#I HAD TO GET IT OUT OF MY SYSTEM OKAY IT'S BEEN PLAGUING MY CONSCIOUSNESS

[cecilscribbles]

okay. so maybe i did draw mildly MILDLY suggestive content. so WHAT. fuck you guys

idek if this is good but it took ages and im tired so take it

bill using affection as a reward and getting ford addicted to his touch and praise so he works harder. you agree. reblog

[darthkruge]

hello lovely!! i’ve been getting back into star wars lately and i’ve been loving your fics!! and i was wondering if i could make a request?? sort of like,, anakin but he doesn’t turn to the dark side type thing?? like he maybe confesses he’s scared to lose you and you help him through it?? maybe obi wan helps out?? honestly you can take it however you want :)) ty ty

anakin skywalker x reader || rewritten

summary || a rots fix it fic where i take many liberties and give anakin a support system + everyone gets better communication and we think about how it would perhaps end differently

warnings || hella canon divergence, angst w/ a happy ending, some violence (non graphic and not super described)

words || 5.1k (i am legit shocked)

a/n || hello and thank you!! i’m so glad you’ve been loving my fics! this fic was honestly super challenging for me and it ended up being the longest thing i’ve ever written. i made some big changes and lots of smaller ones, but each one was fully intentional. i really, really hope y’all like it <3

main masterlist || anakin masterlist 

gif credit

-----

Anakin awoke with a start, chest heaving and covered in sweat. He was gripping the blankets as he tried to ground himself, frantically looking around as if to discern between reality and the horrid dreamscape his mind created. He whipped his head to the side, visibly relaxing as he saw you staring up at him, a confused look on your face. 

You were no stranger to Anakin’s nightmares but this one seemed unlike any he’d ever had. You slept curled into him and, thus, his jolt caused one of your own. Unsure if he wanted your touch just yet, you reached out to him with the Force. Panic, loss, grief, fear, terror, insecurity. You looked into his eyes, watching as they slowly cleared and he registered your presence. He blinked quickly, trying to clear the tears from his vision and gave you a slight nod. 

Reaching a tentative hand to his shoulder, you suppressed a gasp as you felt him shudder beneath you. You quietly whispered his name and placed a finger under his jaw, guiding his face to yours. You nodded back at him and opened your arms in silent invitation. He crawled into your embrace as you pulled him impossibly close to you, situating yourself against the headboard so you could better wrap yourself around his shaking body. Choked sobs erupted from his lips, each one tearing a hole in your heart. As he finally let himself cry with his face buried into your neck, you held him. By the Maker, you held him. 

He didn’t want to speak just yet and you understood. You’ve always extended the same respect back to him as he gives to you. Tucked into you, Anakin’s fingers squeezed into your flesh, as if trying to remind himself you were solid. You placed a few kisses into his soft hair and onto his forehead, hands running up and down his arms and back. You physically pressed reminders of your love into his skin for hours and, somewhere in the midst of your embrace, he let himself fall into a state of limbo. Unawake, unasleep, umoving, yet feeling everything you had to offer. 

----

When morning came, you reached out once again. The emotions from last night were still evident, just not as strong. Simultaneously, you allowed a small smile to come to you as you felt something new. Warmth, comfort, love. You ran your fingers through Anakin’s hair to pull him to consciousness, needing to see his eyes. Stars, his eyes. While they were absolutely gorgeous, they also always gave him away. You once told him that. “Only for you, my love.” He’d replied. 

“Hi.” He croaked out, meeting your gaze. Your eyes fluttered closed for a second as you took a deep breath in relief. His eyes were clear. You didn’t know how long the shadows would be banished for, but as long as they weren’t constant, you had hope. 

“Hi, baby.” You whispered, allowing yourself to give him another forehead kiss, made easy by your position that you’d somehow remained in throughout the night. You looked at him expectantly and knew he knew what you were asking.

“You… you died,” Anakin started. His eyes were already filling with tears. “It wasn’t clear. There was so much blood. And you kept begging me to help you. You screamed and screamed and screamed and you were in agony and…” 

You took his hand in yours, squeezing his fingers in encouragement to go on.

“I never- I never came for you.” He spit the words out as if they were venomous and shook his head. You could hear the self-hatred in his words, the way he couldn’t grasp the concept of hurting you, ever, and yet how seriously he took this. 

“Hey, hey. Stop, my love.” You said, hoping to pull him out of his spiral. “You would never harm me, Anakin. You would come for me, you always have. That was a horrible dream and I’m so sorry you had to experience it. But it was just a dream, Anakin. It’s not real.” 

He pulled away from you as if he couldn’t stand to feel your gentle touch. “No, no, no! It-” His words were cut off by his uneven breathing, his pulse racing as he relived the nightmare. “It felt like the ones I had about my mother. It felt… prophetic. I’m scared, Y/N, I can’t lose you.” 

You walked over to him, placing your hands on his cheeks and rubbing your thumbs over his cheekbones, hoping to calm him. “You won’t. It takes a lot to kill me, you know? Especially when I have you by my side.” 

Anakin nodded but you could tell he was unconvinced. 

“How about you talk to Obi-Wan about the dreams? He’s always helped you before.” You suggested. 

While normally this would be unthinkable, as it would expose your relationship, Anakin felt himself pulled toward the choice. Inwardly, he admitted that he could definitely use a friend right now. And Obi-Wan had always stood by him. Somehow, he just knew that now would be no different.  

------

Obi-Wan easily swung the door open with the Force before Anakin even had a chance to knock. He knew his former Padawan’s force signature like the back of his hand and had sensed his distress for days. Unbeknownst to Anakin, Obi-Wan had canceled his missions due to this, wanting to stay close for when Anakin eventually came to him for guidance. 

Obi-Wan looked up from his paperwork as he realized Anakin refused to come closer. Huddled behind the door frame, a conflicted and fearful look on his face, Obi-Wan was struck by how similar Anakin looked to the little boy he’d found on Tatooine all those years ago. Many nights, young Anakin would come into Obi-Wan’s room, plagued with nightmares. Just as before, Obi-Wan never turned him away. 

“Something’s troubling you.” 

Anakin sighed, taking a tentative step forward. “You know Master L/N?”

Obi-Wan smiled knowingly, having a sense of where this is going. “Yes, of course. A brilliant strategist, much like yourself.” 

“I…. I’m involved with them, Master.” 

“Involved?” Obi-Wan replied, with a quirked eyebrow.

“Please don’t punish Y/N for this, I know the Council frowns upon relationships. If you need to report it, I understand. But just report me, say they had nothing to do with it. But before you do anything please, Master, listen to what I must tell you. I wouldn’t unless it was absolutely necessary.” Anakin pleaded. 

“Anakin, I know.” 

“Yeah, I mean it truly is necessary-” 

Obi-Wan placed a comforting hand on the younger Jedi’s shoulder. “You misunderstand. I mean, I know.” 

Anakin’s eyes widened with realization before confusion filtered into his gaze. “But we were so careful!” 

“Not as much as you would think,” Obi-Wan said with a slight laugh.

“And you’re not upset?”

He sighed. “Being honest, I was a bit at first. Anakin, you know the rules and you can be so reckless at times! But how could I fault you for your own humanity? And I knew who you were when I met you. I was always aware of your compassion, your capacity for emotions.” Anakin nodded and smiled, but the faraway look in his eye never wavered. 

Clearing his voice, Obi-Wan continued. “Are you alright, Anakin?” 

“No.” The strength of the word shocked them both and caused Anakin to take a moment to compose himself. “They’re dying.”

Panic flashed through Obi-Wan’s expression. “They’re what? What happened? Was it a mission? Do the medics know? Is-” 

“- No, nothing… nothing yet. But it will.” While Obi-Wan didn’t exactly understand, he could tell through Anakin’s tone that his former Padawan believed this with his entire soul. 

“I’ve been having more nightmares.” Anakin said. 

“Like the ones with your mother?” 

Anakin nodded, his gaze muddled as his mind wove through every possibility on how to save you. Coming up with none, he looked up quickly, the lost confusion clear. 

“It’s going to be alright, Anakin. We’re going to do this together.” Obi-Wan offered, trying to comfort his friend. When Anakin nodded this time, his expression had more hope in it. Obi-Wan returned the gesture, tipping his head as Anakin walked out. Before Anakin reached the door, Obi-Wan called his name. 

“Talk to me if you feel troubled. About anything, my friend. And just know… it’s okay to feel afraid. And you’re no less a Jedi because you love them. At least, not in my eyes.” For the first time since he’d walked in the room, Anakin gave a true smile. His former Master inhaled deeply, realizing after hearing those words, Anakin looked more like himself than he had in a long while. 

----- 

A few hours and a Council meeting later, Anakin walked back into your chambers, closing the door with a huff. He wasn’t enraged, per se, but definitely conflicted. You approached him cautiously, heart falling when you saw those familiar clouds back in his eyes. 

“Did Obi-Wan not take it well?”

Anakin shook his head. “It’s not… he was supportive. But the Council has assigned something to me and…” He trailed off and looked at you. Only then did you see his bloodshot, puffy eyes. 

“What did they ask of you, Anakin?” You questioned, coming behind him to gently massage his tense shoulders. 

“I’m needed to spy on the Chancellor. Apparently there’s a Sith Lord somewhere in the Order. They suspect him.” He tried to keep his voice strong, but you could see how torn apart he was by the inflection in his tone. 

You took a breath and tried to process the information. “Will you do it?”

“I don’t know… if the Council tells me I must, then I must. But the Chancellor has only been good to me. I worry about betraying him but I don’t want to let down the Order. I’m not sure how to do this without causing someone harm.” He confessed. 

“They shouldn’t have put you in this position, it’s unfair. And you don’t have to, Ani. I know it feels like you do but you don’t need to bend to each of the Council’s requests. Whatever the fallout, whatever you choose, please know that I’m with you. And so is Obi-Wan. Not that it fixes anything, but at the very least, you’ll always have us.” 

Anakin turned around so he was facing you. “I don’t know what to do.” He whispered, voice laced with hopelessness. 

“Trust yourself. You have a good heart, intelligence, and strong morals. They’ve never failed you before.”

He nodded before leaning into you and your arms instinctively wrapped around him. Your fingertips found their way to his hair, gently weaving through the golden strands. 

“We’ll get through this, yeah?” While it was a question, you both knew you meant it as a statement.

“We’ll get through this.” Anakin echoed. He mumbled the words into your neck where he had buried his face. As if the words could seep into your skin. As if the hope could find its way to your heart and stay there, ever protected, ever true. 

-----

The next day, Anakin found himself in Palpatine’s office. He was wary, guarded. It was evident by the look on his eyes, the way he took a moment before taking another step. It was his training as both a Jedi and a General that allowed him to do this. The careful complexity of planning every move. 

“I heard the Council debating whether or not they should have made you a Master. It seems they do not trust you or value your talent as they should.” Palpatine’s words made Anakin freeze. Rationally, he knew this was wrong. At the very least, Obi-Wan trusts him and so do you. But there was a part of him that felt so validated by the Chancellor’s words that he wanted to hear more. To bask in them, in feeling wanted and appreciated. He hated himself for it. 

“I… I’m not sure what you mean by this.” Anakin attempted not to give himself away any more than he already has. 

“Well, they care about your potential. But they hold you back. They’ll never show you your true power, for they don’t want you to understand. They just wish to use it, no matter your own fate.” 

“I feel cast aside. Like I don’t matter.” Anakin wasn’t even sure why he shared these words. Somehow, in feeling so praised, the doubts just bubbled their way to the surface. He felt like a child in these moments, so painfully fragile. 

“You don’t. Not to them, Anakin. But with me I can teach you your power. I can teach you the ways of the Dark Side. I know of your fears, of those nightmares that plague you. I know about your secret marriage and how close you are to losing it all.” 

Anakin froze, his heart hammering in his chest. His thoughts raced as he tried to piece together the truth from all the lies. The mentions of Darth Plagueis. The Dark Side of the Force. 

“You’re the Sith Lord!” Anakin said, igniting his lightsaber and pointing it at the older man’s chest. 

Palpatine bowed his head slightly, a small smile gracing his lips. “Well done, my boy.” Anakin felt sick as he noted the pride in his tone. And yet that aching part inside him still swelled, ever so slightly.

“Now, don’t do anything rash.” The Chancellor reasoned. “Only the Dark Side can save the one you love.” 

Anakin wanted to do the right thing. He wished to be the one who could stand up and arrest Palpatine without a single ounce of guilt or regret. But as soon as Palpatine mentioned you, it’s like all his logic disappeared. He just wanted to save you, to not fail you as he’d failed his mother. But then he thought back to your words. “Strong morals.” And to his Master’s. “We’ll do this together.”

“I’m turning you into the Council.” 

“Wouldn’t you prefer to kill me?”

“Yes.” Anakin’s remark was forceful and clipped with anger.

“Then do it. Give yourself over to your wrath.”

He felt himself burning with betrayal, with resentment toward both sides. Even so, he could still tell right from wrong, selfless from selfish. And whatever Palpatine was doing… it certainly did not have the will of the people in mind. Without so much as deigning him with another response, Anakin turned and walked out of the room.

“If you turn me in, you’ll never save them!” Anakin tried to will Palpatine’s voice out of his head as he ventured back to the Council chambers. When he arrived back, he decided to slightly alter his plans. While he knew he must face all of them eventually, he wanted to talk to Obi-Wan first. Perhaps his Master could give him guidance, like he did about your nightmares. 

“General Skywalker… are you alright?” Anakin stumbled as he walked right into another figure, too caught up in his own head.

“I’m fine, Master Windu. Thank you- I’m sorry.” Mace looked at the younger Jedi with an unreadable expression. While there was much in his eyes, concern was definitely a part of it. 

“Have you seen Master Kenobi?” Anakin said after a brief pause for composure. 

“He’s supposed to leave for his next mission any moment now. If you hurry, you can probably still catch him.” 

Anakin thanked Master Windu before taking off in a run. No matter how fast his legs carried him, he felt his mind was working even faster, the internal conflict brewing more intently by the second. 

-----

Obi-Wan opened the door as soon as before Anakin could even knock. He looked at Anakin and gestured at a vacant chair, a silent invitation to sit. Anakin shook his head quickly. The younger Jedi’s eyes were scattered and conflicted, as if he’d been shaken to his very core. 

“Palpatine is the Sith Lord.” The words came out rushed, yet clear. As if Anakin needed to get them out as quickly as he could but replayed them in his head until they were all he knew. The intensity showed Obi-Wan that there was no doubt in his friend’s mind. 

Obi-Wan blinked. “Okay.” He stroked his beard, trying to find the words to say. “Are you alright?”

Anakin looked at Obi-Wan in confusion. Certainly there were more important questions his former Master would want to ask than that. 

“I know you and the Chancellor were close. This can’t be easy for you. I just wanted to ask if you were alright.” 

“I’m not sure.” Anakin said after some hesitation. “I don’t really know what to think… Palpatine is evil, right? But he believed in me when no one else did. He saw my potential, allowed me to confide in him. He told me he could show me how to save Y/N. Would someone evil do that?” 

Obi-Wan’s eyes softened as he looked at the painfully conflicted young man in front of him. “Anakin… he was manipulating you. He was isolating you so you had no one to turn to but him. It was a tactic, a ploy. He doesn’t care for you.” Anakin looked so heartbroken that Obi-Wan knew Anakin believed him. “I’m so sorry.” 

“But what about Y/N?” Anakin asked desperately.

Obi-Wan sighed. “Loving someone in the Order isn’t easy. Especially after everything you’ve gone through. And losing someone… it changes the way you love. You fear constantly, wondering when your love will evade you. When it will fall apart, like all the rest. But living like that, loving like that… it leaves no room for growth or peace. And that’s what relationships are for, aren’t they?” His voice was filled with compassion and wisdom. From experience, perhaps? Regardless of the reason, Anakin was reminded that someone did understand him. Despite the circumstances, he felt content. At least a bit. 

“Is there any way to save them?”

“I’m not sure. Let’s focus on Palpatine for now, alright? And we’ll bring Master L/N with us so you know they’re safe.” Obi-Wan wished nothing more than having a set solution to save Y/N. But some things were even out of his grasp. “I know this must be impossible for you, Anakin. I truly am sorry.” 

Anakin nodded. After all, it was true. If there was anything to describe the impending threat of losing another person he loved, impossible summed up the process. “I know. You’re doing all you can. Thank you, Master. And yes, I would like to bring them with us.” 

Obi-Wan clasped a hand to Anakin’s shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze as they met each other with a smile. “I’ll send them a message right now.”

----

You gasped when you received Obi-Wan’s message with the details of the Supreme Chancellor’s truth. Your heart cried for Anakin, knowing the betrayal must be breaking him. All you could do was wish that with Obi-Wan’s help, the two of you could support Anakin until he felt like he could breathe again. And you had faith in him. You always had faith in him. 

Grabbing your cloak, you jogged to Obi-Wan’s quarters. As soon as you opened the door, you ran to Anakin and hugged him to you, needing to feel his presence. Somehow, you knew he needed it, too. 

“Ready?” Anakin and Obi-Wan gave you nods of confirmation and you gave a tentative smile. “Alright. Let’s do this.” 

-----

Anakin entered Palpatine’s chambers first. For once, he felt sure of himself. He finally knew what he had to do. His gaze shifted to you, making sure you were alright. You placed a hand on his arm, rubbing your thumb up and down to reassure him. He inhaled. Exhaled. And ignited his saber. 

“I knew you’d come back, Skywalker. I knew you’d join me.” 

“Think again.” Obi-Wan responded as you and him walked into the chambers. Pure, unfiltered rage flickered through Palpatine’s eyes in response.

“Anakin, they’re trying to corrupt you. They’re trying to keep your power. Come with me, boy, and I’ll teach you all you wish to know. I’ll teach you how to save them.” He said, pointing a pale finger toward your face. 

You let out a sharp breath as you suddenly understood Anakin’s conflict. Of course Palpatine was using you as a bargaining chip. Using Anakin’s fear of abandonment, of losing his loved ones against him. It was disgusting, even for a Sith. 

“I… you can’t possibly know how to do that. It’s impossible!” 

“Not on the Dark Side. Look… Obi-Wan has turned them against you. He’s the cause of this! I’m sure he didn’t even pose a solution to saving Y/N. It’s because he doesn’t care about you, not like I do.” 

The shadows returned to Anakin’s eyes as his gaze switched between Obi-Wan and Palpatine. He couldn’t even bring himself to look at you, to see the pain in your eyes as he struggled with a choice that for others would be so simple. He hated himself for being weak but he truly couldn’t fathom losing you. 

Obi-Wan stepped forward, backing Palpatine against the wall and pointing his lightsaber at Palpatine’s throat. Anakin stepped back, too frozen to move, and unconsciously placed himself between them and you.

“It’s over, Chancellor. Don’t make this more difficult than it already is.” Obi-Wan said.

Palpatine shot lightning from his hands, causing Obi-Wan to deflect the matter with his lightsaber, redirecting it to Palpatine himself. As Palpatine shook from the force of his own blast, he once again called to Anakin.

“If you let him kill me, dear boy, Y/N will die. If you don’t try to save them, you will be the cause of their death.” 

Anakin’s eyes widened, those words hitting him right in the chest. He moved forward, pointing his lightsaber at Obi-Wan but refusing to make the final cut to end his life. Obi-Wan looked like he wanted to speak but the effort of holding of Palpatine’s lightning rendered him useless. It was Obi-Wan, after all. His former Master, his friend. The one person who he trusted with the secret of his marriage. He couldn’t kill him, right? He faltered, stepping slightly back. 

“Ani,” You said, your voice calm as you tried to reason with him. “Ani if you do this, you can’t come back from it. I know you don’t want to lose me and if you kill Obi-Wan, you will, regardless of the fate of my life. You aren’t too far gone, yet. You haven’t done anything irredeemable. Remember who you are, my love.” 

Anakin heard your words and looked at your face. You. He wanted to do good by you, to do good by all of them. He wanted to make his mother proud, make himself feel like leaving her for the Jedi Order meant something. And then his gaze filtered over to his friend. Obi-Wan stood tall against the force of Palpatine’s lightning, reminding Anakin of his friend’s strength. It was something Anakin wanted to emulate, too. 

Understanding his choice, Anakin took a step forward to position the blade toward Palpatine’s chest. His hand was shaking, movements unsure, eyes glossed over with immeasurable pain. But before he could make contact, you swiftly moved in front of him and killed Palpatine instead. Obi-Wan was thrust backward as the lightning ceased, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. 

“Why would you do that?” Anakin asked as he looked at you. 

“I didn’t want you to have to kill your friend. No matter what he turned out to be.” You said as you shifted on the balls of your feet. The weight of Palpatine’s death now weighed on your soul, as do those of every life you’ve ever ended. You could bear it and you knew Anakin was strong enough to do so, as well. You just didn’t want him to have to. 

Anakin nodded and whispered a thank you back to you. You just smiled, the love for him clear in your expression. Anakin turned around, walking to his friend and extending a hand for him. 

“I never doubted you.” Obi-Wan said simply as he met Anakin’s guilty eyes. 

“I should have made the choice to believe you earlier. I shouldn’t have let him get to me. I’m sorry, Master.” 

“Look at me, Anakin. We all struggle with our morals. We struggle and we’re unsure and we pray and hope to land on the right decision. And you did. You have nothing to apologize for.” Looking at your and Anakin’s arms around each other, Obi-Wan made one last decision. “How about the two of you retire for the evening? I’ll debrief with the Council, you’ve been through enough.” 

Once again, Anakin was struck by the older Jedi’s strength and selflessness. He nodded, as did you, before he accompanied you back to your quarters. 

----

You kept one arm around Anakin’s waist the entire way home, mirroring his that was around your shoulders. You couldn’t bear to separate, not after the events of the past few days. Seeing Anakin so torn up inside, it was eating away at you. Knowing you couldn’t save him was one of the hardest things you’ve ever had to deal with. 

Now, Palpatine was finally gone. There was no more threat to the Jedi Order, the Force once again balanced. But both of you still understood the one solution that hadn't been found: how to save you. It made everything easier, that you chose to kill the Chancellor. Anakin refused to voice the doubts in his head, wondering if he actually would have gone through with it knowing he would lose his chance at saving you. 

The air was melancholic surrounding you both. Heavy. Neither of you knew what to say, words failing in a moment that was so conflicted it almost overwhelmed you. But your heart warmed as you saw Anakin scamper in front of you to open and hold the door for you. You loved him so much, for doing the little things even in moments like these. It gave you hope.

You were okay with death, so long as it only affected you. When you joined the Jedi, you had to make your peace with it. But after you fell in love everything changed. You didn’t want Anakin to go through the pain of losing you. He’d been so open with you about, well, everything. Especially his past. He’d gone through so much, felt such raw pain and loss, you didn’t want to add to that. 

Taking his hands in yours, you looked into his blue eyes. 

“I don’t want you to die.” He whispered, the desperate, deflated tone making your heart break. “I won’t.” You wished to say, but you knew you couldn’t. 

“I don’t want to die, either.” You chose these words instead, relying on their honesty. 

“Palpatine could have saved you.” Anakin said after a beat. 

You sighed. “You don’t know that.” You stated, knowing it wouldn’t change how he felt. 

“Neither do you!” 

“But at what cost? At the cost of losing your soul? Anakin, you would have had to join the Sith! That’s no longer you! You’re good and you couldn’t have saved me if you were there, don’t you see that?” You pleaded. You wished he would see your logic, the truth behind your words. How even though he thought otherwise, he made the right decision. 

“What good is saving the Order if you won’t be a part of it?”

“What good is saving my life if I wouldn’t have you to live it with?” You countered. 

Anakin let out an exhausted breath before pulling you into him, hugging you. The fighting was too much and, frankly, he didn’t want to argue. Not with you, not ever. You both let out a humorless chuckle as you leaned into each other. 

“I love you.” His tone conveyed it all. 

“I love you.” You replied, your voice muffled from being pressed into his robes. 

“Can we sleep? I don’t want to face this right now. Can we just put this aside, if just for a moment? Can I lay with you and can you hold me and can we just have each other?” You questioned breathlessly.

“I would like nothing more, my love.” He smiled slightly and pressed a kiss to your head as he added the words of endearment, wanting you to understand he wasn’t upset with you. You already knew that, though. You were in love with Anakin Skywalker. Of course you’d argue from time to time. But at the end of the day, you were two hopelessly in love Jedi just trying to save each other. 

Crawling into bed, sleep came for the both of you quickly. You were holding him and he was holding you, tangled together as you nestled his warm embrace. He tucked his face into your neck as you did so and savored the feel of you next to him. Safe. 

Drifting off, Anakin tried to fight the pull of sleep, knowing he’d just suffer from another nightmare like he had every day since the first one. One where you’d die and he could do nothing to stop it. Amidst these tumultuous thoughts, his breathing evened, lulling him under. 

You were in the grass, a flower crown atop your head. Anakin was leaning against a small house. It was quaint but beautiful. Small, not outwardly flashy, but full of love and meaning. Looking around, he smiled as he saw green vines crawling up the sides of the house, a garden of your favorite flowers out front. You always had a soft spot for that. 

We are on Naboo, he realized. It was peaceful. It was the dream you always talked of together. Anakin’s breath caught as he felt the certainty of this dream. It felt just like his nightmares, except this one left him content. He didn’t want to entertain the thought for too long, afraid of jinxing it. But he knew it was prophetic. He wasn’t sure how he changed his fate, what exactly gave him this future. Something inside him just knew that when he wakes up the next morning, all will be okay. He felt infinitely lighter as he understood the threat was gone. 

When you looked up and saw him, you raced toward him and jumped into his arms. Anakin stumbled but caught you, breathing in your scent as you kissed the side of his neck. As he held you, his thoughts slightly wandered. But he was grounded by your presence, reminding him that you were safe and he was okay. With you, he was finally, completely, home.

-----

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[sweetsunflowerkisses]

rest.

Pairing: Pietro Maximoff (MCU) x Fem!Reader

Genre: Soulmate AU

Warnings: Mild language, cannon divergence, reader is kind of an oblivious shy dumb-ass who avoids her problems TvT

Summary: After everything life has put you through you just want to walk through life unnoticed and unbothered, but that seems to be out of the question when you're an enhanced working for the avengers and catch the eye of a certain speedster who just so happens to be your soulmate.

Word Count: 3.1k

a/n: this is very shitty and doesn’t make much sense im sorry i haven’t written something like this in so long :’) 

Sokovia. 2015.

“Glad you like the view, Romanoff. It's about to get better.” Fury said punching buttons on his data pad, “Nice, right? I pulled her out of mothballs with a couple of old friends. She's dusty, but she'll do.” Fury laughed, looking over at the small but capable team of Ex-SHIELD agents, smiling, as the old helicarrier pulled up beside the ever rising city.

You looked out of the window as the battle raged on in the city, you still weren’t sure why Fury had asked you to come with him. After all, you didn’t exactly have a useful skill set for this fight, you couldn’t operate the fancy systems that kept the helicarrier in the air, and despite being enhanced you definitely didn’t have the fighting set to help out the avengers, who were fighting in the city, saving the planet from total destruction once again.

You sighed, turning your back to the window and going to stand next to Fury, who rarely let you out of his sight.

“Sir, I’m grateful you trusted me enough to bring me along but if I could ask, why did you bring me?, My skills aren't exactly useful here.” you said with a frown.

Fury looked down at you grimly, “Just a feeling Mrs. [L/N].”

You nodded, turning your attention to your colleagues, who were diligently aiding in the rescue of the sokovian citizens, and the battle raging on outside. You watched in awe as Tony Stark- or rather Iron Man and War Machine began to destroy the bots that had begun to attack the helicarrier.

Suddenly Agent Hill’s voice rang out “INCOMING!”. You barely had time to jump out of the way as a robot crashed through the front window, Maria immediately emptying her clip into it as Fury finished it off with a piece of metal debris.

“And here I was thinking I wasn’t going to see any action”, you quipped, staring at the mess of metal and oil on the helicarrier floor.

You sighed, trying to even your breathing, absentmindedly running your fingers over the inky black words imprinted on the inside of your wrist. In this world everyone had a soulmate, all 7 billion people, and the first words they’ll say to you appear on the inside of your left wrist when your born, which turns red after you have your first kiss with your soulmate, however you don’t have any expectations to ever meet yours, and you don’t really want too, after all life moves pretty fast when your an Ex-HYDRA experiment and an Ex-SHIELD trainee, and these days you really just wanted to spend the rest of your days unnoticed and unbothered - aside from work of course.

You were broken out of your thoughts when a voice crackled over the comms, “Guys we have a problem!” It was Agent Barton, his voice was panicked and his breathing was ragged, “Pietro’s been hit, I can’t tell if he’s alive or not.”

Fury looked over at you, his face as stoic as ever, but you could see the slight bit of fear in his eyes “Showtime kid, let’s see what you can do.”

You nodded, taking off down the hall and jumping into a small craft, piloting it to the city where you could see Barton leaning over someone’s body. You landed, running over to them, it was one of the twins, a fellow enhanced experiment of HYDRA. You leaned down placing a hand on his bullet riddled chest, a small teal light eminitated from your hand as you closed your eyes and concentrated.

Suddenly your eyes snapped open, you looked up at Clint, “He’s alive,” Clint let out a sigh of relief. “but just barely, I  need to get him back to the medical bay immediately.” You finished. Clint nodded, helping you get the man loaded on the craft you arrived in, he gave you a small nod of thanks before running back to the rescue transports.

Back in your lab you had him hooked up to nearly every medical machine available, while your abilities had managed to stop the blood and heal the internal damage there was still the possibility of him not making it through the night, after all he had yet to regain consciousness and enhanced powers could only do so much, bringing back the dead wasn’t really one of those.

You sighed, leaning over his resting form, brushing a stray piece of his bleach blonde hair out of his face. You studied his face, he was quite possibly one of the most handsome people you’d ever seen, and that was even with the blood and dirt caked on him.

You turned gathering a cloth and a bowl of water, deciding it would be best to at least clean what grime you could off of him. You started with his face before moving to his chest, it was still caked in blood and dirt from where the bullets had ripped through him, though the wounds were closed and healed now. You took note of how well built he was but tried to focus on that as little as possible, after all he was your patient and you hadn’t ever even spoken to him.

As you ran the wet cloth over his body your mind began to wander, however you were broken out of your thoughts when a hand grabbed your arm. It was Pietro. You let out a squeak, mildly startled by his sudden consciousness, however it was clear that he was extremely disoriented and out of it. You moved, setting the washcloth and bowl back on the counter before gathering your clipboard to write that he had regained consciousness.

“Are you an angel?” He asked weakly, you turned looking at him, shocked. Those words, the ever familiar words that had been carried with you since birth, it was him. You inhaled, pushing all that aside, shaking your head as you approached his side.

“Rest.” Was all you said, before you walked out of the room, and for the rest of the night Pietro faded in and out of consciousness, only holding on to the fading sound of your voice.

Avengers Tower. One Month Later.

It had been a month since Sokovia. One month since Pietro Maximoff had almost died. He often found himself wondering what would have happened if he had died, would Wanda have been okay? Would anyone have cared? The other question that seemed to plague his mind day and night, the thought that had burrowed it’s way into his dreams and his absent minded musings, was the thought of seeing that girl that had saved him again.

He didn’t remember much about that day after he was shot, but everytime he closed his eyes he could see her, the girl with the (y/h/c) hair and the soothing voice, he couldn’t remember her fcae or if he had said anything to her but he could remember her touch and he craved to feel it again. The word “rest” also filled his mind, the way it sounded rolling off her tongue, it was the same word that had kept him grounded over the years, and the word that he so often traced on the inside of his wrist. He found himself feeling like the prince from that old animated mermaid movie Wanda made him watch as a kid, looking for the girl that saved him. Looking for his soulmate.

He broke himself out of his thoughts when he heard Maria Hill, one of the many people that had eagerly welcomed him to the Avengers and the remnants of SHIELD calling his name.

“Agent Hill, what can I do for you?” He asked, lifting himself off of the couch, turning to face her.

“Are you doing anything around 1:30 today? I’m supposed to be giving a tour to our newest Avenger today but I have a prior obligation around that time and was wondering if you would mind running it instead, normally I would ask someone else but I feel that you would be the best option in this case due to your…” Maria trailed off trying to come up with the word “Commonalities.”

Pietro’s ears perked up, a new member? Commonalities? Needless to say it was intriguing and would definitely provide a good distraction from his thoughts. “Okay.” He said, shrugging.

Maria smiled, handing him the manilla folder that was your file. “Her name is [Y/N] [L/N], she’s talented, all the necessary information should be in there.” Maria sighed inwardly as she clasped her hands behind her as she watched Pietro speed read through the folder.

To be honest, though she’d never tell Fury, she was hesitant to let you join the Avengers. You were talented no doubt, but she worried about you, maybe it was the fact that she had been the one to rescue you all those years ago, before the fall of SHIELD, before she ever worked for Stark, but still something told her maybe it was too soon, after all you had seemed pretty shaken after the Ultron ordeal.

“Well, you’ll need to meet her at the west elevator on floor 34 in an hour. Just take her through the itinerary there and get to know her, make her feel welcome.” Maria said with a smile before leaving back the way she came.

Pietro smiled as he waved goodbye, before looking down at the picture of you, of his soulmate, the girl that saved him.

Avengers Tower Floor 34. One Hour Later.

You rocked back and forth on your heels. It had been a month since Sokovia. One month since you had saved the man who was supposedly your soulmate. After that fateful day you went back into hiding with Fury, back to training with Fury, but now, according to Fury at least, it was time for you to join the Avengers as their medic.

You walked down the long glass hall, Agent Hill had told you that your guide would meet you outside the west elevator. She had also told you that your tour guide was one of the twins, due to your “commonalities” both in being enhanced and in being the newest members. You hoped it wasn’t going to be him, after all you still hadn’t really had time to process it all. Of course, life never really listened when you asked it for things.

The elevator dinged, signaling it’s arrival, you turned your attention from your wrist to the elevator,pulling down your sleeve to cover it as the doors slid open to reveal the gray clad speedster.

“They told me we were getting a new recruit, but they failed to tell me of your beauty.” Pietro smirked leaning against the elevator wall. You blushed, looking down at your shoes before sliding past him and stepping into the elevator. “Not talking huh? It’s okay I'll get you to crack eventually.” He smiled, winking at you only causing your face to flush even more.

As the tour went on Pietro did what he could to make you talk, though you usually only answered with one or two words. He was confused to say the least, did you not know? It was as the tour came to a close that he finally asked you the question that had been plaguing his mind the whole time, wondering if you would admit to him that you knew or if you were just clueless. “So, [Y/N], they tell me you are enhanced, like us, with healing abilities.” You nodded, “Were you there in Sokovia? Last month I mean, when Ultron attacked.”

You looked up sharply. “Um yeah, yeah I was.” You sighed, fidgeting with your sleeves.

“Then you're the one who saved me that day, thank you.” He smiled, bringing your hands into his, “I’m very happy you’re with us, and I hope that you will allow me to thank you properly? Maybe dinner?” His eyes were hopeful.

Did he know? You wondered, would he bring it up then, ease into it, charm you? Or had he been too out of it to even realise and was simply trying to be nice? Either way it was too much too fast.  “Um, I’ll think about it, I’m just kinda tired right now.”

“I understand, I’ll see you in the morning then beautiful, yes?” He smiled walking you down the hall to your room. You nodded, before looking down at the floor again. “Well if you need anything Wanda and I are both on this floor and if we’re not here we’re likely on the common floor.” He smiled watching you nod once again before retreating into your room.

Pietro sighed, running a hand through his hair, you had to know by now, if he hadn’t spoken to you that day what he said on the elevator should have been the words on your wrist? Why were you so hesitant? Did you not like him, was he not everything you had ever hoped for in a soulmate? He let out a short breath as he pushed the button to call the elevator, fine, he was charming right? He’d do whatever it took to convince you that he was the perfect guy for you, after all you were an angel to him.

A Stark Party at Avenger Tower. Two Months Later.

It had been two months, two months since you had joined the Avengers and you were still just as shy around Pietro as you had been on your first day. He couldn’t understand it, while you were shy around most of the other members too, save for his own sister and Sam Wilson, yet you seemed to purposefully avoid him. He couldn’t help but wonder if he had done something to make you mad or uncomfortable, he couldn’t understand why but it hurt, it hurt more than getting shot in Sokovia had, it was raw and painful but he did his best to hide it and simply be as polite and nice to you as possible.

“Hey there speedy, you seem quieter than normal and I don’t think I’ve heard one smart remark out of you today, what’s going on?” Clint Barton said, placing his hand on Pietro’s shoulder. Despite Clint’s general teasing of the younger man he did genuinely care for him and that was something Pietro was grateful for.

“I’m just lost in thought, thank you though Clint.” Pietro sighed, taking his coffee and heading to his room, after all Stark was having one of his infamous parties tonight and even if he wasn’t there with you Pietro still wanted to look nice for you.

Nearly six hours later everyone was downstairs, the floor alive with people, and Pietro found himself seated at the bar, nursing a whiskey as he watched you converse with his twin. You looked amazing, your gorgeous body clad in a gray knee length cocktail dress with gorgeous lace sleeves and accents. Despite the fact that you rarely spoke to him somehow, some way every little thing you did imprinted itself in his brain and only made himself fall harder and harder for you.

His mood quickly changed however from adoration to jealousy as he watched a group of suit clad men isolate you from his sister and begin to speak to you. Under normal circumstances he would have simply let you be, never wanting to make you uncomfortable or angry, but you were picking at your nails, something he had noticed you only did when you were uncomfortable.

So he did what any love-sick gentlemen would do, and he went to rescue you. Within seconds Pietro was by your side, snaking a hand around your waist, secretly praying to god that he wasn’t making you more uncomfortable.You tensed at the contact but relaxed with a sigh of relief as you looked up to find Pietro.

“Hello my love,” Pietro smiled looking down at you before turning back to the group of men, “Hello gentlemen, I hope you don’t mind if I steal my soulmate for a minute, it’s important Avenger business, you know?” He smirked, giving them no room to respond as he turned and led you to the balcony.

When you arrived on the balcony you sighed as you let the cool air roll over you. “Thank you for that Pietro.” You said softly. “I’m really grateful.”

Pietro smiled softly, “Of course, what are friends for.” He turned heading for the door, but stopped when your voice rang out.

“I’m sorry Pietro.” He turned back to look at you, your eyes trained on the floor, “I’ve been cold and distant and all you’ve done is try and be nice and make me feel happy and safe and welcome here and I’m just so sorry.”

Pietro sighed, running a hand through his hair. “You’ve known this whole time haven’t you. That we were soulmates.”

You looked up meeting his eyes, they were blue and piercing and oh so gorgeous but they were filled with pain.

“Yes, I’ve known since Sokovia. When you first regained consciousness you asked if I was an angel, I couldn’t focus on the fact that we were soulmates in that moment so I pushed it away, after that I just began to wonder, I mean I’m so different compared to you, you're so handsome and kind and talented and I’m just plain and boring, I figured that the universe probably made a mistake, and that you would be better of with someone else, but I never meant to hurt you,” You looked up at him, his face filled with a mix of shock and pain “I’m so so sorry.” You said, your voice breaking as you looked down, tears rolling down your cheeks.

“You are the most oblivious girl I’ve ever met.” Pietro chuckled, your head snapping up to look at him, “For one I’ve been flirting with you since you got here, you’d think that that would be a sign that I find you attractive, No?” You chuckled, “Second, Not talented? You saved my life, I was nearly dead and would be without you. Not kind? You have made my sister feel so happy and so welcome, you’ve given her the best friend she’s always wanted. Not pretty? My Angel, you are the most beautiful girl at this party. I’ve loved you from the minute I saw you, your smile can light up a room, and your laughter can make any sadness fade away, you my darling are perfect.” He smiled softly at you, cupping your cheek as you stared up into his eyes. “I love you moy angel”  

You stared up in awe at the silver haired speedster, “I- You’re so perfect, you have been so understanding and-” Your voice broke as more tears rushed down your face, Pietro simply whispered sweet nothings as he wiped away your tears. “I love you too.” You whispered smiling softly.

“Could I kiss you?” Pietro asked with an airy chuckle, you smiled,nodding before pressing your lips to his, letting the world around you melt away, as both of you reveled in the warm feeling of your marks changing from black to red.

[boop-le-snoot]

Doll Parts | tony stark x reader

i love him so much it just turns to hate // he only loves those things because he loves to see them break // and someday you will ache like i ache // Hole - Doll Parts

all hurt comfort. angst. no happy ending. big sad. tony could have been like this, you know. he was like this to pepper at some point. i don't know why i am like this today. rated M for themes of (implied) addiction & cheating and non-explicit mentions of intimacy. word count: 3,3k

It wasn't as if she was blind or dumb. She saw the way he treated everyone around him; whenever a single person got too close he'd push them away, consciously or not. The man loved pushing everybody's buttons as if he was playing Galaga for a living; rapidly, mercilessly, with intent. Tony Stark was not a man to whom a person would give their heart willingly.

It was her own fault she went and gave hers away, to him, of all people. And sometimes, it did feel like he loved her, in his own way. Tony would shower her with gifts and affection, cling to her whenever he wasn't away on SI business, and God, the sex was out of this world. Sometimes, she felt as if she would suddenly burst into a blinding flash of light, scalding and deafening, that would sprout from the invisible wounds his fingers left on her skin. Like fine china, she cracked little by little under his steady, tender hands.

The first time he'd ended their short, by average standards, but long - by his, relationship, it didn't come as a surprise. She had never held illusions on ensnaring the world's most notorious playboy. Younger and less jaded, she amicably agreed to get her things that very same day, blocked his number and left for an overdue vacation in the tropics. Being able to browse the gossip sites speculating on their lack of public appearances whilst sipping a Strawberry Daiquiri was a much better alternative to spending her nights holed up in rainy Manhattan, having to answer numerous "I told you so" calls from friends and relatives.

Maybe, three daiquiris should've been enough. But she'd quit smoking because he said the smell bothered him and she- well, she could do anything she wanted now. Being alone and not dating a very public figure definitely had way more perks than she previously had taken for granted in her much less exposed life. That's how the heartache began to recede: it was hard to mope when fun was calling for you by your name.

Some of Tony's character traits had migrated onto her. Which wasn't bad per se, she had been told she could use to loosen up. Her friends rejoiced in the newfound adventurousness, never missing an opportunity to go out, throw a party, go on a clubbing spree. She was game and she was enjoying it. Dolled up and eyes sparkling, the newfound confidence radiated off her like a beacon, attracting just about every single like-minded person in a five mile radius.

Tony's champagne he had sent to their table meant nothing. Her friends laughed and giggled and asked her all about the juicy details about the billionaire; as much as she searched the rowdy crowd for a familiar pair of baby doe browns, they weren't anywhere within sight. So she went back to talking and smiled as bright as the strobe lights, throwing down a whiskey shot to water the burning ache in her chest.

She found him on the dancefloor. Seconds after she stepped her foot into the mass of grinding bodies Tony was there, an equally happy and intoxicated smile on his face and arms wide open, as if they hadn't parted ways at all. She wanted to be angry with him, she really did, she wanted to snide his frivolity and the possessive way that he had the audacity to treat her.

His eyes, they were her untold weakness. She hadn't seen him so happy in months. Just once, she agreed, she'd let it slide. And so they danced, bodies accustomed to each other in the way that seemed to be impossible for her to achieve with anyone since the day that she left Tony Stark.

A splitting headache and a cold, empty bed greeted her the next morning. Thankfully, her clothes were laying haphazardly on the floor of the bedroom - the bed that was not his own but, rather, as she assumed, one of the many guest rooms in his tower.

Not the one to usually harbour shame of her very human needs, she felt like a cheap whore when she got dressed and grabbed her purse, making a beeline for the door to the elevator. As soon as the doors opened, she was greeted with a woman in a professional suit - tall, strawberry blonde and as cold as the Arctic, beautiful in the Vogue-magazine, unattainable way.

"Good morning," The woman spoke in a pleasant tone.

She wanted to retch from the false cheerfulness. "Good morning, ma'am. I was just leaving," Refusing to bow to her own shame, she flashed an equally cheerful grin towards the blonde.

"I'm Mr. Stark's personal assistant, my name is Pepper Potts," They briefly shook hands, neither of them wanting to touch the other longer than it was necessary. "There is a car waiting for you downstairs. Be sure to take the left exit."

Internally fuming, she smiled slightly wider, seeing no need to introduce herself or prolong the awkward interaction longer than necessary. "Thank you, Ms. Potts, that will not be necessary. I have arranged my own ride. Have a nice day, ma'am," With that, she pressed the button once again, entering the elevator with the expression of polite contentment glued to her face like a persistent piece of dog shit she couldn't shake off the bottom of her shoe.

Ms. Potts' façade slipped slightly - she must've been new - as the blonde ran a sharply observant look over the woman in the elevator, pulling out her phone as soon as the elevator door was halfway closed. That was quickly forgotten, her head growing clearer with each second it was pressed against the cold window of the cab she'd called on the way downstairs.

It was a mistake, a perfectly human accident that happened to the best of them. Only it left a bitter residue somewhere south of her ribcage, something acrid and viscous that even alcohol couldn't melt. The more she drank, the thicker that ball of rolled up frustration became, bleeding into her work, her relationships with her friends. It was tiresome to keep craving something so far out of her reach.

The exhaustion grew day by day, until her chest felt constricted for most part of the day and all the oxygen in the whole wide world wasn't enough. Her heartache was saved, strangely enough, by aliens - they rained down on New York city like frogs during the Plague in the book of Exodus; as if God himself was angry at the state of affairs of his favourite pet earthlings. For a time, she couldn't afford to worry about her broken heart and focused on the dilapidated city, landing her resources and skills whenever, whenever she could.

Late at night, exhausted and drained, she allowed herself to flick through the news, eagerly soaking up the new details that seemed to pop up every other day. Aliens were real, Thor was one, Captain America was alive and her ex-boyfriend was now a member of the merry band of misfit superheroes.

She had never taken his hero sidegig too seriously. Tony had some good in him, he wasn't the attention-demanding supervillain-waiting-to-happen, but neither he was hero material. The Tony she knew was akin to a hyperintelligent kid left without supervision. Consequences were a slight setback, not a surefire deterrent for this man.

Her building remained mostly intact - some cosmetic damages that were repaired quickly and did not concern her apartment at all - so she stayed in the same place, much to everyone's dismay. A good chunk of her friends had moved away from NYC as soon as they could - not that she blamed them - but the calls of her family, consisting of begging and nagging her to move states, were beginning to climb over the annoying line very quickly. More often than not, she ignored all calls that weren't from her friends or work.

It shouldn't have surprised her that Tony showed up on her balcony one night - but the shriek that left her was utterly involuntary. His armored suit was noisy and clunky, just like was expected from a huge chunk of metal. Tony's face was a ghost of the man she used to know: he was pale, the bags under his eyes were fit to carry groceries in and he'd lost more than a few pounds around his middle.

Not that she had a glow-up. Work hours were long, volunteer work was by far more exhausting and emotionally draining. With her support system scattered across the country and free hours few and in-between, she'd acquired a shrink. Nightmares went away and the sluggishness, too, thanks to a couple of convenient prescriptions. It seemed like the professionals were as clueless as any in dealing with the aftermath of an alien invasion.

"You weren't returning my calls," Tony stated in the way of hello. It was so like him, to be skipping the pleasantries and glossing over the details.

"I have your number blocked," She replied unkindly, raising an eyebrow as the suit retracted and the man, wearing worn jeans and an oil-stained tee, stepped into the twilight of her home without an invitation.

"I wanted to make sure you are alive and your home is being rebuilt in case it was demolished. Stark foundation is shouldering most of the expenses," He offered in the way of explanation, beelining for the nice whiskey she kept in a tumbler in the living room.

The snort escaped her lips before she could help it; brain chronically overtired but medicated; Adderall and weariness. He was never a good liar, only a good faker. "Why are you here, Tony?" All of it: the damages, the casualties, all of it was public record, accessible 24/7. All he had to do was open Google.

He turned around, scanning her head-to-toe, in that not-quite-convinced way. "Just wanted to see if you're okay," He tried for nonchalant but his eyes were haunted. The whiskey glass he was holding empty in seconds.

She walked up to him, staying at an arm's distance from the man, before doing a slow, sarcastic twirl. "I'm fine. Not a scratch. Was in Staten Island that day."

He nodded, not at all convinced. "Good," Before slamming the glass down with such force, she was afraid the countertop now sported a rounded indent. Fingers twitching, he pulled the woman into himself before she could utter a peep, smashing their lips together without any grace, paying no attention to the way she froze as still as a statue. "God, I missed you. Couldn't bear the thought of you dying..." He mumbled in between harshly biting the plump of her bottom lip and steering the kiss towards his wishes, hand tangled in the hair on the back of her head.

He tasted like whiskey and desperation.

She couldn't not give in. She'd felt the same way when she watched his red and gold armor fly into that wormhole, missile in tow. She'd felt the same despair clawing at her ribcage when his lifeless body flew back from it before being caught by the rabid green monstrosity.

It wasn't graceful and it wasn't pretty; feeling like a monster herself, she responded the same way he did. She shredded his clothes, she clawed his back, leaving wet crimson streaks in the wake of her nails and whispered the ugliest, nastiest truths she had denied herself for so long. He left with the promise to stay in contact and for once, he did.

Nothing was the same. Tony was far from the careless, extravagant billionaire he used to be. These days he was a cynical, analytical asshole that one-upped people even before he had a real need to do so. Both of them had changed, really. She was not the tender uptown girl either.

The nights with him were rare and long; the nights alone with her work were recurrent and longer. The tower stood out on the NYC skyline like a sore thumb, beckoning with the unattainable snipe hunt of having something stable with the world's #1 superhero, Tony Stark. Each time they met, she felt almost as dirty as the time she stood in the elevator under the scrutiny of Pepper Potts.

Even if he didn't outright hide her. She'd ran into Black Widow and Clint Barton once or twice, each of them casting a glance at her Special Visitor badge before muttering niceties and moving on with their day. It was only slightly better with the Captain: he got in the elevator two floors below Tony's penthouse at 8 AM in the morning, just as she was leaving for work - dressed in a sharp pantsuit that was not-quite on Pepper's level. The soldier must've assumed she was a high-rank employee or a friend, the tips of his cheeks blushing as he spoke a quiet: "Good morning, ma'am," In that semi-formal tone of his.

Seeing a grown man get so flustered was quite adorable. "Good morning, Captain Rogers, sir," She replied in a matching tone, humoring him.

The elevator stopped suddenly and a few employees got in, staring openly at the national icon, who had his eyebrows slanted in confusion. The woman shared his sentiment: it was Tony's private elevator. She guessed all the other ones were too full in the mornings so the tower's AI put the underused one to work.

Or, at least, that's what she tried to convince herself of anyway. It wouldn't be past Tony to get jealous over something as trivial as sharing an elevator car with Captain America.

The plateau of normalcy didn't last long. Just as she was opening her third bottle of wine for the night, laptop open on the kitchen counter and proudly displaying "Tony Stark and Pepper Potts - America's newest power couple?" article, she realised he was a coward, too. Slowly but surely, he had ghosted her, not even bothering with an explanation of his sudden unavailability, the several dates missed and even more postponed indefinitely.

They were never going to be a normal couple. She had made her peace with that, ugly and depressing - but it was real. She thought what they had was real. She finally had admitted to herself that she loved him, loved an impossible man, loved to the bottom of Hell and pitfire. The fireworks under her skin had never fully gone away, she realised as more and more ugly sobs broke from her chapped lips.

She blocked his number again and bought herself a new one, deleting the "Tony Stark" contact for good. There was more than enough work to do and the time to feel sorry for herself was sparse. And if she picked up a habit to make sure the time working was spent with proper efficiency, without soaking documents in saltwater that her eyes seemed to overproduce those days? It wasn't a big deal. She needed to get back on her feet somehow, without being dragged by a man who wasn't even present to actively be ruining her life anymore.

If anything, she thought she should feel grateful. The blinding light, the stars that exploded and shone inside her only for Tony, became something poisonous and vile. It wasn't the bitter taste of regret; rather, she felt a flash of ravenous, burning anger every time his name or his face popped up in a press article within her eyesight. Love and hate weren't that different when it came to the intensity: she basked in those newfound feelings, taking care to pick apart and neatly sort each of his perceived flaws on a cute little shelf in her overtaxed brain and fatigued heart.

It wasn't healthy. A convenient escape for the summer; a cabin far, far away from the busy New York city - she took up the offer and relocated there, being content with working remotely, drinking strawberry mimosas by the lakeside. Day by day, the clarity of her mind returned, lulled into a false sense of security by the tranquil trees slowly swaying in the breeze and wide ripples in the water.

Tony seemed to be enjoying bringing chaos into her life and making her miserable. The quinjet landed right on the neatly manicured lawn in front of the cabin, several obviously exhausted and wounded superheroes dismounting the vehicle, Tony looking sheepish but determined in the lead.

She wasn't completely unaware of the rest of the world and knew of the fiasco the Avengers recently had. Was it the half-dead, limping Widow or the baby blues of the Captain, she couldn't tell, but the woman ushered them into her house, gathering the tools needed for first aid with haste. Fate wasn't looking to give her a break.

As soon as she stepped foot in the kitchen, alone, Tony was there, looking much like that time on the balcony, baby doe browns turned up to eleven and a groveling speech prepared on demand. He'd noticed her weight loss and the ashen tone of her skin, the prominent veins and the bags under her eyes. She was as obvious as a brick to the face with her vices.

She slapped him. He winced, but stayed quiet, preparing himself for the storm - and storm him she did, keeping quiet enough for most of the team to be able to tactfully ignore the scolding Tony was getting. "I despise, you, Stark. You're a coward. Do not dare to set foot in my house ever again."

Needless to say, the superheroes departed shortly after Natasha's injuries were stabilised and frowning, disappointed Thor and Steve (they'd asked her to address them by their first names) bashfully apologized for their sudden intrusion and any discomfort they might have caused. She smiled at Steve, wide and big; refusing to admit it was done just to spite Tony, she joked and blushed in response to the Captain.

Tony did not attempt to contact her again. For some time, she lived in fear - irrational one at that - he'd appear and wreck her life one more, final time, before admiring the destruction and leaving her a steaming pile of ashes on the floor. But seasons passed and all of it faded, like a vivid, terrible nightmare.

Piece by piece, her life was getting put back together. His name stopped invoking a swarm of feelings she needed to drown just to stay afloat; there were news regarding him, another violent altercation, and she simply flicked the TV back to adult swim. New friends and new hobbies were being made; the fine cracks made by his agile fingers were being filled with the gold of newer, better discoveries.

There was always something going on in the superhero world and finally one of the topics reached her line of work: mutant rights. She'd never stopped being a volunteer after that NYC invasion, making new connections in a domain previously unexplored, it paid off in spades regarding her career growth. The connections were vital to be able to climb the corporate ladder successfully.

Stark showed up at her door three days after half of his merry band of misfits were pronounced fugitives. This time, she expected it. She knew better than to expect him to assume responsibility by himself - a quick Google search and his relationship status was listed as once again single - the Virginia Potts she knew would not have let anything like that happen. Stark was on his own.

"They betrayed me," He'd said, from behind the door she had cracked open a few inches, to make him know he wasn't welcome in her home.

"I think you know now, how I felt then," She didn't falter, ignoring the way his still freshly-bruised face darkened. "As far as I am concerned, you deserve it. Goodbye, Tony." She shut the door without waiting for his response, hearing his footsteps slowly back away as she made herself another coffee.

Tony Stark taglist: @another-stark-sub @letsby @mostly-marvel-musings @rdjesus4ever @ladyeliot

Well um 💀 yeah. I'll go and attempt to scavenge some serotonin somewhere now. Thanks for reading! 💖✨

[thebigqueer]

Omg would love to read something about plague!will going apeshit in battle after Nico gets hurt or something

ooooh yes!!! thank you for the prompt!!

i hope you like this! 

i’m literally gonna do minimum editing lmao

okay literally whoops i made it a lot longer and the prompt starts later my bad asljkfskljfd sorry anon

tw for descriptive imagery & blood

It’s a normal night at Camp Half-Blood, with demigods in their respective cabins, sleeping either fitfully or dreamlessly. After all, there is no in-between for demigods.

And that is no different for Will, who tosses and turns in his bed, sweat prickling his forehead.

Visions of Tartarus flicker across his dreams, memories of monsters and heat and pure agony. The aches and pains from previous injuries return in their full heat, with no mercy for Will.

The dreams consume him, taking away any consciousness and tying him to the memories. Sometimes it takes fifteen minutes to wake Will up at all, even if he’s being shaken. And when he is shaken awake, he merely stares at the ceiling, a blank, glassy look in his eyes. Sometimes he stays there until afternoon. Sometimes he’s in his cabin until the evening.

He’s in there until he can convince himself that nothing’s going to risk his life the moment he steps outside. 

Tonight is one of those lucky moments where Will doesn’t have to be literally thrown around the bed in order to wake him up. A tug creeps on his shoulder, pulling harder and harder, until he jolts awake. Darkness consumes his cabin, spilling all across the room. For a moment, he swears a shadow moves near the bathroom, and he screams and pushes his back against the wall, heart racing.

And then a voice, deep and calming, melts in his ears. “It’s okay,” the voice murmurs. “You’re okay. It’s just me.”

Will’s head whips to the voice, blood roaring in his ears. Monster, some part of him thinks. Monster is trying to sound like my friends.

A demigod stands before him, dressed in black, melting with the darkness. Anxiety creeps over his neck, an icy cold grip on his body. Monster, he thinks again. What if it’s a monster that can shape-shift?

Will pushes himself further, his breathing ragged. The demigod lookalike leans back a little, as if to give him space. They turn their head to the side and mutter something to someone else, but with the utter panic bursting through his body, he can barely hear them.

Then another figure appears before him, this one shorter and more feminine. A part of Will thinks it’s just another monster, but his vision’s clearing now; the panic that gripped him just seconds before eases back a little. He recognizes them. He knows he does. 

“Will,” the feminine figure murmurs, leaning in. “Hey, listen. I’m not a monster. Your favorite song when you were younger was ‘Barbie Girl.’“

Suspicion still crawls over Will, but he’s more stable now. The feminine figure is... Kayla. His sister. Right. 

And the one standing next to her is... Nico? What are they doing here?

Will sits up a little straighter, feeling a little surer in himself. He looks between the two, confused. He opens his mouth to speak, but his throat is dry from the panic that enveloped him just moments ago. Will clears his throat. His voice comes out scratchy as he asks, “What’s wrong? Why are you guys awake?”

Nico nods to Kayla, who turns around and flicks on the light. Brightness consumes the cabin, burning Will’s eyes. The son of Apollo groans and shoves his head in his hands. Another bout of uneasiness creeps through his skin. Why are they awake at such a late time?

“Listen,” Nico says, taking Will’s hand in theirs. “I don’t want to freak you out-” 

“Just by saying that, you’re pretty much guaranteeing that I’m going to freak out.” 

“I know,” Nico mutters. “But you need to be awake. And we need to get out of the cabin.” 

Will blinks. Nico’s words are blending together, slurring through Will’s brain. What are they even saying? He looks around the room, seeing if any of the others are awake. A jolt of unease wakes Will right up as he realizes that, in fact, all of his siblings are awake. “What’s going on?”

Nico rises, hand pulling on Will’s. “There’s a chimera loose on the camp grounds. It snuck in somehow." Their arm tugs, and Will rises immediately, almost as if just by Nico’s strength he’s found the will to stand up.

Dread settles over Will like a blanket. The cabin may be covered in light now, but he feels as though only darkness consumes him. Monster, his mind screams. 

Nico appears to notice Will’s nervousness, because their eyes soften and they whisper, “You can just stay in the infirmary, Will. I don’t know if you’re in any mental condition to fight.” 

Will wants to argue, say that of course he’s going to fight. He more than proved to Nico that he’s not weak when they were in Tartarus, and Nico knows that Will can be more than just a healer.

But Will also knows why Nico’s suggesting that to him. It isn’t because he’s unimportant or useless; it’s because he’s exhausted. He hasn’t had a good sleep in weeks. And he’s just now awoken with dreams about monsters. Battling a monster would do nothing good for him, or for the camp.

Swallowing, Will nods. He looks over at his siblings, who he’s suddenly realized have all been watching him and Nico. After a slight hesitation, he announces: “I’ll help in the ways I can.”

~~~

It’s chilly in the infirmary, the cold air whispering against Will’s bare hands, but he doesn’t mind. It wakes him up, makes him feel a little more alive. 

Austin and Kayla are in the infirmary with him, waiting to patch up any demigods who’ve been hurt by the chimera. Will will admit, even though he hates being thought of as just a healer, he doesn’t mind the sense of calm bandaging cuts gives him. It’s not about helping people; it’s about the fact that at least he feels helpful.

A part of him yearns to be outside and help the other demigods attack the chimera at the hill, but he knows he can’t. Every time the chimera roars, ice drips over Will’s back; terror paralyzes him. He only thinks of Tartarus, of all the monsters who had tried sneaking on him and Nico so many times. 

For the moment, things seem manageable here in the infirmary. There haven’t been many lethal or super serious injuries; only cuts, bruises, and the occasional poisonous gashes. Nothing he and his siblings can’t handle.

And yet, uneasiness still grips him, the sense that something terrible is about to happen. He tries to shake it off. It’s only a chimera, he reminds himself. And there are literally fifty demigods going after it. It’ll be fine.

His worse fears come true when the doors of the infirmary burst open and a demigod comes through, holding a pale, limp figure in his arms.

It takes a moment for the image to register in Will’s brain. At first, the only thought to run through his mind is: Wow, that half-dead demigod looks familiar. 

When he realizes why the demigod looks so familiar, Will gasps. It’s Nico, he thinks with horror. For a moment, he doesn’t move. Fear glues him to his spot by the sink, his knees shaking. The cynical, depressing part of Will already assumes the worst: that he’s dead.

And then, all at once, he zips towards Nico, tears threatening to spill over. He pushes the other demigod aside and circles his arms around Nico, lowering them to their knees.

“Nico,” he whispers urgently, shaking their shoulders. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Nico mutters something incomprehensible, their words slurring together. Their head slumps against Will’s shoulder, body limp. Will takes his hand and places it over Nico’s forehead, almost crying out loud when he realizes how warm the child of Hades is.

Kayla and Austin rush over with a stretcher, their young faces betraying anxiety. Will gently lays Nico over it, his throat aching with the repression of frustrated tears. “Nico, can you say something? What happened?”

This time, Nico’s voice is a little more comprehensible, albeit still slurred. “Chim’ra,” they mutter. “Ven’m. Tried t’ fight it with sword.” They attempt to move their body and immediately give up, grimacing and hissing. Nico’s face turns gray, the color of ashes. 

Will notices the slash on their black T-shirt and the blood oozing out. He quickly lifts the shirt up, discovering a wide gash over Nico’s rib cage. The skin at the edge of the injury is tinged to a slightly green color.

For a second, Will almost loses it. He starts assuming the worst of it, thinking that Nico’s lost it all. But then he remembers: it’s only a gash. The cut may be deep and wide, but there’s no reason he shouldn’t be able to fix it. Nico seems worse off than other demigods who came in with the same poison, but if they can get to work quickly, then there’s no reason as to why he should start assuming the worst.

White hot anger erupts in Will’s system, blaring in his stomach and chest. The Chimera did this. It hurt Nico. 

Will has had enough of monsters. They chased him and Nico throughout Tartarus, making sure to haunt both their dreams. They’ve taunted him, making sure to ensure doubt and insecurities in himself all his life. They almost killed him and his mother when he first arrived at camp. He’s had friends and siblings die because of monsters who never gave a fuck about demigods and their lives. 

And now they’ve decided to mess with Will again, trying to hurt one of the people he loves most. 

Well, Will’s done.

He turns his eyes away from Nico momentarily, staring at his hands. He knows exactly what he needs to do.

“It’s okay,” he promises Nico, who’s skin sags even more under the pressure of pain. “It’s not too bad. Kayla and Austin will be able to fix you up.”

Nico doesn’t answer, too exhausted to do so. Kayla and Austin fix Will with the same confused expression. “Aren’t you helping?” Kayla asks, bending over to take one end of the stretcher. Austin holds the other side.

Will shakes his head, standing. He grits his teeth, staring in the direction of the door. “I have something else to take care of.” 

Austin’s eyes widen in concern. “Will, no. There is no way you’re going out there to fight that thing.”

Kayla opens her mouth to agree, but Will snaps his head back to them. “I’m going,” he states. He glares his eyes at them, mouth set into a thin line. Will almost relishes the sudden look of fear in their faces. “I’m head counselor, guys. I’m supposed to protect you guys.” Turning his face back to the infirmary doors, he announces, “That’s what I’m going to do.”

With that, he storms out of the infirmary. No one follows.

~~~

The winter air snaps at his skin, sinking its teeth into his hands. Will flexes his fingers, anger still seething, pulsing, gushing from every inch of his body. No one hurts his loved ones like that.

He follows the cries of battle and screeches of the monster to Half-Blood Hill, calling on his rage. If the monster wants a battle, then Will will give him one.

It’s been a while since Will’s used his plague powers. The last time was in Tartarus, and when he used them there, he almost passed out. He hasn’t trained with it at all, afraid of how much damage it could cause. What if he accidentally hurts a demigod?

But tonight, as the wind whips across his face and the image of Nico flashes across his brain, he lets the powers pulse, strengthen. His powers hum, resonating through every cell in his body.

His palms burst with a feverish warmth, turning a pale green. He feels the weight of thousands of sicknesses swirling through him, the power they hold. He’s finds the feeling of the plague powers quite strange; it’s like having a sickness, but only inverted. As if he can’t quite feel the symptoms, but he can feel the strength of the problems they can cause. Instead of wearing him down, they only empower him. He controls the sicknesses, can lash them out to whoever he wants.

Heads turn to Will as he steps over the summit of the hill, eyes widening at his sudden change of appearance. Now the heat reaches his face, hot and wild and etching to let loose. He’s a ball of energy, only existing to unleash chaos.

He catches a glimpse of himself in the shield of one of the demigods, and almost screams. He can barely recognize himself. His face has turned a pale, ugly shade of green, his freckles barely visible. The sky blue of his eyes have turned a sickly, glowy yellow, the only vibrancy on his face. The blond of his hair has turned as gray as ashes, limp against his forehead. 

He looks sick and terrible. But really, Will only feels the buzz of power underneath his fingertips. He almost laughs; this feels great. Why would he want to repress this so much? Imagine all the monsters he could kill. Imagine the glory he could get. He would never be looked as weak ever again. 

Demigods eyes trace over him, but as soon as he makes eye contact, they jump and scramble away. Will wants to laugh at that. For so long, he’s felt like some kind of scared, useless wimp; now he’s making others feel like that. 

No, a quiet part of him says. That’s not right. Stop thinking like that.

Guilt starts building up in Will’s chest, but when a roar echoes throughout the camp, anger once against consumes the demigod. He bares his teeth towards the Chimera, whose lion head growls at him, ready to pounce. Its goat, snake, and lion heads all stare at Will daringly, as if taunting him. What are you going to do, Sunny Boy? Going to kill me with silly little poems?

Will just laughs. “What’s the matter, kitty? Are we scaring you?”

This time the goat answers, bleating angrily. Will almost wants to laugh again, but then the goat breathes a blazing hot fire in the son of Apollo’s direction, almost searing off his clothes. 

Will scowls. He speaks again, and just barely registers the change in his voice; it’s raspier, the sound of something brushing against sandpaper. “So you want to play it hard, Kitty? We’ll play it hard.”

The snake tail hisses and spits venom in Will’s direction, but he simply steps back and lets it sizzle on the ground. That was just a test, Will knows. It’s simply measuring how much hell Will is ready to give him. 

Well, he thinks, if you want hell, I’ll give you it.

He lets the plague’s strength build up in his palms, locating the power in one place. Will concentrates on just the sicknesses, the energy buzzing through him. His body buzzes with electricity and excitement. Will’s skin turns an even worse shade of green, practically glowing in the night. Mucus builds up in his nose, and he steps towards the Chimera, extending his right arm.

He waits for it to go first. 

The lion head roars again, and the monster leaps at Will. But he’s ready for it. Just as it lands towards Will, the blond opens his palm to it.

For a moment, it seems as if nothing is happening. The demigods see nothing, no waves or signals to indicate that Will’s doing something. He looks almost ridiculous, really, and some demigods may have laughed if they weren’t so terrified of the way Will’s appearance has changed. 

Will, however, knows a lot is happening. His body surges with power, strength, the urge to only provide sickness. He wants to see the monster fall, weak with illness and begging for death. He wants to see it asking for mercy, and Will will respond only with more torture, more pain. 

He wants to make it beg for Tartarus.

The monster seems confused for a moment, surprised by the strange demigod. What does he even think he’s doing, standing there with his arm outstretched so uselessly and lamely? 

And then it hits the Chimera. Its body grows heavy, weak, wanting only to sit and lie down for a while. It sways on its feet and thumps to the ground, feeling dizzy and confused. Its vision gets blurry; it can barely tell where the demigods are. Only the glow of the strange demigod is clear to the monster, and for a moment it forgets what it’s even supposed to be doing. 

Its mind gets fuzzy. The itch of a sneeze consumes its nose, and then the scratch of its throat makes it wheeze. The Chimera wants to eat this demigod - but, wait. Suddenly the thought of food doesn’t seem too appetizing. 

It just wants to sleep for a while. Its body grows weary, tired, hot from fever. It shivers in the night, its fur doing nothing to protect it in the coolness of the night. The Chimera tries to blow a fire, if only to heat itself, but finds itself too weak to do such a thing. 

And then a strange tickle bursts in its leg. The snake head looks at the limb, and a delayed shock shudders through the Chimera’s body. It’s disintegrating! Not into sand, as all monsters go. Instead, it’s as if the sickness is breaking down all its cells, ripping apart each molecule in the body until there’s nothing left.

Will feels the power ripple through him, and suddenly he can’t help the laughter that bubbles through him. He’s made the monster weak; he’s made the monster helpless. It whimpers, begging for mercy, just as Will wanted.

Will doesn’t relent. He pushes further, extending his powers, breaking the monster down further and further, until it’s left with only the lion head. 

The lion’s eyes peer at Will, glazed over with sickness. Its face is green, which Will didn’t know could happen. Or maybe I made it happen, Will thinks with both elation and terror. 

Will glares, anger once against taking over him. “You hurt Nico. Now I hurt you.” 

And with that, the monster’s head disintegrates. The remnants turn into sand. The monster is gone.

Will wants to smile, to laugh, to say that he did that all by himself. But his vision goes blurry, then foggy. The world tilts violently.

Will collapses.

[clevercatchphrase]

2020 Year Review~

2020. Pretty unique year, don’t you think? It’s the first year since 2002 to have only two different digits in it. After 2022, this won’t happen again until 2111. Yep. Absolutely nothing more interesting than that.

Anyway! It’s time I reflect on my 2020, look back on my yearly goals and rant about things that happened to me this year. I made a post like this last year, where I went over my 2019 goals and talked about what I accomplished and what I didn’t, and it’s only fitting I do the same again this year. Read more under the cut for a random stream of consciousness ramble!

So, first things first, let’s look at my 2019 goals;

Finish paying off that last student loan

Put more stuff on my redbubble

Illustrate my own fan fics

Sew at least one stuffed animal

Make an enamel pin

Read one new book a month

Write one page a day/Complete at least one new fan fic

Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make

Finish fully scripting Ghost Switch

Boost my patreon

 Paying Off My Last Student Loan: Going down the list, I am proud to say that I FINALLY paid off all my student loans! (and not a moment too soon. The last payment I made was literally days before the first quarantine rolled out). It took me roughly 4 years on my part-time paycheck to pay off all my loans, and once I finished, I had no money to my name (literally; I had less than 1k as emergency money in case of car troubles or health issues). Heck, I’m STILL living at home as a save up for a place of my own. Finally paying off all my student loans DID activate my secret 2020 new year’s resolution, which was to adopt a cat! I did this too, literally a week later! She is the best thing that’s happened to me this entire year and I love her so much and she is the snuggliest cuddle bug I’ve ever met. I’m so happy she’s in my life now~

Put More Stuff On My Redbubble: ah ha ha ha… I thought I did this, but then I went and checked, and it turns out-! I did not. I made art I intended to go on my redbubble, but haven’t put there yet. They are all drawings of some OCs from a game I want to make, but because I haven’t progressed on making the game this year, I never got around to putting more stuff related to it on my redbubble. At the time of writing, there are 7 days left in December, so I guess I could go and put it up on my redbubble right now, but without context on where the characters are from, there wouldn’t be much point, now would there?

 Illustrate My Own Fan Fics: Another goal that I was so stoked to actually do… and then just didn’t. Gee, I wonder why I couldn’t find the energy or motivation to do it this year? Truly a conundrum. (Hey, you know what? If Ghost Switch counts as a fan fiction in a visual form, then I am doing GREAT on this goal. 2.5 years in, 1 of ~4 arcs done, and still going steady~)

 Sew At Least One Stuffed Animal: Okay, I have a valid excuse for not doing this one. I even knew which stuffed animal I wanted to make, and had the pattern drawn out and everything, but I had no money for materials because I had just paid off my student loans. And then, by the time I did have enough money again, quarantine was in full effect and I couldn’t go out to the fabric store. I’m still trying my best to stay out of public places even if the rules are laxer now, because I don’t want to catch the plague even if everyone in my goddamn city thinks and acts like the problem is over already. Even if they’re all wearing masks, even if they’re staying 6 feet apart, I still don’t want to risk it. I will stay inside until health experts give the all clear, and when that day comes, then I will buy some fleece and make a plush.

 Make An Enamel Pin: I ACTUALLY DID THIS ONE. TWICE! Halfway through quarantine, I was feeling anxious and depressed about my job and how they were planning to have me work with the public despite climbing infection rates and positive covid cases. I didn’t quit then, but in a desperate move to try and become self-sufficient, I went to madebycooper and made two enamel pins based on some butterfly dragons I drew last year. They’re on my etsy store now! I even went out of my way to open a P.O. box just to start a small business! I haven’t sold a single pin yet, and I’m actually really nervous to sell my first because I don’t trust the efficiency of the postal system thanks to the actions of the GOP that really screwed them over this year! (If you would like to see my enamel pins, click here!)

 Read One Book A Month: I did this! With dragon books I bought a couple years back! In fact, I read FOURTEEN dragon books, and still have more books for next year to read! The 14 books I read this year were:

 The Hive Queen

The Poison Jungle

Wings Of Fire Legends: Dragonslayer

Dealing With Dragons

Searching For Dragons

Calling on Dragons

Talking to Dragons

The Bronze Dragon Codex

The Brass Dragon Codex

The Black Dragon Codex

The Red Dragon Codex

The Silver Dragon Codex

Dragon Strike, and

Hatching Magic

 To be honest, I had read The Red Dragon Codex years ago when it first came out, but completely forgotten what it was about. I remembered liking it, and I knew the reading level was on the lower side, but the whole dragon codex series was pretty good! So far, the Silver dragon codex was my favorite, and black dragon codex was probably the worst! Hatching Magic was also really slow and bad and had plot points that went nowhere, but the book was written in the 80s, so I don’t know what I expected. The Dealing with Dragons series was very charming and great for the most part, save for one line in the last book that really rubbed me the wrong way, and all the Wings of Fire Books go above and beyond in this third arc. The second legends book could be a little tighter, though (sky and wren are the best duo and I want a book solely about them, but I honest to god do not care about leaf and ivy’s stories.)

 Write one Page of any story every day/ complete at least one fic: I… did this? Okay, I kinda cheated near the end of the year. I was keeping up the one page a day thing for the first four months, but then the world went to shit and my schedule and habits got disrupted and I fell off my good track record. I completed 7 out of roughly 12 one-shots I had planned for this year (my goal WAS supposed to be one short a month, but… you know how it happens) I kept trying to catch up on this goal all year, but the days kept piling up…. Until November hit. I managed to write over 250 pages for Nanowrimo, and I consider this goal a win. 365 pages of fiction in total, which averages out to about one a day~. SHUT UP IT COUNTS.

 Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make: Another goal I didn’t have the mental energy to commit to this year. Truly a mystery to where all our willpower went in 2020.

 Fully Finish Scripting Ghost Switch: still haven’t done this one yet! The Snowdin arc is completely planned, but I just haven’t gotten around to getting the other areas. I’m not worried, though. I know all the major plot points I gotta hit, it’s just weaving them together in a way that flows nice is the final task. I’m not too worried though. I don’t expect to finish the Snowdin arc for another year and a half, at the bare minimum.

 And my last goal of 2020, Boost My Patreon. I did this at the beginning of the year, but then very intentionally stopped about a third of the way through. It didn’t sit right with me to tell you guys to donate to me when suddenly EVERYONE was financially strained from layoffs or being furloughed. I told my patrons the same, and if you ever need to stop donating to me to take care of yourself first, then by all means, please do. I would feel much better knowing you’re using your money to see yourself fed and housed instead of given to me (where it is pretty much only used to buy gas for my car, honestly)

 Welp! That was all my goals for 2020! I achieved 4 out of 10 goals plus 1 secret goal! Pretty much the same ratio as last year, but now this time I can blame all my failures on the pandemic! I don’t feel so bad about myself anymore~

 ON TO 2021!

 I have 11 goals for the new year, again some rolled over from this list, and some from even older years. They are, in no particular order;

 Read 12 new books (roughly 1 book a month)

Finish the first draft of 2019’s Nanowrimo project and rewrite it

Script TDV

Finish Scripting Ghost Switch

Build A Comic Buffer

Sew 1 Stuffed Animal

Finish 1 Song Comic

Make another Enamel Pin

Finish 2 short original comics (this one counts as 2 goals)

Finish the 5 remaining one-shot fics

 Now to go into depth on each one, more for my own sake, really. I want to know exactly what I have planned for each goal this year, and sometimes just looking at a short list doesn’t capture all the smaller details.

 1)Read 12 new books. Same as last year! I The only difference is I might not be able to make it all dragon-related books. (I try my hardest not to buy from amazon anymore, but half-price-books doesn’t always have the obscure stuff I’m looking for)

 2)Finish 2019’s nanowrimo project. If you read my 2019 year reflection, you’ll notice I said I wanted to do some original writing. And I did! The story I wrote for nanowrimo back then was a story I’ve been toying with since 2017, but it was only last year I finally got pen to paper. Now, you may find it odd that the keyword says “finish”. You may think, “but isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for nanowrimo?” and to that I say, WRONG! I wrote 50k words for nanowrimo, but the draft was only about halfway complete. I was kinda discouraged about what I had written last year, because I didn’t like how it was coming out, but I did manage to get it half done. Now it’s time for me to bite the bullet and just finish the thing so I can finally revise it and make it into something I DO like. (It’s still gonna be hella long, tho. That’s what I get for trying to write an epic fantasy, I guess.)

 3)Script TDV. TDV is the abbreviation of the game I want to make. I… still need to do so much for this project OTL… In addition to getting the story solidified, I still need to draw art and game assets, and learn how to code for it, both of which are no small task. I keep having some sort of new year’s goal related to this on my list, and every year I just don’t hit this one. Will 2021 be different?

 4)Finish Scripting Ghost Switch. (Or at the very least, get the waterfall arc completely written out). I have a plan to break this down into simpler steps, by focusing on just one arc for a month or two. Every major arc has 2 to 3 parts, broken up by flashbacks, and if I can just finish one section a month, then I should have the entire thing scripted by the end of the year. It’s not a difficult pace, but seeing if I stick with it will be the real challenge, as it is will all my goals it seems.

 5)Build a Comic Buffer: I’m actually working on this one right now! Since I paid off my last loan and got a new job this year, my current Patreon goals are kind of out of date. They had all been centered around me paying off that last loan, and working towards full-time employment, but those are both completed now! So instead, I would love to get to a place where my patrons could read pages at least a week ahead, and to do that, I need to build a buffer. And since I’m working 5 full days a week now, I can’t afford to fall behind. But you can’t fall behind if you constantly stay ahead! I would like to have… a 10 to 12 page buffer. That’s roughly 3 months’ worth of pages to always have on hand in case I get swamped with work, or something. Right now I currently have a buffer of 3, which will cover me for half a January, which is better than not having anything at all, but still not the best. (ultimately, I would love to have a buffer so big, I could queue them up for the whole year. Wouldn’t that be something?)

 6) Sew one stuffed animal: same as last year. ASSUMING the plague gets under control in 2021, I don’t expect to get to this goal until the summer at the earliest.

 7)Finish 1 song comic: I have 7 song comics planned. One is a gift, one possibly for wandersong, one is a collab that’s currently in the works, but I’m waiting on a friend to do their part before I can continue mine, 2 are UT related, and 2 (well, technically 3, but one is the collab) are KH related. It’s one of the UT ones that will probably get finished, if I’m being honest. It’s completely story boarded, and now I just need to ink and color it. I would like to get it done for UT’s 6th birthday, since I made a song comic on the fly for the anniversary this year, and it was fun, and I’d like to do it again! So, look forward to that next september~

 8) Make another enamel pin: I have a dolphin design I’d like to make because dolphins are cute, if not little murder machines. (need to save up some expendable income first, tho. THESE THINGS AIN’T CHEAP TO MAKE.)

 9 and 10) start and finish 2 original short comics: I’ve got some comic ideas I want to do, but I need to get them written out first. I don’t think either would be too long. Each maybe a couple “episode’s” length, if envisioned on a website like webtoons or tapas. They’d both be heavy in allegory, but not overly drawn out (hopefully)

 11)And lastly, Finish the 5 remaining one-shots I had planned for this year but never got around to. I’m going to try to write one every other month. Pure self-indulgent shipping fluff. If I finish these 5, then maybe I’ll ask other people for more prompts and ideas, which I’ve never done before. We’ll see how it goes~

 Also, Like last year, I’d like to look at everything that’s happened to me this year, though to be honest, I’m not sure how much I remember/how accurate it’ll be. God, I don’t even remember what January was like. Who was I back then? Who were we all back then? I guess I’ll start my yearly retrospective in march because, heh, god we ALL know what started happening in march.

 Firstly, I paid off my last student loan! Then a week later on March 18th, I drove half an hour out of my city to adopt a cat and I love her and it was the best day of this year for me. Spring break is just beginning this weekend, but the attendance at the zoo is shockingly low this year. Apparently, a lot of people watch the news, and they’re all taking precautions about social distancing. I wasn’t too disappointed. Fewer people at the zoo, the easier my job is for me. I was looking forward to getting some free overtime on spring break, since I’m broke after paying off that loan, and I’m a cat parent now and have a furry child to feed. Monday rolls around. My manager calls me and tells me that the zoo is going into lockdown until further notice. I worry for the birds I take care of, but understand it’s for everyone’s safety.

 For two months I sleep in and watch way too much YouTube. I join a couple writing discords. I have nightmares about my birds escaping their enclosure and I dreamed one of the security guards I really like at the zoo gets covid and has to go to the ER. I woke up really upset.

 I started and finished BBS for the first time. I also replayed and finished KH2 final mix for the first time. It had been about 5 years since I last played KH2 before my PS2 died, and it was like coming home~ I also finished tearaway, and played and beat Ryme for a second time (which I can’t remember if I did that last year, but it was a fun experience regardless)

 Mid-June, and I’m allowed to start going back to work, be it on reduced hours. The zoo is still closed to the public, but I’m loving it! I get to work with full-time keepers and do full-time keeper things. It’s so much fun not having to deal with the public. August starts to creep up and there’s a rumor that the zoo will be opening to the public again, which I’m not stoked about. I don’t want to go back to standing in one exhibit all day, talking to guests who don’t listen to the rules or to me. 2 of my younger coworkers (who had both only been there a couple of months) get chosen for full-time positions, while I get passed up which really pisses me off. My other 2 coworkers quit when they think we might be reopening because they cannot risk catching the virus due to at-risk family. I am now the last keeper in the interactive bird exhibit.

 I keep working, the zoo slowly opens, but with me as the only interpreter in our interactive bird exhibit, we can’t open because I can’t run the entire exhibit by myself. So my exhibit stays closed. September comes and goes, and then October starts. Now there is more serious talk of opening my exhibit before the end of the year because the zoo expects to bring in larger crowds for the Christmas lights event in November/December. I ask if I get hazard pay or health insurance since I’m doing full-time hours until they hire more staff. They say no.

 I immediately start searching for a new job feeling incredibly indignant/hurt/slighted/insulted/used/abused/ALL the negative feelings at my job. I had been there for 4 years, but never got a chance to work full time, while the two newest hires who had only been there 2 months both got moved up. I can’t help but feel they were holding one mistake I made two years ago against me and never wanted to give me a chance. (that, or they knew I was reliable when it came to showing up for work in such a volatile position that sees a lot of new faces, and they didn’t want to bother going through the process of hiring someone new) I don’t want to risk my life working around guests who don’t wash their hands and don’t properly distance. I don’t want to gamble with my health when they won’t offer me health insurance because I’m part time.

 Mid October, I get an interview for a full time job and get hired on the spot. I peace out at the zoo 2 weeks later, literally 3 days before they planned to open my exhibit to the public. It was a close call for me to escape before they opened to the public (and pettiness was only partially the reason I dipped out so close to opening). Sorry new hires who are now in charge of the bird feeding exhibit. I taught you the best I could in the short time I had. If the managers are struggling with what to do with one less person, I can’t say I feel bad. I can only hope they delayed opening/closed you down again for your own safety. You are not lightbulbs. I really hope the higher ups stop considering you as replaceable as one. Will I go back to the zoo to visit? Probably. But not for a year at least.

 I started my new job the very next day after I quit the zoo, and have been there ever since, (which isn’t that long yet, tbh. Christmas day was my 2 month anniversary). It’s full time, but it’s also a small business, and everyone’s hours this year have been on the short side due to the plague. I understand, though. They don’t want us to work if they can’t afford to pay us. Everyone is nice enough, though some people smoke and it’s hard to avoid them with how frequently we have to go in and out, and I really don’t want to get lung cancer, sorry not sorry, please and thank you. Also, with such a small team, gossip is certainly harder to go undetected, so it’s a relief knowing people don’t talk behind one another’s backs.

 I participated and beat my 4th nanowrimo in a row, I made TWO apple crisps on thanksgiving, and made baklava on Christmas and both of these recipes were my first time making them, and they both came out adequately! I voted the first day of early voting, and I did an art trade/collab with two of my friends for my birthday! (normally we would have done monthly “art days” where we get together and do art projects for fun because we’re adults and we can spend our time together however we want, but the plague said otherwise this year) We drew pokemon and it was fun! (hopefully I can show you all the results soon. At the time of writing, I’m still waiting for the last two colored parts to get back to me)

 I reached 100 pages on my undertale comic, and finish the first arc out of…! (im not sure. It’s either going to be 4 or 5, I haven’t decided yet)

 Over all, I managed to stay healthy as far as I know. I wasn’t as productive as I wanted to be this year, but then again, who was? (don’t answer that. I don’t need that kind of comparison in my life right now)

 Will 2021be any better? Honestly? I don’t think so. Not right away, at least. Just because a new year is about to start does not mean the slate is completely wiped clean. The change of the calendar year doesn’t magically make all our current problems disappear. Covid will still be here and cases will still climb when January starts. Small business will still be strained when the month rolls over, police will still go on murdering innocent civilians and getting away scot free, amazon and disney will still be monopolizing all consumer goods and media, and I can’t help but feel like there’s an impending shit show about to go down on inauguration day. I do hope things will get better, though. It’ll be arduous and unpleasant, but I do hope things will improve, because sometimes hoping is all you can do.

 Good night.

[kyber-kisses]

Hung The Moon 2/2

Dean Winchester x Reader

read part 1 here

Warnings: descriptions of wounds, Angst, worried!Dean.

Summary: After a hunting accident takes one of the things the reader holds most dear, Dean tries to help put her back together.

A/n: this took forever to write but I actually am okay with how it came out in the end! (Gif not mine, credit goes to owner.)

It was quiet.

Dean had tried to move past how quiet it was, but as the days moved by slowly it began to take its toll on him. The sounds of your laughter and voice had melted from the bunker. It’s absence making the air feel heavier.

He had been squeezing his whiskey glass tight enough to the point in which there were indents in his hands from the carvings on the glass- but he didn't care. He had been getting more and more on edge these past few weeks, ever since the accident.

“How is she?”

“The same. I don’t know what else to tell you.” Cas sighed, stepping into the library as he gave his friend a weary look. Ever since Cas saw him and Sam walk out of that house with you carefully balanced in his arms, Dean had sunk into a hole. A deep, dark hole in which he blamed himself for this happening to you.

“Sam is trying to talk to her, isn’t he?” He sighed, his faded green eyes locking on some point in the distance as he took another swig.

“Yes. I’ve healed her to the best of my ability- but like I said before; the rest is on her.”

Dean tried to hide the wince he made at the words, but he couldn’t help it. Cas was an angel. He was supposed to able to heal her. Really heal her and make her better. Now, sure he was grateful that he saved your life. But a part of you was still gone.

“She won’t even try. You know that Cas.”

The cogs in his head suddenly deciding to replay that moment weeks ago when you had woken up in your bed back in the safety of the bunker.

“Dean. I think she’s waking up.” Sam called, sticking his head out of the door, successfully grabbing his brothers attention. Dean having decided to hide out in the hallway instead of at your bedside. The shock of still finding you hanging in that basement fresh in his mind. But quick footstep took him through the threshold of the door and to your side.

kneeling down, he reached out for your hand, giving it a light squeeze.“Y/N?”

Slowly stirring back into consciousness, you blinked, chest quickly rising and falling  as you tried to make sense of where you were, along with remembering what had happened. Eyebrows knotted together in confusion as your pupils filled with fear. All you could think about was that damn noose . . .and Toni.

You wanted to scream. The same fear as in those moments rippling through you in heavy waves. But no sound came out when you tried. All that escaped your lips was rapid breaths as you tried to understand what was going on. How did you get home? How did you survive being hanged? And why couldn’t you speak?

“Hey, hey. It’s okay. Your okay, don’t talk.”

Talk? Talk?! You had just tried to scream and found that you were incapable of that. The realization of what had happened sinking into you, ushering tears to your eyes as they quickly skid down the sides of your face.

The sheer and silent panic on your face made Deans heart drop. Your hands weakly dragging against his shoulders as you continued to try and break the silence. Finding nothing.

“Cas, I thought you said you healed her!?”

“I did what I was capable of doing, I already told you that. But Dean. . . I don’t know if she’ll be able to speak again.”

Your heads spun in unison, somehow managing to fill your eyes with even more panic. You couldn’t ask him to repeat what he had just said. No more talking? How were you supposed to live knowing you couldn’t say another word?

Your rapid breathing quickly coming back with a vengeance as dread settled deep in your core. Deans hands going to your shoulders to keep you steady. “Hey, hey calm down. You keep doing this and your gonna hyperventilate.”

Hyperventilate? That’s what he was worried about? No. No this was too much. You were being crowded and you had just been told you might never speak again. Jaw clenching, you quickly shook your head, pushing Dean away. You wanted him gone. You wanted them all gone.

“Y/N, wait one second-“

You shoved him again, trying your best to keep your emotions at bay until you had your room to yourself. Your insides screaming at them to get out.

“Y/N-“

Get out! Get out! Get out!

“Dean, I think we should leave. C’mon man.” Sam practically having to drag his brother from the room. Both their eyes filled with grief before being blocked by the door as Cas shut it behind him.

As the knob clicked, you dropped all barriers and crumpled- finding even that your cries had gone silent.

*. *. *. *. *. *.

It had been almost a full month since the incident. You rarely left your room, finding that it was too difficult to be around others- especially when you couldn’t have a conversation with any of them. On top of that you couldn’t stand the sympathetic looks they all gave you, especially Dean.

When you did leave your room on the rare occasion you slipped on your headphones as a sort of mask, hoping that if they saw you with them on they wouldn’t bother to approach you. You never played music though, because that was another thing. You couldn’t sing along anymore.

In the beginning you tried drowning yourself in Netflix but quickly found that it only made you angry. You watched characters laugh and have conversations and it just reminded you that you couldn’t no longer do that. You tried yoga, you tried mediation, you tried writing and drawing. But nothing could fill the void that was speech.

But the thing you missed the very most, above all others, was talking to Dean. You missed cracking jokes with him and getting into heated discussions about the dumbest things. You missed teaming up with him to tease Sam and singing classic rocks songs with him in the impala.

And above that; you now didn’t even have the choice to tell him that you loved him. That you were in love with him.

Maybe this was your punishment for not telling him to begin with? Now you really were forced to suffer in silence.

“Y/N, you should really try talking. Cas says he’s healed you all that he can. Now is no better time.”

And then there was Sam. Sweet, innocent Sam who was just trying his best to help you. Sitting besides him on the foot of your bed all you wanted to do was tell him it was pointless. There was nothing there. You knew that. The false hope he was trying to hand you making you look towards the floor.

Yeah, you could always try talking- but you weren’t going to. Because what if you did and it only revealed the truth you already believed. That your voice was gone and there was no getting it back. You didn’t want to go through another round of that pain.

Using what little sign language you did know, you signed at him to leave. The younger Winchester hesitating before standing up and heading towards the door with a sigh. But before he left he turned once more. “You know, Dean misses you. He won’t admit it out loud but It’s easy to see that he does. He’s really worried about you.”

Pulling the Dean card. Nice one Sam. Inhaling, you turned your head away from him, signaling the end of your conversation. . . If you could even call it that. You also didn’t need him to see the tears rapidly forming in your eyes. Unlike Cas and Sam you had actively been trying to avoid Dean at all costs. You didn’t want him to see you like this. It was embarrassing and pathetic.

“Alright, well I think Dean made dinner, so if you want to go grab some you can.” There was a soft click and like so many times before you were left to the silence of your room.

*. *. *. *. *. *.

You eventually mustered up enough energy to leave the confines of your room around an hour later. You pulled on a hoodie, adjusted your headphones around your ears and ventured down the hallway, finally giving in to your rumbling stomach.

It was only when you were about to turn into the war room did you hear the raised voices through the muffled padding of your headphones, making you slow in your tracks and listen.

“Dean, just try talking to her. Cas and I have been unable to get through to her- but maybe if you-“

“Sam, I can’t okay! Haven’t you seen that she actively avoids me like the damn plague?! I don’t want to make her more uncomfortable than she already is!”

They were talking about you. Of course they were talking about you. You probably should have walked in and shut them up with your sudden presence but you stayed still, only moving to ever so slightly raise one of the headphones from your ear.

“You’re not even going to try? Why the hell not?!”

“Because I love her, dammit! Now I told myself I would never admit it or say it out loud because I ain’t that type of person- but I do!”

That was all it took to make you freeze over fully. After the initial wave of shock and surprise made it through your system you suddenly found yourself overwhelmed with rage.

“Dean-“

“No, you don’t get it! I don’t do . . . Love. We’re hunters and if I let myself fall fully. . . Then it will get her killed!”

“Dean, that’s not-“

“Sam, it’s true and you know it is! We care about people and they immediately get a target drawn on their back! Hell, that’s the whole reason why she almost died to begin with!”

“So what, you’re not going to tell her?”

“No! I’m not! Because me openly loving her is going to get her killed!”

Your jaw clenched at his words, hands suddenly itching to hit him. He actually had the choice- the voice to tell you how he felt and he wasn’t going to take it. You spent most of your life believing that someone as perfect as him could never love you. . . And here he actually did- only to choose to bury it in silence.

Holding back the oncoming tears you snapped the headphones back on, once more using them as a shield. You picked your head up, inhaled deeply and casually strode into the room. Your arrival successfully shutting the older Winchester up, his mouth snapping shut as his eyes slightly widened.

“Y/N.”

You did your best to pay little attention to him, trying to keep your destination in mind. The kitchen. All you had to do was get to the damn kitchen. You could see it in his eyes though as you passed him; did she hear me? Does she know what I just said?

Instead you gave him a mock confused stare, briskly walking past him. If you had walked slower there was no doubt that you would have actually hit him.

And you thought you were a coward. . .

*. *. *. *. *. *.

It had been almost a week since you heard Deans outburst. In which you had chosen to entirely ignore his existence all together. Before when you had just been avoiding him, if you did happen to bump into him you acknowledged it. Not anymore.

And Dean was doing no better. He barely recognized you when he did see you pass by in the hall. It was like you were just a shell of your former self. He didn’t know if he would ever see you smile again or even acknowledge him. Each time you walked past without so much as a glance in his direction he felt his heart fracture a little more.

All he wanted was to help you. Put you back together it whatever way he could. But it was a difficult feat when you wanted nothing to do with him.

Slouched over the kitchen table, Dean focused his eyes on the steaming blackness of the coffee in front of him, barely acknowledging his brother as he walked into the room.

“You tried talking to her again, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, well someone has to try and clearly that wasn’t gonna be you.”

Dean let out a sigh, eyes rolling as he did. “Well she hates my guts so there’s that.”

“She doesn’t hate your guts.”

“Then why does she keep ignoring me? It’s like I don’t fucking exist!” He quickly stood up, suddenly finding that he couldn’t sit still.

At the same time you were rounding the corner, you could see the beginnings of another one of Deans outbursts, his hands flying as he yelled- and right into the path of his coffee cup.

Before you could even register what you where doing you let out a hoarse yell, rushing forward to grab his arm to stop it from connecting with the mug and sending it to the floor.

You had successfully startled both brothers, Deans eyes widening before he let out a small breath, his jade irises lighting up. “Y/N, you just spoke!”

At the realization you dropped his wrist, taking a step back as your hand went to your throat. Spoke was a bit of stretch, but he was right. It had been ragged and slightly warped but it was there. You could feel the soreness that came with it too. It felt like you had swallowed a handful of pebbles. In other words it hurt like hell and it didn't sound at all like you.

Dean could see that all too well. How you winced when you swallowed, even more so when you coughed.

“Y/N?”

You didn’t let him continue before you turned quickly, exiting the kitchen just as fast as you had entered it. Sam sent his brother a quick glare, silently telling him to go after you- in which this time he complied.

“Y/N, wait!”

You didn’t. Instead you picked up your pace, wanting nothing more than to get back to your room and ignore what had just happened.

“Dammit Y/N, I said wait!” A firm hand came down on your shoulder, halting you from going any further. In a quick maneuver you spun around, slapping him firmly across the cheek, watching his free hand go to his face is surprise.

“The hell was that for?!”

Raising your eyebrows you wrenched yourself from his grasp, continuing down the hallway.

“Would you just talk to me, please?”

Slowing down you shot him a look from over your shoulder. Did you seriously just say that?

“Sorry, force of habit. Just let me speak. All I want is for you to listen.”

Pausing outside the threshold of your room, you contemplated your options before finally giving in and motioning with your head for him to step inside.

“Okay, so I know you’re mad at me- but at this point I don’t care what about. I just want to help you. Please let me help you.”

Sinking down into your desk chair, you allowed Dean to seat himself on the edge of your bed, his elbows resting on his knees as he leaned foreword.

“I don’t even recognize you anymore. I don’t see your usual light.”

Sucking in a breath you reached across your desk, grabbing the notepad and pen that had been slowly collecting dust over the past several weeks, the pen flying across the paper as you jotted down a response. Handing over the pad a moment later into his calloused hands.

You don’t see that light in me? That’s because she snuffed it out. She took my light and she took my ability to speak.

Dean sat up straighter as he read the words, looking at you with a new determination and curiosity. “She? Y/N do you know who did this to you?”

Grabbing the notepad back you wrote the four letter name that made Deans blood boil as he read it. Toni. He was gonna kill her. He was gonna kill her and every other one of those British bastards for what they did to you.

You debated for a moment wether to write down what else you were thinking, watching Deans facial expressions as his jaw clenched.

I heard what you said

“When I said what?”

He was playing dumb. You could see it in his eyes. He knew what you were talking about but he was choosing not to admit to it. You snatched the pad back again, forcefully underlining the words once more.

I Heard What You Said

“Y/N, I-“

Holding up a hand you quickly silenced him. You weren’t going to take anymore of his shit. You wanted him to admit to it.

You actually have an opportunity to tell me. To use your words. So say it. Because I can’t.

You could see the clear guilt written all over his face as his eyes went over your words, his shoulders falling in defeat. You were doing a really fine job at making him feel like shit.

“I- I don’t know how. If you heard me then you know that I don’t — I’m not that type of person.”

God you wanted to yell at him. You wanted to yell at him so badly. He had a voice still. Did he not know how lucky he was?

You know, right before Toni kicked that chair out from under me, all I could think about was how I would never get the chance to tell you that I love you. That I’m in love with you. And now I know you feel the same and you are choosing not to say those words. You still have a voice so use it.

You hadn’t noticed the droplets of water collecting on the page as you rapidly wrote, the tears slightly blurring some of your words. But you no longer cared. Instead you passed the notepad back, quickly wiping your face with your sleeve and training your eyes on the ground.

Deans eyes ate up the words slowly, allowing him time to process as he did. Now he really did feel awful.

“You’re- you’re in love with me?”

A massive part of him was still telling him not to acknowledge it. He was afraid like before that if he let something happen between you that you really would meet your demise. But his love for you overpowered those thoughts in the end, beating them back violently. You deserved to know that you were loved. . . And by no one more than him.

“Y/N, I am so sorry.” Leaving your bed, he came to kneel in front of you, reaching out to grasp your hands in his. “You’re right. I shouldn’t hold back things. If I- if I had known.” He found it hard to come up with words, everything catching in his throat like molasses. He wasn’t good at this. “When I saw you hanging there in that basement I thought you were dead. I blamed myself for it too. That I wasn’t fast enough. That I brought you into this. I put your blood on my hands the second I realized it was you I was looking at.”

You quickly turned your head away once more, not wanting him to see you cry. You understood where he was coming from. And now you couldn’t even reassure and comfort him like you had done so many times before. You felt utterly useless.

“Hey, hey look at me-“ a gentle hand cupped the side of your face, turning you back towards him. “I was wrong to think I should just bury my feelings to keep you safe. You deserve to hear it and know that I do love you. God, I love you more than I thought possible.” Thumbing away the tears that had rolled down your face, he tried to read your expression.

And like a sheet being pulled back, you let yourself crumple. Dean loved you. You already knew that from before but this time he was saying it to you. 

Sliding out of the chair you fell into Deans arms, letting your sobs loose. You wanted to say the words back. That’s all you wanted. You would give anything to just be able to clearly say those three words.

“It’s alright. I got you.” Dean shushed you, allowing you to let your emotions out. They had been bottled up for so long that it was like a dam had broken inside you. He couldn’t imagine what it was like to be filled with so many thoughts and being unable to voice them.

You almost flinched when at the small touch as Dean brushed your cheek with the backs of his fingers, continuing to wipe the tears away. The small action making you slowly pull your head back to connect your eyes with his. There was some unspoken thing passed through the gaze and then his hand was on the back of your neck, pulling you closer to press his lips against yours. It was only then did it feel like you were taking your first breath of fresh air since the incident.

“I know your voice is still in there somewhere. It’s just gonna take a little time to find, you got that?” He pulled away just enough to speak, resting is forehead against your own. “And then when we find it, you can shower me with how much you love me, how does that sound? I’ll be your voice when you need one until then.” A smile tugging on his lips only when the beginnings of your own began to appear.

“I love you Y/N, and you deserve to hear it.”

The End.

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[lyssismagical]

you were my fairy tale, my dream when I’m not sleeping

Parkner Febufluff  Day 11 & 12 – Proposal & Sung to Sleep

Read on AO3

*

It was a quiet night, as most nights were for Harley and Peter. When the latter got home from patrolling, he was always tired, always worn out.

They had a system where Peter would text Harley when he was wrapping up with patrol, normally around one in the morning, sometimes earlier, something a lot later. Whenever it was, Harley was always waiting up without question. He’d make some food, whether it be reheated leftovers from dinner before Peter left for patrolling, or a nutrition-dense snack of some sort.

Peter would get home, always right on time, and they would eat their late night snack, or meal in Peter’s case with his crazy metabolism.

They would curl up on the couch together and put on some TV, alternating between Harley’s choice and Peter’s choice of a TV show.

Later, if something went wrong on patrol or if something was weighing particularly heavy on Peter, they’d have the opportunity for quiet conversations in the dim light. Either Peter would explain what was happening in his head, or Harley would fill the space with distractions of what he’d done while Peter was out. Normally, it wasn’t too exciting, Harley’s evenings alone, but he sometimes twisted his dreams during his naps after Peter left into extravagant tales just to pass the time.

And then they’d head to bed, curling up in each other’s arms, a perfect contrast of Harley’s frigid body, somehow still not used to the difference in New York to Tennessee temperature, and Peter’s warmth, always running high with his mutations.

Nightmares were frequent, no matter how many times they offered comfort and tried to protect the other from the horrors of their dreams.

Nights were long and quiet. Filled with dim lighting because Peter’s afraid of the dark, and a running fan because Harley needs white noise, and silent tears streaking down their faces when nightmares inevitably tear them from their sleep, and even quieter reassurances and comfort.

Tonight was no different, Harley pressing kisses to Peter’s temple and holding him close, watching the time tick past four in the morning, barely a few hours of sleep.

“It’s okay, love. We’re okay, I’ve got you,” Harley’s saying, voice barely above a whisper, rough with sleep and exhaustion. His arms are tight around Peter’s shoulders, drawing the younger boy against his chest with care and caution.

And Peter cries, tears hot on Harley’s bare shoulders, fingers curling into the fabric of Harley’s old grey sweatpants.

It’s the same song and dance as it always is. Soft comforting words attempting to overpower the anguish playing out in nightmares.

“It’s our five-year-anniversary in a few weeks,” Harley says, voice lilting softly, exhaustion making his southern accent more noticeable. “I keep trying to plan something, because it’s gotta be special, right? And I’ve already pulled out just about every stop in trying to make every day the best for you as it can be.”

Peter’s words are muffled against Harley’s shoulder. “Ten years, technically.”

Harley rolls his eyes, pressing a few more kisses to his darling’s pale skin. It brings back some scary, unwanted memories. Watching Tony stumble off the plane, falling into Steve and Pepper’s arms. I lost the kid.

Peter had been two years older then Harley, seventeen to Harley’s fifteen when the snap had happened. But Harley hadn’t been snapped. He had to live in a world without his boyfriend for five years. And when Peter got back, suddenly the scales weren’t balanced. Peter was still seventeen, but Harley was twenty.

It was weird and they danced on eggshells around each other, unsure how to be with the other after being apart for so long.

But now Harley’s twenty-five, and Peter’s twenty-two, and the age difference doesn’t feel so wide anymore.

Those five years were the worst years of Harley’s life though.

“Ten year anniversary, then,” Harley agrees. “I asked Tony, Pepper, May, everyone, I could think of to give me some advice for what to do. And then I was in the mall one day, and I passed by a jewelry store and I just kinda stopped.”

Peter’s tears have slowed now, at least. He pulls away to look up at Harley, eyes wide and sparkling in the soft light of the lamp.

“I remember that day where we went into the same store, what must’ve been like four years ago, and you jokingly tried on every piece of jewelry you could before we were kicked out because they thought we were going to steal everything,” Harley continues, ignoring his pounding heart and the way his hands shake when he cups Peter’s cheeks, swiping away the tears.

“I remember,” Peter says, offering a smile.

“Yeah, and I guess I started thinking and it’s been ten years, darling. I don’t want to be with anyone but you. I started writing this whole piece that I was going to use on our anniversary, I thought it would be special, but I wanna say it now, without the whole I Love You bullshit because you know that.”

Peter nods again, smiling a little wider because not even the most oblivious person in the world could miss what Harley was hinting at.

“I wanna marry you, Peter,” Harley says, voice softer than ever. “I wanna be with you for the rest of my life.”

“Even if I’m difficult?” Peter says, gesturing vaguely at his head with a lopsided smile and a laugh.

“Even if you have nightmares every night for the next fifty years, I wanna be there with you. Even if you get home from patrol at five am and I have to stay up all night every night for you, I wanna be with you. Even if you decide that I’m fucked up and you decide to leave, I wanna take that chance. Nothing could ever change the way I feel about you, Parker.”

Peter laughs then, no self-consciousness, no self-deprecation. “Never really took you for the sappy type, Keener.”

“Just wanna make sure you know I love you.”

“I love you too, babe. And yes, I’ll marry you. Fuck, Harley, I wanna marry you.”

Harley grins, tears springing to his eyes as well and he laughs, pulling Peter in for a messy kiss. He fumbles for the nightstand drawer, tugging it open and grabbing the little box, pulling it open to reveal a simple silver band.

Harley lifts it out of the box and on the inside of the ring, hidden from view, is a simple Forever.

“I love you, darling. Forever.”

The ring is slipped onto Peter’s finger and he smiles wider, kissing Harley again.

Harley still wants to do the dramatic, down-on-one-knee, sappy speech, hugging Peter and spinning him around as they cry, everyone around them clapping for their excitement of the engagement. He still wants the “Proper Engagement” but he doesn’t mind the quietness of this version.

“Go to sleep, love.”

They slide down in the bed, tugging their thick comforters around their bodies, unable to stop smiling, Peter’s nightmare long forgotten.

It’s not quite a song, but Harley murmurs I Love You and hums the tune to Peter’s favourite song, arms wrapped tight around his waist. He’s not a good singer, so he doesn’t want to try, worried it’ll ruin the gentle peace of their room, but he knows (because he knows Peter better than anyone) that the white noise and the rumbling of his chest beneath his head will put him right to sleep.

And it does, before he even finishes the song, Peter’s breaths have evened out and his eyes have fluttered shut.

Harley gently presses a kiss to the silver band now sitting around Peter’s finger, and smiles up to the ceiling. That night, they dream about the possibilities of the future, no nightmares plaguing their sleep.

[savrenim]

I feel like perhaps my problem is that all my stories eventually metamorph into tragedies. No idea what that says about me! Anyways thank you for the advice :)

I think there’s something super valid about that and I’ve noticed it happening a fair bit to me too so more rambles after the cut?

so this one is coming from a very personal place so I suspect it’s very very different for everyone, but as a kid, my absolute favorite story if I’d had to pick one was Lord of the Rings. especially the movies, I was obsessed with the costuming and production values and music and just the immersive nature of it all, it was gorgeous and I loved it and everything about it sorry legit lotr fandom I have not read the silmarillion but the thing that always stuck out the most to me was how real the ending felt, specifically Frodo not feeling like he was able to return to the Shire because he was too different, the world had changed too much for him

and my childhood felt like a constant battle against the forces of Evil that were trying to crush and destroy my world completely, and the degree to which I fought back, I won, I escaped -- suddenly out in the world I no longer had to be constantly fighting (at least against forces that were specifically trying to crush me instead of, like, general capitalism) and I was a bit at a loss. didn’t know what to do. it didn’t feel like it could be over, what was left in the world after years and years of fighting that consumed the entirety of my world, even if it didn’t destroy it completely. 

and I never really found an answer, until taz: balance? which I won’t spoil at all if you’re unfamiliar and it is long and a podcast and seems like it’s just a joke and everything is comedic bit after comedic bit (some somewhat more crass than others, although none crossed a line for me) and then it just hits you with 

and it genuinely broke my heart and pieced it back together again because suddenly it became a story about characters that had gone through a lifetime of constantly fighting against something that felt like the end of the world and then the ending wasn’t “oh. we’ve saved the world but we’ve changed and this is no longer home”, it was “oh, we’ve saved the world and we’ve changed, and we can make this home.”

and that was weirdly life-changing to me to see that in a story, where the main cast after going through hell could happily settle down into a civilian life which while it wasn’t necessarily a fairy-tale “happily ever after” they didn’t have to fight constantly anymore and didn’t need to and it didn’t destroy them so much that they couldn’t live. they rebuilt, and it was beautiful. there are probably parts of me that are never going to not be consciously or subconsciously preparing to be attacked, but that’s okay, I’m okay with that part of me, and I can live in a mostly chill world where I don’t need to fight without cutting that part out of me, because life exists beyond the end of the world.

a lot of the stories that I’ve written or am writing are either directly about or contain characters based on/ settings/ themes/ arcs/ etc of how I feel. sometimes intended to vent, sometimes intended to comfort. when I had a stupidly huge crush on a camp-counselor-turned-mentor at age 14, the plots of the novels that I wanted to write were “dramatic ya protagonist saved the world oh and also they totally do end up with their several-years-older-but-like-not-too-much-older super cool mentor figure. and it’s all okay because that person is there after Defeating The Evil so it’s totally a happily ever after.” when I’d escaped my abusive household but oops things still were falling apart bc mental health, the stories were “the world is ending biblical imagery this time and time exists as a cycle and consistently always ends and ends like this and the story follows the archangels at the end/beginning of the world as they slowly in horror learn that after killing the archdemons they’ve been fighting for all of existence and time turns and begins again and new archangels appear and cast them out of heaven, that they were the archdemons all along, and there is nothing they can do to change a history that is set in stone to repeat itself and they can just watch as they either slowly sink into insanity and lose sentience and become mindless beasts, or lose hope so much that they lose the will to fight back against their fate and decide to make their past/future selves pay and start the apocalypse all over again” or “alternate universe historical cold war with aliens at a science research base where like the first solid half of the story is the families of all the researchers get trapped in their bunker and the air filtration system isn’t working and they suffocate while the researchers outside watch, also everything has been nuked so even if we succeed in calling off the second wave civilization as we know it is over” or there’s not even any plot so I can only describe it as a psychological horror brainwashing dystopia larp where the fundamental horror besides the inherent horror of the octagon house stemmed from the fact that reality itself seemed to be unravelling at the seams, nothing about the world or knowledge about the world could be trusted, even a happy ending barely felt like a victory or an escape bc the characters didn’t know if everything was about to dissolve into nothingness or if their world even really existed 

anyways things got better and my writing is no longer that, although I’m strongly considering one day polishing up and making something of some of those pieces bc they were pretty cool. but also.....my stories are slightly less obvious about it now but still are just dumping grounds for what I’m feeling trash novel started because I went “you know what there’s too much sadness in my life and my DnD campaigns I want a story where the MC is super powerful and badass and nothing bad happens to her and I can rest assured in that fact and, like, build the rest up from there” and Saes ended up being the “hmmm had childhood trauma but chill and over it” character and Luka ended up being the “hmmm what if I was able to actually act on all of the rage that I felt about my situation instead of keeping it diplomatic to my family constantly” I personally find it impossible to write something that I do not personally feel in some way. mostly because writing is a hobby for me to vent emotions? so.... why am I writing it if I don’t personally feel it type deal, and then editing it and balancing it out and turning it into an actual readable story happens afterwards. if you find things are tending towards tragedy, and always tend towards tragedy when you write, my personal advice at least would be either:

(a) lean into it. write tragedy. write at any given time what vents your emotions the most and gives you the most catharsis, and let your story just be a punching bag for anything terrible that you want to unload. bc it’ll feel like that for the readers too, sometimes everything just needs to be horrible and smashed and get it out and let it be that, it’s okay.

(b) convince yourself in your heart of hearts that there is life after trauma. that some things can never be fixed but they can grow and change and work around the broken bits. write everything that makes your story as terrible and as much of a tragedy as you’d planned. and then make it okay to live afterwards. because if there’s one thing that humans are absolutely incredible for being able to do, it’s keep living and keep making life worth living.

you might write totally different than I do in which case this advice might be thoroughly trash in terms of finding inspiration to write something non tragic. and, like, if you do write from your feelings.... current global situation and general hopes for the future in terms of climate change and fascism and plague all feels hopeless kind of for the human race in general? but humans are pretty hard to destroy. as pessimistic as I feel about current trajectory of the world, civilization might collapse in the next hundred or so years, but I don’t think humanity will be gone. and even if it does go, life certainly won’t be gone. hell as a mathematician I know that there is life out there on other planets, that we live in a universe brimming with life; organic molecules form far too easily and there are far too many planets out there for statistically there not to be more. nothing that’s happening right now can touch a universe that is full of life, and I can live day by day making the world maybe a slightly better place for the people around me, and that’s a good a reason to hope as any. 

just.... write for yourself first and foremost, and what’ll come out will be something beautiful and worthwhile. tragedy or no.

[sunnylh]

╭╯  ﹅   LIKE STARDUST.

     ▬▬   tw: death, homophobia                homophobic slur, blood,                violences,  murder,  etc.                a self (para) memory   !

     If memories could bleed, if dreams could scream..

     "Jiah?” Her short heels clicked against the cracked pavement as darkness surrounded her closest vision. The night continued to grow heavier like it always seemed to do, or was that because of how firm her heart thudded against her ribs? “Jiah? Where are you?” was repeated once more after no responses were echoed her way. “Jiah.. It’s cold..”

     Ding, ding.. Sunhee’s phone chimed through the silence of faltered waterfalls, the phone illuminating a bronze-colored light as if a candle. Various messages arrived on the screen that depicted friends reciting words of confinement or amusement due to the fact on which the other girl has not yet seemed to arrive. Something inside the youngest of them all deemed to wish, to desire, that the sweetest wouldn’t be revealed ─ but bright stars of a smile and freckles that etched stardust across cheeks appeared in-front of her face, the phone nearly dropping to the floor.

     “Sunny! I’m sorry I’m late, I ran into something with my uncle.”

     Anticipation reeked inside the female’s body, breath rapid and shallow.  The wind seemed to become more ponderous, coldness wiping through her nerves as she fell breathless. At this point Sunhee desired for nothing but to be swallowed whole by the waterfalls of Jeju; since her heart developed into a wall of fire with flushed cheeks swimming through the bitter air. This.. This was a bad idea, but it was far too late to be backing out now.

     Today was the day Sunhee and her friends developed a plan. This plan was enticed to be a childish high-school prank in order to prevent Jiah from continuing her lesbian flirts towards her, to end the crush that bloomed inside of the targeted female. This prank was simple, easy, at least from what they decided. Sunhee wasn’t ever told the full details of such a prank, nor did she want to know the entire thing due to the fear that stemmed in the back of her mind. She was only explained to ask Jiah to meet her by the waterfall cliffs a few miles from their school with promises of a loving relationship of mutual feelings. Just ─ girls, girls can be cruel.

     “Ah, no, it’s okay! I haven’t been here lo─”

     “Did you mean it? Your feelings for me?”

     “Of course,” was mumbled just barely above her breath, feigned confidence received through a twist of her hair and lick of gloss tainting her lips. “W-Why would I lie to you?”

     That previous silence returned as the two stood beside each other. She tried best to keep still from shivers that ran down her spine, but the best case scenario was to avoid any and all eye contact by gazing towards the dim-lit stars gassed around like a plague. Who would have guessed that such a beautiful omnipresent sight would become so difficult, so .. suffocating?

     Sunhee froze. Everything began to spin, to fuzz out. A previous distraction was blocked by the view of Jiah forcing her chin upwards, thumb glacing over delicate skin. She could see nothing but those very stars yet traced over the tan hues that is Park Jiah instead of the expansed skyline. Phantoms swirled around auburn hues to haunt dilated pupils pulsing to the quick pattering of her heart. To see her so up close caused a swell inside her body with knowledge of what’s to come.

     “Isn’t this the part where you kiss me, Jiah?” Those words forced themselves more empty handed, but those phantoms turned to positive gleams if only for a few moments.

     “The thing is, Sunhee. If I kissed you, I wouldn’t be able to stop.”

     A pause.

     “Then it’s a good thing she doesn’t actually want to, faggot.” Another voice coming from behind that forced the hand from her chin to drop, Sunhee instantly scuffling away to cover herself by the four new figures appearing forth. What else was she meant to do? Because the last thing on her fuzzed mind was to not involve herself more in the situation.

     The next thirty minutes, or what seemed to dwell on for hours, came by in flashes. Sunhee blocked these flashes out of her closest consciousness as best she could. Violence coming from an unfair match of four against one made her flinch yet she only stood still. This.. prank.. altered towards mistreatment as blood tainted the slick sheet of ice against the pavement. Various punches, kicks, possibly a knife tuning in ─ but she couldn’t fully develop that memory properly since her mind deemed itself more focused on the abusive words foaming at the edges of her friends’ tongues, faint screams of help pointed towards Sunhee’s way; although her body remained frozen just like the cold breeze.

     “I thought you were different, Sunhee,” were words previously stated yet they continuously echoed into her mind as Jiah feel backwards towards the edge of the cliff, motions so deafeningly slow until she vanished faster than possibly processable.

     That night, that night, would be Jiah’s last. The last hefty breath passing her lungs once the fall claimed her life instantly with a piercing of ice through her skull and her deceased body draining down the stream. Not even the glittering city lights or nostalgic scent of the waterfall could aid in such a situation.

     The water hears and understands, but the ice never forgives.

     Sunhee fell to her knees once the feeling of emptiness adapted her view of the world. A quiet sob quivered towards the end of her glossed lips. It seemed as if the cracks in the ground below her bruised knees grew larger, like they were going to take away the guilt that tripped over in a storm cloud. Every crevice of her being shattered in seconds. The young teenager doesn’t think the view of Jiah’s lifeless body bleeding into the saccharine blue depths, eyes open but the previous golden stars turned to black holes that lead her to white lights. That view would never leave her mind, it’d haunt her like those phantoms that previously consumed Jiah’s star dusted expression.

     This isn’t what they planned. No ─ it couldn’t have been. They wouldn’t plan to strip someone of their life, to remove them from others’, to hand grief to loved ones on a silver plate. She didn’t deserve gratitude, not even satisfaction of feeling the weight lifted off of her when it came to the uncomfortable flirting. She didn’t deserve to mourn or feel the guilt vibrating through her nervous system. And she definitely did not deserve her own life as it has taken another’s.

     “Is she dead?”

     “Why does it matter? We need to get the fuck out of here before someone shows up.”

     “Sunny. Sunny. Sunny get your ass up.”

     They’d never know her secret that was whispered down the hallways of the high-school. A secret so intense, so scandalous. One that entailed that Sunhee, too, maintained feelings for the deceased, feelings so intense that she believed those very freckles and shined smile had become one with the milky way. But, she wanted to fit in. She chose to fit in. She didn’t deserve to love another as much as she actually loved Jiah’s enchanting perfection. Although, no one would ever know that.

     No one would ever know what even happened that very night. Not even the police could classify or accuse those for the death of Park Jiah. The only one to ever know would be the dreams that glued themselves into Sunhee’s very essence. 

     Like the moon, nothing can ever be so forgiving.

[cupofteaguk]

the maze to you

summary: turns out you won’t be getting the storybook soulmate journey you were promised when you have a dream of a boy named Kim Taehyung at a frat party. 

pairing: taehyung x fem!reader

genre: soulmate au (the one where you dream about your soulmate) | angst

warnings: mentions of college parties, descriptions of an erection, i know it just says angst but it’s a happy ending :-) i would never hurt u guys :-)

word count: 9k

.

Ever since you were young, you dreamt about the promise of sharing your life with the person the universe deemed as the best fit for you: your soulmate. Given the type of world you grew up in, the type of world your parents and grandparents and every other generation inhabited before you, this isn’t a difficult notion to comprehend—the universe created soulmates and a pretty foolproof way of showcasing when the connection between aforementioned soulmates was established as well as a way of helping the individuals figure out how to gather clues needed to find each other.

It used the minds. Or, more specifically, dreams. The dreams didn’t allow soulmates to speak to each other through means of communication, however, and instead used dreams as a way to allow soulmates more in-dept glances into the lives of their other half. The dreams simply showed the experiences underwent during the day, allowing the soulmates to disclose information on themselves or do anything to share who they were in a way that could bring them together. Soulmates could do anything from sharing their city or pieces from their past or a house, drawing pictures or sharing names across sheets of paper—when trying to share one’s life story within the time frame of a few REM cycles, the sky was the limit on what people would do.

You know all about the extent to which people would go for their soulmate. After all, you like to think of yourself as the byproduct of many happy and determined people who would do anything to reach their partner. Things like sharing cities or writing names across the skin of their arm? Yeah, your parents use to pull shit like that all the time when they first started getting the dreams. They were so set on finding each other, so determined to meet as soon as they realized what was happening that they wasted no time. They found one another with ease, just like your grandparents and every other story you’ve been told since you were capable of understanding the idea of soulmates and love and the desire to have that in your life as well.

Ever since then, you would spend an endless amount of hours hoping and praying and wondering when your time was coming, when you were going to get your dreams and your signs from the universe that your soulmate was actually out there. Waiting for you. Just as you were waiting for them.

“The dreams will appear seemingly at the most random time,” Your mother says one afternoon as you’re resting your chin on the edge of the table, gazing up at her with wide eyes that only a curious and naive eleven-year-old version of yourself could possess. “My dreams appeared when I was fifteen—and the first glimpse I ever got into your dad’s life were the NASA and Apollo mission posters that lined the walls of his bedroom. I hadn’t even seen his face, but I knew he was the one for me.”

You’re not even sure if eleven-years-old is the appropriate age to start fantasizing, but that’s when you start wondering about what your first dreams would look like. During the younger years of your life, you hoped your future soulmate would have a palace, a field of horses in the backyard, look like a Disney prince—you know, the normal desires for a normal child estranged by the concept of Disney movies and happily ever afters.

However, as you grew up, so did your desires and ambitions and expectations for your soulmate. You grew up realizing that you didn’t want to realize anything for your soulmate—you didn’t need someone perfect. You, too, also wanted to see posters of your partner’s interests and passions lining the walls. You want to see someone writing their name across the skin of their own arm for you to see from the depths of your subconscious, you want to feel their desperation to meet you plagued within their body until they got to meet you.

You relay this to a friend on the afternoon of your seventeenth birthday, and Karly laughs.

“Seems a little over-the-top, don’t you think?”

“Easy for you to say,” You grunt back, placing your chin in the palm of your hand and scratching the back of your head. “You got your first dream last year, and you have nothing to worry about.”

That is true. Jung Hoseok was practicing dance in his high school practice room, twisting and turning and moving his body to a beat no one can remember—and that had been Karly’s first memory of his. And she has been in love with him ever since, even if they haven’t officially met yet.

“Oh relax,” Karly says, smiling soothingly, yet only wears the expression of someone whose heart isn’t entirely into the idea of consoling given that they can no longer relate to the current problem at hand. “You’ll get your dreams when you least expect it. And they’ll be perfect.”

Yes. Perfect in its own sense. Perfect like all the other storybook tales you’ve heard. Given that those sort of tales seem to follow all those around you, it should make the most logical sense for your own experience to mirror your friends, peers, and family, right? Right?

You get your answer at nineteen-years-old. In the day proceeding, nothing of significance had happened to you in the sense that you didn’t feel different. You had just gone to school, gone to work, finished your assignments, and moved on. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing to give away that perhaps you would feel different or better the following morning.

Karly had been right in saying that it would hit you when you least expect it.

It seems to hit you as soon as you close your eyes and you are immediately hit with a sense that feels like the world around you is no longer what you thought it was.

When you open your eyes, you’re at a party. The lights overheard are blaring, flashing all sorts of different colors that dance across the ceiling. There’s music, at least, from what you can tell. The music is loud, if the vibrations that thrum through your body is anything to go by.

Suddenly, your body moves of its own accord without any nerves or commands from the brain. It shifts on weight. You see hands that don’t belong to you, holding a questionably-colored drink you would never hold on your own. In the dream, you feel taller and bolder and dizzy and drowsy all at once, a feeling you are familiar enough with to know that it’s being drunk. But unlike you, who usually gets sleepy or nauseous if caught with too much alcohol in your system, this body is holding it well. Very well. So well that it can actually hold a conversation with a (dare you say) relatively attractive girl standing in front of you, all wide eyes and curving smile. Even though you’re pretty sure that you aren’t sexually drawn toward girls in that sense, there is still a suspicious loud pounding in your chest and a stirring in your lower stomach that makes you confused. The voices around you sound like background noise, low murmurs that you cannot make out. You don’t know what the girl in front of you is saying. You don’t even know what you’re saying.

But then, she takes you by the hand. You follow along, despite your consciousness standing alert at the change of pace. You don’t know where she’s taking you as she leads you down a hallway, into a room, before pushing you against the wall and pressing her pillowy lips against yours.

The sensation in your stomach increases in pressure, increases in desire, and you have no idea where it’s coming from and why you’re acting like this. You don’t do parties, you don’t make out with strangers—is your subconscious showcasing this to you to display that you’ve always secretly wanted to make out with girls the entire time? What the hell?

Your body continues acting on its own accord with its own mind, as if the actions have already been decided and you are simply mirroring the movements. Even though you have no control, you can still feel everything. From the way your hands dance over her skin, the blood pounding in your ears, the blood pooling down to—!

Holy shit. What the actual fuck?

Before your mind can ponder too much, you feel yourself getting pushed from the wall, onto the bed and falling onto your back. The girl returns, her hands caressing down your skin, tugging off the clothing of your lower half (it feels like jeans and underwear)—!

Your head lifts up slightly to watch her, immediately feeling like a deer caught in the headlights when your eyes land upon a dick. Like, an actual dick. From in between your legs.

Did… did you eat something before you went to bed last night? A mushroom? A brownie, perhaps?

You don’t have time to ponder that, because the girl tucks some hair behind her ear and leans over the junction between your legs, wrapping her lips around the tip and—!

The next time you blink, you’re staring right into Karly’s eyes. The latter is wearing a worried, panicked expression, with the crease between her eyebrows becoming more and more prominent the longer she stares at you. For some reason, your throat feels a little sore.

Karly must sense something from the way your hand automatically find your neck, because her grip on your shoulder tightens just a little. “Are you okay?”

“Y-Yeah,” You croak out, voice surprisingly hoarse. You cough. “What the fuck, did I catch a cold or something?”

Karly’s eyes are still searching your face. After a moment, she takes a step back, allowing you to straighten up on your bed and take in your surroundings. You look around, making a mental checklist of your current environment. Yes, same room. You look down at your hands. You’re relieved to find the same small, slender fingers, the way they bend to your will. You recognize the bruise on your arm from when you accidentally slammed a cabinet on it at work.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Karly inquires back, not entirely answering the question. “You were sort of screaming in your sleep.”

“Huh?” You turn to look at her. You flicker your gaze to the digital clock next to your bed. Seven in the morning.

“You were screaming in your sleep,” She repeats. “Had a bad dream or something? You look really out of it. Do you remember what you were dreaming of?”

“Um…” You trail off, closing your eyes and pressing your thumb against the bridge of your nose. Come to think of it, you do remember something. Bits and pieces. “There was a party of some kind and a girl—!” You cut yourself off, choking on your words because yes. You remember now. A little too clearly, if you’re being honest. “Oh my god!” You exclaim, turning on Karly wildly. “There was a dick!”

“What?” Karly inquires, furrowing her eyebrows and looking lost. “Like an idiot, you mean?”

“No, like an actual dick—oh my god, I had a dick.” You press your hands against your cheeks. “Oh my god, I remember now. I had a dream that I was a dude at a party, and I think I was about to hook up with some girl because she took my pants off and was about to—!”

“Okay, no, that’s fine,” Karly interrupts. “No need to go into detail.”

“Oh my god.” You repeat, moving to press the palm of your hands into your eyes. “Oh my god, what does this mean? I made out with a girl and had a dick—is my subconscious trying to tell me that they want me to be a dude? How does that work? I mean, the dick looked kind of weird, maybe that’s why I was screaming…”

“Y/N,” Karly cuts in again, reaching out to lightly grip at your forearm. This is probably both to calm you down but also stop you from going on another spiral from the confusion you’ve already experienced. And it’s not even eight o’clock in the morning yet. “I don’t think your mind is trying to tell you that specifically. I think that maybe…” She trails off, looking lost at her own words for a moment. “But that doesn’t make any sense…”

“What doesn’t make any sense?” You ask, tearing your mind away from your current frenzy of thoughts to hear Karly’s perspective of it.

Karly shakes her head. “The only explanation I can think of is that…” She presses her lips together. She angles her head to look up at you but she doesn’t look too confident or too comforting by what she’s about to say. “That guy… I think he’s your soulmate.”

“What?” You ask immediately, breaking out into a disbelieving smile. “N-No, that’s impossible. My soulmate wouldn’t… do that… to me…” You trail off, your heart pounding loudly in your chest. Yet, you have a feeling it has nothing to do the adrenaline from the dream anymore. Although you don’t want to admit it to yourself, the likelihood of that boy being your soulmate held a much higher probability than some hidden desire to actually be a boy yourself. It just makes more sense. It adds up. You have nineteen years worth of dreams under your belt, some abnormal sure but none of them ever came close to the one experienced the previous night.

And thinking about it, you remember the dream too vividly for it to be considered an actual dream. There are too many details you remember, too many sensations you can recall with the snap of a finger. It had felt more like a memory rather than a dream and you think that’s the biggest clue in giving away the fact that the universe had finally opened up the connection between you and your soulmate.

It takes you a second to realize that this was it. You’ve wondered about what kind of soulmate the world would gift you with, as you’ve wondered for the past eight years of your life. Despite the fact that you outgrew a large majority of your original expectations, you know that there is still a part of you deep down had hoped for a soulmate to meet some of the things you had been hoping for.

However, instead of posters of passion or the soft moments of a person’s life or anything really to give you that lightning strike instance of confidence in knowing that your soulmate existed and was living and was (to a certain extent) waiting for you—you get a boy who lets his dick get sucked by another girl, even though he should know about you. He must know. Maybe not about you specifically, but even just the world the pair of you lived in. He should know his soulmate is out there, waiting for him—that you’re waiting for him.

You are filled with a wide variety of different emotions in a short period of time. From anger to frustration to sadness to hopelessness. You close your eyes and clench your jaw, willing yourself to get over the brief pass of questions that wash over you.

You open your eyes, taking in Karly’s own concerned look. “You gonna be okay?” She inquires.

You sigh. “Not sure yet. I’ll just… give it time.” A weak argument, but you don’t know what else to do and you don’t know what else to say. And Karly knows that.

.

As it turns out, it’s hard to “give it time” when aforementioned it starts to make its presence more and more known in your life. You assumed that having to watch your soulmate (first-hand, literally) get his dick sucked by another girl had been a terrible enough sign from the universe that okay, maybe you weren’t going to be getting that fairy-tail happily-ever-after experience that everyone around you seemed to be getting. You try to be fine with that, you really do.

But when you have another dream of your soulmate hooking up with a completely different girl in a bathroom, it’s like salt rubbing in the wound. To make matters worse, it’s like your mind and body have already become accustomed to the nature of your dreams because you can now recall the voices and the whimpers and screams that echoed off that bathroom and if your brain wants to replay that girl’s moans or how she looked in the mirror one more time you might consider driving a fork through your head.

You consider this more and more as you sit in class, drumming your fingers impatiently on your desk, wanting nothing more than to pay attention to the lecture but knowing that the feat would be useless given the other much more pressing issue that take up much more of your attention.

You flicker your gaze up to the professor who is currently going on and on about supply and demand. The topic might be interesting, sure, and you probably need to know the minor details on the subject for the upcoming exam. But when you pull forward your floral covered notebook, it is done with the intention of documenting something other than Economics.

You flip open to a page in which only one line is covered with your script: soulmate.

Picking up your pencil, you start to write with only the occasional flickering your gaze up to the board to give off the illusion that you were paying attention. Instead, you write: hooks up at parties followed with two subpoints, first: ??? second: Irene, definitely Irene holy FUCKING shit, if his disgusting groans are anything to go by.

You continue on: likes drinking, cheap tequila is his favorite i think but also likes vodka.

You ponder for a moment, trying to recall the second dream. Definitely not to remember the name or face or moans of that girl, but to remember him. Him, being your soulmate. You write, long-ish kind of hair, maybe a mullet… has good eyebrows… a low sort of voice. You pause for a second, could be cute if he wasn’t a dick literally AND figuratively.

You think about it for one more second, name: tbd.

You sigh, unable to think about how it could get much worse than this.

But of course, the universe just loves to prove you wrong—and they do by making it worse. Much worse.

Your fourth dream starts just the same way. Lights, music, partying, drinking, bursting into a room with yet another unnamed girl who you know immediately will have moans that will ring through your mind for the next twenty-four hours.

You recognize the signs, you recognize falling right into the action of breathy groans and hushed gasps as your soulmate pushes his hookup against the door of yet another unmarked bedroom. “You’re so fucking hot,” He groans, hot and heavy, the sensation of her soft skin against the fingertips.

“W-Wait,” The girl protests, more like a high-pitched whine as teeth nip into the skin of her neck. “What about your soulmate? Don’t you have one? I-I haven’t had my dream yet but…”

You hear his laughter both in the open air and as a rumble through his chest. “Haven’t had the dreams princess. Even if I did, I wouldn’t care—guys like me don’t get a soulmate anyways so I don’t worry about it.”

You wake up with the air completely stolen from your lungs, your heart pounding loudly in your chest that you feel it thumping underneath your fingertips and underneath your skin. The words ring loudly in your ears, completely unlike a dream and more like a memory that plays over and over again behind your eyes like a movie. Even if he had a soulmate, he wouldn’t care. He wouldn’t care. He wouldn’t care about you. He wouldn’t, and he doesn’t. He doesn’t care about you.

You swallow thickly, biting your lip and letting out a sigh. First you get a soulmate who carelessly sleeps around at a party, but then you also get a soulmate who doesn’t care about the system and doesn’t care you. It’s a comforting thought.

Karly walks into your room, hair in a ponytail, sports bra to show she’s just gotten back from her morning run. “You okay?” She inquires.

You throw your arms atop the covers and glare at your roommate as if she is the reason for your unfortunate position. “My soulmate is an asshole.” And you mean it.

.

It takes you five dreams of parties, of hooking up, of seeing five different girls, and reporting to Karly that you would jump out of the window of your apartment five times, when you actually get something different. When you actually get something real.

You wake up in your soulmate’s body to find him, surprisingly, in a college classroom setting. This realization is a total relief, given that you were beginning to worry that your soulmate was a college dropout or something monumentally worst. Yet, here he is. In class. Scribbling down notes with the occasional glance at his phone to show that he isn’t doing a complete 180 transformation between straight-A-student-with-a-pencil-up-his-ass and hooking-up-with-four-girls-over-the-span-of-five-days.

Class lets out a few minutes later, where a boy with bright orange hair and eyes that curve into half crescent moons is waiting. “Tae!” The boy exclaims, pushing himself off the wall as the two exchange a handshake. “How was class?”

“Long,” Your soulmate replies. The pair of them eat fast food from a corner restaurant on the edge of the college campus, a location that you’ve never seen before with its fancy architecture mixed with modern technology. It’s a nice school, you conclude to yourself, filling you with a little more confidence that perhaps this Tae isn’t as big of an idiot as you had previously assumed.

It’s the first time you catch a longer glimpse of his life, one filled with a relatively long list of classes that seem to go by like a blur. The breaks in between those aforementioned classes are filled with company such as friends and food and everything almost seems normal. You notice that he seems to love french fries with a special passion. He loves meat and vegetables and doesn’t pick any food out of his meals, always seeming capable of trying new things. You also get your first glimpse at his reflection. A real glimpse, allowing you to take in the twinkle of his eyes and the softness of his hair—you hate to admit that he’s extremely cute and extremely attractive. His hookups make sense. You’re sure that there’s a line of girls constantly waiting to flirt with him, to be with him. If you didn’t know better, you might be one of those people.

But you know too much, and this shows in the way you begrudgingly wake up the following morning. Although his face is pretty much permanently plastered in your mind at this point, you refuse to let yourself think too deeply about him. He’s still an asshole.

This thought is further emphasized in the sixth dream, where the first thing you notice after waking up in Tae’s body is the fact that he is hunched over a toilet. You can feel the ear-splitting headache, but you don’t process the pain. Taehyung, however, is a different story. You know he can feel the pain of this hangover, if the way he throws up into the toilet is anything to go by. Normal soulmates would probably feel worried or sympathetic, but you watch the scene barely batting an eye to the problem at hand.

If he wasn’t going to care about you, why should you give him the same respect? If he wasn’t even going to consider your life, your presence, your thoughts, regardless of if he has been getting dreams about you or not—then it wasn’t fair to keep everything entirely one-sided.

You absolutely hate your soulmate. You hate his mind, his arrogance and selfish nature, his cocky attitude, but you hate the connection you are forced to have with him the most. You hate that the universe has paired you with someone of this nature. It feels like a terrible punishment for something you hadn’t even done, taking away the dream you’ve had since you were young and delivering a silver platter of disappointment and a bright red ribbon with the statement I’M SORRY to your doorstep. The frustration is so palpable you can feel it on the tip of your tongue, in the bile of your stomach that fills you up instead of actual food.

“My soulmate is an asshole,” You grumble for what seems like the tenth time that hour and Karly gives you another sympathetic smile. “These dreams are seriously bordering on annoying. I can barely get a good night sleep nowdays because I’m always getting dreams about his hookups which feel like nightmares at this point.”

Karly slides you a cup of coffee, which you so desperately need in order to survive your upcoming shift. “I hope he gets his dreams soon so he can realize what a dick he’s being to you.”

You appreciate Karly’s sentiment although you aren’t too confident.

You slide your floral notebook towards yourself, grabbing the pencil that rests in the spiral and flipping open to the appropriate page, staring down at the statement that seems to glare right back at you, name: tbh.

You cross it out, name: Tae, but I think that’s his nickname… not sure about the full name.

.

When you crawl into bed that night, you wonder what kind of dreams will follow you, you wonder what Tae will have in store for you today. Would it be another drinking episode? Another hooking-up episode that will make you actually want to scratch the eyes out of your sockets? Or would you spend the evening in front of the toilet as Tae had done, emptying out his guts while you watched him do so?

Instead, you open your eyes and find yourself in a bedroom. But unlike the previous dreams, there are no pounding lights or loud music or questionably-colored drinks in hand. Instead, you’re sitting upon a twin-sized bed with bright blue wallpaper all around you. Only a few posters line the walls, pictures of musicians and groups flashing their instruments. Action figures lay on the desks and nightstand, one or two shirts flung off onto the floor. It doesn’t look like a bedroom you are particularly familiar with, one that you’ve spent the past few dreams becoming extremely comfortable with the scape of Tae’s bedroom. Rather, this looks like the bedroom of a little boy.

On the other side of the wooden door, there is a knock. “Taehyung, wake up! Come have some breakfast before I take you to school.” It’s a woman’s voice, slightly older and filled with kindness.

Taehyung. You have a feeling that this is his full, given, complete name. Taehyung.

Taehyung groans, crawling out of bed anyways and making his way into the bathroom—staring at himself in the reflection as you catch your first glimpse at Taehyung at the tender age of eleven. The youth is ever-present in his face, in his messy bed-hair and baby fat that still clings lightly to his cheeks. His rubs at his eyes, brushing his teeth, looking so endearing and like a neighborhood crush you could have had in elementary school.

It only takes a few minutes for the boy to get ready before he is bounding down the stairs and into the kitchen, where a man is seated at the table and a woman is just setting down a plate of breakfast food. “Good morning sweetie,” The woman says with a smile.

“Morning mom,” Taehyung greets back, sliding into the vacant seat and forking down the meal. You watch the way he watches his parents exchange their early morning banter, the way they look at each other and it hits you.

Soulmates. Taehyung’s parents are soulmates. Of course, this should have been obvious given that most parents and couples in general are soulmates from the dreams. But you had thought that Taehyung’s heartless nature about this notion would have sprouted from not having parents who were soulmates. Or just not having parents at all. Or a heart.

As you watch what Taehyung watches, you feel what he feels. He watches his parents and feels excitement. And hope.

You wonder what happened.

Time seems to move forward after that, because the next time Taehyung looks into the mirror, you notice that he is taller, more defined, just a little closer to the Taehyung you currently know yet still with a touch of youth to let you know that perhaps he’s still in high school. Even though you don’t have context of experiencing what he has gone through in the days or weeks or months, you can hear the thoughts that run through his mind.

The high school version of Taehyung is a dreamer. He’s a believer. He is so deeply enamored by the concept of soulmates that he wants to get his dreams as soon as possible. Through his desperation to figure out his soulmate, his search takes him to blindly date with anyone and everyone he sees, hoping and hoping that this more-or-less random girl is his soulmate. And every single time, either she got her dreams and left or he just didn’t feel the spark of a connection with her. And so he would break it off. But the mess he would leave behind has created a reputation that he never would have wanted beforehand. A reputation that Taehyung has a terrible, reckless, single behavior. A reputation that Taehyung doesn’t have a soulmate to begin with.

You watch as Taehyung goes to school, the way he steps onto campus and how whispers seem to circulate around him quickly like people are constantly monitoring his movements. You feel the weight of stares like hot irons on your back as Taehyung walks into the building.

“See you’re still alone there, huh Kim?” A voice sounds from off the side as Taehyung turns his head to see a group of boys near the lockers. You’ve never seen them before, but Taehyung’s thoughts start fluttering in and lets you know that these are the boys that bully him, as they have done for months now. Bullying and isolation is a pretty common feat in Taehyung’s day-to-day life but popular jocks, as cliche as it sounds, make it worse.

Taehyung doesn’t say anything, and you watch as one of the boys detach himself from the locker and approach him.

“Or did you find more company to fill the void in your life? Who was it this time? A slut, maybe? A neighborhood chick? You think they’re your soulmate either way, so maybe the title won’t matter—!”

Taehyung shoves at the boy, cheeks flushed with a mixture of embarrassment and humiliation dusting every part of his skin and you feel it deep in his bones. You feel the hopelessness he feels, the frustration at the world for not giving him an inkling of the soulmate he was looking for. You understand the sensation completely, which is why you are not too surprised to find that you start to feel bad for him.

The boy steps back, but the smirk doesn’t leave his expression. “I’ll take that as a no then, Kim.”

A pause, before another boy shows up. “Listen, Kim, don’t you get it? Boys like you don’t get a soulmate, because you don’t deserve it.”

With a shove that drives Taehyung into the lockers on the other side, the boys depart with one last laughter that seems to ring through the air.

Taehyung falls onto his bottom, bringing his knees to his chest and clenching his jaw tightly. You hear the thoughts echoing in his mind. If the universe wouldn’t give him a soulmate, then fuck. The boys were probably right. Taehyung would never get a soulmate, because he didn’t deserve one.

He would become exactly what they expected him to be, everything they scorned him against. It’s not like he had anyone waiting for him anyways. You feel the despair that he feels, the longing he feels.

You wake up with tears in your eyes.

“Kim Taehyung…” You whisper softly, blinking once, twice, letting the tears fall down the side of our face. “Why am I crying? My soulmate is a jerk…”

.

.

Taehyung has been getting really weird dreams lately about a girl with flower patterns on her notebook, her head in the clouds, and a twinkle in her eyes. He doesn’t quite remember how long the dreams have been occurring, but it feels like months. He doesn’t remember the first dream he ever had of you, but he figures out that when he was able to process the fact that he was dreaming about someone other than himself, something in his heart tells you it’s the same person he’s been dreaming about for those long aforementioned months.

At first, however, he doesn’t believe it—in neither the dreams nor the tiny possibility of purpose that your appearance in his mind is meant to serve. He doesn’t believe it. No fucking way.

After years of torment for remaining convinced over and over again that his soulmate was really out there, it’s hard to go back to that previous mindset. It should be only natural that his first instinct to the dreams would be complete deniability.

And he does a good job of dissociating himself. The dreams about you, for all he knows, could just be figments created by his consciousness. He barely lets himself ponder too long or too hard about the dreams, meaning he has a tendency to forget what happens or just pushes it to the back of his mind.

Then, the dreams seem to be projected onto him in fuller detail.

He starts to hear things.

“I don’t know Karly, he was hooking up with another girl though. Probably different from the first one—her name was Irene.”

Irene was the name of the girl from that house party a few weeks ago.

“My soulmate is an asshole.”

He sees the floral notebook in your classroom, the way your fingers flip through the pages until coming across one with the words SOULMATE scribbled across the top, followed by a bullet point list of items that seem specifically catered to an individual person. It starts with: hooks up at parties, first: ??? second: Irene, definitely Irene holy FUCKING shit, if his disgusting groans are anything to go by, likes drinking… cheap tequila is his favorite i think but also likes vodka, long-ish kind of hair… maybe a mullet, has good eyebrows, a low sort of voice, could be cute if he wasn’t a dick literally AND figuratively.

And then finally, at the bottom of the page, name: Kim Taehyung.

Following that dream, it forces Taehyung into the conclusion that you are indeed a real person who is undergoing a life that he gets to witness, and that perhaps he had been wrong to assume that the universe would never present him with a soulmate. And that if he’s dreaming of your life, then it’s likely to assume that you’ve been dreaming of his life.

Seeing the visual depiction, seeing someone spell out the fact that he really does have a soulmate is one thing. But hearing the next words in your voice changes everything.

“Kim Taehyung… Why am I crying? My soulmate is a jerk.”

The realization hits him before he even opens his eyes the next morning.

His soulmate, you, were crying because he was a jerk. And he has no idea how to reach you. And he certainly has no idea how to make it better.

.

“C’mon Y/N, it’ll be fun.”

“I doubt it’ll be fun,” You retort back, rolling your eyes anyways as you continue to move about your bedroom. Laundry day has just fallen upon you and you’re currently trying to put away all your clothes into their proper place. This wouldn’t be as difficult if Jeon Jungkook wasn’t in your room and trying to do everything in his willpower to convince you about this upcoming party in an university not far from your own. “It’s just gonna be more drinking in a different place. What is over there that you can’t get over here?”

“Uh, a break from our peers?” Jungkook speaks as if the answer should be obvious. “I’m tired of seeing the same people at a party.”

“Fuck off,” You argue with a snort. “You just want to hook-up with a girl who doesn’t know your name.” After all, there are thousands of people enrolled at this particular university. But word travels as does reputation, which is why it has become increasingly more and more difficult for Jungkook to quote “have a good time” with someone who knew about him.

You suppose Jungkook should be thankful to have a soulmate who proposed the agreement to allow both parties to have sex with other people—at least, until they found each other.

“Suppose I do,” He agrees with a grin. “Are you gonna come with me or not?”

You glare at him. “No!” You exclaim, deciding to remain firm about your decision. You’ve been to parties and although you enjoyed yourself to a certain extent, it wasn’t enough where you felt the need to drive off to a different college to experience a different kind of fun. It was all the same to you—you drank, you got drunk, you potentially threw up off the side of the road with your poor friend watching you. It was the same no matter where you were deciding to get drunk, even if it was honestly only once in a blue moon.

Jungkook’s grin turns into a pout. “Please, Y/N? I need someone to go with! I don’t want to go alone!”

You whirl around to look at him just as you finish tucking a shirt away into your closet. “Then ask another friend to go with you! I’m sure your usual crowd of partying friends would love to get drunk with you at a different university.”

Jungkook starts off the bed and approaches you. “Please? You know I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate. Besides, it’s been so long since we went out together. All those times you turned me down—you owe me one!”

His last words make you stop slightly because it’s true in a way. You had been meaning to go out to various house parties with Jungkook, but your schedule and own personal discomfort about too many parties have kept you away from the scene Jungkook enjoys too much. And because he’s one of your best friends, it’s definitely time that you follow through on the promise made many months ago.

You sigh, closing your eyes in defeat as Jungkook’s smile widens. “Fine, fine!”

And with that, you are promptly taken into a car as Jungkook drives out of the lot and down the street for the hour-long drive into the next city over towards the university holding this famous party Jungkook cannot seem to stop talking about. And he doesn’t stop talking about it during the drive over; however the conversation is also filled with other playful banter that you and the boy have developed over the years that you have been friends.

At the red light, Jungkook pulls his phone out from the cupholder and starts to scroll, answering some messages here and there and you pull down the mirror overhead to check your lipstick. You look over at Jungkook who is still in the middle of answering another text. “Anyone important?” You inquire.

He turns his head towards you but keeps his eyes on the phone for a few more seconds. “O-Oh no, it’s just one of my friends from the university. He’s asking when we’re showing up so we can meet up at the party.”

Your eyes narrow into a glare. “Yah, I thought you didn’t have other friends to go with!”

“Well,” He stammers, giving you a side-eye and shrinking slightly when you have a warning flicker in your gaze. “No other friends at our school—ow!”

“Jeon Jungkook!” You crow. “Please don’t tell me I’m gonna have to third wheel you and your boyfriend. I didn’t force myself into this dress only to be ditched as soon as we arrive!”

“Not my boyfriend,” He grits back. “And I won’t ditch you, okay? Tae is super chill, I’m sure the two of you will get along super well.”

You freeze slightly, your heart leaping out of your chest at the mention of the name that feels so foggy, it’s only as if you’ve heard the name in a dream. Or something out of your childhood.

Immediately, you find your mind points you to a direction that makes your blood run cold. But, that shouldn’t be possible right? Surely the name should be extremely common—what are the odds of Jungkook’s friend being your soulmate, the boy from your dreams who you determined to have hated with your entire heart and soul? There’s no way it’s him. The likelihood of that is rare. Besides, Jungkook just addressed the boy as ‘Tae’. Nothing more, nothing less.

The reasonable accusation of your overthinking nature gets you to relax a little. Yes of course. Tae is just a nickname that could stand for many different things and there’s no way for you to know what the other half of his name is or what his last name was. You’re overthinking it just because of a few bad dreams and a terrible taste in the back of your mouth.

That gets you to relax a little as Jungkook keeps driving and you keep talking until the pair of you arrive in the parking lot of the university. Jungkook parks right in the visitor’s parking area before the both of you step out and immediately start making your way across campus towards the appropriate area. For a boy who claims to have only been here once or twice, he seems to know exactly where he’s going, and doesn’t take long to find his goal.  

His end goal is one of the houses on the fraternity road, one that is already blaring with the explosion of music that rocks the property. People are scattered both inside and around the house, balancing cups in their hands while conversing with their peers. Despite the unfamiliar atmosphere that plagues you—obviously, because you have never been to this campus before and hence have never been to this house before—there’s something different in this. You get a terrible sense of deja vu, like you’ve seen this place before either in real life or from a dream.

The uncomfortable sensation doesn’t go away, even as you and Jungkook step closer and closer to the house before emerging through the opened door. The music is even longer here as you see people left and right and at every turn. No one seems attracted to your presence, which is good. Jungkook had promised you the kind of evening where you could just let loose and have fun and that’s what you planned to do.

“Hey Jungkook, you made it!” A boy with a terribly, terribly familiar voice says from a few feet away. The voice makes your stomach drop suddenly as you turn your address from the view of the party to look around Jungkook and see who is now standing before him.

Your eyes widen, your heartbeat quickens, the time around you seems to slow down—all things that point to the conclusion that this evening would not turn out the way you had originally wanted.

That point is further emphasized when the boy catches a glimpse of you too and it’s like you’re seeing Kim Taehyung in the flesh. Actually, no, it’s not like you’re seeing him in the flesh. You are seeing him in the flesh. He stands before you, just as tall as you would have imagined, just as pretty and charming and reeking of sexual intentions. He’s continuing to act carelessly, pretending as if you don’t even exist.

It would be one thing to understand that perhaps he hadn’t gotten the dreams and was acting off his own accord—but the look he gives you as soon as the eye contact between the two of you is established and maintained leaves you little doubt that he thinks of you as nothing more than a mere stranger.

Surprisingly, he is the first one to find his voice. “I-It’s you,” He stammers, completely looking past Jungkook in order to further observe you.

You swallow thickly, unable to notice the way Jungkook flickers his gaze between his friend and you. “K-Kim Taehyung,” You return.

Jungkook shifts his gaze between the two of you, his index finger out and pointing from one to the other. “You guys know each other?”

Taehyung opens his mouth to say something, but you gather your wits back well enough so that the only thing you can muster is one last lingering glance on the boy in front of you, your soulmate, before you rip your gaze from his and walk in the opposite direction.

“H-Hey, Y/N!” Taehyung calls, ignoring poor and oblivious Jungkook, opting to brush past the latter in his attempt to reach you. “Y/N, please—would you just…” He trails off as soon as he reaches you, his fingers curled around your wrist. “This isn’t really how I pictured us meeting…”

“I’m surprised you even thought about us meeting at all,” You retort back gently, but harsh enough so the statement has some bite to it. “You know what you’ve been doing the past few months—I know what you’ve been doing the past few months. Why would you try to deny it?”

“I-I wasn’t,” Taehyung starts slowly, looking down to see the meeting point where his hand is wrapped around your wrist and a realization he has not felt with any other person seems to sink in. He tightens his hold around you, a gesture that forces you to lock eyes with him. “Look, I can’t control what I did in the past—up until a few days ago I didn’t even know you existed. Can you just, I don’t know, forget about it or something?”

Your eyes hardened as you pulled yourself from Taehyung. “That’s not fair of you to ask that from me. I’ll never be able to look at you the way you’ll want me to. I just… I can’t. Everytime I see you I’ll be thinking about those girls you were hooking up with, and it doesn’t matter if it was in the past and you can’t control it and you didn’t know about me or whatever—but it matters to me.”

He bites the corner of his mouth, knowing that perhaps simply asking you to disregard the dreams as if they were slips of paper one could merely throw away had not been the smartest thing for him as a soulmate to ask of.

“Okay, I’m sorry. Maybe that wasn’t the best way to phrase it,” He replies quietly. “But can’t you give me a chance instead of walking away from this?”

You only continue to stare at Taehyung, but something shifts in your expression. It’s such a gentle and subtle change that Taehyung almost doesn’t believe that it’s happening. But when he realizes that the glimmer in your eyes are from unshed tears and not a trick of the light, it feels like years of history crumpling down all around him. The feeling is weird, given that this is the first time the pair of you are meeting and conversing together. Although, he supposes, this is the touch of soulmates.

“You just… you aren’t the person I was expecting,” You whisper and Taehyung doesn’t try to stop you this time as you turn around and walk away towards the exit of the house.

Jungkook rushes next to Taehyung even though his presence has been more or less forgotten. “Wait, Y/N, are you leaving already? You just got here!” When you don’t say anything, Jungkook paces over to grab you by the wrist. “What the fuck are you doing? What’s going on?”

“Nothing!” You retort, pulling yourself from Jungkook’s grip. “I just can’t stay here.”

Jungkook gives you a hard look. “So you’re just gonna go back? How are you getting back?”

“I don’t know Jungkook,” You protest. “I’ll call an Uber or something. I just can’t stay here.”

Jungkook whips around to face Taehyung. “What did you say to her?”

You spare one last glance at Taehyung over your shoulder before you scoff at his lack of response, even though you don’t know what you want him to say, before you make your way out of the house.

.

Even though the last thing you want to think about, wonder about, or worry about is Kim Taehyung—the universe still grants you with him, as if to further prove that no matter how much you wish to reject him it would be impossible.

You never got to wonder what it would be to see you through the eyes of Kim Taehyung, but when you close your eyes you are immediately greeted with a sight that you only see through the reflection of a mirror. You see yourself, or as Taehyung had seen you. You see big doe eyes and a glimmer that you don’t normally see, you see a flush in your cheeks and a shock etched in your expression. You also feel the way Taehyung had felt when he realized who you were—you feel the quickening of his heartbeat and the increasing clamminess of his palms as you feel what he felt, that you were without a doubt his soulmate.

You feel the way his mind scrambles to come up with a reason to make you stay, anything to stop the look of disgust from creeping into your eyes. You feel the hopelessness and desperation he felt when you turned your back on him; but even more than that, you see what happens when you leave.

“What the fuck was that?” Jungkook inquires, whipping around to give Taehyung a suspicious look. “Oh god, please don’t tell me that you hooked up with Y/N and ditched her afterwards.”

“N-No, it’s not like that,” Taehyung returns back, even though Jungkook still looks doubtful. “We know each other though, and got into this huge fight—!”

“I can see that.”

Taehyung glares. “I need to make it up to her somehow.”

You see the way Jungkook is finally convinced to hand over the address to your apartment complex, the way Taehyung finds his own ride into the outer perimeter of your university with a bundle of something tucked under his arm. You recognize your complex, you recognize the stairs he takes and the floor he steps off of, the way he reads every single number on every single door and wait a minute—!

A knock startles you from your thoughts, your dreams, as you bolt up on the bed. Everything about your dream and the memories Taehyung had experienced felt so real it was hard to tell if the knock had been a figment of your imagination or something real…

The knock comes again from your front door. Despite the questionable hours (four in the morning to be exact), you have a feeling in your heart about who is standing behind the wooden frame.

Even though your mind is telling you not to do it, not to look through those doors and open a can of worms that could potentially complicate things even further, your heart is telling you something different entirely.

It is all your hearts fault, really, that you open the door and see Kim Taehyung standing on the other side of the door. He looks nervous, more nervous than you have ever seen him look or appear before—and you’ve been in his head as well as feeling his feelings for months now. You flicker your gaze down. He’s carrying a bundle of daisies, very pretty ones at that, and your own heart does the betrayal thrum of nerves in your chest.

You look back up at Taehyung.

“Um…” He starts when you don’t say anything. Yet you also don’t slam the door back on his face, so he assumes that you’re at least willing to hear what he has to say. “You’re probably surprised to see me here.”

“A little,” You admit. “But I also saw you coming in my dreams.”

“Oh—well, if you’ve seen my day, you must have also felt what I was feeling when I saw you for the first time.”

You avert your gaze. “Perhaps I did.”

“Then did you feel all the despair I felt when you turned your back on me? When you wouldn’t stay to give me a chance?”

You did, and your silence is all the confirmation Taehyung needs.

The corner of his lips quirk up into a shy smile, and he doesn’t look like the player or the fuckboy you had witnessed countless times in your dreams. He looks like Taehyung—the boy with soulmate parents, the boy who so desperately longed for his own half where he would give up anything and everything for the chance. He looks like the sixteen-year-old boy who was shoved into a locker because he believed too much. The universe has been hard on him.

Taehyung takes a tiny step forward. He offers forth the daisies, a flower you have briefly mentioned loving in his dreams. “Can you give me a chance to not be an asshole?”

You stare from the flowers to Taehyung’s pleading expression.

Why am I crying? My soulmate is a jerk…

“Y/N,” Taehyung speaks softly. “Give me the chance to not make you cry.”

Pretty big words coming from someone who has been making you cry since the beginning, even in the most subtle of ways.

Yet, this is what you’ve wanted since you were born. You and Taehyung would definitely not be like your peers or family or friends, but yet perhaps this would be different and better.

“Don’t be a jerk,” You whisper, taking the flowers from him.

Taehyung’s grin widens, breathless, and even though you are awake, it is almost like you can feel his heartbeat in your own chest. “And miss out on something I’ve wanted since I was ten? No way.”

[echoghost1]

Finally able to get this prompt done! When it doubt, continue something you started as a one shot!

This is  a continuation of Phanniemay 2017’s Day 7 Rituals, then followed by this year’s DannyMay Day 21 Ooze followed by Day 22 Isolation

you can enjoy continuing this saga here

or down below

Maddie couldn't stop thinking about what Danny had told her. Not only had a ghost possessed him, a feat she thought was only capable in horror movies once the act of Overshadowing came to light. It was so intense.

He'd been pushed out of his body? His consciousness removed? How was that even possible?

Was that what would happen to anyone who got possessed or was it because of his ectoplasmic contamination? Was that just the specialty of that ghost?

But the thing that plagued her mind was worse than the implications of potential, worse than the theories about these monsters that she could cook up.

It was her worry about her son.

He seemed almost casual when regaling this horror story, practically blasé about the whole thing. Heck, he had apparently nearly forgotten all about it? How could something so intensely dramatic not leave a bigger mark on his psyche? It was almost like this wasn't the worst thing that ever happened to him.

Maddie froze. Not the worst thing? What could be worse?

What else hadn't he told her?

She had to know. If she couldn't get the information from the source, she'd do her research, someone had to know something right?

Maddie had started by asking her ever perceptive daughter. Surely she would notice if Danny was hiding things.

Jazz didn't reveal much. Other than saying that Danny did his best to clear out the second any ghosts showed up. She also promised to keep a closer eye on him.

Maddie just hoped she'd be able to catch anything before it got too bad.

Next Maddie waited until school was back in session, a few days in, to let the routine fall back into place before she continued her quest for knowledge.

She changed into her civilian clothes before making her way to the school, she wasn't here for ghosts.

Maddie knocked on the doorframe to Mr. Lancer's office and waited to be invited in.

"Ah, Mrs. Fenton. What do I owe the pleasure?"

"I was hoping to ask," she hesitated, not really sure how to put it without sounding like a bad mother, "to ask you about my son, Danny. Has he ever been attacked by a ghost at school? Been directly targeted?"

"Danny? Oh heavens no. He's always the first to run for cover. No idea where he hides, but it must be effective."

"Oh?"

"No one can ever seem to find him. Even his friends end up sputtering for answers."

"How often does this happen?"

"It'd be easier to ask how often it doesn't. The ghost attacks on the school are almost daily." He paused then gave her a concerning look, "I thought you of all people would know that."

"I- Right of course." Gosh was it really that bad? No wonder they resorted to magic to try and protect themselves. Not that it did them any good.

"Then again, now that you bring it up. Danny isn't always just the first to leave. It's more than that." Mr. Lancer gasped, "Wuthering Heights! I think he tends to leave before the ghosts show up! I don't know how I didn't notice it before. I'll have to confer with the rest of the staff to be sure, but gosh if that's true he's like some sort of human ghost alert system."

"That reminds me I have something I need to do at home." She fibbed before ducking out of the office.

Her mind raced as she sped home. If Lancer was right, she'd need to test it.

The plan itself wasn't complicated. The hard part was setting up the pieces first. She checked her watch and waited.

Danny was surprisingly quiet as he entered, if she wasn't actively watching he would have just slipped by completely. When did he get so sneaky?

"Hi honey, how was school?" She called from the kitchen making sure she was loud enough.

"Fine, I guess." He shrugged as he made his way towards the fridge.

With him distracted she held up her hand and used her fingers to countdown from 5. Her eyes watched Danny intently the whole time.

He was still rummaging around for food when he abruptly stopped, his body went ridged with a gasp. Quickly pulling his head out and slammed the door. "Gotta go!"

"Danny, wait!" She easily outran him and blocked his path. "Where are you going?"

"Bathroom," he blurted out, "geez can't a guy go to the bathroom in his own house?"

Well, he was definitely getting better at lying, still bad, but better. "Danny you don't have to hide. Your Dad can handle it."

"Handle what?" He asked but his attention was clearly split. His need to flee apparent in his fidgeting posture.

"The ghost. It's just a small one."

"Ghost? What ghost? Who said anything about a ghost?"

She placed a hand on his shoulder, "Sweetie it's okay. I know."

"Know? Know what exactly?" He asked, pulling back half a step.

"That you're psychic. I just don't understand why you thought you needed to hide it."

"Psychic? I'm not psychic." He denied.

"Then what do you call it?"

Danny was beyond exasperated, "What are you talking about?"

She sighed and urged him to sit down. After some reluctance he relented. "I had a hunch and needed to test it.” She started, “Your father is outside, behind the fence, he released one of the samples."

"You released a ghost outside? On purpose? Why?"

"To see your reaction."

It only took a moment for Danny to catch on. "My ghost sense?"

"Is that what you call it?" That was so precious, he must have named it so it didn't seem so scary. "So how does it work?"

He gave a noncommittal, "I dunno." He leaned back in his chair, "and I don't get why you think that makes me psychic."

"You don't need to see or hear the ghost, and yet you are just aware that it's around. How is that not psychic? And does it only work on ghosts?"

"What else would it work on?" He asked, honestly confused.

"So it's not just a general danger sense." Maddie mused aloud.

"Don't think so." He looked away suddenly self-conscious, "so you're not mad?"

"Mad? Why would I be mad?"

"Because I lied."

"I can't say I'm happy about it, but I'm not mad at you."

"Just disappointed then." Danny slummed so deep into his chair that you could hardly call it sitting. Only his back touched the chair, his arms hung listlessly at his sides.

"No, I'm just confused. Why did you think you had to hide it in the first place?"

He sighed and pulled himself back up. "I don't know." He kept his gaze down at his hands, "At first I didn't understand it. I thought it would just go away if I ignored it. But it didn't. It got stronger," his eyes flicked up to her, watching for her reaction.

She did her best to show support, doing all she could to hide the hurt in her heart seeing him like this.

It worked and he continued, "I haven't really tested it. Not scientifically. It starts with this feeling, like I’m not alone. Then I get cold and see my breath. It always points me in the right direction."

"Away from the dangerous ghost?"

"No. Always towards it."

She wanted to question that, but he stood up abruptly and stared out the window.

"What was the ghost you released?" A visible white-blue mist escaped his lips as he spoke, slowly drifting up to the ceiling before making its way to the window. Just as he said it would.

"It was just a small one. A little animal looking one."

"Well, it's not alone now." He turned back to her and held out his hand, "let's go help Dad." He smiled despite the mist in his mouth. The courage he was showing her filled her with a level of pride she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to verbalize. 

So she took his hand instead.

[dpimagines]

Well, That’s One Way to Start a Relationship; Wade Wilson

notes: hey! welcome to my first post on this blog! ‘sup! this fic is something I’ve had finished in my google docs for a while, but had no idea where to post! then, I made this blog, so I decided to polish it up and post it! enjoy! 

warnings/details: dubcon (sex pollen), age gap/underage if you squint, virgin!reader, masturbation, oral sex, penetrative sex, multiple orgasms, just... just really dirty, okay? I originally wrote this on my period, and I get incredibly horny on my period. You’re welcome for that info. 

You didn’t know what happened. As trainees, you and Peter were kind of like alternates for the Avengers. Since Nat and Clint were out doing SHIELD business, the two of you were helping Tony, Bruce, and the others combat this strange, plant-like monster.

When it was defeated, it released this strange...dust. You were the only one who got a lot of it in your system, but after being examined by what felt like a million doctors, you were cleared.

You walked home, to the apartment you shared with Wade after he moved out of Al’s. The old woman had a second stroke and passed away in her sleep.

Wade’s name was alone on the lease, but you paid half of the rent and bills in exchange for the spare room.

“Saw you on the news today,” he tells you as you enter.

“Mmhmm,” you acknowledge.

“That plant monster thing was pretty wild,” Wade remarks. “You okay?”

“Yeah, breathed in some funky dust but all the doctors cleared me,” you tell him. You did still feel a little off, but that could be nerves. “I’m gonna shower.”

“Don’t use up all the hot water,” he warns.

“Oh, and what are you gonna do if I do? Ground me?” You laugh, closing the bathroom door behind you and undressing. You get in the shower and let the warm water cascade down your body. It unwinds your tension a little bit, but you can think of other ways to help with that. After you’re all cleaned up, a hand finds its way down south.

You have very little time to steady yourself once you’re finished, as the man you thought about yells: “Y/N! Water!”

You get out, drying off and wrapping your towel around yourself before making your way to your room.

Wade wolf-whistles.

“Shut up!” You laugh it off, but you’re disappointed at the reminder that he’d never really like you, not like that.

In the living room, he thinks about you. He hasn’t known you long enough that it would be outright wrong to be into you… But he has known you long enough to where it’s a little weird, especially considering your age.

But that, devastatingly enough, is part of the allure.

He always wants what he can’t, what he shouldn’t have.

You don’t come back out of your room, which worries him. Had the flirtatious tinge of you two’s recent conversations made you uncomfortable?

He knocks on the door.

“What’s up?”

“Are you okay?” He asks.

“Y-yeah, fine..” you reply. Uh oh. Since you got off in the shower, you couldn’t stop masturbating. Literally. Every time you try to pry your hand off, you feel a strange kind of pain.

You needed it, and like an itch that you’d wake up in the middle of the night scratching, even when you weren’t supposed to be, your hands just did it of their own volition.

Waves of pleasure shoot through you, even though you’re not to your third orgasm yet. Yeah, you’d had your second only a little while after you’d gotten into your room.

“Y/N!”

“What?” you choke out.

“I’ve been calling your name. What the hell is going on?!” He asks, and you know he’s worried, but you’re so lost.

“I- I think that dust did something to me,” you realize. “Don’t worry, I’ll be over it. Just don’t feel so- Ah! Good.” You’d changed from clit to hole and curled your fingers.

He opens the door.

“I can’t stop,” you whimper, so embarrassed. You avert your gaze from him as if you can just pretend he’s not there. “I really can’t, my hand won’t- won’t move.”

A tent slowly rises in his pants. Why wouldn’t it? You’re fucking beautiful, even more so when you’re naked, legs spread and fingers desperately rubbing your clit. You look dazed and delicious.

Wade knows he shouldn’t take advantage, but the spark in your eyes at the sight of his hardness makes him want to.

“Help me, help me,” you beg breathily, a shaky whisper.

Your back arches, and your eyes roll back, but you’re right back to it.

“Y/N… You’re not in your right mind,” he reasons.

“Please, please.. Ah, Wade...” you moan out his name.

As an experiment, he pries your hand off of you, and you scream in pain, hot tears immediately rolling down. He’d thought maybe if you resisted the urge, you’d be brought out of the trance you were clearly in.

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes. That was some very un-sexy pain, and he only wanted sexy pain for you. Not now, but later sometime.

You’re still touching yourself as you move closer to him. You drop to your knees in front of him and look up at him, eyelashes fluttering.

“Please, can I?”

“You- I- We shouldn’t.”

“I want to, so bad. Please. I got off in the shower to the thought of you, y’know. Once I got off there, that’s when I couldn’t stop.”

“You thought of me?”

You nod, kissing his erection through his Hello Kitty pajama pants. They’re soft against your burning skin. You’re over-stimulated in the best way as you nuzzle his package. You’re close again, to your fourth now.

He pulls your head away.

“Y/N, I need you to promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“That you understand I don’t just see you as an object, I care about you, and-“

“I promise,” you cut him off, over-excited.

“And that you understand that I don’t think any less of you. At all. That I still respect you and want to be in your life no matter what happens when you get over this.”

You nod, smiling. “I promise.”

Wade pulls down his pants.

“You’re so big…” You say, eyes wide. You’d never done this, or, well, anything but kissing before. But you’d seen (and read, and listened to) enough porn to get the basic idea.

You take the head in your mouth before getting more. You gag quite a bit, but you want to get as much of him in your mouth as possible. You moan around him, bobbing your head up and down as fast as you can, almost hungrily. No, definitely hungrily.

“Y/N, I’m going to-“

You immediately pull your mouth off, and begin jacking him off.

“On my-“ you gasp, part in the pleasure you were still giving yourself, part in the need to breathe more due to holding your breath before. “Face.” Guys like that, right?

“I may have a good refractory period, honey, but I get the feeling even mine isn’t going to cut it.”

“That’s fine, I can take care of myself,” you tell him. “You’re so…” you moan as you orgasm, a sound somehow both filthy and pure that he wishes he could hear nothing but for the rest of his life as ribbons of his own orgasm splatter onto your face.

“What’s that? Three?” He asks, curious.

“Four, I came the second time before you came in,” you correct, allowing him to lead you to your bed, as you continue to touch yourself. He takes a tissue from the box on your bedside table and gently wipes your face clean with it, pressing a soft kiss to the tip of your nose. He liked being close to you. He was used to you seeing his face, so the thoughts of self-consciousness that typically plagued him when he was hooking up were almost no more.

“Cute,” he notes, because you’re blushing. He moves your hand, touching you with his less than a moment later, switching between curling his fingers inside you and rubbing your sensitive clit.

You roll your hips against his hand as he kisses your neck, sucking and biting at untouched skin. Marring it with beautiful bruises. Marring you, and he can’t get enough.

“Wade, Wade, Wade..” you repeat his name again and again, like it’s the only thought you’ve got. “I’m gonna- Gonna cum again.”

“Okay, baby,” he says, smoothing your hair back. You perk up at the nickname, he’ll have to remember that.

The way you look up at him drives him insane-er. So much adoration and trust alongside the dazed lust in your your eyes. It’s that that keeps him from feeling like a monster, from feeling like he was taking advantage of you.

“Thank you.. . For helping me...” you whisper, trembling as you cum for a fifth time. You feel his hardness return.

“Do you want to do, uh, this, or something else?”

You’d never done “this” before, and you wanted to, but Wade seemed to think you had and you didn’t want him to stop if he found out.

“I do,” you tell him, and he goes to get a condom, leaving you needy. You touch yourself, tears running at how sensitive you were. It was starting to hurt, even when you were touching yourself. Not to the same degree, but the same kind of pain. You gasp, your breaths shaky.

He comes back with the box.

“I get the feeling we might be here awhile,” he explains, and you nod.

“It’s starting to hurt like it did before but not as bad, I just need more, something, anything, I-“

He positions himself and rams into you. You immediately clutch at him, your arms around his neck and your legs around his waist as you whimper. It’s then Wade remembers something.

Peter had come over a week or so ago, and the two of you and gone into your room. Jealous, he’d listened in.

After some boring ass small talk, there was a bombshell:

“Y/N, what the heck?! You’re pregnant?!”

Wade was shocked.

“Huh?”

“Prenatal vitamins!”

“Yeah, they’re good for you whether you’re pregnant or not, especially your nails and hair. How stupid are you, Peter? You can’t get pregnant if you’ve never had sex.”

“Oh, baby..” He gets you to loosen your arms and looks down at you. “Why didn’t you remind me?”

You freeze up. “You- You know I..?”

He nods.

“I thought you would stop, and I need- I need-“

“I would never deny you,” Wade says, and he really means it. Even though he wishes you had been more honest, he understood that you weren’t completely in your right mind. You were desperate. “Is it okay to move?”

“Yeah,” you reply. He’s uncharacteristically silent, making you uneasy. “Talk to me.”

“You really want me to talk to you? Like, you’re specifically asking me to talk?” Wade is a bit stunned.

“Yes, you fucking- Ah!” He hits the exact right angle and you lose the ability to think. He continues to hit that spot, enjoying the noises you make and the way you throw your head back onto the pillow, back trying to arch but being restrained by his weight, his strength.

He moves a few fingers to touch your clit, and the grip of your legs around him gets tighter, to the point where he can barely move.

“Wade,” you whine, and he knows exactly what you’re saying at this point.

“Y/N,” he groans. “Fuck, you feel so fucking good.”

Your bare chest rises and falls as you pant, taking him in fasterharderfasterharderfasterharder until you come undone for the sixth time this evening, him following shortly after. He pulls out, and you hiss in pain.

“Let me kiss it better,” he offers, his stamina far better than yours as he pulls off the condom and ties it off before lowering himself so that he’s face to face with your abused heat that was still pulsing, still hungry for more. You were in so much pain.

“Wade, please..” you weep.

“Fuck, I forgot, I’m sorry.” And with that, his infamous mouth engulfs you, tongue tracing patterns on you before rubbing at your clit. His fingers dance from your mid-thigh to just above your hips, causing goosebumps to rise.

You moan sweetly, and Wade continues his ministrations, wishing he could tell you how perfect you look, how perfect you are. His little doll. Will broken, eyes glazed, letting him play with you however he wanted. So cute.

And the whiny, breathy little noises you made when you were going to cum, those were his favorite. He’d be hearing those in the back of his mind for a very long time. Hopefully he’d be hearing them in person for a very long time, too.

Your legs give out, and you’re cumming again, that’s seven times. Your eyelids feel heavy. Wade can see you’re tired.

“You gotta go pee,” he tells you. “Cranberry juice isn’t exactly cheap.” You go to get off the bed, but you can’t walk much, your legs hurt. You’re still insanely horny, but the unnatural desire and the pain it comes with is partially quelled. Hurts like hell, but you’ll be able to sleep through it now.

Wade scoops you up, taking you to the bathroom and standing outside. Once you’re done and cleaned up, he helps you back to bed, offering you his shirt so you don’t get too cold.

“Stay,” you insist.

“You want me to?”

You nod, and he slides next to you. You relax despite your back being to him, enjoying the closeness. You sleep.

-

When you wake up, he’s gone, and you’re in intense pain again.

This is getting frustrating, and that frustration adds to the overwhelming emotional and physical stimuli that has been giving you problems since yesterday. You begin to cry, hard.

It hurts so bad, and Wade has disappeared because he regrets sleeping with you, and your feet are hot, and you want to be touched so bad you think that the feel of a single finger that wasn’t your own against your skin would make you cum.

“Baby?” He’s in your doorframe. “Oh, no, I was gonna surprise you with breakfast. I’m not going anywhere.”  

“Need it, need you so bad.” Tears are running down your face.

Wade comes in and you’re lax as he kisses your neck.

“Do you want to try something?” He asks, struck with an idea.

“S-sure…” you agree, and Wade leaves the room for a moment before bringing back a simple plastic tote.

He opens it, and digs around, pulling out a strip of cloth.

“Can I blindfold you?”

You nod in agreement. You’d try anything, especially if he wanted it.

After doing this, he begins to finger you.

“More,” you implore. So, he gets a condom out, and fucks into you. You wince, still bruised from yesterday, but the pleasure outweighs the pain. You cum, and he continues to fuck you for a little while longer, until it’s time for his release.

The blindfold added to the helplessness of the situation in a rather positive way.

“Can I try something else?” Wade offers.

“Whatever you want,” you reply.

“Get my permission to cum before you do.”

“O-okay..” You say, your cheeks heating up.

“Ooh, baby, did I get you flustered?”

You don’t reply.

“Well?” He asks, suddenly his voice is quiet, and in your ear.

“Y-yes.”

“I want to use a vibrator on you, can I?” He asks. He keeps his sex toys in the tote, you realize.

“Mmhmm..” you agree, waiting nervously. You hear buzzing. It’s on a low setting, you can tell, as the bullet-sized thing touches you. Wade’s fingers slip into your orgasm-slick heat, and at a pretty constant rate, Wade turns up the intensity.

You’re right on the edge when you remember to ask.

“What’s in it for me?” he replies, and there’s the asshole you know and love.

“Wade, please.”

“Doesn’t sound like a reason to let you cum.”

“I’ll suck you off. With the blindfold on… And my arms tied behind my back.”

“Before you cum?”

“Yeah, sure, fine,” you agree.

“You’re so cute. Do I get to keep your arms tied?” He asks.

“Anything you want.”

“Anything? Baby, you’re so cute. How about you just suck me off, and leave the blindfold on and the vibrator in? We’ll do bondage later,” he promises.

“Okay.” You tremble, holding your orgasm back as Wade sits on the bed, guiding your mouth to his cock, which was very hard. He was enjoying playing with his new toy. So lax and trusting, getting pleasure from doing whatever he wanted you to do.

You take it in your mouth, bobbing up and down like you did yesterday, but slower. You’re blindfolded, blowing him, and you’re wearing his tee shirt, nothing else. Fucking hot. He loves it.

You pull off for a moment.

“Fuck my face,” you say, and hear a soft gasp.

“You really are something,” he tells you, hooking his fingers into your hair and forcing your mouth down hard, thrusting in. It’s pleasurable for you, too, and you moan around him, allowing yourself to feel the vibrator a little more instead of shutting it out to avoid cumming.

He keeps lifting his hips, and you’re lost and home at the same time. In the dark with an aching jaw and sparks of electricity dancing on your skin, wishing you could cum.

Speaking of cum... His fills your mouth.

“Swallow it,” he demands, and you comply.

“C-can I cum now?” You request, sitting up. 

“Of course,” he replies, and after a few moments of holding the vibrator to your clit and rocking back and forth, the feeling cuts through you like a katana, leaving you gasping and moaning. “You are so cute. Ask every time, because this was amazing. Just yesterday you were a virgin. Today you’re my slut. I love it.”

You tremble excitedly at the term, especially combined with “my.”

“Do you like that, baby? When I call you mine? My little slut? My fucking-”

You nod, his hand gently holding your neck as if we was about to choke you.

Wade rubs your ridiculously wet cunt again, middle finger rubbing your clit before teasing at your hole as his hand goes up and down. You give a whiny sigh, gripping his biceps as he fingers you. But then, your phone rings. It’s Tony, You look at Wade with begging eyes, imploring him to take care of it for you. 

“Touch yourself. I’ll be back.”

“Hello?” He answers the phone as he exits the room, putting it on speaker so that you can hear them but they can’t hear you.

“Is Y/N okay?” Tony asks.

“Why?”

“Bruce inhaled a sample of that pollen that she got in her system, and it had some… Interesting side effects,” Tony explains.

“Oh, that. How do we fix that?” He requests the solution to your problem, because he’s not completely selfish.

“Well, with Bruce, we had to wait it out. Y/N might have to just wait longer. Is she in any pain? Towards the end she might be.”

“She’s been in pain since the beginning,” Wade informs him.

“Oh,” Tony replies. “Did you help her?”

“I don’t like that question. Goodbye.”

Wade goes back to you, and you’re very obviously bashful, to the point where he can tell even with the blindfold on you..

“Did you cum?” He asks.

“Y-you were on the phone, and-“

“Did you?” He repeats himself, trying to sound stern.

You duck your head. “Yes,” you quietly admit.

“Oh, baby, I can’t even pretend to be upset. I know you can’t help it, not right now. You get a free pass.”

“Can I ride you?” You ask brightly, and the crudeness of the inquiry combined with the innocence of your voice excites him too goddamn much.

“Of course,” he responds, sitting back down on your bed. “Though, I think, after, we should go to my bed. It’s bigger and cushier. Fit for a princess.”

You suck on your fingers, wetting them with saliva before your hand his led to Wade’s cock and you stroke him to full hardness. After that, he puts the condom on and you’re ready to go.

“Are you sure you were a virgin before me?”

“Thank the Internet, Wade,” you inform him, before slowly lowering yourself onto him with guidance. His dick goes deeper from this angle, and you adjust to it before lifting yourself up and slamming back down with a quiet whine of: “Fuck...”

“Let me help, baby.” He puts his strong, calloused hands on the soft flesh of your hips, pulling up and pushing down. You rock back and forth while going up and down, until you find the spot that’s just right and fuck yourself at that angle hard and fast.

“Y/N, I’m gonna-“

“No, no, I need.. More, please, longer..” You whine.

“So demanding.” But he does his best to hold off, to give you what you want. It pays off.

“Can I cum?”

“Yes, honey.” You bury your face into his shoulder and shake. He holds you, cumming too.

“I just want this to be over,” you admit. “It feels good, but I- I hurt so bad.” Tears roll down from behind your blindfold, and he takes it off, looking into your beautiful eyes.

“Hey, how about we just use toys from now on? Tony was who was on the phone earlier, and he said that it happened to Bruce too and all we can do is wait it out. I can use vibrators and stuff on you. They’re all sanitized and everything. I know you’re tired, baby.”

You nod, and he scoops you up, taking you to his room as promised. The bed is taller, and you can feel that there’s a memory foam pad on top as you sink in a little. His bed really was fit for a princess. Wade goes back for the tub, bringing it in and choosing a different vibrator. He puts it on the highest setting and just holds it for you, listening to the desperate, pleasured noises you make like they’re music.

You ask if you can cum.

“No need to ask anymore, the point of this is so that you’re not in pain, honey.”

Your eyes roll back.

“You’re so fucking beautiful when you’re getting off, you know that?”

You moan, high.

“Ooh, do you like it when I get raunchy?”

You nod.

“So many things I wanna try. Taking you from behind and listening as you moan into the pillow. Phone sex when I’m on jobs. Mutual masturbation in general just sounds nice. Tying you up. Gagging you, both with a gag and with my cock.”

Wade angles the vibrator different ways as your hips roll around. You’re beautiful to him, sunlight streaming through the blinds onto your smooth skin. Skin so different from his own.

He kisses said skin on your thighs as he continues to take you to another orgasm.

Your back arches again, and you gasp, like you’ve been underwater for too long.

-

The day felt long and short, taking pee breaks every once in awhile. You fall asleep early, and when you wake up, you feel normal.

You’re worried he’s completely gone, but he’s sitting on the rocking chair in the corner. It was Al’s, and he liked to sit on it and polish his guns. However, unlike usual, he was still. Just… watching. It had to be late at night or early in the morning. How long had he been like this?

He goes to the tote.

“No! I mean, I feel normal. I mean, a bit achy after that non-stop sex, but.. Normal. Thank you, Wade.”

He dashes toward you, taking your face in your hands and kissing you.

You respond, allowing his hands to drift down to your waist, your hands now on his face. He pulls away, searching your eyes for something.

“I was so scared you wouldn’t feel the same way, after all that. I- I took advantage of you...”

“No, no, I asked you to help me and you did. Thank you, again, Wade. I don’t know what I’d do without such an amazing...dot-dot-dot?”

“Boyfriend. Soulmate. Future Husband.”

You giggle at his answer, or, answers.

“Let’s cuddle, Boyfriend.”

[megalony]

Sweetheart- Part 11

Another part of my latest bodyguard! Ben Hardy fic which I hope everyone is enjoying so far. This is some fluff after all the angst I’ve been writing.

Taglist: @lunaticspoem @butlegendsneverdie @langdonzvoid @jennyggggrrr @rogmeddows @radiob-l-a-hblah @rogertaylorsbitontheside @chlobo6 @rogertaylors-lipgloss @sj-thefan @omgitsearly @luckytrashgooprebel @scarsout @deaky-with-a-c @killer-queen-ofrhye @bluutac @vousmemanqueez @jonesyaddiction

Series taglist: @anikatcmh @sillyscissorsnerdsoul

Series masterlist

Enjoy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Running a hand through her slightly knotted hair, (Y/n) brushed it from her features as she closed her eyes for a few seconds. Relishing in the numbness that had been coursing through her since last night. It felt so much better to feel nothing at all like this than to feel every nerve splitting at once.

She had felt more awake last night and earlier this morning as her system got used to the morphine that had knocked her out. Now she was beginning to get fidgety waiting for Ben to come back. He had gone back to the flat this morning but said he wouldn't be long. She was waiting for him to come back in so they could go and see Goldie bit (Y/n) was beginning to get the urge to just go and find Goldie on her own. She was desperate because it had almost been a full day since Goldie was born and she was still yet to set her eyes onto the newborn.

Tipping her head down, (Y/n) dared to pull up the hem of her shirt to reveal her stitches. (Y/n) hadn't seen the extent of the stitches nor had she seen the bruises that had felt so bad last night. She had seen the cuts and beginnings of bruises on her knuckles of her right hand from where she had done her best to punch John and they weren't nearly as bad as they had seemed yesterday.

Pulling up her shirt, (Y/n) tilted her head down to look at her stomach, her breath becoming trapped in her lungs at the sight she was faced with. There was a cut in her skin going from one hip to the other which was tied together with little individual black stitches. Her skin was blotched with patches of red around the stitches but her lower stomach and right side were worse. It was like an array of colours splashed onto her skin, there were different shades of crimson ranging from light to angry fire red. There were beginnings of deep purple and some that looked lighter and faded into blue. They stretched across her lower stomach near the stitches and crept up her right side around her lower ribs.

(Y/n) wasn't sure how long she seemed to have been mesmerised by the array of colours tainting her like bad memories plaguing her mind but they seemed entrancing. They stole her attention and made her feel shivers at the reasons why they were there.

She had bruises because her brother thought she deserved them and somehow, maybe she did because she had brought about the trial in the first place. He hurt her because he wanted to show her where her place was in the family and in society. She was beneath them and she had to know that she was meant to bow down to their demands. But they had hurt her when she had already accepted this, they had hurt her for no reason and they had put Goldie in danger because they thought it was fun.

She had a scar littering her stomach because Goldie had been in danger and needed saving. It was there to show that the pain had been excruciating and it had made everything worse.

(Y/n) couldn't let them get away with what they had done to Goldie because it wasn't fair. Her brother didn't care. He would have still hurt them both if (Y/n) had proof that she wasn't going to trial. If she had signed the papers she would still have gotten kicked and pushed around. She would still have gone into labour early because she held the power.

Her brother was simply trying to steal back that power because it would destroy him if it was not in his hands. How could (Y/n) give it back to him now?

Tilting her head up quickly, (Y/n) locked eyes with Ben as she let go of her shirt so it fell down again. Her jaw jutting forward and back as her teeth scraped together, her eyes drifting down to her hands. The marks on her skin just made it real, they made it feel worse and showed what her family was capable of doing to try and preserve themselves and their lives.

"Does it hurt?" Ben questioned quietly as he walked into the room, his head nodding towards her stomach. He only caught a glimpse of the damage but it looked like it would be a killer if she were not on the morphine but that didn't mean she didn't feel some pain.

"No, don't feel anything." The small smile on her lips showed Ben that it was a good thing that everything felt numb and like she was floating.

He nodded back, a look of relief on his features because he wouldn't know what to do if she said it did hurt. They couldn't give her any more medication than she was on already and he was only able to hold her and talk to her which yesterday proved wasn't the best remedy for physical pain. He perched himself down on the side of the bed as (Y/n) slowly swung her legs over the edge of the bed, turning her head to look at him.

"Can we go see her now?"

Ben couldn't help but smile because he knew it wasn't really a question or request, it was more of a sugar-coated demand. (Y/n) wasn't waiting any longer because she wasn't drifting in and out of consciousness now, she was awake and rearing to see what their girl looked like. To see how pretty she was, how small she looked and check she was really okay.

"Of course. Are you okay to walk?" Pushing himself to his feet, Ben turned so he was standing in front of her. Holding his hands out for her to take so he could help her stand to her feet. (Y/n) didn't know if walking was going to make her feel unsettled or hurt or disrupt her stitches or bruises but she was going to try. She really didn't want a wheelchair when she didn't need one, she wanted to see Goldie and no amount of discomfort was going to stop her. Nothing would compare to the pain she endured yesterday and that had made her pain tolerance increase.

(Y/n) had to admit that it felt weird.

She'd been getting used to the extra weight and the feeling that she was always leaning forward just that little bit more whilst pregnant but now the extra weight was lifted. She could stand straight and not feel the need to lean down or feel a building pressure.

There was a little discomfort as they walked out of the room like her stomach was still cut up and trying to patch itself back together again. The numbness made it feel uncomfortable but it wasn't pain, it was the discomfort that happened when your mouth was numbed at the dentist and it made your lips feel like they were swelling. Her stitches were discomforting when she pulled her stomach in when taking a sharp breath and her stomach somehow felt empty and loose but it wasn't painful and that was all (Y/n) cared about.

It was only a short walk down the corridor and then turning left onto the neo-natal part of the maternity ward.

Unravelling his arm from around her waist, Ben slipped his hand into her own as he guided her into a room on their left. He had been back and forth down these corridors all night and morning, he had this ward mapped out in his head to make sure he didn't get lost when switching between his girls. Weaving around the other incubators set up in the room, Ben felt (Y/n)'s head pressing into his arm as he guided her to the back of the room where Goldie was.

"Ready?" Ben whispered, thankful the other parents weren't visiting their newborn's yet. (Y/n) looked up at Ben, the debate on her features as she felt conflicted. She wanted to see Goldie so badly but at the same time, she felt swamped with a sense of sadness that they couldn't hold her. They couldn't cradle her in their arms or feed her because she was here too early.

With a deep breath, (Y/n) nodded, her eyes scanning around Ben as he tugged her over to one of the incubators. Letting go of her hand as he moved so he was standing behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders as he tipped his head down to kiss the top of her head.

"Here she is." (Y/n) almost didn't hear the words as her gaze became transfixed on the newborn.

Small was an understatement, she was tiny. She looked like she would break or fall to pieces if not handled with extreme care. Her nose was so small and slightly curved at the end, her ears were small, her eyes closed so (Y/n) couldn't tell what colour they were yet. Her hand didn't look too much bigger than (Y/n)'s finger as her hands were balled into small fists, one resting up by the side of her head.

There was a small tube taped to her nose which (Y/n) guessed was for oxygen, there were two circular stickers on her chest that looked like they were checking her heart. She had a tube in her stomach that was for food, an IV drip taped to her left elbow and the incubator was keeping her warm. It was a makeshift womb because she wasn't able to help herself yet.

"She will be okay, won't she?" (Y/n) couldn't tear her eyes away from Goldie who seemed to have captured her full attention without doing anything. She couldn't help but think that Goldie wasn't okay like this, she wasn't being fed in the proper way, she wasn't breathing on her own, she was stuck to wires and tubes that were doing everything for her and that showed she wasn't okay. She couldn't do anything for herself except move her limbs around. She obviously couldn't even produce much heat because the incubator was doing that for her too.

And she was so tiny.

"She's just over a month early, there are other babies here who were two months early and they're fine, sweetheart. There's nothing to say she won't be perfectly fine."

There were babies in this room that were miraculously smaller than Goldie was and there were others that were just fine after being born at seven months. Goldie had a big chance of being perfectly healthy because she was being helped and cared for. She wasn't struggling in any way, her lungs were small but she was being helped by the ventilator, she was taking food fine by the tube in her stomach and she wasn't ill or had any infections at all.

"They're going to give her steroids soon to try and make her lungs develop quicker so she can breathe on her own soon." Her lungs were a bit underdeveloped so they had decided to give her some steroids to improve their growth quicker so she would be able to breathe without the ventilator.

Ben pressed his lips to the top of her head again as his hands smoothed over her shoulders. His eyes focused on Goldie who looked to be fast asleep but she was moving every now and then, her arms moving to the sides a little as her head slowly turned to the side. He had watched over her most of last night whilst (Y/n) was asleep and it helped to calm down his mind because every time the nurse checked on her she was fine. She responded to the medication and the food and the ventilator. There were no signs to say she was ill, she was getting better.

Moving his hands, Ben wrapped his left arm gently around (Y/n)'s waist, taking her hand with his other. He let his fingers skim over the back of her hand, his fingertips grazing against her fingers as he gently moved her hand from resting on the incubator.

(Y/n) tilted her head up to look at him but he just tipped his head to look down at Goldie. Looking back at her, (Y/n) watched as Ben gently guided their hands into the circular opening in the incubator. Her breath became caught in her throat when Ben gently rested her hand over Goldie's before letting go, placing his own hand over Goldie's chest and stomach. Rubbing gently over her skin as he felt his heart calming down at the contact.

Biting her lip, (Y/n) tried to stop the shaking in her hand as she brushed her fingers over Goldie's cheek, almost choking when Goldie nudged her head into the touch as if she knew it was her mother. Ben pressed his chest into her back, leaning his head into her neck when tears started to fall from her eyes as Goldie's tiny fingers curled around her index finger. Adrenaline sparked to life in her system as she brushed her thumb over the back of Goldie's hand.

"Chocolate eyes." (Y/n) whispered quietly, a sense of wonder to her voice when Goldie finally opened her eyes that danced around in slow circles, adjusting to the light in the room.

Her eyes were a mix between light and brown, like chocolate being mixed with milk. They were very capturing but seconds later the colour disappeared again showing she was tired. There wasn't much for Goldie to do, she was being fed automatically the same as her breathing and she was only just born. She just had sleeping or crying as options and she must have been in shock when she was born.

"I want to hold her." (Y/n) moved her free hand, resting it over Ben's that was around her waist. Her arms now itching and shaking with the desire to reach out and take Goldie into her arms. She wanted to pick her up and see how she fit into her arms, it was clear she wouldn't even span the length of her arm and (Y/n) wondered how small she would look in Ben's arms. He had muscle and he was tall and built, she would look so fragile and tiny in his arms.

"It itches, doesn't it? Shaking to stop from picking her up." Ben spoke the words quietly as he continued to rub his hand over Goldie's stomach.

It was like a desire to just move everything from Goldie and pick her up, to cradle her close and just wish that skin on skin contact would heal everything that was wrong with her. To hope that they could just love her enough that she would be okay. But it wasn't going to work like that, they had to push back the desire and wait it out. To watch like a hawk until they were able to take her into their arms.

(Y/n) continued to brush her thumb over the back of Goldie's tiny hand that felt smooth as silk.

That desire to hold her was like fuel to a growing flame that was flickering and spreading inside (Y/n). It was taking over everything to the point she felt like she was being put under a trance. She wanted to hold her baby but she had been denied that wish because her brother had hurt them all. He thought it was okay to try and endanger and kill Goldie, he thought it was fine that he snatched the ability from both (Y/n) and Ben to hold their baby.

Her brother thought that it didn't matter that for the foreseeable future, the couple couldn't hold their baby which was what they desperately wanted. It was important to have that contact but all they got was to hold her hand because she was too ill. They couldn't have that contact with her and Goldie didn't know who they were, she could think they were just a stranger or a nurse trying to help her. She didn't know that they were her parents and that hurt more than anything.

There was no way that (Y/n) could let them get away with this because Goldie was stable now but that could change. Something could happen to Goldie at any minute, she could not respond well to the steroids, she could have some sort of reaction or take a turn for the worst. If anything were to happen to her (Y/n)'s heart would shatter. She had to get her brother back for what he had done.

She never signed the forms to withdraw her statement at the police station and she had never been more thankful for not doing something because she was going to trial the day after tomorrow. Her brother was not getting away with taking something from them because he could have taken so much more if yesterday had gone worse.

"You were right, she's beautiful." (Y/n) rubbed her hand against Goldie's cheek, realising that Ben had been right when he said she was beautiful, she was breathtaking. Which was why (Y/n) had to go to trial, her brother almost stole her beauty from them.

He couldn't get away with that.

[redhairdontcare732]

SweetPea x Reader: Riot Night from Hell, Part 1

Author's Note: This one shot will be split into two parts. I just fell in love with this storyline, and the finished product turned out to be way longer than I had anticipated. There will be flashbacks interwoven throughout the story, and they're distinguished by the use of italics.

On another note, if you are enjoying my fics, please do me a solid and either favorite or comment on them so I know that someone (other than me) is interested in them. I'm a new writer, and even the simplest comment, like, or even private message would mean so much for my budding confidence!

Reader POV:

    As I stood on the roof of Pop's, I internally questioned how my life had turned so far sideways in the course of just one day. Riverdale was in complete fucking chaos. My best friend was just shot and I had no idea if he was alive or dead, I had no clue where my boyfriend was, and the cherry on the top of this nightmarish day was that I was now stuck at Pop’s Diner, of all fucking places, with Archie Andrews, of all goddamned people, while Ghoulies patrolled the exterior, screaming my name. So on my list of top days, this was at the literal bottom.

The day had started out decently, I was with Sweets all day preparing for what would happen once Fangs was finally released. Sweet Pea and I had been dating for almost 5 years now, and we'd both spent the day doing everything we could to get our friend out of jail. Thing had really gotten fucked up when we went to the sheriff's office to escort Fangs out in one piece. I shivered internally as I recalled the events of today.

“IN UNITY THERE IS STRENGTH”, we shouted in unison, locking arms shoulder to shoulder. Everyone pulled away as we mentally prepared ourselves to usher Fangs out of the jail amongst the vengeful protestors. Sweet Pea was the only one who didn't pull away from me; rather, he pulled me closer into his arms and I naturally fell into his broad chest; I took a deep inhale of his familiar, comforting scent of worn leather,  light cologne, and fresh soap. My hands found their way to the inside of his serpent jacket, hugging myself closer to him and shivering. Though it wasn't cold in the Sheriff's office I had these ominous chills that had racked my body ever since we'd entered. His thumbs brushed gently against the exposed skin between my ripped jeans and my white t shirt, soothing me in a way I didn't even know I needed. I sighed in contentment, briefly pulled from the swirl of anxious, dark thoughts that had plagued my mind since Fangs was arrested.

“I'm not gonna lie Y/N/N, I get why you have to come out with us, but I'm not thrilled with the idea of you out there with all those insane Northside assholes babydoll”, he murmured into my hair after a few moments. I chuckled lightly against him, tightening my arms around the handsome boy in reassurance.

“I'm not exactly thrilled that you are either Pea, but we both know that we aren't about to let Fangs go through this alone”, I replied quietly. Sweets pulled back slightly, bringing his large hands to rest against the sides of my face. His rough thumbs rubbed delicately across my cheek as he stared deeply into my eyes; I knew in that moment just how scared Pea really was. In times of stress Sweet Pea had the habit of taking my face into his hands, gently cradling my cheeks with the pads of his fingers and his eyes boring deeply into mine. I'd never really given it much thought at first; Sweets had done this since we were kids, and eventually when I pressed about it he had told me that he felt like he just ‘needed to know I was safe’. It somehow comforted him when he was able to see with his own eyes and feel with his own hands that I was indeed still with him. I brought my hands up to cover his gently. We stood like this for an indiscernible amount of time until he sighed in resolve. He brought my face closer to his with his hands and kissed me deeply. Normally, despite his tough exterior, Pea gave the sweetest kisses. His lips, though plump and rough were typically gentle and teasing against mine; Sweets preferred to initiate soft kisses until I moaned or deepened things myself. I think he began this habit when we were young and first together because he was nervous about my reciprocation, but he continues now because he just loved to watch the reaction he still had on me. And while the soft way Pea usually kissed me was one of my favorite things about him, I was surprised to find this kiss was very different. His lips were immediately needy against mine, tongue entering my mouth without warning. It was a kiss of desperation, of longing. Our mouths danced together as we both poured all of the emotions that our voices could not do justice to into our embrace. I was just as needy as him, but before too long we pulled back, foreheads resting against one another's. With one last peck to his swollen lips I nodded in resolve.  Sweet Pea laced his warm fingers through mine, fitting together like pieces in a puzzle, and we headed out to the fray, hands locking us together.

I recalled how I’d gotten separated from the rest of the young serpents after Fangs was shot all because of the protesters and general pandemonium of it all. I had desperately searched amongst the crowd for the sight of the tall boy to no avail. My phone was dead, so I'd decided to search elsewhere. I ended up hopping on my bike and heading to the hospital, hoping to God that Sweets and Fangs would both be there and be okay. Adding to my growing fear and unease, it was only FP I found there, who broke the news that Fangs was in surgery.

“It's...ah... it's pretty bad kid”, FP drawled out while rubbing the back of his neck in nervousness. I felt my heart drop into the bottom of my feet. My eyes teared up at the prospect of losing my best friend. Fangs was so sweet and goofy; he should have never been in this position in the first place. My mind was flooded with picture perfect memories of summer days spent by the Quarry and late nights in Pea's trailer, surrounded by Fangs’ contagious laugh and ridiculous jokes. These memories ended abruptly as I recalled the way he'd slowly fallen to the ground, the red spot on his stomach spreading achingly fast. I remembered the sound of the gun above the screaming protestors. But most of all, I remembered Fangs’ face as he fell-- his soft features riddled with disbelief and pain as he slowly lost consciousness. He didn't deserve to go through this, and my heart felt like it was breaking into pieces because there was nothing I could do to help him. I wiped my tears with the sleeve of my shirt and steadied myself; with a deep breath, I reminded myself of my main goal at the moment. I needed to find Pea.

Despite FP’s best efforts towards the contrary, I'd left the hospital to try and find Sweet Pea. I knew that the whole town was in the middle of a full-on, apocalyptic riot, but I was determined to reconnect with my boyfriend and ensure that he was okay. Or as okay as he could be in this scenario, I guess. Knowing him for as long as I had, I knew that he was more likely than not spirling at the prospect of losing his best friend. And when Sweets spiraled, he spiraled hard and with violence. I was the only one with any chance of talking him off the ledge before he did something that he would regret later, and, honestly, I had also wanted to find him for completely selfish reasons. Even now, as I stood on the roof of our favorite diner, I desperately needed my boyfriend’s strong arms wrapped around me, his comforting scent surrounding me, and his deep voice in my ear telling me that everything was going to be okay.

So, I'd fought my way through Riverdale on my motorcycle, Mad Max style, trying to search anywhere I thought Sweets might be. I ended up at Pop's, hoping that either Pea would be there or Jughead would be and would know where he was. Pop's was an extremely important spot in our relationship; it was where he asked me out on our first date when we were 11 years old, it's where we shared our first kiss at 13, and it was in one of the booths near the back where Sweet Pea had told me he loved me for the first time. To this day the neon glow of Pop's never failed to make me happy or to give me hope.

However, the neon sign seemed dull and lifeless as I found, to my utter disappointment, he was not there. But not long after I showed up, Penny fucking Peabody and the Ghoulies arrived.

I was sitting with my head in my hands, having just been informed by Pop Tate that he hadn't seen Sweet Pea all day. The older man had his hand on my shoulders comfortingly, attempting to sooth my increasing level of anxiety. I glanced up at the kind, wrinkled face of Pop Tate and asked tiredly,

“Pop, you think I could use your phone?”. He nodded and handed me the receiver.

“ ‘Course sweetie”.

I dialed the number I'd long since memorized, praying that Pea would answer. Who knows what kind if trouble he could be in out there? My anxiety only increased as the line went dead, signaling that he hadn't answered. I slammed the phone down in frustration, returning to my previous position. Not seconds after, a giant crash hit my ears, and I heard the taunting voices that could only belong to Malachi and his Ghoulies.

“Oh Y/NNNNNNN, come out and playyyyyy”, Penny Peabody's sickening voice called out in a sing-song manner. “You and I have unfinished business DollFace”.

Penny as and I had never been on the best of terms; it was her and her snake charming ways that had nearly gotten my father released from prison, a thought which terrified me to my very core. Thankfully, the court system recognized the grave danger that would place me in and decided on a maximum life sentence. I thought that was the end of Penny and me, but unfortunately Jughead had to go and get himself tangled up with her when FP was locked up. I had taken my pseudo-brother's place in the deal he made, and once he came up with the plan to get rid of Penny I was all too eager to help. I knew she hated me, but I really thought she was gone for good.

“Okay we should be fine as long as-”, Archie started.

Another thunderous crash echoed through the small diner as one of the windows shattered.

“EVERYBODY STAY AWAY FROM THE WINDOWS”, I ordered as the burglar alarm blared.

“STAY DOWN”, someone shouted.

I ducked behind the counter, finding Archie Andrews down there as well.

“Pop do you have as gun in here?”, he asked tensely. The old man's soft face dropped.

“No. Had my fill of gunfire in the war. But I did learn a trick in the riots of ‘79. I have some liquor left over from Mr. Lodge's poker night”, he said tensely. “And if you can get to the roof from the crawlspace…”,

“I like how you're thinking Pop”, Archie interrupted. I nodded and shared a knowing look with my unlikely Northside ally.

I'd helped Archie Andrews board up the windows, and that's how I now found myself on the roof of Pop's with the ginger, liquor bottles in hand ready to fight the clinically insane gang  below.

“Come on Y/N, you had to know that this moment was coming”, Penny shouted upwards at me, pulling me out of my trance. “It’s time to pay the price dollie”.

    Malachai laughed, swinging his bat around teasingly. I glowered in response, choosing to stay silent. I felt Archie’s strong hand on my shoulder, offering support that I didn’t expect from the ginger boy. We'd been somewhat close as kids (friends through Jughead, my honorary self-proclaimed twin brother) but we hadn't spoken in a year or so. I wasn't overly fond of him as of late, ever since he ditched Jug for his Bulldog buddies and especially not since he'd waved a gun in Sweet's face and started his stupid Red Circle.

    “Get the fuck out of here Penny, Y/N isn’t coming down and you’re not taking her any place”, he practically growled. I nodded.

    “Last chance Ghoulie scum. Leave, or suffer the consequences”, I spat. Penny and Malachai scoffed.

    “DO YOUR WORST! COME ON, HIT ME!”, Malachai shouted, a crazy look in his eye. Well, crazier than the usual insane look he wore. Steadying myself, I prepared the bottle. Lighting it quickly, I launched it as well as I could and managed to hit one of the ghoulies’ bikes dead on. The bike erupted in flames. This did nothing to faze the group below, and Archie lit his second bottle and prepared to throw it.

    Before he could chuck the bottle, the Sheriff’s cruiser came bursting into the fray of Ghoulies, sirens blaring. Sheriff Keller and Fred Andrews came out of the car, Keller with a shotgun. He shot his shotgun in the air in warning and the Ghoulies scattered.

    “This isn’t over Y/N!”, Malachai vowed as he ran away. I saw FP hop off his bike and demand that the rest of the Ghoulies leave. I smiled slightly in relief, and Archie and I shared a brief hug before heading back down into the restaurant.

Once we reached the bottom, I brought FP into a bone crushing hug as my way of thanks. He returned my affection, seeming like he needed the reassurance almost as much as I did in the moment. FP had always been there for me, especially since my own dad had gotten carted off to prison when I was 6. I'd stayed with the Jones’ on and off throughout my childhood, and it wasn't a stretch to say that FP was more of a father to me than my own. He was always there for me, and much like Sweet Pea he always tried to keep me from the less savory sides of life as Serpent. He pulled back from the hug to search my face for injuries. I rolled my eyes.

“You really think I'd let the discount Insane Clown Posse trash this beautiful mug?”, I joked half-seriously. FP rolled his eyes and glared.

“Seriously Y/N? What were you thinking taking on all those Ghoulies alone? You could've been fucking killed!”, he scolded. I scoffed.

“Okay first of all, I was not alone; our dear Archiekins was with me on the roof”, I said gesturing to the aforementioned boy who looked more like a wounded little puppy than anyone who'd just been tossing out Molotov cocktails had the right to. “Secondly, did it seem like I had many other options? And thirdly, I'm fine, so it couldn't have been that bad of a plan”, I sassed. FP sighed and ran a hand through his dark locks, eyes looking more tired than I knew he'd like to admit.

“Heard Sweet Pea is going insane looking for you Y/N; why the hell aren’t you answering your phone kid?”, he asked. I felt my heart flutter at the mention of my partner. My tough demeanor dropped instantly, and I grabbed FP’s arm.

“So he’s okay? Tell me he’s okay. My phone is dead; I'd tried calling on Pop's but he didn't answer. Where is he?”, I demanded. FP grabbed my arms gently.

“Whoa whoa slow down Y/NN. He’s fine, he’s good. He’s with Jug at the Wyrm”, he soothed. “Here, use my phone, call the boy and tell him you’re alright”.

I grabbed his phone eagerly, fingers swiftly dialing the number I knew by heart once again. My heart hammered in my chest as I heard the distinct ringing of the call being placed. I needed reassurance that my tall, dark haired other half was okay. With each ring of the phone my anxiety increased tenfold, until I heard the one thing I’d been searching for all night. That smooth, deep voice that could simultaneously calm me and send delicious tingles up my spine all at once. My mind flooded with the low rumbling chuckles and sweet sounds that comforted me as I laid on his chest in more tender moments, heart signaling sweet reassurances into my ears with each beat. My favorite sound in the world, Sweet Pea's voice

“Hello? FP, what’s up?”, I heard Sweet's soothing bass answer. Even though he sounded tense, panicked even, I couldn't help but feel elated that he was safe and able to speak to me at all. I sighed in complete relief.

“Pea? It’s me”, I answered quickly.

“Y/N/N? Oh my god are you okay? Where are you? Why aren’t you answering your phone?”, he questioned in a state of near panic.

“Sweets, it's okay, I’m okay. My phone is dead, and I’m at Pop’s with FP looking for you”, I breathed. “Are you okay? What happened to you after the Sheriff’s station?”.

“It’s a long story babydoll, I’ll tell you later. Where did you say you were? Stay there I’m coming to get you”, he replied. I shook my head before realizing that he couldn’t see me.

“No, Pea it’s not safe out there right now, and honestly it’s not safe here either. I’ll go with FP back to the Wyrm and meet you there”, I reasoned. He was silent for a beat, contemplating my words. I heard shuffling on the other line.

“Sweetheart, I know it’s not safe, that’s why I don’t want you out there”, he murmured. I could tell that he’d moved away from the other serpents; his sweet side was coming out and he probably didn’t want them to hear. “I just... I need you with me. I need to see you, hold you in my arms and know that you’re okay”.

My heart lurched at his protectiveness, warmth flooding my body at his tender words. I could practically picture his face, eyes cast downward and deep brown irises swimming with that look that he had always saved just for me. His chiseled jaw was probably locked, twitching with unease. If I were there I would run my fingers up and down his cheeks in an attempt to sooth the tense muscles, loving the way he relaxed and leaned into my touch.

“Sweets, I know. Believe me love, I want you safe just as much, but I promise I’ll make it over to you before you know it. The Wyrm is a hell of a lot safer than Pop’s at the moment, and besides I’ve been Mad Maxing my way through this nightmare of a town all night. I've got this”, I stated confidently. No matter how protective Pea could be, I was not some damsel in distress that needed his saving. There was no way on this Earth that I was going to let him go out into the riot that I’d been facing all night. He thought he could be protective but his fierceness had nothing on mine. He sighed and the line went silent for what felt like forever as I waited for his response.

“I love you”, he vowed finally.

“I love you more handsome. And I'm going to see you very soon”, I assured before we both ended the call. I turned to FP, handing him his phone.

“You down to help me get to the Wyrm?”, I asked. He nodded.

“Of course kid. You ready to ride on the back of my bike like you did when you were a tot?”, he grinned. I smiled in nostalgia for a moment, my mind wandering back to the simpler times of my life when FP would take me for rides on his bike to help me escape from the realities of my homelife, if only for a moment. I remembered fondly the day when he finally taught me how to drive my own bike that he gifted me. He always helped me take care of her, and some of my only true family memories were of Jug, FP, and I fixing up our bikes together. Surely he didn't think there was any way that I was going to leave her here in the midst of this shitshow.

“You're kidding”, I deadpanned. There was no way FP was for real.

“Dead serious kiddo. You need a way to get around, and I don't want you roaming the Southside alone even if Sweet Pea or Jug are with you”, he replied. I marvelled at the motorbike in front of us, tracing the chrome detailing with the tips of my fingers gently. I felt tears well up in my eyes and I rushed forward and enveloped him in a tight hug.

“Thank you”, I whispered. FP hugged me back briefly before affectionately mussing up my hair.

“Don't thank me yet kiddo, she still needs a ton of work. If you're up for it I mean”, he countered. I smiled my truest, widest smile.

“I'm in”.

“Think she needs a name don't you?”, he continued, heading over to the bike with his tools.

“Mhm”, I agreed, grabbing a tool out of the box and crouching down alongside him.

“She looks like a Norma to me”, I mused.

“Norma huh?”, he answered, not looking as I grabbed a tool from the box and began working.

“Yeah, Norma Jean”.

“I’m not leaving Norma Jean out here in this fucking dumpster fire of a town”, I countered. “I’ll just follow behind you”.

“That’s not a great idea kid”, he grumbled. “Riverdale is a hellhole on the best of days, and this is clearly not the best of days”. I crossed my arms petulantly.

“I'm not leaving Norma Jean here”, I repeated stubbornly. He sighed and rubbed his stubble ridden chin in contemplation.

“Okay, but you stay on my ass the whole way”, he countered, pointing a finger at me. “I move, you move. I stop you stop. You got that kid?”. I raised my hand solemnly.

“Scouts honor”, I stated seriously. He nodded, and we headed out of Pop’s together to fire up our motorcycles and head out.

We were speeding through the trashed streets of Riverdale, swerving here or there to avoid the dangers that littered the town’s once clean roads. I stayed true to my word and stuck close to FP as we traversed the potential dangers. I did my best to follow him, but after some rioters ran out in front of Norma I was forced to skid to a stop in the middle of the street. Among the din of the riot, FP didn't hear and he continued on. I huffed and began to start Norma up again in attempt to follow once more. But as I revved the engine I felt a pain like none I'd ever felt on the back of my head and my entire world went dark.

Sweet Pea's POV:

“Where the hell are they? She should be here by now”, I practically growled. Jughead lifted his hands up as if in surrender.

“Don't look at me man. Knowing how protective dad is over Y/N, and  knowing how stubborn Y/N is, they're probably still fighting over how to get here. He's not gonna want her to ride alone, and she's not going to want to leave her bike”, he reasoned calmly. “Chill out Sweet Pea it's only been like 15 minutes, I'm sure they'll be here soon”, he continued before accepting a call and walking swiftly out of the bar to answer.

I blew air out of my mouth tensely, chest constricting tighter with each breath I took. While I knew that Jughead's words made sense, a larger more irrational part of me was still screaming that I needed to go out and find Y/N. My head was a swirl of rage and fear; my best friend was at some hospital fighting for his life, and the love of my life was out in this godforsaken nightmare of a town. There was nothing more I could do for Fangs, but I refused to stop until I knew my Y/N/N was safe. The only way I would be convinced that she was alright was if I got to hold her small frame in my arms. And to be perfectly truthful, I needed her warm body pressed against mine, her soft hair tickling my face, the sweet fragrance of her shampoo in my nose, and her melodic voice in my ear with gentle reassurances today more than ever. I needed her to keep me sane and grounded on the best of days, and this was sure as shit not the best of days. Ever since we were kids, long before I was ever lucky enough to call her mine, she'd been there to calm the ever-growing darkness that lived within me. Even once we got together I still needed her unique brand of tough love to set me straight at times.

“Pea stop!”, I heard her musical voice from behind me. I turned to see her comparatively shorter legs nearly running to keep up. I turned forward and continued on, ignoring the nagging urge to stop and listen to her.

“PEA I SWEAR TO FUCK-”, she shouted. I whipped around abruptly, stopping and standing nearly toe to toe with Y/N.

“Look, there's nothing you can say to change my mind Y/N. I'm not going back and that's it. Not everyone is cut out for this education shit, alright? I'll hit up Tall Boy, he's always got something lined up for me”, I practically snarled. I recoiled just the slightest bit at her stone cold face; her usually sweet features were scowling at me, adorable nose scrunched tight and dark eyebrows knitted together in concern and irritation. Y/N wasn't usually one to show when she was frustrated. No that was me; when I was angry everyone in a ten mile radius would know. I was like a wildfire, burning bright and scorching anything and everything in my path in a wave of red destruction. Her brand of anger was more like a blue flame, dark and understated, but more intense than you could imagine. My girlfriend could be downright terrifying at times, and to see her frustration directed at me nearly made me reconsider. She crossed her arms stubbornly.

“Give it up Sweets, you can't fool me with your ‘too cool to care’ act. I know you, and I know that you don't really want to quit school”, she growled. I huffed and ran a hand through my hair, frustration reigniting.

“Maybe you don't know me as well as you thought”, I spat. “In fact, why don't you just fucking leave? Everyone else does”.

I turned once again, walking quickly down the steps and away from the shithole that was Southside High. For a few moments I could tell that Y/N was still standing there motionless, and I felt an overwhelming amount of guilt and self-loathing overtake me. Why did I always do this? I couldn't even fathom the idea of my life without Y/N in it, but here I was trying my damnedest to push her away. But to face facts, Y/N was too good for me. She always had been. Too many thoughts swirled in my head all at once, and I quickly grabbed the helmet to my bike so I could ride and forget about them all. But just before my fingertips grazed the shiny black plastic of my visor , I felt a hand on my shoulder yanking me back. Y/N threw her arms around my waist, hugging me fiercely.

“No.”, she stated firmly, the sound slightly muffled by my chest.  

“No?”, I scoffed.

“No, I'm not leaving you Sweet Pea. Not now, not ever. Get that through your head”, she replied while lifting her head slightly from my body. My heart fluttered, and I sighed in disbelief and skepticism. I tried to pull back from her vice grip, but like a boa constrictor she simply responded by squeezing my middle tighter. My hands hovered over her waist for a second or two before sinking into her embrace, grasping her as tightly as she did me.

“Sure Y/NN”, I murmured into her Y/H/C hair, breathing in deeply her familiar, comforting in an attempt to slow my racing heart. She always smelled the same: lilac scented shampoo mixed with some cheap perfume I'd gotten her for her birthday one year and a hint of cigarette smell. Normally I hated the way stale smoke smelled, especially on women, but somehow the scent was so uniquely Y/N that I couldn't help but love it.

“I'm serious Pea. Nothing you could ever say or do would make me give up on you”, she swore softly while looking up from the confines of my arms. “I love you, all of you. Even when you're so god-damned frustrating that it makes me want to strangle you, even when you do stupid and dangerous things, and even when you are so broken that you try to push me away I will still be there, loving you. I. Will. Never. Leave.You.”.

Her y/e/c swam with a mix of emotions: love, determination, sadness, desperation. I reached hesitantly up to her cheeks to rest my calloused fingers against her soft face, needing to feel her with my own hands and see her with my own eyes. With every sweet moment like this it became easier, but I too often needed to remind myself that she was indeed here. She was real, and she wanted me. Her dark fan of black lashes fluttered closer together as she closed her eyes slowly, reaching her hands up to rest across mine while her fingers traced delicate patterns across the backs of my hands. I was overcome with a feeling that I wasn't sure I could even explain. I decided in that moment that I was never going to let anything ruin this, what we had. Not even if that thing was me.

“I love you Y/N/N. I love you so much babydoll”.

With every passing moment that she wasn't here with me I felt myself becoming more and more unhinged. I paced around for what felt like an eternity. Voices swirled around me, and I couldn't have even guessed what they were talking about. When I finally tuned in, I found that FP had shown up. I immediately rushed over to him, eyebrows raised.

“FP, where's Y/N?”, I asked quickly, hope bubbling up in my chest amongst the fear that still swirled. His tired, worried face told me all I needed to know, but still I found myself asking again, panic evident in my voice. He shook his head sorrowfully.

“I don't know what happened man, she was right behind me the whole time and then all of the sudden she wasn't. I circled back and searched over and over but I don't know where she went off to Sweet Pea”, he admitted. My shoulders dropped and the fear that had been slowly building up all day suddenly contorted itself into a rock that sank into the bottom of my stomach. FP clapped a hand on my shoulder, finger pointing in my face, a determined expression in his eyes.

“Don't worry SP, she's the toughest girl I've ever known. She gonna be fine. We're going to find her man, I promise”, he spoke tersely. He sounded sure on the outside, but I could tell that he was just about as scared as me. It made sense, Y/N was practically FP’s daughter at this point; he and Jughead were the closest thing that she'd ever had to a family, other than myself. It was for that reason, and that reason alone, that I forced the anger that was bubbling within me back down. FP's phone buzzed, and he turned away to answer.

“What do we do man? I've gotta find her!”, I shouted after him. Already 5 steps ahead, I grabbed my jacket and began to head for the door. I'd been patient enough; now it was time to go and search for my Y/N/N myself.

“SWEETPEA!”, I heard a female voice shout from behind me. I turned to find Toni weaving her way through the throng of serpents with that red headed Northside queen bee following closely behind. She reached me and grabbed my arm so tightly that it would have hurt if I were capable of focusing on anything else but Y/N.

“Topaz I really don't have time for this right now. Y/N is still out there and--”, I started before the small, pink haired serpent shook her head furiously.

“No, that's what I'm trying to tell you Pea! I was held hostage by the Ghoulies, and when Cheryl and I were leaving I saw one of them roll in on Norma Jean”, she exclaimed breathlessly, eyes slightly wild.

“It's true. We would have stopped, but I'd just saved TT from those Neanderthals and we didn't have the same element of surprise on our sides this time”, the Queen Bee replied. My hands clenched into tight fists.

“So you're telling me that those Ghoulie scum have my Y/N?”, I spat through my teeth, eyes squinting shut in fury. Toni nodded. I felt my body start to quiver in total rage. A small, buried part of me was terrified at the prospect of my girl being surrounded by those fuckers. Sure, Y/N was as tough as they come, but those Ghoulies were certifiably insane. And she was probably way out numbered. My mind refused to accept the possibilities of what could being happening to her at this very moment, and my entire being chose to ignored this fear in favor of blinding fury.

“You have to take me there Topaz. Now.”, I demanded. Her pink locks bobbed with her head as she nodded grimly.

“Toni, where were the Ghoulies keeping you?”, FP interrupted. His face was grim and his mouth drawn into a straight line.

“I'm bringing SP there now, they've got Y/N”, she replied quickly.

“I know. I think Jughead just went to go save her, and now they've got them both”, FP choked. My hands clenched and unclenched with unabashed anger.

“Well what the fuck are we waiting for? Let's go”, I nearly screamed as I pulled Toni out the door and to our rides.

[heoneyology]

Desire: Ch.4

A/N: Sorry this took so long, the update was supposed to be yesterday (Thurday) according to my new posting schedule! But this chapter was actually only partially finished, and I had some personal stuff come up ^^;

Genre: action, angst, romance, outlaw!au

Word Count: 4339

Summary: Years ago, Kim Hongjoong took something important from you. Years of patience with a heavy grudge on your heart, you carefully construct a plan that you’ve already set into motion. With a series of events, you plan to exact your revenge on him and return the painful favor from years ago. What you don’t plan for, however, is your heart’s desire ultimately waging a war against you as he intricately weaves himself back into your life—and you find yourself matched up against a rival who is already ten steps ahead.

They were so close.

Still about two hours off, but close enough. Hongjoong was growing impatient in his saddle. Physically, he couldn’t push his horse any further or harder. The rush of hooves against the desert dirt below was stirring up enough dust that any person out in this barren land for miles would be able to see them, and probably be curious enough to cut them off and see what the rush was about.

His impatience was probably pulling them unnecessary attention. Maybe, anyway. There was really no telling. But even Hongjoong had to admit that this was the sloppiest he had been in a very long time.

They’d lost about a days time, though, on top of the lead that Jeanette had already gained from knocking the daylights out of him. He couldn’t push waiting any longer, it was a risk he wasn’t willing to take. Especially not after his concussion, an injury that refused to immediately let up, had caused him to fall from his saddle about halfway through the first day.

The dizziness had been so sickening that first day, the glare of the sun against the desert sands causing a whiteout to his vision. Even with the shade the brim of his hat offered, paired with him squinting, he couldn’t push back the nausea that rolled through him like waves; he couldn’t hold down the vertigo that dizzily snaked its way through his mind until gravity had taken over and the world had turned askew.

“Boss!”

“Hongjoong!”

The collective cries from the others rang in his ear, but sounded faraway in comparison to the ringing from the impact with the ground. Hongjoong coughed, waving away dust that floated up from the air, groaning and rolling onto his back. He squinted against the sunlight that beat down on him, blindly grasping above his head for his hat before a figure pulled up and shaded him, blocking the sun away.

“I’ve got the horse!” He heard Yunho yell. The thundering of hooves passed by where Hongjoong had landed, Yunho chasing after his mount.

“You fucking idiot!” It was San hovering over him, reaching down and grabbing one of his arms. Hongjoong, imbalanced, helped to hoist himself up as best as he could manage against San. He stumbled as he was returned to his feet, leaning his weight against San for a moment before a strange sensation passed over him.

“I’m gonna be sick,” Hongjoong muttered, shoving San away and turning around.

He stumbled, before he leaned over his legs, the retching raw against his throat. Bile was the only thing that came up, sour and uncomfortable. Bread and water were the only things in his system at the moment, and the bread was scarce. He’d attempted to eat while they’d ridden earlier on in the day, but hadn’t gotten but a few bites in before his stomach began to protest.

San’s hand suddenly slapped down on the back of Hongjoong’s back. He sputtered, coughing again, before straightening up.

“Okay, better—” He turns, ready to saddle up again. He’s ridden through worse than this. After another try, he’s sure he can handle the vertigo. Not far off he can see Yunho returning with his horse.

But San’s hand moves from Hongjoong’s back to his shoulder. Hongjoong flinches, hypersensitive to everything, as San’s fingers dig into his shoulder.

“If you so much as even put a foot back into the stirrup,” San growls, “I will be more than happy to give you a second concussion myself.”

Hongjoong hardens his gaze, though the pain from his black eye aches against the surface of his skin and he feels as though his usual glare isn’t as intimidating. “San, we really don’t have time—”

“Save it, Hongjoong. What we don’t have time for is you dying. You are going to rest. Two hours. We’re stopping here. That’s final. Mingi!”

Pursing his lips, his jaw set, Hongjoong scowls at San before glancing over his shoulder. His gaze, full of fire, turns to glare at Mingi. With unwanted attention on him, Mingi shifts uncomfortably in his saddle, his eyes darting between San, the doctor, and Hongjoong, the leader.

But even Song Mingi had an ounce of power in the group, being a co-founder and co-leader.

Mingi straightens himself up in his saddle, clearing his throat. “We’re stopping, Hongjoong!”

The declaration sounds more comical than demanding, and Hongjoong lets out a snort, shrugging San’s hand off his shoulder. He brushes past his friend, leaning down to retrieve his hat from the ground and dusting it off, before he moves off to one of the pinyon pines.

He sets himself up against it, much to his own chagrin, ignoring the others.

So, they had stopped that day, as demanded by both San and Mingi. The two hours had passed by much too slowly. San kept tending to Hongjoong as necessary, snapping fingers constantly in front of his face to make sure he wasn’t about to lose consciousness. It was as annoying as Yunho’s persistence in calling San a “quack doctor.”

“Why do you suddenly care now?” He remembered Yunho asking. “You already let him fall asleep with the concussion once as it was!”

Hongjoong couldn’t even be sure anymore if it was Yunho actually pestering San, still, or if he was truly upset about the whole matter. He didn’t dwell on it, though. All he could think about was Jean and her beautiful appaloosa, miles ahead of them and speeding through the high desert. It had added to the ache that already pounded just beyond his eyes from the concussion and nasty black eye she had given him.

Thankfully, the rest of the ride had passed without incident. He’d been able to stay in his saddle much better after giving his body just those two hours. Stubbornly, he decided he’d never admit to San that it had helped him, even if just a little. He was still upset about how much they were lagging, an intense worry building up within him the further they rode back towards Sundown.

Just on the horizon, Hongjoong can finally see the outline of the little base camp they’d set up.

He clicks his tongue, tightening his thighs around the torso of his horse, urging the steed onward for one last final push. Hongjoong and his black steed break ahead of the group, speeding towards the camp. Hongjoong leaves the others behind, his heard thundering in his ears and falling into beat with his horse’s hooves.

His worry, and his heart pounding in his ears, becomes explosive when his horse suddenly speeds into the camp. Hongjoong pulls at the reigns, turning his mount into a full circle as he takes in the sight before him.

The entire camp is upturned. Boxes of supplies were upside down, bags tipped over with their contents spilling out. The kitchen utensils that their only female member, Wooyoung’s girl, Rosette, often used were spread across the camp. Tents were ruffled, still standing upright, but they had clearly been knocked against.

Hongjoong clenches his jaw. What the hell happened here?

“Seonghwa!” He bellows. He’s still a bit dizzy, but he swiftly jumps down from his horse, darting towards his and Seonghwa’s shared tent. Hongjoong practically rips back the flap of the tent, staring inside.

It’s empty.

Seonghwa’s books, many of his bookkeeping and accounting notes—others some of his research material he’d started to note down through their travels—are scattered about a barrel he’d been using as a table, some toppled over onto the ground below. But otherwise, personal belongings are left untouched.

“Park Seonghwa!” He yells again, glancing over his shoulder. His eyes dart around the camp in a wild craze, taking in every detail that he’d had memorized like the back of his hand before his small troop had left to go after Jean. Hongjoong’s memory worked in ways that other’s didn’t—he could recall the way every little thing had been before they left. He could remember the smallest of details that others didn’t. He took mental notes of small things, things that people would often overlook.

No matter how hard he searched, though, he couldn’t make sense of anything. He couldn’t tell if this had been a struggle, or if everyone had left in a rush. Was this an inward or outward cause?

“Jongho! Yeosang!” Hongjoong turns away from his tent. “Wooyoung! Rosette!”

But no matter how much he calls, no one is there. He can feel the back of his throat becoming raw from shouting at the top of his lungs.

It’s about then, with Hongjoong standing listlessly in the middle of the camp, that the others pull in. Horses hooves pound against the ground before falling silent.

If they’d gotten here sooner, could this have been prevented? Was this the outward cause—Jean’s doing? Or was it inward… Wooyoung.

Ghosts of Wooyoung’s past were lingering in this town. Ones that had caused Wooyoung extreme torment in the past, and plagued him for quite some time after. Hongjoong could still clearly remember the night terrors that often overtook the younger, clenching uncomfortably against Hongjoong’s own heart.

It’s going to be difficult, he had told the other, accepting him and all his faults into his small family. They were all broken, in some way or another. We can’t help you, but we can support you. There’s nothing more than your own sheer willpower to get you out of this.

Despite the only words of comfort Hongjoong had been able to offer those couple of years ago, he could still remember waking in the middle of the night to Wooyoung thrashing about against an unseen enemy. There were many nights of blindly thrown punches, the taste of iron being spat out of Hongjoong’s own mouth as he took whatever Wooyoung threw at him, not knowing any better. Yelling at the others to get away when they attempted to help restrain Wooyoung.

Hongjoong had accepted him. Hongjoong was the leader. It was his responsibility to take the punches as they came. It was his responsibility to protect the younger boy.

He could remember, so clearly, a frantic San scrambling about, trying to calm Wooyoung against the demons; dependency on the drugs he’d been fed most of his life slowly and agonizingly forcing their way out of his bloodstream. There’s no easy way, Wooyoung. Just your own willpower. You can do it. I won’t leave you.

Hongjoong had promised Wooyoung that if he’d just wait for his return, he could take care of everything as he saw fit. Revenge, answers—whatever he wanted, they would stay long enough for Wooyoung to do so. They hadn’t been around these parts in quite a while, and the last time they had been here, the wounds on Wooyoung’s heart were still too fresh for him to handle. They’d gotten their supplies and provisions, and they’d left. Another time, Hongjoong had promised.

He’d said he wouldn’t interfere, no matter what Wooyoung decided to do, or how he handled it. But he needed to be here to oversee it. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Wooyoung—he’d witnessed firsthand the boy pull himself out of the darkest pits of his own mind. It was the others Hongjoong didn’t trust, those ghosts that haunted him. Wooyoung was brash. What if Hongjoong couldn’t protect him?

Did he not listen to me? Hongjoong bites down on his lower lip, narrowing his eyes and clenching his jaw further. He stays silent, mulling over that possibility, standing there as his eyes continue to flicker around the camp.

He glances up, a sudden thought passing through his mind, eyes settling on the sky and taking a mental note of where the sun rests. It hovers low in the sky, just as it had the day he’d come into contact with Jean after so long. Just an hour or so away from sunset...

For a long time, all that can be heard is the nickering and snorting of the horses, before, finally, San speaks up, “What happened here?” Bewilderment rings clear in his voice, followed by panic. “Where’s Shiber?”

There’s a sigh from Yunho. “Of all things, you worry about that damn hunting mutt, and not your members?”

Hongjoong lets out a controlled breath, ignoring the two of them as they begin to bicker. He moves past them to the fire pit at the center of the camp, leaning down and pressing his fingers into the small mound of ashes. Lifting his hand, he allows the powdery residue to fall from his grasp as he rubs his fingertips together. Cold. The last fire had probably been made last night or early this morning.

At the moment Hongjoong pushes himself back to his feet, standing, the world around him seems to reverberate. If not for the sudden eruption of sound—a deafening blast—resounding over his shoulder from the distance, Hongjoong would have thought he was losing his balance to vertigo again. Except, he’s not as dizzy any longer.

“Holy hell—” Mingi breathes out, and immediately San and Yunho both fall quiet. “That’s the town…”

Hongjoong whips around on his heel, eyes falling on the horizon. In the distance, black smoke billows from the ground up into the sky. It builds rapidly, higher and higher, staining the blue backdrop until it begins to block out the sun with a brown haze.

“It’s not time…” Hongjoong mutters, eyes immediately finding the position of the sun, as he had just moments ago. It’s too early. She said sunset. It’s nearly there, but still too early.

Something is wrong.

“Mingi, San!” Hongjoong spins back around. With an air of urgency and sudden determination, he takes long strides across the camp. “Scout the area, now—the entire perimeter of this camp, go a mile out, two miles if you have to. Find everyone, including your dog, San.”

The worry that had been piling up inside of Hongjoong is now overflowing. Where are his members? Where is Wooyoung? And most importantly, mixed with the worry is his anger, building up into a blinding rage. He’s pissed—how could she, of all people, not keep her word?

What game are you playing, Jeanette?

Pulling himself into his saddle, he turns. “Yunho, with me! We’re going to town. We all meet back by midnight at the latest!”

He pulls at his horse’s reins, one last time—he feels sorry for the animal, being pushed so thoroughly over these past few days. Luckily for him the horse has always been a hard worker, and loyal. Even luckier, he showed no signs of slowing down.

Hongjoong speeds out of the camp. Over his shoulder, he hears more hooves pounding as everyone breaks apart—Yunho following him, Mingi and San setting to work on their orders. They know better to question him when he’s upset about something, and though nothing makes sense at the moment, he appreciates the fact that they follow his orders without question.

There’s a difference in going against his wishes when he’s irritable from pain and injury in comparison to something clearly being wrong.

“Boss!” Yunho calls, riding just behind Hongjoong. “What’s going on?!”

As they ride, Hongjoong lets out a sigh. Yunho finally manages to get his horse to catch up, pulling up beside him. He spares a glance to his side briefly, before shaking his head once.

“I’m not sure. I have a guess, but I don’t know what’s really happening—” Hongjoong frowns, narrowing his eyes at the expanse of land ahead. The town is only about a fifteen to twenty minute ride away from their camp, they’ll be there in no time. As they ride, the smoke thickens and blocks out the the sun, which dips even lower toward the horizon.

Sunset, now, is really coming.

“Jean made a threat back there, before she knocked me out. Gave me a riddle, saying that the town of Sundown would go up in flames, at sundown,” he raises his voice into a shout over the roar of their horses’ hooves. “She’s after revenge, which you all know—trying to take from me what’s important, like she thinks I did to her.”

“That would be us, right?” Yunho inquires. “The only thing important to you besides that ring around your neck and Jeanette, is us. ATEEZ, your gang.”

“My family.”

Yunho glances over at Hongjoong in surprise, but he doesn’t say anything further. Family. The most important thing to Jean. The one thing she was lacking—the one thing he had gained.

“So she’s trying to kill us off?”

“Yes, but none of you are stupid enough to all go into town and leave the camp unattended—which is why I’m worried. I think Wooyoung may have taken matters of his past into his own hands, maybe dragged the others into it with him. But that doesn’t explain the state of the camp. There weren’t any signs of a struggle, it was just a mess. Seonghwa must have stayed behind,” Hongjoong sets his jaw, considering everything he’d taken in just from a few quick glances, attempting to work his thoughts around every piece of information he’d absorbed.

At one point, he remembered, someone had once called him a genius for his perception and deduction skills. He’d been highly sought after by every high ranking official in the army.

“Seonghwa is the most level-headed of anyone. Which makes me wonder—where is he, then, if the camp is like that and the town is now on fire? Jean said the fire would happen at sunset, and it’s well enough before that… did she break her word?”

“I only know your stories of her, but that doesn’t seem like her…” Yunho frowns down at the mane of his horse’s neck as he rides. “And honestly, Seonghwa-hyung wouldn’t say no to the others if they all wanted to go into town for a couple drinks and a night of music.”

“I know. Sundown has sheriffs, and the army lingering around, but it’s such a small post that no one really pays half a mind to it,” Hongjoong agrees. It was the perks of the small town, tucked away in an upper part of a state, close to the border of three others. The lack of care was one thing that Hongjoong liked about this particular place. Anyone of power was usually drunk out of their right mind. Unless a large bounty were to waltz into town, most wanted men were pleasantly ignored.

Shouting and screaming touches Hongjoong’s ears as they near the town finally. Clicking his tongue, he pulls on the reins, slowing into a trot. Yunho follows suit. The edge of the town is mostly fine, though the smoke hangs heavily in the air around them. Squinting through the haze, Hongjoong can make out the red and orange of flames traveling along rooftops, and further along where the smoke is most black, completely consuming buildings. Multiple buildings.

“She wasn’t kidding when she said the entire town, was she?”

Hongjoong scoffs. “She’d said to me, ‘When the sun goes down, the outline of the town blends with the sunset. From a distance, you can almost see through the windows of certain buildings, and the town is on fire.’ That was her warning. She was describing the way the sunset looks through the windows of the tallest buildings in the sunset, mimicking fire.”

“How’d she manage this, though? Even with that description… this is huge,” Yunho stares at the chaos before him, slightly awed.

“Her father was a firearms expert in the military. She’s good at making things explode,” Hongjoong dismounts his horse, glancing around and spotting a pinyon pine. The horses will slow them down, if the frantic shouting of the townspeople in the distance tells him anything. He hopes the branches will hide their mounts enough to keep them from being stolen, though he knows his own horse would never go with another handler, having once been a wild stallion. “Let’s tie up the horses.”

Yunho follows his lead, and the two of them disappear together into into the cloud of smoke that engulfs the town.

It’s not as difficult to see, moving through it, though Hongjoong glances around as flames engulf buildings, jumping to the next building with ease. Jean must’ve laced this whole place up with gunpowder, he thinks to himself, watching as citizens of the town, soldiers, and others frantically move to dump buckets of water onto anything on fire. Of course, the buildings were all made of wood and the town had been built in such a way that buildings hovered close to each other. The flames didn’t need much urging, even with gunpowder, to move along.

“It looks like it started at the saloon,” Yunho notes, raising a hand to point towards the center of line of buildings they traverse. The smoke is, in fact, darkest there. The flames that have enveloped the building climb high into the sky, following the smoke clouds.

Hongjoong pauses as they come closer, before he stops, studying the building as it burns. Some soldiers are running about, hovering just at the edge of the flames as they attempt to put the fire out. Narrowing his eyes, he studies the entrance of the burning building, watching as some soldiers come out dragging a person with them.

“Do you think they’re in there?”

“I sure as hell hope not,” Hongjoong says quietly, stiffening as someone in the distance, closer to the building, yells, “There’s more coming!”

A body stumbles from the burning building, and Hongjoong immediately recognizes the feminine figure. Without hesitation, he pushes forward, through the crowd of people that hover back precariously and watch as the building burn. He hears Yunho hiss his name before he disappears, worried that someone might recognize them.

Family. Mine. My own. He needs to reach her before anyone else does. From his peripheral, he sees others moving toward her. Hongjoong picks up his pace—

—with just enough time to spare. Rosette McGraw, Wooyoung’s girl, he often fondly referred to her, stumbles right into his arms as he steps forward. Someone that had been hovering nearby glances at him curiously.

“My sister,” he says, wrapping his arms around her protectively.

It was the first thing that popped into his mind. How else would he describe her? Just as much as she was “Wooyoung’s girl”, she was also his family, anyway. Back in California, they’d picked her up off a ranch. A trade—a debt on her father’s head, for her life. Servitude until the debt was paid off, or Hongjoong saw fit. Of course, he’d never once thought of treating her like a slave girl.

He had, however, pushed the responsibility of caring for her off onto Wooyoung with an air of indifference. Wooyoung had been the one that had been so insistent on trading the girl for the debt, despite Hongjoong’s threats toward her father and want otherwise. But it had been difficult to say no, at the time. It had been the first emotion Wooyoung had shown in a long time, since coming clean.

Hongjoong glances down at her when Rosette suddenly struggles against him. It’s a weak attempt to free herself, but the shifting has him realize something. Against his wrist, he can feel something wet and sticky.

She’s injured.

“Relax,” he whispers to her, voice firm.

He’s trying to keep his cool, but somewhere in the back of his mind, certain puzzle pieces fall into place. Wooyoung hadn’t listened to him—Rosette had been dragged into it, that much was certain from the fact that she was bleeding. The two of them worked together often. Rosette didn’t really have a specific position within the gang, but she was decent at gathering intel. It came with working alongside Wooyooung for so long. Hongjoong clenches his jaw. God dammit, Jung Wooyoung.

If he’d just listened, that stupid kid. But where were Jongho and Yeosang?

Against him, Rosette relaxes, her neck practically snapping back to look at him. She blinks back tears welling up in her eyes. He can’t tell if she’s been crying or if it’s from the thick smoke.

“Hongjoong…”

“Save your breath,” he commands, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. He really does need her to save her breath. The smoke inhalation, plus whatever she was bleeding from, meant that she needed every ounce of energy she could salvage. “Yunho.”

“Sir,” Yunho’s reply comes. He wasn’t sure if, after hissing out a warning note, Yunho had actually followed him to the front of the crowd. He’s relieved to find that the other, in fact, had.

“Get her attention.” Hongjoong shifts, carefully loosening his hold on Rosette. As he turns carefully towards Yunho, she stumbles just a bit. Yunho is there to catch her.

“But—” He starts, about to ask a question. As he does so, he easily picks Rosette up, snaking his arms under her legs and hoisting her up bridal style. At the sight of a stab wound on her abdomen, his eyes practically bulge out of his head. Hongjoong finds himself scowling at the sight of it.

Wooyoung, what exactly did you two get into?

“It’s fine,” he interrupts, before Yunho can finish. “Just get back to San and get her the care she needs. Help Mingi search for Seonghwa, instead. Be careful of Jean prowling about. I’ll handle Wooyoung. Give me until midnight. If I’m not back, then come for me. Understood?”

“Yes, sir…” Yunho’s reply comes reluctantly. He can see the questions, and the worry, swirling around in the other’s brown eyes. Hongjoong watches as Rosette’s head falls against Yunho’s shoulder, her energy slipping away. That seems to seal his decision, and he turns away partially. “Hongjoong-ah, be careful…”

Hongjoong studies the two of them, eyes lingering on Rosette. Sunset has bled onto the horizon, now, back-lighting everything with a hue of red as night begins to settle. “Always,” he states, finally, “Rosette. Get some rest. You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

With that, he turns away, stepping towards the burning building.

Wooyoung is in there.