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outoutdamnspark · 2 years

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Cerulean

More Gardenshipping, with Reina x Emmet in the Age Gap au - collectively titled ‘Watching the Earth Rise.’

This one’s set two months after Reina’s drunken confession in Lost and Found; it’s not the one I mentioned in the tags of a different post (I... can’t remember which one), but it is the night directly before. That one is almost done and I’ll probably upload it, too, if people are interested~

This is also where Emmet’s quote from the shipping meme thing comes from.

(Thank you again for the amazing feedback, by the way! I’m so thrilled that everyone likes Reina so much!! <3)

CW: some minor self-depreciation, mentions of alcohol use, allusions to past tragedy. Other than that, it’s pure fluff. (Flashing lights in the song link.)

===

“I still fall for you like suns do for skies

Cerulean pouring in from your eyes

Just a hollow moon that you colorize

So powerful, I feel so small but so alive

Like watching the earth rise…”

- (“Earthrise,” Starset)

===

The autumn night is comfortably warm as they walk side by side, hands brushing occasionally but not quite managing to catch; every time Reina thinks she has the courage to twine her fingers with Emmet’s, she quickly tucks them away again.

She isn’t sure how to go about any of this.

Two months of dancing around one another. Two months of Emmet being unbelievably patient with her as she creeps ever emotionally closer like a scared litten slowly coming out from under the bed. Two months - July into September - since two bottles of gods-awful vodka and grief had loosened her tongue and spilled her adoration through the phone and straight into her boss’s hands. Two. Months. And still she’s struggled with the chains that hold her heart safe inside its cage.

He’d told her he loved her back; she has no idea what to do with that, even now.

(Cracked and dented as she is, she doesn’t think she’s worth the wait. She doesn’t tell him that.)

The funniest part about the whole situation is that Emmet - patient and kind - makes her want to be worth it. He makes her want to be human again, not just whatever hollowed out mannequin she’s become, and maybe she’s being selfish, but she wants him to want her. She’s so tired of being invisible, even if it’s been by her own choosing for the past ten years - better to be forgotten on her own terms than in a way she has no hope to control.

(And that’s the thing: she’d tried to hide away, to keep herself locked up tight and stay as unnoticeable as possible, but Emmet had refused to not see her. And that is probably what made her start to see him back.)

Reina doesn’t realize how long she’s been buried in her own thoughts until there’s a soft brush of a hand against her own. She blinks back to existence to see that they’ve stopped walking - her own body unconsciously attuned to his as it’s been for the past 10 months.

(Ten years of hiding behind a layer of iron and ice; ten months for him to break it down without even trying.)

“Hmm?” she questions, tilting her head at him instead of digging for words at the back of her tongue.

Emmet pulls his hand away with a slowness that feels painful; his eyes linger on the space between their fingers as it stretches wider, until he’s tucked his hand back into his coat sleeve and let it come to rest at his side.

“...We are at the halfway point.”

Reina furrows her brow in confusion. Looking around properly, she sees that - indeed - they are at the halfway point between his apartment and hers. This would normally be where she’d turn down a different street at the end of the block and disappear into the more affordable sections of the city, while he would assumedly turn and go the other way.

But this is the first time he’s walked her home, despite the many times he’s offered. (And, admittedly, Reina finds that she’s more comfortable with the nighttime commute than she’s ever been before, despite the different form of discomfort that comes from being awkward around the man she has feelings for. Emmet’s presence is soothing in a way she doesn’t know how to describe, and it’s probably because of him that she let herself get so lost in thought to begin with.)

She exhales quietly and runs the thumbs on both hands across her the backs of her fingers, popping her knuckles one by one.

“...So we are.”

She looks back at him, and finds that his eyes have been on her the whole time.

Turning, she angles her body towards him. “Emmet?”

He blinks, shifts his gaze to search her face, furrows his brow slightly in obvious thought even as his eyes themselves are soft. She feels her heart speed up and decides she needs to blink, to speak, anything to break the spell.

"What's up?" she asks quietly, just to fill the poignant silence.

Monotone as ever, he says, "...I am unsure how to tactfully ask if you'd like to spend the night with me."

She can't help it - she laughs. It's a quick thing, a bark and then a giggle, a sound made more from her being caught off guard by his frankness than anything else. Though what she even expected from him but candor, she doesn't know. She looks back up at him with a warm, fond smile so he knows she's not laughing at him. She lets the edges of it turn playful to drive it home.

"I mean," she says, eyes crinkling, "I think that was pretty tactful, actually." She smirks up at him through her bangs. "It could have been a lot worse; you could have just straight up asked if I was down to fuck."

Emmet's face contorts. The smile is still there but it's strained, flattened out slightly like the failed birth of a grimace, and his eyes are tight. "I would not ask that," he says. "Not… like that." He says it carefully, too, like there's something else there he can't find the words for, a deeper feeling he doesn't know how to vocalize but is doing his best to delicately try anyway.

(She realizes with surprise that he's been doing this off and on for a while now, she'd just never managed to pin down what it was. The thought of her being something he'd actively try to verbalize for makes her already-stuttering heart beat even further off-kilter.)

She lets him find his thoughts and tries not to implode under the weight of his quietude.

Eventually he takes a step forward, reaching out a (shaking) hand to catch her fingers in his own. "That would imply sex is all I want from you; it is not. I am Emmet, I am not interested in a quick fling." He turns his hand so that his fingers, still shaking, slot with hers. His voice is so, so quiet when he speaks again, a level of vulnerability she hasn't seen before creeping into his usually toneless words. "I was serious when I said I love you." He pauses, looking down at their combined hands. "It would not just be a fuck for me."

Reina has never believed that something could almost literally take a person's breath away; now, standing under a street lamp equidistant between his place and hers, she finds herself exhaling in a single short, quiet, quivering burst. She knows that if she pulls away, lets go of his hand, tells him "not tonight," then he'll let her go without protest. He'll smile - and it will be smaller but it will still be real - and walk her home, no questions asked. No coercion, no ill will, no ulterior motive beyond wanting to make sure she's safe and comfortable. He'll be disappointed, she's sure, though probably not so much over not getting laid and more at the idea that he's messed up somehow. (He's easier to read than most people take the time to realize, she's learned; you just have to be willing to look.)

Reina looks up at this sweet, sweet man, this wonderfully kind and friendly man, endlessly caring to the point of self-sacrifice sometimes, awkward and anxious and constantly just trying to do his best to navigate human interaction on a daily basis, hiding his efforts behind a mask of joviality, secretly the biggest dork to ever exist - and feels something inside herself finally, finally come back from the brink of oblivion.

"Fuck," she whispers. She’d never stood a chance, had she? "Fuck, Em…" She lifts her hands, carefully disentangling from him, and brings them up to the sides of his face, stroking her thumbs across his cheekbones.

He brings his own hands up to cover hers, his expression both happy at the contact and worried by her delayed reaction. He tilts his head at her, brow creasing in confusion. She feels something spill from her eyes and trickle down her cheeks at the same time his eyes widen and he makes a noise of concern.

"Please kiss me," she begs. It's quiet, desperate in the way only someone starved for love can be, hopeful and scared all at once; she can hear it in the cracking of her own voice, hears it mirror the way Emmet's hand had been shaking as he reached for her before.

Without hesitation he leans in, covering her lips with his, hands sliding down her arms to wrap around her waist and pull her close; she slips her arms around his neck and pulls him closer.

"I love you," she whispers into the kiss, sobs without sorrow but instead, the breaking of a dam. It's the first time she's said it since the first time she'd said it - the first time she's said it sober - and she feels his breath catch against her chest from where they're pressed together.

It isn't the first time they've kissed; there have been a handful of others (small pecks on the cheek, chaste brushes of lips along the corners of one another's mouths, little moments stolen in between larger pieces of life and responsibility, usually initiated by Emmet when she was too afraid to believe this was real), but this is the first one that carries so much weight. It's a turning point, a beginning, and for the first time in her entire life, Reina meets it head on, embracing it with open arms. She's spent her whole existence in a state of perpetual stagnation, guarded and afraid, with nothing left to lose, but with nothing to hold onto as a result, nothing to ground herself should the things she's been running from finally catch up enough to bury her. Now, though, in the last place she'd have ever expected it to be, there's a light at the end of her long, lonely tunnel.

She takes a step into the unknown, and finds, not a bottomless chasm, but solid ground - with someone there to greet her on the other side.

"Em," she murmurs, sliding her hands back around to rest against his jawline. He pauses, pulls back just so, giving her room to collect herself after the kiss. She pecks the tip of his nose in thanks, earning her a quiet giggle.

"I love you," he breathes, resting their foreheads together. Pale eyes slit open to peer down at her through the softest, most adoring smile she's ever seen.

"I love you, too."

His eyes slide closed again at her words, crinkling as he smiles, deepening the shallow crows feet at the edges. He sighs. "I have never been in love before," he admits. "You are my favorite person, I am happy it was with you."

Reina nearly chokes as her eyes threaten to spill back over with tears. She squeezes them shut and nuzzles her nose against his. "Gods, Em, you can't just say stuff like that."

She kisses him before he can think she's being literal, or that he's done something wrong. When she pulls back again, she tries to meet his eyes - with minimal success, but the effort is there. "I adore you; you have no idea how much."

Emmet groans. Pulling her flush against him once more, he buries his face in her shoulder and hugs her for all he's worth. "Stay with me tonight. Please? No expectations, just… just stay."

He doesn't have to extrapolate for her to understand what he's really asking. "Of course," she promises against his ear with the same quiet fervor as his own. "Of course, Em, of course I'll stay."

He clutches her impossibly tighter, a hitch in his breath muffled into her shoulder belying his own dam beginning to overflow. His grip is far from painful, however; instead, it's a comfort. Like a weighted blanket, steady and grounding, pushing her towards the overdue end to her decade-long derealization.

She squeezes him back just as tightly and runs her fingers through his hair. "Take me home, Em," she whispers, words deceptively easy, and nuzzles his temple. She leaves it unspoken that he's her home now, knowing full well that, in this stolen moment, he'll understand what she means.

#oc reina kageyama #gardenshipping #submas #subway master emmet #age gap au #watching the earth rise #spark writes #emmet x oc #emmet x reina

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outoutdamnspark · 2 years

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Lost and Found

Some purely self-indulgent stuff this time; I randomly wrote out the “Reina gets drunk and confesses” scene for my Emmet x OC... Not Fic??? called Watching the Earth Rise.

Not completely relevant to the scene, but this one’s set in the AU version of their story, briefly described here, (though the text doesn’t seem to show up on my blog unless I’m on mobile? 😕 Idk why.)

Tl;dr - Ingo's been missing a decade, Emmet is 39, Reina is 29 and works at Grear Station. They are both Very Fucking Tired™️; emotional hijinks ensue. (Inspiration heavily by leggerefiore's SilverFox!Emmet au.)

So yeah, uh. Enjoy~

CW: depression, grief, alcohol, allusions to past tragedy.

(Sort of hurt/comfort; mutual pining, love confessions, pre-romance.)

===

It’s well after midnight by the time her last bottle runs dry, but she’s still sober enough to feel the crushing weight of the silence in her empty, unfurnished closet of an apartment. Stupid, cheap, watery vodka; it had tasted like nail polish remover, the smell strong enough to make her sinuses burn, but she’s now two bottles in and it still it hasn’t been enough to get her so drunk she can forget. It’s not even tomorrow yet, not properly, because even though it’s not technically today anymore, there’s still enough of it left, spilling over despite the clock turning the hours from night into morning, that it doesn’t feel like tomorrow - and that’s the part that really matters. All she’s left with now is the aching quiet and the chemical taste of regret lingering on her tongue.

She needs something - a movie, a song, a voice, anything, because the booze isn’t doing its job, the night isn’t passing like it needs to, the 12th won’t end - but right now there’s nothing. She can’t rewatch The Kids on the Bridge for the hundredth time, she knows, because the music and the story, (usually things that keep her sane, keep her going, keep her alive,) will wreck her. Even the musical's 'darkest before the dawn' message won't be enough to help; the 12th isn’t the day for things she keeps close, it’s not the day for the pieces of herself that manage to stay afloat, taking in water but still hanging on for dear life. It’s the worst sort of irony, to have something she can turn to but only on any day that she doesn’t desperately need it.

Anastasia is out, too, for the exact same reason, though amplified because of its deeper tether to her past - too much of a reminder of the too-few happy childhood memories when people now gone were still here.

She doesn’t trust herself in her drunk-but-still-too-sober state to go digging through her music, either; the heavier stuff will just fuck with her head right now, too much all at once, and the rest, well. She made the mistake once of trying to put her playlists on shuffle so she didn’t have to choose a song. The resulting mental rabbit hole had almost been worse than the hollowness she’d been trying to drown out in the first place.

She doesn’t want to wake her pokemon up, despite how much she desperately wants Cloak to wrap her up in her wings. Reina could use the cuddles - alarmingly so - but her team worry enough over her as it is, and they’re all probably asleep by now. She can’t burden them with this. Not again. Not for the tenth year in a row. They deserve to move forward in the way she can’t - or to properly mourn without having to babysit her, too.

Near to tears at the feeling of utter desolation slowly creeping in from the back of her skull, Reina reaches for her phone. She could call someone, maybe? Surely she knows someone still awake at this hour?

Reina pauses, her tipsy mind defogging for a second, reminding her that she does not, in fact, know anyone. Other than her one friend back in Galar, (who is most assuredly either dead asleep or just barely waking up for work right now) her contacts list consists of the PokeCenter, two numbers that are no longer in service and never will be again, and name that never had a number to begin with, and her boss. Her workaholic, insomniac boss.

Whom she has the stupidest fucking crush on.

(Let it be said that poor states of mind, coupled with desperation, mixed with alcohol and budding affection, will dampen even the shrudest of impulse control. It is a formula to be feared.)

Reina’s holding her phone against her ear before she even fully processes she’s hit ‘call’. It vibrates the side of her head, the dull ringing on the line making her feel dizzy as the tipsiness rolls back in. She can’t tell if she likes it or not.

The phone rings twice, three times, then picks up with a muted ‘click.’

“Miss Kageyama?”

Reina sucks in a deep, sharp breath at the sound of his voice. It’s like ice being pressed over a patch of scalded flesh, a soothing balm in auditory form, and for a moment she feels the horrible jitters subside just a little.

But then she realizes what he’s said and her mouth pulls into a frown.

“...Helllllllo?”

“Yoooooooooou,” she slurs accusingly, “are still at work.” She huffs. “Why are you still at work?”

There is a moment of silence, wherein her boss is likely blinking at his phone screen in confusion. He chuckles, just once. It’s a tense, unsure sound that doesn’t seem to hold much humor, just exhaustion. It still sends a tingle through Reina’s core to hear it so close to her ear, and she unconsciously presses her thighs together for the span of a heartbeat.

“You don’t know that,” he says, and it might be either a deflection or an attempt at teasing, but Reina is too far into the bottle to be able to tell right now.

Instead of picking one, she settles for responding with a, (perfectly mature) “Yuh-huh. Do, too.”

She hears him take a breath on the other end of the line, readying a reply, so she cuts him off before he can make it. “You said ‘Kageyama.’ Kageyama is what you call me at work. Off the clock is Reina.” Another huff, this one morphing into a faint whine at the tail end. There is a small, quiet pout to her voice as she adds, much softer, “...I like it when you call me Reina…”

More silence follows; then, finally, there comes the muted crackle of a shallow exhale. “...Reina…”

But she cuts him off a second time with a hum that, again, is more of a whine. “No.”

“No?”

“No.” Reina sits back against the bare wall she’s been cuddled up to this whole time, defiant despite him not being able to see her. “You can’t call me that yet because you’re still at work.” She pouts, harder this time, petulant like a child and just as stubborn. “Go home. You need to sleep.” Her tone shifts, some old protective instinct half-remembered drifting up and out from its dank little corner and coloring her words like a scold. “And… and probably eat something, too. And water. You need to…” She pauses to get a better grip on her words as they get heavier on her tongue, thick with alcohol. She ‘hnn’s through her teeth in frustration. “Mm. Don’t… You’re gonna say you already did, and you’re a bad liar, so I’m gonna know.” A third huff - something that has evidently become a good part of her vocabulary tonight. “You need to clock out and… I care about you, you fucking… you dumbass. Okay? Take better care of yourself.”

As much as she would (and inevitable will) be appalled at herself without the haze of shitty vodka, any and all thoughts of her own plight - of the 12th - have been successfully, albeit temporarily, pushed from her mind as her bottled-up affection and concern for one of the only living contacts in her phone begins to pour out in ernest. She frowns, almost scowls, and feels hot tears prickle behind her eyes. She grimaces; they do not fall.

“...Reina,” Emmet says softly. It’s patient, ever-so-slightly frosty, like his guard is up, professional mask crooked but in place - but it’s still kind, still that same quiet sort of comforting that’s been wrapping Reina’s heart tighter and tighter around his little finger for months. “Are you drunk?”

She barks a bitter laugh. “Not drunk enough.”

“Oooooookaaaay…” He sounds… worried? Reina isn’t entirely certain since she can’t see him, but from the way he draws out the word, she can picture the little furrow of his brows that Emmet does when he’s out of his depth.

He pauses. Reina waits.

“I am Emmet. You sound… Not. Alright.”

She can’t think of a lie, and it doesn’t register as important to do so, so she simply tells him, “I’m not.”

She hears him exhale. Not a sigh, just an exhale. (There’s a difference, she’s noticed.)

“Can I help?” he asks her, voice quiet.

Reina wants to sob. He’s so kind! Even now, at quarter-to-one in the morning, when she’s most likely breached half a dozen boundaries - both professional and personal - by calling him while drunk, and calling him names. She can’t even fathom it, can’t comprehend it; there is no way this man is real, and certainly no way she deserves to be anywhere near him. (Her chest aches as she reminds herself that her love for him has been doomed from the very start, that she’ll never be worthy, will never have anything to offer him besides the tattered remnants of a person long broken past repair.) A tear finally falls, and Reina is suddenly choking. She shakes her head, both forgetting and grateful for the fact that he can’t see her through the phone.

“N-no,” she hiccups. Her whole body shudders. “No you can’t. It’s… today is bad.”

“Bad?” he repeats.

She nods again, sucking in a watery breath. “Uh-huh. The day is bad. The… the 12th. It’s bad.” Another hiccup catches in her throat as she reaches up to scrub her sleeve against her eyes.

Emmet stays quiet as she sucks in another breath that doesn’t fill her lungs. Suddenly she remembers what today is, why she’d called in the first place, why she’d needed to hear his voice. She coughs on an exhale; it becomes a low, pained whine.

He calls her name softly, gently, Emmet the Subway Boss now replaced entirely by Emmet her friend, Emmet the man she’s fallen head over heels for so hard that she’s surprised she didn’t break something.

She coughs again, giving him an, “Uh?” to show she’s heard him.

“Why is the 12th bad?”

Reina makes a sound low in the back of her throat. She doesn’t know what it is, exactly, but it rattles at her chest, leaving her feeling scratchy and raw. Her back bows and her neck bends until she’s folded so far forward that her forehead nearly touches the boring carpet. “I… I can’t,” she chokes, “I can’t. It’s just. It’s bad. Today is bad.” She emphasizes the word again and again, as if that alone will tell him what he wants to hear, what she can’t bring herself to say lest it break her down more than a single night’s sleep will be able to fix. Or at least, tape her back together.

But she keeps going.

Reina takes another wobbly, tearful breath. “But you’re not. You’re not, and that’s why I needed…” She sniffs. “You’re so nice it hurts.”

Emmet gives an airy, vaguely nervous giggle, unsure. “Uh. Thank you?”

Reina shakes her head until she’s dizzy. “Nooooo, you don’t - don’t get it. I have to tell you I love you. I have to. That’s what… I have to tell you today because… because…” She can’t get it out. No matter how she tries, she can’t tell him why it has to be today. She can’t tell him that today is the day she needs to cling to the memory of the people she loves and can no longer tell. She can’t give him the words to say that she needs to cling to him now, as well, because he’s the one person she can tell, and it feels like she’ll die if she doesn’t tell him before it’s too late to say it to him, too.

And yet.

“...Because today is bad?” he asks. And it’s so, so gentle, like he knows anyway - or if nothing else, he can guess. He knows there’s something important, something painful, even if he doesn’t know what it is.

“Yeah,” she whispers. And it’s enough.

Neither one of them says anything for a while after that. Emmet simply stays on the line as she cries openly into her hand. She can hear him breathing faintly, and it’s comforting to know he’s still there despite it all. Eventually, eventually, her sobbing slows, and Reina hears his voice once more softly calling her name.

“Reina? Still with me?”

She takes a deep breath and lets it back out. It only quavers a little bit this time.

“...Yeah.”

Emmet hums. “Good.” There’s a pause, like he’s thinking. “You should go to bed,” he says, and though it’s kind, there’s a slight edge to it, the barest hint of an authoritative tone. “Drink water first; you’re going to be verrrry dehydrated after this. Can you do that for me?”

She’s too wrung out to argue anymore. Besides, it’s… nice. To hear him say that; it stirs the same echoes that her own scolding had before - all that remains of a time long past. “Yes, Sir,” she breathes, already feeling the exhaustion settling in.

“Good,” he says again. Then, gentler, “Do you need tomorrow off?”

Reina feels her stomach sink. “N-no. Please no, I don’t want–”

“Okay,” he shushes (kind, so goddamn kind.) “No tomorrow off. No leaving you alone. It’s okay.”

She settles back against the wall, relief flooding her veins to drive out the panic. “Thank you.”

He just hums.

A moment passes before he speaks again. “Reina?”

“...Yeah?”

“Go to bed now.”

She swallows the sticky, scratchy lump in her throat and wipes at the tear tracks on her face. She can do that, she thinks. She can do that now. “...Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay,” she agrees. “But… Only if you do, too.”

That earns her a quiet chuckle, this one much more like an actual laugh. It’s tired, breathy, but real.

“I am Emmet. It’s a deal.”

Reina giggles faintly in return. “Cute,” she whispers.

“I… mmm.”

Reina giggles again at his obvious attempt to stifle the familiar verbal tic - it’s a sign he’s flustered, and it makes her body feel warm to hear it. “Hee. Cute.”

There is an exasperated (flustered) sigh. “Good NIGHT, Miss Kageyama," he huffs, but it’s a bit less stern than it’s likely meant to be.

“Reina,” she corrects.

“I am Emmet. Go. To. Bed.”

She snorts. “Going.”

Her smile fades then, slowly melting into something… not quite peaceful, but calmer than she’s felt in a long time. It’s better, even if it’s not completely better. It gives her the strength to whisper one last thing before she heeds her boss’s orders and passes out on the carpet, wrapped up in her travel blanket.

“...I love you.”

(And if, right before she hangs up, there’s a too-quiet whisper in return, she just chalks it up to her imagination, not so far gone in the last dregs of her intoxication to believe she’s heard him say it back.)

#spark writes #idk I'm just kinda proud of this and didn't want to just let it sit on my laptop forever #¯\_(ツ)_/¯#emmet x oc #gardenshipping #oc reina kageyama #subway master emmet #submas #do I tag this as silverfox!emmet?#silverfox!emmet #watching the earth rise

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