#I think I can only draw him blushing or having a mental spiral | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bellysoupset · 7 months

Note

popping in with a prompt/suggestion for vince cause i love me a lactose intolerant boy with lil tummy and his gf is also very hot so it’s a win win :) i was thinking it’d be fun if they were staying in a hotel for the weekend (maybe for a medical convention that wendy is going to?) and so they go to an unfamiliar coffee shop and the barista makes vince’s drink with regular milk. as the hours tick by and the convention draws closer, he’s miserable because his tummy is getting more and more upset and he doesn’t know why. he doesn’t want to disappoint wendy but he really doesn’t want to go because he’ll just end up spending the whole evening locked in a bathroom stall :(

Alright, this spiraled out of control. Anon, have some Vince and Wendy in NYC, him meeting her parents, having a lactose intolerance episode in the most inopportune moment and learning more about Wendy's past.

TW: discussions of transphobia and mental health issues, but nothing actually happens in the fic.

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Vince wasn't a heavy sleeper, he had never been. He was an insistent sleeper, meaning he refused to open his eyes at every little noise that woke him up.

Like the thunders that shook the structure of the building or Wendy's little rushed whispers. He rolled on the bed and let out a happy noise when his cheek met her thigh. Vince snuggled closer, wrapping an arm around her waist and felt her gentle fingers stroke over his cheek, then start playing with his hair.

He wasn't paying any attention to what Wendy's whispered conversation on the phone, so he was genuinely lost when she leaned in and planted a kiss on his forehead, saying just a little louder, "what do you think?"

"Uhm?" Vince forced his eyes open and then opened a smile when he met her face leaning over his, "hi..."

"Hi," she smiled, leaning back against the pillows, "what do you think?"

"About?" Vince yawned, rolling around so he could bury his face on Wendy's stomach. She giggled, starting to scratch his naked back instead of his scalp.

"Going to NYC this weekend," Wendy answered, "there's a medical convention on neurology and Jon's got tickets, but he doesn't want them anymore."

"Sounds boring," Vince scoffed, giving up on sleep and sitting up, rubbing his eyes.

"Well, duh, but it's only going to be one evening... We could go to the Broadway, you like theater..." Wendy said, her voice gaining that whiny consistency that worked so well on him.

Vince rolled his eyes, he knew how to pick his battles and this was not even a parking lot fight. She'd get whatever she wanted, no matter how boring the convention sounded... "Wait," he interrupted his own thoughts and Wendy raised her eyebrows, almost as shocked as him that he hadn't folded immediately.

"Yeah?"

"Aren't you from NYC?" Vince frowned, "am I meeting your folks?"

She blushed, shrugging and avoiding his eyes, "if you want to meet them, sure..."

"Do you want me to?" he grabbed her chin, forcing their eyes to meet and Wendy shrugged again.

"I guess...? I don't know, I want you to meet them, but they also... They're not a good time, Vin," she bit her lip, seeming torn, so Vince made the executive decision for both of them.

"I don't care," he said, pushing a strand of messy hair away from her eyes, "I wanna meet them, alright? It can be just a dinner."

"Just a dinner sounds fine," Wendy agreed eagerly, cheeks turning even redder, "it kinda sucks that your parents are just... So amazing. They make mine suck by simple comparison."

Vince rolled his eyes, shutting her up with a kiss, "they're not that awful, I'm sure. Besides, I don't care even if they are... It's about getting to know you better, not them."

"Uhmmm," Wendy mumbled, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him back, "so NYC this weekend?"

"Sure, sure, sure," Vince said barely paying attention, pushing her back against the pillows.

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"You look fine, stop fiddling with your blouse," He said, wrapping an arm around Wendy's shoulders and tugging her to him. His girlfriend let out an unhappy noise, once more pulling on the front cords of her top.

It was rare he got to see Wendy be this out of sorts, normally she was so sure of herself. Not today. She had been on a manic state since morning, despite the flight between Maine and New York only taking an hour and the convention starting at midday, they had left to the airport at 7 AM. She had picked his clothes, she packed and then re-packed at least twice and no amount of flirty banter had won Vince more than a lukewarm smile.

"Hey," he sighed, pressing his lips to the top of her head, "it's going to be fine, honey. I'm great with parents."

"You are not the one I'm worried about," Wendy groaned, sinking in his embrace, "I'm sorry, I just... I just don't want them to scare you away, that's all."

"They couldn't even if they tried," Vince squeezed her against him as they approached the convention center where the event was being hosted, "I'll meet your back here in five hours?"

"Are you sure you don't wanna stick around?" Wendy sounded all hopeful, but as much as Vince loved her, a neurology convention was not his idea of a good day. He shook his head.

"I love you, but absolutely not. Google Maps says we're close to the Cloisters, so I have my plans laid out for me," Vince said, pecking Wendy's pout, "honey, I'd be a cardboard cut out in a neurology convention."

"I know," Wendy sighed, nodding, "don't cheat and visit the Met without me."

"I wouldn't even know how to get there," Vince lied cheekily and she rolled her eyes, tip toeing to kiss him again.

"I'll see you in five hours. Text me if something happens or you get lost."

"I'm not gonna get lost," he huffed, biting her bottom lip and pulling back with a wink, "have fun looking at brains, weirdo."

"Have fun looking at old bricks, nerd," she answered, smiling as Vince turned around and left her.

The Cloisters were more than just old bricks, although it had its fair share of those too. It was the US' only museum dedicated to Middle Ages art and architecture and Vince was almost bouncing on his feet as he got to indulge his nerdy side.

He was a sucker for medieval history and Vince was completely sucked in as he followed the tour guide around, enjoying the role reversal of him being the visitor instead of the one talking endlessly.

The building had a Romanesque section that had him almost vibrating with excitement and snapping a million pictures, bombarding their friend's group chat. The Early Gothic Hall had him tripping over himself to catch up with the tour guide, as Vince got lost gazing at the mosaics.

Finally, after a two hours and a half long tour, he hit the gift shops and cafe.

He ordered a croissant and a latte, then happily went to inspect the overpriced gifts the museum offered. Vince wasn't much of a gift giving person, but he knew Wendy loved all sorts of trinkets, so he bought her a Tudor decorated fountain pen and a silk neckerchief with a Degas painting printed on it.

Deciding he'd buy other trinkets for their friends once the trip was over, Vince happily took his order from the cafe and started walking back to the subway station.

By the time he reached the convention center, he had long finished his food and was starting to not feel so hot. He wasn't sure if it was motion sickness from the thirty minutes long journey from uptown to midtown or if the cafe food hadn't been good, but regardless his stomach was feeling iffy.

He grimaced as a cramp hit him just as he entered the convention center, showing his ticket and ID to the lady at the entrance. It was a big place, with three different floors and Vince let out a sigh of relief as he felt the freezing A/C cool him down.

Maybe it was just some weird motion sickness, he sure as hell wasn't used to subways back in their town.

He fished out his phone, shooting Wendy a text and then wandering around, trying to find a water fountain. There wasn't one, of course, but there was a vending machine, so he bought a can of tonic water, which he was still sipping when he spotted Wendy's dark head among the crowd that was just leaving one of the lecture rooms.

Vince let out a sigh of relief, power walking in her direction, ready to ask if they could cut the trip 30 mins shorter so he could go to their hotel and just rest a bit before dinner with her parents, when he realized Wendy had company.

She spotted him the minute he stopped walking, opening a big smile and gesturing as she exclaimed, "Vince!"

He knew exactly who her companions were, before even being introduced.

Wendy's mom had wavy honey colored hair reaching the middle of her back, with dark eyebrows and lashes, so he knew she wasn't a natural blonde. She was shorter than her daughter, but not by much, and she was pale, wearing impeccable make up, with the same heart shaped face as Wendy.

Next to her, Wendy's father was completely bald, with his daughter's striking green eyes. He also had Wendy's bright smile and looked friendly as he zeroed in Vince.

"You must be Vincenzo," he presumed, raising a hand for Vin to shake, as if Wendy hadn't just said Vince's name, "I'm Sheldon, this is my wife Lydia. We're Wendy's parents."

"Nice to meet you, sir," Vince shook the man's hand, noticing just how tiny it felt in his. Both her parents were shorter than Vince by a lot and he felt all the more out of his element, the stumbling giant compared to these tiny, polite doctors.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance," Lydia said, stepping forward so Vince could shake her hand too.

There was a brief, awkward pause, that Vince quickly ended by asking, "I thought we were meant to meet you for dinner?"

"I just ran into them!" Wendy answered, moving away from her mom so she could take Vince's hand in hers, "I should've guessed you'd come to the convention."

"You'd have known if you had asked," Lydia answered and although she didn't seem to be antagonizing Wendy, her voice had none of the warmth either. Vince opened an uneasy smile.

"I thought it was a neurology convention? Wendy told me you're a dermatologist, ma'am. And you're an... Anesthesia doctor, right, sir?"

"Anesthesiologist," Sheldon nodded, seeming amused, "not half as glamorous as a dermatologist."

"But any hospital would come to a halt without one," Vince said, winning a genuine smile. Lydia crisped her lips.

"Yes, but some of our family friends were lecturing today," she explained, "we had to congratulate them."

Wendy squeezed Vince's fingers tightly between hers, "alright, uhmm... Mother, did you pick where we're having dinner?"

Lydia frowned, light brown eyes turning into little beads as she squinted, "pardon me? We're having dinner at home, of course."

Vince caught Wendy's grimace before she quickly covered it up with a polite smile, "I thought you said you were craving french food..."

"Yes, one of Michel's specialties," Lydia rolled her eyes, "besides, your boyfriend's never been to our place, it's only polite."

Vince wasn't so sure about polite. If he could take a hunch, he'd go with intimidating. As Sheldon led the way and Wendy squeezed his arm, looking vastly uncomfortable, he knew there was no way he could take a detour at the hotel. He'd just have to suck up his stomachache and gobble up whatever fancy food her parents put in front of him.

Instead of getting the subway again, they got into an SUV and Vince grimaced as he slid in alongside Wendy. Despite the spacious car, he could never sit in a backseat, since he was too much of a giant. He felt even more trapped, his knees up to his chest and Wendy muffled a chuckle, planting a small kiss on his bicep.

"I'm sorry," she whispered and he shook his head, smiling at her, but keeping his eyes in the horizon. The last thing he wanted was to get carsick on top of the already uneasy ache in his belly.

Wendy's place, or rather, her parent's place wasn't that far from the conventions center. Only twenty minutes, painful twenty minutes where Vince was acutely aware of the car's heavy silence and the fact his guts were being very vocal. He wasn't sure if he was the only one hearing the noises or not, but to him they were very clear.

It was so weird the fact these people didn't talk.

Their place, a parisian style townhouse in Carnegie Hill, was simultaneously underwhelming and overwhelming. Vince wasn't sure what to do with the information that this house that was upper middle class for sure, was probably worth up to millions because of its location alone. To him, it seemed like a regular 4 rooms house, if a little fancy.

"C'mon," Wendy tugged on his arm, circling the car. He tried to imagine her living there, walking to school... A much younger version of herself. He couldn't.

Lydia walked ahead of them, dropping off her coat with a maid who rushed to open the door and Vince cringed. Even in Italy, where he was aware they had been at a very expensive place, he hadn't seen any staff. Be it because Luke's house was abandoned or not, Vince preferred it that way.

He wasn't sure what to do with himself, if he should hang his jacket or hand it to the poor girl who was looking at him with a puzzled frown. Wendy solved it by grabbing the jacket with a yank and handing it to the girl, all the while smiling, "Hi Mary! How are you? How are the kids?"

Vince studied her, feeling like he was watching a movie. It was Wendy all right, friendly and extroverted, but... More quiet. Her gestures not as dramatic, as if she was holding herself back.

He turned away, while her parents disappeared inside the house. There were only art pieces in the foye, no pictures, so he had to pretend he was very interested in the messy red painting and not dividing his attention between overhearing Wen's conversation and focusing on his upset stomach.

A gurgle ran down his tummy and he pressed his eyes closed, gulping down. It was starting to cramp.

"I'd hate to interrupt your art nerd moment," Wendy whispered, bumping her arm against his, clearly reading right through his pretense, "but do you wanna maybe take a look around the place? I can show you my old room."

"Please," Vince said, relieved. Standing still was just making him hyperaware of how awful he felt.

Wendy grabbed his hand, pulling him forward. He couldn't pay attention. Vaguely Vince heard "this is the reading nook" and "mother's office" and "dining room", but all he could think about was the fact that sweat was starting to run down his back.

She pulled him up the stairs, bouncing on her feet, "and here to the right is my old room, unless they converted it into a dance studio," Wendy said with an eyeroll, before pushing the door open.

It was nothing like her.

Vince would know, he was well versed on her decor tastes by now. Instead the whole room was in shades of beige and cream, with wooden details. It was delicate, but there was no pink, no lilac, no flowers or busy wallpaper or anything that remotely reminded him of his girlfriend.

"Are you sure we're in the right room?" Vince frowned, following her in and looking around. It was a really nice, spacious room, with a small walk in closet and a suite. Still... "Where's the color?"

Wendy snorted, fiddling with the books in the shelves near her big bed, "my parents would have a stroke if I had a bubblegum pink bedroom... What would our relatives think?" she rolled her eyes and Vince frowned.

Back at his parents home, his room was still the same. Messy, with his three motorcycle posters up in the walls, his pile of books and all the nerdy shit he had collected over the years. Wendy's room felt like it was ready to have its picture taken for some decoration magazine.

"Have your parents been to your place yet?" He asked, moving around. She had almost no books, the few he could see were about high school biology or chemistry...

"Could you imagine them there?" Wendy snickered, hugging him by the middle, "my mother would implo- Aww honey, you must be starving."

Vince grimaced, sure she had felt the upset rumbling of his stomach. He made a noncommittal noise, still hellbent on pretending it was fine. It was fine, even if he was feeling more than a little nauseous and shaky with all the cramping.

"Oh look at you..." Vince cooed, instead of addressing what she said, reaching forward to grab a pictured frame. He could easily identify Wendy between two other girls, even if she was different. She was much skinnier in the picture, the dress hung awkwardly on her and there were no boobs, her brown hair twice as long and draping on her front, with heavy bangs, "Joni Mitchell herself."

"Oh shut up!" Wendy squealed, her whole face ablaze. She bit her lip nervously, "I look terrible..."

"No, you don't," Vince rolled his eyes, studying the little Wendy in the picture, "alright, where are the baby pictures?"

Wendy rolled her eyes, turning around in the half hug so she could press her cheek to his chest and Vince winced when that pushed a queasy burp one, that he swallowed back down. He pressed his eyes closed, forcing down a moan over how disgusting his mouth felt, the latte from before creeping up his throat.

"I'm glad you're here with me," Wen whispered, blissfully unaware of his conundrum. Vince grimaced, running a hand up her back and feeling a twinge of self loathing. He hated that his belly was acting up in such an important moment for her.

He knew by now that surely the food at the museum had been bad, his best guess being the barista had used whole milk in his latte and not oat milk.

Unable to answer her, Vince opted for kissing the top of her head and then they peeled apart.

Dinner was hellish. He didn't expect it to be remotely enjoyable, but he didn't expect it to suck so badly. Wendy had warned her parents he was lactose intolerant, so there were plenty of options for him to eat from, much to Vince's absolute horror.

He almost gagged at the creamy sauce that was planted in front of him, his stomach churning and intestines squeezing as he kept a painful smile on and tried to listen to her parents weird overly polite conversation.

The Marshalls were weird people, Vince thought bitterly. Wendy's mother barely spoke, only made little disdainful noises and wrinkled her nose at every single answer Vin gave to Sheldon's questions.

What's your major? What do you work with? Where is your family from?

"Oh you're an immigrant?" Was the first thing she said after at least thirty minutes of painfully awkward silence and Vince silently praying for his death. He hated the silence above all, because he was sure everyone could hear the upset gurgles in his tummy.

He jammed his fork through the fish he had been pushing around his plate for the past half hour, fingers squeezing the metal and forced his voice to remain steady as he said, "yeah, we moved here when I was ten."

"Legally?" Lydia raised an eyebrow and Vince glared at her, the fork sliding on the plate with how much force he was applying and almost sending his fish flying.

"Yes, legally, ma'am," he answered through his teeth, letting the fork clank back down on the porcelain plate and deciding that there was no way he could pretend to be feeling fine, not with these questions, not when it felt like his body was trying to explode on him, "excuse me."

He pushed back from the table, avoiding Wendy's worried gaze and hearing her exclaim "mother! What the fuck was that question!?" and her father scoff "oh great, he's bulimic too," as Vince sped down the hall.

He didn't remember the bathrooms downstairs from Wen's tour, but he did remember her room was a suite, so Vince all but sprinted up the stairs, as fast as he could on shaky legs.

A fierce cramp went through his intestines just as he burst in her room and he clutched his tummy, folding forward and letting out a choked noise as vomit flooded his mouth, dangerous gurgles warning him he had even more pressing issues than that though.

Vince barely had time to shove the bathroom door locked, before collapsing on the seat, pants pooling around his knees, frantically looking for the trashbin as he couldn't manage to swallow the foul liquid in his mouth.

Why didn't rich people ever have visible waste baskets!?

He couldn't find it and another gag made his spine roll, his stomach squeezing again - He reached forward and grabbed a towel, holding it like a cocoon on his lap and finally opening his mouth.

It was humiliating and painful. His intestines were cramping like hell, it felt like there was an iron hand squeezing his insides like a squeak toy. His stomach churned as more of the dinner he had forced down came up, barely digested, staining Wendy's fluffy white towel.

Vince coughed and whimpered, unable to keep the tears at bay. He felt horrible and horrified he'd have to face the Marshalls after this... Vince groaned out loud, struggling to breath, bent in half over the mess, unable to close his mouth with how queasy he felt.

His belly let out a sad whine, cramping and churning, but also feeling hollow and raw. Vince spluttered for air, dry heaving for another handful of minutes before he managed to get his stomach on check.

There was a little knock on the door and then Wendy's voice traveled through, "Vin, can I come in?"

Fuck no.

"No," he answered roughly, glaring at the mess on his lap and folding the ends of the towel, the movement causing him to feel just how sore his middle was. It felt like he had done a million abdominals... The mere act of moving making him pause and breathe through it.

There was another timid knock, "okay... Can I call the car to get us back to the hotel? Or do you need more time?"

He wasn't sure. Vince wanted to get the hell out of this house, preferably before her parents saw the mess, but he also wasn't sure if he trusted his belly to stay in check. He leaned over the towel again, bringing up a small, wet burp and gulping down the bile with a shudder.

"Vin?"

"Just give me a minute!" Vince snapped, before promptly sniffling, swallowing the knot in his throat. He didn't want to yell at her or be sitting on the toilet with a puddle of his own vomit or to be in her parents fucking house where he was so out of place. He didn't want to be there.

Crying — or trying his best not to cry — was not a good added strain on his belly and soon he found himself heaving over the towel again, trying to cough up his stomach lining. His lower belly was still gurgling bloody murder, even though he felt wrung dry, fruitlessly trying to get rid of anything else.

Vince straightened up as best as he could, spitting a pathetic amount of frothy saliva and unsure of what to do with himself. He wiped at his face, brushing away the tears and the drool still clinging to his lips, clearing his throat twice before croaking a pathetic, "Wendy?"

"Yes?" it sounded like she was glued to the door, which was both heartwarming and mortifying. Vince's shoulders fell in defeat.

"Can you help me?" He needed to clean up, but he was afraid of moving with the soiled towel on his lap and cause an even bigger mess. If he dripped vomit on the ground or her ridiculously fancy bathmat, Vince decided he'd jump out of a window.

"Of course," she pushed the door open and Vince looked away immediately. He didn't want to see a disgusted frown or her gagging on instinct because of the smell and the visuals.

Instead her cold hands came to cup his cheek, thumbs rubbing in circles before she dropped her hands to his shoulder, pushing him back slightly, "aw, my darling..."

"I'm so sorry-" Vince groaned, his eyes stinging, "I swear I tried not to make a mess, I just- I don't know where the trash is and I was feeling so horr-"

"Honey, I don't care about the towel," Wendy scoffed, planting a kiss on the top of his head, "you poor thing..." she rubbed his back up and down and Vince leaned forward, hiding his face against her stomach and trying not to break down crying.

"I wanna go home," he groaned and yeah, he meant home, but the hotel was good enough. Wendy let out another sympathetic coo.

"I already called the car," she undid his loose manbun on the base of his neck, pulling his curls up and tying them back again, "lean back, let me handle this..."

Carefully she grabbed the ends of the ruined towel, balling it up and quickly moving it to the sink. Vince heard another loud growl coming from his stomach and cursed, hugging his middle.

"Wendy... I need you to get out. Please, get out-"

She opened her mouth to complain, but it was already far too late. With another loud whine, his intestines finished emptying in the bowl, all the while Vince's blushed cheeks turned white to match the rest of his face and he gagged against his hand.

"Here, here, I got you," Wendy hurried, leaving the towel inside the sink and opening the cabinet. Instead of it opening to the side, it opened forward, concealing a bin shutter. One she promptly grabbed out of it's placement and held under his chin to catch a little dribble of vomit and a load more of empty heaves.

"Shhhh," she held his forehead with one hand, the other one supporting the bin, "honey, you need to breathe..." Vince was a trembling mess under her hand, tears leaking from the corner of his eye.

He let out a pitiful moan, head handing and now openly crying, "this is so gross and humiliating and- I'm s-sorry..."

"It's not your fault, Vin," Wendy scoffed, running her free hand under the tap and pressing it back to his forehead, hand wet and cool, "are you done?"

"I think so... I need to clean up, can you step outside?"

"Yeah," she put the bin back in place, stepping back, "don't worry about the towel, I'll get it to laundr-"

"No, your parents-"

"I don't care about my that, just focus on cleaning up so we can get back to the hotel, alright?" Wendy rolled her eyes, grabbing the ruined towel and rushing out of the room.

Vince met her back in the bedroom a handful of minutes later, face milky white and hunched onto himself, one arm wrapped around his stomach as if to protect it.

"Where are your parents...?"

"Upstairs," Wendy rolled her eyes, wrapping an arm around his back, "sulking. They'll get over it," she guided him to the first floor, "really Vin, I swear it's all fine... I'm the one who's sorry."

"Whatever for?" His voice sounded like he had gargled with glass shards and Vince winced, massaging his throat and following Wendy out of the house, breathing out in relief at the cool air.

"I didn't realize you weren't feeling well, if I had known I would've come up with an excuse so we didn't stay for dinner..." Wendy held the backseat door open for him and he slipped inside the car, relaxing against the leather seats, mumbling a small "good evening" to the driver.

"That's not on you," Vince groaned, pressing his forehead to the cool glass and muffling a small belch as the car started back up, the driver checking the address with Wendy, "it's my fault for not speaking up."

Wendy sighed, leaning in so she could rub his arm and planting a kiss to his shoulder, "you wanted to impress them and me, I don't hold it against you either..." she moved her hand to his belly and Vince let out a groan, leaning back on the seat and closing his eyes and she rubbed small, discreet circles on his tummy.

He must've dozed off, because next he opened his eyes, they were parking before the hotel and Wendy was ushering him out of the car. She didn't say anything as he hugged her closer, like a teddy bear, during the entire elevator trip and not even when he beelined to the bathroom and locked the door.

Vince came out almost an hour later, face flushed from the hot water, with a towel wrapped around his hip, wet hair dangling on either side of his face. He sat down on the bed with a sigh, with no energy to dress himself and Wendy crawled on the bed, draping herself on his back.

"Penny for your thoughts?" she whispered, pressing a kiss to his cheek. He leaned back, opening a little smile as he felt her fingers untangling his hair.

"Your dad said something," he said slowly, almost melting under the hair pets, "when I left the dining room."

"My dad said a lot of things," Wendy teased, but her voice was suddenly tense. Vince rolled his eyes, collapsing back, so he was half lying down, head on her lap.

He played with her hand, giving her time, "he said something about me being another bulimic."

Wendy's hand froze in his and Vince winced, knowing he had heard that right and assumed it correctly. He intertwined their fingers, "Wen?"

She shrugged, looking away as if his knee was suddenly the most interesting part of the room, "it was a long time ago, my parents just seem to think I'm eternally sixteen."

"Can you tell me?"

She hesitated, seeming to think about it, before carefully saying, "before I transitioned, before I even realized I was trans, things were... Weird. Well, bad. I knew something was different and I knew something was different with me. I wasn't like the other boys... My parents definitely could tell I was different, they sent me to an all boys school, probably hoping it would stop me from being gay."

"Sounds counterintuitive," Vince said lightly and she chuckled, moving on the bed so his head was resting on her thigh, but she could drape herself down and look him in the eye.

"I know, right? So they just started to cut all of my interests and hope they could fix me, which obviously they couldn't because there was nothing broken to begin with. Eventually mom even came to terms with I was possibly gay. Except I wasn't," Wendy rolled her eyes, "when I realized I was trans, I told them."

"And they weren't cool about it," Vince guessed and she shook her head, playing with one of his curls.

"Not in the least. So I spiraled... I spiraled bad. It was one thing to know something was different about me, it was another to know what I needed in order to be happy and have it denied and them calling me crazy. I hated my body and I hated my life and it snowballed... Bulimia, self harming, my journals were... Well, much worse than teenage drama. I was hopping from therapist to therapist, because my parents still thought I was straight up delusional, I was dropping weight like crazy, I was drinking..."

Vince frowned, looking at her, "and how did it stop?"

"...I downed one of my mom's bottle of pills, on my sixteenth birthday," Wendy said with a grimace, watching Vince's eyes widen in horror.

"Wendy..."

"I know," she sighed, "so that gave them quite the scare and they stopped being fucking assholes... I got therapy, real therapy, not conversion therapy. I got on antidepressants and had a nutritionist and all that... And then I left for college and I got gender affirming surgery, that helped like a fuckload, and I got to legally change my name and change universities... And things got better."

"I'm so so sorry your folks are such asses and that you went through all this, honey," Vince pouted, tugging her closer, "thank you for telling me, though... For trusting me."

Wendy opened a teary smile, looking away to get herself in check, before she scooted even closer. She traced a hand up and down his naked chest, biting her lip, "I was scared of telling you."

"Why-"

"No, not this," she shrugged, "before, when we first started flirting. I was sooo scared of telling you I was trans and you ruining things. I mean, you're a football player, Vince, I was expecting to get hate crimed."

He flinched, while she rolled her eyes, causing Vince to pout.

"I'd never-"

"I know," Wendy smoothed a curly chest hair back down, straightening it under her fingers, "but you can't blame a girl for looking out for herself."

Vince let out an unhappy noise, before squinting, "is that why you kept vanishing whenever we sexted...? And then texting back the next day?"

Wendy's whole face turned red and she pinched his side, causing him to squirm, opening a smug smile at her reaction.

"I thought you promised to never mention that again!"

"I'm just wondering!" Vince giggled, grabbing at her wrist and pulling her closer, "viene qui — viene qui, amore mio," he scoffed, forcing Wendy to close the space between them and kissing her, "you're amazing and I love you."

"Yeah?" she bumped her nose with his, "e ti amo... too?"

His face lit up at the broken Italian, "close enough," Vince sighed with a big smile, pulling her back in for a kiss.

#i had to end this somewhere #vince monacelli #lactose intolerance #i am literally so nervous about this fic #mywriting

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thatanimewriter · 2 years

Photo

THIS, IS A WORK OF ART.

➳ request: Hello, can I request some headcanons for Free! boys' reaction when they see their s/o wearing revealing clothes? Soft or suggestive it's up to you. Thank you for doing my request 💘

➳ character/s: nanase haruka, tachibana makoto, ryugazaki rei, hazuki nagisa, matsuoka rin

➳ warnings: swearing, suggestiveness, dumb tiktok references

➳ notes: i decided to tell this through stupid tiktok audios and then jump into what they actually do. this is fluff, crack, and suggestive so beware for chaos. this post will expose my tiktok fyp..

𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬 / 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 / 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 / 𝐰𝐢𝐩 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

── 𝐍𝐀𝐍𝐀𝐒𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐔𝐊𝐀.

‘what on earth, is going on... in the house of commons?’

he probably came back from, like

a swimming practice

n he’s tired

he doesn’t have the mental capacity to comprehend this

and just... stares

you’ve genuinely broken him

but when he does return to earth

he puts his team japan swimming jacket over your shoulders

and continues to stare at you before asking you to just come to bed with him

with a small pout on his lips

and you can’t say no

so this outfit remains for his eyes only

though idk how much sleeping you’ll be getting tbh

── 𝐓𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐁𝐀𝐍𝐀 𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐎𝐓𝐎.

‘i am calm... i am relaxed... i am a happy tree... YOU ARE MAKING IT VERY HARD TO BE A HAPPY TREE >:((’

he’s trying just to keep it together

and you’re making it difficult

for him not to freak out

and ask you - very panicked - if you plan on going out like that

he’s not gonna stop you if you were

but he’s concerned for creepers on the street

and he doesn’t want you feeling uncomfortable ;v;

he’s very much worried for your safety because he doesn’t trust others

you are indeed making it hard for him to be a happy tree

because you’ll send him into a spiral of anxiety

he can’t deny you look absolutely fucking amazing

so he does give you a lil extra attention

just a lil bit

to convince you to stay with him and the cats in the neighbourhood

── 𝐑𝐘𝐔𝐆𝐀𝐙𝐀𝐊𝐈 𝐑𝐄𝐈.

‘it can get weirder. i just washed my hands, that’s why they’re wet... no other reason.’

THIS BITCH WAS READING SMUT

he looks between you and the book over and over again with a bright red blush

covers his face with said book

and is conflicted about whether he try to cover his crotch

or not draw attention to it

when you do point it out

S T U T T E R I N G

he cannot explain it to you coherently

if he does

it sounds so sketchy

and entirely unbelievable

because he failed to keep anything undercover

so here you are, wrapped in blankets he draped over you

lookin like a gremlin

── 𝐇𝐀𝐙𝐔𝐊𝐈 𝐍𝐀𝐆𝐈𝐒𝐀.

‘on a scale of one to ten, my friend, you’re fucked :))’

he will 100% join you

playing dress up is his JAM

he comes back wearing a crop top and mini skirt

some thigh high socks (you don’t know where he found those-)

and takes his phone out to take photos with you

then he pushes you away to the bedroom-

to cuddle you to keep you from going out looking too good for the people

get your mind out of the gutter

but if you do want to go out somewhere like that

he’ll come with

just so he can say

‘they’re staring at US, babe’

what an icon

he would never let you do anything on your own

── 𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐒𝐔𝐎𝐊𝐀 𝐑𝐈𝐍.

‘MOMMY DON’T KNOW DADDY’S GETTING HOT-’

the most sexual one

you’re not walking the next day

the FATTEST smirk you’ve ever seen

and a very husky murmur in your ear

plus some roaming hands

‘where do you think you’re goin?’

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

you’re done for

sorry not sorry

your neighbours hate you

he will ask you to wear it again

especially after you guys get a thorough session in

because he can see all the hickeys and marks along your skin

and this bitch is PROUD

what an attractive asshole

431 notes · View notes

imaginesntingz · 3 years

Text

Imagine Gaara comforting you when the depression and anxiety hit

Trigger Warnings: Depression, Anxiety, Swearing(?)

A/N: Hey y’all! This is my first post on this blog. I hope you all enjoy it <3 Please don’t copy any of my works. It’s all originally written and I put a lot of time and effort into my pieces. Please ask me before reposting.

————————-

You were curled up in bed staring into nothingness. The past week or two you’ve tried to keep it at bay, but you felt the ever lingering depression creeping its way in. Nothing in particular happened. It was just always there. There wasn’t a time you could remember it not being there. Sometimes it was muffled like background noise and other times the volume was turned up so loud it was the only thing you could hear. It was your constant companion following you like a shadow. And to top it all off, anxiety was right behind it. You thought about overthinking and overthought about thinking. Racing thoughts kept you up sometimes until the sun shone through the blinds.

Everyone wondered why you were so quiet at times, but they couldn’t hear the ass beating you were getting from your own mind that made it almost impossible to be in the present moment. Nor could you find the energy, the language, nor a fuck to give to even begin to explain the war going on inside you. Temari invited you out to what you thought would be a small kickback yesterday that ended up being a full blown party. Gaara, who was supposed to go with you, was inevitably called in for village business. You ended up socially tapped after just a few hours in. Although Temari was with you and you met up with some chill friends . . Although you were surrounded by people, you still felt completely alone. Although you heard the words coming out of their mouths, you couldn’t keep up with what they were saying. Although you were physically there, you weren’t there. You wanted so badly to just enjoy yourself like everyone else, but it was what it was. After pleading with your sister in law, you finally went home only to find that Gaara was still in the office. One final push that sent you

Spiraling

down

And there you were exhausted but painfully awake in the darkness of your shared room. You didn’t know how long you were lying there. There was no time, only the bottomless ocean that swallowed anything and everything you tried to drop into it. No amount of journaling, affirmations, meditation, prayer, movement, walking, entertainment, pet cuddling, food, water, medication, vitamins, herbs, epsom salt baths, incense, face masks or any of the methods you’ve tried felt tangible to you in that moment. What was the point when you didn’t even have the will to move? How could you think of going on a mission next week when you couldn’t guarantee you’d attempt to leave your room tomorrow? How were you going to take care of your hair if you couldn’t even braid, twist or put it up for the night? How could you call yourself a caring friend when you’re thinking about canceling the dinner you’ve already rescheduled twice?

“My love? Why are you still awake?”

Your husband’s soothing voice jolted you out of your inner dialogue. You hadn’t even heard him come in, too lost in the wall in front of you.

“ . . . Can’t sleep.”

You heard the sound of the door closing and hushed shuffling as he moved around the room. A few moments later, you felt his weight dip the mattress beside you. A warm arm wrapped around your middle, gently pulling you to his chest. His hand moved to intertwine with yours as he spooned you from behind.

“How did it go with Temari? Again I’m sorry I wasn’t able to go with you. I hope you had a good time.”

“It’s fine. It was fine.” you replied flatly.

Gaara caressed the back of your thumb with his own as silence filled the space between you. His lips met the skin of your shoulder and you felt your body gradually relax into his embrace. He was never one to push you when you weren’t ready to talk and always made you feel grounded back to earth with his very presence. Even amidst his many responsibilities as Kazekage, he always made sure to check in on you and provide whatever you may want or need. He would do anything for you if it meant you would feel loved, safe, balanced and happy. Gaara, sweet Gaara, was the love of your lifetimes and you, his. He knew you better than he knew himself and picked up on every detail. Your likes and dislikes. How you took your tea in the morning. Your sensitivities. Every expression. Your body language. The tone in your voice. The slightest change in your eyes. So it was no surprise that he picked up on the shift in your mood right away.

“(y/n) . . . Sweetheart, It’s alright if you don’t want to talk about it right now, but please know that I am here. I love you more than words can express. I am here to listen and support you in any way that I can. I always will be. You know that, right?”

And with that, you couldn’t stop the tears from flowing. Your body trembled as he maneuvered you to face him. He wrapped his arms firmly around you, cocooning you into the safety of his hold. You buried your face into his chest and the calming scent of earth and cinnamon enveloped your senses. Your tears and running nose wetted the shirt he wore, but he didn’t care. Soft kisses were pressed to the crown of your head as his fingers trailed up and down the length of your spine, occasionally drawing soothing circles. You turned your head to listen to the steady rhythm of his heart pressed against you before finally catching your breath to speak.

“I-I’m just so tired of fighting just to be okay all the time. I’ve been taking steps to take care of my mental health, but it still feels like it isn’t enough. It’s like one day I’m fine and a couple days later it feels like I’m back at square one. I just want to exist sometimes. No expectations. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to feel. I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to be anything. I just want to be.”

He squeezed you gently at your words, pausing thoughtfully before responding.

“You once told me that your dream is to become the peace within and despite the chaos inside of you. The chaos all around us. You said that you wish to heal yourself and pass on healing to others. I know it is easy to lose sight of it when you’re in the midst of what feels like a never ending battle, but I wanted to remind you of it because I never want you to lose hope.”

Your eyes widened in shock and turned glassy as he continued on.

“You have brought me out of the depths of the greatest despair and have played a huge role in supporting me in healing from my past. Your love is medicine to my heart. There were times when I was lost that you reminded me to never lose sight of my dream. To never lose sight of what truly matters. Even in the most difficult times, you have always found hope where others have felt hopeless. That is one of the many reasons I love you. I am your husband, so let me be your strength when you are tired and feel you can’t go on because you are my strength, dear wife. We can get through this together. Remember that healing is a lifelong journey, not a destination. So take it one day at a time. Hour by hour or minute by minute if that’s what it takes. You’re so hard on yourself sometimes, but look how far you’ve come to be here. Right now. How much you’ve grown. I want you to know that I am so proud of you, sweetheart. I hope that you can come to be proud of your accomplishments too.”

A fresh wave of tears came over you, but for a completely different reason this time. You practically tackled your poor mans onto his back and your lips met in an intense yet equally loving kiss. His hands worshipped the expanse of your hips and time fell away. Vibrations hummed throughout your body as you pulled back to look into those seafoam green eyes. His red hair and pale complexion highlighted by the light of the moon peeking through the window. He was ethereal.

“I love you, Gaara. So much. I am so happy that you exist. Honestly when you speak so openly and directly like that I feel like my heart is gonna burst through my chest . . . fuckkkk. In a good way though! But seriously, thank you for being you. I never thought I’d be able to say this to someone without fear, but . . when I am with you, I know that I am home. You are my home, love. ”

His eyes softened before a huge grin spread across his now blushing features. Gaara didn’t smile often, but when he did it was a sight to behold. It was like feeling the warmth of a sunrise for the first time. An all encompassing glow.

He sat up and cupped both of your cheeks in his hands, tears now mirroring your own. “I couldn’t have put it better myself. Do you know how beautiful you are? Truly? Your beauty radiates from the inside out. Honestly, what have I done to deserve you?”

“Sir, have you taken a good look at yourself lately? That’s my line. Fight me. Right now.” you deadpanned playfully.

A look of genuine concern crossed over his face. His hands settled on your waist and his posture noticeably drooped.

“(y/n), I would never fight you.”

“ . . . Gaara, I was just joking. I know you wouldn’t.”

“Sarcasm?”

“Mhm.”

“ . . . Right. I should have known. I’ll do better next time.” he sighed dejectedly.

Your body shook with laughter at your man’s adorably serious face. He’s always trying his best. Only Gaara could go from holding space through your tears of sadness, to making you cry from happiness, to having you doubled over with laughter within a matter of moments just by being authentically himself.

“I love you so fucking much, my sweet Gaara.”

“And I, you. My beautiful (y/n).”

You both slept soundly that night in a tangle of limbs, not knowing where one ended or the other began. Two, who together, are one.

191 notes · View notes

spideymarvelws · 3 years

Note

Peter Parker fluff- as friends or on a date, the reader and Peter go to target and cuteness, flirting and a lot of fluff happen 🥺

Some ideas ( if you don’t know what to do )

- Peter picks you an outfit to wear

- your in the makeup section shopping and Peter either gets into it or he gets bored

- in the food isles Peter says that you both should bake together

Even tho i’m not taking requests... i still wanted to do a little hc cause this idea was to cute to pass up that and i was feeling in a fluffy mood

Main Masterlist

I could see it just being something happening out of the blue

Well for Peter at least

He was ready to just chill at your place

Maybe get some last minute work down

But for the most part he was just excited to goof around with you like he did almost every afternoon

Maybe also gather the courage to confess his feelings to you

What he didn’t expect was to be attacked with your puppy dog eyes, asking him to come with you to target

You were already planning on going with a MJ but she bailed last second

For reasons unknown 👀

Definitely not because the constant pinning was getting on her nerves😀

And since it was a last minute decision to go, you didn't have the time to tell Peter your plans

So once he reached you immediately asked him to go with you

He ‘reluctantly’ agreed, coughing away the red all over his face when you grabbed his hand and dragged him out the apartment

Now where I live we don’t have target and I’ve only ever been there once so bare with me here

Peter doesn’t know jack shit about shopping for clothes

His waredrobe consists of the same jacket, two pairs of jeans he just washes every week, maybe a sweater or two and an entire draw dedicated to tshirts with science puns

And while you found the silly puns and jokes cute, especially when he looked so proud and went on little rambles when someone pointed them out

You couldn’t help but wonder how you could do so much better...

Queue the fashion show montage

The classic black jeans, white shirt combo for starters

Definitely trying out the bad boy look with a fake leather jacket over top

Does target sell plaid pants?💀 cause if they do thats a definite yes

We’ve seen how good Tom looks in them

And maybe- possibly you slipped in a crop top

The second best thing you’ve ever done after embarrassing him in front of the avengers

And as much as he didn’t want to admit, he liked it too

Quite a lot

But he couldn’t let you know that

Especially since he was acting done with the entire situation, he had to keep up with the facade

Not that it was believable when his face was the shade of the target logo itself

Subtly slipped the top into the cart

“I thought you didn’t like it?”

“shutup.” 🧍🏻

Picking out some clothes for you wasn’t any better

Because of course you picked the most revealing outfits

Constantly asking how he felt about it, if he liked the colour, the way it made you look

He always answered with the generic answer of you look beautiful in everything or just a quick, high pitched ye-yeah you look great!

Which was true, you could make a potato sack look amazing

But he wasn’t about to call his best friend sexy in the middle of a Target

Nor did he want to get turned on in the middle of a Target

So calling you beautiful seemed like the next best thing

After the absolute torcher mostly on his part in the in the clothes section

It was off to the makeup

And boy, did you take advantage of him

Using him as your brand new canvas

Countless swatches of eye shadow, lipstick, you name it, littered his arms with the first aisle

Honestly anything that caught your eye and had a free sample you used

Ofc this is after covid

Very pouty boi every time you grabbed his arm

But still looked at you like you lite up the sun

Which was always his downfall

Willing to help

But at what cost?

At some point, you managed to reach to his face

Manz do be looking like a full on clown afterwards🤡

But he was your clown 🥰

*cough cough*

Best friend clown ig 👀🙄😒

Luckily you kept makeup wipes in your bag

Because you were cruel, but not that cruel

And while Peter was relieved, he had to make a mental note to ask if you could do his face properly when you reached back home

Maybe it was because he actually quite liked how he looked with coloured eyeliner or maybe it was because of the close proximity of your face to his

Ig we’ll never know🤷‍♀️

At that point you thought you’d put him through enough

So you rewarded him with going to the toy aisle next

Because you can’t convince me that Peter Parker is not a man child by heart

And that is not the first place he would run too anytime he’s taken to any store like target

You’ve never seen him smile wider that day

Probably because all you’ve been making him do was blush and mumble words under his breath 😇

But he was especially pulled to all the spider man toys

In fact as you both entered the aisle there was already a small boy there, giggling with his parents as he held up packaged web-shooters and playing superhero, adorning a plastic spider-man mask on his face

Peter almost burst into a million pieces of confetti

And as the family left, he turned to you with a bright smile

“Can we get some?”

“THE CHILD??!!”

“WHAT!? NO! Not the child, the TOYS!”

such a weird sentence out of context lmaoo

Fast forward the next thirty minutes, the both of you are giggling and laughing, chasing each other around the aisles with plastic swords and shields

Peter having to hold you back from jumping into a crate of plushies

You making sure he never got any silly string cans in his hands

Just pure chaos

How you both haven’t gotten kicked out? Only bingus knows

Having that moment where he sneaks up behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you against him, just muttering boo in your ear to scare you

Him laughing at you

You trying to calm your racing heart

Then realising how close both your faces where

The area becoming quiet

Feeling his breath against your face

His body close to yours

All Peter saw was you and all you saw was Peter

The both of you slowly leaning in, gaze switching from his lips to his eyes, making sure that this was something that he wanted

Feeling his lips brush along yours, reading to fully press them against-

“eXUsE mE? But do you knew where the shampoo is?”

👁👄👁

🧍‍♀️🧍🏻

🦗 🦗 🦗

Peter stepped away and politely guided the lady to the aisle, earning him a pat on the head while you stood awkwardly by your cart

You both strolled to the food area in silence, immediately separating to ‘divide and conquer’ but in reality it was to fully process what just happened

While you were overthinking near the pastries, Peter was working over by the fruits, hating that the moment was ruined and wondering what would’ve happened if you weren’t interrupted

He kept thinking about the fact that you didn’t pull away

That you leaned in with him

That he felt your lips even if it was for a split second

He wasn't about to let his opportunity go to waste

And his sudden burst of courage

So as you both checked out and walked out of the store, he was quick to pack everything in the trunk of the car, pushing the cart right in front of you and blocking you from climbing into the drivers seat

“Get in.”

“Heh?”

“Get in.”

You blinked

“As in, get into the cart?”

“Yes.”🙂

hehe

you’re in danger😀

But nevertheless you got into the cart, trying your best to find a comfortable position

You mind immediately went to Peter rushing you across the carpark, sending you both flying into a hospital bed

But you didn’t expect him to pull out a camera along with a bouquet of flowers you didn’t know he bought

He delicately gave it to you, blushing when your fingers brushed along each other

“I just- I just wanted to get some photos for memories.”

His hand rubbed at the back of his neck, eyes locked on his shoes that tapped on the floor repeatedly

You bit your lip, relaxing into the cart with your leg thrown over the thin plastic and flowers held to your chest

“Like one of your french girls?”

“Okay. Just because we watched Titanic last week does not give you the right to use that line everywhere,”

“Just shut up and take the pictures Parker.”

After a few moments of Peter circling the cart, making sure to get the perfect angles that captured the sun set behind you but kept you as the focus point of the picture, you started to zone out

Instead of focusing on making a certain face or direction, you took in his appearance

Hair tousled and glowing brown, moving perfectly with the wind

His face fully concentrated on taking the pictures

It was a perfect picture

He was a perfect picture

“If this is for memories you gotta get in here too Peter.”

You smiled, waving your hands and ushering for him to come closer

“I- okay.”

He walked behind the cart hesitantly, leaning over with the camera to get the both of you in frame

He had to lean a little bit closer, his face right next to yours

So as his finger pressed the button to take the photo, you took the courage to turn your head to give him a kiss on the cheek

But he turned his head to do the same thing

Resulting the both of your lips connecting, a quick peck that sent to both of your head spiralling and smiles growing

“Never thought our first kiss would be in a target carpark.”

“Can out second one be there too?”

“Damn right it can.”

#peter parker #peter parker x reader #peter parker fluff #peter parker hc #main character shit right there #people only appear for plot purposes😒🤚#as they should

87 notes · View notes

blueprint-han · 4 years

Text

on top of the world ↠ hhj.

genre: royal au; fluff inspired by a fucking barbie movie leave me alone okay

⇥ warnings: if having a ballroom dance with hyunjin is a warning, then <3, district names are randomly chosen, not meant in reference to SKZ !!

wc: 1.5 K

⇥ disclaimer: this fiction does not aim to represent the activities of the real Hwang Hyunjin, nor does it represent JYPE in any form. Events are pure fiction. ♡

type: drabble.

taglist: @stayverse @districtninewriters @inkidz @sunoo-luvs

part of: the url drabble game; requested by @tpwkjerii (requests for this are closed now!)

↯ note: dghwey i had literally no idea what to write for your url, so i searched up the full form of “tpwk” and ended up with “treat people with kindness”. I developed it into an idea i already had. Tell me if you like it <33 ⇥ dawn.☀️

↯ note 2: oh... i cannot... write fantasy for the life in me. ⇥ dawn.☀️

“Ladies, all in line.” The instructor clapped her hand, signaling all the princess and lady royals to line up in front of her. You quickly scrambled out of where you were seated, almost doubling over your heels as you tried to wobble your way to the line.

Oh curse those heels. They were gonna be the reason you crashed headfirst into the floor one day, you were sure. They were those typical pointy, magenta colored pumps that only an expert in poise could pull of properly. Your uniform didn’t help either, layers and layers of clothing — topped of with a jacket, which meant you would be sweating buckets if it weren’t for the air conditioning.

Gosh, you hated being the princess and heir to the next throne. Why couldn’t you just lounge in the courtroom in your sweats and sneakers? They were more fashionable anyway. When your mom had told you that you were gonna attend “Royal Training School”, you’d pictured horse riding in the lush green stables, elegant dinners with rich silverware, and most of all — just having some time away from the royal castle, just having some time for yourself and having fun in that time.

Well, you were in for a huge mess.

It’d been only a week since you attended this place, and you hated it. The place woke you up at 5 a.m., shoved breakfast (which was mostly a piece of “high gluten” bread) to your hands and then took you ballroom dancing. So your day was terrible from the beginning already. There was no horseback riding, no sword fighting, because according to your parents — “princesses didn’t do fights”. Seemed superstitious to you, someone with a forward thinking mind, but what could you do?

Too dazed in your thoughts, your foot slipped and you lurched forward. You yelped loudly, but before you could catch the attention of the class or feel the polished marble against your face, a hand wrapped around your waist, ceasing your fall and holding you mid-air.

“You okay, princess?”

You snapped back into attention, eyes meeting with your classmates, all of them having a shocked look on their faces, and some of them anger. Turning around, you were surprised to gaze into hazel brown eyes that seemed to draw you in without reserve.

“Um..., princess?”

“Ah, yes!” You snapped out of it once again, straightening up as you smoothened the fabric of your shirt. “T-Thank you.” You took once glance at his face, and... wow. He was absolutely ethereal. His golden locks of hair fell perfectly over his temples, he adorned a majestic black suit and by just looking at him, he exuded confidence.

He giggled. “It’s alright, princess. Glad you aren’t hurt.”

“Oh, that-”

“Ahem!” The both of you looked to the side, noticing now how the entire class, along with the instructor were giving you snobby glares. “If you’re done chit chatting, can we start out class, Princess Y/N and Prince Hyunjin?”

Hyunjin. That was a pretty name.

You noticed that there was another line of men, wearing similar attire like Hyunjin, lined up in front of the princesses. “They must be from another academy,” Silent thoughts flooded your mind as you took your place, and your eyes went wide when you found yourself face to face with the Hyunjin guy again, though there was a reasonable distance between the both of you.

“Now, royals.” The instructor chimed, clacking her heels against the surface as she waltzed to the edge of the room. “You’ve been practicing ballroom dancing with yourselves for a while now, so The Head and me decided that it would be a good idea for you to get a little peek of what the actual thing looks like.” She said uninterestedly, picking at the underside of the nails as she started the music.

Immediately, slow, melodious music flooded through the speakers as you looked at one another. and then at the guy in front of you... err, Hyunjin. “You’ve already been partnered up, so get started.”

Your mouth dropped open a bit when you realised what the instructor’s statement meant, almost panicking when all the girls next to you bowed down gracefully, coaxing you to follow the same. Hyunjin did the signature “bow down and lend a hand” pose like his other classmates, and you hesitantly straightened up, lending a hand to him.

Immediately, just like how confident he looked, he pulled you close to himself, settling his hands on your hips as a smirk graced his features.

Ah... so he’d noticed you blushing.

You didn’t know why you were blushing in the first place. You’d never met this person before, but something about him just made the giddy schoolgirl in you bubble up to the surface. You shyly settled your hands on his shoulders, moving along to the beat with his motions... and silently praying your ant’s worth of dancing knowledge would not fuck this up.

“So, should we do the introductions?”

“What?” You asked, almost stumbling on your feet once again. You made a mental reminder to burn the current pair of heels you were sporting.

“Don’t you introduce yourself to the person you’re dancing with?” he heaved a laugh, almost melting at how adorably bashful you were getting in his hold. You were about to mumble a response, but then stopped, gathered your confidence, and smiled sweetly.

“Oh well then, I’m Princess Y/N from District 8; honor to meet you.” You said in a sing song voice, muffling a laugh as Hyunjin twirled you around in his hold and pulled you back. The velvet coat was soft under your touch, and for some odd reason, you wondered how his soft-lookin hair would feel under your palm.

“I’m Prince Hyunjin from District 10; equally honored to meet you,” He tilted his head to the side and you noticed him bite his lip for a second. Brushing it off, you continued swaying to the music, feeling slightly more at ease now.

“How’s school here, princess Y/N? You enjoying?” His tone was respectful, almost like he was talking to a friend he met after many years,

“Nah,” You rolled your eyes, making Hyunjin look at you like a confused puppy, waiting for you to explain. Hyunjin wasn’t used to someone hearing they disliked royal training, especially when he’d found it nothing but enjoying.

“It’s just the same old. “Oh go to ballroom, learn to balance books on your head, walk with grace, eat your food elegantly, dance again. sleep early!” Your voice was a hushed whisper, yet mocking. “You’d think that’s what I should’ve expected, but I wanted to learn sword fighting, horse riding, that kind of stuff. They barely let us outdoors here.” You tsked, watching as Hyunjin bit his lip again.

“What?” You asked, figuring that Hyunjin knew you’d noticed his action.

He chuckled. “Your stepping on my toes.”

“Oh crap I am?” You looed down, pulling your feet farther away from his as an apology crawled up your tongue, but before you could shoot it out, Hyunjin stopped you. “It’s okay.”

“Maybe I’ll step on yours and we’ll get even?” He winked, a smug look on is face as he waited for your reply. The music was basically forgotten at his point, both f you lost in a world where nobody else existed, just you, your thoughts, your words, and your giggles. You mirrored his playful expression. “I’d like to see you try.”

Hyunjin didn’t break eye contact, and you felt a small flutter in your chest when he did so. He lifted his foot, but you were too quick, you moved your foot away the moment he settled his own down, and then for revenge, you stepped on his foot once again.

“Ouch!” Hyunjin shrieked, and thanks to the loud music. no one could hear him. You hadn’t stomped too hard thankfully, but Hyunjin’s cute expression when he crinkled his nose sent you into a spiral of giggles.

“Hey! You’re supposed to treat people with kindness” He pouted, twirling you around once again as he led you to the next spot in the ballroom. Your feet basically slid around at this point, and you didn’t even mind your heels.

“Yeah? That’s what you get for trying to step on a princess’ toes.” You rested your head against his shoulder, muffling your giggles as well as calming your heart at the sudden sprut of confidence.

Hyunjin’s grip on your waist tightened, making you straighten up, faint heat dusting your cheeks. The dance was almost coming to an end, and you wished it could go on forever. You hadn’t had such fun in a while, but unfortunately, Hyunjin didn’t belong to this academy. Sadly, the dance would come to an end.

“Maybe I can teach you horse riding?” Hyunjin inquired, a curious glint in his eyes as he watched your reaction. You gasped in shock.

“Y-you’d be willing to do that?”

“Of course, if you’re up for it.”

“How will we even do that?”

“I mean, you can’t tell me you haven’t sneaked out of the premises at night.”

You remained silent.

“Thought so.” Hyunjin winked again. “So, what do you say?”

You twirled around one more time, moving slightly closer to him when you came back this time. The next moment, the music stopped, and you murmured to him with a smirk pulled at your lips.

“I’d be on top of the world.”

↯ note: 🕯️ ignore me this is just a small prayer that tumblr doesn’t make me battle the tags yet again 🕯️ may the tumblr gods be in my favor atleast this once ;-; 🕯️ ⇥ dawn.☀️

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ollieofthebeholder · 3 years

Text

For We Are Afar With the Dawning: A RQG Fic

Also on AO3. Contains spoilers for Episode 207.

Augusta is floating. Both literally and metaphorically.

Mentally, she’s floating on a peachy-pink cloud of euphoria and warmth and happiness and contentment. It’s an absolutely perfect day, the kind of day she never gets to experience anymore. The sky is a clear blue dotted with puffy white clouds, the sun bright enough to illuminate the scene but not so bright to hurt the eyes, and it’s pleasantly warm without being oppressively hot. The gentle, cooling breeze brings with it the faint scents of something floral; Augusta’s never been all that great with scents per se, but she thinks it might be roses or something.

Physically, she’s in a rowboat in the middle of a glassy lake, lying on her back with her arms folded contentedly over her chest and her head resting on a lap that seems to mostly comprise of white illusion. Augusta herself is wearing a loose-fitting lawn shirt and a pair of trousers, her feet bare. A pair of oars rest in the locks on either side, but nobody is using them.

“You know, Gus, I think you’re going to have a curly crop when this grows out a bit.” Delicate fingers run through Augusta’s delightfully short hair. “You’re going to look quite rakish.”

“Just so you don’t try to get me to wear one of those dreadful outfits you were talking about that boy wearing in your book.” Augusta smiles. “Really, Lou, where’d you come up with that? Nobody actually dresses like that.”

Louisa laughs. “I wanted it to be really clear that there was no way Jo would ever fall in love with him. Why would she love someone who dresses like that?”

“You should have given one of the girls who came to the Christmas play a name,” Augusta says. “And a personality. And a reason to come back.”

“Are you suggesting I should have put you in the book after all? I thought you didn’t like publicity, O Best Beloved.”

“I don’t like being tied to my brother. Being tied to you is different.” Augusta punctuates this by reaching up and twirling a strand of Louisa’s dark hair around a finger.

Louisa swats her hand away, but she’s laughing again. “Are you going to row us back to shore at any point? Mary and Emma should be here soon. Your Sasha was going to take the carriage and go get them.”

“She’s not my Sasha,” Augusta protests.

“She could be, if you asked, I’m sure. You know we’re all just yours for the asking.”

“Oh, stop it. That’s not how this works.”

“You can’t tell me the idea doesn’t appeal to you,” Louisa says relentlessly. “Having your own personal harem of beautiful and brilliant women. Mary for those delightful scientific discussions and Emmuska for solving puzzles and mysteries and Sasha for going on daring adventures and robbing tombs with and me for...well, when you want to be lazy and bored, I suppose.”

“Louisa May Alcott.” Augusta sits up and takes both of Louisa’s hands in hers. “You have no idea how happy I am. Right here. With you. I don’t need anyone else. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Sasha and Mary and Emmuska and I love having them around...and you’re right, Sasha’s so much fun to go poking around places we aren’t wanted with. But if none of them were here, I’d be happy just the same. Maybe more so. Being with you?” She brings Louisa’s hands up and kisses them tenderly. “This is perfect.”

Louisa blushes beautifully, but there’s a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. “You’re just saying that because you don’t want to row back to shore.”

Augusta laughs. “You wound me. Right here.” She places one hand over her heart.

She’s joking, but suddenly, it feels like Louisa—or someone—has wounded her. There’s a sudden, sharp, stabbing pain in her heart, and the last thing she sees is Louisa’s sparkling eyes and sweet smile before the world goes white.

It resolves after a moment. Now instead of sitting in a boat, Augusta is sitting on a rock in a clearing in a verdant forest. Looking up, she can see the night sky and the stars, so many stars, more than she’s ever seen, and the sweep of the Milky Way looks almost green. The moon shines down on the clearing and illuminates her.

Augusta looks down at herself. She’s wearing more practical clothes now—boots, trousers, tunic, leather jacket—actually, it’s a lot like what Sasha Rackett wore when Augusta first met her, nearly two years ago now, except newer and neater. Across her lap is a well-made crossbow.

A big beast swoops overhead, one Augusta can’t identify (she grew up in a city and the only kind of hunting really considered proper for young ladies of her station was foxhunting). A moment later, there’s a rustle in the undergrowth, and a figure pops out into the clearing, a short figure with outsize ears and a drawn bow.

“Wotcher,” the figure says. “Seen a big beastie go by here?”

“It went that way,” Augusta says, pointing the direction she saw the beast fly. “What is it?”

The hunter—she presumes—shrugs. “Dunno. Still haven’t figured it out. Haven’t caught it yet. Maybe once I do, I’ll know. For now I just call it The Beast.”

He doesn’t seem particularly put out by this. He has a hunt, and what exactly he’s hunting doesn’t seem to matter much; he’ll find the answers when he finds the beast. It’s something Augusta feels an odd kinship towards. “How long have you been hunting it?”

The hunter shrugs again. “Dunno. What year is it?”

Augusta tells him. The hunter draws in a breath, then nods. “Well, then...two thousand years, give or take a couple hundred.”

“Ah.” Augusta looks around her. “We’re dead, then.”

“Probably, yeah. Well, I know I am. You probably are too. What were you doing?”

Augusta thinks for a moment. “Dreaming.”

The hunter snorts. “Not the best way to go out.”

“It’s not like I chose to go out that way. I’d rather have gone down fighting.” Augusta sighs. “At least it was a pleasant dream, though.”

She touches her chest, out of habit, and has a moment of panic when she can’t find what she’s looking for. Frantically, she scrambles at her neck until she finds the fine chain, then pulls it out and breathes a sigh of relief when the heavy silver locket lands in her palm. Just to be sure, she pops it open, and Louisa’s eyes stare back at her.

Augusta smiles back at the picture, then looks up to see the hunter staring at her inscrutably. She coughs and closes the locket. “Sorry. Just...checking.”

The hunter reaches into his own clothing and pulls out a photograph, but doesn’t show it to her—which startles Augusta, as she didn’t think photographs were that old—before putting it back. “It’s important to hold onto these things. Until you find them. Everything dies, after all.”

“That...probably shouldn’t be comforting, and yet…” Augusta takes a deep breath. “Everything does die, doesn’t it? I don’t know that this is exactly her idea of paradise, though.” Then again, she hadn’t realized it was hers, either.

The hunter shrugs. “Probably not theirs, either. But they all connect. I’ve got a camp set up.” He gestures off to one side. “Check in there every few...decades, maybe. Just to see if they’re there yet. It’ll be nice to have a home to come back to, someday, but for now...there’s the hunt.”

Augusta considers that as she tucks the locket back into her shirt, then looks down at the crossbow on her lap. “I’ve never really hunted in forests before, but I’m not bad at hunting in general.”

“I’d be willing to teach you some tactics. If you’re interested. Just until we both find what we’re looking for.”

Augusta stands up, shoulders the crossbow, and holds out her other hand. “My friends call me Gus.”

The hunter grins, red eyes sparkling, as he accepts her handshake. “Grizzop.”

~*~*~*~

Sumutnyerl soars, buoyed up by a thermal, then banks to one side and swoops low, skimming over the grass. This is their favorite form; they love to fly, and it’s a perfect day for it.

Beside them, another eagle tacks and swoops playfully, then sheers off. Sumutnyerl beats her wings to gain a bit of altitude and follows. For a moment, they race one another straight up into the air. Then the other eagle dips backwards into a loop. Sumutnyerl screeches in delight and goes into a spiraling dive, weaving around the other.

They continue this sky-dance for several minutes before the other leads up to the branches of a tree; Sumutnyerl follows and lands on a branch, then transforms back. They’re already laughing with delight. “I never get tired of that.”

“Nor should you.” Oblaitko smiles warmly, their eyes soft and kind. “The day one grows accustomed to the gifts that have been given is the day one ceases to live and begins to only exist.”

“I mean doing it with you.” Sumutnyerl looks out over the rolling meadow. “I would that we could do this forever.”

“We can,” Oblaitko answers. “Our duties are...light. And not incompatible. We needn’t go back to the town at all. You can attend to the Garden, I to the River, and we can spend the rest of our time here.”

Sumutnyerl considers. The idea is...not unwelcome. She feels an utter sense of peace here, with Oblaitko by their side. More than that, they feel like herself, like an individual and not just part of a collective.

“I would like that,” they say at last. “Very much.”

Oblaitko tucks a strand of Sumutnyerl’s hair behind their ear. “As would I.”

“A bargain, then.”

“A bargain,” Oblaitko agrees. “We can ask permission in the morning, but I hardly think the Council will object. It will save resources, after all.”

Sumutnyerl sighs and leans their head on Oblaitko’s shoulder. They place their arm around her shoulders and pull them close, one hand idly resting over their heart.

For just a second, Sumutnyerl wonders if Oblaitko is concealing a blade, because they suddenly feel a sharp, stabbing pain in their chest. They look up in shock, but there’s nothing on Oblaitko’s face to indicate they’re doing anything...and then the world goes white.

When Sumutnyerl’s vision clears, they are no longer in the branches of a tree, but somewhere else, somewhere far too familiar. Awareness settles on Sumutnyerl’s shoulders as they look around the Garden of Yerlick, but not as it is in life—currently or under ordinary circumstances. The flowers bloom as they past, trees put out their hands like old friends, and the spirits of the dead are instantly visible, smiling and calling to them.

Ah. This again.

“Sumutnyerl?”

Sumutnyerl turns and smiles again. Oblaitko stands before them once more, not in the same form as a moment ago—no longer young, their hair white, their back bent with age and the weight of their position—but their eyes are the same warm, kind brown they have always been .Right now, they are wide with shock and not a little sorrow.

“Hello, my dear friend,” Sumutnyerl says.

“Sumutnyerl,” Oblaitko says again. “Why...how are you here? Like this? You—you mustn’t. It isn’t your time.”

“Perhaps not,” Sumutnyerl agrees. They touch their heart, where the phantom pain is fading fast. “I—I believe I may have been stabbed in my sleep.” Like Nik, they think, with a mingling of regret and anger.

“You will be given another chance.” Oblaitko states this quite calmly, as if it is a given fact rather than an opinion...or a hope. “The Garden needs you. Our people need you.”

“Perhaps I shall be given the offer,” Sumutnyerl replies. “And...perhaps I will accept. But...well. There is much that has happened. Perhaps if I am not needed...perhaps if my last great task has been fulfilled after all…” They hold out their hands. “Would you allow me to stay?”

Oblaitko takes Sumutnyerl’s hands, and stares into their eyes, and no other words are necessary.

~*~*~*~

Hamid knows, on some level, that he’s dreaming, if only because Zolf isn’t really one for parties. That doesn’t stop him from being happy, though. Hamid’s sleep for the past few months has been dreamless at best, teeming with nightmares more commonly, and occasionally non-existent at worst. A part of him has started to believe he’ll never have beautiful dreams again, so the fact that this is a good dream means he’s going to enjoy it for all it’s worth.

And the others all look happy, too. Aziza sings beautifully, her eyes sparkling and face expressive, and her husband gazes on her with a proud, adoring smile. Saleh, his wife, and Hamid’s mother are listening to Oscar tell some story, gesturing dramatically with his drink, his other hand being occupied holding Zolf’s. Zolf has a faint smile on his face as he listens to a story he’s probably heard a hundred times—hell, it’s probably one he was there for, those are Oscar’s favorite stories after all—but that he never gets tired of hearing Oscar tell. Hamid’s father looks more relaxed and content than Hamid has seen him...well, ever since he started paying attention anyway, deep in conversation with Saira and Apophis. Azu, wearing the gown she and Hamid designed together for the opening of the so-called Bow Bar, is making a valiant effort at letting Ismail teach her one of the fancy dances he’s learned, while Ishaq enthusiastically does the same with Cel. Skraak and Grizzop have become fast friends, which Hamid isn’t surprised by, and he wonders what they’re talking about and if he’s going to have to help Zolf clean it up later.

Hamid dances. He loves to dance, almost as much as he loves to fly, and he doesn’t really mind that he doesn’t have a partner at the moment. As he spins, putting in one of the fanciest twirls he knows, he catches Sasha’s eye across the room and grins; she grins back and shoots him a double thumbs-up.

Hamid starts in Sasha’s direction. She’s so good on her feet, he thinks, she’ll be really good at dancing, and she’ll love it. Aziza’s just wrapping up the song she’s currently working on, and Hamid’s pretty sure she’s going to go into the aria from Act I of Carmen, which was her first leading role and one she’s quite proud of. Hamid knows with absolute certainty that Sasha will kill it at a tango.

Before he gets to her, he passes his mother and gets a kiss on the cheek. Saleh gives him a friendly poke in the chest as he passes, which actually hurts a lot more than Hamid is expecting, but he tries to laugh it off, especially as Saleh is laughing, too.

Zolf turns to face him. Letting go of Oscar’s hand, he reaches over and touches Hamid’s forehead with one thumb. He’s still smiling a little, and the look in his eyes is one he hasn’t given Hamid in a long time—not since the beach south of Calais, after they survived the storm sailing from Dover. It warms Hamid all the way to his toes.

“It won’t end this way,” he says, and while he sounds like he’s talking at an ordinary volume, Hamid somehow gets the feeling that nobody can hear Zolf’s words but him. “I won’t let it. Your heart’s too big to be destroyed by something like this.”

Hamid feels simultaneously stronger than he has in ages and like something’s being sucked out of his lungs. His wings unfurl from his back before he completely registers that the music is gone.

He blinks. Someone is holding him—it feels like Cel—and it’s dark. The memory of the lights dimming and then going out comes to him...and they’d been heading to the lab, he remembers, because of the tunnel, but what—?

Zolf’s voice comes from not very far in front of him. “Get in in the door, and get safe.”

Hamid blinks again. That’s an order, they’re in the field—he promised he would follow Zolf’s orders in the field, so even if he doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, he’s going to do what he’s just been told and he can ask questions once they’re all safe. Surely Zolf will be right behind him.

He takes in a breath to acknowledge his instructions—and sucks in a lungful of sweet-smelling gas. Instantly, he drops unconscious back into Cel’s arms.

He blinks and he’s at the party again. Zolf is still standing in front of him, smiling as he turns back to the conversation—did he leave for a minute? No, surely not, Hamid’s been here the whole time, he thinks fuzzily.

The song wraps up on a triumphant sting, and there’s a smattering of polite applause, and then just as Hamid suspected, the music starts up and it’s “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” from Carmen. He hurries over to Sasha and holds out a hand. “Sasha, come on, you’ll love this!” he cries.

Laughing, Sasha takes his hand and lets him pull her onto the ballroom floor. She’s a natural at the tango. Hamid would never have dared ask anyone else to do this dance with him; it’s a fiery dance of passion, usually, but this is Sasha and she’s just his favorite sister, as far as he’s concerned, even if she’s not his sister by blood. There’s no romance behind what they’re doing here, no heat. They’re just two kids having fun, really, laughing and taking increasingly flamboyant chances with the flashier moves.

He ends the dance by dipping her, somehow, despite the fact that she’s two feet taller than he is, but they’re both flushed and laughing and having a great time. It doesn’t even matter that they overbalance and fall onto the dance floor. Nobody’s really watching them anyway, which is just the way Hamid wants it right now. He doesn’t have to be the center of attention all the time. Not even most of the time.

“I like your wings,” Sasha says, poking one of them, and when did they come out? Hamid genuinely can’t remember. “This ‘cause you’re a Meritocrat?”

“I’m descended from a dragon,” Hamid corrects her. “I’m not a Meritocrat.”

“Good. But the wings are cool anyway. Do they work?”

“Oh! Yes. Want to see?” Hamid gets to his feet and manages—somehow—to pull Sasha up too. “I can cast fly on you and we can—”

“No,” Sasha interrupts, surprising him. She pulls him into a tight hug, and, oh, Sasha gives the best hugs. Hamid’s always suspected she would, but she’s always been iffy about being touched. If his wings hadn’t already popped out with joy—apparently—they would be bursting out now. He hugs her back just as tightly as she lifts him off the ground with the force of her embrace..

“Don’t you give up, Hamid,” she says in his ear. “Don’t you do it. There’s no dream so good it’s worth losing the whole world for. You get back out there and you fight to make the world this good. Because this right here? This is worth fighting for.”

Just a little of the euphoria peels back from the edges of Hamid’s mind, and he clings to Sasha a little tighter. “I don’t want to lose you again.”

“’M always with you, mate. Just like you were always with me. We’ll meet again. But right now, you’ve got to go save the world for me.” Sasha pulls back enough to smile at him, and her eyes are wet. “Make it a good one.”

Hamid’s eyes snap open.

~*~*~*~

If you had asked Oscar even a year ago, he would never have described this as the most perfect moment of his life. He would have said that the most perfect moment he could imagine is a gala celebrating the opening of his greatest work, a play that will be talked about through the ages and mean his name lives on long after he does, resplendent in his finest clothes, a rapt audience listening to him declaim his opinions—finally being the center of attention for art instead of admin.

But no. He enjoyed that, yes, and he’s looking forward to reading the description of it in the newspapers. But the truly perfect moment is this one. Just a simple, quiet family breakfast the morning after.

Azu is at more or less the opposite side of the round kitchen table they’re using instead of the formal dining table, nursing a hangover bigger than she is; she’s got a glass of tomato juice and a cup of strong black coffee and isn’t really talking to anyone. Cel is scribbling on a piece of paper and muttering under their breath, probably trying to improve or refine the special effects they and the kobolds designed and built for the production. Zolf presides over the stove as usual, his beard done up in one of the intricate braids he only does when he’s in an especially good mood and his shirtsleeves rolled up to expose his forearms. Sasha stands a little way down the counter, beaming as she slices and chops meat and vegetables for him; she’s the only one Zolf allows to help him in the kitchen, and even then only on special occasions. Hamid sits to Oscar’s left, a pile of newspapers between them, his pre-breakfast snack actually half-forgotten at his elbow.

“The reviews look really good, Oscar,” he says, sounding almost as delighted as Oscar feels as he hands over the Times, folded back to the Arts page. “All the criticisms I’ve seen so far have been about the acting, not the play itself.”

“I told you to cast Barnes in the lead instead,” Zolf calls from the stove.

“Not my call, darling. I’m not the casting director.” Oscar reads the article Hamid is handing him, a broad smile blooming across his face as he reads. Hamid’s right, the reviews are glowing, and this is from a critic who’s notoriously hard to please. A particular phrase about halfway down the column catches his eye: Wilde’s masterful words and turn of phrase makes even Johnson’s leaden performance turn to the purest gold.

Turning a few pages on, Oscar opens the society page and is delighted to see that most of it has been given over to a description of the party celebrating the opening. There are even a couple of pictures accompanying the article, and Oscar very carefully folds the paper back so that one of them is more fully visible—Oscar at the center, smiling broadly and holding a drink in one hand, his other arm draped around Zolf’s shoulders, the others arrayed around him looking pleased and proud.

“Have you thought about your next project?” Cel asks, looking up from their notes.

Oscar shakes his head before Cel can launch into an elaboration of the question. “No, not yet. I think I’ll take some time to see how this one does first. It may have opened well, but that doesn’t mean it will end well.” He sighs, a bit dramatically but not entirely put-0n. “Things so rarely do.”

“Things rarely stay good the whole time they’re happening, but that doesn’t mean they won’t end well,” Azu points out. “We got here, didn’t we?”

“And you’ve earned it,” Hamid adds encouragingly. “Happy endings feel a lot better when you have to work for them.”

“Cheers to that.” Sasha tosses her knife into the air; it flips four times and then returns to her hand without her even looking at it, and she goes back to her chopping.

“Have a bit of faith, Wilde,” Zolf chides him.

Oscar smiles fondly at his dwarf as he sets aside the paper. Azu’s faith in Aphrodite is a certainty you can cut your teeth on, but Zolf’s faith in Hope is nearly contagious. Like their happy ending, Zolf has worked for his faith, he’s earned it, and it’s never betrayed him. It’s the only reason any of them are still here, really. It’s the anchor that kept Cel from spiraling with guilt, it’s the keel that steadied Azu when she doubted herself (not her god, never her god), it’s the beacon that led Sasha back to them. And it’s the only reason Oscar and Hamid are still alive, albeit with matching scars—

Wait. Where did that come from?

Shaking his head slightly, Oscar pushes away from the table and passes behind Zolf, touching him first on the shoulder, then the cheek. “I have plenty of faith, dearest. In you if nothing else.”

“Get away from my workspace,” Zolf grumbles, though without any heat.

Oscar smirks and moves down the counter towards the cutting board, ostentatiously reaching for one of the ingredients waiting to be added to whatever Zolf is preparing. Sasha jabs playfully at his chest to make him back off.

She’s too good at what she does to accidentally stab someone when she’s only pretending to, and she wouldn’t stab him, especially not with Zolf’s good tomato knife; she has too much respect for both Zolf and blades to do that. And yet, pain suddenly erupts in Oscar’s heart, as though she’s driven a blade far bigger than the serrated one she’s holding into his chest. He inhales sharply, and the world goes white.

For just a moment, it resolves itself into his flat in Paris from when he was in university, or something similar anyway, but then it swirls into a pink mist. He feels something solid holding onto him, something anchoring him firmly in reality, and warmth floods his entire being. He feels safe and protected and cherished, and it gives him strength.

His eyes open, and he finds himself lying more or less on his back. Zolf kneels next to him, one hand tenderly cradling his jaw, the other pressed to his heart, which hurts like anything.

“Wh—huh—?” Oscar tries to sit up, his mind scrambling to fit this dark and rather crowded antechamber or wherever it is they are in with the light and airy kitchen-slash-breakfast nook he remembers from just a few...moments ago? What’s going on?

Zolf’s face is pale, his blue eyes intent, and there’s a trickle of blood near his hairline that worries Oscar in a vague and distant way. But he doesn’t have time to ask about it before Zolf looks into Oscar’s eyes and says in a voice that crackles faintly with an emotion he can’t place, “Get the others out, and get safe.”

Before Oscar can question it, or protest, or even figure out what it is they’re supposed to be safe from, Zolf half-shoves, half-throws him through a door that’s barely open wide enough for him to get through. He slides a few feet until he’s able to at least drag himself on his hands and feet a little further into the room. Someone runs past him and takes hold of the door, but doesn’t close it.

Oscar blinks hard, shaking his head to clear it. There’s a sweet smell in the air and he almost sniffs at it, almost tries to see what it is, but then his eyes fall on the crumpled figure not far from where he is and it acts like a dash of cold water across his brain. Hamid. Hamid is flopped in a pitiful heap, his new wings draped across the floor, his eyes closed.

He was dreaming. Oscar realizes that in the same moment that he takes in Hamid’s unconscious (oh, gods, please let him only be unconscious, Oscar cannot have failed him a second time) form and the sounds of something that is definitely not making breakfast in the other room. He pushes himself to a standing position and looks around the room. It doesn’t take long to spot the tunnel Hamid spoke of, at the back of the lab. That must be both out and safe.

“Tell the others to follow us,” he calls over his shoulder to the person he now recognizes as Ada, hurrying over to Hamid’s side and hefting him into his arms. The wings make it awkward, but Hamid sort of nestles into Oscar’s arms. Thank the gods, he’s alive.

Oscar runs. He heads down the tunnel, the light fading behind him, but he can’t spare a hand to cast any sort of spell to help him, so he just gets as far as he can. There’s just enough light left for him to see the gate before he runs headlong into it, and he checks, then looks over his shoulder. The others will be coming any moment now, he tells himself. They just have to wait a moment.

He sets Hamid down on the ground and looks him over quickly. He looks...fine, really. A bit disheveled, but fine. Then Oscar notices the bloodied tear in his shirt. Underneath the rend is a scar so new its edges are still shiny, directly over Hamid’s warm and generous heart.

It doesn’t take a genius to guess what happened. And, touching his own chest briefly, Oscar feels the same thing.

He checks Hamid over quickly, and even though he’s a bit rattled, he realizes that the sweet smell he noticed earlier is probably what knocked Hamid out; other than that, he looks fine. Oscar sniffs the air experimentally. It’s a bit fresher down here, so he should be able to…

“Hamid,” he says urgently, shaking the halfling, then slapping his face as gently as possible. “Wake up!”

Hamid’s eyes snap open. There’s a moment of disorientation before his eyes clear. “Oscar?” he says, his voice a bit higher-pitched than normal as he sits up. “What’s—what happened?”

Oscar still has no idea, actually, except for one absolute certainty so strong he sensed it even in his dreams, maybe even before it happened. “Zolf saved us.”

The confusion on Hamid’s face melts into fierce determination. “Then let’s go return the favor.”

#ollie writes fanfic #rusty quill gaming #rqg 207 #207 spoilers #minor character death #grief mention #violence mention #augusta leigh (rqg)#sumutnyerl #hamid saleh haroun al tahan #oscar wilde (rqg)

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tipsydipsydo · 4 years

Text

Touched [M]

Pairing: Yoongi x Reader

Gender of the Reader: female

Word Count: 2.2k

Rating: 18+

Genre: Fluff; Smut

Warnings: tooth rotting fluff; Full Body Massage; Petnames; Praising; Body-Worshipping; Nipple Play; Fingering; Mentions of pubic Hair; kinda tantric orgasm (?); Yoongi is awfully sweet and adorable! 🤧💕

A/N: I wrote this here for my sweet Darling Sibi @borathae who had an incredible awful week and I just thought about how to make a little bit up for this shitty week. I love you and I hope you like it, Baby~ 🙈💖

Summary: This week was just so awful and shitty, every muscle in your body hurts and you're absolutely exhausted from this horror week. But Yoongi has an Idea to relax you and make you feel so loved in a way, that couldn't make thousands of compliments.

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This following story is my intellectual property and belongs only to my blog tipsydipsydo.tumblr.com!

I’ll not accept any kind of reposting, stealing or using/editing my work!

That includes reposting my content on other social media platforms too, even when you link me as the original author.

Thank you.

"Just relax. And if you don't want something, please just tell me.", Yoongi whispers in your ear as he lays you down on your stomach on the big king size bed. You just nod exhausted and worn out, really don’t want anything more than relaxation and rest.

This week had just been terrible and exhausting. You don't know why, but Mother Nature thought this week is a good week to let the temperatures reach 40°C. Exactly in the week where you no longer have lectures and therefore you have to work a 40 hours week in your side job. Not that it's bad, no. You work at a photographer and you study photography, so it couldn't be that bad... wrong. It is already shit if you have to renovate in blazing sun without shade a barn (for photo shootings etc). You are studying photography, not trained as a craftsman! Now you regret having applied with your craft skills.

Yoongi already said the last few days, you should finally quit and find a better part-time job, with a boss who also appreciates your photographic skills. But you need this Job, your Boss pays you well. Only you would like to do more often the things you have applied for and no other stupid work.

Especially when this man, who call you your boss, is sitting in his air-conditioned office and you had to work outside your ass off in this unbearable heat?!

But now this cruel week is finally over and you should not get upset even more with it. You’re finally at home, with Yoongi.

You close your eyes, inhale deeply the smell of the Ylang Ylang oil, which the Oil Burner on the windowsill lets spread throughout the room. A slight smile plays around your lips, Yoongi has remembered which kind of scents you like so much in the summer months. In your bedroom it’s pleasantly cool, the approaching night brings the first fresh breeze through the wide-open terrace door to you, caresses your naked skin tenderly. The sinking sun bathes the entire room in a soft red-orange tone.

It is incredibly comfortable to lie on the bed just in panties, between all the big soft pillows and blankets.

Your Boyfriend is up with something for you, something that is relaxing, sensual, tender. You admit, these last few weeks, you couldn't really be there for each other. Too much work, too many other things had just taken too much time. And the fact that he also spoils you now, only made your guilty conscience towards him grow even more.

The mattress sinks down a little, you felt him shift his weight and sit in front of your head.

He seems to rub oil or something else between his hands before bending over and stroking with his warm and big hands over your shoulders to the swell of your butt cheeks. You sigh softly at this loving touch, enjoy this single touch already so much.

His hands glide again and again in full strokes with gentle pressure over your back and then begin to massage you gently. Your breaths get deeper, undreamt-of tension gradually eases and you enjoy every single caress from him.

Circling, he lets his fingertips wander over your back, scratching lovingly with his fingernails delicately over it, which gives you tingling goose bumps.

Every patch of skin is getting pampered by him and leaves pure relaxation and deep inner peace. You no longer think, you just feel and and

gratefully accept his tender touches and this deep calm as a sensual and confidential gift from him.

Finally, he straightens himself up again and goes to the height of your hip and kneels above you, but lets his hands lie on your lower all the time, thereby not interrupting this physical and mental contact with each other.

His hands exert completely different pressure on your body through this altered Position, which is a completely different experience.

Yoongi really always knows what is good for you, even if you have never said those things before. He likes to massage you, let all his love and appreciation flow into you through these touches.

Things he would never have gotten over his lips otherwise, so that you feel downright adored.

Yoongi had always been a quiet man who had a hard time getting feelings across his lips and yet he is so incredibly soulful that he constantly tries to express all his love differently. And it is precisely through these touches that he can convey it much better than with any words.

For what he feels for you and shows you through these gestures, there are simply no words.

You groan softly and muted as his lips touch your neck and shoulders. Every single feather-light kiss leaves an exciting tingling on your skin, which made your pleasurable sigh slightly tremble.

You gulp a little, a lustful feeling shoots through your nerves and bales in my stomach, which slowly pulls into your lower abdomen.

His tender kisses and nibbles on your skin excite you. It is not a hot and craving desire, it’s a permanent subliminal and sensual pleasure that goes through your entire body and reaches, occupies all nerves and fibers.

His body slides backwards, his hands wander over your butt. It was just a gentle stroke over it and yet it aroused you even more. He continues this loving, slow treatment on your legs, massages and kisses every conceivable place. Even the soles of your feet and toes were kneaded with calm pressure. Your body is completely relaxed and yet you feel pleasure. Lust that let you otherwise expectantly tense. It is new and exciting to experience it like this.

His fingers are back up on your thighs and each of your two butt cheeks is now nestled in his palms.

From your coming sigh your excitement can now be heard, which makes him hum contentedly. There was still the thin stuff of Panties between you, but that doesn't stop your excitement for more. Rather, you feel your nascent moisture between

your legs just even more. At some point, his hands glide once more over your entire back, over your arms and hands, which you have placed at a laterally bent angle next to your head.

"Please turn around, Darling.", he breathes into your ear. A little sluggishly and slowly you turn on your back and notice how some blush rises on your cheeks. Your Breasts are bare. Even though Yoongi is your Boyfriend, it was often unusual for you to show yourself so naked, so vulnerable.

He spoils you now just as tenderly as it has done before with your back. Massages and rubs your scalp, temples and stroke all over your body in long strokes.

Every now and then a fresh breeze pulls over your body, brings the Lust in your blood more into action and makes your nipples hard. You you’re feeling warm, even quite hot. Yoongi feels your Lust now downright, nevertheless he spoils you slowly further, which became a sensual tormenting. He bypasses your erogenous zones, cancels them until the end of the extensive Massage.

Kissing every accessible spot of my skin and you feel as valued as you haven’t felt for a long time. You are tough and don’t get overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted easily, you want to show that you, as a woman, can be strong and independent. But you are also just a normal person, you struggles sometimes too, you also need from time to time a shoulder to lean on.

Yoongi gives you exactly this shoulder to lean on. He is solid as a rock and catches you when you fall. You are not alone in this cruel world. Yoongi is with you.

A light sweat film lies on your skin and you bite down on your lower lip softly, trying to hide your moaning away. Your breath is still deep, but it trembles a little with excitement and arousal.

Every Pore begins to tingle longingly, all over your body, from the hairline to your toes. From your feet, his hands glide in a fluid motion across your shins and the insides of your thighs. Caressing strokes, no more than a breath of wind over your Vulva.

You sigh tremblingly, automatically open your thighs a little more and your fingers run through your hair, which is spread like a fan around your head.

His touches give you immense trust in him. You present to him your soul. Your wishes, dreams, ideas, but also your fears and insecurities. He accepts you, he accepts you the way you are.

Touch you almost reverently, as if you were something so precious that is not worthy his touch. This realization of being valued and on an equal level with him, with him as a man, almost brings tears to your eyes. He shows you the respect that every woman would have deserved.

His fingertips dances across your Vulva up to your stomach and draw blurred lines that find themselves somewhere invisible.

They keep sliding back up and finally, they find your breasts. Finally. You wanted to be touched by Yoongi there so badly.

His fingertips drawing a spiral that circles ever tighter and ultimately reaches your nipples.

Carefully he caresses them and gently breathes his hot breath on them. Your body trembles.

Your folds were swollen and wet with Lust. This sensual game arouses you completely. How badly would you be touched there by him, caressed... Suddenly, his warm lips closes around your right nipple and caress it with light sucking, touching it with the tip of his tongue.

Your body is completely relaxed and yet it seems to you that everything in you is contracting with longing for him.

He plays the same game on your other nipple and you put your head in the back of your neck with your eyes closed. You whole body is so hot... A soft lustful moan escapes your open lips.

"You are so beautiful... you’ll ever be.", Yoongi whispered softly. His voice is also shaky and... there is a certain awe in his deep harsh voice. Another gasp comes out of your throat, his deep voice makes your hot, aroused body tingling. Makes my body pulsate. His lips touch your chin and kiss a trail down between your breasts across your stomach to your hot center.

Just before your Panties he stops and hooks his thumbs under the waistband on each side. Slowly he takes off the last piece of clothing before he lies next to you in a sideway position and lets his one Hand slip between your thighs.

You gasp for air and open your thighs a little more. His fingertips glide through the soft curls of your pubic hair, tugging gently on it to make you mewl. Moving lower to your folds before dipping with two of his fingers between them.

Gently he caresses them, playing gently with your entrance, while you quietly gasp out my Lust. Yoongi kisses your shoulder and your neck, in the Moment he finds your Clit that finally wanted to be found.

Your hip bucks up, you just bring out a strangled moan. You trust him so much, want to be able to open yourself completely up to him and let yourself fall, in the conscience of being caught by him again. He feels this intimate emotion in you, this desire to be completely his.

He whispers barely audible words into your ear, tells you what he loves about you and puts after each compliment a kiss under it. His fingers rubs over your pearl, carefully and sensually. Taking his time for you.

Again and again, two of his fingers sinks deep into you, then he stimulates all over again only your clit. A long, lustful game begins.

Your pelvis rises towards him, you reward his actions with soft, breathless moans and the search of your lips for his own. Your thighs fall apart to the side, open your folds open even more up for him and the idea that it sees you so open, bare and so vulnerable turns you incredibly on.

It’s the last time when his fingertips circles around your pearl, until you tremble and cramp with the fulfillment of your Lust. Feelings and emotions rain down on you, which could never have been properly described with words. Only your facial expressions can show approximately what fulfilled pleasure you are feeling right now.

Tenderly Yoongi kisses you and wispers a breathy "I love you" into your ear, before you look into his dark brown eyes and find nothing but love, honor and respect, which applies only to you alone.

#btswritersnet #suganetwork #bts smut #bangtanhq #yoongi smut #thehouseofbangtan #yoongi tantric massages #bts x reader #houseofddaeng #yoongi the soft fluffball #bangtanarmynet #yoongi x reader smut #by tipsydipsydo

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iamwestiec · 3 years

Text

June 25: t4t Chengqing! 💜❤🏳️‍⚧️

handwaved lots-of-people live AU, canon-era, trans woman Wen Qing, trans man Jiang Cheng, porn with feels

A/N: In this AU, we're assuming cultivation techniques exist with similar effect to hormone blockers and HRT. Wen Qing has breasts and a penis, referred to by the narration in non-specific terms. Jiang Cheng's bits aren't described, though Wen Qing makes reference to his cock. Explicit bits under the cut!

Read on ao3

They're in her favorite place in Lotus Pier, the private pavillion in the little cove behind the sect leader's rooms, when he asks.

It's a sultry summer evening, fireflies dancing beneath the softly swaying branches of the willow trees on the shore and a gentle mist rising above the lotuses, their blooms furled and guarded like precious secrets in the twilight. It's nothing like the home she grew up in, but it's the place in her new home she feels most free. Jiang-furen and Wen-daifu are left behind, put away with embroidered outer robes of vivid purple and scarlet or nestled on soft fabric in a lacquered box next to a crown that could be both lotus and flame and a comb that represents a bold promise fulfilled.

Here, she need only be Wen Qing, and her companion need only be Jiang Cheng, her lover, her husband, her friend.

His head is in her lap, and she's combing her fingers lazily through his unbound hair. The fine hairs behind his ear have curled from the humidity in the air, perfect little spirals that she twirls around the tip of her finger. He hums a low, satisfied rumble against her thighs. "Wen Qing, could I—" he starts, a blush spreading across his nose and those perfect cheekbones.

Ah, she thinks, one of those evenings. She digs her fingers a little more firmly into his hair, scratching at his scalp and tugging with the kind of tension she knows grounds him.

"Ask for what you want, A-Cheng," she instructs.

Intimacy between them has been... interesting to figure out. Neither of them had much space to become practiced at tenderness, and both of them have known their own bodies first as raw material to be shaped, cultivated into the right tool, the right weapon, something with which to do what needed to be done with a little friction as possible. Learning pleasure as husband and wife has been a negotiation, a dance, and—somewhat to both their surprise—a delight.

"I'd like to make you feel good," he says, still adorably red in the face but undeterred. "To undress my wife and properly appreciate her beauty."

He's quiet as she considers, closing his eyes and giving her the space to feel out where she is in her mind and body today, if she's up for this kind of attention. It's a lot, the fervency of her husband's admiration. A shiver races down her spine, and he smirks just a little, no doubt interpreting it as anticipation.

Correctly, as it turns out.

"You may," she tells him, and his smirk blooms into a dazzling smile. She tugs sharply on his hair again, and he bites his lower lip to school his expression into something less giddy. She relaxes her grip, and he sits up, pulling his hair back into a single low braid with brisk, efficient movements of his hands. She loves his hands, strong and scarred and so different from her own, and he blushes again when he notices her watching.

He inclines his head towards their rooms. "Is my lady ready to accompany me inside?"

She asjusts her seat on the cushions and tosses out a quick talisman, mentally offering a wry thanks to her brother-in-law for inventing a silencing charm that doesn't require an enclosed space to set. Jiang Cheng’s eyes go wide and dark, and she grins. "It's such a lovely night though."

He glances around quickly, as though reminding himself they can't be seen, then gives her far too low a bow. "As my lady says."

It's always heady, being loved this way. Jiang Cheng moves with such reverence, carefully loosening the ties of her robes and drawing the soft fabric slowly apart. He kisses each bit of skin as its exposed, soft presses of lips against her throat, her shoulder, down her arm. He takes her hand and turns the palm up, kissing along the sensitive skin from the inside of her elbow down to her wrist, nipping at the meat of her thumb when he reaches her palm. She twists her wrist to trace over plush lips, and his mouth is hot and wet when he draws her fingers between them, tongue tracing patterns on the pads of her fingers. The sight and sensation is more erotic than it has any right to be, and a little shudder passes through her. He pulls off with a quiet pop and moves back up her arm, kissing across her collarbones and repeating the whole procedure as he slides her robes off her other arm. He's beautifully obscene, sucking on her fingers with his eyes closed in bliss, and she watches him for awhile, letting the heat build in her belly and between her legs. He'd stay there as long as she let him, though, so eventually she curls her fingers to dig her nails into his eager tongue, and he releases her with a chuckle and a kiss to her fingertips. "Apologies," he says, sounding not sorry in the slightest.

He snakes his arms around her and runs strong hands down either side of her spine. She arches back into him with a little sigh of pleasure as his fingers find the spots where he's learned she carries tension. "Massage?" he offers, but she shakes her head.

"Not tonight." She loves it when he presses her down and works out all the knots and kinks in her back, but she has better use for his hands right now. She leans back further, and he takes the hint, lowering her onto the cushion and swinging a leg over to kneel astride her thighs. He leans in to place a kiss on her brow, and she closes her eyes so he can drop more kisses on each closed lid, the tip of her nose, scattered across her cheekbones, on her earlobes and the hinge of her jaw, back and forth until she growls and bites at his lips when they press featherlight to the corner of his mouth. She swallows his laughter as he opens for her, letting her bleed off some of the fire he's stoked in her veins in hungry, passionate kisses. Her hands are in his hair again, and she knows his neat braid will be crooked and messy when she lets him up. Good.

After a while, she relents, and he pulls back with laughter dancing in his eyes, the way he always gets when he riles her up enough for her to let her control slip. She pretends she isn't half-breathless and nods imperiously for him to continue. He's smirking again as he moves down her chest, but she decides to allow it, for what's coming next.

Wen Qing is not a vain woman, merely one fully aware of her impressive accomplishments. Her breasts, in her opinion, are one such accomplishment. Her family's work in medical cultivation includes several treatises on people like her and Jiang Cheng, who know themselves to be something other than what the bodies they were born with suggested, and she had worked diligently as a child to grow her golden core fast enough that she might take advantage of that knowledge from an early age.

Jiang Cheng runs his hands up her sides and cups her breasts, pushing them together and kneading them gently. His hands are the perfect size to span their fullness, and she loves the way it feels when he plays with them. He brushes his fingers over her sensitive nipples, pinching and teasing as they stiffen up further under his ministrations. Her breath stutters when he looks up at her through his lashes and bends to take one in his mouth. He rolls it back and forth under his tongue, nibbling gently at first and then less gently as she arches her back and presses her chest up into his face. He sucks, hard, pulling back until her breast hangs stretched like a drop of water from his lips, and at the same time he pinches her other nipple. He releases her from his mouth and follows the tender flesh back down, nipping and kissing his way over across her chest to give the other side the same treatment.

It's gorgeous and intense and for a while Wen Qing thinks they'll just stay like this, grinding against each other while Jiang Cheng worships at her breasts. She wouldn't mind. It's blissful, nearly euphoric, the way he suckles and licks and teases them, but when she bucks her hips up, he chuckles and pulls back.

"Apologies again," he says, "this husband was distracted by his wife's perfect breasts." The fact that he so clearly means it is almost—almost—enough not to earn him a glare. The breeze through the pavilion is cool against her wet nipples, and she wants to shove his face back to her chest.

Then he slides further down and bites at her hipbone, and the noise she makes is somewhere between a moan and a yelp. He plays his fingers across the waistband of her inner skirt. "May I continue?" he asks.

"I was promised undressing and appreciation," she says, with as much cool haughtiness as she can muster while she feels like she's burning up from the inside. "And you know I can't abide leaving a task half done."

He laughs at that and sits up to pull the skirt away. He runs his hands down the ouside of her legs to her feet, digging his thumbs into the edge of her arches firm enough to make her hiss. She can feel the thunderstorm charge of his qi flowing through her meridians and stoking the fire in her belly.

"I should never have explained acupressure points to you," she teases. "That's cheating."

"Your meridians are beautiful too," Jiang Cheng insists, unrepentant. "I mean, I assume. You'd know better than me." She laughs and hooks her heels around his waist, tugging him back down towards her. "I was going to kiss up and down your calves and praise the beauty of your feet," he grumbles.

"I'll consider them duly praised," she declares. "I'd rather have your mouth a little higher."

He grins again, and lowers his lips, now flushed from his earlier efforts, to the inside of her thigh. "Like here?" he murmurs, and she sighs something like a yes as he begins to trace swirling patterns over her skin with his lips and tongue. He teases back and forth, a little higher each time, sending waves of pleasure up her spine. She lets her eyes fall closed as he reaches the apex of her thighs.

"You're gorgeous," he says, cupping her sex and pressing down with his whole palm, the way he knows she likes. Years of training her qi to shape her body mean that she doesn't get hard without intentional effort to direct her blood and energy to that organ. She usually prefers not to, because she loves the way this feels. Firm, deep pressure against all the most sensitive parts of her. Jiang Cheng’s mouth is hot and wet as he licks and kisses between her legs. She moans and presses up into his face, chasing that slick heat and pressure that feels so good. He takes the very tip of her into his mouth, sucking and teasing it like he had her nipples, and she shudders at the burst of intense sensation.

She's close, she realizes, built up slowly from his thorough teasing of her body. She thumbs at her nipples as she pants out, "Can you— A-Cheng, please, I want—" and he grinds the heel of his palm over her hui yin point. He's cheating again, she distantly notes, sending a burst of his own energy into her body, but she feels too good to tease him for it. The charge of his qi—like lightning, like zidian, like nothing else in the world—twines with the fire of her own energy and races through her, a bright burst like sparks up her spine over the lower, slow waves of pleasure rolling through her body. It's gorgeous, and every time she lets Jiang Cheng pleasure her like this, she's overwhelmed by the sheer decadent bliss of it.

When she opens her eyes, he's already staring up at her, resting his head on her hip and smiling that soft, awed little smile he gets sometimes when he's not thinking about what his face is doing. "Come up here," she says, no command left in her voice at all, but he comes and curls around her, kissing her gently, still with that same reverence. "That always feels so decadent," she admits, lingering wisps of pleasant sensations still humming gently through her body. "Give me a second, and I'll be happy to return the favor?"

"Not tonight," he says. Sometimes it's easier for him to focus on her. When she glances out the corner of her eye, though, she sees a blush creeping across his cheeks again. "Besides, I, uh, kinda..."

"Ground your cock into the cushion while you were using your mouth on me?"

Now he flushes fully scarlet. "Yes. That," he chokes out. Wen Qing kisses his flaming cheek. "It's just so much more sensitive now!"

Perks of marrying a Dafan Wen, she thinks smugly. Perks of the war being over, too—she'll be able to teach such techniques much more widely.

"Good," she says aloud. "I like when you enjoy yourself, husband."

"I like to enjoy you," he shoots back.

"And you do it so very well," she agrees. His smile is pleased now, and she kisses it off his lips, feeling perfectly, wonderfully herself in the heart of Lotus Pier. 💜❤

#PrideMonthSnippets Masterpost!

#PrideMonthSnippets #the untamed #wen qing #jiang cheng #chengqing #trans pride #trans headcanons #t4t chengqing #sexy times #oh golly this one is not a snippet #westie writes

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gayshrug · 3 years

Text

you will beat this, starting now, and you will always be around

(tk strand/ carlos reyes, teen+, 1.5k, ao3)

Prompt: "I love me some Hurt/Comfort so what about TK and Carlos early in their relationship [...]; What if Owen has a complication from his treatment [...] and Carlos stops by unprompted to wait with TK?"

Or: TK doesn't care about waiting room etiquette and Carlos wears flannels when he's in a hurry.

TK could practically feel the stares of everyone else inside the waiting room, the bouncing of his leg probably irritating to say the least. It’s just – he couldn’t not. There was nothing else for him to do but sit this out, stick around for his dad to reemerge from the doctor’s office with news. Good or bad. TK had no control over the potential outcome, and it killed him; his brain conjuring up the worst-case scenario over and over again.

His dad was strong and careful, he knew, going to all scheduled appointments and receiving his treatment diligently. The fact that his fatigue had gotten so bad they’d felt it necessary to inform his doctor scared the shit out of TK.

Being the one to walk up to his father’s room to check on him after he hadn’t gotten up for breakfast or his skincare routine in the morning – it had felt like each step closer could change his life forever. The rational part of him knew that his dad wouldn’t simply – he wouldn’t just disappear, overnight. Not with how well he’d progressed and how optimistic he’d sounded after each of their recent talks.

But TK was still his father’s son, weary from his own troubles and the dread of what this illness could mean, hanging over their heads with each passing day.

Thankfully, what he’d found after opening the door was just his dad, legs thrown over the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. Not ideal, but better than what TK had feared to see.

When Owen had let him know he felt too tired and nauseated to get up, TK had sprung into action immediately – he was a first responder, after all, instincts taking over and dialing the doctor’s office in a daze. Making an emergency appointment, even when the secretary had gently told him that this was all normal and an adjustment that was to be expected. The last thing he was going to be nonchalant with was his dad’s health.

Getting Owen dressed and ready to leave had been a chore, movements slow, long breaks in-between.

While his dad had freshened up in the bathroom, TK’s ears picking up on every little sound so he could barge inside if he’d sensed something had gone wrong, TK had shot Carlos a quick text.

worried about dad, taking him to see doc jacobs rn. don’t think i can make it, will update you asap, i’m sorry

They’d made plans for lunch, wanting to check out a popular sushi spot and get to know each other better outside of the bedroom. TK still felt awful about cancelling. Their thing was still fresh, vulnerable, and he’d already fucked up enough in their short time together. But his dad was his priority, so he’d seen no alternative.

After his dad had left the bathroom on unsteady legs, they’d powered through like they always did. Out the door within less than thirty minutes of making the call. He’d supported his dad’s weight all the way to the waiting room, knocking incessantly on Dr. Jacobs’ door until she’d helped Owen inside, uncaring of any potential meetings or other patients in her office.

Her warm but amused smile as she’d regarded the panicked look on TK’s face, telling him not to worry, should’ve calmed his nerves somewhat, but. But. TK wasn’t prone to overreacting for no reason.

The minutes his dad had spent in her office up until know had felt like hours, each passing second making TK more anxious than the one before.

He checked his phone – no notifications – and pocketed it again, not in the mental space to check Instagram or his pile of unanswered e-mails. No response from Carlos but it was still early – maybe he hadn’t gotten up yet, or maybe he was pissed off. TK doubted it, what with Carlos literally being the kindest and most understanding person he’d ever met, but he’d blown him off before and – yeah. TK wouldn’t exactly blame him for being upset.

Before his thoughts could spiral further into that direction, he was startled into looking up by the clunk of the practice door falling closed.

Holy shit.

Striding over towards him was Carlos, hair ruffled from sleep and pillow-creases still visible on his face. The flannel he’d seemingly thrown on in a hurry was only halfway buttoned up, his undershirt askew underneath.

TK’s breath caught in his throat.

When Carlos sat down right beside him and pulled him into a hug, smelling like sleep and comfort, TK couldn’t stop the tears from welling. He clung to Carlos’s shoulders, burying his face in his neck. The panicked breaths he’d somehow managed to hold in for the better part of the morning tumbled out of him in quick succession. For the first time all day, TK felt safe enough to let go and really confront the fear he felt, the anguish.

Carlos’s soothing strokes across his back and neck calmed him down after a little while – like they always did. This wasn’t new for them, not by a longshot.

“Shhh, baby.”, Carlos whispered into his temple, now resting his hands on TK’s waist, drawing patterns into his shirt with his thumbs. TK blinked up at him, seeking out his eyes. Brown, warm, kind. He didn’t care about the other people waiting in the room, their judgement; he leaned up and pressed a thankful kiss against Carlos’s lips, holding onto him.

“Thank you. I’m sorry, Carlos, I-“, but Carlos shushed him again, kissed the corner of his mouth. “Nothing to be sorry for.”, he whispered. “I’m glad you gave me a heads-up, though. Jumped into the car right away. Has he been inside for long?”

Before TK could check, his perception of time always fucked in hospitals and doctors’ offices, Dr. Jacobs opened her door and guided Owen out with a hand on his lower back, keeping a watchful eye on him.

They were on their feet immediately, Carlos rushing over to support Owen while TK quietly asked Dr. Jacobs what was going on, voice shaking.

“As I said before, Mr. Strand, there’s really nothing to be worried about. The nausea and fatigue are, sadly, a routine effect of the treatment we’re administering to him. He needs rest but he’ll adjust. In the meantime, I’ve prescribed some antiemetics he can try.” She held out a few papers for TK to take, putting a gentle hand atop his own. “Do call me again if you’re unsure about anything. I’m glad your father has you to look out for him.”

TK swallowed down the lump in his throat, blinking rapidly. It hadn’t sunken in yet, the fact that his dad was actually going to be okay.

“Thank you, son.”, Owen spoke up from next to him, giving a gentle squeeze to TK’s shoulder. “Doctor, if you’d excuse us – I’d quite like to make use of my bed for the foreseeable future.”

❦

Not wanting to let Carlos go just yet, TK pulled him to the side after they’d filled the prescription at the nearest pharmacy and successfully planted his dad in the passenger seat.

They leaned against the car, TK holding onto Carlos’s wrist. Stroking over his pulse-point. The steady thump-thump-thump draining the remaining traces of anxiety from him.

“Thank you, Carlos, I mean it. You didn’t have to – to do all of this. But I’m glad you did.” The little smile Carlos gave him made TK blush, eyes fixing somewhere near Carlos’s collar to stop himself from rambling on.

“I’m glad I did, too. Your father’s in good shape but I wouldn’t want you to get a lumbago, dragging him all around town by yourself.” He ignored the offended look TK gave him in response. “What do you say – we drive to your place together, you get Captain Strand snuggled up, and I – never mind. You’ve had a rough morning.”

Carlos cradled TK’s face in his hand, an unspoken question in his eyes.

“Carlos Reyes, if you don’t – of course I want to go to lunch with you. I’m fucking starving.” TK turned to kiss Carlos’s palm, lingering. “I’ll make my dad a bowl of fruit, get him to try one of those mystery pills, and then I’ll come down.”

They could hear his dad’s exaggerated cough through the window as TK leaned in and pressed small kisses against Carlos’s neck, pulling him into a hug that lasted way too long to be platonic. Owen rolled the window down, amused. “If I recall correctly, you were still concerned about my imminent death a few minutes ago. I’m sure you can catch up with Officer Reyes at a later time.”

Out of spite, TK held on for another moment, giggling against Carlos’s throat – ignoring Carlos’s quiet “he’s got a point”.

“See you in a few, Officer.”, TK eventually said with a wink, and bounced over to his side of the car. Throwing a grin over his shoulder as he regarded Carlos standing in the parking lot, looking just as disheveled as he had when he’d entered the waiting room earlier.

If TK’s heart felt like it could burst with feelings akin to something he shouldn’t be thinking about this early into their – whatever, nobody had to know.

#tarlos #tarlos fic #911 lone star #911 lone star fic #prompt fic #tk strand #carlos reyes #owen strand #hope you'll enjoy this anon thank you for your message <3

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max-is-tired · 4 years

Text

What the hell would I be (without you)

Pairing: Dukexiety

Characters: Remus Sanders, Virgil Sanders

Words: 2.078

Warnings: sympathetic Remus, swearing, self-deprecation, spiraling thoughts, anxiety, crying, kissing, tell me if I missed something!!

Notes: man I love soulmates AUs so much. This fic is inspired by this headcanon from @figurative-siren-song, I just loved the entire concept so much I simply couldn’t not try my hand at it. I hope you guys like it, comments and reblogs are always greatly appreciated!!

Commission me!! Buy me a coffee!! Join my Discord server!! AO3!!

Virgil stared at the clock on his wall, nervously bouncing his leg on the carpet as he raised one hand to his face. Before he could start biting his nails, however, another hand appeared out of nowhere, giving it a quick slap to keep it away from his mouth.

“No biting,” chided a voice from above Virgil, Remus grinning down at him from his position lying upside-down on the bunk bed. Virgil grumbled but complied, opting to wring his fingers instead.

“You’re an ass,” he muttered under his breath, throwing his best friend a half-hearted grave.

“Well excuse me for trying to look out for you,” Remus shot back, his tone amused. “If you bite your nails you might hurt yourself, and there might be blood and then the whole thing might get infected and they’d have to chop your entire hand off and-!”

Without missing a beat, Virgil reached for one of his pillows and slapped it onto Remus’ face, effectively shutting him up.

“Alright, message received you fucking gremlin,” he said, a smirk of his own tugging at his lips. “Remind me why I have yet to smother you?”

“Because it’s gonna be your birthday in a few hours and you needed your big, strong best friend to hold your hand lest your anxiety reduces you to a hot mess for the umpteenth time,” Remus easily recited, winking down at Virgil. “Not that you need it, you’re already a hot mess by yourself.”

Virgil rolled his eyes, letting out an amused huff as he stood up and stretched his arms upwards with a tired groan -the curse of being born at fucking 2 am, he supposed. Currently, it was only 1:45 am, and for the first time in what felt like forever, all he wanted was to curl up under the covers and go the fuck to sleep.

There was no way he could ruin his soulmate’s birthday if he was asleep, right?

“Oi, Earth to Virgil!” Remus called, startling the boy out of his thoughts. “Did you decide to go for a mental walk without me? That’s just rude, Vee! Come on, what’s running around in that worrying head of yours?”

Virgil shrugged, plopping down on his spinning chair as he looked up at the ceiling.

“Do you think my soulmate will like me?” Virgil finally asked, frowning. “I mean, I know I sure as hell wouldn’t like myself. I’m an anxious, self-deprecating mess, Rem, why the fuck would anyone want to be stuck with me? I’m just going to ruin their birthday, and I don’t want to but I can’t help it, they’re gonna hate me and I can’t blame them for that and then I’ll end up all alone and soulless-”

“Hey, stop with that crap right the fuck now,” Remus suddenly exclaimed, snapping Virgil out of his self-deprecating spiral. The boy pulled his gaze away from the ceiling, only to meet a pair of determined, blazing green eyes.

“That’s my fucking best friend you’re insulting, and I won’t stand for it. You’re an amazing person Vee, you’re loyal and determined and got snark for days. And that’s not even talking about that beautiful ass of yours!! Whoever ends up being your soulmate is going to be one lucky motherfucker, and this is the hill I’m willing to die on.”

Virgil blinked, looking like a deer caught in the headlights as he stared at his best friend with wide eyes. Slowly, he felt the familiar tingle of a blush covering his cheeks, whipping his head to the side to avoid the instinct of doing something stupid like try and kiss Remus or something.

“Shut up,” Virgil muttered, looking down at his hands in hopes that his long bangs would hide just how flustered he was.

“Never,” Remus easily shot back, voice soft and earnest in a way Virgil knew was reserved just for him.

Fuck, and people wondered why he had done something so idiotic as falling for his best friend -he was just… perfect. He was honest, loud and everything Virgil would have wanted and more. He just got him, always had, and before he’d known it Virgil had found himself head over heels, falling and falling with no chance of getting up again.

Not that he would have wanted to, of course. Sometimes, during those endless nights when sleeping felt like the most impossible thing in the world, Virgil found himself wondering if maybe, he and Remus were meant to be. After all, Remus still had to go through the swap, even after having recently turned 20. It wasn’t so far fetched for that to be a possibility, was it...?

Except that it was. After all, why would the universe pair someone as amazing as Remus with, well, Virgil, who seemed to grow needlessly anxious about the smallest and most mundane of things?

And there he went again, his thoughts spiraling more and more as the seconds passed. Of course Remus couldn’t be his soulmate. Whoever the lucky soul was, they were probably someone as incredible as him, full of life and energy and desire of adventure. Not an introvert, anxious downer like him.

1:58 am

Like, who was he even kidding? Virgil probably had no soulmate. His birthday was going to come and go and no swap would happen, not today nor never.

1:59 am

After all, why would the universe doom some poor soul to be stuck with him forever? He should just start getting used to the idea of being alone forever, instead of letting that stupid hope still fester in his chest.

It was just so stupid. Worthless, really.

2:00 am

Except that it wasn’t, not at all.

All of a sudden, Virgil felt a surge of self-confidence overtake him. He stood straighter on his chair, a grin tugging at his lips as his head filled with a thousand ideas. He wanted to bolt out of the room, jump out of his window, run into the woods behind his house and get himself lost in the wilderness, maybe even catch some squirrels.

Who cared if it was the middle of the night and there could be an assassin lurking in the shadows? He could take them, Remus had shown him how to throw knives when they were like, twelve.

Talking about his best friend! Virgil snapped his head up, eyes twinkling wildly under the fairy lights in his room, only to feel his excited expression morph into a frown once he took in the other’s expression.

Remus was hunched over just a few feet away from him, his shoulders shaking slightly as he rested his head between his knees.

“Rem?” Virgil tentatively called, standing up and shuffling forward. He crouched down in front of the other, brow pinched in confusion as he tried to understand what was going down.

Slowly, Remus looked up, his eyes red and wet as he tried to get his shallow breathing back under control. He was clutching at his chest, his fist tight around the fabric of his shirt. All in all, he looked right on the edge of an anxiety attack.

But why? He had been fine just a minute ago! There was no way he could have been faking the determined fire in his eyes as he defended Virgil from his own thoughts, and besides, Remus didn’t get anxious. Like, ever. Virgil should know, they’d been basically inseparable since kindergarten.

Then, Remus spoke.

“Do you really hate yourself this much?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper as some stray tears escaped from his eyes.

And finally, it clicked.

“I-” Virgil stared at Remus with wide eyes, trying to process the sudden life-changing information that had come to light. Normally, something like this would have sent him into some sort of attack, his anxiety, fears, and deepest insecurities filling his head until he could barely keep his head above the water.

Instead, all he felt was quiet, unmistakable happiness blooming in his chest, spreading further and further until he could barely keep himself from dancing around the room to try and get rid of some of the overwhelming giddiness.

“You’re my soulmate,” he breathed, a grin slowly stretching on his face. It was wide, bright, unhinged, the type of smile he would have never dared to let appear on his face before -but now, he couldn’t care less if his teeth were slightly crooked, or if a random stranger was annoyed by his smile.

Fuck them, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Remus was his soulmate, and that meant-

Oh. Oh no.

“Shit, Remus, I’m sorry,” he murmured, raising his hands to cradle the other’s cheeks. Gently, he wiped away the occasional tear still escaping his eyes, leaning forward to rest his brow against Remus’. “I’m sorry you have to feel all of that.”

“How do you deal with this every fucking day?” Remus whispered, looking at him as his breath slowly started to calm down. “I mean, I knew it was bad, but shit Vee, I didn’t think it was this bad.”

Virgil hummed, his smile turning a tad softer. “It sucks, doesn’t it?”

Remus silently nodded, carefully releasing his shirt to rest his palm above Virgil’s chest. His breath started to synchronize with his heartbeat, and after a few minutes, he finally looked like he wasn’t three seconds away from breaking down in the middle of Virgil’s room.

“God, this is exhausting,” Remus muttered, drawing a chuckle out of his soulmate as he slid his head down to rest his brow on the other’s shoulder.

“Holy shit, how do you deal with this shit basically every other day? It’s not even been five minutes and all I want is to curl up under the covers and sleep for like, a century or so. Maybe more.”

Silence fell around them, calm and comfortable as they held each other. Then, Remus looked up, a pensive frown on his face as he visibly mulled something in his head.

“Can I-” he started, sounding strangely insecure as he avoided Virgil’s gaze. “I mean, can we- uh- god, this is impossible!”

Virgil couldn’t help the amused snort that left his lips as he watched Remus frustratingly throw his hands up, his cheeks crimson red in embarrassment.

“What, Rem?” he asked with a lopsided smirk, feeling strangely coy, “do you want me to kiss you?”

“Yes!” Remus nodded vigorously, looking more flustered by the second. “I’ve wanted to smooch your pretty face since fucking high school, do you know how hard it has been to hold off?? So you better kiss me right now before the embarrassment decides to off me for real by sending my heart on a one-way trip around the world with how fast it’s beating right now!”

Virgil cackled as he listened to Remus’ rant, feeling the muscles of his face hurt with how wide he was smiling.

“Well, it looks like the swap didn’t take away your lack of filter, at least!” he exclaimed, before grabbing Remus by the lapels of his jacket and dragging him into a kiss.

They melted into each other, the world around them fading away until there was nothing but the soft press of their lips and their careful, roaming hands. And just like that, they felt something inside them fit into place, like a puzzle piece they’d never noticed was missing.

Virgil felt the extra confidence and energy slowly slip away, leaving behind exhausted happiness as the familiar background tingle of his anxiety started coming back. As for Remus, Virgil didn’t miss the way his soulmate -holy shit, Remus was actually his soulmate, what the fuck???- immediately straightened up, pushing forward a little until Virgil was bending backward and a massive grin had taken over both of their lips.

“Fuck, I love you,” Remus murmured almost reverently as he pulled back enough to look at the boy in his arms. “I hoped, once the switch didn’t happen on my birthday, I never stopped hoping and I just- I love you so much, you have no idea. You’re the only soulmate I’ve ever wanted to have.”

“I love you too,” Virgil answered, the giddiness in his chest ever-present, burning and shining like a million suns, “but I think you’re talking a little too much right now.”

And he leaned forward again, dragging Remus in another kiss. And another. And another.

Needless to say, they didn’t find themselves in need to talk for a little while more.

#sanders sides #dukexiety #virgil sanders #remus sanders #sympathetic remus #soulmates au #dukexiety fluff #ts fanfiction #sanders sides fanfiction #maxiswriting

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livingmybestfictionallife · 4 years

Text

As If Nothing Happened

Summary: Colson and the reader have been in each others’ lives since before middle school, secretly dated for two years, and suddenly vanished from one another. Years later, they accidentally reconnect and the pair share what has been on their minds since their falling out.

The smell of liquor mixed with cheap cigarettes filled the air as (Y/N) watched the digital ball spiral around the board before her once more. All around were people--moving, talking, leaning against walls, pacing hurriedly past her, sitting too close, slurring their words, laughing with friends...living. Of the years (Y/N) had been coming to Las Vegas as a sort of annual tradition, she never came to gamble; she came to see the people, because even it's for the smallest of moments, on October 23rd, she needed to be distracted from her own life.

For nine years on October 22nd and 23rd, (Y/N) would make the trip to Vegas on her own, sit in casinos alone, play roulette, and think about the countless possible outcomes her life could have taken if only she could have changed something that happened ten years ago. So far, this year was much like every other: people continued living around her while a part of herself died over and over each year she came to this forsaken city of sin.

Absentmindedly, she placed a small bet on red-even, and sighed as she watched the digital ball spin around yet again. How many times? she thought to herself as her eyes trailed the ball. How many times will I come here? How many times can I stand to watch this ball go round and round throughout the years? The agony over her regret wasn't something she felt she could ever let go of despite how desperately she knew she needed to. Just as the ball earned her an extra two dollars of wealth, (Y/N) noticed a woman wearing next to nothing walk up to her and place a drink beside her arm without making eye contact. The icy green liquid surrounded a bright red maraschino cherry, and she wondered why her favorite drink was sitting before her. If she ever decided to drink on one of her Vegas trips, it was normally a sad drink like wine. It's not uncommon for people to turn their sorrows into vices, but she didn't want to ever be the woman crying over a vodka cranberry or a piña colada. If she let a tear slide over a Riesling, blush, or merlot, that was a different story. In this case, she didn't want to ruin the pleasant memories she had while drinking apple martinis with the sorrow she had in her heart that seemed to grow exponentially on these two days of the years.

"Excuse me," she called out just before the woman was too far away to regain her attention. "I didn't order this," (Y/N) explained once her eyes met those of the waitress.

"From the man at the bar," was the only response (Y/N) received before the woman sauntered away to attend to another patron. That sums it up, she thought to herself, as if there's not about fifty men at the bar. It wasn't that (Y/N) was interested in seeing who had bought her a drink, or even taking in the appearances of the men gathered at the bar not far behind her, rather the curiosity as to how someone happened to pick that drink to send her. After exhaling a sharp breath, she allowed her head to swivel on her neck and she swiftly took one glance towards the bar. Unfortunately for her, that quick glance was all too much, since a pair of crystal blue eyes stared at her from beneath the scraggly bleach blonde hair that overlapped them. Even across the room his eyes were piercing, and she could feel her stomach convulse into angry knots.

Him? What is he doing here? After all these years, why now?

(Y/N) tried not to watch as the man slowly rose from the bar stool he'd been reclining in, and made his way towards her. She came here to be alone, that was always the plan, that's how it had always been, and now, after damn near ten years, he's here. As he closed the gap between himself and the woman he'd spotted, as if by fate, from across the room, he gazed hesitantly down over her. Nearly a decade had passed since he'd last seen her--at least in person--and she was still as beautiful as the last time he'd laid eyes on her.

"Can we talk?" his voice was soft and low as he tried not to draw the attention of passersby. (Y/N) bit her lip as her heart turned to lead and plummeted to her knees at how soothing she still found that voice to be. Feeling as if she had no other option but to agree, (Y/N) nodded, but she did all she could to keep her eyes from meeting those of the man she knew as Colson, but the world know as Machine Gun Kelly.

After she'd cashed out of the roulette game, she hopelessly followed him as he tried to find a private place in the middle of a casino in Las Vegas. She knew it was damn near impossible, but Colson had always been...well, Colson. If he was determined enough to do something, damn it he was going to. Today however, he decided not to be stubborn, and since he quickly noticed (Y/N) becoming impatient, he led her to a fountain outside of the casino and sat down on the edge without a word. (Y/N) placed herself beside him and stared at their shadows on the ground before them.

There had been so many times in her life that she'd stared at her and Colson's shadows as they stretched across the pavement because she'd been unable to look him in the eyes: in middle school just after he'd gotten into a fight to defend her about some stupid, inaccurate rumor and she felt ashamed, the summer before she started high school after moving to Cleveland when she learned Colson had also moved to Cleveland and was relieved to have a friend, in high school after him and his girlfriend were arguing over something stupid and (Y/N) had to hold her tongue about the feelings she had for him creeping into her chest, and the day she told him she was pregnant.

Long moments of silence passed without anything more than each of them occasionally raising their drinks to their lips and scanning the crowd around them. Neither of the pair could stand to look the other in the eye. It was too painful for either of them to see the other without thinking of the countless possibilities and outcomes that had plagued each of their minds for the past nine years.

"So, how have you been?" he asked in a voice so small compared to how big he had become.

"Fine," (Y/N) responded in just as soft of a tone as Colson's. "You seemed to have accomplished everything you used to dream about," she said as a way to try and break through the tension that surrounded them.

"Yeah," Colson sighed as he gave in and allowed himself to sneak a glimpse of her profile, "almost everything." Another long silence passed where the pair that had once been inseparable struggled to exist around each another. He would stare at his drink and she would look to the shadows, each subconsciously drawing themselves to their individual flavors darkness that swallowed them the moment they left the other's life; yet they each held their breath in hips that the other would speak again.

A steady stream of air escaped Colson's lips as he tried to bring about the courage to say the word's he'd been dying to relay to (Y/N) had he ever been blessed with the chance to meet her again. Unfortunately, she found courage before he did.

"What are you doing here, Col?" The words she felt as if she'd been choking on for the past ten minutes had finally escaped her mouth. She could tell her voice was hurt, and she didn't intend on hiding any of that pain. In fact, hearing the weakness in her tone sent a lump into Colson's throat, and he quickly brought his eyes to look at her. She'd always been strong; it was something he loved about her, but after the past nine years of thinking, he'd realized it was something he'd taken advantage of. Just because she was strong didn't mean she couldn't be vulnerable, but it was in her moments of vulnerability that Colson could feel his heart break. As his eyes fell over (Y/N), he couldn't help but ache. She sat beside him, slumped over, her back completely curved with no posture to her other than the obvious desire to crumble into a fetal position.

"I- uh, I was going to come next year, but I know I'm not going to be in the States then, so I came on the nine year anniversary instead of the tenth." Softly, his fingertips found her arm and he gently traced his fingers along her skin. (Y/N) swallowed her pain with a gulp of her martini and pulled back her tears.

"I didn't realize you were that sentimental." The words nearly fell from her lips in a hiss hat it not been for them getting caught in her throat.

"(Y/N), I-"

"I have been here every year, Colson," she sighed heavily as she turned her head and body to face him completely. "Where were you? LA? New York? Half-way across the world? You know, there was a time that you made it seem like you wanted me to be there, and then the second things changed, you were gone!" The tears she'd desperately tried to keep from spilling began to fall slowly from her eyes and crated agonizing streaks of sorrow for him to look at.

"I wanted it more than anything else!" Colson's restraint snapped as he took (Y/N)'s face in his hands and wiped away her tears with his thumbs. "I wanted that child, (Y/N). I wanted to have you and our baby--I wanted our family! When we lost him, I just, I didn't know what to do or how to react. I felt you pushing me further and further away every day and I didn't know what to do."

"So you drove to LA and became someone else?" (Y/N) asked with an emptiness in her voice that he hadn't heard since she repeatedly told him "I'm fine," every time he asked about her mental state after losing their son.

"I asked you to come with me! I told you we could start over, we could try again if that's what we wanted!"

"I was nineteen, Colson."

"So are you saying you wouldn't have wanted to have a child?" (Y/N) could feel Colson's walls rising as he misinterpreted her words as rejection. "You wanted him when it was an accident," he immediately tried to counter, "what would have been different?"

"Nothing!" (Y/N) snapped as she brought herself to look into his eyes for the first time since she saw him at the bar. "Don't you see that I have no idea that anything would have happened differently? I had just, suddenly, became inhospitable for our unborn son. Who was I to think that any other child we could conceive would be different?" Her words were firm and felt louder than they were as they left her body. (Y/N) shook as the fear she'd held onto for nine years escaped her lips. The truth that hung from the strands of sentences she'd blurted out were difficult for Colson to grasp, but he did his damnedest to try to hold onto each syllable that came from her mouth, each momentary glance she would give him, and every detail of her face he could gather. "I just needed you. I need you, Col, not to move or start over or become something we weren't. I just needed you to tell me it wasn't my fault, that I didn't fuck everything up, that it wasn't because of me that our son was dead, that I wasn't the reason we left one another's lives, but you were gone."

Colson tried to stretch his fingers down (Y/N)'s arm and take her hand in his, but he could feel her muscles tense beneath her skin, so he stopped and lightly laid his hand on her forearm. "(Y/N), I never wanted to make you feel like-"

"Look, it's been almost ten years since we've seen each other. You don't have to do or say anything because you saw me here today. Honestly, sometime I think that after everything we shared together--the loneliness, our friendship, our relationship, all of it--it doesn't matter, because in the end...the way it ended...it was as if nothing happened."

"(Y/N), please don't say that." Colson's voice was weak--hardly a whisper drifting through the small space that separated them--and he knew her eyes wouldn't meet his again. He wanted to stand up and wrap his arms around her, to pull her into his chest and keep her from walking away, but he didn't know what he could say, or if there was anything he could say to keep her with him.

"Thanks for the drink, Colson," (Y/N) sighed as she walked away from the man she once loved--the man she, on some level, will always love--and down the Las Vegas Strip. Colson's eyes helplessly followed as (Y/N) as she slowly disappeared from his sight until she became just another figure hidden among the sea of people before him. The moment he'd lost sight of her gait amongst the crowd, he ducked his head into his hands, and watched his tears begin to soak the pavement below him.

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poptod · 4 years

Note

hello! can i request something romantic with either ahk or snafu or really any rami character where y/n has round dark brown doe eyes? like so dark brown they look black if you’re not looking at them in sunlight? and he’s just flirting with them and he says something nice about their eyes? i have round dark brown eyes and i’m kinda insecure about them cuz they’re so common, and it’s been one shit-show if a week for me and i really just need to feel good about myself

notes: damn, i can totally do that for you. hope your weekend is much better than your week :) thank u for requesting and i hope you enjoy it !

WC: 2k

Life never worked naturally to your advantage. You were born average looking – nothing special on either side of the spectrum, with average hands and common dark brown eyes. You grew up poor and worked your ass off to get into a good college on a scholarship, eventually getting kicked out for something you didn't even do. You auditioned to be part of an orchestra, but there were too many violinists already, and you just 'didn't fit the profile'. You tried to be an artist, but no one liked your creations. You tried to pick up another instrument, but you couldn't afford a good one, and the last time you tried to buy a cheap guitar, the neck broke on the third use.

Because of these many happenstances (and the many more, less mentionable ones), you considered yourself unlucky. It was a fact of life for you as much as the sun's existence in other peoples lives, or that the superbowl was too long. Or guacamole wasn't good. Fortunately, the years of nothing ever coming naturally had made you into a fantastic worker, and by some rare stroke of luck, you found you were rather good at physical labor jobs. You weren't strong by any standards – in fact rather weak – but your attention to detail made you the janitor of a prestigious museum you visited twice as a child.

It wasn't a fantastic job, and the poor pay led to having five roommates, but you enjoyed yourself. You tried to do that in every aspect of life; finding the joy in menial tasks, or solace in duty. After all, you got to see wonderful recreations of history in the still wax figures, and learn heaps of knowledge from the many information panels you came across when making your way through the museum. The only truly unfortunate part of your job was the time – right after closing, but you had to finish quickly, as you weren't allowed inside at night. A stupid rule, but the night guard and Dr. McPhee were insistent on it.

They thought you didn't know about the exhibits.

They were, obviously, wrong. You knew, and you adored the magic behind it all. While you hadn't actually ever seen any of the exhibits come to life, you watched the news on an evening where the exhibits broke out, and with your knowledge of the Tablet curse, you pieced the mystery together.

You hadn't meant to take this long. McPhee was already pissed at you for 'accidentally' skipping over the men's restroom yesterday, and taking too long at your job would land you on thin ice, something you couldn't afford. With a hurried pace you finished sweeping the floors in the last room, storing the broom away and moving on to mopping. Checking your watch once more, you noted the time, mentally checking if you would be able to finish before closing hours.

Mopping the Egyptian room usually takes five to ten minutes, and closing is in two, you thought, despair settling in your stomach. What would you do if you 'found out' about the tablet? What would McPhee do if he found out you knew? He wouldn't fire you, would he?

You truly didn't know. He was a bit of a loose cannon when it came to those things.

As fast as you tried to move, the hours of night came faster than you could mop, and the tablet began to glow behind you. Bewildered you turned, watching with your mouth slightly parted as the glow grew to the radiance of the sun. You knew the tablet brought the magic, but you didn't know about the glow – now that you were witnessing it yourself, the only thing you could feel in your pounding heart was fear. A fear that only grew worse when the Pharaoh's sarcophagus began to rattle.

You'd thought about the wax figures coming to life. You thought about the dinosaur. You, however, did not think about the 4,000 year old mummy.

Needless to say, you bolted. Leaving behind your supplies, you ran as fast as you could, wind pounding past your ears as the sound of a lion's roar came from the neighboring hall. You grit your teeth and made for the main entrance, but by the time you got there many of the exhibits had adjoined in the main room. Pressing yourself against the locked door, you watched with wide eyes as the Teddy Roosevelt statue began to talk to Attila, and in that moment you realized that perhaps magic was not always good. Not when you were spiralling into a panic at least.

It took a couple hours of you staring into space before anyone actually noticed you. To your surprise, it wasn't the night guard, or even McPhee – it was a Pharaoh, skin and everything intact. His crown remained polished upon his head, a stark difference from the crowns on exhibit, whose colors and carvings had faded long ago.

"Hello," he said with a pleasant, polite smile as he knelt, matching the height of your seated position on the floor. "Are you a new exhibit?"

You looked down at your clothes. Janitor clothes.

"No," you said, and instantly his demeanor changed.

"Oh dear," he said, and though you agreed with that statement, you certainly did not agree with him grabbing your wrist and dragging you into the crowd.

"I don't really want to be doing this," you said in a shaky voice, but he did not answer.

As he dragged you through the crowd you kept your eyes closed, wary of overstimulation of both ears and eyes. He eventually stopped at the top of the stairs, where you opened your eyes to find the night guard, Larry.

"What are you still doing here?" Larry asked almost frantically, looking between the dancers below and you.

"In my defense I didn't want to be here, I knew about the magic and I don't – I didn't ever want to actually see it," you half-lied.

"How the hell did you know?!"

"You don't do a very good job of covering it up, Larry," you said flatly, your voice still cracking from nerves.

You didn't have very many friends. Your roommates didn't talk to you much, and the life you had outside of work consisted mostly of quiet, indoor hobbies you could do just about anywhere. So, once the whole of the situation was sorted out (with input from McPhee), you took your drawing pads and notebooks to the museum with you, working for the first few hours and drawing into the hours of night while watching history come to life.

Despite your original discomfort of being in the presence of a 100% authentic, come-to-life mummy, you became rather good friends with him. Not fantastic, and he didn't know very much about you, but he was kind and handsome. You hated to admit it, but he held your avid interest. Another one of those unlucky things in your life – of course you had to fall in love with an immortal, reanimated mummy who only came to life at night.

"Why don't you ever come dance with us?" Ahkmenrah (his name, apparently) said as he sat down beside you on the loft, the only barrier between you and a fifteen-foot fall being a stone rail.

"I'm afraid I'm not all that good of a dancer," you said, not bothering to look up from your sketchbook. You couldn't ever bear to look at him that long anyway.

"Neither am I," he laughed. "That's the point."

Instinctively you looked up at him, holding eye contact with his grey eyes for only a second before you looked away, a blush already making its way to your cheeks. He had the opposite of your life – lucky beyond belief. The favorite of his parents, completely immortal, completely beautiful, almost too wealthy, and many, many friends, including yourself.

What got you the most however was his eyes. Cold eyes were already praised in modern society – people loved grey, they loved blue and green. But in Ahkmenrah's society, the one that existed thousands of years ago, blue eyes hardly existed. The mutation for the new color was one in a billion back then, making him one of the (probably) three people on the planet with blue eyes. And now that lucky mutation stood before you in its purest, oldest form, and you couldn't bear to look at them for any longer than a solitary moment.

For some reason, it hurt you. Maybe because you were boring. Dull. Brown in a brown society. Sure, they looked beautiful in sunlight – you knew that. They turned into swirling gold and the taste of chocolate, but Ahk couldn't see them in the sunlight. That made you dull.

Now, Ahkmenrah was not a man to point things out about people. If they were being a dickhead, yes, but most of the time he noted things and dismissed them. But you'd been doing this for so long that he grew weary of the dance.

"Why don't you ever look at me?" He asked, a question that had your eyes widening and your back straightening, alarm bells ringing all over your brain.

"I look at you plenty," you said while avoiding his gaze like a 15th century doctor avoids respecting women.

"No, you don't," he said softly. "Not even now. I wish you would – you've got such beautiful eyes."

Your sketching stopped at his words. At your silence he placed his hand on your jaw, tilting so you looked at him. Instead of meeting his gaze you looked to the floor.

"They're very common," you got out weakly, still unable to make eye contact, but he kept you where you were, in the easy sight of him. "They only look good in the sun."

He shifted closer, keeping his hand on your jaw in hopes of you changing your mind and meeting his eye.

"Even in darkness they're beautiful, voids as empty and long as night," he hummed, drawing closer yet till you could feel the heat off his body on your still fingers. "I've noted them quite a lot. Eyes are a beautiful thing, aren't they?"

"Yours are," you mumbled, barely catching the meaning and insinuation of your words before they came out.

"As are yours. Remember when we snuck into McPhee's office? The lamplight bounced off of them and they practically glittered like the embers and smoke of a fire," he said with a small smile. "And the bright lights in the hallways –"

Florescent, you thought.

"– and the candle lights that Nick brought, those flicker with that same spark within you. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?"

You couldn't move, stuck in place and stuck in your own head.

"The golden fireplace, Christmas lights – and the light of the moon, a dim, faraway light that can only be admired from a distance... like you," he murmured.

Sometimes you forgot his people were poets and admirers of nature.

"You have blue eyes," you whispered through the knot in your throat. He listened carefully. "And... I can see reflections in them. They're soft, like velvet. Despite everything, they.. you seem... happy. You always seem happy, and your eyes give it away."

"Have you ever kissed anyone?" He asked quietly, and in that moment you realized his nose was almost touching yours.

"No," you answered honestly. Another unlucky aspect of you.

"Neither have I," he said before he leaned in, pressing his lips against yours in a tender embrace you weren't at all expecting.

From both the view of the first kiss and of a Pharaoh's kiss, you weren't prepared, but the plush of his pink lips against yours sent sparks of delight into your heart. He moved slow, taking his time to map out your aspects just as you began to trail your hands over his open palm, memorizing the creases. You were reluctant to part, but he ran his hand through your hair and your brain short-circuited into placitude.

"You have the softest lips," he murmured, hand coming to cup your cheek once more.

You never applied aquaphor or did anything to make your lips soft.

Maybe it was luck.

Didn't really matter to you, because he kissed you again, and your eyes fluttered shut as everything in the world but him faded away.

#ahkmenrah x reader #Ahkmenrah #Night at the Museum #rami malek #rami malek character

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orphic-osamu · 4 years

Note

Congratulations on 800 yue!! you have no idea how proud i am of you and you’re doing so well! may i have “whatever scars your s/o gets appear on you as well” with tamaki amajiki from the event? love you 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩

title ↠ butterflies in your stomach

wc ↠ 2810

genre ↠ hurt/comfort; fluff

song ↠ dodie; sick of losing soulmates

a/n ↠ hiii xuxi !!!!!!!! tysm 🥺🥺🥺 i’m sorry this took so long but here you go! a 2.8k fic on tamaki amajiki, love you too 😚💕 also !! in this fic your soulmate kissing your scars is the only way to get rid of them!

tw! self harm

— AMAJIKI TAMAKI —

A racing heart was not foreign to the elven boy. His heart drummed in his chest when he faced a large crowd, and when things twisted wickedly against his hopes. He was sure his soulmate would scowl at his behavior like he thought everyone else did.

Tamaki was not a stranger to anxiety.

But he never thought he’d be feeling worried over the wounds blossoming on his skin. His mind jumped to his hero training before he quickly knew that wasn’t it. Wounds from training weren’t as angry as this. He peeled his hero costume off, wincing at the sight of them littering his arms. A jolt of pain shocked his body, earning a yelp from him.

Tugging his pants down, he saw more of them on his thighs. In a panic, he reached for his phone, calling Mirio. His chest heaved in fear of what could be happening to his soulmate. It took a while for his best friend to calm him down, but eventually, they concluded that his other half could be a hero too, explaining the injuries and the scars he wasn’t sure were his.

The next day he woke up sore, glancing down at the open cuts on his skin slowly forming into scars. He frowned. He was set on the thought that his soulmate would grow to hate him so he chose to try his best to avoid finding them, but as he glanced at all the new scars, he wished they were near to kiss them away. What he didn’t know was that his soulmate was already in his life, so closely knitted in his daily routine.

“Tamaki, are you alright?” Your voice tugged him out of his thoughts, making his heart thump loudly in his ears.

He flashed a shy smile towards you before nodding quietly, “I’m just a little w-worried about my soulmate.”

“Oh? Have you found them?” The grin you show him back is a little teasing, his face flushing at the question.

“N-No. But a few wounds appeared last night and i-it worried me a little..”

“A little, huh?”

The blush on his cheeks flooded ‘til the tips of his ears as he averted his gaze from yours, the conversation coming to an end.

You were an important person in his life, way more important than he knew you would be. Your aura surrounded him in a warmth he couldn’t explain, so calming but it kept him on his toes at the same time. The dynamic he had with you magnetized him to you, and he found himself in your hold whenever his mind wouldn’t shut up.

He didn’t know how it happened, how you grew to understand all his little habits, and how you just knew when he’d come knocking at your door in the dead of the night in hopes of comfort.

That day was one of those nights, as usual, you welcomed him with open arms and a promise of Disney movies. He sat on the opposite end of the couch, not wanting you to see the new injuries he adorned. When you didn’t make an effort to move close like what you do all the time, however, he felt a twist in his gut.

You played the same movie you’ve both seen numerous times, but Tamaki liked that. He didn’t want to worry himself more with an unknown ending. Though his mind was elsewhere, despite his eyes fixating on the screen in front of him.

“You’re still worrying.” Yet again, you snap him out of his trance.

“H-Huh?”

Your eyes locked onto his, and his mouth goes dry. You shuffled towards him. He leaned back as far as he could, the closer you got. Finally, when he had no space left, your hand came up to hover over his heart.

“Close your eyes.”

He squeezed them shut, butterflies fluttering in his stomach. He swallowed nervously, it wasn’t his first time being so close to you but it still made him jittery.

“You can feel it, right? Your heartbeat.”

For a moment he’s convinced you’re poking fun at him, but the tone in your voice said otherwise. He nodded hesitantly.

“That shows you’re alive if you can’t tell by how vibrant it’s being.”

He stifled a whine, feeling overheated by the pink hue painted on his face. He wondered how you weren’t hot and instead, clad in a thick sweater.

“If your heart’s beating like that, then surely your soulmate’s alive, and fine too.”

Ah right, this was about my soulmate.

You giggled, the sweet sound causing his heart to stammer. You moved away back to your spot, air rushing to fill Tamaki’s lungs. He hadn’t even noticed he was holding his breath. Your gaze returned to the film playing, and the shy boy wallowed over your words, face cooling down. You were right, his soulmate was probably just a hero in training and they were okay.

Tamaki soon learned he was wrong. A little later he realized his soulmate wasn’t like others. His soulmate often drew pictures, words, sometimes just lines that were an angry crimson. Not on paper and not with a red pen, but with what he guessed was self-loathing, translated into drawings on their skin.

When he wasn’t worried about his journey to becoming a pro hero, he was worried about the well being of his soulmate. So much so that what used to be an almost daily meeting in your dorm room lessened to simple greetings in class. He hardly noticed how drained you seemed until Nejire had asked about you.

Your eyes were sunken, lips tugged into a permanent frown and the life in your movement dissipated, like some sort of dark cloud hung over you. His mouth opened to ask if you were alright but the question lodged in his throat. He decided against it, fearing the thought of aggravating you further.

His eyes never left your tired figure the entire day. Tamaki’s never felt so helpless, stuck with the anxieties of his soulmates spiraling mental health and your friendship with him corroding into nothing.

He doesn’t know how he went to bed that night, with so many thoughts coming front. His slumber doesn’t last long, however, as yet another wave of pain flooded through his body. He groaned, awake from the feeling of a new injury on his thighs. The frown on his face was deepened in worry at the sight of more cuts caused by his soulmate.

His own heart throbbed in agony for his other half as the physical pain ebbed away. He certainly wasn’t getting any sleep after that. The clock in his room ticked loudly, only stirring his feelings more. He sighed, deciding to head down to the common room for a glass of water.

As he got down, he caught sight of a familiar silhouette, yours. You looked more sluggish than the day.

“[Name]?”

Your head whipped around in his direction. You looked surprised but, a watery smile danced on your lips in a greeting.

You’ve been crying.

He held his arms out, a silent invitation for a hug. Your footsteps sounded heavy as you allowed him to swallow you in his embrace. He ignored his heart picking up its pace and pulled you to his room, aiming to help you like how you helped him all those days before.

He stumbled his way to his bed, holding you gently to lay you down comfortably. Only then does your body start quivering as sob after sob escaped your lips. He could’ve sworn he was having a heart attack from hugging you so close but he prevailed, deciding keeping you in his arms was more important.

He stuttered words of reassurance as he rocked you back and forth, your cries lowering into hiccups. Soon even those stopped and your breathing slowed. Tamaki pulled away only to see that you’ve fallen asleep. He sighed in relief before concern took over him again. His eyes zeroed on the numerous marks lining your arms, eyebrows furrowing.

His fingers daintily brushed against your scars as his hand held your wrist up for him to get a closer look. He doesn’t know what urged him to do it, what tugged on his heartstrings, but he leaned in and kissed the healed wounds anyways, definitely not expecting the tingle he felt on his skin.

He didn’t stop with one, he kissed almost all of them away. His heart fluttering in an epiphany as he saw each one slowly disappear on both of your skin. You stirred in your sleep, causing the boy to halt and move away, letting you go. His breathing quickened as his previous actions and their results registered in his mind. Half of the scars on your arm were gone.

You were his soulmate.

He went to bed that night on the floor, his heart didn’t stop racing at all. All those years of wanting to avoid his soulmate without realizing it was you.

All those years of building up walls, only to find out you were already past them.

When he awoke the next day, you were gone from his bed, with no note left behind. He felt a little disappointed, hoping to at least bring up the topic of him being your other half. He shrugged the thought off and phoned his best friend, wondering which direction he should take on your friendship.

“I found my soulmate, Mirio.”

A wide grin stretched on the said man’s face at the news. “Well? Did you tell them? Do they know?”

Tamaki shook his head, the heaviness of his thoughts pushing down on his body. He fiddled with his thumbs, mumbling in response.

“They d-don’t.. I don’t know if I should even say anything.”

“Why not?”

His breath hitched. Why not?

Was he afraid of letting you down? But that couldn’t happen if you’ve stuck by his side this long. What was he so scared of?

“I don’t think I’m good enough for them..” He wasn’t exactly lying, but it didn’t explain what he felt about you. Mirio smiled reassuringly, patting the anxious boy on the back.

“There’s no way you’re not good enough, I’m sure they’d love you.”

But would you?

“I think I’ll just stay on the sidelines for now.”

And so he did. From the very next time, he saw you. You bashfully thanked him for that night and apologized, and he flushed and assured you that it was okay through stutters. For days on end, he’d stay near you, picking up on little signs when you’d have a bad day. He’d make sure to talk to you before you went back into your room, afraid of more wounds decorating your skin.

He knew you were apprehensive at first, but he pushed away the nagging voices saying you were annoyed and went on. Eventually, you fell back into your daily routine of staying over, except you were the one in his embrace. Countless nights he hugged you close in effort to keep your demons away, countless nights of him kissing your scars away without you realizing.

One day you felt his lips on your skin. His head was in your lap, one of your hands holding your phone up to your face while the other stayed limp beside him. He squirmed around in your lap ‘til he was lying on his side, looking at your scarred skin. You looked at him in confusion, failing to notice the marks disappear. “What are you doing?”

He stiffened, eyes widening in shock.

“S-Sorry, I just—”

You laughed, “It’s okay, Tama, I don’t mind.”

He moved around to look at you, eyes filled with wonder as they met yours.

Did you know?

He considered coming out with it and kissing you but alas, he was too scared. If he said something and you pushed him away, he wouldn’t be able to take your scars away. He wanted to at least leave your skin unblemished.

It’s weeks after when Tamaki felt a slight jab at his now clear arm. His eyes were the size of saucers as he worried about your well-being. He was out patrolling far from you, and that only filled him with regret. However, as quick as it came it vanished. In confusion he pulled his sleeve up only to see nothing but his own scars on his hand from missions.

Did something happen?

He got back to the dorms, constantly glancing all over his body for any signs of a new cut. And just as he was about to start checking his thighs, a knock on his dorm room interrupted him. When he opened it he saw you with a pillow in your arms, your eyes were glazed over in what he knew were tears. He pulled you inside and asked you to sit, forgetting about the wounds he was looking for.

This time, you were the one who hugged him first, arms tugging him closer in a loose hold. He breathed in your scent, his body slacking in relief. He shyly drew shapes on your clothed back, his way of asking if you were alright.

“Tama.” You called, voice muffled from being squished against him.

“Y-Yeah?”

“Have you found your soulmate?”

He tensed, “No, I h-haven’t.”

He heard you laugh a little, before you maneuvered both of your bodies towards the bed. “You’re lying.” You murmured, releasing your hold on him as you hit the bed. He let out a shaky breath, showing an apologetic smile.

“You didn’t tell them, did you? Why not?” Your eyes were avoiding his, locked on the soft carpet underneath your feet.

Did you find out?

“I—” He thought of lying, giving the same excuse as he told Mirio. But he knew you’d see right through it. He cursed under his breath. Sometimes he wished you didn’t know him as much as you did right now, all his antics and when the scowl on his face wasn’t about his regular anxieties.

“I’m d-damaged goods, y’know? If my soulmate’s the same, I don’t know if I’ll be able to take on their demons. What if I’m not enough to keep them happy? What if my troubles annoy them? What if—”

“Close your eyes.”

“What?”

You were glaring at him with such intensity that he had to follow. The scent of your shampoo hit his nose, your body moving closer to his, the sound of his rapid heartbeat ringing in his ears. He shivered as warmth hit his chest, your hand was over his heart again.

“Feel that?”

He nodded, nostalgia hitting him like a train. You took his other hand into yours, bringing it up to your own heart.

“Feel this?”

He nodded again, face flushing at the sync beating.

“We both have our own heartbeats, though I’m aware they’re insanely in sync right now.” You laughed.

“Amajiki Tamaki, we are individuals built with our own complexities. We are separate humans bound by a soul tie.” His heart began to race.

So you knew.

“I have my demons, you have yours. And I will take my demons on. You can help me through it but love, you’re not going to take on everything on your own.”

His eyes fluttered open, meeting your glossy, hopeful ones.

“I don’t love myself.. I’m sure you’re aware of that, but that’s okay. It’s not the easiest thing to do but if I have you with me then I know I’ll get there someday. But we can’t do this if you’re only focused on trying to deal with my problems while ignoring your own.”

“How’d you know I was your..?” He whispered.

You pushed your sleeves up, unmarked skin on display, “My scars are gone, and you kissed them nights before.” You didn’t say anything, but the whisper of a ‘thank you’ made itself clear in your eyes.

He looked away guiltily, ashamed of himself being found out. You sighed before tugging on his shirt, wordlessly asking for him to look at you. When he did his breath caught in his throat as your gaze bore into his very soul. He felt his heart drop to his stomach, joining the butterflies flying around. You were closer than you usually were, so close that he could count all the tiny flaws on your cheeks and the constellations in your eyes. You were breathtaking like this, every unique quirk proving how human you were. You were simply imperfectly perfect, his dear soulmate.

He cupped your face in his hands, pulling you in to press his lips against yours in a shy kiss. Your lips curved up, making the tips of his ears flush red. When he pulled away he felt dazed, carefree almost, like he was at home. The smile on your face was by far the prettiest he’s ever seen.

“Let me kiss your scars away too, Tama.”

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entitynumber5 · 3 years

Text

hurt never meant

Chapter 1: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29723250/chapters/73101963

Summary: Jon and Martin enter a battle of wits regarding the hiding of injuries.

Content warnings: paranoia, blood, injury, canon-typical worm mentions, descriptions of wounds and scars, stitches, needles, internalised ableism, swearing, arguments, toxic work environment, nausea, food mention.

It was very fun to write Martin being petty and stubborn but my god, having Not!Sasha in this fic was PAINFUL!!!!!! Hopefully the second chapter will be finished soon. Full text below the line. I hope everyone’s having a great day <3

The Tube is choking with artificial heat, pumped unregulated through the vents so that inside in late November, cocooned in coats, the passengers shift and sweat and mumble in discomfort. Martin tries to remember the mundane cycle of complaints and platitudes he follows in circles every morning: the air is drying out my contact lenses. At least it’s not summer. I wish I wasn’t wearing a coat. You’ll be grateful when you get outside.

Each circle is broken, just before he completes it and begins again, by the sensation of heat crawling beneath his skin, a tingling upwards motion. It ripples across his face, inducing a drowsiness like fingers dragging his eyes closed, before the prickling across his scalp sends him spiralling into discomfort once again.

He tries to force himself back to his commuter’s hymn, but the heat feels internal, spreading outwards as if attempting to meet the warm air of the Tube. It’s different from the normal unpleasantness. It’s too distracting. He shifts his weight between bursts of dizziness—he gave up his seat three stops ago for a person with a tiny baby strapped to them, and now he is squeezed against the door by the passengers who have joined him since—and a fresh wave of stars burst across his vision at the sharp slice of pain through his left foot.

Martin clings tighter to the bar as the pain wraps around his ankle and flares up the outside of his calf. For a moment, he thinks his whole leg might collapse beneath him and he is almost grateful for the way they are all shoulder-to-shoulder in the compartment.

Perhaps he should have called Rosie and told her. But a deep-rooted part of him cannot bear to take time off, remembers the times he had dragged himself to work feeling much worse—smiling from behind the till even during a bout of flu that made his entire body ache, carrying plants to cars at the garden centre a few days after he dislocated his shoulder helping his mother up after a fall. At least, at the Institute, he has a desk and a chair and very few opportunities for heavy lifting. Given time to take some weight off the injury before lunch, he is sure no one will even notice. And by tomorrow, he will be fine.

The next stop is his. Outside, the cold air takes some of the unbearable flush from his cheeks and he walks the rest of the journey with his coat open to counteract the heat of the train. He resolutely ignores the throbbing in his left leg as he joins of the parade of commuters, bustling in tandem along narrow pavements. The Institute isn’t far.

Martin fights the instinct to immediately make Jon a cup of tea. He knows it takes Jon a while to warm up to him each day, withdrawn and nearly always absent in the mornings. By the afternoon, Jon is slightly more receptive after enough time co-existing without incident, slightly more willing to drink the tea offered to him even if he always smells it beforehand. Morning tea is fed to the plants; afternoon tea, Jon tolerates.

He should stop by the staff room, anyway. The first aid kit inside is well-stocked. He knows this because he did it himself, spreading the task out with extensive research on the empty, boring workdays before Jon and Tim had returned from their leave. There are painkillers inside and the sort of durable bandages Martin doesn’t have at home. But the urge to sit down drags him past the door and straight to his desk.

“Morning, Sasha,” Martin says, supressing a loud exhale of relief when he lowers himself into his desk chair.

Sasha glances up distractedly from her computer and pulls out one of her earbuds. “What was that, Martin?”

Martin tries to fight an unfamiliar nervousness, an old friend from his early days in the Archives where he wasn’t sure where he stood with Tim and Sasha. “I was just saying good morning.”

“Of course.” Sasha smiles, although her expression is blank, almost cold. “Good morning to you, too.”

Martin gives her a tight-lipped smile in return. Sasha pops the earbud back in and returns to whatever work she is doing on the computer. He wonders if she can hear the noise of the repeated error notification over her music, wonders what she is doing to make the computer so combative.

Before Prentiss, he has a vague memory of there being a radio on Sasha’s desk. She wouldn’t turn it on everyday—sometimes, she could only get work done if she was wearing noise-cancelled headphones—but whenever she did, she and Tim would sing along to cheesy ’80s hits. He thinks he remembers them dancing together, the middle of the open plan office becoming a makeshift dance floor, but he cannot hold the entire picture in his mind. It’s like a reverse polaroid, fading out of view rather than in. Perhaps he only dreamt it.

He shakes himself out of the fuzziness filling his mind and tries to focus on checking his emails. He left leg throbs dully beneath his desk, but the pain becomes peripheral as each email dredges up the irritation he tries to avoid indulging on weekends. Elias has sent a motivational Monday email about the importance of teamwork and rallying together, especially after a difficult few months for all of us. Rosie has forwarded a fundraising form from his old supervisor in the library, who is apparently raising money for Dementia UK. He tries not to think about how difficult it had been to explain to the aforementioned supervisor why he needed time off to help his mother settle into the care home in Devon. And there is no email at all from Tim, who has stopped bothering to even send his apologies for being late with each new blow to his and Jon’s relationship.

“Martin.” Jon’s voice, slightly raised to catch his attention.

Martin looks up. Jon’s door is open just a crack. Before he can reply, Jon adds stiffly: “My office. Five minutes.” And then he closes his office door firmly once again.

Martin resists the urge to groan and lower his head to his desk. While he’s glad that telling Jon about his faked CV seems to have been a small but significant turning point, he isn’t sure he can manage another complicated conversation dredging up old anxieties today. He doesn’t want to reveal each shameful, painful secret he has in a futile attempt to make Jon trust him.

He can’t concentrate for the next five minutes. He alternates between watching the second hand on the clock across the office and refreshing his emails. He resigns himself to giving a fiver to the library fundraiser and eating the leftover takeaway in the fridge for lunch rather than getting a meal deal. He tries not to think about where Tim might be or what sort of mood he will be in when he finally arrives.

As soon as five minutes have passed, Martin stands. But with his stomach twisting in anxiety and his thoughts spiralling, he has managed to relegate the pain in his leg to the bottom of his mental priority list. Now that he’s standing, it’s demanding first place again. He has to grab the edge of his desk, almost sending his nearly-dead office plant and pot of pens flying across the floor. His monitor, still displaying emails, wobbles dangerously with the desk. He stands completely still for a moment, trying to breathe around the wave of nausea induced by the pain.

The prickling hotness is back. He hopes his face isn’t red when he finally plucks up the courage—and energy—to knock on the door of Jon’s office. It wouldn’t be the first time, he supposes. No matter how hard he tries, he finds himself blushing quite often whenever it is just him and Jon in the latter’s office.

“Come in,” Jon mumbles from behind the door.

Martin creaks open the door carefully and steps inside, trying very hard to make himself smaller, non-threatening. Jon sits behind his desk, staring at his computer screen. He doesn’t look away, but he waves Martin into the spare chair opposite him.

Martin has a feeling that sitting down would be a dangerous decision. He clears his throat. “Actually, I’ll—I’ll stand, if you don’t mind.”

This finally draws Jon’s eyes away from his monitor. “Alright. Although I can assure you that, unlike some of its brethren in Artefact Storage, that chair doesn’t bite.”

Martin tries to smile. Jon has been doing this more since the confrontation and subsequent reveal over his CV—trying to make jokes, or some approximation. An attempt to diffuse the tension, even when Jon’s body language is nearly always screaming: I see you as a threat.

“I’m sure it doesn’t,” Martin replies, “But I, um—I was just reading this article about the impacts of sitting at a desk.”

“A productive start to your workday, then,” Jon mutters.

“And so I’m gonna try standing up a bit more,” Martin continues, deliberately ignoring Jon’s comment, “Around the office.”

“Around the entire office or my office specifically?”

Martin can feel the irritation—stirred by the emails, deflated initially by Jon’s joke—rising inside of him again. “Does it matter?”

Jon sighs. “I suppose not.”

“So, what did you, um, what did you need from me?” Martin asks, trying not to shift with nerves. He knows it will aggravate his leg.

“Sasha still appears to be having difficulty with her computer, so I was hoping to delegate the task of digitising the disproved statements from 1995 to 2000 to you,” Jon says.

Martin tries not to visibly bristle. Jon has been doing this a lot lately, too—far more frequently, in fact, than the half-formed jokes. He hoards the statements that won’t record digitally, combs them again and again for details rather than delegating this task to any of his Assistants, and only asks for very vague follow-ups.

But Sasha had volunteered to digitise the disproved statements. She said she liked the clear structure it gave to her day, always able to take a full hour for lunch to visit her new boyfriend, and how it led her to different places within the Archives. Besides, she has a transcribing qualification, although she had asked Martin the other day how to insert line numbers into a document. Brain fog, she had explained with that same thin smile.

Martin is quite happy to do whatever minuscule tasks Jon would sporadically trust him with, as long as it meant he had some idea of what Jon was currently putting all of his energy into. He doesn’t want to digitise statements from the ’90s.

“Will that be a problem?” Jon asks after the silence drags on.

“Nope. Not at all,” Martin lies, “It’s just that…”

Jon raises an eyebrow. “Go on.”

“I thought I could perhaps… do some follow-ups on the statements you’ve been reading.”

Jon sighs again. Distractedly, he lifts his left arm, his sleeve rolled up to his elbow, and scratches at the slightly-raw but almost-healed wound along his forearm. The stitches have dissolved, but Martin can see the pink scarring where they were placed across the wound, which is raised in comparison to the flat worm scars surrounding it.

“Don’t scratch it,” Martin tuts, “You’ll reopen the wound.”

“Martin,” Jon replies, exasperated, “It’s almost completely healed.”

“Completely healed? It’s not—it’s never going to be—you needed five stitches!”

“Yes, as you keep reminding me.”

“Because I—” Martin splutters, trying to find the words. “Because I worry about you.”

“Your worry is entirely unnecessary.”

“Is it? Because I think you’ve given me more than enough reasons to be worried about you lately.”

Jon’s jaw twitches angrily, but his expression is level when he forces his eyes to Martin’s. “I didn’t call you in here to have yet another pointless conversation about my mental or physical health.”

“Of course not. You called me in here to…” To do a completely meaningless task because you don’t trust me with anything else. He takes a deep breath and knows he cannot say that. “Digitise the 1995-2000 disproved statements.”

“Well remembered.”

Martin manages not to roll his eyes. “I’ll get started right away.”

Martin turns to leave. The first step is easy. The pain arrives on the second, taking him surprise, a direct strike to his ankle. He stumbles and has to steady himself again, this time against the chair Jon had offered him at the start.

“Martin,” Jon says, a hint of something like surprise—or worry—in his voice. He is half-standing from his own chair when Martin looks over his shoulder at him.

“I’m fine,” Martin insists.

“You’re clearly not fine. Are you injured?”

Martin leans into the chair so he can turn to face Jon again. At this angle, Martin catches only a glimpse of the healing wound where it snakes behind Jon’s wrist. But even with a limited view, the memory of the first time he had seen it grips him.

It had been near the end of the day. Martin went to use the toilet before he headed home, but the moment he was inside, all he could smell was blood. And for a moment, all he could think was the worms, they must have missed some of the worms, where did I last see Tim, oh, god, Jon hasn’t left for the day yet, is Sasha still in the office, the worms, worms again, always worms, it was only a matter of time. It was like walking through the Archives after the siege to give his statement: the musty smell of the worm carcases and the metallic hint of blood beneath. Jon and Tim’s blood.

He had lifted his sleeve to his nose to block out the smell and tried to gather some semblance of calm. The blood was in the sink. One of the bathroom stall doors was closed but not locked, a shadow just visible underneath. When Martin called out a cautious hello, the door creaked open at the behest of the occupant’s foot and Jon stood sheepishly inside, pressing a wad of red-stained tissues against his arm.

“Ah. Hello, Martin,” Jon had said. And then, “Heading home?”

Martin had shouted. He can’t remember what. His voice was always higher than it was loud when he was upset. After that, it had been a blur of the same lies. “I’m fine,” as Martin tried to apply pressure to the wound. “I don’t need stitches,” when Martin insisted on taking him to A&E. “It’s really not that bad,” while the doctor was injecting the anaesthetic and stitching the wound. “Why would I lie, Martin? For the last time, I cut myself on a bread knife,” repeated in the days after, again and again, no matter how much Martin pushed.

“Martin,” Jon says again, interrupting his train of thought, “Are you injured?”

Jon is lying to him. Jon is playing a game. Perhaps unintentional, perhaps well-meant, but nonetheless—two can play and Martin has thrown his hat into the ring. The irritation scratching against his ribcage is replaced with a petty sense of satisfaction.

“I sprained my ankle on the way to work. Tripped while I was getting off the Tube,” Martin tells him, “You know me. Clumsy as anything. It’s nothing serious.”

“Well, it doesn’t look like nothing,” Jon snaps.

“It’s fine.” Martin smiles. “I’m sure it will clear up on its own,” he adds, since Jon had something to that effect to him while bleeding profusely in the bathroom stall.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t be digitising the statements, after all,” Jon murmurs, almost to himself, “Sasha hasn’t yet transferred them to the office and the boxes can be rather heavy.”

“Honestly, Jon, I can manage,” Martin interjects. The satisfaction has faded slightly, replaced with that desperate urge to prove himself, to show he doesn’t need time off work. He won’t go home. And he won’t be a liability while he’s here. “Besides, what else is there for me to do? Unless you want me to follow up on that statement?”

Jon looks down at his desk. A flash of panic crosses his face when he realises the statement folder is open and Martin, at any time, could have read it. He closes it, deliberately slow, as if trying to hide the reason why. “I’m sure I can find you something else to do at your desk.”

Martin knows this has become a different point of pride now. A dangerous point of pride. He doesn’t want Jon to fuss over him. He doesn’t want to be handled. He will do his job as usual and no one will know he is in pain, no one needs to assume he is anything other than fine.

“I’ll digitise the statements,” Martin says, “In fact, I’ll get started right away.”

“Martin, I—”

“I’m fine. Really.”

“If you insist.”

“I do.”

“Then…” Jon hesitates. “Have a good day, Martin.”

Martin almost folds at the softness in Jon’s voice. For a moment, he considers taking it back—the stubbornness, the bitterness, the insistence that he’s fine. Would it hurt to give in, for a day, to the urge for rest? But it would. He knows it would.

“You too, Jon,” Martin murmurs, dismissing himself from Jon’s office and managing to make it out of the door without flinching every time he puts weight on his left leg.

Jon refreshes his emails. He deletes Elias’s aggressively positive bulletin before panicking that he will somehow know and transferring it back to his inbox. He flips through the statement on his desk. He makes sure the pages are in order, properly aligned. He takes the tape recorder from the drawer. He takes a sip from the sealed water bottle he keeps in the same locked drawer as the tape recorder. He lifts his thumb, letting it hover above the button to start recording.

Martin, he thinks. And he can’t begin the statement.

Martin is not fine. Jon is going to prove it. He had decided this before the emails, the statement, the water. But at the crossroads of burying himself in work or investigating Martin’s denial, he realises that it was never really a choice. He needs to know.

Perhaps Martin is hiding an injury related to Jon’s clandestine investigation. The tunnels are dark and, in places, littered with debris. A person visiting without the right equipment—or, at the very least, without a torch—could easily hurt themselves. Or likewise, if the tables had somehow turned, Martin could have lost his balance in the station while following Jon. The best lies always held some element of truth.

The worry eating at him is for this scenario, Jon tells himself. Not for Martin. He is not worried for Martin.

Jon props his door open slightly with his shoe. Now that he has taken to working in his office, door closed, he no longer worries so much about working in only his socks. He never liked the feel of his firm work loafers, and it’s easier to sit comfortably in his chair when his feet aren’t covered. He checks to see if any of them have noticed him, but in the bullpen, Sasha doesn’t look away from her malfunctioning computer, earbuds in. Tim has yet to arrive. And Martin’s desk is empty.

He goes back to his own desk and sits down. From this angle, he can see through the small gap where his shoe is holding the door open. A direct view towards Martin’s desk. He will know when Martin comes and goes, will be able to examine his reaction to movement and pain. Jon begins a timer on his phone—he should keep a record of how long Martin takes, that might give him an idea of the extent of the injury—and then throws himself into scouring the evidence that Basira left the last time she visited.

Jon keeps stopping to check the timer. At fifteen minutes. At eighteen. At twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-one. Thirty-four. Martin has been gone for far longer than Jon had expected.

At thirty-seven minutes, Jon steps out of his office.

Sasha gives him a brief wave as he passes, but the other two desks are still empty. Jon feels himself frowning. He checks the staff room, but it’s empty and the kettle is cold when he touches his fingers to it. Next, he forces himself to walk slowly to the stacks where the original statements, even disproved, are stored. It is light and temperature controlled here, adjacent to the room where Martin had once stayed for months while they waited for Jane Prentiss’s attack. Because he knows now that was what they were doing: waiting.

Jon keeps his pace slow and measured. He realises he’s still not wearing shoes, which makes it easier to walk quietly along the stacks looking for the right dates. 1980-1985. He’s getting closer. He stops just before 1995-2000, listening for any clue Martin is there.

The first thing he hears is heavy breathing, every other inhalation hitching in pain. Jon grips the shelf behind him, digging his fingers into the wood, focusing on the sensation of the grain. He grounds himself, refuses the first and overwhelming urge to check on Martin. And then, shifting his weight very carefully, he leans forward so he can see through a small gap in the shelving.

Martin is sitting on one of the wheeled, plastic stools used for reaching the higher shelves. His left leg, the one he couldn’t put weight on earlier, is extended in front of him. The hem of his left trouser leg has hitched up slightly, revealing Martin’s sock—covered in tiny dinosaurs and padded as if hiding bandages beneath. His body trembles, almost like a slight blurring around the edges. He is gripping his thighs tightly, digging his nails in as he squeezes is eyes shut.

Jon’s heart clenches. He knew, in his office, that Martin was injured. But this is something else entirely. Beneath the sickly lighting, Martin is pale, almost grey, his skin shinning with a thin layer of sweat. Jon recognises the tightness at the edges of his mouth, the way his throat works against a rising nausea.

“Martin,” Jon says, stepping into view before he can think about what he’s doing.

Martin leaps off the stool, but the motion sends him immediately careening into the opposite shelf when his left leg won’t hold his weight. He catches himself before he falls fully, but he lets out a breathless “shit” that Jon attributes to both the pain and the shock. He tries to pull himself back up to his full height, but Jon can see the toll the sudden movement has taken on him.

“Christ, Jon,” Martin gasps, struggling to regain his breath.

“You’re lying to me,” Jon says. He stops himself before he adds: again.

Martin’s eyes widen slightly in alarm, a look of panic washing out his features further. “Jon, I—I thought we—I’m not—”

“About your injury.”

“Oh.” Martin deflates. “Oh. That.”

Jon is so angry he doesn’t have energy to spare on being embarrassed by his lack of subtlety. “Martin, you look awful.”

“Thanks,” Martin mutters.

“You should take the day off, at the very least.”

“Jon, I’m grateful for your concern, I really am, but—”

“If you say you’re fine again, I swear I will—”

“It’s a sprain,” Martin interrupts, insistent, “Nothing I can’t handle.”

Jon sighs. His anger leaves him, replaced with a sort of sadness he can’t quite place. Nothing I can’t handle. That sentence implies a comparison, a time before that hurts Jon to think about. “Let me get the boxes, at least.”

“No,” Martin says quickly.

“Martin, you clearly—”

“I’ll get them,” Martin insists, “Your arm—”

“Is almost healed. The same cannot be said for your allegedly sprained ankle.”

Martin rolls his eyes. “Allegedly?”

Jon doesn’t dignify his echo with an answer. “My physical therapist says I’m ready to start—”

“No, see, that’s exactly why you shouldn’t be here!”

“I know my limits, Martin. You, apparently, do not.”

Martin laughs humourlessly. “Oh, for gods—”

“What?” Jon bristles. “I attended physical therapy, didn’t I?”

“Because I texted you every day to make sure you went. Because I sent you home when you tried to come back into work too soon.”

“I am more than capable of looking after myself.”

“You stabbed yourself with a bread knife!”

For a moment, a rebuttal sits on the edge of Jon’s tongue. He almost reveals the truth—the door, the blade of Michael’s finger tearing through his flesh when he tried to go after Helen. But no, that would be too much. That would be giving Martin exactly what he wants.

“So you finally believe me,” Jon says calmly.

“I’m finally starting to believe you’re never going to tell me the truth,” Martin replies.

“I’ve already told you the truth.”

“And so have I.” Martin looks him in the eye, unwavering. “I sprained my ankle. I’m fine. I can do this.”

Jon sighs. He rubs at his eyes, wishing he had gotten more sleep for the past—well, the past year. “In that case, I’ll leave you to it.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Jon echoes, although he has no idea why, and leaves before Martin can question him.

Back in his office, he paces. He checks the timer on his phone. It’s been an hour. He sits down, glancing between his computer and the door, the computer and the door, the computer and the door. Eventually, he hears Martin drop a large box of case files on his desk, far louder than he would ever usually allow himself to be. Jon sighs again. He is not sure what battle they are locked in, but he knows it is going to be long and hard-won.

Jon goes back to scrutinising Basira’s evidence. A collection of statements taken from people in the vicinity of the Institute during Jane Prentiss’s attack. A profile on some of the employees who had frequent contact with Gertrude, including Martin’s old supervisor in the library. He had sent a reference of thinly-veiled insults across with Martin’s employee record and, for some reason, Jon had never liked him since.

He is disturbed by conversation outside.

“Afternoon, Tim,” Martin says.

“Afternoon, is it?” Tim replies bitterly. “I didn’t realise.”

Only then does Jon realise it is after midday and Martin still hasn’t badgered him about getting lunch.

“Can I get you anything?” Martin asks, his tone much softer. “A cup of tea, maybe?”

“Thanks, but I prefer coffee these days.”

Martin laughs, a small, quickly fading sound. “Believe it or not, I do also know how to make coffee.”

“I guess I…” A loud, exhausted sigh from Tim. Then, in a smaller, kinder voice: “A coffee would be great. Thanks, Martin.”

Through the half-open door, Jon watches as Martin grips his desk and uses it to leverage himself up. The change of elevation clearly makes him dizzy and he stands for a moment, breathing deeply while he reaches an equilibrium. But when he walks, he is mostly managing to mask the pain, at least until he leaves Jon’s field of vision.

Jon listens. He hears the familiar squeak of the staff room door swinging closed. After a fortifying breath, he forces himself out into the main office. Sasha’s desk is empty; she’s probably on her lunch break with the boyfriend who works at the wax museum. Tim is sitting in his chair, hands in his lap, staring blankly at his computer. The screen isn’t on.

Tim blinks. Pulls his dull gaze away from the computer. The shadows beneath his eyes are deep and purple, and he doesn’t even attempt to smile. “Can I help you with something, boss? Must be big if you’re willing to leave that office of yours.”

“Have you noticed Martin behaving strangely at all?”

“Oh, bloody hell, Jon, not this again,” Tim hisses, “I’m not helping you spy on—”

“No, no, not that,” Jon interrupts, “I believe Martin injured himself on his way to work, but he won’t tell me how severe it is.”

“Wow. Sounds kind of like someone else I know.”

“Tim.”

“I suppose he learnt from the best.”

“Tim,” Jon snaps, “Did you notice anything?”

“No.” Tim sighs. “No, I was a bit distracted, to be honest. I was sort of hoping Sasha would be here. I, uh, I need to talk to her about something.”

“Will you keep an eye on him?”

“I already told you, I’m not—”

“It’s not spying.”

“It’s as good as!”

“It is not.”

“You would know.”

“Tim,” Jon says, lowering his voice for impact, “If you are not going to do any work, at least—”

The staff room door whines open. Martin walks out backwards, holding the door open with his shoulder as he shuffles into the office a mug in each hand. One is the novelty mug with a celebrity and slogan on it that Jon doesn’t recognise, no matter how many times Tim has tried to explain; the other is the plain, sunny yellow one Martin always gives to Jon.

“Oh,” Martin says, pausing when he sees them both, “Is… everything alright?”

“Fine,” Tim replies, “Jon was just interrogating me about why I was late. And I was just telling him how I was passing by London Zoo when I heard a scream and I immediately began running—”

“Alright,” Jon interrupts, “I’ve heard enough.”

Martin lifts the hand holding the yellow mug slightly. “I made you tea.”

Jon tries to push away the warm feeling that unfurls in his chest, every time Martin says this. “Thank you, Martin. Let me take those from you.” He adds, firmly, “Both of them,” for good measure.

With some manoeuvring, Jon manages to relinquish Martin of both the mugs. He places Tim’s down on his desk, receiving a mumbled thanks, before walking the distance back towards his office door. Martin lingers in the doorway to the staff room, looking casually at Jon, but there is a stubborn set to his shoulders.

“How are the files?” Jon asks.

“Terrible,” Martin replies with a slight pout, “I’ve already read five statements about three separate Oasis concerts.”

Jon shudders. “I never liked the ’90s.”

Martin chuckles. “Yeah, well, at least they weren’t getting up to anything actually spooky.”

Jon hesitates. He knows, if he moves first, he will have lost this particular battle. But the war is still all to play for. He assesses the determination on Martin’s face and decides that, on his occasion, he will concede. Just this once.

“Well,” Jon says, clearing his throat, “Good luck with the rest.”

“What, you’re not going to make him put a quid in the jar for saying ‘spooky’?” Tim interjects.

Jon startles. He had almost forgotten him and Martin were not alone. “It’s a first offense.”

“It is not,” Tim calls after him, but there’s something playful in his tone, at least, “That’s preferential treatment!”

Jon goes back into his office without replying. He keeps the door open.

For the rest of the afternoon, Tim doesn’t exactly keep his word, but he does do everything in his power to prevent Martin from getting any work done. Tim isn’t subtle about it, but Martin tries to resist. He only plays two rounds of online Battleships with Tim before insisting on returning to the disproven statements. Tim then attempts to throw pens from his pot into Martin’s, scattering most of them around the office. When Sasha comes back, he quietens slightly and they all fall into some semblance of productivity. Jon does catch Tim playing solitaire when he passes his desk on the way to the bathroom, though.

Sasha is the first to go home. She leaves without stopping by Jon’s office and the absence scratches at his consciousness, some long-buried sense of rejection that he soothes and smothers with the knowledge that this is what he wants. He wants space to work. He wants to snap the lines of connection that might lead him towards betrayal.

Less than twenty minutes later, Tim is next. And he tries to take Martin with him.

“Come on,” Tim whines, his voice carrying through the barely-open door to Jon’s office, “Just one round. On me.”

“Tim,” Martin replies, his voice gentle but holding his position, “I really can’t. Not tonight.”

“We could grab something to eat instead? I’ve been meaning to try this sushi place right near—”

“I can’t eat—”

“Oh, right.” Tim clicks his fingers in remembrance. “You’re allergic to fish.”

“Not all fish,” Martin adds, like an apology.

“Not all fish,” Tim echoes, “But no sushi, just to be on the safe side.”

“Yep.” Martin sighs. “Sorry.”

“No, no, don’t apologise.”

From his office, Jon can hear Tim shifting slightly. The floors are hardwood, carefully maintained over the years, and despite taking some damage during Prentiss’s attack, Elias insists on keeping them. They creak. He remembers Martin mentioning it once in passing, when he was staying in the Archives, how sometimes he thought Jon was there even on the nights when he left before it got dark.

“At least let me walk you home,” is Tim’s last attempt, “A sprain is definitely not nothing. I sprained my wrist years ago climbing and it still plays up sometimes. Especially when I’m caving, actually, but that’s a story for another time.”

“Well, um… I won’t go climbing any time soon, then?”

“Are you just saying that to make me feel better?” Tim says in his most flirtatious voice.

Martin laughs. “I appreciate it, Tim. But I’m—I just want to finish this off. Before I leave.”

Through the crack in the door, Jon sees Tim raise his hands in surrender. “Well, I tried.”

“I’ll be alright,” Martin adds, almost guiltily.

“You better be.” Tim hesitates again. Jon watches him pat the pockets of his coat, searching for his phone or perhaps his keys. “You got my link? The NHS website one about strains?”

“I did. Thank you.”

“And you know about calling 111?”

“Also yes.”

“And you can call me if you need me?”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll go,” Tim says, resigned, “Just—take care of yourself.”

“You too, Tim,” Martin replies softly.

Tim heads off, again without stopping by Jon’s office. And it’s habit, by now, it’s not unusual for Tim to do this, but Jon taps the desk lightly with his fingers to try and dispel the feeling of wrongness sitting on his chest. He watches Martin go back to the computer, a tension around his eyes that suggests at a headache and the same pallid, nauseous look visible even in profile.

Jon considers the work he has left. The work he knows, realistically, he will never quite finish because every statement, every piece of footage, every lead, only stirs up more questions. He could stay. He could push himself on into the night, as he has done so many times before. He could find another reason to go into the tunnels. But deep down, he is exhausted—by the need to know, by the itch at the edge of his knowledge where uncertainty lingers and festers. He wants to rest and he thinks if he leaves now, Martin might, too.

Jon gathers his things, stuffing a few statements inside his messenger bag before shrugging on his coat, his scarf, his gloves and his hat. The cold air hurts his scars and dries out his skin until they become tight, small movements made increasingly uncomfortable without intervention, so he’s resorted to wearing more layers. Finally, he puts his shoes back on, retrieving the left one from the door and then closing it behind him when he steps out into the main office.

Martin glances away from his computer. “Heading home?”

“Yes,” Jon replies, as casually he can, “I thought I would call it an early night. Would you—I thought—perhaps you would like to join me?”

Jon tries not to notice Martin’s cheeks flushing pink. “Oh, um, I—I was actually—I think I should stay. Just for another half an hour or so. It’s just, I’m nearly finished with October to December 1999 and I know it will bother me if I leave it.”

Jon quirks an eyebrow. “That interesting?”

“Hmm.” Martin shrugs. “Mostly just a lot of people worried about the turn of the millennium.”

“Ah. I remember that.” Jon doesn’t let on that he spent October to December 1999 researching that very phenomenon obsessively, walking the line between intense curiosity and deep dread at the possibility of catastrophe. There are some things—many things—Martin doesn’t need to know about him.

Martin smiles. “Well, I… I better get on.”

“Martin,” Jon says, trying to keep his voice measured. He feels like he is wavering between an offering and an argument. “I know I stressed the importance of digitising those files this morning, but there is no reason to spend overtime on—”

“There is, though,” Martin interrupts, “A reason.”

“Oh?”

Martin looks him in the eye and almost smiles. “I want to.”

“Right,” Jon sighs.

“Right,” Martin echoes.

“I suppose I’ll—I’ll be going, then,” Jon murmurs, tapping Martin’s desk just once in deference to the slight tremble in his body, the way he isn’t quite sure what to do with his hands. “See you tomorrow, Martin.”

Martin smiles, this time. A full smile. “Bye, Jon.”

Jon turns. He begins to walk away. In his mind, he sees an alternative: going back, asking Martin to walk with him to the station, an offer he knows will, at least, make Martin think again. The both of them squeezed among commuters, hands stuffed into the pockets of their coats because of the cold, elbows knocking against each other every so often as the crowd tightens and expands. The awkward, protracted moment of goodbye when they part to separate platforms, the glimpse of the other walking away and the pang of sadness that comes with it.

It’s manipulative to ask, a cruel trick, and yet—is it? Is it, if that is something Jon wants, too?

Jon doesn’t turn around. He keeps walking, even though he knows—somewhere deep and hidden and insistent—that he will regret it.

#cw paranoia #cw worms #cw injury #cw blood #cw nausea #cw toxic work environment #cw internalised ableism #cw food mention #cw needles #i feel really shy about posting this?#idk why #it was genuinely hard to write not!sasha that might be it #my confidence might be low right now but my love for martin increases daily #so i will write him no matter what 😤#my writing #love to eveyone #thank you for reading #<333

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sambergscott · 4 years

Text

your son is going to love you

Summary: Peralta dads are cursed, destined to have terrible relationships with their sons. When Jake finds out *he's* going to have a son, he spirals. Amy helps.

goes without saying that if you haven’t watched 7x10 yet maybe don’t read this

She wakes up at 2am needing to pee.

She’s been waking up needing to pee a lot lately.

It’s like their baby has no respect for her sleeping pattern, perfectly honed over the years to maximise productivity, while still fitting in the full 8 hours of sleep needed a day. Their baby doesn’t care about the 8 hour recommendation, he laughs in the face of scientists. With the bad back and heart burn and constant kick, kick, kicking of her bladder, she’s averaging 4.7. She thought babies didn’t start keeping you up all night until they were born but, oh, how wrong she was.

She pats her husband to wake him up and come keep her company. If she’s awake because of their baby, then damn it, he’s going to be awake, too. But he’s not there, leaving her hand awkwardly patting a bare mattress.

“Jake?” She murmurs groggily, sitting up and switching on her bedside lamp. She’s half-expecting him to be sitting in the armchair playing Mario Party on his Switch (he has become a little bit addicted in the last few months and it wouldn’t be the first time she’s found him trying to beat Wario in the early hours of the morning) or have left a note beside her bed that he had a lead on a case and needed to go in with a scribbled ‘love you’ underneath and a lopsided heart. The armchair is empty, but there’s a light on down the hall and since there’s no way she forgot to turn it off before bed (she triple checks), she figures that it must be Jake.

Forgetting the whole reason why she woke up in the first place, she grabs Jake’s hoodie from the floor for warmth and pads into their living-kitchen-dining area. It’s the open plan-ness that made her fall in love with the apartment upon first visit and submit all her paperwork as soon as she was out the door. It’s the open plan-ness that would make the Property Brothers proud and the dumb people who go on that show foam at the mouth with jealousy. It’s the open plan-ness that allows her to see her husband straight away, snacking on the unfinished party food.

(Apparently people don’t feel like eating after a man cuts his thumb off and spurts blood everywhere. Who’d have thought?)

There’s a weird, pensive look on his face that draws her towards him.

“You OK, babe?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” he responds. He pops a tomato from the salad bowl in his mouth, then another, then another.

She narrows her eyes. He never eats tomatoes unless they’re in ketchup or on top of a famous Sal’s pizza. Something is wrong.

She thinks back on their day, mentally rewinding the events from waking up to the morning briefing to their private sex reveal in the break room and finding out they’re having a boy (the empty cake box and blue frosting around Scully’s mouth was very surprising indeed). They were both floating on Cloud 9 all afternoon, came home and Zoomed the entire family, falling asleep on the couch around 9.30pm because pregnancy is exhausting.

Nothing particularly awful stands out.

Unless...

“Are you thinking about your Grandpa?”

He’d been so excited to see him again, so excited to reunite Walter Peralta with Roger, The Admiral with the Captain. To be honest, Amy was less than impressed. He’d been nice enough to her, asked her about her job, about the baby, small talked about the weather. But he never asked her about Jake, probed about the 20 odd years of his grandson’s life that he’d missed out on. Which is frustrating because she has a lot of embarrassing stories ready to tell and a whole photo album of Jake on her phone. He couldn’t care less about Roger or Jake, storming out of the sex reveal party after calling his son a screw up and turning off his phone so they couldn’t get in contact with him. He’s a selfish dick and her husband deserves better. Still, he won’t be thinking about what a monster Walter turned out to be, he’ll be finding ways to blame himself that yet another father walked out of his life again.

He nods silently and she leads him to the couch.

“Talk to me, Jake.”

He releases a shaky breath. “The Peralta’s are cursed.”

“With devastatingly handsome good looks?” She half-jokes, trying to lighten the mood. Because, hello, her husband is hot; she constantly overhears other women in the precinct talking about his glow up and it would be impossible to ignore the female attention he gets in bars and even just walking down the street before he scratches his face to show off his wedding band and wraps one arm proudly around his wife’s shoulders. She’s seen the pictures of a young Roger Peralta, too, and with that charm smile... she gets it.

“Thank you,” he smiles briefly, “but no. Peralta dads are cursed with terrible relationships with their sons.”

“That’s not going to be you,” she says without hesitation, without a shred of doubt.

“How do you know?” He launches into a scathing personal indictment that leaves his cheeks stinging with tears. “I’m immature, obsessed with my work, messy, always late. My dad was never around when I was a kid. I don’t even know what dads do with their sons! And what if it’s in my genes? To be a crappy dad, abandon my kid like a dozen Peralta fathers before me. Your parents still don’t think I’m good enough. You didn’t even like me at first. It only makes sense that our baby would hate me, too.”

“Woah, babe. Slow down. Let’s unpack that one at a time.” She wipes away his tears with his hoodie sleeve and squeezes his hand. “First of all, you are way more mature now than you used to be. We bought a family friendly Sedan. You read parenting books. You were eating fruit, like, two minutes ago.”

“Tomatoes are fruits?”

“What? Yes, how do you not - not the point.” She shakes her head. “And so what, you enjoy your job. That’s a good thing, Jake! Do you understand how rare that is? You’re doing the thing you love while providing a decent income for our family. And besides, I’m way more obsessed than you. I have FOMOW, but that doesn’t mean I won’t love our kid more than anything. And as for the messy, late thing, if I can look past it because of how much I love you, so will our son.”

“Love you, too,” he mumbles.

“Now onto your point about not knowing what dads do, that is a straight up lie and we both know it, Peralta. You’re always hanging out with Charles and Nikolaj and Lord Knows Terry doesn’t shut up about all the activities he does with his girls.”

“I know what they do when I’m around, but what do you do when it’s 5am and they won’t go back to sleep?” He frets. “At what age do you introduce them to Die Hard? In Cry Hard With A Vengeance,” he quotes the parenting book she originally bought him as a joke but has kind of become his Torah, “Bruce Willis says right away, but what if he’s not ready to understand the complex plots? What if he prefers Timothy Olyphant to William Atherton? Oh my God, what if our son doesn’t think Die Hard is a Christmas movie?”

He’s spiralling and it’s a good job he’s with the only person who can truly calm him down.

“I think Bruce Willis is just trying to promote his franchise and that we’ll be watching more Paw Patrol than Die Hard for the next few years, babe, but I’m sure when he is old enough, he will love the movies as much as you.”

“Right,” he agrees, “you’re totally right. Action thrillers aren’t very baby friendly. I’ll just watch it on mute with subtitles.”

She laughs, her eyes crinkling in the corners. She loves him so much. Which segways them nicely onto his final two points.

“My parents do love you. Sure, they’re critical, but that’s just the way they are. They’re the same way to all of us. My mom complains to everyone she meets about how I can’t cook, how Tony hasn’t settled down and made her any beautiful grandbabies yet, even Perfect David faces her wrath when he goes a week without phoning her. If the worst thing my mom has to say about you is that you’re below average in height, you’re doing OK. And as for me apparently not liking you at first, I did like you.”

He furrows his brow. “But you said you found me annoying and difficult to be around.”

“Yet I didn’t ask to switch desks, continued working cases with you and went to Shaw’s whenever I was invited.” She stares at him pointedly. “If I really found you difficult to be around, I wouldn’t have stayed. I thought you were cute and funny and good at your job and yeah, you were annoying too, but,” she shrugs, “it never put me off.”

“So what you’re saying is that you had a crush on me first,” he grins.

“No. You obviously had a crush on me back then, too. What I’m saying is that I love you, our son loves you and you’re going to be a great dad.”

He blushes, ducking his head. “My dad said the same thing. About our son loving me.”

“He’s right,” she replies. “I feel him kick every time you get home from work, every time you sing to Taylor Swift in the car, every time I mention your name. Why didn’t you believe him?”

“I don’t know, still nervous about the curse, I guess.” He twists his wedding band on his finger.

Amy bites her lip. “Are you not excited about us having a boy?”

She has to ask. His excitement looked genuine in the break room, but it’s no secret that he was hoping for a girl. A mini-Amy, he said. While she’s always been more accustomed to boys considering the Santiago’s have, like, a million of them, Jake couldn’t get over the image of a little girl in dresses and doing ballet and with long, dark hair that he eventually learns to braid.

“Of course I am,” he’s quick to assure her. “Stupid excited. Never been more excited for anything. Not even the Ninja Turtles reboot. But still... nervous.” He rubs his hand over his face, muffling his voice. “Everyone is assuming what kind of dad I’m going to be. Whether I’m going to be good at it or not. To be fair, the only person who doubted me is that murderer I arrested last week, obviously not my biggest fan. Everyone else is convinced I can do it. What if I can’t? What if I’m genetically wired to be a bad dad? What if I disappoint you and our baby and Charles who has been dreaming about this forever?”

“Jake,” she softens her voice, pulling his hand away from his face, “the fact you are so worried about being a bad dad proves that you will not be one. Nor could you ever disappoint us.”

“But you’re my wife. You have to say that.”

“I would never have married you and become your wife if I thought you were the kind of person who could abandon your kid,” she promises him. “You have been perfect so far, dealing with all the vitamins and over-scheduled sex and washing my clothes when I sweat through them and holding my hair back when I’m being sick. You’ve been to every doctor’s appointment, read every binder, bought me every weird food craving. You hang out with the bump every night, talking and singing to it. I know you’re going to be a great dad, Jake, because you already are one.”

She kisses him and it’s soft and tender and filled with love, only interrupted by the kick, kick, kicking of their son.

“Hey,” Jake says in his best authoritative dad voice/John McClane dealing with German terrorists voice (he’s been practising in front of the mirror following Bruce’s advice), pointing a warning finger at the bump. “I’m going to kiss your mom as much as I want, Peralta. I loved her first.”

Amy giggles, stroking her fingers through Jake’s unruly curls. His bedhead is always wild and it’s maybe her favourite thing in the entire world. She silently sends a message of her own to their son to inherit his dad’s hair. And eyes. And handsome smile.

He kicks again as if to say ‘OK, mom’.

And then she really needs to pee.

#b99 fic #jake x amy #my writing #let me know what you think!!!!#love love LOVED writing it

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