I CARE

I CARE

this is my brain rn btw… if you even care

ME

Am not prepared to make the hardest decision of my life: which do I listen to first on October 27th? 1989 TV or The Good Witch Deluxe??

Readers' Choice Rec List Part 5 of 7

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

We'll Change the World Yet to Our Dessire [sic] by @torvagatai

@indomitable-love: I just adore this fic and I so rarely see people talking about it, and as it's a little older I think it's got a little lost and I'd LOVE for more people to discover it because I think it's amazing. It's Alex & Henry on a royal tour, battling with Mary to announce their engagement – tender, beautiful, vivid, romantic, has great characterisation and tension without feeling angsty. Just a top tier RWRB fic.

Everybody needs good neighbours by @rmd-writes

@myheartalivewrites: Hot, sweet, there’s Alex being oblivious and Henry pining and I’ve reread it loads of times ❤️

Never Did Run Smooth by @clottedcreamfudge

@myheartalivewrites: Fake dating! Pining! Generalised hotness! If you made me give up all but one RWRB fic, this is the one I’d pick. Don’t make me though

Prince Henry Breaks Down 11 Looks From 1997 to Now by th0ughts

@14carrotghoul: Such a happy ending for Henry and his characterization is magic

Let Loose Your Glow by @athousandrooms

anon: THE comfort fic

Bite Your Tongue On Purpose by Woodsarelovely

anon

Most people exist by @sprigsofviolets

anon: Heartbreaking sick fic

A long way from playground by @three-drink-amy

anon

What do I know by @three-drink-amy

anon: Alex wakes up from a coma and the angst is perfect

Pump the volume by absoluteaudacity

anon: Deaf!Alex. It tackles disability with such care

I just imagine.. On holidays, Alex takes a nap next to him, and Henry reads his favorite book

Emails I Can't Send-Rowaelin Fanfic

This is actually one of my favorite things I've ever written. It's based off of the song emails i can't send by Sabrina Carpenter. That whole album is so underrated - go listen to it! If you want, listen to the song while reading. The song is so so heartbreaking and I just had to write about it. :)

(I know I haven't posted in a while, so I thought this would be perfect because I love it so much. I wrote it back in August <33)

Word Count: 1k

Warnings: Language, some suggestive language

Tag List: @backtobl4ck, @aelinchocolatelover, @renxzs, @blue-bird17, @luell1q

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The song had come from everything and nothing at the same time. She’d written it on a crumpled piece of paper, droplets of her tears weakening the page, at three in the morning. All of her hurt and pain and fear from that night put into a couple scrawling paragraphs. 

Now, standing backstage in the wings, Aelin took a deep breath. The crew buzzed around her, Lysandra last-minute checking her makeup, hair and outfit before she went onstage. “Are you going to be okay?” her friend asked, emerald eyes filled with concern. “I know it’s an emotional song for you to sing live, and…you know, Rowan’s out there…”

Aelin winced as the sound of her ex-boyfriend’s name sliced through her heart. It was a pain she was used but not invulnerable to. “I’ll be fine,” she said, more to herself than anything. Nevermind Rowan was seated somewhere in the audience with the rest of his band, and soon he’d be about to hear a breakup song about him…no, never mind that. 

__

Rowan was trying very hard not to think about what was coming next, about how the woman he loved with everything he had was about to be feet away from him. He’d never heard the song she was singing, very purposefully - whenever it came on the radio, which was every day, he’d cranked down the volume quickly. 

Rowan took a gulp of champagne and tried to think of other things. He and his band, The Cadre, had given a decent performance, performing their song K. It was a crowd-pleaser, one of their first hits about Gavriel’s wife, Krystal. He sat at the table with the band - his brothers, really - their partners, and Maeve, the band manager. 

Over the speakers, the host boomed; “Please put your hands together for Aelin Galathynius!”

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Aelin took a deep breath and stepped out onto the stage, immediately hit with the white-hot spotlight. She stood in front of the standing microphone and smiled as the audience cheered.

“Thank you,” she said, her own voice echoing back at her through the earpiece. “And thanks to all the fans who got me here, performing at the Grammys. This is my new single, emails I can’t send.”

She tuned out the clapping and focused on the instrumentals leaking into her left ear. Nodding to Aedion, her cousin on piano, she took a deep breath. 

__

“It’s times like these, wish I had a time machine so I could see what you did October 13th,” she sang. “At 10:15, were you really asleep or were you lying to me and the family?”

Rowan’s stomach emptied out. October 13th, the night of Aelin’s album release party and one of their biggest fights. The night he’d lied, saying he was with Lorcan when he’d been over at Lyria’s, comforting her while she cried. Comforting Lyria over the record label rejection, when he should’ve been with Aelin, celebrating with her. 

He gazed up at Aelin, who looked heartbreakingly beautiful in a simple white crop top with princess sleeves and low-rise jeans, that showed off her muscled body in a stupidly perfect way. He couldn’t help but think of how he would peel those clothes off her if he hadn’t been such an idiot…get a grip, man. Creep. 

“There’s no us in us when I’m lacking trust,” Aelin continued, and he forced his mind into the present - even worse. Her expression was reserved as her eyes floated over the audience, looking or not looking for one person. “You wanna discuss, ugh, you disgust me…”

The words sliced through him. You disgust me. 

__

Aelin couldn’t tell if she sounded good or not, but she was getting into the mood of the song now. “Don’t make me cuss you out, why’d you let me down? Don’t say sorry now.”

Her voice was rising as she got to the climax of the song, the part she’d truly poured out of the sobs that had wracked her body that night. “And thanks to you I, I can’t love right, I get nice guys and villainize him,” she crooned. “Read their texts like they're having sex right now, scared I’ll find out that it’s true..”

As she sang, she closed her eyes and unlocked the gates she’d built brick by brick over the past five months, the pain and despair from Rowan flowing out her heart and into her voice. “And if I do, then I blame you for every worst that I assume; when I’m 45 someone calls me their wife and he fucks,” at that word, her voice broke in the crooning sort of way that she loves, “our lives in one selfish night.” The lyric, the story, the truth. 

__

Rowan was in heaven because the subject of his every desire was standing in front of him singing with the most beautiful voice he’d ever heard, and he was in hell because she was singing a heartbreaking song about him. 

“Don’t think I’ll find forgiveness as fast as mom did,” Aelin said, and that was the moment when her beautiful, beautiful eyes rested on Rowan. Electricity coursed through him as she did, and he held her gaze as if her irises were his last lifeline. The most heartbreaking and despairing expression flickered across her exquisite face and it was all Rowan could do not to leap out of his chair and hold her as she pointed an accusing finger at him and cried; “And God, I love you, but you’re such a dipshit.”

__

“Please fucking fix this,” Aelin neared-whispered as the song crested, the instrumentals fading and becoming sadder, more mellow. She blinked away the tears blurring her vision, Rowan’s piercing green eyes sending sparks through her body, “‘Cause you were all I looked up to.” and Lyria placed a possessive hand on her boyfriend’s arm, placing a kiss to his muscled shoulder, “And now I can’t even look at you,” and Aelin looked away and lowered her arm as the roaring of the audience overwhelmed the room.