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sio-writes · 2 years ago

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Botanist's Guide - Chapter 12

<<Chapter 11 (NSFW)

<<< Chapter 1

Summary: Cassandra Rowland, PhD, finally has the chance to work on an experiment that really matters: growing Earth crops on another planet. Too many overdue reports and marked failures have put her in hot water with the board, and this is her last chance at redemption. So when she finds herself railroaded by a seven foot tall, glowing alien named Kri, it won’t be as easy as sticking some seeds in the soil and running them under the tap. Tack on the looming repossession of her lab contingent on her success in Kri’s reports, and Cassie realizes she may have her work cut out for her.

Looking into the microscope I see exactly what I should be seeing: The box-like cell structure of a plant, no different than one I'd see on Earth. It's sage, so crushing it between the slides released it's earthy aroma, and now my whole station smells like the greenhouse, but that's not a complaint.

Mutations are non-existent, cell walls look good, chlorophyll is bright green. I check off the Salvia officinalis box on my laptop as well as transfer any notes from my head to the computer, and then I pick up the next slide.

Lactuca Satvia, iceberg lettuce, also looks like every slide I've made. No mutations, it's bright green that fades into a white at the stalk, and if it weren't currently doing a job for science, I'd definitely add it to a salad. I note it down right next to the sage, humming something off-key as I do. Maybe I'll grab a salad for lunch.

There's only a few more slides to go through, I'm making great time today. My mp3 player crapped out on me, a victim of getting slammed against the wall the other day. I have a little funeral planned, which just consists of putting her into the garbage cube-maker thing. If I had funeral music to play I would, but…well.

It's absence has left the lab deathly silent, but I think my coworkers are thankful for it. At least, no one's said otherwise. The change in pace has kept me focused, a good thing for today with so much technical work to get done. Staying on task is my number one priority.

And Jillie won't stop staring at me.

All day now, she's been throwing me glances, flat out staring me down, she even sent a paper note over. I've been pointedly ignoring her in favor of digging into my work, with huge success on my end. I'm apparently very good at my job when I'm avoiding something else.

I'd tried the silent treatment when the door first opened-- two hours later!-- but once she started crying I felt too bad to keep up the charade. Then she'd shoved these nasty granola bars and an ice-cold water in my face, and I ate only to appease her and not because I'd skipped dinner to head back to the lab in the first place. Besides, a few minutes of pretending to be mad told her what I needed it to, and it was about all I could handle anyway. She's my friend, I can't be mad at her for trying to hook me up. But I can pretend to withhold the information to torture her for a few days. Just a little.

The first day back had been the worst of her prying. Kri had decided to keep up his schedule of only showing up once a week, giving her permission to blabber away.

"So. Is it big?"

"Hand me the pipettes, please."

"Aw come on! At least tell me if he was good!"

"Pipettes. Please."

But Kri is here today, thank god, so her barrage of questions has stopped for now.

Eventually I will share, because I want to, but Kri and I didn't actually talk about anything. He didn't wake me up after ten minutes like I'd asked him to, instead the shrill metal of the door sliding open is what woke me up. And then Jillie rushed in with her terrible food, and we all went home. It felt particularly anti-climactic compared to the heated confession and fucking.

Part of me is hopeful, but it's nearly drowned out by the cynic in me. Until we parted ways, Kri kept constant contact with me-- a steadying hand on my back, an arm around my waist, and once, for a glorious moment as Jillie walked out ahead of us, he interlaced our hands together and squeezed my fingers. I think my heart actually leapt into my throat, and then he was walking away without a goodbye.

It's left this…whatever we have going, undefined and hazy. We exchanged pleasantries this morning, but that was all, and it's been nothing but work since. I'm not picking up any anger or malice, but it's also awkward as hell, especially with an extra set of blue eyes watching my every move. "Ignore us Jill, but hey Kri, remember when we fucked? That was great, wanna do it again? On a regular basis?"

It's not like I can call or text him, I don't have a phone that connects to Summanus' sat-system. Just the chunky brick they gave at landing that connects to the handful of satellites we ground out of the military's original plan. I don't know where Kri lives, either, and they don't have any kind of directory in English. But it's not like Kri's made any moves either, and he actually knows where I live.

I sigh through my nose as I prep the next set of slides. Maybe I'm making excuses, flimsy reasons to keep this going as a casual thing instead of what I'd hoped it would be, what I want it to be. But we need to talk, hands down. Because not knowing is driving me crazy.

Stealing a glance at Kri is easy, just pretend to hold the slide to the light. I simultaneously want to catch his attention as well as have him keep ignoring me so I can keep staring like a creep. There's things I hadn't picked up on before, small details. The line of his shoulders, the angles of his wings. He's still so pretty under the lights with the flecks of opalescent color in his plating, but it feels like I'm seeing him in an entirely new light. Has something in my brain switched?

The cosmos grants me a favor when Jillie walks to the bathroom. Immediately, I step away from my desk and towards Kri.

"Hey," I say.

I probably should've thought of something to say.

"Hello," he says, resting his hands on his lap and giving me his full attention. "Is everything alright?"

I fidget with my coat, trying not to remember how it felt to take off for him. "Can we--Can we talk?"

He glances sideways at the bathroom door, then back to me. "Right now?"

I've come to realize that Kri isn't cagey like I once thought, he's just intensely private. He doesn't broadcast things, doesn't offer information like I do, isn't loud or boisterous. He flies under the radar a lot, and I think it's on purpose.

"Later," I assure him. "Later-- um, do you wanna-- I mean, would you mind, maybe--"

As I talk and fidget, Kri stands from his chair and steps up to me. He grabs my face gently between two hands, and tilts my head up to his, both thumbs tracing lines over my cheeks.

"Would you like to talk over dinner?"

"That's a--" I clear my throat, and Kri's eyes crinkle as he smiles. "Sounds great."

His fingers are soft and warm, thumbs tracing over my cheek again, and his gaze falls to my lips.

Nothing's been set in stone, but this, and the reminder of everything else, makes me want something solid. Something real, tangible.

I've tried to think about what I want to say, but I've never been good at stringing words together. I'm more a woman of action than speaking, I'd rather just push Kri against the desk and kiss him until my lips bleed.

We lean closer together, almost kissing, until the sound of a soft 'ahem' makes us jump apart, and we both turn to the source of the noise. In the doorway, Jillie has the biggest, shit-eating grin on her face.

My jaw works on several starting noises, but none make their way out. I wind up looking like a fish.

She holds up her hands, placating. "Hey don't let me interrupt." And sits back at the countertop as if nothing happened.

Heat rises to my cheeks, even more so when I hear Kri softly chuckle behind me as he steps back to sit down. I grumble back to my desk, and Jillie's pointed looks burns a hole through my spine. But we work through the next thirty minutes without issue. It's boring as shit, and the tension in the air makes my leg bounce up and down.

After a few more minutes of tense silence, I'm ready to burst. I'm going to explode.

"I'm holding a funeral for Emmie."

The two of them look to me, but their expressions couldn't be further apart. Kri looks shocked, genuinely concerned that I have a deceased friend, and Jillie's look is flat, very much done with my shit.

"Your mp3 player, really Cass?"

Kri's expression resolves into understanding, and then falls to match Jillie's. "Hardly grounds for a funeral."

I chew on my bottom lip and stare at the floor. "Yeah the, uh, the screen cracked." I pull Emmie out of my back pocket, where she usually lives, and display her in my cupped palms like a baby bird. Behind Jillie, Kri sucks in a breath, but says nothing. Jillie either doesn't notice or doesn't care, because she scoffs, smiling.

"You're so dramatic."

I pocket Emmie again, my brows pinching in mock-offense. "She was a member of this family!"

"It was outdated before your grandparents were born!"

"She was reliable," I hold my hand to my heart, and wipe away a tear. "Three thousand songs, no internet required. Now I have to find something else."

"God forbid you talk to us instead."

I hold my sordid expression. "No one here understands me."

"You listen to your sad music too much, hun."

"It is rather whiny," Kri chimes in, and I shoot him a dirty look over Jillie's shoulder. He shrugs.

"You're both bullies, I'm putting in for a transfer," I say very mildly as I grab the next slides.

"Good," Jillie sniffs. "You can smooch it up in someone else's lab."

As slowly and dramatically as possible, I turn to her. "I'm sorry, who stuck us in a room for three hours?"

"Two, you drama queen."

"At least Kri likes me," I say and Jillie shoves my shoulder.

"One of us has to."

Our shoulders shake as we hold back laughter, and for the first time all day, I feel light. Like a seal has been broken and released all the pressure in the room.

Jillie doesn't stare at me anymore, instead she focuses her efforts on the experiment, and even hums a few songs to break up the silence. We hit a flow again, something that's been sorely lacking the past few weeks, and zoom through the required tests. Despite the crushing quiet, it's been nice to sink into a routine that we both know, stepping around each other like a dance.

I keep my eye-contact down to a minimum, because my thoughts will scatter to the wind again. And it's hard enough reigning them in even when I'm focusing on my work. Looking at Kri only makes me think of the other day, and then what may happen later. It opens up a question that I desperately need an answer to, but won't get until later. But I need it now, and the anxiety of not knowing is ramping up my anxiety to a twelve.

We all break for lunch, the three of us walking to the cafeteria. Jillie and I snag a booth with our food, and Kri splits off. I look around to see if I can find him in the mess that is the food prep stations, but I don't see him. He chose to eat by himself those first few days, a habit that carried over even when Jillie was out sick, but I wish he'd sit with us now.

Turning back to the booth, I accidentally make eye-contact with Jillie. The flame of curiosity is back in her eyes, and I shrink down in my seat. I suppose it's time to end her suffering.

"This is killing me," she says. "Are you guys a thing now?"

She looks so excited, so hungry to hear about everything. I push out a sigh. "I have no idea. We didn't talk about it."

Leaning back, Jillie's face falls into an impressed expression, and I fail to suppress a responding smile. Jillie slaps her palms on the table and barks out a laugh. "I knew it!"

"Shush!" I hiss, reaching over as if the motion would quiet her. "Not so loud."

Jillie's eyes are glittering as she reaches for my hands across the table. "You have to tell me everything."

In as many words, I try to surmise the evening, from the fight to falling asleep, with Jillie interjecting with questions every now and then. Some details I keep to myself, I'm allowed some secrets, but Jillie's my best friend. We try to eat in between, but eventually wind up setting down our food to focus on conversation.

I finish with her opening the door, and she squeezes my hands. "So where should I disinfect? The countertop? The floor? The shower in the bathroom?"

"He held me against the wall," I say, pulling my bottom lip between my teeth.

"Ooh, standing?"

I shake my head, and her look of realization is priceless.

"You have to tell me how big he is."

I groan to the ceiling. "I wish I knew. I couldn't see it."

"Then you gotta look again, hun!"

Leaning back, I grab my water bottle and take a swig. "He did invite me to dinner."

Jillie nods sagely. "You're definitely gonna get some tonight, then."

I open the wrapper for my salad and mull it over as I pour the dressing on. "I don't know if I want to. At least not tonight. I was hoping we'd talk instead."

"Talk?"

I nod. "We didn't do much talking-- shut up-- so now I don't know what this is. Friends-with-benefits? Something serious? And what do I even want? What does he want from me? What is he--"

"Cass, calm down. Nothing's happened yet."

"That's the problem! I don't know what's going on."

Jillie scrunches her face, her head falling to one side. "Then ask him?"

I plop my cheek into my palm, squishing my face on one side. "Not like we've had time."

Jillie offers me a sympathetic look. "Maybe you need to be more upfront. Instead of making out while I'm in the bathroom, you have a little chit-chat. I can disappear for a while."

"We already agreed on dinner," I say, smiling.

"You sure?" She raises her eyebrows. "You just say the word, and I'm gone for fifteen to twenty minutes."

I shake my head again, filled with warmth that she's so insistent. I am anxious about it, but things can wait. It's not worth putting the experiment on hold for. Besides, the lab is hardly a romantic setting to have a serious conversation.

With a deciding nod, Jillie starts to clean her space, and I'm short to follow behind. The rest of the day runs as planned, no interruptions. Jillie stays in her seat, and I'm not thrown into a panic.

I'm actually looking forward to dinner with Kri. The restaurants here are okay, and there's even a few with that warm, low, romantic lighting that's perfect for dates. And honestly, I'm more excited to spend time with Kri. A small, girlish part of me wants to go home to freshen up, make myself look nice instead of the lab rat I must resemble.

All three of us head out of the building, Jillie heading west, Kri and I heading south. The restaurants are all in the northern quadrant by the Capitalism District, there's none in this direction. The only thing this way is housing.

I fake nonchalance as we walk. "So, where're we headed?"

"The…" he trails off, frowning and speaking slowly like he's testing out the words. "Food storage facility."

I raise an eyebrow. "The grocery store?"

He looks down at me, concerned. "Is that okay?"

The grocery store is closer to a MiniMart or a gas station. A handful of isles of instant meals, comfort foods, and frozen produce shipped from Earth. But there's also the ento-run store to the east with more selection. It's open to the public, but everything is labeled in Universal, and I have no idea what's good or not, so I've been too intimidated to go on my own. "Which store?" I ask.

"The eastern building, I just need to pick up a few items."

I feel my stomach grumble. "And food after?"

"I was hoping to cook for you," he says, wings fluttering. "If that's alright."

I haven't had anyone cook for me since I visited my parents. Warmth settles in me, not quite arousal, but something else, something heavier. Kri wants to cook for me.

"That'd be awesome."

The walk to the grocery store runs through another block of buildings, all of them painted in subdued, warm tones. They're all short, maybe three stories at the tallest, and the terrain reminds me of a seaside strip mall-- laid brick and cobblestone. I've only ever been to this side once on a tour, this is where it turns into culture and arts.

The store is nestled at the bottom floor of a deep red building, a carved out space that may have once been a multi-vehicle garage. Inside are several rows of foodstuffs, some packaged, some open. There's an assortment of fruits that I have no idea the names of as well as what look like a few rows of packaged instant ramen. Some things are universal, I suppose.

The store is empty, so it's just the two of us looking through the isles. I wander the isles while Kri picks up several fruits. He grabs a plum-sized blue seed, a handful of bean pods the size of my finger, and two green vegetables that look like potatoes. I'm examining the isle of drinks, wondering what tastes like what, when Kri grabs my attention.

"Would you prefer sweet, or savory?" He holds up two nearly identical looking spheres that look like dark red coconuts. I walk up and pretend to inspect them, humming as I think. I have no idea what he's doing, but I appreciate that he's including me.

"What do you like?" I ask.

"It's your decision."

I blink at him. "But I don't know what you're cooking. What's easier for you?"

Kri regards me, head tilted, and puts the coconut in his left hand back on the pile. He doesn't say anything, remaining silent as he grabs several other things, all the while catching glimpses of me as he does. I sidle up to him as the cashier bags his stuff.

"What'd ya go with?"

The cashier extends one long arm and hands Kri his things, and Kri quickly closes the bag so I can't see inside. "You'll have to find out."

I balk. "No fair!"

He smirks at me sidelong. "You insisted it was my decision."

"But I need to know the results."

"You will."

***

Kri’s apartment isn’t far from the store. I have to wrestle one of the grocery bags out of his grubby hands so I can I carry it and feel useful as we wind around buildings and cross a few streets. We walk quietly, not quite awkward enough for my reflexive talking to kick in, but I feel the need to fill the space simmering under my skin.

I want to say something. I should probably say something. It's only fair, and would help my anxiety so much more than waiting.

We wait in the elevator to his floor and I need to say something. We're approaching his place and I need to speak up, but I say silent.

It's too much, it would break this easy flow. The timing isn't right and god damn it, we're already at his door.

Stepping through the doorway feels simultaneously like jumping off a cliff and nothing at all. I'm aware of how huge this feels, my stomach lurches and my hands go clammy, but I'm also aware of the world continuing to turn around me. This doesn't feel real, but I want to grab at it with both hands and take it before it disappears.

Kri flicks the lights on, and I don't know what I expected, but a mirror of my own place wasn't it. This building is supposed to have the nicer layouts, with actual bedrooms instead of a studio layout. It's not surprising though, us Earth scientists are about as creative as socks for Christmas when it comes to designing buildings. I hope Kri isn't paying extra.

Everything is scaled up for someone of Kri's size, and there's a massive cloth hammock where the bed should be that's piled high with pillows. Along the living room wall on the right are shelves of books, interspersed with plants of various sizes that hang down almost to the floor. To the left of the sliding glass door to the balcony is another bookshelf, with a screen and speakers, and the light reflects off several picture frames that flick through a few photos.

Giving in to my base urge to be nosy, I set my bag on the kitchen counter and wander over to the television set. Under the coffee table is an ornate looking rug that's definitely too expensive for my apartment, and I try to tip-toe around it to avoid leaving any dirt, when something catches my eye.

In the corner, on a bottom shelf, is a taxidermied rat on a tiny skateboard. It's in the middle of popping an ollie, sitting in the center of some kind of ceramic crown of Summanian flowers. The frame above it swipes to a new photo, and in my peripheral I see Kri

My anxiety flares, and I turn away from the shelf of picture frames and other memories. Focusing my attention on something else is all I can do not to feel like a trespasser here, and I wander to the kitchen where Kri is grabbing several items from the fridge. The feeling of inadequacy swells, gelatinous and without form, and I try to push it down. It squishes between the bars of my mind, an imprint reflected back at me that tells me I’m not welcome here.

Instead, I step up to Kri and wrap my arms over his waist. The chitinous plating covering his body draws lines over his form that lead my fingers to his front, and I lean into his frame. Even bent over, my arms are level with his waist, and when he straightens, it pushes my face into his wings. Their whole structure is split into two sets, the bottom that folds open like a fan, and the top shaped like a dragonfly’s wing. They’re cool under my cheek, catching the light and shimmering.

“Yes?” He asks, two hands coming to pat mine.

I sigh heavily against his back, trying to sort my thoughts and coming up short. Taking my silence for an answer, Kri turns in my arms and cups my face in his lower hands.

“Am I not paying you enough attention?” He teases gently, running a free hand over my head. “Because I’m trying to provide you with a meal.”

Shame wells up behind my anxiety, hot and present, and I puff my cheeks and stare at a spot on his shoulder. I know talking is the right choice here, but my head is too much of a mess to talk about anything.

Ignoring the swirling feelings in my gut, I push up on the balls of my feet and press our lips together. He hums, a surprised note deep in his throat, as the hands gently cupping my cheeks firmly hold me and he pushes back. It’s a different kiss than the first one, softer, sweeter, holding promise. He’s slow to lick in my mouth, but it adds heat that reminds me of the passion of last week. He can pick me up and set me against the wall, can hold me with two arms and work me over with the other two.

I push my tongue into his mouth, wanting to make up for the interrupted kiss earlier today. My lips slot against his and he hums another satisfied note as he skims his tongue against mine and starts exploring my mouth.

I want more of this, I want this all the time. I can’t imagine giving up the way he slots so perfectly against me, like a puzzle piece I didn’t realize I was missing.

Kri pulls away from my mouth with a pained sound, but I can hear the smile in his voice. "I thought you wanted to talk first."

I lean into him and push my lip out in a pout. "Changed my mind."

And then he smiles against my lips and pushes forward again. It's so easy to give in, like falling into a soft bed. I'm surrounded by comfort and warmth.

Taking the lead, Kri steps me over to the counter and, without breaking the kiss, picks me up by the waist and lifts me onto the countertop. The ease that he picks me up makes me feel hot, and I moan softly against his lips before Kri pulls away.

"What would you like to--"

"Anything you want," I breathe. "What do you want?"

Kri laughs, low and dangerous. "From you? Everything."

He leans forward to kiss me again, but the silence of the room makes my growling stomach practically echo against the walls, and Kri's hands stop halfway to my chest.

"You need to eat," he says, smiling.

With that, he straightens, hands smoothing down my hair, and turns away from me and back into the kitchen.

"What would you like to drink? I have water, and I'm quite fond of Earth's orange juice."

I snicker. "Orange juice is actually more of a breakfast drink."

Kri presses his lips together and looks away, wings fluttering. "I also have lifrit juice, and wegol soda."

I hop down from the countertop and walk around the island to a stool. It's tall enough that when I sit, my legs swing freely. It's been a long while since my feet haven't hit the floor, it makes me feel like a kid again.

Humming, I tap my fingertips over my lips. I'm not sure what those last two were, and I'm up for trying something new, but I also want tonight to mean something. It feels important that everything go right. "What would go with tonight's meal?"

He perks up at that. "I may have something," And starts rooting around in his lower cabinets. I hear him knocking about lots of metal objects-- pots and pans maybe, before he straightens, holding a bottle of wine.

"Is this acceptable?"

I drag the bottle closer and spin it around to get a look at the label. It's a Sauvignon blanc from a few years back, unopened. What a random thing to have in his cabinet. "Why do you have this?"

"I bought it to sample the taste, but never got the chance," he says as he roots around in the drawers. He opens a few before finding the little corkscrew opener and hands it to me. The bottle pops open easily, and I pour it into the two glasses Kri sets out for me. I bring the glass to my lips and sip at it while Kri watches and mimics me. I'm not super into wine-tasting but this one is good, it would pair well with a fancy meal.

The face Kri makes after he sips is the same face I make when Jillie orders tequila shots, and I have to be careful not to inhale my drink. Kri immediately sets his glass down and shakes his head.

I hide my smile behind my glass. "Not a fan?"

"That is quite awful," he says with a shudder.

I take another sip of mine and then swirl the glass because I feel fancy. "It's pretty dry, you may be a fan of the sweeter stuff like Moscato. That one tastes like ginger ale."

Kri eyes my glass and purses his lips, skeptical, "I'll take your word for it."

As he turns back to the stove, I tip the remnants of his drink into my own, nearly filling the glass to the brim. Drinking on an empty stomach is a bad idea, especially if I'm going to need to find my way home later, but if I take little sips instead of trying to gulp it down like I usually do, I think I'll manage.

I watch Kri as he cooks, sitting on the opposite end of the countertop island to stay out of his way. As always, he's graceful in what he does, even with his back to me. All four hands doing something different, always switching focus and lasering in on it, not a single mistake is allowed, and absolutely hypnotizing to watch.

"You're an alien of many talents," I say, and he glances at me over his shoulder.

"How do you mean?"

"I didn't know you could cook."

"Oh, I quite enjoy it. I can make you all manner of things."

I ignore the flutter in my stomach at the idea of him making me food regularly, and try to peer around him as he works. "What's your favorite thing to make?"

"Lepsc'it, it's a fried Trokk root stuffed with vegetables and spices. It's very easy, only a few ingredients, and there's many varieties all over the globe."

"Are you making that now?"

His wings flutter. "I thought I'd attempt something a bit more complicated."

"Are you trying to impress me?" I ask with a smirk.

He's too slow to cover his smile, "Only if it's working."

The smell of spices and vegetables fills the small space, like thyme or rosemary, with a hint of heat behind all of it, mixed with whatever main dish he's prepping. There's large puffs of pink something resting on a pan in the corner, a thick brown sauce that he scraped cubed veggies into, and something else that's blocked by his frame. It all smells heavenly.

My mouth is watering by the time he sets a large plate in front of me with one of those pink bread rolls on one side, the sauce and cubed veggies on the other. I smell more spices and heat, and it's agony to wait for him to sit next to me at the countertop.

"Is it rude to just dig in?"

"Absolutely it is," he says, smiling. "But we're not at a paid dining establishment." He motions to my plate. "Eat."

This dish reminds me of curry but with bread instead of rice, and smells the same. Kri hasn't laid out any utensils as most ento eat with their hands, so I tear a piece of the pink bread off, dip it in the sauce, and pop it in my mouth.

Spices and flavor dance over my tongue, things I can't name but are still delicious. It pairs with the bread so well, I'm barely through the first mouthful before I'm shoving a second bite in my face.

Kri eats opposite me, slow and careful, trying to casually glimpse up at me like he's checking in on me, and I cover my smile around another bite of food. He's worried, I can tell, and it's kind of cute.

I wolf down my food and say nothing, and normally I would feel bad about the silence, but Kri doesn't say anything either.

"It was acceptable?"

"Don't kid yourself, it was delicious. I'm so full," I say, patting my stomach for emphasis.

It's not just the food that keeps me quiet. I also don't want to talk about how I feel. Being emotionally honest makes me anxious, makes me think of all the ways it could be used against me. I don't want to scare off Kri with all the issues I have. He listened to me in Igrien, but how many more times will he listen to me say, "Oh, Stephen made me this way," before he walks out?

But as we both set our plates aside and sit awkwardly in the kitchen, I realize that this is it. That if I want something to happen with Kri, I have to grab it with both hands myself. Even so, I still fiddle with my hands as I speak up.

"So uh, is this the part where we talk about feelings?"

Kri tilts his head, probably picking up on my mood, and quietly says, "If you'd like."

"Not really," I laugh, nerves making the sound shaky. "But I just want to know that we're on the same page-- that we're at a complete understanding," I correct when Kri narrows his eyes in confusion.

I focus my attention to a spot on the table. "I'm not good at words but I want…this. Us-- something…Something."

Even to my own ears it sounds horrible, and I grimace. God damn it, I should've thought about it before we got here. But all I have is feelings, emotions that push at my heart and flood my senses. I don't know how to describe my anxiety any better than describing the color red. Sometimes it feels like too much, like if I acknowledge anything it'll turn into too much to handle.

Kri only stares at me, giving me more space to talk, and my teeth creak as I grind them together anxiously. "Okay, it's your turn."

And then he looks away, down at the table, at his hands. His expression shutters off, a blank face, then darkens into something profoundly sad, and it's like I can hear his thoughts across the table. I appreciate the romp in the lab, Cass, but this just isn't for me. You're too fucked up, and I'm not about to deal with all of that. Except he'd say it nicer, with bigger words. Taking a shaking inhale, I hold my breath as the tightness of anxiety starts to coil around my chest and wraps fingers over my brain.

Then Kri sighs, a heavy movement of his shoulders, and he looks back up at me. "I admit that my thoughts are scattered. Between wanting to breathe you in like oxygen, and questioning whether I've earned the right to inhale. You've already bared your feelings for me, and I did not tell you mine at the time as I was--" he pauses to think, then huffs a laugh, "distracted. But I believe I have words for you now."

He reaches across the small table, taking my hands in his. He's warm as always, and his thumb rubs the back of my hand comfortingly. The tightness in my chest eases, ever so slightly.

"Cassie," he says. "I have a great many feelings for you, some of which I'm prepared for, and others that frighten me deeply. I am well aware that I come with a history, and the weight that it implies. But if you'll allow me your patience and understanding, I'd very much like to explore what a relationship with you would look like."

It's so earnest, so bare, that I'm hit with a wave of emotion that completely drowns out any other thoughts I have in my head. I want to lean forward and kiss his hands. I want to vault over the table and climb into his lap. "Jesus, did you prepare that?"

His eyes widen a fraction, like he didn't expect me to respond like that, and then he nods. "When confronted with interpersonal problems, I know that I tend to recede into myself and minimize the words leaving my mouth, and I'm trying not to do that so we're, what did you say, on the same page? You deserve my transparency in this, especially considering how I've been acting. I was trying to push you away when you wanted to be close, and you deserve so much better than that."

There's so much he's saying without saying it, and I can analyze why he thinks I deserve better, or inspect why all I want to do is jump over the table and give him the ride of his life, but my brain only latches onto my own insecurity. "You prepared a speech for me and all I had was, like, five words."

With a free hand, Kri rustles around in his bag and produces a small square of paper, folded very neatly. "I also wrote down several non-starters in case you realized that you're too good for me, so I also had a handful of words prepared."

It's said so casually, so matter-of-fact, that I can't help but snort. It breaks the tension in the room and my smile feels easier than before, keeping eye contact isn't as difficult.

"And to be fair," he continues. "You said more than enough the other day. I was worried that you'd take it all back."

Something clicks into place in my head, a small, flighty piece of Kri's psyche that I've been seeing without noticing. That despite his attitude, or ego, or anything else, he still craves a form of validation, still vies for approval. And I desperately, so desperately want to know what he's afraid of. But that's a whole other conversation, a heavy and upsetting one. One that I don't think either of us are up for right now.

So I squeeze his hands in mine. "I…really like you," I say. "I think we just need to get better at showing it. I guess we could…figure it out together?"

"That sounds lovely."

Kri tries to clean up on his own, but I butt my way in when he starts to wash the dishes. I'm off to his left, drying and setting them aside, and we fall into a good rhythm that reminds me of his time helping in the lab. We don't need to speak to fill space, I'm guided by his movements, and he's guided by me.

This is nice. Domestic, even. My heart stutters at the idea of doing this again, of sharing a space, of being welcomed into his home.

As I'm drying my hands on a towel, Kri steps around and in front of me, close enough that I can smell fresh water, and I look up at him and offer a warm smile. Taking my chin in one hand, he presses a kiss to my lips, chaste and simple and wholly perfect. This is our first kiss as a couple, I realize as his other hands carefully take the towel from me and rest it on the counter.

The first of many, hopefully.

Is that sappy? I don't care, as long as they keep happening. I press up to continue the kiss, a deep-seated need shocking through me at the soft noise he makes against my lips.

Then Kri searches my face, and I hear the chitter of his wings as they flutter against his back. "You're more than welcome to stay," he says, voice low, leaving no room for misinterpretation.

It physically pains me to be responsible and say, "I have to clock in tomorrow."

He nods once, decisive, and quickly pecks my cheek again before straightening. "I will fly you home, then."

"Sounds goo-- wait what?"

Kri doesn't answer me, only walks past me and into the living room.

Surely, surely he can't mean literally, I continue to think as I grab my stuff and we head out the door.

But sure enough, we walk outside and he picks me up like I'm a princess, something that still shocks me that he can do, and off we go.

I've never seen the Outpost from above, and it's kind of beautiful. I can trace the lights of the walking paths and the hovercar roads, I see single rooms lit from the buildings, other residents up late like me. And outside the border of the Outpost is the pure, unfiltered landscape of Summanus, with its primordial trees and glowing underbrush, like the ground itself is framing us with light. I've seen Kri fly faster, he must be slowing himself for my benefit. And Kri is glowing too, not nearly as bright as the electronics around us, but more subtle, softer. It's still that pale blue, rivers of light lining his chitinous plating. I want to trace them with my fingers, before I remember what it does to him.

We land in front of my building, so gently that Kri's feet don't make a sound, and he sets me down just as carefully.

"Thanks," I mutter, suddenly shy and awkward. I feel like he's bringing me home from prom and it's past curfew. I clear my throat. "Thank you for dinner. Not bad for a first date."

With his two lower arms, he grabs my hands and brings them together. "You will have to decide the next one, then."

I huff an exhale, smiling up at him. "Okay."

He smiles back, soft, relaxed, totally content. Dark eyes search my face, and even in the low light I can make out my reflection in the inky blackness. Two hands come up to cup my cheeks, fingers wrapping around to the base of my skull, as Kri leans down and gently kisses me.

I tilt my head and sigh into it as my eyes fall shut, wishing I were taller so he wouldn't have to bend down as far and I could press up against him. This is still good, though, he can still rest his other hands over my hips, and I can wind my arms over his shoulders.

This is all going to hit me later, a hurricane of repressed feelings. It's going to be a lot of good emotions though, I can feel them boiling behind my chest. Giddyness and arousal alongside anxiety and dread. I'm both excited and terrified of what could happen.

I can still feel the warmth coming off of him even when he leans back. His hands stay on my face, steady and comforting, and he leans forward and quickly kisses me again.

"I should go before I follow you inside," he says around a laugh, and I nod sadly.

"Or before I drag you in."

He chuckles, low and sexy, and squeezes my hands.

"Goodnight Cassie."

"Goodnight Kri," I mumble, and he steps back, dropping my hands from his.

I watch him take off before going inside, and I couldn't wipe the smile from my face if I tried.

Chapter 13 >>

#my writing #A Botanist's Guide #monster writing #monster romance #terato writing #monster x human #exo writing #and with this chapter we start the second arc of the story #focusing on their relationship #we're at the halfway point folks!#they're gonna be disgustingly in love i'm so excited

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missmentelle · 4 years ago

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Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things

If you’ve been paying attention for the last couple of years, you might have noticed that the world has a bit of a misinformation problem.

The problem isn’t just with the recent election conspiracies, either. The last couple of years has brought us the rise (and occasionally fall) of misinformation-based movements like:

Sandy Hook conspiracies

Gamergate

Pizzagate

The MRA/incel/MGTOW movements

anti-vaxxers

flat-earthers

the birther movement

the Illuminati

climate change denial

Spygate

Holocaust denial

COVID-19 denial

5G panic

QAnon

But why do people believe this stuff?

It would be easy - too easy - to say that people fall for this stuff because they’re stupid. We all want to believe that smart people like us are immune from being taken in by deranged conspiracies. But it’s just not that simple. People from all walks of life are going down these rabbit holes - people with degrees and professional careers and rich lives have fallen for these theories, leaving their loved ones baffled. Decades-long relationships have splintered this year, as the number of people flocking to these conspiracies out of nowhere reaches a fever pitch.

So why do smart people start believing some incredibly stupid things? It’s because:

Our brains are built to identify patterns.

Our brains fucking love puzzles and patterns. This is a well-known phenomenon called apophenia, and at one point, it was probably helpful for our survival - the prehistoric human who noticed patterns in things like animal migration, plant life cycles and the movement of the stars was probably a lot more likely to survive than the human who couldn’t figure out how to use natural clues to navigate or find food.

The problem, though, is that we can’t really turn this off. Even when we’re presented with completely random data, we’ll see patterns. We see patterns in everything, even when there’s no pattern there. This is why people see Jesus in a burnt piece of toast or get superstitious about hockey playoffs or insist on always playing at a certain slot machine - our brains look for patterns in the constant barrage of random information in our daily lives, and insist that those patterns are really there, even when they’re completely imagined.

A lot of conspiracy theories have their roots in people making connections between things that aren’t really connected. The belief that “vaccines cause autism” was bolstered by the fact that the first recognizable symptoms of autism happen to appear at roughly the same time that children receive one of their rounds of childhood immunizations - the two things are completely unconnected, but our brains have a hard time letting go of the pattern they see there. Likewise, many people were quick to latch on to the fact that early maps of COVID infections were extremely similar to maps of 5G coverage - the fact that there’s a reasonable explanation for this (major cities are more likely to have both high COVID cases AND 5G networks) doesn’t change the fact that our brains just really, really want to see a connection there.

Our brains love proportionality.

Specifically, our brains like effects to be directly proportional to their causes - in other words, we like it when big events have big causes, and small causes only lead to small events. It’s uncomfortable for us when the reverse is true. And so anytime we feel like a “big” event (celebrity death, global pandemic, your precious child is diagnosed with autism) has a small or unsatisfying cause (car accident, pandemics just sort of happen every few decades, people just get autism sometimes), we sometimes feel the need to start looking around for the bigger, more sinister, “true” cause of that event.

Consider, for instance, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. In 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot four times by a Turkish member of a known Italian paramilitary secret society who’d recently escaped from prison - on the surface, it seems like the sort of thing conspiracy theorists salivate over, seeing how it was an actual multinational conspiracy. But they never had much interest in the assassination attempt. Why? Because the Pope didn’t die. He recovered from his injuries and went right back to Pope-ing. The event didn’t have a serious outcome, and so people are content with the idea that one extremist carried it out. The death of Princess Diana, however, has been fertile ground for conspiracy theories; even though a woman dying in a car accident is less weird than a man being shot four times by a paid political assassin, her death has attracted more conspiracy theories because it had a bigger outcome. A princess dying in a car accident doesn’t feel big enough. It’s unsatisfying. We want such a monumentous moment in history to have a bigger, more interesting cause.

These theories prey on pre-existing fear and anger.

Are you a terrified new parent who wants the best for their child and feels anxious about having them injected with a substance you don’t totally understand? Congrats, you’re a prime target for the anti-vaccine movement. Are you a young white male who doesn’t like seeing more and more games aimed at women and minorities, and is worried that “your” gaming culture is being stolen from you? You might have been very interested in something called Gamergate. Are you a right-wing white person who worries that “your” country and way of life is being stolen by immigrants, non-Christians and coastal liberals? You’re going to love the “all left-wingers are Satantic pedo baby-eaters” messaging of QAnon.

Misinformation and conspiracy theories are often aimed strategically at the anxieties and fears that people are already experiencing. No one likes being told that their fears are insane or irrational; it’s not hard to see why people gravitate towards communities that say “yes, you were right all along, and everyone who told you that you were nuts to be worried about this is just a dumb sheep. We believe you, and we have evidence that you were right along, right here.” Fear is a powerful motivator, and you can make people believe and do some pretty extreme things if you just keep telling them “yes, that thing you’re afraid of is true, but also it’s way worse than you could have ever imagined.”

Real information is often complicated, hard to understand, and inherently unsatisfying.

The information that comes from the scientific community is often very frustrating for a layperson; we want science to have hard-and-fast answers, but it doesn’t. The closest you get to a straight answer is often “it depends” or “we don’t know, but we think X might be likely”. Understanding the results of a scientific study with any confidence requires knowing about sampling practices, error types, effect sizes, confidence intervals and publishing biases. Even asking a simple question like “is X bad for my child” will usually get you a complicated, uncertain answer - in most cases, it really just depends. Not understanding complex topics makes people afraid - it makes it hard to trust that they’re being given the right information, and that they’re making the right choices.

Conspiracy theories and misinformation, on the other hand, are often simple, and they are certain. Vaccines bad. Natural things good. 5G bad. Organic food good. The reason girls won’t date you isn’t a complex combination of your social skills, hygiene, appearance, projected values, personal circumstances, degree of extroversion, luck and life phase - girls won’t date you because feminism is bad, and if we got rid of feminism you’d have a girlfriend. The reason Donald Trump was an unpopular president wasn’t a complex combination of his public bigotry, lack of decorum, lack of qualifications, open incompetence, nepotism, corruption, loss of soft power, refusal to uphold the basic responsibilities of his position or his constant lying - they hated him because he was fighting a secret sex cult and they’re all in it.

Instead of making you feel stupid because you’re overwhelmed with complex information, expert opinions and uncertain advice, conspiracy theories make you feel smart - smarter, in fact, than everyone who doesn’t believe in them. And that’s a powerful thing for people living in a credential-heavy world.

Many conspiracy theories are unfalsifiable.

It is very difficult to prove a negative. If I tell you, for instance, that there’s no such thing as a purple swan, it would be very difficult for me to actually prove that to you - I could spend the rest of my life photographing swans and looking for swans and talking to people who know a lot about swans, and yet the slim possibility would still exist that there was a purple swan out there somewhere that I just hadn’t found yet. That’s why, in most circumstances, the burden of proof lies with the person making the extraordinary claim - if you tell me that purple swans exist, we should continue to assume that they don’t until you actually produce a purple swan.

Conspiracy theories, however, are built so that it’s nearly impossible to “prove” them wrong. Is there any proof that the world’s top-ranking politicians and celebrities are all in a giant child sex trafficking cult? No. But can you prove that they aren’t in a child sex-trafficking cult? No, not really. Even if I, again, spent the rest of my life investigating celebrities and following celebrities and talking to people who know celebrities, I still couldn’t definitely prove that this cult doesn’t exist - there’s always a chance that the specific celebrities I’ve investigated just aren’t in the cult (but other ones are!) or that they’re hiding evidence of the cult even better than we think. Lack of evidence for a conspiracy theory is always treated as more evidence for the theory - we can’t find anything because this goes even higher up than we think! They’re even more sophisticated at hiding this than we thought! People deeply entrenched in these theories don’t even realize that they are stuck in a circular loop where everything seems to prove their theory right - they just see a mountain of “evidence” for their side.

Our brains are very attached to information that we “learned” by ourselves.

Learning accurate information is not a particularly interactive or exciting experience. An expert or reliable source just presents the information to you in its entirety, you read or watch the information, and that’s the end of it. You can look for more information or look for clarification of something, but it’s a one-way street - the information is just laid out for you, you take what you need, end of story.

Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, almost never show their hand all at once. They drop little breadcrumbs of information that slowly lead you where they want you to go. This is why conspiracy theorists are forever telling you to “do your research” - they know that if they tell you everything at once, you won’t believe them. Instead, they want you to indoctrinate yourself slowly over time, by taking the little hints they give you and running off to find or invent evidence that matches that clue. If I tell you that celebrities often wear symbols that identify them as part of a cult and that you should “do your research” about it, you can absolutely find evidence that substantiates my claim - there are literally millions of photos of celebrities out there, and anyone who looks hard enough is guaranteed to find common shapes, poses and themes that might just mean something (they don’t - eyes and triangles are incredibly common design elements, and if I took enough pictures of you, I could also “prove” that you also clearly display symbols that signal you’re in the cult).

The fact that you “found” the evidence on your own, however, makes it more meaningful to you. We trust ourselves, and we trust that the patterns we uncover by ourselves are true. It doesn’t feel like you’re being fed misinformation - it feels like you’ve discovered an important truth that “they” didn’t want you to find, and you’ll hang onto that for dear life.

Older people have not learned to be media-literate in a digital world.

Fifty years ago, not just anyone could access popular media. All of this stuff had a huge barrier to entry - if you wanted to be on TV or be in the papers or have a radio show, you had to be a professional affiliated with a major media brand. Consumers didn’t have easy access to niche communities or alternative information - your sources of information were basically your local paper, the nightly news, and your morning radio show, and they all more or less agreed on the same set of facts. For decades, if it looked official and it appeared in print, you could probably trust that it was true.

Of course, we live in a very different world today - today, any asshole can accumulate an audience of millions, even if they have no credentials and nothing they say is actually true (like “The Food Babe”, a blogger with no credentials in medicine, nutrition, health sciences, biology or chemistry who peddles health misinformation to the 3 million people who visit her blog every month). It’s very tough for older people (and some younger people) to get their heads around the fact that it’s very easy to create an “official-looking” news source, and that they can’t necessarily trust everything they find on the internet. When you combine that with a tendency toward “clickbait headlines” that often misrepresent the information in the article, you have a generation struggling to determine who they can trust in a media landscape that doesn’t at all resemble the media landscape they once knew.

These beliefs become a part of someone’s identity.

A person doesn’t tell you that they believe in anti-vaxx information - they tell you that they ARE an anti-vaxxer. Likewise, people will tell you that they ARE a flat-earther, a birther, or a Gamergater. By design, these beliefs are not meant to be something you have a casual relationship with, like your opinion of pizza toppings or how much you trust local weather forecasts - they are meant to form a core part of your identity.

And once something becomes a core part of your identity, trying to make you stop believing it becomes almost impossible. Once we’ve formed an initial impression of something, facts just don’t change our minds. If you identify as an antivaxxer and I present evidence that disproves your beliefs, in your mind, I’m not correcting inaccurate information - I am launching a very personal attack against a core part of who you are. In fact, the more evidence I present, the more you will burrow down into your antivaxx beliefs, more confident than ever that you are right. Admitting that you are wrong about something that is important to you is painful, and your brain would prefer to simply deflect conflicting information rather than subject you to that pain.

We can see this at work with something called the confirmation bias. Simply put, once we believe something, our brains hold on to all evidence that that belief is true, and ignore evidence that it’s false. If I show you 100 articles that disprove your pet theory and 3 articles that confirm it, you’ll cling to those 3 articles and forget about the rest. Even if I show you nothing but articles that disprove your theory, you’ll likely go through them and pick out any ambiguous or conflicting information as evidence for “your side”, even if the conclusion of the article shows that you are wrong - our brains simply care about feeling right more than they care about what is actually true.

There is a strong community aspect to these theories.

There is no one quite as supportive or as understanding as a conspiracy theorist - provided, of course, that you believe in the same conspiracy theories that they do. People who start looking into these conspiracy theories are told that they aren’t crazy, and that their fears are totally valid. They’re told that the people in their lives who doubted them were just brainwashed sheep, but that they’ve finally found a community of people who get where they’re coming from. Whenever they report back to the group with the “evidence” they’ve found or the new elaborations on the conspiracy theory that they’ve been thinking of (“what if it’s even worse than we thought??”), they are given praise for their valuable contributions. These conspiracy groups often become important parts of people’s social networks - they can spend hours every day talking with like-minded people from these communities and sharing their ideas.

Of course, the flipside of this is that anyone who starts to doubt or move away from the conspiracy immediately loses that community and social support. People who have broken away from antivaxx and QAnon often say that the hardest part of leaving was losing the community and friendships they’d built - not necessarily giving up on the theory itself. Many people are rejected by their real-life friends and family once they start to get entrenched in conspiracy theories; the friendships they build online in the course of researching these theories often become the only social supports they have left, and losing those supports means having no one to turn to at all. This is by design - the threat of losing your community has kept people trapped in abusive religious sects and cults for as long as those things have existed.

#missmentelle #askmissmentelle #conspiracy theories #cults #psychology #science #neuroscience

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imagining-in-the-margins · 4 years ago

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Here to Misbehave (Pt. 22 | S.R.)

Summary: Things are changing for the better. Couple: Spencer Reid/Fem!Reader Content Warning: Adults w/ Age Difference, Sub Drop, vague mentions of trauma/dissociation, PTSD (mostly comfort) Word Count: 7.25k

MASTERLIST

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The dulcet, bustling sounds of the Dulles International Airport were more soothing than I expected. Normally, the massive crowds and constant barrage of information would make my brain go into overdrive, but there was something about Spencer being there that made it all turn to white noise. If I had to guess, I would say it was the feeling of trusting someone to take care of you.

I still hadn’t gotten used to it.

“Hey, I got you something.”

Even then, when he’d approached me from behind and gingerly placed the bag on my lap, I barely even flinched. I smelled the contents of the bag before I noticed the logo or managed to open it, but once I confirmed it was what I thought it was, my eyes immediately teared up.

“Oh my god,” I keened, pulling out the familiar blue cup holding a much too sweet, much too large cinnamon bun. Although my mind was running with a million things to say to express just how appreciative I was, I took a bite out of it before I said anything else.

“I love you so much,” I mumbled around a mouth full of pastry.

Spencer tried to respond, but after one glance at me, fingers and face already covered in frosting after only a few seconds, he burst out laughing.

“You’re a complete mess,” he chastised, trying to cluck his tongue but failing in his laughter.

I just smiled back, not even bothering with the plastic utensils and enjoying the indulgence with absolutely childlike joy. It wasn’t even just the sugar or my fingers pressing into the warm, sticky dough that made the morning seem so much better; it was the way Spencer watched me.

With one arm leaned against the chair, his whole body was turned towards me. It was clear from the slightly glassy look in his exhausted eyes that he was also stuck trying to find the right words to say to express just how grateful he was that we could still have moments like that.

Those same eyes roamed over my figure with such an overtly intimate gleam that it almost made me blush. If he’d touched me, I definitely would have. But he kept his hands to himself, and eventually, buried them into his carry-on bag. I didn’t even look at what he was doing, too lost in the sweetness of being cared for.

That foolhardy trust was a mistake. Because, it turned out, Spencer Reid was a monster.

Without any warning at all, a cold wet wipe was dragged over my cheeks. I flinched back, only to find Spencer’s hand holding onto my head and stopping me from turning away. The madman even had the audacity to smile as he gingerly wiped the frosting from my cheeks and chin. Of course, considering the fact I was thrashing wildly away from him, it ended up mostly on my lips.

“Pfftbtb! Spencer!” I spit and whined, earning confused looks from basically everyone in the vicinity. What they would find when they looked over was him in a fit of laughter, continuing to try and clean my face, which was still covered in sugary frosting despite his best efforts to remove it.

“I thought you enjoyed the taste of alcohol,” he teased.

“First of all, no one does, and second—” I started, only to be cut off with a kiss over my much too clean mouth. I smiled, but only because it used to be my move. I wondered when exactly the tables had turned, and it became his job to shut me up with a kiss.

“I know,” he whispered, licking his lips just to cringe at the taste he’d forced on me, “I’m just joking.”

I decided then that the sight and shared disgust for ethyl alcohol were enough for me to forgive him for the time being. I let him clean the rest of the evidence of my greed from my face but decided to clean my fingers myself. I popped each one into my mouth in what I’d imagined was a very non-sexual manner, but Spencer still seemed to enjoy watching me as each digit was cleaned. Granted, he handed me another wipe seconds later. Damn germaphobe. Like he didn’t shove his tongue in my mouth on a daily basis.

The rest of the treat was shared between us, with utensils this time, in a relative quiet. Brief giggles or sighs were all there was to be said. Once there was nothing left to fixate on, I was left only with my thoughts and Spencer’s eyes that still watched me like a horribly affectionate hawk.

“I’m really sorry,” I mumbled without realizing. I’d almost hoped he wouldn’t even hear it, or let it go without a conversation, but of course, he couldn’t do that.

“For what?”

“For making you do all of this,” I explained with a heavy sigh, “I feel like a big baby.”

Spencer’s hands came to brush away the stray strands of hairs from my face. They weren’t actually in the way of anything; I think he just wanted to make a better view. That alone was enough to make me smile, but that only seemed to make him feel guilty.

“Don’t apologize for this. This is my fault,” he said just as quietly. I mirrored his motion, running my fingers through his hair and watching as his mouth dropped open in a pleased smile.

“No, it’s not. You’re wonderful,” I said through my own. It was only a little bit sadder than his, but wasn’t that usually the case? I could only imagine what would happen the day we were both overflowing with nothing but joy. Before, that thought might lead me back to the bank, the place that ended our last purely happy encounter, but…

I looked at Spencer, with his mouth still slightly open and his head lolling back and forth with the little weight of my hand, and I couldn’t bring myself to think of anything bad. So I just thought of the picnic, instead. I thought of him licking my hand as we rolled in grass, and of his own hands working through my hair to make it into something besides a mess on my head.

I looked at Spencer, and I saw beautiful things. And the longer I played with his hair, the more relaxed and content he became. Of course, I would never be satisfied. His smile was the most beautiful thing to see, and I needed it to deal with the guilt still sitting like rocks in my stomach.

“Besides, it’ll be so much easier putting down my work and actually getting sleep when you’re waiting for me,” Spencer slurred, his neck relaxing to drop the weight of his head against my palm.

“I hope not too easy. The world needs you, Dr. Reid,” I kindly reminded.

His eyes fluttered open, trapping me in dark honey irises filled with pure adoration. “You need me, too,” he whispered.

“Arrogant bastard.”

Naturally, he took it as a compliment, his smile growing into a smirk as he answered, “A little bit.”

He should have known better than to give me that look, though, because within seconds my hands fell from his hair. A small whimper came from the pitiful man at the loss. It was quickly followed by a sharp inhale when my hand grabbed his thigh.

“You think I’ll actually let you sleep?” I whispered.

Aside from the obviously tense quadriceps beneath my palms, Spencer showed very little response to my suggestion. Well, rather, he showed little arousal to it. There was a reaction— just not the one I expected.

He looked... nervous.

“I actually wanted to talk to you about that...”

“What?” I shot back immediately, my hands withdrawing and tugging on my shirt while I instinctively tried to hide from him. I was trying to look less guilty, but I was acutely aware that my actions screamed the opposite. So, I tried to combat my obvious anxiety with a voice that was far louder than it needed to be. “I swear I’m on all my medications. I haven’t missed a single therapy appointment, either!”

Spencer’s hands were gentle and cautious when they came to my wrists, gently pulling them away from my chest. “I know. I trust you,” he said with a sad but still genuine smile, “I just wanted to ask you how you wanted to handle this.”

“What do you mean? I’m fine.” The words tumbled out of me in the least convincing manner. Spencer was too smart to fall for them, although I could see a playfulness bloom through his features.

“No offense, but you just cried over a cinnamon bun,” he said, unable to stop a few chuckles from mixing with the words.

“It was just really good, okay?” I scoffed, tearing my hands away from him and feigning offense despite his little disclaimer. From there, I sank down in the shitty airport chair and refused to look up at him. I could still feel his cheeky, arrogant little grin watching me.

Eventually, after I thought we’d suffered enough and I could already feel my legs going numb, I weakly conceded, “Fine. What are my options?”

“Well, basically anything. But the main thing to consider is...”

He paused. It was one of the sure signs that he was taking the situation very seriously. Usually, he would just spout out whatever came to mind and sort out the details later. But this time, he spoke slowly and purposefully. “Majority of our relationship has been based on physicality. Whether it was sex or healing or hurting and I... I want to give you the option to not do that. At least, not for a little while.”

A feeling of dread filled my blood that I could suddenly hear rushing through my ears. I didn’t tell my heart to beat faster, but it did. My hands that had once again crossed over my chest suddenly itched to hold him.

“Why would I not want to?” I asked, fiddling with the buttons on my shirt and occasionally glancing up at him only to realize that he wasn’t looking at me, either. I tried not to read into it. After all, he was the profiler— not me.

“It’s not a matter of avoiding it. I just need you to know it’s not expected of you.”

Without shifting my body at all, my eyes were glued to him. The strain of the angle and the sound of those words caused them to burn, but I refused to let tears fall again. He wasn’t rejecting me, right? He was telling me that he loved me. There was no reason to be scared.

I wasn’t used to that yet, either. But I wanted to be. And judging by the way his hand cupped my face and guided it back to his, I think Spencer felt those anxieties. He tried to will them away by pressing his forehead against mine and letting his thumb ghost over flushed cheeks.

“Don’t be scared. I just need you to know that we don’t have to have sex for you to be worth my time and attention.”

The tears grew bigger under his scrutiny, but they didn’t fall until he closed his eyes. I think that was why he did.

“I love you,” he assured me with a whisper, “I’m not going to deny you affection or intimacy if that’s what you want. I just need you to know that it is always an option.”

Normally when Spencer pulled away, the air felt cold in his absence. For so long, my body had felt lonelier and less than without him. But in that busy, bustling airport, I felt just as loved even when his hands fell away and he sat back up in his chair.

For those who might’ve been watching, they would just see two lovesick idiots whispering sweet nothings in a flagrantly public display of affection. They wouldn’t have heard the weight of the words or felt the way my perception of the whole world shifted from them.

Spencer smiled again, still nervous, but also clear and authentic.

“I’m sorry,” he told me with his eyes fixated on my hands in my lap. He made no move to hold it, although I could tell he wanted to. I suspect he wanted me to focus on the words, so I tried my hardest. I almost asked him what he was sorry for, but he answered first, “I don’t think I’ve ever told you that before.”

A lump quickly formed in my throat that I tried to swallow. When that failed, and I felt the telltale signs of tears filling the sides of my eyes, I did the only thing I could think of to hide. I threw my arms around the only thing that never failed to make them better. I buried my face in Spencer’s neck and laughed along with him as my eyelashes and breath tickled the soft skin.

After a brief second of listening to our hearts settle into a matching rhythm and letting our body heat sink into the clothes between us, Spencer groaned, “How are you still sticky?”

—————————————————

A couple weeks prior, the thought of being alone in a hotel room waiting on Spencer to finish work for the day would have instilled the fear of God in me. I would have done just about anything to avoid the exact situation I found myself in now.

But honestly? It wasn’t all that bad. It was the perfect opportunity for me to force myself to slow down. Granted, that mostly just meant that I would watch bad TV in a bathrobe with overpriced food, but... like they say, change is as good as a rest.

The hardest part about it was actually just convincing myself that I deserved the rest. While I was taking naps and trying to do anything to unwind, I knew what Spencer was doing.

Well, I had some idea of what he was doing. Reality was probably worse than my imagination— it usually was with his job. At first, I had let that guilt get in the way, but at some point over the nine hours, I realized that I would have to find a way to cheer myself up. Because as soon as I heard that small beep of the keycard, I would have to find a way to remind him of all the beautiful things in the world.

No pressure, right?

The sun had already started to set, and I hadn’t heard from him in hours. We’d started the day out with a constant line of contact, but over time he became too busy. Which, again, just meant that I would have to work even harder when he finally arrived.

Luckily for me, by the time Spencer had arrived, there was no need for a pep talk or acting of any kind. My heart immediately started to race the second I heard his voice down the hall. I had already bolted from the bed and positioned myself just far enough from the door that I could jump forward the second it opened far enough to fit me.

And when it did, I pounced.

“Spencer!” I cheered, throwing myself into his arms that had fully been expecting me. Still, the two of us crashed back against the frame and I heard the breath be knocked out of him from the impact.

“Hey, little girl,” he managed to laugh with empty lungs that made it impossible to forget how tired he was. His arm eventually settled at my lower back, lifting me slightly so he could move us from the door’s path. But when we were out of harm’s way and the latch clicked softly in place, Spencer didn’t let me go. In fact, he tossed his bag into the chair at the desk and wrapped his other arm around me, too.

“How was work?” I asked, afraid I already knew the answer.

“You know...” he muttered with a crackling voice, “awful.”

If that hadn’t given it away, the way he buried his face in my neck certainly did. His hands were even more insistent, pressing into my back as he led us both to the bed.

I had to laugh, though, as the realization dawned on him that he’d have to let go of me if he didn’t want to track filthy shoes in our bed. A heavy sigh fell from his lips when he finally released me, practically throwing me onto the terrible mattress before taking his seat next to me.

“I missed you,” I announced in the ambient noise of the cheapest hotel that the government could justify using.

Spencer looked up at me, but the words took a little longer to register. I could only imagine how busy his mind must’ve been, and the guilt quickly came creeping back.

“I missed you, too,” he returned, albeit with a tint of sadness in his tone. But the longer we stayed there, the calmer he seemed. It was such a powerful effect of our proximity that by the time he did lay down next to me, he seemed like the man that had wiped frosting from my face in the middle of a busy airport.

Spencer must have noticed the shift, too, because no sooner had his head hit the pillow than he had flipped over, throwing his leg over me to pin me down against the bed.

My initial reaction was to keep laughing, but the noises were muffled by the persistent kisses he gave. They started at my cheeks and over the bridge of my nose but landed on my lips. I felt the tension leave his shoulders as he lowered more of his body weight against me, and I reveled in the feeling of his presence.

“God, I needed this,” he growled just before his tongue slipped into my mouth.

Everything we’d talked about at the airport felt a lifetime away, and as soon as I felt his erection pressing hard against my thigh, I only had one goal in mind. I forced my hands between us, trying to remove his tie with the hope that it would shed some of the thoughts he’d brought back from work.

But then it all stopped. Spencer had pulled away, grabbing onto my wrist and pinning it to the bed beside me once more.

“No, we don’t need to do that. I just wanted to kiss you,” he panted through heavy breath and swollen lips. I couldn’t stop staring at them long enough to answer, but it was clear from the look on his face that any plea I gave would be for naught, anyway. “I’m honestly way too exhausted to give you the attention you deserve.”

I believed him. Even when he hadn’t slept for nearly two days, he still looked livelier then. I had a sneaking suspicion that it had less to do with sleep and more to do with emotions. I wanted to help him with that, too, like he did for me, but I didn’t know how. So, I did the only thing I did know how to do well, which was to place a soft peck against his lips until they turned up into another smile.

“Get some rest, old man,” I murmured, “I’ll be here to kiss again when you wake up.”

“Let me hold you,” he answered immediately, nuzzling his face against my neck like a puppy seeking any shred of attention. I couldn’t tell if I was laughing because of the way his hair tickled or because it was so strange to see him so vulnerable while still in dominant, albeit disheveled, work clothes.

“Fine. Only because you asked nicely.”

Continuing the trend of being remarkably adorable, Spencer giggled as he rolled onto his side. I was almost tempted to turn towards him, but he had already wrapped his arms around me before I could decide. He pulled me as close as he could before his lips once again settled against the column of my throat.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he stated absently. It was so quiet that I’m not sure he’d actually planned on me hearing it. But when I reached a hand up to run through his hair, he spoke with a shaky, relieved whine, “I can’t believe you’re here.”

A gentle, warm exhale breezed over my skin as he continued, “I love you so much.”

From that point, any words he might’ve whispered were muffled through sloppy, sleepy kisses over my neck and shoulder. His hands, though slow, were still rough and purposeful as they pawed at me in a way that was only vaguely sexual. It was more like he was trying to prove to himself that he was actually here with me, and my breasts just happened to be the first thing he could grab.

That still didn’t stop my mind from running wild. The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention as I focused on the way his breath felt against areas still wet from his kisses. And when I arched my back, I felt his hips press harder.

Eventually, when I could trust myself to speak without whimpering, I asked, “Are you sure you don’t want to...”

I peeked back at him before continuing, having noticed a lull in his kisses. Sure enough, Spencer was fast asleep, his lips still attached to my shoulder. I had to chuckle at the sight, but my heart did hurt for him. I couldn’t imagine how tired he must have been to fall asleep then, and still in his clothes, much less.

The guilt over being the main cause of his tiredness was enough to keep me still for at least two hours. I spent that time slowly inching to a more comfortable position, only to be squished seconds later by Spencer. Even in his sleep, it seemed he was terrified of the prospect of me slipping from his arms. He was just being dramatic, though. It’s not like I had anywhere to go.

Wait, that sounded wrong. Truthfully, there were many places I could go, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay with Spencer, tangled in his long limbs and tickled by his hair that had grown long enough to gracelessly flop onto my face regardless of position.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to leave at all.

But I did. Inch by inch, I carefully slipped from Spencer’s arms. Against all odds, I managed to maneuver through the death grip he had on me and plop down on the ground beside the bed. My mind found that to be the perfect time to recall the lecture he’d given me about how suitcases, and more specifically, their wheels, were the most dangerous bacteria-laden aspects of traveling, but I dismissed the thought shortly after I stood again.

I didn’t want to leave Spencer’s embrace. I’m not really sure why I did. There wasn’t even really a particularly angsty reasoning for it. I just had this feeling, this tingling on my skin and a weight in my stomach that told me I was meant to be doing something different.

The only problem was that I had literally no idea what the fuck that something different was.

So, naturally, I did what every young child does when their parents had grown tired of their restless children jumping on the hotel bed. I grabbed the keycard and the ice bucket and set out on a very thrilling journey to find the vending room. The first part was the hardest. It was shutting the door to return the room to darkness, knowing that Spencer was alone in bed.

It was hard, but it wasn’t impossible. I slipped from the room into the horrible yellow lighting of the halls with the dizzying wallpaper and patterned carpet without another thought. I’d hoped that the walk might bring me answers to the mood I was currently wrestling with, but I was wrong. Because it basically only took me three doors to find the room that I was looking for.

Great.

I threw the door open haphazardly, actually contemplating grabbing the ice and returning to bed no wiser than I had left it. But when the door swung shut behind me, the humming from the machines bled into my brain and started to cover all the other thoughts. It was warmer than my room, as well as smaller and quieter. Of course, it was also remarkably less private, but it was also like 2am. If someone came in to find a strange girl sitting on the floor next to the ice machine, that was their own fault.

In a strange way, it was the most peaceful I’d been in a long time. As much as I loved being with Spencer, these circumstances made it hard for me to not feel like I didn’t belong. Probably because I didn’t. He was here on work, a life that he’d tried very hard to keep away from me. I didn’t blame him for that, either. I was sure he’d gotten a number of questions from Morgan and Garcia about my presence, but he hadn’t shared them with me. I’d even asked him, just so I could concoct my own retaliatory questions for the nosiest of them, but he just laughed the question away.

Maybe that was it. Maybe it was just the realization that Spencer had a life of his own and I was just starting to see it for the first time. I was learning so much about him and honestly… None of it was bad. Most of it was just downright silly. Things like prank wars and physics magic and careful, chemistry-based improvements to shitty coffee. I was just too busy realizing that I was falling even more in love with Spencer to notice anything else.

Including, apparently, the sound of the door to the room opening. Trust me when I say that was saying a lot; the presence of Aaron Hotchner was not easy to miss.

“Can I join you?” His voice filled the room despite its low volume, and I followed the sound with a small smile that grew at the sight of him in casual clothing. It wasn’t something that happened often, but it sure did make him less intimidating than our previous encounters.

“Sure,” I said as I pulled the still-empty ice bucket into my lap. Once he took his seat beside me, I rolled my head toward him to try and figure out what exactly he had planned. But after another few seconds of silence, I realized that he was doing the same thing I was.

Improvising.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” I asked, insistent that it wasn’t my job in this scenario to come up with the advice.

Hotch seemed equally lost, and with a slight shake of his head, he explained, “I only heard the door open once. Figured it was worth a trip to get some ice to check.”

He held up his matching ice bucket, to which I lifted mine to knock together like the worst kind of toast. It at least succeeded in making him laugh, although the sound was short-lived. We both recognized the shoddy attempt at humor was just masking the things I didn’t want to talk about.

“Why can’t you sleep?”

He had never really been a beat-around-the-bush sort of guy.

“Freakin’ profilers,” I affectionately muttered back, which only earned me a playful warning glance that I, for once, didn’t choose to ignore. “I don’t know. I’m guessing it’s probably the 3-hour nap I took when we got here.”

Then, deciding that still didn’t describe the situation well enough, I tagged on, “You know, while you all were working and saving the world and what not.”

Unfortunately, I’d forgotten the cardinal rule of the BAU: Do not ever speak poorly about yourself. Not even an implication.

“Rest is important. No reason for you to suffer for us,” he returned without pause.

“You sound like Spencer,” I said through a half-hearted laugh.

Hotch shared my laughter, causing them both to grow in volume as he snarkily replied, “And who do you think taught him?”

“Right. Sorry.” I held my hands up in surrender, but we both knew it would be harder than that.

But that was okay. He came prepared.

“So, what else is wrong?”

“So persistent, you lot,” I chuckled. I half expected him to let it go, but he just turned to stare at me with that usually stoic face contorted with an obvious reprimand. I swear, I didn’t even realize his eyebrows could move that far. But there were, raised up his forehead as his cheeks dimpled from his little, knowing smirk.

“I don’t know,” I sighed, “Just thinking about things and I was scared I would wake up Spencer. Like he would feel my anxiety in his sleep.”

“What’s making you anxious?”

I paused. For a moment, I thought about lying. Not the kind of transparent lie that you do when you say that everything is fine. The kind of lie that also contained the truth. There were many things that had happened lately that would explain my anxiety, and they would be believable enough because I did still feel them.

“Everything. You know. The usual,” I said softly, attempting to stall.

Because that wasn’t what the problem was that day. The problems that day were… complicated in a different way than the usual angst. So, I let the thoughts marinate for a moment, considering the different outcomes and deciding which I really wanted.

I hadn’t let myself want things in a while. Maybe that realization was why I decided to just tell him the truth, despite how embarrassing it felt.

“It’s not bad anxiety, necessarily. It’s just this realization that… I don’t know.”

“Take a guess,” he pressed, feeling the hesitance as I stood at the brink of what I really wanted to say. The real answer to why I was sitting on the floor of an ice machine vending room with my boyfriend’s boss, who also happened to be our shared adoptive father figure.

I took a deep breath, clutching onto the ice bucket so tightly that my knuckles blanched and the edges imprinted on my hand until I blurted out, “That I think I’m ready for something else. Something more.”

We both stopped then, enjoying the noises of machinery and the barely-there echo of my words.

“Something more, huh?” he repeated more clearly.

I didn’t appreciate the way the words were practically sung through a clever grin, and before he could take that train of thought any further, I stopped him with an answer too loud to not be deemed defensive.

“Not like that! Not like, let’s run off and elope and have lots of babies tomorrow!“ He didn’t look convinced, so I continued with a much more believable promise. “Don’t worry, I’m not sniping your genius.”

“Thank goodness,” he replied sarcastically. I appreciated his ability to keep things lighthearted, and for a second I did have to laugh at the fact he was such a different person when he wasn’t at work. He must’ve taught Spencer more than I realized. And, in turn, Spencer was teaching me. I just wasn’t sure when the lesson would be over, or if it had already ended.

“I’ve just held onto my independence and this… heavy bullshit for so long, and I’m a little worried about what that means,” I thought aloud.

Again, Hotch had read my mind, or at least, my body language, and demanded the answer he saw written across my features. “What do you think it means?”

“Do you always give fatherly advice like this to whiny girls in ice machine rooms?” I shot back with my first attempt at a glare. It only lasted until he flashed me a toothy smile and his own clever retort.

“No. Now answer the question.”

“I had to try,” I grumbled, only to be shut down again in an instant.

“I’ll forgive you when you answer.”

With a begrudging sigh, I tried to do what he asked. But I only barely got through one word before they turned to a lump in my throat. I choked on the words strongly enough that tears I hadn’t anticipated began pooling on my eyelashes. The power of a profiler, I guess, to know I was on the verge of an emotional catharsis before I did.

“I know we all change. I know that no one stays the same. We all go through things and they change who we are. And that can be good, right? But…”

Once the words started, they wouldn’t stop, turning and tumbling from clumsy lips still chapped from incessant biting. But teeth and willpower couldn’t stop the feelings that caused them, and if Spencer had taught me anything, he’d taught me that speaking a feeling into existence was half of the battle to let it go.

“But sometimes it’s gotta just be bad, right? Like, we’ve got to acknowledge that sometimes we change in an irreparable way that’s just bad for no reason.”

“Right,” he very eloquently returned. Normally, I would have bullied him for giving such a simple response to such a complex question, but at that moment I was just grateful that I could continue. Heaven knows Spencer wouldn’t have let me.

“So, what if that happened to me? What if one day I wake up and finally find out the answer to the question I’ve been asking myself?”

When I turned to the man then, I saw a genuine confusion for the first time that night. I couldn’t tell you where I’d lost him, but it was clear that he heard something in me that alerted him that some deeper rooted issues were just now finding the light of day.

Of course, in this situation, it was really just a flickering fluorescent bulb.

“What question is that?” he whispered, like his voice would intrude in the thoughts.

But the truth was they didn’t feel like they belonged to me, either. That was the problem. I’d spent so long with memories that felt like a dream. I saw them playback when I closed my eyes, just to open them and find the same images reflecting in Spencer’s. I knew they were real because they were written into my skin, yet my mind rioted against them so hard that instead, I just started to think that this body wasn’t mine, either.

“How much of me died that day?”

The question sat with us, taking form in the reflection on the metallic surface that hummed a somehow somber tune. And even though I knew I was looking at myself, it didn’t feel that way. When I saw Hotch move in the background, I turned to him just in time to feel his hand resting over mine on the metal pail in my hands.

“Can I tell you what I think?” he offered.

“I’d like that.”

I felt the warmth flow through him, bringing life back into a hand that suddenly started to feel like me again. His voice shared the same rejuvenating quality as he quietly but confidently answered, “I think… it’s much less than you think.”

As tears slid down my face, they felt less like the beginning of a downpour and more like the drizzle that follows the storm. I let them fall without wiping them away, hoping that as they fell away, they would take the fear with them.

After they did drip from my jaw, I laughed. I couldn’t hold it in because it seemed so silly how much lighter I felt after losing just a few droplets of saline. But, realistically, I knew it had more to do with his hand still holding mine.

I dropped my head to his shoulder, selfishly stealing his body warmth as I croaked, “Thanks for talking to me. I know I must sound like a stupid kid to you sometimes.”

“Not at all,” he said with that tone that was difficult to discount, “You sound just like you should.”

“Can I tell you something now?” I asked between sniffles.

“I’d like that,” he mirrored.

“You’re like… a really good dad.”

It was his turn to shed tears, then, which he did. They were much manlier and less silly than mine, but they were there. I almost accused him of creating them just to make me feel less embarrassed, but before I could, he’d enveloped me in a hug that was way too genuine to question it.

As I hugged him back, I realized just how badly I’d missed moments like this. I’d fooled myself into really believing that loneliness and independence were the same things for so long that when I was granted the support all human beings need, I didn’t know how to respond.

But that was the beauty of family, right? You don’t have to try to earn their love. They already thought you were worthy.

So I hugged him harder, ignoring the clanking of the machines and the sounds of crowds of people stumbling back from bars in the hall that could walk in any moment. I wasn’t embarrassed to be sad anymore. I was just a person. It happens sometimes.

“Speaking of, it’s well past your bedtime,” Hotch said finally, gracelessly shattering the moment in a very dad-like fashion.

“I walked into that one.”

Following that trend, he continued with a gentle bump of his shoulder against me, “If you don’t want to go yet, you can talk to me about that something more.”

I practically shoved him off me, huffing between chuckles and shaking my head in the hope that he wouldn’t notice how it flushed.

“Please. Spencer talks about that stuff, but he’s all talk.”

At first, Hotch just nodded. But after a few wayward glances, he confessed, “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”

That time the warmth I felt came from within, carried by butterflies that had burst in my stomach at the thought. I almost asked him what he meant, but then felt the familiar, creeping embarrassment that came along with loving someone a little too much.

“Yeah, right,” I scoffed.

I knew he was reading my expressions, but I couldn’t hide the smile, no matter how hard I tried. He still had the decency to ignore my blatant displays of excitement, instead asking the question we both knew the answer to already.

“Is that something you’d want?”

“I…” Such a simple syllable still seemed like too much, and I stuttered it a few more times before I landed on an answer that wasn’t too humiliating. “I guess he’ll have to ask and find out.”

“I hope it turns out well when he does,” he said, pausing to correct with a sarcastic, “Sorry. If he does.”

“Yeah, me too,” I sighed heavily. It was a last ditch effort to hide the way my cheeks were still stuck in a full-faced smile. I turned to see him with a very similar expression.

I knew just how to change that. When he stood up and offered me a hand, I took it and let him do half the work for me. But once we were on equal footing, I placed my hand on his shoulder with a complacent pat.

“You know, if it doesn’t turn out well, you’ll have to figure out how to comfort the both of us.”

“The horror,” he jokingly cringed with a shake of his head.

I almost left then, but thankfully he’d remembered the actual purpose for the room we’d had our impromptu surrogate-father-daughter moment in. He grabbed my ice pail from my hand and dropped it under the dispenser without saying anything else, letting the chaotic crunching signal the real end of the moment.

Once it was over, I looked down at the now freezing bucket in my hands that suddenly felt warm. Then I looked back up at him and saw a pride that I wasn’t expecting.

“Goodnight, Aaron,” I said as the last remaining bit of tension fell from my shoulders.

“Goodnight,” he answered, opening the door and watching as I padded down the hall. He waited until I slipped back into my room before his door clicked shut, and mine quickly followed.

That tiny sound was just enough to wake the man in the bed, and when I turned to him, the sight took my breath away. Because there was Spencer, the man I loved, reaching his arms out into the darkness and grabbing the empty air as he whined, begging me to come to him faster.

And I did. Tossing the bucket onto the table, I rushed over to him and threw myself into the bed beside him without any grace. With a similar restlessness, Spencer wound his arms around me as soon as I was within his reach, pulling me as close as he could without sacrificing all the air in my lungs.

“I missed you,” he mumbled against my hair.

“Don’t worry. I’m back,” I whispered back. The words were lost in his shirt, but he somehow heard them well enough to ask, “Where did you go?”

I didn’t know how exactly to describe what had happened, so I told one of those lies I’d contemplated earlier. “To get ice,” I said. It wasn’t exactly a lie. It was just a very inefficient summary.

Spencer didn’t care, either. In fact, he giggled at the thought, nuzzling his face down into my neck and tickling me with his lips as he mumbled, “Let me warm you up.”

It did succeed in warming me up, but only because it turned into a fit of giggles and more intense tickling. His fingers danced along my sides and his whispers turned back to the same kisses that we’d started the night with.

But it couldn’t last forever. The poor guy still had only had a couple hours of sleep, and I felt the excitement wear off all at once, leaving him only half-awake on the pillow beside me. He still found the energy to look at me like there were stars in my eyes.

“Where did you really go?” he asked again, dragging his hand over my cheek like he could see the tears I’d shed just a few moments before.

“Just ice. I promise,” I answered, ending the thought with a quick kiss on his palm. When I could tell that he didn’t believe that, I brought my hands up to his face as I snickered, “See? Cold hands.”

Surprisingly, he didn’t flinch. Instead, he just leaned forward, letting our noses touch and pulling me in to him again. His eyes fluttered shut, and I could almost see the way his body started to return to sleep as he barely muttered, “No cold feet, though?”

It took me a moment to register the words, and once I did, I still couldn’t believe them.

“Cold feet for what?” I whispered back.

Spencer’s answer only came in the form of a dreamy laugh. He didn’t open his eyes again, instead choosing to drop his face back into my shoulder just like he had before. This time there were even fewer kisses against my neck before he went still again.

Once again, I was left with my thoughts. Only this time they weren’t scary. Because marrying Spencer Reid was not the worst thing to imagine by far. In fact, there were very few things I’d ever wanted more.

—————————————————

| Part 23 |

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perfectpaperbluebirds · 3 years ago

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@sicktember Prompt # 28: Missing Out

Title: Unforgettable

Fandom: N/A

Based on this post as well as an ask box prompt. The prompt: “I’m currently dying for something set in a big house (any period) and the young master of the house has a party to attend but he feels awful and is trying to hide it and be a good host but keeps having to sneak off to cough/sneeze. Until maybe one guest notices and that’s how he meets his future wife.”

A young heir attends a Christmas party with his childhood friend as his date. They find themselves in an interesting position when he falls ill.

CW: Vomiting.

(Author's note: Never written this time period before, but I would like to again in the future! I really enjoyed this prompt. And yes these two are definitely in love and will be married someday.)

The year is 1927, and two young men are seated in the back corner of a jazz club in New England, talking little as they sit, enjoying the music. As the band finishes their opening set and prepares to take a break, the older of the two men takes a deep drag from his cigarette, then glances at his companion.

"All ready for your parents' big Christmas shindig next weekend, Jesse?"

Jesse rolled his eyes and scoffed, tapping a cigarette of his own out of the pack. "Sure John, of course. It's such a thrill to be a captive audience as they get smoked and strut around peacocking for their friends. Highlight of my whole year, that. Masquerade Ball, my ass. What drivel."

John chuckled, reclining back in his chair and taking another drag. "You're expected to bring a dame too, yeah?"

"Naturally. It'd be too bad for the heir of the Hamilton fortune to attend without a looker, wouldn't it? Shame all the women in this town are abhorrent."

John shook his head with another chuckle. "That attitude is why you're a perpetual bachelor, hombre. But I have some news that may interest you. Did you know Miss Greenwood is back in town?"

Jesse's interest was piqued in spite of himself. "Lillian Greenwood is back?"

"The very same. Home from university for the holidays."

Jesse leaned back in his chair, trying to look unbothered. "So what if she is. What's it to me?"

"Well I dunno, only that you might like to invite her to the Masq’. If memory serves, you never found her particularly abhorrent."

"We were kids!"

"You were damn near inseparable. You don't *have* to do anything, Jess. But as your oldest friend, I'm asking you to think on it. You'd enjoy the party more if you had company, and I'm sure she'd like to see her old stomping grounds again. Just something to consider is all."

Jesse made no reply as the band resumed the stage just then, but he did indeed think on it very hard.

***

John's information was proven true only a day later. Jesse was just exiting a drugstore he frequented with a fresh carton of cigarettes when he caught the eye of Lillian Greenwood, who was just about to enter the same store, and looking very fetching in a blue fitted coat and hat. Both their eyes widened in surprise upon seeing each other, and for a moment they were speechless.

"Jesse?" Lillian finally said, a slow grin spreading over her face, so familiar to him. "It's been at least an age!" She seized his hands in hers, reaching up on tiptoes to peck him on the cheek. "How are you? I've missed you!"

"Lil!" He wrapped her in a hug. "I've missed you too! What are you doing back in this dump, accomplished University woman that you are now? I'm surprised you didn't run in the opposite direction from here a long time ago."

"Well I haven't graduated yet, silly. And I couldn't miss another Christmas at home. I missed everyone here so much. Oh Jesse, it's so good to see you!" She hugged him fiercely again. "You must tell me everything you've been up to! Come inside while I shop before we freeze."

He willingly followed her back in, looking fondly at the soft brown hair brushing across her shoulders. He was so sick of the horrid bobs all the girls were wearing, and he loved that Lillian was still wearing hers longer.

He trailed her through the whole store, gamely answering the barrage of questions she directed at him, but mostly content to enjoy her familiar presence. Eventually she stopped short, turning to face him.

"Are you all right? You're very quiet. You've hardly said anything."

"I'm sorry. Just worn out I guess. Been working extra before the holidays."

"You are looking a bit peaky. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to jabber your ear off."

"No it's fine, honest. I'm just happy to see you."

"Likewise." She gave his hand a little squeeze, accompanied by a warm smile. Knowing he wasn't going to get a better opportunity, he took a deep breath.

"Lilli, do you remember that big bash my parents host every year for Christmas?"

"Oh yes!" she said, her eyes lighting up in pleasure. "It was my favorite part of the holidays!"

"No kidding? Well anyway, they still throw it. The last few years they changed it to a Masquerade Ball, but otherwise it's still just like it was. It's a week from Saturday. I know you just got into town and all, and maybe you already have plans… but what do you think about going with me as my date?"

Lillian's grin was immediate, and she clasped her hands together joyfully. "Oh Jess, I'd love that! Just like old times."

Jesse rubbed the back of his neck, attempting to smile. "Yeah, I guess. Same old dumb party. Like I said, if you're busy, don't worry about it. But you're welcome to come… if you want and all."

She looked confused and a little hurt at his abrupt backtracking. "Of course I want to come. I'll be there."

"Great. I better get going though. I'll call you in a few days to give you the details. It was great to see you, Lil." He pecked her on the cheek. "I'll see you around, kid."

He strode out of the store with hardly a backwards glance, leaving her shocked face in his wake. He hated himself for behaving that way, and he wasn't even sure why he did it. Perhaps it was because the "old times" she was referring to included the present he was stuck in, while she had clearly moved on. Perhaps it was the realization that he had resorted to asking his childhood best friend on a date rather than finding a real date to avoid the embarrassment of attending his parents' party unaccompanied. But whatever the reason, speaking to her had made him equal parts thrilled and miserable. Surprisingly, when he called her a few days later as promised, she again agreed to accompany him, despite his rude behavior in the drug store, and continued to insist she was excited for the party, despite his constant negativity towards it.

***

The Saturday before Christmas dawned bright and snowy, and the Hamilton estate was in an uproar all day with last-minute preparations. Every surface was bedecked for the holidays with ribbons and garlands and tinsel and wreaths and holly and candles. A Christmas tree stood in every room, making the whole house aromatic, each twinkling and topped with a star. When evening rolled in, so too did the guests, all as twinkling and bedecked as the house, filling every room in no time. The Masquerade Ball had begun.

Lillian arrived promptly. Jesse met her in the foyer. Even wearing a mask, she was easily recognizable. She looked stunning in a sparkling gown that accented her figure perfectly. Her eyes were a color that would be easier called unique than pretty, her nose a touch irregular, and her teeth a touch crooked, but Jesse had always found her beautiful. Yet he was in a foul temper, and had been the whole day, and seeing her gave him little pleasure. He noted she had pinned up her hair so it appeared “bobbed” like everyone else's, and even such a simple thing soured his mood further. Upon seeing her initially, he took her hand and kissed it, then gave a sarcastic bow.

“Welcom, Lillian dear. It’s a pleasure to see you again,” he said, trying to keep his tone civil

She curtsied daintily, smiling warmly. “The pleasure is all mine. You look very dashing and alluring in that mask.”

He chucked coldly. “You’re looking spiffy yourself, kid. Well, shall we get on with it?” He offered her his arm, which she took, almost hesitantly.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “You seem… not yourself.”

“Fine and dandy. Ready to cut a rug and show a girl a good time. Let’s not keep the evening waiting.” He didn’t bother to keep the sarcasm out of his tone, but continued to tug her toward the dining room, albeit gently. She reluctantly followed, casting him worried glances.

The young Master Hamilton performed his part admirably through the whole evening, however, donning the persona of the host as easily as he did his mask. He chatted and danced and flirted with the appropriate people, giving Lilli adequate attention as required as well. His mother must have been pleased, for the night was a smashing success, from the dinner to the dancing to the decor. Everyone was raving the whole evening about what a splendid party it was. The best one yet, everyone said, just as they said every year.

Jesse, however, was utterly miserable. The bodies packing every room made him too warm, the lights were too bright, the music and din of talking made his head throb, the food smells turned his stomach, and the aroma of pine everywhere left him feeling on the verge of a sneeze all night, especially since his nose had been on the verge of dripping since he awoke. He could only nibble the rich supper. He was barely able to swallow even small sips of Christmas punch without feeling the urge to gag.

In order to keep his sanity, whenever Lillian was occupied talking to someone and he wasn't otherwise engaged, he would duck into one of the unused side parlors. In this sanctuary, away from the lights and sounds and smells, he removed his mask and composed himself. He would first allow himself to sneeze unhindered, finally able to stop his incessant stifling and sniffling, each time surprising himself at how wet and messy and ill they sounded. Then, if he hadn't been gone too long, he would rest his face against the icy window pane, breathing slowly and deeply as a halo of condensation spread out from his hot forehead. Inevitably though, the time would come when he was forced to replace his mask and reenter the ball before he was missed. He counted down the hours desperately, willing himself to last until the end of the party.

The evening began to wind down, and Jesse found himself ducking away more and more frequently. His stomach was in knots and his nausea was gradually rising, so composure was getting harder to maintain. He always checked to ensure Lilli was involved in a conversation before he did so, however. Imagine his surprise then, when moments after he snuck into his sanctuary yet again, he heard the door open after him and Lillian appeared just as he had given over to a violent sneezing jag:

Hiihhh'GEHSSSH'ieeew! ESSSHH'yuuh! Hrrr'USH'IIEWW! Kuhh-hhiiih-ISSSHYUUH!"

"Bless you, Jesse! Heavens, that was a fit! Are you alright?" she asked, approaching him and removing her own mask. "Have you been sneezing like that all night? You keep disappearing."

He flashed the most winning smile he could muster even as he wiped the mess from his face. "I'm just ducky," he said, swallowing thickly as his stomach also decided to give a nasty lurch. "All the pine in the air gets me sneezing. Must be a bit allergic. Sorry for worrying you. Let's go back out before we're missed. I think I owe you a dance or two."

She ignored his rambling and came to stand directly in front of him with a searching look. She lifted a hand and brought the back of it to his sweaty forehead. She clucked softly.

"You're sick, aren't you? You're not feeling well at all."

The thin facade that was holding him together finally crumbled. He limply leaned against the wall, nodding mutely.

"Why didn't you say something? You should be in bed. You look awful."

"I didn't want to spoil the evening," he mumbled.

"Well we need to get you out of here. You look like you're about to collapse."

"I am about to collapse," he said ruefully.

"Come on then. No one will miss us anyway. Let's go up the servants' steps over here so we're not seen."

"I don't want you to miss out on the ball. You looked like you were having fun."

She caressed his cheek fondly. "I came here tonight to spend time with you. I'm not missing out on anything."

They shared a smile, his first genuine one of the night. Then she took him by the hand and led him expertly along the least conspicuous route to his bedroom. The pair of them had spent hours exploring every inch of this house from top to bottom as children, every cupboard, cranny, and corner. He hadn't forgotten those times, and clearly she hadn't either.

It was strange bringing her back to his room. They had spent hours together here too during their growing-up years. He couldn't help but imagine it through her eyes--what was different, what was the same. He realized bitterly that the only thing that was really different was the lack of toys and games everywhere. His room was a reflection of his life--boring and stagnant.

If she was thinking along those lines, she gave no indication. Instead she led him to his bed with a hand at the small of his back, guiding him into a sitting position and helping him remove his jacket and tie. His shirt clung to his back with sweat, and heat rolled off of him in waves. The drier air up here made him begin to cough as soon as he sat, the sound hoarse and desperate. She made a sympathetic sound as she carded her fingers through his damp hair, then dug through his dresser, pulling out a set of his pajamas and tossing them over.

"Make yourself more comfortable, and I'll do the same." She headed to his en suite bathroom. "I'll be right back. Try to relax, Jess." She gave him a little smile, which he attempted to return, a hand going to his sore stomach even as he did.

Once the bathroom door was closed behind her, he slowly changed into his pajama bottoms and managed to strip down to his undershirt. All at once, his stomach had had enough, and he knew he was going to vomit. With the bathroom occupied, the next available option was the balcony off of his room. He dashed outside to the railing, emptying the contents of his stomach onto the ground below, heaving until he had nothing left. As the spasms slowed, his vision began to go gray and wobbly. He sank to his knees weakly, unable to do anything else, clinging to the railing in the freezing cold, which at first felt pleasant on his fevered skin.

He wasn't sure how long he knelt there, and it would have been even longer had Lillian not come out to find him. By the time she did, he was shivering so violently that his teeth rattled in his head. She was speaking to him, but he couldn't register what she was saying. Finally she pulled him bodily to his feet and helped him inside, her arm wrapped around his waist as she supported most of his weight. She again led him to his bed, making him lie down this time and bundling blankets over his icy cold skin while she sat at his side. His consciousness solidified and the world stopped spinning, and eventually he noticed that while she was still wearing her party dress, she had removed her makeup and unpinned her hair, looking more like her old self. The thought made him marginally warmer.

"Let me go fetch some tea for you, and some medicine," she murmured, stroking his hair. She stood and tried to pull away, but he quickly grabbed her wrist, his grasp surprisingly strong.

"Don't go," he rasped, choking back a cough. "I don't want tea or medicine. It'll only make me vomit again. Just stay."

"Stay…" she repeated. "Right. I suppose I could stay."

She went to pull a chair to his bedside, but he stopped her.

"No, come lie here with me."

"Jesse…" she began. "That's not--"

"Why shouldn't you? You were my date. It's what everyone is expecting anyway," he said, a glint of humor in his eye.

She laughed in spite of herself. "I suppose there is that." Against her better judgement, she crossed to the other side of his bed and slipped under the blankets, trying to be mindful of her dress as she got comfortable. He immediately rolled over and nestled against her, and she wrapped an arm around him and began to rub his back soothingly.

They passed the night exactly like that. He was exhausted and very ill, and was clearly miserable the whole night through. However, he refused to let her leave the bed to fetch him anything and only wanted to lie against her all night as he slipped in and out of sleep. She vaguely recalled him being the same way when they were young, but she certainly hadn't expected such behavior tonight. Then again, she hadn't expected to be sharing his bed either.

He slept fitfully, his symptoms keeping him from true rest despite his weariness. Away from the pine trees his sneezing was less, but the congestion and coughing was worse. He was achy and nauseous and too hot or too cold. He also wanted to be touching her at all times, so she slept even less, for between his tossing and groaning and his sweltering fever heat, she could not get comfortable. Yet she knew he needed her this way tonight, and was glad to be able to help her oldest friend.

The morning dawned gray and cold. Lillian lay awake still, while Jesse was at last sleeping beside her, his face tucked into her side. She was trying to decide how best to convince him to let her go home and change when an opportunity for escape presented itself in the form of his mother.

Lillian heard her well before she saw her, for her best shoes clattered loudly on the stairs, and her inebriated giggling and whispering was impossible to miss. It was almost certain she hadn't gone to bed after the party. Lillian quickly slipped out from under Jesse's arm and slid to the floor, ducking under the bed. Just because Jesse seemed to think she was expected to spend the night with him did not mean she wanted to be caught in it, especially by Mrs. Hamilton, regardless of what did or did not happen.

Mrs. Hamilton attempted to be stealthy as she peeked into her son's room, but only his fever-induced slumber prevented him from waking. However, even while intoxicated, what they say about a mother's sense is true, for she apparently noted something amiss and crept closer to her son's bed. Lillian could only see her feet and legs, but she assumed she Mrs. Hamilton reached out to feel her son's forehead, for the elder woman made a little sound of dismay and began to shake him awake.

"Jesse, you're burning up! Oh my, what happened? Are you sick? Did it start at the ball? How long have you not felt well? Oh you're so pale! And you're shivering! My poor baby! What can I do?..." It seemed she had no end of exclamations and questions. Lillian couldn't help but roll her eyes.

Meanwhile Jesse made sounds of waking, sounding very irritated and confused at first. He didn't realize what was happening initially, and Lillian heard him say her name more than once. Thankfully his mother did not notice over the sound of her own constant flow of verbalized concern. Eventually Jesse realized who was speaking to him and began to give appropriate answers, leaving Lillian out of most of it, which the young woman appreciated.

Mrs. Hamilton didn't stop speaking the entire time she was in the room. Eventually though it became clear she intended to fetch a doctor, tea, medicine, and one hundred other things for her son's illness. Jesse spoke only as much as he had to, his voice weak and hoarse and congested. He did not argue with her about any of it, knowing it was futile. Finally the well-meaning woman left, still talking even as she shut the door behind herself.

Lillian gingerly rolled out from under the bed, startling Jesse when she appeared beside him out of nowhere. However a grin split his face when their eyes met.

"I thought you left me without saying goodbye," he rasped.

"Well now you see I haven't. I do need to leave now though, before your mother returns with an army of doctors and finds me here. I would also like to change my clothes at some point and freshen up. Perhaps take a bit of a nap."

He looked devastated at this, but perked up as she continued:

"I'll come back soon though, as a proper visitor. I don't fancy ducking under the bed whenever anyone comes up the stairs."

"All right," he sighed. "I'll be waiting for you, then."

She approached him, pressing her lips to his hair as he hugged her fiercely.

"Be well, Jess. I'll see you soon." She moved to the doorway, her eyes twinkling in a smile. "And thanks for a great night. That was a date I'll never forget."

#sickfic #everyone is hotter with a fever #sicktember2021 #prompt 28

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imaginesandinserts · 4 years ago

Text

Irreverent Pt. 51 - Eye of a Hurricane

Title: Irreverent Pt. 51 - Eye of a Hurricane

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Reader Rating: M Words: ~3K

Trigger Warning: Torture, Canon Typical Violence

A/N: I’m posting Chapters 51 and 52 at the same time. Make sure you read them in order. And if you haven’t read 50 (posted yesterday) definitely read that first.

Irreverent Series Masterlist

It's a sluggishly slow progression towards consciousness as you battle a heavy head and dazed mind, both serving only to deter coherent thought. Your awareness is comprised only of sensation – a cold and dark room, hard chair, your mouth was dry. As you attempt to move, you come to realize that your wrists are bound behind your back and your ankles are tied to the legs of a chair, while the same rough material was corded around your torso, keeping you tied and upright in the chair. What should have been a terrifying realization, was dulled by the presence of some drug you'd been injected with. It would account for all of the symptoms you're experiencing, especially how your mouth felt like it could compete with the Sahara for driest places known to man.

Your mind reels, attempting to piece together how you had come to be in your current predicament. You'd been awaiting Easter at your agreed upon spot for your check-in. You'd stood with your back to the wall, aware of your surroundings. It had been a complete ambush, a gun from nowhere pressed to the side of your head, three large men, all armed, as they forced you into an alley way. They'd been able to get the jump on you as you were severely outnumbered. The last thing you can recall with any degree of clarity is the sharp sting of a needle, pressed to the side of your neck. It would explain quite a bit about how you're feeling at the moment.

Blinking slowly, carefully, you allow your sensitive eyes to adjust to the dim yellow lighting of the room. Keeping your head tilted downwards still, you take in the concrete grey flooring and walls. You focus on taking in as much as you can without alerting your captors to the fact that you're awake. That would immediately tip the scales in their favor.

There is a stale smell lingering in the room, as though from a lack of use. Dust is collecting in the crevices. It's not cared for. Likely a spare room or basement. There are no windows as far as you're able to tell. Behind you, there is a clock that ticks, the sound of it echoing loudly in the quiet of the room.

How long had you been there?

Cautiously lifting your head, you appraise the room you're in. There, in front of you about three feet away, is a table with what looked like various weapons on it. From your position, you can make out knives, a baseball bat, what appears to be a taser, and what could be a fire poker.

You had to get out.

Your bindings have no give, you quickly learn. You couldn't wriggle out of them if you tried.

If you move quickly, you could inch your way towards the table. You might be able to bend down and grab one of the knives with your mouth and use it – somehow – to cut the rope or at least loosen it enough to be able to escape. After you've accomplished that, you'd have to get out of wherever you were being held.

Figuring out why you'd been taken in the first place would have to wait.

You clench, tensing your body and using the leverage of your feet pressed to the floor to jump up and forward in the chair, attempting to drag it forward with you, in the direction of the table. It moves about an inch or two.

With a frustrated sigh, you tense once more, preparing to repeat the action. Just as the balls of your feet have pressed into the ground, there's a clicking sound from behind you and you can hear the door opening. You freeze in place. You should've known they were watching.

Heavy footsteps reverberate against the concrete flooring while you refuse to turn around. Let them come and face you themselves.

"Good, you're awake." The deep voice carries with it a shot of dread that you hadn't quite felt yet since you'd awoken. It cuts through the dullness of feeling and thought, jumpstarting the dormant panic into full gear.

A large man with dark hair and crystal light eyes stands before you, blocking your pathway towards the table you had been inching your way towards. He's dressed casually in dark clothing, there's a scar running down his neck. In his hands is a gun, held almost casually, as though it were merely an afterthought. As though he's quite confident in his ability to over power you without it.

You watch apprehensively, body tensed up, as he leans one hip against the table, perching on it lightly. His cold, steely eyes pore into you, running over your body and taking in your state. His gaze feels predatory as it runs over you in the worst of ways, causing a chill to run down your spine. He watches you as though you're prey and he's a hunter – the kind that collects trophies to hang up above the mantle. He lingers on your eyes, and you can tell he's checking to see if you're still drugged or if you were fully capable now.

You remain quiet, waiting for him to speak first, the two of you locked in and staring at one another. You don't know why you're here, why they took you. You surely don't recognize him. Behind him, you can see a dark glass pane that you hadn't noticed before, beyond which you assume his partners wait, watching both you and him.

"I am going to ask you questions," he says evenly, breaking the silence once more, his eyes boring into yours. "Every time you don't answer or you lie to me, you will regret it. Am I clear?" His voice, low and dark, matches the tone of the room. It's not exactly threatening, more clinical in a way. It's like he's playing a part, doing a job. Like you're his last patient of the day and he's eager to get home early and catch the game. You want to say his heart isn't quite in it, but that wasn't right either. It's more so that he has better things to do than waste his time with you, and yet here is.

You don't acknowledge or answer his question asking if you'd understood, and you can tell he doesn't like to be ignored. His brow furrows ever so slightly, nostrils flaring as he mutters low under his breath, turning and placing the gun on the table behind him. He sets it down and then turns back towards you and you can see he'd grabbed something from the table. Brass knuckles by the looks of it, as he slides them on, flexing his large muscular hands as he does. It's meant to intimidate you, scare you. It does its job.

You take a deep breath, still watching him quietly as you mentally reassure yourself that it would all be alright. That Clyde would of course be looking for you. He'd know you were missing when you hadn't been there waiting for him. He would find you and rescue you from whatever this was. Until then, you had only one job: survival. They wouldn't break you.

He strides forward until he's right up against you, his knees brushing against yours. You can feel the heat radiating off of him, feel the coarse denim of his jeans against your bare knees. The dress that you'd been wearing undercover is bunched up underneath your thighs.

You look up at him defiantly as he stands before you in silence, as though still waiting for you to speak. You wouldn't. You needed to know how much they knew first. He asks for your name first and you provide him with the fake name on the ID in your bag. That earns you a quick, sharp jab to the side that has you keeling over and grunting in pain as the hard metal ridges of the brass knuckles connects with your ribcage. You try to absorb the hit, try to remember everything you've learned from sparring with both Derek and Clyde. Try to stifle your pained groan.

You take a breath and look back at him, ignoring the bruised and burning pain in your side. If you're not mistaken, there's a chance he just cracked a rib.

They know who you are.

The realization causes your panicked brain to go into overdrive as you sift through who could possibly want to use you to get to any information. What they would do with it.

He asks next about Project Atlantis. He asks who else has access to the list. Who else is on the list. How to gain access to it.

Every lie you tell, every time you stay silent, he rewards you with another hit. Another part of your body bruised and broken as he goes through a litany of questions, marking you up as he goes. The tears slip unwanted. The cries come out despite any attempt to not give him the satisfaction.

Where the hell was Clyde?!

Each time, you force yourself to look back at him. To let him know that he hasn't beat you. To let him know that it wouldn't be so easy. To challenge him to do worse.

He does.

Your body becomes a work of art, painted with the red of your blood, the deep purple bruising of your skin. The colors meld and blend together with the salt of your tears.

It hurts to breathe. He's bruised a couple of ribs and shallow breaths are all you can manage through the excruciating pain of drawing a single breath in properly. If he doesn't stop soon, you'll start to hyperventilate. You can't do that. You can't let him win that way. You blink through the tears welled up in your eyes. You couldn't stop those if you tried. It hurts. It all hurts too much.

There is no escape from the constant barrage of questions and from the assault that follows. In the back of your mind there lingers a silent, crying hope that Clyde is out there looking for you but that is it. Otherwise it's all you can do to remain present and conscious to resist simply giving him what he wants in exchange for a respite.

After a certain point, the pain wasn't even really pain anymore. It was as though your body knew, that in order to survive, it had to shield you from feeling the full thrust of all that he had inflicted on you. It knew that if you were to stand a chance, you had to not feel it. The numbness settles in through a haze as your mind goes cloudy once more. You're barely meeting his eyes anymore, try as you might. Your body strains and struggles to stay aware. In the brief moments of respite that he offers you, as he changes from the brass knuckles to the poker, you can't even bring it in yourself to fear what's coming next.

Your mind flits to Aaron. The last time you'd seen him, as you kissed him goodbye and walked out to the waiting cab. He wouldn't know to worry. He'd think you were busy with work. He'd think that you'd return his calls soon enough. He'd think you were alright.

Thinking of him and Jack is the only thing that has you even trying to lift your head once more. Keeps you coming back each time. Keeps you looking your captor in the eye.

You had to make it through. You had to keep bouncing back. You had to endure and persist.

For them.

For him.

Not again.

They can't go through that again.

It's that thought that has you lifting your head, meeting those stony grey eyes once more.

*------------*

Emily would want the Birkins.

That was the first coherent thought that came to mind when you'd become conscious once more. He'd stopped once you'd become unresponsive.

Thoughts of escaping had long since abandoned you. It would be pointless. You were entirely unmatched. Even if you could defeat them, you'd first have to stand, and you're not entirely sure that's a feat you're capable of any longer. Keeping your eyes open was far too difficult a task on its own.

Your mind behaves oddly. Thoughts fleetingly temporary and confused as you contend with the notion that you might not escape. That you might die here.

Aaron would have to pick an outfit for the funeral. He'd have to go to your closet and pick out something to wear for you to be buried in.

Jack would need a new suit.

The bike – that should go to John.

The house was Aaron's.

The rest was Jack's.

There was no one else.

Would he get a body? Or would he bury an empty coffin with your name on the headstone?

If he knew what you were thinking – how you were thinking – he'd be furious.

You're next woken with a jolt as two pairs of uncaring and callous hands work together to lift you up. You thrash and scream, your voice horrifically hoarse as you feel them place you down on the table you'd noticed off to the side earlier. Thick, rough, leather restraints bind you down and hold you to the table.

You can't move. Try as you might, you can't get out.

He asks you again, giving you a final chance. Your stomach coils in fear and panic as tears well in your eyes and stream down your cheeks anew.

You beg them to not do this. You beg them to let you go. I have a son, please. I have son! Please let me go. Please don’t –

You know what's coming next.

His frosty, pale eyes are the last thing you see before a coarse rag covers your face. You prepare yourself. Remind yourself that you won't die. Not like this.

You'll be alright. You'll be alright. You'll be al –

The first onslaught of harsh, cold water beating down on your head has the force of a current rippling through your veins.

You can't breathe.

There's a warbled scream that shouts out and it takes you far too long to realize it was your own.

Your heart is beating faster than ever as the unrelenting assault continues. Blood pounding in your head as you thrash about as much as possible.

Frigid water fills your nose, your throat, leaving you gasping for air.

Your fingers claw at the table, catching splinters of wood in the nailbed.

Your head feels full as though it's floating in the ocean during a storm.

Gasping and screaming when you could manage it, lungs drowning underneath the punishing weight as it rained down upon you, your body fighting against the riptide.

It went on and it went on.

Unrelenting.

Neverending.

Right at the precipice – when your screams were silent, your limbs motionless, the cruel waves kept drowning you underneath the tide – right as you became certain of one thing and one thing only: this was the end. Just as you arrived at that conclusion – it all went away. Dissipated into thin air.

You were floating into a fog, light as could be.

The dulcet tones of singing children at Jack's spring recital, as he waves at you from the stage.

The team at Karaoke night, drunk as can be, singing out of sync.

The rooftop in Ibiza, legs dangling as you sat between John and Julian, a bottle passed between the three of you.

Ricky picking you up at midnight, watching the sun rise over the sea with the boys huddled around you.

Aaron in the kitchen, his beautiful voice humming along to the music.

Aaron on the plane next to you, his hand held tightly in yours.

Aaron peacefully asleep beside you, his chest rising and falling, the richness of his warmth enveloping you entirely.

His face was the last thing you saw.

#aaron hotchner #criminal minds #aaron hotch x reader #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner x you #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds reader insert #irreverentseries #hotch x you #hotch x reader #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid

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mariinara · 3 years ago

Note

Hcs for Harry Flynn when he realizes that he is in love? 🥺

Awh, fuck yeah! I love me some cocky Englishman!

Well, him realizing he's absolutely smitten with somebody would just be fucking torture because he goes through the five stages of falling in love:

Step 1) BUTTERFLIES!!

- A.K.A, the "happy anxiety".

-Typically, Harry isn't the most candid of men when it comes to showing how much he loves someone, but, boy, oh boy..

-He fucking hates it when he makes a stupid joke or throws a one-liner and you reward him with one of your genuine, bright laughs. He just watches you throwing your head back, eyes closing and crinkles forming at the corners, and you just.. laugh at something he absentmindedly said.

-Don't get it wrong; it's not like Harry doesn't know he's downright charming‐ He's a hit with the ladies! But, when he feels that flutter in his abdomen? It just feels raw. Different.

-And, jesus, when you're apart? He just can't shake you off. He's good at shrugging feelings off. Always has been. Ignoring them is no problem. But coming back home to a cold, empty bed? That's probably the worst of it. And, God, he wishes you were right there next to him, making jokes and telling him all about the things you love and– oh god – what was he THINKING!? That can't be fucking right. He CAN'T be thinking like that. He just needed a drink, right? Maybe a couple. He'll get over it. It's nothing.

-But he just can't deal. He can't fucking get you out of his head. Every little thing reminds him of you. From the warmth of the sun embracing him through his window to the shower that relieves his aching muscles before he goes to bed.

Step 2) BUILDING!!!

-You and Harry have always been out with your group of friends– The Drake brothers, occasionally Chloe and Nadine if they weren't too busy– but you rarely ever go out alone.

-But that one night you did?

-You had time for each other. All the time in the world, in fact, to really just absorb each other– bask in one another's presence.

-With a couple of beers in your systems, Harry was more comfortable confiding in you when it came to childhood stories. Some anecdotes. Straight up embarrassing first dates.

-He'd point the neck of his beer bottle at you and give you a serious stare before going on to say, "Do not snitch on me with the Drakes."

-The smile and the zipping-your-mouth motion you'd do was enough for him to spill his heart out to you.

-Only then did it seem like you really saw each other in different lights.

-Harry always thought you were pretty and effortlessly funny. You thought he was handsome but quite literally the stereotypical English douchebag.

-He was.

-But peeling away at his layers was the most fascinating thing you've ever experienced.

-And him seeing more to you than just a pretty face? It nearly made him lose his whole mind on the spot, because wow you were a completely different person to him during the moments he shared with you.

-Instead of wanting to sleep with each other meaninglessly, you grew curious and interested in gathering more information about each other.

-Especially Harry, because, Good God, when you start info-dumping on him with those stars in your eyes? It feels so good and he still doesn't know why.

Step 3) ASSIMILATION!!!

-There came a time when Harry grew a pair and finally decided to ask you out on an innocent date. Just the two of you. Someplace nice.

-It went well until your social anxiety kicked in and you decided to take it on home.

-With Harry, card games and alcoholic cocktails were a MUST, so if things escalated quickly, no one would be surprised.

-It surprised both of you that it took that long, actually.

-And after messing up his sheets, sharing hot breaths and having your bodies molding together, tethered with sweat and desire, you were finally sound asleep next to him. Right there. Like he'd always wanted.

-The realization kicked in when he sobered up slightly. And, wonder of wonders, it had him absolutely freaking the fuck out. Zero to a hundred real quick.

-He couldn't fucking believe it, really. Everything he'd been hoping for has fallen into place and it was like he didn't plan that far ahead, and at that moment, looking at how peaceful you were when you slept, hair sprawled on his pillows and face turned away from him, chest calmly rising and falling, he felt like he needed to come up with a plan. Immediately.

-And he realized how much you clicked. On every level. You saw eye-to-eye in almost everything. The essentials, at least.

-And when he lazily plopped back down on his bed to take in a calming breath, he closed his eyes and raked his hands down his face, deciding that he definitely needed to make a special place for you to fit in that mess he called his life.

-It was too real. And while he thought the reality of it would terrify him and push him away, it helped gravitate him towards you. Helped keep him grounded and humble, too.

Step 4) HONESTY!!!!

-Vulnerability.

-That was the word Chloe mentioned to Harry. The "Key Word", she'd emphasized.

-As much as something like that had never crossed his mind, Chloe made it make sense to him.

-If he wants you as the one constant in his life, he needed to be as transparent about it as possible.

-Pretty much, it was a make-it or break-it situation.

-Harry doesn't remember sitting around, staring at a wall for a couple of hours, biting on his nails in anxiety. He hasn't been this way since he'd grown out of his teen years.

-Damn. You kicked him right back to childhood. And it was high time for him to accept that.

-He was a man who set his eyes on the prize and almost always got what he wanted. It was how life was for him. If he reached high enough, he could grab the stars if he wanted.

-But, no, everything he'd been looking for was right there, on earth, sitting at the same dinner table with him for years, and he was stupid enough to only flirt with you.

-And he decided.

-He was going to call you to set up another date. An important one. Made sure to tell you to "doll up" so he could hear you telling him "bite me" with that smile in your voice that amused him so much.

-He took you to his favorite spot. Drove you to the middle of a grove. No one but you two there, sitting in his classic Cadillac, and when he was ready, he turned the engine off and turned to you.

-You didn't know. You had no idea. You were beyond confused. Because what were you doing in the middle of nowhere? He wouldn't answer you. Only told you to wait and see. But he seemed different. His eyes were glossed over, like something else had completely taken over his mind. Thoughts clouded by only one thing.

-All it took for him to stop looking at you with soft, yet contemplative eyes that were practically silently begging you not to fucking break his heart because he, frankly, would not know how to recover afterwards was a gently, concerned call of his name and your touch against his knee.

-He breathed deeply. Rubbed his temples. Mumbled a "Fuck me" under his breath before chuckling. He voiced how he didn't know how to say what he wanted to say, and you reminded him that it was just you. That he could definitely trust you. That you'd be here, no matter what it is.

-You rambled on and on about how you'd always have his back. If he wanted to break up, that's fine too. You weren't even looking at him to see the look on his face when you said that. He only stared at you incredulously, like you were stupid.

-And, as usual, you made it so much easier for him to talk. To love you like he always has.

-You forced him to lurch forward and seal your lips with a kiss to shut you up, his hands cupping the sides of your neck, thumbs caressing your jawline, his hot breath shattering against your cheek when he tilted his head to deepen the kiss to feel you melt in his grasp.

-He loved it most when your shoulders grew less tense and you sighed against his lips and he'd open his eyes slightly to watch as your brows melted into that desperate arch.

-That was when he pulled away, as gently as possible, watching you slowly descend back to earth, eyes fluttering and love-drunk, staring back at him.

-And that's when he inhaled deeply and cupped your cheeks firmly, "You are such a stupid woman, has anyone ever told you that before?"

-He was exasperated. But he was soft with you, smiling gently and swallowing, eyes bouncing between yours.

-"Yeah, I might've heard that before.." You chuckled, baring that beautiful smile of yours, cheeks squishing against his hand.

-And he huffed, not being able to take how much his chest was swelling, and he spelled it out, "Fuck, I am so in love with you.."

-You couldn't believe it. Didn't process it at first. It was every single cog in your brain stopped turning.

-But when it sank in, you almost cried out. In both relief and happiness. He wasn't breaking up with you; but he was in love with you, and you'd be lying if you said you weren't waiting for it.

-With a barrage of kisses that had him making surprised noises, you professed your requited love for the man you began to straddle in the car seat, catching him off guard, but relieving him and letting him hold you close, all the same.

Step 5) STABILITY!!!

-Shit, from that moment on?

-Everything moved so fast.

-Even the two years you'd been dating. You didn't even feel them. Celebrating your second anniversary was the weirdest.

-Especially that you realized you were celebrating it in your shared home, on that faithful fall morning, when summer had just ended and everyone could breathe again.

-Getting to discover each other, share your life, food, laughter, smiles, even the small bickering and childish arguments like "you took the whole cover last night and I had to sleep with my bum out for the air conditioning to eat out" only fortified what you had.

-Contrary to what everyone thought of Harry, he was extremely supportive and he gave the best hugs.

-He was the best person to travel with, go on adventures with, have a picture album with, and drunkily makeout with during a boring Netflix movie, frankly.

-You would literally never could've thought it would end up being so perfect for the two of you. Just two flawed humans making the best out of each other and accepting the bad, since it was nothing you.

-Neither of you tried to change the other. You only made sure to be there when needed. And you worked it out in the end, whatever it was.

-As for Harry?

-He has never felt more fulfilled.

-Nothing in this damn world would tie him down, but he realized that having someone to love and for them to love you back like you two did never tied him down, it only sort of set him free in a way he never knew he needed.

-He might've progressed through the five stages, but that never meant that he didn't go back to step one every time you did a thing he loved.

-He was just a big softie for you!

#harry flynn #harry flynn fluff #uncharted #I LOVE HIM SO MUCH #thank you for sending this in love #YOU ROCK #hc

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dracosearlgreytea · 4 years ago

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indelicate marks (16)

indelicate marks: chapter sixteen - the admission

A/N: okay, i know it has been months, but i am back with another chapter! this fic has got a little attention over the weeks and honestly, all i can say is THANK YOU SO MUCH. i love to see people enjoying my work more than anything in the world, and bless you all and your patience for waiting for the next part. i am hoping to post a new chapter within the week! please feel free to drop by my inbox with any questions about the fic! i love you all very much - ivy <3

warnings: language, very mild descriptions of scars, nsfw implications, punching, a little spicy drama

lovely tags: @h-annahayy @okaydraco @fanficflaneuse @thatoneasrastan @biinspiration @honeymelon22 @bitch-im-a-fangirl @erinisbadger @strawberriesonsummer @accio-rogers @candune @contentobsessor @darinaioana @bbeauttyybbx @letssingintherain

indelicate marks index

And so the weeks began to slide by more easily. Ignoring the ominous words Draco had offered you that night was easier than trying to decipher them. That, you had more or less figured out in the first week of trying. In fact, ignoring most things that festered away and gave you that constant sick feeling was easier than having to acknowledge them at all. Not bringing them up to the boy you continued to meet more and more also appeared to be easier, and for a while, it stayed exactly that way. Until, that was, he went missing again. You'd agreed to meet at the classroom during your joint free period of the day. With Draco's 'task' growing only further demanding, nightly meetings were much more rare. Instead, you stole your moments with him throughout the day - although, you avoided broom cupboards. This time, his disappearance was much more concerning. Whilst doubt lingered from the last time Draco managed to vanish, you were quite sure that things between you were okay. You hadn't argued. You hadn't even pushed for more information on his involvement with the Deatheaters. By lunch, you knew something was wrong. Shaky, you sat at the end of the Slytherin table. It was summer, and the weather was nice, so most students had opted to go sit outside or take a trip to Hogsmeade, leaving the hall almost empty. What bothered you, however, was that Pansy Parkinson and the rest of Draco's 'gang', were sitting unnaturally quiet a few benches away. Parkinson did look particularly disgruntled, hair a mess and skin a shade paler than usual. You waited for as long as you could stand it, hands twitching as you stared at your plate, food untouched. The thoughts inside your head were loud, and sickening. If something had happened to Draco - did someone find out about his mark? Did Lestrange find him in my thoughts back in Easter? Fuck, Draco, where are you - Parkinson stood, as did the rest of the Slytherin group. Without a second of reluctance, you shot out of your seat. Anxiety clawed at your throat, but you bit it back, calling her name before you could change your mind. "Parkinson!" She paused. Pansy didn't even glance at you the first time, and for a second you thought she was going to ignore you. But, then, she turned, eyes flashing with a concoction of hostility and surprise as they met you. "Uh - Y/L/N?" Her eyebrow arched, scanning you with her renowned glare. Self-conscious washed over you as she did so, but you kept your features steely. "Can I help you?" "I - yeah." You stumbled, inwardly cursing. The group that usually gravitated around her and Draco had paused, putting you on the receiving end of several dangerous stares. Pansy was silent, only watching you with her perpetual, irritated look. "Just wanted to know where Malfoy is - that's all." "Draco?" You noticed the way she froze for a second, before you registered his name on her lips. Quick, you nodded, glancing back at the group, who seemed to be inching back towards you. Heart rate frenzied, you eyed Pansy with what you could only label as a pleading expression. Her eyes narrowed, suspicious. "What the hell do you want with Draco?" Oh, shit. "I gave him my Potions essay for him to copy off." You lied, hoping it came smoother than it sounded. Pansy's face stayed eerily set, almost reminiscent to the way Draco appeared most the time. "I need it back." Pansy was silent, again. "Pansy!" Blaise Zabini yelled from the doorway, shooting you a look as you stared at them. "Hurry up." Pansy didn't even acknowledge him, still scrutinising you. Then, she took a small, but intimidating step forward, setting you with a hard, guarded look. "You're a good liar." She muttered. "But you're behind on school gossip." You stayed silent. You didn't trust yourself not to have a complete breakdown there and then if you opened your mouth. Finally throwing a glance over her shoulder, she returned to look at you in a swift motion. "Potter cornered him in the bathrooms. He's in the hospital wing." No. Teeth grinding together, you stared at her, sharing a look between you. It was an odd feeling, hot, in your chest. The terror of not knowing exactly what had happened to Draco, the rage at Potter, and - and the unusual relief in the understanding of Pansy's eyes. Perhaps it was a skill she had, appearing like she knew everything, every little piece about you. Yet, the glint of recognition in her gaze told you otherwise. Before you could speak, she had turned and strode back towards her group, leaving you alone by the Slytherin table. It took you a second before the realisation of Draco's injury set in. Then, you were launching yourself down the corridors, straight to the hospital wing. "Miss Y/L/N?" Madame Pomfrey called as you rushed in, setting your rather terrified eyes on the professor. You knew her well, by now, after so many visits - you had no reason to shy from her temper. "Draco Malfoy." You said, without a second of hesitance. A bed at the far corner of the hospital wing was cornered off - whatever had happened in the bathrooms clearly wasn't a secret amongst students. How the hell did I miss this? "No visitors." She spoke with a firm tone, setting her eyes on you as you had to take in a breath. "You know I wouldn't come here for just anyone," You murmured, drained. The emotion, and worrying must have shown on your expression, resonating in the way her eyes softened in the slightest. "No visitors, Miss Y/L/N. I can't make exceptions." Stubborn as ever. "Then - I - is he okay?" "Yes." She sighed, lips dragging down in the slightest. "He'll live, dear. Now, please make yourself scarse, before Professor McGonagall thinks you're causing a scene." Madame Pomfrey began to gesture you back to the doorway you had sped through. Yet, before you could bite them back, a last, desperate attempt spilled from your mouth. "Can you at least let him know I tried?" Her lips etched further down in the tiniest. Your heart murmured in disappointment - but, as you were about to give in hope, she gave you a singular, firm nod. "Fine. Now, out of my hospital wing, girl." The tone of her voice was enough for you to know you had pushed her to her limit. "Thank you." Your reply came as a breath you weren't quite sure was at all audible, soon to make it back out of the hospital wing. Draco was at least getting tended to - and Madame Pomfrey didn't seem too stressed. All good signs that whatever had happened wasn't too drastic, at least. Still, that persistent nausea remained, stubborn. You were definitely not in the mood for a mind numbing lesson of a History of Magic, that was for certain. The Classroom it is. At least if Draco gets out of the hospital wing I'll know if he stopped by to see me. So lost in thought on the way to the classroom, you could have almost missed it. The three famous faces of Hogwarts, huddled together, but speeding towards what you assumed would be the Gryffindor common room. If you'd have been paying more attention, maybe you would have noticed Harry Potter's laboured, terrified breathing, and Hermione's furrowed brow. But they didn't need to have been wearing Gryffindor robes for you to see red. For once, you didn't feel your usual jittering anxiety. You didn't weigh up what your actions would mean, what your reputation would do. Your strides became quicker, poised. Fists curled up, you bared your teeth and let out a yell. "Potter!" He didn't even turn to look at you. No, it was his two bodyguards that spun. Expressions tired, they looked ready to face another barrage of questions from nosy students, only to drop. Hermione's eyes lit up with panic at the sight of you, most likely looking a little deranged. Her lips shifted to say something, but your thoughts were too loud. He hurt Draco. He hurt Draco, and now I'm going to hurt him. Harry turned to face you at the last minute. Bringing back your arm, you swung your fist directly into his face. "Don't you fucking dare touch him again!" Your voice didn't even feel like your own as you glared down at Harry. He stumbled back, Ron quick to his aid and preventing his fall. "Y/N-" "No, Harry Potter, you fucking listen to me." Hissing, you pushed Hermione away from you as she attempted to pull you back, despite Harry's lack of retaliation. "You stay away from me, and you stay away from Draco." Your eyes glinted, taking in every inch of shock across his face. "Or I will do a lot worse than give you a black eye." "Y/N, go." Hermione urged, gaze pressuring and a little dangerous. It was only then that you realised there were a lot more eyes on you than you once noticed. All around the corridor - students of every year, every house. Staring. Whispering. Jaw grinding together, you threw another glare at Harry for good measure. Then, you stepped back, getting away from the corridor before anything could escalate. For once, there were no scalding, angry tears to follow your mistake. There was no pounding heartbeat, or panicked breathing. For once, as you made your way to the classroom, there was only the sting of your knuckles. And, the odd satisfaction of knowing you'd at least done something for Draco. You'd stood up for him, like he'd stood up for you - and whilst, yes, there was also the concern of him being angry at you for doing so - you knew it was all you could try and do. If Draco was going to get himself killed, you'd be there to try and prevent it to any measures necessary. You'd been sat at the window ledge for hours when Draco finally made an appearance. Dusk was setting in, casting the room that warm orange you felt so comfortable within. The moment the door clicked unlocked, your heart jumped, and before you could rush to the door he was already pushing it open, eyes locking with yours instantly. Swallowing, a second of silence settled between you. There was a million words coming to mind, yet they vanished. All you could do was take in the note of his familiar grey-blue gaze. "Evening." Finally, he spoke, twitching a corner of his lip upward as he slipped into the room and locked the door behind him. That. That was all it took. "Draco Lucius Malfoy, you complete and utter idiot-" You'd scrambled to your feet in a second, eyes darting all over his body as you marched towards him and pulled him into a less than gentle embrace. Draco let out a grunt, but then you pulled back again, setting a hand either side of his face. "What the fuck did you do? Merlin, are you alright? I've been fucking worried sick about you all day, I had to speak to Pansy bloody Parkinson just to find out where you are-" Draco's lips cut you off, his own hands coming to rest over yours. Your heart leapt as he did so, and despite his cool skin, you flushed warm. Every little bit of stress dissipated at the action, swiped away by his touch. Pulling back, he prized your hands off of him, although kept them tucked into his. His eyes glimmered with a certain tone of pride - one you hadn't seen him wear often in the last few months. "You gave Potter a black eye." Draco's face pulled into a grin as he spoke, as though he couldn't help himself. Chest fluttering, you realised - Draco was proud of you. "Well - yeah." You felt your own, faint smile play along your lips. "He put you in hospital, Draco. Fuck, are you alright?" Straight back to panicking, you searched him again, the sight of him standing so full in front of you almost thrilling after such a long day. "Can you stop fretting for one second?" He pressed. "No, I cannot! What happened?" Demanding, you set him with a firm look. "You gave Potter a black eye, that's what fucking happened!" Draco exclaimed, eyes alight and wide. "I'm aware. I did do it myself, you know." You sighed, finally accepting that you were not going to find anything out about Draco's injury anytime soon. "You're bloody brilliant." He murmured, kissing you again - this time, a lot more hastily, so much it took you by surprise. You allowed him to wrap his arms around your waist, your own hands grasping at the back of his hair as his lips played atop of yours. Only, for them to travel across your jawline, breath hitching as they did so. "I wish I was there to have seen it." Draco whispered, voice dark, tempting. "Stop sexualising my violence." You muttered, evoking a chuckle from the back of his throat. The sound so close to your ear that it made you shiver, his fingers dug into your waist a little deeper. Still, you pushed the feeling away. "Draco, please tell me what happened." Finally, Draco faltered, an echo of a sigh escaping his lips as he shifted back to take you in. "I don't think you want to know." Heart stumbling, you swallowed, eyes dropping to where your hands splayed over his shoulders. "Trust me." Your eyes flickered back to his. Gradual hesitation was breaking through his previous, much more playful gaze. "I want to know." A silence settled between you. Endless amounts of tension managed to fill the small space between your features. It was the type of tension that already made your heart clench in your chest, the type that made you not want to breath. Draco's expression had fallen, a mixture of withdrawal and unexpected dread - one he would usually try so hard to cover. It was unnerving, seeing someone usually so hardened, so steely, dropping back into the terrified boy you only caught glimpses of before. And, eventually, he spoke. "He knows." Your breath caught in the back of your throat. "He saw - saw the mark, when I went to visit Myrtle. Shot some spell I've never heard at me." Draco, once avoiding your glossy eyes, finally met them again. "Nearly killed me." Merlin, his tone was something you'd never even attempted to imagine, coming from Draco. Both haunted, yet accepting, as though he was comfortable with his own fear - and it terrified you, deep into your core. In any other situation, you would have noticed your own terror. The idea of Draco dying, without you having even known - it was unthinkable. He was everything you had, everything you'd ever wanted or needed after a life spent within your own head. If he died - But you didn't. No. For once, it was only anger. Draco's expression was only a spark to a fire pit built many years ago. Built the day you stepped inside Hogwarts, brimming with hopes and dreams, only to be met with rejection. It took a moment for you to realise that Draco was still watching you, uncertain, brow furrowed in concern. For you. Not him, not the one who had almost died only a few hours ago. And so, you let out a careful breath, holding his face in your hands as though it was the most precious thing to exist. "I won't let that happen." You murmured, meeting his complex grey faze with a fierce one. Swallowing, Draco watched you a moment longer, as though trying to read the intensity of your words. "I know." His brow jolted in as he spoke, as though he were wounded to say it. There was an underlying tone to your admission, one you both appeared to ignore. But then, Draco pressed a chaste kiss to your lips, squeezing your waist tight in his grip. The movement brushed away the tension before you could even attempt to hold onto it. It left you feeling a little unhinged, blinking. "I'm alive, though." Draco reassured, catching your eye once again. "Madame Pomfrey fixed me up quite nicely." A soft chuckle left you as he spoke, breaking through the stiffness of your features. "Really?" You raised an eyebrow, teasing. "Any battle scars?" His lips twitched, gaze warm. "You're just trying to get me undressed." Shaking his head, you laughed again, watching as Draco shifted away from you to tug his shirt upward. There was a slight stutter in your chest as he did so, a sudden childish nervousness at the exposure of skin. But, as your eyes swept across the healed, rugged lines across his chest, it faded. Leaving you instead, with both a tinge of worry - and, a slight desire. Draco, however, seemed to note your expression. He didn't allow his shirt to fall back down till your eyes met again, except this time, they were a little darkened. "Like what you see?" A smug smirk plastered his features, but you only rolled your eyes. "Cocky as always, Malfoy." You teased, unable to stop yourself from smiling as he pulled you in closer again. Pressing short kisses to your jaw, he earnt a sharp intake of breath from you. "I never denied that." The mood, somehow, managed to stay warm for the rest of the evening. Settled on the window sill, soaking in Draco's presence and rare good mood - your anxieties faded. His arms were so tight around you, soft lips finding your skin, over and over. It was as though you were dreaming. The anger, however - the anger never quite left. You weren't quite sure if you wanted it to, either.

#Draco Malfoy #draco malfoy angst #draco x reader #draco malfoy imagine #draco x you #draco malfoy x reader #draco malfoy fluff #harry potter fanfiction #indelicate marks series

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haikyuu-scenarios-drabbles · 4 years ago

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Unspoken: Chapter One - Oikawa Tooru x f!reader

Oikawa has been in love with you since you became a manager for the university’s volleyball team, but keeps it to himself in fear of what his fan club might do to you if they found out

genre(s): college!au, mutual pining (mostly Oikawa), friends to lovers, angst, eventual smut words: 3k+

a/n: don’t worry folks, i just got carried away with this fic and felt it would be better to split it up. chapter 2 is complete and will be up tomorrow 💖 with a bonus smut ending if you are a heathen like me. enjoy ~ J ✨ i am also sorry i made the fan club so bitchy

taglist: @takingyouruwus @kurosarium @apollochjld @afterglowkuroo (lmk if you’d like to be added to my general or a specific taglist!)

Chapter 2

The Oikawa fan club is definitely not a fan of you, and you certainly aren’t of them. Not because you have a crush on him too but because they’re obnoxious and take the best seats at volleyball games. It also doesn’t help that they outright despise you. They don’t even try to hide it. Snickering in the hallways at school or passing quick remarks whispered amongst them at games. You really aren’t a fan of that. You don’t care, you don’t care, you don’t care��you chant to yourself to keep your tongue locked behind your teeth. It isn’t worth your time or the effort.

Not until you hear one of them hiss today at the game, “What is she even doing up here? I thought she’s the manager,” a scoff. “Guess the team likes Miko better.”

Your fists ball instinctively. You can’t sit down there, as much as you’d like to. If they knew anything deeper about volleyball beyond Oikawa’s killer serve and being obsessed with his ‘pretty hair’ they’d know that you might be a manager but there is a senior manager who outranks you and only one is allowed on the bench down on the court.

Though you have to admit, sitting up here in the bleachers with the Oikawa ogling brigade in front of you—the manager—fawning over his every move is degrading. You don’t necessarily have to sit directly behind them, but god dammit you want to see the game too and are willing to grin and bear it for the sake of the team. You can’t sit in the normal cheering section crowded with students either since you arrive late and would have to sit at the back of the stands. So, this is the better of two options, even if today the fan club is being particularly petty.

“Or maybe she’s just a wannabe,” another snickers, loud enough that you know she is intending you to hear it.

That pushes you over the edge, making you abruptly stand up. You’re wearing a university volleyball club jacket for fucks sake! Are they really so shallow as to start slinging rumors like that around? They jolt at your sudden movement, glaring back at you, clearly with no intention of apologizing. They so obviously just want you to leave.

You want to watch the game, support the boys you watch work so hard and work hard for yourself, but you don’t want to be around for this bullshit. You know shouldn’t care, but you do, and it fucking ruins the game for you.

Instead of giving them some mean remark like you’re itching to throw at them, you just turn on a heel and go. You stride up the steps and towards the exit right as you hear the crowd gear up for Oikawa’s serve. You stop once you reach the doorway, fists clenched and trembling with anger, furious at yourself for letting them get under your skin. Exactly like they wanted to. You should have stayed as a silent ‘fuck you’ to them, but you can’t stomach going back either. Not like they even care anyways, probably too wrapped up in Oikawa’s serve. Now a sigh escapes you; forcing your hands to unfurl and stretch the ache that formed from how tightly you had them clenched.

You need to take a breath and move on. You have nothing to prove to them, all the matters is that you know where you stand. It also makes you feel better that the team actually knows you, they can pretend it isn’t true all they want but that doesn’t change that you get to spend time with the team, and inevitably, Oikawa. A fact they loathe.

You end up lingering in the hallway near the entrance to the gym, waiting for the game to finish. Usually you can be a part of the between game meetings if you want to, sometimes you can’t get down there fast enough but sitting here in the hallway, you’ll make it today. While you wait, you slide down the wall to sit, leaning against it and pulling your legs close to rest your chin on.

You like to think that you have tough skin and their words can’t hurt you, but they do. And while you may not put the same about of blood, sweat, and tears the boys do into the sport—you put in your fair share for them, and it’s hard to be met with scoffs and sideways glances purely because of jealousy. You’re appreciated enough by those who matter, so why are you so bothered by the fan club? Shaking your head at the fleeting thought that it has anything to do with Oikawa, you convince yourself it’s just annoyance that you can’t enjoy games like you’d like to.

Interrupting your thoughts, the whistle blows to signal the end of the game and you perk your head up. You’re grateful for the distraction, not really wanting to delve deeper into your thoughts about Oikawa, and peek into the gym. Miko notices your head in the doorway and waves you in to join the huddle.

Ha, take that fan club. Wannabe my ass.

Miko’s movement catches Oikawa’s attention. He looks to where her attention is drawn and watches you beam before throwing the door wide and joining the huddle by Miko’s side. He wonders what you were doing waiting by the door, normally you wait until the last possible moment before bolting from your seat in the bleachers to join the huddle. You never want to miss a single second of the game, which he finds rather endearing. And he can’t remember the last time you skipped out on a game early.

He stares at you, trying to get your attention, but you’re fixated on the coach, no doubt trying to soak up as much information as possible. It makes his mouth curve ever so slightly at how eagerly you listen during these huddles. When you do briefly slide your gaze over to him, he gives you a questioning look to which you just shake your head at and point discretely at the coach.

Ah. Your way of saying, ‘shut up and listen’.

He supposes he likes that about you. Your bluntness.

So, with an eyeroll, he fixes his eyes on the coach, fully intending on pestering you later about it. He tries to grab you before the next game, but you hurry away as soon as the whistle is blown, and his fingers grasp empty air.

The team wins the next set, winning the match without going to the 3rd set. As customary, he lines up with the team to thank the spectators and Oikawa gets the chance to pick you out in the crowd. He spots you off to the side, and he’s noted since meeting you that you don’t sit with the cheering crowd, but rather on your own. It’s never too hard to find you, your face split in two by a smile as you clap for them. It’s then that he notices who is sitting directly in front of you.

He fights the urge to frown. He likes to think he’s a polite guy, having always given attention to his so called ‘fan club’. He got used to it in high school, the constant barrage of placating a group of fans, but had been secretly looking forward to hopefully leaving it behind. Only to have a new one re-emerge within the first few months of school. The other guys on the team weren’t too keen about him for a while after that. It took him forever to convince them to tolerate him again.

And he hates that they give you trouble. Ever since they discovered you interact with him outside of school, it seems they deemed you an enemy. He tries to stay away from you during regular school hours, keeping it limited to volleyball only, but lately the two have started bleeding together. He simply can’t help himself, however selfish that may be. Gathering his things, he wonders if they’re the cause for your weird behavior earlier.

He glances at you helping Miko put away the chairs, a tight feeling constricting his chest. God—if he ever told you how he actually feels about you, what would his fan club do then? How miserable would they make you? But damn him to hell, he’s selfish, and it doesn’t stop him from striding over to you cooing your name.

Without hesitation you reply, “Oikawa-san~,” in the same sing-song voice he uses for you. You don’t even bother to look over your shoulder at him, continuing your task.

“What was with the little peeping tom imitation earlier?”

You’re glad to be facing away from him, your skin prickling with the thought of having to explain to him that his fan club was pissing you off. Surely earning yourself a more prying follow-up question that you definitely do not want to answer. So instead you shrug, brushing off his question, “You guys were so far ahead, and I was sure your serves would end it, so I figured I’d actually be a part of the entire huddle.”

He squints, finding that to be rather out of character for you. “You missed my serves though!” He pouts, deciding it’s better for him to let you off the hook than continue to pry. He doesn’t think you’d tell him anyways, no matter how much he pesters you.

“Oh, big baby. I missed what? Two?”

“What if they were my best yet!” He protests, leaning around you so you can see his impressive pout. It delights him that he elicits a smile from you, peering at him from the corner of your eye, clearly finding his antics amusing. “Guess you’ll have to help me with serving practice to make up for it.”

You stick your tongue out at him, which he hates to admit he watches very closely as you answer, “Fine.” Though, truthfully, he’s not really pulling your leg too much. You like helping him practice.

He can’t help how his mouth turns downward into a frown as another member of the team, a bold freshman, butts into the conversation. “Need any help?”

Though he does find immense delight at the way your face falls to a neutral expression, giving him a curt, “I’m alright, thank you.” You don’t even turn to him, instead tilting your head to look at Oikawa continuing, “Oikawa-san is more than enough help here. Why don’t you see if they need help putting away the net?”

The freshman slinks away and Oikawa has to physically restrain himself from doing a victory lap as you shove a chair into his hands grumbling to yourself. The muttering continues as you move to put away more chairs, loud enough that he catches you say, “Is he ever going to get the hint?”

“What?”

You almost drop the chair you’re holding, turning wide-eyed at Oikawa, not realizing you’d been talking out loud to yourself. “It’s nothing.”

He frowns. “Is he bothering you?”

God he’s talking so loudly, making you nervous that the underclassman might hear him. “Can you talk any louder?” You hiss. Oikawa’s expression doesn’t change, however, and you groan really not wanting to get into this right now. “He’s been at it for a couple weeks now,” you say, trying to play off the situation as best you can. You’ve never had someone as persistent in pursuing you as he is, or someone as oblivious to your subtle rejections either.

You vaguely wonder if this is how Oikawa feels all the time with his fan club.

“Wanna pretend to date for a while?” He suggests harmlessly in your opinion, but very selfishly in his. And while he knows he isn’t joking in the slightest—you certainly think he is and bark out a laugh at the idea of fake dating him to get the underclassman off your back. “What?” He pouts. “Is it so crazy of an idea?”

You’re laughing even harder now, enough that people are beginning to look your way, so you swallow you remaining laughter and wipe your eyes dramatically. “It just don’t want to be murdered in the dead of night by your fan club, that’s all.”

You go back to collapsing chairs and don’t notice Oikawa stiffen. He doesn’t like being reminded that his fan club will literally rip apart any girl he is even remotely interested in. And he isn’t just interested in you. He likes you. A lot.

Clearly not thinking anything of this conversation, you say over your shoulder, “What are all those muscles for if you’re not going to carry more chairs than me?” He blinks back to reality and makes a show of picking up way more chairs than you and putting them away faster too. That only earns him a scowl in response, but he knows it’s only for show.

“Oh, pleeeeeease?” Oikawa almost gets on his knees begging you. Practice is done but he wants to stay late and hammer in more serves before the night is over. And sue him if he thinks it’s way more enjoyable if you stay to help him. “You promised last week!” You groan, scrunching your eyes tight, not wanting to look at his stupidly adorable pouting face that usually breaks you. It doesn’t help that you can feel he is standing very close to you. “You’re going to have to open your eyes sometime.”

“Nope, I’ll walk all the way home like this.”

He pleads your name again. “You’re going to miss the rare sight of Oikawa Tooru on his knees for you!”

You don’t budge. “Nice try.”

“I’m serious!” Now he really does get on his knees, dramatically putting his hands together to beg you. “This is a once in a lifetime chance!”

He keeps it to himself that you could definitely get him on his knees for many different reasons.

He’s sure that he’s broken you when you groan loudly and peek an eye open at him. Upon seeing that he is being serious, both of your eyes widen, and you have the audacity to start giggling at him. “I should take a picture.”

That makes him scramble to his feet, sticking his tongue out at you. “You better not.” It just makes you grin and his heart soars at the sight. He can’t help that your smile makes his stomach do somersaults. He takes you by the arm and drags you further into the gym before jogging over to the other side of the court and grabbing a ball from the cart.

He loves that he doesn’t have to tell you what to do. You’re already digging through your bag to find objects to place around the opposite side of the net for him to aim for. He notices that you’ve placed some of them very meanly—some sitting just barely on the outside line, others in spots that he has a record of having trouble hitting. And while it makes his chest swell with pride you even notice his performance, the scowl across his face betrays his annoyance that you aren’t making this easy.

If you’re going to help him—he’s going to have to work for it.

And hell, if that doesn’t drive him wild.

“Those good?” You ask, stepping off to the side, a smug smirk splayed across your lips.

You know exactly what you’re doing.

He levels a look at you that you return with a sickeningly sweet yet utterly terrifying smile. “You’re going to have to do better than that, I’m afraid.”

Your smile transforms into something that makes his stupid fucking shorts tighten, holding his gaze steadily as you challenge, “We’ll see.” Then you tear your eyes from his and he feels like you’ve ripped his chest out with it and like he can barely get enough air into his lungs. He knows the challenge is to drive him to do better, to perform the best of his ability, but damn—he’ll give 110% for the rest of his life if you ask him to.

You will never admit how much you love watching Oikawa play volleyball. Watching him shift from his teasing, easy-going smile, to this intensely serious and calculating gaze that while foreign to you—is also so strangely familiar. You feel lucky to be able to watch him up close, someone who has honed their craft, yet is ever looking to be better. When it comes down to it, you truly admire Oikawa and want to be there to watch him grow and see where he goes. Because to you, the sky’s the limit for him.

Where the hell are those thoughts coming from?

The sound of a volleyball slamming onto the court, sending the notebook you placed on the line skittering across the floor, startles you. “Hey! Pay attention!” Oikawa scolds. You quickly apologize, knowing full well how much a stray volleyball can hurt. “And make sure you’re watching! I’m going to hit every single one of those first try.”

You nod, a bit blankly, still reeling from the thoughts tumbling through your head. He tosses another ball up, his powerful thighs straining as he thrusts his body upwards, hand meeting the ball at the perfect point—the sound of his hand cracking against it almost as loud as the sound that reverberates around the gym when it connects with the floor. It all happens in the blink of an eye, but you feel like you’re watching it in slow motion until his feet touch the floor and you’re jolted back to reality.

God, what the fuck is going on with you tonight?

Oikawa isn’t blind. He knows you’re watching him. And it sends such a thrill down his spine he doesn’t know what to do with himself besides channel as his energy into his serves. Otherwise he’s going to do something very stupid tonight.

You’re uncannily quiet for the remainder of the night. Just watching him serve over and over again, and when he’s finished, helping him pick up the balls and set up the targets so he can start again. He is desperate to know what’s going through your head, but he lets you stew, just as interested in what conclusion you might be coming to on your own.

It’s not his fault that his imagination runs absolutely fucking wild that night. He can’t sleep, theorizing what changed today—if anything did. What were you thinking about as you watched him so intently? What flipped the switch? Are you thinking about him right now, lying awake in bed like he is? It torments him even in his dreams.

He does keep you awake that night. You can’t get the image of him out of your head. His voice either. It’s infuriating. You try to convince yourself he’s just a friend. That all those late nights in the gym, all the times he’s walked you home, all the bus rides you’ve fallen asleep on his shoulder, are harmless. He hasn’t wormed his way into your heart, he hasn’t made you fall in love with him slowly and quietly and its only now hitting you like a tidal wave—has he?

Fuck. Has he?

You’re grateful your roommates’ room is down the hall, giving you the freedom to scream into your pillow.

Are you a fucking Oikawa fan girl now?

You don’t know the difference between you and them is that he’s been in love with you a lot longer than you can even imagine.

#oikawa tooru x reader #haikyuu x reader #oikawa x reader #oikawa tooru imagine #oikawa tooru scenario #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu scenario #haikyuu #oikawa tooru

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jessepinwheel · 4 years ago

Note

I just read the newest instalment of your vignettes. It made me giggle and then I had the thought what if Bant and the clones run into Obi-Wan on a date with a third party that isn’t Rex, Bail or even Fives. 🤣🤣

at this rate everyone’s gonna get a date with Obi-Wan

“I appreciate your help today. I know it was short notice, but it was very informative.”

Bruck, who is just glad to finally be done, nods. “Sure. Glad to be of service, or something.”

“I’m sorry it went on so much longer than expected,” Kenobi continues. “But I think we’ve covered everything I wanted to, so we won’t have to do this again, unless another Sith turns up and starts causing trouble.”

Bruck grimaces. He’s just spent the last seven hours following Kenobi around Coruscant’s undercity to provide ‘Jedi expertise’ on mostly abandoned buildings as some kind of follow-up on Palpatine being a real-ass Sith Lord, which would be annoying enough on its own if almost all of these buildings didn’t also feel like someone had been tortured in them, frequently and at length. He feels gross, and more than a little ill. “Please don’t even joke about that.”

“Ah. My apologies, Knight Chun,” Kenobi says, without even the grace to actually look sorry. “Usually, I pay consultants for their time, but I’m not really sure how that works with Jedi Knights, since you don’t exactly have a salary to begin with.”

“The Temple’s giving me a stipend,” Bruck tells him, and not just because the idea of getting paid by Oafy-Wan makes him feel skeevy for a lot of reasons. “And this counts as normal Jedi work, with the Sith involvement and stuff, and Senator Organa’s the one who actually requested our help, so you’re definitely not supposed to pay me for this.”

Kenobi nods. “Right. I thought that was how it worked, but it’s been a while since I’ve done anything involving the Jedi.”

There’s something about that that really doesn’t sit right. The way Kenobi refers to Jedi from the outside and calls him ‘Knight Chun’, like the two of them didn’t grow up together in the same dormitory in the same Temple. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do about it, because it’s obvious Kenobi isn’t a Jedi anymore--that had been pretty clear around the time he’d walked into a room with an aura of death in the Force and hadn’t even noticed.

It’s just...weird. Bruck hadn’t ever really thought being a Jedi as something someone could stop being.

“Well,” Kenobi says, bringing him out of his thoughts, “I know it’s been a long day for both of us, but if you’re amenable, I could treat you to dinner? As thanks for your help, and because it’s getting late.”

Normally, Bruck would jump at the occasion to get free food that’s not from the Temple refectory--not that the Temple food is bad, it’s just that thirty-some years of the same stuff gets a little tiring--but getting food with Obi-Wan? Yikes. It’s not like either of them ever agreed to hang out or anything; it’s the Council that put him on this assignment, and Kenobi’s been nothing but aggressively professional. They might as well be strangers.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Kenobi says. “But I know the Temple refectory stops serving dinner in about ten minutes, and it’s my fault you had to work so late. If you’re in a hurry you can get something to take home.”

“Oh, all right,” Bruck says. He is hungry, and he’s definitely not in the mood to cook when he gets back to the Temple. “Getting a snack or something won’t hurt.”

“Wonderful,” Kenobi replies. “There’s a kebab stall on the way back. I think you’ll like it.”

Obligingly, Bruck follows Kenobi as they head back in the general direction of the Temple. It’s well into nighttime in Coruscant now, and noisy because of it--both physically and in the Force, like a constant barrage against his shielding. It’s even worse down in the lower levels, and Kenobi’s lucky he can’t feel any of it.

“How’s your kid?” Bruck asks when the awkward silence stretches on a bit too long. “Boba, right?”

Kenobi smiles. Not the little professional smile he uses to be polite, but a genuine warm smile. For a second, Bruck catches a glimpse of the person Obi-Wan used to be, back before everything. It’s disorienting.

“Boba’s good,” Kenobi says. “I think he’s really settling in to life on Coruscant. He’s made some friends his own age, both at the Temple and out. He’s getting into trouble, of course, but he’s ten--I’d be surprised if he didn’t.”

Bruck’s only met Boba once, and not under the best of circumstances, but he’d gotten the impression the kid was a handful and a half--just as likely to try and charm people for treats as to break someone’s nose. Not too different than Obi-Wan at that age, Bruck supposes. He certainly remembers the last conversation they had before Obi-Wan became a Padawan and then fake-died.

“Never really put you down as the fatherhood type,” Bruck says. “Especially not to Jango Fett’s kid. Is that, like, weird? You know, since Boba’s a, uh...”

Kenobi shoots him a sideways look. “That’s not a very polite question, Bruck.”

Oh, okay. So it’s Bruck now.

“Sorry. Just curious. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

Kenobi is silent for a very long moment, then says, “The kebab stall is just here. Come on.”

Bruck follows him into an out-of-the-way small street food stand with a very strong smell of herbs and roasted shaak. It smells very appetizing.

“Order whatever you like,” Kenobi says, handing him a greasy flexplast menu.

Bruck looks it over. It’s not expensive food, obviously, but it’s not cheap cheap, either--as far as street food goes, this is actually pretty high-end, which at least means he won’t get food poisoning. Probably. He orders the house special, some flame-grilled shaak kebab with mushrooms and sweet sauce, rolled in flatbread. Kenobi orders a set of three bantha skewers and pays for their food.

“To answer your earlier question,” Kenobi says, sitting down beside Bruck to wait, “No. I don’t think it’s strange to raise Boba, even though he’s a clone of Jango. Maybe it would be, if I’d known Jango when he was younger, but he was very much an adult when we met for the first time. I can’t make that comparison even if I wanted to. And if I live long enough to see Boba grow to be Jango’s age--and I hope I do--I already know Boba’s going to be very different. He will not be a soldier, and chances are, not a Mandalorian, either.”

“Isn’t being Mandalorian kind of Fett’s thing? What’s wrong with it?”

“Mandalorian isn’t something you’re born into--it’s a culture you learn,” Kenobi says. “A culture that I am not only not a part of, but when Jango offered to adopt me as Mandalorian, I refused. It is one of many reasons we eventually parted ways.”

Bruck shoots a look at him. There is so much about that to unpack that he’s not even sure where to start. Like, Kenobi and Fett were apparently a serious thing? What, exactly, has he been doing in the last two decades? What’s so loaded about being Mandalorian?

“Why’d you say no? You had a good thing going, didn’t you?”

Kenobi takes a deep breath and clasps his hands. “There’s a concept in Mandalorian culture of, literally translated, a white field. As it was explained to me, it refers to a blanket of snow, killing old growth to pave the way for new growth in the coming season. In practice, it’s the purging of old loyalties and deeds to begin anew as Mandalorian,” he says. “In asking me to become Mandalorian, he was asking me to stop being Jedi.”

“But you’re...not a Jedi.”

“I’m not a member of the Order,” Kenobi says. “There’s a difference.”

Behind them, the stall owner calls out their order numbers, and Kenobi goes back to get their food. He hands Bruck his meal, wrapped in oily flimsi.

“Careful, it’s hot.”

Bruck accepts it. It looks pretty good. “Yeah, thanks.”

The two of them go back out into the night to walk and talk. The shaak is a little overspiced in Bruck’s opinion, but it tastes good and that’s what matters.

“So what do you mean, you’re Jedi? You can’t even feel the Force anymore,” Bruck says.

Kenobi sighs. “And people call me tactless.” He bites off one of his skewers. “It’s not that hard of a concept, Bruck. I was raised by the Temple, with Temple values and a Temple Jedi’s understanding of the Force. Leaving the Order doesn’t change that, making changes to my faith doesn’t change that, and becoming disabled with regards to the Force doesn’t change that, either.”

“Really? Because it sounds like you gave up your faith, the Force, and the Order. What’s even left?”

“Only my history and culture,” Kenobi says, his voice flat. “I wouldn’t fault anyone who chose to leave those things behind, but I chose not to because they’re important to me and who I am.”

“But--”

“I’m not accepting any arguments about this, Bruck. I really don’t care if you don’t understand.”

Bruck frowns. “Wow, you kind of grew up to be an asshole.”

Bruck half expects Kenobi to punch him in the face for that, but instead, Kenobi laughs. “Oh, believe me, Bruck. This is not me being an asshole. This is just my baseline these days.” He takes another bite from his skewer. “But to return to our earlier subject, I don’t have the ability to raise Boba as a Mandalorian. I’m not going to hide his culture from him or anything--I can teach him the language and the recipes and some of the customs and I can even try to track down some of Jango’s old associates to talk to him, but that’s not the same as raising him Mandalorian. If I’m honest, I’m not sure I’d want to, even if I could.”

“Huh? What’s the problem now?”

“Mandalorians are warriors. It’s an integral part of their culture--you can’t divorce the two,” Kenobi says. “I don’t want to raise Boba as a warrior. I want him to have options that don’t involve violence and death. I’ll teach him to fight and defend himself, of course, and if he grows up and wants to be a bounty hunter or anything else like that, I won’t like it, but I’ll accept it because that’s his choice. It’s not how Jango would want him raised, but Jango’s not here anymore--I am. War and violence have already taken so much, and I’d like if between the three of us, at least one person doesn’t have to be a killer.”

Bruck doesn’t even know what to say. He only has the vaguest idea of what happened to Obi-Wan after he disappeared, and that it somehow involves something on Melida/Daan, but it’s obvious that that’s barely scratching the surface.

Shit happened in the last twenty-whatever years. While Bruck was busy getting manipulated by Xanatos and making bad life choices, Obi-Wan left the Order, got his ass kicked, got kriffed right up, had a fling with a notorious bounty hunter, broke up, got back to Coruscant and became a detective. He’s not the crybaby he used to be--he’s not going to fold or scream after a couple of insults anymore. He’s professional and he’s mean and he looks at the absolute worst crimes a Sith Lord can drum up and doesn’t even flinch. He just makes some notes in his datapad and moves on. Ice cold.

After all that, it’s really no wonder Obi-Wan didn’t even remember him.

“I can feel you thinking about me,” Kenobi says, tossing away his finished first skewer in a recycler. “If you have a question, you can just ask.”

“I wanted to say sorry,” Bruck says. “You know, for being a dick to you when we were kids. I already said it at your funeral, but since you’re here and not actually dead, I figured I’d say it again.”

“Really?” Kenobi asks. “Why the change in heart?”

Bruck feels heat rising in his cheeks. What a shit way to respond to someone’s apology. “Because I stopped being a shitty twelve-year old, Kenobi.”

“You can call me Obi-Wan, you know. We’re not working right now.”

“Shut up. Just...listen to me, okay?” Bruck says. “After you left, a whole lot of crap went down. I was pissed off about not being a Padawan and--do you know who Xanatos is?”

“We met,” Kenobi says, his voice neutral.

“Right, well, he approached me about the whole Padawan thing. And he was like, you know. Nice. Charming and stuff. He understood me, how it wasn’t fair that Qui-Gon wouldn’t pick me as a Padawan even though I was talented and smart and good at saberwork--”

“Sure.”

“I thought that, okay? I was a shitty jealous twelve-year-old!”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You wanted to. I know you did.”

Kenobi slides a grilled fruit off his second skewer with his teeth. “You were trying to tell me something, Bruck?”

“Yeah, yeah. I was.” Bruck shakes his head to clear it, then says, “What I meant to say is Xanatos ego-tripped me into helping him bomb the Temple and it was a whole awful thing. I almost ended up killing Bant, which is around the time that I realized I karked up super super hard.”

“Is that where the scar is from?”

Bruck grimaces. He doesn’t like to think about the massive burn scar on his face or the circumstances leading up to it. “Yeah. I got caught a little close to one of the bombs when it went off, but that’s not important. My point is, I was laid up in the Halls of Healing for a while and put on pretty much permanent probation, but the Order still didn’t throw me out. They didn’t write me off even though I almost literally murdered one of my classmates. One of the Healers worked with me and my issues with Xanatos and stuff. You came up a lot.”

“Okay.”

The two of them make their way to the upper city promenade. It’s crowded as hell, like always, with glitzy lights and shining shop windows. Bruck thinks he spots a clone soldier or two--they’re becoming more common around downtown Coruscant, with the war winding down.

Bruck continues, “I guess I really made you miserable. I mean, I know I did--that was the point of it. I just...I hated how you had everything without even trying. You had all your friends and you were good at everything and all the Masters liked you. Even Grandmaster Yoda favored you. I didn’t have any of that, so it wasn’t fair that you did.”

“You remember my days at the Temple very differently than I do, Bruck.”

Bruck finishes his dinner and tosses away the wrapper. “Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess I kind of get that better now. But that’s not the point. Even if you did have all that and I didn’t, it wasn’t right for me to be a dick to you all the time. The Temple Healers helped me with that, and like, I got a Master of my own and became a Padawan and I thought I was going to show you just how good of a Padawan I could be--prove that I was just as good as you, and a better person and stuff and then you...died.”

“I see,” Kenobi says.

Bruck feels his cheeks grow hot again and he shouts, “‘I see’? What are you, a droid? I’m dredging up some emotional stuff for you here--can I at least get a reaction?”

Kenobi’s silent for a long moment, finishing his second skewer. “I don’t know what you want from me. I’m sorry you went through the difficulties you went through, and I’m glad you’ve grown from the experience. I appreciate the apology, and I forgive you, if that makes any difference.”

It’s so anticlimactic that if anything, it makes Bruck feel even worse. “Is that all you can say?”

“Bruck, you’ve got to understand that these are all things I left behind twenty years ago. I’ll listen and let you get it off your chest if you need that, but my emotional involvement with this ended a long, long time ago,” Kenobi says. “I’m glad you’re not angry and petty the way you were when we were younglings, and that you were able to find help and support. Thank you for telling me about what happened. You seem to be doing well now, and I’m happy for you.”

Bruck takes a deep breath, counts to ten, then lets it out. This is, he supposes, what he wanted. Obi-Wan’s forgiveness for everything that happened when they were younglings. Water under the bridge.

“This doesn’t mean I want to be friends,” Bruck says. “Just to be clear.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I got that pretty clearly,” Kenobi replies. He twirls his last skewer around, frowning. “I think I might have ordered too much to eat.”

“Seriously? You’ve been running around all of Coruscant for over seven hours and you can’t even finish three skewers?”

“Well, if you’re still hungry, then help yourself.” Kenobi holds out his skewer. It’s cooled down now, but it still smells good. “Go on, don’t be shy.”

Bruck squints at Kenobi, trying to see if there’s some kind of trick to this. Slowly, he grabs Kenobi’s hand holding the skewer to keep it steady, and slides off a piece of sliced bantha. It’s a bit spicy, but it’s chewy and tangy and just the right amount of sweetness. “Mm,” he says. “That’s good.”

“It is,” Kenobi agrees. “I see the Temple just ahead, so I think this is where we part ways. It was good working with you, Bruck. Hopefully there’s no need to do this a second time.”

“Yeah, it was all right, but let’s never do this again,” Bruck says. “Have a good life or whatever.”

“You, too. And Bruck?”

“Yeah?”

Kenobi grins and hands over the rest of his skewer. “This is me being an asshole.”

Without explaining what the hell that’s supposed to mean, Kenobi leaves and vanishes into the crowd.

Bruck’s commlink buzzes in his pocket. Confused, he pulls it out of his pocket.

[Bant Eerin has sent an image.]

Bant: Bruck??? What the hell???

Bant: Obi-Wan is off-limits????????

There, in crystal-clear resolution is a candid photo of him, three minutes ago, eating Kenobi’s skewer directly out of his hand. Kenobi’s smiling at him, and his eyes somehow catch the light to make it look like they’re sparkling. It looks exactly like they’re on a cheesy late-night dinner date.

His commlink buzzes with another message, then another, then another, all with the same holo attached.

That rat bastard. Bruck stares up to the sky and asks the Force what he ever did to deserve this.

#star wars #fanfic #bruck chun #obi-wan kenobi #fic: asynchronous circuit #Anonymous #ask jesse

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downwiththeficness · 3 years ago

Text

In the Bond-Chapter 18

Summary: Lilah often wished she’d never said yes to working with the Gecko brothers—usually while dodging gunfire. At no time was she regretting that decision more than when she’s hanging upside down from the ceiling, staring down a group of hungry culebras and one (1) extremely powerful sun god.

Word Count: ~2,300

Warnings: Canon typical violence, blood, mentions of death

A/N: This is an AU of my Story In the Blood, which can be read here. Basically, this fic explores what would have happened if Lilah had met up with Geckos before she met Brasa.

Taglist: @symbiont13

Start from the beginning Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Read on AO3 Masterlist

Lilah took time to explore the rest of the house while Brasa was busy closing the finances for the month. The door at the end of the hallway was still locked, and she wished she’d snagged Seth’s lock pick set while she had the chance. After making a note to order one online, Lilah veered off to the far side of the house, behind the living room.

There was a stairwell that still smelled of freshly sawed wood, unvarnished, leading to an expansive loft. Like the rest of the house, the walls and ceiling were stone. Also like the rest of the house, it was bare.

Clearly, it was meant to be an office of some kind, bookshelves lining the walls. An adjoining half bath was tucked in the back, with a linen closet stocked with towels. Lilah stood in the middle of it, thinking that it was odd that there was no window. In any other building, there would be a lookout over the property. But, as with most things where Brasa was concerned, this was not like any other building.

Moving back downstairs, Lilah passed through the living room to a smaller office. Brasa was sitting at the desk, tapping away on a keyboard. He looked up in interest as she entered the room. Lilah waved to him, indicating that he should ignore her. His work seemed constant—a barrage of emails to answer when he woke, phone calls that seemed to take hours, text message updates from Javier. Running his business was somewhat more than a full time job.

There were times when Lilah spent almost all her waking hours alone. She’d taken to riding with him to the bar and parking herself in one of the booths as a mean of distraction. The bar manager had good taste in music, and Lilah found that she could actually take some time to relax.

Still, she missed her friends, and she missed the work. A couple times a day, she would get an email or a text—she was disappointed every time by the sender. Seth hadn’t so much as checked in, though Kate occasionally sent her an update. It looked to Lilah that she was going to have to find a new crew. The thought was not entirely palatable. To keep the feeling at bay, Lilah turned her attention back to the décor.

Like Brasa’s other office, this room was plush and touched here and there with soft, luxurious accents. It was the only room in the house that seemed to reflect the inhabitant. There were fewer books here, but the ones that were stacked on the shelves were old, most of them looking handmade. She didn’t dare touch them for fear of damaging the clearly valuable tomes, though every once in a while, her fingers itched to snag one and secret it away.

Like the room above, there was an adjoining bathroom. Simple. Stocked with supplies. Lilah made a circle around the room, touching the marble counter top, and then went back into the office. She clocked Brasa still on the phone, his expression thunderous. It was starting to become a pattern. He’d answer the phone, and bad news would come.

There was no soothing him when he found out that another shipment had gone missing or that Benny had gained a significant number of acolytes. His anger would blossom in a quiet way that left him pacing in thought. All she could do was wait for him to run out of steam, usually laying down next to her, pulling her into his body in comfort.

Leaning against a bookshelf, Lilah waited. He would do as he had done in the past, come to her when he was ready.

When he’d concluded that call, Brasa turned off his monitor and pushed to standing. He tugged on his leather gloves, looking lost in thought. The worry creasing his brow was deeper than it had ever been, and she could feel something like grief emanating through the bond. It pushed her to approach him first.

“What happened?” Lilah asked pointedly, provoked by the distress in his expression.

He glanced at her, saying, “Benny tried to open the portal.”

Aghast, Lilah spit out, “He didn’t.”

“He did,” Brasa replied, stepping around his desk, “He failed. But, it wasn’t without consequence.”

Lilah followed him out into the living room, “Was anyone hurt?”

He nodded, heading for the coat closet and shrugging on his preferred leather coat, “Yes.”

Lilah didn’t like the abrupt answers, the way he wouldn’t look at her. She didn’t know what it meant that he’d failed to open the portal—only that she was relieved by it.

“I’m coming with you,” she announced, stepping into a pair of boots and zipping up the sides.

Brasa hesitated, and she could tell he was about to tell her ‘no.’ Staring at her, he changed his mind, nodding once and reaching for her hand. He led her out to the hidden garage, helped her into the SUV. As they drove, he periodically checked his phone. No new information ever popped up onto the screen. Lilah touched his arm, squeezing it in what she hoped was comfort. He looked at her sidelong, then took her hand, holding it the whole way.

When they arrived at the bar, it was chaos. People milled about, some of them injured. Lilah covered her mouth to hide the gag as the smell hit her nose. Burned flesh. Blood. Fear. It mixed together into something that she couldn’t describe with any other word than ‘horror’. She’d seen war documentaries with less gore. The room was both quiet and loud, the silence interspersed regularly with the moans of those who hurt.

Some of the victims were missing limbs, almost all were burned in some way, shape, or form. Lilah took the crowd in, took in the ones that were trying to help. Crates of blood bags were being hauled out to where Javier stood. He directed traffic, issuing orders with authority that might have surprised her in any other situation. Here, he was shining with leadership that he normally eschewed.

Blood was being applied as a poultice, dripped over wounds and into open mouths. Lilah struggled to contain her reaction, struggled to understand the medicine for what it was. She thought that maybe she’d gotten used to how her world had turned, but what she was looking at was at least three or four steps in the wrong direction.

Brasa guided her to Javier, the hand at the small of her back a reassurance that she definitely appreciated. She felt lightheaded, dizzy, and overwhelmed. There was a very real possibility that she might pass out. Swallowing down what threatened to rise, Lilah forced her spine to straighten, carried herself with strength she did not have.

“How many?” Brasa asked, pulling off his glasses and observing the room with a clinical eye.

Javier scratched at the skin above his brow, his other hand holding onto a silver cane that matched the silver of his belt buckle. He was dressed in a black suit, black shirt, black tie, black shoes. Lilah noted that he wore a silver pinky ring that glinted in the light. Even in utter disaster, Javier was dressed for the occasion.

“Seventy five,” he answered, “I’ve already sent the least injured to our barracks. We will provide them with food and rest. The others…”

He gestured to the crowd strewn across the bar. Some of them were lying on the floor, being tended to by staff. Some were propped up against the walls or laying on the tables. Still others were sitting at the bar. All of them look shell shocked, their gazes in the middle distance. Almost none were talking. Absolutely none were smiling.

As she looked at them, Lilah had never felt more helpless. This was so far out of her wheelhouse that she couldn’t quite get herself anchored. She didn’t know what to do with her hands, didn’t know if she should say something or remain quiet.

“I’ve talked with a few of them,” Javier continued, “He almost did it.”

That stopped Lilah cold. All of the pain in the room had nearly resulted in much worse. The ‘almost’ of his success made her chest hurt with unrelenting anxiety. If he had succeeded, if he attempted to do it again, there would be dire consequences no matter the outcome.

Brasa hissed, his lips curling, “I knew he would try.”

Javier dipped his head congenially, “They tell me that there are possibly a dozen that were taken, that Benny sacrificed to the portal before it collapsed.”

Brasa nodded, saying nothing and eyeing the victims. Lilah wanted to ask questions. She wanted to know what it meant that he’d been able to make a sacrifice, that he’d been able to contact Xibalba. She also wanted to know if the near success had created a rift in the portal, something for Benny to dig his fingers into so that he could rip it wide open.

“He’s getting too close.”

“I know that,” Brasa seethed, “We’ll have to kill him.”

Javier’s lips thinned, “He’s gone to ground.”

“Then we will root him out.”

There was fire underneath Brasa’s words. His voice was low, angry, ruthless. Lilah couldn’t blame him. For Brasa, the people in this room were under his protection. Benny had infringed upon his territory, had done what Brasa had expressly forbidden. It was understandable that he would want to retaliate in kind.

What surprised Lilah was the guilt hiding stealthily behind her shock. If she had advocated to Benny to be killed sooner, if she had let Brasa do what he’d originally planned to do down in those caves...if she hadn’t interfered, a lot of people might have avoided suffering. And yet, Lilah knew that she could not have lived with herself if she hadn’t given Benny the opportunity to do what was right. If she had signed on wholesale to their slaughter, she would have counted herself as no better than him.

“As you wish.”

Knowing that she would be more in that way than able to provide any help, Lilah let Brasa pull her into his public office. The quiet, when they closed the door behind them, was a heavy thing. Lilah hadn’t even realized how loud the bar proper actually was, with the groans of the injured sounding almost constantly. She blinked back angry, impotent tears, wanting to be strong. Or, she wanted the appearance of strength, if only for Brasa’s sake.

Brasa sat at his desk, elbows landing atop it. His head sank into the cradle of his hands, a long, slow breath pushed through his nose. Lilah leaned a hip on the corner nearest to him, one hand soothing over his shoulder. She could think of no words of comfort, nothing that could right the immeasurable wrong that had been committed.

“We need to close that portal,” he murmured, sniffing as he leaned back to slouch in his chair.

Lilah’s hand dropped to her lap, “We do.”

He looked lost, bereft. Lilah wanted to gather him into her arms and rock side to side, wanted to ruffle the curls of his hair, wanted to take the heavy weight from him. And yet, there was nothing that could bring his people back, nothing that could heal the deep wound Benny’s attempt had made.

She said that only thing she could, “We still need the knife.”

Brasa ticked his head to the side, “Yes, we do.”

Lilah grabbed on to the opportunity to do something, “Tell me where to find the knife. I’ll get it and bring it back here while you see to the injured.”

Brasa was already shaking his head, “I can’t risk you. Not now.”

She knew he’d say that, knew it like she knew no one could get at the knife as fast or as efficiently as she could. Lilah may not be a politician, or a diplomat, but she could steal with the best of them. He could run point here while she took care of business out there.

“Its not a risk,” Lilah lied, “Benny will be in hiding until he tries again. He won’t even notice I’m gone.”

One leg kicked out and pulled the rolling chair forward so that Brasa could take her hand, “I’ll send someone to get the knife.”

Lilah thought for a moment about relenting. And then she thought about the people outside, she thought about how useless she felt. She needed this. Not because someone else couldn’t do it, but because she needed to feel like she was contributing. That need rode her hard, pushing past whatever fear she might have for her own life.

“You’ll send me,” she enunciated clearly, “You know I can get in and get out with no problem. I’ll be back in forty eight hours, tops.”

The beginnings of a plan had already started to form in her mind. Her bags were already packed, a possible partner already selected. She could do this.

His eyes narrowed, “Its in Iceland.”

The plan pivoted a little, but the main points remained the same. A change in locale was no true barrier to getting it done.

“Seventy two hours, tops,” Lilah countered.

He said nothing, but she could see the gears turning in his head as he worked around the problem. Lilah might not be able to help the injured just outside their door, but this she could do. She could get him the last item he needed to stop any further attempts on the portal.

“You know I can do it. Just show me where it is.”

Brasa stood and took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, “You will take my plane. You will take a weapon. You will tell me the plan before you leave.”

“I can do that.”

#from dusk til dawn #from dusk til dawn: the series #Brasa #In the Bond

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xmxisxforxmaybe · 4 years ago

Text

Elliot, Just a Tech

Summary: Plagued by not having Admin rights on your work computer, you contact the IT department expecting to talk to your usual guy. However, you are greeted by someone new.

A/N: Consider this post-show

WC: 2596

Warnings: None

You looked over the icons on your desktop for the eleventh time, dragging the old version of Adobe into the trash for the tenth time, and growling with frustration as the error message appeared for what felt like the hundredth time.

Please enter an Administrator’s Username and Password.

After the great email phishing scam the month prior, the IT department had been directed to revoke all employee’s Admin rights to their computers. It wasn’t your fault your colleagues were too dumb to realize that you should not click on email that has been flagged as spam, even if it is a version of your boss’s name: Mattthew Whitman has scheduled a meeting with you at 9 pm!

As if Matthew spelled with three ts wasn’t enough to deter someone, scheduling a meeting at 9 at night should have been, not to mention the exclamation point to top it all off—no one ever enthusiastically scheduled a meeting. Ever.

Alas, no less than 13 people had opened the email, severely compromising the integrity of the network.

You needed to get rid of the old version of Adobe in order for your network’s cloud to allow the download of the updated version, so you were left with no choice but to submit a ticket to the IT department.

You and Matt, no relation to Mattthew your boss, had had several Zoom sessions since the start of the quarantine, mostly thanks to your need to actually get some work done. With so many more people on your network, the IT department was doing the best it could to make sure everyone was achieving basic functionality.

Opening a new work order, you quickly filled in your information and snapped a screen shot of the error message. In less than a minute, you had an email inviting you to a Zoom session.

“Matt’s really on it today,” you said while opening the link and waiting for him to start the session.

You had just glanced away to check your To-Do list when someone opened the Zoom session and you paused, staring at the downturned face of someone who was definitely not Matt.

“Hi,” you greeted awkwardly.

“Hi,” he answered, still not looking into the camera.

“Where’s Matt?”

The stranger looked into the camera, clearly caught off-guard.

“Uh, he’s off today.”

“So they finally unchained him from his desk—good for him!”

The stranger’s eyes widened a little in amusement, but he didn’t smile which caused your grin to quickly fade.

“Are you . . .” the stranger trailed off as he glanced at his other desktop monitor. “Y/N?”

“I am. And you are?”

“Elliot.”

“Are you the new Supervisor they were hiring for last week?”

“Nope. Just a Tech.”

“All right. Well, hi, Elliot, just a Tech. I’m in dire need of installing an update, which I cannot do because my colleagues are dumbasses.”

This time Elliot did smile, and you found yourself reaching up to fix the wild bun on the top of your head, wishing you had actually taken some time out not to look like a troll who had crawled out from under its bridge.

“I see that you can’t install Adobe’s update without administrative permission.”

“Yup. That’s my issue, I think.”

“I want to try something first,” Elliot said, concentrating on the task at hand as he looked away from the camera and to his other monitor.

“Can you locate your system preferences? You can find it by clicking on the appl-“

“Done. What do you want me to go into?”

Elliot looked back into the camera, then gave you a series of steps which you quickly followed.

“I am only semi-illiterate when it comes to technology,” you said, trying again to get him to smile and this time it worked.

Elliot adjusted his headset and lowered his eyes as he grinned. “You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve had to explain over the past few days.”

“Oh, I would absolutely believe them. I’ve talked three people in my department off a ledge just by explaining the magical powers of “Command + Z.”

Elliot chuckled, and the sound of his laughter filtering through the mic on his headset made you want to stay on the call as long as you could stretch it out.

“It looks like the program is not responding. I’ll need to take remote control of your desktop.”

“Have at it.”

You watched as Elliot worked, waiting for your mouse to start moving across the screen, but nothing happened.

“Uh, do you have any error messages on your end?”

“Nope.”

“Let me try one more thing,” Elliot mumbled, his eyes narrowed in concentration.

You sat quietly, letting him work, which gave you an excuse to just look at him and the more you looked at him, the more attractive you realized he was.

Elliot had a stylish haircut, although it looked like his fade had grown in quite a bit thanks to the lockdown. Tufts of straight black hair stood up on either side of his headset and you wondered if they’d be stiff or soft to the touch. His eyes were large, clearly the most enticing of the features of his face, except for his angular jaw that made you softly smile in appreciation of its masculinity. Elliot may consider himself “just a Tech,” but he was a damn good looking one.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” you blurted out, forgetting all of your manners thanks to the lack of social interaction.

Elliot fumbled as he was typing and looked into the camera, his lips parted.

“Oh, lord. That came out . . . blunt. I asked because Matt’s been loving working from home. His wife just had a baby and even though he’s chained up in his home office at all hours of the day he still gets to spend time with the people he cares about. Which is what I was trying to ask you—if you were enjoying working from home.” You finished with an awkward laugh, and a barrage of mental curses to yourself.

Elliot’s lip turned up with a quirk. “My sister stops by to bring supplies, but I live alone.”

“Oh—well, that’s nice you have someone to interact with. I still see my sister, too.”

“I like this. Not having to interact with people.”

“The only downside is the verbal vomit you spew when talking to someone new because you no longer understand social protocol.”

Elliot laughed again, that same breathy little chuckle that upgraded from drawing your attention to making you shift in your chair.

“I’ve never been particularly adept at social protocol. Hence . . . just a Tech.”

You laughed and Elliot must have liked the sound because he stopped to watch you, his eyes flicking over your face through the camera.

“You need to update the Zoom app for me to take over your desktop. I don’t know why yours seems to have this glitch, but are you ready for the steps?”

You grabbed your pen and a fresh post-it. “Lay it on me, Tech.”

Elliot smirked, then listed the steps. “I’m going to close the call, but as soon as you’ve completed the steps, click on our Zoom link again.”

“Got it!”

Your eyes connected and lingered for just a moment before Elliot closed out the call.

You missed him immediately.

“Oh, Matt. If I had known Zoom calls could be like this, I’d have dumped you long ago.”

You shook your head to clear it and began to go through the steps Elliot had listed for you. You wanted to get this right to prove to him that you weren’t incompetent.

Having successfully, and quickly, completed all of the steps on your Post-it, you reinitiated the Zoom meeting.

“You’re quick.”

“I’m sure you’re much, much faster,” you said.

“I can only go as fast as the web connection, unfortunately,” Elliot replied, staring into his other monitor again.

“Let’s try this again—remember the steps to give me remote access?”

“I think so . . .” you said, trailing off as you began to click.

You paused, then your mouse began to move without you.

“Excellent job,” Elliot praised and you knew you wanted him to praise you again . . . preferably away from a computer, maybe in a bedroom—

“All right. So I need to delete, reinstall, and wait for an error message that’s been popping up making this a little harder for people to do themselves.”

You watched Elliot control your computer, and once he got to a point where the app was updating, he paused and turned back to the camera.

“About that girlfriend thing you asked me earlier. Are you seeing . . . anyone?”

“I was . . . about six months ago. By the time I was ready to get back on the horse, the plague struck.”

Elliot chuckled. “Not exactly the best time to start dating.”

“No,” you said softly laughing, too. “I agree with you, about the whole nice not seeing people thing, though. For me, it’s more about setting my own schedule. I get so much more done without constant interruptions just to chat.”

“Kinda like we are now?”

“Hey! We are waiting on a signal to go to space and come back. It’s only polite to give it some time so it doesn’t feel like it’s being watched—like a watched pot never boils kinda thing.”

Elliot smiled, his eyes meeting yours and lingering as you smiled back.

A new box popped up breaking your eye contact and Elliot went back to work.

“Fixed. You shouldn’t have to worry about the next update. We’ve been reporting this glitch regularly so the developers should have it fixed by then.”

“Thanks, Elliot. I really appreciate it.”

“It’s my job,” he said with a slight shrug.

“Well, enjoy the rest of your afternoon,” you said, wishing you had a reason to stay connected.

“Yeah.” Elliot replied, looking at you again with those hypnotic, grey-blue eyes. If they could impress you through a screen, imagine what they looked like in person. “You too.”

You smiled at each other and when neither of you closed the call, you both laughed, Elliot looking a little shy and you looking a little embarrassed.

“I’ll close it. Don’t forget to fill in your survey so big brother knows I did my job.”

“Five-star service, all the way!”

Elliot chuckled again, and you shivered this time, the sound of his voice working its way through your entire body, filling you with a pleasant warmth.

“Bye,” he said, tucking his bottom lip between his teeth as he ended the meeting.

When the session closed out, you began to think of ways to break your computer so you needed to talk to him again, but before you could pull a purposefully dumbass move like downloading a virus, a sticky note popped up on your desktop.

212 555 0179

Probably breaking work protocol, but text me sometime if you want.

~Elliot, just a Tech

“Oh my god!” you gasped, glancing up at your camera to make sure you really were disconnected, unable to shake that feeling like someone was watching you. You reached for your packet of stickers and placed a fresh one over the camera of your computer—better paranoid than sorry!

“Should I text him now? Is that desperate? Or is it mean to make him wait? Fuck, fuck, fuck,” you said, pacing around your small office space.

“Just a simple hello,” you decided. “First, gotta find my phone.”

After walking through your apartment, you found your phone in the kitchen, unsurprisingly because snacking had become your favorite hobby since the lockdown began. It was a blessing and curse to be able to eat whenever you wanted.

You took your cell back to your computer and smiled again at Elliot’s virtual Post-it note and typed in his number and contact information.

Hi, Elliot ☺️

Hi, Y/N. I hope your emoji means I didn’t creep you out

That’s what this one 😱 is for

Lol. Got it. I don’t really do the emoji thing. They kinda confuse me

Well then! Maybe that’s why we met? You know all the real techy stuff, and I know all the silly techy stuff. I can teach you to emoji like a boss 😎

Sunglasses = boss? Shades? Because bosses are shady?

🤣more like the shades mean you’re just too cool to care. Like a boss attitude. But actually 🤔that’s a really great analysis!

See? Confusing 👽

Confusing as in no one knows what’s really “out there” huh? Wow. I like your way of emojiying (new word, just go with it)

Lol really?

I do!

Can I ask you something?

Sure

Which emoji makes you think of me?

👀🦋💬🧸🧨 😰📱😃

You stared at Elliot’s text, a goofy grin on your face as you tried to puzzle out his emoji story. The eyes, okay, but the rest was sort of a mystery.

Lol! I need to do this in pieces so you can tell me if I’m right or wrong

So, you saw me and thought I was nice? Pretty? Delicate?

Lol pretty

Ok. Thanks, btw. We talked and then, oh boy, this is tough. An exploding bear? Talking to me made you feel like you were going to die? This is not good.

🤣 Poor choice of the firecracker, clearly, but take them as two separate things. What do you associate with a teddy bear?

Um, childhood . . . safety? Protection?

Close! Warm, safe. You seem like a warm, safe person to talk to.

I am grinning like an idiot right now. You are so sweet. But on to the firecracker? Wait! Like sassy? Like I have a firecracker personality?

Yes! You’re funny in a forward, witty way. I guess the “She’s a real firecracker” thing might be a bit outdated.

I LOVE IT. I gotta keep going now. This part is easy, I think. Sooo even though you felt nervous, you took a chance and left me your cell, and now you know it was a good choice because you made me happy.

Almost—when you texted, it made ME happy. Hence 😃 and I have big eyes so I used the big eye happy face.

I.am.dying. That’s the cutest thing anyone has ever done over a text in the history of the world!

Lol. Is there a dramatic emoji because I don’t think anything I’ve ever done is that great.

This WAS great. I’m serious

Do you wanna maybe have dinner over Zoom? God how lame is that?

You respect the quarantine—not lame at all. I’d love to!

They let me unchain myself around 6. I’ll send you a link at 7?

Perfect! But what are we going to order? Shouldn’t we order from the same place to make it more authentic?

Do you like Chinese?

Who doesn’t?

You looked at the location Elliot sent and laughed with the irony that it was your favorite take-out spot.

How did you know that was my favorite take-out spot?

Lucky guess 🤷🏽‍♂️

Well, lucky Elliot who is just a Tech. I’ll “see” you at 7. If we order the same dinner, I’ll consider it a sign that we are meant to take over the world together by eliminating one dumbass’s access to a computer at a time 🦸‍♀️🦸‍♂️

Lol except that would leave me out of a job

We will find you something more meaningful, I promise

Make me a list 😃

You got it! Can’t wait for 7 ☺️

Me either

* * * * *

Tags: @ramimedley @clumsybookworm18 @r-ahh-mi @aboutthatmelancholystorm @alottanothing @sherlollydramoine @txmel @diasimar @hah0106 @flipper-kisses @rami-malek-trash @ramisgirl512 @dancing-disco-deacy @just-a-queen-bee @eightiesriot

Maybe a Part II?

#Elliot Alderson #elliot alderson x reader #female reader (but it is pretty ambiguous)#elliot alderson fanfic #elliot alderson imagine #fluff #for now #Rami Malek character #rami malek fanfiction

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wenttworth · 4 years ago

Text

5 times martin used a pet name and 1 time jon did

The first time was on the train to Scotland, hastily-packed bags at their feet and hands clasped tightly together. Jon was sitting perfectly still, eyes closed and concentrating on their surroundings, Knowing everything that he could. There was nothing suspicious, but it wasn’t like the Beholding didn’t often let him know of danger seconds before it happened. Peter Lukas might be gone, torn apart and cast… somewhere far away, but he had never been the biggest danger. He was even useful, right now. The statement of an Avatar was more nourishing than a normal human. He could push further without risking quite so quick an onset of starvation. Even if he would have risked that and more to keep Martin safe.

Martin was sleeping, a dreamless sleep that Jon hoped would dissipate the vestiges of the fog that still clung to his mind. Even out of the Lonely, he’d still been a little faded, quieter. Like he was trying to fold himself smaller. His eyes weren’t yet back to the shining brown they usually were.

Martin stirred, and Jon rubbed his thumb over his knuckles.

“Jon?” His voice was quiet. Subdued. Everything Martin shouldn’t have to be.

He let go of the Beholding. They were safe. Only Basira knew where they were, and she knew how to keep a secret. For now, they didn’t need to worry. He leant against Martin’s shoulder. “I’m here,” he reassured him.

Martin kissed the top of his head. “You should sleep, love.”

If he’d been standing, Jon was sure he would have fallen over. Love. Love, love, love. He knew that Martin loved him—Knew and knew—but such a casual affirmation. Something present and coming directly from Martin. No vague, cut off sentences or rumours. No past tense, as if he were resigning that feeling to the fog.

What could he say to that? What could he say to the one person who had always trusted and believed in him? Who had loved him so unconditionally?

He raised their entwined hands and pressed a kiss to Martin’s knuckles. Martin’s breath audibly caught in his throat at the gesture, cupping Jon’s cheek with his free hand. Jon’s pulse was pounding in his throat when he tilted up his chin. His eyes were bright, the dull grey finally gone to reveal the warm brown Jon had missed so much over the past few months.

Martin was only a hairbreadth’s away when the elderly lady sat in front of them coughed pointedly.

They pulled away hurriedly, Martin biting his lip against a smile that made Jon’s chest fill with light bubbles.

The only food available at the cabin was instant noodles and canned vegetables, which Martin threw into a pot with a distinct look of disgust as Jon cleaned some plates he found in his hunt through the cupboards. He’d found a map of the area in one of them, and measured the distance to the nearest town—3 km by footpaths. “We probably have time to go to the supermarket today,” he said.

Martin twisted some noodles around his fork and prodded at the very English boiled vegetables. “Let’s do that.”

The sun was setting when they left, Martin easily slipping his hand into Jon’s. It was bracing, the wind through the highlands, the emptiness of their surroundings. London was always so crowded and claustrophobic.

“If it wasn’t for the vertigo I think I’d like the Vast,” he said. Thoughtlessly.

Martin flinched, and Jon squeezed his hand. “Sorry,” he said.

“No, it’s… it’s fine. I just don’t want to think about…” He sighed. “It’s just that we have a chance to leave that behind, maybe.”

Jon held his tongue. He could feel the vague hunger pulling at his mind. Still easy enough to ignore for now, but it would only get worse. He would never be able to leave it behind. Still, if Martin wanted to… leave it. To start over. Jon would be the last person to stop him. Not that he was brave enough to bring it up now. “Okay,” he said, leaning his head against Martin’s shoulder.

“It is beautiful,” Martin said. “I always missed spaces like this in London.”

The supermarket was well-stocked enough with spices and vegetables that Jon was suitably inspired. He wouldn’t be butchering his grandmother’s recipes, at least. Martin made himself… well, useful in getting things from the higher shelves that Jon had no hope in reaching, having to hide a smirk the entire time.

Jon was comparing a couple of bags of chickpeas when he asked: “How is your cooking, Jon?”

Jon blinked. “Fine? Why?”

“Well, you… you set the microwave in the staff room on fire the last time you used it.”

The only time he’d used it. He wrinkled his nose. “I’d never used a microwave before. My grandmother was…” he considered. “Traditional. She didn’t grow up with a microwave so she didn’t see why I would need one. I think my parents had one, though.”

That seemed to satisfy him. “I’ll go get some meat. Did you want any in particular?”

Jon decided on the locally sourced chickpeas, if only to see if chickpeas grown in Scotland were any different. He dropped the bag in the trolley. “Chicken. Lamb if they have any.”

“Okay, sweetheart,” Martin said, dropping a kiss on the top of his head.

Jon dropped the other bag of chickpeas and stared in disbelief as the bag split and the runaway legumes covered the floor. “Oh,” he said.

At least his skin was dark enough that it was difficult to tell when he blushed.

“I’ll go get the meat,” Martin said, obviously holding back a laugh.

Jon made a vague noise of agreement and braced himself when a shop assistant approached.

They’d settled into a sort-of routine within the week. Jon would wake before Martin, press a kiss to his forehead as he grumbled and rolled away, and be halfway through making breakfast by the time Martin joined him. It took him much longer to wake up than Jon, as he wrapped his arms around Jon’s waist and yawned against his hair. He always seemed fascinated with his shoulders, where the tops Jon stole from Martin were falling off them. He never even avoided the scars, kissing them just the same as the scant clear skin.

The kitchen smelled like home, the freshly crushed garlic, the pitta bread in the oven, the cumin, the slightly sour yoghurt. And it was even better with Martin’s arms around him, the warmth and softness pressed against his back.

“Awake?” Jon asked.

“Almost,” he said, before pulling away and rooting through the cupboard for the tea. “Could you fill the kettle, darling?” he continued.

Jon dropped the wooden spoon into the saucepan, making Martin jump with the noise.

“Are you—?”

“Okay! Good. I’m… fine,” Jon said, throwing tahini and garlic into the pot haphazardly. His grandmother would be horrified. It took another couple of seconds of Martin watching him in amusement before he remembered the kettle.

The hunger was starting to hit him harder, and although he did his best to keep it from Martin, it was within a few days that he brought it up.

Jon had climbed onto Martin where he’d been lounging on the sofa, overcome with a fatigue that he knew wouldn’t fade until he found another statement. The TV was playing a documentary, and Jon idly corrected the information until he drifted off with Martin gently stroking his hair.

He barely remembered his dreams, but he didn’t feel any more rested when he woke up.

“I’ll call Basira and ask her to send some statements, okay?” Martin said when Jon shifted.

“Okay,” he mumbled, muffled against Martin’s chest.

“How bad is it now?”

Jon sat up. “Bearable. I can wait another couple of days before I use the one Basira managed to sneak out. Then it will give her time to send more.”

Martin’s hands had settled on his thighs, rubbing gentle circles with his thumbs. “Do you think a blindfold might help?”

“A blindfold?”

“I was thinking about the, uh… quitting method, and maybe it could help? Short-term, obviously.”

It would be vulnerable, definitely. But it was Martin. He could trust no one if he couldn’t trust Martin.

Jon leant down to kiss him, smiling at the surprised hitch in his breath. “Couldn’t hurt,” he answered. “Do you have anything I can use?”

He did, in fact, and before long he’d fetched a length of soft, black fabric. Jon was sat between his legs, and remained perfectly still as Martin gently tied it around his eyes. He was even careful of his hair, smoothing it down so it wouldn’t catch in the knot.

It was… uncomfortable, frankly. Something so foreign and against what his patron was. Everything inside him fought against it for a long moment, which peaked when Martin’s hands left him.

He jolted, fear flooding him. Fear of the unknown, urging him to rip off the blindfold, to make sure that Martin was still with him, that Martin was safe. He couldn’t lose him, not now, not ever. “Martin,” he exclaimed, and Martin immediately took hold of his shoulders. Jon pushed back, clumsily grabbing his wrists to guide his arms around him. “Don’t let go,” he insisted.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Martin repeated, pressing kiss after kiss to every part of exposed skin he could reach. He was squeezing tighter now, almost enough for Jon to be breathless.

The hunger didn’t go away. He could still… Know if he wanted. But without that constant barrage of information that came from humankind’s most important sense, it was easier to focus on something else. Like touch, the way the soft, stretchy fabric felt against his eyes, his hair tickling the exposed skin of his shoulder, and… Martin. Around him, holding him with a strength that took Jon’s breath away, the gentle but desperate way he was kissing his neck, that spot just behind his ear that always had been way too sensitive, his thighs pressed tight around Jon’s hips.

“Breathe, love,” Martin whispered against his shoulder, and Jon obeyed, letting himself sink into Martin’s chest.

He didn’t know what it was, the effect that those little endearments had on him. He’d always assumed he’d had a general hatred for being called anything except his name, still shuddered uncomfortably when he remembered the only time Georgie had called him a pet name. But with Martin, it was somehow different. Maybe it was just how absolutely he trusted Martin. Maybe everything he’d avoided with Georgie would be different with Martin. It was a trust that he’d had to purposefully choose in the beginning, of course, but now was easy as breathing.

“Okay?” Martin asked softly.

“Y-yes,” Jon replied, barely able to remember how mouths worked.

“Better?”

“Easier to focus on something else. So yes. Just… just don’t let go.”

“I won’t,” Martin vowed.

Martin was, as Jon had discovered much too late, far from an idiot.

He was more observant than Jon, for one—Ceaseless Watcher be damned—sharp and quick to pick up on clues that others overlooked, and brilliant at weaving lies that were close enough to truth that they could barely be distinguished.

“So… we had three dogs when I was growing up, I never came out to my mother, the reason I like spiders so much is because they were the subject of the first documentary I ever watched, and I…” He bit his lip against a laugh that threatened to bubble out. “I was suspended from high school for smoking behind the bike sheds.”

Jon snorted. “Well, the last one is the most typically British high school experience, so I’m thinking that’s true.”

Martin grinned.

“You’re not really a dog person, though,” Jon continued.

“Spider person,” Martin joked.

“Oh, don’t,” Jon said with a shudder. “So, is that the lie?”

Martin shook his head. “I never came out to my mother.”

Jon was quiet for a moment, then reached to pull the blindfold away from his eyes. “Why not?” he asked softly.

“I didn’t have to,” he answered. “She, uh… walked in on me and my first boyfriend.”

Jon blinked, before laughing. “Well that must have been a bit awkward.”

Martin’s skin, being a couple of shades lighter than Jon’s, was therefore a lot easier to tell when he was blushing. Especially with how close they were to each other. “She was not… impressed,” he said carefully.

Jon pressed a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“Okay, honey. Your turn.”

Jon had been on his knees to easier reach Martin’s mouth, and when his strength gave way he collapsed awkwardly on his side. Martin patted his cheek. “Do you… would you prefer if I didn’t call you l-like that? You always react quite…” he trailed off and pulled his hand away from Jon’s cheek.

Jon caught it, kissed the knuckles. “I don’t want you to stop,” he admitted. “I just… I’m not used to it. I’ve been… I’ve been alone for a while.”

Martin watched him, picked up one of the curls that were lying haphazardly on the bedsheets. He twisted it around his finger before lying down next to him, easily shifting to accommodate Jon as he settled more comfortably in his arms.

There was hope bubbling in his chest. He’d spent the last couple of weeks trying to quash it, surely something would go disastrously wrong today, or the next day, or the next, but he couldn’t help it. Martin’s easy optimism was rubbing off on him, that simple but powerful wish of happiness.

“We should probably start thinking of getting jobs,” Jon said. He twined their fingers together, tracing the lines on his palms. He paused at Martin’s ring finger but shook off the idea. Too soon.

“I think the library’s hiring,” Martin said. “And the supermarket is probably hiring.” He pulled a face at that but sighed, tucking his face against Jon’s neck.

It was exhilarating to plan something not about the Institute, for once. He hadn’t even tried Knowing anything for days. Maybe the Eye’s hold on him was weakening. Maybe Eli—Jonah had found someone else to torture.

“Let’s try the library first,” Jon said.

Jon sang more, these days.

It was a small thing that Martin had noticed within the first couple of days. When Jon was relaxed, he was always singing something quietly. Everything from classic rock to whatever they were listening to on the radio. He’d sang Lacrimosa in the shower the other day. More than that, he was good. All the control and sweetness of someone who had grown up singing in a choir.

Martin tried to concentrate on the book he’d bought the day previously, but his eye was continuously drawn to the sliver of the kitchen he could see through the open door. Jon was dancing in and out of view as he rummaged around the kitchen. The kettle boiled a couple of times and his voice was louder as he fought with the noise. The smell of cumin and lemon and tahini and garlic spilled from the kitchen, a smell Martin was quickly coming to associate with home. With comfort and love and everything he’d barely let himself dream to hope for.

It wouldn’t last. But it could.

A steaming cup of tea appeared in his peripheral and Jon dropped a kiss on the top of his head. “Here you go, darling,” he said.

He’d finally been the first to wake this morning. Jon was beautiful in the early morning light falling across the bed, wearing another of Martin’s t-shirts that he’d managed to squirrel away. He’d been curled towards Martin as if even in his sleep he was seeking that warmth.

He hadn’t been able to bear pulling away or moving, in case he woke him and shattered the moment.

Martin took the tea on autopilot, and his mouth went dry when he registered Jon’s words. His eyes were welling up with tears. He never could have expected this, from Jon or anyone. Jon was always so gentle with him now. Not walking on eggshells or anything like that. Just… loving. In a way that Martin had never experienced before.

“So, there’s that new café opening up in town,” Jon started. “I thought we…” he trailed off when he saw Martin’s face. “Martin?” he asked.

That was another thing. He’d always loved how Jon had said his name, the way his voice curled around the first syllable. When they’d first met just that was enough to send shivers crawling up his spine. But now when it was said so gently, so affectionately, it was almost unbearable.

Martin gave a short laugh as Jon scrambled to get both their tea safe on the low wooden table and climb into Martin’s lap at the same time, pushing his hair back from his forehead to kiss it. “What’s wrong?” he asked desperately, brushing tears away with his thumb where they were falling over his cheeks. Miraculously none of the tea had spilled.

Martin laughed again, pressing his face into Jon’s thin chest as Jon tightened his grip around him. Like he was afraid Martin would fade away.

It had been tempting even nowadays to fade, to give up on this happiness that he wanted to deserve but couldn’t. There was still a chance it wouldn’t work, but that was life, right? Didn’t mean he couldn’t love with everything he could muster whilst it did last.

“I’m fine, I just didn’t expect it,” he explained.

Jon chuckled, worry still warm in his eyes. God, he was beautiful like this, hair loose and falling over his shoulders, still mussed from where Martin had been clutching it earlier. He pushed his hair aside so he could press a kiss there. He never wore his own clothes around the house, and it satisfied some jealous part of Martin that he didn’t like to acknowledge. Well, he’d never claimed to be perfect.

“And you thought you should stop using pet names,” Jon scolded, still stroking his hair, dotting kisses on his forehead. Generally acting like a fussy mother hen. “Hypocrite,” he continued fondly.

It just felt so good to be held, to have someone who was just as happy to take care of him as Martin was. He hadn’t realised until their first night here, Jon lying on his chest, just how much he craved someone’s touch. It had almost been uncomfortable, the way his skin tingled wherever they touched. Some parts of him had constantly been urging him to back away and put more distance between them, but Jon had looked so exhausted on their journey and in the end he couldn’t bear to wake him. Even now a hateful part in the back of his mind was encouraging him to reject Jon’s caresses. He flinched away sometimes, when Jon caught him off-guard, but it was becoming easier to accept.

“Okay?” Jon asked.

“Yes,” Martin said.

#jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #the magnus archives #tma #I didn't mean to use the 5+1 format it just happened #my writing

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miohmy · 5 years ago

Text

It was only a matter of time.

fandom: haikyuu

characters: kuroo x tsukishima

summary:

“Why did you call me, then?”

“Hah?” Kuroo squinted his eyes, looking at Tsukishima as if he were the dumbest person alive. “Cause I wanted to hear your voice, of course. Keep talking.”

Kuroo falls asleep over FaceTime and Tsukishima’s feelings overwhelm him.

Tsukishima Kei was bad at expressing his emotions.

Or rather - he was not bad so much as he was methodical. He was almost too logical for his own good, approaching matters of the heart with a precise level of skepticism and objectivity. He would never let his emotions control him. Feelings like frustration and anger were fleeting, after all. Given time they would eventually fade, so there was really no need for Tsukishima to work himself up over nothing.

Similarly, when Tsukishima felt an inkling of happiness or hope in his chest, he would never let it consume him, for those feelings were temporary, too. It was better to keep his expectations low. If things ended up taking a turn for the worst, then he could stave off disappointment (and save face).

Tsukishima approached all aspects of his life in this precise manner: school, family, volleyball, friendships, whatever. He never made any decisions without careful consideration. Nor did he allow himself to be carried away on whims or anything resembling irrationally.

Of course, that was before the joint training camp...before he met Kuroo Tetsurou.

Kuroo was different for Tsukishima and he couldn’t figure out why. All sense of rationality immediately flew out the window when it came to rooster-hair. Kuroo provoked a different side of him - one he didn’t even realize was there. At first, Tsukishima assumed the feeling swelling in his chest was annoyance - albeit an very extreme case. Kuroo did love to be a thorn at his side and tease him.

Deep down, however, Tsukishima knew it couldn’t be that simple. Whenever Kuroo ruffled his hair or pinched his cheek or got a little too close during blocking practice, Tsukishima didn’t know how to act. He’d pull away, flustered, cheeks burning red, heat chasing after Kuroo’s touch. The sensation crawling under his skin couldn’t be mere annoyance; it was too strong, too overwhelming.

Even more suffocating were the thoughts. They were constant: an endless barrage, day and night. All he could think about was that sly grin, and the feeling of Kuroo’s hand at his back, correcting his form in a manner that came off far more intimate than intended.

These feelings didn’t die with the training camp, either. Kuroo wouldn’t let them, no matter how hard Tsukishima tried.

Somehow, in the weeks following the camp, Kuroo managed to get a hold of Tsukishima’s phone number. He doesn’t know who gave it out, but he suspected it might have been Hinata. The traitor.

Kuroo would message Tsukishima every day, first thing in the morning, reminding him to eat a full breakfast. He would sometimes even ask for pictures as proof. How are you going to get any stronger if you skip meals?

In between classes, too, he would berate Tsukishima with questions. What’s the weather like there? How’s shrimpy doing? Did you eat lunch? What are you doing right now? Do you miss me?

Why do you keep talking to me? Tsukishima finally sent one day, his words seeming harsher than intended over text. He certainly didn’t mean to come off cold. He simply could not understand why Nekoma’s captain kept messaging him constantly, and over nothing.

Kuroo’s reply was delayed - perhaps he was considering the question himself. Why does he keep talking to Tsukishima?

Later that night, his phone lit up with the answer.

you’re cute thats why :P

Tsukishima stared at his screen. The heat, the blushing, the swelling in his chest - it all came flooding in full force.

He took off his glass and rubbed his eyes, the smallest hint of a smile ghosting his lips.

Tsukishima didn’t know when their daily texts turned into daily calls, or when those calls then became FaceTimes. Kuroo must have suggested it at some point - he’s always the one coming up with ideas - but Tsukishima can’t say for certain. It was all a blur, really.

What he did know, however, was that seeing Kuroo’s sly grin had now become a staple in his nighttime routine. After practice let out, he would walk home with Yamaguchi, greet his parents at the door, eat dinner with his brother, and then head up stairs to take a shower. Once he had dried off and slipped into sweats, he would putter around his room, waiting. Then, at 9 PM on the dot, his phone would ring.

Kuroo Tetsurou wants to FaceTime.

“Yo Tsukki~”

He greeted him the same way every time. And every time, Tsukishima would return the greeting properly, like the respectful kouhai he was.

Kuroo didn’t like all that formal crap; he’d said so on multiple occasions. But no matter what, Tsukishima couldn’t bring himself to be familiar. He still felt flustered around Kuroo, like nothing between them had changed since training camp.

Of course...nothing had changed between them. Whatever the hell they were doing...FaceTiming each other every day and talking until midnight...it was strictly platonic.

That’s what Tsukishima kept telling himself. Strictly platonic.

“How was your day?” Kuroo asked. It wasn’t some poor attempt at small talk, either. He was genuinely interested. He’d listen to Tsukishima talk about school and practice, asking questions and following up on information previously shared.

“How’s your friend’s float serve coming along? What’s his name....”

“Yamaguchi,” Tsukishima answered. He propped his elbow on his desk and rested his chin in his palm, his other hand holding up the phone. “He’s been working a lot with the alumni,” he said, thinking back on practice. “His ball control is getting better.”

Kuroo whistled. “Already? You know, if he manages to get that nailed down by nationals, he might just give Nekoma some trouble.”

“Nationals?" Tsukishima smirked. "That’s a bit presumptuous. We probably won’t even beat Shiratorizawa next week...”

Ah, there is was. Tsukishima’s precise rationality; never letting himself get too hopeful.

“Hey, you don’t know that,” Kuroo cut him off. “Karasuno is strong. Not as strong as Nekoma, maybe...but you’ve got that freak duo. Daichi’s a reliable captain too, and your little libero is pretty competent when it comes to receives. Not to mention, they have you. My little blocking prodigy.”

Tsukishima’s stomach twisted in knots. “Shut up,” he muttered, his words lacking any real bite.

Kuroo yawned. He reclined further back on his bed, switching to his side. It was only then that Tsukishima realized how truly exhausted he appeared. By all means, Kuroo was a fairly energetic guy, especially when compared to the reserved Tsukishima. He was far more outgoing, getting easily wrapped up in Bokuto’s antics and causing mischief just for the fun of it.

But now, his energy was noticeably low, sapped from him. The circles under his eyes were dark, and his voice was beginning to rasp. Tsukishima’s brows furrowed.

“Are you alright? You seem tired.”

Kuroo chuckled at this. “Aw, are you worried about me, four-eyes?”

Tsukishima’s rolled his eyes. “No. I just don’t want to keep you up.”

Kuroo grew suddenly serious. “Don’t hang up. I’m not tired. I’m the one who called you, anyway.”

Tsukishima was unconvinced, raising a skeptical brow.

Kuroo sighed. “Really, four-eyes, when did you become so responsible? I’m only tired because training was brutal today. We lost our practice match against Fukurodani last week and coach made us pay today with extra laps.”

“You lost to Bokuto?” Tsukishima asked, not even bothering to hide the smile playing at this lips.

“Oi, give me a break,” Kuroo moaned, frowning. “I've had a long day and I didn’t call you to be made fun of.”

Tsukishima’s smile faded. He brought his knees up and hugged them to his chest, toes curling over the end of his desk chair. He allowed himself a beat of consideration, before asking, “Why did you call me, then?”

“Hah?” Kuroo squinted his eyes, looking at Tsukishima as if he were the dumbest person alive. “Cause I wanted to hear your voice, of course. Keep talking.”

The knots in Tsukishima’s stomach returned, twisting and flipping and turning inside out. For a second, he really felt like he was going to throw up. “Oh,” was all he could think to say. “Ok.”

And so talk he did, rambling about nothing. He must have gone on for thirty minutes uninterrupted. He can’t even remember what he said - something about an assignment for class he was struggling with. At some point, he was so strapped for interesting topics that he brought up his older brother - someone he rarely ever mentioned nowadays.

“...recently he’s been coming to our matches. He’s still a little awkward about everything, but I think he’s trying to make up for lost time...”

Tsukishima trailed off, distracted by the sound coming from the other side of the screen. Kuroo’s eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm, his breathing heavy and loud.

The bastard was snoring.

“I told you to go to bed, dumbass,” Tsukishima said softly. He wondered how long Kuroo had been out for, chiding himself for not noticing sooner.

His first instinct was to hang up. Kuroo really did seem wiped out from practice. Tsukishima knew if he woke him up now, the stubborn idiot would insist he was fine and try to keep talking. Kuroo was usually the reason their nightly FaceTimes stretched out to midnight. He hated saying goodnight and would come up with any excuse to prolong the conversation.

At the same time, Tsukishima couldn’t bring himself to end the call. His eyes were glued to the screen, drinking up the soft expression before him.

Kuroo was never one to put on airs and pretend to be something he’s not. At least, not in the way Tsukishima was sometimes guilty of. That being said, Kuroo definitely liked to play up certain parts of his personality when the two talked. He was always lighthearted, making unfunny jokes to keep the atmosphere from becoming too serious. That was part of the reason why Tsukishima found him so hard to read. There were very few occasions in which Kuroo’s expression broke from that sly grin.

This just so happen to be one of those rare, golden moments.

Kuroo’s brows knit together while he slept, creasing in the middle as if he were worried about something. His right cheek was buried in his pillow, causing his lower lip to part slightly and create a small puddle of drool by his chin. His hair, which was messy on a good day, had been further rumpled by the pillow, sticking flat to his forehead. And his expression - it was nothing Tsukishima ever seen before - soft and vulnerable, tinted orange from the glow of his bedside lamp.

Staring in quiet awe, Tsukishima realized he wanted to see this side of Kuroo more often. He imagined what it would have been like if they were together in person, talking late into the night until Kuroo inevitably drifted off first. Tsukishima would just lay there beside him, wide awake, soaking up his vulnerable expression until he was content.

Thoughtlessly, he brushed his thumb across the screen, stopping over Kuroo’s parted lips, wondering what they felt like.

Wait.

It only took a second of self-reflection to snap Tsukishima back to reality. He quickly ended the call and placed his phone face down on the desk. He sat there frozen for a second or two, before covering his face with both hands.

What the hell was he just thinking?

Tsukishima was no fool. He may have been a rational thinker, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t reconcile his own emotions, especially when they were presented to him so clearly.

Part of Tsukishima - a deeply buried, unconscious part - had always known this would happen. From the very beginning, Kuroo had been different. Tsukishima fixated on him, imitated him, looked up to him. But more than that, he liked him. He liked him so much that he was willing to put up with his lame jokes and constant teasing. Hell, he would gladly talk for hours each night about nothing, so long as it meant more time together.

It was only a matter of time before Tsukishima dealt with the feelings planted firmly in the pit of his stomach. They had always been there, vining through his body and blooming beneath his skin every time Kuroo’s number lit up his screen.

After what felt like forever, Tsukishima finally pulled his hands away from his face. He leaned back in his desk chair and stared at the blank white ceiling. Strangely, he was smiling.

“I’m so fucked.”

#kurootsukki #kurootsuki #kuroo x tsukishima #kuroo x tsukki #hq #haikyuu #haikyuu!!#fan fiction #my writing #otp: moon and cat #I only have one mode when writing my otps and thats tender #:)))))

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lemonjoonah · 5 years ago

Text

The Shoulder on Which You Cry (M)

Pairings: Jungkook x Reader, Namjoon x Reader, Mention of Yoongi x Reader Word Count: 11K Rating: M Genre: Romance, Drama, Hometown AU, Fluff, Angst Warnings: Drinking, Smut Scenes (Unprotected Sex, Fingering, Slight Amount of Thigh Riding)

Summary: After moving away from your hometown five years ago, you’ve struggled on every return. Each trip back being made out of haste due to an unfortunate event in your life. Namjoon has always been there to help you through those moments. But when he can’t be there to support you during your current trip home, Jungkook offers to stay by your side and be the comfort you need.

A/N: Definitely not the typically genre I write in but I thought I would give it a shot, I would love to hear your feedback! I came up this story after listening to Intro: Persona for the first time (it’s been in my head for a couple months now), using the line, ‘I just wanna give you all the shoulders when you cry,’ as my inspiration.

...

“Fuck,” you mutter repeatedly as you grip the narrow armrest next to you. The women sitting beside you throws you a disgruntled look, prompting you to whisper an apology as turbulence continues to rattle the plane.

Flying is by no means your favourite pastime. You knew that it would become an issue when you moved away. You’re almost thankful that your career goals have kept you chained to your desk instead of enduring this torture on a more frequent basis. Now your trips home have become few and far between, returning only when it was absolutely necessary.

This place was once filled with such good memories holidays, birthdays, graduations. But now in the past five years it seems like you’ve only returned for unfortunate circumstances events like, the divorce of your parents, your father’s car accident, or the death of your grandmother. Leaving your hometown to become a grim retreat. You’ve come to fear this town and all that it represents, but there’s always been one bright spot in the form of Kim Namjoon.

...

You slowly shove the last box of your father’s into the back of the truck. That’s it, there’s nothing left between them, what’s his is his and what’s hers is hers. When you first heard the news you wondered what could have gone wrong, why did it have to escalate to this? If you had been home could you have seen the warning signs? Could you have urged them to seek help and work things out?

Your father claps you on the back thanking you for your help before starting the engine and driving off. Leaving you alone in the driveway. Your mother had gone to stay with her sister while your father removed his belongings. You have no desire to reenter the empty house just yet, the emotions of the day are still too raw. At least in the yard with the warm breeze on your face and the cicadas buzzing your world feels a little more full. After the physical and mental toll of the move you take a rest in the shade of a tree, closing your eyes for just a moment.

“You know most people find somewhere comfortable to nap. A bed, a chair, but no you prefer the ground outside.” Namjoon hovers over you with his soothing tone.

“Most people didn’t spend the day lifting heavy boxes,” You groan back at him. “Who called you to say I was here?”

“Your mother.”

“Of course she did...” It’s no secret, she’s had always tried to push you and Namjoon into a deeper relationship than your current friendship. She thought he would convince you to stay, that he might keep you here when you had made a new life elsewhere. Even now she hopes he will bring you back, and at times like this you worry that she might be right.

Namjoon sits down next to you on the grass, pulling the blades of greenery between his fingers. “Was that everything?”

“Yep, he is officially moved out.” You struggle to keep your tone even.

“And how are you doing with all of this?” He asks cautiously as if the question might inflict even greater pain.

“Fine.” You mutter looking down at the ground

“Liar,” Namjoon scoffs back.

“What? It’s not like I’m the one getting divorced, why should it matter?” You retort your tone falling to a whisper as you reach the end of your rational.

“Because this affects you too. You’re allowed to be upset.”

“Not as much as it affects them.” You remain focused on the ground trying to fight the emotions he brings to the surface.

Namjoon lifts your chin to focus his sights on you and your reaction, “Really? You should tell that to the tears in your eyes.” He shifts closer to you under the tree letting your head rest on his shoulder and your tears fall upon his shirt.

...

Namjoon has always been there for you as a friend since you were young. Living just across the street for most of your life, helping you whether your problem be a skinned knee or a difficult test. Even as your feelings for your town grown dim, he refuses to give in, he is that one light which refuses to fade.

When your father had been hurt car wreck, Namjoon was by your side from the second your flight had landed. He stayed at the hospital with you until visiting hours were over and then proceeded to make sure you got home safe. There were tears then too when you realized there was nothing you could do. But Namjoon didn’t shy away, he came in and held you close.

You’ve lost count of how many shirts of his you’ve ruined with mascara. You haven’t been back for two years since your last trip, your grandmother's funeral. He had been the one to take you in then, with all of your family at your house there was little place for you to stay, so Namjoon graciously offered up his spare room.

...

After the funeral you both take a seat on the sofa, the light of the day slowly fading outside. His house is beautiful and comfortable but it’s so large just for him, despite the warmth of the wooden furnishings it feels somewhat cold and empty. However for him this home is a step in the direction of the dream that he’s always told you of, the hope that one day he would have a family. One that he could grow with in this town that he loves.

His arm crosses around your shoulders as a movie plays on the screen in front of you. You tuck into his chest and close your eyes when the strain becomes too much.

His fingers comb through your hair with a soothing touch pulling the strands from you face. Its when his lips touch the top of you head you open your eyes to look up at him.

“Namjoon?”

He looks down at you with a conflicted expression before closing the gap between you. His lips take yours in a desperate fashion. Your mind starts to swim with the possibilities of what could be. The clothes discarded on the floor of his bedroom. Your back pushed into the mattress as Namjoon hovers over you. His eyes meeting yours as he presses himself between your legs.

You gasp at the thought encouraging him to pull you closer, his hands coming to rest on your cheek and lower back locking you in place on top of him. You can’t deny your feelings for him, those have always been very apparent and without question. The problem rests with the cost of staying together. The life you’ve created far away, the one you’ve worked so hard to build, it would all be gone. The thought of staying in this town has never held joy for you, and it’s only gotten worse as you’ve parted. As much as you want to stay with Namjoon, you can’t remain here.

You push away from him. Trying to find a way to explain yourself, when Namjoon opens the discussion for you. “Ask me to go back with you.”

“W-what?” Your breath catches from the shock of his offer.

“Ask me to be with you and I will. I’ll leave this life behind and follow you.”

The selfish side of you is so overwhelmed, so eager to accept his proposal. Screaming at you to say the words he’s requesting of you. But you can’t do it, not with the man who’s always been so supportive of you.

“You’d never ask me to stay, please don’t expect me to ask that of you. It wouldn’t be right Namjoon, you wouldn’t be happy there, just like I wouldn’t be happy here.”

“Do you love me?” His crestfallen face begs the question of you, as if asking for a reason to discard his dream.

The simple ‘yes’ rests on the tip of your tongue but you refuse to let it out. “You have to stay,” Your voice cracks but you hold firm, knowing you would never forgive yourself if you took this dream away from him. You know he’ll find someone who wants this life as much as he does.

...

As the airport comes into view below, you begin to dread the landing, and the arrival home. You’ll cry on this trip too there’s no doubt about it, but this time Namjoon won’t be able to offer his shoulder in comfort.

The customs agent leads with the question you dread most on every return. “What’s the reason for your visit?”

Your throat immediately tightens at the thought, you swallow before spitting out the words, “A wedding...”

Namjoon’s wedding... he called you a month ago to issue the invitation. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, he had already bought your plane ticket and was sending you the information. He confessed that he had a favour to ask of you when he sees you, but you didn’t care at the time the majority of what he said didn’t register with you after the words ‘I’m getting married’.

You knew he was dating someone but he didn’t go into details. That part of his life is rarely shared with you since the exchange after your grandmother's funeral. You should have been prepared for this, it’s what you wanted for him, you know that you did the right thing, but it still hurts so much.

After a short taxi ride you check into the same hotel where the wedding is to take place. Choosing to stay alone rather than reside at your mother’s, where you would be barraged with her constant comments on how it should have been you standing beside him all dressed in white.

...

It’s a large affair, the ceremony and reception rolled into one event, and you are seated at a round table with many of Namjoon’s friends. You recognize several faces from long ago but much to your embarrassment you’ve forgotten many of their names. You sneak a glance at your neighbours place card before greeting them. In anticipation you do the same for the empty seat beside you, reading ‘Jungkook’... yours and Namjoon’s neighbour from when you were kids and one of your oldest friends.

You smile as you recall the scrawny doe eyed child who used to follow Namjoon everywhere like a fawn following a parent. Even though there’s only a few years between them, Jungkook still looked up to his elder with great admiration and in return Namjoon always cared for him like a younger sibling. You remember how you were both eager for Namjoon’s attention as kids. As you grew your dynamic didn’t change much, even when you and Namjoon briefly dated in high school he was a constant third wheel.

You haven’t seen or spoken to him in years, not since you moved away. You tried to keep in contact but it would seem that distance and time had gotten in the way. It’s a shock when a sturdy man, with wavy hair, takes the seat next to you. “Noona, it’s been a while!”

You choke on your water. Finding it difficult to see the boy you used to know in the man sitting next to you. “Jungkook?”

He smiles and you relax, it’s definitely him, you would recognize his bowing smile anywhere. But finding it attached to such a built figure is unexpected and slightly intimidating.

“It’s good to see you,” you return the smile. “How have you been?”

“Good, can’t complain business is going well. How about you, how’s life abroad?”

“Busy, I’m just lucky I was able to make it make it back for this.”

As the ceremony starts the chatter dwindles. Namjoon looks dashing in a three-piece suit and his bride statuesque in white. There’s a brief moment of tears from her which Namjoon promptly wipes away as he had done for you so many times. You’re stunned when you see her reaching to his face, knowing full well that Namjoon would rather bury his than put them out on display, but there they are rolling down his cheeks.

“That’s the first time I’ve seen him cry...” You whisper as you watch the couple. All those years he had been the one to give you strength when needed and yet he’s never shown his own weakness. They might be tears of happiness today, but they are still hers to wipe away. She’ll be there for him in ways you never could, she’ll be his strength.

Out of the corner of your eye you see Jungkook glance over to take in your comment, but he doesn’t press you for any further explanation.

You sit in silence for the rest of the ceremony and throughout the dinner. A mixture of happiness and longing as you watch the new couple take their seats. Friends step up to the microphone telling stories of how they met and moments that you had missed. Wrenching further emotional reactions from you as the speakers recount the love between the newlywed pair.

As the cake is served the table begins to empty and disperse giving you the freedom to leave your seat without rudeness. Jungkook had already slipped away several minutes before when a few of the bridesmaids began to hang around the table.

The door to the garden is open prompting you to grab your glass of champagne and steal a moment of fresh air.

Passing the rows of fairy lights you spot in the far corner a table between the hedges, hidden away from the others, with only one other occupant, the missing Jungkook.

“Can I sit here?” You ask nodding to the seat next to him.

He looks up from his phone with his wide eyes and nods. He shifts in his seat sitting up straighter before looking back down at his phone.

You glance over to see him on twitch watching an Overwatch match. Your happy to see that he hasn’t changed entirely over the years apart.

The door to the event room opens to a gaggle of young women. Jungkook’s head jerks up as they call out his name, but not out of acknowledgement, judging from his expression it’s more so a panic of being found.

You snicker into your glass as you watch him slink back down in his seat hiding from his admirers. He gives you a pleading look as to not reveal his location. You nod and smile back to him, his fear breaks into relief. Once they retreat back inside you begin to pester him regarding his suitors. “Still afraid of girls Jungkook? That’s quite the following you have there.”

“I’m not afraid of girls! They want to drag me back in there, you know I don’t like crowds.”

“Nice try you were totally afraid of me growing up. You were worried that I would steal Namjoon away from you.”

“I wasn’t afraid of you...” He nurses what’s left of his beer in sadness, probably realizing he’ll have to go in if he wants to get more.

You get up from your seat and extend a hand for his glass to take it in. “Another drink?”

His eyes brighten and a grin returns to his face, “Please...th-thank you Noona.”

You chuckle as he continues to call you with such familiarity, despite having been apart for so long.

“Is it okay... that I still you that?”

“Yeah, I’ll be right back.”

...

You hand him a full glass and take your seat once again under the dim glow of the lights.

“So what do you do now?”

“I have a repair shop,” Jungkook mutters quietly.

“Really? How did you get into that?” Hearing that Jungkook actually owns his own business comes a surprise.

“Opened it together with a friend of mine. I never thought it would get as big as it has though...”

“That’s great if it is, I’m sure you’re parents must be proud,” You smile back at him confidently.

“They are...” Eyes look down to the ground. “I think they’re holding out for something like this though.” He tilts his head in the direction of the ballroom.

“I know what you mean.” You scoff as you take a sip of your champagne.

He starts to ask about you own life, but with the sound of the door you pause your answer to warn him, “Looks like your club is going to be making another round for you.” You watch as he winces at the inevitable, “Why don’t you just go home? Everything seems to be winding down.”

“My ride is in there, dancing the night away I’m sure.”

“I have a room,” You blurt out much to your own surprise, slightly bewildered by your own offer. Maybe it’s because you don’t want to be alone, or maybe you took pity on the shy man next to you, but you stick with it despite your own confusion. “I have my computer to stream, full mini bar...” You laugh in spite of yourself, what you definitely did not expect is for him to take you up so adamantly.

“Yes! Get me out of here please.”

While Jungkook practically dashes in and through the ballroom for the exit, you pause to take one last look at the glowing couple surrounded by their family. Namjoon had given you so much throughout the years the least you could do for him in this moment was be happy for him. You lock eyes and give him a bright smile not wishing to intrude on this moment of his before slipping quietly out the door.

Jungkook waits for you in front of the elevator. Finally seeing him in the full light of the lobby is a staggering sight, the suit neatly trimmed against his built form, you find the fabric taut against his chest and thighs. His lips pull back giving you a view of his clenched teeth as he stares around clearly hoping not to be spotted.

“Are you sure there’s nothing else wrong? You honestly look like you’re avoiding more than just a group of giggling girls.”

Jungkook nods, “You haven’t meet Hoseok or Jimin, if they find me no doubt they’ll physically drag me out. Which is why I want this damn elevator to hurry up!” He pushes the already lit elevator button several times for good measure.

The second that the door cracks open he grabs your arm and pulls you in with him. A loud sigh breaks from him as they close.

You give him a smile in sympathy remembering how he used to cling to you or Namjoon in social situations like this.

You unlock the room, and head in grabbing the ice bucket before stepping out again. “Go ahead make yourself comfortable I’ll be back in a second.”

His level of comfortable is far more relaxed than you had anticipated. Your old friend had no problem stripping down to his undershirt and pants, while making himself at home on your bed.

You avert your eyes when you reenter and open the mini fridge finding several small bottles of liquor.

You hand him a strong drink over ice laughing at how he cringes with the first sip. “You don’t have to drink if you don’t want to.”

“No it’s okay it just takes me a bit to get used to it.”

“It’s funny to think, but last time I saw you you weren’t even drinking age... I can’t believe it’s been five years.”

“Do you miss it here?” He asks with a slight worry, looking into his glass, “After being gone so long do you find yourself wanting to come back?”

“No, not really, not anymore. Don’t get me wrong I still miss people but with each trip home I feel more and more like I’m a stranger to this place. There used to be some comfort here for me, but it’s a bit more complicated now...” You can’t help but be saddened by the thought.

“Namjoon hyung, you and he-”

You look to Jungkook with a slight dampness in your eyes willing it to stay in place and not let it cascade down your cheeks. He notices your grief and switches to a more pressing question.

“Noona... do you still have feelings for him?”

You give a slow pained nod, “Please don’t say anything, and don’t tell him that I was upset. It’s foolish really, it never would have worked between us. His life is here, it’s what he’s always wanted, but I wanted to leave, I had other goals.”

He nods in understanding, “How bad is it?”

“Pretty bad, definitely more than one should care for a married man...” You hate every word of your confession. You chose this and yet here you are grieving. A tear falls and you are sick of it, you’re sick of crying over things you can’t change. “Fuck I’m sorry.”

Jungkook’s hand comes to rest on your knee, rubbing circles with his thumb, and lingering far longer than you expected him too. “No it’s okay, I’m surprised you came if you still feel this way.”

“Namjoon was very insistent. I think he thought he was being kind. I figured it would be best to support him.” You hesitate before asking the next question, “Do you know her well? Will she... is she a good fit for him?”

“I do, and I think so. They seem very happy when they’re together.” He pauses and looks to you, “I was surprised when he let you go though, I thought he really cared for you too.”

“No I told him to stay. I could never ask him to come with me.”

“Then he should have gone off his own accord,” Jungkook reasons.

“That’s sweet of you to say,” you chuckle lightly, “but our dreams were both bigger than each other. It was time to let go.”

“But you haven’t let go yet.”

“No... I haven’t.”

“And why is that?” He prods.

“He’s been one of the few people I really connect with, someone who enjoys being with me even when I'm an emotional wreck. I’m doubtful that I’ll find that again...” You give the easier answer failing to mention the fear that’s been holding you back. The fear of finding someone, of falling too deep and the pain that follows when it inevitably comes time to part. You worry that if you let go of Namjoon someone else will fill that void and the cycle would repeat.

You’ve had one night stands and hookups, but nothing beyond that. The longest connection you’ve had with someone is with a man by the name of Yoongi, but that’s purely for physical relief. He’s very upfront about a no strings attached arrangement, and it works for your purposes too.

“You’ll find someone,” Jungkook states confidently.

“And how do you know that?”

“Why do you think I’m here?”

“To avoid your fan base...” You can’t help but snort at him.

But he only rolls his eyes. “Because I’ve enjoyed your company tonight.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Yes it is Noona! I haven’t seen you in years and yet you still feel comfortable to be around. Do you see me running away from you?”

Jungkook’s hand trails up your leg as if to make a point. “Just because it didn’t work out with Namjoon doesn’t mean you can’t find someone else. It doesn’t mean you can’t be happy.”

You’re enjoying his company far too much. The warmth of his fingers on your skin. You should never have invited him up here. He is far too tempting and dangerous of a rebound. “You should go, I’m sure there all finished by now.”

“Why? Because you’d rather wallow away in your pain alone? Stop punishing yourself, you came here to be supportive, you did nothing wrong. You’re allowed to be upset.” Hearing Jungkook speak the words that Namjoon had said before hits you hard, leaving you defenceless as he continues, “What if I want to stay? Are you going to push me away? I didn’t just come up here to hide out Noona. I wanted to make sure that you were okay, you’re awful at hiding your grief and I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to make you feel better.”

He moves in closer placing a hand on your upper chest and softly pushes you down pinning you beneath him. “Look me in the eye and tell me you want me to leave. Tell me you’d be happier if I left you alone tonight.”

How can someone who seems so innocent be so commanding. His legs are strong on either side of your thighs. One hand now holds him off the mattress while the other tilts your chin. His eyes search yours looking for the honest answer. “Tell me what you want.”

“Please stay...” You whisper, ashamed by your need.

He obliges locking your arms behind his neck and lifting you off the bed pulling the sheets back before climbing under the blankets with you. Joining him under the covers adds an unexpected level of intimacy for such a sudden affair. The warm weight of his body presses you down into the mattress as he nuzzles your neck.

“Jungkook...”

“Yes Noona?” He asks in a soft voice.

“Would you... would you kiss me?” He pulls his head up to meet your eyes again and you begin to worry about what you had just requested, “don’t feel like you-”

Before you can finish your panicked thought his lips come down onto yours. His mouth moving with yours as his had palms your cheek. The faint taste of his beer and liquor eases into your mouth along with his tongue.

Your chest pushes back against his as you attempt to draw in deep breaths.

“What else do you want?” He mutters against you.

You fiddle to undo the zipper embedded the side of your dress desperate to feel his warm skin against yours. His fingers join in the attempt to pull it down lifting himself off you so the fabric can be pushed down your frame, with his fingers making sure to trail along the exposed skin as he does so.

He holds the seam of his own shirt and looks to you as if asking if it would be okay. You promptly nod, you had felt the definition muscles as he pressed against you but seeing them is a wonderful sight to behold.

He flips you over to your stomach, your face presses into the pillow, your lipstick no doubt staining the case.

With the clink of his belt behind you find yourself squirming between his thighs, excited by the thought of one less layer between you. While he takes off his pants you reach back to unlatch your bra sliding it off and free from beneath you.

He returns to his lowered position on top of you. His chest resting against your back is so warm, the weight extremely comforting. He kisses the top of your shoulder before moving back towards your neck. You feel almost smothered beneath him with the blanket trapping in the heat.

One of his hands caresses the length of your arm while the other wedges itself between your stomach and the bed. His cock pressed against the seat of your ass ready and willing but Jungkook places his attention elsewhere. He pushes your underwear to the side finding the sensitive nub and devoting a rhythm of shallow circles to the nerves.

He whispers in your ear “Do you just want me to hold you like this, or do you want more?”

You nod for more, your hand reaching back to feel for his shaft beneath the cotton of his underwear.

He moves to pull the concealed erection from the fabric of his boxers. Giving it a quick stroke before lining himself up with your entrance, pushing between your dampened folds with the head of his cock. You return grip the pillow as he plunges inside. A swear drops from his mouth along with a groan.

Your head arches back while a hand comes to grip the apex of your neck, with a commanding grip. Though he takes you from behind you’ve never felt anything so close, so intimate. The full rhythm of his thrust has you aching for more after a few minutes, causing your hips start to buck back into his crotch. “Noona if you keep doing that I’m not going to last.”

You moan as his fingers pick up speed in retaliation. You can feel yourself tighten around him as he draws you closer. There’s a pleading whine in your ear as Jungkook begs you to come for him. His fingers grip tighter on your throat making your head swim as you reach the peak and begin to quake from the tremor that surges through you.

You’re not sure how long he laid on top afterwards, or when he moved to his back tugging you into the nook of his arm. So lost in a daze you don’t care. It just feels good for once to fall asleep in someone else's arms, and to see him still there by the time morning comes around.

...

You slowly dress yourself as he smiles up to you from the bed. “How long before you go back?”

“A few days.” You explain, “I thought I would take some extra time to visit my family.”

“Give me your phone.” He holds out his large hand waiting.

You humour him knowing that even if he puts his number in you should probably keep your distance. You don’t want to give him any mixed signals that you might be looking for more.

...

The second you step into your mother’s house there’s a barrage of questions about the wedding. Who was there? How lavish was it? Did the couple look happy?

“I give it two years tops.” Your mother adds, “He’ll be single again before you know it.”

“Mom?! I’m not having this discussion. Namjoon is happy, he’s made his choice.”

“Sweetheart I’m just thinking about you,” She softens her tone but you still find it difficult to swallow.

Giving up on any civil conversation after an hour, you exit the house to take refuge in the garden. Seeing Namjoon’s childhood house across the street, and the tree in your own yard under which you both sat, is almost as painful as the topic you mother refuses drop.

Looking for a distraction you busy yourself with the weeds that have taken hold of the flower beds. The sun beats down burning the back of your neck as you yank the dandelions from the dusty ground. Your frustration grows over the realization that the only questions she’s asked have been about your love life, with not one thought to what you are doing with your career or if you’re happy where you are. No her focus lies primarily on you obtaining the golden band that has the potential to drag you home. And now the weeds of the garden are paying for it dearly as you take your aggression on them, not giving in until the sun is significantly lower in the sky.

“Jeez what did they do to you?” The joking voice of Jungkook asks behind you will looking to the wilting pile of greenery.

“I kept picking them hoping that one of them could answer my wish, but unfortunately I’m still here.”

“But you’re missing one important step.” He picks up one of the discarded dandelion heads, closes his eyes and blows away the seeds.

The innocent sight brings a smile to your face, “Your right, how could I have forgotten?”

“That’s okay you don’t need to wish on a weed when I can easily grant that for you. Let me take you out for the night.”

“You don’t want to hang out with me right now I’m a mess.”

“Then at least let me give you a ride back to the hotel. I’m heading in that direction anyway, I just came by to see my parents but I’m heading off now.”

You consider his offer, if you left alone your mother would never let you hear the end of it. But if you left with Jungkook... you could possibly kill two birds with one stone and have some form of peace for the rest of your visit.

“Okay, but I’m going to need you to follow my lead for a minute. Don’t say anything, just smile and nod if you have to.”

You step into back into the kitchen for a moment calling out to your mother. “Mom I’m going to head out, I have a date with Jungkook.”

There’s a brief silence and then a flurried rush of steps from the other house before your mother pokes her head out with a surprised grin. “What?! Why didn’t you tell me?” With his parents still living across the street your sure she’s overjoyed by the thought.

Jungkook takes the act very well waving to your mother, “Hi Ms.-”

You push him out the door before he can finish his greeting knowing she’ll want him to stay for her game of 20 questions. “I’ll be by again tomorrow,” You call out to her, before turning back to Jungkook and mouthing a thank you.

He smiles back to you taking his role very seriously he grabs hold of your hand and leads you to his car where he opens the door. If your mom was watching out the window, you’re sure that this would convince her.

You take a deep breath as you get into the car, throwing Jungkook a smug look, “I owe you one.”

“Don’t mention it. This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to forge a relationship”

“Why would the boy with a fan club need a fake girlfriend?” You ask, your curiosity getting the better of you.

“For the same reason you would.”

“Oh, so your mom wanted you to marry Namjoon too?” You chuckle at him unable to contain yourself.

Jungkook bursts into a fit of laughter clutching the wheel. “Not exactly, just family pressures. And me finding it difficult to... commit I guess would be the best way to put it.”

“Lucky for you I won’t be here in a couple days, so that won’t be an issue.” You breathe a sigh of relief, if he has difficulty committing spending time with him shouldn’t become an issue later on.

“Yeah... lucky I guess.”

He parks the car in front of the hotel and thank him for the ride. But you look over in confusion as he gets out too.

“Why-”

“You told your mom we’re going for a date.”

“Yeah but not actually.”

“Oh...” His expression falls looking dejected.

Fuck... why does he have to look like a kicked puppy when he’s sad, it’s not fair. You give a small huff, it would be easier to maintain the lie if you stuck around with him. “Fine, I need a shower first though.”

His face lights up and he follows you back up to your room taking up residence on the bed to wait for you.

You throw your phone and purse down on the desk and before slipping into the bathroom, sliding out of your clothes and stepping into the stream of water behind the glass door.

A few minutes later, Jungkook pokes his head through the door you left cracked to help vent the steam. “Noona your phone’s ringing.” He holds it out to see if you want to take it.

“Who is it?”

“Uhh... it’s Namjoon.”

Your stomach drops, “Let it go to voicemail... I’ll call him back later.” The thought of talking to him now, the day after his wedding, is unbearably painful. You stand still in the shower watching the water flow down the drain as you contemplate why he called. Maybe he just wanted to say hi, or to thank you for coming, as you didn’t get a chance to speak to him yesterday.

Jungkook calls out to you again possibly noticing your stillness behind the fogged glass, “I have somewhere in mind to take you if you still want to go out. I just have to stop by my shop first. Taehyung, my business partner, just sent me a message, he can’t remember if he turned the alarm on when he left the shop today and asked if I was nearby.”

You force a smile back at him, “Yeah, I’ll be out in a second.”

...

Jungkook suggests to walking to his shop since the final destination of the night is a favourite bar owned by a friend of his.

“It’s just right here,” He points to a small building just across the street, taking your hand before dashing across the road.

You smile at the small sign out front, ‘Nostalgia: Restoration and Repair’. “Cute name.”

Jungkook gives an embarrassed laugh, “Taehyung came up with it. It just seemed really fitting.” He unlocks the doors with a large ring of keys, and then looks back to you “Do you want to take a peek before I set the alarm?”

You nod curious of what you might find inside. It’s not really a store but more of a work space with painting backdrops, vent hoods, and a workbench littered with wires and soldering tools. Behind the bench are several outdated electronics old gaming systems and PCs, things that people wouldn’t normally use nowadays except for... well... out of nostalgia. “When you said a repair shop this was not what I expected. ”

“Yeah it’s a little different, we deal with things that you can’t buy anymore, items that hold sentimental value. Some people want them just repaired in working condition, while others hope to get them looking like new again.”

You pick up a brick-like gameboy from one of the tables, your fingers brush over the paint worn keys. Hundreds if not thousands of hours would have gone into this device to bring it to this state, it must have been well loved in it’s day.

“It’s not much,” he states nervously looking around the space, “We specialize in mostly electronics, but I’m hoping to branch out in some other areas too, things like metalwork and woodwork. I still have a lot to learn.”

You’ve seen places like that your own city, those which refurbish antique wagons and linen chests, but this is something new and different. This catered to a whole new generation. “It’s brilliant, it really is.”

Jungkook blushes with pride as he scratches the back of his head. “Thanks Noona, I’m glad you like it.”

...

The bar is only two streets over from his shop. The owner looks relieved as he spots Jungkook come in the door. “Thank god, I was going to call you and see if you still planned on coming tonight. Some drunken idiot knocked into our jukebox and it stopped dropping records.”

“Ah Jin I told you, you shouldn’t be using it as your main system unless you go completely electric with it.” Jungkook scoffs.

“I know but do you think you could take a look at it for me.” The barman spots you behind him, “Sorry I can see you’re with someone, but drinks on the house for you and your date if you can fix it.”

“Deal! I’m going to hold you to it.” Jungkook acts like he’s won big with this agreement.

Jin’s tone verges on exasperation, “Just fix it please.”

“Yeah, yeah, do you have a tool box?”

You take a booth right beside the broken music machine, kneeling on the cushion with your chest pressed to the back of the bench so you can watch as he works. Jungkook pulls away the backing of the player to take a look inside, muttering to himself while he looks over the interior.

“Electrics look fine nothing seems to have disconnected...” He works his way up the machine leaving no spot untouched. “Ah, here it is...”

“Did you find what’s wrong?”

“Yeah,” he reaches into the mechanical portion and tugs on a lever which falls back into place once he lets go. “Looks like the spring for the release dislodged itself... it should be around here... found it...” His nimble fingers latch it back into place. “That should do it.” He reattaches the back and selects a track with success. He glances over to Jin at the bar with a wide smile, who matches it although looks slightly nervous. “Right, I need to go wash up really quick,” He looks down at his hands covered in black grease, “What do you want to drink?”

“A beer sounds good.”

“That’s it, you sure? Jin’s buying, so no need to hold back.” Jungkook gives a wicked grin.

“Yeah I’m sure.”

He returns a few minutes later with your beer while he holds a whiskey for himself. His hands are raw from scrubbing and there’s still a hint of the black grease here and there. He drinks deeply from the cup clearly not caring for the taste but continuing with it nevertheless. You take a couple long drafts of your own drink but know it’s a futile endeavour to try and keep up.

“I’m surprised you went for something so strong considering you had a hard time with the liquor last night.”

“Honestly I can’t stand the stuff,” He laughs. “but it’s the most expensive drink he has and I’m not one to waste an opportunity.” Jungkook looks back with crooked smile to Jin who is found shaking his head. “My skills don’t come cheap.”

“I can see that, I’m almost afraid to ask for your professional opinion on a personal matter, I don’t think I can afford your answer.” You peel at the label of your bottle somewhat nervous, but still hoping to discuss something that’s been bothering you for a while now.

“I have been bought with flattery on occasion... just don’t tell Jin.” Jungkook raises a finger to his lips as he lets out a small snicker.

“May I ask you a question then oh talented one?” You can’t help but laugh as you stroke his ego.

“You may,” Jungkook’s voice sounds confident but you notice a slight blush to his face as he laughs along with you.

“How would you fix nostalgia for a whole town? Say someone only gets to return during the worst periods of their life and the whole view of their former home shifts? How can you save it and bring it back to what it was before.”

Jungkook pauses, the laughter vanishes from his expression as he takes in your question. “That’s a tall order. I don't think you can for something that big. I don’t go around fixing entire blocks, I work with the smaller items. You have to find those things that you still love about this place and hold them tight, bringing them with you when you go.”

You really wish that you hadn’t asked now, for the first thing that pops into your mind is of course Namjoon. “What if you’ve already let it go...”

“Your whole past isn’t linked to just one singularity, you’ll find something else. You don’t always know what you were missing until you find it again. The items that people bring to me have often been hidden away for years in a dark closet or dusty box. All it takes is a little attention to bring them back to their former glory... sometimes they become even better than before...” He stops again looking hesitant to continue but pushes through with his final words. “Namjoon hyung isn’t your only tie Noona... there are other things you can hold on to.”

There’s silence between you as Jungkook brings up his name, you resent how easily he’s able to guess that it was Namjoon in your thoughts.

“I’ll go get another round,” He offers giving you some space.

You excuse yourself to the washroom for a moment while Jungkook fetches the drinks. Checking your eyes in the mirror for any sight of streak to your mascara before returning.

He’s still waiting at the bar when you come back, so you proceed to the empty booth. There’s a loud cat call from one of the tables you pass. You look away trying to ignore who ever thought that would catch your attention. That is until he calls you out as a, “cold bitch.”

Jungkook must have heard the insult because seconds later he’s pulling the man forcefully out from the seat.

You immediately intercede, not wanting for Jungkook to get in trouble on your behalf. “Jungkook, put him down.” He continues to hold the man, and pushes him against the wall with a look of fury.

“Apologise,” Jungkook demands of the drunkard.

“Jungkook it’s not worth it.” You try to calm him down, but to no avail. Resorting to a more forceful method you grab the arc of his ear. A yelp of pain echoes through him but he releases the man. “We’re leaving.”

“Ow Noona!”

You let go once you reach the front step of the bar grabbing his hand this time to drag him back to the hotel. His other hand reaches up to rub his ear.

“What the hell do you think you were doing?” You question him.

“He insulted you!”

“That doesn’t mean you have to throw him against the wall... fuck Jungkook. I told you it wasn’t worth it, a provoked apology means nothing. What if he retaliated and injured you? What then?”

There’s only silence as Jungkook reflects on his actions.

“Do you usually pull shit like this?”

“No...” He mutters in defeat.

“Then why would you try and start a fight?”

Jungkook doesn’t answer instead looking down at his feet as you both walk back.

You anger breaks to empathy at the sight of his sad submission, and you give him a small smile. “It was nice to see how fast he shut up though,” you glance over at Jungkook who lifts his head and grins back at you. “Usually I would just end up leaving the bar if something like that happened.”

Your half way back to your hotel when Jungkook begins to speak again, “Do you ever get scared or lonely in your city?”

“Sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that I was never scared or lonely here. It’s kinda hard to compare the two on that level thought... there just... different. Personally I prefer the city.” You look up to the night sky, “I do miss things like this though. Do you remember when Namjoon tried to teach us the constellations?”

“And you kept making up your own to impress him?” Jungkook guffaws back.

“If I recall you got jealous when he said my koala constellation was adorable.”

“Because it was, and I didn't get to tell you first...” Jungkook confesses his blush even more prominent this time. “You see, you do have something good to remember. It’s memories like that which you need to focus on.”

“I don’t think it’ll be enough though... the lights of the city often hide the stars, so I can’t hold them as close as I’d like.”

“It’s a good thing then that they aren’t the only part of that memory.” Jungkook takes your arms and wraps them around him before stealing a kiss. “You can hold me close Noona.”

You can’t help but be confused for the lack of communication between you two if he felt this strongly about your past together, “Jungkook... I wasn't the one who let go, when I moved away. I sent messages to you but you never replied.”

He looks away in disappointment, “When you left, I didn’t know what to do. Namjoon was sad and I couldn’t help but be angry. For a long time I held on to that... but when I saw you again I realized that it was really because I missed you Noona.”

“Jungkook...”

“I know, it was stupid of me. But I see that now, I shouldn't have left you in the dark. I’m sorry it took so long to find you again.”

...

Your final visit with your family starts off well, your father stops by and it’s almost like things are back to the way they were before, before the wedding, before your parents split, before your move. But then the bubble bursts. You thought your mother would behave, that maybe on your last night she wouldn’t put you through another round of guilt. Questions of when you would return begin to overwhelm you.

You return to your hotel room in tears. When checking your phone your finger hovers over two more missed calls from Namjoon. If he was so adamant to reach you it wouldn’t be wrong to talk to him despite your feelings right? You phone changes screens with an incoming call from Jungkook, you answer but there’s a slight warble in your greeting which he notices in an instant.

“Noona... are you okay, what’s wrong?”

“Just nervous about my flight tomorrow,” among other things, you think keeping them to yourself, “Was there something you needed?”

“I wanted to see you again.”

“I think I might head to bed, I have to get up early.” You voice catches even more tipping him off to a greater problem.

“What happened Noona? Why are you really upset?”

“I-I’m sorry it’s just... my mom asked about you, she said that if I couldn’t comeback for her that I should come back to see you...” You have heard it all before, but when she spoke of Jungkook that tore into you more than anything else. He’s been nothing but kind and now you’ve dragged him into you family affairs. “I’m sorry I pulled you into this, I told her we aren’t dating so she shouldn’t trouble you with anything.”

“Noona that doesn’t bother me. I can tell your upset, please, just let me come see you.”

“Jungkook I’m not going to use you as a shoulder to cry on. It’s not fair to you.”

“Maybe I want you to use me...”

“You can’t be serious. You see how much happier Namjoon is with someone who can be here with him.”

“I’m not Namjoon hyung,” Jungkook raises his voice enough to startle you, “Noona... I don’t want what he has. I want you!”

“No you don’t... Jungkook... Jungkook!” The line goes dead as you try to talk him down leaving you shouting his name to a dial tone. “Fuck.” You know it’ll be harder to convince him than Namjoon that being together would not be the best for either of you, that he needs to prioritize himself over your feelings. You try calling him back but his phone goes straight to a busy tone.

Ten minutes later there’s a pounding fist at your hotel door. “Noona open up!” You move to the door slowly, resting your hand on the knob and your head against the panel debating if you should give in. The pounding stops after a minute with one last thunk, his next plea no louder than a whisper, “Noona please...”

The waver in his voice takes hold of you and throws all forms of self-preservation out the window. You open the door to find stunned and teary eyed Jungkook. Stepping closer to him your hands reach up to his face, thumbs brushing away the dampness on his cheeks, before he crashes straight into you with a fierce need. His lips ram against yours almost to the point of pain. His hands take your shoulders and push you out of the doorway, the door slams shut as you are thrust into a wall.

His mouth continues to feast on yours in hunger, his tongue sweeping in for a deeper taste. If you weren’t wedged between Jungkook and the wall you doubt you would be standing. Your legs start to give way and you slip down a little before he places his leg between yours. A moan escaping you as you come to rest on his thigh.

He presses his leg harder against you, dragging out your reaction. “Why didn’t you answer the door sooner Noona? Why did you make me wait?” he mutters against you.

“I didn’t want to hurt you...” You whisper back.

He tugs your sundress over your hips. His hand roaming down in search of answers regarding state of your arousal. “So you were holding back? If I were to touch you would you be already wet for me?”

You nod adamantly, hating yourself for how quickly you give in to your selfish needs. He relaxes his leg for a moment allowing his fingers to push aside the damp fabric and press inside. As they start to curl inside his leg ramming the back of his hand driving the tips of his digits even further sending a shock wave through you.

You collapse forward head against his shoulder with deep quaking breaths. The palm of his hand folds up pressing firmly against your clit. You can feel the warmth begin to spread through you, his fingers no doubt soaked pressing you to your limits. As he drives more you are forced on to your toes and with nowhere left to go you give in to the wash of tingling heat. All you can do is lay limp against him as he continues to cull your moans with his hands and collect them with his lips.

You gladly accept his arms as they encircle you, supporting your body as he moves you to the bed. He takes a moment to tug off his shirt. Throwing his pants and boxers to the floor before climbing on top. He holds the swell of this cock in his hand, pumping it slightly as his hangs over you. “God I want to fuck you. Do you enjoy this power you have over me?”

He gives you a crooked smile, “Should I make you beg? Should I show you what it feels like to wait?”

“Jungkook... please...”

He buries the head of his cock to your entrance and roughly snaps his hips. “No I have a better idea, I’ll fuck you without end, continuing even when you’re raw and filled. I want you weeping my name.”

His thrusts are slow but determined and impactful, shifting you on the bed each time. His hands take your wrists and pin them beside your head.

He drives himself deeper inside as you writhe beneath him. You cry out with each surge from his cock. He looks down at the sundress and bites his lip. He stops his thrusts and removes his hand to grab the hem, dragging it up and off you. You bra is next to go, barely surviving the forceful removal. Jungkook catches the curve of your breast in his hand his mouth latching on to the stiff peak, and toying at it with his teeth. You take his other hand and bring it to your mouth, you can taste a hint of your remaining arousal but you could care less considering what the sight is doing to him.

His thrusts return and he bites down hard. A squeal of surprise exits much to his pleasure, you release his hand only for him to drag it down your stomach and grip your waist.

His fingers appear so desperate to grasp your flesh, to handle you in any way he can. Never letting go but trailing from spot to spot in a teasing line. You are at your end every nerve you your body screaming to release. “Jungkook...” You whine with desperation.

“What’s wrong Noona? If you think I’m finished with you, you clearly weren’t listening before.”

Your vision clouds as you quake from the climax that hits, but he carries on with a smirk. “I don’t want to let go just yet.”

By the end you’re nearly in tears just as he promised, barely able to move. You lost count how many times you called his name, but on each occasion he would reward you with a harder thrust leading down an endless cycle. He leaves your marked chest with a kiss before turning you over and folding in behind you. You both lay there in the dark for a time, letting the quiet settle as you listen to his breathing.

“Noona,” His mumbles with hesitation, his voice void of all the confidence that he held a few minutes ago, “If I were to come see you in your city... would you still want me? Could we ever have more than this?”

“Jungkook...” You have to cut this off now, you have to lie for his own benefit. Your selfish honesty would only cause him to follow as he admitted before. “No... I don’t think that would be a good idea.” You fill your head with assurances that he’ll find someone better for him here, just like Namjoon did.

...

You step into the airport the next morning in a haze, sleep having escaped you after rejecting Jungkook in such a manner. He surprisingly stayed with you until the early morning before heading off. You in your cowardice you pretended to remain asleep as he bid farewell with a kiss to your cheek.

Your thrown off when you hear someone calling your name from behind you. Turning around to find Namjoon running towards you. “Wait!” He urges as he takes the last few strides which separate you. His heavy breathing accompanied by a smile of relief. “I’ve been trying to reach you...”

“Namjoon, why... shouldn’t you be...” You want to question him and chide him, but all you can give is an apology. “Listen I’m sorry...”

“No, I’m the one who needs to apologize.... I got a somewhat angry and condemning call from Jungkook last night. He told me you were upset, and why you didn’t return my calls. I’m so sorry if I had known...”

“No it’s okay, I’m glad you didn’t.” You can feel the tears brimming to the surface. You plead with yourself to keep it together, just a few more minutes and then you’ll be on the plane. You make a promise to yourself that you can cry all you want then, just not now.

Namjoon pulls you into a hug and whispers. “I wanted to invite you as a thank you, to thank you for being strong, and for allowing me to find the happiness I needed... by telling me to stay.”

You have no hope in hell maintaining your expression now, the dam bursts and your tears spill out. But for the first time it’s not Namjoon that you cry over... but the loss of a future with Jungkook, and the confirmation that you’re doing the right thing by telling him that you’re relationship can’t continue.

Namjoon reacts calmly as always, rubbing your back with his hand. “I’ll be here when you need it, I’ll still give you a shoulder to cry on when you need it. Okay? We’re still friends right?”

You nod lifting yourself away from him.

“I need to ask something of you though. It’s about Jungkook... He doesn’t want me to tell you this but I think you need to know and make your own decision. Do you remember how I wanted to ask you a favour?”

You nod in confusion.

“I need you to look after Jungkook...”

Your heart breaks even further, having Namjoon plead his case. “Namjoon, please don’t say that, he belongs here, for god's sake he has a successful business! I’m not going to drag him to another city, another country with me.”

“That’s just it. He didn’t want me to tell you this but he and his partner are almost certain to by a business out your way. There’s a seller who has a restoration shop for sale and is willing to train him in the areas he wants to expand in if he buys the business. He didn’t want to tell you because he wasn’t sure if he was going to put in the offer, he was scared to make that jump and leave to somewhere new. I told him he should talk to you about it at the wedding, to hear how much you love it there.”

You chest tightness at the prospect, and the fear over the impact of your lie. “When he called you did he say that he if he had decided?”

“No I’m still not sure if even he knows. He was supposed to leave quite soon after the wedding to make an offer. If he does decide to go I wanted to make sure that someone was there for him, to check up on him. He’s probably going to have a tough time adjusting so he might need someone to lean on every now and then.”

You give Namjoon a small smile back, Jungkook clearly hadn’t gone into details about what had happened in the past few days between you two. “If he goes, I’ll gladly be there for him.”

Once you leave to go through security you’re stuck with a dilemma. How much did you affect his choice? You don’t want him to make the decision based on you but at the same time you don’t want to leave him with a bad taste in his mouth regarding the possibility of a move. You would be there for him if he moved, you want to be close to him. But if his dreams fail, if he makes the wrong choice because of you, you could never live with yourself.

You take your seat by the window fastening your belt as tight as it will, before resting your hand in it’s usual in flight position, clutching the arm rest. In your other palm lies your phone, you have only a few short moments before you have to turn it off, and you are still hoping that it’ll make the choice for you. When he calls...

You answer it quickly, and Jungkook leads with a stern question “I need to know, did you lie to Namjoon or did you lie to me?”

You begin to stutter unprepared for his question, “I-I...”

“Do you want to cut all relationship ties even if I come to the city or do you want to see me? Did you just say yes because Namjoon asked it of you? I need to know Noona. You need to tell me what you want.”

All his cards are on the table all of his choices are there, you only need to lay out yours to make this right. “I’m sorry Jungkook, I’m so sorry I lied to you last night. I was just worried that you would follow without-”

“So you want to see me again?”

“Yes.”

“You’re okay if I go the the city alongside you?”

“Yes, I just wanted to make sure if it’s something that you want for yourself.”

“It is... I’ll see you soon Noona.”

“Wait no... don’t hang up on me again...” You plead but the line still goes dead.

You’re about to call him back when you spot Jungkook boarding the plane. His fluffy black hair and masked face peak over the line of people boarding. The phone drops from your hand as you look to him. You may not be able to see his mouth but you can tell from his eyes he’s smiling widely. He sees the empty seat next to you and double checks his ticket, before a man in a suit comes to claim the spot. Jungkook looks across the aisle to what must be his seat and instead taps the man on the shoulder.

“Would you mind switching seats with me,” He points to his own two feet away. “It’s just that’s my girlfriend and she’s terrified of flying.”

The man grumbles but makes the switch. Jungkook plops down in the seat next to you but before he can get a word out you smack his arm. “Ooow what was that for?”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Do you know how painful it was to let you go?”

“I was still deciding, besides I wasn’t sure what you wanted out of our relationship. If you only wanted to have a fling and to cut ties again after this weekend I wanted you to be free to do that. I didn’t want you to have to look after me, I told Namjoon not to ask you but he came here to see you off anyway, and I guess I’m glad he did. I overheard the two of you talking...”

“And what were you going to do if I said I didn’t want to see you just now.”

“I would have taken the next flight,” He smiles sheepishly. “I remembered how much you hated flying, I wanted to be there for you if you needed it.”

He lays his open hand in front of you, his eyes wide and expectant. A hint of a smile graces his lips as you release your grip from the rest. Your fingers graze across his palm before interlocking with his. “Hold on to me Noona,” He comforts you with a whisper before resting his head on your shoulder as the plane takes off.

...

-Three Months Later-

You wait at the airport checking the flight arrival information for the hundredth time. Making sure that his flight did in fact land when you finally see him amongst the crowd. There’s a heavy bag on Jungkook shoulders but even that can’t weight down the massive grin on his face. You run to greet him colliding with his chest and forcing him to take a step back with the impact. He coughs slightly from the hit to his lungs, but then hugs you back just as tight. “I definitely prefer the welcome here, Namjoon only shook my hand when I saw him.”

“So that’s everything, your visa cleared and your belongings shipped? No more loose ends to tie up?” After Jungkook’s offer was accepted it’s been months with him going back and forth for the transition. Helping Taehyung find an additional worker and supply training, plus the time spent packing up most of his life to move it out here. You’ve grown so accustomed to having him here that sending him off each time leaves a deep ache inside you.

“Yep, that’s everything.” He takes your hand and kisses your fingers with a smile, “No more letting go.”

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