Fandoms, Geeky, Alternative, Eclectic, Collector, Writer, Level/Age 40+, 18+ Content (MDNI), She/Her/He/Him. "Can't sleep so might as well hammer." "There is no prize to perfection...only an end to pursuit." "Love is a dagger." "After the night when I wake up, I'll see what tomorrow brings."
Welcome to my chaotic blog of fandoms and fanfiction. 😊
Here is an accumulation of all my stories, poems and artwork. I will keep this list updated.
As always, all content is for 18+ years old (MDNI).
AO3 works
Instagram
Bluesky
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Spotify Playlists:
DnD Songs that Slap
Pandora - Durge
BG3: Astarion, Dammon, Rolan and Gale.
Bridgerton: Benedict
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The Legend of Vox Machina S4 thoughts
TLOVM S4E1 Review
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July WIP Schedule
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6/4/26 - The Blacksmith and The Fighter Chapter 3: Scars of Battles is now posted.
6/7/26 - Snippet from Love Letters from Dammon
6/11/26 - Snippet from Master Rolan A Private Audience Chapter 4
6/22/26 - Love Letters from Dammon is now posted.
6/28/26 - WIP snippet of Dammon smut
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2026 Fandom Goals
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BG3 Headcanons:
Dammon More Dammon HCs
Rolan More Rolan HCs Even More Rolan HCs
Dammon and Rolan HCs for celebrating Tav's birthday
Astarion
Magical March: Rolan
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BG3 Letters from Loved Ones:
Letters from Rolan: The Apprenticeship: To Tav
Letters from Dammon: Letters of Grief
Letters from Rolan: The Apprenticeship: To Cal and Lia
Prayers from Rolan
Love Letters from Dammon
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Current BG3 Long fics working on:
Fire, Ash and Metal (BG3 Dammon in Avernus)
Tiefling Massages (BG3 Massage/Coffee Shop AU, eventual poly relationship between Ren, Rolan and Dammon all together)
The Blacksmith & The Fighter (BG3 Dammon x Tav Rosa)
A Season to Remember (BG3 Rolan x OC/Tav - Regency AU)
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Various Short BG3 Fics:
Master Rolan: A Private Audience (Master Rolan x Tav)
Sunshine and Wine (BG3 Rolan x Dammon)
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BG3 Tavs/OCs:
Aurora: Origins Class
A Nautiloid's Chance in Hell
OC Tag Meme
Magical March: Aurora
Love Is Magic
Proud Gate Moms (aka where I spill all my fic ideas and HCs for Rosa and Dammon's children)
Pandora - Durge
OC Basic Asks (Aurora and Rosa)
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Gifted BG3 Works:
Know that I loved you all along
Dammon x Rosa VPs
2025 Holiday Gift Exchange (Received)
2025 Holiday Gift Exchange (Gave)
Dammon x Rosa VPs (spicy)
Dammon x Rosa VPs (6/13/26)
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BG3 Snippets and WIP Posts:
WIP Whenever (5/24/26)
Chapter 5 - Fire, Ash and Metal
WIP Wednesday (4/29/26)
2 snippets from The Blacksmith and The Fighter Chapter 3, and Prayers from Rolan
Self-care Sunday:
3/1/26: 4 snippets (2 from The Blacksmith and The Fighter, 1 from Fire, Ash and Metal, and 1 from Master Rolan: A Private Audience)
Snippet Game:
Fire, Ash and Metal - Chapter 4 (Snippet) - Dammon in Avernus
Belated WIP Wednesday:
A Season to Remember - Ch. 2 (Rolan x OC/Tav - Regency AU)
Whatcha Working on Wednesday:
A Season to Remember - Ch. 2(Rolan x OC/Tav - Regency AU)
Tiefling Massages:
Part 1 Part 2 snippet Part 3 snippet Part 4 snippet
Drabble
WIP Wednesday:
Master Rolan: A Private Audience (Rolan x Tav (AFAB))
Fire, Ash and Metal (BG3 Dammon in Avernus):
Part 1 Part 4
Part 2 Part 5
Part 3 Part 6
WIP Whenever:
Master Rolan: A Private Audience (Rolan x Tav (AFAB))
The Blacksmith and The Fighter (BG3 Dammon x Tav Rosa)
Last Line Written: Chapter 2 snippet of The Blacksmith and The Fighter.
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Main Masterlist last updated: July 12th, 2026
TW/CW are on the post before each Oneshot and AU/Series that have a need for TW/CW either on the Tumblr post or on AO3.
My OC Panda's name is only equivalent to a nickname or just happens to be her name for one reason or another. She is a human, she/her pronouns unless otherwise stated.
Jaskier Masterlist
Loki Masterlist
Benedict Bridgerton Masterlist
To Woo the Emerald Princess Chapter 4 excerpts
Chapter 4 WIP excerpt (7/7/22)
Chapter 4 WIP excerpt (8/24/22)
My Comfort Characters In A Room Series Masterlist
Moodboard Masterlist
** Denotes it contains Heavy Sexual Content
Miscellaneous Oneshots
** Mirror, Mirror on the Wall ~ Colin x f Reader
Miscellaneous AUs/Series
The Thrilling Adventures of Disaster Boy and Anxiety Girl ~ Colin x Flower OC Reader
Tags: body horror, psychological horror, blood and violence, angst, major character death
VP by the beloved @cursed-nyxan, the bestest birthday gift <3
Summary: An entry of Rolan’s diary on the day he killed Lorroakan in cold blood. Struggling with piled-up mental issues caused by the events of the past, Rolan rapidly approaches the breaking point, hallucinating and accepting that something in him has changed irrevocably. (Notes at the end)
A late entry for the free day for @rolaninto2026, sowwy :3 Read on AO3 or continue below.
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Eleasias 22nd
I came to my senses lying on the floor. Couldn’t remember why. Oddly, it was comforting. The less I moved, the less it ached. Even breathing felt exhausting. And so, I stayed, staring at the ceiling, mouth opened wide to catch the stifling air.
It was a moonless night. Shadows swallowed the Tower. The arcane barely gleamed above, as if its magic, its life essence, had drained away.
The stones of the ceiling were distorted beyond comprehension. It seemed they’d fall and crush me any moment. Until I realized there was nothing wrong with it. Rather, my right eye was seeing nothing but blur. Upon the revelation, a sharp, senseless pain immediately surged into it. Through tissue and bones, straight to the brain.
I wasn’t certain if the eye was still there. The ache whispered it was nothing more than a glass-filled hole.
Right. The bastard had slashed it. He must have been somewhere close.
Still, I lay motionless. Stalling, hoping I would fall asleep again. That I wouldn’t see him. That I wouldn’t hear the mire.
But there was no mercy.
Slowly, I turned my head left. Didn’t realize how close he was all this time. So close I could’ve felt his breath. But there was none.
Lorroakan was dead. Eyes covered with a swamp-green tint. Eyes of a dry fish, looking at me. Features contorted, making his face look like a bloodied egg smashed against rocks.
Knowing he was as terrified as I brought solace. At least he was lucky enough to expire. Expire. A perfect word for Lorroakan’s miserable condition. I could only imagine how putrid my own mug looked.
Had he realized he was doomed once I pierced him? He must have. I aimed straight at the heart.
I remembered then how heavy the first hit was. Wielding a dagger was so inefficient compared to weaving spells. Yet, I couldn’t risk him counterspelling. I needed him dead, permanently.
After the first hit, the dagger stuck in him. I thought my whole hand went inside his chest. Revolting. His muscles spasming, warm blood soaking my skin. I could’ve sworn his innards wrapped around my wrist, holding me in place. And Lorroakan yelled. Screamed so loudly I thought he’d melt my teeth.
Once it got out, I hit him again.
Again.
And again.
And again.
I’d pierced him another thousand times if it meant he’d finally shut up.
Then - all a blur of motion, limbs tangled, blood spattering, screams echoing. An eternity and a half shattered as we wrestled on the floor until he accepted it.
I kept staring into his bulging eyes, wondering: how did it feel? To be the embodiment of an arcane power, yet die with no purpose. His body would rot, and so would mine. Years would pass, but the Tower would still be standing, regarded as the wonder of the realm, no matter who the Master. Lorroakan’s existence was pointless, just as mine. All this time, we were equal.
And then, I saw it.
A fly, crawling up his cheek. To feast on that damned fish eye. Why was it there so soon? Did it know what would happen here? Or was it summoned by the mire? Did it come for me?
It rubbed and rubbed its stick joints, gauging at the corpse as if it owned it. I knew I was full of its maggots. Under my skin, inside my organs, in the back of my eyes. Crawling, swarming, poisoning me. Feasting on the decay I’ve been cultivating for so long. Singing praises to the rot so vehemently that it deafened my shrieks.
I screamed for them to stop, trying to scratch them out of my body. Begging them to go into Lorroakan’s gaping hole of a chest instead. They only laughed and chewed.
It would’ve been better if he cut out both my eyes.
I should have died with him.
Staring at Lorroakan was no longer bearable. Turning away was impossible. Something, someone was in the room with us. I’d rather let the maggots eat me for another ten years than learn who it was.
The mire wouldn’t stand for it.
As if by command, the fly had flown into Lorroakan’s mouth.
I turned.
The maggots didn’t matter anymore. I was struck by dread only a worshiper of a hundred deities can experience.
Cal and Lia watched me from the corner of the room. Petrified. Crying. Yelling something horrifying in the language of mutes. I didn’t need to hear to know.
I howled back at them, begging for forgiveness, imploring them to understand. Their faces only grew more contorted and despairing. They couldn’t accept it.
Amidst the crying and pleading, I heard a voice at the back of my mind. It pounded, and pounded, and pounded, cutting me from the inside. Out of sheer desperation, I ignored it, as I didn’t know what was worse. To let Cal and Lia see what I’ve become. Or to remember that it was impossible for them witness it. That Cal and Lia were long gone.
I chose delusion, crawling to reach them. The pitch black of the Tower couldn’t hide the early signs of decomposition on their bodies. Their utter disdain for me.
It was all in vain. They were nothing but ghosts conjured by my shuttered consciousness.
I couldn’t bear it. I wanted every sense and feeling left in my body to cease. Yet, I refused. Not until my purpose came to fruition. Not until I rectified the injustice dealt to my family. If it meant I’d have to live with this sorrow engraved in me, I was ready.
The mire sensed it, descending upon me. The only being that pitied the foulest creature, answering my cries for salvation. I knew it would demand tenfold from me in return. Caution betrayed me at that point, abandoning my remaining moral boundaries.
I let it in. I embraced it.
The noise faded away. So did the thoughts. The heart thudding. The regrets, the guilt, and the pain. All cocooned under a thick layer of warm bog.
I can still feel and breathe that bog, even as I write it.
The entry ended abruptly. Zevlor turned the page in search of more, but Rolan resumed writing his diary only three days after. Slowly, the Hellrider looked up, reluctant to meet his captor’s gaze.
Rolan sat in front of him, eyes dead-set on the wall. Eyes of a stained ember glass, or a senile dragon that lost its wings. Zevlor could swear he was carved from stone, if not for the wizard’s clawed hand absently scratching his forearm, leaving deep red marks.
“What happened after?” the older tiefling asked quietly.
Upon the question, Rolan’s eyes began moving, as if trying to catch something invisible in the air. His jaw moved side to side, shedding distorted, clicking sounds.
“I don’t remember,” he lied. Something inside him protested against telling Zevlor how he cut Lorroakan’s body into pieces and experimented on it until it rotted beyond recognition. The Hellrider wasn’t ready for it. Yet. “If I don’t write it down, it is as good as perished.”
Zevlor sighed, turning more pages, “Don’t think for a second that what happened that day somehow absolves you from your crimes.”
Rolan laughed, shaking his head as if his former friend just told him a hilarious joke, “You- you think I gave you this so you can pity me? You think I need a warm hug and reassurance from a hypocrite, the Elturel’s Butcher? Please.”
He reached through the bars, retrieving the diary. "You asked when I became the Miresworn. This is your answer."
The Hellrider jolted, looking closely at the wizard. The Miresworn it was. The Rolan he knew indeed died with Lorroakan that day.
“Fair enough,” Zevlor replied, “Yet, I still struggle to understand: what is this mire that compelled you?”
Rolan froze again. In truth, his distorted memories couldn’t give him a comprehensive explanation, “It’s a long story,” he said slowly.
“How lucky that I have plenty of time now,” Zevlor drawled. And he did. The Hellrider intended to understand what broke a good man to the point of no return. Even if it was the last thing fate had prepared for his life’s path.
Notes: Soooooo... welcome to the Miresworn AU. 😅 This is an introduction to the longfic I am slowly starting to work on. I have been consumed by the idea of writing a dark Rolan fic for a while now. A universe where Cal and Lia die in Shadow-Cursed Lands, and Rolan looks for ways to resurrect them. In his pursuit, he begins using Thay's Necromancy. As it slowly corrupts him, Rolan loses his grasp on reality and allies with Ascended Astarion to control Baldur’s Gate from the shadows and have full access to all its resources. The snippet of the story you’ve read takes place two years after the final battle. The persona of the Miresworn has completely taken over Rolan. Hope I’ve got you intrigued with why he keeps Zevlor captive. :3
For more information on the Miresworn, you can read this post :))
Here's a bigger project I've been working on for a while. The tiefling refugees are all pretty close to my heart, so I wanted to give them the love they deserve. A few of them are still missing, but I'm already planning another set for the kids!
Unfortunately, I can't add as many tags as there are characters, so feel free to tag your favorite underrated tiefling!
Oooookay, sorry for playing the boomer. I figured I need to leave the tags here. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go bury myself out of sheer shame.
I was tagged by @kt-catt @@rdekarios @lilhumanoid @litsenn @oursusanellen @thepalelawyer @tynithia @faeriiefire @lolthwoven @bladesingerlily for WIPs and last lines written. Thank you dears! 🫶
Parts Part one, two, three, four, five, six
He smirked—small, brief, the first warmth she had seen in him all evening, not the warmth he usually offered her but warmer than the careful distance he had maintained since she walked through the study door, as though she had managed to bridge some narrow fraction of the chasm she had created.
"I cannot claim to be entirely unfamiliar with the feeling," he added, and she understood what it cost him to admit it. "But what I fail to grasp—what I genuinely cannot reconcile—is why you would lie to me about it. Why would you not trust me enough to share this with me?"
Celeste sighed. "I love you. You are an Archmage. A Professor at the Blackstaff Academy. You take lunch with the Blackstaff herself and dinner with the social echelon of Waterdeep—"
"As do you."
"As your wife, yes. The woman beside you." She turned the glass slowly. "When we came to Waterdeep, I had nothing to my name but a heritage I didn't want. No past, no identity, no memories I could reliably trust. Not even a last name—you gave me yours."
For a brief moment, a smile crossed his face, and Celeste considered carefully how much truth he would be able to stomach, and how quickly.
"Do you remember," she asked, her voice dropping, watching the firelight catch in the rum's dark surface, "the first night I played the Yawning Portal?"
"I do."
"We had wandered a great deal in those weeks, you had shown me the city, your favorite spots, the restaurants, the bakeries and vendors you love—"
"I remember," Gale stated, harder than before, and she heard what lay beneath it: that it was a good memory, a fond one, and that revisiting it tonight was complicated.
"I noticed we were being followed. We were both slightly drunk, just enough for me to be entertaining when I performed, and you hadn't noticed. I was absolutely certain, but you were enjoying yourself so thoroughly that when I asked whether you had noticed anything—"
"I declined!" Gale sat forward abruptly, the memory surfacing with enough force to animate him despite himself. "We were on our way home, finding—" He took a breath and fought back a smirk with visible effort. "Indulging in alleyways. You asked if I had noticed something, and I declined."
Celeste managed a small smile, glad he was willing to go there with her, even now. "Yes. You declined. And I tried to let it go, and we had other things on our minds that night. But I could not shake the feeling. So when you left for the Academy the next morning, I followed, at a distance. It was just a feeling that something might be wrong."
"And you concluded I was incapable of handling it?" The warmth the memory had briefly restored evaporated instantly, replaced by sharp offense. "I was Mystra's Chosen, Celeste. I have—"
"I am aware, Gale," she said gently. "I did not think you would be attacked in broad daylight and be unable to defend yourself. I was concerned. This was a new city, and I did not yet know its patterns." She sighed. "I would have done it differently, with hindsight. But it was not distrust. It was—if I am being completely honest—also thrilling. I admit that freely. It was thrilling to follow a thread and see where it led."
Gale sighed with the resignation of a man defeated by a truth he recognized in himself. "Though I do not particularly enjoy admitting it... I am familiar with the feeling."
Celeste nodded, drank, then offered a small smile. His eyes softened, fractionally.
"And? Had I been followed?"
gentlest of tags for @cinder-rellish181 @missfortunetherogue @heartcrystal2000 @deianestormborn @defira85 @mesmerisingpurple @graysparrowao3 @fangedgrace @gloura @hollowharp @unovafarm @alliskit @goodgirlgonebard @elandra-beltharys
The Sorceress of Ramazith's Tower: The Final Chapter
(aka holy shit she finished it) (Entire story)
2,763 Words
Baldur's Gate 3
Chapter 44/44
Pairings: Lia/Gale (main), Dark Urge/Rolan and Cal/Lae'zel (secondary/background)
Thanks to @wasteful-sam - whose Rolan-posting kept his sister and a certain Wizard of Waterdeep just active enough in my mind I never truly forgot them
===
Time seemed to crawl in the space between Lia gaining her magic and Cal's departure from Baldur's Gate. As time moves ever more rapidly, the shape of Lia's life to come begins to form.
The end to the story for now. Highlights of the adventures lived in the space between (departures, training, fireworks, a proposal, and a wedding), ending at the start of the next great adventure.
===
Perhaps not the ending I wanted when I set out with this two years ago, but given that I'm in a state of largely unrecoverable burnout with BG3, I really wanted to give these two closure and an ending for those who invested in my often insane story the past two years.
The tone and pace are incredibly more rapid than the preceding 43 chapters. But I'm still immensely proud of this story.
It's closure, and it's a sweet and devoted end for Lia - the Sorceress of Ramazith's Tower
The Sorceress of Ramazith's Tower: The Final Chapter
(aka holy shit she finished it)
2,763 Words
Baldur's Gate 3
Chapter 44/44
Pairings: Lia/Gale (main), Dark Urge/Rolan and Cal/Lae'zel (secondary/background)
Thanks to @wasteful-sam - whose Rolan-posting kept his sister and a certain Wizard of Waterdeep just active enough in my mind I never truly forgot them
===
Time seemed to crawl in the space between Lia gaining her magic and Cal's departure from Baldur's Gate. As time moves ever more rapidly, the shape of Lia's life to come begins to form.
The end to the story for now. Highlights of the adventures lived in the space between (departures, training, fireworks, a proposal, and a wedding), ending at the start of the next great adventure.
===
Perhaps not the ending I wanted when I set out with this two years ago, but given that I'm in a state of largely unrecoverable burnout with BG3, I really wanted to give these two closure and an ending for those who invested in my often insane story the past two years.
The tone and pace are incredibly more rapid than the preceding 43 chapters. But I'm still immensely proud of this story.
It's closure, and it's a sweet and devoted end for Lia - the Sorceress of Ramazith's Tower
As you are so clued in with the BG3 world, I was curious if you could recommend any fics or writers to read. Preferably Gale/Tav or OC. I don't mind genders but I dont want bloodweave
Im a bit of a sub for angst and no comfort
Hewwo :3 Ahh, thank you for asking <3
Ok, full disclosure: I am “the other wizard” girlie 🤣, so I am not actively seeking out Gale-centered fics 😅 BUT I follow many people who are writing about Gale, so I can recommend them for sure! Unfortunately, I didn’t get to reading all of their works yet, AND MOOTIES, I AM SO SORRY FOR THAT 🥺, but I went through them and gathered information on their works for you :3 For some of the them, I began reading snippets or newer works, and I definitely might be missing out on some of their older works :( But honestly, like, I am 1000% sure their writing is good even if I haven’t started reading their works yet, and you, anon, can choose for yourself whose style you prefer :3
This is also an invitation for mooties and ANYONE really to reblog and add your list of Gale writers for the anon <3
@optimisticgrey For ME, this is the first Gale writer that comes to mind, as I’ve read their works the most :3 You can check the full master post here, but there’s one fic in particular I read in preparation for this question because I’ve been eyeing that one for a while. It is “In the wake of your departure”. OH MAN, this is such a great hurt angst, as a Gale fan, you will be left gutted for sure! And I also loved the “I have known you”, I wouldn’t say it’s SAD sad, but likee… you do feel your heart tingling at the scenario :(((
@warmsummersday “In every universe“ OH MY GOD. I’ve read it so long ago, and I still remember it, it hurt me. :( It is short, but it made me cry hardcore at the scenario. Also, they have a longer fic “Don't forget me”, if you want moarr from them :3
@deianestormborn , a newbie (affectionately <3333), but I know you can expect great things from them <3 Please check the whole AO3, it has HAWT smuts, HOWEVER, considering you need sadder/angstier, I really liked the “Golden hour” - bittersweet and very tender for sure :3
@alpydk has a big collection of Gale works, including great angst and interesting ships! <333
@bhaal-battle-beer-bard - turns out my dearest also has a Gale fic!! I love their writing so much, you will definitely enjoy! <33 Gale x FTav, angst, hurt, sadness "Visions of Gale".
@cep-stories "Threads of fate" - angsty and fluffy Gale x Ftav :3 Also pre-canon, definitely an interesting setting!
@carnivaley "Terms of affection", Gale x F drow bard, and has elemets of angst + pretend relationships, like??? that's cool af!
@heartsong94 has both lighter and darker stories which are very vast, M!Durge x Gale <3, includes post-epilogue sneaky God!Gale content. :3
@renofdragons has a great collection of Gale pairings with other characters, including Karlach, Halsin, Wyll, Astarion AND Rolan wewewwwww :3
@knightofbhaal has spicyyyyyy smuts with MDurge/Gale <3 "Don't fear the reaper" and "Unusual research". Yep. those are hardcore smuts, HOWEVER, I am reading those, I'd say that's pretty ansty, too! ;)))
@gortashsrighthand "Gale's folly" with dark Gale?? Oh hell yeah! On my reading list! But check their complete mastepost for Gale as well, very versatile.
@sol-el writes Gale and MTav, their writing style is etherial and stories are quite unique <3
@shewolfofvilnius and their great, unique fic with Gale x Lia (yesssss, the queen!!!). Fluffy, has angst, and goes unexpected places for sure! <333
@rdekarios - certainly on a sweeter side, but still very worth to check their AO3, because I know for a fact that their Tav, Seraphina, is absolutely lovely!
I cannot NOT mention dearest @kimberbohwrites , who apparently cheats on OUR wizard with Gale :P They have 2 delicious stories with Gale x FTav! "The raven's risk" and "Mistake by Moonrise".
@perpetualmaladaptivedaydream and their AO3 with shorter stories about Gale/Tav, but it has a lot: angst, yearning, sexy times, fluff, and more! <3
@saylofwaterdeep has an absolute goldmine of FDurge x Gale writings, has mystery, dynamic plot lines, and even horror! :3
@asorceresswrites -another great, versatile collection with angsty and sweet stories :3 FTav/Gale
@ashprince-of-bel-air writes a lot about different characters, including Gale <3 Check the full masterpost, their writing is so tight! <3
OK, I think that's it. If I missed someone, please let me know <333
As you are so clued in with the BG3 world, I was curious if you could recommend any fics or writers to read. Preferably Gale/Tav or OC. I don't mind genders but I dont want bloodweave
Im a bit of a sub for angst and no comfort
Hewwo :3 Ahh, thank you for asking <3
Ok, full disclosure: I am “the other wizard” girlie 🤣, so I am not actively seeking out Gale-centered fics 😅 BUT I follow many people who are writing about Gale, so I can recommend them for sure! Unfortunately, I didn’t get to reading all of their works yet, AND MOOTIES, I AM SO SORRY FOR THAT 🥺, but I went through them and gathered information on their works for you :3 For some of the them, I began reading snippets or newer works, and I definitely might be missing out on some of their older works :( But honestly, like, I am 1000% sure their writing is good even if I haven’t started reading their works yet, and you, anon, can choose for yourself whose style you prefer :3
This is also an invitation for mooties and ANYONE really to reblog and add your list of Gale writers for the anon <3
@optimisticgrey For ME, this is the first Gale writer that comes to mind, as I’ve read their works the most :3 You can check the full master post here, but there’s one fic in particular I read in preparation for this question because I’ve been eyeing that one for a while. It is “In the wake of your departure”. OH MAN, this is such a great hurt angst, as a Gale fan, you will be left gutted for sure! And I also loved the “I have known you”, I wouldn’t say it’s SAD sad, but likee… you do feel your heart tingling at the scenario :(((
@warmsummersday “In every universe“ OH MY GOD. I’ve read it so long ago, and I still remember it, it hurt me. :( It is short, but it made me cry hardcore at the scenario. Also, they have a longer fic “Don't forget me”, if you want moarr from them :3
@deianestormborn , a newbie (affectionately <3333), but I know you can expect great things from them <3 Please check the whole AO3, it has HAWT smuts, HOWEVER, considering you need sadder/angstier, I really liked the “Golden hour” - bittersweet and very tender for sure :3
@alpydk has a big collection of Gale works, including great angst and interesting ships! <333
@bhaal-battle-beer-bard - turns out my dearest also has a Gale fic!! I love their writing so much, you will definitely enjoy! <33 Gale x FTav, angst, hurt, sadness "Visions of Gale".
@cep-stories "Threads of fate" - angsty and fluffy Gale x Ftav :3 Also pre-canon, definitely an interesting setting!
@carnivaley "Terms of affection", Gale x F drow bard, and has elemets of angst + pretend relationships, like??? that's cool af!
@heartsong94 has both lighter and darker stories which are very vast, M!Durge x Gale <3, includes post-epilogue sneaky God!Gale content. :3
@renofdragons has a great collection of Gale pairings with other characters, including Karlach, Halsin, Wyll, Astarion AND Rolan wewewwwww :3
@knightofbhaal has spicyyyyyy smuts with MDurge/Gale <3 "Don't fear the reaper" and "Unusual research". Yep. those are hardcore smuts, HOWEVER, I am reading those, I'd say that's pretty ansty, too! ;)))
@gortashsrighthand "Gale's folly" with dark Gale?? Oh hell yeah! On my reading list! But check their complete mastepost for Gale as well, very versatile.
@sol-el writes Gale and MTav, their writing style is etherial and stories are quite unique <3
@shewolfofvilnius and their great, unique fic with Gale x Lia (yesssss, the queen!!!). Fluffy, has angst, and goes unexpected places for sure! <333
@rdekarios - certainly on a sweeter side, but still very worth to check their AO3, because I know for a fact that their Tav, Seraphina, is absolutely lovely!
I cannot NOT mention dearest @kimberbohwrites , who apparently cheats on OUR wizard with Gale :P They have 2 delicious stories with Gale x FTav! "The raven's risk" and "Mistake by Moonrise".
@perpetualmaladaptivedaydream and their AO3 with shorter stories about Gale/Tav, but it has a lot: angst, yearning, sexy times, fluff, and more! <3
@saylofwaterdeep has an absolute goldmine of FDurge x Gale writings, has mystery, dynamic plot lines, and even horror! :3
@asorceresswrites -another great, versatile collection with angsty and sweet stories :3 FTav/Gale
@ashprince-of-bel-air writes a lot about different characters, including Gale <3 Check the full masterpost, their writing is so tight! <3
OK, I think that's it. If I missed someone, please let me know <333
Inspired by this, though they are not university professors.
I have known you
Gale x f!reader - 9,6k words
AO3 Link
You wake to the soft hush of rain against the window and the sort of Saturday morning that asks nothing of you.
No obligations. No reason to leave the warmth of your bed or your cat purring on your stomach.
Only the familiar, irritating ache in your chest — that strange hollow fullness that comes whenever you surface from a dream you’ve already forgotten, and yet somehow know mattered.
You stare at the ceiling for a moment, frowning.
It had felt good. That much always remains.
Not the shape of it. Not the surroundings, or the people, or whatever story your sleeping mind had wandered into. Only the feeling of him left behind like a handprint against your ribs.
Warmth.
Comfort.
Belonging.
You had belonged there. With him.
As if wherever your mind had taken you had not been something imagined at all, but something known. Someone familiar. Someone who had once been yours.
A sharp, offended yowl tears through the thought just before your cat launches herself off your stomach with all the grace of a falling brick.
“Ow—”
You laugh despite yourself as she lands with a dramatic thump on the mattress, then turns to glare at you as though you are the one being unreasonable.
Right.
Breakfast.
“Sorry, love,” you murmur, voice still rough with sleep, and push yourself upright.
Even the warm, earthy tones you had chosen so carefully for your bedroom look muted in the grey light of morning, dulled by rain and cloud until everything feels softer, quieter.
You let your gaze drift around the room.
It is a nice bedroom. Cozy in a way that feels lived in rather than curated.
Drawings and paintings are scattered across the walls and wooden shelves — little pieces from the people you love most. Sketches from your closest friends, half-finished gifts, small ridiculous doodles that still make you smile. And, tucked among them, more than one portrait of your favorite man. Some subtle. Some… less so.
A small but sturdy wardrobe stands in the corner, dark old wood polished to a low shine. You had found it secondhand, scratched and neglected, and spent an entire stubborn weekend refurbishing it yourself until it looked like something worth keeping.
Beside the oversized bed — a bed far too large for one person and one demanding cat, though she would argue otherwise — sits the only nightstand, half-buried beneath your ever-growing to be read pile.
Books stacked in precarious towers. A mug you forgot to bring back to the kitchen. A candle burned nearly to the end. Your phone face-down. The quiet evidence of a life that belongs entirely to you.
It should feel comforting.
And it does, mostly.
But on mornings like this, with rain at the windows and that strange ache still lingering in your chest, even this room — lovely and familiar and yours — feels faintly like the place you woke back into.
Not the place you truly left.
You sit on the edge of the bed for a moment, elbows on your knees, rubbing your face with both hands as you try to gather yourself.
Wherever the dream had taken you, you had liked it there.
No, more than liked it.
You had lived there. That is the unsettling part.
There had been warmth, yes, but also certainty. A strange and easy certainty that followed you even now in fragments. The sense of knowing how to love and being loved in return. The certainty of having found your person.
As though, in that place, you understood the rules.
As though you had been there before.
As though you had a life there. A relationship. A home.
Your toes curl against the thick cream carpet, grounding yourself in the texture of it, in the familiar shape of your room, in the ordinary reality of your own life.
The cat meows again — louder this time, more insistent, circling your ankles now that you’ve finally stood up.
You sigh, smiling despite the strange heaviness in your chest.
“Tragic,” you mutter more to yourself than to her. “Utterly neglected.”
She blinks up at you without remorse.
You move towards the kitchen on autopilot, and the feeling follows.
The faint, lingering ache. Like waking has cost you something.
Like you have misplaced something important in the shift between sleep and morning, and no matter how hard you reach for it, your hands close around nothing.
It has been happening for a while now.
Long enough that it no longer feels strange in the moment, only afterwards, when you catch yourself standing still in the middle of your own kitchen, spooning cat food into a bowl while trying to hold onto the fading edges of a life you cannot remember.
You never recall the dream. Not properly.
Never the faces. Not his face.
Never the conversations.
Only the feeling.
And sometimes — more unsettling than all the rest — the distinct impression of someone.
Just one particular presence.
One particular person.
“The Dream Man,” Abby calls him, with the kind of dramatic delight only Abby could bring to something that leaves you feeling quietly unwell.
You had rolled your eyes the first time she said it, but the name stuck anyway.
The Dream Man.
Faceless. Familiar. Always just beyond your reach.
You’ve spoken to Abby about him at length — over coffee, over cheap takeout, on the phone after one particular intense night and one particular night, sprawled on her couch while she looked at you with the kind of fascinated concern reserved for people describing things that sound romantic only until you say them out loud.
Because that is the problem, really.
It doesn’t feel like dreaming.
Dreams are nonsense. Dreams are fragments and symbols and your subconscious rifling through whatever emotional clutter you failed to deal with during the day.
This is different.
This feels like remembering.
As though, in sleep, some hidden door inside you opens and you step through it without permission — not into fantasy, but into something already lived. Something old. Something yours.
A past life, Abby had said once, half-joking and half-not.
You had laughed.
But alone, in the dim quiet of rainy mornings like this one, with your cat finally crunching contentedly through breakfast and the ache still sitting low in your chest, you are less certain it is ridiculous than you used to be.
Because no matter how little you remember, one truth lingers every time.
You knew him there.
Whoever he is.
And somehow, impossibly, heartbreakingly—he knew you too.
You shake the feeling off as best you can. You have practice.
This is not the first morning you have woken with that ache lodged beneath your ribs, nor the first time you have had to drag yourself back into the shape of your real life while some stubborn part of you insists you have left something important behind in sleep.
Not the first morning. Not the first rodeo.
So you do what you always do.
You reach for your phone.
Abby’s good morning message is waiting for you already — of course it is — followed by a reminder about meeting later. You answer with a sleepy heart emoji and confirm the time, all while trying very hard to ignore the lingering, absurd sense that you are somehow mourning a faceless man.
The thought hits you so suddenly you snort aloud. Your cat looks up from her bowl with visible offense.
“Sorry,” you mutter, grinning despite yourself.
You carry your coffee to the turquoise couch and sink into the cushions, curling one leg beneath you. Rain still taps softly at the windows, the whole flat washed in that same dim, colourless light that makes even the warmest things feel a little muted around the edges.
You unlock your phone and start scrolling.
Doomscrolling, technically. A terrible habit.
A scientifically proven terrible habit, if Abby is to be believed — and she is, because she had once sent you three separate studies about how it wrecks your attention span, complete with highlighted sections and a deeply judgmental voice note.
You smile into your coffee at the memory.
“Touch grass,” she had said. “Or at least stare out a window like a Victorian heroine instead of melting your brain before breakfast.”
A stranger’s face flashes across your screen. Then another. And another.
People you do not know. Lives you will never touch. Opinions you never asked for.
Usually, it works well enough as distraction.
Usually, the dream fades.
But this morning is different. You know it before you can name why.
Something about today feels… sharper. More immediate. The ache in your chest is deeper, less like a passing mood and more like a bruise someone keeps pressing a thumb into.
If it is the dream — if it is this lingering sense of loss that comes from waking — then today it has teeth.
Today it hurts.
You frown down at your coffee, turning the mug slowly in your hand.
It’s ridiculous.
You have been single for long enough now that it no longer feels like a temporary state. You are not pining after anyone. You are not secretly lonely in some tragic, unmet way. You have no desire to date, no hunger to perform the exhausting ritual of letting strangers disappoint you over overpriced drinks.
Why would you?
You have built something better. A life full of people who love you.
Friends who show up.
Family who fuss over you.
A circle of affection so solid and familiar it holds you up on the days you cannot quite manage it yourself.
You are not lacking.
Not emotionally.
And sexually? Please. There are toys for that. You snort into your cup again at your own train of thought.
Your parents may still sigh dramatically about grandchildren every time someone announces a pregnancy on Facebook, but that is hardly your problem.
Your brother can deal with that. He is married, after all.
Darining the last of your coffee, you push yourself up from the couch, already thinking vaguely about breakfast — or rather, the sad excuse for breakfast you have left waiting in the kitchen.
Your foot catches on the edge of the coffee table.
“Fuck—”
Pain shoots through your toes as you stumble, barely saving the empty mug from slipping out of your hand.
At that exact moment, your phone pings.
Perfect.
You hiss through your teeth, set the mug down, and collapse gracelessly back onto the couch, grabbing your foot and rubbing at the offended toes.
“Excellent,” you mutter. “A flawless start.”
Your cat, from the floor, offers no sympathy.
You pick up your phone. Another message from Abby.
Has the Dream Man visited you again?
You stare at the screen.
It is obviously a tease. You know that instantly. You can practically hear her saying it with that smug little grin she gets whenever she thinks she is being hilarious. But for one terrible, breathless moment, your heart simply… stops.
Yes.
Yes, he has.
He always does.
The faceless man.
The one whose words you never remember, no matter how desperately you try to hold onto them after waking. The one whose presence feels more intimate than memory should allow. The one who seems to belong to you in some impossible, undefinable way.
Not a stranger.
Someone known.
Someone familiar.
Someone you have loved — and been loved by — so completely that even stripped of face, name, and voice, the feeling of him remains.
A man you have shared a life with.
In another timeline.
In another life.
Now only in dreams.
Your throat tightens so suddenly it startles you.
You sit very still on the couch, staring at Abby’s message while the ache in your chest swells and swells and swells until it feels almost unbearable.
It is no longer just wistful.
No longer abstract.
It is grief, you realise. Raw and senseless and humiliating.
Your eyes sting.
“Oh, come on,” you whisper to no one.
The room feels too quiet all at once.
Rain against the window.
The soft crunch of cat food.
The low hum of the fridge from the kitchen.
Your own pulse in your ears.
And beneath it all, that awful certainty that you have lost something.
Someone.
Not metaphorically.
Not in the vague poetic way people talk about longing.
Truly. Honestly.
As though, each morning, waking tears you away from a life your body still remembers even when your mind refuses to.
A sob rises in your chest so abruptly you have to clamp your mouth shut against it.
“Fuck,” you breathe, voice cracking.
Your hand trembles around the phone.
You stare at the words on the screen until they blur.
Has the Dream Man visited you again?
Yes.
Yes, and today something about it feels dangerously close to real.
You press the heel of your hand hard against your sternum as though that might stop whatever is splintering there.
This is insane.
You are losing your mind over a dream.
Over a faceless man.
Over the ghost of a life that may never have existed.
And yet— if it is only a dream, why does it feel so much like heartbreak?
It takes you an embarrassingly long time to force the tears back down. Long enough that your cat notices.
At some point, while you’re still curled on the couch with your phone face-down beside you and your breathing doing its best impression of something normal, she hops up beside you with surprising gentleness and presses herself against your thigh.
You let out a shaky little laugh that sounds too close to another sob.
“Well,” you murmur thickly, reaching for her automatically, “at least one of us is emotionally available.”
She answers by climbing half into your lap and butting her head insistently into your hand until you give in and start scratching behind her calico ears.
The purring begins almost immediately. Deep. Steady. Warm.
You smile through the ache in your face, blinking hard against the tears still threatening to spill.
It helps.
Abby had told you about this once — in great, delighted detail, because Abby never merely shares information, she delivers it like a lecturer with tenure and a captive audience.
Something about the frequency of cat purring having healing properties. Reduced stress, improved regulation—possibly witchcraft disguised as biology.
There were probably studies.
There were definitely studies.
You make a vague mental note to ask her later. She is the scholar, after all.
For now, you just sit there and let the cat purr herself into your ribs until the worst of it passes.
Eventually, your breathing evens out.
Eventually, your chest stops feeling quite so tight.
Eventually, you become calm enough to function again — or at least to pretend convincingly.
You peel yourself off the couch and head for the bathroom, shedding clothes along the way in the lazy, graceless manner of someone whose dignity has already been thoroughly compromised before noon.
The bathroom is cold when you step inside.
The shower, at least, is not. You turn the water on hot and wait until steam begins to fill the small room, curling around the glass and softening the sharpness of everything. Then you step beneath it, close the door, and let the heat fall over your skin.
And the moment it does, you fall apart.
There is no warning. No graceful unraveling.
One second you are standing there, head tipped back beneath the spray, trying very hard to be a functional adult.
The next, the first sob tears out of you so violently it nearly doubles you over. You slap a hand over your mouth on instinct, as if that might somehow contain it.
It does not. It fails spectacularly.
Another sob follows, deeper, rougher, dragged from somewhere so low inside you it feels almost physical. Tears spill hot and immediate, mixing with the water, impossible to separate from it.
“This is insane,” you whisper against your palm, the words broken by breath and water and grief you cannot explain.
It is a dream.
Just a dream.
The feeling is a dream.
This is not real.
There is no mysterious faceless man waiting for you in another life.
There is no one out there whom you love with this absurd, devastating certainty.
No one who loves you in return. You brace one hand against the tile wall and squeeze your eyes shut.
This is not the first morning you have woken after dreaming of him.
And it will not be the last.
You know that.
You know that.
“Get a grip,” you tell yourself harshly, because sometimes cruelty is easier than tenderness.
It does not help. The tears keep coming anyway. Hot, relentless and humiliating.
Your shoulders shake so hard it hurts. Every attempt to pull yourself together only seems to make the next sob worse. You breathe and breathe and breathe, trying to force air into lungs that suddenly feel too small for whatever this is.
It takes forever.
Forever to calm down.
Forever to stop shaking.
Forever to wash your hair, your skin, your face — as though the ritual of it might somehow scrub the ache out of you too.
It doesn’t.
By the time you step out of the shower and wrap yourself in a towel, the feeling remains.
That terrible, shapeless thing.
Missing.
Longing.
Him.
You dry your body mechanically, movements slow and detached, the mirror carefully avoided. You manage skin care. Deodorant. A half-hearted attempt at feeling human.
Then you reach for your toothbrush and freeze.
The memory comes not as an image, but as sensation. So sudden and so intimate it steals the air from your lungs.
The feeling of lips against yours.
Not a face, but lips. His lips. They are warm, familiar and impossibly gentle.
A hand on your hip, certain and knowing.
Pulling you closer with the easy confidence of someone who has done it a hundred times before. A thumb brushing slowly over your skin as though he knows exactly where to touch you, exactly how to steady you, exactly what you like.
Your entire body goes still.
Your fingers tighten around the toothbrush.
You can almost feel it.
Not imagination.
Not fantasy.
Memory.
Or something so close to memory that the distinction stops mattering. You exhale shakily.
“Jesus Christ,” you whisper to the empty bathroom.
Then, because there is apparently no dignity left to salvage, you close your eyes and brush your teeth like a person trying very hard not to have an existential breakdown over phantom kisses before breakfast.
The feeling follows you anyway.
Through choosing clothes.
Through getting dressed.
Through drying your hair.
Through standing in the kitchen trying to decide if toast counts as a meal.
It clings to you like static.
You cannot shake it.
Every quiet moment seems to sharpen it. Every pause opens the door for it to rush back in — the ache in your chest, the phantom touch on your skin, the impossible certainty that somewhere, somehow, you have loved someone you cannot even name.
By midday you are willing to try almost any explanation, no matter how pathetic.
Hormones, you tell yourself.
That has to be it.
You are probably ovulating.
You are probably being chemically ambushed by your own body and assigning tragic literary meaning to it because apparently you are one gloomy playlist away from becoming unbearable.
It’s plausible. Almost reassuringly plausible.
You even glance toward your phone where the period tracker app sits buried among the others.
You could check.
You don’t.
Because some stubborn, frightened part of you already knows the answer would not make this feel any less real.
By the time you are finally dressed and have forced down something that only loosely qualifies as breakfast — one piece of toast with Nutella and a second cup of coffee strong enough to count as self-defense — you decide the only sensible thing left to do is go for a walk.
Fresh air, you tell yourself.
Movement.
A change of scenery.
Something to quiet the fractured static in your head.
It is, in theory, an excellent plan.
In practice, the walk does not happen.
Or rather — it begins, and then almost immediately becomes a spectacularly miserable idea.
The rain has intensified since morning, no longer the gentle, cozy sort that belongs in playlists and overpriced candles, but a steady, needling downpour that finds every gap in your defenses. Your windbreaker is doing its best, technically. Water beads and rolls from the fabric exactly as advertised.
Unfortunately, the wet cold creeps in anyway.
You shove your hands deep into your pockets and hunch your shoulders, lowering your head as you tug the hood farther over your face.
The world beyond it is all grey pavement, dripping trees, and blurred windows.
It should be grounding.
Instead, the cold only makes everything worse. It gets under your skin, sharpens the ache and deletes the warmth the shower had left. Stirs the missing and the longing until they feel less like emotions and more like symptoms of an illness you cannot name.
Your mind, traitorous thing that it is, circles back to the same place it has been orbiting all morning.
The memory.
Not even a full memory. Just the ghost of one.
The feeling of his lips against yours.
That same impossible warmth.
The hand on your hip.
The quiet certainty of being drawn closer.
A shiver runs the length of your spine so suddenly you nearly stop walking.
“Absolutely not,” you mutter to yourself, as though scolding your own nervous system.
A woman passing under an umbrella gives you a brief, cautious glance.
Fair enough.
You make it another block before giving up entirely.
By the time you return home, your jeans are damp at the hems, your shoes are making unpleasant squelching noises, and whatever composure you had scraped together this morning has dissolved back into a sulky, waterlogged heap.
You kick off your shoes by the door and stand there for a moment, dripping faintly on the mat.
“Well,” you say to no one, “that was character building.”
Your cat appears from the hallway, looks at you, and clearly decides she wants no part in whatever terrible choices you’ve made.
You make tea. Because tea, unlike your own brain, has never once betrayed you.
The ritual helps a little — kettle on, mug out, honey, steam rising in slow curls from the cup. Something warm between your hands. Something simple. Something real.
Then, because you are still determined to salvage at least one respectable activity from this day, you retrieve your book and settle onto the couch with the cat in your lap, tea in one hand, book in the other.
This, too, should work.
Rain at the windows.
A purring cat.
A good book.
A mug of tea warming your fingers.
It is the sort of scene people post online with captions like my ideal Saturday, and under normal circumstances you would agree.
Today, the words fail you entirely.
You read the same sentence three times.
Then a paragraph.
Then half a page.
Your eyes move across the text, obediently performing the mechanics of reading, but nothing lands. The words slide off your brain like water off glass. You turn a page and realize with a jolt that you have not absorbed a single thing.
You go back.
Try again.
Still nothing.
The cat purrs, heavy and trusting in your lap.
The tea cools.
Outside, the rain keeps falling.
Inside, your mind drifts helplessly back to the same impossible gravity well it has been circling since you woke.
A faceless man.
A remembered kiss.
A grief with nowhere to go.
At some point you stop pretending to read and simply stare at the page, unfocused, while your thumb rests between the chapters like a placeholder for a person who has temporarily left the room.
When your phone alarm finally goes off, the sound is so abrupt it startles both you and the cat.
She gives you a deeply offended look before hopping off your lap.
You blink at the screen.
The reminder you set for meeting Abby.
And to your own immense surprise, what you feel is not annoyance at being interrupted.
Not reluctance.
Relief.
Pure, immediate relief.
Because at last, finally, there is something to do.
Somewhere to go.
Someone real to look at.
Someone who might anchor you back into yourself before you lose the rest of the day to a man who does not exist.
Or worse—to one who somehow does, just out of reach.
You get dressed properly this time.
Jeans, thick socks, a sweater soft enough to feel like armor, then your rain jacket over the top. Before leaving, you crouch by the kitchen counter and bribe your cat with three of her favorite catnip treats in what you both understand to be a transparent but necessary attempt to secure your absence without emotional consequences.
“Be good,” you tell her.
She crunches one treat, stares into the middle distance, and pointedly ignores you.
Fair.
Then you grab your keys and head out.
The bookstore sits only a short drive away, tucked between a florist and a tailor that still somehow survives in a world increasingly determined to kill every charming little independent business left standing.
It is really two stores pretending to be one. Or perhaps two old hearts that decided, sensibly, to beat side by side.
One is the café, run by Amanda, who seems to have been old for as long as anyone can remember and who carries herself with the unshakable authority of someone who has seen enough of life to stop being impressed by very much. She bakes everything herself — cakes, pastries, little seasonal things with too much butter and entirely too much love.
Next door is the bookshop, run by Chris, whom Abby knows from somewhere and refuses to properly explain.
“Don’t worry about it,” she always says, which is deeply unhelpful.
Chris is sweet in that slightly posh, faintly dramatic way that somehow makes them the perfect bookstore owner. The sort of person who can recommend a novel like they’re bestowing a sacred text and somehow make you grateful for the privilege.
Years ago, customers began carrying their new books into Amanda’s café to read over coffee and cake. Amanda, apparently deciding resistance was pointless, and Chris, no doubt delighted by the romance of it all, eventually knocked through the wall and connected the two shops with a narrow door that now remains permanently open.
You can wander freely between shelves and espresso.
Between stories and sugar.
It is, frankly, revoltingly wholesome.
And every time you go there, your heart swells a little against your better judgment.
By the time you pull into your usual parking spot, you are already smiling.
The bell over the café door gives its familiar little chime when you step inside.
Warmth hits you first.
Coffee, vanilla, cinnamon, the buttery sweetness of something fresh from the oven.
It is quiet and I shortly after lunch time, so the cafe will most likely fill later.
Only one couple occupies the corner table near the enormous plant someone donated years ago — a sprawling green beast Amanda insists is called Bernard and speaks to like an old friend.
Amanda spots you immediately.
Her giant glasses slide halfway down her nose as she peers at you over them, then adjusts them with one practiced finger.
“Oh, hello there, dear,” she says, smiling. “Chocolate peanut butter cake today, and cherry cupcakes. What can I get you?”
You smile back before you can stop yourself.
There is something about Amanda that makes resistance feel not only pointless, but vaguely rude. Kindness radiates off her in a way that feels both effortless and devastating.
“Hi, Amanda,” you say, stepping up to the counter. “Cherry cupcake, please. And a big oat latte.”
Amanda nods, already turning toward the absurdly enormous coffee machine behind her — a gleaming, aggressively modern monstrosity that looks like it should be piloted rather than operated. The contrast between it and her cardigan-and-sensible-shoes aesthetic remains deeply funny.
She works it with expert ease, peeking over one shoulder as the machine hisses to life.
“Abby joining you?”
You nod, your gaze drifting over the counter.
There are the usual flyers and pamphlets — local events, art classes, community theatre, a knitting group that sounds alarmingly militant. Beside the register sits the donation tin Amanda keeps where a tip jar might otherwise be, currently raising money for a local LGBTQIA+ support group.
You smile faintly at that, until you realize Amanda is still waiting for an answer.
“Yes,” you say quickly. “She’ll be here soon.”
“Good,” Amanda declares, as though Abby’s attendance has been formally approved. She sets your absurdly large oat latte on the counter and adds a plate with a small flourish. “I’ll make hers too.”
You blink.
“Amanda, you don’t—”
“Take the cake,” she interrupts. “It’s her favorite.”
You laugh softly, entirely helpless. The cherry cupcake appears beside your coffee.
Amanda hesitates then, her expression shifting just slightly as she looks more closely at you.
“Are you all right, dear?” she asks, voice gentling. “It’s none of my business, of course…”
The sentence trails off in the particular way older people do when they are attempting to seem less nosy while remaining extremely invested.
You manage another smile. It feels easier here.
“Just a rough night,” you say. “Thanks, Amanda.”
Her eyes soften.
“Well,” she says, with the solemnity of someone offering serious medical advice, “cake helps.”
You laugh — genuinely this time — and pay, fishing around in your wallet before dropping every bit of change you can find into the donation box.
Then you gather your coffee and cupcake and turn toward the seating area.
Places like this have a kind of timeless charm that can’t be manufactured.
The tables are old but polished, the wood worn smooth by years of elbows and books and steaming mugs. The chairs do not match at all — some donated, some rescued, some apparently inherited from entirely different decades whenever one of the originals finally gave up.
The walls are crowded with art from local patrons and customers alike. Watercolors, sketches, embroidery, prints, photographs. Some amateur, some astonishingly good, all of it loved.
A few of your favorite pieces in your apartment came from these walls.
The children’s corner, once tucked near the back of the café, has long since migrated into the bookstore itself, where it apparently became more practical. In its place sits an old, faded couch that should by all rights be uncomfortable, but somehow isn’t.
Near enough to the corner table to feel companionable.
Not near enough to look suspicious.
You drop your jacket over one of the adjacent chairs and sink onto the couch with a grateful sigh, balancing your cupcake on a napkin and wrapping both hands around your latte for a moment before taking a sip.
Perfect.
The warmth spreads through you slowly, loosening something tight in your chest.
For the first time all day, your thoughts do not immediately lurch toward him.
Toward the ache.
Toward the faceless grief still haunting the edges of everything.
Instead, you let yourself drift.
The couple in the corner speak in low, tense voices — not loud enough to intrude or understand, but not soft enough to hide the fact that they are definitely having some sort of argument. Not explosive. Just… strained.
You glance over your cup, catching the way one of them gestures too sharply, the way the other looks down at their hands.
Cute place for a first date, you think dryly. Less cute place for what appears to be a low-stakes breakup.
The thought has barely formed when the bell over the café door rings again.
You look up.
Abby.
She comes in with rain clinging to her bright yellow coat and the ends of her glorious dark hair damp and curling wildly around her face. She pauses just inside the doorway to shake off the worst of it, muttering something under her breath that is probably rude and definitely deserved by the weather.
And for the first time today, you relax.
Truly relax.
The tension leaves your shoulders so suddenly it almost makes you dizzy.
You had not realized how tightly wound you still were until the simple sight of her begins to undo it.
Abby glances around, spots you instantly, and her expression softens in that quick, unguarded way it only ever does for people she actually loves.
She heads straight to the counter.
Amanda, already three steps ahead as always, has Abby’s coffee waiting before she even opens her mouth. Abby pauses, visibly delighted, then grins and exchanges a few quick words with Amanda that you cannot hear from here.
Amanda laughs.
Abby points at you.
Amanda gives her a Look.
Abby clutches coffee cup to her chest in mock offense.
Then she turns and makes her way over, armed with coffee and enough chaotic energy to qualify as a weather system of its own.
“You didn’t have to pay for me,” she says, grinning as she sets everything down on the table.
“It wasn’t me. Amanda decided you’re apparently one of her chosen.”
“As I should be."
She drops her jacket over the back of the chair, then opens her arms expectantly and gives you a look that says don’t be weird about it.
“Up,” she orders. “Hug first. Emotional collapse second.”
You laugh — a startled, breathless little sound — and stand.
The moment you step into her arms, something in you gives way.
Not dramatically. but all at once.
Just enough that you realize, with painful clarity, how much you needed this.
Abby wraps herself around you without hesitation, one hand firm between your shoulder blades, the other squeezing once at your side.
She smells like rain, coffee, and the faintest trace of her perfume.
“Hey,” she murmurs, quieter now, the teasing stripped clean from her voice. “I was joking this morning, but… fuck, you look awful.”
You huff a laugh into her shoulder that wobbles dangerously near tears.
“Thank you. That’s exactly what a woman wants to hear.”
“I mean it lovingly.”
“That somehow makes it worse.”
She pulls back just enough to study your face. And because Abby knows you too well, her expression shifts immediately.
The grin fades.
The sharp humor softens.
Her dark eyes narrow, not in judgment, but in concern.
“Oh,” she says, very quietly.
Just that. And somehow it tells you she understands at once that this is not your usual Dream Man nonsense.
This is something else.
She reaches up and smooths a damp strand of hair away from your face.
“What happened?”
You avoid her gaze as you sit back down, reaching for your cup as if the motion alone might save you. You take a sip, more for something to do with your hands than because you want it.
“Another shitty morning,” you mutter.
It is not a lie.
Not really.
Abby watches you over the rim of her own cup, then sets it down with deliberate care.
“The dream man,” she says.
It is not an accusation. Not even a question. Just a quiet statement, made with the kind of certainty that tells you she has already pieced together far too much. She reaches for her cake and takes a slow, thoughtful bite, but the growing worry in her face is impossible to miss.
You nod, suddenly and painfully embarrassed.
“I know how this sounds, Abs,” you say, your voice thinner than you would like. “I know it sounds insane. But it was so real. It felt like…” You trail off, your throat tightening around the words. “I mean…”
Your voice wavers.
You curl both hands around the paper cup, clutching it tighter, grounding yourself in the heat of it. In the texture of the cardboard sleeve. In anything that is real and solid and here.
“I could feel him,” you whisper. “His lips… I know what he…” You break off, horrified by your own words. “Fuck, Abby…”
A groan escapes you as you cover your face with both hands, wanting very badly for the floor to open up and swallow you whole.
Abby is quiet for a moment.
“It’s alright, dear. Talk me through it, hm?” Her voice is warm, careful, impossibly patient. “I’m here.”
“I know,” you blurt, a little too loudly.
The words crack out of you sharper than intended, edged with humiliation and the kind of frayed panic that has been chewing at you since you opened your eyes this morning.
The couple in the corner glance over. You flinch immediately, mortified.
“Sorry,” you mutter, dropping your voice as heat floods your face. “Sorry. I know. I know you’re here. I just—”
Your hands tighten around the cup hard enough that the cardboard sleeve creaks softly under your grip.
Abby does not interrupt, not does she rush to fill the silence.
She just watches you with that infuriatingly patient expression she wears when she has decided you are not allowed to spiral alone.
“It’s just…” You swallow hard and stare stubbornly at the swirl of foam in your latte instead of at her. “Every time I talk about this, I hear myself, and I sound completely unhinged.”
“You sound upset,” Abby says calmly. “There is a difference.”
You let out a shaky breath that might have been a laugh in another life.
“There’s definitely overlap.”
Your words earn the faintest curve of her mouth, but she lets it pass without comment, carefully breaking off another piece of her cake as if this conversation is not slowly killing you.
You hate how kind she is when you’re close to falling apart.
It makes it so much harder to pretend you’re fine.
You drag in a breath and try again.
“It wasn’t like the others,” you say quietly. “Or— no, that’s not true. It was like the others, in the sense that it was him. The same…” You make a vague, helpless motion with one hand, as though you might pluck the right word from the air. “Presence. The same feeling. Like I know him. Like I’ve always known him.”
Your throat tightens.
“But this morning…” You shake your head. “Abby, I woke up and it didn’t fade.”
This gets her full attention, she sets down her fork.
“What do you mean, it didn’t fade?”
You laugh once, brittle and humorless.
“I mean I woke up and it felt like I had just been with him. Not dreaming about him. With him.”
The words sound absurd out loud. You hear them. You hear how ridiculous they are.
And still, saying them makes your chest ache all over again.
“I could still feel…” You stop, close your eyes, then force yourself onwards because if you don’t say it now, you never will. “His hand on my hip. Like— like he had just touched me. I could feel his thumb moving against my skin.” Your voice drops lower, trembling. “And his mouth. I remembered his mouth.”
Abby goes very still. You keep staring at your cup.
“It was so vivid,” you whisper. “Not vivid like a dream. Vivid like memory. Like I was remembering something that actually happened.”
Your fingers tremble and you tuck them tighter around the warm cup, clinging to the heat.
“I went into the shower and I just…” You let out a shaky breath. “I completely lost it.”
“No, don’t do that,” you say at once, wincing. “Don’t sweetheart me, I’ll cry again.”
“That was rather the concern, yes.”
You laugh, but it breaks halfway through, but your eyes burn.
“I’m serious,” you murmur. “I was standing there in the shower sobbing like someone had died.”
The words hang between you.
For a moment, neither of you says anything.
Rain taps softly against the windows.
A cup clinks behind the counter.
And then Abby, with that maddening gentleness she only uses when she knows she has to be careful, asks, “Did it feel like grief?”
You look up at her then. Her dark hair still damp from the rain. Her fingers resting lightly against her coffee cup. Her face open, concerned, serious now in a way that makes your chest twist.
Because she gets it. Of course she fucking gets it.
She always does.
Your lower lip trembles before you can stop it.
“Yes." The answer is immediate and absolute.
Your eyes drop again.
“It felt like I missed him so badly I couldn’t breathe.” Your voice thins. “Like I had lost something—someone—important enough that my body knew before my brain did.” You shake your head, furious at yourself, at your own helplessness. “And that’s insane, Abby. That’s insane. He isn’t real.”
Abby is quiet for a long moment.
Then adds, carefully, “do you believe that?”
The question lands like a stone dropped into still water.
You freeze.
Because that is the problem, isn’t it?
Not whether this sounds ridiculous.
Not whether it should be happening.
But whether, deep down, beneath all your rationality and embarrassment and increasingly pathetic attempts to explain it away with hormones and stress and an overactive imagination— you actually believe he is not real.
You swallow.
And say nothing.
Abby exhales softly through her nose.
“Right,” she murmurs, not unkindly.
“I want to believe he isn’t,” you say quickly, defensively, before she can draw conclusions you are not ready to hear. “I do. God, I do. Because the alternative is what? I’m haunted? I’m having a psychotic break? I’ve somehow invented the world’s most emotionally devastating imaginary boyfriend?”
Abby snorts. “Not impossible. You do have a flair for drama.”
You glare at her through wet eyes. “Abigail.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, though she does not look remotely sorry. “That one was sitting there begging to be said.”
A laugh escapes you anyway, small and broken and unwilling. The relief of it hurts.
Abby’s expression softens again.
“Listen to me,” she says, leaning forward slightly. “I do not think you are crazy.”
You open your mouth, but she lifts one finger.
“No. Let me finish.”
You close it again, but barely.
“I think you are distressed. I think you are exhausted. I think something is happening that you do not understand, and because you do not understand it, you are trying to force it into the neatest, most humiliating explanation possible so you can control it.”
You blink.
That is… uncomfortably accurate.
Abby continues, her voice low and even. Her friend voice.
“You have been dreaming about him for how long now?”
You grimace. “Months.”
“Months,” she repeats. “And it has been consistent?”
You nod.
“The same presence. The same emotional continuity. The same sense of… familiarity?”
“Yes.”
“Has he ever done anything frightening?”
You think about it.
About warmth.
About the strange, impossible tenderness of a faceless man who feels more known to you than half the people you meet in waking life.
“No,” you say quietly. “Never.”
“Has it ever felt malicious?”
“No.”
“Violating?”
The answer comes at once.
“No. Gods, no.” Your voice softens despite yourself. “Quite the opposite.”
Abby studies you for a moment. Then she leans back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other, expression shifting into the thoughtful severity of a scholar beginning to assemble a problem.
And there she is.
Your Abby. Not just your best friend.
Your favorite terrifyingly intelligent menace.
“Alright,” she says.
You blink.
“Alright?”
“Yes.”
“That’s it? Alright?”
“Yes,” she repeats. “Because panicking has clearly done wonders so far, and since we are both so very fond of innovation, I suggest we try a different approach.”
You stare at her.
She picks up her fork again, points it at you like a professor wielding a lecture pointer.
“We are going to treat this like data.”
You snort.
“Abby—”
“No, I’m serious. You have recurring dreams with consistent details, escalating somatic response, and a strong emotional pattern. That is either psychological, neurological, symbolic, spiritual, or”—she lifts a brow—“something weird.”
You blink again.
“That is not helpful.”
“It is extremely helpful. It narrows things down to nearly everything.”
You laugh despite yourself, a damp, reluctant sound. Abby smiles, clearly pleased she has pulled you half an inch back from the brink.
Then she grows serious once more.
“Start from the beginning,” she says. “Not just this morning. The very first dream you remember. Every detail you can give me. What changed over time. What stayed the same. What you feel during them. What you feel after.”
She tilts her head.
“And then,” she adds gently, “we decide whether I’m taking you to a neurologist, a witch, or a historian.”
That startles a real laugh out of you.
Loud enough this time that even Amanda glances over and smiles to herself behind the counter, apparently satisfied that whatever private tragedy was unfolding at your table has at least become manageable enough to pair with cake.
You scrub at your eyes quickly, embarrassed by the wetness there.
“God,” you mutter. “I hate that you’re good at this.”
“I know,” Abby says smugly. “It’s one of my most annoying qualities.”
You shake your head, then finally—finally—meet her gaze.
And because she is there, because she is steady, because she has made this feel survivable in the space of five minutes and half a slice of cake....you inhale slowly.
Then begin.
“The first time I dreamed of him,” you say after a moment, quieter now, your voice steadier for the simple act of finally speaking, “we were home.”
Abby says nothing, only watches you over the rim of her coffee cup, waiting.
“Not just… a home,” you add, frowning slightly as you try to catch hold of the memory before it slips. “Our home. It felt like ours in that way you only know a place after years. Lived in. Familiar. Like I knew every creak in the floorboards without having to think about it.”
You glance down at your hands, still wrapped around your cup.
“It was near water. A harbor, maybe. Or the sea. I don’t know. I couldn’t see much outside, but I could hear it. Waves. That soft constant sound of them.” Your mouth twitches, almost against your will. “He was making breakfast.”
Abby tilts her head slightly.
“He usually does,” you say before she can ask, the words slipping out with strange certainty. “I don’t know how I know that, but I do. He usually makes breakfast.”
That gets a flicker of something across her face, but she wisely keeps quiet.
“He was making pancakes,” you continue, your gaze drifting somewhere beyond the rain-streaked windows, into a place only you can see. “And he was smiling while he plated them. Not at me exactly, not the whole time. Just…” You huff a breath that might almost be a laugh. “That sort of absent little smile people get when they’re doing something ordinary and they’re happy without realizing it.”
Your fingers tighten slightly around the cup.
“We talked. About weather. Politics. Literature. Nothing dramatic. Nothing strange. Just…” You shake your head, struggling for the right word. “Domestic. Easy. Like we’d had the same sort of breakfast a hundred times before and would have it a hundred times again.”
Abby is still very still now, all of her attention fixed on you.
“But you don’t know his face,” she says gently.
The question lands softly and you swallow.
“No,” you admit. The word is quiet. Frustrating. Almost painful. “I don’t.”
For a moment, you just stare out into the rain.
“But I know what I feel in those dreams,” you say, and there is something rawer in your voice now, something more honest than you meant to give. “That’s the part that always stays.”
You lift your eyes to meet hers.
“Contentment,” you say softly. “Love. Home. Belonging. Safety.”
The words settle between you, fragile and far too real.
“And all of it…” Your voice catches, just slightly. “All of it revolves around him.”
You look away again almost at once, embarrassed by the sudden sting in your eyes.
“It’s not even like he’s doing anything extraordinary,” you murmur. “He’s just there. Existing. Making pancakes. Talking to me like we’ve been having the same argument about the weather for years.”
A wet laugh escapes you, brittle at the edges.
“And somehow that’s the part that destroys me.”
Abby’s expression softens into something almost unbearably tender.
Of course she would understand that it is not passion that haunts you most.
Not mystery.
Not desire.
It is the intimacy of it.
The terrible, impossible familiarity.
The feeling of having belonged somewhere so completely that waking up from it feels like exile.
You let out a breath that catches somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.
“But alas,” you murmur, trying for lightness and not quite managing it, “it’s a dream. And I wake up here.”
Abby lifts a brow over the rim of her cup.
“Where I am your closest friend,” she says dryly. “Annoying, but close.”
A startled chuckle slips out of you despite yourself.
“No, Abs, it’s not—that’s not the issue.”
“I know,” she says at once, grinning now. “I was teasing.”
She drains the last of her coffee in one long sip, then rises, brushing a few crumbs from her fingers before extending a hand toward you.
“My treat.”
You hesitate only long enough to blink at her.
“Absolutely not.”
“Too late,” she says. “You are visibly unstable. I’m invoking best friend privileges.”
“That is not a real legal category.”
“It should be.”
Still half smiling despite the ache in your chest, you surrender your cup to her and watch as she turns towards the counter, carrying both empties with the easy confidence of someone who has already decided this argument is over.
For a moment, you simply let yourself watch her go.
The familiar line of her shoulders beneath her sweater. The damp ends of her dark hair curling from the rain. The way Amanda’s face immediately softens when Abby approaches, as though the two of them have silently agreed to keep you alive through caffeine and baked goods if necessary.
And then—for the first time since you sat down—the couple in the corner stop whispering.
The man speaks first, his voice low but no longer careful enough to be lost beneath the hum of the café.
“No, I assure you, this is not the issue,” he says with a weary sort of exasperation.
Something about the sound of it makes you go still.
He sits with his back to you, broad-shouldered, dark hair threaded with the first signs of silver and tied back at the nape in a loose man bun. One hand lifts as he speaks, long fingers pressing briefly to his temple before falling again.
There is something achingly familiar in the movement of his gestures.
In the cadence of his voice.
The woman across from him leans forward, her own voice dropping into a sharp hiss.
“Then what is?”
He exhales, the sound soft and defeated in a way that seems too intimate to overhear.
“She is not here.”
The words are almost too quiet.
Barely more than breath.
But you hear them.
You hear every one.
“With me,” he adds, and something in your chest gives a strange, painful twist. “That is the issue. The entire, devastating issue.”
Your fingers tighten unconsciously against your own knee.
He looks down as he speaks, and when he turns his head just slightly, you catch the glint of silver in his left ear — a small earring, understated and somehow startling enough to make your pulse jump.
“I can theorize about futures and matrimony and names all I like,” he goes on, voice fraying at the edges, threaded through with a grief so old and so carefully contained it almost doesn’t sound real. “I can wax eloquent about hypothetical tomorrows.”
He gives a short, humorless laugh. “But none of it—none of it—means anything if she’s not actually here.”
His hand curls against the table. “Present.”
The word lands like a blow.
Not because of what he says.
Because of how he says it.
That voice.
Warm and worn and clever even in despair.
The rhythm of it.
The precise, ridiculous elegance of wax eloquent and hypothetical tomorrows spoken like a man who cannot help being himself even while his heart is breaking.
Your breath catches.
No.
No, no, no.
For one impossible, terrifying second, the whole café seems to narrow.
The rain at the windows.
The smell of coffee and freshly baked goods.
Amanda laughing softly at something Abby says by the counter.
And that voice.
His voice.
Your pulse roars suddenly in your ears.
Because you know that voice.
You should not.
You have never heard it before in your life.
And yet—your body knows it before your mind can protest.
Knows it in the same deep, unreasoning place that knew the warmth of a hand at your hip.
The press of lips you have never kissed.
The sound of waves outside a house that does not exist and you have never been to.
You do not realize you have half-risen from the couch until your thighs bump the edge of the table and your cupcake plate rattles faintly against the wood.
The man in the corner goes still.
Not fully.
Not enough for anyone else to notice.
But enough.
As though something in the room has shifted.
As though he feels it too.
At the counter, Abby turns at the sound, brows drawing together the instant she sees your face.
Your mouth has gone dry.
Your hands are shaking.
And all you can think—all you can hear, over and over, like something ancient and impossible breaking open inside you—is: I know that voice.
You have not actually spoken to him. You have never really heard his voice. And yet—there it is, reverberating through your chest, threading into your bones, igniting something that has always been there, waiting: a recognition that is older than memory.
The man rises slowly, cautiously, hands pressed lightly against the edge of the table as though bracing himself. The woman has gone utterly silent, eyes wide and uncertain, sensing the shift in the air that only you can feel.
And then he turns.
And you know.
Not just intellectually, not just in fleeting awareness, no, but with a clarity so sharp it aches. The dark brown of his eyes meets yours, wide with shock, disbelief — and awe. The faint curve of his lips, framed by a carefully kept dark beard. The subtle tension in his shoulders.
You have felt those lips this morning. In your dream. His hand pressed to your hip, gentle and knowing, pulling you closer in ways that had felt impossibly real. You remember the warmth, the weight of it, the way it grounded you, even when you woke.
Your stomach lurches. Your chest tightens. The world has narrowed. Even the rain outside seems to pause, or at least, that’s how it feels.
You know what he will say before the words leave his mouth, before the world tilts on its axis and the café falls entirely silent.
Because you know. You know, in the deepest part of yourself, in a place that cannot lie.
And when your eyes meet—and he gasps, sharp and unbidden—you gasp too.
It is recognition. Shock. Relief. Terror. Desire. All at once.
And above it all, a single, undeniable truth: You know him.
Before a word is spoken, before a breath is taken, before the world moves again—you know him. And he knows you.
The universe tilts, and nothing in it feels ordinary anymore.
Then, as if pulled by some force older than thought itself, you both simply smile. Wide. Bright. Disbelieving. The kind of smile that makes your chest ache with recognition and longing all at once.
He lets out a soft, incredulous chuckle, and the woman next to him reaches for his arm.
“What is happening?” she asks, voice trembling between accusation and confusion.
“You okay, girl?” Abby calls over, concern in her tone. But all you do is stare. At each other.
There is a sudden, sharp clarity, a bolt of knowing that cuts through everything. You know this move. You know him. And as though obeying that certainty, he steps forward, deliberate and calm, and extends his hand.
Instinctively, you reach for it.
The moment your skin touches, it’s as if every memory you’ve ever had—dreamed or lived—floods through you. The laughter. The quiet mornings. The shared glances that carried entire conversations without a word. Hidden jokes, known sequences of sentences, the subtle rhythms of life lived together—laid bare in an instant.
It fills you completely, faster than nerves can register. Faster than thought. The warmth of his hand is grounding and explosive all at once. And in his eyes, you see the same recognition mirrored back at you.
He knows.
He remembers too.
Another life, another lifetime or another universe you loved each other. You love each other now. Whatever this moment is, whatever impossible magic or chance or memory has pulled you here, the truth is undeniable.
You love him, with all that you are.
And you know, without any doubt without or even a whisper of uncertainty, he loves you too.
You feel the shift of his hip as he steps closer, the weight of him, familiar and impossible, grounding you even as it shatters you.
“Hello,” he says at last, and it is almost gentle in its simplicity, yet it carries a weight that bends the world around it.
Hell is empty and all the Devils are here Book One: Dawn
Chapter 9
I followed her willingly—into the warmth of the bath she had prepared, into her embrace, and later into her bed—and the details themselves matter less now than what I discovered there, which was not desire, since I had known desire for years, and not pleasure, since that too was familiar, but love. Affection, and the realization that intimacy could exist without urgency and without conquest and without either person attempting to prove anything at all. Two people could simply be present with one another and find it fulfilling.
People complaining that their posts/artworks/fics don't get much notes/reblogs/likes, but who never give love to other people's content:
Go F yourself.
You're just hypocrites and I stg I'm going to clear my following list this week because I don't have time for this.
Mind you, when I share and like other people's content, I don't do it because I expect them to do the same with me, I do it because I genuinely like/admire/appreciate their content (I never share something that doesn't align with my own tastes).
So I suppose that if you don't like and/or share my stuff, you just don't give a shit about my content. And that's okay, I never expected anyone to like it anyway.
But if you don't at least take the time to have a look at my stuff and give a little like or share it every now and then, why are you even following me? why are we mutuals?
If you're here just because you want me to pay attention to you without making the slightest effort to discover my content, you can unfollow me right away.
And then people complain about the fandom dying 🙃
It's up to YOU to keep it alive. It's up to you to encourage content-creators to keep on posting stuff.
Shameless self-reblog as a follow-up to @wasteful-sam's great post HERE (read it, like it and share it please) 🖤
I still mean everything I wrote there.
And also, since someone used the tags as they reblogged this post, to say they didn't want to 'bother' people with notifications:
We want you to invade our notifications!!! We want to see your username everywhere!
Go on please ❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
Spam people with likes and/or reblogs and/or comments! You'll never bother any creator with it, I swear to you. you'll just make them happy!
if they don't want to see their notifications, they will just turn them off, and if you ever meet someone who says you 'bother' them for liking their content -> run away from them, they don't deserve your love.
I finished the wip I was doing some days ago, it's one of those japanese drawing memes where two characters are trapped inside a box and awkwardness ensues but I couldn't be bothered to draw a box so now they look like they're playing twister