#`` for this dumb idiot baby who still eats like a teenager even though he's past 40.

[bakugohoex]

Ok ok hear me out: a sleepover with the class 1A girls and the fem reader, they all let loose eating, doing face masks, dancing in their tiny pjs or whatever and the boys hear about it and go spy on the girls. Bakugou goes because he’s curious to see what the reader is like when they’re not in school (as she seems mom friend ™️) turns out she’s like a big goofball and a dancing queen and Bakugou gets all blushy after realizing he has a fat crush on her. The guys get caught obviously 😂 ty sm!!💕

“she’s doing what?”

pairing: katsuki bakugo x female reader

cw: language, kissing, fluff

word count: 1500+

a/n: umm hi, this is a request and i’m done for tonight i need to get on the grind again with revising so hopefully i’ll go back to posting once a day but i thought new year a little treat

summary:  in which you’re seen as the mom of class 1a, the boys got to spy on the girls sleepover and what they didn’t expect was you to confess your crush but also for you to have hidden talents that makes bakugo realise he needs to have you 

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If you don’t think you have these boys in the palm of your hand then you’re lying to yourself.

They’re either scared of you telling them off or fearful of disappointing you.

Even Bakugo will refrain from his usual angry self around you,

It’s probably more due to his infatuation with you though.

This boy just wants to know what makes you tick.

How someone like you has the ability to be so caring to the class that even Mineta stops being a perv when you’re around.

He says he doesn’t care.

He does care.

This man just wants to know if you ever act like a normal teenager.

You literally worry about everything with the class.

Making sure Denki doesn’t overcharge himself and become well dumb.

Making sure Ururaka doesn’t use her quirk too much to make her puke.

Even making sure Deku’s injuries arent as bad as they really are.

This man follows the rest of the boys to the girls sleepover and is in shock.

Utter shock at the sights of you doing the Tiktok dance Mina had been begging you to do.

The facemasks and music played in the common area on the bottom floor, the tight shirts and shorts on all the girls. You all had been playing truth or dare with masks you and Mina had bought hours prior. Ready to peel off the masks and toss them in the bin hopefully feeling refreshed and rehydrated. The Saturday night sleepover had been a sacred ritual for months now, the boys being banned from even daring to step one-foot downstairs.

“Truth or dare, Y/n.” Ururaka giggled with the tea that Momo had made in her grasp.

You thought looking around the group, “truth.”

The boys had finally got the nerve to come crawling down. They hid in the kitchen listening in, Mineta being locked in his room due to him being well a pervert. Even Bakugo stood alongside the group of his own free will, they were all listening in, watching how you were waiting for the truth question.

His eyes perked upwards listening into round faces question, he didn’t care about the rest of the girls. He just wanted to see how you were outside the comfort of class and school, of course he had seen you in your less worrying state but this, your shorts shorter than normal. Your shirt peaking upwards towards your stomach, he waited and waited until the words dripped from round faces mouth.

“Out of all the boys in the class who would you date?” It was unexpected and he hoped he said you, it was a wish, knowing how close you were with Todoroki and Midoriya he didn’t expects his name to ever come from a question like that.

He watched you think, your eyes looked tired but still happy before you confessed, “100% Bakugo.”

“Y/n I cant believe you’re actually into the angry Pomeranian.” Momo spoke up.

“Hey, it’s not my fault, like he’s not that angry with me and he’s just I don’t know, I think he’d be an amazing boyfriend.” You confessed the truth, knowing Bakugo would never found out so you didn’t care, “also he’s so fucking attractive.”

They laugh as the truth and dare continued, the boys had looked at Bakugo, his face beet red and his eyes were a lot softer. “She…she likes me.” He whispers.

“Now you can ask her out.” Kirishima nudged him with his shark teeth grinned.

“Shut it.” He muttered allowed not to anyone in particular. You liked him, you saw more past the anger and thought he’d be a good boyfriend. Hell you ever called him attractive, it fuelled his ego and he wanted to see even more.

The boys continued to listen in, “this was a waste of time.” Tokoyami muttered having been dragged here. He left with some others, Bakugo hadn’t noticed but Midoriya stayed talking to Todoroki and Sero and Kirishima and Denki paid attention to the girls so Bakugo wouldn’t feel self-conscious about staying to here you speak. Well Denki mostly stayed thinking that a pillow fight would occur soon enough.

“Y/n, let’s make the Tiktok dance.” She gestured; this perked Bakugo’s ears but he was unable to move. You weren’t going to dance; you were too pristine and clean to dance to a Tiktok song.

“Woah Y/n’s a fucking good dancer.”

“She’s doing what?” He listened to the sound of oops! By yung gravy, it had been playing in Mina’s phone for the past week and Bakugo had gotten sick of it.

But clearly you had learnt the dance as you did it with ease with Mina, you both did the dance with a swing in your step, he watched in awe at how your body moved. Heavily attracted to you and enticed by your movement. He continued to stare, moving his body to lean against the wall in view of the girls as he watched you. He needed you, he craved you and most of all he didn’t care who knew about their spying at all. 

“Agh.” Hagakure belched out, making you all stop. You noticed Bakugo’s eyes skim you up and down.

You looked at how the other boys fell out of the kitchen, silence occurred but Bakugo stayed leaning against the wall eyes directly facing you. “How long were you guys there?” You ask, “tell me.”

“Long enough.” Sero spoke to ease the tension.

You heard the noise of stomping down the corridor seeing an agitated Iida, “I told you all there would be consequences if you followed Kaminari.” The blame had shifted to the boy who jolted out of there Jirio and Tsu chasing after him.

Momo, Mina, Hagakure and Ururaka looked between you and Bakugo all knowing he had heard the words that had supposed to have been private. “Let’s go.” Kirishima muttered making the boys leave except Bakugo, the girls looked before collecting there things and scurrying away themselves.

Mina mouthed a sorry before you moved towards your discarded hoodie about to put it on, “leave it.”

It was a command rather than a suggestion and you obliged, tossing it with your things. Before sitting on the sofa, he sat beside you in silence, you looked down not wanting to meet his gaze, “Iida was right, you shouldn’t have been watching us.”

“Really you going to tell me off to avoid the real matter.” He pulled at his hair and action that made your stomach churn with butterflies.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” You lied.

He laughs cocking his head back before meeting your gaze, “you’re the one who said I’d be an amazing boyfriend and called me fucking attractive.”

“I…” You couldn’t lie he had repeated the words, word for word.

He moved closer grabbing your jaw with his rough hands. “You could’ve just told me.” He spoke making your face move closer to his own. His lips brushing against your neck, his hot breath fanning your exposed skin.

“Bakugo.”

“Katsuki, you already think I’m fucking attractive, so call me Katsuki you brat.” You took in a sharp breath, his hand still on your jaw, your cheeks squished between his fingers. “I saw you do that Tiktok, showing yourself off like that to everybody, only I can see that, not those shitty extras, only me.”

You hummed in agreement feeling intoxicated by his voice waiting for him to continue, “you want to be mine, want to be my fucking girl don’t you.”

His thumb brushed against your lips, a soft moan of a “yes” erupted from your mouth. It was beauty to his ears, he felt you lick your lips brushing his thumb.

“Prove it then.” It was another command, he needed you to beg, needed you to prove that you wanted to be his. “Beg for me.”

He brushed his thumb across your cheek, you closed your eyes, “I want to…to kiss you.” It was torture to say, torture to admit that you craved his touch even more.

“That’s all I wanted to here baby girl.” He let go of your grabbing your waist and bringing you closer to him.  “You’re a lot more than an irritating worrier than I thought.”

“Katsuki.” You pout, “I thought being nice would make people like me.”

“Be yourself idiot.” He spoke.

“O…” Before you could agree his lips smashed onto your own.

He spoke through the kiss as he nibbled on your bottom lip, “shut up.” You nodded wanting to feel his tongue inside of you, teeth banging together. His touch sending shivers down your spine, feeling him kiss you with such passion that drives you crazy.

His lips were exactly how you expected them to be, rough and able to bruise your own. Your lips felt sore, felt bitten and wary. You felt his tongue guide your own, you followed his movement, his hands in your hair pulling you closer.

He let go taking a breath, watching your dazed position on top of his lap. “Fuck, we should ugh…” He didn’t know how to speak your figure on him making his ears perk red.  “…go out or something, I don’t care.”

“I’d love too Katsuki.” You smile, you hadn’t expected his next movement. His arms wrapping around your waist into a hug, the words you had said prior about being an amazing boyfriend. Had shot something inside of him, you believed he would be good at something, and maybe even maybe you believed he would be your amazing boyfriend.

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[inwhichiramble]

Why Gabriel Agreste Should Have His Kneecaps Stolen

Good grief this dude ~Has *repeatedly* said he wants to rule the world ((in addition to his wish to resurrect Emilie; in fact, it was the first thing he ever said he wanted (Origins) and I really don’t think it was a red herring considering the actions that followed)) ~tried to pawn Ladybug's earrings AND Chat’s ring AS GABRIEL. How did he think that would go??? ~Uses as many as, if not more puns than his son (but they’re much worse) ~Akumatized himself?? Bro is dumb but not an idiot ~BATTED HIS SON OUT OF THE AIR LIKE SOME KIND OF DESPICABLE BABE RUTH WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU ~Does not like being around people (fair) ~Thought that he could make an akumatized baby work ~Knows very well that LB and CN are teens but he's very determined to obliterate them so that's fun ~Wanted to start WORLD WAR 3?? Like come on dude what on earth were you thinking??? ~When he thought Adrien was Chat Noir his response was to DROP HIS SON OFF A BUILDING ~Is extremely abusive like dude honestly ~Isolates and neglects his son for his whole life and then is like "kids should be able to do whatever and yadda yadda yadda" ~The only times he allows Adrien to do something he always has an ulterior motive and it's almost never in Adrien's best interest. Several time Nathalie has to remind him that he has a son.  ~Canonically threw a mini temper tantrum when Gigantitan completely ignored him (that was hilarious though) ~Has been saved by LB and CN TWICE as Gabriel, and was literally shown mercy as Hawkmoth despite being their mortal enemy and still did not care ~Has used the pun "revenge is a dish best served cold" at least THREE TIMES. Dude, plz think of something new ~This boi really said "feel the burn" ~Okay but how many times does he go in and out of his lair? I feel like people would start to notice his window opening and closing all the time lol. ~Gabe really backfired with his "let's akumatize a robot" plan, like that was an all time low ~Hawkmoth knows that akumatizing Marienette would be just about the smartest thing he could do as a villain. Obviously he doesn't know the biggest reason that this will work in his favor, but he knows that she would make a very strong supervillain. I'm very worried about this as A) he's right and B) it's probably foreshadowing ~Was about to let Feast eat every single miraculous known to France if he succeeded?? I mean, dude has nerve. ~HE HAS AN AGREEMENT WITH KAGAMI'S MOTHER??? WHAT IS THIS ABOUT??????? ~PRIORITIZES BEING HAWKMOTH OVER BEING A DECENT FATHER AND HUMAN BEING ~Like he says "this is so Adrien can be happy" and blah blah blah but doesn't even tell his son or ask him what he thinks or anything UGH ~Has literally no qualms about any destruction that might be caused by his or his akumas' actions. "no matter the cost" he says ~AS OF THE NEW YORK SPECIAL HE HAS AKUMATIZED MR. RAMIER FIFTY-ONE TIMES ~FIFTY-ONE TIMES ~Honestly dude give the guy a break, how desperate are you??? ~side note was the secret basement and akuma headquarters always in the Agreste Mansion or did he have them installed? How were the builders not suspicious? Who decorated these places? How does he cover up however he got all his butterflies? ~THIS MAN IS LITERALLY STUNTING THE GROWTH OF EVERYONE IN PARIS BECAUSE THEY DON'T LEARN HOW TO DEAL WITH THEIR EMOTIONS Obviously the game is changing as people are more used to akumas and LB's lucky charms are going into circulation, but some people aren't strong enough to fight off akumas! Only THREE PEOPLE have done it (Chloe, Alya, and Nino). Mr. Ramier was akumatized SEVENTY-TWO times and what do you think he learned from that??? NOTHING THAT'S WHAT. Because rather than having the ability to work out their emotions and deal with them accordingly, Parisians get akumatized and then forget everything that happened. They are very emotionally unstable, and we can very clearly see why! And them being weakened works in Hawky's favor. It's disgusting and I really hope everyone in Paris gets therapy or something. ~He flung a random teenager (Fei) by the arm through a waterfall and into a very deep well like some kind of despicable frisbee ~More evidence that he quite literally does not care about his son's needs if they get in the way of his villainism. The only time during Shanghai that he is concerned about Adrien is when the monster HE CREATED is about to destroy the whole city ~Since when has he called Marinette by her full name and HOW ON EARTH DOES HE NOT KNOW SHE'S LADYBUG ~Maybe he'll figure it out now, idk ~Also whatever this Prodigious is it has been made quite clear that Hawkmoth has been in the works long before Gabriel started sending out akumas. I strongly strongly suspect that there's something about Adrien we don't know yet because if this villainism has been in the works for 15 YEARS?? Yeah something is up. And, as has been stated by another fandom member... Mama Agreste might not be as great as we were led to believe. ~Gabe may have diverted his attention from Adrien being Chat but he is definitely, definitely suspicious of Marinette, I'm telling you ~His voice got more evil over time I swear ~Also again he was only worried about Adrien (before his plan backfired severely, AGAIN LOL) and not that the akuma might kill literally thousands of people in Shanghai, haha way to go Gabe ~Yeah sorry Mari but Hawky takes no vacations ~HE WENT AFTER NEW MAGIC AND THEN BECAME SHADOW MOTH?? W H A T ~Kay so apparently Shadowmoth is much smarter than Hawky. At least... more tactical.  And he accepts help from Nathalie. But he still ain't winning lol, even if he's getting closer. ~And even though he was *this close* to getting the turtle miraculous, he was even closer to getting HIS TWO MIRACULOUS STOLEN ~STOP REAKUMATIZING PEOPLE, IT'S NOT GONNA WORK ANYMORE ~On Mr. Pigeon's 24th akumatization Hawky was really like "this man is hopeless" and proceeds to akumatize him 48 more times ~I love how he assumes he's still gonna be Hawkmoth by the time LB  and CN are adults XD like he'd literally be in his 70s ~the fact that he had every single miraculous holder in one place and didn't realize it ~I love how he has no problem letting Alec watch his whole villain spiel ~mans really said that negative emotions turn him on ~the fact that one of his smarter villains was a five year old -_-

[robininthelabyrinth]

My prompt is just more trans au. Various people reacting to baobei. Just i love trans au so much thank u for this gift.

Baobai Pt 1 - on tumblr, on ao3

-

“Oh, hey, you have a kid,” Wei Wuxian said, out of lack of any other conversational topics that weren’t ‘so are you here to kill us all?’. Kids were usually a good, neural topic, especially when they were that small. “Look at her, she’s so tiny! Her parents know you brought her out here?”

“She’s da-ge’s,” Lan Xichen said with a smile and a nod towards Nie Mingjue, who as tall and terrifying as always. He was glowering at the half-grown radish fields as if he was personally offended by them.

“Congratulations, Chifeng-zun,” Wei Wuxian said to him, hoping to stave off any impending violence. The baby was young enough that the mom was probably still in isolation recovering, and maybe hadn’t consented to said baby being brought to the Burial Mounds of all places - certainly Wei Wuxian wouldn’t have agreed to cart a small infant all the way from Qinghe, and he’d thought mothers preferred to remain near their children in the few months after birth - but Wei Wuxian was not really in a position to object.

Certainly not after the quick work Nie Mingjue’s saber made of all of his defensive arrays. That man was scary.

“Thank you,” Nie Mingjue said, and it was awkward for a moment until he added, “Pain in the ass to acquire.”

That made everything better: Wei Wuxian knew how to deal with snark. “Oh yeah? Carried her yourself, did you?”

“Ten fucking months,” Nie Mingjue said, and Wei Wuxian laughed and shot Lan Xichen a wink, figuring that his stupid joke about having given birth to A-Yuan had made the rounds. Funny, he wouldn’t have pegged Lan Wangji to be the sort of person to pass on jokes…

At that point, Nie MIngjue twisted his head around to look at Wen Ning and Wen Qing, who were hovering nearby, trying to hide A-Yuan behind their legs, and said, “She’s your cousin three times removed, if I have my family tree down right, so stop being queasy and let the kid come see her.”

“Fuck,” Wen Qing said, and abruptly sat down. “I’m sorry.”

Wei Wuxian had the distinct feeling he was missing something, especially when Wen Ning’s expression shifted from equally puzzled to outright horrified.

“It’s not exactly your fault, you’re not soldiers,” Nie Mingjue said, and glared at the radish field again. “But in all seriousness: let the kid see her.”

Wen Qing waved a vague hand at A-Yuan, who correctly interpreted it as permission and zoomed over to the baby as fast as his little legs could carry him. He was in that another-kid-how-cool phase that all kids had, and babies were a particular fascination.

“You’re cousins?” Wei Wuxian asked Nie Mingjue, feeling a bit weird about. Three times removed wasn’t close, but still…of all people...“With the Wen sect? You?”

Nie Huaisang made a strangled noise that from anyone else Wei Wuxian would have said sounded a bit like he was going to imminently stab someone.

Nie Mingjue just gave Wei Wuxian a look like he was an idiot. 

“No,” he said very slowly. “I’m not.”

Wei Wuxian continued not to get it, right up until he glanced at Wen Ning who mouthed a name at him and – wait, but no, that’s impossible – but he’d have to be – wait, he was from Qinghe –

Wei Wuxian suddenly noticed that he had sat down on the ground as well at some point.

“Pain in the ass,” he said blankly. “Right.”

Nie Huaisang was glaring at him like he really was going to pull out his never-used saber to start chopping Wei Wuxian into bits, and honestly that might be a preferable option to the sheer awkwardness of having just put two and two together like that in front of so many people. Maybe he could use demonic cultivation to open the ground up beneath him? It’d never been done before, but then again, that was most things he did…

“Why are people so weird about babies?” Nie Mingjue complained, picking up the baby in one arm and a giggling and blissfully ignorant A-Yuan in the other, swinging them both around a bit. “They’re like – lumps of little people. We were all babies once. It’s not that weird.”

“You heard him,” Jin Guangyao said to Wei Wuxian with a smile that looked like it had daggers in it. “It’s not weird at all. Right?”

“Right!” Wei Wuxian said hastily.

Apparently scary people flocked together. Though, did that mean there something he was missing about Lan Xichen..?

-

Lan Xichen smiled at Jin Guangyao, who smiled back. That was really the only good thing about these discussion conferences, he thought – they were long and draining and he had to meet a lot of people he didn’t want to see (Sect Leader Yao ranked highly), but he got to spend a great deal of time with his sworn brothers, which he didn’t often manage. And, really, that made everything worth it.

“How are things going?” he asked in an undertone, scanning Jin Guangyao with his eyes. Madame Jin did not have the reputation for being a kind woman, especially not about her husband’s affairs, and he couldn’t help but worry.

“Manageable,” Jin Guangyao assured him, though it wasn’t really that comforting. “It helps that this conference isn’t at Jinlin Tower – less to arrange, less work to fall on my shoulders. It’s positively easy by comparison. When did you arrive? We’ve been here for a shichen already, setting up.”

“Just now. They’re still moving our things into our rooms –”

“Er-ge! San-ge!” Nie Huaisang’s voice rang out, sharp and clear and murderous; they both turned to look at him at once to try to determine if it was the sort of murderous that meant someone had bought out a painting he’d liked before he got there or if it someone had actually offended him. He had a fixed smile on his face, which boded no one any good. “I was just looking for you. I want to chat.”

“What happened?” Lan Xichen asked, looking around – they were more or less alone, and a quick hand-seal made it so that they wouldn’t be easily overheard. “Did someone do something to Baobei…?”

He couldn’t believe they still hadn’t named her, the poor thing.

(Jin Guangyao had briefly been lobbying for them to name her A-Shi, but then Nie Mingjue told him that if he wanted to have a girl named Nie Shi he ought to man up and sire her himself, and ever since then Jin Guangyao had been proposing different names entirely. Possibly he was concerned Nie Mingjue would take back the offer if he used up the name.)

“Surely not,” Jin Guangyao said. “In the middle of the Lotus Pier…?”

“Not Baobei,” Nie Huaisang said. “But your father just figured out who carried her, and he just – he put his hands – he said he had the right to check on account of da-ge having misled them –”

Lan Xichen observed, a little distantly, that he’d previously thought that the phrase ‘seeing red’ was an exaggeration, rather than a perfectly accurate description.

“Did da-ge rip him to pieces?” Jin Guangyao asked, sounding as if he was very much in favor of that result.

“He did not,” Nie Huaisang said. “You know how he is during these conferences; he’s far too reserved. Slapped his hands away but didn’t do anything else about it.”

“Surely that would put an end to it…?” Lan Xichen suggested, mildly hopeful, but the expression on Jin Guangyao and Nie Huaisang’s face did not fill him with much expectation.

“He’ll try something,” Jin Guangyao said flatly. His voice tremored briefly, full of rage even he couldn’t hide, and he gripped his hands together tightly. “He will try something.”

“Sect Leader Jiang will help us keep them separate for the conference,” Nie Huaisang said. “He still hasn’t figured out the details of Baobei’s parentage, I think he’s convinced himself that men just bear children – in some way that man is as dumb as a rock, same as when we were teenagers, I don’t know how anyone is that gullible – but he’s offended on da-ge’s behalf anyway. But when the conference is over for the evening…”

“It would be unfilial of me to plan my own father’s assassination,” Jin Guangyao said, and his eyes slide towards Lan Xichen, questioning. “But if you wanted to have a theoretical discussion regarding the security system at Jinlin Tower, and the weaknesses thereof…”

“Yes,” Lan Xichen said, putting aside all concerns regarding the morality of assassinations, and found that he didn’t regret the decision one bit. He’d barely tolerated that lecher when he had no choice, when he was Jin Guangyao’s father and a powerful sect leader. But putting his hands on da-ge – thinking of doing more ��� “Let’s have that...theoretical discussion.”

“I knew I could count on you two,” Nie Huaisang said with satisfaction. “So here’s what I was thinking –”

-

One of the worst days of Nie Huaisang’s life started quite normally – waking up when his brother lifted him bodily out of bed and slung him over his shoulder.

“Da-ge!” he yelped. “Da-ge, no – it’s too early –”

“If you stayed up late, that’s your own problem,” his brother said with the sort of purposeful cheerful sadism that only a person who actually enjoyed waking up with the sun to go train could employ. “I told you yesterday that we were going to be training this morning.”

“But da-ge –”

“You missed the last three days. You’re not missing today.”

But it’s so fucking early, Nie Huaisang thought despairingly, drooping into dead weight over his brother’s shoulder – not that that helped, of course. His brother was too damn strong.

“Are you sure you’re not taking out your feelings about getting fat on me?” he asked, poking at his brother’s somewhat-rounder-than-usual waist. “That peacetime bulge of yours hasn’t gotten any smaller, you know…”

In all honestly, Nie Huaisang was delighted by the small swell of his brother’s usually flat stomach. His brother wasn’t vain – his body was a tool shaped for purpose – and the idea that his brother had finally let go enough, whether by eating more or resting more, to actually gain some weight…

“Whatever you say, pork bun,” his brother said, and Nie Huaisang yelped and hit him because he was not a pork bun! No matter how pale or chubby he might become!

It was a hot day, which of course made going through the steps of training even more miserable than usual. His brother was patient as always, showing him the steps and then making him repeat them a few times before starting up his own morning training routine; after a while, they both got into a nice rhythm, swings and chops.

Training wasn’t that bad, especially when it meant he could spend more time with his always-busy brother. He still didn’t like it, and obviously he had a reputation to uphold, and yes, it was obnoxious to get up early...but it could be worst.

And then, just as Nie Huaisang was turning to tell his brother a joke he’d heard the day before, he saw his brother abruptly turn pale and fall over.

He even dropped Baxia.

“Da-ge!” Nie Huaisang screamed, a thousand ancient fears rearing their heads at once, and he rushed over at top speed. “Someone get a doctor! Quick!”

Not a qi deviation, not a qi deviation, don’t be a qi deviation, he prayed, dropping to his knees next to his brother, who was already waking up – eyes clear, not red, and looking more confused than anything else. He’s too young, I’m not ready, I can’t lose him, not him, not yet, please –

On Nie Huaisang’s instructions, some of the nearby retainers helped Nie Mingjue back inside, even though he was insisting that he was fine.

“You collapsed,” Nie Huaisang snapped at him. “In morning training. You are going to see a doctor, and that’s final.”

Nie Mingjue held up his hands in surrender, looking amused at Nie Huaisang’s uncharacteristic fierceness. His amusement faded into sympathy when he realized why Nie Huaisang was so tense – their father’s death had hit them both hard – and he pulled Nie Huaisang into his arms for a hug.

“It’s not that,” he said confidently. “Not yet. The doctor will tell you.”

The doctor’s face did something funny, though, when he listened to Nie Mingjue’s pulse. Not the oh-no-it-really-is-a-minor-qi-deviation sort of funny or even a nah-total-fluke-you’re-overreacting sort of funny, more of a what-the-fuck sort of funny.

“What is it?” Nie Huaisang demanded. He knew enough medicine – the entire Nie sect knew enough medicine – to understand most basic diagnoses, as well as what they might mean for future health. “What type of pulse?”

The doctor hesitated.

“Well?” Nie Mingjue said. “Spit it out.”

“…a joy pulse,” the doctor said. “About five months, I’d guess.”

For a moment Nie Huaisang didn’t understand. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what a joy pulse was – he did have female friends, some of whom were now mothers – nor that he didn’t know that his brother was capable of carrying, he’d known that forever.

It was just that his brother was an antisocial misanthrope. He didn’t have any lovers, as far as Nie Huaisang knew, which meant he shouldn’t have a joy pulse. 

Besides, five months ago they were still at war! His brother took his duties far too seriously to waste time on a battlefield dallying with someone, anyone, and especially not if there was a major battle around that time. Five months ago there must have been one – which one was it?

Five months…the main force of the army had gone up from Xingtai to Shijiazhuang six months ago, and then there would have been – Yangquan.

Yangquan.

When his brother had been duped by false information into leading an attack on what should have been a mostly abandoned outpost, but which turned out to be in the middle of being reinforced by Wen Ruohan personally – when his brother had been captured – tortured – and even -

“Shit,” his brother said, presumably realizing at that exact moment that Nie Huaisang was capable of math and also dates and possibly even logic. “Doctor, you can go, thank you.”

Nie Huaisang didn’t even hear the doctor leave.

“Huaisang…didi…” His brother was trying to pull him into a hug, but Nie Huaisang didn’t want one, struggling unsuccessfully to get away. He didn’t want to be any closer to – to that – to the creature sitting his brother’s stomach, weighing him down; to what he’d thought was a sign of peace and good times and what was actually nothing more than yet another scar left by the war.

He’d actually been happy about it, and the thought twisted his stomach.

“Can you get rid of it?” he asked, voice strangled. “You can, right? It’s still early…”

“Five months is pretty close to quickening,” his brother said, wincing. “After quickening, the medicines don’t work as well. It might not be that easy.”

“Do you know how dangerous childbirth is?!” Nie Huaisang demanded. His mouth was moving on automatic; he wasn’t even thinking about what he was saying. He wasn’t thinking of anything, anything at all, because if he was thinking he’d have to think – he’d have to – his brother – “What if it kills you? You can’t let them kill you! Not after everything we did to avenge A-die!”

“I’m not going to die,” Nie Mingjue said, holding him tightly, his chin on Nie Huaisang’s head the way they always where when they hugged. “I’m a very good cultivator, Huaisang. My golden core will keep me healthy, even if I start bleeding…it won’t be like your mother. I promise.”

Nie Huaisang started shaking. “Da-ge,” he whimpered, pressing his face into his brother’s shoulder. “Da-ge, tell me…”

“Anything,” his brother promised, and he’d regret that promise in another moment, Nie Huaisang knew, the question would only cause him pain, but he needed to know. The second they were out of this situation his brother would clam up, pretend that nothing had happened and that it was all fine, so if he had questions – and he did – then he needed to answer them now.

“Was it – who was it? Was it him?”

His brother stilled.

“You said you’d tell me,” Nie Huaisang reminded him.

“…I don’t know,” his brother said. “I don’t – it could be. But it might be – someone else.”

There had been more than one, then. Nie Huaisang swallowed back bile, wanting to be sick. His father’s murderer had forced himself on his brother, and he’d let others do the same, and now they had to deal with the fallout.

“I want to kill them,” he whispered. “I want – I want them dead – all of them –”

“If it’s anything, I’ve made a pretty good head start on that already?” his brother offered, and of course his brother was trying to find some levity in a terrible situation. “We broke them, Huaisang. Even if some individuals remain, there’s no Wen sect left. If I do end up keeping it, the child won’t have a paternal family to lay a claim – they’ll be surnamed Nie. Another Nie, like you and me. You’ll be their uncle; you have to forgive them, it wasn’t their fault...you have to spoil them rotten.”

His brother’s thumb wiped away some of Nie Huaisang’s tears.

“You’ll be a good uncle, didi,” he murmured, pressing his lips to Nie Huaisang’s brow. “If the child is surnamed Nie, that’s all that matters.”

“People will know,” Nie Huaisang pointed out. “About you, about…I’m not the only one who can do math. We won’t…it can’t be kept quiet, can it? People will know. About you, about - what happened.”

“Let people know,” his brother, brave as ever, said with an indifferent shrug. “What do I care? In the end, it’s just another way to show that even when they threw everything they had against me, I still won.”

-

“What a charming child you have,” the young man from the mountain – Xiao Xingchen, he said his name was, and he was already famous despite having only been around for a few months – said, smiling down at her. “She’s beautiful.”

Nie Mingjue was not currently feeling especially kindly disposed towards human reproduction at the moment, being currently heavy with his second – the world needed more Nies, he wanted more Nies, children to keep Nie Huaisang company if that qi deviation he was promised ever actually turned up, and he had a very good list of cultivators with various pros and cons willing to help him introduce some more diversity into the Nie bloodline to try to minimize the chance of future qi deviations for his descendants, but at the same time he hated waddling around like a stuffed hippo with a bunch of people insisting that he not even think of physical exertion – but he nodded his thanks regardless.

At least for once someone wasn’t going to comment about the child’s parentage, he reflected wryly. There was only so much purposeful playing dumb a man could do, and the first year or so of his little baobei’s life – by the time they’d finally gotten around to trying to name her, the nickname had stick so firmly that they’d succumbed to reality and made her given name A-Bao, though of course, it being Qinghe, no one actually called her that – had really strained his tolerance in that specific regard. 

It was the quickest way to avoid awkwardness, to pass along the information while avoiding conversations he didn’t want to have, but still…

Nobody brought up on a celestial mountain would know about Wen Ruohan, though. He was pretty sure of that.

“And I see you’re expecting another? Sometime soon..?”

“I am,” Nie Mingjue said. “Soon enough.”

Not soon enough. He wanted to go back to training – why did he keep getting high blood pressure no matter how much medicine he took?

“I see,” Xiao Xingchen said. “You’ll have to let me give you a gift of some sort. Do you have a favorite form of cloth?”

Nie MIngjue blinked at him. “Cloth?”

That was a strange gift. Did Xiao Xingchen think that his sect was so poor that he couldn’t cloth a child?

Xiao Xingchen – who was really quite young – blushed red, the color going all the way to his ears.

“I’m sorry for my presumption,” he said, then hesitated, before saying, very delicately, “Have you finished preparing the nest for the egg, then?”

[cinnaminsvga]

Taming of the Bridezilla | Seokjin

→ summary: Picture this: You had been (not-so) cordially invited to the wedding of your least favorite cousin—a woman who had been hellbent on making your childhood a living hell. Now older and wiser, you would think that you would put aside your differences and attend your cousin’s special day without any hard feelings, right? You wouldn’t seek revenge, now would you?

→ genre: fake dating!au, i2l, humor/crack, fluff  → warnings: seokjin and oc paradoxically have big yet small brains, fake proposals, not-so fake mutual pining, thinly veiled baby-making jokes, terrible family members, ass slapping (no worries it’s consensual) → words: 6.3K → a/n: first of all, no this is not a horror fic; i just thought the title was funny. unless you consider the stupidity of the characters to be mildly horrifying, then sure you can count this as a horror fic. this insanely ridiculous fic was commissioned by @breadoffoxy!! anyone who loves chaotic jin is an angel in my book. yes, this comm is a bit longer than expected but what can i say... i love me some jin. anyway i hope you guys enjoy!

“You got the ring, right?”

Seokjin pats his left breast pocket and gives you a quick smirk. The bump where the ring should be is fortuitously hidden by his large and garish boutonniere, looking to all the world like he had pinned a whole head of cabbage to his suit. Even then, he still somehow manages to make it work. “Of course I did. This entire plan would be useless if I didn’t have it,” he says.

“What flavor did you get? I quite like the watermelon one,” you muse, smacking your lips in anticipation. “Though it’s hard to remember since I haven’t had a ring pop in years.”

Seokjin laughs loudly, startling a group of aunties gossiping in the corner. They all shoot glares at him, though the effect has lost its novelty as they’ve already been glaring at you from the moment you arrived. You suppose that they have a good reason to, considering that you both arrived at the reception an entire 30 minutes late. You can imagine them cursing you under their breath, saying something like, “You’ve brought dishonor to us all!” or whatever it is that aunties like to say these days.

“I could have gotten you all the flavors available at the convenience store if you wanted, but then we’d be 40 minutes late instead,” Seokjin sighs, pretending to be anguished at the thought.

You snort in the most unladylike manner that you can, grinning wildly when you hear one of the aunties gasp in horrified disbelief. From the way they’re reacting, you might have thought that you just flashed them your Borat-inspired neon green thong.

“I do love a man who can treat me well,” you giggle, earning a soft pinch from him.

“Oh, hush. I know you love it. You nearly burst into tears the other day when I bought you a McFlurry because your broke ass was a dollar short,” Seokjin teases. You squawk indignantly, unable to come up with a retort.

“Whatever! Just because you’re a trust fund baby doesn’t mean you get to bully my impoverished state. Just you fucking wait ‘til I get hit by a wealthy 77 year old’s BMW and then I’ll be made for life,” you huff, your illusion of annoyance quickly shattered by the large, dumb grin on your face. “Hey, would you still love me if I broke all my limbs but had a massive bank account?”

“I’d rather buy you McDonald’s for the rest of your life than see you in pain,” he answers simply, patting you gently on the head. “Though I suppose helping you inject thousands of calories into your bloodstream would also cause you pain later on in life, but hey, at least you’d go down doing what you love.”

“Oh, yes. Keep talking dirty to me. I love it when you talk about the ways you’d kill me by association.” You laugh, casually looping your arms together as you walk past the slowly growing crowd of aunties and entering the reception hall to find your seats. Almost everyone is already in their seats, with a few guests milling about and greeting one another with tight-lipped smiles and hollow laughter. The sight brings goosebumps up your arm, bringing back terrible memories of having to make niceties with these people despite knowing that they despised you and your less affluent family.

Remember, you’re only here as a representative for your parents, you tell yourself. You’d rather bear the brunt of the thinly-veiled insults than to have your parents have to experience this hell. Besides, you have big plans for today, and they would only be brought to an end if your mother ever found out what you wanted to do in the first place.

“As they say… We’re here for a good time, not a long time, which I suppose is our philosophy for tonight as well,” he quips back. He taps you lightly on the hand, wrenching your gaze away from the magnificent chocolate fountain on the dessert table and back to his somewhat less magnificent face. A straight-up lie, but it is the only defense mechanism you have in your arsenal that can keep you from staring at how gorgeous he looks in his suit and tie like a braindead idiot. Denial, after all, hasn’t failed you during the last five years that you’ve been in love with your own best friend.

“What is it?” you ask, curious when he furtively points out one of your cousins near the front of the hall. “That’s Namjoon. Do you know him?”

“Know is a strong word,” Seokjin hums, winking at your cousin when he happens to turn towards the two of you. Namjoon’s eyes light up when he sees him, but his excitement immediately vanishes when he notices who Seokjin has beside him on his right arm. You could see the mental cogs going on inside Namjoon’s head as he stares at the two of you, but you don’t get to see him reach a conclusion before Seokjin is pulling you away, walking in the opposite direction.

“Seokjin? What was that all about?” you ask, though you have to admit you’re kind of afraid to know the answer to your own question. As much as everything about tonight’s scheme had been your idea, you can’t help but think that Seokjin’s intense enthusiasm to help you isn’t merely out of his own desire to help you as a friend, but rather due to his innate calling to cause chaos wherever he goes.

“I have a secret bonus surprise for the bride and groom once we get kicked out from this joint after we do our thing,” he says. “And, dare I say, it’ll be quite a treat for all the guests here.” The smirk on his lips is downright heinous, only exacerbating the frantic racing of your heart. There must be something wrong with you, not with how badly you want to do unspeakable atrocities to him and his evil-looking ass. Or perhaps he was simply put down on Earth to test your slowly fraying sanity.

He snaps you out of your dumbfounded, horny stupor when he continues, “If everything goes according to plan, then we’ll truly end this night with a bang, no pun intended.”

“What was even the pun there?” You raise a brow, slightly disconcerted by the way Seokjin was struggling to keep his laughter (at his own joke) at bay. “You know what? Don’t even answer. I guess I’ll just have to find out later tonight.”

After some pointless meandering while the two of you locate your seats, you are finally able to locate your table, unsurprisingly situated near the farthest corner of the hall where no one would have to see you. You’re honestly more surprised that your newly-wedded cousin had even remembered to give you a seat, though you suppose that it must have been at the behest of your uncle. While your devil of a cousin has always been rude and cruel to you, you have to admit that at least her father knew some manners, though that only begs the question as to what happened to his daughter along the way. Genetics and expensive etiquette classes can only help so much, you suppose.

“Thank you again for doing this with me. You really didn’t need to,” you say when you take a seat, nearly elbowing him in the process. Your chairs are wedged right beside the emergency exit and a grotesque ice sculpture of the bride and groom, forcing the two of you to sit so close that you could feel Seokjin breathe directly into your ear. If you shifted just slightly to the right, you’d basically be sitting on his lap (which is a prospect that intrigues you greatly, but you refrain from voicing it in fear of creeping him out… for now).

“How could I ever resist the offer to ruin your cousin’s wedding? This has been on my bucket list for years,” he winks cheekily at you. “Besides, you’re my dearest friend, Y/N. You could ask me to fight a bear naked, and I’d gladly let it eat my dick in one chomp!”

“I wouldn’t let a bear eat your dick,” you say kindly, patting him gently on the back. “You can’t afford to lose an inch when you only have two to offer.”

Before you could laugh hysterically at Seokjin’s howls of betrayal, your attention is pulled away when the soft violin music stops playing abruptly. From far away, it’s hard to tell what’s going on until you notice a bright light reflecting off of the sea of attendees, the balding head of the reception’s host bobbing up and down as he makes his way to the front of the hall.

“Attention esteemed guests! We will now begin serving dinner shortly. Please remain in your seats as our waiters attend to you.” The host speaks into a crackly microphone just as a few scraggly-looking underpaid teenagers in black dress shirts come out with the first course of the night.

Seokjin cranes his neck, trying to see what the food is. “What the hell is that? Why does it look like green shit in a bowl?” he murmurs, loud enough so that only you can hear. “I didn’t know your cousin was a Dr. Seuss fan. Are we being served green eggs and ham?” Before you can guess, you watch as his nose crinkles in disgust, a vile stench making its way to your area even though none of the waiters were even close to your table. “Oh my goodness, is that stench what we’re supposed to eat?”

“Smells like a barnyard,” you comment, though you aren’t as surprised as he is by the revolting smell. “Well, my cousin always did like making atrocious vegan recipes on her shitty WordPress blog, so I wouldn’t put it past her if she made up the menu for her own wedding.”

“She’s a vegan and a bully? What are the odds,” he says drily, cringing when he watches one of the guests begin to dry heave the moment a spoonful of the green stuff enters their mouth. “Christ. I didn’t know I was signing up for a life or death mission.”

“At this rate, I don’t think we’re getting served until the end of the night anyway,” you say, observing as the understaffed employees tried their best to get to every table while insufferable aunts did their worst to hinder their progress by nagging and complaining. Why were they so adamant about eating the food anyway? Were they itching to get diarrhea on a Saturday night? You do admit that it would probably be better, so then at least you’d have an excuse to leave earlier. “Though I suppose... Do you think eating the mystery goo while it’s cold would be better or worse?”

“It’s okay, I’ll treat you to McDonald’s when we finish up here,” he says, smiling sweetly at you. Never in your life has the mention of greasy fries and chicken nuggies made your heart race faster than it did at that moment, but then again, it could also be your high-blood pressure kicking up. Either way, you can’t ignore the way your face heats up at his offer, now more excited than ever for the reception to be over.

You and Seokjin chat as you wait for everyone around you to finish eating, not even bothered when the waiters forget to bring your food. You’re in the middle of debating the pros and cons of cock and ball torture when large dark shadows loom over both your heads, much like a solar eclipse. A cold shiver runs up your spine when you look up to find the reptilian faces of your aunts, the fumes of their designer perfume creating a cloud so noxious that you could feel your lungs shrivel into prunes.

“Hello, Y/N. It’s nice to see you after such a long time,” your Aunt Sohee greets, her tone indicating that there was nothing pleasant about seeing you at all. Your aunt, who had gotten so much botox done that she was reminiscent of a plastic balloon ready to pop, has her entourage of fellow aunties behind her, all of whom looked ridiculous in their fake designer dresses. You swear you can see that one of them had forgotten to snip off the Made in China tag before wearing it to the wedding.

“Aunt Sohee, you’re looking… young,” you say after a moment, deciding to settle on lying for now. Even though your main plan for this evening is to create chaos at your cousin’s wedding, your one condition is that you wouldn’t cause a scene with your aunts. While you are hardly in the running for favorite niece, there is still a 1% chance that you could get some inheritance from them once they hit the grave, so you’ll have to grit your teeth and bear the incoming barrage of personal questions coming your way lest you lose out in the long run.

“Why, thank you. I can’t say the same for you,” she huffs, shamelessly grabbing my cheeks and squishing them like stress balls. She peers sourly at your disfigured face, trying to squint judgmentally at you but failing due to her horrendous plastic surgery. “How old are you? Why do you have so many wrinkles?”

You feel your eyebrow twitch involuntarily, unable to respond even if you wanted due to the gorilla-hold she has on your face. You side-eye Seokjin, who is looking back at you with a blank and calm expression. You had already told him beforehand that you wouldn’t be arguing with your aunts, but that doesn’t mean he’s not allowed to be an asshole.

Being an asshole, after all, is Seokjin’s favorite pastime.

“Hello, Aunties. My name is Kim Seokjin, and I’m Y/N’s long-term boyfriend. She’s told me many good things about you,” he says with a polite smile, his hamster cheeks puffing up in that adorably boyish way. The surrounding aunties all begin to coo at his handsome face (unfair!), but they’re quickly silenced by a sharp glare from your Aunt Sohee. She appraises him, giving him a once over with a pursed lip.

“Long-term boyfriend, huh? Are you sure you aren’t paying her or something? Y/N hasn’t had a boyfriend in years. Her cousins have told me that she’s been too busy with other… extracurricular activities to bother sticking around,” your aunt says snidely, her sneer deepening. She lets go of your face, crossing her arms when she spies the expensive watch on his wrist. “Ah, I see that you’re well-off. I just can’t possibly see why else you’d be staying with her if not for other reasons.”

You can feel your blood pressure rising, the veins on your forehead undoubtedly bulging as you try to suppress your rage. Screw your cousin for spreading a rumor that you’re a whore! It’s as if you were the one sucking guys off in the locker rooms when the two of you were in the second year of high school and not her. You haven’t even had your first proper kiss, for heaven’s sake!

Instead of getting angry, Seokjin’s expression hardly changes at all. His serene smile is still plastered on his face, but only you can tell that he’s even remotely bothered by their rude remarks. You can feel the air around him turn frosty, but your oblivious aunties are still too busy tittering amongst themselves, exchanging insults at your expense.

“Oh, are we that obvious?” Seokjin tilts his head, feigning innocence. Your head jerks towards him, your eyes bugging out of their sockets. What the fuck? “You are so right, Auntie Sohee. I’m sure Y/N must have informed you about our predicament. You see, we’ve—”

“Your predicament?” Aunt Sohee scoffs, interrupting Seokjin mid-speech. “I can’t believe the nerve of this girl, bringing her little boy-toy to the holy matrimony of her cousin—”

“—been trying to produce an heir to the Kim Line for months now,” Seokjin sighs heavily, looking off into the distance with glazed, dreamy eyes. You nearly cough out a lung at his sudden proclamation, about to interject and ask him what on earth he was talking about. Your words die on your tongue, however, when he grips your hand tightly underneath the table. He taps three times on the back of your hand: an old sign that you both made back in high school whenever he was busy bullshitting his way out of trouble.

Luckily, none of your aunts notice your blunder, all of them too occupied trying to wrap their heads around what Seokjin had said. Multiple mouths drop open in surprise and disbelief, including your Aunt Sohee. Her penciled eyebrows arch comically high, her smoothened forehead wrinkling infinitesimally (a feat in itself, for you were sure she had long since lost any ability to move the skin on her face.)

“I beg your pardon?” she whispers, staring daggers at Seokjin.

Then beg, you think to yourself. Judging by the way the corners of Seokjin’s lips lift slightly, you have a strong feeling that he was thinking the same thing to himself. Instead, he says, “Yes, Aunt Sohee. You see, I come from a long line of businessmen. Ever heard of Kim Enterprises.”

Her face turns pale. “You mean… the Kim Enterprises? The one that owns—”

“South Korea’s largest chain of department stores? I’m flattered that you’re familiar,” he winks. He leans forward, gesturing for your aunts to come closer, like he’s imparting state secrets to them. “My older brother, who has been married for quite some time, has chosen to remain childless at the behest of his wife. For that reason, my father put me up to the task of producing an heir for the company.”

“An heir?” your aunt repeats, dumbfounded.

Seokjin nods, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “Yes, it’s quite unfortunate, but it’s a responsibility I’m willing to take. My family is notorious for planning our lives, even for the next 50 years, so I am forever grateful to have Y/N who is willing to bring me multiple potential heirs to my family.”

“Multiple heirs?” Your aunts shriek in unison, causing a few nearby guests to look over at your table in curiosity. You wave at them awkwardly in apology, hoping to get them to ignore the absolute clusterfuck happening right in front of you.

You feel Seokjin kick you gently in the shin, urging you to say something as well. You clear your throat, channeling all the pent-up Seokjin energy that you had indirectly absorbed over the years of being his friend. “That’s right… My Jinnie has always been so lonely, living in his gigantic mansion with his piles of money. He may have never felt the loving touch of his father, but I’m certain that we’ll be great parents to our children. Why, we’re almost like a pair of rabbits when it comes to—”

Aunt Sohee clears her throat abruptly, a deep flush coloring her cheeks as she glares daggers at you. She looks absolutely peeved, and it takes all your mental fortitude to restrain yourself from jumping up in triumph. Take that, wench!

“I have to admit that this is somewhat… unexpected,” your aunt says carefully, pointing a tight smile at Seokjin. He beams back, positively delighted.

“Y/N is quite the catch. I’m grateful to have her in my life,” he says, his tone growing soft by the end. He looks at you then, and you find a mysterious emotion floating in his eyes that you can’t quite name. When you blink and try to get a closer look, his careful façade is back in place.

Eventually, your aunts lose interest in you once they realize they can no longer bully you, not when you had an incredibly rich boyfriend to back you up. “Must be nice being a rich boy, huh?” you snicker, teasing the blushing boy beside you. Thanks to his hair growing longer than usual, the tips of his ears are miraculously hidden away. When you brush his hair back, they are as red as a baboon’s ass.

“Oh, shut up. You know I hate flaunting my dad’s money,” he whines, pouting cutely. He fingers the watch on his wrist, staring at it uncomfortably. “This isn’t even my watch. I had to borrow one from my brother.”

“Well, you did it for me, so I suppose it’s not all bad,” you laugh, pinching his cheek lightly. “Plus, it was funny watching my aunts shut up for once. They’re just mad that you’re richer than the groom.”

“Really? What does he do?”

“He’s an entrepreneur.” You snort, emphasizing the word with air quotations. “Honestly, he just calls himself that while he waits for his self-made business to pop off or whatever. No such luck so far, if what I heard was right.”

“Lucky for you, you’re stuck with my devastatingly handsome face and stinkin’ rich bank account,” he jokes, contorting his face into a funny expression until you’re left snorting at his antics. Little does he know, you still would’ve l***d him even if he wasn’t any of those things, but that’d be too cringey to say. What are you, some sort of romantic lead protagonist?

It takes a little bit over an hour for dessert to start getting served, by which point the bride and groom decide to make their rounds to greet the guests. “Don’t you think this is the perfect time to put our plan into motion? The dance floor is open and we should be able to make it to the center without anyone noticing,” he whispers, his breath tickling your neck.

“Yeah, let’s go,” you say, but just as you’re about to get up from your seat, a flurry of white blocks your path in an instant. You startle slightly, falling back to your chair and hitting Seokjin in the chest with a soft grunt. “Shit, sorry about that Seokjin—”

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t my dear cousin,” a voice cuts you off, the disdain in their voice dripping like acid down your ear canals. Your blood freezes instinctively, years of past trauma crashing down on you as your childhood bully stands just inches away from you, her blood-red lips stretched into a broad smirk.

“Kairi,” you greet.

“Y/N,” she responds.

“Seokjin!” Seokjin adds helpfully.

Your cousin turns to him slowly. “Quite right,” she hisses, eyebrows pinched together in thinly-veiled annoyance. “I’ve heard through some whispers that my baby cousin finally managed to snag a rich kid for a boyfriend and I just couldn’t help but let my curiosity drag me over here.” She looks you up and down, snorting at what she sees. “You would think that having a chaebol as a boyfriend would mean you could at least afford a proper dress.”

You glance down at your dress: a hand-me-down from your mother because you couldn’t be bothered to buy a new one, not when you’d rather choke on Satan’s hot fiery balls for all eternity than spend any amount of money just to attend your cousin’s wedding. Despite this, you can’t help your cheeks from heating in embarrassment, an automatic response after years of bullying and torment from that spoiled bitch.

When you don’t reply, Kairi’s smirk widens. “Oh? Cat got your tongue? Sugar daddy couldn’t even be bothered to buy you a dress? While you’re at it, maybe you should ask for a new car too. I’m surprised you even made it here alive in that old metal deathtrap of yours. You’re lucky you were just late to the reception instead of dead on the street.”

You can sense Seokjin staring at you from your right. Your fists are clenched tightly on your skirt, your nails nearly tearing the fabric in your searing rage. Slowly, carefully, Seokjin slips his hands underneath yours—he pries your death grip open until he can lace his fingers in between yours. At once, your anger melts at his tender gesture, your focus pulled away from your cousin and back to him. He thumbs the back of your hand, as if assuring you that he’d handle this himself.

He smiles at Kairi, not a single ounce of kindness in his eyes. “Yes, indeed. It is my mistake entirely for not ordering a dress much sooner. Y/N is so incredibly humble; she’d rather wear a vintage outfit than wear one of those paper-thin dresses from YesStyle that you and your bridesmaids seem to favor,” he sighs, pretending to be pained.

“Paper-thin? YESSTYLE?” Kairi screeches, her voice breaking the sound barrier. You watch in fascination as her skin turns an unflattering ruddy shade.

Unperturbed by her murderous aura, Seokjin prattles on. “Quite right,” he mocks her with her own words, smirking ever so slightly. “Though, I must apologize for being late to the reception. That was my fault as well. My father had a general meeting this morning for all the employees at the company, as he had wanted to announce that I would be the Vice President starting next Monday. We tried to leave sooner, but everyone had been too busy congratulating us,” he apologizes, though not apologetic in the slightest.

Your cousin could cosplay as a walking crack pipe with how much steam was puffing out of her ears. She’s livid, so much so that her fury was preventing her from formulating any sort of comeback. “You—how dare you—I swear on my—” she stutters incomprehensibly, her vulture-like nails tearing her dainty paper-thin skirt into shreds.

Just as she looks about ready to blow, her father comes around to your table. He places a hand delicately on his daughter’s shoulder, immediately understanding the situation when he sees you. “Kairi, I think it’s time for you to greet the rest of the guests. Uncle Iverson said he has a gift for you that simply cannot wait,” he says, doing his best to appease you. He gives you a genuinely regretful look; you shake your head, waving off his concern.

“It was nice seeing you, Kairi. I hope you and your husband will have a wonderful year together,” you say. You gasp exaggeratedly, holding a hand to your heart. “Oh, sorry. I meant to say I hope you have wonderful years together. Pardon my mistake.”

Before the scant amount of brain cells in your cousin’s brain could process your words, her father pulls her away, dragging her to the next table over. Once they’re out of earshot, you heave a sigh of relief. Beside you, Seokjin lets out a laugh that he had been undoubtedly holding in the past few minutes, sounding like a fish gasping for air with how much he is shaking with mirth.

“Fuck, that was hilarious. Did you see how angry she got? Beautiful,” he says, wiping away a stray tear. “Love that for us!”

“Damn. I knew you were good at bullshitting, but even your acting skills almost convinced me,” you whistle lowly, impressed. “You sure you’re not a con-artist in disguise?”

“All good businessmen are con-artists, my young padawan,” he snickers, winking at you. He shrugs. “You get used to dealing with assholes like her when you attend enough rich people parties. Besides, all good lies are rooted in the truth, after all. That’s what my father taught me when I was seven.”

“You must have been a terrible child, then.” You laugh, before realizing what he had just said. “Wait. Rooted in the truth? What does that mean?”

“Oh. Well,” he clears his throat, giggling nervously. He rubs his neck, embarrassed. “I am the vice president of dad’s company now. I just lied about the meeting being this morning. He announced it a day ago or something. Not that it’s a big deal or anything…”

You gawk at him, speechless. Not for the first time in your life, you are once again stunned by the absurdity of the man before you. How did men like him exist outside of cheesy k-dramas? He’s handsome, rich, funny, AND well-mannered? It’s almost like some love-crazed author had penned him into existence for their entertainment.

Seokjin breaks you from your reverie, tapping you thrice on your shoulder. “Shall we go? The dance floor is still empty. It’s now or never.”

You nod excitedly, standing up to head towards the center of the hall. This time, there is no one stopping you as the two of you make your way towards your destination. The lights near the dancefloor are still dimly lit, as most of the lighting is currently focused on the guests as the bride and groom make their rounds to greet everyone. Even if Seokjin got onto his knees right now, only a few people nearby would notice, so you’d have to do something to catch people’s attention.

“This is going to be moderately to highly embarrassing for a few moments, but I think that’s the atmosphere we’re going for, isn’t it?” Seokjin whispers, his mouth embarrassingly close to yours as he holds you gently by the waist. There isn’t a need for him to stand so close to you, but you have to admit his presence is mostly calming—minus the fact that he’s been your crush for five years and he’s going to be fulfilling one of your deepest fantasies in front of your entire extended family. No biggie.

“I suppose so. What are you gonna do to get their attention?” you ask, palms beginning to sweat. Despite this, Seokjin still takes your hands into his own, a small smile on his lips.

“Just watch,” he whispers, before slowly getting down on one knee.

Ba-dump. Here we fucking go.

“My dearest Y/N… The apple of my eye, the straw to my berry, the con to my dom,” Seokjin says, projecting his voice so that it can be heard even above the music. One of the violin players is even startled long enough to stop playing, further causing more heads to turn in their direction. You hear a gasp coming from your left, but you force yourself not to look. Instead, you stare right back into Seokjin’s sweet brown eyes, your heart beating a mile a minute.

This isn’t real… This is just a prank, bro. Get over yourself, you hiss internally, but your heart refuses to listen.

“You’ve been in my life for almost half a decade, and not a day goes by wherein I don’t wonder what it would be like to live the rest of my days with you. In many ways, I wouldn’t be the person I am if it hadn’t been for your presence in my life,” he says. If you look deeper into his eyes, you can almost trick yourself into thinking that they looked wetter than they had just a moment ago.

“Y/N, you are the person I’ve loved for years now. I used to think you didn’t like me as much as I liked you, so I was always scared to pop the question. I had many opportunities to ask, but I suppose tonight just felt like the right moment. I was afraid that if I didn’t do it now, I might never get the chance to ask again, and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I let you slip away out of cowardice.”

For some reason, his words seem almost too real, like he was speaking the truth. You have never doubted his acting skills, but would you be willing to wonder if there was even a small possibility that there was some truth to his tale? You swallow thickly, the need to ask just dangling on the tip of your tongue.

He rifles through his jacket pocket, procuring a small velvet box. He thumbs it almost reverently, his hands shaking slightly, but you can blame that on the nerves from hundreds of people watching you. He takes a deep breath, opening the box with a soft click. “My dearest Y/N… Would you give me the honor of spending the rest of my days with you?”

You feel your breath get knocked out of you in an instant, the genuine adoration in his eyes too much for you to handle. You stammer slightly, too busy staring at him to properly register the loud claps, screams, and hollers all around you. “I… Seokjin… This is…”

“MAKE THEM STOP! SOMEONE KICK THEM OUT RIGHT NOW!” You dimly hear your cousin screaming obscenities somewhere, but you are still too caught up in the moment to care. The world only consists of you and Seokjin—nothing else matters right now.

When you look down at the box in his hands, fully expecting to see a comically large ring pop nestled in its cushions, but instead you find—

You gasp, nearly doubling over in surprise. “Oh my god, Seokjin. Is that a real fucking diamond ring?!”

He shrugs, smiling wryly. “Only the best rocks for the girl who rocks my socks off every night,” he jokes, but his nervousness is palpable. He’s sweating, a drop trailing down the side of his face despite the strong air conditioning.

Oh shit. It hits you right then that his proposal is real. The damned idiot is fucking proposing to you in front of your most hated family members, and he’s proposing to you for real.

“Kim Seokjin, please fucking explain yourself—”

But before he can have the chance to open his mouth, you feel rough hands grab you by the shoulders, pulling you away from him. “I’m sorry I have to do this, ma’am. Bride’s orders,” one of the waiters says, awkwardly escorting you to the exit. When you turn back, you see another waiter pulling Seokjin away as well, the box with the ring still clutched tightly in his hand.

The two waiters deposit you outside the hall, bowing stiffly before heading back into the room. You’re still breathing heavily, the adrenaline coursing through your veins. Seokjin isn’t any better, bent over with his hands on his knees. From your vantage point, you can see how red his entire neck is, his blush reaching even past the collar of his shirt.

“Seokjin…” you trail off, unable to say another word. You’re completely flabbergasted, elated, annoyed, and mostly just mind-fucked because when on earth did Kim Seokjin ever have a crush on you?!

“I’m sorry. That must have been quite a shock,” he coughs out a laugh. He rubs his face, embarrassment rolling off of him in waves. “I just… It was sort of a last-minute decision I made. I’ve been into you for years now, and I know I’m kinda putting you on the spot by proposing like that, but I knew if I didn’t do anything soon, you might just slip away before I can say anything.”

“Wait. So are you really… proposing to me?” You squeak out the last bit, your face mirroring his reddened state.

“No!” He shouts suddenly, before covering his mouth with his palm. “S-sorry, what I mean to say is, it wasn’t really a marriage proposal. It was more like… just a general proposal? I do want to live with you forever, but I know that thought must be daunting and—oh god, I don’t even know if you like me like that, so this must be incredibly weird and out of line. Please excuse me while I shove a cactus up my ass—”

“Seokjin,” you interrupt, silencing his rambling. He clamps his mouth shut. “Are you… asking me out?”

He nods his head. “Yeah…”

“And what you said is true? You actually like me?”

“No, you don’t understand. I love you,” he says, before getting shy again. He looks down at the ring box. “Fuck. This isn’t a real engagement ring, by the way. It’s more like a promise ring, so you don’t have to feel bad for rejecting me.”

“Oh my god, I’m in love with an idiot,” you groan, pulling him into a hug. You nestle into his chest, giggling hysterically into his shirt. “I fucking hate you.”

“Wait, I’m getting mixed signals over here,” Seokjin says, gasping when he feels how tightly you embrace him. He doesn’t complain, however. He returns the gesture in kind, nuzzling deep into your neck. “So, does that mean the feeling is mutual?”

“Yes, you idiot. Now give me my ring.”

“My pleasure, princess.” He laughs, drawing away slightly so that he can slip the ring on your finger. The diamond shines brightly under the fluorescent lights, but nothing brings you more joy than having the boy you love in your arms.

As the two of you are sharing a sweet moment, it takes a second for you to realize that the commotion from inside the venue still hasn’t stopped. When you crane your heads, you spot one of the doors had been left ajar, allowing you to slip your heads through the crack just in time to see Seokjin’s beautiful bare ass being projected onto a large screen.

The musical notes of Rick Astley’s most popular song play loudly on the speakers, drowning out the sounds of the bride screaming bloody murder as the IT people tried their best to sort out the mess. The Seokjin on the screen slaps his ass in time with the tune, his glorious moon-shaped globes shaking mesmerizingly for all to see.

When you look to Seokjin for an explanation, he merely shrugs his shoulders. “They really should do background checks on the people they hire for these things. Taking that one video editing course in university really does pay off, huh?”

“Sure does,” you grin, linking your arms together. “Now let’s get some fucking McDonalds.”

And so, you lived happily ever after—the end.

[ficforce]

After You, No, After You

Konro and Benimaru x Reader SFW

“Stay still, Waka,” Benimaru grumbled under his breath as the woman’s fingers combed through his hair at the back of his head and he gave a grunt as he felt the strands pulled from his scalp, “Sorry, it’s really stuck in there… you’re gonna have to wash it out. It’s practically syrup.” The twins were hiding behind Konro as they watched her try to get the gooey remains of their sweets out of the Captain’s hair – they swore it was an accident. With a sigh, she stood up and patted the dust off of her pants, “Maybe it’s a good thing, you’ve been working pretty hard this week – take a break, Waka, a decent bath might do you some good.” Her hand reached down to pat his shoulder but at the last moment the man avoided the touch, he got up and stalked past her mumbling about not being a little kid. The twins ran off after him and Y/N watched after him in confusion before looking to Konro, he couldn’t help but defend him, “He’s been a little frustrated lately.” “I know…” she sighed, “It feels like he’s mad at me though. I guess I baby him a little, even though we’re not that far apart in age. He just has so much to deal with and sometimes I think it really gets to him. Not that he would ever admit it.” All she wanted was to make things a little easier on him, feeling Konro’s hand on her arm she turned her gaze up to his, “Is this where you treat me like a kid?” He smiled at her question and gave her arm a comforting squeeze, “You’re too grown up to be treated like a little girl, Y/N.” Konro couldn’t ignore that she was a grown woman any more than Benimaru could, he had seen crimson eyes follow her around too often to ignore, the walls were thin in the Guardhouse and the Lieutenant wasn’t deaf to the younger man moaning her name quietly in. It wasn’t so different from the way Konro looked at her or fantasised about her…

“I think he wants you to see him as a man rather than someone to look after – so he takes it personally when you try to soothe him like that.”

Her fingers locked together and she tried to keep her voice steady, “…You make it sound like he, ya know… likes me.” “Would that be so bad?” She noticed that he was having trouble keeping eye contact with her now and he shifted his body slightly away until his hand fell back to his side, “Waka’s really grown, he’s reliable and you know the cold attitude is just for show – you’d make a good pair.” Konro didn’t say much more than that, he made his excuses and headed out. Did Benimaru like her? They worked well together, she was a fire soldier third generation and had started off as a regular Hikeshi, her abilities didn’t kick in until after her twentieth birthday. She got on with her Captain and wasn’t afraid to pick on him, though not many Asakusians were afraid of him unless they were up to no good, he always invited her for drinks and when he decided to gamble – which he was bad at – he relied on her intuition. Her fighting style was basic, trusting her ability to get the job done but Benimaru still insisted on training with her every now and then, he wasn’t gentle and she was always bruised afterwards. He complained when she pet his hair after a few too many drinks and he didn’t like when she tried to tell him to take a break, eat something or drink something. All she wanted to do was thank him for all his hard work… it was a way to stay close to him too. Konro’s words gave her butterflies and Y/N wondered if he was right. Konro was always right, she looked up to him and admired him. He always seemed to be the one to help her get control of her fire when she lost control because of her inexperience, Y/N knew he could be dangerous and that he wasn’t one to shy away from a fight; he just tended to be smarter about picking them. He always made her feel warm. Her heart often fluttered at the sight of Konro in the same way it did for Benimaru… wouldn’t it be nice to have both  — - “Y/N!” Her head tilted up toward the smokey sky at the call of her name, Benimaru was above on his matoi and he pointed south, “There’s a couple of kids hiding down that alley.” “On it, Waka!” Y/N ran off, she was careful to avoid the stray fireworks whistling through the streets from the warehouse that had caught fire. There was no Infernal this time, just a couple of idiot teenagers who had caused flames to spread over half the block, “Anyone down here?!” Crying could be heard coming from behind a tower of crates, “Hey, it’s okay, come one, let’s get out of here.” Y/N took the toddler from the little boy who had been trying to look after her, “Hold onto my coat and stay close.” A loud bang made her jump and a wall of fire blocked the three of them into the alley. The boy buried his head into her side and she tried to keep the little girl from the heat. “Y/N!” “Lieutenant!” Through the brief gaps in the yellow and orange flames, she caught glimpses of the man. “I’m… I’m gonna try to part it so I can hand the kids through!” If she had been alone she would have just run through the blaze but the children would be burnt, her eyes illuminated as she concentrated on pulling the fire apart until there was an opportunity to thrust the toddler into Konro’s arms. The man called the boy to run through, giving him enough courage to brave the flames and join him. Konro handed both of them to another Hikeshi and told him to get them out of the danger zone, the space closed and he lost sight of her, “Y/N… Oi! Come on!” She wasn’t paying attention to her powers and the blaze began to spread up to the roofs of the other houses, “Get it under control!” The Hikeshi panicked as she watched it spread because of her, Konro’s call made it worse as she could only imagine how disappointed he was at her failure. “Forget controlling it, Y/N, just run through!” Konro let out a relieved breath as she appeared through the flames in one piece, her clothes let off a few billows of smoke but otherwise, she was fine, “We’ll deal with this, head to the river and make sure the civilians are safe.” Later, when everything was put out and rebuilding had started,

Y/N was surprised when Benimaru sat down beside her and shoved a box of mochi onto her crossed legs, “You look like a kicked dog.” “Rude.” Once she had opened the box he dived straight in to grab one, she noted it was the least sweet one in there and tutted at him, “Did you get this because you wanted that one or because you were a brat earlier?” He shrugged one shoulder, “Who cares - why you looking so miserable?” Benimaru chewed his mochi as he waited for her to tell him, she was usually straight forward with him but as he swallowed he realised she hadn’t touched the snack and she was yet to answer him - that wasn’t so usual. “Is it because you made that fire way worse?” “I wasn’t good enough, I had the kids and I panicked… I screwed it up and the Lieutenant had to deal with my mess.” Y/N dropped her head into her hands, she felt utterly defeated and it was all because she caused trouble for Konro, “I’ll be better next time, I’ll work until I pass out if I have to.” “Good.” The Captain took the box of mochi from her lap before shifting himself on the mat and resting his head on her thigh, “Is it your lack of skill or disappointing Konro that’s got you down?” He looked up at her and smirked, Y/N’s expression was surprised at his position on her lap but she didn’t seem like she would push him off, “You like him, right?” Y/N’s eyes widened a little and she cleared her throat before answering, “O-of course! He’s my Lieutenant and… and everyone likes Konro…” “Don’t play dumb, Y/N, you know I mean,” the man picked up a piece of mochi and shoved it in her mouth, “He likes you too, he’s just being a coward. If you like him you should tell him… Konro will look after you, he’s not mad that you lost control earlier - he was just worried.” He closed his eyes then, “You’d make a good pair.” His words parroted what Konro had said that morning and Y/N could sense the same unusual discomfort in Benimaru that Know had had earlier. It was as if they wanted to support the other but were giving up something they wanted to do it. “Benimaru…” his eyes opened at the sound of her voice, she couldn’t help but think that he had a beauty to him, his crimson eyes always caught her attention, “Konro said the same thing about us.” “Tch!” He sat himself up and pushed his hair out of his face, “Course he did - that idiot! You don’t even look at me the way you do with him, Konro’s a better man, ya know, you should just tell him.” Benimaru got up and headed out before she could find the words to answer him. Benimaru had as good as told her that he had feelings for her but in the same breath told her to be with Konro. Y/N exhaled loudly and tried to calm her beating heart - did this mean they both liked her the same way she did them? Did she have to choose? Of course, she did… It wasn’t likely they would want to share, if she chose one over the other it could change everything, either they would resent one another or she would lose someone she adored, “Fuck.” — - The next three days were busy with rebuilding and preparation for a festival, they were fortunate that no Infernals appeared and the fireworks disaster wasn’t too catastrophic, it gave her a chance to practice and Y/N was taking advantage of it. Feeling her lungs squeeze painfully the Hikeshi fell to her knees in exhaustion, it was getting harder to take in air and her limbs were shaking from overusing her ability, it wasn’t time to give up so she forced herself back up straight and glared at the metal barrel she had started a fire in. She kept it up until her knees gave out and she tasted dirt in her mouth. Her vision blurred and she couldn’t even move her arms under her to get up, she knew she’d burned herself out but she figured it would pass soon enough. Y/N wasn’t sure when she had passed out so she was confused when her eyes opened and the world was moving, the ceiling and walls were passing by and as she blinked groggily up she realised that Konro was carrying her through the Guardhouse, “‘m not done…” “Yes you are,” he murmured back, “You’re out of firepower, Y/N,

don’t force it.” Konro adjusted her in his hold and slid the door open with his foot, he placed her down onto the futon in his room and then headed out briefly to grab a damp flannel to clean the dirt on her face. He could see she had pushed herself a little too far. “She okay?” Y/N turned her head to the man leaning against the doorway, her eyes couldn’t focus on Benimaru so she let them slip closed again. “Burned herself out, Waka. You should sit with her for a while…” Benimaru looked away from them, “You’re better suited.” Her head was pounding and she felt like something was pressing down on her, Y/N really wasn’t in the mood to listen to then argue who should sit with her and it was out of character for them. She’d been agonising over the situation for days - Benimaru liked her, Konro liked her, and she liked them both equally but for different reasons. In the end, she decided she would be better off not choosing. “I don’t want either of you!” The Hikeshi sat up from the futon, batting Konro’s hand away as he tried to get her to go back down, she then forced herself up onto her feet, wobbling as her oxygen-starved muscles protested, “One of the things I admire about you both is the way you go for what you want - how you fight for it. You both told me that the other likes me and you’re trying to push me onto the other like I’m not worth the effort!” That’s what really bothered her, the fact they were willing to give her up. Konro and Benimaru were close and she understood them not wanting to hurt each other but she wished they would see it from her point of view too. “If I’m not worth fighting for then don’t bother! I don’t want reasons why you’re not good enough… I want you to tell me why I shouldn’t throw you both out of here right now!” “It’s my room.” “It’s literally Konro’s room.” Heat flared up inside as her temper rose, it hadn’t been intentional on her part to call up her flames but as they were too weak to do more than make her too hot it didn’t cause the men too much of an issue. The issue was that her body lost all strength in it and she fell, luckily, into Konro’s arms, “Y/N!” He got her back on the futon and sighed, “I get what you’re saying, Y/N, we didn’t expect to both fall for the same girl and in the same way.” “It’s not like we can share you either.” Benimaru pushed his hand through his hair and sat down beside her, “I want you to be happy and I think Konro would make you happier than I could, I want him to be happy too… you deserve at least that, Konro.” “Beni…” the Lieutenant’s voice was soft and he wanted to argue with him but his voice was momentarily silenced. He felt the same way, he wanted Benimaru to steal a little bit of happiness too. Y/N managed to get her vision to focus on them, they were pretty dumb when it came to these kinds of things, if they couldn’t fight it then they tended to struggle, she reached out and grabbed them, catching Benimaru’s pant leg and Konro’s sleeve, “Why can’t we share?” She smirked as they did a double-take of her, “It’ll take two of you to handle me anyway.”

[bbdaydreams]

Courage My Love// Semi Eita

Pairing: Semi Eita x Reader

Summary: You like Semi and come up with a plan to confess to him, unfortunately it takes a turn. You meet again a couple years later by chance.

Chapter Eight: Teenage Dream

Series Masterlist•<previous•next>

A week into the tour and your body finally decided to allow you wake up before two in the afternoon. You stretched your body a little bit in your bunk before getting up and out to finish stretching. You checked the surrounding bunks and saw that only Haruka was still sound asleep while the others were empty. Making your way to the lounge you found your missing members and greeted them. They gave you back a robotic response while peeking out the window.

“The hell are y’all looking at?”

“The boys,” Yui answered. “I’m waiting to see if one of them eat shit.”

“Yui, what the-“

“Look, look, look!” Izumi whispered, stretching her arm behind her in an attempt to grab you to pull you towards them. You placed your knees on the bench to watch through the blinds with them.

Semi, Subaru, and Ranmaru were wearing plain t-shirts and gym shorts while Jiro wore a buttoned up blue flannel with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and black skinny jeans. The three elders from the group seemed to be running back and fourth from one end of the parking lot to the other while Jiro was skating a few feet away.

“How long have they been doing this?” You asked, turning away from the window.

“No clue- oh shit!” Izumi exclaimed, jumping up and running over to the main door to hop off the bus.

“That was a bad wipeout,” Yui added, following after the bassist. You followed after them, hesitating a little bit because you had just woken up and were in your sleepwear. Saying ‘fuck it,’ you threw on a pair of slip ons before following the others.

“Jiro!” Subaru and Ranmaru yelled before running over to their guitarist.

“Dude! You good?” Semi asked, crouching down to help Jiro sit up.

“Yeah, I’m good. Where’s my board?”

“I’ll go grab it,” Yui said as she headed towards the direction of there the skateboard rolled off to.

“What happened? I heard yelling,” Haruka asked. She was stepping off the bus still in her pajamas and rubbing her eyes, making it clear that she had just woken up. Her eyes landed on Jiro who was sitting on the pavement. He looked at her with panic in his eyes as she took in his disheveled look. “Why are you bleeding?”

“I- I’m okay, no need to worry-“

“You have a giant hole in your jeans that shows your red scraped knee, you have scratches on your face, and I can see the blood droplets on your flannel!” Haruka exclaimed, turning back around getting onto the bus.

“Is she pissed?” Jiro asked.

“Nah, just concerned. She probably went to grab our first aid kit,” Izumi answered. “You should probably take off your flannel though, that’s a pretty big stain on your elbow.”

Jiro unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a black t-shirt. Haruka came back with the kit and knelt next to the heterochromatic male. She took out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and some gauze making him gulp, knowing what was to come. “Do you have to use that?” Jiro asked, gradually moving his arm away from her.

“Yes, now sit still,” Haruka responded.

“Here’s the board I ran as fast I could as soon as I saw-“

“Fuck!”

“-the brown bottle,” Yui laughed. “Guess nurse Haruka has it under control.” The rest of you laughed at Jiro’s reaction and left Haruka to tend to his wounds.

“What are you guys doing anyways?” Izumi asked the three older males.

“Oh, we were working out. Jiro does his own thing for exercise which is mostly either parkour or skating,” Subaru responded.

“Or as we call it, just Jiro things,” Ranmaru added on. “You guys are free to join us during our workouts though, makes things more fun.”

“Haruka and I might join you guys,” Yui responded.

“Pass from Izumi and I,” you spoke up.

“And why’s that? Nice pajamas by the way, very festive for summer with the snowflakes,” Semi teased.

“Leave me alone. Sweating is gross. And personally I get bored doing the same thing repetitively. I’ll go on a walk, maybe jog a little bit, but that’s about it.”

“Sweating is gross, huh?” Semi asked with a devious look in his eyes.

“Don’t you dare come near me,” you responded, taking a few steps back as Semi walked closer to you.

“What? I just wanted to give you a hug, especially while you wear your cute pajammies.”

“Stay the fuck away from me. Semi. Semi! No!” And now you were running away from the 180cm tall former setter, who you know could catch up to you at any time. You still chose to take your chances though.

“He’s never gonna let her go, is he?” Ranmaru asked Subaru.

Izumi and Yui heard him loud and clear which peaked Yui’s interest. “Ahhh so he still has feelings for our leader. How cute.”

“Keep this between us, but yeah,” Subaru spoke. “Does she have any feelings left for him?”

“Honestly, we’re not sure. She never talked about him after the whole thing went down. She’s been with other people but she’s never been over the moon for them. It doesn’t help that she’s also super independent. It makes us think sometimes that she’d rather be single. There’s nothing wrong with that either, but at the end of the day we think it’d be nice for her to find someone,” Izumi spoke, watching you run around the bus only to yell out you were going back to sleep right when Semi caught up and wrapped his arms around you. “You guys might not believe it but how she’s acting now with him is no different to how she’d act with other people. Maybe it’s because of all the touring we do but she’s so open with people that it’s hard to read her. We love her and she’s fun to be around with but when it comes to her, it’s hard to tell what she wants.”

“We see. Eita’s sort of been the same in relationships. He’s gone on dates too but he’s never been whipped for any of them. Like he’ll do his best to please them and shit like a good partner should, but if you look at him from a distance it feels almost forced. He wants to love but it’s like fake love, if that makes any sense,” Subaru spoke.

“What about your drummer girl? Also between us, Jiro still seems to like them a lot,” Ranmaru asked, deciding to bring light to the other potential couple.

“Wait, what do you mean still? From what we know, they were friends during their final year but that’s it,” Izumi explained , now confused.

“Jiro fell for her hard during that year like he would come home and talk to us about her and ask for advice if he couldn’t ask his older brother. The thing is he was labeled the dumb hooligan while Haruka was the typical quiet good girl so he didn’t want to taint her record. You know how people talk in high school. He was convinced she shouldn’t be with a fool like him, so he never spoke up,” Subaru followed up.

“Ah. Well I think they’ll be together by the end of the tour, maybe even week. I can feel it,” Yui said.

“And what about you guys? Are you single?”

“I have a boyfriend,” Izumi quickly answered. “He’s back in Japan.”

“I’m single. My reason being it’s hard finding people you wanna know more about, ya know?”

“Really now?” Subaru answered, looking at Ranmaru.

“Yui, are you sick? I think you’re lacking some vitamin me,” Ranmaru said, attempting to put his arm over Yui’s shoulders.

“No! Me!” Subaru argued.

Before either of them could touch her, Yui grabbed their forearms and tugged on them to bring them closer. When they jumped a little closer together she took their hands and placed them in each other’s before letting go. Yui looked over and Izumi who was smirking from trying to hold in a laugh. “Don’t worry about it, Dumb and Dumber. Since I apparently have you guys weak at the knees it appears you might be lacking vitamin D. You two should get to know each other and solve that problem,” Yui responded as she gave them a fake smile. “Let’s go Izu,” she laughed, turning from the boys to get back onto the bus.

Semi came back to the two white haired males and crossed his arms before speaking. “You guys are idiots.”

“Karaoke night!” Haruka cheered when your set finished that night.

“We just got done playing and you’re this excited for karaoke? At least act tired,” Izumi whined, leaning forward to place her hands on her knees after she set her guitar down.

“Haru,” Yui started before taking a deep breath, “what the fuck.”

“Mmmm, nice cold floor,” you said, letting your body collapse on the black tiles the backstage had to offer.

“Y/n, no!”

“Get up people walk there!”

“It’s dirty!”

Too tired to figure out who said what, you let out a groan and got up. “Fine I’m up, I’m up. I need a baby wipe though. I’m all sweaty and gross.” Making your way over to your green room you bumped into One Ok Rock. “Hey guys.”

“Hello, hello. You guys sounded amazing as always,” Taka complimented.

“Thanks! Oh! Do you guys have plans after your set?” Haruka asked.

“Sleep,” Ryota responded which made the others laugh.

“Ah haha, did you guys have something in mind?” Toru asked.

“We’re all off tomorrow so we were gonna have a karaoke night on our bus,” Yui explained.

“And there’ll be booze!” Izumi added.

“We’ll try to pop by then,” Tomo answered. You wished them luck before heading into your dressing room to clean up a little bit before meeting your fans.

Yui and Haruka were currently making dinner while while you were showering and Izumi was setting up the karaoke system.

“Oh fuck, we forgot to invite Won’t Regret,” Yui mentioned.

“I’ll text RoRo!” Haruka lit up.

“How could we forget to invite all of your guys boyfriends?” Izumi teased.

“Jiro is not my boyfriend!”

“I never said he was,” Izumi responded with a smirk.

“Does this make thing one and two mine?” Yui asked.

“Lol, yeah. Are you gonna tell them?”

“Yeah, I don’t need them annoying me. I have enough to put up with.”

Stepping out of the shower with a towel around your body you looked over at the girls and saw they were still doing what they did when you last saw them. “Hey, is dinner- oop gotta go!” You exclaimed, running to your bunks and closing the door because there was a knock at the front of the bus.

“It’s open!” Izumi yelled. Coming up the steps was Taka and Toru with smiles on their faces. “Hey! Welcome to our bus! Did the others decide to call it a night instead?”

“Yeah. They’re parents now so they age faster and need more sleep,” Toru laughed.

“No worries. C’mon in and take a seat. We just finished cooking if you’d like some food,” Haruka said, showing them a plate she had already prepared.

“Taka and Toru just got on the girl’s bus. Wonder what’s going on over there,” Ranmaru said aloud as he glanced out the window.

“Who what now?” Semi asked, looking up from his phone.

“Oh they’re doing some karaoke tonight. RuRu just texted me to invite us,” Jiro answered.

“RuRu? Do you mean Haruka? You guys have nicknames for each other already?” Subaru teased, laughing at Jiro’s reaction.

“Look at how red he is!” Semi roared.

Subaru looked over at Ranmaru, smirking knowing he was about to roast Semi. “Boy if you don’t shut up! Go look in a mirror before judging him!”

“Eh?!”

“Eita, every time Y/n is around you put all your attention on them. It’s like you’re a bee fixated on a flower. Just non stop buzz buzz buzz around them.”

“Okay, I get it.” Semi sighed. “Is it that obvious?”

“Yes. Please just ask them out already.”

“I can’t do that, bro. It’s too soon. We’re just friends for now.”

“We have 5 weeks left on this tour. You’re gonna have to ask them out before then. Who knows if we’ll see them again after this.”

Letting Ranmaru’s words sink in he realized the reality of it. After the tour was over your band would probably go on your own tour to promote your new album in Europe, Australia, Japan and maybe even the US again whereas his band would probably only do Japan. You’d be busy touring and focusing on yourself you wouldn’t have the chance to see each other again. “Fuck. You’re right.”

“I’m always right. Anyways I’m headed to bed. Have fun at karaoke.”

“I’m going to bed too. Night,” Subaru yawned.

“Guess it’s just us,” Jiro laughed before tilting his head to ask “let’s go?” to which Semi responded with a head nod. They told their bus driver they’d be on the other bus so he could drive off if they didn’t come back by midnight.

“Alright that’s the theme tonight?” Yui asked Izumi, covering her mouth since she was chewing. They were both currently sitting on the small kitchen counter while Taka and Toru were sitting around their dining table and Haruka was standing off to the side.

“Let’s have our guests have the honor! Hit the button to spin the wheel,” she explained as she jumped off to hand her phone to the two older men. “Ooo, looks like we’re doing ‘Women in Pop’!”

Hearing knocking from the front door, Yui yelled it was open. Semi and Jiro walked in and greeted everyone. “It smells so good,” Jiro stated, eyes lighting up once he spotted the meal that was cooked.

“Take a seat and I’ll give you a plate. Semi, would you like one too?” Haruka asked. Semi nodded his head and they both accepted the meal after thanking them for the hospitality. After they were seated Yui got them up to speed to what they were doing.

“We should probably go first to show them how it’s done,” Haruka stated.

“I kinda wanna finish my food,” Izumi mumbled which made Yui jump in and say ‘me too’. Luckily for Haruka, you had just come out of the bunk area in sweats. “Look at that, Y/n can sing with you.”

“What did I do in the first five seconds of me appearing for me to go first?” You asked confused.

“Show up. Here is your mic,” Yui responded, making you playfully roll your eyes at her.

“How do you decide what song to sing?” Taka asked.

“We just decide between ourselves. Any song is good as long as it fits the theme,” Haruka responded. You let Haruka pick and take the lead for the song as you backed her up and sang your parts while also trying to match her energy in small dance gestures. When you finished you handed your microphone to Toru who asked to go next and Haruka handed hers to Izumi. Fixing yourself a plate you took Toru’s spot and sat next to Taka while Haruka took Izumi’s spot.

“Yo,” Semi started to grab your attention, leaning forward to not speak into Taka’s face.

“Yo,” you responded.

He smirked before continuing, “nice pajamas.”

You let out a small chuckle before looking back at him. “Leave me and my comfy clothing alone, asshole. I am cozy.”

Laughing at the nickname you gave Semi, Taka decided to jump in. “Hey Eita, we should go next.”

“Eh, I don’t know. Honestly I’m not much of a karaoke guy.”

“Boo, Semi you’re no fun,” you pouted while eating your food.

“Yeah, Eita you should try it out,” Jiro added.

Semi threw his head back and grunted in disapproval before turning his head to look at you. As he leaned back you did as well and gave him a child like smile, showing as many teeth as you could with your lips curved upwards as a friendly way to encourage him. Letting out a small chuckle, he leaned forward and let his forearms rest on the table. “Alright, I’ll do it.”

“Yay!” You, Taka, and Jiro cheered. Izumi and Toru sang Party In the U.S.A. by Miley Cyrus which had the group laughing when Toru tried to reach the high note and when he tried to mimic Izumi’s dancing. When they were done you all applauded for them.

“Do you have an idea for a song?” Semi asked Taka, taking a sip of his beer.

“Yeah, yeah. I wanna do Beyoncé! Is Single Ladies good?,” Taka responded with a giant grin.

“I’m good with that.” The two got up from their spots and you and Jiro slid into their spots so others could sit as well. They accepted the mics from Izumi and Toru, Taka stretching afterwards to ‘loosen his body up’.

When the music started, Taka started moving his shoulders from side to side while Semi lightly bobbed his head along to the beat. Taka took the lead and sang the first verse. As the song progressed Taka put his body more into the flow making you all get louder for him to cheer him on. Leaving the second verse to Semi he moved his torso more into the song but he couldn’t compare to Taka, and it made him start overthinking a little.

He’s so much cooler and better than he is. Taka knows how to rile up a crowd. His performances are better than Semi’s but then again he does have more experience so he has to factor that into their differences. He’s so chill and laid back but also open and hilarious, he’s got it all.

Towards the end of the song when they were singing the last of the “all the single ladies”, Taka got closer to where you were sitting and went to hold your hand as he sang, causing the group to hype him up even more than they already where.

When they finished, you and Yui went next, opting to do Katy Perry. As you took the lead, Semi couldn’t keep his eyes off you and agree with the lyrics you were singing. He enjoyed your facial expressions as you sang and the way you carried yourself, somehow different than how you were on stage. Unfortunately Semi also couldn’t stop the negative thoughts that obscured his brain.

Semi noticed the blush on your face when Taka had the slightly intimate gesture with you. What if he’s not good enough for you? He doesn’t want to hold you back from being the happiest person you could be. Semi knows he’s not the funniest, most charming person in the world. Compared to your ex, Tendou, he knows they’re almost nowhere near similar. Tendou was more easygoing and knew how to light up the mood whereas Semi is more uptight, always concerned about others and what they think. If anything Taka was more like Tendou, a potential better option for you than himself. But he knows you all had just met recently so who knows if Taka is just being friendly or trying to get at something. Maybe you were just going to stay a teenage dream.

A/n: look at that an update. Sorry for taking so long, I’ve been tired but here ya go!

Taglist: @pluviophilefangirl @yourstarvic @sunaswife @mynscorner @itoshibaby @discountkiyoko @ibetonlosingcats @lilith412426 @soggyacidjuice

[zodiyack]

Lost And Found - Deux

Requested by anon: lost and found was so precious! could I request a second part about how the family reacts to him finally finding her and their first days together? 😊

Pairing: Thomas Shelby x reader

Warnings: Swearing, some characters possibly being slightly ooc on accident, fluff, one sexual joke(?) that’s really dumb but my friend liked it so I kept it also sorry if this sucks lmao

I strayed from the request a bit on accident but I hope you like it still!!

Taglist: @captivatedbycillianmurphy, @stydia-4-ever, @matth1w @redspaceace, @jenepleurepasbaby​

Masterlist | Peaky Blinders Masterlist | Cillian Murphy Masterlist

part one. part two. part three.

Y/n fidget with her fingers nervously. She waited there, on the doorstep to the Shelby home. Thomas was inside with his family, and she was outside, waiting to knock. Her heart was racing. What if they didn’t like her?

Just as she was about to chicken out, about to pull away from the house and run as fast as she could back to her car, the front door swung open.

“Tommy! She’s here!”

Footsteps thundered as Thomas practically jumped the entire staircase. He paused, catching his breath and glancing at John with a smile. Y/n, now in his line of sight, was surprised with an almost sprinting Tommy then breath-taking hug. Tommy swung her around, smiling even wider at her giggles.

“Hello my love! It’s nice to see you too!”

They stopped spinning, but she remained in his arms. “I-I’m sorry, Y/n/n, it’s just- I’m so excited to introduce you to my family. They’re gonna love you! And- I missed you a lot.”

“Tommy you saw me two hours ago.”

“I know.” He set her down and kissed her roughly. “So, you ready to come inside?”

Y/n nodded and held his hand, grip getting tighter when he raced to the family room where he forced his family to sit until she arrived. Although Polly would’ve normally told him no and that he couldn’t make them do that unless it was for something absolutely important like a death, Tommy’s child-like soul was showing for the first time in a long time. 

They were experiencing a version of Tommy that they hadn’t seen since before the war.

He kissed her hand and asked her to wait by the door. He opened the door slightly, trying to hide the smile creeping onto his face but failing miserably. Ada jumped up from her seat with wide eyes, “Is she here?”

“Don’t be ridiculous Ada, look at that smile. She is, and lover-boy can’t help but smile like a bloody idiot” chuckled Arthur.

“Shush! Don’t tease your brother, he’s happy and that’s what matters.” Pol turned her attention to the man of the conversation, “So, is she going to say hello?”

Thomas rolled his eyes at his brother’s comment, a slight blush on his cheeks, then poked his head out the door, mumbling to someone the other’s had no knowledge of. They exchanged glances of confusion before readjusting to more welcoming and comforting expressions as a gorgeous h/c woman walked into the room.

“Well fuck. Tom really did pick a good one.” Michael laughed to himself. 

“Family, this is Y/n, the woman who helped me in the war...the woman I fell in love with. Y/n, this is my family.” She waved nervously. “You’ve met John and Arthur. That’s Finn, Ada, my aunt Polly, and my cousin Michael.”

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet all of you.”

“And it’s a pleasure to have finally met you. Tommy never shuts his trap when it comes to you. You have no idea how grateful we are about the whole saving Tommy thing, even if you were just doing your job.” Pol admitted.

“Now that Y/n’s here, can we eat now Tommy?” Finn finally entered the conversation, his question causing Y/n to look over to Tommy with a look that wordlessly questioned something along the lines of, ‘you didn’t let them eat?’

He looked back, raising his eyebrows to reference his point. He was waiting until she arrived. The family watched them as they communicated with their actions until Finn repeated Tommy’s name. “Ah yes, dinner! Uhm, Pol, can you show Y/n to the dining room?”

“Of course. Come dear,” she stood up, holding out her arm, beckoning Y/n to join her. “it’s alright, I don’t bite” she winked.

Tommy joined them with a bottle of Y/n’s favorite alcohol. Y/n thought back to the time Tommy flooded her with questions, drawling out excuses when asked, and now here was the answer to the preferred alcohol choice question.

“So, Y/n, what do you for a living? Still in the nurse industry?” Pol tried her go at small talk, smiling kindly at the woman sat next to Tommy.

“Not really, I was hoping there was a spot open in the...ya know, Peaky business-” she was cut off by Arthur choking on his asparagus. “but then again nurse stuff could help. I mean, you could use some help if someone were to get injured in a gun fight or something, right?”

Arthur recovered from his asparagus accident and squinted his eyes at Y/n. “Woah woah woah, wait a fucking minute, let me get this straight. You know about the...well not so legal side to our work?” She nodded. “Tommy told you?” She nodded again. “And you’re fine with it?” She nodded once more.

A pregnant pause filled the room. Awkward tension grew heavier.

“When do you think you’ll pop a baby in her?”

Y/n’s eyes bulged out of her head, Arthur broke from his cautious state into laughter, Tommy’s cheeks turned red from blush and his attempt of not breaking like his older brother. Ada gasped as her mouth dropped open, Finn snickered with his oldest brother, Michael looked away and snorted but mumbled an apology when his mother glared at him.

“John!”

“What? It’s just a qu- ow!” She flicked his ear and sat back in her seat.

“My apologies, Y/n. You’ll have to excuse Tommy’s brothers and their...humor. You’ll get used to it at some point, but I’m not sure how long that’ll take.”

“It’s alright, the question just...caught me off guard.” Y/n smiled weakly at John with sympathy as he rubbed his ear with a childish grumpy furrow of his eyebrows. “Besides, we aren’t exactly planning on turning into bunnies or having all of our children in a month. We can’t have two Johns in your family, can we?”

The tension was cut like it never existed. The family, all except John, laughed. Y/n smiled and joined in, happy her joke made from the knowledge of John and Esme’s relationship Tommy, and a boasting John, shared with her, caused the family to laugh. Her nervousness was brushed away by the sound of amusement.

“Oi! What’s that supposed to mean?!” red dusted across John’s face. He knew exactly what it meant.

“Look Tommy, I can see his fluffy little ears, how much longer do you think it’ll take for them to grow into big boy ears?” Arthur added.

“Alright, that’s enough, leave John alone.” she wiped away the tears she had shed from how hard she was laughing. Pol couldn’t remember the last time she laughed that hard, let alone the last time she had a good laugh.

Y/n was Tommy’s angel, the thing that kept him who he was, the beacon that signed home when he was lost, and now, she was spreading that feeling to his family. While dinner continued, jokes being made, fun being poked at, spirits high and tummies full, Polly was thankful.

She reclined back into her chair, watching as Y/n leaned into Tommy’s side, her eyes sparkling with interest when stories of a teenage version of the man was brought up. Y/n brought out the child-like-souls they thought were long gone. She made sure they had fun and didn’t grow up in a sense that they had lost their fun sides. 

The boys were acting like children once more, wrestling with each other and chuckling every now and then. Ada and Y/n were snickering to themselves by the fire like teenagers gushing over their crush.

“I’d like to make a toast.”

The fun-filled-joyous sounds came to a halt when Pol raised her glass. They all quickly grabbed their glasses, Y/n and Ada reaching beside them, and the boys stumbling over to the kitchen and returning with their beverages.

“I know I should’ve done this at dinner, but now feels like the perfect time. Thank you, Y/n, for...well everything. You helped Tommy, later meeting him again and rekindling the fire you felt for one another, which I doubt had ever gone out. Thank you for bringing our spirits of happiness and fun back to us, relieving us from business and worry. Thank you for being the sweet angel you are.” She wiped a small tear from her eyes and raised her glass again, “to Y/n and Tommy.”

“To Y/n and Tommy!” The siblings smiled and downed their drinks. Their fun resumed, without Y/n and Tommy though.

“To us,” Y/n turned to Tommy, both drinking to the toast, and set down her glass. “Thank you too, Thomas Shelby, for fighting through that war. You didn’t have to fight for me, but you did, and you kept up with that promise. I love you so much.”

“I love you most.” He rested his hands on her waist as he pulled her in for a soft kiss and her hands cupped his cheeks. They stayed there for a second, relaxing in the euphoria before pulling away. Tommy walked over to the sofa, patting the spot next to him. “Just a couple more weeks, then you’re all mine.”

She rested her head on his shoulder, smiling at the ring on her left hand, “A couple more weeks.”

[puckmeupfam]

Emotion | Andre Burakovsky

Word Count: 3064 Note: I’m a sucker for soulmate AUs and this has been in my head for awhile. Excuse any spelling/grammar errors because I barely edited it. Sorry I couldn’t find a way to include Burky getting into a random car thinking it was his Uber or Backy calling him his “baby boy.” 

Growing up, no matter how confusing everything else seemed to be, you knew one thing for certain: everyone had a soulmate. You could purposefully communicate with your soulmate no matter how far away they were and any especially strong emotions were shared whether you wanted them to be or not. There were some rules that had always seemed rather nitpicky to you. You couldn’t communicate where in the world you were, or your full name, or anything too identifiable. But other than that, the whole thing always seemed amazing to you - there was someone out there who you would know better than you knew yourself, someone meant for you. 

There was one major problem in your personal circumstance. Your soulmate was much, much further away than you would like. As early as pre-school you remembered getting feelings of your soulmate’s emotions before dawn. Excitedness at breakfast. Boredom while you brushing your teeth in the morning. Sometimes you would even be woken up as early as three in the morning with exuberance and for hours you would be too jittery to get back to sleep. 

Around the time you started school ou had begun receiving messages from him. You were forced to the conclusion at just six-years-old that your soulmate was a complete idiot. The messages he was sending you were in utter gibberish. Your first real encounter with your soulmate consisted of him waking you up early with his words that made no sense. It was annoying and you had to go to school tired. In the car, there was more and you sighed. But by the time of your spelling test, you had had enough. You were trying to focus and there was a voice in your head interrupting your thoughts. No one had ever officially taught you how to send communications but you couldn’t sit back and let him bother you any longer. You closed your eyes tightly and focused as hard as you could. 

“Could you please shut up!” Yes, you had been taught not to say things like that to anyone let alone your soulmate but drastic times called for drastic measures. Luckily for you, your soulmate finally stopped talking. You did feel a wave of… something, but while it was odd and made you feel slightly shaken it was now time for recess, and all of your soulmate problems were soon forgotten as you ran for the swingset.

Later, as you grew up and learned how to articulate the millions of emotions that encapsulated your life, you would be able to classify that feeling better. Apprehension.

The next day was a Saturday and the weather was nice enough that you got to color outside. You sat criss-cross applesauce on the grass even though it made you a bit itchy. As you were deciding which shade of pink to use you felt a tumbling in your belly that you usually associated with the first day of school or singing a song at camp all by yourself. Nerves.

That’s when it came through. The stuttered, “hi.” The word didn’t sound like you had ever heard it before. Not clear like your teacher or confident like the boy who sat across from you in class. But whether or not it sounded like he was eating saltwater taffy, this was an improvement to you. So you squared your shoulders and sent back a hi of your own. Unlike the first time, the feeling that washed over you felt good. This time it felt… cheery. The feeling egged you on so you sent another message.

“My name is (Y/N).”

His response came, still not clear but slightly less timid, “‘m Andre.”

—

Over the years your Andre had become more and more fluent in English. After you’d grown up a bit you had asked him enough roundabout questions and done enough research that you had determined that what he was speaking was not gibberish but rather Swedish. While the difference between the two wasn’t that big to eight-year-old-you, it was still an improvement. 

It was when each student in your class had to do a report on a country of their choice that you had to come to terms with the logistics. When the teacher announced the project you had been quick to raise your hand and request Sweden. But when you sat down to do the research you discovered the startling fact that you were about five thousand miles away from the country. For Andre, it was around dinner time when he must have felt your thunderstorm of emotions. Disappointment. Frustration. 

“What is wrong?”

You sighed and replied sadly, “you’re far away.” His response was slow and when it came back it was just a solemn, “very far.” For a minute you just sat and stared at the wall. Before Sweden had seemed like this fun, magical place where your soulmate would live until the day you were both ready for him to appear on your doorstep. It wasn’t until this random Monday that it occurred to you that it might not be that easy. That you were separated by oceans not streets. That you may very well never be able to find him.

That’s when his words came, “It is very far. But we are soulmates and I will come to you.” He sounded more certain in those big plans than he ever was before and you genuinely felt like if anyone could make something like that happen it would be Andre. 

You tried your best to transmit all of those feelings and hopes to him and thousands of miles away, on a completely different continent you knew he would sense it. Reassurance.

When you were in your teenage years it was a definite fact that Andre was your best friend. He had always been your soulmate and you’d always had a certain affection towards him with his goofy jokes and dumb ideas. But over time he had become your confidant and he had become yours. You’d become decently proficient at Swedish- enough that he could complain to you about his parents or his totally unfair and definitely rigged penalty. It had also become your party trick at school to teach everyone the Swedish swear words that you had learned from Andre. 

You knew that he played hockey and that it dominated his time and his thoughts. You’d felt waves of excitement, disappointment, and pure adrenaline throughout his games. But it was in 2013 that, together, the two of you came to terms with the fact that he was going to be drafted. While you were so proud that he was going to be living out his dream, another part of you was full of nervous excitement because not only would he be playing professionally… he would be playing professionally in North America. 

In the weeks leading up to the draft, there seemed to be a constant flurry of nervousness coming through your connection. You did your best to take deep breaths to send back as much calm energy as you could muster. There were times when you knew he was sitting awake. Trepidation. 

“It’s going to be fine, ‘Dre,” you would tell him, “you’ll go where you’re supposed to be.” 

“But what if no one takes me,” you would hear in his nervous whisper. 

“From everything you’ve told me about yourself you’re really good so unless you’ve been lying to your dear and beloved soulmate, someone will pick you,” you were trying to come off as cheeky, trying to make him smile even if you couldn’t see it for yourself. His anxiety was starting to diminish but your own mind was filling up with something else… something that you spurred you on to say more. To make him understand.

“Andre. At the end of the day, if all else fails, just know that I will always pick you.”

Both of you were swimming in emotions. There was a crushing weight of something in your chest that almost brought tears to your eyes. The feelings were all new and unfamiliar and it made you feel too overwhelmed to try and categorize. So you chose one of the simpler ones. Bliss.

The day of the draft you had practically glued yourself to the TV. You swore you could feel Andre’s nausea. As it was all gearing up you made sure to tell him how proud of him you were no matter what happened. You sat through most of the first round chewing your lip before the twenty-third pick came up and with absolutely no preamble you heard it.

“Washington takes Andre Burakovsky.”

The camera panned to the player and his family. Your jaw dropped as you practically drowned. Disbelief. Glee. Euphoria.

You knew but asked anyway, “is that you?” You swore you saw him laugh before he said “yeah.” The voice in your head was full of happiness and tears sprung your eyes as you laughed. Anyone watching would think you were deranged but there he was. Still not with you, though you chose not to dwell on that, but he was real. And you had to say it, “you’re so hot.” Through the screen, he shook his head jovially while the wide smile seemed unable to leave his face. As the Canucks took the stage for their pick you were still stunned. Andre was chattering to you happily but you couldn’t quite focus. “It’s you,” you were interrupting his rambles and he paused. While you had already established that the Andre on the TV screen was your Andre, he knew what you meant.

“It is me… and it’s always been you.”

—

During his time on the Otters you let him focus on hockey while simultaneously teetering on the edge of Something. He was on the verge of making it and you didn’t want to complicate that, but you were both acutely aware of each other. For as long as you could remember Andre was yours and him being in the NHL didn’t change that. Over time you’d gone from kids who could barely conceptualize that the voice in their head was a real person to teenagers who were friends and now you were adults who were a bit more. You were falling for your soulmate. 

On the night of his debut with the Caps, you were bubbling over with delight. You were sitting on the floor in front of the same TV that you watched him get drafted on. The camera followed him as he did his first lap on NHL ice and like the first time your mind went blank except for Andre. You were enraptured watching him during the anthem and when the game started your eyes didn’t follow the puck, instead they stayed trained on number sixty-five. 

Suddenly there was a turnover by the Canadiens and there was Andre with a one-timer and you actually screamed as you watched your soulmate score his first goal just six minutes and forty-three seconds into his NHL debut. As he jumped the boards you did your best to focus enough to send him a clear message. He was tackled by his team so you weren’t even sure if he got it until he emerged to high five everyone on the bench. That’s when you heard him. Short and tooth-rottenly sweet. 

“For you.”

Pride.

—

Not every day was as rejoiceful as that one. His upper-body injury during their 2018 Cup run hit him hard. He had missed time due to injuries over the last two seasons and he had been hoping to prove himself. Healing during the playoffs gave him far too much time to overthink. Every time he told you about a pass that missed or a shot that was saved you did your best to talk him down and convince him to focus on healing. The trouble came when he was finally back in the lineup but seemed to psych himself out of every scoring chance. You watched as he went back to the bench after barely five minutes of ice time. Anger. Desperation. Normally you avoided communicating with him during games but you could tell he needed more than even Nicke or Tom could give him. 

“Andre, don’t beat yourself up. Just focus on the team.”

“You’d pick me?”

“I will always pick you.”

Later that night, even though Andre hadn’t scored, the game was one to remember forever. Your jaw hung open as you listened to John Walton cheer, “The demons have been exorcised! Good morning! Good afternoon! And good night Pittsburgh! We’re going to Tampa Bay! The Capitals have done it!”

Shock. Thrill.

When Washington won the Cup final against Vegas you were overpowered by Andre’s triumph and ecstasy. You couldn’t even tell where his excitement ended and yours started. While he spent the rest of the summer drunk on happiness and an unbelievable amount of alcohol you found yourself oddly jealous. The two of you had never really discussed a plan for meeting. But now you were selfishly upset that he had gone through this momentous life event without you. That he had gone so much of his life without you by his side. You told yourself it was because you didn’t want to distract him. You told yourself it was because you had to make your education a priority. But Andre was out there. 

When the season started again with the team affected by their Cup hangover, you could feel Andre’s stress. And though you were wallowing in your own cowardice, you pushed it aside to support him and let him focus on hockey. You did your best to congratulate him on every goal and reassure him about every loss. Even though the team was doing well, even clinching their division title, it was a tough time for your soulmate. He only had twenty-five points through seventy-six games. While you were so proud of him and content with the progress he was making with his sports psychologist, you could feel how heavily it weighed on him. Everyone was telling him that he was supposed to be on the first line besides Ovi. Andre was invaluable on the rush but the constant pressure seemed to do nothing but push him further and further away.

It wasn’t until July that everything changed. You were calmly stirring honey into your tea when it hit you right in the chest. Dread. It felt like the air had been knocked out of your lungs. Something was clearly very, very wrong. Worry settled in your stomach and you took a moment to steady yourself before reaching out.

“Are you okay?” 

“I got traded.”

You felt vaguely hollow. Another major life event that you weren’t there for. And this time it wasn’t jealousy that you felt but sadness. He needed you and you weren’t with him. 

“I’m terrible. The Capitals dumped me because they knew I wasn’t good enough.”

“Andre, could you please shut up,” you said, quoting the first time you ever spoke to him, “you’re fucking amazing, I know it, and maybe now you’ll finally get the chance to show everyone else.”

His grief dispelled a bit and he replied, “I miss you.” Your eyes stung as you tried to contain your emotions so he didn’t feel the need to worry about you. 

“You can’t miss me, you don’t even know me.”

“I do know you, though.”

Heartache.

You composed yourself enough to ask him where and when his voice replied Colorado it felt like the decision was made for you. 

—

As soon as the Burakovsky number ninety-five jersey appeared for sale you bought it. When the dates for the pre-season came out you sprung to buy a ticket out to Denver. The travel website asked you when you would like your return flight to be and without even thinking you clicked one-way.

Your knee shook as you sat on the plane, waiting for takeoff. The cabin was tight and full of chatter but you were too busy imagining what it would be like when you finally met your soulmate to care. Eagerness.

“Everything good with you?” Andre asked. He could feel your nervous energy, but you wanted to keep the surprise. 

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just excited about your first game as an Avalanche,” it wasn’t untrue and you hoped he wouldn’t press for more. 

“When I score it’ll be for you,” he replied. It mirrored his first-ever goal and you laughed lightly, “I have a really, really good feeling.” Giddiness.

You dressed in his jersey and spent longer than usual on your hair wanting everything to be perfect. Standing outside of Pepsi Center hours before the game you took a deep steadying breath as you thought about how your life was about to change. Your soulmate was somewhere in that building and holy fuck this was really happening. 

“I’m here,” you told Andre after you had willed yourself inside. Despite your best efforts, your voice shook on the words. 

“What,” his shocked reply was immediate, “no… where?” You looked up and communicated all of the signs you could see, just hoping that he had learned enough of the building to know where you were. Within minutes you heard the sound of someone running. The door flung open and there was your Andre. Amazement. 

For a minute the two of you just stared at each other. He was dressed in a crisp game-day suit with his usual swoopy, messy hair and he looked so tall in person. You took one step towards him and that seemed to wake him up enough to hurriedly get over to you. Right before he actually reached you, with just a few inches distance between your bodies he stopped again. Looking up at his astonished brown eyes that were so clear even in the harsh fluorescent lighting you saw everything going through his head. It felt different than when you felt his emotions through your connection because there he was right in front of you.

“Hi,” you whispered. Andre smiled and if you weren’t absolutely gone for him before you definitely were then. “Hi,” he murmured back.

Joy.

You reached out and tangled your fingers with his. They were warm and calloused from years of hockey. Andre tightened his grip on your hand and squeezed your hand as if to check if it was really there.

“It’s you.”

“It’s me… and it’s always been you.”

Love.

[brideofcthulhu10]

Eek! I requested but tumblr was being dumb, so I dunno if you got it or not! I remember it though! - I'm happy to have made your day! I relate to you on the insomnia, especially sleeping at 4 am. I hope you get some sleep! I think I just need some fluff right now, (it's 4:19 am and I'm playing with my piercings while reading and listening to music, so perhaps something involving the insomnia we share? I dunno) and who better to be fluff with than Marko? Right? The boy just needs some love 🥺❤️

Sounds perfect! I just so happen to have some perfect fluff in my handy dandy notebook!

MARKO FLUFF

Marko is my sweet baby, I adore him, I'll take any excuse to write more about him!

Marko gets a tad fidgety before bed, very similar to a toddler with that sudden burst of hyper just before the sun comes out. He'll take a good few hits of Paul's wacky tobacky to curve his energy. He knows the sun is rising, he should be tired... but he can't help it, his mind is going a million miles an hour! The best way to describe it is a loopy kind of tired, he'll usually either get giggly, or try to keep the other boys from falling asleep so he's not awake alone, or start asking the most ridiculous questions. Just hanging upside down in the cave with his hands behind his head as something will randomly pop in his head

"Psst, Paul. Paul. Hey man, you still awake?"

"Yeah dude, what's up?"

"Do you think pigeons get nightmares?"

"I dunno... maybe? Probably I guess. Like cats and stuff?"

Cue David in the most half asleep, mumbled monotone he can muster through his teeth.

"I'm going to give you two ten seconds to shut the fuck up and go to sleep"

He does secretly miss the sunset, the way it used to light up the whole sky in fire. It's one of the few things he misses about being human. Thankfully with the plethora of cinema now he can be content with watching movies. The beach waves really help him sleep, it's something he could never be bored with. The seagulls trying best in their cave, that gets old quick. When he first turned he would still try to peek at the sunset, but of course any glimmer of sunlight would char his undead skin. Cue him sulking for a few hours in the cave, arms crossed with a pouting lip.

Wrestling is pretty common amongst the 4 boys when bored out of their skulls. Marko is quick with a headlock, laughing like an idiot when Dwayne lifts him by his belt and flings him over his shoulder. Doesn't stop him from flying onto the ceiling then dive bombing Paul. Noogies for all, beware! Four teenage guys under one toppled, hole filled roof? Roughhousing will ensue, and furniture is not against the rules. Well, really there are no rules at that point. 

"Dudes, boardwalk's having a movie night we gotta go!" Waves flyer as he runs into the cave, leaves out the part he only found it because the wind slapped it up against his head on his way back from a food run. He'll beg to go, which doesn't take much convincing since it always got slower around winter time. Popcorn is a must, and he'll plop down in the comfiest spot. It's gotta be just right, middle not too close, not too far away. Definitely one to shush you if you try talking over his favorite scenes. His favorite movie is probably either Aliens or Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Who doesn't love cartoon violence? I absolutely picture him being a secret scifi nerd, like loving all the futuristic space stuff , "buying" tabloids with the most ridiculous titles (ie "I Married a Wolf Man"). He's not really a conspiracy theorist or anything, but he's definitely curious what else could be out there

When Chinese food grows old, his next favorite food is a good, classic burger. Honestly he's a bit of a foodie, he loves trying whatever weird concoction they have brewing on the boardwalk. He'll ride down to the nearest burger joint and order a chocolate shake and a double bacon cheeseburger with chili fries- hold any garlic. He'll of course get something for everybody, carrying a little scrap of paper with the various requests. You don't tell him what you want, fine it'll be a surprise. Paul of course has to steal some fries, to the point that Marko will get him an order even if he says he doesn't want any.

"My fucking fries count as wanting fries, man."

Believe it or not he does read when bored, but even better if someone reads to him. Hopeless romantic is too strong a word, but he does secretly wonder about how it'd be to have a mate. Laying on their lap, listening to them read aloud while playing with his hair. The thought always makes him smile. His favorite book is Lord of the Flies, second being The Crucible, it makes him wonder if there really are witches. He figures if vampires exist, why not other things? David is the first to dismiss said questions. It's not like knowing would make much a difference, he's content with what they already know. Fair enough, but he still keeps his little questions locked in his own mind. On lazy nights he'll lounge on a torn up couch with his feet propped up zoning out to a good read, sinking until he's practically being eating by the cushions. He'll definitely fall asleep on the couch with the book covering his face if you leave him there

Red hands is a favorite boredom game he'll challenge Paul to. Rock, Paper, Scissors was too predictable. Both are pretty evenly matched and snicker like idiots every time to other flinches. Lots of cussing whenever they lose, and you bet they count flinching as a reason to lay down a quick SMACK!

"Two for flinching!"

"It's only one you ass!"

Eventually try to challenge Dwayne to it and pester him until he agrees, only become increasingly frustrated when he repeatedly loses. When he finally gets a hit in, he definitely gets over excited and it's like being slapped by a bear. They've since stopped bugging him to play. Paul was ballsy enough to try and challenge David, and Marko had never seen him move so fast. Paul lost five times in a row and just rage quit by that point.

[bangtancentricsblog]

○ souleater ○

➣ he didn’t only eat souls he broke hearts too

❒ pairing: jung hoseok x reader

❒ genre: angst

❒ alternative universe: soul eater (anime), college

❒ rating: NC 17

❒ word count: 2.1 k

warnings/disclosures: meisters yoongi, mc and namjoon, death weapons jungkook, hoseok, jimin and taehyung, meister teacher seokjin, nothing too bad that I can think of but let me know if I missed anything!

monster mash ml • main ml • AO3

some quick vocab for my non anime fans:

kishin - is a human who has hunted too many good souls thus possessing a vast amount of dangerous destructive power

meister (i.e. mc) - essentially the 'hero', the one who fights the battles with their death weapon partners the first half of a weapons meister duo.

death weapon (i.e. hoseok) - a human who can take form of traditional weapons the second half of a weapons meister duo.

DWMA - death weapon meister academy in the soul eater anime is a 'hero' school that teaches it's students how to help keep the world in order.

“Hoseok is such a dick.” the blonde two rows back says.

“For a weapon he’s pretty full of himself. I heard he’s got a crush on his meister.” another adds as heat floods your face. Hoseok in love with you? No you couldn’t believe that, not Hoseok, you were only partners you reasoned. The whispers of that particular group grew louder still as more girls joined in adding to the already ongoing conversation. You had never cared what people thought of you and Hoseok, more so because you were a strong pair, ranked in the top three of the academy. Besides yourself there was Yoongi and Jungkook, followed by Namjoon, Jimin and Taehyung. All of whom were close friends and none that had ever given the vaguest hint that Hoseok had harbored any type of feelings for you.

Though the same couldn't be said for yourself, because how could you not? He was bright and your wavelengths had been so compatible it’d almost been like fate that you two be weapon and meister. In fact he’d been the one to approach you the first day of classes, a decision neither of you had regretted since. And yet you had gone and fallen in love with him like some normal love sick teenager and not one of the top three meisters in the DWMA. You had come to this school to create a death scythe, falling in love had not been in the plan. Yet here you were, Jungkook nudged you a furrow to his brow as he did.

“Do you think Jin will be here today?” he asks.

“Why?”

“I didn't do the homework and I’m thinking of skipping.” you weigh your answer for the briefest of moments before answering.

“I saw him earlier so now would be a great time to leave.” you say with a grin that sets jungkook off, he’s not sure whether to believe you. So he decided he’s going to skip anyway, he’s hopping out of his seat startling a yelp from Yoongi a row behind you as he sees his partner zip down the stairs of the amphitheater.

“Jungkook, thank you for volunteering!” Jin says with a laugh placing both hands on his shoulders and turning him to face the class. The room erupts into snickers, even you laugh at the betrayal etched into his pretty features.

*

You’re studying with Namjoon, Jimin and Taehyung as you’ve been giving study hall now that you have become fourth years. The earlier conversation between those girls plagues your mind, and not for the first time you question your relationship with Hoseok. He’s not a bad guy so you’re not entirely sure what it was those girls were talking about. Maybe it’s because he stuck out, but then they would talk about your whole group because truth be told you eight were an odd bunch. Namjoon and his two weapon partners Jimin and Taehyung, Yoongi the reserved yet overpowered and Jungkook the quirky usually quiet but troublesome and then there was your peculiar relationship with Jin your teacher.

Jimin has been staring at you since you’ve started clicking your pen, the pensive look you have says it all as you continue to do so even as Taehyung calls your name softly. He’s sure your thinking about the conversation between your classmates earlier which to him is dumb because eww Hoseok. But he knows that gross lovesick puppy look that flashes across your eyes is proof that you are indeed still in love with him. He glances at Namjoon who hasn't noticed that the three of you had stopped working, then to Taehyung who meets his gaze eagerly.

“___, honey please stop.” Jimin says an overly sweet tone filling your ears and pulling you from your thoughts.

“Sorry, I didn't mean to bother you.” you mumble tucking a stray lock of hair behind your ear.

“What’s bothering you?” Taehyung chimes in a tone so genuine Jimin wants to gag.

“Nothing, just y'know, the usual.” you laugh softly feeling your stomach drop.

“Is it Hoseok again?” Jimin asks.

“I wouldn’t say it is, but i wouldn't say it isn't either.”

“What about him then?” Taehyung says, taking your hand in his.

“I don't know.”

“We’re not doing that.” Jimin says brows pinched together.

“I’m sorry.” you murmur pulling your hand from Taehyung’s. Jimin can feel his anger build but not at you, never at you because you’re his soft sweet friend that he loves to death. His anger is directed at that idiot hoseok who he knows is a total ass but your poor baby heart can’t help but like. Again eww, Jungkook would be a better candidate for those feelings he thinks staring long and hard as you tuck stray curls behind your ears. God your cute, any stinky boy at your school would be lucky to have you and you want Hoseok of all people.

“Is it because of what those girls said?” Taehyung says reaching for your hands again, an annoying habit of his that you don’t seem to mind too much.

“Does Hoseok, I mean do you think h-he might like me?”

“Don’t worry about trivial things like that, Hoseok is your friend.” Namjoon adds scaring Jimin who had forgotten he was there.

“So you don't think so? Should I ask him out or something?”

“Definitely not, Hoseok is weird about things like that. Just stick to the norm if Hoseok likes you, he’ll tell you.” Namjoon says calmly flashing you a smile as he picks up.

“Okay, thanks Joonie. Where are you going?”

“I’m done studying, so I’m going home. I expect you two to actually finish your work before you do the same.”

“Don’t say it like that, if anything Taehyung is the one who should get the warning!” Jimin says with a huff. You laugh as the two boys argue amongst themselves over who is most likely to take the class over again. All thoughts of Hoseok gone for the time being.

*

It’s been weeks of Hoseok literally avoiding you at every possible turn. He skips class, eats lunch at odd times, he doesn’t come home till you’re asleep, and only talks to your friends when you’re not around. It’s annoying to say the least, mostly because he’s never acted this way before. But on the other hand he’s been the talk of the school girl giggling amongst themselves, boys sneering at the mere mention of him, even teachers have his name on their lips. You’ve reached your limit and no amount of Jimin and Taehyung talking you down can stop you. You’re hurt, mostly because Hoseok was your friend, and you can't think of a reason that he’d do something like this.

Unfortunately you don’t have the luxury to confront him as easily as you had hoped. This weird phase between you lasts another couple of weeks because try as you might Hoseok is really good at hiding. Something you ever thought you’d have to learn because he’d never hidden from you, from the boys maybe but not you. So imagine your surprise when you get the chance to hunt down another keishan, making it his 87th keishan soul only 12 away from a witch’s. Thirteen in total till he could become a death scythe, only thirteen till you’d have to say goodbye to him forever. Just because you wouldn’t be partners anymore didn’t mean you couldn’t be friends, you reasoned, shaking the thoughts from your mind as you walked along the lone path through the forest of a neighboring town.

The moon shone down on you eerily, casting shadows across the dirt, almost like little pockets of light to show you the way. The silence was unsettling, the thicker of leaves and branches that hung overhead enough of a sign that this forest should’ve been filled with wildlife. And yet not a single sound, not an owl's hoot, not a crickets chirp, not even the slight breeze made a sound. A chill raced up your spine as you stopped catching Hoseok’s attention as he moved to stand beside you.

“What’s wrong?”

“Something is off, I’m not sure but I don’t like this Hobi.” You murmured, taking his hand. To anyone else you’d seem like any normal young adult, you, a frightened little thing while your boyfriend reassured you that everything was okay, only you weren’t. You were holding Hoseok’s hand not for reassurance but to better your chances of not missing your target when they appeared, and if you were right then they’d be coming at you any second now.

As if on queue they come barreling at you from above, a manic look in their eyes. You’d called Hoseok’s name softly, calmly, while dodging the first few swipes of their long arms. Hoseok had taken the queue easily transforming to his weapon form, the rapier now sat perfectly in your palm. Hoseok was a beautiful specimen in human form but his weapon form was just as beautiful. A sleek silver blade, with an intricately detailed golden hilt, the weight rested comfortably in your palm.

You sighed as the keishan stood and watched as you stood stock still a little miffed that it caught the corner of your duster cardigan, because it was new! The boots you wore were caked in mud but that could be washed out you supposed.

“Hey are you gonna do something about that thing or what?”

“Shut up Hoseok.” You sighed again because you really didn’t wanna be here right now. But a job was a job you guessed as you planted your feet firmly on the ground narrowing your gaze as it sprinted towards you. You hated these things especially when they moved this fast, this was gonna be a mess you thought finally pushing off the ground and charging towards it.

*

Hoseok is pleased he didn’t really have to get too involved in this job because as strong as you were you could be really clumsy. But he liked how efficient you were when taking down your foe. The soul of the keishan sat there waiting for him to eat it, and he usually wouldn’t hesitate but there was something bothering him about this, mostly you. You’d been unusually quiet this hunt, almost pensive if he had to say so. So he wanted to know what it was that was bothering you, he reasoned grasping the soul while turning to look at you.

You were crouched over some wild mushroom, back facing him because you claimed it grossed you out to see him eat the souls. He agreed because not all of them tasted great, but he digressed.

“What’s wrong?” He starts just to break the ice.

“Nothing why? Are you done yet, cause I wanna go home I’m tired.” You mutter, pulling up the mushrooms trying to recall if they were edible or not.

“Yeah.” He sighs, quickly shoving the soul into his mouth, chewing once, then twice before swallowing. This one hadn’t been as gross as the last one. The texture was nice, almost as good as a medium rare steak he thought as he waits for you to stand. Except you don’t, you’ve stopped playing with the mushrooms and just sit quietly.

“Hoseok, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Do you like me?” He’s frozen, his head quirked slightly really letting your question settle in.

“Of course I like you, we’re partners.” He says, wetting his lips.

“No, I mean more than friends. Do you like, like me?”

“Why does that matter? We’re partners and I like you but, but not like that.” You say nothing, finally standing to your full height. His hands are clammy as you turn to look at him, eyes wide and glassy. He can see the tears that pool at your lash line, your lip trembles as you let out a choked half sob half laugh. He feels bad, because he didn't want to do this to you. Had never meant to break your poor loved up heart this way, because Hoseok loved you like a friend and would rather hurt himself than hurt you.

“I knew that, I mean it’s obvious why would you like me right?”

“I never said that.”

“It’s okay Hoseok I understand, you don’t need to explain.” you say and he wants to hug you close and make sure you understand that it’s really not you but him. He steps closer ready to embrace you, but you step back hands out to keep him from coming any closer.

“Let’s go home.” you mutter with a watery smile turning on your heel and making your trek back to your dorm with the broken pieces of your heart in hand.

[mychemicalficrecs]

Can you recommend some high school AU frerard or Ray/Mikey fics? :3 thank u

Hi Nonny!

I'm going to make seperate lists for this again. Can't promise the second one will be ready by tomorrow but I'll try ;)

I'm not a big reader of High School AUs, so the second half are fics that looked promising on AO3!

Frank/Gerard High School AUs

In Repair by autoschediastic, 33k, Explicit. "Shit," Frank mutters, and shoves both hands through his hair. He looks around the kitchen like he's gonna find what he should do scratched into the old linoleum, then looks back at the bot. He gnaws on his lip. Fuck it. He already knows what he's gonna do. He's just gotta do it. Getting down on his knees, he braces a hand on the edge of the crate and leans over the bot. It's dressed in a plain white tee and matching drawstring pants like an escaped mental patient. Frank rolls his neck and cracks his knuckles, shaking the ache out of them before carefully laying his palm against its cheek. He's pretty sure his voice is steady when he says, "Activate." Nothing happens. Fucking shitty packaging-- the thing's busted. But Frank keeps his hand where it is, jumping a little when he feels the surge of energy beneath it. The robot's skin goes from room temperature to lukewarm, then warm. Frank watches it open its eyes, the light behind them adjusting until they're a pale sort of brown. It looks at him and asks, "Am I dead?"

Get Naked (I Got a Plan) by autoschediastic, 11k, Explicit. Frank slides his hand all the way up to where Gerard's arm and tentacles fuse at his armpit. The difference between the feel of one beneath his palm and the other is literally the stuff his dreams are made of. His wet dreams.

A State Of Orange by gala_apples, Frank/Mikey, Frank/Gerard, 20k, Explicit. Being a halfling in a red state can sometimes cause issues for Frank Iero. He’s the weakest at Jett Clement High School, and probably the entire state (not counting the meal plans). His moods are oddly stable, as much as he tries to be mercurial. And being able to withstand the sun for up to twenty minutes only allows him more time to be forced into chores. Still, his parents are insane if they think he’s going to be happy about their decision. Frank doesn’t want to move to a Mixed state. How is he supposed to get great friends? How is he supposed to find great food? How is he supposed to have great sex? But Frank doesn’t have a choice. He’s New Jersey bound for the next year, if not longer. He’ll be surrounded by tame vampires who have been nagged out of a sex drive, and humans he’s not allowed to eat. Mixed states suck. Lucky for him, not every person in Jersey sucks.

The Truth Is I'm On My Way by samanthahirr, 6k, Teen And Up Audiences. Frank's been drawing on himself since elementary school, up under his sleeves and pant legs where his teachers and classmates won't see; he knows how to color inside the lines. He doesn't need Gerard to do it for him. (A high school AU.)

You Only Hear the Music When Your Heart Begins to Break by Solarcat, 14k, Teen And Up Audiences. Frank has high school figured out. His mom has given up arguing about the amount of time he spends in Gerard's basement, and he doesn't actually care if people think it's weird that he and Gerard hold hands in the hallways and go to the bathroom together. The only thing Frank cares about is figuring out why Gerard's suddenly avoiding him -- because what's the point of losing your virginity on Prom Night if you can't tell your best friend about it in the morning?

Smokeless Flame of Fire by tabulaxrasa, 21k, Mature. Frank blinked. "What kind of name for a genie is Gerard?"

to the midnight land by akamine_chan, 24k, Explicit. Being a teenager is hard. Being a Blooded teenager, one with a connection to the Moon and his fur-self, is even worse. He's got to contend with his own hormones, high school, and the fact that he's in love with his best friend. Luckily, Frankie's got the determination to see things through. He's got family, friends, and a community of shifters to lean on, and he's not going to give up. Frankie's not patient, but he's stubborn when he knows what he wants. And he wants Gerard.

Thing-Thing by sinsense, 43k, NC-17. When Gerard signed the admissions paperwork for the Fordhaven School for Boys, he knew he was signing up for four years of sexual frustration. No one was gay at Fordhaven. Gerard was all-too-aware that he would be a virgin until he graduated. In his senior year, though, this stupid gay freshman disproves Fordhaven's straightness, and throws Gerard's entire world off-kilter. Now, in between drawing, avoiding bullies, running an incredibly serious tabletop RP game, failing out of math, and hanging out with friends, Gerard is also busy kind of falling for this asshole who's way too young for him. It's not what he planned on, but it's what's happening. In conclusion: high school sucks.

You'll Always Feel This Way by wakingup, 14k, Not Rated. It's Frank's birthday and he's gonna A) get drunk B) hit on Gerard C) get laid. Yeah, it's definitely going to work out like that. (Spoiler alert: it might not be that easy)

Nothing Comes as Easy as You by rivers_bend, 9k, Explicit. "Um, I've heard, you know, around, that like, there are guys who can get off three times without stopping. And I was, I mean—" god he sounds like a fucking idiot. "Have you ever heard of that?"

Church of Hot Addiction by spleenjournal, 0nlymemories, Frank/Gerard, Frank/Mikey, 36k, Adult. When Gerard Way gets transferred to Our Lady of Peace in Arlington a few weeks into his Senior year, he thinks it's his chance to be cool. Too bad his idea of "cool" is no cooler than it was in 3rd grade, even if there aren't any green tights. (AU of the INO AU, more or less.)

The Marching Band AU by frankiesin, many pairings in a bunch of different works, 150k, General Audiences, Teen And Up Audiences, Mature, Explicit. A bunch of gay teens are in a band and do dumb things while in high school. There will be a lot of pairings, each part can be read without reading the others, and the series is in chronological order.

We're all Okay by rivers_bend, 28k, Explicit. A story in which Frank is not a stalker, Gerard is not a psycho, and Mikeyway is nobody’s boyfriend.

Where Did The Party Go by frenchpirate (Whiskey_n_speed), 16k, Mature. The one where Frank get's a new and nocturnal neighbor, Gerard throws a Halloween party that turns out far from what was expected, Pete wakes up on a strangers couch and Mikey really doesn't want any serenades (but that doesn't mean he isn't getting any).

Miss Congeniality by melusina, 11k, Mature. Gerard pretends to be a girl, Frank and Gerard discover email and Mikey’s good advice goes unheeded.

honey, this mirror isn't big enough for the two of us by orphan_account, 17k, Explicit. You should have raised a baby girl / I should have been a better son. (the unholy union of a high school au and a gender feel)

SKETCH by frnklyiero, 77k, Teen And Up Audiences. "You having a problem with drawing straight?" "I'm having a problem with being straight." Gerard Way happened to be the most fascinating sight in school to Frank Iero perhaps besides Jamia Nestor. Every little detail of his perfect features made Frank itch to sketch them. There are just a few problems: 1) Gerard is probably straight as a ruler, 2) Jamia isn't thrilled that her boyfriend may or may not have been secretly doodling Gerard in his notebook, 3) No matter how much Frank practices, his Gerard sketches still look like eggplants with creepy faces on them.

Save Me (From My Self Destruction) by cyanidepurified, 14k, Teen And Up Audiences. Frank and Gerard are best friends, both are unaware that they're in love with each other. When Frank discovers Gerard's secret, will he be able to save his best friend?

Speeding in a School Zone by 1001cranes, languisity, 16k, Teen And Up Audiences. High school AU where Frank and Gerard are awkward, Pete is romantically confused, Patrick owns, and Bob is a ninja. Pete, the first time we met you proposed to me. I don’t think your heterosexuality was ever all that secure.

The Chasing of Moons by Helena_Hathaway, 110k, Explicit. The biggest dilemma in all of this is that Frank slept with his future husband. Now Frank’s just got to make sure that the future with him stays intact, but it’s not so easy when present day Gerard seems to hate his guts.

Early Sunsets Over Monroeville by FedeLove96, 11k, Explicit. Frank Iero was a junior when he fell in love with Gerard Way, but their love story was just at the beginning.

A Case of Unknown Identity by Helena_Hathaway, 44k, Explicit. Frerard High School AU. Frank is a teenager with only a few friends, one of whom is a charismatic guy who is just like Frank. He might even be falling for the guy, but the only problem is that he’s just a username on a website without a face or a name. The guy goes by 'Watchman' and he’s perfect in Frank’s eyes, he doesn’t even need to meet him to know he’s amazing. Frank also deals with bullies which makes it hard for him to hold onto friends, but things start to become better after he befriends the antisocial kid Mikey, and realizes that Watchman might just go to his school. Watchman might also know a little more about Frank than he’s letting on.

But The Pages Are All Torn and Frayed by blindlyseeking (orphan_account), 55k, Mature. Basically, this is based off of the music video for “I’m Not Okay” and it also includes (but is not limited to) gratuitous mentions of a drunken fascination with a lamp, one evil lacrosse team, two breakdowns in a bathroom, grandmothers with green hair, a couple bruises, and a whole lot of revenge. Enjoy!

[carol-effing-danvers]

push me, pull you

this is part three of the series “run long, roam far, return soon” part one: “knock me the fuck out (i dare ya, babe)” (cont.) (fin.) part two: “where we grew up”

(click here if you’d prefer to read this in AO3′s format)

“You guys have been in here for over twenty minutes,” Steve complains, turning into the kitchen of the Wheeler’s house – not the same as the one they lived in while Nancy and Mike where in high school. Karen got her heart set on a fixer-upper after Mike left for college and it became a passion project for her. It’s old, charming, and deeply haunted. “What are you two doing?”

Quickly, El turns away from Billy, nervously running her hand over the end of the braid draped over her shoulder. She’s dressed a little nicer than he normally sees her today, in a sweet flowing dress patterned in butterflies that leaves her shoulders bare. There’s always been an innocence to her, despite her childhood, or maybe because of it. A wide-eyed wonder that he secretly hopes she never loses.

Steve notices that Billy looks concerned as he informs Steve “El’s gotten herself ready for a big date.”

“Billy,” she pleads, mumbling at her hands. “I can’t.”

“Just ask,” he coaxes softly. “Even if he says ‘no’, anything is better than wondering. You know that.”

“Ask who what?” Steve asks, confused. Then, feeling like he’s been hit with a frying pan: “Jesus fuck, please do not say Lucas, I will have a fucking heart attack-”

Lucas has spent six years hoping that Max would see what a monstrous snake her husband was and leave his ass and Max has, from what Billy’s told, regretted most of the eight years since they broke up for good. Steve can’t take watching life break El’s heart that way, not sweet and loyal Eleven.

“Henderson,” Billy says, clipped and brusque. “She’s talking about Henderson.”

“Why would you talk El into asking Dust on a date?” he says, even more confused now. “Eleven doesn’t even want to talk to Dustin. I mean, I don’t think you hate him, but he’s pretty sure that you do. He can be dramatic sometimes.”

El trembles as she slides down the wall into a crouch. “I can’t!” she tells Billy, her eyes filling with tears. “Billy, I can’t! I’ve already messed it up.”

Crouching beside her, Billy says, “Why d’you never talk to him, honey?”

She shrugs, staring at the floor as she wipes furiously at her cheeks. “I can’t-I can’t remember how to talk around him,” she says, swallowing against a fresh urge to weep. “I forget words.”

“Yeah, baby, I know. Love can make you super dumb.” Billy says sympathetically and Steve feels sucker-punched when he realizes that he is talking about the way teenage Billy felt about teenage Steve.

Turning on his heel, Steve enters back into the group of people laughing around a game of mock D&D in Max’s living room. “Hey,” he says, smiling at Dustinas he gestures wildly with a half-empty glass of Guinness. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Um, yeah.” Dust downs the rest of his glass and hands their shoddily made up script to Erica. “Have fun. Make me proud.”

“Wow, the bar has never been lower.”

“I love you too, you little shit.” Steve begins pulling him along toward the kitchen. He’s not sure he’ll ever get over Dustin growing up to be bigger and taller than him. Bemused, he asks, “Where are we going?”

“I think that it’s time for El to apologize to you,” Steve says firmly. It was the one thing he was sure of – his realization may never have arrived if Billy hadn’t been laying in the hospital bed and apologized in that dead, traumatized monotone.

Dustin begins to resist a little. “No, Steve, c’mon. The six of us don’t really have to be attached at the hip.”

“You think she hates you.”

“No, I said she didn’t like me,” Dust replies patiently as they approach the kitchen. “That’s not the same thing.”

Billy and El are where he left them, and if he didn’t believe it before, he believes it when he actually looks at her reaction to seeing Dustin.

Eleven’s back straightens up and her eyes widen, leaning away from their approach like someone is actively holding a gun to her head. If Billy’s reaction to his own love was rage, El’s reaction seems to be terror.

“Dude, what did you guys do to her?” Dustin is just as clueless as Steve was, but it doesn’t take a genius like him to notice that she’s been crying recently. “Eleven…”

Even the simple act of hearing her name makes El tremble. Dustin can barely seem to stand looking at her and it pains him. Steve says, “If you guys ever want to get past this, then she needs to apologize to you.”

“Why the hell do you think she needs to apologize to me? I’m the asshole, you dipshits! Have the two of you seriously been telling her that was her fucking fault?!” Crouching, Dustin mutters, still without looking quite at her, “C’mon, you don’t need to do this. Go to The Party, I’ll talk to the idiots.”

“Dustin, what you talking about?” Steve demands, “What’s your fault?”

Startled, the younger man looks at him, blinks, then quickly says, “Nothing, stop harassing her about this. She doesn’t need to apologize, we don’t talk to each other, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have my back, okay?”

Billy tries to say something, but Steve cuts him off. If he knows what Dustin sounds like when he’s tired, then he also knows what Dustin looks like when he’s done something he shouldn’t have. “Why do you look guilty? Dust, what did you do? Why did you call yourself an asshole?”

Awkwardly fluffing his curly hair, like an exceptionally sad-looking poodle, Dustin grimaces and tells El, still without looking her directly in the eye, “Sorry, I thought you already told him. I should have known you wouldn’t rat me out. I’m sorry they’ve been bugging you.”

She stares at him, wide-eyed, as he turns to Steve and bluntly says “Eleven doesn’t like me because two weeks after graduation, after she broke up with Mike, I basically shoved my tongue down her throat.” Everyone in the room gapes at him in shock and he sighs heavily, “We were all at a bonfire, I was drunk, she was really drunk, She didn’t want to talk to me anymore, and I totally respect that. You guys need to stop this weird crusade to force her to like me, because it’s my fault. I earned it.”

Dustin flails his arms in a ‘so, there’ kind of gesture, and adds, “El, I’m so sorry for this whole thing, I should’ve apologized immediately, but you look so freaked out anytime I go near you, and I didn’t wanna corner you like some kind of creep. You’ve always been Mike’s girl, and it was so fucking gross and sleazy for me to…”

“I’m not a possession.” Eleven interrupts, her voice hard and cold. “I don’t belong to Mike Wheeler. Michael Wheeler doesn’t own me.”

“Of course he doesn’t,” Dustin assures her. With a nervous laugh, he adds, “I don’t think anyone could if they tried.”

And El’s face fills with a helpless rage that reminds Billy painfully of himself. You idiot, he thinks, watching Dustin’s face, so full of friendly sympathy. So clueless for a kid so smart. She wants to belong to someone. She wants to belong to you.

Were his feelings that obvious?

Oh, totally, Robin’s voice answers in his head, explaining to Erica on the phone. There poor Billy-boy was, heart on his sleeve, checkin’ Steve-o out like he was on the effing menu. And Steve got so flustered every time Billy walked in, he never even noticed.  

“You kissed me,” she repeats angrily.

“I’m sorry,” Dustin repeats, miserably. “I took advantage of you, El, and it took me so fucking long to apologize, but I really am so sorry.”

“I don’t remember,” El seethes, fists clenched. “You kissed me, and I don’t remember.”

“You were really drunk,” Dustin says gently. “But I promise, I won’t ever do that again, okay?”

Oh, that is the opposite of the thing Eleven wants to hear. She’s so angry – she feels like something she so desperately wants has been taken from her, and now Dustin is telling her she doesn’t even have the chance to get it back again.

“Bastard,” she hisses, eyes beginning to shine and glitter with unshed tears. On the stove, a kettle begins to whistle sharply, even though the burner it’s sitting on isn’t even lit.

Dustin begins backing away, eyes wide, and El lunges, grabbing the front of his sweater with clawed fingers and kissing him, passionate with anger and six years of love that she’s just been choking herself on.

She pulls away just as abruptly, and Dustin’s lower lip begins to bleed sluggishly. “You bit me.”

He doesn’t sound mad, just quietly shocked.

“That’s all you can say to me?” she demands, as the tears begin to slide down her face. She has made herself into a fool, and for no good reason. She told Billy this was a mistake.

“I…yes?” He’s bewildered by the combination of passion and violence, and even more bewildered by the tear. Maybe the kiss made them even now? But then why the hell is she crying? Fuck, he’s been trying not to upset her, Dustin can’t stand it when Eleven cries, but somehow, he’s managed to do it anyway.

Swiping angrily at her eyes, El darts toward the back stairwell beside the sink. Dust, feeling like something important was slipping away from him, grabs her arm, though he knows that’s the last thing he should do with El when she’s upset. That’s how you end up suddenly knowing what the ceiling feels like on your back. “What do you want me to say?” he pleads, grabbing both of her elbows. “Just tell me what you want, and I promise I’ll do it.”

LOVE ME BACK!, she wants to scream.

“Nothing,” she says dully, limbs going slack like a puppet with its strings cut. The lie crushes her. “I don’t want anything.”

“Do you just…really not like me, then?” he asks in a small voice, and the question startles her into a half turn. “Because you didn’t remember my dumb drunk kiss, but you always act like I’m a Demogorgon that’s about to…eat…you…”

Her face is a brilliant crimson, arms crossed defensively over her chest. His lower lip still stings. “Oh.”

“Don’t look at me,” she says in a mumble, shoulders hunching. She covers her eyes, tears spilling out from beneath her fingers. Chin trembling, she repeats, half-pleading, “I don’t want anything.”

Dustin swallows hard, licks his lips. He’s been less nervous presenting his actual dissertation plan. “What if I want something? Would that be okay?” He watches her chewing on her lower lip before she nods. “Can you please look at me?”

Slowly, arm trembling, she lowers her hand and stares at him, her gaze darting at him and then away, frightened and hesitant. She’s barely able to raise her voice. “...okay.”

He never had the slightest conception of the power his touch could have over her, but when his hands cup her face, all of the cupboard doors suddenly swing themselves open. His thumbs wipe at the trails of tears on her cheeks and the dishes on the shelves tremble along with her. Dustin lets her relax enough to look him straight in the eye and says, deadly serious, “Do you have any idea how fucking difficult it is, finding a girl who can measure up to you?”

Her brows pinch together.

“Because I’ve tried,” he confesses. “For twelve years, in three different states, I’ve tried to find a woman who can compete with the first girl I ever fell in love with, and it’s asking way too much of one person.”

Eleven listens, stunned, as he continues “Because that girl is the kindest person I know, and the strongest, and the bravest. She’s clever, and funny, and beautiful, and wise. She’s stubborn as a mule and she pushes anyone who’s ever loved her to be the best version of themselves. She can flip cars without breaking a sweat, and she makes a chocolate cake so delicious that after my first bite, I cried literal tears of joy.”

She’s crying again, and the bags of flour and sugar on the counter have split their seams and begin to pour their contents all over the countertops and the floor. Like Eleven’s heart is bursting, and they burst with her in sympathy.

Pressing his forehead to hers, Dustin whispers “That’s all I want. Find me your equal. I’ve tried, but every time I come home, I see you and I know it’s no use. No matter who they are, they can’t be better than an Eleven.”

“…I can’t say anything that nice,” she admits, holding his hands to her skin. “I’m-I don’t have the words…”

Karen’s tulips, half dead in their vase, are suddenly blooming in full life on the center island. Billy and Steve grin at each other.

Very quietly, Eleven says, “You carried me.” At his confused look, she continues “In the school. When we were young. You carried me. I remembered that.”

“Yeah?” He doesn’t know why, because she seems to think this is very important.

“It was the first,” she tells him. “The first time I really knew what ‘safe’ felt like. It was you. It’s always been you, too.”

Dustin laughs. “We’re a pair of perfect fuck-ups, aren’t we?”

Seriously, she asks “Are we a pair?”

“We could be. If you want.”

She considers that for a moment. “Does it mean I can have a real kiss now?”

His eyes flicker down to her lips. After fully breaking, his voice has always had an almost musical quality, but it seems especially nice to her. “They both felt pretty fucking real to me.”

The back of her neck tingles. As stubborn as he accused, El insists “More?”

Dustin glances nervously at Steve and Billy.

Steve laughs and Billy rolls his eyes. “At least go upstairs, we don’t need to watch the two of you making out.”

Billy sighs as El drags Dustin up the stairs. He’s intensely familiar with dating someone who looks innocent but turns into a fucking maniac in the sack when they’re in the right mood.

Fuck, I hope the kid has a seatbelt and a fucking helmet.

[just-jordie-things]

Lady Advice - Peter Parker

word count: 1933 warnings: none? summary: Peter gets some ‘girl advice’ from Tony Stark, who doesn’t know that he’s going to use said advice on his daughter request: @neverlandparker: Hello! I just wanted to say your writing is AMAZING! Are you taking requests? If you are, could you please do a stark!reader x peter parker fic where peter is talking to tony about girl advice and tony is curious but peter doesn't give him the girl's name until later he sees his daughter and peter walking holding hands and at first he's mad but then he comes to accept it and is happy for them? Sorry if that was too specific, feel free to change it around. Thank you so much! Have a nice day!! :) a/n: me? actually doing requests? unheard of.  but I loved this one and I hope you like it!!!

Peter wasn’t great at keeping secrets, it was almost common knowledge that he couldn’t keep a damn thing hidden.

So Tony could tell when he wasn’t all that focused on tinkering with the new Spider-Man suit.

“Alright kid, I bite,” Tony spoke, making Peter turn to him with furrowed brows, because, of course, he didn’t think he was being that obvious.  “What’s going on?”

The older man sat back in a wheely chair, waiting for Peter to spill his thoughts.  But the boy just gaped and shook his head.

“Noth-nothin’ nothin’s going on Mr Stark” The way he shook his head was fast and panicked, like it scared him to even admit what he was stressing over.

“Come on kid, just spill it.  What is it, school? Spider-Man? A girl? Steve being too- it’s a girl isn’t it?” Tony caught the way Peter’s cheeks flushed when he’d mentioned it, and Peter’s eyes blew wide as he began to shake his head again, more rapid this time.

“It’s really nothing Mr Stark, no big deal, at all-”

“Kid, give it up, just spill. Who is it? Girl from school?”

Peter looked around the room for minute, weighing the pros and cons of opening up to Tony about this.  Pro, he could give him some really good advice, he was sure of that.  Con-

“Yeah, it’s a girl from school” Peter said, cutting off his own train of thought.  Tony grinned, and clapped his hands together.

“Alright kid, tell me about her! What’s the issue, too nervous to ask her out?”

“Well, uh, actually-”

“Have you talked to her before? Do you have a nice foundation that you can build off of?”

“Yeah, we do,” Peter smiled to himself.  “Actually, we’re pretty good friends, and I think that we could really… I don’t know I think we’d be really good together, but I can’t even tell if she likes me, and I’m not gonna make a move if-”

“Okay slow down, don’t open the floodgates so fast because I can’t understand half of what you’re saying,” Tony said.  “Does she go out of her way to spend time with you?”

“I mean… yeah, pretty much every time we hang out she has to take time off work or… stuff like that” Peter answered.

“Alright, and does she laugh at your jokes, even the dumb ones?” Tony asked, and Peter shrugged before nodding.

“I mean they’re all dumb-”

“You’re already in bud.  She likes you, you’re welcome” Tony stated, and even though Peter was still unsure,  a smile spread across his face at the idea of his crush returning his feelings.

“You think so?”

“Yeah, you see Parker, women try to hide these things, but it’s easy to tell with two things.  One, if she laughs at your dumb jokes, not out of pity, but because she founds your personality funny enough.  And two, if you touch her and she blushes.  On the hand, arm, shoulder, whatever, if it’s skin to skin contact, and she blushes, you’re in”

He had to admit, it wasn’t bad advice.

“So… what do I do now?” Peter asked, and Tony rolled his eyes, Lord this kid needed help.

“You ask her out, Peter, it’s not rocket science.  And I know you know rocket science” They both chuckled, but Peter was still unsure.

“I just… I don’t know how I would do it.  Big gesture? Little gesture? Text her? I don’t wanna look like an idiot, I really like this girl”

“Then do something from the heart,” Tony told him.  “So she knows that”

Peter nodded, and made a mental note of it.  Maybe Tony was right, maybe it’d really work out.

A few hours later he’d gone upstairs to the kitchen, and no surprise, (y/n) was sitting there at the kitchen island, a tray of cookies cooling off on the counter across from her.  Peter grinned when he walked in, although her back was turned to him.

“Of course you’re up here making cookies” He said, and (y/n) turned to see him, a smile on her lips as he took a cookie off the pan.

“Oh, Pete I wouldn’t eat- oh okay,” She began to warn him but he already took a large bite, only to have his eyes widen and his mouth open from the heat.  “They just came out, I’m sorry I should’ve-”

“It’s fine, it’s all good” He swallowed the burning cookie and tried not to express how much pain his mouth was in.

(y/n) had already gone to the fridge and poured him a glass of milk, laughing nervously as she handed it to him.  He thanked her before taking it and chugging it down to cool down.

“Sorry about that, I came up here to ask you out and then stole one of your cookies and now have milk spilled on my shirt”

“What?” She mumbled, his words taking him by surprise.

“Really, right here, a little splashed on-” He was holding out his shirt a bit, but (y/n) shook her head.

“No, no Peter, I mean, you were gonna ask me out?” She repeated, brows raised as she stared at him intensely, waiting for him to do something.

“Uh… yeah… I was, I was.  I was going to ask you out.  Like, on a date”

She couldn’t help the grin on her face as a small laugh came out, and she nodded.

“Alright then, do your thing” She prompted, crossing her arms over her chest and patiently waiting.  For a minute, Peter looked like a deer caught in headlights, but he composed himself, and tries to speak without stammering.

“Okay… (y/n), would you want to go out with me sometime? He asked, the nerves clear in his stature.  His hands were fiddling together and he was having a hard time looking her in the eye.

“Why not?” She smiled at the slightly perplexed look on his face, but before he could open his mouth to tell her that she didn’t have to, or perhaps to apologize, she laughed and spoke again.  “I’d like that a lot, Peter” She assured him, and he let out a breath of relief.

“You would?” He asked, and she nodded her head.

“Yeah,” She hummed, before walking over to her cookies, taking one, and waving as she left the room.  “Just let me know when you’re free” She told him before leaving.

If he wasn’t so worried about being seen, he would’ve done a little happy dance.

A few weeks later, Peter and (y/n) had made it official, and had gone out quite a few times.  It was going great, to say the least, and they were both incredibly happy with each other.

Tonight they were sat on the sofa in the common room, watching old movies and tossing popcorn into each other’s mouths.

“You know, for spider-like reflexes, you’re pretty bad at this” (y/n) giggled as the piece of popcorn she threw hit his nose and fell into his lap.  She turned to swing her legs over his lap for a better angle, but he didn’t catch the next piece either.

“Okay okay, give me the bowl, meanie,” Peter said, taking the bowl of popcorn.  “Let’s see how good you are at this, then” He said, but the first piece he threw she caught with ease, chewing and swallowing before grinning.

“I don’t know Parker…” She said teasingly, cocking an eyebrow.  He threw another kernel without warning, but she caught that one easily too.  Peter’s mouth dropped open as he gasped, taking offense at how good she was at this.

“What!” She giggled at his exclamation.  “Okay, you’re cheating.  It’s all your training with Clint and Natasha, that makes it unfair” (y/n) only continued to laugh while he whined.

“Peter, you have a superpower that should make you good at this,” She told him, reaching over to take a few pieces of popcorn to eat.  “I don’t know where you went wrong here- oh don’t pout at me” She rolled her eyes playfully as he stuck his lip out in a pout.  “You big baby” She mumbled before leaning over again to kiss his pouty lips.

“Don’t know how I scored such an awesome girlfriend” He said with a big smile.  She rolled her eyes again, patting his cheek with her hand amusingly, but she kept her palm there on his face, her eyes searching his with a smile on her lips.  She teased, but she was really falling for this dork.

“Well I don’t know how I ended up with such an awesome boyfriend” She replied softly, and just as she leaned forward again, he met her in the middle and kissed her sweetly.

“I’m sorry,” A new voice said, and instantly the two pulled apart, looking over the back of the couch to see Tony standing at the doorway of the common area.  “Did you just say boyfriend?”

(y/n’s) mouth opened but no words were formed. Peter didn’t even try to speak, his fear kept him frozen in place.  His hand had been set on (y/n’s) leg in his lap, and she could feel it tighten a bit in panic.

“When you came to me for lady advice Parker, you were talking about my daughter!?” Tony’s voice rose, and he shoved his iconic sunglasses off his face and on top of his head.  “Are you out of your mind?”

“Dad, calm down for a second-”

“Calm- and you young lady, you weren’t even going to tell me about this-this little development?” He asked angrily.  She shrugged before shaking her head.

“No?”

“And why not?”

“Because I figured you’d freak out and tell at us, like you are… right now” She was messing with him a bit, which only frightened Peter more, but somehow it seemed that it calmed Tony down, just a little bit.

“You… I swear, if you even think about trying anything Parker-”

“I would never, Mr Stark-”

“You’re a teenage boy, you will,” Tony spoke.  “Just remember I can kill you, it’ll look like an accident too-”

“Okay Dad, privacy please” (y/n) told him.  He looked at her in astonishment, mouth forming into an o shape, and his eyebrows raising as he blinked at her.  She just gave him a pointed look back before pointing to the door.

“Doors open, and Peter, get your hands off of her”

“Sorry Mr Stark” Peter quickly let go of her leg, rubbing his sweaty palm on his khakis and looking everywhere but at the two of them.

When Tony finally left, (y/n) gave him an apologetic look.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell him”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell him” He replied, making her smile a little bit.

“He’s all talk, he’s not gonna murder you,” She assured him.  “At least… I don’t think” She added in a playful tone.

“Yeah, I wasn’t believing you either” He said with a scoff, and she laughed, before wrapping her arms around his neck.

“You’re good for me, Peter, you know that?” She told him sincerely.  “And he’s just got his panties in a twist for now, but he’ll see it too, with time” Her fingers ruffled through the hair at the nape of his neck, combing softly through the curls.

“I am pretty great” He gave in, making her smile so much the corners of her eyes crinkled a bit.

“Dork,” She mused before kissing his cheek.  “But you’re not wrong”

Getting lady advice from Mr Stark was the best and worst thing Peter had ever done.

taglist:  @writings-and-stuff @rofromtheashes @tomshufflepuff @steve-avengers-rogers @vibhati123 @dark-night-sky-99 @hollandhours @drakonwild

xoxo ~ jordie

[juicemitio]

Alright I went to Louisville Galaxycon and saw Travis and Clint twice, for their worldbuilding workshop and their Q&A. Here's some interesting stuff I learned (I didn't include stuff they talked about that's pretty common knowledge or they talked about on the last ttazz)

Graduation 

Fitzroy was originally going to be a jock that was weak bc he no longer had a team, Travis told Griffin that that didn't really work for the world so they reframed it as him training to be a hero, was great academically and behaviorally, but had a problem no one had seen before and no one felt like dealing with. It specifically wasn't "barbarian fails bc he can't keep his rage in check," it was that no one was willing to deal with his magic so they shipped him off

Someone asked Travis to explain fitzroy's magic, so from the DM's mouth- he's a barbarian subtype with elemental magic which has a random effect while raging, which we haven't seen yet (path of the wild soul if you want to look it up and see what he can do) and he took a feat which gives him the ability to cast 3 cantrips of his choosing. What I thought was interesting was that Travis described Fitz's magic using the word "elemental" twice, even though that isn't specifically stated in the path of the wild soul entry

Travis knows Argo's secret and is very excited about it 

Clint has a pirate fiction book he reads every night before they record to get into the headspace to play Argo, he told us the name but I forgot it 

There is one small little concept that made the whole of graduation make sense to Travis and is what the arc will be about, and he only figured it out a few days before recording. Obviously he didn't tell us what it was

Originally it was going to start with everyone starting at age 11 and slowly killing the other kids off, but Justin didn't feel comfortable playing a game surrounded by kids dying 

The accounting scene is already one of Travis' all time favorite taz scenes

The pegasus scene informed Travis on exactly how he was going to treat the firbolg

Also Travis referred to Justin's character exclusively as "the firbolg," which means "master firbolg" is solely a thing going on with the npcs in the game which I find hilarious. They just all decided to give him a dope title bc he deserves it, meanwhile no one will call Fitzroy "sir"

To Fitzroy, social threats are an extremely real and serious thing, like the Biggest thing to him (we were talking about what characters found threatening in the workshop, for context)  

There's some big concept/idea that comes up in the next episode that travis almost let spill and had to quickly stop himself from saying it

Someone mentioned eating breakfast in their question in the workshop and Travis goofed on it for a second, then said "cereal world" suddenly, and Clint had to pick up the question bc Travis had to take a second to make a note of it in his phone 

Travis started brainstorming graduation in March and they recorded the first episode in October, and his main job in that time was working on graduation 

Before Buckminster was adapted for graduation he could not fight at all, if he got into a fight he would die, he poured everything into charisma and could talk his way out of any fight (even the big bad of the game he crit 20d his check and the big bad walked away from the fight) 

Travis is really into psychology and how if you assign a label to someone they're going to act more like it (ie you tell a kid they're amazing and smart and talented and they become more like that, you tell a kid they're annoying and dumb and a problem they become more like that), and how that was a major contributor to play into hero/villain/sidekick/henchperson dynamics, you get assigned this arbitrary title of good/evil/subservient and you become like that to fit the role, and then the inevitable pushing against that mold

Travis is fully aware of his story being compared to harry potter and he doesn't care bc it's apt (people in a school arbitrarily divided into four groups and one of them is the Bad One), also he knows people describe it as "sky high meets Harry Potter meets my hero academia" and he actually finds that really flattering bc he thinks that sounds cool and like something he'd want to watch 

On that note, Travis is a self-identified Slytherin and he's always upheld that the reason Slytherin is depicted in a bad light is bc Rowling decided she didn't like them, and he's always sympathized with the idea of a first year Slytherin working their ass off following the rules and doing their work and getting points, and Dumbledore rewards three idiots for breaking like every rule and pulls the trophy away from you. This was a big inspiration for graduation, of one group getting a bad rep and being portrayed as evil for literally no reason 

Amnesty

Clint & Travis's favorite scene they've ever done together was Ned & Aubrey's final scene together 

Aubrey and Dani do move in with each other at the end of amnesty

Balance

Travis' main emotion around taz is pride and he's most proud of the scene in stolen century with the spirits in the robots, bc they had to record it a second time bc it got way too dark and ended in a really grim way and about 20 min after they finished they all decided that they weren't happy with it, that it didn't fit the tone, he's really proud they didn't just leave it be and they took the second pass at it to make it right

I'm pretty sure he's talked about wanting to kill Magnus off at the beginning before but he mentioned that it was only at the end of petals to the metal he actually realized he wanted Magnus to live, bc Hurley had to sacrifice herself to save Magnus bc Magnus had been so reckless, that hit Travis really hard. Travis realized that Magnus' recklessness was getting people hurt and so Magnus did too, so Magnus become a bit more cautious and took up rogue training to try not to get anyone killed again 

Dust

Dust wasn't designed to be anything more than a one off and the workload was completely unsustainable, the document of notes for dust was about 100 pages and only about 10% of it got used

The reason Travis loved it so much was bc it was a mystery and he found it really fun

Commitment

Clint would love to revisit commitment, but probably not in podcast form bc he didn't find himself really being in the moment as much bc of all the different things he had to keep track of, he'd like to see a comic adaptation/continuation if possible

It was based of a comic he wrote that never got published bc the company producing it failed (he still cashed his paycheck) so he reused it bc he still liked it a lot, it was about how America was founded as a monarchy instead of a democracy and what that changed in the usa's (united sovereignty of america's) history, and how people now were fighting to establish a democracy. Also there were cowboys and spaceships and other cool stuff he put in there bc he liked it

General adventure zone

The reason why they're are able to do romantic relationships w/o being weirded out by it (they joke about it but they don't actually care) is bc it's never done in an explicit or sexual way and since it's the decision the characters would make to pursue the relationship then that's the decision they make. He reframed it as it wouldn't be weird if a family were writing a script together and there was a romance and one person wrote lines for one character and the other wrote lines for the other. He did mention that two siblings playing characters in a relationship as actors on screen wouldn't be cool though

They sometimes get comments that some of the stuff they do is "fanservice," but they feel that they owe their success to their fans and they owe some to them 

They are both aware of and proud that Justin is the best at character creation, Clint specifically really was talking about how Justin's strong suit is definitely character creation and characterization

General mcelroy stuff

They walked pretty close to me when they entered the stage room for the q&a and like… they're short, like shorter than you think

Travis referred to his unborn child as "baby dod" (I'm not 100% certain but I'm pretty sure) which I looked up and is a nickname for George, and given with their older kid being named Barbera and nicknamed BeBe and Travis talking before about how he and his wife like classic names with cool nicknames it makes sense

Travis had an earing in his right ear, I didn't get to see his left ear and I couldn't tell if it was an actual piercing or a fake, it looked really good though. Also his tinted glasses look a lot cooler irl than they do in pictures

Clint told the teenage mutant Ninja turtle story with the signatures that griffin told on mbmbam, but Clint remembered it as happening at King's Island, not Disney. This story was prompted by the question of the biggest lie he ever told his kids, and he only came clean about this a few months ago

Travis told a story about how he finished a videogame when he was younger and was so excited that he picked up a plastic knife, yelled "throwing knife!" threw it directly at Griffin who dodged it and it hit and shattered a window

[serpentupemotions-blog]

Guilt - Reader x Sweet Pea 

(The gif isn’t mine, credit to the creator!)

This is based on the incredible request from @babbbiegirl : “Could you do another sweet pea × reader fan fic. Im not good at writing or anything but basically shes Archies baby sister and she sees the fight go down. She goes to the wyrm to apologize for her brothers actions and sees sweet pea and falls for him. Idk if thats good or not but it popped in my head.”

A/N: A couple things about this one. First, stuff that is in italics is dialogue directly from the show, I didn’t write that myself, those are quotes from Riverdale. Secondly, there will be a second part to this. Unfortunately, I have no freaking idea where I want to go with this. I have about six different starting points to a part two and I’ve been fretting over it for so long, so I decided to just put out part one since it’s done already. 

Word Count: 3,897

You had been doing your very best to ignore Veronica and Archie yelling in the living room downstairs. At least someone else was there to do it this time. Maybe a different voice yelling at him about his idiotic plans of taking out the Black Hood would get it through to him that he was just a teenager with a vendetta, not a detective with police training. But the knocking on the door was enough to draw your attention from your book. Crawling off your bed you press pause on your speaker, so you could listen to what was going on downstairs. Archie wasn’t the only one who was shaken up by the Black Hood, living in a constant state of fear. But he was the one completely unravelling at the seams.

The lack of commotion both comforts you and sets off warning signals in your brain. Probability versus possibility. The counsellor you had been seeing since this Black Hood stuff started told you to always consider what’s probable versus what’s possible when something was making you anxious. Probability says it was a friend or a neighbor coming by to say hi. Possibility says it was an intruder and they attacked so fast Archie and Veronica didn’t even have an opportunity to fight back. But sometimes the possible was so pressing there was no way you could just settle on believing the probable had happened.

You push open your bedroom door, carefully moving through the hallway to the top of the stairs. When you glance around the corner you feel the tension in your body dissipate at the sight of the football team piling in through the door. They weren’t an immediate threat. But you still didn’t want them here, they had done enough in helping your brother form his crazy Red Circle vigilante group.

“What are they doing here?” you ask Veronica as she shuts the door, glancing over her shoulder to watch you walk down the stairs.

Rolling her eyes, she glances into the living room where Archie had gone with the team, “no idea.”

“Great,” you mutter, turning around and ascending the staircase again. You would hear about it later. You just didn’t want to be involved in it. At least if you weren’t involved you could plead ignorance.

Not long after you had settled back onto your bed with a novel, getting lost in a world full of other people with different problems to get your mind off of your own, you hear the sound of motorcycles. Not just a couple, the noise is loud enough to draw your mind out of a fantasy world and straight into a panicky reality. Tossing the book to the side you hurry to your window, watching a group of people parking their bikes in your driveway before heading towards your front door. Probability versus possibility might have been able to help your worries if you weren’t living in a town where the probable seemed barely possible and the possible was incredibly probable.

This time you had a reason to sneak through the hallway quietly, stopping at the top of the stairs and standing with your back pressed against the wall around the corner, listening intently.

“How stupid are you Northsiders? You really think you can come to my house, stick a gun in my face in front of my boys and there wouldn’t be any payback?” The voice is unfamiliar, and it sends waves of panic through your body like fire. Your legs feel shaky and your palms become clammy. Was he talking to Archie? Archie had been acting like an idiot lately, sure. But you couldn’t believe he had figured out how to get a gun and was using it to threaten people.

“You have crap timing, bro. Bulldogs eat Serpents for lunch,” Reggie’s voice is familiar to you and if you weren’t so terrified you may have rolled your eyes at how stupid he sounded. But his presence down there with Archie was oddly reassuring now. When had Archie gone to the Southside and threatened the Serpents with a gun? Sometimes you were sure your parents had mixed up your birthdates, that Archie had to have been the younger sibling. There was no way your older brother was dumb enough to be running around threatening gang members with firearms.

The conversation becomes a little more hushed and you try to make sense of what was happening without coming around the corner, exposing that you were there, that you were listening. It sounded like they were negotiating ground rules for a fight. Something about guns and knives, weapons. You wanted to run down there, yell at them that they were all being stupid. That everyone should just slow down and talk things through. But you couldn’t move, frozen with anxiety. You feel the nausea building in your stomach, pressure in your chest, your fingers were cold. You knew it was anxiety, knew it was a fight of flight reaction. You did neither though, you froze. Fight, flight, or freeze. Of the three, freeze had to be the most useless, to just let the threat get you without any defense.

The next thing you know you hear the door closing and it’s enough to break you from the spell of immobility that the fear had put on you.

“Veronica,” you call, turning around the corner and running down the stairs. Archie wouldn’t have let her go anywhere he thought might be dangerous, wouldn’t let her get hurt. “Is this really happening?”

She turns to you when you practically fly down the stairs, your hand clutching the railing the whole way. “How much did you hear?” she asks, pacing the length of the living room, ringing her hands anxiously.

“All of it,” you admit, leaning against the pillar of the railing at the bottom of the stairs, not trusting your shaking legs to not give out at any second. “Did Archie really…?”

“Have a gun?” Veronica finishes your question before nodding hesitantly as if she’s not sure she should be telling you.

“Oh my god,” you mutter to yourself, sinking down and sitting on the stairs, running your hands over your face.

Veronica walks over and joins you, sitting next to you on the stairs. What feels like forever passes, the two of you sitting on the stairs. There was a silent acknowledgment between you two, that you both knew what Archie was doing was stupid and dangerous. You both cared so much about him, didn’t want him to get hurt because he felt like he needed to put his life in danger to make up for your dad getting shot.

“I have to do something.” Veronica suddenly stands up and walks towards the door. You watch in shock as she pulls her jacket on.

“You can’t,” you tell her, shaking your head. What did she think she was going to do? Single-handedly take out a group of Southside Serpents?

“Yes, I can. I have to.” She opens her purse and slowly pulls a gun out, your eyes widening in fear.

“Have you all lost your minds?” You pull yourself up off the stairs, still using the railing for support. “Where did you even get that? Why do you have it?”

“It’s Archie’s,” she tells you, hand already on the front door handle.

“That doesn’t make it better, what are you going to do with that?”

“I’m not going to shoot anyone, Y/N, calm down. Just stay here, okay?”

You reluctantly nod in response, sitting back on the stairs as she takes off into the stormy night. Sitting in the house all alone you suddenly felt so small, so unable to do anything. You hated it, hated feeling so insignificant. Archie was out risking his life because of his—admittedly misguided—attempts at helping the people he cared about. You wished you could be like that, so selflessly caring for the people you loved. Only, a version that wasn’t putting many people’s lives at risk in the process.

The sound of a gun firing makes you fly from where you were sitting, no longer feeling the need to hold onto the railing. Your body was now filled with adrenaline, raging through your veins and turning you into that person who you were wishing you could be only moments before. When all you can think about it the possibility that someone you cared about might be bleeding out in the streets the fear that made you freeze moments before had now vanished.

You place your hand on the door handle of the front door just moments before it’s shoved open, making you stumble backwards. Archie steps through the door, soaking wet, hand clutching his torso in pain but otherwise seemingly fine.

“Everyone is going to be fine,” Veronica assures you, reading the terror in your face clearly.

Within seconds your concern is transformed into anger, realizing that Archie was nothing more than a little bruised. “What the fuck? I can’t fucking believe you, Archie. You’re such a fucking idiot, when did you get a gun? Why did you think that was a good fucking idea?” your words were shocking even to yourself. You were normally fairly quiet, rarely swore, people perceived you as sweet and innocent. But anyone hearing you for the first time now would never believe any of that.

Archie is stunned, staring at you blankly. “I’m going to take him upstairs, Y/N,” Veronica says protectively. She was still in concerned mode, wanting to care for him. You wanted to take a swing at him yourself, for putting himself in danger the way he had, for bringing a gun into the house, for threatening to kill someone. But you weren’t a fighter, you ran, or you froze or sometimes, when you were feeling brave, you tried to talk things out.

You nod and wait until they had disappeared up the stairs before turning to the closet in the hallway, yanking your rain jacket free from its hanger and pulling on a pair of shoes. Now was your chance, to selflessly protect your brother. You needed to use the bravery your adrenaline had afforded you to apologize for your stupid brother and hope the Serpents might leave him alone. It was a long shot, but you couldn’t sit around and do nothing anymore.

The walk to the only place you knew to find Serpents was longer than you had expected, especially with the rain pouring down on you in heavy sheets. But eventually you find yourself standing in front of the Whyte Wyrm, eyes wide in fear, legs frozen once again. You couldn’t let it do this to you, the fear. You couldn’t let it stop you again. So, you muster every ounce of courage left in your trembling body and march up to the door with a fake confidence, pushing it open and stepping inside before you could stop again.

Swallowing hard you realize the Wyrm was not as busy as you had anticipated, and it seemed almost everyone in the bar was now staring at you. Maybe you shouldn’t have pushed the door open with quite as much fake courage, but at least this meant you didn’t have to ask for attention.

“What are you doing here?” a man calls from where he was sitting a few feet away from you at the bar, a half-empty beer sitting in front of him. He was eyeing you up suspiciously before rising from his seat. There was nothing about you that fit into this bar, you screamed outsider and that was clearly putting this man on edge. “Get out,” he commands.  

“I just-,”

“I said, get out,” he barks. Every last bit of confidence you had disappears as you jump at the sound of his loud, deep voice, recoiling till your back hits the door.

“I’m sorry,” you squeak out, “I just wanted to come and say I’m sorry for what my brother did,” you add, your hand already on the door, ready to flee.

“Are you Archie Andrews’ sister?”

The voice is familiar to you this time, not a reassuring familiarity, but familiar, nonetheless. Forcing yourself to look in the direction of the sound your eyes meet those of a tall teenager, hair wet with rain and a dark bruise forming around his left eye. All you can manage to do is nod.

“He know you’re here?”

This time you shake your head, immediately wishing you hadn’t done that. Of course, you should have said yes. Like how you never tell someone you don’t know that you’re home alone, it makes you vulnerable.

“You should go,” the guy tells you and you furrow your eyebrows in confusion. He wasn’t going to get mad at you? Yell or lash out? You had prepared yourself for the worst, expecting that perhaps you would be leaving with a black eye of your own.

“I really am sorry, for what he did,” you tell him, turning towards the door and opening it a bit, the sound of rain pouring on the concrete filling your ears.

“You walked all the way here just to say that?”

Turning back around the door falls shut behind you. “I guess so,” you shrug.

“Why?” His stare feels piercing and you wished he would look away from you, the intensity making you incredibly nervous.  

“Because what my brother did was wrong,” you tell him, nervously yanking on your sleeves to cover your freezing, rain dampened hand. “Unless you did shoot my dad, which I’m pretty sure you didn’t, he shouldn’t have threatened you, especially not with a gun. He’s not handling what happened to our dad well, but that’s not an excuse. This never should have happened.” You gesture towards his eye, surrounded by a painful looking bruise, “you shouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

He eventually looks away from you, seeming to process what you had said. But the lack of attention from him only makes you realize that the rest of the bar was still watching you closely, including the man who had yelled at you to leave.

“I’m gonna go,” you mutter, turning to look back at the boy with the bruised eye. “I’m sorry, I hope that heals quickly.”

When you’re back outside you feel warmth on your cold cheeks, tears rolling down from your eyes. You knew that this was beyond messed up and it felt like everything was just catching up to you now. You didn’t know what more you could do. You had forced your apologies onto a group of people who didn’t look like they wanted it.  The walk back to your house feels surprisingly short. It seemed like you didn’t have enough time to think, to try and figure out what you were going to do from here.

“Jughead, hey,” you say into your phone, standing in front of Southside High the very next day.

“Hey, Y/N. What’s going on?” Jughead questions and you can make out the sounds of a high school hallway through the phone, chatter, laughter, slamming lockers.

“I’m at your school.” Growing up as Archie’s younger sister you had also hung out with Jughead a lot, him being around the house so much it was inevitable. Even when Archie was going through the typical ‘I’m too cool for my younger sister’ phase, Jughead was always still nice, always still willing to talk to you. It’s not like you were much younger than him or Archie, less than a full year. Just enough to be in different grades.

“What? Why?”

“I’m not totally sure,” you admit. You had looked up the Southside schedule and got on a bus to get you there for lunch. “I want to talk to you about what happened last night,” you tell him, as an excuse for being there.

“Last night? You mean when Dilton was jumped?” there’s a pause before he continues, “where are you? I’m coming to meet you.”

“Dilton was what?” Probability says that Dilton was not jumped after also partaking in a fight last night. Possibility says this town was messed up enough that maybe that actually did happen. “Out front.”

“Dilton was jumped by a bunch of Serpents, stabbed in the leg or something, I didn’t get all the details. Sounds like he’s going to be fine though.”

“That doesn’t make sense-,” you hang up the phone when you see Jughead approaching. “That doesn’t make sense, Jug.”

“I don’t think you should be here,” Jughead says worriedly.

“Well I am, so whatever,” you state. “Are you friends with any of the Serpents?”

“Acquaintances might be more fitting. Why are you here? What’s going on?”

“Can you just show me around or something?” you ask, glancing around the parking lot. You couldn’t believe you had gone this far out of your way in hopes of seeing the guy from the bar again. You had managed to convince yourself it was to check on him. As if a black eye could suddenly get so much worse overnight.  

“Thinking of transferring?” Jughead jokes before reluctantly agreeing to show you around. The tour is short, the school rather unexciting and severely lacking in a certain tall, injured boy you had wanted to see so badly. Eventually Jughead pushes a door open, letting you step outside ahead of him. “So, you know I’m in a relationship, right? This older brother’s best friend thing is cute, but it’s not going to happen,” Jughead teases.

“Shut up,” you laugh, shoving him. “I would never want to date you.”

“Way to bruise a guy’s ego. But I’m just going to believe you have a crush on me until you tell me why you’re here,” Jughead says with a chuckle.

“Like I said, to talk about last night,” you lie, walking out of the school beside him. “Wait,” you comment, placing your arm in front of Jughead to stop him from going any further. Your eyes were locked on the picnic table across the outdoor yard, the now familiar guy was leaning over it with a friend, looking down at some papers. “Do you know him?”

“Who?” Jughead asks in confusion, scanning the yard.

“Him,” you nod towards the table and Jughead follows your stare.

“Fangs or Sweet Pea? Yeah, I know them,” Jughead tells you and continues walking towards the table. “Why?”

You hesitate, “well last night-,”

“No!” Jughead suddenly grabs your arm and turns you to face him, “please don’t tell me you slept with one of them, Y/N,” his voice is hushed as he stares down at you, and thankfully so, since you two would be close enough for them to hear you talking at a regular volume, if they were paying attention.

“What?” you exclaim, “no, after the fight.”

“What fight?”

“He doesn’t know about it,” the familiar voice calls and you look over before glancing back at Jughead.

“What don’t I know? That Dilton Doiley said he was stabbed and that a bunch of you guys jumped him?” Jughead asks, walking up to the picnic table with you trailing along behind him.  

“The idiot stabbed himself with his own knife,” the shorter guy chimes in, but you can barely peel your eyes off the taller one.

“And we didn’t jump him. There was a fight. Bulldogs versus Serpents. And you see this?” his voice is very evidently angry. You watch him gesture towards his eye, which did look much worse than it had the night before. “Your boy Andrews gave it to me just before his girlfriend shot a gun into the air.”

You zone out a little when you hear him say that is was Archie who gave him the black eye. All of it on the grand scheme was caused by Archie, the whole fight. But knowing he was actually the one who gave him the black eye, that made it so much worse.

You feel his eyes on you and you have an overwhelming desire to say something, do something, anything to make him like you. You could feel the residual hate for Archie rubbing off on you and you wanted to distance yourself from Archie.

“Come on,” he mutters to the guy beside him, nudging his arm before turning and starting to walk away.

“Wait,” you barely croak out and to your surprise he seemed to hear you, glancing back over his shoulder at you.

“What?” he asks, not angrily, but not gently either.

You shake your head, not knowing what to say to him. Because, ‘I just don’t want you to go’ was not an adequate answer. “I didn’t know Archie was the one who hit you,” you comment, taking a couple steps towards him.

“Y/N,” Jughead’s voice is low from behind you, warning you not to get involved. He didn’t realize you already had done just that.  

“You don’t have to apologize for him again, he’s old enough to pick his fights, he’s old enough to apologize for them if he feels sorry.”

You glance back at Jughead who’s watching you with curiosity and concern. The boy with the black eye follows your lapse in attention, noticing Jughead’s staring as well.

“I know I don’t have to apologize for him,” you say, looking up at him nervously. Him simply staring at you was enough to make your heart race with nerves. “I know he won’t say it, he won’t say sorry to you, I don’t think he ever will. Archie’s too proud too apologize. But that doesn’t mean I can’t say sorry. I should have realized sooner how far Archie had spiraled, I should have done something to stop him, before everything got so bad.”

He shoves his hands into his pockets, glancing over at his friend and leaving you staring at him in silence. “Look, nothing that has happened is your fault. Don’t take the blame for this. Your brother may be out of control, but you went through the exact same shit as he did and you’re not running around waving guns at people. You don’t have anything to apologize for so just let this go, let your brother feel guilty about this, not you,” he leans closer to you as he talks, like he doesn’t want anyone else to hear what he’s saying. His words are rushed, reassuring in meaning, casual tone. “See you around, Northsider,” he comments, his eyes lingering a moment longer before turning around and continuing away with his friend.

After watching him leave you return to Jughead, spending a fair amount of time convincing him that everything was fine and normal. You manage to get away without admitting you had gone to the Wyrm the night before.

“Well I should go then, the bus leaves in ten minutes.” You begin to turn around before suddenly turning back to Jughead. “What, um, what was his name?”

Jughead looks at you curiously, realizing what you were asking but not knowing why exactly. “Sweet Pea.”

You simply nod in response, turning around and leaving this time. Sweet Pea. You look down at the ground as you walk, a smile plastered on your lips. This was dangerous. Even being on the Southside after what went down the night before held a certain level of physical threat. But it wasn’t that kind of danger you were worried about. It was the emotional mess you were getting yourself in that worried you.

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! If anyone reads this and wants to discuss what I should do for part two please message me, I’m in desperate need of opinions about it. 

Tags: @gruffle1 @sweetpeasbabydoll

[chaniters]

Villain’s exposition

Kruk suggested I should write about Cyrus’ time at the farm, so here it is. Some warnings: It’s LONG, and a lot of monologuing.

IT’s got four of the major trigger warnings. 

-TONS of SPOILERS under the cut !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-suicide -heavy self-depreciation -drugs -rape

Ortega is there to blunt the sword a bit but he ends up getting cut by it as well. -----------------------------------------------

Villain’s exposition

"What difference does it make now?"

"I want to know whatever happened to you!"

"And I already told you I don't want to talk about it!"

"So that's It? I find you're a villain? THat you're a Regene? That you've been beating us senseless and you’re not going to share a single reason as to why?"

"EXACTLY!" you say walking to the door. But he's too fast, standing in between.

"NO. No, you don't! You've lied to me ALL the time. Since the moment we met you. I thought I loved you, and then you died, and I've been dealing with it alone ever since. You owe me one big fucking explanation!"

"I don't owe you anything!" you say trying to push him. But he won't budge. "MOVE!"

"Fine! I'll move!  But this is the last time I take any of your shit, you hear me? We're DONE. DONE!" He yells at your face moving to the side.

You walk through the door...

"By the way, it's your own fucking house you dumb asshole"

... fuck. He got you again.

You do the 180 turn, glaring at him.

You've never felt like this... there is a rage you didn't know existed in you. Taking over the reins.

"You know what? You win. I'm going to let you know what I've been up to these past years Ricardo." you say turning.

He's got his arms crossed, matching your glare. You walk up to his face once more, slamming the door shut behind you once more.

"You want to hear my side of the story? GREAT!" you say up close "But you better brace yourself because you're NOT GOING TO LIKE IT!" And that's an understatement.

You walk back to the living room. The lamp's still on the floor where you threw it, just like the overturned chair you were sitting on. You let him fix the mess and take the sofa. He’s still glaring at you, but you just look away. Staring contest is over. 

You can see him taking a seat next to you in the corner of your eye. Good. This will take a while.

"Whenever you're ready," he says, arms still crossed.

"You want the truth" you sigh. "Well, I'm going to give you the truth. Enough for you to fucking choke in it."

"Be my fucking guest?" he says sarcastically "If you even can say anything resembling the truth"

"Let's go. Where do we start?"

"Maybe at the beginning?"

"Great. So let's go back to 2001 when I was born..."

"You're much older than 20 Cyrus... Maybe you just physically can't stop lying?"

"Shut it. I was born out of a liquid nutrient tube in 2001 at a place called The Farm in the Nevada Desert. I was made to look 14 years old from the get-go"

"Wha...?"

"I was MADE you idiot. what part do you not understand? They didn't need a baby to perform their covert operation missions. They wanted field-ready agents"

"You mean you're..."

"Yeah... I look older but I'm just 18 years old. Surprise bitch! I'm legal this year if you still want to fuck me. Want to know which day's my birthday while at it? We could have cake and all that jazz"

"I..."

"I suggest you record this because I'm not going to do this ever, EVER FUCKING again." you glare at him. You already feel the migraine. “It hurts to even speak about this. Also, they one rule they taught me was to keep my mouth shut, so speaking about this is just...” you can’t even begin to describe how it feels right now. 

He says nothing for a few seconds... then presses a few buttons on a hidden panel on his mods. Of course. Living recorder.

"Go on"

"So it's back to 2001. I was sleeping comfortably in my tube marinating around my own bodily fluids. You know, usual perverted experiment stuff. And then BAM!. They activated me. Or more like electroshocked me, whatever the case I came into the world with a bang. But I wasn't really myself at first. I had the intellect of a potato because my mind had never been used before, not while sleeping and being grown to the ideal age. So they jumpstarted my implant... and boy, that's when all the fun started"

"Implant?"

"Yes. They put implants on our brains to impart basic knowledge. How to stand upright. How to use a toilet. The basics of speech. How to eat with your mouth shut. How to eat period. You know. Baby stuff. Because that's what we were, babies in the bodies of adults. They awoke a whole batch of us, and they immediately started imprinting memories and knowledge in our little lab-rat brains."  

"So you never had a ..."

"Childhood? Nope. Sorry, that's not for me. And of course, no parents either, It was more like a chicken factory. And not all of us came out alright. Several were discarded that night. Not that I noticed, I had more important stuff to do trying not to have my head explode with all the new information. They processed us. Got us a bath. Dressed us. Gave us our first meal, a sort of milky liquid. Actually, maybe It was baby formula for all I know.. And then they got us to a group bedroom and made us all lay down, tied us to the bed to make sure we wouldn't fall off. Then they turned off the implants not to fry our brains, and left us to our own devices." "Most of us screamed or cried all night long, because, you know, we were essentially human DNA based and our instincts told us we wanted our mommies with us. But that wasn't going to happen. Not to us."

He just stares at you, unsure if you're lying or not. Of course, he would, your truth is far more outlandish than any lie you could make about it. Perhaps you should spare the details... but no. You're mad. Let him have it all, he asked for this.

You go on, detailing how several of you simply died off over the next few days, and the doctors were just discarding the bodies as if it was the usual. Because it was, there was nothing natural about being born this way and it was an extremely traumatic experience the human body was not designed for. Because some medical machine failed. Because of some doctor's neglect of fuckup. Because you were all loaded with Hero-Drugs from birth and didn't stand the dosage long-term... Or maybe no one knew why in some cases. And you were among the "Lucky" ones and survived.  

"Then after the acclimation and basic imprinting period, we were assigned handlers and sent to classes. Speech, speech and more speech. They wanted us to talk. We were extremely fast at it, you know. Because we had baby brains back then. We learned 9 languages. Some of us even got to 12 languages or more. You know I talk Spanish. Chen doesn't know I speak Cantonese. And then school. And high school. And a few degrees. The Best education there in the farm. I'd recommend it if it also included basic rights..."

"Then there were physical classes too. Martial arts, personal defense. Combat. Guns. Driving cars. Driving bikes. Driving Helicopters. Driving whatever actually... you name it. Oh, and managing our powers too of course! And medical exams, all the time. Tests and more tests... They wanted to know everything about our abilities"

"How long did all this take?"

"Some years" you smile. "Some of us died in accidents... our handlers tried to keep us alive though. There was a big bonus for them in it."

"How was... your handler?"

"Oh, she was actually decent. Some were not so lucky," you say bitterly. He swallows, but you don't elaborate.

"Eventually they figured out my powers... They decided I was a low-key psychic, and trained me for information gathering and surveillance. And that's what made me who I am. They chose to make me a Cuckoo, so instead of dying my skin blue, they left it as is, and just tattoed my code bar on human-looking skin. So that's what it all comes to. Some stupid scientist decided I was good enough to have the get the fancy paint job. If it hadn't been like that, we'd never have even met" You smile. "Or maybe you'd have thought of me as one of those blue-skinned things that give you the creeps."

"I never..."

"Oh yes, you did. Numerous times. I threw a ton of oddballs at you to find out what you thought about regenes, and each time you made it very clear how disgusting you found my whole bio-engineered fuck-up species." he goes silent for a moment pondering on your words "Relax. Most people claim we should just be exterminated as an affront to god, so I'm pretty used to it..."

"So where was I? Oh yes. TRaining. They made an agent out of me. It was a whole big montage with a song, like in those movies. And I was happy to be their agent! I mean, they gave me drugs to make me feel good when I succeeded in my missions, and they made me drugs to make me feel sad when I failed my missions, and they gave me drugs when they wanted me to sit tight and shut up in between missions, so whatever I did, I was in high cloud nine the whole time! No don't you feel sorry for me" you smile weakly.

He shifts uncomfortably. Of course, he can't handle knowing this. But this is what he wanted, so this is what he's going to get.

"So one of the handlers didn't follow protocol much, you know? He had a harem of young female regenes that absolutely adore him, and he treated them like his personal dolls... so he..."

"What?!"

You shrug "Our bodies didn't belong to us. We were state property and he just took advantage." you smile bitterly. "So many of them took advantage... doll fuckers they called them. It was a running joke... We were almost all used one way or another by then. And we all had teenage bodies... To tell you the truth, I think they just kept us on drugs to prevent our hormones from tearing us all apart"

"Where you...?"

"Nope! I guess I wasn't funny enough, or smart enough, or good looking enough compared to my brothers and sisters... you know I actually used to wonder why they didn't like me? Made me feel so ugly..."

"That's just sick Cyrus!"

"Of course it is, but no one cared about 412's inner unresolved sexual trauma. Oh, that was my name. 412." You keep the cheerful attitude as you go through your life. You try not to ponder how long can you keep it up.

"So this handler used to talk to his doll fans about life outside the farm to impress them. And you know, when I wasn't too drugged, I actually listened. And I thought it was the best thing i had heard about in my life. Which was quite a short time actually..."

"And thus, I became an agent and took part in several missions. Most of them were just finding out stuff or making sure there we no problems for the main agents, you know. Support stuff mostly. Until they started to order more complex stuff"

"Like what?"

"Oh, you know... Steal files.. infiltrate buildings...  Also, they made me interrogate prisoners.. assassinate the odd terrorist..."

"You killed people??" he asks taken aback

"Well, I hadn't been taught to say no, you know? Didn't get the best role models."

"Hmr..."

"So I was a fine agent and all... until one of our missions went hella bad... Me and three of my friends from the orange-pinstripe-club..." you say tracing one of the lines on your tattoos "...we got captured by Russian intelligence. They killed our handler -you know, I actually miss her now that I think of it- then they tied us up and began cutting us open after using some sort of scanner. They were talking about removing our trackers...and that was VERY, VERY interesting to all of us."

You lift up your shirt to show you a small scar on your side.

"So they didn't know I was a telepath. I wasn't very strong back then, but I could do stuff if you gave me enough time and they were very close to us... When they least expected it, I made them undo our knots and my two friends took their lights out. We fled, on the back of a truck carrying bananas."

"Yikes"

"What did you expect a more elegant escape? It's me we're talking about. So we were cut loose, no trackers or so the Russians said... and well... suddenly none of us was in any no rush to go back... we could explore a bit of this real world we had heard so much about, you know? Those KGB guys did us one big favor."

"What happened to the other two?"

"Each of us took a new name... wished ourselves good luck... and split. Much better chances going our separate ways."

"You never saw them again?"

You smile at him. "We expected to be caught within days. This was just us acting up, throwing a tantrum. You don't understand the degree of control they exerted over us..."

"So how did it go?"

"Terrible. Within a day and a half, I was having withdrawal from the whole drug cocktail. Ended up on the streets, alone and it was winter. It was very, very rough and I had never been alone before, everything I tried came up wrong and I couldn't ask anyone for help. I was considering handing myself over when I met this old lady who needed someone to take care of her... and I did. She let me stay at her appartment.. and I started getting better eventually. Until she passed" you say, clearing a tear from your eye. "That's the first human I really cared for"

He nods slowly, waiting for you to go on.

"So a few months later, I was still living in her apartment alone, until Mr. Molotov moved on to the lower floor, and set up shop. Every night he worked out to make his weapons and suits, it was like a factory, I couldn't hear my own thoughts or sleep... So I had to find a solution"

"Waaait... is that why you came after me? He was too noisy?"

"You wouldn't believe how bad it was. No one complained because the building was full of squatters like me, and well... he was a supervillain. And I wasn't good enough to go toe-to-toe with him myself."

"You could have moved"

"Yeah. But they were MY apartment. That woman wanted me to have it. Why should I move? I think that's the first selfish thing I did"

"You know the rest... I got you to get rid of him, but the building burned down after the fight... found a new place to stay... and then the Eldritch mess happened and I became friends with Anathema..."

"But why did you become a hero?"

"Anathema. And you." you turn away "You were my first real friends... And I liked you... wanted to be like you. Made me there could be more to life than just surviving. That I could have my own interests.  And I kept thinking ... Maybe If i do well enough, then they'll let me be a human as well!"

"But you are!!"

"No, I'm not. I never had a childhood. No parents. I never went to school or was in a sport's team. Never had a boyfriend or girlfriend. Didn't even know how to have my own opinions for the longest time.  I'm just this thing they made to be a slave that's rebelled against them."

"You are still human!" he says holding a hand to your arm. You just pull away.

"I don't need your pity" you burst out. He retracts his arm startled by your reaction. You sigh "Shit... and we didn't even get to the juicy parts..."

"We can stop" he makes a peace offering.

"No. No, we can't, because you won't stop asking until I tell you everything, and I told you, I'm never going to do this ever again. So we're doing this" You say with teary eyes.

"Let me get you a soda," he says standing up.

"'kay," you say laying over the couch sideways. You close your eyes. Everything's spinning. But it's ok. It's under control... for now at least... Just have to keep your shit together and you'll get through this.

.............half a can of soda later.........................

"Hey... I'm sorry" you start

"No, I should be sorry," he says pacing around the room.

"For what? I've been dodging these questions for ages..."

"Yes, but I have no Idea It was so..."

"Horrible? Perverted?" you chuckle. "It gets so much fucking worse"

"You don't have to continue if you don't want to, really"

"I kind of have to now..."

"I just didn't know..."

"Ricardo... you and Anathema are among the only people that treated me like a real person... like I mattered at all. Every tiny moment of normality with you guys was something I had never experienced before. So I owe you a whole lot, You fucking know that, right?"  

He turns, giving you an odd look. OF course, he didn't know that.

"Crap..."

"I never knew that the... regular stuff meant that much to you. I just thought you were... easily impressed"

"Well I was" you smile

He nods and takes his seat once more.

"Ok, here we go again" you start.

"You know what happened next... the Psycopathor mess... that kiss.. -you both smile at it-, The Phoenix massacre... a few other stuff... then Elyise... the Nanosurge..."

"And Heartbreak" he adds when you fail to do so.

"Yeah. Heartbreak"

This is not kool. You don't even know where to begin. He holds your hand... slowly. You don't pull back this time.

"You're cold," he says taking both your hands in his.

"So that bitch... he was from the farm too. But different. He just wanted to Kill everyone. Everywhere. Including himself. I think he got off killing himself while possessing other people's bodies if that makes sense? Addicted to suicide so to speak. I'd say he was a living weapon even."

"Shit"

"You saw what he did to the city... to everyone. To Anathema" You swallow hard. "I was right there... I should have done something... should have..."

"There's nothing you could have done"

"You don't know that... I just thought Steel's Mind Dampener would protect us? I couldn't use my powers all that much, so I didn't think anyone else could. But Heartbreak... went right through it..."

"None of us knew. They sent us in the dark"

"They did. The farm fucked up big time. Releasing that thing..." you sigh. "I managed to get up to it... I walked to it and shot it. Several times... and It still wouldn't die"

"Is that when..."

"It made taste the gun. It wasn't even angry. Just wanted me to taste it... Took his time. UNtil you stopped me."

"I couldn't stop you"

"No. No, you could not" you pull back your hands and cover your face. It's too much. The fucking memories.

"Want to stop?"

"I told you, we're doing this..."

"Then scooch," he says.

"What?"

"You heard me," he says. You stand up, and he lays down on the couch, then pulls you down over him too, wrapping arms around you.

"Seriously?" you smile "This can't be comfortable"

"Whatever. Now you can go on," he says tightening his grip for a moment.

"Idiot" You feel stupid like this, but at the same time, It's somehow making you feel safer. You decide to trust him, he's the one who knows the tricks of bodily contact after all.

"I can be your idiot if you need me"

"And now you're corny too" you clear some more tears again.

Silence. He waits for you to continue...

"He... It... It broke something in my mind. Made me stop caring about life. Found all of my fears and magnified them by a thousand. I never had such high self-esteem, you know that, but... he made me see myself as this repulsive thing... Like I had no right to be alive. Just a waste of oxygen, bringing problems to everyone... And offered me a release, If i just did what he said and jumped the window. I tried to resist. Tried to hold on to the good memories but... besides you, I realized I didn't have that many... That I was just a mess." Your voice breaks for a few seconds "He must have done the same to Anathema"

"You're a human just like me. And whatever he did to you, it's not true, you know this" he says giving you a soft kiss on the neck.

Your voice turns shakey as you share the darker parts of your story...

"They took me in that ambulance... I don't remember everything. Took me back, and fixed me... and then.. then started figuring out what to do with me."

"How did they do that?"

"They interrogated me... dampened the cell. Used different methods. I asked them to set me free. I told them ..." it takes a few tries to actually say it "...I told them the rangers were going to rescue me. I told them you were going to come for me. I kept saying that... so many times… I was sure my best friend Charge would come in, beat the bad guys and we’d be off, like always… I was so fucking naive!"

You can feel his reaction. Now it's his turn to cry.

"I didn't know Cyrus... If I had known... "

"OF course you didn't… But I still kept waiting for you. And you never came. Also, as I kept insisting with that, It turned out to be a huge mistake. They panicked"

"What... why?"

"Because they knew just how close Sidestep and Charge were. They thought you had to know I was a regene. That I would have told you at some point. They were thinking you would reveal what they had done to the world."

"But I didn't"

"No. And I told them that. I didn't know what would they have done if they thought you were a security risk to them... I told them I had never told you... and they didn't believe me. So they started the... enhanced... interrogation and re-education"

"Torture?"

"Yeah. THat's the word. And also they wanted to do full medical exams and testing... very painful medical tests... They thought my powers had improved a bit. They kept wanting bone marrow. I'm not sure why. They took samples so many times... "

"Shit... shit... How long?" he asks at last.

"I have no idea. Months at least. They did waterboarding, electroshock... truth serums... chemicals... sleep deprivation, food deprivation, cold... and then they brought in the psychologists. Those can torture you pretty badly as well, you know?"  

He just holds on to you, listening to your words. You wish you could stop, but you're not finished. You have to get this out because if you don't, you'll never do it.

"They sent a new handler to oversee my... procedure. Funny thing he was a Sidestep fan back when I was in costume... So he was in charge of talking to me whenever I wasn't being dragged into some testing chamber. To be the "Good Cop"

and ... he... " you rub your eyes. This is too hard.

"What did he do, Cyrus?" you can feel he probably can already tell.

"He... used me. He fucked me. I was his plaything... He boasted about owning me with the others. I tried to get him to stop at first... but then he would beat me, and call the guards on me... and then it'd be even worse... so I just... let him. I just stopped caring."

Ricardo's gone completely motionless behind you, except for the heavy breathing on his chest. Now he's angry as well.

"I'm going to kill him... I'm going to kill him, Cyrus. I'm going to find him and kill him... " he repeats a few times. You just stay still. You used to dream about killing him, even before you left the farm.

"In the end, I didn't care. Because they reminded me I wasn't human. I was back to being a tool in their box. That's what they called this... "Induced depersonalization". Reduce us back to being what we were meant to be once more. They had a lot of experience with escapees like me. I couldn't understand why was this happening to me. Why was everything so unfair.  I just knew it was my own fault because that's what they kept telling me..."

He holds you as if his arms could heal. You can feel him trembling behind you. His tears on your neck. You knew this would break him. Why are you even telling him this? These secrets only bring pain...

"One day he came in... and told me to stop asking for the Rangers to rescue me. He told me you knew all along. That it was just a delusion of mine. That you handed me over to the Directive after Heartbreak when you saw my Tattoos. He told me we weren't friends. That you had moved on. I didn't want to believe it... but they drugged me. And then they showed me a video of you living your ordinary life. Getting awards and medals for more heroics through the city without me. You know, being happy. While I was back there"

"Did... Did you believe it?" he asks unsteadily

"Yeah. I bought theyr story. My mind was a fucking mess, they could have fed me any story they wanted by then. I hated you. I hated you so much... and I hated myself mostly, for being so stupid. That very night, I tried to kill myself. Tried to force him to choke me, even trough the dampener. I didn't even realize I was doing it... until I felt I was inside his body."

"You.."

"They stopped him. They just thought he had done it by himself. You know, he had been torturing me for months. They thought he was losing sight of his goals. They replaced him soon enough. A new handler came in, and It went on, and on... But I had learned something. I learned I could still use my powers"

"And then?"

"They started trusting me with small things again. I had undergone their "Process" so I was a loyal tool once more. They had me mess up the minds of other regenes for them. Inside the farm mind you, they weren't going to let me out again...

"Until I escaped. It's a bit blurry about how I did it... I possessed several people. I was drugged half the time too. I just remember I had someone drive me off the desert, inside a supply box... the rest is ... gone" you say finally.

"I remember I squatted a room. I was just using my powers freely then. Got drunk. Did several drugs for months. I was always hiding in filthy hotel rooms or sleeping in alleys... I just... sort of gravitated towards Los Diablos I guess"

"I saw you" you continue. "I almost talk to you... but I was... very confused. I still think you knew what had happened to me and did nothing. I thought you abandoned me there. I walked up to my Tomb, and Anathema's... And I came up with a fucked up plan to cause a new mess I guess?"

"If only I had known..."

"Yeah... well at least... at least now you know."

He sighs softly.

"Well that's.. the whole story... except for one more thing I guess"

"Tell me"

"I just... You know... Sometimes I still feel like he was right? Heartbreak? When he told me that I don't deserve to live"

"Cyrus you're a good person. You have a lot to live for."

"Do I?" you ask him a bit unsure “Because sometimes I don’t know Ricardo. I mean do you even see a future for me? One in which I don’t end dissected on a laboratory?”

"You saved the city countless times. You're a hero. I'm going to be here for you, as long as it takes. And you do deserve to live like everyone else, ok? And we’ll make a future for you. I’ll make sure of it." he says behind you.

You close your eyes. Your eyes feel watery and you just are just weak and tired. He keeps speaking, saying something meant to be comforting. He holds you tighter as he notices you're shaking all over. You can feel the warmth of his breath over your ear tough the words lose all meaning.

You're overcome once more, with that familiar sensation of pointlessness. Feeling like you're dangling over a dark bottomless pit. He's holding you now, but does it make a difference?

Does it really?

"I'm here for you Cyrus. Always" he says as if he heard the question in your mind. 

.......................................

He stays the night. He takes you for a walk through the beach the next day and makes sure you make an appointment with your psychiatrist before leaving to work.

Life goes on, not caring you can't shake the feeling that you were hit by a bus. There's a big relief, but also anxiety. You're not sure what's going to happen now that he knows.

And eventually nothing bad happens but you can’t shake the feeling that it will. You just know it will. Still, he just grows much closer than he ever was to you.

Having someone who actually knows you accept you as you are is a whole new thing. It’s scary, and it's not going to be easy getting used to it.

The numb sensation stays with you for a few more weeks.   ____________________________ My fanfics: https://chaniters.tumblr.com/post/181692759294/my-fanfiction-for-fallen-hero DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fan fiction using characters and the setting of the Fallen Hero: Rebirth and upcoming Fallen Hero: Retribution games written by Malin Riden. I do not claim ownership of any characters from the Fallen Hero wold. These stories are a work of my imagination, and I do not ascribe them to the official story canon. These works are intended for entertainment outside the official storyline owned by the author. I am not profiting financially from the creation of these stories, and thank the author for her wonderful game/s, without which these works would not exist.