#HAVE YOU NEVER EXPERIENCED GRIEF? HAVE YOU NEVER HAD LOSS? HAVE YOU NEVER LOVED SOMEONE WHO IS GONE? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

icysnails · 1 year ago

Note

Hello. I was wondering if you could you write a platonic angst story where the reader is Blade's child. I was thinking that because Blade barely spends any time with the reader unless it's during one of their extremely harsh training sessions the reader decides to run away especially after one particularly rough training session where the reader was injured after they accidentally talked back and that night the reader starts packing their stuff but they accidentally left behind their late mother's pendant and Blade found it the next morning. (I hope you're okay with writing this and I wish you a good morning, afternoon or good night ☺️)

Family.

A/n: Hello Anon!! Thank you for your request!! I am so sorry this took so long- school + extracurriculars started so I had way less time to work on writing outside of school (TvT) But this was so much fun to write! I got a little bit carried away and it ended up being a found family type thing with all of the Stellaron Hunters– I tried to focus on Blade being a father figure as much as possible though! I hope you have a fantastic day, and I hope you enjoy!! ૮꒰ ˶• v •˶꒱ა ♡

Warnings: all relationships are platonic, found family trope, betrayal, suicidal ideation (Blade), mentions of death, reader's parents are dead, flashbacks, reader runs away, mention of bullets + broken glass, overthinking, Blade being insecure, reader uses a sword, reader gets injured a couple of times (If i forgot anything, please let me know!!)

Genre: angst, slight fluff

Pairing: father figure!Blade x gn!child!reader (PLATONIC), mother figure!Kafka x gn!child!reader (PLATONIC), sister figure!Silver Wolf x gn!child!reader (PLATONIC)

Word count: 7.3k

Blade is a cruel man.

There is no love in the red pools of his irises, no signs of any humanity. Dark circles adorn the skin just below his merciless stare, eyebrows slightly furrowed in an eternal state of aggravation. It was no wonder enemies cowered at the mere mention of him. He holds nothing back, and if an enemy was unfortunate enough to meet the steely edge of his sword, they were sure to be broken and lifeless by the end of the encounter. Unfortunately, he isn’t much different off of the battlefield either.

Blade is bitter and selfish and cold, to the extreme that even Kafka and Silverwolf are convinced that he has forgotten how to feel.

The thorns of the mara in his veins torment him constantly, the pain never faltering, even after decades. The other Stellaron Hunters had begun to wonder if those thorny, agonizing vines had punctured through his heart as well. It would be understandable, to an extent. After all, he is a man who has experienced endless with suffering and loss, his mind poisoned with grief and the sole desire to die. No more pain, no more fighting, just darkness- the mere thought was enough to drag a bitter smile out of him.

He was used to the dark, used to feeling like an empty vessel.

But why, if he was so familiar with agony, would he impose that same feeling on you as well?

You had always been alone. You were only a toddler when your parents were taken from you, the only proof of their existence being a necklace your mother left with you before she died. You had spent your youngest years void of any parental guidance, hopelessly wandering between foster homes and planets, hoping someone would take you in. You gave that up by age ten, running away from your home planet to travel the galaxy. From that point on, most of your time was spent sneaking onto Starskiffs, hiding in empty cargo compartments on any moving vehicle you could find, and even stealing authorization keys to search occupied space stations, all in search of someone whom you could call family.

But what exactly did the word family mean?

You always thought it was a strange word. It had such a subjective meaning, yet it was talked about so often. You didn’t understand what it meant, and no textbook definition could help you. All your efforts to find its meaning were in vain. And yet, your curiosity haunted you.

With every new destination, the word family buzzed among the crowds constantly. No matter where you had landed yourself, all you could do was spectate. You watched as children laughed and clung to the legs of their guardians, as relatives sobbed in unified grief over flower dressed gravestones, and as teenagers linked arms with each other, growing away from the protective grasps of their parents.

Every planet you traveled to, every dragging, lonely step you took, that sickening, seemingly joyous word that made you feel so isolated was there.

Six months after you had ran away, you went out alone to buy food. It was late at night, and you were preparing to head off to another planet the next day. Luckily, you bumped into a nice shopkeeper earlier who gave you some extra credits because she thought your coat was cool (in reality, she was just worried about you wandering off all alone, but didn't want to pry about your parents' whereabouts). So, you headed out amongst the crowds as you always did, pouch of credits in hand and determination plastered on your face.

But a woman stopped you on the way there and asked why such a young child was wandering around alone at night. She had a little girl with her, who looked no older than you.

She asked you if you had any family she could call to come and get you, with the assumption that you were lost. You couldn't say anything. Instead, you just stared, your wide-eyed gaze pinned on the child that almost mirrored you. Almost. Perhaps if the world were kinder, your eyes could have donned the same innocent, joyful light. One of her hands was encased by her mother’s, while her other hand kindly reached out towards you. A cheerful “hello!” rang through the air as she tried to shake your hand.

You stepped away from her. It was hard to breathe. You had seen all this before. Yet why was it so painful this time?

Internally, you demanded the Aeons to tell you why the truth of your situation had to be rubbed in your face so blatantly. You were alone. You wondered if it might be good to explain that to them, to create some kind of connection with these people, but no words would leave your throat. Your heart felt like it was splintered in two.

You didn’t know how long you stood there staring, but you were sure the devastation tearing you up inside was evident on your face. The woman called out to you one more time, her worry falling on deaf ears as you backed away slowly. You took one more look at the girl before turning on your heel and running as fast as you could, sobs wracking your chest so deeply it hurt.

You hadn’t returned to that planet since then.

You wanted the life that little girl had. You wanted to have a guardian.

But as the years went on, nothing changed. Your travels continued, and you came to terms with the fact that you might never know what family felt like. You made acquaintances as you traveled, friends, even. They never stuck around for long, though. The darkness always swallowed them up one way or another. And with every loss, the painful void in your chest numbed and steeled over a little more.

You thought that your life would always be this way. In truth, you had forgotten that there was any other way to live.

However, that was before a certain group of Stellaron Hunters swept you away from your life of solitude, and recruited you into their dangerous yet thrilling world.

A year later, you found yourself on a sand covered planet. You were on a train, heading to one of the planets' larger cities from a smaller town. There wasn’t any way you walk- it was too hot and the distance was too far. Otherwise, you would have spent your savings on something other than train tickets.

The trip was uneventful and for most of it you just stared blankly out the window, exhaustion and boredom settling in your bones. You were tired from running errands for the previous town's residents- it was onerous but it happened to pay well. Though you were happy to have a break, your mind wasn’t used to the quiet. The barren landscape outside did nothing to help. It was a dry, flat expanse that was dotted only with dead weeds and the scraps of broken automatons. In short, nothing of interest.

Aside from that, all was going well. You had enough credits to last you at least six more train rides and get food and extra supplies, and you had several acquaintances with whom you could stay in the next city. You made a point not to talk about your budgeting skills, as it would usually spur a torrent of questions from whoever you were talking to. You couldn’t blame them though, children your age typically didn’t devote themselves to a life of aimless travel.

The train stopped right on time, and you stepped onto the platform that was crowded with people. As usual, you were met with the sight of teary-eyed relatives hugging each other, children running around and playing, and couples greeting each other. You kept your head down, feeling more inconvenienced than sad. In their excitement, the crowds always seemed to block your path to the other platforms. Besides, they say time heals all wounds, so why would you care, anyway? You awkwardly shoved your way toward a nearby stairwell, grunting as several people bumped into you. Just as your fingers made contact with the stair’s banister, ear shattering sirens echoed throughout the station.

Emergency lights flashed on and off in a blinding rhythm, the red glow engraining itself into your mind. Suddenly, pixelated bullets flew towards the ceiling, shattering several of the glass panels. Screams rang out in response, and the previously happy crowd flew into a panic, ducking to avoid the broken glass. However, the glass shards evaporated into more pixels before they could hit the crowd, preventing any damage from being done.

Amidst the swarms of people trying to escape, you cautiously walked closer to the source of the commotion. You really shouldn’t have, but the nagging curiosity in the back of your mind compelled you to do so. And even if it seemed dangerous, there was something off about this incident. After all, if the initiators were out for blood, wouldn’t they have attacked the crowd directly? If whoever caused this wasn't intending to cause harm, they must be looking for something.

As you got closer, you saw three figures: A magenta haired woman with lightless eyes, a pistol in one hand, and a glowing thread of purple silk in the other. She was leaning back against one of the platform’s pillars, watching the whole scene with fake amusement. The second person you saw was a smaller girl decked out in a myriad of purples and blues, her drill style ponytail swaying as she typed up coordinates on a hologram screen. And lastly, you saw a red eyed man with a glare so sharp it made your heart sink. You certainly did not want to be subject to whatever rage he had stored away. From the looks of it, he could kill you in a split second.

For some reason, all three of them seemed familiar. You couldn't quite place it, but you quickly realized, you knew who they were. Their faces were plastered on all of the IPC’s wanted posters, which were scattered on literally every planet you had been to so far. You couldn’t remember their names exactly, but you knew that, together, they were known as the Stellaron Hunters- the universe’s most wanted criminals. You should have recognized them from the pixelated bullets earlier- how could you have been so naive?

You could have tried to run, but it would be futile. You were already out in the open, and they had already seen you.

Your eyes widened in sheer panic as the man dressed in black set his gaze on your shaking form. There was no way you’d survive this encounter. Absolutely zero chance. He stepped toward you but was interrupted by the sound of a clanging of a spear. The station’s security officers surrounded the Stellaron Hunters, demanding that they freeze and turn themselves in immediately.

You covered your ears and ducked as a fight broke out, the Stellaron Hunters throwing themselves into battle. Your eyelids were screwed shut in fear until the sounds of fighting had ceased. When you opened your eyes, you looked up to see that all of the guards had been knocked out, and that the taller woman standing above you, watching you in a way that was eerie, yet... comforting somehow. Even so, your better judgment caused you to back away, frantically scrambling on the hot cement of the platform. The red eyed man yanked you to your feet before you could stand up, and a panicked noise left your throat as he dragged you toward his two companions. you caught a glimpse of his sword that was poised in his other hand, taking note that he was ready to strike if necessary.

“It’s a kid.” He grumbled, still glaring at you.

The tall woman chuckled and took a step forward, observing the way you struggled to get out of her companion’s grasp. You were getting more anxious by the second, she could tell. No matter how strong and collected you acted, you were still just a kid, and you had the minimal strength of one.

“Let them go, Blade. I don’t think they mean any harm.”

Small, scared breaths left your throat as you were released, your shaking legs failing to hold you up. You fell to the ground, staring in shock at all that had occurred. What would have happened if they didn’t let you go? How much danger were you really in, and how the hell were you still alive?

Then, the monotone voice of the grey haired girl met your ears.

“What a waste. Looks like those signals were nothing but a glitch.” She sighed. “There's nothing for us here.”

The scary man who grabbed you- Blade, as the woman called him- looked down at you crumpled form, eyes softening just the tiniest bit. Your fearful gaze met his, and you didn’t dare move. The two other hunters made conversation about their next moves in the background, while Blade narrowed his eyes coldly.

“Why aren’t you running?”

…What?

“Go. Lingering here will only bring you suffering”

Your fearful gaze then turned to one of confusion. It was unclear if his words were meant to be a warning or advice. Either way, it gave you the strength to pull yourself off the ground and attempt to respond, but all that came out of you was a strangled groan. Your body hurt, and everything had happened so fast that your mind was still trying to catch up. It wasn’t that you were trying to make an impression by staying, you just couldn’t bring yourself to run because of the adrenaline coursing through you. You hunched over and placed your hands on your knees to get your bearings. After a few minutes, you finally responded.

“Y- yeah, I… uh…” You hesitated, unsure of what to say. “...I have another train to catch...?”

It came out like a question, which was unintended. It was the truth, but you were so nervous that you would say something wrong and provoke him. Your life may have been spared for the moment, but they could still change their minds, and you didn't want to re-dig your own grave.

The man beside you let out a small sigh before turning his gaze back to his two companions.

“Fine.” He muttered.

A few moments passed with you and Blade sitting in comfortable silence. or, it was comfortable him, at least. He was still and silent, ignoring you entirely. You just kept fidgeting the whole time, unsure if you should stay or run for the hills. It was borderline suffocating. thankfully, the tall woman came over again, ending your misery.

“Well, we’re off.” She said to Blade, prompting him to walk towards the edge of the platform where the smaller girl stood. Before walking off, she turned to you one last time.

“Take it easy, kid.”

Something in your heart screamed at you to speak up. A strange urge began eating away at you, telling you that if you didn’t do something right now you’d regret it for the rest of your life. But do what? What could you do without potentially dying? It was stupid. And dangerous.

But that old feeling of longing, that desire to be a part of something wouldn’t leave you alone. Your desperation to attain a family of your own had been reawakened. Your undying hope, which laid dormant for years, was now ruling your judgment.

Just as they turned to leave, you stumbled forward and cried out.

“Wait!”

All three heads turned towards you.

A purple set of eyes knowingly scanned you as you trembled, a smirk growing on the woman’s face.

You anxiously gripped at your clothing, trying to summon up the courage to put on some kind of brave face for them. Before you think, pleas for them to take you with them were spilling from your throat. You told them that you wanted to see the universe and that if they gave you that opportunity, you’d do whatever you could to assist them. It was a partial lie- exploring the universe did sound fun, but it wasn't what you were truly after. Your true motivations were far too personal to tell them just yet. It felt like a wound had unexpectedly reopened ever since they arrived, and you were sure you’d crumble if you forced yourself to explain.

Luckily, you didn’t have to. You had the strangest feeling that they already knew your story to some extent. Even without the influence of your longing, you couldn’t deny that it was the opportunity of a lifetime. It wasn’t every day that you came across three highly skilled fighters who could quickly travel anywhere they wanted. You could save years worth of credits and injuries if you went with them.

Once you had finished your frantic explanation, you took a breath to calm your pounding heart. The silence you were met with was deafening, which you took to be a bad sign. A deep chuckle reverberated through the elegant woman’s chest as she took a decisive step closer to you. She hummed in amusement, holding her hand out for you to take.

“You may not be crucial to our mission,” she leaned down to your height, voice almost a whisper, “but if that’s what you want, then who are we to disagree?”

You took her hand, heartbeat slowing to a calm pace as you did so.

The days you spent with the Stellaron hunters were some of the most peaceful days you had ever experienced.

You weren’t constantly slinking around trying to find information and resources for your travels, and it was the first time you had slept in a room that had officially been dubbed as your own. You weren't hopping between inns and the homes of your few friends. Even expenses weren't an issue anymore. It felt strange to have time on your hands. Guilt inducing, even.

You didn’t get too caught up in that though, since the confusion and questions plaguing your mind happened to be stronger than your melancholy. It was beyond your understanding how three of the most dangerous criminals in the entire universe could be so kind and willing to take you in. Perhaps it was because you had seen too much. You were a witness to Blade knocking out over ten armed guards. However, they were so powerful that they seemed to be able to get away with anything. Either way, you were a part of their goup, and that's what mattered.

As time went on, you grew closer to the Stellaron Hunters. Especially Kafka, who you learned was much less intimidating in regular life, and Silver Wolf, who was still as deadpan as before, but seemed subtly happier with you around. You also were officially introduced to Blade, and were promised that he wasn't always so brooding. That was hard to believe, though.

Silver Wolf was like a sister to you. She dragged you with her everywhere. She said it was a part of your duties to accompany her on errands, but in reality, she just enjoyed having you with her. Whenever a battle presented itself, she would have you on the sidelines cheering for her as she obliterated enemies in the blink of an eye. It was clear that your support went straight to her ego, but she also secretly wanted to impress you so that you'd view her as some sort of mentor. Silver Wolf wanted to be a reliable guide and friend to you, especially after you had been alone for so long. Thankfully, you didn’t mind spending time with her. In fact, chatting and playing video games with her became one of your favorite ways to kill time. The latter was clearly her passion– after all, her combat techniques were solely revolved around her exceptional hacking skills.

Silver Wolf taught you how to play all her favorite games, staying calm and patient with you when you kept losing. Often, she would discreetly take you out to arcades during your free time, and every time it would be humbling due to your lack of gaming experience. However, losing meant that you had more time to watch her win, which was never boring. In any other situation, you might have been jealous, but it was just so mesmerizing to watch her play. Besides, she gave you all her prizes, so you weren’t going to complain. But what you found to be even more amusing was watching her lose it over the few games she hadn’t mastered yet. Her face would contort into one of sheer disbelief and anger as she held onto the machine tightly, aggressively mashing buttons and mumbling insults. You would always laugh and try to cheer her up in response. It always gave her a huge ego boost, and convinced her to try again, despite still being angry. You never expected to gain such a dear friend when you joined the Steallaron Hunters, and you wouldn’t trade any part of your friendship for the world.

Kafka was another story, though.

At first, Kafka terrified you. She held so much power over the other hunters- well, really over everything, that you were sure she’d destroy you if you stepped out of line. Her empty eyes and ruthless reputation didn’t help either.

Ever since your arrival, Kafka kept a close eye on you. She made sure that you were alright as you settled in, and that you weren’t feeling unsafe or lonely in your new environment. She offered you comfort and advice and cared for you like the mothers you had witnessed on your past journeys.

One night, a month after you had arrived, you hurt your leg on a walk and Kafka was right there to patch you up. She shushed you gently as you tried to protest that you were fine, and dragged you to the nearest chair so you could sit. She took a first aid kit from a nearby cabinet, and began tending to your wound. You winced as rubbing alcohol combined itself with your blood, and you quietly explained that you had been doing this your whole life- that it wasn’t her job to take care of you. Kafka paused and looked at you, eyes showing a rare glint of sadness. She whispered to you that those days were over. You weren’t alone anymore, and you should ask the three of them for help whenever you needed it. You weren’t a burden to them.

Kafka wasn’t sure what the cause of it was, but something in her chest began to ache when she saw you injured. She had never felt fear before. She deemed it impossible before you came along. She had always been known as a ruthless, unshakeable force of danger, who would stop at nothing to achieve her goals. But now, she had to keep you safe. Part of her wanted to berate herself for getting so protective over someone, for willingly weakening herself by caring about you. But you needed safety and a group of loving people to return to. You were just a kid, after all, and even after the short time you had been traveling with them, she had begun to feel like your guardian.

Tears filled your eyes, her words weighing down on your lungs. You couldn’t truly believe her. Not after all you had been through. But even so, Kafka was right in front of you, smiling softly, waiting and willing to take care of you. She wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. It was a foreign feeling, one that scared you more than anything else. But you were safe. You were at home.

So you let yourself cry. Your heart split open, all the bottled up agony from your past finally bursting out. You curled into yourself, the gash on your leg long forgotten. Kafka kneeled before you and gently wrapped her arms around your shaking form. One of her hands carded through your hair, while the other rubbed your back soothingly. Gentle whispers fell from her lips, promising you that she was with you. You were safe.

You weren’t sure how long had passed when you calmed down. Maybe it had been hours. Whatever the truth was, Kafka remained by your side, not pulling back until she was sure you were okay. After you had stopped crying, she leaned back, meeting your sad, exhausted stare. She looked down at your bleeding wound, grabbed a roll of bandages, and cautiously wrapped it around your leg. When she was finished, she smiled and stood up, placing a hand on your shoulder. You matched her smile, assuring her that you were fine.

However, after a moment, Kafka’s comforting smile was replaced with a teasing smirk. Confusion sparked in your eyes and your eyebrows furrowed as if to silently ask what the problem was. She just chuckled and took a seat across from you, crossing her arms over her chest and tilting her head back as though she was assessing you. Her next words not only shocked you but caused your entire being to wilt in annoyance and anxiety.

“I think it’s about time we start training you in combat. If a scrape has you in this much pain, imagine the damage a real battle would do. We can’t have you dying on us, now can we?”

She paused, thinking for a moment before reaching her conclusion.

“Yes… I’ll have you train with Blade. His abilities never disappoint.”

And that was how your ongoing feud with Blade began.

When Kafka decided to pair you up with Blade, you were pissed. However, you knew she was right. If you were falling apart just from accidentally scraping yourself, how were you supposed to handle actual threats? You would be utterly useless in a fight. And if anyone managed to get past the Stellaron Hunters and attempt to harm you, you would be dead on the spot. There wouldn't be a fight, just abrupt darkness, and a very disappointing end to a life such as yours. It would shatter the hearts of Kafka and Silver Wolf, who had already sworn to protect you at any cost. As you got older, the target on your back only became bigger. With the Stellaron Hunters’ reputation becoming more notorious by the day, civilians and authorities alike were bound to find out about you. Self-defense was a necessity.

But Blade never spoke to you. You felt as though you were a nuisance to him. Just another issue to be dealt with, another soul to pester him throughout the day. The way he glared at you made you wonder if you had done something wrong, or if you were imposing by being around. He made you feel out of place. Even after thorough reassurance from Kafka and Silver Wolf that his behavior was entirely normal, you still couldn’t help but worry. It was only after several months had passed that you came to understand that it truly wasn’t you- he was just grumpy. And that began to annoy you. If he wasn’t open to being somewhat nice, then why should you bother? You could glare back just as hard, and ignore him just as easily. If that's what he was getting at, then so be it. However, Kafka was the leader of both of you, and she wanted you to train. Despite your mild hatred of Blade, Kafka already had done so much for you. She only wanted the best for you. You could at least attempt to abide by her wishes.

So you gave in and begrudgingly stated training with Blade.

For a few hours every day, you and Blade would find any open area and he would walk you through different defense techniques. You expected the technical side of it, but you did not expect that you would be sparring right off the bat. On the first day of training, he threw you into your first match and charged at you with the assumption that you had sharp enough reflexes to block him successfully. Obviously, you weren’t at all prepared since you had zero experience with combat. Turns out Kafka really wasn’t kidding when she said Blade knew how to fight.

Lessons carried on like this for weeks. You would return from sparring exhausted and bruised, feeling completely done with everything as you limped to your room to sleep. You felt generally bitter, making it hard for Kafka or Silverwolf to help, and Blade just acted like it wasn’t his problem. The most he did was help you up, and that was only if you put up a good fight. But thankfully, after a while, Blade began to notice how badly the sparring affected you. It wasn’t like you were on the brink of death, but you were still in pain. And given your age, there was no doubt that it was a lot more overwhelming than anticipated. So Blade subtly began to take care of you a little more. It wasn’t much- he mainly just gave you icepacks whenever you needed them and helped you walk, but it was the most he knew how to do. He was clueless when it came to caring for people, especially children.

You were a persistent kid, which Blade found surprising. He thought you would have given up within the first week of training, but you just kept working at it. And while Blade found your stubborn behavior annoying most of the time, it assured him that you had enough courage to fight alongside him and the others. He knew you didn’t like him much, and he knew a part of you blamed him for the injuries you got, which was reasonable. As annoying as you found him, Blade never gave up on you, even when you messed up or got so frustrated that you cried. He never babied you during these moments either. Instead, he would walk you through what went wrong and have you run through the solution until you had it down cold. Even if you were upset, he wanted you to push through it and use your anger to become stronger. You had been fighting your whole life. You had the tenacity and potential to gain the strength that you required. Blade could tell that, even after joining them, you wanted a purpose. You wanted to explore the universe and find your place among the glowing webs of stars. However, the beauty of the galaxy came with dark and unfamiliar territory. If you were to traverse the universe, you had to learn how to handle to darkest parts of it.

Little by little, you improved. You worked as hard as possible until you were able to withstand Blade’s strength and evade his attacks properly. You had a long, long way to go before you could actually defeat opponents, but you could at least hold them off, which was just as important. Despite how grueling Blade’s teaching methods were, you did come to respect him more as your mentor. He looked out for you in his own distant ways and seemed to actually care about you. In truth, Blade had started getting protective over you- not that he would admit it. It wasn’t an overbearing kind of protectiveness- he just wanted you to stay out of trouble. It was nice to pass knowledge onto someone, and protect them from the world's dangers by doing so.

The truth was, even if Blade acted indifferently toward you, he secretly was really proud of you. He admired your kindness, even after all the pain you had been dealt. You kept smiling and picking yourself up, finding your back to the light time and time again. Perhaps that's what made you so different from him. His will to keep fighting was growing fainter by the day.

Even with your differences, you both became closer. Blade kept an eye on you whenever you left the ship, talked with you whenever you got bored, and even helped you whatever chores you had to do. Sure, you were stubborn, but Blade never grew to dislike you. Your relationship felt routine and safe- it held a sense of comfort that felt normal. Blade caught himself questioning if this was what family was meant to feel like. He couldn't remember, but a faint, distant memory assured him that it was. If he could contribute to the familial safety you longed for so much, he would gladly do so.

Was that even possible, though?

Blade had very little experience with love of any kind. Any memories he had of his past friend and family were long gone. His own sense of self was unstable, so how could he provide stability for you? He couldn't bear the thought of causing you pain. Or, there was a chance that he would rub off on you. That you would start to become like him. That prospect was enough to make him feel sick. So he began distancing himself from you in any way he could.

Now, whenever you crossed paths he would treat you especially coldly. Most times he saw you, he walked past you and pretended you didn't exist at all. He was back to being rude and dismissive, even more so than when you first met him.

Instead of encouraging you during training, he would call you weak and pick apart everything you had done wrong. This was not received well by you. After all, you didn’t know if Blade’s behavior was your fault, or if this was just how he truly was. You felt dejected and lonely, even with the support from Kafka and Silver Wolf. Though you loved them immensely, Blade was also someone you cared about, and you didn’t want to lose another parental figure. After weeks of being ignored, hatred replaced any good image you had of him. What used to be a safe, happy friendship soon morphed into an incessant rivalry.

It felt like Blade only wanted to see you unhappy. You imagined that he was secretly gloating over your distress- that you were nothing more than a temporary amusement to him. But you were wrong. So, so very wrong. Blade hated seeing you upset because of him. He was failing you by ignoring your wellbeing. You were just a kid. More importantly, you trusted him.

But it was for your own good, wasn’t it? His past was dark, and perhaps he was too, by nature. He would never forgive himself if he allowed harm to come to you. Even if that meant leaving you behind. No, he would much rather watch you grow up and live happily from afar.

Kafka still wanted you to train though, so Blade couldn’t avoid you entirely. Sparring was the only time he saw you anymore. Your sessions with him were difficult, but not because the material was hard. In fact, it was harder for Blade than you. You would glare at him constantly and show complete indifference to everything, making it nearly impossible to communicate with you. He wasn’t doing much better either- he couldn’t bring himself to say anything to you. It felt like the consequences of his neglect were crawling up his back, ready to snap at him at any moment, and he knew that any day now, you would finally break. Soon, everything would fall apart.

You knew Blade was heartless, but his cruelty was amplified when you trained with him now. He went all out, forcing you to scramble for scraps of knowledge he had previously given you to win. But that wasn’t enough this time. You were too tired, physically and emotionally, to continue. You felt smaller and weaker than you had ever felt before.

Lightning-fast blows struck you from all sides, the scent of bloodstained spider lilies clouding your senses. You weakly pulled your sword out of its sheath and tried to block his attacks, but doing so would knock you off balance from the force of his blows. You fell back on the ground, coughing and clambering to your feet, promptly hurling yourself towards Blade with hopes of hitting him just once. Built-up anger from the last few weeks rushed through your heart, tears of desperation dripping down your cheeks. God, you were tired of this. Blade used to be your friend. You wanted to know what changed, and you wanted that piece of your family back.

In your fury, your reaction time fell short. Blade darted behind you and shoved you to the ground, watching coldly as you crumpled over in defeat. A glint of regret shone in his eyes, but he quickly covered it up by turning his back to you. Once more, you picked yourself up, your throat burning from the lack of a break. It must have been hours since the start of your match, but it might have just felt that way because you were the one getting injured. Never before had Blade fought you this hard. You weren’t prepared, and he knew that. You internally questioned if he was actually trying to make you despise him, albeit sarcastically. It hadn’t occurred to you yet that it might actually be the case. You shakily lifted your head to look at him, angrily mumbling something that Blade couldn’t understand.

Blade took a breath and turned around to face you, blank expression unwavering.

“What was that?” He growled. The world seemed to fall silent as you locked your gaze with his in an act of defiance.

“I said, I hate you!”

You hated that you were crying. You hated feeling weak. You hated what he had put you through.

But you didn’t hate him. Not entirely.

You wanted to hate him fully. You wished you were strong enough to. But even then, as you wiped your tears and walked out, you couldn’t bring yourself to hate him. Maybe it was the memories you had of when he felt like family, maybe it was inherent kindness or just plain stupidity. You couldn’t feel hatred. All you felt was dejection. So naturally, you began spiraling.

If Blade didn’t want you around, there was a chance Kafka and Silver Wolf didn’t want you either. If it was possible that they secretly hated you too, you wouldn’t allow yourself to withstand their rejections as well. You might as well just get out of their way, and save yourself the trouble. It was nice feeling happy for a while. But it wasn’t what you were made for. It wasn’t how you were used to living. Perhaps this was a sign that your destiny rested in the familiar arms of solitude, away from the glowing crowds.

That night, when you returned from training, you bid Kafka and Silver Wolf goodnight and began packing your bags. When you were sure everyone had gone to sleep, you took your leave. You slipped out of the ship’s main entrance, the frigid night air numbing the uncertainty in your chest. You started walking, not sure where you were headed. You were out of practice with your usual travel routines, but that wasn’t important. As long as you were away from the Stellaron Hunters, you would be safe. Lonely, but safe. But even with your half hearted reasoning, you still felt a sinking feeling that this wasn’t right. That you might regret this. You shoved it off, cursing at yourself quietly for getting so softhearted. It was time to cut ties. It was for the best.

However, you had made one vital mistake. While preparing to leave, you had purposely left behind any photos or items given to you by Kafka, Silver Wolf, or Blade. In your rush to leave, you accidentally left behind something incredibly important to you: your mother’s necklace.

You took it off and left it on your desk by accident. It was the last existing link between you and your biological parents and you cherished it because of that. So when Kafka found it the next morning, along with your neatly made bed and discarded photos, she knew something was very wrong. Silver Wolf burst into your room shortly after she found them, questioning Kafka about your whereabouts. She had no answer, all she could do was say she hadn’t seen you. Silver Wolf left worried and agitated, grumbling about how they had to find you. As Silver Wolf left, Blade approached your doorway with the intent of finding you for your training session, because at this point you would have been late. Gripping the necklace tightly, Kafka turned to face Blade. She knew there tension had been growing between you and him for the last month. If he was the cause of your absence, she would not let him get away unscathed.

Blade’s expression was serious, but Kafka could see the glint of confusion in his eyes. He seemed entirely clueless, so perhaps interrogating him wouldn't do much.

“There’s no sign of them anywhere on the ship,” she said softly, trying to keep her voice steady. “There’s only this.” Kafka gestured to the thin chain that lay forgotten on your desk. Dread immediately shot through Blade’s heart.

You had left.

And it was all his fault.

He neglected you. You had every right to leave. He was meant to be a guardian to you. It was his job- no, his privilege to keep you safe, and failed to do so. And now you could be anywhere in the galaxy, wandering aimlessly once again. Blade carefully took the necklace, trying to keep his composure as questions and visions of the worst raced through his mind. What if they never found you, or what if you had gotten hurt? What if it was too late, and you were already–

He didn’t allow that thought to finish itself. Catastrophizing would only slow the process of finding you.

But would you even want to come back? Why would you, when you felt unwelcome enough to leave in the first place? And even if, by some miracle, you came back, would you ever trust him again? If you ever granted him forgiveness, would he even deserve it?

This was what he wanted, wasn’t it? That was why he pushed you away- so you would leave him alone. You were gone now, and he had gotten what he wanted. Was he truly so terrible that he would still be unhappy, even after he had achieved his desire?

It wasn't meant to go like this.

You weren't meant to leave them. It was his fault though, so maybe it was best to let you go.

Kafka’s piercing gaze bored into the side of Blade's head as she watched the gears turning inside his head. She took a short breath before heading towards the door. She was scared of losing you, and angry that they hadn’t noticed your absence until now. There was no time for emotions such as anger. You were missing. They had to find you.

Blade stood in the center of your room, now entirely alone. The metal of your necklace dug into his skin as he clutched onto it for dear life, his eyes falling to the pictures on your bed. You seemed so happy before. So did Kafka and Silver Wolf- he was happy too, though he was reluctant to admit it out loud. He had broken the loving family you had brought together. A strange family, but a family nonetheless.

Blade kept staring. He wished he could go out looking for you. Unfortunately, wishes are not reality.

Blade would not search for you that day. He would be chained to where he stood, fighting with himself internally as time slipped by quietly. You could have died already. And he was just standing there, staring.

No, he would not look for you.

Because the truth cannot be denied, nor masked with excuses- in the end, Blade is a cruel man.

One who cannot be changed by anything.

#honkai star rail x reader #hsr x reader #blade x reader #yingxing x reader #blade x reader platonic #kafka x reader #silver wolf x reader #stellaron hunters x reader #gender neutral reader #hsr angst #hsr fluff #blade x you #hsr x you #kafka x you #silver wolf x you #honkai star rail #platonic #angst

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sluttysnowangel666 · 3 months ago

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Home Is Where the Heart Is - jace velaryon x reader (request)

summary: in a modern au, jacaerys must return home from studying at uni to help his stepsister care for his younger siblings when their parents and brother die. The step-siblings already complicated relationship grows more and more tense given the circumstances, and they find themselves being each other’s source of comfort in hard times.

cw: stepsiblings, death, angst, grief, emetophobia warning, childhood trauma, modern au, modern!jace, smut, idiots in love, mutual pining, slow burn, talks of abusive/ unhealthy relationships, jealous jace, NO INCEST(except daenyra but like not really bc it’s au) not entirely canon, drinking, use of Y/N

this one was hard to write for me, given i’ve experienced parent loss. i put a lot of emotion and personal experience into this one so pls be gentle with this one if you don’t like it.

I - The Leave

To say you and your step brother had tragic lives was a bit of an understatement.

Jace’s father, Harwin, had died in a fire when he was a young boy. Your mother had died in her birthing chambers having you. The paths your lives had been on as children shifted, leaving your parents to remarry when you and Jace were both only 15.

You initially did not get along. Jace did not like your father Daemon, and you did not like Jace’s mother Rhaenyra.

Over time though, you both acclimated to each other. You grew closer as the years aged you. By the time you both turned 19, you were thick as thieves. You had comforted each other through heartbreaks, similar childhood trauma, navigated what it meant to grow and change as people, and protected each other from the rest of the world.

Jacaerys was your best friend, and you were his. In another universe maybe, you could’ve been more than that. But it seemed in this world you were only meant to remain as blended family.

So when Jacaerys told you he was leaving to go across the country to Uni, your heart nearly split in two.

“What’s in Manchester?” You ask him.

“A school.” He replies sarcastically. You throw a pillow from his bed at him.

“No shit.” You say as he throws it back. “But why’d you pick one so far?”

He pauses, not wanting to reveal the honest answer. Truth be told, he found it more and more difficult to keep his secret around you. He needed to go simply for the fact he was falling in too deep, deeper than a stepbrother should fall for his sister.

It was hard seeing you every day of his life yet never being able to be with you. He saw you with other men, which ignited a jealousy in him he didn’t even know that he had. He couldn’t stand being around it, couldn’t stand lying to your parents when you snuck out of his bedroom window, couldn’t stand watching you allow yourself to get treated like shit by men who provided nothing. If you had been his… in another life… things would be different.

“I just think I’ve outgrown London.” He says, continuing to pack his clothes.

“I hope you love it.” You tell him. You were so sweet, so kind to everyone. You hadn’t deserved the hand life had dealt you. He only wished you could see the love you deserved, he wished he could show you.

He felt sad leaving you, but he felt better knowing you would be safe with mom and Daemon. He knew you would take good care Aegon and Viserys. He knew you would care for Joffrey and Luke too. Even though they weren’t your blood you loved them like they were.

“When do you go to get your rental car?” You ask him.

“In the morning. Then I’ll drive non stop to Manchester.”

“Hm.” You hum while petting his cat, Vermax. “He will miss you.”

“I trust you’ll take care of him for me.” Jace says.

“I will, besides he’ll have Arrax and Syrax to keep him company.”

“And what about you? Who will keep you company?”

“Don’t you worry about me, Jacaerys. I will get by.” You say. He looks at you, comfortable on his bed with Vermax on your lap. “Perhaps you’ll even meet a girl in Manchester.”

“Perhaps you’ll meet someone who won’t cheat on you.” He says, a random anger appearing out of nowhere.

“Don’t be fuckin’ rude, Jacaerys.” You say. “I’ve done nothing to anger you.”

“No, you’ve just allowed yourself to be treated like shit by men and I know you will continue to when I leave.”

“I don’t see how it’s your business anyway.” You say. “But be like that if you wish. I have a tampon I can throw in your bag if it’s that time of the month.”

He sneers at you, waving you away with his hand. You stand to leave. “Goodnight, Jacaerys.”

“Wait.” He says, grabbing your wrist as you open the door. “I’m sorry… I’m just… scared. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

“You have nothing to worry about Jacaerys.” You say, taking his hands in yours. “You’re gonna do great.”

You look into his eyes, but he looks past you at the door. His hand pushes it shut, and you look at it, then back at him. “Jace?”

He presses his lips onto yours and you pull away, shocked. You both stare into each other’s eyes in silence, both of you gasping in shock at what just happened.

Neither of you had any idea what to say to each other, so you pressed your lips back onto his. His hands rested on your waist, pulling you into him. You wrapped your arms around his neck as he backed you onto his bed. You landed on the pile of clothes on his bed, letting him in between your legs while playing with his pretty brown curls.

“Bubby!” Viserys yells, coming into Jace’s room. You practically kick Jacaerys onto the floor. Viserys doesn’t seem to notice what you two were both up to, too distracted with his mission. “Have you seen Aegon? We’re playing hide and seek, mommy said check in here.”

“No, Viserys! Get out.” Jace says on the floor. Viserys sticks his tongue out at him.

Your heart was racing from the fear of getting caught by your sibling, clarity hitting you in the face.

“I’ll help you find him, Vis.” You say, standing and leaving Jace’s room, avoiding Jace’s eyes that were pleading for you to stay.

The next morning you all woke early to say goodbye to Jacaerys. He’d wanted to text you during the night and ask you to come to his room so you both could talk, but he gave you your space.

Your family all said goodbye to Jace, helping him bring his bags to the car and giving him a tearful goodbye.

You waited by the car door and he walked over to you with a gentle smile. You both stared into each others eyes, pleading.

Tell me to stay. I’ll stay. His eyes begged yours.

Stay. Your eyes begged.

But in the end neither of you said a word. Instead you wrapped your arms around him in a tight hug, and he did the same.

He moved you by your hips away from the car door, getting inside and avoiding your eyes. Your family all waved goodbye to him, saying they loved and were proud of him.

He drove off, staring at you in the rear view mirror.

That was the last time your family was all together.

II - The Photo

A few months had gone by since Jace left, and neither of you had spoken. You occasionally stalked his Instagram to see how he was doing though. He had been traveling, getting sunburnt, clubbing, DJing apparently. A hobby you hadn’t expected him to pick up, but one he had nonetheless. He had made two friends you noticed often, Cregan and Benjicot.

He was doing good. He was handsome, growing into a man. You missed him, in ways a stepsister shouldn’t miss her stepbrother. You dreamed of him often, even sneaking into his room at night every once in a while just because you missed his smell.

You stole oversized shirts he left behind, sleeping in them. You messed around on his PC, playing games like Roblox knowing he would get home and think it was Luke.

One day you had been mindlessly scrolling on Instagram when you saw Jace was tagged in a post by Cregan.

It was the two of them… and a girl. Jace’s arm was wrapped around her and they were practically connected at the hip. You gasped softly, trying to find who the girl was.

Her name was Sara, and she was obviously Cregan’s sister. They had the same sharp features.

“Slut.” You mumbled to yourself. You liked the post to be petty.

Jace’s heart dropped at the notification. It was the first interaction, if you could even call it that, that you two had shared since he left.

He wondered if you were jealous.

You were. You wondered if they were hooking up, or even dating.

They weren’t, she was a lesbian, but he knew the photo would get your attention.

Jace had told Cregan about your kiss, and Cregan wanting to be a wingman posted the photo in an attempt to get you to message Jace.

It didn’t work, and slowly you both started to move on from each other. You never exchanged any texts or calls or letters, and another year and a half would go by before you would reunite under the most unfortunate circumstances.

III - The Loss

You’d awoke in the middle of the night to a frightening knock on your door, a knock that only comes when there is bad news.

And bad news had come indeed.

Rhaenyra and your father Daemon, as well as Lucerys died in a car accident.

The news was debilitating for you and your walls had broke down.

You called Jacaerys in the middle of the night, and when he seen that call he knew only the worst had happened.

He answered, his voice shaking. “Y/N?”

“Jacaerys.” You sobbed into the phone hysterically. “Jacaerys, come home please. You have to come home now.”

“Y/N, I’m on my way. Y/N, please please calm down, you’re scaring me. I’ll be there in the morning. Do you want me to stay on the phone with you?”

“No, Jacaerys, just please get home as soon as you can.” You sobbed, and he heard your brothers crying in the background too.

“Okay, okay.” He said, beginning to cry. Cregan heard the commotion and awoke from his side of the dorm.

“Are you alright, brother?” He asked, his voice groggy with sleep.

“I don’t know, I don’t know. Y/N called me freaking out, the twins and Joff were crying too. I don’t know what’s going on. I think it’s my parents.” Jace said crying.

“I’ll drive you to London.” Cregan said, immediately dressing.

“You-sob-don’t-sob-have to.” Jace cries.

“Dude, you’re in no condition to drive. Don’t worry about it.”

“B-But it’s a four hour drive and there’s-sob-classes-“

“Dude. It’s fine. Alpha Drac for life, right? I’ve gotchu.”

Cregan drove them to London without stopping once, speeding 15 over the limit the whole time. Jacaerys cried half the car ride, then fell asleep the second half.

Cregan pulled down your street, waking Jacaerys before reaching the driveway.

“Be safe. Call me when you can.” Cregan says, but Jace was already sprinting out of the car door and tripping up the stairs.

He burst into the door, saying your name, mom, luke, anyone.

He ran into the living room, waking you from the couch where you had pulled out the hide-a-bed and were sleeping with the twins and Joffrey.

You immediately started crying when you saw him, trying to stay quiet so you didn’t wake the boys.

“Oh, Jacaerys.” You pulled him into a hug, and you both sobbed into each other.

“Is it mom and Daemon?” He asked, knowing the answer but fearing the worst.

You nodded. “And Lucerys.”

Jace pulled away from you. “You’re lying.” He said in a whisper.

“No, Jacaerys, please listen-“ He turned and walked away from you upstairs. You followed right behind him as he turned into Luke’s empty room.

He fell onto Luke’s bed, screaming into the pillows. You laid behind him, rubbing his arm and sobbing into his back. You kissed his shoulders, quietly saying a prayer for your broken family.

He sat up, “Oh my god, I think I’m gonna be sick.” He said, leaving to the bathroom.

You followed again, holding his hair back as he got sick into the toilet and sobbed. You sat on the edge of the tub, and when he was done he rested his head onto your thighs continuously sobbing while you rubbed his hair and sobbed with him.

You eventually walked downstairs when the sun began to rise, and you both laid down and fell asleep next to your brothers, not letting go of each other once.

You both only slept for a few hours before you woke up, seeing your brothers awake and sitting in silence.

“Jace.” Joffrey said, and he and the twins all moved to lay on Jacaerys. He held them, wanting to cry more but there was nothing left.

“Kids?” The door opened and Rhaenyra’s aunt and uncle Rhaenys and Corlys, her cousin Laena, and your cousins Baela and Rhaena walked in.

Rhaenys and Corlys were also Jace, Joffrey and Luke’s godparents. Joffrey and Jace immediately greeted them, while you and the twins remained seated. They were not your family, and you had only met them a few times.

Your father could be an ass, so he had a lot of enemies you could say, including majority of Rhaenyra’s family.

Thankfully they had been kind and sympathetic of your grief and the twins as well, knowing you all were now also without a father and mother. They were your father’s enemies, but not yours.

Corlys and Rhaenys pleaded with you and Jace to foster Joffrey so they could teach him about the Velaryon family business in overseas trading, as they had done with Lucerys.

You wanted the best life for your siblings, so you let Jacaerys decide for his blood brother. You knew Joffrey would be better off with them and his older cousins, but Jace said no.

“Our family is here. We need to stay together from now on.” He told his aunt.

“Jacaerys, you’ll have to return to Uni at some point. You’re so close to being done. How do you expect Y/N to raise three children on her own so young?”

“I’m not going back.”

“Jacaerys!” You yelled at him. “You have to finish school.”

“No. My decision is final. We’re staying together. Nobody raise the matter again.”

The funeral was a few days after that, and it had brought all of Rhaenyra’s family as well as Daemon’s weird and mysterious friends from all over the world.

People gave you and Jace their condolences, as well as tons of money. You knew Rhaenyra was rich from inheriting her father Viserys’ estate, which Jace would now inherit in turn, but Rhaenyra’s cousins and aunts and uncles and friends wanted to make sure you both were well set on top of that inheritance so that you and Jace could take care of your siblings with no trouble.

It was a generous thing, money, but it didn’t bring your family back. It didn’t matter how many checks they wrote, you couldn’t cash them to heaven.

“Brother.” A deep voice said.

You and Jace turn your heads to see Cregan and his sister approaching you.

“Cregan?” Jace embraced him in a hug, both of them holding each other for a moment.

“Hi, I’m Sara.” Sara said, taking the moment to introduce herself. “I’ve heard nice things about you.”

You turned your nose up at her, thinking she was being sarcastic. She wasn’t but despite your attitude she was polite to you anyway, knowing you were heavy with grief.

“It’s nice to meet you, I’m sorry it couldn’t be under better circumstances.” Cregan says to you, hugging you as well. You appreciated them coming, knowing it meant a lot to Jacaerys to have them there.

Jace took your hand in his, both of you in all black, staring at the three caskets. You thought he held your hand for your comfort, but it was for his.

The guilt Jace felt was huge. He hadn’t been there, he had left to Uni for his own selfish reasons. It didn’t matter how many people told him it was okay, he was trying to get an education, it wasn’t the real reason he was there. He left to get away from you.

And that own selfish reason he had for leaving… he thought it could be the reason why your parents and brother were now in the ground. If he had stayed, they might have too.

“Jace?” Your voice was muffled. “Jacaerys?”

“Hm?” He asked, your voice pulling him back to reality.

“They want you to say a few words.” You said. He looked around, noticing his family was looking to him to say the final goodbyes.

“Will you come with me?” He asked. You nodded, standing with him to look over the caskets.

He said a few words of love and praise to his now lost family, holding your hand the whole time. You both couldn’t recall what he said, only having said it for the others around you.

You both grabbed a pile of dirt, throwing it onto the caskets. Jace winced when it landed on Luke’s.

“Are you okay?” You asked, rubbing his arm. He shook his head no. You brought his head to your lips, pressing a gentle kiss on his temple. “Me either. But we’ll be okay… someday.”

He liked to believe that what you were saying was true.

IIII - The Recovery

Jacaerys moved home, taking a leave of absence from Uni. They were more than generous with him, giving him as much time as he wanted to decide when to return. You begged him to reconsider, but he was set in his decision.

You both stepped into a parental role, playing mommy and daddy 24/7. And by god’s grace for some reason those kids to listened to you.

You did everything Rhaenyra and Daemon had done like bathing, cleaning, cooking, laundry, etc. You and Jace had become a power duo at the household chores just like they had.

Neither of you worked, taking time off to grieve and you also really didn’t need to work due to Jace’s inheritance.

You both contemplated moving. The house held bad memories for you both, but you dared not touch your parents and Luke’s room. Neither of you had the strength to even go in the rooms anymore, nor uproot your little brother’s lives by making them move from the house they were raised in.

You and Jace never talked about the night before he left, instead focusing on the chaos of two teenagers raising three young, rambunctious boys.

A year went by of this lifestyle, making it three years since your initial kiss and a year of your parent’s and brother’s passing.

In a way, you both had moved on. You were older, forced to mature quicker than you’d have liked, raising three kids, unable to focus on the past of what once could have been.

Cregan and Sara moved down to London following their final year at Uni, requesting you both to come out and celebrate their birthday.

You both hesitantly agreed, given the boys had all just left a day before to be with Rhaenys and Corlys for the summer, and you had not experienced what it was like to still be a young adult in almost a year.

You had nearly forgot life could be fun when you weren’t being a parent.

You all met up at a sports bar since Cregan had wanted to watch a soccer game, and it was packed.

You managed to find a table, but it did hardly anything. Bodies were packed in there like sardines to see the world cup final.

You and Sara both sat, sipping on a cocktail while the boys got more drinks. You weren’t particularly keen on being left there alone with her, given you hadn’t cared for her since you didn’t know what had gone on between her and Jace when they were at Uni.

You made polite small talk, but Sara was a certified yapper. She’d find anything to keep the dying conversation going.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Sara asked.

“Uh, nah. Haven’t really had the time nor the want with the kids and all.” You said, sipping your drink.

“Maybe you ought give girls a try.” She said. “I did once and I’ve never gone back since.”

“Yeah, maybe.” You chuckled. “Wait, what?”

“What?”

“You’re… a lesbian?”

“Don’t look so surprised.” She said.

“Well, I thought you and Jacaerys-“

She spit her drink out onto you, laughing at even the idea. You wiped your face off with a napkin, trying not to smash your drink upside her head.

“And this whole time I had no idea why you hated me.” She sat back, crossing her arms and smirking. “No wonder… This whole time you thought I was in love with Jacaerys.”

You couldn’t hide the little smile that crept on your face.

“Oh, sweet thing… Jacaerys is all yours.” She looked over at him at the bar. “I think he always has been.”

“So… were there any girls at Uni?” You asked.

“A few.” She mumbled, hesitant on telling you. “I’m sure you had a few back here as well.”

She wasn’t wrong, but it still hurt knowing Jace had moved on too during the time. It hurt knowing girls were getting his love that you desperately craved.

“He told me and Cregan about your kiss.”

“That was a long time ago.” You say. “We both have bigger things to worry about now rather than a moment in time three years ago.”

“I know you love your brothers, Y/N. I know Jace does too.” Sara says. “But don’t forget to take care of yourself. It’s okay to be selfish sometimes.”

You looked at Jace, who was making his way back to your table with more drinks. His eyes caught yours, and he smiled at you. He didn’t do that a lot anymore since they died.

“I got you a negroni, my lady.” Jace says, setting your drink in front of you. You roll your eyes with a smirk.

The four of you drank all night while watching the game, you and Jace loosening up the more alcohol you consumed.

The night had spiraled out of control, the four of you separating from each other.

You found yourself at the bar, ordering more drinks, Sara was in the bathroom with a girl, Cregan was busy arguing and growing closer to a fist fight with Germany fans, and Jacaerys was busy searching for you on the wrong side of the bar.

A man sat beside you by the bar while you waited.

“Her next drink’s on me.” He said to the bartender.

“No, that’s fine actually. I’ve got a tab open. My drunk friends will find out in the morning they paid for it.”

He laughed, and a blush creeped across your cheeks. “What if I had been ordering 15 shots? Then what would you have done?”

“I would have paid for 15 shots.” It was your turn to laugh now.

“What’s your name, pretty?”

“Y/N. What’s yours?”

“Jason Lannister.”

“Nice to meet you.” You say. He was kinda cute, and the thought made Sara’s words from earlier echo in your head.

It’s okay to be selfish sometimes.

“Actually, you can pay for my drink.” You say.

He smirks, pulling out his wallet. “What’s your poison?”

“Surprise me.”

He bought you both a few rounds of shots, and you grew more confident and more drunk with each one.

“I’m gonna use the bathroom.” You drunkenly slur.

“Do you want me to come with you?” He asks. You say yes, taking his hand and dragging him along behind you.

You got lost on the way to the bathroom, instead ending up dancing in the middle of the floor.

You were chest to chest with him, his hand on your lower back as you leaned up to kiss him. Your hands held tight onto the collar of his shirt, which was keeping you from falling. He matched your energy with the kiss, his hand tangling in your hair.

His other hand snaked its way to your inner thigh, his fingers tickling the skin under your skirt.

“What the fuck are you doing?!”

“Huh?” You pulled away to ask Jason, drunkenly wondering how he was able to talk while kissing you.

But it wasn’t him yelling, it was Jace.

Time slowed down for a second, and it all happened in slow motion as you watched Jace swing his arm to hit Jason in the jaw.

Jason stumbled, holding his jaw and glancing back and forth between you, Jace, and Cregan who had noticed the commotion and came to back up Jace.

“The fuck, Y/N?!” Jason yelled at you, pushing your shoulder lightly, but you were drunk and uncoordinated so you fell.

Jacaerys practically jumped on Jason after that, punching him over and over in the face.

“Jacaerys, stop, now!” You yelled. “Cregan, stop him!”

Cregan didn’t help the situation, only helping Jacaerys jump Jason.

“Oh my fuckjng God.” You yelled to yourself, trying to pull Cregan and Jacaerys off of Jason.

Bar security came, kicking you all out and banning you forever. You didn’t care about that though, you were just pissed at Jace for embarrassing you like that.

You, Cregan, Jace, and Sara took the taxi home in silence.

Cregan and Sara had immediately went to bed downstairs, while you angrily stormed up to your room.

“Are you seriously angry with me?” Jace asked, following you into your room and closing the door.

“Get out, Jacaerys.” You said, both of you sober by this point from all the adrenaline of the last hour of events.

“I was just protecting you!”

“From what?” You laugh, frustrated.

He had no answer. He knew he had only attacked the guy out of jealously, seeing you kiss a man that should have been him.

“Why would you do that?” He asks, his voice laced with sadness.

“Do what?” You ask, rubbing your eyes as you felt a headache forming.

“Kiss him.” He said. You sighed.

“Because I wanted to. I don’t need you protecting me.” You looked at Jace, his signature pout forming. You glanced down to his hands, which were bloody and bruised.

“Jesus.” You mumbled. “Come on.”

You pulled him to the bathroom, making him sit on the toilet while you cleaned and bandaged his hand. He watched you the whole time, your eyebrows knit together as you focused on his wounds.

It was there it hit him, that he loved you. He was tired of burying that feeling. He loved you. He loved how you took care of your siblings, he loved how you immediately stepped into the role of a mother without ever complaining, he loved his life with you.

His hand caressed your cheek.

“Stop, I don’t want you to hurt yourself anymore than you have.” You say. His fingers were gently gliding over your jaw, eventually taking a hold of it to make you look at him.

Your heart was racing, you knew what he was feeling because you felt it too.

“You’re mine.” He said, and without even thinking you smashed your lips onto his. He pulled you onto his lap, his damaged hands loosely resting on your waist.

Three years it had been since your first kiss, three years of longing and aching for him, trying to let the feeling go for the sake of your children.

It’s okay to be selfish sometimes.

You pulled him into his room, kicking the door shut as you fell onto his bed, just like the first time.

He nestled between your legs, kissing you intently. He moved his lips down, pressing kisses on your neck and chest.

You whimpered, your fingers toying in his hair.

“I need you, Jacaerys.” You whisper.

“Fuck, I need you more.” He whispers back.

You sit up on your knees as Jacaerys stands. You pull his shirt gently off him, avoiding his hands, and move to helping him undo his belt and pants until he’s in only his boxers.

You undress your torso, then wiggling to kick off your skirt to reveal your thin little panties.

“You might have thought you had a mission but really you had a death wish going out in those.” Jace said, pressing his lips onto the thin black lace. He kisses your wetness, moving your panties to the side so he can eat. His tongue glides into your cunt, making sure to lick and taste the sweetest parts.

“So possessive, and for what?” You moan, your fingers gripping his curls.

“Because you’re mine.” He says into your heat, and you moan at his voice.

He eats you with a burning desire, a taste he had dreamt about for years. He’s messy, yet coordinated, kissing and sucking just the right spots to make you melt onto his tongue. He was starved for you, and now he eats as if he’ll never eat again.

You chase the release, grinding your hips into his face.

“I’m gonna cum, oh my god.” You whine, your hand trembling in his curls. He moans into your heat, pushing you over the edge. You spill onto his tongue, and he doesn’t miss a drop, licking as long as he can until you’re shaking.

You go to kiss him, but he pulls away. “I’ve still got you on my lips, I wanna savor it as long as I can.”

“You can’t share?” You tease.

He shivers at your words. “Ooh, don’t test me.”

You settle for kissing his neck instead, pulling him by his hips between your legs to make him grind onto you.

You feel his length inside his boxers against your heat, and you shiver at the size.

“Don’t keep me waiting any longer, Jace.”

“How long have you been waiting exactly?” He teases.

“A long time. Longer than three years.” You say. He finally presses his lips back onto yours, his hand weakly kneading your breast. You gently take his hand in yours, guiding his weak fingers.

“I wish my hands weren’t numb.” He moans between kisses.

“What-“

“Sh, it’s fine, just keep kissing me.” He says, refusing to let you break away. His tongue plays with yours, and your lips are bruised and swollen from the eagerness of his.

“You’re playing a dangerous game.” You moan, trying to push down his boxers to rub his length.

“Just like you were at the bar, walking around in that tight little black skirt, kissing on guys who had no business even breathing the same air as you.

You finally reach your hand in his boxers, eliciting a gasp from him as you rub his length. You push his boxers down, and he pulls your panties off you.

You rub his length against your wet slit, moaning as you guide him inside you.

“Baby.” He moans. You shiver at the pet name, wanting to hear more of his sweet voice. He rests his weight on his fore arms, kissing and sucking on your neck to leave marks. His thrusts are fueled with love, unlike ones you’ve felt before from others.

He fucks you so sweetly, pulling away your neck so he can look in your eyes. He holds your hips into the bed, fucking you. You moan and whine, gripping his wrists for support.

“Say you’re mine.” He moans.

“I’m yours. Fuck, Jace, I’m all yours.”

“Yes, my girl. Fuck, you’re so wet.” He says, his words sultry and low.

“I’m so in love with you.” You moan, lost in lust.

“I wish I could fuck you all night long.”

“Don’t worry.” You moan. “We’ve got a lifetime to do that.”

“Fuck, I love you so much.” Jace moans. “I’m so in love with you it hurts.”

He nestles into your neck, and you hold him close to you, moaning in his ear.

You feel his thrusts grow sloppy, and he shakes as he grows close to his release. He fucks you so deep his pelvic bone rubs your clit, drawing you closer too.

You pull him by his neck into your lips again as you both cum. He fills you up, warm and deep inside your stomach as he moans into your lips.

“Fuck, fuck.” He pulls out, gasping. He looks into your eyes, both of you catching your breath and coming down from what just happened.

“Are you alright? I wasn’t too rough, was I?” He asks, still shaking him his release.

“No, Jace.” You say, tucking a curl behind his ear. “You were perfect.”

“I’m sorry about tonight.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.”

He lays beside you, resting his head on your shoulder. “What happens now?”

“We…” You say, not knowing where to start.

Your whole life had been uprooted. Both of you had done nothing for yourselves, until now. You both had a choice to make. You could quit living half a life, one foot in one foot out the door, doing your duty yet nothing for yourself. Or, you could get busy living. Take care of your brothers, love each other endlessly, make the most out of your life and your love like your parents would have wished for you both.

“I think we just start enjoying it.”

“Enjoying what?”

“Our lives.” You look at him, and you take his bruised hand in yours.

“Together.”

#hotd #hotd season 2 #hotd jacaerys #jacaerys x reader #jace velaryon #prince jacaerys #jacaerys velaryon #jacaerys targaryen #jace targaryen #jacaerys x you #jacaerys smut #jacaerys strong #jacerys velaryon #hotd x reader #hotd imagine #hotd smut

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fluorynn · 8 months ago

Text

✮⋆˙ 🩻 — 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 | 𝐥. 𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐲

✮⋆˙ 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 : lo’ak 〤 omaticayan!reader

✮⋆˙ 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 : in which 4 years have passed after the incident. Change was normal to occur, but so was loss and grievance within that change. Change was something that had occurred within the youngest Sully boy when the RDA returned, when he had to flee from home and leave you behind, when the incident happened. When the Sullys returned after two years, Lo’ak instantly seeked for you, yet you’ve noticed he had changed both for the better and worse, and sometimes, most days, it had become for the worst. You’d given him many warnings throughout the year, as both of you have now reached adulthood and have committed to a relationship that at first begun with the constant lovesickness for one another, never ending touches, stolen kisses, but that was when you were mere teenagers, and as time went by, as change and grief and war came upon you, your relationship took a shift. Harsher he became, more reckless, impulsive, ignorant, inconsiderate, yet he promised he’d change for you. After every act and word, he promised to search within himself, within the past to try and find the Lo’ak he once was, the proper mate you deserved soon, the Lo’ak who you adored with your entire soul. Yet if you were to be sincere, you knew that after all these major events that happened to Lo’ak and after the months of not seeing him, he would not be the same, especially after the loss of Neteyam. You wanted to hang onto the sliver of hope, of sanity for yourself, because Lo’ak had not been the only one to have lost something, someone, yet it seemed that everyone always excused him for his behavior, nobody cared, especially Lo’ak. He was constantly out flying, ‘on patrol’, never returning to the hideout the Omaticaya People still had to endure, and his excuses only became more and more unreasonable. His father said the boy’s just under a lot of pressure, Kiri said he’d come around, but Neytiri did not; while she too grief, she too experienced major changes, it did not give her son the excuse to treat you with such heartless behavior. You loved Lo’ak, and you loved him ultimately and beyond compare. You loved him too much however, to the point where it blinded you from seeing the harsh reality that this indeed was not your Lo’ak anymore. The strong substance your people had, he somehow always found a way to consume it, practically reek of it without his family knowing — and you didn’t dare ‘rat’ him out. He wasn’t yours anymore, and every ounce of pain, of grief, of sadness you felt for him soon disintegrated. He was supposed to be your boyfriend, he was supposed to be the one bound to be your mate when the time came. But now, it seemed that he wasn’t suitable for you, and while 14 year old you promised his 14 year old self to never leave, you realized now why promises wound up empty. Everyone reaches a breaking point, and you are now finally acting upon it.

✮⋆˙ 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 / 𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 : aged up!lo’ak, ANGST, 18+, thigh riding, fingering, grinding, mild kuru play?, overstimulation, soft!lo’ak, teasing, drinking/alcoholism — lo’ak’s insecure, stubborn, harsh and grieving still but masks it a bit well, reader is slightly sensitive, fed up w him, gives in to one more chance w him tho — italics in dialogue signifies they’re speaking Na’vi!

✮⋆˙ 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 : pretty long, lol

✮⋆˙ 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬 : @bambithewriter @lilghostiequinni @pandoraslxna @avatarloverfrfr @strongheartneteyam @talanyra

✮⋆˙ author’s note : Just in my feelings rn, LMAO. Neteyam series prologue will be posted soon ( hopefully….I just want to make sure it’s good and there’s enough but not too much detail to give away what may happen in future chapters — it’s one of those things where I’ve written the following chapters just not the one I should have actually put time in😭 —) but just thought I’d drop this — Lo’ak lovers, rise up! I hope you like it! Please don’t hesitate to comment, reblogs are appreciated! <33

“Good. You are up here.” You are met with his back facing you mere feet away, the unkempt pattern of his stripes and the tense rise of his shoulders is more than enough for you to know it is him, especially when knowing that this spot is the single one reserved for him. Lo'ak Sully was left in a state of utter bewilderment, a feeling he thought he had long surpassed. Over the years, he had honed and heightened each of his senses to such an extent that no ordinary being could startle him anymore. However, you were no ordinary being, and that was precisely what captivated him. Your ability to always bewilder and astonish him in unexpected ways kept him constantly alert and intrigued.

He gave a subtle glance to the object in his hold — a minor wooden cup filled to the brim with an alcoholic beverage — naer — one the Na’vi can smell before even spotting it for its scent is strong, vigor. At this point, there is no trying to hide or deny it from you. Even if he did try to throw it off the large branches he sat upon, the scent would be there, reeking around and on him. He had given you the vacant promise to back away from it, or very least try to yet make no effort in doing so. This drink that, while it tips one over for a bit of time, it also deprived feelings you could no longer do. Whatever had happened in his life, each burning drop down his throat and to his mind managed to fix for a minimum amount of time. Of course Lo’ak would not give this up — the opportunity to not feel anything to the bone.

“Your father said you did not show up for your training.” Your tone of voice was deficient of its common disappointment and despair, simply uttering as if you didn’t spare a care for it anymore.

“My father should learn to mind his own business and worry more about leading his People and fixing the damage done from the Sky People.” Lo’ak finally spoke, voice curt and Na’vi language gaining a thickness as he heard your subtle footsteps against branches. “I am not a child anymore.”

“You are right. You are not. But he is still your father, he worries for you. So does your mother.” You reminded him as if it were not known, reaching your spot next to his sitting frame only to see what you have already suspected in his hold, taking in his physical state.

“Yeah well, he shouldn’t. He has no reason to, and neither does she.” His quip made your lips squirm down but said nothing as you observed the drink in his hand, the way his ear flitted from his own words, from your words in adding onto that his mother worries. A quirk settled between your browline but held your tongue for you did not want to start some meaningless quarrel. But Lo’ak could feel the distaste radiating from you, how you’re fighting the urge to scold him for his incapability to uphold his fair share of promises. What he doesn’t understand is why have you not done so?

“You look very pretty. Sevin ( pretty ).” He softly stated.

A small smile was all to be offered — one filled with slight remorse. His legs had been dangling down the edge of the thick glowing lodge, and you pondered on doing the same as you have always done since you were children; swinging them above the small lake of water at the same pace he would, teasing him with a light nudge of your foot. But this time was different. Instead, you settle beside him, knees bent beneath you and slightly tilted your body towards him. Lo’ak’s blazing irises scrutinized you the way he typically does, recognizing the strain your shoulders formed, as if you were on edge because of him. So, he took one more small swig of the liquid before his face started inclining forward to plant a light kiss on your lips. One that was fleeting – everything tied or related to Lo’ak was always fleeting.

Lo’ak’s lips very often suffused your mind from thought, so incongruous from right and wrong.

One moment Lo’ak offered his physical affections and pretty words.

The next, not even a split moment, he was the cause of your suffering stars.

You now pondered where exactly this little act would land the both of you in.

You were the first to retract away from Lo’ak, not wanting to fall into his patterned act. The kind of act of loving Lo’ak too destructively that overflowed everything with a single touch, and tug you back into him.

“What iss wrong?” He inquired, dark brows quirking.

Your coils lightly sway at the head shake given, yet he knew before you could have a chance to verbally utter the lie. “Lying is not a good look for you.”

“I am not lying.” You were quick to snip out before you could contain your tone, palms pressing into your thighs that indicated the falseness of your words.

“Right.” His eyes rolled and bit, “There’s something you would like to say?”

You can’t help but blink a few times. This was an opening, to say what was in your chest. “Srane ( yes ).”

A hum of boredom rang through the air. “You could have just said that then. No need to take the hard way around.” His golden eyes were drawn to the liquid in his hold, watching its faint glow swirl with the light flick of his wrist, and you wondered just how far gone was he. Normally, Lo’ak would have some sort of facade going on, one that’s filled with his now dry jokes and teasing smiles despite the fact that the both of you knew it was just a show. Yet now, he was unfazed by your presence as he brought the cup to his lips, throat bobbing with the largest swings he took.

Perhaps if you were standing, you might’ve tipped over and fallen into the lake. He simply saw it written in bold letters right across your face. “I am not here to fight with you.” You quietly started.

“Then don’t.”

An exhale flared your cat-like nose at his crossed tone. “Okay, I will not but I am going to need you to drop whatever tone it is you are trying to achieve with me, Suli.” Lo’ak, despite the abrupt changes spiking in him, was still your Lo’ak, so when he heard your warning, his ears pinned down by the sides of his head and eyes strayed to the ground below as an act of regret. This gave you some sliver of hope.

Not necessarily did you want Lo’ak to be unstable or uncertain with himself, it made you quite content that he has grown into his fierceness. What was bothersome to you were his drastic changes, and it seemed what once went as two souls that twined perfectly for one another was now misplaced — your presence within his life was not necessary any longer. The intoxication he was constantly washed in came with a smell too strong for your liking, too nauseating, too overwhelming for your senses. Tears swelled up in your eyes, yet you contained them. “I had thought you were going to quit.”

“If we are speaking truthfully, I told you I would try.” He corrected, smug voice paired with a stupid smirk.

“Hm, and have you?” You retorted and his brows hitched beneath his two thin cascades of braids. “Have you tried to quit?”

“And you have got proof that I haven’t?” You despised this, despised the person he’d become, despise that he seemed to knew precisely what he was doing and didn’t give two fucks about it.

“Let us see — there is Kiri, there is Spider, oh there is even Tuk who tells me this!” Your voice carried a feign sweetness and surprise, watching how his brows crashed together with your sneered words. “This is the brother you wish for them to see? This is the person you want your future People to see, Lo’ak? Their possible future leader, the Tippling Olo’eyktan?”

“And what the hell is it to you, huh? We already know I am not suited to be Leader.” His spiking temper was one to shut you up, but you did not fail to notice the light lash his tail made. “You are not my mother, you are not Tsahik, and you are certainly not my mate. I do not need you worrying over me. And I do not need your constant annoying questions.” Your body shuddered, more so because of the harshness of his tone rather than the biting air. Your knees dug into the branch’s crippled surface, fingers winding into fists as your eyes quickly averted from him. Eywa was witness to the sensitivity you had gain over the years, the years Lo’ak happened to be in.

“It is not common for some warm body to ask this much from their future Olo’eyktan either.”

Lo’ak’s added on words striked you with force, causing you to physically and instinctively recoil from the sharp sting of it. The deep slice within your heart, cleanly tearing into two parts. Perhaps in some pieces, some hindsight, it could have been described as that if you did not add onto the fact that the both of you grew up together, the fact that he did not have the simplicity of courage to call you by the true title he once proudly uttered you as; his. His bound-to-be mate, his love.

“A warm body? That is all I am to you?” You questioned, and Lo’ak — rethinking whether his mistake was to tell you the definition of those words in human terms or perhaps the true, more common mistake he noticed that was clearly etched in his features — gained regret behind those lax-colored eyes of his. But it was masked, tightly trapped beneath this filthy portrayal of pride, egotistical, brash and reckless man. Not even a man, a boy.

“Lo’ak!”

Instead of giving you a proper answer, he threw you a side glance, one filled with provocation. The scoff emerging from your throat was inevitable, and you nodded. If this was how he wished to act, then fine. It will make the forthcoming situation much easier for you then. The only way to get through with this was if you treat him as if he was nothing to you. “We must speak.”

Push through the heartache, the pain, the way it tore you apart. You must start to truly see him for who he was in this present moment.

And what you saw was not your Lo’ak.

Lo’ak was listening, you could tell by how his ears slightly flitted up, but he said nothing. Simply awaiting for you to proceed as he took another sip.

“I…” You felt the affliction that tried clawing its way up your throat, your eyes fixating on the ground and you stayed quiet for a while.

“Just spill it already.”

“I have come to say goodbye, Lo’ak.” His slamming shock is beyond thrilling. You had been seeking for some, any type of sign that would prove Lo’ak’s care for you — and perhaps this was the answer; the high perch of his ears, the broadening of his eyes, the hitched breath. Nonetheless, it was too late. He had created his situation, and now he would have to accept the consequences.

“What do you mean g-goodbye?” He stammered, and the cup was now abandoned and falling to the ground that was far below the both of you.

“Ah, so now you can speak!”

“Enough,” he inhaled deeply. “And answer the question.” The audacity this skxawng had. You are firmer with your words “Srane. Goodbye, Lo’ak.”

“And where exactly are you going? And when exactly were you going to tell me?” He spat out in distaste and disapproval, body fully turning towards you.

“The Tipani Clan.” You responded with an edge of sass. “I am telling you right now, aren’t I?”

His response was immediate, loud and he shook his head despite your answer was to be expected, knowing that one of your deceased parents descended from there. “The Tipani Clan? What about—” He halted his sentence from speaking of himself, of how if you left, you would be tearing away a part of him and taking it with you. But fear of vulnerability halted him from doing so, so instead he dodged it. “What about your duties here? I thought you promised to be here for your People in case the Sky People returned. To help rebuild.”

“Lo’ak, I am telling you that I am leaving and all you care about speaking is duty? Are you serious?” He instead looked away from you, too stubborn to answer, so you said his name again. He ignored you.

“Lo’ak, fucking look at me.” It was the rarity of hearing you speak English and the vulgar word thrown in the mix that caught Lo’ak’s attention, gold orbs flickering towards you in an instant and you immediately notice the diversity of emotion pooling them.

“So all that matters to you, is my duty to the Omaticaya? For me to not be here as a fixer upper for them? You only care about that being broken instead of this? Is that the only thing that matters in that head of yours?”

No. The response was, should have been a fierce no. You were constantly, always in Lo’ak’s head. He yearned for you extravagantly, and besides staying alive for the sake of his family, you were one of the few things he could find himself caring for. There would be many cold and curt swears to never trust, to never care or love after losing someone who not only qualified as a good mate, but a loving one, is what Lo’ak thought, he knew it. If you left him — when you left him, he would be done with it, with the twinge of good, of hope. He would be completely shut off from ever seeking a mate to be bonded with under Eywa’s will, he would not care of continuing the legacy of his name despite him now being the only son. His heart, the heart you once saw as fearless and strong, would be guarded by much thicker, massive walls, and that small space left would only become constricted by the waves of his tears. While you were everything to him, you were not sufficient enough to spare him the grief. At least not alone.

While he has grown, while he has sculpted his abilities and became nearly as mighty as his big brother, under all that was still a broken, hurt boy filled with guilt. He could not allow himself to get rid of that part of himself. He could not shed enough tears to move past everything that happened, that he had seen and lost.

Lo’ak loved you, he is deeply in love with you. And perhaps another thing that has changed was that he could not depend everything on you. No one should carry the responsibility of one’s whole happiness. There is no fairness in that.

So instead he found need in other things, distractions despite it being selfish. He needed to fly because it could get him away from the ground and connect to the closest thing that felt like Neteyam, he needed to drown himself in that alcohol the Na’vi made because it drowned away all the pain and misery his family went through, the burden to try and add up to something, someone he will never be able to fill. But while he was engulfed himself in all that, he could pretend that his family was not broken. That it was the same, once happy family it once was 5 years ago. The one that still had Neteyam’s presence, the one that still had a father rather than a commanding leader. In this minor haven of numbness, he could still pretend that those once fond memories were fresh, remembered the way they were supposed to be reminisced. He could not just let it go.

Meanwhile, Lo’ak’s silence was tearing you apart, fragmenting your heart into pieces. But now you knew, you saw the truth. You could not keep a desperate grasp around old words and acts anymore, for now they were faint. Empty. Pointless gifts of a said courting that was going nowhere. Loving phrases and charming grins he more than knew could accomplish in capturing your heart.

But now it was clear as day that it meant nothing to Lo’ak. You meant nothing to Lo’ak. He did not love you as much as you loved him.

His throat cleared, and thickly spoke in English. “Your place is here, Y/N.” His eyes refused to meet yours, jaw narrowed enough to demonstrate he was clearly upset, though you’ are not certain why.

“It was.” The correction you gave his words finally made everything click. His gaze lingered on the lake’s neon glow before lifting to look at you, trying to catch your own. The pretty decorated braids that framed his face moved with the motion of his head slanting to the side. He repeated your word, squinting before shaking his head and more so whispering to himself, “You’re leaving.”

Sharply exhaling, you finally uttered, “I am also here to end things between us, Lo’ak.”

Again, he was bewildered, and the cut breath he released made it known. Eyes darted over each feature upon your face, as if trying to commit it all into his memory, panic slowly seeping within him. “Can … I can say something, right?” His tone still carried its infamous jeer, but you suppose that was the last you deserved. You were the first to engage in this conversation. When you grant him the permission to speak, he wasted no second in taking advantage of it.

“W-where’s this coming from?”

You’re more than certain more inquiries will follow, and one or two questions will satisfy his little interrogation.

“What’s the motive behind all this, huh? How long you’ve been planning this, to leave me?” Lo’ak’s voice was one that never faltered nowadays — he, much like his father, was a fierce speaker. You knew that Lo’ak did not like to be kept in the unknown, in hiding. But now his voice was rather meek. His once honed gaze turned rounder, emphasizing that he may cry. What you despised most in this moment, was that it unphased you. Before this, all the trouble and conflict spiking between you and your Lo’ak, his tears were your least favorite thing in this entire existence. Out of everyone, you once believed Lo’ak was the least of them all to deserve the brim of tears. That he deserved happiness. The sight of them always managed to tear you bit by bit with every fallen droplet, and now it hardly mattered. While you do still very much believe that he indeed deserved happiness, you have reached your limit. You have devastatingly accepted that you could not restore that happiness in Lo’ak.

“Few weeks. A month maybe.” You answered faintly. You use the best of your abilities to keep a firm composure. It would be miserable to cry, especially right then and there. Lo’ak stumbled through his repetition of your answer, dubiety twisting your features, mind and heart. You cannot seem to comprehend the sudden shift of his act. The authentic perplex and strain to recall what went wrong as if he never saw this coming from you.

“Whatever I did, I’m sorry, Y/N—” His long arms extended, touch reaching to collide with you, yet he reluctantly retracted back as if he had been scorched by some blazing flame of a barrier around you. He repeated his apology, scrambling to try and find whatever pieces he has broken and bring them back together while trying with all his strength to not lose his damn mind. “Lemme fix this — y-you have to let me fix this, okay?”

His voice is desperate, pleading, and it was as if he is speaking without wanting to hear reason. Lo’ak may not be known for his smartness, but he was clever with certain things. To you, Lo’ak was everything. But even so, that usual thick headed mind of his was unable to get himself out of this one.

“Y/N, we can — it’s fixable.” His head was repeatedly bobbing up and down, and it told you that perhaps you have brought him out of his drunken state. Brought him back to Pandora, at least for a split moment, you thought.

“I think it is too late now, ma Lo’ak.” His eyes shuttered and he let out a quivered exhale.

“Baby, don’t say that, please—” He reached for you again, this time pushing through the fear and on with it. He could not help the slightness of grimace upon him when his hands cut into your self-obtained space, and it was then that he realized why that burn had been a great protection for you.

Anxious, panic-stricken he was, digits winding around the bareness of your hips and wastes no second in tugging you upon his lap. “Please…just give me one more chance a-and let me fix this, yeah? Baby?”

The expanse of his palms quivered when they lifted to your cheeks, your own gripping the taut muscles of his shoulder blades to maintain your balance, to keep yourself steady from the plead within his green-speckled hues. The air surrounding Lo’ak reeked of that forsaken alcohol, entangled through his braids, the essence of his blue flesh, his accessories.

You take him in; the faint violet flushed beneath the sockets of his eyes, the drain that highly beseeched at you with every syllable tumbling from his cloying lips. “I’m….fuck.” His breathing was escalating; more turbulent, almost hysterical as he tried retaining every part of you inside of himself.

Without your willingness, you are gently moved, yet still, your form remained unyielding.

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, and you know that.” His softly hushed words are right. You knew he meant them. While Lo’ak’s emotional avoidance over the last few years had been quite a lot, it did not make him exceedingly insensitive. He was full of many pretty words, but never once did he utter abundant words into existence without purpose. But what you only wished for was that he’d been able to say them sooner. Could have been swarmed with the realization and recognition of you before you had made it to the edge of the cliff above the depths. All that was left for you to do in order to escape was to take the act in plummeting. To end things with Lo’ak, to start anew with your own life.

It is unattainable, you arere more than convinced that this is the end of the path for the both of you. Even with that said forged in your mind, you nodded still. Purposeless it was to see him in this state of franticity and fear of the prospect of losing you burdening your heart. You may feel repentant later on, but you are to leave once this is finished, once this is over with and you would never return to the Omaticaya. Lo’ak was to be an experience of your past. He would hate you then, hate you for an eternity for what you were to do, but you knew he would be okay. What he needed was his family. To fix those cracks, to patch those injuries. To improve himself, Lo’ak must and will find a way to find his true self beneath all those layers of resentment and suffering.

That was all that ceased to matter.

“I can fix this? You’ll let me?” You nodded once more, but he did the opposite in an act of disapproval. “Nah, I need to hear it. Let me hear you.” His voice was glazed with true, raw pain, something you haven’t heard from him in such a long time. “Please, Y/N…”

“You can fix this, ma Lo’ak.”

“Y-you promise me that?” He questioned, and for a moment you faltered. It’d be much more deceiving for him to know you were lying. So you do not, and instead you let the tips of your four fingers stray to the nape of his neck and pull him into a kiss. And in this moment, you knew that you had never loved with such depth, such fervor with every fiber in your being.

You were aware that once you vanished from here, the fractures etched in your heart would scorch, ablaze to the point where you would feel every flicker and pain. With that being said, you poured it all into this one kiss, one that seized every ounce of respiration from his lungs. Vehementing it was. Vehementing you are, of course. His mind is nebulous; hazy, too fucked over — but you are here. In amidst the turmoil of an inner war, you. He loves you profoundly, and he knows you well. Well enough to know what the next day would bring. He knew why you were contributing to this, why you were granting him the belief that his pathetic attempt of resolution would be enough.

You love Lo’ak as well.

The thought of facing a day without your presence gracing his life churns his chest with a crushing sense of loss, the palpitating organ within bending and compressing as if some being had reached and tried bending it to their own taunting will. He must give you everything, he has to give you everything, risk it all, and perhaps it would be sufficient. This time it is Lo’ak who retreated from you, dark lashes fluttering against the warmth of your cheek while his eyes perused over your face just one more time.

“You know that no matter where you go, you’ll always be mine.” His words are not a question, more so a statement of persistence and certainty the both of you felt and knew deep within your bones.

“You do understand, yeah?” You could hardly form a verbal response, though you do not give him the opportunity to bask in his little glory, and instead your hands, the ones currently on his shoulders, slide to the beaded necklaces encasing his toned neck, fingers tangling through them. “If you are going to do something, get on with it.”

Lo’ak cannot help the soft smirk hoisting his cheek at your clipped tone and grumbles, “Impatient much?” Candidly speaking, this was perhaps the closest he was to being himself. That brilliant smile you haven’t seen in so long resisting the urge to be the prime focus of attention. A pity, really, for you.

“You still trust me?” He notices your indecisiveness. He does not give you time to respond for he soon adds on, “Like this?” and that almost immediately changes the answer. The adapted pads of his fingers graze down the dip of your neck and to the elegant line of your collarbone, peering down your figure. “Do you trust me enough to have you like this?”

Your chin slightly dips bashfully as you nod. His brows draw together and hisses in a breath. “I wanna hear you say it then. Make this easier for the both of us.” Your delicate beaded chest piece subtly heaves from the ascent your chest makes, and he could not help but laugh, eyes crescent-shaping with the sound, at your irritated voice.

“I trust you, Lo’ak.”

“Good.” he mutters softly beneath his breath while letting his hands fall and secure themselves to your hips.

Yes, good, you repeat the single word in your own mind.

“You’d give yourself to me right here, right now?” He question, and you stutter at this. It was not the upmost ideal thing, for this spot practically belonged to you and Lo’ak was perhaps the most reserved place within the Forest since you were children. But it was the Forest, and you never knew who from the People could be wandering around. The thought of someone stumbling upon you and the Olo’eyktan’s son out in the open petrified you.

Though it seemed your pussy thought otherwise and did not mind one bit of this idea.

“S-srane ( yes ).” Firm is your word, and it pleases Lo’ak. Muscle memory it became when his palms create a path upwards from your hips. Palms that hold such tenderness as they splay up your stomach, blunt nails beginning to faintly engrave themselves into the azure flesh of your waist, soon following your midsection to endearingly trace over the pretty stripes decorated there.

The strokes he causes make you squirm in his lap, body curling slightly to the side and your nose twitches cutely. “Lo’ak, enough—” your plea goes ignored once more by him.

“Do y’know how pretty you are?” Lo’ak’s words cause your heart to skip a rather large beat. Curse his idiotic mouth, curse him. Curse his abilities to have you melt with a single breath of his lungs.

“Our People always speak about the Great Mother’s beauties. Saying how she spent a great deal on Pandora,” You didn’t hesitate to listen, even despite the light acts created from his touch that have your abdomen twitching.

“But gosh, I think you’ve bested her.” He exhales almost breathlessly, as if the weight of his words are too grand and exquisite from being spoken to existence, to you. You see nothing but sincerity in his face, blinking rapidly when he taps your hip and utters, “Take it off now.”

His demand left no inch of a room for a disagreement, so without further hesitation, you hitch yourself a bit up while wobbly fingers perch down and into the weaves of your tewng, slipping the garment off. You more than know that when he meant to take it off, he meant to discard everything — such as your little chest piece. But almost as if it were a challenge, you do not. This draws a chuckle out of Lo’ak and you roll your eyes despite settling back down on his thigh.

His mouth moving hot against yours, and for a second your entire world stills, the remaining fragments of your heart plummeted, the wild fluttering as the single thing inside of you capable of sustaining life. Your ache, your beautiful, throbbing, lifelong ache dwindles for a moment as Lo’ak’s mouth meshes with yours. He kisses you fiercely, fingers brushing the lower swell of your breast, breathing existence back into your being, and it is then that you moaned lowly for him.

When he rips his mouth away from your own, it is when his fingers found their way down the dips of your stomach, outlining the lower section, soon curling around the upper muscle of your thighs to part them just a bit more, dragging two deftly fingers through the growing mess between.

“Even when that pretty head of yours wanna hate me, this body can’t resist me, hm?” He retracts his hand as he speaks, long enough to glide those two fingers between his lips, humming contently around them before pulling them out. They were profusely coated with his spit, making it such an effortless task to increase the mess worse. Its pads nudge back and forth between your slit, occasionally granting nurturing circles to your nub. Your mind is becoming warped within the lust, back to clutching onto his shoulders for steadiness.

Your nails puncture the muscles there with the longing to grind against something, anything. “You’re so damn wet, mamas.” The foreign nickname has force in tearing out a sharp gasp from your throat, and he huffs out a chuckle while absorbing all the moist sensation.

“ ‘m gonna have you all fucked up on my fingers, then some more with my dick, how does that sound?” The sensation of his dark plaits graze your cheek, lips adding on when they brush your flickering ear. “You want that, Y/N/N/?”

You could not do anything more than whine, allowing your hips to wind forward in hence to catch every languid swipe of his slim fingers against you. Your body quaking, head pummeling as you paddle near the pleasure.

Pleasure which you more than know was not healthy. It is as if adding a single aid to a severe wound. The following day, you will detest yourself to the core for giving into this thrilling temptation; the thrusts he gives your tightened cunt, the kisses shared between your swollen mouths, the caresses given to your skin, all of this would create much more difficulty for you to move on.

Lo’ak’s fingers waste no time in swatting against your swollen clit, pads of each digit rubbing gingerly over. Sensitive it is, every swipe causing your entire body to stutter.

You could feel more arousal oozing out of your cunt, adhering to Lo’ak’s constricting thigh. His flesh will be tainted with your slick, his dangling braids and pretty coils will be ruined with every slight tug given by the time you were done. Though he cannot not bring himself to care about it, he cannot let you go at this moment, he cannot not ever bring himself to do it.

The momentum of his overworked digits is lethal, you will be culminating in a matter or seconds. The hand currently entangled within Lo’ak’s hair suddenly disappear to slide down the base of his thick queue, fingers delicately curling around the sensitivity while you begin to subtly gyrate your hips forward, the stimulation becoming much more direct and effective.

Though the act made from your dainty touch causes his jaw to go slack, pupils engulfing the golden pools of his eyes as a soft hiss whispered from his mouth.

"Look at you go, baby…" Tongue peeks out just to glide over his honed incisors before teasingly reaching forward to lightly bite your pouting lower lip, gaze never tearing from yours, and you see it : everything is what you are to him.

The brimming of your orgasm deepen inside the center of your lower belly, spiraling bit by bit. “Hey, no, look at me, mamas.” His tone is low but beseeching, words practically breathing into you, directing you to obey his plea despite the violent desire to let your head slant back if it weren’t for another one of his pleas catching you, voice caressing the tethers of your soul.

“Please look at me, sevin. Lemme see you when you fall apart for me, yeah?” And it is then that you were reminded of your thoughts from earlier.

How fucking perilous Lo’ak’s mouth could be.

“Ma L-Lo’ak—” His name is uttered in a whine, clutch becoming firmer around the single braid of his as you compel yourself to remain in eye contact with the Sully son. He squirms yet does not reprove you and continues his work between your legs despite the building-up ache bulging between his own, three fingers dipping lower to gather more slick before adding it to his pattern against your throbbing clit.

“I-I’m close,” you huff out, and Lo’ak nods deliberately, the subtle movement of his pleading face mesmerizing you. “C’mon, lemme see it happen. Lemme see what I do to you, how good I make you feel, hm?”

"Hmm— L-Lo’ak, I am near, y-you are going to make me cum…" Perhaps you are nearly driven to tears when Lo’ak crane his neck forward again, though this time his lips peck over the pink contours of your scrunched nose first. Sweet, loving kisses falling over each star-like speck across your cheeks, beginning to create a path all over your face.

“You are doing so, so good for me. Always so fucking sweet to me." His breathy muttering ought you to look away abashed, flustered.

"You love the boy you knew, don't you?"

"You are not a boy anymore — y-you are grown, you are to be Olo’eyktan o-one day." You remind him curtly, words tumbling from your lips as you try focusing more towards your pleasure.

"Nah, no." His head shakes, the two braids aligned to each of his cheeks swaying from the motion. "Grown — Grown Lo’ak is very different from boy Lo’ak, isn't he?"

Your heart cannot help but falter at this, a muskiness kissing your waterline, blinding your senses as you stare at him solemnly. "I love every version of you, ma Lo’ak. I just love you."

Agitation suddenly crumbles his pretty features, and brokenly whispers, “Then why are you choosing to leave me?"

You truly do want to answer him despite the way your heart nearly plummets to your stomach, yet it is difficult to. His lips sweetly find their place over your face again, prickling your flesh as if pointed needles.

“L-Lo’ak." He merely hums at the low warning, nuzzling against your flushed cheekbone. "It’s okay, just go ahead mamas. I know."

"Cum for me, you've been so good, sevin. My pretty girl." Your chest heaves overwhelmingly, the tips of your ears flirting with each of the pretty, earnest words he reiterates, swelling the urge for you to sob. "Perfect and pretty. The only girl, my only babygirl."

And perhaps you will sob.

"All you have always done is take care of me, huh? But who takes care of you?" His working hand drags up, and the sudden act caused you to jolt. Lo’ak’s free arm and hand, however, waste no second in coiling around your midsection in order to keep you from moving away.

"Just wanna make it up to you, tìyawn. Just tell me that's what you want from me." He beseeches, nose nuzzling into the line of your trembling jaw.

“Y-yes, that is what I want, ma Lo’ak. Please, please, please. T-Take care of me — make me cum— make it up t-to me, Lo’ak, please." A moan rumbles in the center of your throat for Lo’ak feels it when his lips twist upwards into a wide grin. “Then do it — c’mon, cum for me, baby. Let it out…”

He did not need to instruct it twice for you come in an instant. It washes over with a moan, long and broken, your head seizing forward and into the crevice of said neck and broad shoulder. Damped lips are immediate to latch onto the future Olo’eyktan’s neck, biting, suckling, and softly licking the striped flesh, body quivering as you are thrown over the edge.

Your walls twitch around a vacant place, and Lo’ak kneads your abused nub through the aftershocks as the pearlescent proof of your release pools out of your cunt. "Fuuck, my pretty girl, doing so damn good for me." He croons sweetly, the long length of his lashing tail somehow finding its way to tenderly coil around the thigh clenched by his side.

You faintly feel the swift movements of his hands reaching down to fiddle with his own tewng, yet the dread is too heavy for you to react.

It is only then when you realize that Lo’ak was not stopping his tempting assault that you found the strength to peer hazily down at where your pussy and Lo’ak’s fingers met. He is still playing with you, flexing digits coating themselves in your sweet essence before ramming them right into your much sensitive hole.

He is immediate in starting at a brutal pace, so engrossed in searching for the spot that will have you squirting all over him.

"L-Lo’ak, Lo’ak, no w-wait, please— " Yet he has decided to not listen to your cries. Not even looking at your face, no, his gaze was enthralled with the way his fingers are digging you out, the way you swallow them whole, nearly becoming one with them.

"No, you must take it. You can take it.” He forewarns but your head is shaking in denial, a sob flying out your mouth. “K-Kehe ( no ). I-I can’t, m-ma Lo’ak—”

“But you can, baby. I know you can.” His brows furrow softly together, brushing against your browline as his forehead kisses yours. “And you know how I know that? Hmm?”

Stammers are the only that manage to form. “Because I know you, Y/N. I am the only one who knows you better.” He feeds you the answer he had been seeking for and your chin juts up and down. “Or am I not, mamas?”

“Y-yes, L-Lo’ak, it is you — just you.” A chuckle proudly spews from him. “And who knows this pretty pussy better than me?” Hips jerk forward, whining with a gasp at the harsh deepness of his digits. Your grip on his queue releases, palms scattering out and planting on each side of Lo’ak’s angular face as you keep his attention locked towards you.

“N-no one, ma Lo’ak. N-no one—”

Lo’ak nods firmly, “That’s what I thought, baby. Now, let me treat her the way she deserves to be treated, okay?” His mouth brushes over your lush one, yet didn’t necessarily grant you the yearn of a kiss. Not as he notices the subtle flash of upset striking your face.

“Just one more chance for tonight.” He adds after a pause. “You’ll let me have her for tonight, won’t you, Y/N?”

You whine shamelessly, “Y-yes, o-oh … P-please, Lo’ak—”

“That’s the Y/N I know,” His praise goes by tenderly while the act between your legs is entirely distinct, much more carving, exhilaratingly burning you. “My Y/N, my girl.”

Your pussy is well acquainted with the feel of Lo’ak’s touch, a rather hefty debate between said cock and fingers. Every single adapted ridge, divot, arch. Always, always taking him so well, so eagerly, prettily desperate for Lo’ak.

"You're so wet." He grunts, pupils dilating in awe from the brief yet sufficient enough glance given to the drenching mess. "Need you to tell me how it feels."

“So good, Lo-Lo’ak. You make me feel so, so good." Lo’ak likes you like this, all in a drunken daze, vocals all garbled up.

"You gonna cum, mamas?" You cannot even answer, not as your body actively chases every thrust. "I can feel you squeezing my fingers so good. Jeesh, you're so damn perfect." He rasps lovingly, "Love having you like this…you’re everything to me, you know that?”

The words are meant more to himself, yet you hear him all the same. “L-Lo’ak." you mutter though the tut his tongue makes keep you from proceeding, head shaking. “Shh, don’t say anything. I jus’ want you to cum for me, got it? Flood my shit.”

You feel every curl, every nudge his fingers gives the most sensitive spot within, your insides coiling, rattling all at once to the point where you nearly lose all feel of your lower body, all sense of the way your tail swivels, the way your limbs quiver. “Make a mess all over your Olo’eyktan, hm?”

The hand grasping your hip rises to press against the rising arch of your back, encouraging the pretty dip to take shape while your inner thighs clench around Lo’ak’s palm.

But the continuous push to your back flush you forward, thighs yanking open with the lankiness of his lower abdomen shoving between. The act causes his fingers to retreat from your weeping hole and knead them sloppily upward. The intensity of your subsequent climax comes in high waves when he slumps them back inside, pumping once, twice, three times all in one before he is pulling back to stimulate your pulsating clit.

White spasms of what can be compared to blazing stars overcome your vision, a shriek rippling from your hoarse throat while you drizzle your release all over Lo’ak, the hands once cradling his face dragging down to the length of his neck and jabbing your thumbs into the hollow of his constricting throat. Tears cascade down your glowing, flushed cheeks, a never ending streak assisted by the river flowing from your cunt — an enthralling combination that has Lo’ak feeling ecstatic.

"Mhm, that's it, baby. Just ride that shit out for me…that’s it, there you go." His encouragement has your body feeling dazed and spent as you lean forward to flush yourself against Lo’ak’s dampened chest, ear flickering at the rumbled sound he creates.

"You did so good for me." Lo’ak mutters into your other ear, mouth grazing the point of it. "So, so good." The length of his palm move to cradle the curve of your head as he feel the racketing your body creates, watching the sways your lovely tail creates before it nestles right beside his thigh.

"Your pussy's so perfect, made to take me, made to listen to me, isn’t that right?” You cannot help but to not answer from the embarrassment clutching at you, and instead nuzzle the tip of your nose over a glowing speck on his cobalt striped chest.

"Nga yawne lu oer ( I love you )." This is sincerely declared with a brush of a kiss to your head. "I do, I really, really do." He insists, and he cannot evict the sniffles following that scrunches his nose afterwards. "I am sorry, very sorry for the way I’ve acted."

You are too exhausted to create some sort of movement, but one thing that is for certain is that Lo’ak prefers it this way. It makes the act of speaking, of apologizing much easier for him.

"Damn, I really have been so selfish, haven’t i?” A deep furrow finds its way to your forehead at his self chastising, at the way he is combined, conflicted between uttering this to you or to himself. “You will still leave. You won’t be here anymore. This is really happening, isn’t it?”

Another stiff sound leaves Lo’ak, so meek, so lost before sweetly adding, “I promise I did try. For you, I really tried. F-for them — for my family. To be what they need— what you needed.” A sob strangles in his throat, mind nearly beginning to descend into that fogging darkness. “A-and I know it’s not an excuse, I know it’s been years but after we left, a-after Neteyam—”

Yet the gentle, secure entanglement of your arms pulls Lo’ak from that mindset, and he finds solace within this embrace, keeping him close, letting him feel and know that you are there.

“Q-quiet. Enough — do not do this to yourself.” You stammer out softly, a light kiss meeting his collarbone. “We still have one more chance, ma Lo’ak. One more chance within this night. One more chance to pretend that this is not our future, to pretend that everything is fine, yes? Do not waste it by recounting your regrets, okay?”

Lo’ak’s mind gear this over, and in there, and in his heart, he more than knows that he is never going to be able to bring himself to love with such force as the way he loves you. Yet still, even now he cannot express it in a good, healthy, proper way that you truly deserve. He will find a way to prove it, however. To show, to act, to live by it as if it was the very sole purpose of his life. Lo’ak will find the pieces of himself beneath all this tethered and tainted pain, and bring them together within himself in order to bring himself back to life.

Lo’ak would do it for you. For his family.

So you can learn to love him again.

But he will do it for himself as well inorder for him to learn to love himself again.

"Wipe your tears for right now, okay? I am still here. I am right here in front of you." Lo’ak’s firm arms surround your frame into a hold that is soothing, familiar, full of strength. It blossoms molten warmth within your chest, erupting an arsenal of emotions.

"Whatever you — whatever you wish to give I will take." you end meekly and Lo’ak is certain he has fallen for you all over again. Yes, his climb back to victory will be well worth it. For you to look at him one day, and to once again see him as the boy you loved, the man you will love, the man you admired so profoundly. It makes Lo’ak’s entire heart begin to tremble, along with the curves of his lips.

"Alright then, sevin. Just take a breather and rest for a while, yeah? Our night's just getting started."

︵ ✮⋆˙

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tabbiwritesgenshin · 2 years ago

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failing light | various

synopsis: how would they act when you die

genre: angst

word count: 1,119

a/n: I don't have anything interesting to say but can I add how baffling it is the support my previous post got? like damn, i went from 20 notes to 253. tysm y'all omg

Collei wanted to scream, she wanted to cry, to yell, her whole world had crumbled in only a few glances, yet she couldn’t. She was struck with both fear and shock, you were her most beloved person in the entirety of Teyvat, you were the only person who had shown her any love in a long while and now..you were just..dead. She could only stare at your body for what felt like hours until she eventually lost consciousness.

Eula clutched your body with all she had, she had to make sure your last moments were ones of peace. She tried her best to contain herself, to ignore her tears, to do everything she could to look strong for you, yet, she couldn’t. She was left as a crying mess as the concept of losing the only person who loved her dawned on her mind.

Again she had lost, again Ei had weeped, again was someone else taken from her, again, she felt hopeless, like she had lost everything she held dear. She wanted to move on, she wished to maintain strong, that’s what you desired, that’s what she promised to you..yet she couldn’t. The pain was too much, the grief overtook her. Again would she retire to her Plane of Euthymia, again would she abandon everyone, again would she despise herself.

Ganyu was afraid, she was scared, terrified of the idea of losing you. She tried everything she could yet nothing worked. The half-Qilin tried every bit of knowledge she had on medicine to try to save you, even those used only by the Adepti, if she could, she’d even give out her life for you. Perhaps it was due to the panic of losing someone again, but during her numerous attempts to extend your life, she hadn’t accepted the fact that you were truly gone.

Kujou Sara was unfortunately experienced in the concept of loss and death so when you approached her with heavy battle wounds, she knew better than to panic. Her pain and grief were incomparable to whatever suffering she had seen before in her life, yet, she kept strong. She didn’t want you to pass in fear or sadness. The moment you died it shattered whatever facade was left in her. She collapsed onto the floor, still clutching your cold body. The mighty Tengu general of the Shogunate was lost..truly destroyed.

The skies were split and thunder roared as The Raiden Shogun weeped to your lifeless body. All semblance of hope..all happiness which she had ever felt in her life vanished as her eyes gazed at the ones which had given her so much with so little in return. No longer would the Shogun hold back against humanity, she would make all who dared harm her beloved pay, none shall be spared. All will suffer for the sake of eternity so no one she held dear would fear again.

Rosaria always acted like she didn’t care, Rosaria always acted like nothing mattered to her, even when she had someone to love, someone who loved her, she still acted with this cold exterior, yet, when she was faced with the news that the most significant person in her life had died every facade she had, every coldness in her heart, they were crushed as a sense of hopelessness would crush her like a boulder. Never again would that be a facade, after you had died, after she was left alone once more, that coldness overtook her heart and no amount of warmth could heat it ever again.

The Anemo Archon Venti would hold you on his lap as you slowly passed away, even in your last moments, his love was there to comfort you. Even after you were gone, he would not leave this position, even when you were buried, even when everyone thought you had died alone, even when everyone thought you two hadn’t even spoken to eachother, he would always be present in the place of your passing. Every night, every month, every year, he would sit there for hours at a time, drinking away as he talked to himself in only praises of yourself.

The Wanderer felt different, he was the creation of a god, mortals were below him, none were equal to him, he was above every single one of those worms, yet, there was one of those so called “worms” that for a single moment, for a brief second, could make him believe he was only a human, that he could feel happy, he could feel everything those he called below him could feel. There was only one person who could make him happy, only one person who could help him forget about his betrayals yet even them suffered, even them were hunted down due to his past, even them suffered because of him. Some would say, that the Wanderer, after so long, would return to who he was, even for a single minute, would enjoy murder once more.

He knew it would happen, a karmic debt was placed on Xiao a long time ago, he knew it, he knew that those around him would suffer because of it, but even then, the mighty conqueror of demons could also fall prey to the enticing and intoxicating love he used to think he was undeserving of. His more rational side was prepared for such an occurrence, of losing his most loved one yet deep down, he knew he wasn’t, he knew the moment you were at the brink of death, he would sacrifice his own to keep you safe..but he was too late, you were dead before he could heal you, before he could save you. Never before had the Yaksha felt such deep hatred, such unfeeling rage, so much was it that when he was done with his vengeance, when he had bathed in blood in the name of love, he felt nothing but a consuming sense of hollowness.

Zhongli grasped your hand with all the softness and grace he could have. He had a rather long talk with you, reminiscing about the fond times you two had, the love you shared, the pain and the happiness you had shared. He knew it would come to this, he knew that this would happen eventually. You were a mortal, a mere human, he was an archon, a god. Once you were gone, once time finally caught up with you, he couldn’t help but to shed a tear. Once again, none who would share his memories, once again, another loved one had been hit with time. Some could say that from that day, the enigmatic consultant of the Wangsheng funeral parlor seemed more distant, more cold, even.

#collei x reader #eula x reader #ganyu x reader #ei x reader #kujou sara x reader #rosaria x reader #raiden shogun x reader #venti x reader #wanderer x reader #scaramouche x reader #xiao x reader #zhongli x reader #genshin impact #genshin #genshin angst #genshin impact angst #genshin impact imagines #genshin imagines #❥ tabbi writes ❥

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winchestersisterimaginessss · 2 months ago

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Request: Sam and Dean’s sister has a complete mental breakdown from being depressed that everyone is dead and the anxiety that she is going to lose her brothers as well, but she’s also afraid that she’s losing herself because of how bad mentally she is.

Sam and Dean Winchester X Sister!Reader

Trigger warnings: Depression, Eating Disorder, Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Grief and Loss, Unintended Self Harm, Cursing

AN: I really went into this DEEEEP. I’m sorry if you have ever experienced anxiety or panic attacks like this one before and I know how hard it can be. If you ever need to talk I’m always here. Also, requests are open! I’ve been working on a ton all at the same time and whatever one is just flowing at the moment is usually the one that I finish and post quicker. I love all of the requests I’ve been getting and they are all so good so feel free to request more and anything you want! I hope you like this one!!

You sat in the front seat of the impala in some random parking lot, sobbing your eyes out. You felt your phone vibrating over and over again and assumed it was your brothers calling. They were defientely freaking the hell out because you snagged the car keys and ran out of the bunker crying. You were just so overwhelmed with everything happening in your life. Everyone was dead and you never knew if you or your brothers were going to be next. The instability and constant fight or flight response from your body was finally catching up to you. You couldn’t sleep, you couldn’t eat, you couldn’t stop worrying and you felt like you were dying. You felt your body shutting down and you were starting to feel hopeless. You were slowly killing yourself and the cycle was terrifying you.

A sudden sense of doom came over you and you felt like you were going to lose yourself at any moment. You started shaking and that’s when you noticed your heart pounding through your body. This was it, you were going to die. You were going to have a heart attack or a stroke or something. Your body officially had enough and you were going to die in this random parking lot and someone would have to find you there, dead. You choked back a sob as you panicked and put the car in reverse. You sped back towards the bunker and cried in relief as it came into view.

You parked the car and got out of it. As soon as your feet touched the ground, your body collapsed under you. You couldn’t even feel your limbs because they were so weak and numb. After numerous failed attempts of trying to get up, you just laid there on the hard ground. You were on your side in a ball, absolutely bawling. Your sobs drowned out the noise from around you as you let out painful cries. This was the end and there was nothing you could do to save yourself. You had lost complete hope and cried for every person you lost, every emotion you felt and you cried for yourself. You had completely lost who you were and you grieved the person you used to be. There was nothing else you could do because you were sure this was the end. You were going to meet your fate on the hard cold ground because you’re body gave up on you and couldn’t support you anymore. You let out another loud painful sob that raked through your body when you felt a pair of hands touch you. You jumped in fear and cried out. You were unable to defend yourself from how weak you were so you let out a sob of protest.

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s Sam, it’s Sam!” You heard Sam say frantically as he checked you over for injuries.

“What the fuck?” Dean said as he squatted down in front of you and was met with your paled, clammy face and trembling body.

“Whats wrong?” He asked frantically, reaching out to put his hands on your body to stable you. You let out another sob and tried to suck in a breath. Your breathing was rapid and choppy and you couldn’t catch it with how hard you were crying. You were going to die.

“I-I’m g-go-going to die!” You shrieked, terrified as you reached to grab his forearms.

“WHAT?” Dean asked, frantically scanning your body for any sign of injury.

“I-I-I can’t b-brea-breathe.” You cried, struggling to talk. Your brothers shared a knowing look. Sam who was still behind you, stepped over top of you. Dean moved out of the way, to let Sam talk you through this one. You were terrified and your breaths were rapid. You latched onto Sam’s forearms in panic since Dean’s were now absent from you. You were searching for any kind of physical comfort and they both knew that. Dean went behind you and sat you up, pulling your back into his chest to support your body. You panicked from the lack of oxygen making its way into your body.

“Hey kid, I need you to relax for me. You’re okay, it’s alright.” Dean tried to soothe you, but you were too focused on the fact that you were dying. You gasped for air as your finger tips dug into Sam’s forearms. Sam’s eyes were soft as he looked into yours that were filled with terror.

“Hey bug, you’re okay, it’s okay Y/N/N, you’re alright.” He said softly, trying to get you grounded.

“No!” You sobbed. You were dying and these were going to be your last moments.

“You’re having a panic attack I need you to calm down for me.” He said gently.

“No, no, no, no!” You cried feeling the impending doom hitting you.

“I need you to breathe for me bug, please.” Sam tried again, grabbing your hands in his and giving them a squeeze.

“Oh my God!” You cried. “My f-fa-face is g-going numb! I’m h-ha-having a s-stroke!” You shrieked. Dean felt your body trembling and your heart pounding through your body.

“Hey, hey, hey, hey, kiddo you’re okay, you’re okay!” Dean said helpless. His baby sister was struggling and he couldn’t snap you out of it. Sam instantly cupped your cheeks and made you look him in the eyes. Your hands went back to gripping his fore arms.

“You’re not having a stroke, your body’s in fight or flight so you need to breathe for me please.” He pleaded with you. You let out a strangled sob trying to breathe.

“I’m t-trying!” You choked out, desperately.

“I know, I know, you’re doing so well. Come on bug keep trying for me please.” Sam said softly. Dean felt your body struggling beneath him.

“Okay, okay try to match my breathing kiddo.” You heard Dean say as you felt his chest expand. You tried matching it and started making a little progress.

“Atta girl.” He praised, trying to encourage you to keep matching his breaths. You weren’t gasping for air anymore, but it was still clear that you were still struggling.

“Hey sweetheart, you’re okay, alright? I need you to tell me 5 things you can see right now.” Sam said. The question threw you off, but you looked around.

“T-the sky?” You questioned because you were still confused by what he was asking you and why.

“Okay and what are four more things you can see?” He asked gently, his eyes encouraging.

“The g-grass, you, Dean a-and the ca-car.” You responded.

“Good job!” Sam praised as Dean rubbed your back.

“What are 4 things you can touch?” He asked.

“Uhhh the concrete, the g-grass, this leaf a-and the car.” You responded again.

“Okay good, what are three things you can hear?” He asked softly. You took a minute to really listen to your surroundings before you answered.

“The birds, the breeze and the t-trees rustling.”

Sam sent you an encouraging nod.

“Okay and 2 things that you can smell?” He said.

“The m-mulch and the grass.” You said.

“Okay and one thing that you can taste.” He said.

“That’s easy, my tears.” You chuckled as Sam sent you a pained smile. Dean felt your body physically start to relax and nodded towards Sam. Sam shook his head before Dean spoke.

“Alright kid, how about we get you inside, yeah?” He asked. You nodded and he gently pulled you up from the ground. You were still trembling and your heart was still racing a little bit. You gripped onto Dean for support and shot him a terrified expression.

“Hey you’re alright, it’s normal. You’r body’s trying to calm down alright?” He explained. You nodded and tried to take your first step before you felt your body partially give out again. You were just so weak to begin with and your panic attack took so much out of you. Dean was quick though as he held you up to prevent you from hitting the ground. A slight whimper fell from your lips.

“I know kid, I know. I’ve got you.” He whispered as he helped you into the bunker. He guided you over to the couch before gently sitting you down. Both of your brothers now faced you with worried looks and you immediately looked towards the floor.

Dean squatted down in front of you so you had no choice but to look at him.

“What’s going on?” He asked concerned. You squeezed your eyes shut trying not to have another meltdown again.

“Hey,” you heard him say softly as he put his hand on your shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “You’ve gotta tell us what’s going on kiddo so we can help you.” He explained.

“Everything!” You choked back a sob. “I’m scared, De! I’m just so scared!” You cried before finding enough energy to launch yourself into his arms—needing comfort. He immediately wrapped his arms around you and held the back of your head with one of his hands as he rested his chin on your head. The two of you stayed still for a few moments before Dean spoke again.

“You need to tell me what you’re scared of.” He said gently, trying to coax it out of you.

“I’m scared of losing you. I’m scared of losing Sammy. I’m scared I’ve already lost myself.” You whimpered. Dean clenched his jaw, not sure how to continue.

“Me and Sammy are right here kiddo, alright? We’re not going anywhere. Not ever.” He reassured you and you nodded into his chest before he pulled you back. You looked between both of your brothers pained expressions.

“What do you mean you think you’ve already lost yourself?” Dean asked concerned.

“I-“ You started before another tear slid down your cheek and you looked away.

“Hey bug, you’ve gotta tell us what’s going on, alright?” Sam said softly. You nodded and gulped.

“I can’t sleep because I’m terrified. I can’t eat because I’m terrified. I literally can not function and I feel myself growing weaker by the day. I can feel my body shutting down and it’s scaring me because I think it’s slowly killing me.” You whimpered.

“Okay.” Sam nodded, understanding where you were at mentally. Dean pinched the bridge of his nose and felt so much pain for his baby sister who was struggling so badly. He wanted you to be able to live a normal teenage girl life so badly.

“I just feel so hopeless. Everyone’s dead, everyone I’ve ever loved is dead besides you two. You’re all I have left, but every day I never know if it’s going to be the day that I lose one of you or both of you! Without the both of you, I have nothing to live for and I wouldn’t know how to go on. You two have always been the most important thing in my life and you’re everything to me and I can’t imagine a life without either of you.” You said, bursting into tears. This was your reality and it was so shitty. “B-but, then I am so a-anxious and absolutely t-terrified that I can’t ever sleep at night and then I c-can’t eat. I feel my body shutting down and I-I’m scared that I’m dying. Its like I’m killing myself s-slowly, but I don’t mean to be. I just feel trapped in a n-never ending cycle of being hopeless and scared. I d-don’t want to die and I don’t want e-either of you to die, but the possibility of either of those things happening is so h-high and I can’t take another second of it a-anymore!” You cried out, it felt like your last plea for help. Your brothers expressions were pained. You couldn’t face them so your trembling hands gripped your hair and pulled your head between your knees. You let out another sob trying to drown out your reality. You felt your brothers sit on either side of you and a hand was placed on your back while another was placed on your knee.

“I can’t take it any longer!” You sobbed. Dean clenched his jaw and looked away from you. He took his hand off your knee and covered his face trying to stifle his emotions that were threatening to spill over. You let out another sob and he got up from the couch. He came in front of you and squatted down to your level. He grabbed your hands from your hair and gripped them tight in his.

“Look at me.” He said. You looked up at him and his face softened.

“I need you to know that nothing is going to happen to any of us ever alright? Please just trust me in knowing that we’re all going to be okay. We’re all too stubborn to die and stay dead anyway. We’re winchesters, we always find our way back no matter what. We will always be here for you. You got it?” He asked.

You nodded and chuckled slightly through your tears. To anyone else, that might’ve not been reassuring, but to you it was. Dean was right. We were all too stubborn to stay dead anyway. The Winchesters never gave up and we were relentless.

“Yeah we really are too stubborn to die.” You said, cracking a slight smile.

“And listen to me, we’re going to start working on that head of yours okay? Me and Sam are going to make sure you’re eating the way you should be. It will probably improve your sleep and then we’ll figure that part out from there, alright?” He asked.

“Yeah alright.” You said feeling a slight amount of hope.

“We’re starting this tonight so go get yourself cleaned up and showered. I’m going to make you a good protein filled dinner that you’re going to eat and then we’ll figure the rest out from there okay?” He asked. You nodded and he gave your hands one last squeeze before letting them go. You watched as Dean walked towards the kitchen and sighed.

“Do you need some help getting to the bathroom bug?” Sam asked with his hand still on your back. You were still incredibly weak and shaky, but you felt embarrassed needing even more help.

“Umm no I think I’m alright.” You said, shooting Sam a slight smile. There was no way you were going to let your body give out from under you again. You stood up weakly and felt Sam’s concerned eyes on you. You took your first slow step and wobbled slightly. You heard Sam stand up from his seat and that was all it took for you to push forward. You made your way to the bathroom with Sam following behind softly. He knew you were struggling, but knew you all too well. You weren’t going to ask for help so he turned on the shower and got a towel out for you.

“Thanks Sammy,” you whispered.

“You’re welcome. I’ll go get you some clothes and leave them at the door for you. Yell if you need anything else alright?” He asked.

“Yes, thank you.” You replied softly before you embraced him. The hug caught him slightly off guard, but he wrapped his arms around you and kissed your head.

“You’re going to be alright, everything’s going to be okay. We’re here for you always.” He reassured you before you pulled away.

“Okay.” You nodded and smiled slightly. He walked out of the bathroom and shut the door behind him. You got a shower and grabbed the towel that Sam got out for you. You dried off and slightly opened the bathroom door to see the pile of clothes Sam left for you. You put on his sweatpants that he gave you and had to roll them up about six times. His sweatshirt fell down to your knees and you hugged yourself. You felt safe and secure wearing your brothers baggy clothes. You walked quietly down the hall towards the kitchen. When you walked in you saw both of your brothers there. Dean pushed the plate towards Sam and Sam plated some sweet potatoes onto it. Dean grabbed it back from him and placed some chicken onto it. They both turned around and noticed your presence.

“Hey kiddo, here’s some chicken and those nasty sweet potatoes that you love so much.” He said, putting the plate down on the table in front of you. You chuckled as you sat at the table.

“Thanks guys. And Dean they are actually really so good, you should give them another try!” You said laughing at his disgusted expression.

“I’ll stick with my normal French fries thanks.” He said and pretended to gag.

“Okay more for me then!” You exclaimed.

“Yeah kiddo more for you so eat up and then we’re going to watch a movie.” Dean said softly looking at you starting to pick at your food.

“Oh okay, that’s fun! What movie are we watching?” You asked.

“Legally blonde, your favorite.” Dean said, smirking. You cheered and did a little happy dance in your seat.

“I’m so glad you think Reese Witherspoon is hot so we get to watch my favorite movie all the time.” You smirked.

“Yeah and Sammy was going to be a lawyer so he can relate to her or whatever. It’s the perfect movie for all of us.” Dean responded, smirking towards Sam. Sam sent Dean a bitch face.

“Yeah I’m just like Elle Woods.” He said sarcastically.

“Exactly, I know you brought your pink glitter pen to your bar exam.” Dean smirked and you giggled at his joke. Dean sent you a wink as you heard Sam huff.

“Yeah okay, go set up the movie Dean.” Sam said, rolling his eyes.

Deans laughter boomed as he walked out of the kitchen to set up the movie.

Sam sat with you as you picked at your food. You ate a few more bites before setting down your fork. There was still half of the food left and Sam shot you his puppy dog eyes.

“You’ve gotta finish okay?” He said softly.

“But, I feel nauseous.” You whined.

“I know you’re feeling nauseous. Try to take small bites and eat slowly.“ Sam suggested, shooting you an encouraging look.

“Okay.” You said sadly and put more food into your mouth.

“You’ve got it bug.” Sam said standing up and kissing your head before he turned to clean the dishes from your dinner. He checked on you periodically as he cleaned the kitchen up. You actually felt pretty good once you pushed past the first feeling of nausea. You realized how hungry you really were and ate your dinner with ease. Just as you were finishing your last bite, Dean walked back in. He looked at your plate and smiled when he saw that you ate everything.

“Atta girl!” He cheered. “Now who wants some popcorn?” He smiled, looking between you and Sam.

“Me!” You said as you walked out of the kitchen. “And Dean grab some candy too!” You shouted as you jumped onto the couch. Sam followed behind you and sat down. Dean came in a little after with a huge bowl of popcorn and a ton of candy. He sat down and handed you the bowl of popcorn since you were in the middle of them both.

“Yum thanks!” You said, stuffing your face with the popcorn before the movie even started. Sam chuckled as he grabbed the remote.

“I’m glad you’re starting to feel more like yourself bug.” He said as he ruffled your hair with one hand and played the movie. By the end of it, the three of you were passed out on the couch together.

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soracities · 7 months ago

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How to stop fearing love? When i think about me falling for someone it's always here with the shadow of grief and loss what if i loved so much that it might end and hurt more? I experienced grief and since then i fear losing anyone i love even tho i know no one can run away from death but it's not only death what if there is no place for me in the heart of those i adore? I never allowed myself to confess or be honest about my feelings for someone i love, i keep it as an idea i keep just daydreaming about it.

Love that you allow only to breathe as a fantasy, that you keep as a daydream to get lost in, that you put in a glass jar on the highest shelf for fear of what might happen if it's too close cannot--no matter how much you may hope for it, and no matter how much the love itself aspires to it--become Love. You can't hold love on a leash and expect it to grow; grief and loss are your entry tickets because for your love to be real it has to be honest. And honest love is a confrontation with the fact that it may not last. Love that is only there under a precondition cannot ever be free, and something that cannot exist freely cannot exist honestly. And what's a love worth--any kind of love--that isn't honest?

We hope that the people we love value us and care for us. We hope that they do so as much as we care for and value them. But I think the spectre of loss, terrifying as it is, does not necessarily have to become a noose around your neck: the difference between being confronted with sudden hurt and closing yourself away is that at least the hurt is real--it came from a real choice that you made, to be awake and present in the world with another person. The alternative is spending your whole life wondering "what if?": right now, it's what if I get hurt? But eventually, as time goes on, it becomes what if I'd been braver? What if I'd taken a leap? What if I'd tried with xyz? What would my life look like if I had? The difference between these, and get your heartbroken, is that heartbreak will, one day, find a place in your life, and you will be able to move on. Regret, however, has a far, far longer shelf life; it's almost impossibly to move on from a question you will never get an answer to.

All your fears and worries, anon, are natural and I think everyon has them, at some point or another. But when you lead your life with this fear--"What if there is no place for me in the heart of those i adore?"-- you're already guaranteeing that there can be no place because you are not allowing yourself the freedom to find that place. It's like saying "what if I never see the ocean?" but avoiding every trip to the beach that comes your way. And not only are you depriving yourself of genuine loving connections with other people, you're depriving them of the opportunity to give you those connections too (and hence your fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy).

I think at the end of the day, fear of love ending, fear of the hurt that follows, fear of what will happen to us as a result of that hurt is not down to whether or not you can trust that the love will last or fear of love at all to begin with; I think it's down to whether or not you trust yourself to be okay if it doesn't. And I think the prospect of falling in love, and then falling out of it, becomes far less terrifying when you look at it from that point of view. It's not can I trust you not to hurt me? It's can I trust myself to still love me if you do? Can I trust myself to still believe I deserve love and good things, even if you do? Can I trust myself to be okay for myself?

Because ultimately, it's not about other people having a place for you or not, it's not about knowing in advance that someone will never hurt you--you can't predict this about anyone, about any situation. But what you can rely on, what you can control is however you respond to it. Love is a dialogue, I think--it's a collaborative mode of being: there are two (or more) people in it working in tandem on something, towards something, but you don't cease to be two individuals in that process either. You still stand if the other isn't there: you must simply learn to navigate the space they leave behind and fill it up differently. You said you experienced grief once already--my question is: have you honoured that grief? More importantly, have you honoured the love that this grief came from and that you lost? Do you believe that you're honouring the importance & your memory of that love in your life by closing yourself off from the opportunity to ever experience it again, in different forms?

I think Vuong said somewhere that grief is the final translation of love and I believe that's true--but I also believe it does this love a profound disservice to measure it, value it, form a legacy from it purely from that grief alone. The love was there. Then grief came, yes. But the love was there. All hurt, all grief, all shattering sense of loss is a testament to the enormity of that love to begin with. It hurts as much as its worth, as they say. The grief isn't a punishment; it's to remind you of that worth. And the lesson from that grief, if we decide it's better to not open ourselves up to love and connection again, is, in my view at least, a diminishing of that worth.

I used to do rollerblading and ice skating, and possibly the only useful thing I can say on this is that fearing love is a lot like learning to balance on skates: you cannot go anywhere on those things as long as you are utterly petrified of falling to the ground. And you will keep being petrified until you do fall--but after that, you learn: you learn how to fall, and get back up, and you learn that the fall itself and what comes after is not nearly as terrifying or impossible as the anticipation of pain and inching along in terror for the rest of your life because of it. A few falls in, you slowly learn to trust yourself. There's no harrowing what if? anymore because you have something now you can work with (the fall hurts and it sucks and it is embarrassing but you're here, still) and use and learn from and become a braver version of yourself.

I don't know if any of this helps you, anon, but I sincerely hope it does and I'm sending you all my love through this 🤍

#ask #Anonymous #notes from elsewhere

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miguelswifey04 · 1 year ago

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Miguel saving the multiverse but his spider wife dying in his arms and everyone’s celebrating until they see Miguel with his wife in his arms sobbing

dude this is the saddest thing i have ever read…i even have tears in my eyes because i can envision it ☹️

miguel o’hara x wife! spider-reader

summary: everyone was blinded by their own victory when miguel’s crying over his dying wife in his arms…

cw: reader’s death, angst, grief & trauma

what was a man to do when all he could do is cry watching his love of his life slip away from his fingers. “y-youre gonna be okay! i-i promise i’m gonna save you!” miguel’s body violent shook as he cradled your body so close to his as if to give you his very own soul to keep you alive. but, he felt the way your heart beat was slowing down and your breathing had become more shallow, “mi vida, please, please hold on i’m gonna call the emergency evac!” miguel with one arm clutched you to his body as he typed away on his watch. everyone else around him were too busy celebrating in their latest mission. everyone was rejoicing while also busy talking amongst themselves but nobody bothered to even look at you or miguel in agony. until he screamed.

tears streamed down his face when you had whispered “it’s okay miguel, i’ll always be with you in your heart,” it took every strength in you to use your delicate voice. miguel couldn’t lose someone again, especially his wife. but at last, things don’t turn out the way he wanted too. your body went limp. he face fell to one of horrors that he had witness pass through his mind all at once. he shook you..tried to wake you up. he wanted to tell himself that you just passed out, but, no, you died right in his arms.

the cheers and jubilation faded as the heroes, now victorious, witnessed miguel’s profound grief. the heartache and devastation etched on his face were a stark reminder of the sacrifices made for the greater good. one by one, the spider people approached miguel, their expressions changing from jubilation to sorrow. they realized that, amid their triumph, miguel had experienced an irreplaceable loss. sympathy washed over them as they joined him in his moment of grief, their cheers silenced by the weight of the tragedy. his sobs would be very etched in everyone’s brain. a distraught and melancholic miguel. the man who never showed much emotions but deep down he was overcame with every human emotion. he is spider-man 2099 and that was the burden he’d carry for the rest of his life.

tags 🏷️!! @kairiscorner @obi-mom-kenobi @emiemiemiii @sabcandoit @astro1bloom @meeom

#spiderman atsv #spider man: across the spider verse #miguel o'hara #atsv x reader #🌱 lin writes #miguel o’hara x reader #miguel spiderman #miguel o’hara x y/n #spider person #lin’s asks #♡´･ᴗ･`♡ lin answers #miguel o’hara x yn #miguel o’hara angst #miguel o’hara imagine #miguel o’hara x wife!reader #spiderman 2099 #spiderman2099

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little-miss-dilf-lover · 1 year ago

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Hiii, this is my first time requesting a Miguel fic😭😭😭 nervous

so like hurt/comfort where spider-woman reader was a mother and losing her child (preferably a daughter) was one of her cannon events.

Shes watching old videos on her phone/laptop where her kids kind of like, standing on her feet and they're dancing together to my love mine all mine by mistki (her new album destroyed me) and Miguel walks in and just watches.

Miguel gets caught staring at the videos but instead of telling him to leave she asks him to stay because she knows hes been through something similar. They're just watching old videos of her kid and then they eventually move onto talking about Gabi too.

im a sucker for friends/coworkers to lovers so maybe add a little lovey dovey smut at the end if you want <333

rlly sorry if this is a bit much i just had to get this out of my smooth little brain😭😭😭

hii!! AAA I love it!! but really sorry, no smut in this one :(( I had too many ideas but I had a total brain fart writing this. thank you for requesting, hope you like it💌

—

OF THE PAST

miguel o’hara x spider-woman!reader

word count: 550

warnings: mentions of death, grief etc

✧.┊ MASTERLIST

Grief and loss aren't uncommon emotions for a Spider-Person. They were feelings all Spiders experienced at one point- all of you connected by a singular canonical death.

For many others, their event was the death of Uncle Ben, but not you. Yours was your daughter- your little love who 'mistakenly' got caught in the crossfire.

Not many Spiders could resonate with the grief of losing a child, nor could one imagine the weight of it. It's a feeling that can truly be understood by those who have experienced the same thing, by someone who had also lost a child.

There was only one who could comprehend your grief, Miguel.

You'd often find yourself rewatching old family tapes of you and your daughter, replaying the clips over and over as if the memories weren't painful enough.

You'd essentially watch your life back, looking over videos and pictures of you and your little girl- times when you baked cupcakes, or had secret picnics in the backyard. Beautiful moments where you danced in the living room, her tiny feet balanced on yours as you held her hands, spinning her around to the music.

When you watched it back, you couldn't recognise yourself. The woman in the videos isn't here anymore. She was long gone, and you missed her.

You were still at HQ, not wanting to return to an empty home, so you stayed, sitting in the vacant cafeteria as you stared aimlessly at your phone, honing in on the tiny writing at the top of the screen, '1 year ago today.'

"You can sit down," you whisper to the presence behind -Miguel- who has been lurking for the past few minutes.

"What gave it away?" he quietly asks, pulling out a chair next to you.

"Your heart," you sadly smile at him and turn your focus back to your phone.

The subject of child loss is always incredibly tricky, never knowing what to say or constantly worrying if you said the wrong thing. It's hard to gauge what does more harm to the parent, and though Miguel is dealing with a similar situation, he still found himself at a loss.

"I do that too," he finally speaks, nodding to your hand. "It feels good for a bit, then it just..."

"Hurts some more," you finish his sentence, weakly chuckling.

"Yeah," he nods, twisting around in his chair to face you. "Can I see?"

You hum, lightly nodding as you press her photo album, turning it so Miguel could see.

You swipe through with tears prickled in your eyes, looming in the water line as you smile at the screen.

"This one," you speak up, clearing your throat. "She— uh, she got into my makeup bag," you laugh, recalling the memory. "And she— erm, she stained her face for a few days. Looked like a panda for a while."

Miguel chuckles, fully immersed in your story. "Gabi did that, too. But she," his smile widens, shaking his head. "Found high heels and dresses."

"Mine too," you snicker, showing him the picture of your daughter playing adult dress up.

You both stay like that for a while, sharing stories and memories of your daughters, recalling comical events to lighten the atmosphere. The pair of you telling tales in a way that connects you.

— — — — — — — — — — ☆ — — — — — — — — — —

artwork by shuploc

#request #miguel ohara #miguel o'hara #miguel o’hara fic #miguel o’hara x reader #miguel ohara x reader #miguel o’hara drabble #miguel o’hara angst #miguel o’hara fluff #miguel spiderverse #miguel o’hara imagine #miguel x reader #miguel atsv

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yeyinde · 2 years ago

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infinity in the palm of your hand (eternity in an hour) | reincarnation AU

Johnny "Soap" MacTavish (OG) x Reader | Johnny "Soap" MacTavish (Remake) x Reader

You're grieving for something, someone—a man with kind eyes and a soft smile like the valley in spring: fresh rain over the boscage in bloom—that you've never met before.

And then you find him.

MATURE | 18+ —TAGS: AU, canon divergence: reincarnation; fluff; tagging as fem!Reader due to usage of "bonnie" (not a name—Reader is not named), and mentions of a dress but no other descriptive imagery is used —WARNINGS: grief, loss, unhealthy coping mechanisms, existential crisis, allusions to smut; cosmic horror (but??? it's a romance????) —WORD COUNT: 11,9K —NOTES: I like the idea of fated pairs, soul mates, but I can't write this concept without somehow diving into the cosmic horror of something, someone, controlling you from behind the scenes. So. Um. Idk what to call this abomination. It leaks horror but is meant to be quite fluffy. It's romance. It's a love story. But it's also kinda eldritch. Oops. This was also originally a request I got back in November (I'm so sorry!). I have since lost the request, but Reincarnation Anon, this is for you!!! 🖤

In Greek, there are two words for time:

Kronos—chronological, the clock: fixed—measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years. The world runs on Kronos. On its merciless rigidity, it's apathetic, unending trek forward. It is cruel, sometimes, but it cares little for you, or anyone else who exists inside its unforgiving realm. Time is linear. A steady March.

And then there is Kairos. In its essence, and in utter simplicity: timelessness.

It's often found in grief when the world around you shatters and implodes. When it lapses into pain and agony. Into how and why and—

Nothing makes sense. Nothing matters.

You've never experienced any such loss. Gran, grandad, friends, family—all alive and well. And yet—

You're grieving for something, someone—a man with kind eyes and a soft smile like the valley in spring: fresh rain over the boscage in bloom—that you've never met before.

And then you find him.

Or, rather, he finds you.

(Over and over and over again—)

It starts in university.

Start, of course, is an operative word. It's an incipient event: a slow burn in the back of your head that gets hotter and hotter, but you can't quite discern why. You just feel wrong. Shaken. The foundation in which you walk wobbles. Crumbles.

There is an unseen precipice under your feet covered by cobblestone. You know it's there—are aware of the yawning chasm that wants to swallow you whole, but you don't know where it is.

And then—

There is no phone call, no blunt condolences for any particular loss, just—

A knock on your door. It's just your flatmate, but the rhythm cuts through your head, right down the middle.

Agony. The world around you flips, topples off its axis, and just keeps spinning, spinning, spinning—

It hits you with the force of a tsunami. A deluge of biblical proportions that uprooted everything you'd ever know, casting you out into a frothing abyss, ravaged by mountain-tall waves that left you asunder. Awash in a tumultuous sea.

It would make sense, you suppose, had you lost someone, but you haven't.

The most you've lost was a pet.

And yet—

You sob, scream, and claw at your chest until your skin is torn and shredded, trying futilely to get to where it hurts the most. It's agonising. Brutal. They sedate you—no choice is given when you're so frantic, so desperate. The world slips away. The pain abated.

But it doesn't stop it.

They call it grief, and you don't know why. You haven't lost anyone. Mum, dad, gran, grandad. All alive and well. All there, standing clustered around your hospital bed (admitted when you wouldn't stop screaming) looking quite bewildered by you. By the things you say—missing something, someone, gone, just gone—and the way you're acting.

And it scares you just as much as it does them, but you can't just push it aside, let it go. There is a gaping hole in your chest, one punched straight through your sternum. It's gangrenous, and rotting; the stench makes you dizzy, makes your head spin. Your heart is necrotising between your ribs and spine, but no one knows why. No one understands the agony you feel because everyone is alive.

They all say the same: we don't know. Depression, perhaps. You just need time.

Time does nothing to heal the wound. You can't run from the hurt—it's never-ending—but you get better at hiding it, at dealing with pulpy remains of your still-beating heart that slugs on despite the mouldering wound ripped open in the centre.

They tell you it's Thursday, now.

Before you'd throw something, thrash, and scream yourself hoarse because what does it matter when your heart is dying, decaying inside of your chest.

Now, you just nod. Thursday, is it?

Time doesn't exist to you anymore. It's just an endless stream of days and nights that get easier to withstand as the foreign clock on the wall ticks down the seconds you don't feel.

The world is a murky haze of confusion and pain. You move on only because you have to.

Things—

Well. They don't get better, but they get bearable, and you suppose that's the same thing, isn't it?

And then you dream.

They come in flashes. Snippets. Little moments of a place and time that doesn't exist, that isn't real. This life was not one you lived. The taste of elderberry has never graced your lips, but you think of the sweet, tartness like it's an old comfort.

It makes you ache.

Simplicity bleeds into familiarity into love into—

—you should… you should sit for this—

Crushing heartache. It carries the flavour of gunpowder, and is soaked in charcoal; the soot stains the tips of your fingers when you reach out, curling them in the rough lapels of a gunmetal grey jacket still carrying the scent of ichor, and loss.

—i… i can't promise you forever, but i can promise you now—

You dream of a man. Of hands on your body. Eyes gazing at you—an alluvial fan in hazel, green, and gold; the shadows cast in the shallow valleys make you yearn for something.

Something, something—

You wake up, hand to your splitting chest as the agony rips it into pieces. Heartache, grief. It drapes itself over you like a storm cloud. Looming there, ever-present, and ready to chisel open a deluge of pain so visceral you weep. And weep. And—

Your pillow is wet. Nose stuffed, eyes gritty. You've been crying, sobbing, in your sleep again.

It's a cycle. Memories flood your head until it's splitting apart at the seams, making room for that life it wants to force you to remember, acknowledge, and pretend exists, and one you're in now.

It breaks something inside of you. Cracks the levee. In the midst of crumbling concrete, and a roaring deluge, you hear a voice.

(You stare at the bottles lining the shelves in your vanity, and tell no one.)

—excuse me? You dropped this—

HERE

There is a tavern on High Street.

It's nothing special on its own. Just a building, just a pub. You pass it twice a day on your commute to work, and it should be background noise. A blur of scenery and objects as you stroll through the streets. A melding of the world around you, an inconsequential smear of cobblestone and brick.

And yet—

Your eyes keep finding it, seeking it out. It's involuntary. Automatic. You pass the grocer and the pharmacy, head angled down toward the grey stone below, and then, like an unignorable force, a gravitational pull, your head lifts. The fairy lights are strewn around the outside coruscate in the gloom. You nearly trip.

It's strange. Odd.

It's just a building. Just a tavern.

—got some of the best brews in town—

But you remember it. Are familiar with it in a way that makes absolutely no sense. You've never gone inside, never heard anyone speak about it. It's a building on a street of many. Ordinary. Plain. Nothing about this place should stand out to you. It isn't eye-catching or garish. It's—

—cosy little spot—

It's an anomaly. Much like—

Well. Much like everything in your life.

There is a gnawing in the pit of your stomach, one that's so achingly familiar that your head swims from deja vu that shouldn't exist. It fits inside like an augur. A portant.

How can the unknown be a comfort to you? How can it blister your heart with such ferocity that you find yourself pawing at your face to stem the deluge of tears that cascade down your cheeks in rivets?

Whatever it is, it's calamitous and entirely unignorable.

Your life is asunder, in shambles because of it yet each hiss in your ear addles your thoughts until you become overwhelmed by it all. Until the echoes that tell you to wander down a random side street, sign a lease for an apartment you can't afford, to leave the safety of your home country, and—

On a whim, you packed your things up on the behest of that strange, Eldridge feeling eating you alive that made you cut ties with your old, peaceful life, and book the first plane ticket to Elgin. No plan, no money.

(You'd call it an afflatus had it not been so drenched in the unknown.)

It's paradoxical: you cry when you see that stupid church in the distance, your feet drag you to places you've never been before, and now.

Now:

You can't stop staring at a nondescript pub in a sea of many.

Ignore it. Leave it. You take another route, head down, hands shoved deep in the pockets of your jacket to keep them from trembling. It'll pass. It'll go away.

It doesn't.

It pools in the pit of your stomach, noxious and rotten, until you wake up drenched in sweat, hands grasping for a phantom who no longer exists—

—wanna come with me?—

You break on Saturday.

—i like when you wear that dress—

You wear it, and hate yourself a little bit for it. It's stupid, and out of place, but you do it, anyway.

—booth in the back is where i always sit, want to come join me—

The inside of the tavern is just the same as you remembered it—

No. No.

You've never been here before.

You smell malt in the air; the same amber that spumes in your veins. You dance in circles between the tables, giggling at the people who smear by in a haze of gold and red.

A hand reaches, snags your waist. "Where are you going, pretty thing? Wanna come sit with us?"

It makes you laugh, and laugh, and—

"There a problem?" Heat against your bare back. Ironclad arms around your middle. His voice is a rumble. A thunderclap. "She's with me. Go on now. Get."

You pull away from him, smirking, and—

The air is punched from your lungs. Longing sits in your throat, heavy and thick. It aches. God, it aches. A phantom pain that never quite dissipates. A raw wound left to fester; exposed and open to the elements. It never heals. Never scabs. It oozes grief and headache into your bloodstream and makes you feel lost. Dazed. Confused.

It's silly.

Stupid.

The warm blends of burnt umber and gold make you tremble. Everything inside is—familiar, in all the ways it shouldn't be.

You can't be here. Can't—

Something quivers inside of you. The sting of a guitar being plunked by indelicate hands. It snaps, breaks. You turn, eyes wild, wide—

—hey, where are you—

"...goin'—?"

A chest. Warm. Familiar.

Your neck aches when you jerk your chin up, hands beaded against the hard, firm flesh of a stranger who feels all too familiar, too—

Hazel. A boscage in spring. Warm milk—

"Honey…"

It's out before you can stop it.

Green and golden widen until they're drowning in a sea of arsenic white. An island of bloom, spring, carved in the middle of a barren, icy land. Lids fall, lashes dust across the shadows of the valley smeared beneath the red seal of his lower lash line.

Your breath catches when they slide open, a slow crawl over a varicoloured plume of witch elm and wheat.

—dark eyes, a furrowed brow, long nose, a dusting of charcoal stubble along his cheeks and jaw, and full pink lips—

No. No.

It's different. This isn't the man who haunts your dreams and whispers sweet nothings into your ear. This is not the cut of a man who once curled his fingers over your hips, lips glued to your pulse as he spent himself inside of you—

Heat sears your cheeks.

His mouth opens, and closes. Opens again. No words spill out. His confusion is an oppressive silence.

You swallow down the bitter tang of panic that pools on your tongue, nails digging into the soft fabric of his shirt.

This isn't that man.

He just—

"Sorry," you think you say, but it's all a blur. There was a blue ravine in his eyes, one with shallow shores, and crystalline waves that rippled with the breeze. You're sinking in those waters, now. Dragged down to the murky depths of blue, blue, blue that once made you see samsara with just the brush of his lips. Everything sounds distorted. Hollow.

—you make me crazy. make me want things i shouldn't. Riley thinks i'm whipped. kinda agree with him, but i can't let you go. i can't get you outta my head, and i don't want to—

"Sorry—," you choke, the words a crumpled piece of paper lodged in your throat. Papier-mache seals over your trachea.

You push away from him, stumbling out of this paroxysm. Flames lick at your heels, carrying you further from the laps of blue that flicker over beige.

He chases after you. A warm hand around your wrist stops you on the corner outside of a pharmacy. The streets are dusted in white. It trickles from the sky in a thick hail of cosmic dust.

His breath plumes in front of him when he breathes, pure white tendrils ghosting into the midnight blue silk that covers the town.

"Hey, you alright? Can I—call someone for you, or—"

"No." You gasp, shaking your head so fast, you're nearly sick with it.

"Hey, hey." His hand moves, perches itself against your cheek, eyes brimming in the flushed lamp overhead. His brow is drenched with concern. With confusion. And anger. Anger—why, why—

"Did someone drug you? Did you drink anythin'?"

It rips a bark of laughter from your chest. "Drugs? No. I'm just—"

Spiralling.

You make a vague motion with your wrist, and hope it's enough to convey the absolute travesty of your life. It meets the mark.

The divot in his forehead softens, eyes creasing in the corners. Full pink lips knot to the side. Something passes his expression that looks a little too much like understanding to ever sit well in the pit of your stomach.

You swallow down the acrid residuum of panic, and nod. Why—who knows. It just feels appropriate.

"I need to go—"

"—I like your dress."

The words tumble over each other, barely coherent amid the amalgamated syllables, but ring with distinct clarity in your head. Your dress. Your brows knot, eyes dropping to the stupid little thing you'd picked out in a shop you had no business being inside. Led by the nose. A puppet on strings.

You scoff. "I hate it."

You don't. You'd have picked it out yourself if you had that funny little thing called freewill; that precious little something you'd left behind in a dorm on a university campus you haven't thought of in years.

"It's, ahh—," he rubs the back of his neck, eyes skirting toward the bar you fled from. "It's pretty."

Pretty.

"Oh…," you say, quite intelligently. "You can have it if you want."

It's only when his brows buoy to his hairline do you realise the innuendo within that.

The fire inside dies. Doused with the waters of Acheron.

"Sorry—"

"—'dunno if it'd look as good on me as it does you, bonnie."

Bonnie. Your veins crackle with ice. Bonnie.

"What—what did you call me—?"

He blinks. "Oh, it's not—," his hand slides away from his neck, scrubbing over the stubble on his jaw. He looks bashful, almost. The man in your dreams is—

Reserved. Cool waters. A rock.

"It's just a nickname, it's not—it's not anythin' weird, I promise."

A nickname. You should have known that, you suppose; but like many things, it slips, silken and liquid, through the cracks wrought by paradox.

"Right." Your nails dig into your palms, cutting the flesh until your fingers puddle with something warm, wet. Tacky. The breath you suck in between clenched teeth is a sharp hiss. "I should go."

"Ah, yeah," his brows tighten again, jaw ticking. He looks uncomfortable, unsure. Concerned. His arms come up, folding over his broad chest. And that—

That is familiar.

You swallow down mildew and honeysuckle. Heart lurching in your chest, a painful crescendo that echoes to the whispered beat of soft words in your head.

—you should stay, bonnie. stay with me—

"Can I at least make sure you get home safe?"

You can't. You can't—

There is a tavern on High Street that you've been to before in a dream, where you are taken to by a man with a distance in the crook of his smile; a degree of separation that makes you yearn. It pulled you in, gravity and magnetism and that primal something that they often talk about in wordy biology papers you can't understand.

Maybe it's the chemical slurry in your head—dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin—all mixing together, and polluting your rationale, but it made a shade of roseate fall over your eyes; veiled like a Magellanic cloud. Through the startling nebulae and cosmic radiation, he loomed. Your fingers reached out, latching on to him, and you pulled him into your orbit.

The reservations slipped, dulled by the way you fit against him. A missing piece. A complimentary artefact. His edges softened until he looked at you with nothing but warmth, affection.

And then—

Then:

Three knocks in halted succession. Military precision. Boom, boom, boom.

A man stood before you, achingly familiar in his mutton chops and hat. The gleam of his metals—chest candy—caught in the setting sun. Ochre, gold. You think of him, and you smile. Was smiling when you peeled back the curtain to greet him.

It wavers. Your heart aches for that person standing in the doorway; you from a dream.

It drags in slow motion. He takes his hat off, and cups it on his chest.

—look, i don't… i don't know how to tell you this—

Then—

"—don't." The word startles you as much as they do him. You baulk. "Just… no thank you."

Something rings in the cognitive dissonance that shrouds you.

It's your turn to walk away.

And so, you do.

(He doesn't follow. You don't know why you expected him to.)

—be patient with me, Bonnie. my job is my life. my everything, but you–you're my—

It doesn't rain—a rarity in Elgin—but the scent of wet soil, petrichor, clings to the air.

It isn't raining, but it feels like it should.

You don't expect to see him again.

And why would you? There are so many people in Elgin, so many men. The chances of finding him again—shaggy mohawk; kind, amber eyes—were nearly impossible. Infinitesimal, really.

So, you push him to the far reaches of your mind, and try not to dwell on the stranger that smells so strongly of coumarin that your head still feels dizzy from the scent of golden wheat fields in the spring and sycamore when you breathe in some mornings.

Out of sight, out of mind.

A familiar stranger in a foreign land.

But you should have known better than to expect anything in this strange purgatory you’ve slipped inside where dreams are sometimes a reality, and you can’t stop comparing a hazy figure in your mind, someone you might have loved in a distant life you have no memory of, to a stranger who slots himself into your path like he was meant to be there all along.

It starts three days later.

You tuck a book under your arm, and walk the unfamiliar path to a small cafe you’ve never dreamed of, have no lingering sense of recognition in the small building.

Safe, you think.

And then—

Blooming honeysuckle. The heady scent of coumarin. Salt, amber.

He crashes into your life again, and again, always with the same expression of happy surprise when recognition bleeds into wheat-tinged eyes.

He offers a wide smile, a little wave, and seems unbothered by a dizzying sense of unease that sweeps through each uncanny meeting, each strange divergence of paths always, always, leading to each other.

In the produce section of the grocery store halfway across town, he holds an unripened apricot and grins at you over the yellow sign above (30% off!). The colourful anchor in Cooper Park, where he stands with his hands in his pockets, eyes listing toward the swans in the background, drifting idly over the dark water. At the counter in a Turkish restaurant, laughing at something the waiter says as he takes his bag of takeout.

You turn down a random sidestreet, trying to navigate the tight, claustrophobic streets of Elgin, and he's there, suddenly, at the end. Legs thrown over the seat of a sleek motorcycle, fingers toying with the clasp of his helmet. Wander into a shop, and he's already sat at the table. Reach for a carton of eggs in Tesco's and his hand bumps against yours as he tries to grasp the same.

You hear his voice crackling through the concrete. A whisper in the back of your head. The grit, the cadence, is so different from the man you dreamed about, the hazy spectre who haunts you, that you know, instantly, that it's him. The man whose only resemblance to the ghost latching onto you is his eyes, the hairstyle. The scent. The familiarity blooms in his proximity. Two strangers sharing the same essence of a soul.

He drives past you on his motorcycle, wanders down the same alleyway, boards the same train, and gets off at the same station.

A living phantom.

It's always the same, too. His eyes always shift, somehow catching yours. Easily, effortlessly, finding you even in the midst of a crowded shop, a bustling park, or a loud eatery.

Each time, you run. And keep running.

And then once, you catch him.

He leans with his forearm resting on the railing of a mezzanine at dusk. His wrist resting on the iron, fingers gripping the nozzle of a lagger that dangles over the edge.

Behind him, music spills out from inside the flat. French doors spread wide open, leaking the whisper of a party into the warm air.

No one joins him. He doesn't look back.

His chin is pointed up toward the varicoloured sky streaked with lavender and pink and blood orange. Eyes glowing brightly in the darkness. A field of wheat against the midnight blue gloom of an approaching storm.

It's mesmerising.

Despite the urge to run, you stop. Can't help yourself, really. Not when your heart cracks at the expression on his face, eyes drawn tight, brows pinched. Full of—

Longing.

Like a magnet, then, his gaze drops to the ground where you stand, clutching your book so hard, your joints ache.

His hand lifts, fingers still curled in a loose fist, and he gives you a lazy wave from above, lips pulling back into that same wide, infectious, grin. Happy—for some inexplicable reason—to see you, his own little poltergeist.

You hesitate for a moment, burning the image of him in your retinas where he'll stay, a permanent scar, in the black puddles for you to see again when you close your eyes, or look into a mirror. Another ghost.

And then you turn. Run.

(He doesn't try to stop you. He never does.)

It is almost clockwork.

The same soft hazel eyes creased lightly in the corners. Broad shoulders are hunched as he gazes down at his phone resting on the countertop. His brows are furrowed today. Irritation bleeds in the crevasse.

Your fingers itch. You want to smooth it out.

(It doesn't surprise you that you can feel the phantom warmth of his finger under your flesh.)

It's strange. All of this is. Paradoxical, really.

You know him. You don't. You've never met him before. You know he'd taste of honeysuckle.

There is a war in your mind. A long, drawn-out battle.

(No victor in the carnage.)

You should walk away, leave, like all the times before when you'd spotted him, and ran, but:

Frozen. Paralysed.

You can't move. Can't—

—maybe, you're just tired of running—

—maybe, i'm just waiting for you to catch up—

His head lifts, and he catches sight of you before you can run. Hazel flashes in recognition. Spotted, you think; but it doesn't matter, it doesn't.

He isn't waiting for you—

His chin lifts, a smile crooking on the corner of his mouth.

—you'll be waiting a long time, Bonnie—

You want to run, but you can't. Can't. All you can do is watch as he slides out of the booth, hands shoved into his pockets, and makes his way to you. Tucked into the corner near the counter, away from everyone, everything, but he still spotted you. Still noticed. Still—

"Hi," he greets, low and cautious, like he's trying his best not to startle you. His eyes crinkle. "Didn't expect t'see you again."

You shouldn't be here. "Yeah," you say, instead, huffing. "I, uh… life is pretty funny that way, isn't it?"

His brow furrows together at your words, eyes darkening with something you can't place. An unknowable emotion, hidden from your prying eyes. You think of him, then, and see the similarities you tried so desperately to ignore each time you saw him. Each time you ran.

"Aye, it does."

You should leave him here. Turn around, flee. Forget this place, this microcosm that blooms, and spreads over parts of Elgin you know so intimately; sure, somehow, that you'll find your fingerprints smeared across the ruins despite never having been there before.

Little pieces of yourself. Shedded skin, hope, dismay, peace. Longing. Laughter. It echoes through the tight webs of cobblestone buildings, bouncing playfully off of the pilasters and balustrades, the wrought iron fences, the fanlights, forever embedded in the grout.

If you go there now, in that beautiful divisional line between new Georgian and old Baronial, you'll hear it whispering through the alcoves, a tantalising sound that rents the air in two.

But it shouldn't. Can't.

You've never been there, or here, or anywhere else that wasn't the winding path from your rented flat to the tavern, and the place you eked out from stone to support the vagary of moving to a whole new place for a dream. A feeling.

And yet—

You taste malt in the air. Smell the barley, the sickly sweet scent of wet dirt on the slick pavement.

It's familiar in your olfactory senses. Petrichor. Loam. Humus. It congeals in the slick mortar, clinging to the moss that weaves over the old concrete.

If you looked down, you'd find a little weed growing through a crack beneath your feet, and so, you fix your eyes up, ahead, and try not to weep when the swooping sense of deja vu nearly knocks you off your feet.

But the only thing ahead of you is him. Expectant, curious. He looks at you like he knows you, like he can peel back the skittish layers that cling to your skin until you're shiny and new again.

It's too much. Intense. Hazel.

Your gaze drops, fixed on the rounded points of your shoes. There is no pavement beneath your feet—just scuffed linoleum.

"Do I, uh, know you from somewhere?"

His voice carries that same heft, that same weight, as the look in his eyes. A strange approximation of wariness and steeled scepticism, blanketed together by intrigue. Curiosity. Concern.

"No."

It sounds uncertain. A white lie that crackles in the air between you, nestled amid the sound of chatter muted in the background, as if someone turned the radio on in a different room. Everything seems to contort, and shift around you when he's near.

A little microcosm eked out inside a cafe you've never been to but know, innately, what you'd order, and what you would recommend.

"Well," he dips his head like he's trying to catch your eye, and when you lift your chin, the flash of teeth nearly makes your knees buckle. He's softer when he smiles. "How 'bout lettin' me get t'know you then?"

It's a bad idea etched into the cold marble of a headstone.

Your mouth opens, but the word that chews through your teeth isn't no, but yes.

And fuck—

Something in his gaze shifts. Noctilucent eyes widen, staring down at you like he somehow didn't expect a yes at all, and was bracing for the harsh impact of no.

"Well—" he starts, but the words fall into ash when you duck your head to avoid the crevasse of hazel washed out in flushed gold. "What's your number? I'll call you when m'free next, and we can—"

"Sure," you cut in, hand sliding into your pocket. The cold metal of your phone burns the tips of your fingers when you pull it out. It feels a little bit like a mistake when you hand it over, but he says nothing about the way your hand shakes when he takes it from you.

His brows draw together in a childish concentration as he taps away at the screen. The artificial light, dimmed as low as possible, brightens the craggy ravines that cut across an emerald tinged boscage; sunlight splitting a lush valley of yellow and green. His puckered lips, the flash of a deep red tongue swiping across his sun-chapped mouth, seems designed to appeal to your baser desires. The one that knows how he'd taste if you pressed you let your tongue grace the tip of his, and can feel the weight of his hands on your flesh.

He'd hold your hips like he was anchoring you to the earth: tight, warm, and a little bit desperate as he devoured you whole.

You shiver, and try to ignore the way his pupils bloom into pits of black eclipsing lightened hazel when his gaze settles, hot and heavy, at the brief brush of skin when you reach for your phone.

"I'll call you," he says, low and strained, like he was choking on the words he wanted to say. "I'll call you as soon as I can, bonnie."

You nod. It's all you can offer with your heart scrambling up your throat, pulsing furiously against your trachea.

His nails scrape the skin of your palm when he curls his fingers into a fist, and pulls away.

"I'll see you around."

It's not a choice, you want to say. You nod instead. Choke out an equally strained, yeah, and fight the urge to follow him when he finally pulls away.

"Are you ready to order?"

The world bursts back into sound, colour. You blink rapidly against the light that seems harsher now than that it did when he was blocking out the sun.

"Uh, yeah—"

The taste of freshly poured coffee blooms on your tastebuds.

You order tea instead.

(It tastes like defeat.)

You only stop running when you can't anymore. When the murmuration in your head turns into screams, and the white-hot agony of grief, of yearning, threatens to make your knees buckle and your bruised heart give.

You stop, letting him finally catch up.

(Somehow, somehow, you feel lost and found at the same time.)

His name is Johnny MacTavish. He tells you this over dinner at some upscale restaurant that feels out of place on the old side of Elgin where the walls bleed history, and stink of old bones, and funeral dirt.

Over a steaming dish of shrimp scampi and burgundy wine that makes your head spin and belly churn, you wonder why it doesn't feel new to you when he murmurs it.

(A bit late, you find, since you've been texting rather infrequently since you gave him your number three days ago.)

Names never mentioned. Somehow, they didn't have to be. Until now. Until there was emptiness at the end of his question when he posed it, hazel eyes bright and blooming under the hushed yellow glare of the coruscating chandelier hanging above your heads.

It feels a touch too late when you share your names over dinner despite already knowing he's in the military—opinions clenched between aching teeth and a strained smile that doesn't reach your eyes—and that he normally adorns a Mohawk when he's on missions, but grows it out, rather haphazardly, when he's home.

Everything between you and him seems to happen in reverse: fears, wants, and worries are known before his given name; the touch of his skin on yours, the taste of his lips, the brush of his tongue, the weight of his palms holding your hips as he buries himself as deep as he can go in a haunting sequence of memories that bare their teeth at the starkness of reality holding them at bay. All of this before you've ever even touched him with your bare hands.

There's a strange listlessness that envelopes you—a tangled web that spools around you, trapping you in this realm of hypnagogia. The lines between reality and dream blur until they're indistinguishable from each other. Knotted threads married together. Parallel. Concurrent. Where one begins and the other ends is as lost to you as the unfathomable uncertainty of the unknown universe.

It's not meant to be this way, you think, watching as he feigns not knowing the name that slips between your numbed lips in the same manner you had only moments ago. Traps surprise in the tilt of his chin, but the display is largely done out of some unspoken agreement that this paradox does exist, and the emotion is fleeting. Temporal. He cloves it down the middle, and discards the excess as soon as you look away.

(Your name fits in his mouth better than it ever did your own, like it was made for his mouth, preordained to play with the soft coil of his tongue.)

He knows more than he lets on, but you don't begrudge him his secrets—not when you have to turn your gaze back to the curled shrimp on your plate to avoid reminding him he prefers fish over crustaceans when he makes a face at the steamed scallops, and should have ordered the Maple Crusted Salmon instead.

Like he didn't before, in a life you've never lived. In a place that mirrors this world.

(It isn't something you should know, but you do. You do.)

You know more than that, too: whispers late at night when he couldn't sleep—internal clock still stuck halfway around the world—and urges you into playing a dangerous game of asking questions of each other when pieces of truth buoy in the dark like bobbing for poisoned apples in a barrel.

You have to erase the words when you type them out, preemptively answering questions he'd never asked yet, and filling in the blanks to ones you posed yourself.

Odd, you think. Strange, and weird, and macabre in that way that only deja vu gnarling between the broken crevasse of your grey matter can imbue.

People don't just—

Know each other.

And yet—

"They call me—"

"Soap."

Your eyes snap up. A misstep. A grievous one. You've both been content to ignore this paradoxical magnetism that draws you together like eager poles, unable to stay away (not by choice or freewill, but some design that has no place in rigid structures of reality), and you broke it. Trampled over the unspoken rule left to linger in the foreground while you navigated around it like some misshapen elephant in the way.

He tries to hide the suspicion, the surprise, but it falls between the empty space of his plate (food he only ordered because he's never been here before despite the familiarity that bleeds from the walls like condensation in June) and the ledge. A proverbial precipice that you leaped down; the steep incline filled with detritus and broken shale sharp enough to carve skin, muscles, from shattered bone.

You want to swallow the words down, but they sit—innocuous and damning—between the salt and pepper shakers where his hand twitches, curls into a tight fist, knuckles bleaching under the strain of reeling himself in. Joints, cartilage, bulging through translucent skin. Reddened around the angry peaks of distrust and wariness; a summit you're not sure how to descend from now that you've crossed the arching tops.

(Stuck, forever, at the peak.)

"How—" his voice is gravel, lavascape. Jagged rocks. Lakes of sulphuric acid. "How did you know that?"

His accent thickens when he's angry. You wonder if he knows that.

"I—"

Excuses float like moots in front of you. You reach out, grasping for one, but it dances away in the turbulent wake you leave behind. You bite your tongue until it tastes of oxidised pennies, and then shrug. Nonchalant. Indifferent. Fear curls in your gut. Military, right. You wonder what you'll say if they arrest you for treachery. That you dreamed about him? Stupid. Stupid.

"You told me," you murmur, eyes downcast and heavy, fixed on the bloody cup of wine you don't like, and trying to find solace in your downfall. "I think. I just remembered it from somewhere."

It makes no sense, and the weak explanation would crumple like damp papier-mâché if he pressed, even just slightly, against it. A single touch, and the house of cards you built from the ground up on nonsensical lies will come crashing down around you.

He shouldn't entertain it. Shouldn't let it go.

"Yeah." But he does. "I must'a, huh?"

When you look up, you catch keen hazel eyes, sharp and pointed like the curved talons of a hawk. Johnny MacTavish is many things, you learn, but stupid, guileful, naïve is none of them.

"Yeah," you echo hollowly, and give another shrug. "Guess so. It's, ah, an interesting nickname."

The clumsy barb seems to break the surmounting tension, and the pieces fall around you like poisoned raindrops, staining your skin.

A reminder, then, when it crawls down your throat, that this balancing act can't last forever. That, eventually, your excuses will run dry. Empty. They'll be picked at and poked until they burst like a waterlogged, bloated corpse drifting aimlessly down the Nile.

"Not the only thing that's interesting about me, bonnie," he says in a way that bleeds boyish charm, but his grin is wide, wild, and untamed. White teeth, sharp canines. You think of a wily fox on the prowl, and reach, reflexively, for the glass of wine, swallowing it down like a lifeline. "But I'm beginnin' t'think y'know that already, don't ye?"

It's a threat. A warning.

You stare down in the half-empty glass of burgundy, the same colour red as the papercut on your index finger, and try to read the beads of crimson that run down the glass in a bloodied rivulet as if the answer could be found somewhere in the liquid.

(Crystal Ball. Crystal glass. It's all the same, isn't it?)

"Not really," is what you eventually settle for, hedging through the murk that swims before you, an unsettling fen of unknowns and praeternatural happenings that you no longer than chalk up to happenstance.

Kismet.

Horror.

Some cosmic merging of the two.

It's all—

Absurd.

And when you politely whisper to him that he should have gotten the salmon, you can't help but notice the ravines in his eyes widen slightly, the chasm growing and gaping, and taking on new shapes in the boscage that blooms like a familiar friend.

(Kismet, indeed.)

He tries to pretend he doesn't know what the maple salmon tastes like, but slips up when the waiter passes by, and says it was good the last time.

You fight the urge to chew on your glass like rock candies between your teeth.

He stands with his hands in his pocket, rocking back and forth. The uncertainty in his brow is swallowed by the tendrils of pleased excitement that knot over his expression, unable to hide his glee when the hazel of his eyes glow brighter than the sun.

Isn't this strange, you ache to say, words painted with the aftertaste of brine—sea, salt, and sand that are so uniquely him—but they, too, are swallowed down.

The urge to lacerate the bubbles of complacency, feigned normalcy, are eclipsed by the raw shock of seeing him happy. Of wanting to make him happy. This stranger in a strange land.

So, you offer some facsimile of a smile when he asks, words pushed out through a wide grin; infectious, if you had a good time.

"Yeah," you say, and know that this word, this blase affirmative is quickly becoming your faultline through this mess. The thread keeping you sane, keeping you steady.

It's at the curve of the word when everything else in the world is devoured by the shadow cast under his magnetic glow. The bright yawn of the sun in shades of white teeth catching on some ephemeral magic still dancing within the aether. Atoms spark.

You try to run from it, ignore it, but your core teeters on the edge of instability. You think of neurons. Protons. Criticality. Something inside of you heats to almost half of the degree of the sun, sweltering and unrelenting. Pulsing, blue-hot.

"That's good," he husks, eyes lidded and heavy. "I did, too. Whaddya think about doin' it again w'me?"

It blooms. A great, scorching mushroom cloud plumes in midnight black in the milky white of your eyes.

You shuffle through the darkness, the artificial, comic night, and try to pat at the walls until you find something familiar in terror, the gnawing sense of loss that permeates through your pericardium, thrumming like a mourning toll.

Sightless, you nod. "I'd love to."

And you mean it, too.

(Damn you. Damn you—)

Despite that tangled web that snakes around your jugular, twinning threads between the two of you, Johnny MacTavish is relentless in his pursuit.

Where someone else might have shivered at the ghosts that brim in the tenebrous of your pupils, lurking in the untouched corners where your fingerprints stain the sediment, he lingers. Stays. Fixes himself in your path, and refuses to acquiesce to the whims of the world that keep stringing you along like reluctant puppets to some unseen, unknown marionette.

It's almost charming in its own right, and really—when has a man fought so hard just to simply coexist in the space you deign yours? When has he torn nails from their beds, clawing at the walls that stand tall and proud, a protective tower of ashlar and dread around you until it starts to give. Until the stone crumbles away under his bloodied fingers.

But as potent as his statement is, it gnarls inside your stomach like a poisoned seed.

Bending to the demands of whatever this paradoxical realm goes against every fibre of your common sense that you recoil, almost, for just allowing him the scant space he occupies in your proximity.

It's a deranged pantomime with some unseen force at the helm, conducting the madness with fingers drenched in whimsy and fate. Notched between its knuckles is the mockery of freewill and choice as it pulls you around a soundstage set in a place you've never been. It makes you dance. Amused god, eldritch horror. It takes pleasure in your discomfort, and glee in your fickle humanity. Weaving webs of tangled kismet until the silken threads are pulled taut and there is no more room, not a single atom, between your body and his.

A nameless, faceless playwright with you as its shining star.

Hapless leads stuck in an unending beat, a cantastoria, waiting for the shoe, the curtain, or anagnorisis to drop.

You want to run again, but your feet are glued to the floor. Tangled in webs, threads of abstract concepts your mind threatens to come undone at the mere thought of. A cosmic sense of surrealism: crushing helplessness.

This is horrific and terrific in equal measure, but the ache, the agony, of distance hurts more. And so, you stay. Watch as the curtain shudders over his eyes. As the etchings of complacency seem to gnarl in the tussock that line the expansive valley. He looks at you and doesn't see the awful truth nestled in the scant distance between your flesh, unable to be apart for too long. He sees you, somehow, and for him, that's enough. Enough.

Johnny smiles at you, seemingly unbothered by the precariousness of this dance you're caught inside. In this strange equinox where you can answer questions he hasn't asked, and know things he hasn't said. Where you catch yourself leaning closer, starved for a touch you haven't forgotten despite never experiencing yourself.

He's content, then, chasing the whims of a ghost, reaching for a fantastical dream in the head of another.

But as content as he is, Johnny MacTavish is a hard man to catch, you think, noting the distance in his eyes, the arm's length of space he keeps between the version of him not haunted by the wants of ghosts, but such an easy man to love. To fall for.

He balms the panic—that world-ending sense of uncertainty that nips at your heels—and makes you forget, sometimes, that there is more to him, and more to you, than anyone else could ever know.

He's kind. Charming.

A little space inside of your head is eked out just for him, and you find yourself hating that person for falling for some version of him first. Loathe them just a little bit more with each effortless grin he sends your way for tainting the experience of knowing him yourself.

But you wonder, when he turns away, hiding the shadows in his eyes, and the pinch in his brow, if you really, truly know him.

Or if the face he's wearing belongs to a phantom.

The dance continues.

Your feet move to a soundless beat, steps preordained in a sequence lived world's ago. Nothing can feel surprising when you know a man so intimately without more than a touch, when you feel the burn of winter's chill in the middle of summer, and long so desperately for someone you just met.

Nothing is new, and yet everything is novice. A paradox awakening with each gravitational pull to him, this man who looks only vaguely like the phantom who lives in your head, and tastes of longevity between your teeth.

An arranged romance. Possession by ghosts who want to drive your bodies until they can live again, and love in tandem, vicariously through your living flesh.

It makes sense to you, then, to call for an exorcism.

(It just surprises you that Johnny does it first.)

Johnny has his secrets, just like you have yours. A small morsel of agency after autonomy has been stripped from the bone.

You see the shadows of those hidden things etched in the topography of his valley-filled gaze, crevasses and canyons that pitch themselves in the tenebrous, uncrossable to even you.

He reaches for you through the murk, fingers threading through your own, hands trembling with the shock, the electric current that sizzles through your blood at the brush of bare skin against quivering flesh. His hands are rough—worker's hands—and chock full of callouses and cuts, multitudes of scar tissue packed tight on top of each other, a thick layer of a life you will never know. Don't want to know.

He seems settled when you touch, finally, thumb brushing your skittish pulse point as if he could somehow calm the acrid panic in your chest.

(And damn him, damn this, he does. He does—)

Magnets fixed together, locked tight. You feel like a conduit to his frenzy, his hidden mania, and feed your own through the line, the red string that ensnares you both in a tangled web, until it's buzzing with shared panic and serenity and joy and helplessness. A feedback loop of emotions too extreme, too flighty, to catch. They run in droves along the lines, weaving into your skin, your chest, your head, and then pulling away to do the same to him.

His eyes are heavier than steel when he gazes at you, expression caught between relief and longing and fear and—

Something, something. You can't pick it apart. Can't undo the tight knot until it spools, open and known, in the palm of your hands. Some unseen distance. It feels like standing at the highest peak of the valley and trying to make sense of the men in the tussock who look like mere ants from this high above.

Is it happiness, you wonder.

(Or maybe it's the same reluctance that wraps it's boney, gnarled fingers around your neck—)

It becomes too much. Too soon, too sudden. In the back of your head, you see images and flashes of a life not yet lived, a world still taking shape. You see him and you and a clock above some blue, broken bed. You see his smile, wide and elated, caught on the dawning sun spilling from the open curtains before it disappears under the covers, taking your laughter with it, stuck between his teeth.

You see the past, the present.

And your future.

Cold. Barren. Three sharp knocks echo in the emptiness of your head. A man, a familiar stranger. You don't know him. You'd die for him. He rents the air in two. Your world in cloves. They fall to the ground, leaving you stranded and alone in the middle.

Future. There's no future.

Your chest twists. You let go of his hand and find bloody crescent moons embedded in a ring along his flesh, knuckles whitening under your harsh grip. He said nothing about the pain. The flicker of worry across his face is genuine, you think. Real. Current.

You smell funeral dirt in your nose. The mud is called under your nails.

You pull away. He lets you go.

"I, uh," he breaks off into a soft huff, injured hand lifting to scratch at the back of his shorn nape. His eyes slide away from yours, listing seaward. Avoidance undercuts the arch in his brow, the sheepishness in his mien. It's his turn to run, you realise.

"Glad I met you," he says instead, and it's a confession and a curse.

A bonfire burns in the river that runs through the valleys in his eyes. It's pitched on the sandy shore: an ochre flicker in the cobalt hue that saturates the land. You see the dark peaks of the rolling hills in the distance, black shapes in draped blue.

The river is calm. The fire burns a smear of orange across the tranquil surface, meeting the milky white glow of the moon.

It makes you think of those nights in the zenith of summer, the ones that feel neverending. Timeless. A piece of your history etched in balmy melancholy. Alone in the great expanse with nothing but the trill of cicadas, and the echoing chirp of the crickets hidden in the lush grass below.

The sky shifts. His eyes plume with lavender-tinged stratocumulus.

"I really like you, bonnie." It's whispered in your ear, and you wish, oh, how you wish, you couldn't hear it. That you could block the words, and the world, out so that it never reaches you again.

Sweet longing. Beautiful agony.

Your heart races, and you wonder how an empty space can beat at all. Can feel anything when it's just a hollow chasm.

A heat blooms under your skin, desperate and aching. This, this, is everything you've been looking for since your heart split free from its fleshy prison, and ran away to find him, tucking itself in the boscage that glows in the flame on the shores. It's hidden somewhere. The palpitations sound like a song. You could follow it, you think, and find its lovelorn shell nestled amongst the grass that sways to its beat, and tuck it back into your empty chest where it belongs.

(But it belongs to him, now.)

And you—

You hesitate.

The words well on your tongue, but you think of fate, of choice, and swallow them down.

The flames in the distance flicker, growing dimmer and darker as the moments stretch on, unbroken and barren until it's snuffed out. Gone.

What can you say? What could you say?

Instead, you say nothing at all.

Johnny leaves a piece of himself on the table when he walks away.

(You don't pick it up.)

Johnny doesn't say anything at all when he brings you home, when he stands outside of the archway to your flat, eyes lidded and pensive. A smile snakes across his face, but it's brittle and full of uncertainty, and your fingers ache to smooth the rugged lines in his brow, in the stress in his shoulders. You push it down. Smile for him instead.

"I'll see you later," you say, and wish the ghosts wailing in your head would drop dead.

The valley is drenched in ink when he nods, catching your gaze.

All black, black, black.

No sounds escape.

"Sure, bonnie."

You dream, and when you dream, it's of him.

He stands at the top of a hill, and when he smiles it's full of starlight so bright it could eclipse the sun.

In his hand, you see a pair of shears. Your mouth opens, but no sound escapes.

He says just one word—your name—and then he lifts his hand, and cuts the rope. The sutures knit your bodies together, the string that holds him to this mortal plane, falls in swaths of golden thread to the ground where they're devoured by the earth, dissolved into nothing. Gone, forever.

There's distance now, and separation. Nothing ties you to him except space.

You wake up with the ghost of a scream on your lips, and the feeling of silken threads dragging over your flesh. You reach for them, and catch nothing but air.

Palm pressed to your chest, you feel the rapid pulse under your fingertips, and know that it's back. Back where it belongs.

Belongs, but doesn't want to be.

You think of Johnny.

And you weep.

He sends a text message, and for the first time since you've met him, it surprises you. Nothing should shock you with him, anymore. You know everything, anything, about him.

Gonna be away for a bit. Should talk when I get back.

You reach for answers but they slide like mercury out of your hands.

You don't dance, and you don't dream.

You wander down the streets of Elgin, and for the first time since you woke up screaming in your bed with ghosts wailing in agony inside of your head, you get lost.

Johnny comes back a week later, eyes heavier than you'd ever seen them, and shoulders drawn tight together as he asks you why—

"Why'd'ya keep runnin'?" He asks, words pitched and heavy with something lour and aching, a phantom pain you know all too well. There's desperation in his eyes, a low keen settling in the depth of his throat, echoing with the clamour of his despair. "If you don't want this—;" don't want me: "—then just say so, bonnie, 'cause I ain't forcin' ya t'be w'me, I ain't gonna make you stay. You wanna leave, you can just go—"

Can't. Can't.

"Johnny—"

"No, none o'that, now. You make up your mind, 'cause I ain't makin' it for ya. I ain't makin' ya do somethin' you don't want to, and I ain't—"

He's pleading, you think. Begging—

For this, this strange thing. This awful, broken calamity, this abomination in the face of free will and autonomy. Despite the rage that hums in your veins at the idea of being controlled, manipulated, he finds something worth chasing. Worth running for.

Why?

And what?

And—

It comes in flashes, snippets. Fragmented pieces of bright eyes—brighter, maybe, than the sun—and warmth, one hot enough to burn but it doesn't, it won't, it soothes instead. Eases coiled muscles, and absorbs the lactic acid that leaks from shredded, knotted fibres. Hands on your body, on your skin: the press of rough fingertips over prickling flesh. A whisper of curiosity, the slow descent into affection, adoration. Plush lips pillowing sharp teeth, too reverent to ever leave a mark behind—part in fear of marring fragile skin, and—

Letting the ghost of permanence fester, take root, inside his chest where his heart beats—

Jus' f'r you, bonnie. Jus' you.

For once, the phantom touching your body isn't a dream, a half-lived fantasy in another world where a man-made you whole and then ripped you into pieces, letting the scattered fragments blow with the sharp winds howling through the highlands. You know the touch, remember it. Felt it. New, and tangible. A touch that never lingered, too afraid of letting something, something, stick.

For once—

The snaps flashing, blindingly, through your synapses are not made of dream dust and kismet.

And—

All at once, it shatters.

—you know, i never thought i'd say this before, but i—

(You were lost in Elgin, but when you see his face, you feel found—)

THERE—

There is a lot to be said about Johnny MacTavish.

Good things—kind, dedicated, driven—and bad things—bold, stoic, dogmatic—but one thing neither have in common is tardiness. Broken promises.

So, when Johnny calls you in some distant land you've never heard of, and says:

Things got bad. I might not—I might not be coming home.

You believe him.

But the thing is: there's a difference between believing the words being said to you, and understanding their meaning. Your mind is not equipped to latch onto devastating blows with the same swiftness you do ignorant bliss.

So, when you hear I might not be coming home, you think, instead, of tardiness. Of a missed anniversary dinner.

(Of all the ones that came before it, and will come after it.)

And you smile. Smile into the receiver with your heart drifting down Lethe.

"Okay, Johnny," you say, and those words will come back to haunt you three days from now, when John Price shows up at your goddamn door, stupid bucket hat tucked tight to his chest, and rips your heart into pieces.

But for as much as you are blissfully ignorant, your mind still understands nuance. They used to call it foresight, a sixth sense; hindsight.

You add, softer than you've ever said the words: "I love you."

His breath stutters through the line in response. A brief pause. And then—

"If anything happens—" you hate him a little for even saying it; you really do: "just know that I love you, too. And that I hope—ah, Christ, bonnie, you got me all stupid, now—but, fuck, I hope we meet in another life."

It knocks something loose inside of you. Some primaeval thing that nestled in the safety of your ribs, moulting along your moon-white bones and glueing to the soft tissue that pulsed around it. It's shaken. Dislodged.

It feels a little bit like your soul is being scraped off of bone.

"Johnny—"

"—gotta go. We haven't heard from Roach or Riley in a while. I probably won't call tonight. So, don't wait for me, bonnie."

The line clicks before the words I've been waiting for you forever fall from your wobbling lips.

You hate Johnny a little bit for this. For digging his roots deep into the soft chambers of your heart where it gnarled around your pericardium. A perfect little knot. A bow tied nice and pretty just for him.

It makes it so much harder to bare when John fucking Price knocks on your door, stupid fucking bucket hat tucked tight against his chest, ghosts in his eyes, blood on his hands, and rips your heart into pieces until nothing but the rotten, dying roots remain.

"I hate you so much right now," you hiss at the tombstone—the only thing you have left of him. "I hate you and I miss you and I wish you were here so I could—"

John finds you with your forehead pressed against the brass plaque, cheeks raw from the rivulets of tears that feel endless—a baptism in grief; in your tear ducts, Noah battles the biblical flood, and loses.

Eyes that can't see past a shimmering hinterland of death and abject dismay are fixed, broken, against speckled granite.

It's agony. The kind that makes it feel as if the marrow in your bones turned into a corrosive liquid, molten and devastating, and burst through brittle, hollow bone.

Price, you've come to realise, seems to know things beyond what you tell him. Always picking up the shedded skin that falls from the people around him. Little pieces of them that he shoves in his pocket to ruminate on when he's trying to put together the puzzle of who they are.

Words won't penetrate through the haze in your head. It filters in like water through a rhyne, back out to the open sea.

(He knows this, of course, because you've been shedding pieces of yourself around him for years.)

It doesn't surprise you, then, when he says nothing. When he just falls to his aching knees in the soft humus, resting beside you as your world crumbles into ash and heartache.

You sit in numbed silence until the sun is swallowed by the dusk that creeps across the sky. The moon itself seems to mourn along with you, hiding her eyes behind a nebulous veil of gunmetal.

Price, without a word, helps you stand when the gravekeeper comes and ushers you out. He shepherds you into his Jeep and brings you back to the place that reeks of loneliness and dinners for one. A place that still carries the ghost of his presence around every corner, tucked away in each alcove and nook.

He might be gone, but his shadow still lives and breathes the dank, funeral air that clings to your sallow skin. A miasma of loss that tangles itself in every atom around you.

Price seems hesitant to step inside, but you'd rather sleep on the patio with the chirping crickets and the weeping moon than be inside where the echo of his voice whispers through the halls, and he knows this, because he knows you, and so he brings you in before you can entomb yourself in grief, lost to the elements. He sets you down gingerly on the couch, body now more fragile than fine china, brushing your tangled hair from your forehead. It catches on his weathered hands. You barely feel the pull.

He looks at you like you're a battle that can't be won.

"Take care'a yourself, yeah? It's what—" he chokes, then, and you feel the hiccup like a white-hot knife to your gut. "It's what he would've wanted."

What he wanted is gone, and it's dead—just like him.

You don't say these words, but you wonder if he knows them, hears them, anyway. He must, you think, watching as the ashy, smoked cedar of his beard twitches. His mouth gnarls to the side in grief, uncertainty.

He says your name. You know this because you know the shape it makes of his mouth, but don't you hear it. All it sounds like is a nail scraping over waterlogged, mossy wood.

Price leaves.

A part of you goes with him.

You rest your forehead against his pillow, the one that smells of him still—warm milk, honeysuckle—and you wish so hard on broken promises, unfilled dreams, to see him again, to hold his face in the plinth of your palms, that your heart feels like it might burst—

—break.

But it's already broken. There's nothing left to shatter. The pulpy mess he left behind beats not because you want it to, but because it has to. A biological failsafe that does not care about your human emotions even as it quivers and shakes at the loss that tipped your world upside down. A gaping hole sits in the middle in the shape of his smile, and your stubborn heart pulses around the wound.

Sometimes you think it would be easier to feel nothing at all. To shed the agony like a rotting limb, cutting it as close to the bone as you can, and watching it fall, blackened with decay, and postulating with infectious spores that bud, devouring unblemished, unhurt, flesh until you're a pristine corpse.

Grief twists you into the living dead. Breaks your head in two, cloved clean down the middle of unrelenting panic and anger—anguish so severe, you can easily convince yourself nothing at all is real.

But it is.

And then there is only denial and abject horror at that unimaginable nothingness that looms, blooming in your insides until they turn into a gaping, festering maw. One that makes you feel like you could swallow the whole world and still feel empty.

No longer a human on the inside but a chasm. The person you were before died the moment his heart stopped beating. Irrevocably changed with three, stark knocks against the door he painted yellow because it reminded him of the way you looked standing in a field of sunflowers. Gone. Gone—

A barren void with its insides scraped out. Hollow. Wind rattles through your chilled bones. It sounds like his voice when it ghosts over your ribcage.

You chase the sound.

Running, running, running. Going so fast, it barely feels like your feet touch the ground. A wingless bird soaring across the valleys that gleaned in his hazel eyes.

Running, running—

Your feet slide against marshy peat. A hidden bog gurgles beneath your soles.

You don't scream when you sink.

(The bubbles sound just like him—)

You smile.

—NOW

Eldritch machinations, some fanciful god playing a chaotic game of matchmaker, a dizzying sense of folie a deux—you haven't quite determined what the reason for this is, who or what might be behind it, but one thing you do know is this:

Something might be aligning your paths until all trails lead to him, but when you wander down those Wonderland roads, your heart beats for him.

A second heart pulses under your skin. One slipped inside when you cupped his cheeks in your palm, and told him when you looked, you saw only him.

It might not be a choice you've made in this lifetime, but it's certainly one you can't bring yourself to regret.

You run, but this time, it isn't away from him, but to him.

He tastes of coumarin when you press your lips to his, a kiss met in the middle.

You're lost, now, in the swell that gusts across the boscage. A breeze dances over your ears. A thousand starlings coo in the clear blue aether above. You feel the tickle of barley against your knees. Rasping tussock sedge curls over your ankle, weaving together until you're tied to the ground. Anchored against the stalks of wheat that shiver in the wind.

His hands are warm, solid, on your skin. One hand braced on the small of your back, keeping you pressed firmly against him. The other cups your chin like you're made of fine china, polished crystal full of precious gems and rare metals. He holds tight as if he's afraid you'll drift away when he lets go.

Your head is blooming full of sunflowers. They germinate in your thoughts until the petals burst through, lifting high to the heavens where the sun burns half as hot as his body angling against yours.

His atoms sing, calling to yours. A buzz, a hum. You feel them stretch, shifting from the prison of you until equilibrium is reached when they merge, tangling together. A new being, a new entity is born from the collision—a person made of two with lungs and hearts that breathe and beat in the same cadence as it's ghosts. Woven together with marionette strings.

It feels like coming home and getting lost all at once.

Etched in the delicate flesh of your heart sits a kairos moment. A brief period of nothing that runs as deadly and tumultuous as the Swillies. An upheaval.

Time is tenuous. Broken. Fragmented.

An arm stretches out, anchoring across your waist. His mouth presses a kiss to your bare shoulder, eyes glossy in the mid-morning sun.

"Wha' time's it?" He slurs out, words thick with sleep.

Your eyes cut to the alarm clock on the end table. A slow, languid smile curls across your kiss-bruised mouth.

"Eleven-fifteen," you breathe, eyes fixed on the red lines. Your heart stutters when it flickers. "Eleven-sixteen."

"S'too early," he moans, lips rubbing over your flesh. "Stay in bed with me."

You peel your gaze away from the clock ticking down the seconds (minutes, hours, days, months, years), and turn to him. Hazel in bloom. A boscage in spring. Your eyes mist a little from the morning dew.

"I love you, Johnny."

His breath ghosts over your skin. You hear the hitch in his voice when he speaks.

"Been waitin' a long time t'hear you say that, bonnie."

"Sorry to keep you waiting."

—don't wait for me, Bonnie. i'll come find you—

—THEN

"Excuse me? You dropped this."

It's raining. Pouring, really. The droplets are the size of pennies and pelt the top of your umbrella with an unforgiving force. It sounds like the clatter of a mourning bell, and drowns everything else out.

But it catches. Clear. Low.

You turn, blinking through the thick fog that congeals around High Street in a dense, white blanket.

"Sorry?"

A man. He's towering above you, cut off at the chest by the fine points of your umbrella. You lift it, and—

Your wallet is the first thing you see. Wet, covered in grit from the cobblestone. It's clenched between a thick thumb and forefinger, held delicately together. You baulk.

"Oh, shit—," it's snatched out of his hand, and pulled into the sanctuary of cover. You can feel it already. The mess inside. Still. You hope—

The leather peels back. Mush.

You groan. The meagre bills you'd pulled from the machine are now wet, sticking together in a papier-mache square. Useless. No one is going to accept sopping wet bills.

"Alright?"

"No, I—," you glance up at him, irritation cutting across your brow. No, you're not alright. You're shit out of luck, and stranded here, now. And—

And—

Hazel. It's the first thing you see. Mountains of brown slope into a lush green valley. A cool blue lake cuts through, splitting off into a ravine.

Your breath catches.

"Sorry, umm. Yes. I'm—"

Attractive is the first word that springs to your mind when you stare at him—dark eyes, furrowed brow, long nose, a dusting of charcoal stubble along his cheeks and jaw, and full pink lips. Kissable is the second one.

And then—

Oh, God.

"Sorry," you murmur again, cheeks heating despite the chill. "I'm fine. Thank you, I'm—"

"You're not," he says, and it's uttered so assuredly that you can't find it in yourself to lie. As if he is somehow able to chisel into your head, and rifle through your problems with ease. "It's all wet, isn't it? Were you heading home, or—?"

It's cliche. Stupid. Your belly rumbles.

Mortifying. Absolutely—

His lips quirk up. A soft, almost secretive smile. Reserved. "Well, I know this place around the back. I could use the company, if you wouldn't mind."

You should say no. No, thank you—because you were raised proper. But all you can think about is the deep, brassy tone that tickles your ears when he speaks. The distant, almost careful way he regards you, as if he's putting himself at arm's length so you aren't scared off by his brawn.

Hazel is dusted in gold. You want to bask in his warmth for just a moment longer—

"I'll pay you back, I promise."

His brows raise. Hazel framed in white. A soft huff leaves his full mouth before his lips pull up in a slow, genuine smile.

"Y'alright, bonnie. I'll hold you to it."

(And so, it begins.)

#john soap mactavish #soap x reader #Johnny MacTavish x reader #og soap x reader #og soap #john soap mctavish x reader #john soap mctavish x you #cod fanfic #AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH #this took me forever #idk why #i just?? expected more fluff but instead we get horror and grief and eventually fluff #kinda #like #sorta #idk #enjoy

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retroellie · 1 year ago

Text

Looking out for you

Summary: When the whisperers are knocking at your door, a war is just waiting to happen. However, this war goes far beyond just a war this time.

A/N: Hey :) i wrote this a while back but i just decided to finish it. I was going to write a smut for it but honestly i was not in the mood for smut today, so here's a little fluff/angst for your day <3 Also i miss y'all so much!!

Warnings: regular TWD content, mentions of miscarriage and death

Word count: 3.5K

Tomorrow is the day, the day you will experience the place you once called home become a battlefield, the people you love become soldiers, and the world feels as though it is ending once again. You didn’t want this war, no one did but the whisperers wouldn’t let up. They were a tough group, very different than any group you have ever been up against but your people were even stronger, you have all been through hell and back.

You would not let the whispers destroy your home without a fight, none of you would. You all have experienced loss too many times, Glenn, Rick, Jesus, Carl… the list goes on. You were all angry, ready to pounce on anything that came too close. You all knew it needed to be done but you didn’t want to, you were against it. You had been fighting for so long, so hard that you were exhausted. You think you're becoming depressed, more depressed than usual.

The other wars you fought were different, no one depended on you, you weren’t too close to anyone. Sure they were your family but if you died, you’d just be another name on the wall at Alexandria. This time it was different because you had someone who depended on you, you had people who depended on you. You had Lydia, rj and Judith, the entire community of hilltop all looking at you but most importantly, you had Daryl.

You guys had made it official before Ricks disappearance, it wasn’t anything too romantic but the night started with you two checking around the walls of Alexandria and it ended with Daryl tongue fucking your face. You both had been close with each other, looking out for each other and making sure the other was safe. So it was almost like you two had already been dating, the kiss just made it real for the two of you.

But he was why the war this time was different, if you lost him… you couldn’t recover. You swore the sun would stop shining, water would evaporate and never come back down, buildings would burn and your world would completely stop. You thought it would be bad to lose him but oh… if he lost you. He had already planned on going with you, you weren’t going to leave him by himself again, he refused. Even if you didn’t lose each other, you would still lose something in this war.

You had a bad feeling about this, you knew it would bring great loss this time around and grief wouldn’t be too kind to you. So here you were, in the middle of the night when everyone else was asleep, only the patrols were wide awake… searching for any movement to sound the alarm. You were sitting on the porch stairs, watching as the wind blew through the leaves of the trees. It was a cold night, so you lit up a cigarette to keep you warm.

It was the first time that you were able to think, the silence of it all leaving you alone with your thoughts. You were terrified to say the least, you had never felt this way about anything, not like this. You could tell everyone was on edge, even Daryl. When you saw the look on his face when he came through the gates with Lydia, he tried to hold back his fear but you knew. That was the first time you had ever seen Daryl scared, which automatically set deep fear within you.

“You’re gonna freeze out here.” A voice said, startling you.

You turned to see who it was, but slowly calming as you saw it was just Daryl. He tried to give you a warm smile but you were far too scared to even acknowledge it. You turned around, back to where you were looking before. You forgot how beautiful fall months could be, the leaves had already started to turn into beautiful shades of red, yellow, orange and brown.

You just shrugged, taking a long drag of the cigarette before exhaling. You didn’t care if you froze where you were now, the beautiful view making you feel at peace for a moment. You could hear Daryl shift behind you, seeing him from your peripheral. Daryl sat down next to you, the wood of the porch creaking as he did so. you wondered if you and Daryl did survive this, what would happen next? What enemy would you have to fight after this? How would the next fuck up start and were you even ready for it?

“Sorry, I haven’t been here for you, just so much going on.” He said, watching as you took another long drag of your cigarette.

He wanted to be here with you, desperately but as of right now everyone is looking up to you two for answers. Carol was a wreck, the king was now coming to terms with his cancer, Maggie wasn’t here, Jesus was dead, Tara was dead… it was only you two left now, you two made the shots now. Neither of you wanted this though, All Daryl wanted was to run away with you. To New Mexico… he even had a plan for it.

“‘S okay, I get it.” You said, passing your cigarette over to him.

Daryl took it, taking a long drag of it. He could taste your chapstick on it, the taste bringing back memories of the night spent pleasuring each other. Daryl could sense your nervousness, your fear or whatever you want to call it. You were usually quiet, you allowed others to talk and you would listen, Daryl swore he had been the only one to hear you speak more than 2 words but your quietness now felt off.

He knew you and he knew you well, he knew that you hid your emotions and that you hated talking about your feelings. But the thing you hated most was awkward silences, they were the loudest thing to you. You couldn’t even enjoy the silence because the awkwardness blocked it out, you hated them. So you allowing one to happen right now, hinted to Daryl that something was wrong.

“Rj today wore my vest, it was ten t…” he started, not being able to finish before you dropped a bomb on him.

“I’m scared Daryl.” You said, turning your head to face him for the first time.

Daryl felt his heart throb, you were doing something you hated the most and you were doing it with tears in your eyes. You’re staring at him and he’s staring back at you, the cigarette in his hand blowing smoke into his eyes but he never once looked away. He could see it on your face, pure fear.

“What?” He asked dumbfounded as you blinked slowly at him.

“I know what you're trying to do, trying to ease the silence but you can’t Daryl because you’re worried, it’s written all over your face” You started, reaching out for the cigarette. “So no Daryl… I’m not okay, I’m fucking scared.”

You took the cigarette, breathing in its air, allowing the toxic air to burn into your lungs. Daryl continued to watch you even after you had started looking up at the trees once more. He wasn't sure what was next to say, should he question you further or should you both just suffer in silence. Daryl hated that he couldn’t do anything for you, especially now. Everyone was scared, Everyone... and if you were scared then there was no hope for anything.

Daryl had left you alone a lot lately, allowing you to figure shit out alone and he felt terrible for it but this wasn’t the first time he left you alone. When Rick died he disappeared, you would visit him for a couple days but then you’d go back to being alone. It’s not that he wanted to leave you ever, things just got in the way. So you being terrified was bound to happen at some point, not being able to lean on someone else would eventually catch up to you.

Daryl looked down at his hands, seeing how they absentmindedly fidgeted together. You had that effect on Daryl, you made him feel like a scared teenager in love sometimes. He never quite knew what to say and how to say it, sometimes words would get lost in his head when he was near you.

“You uh… you want to talk about it?” He asked, stuttering out his words.

You weren’t the only one bad with feelings, Daryl could physically not get the words out but he so desperately wanted you to know he was there for you. He wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to say in this situation or if you would even want to speak about everything happening, again Daryl hadn't been around for you recently, he hadn’t been there for you.

“Not really…” you admitted, taking another drag of the cigarette. It had become a small bud at this point, but you once again passed it to Daryl. “But I will because you're my boyfriend and I won't leave you in the dark… not now.”

Daryl couldn’t even bring the cigarette up to his lips this time, he just stared down at the burning end of it. There was another awkward silence but it only lasted for a minute or two. You needed time to form your thoughts and calm your mind before you told him what had been aching in your mind for days now. You brought your arms together, wrapping them around your cold body as you rubbed warmth into yourself.

“What if this is our last fight?” You asked, biting your lip as you tried to hold back tears. “I mean, we’ve already lost so many people. Jesus, Tara, Henry…enid.”

Your breath hitched when enid's name fell from your lips, she was a little sister to you and losing her felt like it was the end of the world. She reminded you of Carl, so strong and knew exactly who she was. She was the last thing you had of Carl and now she was gone, you couldn’t bare to see her on that pole… it almost killed you.

“It’s only a matter of time before I lose you too, so what if this is it? What if we fight tomorrow and you end up getting stabbed or bitten… or you lose me.” You couldn’t stop the tears now, they flowed from your eyes as you looked over at him.

“We’ve fought before Y/N… this is just another hiccup.” He tried to reassure you but it didn’t help, it only made the anger build up in your heart even more.

“No Daryl… this is different because it’s not just us this time.” You said, trying to explain but it just didn't want to come out the way you wanted it to.

“What? Judith and rj? I mean Judith knows how to fight and rj won’t..” he started but you stopped him once again.

“Daryl… I didn’t mean them.” You said, wanting to let it all out of your system before it ate you up alive.

He was staring at your cigarette still in his hands, you were about to drop a huge bomb on him… even bigger than what you’d already dropped on him. You couldn’t lose him without him knowing though, he needed to know. You sighed, wiping your tears away from your eyes before setting your hands in your lap.

“I think I’m pregnant.”

Daryl choked on his own spit, his face drained of blood and he dropped the cigarette. What the actual fuck, was all he could think. He had dreamed of getting you pregnant, so many times he lost count but it can’t be happening now… not now. He just stayed silent, it was the only thing he could do because he had no idea how he felt. He wanted to run away, he wanted to scream, he wanted to cry so he just stayed as still as he could.

“I thought maybe it was a stomach bug, I was throwing up every time I smelled food and I couldn’t keep shit down but then I realized I was late 3 weeks…” you explained, curing yourself up into a ball to make yourself as small as possible. “I know my mom was like this when she was pregnant with my siblings so I’m just putting two and two together.”

Daryl felt like the world was closing in on him, to add onto his shitty couple months he’s had you drop this on him. It’s not like he didn’t want kids with you but god damn he really wished he'd wrapped it up right now, so many bad things could happen to you right now. He wanted to kiss you, he wanted to make sure you knew he was here but he couldn’t. He was stuck frozen but his eyes had started to burn, from the smoke or from the tears threatening to spill from his eyes.

“Shit…” was all he could muster up to say.

You chuckled at his reaction, watching as he slowly freaked out. You knew you were ready for a kid, you had been ever since you meant Daryl but it was the wrong time. You didn’t know if you could fight, the risks of you getting killed or you losing the baby was high. The whisperers didn’t fuck around, you knew what was going to come from this war. It wasn’t just you two now, you had someone depending on you and it wasn’t just Daryl or the others. With this is was different because the others can survive if you didn't, but this baby... it quite literally depended on your survival.

“Shit is right… you got me knocked up by Daryl Dixon.” You chuckled, wiping your tears with your sweater.

You both just sat in silence, allowing your words to consume the both of you. You felt you couldn’t breathe in this moment but at the same time you felt you could finally breathe, this overwhelmed you more than it did Daryl. You knew what risks could happen, the risks that Lori had and she died because of them. This world was cruel, it wouldn’t allow you to be happy, it wouldn’t let you be happy with the man you love and your child in your arms.

You never wanted to be a mother, you rejected that life but you can see it now. You crave it now, you crave coming home after a long day to see Daryl and your child passed out on the couch. You crave to walk into your child’s room, seeing Daryl reading to your sleeping child, then coming to your room to make love to you. You would have never thought you would want this but you were tired, you wanted to settle down with daryl. The silence was still hovering heavily in the air when you came back to earth from your thoughts.

“Daryl… please tell me what you’re thinking. You know I hate when you don’t talk to me…” You begged for him to speak, to tell you it was okay and that you had nothing to worry about.

“Think you should stop smoking.” He stated, as if he didn’t hear you.

You couldn’t help but get frustrated with him, you didn’t mean to, you just did. Maybe it was the hormones or the weight you were feeling but you wanted to scream at him. People would die, good people and you were both putting yourself at risk because of some petty drama with the whisperers. You were ready to leave this all behind you, you wanted to run away and all Daryl can think about is your health?

“Seriously? Daryl…” you sighed, face heating up. “People are going to die, we are risking our lives with this war and all you can think about is my smoking habit.”

You set your head in your hands, curling into a ball so hopefully the earth would consume you. You hated this feeling, the fear and the anger that you held in your chest. It weighs you down and you wanted it to stop, you wanted it to stop so badly that you could feel yourself tearing yourself apart just to ease it. Daryl looked calm now, his hands still fidgeting but he was calm… you hated how calm he looked because how could he be calm?

“Yeah, I’m looking out for you… just like I always have.” He replied, his voice laced with reassurance. “Y/N, have I ever not protected you? Have I ever left you? Left you without coming back?”

You looked over at Daryl, he was already looking back at you. His eyes were calm, like calm ocean waves that you could fall into if you weren’t careful. Daryl needed you to know he was here and he wasn’t going anywhere. He needed you to know, he didn’t care if he had to pound it into you or keep you up all night craving it into your skin… you needed to know. You shook your head, sure if you were to speak you would start sobbing. Daryl smiled, moving in closer so his legs were touching yours.

“Exactly, I never have and I don’t plan on doing it now.” He said, bringing his hand up to wipe your tears away. “People will die but they will die fighting for the future of Alexandria and hilltop, our future y/n. They are the ones who are going to give our kid a chance, it’s sad but it’s what has to happen.”

His hands were cradling your face, slowly caressing your cheeks as tears continued to stream down them. Seeing you like this, so broken down, had Daryl’s eyes prickling with warm tears.

“I will make sure we see another day, bunny… I promise that, okay?” He reassured, watching as you nodded, making it known you were trusting him.

He brought you into a hug, you melted into him. You couldn’t help the sobs that you let out, grabbing onto him with dead life. You were so scared but his words soothed your fears, now your tears flowed out simply because you were so in love with him. He always made sure you were okay, no matter what was wrong he always knew how to make you feel better.

You had hope of seeing another tomorrow, you could see you two going into war now. Hand in hand as you fought, fought harder than you ever had. You were going to see another tomorrow, you promised it. You were going to be selfish for the first time in years and you were doing this for you, you were going to survive for you. Daryl’s hand soothingly pet your head, massaging your scalp as you let your tears flow out of your eyes.

“We’re gonna be okay bunny…” he whispered, leaving small kisses to your hair line.

You nodded once more, taking in his words as you cuddled into him. You stayed like this for a bit, allowing the moment to take you in with loving arms. You broke away from the hug after the moment had felt like an eternity, you looked at him with tear filled eyes as they continued to pour out of your eyes. Daryl kept his hands on you, his hands slowly rubbing circles on your skin

“Daryl.” You said, almost in a whisper.

“Yeah?” He replied

You felt so many emotions, so many overwhelming emotions so it wasn’t surprising when you wanted Daryl to take you to bed and love you like it’s the last time. Your fear of the war still lingered even though it had been dulled, you still wanted Daryl to bore his words into your skin so you’ll never forget it. It would honestly just give you an excuse to forget everything.

“Whether we make it or not…” you started, watching as Daryl’s eyebrows furrowed, wondering what would come next. "I want you to take me to the bed room... and fuck me like it's the last time."

Daryls taken back by this, one minute you were in a tear-filled rant and now you are asking to be fucked. Daryl took a minute to realize you were being serious, seeing the lust that had taken over your eyes. Your tear-streaked face looking up at him with puppy dog eyes, he couldn't say no to you. Daryl smiled, standing up and handing you his hand.

"Anything for you..." He put it simply, watching you reach your hand out to connect to his.

The night was far from over, filled with "i love you"'s and the sound of the both of you moaning. You made sure if one of you hadn't made it, the other was carved into your skin. Obviously, Daryl knew this was not going to be the last time you were together, Daryl was a fighter and he made sure nothing ever happened to you, that mindset wasn't going to stop for him now.

#daryl dixon fanfiction #daryl dixon smut #the walking dead fanfiction #daryl dixon #the walking dead #twd daryl #daryl dixion imagine #daryl dixon x reader

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