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bratbarzal · 14 days ago

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The Secret of Us (LH43) 3/3

aka the sequel to let it happen

Pairing: Luke Hughes x Fem!Reader

>PART ONE< / >PART TWO<

the pain of, the reign of, the flame of us

WC: 31k (I need therapy atp)

General Warnings: angst!!! did we expect any less for the final instalment of the epic highs and lows of this criminal situationship? (god bless the anon who sent me that line I think of it daily) cursing probably, inaccurate timeline of events regarding hockey and all but it's fiction just play along lmao, mentions of jack's injury, meddling friends, miscommunication final boss, hypocrisy final boss, jealousy and avoidance final boss and an ending 🙂

A/N: guys I wish I could put into words just how much joy writing this fic has given me, I have so much love and gratitude for the way you all responded to it. writing fic can sometimes be such a lonely and stressful experience in a weird way, especially something as long as this, and you guys turned it into this giant team effort and I felt like you were pushing me along the whole way!! this is such a corny a/n but I really love you all so much - thank you for being so kind to me, thank you for discussing every single element of this fic with me, thank you for loving (or hating lmao) the characters, and making them real enough in my head that they just flew onto the page. thank you to everyone who recommended this fic to anybody else, or who loved it so much that they went through everything else I've written and liked that too!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! I hope this final part is loved as much as the rest, and I can't wait to talk to you guys about it!! my ask is always open for lih/tsou discourse!! these two will live with me for the rest of time lmao but I do now feel the need to run and hide because I'm terrified to post this actually so hope you like it lol

You can’t remember the last time you ever felt so lost in your life.

You’ve always been someone that finds your way - lands on your feet, figures things out - because you’ve had no other choice, before. Forced to be independent before you ever needed to be, you can usually work your way out of sticky situations with minimal scarring.

But Luke Hughes has somehow managed to crush you beyond recognition.

You thought things were finally going well, you were taking this monumental leap into something more, kissing him like you’ve been denying yourself for too long, and then all of a sudden you’re struggling to get your words out, letting him assume the worst of you and running with it, because what other option do you have now, knowing that he doesn’t want you back?

You’re a little caught of guard at the initial rejection, but the words that follow make you speechless, entirely, gaping open-mouthed like some dumb-struck idiot as he tells you that he’s moving on, and you only want him because you don’t want to lose him.

And you’re so consumed by this wave of renunciation that you can’t even fight him on it.

And then he’s gone.

The silence that follows Luke’s departure from the porch almost makes your ears pop - pressure building and building to the point of eruption inside your head, and you’re so caught up in your mind that you’re barely functioning otherwise.

It’s below freezing out, a cold wind whipping at your cheeks, and every breath you take feels rough and textured like you’re rubbing coarse sandpaper at your chest cavity - you really shouldn’t be out here, exposed to such harsh conditions, but what does that matter when you would be hurting anyway, no matter where you are.

You don’t even know how you got here.

One second you were running through the house with the best news of your life and only one person in mind to share it with, and the next you were out in the cold - key moments from the night playing in your head like some horror movie sequence.

Ellie’s warning of, he’s gonna crush you when he starts seeing someone and you get left behind.

The way she’s been keeping it to herself that he already is seeing someone, or speaking to her, at least, whatever that entails - because, the two of you speak. You speak every day.

Seeing Victoria with her hands on Luke, sinking her claws into him while he gave her one of those cute, toothy grins - the kind that made his eyes gleam and crinkle in the corners.

And then, I don’t want to be with anybody but you tonight, I promise.

How can anybody possibly hear that and not want to kiss him?

Sure, it was some weird, territorial spur of jealousy that consumed you and forced you to take that final leap, but it’s not like you haven’t thought about doing it before. Sat on your bed watching Wall-E on your birthday, the plush he had bought you tucked into the crook of your elbow and your hand brushing repeatedly against his in the bowl of popcorn. Or when he’d snuck out of your house the morning after, only just managing to evade being caught by your sorority regime and holding you against him with a kiss to the side of your head as the two of you said your goodbyes on the porch.

Does it really matter what the final catalyst was if the finished result was what you’ve both been wanting this entire time? Plus, it’s not like he hasn’t encouraged those feelings before - Mr Tell me that the thought of me even talking to another girl makes your skin crawl.

But that’s the problem. You’re probably too used to acting impulsively with Luke - doing first, thinking later - and he’s starting to realise it, too, growing tired of your stretched out resistance and finally throwing in the towel.

We both have to find a way to move on.

Maybe it’s not what you’ve both wanted the entire time.

Maybe Luke hasn’t wanted it for a while - has wanted to move on and find someone new. See someone else - speak to her, or whatever.

God, you feel pathetic.

A feeling that worsens when Ethan finds you, teary eyed and shaking - too consumed by your own humiliation to feel just how cold it is outside until he shrugs a jacket over you, holds it closed in front of your torso and peers down at you with nothing but concern in his chocolate eyes.

His mouth moves, but all you hear is muffled noise alongside the sound of your racing heartbeat, and you try to read his lips, but it’s hard to see through the blur of tears. His hands start rubbing at your arms, and the friction brings everything back into focus, a little. The cold night air, the cologne rubbed into the collar of the jacket, the voice of the caring boy in front of you.

“You’re shaking like a leaf,” he mutters, “Let’s get you home.”

You nod wordlessly as you accept his help, a guiding arm around you that ushers you off the porch, helps you down the steps and pushes you gently to the edge of the yard until you’re walking side by side down the street. You sniffle, not even realising that you’re crying until you try to remedy the dryness in the corner of your lips and taste the salty tears that have fallen there, and you end up crying the whole walk, trying not to be obvious about it - arms wrapped around yourself and head dipped to watch your feet as they move along the sidewalk.

Ethan doesn’t try to talk it out of you, for once, which you’re grateful for, and he walks you all the way up to the front door, turning away without any prompt so you can fetch the key you hid under one of the plants before you left

“Thanks,” you mutter, once you’ve retrieved it, standing back up and watching as he spins back around. “For walking me back, sorry that I got upset and weird.”

“It’s alright,” he shrugs, hands buried in the pockets of his jeans to maintain some semblance of blood flow, the below freezing temperatures making it almost painful to breathe. “Lot of tears for a guy you’re not into, though.”

“Yeah,” you sigh, because what’s the use in denying it anymore. It hasn’t done you any favours this far. You fumble your key into the lock and shoulder the door open, leading him into the house with a silent invitation, thankful that he follows without any hesitation and seals the heat back in behind him. “Can I ask you something?”

“As long as it’s quick, I got a beer pong championship I need to retain, I’m on for a three-peat, kids in this town will be talking about it for years.”

“Well I wouldn’t want to hold you back from greatness,” you scoff, offering a lighthearted chuckle as you shrug off the jacket he had slung over your shoulders before. Luke’s jacket, you’re pretty sure, that in any other circumstances, you’d keep, but the smell of him is probably going to suffocate you if you inhale it any longer. You hold it out to Ethan, quirking a brow when he frowns down at the garment. “You’re off the hook, it was stupid anyway.”

“No, come on,” he prompts, “I was kidding.”

He blinks slowly at you, dark eyes warm and encouraging as he steps a little further into the foyer, leaning against one of the pillars by the door. He’s settled in, and he’s giving the kind of energy that it’s hard not to reciprocate - open and receptive to whatever it is that you want to talk about.

“Do you guys talk about, like, girls and stuff?” You ask, brows creasing almost immediately at how dumb it sounds to even bring it up. God, you’re starting to hate what he’s turning you into. “I mean, like, if he was into somebody, would he tell you?”

His eyes go darker, somehow, amusement flashing through them as his lips quirk, and he can try all he wants, but it’s so obvious he’s biting back a smile. “He doesn’t have the track record for it since he moved away, no, but Luke’s a pretty private guy. Even when he was here, he was never really big on talking about that kind of stuff.”

“Oh.” You sigh, because great, you’ve just made an idiot out of yourself for no good reason - to Ethan, of all people, who’s been trying to eke information out of you all year.

“Awful poker face, though,” he adds, “Like anybody could see from a mile off that he is into somebody.”

That doesn’t make you feel any better. If he isn’t talking to the boys about any girl he potentially is interested in, why would he tell you? Maybe you had been wrong, when Ellie brought up him speaking to somebody back in Jersey, maybe he wouldn’t have told you. Maybe he’s a pretty private guy, like Ethan said, and that privacy extends to you in the same way it does to the guys - where Luke keeps his cards close to his chest, just like he had back in summer, when the two of you were a thing.

“Ellie told me that he was,” you lament, leaning on the pillar closest to Ethan’s, crossing your arms over your chest, “I didn’t believe her, I thought he’d tell me, but now I don’t know.”

“Is that what you’re upset about?” Ethan’s eyes narrow, “That he didn’t tell you?”

“I guess maybe he did,” You sigh, replaying his words over and over in your head. We both have to find a way to move on. I don’t know how long I’m supposed to wait for you to figure it out. It hadn’t been explicit, but the sentiment was there - like he was laying the foundations of something he’d be more ready to build onto at a later date.

Maybe this thing with Yasmin is early days, still. Maybe you put him so far off the idea of letting anyone else in on what could be a good thing - through fear of it all coming crumbling down, just like his relationship with you had done - that he won’t tell anybody until he knows for sure.

“I feel like an idiot.”

The idea of him letting go of his feelings just as you started to come to terms with your own hurts, but you can hardly be mad at him. He had been right - you’d told him in no uncertain terms that you weren’t willing to take things further again, and even though that was almost 6 months ago, now, it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve withheld your feelings, since. You don’t even remember what you were trying to protect yourself from, because it can’t have been as bad as this.

“Maybe you should talk to him before he leaves again, tomorrow,” Ethan suggests, “I can try talk some sense into him if you want?”

“You’re good,” you decline, figuring you’ve done enough invading his privacy for the time being. You need to let him figure things out on his own, you think, instead of acting out of impulse and making everything explode in your face. “I’ll call him in the morning, thanks though.”

Ethan straightens up as he starts to get ready to leave, but just before you can say goodbye, he turns at the door. “He really cares about you, you know.” He tells you, “In case he didn’t tell you that, either. He can be an idiot, but he cares.”

“I know,” you breathe, smiling softly to try and reassure him - because if you do know one thing about Luke in this whole fiasco, it’s that he cares. Whether it’s too much, or not enough, you’re not sure, but it’s there, nonetheless.

You thank him again, because you really are grateful that he walked you back, and that he was so willing to lend an ear to your stupid questions without making you feel entirely stupid for them, and grins back, boyish and sweet, before he leaves.

The house is unsettlingly quiet - the rest of the girls either in bed or at the party - and you just want to go to bed, yourself to shut out the unbearable silence, but your room doesn’t provide the kind of escape you thought it might.

One of Luke’s sweatshirts is slung over the back of your desk chair, and even without it being there, you think you’d see him in every corner. He’s in your reflection in the bathroom, brushing his teeth by your side and nudging you out the way to spit the residue into the sink. He’s poking and prodding at your skincare on your vanity, reading the bottles and asking what they do. He’s sat at your desk, looking at your little calendar and telling you that you really need to take a break for yourself when he realises just how many spaces are filled in. And he’s in your bed, his scent in the sheets you’re yet to wash since he slept in here on your birthday - and even that isn’t giving you reprieve like it had the night before.

You can’t get to sleep at all.

And it’s probably morbid curiosity that will be the end of you, because as you lay in your bed, tossing and turning and trying to drown out your thoughts so that you can finally drift off - there’s some stupid, sabotaging part of you that thinks it’s a good idea to open up instagram. And then it seems reasonable to check Luke’s profile, knowing that he hardly ever posts, but heading straight to the accounts that he’s following.

You type her name before you can convince yourself how bad the idea is, watching as the results narrow down to just one with only a few letters, and you click straight through to the profile that remains.

It’s unassuming, initially. Her name is Yasmin Keating. Her bio suggests she’s a student, her location says North Carolina, and most of her feed is dedicated to her time spent decked in blue and white playing basketball at UNC. And she’s gorgeous. She’s athletic, and would probably understand all of his weird sports references more than you do, would probably understand his lifestyle, and the stress he’s under. She’s sociable, probably wouldn’t hide him away and make him feel like some dirty secret.

And one of her latest posts is tagged in New York, from a couple weeks ago. A carousel of photos, each as pretty as the last, and you hold your breath as you swipe through them for any sort of sighting of the curly brown hair you know too well.

The sighting doesn’t come, but as you scroll down a little, you find something just as bad.

Liked by lhughes_06.

If you were hesitant to accept Ellie’s word for it, confused by Luke’s own reluctance to let you in, and Ethan’s shifty explanation of his best friend’s privacy, then this is the confirmation you need to finally accept the truth.

Luke is moving on.

And maybe you need to let him.

When Luke wakes up the morning after, his head is pounding. There’s a relentless thud between his ears, and he swears his brain feels loose, like it’s rattling around his skull at even the slightest shake of his head.

He doesn’t think it’s a hangover - he’d had a few drinks, but not that many, and had ended up coming home a lot earlier than anticipated, his party spirit dampening as soon as you left, anyway. He’d fallen asleep with his phone in hand, staring at your message thread and trying to figure out if texting you would be a good idea, so maybe it’s staring at a screen for almost an hour that gave him such a headache, he thinks.

But all his usual remedies aren’t working.

He drinks a full bottle of water straight from the refrigerator, chugging the contents down until the plastic is squeezed to within an inch of its life in his hand, and manages to swallow down some Tylenol with it. He showers, letting the water spray directly onto his neck and shoulders to try and relieve the tension there, and spends a little longer than usual to try and wash the pain away. He even makes himself a decent breakfast to try line his stomach, but by the time 10am rolls around, he still feels like crap.

He is supposed to fly back to Jersey in the late afternoon, and as the hours tick on, there’s a panic that stirs within him - a feeling like he’s forgotten something, already, even though he doesn’t have to leave for a while. His bags were packed yesterday - he had figured he’d get ahead so that he isn’t stressing - and he doesn’t have to worry about returning a rental car, because he’s been driving his dad’s while they’re out of town and is supposed to leave it at the airport, anyway. He’s checked all the windows around the house, and the settings on the heater - there are no dishes in the sink, no clothes left in the washer or dryer, and it’s about as tidy as it was when he arrived last week.

And it’s only when he checks his phone for what is probably the 20th time that he even realises he keeps doing it - realises what he thinks he’s missing.

You.

He probably would have been with you, if things didn’t blow up last night.

He’d have been at your house, or you’d have been at his, and you’d have kept him busy all the way up until the point he needs to leave. He’d have slept by your side, like he’s pathetically getting so used to doing, now, and would have woken up to your pretty eyes slowly blinking back at him. And he figures that’s why he felt off as soon as he opened his own, with the sun peering into his bedroom through the thin curtains, and the slight chill that wracked through his body without yours to keep him warm.

You haven’t even text him - the last message on his phone being from Ethan, last night, after he’d dropped you off, one Luke had seen as he sat in the back of his Uber home, all desire to be around anybody swiftly drained as soon as you were gone.

His hands start to shake the longer he thinks about it, and the more he remembers - pushing you away and watching you leave - and he can’t even rationalise it all, anymore.

Summer might feel like a lifetime ago, but if that’s the case, then it’s a lifetime of Luke still wanting you. It’s months of trying to fan the flames of your affections, trying to keep the spark alive, despite all the ways you had told him it was long blown out.

He knows. He’s always known that there was something left.

But he’s tired of being the only one who believes in it, anymore.

Jack doesn’t support him, his parents are none the wiser, his teammates barely have time for their own relationship dramas, let alone his, and the only person who had ever encouraged him to pursue more with you lives on the other side of the continent.

But right now, the last remedy that comes to mind is a call with his oldest brother - one last ditch attempt to clear his mind before he flies back to Jersey and throws himself back into hockey for the last few months.

He’s found himself calling Quinn much more while he’s been home alone for the past 10 days, with Jack busy with the tournament, and his parents busy watching them - he thinks there’s a common ground there, with Quinn, where he’s sort of detached to the point of novelty when it comes to Luke’s life.

He offers a fresh perspective, gives unbiased advice - helps him make pancakes over FaceTime for the girl in his bed who isn’t his girlfriend, and doesn’t make snarky comments or push him to talk about it.

And so he’s pressing on his contact before he can think better of it - waiting until Quinn’s face pops up on his screen, seemingly propped up while he makes himself a breakfast smoothie all the way over in Vancouver.

“Lukey, what’s up?”

“Hey man, you got a minute?”

“Sure, let me just back away from the blender before I try to multitask and blitz my kitchen.”

He watches with a grateful smile as Quinn makes his way through his apartment, walking into the living room himself and throwing himself down onto the seat in the bay window.

“Surprised you found the time to call me, thought you’d be spending your morning at a certain sorority or something.” His older brother laughs as he lowers himself down onto the couch in his apartment, the view behind him that of a misty Vancouver, the sun barely seeping through the clouds.

It makes him feel a little closer, to see it - peering through the glass at the front of their parent’s house, himself, and looking up at familiar grey skies.

“That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.” Luke frowns, hating the way his gut twists guiltily at the vague memory of last night - of your elation turning into evasion, and the way he still thinks he can taste you if he swipes his tongue across his bottom lip. “I don’t think she wants to see me right now.”

“What did you do?”

“Why do you assume I’m the problem?”

“Are you not?”

“I don’t even know.” He groans, looking back on the evening with a lot more clarity than his beer-goggles had allowed him, before. “I sort of blew up at her last night about something, I had a couple drinks, and I think I was pretty harsh. She left the party early and we’d usually text by now, but I think she’s probably avoiding me.”

“You’re gonna have to quit being so vague if you want me to help you out, man.”

The look Quinn is giving is like the virtual version of a brotherly swat, a blank but bold stare at the screen that’s his own silent way of telling his little brother to just spit it out, already.

And Luke takes little convincing - despite all the months he’s held back from doing so. This is technically a boiling point, and keeping this whole thing between the two of you such a secret has done absolutely nothing to serve him, so far. He could really use the help, he thinks.

“We’re supposed to be friends.” Luke sighs, “Back in summer, we had a thing, like we were sort of, almost together,” he cringes as he says it, unable to think of a better way to lay it out. Sure, he’d spoken to Quinn a little about you, back then - had admitted to having a crush, at least, but he hadn’t shared much past that. And it’s different with his older brother, he thinks, on the other side of the continent, oblivious somewhat to Luke’s day to day, and just how much it probably involved you by now. He needs to explain it for it all to make any kind of sense. “Like we were hanging out together all the time, and sleeping together, and it sounds like a mess but it was perfect when it was just us.”

“Are you waiting for me to be shocked or something?” Quinn queries after a moment’s pause, quirking a brow with narrowed eyes pointed straight at the camera. “Because we all knew you were sort of, almost together, you couldn’t have been any more obvious about it if you tried. Was it supposed to be a secret?”

“I don’t even know anymore,” Luke huffs out an elongated breath, the whole thing feeling like a waste of time, right about now. Keeping you hidden, abiding by your rules of saying nothing about whatever was going on between the two of you. What was the point in kissing you behind closed doors and rushing you back to your bedroom in the mornings if everybody knew, anyway? What could the two of you be, now, if you hadn’t held yourselves back? “I really fell for her, though. Hard. Like the worst hit I’ve ever taken in my life. And I fucked it all up by being stupid, and I said some pretty awful stuff about her that she overheard,” he winces, hating even looking back on that stupid conversation with Cole, not wanting to slip and indulge too much to his oldest brother about it through fear of valid judgement. “And it took her a while to let me back in, and she said that we’d only ever be friends, and obviously I want to be more, obviously I’m still in love with her, but she made it pretty clear we’d never cross that line again, and I can’t spend the rest of my life standing at the wrong end of a bridge I can’t cross, do you know what I mean?”

“No,” Quinn deadpans, “I’ve never heard anything so dumb in my life.”

“She kissed me, last night, Quinn,”

“Sounds horrific.”

“And I pushed her away,”

“Sounds idiotic.”

“You don’t get it,” Luke’s jaw tenses, glaring at his brother through the screen. “She only kissed me ‘cause she didn’t want me to kiss somebody else. She saw me with this girl she hates and I found her after, she was pretty upset.”

“Lukey boy,” Quinn chuckles, giving an amused, crooked smile on the other end of the call, “You’re so full of shit, the hot girl that you like kissed you, it’s hardly the end of the world.”

“Don’t be a dick, Q,” Luke scowls, trying to push past the flare of agitation that lights within him at his brother referring to you as the hot girl. Even he can see how hypocritical it is, but it’s instinct - he can’t exactly fight it.

“No, come on,” his older brother starts, straightening up where he’s seemingly reclining on the couch, a surefire sign that he’s about to give some sort of lecture. “You spend your whole summer obsessed with her, and God-knows how long before that, and you fuck up so monumentally that the girl doesn’t talk to you for like 6 weeks, and then by some miracle she lets you back in and you fuck it up again.”

“Jack said I should move on,” Luke huffs in response, some attempt at trying to rationalise how stupid he had been to push her away last night.

“Jack’s an idiot.”

“He said that she’s probably moving on, and he made out that it was all sort of one-sided, and you know how much him and Ellie talk, I figured it had to have come from somewhere-,”

“It came from him being an idiot,” He repeats, “And it must be contagious, because why would you not just talk to her instead of letting it all blow up like that?”

“I tried,” Luke whines, “We went to a game together last week, I asked her about dating and stuff,”

“And?”

Luke frowns as he tries to remember the crux of the conversation - you’d joked that you wouldn’t go to a hockey game on a date, that you hadn’t been going to games on dates, and it never really expanded further than that, his attempt too specific to the situation and not the wider issue.

“I guess she said she wasn’t, but I probably wasn’t asking the right question.” He admits, blinking slowly as he tries to come up with any other reason why he had acted so irrationally the night before.

“So let me get this straight,” Quinn’s voice brings him back a little, shoulders stiffening in preparation of the verbal lashing he’s no-doubt about to receive. “You two spend a whole week together, like every waking second in her company when she’s not in class or with her friends, she spends valentines and her birthday with you, she tells you that she isn’t dating anybody else, she gets so upset about seeing you with somebody else that you find her almost in tears, and you somehow ignore all of the evidence that she is, in fact, into you, only to push her away because Jack implied she might have moved on?”

Well that sounds fucking stupid, Luke thinks.

“But she-,”

“She what?” Quinn asks, raising an expectant brow. “She snuck you into her house all week, despite the fact we both know how strict those girls can be about having guys over? She spent every day doing things that were important to you, trying to learn about the things you like, hanging around your friends, coming to you when she was upset?”

“You don’t get it,” Luke huffs, regretting all the information he’d been sharing with his brother throughout the last week right about now - not realising the little parts would be pieced together and used against him like this. “She told me she only wanted to be friends, she told me multiple times, and she only ever wants more when she is upset, like I’m just there to comfort her, or something.”

It had been the same back in summer, initially - you only ever sought him out when you were agitated or emotional over something you wouldn’t talk to him about. You followed him up to his bathroom after seeing him with Victoria, you brought him upstairs to his room in the middle of a party after an argument with Jack - and he had been fine with it, at the time - encouraged it, even, trying to flare up your jealousy to prompt you to give in to him, taking whatever scraps of your affections you were willing to give - but this feels different.

He can’t keep carrying on like this.

“Don’t you want to comfort her?”

“Of course I fucking want to comfort her,” he scoffs, because it isn’t about that. He loves you, he’ll always want to comfort you if you’re hurting or upset, but he can’t keep himself on stand by to be available to your methods of avoiding your problems only for you to keep pushing him away, otherwise. “But, I don’t know, there has to be a line, you know?” He sighs, “I have to put a line there before I fall any further and she pulls the rug from under me when she does start dating. Like she just saw me speaking to some girl she doesn’t like, and then she said she doesn’t want to see me with anyone else, but she still wants to be friends! I told her that we both need to move on, I don’t even know why, I don’t even think I want her to.”

“You need to talk to her, man,” Quinn frowns, “You need to tell her that.”

“That’s what last night was-,”

“No, last night was impulse,” he sighs back, “It was you after a few drinks, and both of your emotions at a high, and you blew up at her out of nowhere. Sure, she probably shouldn’t have kissed you, but you’ve got to give her a chance for her to think about what she wants instead of just telling her she needs to move on because she didn’t give you the right answer in the moment, Luke.”

You weren’t there, Luke wants to say, you don’t understand.

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe an outsider’s perspective - someone like Quinn, who is fair and reasonable, who doesn’t let his loyalty to or protectiveness over his little brother cloud his judgement, who always understood the depths of his relationship with you before Luke could ever admit it to anybody - sees more than Luke could, himself.

“Go over, before you head to the airport,” Quinn says, his tone suggestive, but classically authoritative, “You don’t wanna leave it like that, trust me.”

“Yeah,” Luke breathes, “Thanks, man, sorry for dumping all of this on you.”

“It’s fine,” Quinn smiles back, crooked and familiar, bringing the kind of comfort Luke finds himself craving, sometimes, when his other brother is being a dick. “I’d rather you come to me than Jack, he just ends up making a bigger mess that I have to clean.”

Luke gives some attempt at a laugh that doesn’t quite seem right with how heavy everything else feels, and lets his brother carry on with his own morning routine with no more whining from him.

He gets himself ready, loads his bag into the trunk, and makes sure everything is locked up and secure before setting off across town on a route he now knows like the back of his hand. He sits in the car, parked up across the street from your house, for 10 minutes - trying to think of how he can possibly clear everything up before he leaves - when he sees something that makes his breath catch.

You come out of the house, bundled in what looks like a bunch of layers and his sweatshirt on top, your backpack slung over your shoulder, and you’re smiling as you turn back to speak to someone following you out of the house. Even from as far away as Luke is, the sight of your smile calms something within him, but that calm quickly turns frigid as he takes notice of who is coming through the door behind you.

Ethan is wearing the same clothes as last night, his hair is shaggy and unkempt, and Luke recognises the kind of wry grin he’s flashing your way from back when the two of them lived together when he was in college. It’s the kind of smile that follows a phrase Luke can still hear in the back of his mind, as if it were last uttered to him yesterday, and not almost 2 years ago. I don’t kiss and tell.

And that swirl of panic comes back tenfold - fingers clenching against the wheel as he starts the car back up and drives off as quick as he can, not wanting to watch anymore of whatever scene that was between the two of you unfold.

If he hadn’t regretted last night before, he sure does, now - because he understands you more than ever - 8 familiar words ringing around his skull like a siren sound.

I don’t want to watch you move on, you had told him, pupils blown and lips swollen as you spoke, the surface of them still slick and pink from his bruising kiss. And being the idiot he is, he had encouraged you to do just that - had thought it would be what’s best for you both, what’s healthy and right.

But he doesn’t want to watch you move on, either.

And now it seems like he has no choice.

Trying to distract yourself from the fact that Luke is actively avoiding you is harder than you ever thought it would be.

You lived so much of your life before him that it really shouldn’t take a lot of effort to try and reignite some form of your old routine, but as the days pass by - and the conversation lulls, the texts dwindle into short responses, and the FaceTimes cease entirely - you think you might have forgotten what your world was ever like without him.

You throw yourself back into your school work for a couple weeks, but it doesn’t really work the same as it used to, and you find yourself thinking about your future too much - about your grades, about NYU, about all the plans that involved him and now don’t seem as certain as they once did. You get back into the groove with your sorority responsibilities, spend a lot more time with your sisters, helping to plan the activities and events like you did a lot more last year, but you find yourself checking Luke’s game schedule more often than you should, trying to make sure nothing clashes even though he probably doesn’t care by now and he no doubt has Yasmin to support him instead of you.

And then you try to do things for yourself. You get back into your routine at the gym, you pick up swimming again and even volunteer on your one day off a week to teach a few lessons at the rec centre, thankful for those few hours you spend with a bunch of kids who just want to splash around and dive for the random items you throw into the deep end for them.

You manage to find some semblance of balance, but he’s always in the back of your mind, and before you know it, weeks have passed - whatever spark you had left with Luke fading as they do - and the last text you have from him is from 5 days ago. You’d tried to lure him into a movie night, asking about his availability, and he’d said he would let you know. He never did. And that is what led you to tonight - going out to the movies instead of sitting on your bed and thinking Luke should be beside you, and you figured it was the safer option, going somewhere that you never went with him.

You even ran into Ethan while you were out - and where the initial sight of him might have previously made you a little nauseous just from the connection to Luke, the last few weeks have alleviated that, somewhat.

After Ethan had dropped you home that night of the party, you’d left your bedroom to find him hiding behind a corner at the top of the stairs while the rest of your sisters lingered around at the bottom. He had been wearing the same clothes from the night before, and was close enough to your friend Megan’s room to understand that he had spent the night there. And you know Megan well enough to know she probably kicked him out and left him to his own devices, too exhausted to try and sneak him out of the house, herself.

So you did the honours - you figure you’d gotten good at it with the amount of times you had snuck Luke in and out the week prior - and helped him navigate his way out without getting caught, leaving the house with him on your way to class. He’d offered to drive you as repayment, and you’d gladly accepted, and the two of you ended up speaking more often - finding comfort in the way you didn’t really have to hide from him, anymore. He’d seen a vulnerable part of you that you no longer had to cover up, and it had been nice to have someone else that you didn’t really have to pretend around.

The local IMAX was playing The Martian, one of your favourites - so what if it was something you watched with Luke all the way back in summer? And you’d just planned on watching the movie and going home, but bumping into Ethan had stretched out your plans a little.

You’d both been hungry after the movie, despite the copious amounts of popcorn you ate and the giant soda you drank, and he suggested grabbing burgers. And then the burger place he drove out to was right beside an arcade, and he’d wandered in there first, really - you just followed - but you don’t regret it.

You ended up having a lot of fun - the weightless kind, where Luke sort of slipped from the back of your mind. And it wasn’t even just Luke that slipped - it was the stress of school, of your finals coming up, of finding out your dad was going to be on vacation again when you were due to graduate, and you’d gotten into a fight with your mom about NYU and turning down the job you had lined up back in Chicago. It was all the things that you’d been bottling up now that you didn’t really have Luke to talk to, and forgetting them for even just one night was nice.

Ethan had dropped you home after the arcade, and left you at the side of the street in front of the sorority house with the stuffed animal you had won just for Ellie, because she’d seen the little duck in the back of the picture you sent to her of your whereabouts.

And you’re just about to knock on her door when it swings open - Ellie’s eyes red and her cheeks puffy with fresh tears, alarm and panic in her features that immediately elicited the same in your own.

“What’s wrong?” You ask, heart seeming to thud to a dramatic stop as you watch her lips tremble and she ushers you into her bedroom.

“It’s Jack,” Ellie sniffles, “He got hurt, it’s pretty bad.”

“Oh, El,” you reach out to take her into your embrace, rubbing at her back as sobs wrack straight through her spine. “What happened?”

“He took a hit and went straight into the boards, I can’t bring myself to watch the replay, they’re saying on twitter that he passed out, and I can’t get a hold of anybody. Could you watch it for me? Could you tell me if he looks alright?” You hadn’t even realised there was a game on tonight - too consumed in your plans and your determination to have a night off from thinking about Luke to even check.

“Oh, I don’t-,” You break away, trying to think of how best to get out of it. You’re really not the best with injuries, and if it’s bad enough for her to be this upset, you have a feeling it’s going to make you feel sick. “Maybe I should ask Ethan to come over and watch it for you, I-,”

“Please?” She pleads, eyes round and welling with tears, a surefire way to get you to agree. “I just need someone to be honest with me.”

“Yeah,” You resign, holding out your hand for Ellie to give you her phone, seeing the video is already loaded once she’s unlocked it. “Yeah, alright.”

Ellie turns away with her hands covering her ears as you press play, and you watch as Jack skates toward the net, readying himself for the puck to be played towards him, not expecting the way he’s being approached from behind all of a sudden, and can’t bring himself to a stop before he’s colliding straight into the boards, the opposition player bumping straight into the back of him.

You try not to wince at the impact, at the way Jack’s body goes limp and he has to be turned over by the other player. You try to focus on the positives before you assemble your thoughts - he gets up, he can skate on his own, he isn’t bleeding anywhere - but it’s hard when you know him.

It’s hard when, as much as you and Jack don’t really get along, you’re similar in more ways than you’d like to admit, and you know that seeing him express even the slightest bit of pain must mean he’s in absolute agony.

She said that she wants honesty, but you know Ellie - she doesn’t want to worry, you don’t want her to worry, not until she knows all the facts.

“He’s up, he’s skating off,” you tell her, glancing up and offering what you hope is a comforting smile, a slight twist of your lips that does little, probably, to hide your own concern. “I don’t think it’s the same shoulder he hurt last year.” You remember how much she stressed about that at the time - about his surgery, and the aftermath, and you’d been living with him back at the beginning of summer, enough to know which side he previously had in a sling, or which side he avoided doing much activity with in the earlier weeks. “It doesn’t look great, but at least he can take himself off the ice, right?”

Even from clips of the incident, you can tell how much it worries the people around him - players on the ice, fans in the stands, and you wonder for a second about Luke, about how it must feel to watch from the bench and have to carry on without knowing what’s happening.

And now you’re worried about him.

You hand Ellie’s phone back over, watching as she chews nervously at the inside of her cheek, spinning the device in her hand and fidgeting erratically.

“I’ll wait with you until we hear something,” you promise, placing a hand gently on her lap to try and stop her knee from bouncing. You hand the stuffed animal you’re still holding out to her, and she takes it with a limp smile that comes nowhere close to reaching her eyes. “I’ll get you a drink, do you want something warm to calm you down? I can make you a sleepy tea, if you want?”

Ellie nods, eyes glistening as she maintains that weak effort of a smile, and you smile back, an attempt at reassurance before you hand her phone back and head downstairs to the kitchen. You’re thankful it’s empty when you finally walk in, able to wait around while the water boils and try to calm yourself down.

You know it’s selfish as soon as you start to think it - your best friend in pieces upstairs about her boyfriend being hurt - but all that flashes through your mind is Luke. That could have been Luke. How would you feel if Luke was hurt? How do you feel that he’s potentially, probably hurting now, even thought it isn’t him? How are you supposed to help him through this from so far away, with everything going on, afraid to even text him first, anymore? Would he even want you to?

Your cellphone burns a hole in your back pocket, the urge to reach out is practically making your fingers itch, and you cast a glance to the clock that flashes on the little screen on the range. He’s probably back in his hotel, by now. Or he’s with Jack and the medical team.

You could call him. Just so you’ve at least tried. Just so he knows you’re there if he needs you, and that the last few weeks of minimal contact mean nothing if there’s any potential of something happening to him.

Sitting around and dwelling on the fact that he hasn’t tried to call you is pathetic, you think. It’s self-centred and petty, and you need to be better than that. He deserves better than that.

So, as Ellie’s tea is brewing, you reach into your pocket, swipe at your phone with muscle memory and bring it up to your ear, waiting for the beep of his voicemail so that you can leave some sort of message, even if he probably won’t listen.

“Hey,” his voice cuts at your spiralling thoughts, low and tired, more like a sigh than anything else, and your body straightens against the counter as you rush to respond.

“Hi,” you say, a weird flutter in your chest at the mere sound of his voice after so long. “I didn’t think you’d pick up.”

He doesn’t reply other than a little huff, and you’re sort of thankful for it - if he doesn’t reply, he can’t say something you don’t want to hear, like how he doesn’t want to hear from you.

“I just got back to the house and Ellie told me about Jack, I wanted to check on you.”

“Pretty late to be just getting back,” he murmurs, and you hear a little shuffling, like he’s moving around, before you hear the soft clasp of a door in the background. “You overstay your welcome at the library again?”

“No,” you breathe out a little laugh, leaning against the counter as you watch steam rise from the mug of tea sat on top. “I finally followed your advice, actually,” you tell him in the hopes that hearing that might perk him up just a little. “Ditched the books for a day, did a whole lot of not studying.”

For as long as you’ve been stressing about school, Luke has been trying to guide you towards some sort of balance - giving yourself a little grace to actually have a breather - and maybe your main stressor hadn’t been studying, this time, but he doesn’t need to hear that, right now.

“Oh, really?” You can hear his smile through the phone, small but sure, and the sound of it eases a little of the anxiety swelling in the pits of your stomach. “You get up to anything cool?”

“Yeah, actually,” you stir at Ellie’s tea absentmindedly, hoping you’re offering some sort of distraction. “They were playing The Martian at the IMAX, I got all up close and personal with Matt Damon and his shitty potatoes.”

“Sounds like you had fun,” he snorts, and you’d like to think you can hear the soft semblance of a smile, even if his heart isn’t entirely in it.

“It was great, we went to go get burgers and play pinball after, which is why I’m so late home.” You sigh, only just starting to feel the exhaustion from it, hoping this sleepy tea does its wonders on Ellie so that you can both go to bed pretty quick. “I feel like I haven’t done anything fun like that all year.”

“Who’d you go with?”

“Just Ethan,” you scoop the teabag from the water and dispose of it, frowning as you realised you’ve somehow made this whole call about yourself, guilt seeping into your subconscious. “But enough about me, how’s everything with you? How’s Jack? Ellie said she hasn’t been able to reach him, which is why I thought you wouldn’t pick up.”

“Uh, they think they’re gonna send him back to Jersey,” Luke laments, “He’s gonna miss the game in Dallas, he’s convinced his season is over, so he’s pretty down right now. I think he’s about to give El a call and tell her.”

“What about you?” You bite your lip, hoping Ellie is occupied upstairs and you can stay on with Luke a little longer. This feels less charged than the last few times you’ve spoken - easier, despite the heavy topic - and you just want him to know that this sort of stuff is still on the cards. At least, you hope it is. “Can’t have been easy, watching him go down like that.”

“I’m fine.” The way he says it is short, obviously a lie, and you try to tell yourself not to take it personally. Luke never usually lies to you. Sometimes he doesn’t really talk about stuff, but he’s never hidden his feelings from you. But this isn’t the kind of thing the two of you have really had to navigate, before. Maybe it’s even the kind of thing he doesn’t want to navigate with you - maybe it’s something friends don’t navigate together.

“You know you can talk to me if you’re not,” you assure him, in the hopes that he won’t shut you out. “I told Ellie I’d stay with her for a bit, but I can always call you after, even if you don’t want to talk, it’s been a while, I-,”

“I’m fine,” he repeats, even shorter this time, his tone clipped, and the silence that follows feels like it goes on forever.

“Okay,” You croak after a moment, hesitance creeping up on you, again, all joviality from the previous conversation drained.

“I gotta go,”

“Luke, I-,” you don��t even know what you want to say, but there’s this voice inside that’s screaming to say something. To put up some sort of fight, to make sure he knows you want to be there for him. But this sudden reluctance is all consuming. It’s debilitating, even, and it overpowers that meek, unsure voice in a booming, unavoidable roar, that tells you he doesn’t want your help. He wants to move on, and you’re not letting him. And so all you can bring yourself to say, again, is “Okay,” like a whispered resignation.

He mutters out some form of goodbye before he hangs, up, and you find yourself staring at the billowing steam rising from the mug of sleepy tea until a hand on your shoulder shakes you from your reverie.

“Was starting to think you’d knocked yourself out with this stuff,” Ellie huffs out a weak laugh as she steps up to the counter beside you, taking the mug by the handle and bringing it to her lips. You watch as she takes a sip, as the line of frustration between her brows smooths itself out, and her shoulders slump a little, relaxed and soothed. “Just spoke to Jack, he’s flying out to Jersey in the morning for further evaluation, said he’ll update me after.”

“Oh,” you shake yourself out of your own head, feigning ignorance as you cross your arms over your chest. You can’t tell her about your call with Luke, partly because you don’t know what Jack has told her to try and ease her worries, and partly because talking about Luke with Ellie fills you with unyielding dread every time, and it’s the last thing you need. “Does he have any idea what’s wrong?”

“Won’t know until tomorrow,” she sighs, “He thinks he’s gonna need surgery, though.”

“Shit,” you mutter.

“I think if that’s the case, I might ditch spring break and go spend it with him. Help him out while I can, you know?”

You nod, pressing your lips together. The two of you were booked on a trip to Cabo, your last spring break together as seniors, and a few of your sisters were going, too, so you won’t be on your own if she does have to ditch you. You can’t hold any resentment about it.

You’d do the same, if it happened to Luke, you think. Not that he probably would want you to, anymore.

Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe he’s right about boundaries, and blurred lines. Maybe you’re taking things too far.

“Of course,” you try to offer comfort, a reassuring smile that doesn’t feel as authentic as you’d like and a gentle pat to her shoulder, hoping you don’t reek of condescension.

Ellie chews at the corner of her bottom lip, like she wants to say something else, but nods, instead, diverting her gaze as she sips at her tea. “I’m here for you too, you know,” she says, after a few seconds, eyes peering up carefully to meet yours. “If you need me.”

“I’m not the one with the broken boyfriend,” you chuckle softly, thankful for the smile she gives back, a little of the tension eased from your shoulders.

The fact that you’re the one with the breaking bond goes unspoken, but you can tell Ellie is thinking it - it’s why she offered, in the first place, more perceptive of your situation with Luke than you probably give her credit for.

But you don’t want her pity - you don’t deserve it. You made your own bed with Luke, and all you can really do now is lie in it. He doesn’t want you anymore - not in the same capacity he used to, not like summer, whenever he cast a heated glance your way, and you’d feel it all the way through to your bones. You don’t think you’ll ever go back to that, it’s too late to get that back. You need to give him the space he so clearly desires, and maybe the two of you can find your way back to something resembling the friendship you had before you monumentally fucked it all up.

And maybe Ellie can give you the perfect distraction to do just that - focusing on fixing your relationship with her instead of investing all your efforts on a guy that no longer wants you back.

Luke knows it’s a selfish thing to say, but Jack’s injury has been hard on him.

For the second year in a row, his brother has had to end his season early, at the most crucial, cut-throat point as the team battle to make it to the playoffs, and Luke has had to shoulder a lot of the aftermath on his own.

There’s media, who are constantly asking him about it, waiting to trip him up, make him share something he’s not supposed to, or say something he doesn’t want to, and every time there’s a camera or a microphone shoved into his face, he dreads the social media discourse that follows.

There’s commentators and people in the league themselves, providing a constant reminder that the Devils are at some sort of disadvantage, and have to work twice as hard to make up for everyone that’s slowly succumbing to the brutality of the sport as they finally near the peak.

There’s coming home to an empty apartment while Jack’s away getting his surgery, and trying not to worry or overthink what he’s going through.

And then there’s Jack himself, when he returns - a grouchy, bitter mess of a person who can’t see the wood for the trees, can’t focus on anything other than where he’s stuck, watching his team persist in his absence and wishing more than anything in the world he can take someone’s place - that the misfortunes that keep finding him lose track, just once - even though he would never want anyone else to hurt like that.

And trying to juggle accommodating his brother's situation with his own is rough. Back to back losses following Jack’s departure, increased pressure on Luke as he takes on more responsibility within the team, and if you throw all of that in with the loss of his own coping mechanisms, Luke has found himself in a rut.

He isn’t sleeping the best, and he’s distanced from everyone - too in his head about seeing you and Ethan together to reach out to either one of you where he usually would - and he’s losing himself as the weeks blur by, and it isn’t until Jack mentions that Ellie is around that he lets himself think about you - about everything that happened in his bye-week, about how he’s been a pretty shitty friend to you, since.

“It’s spring break,” Jack says as Luke comes home to find him up and dressed for what seems like the first time since he got back from his surgery - struggling to shrug into a jacket while he only really has use of one arm. “She came out to spend it with me, gonna go over to her rental and watch a movie, you’re coming too.”

“Dude, I’m exhausted,” Luke huffs, throwing his keys into the bowl by the door as he watches his brother glare back at him, “I just want to go to bed, you don’t need me around when you’re hanging out with your girlfriend, I really don’t want to be seeing all that.”

“Lucky for you, there’s nothing to see,” Jack scowls back, “Ellie brought hell-spawn over with her, that’s why she isn’t staying here. Need you to work your magic as you seem to be the only one of us she can tolerate and I’m not in the mood for her bullshit.”

You’re in Jersey?

“I thought they were going to Cabo?” Luke frowns, too in his head about the fact that you’re in Jersey without telling him that he doesn’t call Jack out on how stupid he sounds, stopping in place as he watches his brother shrug in response.

“Ellie wanted to come out and see me, I guess she followed.”

And before Luke knows it, he’s driving the two of them over to the condo the two of you have rented for the week, and Ellie is answering the door with a giant grin on her face, cooing at Jack as she ushers them inside.

He’s looking around like a madman until she tells him you’re in the kitchen, and that you’re gonna need some help getting the snacks and drinks together - and despite it only being a few feet away, Luke feels breathless as he barges through the door, like he can’t calm down until he sees you in person.

Your back is to him when he enters, but the commotion he makes is enough to draw your attention, and your eyes are wide when they land on him, and not in the way that he usually likes.

Something about this whole situation makes him uneasy - the weeks of minimal contact, the lack of closure, the way you’re looking at him like you don’t know what to say.

You’ve never not known what to say, not when it comes to him.

“Hi,” he offers, because it’s the easiest thing for you to respond to, and the rest of the problems between the two of you are his own fault, so he may as well be the one to start to fix them.

“Hey,” you give back, the microwave pinging behind you, and you turn back to retrieve the bags from in there before you transfer them to the side. “I didn’t realise you were coming.”

“I didn’t realise you’d be in town,” he frowns, “Last you told me you guys were going to Mexico, your big senior spring break trip.”

That had been last month, and he has been a little distant since he left Michigan, but if you’re around, he would want to know about it. He can’t fathom why you’d be in the same city and not even tell him that you’re around.

He also can’t fathom why you’d give up something you’ve been looking forward to all year.

“Yeah, well, Ellie wanted to be here for Jack,” you shrug, busying yourself by emptying the popcorn out of the bag and into a few bigger bowls. He can’t remember ever having a conversation where you didn’t give him your full attention, and he feels a little nervous as he watches you focus on anything but him. “And I want to be here for Ellie, she shouldn’t have to miss out on her last spring break.”

“You couldn’t have told me?”

“Thought you’d be busy,” you reply, still not looking his way, “You’ve been busy most times I’ve tried to reach out the past few weeks.”

He wants to tell you that’s different, but it isn’t. He’s been avoiding you, and it’s obvious to the both of you that he’s been using the distance as the perfect excuse. He technically has been busy, but it’s no more than he was before that night in Michigan, and he managed to make time for you then. Sure, he’s been on the road, and there’s been a string of some pretty shitty games, but he’d had the same in January, too, and the two of you still kept up texting, at least.

“I mean, I’m playing like every other day this week,” he pouts, “But I’d still want to see you.”

He watches as your brows knit together, your movements coming to a halt as you stand in front of the counter, still not sparing him a glance. You pull your bottom lip between your teeth as you contemplate a response, and he wants to give you the time to think of one - doesn’t want to rush you again into saying something you don’t entirely mean.

He might have ignored Quinn’s instruction to clear up this entire mess before he left Michigan, but the rest of that conversation has still been weighing on his mind - about how he had been impulsive, and unfair, and he hadn’t considered all the ways you showed him things, without necessarily telling him.

“There is this art installation I wanted to visit,” you tell him, hesitantly meeting his eye, “We could go together, if you’re free at all?”

“As friends?” He asks, because he can’t help himself, watching as your eyebrows raise a little, like you’ve just been hit by an unexpected impact.

“Yeah,” you nod, although you don’t look entirely sure. “As friends.”

And he hates how he can’t even withhold the disappointed sigh he gives, your own shoulders slumping as you notice the reaction, and you retreat a little into your previous distance, eyes darting down until he can no longer see your irises.

“Maybe we should do something else,” he mutters, trying to push down the immediate need to backtrack when you don’t even respond, “You could come to a game, or something? An installation sounds cool and all, but that’s the kind of thing you do on a date, and we’re supposed to be moving on, right?”

“Are you?” You ask, peering up at him, again, “Moving on?”

He nods before he even realises he’s doing it, but it’s too late to stop before you notice, and all he can think about is the day he came back to Jersey, when he’d seen you leave your house with Ethan. All he can think about is losing you, and for some stupid reason, he thinks this is the only way to stop that. “I’m trying,” he shrugs, like he isn’t actively saying the most insanely stupid lie he’s ever told, “It’s what we said we’d do.” And he only says that to make himself feel better, he thinks - that you were only ever following the rules that he laid out for you, because it helps him to be delusional like that.

“Oh, okay,” you breathe, stepping back with a pained attempt at a smile and dodging his gaze, again, even quieter in your acceptance of his rejection, and it sort of makes him panic. “Yeah, it was stupid, this was stupid, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” he frowns, the way he so quickly needs to correct you when you try to shrug him off coming by instinct, now. And he doesn’t like where this is going, now - misses the way you used to just roll your eyes and call him an idiot when he’d act like this, choosing the wrong path at every turn. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard you call yourself stupid, and he has to try to reassure you. “It’s not stupid, it’s cool, it sounds like it would be fun, it’s just-,”

“Not together,” you bite back, “I get it.”

He sighs out your name, regretful and apologetic, “That’s not-,”

“Are you guys almost done in here?” Ellie huffs as she shoulders her way into the kitchen, features curled into a soft scowl as she stomps toward the counter, and Luke bites down on his tongue, fighting the sudden urge to tell her to go away. Her and his brother both have the single worst timing he’s ever known in his life. “Jack won’t shut up about how hungry he is."

“Yeah, sorry,” you mutter, “We’re ready.”

And Luke steps back to let the two of you carry some drinks and snacks through to the living room, holding the door open for the two of you and trying to meet your eye as you slip past, his chest aching all over when you don’t. He grabs whatever’s left and follows the two of you out, watching as you sink down into one of the smaller loveseats,

Jack and Ellie are taking up most of the couch, so he walks straight over to the seat opposite yours, an entire coffee table separating the two of you where you’d usually sit together, and he tries not to think about the last time you watched a movie - your birthday, when you’d been squished up against his side in your bed, the Wall-E plush he got you smushed between you as you watched the film, itself.

The last time things had felt easy - the last time any of it had felt right.

And then he’d gone and ruined it.

Jack tees up Good Will Hunting, huffing and puffing when the remote isn’t working like he wants it to but refusing to accept anyone’s help on the matter, and Luke busies himself with his phone while it starts, trying to sort some tickets for his next game so he doesn’t let you down on that front, either, and every time he peers over at you, he thinks the tension grows, somehow, your jaw set and your eyes focusing only on the screen.

He dips in and out of the movie, waiting for an update so that he can hopefully set about bridging the gap between the two of you tonight, and he only tunes back in at random intervals.

He’s seen it before, it’s one of his favourites, and he probably could quote it back to front without assistance, but certain parts have a new meaning when he really hears them, this time.

Especially when it comes to a certain monologue, the comforting voice of Robin Williams ringing throughout the room as his character sits beside Will in the park, watching the swans and realising just how short Will’s perspective on life is.

“If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favourites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy.”

He tries not to glance your way, his jaw tight as he blinks slow, recollections of waking up by your side flashing in his mind like something out of a dream. A blissful peace he hasn’t quite experienced elsewhere, his eyes flitting around your features as you slept, trying to study every inch of your face to commit it to his memory, never knowing if each time he got to experience it that it might be the last.

“I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell.”

He thinks of all those times he sought you out for his own personal comfort - after back to back games that drained every ounce of his energy, long stretches away from the comfort of his own bed, the constant comparisons to his brothers, and how he’d always come up short - but he was always first, to you.

Even when the two of you were caught up in the in-between, whatever you were before - friends, or something more - he always felt like a priority to you. Always wanted you to feel like a priority to him.

“And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her be there forever, through anything.”

The night of your birthday, the light in your eyes when he gave you those gifts, the soft but beautiful curve of your lips as you told him he was your best friend. The way you were worried he’d get tired of you, and he had promised that he wouldn’t.

“You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much.”

He hopes with everything in him that this isn’t the same - that he isn’t losing you. That his own immaturity and impatience hasn’t ruined the best thing he ever had in his life.

Because he does love you. He’s loved you for a long time, now.

Since the night of his cousin’s wedding, he thinks, when you’d opened up to him for the first time. Back when you laid in his arms in the dead of the night, your head on his chest and his arms around your body, and it finally felt like you were equals. Like he could stop chasing you, like you’d stop running.

He’s never felt the way he feels with you about anybody else. He doesn’t want to, doesn’t think he possibly could.

He doesn’t know why he ever made out like he could move on.

But he’s too familiar with saying things he regrets, now. It just keeps happening. Mouthing off to Cole back in summer, agreeing to be just friends in the fall, telling you that he can’t wait around for you at the end of winter, that he’s trying to move on.

Quinn was right, that morning when he called - he keeps doing stupid stuff out of impulse. Keeps letting his emotions get the better of him, and not giving you a chance to figure things out for yourself.

When he finds the courage to glance your way again, he just about catches you before you look away - a blink and you’ll miss it moment where he’s not even sure if he imagined it, but he keeps trying for the rest of the movie, a lot more focused on the ending than he previously was on his phone.

He thinks when it ends, and the credits start to roll, he’ll be able to find a way to ease the tension - to get you alone and talk it out, but his stupid brother opens his stupid mouth, and things escalate before he can even make sense of what’s happening.

“Stuff like that just doesn’t happen in real life,” Jack huffs, giving his thoughts on how Will chose to leave and go after Skylar, despite their mess of a relationship and how much he hurt her before, “These big love confessions, this whole corny, I gotta see about a girl, thing, why wouldn’t he just be honest about his feelings in the first place instead of trying to sabotage himself? Would save them a lot of trouble.”

You scoff from your own corner of the couch, and Luke’s eyes dart over just in time to catch the distinct roll of your eyes, barely even sparing a glance to Jack as you say, “That’s rich coming from you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jack winces as he straightens up, Ellie frowning from under his good arm as she follows suit, and Luke feels his own shoulders stiffen in anticipation of an argument - Jack’s been riled up to have one since he got injured, and you’re walking straight into a trap without knowing it.

But you can handle yourself, he thinks, especially when it comes to Jack.

Only something in you deflates when he looks again, the usual tenacity dissolving right before his eyes, and he watches as your gaze softens, flicking between the couple at the opposite end of the couch. “Forget it, doesn’t matter,” you mutter, your jaw set and your attention diverted back to the screen as the credits roll.

“That’s what I thought,” Jack grumbles back, accepting the swat Ellie gives to his good side to tell him to reign it in.

Luke doesn’t know why he stays silent, the urge to speak up for you is so strong it’s making his fingers twitch, but you sink into your place against the arm of the seat and fold your arms over yourself, like you’re giving up entirely.

“I was just saying, he’s a smartass, he’s hard work and she isn’t cut out for it, it shouldn’t be such a struggle to get somebody to open up, their relationship probably wouldn’t last a month once the movie’s over, if she even lets him back in when he goes to California, that is.”

Luke can see as clear as anything that Jack’s only using the film to vent his own frustrations - that he’s angry, and he’s exhausted, and he’s upset at everybody and everything - but he only understands that because it’s his brother. Because he’s known him his whole life. Because he gets where he’s coming from as a player - and Luke thinks he would be the same, if his season came to an abrupt end when he was on such a high, and all he’d known for the past month was loss and pain. He’d be angry, he’d snap at people, try to get them to hurt just a little bit so that it means he’s not alone. And it’s shitty, but he gets it - if his words were spoken to hurt Luke, he’d probably just shoulder the blow.

But they aren’t.

They’re meant to hurt you.

And when Luke looks over, and you’re staring at the wall with a distant, glassy look in your eyes, your lips twisted to stop them trembling, and your arms wrapped around yourself so tight that your shoulders are all hunched up, he can’t really bite his tongue anymore.

“You’re such a hypocrite,” he spits, eyes narrowing as they focus in on his brother, “You’re hard work, and you’re lucky Ellie isn’t running for the hills,”

“Whoa,” Jack frowns back, lips pouting as he diverts his attention across the room, “Chill out, man, it’s just a movie, I’m just saying my thoughts on it.”

“No one asked for your thoughts on it,” Luke scowls, “You’re being a dick for no reason, you don’t always have to spout your opinion on every little thing like it’s fact and shut down anyone who tries to argue with it.”

He expects to have caught your attention, seeing you move out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t expect for you to push yourself up and leave the room entirely, your feet padding softly against the carpet until the sound of them disappears completely, and the door to the kitchen swings closed behind you.

“Clearly touched a nerve,” Jack mumbles, and even Ellie pushes herself off of him, rolling her eyes until she storms off after you.

Luke almost wishes she hadn’t - wishes that he could be the one to go and comfort you, but after your conversation in the kitchen, before, he’s not sure if that’s what you would want.

And he knows it’s his fault for this wedge that’s between the two of you, after pushing you away and telling you to move on and getting all in his feelings about you potentially doing so, leaving Michigan before the two of you could actually talk about it and neglecting to patch up the now gaping hole in your relationship - but he doesn’t know how to fix it.

He doesn’t know how he can sit around and pretend like everything’s fine.

“You really can be an asshole, you know,” Luke snaps at his brother, using the situation as a cover for the way he wants someone to tell him the same - wants you to say it, for you to tell him that he’s dumb, and an idiot, and that he’s hurting you. He doesn’t want you avoiding eye contact and sitting on the other side of the room and coming to Jersey without even telling him.

“It’s not that deep, Luke-,”

“Seriously?” He scoffs, standing from his own seat and glaring down at Jack, his good arm sprawled across the back of the couch like he’s trying his best to make himself bigger, like Luke can’t see straight through the facade. “I get that you’re having a shitty time of it right now, but you don’t have to take it out on everybody else. You asked me to come with you to try and keep things from blowing up, but all you do is make digs at her for no good reason. I don’t get why you can’t just be nice.”

“I asked you to come with me because I thought you two were friends,” Jack lowers his voice, mindful of the fact that there’s only a wall that separates you and Ellie from the two of them, and he’s obviously on the verge of being in his girlfriend’s bad books after his behaviour. “She was annoyed about something before we even started the movie, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what when she won’t even look your way, Luke. I’m sick of you blaming me for her pissy attitude and not just having it out with her.”

God, he wishes Jack would just butt out of his business, for once.

Why can’t there be a middle ground between his unrelenting cynicism and Quinn’s blind hope?

If there was just one distinct voice for him to listen to, one clear instruction for him to follow, then he’d be able to make sense of everything swirling around his brain.

He thinks that voice would probably be yours, and he’s going to fall apart if you keep it from him much longer.

“I think you two should go,” Ellie’s voice carries softly over from where she’s come back out of the kitchen, “You have that appointment in the morning, Jack, and you have a game tomorrow,” her eyes are cautious as she casts her gaze toward Luke, raising a brow as if pleading for his help in getting his brother out of the way.

“Yeah,” he mutters, cursing himself for not being the one to go straight after you, instead.

Jack doesn’t put up much of a fight other than his usual huffing and puffing as Ellie helps him into his coat, and Luke gives the two of them a second to say their goodbyes as he stands to the side, keeping an eye on the door you’re yet to reappear through. He wants to give you space - knows that he shouldn’t follow you in there to corner you again, but if you peek your head out, maybe he’ll feel a little less anxious. Maybe then there’s hope.

“Could you let her know I got her a ticket for the game tomorrow?” He asks Ellie before he leaves, “I can get you one, too, a couple of the guys from Michigan are gonna be there, I’d love it if she came.”

“I’ll let her know, Luke,” Ellie’s smile is apologetic, but it just makes him feel worse, and he drives him and Jack back to their apartment in the most uncomfortable silence of his life, his jaw set so hard it aches when he’s home, and he storms straight to his room with a dramatic slam of his door.

He opens up your text thread as he lays awake for what feels like an hour, staring at the keyboard and willing some sort of explanation to come to his head as to why he’s such an idiot.

And that’s how he ends up falling asleep, phone still clutched on his hand, and no further clarification on what the hell is going to happen with the two of you.

When Ellie had told you last night about Luke’s invitation to his game, it had felt like a no brainer at the time that you’d skip this one out.

You don’t really know how many more knock backs you can take from him after telling him about the installation - an exhibit you’d seen online months ago, that would only be in town for a limited time following its success in Europe, and Luke had been the only person in mind you’d have ever wanted to go with.

But he doesn’t want to go with you.

He wants you at a safe distance, with distinct boundaries, and while you’re grateful for his attempt to try and lessen the blow of his rejection, you think foregoing the game entirely is the safest distance you could possibly wedge between the two of you.

As friends? He’d asked, almost immediately, like he was rubbing your face in it - like the mere thought of you wanting to go as anything more wasn’t even worth entertaining, anymore. And agreeing had been your last attempt to save face, because the last thing you were gonna do was put your heart on the line with his dickhead brother only one room away. You’re not that much of an idiot.

Plus, Ellie has taken your place - and she said some of the guys from college would be there, anyway. He probably won’t even notice you’re not there, just like how he’s managed to pretty much ignore your existence since he left Michigan.

And you can enjoy your first night of peace during your spring break, the others so far consumed by Ellie - not that you mind, all that much, it’s been kind of nice for the two of you to be away from everything, even though you’re within dangerous proximity to her demon boyfriend.

The rental she found is nice, too - the kind of place you could see yourself living in when you move over this way - spacious but cozy, with a giant TV that you can’t wait to watch your heart-shredding movie marathon on.

You set the space up as soon as Ellie left for the game, blankets thrown onto the couch, an array of snacks on the table, My Best Friend’s Wedding on the screen, and you’re about to settle in when there’s a harsh knock at the door, shattering your illusion of peace in an instant.

You grumble the whole way to the door, making sure the chain is on before you open it - all too aware you’re on your own in a city you aren’t entirely familiar with, and it would be just your luck to be murdered, probably.

But when you open the door, you almost wish it was a masked killer.

Jack Hughes stands on the porch, eyes narrowing as you peer at him through the crack in the door, his hip popped impatiently and foot tapping against the floor.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Are you gonna let me in?” he asks, raising a brow as he huffs out an irritable sigh, “Considering I’m paying for the place, I really shouldn’t have to ask.”

You frown as you move, unlatching the door and giving him enough room to pass you without the risk of bumping your shoulder and agitating his. “I didn’t know that,” you mumble, annoyed even more so now that Ellie had chosen not to tell you that. You suppose it’s your own fault for not asking, but she of all people knows how you are about others paying your way. “That you were paying, I’ll pay you back if it’s a problem.”

“It isn’t.” He rolls his eyes as he stands in the room you thought was actually nice before he arrived, and now you sort of hate it.

“Alright, well you didn’t answer my question,” you glare, “Why are you here?”

“I’m supposed to be checking up on you,” he says, rounding the couch before he throws himself down onto it, kicking off his shoes before he swings his legs up. “Usually when I have a headache so bad I can’t leave the house, watching the TV is the last thing I’d be doing.”

“Yeah, well, some of us are built different,” you scowl, “I’m fine, you can go ahead and crawl back to whatever pit you came from, I’ll let Ellie know you fulfilled your supportive boyfriend duties for the month.”

“Can’t actually,” he shrugs his good shoulder, reaching forward and grabbing the remote from where you left it. “Game’s starting in ten minutes, I won’t make it back to my place in time so you’re stuck with me for the next few hours.”

“Great.”

“Plus, Ellie didn’t send me, Luke did.”

You don’t exactly know how to feel about that. Jack couldn’t be more obvious in his distain for you, and you couldn’t have made it any clearer that you aren’t his biggest fan either, so why Luke would send him of all people instead of just texting you and asking if you’re alright, you don’t know. Especially after the movie last night - Jack is the last person on Earth you would want checking up on you.

“Sorry he wasted your time, then,” you sigh, “I’m gonna go to bed.”

“We both know you don’t have a headache,” Jack calls over his shoulder, “So you can give up the act. You’d really leave a guy in a sling on his own for hours? What if I need a drink?”

“That’s what your good arm’s for,” you smile, sardonically, a quick flash of sarcasm that drops as soon as Jack rolls his eyes, “So lucky that you have two.”

“Please?” He asks, uncharacteristically, the sudden shock of him actually being polite instead of demanding causing you to still, “I don’t like watching the games on my own, it makes me all tense, which makes everything hurt a whole lot more.”

And the sudden vulnerability from him seems to hypnotise you, huffing out a petulant fine and sitting as far away from him on the couch as you possibly can.

You’re leaning against one arm, and he’s leaning against the other, and the two of you sit through the build up and the first ten minutes in complete silence until he notices that you’re actually watching, unable to help himself from being a dick, apparently, and asking, “Do you even know what’s going on?”

“No, I just watch for the hot guys,” you scoff, “Thank god you’re not there to lower the average anymore.”

The genuine laugh he snorts out in response in unexpected, and you side eye him until you can feel his attention is completely diverted, the two of you settling back into the quiet until a play towards the end of the first period stuns the two of you.

Luke has the puck, and he’s going so fast you can barely focus, gliding in between the opposition seamlessly until he’s advancing on the net, and just as he’s about to shoot, a much bigger body slams into him, knocking him back until he collides with the boards and crumples over, and a sickening sense of deja vu creeps up on you so quick it makes you dizzy.

You watch the aftermath wide eyed, the whole thing blurring together as Luke takes himself off the ice, and disappears down the tunnel.

The game carries on, but you can’t move - you don’t even think you’ve blinked in a minute - and your mouth is still gaped open like an idiot, the inside of it drying so much that you feel it all the way down your throat.

“He’ll be alright,” you hear from the side of you, a hesitant, reassuring tone that you don’t think you’ve heard come from Jack, before. You turn your head to meet his eye, and his body is fully angled towards you, his gaze scrutinising and intense. “It’s just a knock, he’ll be back on after the intermission probably.”

“Reassuring coming from the guy who just had to have surgery after a knock.” You can’t help but snap back, little bite in your own inflection, but you ache from the tip of your tongue all the way down to your stomach. It didn’t look like just a knock - you’ve seen Luke take knocks before and never have to go off for medical attention - it looked way worse. And all they’re gonna do for the next 15 minutes is replay it over and over.

You feel sick.

“Lukey’s made of harder stuff,” Jack responds, the same relaxed lull to his voice. “That’s what my dad’s always said, anyway. Quinn would tell you the same, there’s something about him that always just bounces straight back, pisses me off a little sometimes, if I’m honest.”

You should probably know that better than anyone - for all the times you’ve pushed him away. But you’re starting to lose faith in that fact, a little.

“I just don’t want him to be hurt.” You mutter, trying to swallow past the stinging at the back of your throat, gulp down the growing insecurity that maybe you’ve made him weaker, maybe, somehow, this too is your fault.

“My phone’ll probably go off during the break” Jack sits up a little straighter, gesturing out to his cell that sits on the coffee table in front of the couch. “They’ll text me as soon as they’re done taking a look at him. I promise they’d know by now already if it was anything serious. I’d have gotten a call, our medical team are seriously good, they can tell stuff like that in an instant.”

It might be the fact that you’re relying on Jack Hughes of all people for reassurance that forces the tears to start welling in your eyes, your view of him blurring a little - or maybe the fact that he’s actually wilfully giving the reassurance, but either way, you don’t really want him to see you cry.

You sit in an uncomfortable silence as you watch the rest of the period, fidgeting in your place on the couch and picking painfully at the skin beside your fingernails, and it’s only when the last few seconds tick down that you can see Jack shuffle himself in your peripheral, turning until he’s properly facing you again.

“You really care about him, huh?”

You try to blink away the remaining threat of tears before you turn, yourself, meeting Jack’s eye across the couch and trying to muster up some sort of strength to shrug off this awful feeling that you can’t shake. “I’m not the heartless bitch you think I am, Jack,” you denounce, “Of course I care about him.”

He narrows his eyes in a glare, and you can tell he’s biting his tongue, careful not to goad you into some disastrous argument that neither of you really want. Last night had no doubt scratched his itch to lash out at somebody, and you don’t really think you’ll manage a round two.

The two of you stay locked in a heated, silent exchange for a few extended seconds, his jaw tense and your teeth chewing at the corner of your mouth in anticipation.

“Do you love him?”

“It doesn’t matter,” you sigh, like it’s instinctual at this point, and you wince, even, once the words come out. They feel wrong. They feel like a bare-faced lie. Like some foreign language you have no business even attempting to speak. “I’m hard work, you know that, he knows that, and I think I’m all out of chances to try and convince him otherwise.”

“He doesn’t think you’re hard work,” Jack replies, “Trust me, I’ve been trying to convince him of as much since last summer, and he refuses to listen.”

“He said it himself to Cole,” you huff, hating how quick the memory comes to the forefront of your mind, hearing him say those things about you like it was nothing, replaying them over and over in your head like they were everything. “I heard it, Ellie heard it, he said that I wasn’t the kind of girl that he would date, and that I wasn’t worth the hassle.”

“And I’m sure he told you after that he didn’t mean any of that,” Jack tries to defend, brows furrowing as he thinks of any way to get his point across. “People say stupid things in the heat of the moment, we know that better than anybody, you can’t seriously think he actually believes that stuff,”

“He had to have been thinking it for it to have been said in the heat of the moment, Jack, he didn’t pull all that stuff out of his ass. He always knew it wasn’t gonna work out.”

Jack sighs your name, his free hand rising to rub at his temple in exasperation, and you wait as he winces, your eyes darting to check for any uncomfortable movements with his shoulder - but it’s something else that’s bothering him.

“I put those thoughts into his head.”

The concept isn’t surprising - you’ve always known Jack hadn’t liked you, always knew he was badmouthing you to whoever would listen, and snarking at you for the entire house to see. It’s what he’d done last night, using the movie as some sort of metaphor for just how fucked up you are, and everybody in the room could see it.

“I told him every opportunity I could get that you weren’t gonna work out, and that you were bad news, and you’d just mess him around until you got bored.” Jack admits, and again, you’re not shocked. He’d said as much to your face. You even thought you’d resolved this whole thing with him last summer, before everything went to shit, but he’s been off with you since then, so you have no doubt his sentiments have picked straight back up where they left off all those months ago. “And every time I did, he’d just tell me to go fuck myself. Still does. I tell him all the time you’re not good for him, and he just tells me I don’t know you. You’re like the only thing we fight about, and we live together for God’s sake, he’s messy as all hell and I don’t give him half as much grief about that as he gives me about being a dick to you.”

“You’re just proving my point,” you huff, “If I’m causing arguments between the two of you, I’m hardly the kind of person he should be keeping around.”

“He loves you too, you know,” Jack offers as rebuttal, raising a brow as if pushing you to fight back on the fact when you zero in on him. “He told Quinn when he was in Michigan. I got this huge lecture off of him about butting in on your business where I’m not wanted.”

You chew a little at the corner of your mouth, the sudden, inappropriate urge to laugh rising within you at the thought of Jack getting a telling off from his big brother.

“I’ve been angry this whole time that he doesn’t talk to me about stuff when it comes to you, but I guess I’ve been giving him a good reason not to.”

And as much as you don’t get along with Jack, the thought of driving a wedge between them - between all of them - makes you feel like crap, so all you can do is carry on fighting him.

“He wants to move on,” you shrug, “And he said some pretty shitty stuff about me back in summer when Cole said he wanted to take me out, he doesn’t think as highly of me as he makes out.”

“You’re gonna sit there and tell me that if a girl came up to you and said they were gonna ask him out, you wouldn’t try and talk them out of it?” Like you didn’t storm off at the mere sight of him with Victoria at that party. Like you haven’t been spiralling for weeks over him liking some girl’s post on instagram. “That you wouldn’t feel like someone was trying to take something from you?”

Of course you’d feel that way, you think.

Luke Hughes might be the only person you’ve ever let all the way in, and if someone were to swoop in and snatch him from your clutches, you’d probably go insane.

You’d do anything you could to deter them - including using Luke’s flaws and self-doubts against him. You’d even stretch them to fit your agenda, exaggerating the depth of them to make sure you really put them off.

You’d tell them he can be really insecure - that he gets in his head about stuff, especially anything that can be considered a comparison to his brothers - and that sometimes it brings out something avoidant and petty within him. You’d tell them that he isn’t serious when he needs to be, and that, 9 times out of 10, he’s going to crack some awkward joke that doesn’t land and he doesn’t really know how to properly resolve tension. You’d tell them that he craves validation, and it can be a minefield sometimes to navigate his need for attention.

You wouldn’t tell them that you love all those things - that he gives you this look when you stroke his ego that makes your heart stop, and that your sense of humour matches his like two perfectly placed pieces of a puzzle, and that he somehow manages to creep under your thick skin when you’re trying to stay mad or upset for no reason other than you think you need to. You wouldn’t tell them that he fills the exact same validation-void in yourself, and that the two of you balance each other out like two sides of the same coin.

And as much as the things he had said last summer crushed you - and for as many times as you’ve replayed them in your head over and over for the past several months since hearing them - you think you finally get it.

Jack Hughes is going to be the last person that you admit that to, though.

“We’re not each other’s property,” you protest weakly, instead.

“Oh don’t come at me with that bullshit,” he exasperates, rolling his eyes and shaking his head, “I’m not saying he owned you, or that you own him, I’m saying the two of you put in way too much fucking work for someone else to reap the benefits of it.”

“You have a lot to say, all of a sudden, for someone who’s been trying to put him off of me for God-knows how long.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I was wrong about you.” He huffs, like it pains him to say it, “And maybe last night I was angry about something else entirely, and I took it out on you because I didn’t want to feel that way on my own.”

Oh.

If that’s as close to an apology as you’re gonna get, you don’t think you entirely mind it.

It makes sense, after all, you think. The two of you have always had this incessant need to rile the other up, and you were the easiest bait he had to make himself feel better.

If you’d had a month like Jack just had, you’d probably do the same.

“Why didn’t you go to the game?” He asks, and just as your lips part to respond, he adds, “And don’t insult me with the whole headache thing,” forcing you to press them back together.

You sigh, weighing up in your mind if it’s even worth it to open up to Jack at this point. Sure, he’s making out like he finally sees your true intentions, but does it really matter anymore?

“He doesn’t want me there.”

“Of course he wants you there,” Jack frowns, features curling in confusion. “He got you a ticket, he invited you.”

“It was like a consolation thing,” You huff, thinking back on that conversation in the kitchen, where you’d mustered up the courage to cross some unspoken boundary, and he’d shut you down. “I wanted to do something else together, and he said it was too much, said we should be moving on. Blurring me into a crowd of thousands is the only alternative, apparently.”

Jack snorts out some muffled noise, somewhere between a chuckle and a scoff, and you glare at him as you wait for him to clarify whatever the hell sort of response that was. “You’re both as annoying as each other, you know.”

“Whatever,” you pout, shuffling your body to turn away from him again as you fold your arms over your chest like a petulant child, “He wants to move on, so I’m giving him the space to do that. I’m done with it.”

You don’t know who you’re trying to convince, but you should know better than to think that would ever work on him.

“Right,” Jack snickers, “So done with it that you’re sat here almost crying at the thought of something happening to him.” You scowl, then, because what’s the point in trying to soften your reactions if he’s just going to be an asshole about it. “He’s fine, by the way,” he shakes his phone, then, giving a blurry glimpse of a message thread you can’t even read.

And you thought good news would have lessened the pressure in your chest, this pulsing, swelling feeling that grips at your heart like a vice at the thought of him being hurt - but it doesn’t really go down, at all.

Luke said he wanted to move on. He said he wanted to be friends, and that the two of you should stop blurring the lines.

So why is he sending one brother across the city to check up on you? And why is he telling the other that he loves you?

You weren’t entirely lying, before.

You are done.

And the only way you think you can ease this pain now is to talk it out, with him, once and for all.

Trying to talk to Luke is harder than you ever thought it could be.

Texting him seems out of the question, as stupid as that sounds, but when you open up your messages to try, you’re faced with weeks worth of one-word responses that put you straight off - the thought of him shutting you down one more time almost toppling you over the edge of insanity.

And you could call, but it fills you with the same sort of dread. The last time the two of you spoke on the phone had been when Jack was injured - when you’d offered to be there for him if he needed you and he’d sort of snapped at you.

And sure, emotions were high, but things haven’t really been the same since that conversation. They haven’t been the same since the kiss, but there’s a part of you that doesn’t really want the burden of all the blame on your shoulders for once.

There have been countless opportunities for the you to clear everything up, but there have been chances for him, too, and you’re starting to think that maybe the two of you are far too content to let each other suffer instead of actually communicating your feelings like adults.

And after you spend the whole day after the game you missed dwelling on that fact, you’re grateful for a little reprieve when you get a text from Ethan, in town to talk about his own career, who wants to go out for drinks to toast to everything - to spring break, to your NYU acceptance, his devils contract.

He drops a pin for a bar in Hoboken, and you and Ellie make your way down together, meeting up with him and a few of the other guys to celebrate, and it’s the first night in a while that you feel like you don’t need to stress about anything.

You manage to push Luke to the back of your mind for a while, sat in a booth beside Ethan as he shows you pictures of the apartment he went to look at a couple days ago, his plans to move over here coming a lot sooner than yours, but apparently the building have vacancies coming up in the fall, and the two of you talk about how weird it is that you’re gonna be close, again.

You’re joking with him about his hookup with your sorority sister Megan, threatening to bring her over as your roommate and giggling into your hand through a drunken buzz, when the one person you’re trying to forget for a second appears out of nowhere, standing beside the booth as he looks down at the two of you with an unfamiliar sadness in his eyes. He looks a little run down, dressed in a hoody that stretches across his shoulders, and donning a baseball cap that’s probably supposed to keep his presence lowkey.

“Lukey boy!” Ethan exclaims as he stands to greet him, the two of them doing that brotherly fist bump and hug that all guys do, “Thought you were too beat to come out!”

“Changed my mind,” he shrugs, eyes glancing back at you. “You mind if I sit?”

“Nope,” you shrug, nodding to the opposite side, where he slides in, and his knees knock against yours under the table.

“I’ll get you a drink,” Ethan tells him, winking over at you as he backs away, your eyes wide as you watch him retreat before you look back at Luke, the silence around you almost visible in animated ellipses that dot in the space between the two of you.

“Since when are the two of you so friendly?” He asks, tone surprisingly bitter as his eyes darken, and you feel your defences build despite them usually being so weak in his presence.

“We’ve always been friendly,” you frown, “Since when are you so rude? What happened to hello, how are you?”

“I don’t know, probably since you started avoiding me,” he juts out his bottom lip, leaning into the back of the booth and stretching his hands out on the surface, “Hard to stay nice when you come to town without telling me and send Ellie to a game I specifically invited you to.”

“You told me you didn’t want to hang out with me,” you scoff, uneasy with how quick this entire conversation is escalating. You’re a little tipsy, but there’s no excuse for how he’s so quick to snap at you.

“That’s not what I said and you know it,” he huffs.

“No, I don’t know it, because you’ve been avoiding me too,” you bite back, “Why are you being such a dick all of a sudden?”

“You kissed me,” he leans forward onto his elbows, eyes dark under the shadow of the bill of his cap, and you feel a shudder run through you at the intensity behind his gaze, at the memory the mere mention of it invokes - combined with the rasp in his voice, it’s taking everything in you to fight the urge to do it again. “It was barely 3 weeks ago, and now you’re here, without telling me, and you won’t talk to me, and you’re all buddy-buddy with Ethan all of a sudden-,”

“You pushed me away,” you snap back, eyes narrowing to mirror his, “You told me I was making things harder for you, and that I should move on, and then you started avoiding my calls and sending one word responses to my texts, you don’t get to sit there and be an asshole to me just because I’m hanging out with somebody else.”

“So that’s what this is,” He points over to where Ethan is lingering at the bar, no doubt flashing those puppy-dog eyes to the girl behind it, a charming grin cast her way as you can see her blush from all the way across the room. ”This is you moving on?”

“Ethan and I are just friends,” you frown, watching as Luke’s jaw tenses in response, clenching at either side of his face in a way that would usually turn your mouth dry. “I’m not moving on, we aren’t dating.”

Luke’s eyes are stormy when they meet yours - strained and serious as he weighs up your response. “Neither were we.”

The next breath you take is sharp and jittery, gaze still fixed on his from across the table - and despite the proximity of your bodies, him leaning forward, and you just about doing the same, and the urge you had mere seconds ago to close the gap between you, you couldn’t feel any further apart.

You see his hands shift in your peripheral, long fingers picking at the label on Ethan’s empty beer bottle before his gaze shifts down - guilty and withdrawn. You can’t look away, though - you need to properly look at him, you need to try and see some lifeline you can cling to, here.

He’d pushed you away back in Michigan. He’s been distant, since - too busy for calls, too avoidant for any attempt at a lengthy text conversation. He’s irritated, now - even if he won’t say as much - you can tell by the heavy set of his jaw, and the way his eyes narrow whenever Ethan is too close.

“What were we, then?” You ask before you can think better of it, before some internal part of you convinces yourself that his answer will only serve to hurt you. You’re not going to get anywhere by holding back, anymore.

He’d drank from that cup all those months ago back at that party. Never have I ever been in love. He’d looked you in the eyes as his lips pressed to the red plastic, and he’d watched and waited for you to respond.

And everything that happened after that will never erase the memory of that heated look in his eyes - piercing straight through the flames in the middle of your circle of friends, burning into the very depths of your being and warming you just enough for the months that followed.

All the talk about being only friends, of getting any other feelings out of your systems one last time and pretending to rinse them away - it was that night out in the yard of the hockey house that kept things alive, you think.

Knowing that somewhere down the line, despite everything you put each other through - despite the insecurity, and the jealousy, and the pain - he loved you, and he might possibly be the only guy who ever has. The only guy you ever want to.

“Friends,” He frowns as he continues to pick at the sticky paper, tearing the corner until it starts to peel, briefly glancing up to meet your eye as he asks, “That’s all we’ll ever be, right?”

You gulp, your own gaze dropping to the surface between you, eyes tracing the rings of condensation on the table left behind from the chilled bottles.

“I don’t know if I’m good at being friends,” comes out somewhat instinctively, your brows furrowing as the circles your eyes were mapping seem to hypnotise you into unprompted vulnerability. “I’m having a hard time moving past what happened last summer, I think,” you admit, a rattling breath following, hesitant to do so but needing to get it out, to make him understand that none of this is easy for you - letting him go and moving on isn’t some minor thing he can simply suggest to make things better. It’s not possible. “I feel like it’s always in the back of my mind when I’m with you, like I can’t let it go.”

Spilling secrets by the fountain at the country club, kissing in his car when he’d pick you up from work, pulling over on some deserted side road where no one could see, splashing at him in the lake, the sun rays bouncing off the water and bringing out the sea-glass shade of his irises. Trying on stupid disguises in the thrift store at the mall together, his hands on your waist as you danced together at his cousin’s wedding, defending you to his brother whenever Jack tried to pick some stupid fight with you.

It all plays like flashes from a movie at every given opportunity - the second you give your mind a chance to wander, it travels straight back to those weeks spent in his company, to a time where you’d shared a connection so intense that it permanently altered some deep, previously untouchable part of you.

“I thought that I could just push it down,” you sniffle, “I thought that being friends might help me forget, but I can’t, it just feels harder.”

He mutters your name, softer and quieter than before, but the intention is there to say something as a rebuttal, you can tell by his tone.

You don’t really have much fight left in you, though, not anymore.

“And you were right, back in Ann Arbor, it’s not fair to you.”

“That’s not what I meant-,”

“It is,” you resign, “I don’t know how to be your friend, I don’t know what I want anymore, and I can’t keep pretending and making everything worse for you when it would just be easier if we,”

“If we what?”

“Stopped.” You croak, every muscle in your throat working to resist the words from actually working their way up and coming out. “Whatever it is that we’re trying to be, or trying not to be. So that you can move on, like you want.”

You chance a quick glance up, vision blurred by a thick wall of tears, and meet his startled gaze.

“Is that what you want?” His voice shakes a little as he asks, breathy and reluctant - like he’s bracing himself for your own response to hurt.

It doesn’t really matter what you want, you think. You’ve long lost any right to fight for it - not when it comes to him. You had your chance in summer, to open up about all the things you were starting to feel, and you chose to push them down. You don’t even know why, anymore.

You really thought there would be something left to salvage of your relationship with Luke - something to cling to so that he couldn’t push you away, something that got the two of you back on track, especially after talking to his brother, last night - but now that you’re here, everything just feels wrong. It all feels like a stab in the dark, like you’re no longer familiar with the boundaries of what is or isn’t okay with him, and that leaves you feeling lost, again. Like even the slightest attempt to bridge the gap is one giant wasted effort.

And you know all too well where this feeling gets you - too afraid to put your heart on the line, you hide it away, lock it up and throw away the key so that no one can even attempt to get to it again.

He doesn’t want to hang out one-on-one, away from the safety of using Ellie and Jack as a buffer. He doesn’t want to watch movies like you used to, or talk on the phone, or even be within 5 feet of you, it seems. He’s annoyed that you’re close to his other friends, he’s annoyed that you’re around at all, you think.

He doesn’t want you anymore - he shuts down every thought of being anything more, and he can talk all he wants about blurring lines and still being friends, but you know how this plays out.

He wants to move on, he’s said so too many times now for you to discount it or try and find a work around. And when he moves on, and he finds some other girl, like Yasmin, or even Victoria, who doesn’t push him away, or make his life hard, or knows how to express her feelings without saying or doing the wrong thing, he’ll have no use for you.

His brothers will like her, and he’ll show her off to his teammates, and their relationship will expand beyond a phone screen and the distant, foggy memory of something more. And it will be easy.

And he deserves that.

He deserves so much more than you’ve ever been able to give him. Maybe if you saw that sooner this whole thing wouldn’t be such a mess. Maybe if you’d been more accepting of your blossoming feelings in the summer, and you hadn’t been so insistent on maintaining control, everything wouldn’t have spiralled so far out of reach.

Ellie might have seen your interest, Cole might have turned his attentions elsewhere, and Luke would never have said those things about you to try and deter him. And then these last few months would have been easier, too. Your walls would have long been knocked down, your defences weakened, and you’d have just let him in like you’ve always wanted to.

And Luke wouldn’t have gotten tired of trying, just like you predicted all those months ago.

“I think your brother was right, the other day, about the movie, and people being hard work. I want you be happy, Luke, and you said it yourself, I can’t make you wait around for me to figure shit out, you have enough going on without me making you feel like this.”

You feel a shift when you look at him again, a slump of his shoulders as he leans back into the booth - something like resigned acceptance - and you can’t help but be reminded of the exchange that started this whole ordeal.

Him on the other side of a booth in the restaurant at the country club, a hopeful gleam in his earthy irises and his chest puffed out in what you remember thinking seemed like a facade of arrogance, with something much gentler beneath the surface. Things had been much lighter then. Playful and easy. And you don’t think it’s been like that for a long time.

You did that, you think.

You sank into the dark, murky waters of your own insecurities and you dragged him straight down with you - and now it’s time to set him free.

The silence that follows your words is awkward, maybe for the first time ever with him, in a way that makes your skin itch with a prickly heat. You had been so intent on speaking to him, before, and now all you want to do is leave so that he can’t stretch this out, or leave so you don’t have to sit here and watch him not even try. You want to run. Scream. Cry, even. Do anything but wait around for him to agree.

“I’m sorry,” comes out croaky, and broken, and you blink out the tears that blur your vision, feeling them run their course the whole way down your cheeks until you swipe them away from your jaw.

“Me too.”

You want to tell him he doesn’t have anything to apologise for. You want to tell him that you’re the problem, and that you shouldn’t have led him on for as long as you did - but you don’t really want to keep going in circles with this conversation.

You just want to go.

And you couldn’t be more thankful when Ethan comes back, oblivious to the tension between you and his best friend, pushing another bottle across the table and sliding into the opposite side of the booth, right next to Luke.

“So, Lukey, are you gonna let us in on all your favourite spots around here for when we’re both back in the fall?” He slings an arm over the back of the booth, falling naturally above Luke’s slumped figure, and you straighten up in your own seat.

“I’m gonna go find Ellie,” you say, shuffling out from your own side, smiling meekly when Ethan frowns at you, not even daring to look Luke’s way. “I’ll leave you two to it.”

And then you walk away, because that’s all that’s left to do - and when you find Ellie, she takes one look at you, and she knows.

Eyes welling with tears, lips trembling - a mirror image of the girl she found back in your shared room that afternoon of her party, back in the summer - and she ushers you out of the bar and holds your hand the whole way back to your rental, your head on her shoulder as you try not to sob in the back of a taxi.

For all the times people in his life have called him an idiot, Luke has never felt as stupid as he feels right now.

Watching your teary eyes from across the table, able to do nothing but stare back at them, speechless and spineless as you finally throw in the towel, as you finally admit what you’ve been holding back this entire time.

That you can’t move past what happened in summer.

That this whole time, you’ve been trying to distract yourself from how much he hurt you, how much he fucked up, and all he’s ended up doing is hurting you again.

I feel like it’s always in the back of my mind when I’m with you, you had said, like I can’t let it go.

Like he can never take back all the stupid shit he said to Cole when he was jealous and immature - like he still can’t handle those sort of emotions when he’s around you, and he lashes out when you don’t even deserve it, all because he can’t handle seeing you with anybody else.

He doesn’t even know why he came at you so quick.

All he remembers is seeing a photo on an instagram story of the guys at the bar, of seeing you and Ellie crouched in the front, carefree, giant grins etched into your faces, and all of a sudden he was walking in.

And you were smiling so sweet, your nose scrunching up and your body shaking with laughter as you sat beside Ethan, absolutely no space between you in the booth, and he had felt something ugly consume him before he even had a chance to realise what was happening.

And now you’re gone, and his heart is pounding in his chest, and the sound of your soft voice uttering one final apology is echoing around his head.

“Are you okay?” Ethan asks from beside him, leaning forward until he appears out the corner of his eye, and Luke shakes himself out of the trance you put him under.

He mutters your name, and Ethan’s head tilts in confusion until Luke asks, “Are you into her?”

“Into her?” Ethan’s eyes widen in alarm as he almost chokes on a sip of his beer. “Why would you ask me that?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugs, a pathetic attempt at nonchalance that he can tell doesn’t land as soon as he does it, “You looked close when I came in, and she said you went to the movies together the other week. Got food after, sounded like a date to me.”

“Interesting observation,” he scoffs, “Considering all you two do together is watch movies and eat.”

Luke frowns, especially when he looks over properly, and Ethan is smirking at him. He feels like he could throw up. “She’s my friend,” he says, although he supposes that’s not really true, anymore, but he’s sick of having to explain it to everybody. “I’ve told you like a million times.”

“Mine too,” he snickers, and Luke can feel his blood start to boil a little at the implication that your relationship with Ethan might at all be similar to your relationship with him. “She’s a cool girl.”

“Yeah,” Luke agrees, a nauseating sense of deja vu washing over him, soaking him to the bone in remorse.

She’s a really cool girl, Cole had said, back toward the end of summer, really funny.

He feels the same swirls of panic stirring in his chest, a stutter to his heart rate that has him holding his breath to try and correct it, somehow.

“We’ve just been hanging out a little more the last few weeks, ever since I took her home,” and the mention of that night back in Michigan makes him feel worse - that swirling feeling evolving into something sinister, catastrophic, even. He’d upset you and you’d turned to Ethan for comfort - you’ve continued to turn to him, since. And Luke had really left you no choice but to do so, so upset at the thought of the two of you together that he shut you out, entirely. “I guess we got closer throughout this year, but it’s mostly been in a group, like at parties or whatever. She’s a lot different to how I thought she’d be, especially when it’s just her, we get along.”

“Yeah,” Luke breathes, monotonous and slow, because he can’t really muster much else.

He could probably cry, if he thinks too hard about it. Could probably break out in a sweat and hyperventilate, and all that’s stopping him is the nails digging into his palm to keep him grounded to reality.

He had you, he thinks, back on that porch outside the hockey house, and he let his own fragile ego get in the way, once again. Just like back in the summer, when he had you, and let this panic and jealousy consume him, turn him into something ugly and cruel, saying things he never meant, or never had any right to divulge.

“I think uhh,” his jaw feels tense as he speaks, like something in him doesn’t want to carry on, but he fights past it, “I think a lot of people have the wrong idea about her.”

“How do you mean?”

“People judge her based on what they think she’s like, but they don’t really get to know her.” He relaxes back into his seat, a little, trying to alleviate the growing tension in his spine. “I’d say she doesn’t really let them, but people don’t try hard enough. It’s like you said, she’s really cool.”

“Funny, too.” Ethan smiles a little, and the look in his eyes brings the essence of tears to Luke’s, almost.

“Really funny,” he agrees, pushing through the way his throat feels like it’s closing up, lips twisting up into some attempt at a smile. “Really quick, not even just telling jokes but like, she can just read every situation as it’s happening. I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation where she hasn’t made me laugh, even if she’s trying to bite my head off or something or I’m not really in the mood to be laughing.”

Ethan nods along, like he could possibly understand what Luke means - but maybe he can, Luke worries. Maybe that’s what you’ve opened his eyes to, while the two of you have been growing closer this year with him being none-the-wiser to your budding relationship.

“And sure, she’s snappy, but she’s like,” he pauses, a breathy chuckle as he fights the swelling of his chest, now, too, “the most caring person I’ve ever met. You feel it, too, even when she is biting your head off or whatever, she’s doing it because she thinks it’s just as much fun for you as it is for her, and she just wants to keep you hooked. And sure, it takes a while for her to warm up, but when she does it’s like, I don’t even know, man, like her smile,” another pause, and Luke smiles a little more, himself, the upturn of his lips coming so naturally that he can’t tell he’s doing it until his field of vision narrows a little, “She has this smile that’s all slow and cute, and I swear it could thaw ice or something corny like that.”

“She’s got a cute smile,” Ethan agrees, but the way he’s looking at Luke makes him feel a little too seen, and so he straightens back up in his seat before he can sink any further. “Not sure it’s worth losing one of my closest friends over, though.”

“You wouldn’t,” Luke gulps, trying to swallow past the growing lump in his throat at the mere thought of you and Ethan together, a feeling that’s achingly reminiscent of how he felt about you and Cole - sick to his stomach. But this had been the problem before - thinking he has any sort of say over how you move forward with anyone that isn’t him. “I just want her to be happy, I know you’d look after her.”

He’d told you to move on. He’d told you he couldn’t wait around for you to figure things out. He’d shut you out, forced you to close yourself off to him, accused you of only wanting him when you think you’re losing him to someone else - and here he is, falling apart from the inside out, once again, at the mere thought of you with anybody else.

He’s a hypocrite, and he hates himself for it - he’s going to lose you because of it. Maybe he already has.

“You’re an idiot,” Ethan scoffs, mouth curving up at one side in amusement. “You’re seriously gonna sit there and say you want me to ask her out? You want me to date the girl you’re very clearly in love with because at least I’d look after her?”

“C’mon, E-,”

“Like she needs looking after?” Ethan’s dark eyes narrow as he levels Luke with an incredulous glare. “You know if she heard you, she’d beat your ass, right? Trying to auction her off like some sort of prize, are you insane? I swear to God, the two of you are borderline painful, you’re as bad as each other.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I honestly thought you were both just being oblivious, or something, but it’s like you’re actively trying to sabotage yourselves, you need to talk to each other, you need to tell each other how you feel.”

“I know that you slept with her,” Luke blurts out, eyes wide as Ethan’s face curls up in horror, “I saw you come out of the house with her the morning after the party,”

“Whoa-,”

“And it’s fine. Not that either of you need my permission,” Luke scoffs, “But I’m not blind, E, she was with you the night Jack got injured, too, she was smiling at you tonight like she hasn’t smiled at me in forever, I just want her to be happy, and if that’s not with me-,”

“I slept with Megan,” Ethan interrupts, “The night of that party, I dropped her off like you asked, I went back to the house, and I hit up Megan because we were hooking up for a while before she got all crazy on me. You remember her, right? The girl with the tattoo of her cat?”

“You were hooking up with a girl who had a tattoo of her cat?” Luke frowns, distracted momentarily until he realises what’s happening.

“She’s in the same sorority,” Ethan scoffs, “What you saw was her sneaking me out of the house because I got stuck upstairs and Megan wouldn’t help me.”

“But the movie, and the pinball,” Luke fades a little, brows furrowing as he tries to piece together whatever the hell he’s managed to fabricate between you and Ethen this entire time - weeks of avoiding you for nothing.

“We just bumped into each other at the IMAX, she seemed a little down, so we hung out after. Like friends do. Like you’d probably know, if you talked to her. You really thought that either of us would do that to you? That girl is crazy about you, Luke, she pretty much cried the whole walk home because you didn’t tell her you liked her.”

“She what?”

“Kept asking me if you’d said anything about being into anyone, she was being all cryptic and weird, I tried to imply you were into her, but clearly it didn’t help.”

“No, no, no,” he shakes his head, muttering repeatedly as he remembers that night, remembers what Quinn had tried to tell him, remembers everything from the past 6 months, all at once. He runs two shaky hands through his hair, trying to squeeze at his skull to stop the influx of regret that’s starting to vibrate in there, incessant and relentless, like it will never go away. “I need to go after her.”

Luke pushes gently at his best friend, frowning when he doesn’t budge.

“E, I need to apologise to her, I need to talk to her,”

“Tomorrow.” Ethan advises, “Her and Ellie knocked back like a whole margarita pitcher together, you don’t want to do this when she isn’t in the right state of mind.”

Wrong.

He wants to do it as soon as he physically can.

And he’ll do it on the hour every hour until you’re sober, he thinks.

“Trust me,” Ethan pats at Luke’s leg, a brotherly gesture that does little to calm his nerves. “Take tonight to think about what you want to say, and say it tomorrow.”

Luke hates that he’s right - just like Quinn had been right all those weeks ago.

He can’t do this out of impulse.

He needs to do it right.

When Ellie knocks on your bedroom door the next morning, she’s merely a fuzzy blur through your puffy eyes, and you can barely muster a smile as she walks in with a cup of green tea and a slice of toast for you.

“Thanks, El,” you croak, voice thick with sleep, and maybe dry from the salty rim of the many cups you drank from last night - or the way you cried for maybe an hour until you eventually drifted off.

Ellie had been your literal shoulder to cry on when you got home, letting you sob and finally release months worth of pent-up frustrations as she listened, taking it all in while she stroked a gentle hand through your hair.

You told her everything - about halloween, and christmas, watching movies over FaceTime and spiralling over them alone in your room after he hung up. You told her about texts that made your knees go weak, and calls that lasted until the early hours of the morning, and sleeping in Luke’s arms when you finally saw him in person. You told her about the gifts, and opening up to Luke about your family, and kissing him on the porch back at the hockey house.

Then you told her about the aftermath. About distancing yourself from him to let him move on, about him distancing himself from you because you’re too much of a mess for him to make sense of, and then about that conversation in the bar - about finally letting him go.

She just let you air it all out until it exhausted you - tucked you into your bed where you sobbed into your pillow for a little longer, and promised to talk more in the morning.

And you suppose that’s what this is - breakfast in bed, a soft smile sent your way as she lowers the tray onto the sheets in front of you, muttering a short, you’re welcome, as she perches herself on the end of the bed.

The two of you make a little small talk as she watches you eat, concern in her eyes and hesitance in her posture, and you figure you must have freaked her out a little too much last night - probably still freaking her out, now your face still swollen from all the crying.

“I’m sorry about last night, El,” you sigh once you’ve swallowed your last bite of toast, pushing the plate away. “I feel like such an idiot, you get a free pass to say I told you so, or whatever.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” her lips twist, unsure and uncomfortable, as she shuffles against the footboard. “It wouldn’t be right after what I did.”

“What you did?” You frown, “What do you mean?”

“Please don’t be mad at me,” Ellie shrinks away a little, face scrunching in anticipation of some poor reaction, and all you can hear is the persistent thudding of your heartbeat - still reeling from last night, a little. “I was just trying to help.”

“Help with what?” You blink slow as you watch her, eyes drawn to the way her lips twist and turn, tugged between her teeth as she tries to work through whatever it is she wants to tell you.

“It was sort of Jack’s idea, initially,” she starts, “I mean, I guess I took it a little too far, but he’s the one who brought it up-,”

“Ellie-,” you warn, the anticipation of it all only making things worse.

“He thought if the two of you felt like you were losing each other to somebody else, you’d realise you actually wanted to be together, and you’d stop forcing the whole friend thing and make the next move.”

“I don’t understand-,”

“He said he tried doing the same thing last summer, when he was being an idiot about asking me out. He took some girl from the club on a date, picked someone that he knew you’d find out about, but I guess you never did, ‘cause you’d have told me about it and I’d still have a dent in my head from where it would have hit the roof.” The nervous chuckle she gives does very little to lighten the mood.

“Right,” you nod along, muttering out the affirmation despite the fact that you’d done the complete opposite.

You never told her about Jack and Jessica, the girl from the club last summer - who you and Luke had spied on in the earlier days of your scheming. It was for her own good, though. You didn’t want to hurt her over something that clearly wasn’t worth her time. Jack was being an idiot, that much was obvious at the time - even without the context you now have that he was trying to get caught - and so you feel less bad about lying about the whole thing.

Although, your eye starts to twitch a little at just how ridiculous this whole thing has started to become.

“So he pushed Luke to date this Yasmin girl for the same reason?”

“Not exactly,” Ellie winces, “I think he tried to get him out of the house one time just to test the waters, but nothing ever came of it. And then Jack got busy with the tournament, and Luke came out to Michigan, and I felt like I had to take the reins a little.”

“Take the reins on what?”

Your tone must unintentionally reflect just how tired you are of this whole thing, because Ellie cowers a little, eyes glassy as she skirts around what it is that she wants to say.

“I need you to understand that I felt really bad about the whole Cole thing, okay?” She says, “And then ever since summer, you haven’t really been yourself, you know? Like you don’t wanna come out anymore, and you’re letting school get to you, and you don’t talk to me about stuff, even when I know that it’s bothering you,”

You look down, your own lips pressing together to try and ease the tension elsewhere in your jaw.

You have been a little more reserved, but it’s not entirely because of how your summer ended. And it’s not like you weren’t coping, entirely - you just weren’t running to Ellie like you normally might have.

Maybe it was unintentional, the way you had shut her out, even since the start of summer, but that doesn’t mean it would have affected her any less. Guilt starts to nip away at you from the inside out, her meek response heightened when you lifted your gaze back to watch her.

“And I just thought maybe you needed someone to look out for you, to give you a little nudge in the right direction, I didn’t realise it would have made things worse.”

A nudge - just like the kind of nudge you and Luke were supposed to be giving her and Jack last year.

You’re starting to get a headache with it all, the way you seem to have come full circle in the worst possible way - where the universe throws you Ellie and Jack of all people to try and gain some semblance of order to your life.

It’s tragic.

“What are you even saying?”

“There is no Yasmin,” she blurts out, “I made her up.”

You blink slow, feeling as your face slowly contorts with confusion - lips turning down, brows scrunching together, little creases forming in the side of your nose. “No,” you mumble, shaking your head as she stares, wide-eyed and panicked, back at you. “I saw her instagram. He liked her pictures.”

“I’d imagine that was just some random girl he follows,” she shakes her head with a grimace, “Dumbass likes every post he sees on his feed, I think.”

You gape back at her, your eyes widened in shock and your heart racing in your chest, because what the fuck?

You’ve been pushing him away this whole time to move onto a girl who doesn’t even exist?

“And I know I should have told you sooner, but I got swept up with all of the Jack stuff, and I,” her lips tremble as she stares back at you, apologetic and regretful. “I didn’t realise how bad it got between the two of you. I didn’t know it would end up like this, I was just trying to make things better again.”

You stare down at the empty plate at the bottom of your bed, and all of a sudden you can feel every swallowed bite swirling around in the pit of your stomach. “I feel sick.” You slur out, pushing yourself up off the bed and stumbling towards the bathroom, slamming the door behind you as you fall down against it, and you can hear the soft patter of feet as Ellie follows behind.

“I’m sorry,” she cries through the wood, “I know that I should have known better than to interfere, but I just-,” she hiccups then, and you resent just how much it affects you, guilt and shame swirling around with the nausea. “I wanted my best friend back. You haven’t been the same since summer.”

And you sob, yourself, because you know that’s true.

You’d admitted it to Luke, last night, when you had told him you didn’t think you could ever get over it.

And now you’ve lost him.

You can’t even blame Ellie, either.

She had planted the seed, but you’d been the one to water it - constantly avoiding having to have a difficult conversation with him until everything boiled over, until it was too late.

You could have talked to him at the party, the night you kissed him. You could have told him there and then that you loved him, because you knew it as sure as anything, but you didn’t. You could have told him at any point since then, and you never did. Because you were scared, and insecure, and weak.

Ellie calls your name from inches behind you, soft and shaky, and the thought of ruining everything with her too is too much for you to handle.

You need to get out of the bathroom, need to get out of the house, need to get away period.

You just need space, and you know exactly where you’re going to find it.

Luke has never been more thankful for a day off in his life.

And he’s never been more proactive in one, either.

One of the biggest joys usually comes from turning off his alarm the night before. No morning skate, no practice, no training, no meetings, no game to prep for.

There’s just you, across town, thinking he doesn’t care enough about you to stop you giving everything the two of you have up.

So his alarm had stayed on, shrilling beside his head at 7am, and he shoots right out of bed, not even putting it on snooze for four times before he gets himself up.

He makes breakfast, eggs and avocados on toast, brain food as his mom might say, and starts to think about what he’s going to say to you - making notes on his phone like it’s some dumb presentation - until he feels satisfied that there’s enough of his heart in it to actually make an impact.

He’s done letting his emotions control him.

The two of you are going to figure this out, and it’s going to work out - he’s sure of it. He has to be.

And just as he’s about to leave, Jack appears from his room, also dressed and ready to face the day, quirking his brow at the abnormal pep in his little brother’s step.

“What the hell’s got you so jumpy this early in the morning?” He asks.

“If I tell you, I don’t want to hear a lecture about it.” Luke huffs, because this is the last parade he would ever let his brother rain on, and he’s kind of worked himself up to the point of delusion. Jack just nods in response, and Luke can’t help the giddy smile that breaks out right before he says, “I gotta go see about a girl.”

Jack’s eyes widen, and Luke feels like he’s been punched in the gut when his lips quirk up, preparing himself for the blow of being laughed at by his own brother.

But what Jack says, instead, is even weirder.

“Let’s go then.”

And Luke practically stumbles over himself to get the two of them to his car, the weight of his brother’s approval pushing him further than he ever wanted to admit that it could, his entire body buzzing as he drives them over to the rental you and Ellie are staying in, and he tells Jack about his plan on the way.

He tells him how he’s gonna get you out of the house, gonna take you on a walk, somewhere, where the two of you can finally talk things out, and he’s gonna tell you how he feels. He’s gonna let you speak, gonna give you the time you need to figure things out - he’s gonna lay his heart on the line, and he’s gonna be a man and let you decide whatever it is you want to do with it.

You say you can’t get over the summer, but you don’t understand how much he regrets it, how much he loves you, how he’d never hurt you like that again. And if you turn around, and you don’t feel the same, then he can do whatever you want, but at least he’ll know he tried - at least you’ll know what you mean to him.

Jack gives him pointers, like he’s ever gonna take love advice from a guy who took like 3 years to ask his girlfriend out, but Luke just nods along with a smile on his face, too in his head with the hope that this could finally be it.

And that hope carries him all the way from one side of Jersey City to the other, airy and light, until he’s knocking on your door and waiting for you to finally open up for him - and all of it drains from him the second he sees Ellie’s teary fave on the other side. He’s too confused by the situation to notice when Jack brushes past him to comfort her, and he finds himself looking around for you again, that light, airy feeling growing heavier by the second.

“Calm down,” he hears Jack coo, “It’s alright, what happened?”

“We got into a fight,” she sniffles, “Or I don’t know, a disagreement, I guess. I was gonna give her a little room to breathe, so I went to my room, and then she left, and she’s not picking up her phone.”

Luke feels the colour drain from his face, a dizzying wash of panic flooding his system that causes his chest to swell. He reaches for his phone before he even realises what he’s doing, fingers knowing the way straight to your contact and pressing on it within seconds, the call reaching voicemail before he even lifts the device to his ear.

“It must be off,” he frowns, the swelling worsening with every second that passes. “She just left? She didn’t say where she was going?”

“She was pretty upset,” Ellie tells him, tears welling in her eyes as her face twists with guilt, “I really, uhm,” she runs a hand through her hair as she turns away from him, taking a few pacing steps to distance herself, “I really fucked things up, I think.”

“Fucked what up?” Luke asks, following by instinct to close the gap, trying to get her to look at him just to get a read on the severity of the situation. He’s witnessed a couple of your arguments with Ellie - mostly minor irritations that you come to him to talk you through, and it’s never been bad enough for you to get seriously upset over it. Not like this. And Luke has known Ellie for a long time, too - had seen all the ups and downs of her relationship with Jack before they ever got together. He’s never seen her like this, and dread pools in the pit of his stomach. “What happened?”

“I uh,” she takes in a trembling breath, staggered and shaky and doing little to make him feel any better as he hears it. “I thought I was helping. I thought she just needed a push, or something, like someone to guide her-,”

Luke can’t imagine a world where you would need guidance on anything. Headstrong and self-assured, he can’t picture what on Earth would make Ellie assume you would need her to push you.

“I swear, I thought I was doing the right thing. I wouldn’t have gotten involved, especially after summer, you know, I felt really bad, and I just wanted to try and fix it somehow, but she never tells me anything, so I didn’t realise she was kind of getting there on her own and I think I just made everything worse.”

The mention of summer makes him wince, Ellie’s words all merging together into one long, confusing blur of excuses that don’t quite make sense, but this has to be about him, somehow, he thinks - because you would have told him about anything else happening in your life, something else that might have happened in the summer.

Ellie felt bad about the whole Cole thing - that much seems obvious. Lending her efforts to him asking you out, being the catalyst to the whole thing blowing apart from the inside, out. But how could she ever possibly fix that? Especially considering he was the master of his own downfall, in the end.

“What did you do?”

When Ellie’s eyes meet his, they’re flooded with remorse, round and watery and it does little to quell the panic continuing to rise within him.

“I told her you were seeing somebody else.”

Luke feels time stop, his heart coming to a screeching halt, and all thoughts wiped from his brain until all he can hear is your voice, soft and small and vulnerable as you tell him, “I don’t want to watch you move on.”

“I just thought she needed a wake up call, or something, like if she thought that there was the potential that you were moving on she might have finally realised that holding back this whole time was doing more harm than good, but I don’t know what happened, she just shut down, after-,”

“After what?” Luke asks, although he doesn’t know why, he’s pretty sure he knows the answer to both questions he poses Ellie’s way. “When did you tell her that?”

“Before the party back in Michigan,” she gulps, “Before you left.”

Luke stumbles back a little, hands finding purchase on the back of the couch, needing something to steady him, to ground him before he spirals out of control.

“Jack told me that he’d been trying to get you to move on, that he took you out with the guys, that you were just flat out rejecting the idea of even speaking to somebody else, and I just thought-,”

“You knew about this?”

“No,” Ellie is quick to defend him, quick to take responsibility, for once, “Well, sort of, but he told me not to do it, and I didn’t tell him that I did, so he’s not to blame, here. I thought if I just said that you were moving on then she wouldn’t have believed me, so I made somebody up, but I guess you’re following some girl with the same name on instagram, and you liked a couple of her pictures, and last night she kept saying that you don’t want her anymore, that all she can think about is how much she loved you back then, but you don’t feel the same,”

I’m having a hard time moving past what happened last summer, I think

He thought you meant the Cole thing. He thought you meant you couldn’t look past his mistake.

I feel like it’s always in the back of my mind when I’m with you, like I can’t let it go.

You weren’t talking about the bad stuff.

You were talking about the rest of it.

And now all Luke can hear in his head is little snippets of conversations from the past few weeks. I want to, which he now sees as an admission of your feelings when he had asked you to let him in. Are you moving on? After he had turned you down for that art installation, wedging an insurmountable gap between the two of you while you assumed he was seeing some other girl. He’s hard work and she isn’t cut out for it, and the way you so quickly gave up when it came to Jack’s stupid outburst.

All of that had been with idea of him already having moved on.

All of that, and you still refused to do so, yourself.

Oh no.

“I was just trying to help, Luke, I swear, I just wanted to help her. She just lets things pass her all the time, for as long as I’ve known her, she gets all in her head, and she doesn’t let people in, and she was doing the same with you, and I just wanted her to take something for herself, I wanted her to win, I didn’t realise it would become this huge mess-,”

“Stop,” he huffs, because he can’t let her blame herself, not entirely - he made a mess of this, too. He’d jumped to conclusions, after the kiss. He hadn’t let you speak, hadn’t let you come to terms with what you were feeling. He’d misunderstood your intentions and jumped down your throat, and let his own hurt in the situation stomp all over yours. He hadn’t talked to you, despite all the times he had been urged to.

“Where would she go?” He asks, trying to shake himself into action. “Does she have any other friends around here, did she mention anywhere to you that she might escape to?”

“No,” Ellie whines, “She only came here for the first time in October, the only places we mentioned were lunch spots, I don’t think she ran off in tears for a bagel. The only person I could think of was you, but you’re here.”

Luke wracks his brain through the last few conversations the two of you had - and all he hears is the multiple opportunities he had to clear everything up. The multiple attempts you made to bring things back to normal - to bridge the gap he had forced between the two of you.

Movie nights, coffee shops, the game the other night, the art installation.

The art installation.

“Did she bring her laptop?”

You can’t really pinpoint where your obsession with space started.

It’s probably somewhere between laying awake at night, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars your dad had stuck to your ceiling, and a field trip to the Henry Crown Space Center - and the two memories are probably a lot more linked than you care to think about, both providing distractions when you needed them the most in life, but you’ve never experienced anything like this.

You’d found out about this exhibit on TikTok of all places, putting the you in for you page to work when you first started seeing it on your feed, saving every video that came up. Destination Cosmos originated in Amsterdam from what you could find, and you’ve wanted to go for years. It feels like fate, almost, that it would be in New York for one week only while you’re just across the river for spring break, and missing out on it would have been your biggest regret since coming out here - which considering the events you’re actively trying to escape from, is probably saying a lot.

Maybe if you’d have sold it a little better to Luke than just being an art installation, he might have come with you. Maybe if you’d done a lot of things differently, he might have come with you.

As you stand in the centre of the universe, projections of everything you’ve spent your whole life admiring only from afar, chasing something you still don’t understand, you feel smaller than you’ve ever felt in your life.

It’s overwhelming, almost, how lost you feel now.

On your own, in the middle of an exhibit you’ve been dreaming about for years, in a city you don’t really know, but are going to be moving to before you know it, with all other aspects of your life imploding in calamitous fashion around you. The way the images flash across the walls - stars, planets, nebulae, supernovae - make you feel like you barely even exist, and you hate it.

You’ve never felt so alone, so afraid of what comes next, and all you want is for someone to reach out and shake you until you don’t feel it anymore.

And when somebody actually does, when the soft but familiar mutter of your name brings you out of your reverie, and a gentle grip forms around your wrist, you gasp, yanking your hand away like the touch burns.

You have to be dreaming, you think.

There’s no way you haven’t slipped into some sort of coma, or something.

Maybe you missed a low ceiling somewhere on your way into the exhibit, hit your head and knocked yourself out.

Because there’s no other explanation for how Luke Hughes could possibly be standing before you, in front of the most beautiful backdrop of glistening constellations, other than you imagining the whole thing.

“What are you doing here?” You ask, taking in his frantic form - chest heaving with rushed breaths and his baseball cap askew, probably from where he keeps taking it off to run his hands through his hair.

“I uh-,” he pants, blinking slow as if you’re just about coming into focus. “I came to see about a girl.”

You blink back, brows pushing together as he takes another step, “What?”

“Good Will Hunting,” he clarifies, “Declarations of love, I know you hate them but I uhm-,” he frowns, cringes, even, like he’s thinking better of doing this already, and you wait with bated breath for him to string his thoughts together. “I’m doing this wrong, I think.”

“Luke-,”

“I was trying to think the whole way here of some sort of speech, like one giant combination of all the soppy, cheesy movie quotes you love so much. Y’know, like, uhh,” his bottom lip juts out as he takes a second, and all you can do is watch, “Like a megamix or something.”

“A megamix?”

“Yeah, like a little How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, a pinch of Notting Hill, just this huge shit show of the corniest garbage you’ve ever heard in your life.”

“Sounds great.” You frown, a little lost on how he went from declarations of love to corny garbage in a matter of seconds.

“Probably would be,” he nods as he takes another step, and you fight the urge to retreat, your feet staying firmly in place and your arms wrapping around yourself in some twisted protective stance. “But all I can think about is that one scene in When Harry Met Sally, y’know, when she’s all frizzy and crying on her bed, and he’s there to comfort her?”

“I don’t really remember,” you mutter, although you have a vague recollection. “I only watched it that one time and I was a little distracted.”

“I watched it 8 times.” He tells you, “Could probably talk you through the whole thing.”

“You don’t have to-,”

“So Sally’s just found out her ex is engaged,” he starts, anyway, and you don’t even have time to question why the hell he watched that movie 8 times. Once was enough to scar you for life. “And she’s like sobbing to Harry, and saying all these things about how she was just a transitional person, and she thinks something’s the matter with her, ‘cause her ex never wanted to marry her.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“She says, I’m difficult,” he mimics her voice, somewhat, a soft smile curving at his lips as he recalls the scene, “And Harry tells her, you’re challenging, and every time I watch it, I think of you.”

Ouch.

He must see the way your face drops, because he takes another step, and the distance between the two of you is so small now that you could conceivably touch without reaching - if he stopped making out like you’re a problem, that is.

“‘Cause that’s when they kiss, right?” He asks, and you nod, hesitantly, because you sort of remember it a little better, now. “That’s when he realises how deep he’s into this thing with her, and how right he was that they could never be friends.”

“I guess so,” you pout, your chest clenching at the mere mention of your friendship - the one you had denounced only a day ago, and are still very freshly mourning the loss of.

“And then I think about the other night, about what Jack said.”

You’ve already gone through this whole thing with Jack, you really don’t want to do it, again. Not here, not now, especially. “Luke-,”

“He shouldn’t have said any of that stuff to you, and he was being a world class dick, but he was sort of right,” he tells you, a crooked smile cementing itself into his features as he reaches out to tuck your hair behind your ear as it falls forward, leaving you to watch in confused silence as amusement flashes across his irises, despite the fact that it’s not remotely funny. “You are hard work.”

“Did you seriously come all the way out here and hunt me down just to tell me that?” You scoff, something within you switching as you unfold your arms and reach up to push his hand away. “That all I do is make your life hard, you don’t think I already know that?”

He grabs yours, instead, intertwining your fingers despite your resistance, and smiling even deeper. “When did I ever say I want things to be easy?” He challenges, his other hand rising to the opposite side of your face, cupping at your jaw and lifting your face until your eyes meet, “I love that you’re hard work.” And just as you scoff, just as you try to argue such a ridiculous statement, he continues. “It makes being with you and you letting me in all the more rewarding, like I earned it. I’d like to think that I did, too. I’d like to think we’ve come really far from where we started.”

You gulp down the urge to tell him you agree, still a little confused by this whole speech, where one second he’s comparing you to a sobbing emotional wreck, and the next he’s suggesting you’re sort of a nightmare. Still confused by how he found you in the first place, but it feels too late to ask, now.

“Ellie told me about Yasmin,” he says, and you swear the way your heart skips a beat is wishful thinking, your mind praying that the ground will just swallow you up. You were embarrassed enough without him knowing about it, too - that you got all in your feelings about some girl that never even existed, enough to end up ruining everything with him over what turned out to be nothing. “And Ethan told me about Michigan, about how you were upset that I didn’t tell you how I felt.”

What? You’d been upset he hadn’t told you about Yasmin, who you now know doesn’t exist, not-

Oh, Jesus Christ, you think, too embarrassed to even react. Ethan had been talking about you.

Anybody could see from a mile off that he is into somebody.

“It doesn’t even matter-,”

“Don’t do that,” he pleads, desperation flashing across his eyes, stunning you a little into submission. “Please don’t do that, not about this.”

“Luke-,”

“I love you.” He says, voice sure and steady, a little louder than he’d been speaking before but you can’t really find it in yourself to care. “I’m in love with you. I don’t think I’ll ever not be in love with you. And there’s no Yasmin, there’s no Victoria, there is nobody else and there never will be. That’s what I came all the way out here to say.”

That’s a little better than whatever the hell he was saying about a megamix, you think.

“That there’s only you.” He’s still sure, but quieter now, like a whisper that’s only meant for you to hear. “That I love you, and it matters.”

He’s giving you this heated look, like he can see every single cell of you - like he loves every single cell of you - eyes dark and intense, and you can’t look away, too entranced by whatever hold he now has over you - barely able to even form a cognitive thought, let alone voice one.

“I love that you’re weirdly nerdy about space,” he maintains a hold on your cheek, his touch soft but his presence solid, and uses his other hand to gesture around you, to the spectacle around you - to the vibrant projections of planets on walls that seem to extend light years right around of the two of you. “And that of all the places in New York you’d even want to go during your last spring break, this was the only place on your list. And despite that, somehow I’m the dorky loser out of the two of us.”

You feel your lips quirk up, still gazing up into his eyes, your own wide and watering as you watch him continue.

“I love that you never mind spending time with me, even if it’s just watching movies, or watching hockey, or eating, and you always know what food I like, even though you complain that I eat more than any human should. I love that I never feel too much for you, or too little, or too loud, or like I’m not saying enough. You call me an idiot all the time, sure, but you never make me feel like one.”

Everything around you turns into a blur, now, beyond trying to blink away your tears as they slowly start to trickle from your lower lashes, Luke’s thumb coming to swipe at your lip when one settles there, offering a soft smile that makes your heart melt in place - this warm, sticky sensation spreading between your ribs.

“And I love the way you look at me,” his voice is so soft that it makes you feel boneless, and you think if he didn’t have a hold on your face you might just dissolve into nothing, “Sometimes I feel like you’re the only person who actually sees me.”

You love that about him too, you think - the first tangible thought you can muster as he does his best to turn you into complete mush in the palm of his hand.

“I love that you make the 600 miles between here and Michigan feel like nothing. Like I miss you all the time, but you always make it seem like you’re here, even when you’re not, as stupid as that sounds.”

It doesn’t sound stupid. Not at all. It’s crazy how much comfort Luke has given to you just through a phone screen for the past 5 months, like he’s been with you the whole time, all those worries about your relationship being too weak to withstand the distance that you had at the end of summer dissipating almost instantaneously.

“And I’m sorry I keep giving you reasons to think otherwise, but I’ve never felt this way about anybody before. I love you so much it makes me crazy, and it makes me do stupid things, and say shit that I don’t mean, but I mean this, I need you to know that, as insane as this whole thing is I’ll say it all again and louder if you need me to.”

Your heart is pounding against your ribcage, the trembling breaths you take to try and alleviate it providing very little relief, and Luke watches you with bated breath of his own, wincing a little in anticipation as he waits out some sort of response.

You reach up to the hand that rests on your cheek and peel it from your skin, fingers clasped around his palm and tugging it away carefully until you can bring it down. You step just a little closer - close enough that you’re looking up, close enough that you can place his hand against the rampant thudding in your chest, and hope that the proximity of him now helps calm you - helps build the kind of courage it takes to stand in front of the person you love and lay your heart on the line, like he just had.

“I love that your version of a declaration of love starts out as you calling it a corny garbage megamix,” you tell him, hesitant but hopeful, like you’re testing the waters, watching as his eyes start to well up too and relief wracks through him in a visible shudder. “And that you watch some movie 8 times on your own because it makes you think of me.”

He huffs out a breathy chuckle, the smile that takes over his face is unwavering and it spurs something courageous within you, fingers intertwining with those on his free hand and smiling straight back.

“I love that every text you send me is a triple text,” you snort, “Like you couldn’t possibly just type out a paragraph, you have to send me every single thought as it passes through your brain. Like I’m the first person you want to come to about anything and everything, it makes me feel like you value me, it makes me feel good. And I love that you make everything lighter, and easier, and you never let me sit in my feelings, or let anybody make me feel bad.” You think of all the times he has defended you - to Jack, to yourself, even. He’d been so sure of you getting into your graduate program, more than you had ever been, and the stress around the whole thing seemed to dissolve whenever he was around. He’d backed you up when Jack went on his weird tirade at movie night, and has apparently been doing so the whole time Jack’s tried to sabotage things between the two of you. “Even if you do agree that I’m hard work.” Your lips twist in amusement as he dips his head a little, but you understand what he meant - where he was going with what he said.

“I love that you make me second guess myself,” you tighten your hold on him a little, “And you make me think differently, think better. I don’t feel afraid or unsure when I’m with you, not about the real stuff.”

He tightens his hold, too, readjusts his fingers where you’re clutching at them until he can move your hands to your sides, pulling back until you’re touching, almost, chest to chest.

“And if you asked me a year ago if I ever thought I’d want the boy I love to hunt me down in a dorky space exhibit, I’d have probably curled up and died from embarrassment at the thought,” you snort, “But I wanted to be here because it reminded me of you. Because you call me a dork, but you never make me feel like one, either. And because I used to want to feel like nothing when I thought of this stuff, but now I know that I don’t want to feel small, or insignificant, or unimportant,” you’re so close now that your voice is like a soft hum, stretching up on your toes and untangling your fingers from his for them to find purchase on his chest, helping you balance better. “I want to feel like I matter, and you’re the one who taught me that I do.”

You break eye contact only to watch the slow roll of a tear down his cheek, one he doesn’t even bother to wipe away, not afraid to show just how much it means to him for you to say all of that stuff back.

“I love you, Luke,” you almost-whisper, but the lack of volume does little to lessen the meaning behind the words, and your eyes drift back up to meet his, “I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you.”

“Can’t believe you just outdid my own corny declaration of love.”

“Consider yourself megamixed.”

“Shut up,” he laughs, the sound rumbling all the way from the depths of his chest and into your lips as he presses his own into them, fingers curling around the back of your waist as he pulls your body flush to his, and you think you see the swirling stars even when you close your eyes, a bright burst of colour consuming your brain until it’s all that you feel.

You kiss him without a single care in the world, forgetting that you’re in the middle of an exhibit, and that people might see, or stare, or think that you’re crazy. You love him, and you’re done hiding just how much. He kisses you back the same, with intensity and intention, like he’s trying to cement all those wonderful words he said to you before into the core of your being.

When you pull apart, slow enough that you barely separate at all, you watch as he smiles, swollen lips curved all the way up, the slight flash of teeth, cheeks balling up and his eyes creasing in the corners, and you feel your face mirror his, your noses pressed together and your hands still clutching at the shirt on his chest.

“Y’know,” he breathes, a slight rasp to his voice, “I was kind of right about one other thing.”

“What’s that?” You ask, backing away to give the two of you the slightest bit of breathing room.

“This feels like the perfect place to take somebody on a date.”

Your smile deepens, somehow, big enough to ache a little, and when you rush and stumble out of sheer instinct to kiss him again, his hands are primed to catch you.

And they don’t let you go for the whole 90 minutes you spend exploring the exhibit, where the two of you learn all new things about the universe and everything beyond it, and for the first time in a long time - the first time maybe ever - you let yourself believe that everything is going to be okay from here on out.

School might be hard, but you’ve worked almost the whole way through it with an end in sight, and a you’re building a life for yourself that you’ve never been so excited to live.

Your parents might be shitty, and they might not show up when you need them, but you have other people who do.

You have Ellie, who, for all her faults, has always been there to fall back on. She lets you spend the summer with her, with all intentions to have you stay the whole time, even if the two of you ended up elsewhere, and lets you impose on the holidays - shares all her traditions and never makes you feel like you don’t belong there. She cares so much about you that she goes a little crazy, but you think you’d rather have it that way than not at all.

You have Ethan, and you have Quinn, who both refused to fall for everybody else’s misconceptions of you - who encouraged Luke to persist when you gave him a million reasons to give up, and who were both in your corner without you ever even knowing about it.

And you maybe even slightly have Jack, who was just trying to look out for his little brother, like he’s so used to doing in all other aspects of Luke’s life, and who was willing to admit he was wrong despite how much you know it pained him to do so.

Everything in your life leading up to now might have jaded you a little, might have skewed your perception on what it meant to be loved, but you have Luke, now, to clear it all up.

Luke, who is dorky, and unserious, and loud, and uncoordinated, and acts out of impulse sometimes in ways that hurt you, but cares about you too much to ever leave you behind. And that, yes, he’s someone who doesn’t leave, but he’s also someone who comes back - who keeps showing up for you despite you giving him a million reasons not to.

Luke, who persistently slips in through the cracks of your long-caged heart and cements himself a place so deep in there that you’ll never get him out - you won’t ever want to.

Luke, who you love, and who loves you back, and who tracks you down in the next state over with a bunch of ridiculous movie references and makes you regret ever telling him you were freaked out by declarations like that, because you’ve wasted far too much time now trying to convince yourself you were a cynic.

Luke, who told you all the way back at the beginning of summer exactly who he was - who he was always going to be, and you were just too stubborn to listen.

Luke, who is, and always has been, inevitable.

When spring turns to summer, you find yourself back where it all started, your eyes fluttering open at the familiar sound of tyres rolling across the gravel driveway of the lake house, sun beaming harsh enough through the windshield that you have to squint against it, and your heart hammering in your chest.

It’s been a few weeks since you last saw Luke - when he’d surprised you at your graduation, and had helped you box up all your stuff back at the sorority, and the anticipation of a promise he’d muttered into your lips on your last night together has been the only thing keeping you going while you were back in Chicago with your mom.

The whole summer, he had promised when he invited you to stay, and I’ll even be your chauffeur again.

The thought of coming back to the place you fell in love, with the boy you fell in love with, and getting to experience the beauty of it all through eyes that finally let you truly see it makes your heart do little somersaults in your chest - a feeling that’s only exacerbated when you climb out the car to see Luke sat on the stairs leading up to the front door, waiting for you.

You feel the weight of his crooked grin even from a short distance away, a warm, gooey sensation spreading throughout your entire body as you run straight for him, ditching Ellie to get out the car on her own time and leaping into his arms.

You press frantic kisses wherever you can reach, and he holds you up so that you don’t fall, your legs wrapping securely around him as his glorious laughter rings out into the air around the two of you - your lips against his cheek, and his jaw, and his forehead, his nose, his eyes, even, and finally his mouth, where he matches your enthusiasm like he’s been waiting the whole time to do so.

“You missed me, I take it.” He chuckles, lips moving against yours as the words fall between your lips, and you hum back, kissing him again as a response.

“Get a room, that’s disgusting,” you hear the bitter scoff of Jack as he brushes past the two of you and heads straight for Ellie.

“Don’t listen to him,” Luke mumbles as he carefully lowers you back down until your feet touch the ground, “I got us a room, I even put some things in there for you, do you wanna go see?“

“What about my bags?”

“Your bags can wait,” he smiles coyly as he grabs at your hand - tugging until you’re following him into the house, and up the stairs, a layout you could still follow with your eyes closed. The familiarity of it all makes your heart ache in the best way, a stupid, lovestruck grin taking over your face as he guides you towards his room - your room too, now, apparently, and holds the door open for you to walk in.

It’s pretty much exactly how you remember it, the big window looking out over the pool at the back, the lake in the distance, and a soft breeze causing the curtains to flutter gently.

There’s the bed in the centre of the room, where you slept for the first time beside him, the same navy sheets, and you bet they still have the same soft linen smell to them, the same detergent kept in the laundry room downstairs. There’s the dresser to the side, where he once kissed you so stupid you never thought you’d think straight again. And the en-suite, where you first taken things a little too far with him, not that you regret any of that now.

The summer you’d spent so long trying to squash down is here now, larger than life, impossible to suppress or forget. And the boy beside you is the same.

You can’t fight the smile as you turn to him, his eyes glinting back at you the same way they have ever since that day in the exhibit, a light in them that you don’t think will ever go out.

“What did you put in here for me?”

“Nothing, it was just an excuse to get you up here,” he chuckles, advancing on you before you even realise he’s doing it, hands sneaking around your waist until you’re pressed flush to his body, and he’s dipping his head to kiss you again. “But if you want to go shopping later, we can get you some stuff. Make it feel more like your room, too, add a feminine touch, or whatever.”

“A feminine touch?” You scoff, grabbing at his t-shirt and turning the two of you until you can push him down onto the bed. “You gonna let me paint the walls with rainbow sparkles?”

He scoffs, thighs tensing as you lower yourself onto them, straddling his hips and grabbing at his hands so that they can’t hold onto you like he wants. “If that’s what makes you happy,” he smiles up at you, dorky and adorable.

“I’m happy,” you tell him, leaning in and kissing him slow, and sweet, unable to help when your lips curve up where they are pressed to his. “I will put one feminine thing on the list, although I don’t know anywhere around here that might sell them.”

“What’s that?”

“Pink fuzzy handcuffs,” you smirk, leveraging your hold on his wrists to lift his arms and press them back down into the bed, heart racing at the way he looks up at you - like you’re the entire universe. “So I can tie my pretty boyfriend to our bed.”

And then you lean forward again, pressing the curve of your lips back to his, revelling in the way his laughter ripples out into your mouth - swallowing it down until it swirls like petals in the depths of your stomach, cinematically swept up by a soft breeze, dancing and falling in slow motion.

“You’re gonna make me regret this, aren’t you?”

“Definitely.”

A/N: guys I could hardly warn you above for the cheesiest ending you'll ever read in your life without spoiling the whole thing, but if a guy professed his love to me at destination cosmos, I'd melt into a pile of water slime or something. this is honestly so wild, and probably repetitive, and might feel rushed and insane towards the end, but I feel like it needs to be, because these two are insane.

I hope you guys are happy with this lmao, I've had a lot of fun torturing you the past few months!! a lot of LIH callbacks in this final chapter, if you can pick them out ily, it really feels full circle, and like the right ending for both of them, so I'm praying you guys enjoy it as much as the rest!!

Ending this series is bittersweet, because I truly do adore these two idiots, they have a place in my heart forever, and if they have a place in yours, I would welcome any asks/conversations about them in the future!!

Again, thank you. I don't really know how to end this without being a blubbering mess at how much I love you all for getting me here!!! Being able to finish something like this, and be genuinely proud of it, isn't something I've ever done before I came on this site, and your support of my writing, whether it be LIH or OYS or anything else, brings me so much happiness I can't even describe it.

#luke hughes #luke hughes x reader #luke hughes imagine #luke hughes fanfiction #nhl imagine #nhl fanfiction #luke hughes fluff #luke hughes angst #*writing #shoutout to megs dolls they’re gonna need a good 30 minutes of privacy #I dread to think what sort of shapes they’ve been smushed into

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honeybuckin10 · 8 months ago

Text

Hospital Beds - a Hawks x fem!doctor!reader One Shot

Summary: Hawks heals more than his wings after the Paranormal Liberation War attacks [wc: 4.6k].

Warnings: mentions of mental health struggles, mentions of character death, descriptions of wounds, swearing, angst, fluff, comfort, potentially unpopular Hawks opinions. characters slightly aged up.

a/n: started writing thinking this was gonna be cute and flirty, ended up taking a kind of serious turn (still otherwise cute and flirty with happy-ish ending). might do a spicier part 2 at some point. as always, don’t be a ghost reader pls and ty <3

Hawks’ eyes were focused on the window, lost in thought. There was a crowd gathered outside Central Hospital. From the muffled voices through the glass, it didn’t sound like they were there for support. He felt the span of his back against the hospital bed, a sensation both foreign and grounding. The space where his wings once were stung slightly at the contact, despite the heavy nerve blockers he assumed were administered earlier.

“Back again so soon?”

You broke him from his trance as you shut the door behind you. Your eyes immediately scanned his monitors, a pleasant smile never leaving your face.

“At some point, we really do have to get your heart rate checked out.”

He didn’t actually have a high heart rate. But the machines he was hooked up to always went crazy whenever he got sight of you. He was too embarrassed to say anything, though he wondered if you noticed why his charts never reflected any underlying conditions when his vitals were checked by others.

“You’re not a very good patient, you know. Though now that you can’t talk, perhaps you’ll actually listen.”

He tried to respond, but quickly remembered he couldn’t open his jaw, not very much at least. No sound came out of the small gap between his lips.

You had treated Hawks on several occasions now, usually after incidents involving fire. Most were minor. He’d come in and joke that he’d done it on purpose to see you. You’d roll your eyes, every now and then you’d even dignify him with an actual response: ‘nice try’. But his injuries now were unlike anything you’d ever seen. You knew it was bad when he didn’t try flirting with you. Then again, it’s not like he could even if he wanted to.

Your tone was light and breezy, but the furrow in your brow betrayed your façade.

“I’m only joking, of course. But in all seriousness, your trachea was severely damaged from the smoke inhalation during the attack. Fortunately you narrowly avoided respiratory failure, but you won’t be able to use your voice for a couple of weeks. Lucky for you, technology has advanced enough that you won’t have to carry around a notepad everywhere you go. We recommend using the voice app on your phone.”

You handed him his cell phone, when Hawks noticed a plastic bag of personal items behind you with unknown origins. You followed his eyes to see what was distracting him.

“Oh yes, a young man named Tokoyami brought you a change of clothes and some other things you may need while you were out. Said he was your mentee.” You paused, searching for some kind of reaction. You thought it might brighten his spirits. His eyes widened somewhat, but there was still no smile. “It’s clear you’ve had a big impact on him.”

Tokoyami. His mentee. A child. More memories of the battlefield came flooding back. Twice. Dabi. He knew you hoped that bringing up his pupil would put him at ease. But Hawks was suddenly overwhelmed with guilt that he had put the student is such a dangerous situation.

“I also spoke with Dermatology. They informed me that sixteen percent of your body is covered with third degree burns, another twenty percent second degree, and twenty-two percent first degree. Given the severity and location of the burns, you’re also at risk of developing contractures that could compress your airways in the future so we’ll need to keep a close eye on that. Once your wraps come off, they’ve prescribed you a topical treatment that you’re to use three times a day until everything is healed. You’ll also be started on an oral antibiotic immediately, which you’re to take for three weeks.”

He attempted to use his new voice.

“What about wings?” You took a deep breath. Not good.

“I’m getting to that. I’m going to adjust your bed a little first. Are you able to lean forward?” He nodded as the bed rose up and the angle of his back moved more upright. He winced, unable to hide his discomfort but did as you instructed.

“I’m sorry, I know this is painful for you. I’m going as quickly as I can.” You talked through how you were examining his dressings, that his biggest risk at the moment was that the wounds would get infected, and that the dressings would need to be changed again before the end of the day.

“I think they will grow back. But it will be painful and it will be slow. You must be patient during this time and you’ll have to stay out of the field for a while. I’d recommend taking a well-deserved break until they’re fully healed.”

Bedrest sounded like Hawks’ personal hell. He only nodded his head. He didn’t have the energy to protest.

“You’ll also need to go through a psychiatric evaluation before rejoining field.”

Hawks let out a muffled groan. You let out an exasperated laugh.

“Really, you didn’t make a peep when I was examining your open wounds but you draw the line at psych eval?” You watched as he typed out his next thought.

“Waste of time.” Your eyes softened.

“First of all, this is standard procedure. Endeavor, Mirko, Eraserhead, all those UA students are going to have to get one too. Second, even if it wasn’t, what you – what you’ve all gone through would cause even the strongest soldier some kind of stress. We want to make sure that you’re all in the right headspace so that you’re the most prepared you can be going against whatever this enemy is. You have to take care of yourself first before you can take care of others.”

Hawks sat there a moment in silence, absorbing your words. Wondering whether you would be so sympathetic and kind if you knew the truth. He began typing.

“I killed someone,” the unnatural voice said. It came from him, but it didn’t feel like him. It echoed against the walls of the sterile room, void of emotion.

You pulled a chair next to his bed so that you were slightly below his eye level.

“I heard. That must be a lot to carry.”

“You hate me.”

“I don’t.”

“I’m a bad person.”

“You’re not.” You paused, choosing your next words carefully for the fragile hero. “I don’t know what your world is like. I wasn’t there so I don’t know exactly what happened. But I do know that we are both in the business of saving lives, albeit in different ways. My guess is you made a split second decision on what was in the mission’s best interest to save the lives of your colleagues and ultimately the lives of civilians. Nobody has a crystal ball to know whether that was the best or right choice. But it was a life or death situation, and you did the best you could in the moment. It’s natural to feel remorse and guilt, but you can’t let it debilitate you for the rest of your life either.”

What right did you have to comment on such things?

“You’ve never killed someone,” he countered.

“I have. In my OR. There are some people that can’t be saved, no matter how hard you try.”

“I think he was a good person,” he typed, wondering if that negated everything you just said.

“Good people do bad things all the time. It doesn’t make them bad people.” He sighed, swallowing the searing pain as harsh air passed through his lungs. You watched closely as the hero studied his bandaged hands, refusing to make eye contact. “For now, the best thing you can do for yourself and Japan is rest. We need you.”

He sat with your words. It didn’t dawn on him until long after you left the room that you weren’t just talking about Twice.

As you warned, the days passed at a glacial pace. He didn’t enjoy how quickly he acclimated to talking through his phone. He had growing pains from the nubs of his wings that began to poke through his skin. Each day brought a revolving door of doctors and healers and other specialists, by whom he was constantly poked and prodded and observed. Hawks hated every minute of it. Almost every minute.

You came in daily to monitor the progress of his wings. It was the most painful part of his recovery. But you entered his room with a smile and sunny disposition, like you weren’t about to inflict torture on him for thirty minutes. The air hurt his exposed back when you removed the old bandages. It stung when you applied antiseptic to cleanse the area. It felt like he was going to pass out when you ran your gloved fingers along the growth that was coming in. He felt all the more pathetic laying on his stomach as you did your work.

But you did your best to distract him with bad jokes and hospital gossip. Not that you had to put in that much effort. Your presence was distracting enough.

On the fourth day after the battle, you finally got a chuckle out him. What’s black and white and black and white and black and white? He shrugged as you applied ointment. A penguin falling down the stairs. You quickly realized that your methods may have been faulty as his laugh devolved into a coughing fit, his lungs still weak.

“Shit, I’m sorry. Try to remember your box breathing.”

He held his breath at the top of his inhale. Four, three, two, one. Exhale. Four, three, two, one. He repeated this for a minute before his breath finally returned to normal. He gave a thumbs up. I’m ok.

Relief washed over your face. “I’m sorry I made you choke on air. But glad to see you in better spirits today.” He began typing.

“I’m always in good spirits when you’re around.” You bit back a smile no one could see as you started redressing the incoming wings.

“Ah, there he is. Yeah, you’re definitely starting to feel better.”

“Can’t you tell? I’m the pinnacle of health.” The gallows humor was hard to miss despite the monotone robotic voice, the statement in stark contrast to his fully bandaged and hospitalized body.

“You will be, soon enough.” You finished applying new bandages. “That’s it for me today, unless there’s anything else you want to share.”

“Capricorn. 27. Single –“

“Yeah, yeah, very funny.” You pulled off your disposable gloves, turning to hide the blush creeping up your neck. “I already knew that from your chart. Nice try,” you teased.

“Didn’t know you were stalking me.”

“Goodbye Hawks, I’ll see you tomorrow.” You knew your faux sternness was hardly believable, as you caught him wink before you closed the door.

Two days later you bumped into Hawks and Best Jeanist in the hallway. You broke into a wide grin when you noticed the two heroes, pleasantly surprised to see just how much progress your patient had made in such a short time.

“Good morning gentlemen.”

“Good morning Dr. y/l/n,” Best Jeanist said with a small bow. Hawks was visibly confused about his formality.

“Please, there’s no need for that. It’s just good to see you back in the land of the living.” Best Jeanist helped fill in the gaps for his perplexed cohort.

“Hawks, Dr. y/l/n was part of the team who developed the drugs to put me in a temporary death-like state to convince Dabi that you’d killed me. We can thank her for setting us up for success to get you undercover.” Hawks knew he missed out on a lot during his covert mission, but had no idea how many parties were involved outside the ordinary network of hero agencies and the Commission. You blushed at the praise.

“It was nothing, really. You guys are the ones doing all the hard work.”

“Truly, we are in your debt,” Best Jeanist piled on. You weren’t used to so much flattery and you had a job to do so you tried to end the conversation.

“Anyways, I have to get to my next patient. Jeanist, keep an eye on your partner. It’s good for him to walk around a little bit but make sure he doesn’t overdo it.”

“I won’t let him out of my sight.” He gave another bow.

“I’m right here,” Hawks typed, unamused by the turn of the exchange.

“I’ll see you in a few hours, Hawks,” you yelled over your shoulder before disappearing down the next corridor.

The session later that day was nothing out of the ordinary. The nubs sprouting from his back had formed into tiny but well-defined wings and he was able to sit up during exams as opposed to lying face down on the hospital bed. All signs of positive progress.

He watched wistfully as you documented your observations, swaying his legs off the side of the bed like a child.

“They’re coming in quite nicely, I’m really happy with where you’re at.”

“Great what do I need to sign to get out of here?”

“Ahhh not so fast. You have to stay at least another two days and even once you’re discharged, you most certainly are not ready to return to active duty.” He pouted underneath his respirator mask.

“You’re no fun.”

“Sorry, just doing my job.” You proceeded to check his other vitals before heading out. First you took off his mask to check his lymph nodes, pressing your fingers firmly against the outer side of his jaw, moving down his neck. He was acutely aware of the lone thin layer of latex that separated you. He couldn’t stop the warmth that crept up his face, thankful that most of it was still covered. His flushed cheeks may have been under wraps, but he couldn’t hide his quickened pulse from you. You put on your stethoscope and instructed him to breathe deeply a few times, the cold metal circle moving from his upper back, to lower back, to his chest.

Your brow furrowed in confusion. “Your lungs are sounding better but your heart’s beating like crazy.”

He feigned surprise, which was much easier when he didn’t have to control his own voice. “Really? That’s odd, no one else’s said anything.”

You pulled up his chart again to check the inputs of all the other practitioners who’ve treated the hero since his arrival at Central Hospital. All values normal.

“On a scale from one to ten, how much pain are you in at this point?”

“Two or three.”

“Are you feeling nervous about anything?” He chewed his lower lip trying to think of a way to get out of this, knowing that if he said no you would run more tests which would be unnecessary and prolong his stay.

“Yes,” he lied. Kind of. He actually was a little nervous, though definitely not for the reason you likely thought. You brought your chair next to his bed again.

“Do you want to talk about it?” A loaded question.

“No.” The good thing about talking through his phone and the mask was that he could get away with saying less. Sympathetic people tended to not ask follow up questions.

“Okay. Well, you know I’m always here if you ever want to talk.” You spoke slowly, your reassuring voice laced with uncertainty. It was difficult to get a read on him when you couldn’t hear the tone of his voice or see his face. “Do you have any questions?” He nodded.

“Will you go on a date with me?” You almost choked on your own saliva. You blushed, but forced yourself to remain stoic.

“I’m very flattered, but there are strict protocols against physician-patient relationships.” Your stern message was undercut by your stammering, high pitched squeak.

“What if I promise to never get hurt again?” You tried not to smile, knowing it would only egg him on. You were failing.

“You shouldn’t be making promises you can’t keep.”

“What if I find a different doc?”

“You’ve gotten awfully good at talking through your phone,” you muttered under your breath.

“Can’t hear you.” Despite his mostly covered face, you could tell from the crinkle around his eyes that he was enjoying every moment of this interrogation.

“I-I’d have to take it up with the Board of Ethics.”

“That’s not a no.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Can I say one more thing?” You sighed, bracing yourself for whatever nonsense he was about to spew.

“I’d rather you didn’t but legally I think I have to say yes.” You watched as his thumbs frantically moved over the keyboard.

“Thank you for taking care of Best Jeanist. This operation wouldn’t’ve gotten so far without him or you.”

“Oh.” Your felt your heartbeat in your throat. “Again, just doing my job. Glad I could help.” You fiddled with some papers. “Let’s try this one more time. Do you have any other questions… about your health.”

Hawks shook his head, looking exceptionally pleased with himself. Despite the fact that you wanted to scold him for the bizarre interaction, you were reassured by his pleasant disposition, one you hadn’t seen since he arrived.

“Good. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Tomorrow rolled around but you entered an empty sterile room, bed ready for a new patient. After a few seconds your confusion passed and you saw red.

You stormed down the hall in search for any hospital staff, until a poor resident had the unfortunate luck of being in your path.

“Where the hell is my patient?”

“I-I’m sorry?”

“Room 3409. Yesterday my patient was there and today the room is empty. He wasn’t ready to be discharged so where is he?”

“I-I-I don’t know ma’am, I’m sorry.”

“Dr. y/l/n, this is a hospital, not wrestlemania if you could keep it down please. And stop traumatizing the junior residents.” Hawks’ pulmonologist emerged from his office and tried to placate you. You glowered at the first young doctor as he silently excused himself from the conversation that was definitely beyond his paygrade.

“Please tell me he got moved to a different wing.”

“I’m afraid not.” He spoke again before you could let out another outburst. “I warned him of the risks of a premature discharge, to which he insisted he was feeling fine and that those were risks he was willing to take. I had him fill out some paper work and a consent form and he left this morning.” Your nostrils flared as you silently seethed.

“I’m gonna kill him.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that so I don’t have to report you. Oh, and one more thing…” The doctor took a deep breath before proceeding, worried he may end up the subject of your wrath. “This is probably terrible timing, but – he requested to take you off his care team,” your eyes widened “…and should he be re-hospitalized that you not be involved.”

“WHAT?” You continued mumbling a string of profanities under your breath. The doctor continued slowly and calmly.

“He made it very clear it had nothing to do with the quality of care he received from you. But he uh, mentioned something about a potential conflict of interest.” He took a step back as you burned an imaginary hole through his head with your retinas. “I cannot emphasize enough how much I do not want to know any more information about this.”

“There is no more information about it because it doesn’t exist!” You wanted to scream. “Fuck him. Fuck you. Fuck this hospital. I’msosorryItakethoselasttwoback.” You stomped your foot down like a petulant child before storming off. “FUCK!”

By the next day you had cooled off, that is, until you saw Hawks loitering outside Endeavor’s room as you were making your rounds.

“YOU!” you boomed. Hawks’ excitement to see you was quickly replaced with fear as you approached and you were close enough that he could see the rage steaming off you.

“Hey doc,” he said sheepishly.

“Don’t you ‘hey doc’ me.” You were very close to his face. He was sure he would’ve felt your breath if he didn’t have the stupid respirator mask on. For a split second he thought about taking it off but realized that would only further enrage you. “What the hell were you thinking?”

He began typing but you swatted his hand before he could answer. “Ow.”

“And you –“ Best Jeanist would be the next recipient of your verbal lashings. “You said you would keep an eye on him. Liar.”

Hawks had never seen his colleague scared before, but there was a first for everything.

“He just wanted to come for a ride-along, I promise he stayed in the car the whole time!”

“I have never been more disappointed,” you said in a low voice. Best Jeanists bowed.

“I am very ashamed and deeply regret my actions. I am sorry.” That seemed to pacify you momentarily. You returned your wrath to Hawks.

“I told you you’re not ready to return to the field. And now I hear you’re refusing to receive treatment from me? I cannot explain to you how embarrassed and insulted I am.” You allowed him time to type this time as Best Jeanist stood there as witness, desperately wishing for the floor to open below and swallow him whole.

“You’re right. I’m not ready. But this enemy is moving too quickly, time is of the essence. I’m in good enough shape that I can help off the field. I’m sorry I went against your professional judgement.” You continued to glare at him with pursed lips.

“And?”

“And I was being proactive. I’m taking you on that date.” Your face flushed immediately while the avian hero somehow remained shameless. You did your best to maintain your composure.

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s a promise.” You crossed your arms defensively.

“After a stunt like this, I wouldn’t be so sure. Plus, since you’ve already taken it upon yourself to be discharged I’m not sure why you’re even here.”

“Now that we know about the Todoroki family connection to Dabi, we need to gather intel. Also need to consolidate info from those at the Jaku Hospital attack. Off-field work, if you will.” Your eyes narrowed, only to be met with undeterred playful golden irises.

“Fine, I’ll allow it. But I feel the need to make it known that I’m not happy about it.” The injured hero smiled again.

“Thanks, doc.”

“Again, our sincerest apologies for the mishap.” Best Jeanist did his best to make up for his companion’s clear lack of repentance.

You only gave the heroes a parting glare as you walked away.

The rest of the day passed, otherwise uneventful but long and exhausting. You kept a professional and pleasant face for the benefit of your patients, but it was getting hard to maintain after all you’d seen in the last seven days since the attacks. Yes, there were cases of miraculous recoveries in the face of overwhelming trauma. But far more frequent were lives that were forever altered by all that had transpired, not just for patients themselves but all the other souls connected to those individuals. The hospital was at capacity, and each bed represented not just one person but a web of lives that now had to face a new crippling reality. If you thought about it too much you could cry – which you did, in the nearest break room or supply closet if had even just two minutes between appointments. Thus, your favorite part of the day became doing paperwork in your office at the end of your shift. It was methodical and soothing, and allowed you to disassociate.

It was at that moment when you were enjoying your oasis that an intern rushed into your office, disturbing your peace.

“There’s an emergency on the top floor, you need to come quick.” You immediately got up and followed her down the hall and up the elevator, asking clarifying questions about the situation.

But when you entered the room in question, all you saw was a picnic blanket on the hospital bed, two champagne flutes, a bottle, and the number two hero. The intern shrank in the doorway.

“I’m really sorry, he said he would send me a bunch of merch if I could get you here.”

“You’ve got to be joking.” You rubbed your temples, hoping it would transport you to another dimension where you never went to medical school and thus would not be here. “You are not to accept a single thing from him, do you understand?” The intern nodded aggressively. “Now go, I’m sure you have better places to be, ideally with a patient who actually needs help.” The intern scurried away without another word.

“And you,” now turning to Hawks. “Bribing medical professionals? Super illegal.”

“Sorry.” His mischievous eyes said otherwise, clearly undeterred by your scolding. You scoffed.

“No you’re not.” He shrugged. You took a closer look at the set up. “Seems kinda wasteful, doesn’t it? You can’t even drink.”

He turned the bottle to show the label. Sparkling nonalcoholic cider. The corners of your lips tugged upwards, threatening to betray your steely exterior.

Any semblance of a smile quickly vanished, however, when he removed his respirator mask.

“What are you –“ He spoke before you could protest or before he lost his nerves.

“I’m going to be gone for a really long time after today. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Or if I’ll be back.” He cautiously grabbed your hands. “Regardless of which it is, I really want to make sure I don’t break any promises.”

You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding in when he paused. You suddenly found it hard to keep eye contact.

“This is a hospital, not the Make A Wish Foundation.” Despite your icy response, you made no effort to pull your hands away from him. He gently rolled his thumb over your knuckles, trying to memorize every ridge and crease.

Most of his face was still covered in bandages, but you liked that you could now see how his lips curved into a lopsided smirk, punctuated by laugh lines that formed around the corners of his mouth. You liked knowing that you were responsible for it. Your mind concocted imaginary circumstances of other things you could do to get him to make the same perfect expression. Your eyes lifted to meet his when you were done daydreaming.

“I thought they were one in the same.” He was insufferable. His arms fell to his sides when you separated yourself from him. For a moment he almost looked like the defeated shell of himself that was in your care a week ago. But it was quickly washed with relief when he saw you grab the bottle.

“You are the worst patient I’ve ever had.” A satisfying *pop* echoed in the room. He knew your words were hallow, as your acquiescence was rewarded with the hero’s bright eyes and heartfelt smile that made your heart beat in time with the little bubbles that evaporated around you. You handed him a glass of cider, his fingers ghosting over yours as he took the flute from you that sent a shiver down your spine.

“Then it’s a good thing I’m not your patient anymore.”

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giuseppe-yuki · 9 months ago

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feathers

alex albon x cockatiel shapeshifter! reader

w.c.: 1.2k

warnings: one suggestive comment

part of my shapeshifting!reader series

summary: you annoy alex; ft. james vowles

picture credits from pinterest :)

the parc ferme was packed with people as you fluttered around alex’s head, feathers swaying in the wind. he wasn’t hard to follow, considering his tall 6’1 figure and unmistakable forest green aa23 hoodie. the crowds parted like moses and the red sea as he crossed, recognizing him as 1 of the 20 drivers on the grid. from your birds-eye view, you were pretty sure you saw zak efron five meters away from you next to the red bull garage and scotty james hovering around daniel’s blue vcarb next door.

nobody batted an eye at your presence- they all assumed you were just one of the many albon pets.

chittering, you land on alex’s shoulder and give him a few hard pecks with your beak, ripping out a few strands of his bleached hair. you giggle internally- he was so easy to annoy when you were in cockatiel form.

“hey!” he protests, stopping in his tracks front of the aston martin garage. he raises his hand, about to forcefully push you off his shoulder for being mean. before alex is able to, he spots two young fans, sporting fernando alonso caps, looking at him. not wanting to be labeled as “alex albon the bird assaulter,” he slowly lowers his hand, and instead converts it to an awkward wave. to avoid another awkward situation, he takes off running towards his original destination, the williams garage, but not before shooting a glare at you.

when you arrive at the williams garage, you find logan standing in front as well. alex waves his hand in greeting and you chirp in a greeting.

“took you long enough,” logan quips, smiling. “james called for you a while ago!”

“well, i would have gotten here quicker if this cockatiel would stop being irritating!” alex says, gesturing towards you. turning his head towards you, he places a kiss on top of your feathery little head. “you’re kinda lucky that i love you, or else i would probably have donated you to the zoo!” he jokes.

for the second time that evening, you give peck his head, hard.

logan laughs at the interaction in front of him. “if you’d like, i know a hawk that can act as ‘animal control’ for you! she’s back at home in miami right now, though.”

the gall of this man! you know logan is joking, but still, you hop off of alex’s shoulder and purposely fly at logan’s face, flapping your feathers in the direction of his eyes.

“okay, okay, okay,” logan laughs, trying to cover his face, “tell your girlfriend to stop attacking me or else i’m sending my girlfriend after her when you guys come to the states!”

ten minutes later, when you enter the air-conditioned williams motorhome, you are dressed in a flowy white pants and a williams blue silk halter top. you loop your arm through alex’s as he asks his race strategist the whereabouts of his team principal.

when he finishes with his conversation, he leads you towards his driver’s room

“i thought you came here to meet james,” you question, looking up at alex.

“yeah, i did,” he responds, “but apparently he had to have a quick meeting with the engineers and will find me later, so i guess we have a little time to rest in my driver’s room before the race.” a flashes a devilish smile and little wink at you.

a flash of shock runs across your face, and you shoot him a dirty glare. “we are NOT doing that in your drivers room.”

“what do you mean?” he replies innocently, “ when i said rest, i meant that we could maybe chill on the couch and watch a little bit of high school musical- i saw you looking at zac efron in parc ferme earlier.”

you groan exasperatedly, but follow him into the small room.

when you first started dating alex, he was always ever the gentleman, complimenting you and whispering sweet things into your ear when you were with him. you trusted him with all your heart, and instead of freaking out when you told him that you could shapeshift into a cockatiel, he immediately started researching info about cockatiels and began carrying sunflower seeds around for you. as time passed, your relationship evolved into a loop of you bullying alex in bird form and him teasing you nonstop in public. (he obviously still knew your limit though, and was always the sweetest behind closed doors)

you hop on the couch as alex navigates to disney+ on the tv and starts the movie. he places his arm around your shoulder and leans his head against yours. you curl up into him, breathing in the smell of him. to your disappointment, within in the first twenty minutes, alex is dead asleep on the couch. you frown, lifting his arm off of you. you were about the shake him awake when you came up with a brilliant idea.

turning back into your cockatiel form, you shake off your loose feathers onto the couch. you smile to yourself. alex hated when you left your feathers everywhere. you pick up a feather or two with your beak, and place it strategically on the floor. one on the couch hand rest, three on alex’s head, two behind the couch (when you placed those, you found a giant glossy picture of george russell behind the couch?? you’ll have to talk to him about that later). after arranging the finishing touches, you nudge alex’s cheek with your feathery head to wake him up. as soon as he opens his sleepy eyes, he immediately sees the absolute mess you made everywhere. but before he could say a word, a knock sounds from the door.

“alex, it’s james,” says the voice outside the door.

alex’s eyes widen, and (screw his ultra-quick reflexes) proceeds to quickly snatch you off of his lap and unceremoniously shoves you inside a nearby drawer. he slides it shut, except for a little crack so you could breathe.

oh you were gonna kill him.

you hear the door open, and footsteps into the room.

“hey, says james, “so i was gonna come here to talk to you about a chassis problem, but i think that it would be better if we could talk about it as a team in a meeting after the race. i was going to send you an email about it, but since i was passing by your drivers room, i just wanted to pop in in-person to let you know.”

you hop towards the crack and raise an eye to see through. alex is standing awkwardly, half in front of the coach with his hands next to his sides, pointedly trying to block the mess of feathers on the couch.

“err.. yeah! of course!” your boyfriend says.

as if just noticing the feathers all over the couch, james raises an eyebrow. “did you kill a bird in here or are you making an art project?” he asks, looking at alex with an incredulous look.

“art project,” alex responds, almost immediately.

“okay.” james says, in a tone that suggested he didn’t really believe alex. he turns to leave, hand on the handle. but before he does, he turns around. “wait a second, i could have sworn logan said that you were in here with your girlfriend?”

a/n: second installment of the series! ( i wrote this at 3am) if you didn't get the george russell picture reference, here's a link to a video that i watched: link

taglist: @ilivbullyingjeongin @ale-522 @formula1-motogpfan @aceyalonso

#f1 x you #f1 x y/n #f1 fic #f1 x reader #f1 #f1 rpf fic #alex albon x reader #alex albon x you #alex albon imagine #alex albon x y/n #f1 x female reader #aa23 x reader #📝

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myheadsgonenumb · 1 month ago

Text

I know a lot of people accuse the marauders fandom of being misogynistic because of the way they pair male characters together and sideline female characters to do it. And maybe there is an element of truth in that for some people.

But I see wolfstar and remadora being used as an example of this - as if the wolfstar ship hadn't existed for four years before Tonks was introduced to the readership, as if it wasn't six years old before remadora was introduced, as if it isn't perfectly reasonable that readers read Tonks as queer coded before she was straight jacketed into being a stepford wife and as if remadora was a well seeded and compelling relationship that anyone might feasibly have any interest in.

I don't like Tonks - not because she's a woman, but because she knocks things over and says "wotcher", and there is no excuse for that. She is an irritating character that adds nothing to the narrative. But even so, if Remadora had played out differently, I could have got on board with it. I want Remus to be happy - and if Tonks is what makes him happy, so be it. I like Romione and Hinny, after all. I'm fine with canon ships where it's clear the characters like each other. But married Remus isn't happy, and it is not clear that he and Tonks like each other at all.

I am a wolfstar shipper, but even if I wasn't, I wouldn't like Remadora. I unashamedly love the HP books and there is very little that I will criticise them over, but Remadora is one of those things, and this is why.

Remadora is a hot, toxic and abusive mess but it's her not him.

Whether she likes his reasons or not, whether the readers or the fucking Weasleys like his reasons or not, Remus is entitled to his boundaries. He does not want to be in a relationship with her because he believes it is a bad idea. He knows, better than any of them, what his life is really like; the toll the prejudice he faces takes on him and how this will impact Tonks' life. And he doesn't want to be responsible for that - and that's fair enough.

So he says "no" a million times (actual quote) and removes himself from the situation. Which is the mature and sensible thing to do.

She doesn't accept it. For a start - he shouldn't have had to keep repeating his "no", that is enough to tell us she is repeatedly forcing the issue, that she doesn't respect his answer or his feelings and is not listening to him. She thinks that because she loves him despite his condition that that is enough. He is old enough to know the reality of their life together will be far more complicated than that and recognises that he does not want it (and fears that eventually neither will she).

But she won’t listen and she won't respect his decision and so she goes around airing their dirty laundry in public, getting his friends to side with her and agree he is being "ridiculous" (again - actual quote). She is losing her powers over him and no - that is not him draining the life out of her, as I have seen said - that is her being a melodramatic twat. She is not the first person to be unlucky in love, her reaction is what is ridiculous. Meanwhile, Remus is being the grown up and getting on with his life. Yes he's going out of his way to avoid her (which is proving necessary as she won't let their relationship lie) but it's still necessary work and it’s work only he can do. The fact that he might be relieved to have an excuse to get away from her speaks to her bad behaviour not his.

She changes her patronus to match his and this is just so... everything that is wrong with them and with her encapsulated. For a start, we only see two sets of exactly matching patronuses in HP - Remadora and Snily, both examples of unrequited, thwarted love. Healthy relationships might have complementary patronuses, but relationships where one person's patronus assumes the shape of another's suggests that one person is being subsumed by the other. And yet this is not a relationship or level of control that either Remus or Lily are interested in having, so it is a sign - not of control or abuse from them - but of how obsession is eroding Tonks' and Snape's core selves. But that isn't the fault of the person they are obsessed with.

The remadora example is far far worse though, because a doe doesn't have any special significance to Lily, that is just the shape her patronus is. Remus's is a wolf. He hates that, and chooses to cast an incorporeal patronus when he can. Being a werewolf is his greatest source of pain and shame, and he sees his patronus as an extension of that, almost of it outing his condition. Tonks - the absolutely fuckwitted stalker that she is - bears absolutely none of that in mind, changes her patronus and blithely casts it around to all and sundry to deliver messages. She is taking Remus's darkest, most shameful, most secret part of himself and using it to wizard text. And she doesn't even get why that's a problem. It just shows that he is correct in believing that she doesn't understand the reality of his situation and is not ready for it; she doesn't appreciate or respect the toll it takes on his life and frankly she doesn't respect his feelings (which we already knew from her not accepting his "no").

It all comes to a head when Dumbledore dies. Remus loses control of his emotions at this point, and Harry is so startled that he thinks of it being "indecent" to see Remus vulnerable like this. Remus is not just grieving Dumbledore, he is processing the fact that without Dumbledore the war is lost; Voldemort will win; everything has been vain and the whole world is going to tumble into darkness. Every sacrifice he has made, Sirius, Lily, James - it's all been for nothing. That is where he is at that moment.

And fucking Tonks - fucking Tonks - makes it about her and their relationship. And it’s not just that she corners him when he is at his most vulnerable. But she does it publicly, in front of their friends, in front of the kids. She grabs hold of his robes and physically shakes him. She physically shakes him . If he had physically shaken her we would not be having a discussion on if she was unreasonable to not want to marry him.

Even at this moment, he tries to stand his ground, He knows what is right. He knows getting married is the wrong thing for them to do. But she won't back down and all their friends back her. It's unbelievable.

And he is a weak man. He knows it, we know it, and he never claimed to be anything else. Under this much pressure, he gives in. But he later says it was done very much "against {his} better judgement". He was co-erced into marriage- both emotionally and eventually physically.

So - yeah - Tonks gets pregnant. There are many clues throughout the books that the wizarding world is a no sex before marriage society and that they don't have contraception. Babies often follow hot on the heels of marriage. Should Remus have refused to consumate the marriage he entered against his will? Probably. Would Tonks have accepted that? Hell no! She'd have been back round Molly Weasley's for "tea and sympathy", telling the whole Weasley clan he won't shag her. Having gone through with marriage, despite his misgivings, he gives in and goes through with it all. And Tonks gets pregnant.

And she is delighted. Because despite his fears of what this will mean for the child - Tonks couldn't care less. Remus says they don't know if the baby will be a werewolf or not. werewolves don't have kids. She is bringing a child into the world who could have a chronic, debilitating illness that will make them a pariah, and she doesn't even care. She doesn't think it's a problem. She thinks love will be enough, because she has no actual understanding of what she is dealing with, and shows no interest in gaining that understanding. She thinks "I don’t care” (about her family being werewolves) is the answer to the problem.

Meanwhile, Remus is spiralling into depression because he is facing the reality of the prejudice his condition is now forcing on his wife and child, He cannot take the guilt of how he is going to negatively impact their lives. And while Tonks is within her rights to say she doesn't care about that, Remus is within his rights to say the guilt is too much for him and he doesn't want that. He is entitled to his boundaries and his feelings as well, but Tonks, the other characters and a hefty portion of the readership don't seem to recognise this.

So Remus is now trapped. He admits it was a mistake to marry Tonks and he knows he shouldn't have - but he was pursued until he couldn't stand against it any longer, and the depression and guilt is killing him. Harry is worrying about him, he is so clearly miserable. AND TONKS DOESN'T EVEN SEEM TO NOTICE! She is described as being "radiant", she is blissfully happy. She has what she wants and she can't even spot what the teenage boy whose only spent a couple of minutes with them since they got married can see is glaringly obvious.

And this leads back to her being obsessive about Remus, but actually seeming to know or care about him very little. She doesn't respect or understand his feelings and has no interest in doing so. She wants him. She has him. The end.

So - unable to cope with the guilt of what he has done, the societal stigma he is inflicting on his own family, the coldness of now having to deal with that prejudice in his own home via his in laws (and I've seen people try and gaslight him by saying he is imagining that, Ron and Molly spout anti-werewolf rhetoric, no Andromeda is not chill about her only daughter being married to one) and having no one on his side who will even listen to his fears - he suffers a total mental breakdown and runs away.

And is told to go back.

Fuck that. Anyone is entitled to leave a marriage they are unhappy in. Yes, he can't leave in such a way that he is not around to support the child and it was wrong of him to try (though understandable that he did not think that through in the circumstances) but he does not have to stay with Tonks, if he thinks it is for the best that he leaves. Especially when the impact the marriage is having on his mental health is taken into account.

Harry is a teenager, who is seeing the situation through his own lens of being orphaned. And he is absolutely right to refuse to be Remus’s cover here. Remus is doing the mental gymnastics that if he leaves his child to protect James’ child then it’s all OK, and Harry is right not to be OK with that. But he is wrong to unequivocally think Remus should go back to Tonks. This is an adult relationship that Harry is not yet old enough to understand, which took place under duress, and Remus is miserable in it. Why should he stay?

They get lucky, and Teddy is not a werewolf, but that does not mean his fear around that was not reasonable. And he dies before they ever have to face up to the reality of life together for any length of time.

He is not proven wrong just because he does not live long enough to be proven right.

He just goes back, because there is nowhere else for him to go and no one willing to help him. and buries his head in the sand. But he is the expert in the experience of life as a werewolf. If he says it’s awful, if he says Tonks is going to face mistreatment and stigma because of it, then he is right. And it is all very well for a young and in love Tonks to say that doesn't matter, but he is older and wiser and knows how prejudice wears you down through the years. He knows reality will get the better of them in the end. And even if it doesn't - even if Tonks was to remain cheerful in the face of blatant discrimination for her and her child for the rest of her life - Remus is not unreasonable to say he is not willing to be the cause of that, that he can't live with that guilt, and to choose to remove himself from the situation so Tonks and Teddy can live normally.

I think the books do Tonks dirty. She is a different character in each of the three books she appears in, and each incarnation is worse than the last. But I can't like her because ultimately her actions are so abusive and she is so oblivious to the pain Remus is in. The only good thing about the ship is that the mental breakdown gives Remus something significant to do in DH, when otherwise he would have been totally sidelined - and the breakdown to coming back with Sirius and James and Lily gives him a nice redemption arc. But in terms of both characters it doesn't make sense and both need to be totally broken to make it work.

Remadora is one of the best written examples of an abusive relationship I've seen. What's weird about it is a) it’s in a children's series and b) the conclusion is that the victim of abuse is being very silly and should return to his abuser.

So please, stop telling wolfstar shippers that they are misogynistic because they are more interested in the potential of the 40 line stare than they are in this toxic wasteland of romance. It's just bad. And it's OK not to ship it because it is bad.

#anti remadora #hp meta #in defence of remus lupin #wolfstar #marauders

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wheneclipsefalls · 2 years ago

Text

Withered

Beautiful Adult Neteyam photo by the wonderful @cinetrix

Pairing: Alpha Neteyam x Beta Fem Omatikaya Reader

Synopsis: You and Neteyam have opposite lives. He thrives in the daylight of possibilities while you are forced to the shadows. You are sure that the right course of action would be letting the future Olo'eyktan go. Neteyam is less convinced.

Based on a request from my 🥔 anon

Warnings: aged up characters, aged up neteyam, angst, health problems, explicit smut, dirty talk, crying, miscommunication, p in v, virgin reader, first time, omegaverse, alpha/beta relationship dynamic, heat, sickness, 18+ only MDNI

Tanhi: star/little star I Yawne: beloved I Sevin: pretty I Mawey: calm

A/N: I can't tell you all enough how grateful I am for the hype and many comments that have been around this story just from that small sneak peek I posted. This ended up being a lot longer than I ever anticipated but I had a blast writing it. Please let me know what you think. I love hearing from y'all!

For many the sun is a symbol of warmth, peace, and solace. The bright rays enwrap Na’vi of all ages in the glow of Eywa’s love. The rise of morning light represents a new day, another chance for adventure and possibilities. When the illuminating glow of yellow sunshine transforms into streaks of vibrant purples and pinks, it indicates a time for families to come together and tuck in for the night.

However, for you, your day truly begins at the first glow of bioluminescence. Eclipse is your time to explore the world.

You were born with an almost unheard of disease. It only took a few days of your infant body breaking out into abnormal rashes for Tsahik to realize something was wrong. Exposure of more than a few minutes to sunshine causes detrimental effects to your body. For this reason, you are forced to avoid the vibrant glow of the sun.

From that moment on you have lived your life almost nocturnally. On lucky days the clouds protect you from the harmful UV rays. Rain has come to be your favorite weather as it allows you an escape from your hut.

Despite these difficulties you have always strived to remain positive. You thank your parents for their gracious attitudes that inspire you to look for the silver lining in all situations. Sure you can not sunbathe or prowl the forest during sunny days but no one knows the forest at Eclipse as well as you do. Your knowledge has come in handy more than a few times, being asked to guide night hunts with some of the most notorious warriors in the clan.

This is where you met Neteyam.

The firstborn of the infamous Toruk Makto and your future Olo’eyktan, you originally assumed he would have no interest in interacting with you. You knew him from afar, hearing the word spread of his kindness and diligence when it came to helping those around him. His alpha status only served to bring a larger gaggle of girls practically falling at his feet. As a beta and suffering from a rare condition, you naturally took yourself out of the run up. You were confident he would choose some sweet and knowledgeable omega that would be the perfect tsahik.

However, your assumptions quickly crumbled as he progressively paid attention to you more and more throughout these night hunts. Instead of joining the rest of the alpha warriors gathering to share a strong drink after a successful kill, he would opt to check in with you. You were shy at first, unsure of how to act around such an influential member of the clan. However, there was something about those golden orbs and soft smile that quickly set you at ease.

You still remember the first time you had sustained a small injury during these hunts. It was nothing more than a shallow slash to your forearm, but Neteyam had insisted on carefully wrapping it himself. You gushed over him like an idiot, reminding him that it was unnecessary but he showed his stubborn side that day.

At first you thought it was your own overactive imagination noticing the frequency of night hunts he signed up for increase, but eventually it had become every single night. No matter how boned-tired he was from a day of full Olo’eyktan training, he would beam at the sight of your small form. His scent was something that seemed to constantly enrapture your senses. The heavy essence of pine and hormonal swings was so much stronger than yours. It took some getting used to. The first few nights you were bashful to come home and find evidence of your arousal dampening your loincloth.

Still, you told yourself it was just a simple crush that you had to live with. It took weeks for you to even consider the possibility of Neteyam showing interest in you. He had been consistent in bringing you out of your shell, getting you to talk about everything from your family to the fondest hope and dreams in your heart. Oftentimes he would stay back behind after the hunt to help you join him sitting on an overarching thick branch (you were grateful for the darkness of eclipse that hid your blush each time he effortlessly hoisted you up with large hands gently holding your waist) and chat away into the night.

It was only when the gifts began that you gave these interactions a second thought. It had started small with simple flowers and fruits he had encountered throughout the day. However, they slowly became more intricate. The first time he brought you a small woven bracelet of sparkling gems, you had been gobsmacked.

“Like the night sky. The only thing appropriate for my tanhi.” He had said, making you almost choke on your own spit. Tahni- little star: a nickname he had coined for you after the first week. A fitting term for someone that only knew the night sky. Still, it was the first time he had ever called you his. The terminology was not lost on you.

When the sun arose once more and you had retired back to your protected hut, those words had kept you up, your small fingers twiddling with the bracelet.

Taking your acceptance of the small gift, Neteyam had become even more bold with his courting. Before you knew it he was bringing a meal with him for you before every hunt. You had tried to decline the thoughtful gesture but he would not take no for an answer.

“Someone has to make sure you eat, tanhi.”

There was no fighting the alpha on this, so you graciously took the meals each night. He smiled proudly as you moaned in satisfaction of the carefully seasoned meat he had killed and prepared for you. Another testament to the mighty warrior and beneficial mate he is.

You started to think that the eldest Sully was simply a flirt, or perhaps such a kind person that his actions came off as romantic. However, there was one instance that finally tipped you to accepting his affections. It was a particularly successful hunt, dragging home a thanator, when he had slowed down to your pace. Talking about anything and everything under the night sky, your breath was practically stolen from your lungs when he reached out to tuck a strand of your dark hair behind your ear.

However innocent the gesture was, it was the lingering of his hand running down your neck that caused your heart to bash against your rib cage violently. A simple brush that had left his scent to coalesce with yours. An essence that would keep other suitors away. Out of habit, you mentally went to play it off as a simple accident, but the crooked smirk plastered across his face did not allow you. There was a primal satisfaction seated in those golden orbs, one that caused a pool of arousal to gather in your core.

He knew what he had done.

Neteyam was proud of it.

His affection was untethered from that point forward. Accidental brushes of fingers had turned into blatant hand holding. The alpha never missed an opportunity to press a warm hand to the small of your back, guiding you through the terrain, or wrap an arm around your waist in order to steady you when walking over uneven forest floor.

“What kind of alpha would I be if I let you get hurt?”

He had spoken in response to your inquiry, a cheeky grin plastered across his face.

Falling for Neteyam was easy. Too easy. It was keeping yourself back from jumping into his arms or melting into his embraces that was difficult. No matter how strange and suggestive his behavior had been, you didn’t want to get your hopes up. After all, there was no saying what he got up to during the day. For all you knew he could be taking omegas out every day and weaving sweet gifts for them too.

So you had decided to do what was best for everyone and take yourself out of the situation before something embarrassing could happen. You declined the request to accompany the hunting party and instead went to spend some more time with your family. If your parents noticed the difference in your appearance they did not show it. They were always good at giving you space, respecting your independence as an adult (although your mother did go out of her way to place a comforting hand on your shoulder, a silent way to express her understanding and love). Neither of them knew about Neteyam at the time, it was easier that way.

This fact only heightened their surprise when they saw Toruk Makto’s eldest son approaching their small gathering. You can still remember the intent gaze that Neteyam pierced you with. Your heart hammered out of your chest, hands fidgeting with the moss beneath you nervously. Neteyam signaled the traditional greeting to your parents before respectfully asking your father if he could borrow you for a moment.

They were caught off guard, your dad turning back to send you a curious look, but naturally neither wanted to decline the Omatikaya prince.

Once the two of you were finally alone, Neteyam immediately sprang into action. He grabbed your biceps and used that hold to turn you from side to side as he scanned your form. His intense inspection had blood rushing to your cheeks.

“Neteyam, what are you doing? I thou-”

“Where are you injured?” You twitched when he reached a hand out to inspect your flicking tail too. Confusion swarmed within you. You had sputtered and struggled to put together a full sentence.

“It has been three days, Tanhi. I blew one day off as exhaustion or a fluke and the second as pure coincidence but surely only an injury would keep you away from the hunt for three days.” His eyes finally met yours again when there was no wound to be found. His tall frame had towered over yours as he reached out to cup your cheek.

That familiar warmth and adoration you had for him had returned within an instant.

You stepped back, successfully out of his grasp.

“I’m fine.” You replied simply.

His tail swatted in the humid air and those golden orbs had squinted into slits. The focused attention of that look full of suspicion was enough to hold you down to your spot. You swallowed the lump in your throat and as you tried desperately to keep the fidgeting at bay. It was one of the few times you were grateful to be beta because surely an omega would shrivel under the pressure of his looming presence.

“I don’t like when you lie to me, Tahni. Now tell me why I’ve had to go without my little star for three whole days.” Neteyam placed his hands sternly upon his hips, ears twitching forward as if preparing to take in your explanation. An explanation that you felt could not be shared. Doing so was bound to undermine your plans, completely destroying the efforts that had been made.

“The group seems to be more than sufficient without my guidance.” You don’t dare to meet his eyes, your own orbs trained at the ground instead. In a moment’s notice his sculpted body was once again inches away from yours. His warmth came off of him in waves, along with the heady aura of alpha pheromones.

You couldn’t hold back the shiver that ran down your spine when he placed heavy hands on your shoulders and bent over your frame till you could feel his calm breath against your ear. Neteyam’s tail wrapped around your thigh. A part of your brain told you to run, understanding the alluring danger that awaited you, while the other yearned to curl up against his impressive physique.

You couldn’t understand how any omega managed to be around this male without completely dropping to their knees.

Suddenly you had some sympathy for the girls that had always fawned over him.

“Tell me the truth, sevin.” The heated words tickled at your ears and made your heart skip a beat. It was foolish to think that there was any chance of lying to Neteyam, the mighty warrior that walked with the confidence of the supernatural.

So you did.

You had scrambled to messily explain how it would be best if the two of you spent less time together. Unfortunately this unrehearsed synopsis included an approach that painted yourself as the foolish beta with a crush on the Omatikaya prince and therefore unable to handle herself around him. It was not the perspective you had hoped for, but it was the only one that could have been presented in your state of jumbled thought.

Neteyam shook his head, an almost fond smile upon his lips.

“Tanhi, you really do not like to make things easy for me.” A bitter laugh escaped his throat. The sound put you slightly on edge but there was no trace of anger in his expression. Amusement was easily perceivable in the raise of his hairless eyebrows. He had taken your humiliating and pathetic explanation in stride, in fact, he had found humor in it.

“I thought I’ve made myself clear.” You were swooped into the encirclement of his arms in one quick motion. You squeaked and braced yourself against the warm muscles of his abdomen. “You are the mate I seek.”

His words had thrown you into a spiral, your heartstrings plucking into rhythms of heightened emotion. It was almost too much to take in. A part of you still found security in denying these bold claims but there had been too much evidence at that point. Neteyam Sully had in fact been courting you.

His head lowered, nuzzling at your face until you finally looked up at him. Your lips were only a breath apart.

“If you’ll have me.” Neteyam whispered.

There was no fighting the longings of your heart at that rate. That night you had agreed to his courting and within a month the two of you had been madly in love and preparing to officially mate.

The process was faster, seemingly faster than anything else in your life. Night had always slowed you down from progressing in the normal rhythm of Na’vi milestones, but Neteyam had broken that pattern for you.

You can still remember the vivid sensation of his tendrils connecting with your own. Those sparks of electricity that had created a direct line to his innermost feelings and thoughts. There was great solace to be found in the surging feelings of love and adoration he had for you, something you had been able to tap into. Still, nothing could ever compare with the way you felt for Neteyam.

He’s your world. Your light. Your sun.

Being with him feels like finally having a taste of those golden rays. You can see it in his smile. In the shake of his shoulders when his laughter trickles from soft lips. In the unashamed sparkle that overtakes his eyes in a coating whenever they land on you after a long day of training.

Neteyam has become your world in only a matter of a few months. It is hard to imagine how you went so many years without this unbreakable connection between the two of you. Each night you wake up to the warm embrace of your mate who has come home from a long day of training. Soft kisses are placed along your eyelids, cheeks, and nose until your thick lashes flutter and you regain consciousness.

The searing envious looks of other females can be felt at your back when the two of you join the rest of the clan for dinner each night, but it is only white noise in the presence of your handsome mate guiding you with a hand to the small of your back. In fact it becomes less than a passing memory when Neteyam goes on to share the events of the day in great detail, usually pulling out a tucked away gift he has found for you along the trails of his adventures.

There is so much hidden beneath that emanating exterior of perfection that Neteyam upholds. He strips away those layers only for you, usually among the flowering meadow the two of you lay in while stargazing. The stories often end with your mate trailing off into a groggy murmur until the air fills with the sounds of his sleeping breaths. You prefer to stay tucked against him for a while longer, letting the moment last before you must wake him and shoo the mighty warrior back home for some much needed rest.

While he sleeps you venture from the hut to forage and hunt, although Neteyam prefers to accompany you during dangerous hunts. You decide that what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him. He is known to be an overprotective alpha anyway. Once food has been secured and your adventures have come to a close, you slip back into the darkened hut before the first break of dawn. Those specially made thick curtains are the difference between life and death for you.

Although the tent has been sufficient for years, Neteyam continues to add to its layers. He is constantly worrying about the vulnerabilities of the hut, convinced that one slip could bring catastrophic consequences to his mate. So he works with his father to constantly rebuild and strengthen the exterior walls. There are times where you remind him of how unnecessary these actions are but Neteyam is undeterred by these conversations. So you let your mate continue his projects. If it brings him peace of mind to obsess over the structure then it must be doing some good.

Things are great for the first month. Nothing sexual occurs during those first few weeks of being newly mated, out of respect to you. There is no denying that Neteyam has had experience in the ways of pleasuring females but you on the other hand have never been close to intimate with someone else. As a couple you decide to take things slow. However, you can not help but admire the restraint Neteyam shows when you catch the shift of his pheromones into that of lust or see the tightness of his loincloth after a particularly long make out session.

Were it any other alpha you are sure that the time would have come for him to become impatient and work towards persuading you to go further with him. However, Neteyam knows that you are shy and nervous. He puts your needs before his own and constantly assures you that he is happy to wait so long as you feel comfortable when the time is right.

Your apprehension has slowly been melting away. The soft caresses that travel along your form sends a burning thrill that is exotic to you. Moments where you are brave enough to straddle his lap while kissing, the friction of his groin against your core is electric. These new feelings have been quickly festering and building inside of you. The nerves have slowly morphed into alluring curiosity. It has been becoming harder to hold back.

For this reason, you’ve decided to tell Neteyam tonight that you are ready. Finally, the bond created through tsaheylu will be strengthened and confirmed by the intertwining of each other’s bodies.

The last hints of sunshine have disappeared behind the moon. This time you wake before Neteyam has a chance to come wake you up himself. The nerves that bundle into a coil in your stomach have kept you from sleeping in so you decide to seek him out yourself. It shouldn’t be long till he is back from an exhibition with Jake.

The village is lively with reuniting families after a prosperous day of duties. It's a familiar sight that has always brought a warmth to your heart, especially that of small children running to their mothers or fathers with grabby hands. There are times where you imagine sending your own child to wobble excitedly towards Neteyam, spun through the air by the mighty warrior that you are lucky enough to call your mate.

High in the trees, hidden by the walls of a family hut you hear the familiar voice of Lo’ak. A smile tugs at your lips, confident that Neteyam is sure to be with his brother. However, that excitement is dampened slightly when the responding voice is not your mate’s but Unip’s.

“I just don’t know how long he thinks this can go on.” Unip sighs.

“Well you know how Neteyam is. He will find a way to succeed and if not, he will die trying.” Lo’ak snorts, but there is a hint of concern in his nonchalant tone. It’s a timber that makes you halt in your tracks and ears twitch to hear the conversation.

“It’s only going to get worse, you know. Once he is Olo’eyktan, half a night’s rest will not be enough anymore. He already looks half dead.”

There is a silence that follows, only filled by the sound of your own heart thumping.

“You’re never going to convince him otherwise, bro.” Lo’ak responds, amused tone faltering greatly.

Stepping forward, you curve yourself around a thick tree trunk in effort to discreetly get a better look at the pair. Lo’ak’s back is facing towards you but even from this low vantage point, the lines of his tense muscle are easy to spot. Your golden eyes have become specialized for seeing in the dark after all these years, allowing a better image of his form and mannerisms. You are used to reading people’s expressions and body language with only the dim glow of eclipse.

“Stubborn skxawng.” Unip shakes his head before leaning against the sturdy trunk. His scowl is illuminated by the soft red glow of a patch of sprouting flowers. The sight makes your stomach twist.

Have things truly gotten this bad?

“Neteyam won’t leave her. You and I both know that. All that can be done is make peace with it.” Lo’ak shrugs his shoulders.

“And watch him turn into an old man in a few years. Those bags are sure to be bad for his pretty boy appearance.” Unip quips back, causing both the males to break out into laughter.

The tension visibly eases between them but you are not laughing. In fact, you can feel the beginning of those twisting nerves pushing bile up your throat. All joyful anticipation has washed from your features, replaced with dread and horror.

Your feet drum against the forest floor, stuck on autopilot and effectively taking you home. The beginning of streaming tears threaten to drop past your eyes.

It’s true that Neteyam has been tired but it isn’t till now that you reply back your interactions and his recent appearance. Those dark circles aren’t as prevalent in the light of eclipse, perhaps they are more telling in daylight. Neteyam has a way of falling asleep in a matter of seconds once hitting the mat but you have always assumed that to be a part of his nature. Some people are naturally deep sleepers.

However, now, all of these signs appear in a different light for you. Each conversation is played back in your head but of course Neteyam has never let his weaknesses show, especially ones that could be brought on by you. You know this and yet it is only now that you scold yourself for not being more perceptive, for not seeking advice and perspective from those around him.

His family and friends have an advantage that you can not achieve. Surely they would be the first to notice his changes in demeanor and health. They are the ones watching him work, train, and interact more closely with clan members. You have never been more envious of those walking in the sun in your entire life. This condition has always been a hassle for you but now it has turned into true heartache.

This weakness that Eywa has given you is no longer just affecting you but now your perfect mate. This disease has spread to him in a way you scold yourself for not anticipating.

How is he supposed to become Olo’eyktan, protecting and guiding the People all while being tethered to you?

Eywa has destined your life to be forever restricted to the shadows, but that is not Neteyam’s path.

You can spot the familiar dark canvases of your hut in the trees up ahead. No doubt Neteyam has already returned home at this point, if not then he will soon. Less than an hour earlier you were ecstatic to see him but now the thought of seeing those tired eyes makes you want to curl up into a ball.

Needing more time to process, you opt to take a different route, one that leads to a secluded waterfall. Safe in the greenery and now sitting in the shallow area of the glowing water, you take a moment to breathe. Water trickles into a soothing pattern that has been associated with your memories in this found sanctuary.

Truly, none of this should be a surprise. This ailment has been the driving course of your life thus far and you’ve grown used to it, letting go of certain aspects that are not meant for you. Neteyam is just another one of those. He is beyond your reach. Keeping him here would only hurt the clan. They need a leader that can be with them, present both physically and mentally. For the greater good it is time to let him become that Olo’eyktan.

Perhaps you would have accepted this fact and stuck to it earlier on were it not for the great love you hold for him. Neteyam Sully holds your heart and soul effortlessly in his hands. There will never be another that lights up your life the same way he does and truth be told, you don’t want there to be. Forever your first and only love.

Regardless, the time for being selfish is over.

Some Na’vi have the honor of dying a warrior’s death, going down in the name of protecting the People. Others sacrifice their time and energy serving the clan daily in the name of Eywa. You have been kept back from either of these duties so it makes sense that giving up the future Olo’eyktan would be your contribution.

After all, how are you supposed to serve as Tsahik with your limitations?

This makes sense. Your brian tells you this is the logical solution. Life will go on. You will return back to a life that you have come to be content with over the years and Neteyam will find a proper mate that can serve The People by his side.

Still, it is impossible to ignore the cracks that are slowly developing in your heart. It is difficult to imagine a life without your true love. The thought alone has a sob crawling up your throat. This sound however is morphed into a strange shriek when a pair of muscular arms suddenly grasp and pull you back against a hard chest.

The water splashes around the two of you and you can feel the rumble of Neteyam’s laughter as you are awkwardly shifted in his arms.

“Baby girl, you are really off your game today.” He teases fondly before nuzzling his face into the curve of your neck. An efficient shuffle has you more familiarly settled between the corded muscle of his toned thighs. Instinctually you lean back against him.

“What? Nothing to say in your defense?”

“Oh yeah uh just tired.” You lamely respond.

“Silly Tanhi, today has barely begun.”

For you.

The day has barely begun for you and only you. Every other Na’vi enjoy the blissful alignment of the sun and their ‘days’. You are the outlier.

Gathering up your courage you finally lift yourself onto your knees and turn to face him. Neteyam grins, but for once you aren’t focused on the gleams of those pearly teeth. Sure enough there are dark circles in a crescent shape beneath his eyes. You reach out to thumb at those dark contrasts. The alpha blissfully misreads this as cupping his cheek. He leans into the touch and his smile broadens.

“My sweet sevin.” He mumbles. Your stomach tightens back into that knot. Finally, he seems to notice the shift in your demeanor. The smile falters and he places his hand over the one cupping his cheek. The large veined hand completely covers yours.

“What’s wrong?”

It seems an impossible task to go through with what you know must be done. A part of you considers holding off, letting it last a little longer before you lose him forever. However, that would only result in a more sleep deprived Omatikaya Prince and the suffering of future Olo’eyktan.

The longer you take to respond the faster the amusement in those golden orbs declines. He calls your name softly and turns his head to gently peck your palm.

“I just-” You steady yourself. The words feel like acid crawling up your throat and sitting pressed against him only makes it burn more. Cautiously you detach yourself completely and settle down on the colorful rocks lining the shallow river.

Neteyam immediately stiffens. His tail curls up into high alert and his ears twitch back slightly, but still you can see the now fake smile plastered on his face.

“You’re…tired.” It’s a weak start but they are the only words you can force out.

There is a flicker of surprise in his features but it melts away into a mocking eye roll. The corners of his lips are back to being turned up in a more genuine manner.

“Well of course I’m a little tired Tanhi. Every mighty warrior should be if he’s done his job right.” The alpha chuckles and you can almost taste the deviation of his pheromones. He confidently reaches out to take your hand in his. “But never too tired to spend time with my sweet little star.”

The cool rush of water is a dramatic contrast to the warm grasp Neteyam has on your hand. It feels like fire that curls up your veins and pushes tears to the back of your eyes. It’s too painful to be close like this. To see him obliviously flirt and cuddle as if all is well when you know deep down that this will be the last time you feel his touch.

“No, I mean exhausted. Ma Neteyam-” You shut your mouth tight. That phrase was so easily in your arsenal of vocabulary but it’s time to start training yourself to stop using it. You brush the circles under his eyes again. “You haven’t been getting enough sleep.”

Realization seems to dawn for him.

“Oh you mean my eyes. Lo’ak was teasing me earlier about it. Didn’t think it would bother you so much, sevin, but I’m sure my grandmother has some herbs to lighten the color.” He laughs lightly.

“No, Neteyam. This is bad for you. Staying up every night only to push yourself to the limit the next day. Living in that darkened hut. Spending every last fiber of energy you have spending time with me. Taking care of me-”

“That is what mates do, Tanhi. I don’t want it any other way-”

“I am bad for you!”

The words cut through the air and suddenly every remnant of the playful atmosphere has disappeared.

“Don’t say stuff like that, Tanhi.” His voice is firm, stern enough to be considered reprimanding. Neteyam eyes darken onto a duller glow. The musky scent of your mate shifts into that of a stronger presence. It’s moments like that that you remember how distinct his second gender is.

“Neteyam, you know I’m right. This condition is no longer just hurting me but you too. Playing this game of back and forth makes no sense.”

He sits up straight, back stiff as a rod. It takes everything in you to hold that gaze without bursting into tears and backing down. The flicker of his tail has turned into frantic swatting as his lips curl downwards.

“What are you trying to say, love?”

You gulp and prepare yourself to utter words that weigh heavy in your heart.

“We have to end this.”

Silence drags on. The rush of running water and purring wildlife is the only thing that fills the air. Your tail swishes nervously in the water, causing a slight splash. No matter which way you squint or tilt your head, Neteyam’s expression is unreadable. Even your enhanced night vision is not enough to fully understand or anticipate the brewing emotions beneath those golden eyes.

“No.”

Your mind sputters to a halt at the snipped response. He’s giving you nothing to work with.

“Neteya-”

“Where is all of this coming from, yawne?” He reaches forward to cup your cheek but you stand up before he can. This close proximity is becoming too much. Perhaps it’s cowardly, but you need a reprieve from his love-filled gaze and tender touches. Otherwise, there is no way you will be able to do what needs to be done. You wonder if he knows this as you are met with a toned chest at eye level blocking your path.

“Did something happen?”

“No.”

“Then why are you so worried all of a sudden?” He pleads for an answer but you have finally managed to slip past him and wade out of the water. The drum of your feet rings in your ears, taking you to Eywa knows where. Neteyam is hot on your heels.

“It’s not just worry, it’s logic, Neteyam. Can’t you see? You are going to be Olo’eyktan. The People need a leader that won’t be tied to some nocturnal Na’vi that drains the last bit of energy you have left.”

The alpha goes to interject but the words are flying out of your mouth at such a speed at this rate, he has no opportunity.

“They will need a Tsahik that can do more than just work a night shift. Not to mention one that actually understand healing protocal-”

“My grandmother has already offered to teach you.” He counters, stomping feet practically nipping at your heels. It’s not that you mean to walk away from him, but the dam that holds your suffocating emotions at bay is starting to crack and crumble. One look at him could weaken your resolve. This has to be done fast, ripped off like an adhesive bandage.

“You deserve to be with someone that can lead The People with you. A mate that can serve both you and the clan in a way I never can. An omega that is a proper mate.”

A strong hand clamps around your bicep and spins you around. Neteyam glowers down at you with an intensity that is borderline desperate. The tears are starting to leave a glaze over your eyes, even as you avoid his own at any cost.

“You are my mate. You are the woman that I choose to spend the rest of my days with.” He tries to gently tilt your face towards him by grabbing your chin, but you flick it off. “We are mated before Eywa.” The crack in his voice tears at your heart.

“I shouldn’t have let it go on this long, I’m sorry. I foolishly let myself believe that you and I are meant to be but now it is clear that my head was simply in the clouds.” A sob thickens your voice until it is barely tangible. Words are failing you and you idly wonder how many more you will truly be able to manage in this state.

You attempt to flee from his embrace once more, just a moment to escape that heartbreaking stare that follows your every move. Neteyam holds you gently by the biceps but there is enough force there to keep you in place.

“We are, Tahni. All these other obstacles are just that, obstacles. Things we can overcome.” He slumps down, determined to finally have your eyes meet his. The curtain of your flowing hair is a weak shield against these efforts. You can feel the heat of his escalating breath tickle at your cheeks. He swoops in closer slowly, with the caution of closing in on a skittish prey. “It’s just you and me, little star.”

The flat of his nose finally rests against yours, lips only a sudden movement away.

There are promises of familiar comfort and happiness in this intimate position. Your nature keens towards his gentle touch. It prompts you to hide away every other concern, worried that it could break this moment of tranquility.

However, that is exactly what you do.

“You have to break it.”

There is a pause, a moment of shock that you take advantage of. Slipping out his hold, you watch realization slink across his features. It’s blood chilling, the look of horror that is clearly evident upon his handsome face. It’s a rare thing to render Neteyam speechless. He has grown up learning how to lead and command a room with confidence and grace. Seeing him now, mouth agape as his thoughts lag, it’s easier to see that there is simply a normal man behind the mighty warrior.

A male that you have managed to strip away the light in his eyes, all evidence of excitement lost.

It is now that you can truly see the aching restlessness and lost nights of sleep in his demeanor. He wilts before you.

“You don’t mean that.” He insists, voice now hollow of its usual domineering confidence.

“I do.” The timber of your voice shivers and shakes, doing nothing to strengthen your resolve. Still, the lost look that Neteyam sends you absolutely wrenches at your heart. “It’s what’s best for everyone.”

Words that are meant to reassure him at least slightly only make his tail halt movement, obvious that the phrase only digs the dagger deeper into his chest.

“Everyone?” He whispers, hairless eyebrows drawing together. Hesitant steps lead you backwards, eager to begin your journey away from this tornado of darkened emotions. Away from the raincloud you have created between the two of you. “You…this is what you want?”

Want.

That small word is a palpable distinction. To change this argument from what needs to be done to the inner workings of your desires and dreams. To veer it towards the ever flowing river of devotion and love you know will always be in your heart for him. It’s the one move that leaves you completely defenseless.

This is the last thing that you want.

He has to know that. He must know that. And perhaps that is why he faces you with this question head on, forcing you to say the words out loud. It’s a towering wall that you have no hopes of climbing. Lying is not your strong suit. Neteyam knows that.

“Please Neteyam.” You send your final plea before turning on your heel and bolting. Vanishing into the trees before he has a second to form one syllable.

Lying isn’t your strength, but hiding is something you are familiar with.

“She’ll probably cool down.” Lo’ak reassures him, handing a leaf with larvae to Neteyam.

“What did I do wrong?” Neteyam wonders out loud. It’s difficult for Lo’ak to tell whether or not that question is rhetorical. The eldest Sully’s eyes are focused on the horizon, he’s lost. Off somewhere else.

“Nothing, bro! Not everything is that simple.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Neteyam sees the wooden cup of strong drink pushed toward him but he declines. Drinking is the last thing he needs right now, although it is tempting. These past two days have been pure torture and sorrow. Washing every clouding thought away with the swig of fermented fruit would surely keep his mind off of you for a while, but it would never stop the permanent ache in his chest.

Although Neteyam knows he must look awful because even his father encourages him to drink, despite the duties he is set to carry out the next day. Most nights he is advised to keep his wits about him, but Jake has let up since the event.

“There has to be something I could’ve said. Perhaps something I can say now.”

“Bro, you’ve already said more than enough. If your constant notes and begging haven’t got her to let you into the hut, I don’t think words are the problem here.” A grimace is etched into Lo’ak’s features but Neteyam turns away from the sight. He can’t handle the look of pity that his family seems to constantly be shooting him.

He looks miserable. He is miserable. Every Na’vi with eyes can see that much. However, he doesn’t want sympathy. He needs solutions. A plan that will set things right again. Anything to bring his littler start back into his arms.

“Ma Teyam,” Neteyiri gently coos, haunching forward to tuck on the tangled braids behind his ear. “Perhaps it is time to give her some space.”

Usually his mother’s presence has the power to soothe away the worst of his worries, but today all he can do is sigh at her words. Sitting in problems has never been his strong suit. Neteyam is used to problem solving. Coming up with a strategy and executing it until the issue is nothing but a distant memory. He prays to Eywa that this too will become just that. Something that can be laughed at down the road.

However, sitting here now surrounded by people and never feeling more lonely, it’s hard to imagine ever laughing at such a thing.

Neteyam continues to pick at the grass next to the untouched meal. The sun has been down for over an hour now. Dinner is wrapping up and there is still no sight of you…again. Every crunch of a leaf or flitter of voices has him turning to search for your small frame in the darkness. It’s an effort that leaves him empty handed every time but, no matter the frequency of failure he can’t stop himself from whipping his head around anyway.

“You know, there was a time that I was upset with your father. Livid, actually. And yet here we are today.” Neytiri almost purrs, trying to comfort her son.

“Yeah and did he wait around and give you space?” The words come out harsher than intended but Neytiri doesn’t tell him off like usual. Instead her ears pin back and she runs a thumb across his cheek. Jake and Neytiri lock eyes from across the fire, a silent communication that has Jake clearing his throat.

“I’m not sure if I’m the prime example in this scenario, kid.” A deep chuckle accentuates Jake’s words. He goes to close his mouth and leave it at that but his mate sends him one fierce look that lets him know he is far from done comforting their eldest. “I mean uh truth be told, I was an absolute knucklehead before I met your mother.”

“Still are.” She corrects him.

Jake doesn’t try to fight against the claim, but he does nervously clasp the back of his neck, searching for the right words to say.

“Tanhi still hasn’t eaten. Must go.” Neteyam abruptly calls, on his feet within a heartbeat. He gently cradles his untouched meal in the palm of his hand as he navigates his way out of the circle of his family. Neytiri sighs and Jake sends her an apologetic look as they watch their son slither off into the night once again.

Even Tuk sends sad eyes in the direction of her older brother as he walks away.

Upon reaching the dark curtains of your hut, Neteyam is unsure whether or not you still reside inside. There is no sign of light emanating inwards. For a moment he is convinced that you have slipped out during his absence, but then there is a ruffle of covers that his ears manage to pick up. Stalking forward carefully, he leans in to pick up on every sound possible.

Even with his alpha hearing, there is little to no noise coming from the hut. Or at least no sound that is useful to him in any way. He wonders what you are up to within those darkened walls. His hindbrain urges him to go inside and find out for himself, cradle you in his arms till there are promises of never leaving again. However, he knows better than that.

Neteyam waits to be invited in.

“Tanhi?” The sound echoes through the night air, but no response comes. With a sigh he kneels down by the entrance, cautiously pushing the leaf underneath the thick rim of fabric.

“You missed dinner again.” Neteyam knows he shouldn’t expect a response at this point, but his tail still naturally droops to the floor when one doesn’t come. “I brought some for you.”

He waits once more, but silence hangs heavy in the air. Neteyam’s ears twitch to focus in on the minute sounds again. The shallow breathing is confirmation enough of your presence. A part of him almost wishes that he is talking to a blank piece of fabric. If you had left then he could have at least spent that anxious energy scouring the forest for your slim frame. If you had left it would give him hope that you’ve hunted, eaten, gone on a walk. Anything that isn’t sitting in your hut.

“Do me a favor, baby. Please eat something. Maybe you have been when I’m not breathing down your neck,” He gives a humorless laugh. “But…I just want to make sure you’re healthy. I’m starting to get worried.”

When the silence continues he doesn’t leave immediately. The weight of the stress and heartache is tangible. He can feel it in his bones. He can sense it when in the lag of his maneuvers and movements during flight in his training. Truth be told, Neteyam is sure that it’s visible to others, shining through in his trudging walk to and fro.

Sitting here in the grass, the same place he had spent that first night you started icing him out, he can feel the weight of sleep pulling him downwards. The muscles of his body scream in protest at every movement. Physically his body is ready to give way, but his hindbrain weaves together signs of distress all night long.

His instincts yearn to be close to you again, close to his mate who he shares a special connection with that nothing can replace. At times it is painful, that bond between the two of you. Neteyam remembers many days where that connection has been physically fortified by your time together, binding tighter with every brush of his fingers along your skin. However, he did not anticipate the effects of the opposite reaction.

Going to sleep alone and cold, leaves a heavy weight on his chest. At times it feels almost suffocating. Sleeping outside of your hut doesn’t erase these pains, but it does dull them slightly. He wonders if you’ve ever stepped over him during his slumber. Actively trying to or not, his senses remain on high alert throughout the night. He can wake at the drop of a leaf, false hope that it may be your small form finally stepping past those heavy curtains.

“Neteyam.” His head whips around at the voice, but it isn’t your honey timber that flits through his ears. Instead it comes from behind him, where Kiri stands with her hands woven together in front of her.

“What’s wrong?”

Not bothering to answer, she instead motions for him to follow her. He glances back at the entrance of your hut, but one look at Kiri’s down turned lips has him groggily shifting back onto his feet. She doesn’t speak till the two of them are out of ear shot.

“Mom and Dad sent you?” Neteyam guesses, tail already drooping between his legs. It bothers him that his parents are rushing to bandage things up, treating him like a child. Advice is appreciated at the best of times, but this is his life. He is an adult, and has been for years now. The rift that has been fortified between you two is his problem to solve and therefore his choice on how to fix it.

“No, just thought I would save you from making a fool of yourself.” She continues to effortlessly lead him away from the hut.

“I’m just dropping some food off.”

“I know.” There is no hint of mocking or disbelief in her tone. She simply grabs his hand gently and guides him back along the path home. Neteyam braces himself for a spew of advice but it never comes. Kiri to his surprise is silent, no hint of tension lingering between them. Still, he knows what message is being conveyed. No matter how much it hurts, he can’t continue to barricade your front door.

It’s moments like these that Neteyam comes to truly admire how much his younger sister has grown up. She prances through the forest with a humble confidence. Each step taken with the certainty of belonging. Kiri no longer needs others to tell her who she is. Similarly she feels no need to press her opinions on her older brother. She waits patiently. As if she knows that he will come to her when the time is right.

It is a quality he looks upon with great fondness and gratitude.

Life has thrown you more obstacles than you care to count. This condition has been a stumbling block your entire life, but you refuse to let it keep you from the finishing line. You consider yourself a persevering person, one that is not easily taken down. When things get difficult you have always been taught to gather your bearings and get to work. Some sacrifices are painful but meant to be left behind if they are keeping you from fulfilling a happy and purposeful life.

So for the first few days, you try to get back into your normal routine. The first night was spent weaving baskets together through the blurred vision of your tears. The basket came out looking like it had been mauled by a Palulukan. Regardless you continued to attempt getting back into your old routine, however those were usually filled with night hunts, an activity you were terrified of seeing Neteyam at. So you declined.

However, truth be told, it only takes twenty four hours to realize that this heartbreak is intruding upon everything you do. You open your eyes as sunset turns to Eclipse and the first thing that surfaces is the dread at needing to go to communal dinner. So, you push dinner off. Neteyam is persistent in bringing you a plate each night, usually saying a few apologies and begging once again for you to come out.

Your lips are raw and sore from biting into them in order to keep sobs at bay every time he comes to visit. Those first few nights he spent laying outside your hut was an awful mixture of longing and agony. His potent essence was easily carried through the night wind, constantly bringing it to your senses. You had twisted in the thin blankets on your hammock to stop yourself from going out there and cuddling next to him.

On the third night, he doesn’t stay.

You expect to feel relieved when he silently sets the serving of food down and leaves.

And yet, there is a part of you that longs for the draw of his smooth voice, no matter how distraught and rough it has become over the past few days. A part of you seems to also intrinsically sense his presence, even in the midst of slumber. Now that he spends his nights away from your hut, the emotional turmoil has become too much to handle.

Simple tasks pose as daunting accomplishments, ones that already feel like impending defeat. So, you slowly start losing those habits too. Your eyes run out of tears to shed so instead you spend more than a reasonable amount of time pondering on your life. You consider what it is that brought you to these circumstances, questioning whether or not you were the one to blame for this heartbreak. Perhaps, you were the one easily swayed into promises of fairy tales.

Before you know it a whole week has passed and you haven’t stepped foot outside. Recognizing this fact makes you feel pathetic and helpless, something that you don’t take a liking to. So, with red rimmed eyes and a congested nose, you take up a new purpose. Wielding together weapons from the materials in your hut.

Although they’re nothing to gawk at, the finished results are enough to convince yourself that you are contributing to the welfare of the clan. The steps are repetitive and allow your thoughts to wander while doing so. By the second week you have donated a fair amount to the hunting parties without having to leave your home, thanks to the kindness of your mother.

Your parents drop in frequently, but it’s obvious that they too find these visits painful. It’s an emotional ball and chain to see you wither away into something different. Visits that used to be full of vibrant laughter and storytelling now consist mostly of their own updates and pleas for you to come outside. Each time you assure them that you will…soon.

It’s not a lie, at least not to you.

Despite the physical ache of your heart every time you think of Neteyam’s smiling face and the bond that is now nothing but dust between you, there is still hope in your heart. A hope that someday you will recover from these lovesick feelings and finally be able to look upon the Omatikaya prince as any other clan member would. Purpose will return to your everyday tasks and Neteyam will only reside in your mind as Olo’eyktan of the Omatikaya.

Still, you would be naive to ignore the weighted awareness of his presence that consumes you every time he comes to drop meals off. You can sense him before his footsteps are even audible. Occasionally, he will say a few encouraging words or promises of solution but some nights he simply places the food there and stares at it sadly before disappearing once more. Both instances strangle your heart in their grasp.

You thought that his scent would lessen once the bond was broken, but you figure it is alpha status to thank for always sending his essence of fresh pine through your hut at each visit. In some ways it feels like the only full breaths you took. The woven walls still allow air in, but only breezes warped with his scent remind you of being outside.

It’s on the two week mark that there is a shift in the miserable routine. No meal is brought to the entryway. Hours go by and Neteyam never comes by. You’ve been living off of those nightly meals and while one meal is not hardly enough to maintain a status of full health, its loss is even worse. At first, it appears that Neteyam has given up. He is tired of chasing after you and rightfully so you suppose. This is meant to be a step in the right direction, but you cry yourself to sleep that night. Apparently, your body had an extra storage of tears after all.

However, when it happens again, your theories start to change. A small slice of fruit is left outside on a leaf by the curtains in place of a meal. It’s delicious with juice squirting along your tongue in a dramatic symphony of taste. It’s the type of experience that leaves one wanting for more. Initially you are disappointed when the small piece is gone, but you remember where this food comes from. It would only take a five minute walk to approach the communal fire and snatch some away for yourself.

Only moments away from dipping outside that entry way for the first time in two weeks, you have another thought.

Neteyam only put one piece.

Would it not have been easier to leave a whole fruit rather than take the time to cut and separate one morsel of it onto a leaf as an offering.

It wasn’t an offering, it was an enticement.

You stay behind, trying to forget the sweet tang of the dessert.

Sure enough the suspicion is correct when the next night one piece of wrapped chocolate is left outside with a note.

Found this during the raid this week. There’s a whole bag left sitting in my hut. Let me know if you want some more.

-Neteyam

The chocolate is a tiny ball wrapped in a red textured material that is unfamiliar to Pandora. Chocolate is something you never knew of before Neteyam. However, now it has become one of your all time favorite delicacies, especially with the rarity of its availability. Neteyam took a great liking to showing you around the outpost and the stocked treasures they were stealing from the old Hell’s Gate post and the new trains they were constantly raiding. He would explain the random customs and stories of Sky People that he hears from his father while carefully unwrapping the delicious pieces for you.

Some days you would even have him read some of the English text, whether from the wrappers or other books that are kept around the outpost for the human scientists to enjoy at their leisure. You never understand a word of what he says, but the sounds are fascinating to hear in Neteyam’s familiar timber. Although the Mother Tongue of the Sky Demons, you’ve always been fascinated by Neteyam’s ability to speak it. Something very distinctly attractive about his extra abilities.

You sigh and thumb at the round ball of chocolate. It melts on your tongue, creating an explosion of sweet smooth sensations. Leave it to Neteyam to try and lure you out through your love of chocolate. That night you flatten out the wrapper, running your thumb over the English text that appears as nothing more than scribbles to you. It serves as a painful reminder of the golden memories the two of you have shared.

It remains clamped in your fist the entire day.

Heavy eyelids blinking open slowly, you can still feel the strange texture of that wrapper between your fingers. Contrary to your lack of activity, your body feels sore. Every muscle seems to be wound the wrong way and the air in your hut feels moist and stuffy. Stretching out, your foot hits the food supplies basket you keep and knocks it over. You stumble to put the object away, or rather you try to before you realize that it’s empty.

The last of your supplies is gone.

Regardless of your feelings and fears, you need to go outside today. It’s time to face the music.

Your toes curl and feet flex before carefully shifting to stand. Pushing aside clusters of baskets and tools you finally breach the front entryway of your hut. Expecting the air to have cooled down by now, your skin prickles strangely at the feeling of heat against your back. You rush to throw off whatever blanket or item of clothing that must have stuck to you but then your eyes are blinded. Sheer light invades your vision, drenching every sight in white.

Stumbling across the forest floor, it truly takes you more than a moment to understand what is happening. The harsh light, the foreign heat. This is sunlight.

A pure beam of sunlight that has not disappeared behind the moon yet.

Your delayed reaction finally allows you to search for the entryway and try to scramble towards safety but it’s impossible to see with the brightness of the world turned up to one hundred. Your eyes can’t manage to stay open for more than a second, each time feeling a burning sensation that is unbearable. Soon, though, it seems to be too late as your limbs grow heavy and your skin heats uncomfortably. Even when that last ray of sunshine disappears, your body continues to torment you with a rising heat.

The sensations become too much. The weight of your own head drags you down. The world spins around you in disorienting directions. Only a glimpse of blue skin is caught before you collapse into someone’s arms and the world turns blissfully black again.

“Move before I kick you out.” Mo’at warns, but her tone holds a morsel of sympathy despite the strict instruction.

You are laid out along the mat of her healer’s tent with half the Sully family gathered around. Neteyam can hardly keep his hands off of you, constantly checking to see if you have cooled down yet. Each time renders him disappointed, ears folding back against his head. Mo’at is quickly losing patience as she is constantly swatting the boy away in order to apply the series of healing balms.

“She’s burning up.” He protests, but finally moves out of her way. His idle hands find a new place along his knees where the blunt nails dig into his skin. Kiri and Tuk surround their brother but are careful to not impede too much on his space. His panicked dread rolls off of him in waves, a palpable tension that can be felt by everyone in the tent.

“How long was she exposed?”

“I don’t know. Can’t be more than a few minutes maybe. She was hardly past the entrance when I found her…I….is she going to be ok?” His voice cracks as tears finally well up over his golden orbs. Tuk places her small hand on his shoulder.

“Only the Great Mother knows that.” She pauses, looking up to see her grandson’s crumbling composure. “She is hot. Her temperature needs to drop significantly.”

The message doesn’t seem to settle on Neteyam. His gaze continues to focus on your unconscious face.

“Neteyam.” His head finally snaps up at his grandmother’s stern voice. “Go fetch me cold water from the river.” A basin is handed to the alpha but she can already tell there is reluctance in his expression.

“Now.” It’s harsher than Mo’at would like to be but she knows that getting the concerned alpha outside of the tent is essential for her to complete the healing rituals. His presence is a distraction that has her own emotions tugging her away from the work at hand.

Neteyam purses his lips and sends one last glance towards you. He cradles your cheek and leans down to softly press a kiss to your forehead, whispering promises to return. Then finally, he rushes out of the tent, driven by the given task.

The hours rush and drag simultaneously for Neteyam. It becomes difficult to believe that it has already been a full twenty four hours and yet every minute that your eyes are not open feels like a year to him. Jake recruits Norm and some of the other scientists to take a look at you in the outpost. Moat is naturally displeased by the change at first but even she can’t deny that the old metal portable is a safer place for you to hide from the sun. Thick blankets and rugs are hung over the windows to keep the rays of sunshine out.

Between the expertise of the scientists with their modern technology and the healing powers of Tsahik, things begin to look grim when there is little to no change in your state. Neteyam becomes increasingly more tense with every passing hour that yields no result. At some point his family stops trying to convince him to take breaks. Tuk takes it upon herself to gather and deliver a good serving from the communal fire for her older brother at every meal.

Kiri is constantly teetering between helping her grandmother wrap cooling salves of thick leaves on your skin and foraging through the forest for different materials that could be used to create various healing ointments.

Lo’ak tries to provide his brother with some pleasant company. If not that, then at least an annoying younger brother that can keep his mind off the matter for a few minutes. He tells jokes and shares random stories, usually featuring young alphas and the things their idiotic pride leads them to do. He has a plethora of these events saved up, having been training the new batch of future warriors almost daily. Those stories shift to other couples’ drama and fights when Neteyam laments over the past few weeks, assuring his brother that rough patches are normal in relationships and that perhaps he is not the worst skxawng to be found in the forest.

Jake and Neytiri watch the scene with sorrowful eyes, discussing in the privacy of their home what needs to be done for their son and you.

At hour thirty six, you begin to squirm. Every muscle seems to creek with each movement, seemingly as rusty and worn as the door to the outpost that takes an extra shove to open. It’s the burning heat that you notice next. It seems to travel along your veins and cover you in a suffocating cloud. It brings on feelings of almost claustrophobic symptoms.

Finally, the flutter of your lashes reveal your golden eyes to the synthetic lighting of the outpost makeshift hospital wing. Only one electric light is turned on down the hallway. The rest of the ambience comes from lit candles scattering the surfaces around you. Their flicker is soft and soothing, but it’s the familiar scent of timber and pine that has your muscles finally relaxing.

The surface beneath your head is cool to the touch, you rub your cheek against it.

“Tanhi.”

That soft makeshift pillow is his thigh. Your already burning cheeks seem to reach new levels of inflamed rose color as you drowsily look up at him.

“You’re awake.” His voice is thick with emotion, almost choking the sounds from his throat. On its own volition your hand shakily reaches up to swipe away the tear traveling down his cheek. His skin is cool to the touch, such a different contrast to the usual warmth that you remember radiating off of him in your nights together. Your thin arm shakes from the strain of holding it upwards, he grabs your wrist gently and reluctantly helps you lower it back to your side.

“Yes.” The sound comes out more hoarse and gravelly than you anticipated. You clear your throat before continuing. “How long have I been out?”

“Over a day.”

A few moments of sunlight and suddenly a day and a half has been taken from you. It’s a lot to process, especially with the hazy pounding assaulting your head with every moment. The usual strength and energy in your body seems to have greatly dissipated, leaving you feeling as nothing but a shell of your normal self. Your attempt at sitting up is not only hindered by the strain of your abs but also cut short by Neteyam’s large hands gently pushing you back down.

“No no Tanhi, just rest. Don’t strain yourself.” It’s too easy to settle your head back onto his welcoming lap. A small voice at the back of your head warns you of reversing all the progress that has been made, but it seems insignificant when Neteyam begins to tenderly brush his fingers through your hair. Nothing can take away the ache of your body and heat of your blood boiling but his touch does finally stir your heartbeat into a steady rhythm. It’s as if a weight is lifted off of you as your senses become filled with his essence. Every point of contact between you is like fire and ice. He is the ice that you welcome greatly, the only thing that seems to relieve the burning along your skin.

“I’m sorry.” You whisper, eyes almost closed once more.

“Whatever for, love?”

“I don’t mean to trouble you. I should’ve been more diligent, tracking the sun’s cycle..” Your lungs seize into a painful invisible grip, forcing a coughing fit to begin. Neteyam is quick to shush your sentence away and help you get some cool water down. His large hand rests over the heat of your forehead. The eldest Sully frowns down at you, no doubt still feeling the evidence of your raging fever.

“Hush, Tanhi. There’s no place I would rather be right now.”

You watch the shadows dance across lines of his collarbones and sharp features as he prepares another cool wrap to lay across your forehead. The grip you have on conscious thought is weak, but even at your mental peak you are sure that there is nothing more beautiful than the man above you. His harsh and sharp features that frame those kind and insightful eyes. He has an ethereal beauty that has always captured you.

“You’re going to be ok.” It’s unclear whether or not the sentiment is meant for you or rather himself. His hairless brows pinch into those familiar clenched lines. You recognize them from days he would come home to, the evidence of his still racing thoughts clearly etched into his features.

Through the constant ache of your body and heat that tries to lure you to sleep, it takes you a moment to recognize the pheromones drifting off of him. You’re surprised to find that you can still identify the shift of emotions through his essence. Supposedly your sense of smell is better than you thought for a beta. The curling sadness and anxiety that comes off of him in waves, however, is something you wish could not be so easily detected. It is foreign and strange when mixed with his calming perfume. Neteyam isn’t usually one easily frazzled.

Neteyam settles a clear plastic over your mouth and it takes a moment before you recognize it as the Avatar oxygen masks. The air filtered through it is clearer and more readily accepted by your lungs. After a few breaths you nod at him and he pulls it away again.

Silence ensues. You yearn to break it with some semblance of an apology or explanation, but the words never come. Your body has other ideas as it drifts in and out of consciousness. Several times you wake to see another member of the Sully family perched next to Neteyam. However, the oldest Sully child never leaves. The hold you have on time becomes almost nonexistent as you slip back and forth between reality and fever induced dreams.

Eventually you begin to wake periodically in Neteyam’s arms, head laying on his chest or coddled in his lap. Each time you consider saying something, knowing that he is no longer your mate. You have no claim on him and therefore no right to use him in this way, but his skin is cool and calms the sizzling heat upon your own. The very idea of creating distance between you two causes a spike of anxiety to take hold.

It would be all too easy to blame this on your fever and the aid he provides, even in your state of watered down thought you know the truth. There is a yearning to be close to him again. To feel the gentle caresses that line your lips and cheeks as you sleep. To fall into a fantasy where the two of you never split, convincing yourself that today is simply a small sick day where your mate pampers you. The natural instincts of your beta nature furthermore aches for the calming presence of an alpha. Even the simple actions of his rising and falling chest that contains a steady heartbeat lulles your nature into a submissive calm.

It is such a dramatic contrast to the empty abyss that has replaced your heart over the past few weeks. Falling into Neteyam feels natural, as expected as the waves that crash against the shore. It’s an ironic feeling to have considering the most inconvenient and problematic characteristics of your relationship. He was never meant to be yours.

You chant those words in your head, willing them to echo true.

This time, your eyes flutter lazily open to the feeling of his slim tail wrapping itself around your upper thigh. With creaky drowsiness you look up to find him fast asleep, lips parted softly with shallow breaths escaping soundlessly. Sprawled across him, head on his chest, this position resembles that of your usual sleeping position together. Or at least, what it used to be. Before the first cracks of dawn you would slip back into the tent and gently fall into his dozing embrace. It was not uncommon to find his tail slink around one of your limbs possessively all while never stirring from his unconscious state.

Looking around the dingy outpost, it’s just the two of you. The plastic material of the mask around your neck feels uncomfortable around your heated skin. You find a matching one around Neteyam’s own throat. Although showing no signs of struggling breathing, you gently place it against his lips. When the clear oxygen filtered through his lips, Neteyam stirs.

You contemplate faking sleep when his ears twitch and eyes slowly open, but they immediately land on you.

“Yawne.” Neteyam groans, voice thick with sleep. The deep rumble of his morning voice always makes your stomach do somersaults. “How are you feeling, Tanhi?”

His ears pin back when you veer away from his efforts to cup your cheek.

“A bit better.” Your arms tremble as they push against Neteyam pectorals to try and sit up properly. Despite his gentle protests, you finally manage to remain upright for the first time in days. The room spins around you. It’s only by the grace of Neteyam’s hands supporting your back that you remain sitting. “What time is it?”

It feels like night but then again the heavy blankets over the outpost windows would show no indication of broad daylight if present.

“Middle of the night.”

“Then I should go.” Your feet are barely planted on the ground before Neteyam is pulling you back into his arms.

“You don’t really think I’m going to let you out there in this condition, do you?” His chest rumbles with a stern timber, but his hold is tender and gentle. You are tempted to roll your eyes at the protective behavior, but you’re worried that doing so would put the room back into orbit again.

“You need rest.”

“I can rest at home.”

“Like hell you will.” Neteyam scoffs, using another phrase he so commonly picks up from his father. You can practically feel the protective growl that yearns to climb up his throat, but a sigh comes out in its place. “You’re shaking, Tanhi. Let me take care of you.”

His knuckles graze your cheek delicately, sending a cool shiver along your shoulders.

“I don’t think that is a good idea.”

Neteyam’s hand stills before dropping heavily to his lap. The heated breath coming from his lips tickles at the back of your neck. Were it not for your already trembling form you are sure that his presence alone would erupt goosebumps and shivers along your body. The pressing weight of silence is dizzying, tempting you to lay back down. You can practically hear the cogs in his head turning at a rapid pace.

“Please just hear me out for a moment.”

Turning around to face him takes more effort than you would like to admit. Seeing those sad golden eyes without melting takes even more.

“Five minutes is all I ask.” You hesitate, biting your bottom lip. “And if by the end of it you are sick of hearing from me then I promise I will leave you alone. My grandmother will take over caring for you and I will…respect your wishes.” His words are strangled, that suffocating dread pulling his features into a deep frown.

“Ok.”

The shimmer of hope is barely visible in his shining eyes but it still wrenches your heart.

“My entire life has been about being Olo’eyktan. I’ve watched my father lead the people since I could barely walk and since then I have always known that someday that would be me. I wake up every day and the first thought that comes to mind is what needs to be done in order to become the mighty leader that everyone expects me to be. For a long time I’ve thought that my path was already decided by Eywa. Find an omega suitable of being tsahik, settle down with her, and lead till my son can take over. I was ok with that, I’d accepted my fate.” Neteyam shifts to his knees, fingernails digging slightly into his own thighs. Apprehension spoils his scent, creating a new mixture you are unfamiliar with. It’s then that you realize you’ve never seen Neteyam nervous before.

“Then I met you.”

Your eyes dart to the laminate floor.

“I…I’m usually a lot better with words.” He chuckles nervously while rubbing the back of his neck. “It occurred to me recently that I’ve been negligent in our relationship. I never truly explained why I chose you. Why you are the person I can’t live without. Perhaps if I had we wouldn’t be in this situation now.”

“Neteyam it’s not-”

“Please let me finish, Tanhi.”

You nod softly, careful to not increase the already blooming headache pounding at your skull.

“I’ve never met anyone like you.” A weak snort transforms into a cough raking up your throat. “I don’t mean because of ailment, yawne.” He clarifies and you suddenly feel embarrassed for assuming so quickly. Neteyam pauses his little speech to reach behind and once again carefully bring a cup of water to your parched lips. Gratefully, you let the cool substance slink down your throat to soothe the scratchy ache.

Once he seems to be sure that another fit is not about to come on, Neteyam continues.

“You have this unyielding spirit, determined to forage through any storm. Eywa herself puts you in the shadows and you conquer the terrain. The air around you hums with a quiet confidence that is…” He searches for the right word. “Intoxicating.”

A laugh escapes your lips and yet you feel nothing resembling humor. Your hairless eyebrows scrunch in disbelief. Neteyam shows no acknowledgment of your reaction as he instead puts the mask back against your mouth.

“I’ve been drawn to you since that first night hunt. Surely, that isn’t a secret.” He laughs into his own mask that is raised to his lips. If only he knew how oblivious you were to his intentions those first few weeks. “You’re fiercely determined and independent yet hold a gentle empathy and kindness for those around you that I could only ever hope to imitate. And stubborn too.” Neteyam chuckles with a shake of his head. “Fucking stubborn enough to tell a dumb alpha like me off, consequences be damned.”

Your lungs can only manage a simple huffed laugh, but the corners of your lips are already turning upwards subconsciously.

“When I’m around you,” His eyes pierce through you. “I can finally bear that weighted pressure of expectations on my chest. You make it light.” Neteyam leans forward and tucks a stray strand of hair behind your upturned ear. “My little star.”

Your cheeks are damp and it is only then that you realize tears drops have been escaping your eyes. Neteyam thumbs them away with tender care.

“I’ve grown accustomed to sacrificing whatever it takes to become Olo’eyktan. I’ve written my life off as not my own. I’ve given everything I can and could in order to fulfill this role. You are the only thing that I can not sacrifice. And maybe that is selfish of me, but I also know that without you I’m simply a shell of the man I am with you.”

“I could never be Olo’eyktan without you by my side.”

“But how am I supposed to be beside you when I can’t even step a foot into the sun without falling apart at the seams?”

“You truly think that I haven’t thought about that, yawne?” Neteyam’s lips quirk into an amused smile. “I guess now would be a good time to tell you that Lo’ak and I have been building a black out healers tent.” You gape at him. “I wanted it to be a surprise. I suppose I should’ve known better than to think I could pull one over on you.”

It’s foolish, you tell yourself. Another darkened tent doesn’t solve all of the problems. It doesn’t erase the strain this relationship would have on Neteyam or allow you to operate during the daytime hours, unless you are content to remain in the tent for all of your days. And yet, there is a sliver of hope growing in your bosom.

“Nete, I don’t know what to say.” His braids swing over the intense eyes that focus on your every move. He’s tense, ready to jump in at the notice of resistance. “But, I can’t live my life in a dark tent.”

“Of course not. I’m talking about a compromise. Lo’ak, he takes over in the mornings while you and I start the day in the midafternoons. Tsahik duties in the tent for a few hours and then the rest of the night spent together. Leading together. Hunting together.” The dopey grin that spreads upon his lips is fiercely adamant in capturing your heart once more. It takes everything in you to not reach out and pinch the mighty warrior’s cheek. A notion Neteyam is known to reprimand with a playful glare.

“You make it sound so simple.” It’s too much to meet his gaze. You prefer the view of the worn down tiles as you take another calming breath from the mask. The pace of your heart is evermore increasing and part of you wonders if this conversation has the ability to make you faint.

A hand beneath your chin gently prods you to look back up again. He whispers your name, soft but clear in the quiet outpost.

“We have a choice.”

The words weigh heavy in the air, drawing your ears to perk forward in anticipation.

“I know that may sound like a lie to you. However, if there is anyone that understands their life being determined from birth, it’s you. You and I have been pushed and kept into our respective boxes, taught to dream of only the realistic paths ahead of us.”

You wish to say it’s untrue, but any other reality has been stripped away from you from your first breath and morphed into only that of fairy tales.

“We get to choose whether or not we believe that. I’ve accepted my destiny, Tanhi, but I can not bring myself to see my journey walking besides anyone that’s not you. I’ve already chosen. You are what I will not sacrifice.” Neteyam’s calloused fingers weave into your hair, hands on the sides of your head.

“It’s your turn, Tanhi. What do you choose?”

“Is that your definition of fumbling words?” Your chuckle is choked with tears. Neteyam’s short laughter joins your own, his lips already starting to spread into that smile you adore so much.

The past few weeks have been a constant building of that fortress around your heart. You’ve tried to convince yourself over and over again that the two of you parting ways is for the best. These mantras have ripped your heart out and left you in a state of empty sadness, but they also have created a sturdy wall, one that is hard to crumble. Naturally, it is Neteyam that ever stands a chance at breaking through. Sweet Neteyam that knows you so thoroughly that he doesn’t require brute force to get through, he finds a hold from the inside, reading you like a book until there is nothing left for you to hide.

This experience has been a draining uphill battle, but one that you have embarked on because you’ve been convinced that the right thing to do is often the hard thing. However, now, the story shifts. You are left wondering if perhaps this whole time, running away is not the hard thing at all. It’s staying that proves to be the most difficult battle to fight. It’s staying that requires your heart to be opened and at the mercy of failure and disappointment. Leaving Neteyam isn’t the noble cause you once thought it to be.

It’s hiding.

“You really have some nerve calling me stubborn.” You try to joke, but tears are already cascading down your cheeks at an alarming rate and you can tell Neteyam is seconds away from scooping you back into his lap.

“Well I admit being stubborn has its reward sometimes.” He quirks an eyebrow at you. “Perhaps it’s paid off for me this time?”

“Perhaps.” You smile coyly at him. It takes bracing a stabilizing hand against the floor to stop yourself from falling over when you lean forward but it’s worth the exhilarating feeling of his lips against yours once more.

Neteyam is cautious and gentle, moving his lips softly in sync with yours, but you can feel the restraint it takes for him not to swallow you whole. However, you are still healing so Neteyam treats you the way you expect any alpha to: like a delicate flower. Your own tears wet the canvas of both of your cheeks and it takes a moment to realize that small droplets are falling from Neteyam’s eyes too.

The kiss is warm and tender. Relief washes through your body in a wave that makes you realize how much pain you truly were in. How even the very bones in your body finally lose their ache when Neteyam slips an arm around your back to bring you closer.

You’re forced to break the kiss earlier than desired as Neteyam can feel the way your body lags to get air into its lungs. The soft pants that leave your lips are soon encased by the mask that the alpha slips over your mouth once more. The warmth of his gaze beaming down on you spreads across your chest and lights another fire along your skin.

“Come home, Neteyam.” You whisper softly. His forehead leans against your own, those golden orbs still shimmering with unshed tears.

“Always, Tanhi.”

The hours float by in a happily dazed dream afterwards. Neteyam’s touch starved state comes fully into the light as he is constantly keeping a point of contact between you two. It’s obvious that his alpha hindbrain has gone off the wall after being apart for so long and furthermore trying to care for you without going too far. Now that the green light has been given, Neteyam is constantly wrapping his body around your own smaller form till you are almost completely encapsulated by him.

Truthfully, you have no objections. In fact, even your own instincts push you towards readily accepting and initiating any forms of affectionate touch. It further helps that Neteyam’s skin is cool to the touch in comparison to your own raging feverish skin.

Within half a day your wellbeing has greatly increased after the constant nurturing of your overprotective alpha, who seems to be constantly slipping water, food, medicine, or mask given air past your lips. Mo’at is greatly pleased when your temperature begins to return back to its former state and there is a greater strength present in your body. Still, she instructs you to lay low for another day as a precaution.

Neteyam is more than happy to keep you to himself for another day. Watching you come close to the brink of death has his primal urges dialed to eleven. You have to scold him every now and then when his younger brother comes to visit and Neteyam thanks him with an aggressive hiss and tucking you safely into his arms and away from the ‘threat’.

It’s borderline shocking to see his strong reactions considering the severed bond between the two of you. That is, until you find the truth.

“I admit, it might’ve been selfish Tanhi but I couldn’t bring myself to cut our tie before knowing that I had tried everything possible to get you back.”

He had looked up at you with a guilty composure but after everything the two of you had been through you couldn’t hide your relief and joy in finding out that this bond had still survived the heartache. It also provides a greater explanation to your own body's willingness to melt into him with or without a resolution. Now, though, you are content to let him have his fun babying you for one day more and revill in the renewed connection the two of you share.

This time when you awake in the newly hung hammock inside of the outpost (Neteyam had used every angle possible to convince the human scientists to let him temporarily take up the space) you’re surprised to find your mate’s skin hot against your own. His thumping heartbeat rickets in your eardrums but instead of rocking you to sleep, the sound sends shivers down your spine.

Neteyam is blissfully unaware of your consciousness as your own heart starts to speed up. Shifting your leg, it’s a surprise to feel a sticky texture lining the inside of your loincloth. Blood rushes to your cheeks when you realize the source of this substance. Bashfully you’re relieved to see Neteyam is still asleep, allowing your arousal to remain a private humiliation.

With the cautiousness of a sneaking Palulukan, you attempt rolling off of the hammock and out of his arms to take care of your little problem. It’s only halfway rolling over to your side when the Omatikaya prince shifts and spoons you from behind. All plans are immediately thwarted when his muscular thigh slips between your splayed legs innocently. However, the pressure it incidentally puts against your clit brings forth feelings that are anything but innocent.

A veiny forearm easily clamps around your waist to pull you back against his chest. The act rubs his thighs against your clothed folds so suddenly, that it brings a whimpered moan from your lips. Breath hitched in your throat, you wait to see if Neteyam stirs. He shows no sign of waking so you try to scoot your heated core away from his thigh slyly.

Not only are these efforts unrewarded but also bring a tinge of sadness coursing through you. It’s a strange wave of emotion that follows. Arousal quickly windles into full blown desperation within a few heartbeats. The sensations are overpowering, racing through every surface of your body until all that your mind can focus on is the need to be filled by a mate.

Filled by Neteyam.

“Oh Great Mother.” You curse quietly.

Your first heat.

A momentous milestone that your parents have talked to you in great lengths about yet still brings nothing to light on the reality of the experience. You’ve had smaller mini episodes of heat, normal in the beginning of adulthood for Na’vi betas, but it’s only a laughable comparison to the clawing desire taking over your body currently. As a beta you figured that your own heats would be miniscule compared to the laborious heats that plague omegas earlier in their years.

Involuntarily rocking your clothed core against Neteyam’s thigh you now wonder how these Na’vi have ever survived such a demanding lust and lived to tell the tale. And that is what it feels like. Death if not satisfied. Pain if not satiated.

Embarrassment is thrown out the window in favor of creating a pleasurable friction against your clit. Hardly ever having experienced touching yourself on the rare occasion, you have no idea what to do. The corded muscle of his relaxed thigh feels better than your usual small fingerings drumming against the bundle of nerves, so you continue to rock back in a desperate rhythm.

The hammock starts to sway softly with your jutting hips. Some movements are rewarded with a spark of pleasure, only to then be absent on the next rock of your hips. Frustration is quick to brew as you can’t seem to find the right angle and pressure against your core. Shiny slick drenches through the thin fabric and onto the alpha’s thigh. It acts as a lubricant for your journey across his skin, allowing a faster pace to be adopted.

Your pussy clenches around open air, beckoning for a worthy mate to finally fill and claim you properly. It’s an emptiness that you can only compare to the tingling you have experienced after especially long makeout sessions with Neteyam, but it’s worse. So much worse that it brings tears to your eyes. The only relief is found when a lucky thrust finally has the fabric pushed away from your core and lets your small clit peek out and press against his azure skin.

Now without any barriers, pure ecstasy wracks through your body. It only amplifies when the muscles flex slightly beneath you, giving just the right amount of pressure against your clit. A knot forms and tightens in your stomach, quickly winding until it feels as if it’s about to snap. It feels almost dirty to realize that your slick has now coated the entirety of Neteyam’s thigh all while he is sleeping and yet it lures you further into a state of arousal than you have ever been before.

Your own thighs clench harshly around Neteyam’s to trap it against your core. A release clear on the horizon, every effort is put into maintaining that delicious sensation of your clit being assaulted against the muscle. Legs shaking and small squeaks erupting from your throat you chase that feeling relentlessly.

“Cum, Tanhi.”

Neteyam’s raspy voice pushes you over the edge with a shocked gasp. His rumbling growl of satisfaction seems to pulse through you in sync with the overwhelming sensations of an orgasm.

“Good girl.” He praises as your body trembles in the afterglow of release. Neteyam chuckles when a simple flex of his thighs has a whimper spilling your lips. Swirling patterns are drawn by the alpha’s fingers along your sides and arms.

Mental clarity returns in a flash, allowing the reality of the situation to sink in. You hide your heated face against his arm underneath your head while groaning in humiliation.

“Nete.” You whine.

“Hush, baby girl. It’s alright, no reason to get all shy on me now.” He coos while swiping your hair away from your cheek to finally have an unobscured view of your blushing face. “Especially not when you make such pretty noises.”

The words crumble any wall of resistance against the impending heat. Your body yearns for another release, still screaming at you for not being filled with your alpha’s cock yet. A cock that you can feel hardening beneath Neteyam’s loincloth and poking at your lower back.

“Neteyam, it really hurts.”

“I know, Tahini, I know.” He soothes, softly kissing your temple while brushing the strands of hair away. “My poor little star. A bit stronger than you expected, hm?”

When his thigh finally shifts away from your leaking pussy, despite the strength of your clamped legs, a noise of disappointment escapes you.

“So much worse. Neteyam please!” It’s hard to say what you are begging for specifically, but the alpha is quick to calm your worries with sweet nothings. Your limbs kick out and try to wind around any of his, subconsciously finding ways to trap his body closer to yours.

“If you want help, all you have to do is say, yawne. I know how to take care of my girl.” He turns you by the chin to make direct eye contact with him, a silent second measure to make sure this is truly what you desire. Hesitating is far from your mind as you nod and whine out little pleas.

Satisfied with your consent Neteyam grins and begins to descend down your body. Confusion swirls in your eyes when he situates your legs over his shoulders. The sex talk from your parents may not have been that descriptive but you know enough to realize that his cock is nowhere near your drenched entrance.

“How does that…” You trail off, head tilted to the side.

“Just need to get your ready first, Tanhi. Want my baby girl to feel good.” Pointed teeth poke out beneath his lips in his open mouth grin. The pads of his fingers tenderly brush and tease along your outer thighs, slowly making their way to your inner. Tingles of anticipation and pleasure trickle up your body. It boggles you how such a light tracing heightens your lust to new levels.

“How?”

His face softens and Neteyam coos at you while tucking a strand behind your ear.

“Just trust me, little star. I promise you’ll like it.”

So you do, even when his face lowers to your partly clothed mound. Neteyam’s nose presses against your pussy and he sucks in air like a man on the brink of drowning. Your cheeks set aflame at having his face so close to your special place, something you had never considered before. The rumble of power in his hungry growl, however, washes away any insecurity that would plague your mind.

“Smell so delicious, Tanhi.” He purrs.

Neteyam’s creates a path of wet kisses along your inner thighs. Careful grips on your knees allow him to maneuver your legs into whatever profane position he desires, easy access for his eager tongue and lips. His saliva and your slick become intermixed along the expanse of skin as he takes his time warming you up. Each time his lips come closer to your folds, you whimper needily. Heated lust entraps every thought you have, wondering how long it will be until the two of you finally become one.

The first nips at your left inner thigh causes you to jump. His eyes look back up at you as the pointed tips of those canines teasingly scrape against your soft skin.

“Just a little taste, yawne?” He asks, although the smirk along his lips suggests that it is less of a question and rather a warning.

“A bite? T-there?”

Neteyam chuckles at your clueless behavior. It’s been known among Na’vi to leave obvious hickeys and bites along one’s mate’s skin, but you’ve always assumed that to only be in places more visible and less…private. Your tail swishes anxiously as you think of those marks being so close to your heated entrance.

“Yes, baby girl. A little mark to remember me by, hm?”

A simple nod of your head is all the permission required for Neteyam to continue. He takes one last breath from the hanging mask before picking a spot on your inner thigh where the flesh is supple and tender, licking and kissing and the area in preparation. When his lips close around the plush skin and begin to suck, it sends tendrils of electricity straight to your core. Without even thinking you moan and grab at his hair. You’re stuck between the urge to push his head away and encourage him to suck harder.

Once released, the skin is left with a pronounced purple mark. One lick is deposited on the spot before his teeth nip and tug at the skin. You squeal and arch your back dramatically, Neteyam moans darkly he has let it fall from between his teeth and begin to soothe the skin with kisses and licks. The entire act scratches a part of your brain that is primal, satisfied by the apparent claim he leaves for all to see.

“Much better.” His tone drips with pride. “Thank you, Tanhi.” He kisses your knee in gratitude, as if you have given him some sacred gift, and perhaps for him that is true.

It’s only now that it occurs to you how many times Neteyam has held back from staking his claim on you the way most alphas do. You vaguely remember the indented mark of his own teeth against his bottom lip that would draw blood, especially after you have shared an intimate moment or he saw another male eyeing you for too long. What you had originally shrugged off as a habit now transforms in your mind as an act of self control.

Neteyam is quick but deliberate with his handy work of undoing the ties around your tail and hips. He slides the fabric away from your pelvis with an attitude of reverence. Cool air against your slick folds feels like a tickling touch that has your lust spiking dramatically. Burning eyes on your most sensitive area is like gasoline to the flames.

You attempt to clench your thighs together to protect your dignity, but Neteyam hoists them apart and back on his shoulders sternly.

“None of that, baby girl. Let me see how pretty you are.”

And there’s something in that phrase and his undivided attention that makes your toes curl. It becomes blatantly obvious that if he doesn’t hurry up and get on with sticking his cock inside your pussy, you will fall apart at the seams before there is even a chance.

“Neteyam, I’m ready. Please please I’m so ready.” You ramble, willing your legs apart to prepare easier access. Once he is inside everything will be better, although the thought of your virgin walls stretching around him causes a slight tinge of panic to break loose.

“Mawey, my love. It’s about to get good.”

However, frustration and confusion bubble to the surface again when you see his face lowering back down.

“No no, Nete. Enough kisses.” You whine. “I need you inside.”

His brows push up at that, the corners of his lips perking slightly as if hesitant to fully grin.

“Are you sure, my love? We can still wait if you wa-”

“NO! No more waiting! I’m ready now. I need you right now.”

He calls your name softly, but with a hint of unyielding sternness that lets you know it is important you listen. Even a beta can sense when the time to obey is present.

“You’re heat is a very powerful thing but also fleeting, Tanhi. I don’t want you to make such a big decision purely because of your primal instincts.” It’s a respectful and considerate gesture but your head is shaking before he is even close to finishing. If this man does not take you now, you’re ready to flip him over and sit on his member, inexperience be damned.

“It’s not. I’ve been ready for weeks. W-was just waiting to tell you. Take me now, stick it in now.” The ringing in your ears, you realize is actually the accelerated blood thumping along the eardrums from your racing heart. It feels as if the speed will be enough to burst your ribcage open. “I’m ready.”

Neteyam watches as your eyes clench shut and hands scrape against the woven material of the hammock. You’re braced and ready for the pain that will ensue upon penetration.

“Tahni,” Your eyes slowly peek open to see that the alpha hasn’t moved a muscle. “You love me, don’t you?”

The question throws you off guard, but the answer comes easily.

“Of course.”

“And you know that I love you?”

“Yes Neteyam.” Your hips scoot against the fabric, pussy fluttering as it continues to wait for the incoming sensation.

“And you trust me?”

“Always, Nete.”

The alpha hums happily at your response, muttering out a deep ‘good girl’.

“Then I need you to trust that I know what I’m doing, baby girl. Trust that your alpha will take care of you.” He tenderly brushes his fingers over your soft stomach. “And trust me enough to say if or when something doesn’t feel good.”

You nod hazily, keenly aware of the tickling sensation of his touch along your hips.

“That’s my good girl. Now let me get you ready.”

It’s still confusing when you see his head lower towards your navel once more, but you don’t protest this time. He’s right, you do trust him and he does have far more experience with sex than you by far. Your upturned legs are spread even wider by his broad shoulders as he leans closer and lets the tips of his tongue drag over you from belly button to navel. The saliva line goes down further and further until…oh.

It takes his grip on your hips to keep them pressed against the hammock when his tongue brushes over your clit for the first time. It’s a pleasure that is completely foreign to you. Comparable to the spark of dopamine that comes from your small finger teasing the area and yet completely different in intensity. He draws sensual figure eights along the bundle of nerves several times before swooping down to collect more of your arousal between your folds.

Neteyam is calculated with his exploring, performing in the way of someone who has crafted their art. When his tongue just barely swipes across your entrance your hands fly down to grasp his braids again. This time, however, the only thought on your mind is keeping him down there. His flat nose nudges at your clit with every swipe of his tongue along your pussy.

“Oh my Eywa!” You screech as that knot is quickly being tied again in your stomach.

Neteyam on the other hand becomes focused on another knot, tugging at the twine holding your top in place while still working on your pussy with zealous excitement. With your aid, the dangling top is released and falls to the side. His assault on your pussy pauses for him to trail upwards and lick along your quickly hardening peaks.

“So pretty, Tanhi.” He murmurs against your right nipple before taking it into his mouth and sucking. Meanwhile his fingers have taken the place of his tongue and expertly rub your clit. “My pretty little star.”

Gleeful pride twinkles in his eyes as he looks up at you, a string of saliva connecting his lips to your chest. Your small hands grapple at any part of him you can reach, finding purchase on his flexed bicep that holds himself over you.

The connecting lines of your thoughts are tangled into a ball of messy hunger and desperation. Never in your wildest dreams would you have imagined such strange things to be so exhilarating. A part of you wonders what else was not included in that sex talk.

His head is found back between your legs again once your nipples are red and pointed proudly. Neteyam licks, nips and sucks at your pussy like a starved man. Every moan of pleasure releases vibrations that sky rockets through you. It becomes too much to handle. You’ve never felt more fragile in your entire life than when his eyes connect with yours, one eye winking at you, and you fall apart.

Neteyam’s moan while licking up the white substance pouring from you goes completely unnoticed as the world around you spins and your ears ring. The gravity of this orgasm shakes you to the bones, floodgates of pleasure completely open in your brain.

Although it feels as if Pandora has slipped out from beneath you, the recovery from this release is swift. Your skin prickles with goosebumps and your pussy hungrily clenches around open air once more. It seems that the monster of a heat inside you grows more insatiable with every second. So when Neteyam covers one finger in the remnants of your juices and starts to prod at your entrance, you’re relieved.

“You’re doing so good, baby girl. This may feel strange at first, but let me know if it hurts too much.” It’s hard to focus on anything else besides the shiny slick that still coats his chin as he looks at you, but you manage a nod.

It does feel strange at first, your walls incredibly tight. Getting down to the first knuckle is easy but going towards the second proves to feel a little more strained. Regardless, you are happy to find that getting one finger inside is nothing near as painful as expected. Neteyam wiggles the digit and it makes you twitch. Such a strange sensation to be filled but, the longer he twists and curls his finger, the more you find yourself enjoying it.

“How does that feel, yawne?”

“F-fine…a little strange.”

Neteyam chuckles.

“I know. My girl’s pretty pussy is so tight.” It’s the pride and adoration in his voice that melts you from the inside out. The muscles of your cunt relax against him as he starts to slide another finger in.

This stretch takes a little more time, effort, and praise from your alpha but otherwise it’s smooth sailing. He scissors and stretches your walls with due diligence, even as the dark pupils of his eyes overtake the gold color. By the third finger, you’re clawing at his braced forearm and begging for his cock. Neteyam doesn’t immediately give in, reminding you of the importance of being stretched out for him. Frustrated by his noble intentions, you aren’t beyond playing dirty.

“Alpha please! Need your cock so bad, it hurts. Feel so empty.” The begging turns into sweet tones of whimpers. You can see the shift of his muscles as they tense. His pheromones take on a stronger hue, one that surrounds you like a cloud. Your small hand reaches down for him, fingers grasping in open air. Neteyam is quick to use the hand not half way up your pussy to hold your own, looking up at you. “You said you’d take care of me, alpha.”

Perhaps in a situation not distorted by desperate lust and the sweet scent of your erotic perfume Neteyam would be tempted to put you over his knees for trying to manipulate him, but the clenching of your velvet walls around his fingers is enough to keep him focused on being balls deep inside of you instead. You can see the moment that his resolve crumbles to ashes, it’s accentuated by a deep growl and narrowed eyes.

You watch with hungry eyes as Neteyam hastily claws at the strings of his loincloth. It’s a wonder that it doesn’t rip underneath his harsh fingers but it finally falls away and your pupils dilate at the sight. His length stands heavily against his stomach, curving slightly under its own weight. Saliva gathers in your mouth as you observe the freckled stars that glow under the dim light of the room and scatter over his shaft till reaching the tip. A bead of precum is settled there and for the first time, you understand the desire to put your mouth in such sinful places.

Neteyam preens under your awed attention, his hindbrain purring in delight at seeing his little mate impressed with what he has to offer. His grin widens when he notices your hand hesitantly reaching towards it. You stop, however, before getting to touch.

“It’s ok, Tanhi. You can touch.” The three fingers leave your entrance with a squelching sound. Neteyam confidently keeps eye contact while licking the digits clean with a soft purr, then that large hand is wrapping around your own and leading you towards his twitching member.

Even with Neteyam’s guidance, you’re unable to wrap the entirety of his width in your grip, but he doesn’t appear to be bothered by it. In fact, a devious spark lights in his smile as he watches you struggle to hold it. Although, you will probably never admit it outside of heat, you too enjoy the dramatic size difference between the two of you. On more than one occasion you have let your arousal ruin your loincloth just from having his large body completely wrapped around your own, tucking you away so easily.

A small gasp leaves your throat when his cock twitches in your hand. Neteyam can’t keep his cooing laughter in as he pets affectionately at your hair. He pauses to take a breath from the mask while still smirking.

“You see what you do to me, baby girl?”

The taste of iron erupts in your mouth and it is only then that you realize you’ve been crushing your bottom lips between sharp teeth.

“Is it…uncomfortable?” It feels silly to be so bashful after having his lips along your pussy moments earlier, but you can’t help but keep your voice down to a whisper. You thank the Great Mother for the privacy that the scientists have allowed the two of you over the past few days. There would be no recovery for your dignity if they were to walk in on this scene. Heat or not, being whiny and oblivious is embarrassing.

“Hm, sometimes my love. If relief is not given.” He guides your thumb to run over the head. “Mostly it gets my thoughts traveling to tempting places. Imagining all the different ways I can have you laid out for me.” The weight of your eyelids seem to increase with every word he speaks. His other hand running up and down your inner thigh only adds to the lust filled daze that has captured you.

“Wondering what you would taste like.” Being the cheeky alpha that he is, Neteyam doesn’t let the opportunity pass by without reaching a few digits down to his soaked thigh and swirling the substance between his fingers. He simultaneously continues to help you jerk his thick member slowly while sticking the dripping fingers into his mouth profanely.

“My imagination, however, doesn’t do it justice.” He hums with delight, his pink tongue swiping over his bottom lip to collect any escaping juices. “My thoughts are merely a facade in comparison to the real thing. They can’t do you justice.”

You subconsciously tighten your grip around him at the words, causing a low groan to rumble from his chest. Another trickle of slick coats your entrance. You’re in absolute awe at your body's ability to get close to cumming just from the dark noises and words that spill from your mate’s lips. Not to mention the twitching weight of his cock restrained in your hand.

“Then stop imagining and come here.” You leap forward and capture his lips with your own. Neteyam’s hum of surprise morphs into a viscous growl as your tongues fight for dominance. The little gasps and groans that slip into the kiss as you pump his cock is electrifying. It’s borderline addicting to see that way the mighty Omatikaya Prince bucks his hips for you. A sense of power to know that you can get him melting like this.

Never breaking the kiss, Neteyam shuffles your body forward and the two of you start to guide his cock towards your fluttering pussy. All forms of trepidation are gone. Your body screams from every pore that you can take it. You trust these instincts as the thick head of his member prods at your entrance.

Your lips part against his mouth in a gasp when the head slips past your entrance. Slick walls stretch in ways that you couldn’t have imagined and it feels as if you are about to be split in half. Neteyam continues to kiss and nip at your lips gleefully while carefully continuing to guide himself in inch by inch.

“You’re being such a good girl for me.” He coos as your eyes scrunch shut tightly. It feels as if the length will never stop, as if he is about to reach your chest from the inside, but Neteyam is patient. He takes his sweet time checking up on you with every inch and soaking his tone and words with constant praises. It does this trick, scratching at that primal desire to please your alpha.

When his balls finally meet the curve of your ass, little whimpers rain from you consistently.

“N-nete, so b-big.” You cry, forehead touching his own as you struggle to take in ragged breaths. He forces you to take a breath from the mask hanging from his neck.

“I know, baby. So perfect and tight around me.” His own voice shakes slightly. “God damn!” The english phrase sounds like gibberish to your ears but you understand the sentiment nonetheless.

Settled there to let you adjust, your head lolls to his shoulder. When his cock twitches, you clamp your teeth down on his exposed shoulder to stabilize yourself. Neteyam encourages the oral fixation through hissed words of praise. Tears spill from your eyes but it’s hard to say what the source of your crying is. The stretch is uncomfortable but you can’t deny the certain tinge of pleasure that courses through you when a slight shift reminds you of how full your pussy is. Eventually, your heat takes the edge off, rewarding your ability to secure a mate with a pulsing clit and dripping entrance.

It takes a moment to realize that Neteyam is calling your name, you eventually snap out of it when his lips murmur it straight into your flicking ears.

“Hand me your kuru, baby.” Your hands obey on their own accord. “Want you to understand how good you feel, Tanhi. How happy you make me.”

When those dancing tendrils wrap securely around one another, your eyes go from sleepy slits to dilated pupils of awe. It never becomes old being able to feel Neteyam so closely. To feel his breath and strength. To have his own emotions coalesce with yours. A vulnerable certainty of how he is feeling. In this state, neither of you can hide. There is no deceit. There are no polite formalities. You both have direct access to the other’s soul.

This time, a new current of sensation travels through the bond. It sparks into growing forms of ecstasy that makes you groan. It’s a strange thing to accept, but you can feel your own tights walls secured around him. Hugging him so tightly in the warmth of your cunt, velvety texture caressing him with every shift. Underneath that pleasure also grows an unyielding lust that pricks at his self control with every passing second. His hindbrain is screaming at him to move. To claim. To fill your womb with his seed until it drips out from you.

It’s better than if the words had come from his own lips. It sets you into a feral need to complete these fantasies.

“Can you feel me, baby girl?” His arms are securely wrapped around your middle to keep you tight against him.

“Yes Nete, feel all of you. Need all of you. W-want you to move.” The ability to form coherent sentences starts to slip between your fingers. Neteyam, however, requires no further instruction. Your back hits the hammock once more as his strong grip clasps around the soft flesh of your hips. The mask is settled over your lips by the alpha before he continues.

Slowly, but surely, he draws out with smooth and continuous thrusts. Your cunt clenches around him almost painfully, as if to keep him locked there. Once the tip is just barely past your entrance he starts to slide back in smoothly. The prolonged thrusts eventually angle in a way that hits a bundle of nerves inside you that has never been explored by you before. Neteyam moans in sync with you as he can feel your own pleasure every time the head of his cock rubs at the rosy spot.

It spurs him forward. You don’t have to explicitly tell him to go faster because he can feel it straight through the bond. It allows you to focus the energy you have left on gripping his shoulders for dear life. A brutal rhythm begins to take place, your legs wrapped around his waist.

“Oh Eywa!” You screech. The obscene noises of skin slapping fills the room along with Neteyam’s loosed growls and grunts.

“That’s not my name, Tanhi.” The alpha teases, but you can feel the aching desire he has to hear his own name upon your lips. To have the auditory satisfaction of knowing he is pleasing his little mate.

“N-neteyam oh haa Nete!”

His precision at hitting your g spot increases. Neteyam learns your body with an impressive speed. One hand comes up to palm and tease your breasts in his large hand. His eyes switching back and forth between watching his cock disappear inside of you and marveling at the nipple hardening between his pinched fingers.

Everything starts to become a blur for you. The origins of sounds are unknown. Several times you are surprised to find that the high pitched screams are coming from your own throat. Your body shakes and trembles as if it is about to shatter into a million pieces. And that is what you come to truly believe as it overwhelms your senses. It is so consuming and new that you start to sputter little pleas of mercy to your mate, convinced that you truly will die from this overload of sensations.

“It’s alright, Tanhi. You’re alright. Just let go for me. Let it all go.”

Your hair tangles in the woven material of the hammock as you shake your head. Neteyam thrusts become ragged and less coordinated but he slips a hand down to fondle at your clit. You scream and arch, cumming harder than ever before. Neteyam is less than a second behind you, feeling the effects of your orgasm through the bond. Warm ropes of seeds paint your inner walls.

The first normal sense that comes to you is the feeling of Neteyam’s heavy and warm body collapsed on top of yours. Heated breath tickles at your neck, intermittent with sweet kisses and nonsense murmurs. You let yourself bask in the afterglow. Your body is sore and motionless, but luckily Neteyam takes over. Only a tiny sound comes from you when he slips out.

“Come here, tanhi.” Your boneless body is pulled to lay on top of him. Soothing affection swims across the bond when you nuzzle your face against his chest. The swing of the hammock and rhythm of his heartbeat is quickly luring you to sleep.

Neteyam grabs your hand and kisses it sweetly. You can vaguely make out the sound of his voice, but the words are like garbled noises which never compute in your brain. It’s hard to say whether or not it’s english or if you just can’t understand simple words now in your fucked out state. Still, you like the way it makes his chest rumble.

“Neteyam.” The rumble stops, tail flickering as he waits patiently.

“I see you.” Your words are barely more than a whisper in the stuffy room but they ring true. He gently places the breathing mask over your lips again before your eyes close.

“You’re all I see, little star.”

Taglist @yurmomsawh0r @nilahsstuff @name-saken @luvv4j4ybe11 @stylishtoast @karateperson @henhouse-horrors @easy2004 @whisperingwillow0854 @whenercolorfulrainbowlol @neteyamtesuli

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forsaken-headcanons · 11 days ago

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not itrapped or april fools related headcanons, sorry

whenever the inevitable parasocial breakup happens, taph just silently freaks out around builderman and attempts to remove himself from the situation to avoid the distress or embarrassment. like. he bottles it up and doesn’t let anyone even get a suspicion that he’s going through it 💔 RIP buddy it happens to the best of us

ALSO. i think that taph has horrible sleeping conditions (like. sleeping on the floor on glass type of bad) and probably enjoys the smell of burning stuff or burnt stuff due to the explosions and presumable resulting fire/ash and has a crap ton of like. candles around his home that aren’t scented.

maybe he’s also got some hearing loss and poor eyesight too because of the explosions, though since he’s a professional i assume he would know the correct gear and distance to be from them when they blow up.

Oh don't hurt me. I love them so much.

Hearing and vision loss Taph is real.

#forsaken headcanons #forsaken #forsaken roblox #roblox forsaken #taph forsaken #builderman forsaken

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scoobydoodean · 4 months ago

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Not a lot to say about 7.10 "Death's Door" which presents a pretty clear (and I think very touching) narrative. But one thing I want to talk about is Sam and Dean's responses to Bobby being at death's door and Dean filling the assumed role as the oldest, handling most practical matters surrounding their adoptive father's hospitalization and death (and being afforded far less breathing room partly as a consequence). We already know from 3.10 that Dean is Bobby's emergency contact. In that same episode, Dean refers to Bobby as his father for the first time. Dean makes the same claim in 4.01, and of course—in 7.10, Bobby makes it very clear that he sees Sam and Dean as his sons.

The first way we see Dean taking on the practical role as the oldest son is by facing the initial news about Bobby's condition from the doctor alone. Whether it's good or bad, he knows he has to be the one to hear it. Dean stands tall but rigid—bracing himself. In contrast, Sam noticeably hangs in the background. He isn't ready to shoulder any of the information about Bobby's condition yet without his older brother as a buffer.

Sam is looking very little brother shaped when the doctor leaves and Dean turns around to see how Sam is reacting to the news that Bobby is stable.

Notice how Sam stands—as far back against the wall as possible. Dean had been standing right in front of the door to Bobby's room when the doctor emerged. In contrast, Sam's position protected him from having a direct line of sight into Bobby's room when the curtains opened, because he can't look.

Note: I'm not judging Sam for this. It's a reasonable reaction to the fear of losing a loved one. I also think it's in keeping with Sam's previous avoidance of situations that would force him to confront Bobby possibly not making it or in a tenuous emotional state (some examples where I've talked about this here and here and here... or more generally—#sam and bobby).

Sam's feeling more ready to face news about Bobby's condition at Dean's side the next time we see the brothers. They're being told it's possible that Bobby will live, but that he has high swelling, and they can't operate until it goes down. They're also told that most people with this injury die, and "Right now, it all comes down to [Bobby]".

Immediately after the doctor finishes telling them this, with no time to process it, a man comes in asking for Bobby's next of kin, clearly needing to settle some practical matter (Dean initially assumes related to insurance) once again, Dean handles this alone. We see him framed at the very end of the hallway in a separate area, Sam once again noticeably absent.

Dean isn't even being asked about insurance (which he's already not happy about) but about donating Bobby's organs. This guy's timing is absolutely awful. He also assumes Bobby will die, when Dean is focused on just having been told that Bobby could still make it, which makes Dean very upset.

THEN Dean exists the hospital to cool off, and yet again fills the role of the oldest son by inheriting the role of avenger. He sees and confronts Dick Roman alone in the parking lot, swearing to avenge Bobby (which Dean does at the end of the season—as he did John and Mary in 2.22). Dean's actually so confident and scary that—for all his gloating bravado and soulless smiles—Dick appears genuinely threatened for a moment (of course—we already knew from Dick's master plan to get rid of them in 7.06 that he takes The Winchesters seriously as a threat).

While Dean's been gone handling "insurance" (Dean says that's what it was about when Sam asks) and measuring dicks with Dick (which he does mention to Sam), Sam's worked himself up to looking into Bobby's room from a distance.

It's here that Dean asks for an update, and Sam is in the position of being the one to have received news about Bobby that Dean doesn't know yet. Bobby's swelling is going down and he's breathing on his own, which are both good signs. But the doctors aren't sure about surgery yet because it could be risky, and there's dead brain tissue. Bobby's currently stable, but Sam has begun to face the fact that Bobby might not make it. Note that he’s also had time to process alone after hearing the latest news. Dean hasn’t.

Sam then asks to talk to Dean and starts walking out of sight of Bobby again, and here's where he pulls his signature Sam maneuver: Trying to process what he's trying to face through Dean, by trying to make it a problem that Dean hasn't accepted the possibility that Bobby might not make it... when there's not... actually any real reason to push Dean to "accept" that possibility right now. If Bobby had been in intensive care for weeks, that would be one thing... but it hasn't even been 24 hours since he was shot. Whether Bobby has a high probability of making it or not, Dean really hoping he will... isn't actually a problem Dean needs to "deal" with right now for his emotional health or any other reason.

SAM: Can I talk to you? DEAN: What? Talk about what? SAM: You know what. DEAN: No, we're not gonna have that conversation. SAM: Well, we need to. DEAN: He's not gonna die. SAM: He might. DEAN: Sam. SAM: Dean, listen – we need to brace ourselves. DEAN: Why? SAM: Because it's real. DEAN: What do you want to do? You want to hug and – and say we made it through it when Dad died? We've been through enough.

Sam's choice of words here—"because it's real"—isn't an accident. When Dean walks out, Sam sits and immediately presses his thumb into his palm—the action he uses to dispel hallucinations of Lucifer—who is no doubt mocking him and taunting him with hope of Bobby making it being a pipe dream. We know from 6.22 that one of hallucifer's taunts is that Sam never even left The Cage and all of this has been an elaborate hoax to give Sam hope then completely crush his spirit. As a result, Sam feels he needs to go ahead and accept the worst case scenario so that "Lucifer" can't crush him with despair he wasn't ready to feel.

The thing is... this is a problem very specific to Sam. It may be a reality Sam needs to accept on a particularly quick timeline, but it isn't a "we" situation—it's a "me" situation, and what's "good" for Sam isn't necessarily "good" for Dean. There's nothing here that Dean needs to "accept" at this stage. It's not fair to claim he's in denial. Dean's "crime" here is wanting to hope in something he’s been told is possible, and he doesn't appreciate Sam trying to make that a problem and trying to take his hope away prematurely. But Sam finds he needs to "accept", and instead of facing that within himself, tries to make it a problem Dean is having that Sam needs to force him to work through.

#pk rewatches spn number ?#7.10 #dean and bobby #sam and bobby #season 7 #do i look like a ditchable prom date to you?#the flannel business #bad therapist sam #sam and grief #dean and grief

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linddzz · 4 months ago

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While yes, Viktor is confident too, but...

This man isn't shy? He's hyperventilating and nervous-tapping over the idea of giving a speech!

This man?

I guess Im not getting across like, the Vibe that I always see that bothers me? Viktor's got the social anxiety for sure, and it's VERY fair to assume that his condition makes him even more self conscious to be up in front of a crowd full of topsiders. He's pretty clear in episode 1 that he's aware of how topsiders see him and his cane use, and that's before his disability is even more visible.

But ALSO very few people ARE good on a stage in front of tons of people. And also there's a very specific connotation to "shy" that is beyond social anxiety.

Shyness to me, is its own flavor of social anxiety plus timidness. The actual definition is a bashful, timid nervousness. It has connotations of the wilting flower personality. Viktor, even when he's quiet around other people doesn't come across as nervous or timid in the slightest. His first introduction has him VERY confident and collected surrounded by enforcers and not taking Jayce being snappy and angry at him. As a kid there's more of an argument to be made because what awkward socially isolated kid isn't going to be shy. But at the same time he doesn't try to shrink away from Sky's attention, he still looks right back up at her, he just keeps on doing his own thing. Mostly he comes across as someone who does not know how to casually interact with people so he doesn't. He's got tunnels in his eyes lmao.

Viktor is complicated. Viktor is nuanced. It's why he's Ultimate Blorbo. He's withdrawn and awkward and not very good at interacting with people, but he's not timid about it. He is very self assured in himself.

But when I say fandom makes him shy it IS much more of the wilting flower timid woobie that I kept seeing in Season1 fics. There was SO MUCH of Viktor being the nervous soft spoken anxious thing who was just so happy Jayce was even giving him the time of day as if Viktor didn't sass Jayce about his notes right after he stopped the man from jumping lmaoooo

And idk not to be TOO OBVIOUS with my projecting but it's the part of Viktor I can relate to the most. I consider myself a quiet person who gets annoyed when people think that me being quiet = shy. I'm able to speak up well on zoom calls with colleagues and I also would rather drop dead than have to go up on a stage in front of a bunch of normal people who I know were expecting someone very different. I get nervous and shaky speaking up in front of a crowd of colleagues even! but afterwards I can go right up to people like "your presentation was insane tell me more right now." I am often quiet and uncomfortable in large social situations because I know that most people there are operating under a different wavelength than I am, I do not know what the right responses to things are, or I full on do not know how to not accidentally come across as a huge asshole and I don't want to be an asshole. And when I was younger I would have so many people come up and act like I was a little wallflower (bc oh boy can I also relate to being quiet while physically small meaning being constantly infantalized) who "didn't need to be so shy" and every time I was like "I'm not shy. I just don't feel any engagement with this conversation and I don't want to be a dick and tell you that, but if you gently tell me it's ok to talk one more time I'm gonna start biting."

(It got better as I got older bc I learned that if you're quiet but making active eye contact instead of staring off into other directions - not to avoid attention but because you're just thinking of other shit - people will stop labeling you as shy and instead say "intimidating" or "mysterious" which is also hilarious when what you're thinking about is "machine herald big naturals lmao" but it's better than being labeled "shy")

#arcane #Viktor arcane #viktor meta #hes a complicated guy!!#i maybe project onto him a lot and it makes my opinions bigger!!#he absolutely is repressed and is VERY GOOD probably at coming up with logical reasons for him to not be more forward #but there were so many fics where he was adverting his eyes and blushing and every time i wanted to bite stuff #it also may be that people are using shy to mean different things #when to me shy has a VERY specific connotation

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edgeray · 11 months ago

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Hi there!

I just finish to read the rules for Arlecchino request, and I saw no specific illness/disease, so I will try to make my situation for everyone:

I have horrible knee pain to the point I'm close to faint because of it sometimes.

But to put it more accessible to everyone what about that:

Reader hurt themself during a mission but it was an intern injury, they hide it but Arlecchino noticed how they start walking weird and many other sign.. until Reader faint from the pain? How will Arlecchino react and what would she do?

Sorry if it disobey the rules and for any grammar mistake since English is not my first language ^^ (and I'm writing this while it's 12 am where I'm from ;/ )

Thank you if you are making this request, if not I still thank you for reading it until the end :)

I Am Fine in Your Arms

(Arlecchino x GN! Reader)

A/N - Hi, there anon! If you choose to request anon again, give yourself a name/emoji 🫶! I really appreciate you pertaining to my rules; not only do I want to make my x Reader's accessible to as many people, but I also don't want to misrepresent anyone or their experiences with that illness/condition especially since I myself most likely won't have them, so thanks for the consideration. I'm assuming by ‘intern injury’ you mean ‘internal injury,’ so that's what I'm writing based off. You're not breaking any of my rules but your concern is appreciated! Don't worry about it though. Your English is good, especially since it's not your first language :). Little bit rushed because I am tired and ti's 12AM. Thank you for your request! Content warnings / info - reader goes by ‘mother’ but gn! reader, semi-graphic details about injury, this weirdly had actual plot for some reason, 1.5k words

Although the vast majority of your duties was primarily serving the House of the Hearth and the Fourth Harbinger, as a member of the Fatui, it was mandatory for the Fatui to ensure you still held loyalties to the Tsaritsa. Typically, proof of your fidelity was through completing the occasional reconnaissance mission assigned to you every couple of months though this time you were given a different type of operation: direct action, specifically, assassination.

Assassination wasn't necessarily your forte, but it was doable. In a few weeks, you'd stop scrubbing your hands incessantly in hopes of washing away the stained blood, and you would stop receiving dreams painted in red. At least, with reconnaissance, blood and violence could be avoided. Why you were assigned this particular assassination mission when there were much more suitable candidates, you could only assume. You had an inkling it had to do with some of the other Harbingers’ grudges and suspicions of your husband, and perhaps the chink in the Knave's impenetrable armor would be you. Failure in this mission could quickly spiral into considerable consequences for you and Arlecchino, regardless if the designation was influenced by more untrustworthy Harbingers, so you couldn't afford to fail this anyways–not with how high profile this target was.

You return to the House of the Hearth, splatters of blood still visible on your appearance despite your best attempts of cleaning up. At your arrival, some of the children rush to greet you, only to pause as they take in your exhausated form. You give them a weak smile, bending down and extending your arms to accept their eager embraces.

“M-mother!” the children exclaim as they swarm around you, their curious and anxious minds surely brimming with many questions. You hadn't told any of the children where you've gone to for the past few days, believing that there was no need to stir up such worries when the mission was going expectedly. You were wrong, however; no mission like the one they had given you should have been done alone, and yet the only one you could depend on was yourself and your vision. It was undeniably a test for you, and you had only scraped by with your life and the mission's success. Now, all you wanted to do was collapse in bed and hibernate for several weeks, your head filled with a dense fog and senses dulling.

“Mother, there's blood on–” Barely able to hear the statement, you shake your head, dismissing the little girl's distress. “Don't worry, dear… it's not mine.”

With some effort, you pull away from the children and you hobble your way towards the living commons, your bruised ribs impelling pained grunts from you.

“Someone…” you pant, placing your hand over your forehead. Leaning against the nearest wall, you shut your eyes, breathing in deeply as an attempt to relieve the ache. “Someone go get your Father.”

Multiple feet scurry away after your command, but the remaining children around you overwhelm you with their burning questions of what they can do to help, what did you need, whether or not you needed medicine, and much more that you couldn't bother processing. Gently, you push past them, making your way to you and Arlecchino's shared bedroom.

“I'm sorry, children, I just need to lay down in private for a little bit, okay? Then I promise that I will be up soon, and we can make cookies. How does that sound?” You say to them in an effort to quell their anxiety and it works for the younger children. The older ones, however, you can tell they still carry some distress but they nod along for your sake.

Such good children.

You enter your bedroom and shut the door, immediately peeling away your clothes caked in blood, not even bothering to go into your adjacent bathroom. After chucking the articles in the direction of the laundry basket, you dig through the wardrobe for your much more prefered uniform, the one you wore as ‘Mother.’ By that time, the door clicks, and your husband enters.

Arlecchino wastes no time in appearing by your side, her blackened hands wrapped around your hips, and guiding you to sit on the edge of the bed. You hoped that you were able to hide your wince in time when she touched you. You know your husband far too well to know that, despite her stoic expression, she is just as worried for you, if not more, than your children. There's that small knit in her brows, and her lips are curled the slightest bit more. She had always been fiercely protective of you.

“My love, there's blood–” she starts, but you cut her off with a chuckle. “I know, one of the children already pointed it out.”

Then, your tone hardens. There's no need to wait to let her know. “I need to tell you something.”

“You should rest.”

You shake your head. “This comes first, Arlecchino.”

“You just came back.”

“Peruere,” you enunciate, quickly silencing the Knave. “I am fine,” you assure her with a stern tone but fond eyes. You let out a defeated huff, resorting to wrapping your arms around her and leaning your head against her shoulder to ease her and to conceal your pained expression as your body protested the movement.

Remaining in that position, you brief her on your mission and every single detail to it. From the process of researching and finding the opportune time to, to the actual execution of the assassinatin, which proved to be much more complicated and difficult than you were able to account for. This was due to the lack of information given to you once you were assigned. With the absence of partners and the omittance of crucial details, it is, undoubtedly, an attempt to sabotage you and cause you to fail. The two of you discussed what to do, going forward in cases like this, as well as potential suspects, their motives, and wouldbe gains. With each growing minute, Arlecchino held you tighter and you leaned in closer.

After the conversation finished, your husband quietly held you, without uttering another sound, for around half-an-hour, the two of you indulging in one another's company. You pull away with a kiss to her forehead.

“I promised the kids I would make cookies with them. Would you like some?”

Arlecchino knows better than to say no. She gives you a curt nod. You hum with acknowledgement to her answer, standing up from sitting on the bed. Almost instantaneously, the moment you stabilize yourself on your feet, your vision grows black and an abrupt throbbing comes to your head. You stumble forward, but catch yourself.

“Love–”

“I'm fine. Just stood up too fast,” you gruff, staggering your way towards the door but the limp is far too obvious. You only make it a few steps before you stumble over again, nearly hitting the floor if it weren't for Arlecchino’s quick reflexes. Stabbing pain surrounds you, and paired with your fatigued state, you no longer have the energy to ignore the agony. She cradles you in her arms and you glance up at her. Your sight swims, and her appearance keeps distorting before you. Clinging onto consciousness seems to be a losing battle.

“The cookies…”

“Forget about the cookies. You said you were fine,” Arlecchino scolded through gritted teeth, with some frustration and anger in her voice. Placing her arm underneath your back and underneath your legs, she carries you bridal-style, already rushing towards the medical bay.

“Stay awake for me. Stay awake,” it is a harsh demand, but you know it is nothing more than a desperate plea. Your eyelids droop and you close your eyes.

Arlecchino lets out an expletive under her breath, quickening her pace as she barges into the room. The specialized doctor for the House of the Hearth is startled, but the Harbinger's intense glower tells the doctor all she needs to know.

“Find out what is wrong with her, and fix it. Now,” the Harbinger orders, and the doctor goes into work immediately once your body is placed on the bed.

The Knave soundlessly watches the doctor's each and every action, refusing to budge by your side. Although she knows that medical treatment is not her expertise, Arlecchino cannot help but critique her doctor in her thoughts. Not fast enough, not effective enough, not enough for her darling who could be experiencing unbearable pain now.

The doctor works until she assures the Harbinger that everything that could be done is, and that you will wake in the following morning. Arlecchino wordlessly thanks the doctor but her hand that clasps yours doesn't move for even one movement. Eventually, night falls. Climbing into the small bed, she tenderly wraps her arms around you, unable to be pulled apart from you until she knows your safety is guaranteed. Underneath her skin, seething rage boils for the coworkers who try to deprive her of her authority and power, but most of all, for causing you in this state.

The next morning, Arlecchino's eyes flutter open when she feels the warm body next to her stir. She awakens to your soft smile.

“I said I was fine, didn't I?” You greet her with a twinkle in your eyes.

Arlecchino's heart swells.

#arlecchino x reader #arlecchino x you #arlecchino #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact x you #genshin x reader #genshin x you #genshin impact fic #genshin impact fanfics #genshin fics #edgeray.writes #edgeray.requests

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snotbuggle · 1 year ago

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Omega when she gets to jail and realizes that she now has to big sister four other children. One of which is nowhere near her age.

Going to try and condense some more serious thoughts about these episodes down below so I can avoid spoiling someone as much as possible and not post a dozen times. I don’t want to miss tag any one of those.

Jex/Jek?? I can’t completely remember his name, but the mirialan kid is for sure not going to trust her at all. Can’t say much for the pantoran kid since they haven’t shown much of them so far, but Eva is going to love her.

I think the mirialan kid is definitely going to be skeptical of Omega’s prior knowledge of the facility, Emerie, and why they’re there. Although he might overlook these things hanging on her promise that her brothers will get her, and in turn them, out of there. I can’t help but wonder what Omega and the others will think after about a week and there still not being a rescue. (These two are assuming that she will be placed with the other force sensitive children. Although she may be moved since her blood actually works for project Necromancer)

Crosshair is definitely going to hear it from Hunter. ESPECIALLY after he threw Hunter’s past failure to keep her out of Tantiss in his face. What I think will weigh on his conscience more though is the fact he thinks she’ll be alone this time. In a way she definitely will, but I have no doubt that he realizes he was probably the highlight of her day. He was probably the one thing that kept her hopeful even if he tried to talk down on her and get her to leave. Yes, she had hope that Hunter and Wrecker would find her, but she also needed someone there with her. A familiar face and not someone who just revealed they were your sister out of the blue. Her situation has changed, but Crosshair doesn’t know that. The Crosshair guilt is going to be so real in these last episodes.

Switching gears, CX agents are always a cool and interesting topic for me. While the identity of CX-2 isn’t usually as engaging, I have to say that I’ve drifted from the standpoint of “there’s no way that’s Tech” to “it’s a possibility” over the course of the last two episodes. I’ve seen some fun ideas for who it is otherwise. Personally, I think that they’re probably just another copy paste man with no autonomy anymore.

ANYHOW! I haven’t seen anyone talk about it much, but the scene with Hemlock reviewing the CX agent data and the capsule has me thinking a little harder on their creation/conditioning. The way Hemlock talks about the other operatives as well. “The others aren’t ready to join you” (paraphrasing) seems to show that after the mental conditioning through obviously brutal means, it takes a load of time to physically condition the agents. Seeing as CX-1 was most likely initiated around the same time as Crosshair (I choose to believe that they were near each other’s tables which is why they’re familiar), that took around five months to half a year. In that time span there had to be a lot of soldiers who Hemlock saw fit to be “reprogrammed” but we see very few operatives throughout. This means that if they make it out of mental conditioning, physical conditioning is most likely very dangerous and often times fatal. I’d like to draw attention to the capsules as a part of that physical conditioning. There were several capsules that Hemlock was observing, along with the foggy one that is most likely that new Huyang-lookin-ass operative. If these capsules are the final stage of physical conditioning, it adds meaning to CX-2’s first line, “Why have I been activated?” (Once again paraphrasing). Although the capsules could be for something else entirely.

Also a bit of a gripe, why in the world do you need a new secret-secret operative, Hemlock? You have the commandos, and then the first X troopers, now the CX’s, and what? You wanted a new one? I can’t tell if this man is an overachiever or just way too absorbed into the advanced trooper rabbit hole. Also for you Tech theorists, it’s kinda suspicious that he makes a new version of agents isn’t it? Almost like there’s something…deviant about him?

Completely side tracking here, I really like Phee’s awareness in the station. Yeah she didn’t hear the blaring alarm, but she was in a room where it’d be hard to hear anyways. However, when she got back she felt something was off about the ramp. We’ve seen how slick CX-2 is, so her noticing something is up was a nice touch imo. Also was very appreciative of her caution and readiness with her knife. I love when female characters get to be aware of their surroundings and ready to throw hands if things go south.

In conclusion, thank you for listening to my dump-rambling. I’ve been trying to keep my lips shut so I don’t miss tag anything and spoil it for someone (because I know that I’ll forget to tag everything right). I hope Wrecker is okay. And even if I’m not a Tech CX theorist, I have to admit that I’ve been seeing some fairly strong parallels.

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howlsofbloodhounds · 3 months ago

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Im thinking color thoughts again

After years in a controlled, monotonous environment, exposure to light, sound, smells, and movement would be overwhelming.

Bright sunlight could be physically painful. Noises might feel unbearably loud, and unfamiliar smells could trigger confusion or distress. He might instinctively cover his “ears,” shield his eye, or freeze in response to sensory stimuli.

He might struggle to process or make sense of his surroundings, leading to feelings of dizziness, nausea, or a sense of the world spinning out of control.

After decades of emotional suppression, he might feel emotionally “flat,” unable to process the gravity of his freedom. A hyper-pragmatic, survival-focused mental state may persist, where emotions are seen as a distraction from staying alive.

He might respond mechanically, focusing on immediate needs like finding shelter, avoiding perceived threats, or hiding.

Freedom might feel hollow or meaningless at first, as his emotional range is muted by trauma.He might be consumed by the belief that whatever kept him confined is pursuing him.

That can be some type of personification of the Void itself, or related to paranoia about Gaster—especially if, given survivor’s guilt if Gaster didn’t also get out/potential lingering episodes of psychosis/the whole “scattered across time and space” thing—Color sees, hears, or feels like Gaster is watching him. This could also be about the human, as the cause for why Color was sent to the Void.

He would constantly look over his shoulder, avoid open spaces, or refuse to trust anyone he encounters. Decades of captivity and isolation would condition him to be acutely aware of potential threats.

Any sudden movement, loud noise, or unfamiliar person might trigger a fight-or-flight response. His isolation would leave him unaccustomed to social interaction, making him wary or outright hostile toward others.

He might assume that anyone offering help has ulterior motives, even as the souls urge or think differently and disagree with him and amongst themselves.

He might believe he is being watched or that his escape was a trap, or even that Core or Delta is somehow malicious —such as starting to get paranoid that they’re keeping him trapped in a hospital, facility, the apartment, the Omega Timeline, etc, and will not let him leave.

After prolonged isolation, he might feel as though the world outside his confinement isn’t real. Everything might seem dreamlike, distant, or too strange to trust. Years of neglect, isolation, and trauma would erode his sense of self—on top of the six souls.

He might struggle with questions like “Who am I now?” or “Am I even real?”

He might not recognize himself in reflective surfaces due to his physical transformation.

After years in a predictable environment, the freedom of the outside world might feel chaotic and overwhelming. Decisions like where to go or what to do next could trigger paralyzing anxiety.

Sights, sounds, or situations that resemble him of the Void (e.g., dark rooms, confined spaces, the souls’ voices, Gasters), might provoke panic attacks or flashbacks.

Prolonged isolation may have stunted emotional and social development, causing him to regress to a more childlike state—on top of already having the absorbed souls of dead children in his head.

He might cling to anything that feels safe or familiar, such as routines or objects. His immediate concerns might revolve around basic needs like food, warmth, and safety, without higher-level goals or ambitions.

He might wonder why he survived or escaped. while others didn’t or question whether he deserved freedom or to live, in case of something having happened to his AU, Othertale, and him being among the only survivors.

His physical disfigurement and changes might cause extreme self-consciousness, leading him to avoid mirrors, cover himself, or hide from others—only to find the fear of being alone again to suffocating to bear, often drawn back to people even if it’s overwhelming and painful.

After years of predictable confinement, he might crave structure and routine, even if it’s harmful or unnecessary to him, his body, or the souls.

He could re-create elements of his confinement environment (e.g., sitting in the dark, avoiding large spaces) as a coping mechanism. The endless choices and lack of external control in freedom might feel terrifying, making him retreat into old habits or behaviors.

Despite his fear and trauma, he might experience brief moments of wonder at the outside world, like noticing a bird, a sunset, or fresh air. The stars, definitely—might make him feel faintly connected to who he was before.

These small moments could create a faint spark of hope or connection. Over time, he might begin searching for a reason to live, whether through connecting with others, rebuilding his identity, or finding a sense of purpose.

He might refuse to speak or make eye contact with others, cling to familiar objects, such as remnants of clothing or tools from the Void, hide or avoid open spaces, possibly curling into small, enclosed areas for comfort, startle easily or react aggressively to perceived threats, hoard food, water, or other supplies, even if unnecessary, and repeat patterns or behaviors from captivity, such as pacing or muttering or hugging himself and rubbing or tightly gripping his arms.

Having his entire existence and memory erased from his original universe would create a profound sense of being “unreal” or “nonexistent.”

Color may struggle to reconcile the person he was before the risky action (and subsequent confinement in the Void) with the new version of himself, who has no history or identity in the present world.

This sense of erasure would likely lead to feelings of alienation, as he tries to grasp at who he was before but finds nothing. He may feel that he no longer “belongs” in the world he’s returned to.

The fact that Undyne has taken his place would compound feelings of irrelevance. Color might feel that his entire existence has been supplanted, not only losing his physical and emotional self but also the role he once held. Undyne may seem to have lived his life, possibly even fulfilling his dreams or wishes, leaving Color with no real purpose or place.

Jealousy or resentment might arise towards the one Undyne, but there may also be feelings of guilt or shame for being unable to occupy the role he once had. Given that he never planned to survive his initial risky action, he might now view survival as a curse rather than a gift.

Survivor’s Guilt could be compounded by the feeling that he didn’t deserve to survive—especially if he didn’t want to in the first place. This could manifest in a profound self-loathing or hopelessness, as he might feel that he has no real reason to exist anymore, as everything he once was is gone and replaced.

The combination of feeling erased, irrelevant, and deeply alienated from both the past and present might drive him to believe that he would be better off dead.

The internal narrative of “I didn’t expect to live through this, and I don’t want to now” would dominate his thoughts. This mindset could make him highly susceptible to self-destructive behavior, suicidal ideation, or an overwhelming sense of numbness.

Color might feel that death is the only way to regain control or escape the unbearable confusion of living in someone else’s life and universe—or in the case of having gone to the Omega Timeline with Core, perhaps feeling trapped in a promise to live for Gaster, and feeling out of place in an unfamiliar, alien world that doesn’t feel real.

The thought of trying to live in the world again might feel unbearable. The freedom he now possesses could feel more like a trap rather than a release.

The disconnection from his former life and the overwhelming nature of his new reality could cause intense episodes of derealization (feeling that the world is unreal) and depersonalization (feeling detached from his own body or actions).

He might not feel like he belongs in the present, or like he is watching his life happen from outside his body. This would be especially intense if his memories of the past are vague or erased, leaving him confused about his own existence.

He may have flashes of who he was before captivity—moments of fragmented memories or emotional triggers—but these would be disconnected, coming in bursts or waves.

The attempt to piece together these fragments might bring up anger, confusion, or sorrow, and he might find it difficult to trust those memories, wondering whether they were real or just constructs of his fractured mind.

He might feel like a stranger in his own life, as if relationships and connections are meaningless because he wasn’t meant to be part of this reality.

Rejection of new bonds could be a defense mechanism, as he might push people away, not wanting to form attachments only to lose them again—or because he sees no point in having relationships when he wasn’t supposed to survive.

To avoid feeling completely alone and disconnected, he might linger on the outskirts of groups—and if he does form any connections, he’s like to cling to these and the memories formed, experiences had, extremely intensely.

His family or loved moving on with their lives without him, especially with someone else taking his place, Color might feel resentment towards them for “forgetting” him or moving on—struggling to come to terms with something he’s unlikely to find closure on with them personally.

He might feel abandoned, seeing an Undyne as something of an intruder, but also feel guilty for resenting people who likely had no choice in the matter. This dynamic would further fuel feelings of alienation.

To cope with his overwhelming emotions and the internal void, Color might turn to self-harm, whether physical or emotional.

He might seek out dangerous situations or even engage in reckless behavior to feel something, because emotional numbness and an inability to feel or process anything might make him feel even more disconnected from the world.

The desire to escape the world or the emotions he can’t face might lead to a retreat into isolation, where he might try to avoid dealing with the overwhelming pressure of his existence.

He might shut himself off from any emotional or physical closeness with others, trying to protect himself from the pain of remembering his old life or facing their new, unrecognizable role in the world—clinging tightly onto the very few connections he manages to form, and being drawn to people and social events to stave off his horror of being or feeling alone again—searching for a reason or a point to continue living when he’s been forgotten, and likely feels it’ll happen again, if he’s so easily forgettable and replaceable as the Void made him feel.

Despite the overwhelming hopelessness, there might be flickers of desire to find meaning in their new life. He might seek out the reason for their survival, questioning if there’s something they’re meant to do now.

He might latch onto any small fragment of hope or purpose—helping others, trying to reclaim his lost identity, or discovering a new role to play in a world that no longer has a place for him.

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fuckyeahisawthat · 2 years ago

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I’ve seen a few metas now that describe Crowley as self-loathing and…that’s not quite it to me.

Crowley for sure has Issues. He has a lot of anger and doesn’t always deal with it in constructive ways. He is hypervigilant as all fuck, and the fact that he is almost always correct about the amount of danger he and Aziraphale are in at a given moment just reinforces that hypervigilance feedback loop.

He has the hair-trigger flight response of someone who has spent millennia dodging oppressive forces that are more powerful than him, and this makes him default to RUN even when on some level he knows that is not the right response to a situation. He’s very aware that there are a lot of people out there who can hurt him, and there is no one coming to protect him. The only option is to try to avoid the blow.

And he is absolutely terrified of rejection, for very understandable reasons. This also encourages him to have one foot out the door of a situation, to pretend he doesn’t care, because if you leave first and actually never cared at all then you can’t be hurt. He is painfully aware that good things can be taken away from him without warning, that love that looks absolute can turn out to be conditional, because that already happened to him.

But. As much as I love a self-loathing blorbo, I don’t think Crowley hates himself.

Sure he talks a good game about how he’s not nice. But I don’t think, for example, that he thinks he is unworthy of Aziraphale’s love, that he is not good enough for Aziraphale because he is a demon or for any other reason. Because as far as Crowley is concerned, angels and demons are the same! All that good and evil stuff is just names for sides. I think he is afraid, because he’s still not sure, after all this time, if Aziraphale feels the same way he does, and broaching that topic is an enormous risk compared to just staying in the ambiguously-defined status quo they have now. (And then he works up the courage to do it anyway, and seems to have his worst fears confirmed.)

FWIW, I don’t think Aziraphale thinks that Crowley is not good enough for him either. Not at all. But I think Crowley might think that Aziraphale thinks that after the end of s2. And that really stings, because as much as they both gave lip service to the idea of “I’m good, you’re evil,” I think Crowley always assumed that Aziraphale saw through that when it came to him as a person, that it was just something Azirphale said and not something he really believed about Crowley, and now he’s not so sure.

I also think Crowley believes he did not deserve his fall (hot take: none of them did) not because he is extra-special Good, but because that’s a fucked-up thing for someone who said they loved you to do. While he is clearly still dealing with the trauma of it, I think he knows by now: I shouldn’t have been hurt like that. I didn’t deserve it, and it wasn’t my fault.

And so the horror of Aziraphale accepting the offer of going back to Heaven is partially I thought we both understood how this system works; I thought we were on our own side together and partially I can’t believe you’re going back to the people who hurt you and at least a little bit I can’t believe you’re going back to the people who hurt me. Do you think they were right?

(And Aziraphale doesn’t! He doesn’t think that! He thinks they were wrong, but he thinks they were wrong about Crowley, that it was an individual mistake and not a feature of a system that squashes questioning and nonconformity of any kind.)

I wrote a whole meta about “I won’t be forgiven, not ever” and “unforgivable, that’s what I am” in 2019 that I won’t rehash here, but tl;dr, I don’t think Crowley is saying that as a statement of his self-worth. I think he is saying, Heaven would never let me back in, and if they did, I wouldn’t go. Because I don’t want or trust the “acceptance” of people who don’t value me as I am.

And it’s part of the cruel dramatic irony of the Final Fifteen that one of the things that breaks them apart is that Crowley values himself enough not to go back to Heaven. Crowley, who we’ve seen will do almost anything for Aziraphale, says, No. I am not putting myself back in that abusive situation. You shouldn’t either; I really wish you wouldn’t; but if you do, I am still not going back there. Not even for you.

#good omens #good omens s2 #crowley #heaven #to be clear! crowley does not have a solution to their problems!#but he’s not wrong to hold on to that boundary and i’m proud of him #my good omens meta

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mercurial-thrills · 3 months ago

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I've been taking writing seriously for eight years. Here are eight lessons I've learned.

*Buckle up, this is going to be a long one*

As I squinted at my phone in the darkness, I stared at my Calendar. Blocks of red and pink were blocked into my schedule: do schoolwork, take a quick break, attend an online co-op class, sign up for a school workshop, finally read the first chapter of that thick textbook I bought.

Then, I looked above it all, the day of significance in magenta.

"Anniversary of Secrets." September 9th. The day I chose to take writing seriously. Between unfinished stories on loose-leaf paper, and untitled documents of characters on my desktop, writing had only been a spur-of-the-moment activity.

But then, September 9th came along. From visions of girls riding dragons and comments of classmates writing their own stories, I realized I could be like them. I could take writing as seriously as they did, spending more time on my stories than fixated on my favourite series.

In fact, writing became a fixation of my own. Over these eight years, I have watched countless videos, read a few books, and wrote hopefully around a couple hundred thousand words. As well, I have amassed a fair amount of writing advice. Here are eight of the lessons I learned over the years.

Lesson #1: Outline First, Write Later.

Ideas popped into my head like a game of whack-a-mole. They popped in and out whenever they pleased. I dreamed of cat-eared superheroes, of zodiac themed dystopias, of strange, American-style Isekais before I knew what that word meant.

My attempts to outline the story were inflated by my urge to write it. By the time I started writing my first official project, I decided to write the outline and FINISH the outline before jumping into the story.

Lesson #2: Embrace Diversity

If you've been on the Internet in literature or writing related circles, it's hard to avoid the topic of diversity, and for a good reason. Diverse situations and characters create new perspectives for readers and writers alike.

I learned to embrace diversity through a video made by Jenna Moreci:

After watching this, I thought more about my character's racial and ethnic backgrounds. Along with that, my characters became much more queer, and far more neurodivergent than I could've fathomed back in the day. Their backstories and family situations are more diverse as well: some of them were in foster care. Others came from big families.

The most important thing is to not do this offensively, and honour every culture you come across that's different than yours. Thankfully, there are plenty of resources online, such as Writing With Color(https://www.tumblr.com/writingwithcolor).

Lesson #3: Take Inspiration From Your Favourite Things.

My first story, Secrets, took direct inspiration from the books Harry Potter, Bone, Percy Jackson, Masterminds, and Eragon, respectively. But my second big project became a result of my Voltron obsession (which, assuming you're reading this on Tumblr, I'm sure you're familiar with).

The story formed as a space opera with alien planets I invented myself, and a human species who evolved to conditions on Kepler-22b. I'm not going to deny that I drew inspiration from the "Leakira and the Defenders Of Tomorrow" AU. Though this project is now its own being, I cannot deny where its origins came from.

Lesson #4: Do NaNoWriMo. Seriously.

First of all, I'd suggest staying away from the actual site. There have been numerous controversies, including demonstrating support of AI for creative works, and predatory behaviour on its forums. That doesn't mean we cannot still participate in writing a novel within a month.

Doing an unaffiliated one-month writing challenge will likely not help you get better at writing. Quality over quantity, after all. However, it will help to create a writing habit, and force you to think of unorthodox situations where you could write words… like, on the bus, in a bathroom stall, or in a waiting room.

Lesson #5: This is not going to be a career. Not for a while.

I was a 17-year-old, frothing at the mouth, obsessed with what my hands could produce at the click of keys. I wanted this to be my career. Badly.

However, college loomed around the corner, and I could not fathom spending so much money to learn creative writing in university, when it would have so little pay-off later down the line. Plus, I knew the field was a competitive one, and boy, I was not ready to compete.

If you want writing to become a career one day, go for it. Work hard on your writing. Focus on it like a bird focuses on looking for its worm. Keep in mind, however, whether the pay-off will be worth it for you.

For example, if you are willing to compete and set yourself apart, it would be beneficial to study English, Creative Writing, or Journalism at a university. You could become a copyeditor, a journalist, or a teacher, with some extra learning. However, what if becoming an author feels unstable? You could consider a career in a transferrable field such as office administration, library technician, marketing, psychology, or accounting.

Lesson #6: Fanfiction is good.

When I got into the game Terraria, I spent many hours traversing the right side of my world and building cube-shaped houses, and far too many hours before I thought I was powerful enough to fight the Eye Of Cthulhu. That aside, I started writing fanfiction inspired by the franchise.

Surely, there’s not much canon material regarding the NPCs whose names change when they get killed. So, I made my own. I elaborated on characters that had pre-existing relationships and made up my own where there weren’t any. It was a brilliant practice in writing when none of my other ideas seemed appealing.

I have since finished said fanfiction, but I still write about certain fandoms from time to time. It helps to have an outlet for creative ideas that would not fit your other stories.

Lesson #7: Don’t Fear The Critiquer

Reading my works aloud startled me to the bone. Thankfully, my friend clarified that this writing club gave good critique on his own worldbuilding. So, I showed up, and oh, am I ever so thankful I showed up, because it has, quite literally, changed the way I see writing.

Reading out my writing to others has made me better at sharing, and at accepting critique. I received a lot of praise, and I also realized a lot of mistakes. Most of all, I learned not to fear what people thought of what I wrote: chances are they’d like at least part of it.

Lesson #8: Every little bit counts.

After many years of taking it slow, life started to get busy again. Life became more cluttered, and I fought to balance my classes with any extracurriculars I may have had, with therapy appointments and going to the doctor’s to sort out health shenanigans, with the full time summer job I had, and with nurturing my relationships.

If you had a hard time reading that sentence, that’s what my life has been like for the past year or so. Busy, cluttered, hard to organize, but still manageable in small chunks. This is what writing while busy should look like. Little bits and pieces of writing, whether it be in a chapter or short stories.

The Big Conclusion

Plot twist: These eight lessons I learned were relevant to each of my eight years spent learning the craft. I spent them embracing the craft, learning to make good settings, and understanding how to create interesting plots. At the same time, I have yet to self-publish any fiction other than a short story.

Still, I’m happy with the progress I’ve made in these past 8 years. It’s been a long journey, but with every year, I learn so much more.

If you’re looking for where to start, this is where you should: whether it’s writing down that random idea that’s been sitting in your head, or scribbling down a drabble about the rain outside, just take one first step.

#writing #writers #writing advice #writing tips #writing tip #on writing #writers on tumblr #tip #tips #writerscommunity #writing lessons #lessons #life lessons #wisdom

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emepe · 7 months ago

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— Pairing: Eren x Reader, friends to lovers

— General info: series, 18+, modern AU, serial killer AU, smut, fluff, angst, hurt/comfort

— Summary: Fate is a tricky thing. Certain situations can’t be avoided as much as certain people’s lives can’t be kept from intertwining. With a serial killer on the loose, and unexpected relationships blooming, how will the universe intervene?

— Chapter summary: The first 48 hours are crucial when a person goes missing. Eren can only pray it’s enough to reach you..

— Content warnings: emetophobia, mention of assault.

— Notes: Helloooo!!! Welcome to TV Friday number 12 <3 I thought about posting earlier but I thought best to keep up our little tradition ^^ Please read the notes at the end for extra notes about TV’s future. Don’t be shy to stop by my ask box <3 If anyone else would like to be added to the tag list, lmk. Happy reading!

Links: Read on AO3 | Chapter guide | Masterlist

Forty-eight hours

Hour One

A missed call shouldn't have been enough to raise an alarm, but his gut instantly told him something was wrong. And yet he tried his best to remain calm — stepped out onto the street and made his way to the bus stop where you should've been dropped off, glancing into convenience stores just in case, hopeful that the bus was just running a little late. But when the bus you would've taken showed up — allowing Eren some time to sigh in relief and shake his head at his own presumptions — and you were nowhere to be found among the few people to scatter onto the sidewalk, it only confirmed that previous gut feeling.

Hour Two

Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

There's a stiffness to Eren's breathing that makes the process more painful than its intended effects — his lungs feel too big for his ribs, which seem to be pressing them against his heart, pushing his brain into hyperactivity to keep him from imploding.

Where does he even start? Where should he even go?

If there's a proper protocol to follow to find you, he's no idea of it and he's strangely aware that his anxiety might lead him in the wrong direction when there's so much he has to do — so many places he has to be — at once. It's infuriatingly difficult to not have a cool head when you really need it.

He didn't think to bring his car — perhaps it's for the best, considering his vision continues to blur and it's not a sign of good condition to hear your own frantic heartbeat pounding in your ears.

His eyes anxiously scan the faces of every person in his path. Paired with his dazed footing and the sick expression on his face revived every couple of minutes from the nausea stemming from some sort of sensed doom that he continuously swats away, there hasn't been a shortage of odd looks and aversions since he ventured into the dark streets in hopes to find you fine and well out of thin air.

It's been too long to dismiss as a casualty since his calls stopped going through, and yet he insists on redialing your number each time he's met with the automated message that only further fuels his dreadful symptoms, hopeful that your voice will reach his ears again, for that comforting sound to put an end to the infernal crescendo of his insides.

Just as he's about to redial once more, his phone starts buzzing first, and for a split second his body is at peace and his heart soothed in the spare moment that it takes for him to accept the call and bring the phone to his ear.

“Have you heard from her yet?”

The voice on the other end causes his stomach to plummet to his feet for what feels like the tenth time tonight.

It takes a moment for his brain to assimilate that it's not you on the other end and another for him to hate himself for not checking who was calling and stupidly spit a response to an Armin who has no fault in anything, especially for not being you.

Armin, as understanding as ever and assuming the more collected role for Eren's sake, dismisses the frustrated tone in his friend's voice, fully aware it's nothing personal.

“The security guard says she left a little over an hour ago and Mika called me a minute ago and said she hasn't been home. Are you sure she wasn't going to make any stops on the way?”

“No, Armin, she would've told me. She would've come here first or she would've at least texted me.” Eren's voice cracks. “Something is wrong.”

The weakness in Eren's voice is enough to fracture Armin's composure for a fraction of a second.

“Let's go to Levi.”

Hour Three

Being in the police station feels more reassuring than Eren would've imagined. At least this means he's doing something — and something right, at that — and the drive over spared him enough time to ease his nerves, even just a little, as he continued to repeat inwardly to himself that everything is going to be fine.

Time is everything and frankly, he can't help but feel a bit dumb for not thinking about getting some help from Levi in the first place. He'll find out what's going on — if there was an accident, if you got mugged and that's why no calls go through, or even if your bus broke down and that's why he hasn't seen you when he should have by now. Even if it turns out to be a misunderstanding, better to cause a scene than to sit on his hands. Though three hours without any sign to say otherwise can't be a misunderstanding.

Eren hunches over, resting his forehead on the edge of Levi's desk, not minding one bit as it digs a dent into his skin. His knee bounces every couple of minutes as he and Armin wait for Levi to get back to them.

“Eren Jaeger?”

He looks up to find a tall blond man instead of Levi.

“Yes?”

“I'm Captain Erwin Smith. Come this way please.”

Eren stands to follow the man's lead, only sparing a nervous glance to Armin, who replies with a comforting one from his seat, only morphing into a more accurate depiction of his worry once Eren turns his back to him.

“Where's Levi?”

Eren's eyes wander the barren space he's been led into. Nothing but a table and a pair of chairs set opposite of each other.

“He'll be here in a moment. I just want to ask you some more questions about the missing person's report you're filing.”

“Of course.”

Doing his best to hold in his exasperation at the ticking clock in his head, he dutifully replies to every question he's already answered for Levi when he first walked into the station — what made him come to the station, his relation to you, your description, what happened before he lost contact with you, amongst other basic things to paint a picture of the situation.

“Was there ever any trouble in your relationship?” Erwin asks.

Eren's brow furrows.

“What do you mean?”

“I'm asking if there was any indication that your girlfriend,” he makes a vague motion with his hands as he reads your name from the folder in his hands, “might’ve been upset with the relationship. Did you ever argue or have any trouble? Perhaps something in the past few days? Or ever?”

Eren hardens his jaw in an attempt to remain calm. He knew he'd have to spend a while at the station, answering questions more than once — as frustrating as the lengthy process could be, he expected that much.

Erwin's tone has remained neutral for the entirety of the questioning, and it's only natural to want to rule out any immediate suspects, but it doesn't make the implication of the captain's words any less offensive and borderline cruel.

“No,” Eren chokes out, horrified by the mere idea that either of you would walk away without warning. That isn't you.

“So no reason for her to break off contact with you.”

“She didn't break off contact,” Eren spits, growing heavily frustrated at the sudden turn of events. “We were supposed to meet, she was on her way already. I saw her just this morning and she called me first to tell me she was coming home.”

“Maybe she only said that to throw you off?”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Just tell me what you might think,” Erwin replies, voice stern. “You say it's only been three hours since you last heard from her but she's a mentally stable, healthy adult. Unless she has any conditions that could put herself or others in danger, chances are she's safe and sound somewhere and this is all a misunderstanding. Was there anything suspicious or weird about her?”

Eren's shake of his head grows more and more frustrated as Erwin does little to conceal his skepticism, which only shapes as a misunderstanding from Eren's increasingly impatient point of view.

“What's suspicious and weird is that she never made it to our date at all and it's been three hours and I haven't gotten a single word from her.”

Eren's expression is one of pleading, yet Erwin's remains neutral and made of marble.

“And it's not like that,” Eren murmurs. “I was going to ask her to live with me tonight. She called me after she left work to tell me she was on her way.” Eren can feel his heartbeat start to pick up as his ribcage begins to close in on his lungs once more as more anxious words continue to spill from his mouth in increasing pace and volume. “She told me she had news and that she loves me. Why would she tell me that if anything was wrong? Why would she say that if she wasn't going to make it to our date?” The crack in his voice comes at the same time as the stinging sensation behind his eyes and the uncomfortable tickle in his nose. “I was making dinner for us. I had this whole thing planned. I wanted to surprise her with all her favorite food and the pictures from the new apartment. I wasn't going to tell her about the pink bathtub because I want it to be a surprise when we move in. She…” He curls against the table, hands gripping his hair in frustration, pulling at the strands to make sure he still feels something because there are just too many sensations overwhelming him as he tries to get through to the man in front of him. “She really wants a pink bathtub.”

Eren doesn't lift his gaze, just remains quiet and unmoving until he catches a flicker of movement in front of him. It's only when he takes the tissue offered by Erwin that he becomes aware of the tears streaming down his face.

Levi nearly had a heart attack when he first caught eye of Eren's and Armin's familiar faces walking into the police station. The frantic green eyes and anxious expressions made it clear something awful had happened and hot flashes of searing dread burned inside his stomach. That is until nobody pronounced his niece's name. After that, the flame of pain withered to ashes of guilt, consuming him from the inside in such a manner that it was hard to face his niece's friends knowing he'd felt relief it wasn't his family who'd been affected tonight.

Levi's known Eren since he was a kid — a bit childish and whiny, but ultimately a decent man with a kind heart. It's been a pleasure watching him grow up and knowing he's remained a good friend to his niece.

Levi's only met you once. It was at Jean and Mikasa's engagement party earlier this year. If Jean and Mikasa were the happiest couple there, you and Eren were a close second. It was easy to know just how much he adored you, and how attached you were to him. Eren was rarely in a dark place, but next to you his smile was blinding.

After finding out Erwin conducted the interrogation to rule out a possible runaway case — and how he did it — he still hadn't ridden himself of enough guilt to apologize for making the situation more stressful, no matter what the rules say.

It's no secret some sudden disappearances hold more danger than others. An abducted child, an older person with dementia, a mentally and emotionally unstable person who's looking to cause harm to others or themselves — they demand a higher sense of urgency than logging the missing person into the system and following up when there's nothing more pressing on the police's plate.

The desperation consuming Eren's features when Levi finally walks into the interrogation room is enough to kick off his own instincts.

It's upon Levi's insistence that patrols are dispatched immediately.

Hour Five

When a loved one's safety is on the line, any efforts from authorities never seem to be enough and yet one remains oddly hopeful that the people with a proper protocol should know how to better handle situations that leave one frantic and lost.

Calls to the nearest hospitals, pings from cellphone towers, two patrols dispatched to the last known location and its surroundings, questions to potential witnesses who have nothing to report or are rather too invested to go back to whatever keeps their attention inside to provide some detailed tips, one patrol leaving because of a nearby break-in and the remaining one left with nothing more to go off of than one grainy clip of CCTV footage that shows your figure walking down the street, and a second clip from a convenience store's outside surveillance camera where you don't show up at all, but the lack of witnesses lead to nothing in between.

Keeping up the search when there's been nothing gained starts proving to be more difficult when obstacles continue to pile on. Aside from the growing boredom of those in police cars from the lack of fresh information to keep them motivated, the heavy clouds that hover over everyone's head threatens for the case to soon be abandoned for the night.

Hour Eight

Levi is hesitant to leave. But with no leads — no CCTV footage, no unknown numbers blinking on Eren's screen, no mother, an estranged father, no sign of a struggle at the last known location, and so much yet so little more — there isn't much he has to do than drive back with the pair of worried men to the station for more questioning in case of foul play, while constantly eyeing his notifications for any incoming messages on an assault victim found in an alley not too far away from where your phone was last still on.

Eren refuses to leave. Despite Levi's efforts to persuade him that going back to the station was necessary, knowing he was so close to where you'd last been was enough for Eren to stand his ground. Getting into Levi's car means going back miles worth of steps. It means straying from what feels so much like the right path already. And as ridiculous and futile as it is with no leads, it means losing his grip on something much more solid.

How easy it would be if a last known location means he can find you just by looking behind a tree or having someone point and say “yes, she's right there”.

So when Levi makes another plea for Eren to come back with him — he doesn't mention what for to not stir any more nerves — and Eren says no while steering himself down the block for what feels like his hundredth recon of the area — just in case you really were behind that tree in the small playground all along, playing a nasty prank on him — Levi chooses to go back to all the nearby twenty-four hour convenience stores one last time before the downpour begins.

Armin gives Levi a grateful nod before lightly jogging to catch up with Eren, who's already turning onto the next street.

“You can go,” Eren calls over his shoulder after catching a glimpse of his friend's blond hair beside him. “I'll keep looking by myself. Besides, it's gonna rain soon. You'll get wet.”

“What about you?” Armin looks down at his friend's bare arms. “You don't even have a jacket.”

Eren looks down at his sides, like he just noticed his lack of a coat. He could've sworn he had one on him when he walked out his apartment. You would've been upset with him otherwise, that small pout forming on your lips while your brows are weighed down with disappointment.

The instant of amusement he feels is quickly consumed by the ache of why he's out on the street with no jacket to begin with.

The food must be cold by now. He'll have to heat it all up once you're back home.

Light raindrops brush against his skin with a small gust of wind.

You're still not behind the tree.

It's nearly half past two in the morning. Any civilians with useful information have been asleep for hours, and any passers-by would've reported anything had they seen it, Armin thinks.

It's chilling to walk down streets so quiet and empty, with the only reminder that this isn't an alternate universe being the sparse cars that drive by. Surely the people inside might find it strange to see the pair walking up and down the streets, turning, looking, flashing their phones to make out shapes in the dark.

The tickle of rain on skin is no longer, but the temperature continues to drop.

Armin takes on one side of the street while Eren tackles the other. He receives a polite nod from the security guard of a small daycare center, who fails to conceal his look of pity. Levi interviewed him around an hour ago, so he has to know what's going on.

Armin averts his gaze, his cheeks burning at the thought of some stranger pitying him and his friend when everything is going to be just fine.

The rain starts up again. Eren isn't around anymore. With one quick scan of the street, Armin spots him rounding the corner to the next street — pace firm but anxious. He's quick to follow.

By the time Armin catches up, the raindrops have grown in size, a reliable sign that this time, it's for real.

“Eren,” Armin calls him carefully.

Eren continues walking, flashing a light behind a dumpster in a narrow alley between a family restaurant and a bookstore.

“Eren,” Armin calls him a bit more firmly to get his attention, but to no avail.

With brows knit more in desperation than concern, Armin quickens his pace and pulls Eren by the shoulder just before he rounds the corner to the next street.

“Eren!”

“What?”

The anger and volume in Eren's voice shrinks Armin in his place for a brief moment.

Embarrassed by his own reaction, Eren exhales an apology. But his face hardens once more when Armin suggests it's time to go home.

Armin steps back, surprised to have caught a swear word from his best friend among the words he spits back in a negative response.

But when Eren turns, ready to resume his search, Armin pulls at him again.

“Eren, stop!” he half-yells, quickly readjusting his volume before speaking again to not cause any disturbances to sleeping strangers.

“You don't want to pick a fight with me Armin, I'm warning you,” Eren's voice grows low, but still reaches Armin with the same anger and menace.

Eren harshly pulls away and continues to storm down the next street, leaving Armin to stumble behind.

The rain is heavy enough now to spot the pavement faster than it takes for each drop to dry.

“We need to go back, we aren't going to find her like this,” Armin calls after him. His hands do little to shield himself from the rain. Thankfully, Armin thought to bring a jacket along but it won't do much for either of them when it's bound to be sopping wet in just a few minutes.

Eren's shirt is already clinging to his skin in large patches down his back, and yet he continues walking with purpose down the street.

Armin's shivering now under his jacket as he looks around to gather his surroundings. This street isn't far from the office. It's poorly lit which, paired with the rain, is best explored in daylight. There's a single street lamp that's meant to illuminate the area at night, but it's been broken for months and either nobody has reported it, or laziness has kept it from being repaired.

“Come on,” Armin insists, lightly jogging now and losing his breath under the cold shower as he tries to keep up with Eren, who still refuses to listen. “We'll come back in the morning! You need to get some rest if you're going to keep looking! I'll come with you, okay? But we need to go!”

Armin suddenly crashes into Eren's chest as the latter abruptly turns around in a sudden fit of pure rage.

“I already told you I'm not fucking leaving!”

Armin stumbles back, teeth chattering, muscles drooping from his wet clothes and vision blurred by the heavy rain.

“You can leave if you want to! That's what the fucking police is doing! Just go already! But I'm staying because I care! I don't give a fuck about the rain, I'm going to find her!”

Eren's words pierce through Armin's chest, and the next moment he's tackling Eren to the ground. It's not so much to stop him from leaving this time, but out of indignation.

Eren falls on his ass with a wet thud, his palms painfully pounding onto the pavement as Armin falls on top of him, grabbing a fistful of his shirt in his hands.

“You think I don't care? Why do you think I'm here, you idiot?” Armin yells in Eren's face. Had the pouring rain not been a factor, he would've been red in the face. But had the rain not been there, Eren also would've easily seen the tears streaming down Armin's face, and that would've taken away from his blue glare.

“She's my best friend! I'm just as worried about her as you are! You can't decide you're the only one affected by this! That only makes you a jerk and you're not!”

Eren is tense all over as he holds Armin's surprisingly threatening glare. His chest heaves as a twinge of guilt surges inside of him at his friend's pointed remarks. The stiff breathing makes its return.

“But we have to go,” Armin's voice softens — it cracks and begs.

And Eren breaks down in sobs. His scraped palms come to his face, aggressively digging the heels against his eyes as if to force his tears back in while his shoulders tremble in cold, grief and guilt.

“You don't understand!” he cries, his shirt still crumpled under Armin's grip. “I fucked up, Armin. This is all my fault!”

Unsure of how to react to this abrupt change in attitude, Armin remains frozen save for his teeth, which continue to chatter under the deafening rain.

“I was supposed to pick her up. I'm never late,” Eren hiccups. “But I didn't come today and now I don't know where she is! It was me, Armin! I did this! This is my fault!”

“Eren,” Armin murmurs gently, eyebrows upturned in sympathy as he finally softens his hold on his friend.

“I can't find her and I don't know if she's hurt or scared or if…,” Eren's words drown in another wave of sore sobs, his lips refusing to let the thought of the worst to escape as a spoken word — to think that someone might have caused you harm and that's what's kept you tonight.

“I need her to be okay,” he whimpers finally, lips trembling as his body begins to react to the harsh cold surrounding him. “Where is she, Armin?”

It takes a while for Armin to gather his thoughts and catch up to the workings of Eren's mind from this hellish night.

He often leaves the office with you, stays behind some evenings when he notices you're close to wrapping up your work and can ride the elevator together. Sometimes even accepts Eren's offer for a ride when he's too tired to deal with the overwhelming setting of public transportation — tired enough to not mind third-wheeling for a short while. If the last place your phone was turned on was before you even had a chance to take a bus, surely he could've done something to prevent this mess too. Why didn't he think to stay behind today, too?

“It's not your fault,” Armin finally says, his voice just barely audible amidst the rain and thunder. He blinks up from the ground to his friend. “And we don't know what happened. We'll try the hospitals again later, we'll keep calling her in the meantime. We have Levi helping us, right?”

Eren blinks back at him, slowly gathering that Armin is trying to encourage him through reassurances, and finally nods in response as he does his best to ignore the tight lump in his throat.

“It's like three in the morning, Eren. I'm not asking you to stop. But we can't keep going like this.” He motions vaguely toward the incessant rain from above and the wet clothes sticking to their skin.

Armin stands, relieving Eren from his weight as he pushes back his hair with one hand and offers the other to his friend whose reluctance casts a shadow over his usually bright features.

Eren trains his gaze on the ground, leaving Armin's helping hand hanging for the while longer it takes for him to convince himself that Armin is right and this doesn't mean he's failing you.

Finally, Eren accepts his friend's hand, who hoists him up just as they both spot Levi's car pulling into the street from the farthest corner.

Armin motions for Eren to follow him toward the car, to which he responds with a weak nod. But just a couple of steps in, something crunches and gets caught under his shoe. Naturally, he looks down, forgetting the deluge falling over him at the moment to frown at the foreign object.

Armin glances over his shoulder, sensing his absence, and turns around fully when he realizes Eren is kneeling on the ground, cautiously picking something from the ground that ultimately dangles from his fingers once it's fully suspended in the air.

Armin retraces his steps, kneeling next to his friend to find his face pallid, and green eyes wide with fear as he stares at the broken chain between his fingers, from which hangs an angel cast in silver with a broken wing.

His features contort in horrified realization. It's almost ridiculous to turn to Eren for confirmation of what he already knows and can already begin to imagine. But when he does, the latter is already hunched over in the opposite direction, emptying his stomach onto the wet pavement while the nearing lights from Levi's car come to blind him.

Hour Fifteen

Mikasa, Jean, and Sasha step into the elevator wordlessly, the only sounds on the way to Eren's floor being the inevitable rustles from the plastic bags with food in Mikasa's hands.

Jean offered to take them, but Mikasa insisted she'd hold onto them. Maybe it's because of her cold hands, but it might also be because she needs something to help keep her grounded — literally; she feels as though she might float away otherwise. Because if anyone were to ask her, nothing has felt real since last night after Armin's call.

The elevator’s hum ceases as it comes to a gentle stop and the doors slide open.

The same somber silence continues to hover between the trio as they mechanically walk down the hall to Eren's door. Jean takes out his copy of the key from his jeans pocket and pushes the door wide open, gesturing for the girls to enter first before quietly closing the door behind them.

Spare keys aren't rare between them. It was chain reaction that stemmed from Eren's father's passing. Everyone wanted to make sure he was okay. The rest is history.

“In case of emergency.”

“Can you please water my plants while I'm gone?”

“Can you check something for me?”

“I'm really sick, just let yourself in.”

“Just keep it.”

Jean's copy has rarely been used. In fact, not many of them have made use of Eren's key once he started dating. Not that it's been a dramatic change, but now there's not much need to be wary of barging in on something they'll all laugh about later. And today, after Eren passed out on the street in the rain, it seems crucial to brush the dust off an old habit for their friend's sake.

The trio is careful not to make any excess noise — Eren might still be sleeping —, but the further they venture into the apartment, they realize their efforts are in vain.

They expected Eren to be lying on the sofa where Jean and Armin had so carefully helped him settle down, still fast asleep considering it's only been a few hours since. Although Eren's sudden nausea was a mere reaction to finding the necklace, Armin still spent a couple more hours watching over him as a precaution while he cleaned up the kitchen and dining area, and quietly left for his apartment to make another round of calls before work.

They're met with the view of their friend bustling around his work area in a corner of the living room, his brow furrowed and eyes laser focused as he refills the ink tanks on his printer. Stacks of missing person's posters cover his desk with a handful of faded ones having been scattered and crumpled on the floor as evidence of the ink shortage he's tending to. Your face occupies nearly the entirety of his immediate view, which is why a single glance is enough to distract him from his task that he doesn't notice his friends present in his apartment, nor when the ink begins to leak.

At the instinctive curse word that leaves him in a frustrated huff, Jean rushes over to help him.

“I'll handle this,” he assures Eren, who only blinks in surprise as he realizes he's not alone.

Mikasa and Sasha walk over to him unsure of whether a hug is appropriate as a greeting. In the end, they choose to speak the words instead.

Sasha leaves the conversation in exchange for helping Jean clean up the spilled ink. An irregular blob-shaped stain is left behind on the ash gray wood.

“Are you– How's your stomach?” Mikasa asks.

An uneasy grimace makes its way onto Eren's face.

“It's fine. It was just… Yeah.” He shrugs it off, unsure of how to properly explain the incident without triggering more discomfort.

Mikasa nods in understanding.

“Armin said you're going back to the police station later.”

Eren huffs at a humorless puff of air from his nose.

“Yeah. More questioning,” Eren replies, his head continuously shaking in disbelief, to which Mikasa frowns.

“What's wrong?”

It takes Eren a couple of tries to let the words out, his mouth opening and closing with hesitancy.

“They all left, Mika,” he softly murmurs, a hint of helplessness infecting his fragile voice, that births an ache in Mikasa's chest. “Nobody could say anything and they got bored. What kind of excuse is that?”

Mikasa drops her gaze to her shoes, submitting before the hurt and impotence Eren's words awake in her.

Then she shakes her head briefly, recalling a good thing.

“Levi's on the case… and there's evidence for foul play now, there's a lead,” she says, trying her hardest to appear more hopeful at each thing on her list. “He'll find her, Eren. This'll just be nothing but a bad memory soon.”

She smiles, but it comes out sad from the red that tints her waterline.

Eren doesn't have the energy to try to appear cheerful from her encouragement, and limits himself to a nod.

“Eren, how long have you been up?” Sasha asks with concern from his desk, where her eyes scan over his computer screen and the stacks of paper with your face printed front and center.

“A few hours?” Eren replies with a shrug, to which everyone else exchanges concerned glances.

Jean breaks the silence with a loud clap, refusing to make way for any awkwardness in the air.

“We brought you some food, buddy. Come on, let's eat.”

Sasha eagerly nods, her enthusiasm a bit too stiff it almost seems rehearsed, as she encourages him to follow them to the dining table.

Eren allows himself to be tugged along for a couple of steps before he tethers himself to his spot for a moment and then decidedly takes a step back under everyone's puzzled expressions.

“I'm not really hungry,” he murmurs, shaking his head.

“Are you sure?” Mikasa gently asks.

“We got your favorite soup,” Jean smiles, though Eren is too busy staring at a blank point to notice. “Minestrone.”

“Extra parmesan,” Sasha adds.

“It's fine.” Eren assures them with a forced smile. “You guys eat. I have a lot of things to do.”

“Well, you can't do them on an empty stomach. Let's eat and then we'll go through your to-do list together,” Jean insists.

“Yeah,” Mikasa agrees, shooting a grateful smile to her fiancé. “Jean can drive you to the station after breakfast and Sasha and I can handle the rest.”

Every offer is sensible and comforting, but Eren still refuses. He can't eat, not when you still haven't come home.

“No…” his voice trembles ever so slightly as his eyes wander around the room, as if looking for an excuse. He ultimately makes his way back to his desk, where the stacks of posters await him. “I'll just head out now. I'm gonna hand some of these out before going to the station.”

The rejected trio exchange another round of anxious, meaningful looks. Mikasa's the first to break away from the group to join Eren in gathering a stack of flyers and a roll of tape from the black metal organizer on his desk.

As her hands roam around the surface of the ash gray wood, the jewel on her finger catches the sunlight peeking through the curtains.

Eren's movements grow slow as his focus is stolen by the silver engagement ring.

Mikasa notices the pause in his movements from the corner of her eye, and looks up at him to assess his status. Eren tears his gaze from her ring — embarrassed —, but not fast enough for it to go unnoticed, nor does he remember to ease his hardened jaw afterwards. He moves in silence and sets a fast pace toward the door, leaving an anguished Mikasa to trail at his heel.

Hour Twenty

It takes a handful of hours for Eren to get back home from the station, with a significant reduction to the baggage he left with. The stream of questions would've been fairly simple had he not been charged with so many uneasy feelings as to why he was doing all of it in the first place. It certainly didn't help that he had to face the same people who had simply left this morning. But he has to do things right — even if it means swallowing his anger to contribute with any useful information.

Social media presence, daily routines, bus routes, habits, friends, family situation.

Saying you know someone like the back of your hand is an odd saying, he thinks. He's not that vain to spend lengthy periods of time observing himself. In his case, it suffices to say he simply knows you — all he's done is look at you.

He knows your hands quite well. The shape of your fingers, the curves of your knuckles and the warmth of your palms when they latch onto his heartbeat and manipulate it to your will. And now what's been left since last night is a painful cavity. It's all wrong. Your hand should be here, filling his void.

The apartment is empty, Jean and Sasha long gone. The plastic bags have been folded into neat triangles and the counter has been cleared. Upon opening the fridge, Eren finds stacks of containers that have been added to those Armin helped put away the previous night from the uncelebrated dinner.

He stares at his packed fridge for a long time, any energy to step away vanishing into thin air and leaving him stuck in place, looking straight ahead until he no longer recognizes the shape of anything inside, and he grows numb at the cold air that slowly envelops him.

A ring from his pocket is what finally pulls him out of his daze and he's quick to whip the device out and accept the incoming call with pure urgency and no thought.

“I'm only assuming you've been too excited to call me to tell me how it went last night,” Carla's playfully accusing tone comes through the speaker.

“Mom,” Eren pronounces in a voice so soft, yet empty as he only acknowledges it's her, but any word that bounces off his tongue is devoid of meaning until he can speak the name he wants to.

“So,” Carla's enthusiastic grin is evident through the phone. “Was she thrilled? What did she say?”

Eren's voice fails him.

In all the anxiety and chaos, with all the things he's had to do within the last twenty hours, he completely forgot to tell his mother what had happened and that moment is catching up to him now.

His lips roll inwards, a habit reserved for when he's feeling shy because of things you say or do, and now has come back because of his lack of words — or rather the will to expel them.

His hand comes up to his hair, his fingers brushing his hair back as he struggles to find his voice.

It's only when Eren takes a second too long to reply that a shift in mood can be sensed from Carla's end of the line.

“Eren,” she calls him carefully, which only makes the lump in his throat grow. “Honey, what's wrong?”

“Mom,” is all Eren can muster, voice cracking as he pushes the word out.

“Did you have a fight? Is everything okay?” Carla's concern amplifies through the speaker, as something rustles in the background, a sign that she's taken on a more alert position.

“You didn't break up, did you?”

Out of all the things that could've gone wrong last night, Eren wishes that had been it. At least he wouldn't be as helpless. At least he'd know where you are. At least it's something he could reverse.

“No.”

The word comes out choked, his throat instantly sore for the second time.

His monosyllabic replies must be getting to her, because Carla takes a deep breath before trying again.

“Eren, honey. You have to speak clearly, okay?” Carla's voice grows gentle, as it always has whenever Eren would have trouble speaking his mind. Granted, that's been lost as he got older, but Carla's sweet attention hasn't. “What happened?”

Her patient voice finally manages to coax the lodged words from Eren's throat.

“I don't know where she is. She's missing.”

Hour Twenty-four

Rain is bad for detective work. Eren heard about it in a documentary or a podcast, or maybe he read it somewhere — he can't remember. But it supposedly washes away any evidence, making easy cases tricky and difficult cases nearly impossible. Considering the silver angel necklace was found in the midst of the sky falling, it comes as no surprise when he comes home from a casual meet up with Levi at a nearby coffee shop with the news that no DNA or signs of a struggle were found on site after a thorough search in the light of day. The other half of the broken angel wing was found stuck on the edge of a sewer grate, though. Eren would feel any comfort at all if it meant it would lead to something. But at least the necklace can be fixed for when he finds you and this is all over.

The necklace is pretty much a dead end, but it'll remain under the police's hold just in case.

Eren has never gone so long without seeing your face. Now that the clock has found its way back to the hour you were supposed to walk through his door, it's unbearable to know that you won't. And still he looks over in its direction every few minutes, expecting you to burst in and throw yourself into his embrace, marking the end to a day-long fever dream.

That's probably it. A dream. No, a nightmare. It's nothing but a wicked play of his subconscious — to teach him a lesson on appreciating you more. Maybe to scare him into doing a better job of protecting you. Maybe he's gotten too lax, too careless. After all, the city hasn't been terrorized by any violent crimes in the last few months. But that's no excuse to dismiss the possibility of danger. Right… There was a killer last year. Two murders. No suspects. No arrests. And there was a burglary just last night. So what if…

No.

Eren pulls at his hair, agitated by where his mind is leading him. He pulls hard on the strands, like they're the reins of his thoughts that he needs to redirect onto a less horrifying path.

His phone dings as if on cue with a text message.

I'll be there soon, honey. Get some rest, I'll call you tomorrow. I love you.

A tap on the attached file opens up a copy of a plane ticket for the day after tomorrow under the name Carla Jaeger.

His heart feels a tad lighter.

It'll help to have his mother around for a few days. He types his gratitude into his phone and presses send.

He lets his face fall into his hands as he hunches over his desk.

Everything will be okay, he repeats to himself in his head like a mantra.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

Everything will be okay.

Outside, rain starts to fall.

Hour Thirty

The rain has been on and off for hours.

By the time Eren reconnected with his surroundings, ready to go out and look for clues on his own around the area, the rain was nearly as heavy as it was at three in the morning.

He sits by the living room window, watching the downpour. His phone is charging on a wooden stool next to him, taking a break from another round of calls to nearby hospitals to ask for any patients bearing your name. Still no.

His stomach has been growling for a while, but any energy he possesses isn't the kind that'll get him off his chair and into the kitchen — it's the kind that's meant to be used to stare out the window and grow numb over any trivial needs.

It's fine, he thinks. It'll pass.

Hour Thirty-seven

All five of his friends come through the door a little past seven in the morning, with bags of fresh meals to share.

Eren sits down this time, allowing Mikasa to fix him a plate and Connie to pour him a glass of juice.

Nobody mentions the dark circles under his eyes, and Eren's gaze is too lost on a blank point to sense the meaningful glances exchanged all around him.

There's not much room for conversation. Any sense of normalcy is lost in the thick air. It seems equally wrong to create a lighthearted break for the length of a meal as it is to talk about the empty seat across from Eren when everyone is trying so hard to make sure he's at the very least feeding himself.

Eren merely pokes and stirs at his food with his fork the entire time. There's a fresh stack of flyers on his desk that demand more urgency in his eyes than sitting down to eat.

His demeanor is easy to read by everyone at the table, yet another round of concerned glances and subtle nods in his direction being tossed around with silent messages.

In the end, nobody says a thing and the groups is broken off in pairs to tackle the surrounding neighborhoods.

Hour Forty-five

Nobody has called. Not him or the station. As the only person outside of the police to be contacted for any updates, his phone should've rung at least once. But aside from yesterday's encounter with Levi and his visits to the station to see if his presence alone will bring something up, there's been a drought in leads. And despite his determination in making sure every person he passes knows anything, there's still nothing.

It's been hours since his stomach has demanded his attention. It's finally reached the point where it's so empty, it's gone numb. His body is running on nothing more than sheer will and water.

He should at least try to eat, test if he can hold any food down.

The fridge remains packed with food, even more now thanks to what's been gathered from his morning visits.

Ever so slowly, with overly cautious movements, he takes out a container, transports it to the counter and peels off the lid. It's from the dinner you were supposed to share two nights ago.

His lips tremble, eyebrows upturning for the split second it takes him to grasp back at his composure. An outsider would think he's glaring at his leftovers, disgusted at whatever is inside, completely misunderstanding the mental ordeal he's traversing as he takes several deep breaths.

He pulls out a stool from the breakfast bar, sits down and stares.

Hour Forty-eight

It's been two whole days since Eren has stepped foot in his own bedroom.

His feet drag him toward the bed without stopping to flip the light switch. Though the night is cloudy, signaling another shower for tonight, the moonlight still finds its way into the room just enough for his eyes to take in the most basic shapes of his furniture.

He comes to a stop at the foot of the bed, and his gaze zeroes in on the neatly folded white cotton fabric set on the corner. It's the shirt you slept in two nights ago, the one that's the wrong size because it's his and he likes his clothes to be just a bit baggy.

It's the shirt he gently tugged off your body to feel your skin pressed against his. The one that you take care in folding even if you're in a rush and even though he'll throw it in the wash anyway.

His fingers slowly reach out to collect the fabric.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

It still smells like you. Just barely — a mere scrap of notes that have faded over the last two days. A mix of vanilla, citrus and a faint trace of eucalyptus fabric softener.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

Breathe, Eren.

It doesn't work. The air is too thick. It gets caught in his throat and forces a choked sob on its way back out.

His face contorts in anguish as he falls onto the bed, curled up in an attempt to make himself as small as humanly possible, with your shirt clutched in his hands as the world outside darkens and he simply weeps.

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Notes: Tunnel Vision will continue, just not with the same schedule it had before my hiatus. I’ll be adding word count and progress updates in the chapter guide in case you want to keep up with the story in that way (It’ll also give you an estimate of when the next chapter will be posted. I have ideas for some ficlets, which I’ll do my best to post in between TV updates just so I don’t leave you all hanging with Eren content. It’ll depend a lot on whether I see any enthusiasm for it or not though (aka comments and reblogs that aren’t… well… empty). In the meantime, thank you for the support and feel free to slip into my ask box to chat :)

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