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curly-bangtan · 5 years ago

Text

Blizzard (M)

Pairing: roommate!Jungkook x reader

Summary: When a blizzard hits your town, you and your shy awkward roommate are forced to spend time together, not being able to leave the house due to the strong snowstorm. To make matters worse, the power gets cut in the middle of his shower. Which also means no heating.

Genre: roommate au, domestic au, fluff, smut, strangers to lovers

Warnings: bit of a slow burner, vanilla!Jungkook, virgin!reader, dry humping, penetrative sex, fingering, oral (m receiving), losing virginity, shy soft boy Koo with a crush and a noona kink, your heart could possibly burst from how cute he is

Word Count: 15.5k oops

A/N: (This fic is written in parallel to Heatwave, with an opposing concept in mind. You don’t have to read Heatwave to read this, but it would be interesting and funny to see the differences in the two scenarios that both lead to roommates hooking up.) Also, happy birthday, bunny boy! Sorry this was a day late, I was honestly swarmed. I love you, koo. Writing this very much gave me a bias crisis but it was all worth it. Enjoy! :”)

PS. Think April 2019 Jungkook

‘A severe snowstorm is set to hit us this weekend with temperatures dropping down to -16˚C. It is therefore ill-advised for anyone to leave their houses during this period until the blizzard subsides as the fifth snow-induced traffic accident has been reported this week in our town…’

You have always marvelled at how the weather lady announces such things with such a passionate captivating tone.

‘The calculated probability of a city-wide power cut is currently at 72%, so please be well-equipped to stay indoors for the next two days.’

Oh shit. A power cut?

This is not good at all. Not like you have any plans for this weekend anyway, and you wouldn’t necessarily mind being stuck inside since you are good at entertaining yourself. But to possibly have no warm water, no internet in the duration of these few days?

You are currently snugly rolled up in the warmth of your blanket burrito, a mug of chamomile tea fitted in your hands, the steam of which evaporates under your chin into a slick coat. Friday evenings have never been eventful for you as long as Jimin doesn’t drag you out to some bar with him. As introverted as one can get, you much prefer staying in and watching TV or endlessly browsing the web.

The distinct rattling of keys spins your attention to the front door. Hearing the plunge of the metal into the keyhole is strangely satisfying to your ears. In steps a pink-nosed, frost-dusted Jungkook, all wrapped up in winter apparel thick enough to make him waddle clumsily.

A gust of cold flares inside from the harsh outdoors, stray flakes of snow flying in after him and landing on the rich oak tiles of the foyer. From the couch, you see his silhouette breathe out a visible grey huff. The door behind him falls shut, once again entrapping the warm temperature into the confines of these walls.

You watch your roommate, humming to himself with his black earpods hooked in his ears, as he unties the scarf around his neck. He probably hasn’t noticed your presence yet; he’s always been a little clueless afterall.

Then he looks up and meets your lingering gaze.

You both jump a little, his humming ceases instantly, eyes scrambling, darting away to your surroundings: the quiet television, the arching lamp, the white powdered window panes. Anywhere but at each other.

Clearing your throat, you greet him softly . ‘Hi.’ Your thumb rubs at the lip-shaped tea stain on the rim of your mug.

‘Um, hi. Good evening, noona.’ He dips his head at you, hood drooping lower over his head. You are two years his senior, and despite your supposed familiarity, he insists on formalities.

The weather lady has now been replaced with the anchorman, who is droning on about the car accident this morning. Awkwardness hangs in the air between you, as it always does every time you speak. It’s now your turn to say something, you’re painfully aware. But what do you say?

‘Snow storm.’ It is a statement more than anything. As if he hasn’t noticed… Nice one. You immediately want to hide your face in the mint furry throw you’re wrapped in.

‘Yeah. Snow storm.’ The rubbery sound of the careless removal of his shoes against the floor is louder than his response. ‘Jimin didn’t make it.’

Your blood freezes. ‘Wait what?! Oh my god! What happened to him?’ It takes the blanket sliding off you for you to realise that you’ve stood up abruptly. Your body is immediately flushed with a breeze of cold, devoid of insulation.

The car accident… It can’t be…

Jungkook’s attention flickers to the glaring screen as he paces towards you and realises how he must’ve sounded. ‘Woah, sorry, I worded it badly. I mean, Jimin’s stuck at Taehyung’s because the snow is too thick for him to drive back. And the service on his phone is whack, so he can’t reach you. Taehyung told me. Sorry, I didn’t mean he didn’t make it.’ Nervous chuckle. Scratching the back of his head.

Never has he said this many words to you in one go, this must be a record. That, as well as your own silly misunderstanding of his words, makes you release a humoured breath. ‘Oh right… Haha… I’m stupid.’

‘No. my bad.’

Wow. If you two keep this up, this might just be your longest running conversation in the history of living together.

Because he’s looking at the floor rather than you, you feel the liberation to look directly at his face. His round nose is red from the freezing temperature, his teeth gnawing at his chapped lips. You follow his gaze travel across the dark wooden panels, reaching a halt at your feet.

‘You’ve got a hole in your sock, noona.’ He states.

Indeed you do. Under his wide-eyed glare, you can’t help but curl your toes inwards as if it would hide your pinkie jutting out of the fabric. The way he addresses you, how his lips form a pouted ring when he pronounces the “oo”, makes you particularly self conscious. ‘Oh… Yeah, I know, it’s fine. It’s my only pair of fuzzy socks.’ These socks have sheltered your feet for three winters only to betray you now, during a bloody blizzard. The icy floor licks at your exposed skin tauntingly.

Silence draws taut between you. Like you’re tied to opposite ends of a string and are both trying desperately to escape, to walk away from each other.

It’s his move now… Why isn’t he saying something? But at the same time, what can he possibly respond to ‘It’s my only pair of fuzzy socks.’?

‘Right… See you.’ Jungkook nods politely and heads for his room. And you know you probably won’t see him reemerge until tomorrow; it’s practically his batcave in there.

A shudder courses through your body. Though it’s not from the cold but rather the embarrassment of that encounter. Quickly switching off the TV, you hide back in the comforts of your blanket like a Halloween ghost and scurry into your own room to avoid seeing him again.

Jeon Jungkook.

Even the thought of his name makes you crease inward involuntarily like it’s some bad memory. Despite having lived under the same roof for more or less six months, neither of you have warmed to the other in the slightest. It’s not that you have anything against him; you’re sure he must be a lovely boy, but…

Well, when you put two shy individuals next to each other, you can’t really expect them to bond over their bashfulness. No, they both tend to retract into their shells.

How you came about living together is three simple syllables: Park Jimin. If it wasn’t for this one common thread you share, your worlds would never have collided.

Ever the caring friend, it goes without saying that Jimin would rent out his vacant room in his three-bedroom house to you without even a second of hesitation after Hoseok ditches the boys to move in with his girlfriend. You’ve met all his friends before. Jimin is a social butterfly afterall, how could he resist forcing all his best mates into a confined space and make them talk to each other, or more commonly known as a party?

Namjoon and you get along just fine, seeing as you both are whores for literature. Seokjin? As long as you compliment his cooking and force a giggle at his jokes, he’ll accept your friendship. Surprisingly, Yoongi took a liking to you; you guess is due to your mild mellow nature which must clear his headaches caused by this chaotic bunch. Unsurprisingly, Hoseok took a liking to you, well, because he’s Hoseok and incapable of negativity. Much to Jimin’s jealousy, you have a soft spot for Taehyung, his mysterious charm and boyish charisma; your friendship was almost instant.

But then Jungkook…

Your introduction was a blur of awkward hellos and unmet eyes. Every time you spoke to each other, it’s a nervous stutter from him or unwarranted silence from you. Worse, if the two of you happened to bump into each other in public, neither of you knew whether or not to say hi and commence a conversation like normal acquainted people, so it always ended up being an uncomfortably long pause before nodding out of courtesy then parting ways. It’s not like you belong to the same friendship group and see each other every week or anything.

Jungkook’s playful childisness shines brightly when surrounded by the boys, witch-cackle laugh and all. However, for some reason unbeknownst to anyone, this goofy side to him is immediately switched off in your presence, as if you’re the rain that extinguishes the flame of his candle. His body stiffens, eyes widen, voice stammers. Which only leads you to mirror his behaviour.

‘He’s just really uncomfortable around girls.’ Jimin has tried to offer the only plausible explanation. ‘Poor kid went to an all boys’ school his whole life, has only ever had one girlfriend who dumped him on their one year anniversary. Your femaleness scares him.’

That would be kind of cute, you guess, if you weren’t also a socially-uncomfortable hermit who requires soft gentle prodding in order to befriend. Because then you become two logs sitting beside each other, neither willing to inch towards the other.

Forgive Jimin’s mistake of thinking that sharing a roof would change this. Because how wrong was he… If anything, it only led to increased timidity around each other.

When you first moved in, Jungkook was eager to help you carry and unpack everything, seeing as he is the most physically apt person in the house. So you thought that it was his first step towards you, and that your dynamic was finally making progress into becoming one that’s more comfortable. He even lingered around your room the first few days with Jimin to help you open all your cardboard boxes.

However, he has since struggled to utter more than five words to you. Which has continued forth until this day. In the morning rush to class, you never encounter him due to your proneness to punctuality and his to tardiness. If you ever do, it’s only ever just a quick good morning, noona without looking up from his cereal. You both enjoy the safety of your own rooms, hence rarely peak your head out unless it’s for food. Jimin is always the one to drag you out by the foot, even if its just to his room or the sofa to watch a film with him. You say drag, but really you just enjoy seeing Jimin all pouty and whiny and sucking up to you in order to earn precious quality time with you; you actually enjoy being around Jimin. It’s worse for Jungkook though because he has his own ensuite bathroom, orders Deliveroo instead of coming out to eat with you two, and only ever joins social gatherings that you’re also involved in if a high enough bribe is offered.

Hence the time you and Jungkook are exposed to each other gradually diminished over time despite being roommates. At first you only suspected, but now you know for a fact, that he is purposely avoiding you like the plague.

It baffles you, if Jimin’s theory is true, how he could possibly be scared of you, regardless of his shyness towards the female specimen. Look at you, you’re this soft-mannered, quiet-spoken creature with a meek presence. You have more reason to be intimidated by his melon-sized biceps and aggressive shouts that echo from his room when he’s gaming at 2am.

So due to this mutually reciprocated mousiness, this awkward friendship-but-not-quite thing, has never been overcome in these months.

This is not a result of lack of trying, at least from your end. You do try to talk to him, exerting enough friendliness to burst your balloon of introversion. And you suppose he does make as much effort as he can as well. He once left you a note telling you to help yourself to the leftover pizza in the fridge. On your birthday, he gave you a card in which he drew cute little cartoon illustrations of you three housemates and wrote a short message.

Happy birthday, Y/N noona!

You are such a kind person, I hope we can speak more.

Jungkook :)

You thought the exclamation mark and smiley face were above and beyond for his standards. It made you smile for the rest of the day.

It’s 6:23pm and your growling stomach is exacerbated by the cold that has made itself at home in your bones. You’ve always been an early dinner person while Jimin and Jungkook are the opposite.

You’ve managed to get a hold of Jimin through Taehyung; your FaceTime call with him lasted a total of twelve minutes before the connection got too poor that it hung up on its own. Berating Jimin for leaving you alone with Jungkook, especially in this snow storm where everyone is basically on house arrest, all he did was laugh at your feign annoyance. You know it isn’t Jimin’s fault but you still like to blame him for all the awkward predicaments that are bound to happen.

After this chapter of the book you’re reading, you’ll go out to the kitchen and make some dinner, you decide.

Wait a second... Do you even have enough food in the pantry to last a whole weekend? Particularly since Jungkook can easily demolish three bowls of rice and a whole pound of meat, and still have room for dessert?

Looking out the window, you realise it’s snowing way too hard for you to feel confident to pop to the nearest grocery store without slipping and dying.

Shit! What are you going to eat these few days? Especially since the electricity can cut any minute?

Just then, you hear the echo of the front door shutting. Oh no… Jungkook did not just go out in this weather. He probably noticed the lack of food as well and decided to go for a shop. You know what he’s like, he’s a boy who’s really certain of his capabilities, over certain in fact. He probably does not see the hazard of leaving the house in such heavy snow, especially in the evening. Because nothing stands in the way between Jungkook and Food.

Do you go after him? Hell, if you do, you would probably get lost somewhere and slowly freeze to your inevitable death. You can barely navigate in perfect daylight.

Scrambling for your phone, you begin searching for his number. You’ve embarrassingly only called him once, and that was when you and Jimin got locked out of the house after a pub night.

No one is picking up.

In fact, when you check your screen, you don’t even have signal. The blizzard must be getting so bad that it’s refracting the radio waves. Which means it’s even worse for Jungkook to be out right now.

He’s such an idiot. Why did he think it’s okay to just take a walk to the supermarket right now in the middle of a snow storm? You’re such an idiot. Why were you too lazy to stock up on food during the day?

You pace around your room, phone clutched in your hand in case you miraculously get signal somehow. How on earth would you explain to Jimin that your roommate, his friend, whom he left in your care since you’re his senior, went out in a blizzard to buy food that you were supposed to have gotten this morning, and ended up dead from hypothermia?

Are you overreacting? Surely you’re overreacting. Everything is going to be fine! Deep breaths.

He’s going to come back any minute now and see you losing your mind over nothing. Right? Right.

Jungkook isn’t going to die. You’re being paranoid. Ridiculous. Overly anxious as usual.

But you can’t help yourself from pressing your face against your window to try to peek outside for a sign of him. The glass is ice cold against your skin, and it sends a blood-chilling shock through your veins. You can barely make out any shapes in the sea of greys and whites.

If you can’t even see out the window, how is he walking outside right now?

Screw it, you’re going to find him.

You’re a tornado getting dressed, whipping on your massive faux-fur lined puffer coat over two layers of fleece. A pair of gloves, double layer of socks, snow boots. Useless phone and hand warmers shoved in your pockets, you storm out of the house.

The cold that greets you burns up your nostrils and painfully invade your lungs. Snow is flying directly at your face, and you’re barely sheltered by your hood as you feel the icy flakes stab at your skin and melt away. Step by wary step, you steadily walk off your porch, careful not to slip. Your heart leaps out of your chest when your feet sink down at least 10 inches of snow, your squeal is muffled by the scarf you’re using as a ski mask.

It’s now been at least 10 minutes since he’s left. Jungkook is a fast walker, but in the snow, perhaps you could catch up with him.

The flickering lamp posts light up the night, but they may as well not be working because all you can see is white. Barely able to keep your eyes open, and batting away the heavy wind that’s threatening to blow you over, you trek in the direction of the local supermarket.

You don’t know how much time has passed when you realise that you don’t recognise the way anymore. Everything is a blur of snow. The cars, houses, street signs. All snow. Google maps is failing you; you’ve given up removing your gloves each time, your fingers instantly freezing at the exposure, to zoom in or rotate the navigation which keeps hopping from location to location.

You’re utterly and undeniably - lost.

Stopping dead in your tracks, you just plop down on your ass in defeat.

Where the hell are you? Where the hell is Jungkook?

Fear and frustration bubbles in your chest. It must have been half an hour now since you left the house. Surely he should be back, and surely he would’ve intercepted you on the way. That could either mean one of two possibilities: he got lost, slash, injured, slash, died on his way, or you have somehow strayed from the route to the store and he’s now frantically searching for you.

The lump in your throat festers into a ball of panic and despair. Looking around you, there’s absolutely no one. Just eerily-still buildings and snow-hidden cars. The only sound is the howl of the winter gust and your own uneven breathing.

You’re scared, and cold, and alone.

Why the hell did you think you could find him in this snow storm? You watch your warm visible exhale disperse in the icy air, the stinging of desperate tears piercing the back of your eyes. What are you supposed to do now?

And then it hits you. Perhaps you could trace your steps back since your feet have imprinted a trail in the snow. Looking behind you, you see that the downpour of snow has already began filling the footprints nearest to you. You’re praying that they haven’t already entirely covered your earlier steps closer to the house.

Gathering yourself together, you exert a lot of effort to stand up from the ground. Your butt is now wet, and a damp chill is seeping into your underwear. Determined, you follow your footsteps, which are growing fainter, back home.

You’re hoping you recognise the way now, that you’re not just convincing yourself that the street looks familiar.

Then an awful realisation hits you.

Both your hands are stuffed into your pockets, holding those hand-warming packets and your phone. But not your keys. You forgot your keys.

‘Fuck!’ Cursing is rare for you, but anyone would probably deem this situation as a very reasonable one to swear at.

Hot gushes of tears begin flooding down your face, painting streaks of cold that freeze over in a matter of seconds. How could you be this dumb? The snow is getting heavier right now. Checking the time on your phone, it’s 7 o’clock. The streetlights are dimming due to the weather, and the pitch dark night is starting to settle in around you.

You sink to a crouch.

This is it then, you guess. You’ve met your inexorable demise, rooted from your own stupidity. And Jungkook.

You can’t believe you’re going to die trying to find Jungkook in a goddamn snow storm.

The quiet sobs and sniffles that escape you are muted by the hood around your ears. A shiver overtakes your body as your muscles tremble as a last attempt to keep you alive. Your whole face is numb, teeth clattering, eyes clamped shut to stop the tears from freezing on your cheeks.

‘Noona?’

The voice is muffled but you recognise it instantly. Your eyes fly open to see a pair of shoes halted in front of you. You look up.

And there Jungkook is, eyes wide in shock, quivering lips parted in concern, carrying four plastic bags full of food and supplies. The streetlight situated directly behind him shines a halo around his head, painting a heavenly image of him. You’ve never been more glad to see anyone in your life.

Unable to contain yourself, you fling your ice-stiffened arms around his waist and bury your face in his coat-clad torso. Your knees give in and hit the ground. New tears spring from your eyes, but this time it’s tears of relief, tears of joy, tears of gratitude. A surge of his warmth washes over you, and all of a sudden, the cold cannot touch you.

‘W-What happened? Are you- Are you okay?’ Jungkook is rooted to the ground, he wants to wrap an arm around your small head or help you up but his hands are full with the groceries.

Gripping his sleeves, you tug yourself up to face him. You probably look like a mess, red eyes, nose and cheeks. But you don’t care. Jungkook is alive, you’re alive, and you’ve found each other. ‘Yeah, I’m fine, Jungkook. Everything is fine.’

‘You’re crying, noona.’ His ears are neatly tucked under his black knitted beanie.

‘Not anymore, I’m good now.’ Ferociously wiping the liquids profusely leaking out of your orifices, you give him the biggest grin your frozen cheek muscles would allow. ‘Let’s go home. Do you need help with the bags?’

‘No, don’t worry about them.’

Standing an inch apart, you walk side by side following his lead, assuming he knows the way. The material of your coats scrape at each other when either of you leans a bit too far towards the other.

‘What are you doing out here though?’ He asks quietly.

What are you doing out here? How do you give him an explanation that does not depict you as an idiot? Because once again, you’ve been stupid and dramatic and stressed over absolutely nothing. It’s twice in the same day now that you thought one of your roommates have died. When both of them turned out to be alive and well.

‘Um… Well, I thought it was dangerous for you to go outside alone in this weather, especially since it’s getting dark... I tried calling you but had no signal so, uh, I decided to... uh, come out to find you…’ Embarrassment begins to creep it’s way to your senses, it claws digging into your skin.

You peak at him in your peripheral vision to see him stiffen, eyes eerily focused on the snowy path in front. What is he thinking? Is he going to laugh at you? Think you’re dumb? Find you weird and obsessive?

‘Oh… Um.’ Clearing his throat, he glances at you and you quickly look away. Flustered. ‘You didn’t have to, I’m fine. I know this neighbourhood like the back of my hand, noona.’

‘Yeah, but you took so long. I got worried…’ You whisper the last bit.

An awkward pause is birthed. Your fists tighten around the hand warmers in your pockets.

‘I- I’m sorry for worrying you, noona.’ You hear his own fists tighten around the handle of bags as well, the plastic crinkling. ‘The supermarket around the corner was shut so I had to find another one that wasn’t. I made it just in time, though, right before this one closed as well. Then I also had to find a store that sells those so-’ He stops abruptly when he realises that he’s rambling.

‘Sells what?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ Jungkook mumbles.

Another silence. The night has fallen, looking around, if it isn’t for the scarce light casted by the lamp posts, everything would be pitch dark. You’re so glad you’re not alone. Worse come to worse, you would’ve had to knock on these random houses and beg them to take you in for the night.

‘Wait,’ he says, ‘That doesn’t explain why you were crying.’

Well, crap. What are you supposed to say?

‘Uhh… Well, I got lost and my phone wasn’t working, so… I just kinda panicked.’ If your face wasn’t red from the cold and embarrassment from before, it definitely is now. You feel the blood pumping to your head, enough to make you sway a little.

‘Oh shit. I’m sorry, that was all my fault. I- I should’ve told you I was popping out in the first place. Ugh, noona, I’m sorry.’ You’ve never seen him display much emotion towards you, but currently, seeing him so alive with exasperation… It’s kind of endearing.

Screw earlier, this is the longest conversation the two of you have had, ever.

‘No, Jungkook, stop apologising. It wasn’t your fault at all!’

To be fair, you couldn’t have wandered that far if Jungkook found you on his way back from whatever shop he went to; you must’ve been close at least.

And so you two arrive safely to your house. Carefully wobbling up the porch slippery with slush, you stop in front of the door.

He looks at you expectantly. ‘Keys, noona?’ Of course, his hands are full.

Here you are, thinking you could’ve gotten away with not telling him you had moronically left your keys at home. ‘Um, I forgot to bring them with me.’ You utter, then add. ‘I was in a hurry.’

For a second, Jungkook looks like he’s about to tell you off for endangering yourself with such stupidity. But he just lets out a half-laugh half-sigh and bites down on his lip. ‘Mine are in my left, no, right back jean pocket.’

Right. He is asking you to get his keys from his back pocket.

His back pocket.

You freeze.

You’ve never so much as touched Jungkook, if you don’t count brushing shoulders. Hugging him back there was purely out of hysteria, which you retracted from the second you registered your action. Now, you’re going to grope his ass. This day just keeps getting you more familiar with him, doesn’t it?

Gulping, you suck up your cowardice and slide your hand into his back pocket, intentionally not looking at him while doing so. The firmness of his buttcheek fits snugly in your palm while your index finger hooks around his keyring. And what the hell, you strangely get the urge to squeeze it.

You yank your hand out of there before it can betray you and act on that impulse. Glimpsing up, you see that his cheeks are also crimson as he stares up at the ceiling a little too attentively.

After changing into some warm dry clothes and setting your snow-dampened ones on the radiator, you go out to the kitchen to see Jungkook cooking some ramen, which doesn’t come as a surprise as he practically lives off them. He’s dressed in sweatpants and a black hoodie; after cupping his ass through his back pocket, you can’t help but notice how round his rear is, especially in those bottoms.

God, what is wrong with you? You cannot seriously be checking Jungkook’s ass out.

This time his hood his down, and you appreciate how fluffy his hair is starting to grow. You can’t help but wonder what it sme-

Woah.

Why are you thinking so much about Jungkook?

Truth be told, that scare he gave you just now opened your eye as to how much you actually care about him. Despite never really saying much to each other, you guess you’ve grown a sort of fondness for him that you didn’t realise you have. It’s only natural; you have known each other for close to a year now, and half of which was spent under the same roof. Of course you would worry for his well being, you tell yourself.

The kitchen fan must be blocking his hearing because he doesn’t sense your approach, he’s singing softly to himself. He’s got a lovely voice, both your roommates do. But whereas Jimin sings loudly and proudly, Jungkook only does so in the shower or when he doesn’t think anybody is listening.

When he notices you finally, you’re peering over his shoulder. He jumps. You jump. The chopsticks he’s using to stir the noodles fly out of his hands, clattering on the counter.

‘Oh jeez, you scared me.’ He picks up the chopsticks.

‘Sorry.’ You squeak and take a step back when you realise your proximity.

‘Haha…’ He chuckles nervously, embarrassed. ‘Noona, you like jajangmyeon, right?’

Do you like jajangmyeon? You live and breathe jajangmyeon. You can’t go a week without jajangmyeon. You’ve had it for breakfast, lunch and dinner before all in one day. Those noodles in that sauce… Mmm…

‘Yeah, they’re my favourite.’ Is all you say though, you figure he probably doesn’t care for a whole speech about your love for them. Surely he knows at this point, there isn’t a single day in this house where the ramen cupboard is devoid of jajangmyeon.

‘Great, I’m making you some.’

Oh. Jungkook is cooking for you. A warmth creeps into your cheeks, and you’re not sure why.

‘You don’t have to, Jungkook. Just cook for yourself, I’ll make myself dinner after you.’ But then your stomach chooses now to bellow aloud like a bullfrog traitorously. You look at him, abashed.

A smile is playing at his lips, though he’s trying not to show it.

‘Go sit down, noona. It’ll be ready in a second.’ His eyes are fixed on the bubbling water, chopsticks hauling up the softening noodles to check their texture. Though you’ve never tasted his cooking, you don’t doubt ramen mastery, so you nod compliantly.

The bags of shopping are half unpacked on the dining table, so you decide to finish sorting them out. He’s bought gimbap, bread, cheese, some salad, mostly food that doesn’t require cooking; you can tell he has thought ahead for the potential blackout.

Then something else in the bag catches your eye.

‘Dinner’s ready.’ Jungkook carries two bowls of brown noodles, garnished with sausage and cucumber, just the way you like it.

He sets the bowls opposite each other on the end of the table that’s not packed with groceries. This feels extremely weird and domestic. Although you live together, you don’t remember the last time you’ve had a meal together on this table, just the two of you without Jimin. Yet now, you’re about to eat jajangmyeon that he cooked for you, right across each other. Extremely weird.

‘Thank you so much for cooking, Jungkook.’ You bow your head at him politely and take a seat opposite him.

‘You’re welcome, noona.’ He also mirrors your action. You can kind of understand why it must be so annoying to Jimin how you’re so formal to each other, it must sound so forced and awkward.

Which is what this meal is going to be. Forced and Awkward.

Jungkook waits for you to take the first bite before digging, which you have to do so without rolling your eyes back and moaning out loud in satisfaction. Jajangmyeon tastes so flipping good! Your one and only true love.

You’re too focused on slurping down the noodles that you don’t notice him smiling fondly at the rare sight of you so blatantly excited.

The meal goes by quietly, neither of you are talkers to begin with, much less while eating. Whether it’s because it’s your favourite dish, or because it’s a freezing cold winter day, or even maybe because it’s Jungkook’s own cooking, the food tastes especially scrumptious.

‘This is delicious.’ Your eyes are practically glowing at him; he shys away from the praise by sipping on his can of coke. Who drinks coke in this weather? A smile stretches your lips at the oddity of this boy’s taste.

Jungkook mumbles a thanks, avoiding your eye as usual. But the jajangmyeon has put you in a good mood, you’re feeling rather chatty actually. ‘Also, Jungkook, I saw you bought-’ You dig into one of the grocery bags and pull out what you spotted earlier.

‘Oh yeah.’ Jungkook stares at the two-pack of fluffy socks in your hand, wearing a slightly mortified expression. ‘Um… I thought... you could do with some new ones.’

Surprised, your whole body tenses. You had thought he bought them for himself after seeing you wear yours so comfortably. All thought flaps away from your mind like a flock of frightened birds, leaving an empty field. He- Why- What do you-

‘Oh.’ Clearing your throat, you murmur. ‘Wow, thank you so much.’ Unable to look at him for any longer, your eyes fall onto your noodles. Your hand holding the socks drop onto the table at the weight of his kindness. Then a realisation creeps up on you. ‘Wait… They don’t sell these socks in supermarkets…’

Glancing up, you find him fiddling with his fingers nervously. ‘Uh. I went to another shop that does.’

Knots upon knots begin to tie in your stomach. So that’s why he took so long out there, not only did he have to find another supermarket that was open, he also searched for a store that sells fuzzy socks. For you.

Why do you feel so warm everywhere?

When you fall into a silent trance of your own thinking, Jungkook gets worried. ‘Noona, do you not like them? Did I get the wrong ones?’

‘No, no, no!’ You frantically dispute, forcing yourself to look at him. ‘These are perfect! I’m just surprised… and touched. That’s all. Jungkook, you really didn’t have to.’ The fabric of the socks feel heavenly to touch, your thumb sinks into the clouds of its softness. Truly, this has taken you by surprise and you don’t know how to react.

‘It’s okay…’ Redness blooms across his cheeks like drops of watercolour.

First he cooks you your favourite meal, then he buys you fuzzy socks? Is this the same Jungkook you’ve been living with all these months?

‘No, here…’ You rip open the card of the packet and snap the plastic wire that holds the four socks together. ‘Take a pair, I only need one anyway.’

At you waving the socks in front of him, he leans back in refusal, shaking his head and muttering a string of no no no’s. You’re not at all a strong-willed person by any means, but you’re not backing down on this, not when he’s been so lovely to you all night. When he realises that you won’t take no for an answer, he sighs, scratching the back of his ears. ‘Okay, okay. You can have the mint ones.’

One pair is mint and the other is pink. You blink. He wants the pink ones?

When he realises what must be going through your head, he quickly says, ‘Mint is your favourite colour right?’

Mint is your favourite colour. Though how does he know? All your possessions are in a variety of pastels: baby blue, cotton candy pink, mint green and lilac purple. He couldn’t have possibly guessed…?

‘Yes, it is… But I seriously don’t mind if you want the mint ones, I’m not gonna make you take the pink ones.’

‘No, it’s fine. I don’t mind.’ Jungkook snatches the pink fluffy socks from you before you can argue and stuff them onto his lap.

Your heart does a little thing that you can’t describe.

The two of you finish your dinner in silence, mirroring each other with one hand gripping the socks ever so tightly and the other hand picking up the noodles with your chopsticks. Awkwardly, Jungkook take a glimpse at you. A tiny smear of sauce stains the corner of your mouth.

Does he tell you? It would make it awkward though, wouldn’t it? But then again, it would be worse for you to find out yourself when you look in the mirror and think that he didn’t tell you you have sauce on your face.

‘Sauce.’ He accidentally says before he could finish formulating what he’s going to say to you. Shit. What’s wrong with him? Why did he say it like that? In response to your confused expression, he gestures dumbly at the corner of his own mouth.

Instantly a blush flames across the apples of your cheeks. You are about to wipe it away with your sleeve when you realise a second too late that you’re wearing a white sweater.

Your hand dangles a centimetre from your face, wrist caught in Jungkook’s fingers as he notices the mistake in your action before you. His whole body is leaned over the table in order to reach you. Wide eyes locked on each other, neither of you dare to move at his sudden outburst of motion towards you.

‘Um.’ He peeps. ‘Careful, I’ll do it, noona.’

Before you can register, he lets go of your arm allowing it to fall onto your lap. When his index knuckle brushes against the end of your mouth, a wave of shock zaps down your spine. Your heart lurches down an abyss at how soft his skin feels on your sensitive lips. Then his touch is gone, leaving a warmth tingling in his wake.

As he looks around for something to wipe his finger on, pupils round like a puppy, your eyes refuse to leave him. Thank you sits at the tip of your tongue but your throat is too clogged to utter a sound. The clockworks are trying to turn in your brain but all you can focus on is Jungkook.

How is he this nice, kind, gentle boy? And how have you completely missed this about him? In fact, why have you been so demure with him when he’s… an angel?

Watching his tongue poke at the inside of his cheek, a much scarier thought dawns on you.

Do you have a crush on Jungkook?

White screen glaring at you, the words of your unfinished essay frowns at your lack of attention in disapproval. You can’t write about Jane Austen’s exploration of feminism when Jungkook has overtaken your capacity to concentrate on anything other than him.

The radiator by your desk acts as your foot rest, blazing the pleasant heat up your legs. Ever few seconds, your eyes would wander to those mint green fuzzy socks you’re wearing, so brand new that its fluff caresses your toes like a flower bed. Just the thought that he went out of his way to replace your old hole-ridden pair…

Stop.

Jane Austen. Focus.

But the phantom touch of his finger sweeping across the plump of your bottom lip is etched on your skin, the picture of his doe eyes staring at your mouth refusing to leave your memory.

What has happened to you? How have you just swung from two extremes: from hardly able to speak a word to him without stuttering, to daydreaming about his kindness towards you?

The cold is making you delirious. It has to be this godforsaken cold, because why else would you all of a sudden be so flustered from the thought of Jungkook?

You take a long hard sip of your coffee, and mark it as a new leaf. From now on, no more thinking about anyone else other than Jane Austen. Pushing up your sleeves, you straighten your slouching back and face the monster of you assignment head on.

Not 5 minutes later, your desk lamp begins to flicker. You throw it a quick glance as your fingers type on your keyboard. Weird, you just changed the bulb a few weeks ago. Nevermind it.

Then all of a sudden, all the lights in your room go out. Frowning, you get up and try the switch several times to no avail. Peaking outside your room, all that greets you is a cold darkness. So you turn on the flashlight on your phone and try other light switches of the house. Nothing. Even the heat begins to seep away from the heaters as they dim to a cool. Oh no, right now?

Using your phone as a torch, you pad towards Jungkook’s room and open his door before you can remember to knock. Perhaps your anxiety has overridden your common sense and courtesy. Unfamiliar with the orientation of his room, you trail your side against the wall to guide you.

‘Jungkook? I think the power’s ou-’

Your phone shines onto a tall silhouette, illuminating a view that makes you shriek and stumble back.

There he is, standing with a white towel around his waist, beads of water splattered across his naked body and dripping rapidly out his wet slicked back hair. The swell of his biceps catch your attention first, lined with prominent veins running all the way down to his large hands placed on his hips. Which leads your gaze to the illustrious v of his hips that arch down to-

Without meaning to, your eyes travel down to this bulge. His hefty unmissable bulge. The towel protrudes out like a tiny hill, and you want to scream at it.

If you had a drink in your mouth right now, you would surely spit it out all over him and choke to your death. But you don’t, so all that comes out of you is a strangled cat noise. Looking away from that sinful area as quickly as you can, you arrive at his face - shocked, alarmed and confused. Your cheeks burning in the flames of hell, you spin away hastily to sprint out of his room in horror.

Except you run into the wall.

The impact hits your forehead and thankfully not your nose. Phone flung onto the ground with the light facing up, you fall onto you knees clutching at the eruption of pain. But nothing hurts more than your pride and image.

‘Noona!’ One hand securing the towel covering his manhood and preserving his dignity, he scrambles over to help you despite himself.

You flinch away at his hand on your shoulder because he is now right beside you. And it’s as if you’ve zoomed in too far on a picture because his nakedness is suddenly magnified 100x. You want to Ctrl Z yourself out of his room and back into your own desk. Because what. the. hell.

What the hell? What the hell? What the hell?

Transfixed on the ridges of this abdomen, you cannot focus on anything other than the way his muscles groove up and down so smoothly to form a six pack. Shadows casted by the flashlight sculpting more definition onto his marble chest. Goosebumps are raised on his blemishless skin, which you almost want to stroke away with your warmth.

‘I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay.’ You chant cataleptically in a daze. It’s more for your own reassurance than his. His bare upper body needs to let you breathe.

‘Are you sure?’ His concern is apparent in his expression, eyes examining your entire face for your injury.

‘Yes, yes.’ Desperately wanting to shoo him away, you wince at the pulsing ache burgeoning in your forehead.

‘I’m sorry.’ You both say in unison, though neither of you understand why the other is apologising.

Though he seems abashed about being shirtless, his humiliation comes nowhere near your level. Why isn’t he scrambling to put a shirt on?

To be fair Jungkook does seem awfully self conscious, you’ve caught him looking down at himself for about the fifteenth time now as he helps you up to your feet.

‘I’ll let you get dressed, sorry.’ Is all you say after snatching your phone off the ground, not even bothering to check for a cracked screen, before making your timely escape. This time more successful than the last.

Clutching your throbbing head, you race to your room and catapult onto your bed. The picture of a wet, shirtless Jungkook with only a towel to shield you from his crotch is now ingrained in your mind. You think shutting your eyes will help but you still see his divine abs behind your lids.

Holy shit.

What perhaps scares you more is how attracted you are to him. Since when did you find your roommate hot? This is shy, quiet Jungkook who plays overwatch until 4am. How dare he have a Greek God’s body to confuse you like this?

You need to stop thinking about his naked body right now.

Instead you check outside your window to see that the streetlights are off as well; it must be a blackout across the whole town, if not city. Without heating, the cold air begins to harshly sting your exposed skin. Panic starts to fester in your chest. How long can you last with no electricity whatsoever? You don’t even have phone signal, or something to charge your phone with except the one portable charger that may or may not be dead right now.

Though your door is wide open, Jungkook knocks on it politely outside your room. Which is what you should’ve done with him, you mentally scold yourself. Though he is now dressed in an oversized hoodie, your image of him is forever changed after seeing him fresh out the shower, hair still dripping. You blink hard in attempt to rid that thought.

‘Hi…’ He whispers. He’s holding two burning candles against his chest, their flames lighting up the underside of his sharp jaw.

‘Hi, come in.’

You can sense his hesitancy, the unease in the air between you, when he enters your room gingerly, feet clad in those pink fuzzy socks.

‘Sorry-’ You both say at the same time again, then release a breath of laughter. Mirth twinkles in his eyes, though his shyness does not stray from him.

‘I’m sorry for barging into your room like that.’ It’s an effort not to glance down at his adorable socks. ‘That was completely my fault, so don’t apologise.’

He swallows. ‘It’s okay, noona.’

His eyes hold yours for a solid moment before dispersing. A familiar blush is starting to paint your cheeks, you feel the heat from your chest blare up to your entire face. Unable to help imagining those solid muscles underneath his clothes, you tug at the hem of your sweater.

‘So,’ Jungkook places one of the candles on your desk. ‘This is for you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Instead of using the flashlight of your phone, use the candle or one of the torches I’ve put on the table outside to save your battery. I’ve checked the main fuse, it isn’t switching back on. Good thing is that we still have running water and plumbing, just no heating or any electricity.’ He glances at your own socks. ‘We need to use the water sparingly though or the reservoir will run out. From the shops, I’ve bought some food that we can eat without cooking like gimbap or sandwiches. There’s also a stash of hand warmers in the drawer of the TV stand if you’re cold.’

That’s a lot of words to come out of Jungkook’s mouth in one go, all spoken to you. What he’s saying is sinking in and relief washes over you, yet you can’t help but focus your attention on the way his lips move as he speaks. The dark red gleaming with lip balm, curving over each syllable so prettily.

‘That’s great, thank you.’ You finally snap out of it. ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’ That last sentence slips out of you before you could stop it.

Pupils widening a fraction, Jungkook’s lips part in reaction. Why did you tell him that? Maybe you should just lock yourself in your room after continuously embarrassing yourself tonight. But then he pulls into a smile that melts away the ice that’s numbing your limbs and burning your lungs. The front of his teeth slightly jutting out sweetly.

Again, a fondness tickles your chest.

‘Me too.’ The tingle spreads into a pulse that crushes your throat. Is that why they call it a crush?

You simply cannot suppress your own growing grin.

Jungkook begins to walk away, but then stops at your door and turns back. There’s a reluctance, an uncertainty to his slow movement as he faces you.

‘If… If you get too cold without the radiator… you can…’ His voice barely a husk. ‘You can come over to mine.’

Then he’s gone. The aura lit up by his candle gradually diminishes away from you as he walks down the hallway to his room.

Frozen in place, you’re not even sure if your heart is beating anymore. Those final words ring in your ear like wind chimes.

You can come over to mine.

Does he mean what you think he means? Is he offering to keep you warm during the night?

You watch the candle he’d placed on your desk, its flame mirroring the small fire kindling in your core for the boy who went out during a blizzard to buy you fuzzy socks so your feet don’t get cold.

On the other side of the wall, Jungkook is on the verge of combustion at his bold proposition to you, red burning the tips of his ears. Though the memory of the look of pure euphoria on your face when you took your first bite of jajangmyeon burns his heart hotter yet.

The cold is brutal and shows no mercy. Despite your tossing and turning and effort to warm yourself up, sleep does not grace you. Part of the blame goes to Jungkook, you have not been able to cease thinking about him and everything he has done tonight. It makes you reflect on all your past moments together, whether he has always been like this and you were only too closed off to pay heed.

Sitting up from your bed, you decide you won’t be able to fall asleep without extra warmth. You need hand warmers stuffed down your pyjamas.

So, muscles stiff from the cold, you clamber out the little warm burrow of your covers and head for the living room, forsaking any light since your vision has adapted to the dark. On your way there, you walk past Jungkook’s room. Without knowing why, your legs betray you and stop outside his door.

You can come over to mine.

The low rasp of his voice still echoes in your head, stirring your unwarranted feelings for him into a warm pot of honey.

Had he really meant it? Did he honestly invite you to his share his bed? Surely not - this is Jeon Jungkook you’re thinking of, he doesn’t even speak to you most days, can’t not cower away from your glare. And he also knows what you’re like, how it took you two whole months to even warm to all of Jimin’s friends, how you only recently stopped using honorifics with those older than you.

And surely he must be at least mildly aware of the lack of boys and romance in your life, living just down the hall from you. Jimin is the closest male friend you have, and even so, you aren’t completely comfortable with sleeping beside him.

But then… All that has transpired about Jungkook’s character tonight, how sweet and kind and thoughtful he is which completely falls outside your predictions of the boy…

You realise you want to know more, want to explore the depths and mysteries that is your strange roommate. This intangible force that has been building up in the mere hours you’ve spent together this cold winter’s night draws you to him.

So screw those hand warmers, they last way too short anyway. Who needs those fidgety packets when there’s a whole Jeon Jungkook next door?

Gathering all the courage you can muster, you knock on his door.

The wood sends tendrils of cold into your knuckles. There’s a pause at first which leaves you thinking that he’s asleep, and to be fair, this late at night he has every reason to be. You’re about to turn away and head forth down the hall when you hear sheets moving, followed by his muffled come in.

Timidly, you step into his room, mind still fresh with the memory of what had happened last time you entered here unannounced, mere hours ago. Let’s not think about that right now, shall we?

Jungkook is sat up in his bed, black hood engulfing half his head. A single scented candle lit on his bedside table beside him illuminates the whole room into a golden ochre hue, it smells of freshly washed sheets.

‘Hi…’ You peep out, stopping in front of his bed.

‘Everything ok, noona?’ His eyes are fixed on your face in wonder, but when you meet them, they dart to your socks.

‘Um, yes.’ How do you put this? How do you formulate those words? ‘I just… It’s absolutely freezing with the radiators not working. Maybe- D-’ You exhale shakily. He’s gaze slowly crawls back up to your face as he realises where you’re going with this. ‘You know how you suggested that we should… sleep tog- on the same bed… to keep each other warm…? Well...’

Jungkook blinks at you. For a heartbeat, all you want to do is curl up into a ball and roll out of here. You couldn’t even finish what you were saying because your jaw has simply refused to move, refused to let you carry on embarrass yourself.

Then, although he was already on one side of the bed, he scooches over to the left. He doesn’t look at you when he replies, ‘Of course.’

Your heart is pumping fast, almost making you choke on your constricting throat. Warily you clamber onto his bed, but stop when only your knee is on the mattress. The bed frame creaks. Jungkook is regarding you with an unreadable expression, nibbling on his bottom lip. ‘Wait, if this is weird, just tell me to go.’

‘N-No. It’s fine.’ Pulling the covers over his chest, he crosses his arms shyly. There’s a pink tint to his cheeks, though you could be mistaken due to the odd lighting. ‘I was struggling to fall asleep from the cold as well.’ He adds when you don’t seem convinced.

Both of you are making this a bigger deal than it actually is, you are fully aware. It honestly pains you how awkward you two are with each other; if this were Jimin, he’d be dragging you onto his bed by the waist, letting you flounder about in his arms like a cat trying to escape before smothering you with his affection. But this is Jungkook. Quiet, shy, awkward Jungkook. Jungkook who hasn’t spoken more than ten words a day to you before the events of tonight even though you live together. Jungkook who you’re slowly learning more and more about during this blizzard.

Plus, he was the one who offered to share his bed earlier in the first place. This is fine, just fine. Act normal.

Overly conscious of how he’s watching your every movement carefully, you slowly burrow into the comfort of his bed. Immediately you’re enveloped in his residual body heat under the duvet. Now you realise that he moved over to the other side of the bed, the cold side, so you can relish in the warmth that he’s been collecting under these covers.

Why is Jungkook so… considerate?

Again, the same fuzzy feeling as before tugs at your heartstrings. Suddenly you want to reach out to him, but instead, you tug at your sleeves.

You’re both staring at the blank ceiling as if it is some fascinating art piece, with enough space between you to fit a Jimin. The candle has casted long grey shadows across the room, occasionally flickering haphazardly.

Everything that is currently whizzing through your head is driving you insane. This is actually happening. You are sharing a bed with Jungkook, the guy who you can’t even look in the eye when speaking to, your roommate who has only ever tried to avoid you. This day is a jack-in-the-box of Jungkook-themed surprises. What’s going to be next?

‘Feeling warmer, noona?’ He breaks the silence first, and you can’t help but glance over at him. His side profile is mostly masked by his hood, yet you can still see his jaw clenching. You can only imagine how uneasy he is currently feeling.

‘Yes.’ It’s barely a whisper you manage, so you clear your throat. ‘Much better Jungkook, thank you.’

Another silence. Though this is an improvement from before, you still feel a chill in your bones; the cold is a resilient pest that aches your muscles and numbs your face.

‘Should I blow out the candle then?’ You ask.

‘Oh right, yeah.’

You huff at the small flame but it refuses to go out, and you kind of don’t want it to as it provides a strong beacon of heat as its smoke licks at your face. You huff again. Still, it only wavers. You’re so cold that you don’t even have the strength to take out a candle. Peaking over at Jungkook, his eyes are locked on you patiently.

‘I’ll do it.’ He leans across the bed over you, you feel his warmth radiate into your proximity as his should hovers over your face. His scent, a clean soft musk, swims up your nose; you never noticed how pleasant he smells. The veins on his neck are protruding as he strains to reach over. When he extinguishes the candle with a single harsh blow, embarrassment rains on you.

Darkness enshrouds you two. As he returns to his position, you notice that he’s closer to you than before, now only less than a foot away. The sound of his breathing provides a steady rhythm that soothes your wild thoughts.

Though your social skills are subpar by nature, Jungkook has a way of magnifying your awkwardness. Should you say something? Good night? Thank him again?

Then you realise, he’s shivering. Of course, his hair must still be wet from his unfinished shower that was cut short by the blackout. God, he must be freezing.

‘You’re cold.’ You state, though you mean it more as a question.

‘I’m fine.’ Hums his response, yet his inhale is shaky.

Squeezing your eyes shut, you know what you’re going to do next is completely out of character and will require more guts than you actually possess. Your hand gropes at the space between you until you find his hand. It’s ice cold. Jungkook jumps at the contact and you hear him turn his head towards you. You hope his sight hasn’t adjusted to the dark yet so he can’t see how abashed you are.

‘You’re not fine.’ His fingers are stiff when you interlock yours between his. Everything is screaming inside you. What are you doing? What the heck? If Jimin were here to see this his jaw would drop all the way down to hell.

Unable to suppress the urge either, you also turn to look at him. In the dark, you can barely make out the outline of his face, the shape of his glossy eyes reflecting the moonlight seeping in through the window. Slowly, his fingers curl up around your hand. Your heart flips.

Blood roaring in your ears, you inch towards him like a frightened deer until your sides are pressed against each other. Your faces must be a hand’s width apart, but the darkness fuels you with a brazenness that allows you to not cringe away. His whole body tenses in response.

‘Better?’ Voice so soft he strains to hear you.

Jungkook nods, eyes never leaving yours. ‘Better.’ His response rumbles into your ear and percolate into your mind, and only now are you aware of how close he is.

An amalgamation of unidentifiable emotions stir inside you. You feel your own warmth trickle towards him as his does with you, and slowly his presence plucks away the cold you are plagued with.

‘Good night, Jungkook.’

‘Good night, Y/N noona.’

Though it’s only briefest of movements, you feel his thumb stroke over yours once, twice, as your eyelids fall shut.

The next morning, you wake up first with your head fitted cosily on his heavily breathing chest, his arm draped across your shoulder, shielding you from the chilly morning air.

The power still isn’t back on.

It’s now nearing 24 hours since the blackout first hit.

You’ve wasted the day wandering about the house, unsure of what to do with yourself. Though you tell yourself it’s the withdrawal symptoms from the internet, it’s mostly due to the fact that you slept next to Jungkook last night.

The earlier half of the day was spent subtly avoiding him because what the hell are you supposed to say to him? Do you just carry on your usual selves around each other or are you, like, friends now? You caught yourself watching him sleep this morning, serene breaths in and out through his nose. There’s a tiny mole under his lips that you’ve never noticed before. You had poked it with your pinky before you could stop yourself. And thankfully he’s a heavy sleeper, he didn’t even stir.

With more effort than you thought would require, you pried yourself out of his arms, a cold breeze instantly welcoming you in an embrace as you left his bed.

Those scenes keep replaying in your head: him finding you out in the blizzard, watching him cook you jajangmyeon, discovering that he when out of his way to buy you new sock, then walking in on him almost stark naked from the shower, and finally, falling asleep enveloped in his warm and scent.

You’re definitely crushing on him.

You’ve stopped denying it when you saw him meander wearily out his room at noon, bed head ruffled, eyes still droopy from sleep. Wordlessly, you had passed him the ham and cheese sandwich you prepared for yourself and you don’t even know why because you were absolutely starving.

The downpour of snow only stopped for a good 10 minutes this afternoon, a tiny window in which you poked your head out for some fresh air. Jungkook had tried to shovel away some snow to clear the porch, but quickly ran back inside when he saw your worried face plastered to the window watching him.

There isn’t much either of you can do with no electricity, no internet, no television, trapped indoors. So you occupy your day curled up on the couch, nose buried in a novel, completely immersed in that beautifully crafted fictional world.

Until Jungkook walks out in a white t-shirt and shorts.

Your eyebrow raises, peeking at him from behind the pages.

‘I’m gonna work out here, if you don’t mind. There isn’t enough space in my room.’ He scratches the back of his head.

‘Sure.’ You exhale, knowing your demise is looming over your head like a storm cloud. A lot of self control is exercised in order to not ogle at his calves.

Training your eyes at the novel in front of you with great determination, you turn the page. The first minute is easy enough, you just have to angle your book to block your view of him. But then his breathing grows heavier, panting every rep. At that, you can’t help but glimpse past the corner of your page.

Oh Lord. He’s doing push ups.

Though his biceps are mostly covered by his sleeves, the muscles of his forearms tensing at every contraction catch you eye. You marvel at the way his tendons flex out, and the way his serpentine of veins snake down his hands.

Jeez.

Then he lets out an unholy grunt, setting your whole skin on aflame. Scarlet stains your cheeks, you’re sure of it. But the sinful sounds do not stop. Sweat his now seeping through his shirt, rendering the material transparent down his back. And his ass…

You snap your focus back to your novel.

Just in time as well because he stops onto his knees, head falling back as he sits on his ankles, panting. His neck is shimmering with his perspiration, droplets trickling down like a brook.

Jungkook glances over at you to see you reading intently, jaw clenched from what he guesses is due to the excitement of the plot.

But then you stand up so abruptly that it startles him. You can’t sit here and spy on his workout any longer, you physically cannot take it. Not to mention, it makes you feel so awful, like you’re perving on the poor clueless boy who only wants to break a sweat.

The both of you just stare at each other, flustered for different reasons. His breathing slows.

‘I’m gonna-’ You don’t know where you’re going with the sentence. Gulp. ‘Uh, see you later.’

Scampering away into your room, you don’t wait for his response. Why are you panting heavier than he is when he’s the one exercising? Your book is pressed tightly against your pounding chest as you lean your back on your door. Your legs give way and you slowly slide down onto the cool floor.

There’s one thing you know for sure.

Jeon Jungkook is not good for your heart.

It’s almost midnight and Jungkook is standing outside your door. Fist clenched, inches away from rapping on the wood, but completely frozen in action.

Just do it, idiot. He scolds himself.

After an ice cold post-workout shower, this time early enough so he doesn’t have to sleep with wet hair, you both had gimbap for dinner. It was an excruciatingly silent meal which he blames himself for, though he can’t help the way his tongue gets tied every time he wishes to speak to you.

And now, bed time, he is at a dilemma of whether or not to ask to sleep with you again. It may come across as too forward coming from a guy, he doesn’t want to scare you. But he also knows that he will be missing the warmth of your body beside him if he goes to bed alone.

Jungkook sighs and lets his hanging hand fall to his side.

If you wanted to, you would have gone to his room anyway. Might as well save the awkward rejection and just take this as a no.

However, your door suddenly swings open. He’s confronted with a pyjama-wearing, baby-faced you, flinching back a step at the surprising sight of him.

‘Op- I was just....’ His sentence falls flat. He was just what?

‘I was just coming to find you.’ You mutter, eyes softening if he isn’t mistaken. A flood of relief rushes at him, so you were planning on coming to him tonight.

Wordlessly, you pad after him to his room. Everything is dark but you see his figure clearly in front of you. It gives you a false sense of confidence which leads you to trip over his charger wire you so clumsily missed.

You don’t know how he reacts so quickly to your yelp of distress, but he turns around in time to catch your outstretched arms by the elbows. ‘Watch out.’ Feet fumbling over each other, he stumbles back onto his bed as you fall onto him. The weight of your bodies sink down onto the mattress.

Hard muscle cushions your fall. Chests pressed against each other, you don’t realise your hands have instinctively circled around his shoulders for balance. Your nose is touching his fabric of his collar, his musk instantly overriding your senses. When you look up, his eyes are a crystal clear pool somehow reflecting the constellations of the night sky in this darkness. His breath caresses your forehead. Your gaze drops to his mouth, pink and parted.

You want to kiss him, you realise. So badly. Every fibre of your being is currently yearning to meet his lips, longing to know whether he tastes better than he smells.

But then your limbs are moving for you, propping yourself up and off him. Your own mouth forms and quiet ‘sorry’ as you shuffle under the sheets. It’s as if you’re watching your own actions through your eyes, controlled by your logic rather than desire. You couldn’t let yourself kiss him.

Jungkook silently squirms into his bed beside you, unwilling to look your direction as much as you’re averse to his.

So this is how it’s going to be again. Two sleeping logs next to each other.

There’s an ache of regret in your heart for being so timid. Annoyance at yourself drips down your throat, fist clenching at the sheets. You should’ve kissed him right then and there, consequences be damned. When will you get another chance? But perhaps it was fate. You have no idea how he would’ve reacted; the pessimist in you thinks he would’ve been disgusted. Yes, it was fate. It was right not to have kissed him.

Wait, no. A boldness suddenly pours down on you. Shyness and introversion has gotten you nowhere before, and it will not help your situation now.

‘Jungkook.’ Your voice comes out crisp and clear.

‘Hm, Noona?’

‘I’m still cold.’ Turning to face him, you see innocent confusion settle in his expression. The sound of your thumping pulse has reached your ears, your heart is a speeding motor flying off to find him. ‘Come closer.’

The shadow of his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. His focus does not stray from you as he slides across the bed hesitantly.

‘Closer.’

He edges further towards you. You can now just about make out the shape of the scar that flecks his left cheek.

‘Closer.’

This time, his exhale tickles your neck. Warm bodies touching, confusion and perturbation cloud his glassy orbs as he scans your face for an answer to the plethora of questions swimming in his head.

‘Thank you.’ You breathe, though it feels like no air is entering you. You can’t believe what you’re doing. This close to him, you’re entire being bathes in his presence, his aura; a familiar tingling ails your soul as your eyes flicker to his lips.

Every single muscle in Jungkook is frozen in shock, unsure of what is going on and why the sudden change in your demeanour towards him. And when you turn onto your side away from him and inch by inch back your body onto his front, his heart

stops

beating.

Nose buried in your floral-scented hair, vacillating thoughts tell him to put his arm around your waist and hold you close to him. You sense his unsureness in the way his hand rests on your side and pauses for too long before pulling you into his chest.

His frame engulf yours, the curve of your back lining perfectly with his. You feel safe, protected. His furnace touch on your waist burns through the thick fabric of your jumper and seeps into your core. The effect he has on you is nothing you’ve ever experienced before, and neither have you ever been in this position with anyone. Although it isn’t much, merely just cuddling, this feels so remarkably intimate and intense, like you’ve finally stepped through a threshold built into the emotional wall that towers between you and him.

You’re not entirely sure if you’re breathing.

Despite being the one to instigate this, you’re awfully apprehensive, not daring to even twitch incase it rattles him and sets him scrambling away. The two of you are like a pair of squirrels, slowly approaching to sniff each other, curious yet easily frightened.

His hot breath rushes down your spine like smoke. You desperately want to know what he’s thinking. Is he as nervous as you? Do you feel comfortable to him as he does to you? Or is he already falling asleep?

You should close your eyes and try to. Though who are you kidding? You’d never manage to catch a wink when you’re an accidental turn of a face away from kissing him, at least not right away anyway, not until you calm yourself down with a mental meditation exercise or something.

The urge to check if he’s indeed asleep is yanking at you, but you use all your willpower to resist, not wanting to risk rousing him when he’s as skittish as you.

But then you feel it.

Him.

It’s subtle at first, just a gentle pressure at your bottom.

Innocent and untainted as you are, you don’t even realise what it is at first, so you shift your hips unconsciously.

Then it’s stiffness grows, and grows, until it’s a baton poking at your rear.

Something in your core ignites, your chest constricts, and a wildfire of lust you’ve never felt before smoulders from your scalp to your toes before finally rooting itself in your sex. Ten hells, Jungkook’s boner is touching your ass. Jungkook has a boner and it’s touching your ass. Jungkook has a boner because of you and it’s touching your ass.

Your brain is devoid of all senses except a formidable hunger for him. Suddenly, though he’s almost surrounding you completely, the only thing you can feel is his hard member prodding you.

Is he asleep or not, you need to know.

Then a strange force possesses your lower half, and like a puppet on a string, your ass sinks back further onto him until his length is tunnelled between your cheeks.

The softest moan escapes him, almost a gasp even.

You think he’s going to say something, move away or stand up and leave. Instead he pulls himself away and slowly thrusts forward again. His clothed length slides smoothly up your crack, brushing ever so slightly over your slit. It sends a wave of arousal convulsing up your core, so powerful you almost choke.

Continuing to encourage him, your hips move in tandem with his, rubbing your ass all over his pulsing erection, occasionally letting it slide between your thighs against your clit. A pleasured mewl escapes, though you’re not sure who from. You’ve never felt anything like this, the ruin that overtakes your core at the friction. This is a divine sensation, luxury of the gods.

Jungkook’s fingers dig into your waist as his pace increases, his breathing slowly shifting into wavering panting. Finally you succumb to the urge to twist around to look at him. Your heart erupts at the pure devastation contorting his face. His brows angled in pleasure, teeth clamped down on his lip to suppress those unholy noises, lids hanging heavy at the weight of his thirst for you. When his eyes lock on yours, something unleashes in him and devours you wholly.

Fire and ice. His lips feel like both fire and ice. Fire because your entire mind is burning at his smoothness, fuelled by your unkempt want for him to take over you. Ice because everything that isn’t him feels numb and insignificant, and your feelings for this man holding you is the purest flake of snow.

Your first kiss, and it’s already the best kiss you’ll ever have, you’re sure. Because the way his lips meld onto your, the desperation in the way he leans so far into you, the heat of his arousal forging it’s mark between your legs. Nothing in this world can top that.

‘Noona.’ He sighs into you. It drives you absolutely insane.

Fingers grappling in his wavy locks, you reposition yourself completely to face him. His length twitches against you as your leg swings behind him to pull him closer. He is holding your neck with a heartbreaking delicacy, thumb stroking your jaw like it’s the most fragile of chinas.

‘Jung-’ You whimper. ‘Koo…’

Tasting of mint, his tongue gently laps at yours when you open for him. You’re drowning in his essence, lungs filling with his air, though you welcome your sweet painless death like it’s a heavenly gift.

Knowing his docile nature, you move his hand underneath your top, giving him permission to roam freely on your skin. He snakes around your back and circles around your front before finally meeting your sore breasts. As he kneads them tenderly, you feel a warmth ooze out of you into a puddle of concupiscence in your pants.

Oh God.

Your own hands wander beneath his hoodie, raking up the bumps of his god-sculpted abdomen and taking hold of his muscular chest. His wet kisses are a drug, and you’re completely and utterly under its control.

‘Jungkook, I want you.’ You moan.

When his eyes fly open, you’re met with pools of desire, seething into you like jets of lust. Never in your wildest dreams did you think you’d experience him like this, covetous for you and withering under your touch.

‘Noona… Fuck.’ He trembles as your hand travels down his navel, daring to slide under the band of his sweatpants. ‘I want you so bad, noona.’

The whimper that leaves his mouth when you palm him through his boxers sends a flood of yearning down to your core.

Holy shit.

He feels…

Massive.

Heavy with girth, only about half of his length fits in your palm. You have to stretch your fingers in order to fully encompass him. He is fully at your disposal, groaning, grip tightening on you.

As he huffs into the edge of your jaw, his own hand comes down to find your pussy pulsing for his touch. When his touches your clothed slit, a compulsion forces your hips to buckle forwards. And when he begins to rub circles right on that tender spot, waves upon waves of ecstasy hit you.

Whining like an animal, your head falls back at the newfound pleasure he’s showing you. With you neck presented so openly to him like a platter of dessert, he plants dulcet kisses onto you, his gentleness kindling your fire for him. Despite your attempt to wind your focus back to him, your grip on his erection slackens at his vibrations on your cunt.

‘Can I?’ Jungkook whispers into your ear, softness tickling your lobe. You don’t waste a second before nodding eagerly.

Then his fingers slide underneath your panties. Sensitivity explodes at the contact between the pad of his thumb and your clit. A string of moans release from you. His fingers stroke tactfully up your slick, lubricated by your wetness for him. And when he slides his digit into you, the thread that holds your soul to sanity snaps.

‘Oh my god.’ He pushes through the sleek pressure of your walls. ‘Jungkook.’ The whimper of his name rolling off your tongue sends a rush of blood down to his aching cock.

‘Noona, is that okay?’ The genuity in his voice squeezes your heart.

‘Yes, it feels so, argh, good.’

He latches his lips onto your neck and sucks clouds of lavender to your smooth seamless sky. His finger is slowly pumping in and out. It is a foreign feeling, so strange and unfamiliar, yet all the more exciting. The rise of his knuckles hit your wall at eye-rolling angles. Your hips roll in his rhythm to help him reach newer depths. The pleasure is unforgiving, relentless.

Another feeling gnaws at your chest, a longing to please him.

‘I want to make you feel good, Jungkook.’ You mumble, shy.

He looks up at you, finger gradually ceasing its movement. The pure passion alit in his eyes drives you thrumming for him.

‘O-Okay.’

‘You… You have to teach me though.’ Redness flushes your cheeks.

‘Okay.’ He says again, and you wonder if you’ve broken him at the way he’s frozen.

Sheepishly tugging down his pants, you inch yourself down and settle between his legs, the duvet rested upon your shoulders. He bobs free from the restraint of his apparel.

Your eyes bulge at his cock that is, despite the darkness, standing tall and proud, beaming at you. How is that monster going to fit inside you?

A strong vein runs down the course of his length. Angry red tip swollen and trickling with a clear liquid. You look up to find him staring helplessly down at you, gulping. A nervous fear is eating away at your throat; you’ve never done this before, how are you supposed to know how right now?

‘Teach me.’ Your fingers come around the base of his shaft and he gasps audibly.

‘Uh-’ Another gulp. ‘Lick the tip.’

You lick the tip. Drawing your tongue over his engorged head, tasting his salty precum that continues to leak out of him profusely. He curses.

‘Like that?’ Your mouth doesn’t leave him as you say.

‘Mhmm.’ He runs his hand through his dark locks in exasperation. ‘Suck on it gently.’

You suck on it gently. Lips wrapped around his tip like a vacuum while you breath him in. Your cheeks hollow. You look up at him for approval. One eye is clamped shut, the other is barely held open to witness the most seraphic scene.

‘Fuck, noona, like this.’

You try to take in more, letting his wide cock slide into your mouth, careful not to scrape your teeth against his hilt. When he hits the back of your throat, you gag and splutter around him. Embarrassment shoots at you, yet when you glance up, he doesn’t seem to care.

Instead, he brushes your hair behind your ear and coos, ‘Careful, noona.’ He’s so sweet, so dear, you feel a crack in your heart.

So you try again, this time slower, swallowing as much of him as you can. Your hand swirl around his shaft while his massages the back of your scalp. You roll your tongue around his head every time you come up, flickering at his slit. Soon, your pace increases along with your confidence. Jungkook is a mess under you, thighs quivering, toes curling. Humming in satisfaction, your vibrations resonate into his dick and he yelps.

‘Noona, stop before I cum.’ The way he pleads sends your cunt throbbing. You pull his member out of your mouth almost obscenely, inhaling sharply for air.

He gently places you on your back, finger tracing your drenched lips in endearment. ‘Was that ok?’

‘That was perfect, noona. Are you sure that was your first time?’ Doe eyes wide in awe of you. You giggle and nod, glowing in timid pride. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

At that, the reality of this situation hits you. This is happening, this is actually happening. You’re going to have sex for the first time. With Jungkook.

Are you sure you want to do this?

You are sure you want to do this. If not with him, then no one else.

‘Yes.’ You state firmly, eyes never once wavering from his.

His gaze on you is so soft, yet so intense, you want to melt under him. ‘Okay. I- I need to go find a condom in Jimin’s room.’

Fuzzy with your feelings for him, you watch him scramble off in the dark to the other room. Loud clangs echo down the hall, you can’t help but smile at the thought of him digging through Jimin’s pig sty, frantically searching with his rock hard cock.

Jungkook returns moments later to the sight of you completely naked on his bed. Gaping like a little boy, he almost falls onto you as he climbs onto the bed while he tears off his own top. For a minute, you two just stare at each other’s bodies, allowing the beauty to sink in and etch itself forever in your souls.

‘Noona, you’re so beautiful. Do you know that?’ He leans over to kiss all over your face.

A warm prickle sieges your heart. No one has ever called you beautiful before. Emotion floods you like an ocean, and you’re suddenly met with a familiar sting behind your eyes.

He hovers over your lips, nose rubbing on yours so lovingly you want to cry. You’re at a loss for words, so you just nod, not daring to peep a sound lest a tear escapes from you.

His hands are shaking as he rolls on the condom. Prudently, he kisses up your inner thighs before spreading them open with care. Finally, he pecks the top of your flower fondly.

Then slowly he rests his elbow beside your head and situate himself between your legs. Both your breaths are wobbly, you search his face for security and find it. His irises reflect his galaxy - you. And your fear ebbs away.

Stroking his tip along your wetness, he kisses the shell of your ear. ‘Are you really really sure?’

‘Yes, Jungkook.’ Your fingers entangle in his hair assuringly.

‘Tell me to stop if it hurts a lot. Promise, noona?’ His concern is heart wrenching.

‘Promise.’ You whisper, other hand locking with his.

Only then does he begin to ease into you. At first you don’t feel much, just his tip diving into you. Then the rest of his length pushes in, plunging through a tremendous pressure built into your walls. Pain blooms inside you as he enters deeper and deeper, it’s an ache that you anticipated but never imagined. You both cry out, though for different reasons.

‘Are you okay?’ You can tell he’s struggling to stay still, shoulders tensing at the temptation to thrust again.

‘Mhmm.’ You manage to gripe. Because despite the blinding pain, you are okay.

‘I’m gonna go as slow as I can.’ He ensures you, fingers tightening around yours.

When he plunges into you again, you expect the hurt to lessen, but it doesn’t. It overwhelms your whole body, yanking inside you. Though, every time he kisses your lips so tenderly, your forget the soreness he’s impaling into you for a fresh second. Opening your eyes, you see him panting at your tightness, trying with every muscle in his body not to go wild at you.

‘Fuck, noona.’ He exhales, forehead rested on yours.

Seeing him so berserk with pleasure calms your running anxiety. His thrusts inevitably quickens, and you just about begin to see pass the pain. Behind the ache, there’s a gratifying sting clenching your walls. The slap of his hips against your thighs ring loud.

‘Still okay?’ Jungkook asks again, worry painting his face at your silence.

‘Yes, you can go faster.’ You answer despite the ever-present soreness. When he drives hard into you, stars and tears blurring your vision.

Something in him snaps as you feel him twitch inside you. His movements grow sloppy and feral, just like the grunts that he heaves. Chasing his climax, you can tell how close he is to his sweet release.

‘Oh- Noona, I’m so cl-ose.’ He’s whimpering into your neck.

‘Jungkook, baby. Come for me.’

At your name for him, he goes crazy, ramming into you with a strength and stamina that you couldn’t expect less of from him. ‘Noona…’ He begs. The pressure inside you is easing, pain dulling, though you know you won’t feel any pleasure this time round.

Then, in one last powerful push, he ejects into you with a loud cry. You pull his lips to yours immediately to soothe his euphoria. This look of pure pleasure on his face rips you to shred as he refuses to let go of your hand. His hips jerk into yours to ride out is high as his whole body deflates onto you.

Although it’s a freezing night, goosebump plaguing both your skins, neither of you feel cold. Instead, you are enshrouded by the warmth of your passion and desire, all you feel is each other.

You, wrapped tightly around him, and him, spasming inside you.

Heavy with exhaustion, he nuzzles up to kiss you. Long, slow and hard. You have never truly appreciated his beauty until this point, under the subtle snow-clouded moon, eyes boring into you with a never-dimming glow of adoration.

Jungkook removes himself from you, hastily disposing the condom to not miss a moment by your side. Dressing you first so you don’t catch a breeze of cold, his touch feels so much warmer, gentler.

Snuggled up under the covers, he holds you so close to him that you hear his beating heart. For a timeless passage, you stare into each other wordlessly, fingers tracing delicately over every patch of skin.

‘Y/N...’ He muses out loud. ‘Y/N… You don’t know how perfect you are…’

Again, he has rendered you speechless.

Caressing your cheek in his palm, he continues. ‘I wish you could see yourself through my eyes because then you would understand why I’m so completely in love with you.’

At his words, your throat constrict. ‘What?’ You choke out.

‘I’m in love with you, noona.’ His lips are trembling, chest pounding against you. Disquietude emanates from how he’s peering at you.

‘Oh.’

‘I don’t know how you never knew, I mean- I guess it’s pretty obvious from the way I act around you. Even Yoongi-hyung spotted it right away…’ He begins to ramble, focus hopping to the collar of your jumper that he’s toying with. ‘I just… I don’t know. There’s something so special about you that I can’t find in anyone else. I thought it was just a crush but... but then you moved in with us and… And my feelings for you just drove me insane. That’s why I kept trying to avoid you. I know I wouldn’t be able to hide it if I actually spent time with you, I’m kinda stupid when it comes to girls if you can’t tell already.

‘But the truth is,’ he takes a deep breath and sighs, ‘I am truly, deeply, madly in love with you, Y/N noona. Everything about you. The way you devour jajangmyeon as easily as breathing. The way you never go a day in winter without wearing these fuzzy socks. The way you only drink lattes and chamomile tea. The way you would rather spend your friday nights curled up with a book. The way you pretend to find Jimin annoying but secretly love the attention he gives you. The way you rushed out to find me in the snow and forgot the bring your keys. And the way you can’t talk to me without stuttering just like how I can’t look you in the eye when we have a conversation.

‘I know this is a lot to spring onto you, and I don’t expect you to love me back at all. But just know that I’m here for you whenever you need. I’m your furnace in a snowstorm, hand warmer in a blizzard. And it’s okay if you don’t feel the same for me, I’ll still be here.’

Jungkook finishes with a final huff.

You stare at him, dumbfounded by his confession. Emotion floods your veins at the revelation, and you can all but break down into sobs. Jaw gaping, you regard him from his arms, trying to piece together your scattered thoughts.

‘Noona, say someth-’

You kiss him, urgently and desperately. Like you’ve been drowning in a sea of lostness, aimlessly floating about to try to find your way, and he’s your first gulp of air. Mist of perplexity is finally starting to clear away, and you see the path ahead of you with crystal lucidity.

It’s Jungkook. Jungkook, who knows your favourite colour when even your own mother doesn’t. Jungkook, who waddled out into the freezing snow to buy you new socks. Jungkook, who so gently and delicately made love to you tonight. Jungkook, who has loved you unconditionally and will continue doing so regardless of your feelings towards him.

‘I think… I think I’m falling truly, deeply, madly in love with you too, Jungkook.’

End

extras: christmas special

@shookpreme @hazelelizabeth99 @teenage-hippie @bunbundesu @tangledsparkles @gingerpeachtae idk who wanted to be tagged lol 😬

02/09/2019

12K notes · View notes

the--highlanders · 3 years ago

Text

1. “I need you.”

on ao3.

“Isn’t it funny.” Shifting to put her back against the arm of the sofa, Polly swung her legs up to plant them across Jamie’s lap. She prodded at him with one socked foot, and he huffed, holding out the bowl of who-knew-what so she could take a handful. It was a bit like popcorn, she had said, which might have been helpful if he had even the vaguest idea of what popcorn was. “That when I go home, if I wait long enough, this movie will come out. And I’ll already know what happens.”

“Mm.” Polly’s hand was reaching over to the bowl again, and Jamie shoved her aside idly to take a handful for himself. Glancing down at the green and blue and purple pebbles, he closed his palm around them rather than shoving them in his mouth straight away. They were good, Polly had said, but he had not yet mustered the courage to take a bite himself, even after half the movie. If Polly had noticed, he told himself bracingly, she would have been teasing him about it by now. “Ye could tell everyone what happens.”

Polly snorted. “As if they’d believe me.”

“They’d believe ye after they saw it, though.”

“I suppose.” The smile slowly faded from Polly’s face as she turned back to the screen, absorbing herself in the movie again. Jamie wrenched his gaze back towards it too, but somehow even the bright flashing lights of the spaceships and their blinking missiles couldn’t quite hold his attention. Maybe, he thought, it would be more exciting to someone in Polly’s time, who had not seen space battles unfold in reality. It was certainly much showier than most of the spaceship fights he had seen, but it was somehow all the sillier for it.

“What if,” Polly started again, “I wanted to watch the movie?”

“We are watchin’ it,” Jamie said, grinning. “Did ye forget?”

She swiped at him, almost knocking his handful of pebbles out of his tightly-closed fingers. “I know that,” she said. “I mean when I go home. It’ll be years before I can rewatch it.”

“Do ye like it all that much?”

“That’s not the point.” But she did not seem particularly keen to elaborate, sinking back into watching the screen. Somehow it had flicked over to a sort of duel with bright, colourful swords that thudded rather than clashed against each other, but he was even more distracted than he had been before, hardly able to tear his eyes away from Polly’s face.

“Ye keep talkin’ about – about when ye go home,” he said, so softly that his words were barely audible over the humming and bashing of the swords. “Like ye know you’re gonnae get there.”

“Well -” Polly tossed her head, flicking her hair out of her face. Her eyes were still fixed on the screen, but it seemed more pointed now, like she was reluctant to look at him. “Oh, I don’t know. I just keep holding out hope, I suppose.” A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. “Ben thinks I’m silly.”

Jamie frowned. “Does he?”

“For still thinking we might get home. He thinks – oh, I don’t know if I should be telling you this. Maybe he wouldn’t want you to know.”

“That wasnae really what I was askin’, anyway.”

“Oh.” At last, Polly tore her eyes away from the screen to face him, her cheeks dusted pink. “What were you talking about, then?”

“Och, I don’t know.” It had been so clear in his mind before, but now that he had to say it aloud, it was all melting away. Almost automatically, he shoved his handful of pebbles into his mouth, regretting it only when they hit his tongue. It would buy him time, at least – but he had been thinking of trying one first, just to see whether he liked them. They were sweet, he realised, but somehow just a little salty. Not bad at all. Maybe there had been nothing to be worried about.

And then the popping started. Tiny wee explosions, all over his mouth, ricocheting up into his brain. His eyes widened, and he wondered if he should spit the pebbles out into his hand – but suppose they started exploding in his hand, too? Or what if he swallowed them, and they kept fizzing away in his stomach forever? He couldn’t just let them sit there in his mouth, bouncing and crackling away - but what could he do?

His face must have been a sight, because Polly was laughing, taking another handful of pebbles from the bowl herself. “Enjoying them?” she asked, tossing a few into her mouth. All Jamie could do was boggle his eyes at her, and she laughed harder. “It’s alright, it goes away.”

He could only hope she was right. Clenching his fists against the fabric of the sofa, he swallowed the pebbles, wincing as he felt them slide down his throat. You were meant to wait for them to dissolve, he supposed, or else chew them up, though he had thought of neither of those things in his hurry to get rid of the popping feeling. Polly was still laughing, and he scowled at her – his second mistake. He should have known that would only make her laugh harder and longer.

It took several minutes for her to catch her breath enough to speak again. The movie had carried on to another sword fight, green smashing against red, and Jamie doubted either of them had any idea of what was going on. Wiping away tears, Polly wheezed out, “oh, I needed that.”

“Aye, well. Good.” She seemed happy enough, now. Should he really spoil it by carrying on asking questions? He could always have another handful of pebbles if she got too upset, he supposed. That seemed to have worked well enough. Glancing down at his palm, he saw that it was stained blue and green and purple from clutching at the things for so long. “I just mean – ye sound very sure that ye want tae leave.”

He had never dreamed that – well, that they would want to. Maybe it seemed obvious to them, but he had simply never thought about it.

Sure enough, Polly’s next words were, “don’t you?”

“No.” The word all but fell out of him of its own accord. It was so terribly obvious - or at least, he had thought it was. “I like it here.”

“But don’t you ever want to -” Leaning forward, she snatched up a pillow from behind her to clutch it against her chest. “Well, to go back?”

“No’ really, no.”

Polly’s baffled expression slowly turned to horror, her hand coming up to cover her mouth. “Oh, Jamie, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think – I don’t suppose you can go back, can you? After everything?”

If he was honest with himself, Jamie had hardly been thinking about – everything. Everything was a good way of putting it. “Och, no, I didnae mean that.” There was always a chance, he supposed, that his home would be nothing but a pile of cinders, if he went back there. And the place was bound to be crawling with redcoats, anyway. Still, without the Doctor, he would have had no choice but to take that chance. “I mean – I suppose I did, a wee bit. But even if it weren’t for – everythin’ – I dinnae think I’d want to.” Polly looked so much like he had grown an extra head that he was tempted to reach up to his shoulders and check. “I’m happy here.”

“You mean -” She was still looking like she could not entirely swallow it. Like he must be trying to play a joke on her. “You don’t think of going home at all?”

He shrugged. “No’ really. I mean, I miss it. But no’ like I’d want tae go back.”

Polly had talked about going home so often. And Ben, too. Just casually, but always with a sort of certainty. When I go home. When I get back. When I see them again. And every time, he had thought they were joking, or at least exaggerating. Silly of him, really.

“Ye really meant it, then,” he said. “When ye were talkin’ about the movie. Ye really think ye might see it in your own time, someday.”

“I -” Polly looked less certain now, picking at a loose thread on the edge of the cushion. Her head was bent so far down that her fringe fell over her eyes, but Jamie could just barely see her lips pursed in thought. “I don’t know, really. I mean, it’s not like we ever know where we’re going to land. We might never get back to Earth again, let alone somewhere remotely close to nineteen sixty-six. But I’d be lying if I said there isn’t a part of me that believes we’ll get back.”

“Oh.” He had expected to feel – something. Crushed, maybe. Heartbroken, even. But he just felt a terrible emptiness, the horror of not quite believing something wasn’t a dream. It had to be. Polly and Ben missed their home, of course they did. That wasn’t news to him. But he had known… or assumed, really, that travelling with the Doctor more than made up for it, as it did for him. “I need ye,” he said quietly, not quite knowing whether or not he wanted Polly to hear him. “An’ Ben. I need ye both. I don’t know what I’d do without ye.”

“You have the Doctor,” Polly said, just as quietly. Their voices were all but drowned out by the movie, but neither of them were really paying attention to it anymore, the sound fading away into the background. The heavy thing between them had dulled it down well enough. “And you’re more than capable of looking after yourself.”

Jamie scoffed at that. “I want ye, then. I want ye both here. ‘Cause if ye leave – there’s no knowin’ if we’ll ever see each other again. An’ I don’t want that.”

“You could always -” Polly paused. “Stay with us. If we left. You’d be welcome.”

Don’t make me choose between you and the Doctor, Jamie wanted to say. I can’t do that. But he could do that, more easily than he cared to admit. He loved Ben and Polly dearly, of course he did, how could he not – but he knew where he would stay, if push came to shove. And it was not with them. “We dinnae know if it’s going tae happen,” was all he said in the end. “Like ye said. We don’t know where we’re going tae land.” It might never happen. They might carry on just as they had been, perfectly happily, and he could pretend this conversation had just been a dream, an idle fantasy. It was all he could hope.

But was it selfish to hope, when Polly’s smile had so quickly turned small and sad? Was it selfish to want to keep the four of them together, when Ben and Polly wanted to go home?

“Oh, I suppose you're right,” Polly said softly, more to herself than to him. “It might never happen.”

#second doctor #fanfic archive #my writing #fictober 2021

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ivyglow · 4 years ago

Text

sweet, red and sticky | Elias Pettersson

A/n: Late again ik, but hope you guys like it anyway. A huge shout out to @nhlguentzel for proofreading this piece <3 you’re an angel, Tori!!

Requested: yes

Word count: 1.6k

Warnings: mention of anxiety

Prompt: 82. “You’re stained with my lipstick.”

You and Elias were not what most people would call friends. Well, when you first met, it was animosity at first sight and some even joked that you were jealous of his friendship with your brother Brock. But in reality, there was just something about him that would push all of your buttons at once, leaving you dazed and confused, and as much as you wanted to ignore his existence, he was always there hanging around your brother’s house or in every celebration you went to. Eventually, things started to escalate. Your bickering interactions began to end in secret make-out sessions.

At least, you two thought it was a secret.

Brock knew you better and he knew his best friend as well. He also knew that the jokes everyone made about you and Elias dating someday was more than likely going to become a reality. It was a Saturday night and the team was celebrating a win at Brock’s place. You tried to dodge the invitation but the guys were all in your messages and nobody was having it. So the only solution was to get dressed, head to your brother’s place, and then go to your room there and hide until the night was over. And you did it.

By the time you got there, everyone had already arrived and you made small talk for some minutes before disappearing to the purple and blue room. The end of the hall gave you enough distance to drown out most of the noise, however, even in the silent space, your mind was still pure confusion and tiredness as you lay there trying to stop the world for a minute or two. First, it was school and the tons of stuff you had to do but could not concentrate on for more than ten minutes, work came in second on the list with your boss always expecting more than you could give. It wasn’t like he was a bad guy or anything, he just had too much faith in you and it made your anxiety go to the roof. And then there was Elias and the makeout sessions. You never knew what they meant, where you two stood, what was really happening, and whether or not Brock was gonna be upset when he finds out about the two of you.

And so you wished for at least one full minute of no problems to worry about, nothing, just a stop on the constant spinning of your world.

“If you’re hiding to think about me, here I am” his voice echoed inside your mind along with the fast noise of the music and chatting before he closed the door behind him.

You lifted your head from the pillow to look at the man in front of you, a slim smile on his lips, so well shaped and soft when against yours... “Hey, you in there?” now he was sitting at the edge of the bed beside you, his hands right in front of your face trying to catch your full attention. And you see, that’s the thing about Elias, he liked to have it all. All of your attention, all of your kisses, it doesn’t matter. He always craved it fully, pulling the edges.

“You’re okay?” he asked, a concerned look on his eyes. You nodded a silent yes, not daring to look at him. “Honey, I’m used to your non-stop talking, and this is not a good silence, it’s a weird silence. You’re sure you’re good?” You almost cursed after the nickname. And you knew that if you simply took a look at his face or into his eyes, you would tell him all of your secrets. You were so tired of trying to suppress the feelings that tried to swim to the surface every time he showed up.

So when his thumb found your chin directing your face to his, you knew things would never be the same.

“I’m afraid you don’t like me the way I think I like you, and I’m afraid I’m not as good as my boss always thinks I am, or that I’m not smart enough to do all the stuff that I had to do this semester, but I don’t wanna worry anybody cause everyone always says that I have everything and there are people out there wishing they had my life and one minute I’m sad the other I feel guilty for being sad and I feel so dumb, Elias. I’m not even making sense, I’m sorry...”

“You are more than enough in every aspect of your life, y/n. I can go on all day telling you how good you are at everything you do,” his big hands cups your face, “except cooking, you are worse than Brock at trying to make breakfast,” he jokes, looking for at least a small smile, which he gets a chuckle.

“I know how to do instant noodles, doesn’t it count?” you look at him, tears still in your eyes but now an amusing smile on your face.

“Hell yeah, that’s more than enough to me.” His hands wipe your eyes one more time and you do a little turn to kiss the inside of his palm. Elias watches you intently like he usually does, like he’s reading a book or trying to piece puzzles on the right place...this time, he looks at you as if he liked you just as much as you liked him and it felt good, it felt refreshing and calm, like when you stare too long into his eyes and it reminds you of the ocean or the sky on a summer day, or your favorite dress when you were a little girl. And so when he softly pressed his lips against yours, it felt like home. The way his hands found their way into your hair and yours gripped his shoulders bringing his body as close as possible, or how he tasted so salty but sweet at the end. It all felt like home to you.

“Sweetie...” he trailed after one more peck on your lips. “Is it a new lip balm?”

You took some seconds to even your breathing before opening your eyes.

“It’s actually a new lipstick...” you contemplate saying it WAS a lipstick, considering he probably took it off while kissing you, but decided to just explain, too engrossed on the idea that he pays attention to how you taste, but Elias seemed to catch your thoughts on the air. “Oh fuck, my face is all red isn’t it?” you chuckle lightly and nod your head.

“Might as well take what’s missing,” he trails before going for your lips once again. You smile into the kiss and he directs his mouth to your neck, softly biting the spot he knows makes you laugh. You squeal before blindly searching for his lips on yours again, too engrossed in the moment to hear the footsteps on the hall or your door opening.

“Y/n, have you seen E-” Brock freeze on his tracks taking in the image in front of him.

“Oh fuck” you curse.

“It’s not what you think...” Elias starts, but the look on your brother’s face leaves you unsure about if he was even mad.

“Of course it is what he’s thinking, Elias, you’re stained with my lipstick...” you roll your eyes before laughing along with Brock.

“I knew it! You’re always too interested in how y/n’s doing and always wanting to know if she’s coming to games...” Now Elias looked more embarrassed than worried about Brock’s reaction. And then your brother looks at you, laughing again. “Oh my gosh, and I fell for your ‘I don’t care if he’s your best friend, he’s annoying’ talk.”

This time, you were the only one to roll eyes.

“Just saying, I’m okay with it, but not when I’m home, alright?” Brock opened the door, trying to control his laughter at the shade of pink Elias’ face got with his comment. Considering his lips were already red from your lipstick, it was a pretty funny view.

“Oh, fuck you, Brock!” You threw a pillow in his direction and he dodges it before walking to the hallway.

“And we still need to talk, the two of you and me” was the last thing you heard before he went his way.

You let out a sigh, relief, and embarrassment finally sinking.

“At least we don’t need to hide anymore,” the blonde beside you said before standing up to close and lock the door.

You arched your eyebrows, giving him a glare that was mostly a funny look. “You know he’s coming back here as soon as he notices it is closed, right?”

“Let me have at least twenty minutes of privacy with my girlfriend.” He made one of his comic faces and you giggled.

“You’re bold, aren’t ya?”

Elias smiled before slouching beside you on the bed. “I mean, you told me you like me, I like you, we’re together and stuff, how do you wanna call it?” You stop on your tracks for a second. “You like me?”

“Obviously. I was supposed to say it as soon as you started to rant, but I got distracted with your lipstick.” He was so casual about telling you he liked you, playing with the threads from the rip on your jeans. You turned to look at him with a small smile.

“I like you even more or so than you like me,” he whispered before kissing you, and by the look on his face, you knew that he was up to something. He looks at you with a devilish smirk, “Also, I like that lipstick too. For sure.”

#nhl imagine #elias pettersson #elias pettersson imagine #vancouver canucks #brock boeser #hockey imagine #elias pettersson request #mels writing

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lofitowns · 4 years ago

Text

cleanse me

“ YOU ARE GOOD AND PURE AND EVERYTHING I AM NOT “

pairing. dabi touya todoroki x gn! reader

wc. 1.9k

summary. in which he is death and destruction and you are life and prosperity

tw/cw. blood, wounds

an. i’m really sorry if his characterization is off! i’ve never written for dabi before! also sorry if this isn’t my best,, i had an idea but i’m not sure if it translated well haha

sometimes he wonders why you let him touch you

You first met by accident. It was dark in the city; you could barely see around the corner. You knew you shouldn’t have been out that late. You knew you should have stayed over at your friend’s, especially with all the villains roaming around.

Your limited sight made you miss the man rounding the corner. His shoulders were hunched, and his breathing ragged. You didn’t acknowledge him until he fell in front of you. His body laid across the pavement. You gasped in surprise, kneeling to see what was wrong.

Maybe it was stupid, but you didn’t want to leave him there. Even though you instantly recognized the purple scars and glistening staples, you weren’t scared.

Your apartment wasn’t far, but you were glad it was dark. Anyone would think it was strange to see someone lugging an unconscious body along with them.

You grunted as you attempted to open your door, hoping none of your neighbors would hear your struggle. The last thing you needed right now was someone seeing you bring a villain into your apartment.

Once you finally got it opened, you dragged him into your bedroom and dropped him on your bed. You figured it would be easier to clean your bedsheet than your couch cushions.

You surveyed the damage. His shirt was torn, and you could see blood seeping out of the gashes. You attempted to peel it away from his skin, which in itself was a struggle. When you finally got it off, you wet a cloth to try and clean him up.

There was a multitude of cuts littering the man’s torso and arms; it made you wince. You ran the cloth over his skin, avoiding the staples since you didn’t know how sensitive those areas were.

Why were you doing this? There was nothing for you to gain. You chewed your bottom lip in concentration as the rag soaked up his blood. When he was finally cleaned off, you grabbed some bandaids and wrap to try and stop the bleeding for the time being. There were a few deep gashes, but with no medical experience, you wouldn’t be much help for those.

When you moved him in an attempt to wrap the bandages around his waist, he began to stir. Your breathing stilled for a moment as you stood in waiting. His eyes slowly fluttered open, and they were the most beautiful shade of turquoise.

He blinked a few times before turning his gaze to you. Your lips were parted, and your eyes were blown wide. A deep rumble rose from his chest, falling out of his lips as a chuckle.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Your mouth opened and closed a few times before you were able to come up with an answer, “Fixing you up.” It sounded more like a question than a statement.

He looked down at the white bandages, then back up at you, then back at the bandages. You sent him a weak smile, but he shook his head.

“You did it wrong.”

“Oh! Sorry, I just wanted to help...”

His face scrunched up as he sat up fully, hands gripping your bedspread. You reached out a hand to help him, but he pushed you away.

“Get me a needle and thread.”

You sprang up, hoping that there was some in your first aid kit.

As luck would have it, there was.

You quickly brought it back to him, seeing that he had taken the majority of his bandages off. When he saw you, he snatched the items out of your hands and began to work on himself.

You sat on the end of your bed and watched him. His fingers worked skillfully as he sewed his skin together. His jaw was clenched, and his eyes were twitching. It was painful to watch. You were sure he had done this many times before.

Even knowing what he had done, you felt sorry for him. You didn’t know anything about his backstory. There were so many things that could have happened to him that lead him to this life. You weren’t here to judge him; you simply saw someone in need and helped them. You wouldn’t have to see him at any point after this anyway.

that night you scrubbed his hands clean twice, and he still saw blood stuck deep in his pores

But things weren’t that easy. He began showing up at your window at least once a week with blood collecting on his shirt.

In that time, you had become better at stitching him up. He showed you and gave you instructions the second time he came over, even though you tried to push him out. He would never say it, but he was grateful that he didn’t have to do it himself anymore.

This night was no different. You had taken to keeping your living room light on and window unlocked just in case he needed in.

It still confused you as to why you continued. He wasn’t giving you anything in return. Maybe it was because you enjoyed his company. But maybe you were just scared.

You heard the sliding of the window and the creaking of your floorboards. That was your cue to gather supplies and put a towel on the bed.

After setting your phone down on your bedside table, you made your way into your bathroom. After grabbing the small box and a washcloth, you turned to make your way back the way you came.

But you couldn’t. Dabi’s tall figure stood in the doorway, looking down at you. He whispered your name as you took in his form, checking for where he was bleeding.

You noticed a few tears in his clothes, but what caught your attention was his hands. They were drenched in red. Your eyes widened as you stared at them.

It didn’t take you long to decide what to do. You reached for his arm and brought him into your bathroom. He moved to sit on the toilet seat, eyes glazed over and staring into nothingness. You ran the tab, holding the washcloth underneath it for a few seconds.

You slowly cupped his right hand, averting your eyes from them to gaze at his face. He stared back at you, watching intently as you began to scrub the red away. The fabric would stain; there was no way it wouldn’t.

It took you more than one washcloth before you could see his skin again. And even after that, he asked you to do it again. His palms were tinted pink and you didn’t know if it was because of the roughness of the cloth or from the blood.

Dabi couldn’t turn his attention away from you kneeling in front of him. All your attention was focused on helping and cleaning him up. It confused him, almost made him mad. Were just stupid?

He knew you weren’t.

The man didn’t know why he still came here. It seemed routine now, he would get into a fight, and he would find himself sitting in your apartment. Your soft gaze would fall over him. Why were you so gentle with him? You were so kind. He didn’t deserve any of this.

But that’s why he kept coming back.

You made him stand up so you could inspect the rest of his body closer. In the time that you had known him, he never let you get too close. Sometimes he would talk your ear off, while other nights he would be completely silent. You could never tell what was really going on inside of his head, but you assumed that was how he liked it.

his battle-worn tongue doesn’t say the truth anymore; that he is ruined

The next time he crawled through your window, there was no blood in sight.

You had already headed to the bathroom to grab your supplies while his feet took him to your bedroom. He stared at your bed. Your sheets were bunched up, and he assumed you had been sleeping prior to his intrusion.

“Dabi?” His name left your lips as you stood in the doorframe.

His attention was pulled to you, the light from behind you giving you an ethereal glow. You really were his angel.

“Hey, babe.”

You shook your head at the pet name, “Where are you hurt?”

“I’m not. I... I just wanted to see you.”

Your jaw clenched, averting your gaze from him to the box in your hands. His personality had always been flirty, but he had never gone out of his way to see you. He only came over when he had something to gain.

“Dabi...”

His long strides brought him over to you in seconds flat. He raised a hand and tentatively hovered it over your cheek. You shouldn’t even be in the same room as someone like him, let alone let him touch you. But when your eyes turned up to look into his, he knew he was a goner.

It happened gradually, increasing every time he stepped foot into your bedroom. The atmosphere fits you well, he thought. The fondness he felt made his chest constrict, and the breath was knocked out of his lungs. He wasn’t supposed to feel like this. He was a villain for god’s sake.

You felt similarly. There was no doubt he was good looking, even with all his scratches and scars. Your stomach would twist into knots whenever you thought about him. It was always on your mind that one day he would stop coming, be it that he didn’t need you anymore or he lost his life. You never took yourself as someone that would fall for a villain.

After a few moments, you reached up and pressed your hand to his raised on, finally setting it on your skin. He moved forward, the gap between your faces growing smaller. His breath fanned across your face, and you couldn’t take it any longer.

You rushed forward, pressing your lips to his. They were chapped, and his palms were rough, but it didn’t make it bad. You reached up and cupped his cheeks in return, trying to keep him as close as you could. His hands moved down to rest on your waist.

The kiss was shorter than you had expected. He pulled away and rested his forehead on yours, a small but intimate act. The man kept his eyes closed, fearing that if he opened them, you would be gone, and he would be alone again.

He wanted to thank you for letting him crash into your life, but he knew he didn’t deserve you. You were everything he wasn’t. But you were allowing him to hold you with his stained hands and wrecked body. You were letting him touch you.

No words were spoken as you took his hand and led him over to your bed. You crawled under the covers and lifted the other side, signally for him to join you. Dabi watched your moves intently, fighting an internal battle. Should he mess up your life even more than he already had?

But you wanted this. You wanted him. And while he didn’t understand why, he wasn’t going to leave you hanging. He slipped his shoes off and dropped himself onto your sheets. They felt soft against his skin; he didn’t know the last time he had felt so content.

He turned his body towards you and saw that you were already facing him. You opened your arms, and he fell into them. He rested his head in the crook of your neck and breathed your scent in deeply.

It took him a few moments to hold you back, but when he did, he pulled your flush against him. The pair of you melted into the embrace, the natural heat of his body warming you.

Dabi knew he was never meant to have good things, but maybe this could be the exception.

and he wonders why you let him, the butcher, touch you, the sun.

thank you for reading :) have a good day!

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hopeisour4letteredword · 5 years ago

Text

break me down (and build me up)

Content warnings: STAB WOUNDS, BLOOD, non-descript vomiting

Summary: Flynn gets stabbed.

Read it here or check the notes for the link to AO3.

Meet up with me in the woods to the south of Aurnion, Flynn’s message said. There could be a new Giganto monster, he said. If there isn’t, we can send my rookies home and spar, just you and me. When do we ever get the chance to spar without an audience anymore?

Well, Yuri’s been wandering the damn woods for ages, and still no sign of Flynn or his rookies. It’s annoying, but more importantly, it’s unnerving. The Knights aren’t kitted out for stealth. Yuri should have heard them from a mile off by now. Even Repede, loping along at Yuri’s side, has only been able to give the air the occasional confused sniff.

“Why do I keep doing favors for this dumbass?” Yuri asks Repede. Repede yawns. “Ugh.”

He stomps through the next half-mile of foliage before Repede’s easy trot comes to an abrupt halt and Yuri almost trips over him. Repede sniffs the air wildly, ears swiveling upright as his hackles rise.

“What?” Yuri asks, warily, shifting his grip on the cord of his sheath. “What’s there, bud?”

Repede growls and darts off into the brush. Yuri groans and starts after him. He’s not awful at following a trail, but Repede doesn’t leave much to work with except the occasional pawprint and rustling leaves. He makes it about five minutes before he has to yell, “REPEDE!”

Distant rustling. Then, a hoarse and muffled yell—“YURI?”

“FLYNN?” Yuri starts running again. “Where are you?!”

Repede pops back out of the undergrowth. He whimpers at Yuri, circling his legs to herd him in the direction the yell came from.

“I’m here!”

“Where’s h—“ Yuri breaks through a line of trees, into a clearing. He makes three observations in quick succession.

The first: Flynn is on the ground.

The second: the rookie Knights are nowhere to be seen.

The third: there is a knife sticking out of Flynn’s midsection, and his lower body is drenched in his own blood.

“Oh, fuck,” Yuri hears himself say, as though from a distance. He loses track of his own body for a moment. One second he’s still at the edge of the trees, and the next he’s sinking to his knees next to Flynn, right down into the bloody earth. “Oh, shit, Flynn.”

“Hey there,” Flynn manages, with a weak, wobbly smile. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Fucking—“ Yuri lifts his hands, shakily, but he doesn’t know what to do with them. It’s not a Knight’s knife; it’s huge and ornate and ominous looking, like something from a noble’s estate that would be sold as cursed or haunted. Repede sticks his nose under Yuri’s arm, whimpering again, before he turns and sprints back into the woods. North, Yuri thinks. Going to go find help. Good boy. “What happened?”

“I suppose the rookies weren’t being truthful when they told me they’d seen a huge beast in the forest,” Flynn says. He takes a deep, wheezing breath, and his face contorts with pain. “Not really how I expected my first assassination attempt to go.”

“Don’t joke about this,” Yuri hisses, which is easily one of the most hypocritical things he’s ever said. He ends up with one hand knotted into the fabric of Flynn’s tunic next to the wound, watching Flynn’s face for an adverse reaction. It’s kind of a fool’s errand. He’s already in obvious, incredible pain. “What—what can I do?”

“...Yuri...”

“What can I do?” Yuri repeats, desperately. His heart pounds in his chest. Flynn’s blood is hot and slick under his hands, and oh, gods, there’s so much of it. There’s so much blood. Yuri isn’t a squeamish person, has never had the option to be, but this is—

“Just stay with me? Please.”

Oh, no. No. Why did he have to phrase it like that? Like—like he thinks he won’t—

“There has to be something else.”

“If we try to do anything with the knife, I’m going to lose a lot of blood.”

“You’re already losing a lot of blood.”

“Don’t cry,” Flynn says, softly, reaching up to touch Yuri’s cheek. His fingers are sticky with his own blood. “Yuri, don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying,” Yuri grits out, even though it’s objectively untrue. When did he start crying? He’s barely been here a minute. Surely he can’t be melting down already. He’ll come up with a plan any second now, if he can just calm the fuck down. “We need to have your eyes checked when we get you back in town.”

“Yuri...”

“We’re getting you back to town,” Yuri repeats. His eyes burn. Flynn’s hand falls away from his face again. “We are. I’m not—I’m not leaving you here. I won’t.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Flynn says, voice pitched low and soothing, and how the fuck is he the one comforting Yuri right now? Yuri knows exactly how much it hurts to have a knife stuck in you like that. “I know. But—“

“Shut up,” Yuri says, desperately. His heart pulses like a drum-beat, loud and oppressive and so hard it feels like it’s making his head ache. He casts around for any cloth he can use to apply pressure. There’s Flynn’s stupid capelet, but the fabric was already slick before it was blood-soaked. Yuri doesn’t want to be fumbling to get a grip every few seconds. They aren’t getting anything else on Flynn’s upper body off any time soon—that’s out. Yuri’s clothes, then. He haphazardly strips off the upper layer of his tunic.

“It’s okay, Yuri.”

“Yes,” Yuri snaps, aggressively wadding the fabric up into a makeshift pad. “It will be.”

“Just take a deep—“

Where is Yuri’s sword? He dropped it on his way into the clearing in a panic. Fuck. Well, he’s not getting up to go find it now. Flynn’s will have to do. Might even be better, really. Doesn’t it have an affinity for light magic?

He wraps his free hand around the hilt of the knife. Flynn’s breath catches.

“Yuri, please, no.”

“There’s no time,” Yuri says, and it tastes bitter and sour and awful in his mouth. There is no time. Yuri does not have room to fuck this up. He doesn’t even want to know how long Flynn has already been laying here, injured and alone. “We can’t—there’s no way healers are going to get here in time.”

If there’s even anyone coming. If anyone even knows to come yet. Repede can only run so fast.

“I know,” Flynn says, so, so softly.

“So I have to,” Yuri says—no. He begs. Please, Flynn. Please let him do this. Let him at least try.

“It’s okay,” Flynn says, again, more coaxingly. “This is already—when I first collapsed, I didn’t even think I would get to see you again. But you’re here, and that’s more than—“

Yuri’s vision blurs with tears. “Shut up. You’re not dying here.”

“Yuri—“

“Don’t be so selfish,” Yuri says, but he’s up to both elbows in Flynn’s blood, and Flynn already looks so pale, and so tired. He gives so much of himself, always pushes forward, and here at the last gasp Yuri won’t let him stop. Flynn is not the one who is selfish here. Yuri knows that. Yuri has always known that. “You think you just get to leave me with all the work?”

Flynn dredges up a smile from somewhere, somehow. “I am sorry about that.”

“You should be,” Yuri says. If his voice shakes, that’s between him and Flynn. He can’t spare the energy to stop it. If he does this, even if he does everything right, miraculously, the shock alone... no. He needs a distraction. Think, Yuri, think. What could be startling enough for Flynn to forget Yuri’s pulling a goddamn knife out of him?

...Well. As long as he’s already being selfish.

“Flynn—“

“Yuri?”

“—Forgive me.”

He pushes forward and kisses Flynn full on the mouth.

Flynn gasps against his mouth—Yuri got the surprise part down, at least, that’s a start— and Yuri mumbles sorry right as he yanks the knife out. Flynn cries out, full-throated and anguished, as the blood rushes out alongside it. Yuri tosses the knife aside without looking, fumbling for Flynn’s sword with one hand and to apply pressure with the other. Flynn presses into him, frantic, keeping their mouths sealed together as Yuri gets a solid grip on the hilt of Flynn’s sword. He plunges the sword into the rocky earth next to Flynn’s hip with a snarl of—

“Guardian field!”

And golden light blossoms around them.

“Oh, fuck,” Flynn wheezes, one hand scrambling to press over Yuri’s where it holds pressure on the wound. “Oh—“

Please let that mean it’s doing something helpful, Yuri thinks, wildly. Please, if the universe never gives him any other victory, if Yuri dies tomorrow—please let this, at least—

The light starts to fade, and he draws the sword back out of the ground just enough to plunge it back in.

“Guardian field!”

Flynn whines, loud and sobbing against his lips. Yuri pushes into the pressure of his hand, trying not to look down at the splatter of scarlet between them. As the light dies down again, he stabs the sword back into the loam again—and again—and again, and again, and—

Flynn abruptly shudders and falls back, head limp on his neck. Yuri cranes forward, heart in his throat. “Flynn!”

“Ow,” Flynn mumbles. “Ow.“

Oh, gods. He’s not dead, at least. Yuri looks down, at long last, and has to stop himself from retching. It’s just—red, all red, staining their pants and their skin and the ground below, soaking all the way through the cloth Yuri is holding to the wound. Red and wet and sticky. He shifts his weight enough to slowly, unsteadily pull his hand back.

The wound is gone.

It’s just an angry pink scar, smeared with blood. Yuri feels himself start to shake, first in his hands and then in his core, until he tips forward and is forced to rest his forehead against Flynn’s chest.

“Say something,” he says, hoarsely. Flynn’s breath is short and shallow in his chest. “Anything. Please, just—“

“I’m here,” Flynn whispers. A hand comes up to thread through the hair at the back of Yuri’s neck, even shakier than his own. He’s probably getting blood in Yuri’s hair. “I’m—I’m here. It worked.”

Yuri’s vision blurs out again. The hot tears track down his face, mixing with the tacky blood Flynn left there earlier. He’s shaking so hard he starts to pull away, afraid he might hurt Flynn, who is already so, so vulnerable—but Flynn holds him there, against his body, where Flynn’s heart thumps under his ear with every beat.

“Fuck,” Yuri says. It sounds shredded coming out of his throat. “Fuck.”

Flynn laughs, a tiny, wheezing huff of breath. “Yeah.”

Yuri still has a death grip on the hilt of Flynn’s sword. Flynn’s fingers tangle with his, kitten-weak, and nudge them away. Yuri lets himself be removed, the hand falling to bury itself in the bloody hem of Flynn’s tunic.

“I’m sorry,” he says, hollowly. Gods, the noises Flynn made— “I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, I—“

Flynn laughs again, a little stronger this time, almost incredulously. “You’re sorry?”

“I—I know that’s not—worth anything, but I—“ Yuri tries to bite back a sob, but it just comes out strangled and odd. “I couldn’t—“

“Shh,” Flynn says. He pets at the back of Yuri’s neck. His second hand steadies Yuri by the shoulder. “Shh, shh. Hey. You—Yuri. Shh. Don’t cry. You saved my life, what are—what are you sorry for?”

“You—“ Yuri curls closer, hiding his face against one of the few corners of Flynn’s tunic that isn’t completely covered in blood. “You were in so much pain, and I—“

“Well, I can’t say I enjoyed it, sure,” Flynn says, agreeably, surprising Yuri in a hacked-out bark of laughter. “There we go. Come on. Shh. It’s okay. I’m okay.”

“You’ve lost half your blood, you’re not okay at all.”

“But I will be. And you did that.”

Flynn will live.

“I’m sorry,” Yuri says again, and when Flynn makes a disapproving noise, he forces himself to finish, “For kissing you.”

Flynn stills. “You’re sorry for that?”

“I just—“ Yuri scrambles to unravel the mindset he’d had not five minutes ago, when Flynn’s blood had still been actively pouring out over his fingers. “Needed you to be—distracted. And I didn’t have much to work with, but I thought, it didn’t matter if you liked it, as long as—but it was still... I’m. I’m sorry.”

“You kissed me to distract me,” Flynn says, flatly.

“I know if it hadn’t worked it would have been kind of a shitty way to spend your last breaths,” Yuri mutters. The consequences of his actions are starting to close in on him, in a sickening rush. It’s worth it, though. Flynn is alive. That’s worth almost anything. Even if he’ll never speak to Yuri again.

“Shitty?” Flynn sighs. His fingers start to stroke through Yuri’s hair again. “I think we’re having different conversations.”

“We are?”

“If my choices were dying while kissing you or just dying... you think the first one sounds worse?”

“I—“ didn’t structure my brain for this version of the argument— “Yeah? I guess? Not any better, at least.”

“Okay,” Flynn says. He sounds exasperated. Yuri doesn’t know where he found the energy for exasperation. Yuri’s not even the one who got stabbed, and he barely has the energy for confusion. “For a minute there I thought you were saying you had knowingly weaponized the fact that I’m in love with you to distract me.”

Oh, that’s what energy feels like. A surge of adrenaline that almost makes him headbutt Flynn in the underside of the jaw when he jolts in place. “You’re in WH—“

“But now I can see you’re just a dumbass who used kissing to distract me for totally unrelated reasons.”

“You’re in love with me?“ Yuri says, much more loudly and higher-pitched than he intended or expected. He wishes he hadn’t jerked out of Flynn’s grip to look him in the face, because now he has to watch Flynn lift his eyebrows judgementally and feel himself go completely flushed. “What is wrong with you?”

Flynn opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, there’s a distant shout in the woods. Yuri whips around, staring in the direction the sound came from. A beat later, it comes again, more clearly.

“Yuri!”

“Commandant!”

“Flynn! Yuri! Are you there? Hello?”

“Sir, please respond!”

“Took them long enough,” Flynn says. He goes limp in Yuri’s hold, again, letting Yuri and the ground take his weight. When Yuri glances back to check on him, he smiles, wryly, eyes closing. “We’ll talk more in Aurnion, I suppose.”

“Flynn—“

“YURI LOWELLL!”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Flynn shudders with silent laughter as Yuri turns to yell, “WE’RE HERE! OVER HERE!”

“Yuri!”

It takes a bit more shouting for the search party to triangulate their location. When they finally stumble into Yuri’s view, Brave Vesperia bursts through the line of the trees first. Estelle sprints forward and drops down next to them with no hesitation, heedless of the blood that immediately gets all over her. Yuri tries to help her as much as he can but soon enough finds himself physically dragged away by Karol and Judy. Healers from the Knights come onto the scene next. Yuri can feel himself bristle. It takes five minutes of Karol coaxing him that Rita and Estelle are here, they won’t let anything happen to Flynn, it’s okay, before Yuri stops digging in his heels enough that he can be removed from the clearing.

It’s all a bit of a blur after that. Somehow they get back to Aurnion; somehow Yuri and Flynn cross the gates at the same time, despite the fact that Yuri could have sworn Karol and Judy have been trying to get him to come ahead of the pack with them for the last hour. Of course he’s been resisting, but he feels weak and wrung-out. His head aches and throbs, and his torso is one big knot of exhaustion and nausea. Surely he can’t be giving them that much trouble?

When he finally staggers into the guild’s Aurnion headquarters, Raven—who had stayed behind to keep an eye on the home base—is ready to greet them with a grin. It slides away after one look at Yuri. He grabs Yuri by the arm and hauls him down the hallway to the bathroom. Yuri is on his knees in front of the toilet in seconds.

“Sorry,” Yuri splutters, when he stops heaving his guts up for long enough to speak. In the corner of his vision, Raven shrugs. He’s perched on the edge of the bathtub, within arm’s reach.

“It happens.”

Yuri has an incredulous look with Raven’s name on it, but he’s too busy puking again to deliver it. In between bouts of retching, Raven pulls Yuri’s hair back for him in a sloppy ponytail at the base of his neck.

“Honestly, for as much of a lightweight as you are, what impresses me is that this is just now happening for the first time and it has nothing to do with alcohol.”

“Ha ha,” Yuri coughs.

“Spirits forbid your frail mortal body can only keep up with your bullshit for so long. Some of us have heart conditions, y’know.”

“Some of us have—“ Cough. “—Have young, healthy bodies with no excuse for this.”

“Yes,” Raven says, mildly. “No excuse at all. Overwork and sleep deprivation? Absolutely nothing. I’m Yuri Lowell, and I’m fucking invincible.”

Yuri laughs, a little hysterically, despite himself.

“What happened, anyway? You fucked off into the woods, and the next thing any of us knew your pup was back without you howling his little head off. The Knights were throwing some kinda fit about Flynn, too. A monster got him or something?”

“A monster?” Yuri repeats. The retching has stopped, at least for the moment, and he takes the chance to spit voluntarily. “No, he got—he got stabbed. Said it was the rookies he went out with. I found him after the fact.”

Raven whistles, low and impressed. He ruffles Yuri’s hair. “Ah, so throw emotional trauma in with the overwork and sleep deprivation.”

“...Flynn’s the one who got stabbed, not me.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you handled it just great, finding your bosom buddy wounded to the point that you look like that.”

Yuri glances down at himself. Ah. That’s right. He’s still covered in Flynn’s blood.

“I know we like to have fun around here,” Raven says. “But I gotta ask, for realsies. You okay, kid?”

Yes, Yuri thinks. I’m fine. Flynn’s the one who got hurt. I’m fine. Nothing happened to me. I have no right to feel like this. I’m—

“No.”

“Ah, shit,” Raven says. “I wasn’t really expecting you to be honest. You wanna talk about it?”

No, it’s Flynn’s business and Yuri should wait to discuss it with him in private, and—

“Flynn tried to get me to let him die in peace,” Yuri says, and has to swallow hard against the instinctive urge to vomit again when he thinks about it. Maybe some of the pressure will ease off if he just says it out loud, even if he doesn’t really want to talk about it. “So I—I kissed him to distract him while I pulled out the knife anyway, and now he’s alive and I have to deal with that.”

Raven stares down at him for a moment, both eyebrows raised. Yuri stares back, too exhausted to care about how pathetic the whole situation is. He feels sticky with sweat, his mouth tastes vile, and he can’t shake off the phantom gush of Flynn’s blood over his fingers.

“I think what you need,” Raven finally says, “Is some nice, warm soup, a hot bath, and for everyone to leave you alone until you can talk to our favorite Commandant again.”

All of the tension slumps out of Yuri, along with the last dregs of his energy. He has to stop himself from resting his face against the toilet.

“That sounds good,” he mumbles. Raven pats his nearest shoulder and reaches over to check the security of his ponytail situation. Yuri hasn’t had anyone but Flynn make sure his hair is pulled back while he pukes since he was a little kid. “I’ll make some—“

“You aren’t making anything,” Raven says. He rises from the edge of the bathtub and steps over Yuri’s wayward limbs. “Judy will get some chicken broth going.”

“N—no, I can—“

“All you’re going to do is start the hot water,” Raven says. “I’ll grab you a change of clothes. Come on, kid. Take it easy for a second.”

It would be easier to argue with that if Yuri’s clothes weren’t stiff with a crust of blood. He hunches his shoulders and nods in acceptance.

The shower is disgusting. Yuri takes a moment to wash his mouth first, and he always hates trying to scrub out the taste of vomit. After that, he stands under the hot spray of water and gets wet enough to scrub the blood away, starting at the crown of his head and working his way down. Blood is matted into his hair and stuck under his fingernails. The water pools at his feet with a pink tinge. Yuri tries not to think about cleaning the tile later. When the water running off his body stays clear, and he doesn’t feel so nauseatingly overwhelmed by the smell of copper, he grabs the shampoo and switches over to his usual bath protocol.

The soaps Karol buys for the guild bath are gentle and floral. The smell slowly overtakes the bathroom. Yuri relaxes, little by little, in the cover of the sweetly-scented steam. At some point, on the other side of the bath curtain, Yuri can hear Raven come in. He departs again after a brief rustle of fabric. When Yuri finally turns off the water and wraps himself in a towel, he exits to find the tank top and sweatpants he usually saves for cleaning day. His bloody day-to-day clothes are nowhere to be found.

He gets dressed and towels off his hair. The towel stays slung around his shoulders to catch the drips as he yanks a comb through it. By the time he’s done, his stomach is growling at the faint whiff of soup coming through the door, so he follows it back out to the kitchen.

“You’re the best,” Yuri tells Judy, when she wordlessly pours him a bowl of broth. She snorts.

“I’ve made much fancier soups and foods for us before, but plain broth gets me ‘the best’?”

“It does right now.”

Yuri takes a long pull of the broth. From a nearby table, Raven says, “Don’t make yourself sick again.”

“’S just soup,” Yuri says, after he swallows.

“You can make yourself sick drinking soup too fast, with the state you’re in.”

“Leave him alone,” Judy says, bless her. “Take some more with you and lie down, okay?”

“Where’s my clothes? I have to wash them first.”

Silence.

“Guys?”

“Sometimes,” Raven says, slowly, like he’s choosing his words carefully, “In guild work, we survive but our clothes do not.”

“Wh—they were still fine! They just needed—“

“No, they weren’t—“

“Just some soap and they’d be—“

“We had Karol take them to a random dumpster in town,” Judy says. “So you couldn’t dig them back out. You’re welcome.”

“I changed my mind about you being the best, asshole.”

“I know. Take your damn soup and go rest.”

He does, fuming silently. Curled up in bed, he drains the rest of the soup, then lays down to doze off the headache starting to set in. Someone will get him if there’s news about Flynn, he’s sure. He hopes.

What feels like hours later, he’s halfway asleep when there’s a gentle, familiar knock on his door. “Yuri?”

Yuri scrambles to sit upright. “Flynn?”

Flynn cracks the door open and sticks his head through. He looks awfully, alarmingly pale, but otherwise much more cheerful than he did earlier. “Hey. Can I—“

“Come in, yes, fuck—“ Yuri tries to kick the blankets away. Flynn is through the doorframe, door closed behind him, and halfway to Yuri’s bedside by the time Yuri swings his legs over the edge of the bed. “The healers let you leave the hospital?”

“I can take bedrest anywhere,” Flynn says. He, too, is dressed down in simple, soft clothes. “They already gave me blood transfusions.”

Yuri frowns up at him. Flynn offers him a hand, palm-up; when Yuri takes it, he can see the thin strip of bandage Flynn must be indicating, wrapped around his forearm. Flynn turns his arm after a moment so that his palm can slide against Yuri’s.

“Let me lie down with you?”

“If you want,” Yuri mumbles, beating down the hope that wells in his chest. Flynn has always been the type to reassure himself with physical contact. Flynn sits next to him on the edge of the bed for long enough to kick off the loose civvy boots he’s wearing, then nudges Yuri back into the middle of the mattress, where he can push him down into the nest of blankets. Yuri allows this, rolling onto his side to face Flynn.

“You smell nice,” Flynn murmurs, appreciatively. He curls around Yuri, arms locking behind his back. Yuri presses his face to Flynn’s throat and a hand over his heart, unable to stop himself with Flynn so close and so affectionate. His pulse is steady. Flynn makes no objections.

“Had to wash up,” Yuri says, not really paying attention to anything he’s saying. Flynn’s pulse keeps going strong under his hand and his cheek. “Prob’ly still smell like the soap.”

“Like fresh growing things,” Flynn says. He noses against Yuri’s hair. “How are you feeling?”

“How am I feeling? You got fucking stabbed.”

“I’m pretty sore,” Flynn admits, easily. “And very lightheaded. The healers said I have to be sure to eat a lot of sugars and proteins for the next few days, and get plenty of rest and fluids. So—here I am.”

“Here you are.” Yuri tries to use the hand on Flynn’s chest to push back a bit. Flynn clutches him in place. “Hey. Let me go grab you a snack.”

“I just had something to nibble. I don’t need anything right this moment.”

“But—“

“Raven said you were sick.”

“That snitch,” Yuri grumbles. Flynn’s grip tightens.

“It’s true, then?”

“I’m fine,” Yuri lies. He stops trying to squirm out of Flynn’s grasp. This bluff will probably work better if Flynn can’t see his pale, gaunt face. “Just a blood sugar crash.”

“Mm. That’s not what it sounded like.”

“...What did Raven tell you?”

“You got home looking like death warmed over, immediately vomited, and directly answered questions about your state of emotional well-being.”

Yuri winces. Nobody is better equipped than Flynn to know what a red flag that last one is.

“He also said I should be gentle with you because you’ve barely slept in two days.”

“He really is a snitch.”

“If it makes you feel any better, it was news to Karol.”

Yuri sighs. Flynn slides one hand up his back to start stroking his hair again, like he had in the forest. Yuri has to admit it’s a lot nicer when they’re not both drenched in blood. “And I hardly need Raven to tell me that something is wrong when you’re actually letting other people take care of you.”

“You should worry about yourself right now, not me.”

“I’m well-equipped to worry about both of us at once.”

“You almost died, Flynn,” Yuri says, and he feels sick again just saying it. “Don’t—“

“Can you shut up and let me care about what happens to the love of my life for five minutes?”

Yuri’s jaw snaps shut. He can feel his face flare red-hot. Flynn huffs out a little laugh, snuggling in close. The hand on Yuri’s lower back starts rubbing in slow circles.

“You have bad taste and you make no sense,” Yuri says, eventually.

“Leaving your unforgivably poor self-esteem aside for the moment, how do I not make sense?”

“How can I be the—“ Yuri grits his teeth and soldiers on. “—The ‘love of your life’ when we aren’t even dating?”

“I love you,” Flynn says, with a brisk, matter-of-fact sincerity that makes Yuri want to roll over and smother himself with a pillow. “And I have my whole life, and I always will. It hasn’t got anything to do with whether we’re in a romantic relationship.”

“You’re bonkers.”

“I’d be offended, but recent events suggest you don’t dislike bonkers.” Yuri stills. Flynn snorts. “Your first impulse to distract me was to kiss me, and it wasn’t because you knew I was in love with you? Come on. I’m not stupid.”

“...I panicked.”

“I know. Hell if it didn’t work, though.”

“It didn’t work,” Yuri says, around a lump in his throat. “For spirits’ sake, I was there. I heard you yell. It didn’t work.”

“You were pulling a knife out of me. Of course I yelled.”

“But—“

“But it was extremely motivating to know that if I lived, I might get to kiss you more.”

Yuri kicks him.

“Ow!”

“What kind of stupid reason to live is that?!”

“Well of course I wanted to live for other reasons, but they were a little abstract when I was already bleeding out on the ground miles from help!”

“Shut up!” Yuri kicks him again. Like the first one, it’s weak and half-hearted, but Flynn seems to get the intended message. “I can’t believe you. You know how to cast guardian field yourself!”

“Are you yelling at me for not pulling the knife out myself?!”

“I’m yelling at you for giving up so fast!” Yuri’s face still feels hot with mortification, but now it’s a flush of anger, too. How dare Flynn act like the affections of messy, criminal, fuck-up Yuri Lowell are a more compelling reward than continuing to live his own life? He knows Flynn was probably just trying lighthearted humor out on the situation, but fuck. “I’m yelling at you for making me ignore your stupid, bad wishes! You tried to tell me not to save you, you dipshit!”

“Yuri—“

“It wasn’t worth the fucking effort to try to live when it was just living for me, as your friend?” Yuri’s voice breaks. Shit. “It wasn’t worth the effort to try to live for Estelle, and the Flynn Brigade, and Brave Vesperia? Wasn’t worth it for Repede?”

“I didn’t think it was going to work!” In a flash, Yuri finds himself wrestled back from Flynn’s body, so that they’re face-to-face. Flynn’s eyes are wide and frantic. One hand cups Yuri’s face; Yuri is horrified to realize that his cheeks are wet with tears again. “I’m sorry! I thought there wasn’t a chance, and maybe it would be less frightening to just leave the knife there and let it happen!”

“It wasn’t less frightening for me,” Yuri says, thickly. He knows it’s still selfish as he says it. All of this is selfish. Who is he to tell Flynn how to feel about his near-death experience? “To just—just sit there and wait for you to die without even trying to stop it.”

Flynn’s expression softens a little. His other hand slides up to cup Yuri’s other cheek. “I know.”

“And I don’t—want to think that if I’d tried to distract you any other way, maybe now you wouldn’t be—“ Yuri squeezes his eyes closed. Gods. He needs to stop crying.

“Shh,” Flynn mumbles. His forehead touches Yuri’s. “Shh. It didn’t happen. Don’t think about the what-ifs.”

“I have to.”

“No, you don’t.”

“But if there’s a next time—“

“If there’s a next time, I’ll know I should never doubt my brave, stubborn Yuri’s ability to pull a miracle out of nowhere.”

“What if next time—“

“No. Shh.”

Flynn kisses his cheek, gentle and chaste. Yuri hears his own breath hiccup, and reaches up to cling to the front of Flynn’s shirt. Flynn pecks the next kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“I’m sorry I asked you not to try,” Flynn whispers. “Shh. Don’t cry, Yuri. We’re going to be okay. It all worked out. Don’t cry, please.”

“I can’t stop,” Yuri says, miserably. “I’m trying.”

Flynn makes a soft, sympathetic sound. He gathers Yuri against himself and let him hide his face against Flynn’s neck again. They lay there for a long, quiet set of minutes, spoiled by Yuri’s wet sniffling and Flynn’s occasional soothing hushes. Flynn pets his back, his hair, his shoulders. He only stops to tug gently on a lock of Yuri’s hair to get his attention.

“We should both get something to eat.”

“You go,” Yuri says. His voice is still thick with tears. “I’m—I’ll be fine.”

“No,” Flynn says, firmly. “You need to drink some water, at absolute minimum.”

“I’m not going out there like this,” Yuri snaps, even though he knows it’s a cowardly and pitiful reason to deprive himself. What if Karol sees him? What if Patty does? It won’t kill him to hide in here a bit longer. He already had that soup earlier, never mind how long ago that was. Flynn sighs.

“Sweetheart...”

Yuri’s face flushes hot again. “No. I’m vetoing that. You cannot.”

“I can, though,” Flynn says, “And if you don’t come with me, I will.”

“That’s underhanded of you, Commandant.”

“And what will you do about it?” Flynn tugs on that same lock of his hair again. “My love?"

“Good grief.” Yuri didn’t know his face could turn this red. “Please don’t.”

“Then please come get a snack.” Flynn’s fingers in his hair transition into a caress. Yuri shivers a little when they brush his neck. “You don’t have to talk to anyone. We’ll just go into the kitchen, get some food and fill your canteen, and come right back.”

“I will have to talk,” Yuri says, resignedly. With the state he came back in? The guild is going to want at least a word or two out of him, to promise he’s slowly stabilizing. He has no idea what dark magic Raven used to keep them at bay between Yuri’s last foray into the kitchen and now. He dislodges himself from Flynn’s embrace to roll onto his back, scrubbing his face with both hands. The bed shifts under him as Flynn props himself on one elbow. “Flynn?”

“Yes?”

Muffled into his hands, Yuri says, hopelessly, “You were just bullying me with the pet names, right? You’re not actually into that?”

A beat of silence.

“Oh, no.”

“I’m mostly into how embarrassed they made you,” Flynn admits.

“You’re mean.”

“I was just trying it out on a whim. It did feel pretty weird to say.”

“So no more?”

“Hmm.” Yuri peeks out from behind his hands. Flynn smirks down at him, chin propped on his hand. It’s a weirdly soft smirk. Yuri didn’t know smirks could look like that. “I don’t know. I do like how flustered you are right now.”

“Be nice to me,” Yuri grumbles. “It’s been a long day.”

“You’re right,” Flynn says. “I should wait a few days and see how you respond on an even keel. There’s no guarantee it will usually be this much fun.”

“Mean,” Yuri repeats.

“I’m drunk on power,” Flynn says. He bends down to kiss Yuri on the forehead. Yuri can’t help closing his eyes to savor it. “As always, it’s up to you to put me in my place.”

“Try some self-restraint.”

“I’ve been doing that for years, and it turns out you would have been receptive to kissing me for at least part of that time.”

Probably most of it, if not longer, Yuri thinks, but miraculously manages not to say out loud. The alarm bells in his head are blaring, warning him that he’s half a second away from Flynn asking about the time frame anyway. He pushes himself upright, fighting through a pulse of dizziness, to crawl over Flynn and off the bed.

“I’ll go get food. You stay here.”

“What? No, I—“

“You’re supposed to be resting.”

“I can walk to the kitchen, at least.”

“You could, but you don’t have to. Any special requests?”

“Get something for yourself,” Flynn says. “Food. Not just water.”

Yuri clucks his tongue in irritation. “Any special requests for the food you want for yourself?”

“Lady Estellise should be here. She insisted she would come up with a menu for me.”

Oh, no. Yuri definitely won’t escape this without a conversation and a half if Estelle is here. “Alright. Fine. I’ll be right back.”

“Yuri—“ Flynn catches his hand before Yuri can turn and leave the room. When Yuri pauses, Flynn brings the hand to his mouth and presses a tender kiss to his palm. Yuri can feel all the blood in his body rush to his face, coloring him scarlet. “I’ll be waiting.”

“Cool,” Yuri says, his voice cracking humiliatingly, and flees the room before Flynn can do anything else mushy. At least getting bullied with endearments bought him a little time to stop crying.

“He lives,” Judy says, when he appears in the kitchen. Estelle, standing at the counter, lights up.

“Yuri!”

“Hey.”

She launches herself toward him; Yuri braces himself, but she stops before impact, wrapping him in a gentle, barely-there hug.

“I’m okay, Estelle, really.”

“No, you aren’t. Raven said—“

“Stop ratting me out!”

“I just wish people would stop ratting me out for ratting you out,” Raven says. “Whatever happened to witness protection?”

“Eat! Eat, eat. We’ve got soup—I have some cheese and crackers here, I was going to put some together for Flynn, but there’s plenty for both of you—Rita put together some veggies and dip—“ Yuri looks around, but Rita is nowhere in sight. “Oh, she’s back with the Knights, Flynn asked her to make sure there was due process in his absence.”

“Of course he did.”

“Repede went with her. And Karol boiled some eggs before he went back out with the guild rookies.”

“I just need water for me and whatever you were going to give Flynn.”

Estelle opens her mouth to protest. Judy pats her on the shoulder. “I’ll do the soup, you make the snack platter. Just give him enough for two.”

“Please don’t,” Yuri says, mostly resigned to his fate. “Flynn will actually make me eat it. I don’t need—“

“Feed him,” Raven says.

“Yeah, no,” Judy says.

“Yuri, really, how are you feeling?”

Yuri sighs, through gritted teeth, and tries to summon up whatever part of himself managed to be straightforward with Raven. The team is nosy because they care. They just want him and Flynn to be okay.

“...I’ve been better. I just need a little more time to recover.”

Estelle relaxes a little, satisfied to get some measure of honesty. She nods as she putters around the kitchen. “And Flynn seems to be doing alright?”

“A little pale and shaky, but a lot better than I was afraid he would be at this point.”

“Good.” Estelle shuffles a few things onto a tray. Judy plunks down two bowls of her soup. “Here! And I will come by later to make sure you actually ate all of it. And you know Flynn will tell on you if you have him eat yours.”

“Flynn won’t eat mine in the first place,” Yuri says.

“Good! Now go rest some more. Chop chop!”

Yuri finds himself shooed back out of the kitchen, now laden down with the tray. He kicks at the door gently to knock, then opens it with his foot. “Room service is here.”

“Five-star service,” Flynn says. He sits up against the headboard and the pillows. “Maybe I should get grievously wounded more often.”

“Don’t you dare ever do that again,” Yuri says, which is absolutely useless to the point of being nonsense. He drops the tray onto his bedside table with a little more force than necessary. The soup sloshes dangerously. Flynn covers his mouth with one hand, trying to conceal his laughter with a cough. “I’m serious.”

Flynn clears his throat after an odd hiccuping sound. “I know you are. I also know from the look on your face that you know I can’t promise that.”

“You could lie to make me feel better,” Yuri says, sourly. Flynn catches him by the arm and drags him closer. “What are—what are you doing?”

“Cuddling my poor, nervous sweetheart,” Flynn says, and saves himself from Yuri’s opinion on that combination of concepts and endearments by trying to pull Yuri into his lap. Yuri scrambles to plant his limbs against the mattress, in safe spots that put no pressure on Flynn’s body.

“Stop that. You’re wounded.”

“I’m healed. The recovery is for blood loss at this point.”

“You could still lose more blood if we reopen—“

“We won’t. Come here, stop wriggling.”

“At least let me stay to the other side!”

“Alright, fine.” Flynn curves his hands over Yuri’s hips, whose final placement is astride one of Flynn’s thighs on the un-stabbed side of his body. “You can be such a worrywart.”

“You got stabbed!”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” Flynn says, dryly.

“Oh, are we getting snippy now? Because I’m pretty sure if I got stabbed, you would—“ Flynn seems to legitimately ponder that hypothetical for a moment, because after a beat his grip on Yuri’s body tightens painfully. “—Ow, Flynn.”

“Sorry,” Flynn mumbles. He loosens his grip and smoothes his palms over Yuri’s flanks. Yuri has to stop himself from shivering with the novel contact. “No getting stabbed.”

Saccharine-sweet, Yuri says, “Well, you know I can’t promise that.”

Flynn laughs, tiredly. “You could lie to make me feel better.”

“So we understand each other.”

“Unfortunately.” Flynn pets at him some more, making Yuri fidget, before he says, quietly, “I’ll do my best. I can promise that much. I’ll always do my best to come back to you safe.”

“I’ll take it,” Yuri says, since it’s probably the best he’s going to get.

“Now you?”

“...Motivate me.”

“What?”

“You made that big deal about motivating factors earlier,” Yuri says, even as he finds himself flushing red again. Is he miscalculating this move? Too late to back out now. “Well, I don’t get it. Motivate me.”

Flynn stares at him for a second. Right when Yuri starts to seriously consider bailing, Flynn grabs him by the waist and rolls them both down into the sheets, Yuri on his back with Flynn braced over him.

“Hey!” Yuri yelps. “You aren’t supposed to be exerting—“

“Shut up,” Flynn says, and kisses him firmly on the mouth. Yuri scrambles to get a hold of—something, anything, and ends up with fists clenched in the front of Flynn’s shirt again. Against Yuri lips, Flynn adds, “You’re such a little shit sometimes.”

“That’s—mmph—“ Yuri shifts his grip to Flynn’s face as the force of Flynn’s kisses pushes him into the pillows. “N-not a very mmm—motivating thing to say.”

“I’ll give you some motivation,” Flynn mutters. He grabs Yuri by the chin and kisses him long and hard. When Yuri has to shove him back to gasp for breath, he says, “Let me court you.”

“Huh?” Yuri pants. Flynn rubs their noses together in a butterfly kiss, still holding him by the chin.

“I want to date. Is that motivating enough for you? Can you promise to try to come home to your boyfriend?”

“Yes,” Yuri says, weakly, robbed of breath for humorous retorts. “I can try.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise. I’ll always try to come home to you.”

“Come home safe?”

“That’s pushing it.”

“Okay, then how’s this? If you get stabbed I’m going to call you pet names in front of your guild for as long as it takes Lady Estellise to give you a clean bill of health.”

“No fair,” Yuri mutters. “I can’t pull the same shit on you. It would backfire.”

“I’d pay real gald to see you try,” Flynn says. He presses a light kiss to the tip of Yuri’s nose. Yuri scrunches his nose.

“I liked the other motivation better.”

“You can have both,” Flynn says, generously, and proceeds to demonstrate exactly that.

They do stop to eat the food. Eventually.

#fluri #flynn scifo #yuri lowell #tales of vesperia #long post #blood mention tw #vomiting mention tw

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eleventoes · 6 years ago

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as i told you | drabble

pairing: jungkook x reader | fluff (do i even write for any other genre at this point) word count: 1.5k warning(s): none synopsis: You and Jungkook are still idiots, except now you’re idiots in love.

( a look into what happens after as i told you ) ***

The truth of the matter was this: the thought of strangling Jeon Jungkook with your bare hands still crosses your mind more than it should, and that’s not what a healthy, loving relationship looks like, at least not according to Wikihow.

The cheerleaders badger you all the time in the locker room after practice, bombarding you with questions about what the two of you get up to in the apartment (“Sooyoung, you can stop wriggling your eyebrows now,” you’d scowl.) and Taehyung isn’t any better, because he thinks the two of you have cute romantic dates at home, and he gets all dreamy when he talks about it.

Yes, okay, sometimes the two of you can be pretty darn cute, even if you say so yourself. Jungkook likes spoiling you every other week, so he trudges to that famous bakery on the far side of town just to get you those donuts you adore, even when he’s worn out from late night practices. And you hate seeing him tired every time practice gets a little too rough as well, so somehow weekly Sunday morning massages became a thing, even if it evolves into a mini-wrestling match more often than not.

But people around you seem to forget that the two of you share almost everything: an apartment, a bed, a toothbrush (when Jungkook accidentally flushed his down the toilet) and a relentless competitive streak.

“Is that my hoodie?” he squints one morning as he emerges from the bathroom, hair still damp from the shower and eyes still bleary with sleep.

You nod from where you’re perched on the kitchen stool, too preoccupied with the latest webtoon update to spare him more than one appreciative glance. It’s not your fault his clothes are so goddamn comfortable, plus they always smell like that body spray he’s obsessed with, and it makes you feel all homely and tingly inside.

Without looking, you can tell he’s squinting again, and he hovers a little before speaking, “I’m not saying it’s not cute, because it’s cute seeing you waddle around—”

“I don’t waddle,” you throw him your best faux glare.

“But it’s the fourth time this week,” Jungkook cries, a little too dramatically in your very objective opinion, “I’m literally running out of clean clothes to wear.”

“You don’t seem to have an issue wearing dirty ones,” you retort, not because you’re still being petty about him never doing laundry (okay so maybe that’s half the reason), but because it’s true, Jungkook recycles dirty clothes more than he actually recycles.

You should have known something’s up the moment Jungkook narrows his eyes at your smartass remark, because the next morning, you almost drop the milk seeing Jungkook wearing one of your looser t-shirts.

“What the fuck,” numbly, you choke out, because the shirt’s tearing at its seams, and is figure-hugging in a way it was never supposed to be.

Jungkook, that smug asshole whom you love and cherish, only smiles devilishly before slinging on his sports bag and announcing that he’s leaving for practice, leaving you stunned (and a blushing mess, but we don’t talk about that) in the kitchen.

You do end up dropping the milk.

But what ensues is this: the two of you have once again embroiled yourselves in another unspoken challenge. The goal? To wear as many of the other’s clothes until one admits defeat. The prize? Bragging rights, because the two of you are wired that way. Purpose of challenge? None, as usual.

For a week or two, the two of you were practically stars on the campus forums; there’s a whole thread filled with ridiculous pictures of the two of you wearing each other’s clothes. Jungkook showed up to lab wearing your baby pink coat (and almost ripping it), you show up at an art elective class donning his favourite Iron Man tee (the stains were thankfully non-permanent), and you’re pretty sure he was going to wear your cheerleading skirt as an arm band or something, but you’ve been guarding your uniform with your life to avoid that ever happening. Highlight of the entire challenge was when Jungkook wore one of your long flowy tulle skirts to class, because he’s a badass like that, and gave a whole speech about the toxicity of gender normativity when sneered at by one of the TAs.

Yeah, you were proud, but on the brink of tears when he confessed that he spilt coffee on it right after the speech.

The challenge quickly draws to a close when your closets are all mixed up and laundry gets confusing. It got so messed up that you thought you were looking at Jungkook’s wardrobe when you opened your own, and it ends up being a tie, because now the two of you were unknowingly sharing closets.

Not the goal of the challenge (if there ever was one), but then the two of you get all giddy and excited over shopping for a new wardrobe (so that you both can officially share the same closet, duh), and now there’s only one wardrobe between the both of you.

So yes, the both of you were pretty darn cute.

Until Christmas rolls around and Jungkook gets a polaroid camera from his brother, which shouldn’t sound like it’s anything significant at all, up till you walk into his bedroom unannounced one day and stumble upon him and a handful of photos. All of you.

“I swear it’s not creepy,” leaping out of his chair, Jungkook gets to his feet and holds up both hands defensively.

You don’t tell him that him being creepy hasn’t even crossed your mind, because really, you’re just embarrassed and ridiculously flustered by how soft he looked when he was arranging the photos, so you just nod speechlessly.

“I was just trying out the camera, and you fell asleep on me, and I thought you looked,” he looks down and whispers, sounding almost like he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, “Cute.”

“After that it was just fun to play around with the angles and the lighting, and you’re a pretty good subject,” he continues, albeit a little more bashful that you’ve ever seen him, “I thought I could compile it all into an anniversary gift once I’m done.”

The first outcome is this: two really flustered people and a pretty intense make-out session. The second is as follows: you wanting to capture Jungkook and his beauty the same way he captures yours, you getting a polaroid camera of your own, and then the two of you obsessively taking pictures of each other.

Jungkook slumped upside-down on the couch gaming on his phone? Click.

You and your bedhead looking exceptionally murderous one fine morning? Click.

Jungkook almost exploding something in the microwave? Click.

Your friends have all caught onto this new challenge; some roll their eyes, some scoff affectionately, others scream and claim the both of you as their OTP.

Others, like Kim Namjoon, with a fondly exasperated look on his face, suggest that the both of you stop wasting expensive film like its nothing, and maybe start taking photos together instead. That seems to make perfect sense, and both you and Jungkook cannot wrap your minds around how neither of you have actually thought about the most obvious thing in the world.

(“That’s easy,” Namjoon replies, looking as if he’s nursing the beginnings of a migraine with how he’s pinching the bridge of his nose, “It’s because both of you are hard-headed idiots. And you are perfect for each other.”)

So the two of you get all giddy and excited once again at the home depot store next to campus, picking out a nice corkboard and some nice scrapbooking supplies for the kitchen.

The challenge didn’t have any winners (again), largely because the both of you forgot that it was a competition to begin with, and are now too busy filling the corkboard with cute couple polaroids that anyone would be jealous of (“We would out-couple every couple out there,” smirked Jungkook when he’d put the board up. You’d agreed.).

There’s this one the both of you took at the beach, and the smiles on your faces are wide, and there’s one where the both of you were trying to babysit Taehyung’s puppy and ended up taking a million selfies with the poor dog smushed between your faces. And there’s your favourite: a blurry photo of the both of you attempting a selfie with the camera for the first time, except none of you had figured out how it worked just yet and it ended up being a blurry photo of Jungkook mid-blink and you squinting.

And yeah, maybe the two of you weren’t that couple who’d take each other out to romantic candlelit dinners, and weren’t the type to call each other adorably affectionate pet names, and maybe the two of you get too competitive with each other sometimes.

But the both of you were still pretty darn cute, even if you do say so yourself.

a/n:

yay to uploading after forever; i just can’t seem to let this au go! special shoutout to @fan-ati--c for requesting this, i rly hope you liked it :3

#networkbangtan #btswriters #bts fanfic #jungkook scenario #jungkook fanfic

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kirastrations · 6 years ago

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Loved the Way You Hated (me)

"I'm perfect for a killing game, I don't have any faith in humanity!"

Hair the colour of buttermilk swirls framed a face devoid of pigment, lavender eyes clouded over with a mist of hollow nothingness, with a smile that screamed "I want to win."

Tsumugi Shirogane had been instantly sold.

~Tsumugi reflects on her actions, and finds herself pondering over what could have been.

My piece for the @danganevents Valentines event, for @mastermind-madd ^^ Doubling it as a piece for @femslashfeb.

Read on ao3

Read on fanfic.net

The moment Tsumugi is alone with her thoughts, it hits her like a ton of bricks.

Or a box of shot-put balls, to be more precise.

She trudges through the dimly lit academy, drinking in her surroundings through eyes the colour of gravel and monotony, an arrow of doubt pierces her (one of those arrows from Maki's soon-to-be-revealed lab, for sure). Doubt at her existence. Doubt at the journey she'd made to get this far. Had it been worth it in the end?

Conflicting emotions blanket her core, not unlike a corrupted, malicious and double-dealing piece of fabric. Each thread is twisted and tangled, with no plans on loosening any time soon. Buttons of hope sew their way into the ground beneath her feet, and no matter how large and terrifying the darkness seems to be, they don't fall out. They endure each movement, each twist in the road, and it's beyond the cosplayer how it all works. Another voice tells her that hope is just a petty illusion, one that is unreachable and only attainable through fictional mediums. Hope fools the mind and defies all logic, logic which is hurled at one like a bullet from a gun.

Such is doubt.

What even is hope?

Tsumugi... doesn't think she really knows anymore.

Had she ever known to begin with?

Either way, she had been hoping to learn. Hoping that she'd be the one to show her, a final lesson to twist the final nail in a coffin that awaits the seamstress a mere five trials away.

Back to the present, Tsumugi finds herself walking, walking, walking. Where to? She doesn't know, but that's a lie.

Her head snaps up as a second figure comes into view. And the mask drizzles back down her face like a sickly sweet honey.

It's Shuichi Saihara, because of course it is.

As they cross paths, he doesn't bother meeting her eyes, choosing to remain hidden beneath the shadow of his hat. He doesn't even see her. A chill runs down her spine, and a fleeting he hates me so much dances across her mind.

He's so pathetic, says Tsumugi to Tsumugi.

Tsumugi purses her lips. She wants to agree, but knows she can't. She can't now.

She reaches her destination, plainly patterned shoes squeaking to a halt outside the not-so-plainly decorated door. Kaede's lab had been the easiest one to design, after all - there had been an 'Ultimate Composer' the season prior, so all it had really needed was a little bit of dusting down.

Sighing, Tsumugi slips into the leather stool, sliding up the piano's hood. She had no intention of playing it, of course - she'd damage her nails - and her characterisation, she supposes.

A hand ghosts the untouched Monokuma-coloured keys. Freshly-painted teal nails glint back at her, almost mockingly, as if to say you did this.

Kaede... such potentional for a protagonist. Closing her eyes, Tsumugi remembers the grovelling she'd had to do to get her the part. The strings she'd had to pull. The paycheck she'd willingly given up. The lows she had stooped to in the initial writing process. They'd eventually managed to persuade her to "Go back to basics, give the viewers a nostalgic kick up the rump!" And she had begrudgingly complied.

Danganronpa wouldn't be Danganronpa without that one shy-boy who could grow— Not too bad, she could fit that in alright. There'd always be that one student who can barely remember their own name— No biggie, Rantaro would be the best decision for that plotline. Oh, and of course, who in their right mind would be against a spicy romance plot— Astronaut and Assassin, perhaps? Typical normie suggestion, but it's not like she could say no at this stage. Fanservice is a must— Fine, fine, Iruma and Ouma could slot in there nicely. Case Three's gotta be a double whammy with a crazy twist, just like the old days— Eh, wouldn't be too hard, she supposes.

Oh, how naive she had been!

Tsumugi Shirogane had signed her livelihood, her dignity, her life off, for a single chance to see a girl take centre stage for once...

... Only to have her fucking die before the second arc had even started.

Tsumugi's eyes flutter shut. Oh, how fun she'd have been so fun to work with. To get to know. To see the absolute utter despair in her eyes when Tsumugi would finally finally tear off her bespectacled mask, and stab her puppet where it'd hurt most. The heart. Kaede would feel the knife before she'd lay her eyes on it. She'd be forced to look into the eyes of it's wielder, just two stands down from her. And Tsumugi would finally see it. Those eyes that had once been filled with determination and purpose, would be brimming with bitterness and absolute hate.

But even so, Kaede would have changed it all. She'd have changed the course of Danganronpa history. She'd have found some roundabout way of beating the tradition. She'd have rewritten the fiction that she'd confidently stated as loving so much all those months back.

A tiniest fragment within Tsumugi's jaded heart had believed, no, hoped that Kaede Akamatsu would have reignited the firey passion Tsumugi had had for Danganronpa all those years ago when she'd first joined the Team.

“I'm perfect for a killing game, I don't have any faith in humanity!"

Hair the colour of buttermilk swirls framed a face devoid of pigment, lavender eyes clouded over with a mist of hollow nothingness, with a smile that screamed "I want to win."

Tsumugi Shirogane had been instantly sold.

The audition tape plays in the cosplayer's mind on a loop, like a broken CD from the dead pianist's lab. Her stomach bubbles and pops with a feeling she can't quite place a finger on.

Despair, perhaps?

Ah yes, it was probably despair. Tsumugi has a sudden urge to race to the bathroom to relieve herself of the feeling. To dance into her special little room, throw on that blonde wig, and cackle and cry till her emotions run dry.

She'd succeeded, she'd failed, she'd succeeded, she'd failed. She'd finally, finally succeeded in channelling her inner-Junko, something she'd longed to achieve ever since she'd been a little girl, the moment her once-innocent eyes had been tainted with the fashionista's reveal and ultimate demise. But she'd also failed, she supposes.

All of her hard work, all of her endless efforts, all of her hopes to change Danganronpa into something other than what it's been for the past few decades. All of it currently lay crushed beneath a huge grand piano, painted red with blood, and stained pink with deceit.

It's so despairingly delightful.

Tsumugi bites back a shuddering sigh as the memories come flooding back. She chuckles, quietly reminding herself that someone else already has that character this time around.

Actually, speaking of...

Korekiyo. He'd been onto her both before and during the trial. Tsumugi's fists ball into her skirts. He (and Angie, much to her surprise) had been the only two to get remotely close to the 'true truth'.

She refuses be outed by mere side characters, of all people. They'd both have to go, and soon. Tsumugi makes a mental note to make the artist more appealing to 'Miss Shinguuji's' tastes further down the line.

Yeah, yeah, that should work.

Tsumugi absolutely adores the characters that are a threat, she always had done. It was only natural for her to want a whole cast full of them! It's why competent characters such as Korekiyo and Kirumi exist. It's why unpredictable characters such as Kokichi and Angie exist. It's why threats to her very existence, such as Rantaro and Kaede existed.

She loves them.

She loves their hatred.

Another sigh spills from the cosplayer's lips. The classroom is as dead as the night outside, as dead as it's owner, and the man she didn't kill.

And then, it's all empty again.

Tsumugi's empty.

She's empty.

The emptiness... is always there, but Tsumugi is a professional, she's great at hiding it, masking it with normal human emotions. No one is going to ask her why she's smiling. And in a Killing Game, no one will ask her why she's crying either. The emptiness hides everywhere, this emptiness, it floats around in hive-minded swarms, it hides between the cracks in walls. There isn't any getting away from it. The nightmares of her classmates seem to help fill it, the contents of which is mostly irrelevant. The feeling gets lighter with each corpse added to the growing pile of her former peers. Yes... that's it... Something has to go to shit, something has to be imperfect for her world to keep on spinning.

Something tragic. Imperfect. Exciting. Despair-inducing. Unplain. Or else there's no meaning to the killing game. No meaning to life. No meaning to her.

And so, in the midst of the emptiness, Tsumugi Shirogane grieves. There are no waterworks, no theatrics, no speeches of hope and friendship to pick her up off her feet.

Just an the familiar pit of emptiness Tsumugi thought would be quenched with a new kind of killing game.

No such luck.

Tsumugi grieves the loss of her precious new killing game, and with it, the loss of Kaede Akamatsu, the Ultimate Pianist.

She grieves the loss of the most treasured puppet in her collection.

In the world of Danganronpa, trusts are broken, and lies are told. For the puppets to believe in what they seek, they must know what it means to be what they don't want to be.

Being sad will make them realize how valuable being happy is.

Being weak makes them know what it means to be strong.

Being helpless is what makes them determined to be helpful. Mistakes happen tragedies occur, and then the process starts all over again.

But, by looking at the brighter sides of things, they might just be able to briefly smile one last time in life, and in the something just beyond that.

Tsumugi reapplies her makeup, sliding her glasses back up the bridge of her nose.

And she gets back to work, slipping into the classroom adjacent. Those Kubs Pads won't make themselves, after all.

The other puppets are eagerly waiting her arrival, whether they know it or not.

Whether she likes it or not.

#kaede akamatsu #tsumugi shirogane #kaemugi #femslash february #ndrv3 #kirwrites

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abalonetea · 6 years ago

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@simplelinesunfashiond sent me in an ask to do whatever i wanted for the Kiss Prompt and??? i got carried away but here’s Kisses Out Of Order, from my wip A Life Out Of Order, which was totally fun to write.

Skittles shouldn’t be kissing Tony. The band has been broken up for three weeks and he’s so red-raw inside it hurts, so drunk and high that he’s not sure if this is really happening or if it’s a dream – except it has to be real because Tony reeks of Menthols and has hair spray stiff hair and is warm pressed up tight against Skittles. It’s the sort of bar where no one gives a shit what goes on, and the corner is so dimly lit that it’s hard to see anything. But the piercings in Tony’s ear still glint and there are lights flashing in Skittles vision, floating, pulsing orbs that shouldn’t exist but do. Tony laughs into Skittles lungs and the whole world swims sideways, or maybe it’s just Skittles that’s leaning. I miss you, thinks Skittles, tries to gather up those angry, dizzy words and push them out through tongue and tooth and painted red lips. I miss you so fucking much.

Lips on the back of Skittles shoulders, butterfly soft. Big hands threading through his red, red hair, pulling it back, pushing it out of the way, and those kisses move up, over the curve of Skittles neck. He yawns, stretches, leans back into Eric’s hand. “Wha’time is it?” “Late,” says Eric, voice morning rough. “I’m hungry.” “Den go git yerself somethin’.” “Skittles.” “What?” “We’re going out.” It’s not phrased like a question. Chapped lips brush against the back of Skittles neck and then Eric is up, pulling away, nails making one soft-jagged line down the curve of Skittles spine and – he supposes they’re going out for breakfast.

No one else is at the gas station, or at least they aren’t in the parking light. It might not even be open anymore. Skittles can’t tell. He’s more focused on the way William rubs a calloused thumb under one eye, trying to get off the last of the make-up from the gig Skittles had two days ago. “You’re dishgusting.” Skittles laugh is warbling. He catches William’s wrist in one hand, lime green painted nails pressing lightly against heavily tanned skin. “Says the guy wit blood all over’is face. Dood, ya don’t got no room ta talk.” “I got plenty of room,” huffs William. He licks his thumb again, starts wiping at a different spot on Skittles face. “How did you get covered in glitter?” “Part’a the act.” Skittles shrugs, runs his hand up the length of William’s arm. “Hey, Willie.” “Don’t call me that.” “Can I kiss you?”

They’ve been in Europe for almost two weeks and Skittles is tired, and wired, and living the life that he’s always dreamed of. Bass echoes in his ears even when the band isn’t playing but right now they are, and the music echoes in his brain and vibrates in his bones and hums in his heart – and the people in the crowd scream out along with them even though they don’t know the words and this – this – this is where Skittles belongs. He reaches out, grabs the hand of someone in the stage, sweaty palms sliding together as he bellows out the lines of their hottest song yet, Meet Me On The Wayside. “I’m having fun and ya know I can’t conceal it, I’m living large and I know you feel it! Got a laugh in my lungs and a name on my tongue and hard liquor in my ve-ei-ei-eins!” Tony hits the back up vocals right on cue, voice deeper than Skittles is ever going to be. “We’re living life on the wayside! We’re living life on the wayside! We’re living life on the wayside and I’m running down, running down, running down on – “ It breaks into a drum solo, hard, heavy, the beat matching the one in Skittles chest and he staggers left, saunters even, all red thigh high boots and glitter caked skin and too much everything crawling under his skin. Even with the boots on Skittles is still shorter than Tony, has to use the guitar strap and a fistful of dyed blue hair to pull himself up, up, crash their mouths together the same way Snazzy goes down on the cymbals and the crowd goes wild.

Teeth bite hard at his lower lip and Skittles shoulders hit the wall and there are fingers in his glue crisp hair and he thinks, thinks, thinks that this isn’t what he ever thought it would turn out to be, where he’s got all his jagged pieces on display and Eric is so good at gathering them back up, water in his hands, sweat on the back of his neck, only to prove that he’s even better at tearing Skittles apart all over again. There’s still an argument on the back of Skittles tongue but he’s too tired to try and bring it back to life and Eric is so good at dismissing them anyway and – the radio is playing and All We Are comes on and Skittles thinks it’s so ironic he could die.

William pulls back, doe eyed and quiet. He looks utterly ridiculous with pink smudges on his lips and Skittles smiles at him, laughs, says, “damn, I’ve been wantin’ to do dat fer ages.”

Skittles is fourteen years old pretending to be sixteen while he crashes a part on the outskirts of town. He drinks cheap beer and smokes cheaper cigarettes bummed off of Cathy Maes, who tries to pretend she’s better than everyone, but the whole town knows that her daddy’s stolen credit card is what’s funding this place. Everything is dark and loud and Skittles loves it, the way the bass crashes over him and speaks to something deep in his soul, the way Tommy’s cousin from out of town keeps glancing his way, smiling with crooked teeth and crow’s feet and wavy dark hair. Skittles smiles back at him, chip toothed and freckle faced, saunters across the crowded dining room like it’s gold on his nails and not a sharpie marker that he stole from the Quickie Mart on the way here. “Hey,” he says, leans right up close in Tommy’s cousin’s face. “Ya wanna ditch dis place?”

Tony runs fingers over the bruise circling Skittles neck, is more quiet than he usually gets. “Don’t think dat hard.” Skittles bats at Tony’s shoulder, because this isn’t a conversation that he ever wanted to have, ever thought he would get to have. “Yer gonna bust somethin’.” “Lucky I don’t bust his head,” grumbles Tony. The opening act is still on stage but it sounds like maybe this is their last song, because it’s loud and slow and a build up to a ballad no one wants to hear - Skittles life spilled out in words about small town kids and big dreams and sour clouds of smoke that suffocate, suffocate, suffocate me. The next touch makes Skittles jump, just a little, when purple stained lips press against his forehead. It’s chaste in a way that Skittles doesn’t really know, like his mother catching Asher on the way out of the house, like pretty Sarah Lee smiling at him from across the cafeteria right before she asks Linda White out for the Wolf Moon Dance. “You’re staying at my house,” says Tony and it’s a nice thought but they both know it’s a lie.

“What did he do?” Marcello is draped out across the worn sette that’s been shoved in Skittles dressing room. They’re one show away from leaving for Europe and it feels like there are bees under his skin. Skittles is nervous like he hasn’t been since that first time he walked up to Eric’s front door, knowing him only as the friend of a brother of his own brother’s friend, and that whole trip went south so why wouldn’t this one? When he doesn’t answer Marcello tilts his head up, dark bags under his even darker eyes and it must be written plain as day on Skittles face because all he says is, “oh.” “Yeah,” echoes Skittles. “Oh.”

“Schorry, buddy. I just – I gotta go.”

#a life out of order #my writing #alooo #kiss prompt #prompt fill #simpline tag

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loquaciousquark · 7 years ago

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4th Solace. I’ve just realized I’ve missed the worst of the summer heat thanks to the Arishok’s oversized toothpick. If I’m being honest, not a bad trade

Odd thing happened today. Gamlen was here visiting again--which, that has been odd enough, for all that I've been glad to see him (even if his concern throughout my whole recovery has been markedly acidic). We were in the library, three layers deep into Bodahn’s date buns, when all of a sudden Orana knocked and announced Lady Audrey and her son, Stinton Forrester, were here to visit. They live about seven estates down the way with the extravagantly bitter Lord Willem Forrester and his unkinder mother, and I don’t think we’ve ever spoken to each other in our lives.

Anyway, in they came. She was in purple silk and he had a suit with puffier sleeves than my entire wardrobe; Gamlen was in his workcloth shirt with the seam I mended in pink thread two years ago, and I had a grease stain on my pants the shape of Antiva from that time we stumbled into the raider tripwires in Darktown.

I will say the shower of crumbs as I stood to greet them was remarkable, as was Toby’s alacrity in removing them from the carpet. After that scintillating beginning, though, I wasn’t sure what to do, so we ended up perching on the chairs and staring at each other for a good bit. Eventually someone ventured a remark on the weather and someone else responded in kind, and then we were making the small insipid talk I’ve heard at every one of Mother’s parties, and even Gamlen restricted himself to quiet snorts and rolled eyes instead of his usual biting commentary.

To be honest, that worried me more than anything else. Lady Audrey was never a great friend of Mother’s so far as I knew, but for the solicitousness of her concern over my injuries I might have thought she and Mother were the closest sisters in Thedas. Endless questions about my comfort, my recovery, endless advice on salves and creams to reduce scarring. Stinton just sat there and stared at me. I don’t think he said ten words.

They stayed just long enough to make the room thoroughly uncomfortable, then sailed out in a silk cloud. Stinton smiled at me when Orana came to walk them out. I’d forgotten two of his bottom teeth are turned sideways.

I haven’t the faintest idea what just happened.

Later

Gamlen says Stinton intends to court me. I say Gamlen needs to stop drinking the moonshine Jo Mallen makes with goose dung.

11th Solace. Steaming hot. Suppose I haven’t missed the summer after all

Stinton’s been back to visit twice. As have Orwen, Pelarie, Derrick, Braeden, Sage, and every single one of their mothers.

Shit.

19th Solace. Stormed hard but cleared up by midmorning. Everything marvelously dank, just like it should be

They’ve set the ceremony to make me the city’s champion for the last day of Solace. Stinton’s hinted three times he’d like to arrive on my arm. Or--me on his, as I suspect he’d prefer. He’s stopped coming with his mother. I wish he’d stop coming at all. He has the most abominable habit of saying my name every few words, as if he wants me to be absolutely certain I have his full attention. Feels more like he’s trying to piss dominance over a prize bitch.

No one’s called me that name since Mother died, and even then it was only when I’d been caught making trouble. It’s not for you, you pompous prick.

23rd Solace. Hot again. Foundry smoke’s been drifting over all day. Wish the smell would be kind enough to blow elsewhere, tired of nightmarish memories

Pelarie Ashbridge is entirely too shy to be caught up in this mess. She barely comes up to my shoulder for all that she’s over twenty, and no matter how her maid dresses her in cashmere and taffeta she still seems like a girl forced too far too soon. The only time I’ve ever really seen her smile was when I told her about the time Carver and I stole a sackful of unripe pears from Barlin and were sick for three days afterwards. Of course, that only lasted until her mother The Most Dour Woman In Thedas pinched out a smile and said something about how all children must learn to be ladies eventually, and Pelarie’s smile fell off her face like an anchor’d been tied to it.

Joke’s on her, though. I was nineteen when we did it.

(She certainly didn’t care for my pointing that out, especially given my glee in the doing. Pelarie smiled again, though, so I suppose it was worth the spite.)

Flames, but I wish these idiots would stop using their children as leverage. For all Mother’s faults, she never once tried to sell me for profit.

27th Solace. If I imagine hard enough, I can almost convince myself the city’s beginning to cool

If the hand is shakier than usual, it’s because I’m laughing hard enough I can barely breathe.

We came home--Andraste’s glorious girdle! I’ve got to get through the setup before the punchline, but the delay might very well kill me. We were out on the Coast today for Aveline, rooting out some smugglers who’ve been peddling qunari detritus at a tidy profit. First real fight since the Arishok--did fairly well, all things considered! Mana’s still a trifle weak, so some of the firestorms were more like fire trickles, but the battle ended with them dead and me with only a cracked shin, so all in all a resounding victory so far as I’m concerned.

Invited everyone over to celebrate, naturally, but Sebastian was already pushing late for Chantry services and Aveline had dinner plans with Donnic, so in the end it was just Fenris and me walking back to Hightown together.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, but I told him about these fool visits at Wicked Grace last week. He hadn’t laughed like I’d thought, just gone...quiet, I suppose, is the best word for it. Frowned at his cards for three hands and lost every coin he came with, then excused himself early. I hadn’t meant to go after him--Maker knows his running wouldn’t thank me for the chase--but I saw him fiddling with that damned red band on his way out and knew right where his mind had gone.

Caught up to him right outside the door. It was cool for Solace, I remember, because his northern arms had gone to gooseflesh in the chill, and he’d actually shivered when I’d touched his shoulder to turn him. Wouldn’t meet my eyes, either, for all he stayed put, and it wasn’t until I reached down and tucked my fingers around his wrist (the wrapped one) that he came back to a little life.

I don’t remember exactly what I said. More than I should have--I’m fairly certain I offered to start hanging paint buckets above doors at his druthers--but it only garnered the slightest smile until I stepped a hair too near and he moved just a bit too close and--all at once--I had nothing to say.

All this time, and that was all it took. The slightest lean in instead of away, and my heart leapt so high in my throat I could hardly breathe.

I told him I wasn’t going anywhere.

I didn’t say anything else. I didn’t know what else to say, but he looked up when I said it, and that uncertain smile shifted into something a little deeper, and then he closed his eyes and his forehead came up against mine for just a moment or two, just long enough for a breath that took a thousand years with it on the exhale.

He left after that, and I didn’t try to keep him.

Funny, I don’t feel like finishing this now. I’ll come back to it another time.

Later.

All right. I’m three shots of Antivan liquor and most of a rotisserie chicken in, so let’s get on with this.

We came home from the Coast, is the short of it. It was easy enough between us after that conversation so I wasn’t thinking about much, just enjoying the walk, and then we came in and who should be sitting in one of those overtall embroidered chairs in my library but Lord Stinton Fucking Forrester in orange and ivory silk and slashed sleeves.

His face. Oh, Maker and his Bride, I’m crying at the thought of it. That pristine little suit, and in we come covered in blood and mud and sand with Fenris picking sinew out of his cuirass. I might as well have struck him upside the head with a frying pan.

Gaping isn’t a strong enough word. I started laughing the moment I saw him--couldn’t help it, too absurd--and managed to struggle through an introduction while shaking bone bits out of my hair. Stinton barely got out a stuttering hello, looking at me the whole time like I was quite alien, but Fenris--Fenris! that insufferable magnificent ass! gave such a deliberate flourish of his sword before sheathing it and setting the whole massive thing one-handed against the wall. Then he gave Stinton the most Tevinter half-bow that managed to signify more disrespect than a formal Kirkwall snubbing ever could, and I had to bite down on my tongue to check the giddiness.

Even that would have been enough. But then Orana--and Maker bless every bone in her body, for I think she dislikes Stinton as much as I do--came in with a bowl and a handful of rags the way she always does when we come home covered in gore, and kept a gloriously bland smile on her face the whole time we wiped off the worst of the blood. She even asked how many we’d killed this afternoon (which she hardly ever does), and pretended it was a perfectly normal thing when Fenris answered her with “sixteen.”

It was possibly the most Tevinter-esque conversation they’ve ever had in front of me, and my heart’s still singing for it.

Anyway. This continued on in the same vein for several minutes, Stinton looking nervously between the two of us, until there was an unfortunate lull, whereupon Stinton took it upon himself to ask how long Fenris had been serving in my household.

Oh, journal, but I bristled. Fenris hardly seemed concerned--resigned only, which I hated just as much--but I kept my temper enough to inform him quite frostily that he was a dear friend and had been so for years, and I had been honored to fight in his company today.

Which was all true, though I haven’t the faintest idea who was more surprised between the two of them.

Stinton didn’t stay much longer after that. He looked as though he still wanted to speak to me privately, but the Void would have to tear open my library before I’d ask Fenris to leave it for Stinton’s sake, and he left within a few minutes of Orana carrying away the bloodied bowl. I wasn’t sorry to see him go.

Then it was just Fenris and me left, and a silence that ought to have been awkward but wasn’t. Instead it was just comfortable, the both of us tired after the fight and that fool and willing to forget them as fast as we could.

I asked him if he’d come with me to the ceremony. As a friend, if he wanted, but I said I’d like to have him there.

He didn’t answer for a long time. Then he said no, which didn’t surprise me, but he looked sorry to say it, which did. He said he’d make a poor showing in dented, stained armor and he hadn’t time to get new things. I said I wouldn’t care in the least--it was him I wanted there, not his clothes--which made him laugh even if it didn’t change his mind. He said it would be a bad idea to draw attention to himself given both Danarius and the fact that he’s still squatting in that rotting mansion.

I couldn’t argue with that. So. He left, and I’m left to Varric and Sebastian as my only acceptable escorts. Not that I don’t--but--well. I knew it was a long shot.

Well. Nothing to be done about it now. It was still a wonderful thing to see Stinton slinking out like the weasel he is.

29th Solace. The day before my doom is fittingly dreary

Felt bad all morning over mocking Stinton to his face yesterday. Sent a note to him this afternoon asking him to come by for a few minutes so I could apologize.

He accepted it, ungraciously as it was given, which made me feel even worse--right up until the point where he told me he’d be happy to continue his attentions towards me only if:

a) I stop “trouncing about with Kirkwall unsavories”

b) I tone down my use of magic--so difficult to overlook when I keep throwing it in people��s faces

c) I dismiss the elf from my service (not certain if he means Fenris or Orana, though given his sneer I suspect the former)

d) I stop permitting Lady Ashbridge to bring Pelarie to visit, and Orwen and Braeden and the rest, no matter how gentle Pelarie is when her mother’s not crushing her under her heel.

I’m not often stunned speechless, and I’m pleased to say this was no exception. I’ve forgotten exactly what I said, but I know at one point I used the phrase “barbaric bollocking boor” and was fairly pleased with myself. His face turned all sorts of colors but ended a mottled red, and when I was finished he turned and walked right out the door without waiting for Orana.

Burned that bridge right to the ground, I suppose. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

30th Solace. Cold. Grey. Blustery. Pfeh

Orana has been at me for hours with more perfumes and salts than a magister’s bathhouse.

Just put me in the damned dress and let me go. No one who likes me will be there except Aveline anyway, and she’s seen me naked and covered in mud. That was one memorable trip up Sundermount, I’ll tell you that.

She’s coming with a fistful of gold pins for my hair. Maker save me

Later

The carriage is at the door; I can hear its squeaking wheels and Sebastian’s just come in the foyer. I can hear his voice from here. I asked Orana if I could pretend to be dead and she said she didn’t think the ruse would take. Damn her

Snuck the journal in my useless clutch. Serves her right. I’m drowning in poorly-scented sweat and Stinton keeps sneering at me across the floor. Pelarie’s here, though, and I’m determined to dance with her at least once to get her mother off her back. Sebastian’s been a darling to take my temper and he looks marvelous in russet and white and gold. Plus he knows the dances, which makes me look a good deal better. He’s dancing with the oldest Allencourt girl now. I foisted him off to spare him from me awhile--she’s sweet, if a bit dim, and guaranteed not to snap when he offers her a canapé.

Music’s changing again. How much longer?

Ceremony’s done but I can’t leave yet. Snuck off to some fainting room and locked the door--Cullen of the templary curls offered to escort me to get some cooler air but I said I’d rather avoid any surreptitious branding, which I think genuinely shocked him. Meredith didn’t seem to hear for all she’s been staring at me all evening, so I suppose I should count myself lucky and shut my mouth.

Aveline’s here. She’s in uniform, but it might as well be a golden gown for how adoringly Donnic’s watching her. Lucky thing.

Too many people altogether, all looking at me. Orsino, Meredith, Cullen, Elthina--even Bran showed up and brought me a champagne flute. I asked if it was poisoned. He looked at me sourly and said if he’d meant to poison me, he’d have done it when I was still the vagabond refugee fumbling with a wineglass in the Viscount’s office.

People keep knocking. Told them to go away but I guess I can’t have fainted then

Sebastian says I can leave in half an hour. The Champion of Kirkwall gets an iron circlet and a medal and a piece of paper in the mail. The medal’s in the clutch, but there’s not much to do for this damned circlet. My forehead’s going to be dented for weeks

Later

It’s almost three in the morning, but I’m finally home. The candle’s nearly out so I’ll keep this brief as I can, but--

Fenris came.

It was just for a few minutes, so quick I might have blinked and missed it. I’d stepped out for the last time--the Viscount’s gardens back right up to the great hall, and there was a wonderful shrubbery thing in a great brown pot that hid me marvelously in the shadows, even with the crimson satin. Only this time I stepped out and--there was someone already behind it.

I will say I repressed the scream admirably. I can’t say I didn’t stumble back with the most ignominious trip into the gravel I’ve ever had, except the shadow reached out and caught me.

Maker. I even write besotted.

Knew him as soon as I felt his hand. Knew the calluses well enough, certainly, but the lyrium I’d recognize blind and deaf and dying. He stood me on my feet, and I looked at him, and...

Sometimes, in Lothering, Bethany and I would go out to the creek that ran behind our fields. There was a wild hydrangea bush there, taller than the two of us together, and in the last days of spring we’d find the little buds and Bethany would coax them with her magic to see if she could get them to bloom. She was much better than I was at it--I tended to get impatient and wither them instead--and most of the time they’d only open a bit, only slivers of brilliant purple peeping out between waxy green sheaths.

Sometimes, though--sometimes, if everything was perfect--she’d thread her magic into the leaves and I could see it take, could see the leaves growing and greening and beginning to furl away, and the bud would swell and swell and swell until all at once the bloom would burst open--in perfect silence--and a glorious purple blossom larger than my head sat in her curled fingers.

They were beautiful. And I...

That happened in my heart, when I saw him. Silent and sudden and beautiful and overwhelming, and there was no going back after it opened.

He wasn’t in his armor. He’d found a dress tunic--Tevinter in style, high-collared, but with long sleeves that gathered snug at his wrists, and black trousers that fit him beautifully, and I’d never felt so near crying from gladness in my life. I don’t know where he found them. I don’t care.

He said he couldn’t stay, that the guards would only ignore so much, even well on their way to drunk, but he misliked the idea that his fear of Danarius might control him even now. He said he knew I needed no protection from fools (like Stinton, implied), but if I needed refuge from their mothers...

I shouldn’t have hugged him, but I did, and I don’t regret it. He held me back, so he couldn’t have hated it that much.

I told him he was the best thing I’d ever seen. He told me I was beautiful, and he didn’t let go of me until I’d pulled away first.

Lady Everlyn came out only a few seconds later with Braeden at her heels, so there wasn’t much more to the moment, but he was still watching me when I stepped away to keep him hidden. I told him he’d be standing up with me next time, not hiding behind a bush. He said, “Hm,” but he was smiling when he did.

The candle’s long out and I’ve been writing by magelight for twenty minutes. I’d better stop before Orana ties me down with my own bedsheets.

(I’m determined there will be a next time. If nothing else, I need to see him in those trousers in proper light, not in the shadow of a shrubbery.)

(He came for no other reason than I wished him to and he’s kind, even if he doesn’t want anyone to know. If he’s trying to make me forget him, he’s gone the wrong way about it.)

(My face is so flushed the damned iron circlet feels like ice.)

(He said I was beautiful.)

#fenris #hawke #fenris/hawke #dragon age #quark writes #hawke's journal tag #i did this while watching 1 topple #:)))))#yay auburn

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crowkingwrites · 7 years ago

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The Dreadfort

Pairing: Ramsay Bolton x Reader

Summary: Ramsay, a high school outcast, has opened his historical mansion for a Halloween Haunt. Your boyfriend suggests you and your group of friends go, thinking nothing of it. Your best friend invites your frenemy who starts to flirt with your boyfriend. Maybe coming to the haunt was a mistake. Unbeknownst to you, Ramsay sees you’re unhappy and decides to give your unforgivable friends a ‘special’ experience.

Words: 3145

Read on Ao3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12518224

DISCLAIMERS:

1. The radio news audio is directly from the cancelled video game Silent Hills/ P.T. You can find the full script here (http://www.silenthillmemories.net/silent_hills/pt_script_en.htm) You can find the full audio of the radio here but I do warn you this is a walkthrough of the game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-gbWxjzTYg) I do not own any part of Silent Hills. I love the radio news audio, so i wanted to put in this one shot.

2. Historical societies do actually put on real events to invite more people to get involved with local culture. I do urge you all to check out local events this Halloween. They're pretty cool! Some ideas include visiting graveyard tours and going to historical houses for readings of Poe/Shelley/other Halloween-related authors.

Wednesday Morning: Westeros High School, Your Locker, 7:45AM

“13.28.10,” you mumbled to yourself. The lock clicked in your hand. You locker opened to reveal your books, notebooks, and an array of pictures of your friends. You smiled at the picture of you and your boyfriend together. A tap on your shoulder made you turn around.

“Hey babe,” your boyfriend smiled at you. You kissed him hello.

“Good morning to you too,” you smiled.

“Is it cool if I borrow a couple of bucks from you? I forgot my lunch today,” he gave you a puppy-dog face.

“No, it’s not,” you shot him a look. “I just gave you twenty bucks yesterday ‘for lunch’. What happened to that?” Your boyfriend threw his hands up.

“Alright you caught me, I’m smoking a shit ton of pot,” he laughed.

“That’s not funny,” out of the corner of your eye you saw Ramsay Bolton walk up to the both of you.

“What do you want, creep?” your boyfriend said, snatching a paper from Ramsay’s hand. You looked at the orange flyer.

COME ONE, COME ALL TO THE DREADFORT BRING YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILIES BE THERE OR BE SCARED!

“You’re having a haunted house?” you asked Ramsay. “Isn’t your house an old mansion? Like its part of the historical society?” He lit up at your question.

“It is, but my stepmom and other people at the society thought it would good to open it up for guests for a night. Just to spread the word about the historical society, you know?” he smiled at you for a moment and then the smile faded when your boyfriend started to laugh.

“Seriously? A free home haunt? That’s so stupid,” he snorted. Two of your boyfriend’s friends showed up to the scene. “You guys! Check this out, school shooter wants us to come to his house to get scared!”

“That’s rude,” you scoffed at him. “Ramsay, I’m so sorry. We’ll be there, ok?” Ramsay gave you a half-smile and walked away.

“I bet it won’t be even be scary!” one of your boyfriend’s friends shouted after him. The other threw a paper ball aimed at Ramsay’s head. It missed, but you felt bad.

Wednesday Night: Your House, Your Bedroom, 9:05PM

You scrolled through Facebook a second time to see Ramsay’s Home Haunt ad again. Several people had liked it, loved it, and left either angry or excited comments on the picture. Your boyfriend was one of them.

‘First person to get evidence that he worships the devil gets 50 bucks from me! Maybe we should call in a priest huh?’

A lot of people left the ‘haha’ emoji reaction and you rolled your eyes. You heard a ding from your phone to see your friend, Michelle, had texted you.

Michelle: [Pls help me with English homework. Mr. Johnsen is killing me.]

You:[It’s not hard. Isn’t it obvious? Holden Caulfield is a phony.]

Michelle: [Lol! I haaate this guy. Speaking of emo dudes, did you see Ramsay’s ad??]

You: [I did! We should go!]

Michelle: [You’re kidding right? This is Ramsay Bolton we’re talking about.]

You: [Oh come on. He’s not gonna kill us all. Give the guy a break. He has one psychotic episode and everyone thinks he’s going to shoot up the school.]

Michelle:[He’s a creep…but I guess you have a point. It would pretty scary to go to a home of future serial killer lol]

You:[That’s SO mean lol. But we should still go. It’s a really old house. It could be haunted.]

Michelle: [That’s right! Holy shit!!!!! We’re definitely going now. I’ll start the thread. I’m inviting Chelsee.]

You felt your stomach sink. Chelsee was coming. Michelle had been your friend since the 4th grade, but when Chelsee moved in next door to Michelle, everything changed. You wanted to be friends with her so bad, but you could never shake the feeling that Chelsee hated you.

Michelle would always tell you that Chelsee had a funny way of showing her affection for her closest friends. However, when she spread a rumor about your period freshman year, it sure didn’t feel friendly. When you told Michelle, she didn’t believe you. ‘Chelsee says she didn’t do it, I believe her. You’re being paranoid.’

All Hallow’s Eve, The Dreadfort, Front Lawn, 9:56PM

The homes on the northern side of the city were usually a part of the Westerosi Historical Society. Their windows had thick curtains that always seemed to have someone watching you in between them. The dirt and grass sunk in sometimes, and the air always stinged with a chill.

You wore your favorite Halloween sweater that said “I am a Final Girl”. You matched it with a black skirt and tights. You thought you looked particularly adorable.

Your boyfriend held your hand as he and his friends started towards the Dreadfort. They weren’t dressed up in anything particular, but they had Halloween masks with red-stained shirts. That counted right? That’s when you saw her.

She wore a full-on playboy bunny costume. Her ears and corset were a bright-Barbie-classic pink. Her tail was round and fluffy. Her black tights hugged her thighs, and her heels clicked the street. Chelsee.

“Hey guys!” she waved flirtatiously.

“Hello Chels,” your boyfriend said slowly. His mouth almost dropping open like some perverted cartoon wolf. You let go of his hand and crossed your arms.

“Hi,” you greeted both Michelle and Chelsee. Chelsee went to the other side of your boyfriend and grabbed his arm.

“I’m gonna get so scared!” she squealed. “I hope you’ll protect me.”

“You know Max can protect you, right? He benches like 200,” you told her, pointing to one of your boyfriend’s friends behind you.

“It’s cool, babe,” your boyfriend waved you off. “I can protect everybody.” You rolled your eyes and the six of you walked towards the Dreadfort. It was built in the late 1890’s, so the exterior needed no décor. The windows had flashing lights inside, along with some caution tape around the property.

A line of people of all ages lined the front of the house and then some. You watched your classmates take selfies of themselves by the wood and metal ‘Dreadfort’ sign. The line moved steadily, but the wait seemed so long when Chelsee and your boyfriend couldn’t stop laughing with each other.

Soon you reached the front of the haunt, Michelle was taking selfies, Max and your boyfriend’s other friend were pushing each other around, and Chelsee and your boyfriend were flirting right there in front of you. Ramsay’s stepmom greeted your group.

“Hello dears!” Walda said. She wore a 19th century mourning gown. Your jaw nearly dropped.

“Oh my god! Your dress is beautiful!” you said to her excitedly. “Where did you get it?”

“I made it.”

“You made this?!” you exclaimed. You started to hear the snickering behind you. You should’ve known. You already heard the words come from his mouth. ‘She’s so fat! She looks like the fattest witch I’ve ever seen.’ You pretended to not listen.

Walda led your group inside the very first room of the haunt which was the porch. The front door had a hand extending out with a door ring. Chelsee grabbed your boyfriend’s arm again.

“Oh my god, this is so creepy!” she said, making sure to get as close as she could to him.

“We’re not even inside yet, baby,” he responded.

“Baby?” you asked him. “Really? Seriously?”

“Oh come on, I’m just playing. We’re playing right Chels?” he elbowed her back.

“Yeah, don’t get your panties in a twist, Y/N,” she flipped her hair. You turned back and sighed. Your eyes found the porch. You saw the small holes and grooves in the wood. What you didn’t see was the small crack between the curtains with a pair of eyes watching you.

“Come on, we gotta get in position,” Grunt grunted.

“She’s not having a good time,” Ramsay noted. “It’s because of him. What a fucking ass.”

“What?” Grunt asked.

“Nothing,” Ramsay left and Grunt went to the front door for the first scare.

Walda received the sign your group is good to go. She instructed you to knock on the door three times. The door creaked open while classical music filled your ears. The piano seemed to be off, but you took in the same smell of death in the air.

“This is it?” Max says. “This is not—

Grunt comes up behind him and touches his shoulder. Max jumps high in the air and screams. He turns to see Grunt, smiling.

“Greeting guests,” Grunt says in his deep voice, towering over Max.

“You’re not supposed to touch me, dumbass,” Max argued, trying to cover up his fear. “That’s how haunted houses go. The actors can’t touch the guests.”

“Not here. The rules sign outside says we can,” he corrected him.

“The rules sign? What rules?” your boyfriend eyed him down. Grunt pointed to a front window where you saw a group of people reading a sign with rules on it. You put your hand on your mouth, trying to stifle a fit of laughter.

“When you entered your doom, you accepted that we can legally touch you,” Grunt explained. “Now, come, my master has been waiting for you.”

“No way, you can’t be serious!” Max argues.

“Shut up, Max,’ your boyfriend leads the way towards the dining room. A disgusting feast was lain out for you and your friends. Rotting fruit and bloodied meats leaked onto plates. Two maids reached inside their stomachs and presented you with spaghetti screaming, “Eat me! Eat me!”

Chelsee and Michelle shrieked and then laughed it off. Your boyfriend rolled his eyes and kept leading the way through. There was a narrow hallway with old creepy pictures lining the way. A door that said ‘Redrum’ in red caught your eye in particular. You reached for it, only to have a small toddler scream “Redrum! Redrum!” at you with a plastic knife in his hand.

You screamed, but laughed at yourself and the cute toddler who did his best to scare you. The toddler went back inside the closet and you waved goodbye to the little guy.

“This is so stupid,” you boyfriend said aloud. “You call this scary?” Suddenly, your boyfriend shook in place, took his hoodie off, and ran away from the wall.

“Dude the fuck?” Max asked.

“Something touched me! What the fuck?” your boyfriend shifted his eyes around. As you went through more of the rooms, things got creepier. Doors shut on their own. People followed and then unfollowed you.

You were having fun. You screamed and stared off in dark corners. Michelle grabbed you and both of you started to walk through together. Ramsay’s friends and family jumpscared and tricked you all in set ups and traps. Then you noticed your boyfriend and Chelsee holding each other.

“Get off of him,” you said to her. Michelle grabbed you.

“Y/N-

“Get off of him now,” you shouted, going towards Chelsee. She rolled her eyes at you. Michelle gripped you tighter. “Let me go!”

“Come on, it’s not worth it,” Michelle pleaded. You looked back at her to discover the tension in her body. Everyone fell silent.

“It’s happening isn’t it?” you said weakly, turning to your boyfriend. “You’ve been cheating on me. And everyone knows right?”

“Come on, Y/N,” your boyfriend reached out to you. You pushed it away.

“It’s the truth isn’t it?” you turned back to your best friend Michelle. She was looking down. “You knew. You knew all along didn’t you?” Michelle couldn’t meet your eyes. You felt hot tears at the corners of your eyes. Your knees shook as you took your sweater sleeve to wipe the streams away.

Behind the basement door, Ramsay watched the whole thing. You had always been so nice to him. This was wrong. This was painful to watch.

“Ben, remember what I told you if we thought some people weren’t going to enjoy themselves?” he whispered.

“Yeah,” Ben inquired, taking a look at the argument between you and your boyfriend and your friends. “I remember that plan. The Dread Game, right?” Ramsay nodded.

“You know what to do then,” Ramsay took one last look at you. He saw the tears coming down your face. “She deserves better.”

You descended down the stairs and into the dark area. You started to hear some radio audio that sounded a lot like the news.

‘We regret to report the murder of the wife and her two children by their husband and father. The father purchased the rifle used in the crime at his local gunstore two days earlier. This brutal killing took place while the family was gathered at home on a Sunday afternoon.’

You looked around the basement. Flayed bodies hung from the ceiling. One mechanical body shook as it was taking its last breaths. You heard the weak gasping and choking. The news continued.

‘The day of the crime, the father went to the trunk of his car, retrieved the rifle, and shot his wife as she was cleaning up the kitchen after lunch. When his ten-year-old son came to investigate the commotion, the father shot him, too. His six-year-old daughter had the good sense to hide in the bathroom, but reports suggest he lured her out by telling her it was just a game.’

You felt numb, but you had to continue. You were stuck in here with all of them. Chains moved to and fro, and you felt time slowing down. Red ‘x’s were everywhere. You started to hear saw noises. You couldn’t tell what was scarier, this basement or the horrific truth your friends kept from you.

Suddenly, you saw a pair of red converse shoes in front of you. Slowly, your eyes trailed up the body. Ripped jeans with bloodied knees, torn shirt, and a pair of pig eyes staring back into yours. You tried not to scream, but a hand over your mouth took care of that. The pig boy took you inside a hidden closet.

You struggled and moaned until the boy removed his mask. Ramsay put one finger to his mouth. Taking the hint, you nodded your head.

“Watch this,” he whispered. His mischievous smile disappearing as the pig persona took over. Chelsee screamed at the sight of him. Ramsay grabbed her by her hair and pulled her to the wall. He turned on a switch that let out pig squeals in her ear. Chelsee screamed out your now ex-boyfriend’s name. He ran to her, but was tripped by Ben Bones wearing a mask of a distorted smile and sunken eyes.

Ben took your ex and chained him to a cross. You looked to see Michelle screaming at Grunt who cornered her with a working circle saw. Max and your boyfriend’s other friend ran from the basement screaming. Two of Ramsay’s friends ran after them; their faces were falling off their heads. Your eyes went back to Chelsee who screamed and tried to get out of the pair of handcuffs.

“Holy fuck!” your ex screamed. You turned to see Ramsay with a working chainsaw. He ripped it and put it close to your ex’s head. He screamed, but then laughed. “You’re not actually gonna hurt me. You can’t touch me.”

Ramsay ripped off his mask. His sweat-covered hair and forehead shined in the one lightbulb moving to and fro between the boys. He slowly stalked your ex trapped on the cross.

“Or could I?” he taunted.

“No you wouldn’t,” your ex responded. Ramsay placed the chainsaw at your ex’s ankles.

“I don’t think you need to walk anymore,” Ramsay’s threat rolled off his tongue. You secretly enjoyed it. Your ex squirmed in place. Ramsay moved the chainsaw to your ex’s chest. “Or maybe I could cut your heart and keep it in a jar. I could give it away to Y/N.”

“You sick fuck!” Ramsay moved closer to your ex inches from his face.

“Get the girl,” Ramsay commanded. Ben Bones dragged Chelsee in front of your ex. Tears were coming down from her face, her makeup dripped and leaked.

“Leave her alone,” your ex warned.

“What are you going to do?” Ramsay laughed at him. “You’re tied up. I could do anything I wanted. And I do mean anything.” Ramsay took a flaying knife and cut his hand open. Blood trickled out, showing how truly sharp his blades were. He put the blade against your ex’s throat.

“Just let us go, man,” he begged.

“Tell me I’m a sick fuck again,” Ramsay said to him. Your ex mumbled. “Say it again!” Ramsay screamed in his face.

“You’re a sick fuck! Let us go!” your ex screamed. You swore you saw a little pee come out of him. Ramsay laughed and then took his bloody hand and wiped it across your ex’s face, leaving a smear of blood on him. Ben and Grunt untied the girls and let them go. Chelsee struggled to run in her heels.

Ramsay unchained your ex and pushed him against the wall. His right hand on his throat. “Do me a favor, don’t talk to Y/N ever again. If you so much as breathe a word to her, I’ll put your dick in jar.” He dropped your ex to the ground. He made a large thud, and then ran out of the basement, following the girls.

You exited the hidden closet, looking around you. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah?” Ramsay said, smiling. “Was it good enough? Did you like it?” You went to hug Ramsay, wrapping your arms around him.

“Thank you,” you said. You both heard knocking.

“That’s the next group, come here,” Ramsay took your hand and escorted you out of the basement. The air outside was cold and crisp. “Y/N, if you take a left here, there’s a guest house. If you go in there, my stepmom will be in there with my little brother. She has cookies. You know, in case you didn’t want to go home with them.”

“That’s really nice of you to offer,” you looked to the left and started walking. Your feet paused and then turn back to Ramsay. “Can I have your phone?”

Ramsay shrugged and gave it to you. You type in your contact information and hand it back to him. He looked at his new addition to his phone and back to you. “What’s this?”

“My number,” you replied.

“Why would you—

You interrupted him by kissing him on the cheek. Ramsay blinked twice and looked at you for some explanation. “I’m single now, I guess,” you started. “Besides, I think I might like dangerous boys.”

Ramsay smiled at you before going back inside the basement. You could already hear some of your classmates screaming bloody murder. “Well then, you may have found the best one.” Ramsay winked and closed the basement door.

#ramsay bolton #ramsay snow #ramsay x reader #ramsay snow imagine #ramsay bolton imagine #the dreadfort #halloween #halloween one shot #one shot #long one shot #modern au #game of thrones fanfiction

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infinitehours · 5 years ago

Text

Chapter 1

This fic is based off of The Haunted Mansion “Story and Song from the Haunted Mansion” audio. It will also be based deeply off of my first impressions of the ride itself when I was a kid going on it those first few times in my life.

Also, if you’re wondering why there isn’t much description on our two main mortals, it’s because I felt it best to leave that up to the imagination (there was never much description in the original either). I know I can’t get away without descriptives for every character though, so I’m not going to try for that, but hopefully it wasn’t too jarring.

~~~

Trigger warnings: ghosts, death concepts/discussions, murder, suicide, abuse, blood, lots of scary stuff (horror), implied sexual abuse, cursing (damn and hell), drug abuse, domestic violence, attempted rape (never completed; in a later chapter).

Other Author notes: There’s supposed to be an audio of the Big Ben chime (to parallel the demonic clock and represent that this is the realm of mortals), but I can’t currently find a way to create this audio file. So. Imagination I guess.

Someone created a recording of the Big Ben clock from Parliament Square. Cars and all, it definitely sounds like a city. I will link it here in case you all want to hear it and use it to help your imagination, but it was NOT made by me, and as such it is NOT officially part of this story:

https://freesound.org/people/Noise%20Cuisine/sounds/47098/

___

Table of Contents Link

~~~

Ch 1: Miss Jackson

Have you ever seen a haunted house? You know the kind I mean. That old dark house that’s usually at the end of a dimly lit street. The windows are broken and boarded, and the shutters hang loose on their hinges. The trees have grown wild, their branches brush against the sides of the weathering house making strange noises in the night. There’s a high vine-covered fence around the property. Is it there to keep somebody out, or is it there to keep something inside? It’s a house that people avoid walking past at night. Strange sounds come from within the walls, and it’s said that eerie lights have been seen both in the attic window and in the graveyard at the side of the house.

Seen, at least….by some….

Our story revolves around this mysterious mansion….

But I’m getting a-head of myself…aren’t I?

So let me ask a different question…

Have you ever been chased?

He was panting the whole way.

Round the corner where the pastor liked to play his accordion.

Over the iron wrought fence that blocked off the alley from the cars.

Through the double doors of the unused library.

Out the back.

Through the nook by J. H. Thomas’ shop.

And over the broken manhole right to the berry-red bench in the tiny cranny.

Michael knew the route like the back of his hand, spent every day of his life traversing it. Or, at least, every day of his High School life, which was the only important part of your life you considered when you’re fresh faced and under twenty.

But they were right behind him, he could swear they were, thumping along and hollering; you could only run for so long. The clock of the church chimed from somewhere a ways away, in Big Ben style; Six PM.

He jostled a trash can on his way, half-heartedly hoping that it might slow his pursuers down as he rounded the corner. The relief that flooded him when his target, a bench, came into his sights was a thankful feeling

For all of five seconds.

Then he was yanked back by his collar, just out of reach of his fragile safety net. Falling to the hard concrete, three faces loomed into his view; three black leather jackets swarming around him and his red hoodie like vultures around a recent bloody kill

Jacob Matheson. The head vulture, front and center, grinning over his recent (and recurring) victim.

He was the son of the owner of the largest retail store in town, which earned him a bit of a celebrity status in the sleepy rurals of northern Virginia. Probably the only reason why he was the leader of his little gang.

“What’s your hurry, huh?

Michael grimaced as a boot came down on his chest

“I…ugh. I was just on my way back home..

“Liar. You live other way.”

“What’s the super special occasion?” Another boy said. “We never see you out anymore, Mikey-Wikey. You wouldn’t go off without at least saying ‘hi’, would you?”

“Our feelings might get hurt. You wouldn’t want that now would you?”

Michael refused to answer that, wincing as the toe of the boot dug deeper into his ribs

“So how you going to make it up to us, huh? How much you got on you?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re a really terrible liar, Mikey.” Jacob gestured towards the others.

Two seconds later and they pried Michael’s hands off of his pockets to start their rummaging

“Nice. A whole twenty.”

“There’s more than that! What’s this?”

The other boy held a miniature keychain of a football, twirling it around on one of his fingers

��That’s mine. Give it back!” Michael lunged, yet the boy had already tossed it to another

The three jeered and danced around him, taking turns with the keychain.

“Ooh. Almost got it that time!

“Gonna practice your jumping skills with us, huh?”

“Good dog!”

“Go get it, boy!

“You think we can teach him to beg?”

“You want it?? You want it?? HA!”

Jacob was last to receive, and Michael turned to him in irritation. “You have my money. You played your little game. Can you just leave already?”

“I don’t know. We just got here.” A murmur of agreement. “What are you doing with this thing anyways? Pining for the good ol’ days when you were still on the team?”

“Aw, Jacob. Can’t you see he misses playing?” One of the other vultures said.

“Oh. I’m sorry. Did I say that too soon? How long’s it been? Four months? Five? Got your leg all healed up nicely?”

One of the boys pretended to make a pass at his left leg, causing him to jerk into the defensive. Jacob flashed a grin at the sight.

“Still not in tip top shape, huh? Considering what happened, playing with this little football is probably the closest thing to a real game you’ll ever going to get for the rest of your life. But don’t worry, Mikey.”

Jacob’s little wicked sneer only grew smug.

“I’m sure the rest of the team will do just fine without you. You were just the water boy, weren’t you? Most benched player ever in ol’ G. H. T. High. Quite the honor.”

Michael gritted his teeth; he never cared too much about playing football, but he also didn’t need to hear this.

“But you can come play with us any time. We don’t mind that you’ve got a bum leg. In fact, how about you go long right now?”

Jacob pulled back with a sinister little smirk and a clear intent to throw it straight to the roof of the nearby apartment building. Unfortunately for him, the football was snatched just before he let it loose.

“Wow, what do you know? A real life wannabe biker gang in their native environment.”

The football’s new owner was a welcome sight. A pink sweater, a black skirt with an embroidered horse, a white blouse, and the look of someone who had just ate a whole bag of sour gummy worms (Jacob and his gang tended to have that effect on people).

“Ugh. It’s the girlfriend. Go away, Karen. Nobody invited you.”

“As if I need an invitation to rain on your parade. If you’ll give back the money that I’m sure you stole, we can be on our way and I won’t have to tell anyone about this.”

A speck of realization later and Jacob was staring at Michael with an even wider grin than before.

“Wait, is SHE why you came out of your house? Date night? OooooOOOoooooh. Kissy kissy.”

The boys started making smooching noises, prompting Karen to let out a sigh of frustation.

“Mr. Vance! Mr. Vance! The jerks are back and they’re threatening your customers!”

“Whine all you want, what’s that old geezer even going to d-“

“Come over here, Mr. Arrow. There’s a bit of vandalism I think you ought to look at.” A much older man in black stained overalls came seemingly from out of nowhere, seemingly gesturing for the chief of police to follow. Jacob’s face dropped.

“Scram!” Jacob said, not even waiting for his friends before booking it straight out of the alley. They were generous, at least, if only in the fact that they threw Michael’s money back in his face.

Mr. Vance watched them retreat and let out a long, drawn out sigh. “You kids okay?”

“As good as can be, I guess.” Mike said.

“Thanks for pretending for us, Mr. Vance.” Karen said.

“A little lie goes a long ways sometimes. I only wish I could convince an officer to hang around here. Could do with a little less thieves. Those three are gotta get their comeuppance sometime.”

“Yeah?” Mike grabbed his keychain. “I’m still waiting for that to happen.”

“Might come sooner than you think. Well…come in then. I’ve got your package in.”

Mr. Vance took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow; the wrinkles that lined an otherwise middle aged face seemed particularly discernable that evening. Coupled with the silvery threads of his hair, anyone who didn’t know any better would have had the man pegged for a senior citizen. But he was very much in his thirty’s, at most, and the reasons for why he looked so aged had often been the subject of discussion in town.

Especially considering that his store was easily one of the most important places around.

The big retailer shop that lay in the heart of town was nice, but they often didn’t carry specialty items (and didn’t appreciate you asking to order them). That was where Mr. Vance and his store came in. Sure, it was tiny and cramped, and there was always a heap of unsightly broken bits of rusted metal in the corners near a large creepy portrait of a woman holding a skull, but there was so much of the place that was filled with mysterious and old objects, books galore, and more candy than you could ever possibly eat in your entire lifetime. The man had no organization to speak of, so whenever a person cared to carouse the shelves they were almost guaranteed to find something wondrously unexpected.

Karen loved it here. As much as Mike liked old nick-knacks himself, it was mostly for her sake that he stepped foot inside time and time again. Whenever she would examine a row of clocks or ancient utensils or even the words on the spine edge of a book, her whole demeanor would brighten up. He loved watching her when they were here, she would always hold a smile on her face as she delicately traced a finger over things that were several times her own age.

Currently, she seemed distracted with an old timey animation device. He couldn’t remember for the life of him what the things were called, but they consisted of a cylinder with slots for viewing, and had an image painted all around the insides. The images were slightly different, so that when the cylinder was turned quickly it would simulate movement. Animation.

Unfortunately, the one that Karen found seemed to be broken. She couldn’t get it to spin, the painted crows were forever stuck in place…

“M-miss Jackson? I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there. You’re here….early.” Mr. Vance said.

Mike looked up….the air somehow felt…colder as his eyes fixated on the lone figure standing in the middle of the room.

The strangely dressed lone figure standing in the middle of the room, who was most certainly not in the middle of the room a few seconds ago.

A deep green dress like a thick moss on a dark forest floor, with a pinstripe blouse and matching apron. Dark brown hair and vivid blue eyes were part and parcel of a face that oddly looked both amused and bored all at once. And the bit of frill and bow on the top of her head seemed to so wonderfully match her attire yet be so terribly out of place in a modern day setting.

She looked like a maid. An old-fashioned maid. A very lost old-fashioned maid, considering that there were no buildings nearby that were large or rich enough to need to hire one.

“My….employer…” There was surprisingly nothing strange or unusual about her voice, “…is rather anxious tonight, so I had hoped to present to him the items I had ordered. If you happen to have them ready, of course.”

“Y-yes…Yes. You…you wouldn’t happen to have come alone, Miss Jackson, would you?”

The girl smiled wistfully. “Are we ever truly alone?”

Mr. Vance visibly gulped. “Right…of…of course not. I-I-I got your package right here. Oh..Michael?”

Mike tore his eyes away from the woman back to the shopkeeper. Mr. Vance’s demeanor seemed….suddenly different. His face had gone a little pale, and there was an almost imperceptible waver in the way his voice cracked.

“Would you…would you mind waiting a bit while I wrap up Miss Jackson’s items here?”

“Uh...Yeah, no problem.”

“Thanks.”

Mike headed over to where Karen had been curiously watching the whole exchange.

“Is there a costume party we weren’t invited to?” He asked her jokingly, earning a smile.

“She looks…kind of familiar. Like I’ve seen her around…just…not in that getup.”

“Yeah…I feel like I’ve seen her around, too. But I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to her before…”

She turned back to the animation device….and found it….spinning. Ever so gently.

The painted crows began to flap their wings, rhythmically in time with the cylinder.

But then…faster. And faster. And furiously faster still, until the image was a seamless representation of the act of flying.

“Mike….” Karen said, the nervousness clear in her tone. The device was not electronic, yet seemed more than willing to move completely on its own.

Even he was a little hesitant to touch it, yet his mind was made up when he could feel the warmth of her fingers clinging to his.

Clap. His hand clamped down on it. When he let go, the device obediently remained still.

“Heh.” Mike’s laugh was more nervous than amused. Karen’s hand squeezed his again. “Must be off balanced or something. Speaking of spooky, though, did you check out the way Mr. Vance was- ”

“Are you going back to the cliffs?” The voice behind him interrupted.

Mike spun around to find himself face to face with the strange woman. Up close, it was more obvious that she couldn’t have been more than a few shades older than either of them, despite her rather timeless attire.

“Yes….we are…” Karen anxiously responded, “But how did you know that?”

“I’ve watched you go up there. The house I stay in happens to be nearby.”

“Where?” Mike butted in, “The only buildings up that way are all abandoned or mostly destroyed. It would be kinda hard to live in any of them. It’s pretty much a ghost town.”

“Yes…” The woman said, a faint smile on her lips. “Yes, you’re right.”

He couldn’t tell what she meant by that. Was she saying that she wasn’t living in any of those buildings?

Karen coughed. “Um. Well I like your dress. The green looks very pretty on you.”

“Oh thank you. I think so too. It also makes my employer uncomfortable and likely brings up awkward memories for him. Which is the other reason why I wear it.”

He and Karen exchanged a funny look. He couldn’t tell which was odder, the fact that she purposely wore something just to make her employer uncomfortable or the fact that she just casually dropped this information to complete strangers like it was a normal subject to talk about.

“Miss Jackson? Your items…” Mr. Vance interrupted.

“Of course.”

The shopkeeper seemed to hesitate as he handed her a bag full of several individually wrapped parcels.

“One of these…you do know one of these things on your list is…”

“Illegal?” The young woman didn’t mince words or even flinch, which is more than what Mr. Vance did in response, “Technically it’s not, if people only bother to read the law anymore. But yes. I’m well aware. But as you are quite aware, my employer is not concerned with legal matters…Anymore.”

“…I’m well aware.” He softly said.

“Will I see you later then?” The young woman said as she turned to leave.

But Mr. Vance kept his head turned away from her and firmly on a broken clock in front of him, eventually squeezing his eyes shut as though he could will her away.

“…Have a good evening then, Mr. Vance.”

“…Same to you, Miss Jackson.”

Before she left the shop proper, the woman turned one last time to Michael and Karen.

“By the way…Tom Sawyer’s road is the faster way back to town if you’re coming from the cliffs. And if you’re ever caught in an unfortunate rainstorm, please do stop by. You’re more than welcome to hide under our awning.”

“We...never go to the cliffs on a rainy day.” Karen said.

“Never say never,” With the twist of a tiny smile, the woman left the shop.

The atmosphere grew quiet.

~~~

And it remained silent for a solid minute.

“…Hey Karen? You can get our stuff, right?”

“Wha-?”

Before she knew it, Mike had just thrusted the twenty in her hands and ran out the door.

“Hey…Mike!”

“What’s he doing?” Mr. Vance said, his brows furrowed in concern.

“I think he’s trying to catch up that woman. Who was she, anyway? I don’t see her often enough around.”

“That’s because she doesn’t live in town. That’s Eleanor Jackson. ‘Nell’ for short. She’s up near the cliffs.”

“Where near the cliffs?”

Mr. Vance handed her two glass bottles of crème soda and a heart shaped package. “I’m sure Michael would be very insistent that you don’t open it until you’re together.”

Purposefully changing the subject.

“…And you said that women asked for something illegal…”

“Now don’t you repeat anything you’ve heard here…”

“I…I won’t. But is everything alright? If she’s forcing you to do something illeg-“

“It’s not like that.”

It was said so forcefully and emotionally that Karen took a step back.

“…It’s not like that.” Mr. Vance said, softer this time, “But you should go and stop Mike. Nothing good will come of him following after Nell like that.”

Package and soda in hand, she started to do just that.

“Karen.”

She paused.

“…Don’t always trust Nell. She often only gives you half of the truth.”

With that statement freshly turning in her head, Karen went out into the alley looking for Mike.

He didn’t get very far; right around the corner he looked up at her sheepishly from the ground, while a friendly face tried unwind a long bit of fishing line.

“I tried catching her, but…”

“I think I ended up catchin’ a young ‘un instead.” Mr. Mortimer flashed a grin at her before untwisting the hook from Mike’s jacket, “You ain’t quite the fish I be looking for, lad.”

Mr. Mortimer was a fisherman. Probably by trade, too, as that’s the only thing she’s ever seen him do. He always had a fishing pole in one hand, his trusty (but peculiar looking) tackle box in the other, a smile on his wrinkled face, and a song on his lips. Very few people in town could ever say that they hated the man, even though he did always smell like fish.

He was also frequently wet, as he claims he never had good balance and constantly fell in. She had no doubts about that. The sight of him trudging around soaked in the frigid air….She often felt freezing just looking at him….

“Are you alright, Mr. Mortimer?” Karen said, offering to help him up. His hands were cold as usual.

“Aye I’m alright, I’m alright. No harm done,” With Karen’s help, he stood steady on his feet again, “But tell me young ‘un, what had you such ‘n a hurry? Who were ya chasin’ after?”

“Some lady we saw at the shop.”

Mr. Mortimer flashed him a joking grin. “Chasin’ after another while you got your young lady here?”

Karen snorted.

“Hey! No! That’s not what I meant! Karen!” Mike didn’t find it as amusing as they did, and gestured her to help him out.

“Mr. Vance said her name is Eleanor Jackson.”

Mr. Mortimer’s eyebrows rose in recognition.

“You know her?” Karen asked.

“Aye.”

“Did she come down this way?” Mike said.

“Sorry, young ‘un, I didn’t see anyone but yourself.”

“But I could have sworn she turned here…”

“She be a sweet girl, no doubt. But you’re best off not followin’ her home, for your own good.”

“Mr. Vance said something like that…” Karen said.

“He be a smart one. Is he in today?”

They nodded. Before they could say anything else, Mr. Mortimer bid them good day and went off to the shop.

“Mr. Vance didn’t want to answer any questions about her either…”

“Everyone’s acting funny about her. I don’t get it.”

“Well…let’s not worry about it anymore. I really want to go to the cliffs tonight before it gets too dark,” She shook the heart shaped parcel slyly, “What’s in the box?”

“Three guesses,” Mike grinned.

“Hmmm,” She held it up to her ear and closed her eyes, as though she could somehow divine the answer, “Caramel chews, sour worms and…black licorice gummy bears?”

“Right on all three counts!”

“Do I get a prize?”

“Do I count? Or are you still mad at me because I went ‘chasing’ after someone else?”

“I guess I can forgive you,” She said coyly, giving him a peck on the cheek.

They walked off together, hand in hand, too distracted with each other to notice the growing storm clouds overhead….

Storm clouds the weatherman never predicted.

Storm clouds that never moved from their position above the woods that led up to the cliffs.

#chapter 1

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unto-myself-together · 8 years ago

Text

Of Stories and Songs: A Haunted Mansion Fanfic Ch 1

Ok. If I keep going on fretting about how imperfect this chapter is, I’m never going to get it out.

I have now edited a TON of stuff in this chapter.

~~~

Table of Contents:

Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 , Chapter 4 , Chapter 5 ,

Chapter 6 , Chapter 7

~~~

Ch 1: Miss Jackson

Seen, at least….by some….

Our story revolves around this mysterious mansion….

But I’m getting a-head of myself…aren’t I?

So let me ask a different question…

Have you ever been chased?

He was panting the whole way.

Round the corner where the pastor liked to play his accordion.

Over the iron wrought fence that blocked off the alley from the cars.

Through the double doors of the unused library.

Out the back.

Through the nook by J. H. Thomas’ shop.

And over the broken manhole right to the berry-red bench in the tiny cranny.

For all of five seconds.

Jacob Matheson. The head vulture, front and center, grinning over his recent (and recurring) victim.

“What’s your hurry, huh?

Michael grimaced as a boot came down on his chest

“I…ugh. I was just on my way back home..

“Liar. You live other way.”

“What’s the super special occasion?” Another boy said. “We never see you out anymore, Mikey-Wikey. You wouldn’t go off without at least saying ‘hi’, would you?”

“Our feelings might get hurt. You wouldn’t want that now would you?”

Michael refused to answer that, wincing as the toe of the boot dug deeper into his ribs

“So how you going to make it up to us, huh? How much you got on you?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re a really terrible liar, Mikey.” Jacob gestured towards the others.

Two seconds later and they pried Michael’s hands off of his pockets to start their rummaging

“Nice. A whole twenty.”

“There’s more than that! What’s this?”

The other boy held a miniature keychain of a football, twirling it around on one of his fingers

“That’s mine. Give it back!” Michael lunged, yet the boy had already tossed it to another