here earlier.”

“I’m on time.” Juno didn’t expect to be correct. “I have a life outside of this office, you know.”

“And I’m sure you do.” The man—who’s name was irrelevant to Juno by that point—shrugged. “But when you’re here it’s our time, okay?”

“I’m not a fucking intern.” Juno grumbled, yanking open his desk drawer to gather his favorite pen and highlighter: another gift.

“Sorry? What was that?”

“I’m not an intern.” Juno over-enunciated. The man hadn’t expected Juno to repeat himself, to use company time to talk back. “I’m double your age and a grown fucking man. Don’t treat me like I haven’t figured out how to scrub my balls yet.”

It was a common complaint at home that Juno had too much of a sharp, grotesque tongue when he was angry. Then again, he wasn’t angry at home very often. He was out of practice.

The man blinked, considering the snap back. “Morning meeting.” He said finally. “I’ll do a longer schmooze bit in the beginning and buy you an extra ten minutes, if you should need it.”

Juno made the morning meeting, walking into the office with the report in one hand a large cup of coffee in the other. He looked at Son-of-the-Firm-Something-or-Other and made a very large charade of handing it over to the nameless man, who, as Juno realized was supposed to have it done himself.

Those extra ten minutes may not have been Juno’s to have, but as reparations, but they were ten minutes he’d converted into a stewing clip of embarrassment for What’s His Face.

It was enough to pass the next seven hours in petty delight.

###

Juno rushed home in a fast, more angular commute than the morning. He buried his hands in his front pockets and bent forward, hoping he’d stumble and find himself rolled over in the hotel’s flower garden. The hotel’s shadow would block out the sun and allow his disoriented look up at the sky to be clear and vivid. The gardener would be there, probably scolding him for crushing his work, but still helping him up and home.

The gardener was not out front when Juno crept inside. He ducked behind a family checking in to avoid Miss Roseanne. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the hotel staff—rather the opposite, considering his indefinite stay—but he was aching to be back in his room. To have time all to himself again.

In the middle of Juno discovering that his twist off beer bottle wasn’t twist off, someone knocked on his door. Juno only ever had one visitor. He paused the request for entrance with a swift bang on the hinged deadbolt—knocking the bottle cap clean off, without foaming over. Juno held the bottle out to his side and then answered the door.

The gardener stood in the hallway, gently playing with the bottom button of his denim jacket.

“You didn’t come over last night.” Juno said, stepping to the side and bracing his weight on the door.

“I finished late, hun, I’m sorry. I didn��t want to wake you.”

“You aren’t a bother and you know it.” Juno sighed. “Get in here.”

“I missed you.” Landis said, safely past the foyer of the room.

“You could start saying that instead of hello.” Juno muttered, locking the door again.

“It’s true. The moment I see you again, I realize how much I’ve missed you. That little ache goes away.”

The little ache: Landis’s sense that there was something else more important to be doing, or something out of place that couldn’t be seen, but needed to be fixed in order to continue. An obsessive thought that was completely silent but ran on a repeat. The ache was the record spinning around one more time.

“Why don’t you sit down, let me take off your boots.” Juno handed Landis his beer and pushed him back into the hotel’s teal green armchair.

Landis collapsed with a faint huff, letting out a low groan as Juno hoisted his leg onto his own bent knee. He tipped back his beer as Juno began unlacing his shoes. They were double-knotted, but also caked together with a thin layer of mud and mulch. Juno picked at them ferociously, not wincing when a splinter of wood got under his nailbed. He wanted to simply race to the point when he would free Landis’s foot and he would slip down lower in his chair.

“How was work today?” Landis asked. He rested the bottom of the bottle on his shoulder, his temple against the cool bottle neck.

“The same. Can’t get much worse.”

“I’m sorry, honey.”

The demotion hit Landis harder than it did Juno. Juno laughed his way out of the payroll office, thinking what idiots they were for not just firing him. He was still more talented than he was gay, apparently. Enough of both to keep around. Landis, on the other hand, felt it as a personal cut from his own hand onto Juno. It was his name he carried on his smaller paychecks. But also, as Juno had to point out it, it was also Landis’s name and his “fault” that Juno walked into pay roll with such a high skip in his step. They could have just enough of both too.

“It’s okay. I still have a job.” Juno brushed the flaked mud from his right knee before switching to bending his left. He started on the other knots. “And I still have you.”

“Those two things aren’t married; you’d have me even without the job. Maybe even have your old job if it wasn’t for me—”

“Oh, you’d love me even if I was unemployed?” Juno teased, running his hands up Landis’s calves. He squeezed his muscles, pulsing a quick massage over their undoubted aches. Landis groaned and yanked his legs back from Juno. He put his beer bottle on the floor by the back right leg.

“Get up here.” Landis straightened his posture and closed his leg, pressing his knees together. Juno stood and put his knees on either side of Landis’s thighs, just fitting against the curved sides and armrests. Landis slid his hands up the length of Juno’s back, feeling his muscles twitch as he squirmed; Landis always had cold hands. “I missed you so much today.” Landis rested his head against Juno’s cheek. He inhaled deeply, burrowing his nose into Juno’s neck. “I barely saw you—you were late for work, weren’t you?”

“Barely.”

“Be on time, if only for me. I want a good glimpse of my husband in the morning.”

Silence fell over them both. Not quite the same silence they kept when in public together, but a far sharper one. One with teeth and claws. One that left marks on them if they weren’t careful. One that the people around them swallowed when they would whisper.

“Only for my husband.” Juno promised, threading his fingers into Landis’s hair. The roots of his hair were still wet, after his cordial cleanup after landscaping. Juno always told him he didn’t have to clean up to see him. He’d always take him at his most well-worked, and kiss him just as deeply as the roots he’d planted.

Juno loved his husband more than any words were capable—but he knew he had to create them sometime. He couldn’t let their relationship stay liminal and simply for the “in-betweens”. This was Juno’s life, not anything else he attended just to simply see the hands of his watch swing all the way around and tell him he could return to his bedroom. Return to Landis’s arms: tanned, firm, and tired. Juno missed Landis, too, every moment of the day. But, more articulately, he missed his life.

How could any words ever say that?

“Why don’t we go to bed, hm?” Juno slid back, trying to get his feet on the ground without stumbling. “You must be tired, Handsome. Always working so hard.”

“I’m not tired.”

“No?”

“No.” Landis hoisted Juno up by his waist. “I can still make love to my husband.”

“Landis, no, it’s been a long few day for you--”

“And I miss you.”

Would it be selfish for that to be enough? For Juno to accept that he was enough of a reason to bring life back to their room, to their bed, to himself?

“I can’t tell if you want me to argue.” Juno laughed, covering his own mouth. He braced his other hand against Landis’s shoulder. “Because I won’t.”

“Only argue if you opposed to the ravishing.” Landis jokingly pretended to toss Juno backwards onto the bed but caught him again before easing him back onto his own feet. “I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

“You said that yesterday.” Juno feared for a moment he was only worth a repetition. But then he saw the look on his husband’s face, the non-mourning loss in his eyes, as he got carried off by the teasing touch of Juno’s fingers on his collar.

“And I’ll say it again tomorrow.” Landis pressed against Juno, both of them braced by the bottom of the bedframe. “Always, until it stops being true.” He lifted Juno again, easing him over the frame’s edge. “Then I’ll tell you that I miss you right then and there, even when I can still see you on the sidewalk. I’ll tell you and never leave you alone.”

“Then how will you miss me?” Juno arched an eyebrow, letting himself be laid down on the new sheets.

“Unless I can have you like this, every moment, then there is always something to miss.” Landis climbed over the bedframe as well, not bothering the two steps to walk around to his side of the bed. On all fours, he shifted his weight from side to side, jokingly shaking the bed and jostling Juno.

“Every moment, huh?” Juno kept his eyebrow raised, adding Landis’s favorite smirk—the one that got them to the same position fifteen years ago. “Aren’t you getting a bit old for that, Handsome?”

Landis didn’t respond and slipped his hands back under Juno, cradling his back against the mattress. Between the shirt and the blankets, his hands warmed and were almost like liquid curling around Juno’s spine. Openly, and stupidly, he moaned into the static silence of room 516. The warmth of being held was more than enough to convince Juno that age had noting to do with them. Love—the way they created it, made it, held it, nurtured it—didn’t age and didn’t age them. It was the ultimate elixir, and Juno was nearly intoxicated with it. His hands grappled with Landis’s shirt, pulling his body flush against his own.

“I keep falling asleep in my clothes.” Juno said into his husband’s ear. “Why don’t you undress me?”

###

Juno and Landis slept stretched over one another. Arms latticed together like they were trying to meld back together in their unconscious state and keep the impending separation from even the realm of possibility. What would—hell, could—anyone do if he was sutured at the hip to Landis as he reported to the other landscapers not much before dawn. Juno would love to kneel in the damp, malleable earth with his husband and mold mulch around baby sprouts and loose roots. The rings of dirt on their fingers and palms would be more sacred than a wedding band. Even in disguising it, they could wash each other’s hands—one caressing over the other—and watch their joint work swirl down the drain. At least Juno wouldn’t have to spend his day alone.

A knock startled Juno, nearly causing him to dislocate Landis’s shoulder. For once, Juno was ungrateful to not have been wearing his work clothes.

“Be right there!” He called, scrambling for his robe. He’d left it just outside the shower, wrinkled and still damp from two sets of feet stomping all over it.

“Mister Fern?”

“Are they talking to me?” Landis grumbled, rolling over.

“Don’t be so arrogant, I had the name first.” Juno whispered, tying the robe closed. He didn’t even check the mirror for any red marks on the curve of his neck or behind his ear. If he stood in the opening, the door didn’t reveal his bed. “Hello?” Juno didn’t even know what time it was.

“My wife sent me over.” The man in the hallway was older than Juno, in his own robe, and smiling just as anxiously as Juno felt.

“I’m sorry I don’t know your wife.” Juno cocked his head to the side, blocking the wandering eye of the other tenant. “Terribly sorry if she knows me.”

“I asked the front desk for your name.”

“You asked the front desk for me? I can’t possibly be that famous.” Juno repeated the man for Landis’s benefit. He could posit his theory for the disturbance the moment Juno closed the door over.

“This slipped under our newspaper this morning—I think it was kicked under on your way out the door.” Henry held out a note on the hotel stationary.

He expected to see Landis’s handwriting delicately fitted onto the top third of the paper, refusing to stretch over more than it had to. Instead, it was from a typewriter. It was a note celebrating another year at the hotel. Now, sixteen years in the same room.

The number shook Juno as he stood in his doorway, the man looking at him for some kind of explanation or calming words.

He spoke instead. “Sixteen, huh? Wow. You definitely settled down, didn’t you? Got a roof over your head.”

“Yeah. Yeah I do.” Juno nodded, finding a smile somewhere in his quivering lips. “Settled down just fine. Faster than I expected, too.”

“Hope there’s someone worth sharing it with, even if it’s rented.” The older man said with a short nod to his own door. “Sorry to interrupt your evening, Mister Fern. Have a lovely stay… At home.”

“Oh. Thank you.” Juno folded the paper over, his fingers sounding rough over the cardstock. “For returning my mail, too. Good night.”

Juno closed the door over and read the note again. Sixteen years in the hotel, in the same room, with the same man. It was like a strange sort of birthday card. The anniversary telling him just how many years, those that came before, could be discarded. Those that were lived but lifeless.

Juno had no idea the time, no idea the hours he had left with Landis in their—his—bed. He struggled to ration how much time he should stay away in order to compile memories of Landis as he slept awkwardly twisted and bent while on his stomach, reaching for Juno’s still-moving body. There was so much to find new, even after sixteen years of evenings just like this one.

The thing that was always the same though, thankfully, was Landis’s inability to snore.

His soft, airy breathing, slow and even—nearly an audible pattern. Like a set clock of Juno’s very own kind. The only kind of clock that wasn’t counting down, or keeping any sort of time, just keeping rhythm and routine. Juno decided he only wanted to know that time, and laid against the other pillow, facing his husband.

“Good night, Mister Landis Fern.”

“Good night, My Juniper Catherine.”

“I miss you.” Juno said, closing his eyes. “Wake me when you go.”

#writeblr #original work #original short story #my writing #Juno and the gardener #listen i had this idea and i wrote it and it's gay and sweet and not as sad as my other stuff #enjoy!!!

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