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heyyyharry · 6 years ago

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My Girl Series: Chapter 13 - Ghosts

…in which Y/N returns to Holmes Chapel, and Harry is a little too late.

Series description: Y/N falls in love with the older boy next door who doesn’t feel the same, years later they meet again at a funeral.

AU: actor!harry, older!harry, younger!y/n; (4-year age gap)

Chapter 12: I Love You - Y/N wants to face her past, but Harry wants to leave his behind.

Warning: EXTREME angst.

Idk why I decided to break my own heart and everyone else’s but let’s bear with me for a better future for our babies lmao. Btw, if you guys want a cute happy song to cheer you up, Taylor Swift’s new song ME! fits their relationship very well.

OC version

1:45 AM.

Most of the bad decisions in Harry's life by far had been made at this time of the day, when his brain was numb and his defenses were down. It started with teenage Harry throwing pebbles at his crush's window and getting chased by her father, to 24-year-old Harry picking up the call from the person he'd been avoiding for months.

Though his number one advice to himself had always been: 'if you're awake at two in the morning, just go to sleep', it was still something he'd never learned.

Sitting in the swivel chair by the floor-to-ceiling window, Harry looked out at the city, one hand gripping the phone at his ear, the other subconsciously tapping on his knee. The woman on the phone was waiting for his reply, but what she wanted to hear wasn't what he could give.

"H, say something."

A little part of him wanted to end the call and go back to bed where his present and possible future was expecting him, yet there he was, clinging onto the ghost of his past by prolonging that unnecessary conversation that was heading nowhere.

"Can I—" Ruby spoke again when all she could hear was his ragged breathing. "Can I just come over? I need to see you."

"I don't want to see you," he finally said. Judging by the sudden pause, he knew she was taken aback by that stone cold answer.

"I broke things off with him. It's true this time." Her voice trembled just like how she'd told him she would never leave him the night before she left. This might be another one of her easy lies. But why did he keep on listening instead of hanging up?

"We're gonna make an official announcement soon. But I wanted you to hear it from me," she went on to fill in his silence. "Baby, I-I know you won't believe me when I tell you this, but I love you. I still do. As much as I did before. I'm sorry I waited until now to finally end things with James. I guess I was just scared, but I'm not scared anymore. Now I know what I want. And I want us."

That was exactly what Harry had wanted to hear a couple months ago. But everything was different now.

"Rubes," he whispered, eyes squeezed shut as his brows furrowed harder. The sound of her laugh used to take him to heaven, now it only dragged him to hell.

"I missed your voice," Ruby said, funny how a smile could be heard through the phone. "I miss you. Terribly."

He shook his head slowly, afterward smiling to himself as he remembered she couldn't see him.

"Please say something, H. Anything. Let me see you."

His face contorted as she begged him in the most tragic tone he'd ever heard. It was like cleaning your closet and trying to debate if you should throw away the t-shirt you used to love that didn't fit anymore. He wanted her to shut up, but at the same time, didn't have the heart to end the conversation.

"I loved you a lot," he said at last, trying to steady his breathing when he heard her do the same. "I guess...you're always gonna mean something to me."

Ruby released a slight laugh as he took a pause. "But?"

He sighed in response to her voice crack, praying that she wouldn't burst into tears, for he wouldn't know how to cope with it. "I can't do this again, Rubes. Go back to your fiancé. We're over."

"I can't go back to the man I don't love."

"You did once before. Sure you can do it again." He chuckled wryly. "I-I'm very sorry."

She wasn't the woman he loved anymore. She was Ruby Ellis — his co-star, an actress, a stranger. That was who she was to him from now on. And he knew better than to go back to her. However, his heart ached to the thought of never hearing from her again after this call. Now he was so confused. What was it that he wanted?

Ruby didn't say anything, yet he could hear her quiet sobs which were slowly killing him. He pinched the bridge of his nose, holding his breath while waiting impatiently for her reply, which, sadly, never came.

The loud noise at the living room entrance caused his head to spin just in time Y/N caught the vase before it collided with the floor. Her big eyes stared straight at him, and his heart broke in reaction to her expression. Without reluctance, he ended the call with his ex-lover and rose from the chair, keeping eye-contact with Y/N as she took a few steps forward, eyes already filled with tears.

"Ruby?" Her voice was strained. "Ruby Ellis? The actress?"

Harry nodded, eyes glued to the floor. Y/N held her head with both hands, trying to fight the battle of emotions inside her chest as she put two and two together.

"But she'd been with her fiancé for three years." It was more like her talking to herself than to him. "Did she...cheat on him with you?"

Hurt and disbelief was etched on her face, but she still had to ask, expecting a different answer from the truth. However, Harry picked the worst time to finally be honest. He sucked in a breath, nodding his head and finally looking up to meet her eyes.

"We had an affair, but...it was more than that, at least for me. I was in love with her." Harry swallowed hard as he broke their eye-contact. "I couldn't walk away even though we'd tried to call it quit endless of times. She told me she wasn't happy and that she was gonna leave him soon, and I was stupid enough to believe her...until she left me."

Y/N's face fell fast. In that instant her skin became pale, her mouth hung with lips slightly parted and her eyes stretched wide.

"Why didn't you tell me?" She almost choked on her own words, but he wasn't looking at her to see how broken she was. "I told you everything about Blake. I trusted you!"

"You're overreacting," he mumbled and turned away. Immediately, she marched straight towards him and clutched his elbow to force him to look at her.

"What else are you hiding from me, Harry?"

"Are you serious?" He scoffed. "The past is the past. Why are you digging into mine now?"

"Because you can't seem to let it go!" Y/N shook her head fast. "We won't have a healthy relationship if you keep things like this from me."

"But we're not in a relationship, are we?"

Those words which got out on spur of the moment shocked her to the point that she let go of his arm and stumbled two steps back. Harry wasn't even thinking when he blurted out that sentence. He should've stopped there. If only he'd stopped.

"You're not my girlfriend, I don't have to tell you everything. Even if I'd told you, you would've judged me like you do now, just like everyone else!" Harry raised his voice, apparently too out of his mind to even notice the fear in her glistened eyes. "You had one boyfriend and the break up wasn't even that bad. You don't fucking know how awful it feels to give someone everything you’ve got, and still cannot compete with the person who doesn’t love them."

Y/N stared into those green eyes burning with anger. Her heart fell silent.

"Then how do you think I'm feeling right now?"

That question struck Harry like lighting. It was only then that warmth flooded back to his features. Once he saw tears streaming down her pretty face, his entire body went limp and the rapid beating of his heart echoed within his brain. The red mark on her cheek was there to remind him she'd been hurt before, now it was him who caused her more damage. The second lesson that he had never learned, was never to let anger do the talking.

“Blake left me just a week before my mother died, then you came back, you kissed me and left me too...Now put yourself in my shoes, H. Just because your pain was different from mine, it doesn’t mean you had it worse. I hurt too. I was depressed and starved myself for weeks...Is that what you want to hear?”

Trembling and afraid, Harry shook his head fast as he reached for her hands, but she shrugged him off to cover her face and muffle the heartbreaking sobs that were tearing him apart. Although she was standing right there, he couldn't help but feel like she was slipping through his fingers. He quickly clutched her arms, tears shone in his eyes yet she refused to look at him now.

"I’m so sorry...I shouldn’t...I-I don't love her anymore...You have to trust me," he pleaded, tilting his head to catch a glimpse of her face. He watched her shoulders tremble with despair. Finally, she looked up, both pairs of tear-filled eyes staring at one another.

"You don't love me either."

Y/N could see that Harry was taken aback by those words so she gave him a nod to confirm the truth.

"Yes, I knew what I said, Harry. I love you. I thought you just needed more time," she whispered, her brows drew closer together. "But now I know...I can never compete with her."

Harry's heart sank to the pit of his stomach as he heard those words. Y/N stood still, arms glued to her sides. She should feel affection when he held her face, not this, not the discomfort of his cold palms against her skin. She wanted to push him away, but she didn't have any energy left to even flinch.

He shook his head fast, pressing their foreheads together. "Bambi, look at me...You're not here to replace her. I don't love her anymore."

When he repeated those words, she almost believed him. Almost. But she couldn't. Not after what he'd said on the phone. Not after what he'd said to her when he lost his temper.

"But that's not what you meant." She exhaled sharply. "She still has a place in your heart."

"She...I...I don't...I just—" He tried to explain, though the words that got out made absolutely no sense.

"Did she leave you right before you came back for my mother's funeral?" She cut him off, not wanting to be fed with more of his meaningless words. She just wanted solid proofs that she wasn't his rebound, yet there he was, looking startled and hesitating before nodding his head to confirm her fear was real.

"Was she the one who called you after we kissed in the treehouse? The reason you were so eager to leave?"

"It's—"

"Yes or no, Harry."

"Y-Yes."

Now both of them were crying in front of one another. Y/N soon forgot about the mark on her cheek. Not a single slap could compare to this pain she must endure from hearing his confessions.

"One last question. And please be honest with me," she spoke with a breathy voice. "Do you love me?"

Silence.

Utter silence.

He could've said no, and it would've felt less insulting than him giving her silence and reluctance instead. She loved him so much that she wanted to justify for his reaction by saying he'd been hurt before and was terrified by the idea of love, that she could understand. But weren't they both the same? She'd been hurt too. She had every single reason to believe love didn't exist until she looked into his eyes. She had fought all that fear within her just to say those words to him, and meant it. If he couldn't fight for her, if he must have a second thought to decide how he should feel about her, then what was she still doing here?

Harry sucked in a breath when Y/N grabbed both of his hands and removed them from her face.

"Don't be like my dad." Her voice became as fragile as glass. "I love you...but if you don't love me back, you have to let me go."

When Y/N said those words, she did hope that he would change his mind. She did wait. But he didn't speak. And when her time for him had run out, she quietly went back to the bedroom. As for Harry, he was rooted to the spot, still trying to get grip on reality.

It didn't take too long until Y/N returned, now dressed in her own clothes and holding her handbag. He was still standing there, waiting for her to leave him instead of saying those words she'd shrugged off all of her pride to say to him. His face was paler than her ever recalled it being, as if his blood was all shrinking away.

In the blink of an eye, the door fell shut. And she was gone.

When Y/N stumbled out on the street, her eyes flooded with tears and the first person she called was Celine. She just needed to talk to someone or else her heart might combust any minute now. She bit her nails while waiting for her best friend to pick up the phone. Though it took a bit longer than usual, she knew Celine would never miss any of her calls.

"Hey, baby! Wow, I was just about to call you. Talk about being soulmates!"

"Cece, I—"

"I hope you're sitting down right now because your girl has an announcement to make!"

Y/N literally held her breath for that one-second pause.

"I'm engaged!"

When Celine screamed the big news into the phone, her best friend from across the ocean was so shocked she couldn't make a sound. She stood like a corpse on the side of the road, tears in her eyes but she was too afraid her heartbreak would ruin her best friend's happy day.

"Y/N, are you still there?"

"Yeah...I'm here."

"Are you crying?"

Y/N faked a laugh. The last thing she wanted was to make this about herself.

"I can't help it. I'm just so happy for you two," she said, trying to sound as cheerful as she could pretend.

"Aww, my love! Gosh, I wish you were here with us." Celine giggled. "Oh, why did you call by the way?"

"I just missed you, that's all." Y/N pressed her lips together, taking a deep breath. "Hey, something just came up, I gotta go now. I'll call you another time, yeah? Then we can spend hours talking about this."

"Oh, we certainly will! Love you, baby."

"Love you too, baby."

When that phone call came to an end, Y/N sank even deeper into depression.

How could it be?

In less than twelve hours, everything had been taken away from her. She had prided herself on being independent and laughed in the faces of the ones who needed the company of another to feel fulfilled. Here she was, completely lost with no one to turn to, not even herself. So she kept on walking, letting her tears fall and her feet lead the way. Maybe when the sun rose in a few hours, everything would be alright.

If only it'd been that easy.

The rain came without warning. It started out with little droplets, and the next second it was a torrential downpour, washing over her skin so strongly that it felt as if she was standing under a giant waterfall. Y/N didn't have an umbrella with her, so the only thing she could do was cover her head with the handbag and attempt to call a taxi on the phone. Due to unfortunate carelessness, the device slipped out of her grip and fell right into the puddle on the pavement, causing Y/N to literally scream out a curse word. There wasn't anyone around to think she was insane anyway.

The phone was dripping in rainwater when she picked it up, thus only magic could get it to work again. This time, instead of risking her life to run home, she dashed to find cover under a roof nearby, just in time two headlights appeared through the thick water curtain.

A car pulled over in front of Y/N. The familiar voice grabbed her attention right before she could recognize the person in the driver seat.

"Get in!" Marcy shouted as she tapped on the window.

This woman would be the last person Y/N wanted to be around at a moment like this, but she was given no other choice. It was either being safe in the car with the crazy person who'd slapped her, or risking standing there and getting swept away by the thunderstorm. Any sane person would've chosen the former in a heartbeat.

Immediately, Y/N got into the passenger seat and heaved a heavy sigh as she slammed the door shut, trying to catch her breath with her head back tossed back and eyes shut. Marcy quickly turned back to grab something from the backseat.

"Here." She wrapped the huge blanket around Y/N's body, stroking both of her arms to keep her warm.

"Why do you have a huge ass blanket in your car?"

"I get cold easily." Marcy rolled her eyes, although she did find it amusing how Y/N was more shocked by the blanket, than the fact that she'd showed up just in time to rescue her from the storm.

"Better?" Asked the blonde as she drove away in the rain, taking a quick glance at her future stepdaughter whose eyes were still shut, too lost in her own head to even hear that one-word question.

"How did you find me?" Y/N asked once she'd calmed down.

"It was pure luck I guess," replied Marcy. "I was driving around the city looking for you, and when it began to rain I was about to give up, then I saw you on the side of the road."

Y/N didn't say anything, instead, she turned her head to the left. Water droplets hit the car window as they drove onwards. She watched those raindrops race down, somehow finding a little bit of peace and calmness in the loud and chaotic storm.

Now that the heavy shower had washed away his scent on her body, she didn't want to go back anymore. She didn't even want to return to her flat where everywhere she looked reminded her of him. Now she had no other place to go but one.

"Are you heading back to Holmes Chapel?" She asked Marcy, who was taken aback by the sudden question.

"Uh...yeah, but I can drop you off—"

"No." She shook her head, staring at the road ahead instead of the woman in the driver seat. "Just keep on driving."

Harry completely lost track of time, which seemed to fly faster as he was lost in his own thoughts. Maybe he would've continued sitting there on his sofa and replaying Y/N's words over and over again in his head until he passed out from exhaustion, if the sound of thunder hadn't dragged him back to reality.

His head turned to the glass window when the rain started to pour. All that he could see was a thick curtain of water and the hazy city light hidden underneath it. His heart stopped for a second when he recalled the accident which left Y/N with a sprained ankle. He couldn't show up to help her then, now she was out in the rain because of him.

If something bad happened to her...

Harry quickly rose up as the thought briefly crossed his mind, just in time his phone began to ring. The name Ruby appeared on the screen again, but this time, he didn't even care. It was funny and sad at the same time, how the moment of realization always came a bit too late.

What had he done?

Not until then did it occur to Harry that his Bambi had left him for good. He'd officially lost her.

Now that she was gone, he missed her, he needed her, he worried about her. Now that he knew there was a high chance that he could never get her back, it felt as if he was bleeding internally. The pain couldn't compare to when Ruby left him, no, it was much worse. It tore his chest opened. If something bad happened to her tonight, how could he possibly live with himself?

What had he done?

Harry ran fast to his bedroom to throw on a pair of jeans and the t-shirt she'd left on his bed, which still smelt like her. He returned to the living room and grabbed an umbrella before heading out as fast as possible. He rushed to the street, gasping for air as the raindrops hit his cold skin. Even with an umbrella above his head, Harry couldn't save his clothes from getting soaked just in less than a minute. But it was the least of his concerns now. He turned left, then right, mouth agape, eyebrows knitted together. There was not a single person or car in sight. Where was she? Where was his Bambi?

He dialed her number but he couldn't reach her. She either had him blocked or her phone turned off, whichever it was, he wasn't sure if she was safe, and he couldn't rest knowing she was somewhere out there in this pouring rain, all on her own.

He must go find her now.

What had he done?

It was a long drive back to Holmes Chapel, for no vehicle could go fast in this kind of weather. The more time it took the more uncomfortable it got for the two young women in this car.

Marcy inhaled deeply as she stole another glance at Y/N, who had been so quiet that Marcy felt like it would be a crime if she breathed a bit too loud. She thought it might be for the best if she just kept silent and her eyes on the road. However, it was hard to ignore the mark on Y/N's cheek. Although it looked better now than before, it reminded Marcy of what she'd done. And she'd been tormenting herself over it from the night before.

After a couple seconds of contemplating, she finally spoke up, "About what happened in the store..." She paused to clear her throat. "I-I'm very sorry. I shouldn't have—"

"Don't bother," Y/N cut her off, speaking in a monotone. The girl couldn't sound any less indifferent, not her usual aggressive and sarcastic tone. That was how Marcy knew it had a lot to do with the big reason behind her wanting to go back to Holmes Chapel. Marcy was just too afraid to ask.

"After all," Y/N went on, this time sounding breathless. "My father was the one who took the ring from my mother, not you."

"But..." Marcy sucked in a deep breath. "But he didn't take the ring back."

This time, Y/N finally turned to look at her, eyes broadened at once. Marcy kept her focus on the road, yet her expression hardened as if what she was about to say was going to be very brutal to the young girl sitting next to her.

"On the night of the accident, before your mother left, she gave it back to him."

"W-What?"

"Your father asked me not to tell you this but...I think you deserve to know the truth." Marcy sighed, tightening her grip on the steering wheel. "Your parents had planned on getting divorced two months prior to Tam's death. I-I had nothing to do with it, I don't even know the reason. It wasn't until after she'd left that Brad and I began to grow feelings for each other. But everyone blames me for their fight, for her accident. I guess that was why I got so fed up with your attitude and—" Marcy blinked fast, shaking her head in guilt. "I'm not trying to justify my action, because I know it was wrong. But I didn't mean to hurt you on purpose."

Y/N didn't expect any of that. Besides the divorce, nothing else seemed to make sense. Why did her mother take off the ring that she loved more than herself? What was it that they were arguing about that night?

She had hoped that Marcy was just lying, yet for someone with such a troubled past, she would be able to tell if someone was spilling out lies. Therefore she was sure Marcy had said exactly what she knew. Now Y/N felt like she knew nothing at all, not even her mother, the one she loved most.

"You should take a nap. I'll wake you up when we're almost home," Marcy said with a smile.

Now that the rain was over, the sky glowed like a summer peach and the sun slowly emerged from the skyline as tall buildings rose out of the darkness. Y/N's heart was at peace once again, knowing she would be home soon.

But as she closed her eyes to get some rest, all that she could see was him.

"Bambi! Please, open the door if you're in there!" Harry knocked more urgently this time as he tried to catch his breath and fight back the tears. His voice was hoarse from pleading for her to let him in. It had been a while, and now he began to think she wasn't there.

The first golden light of the new day snuck through the little window near the ceiling into the hallway, blinding Harry for a second as if to let him know that the sun had come once again. How often we saw the dawn and took it for granted, that when darkness took over we suddenly craved for the light and the life it brought to our world? Same as Y/N. Now that she was gone, he finally realized what he'd lost.

Harry sat down on the floor with his back against her front door, head in his hands. Their last conversation soon came back to haunt him, and so was the look on her face when he let her go. He knew he deserved that. He was unworthy of her love. But now that he'd lost his ray of sunshine, how could he live with this cold?

In just a minute, Harry's eyes dripped with tears as he gazed toward the window above, as if the light could soothe him. His face twisted and his fists clenched so tight he could feel the sweat trapped inside them. He looked like the same distressed little boy who'd lost the stuffed bunny and the girl he loved. It would take more than a black eye and losing his captain armband to win her back this time.

But right now, he just wanted to know if she was safe. He wiped his tears and pulled out his phone, quickly making a call to the only person he knew would be able to help.

"Hello?" Isaac answered after five seconds. His sleepy voice was evident that he was barely awake.

"Mate...did Y/N come to you, or at least contact you?"

"No. What's wrong? Did something happen to her?" Just like him, his best friend sounded overly distraught.

"We had a fight and she ran off in the rain and...I'm right outside her place right now but she's not home yet."

"She didn't answer your calls?"

"No." Harry sighed, combing his fingers through his hair. "Maybe if you call her, she'll pick up."

"Alright. I'll text you if I know where she is."

"Thank you. I-I appreciate that."

Isaac hummed as a reply and hung up the phone. Harry sat there with his head tossed back, resting against the door, his eyes on the ceiling. Now he was too stressed to even get on with his day and act like nothing was wrong when everything was. But if he continued to sit there for too long, one of Y/N's neighbors might report him, or even worse, someone could start a false rumor that might damage her reputation. Sighing, he pushed himself off the floor to stand up straight, one palm pressed against the wall to keep his balance.

"Hey, you!"

When Harry heard that voice, his head jerked in its direction where he found an old lady walking up the stairs.

"Hi, ma'am," he mumbled, pressing his lips into a small smile as she approached him. But the woman couldn't look more irritated.

"You're dating the girl in that flat, right?"

Harry parted his lips, not knowing how to answer, but he assumed the old woman must be Mrs. Huang, the angry neighbor who kept complaining about him and Y/N having sex a bit too loud. She didn't even need a response from him, and just went straight into the point, handing him the pink notebook which he hadn't noticed that she'd been holding until now.

"She dropped this yesterday. Maybe you can give it back to her."

"Oh...thank you."

Mrs. Huang eyed at the young man from head to toes, making him think she might begin to lecture him on how to not disturb the neighbors. However, what she said to him was this.

"Ever since you came around, I've seen her sing a different song every day when she leaves the building. As annoying as she might be sometimes, that girl seems to be head over heels for you." Then the woman sighed happily, her wrinkles became more visible now that she was smiling at him. "I miss being young and in love with someone. Hold onto it while you still can, alright?"

When Mrs. Huang patted him on the arm and returned to her home, Harry looked down at the pink notebook in his hand. And in a few seconds, all the memories flooded back and the different images of her beautiful smile flashed right through his mind. At that moment, he realized, the goodbye wasn't supposed to be the hardest part, it was the flashbacks that followed right after.

Every single day he'd spent with Ruby had been filled with fear and anxiety, which he'd mistook for passion. But Y/N was his medicine. When he was with her, the pain stopped. She made him feel safe even though their relationship had never been solid, and with her, he could get away from the chaotic of his world to find real peace.

After getting soaked in the rain, his old t-shirt no longer smelt like his Bambi, which meant he had nothing left of her to keep, not even her scent. Now he missed her with a pain in his guts like a fire burning slow.

Had he been brave enough to just face his fear and accept the fact that it was love. It wasn't anything like the love he'd had for Ruby, but it was love. Otherwise, he wouldn't have trembled every time she called his name, his knees wouldn't have gone weak every time he caught her smiling at him, he wouldn't have spent most of the time during a day thinking, fantasizing, daydreaming about her.

If it wasn't love, what else could it be?

In his heart, he retracted all the terrible things he had said to her. He'd learned his lessons the hard way, but not soon enough for the two of them.

"Your sim card is okay, but I'm gonna have to take your phone to the repair store. Meanwhile, you can use my old Blackberry, it still works pretty damn fine."

Y/N pressed her lips into a small smile as she took the phone from her dad, sitting down on the edge of her bed with a blanket wrapped around her now dry and warm body. Bradford stood there for a moment to make sure his daughter didn't need anything else. He was debating with himself whether or not he should ask about why she'd come back. But once he saw the look on her face as she acted busy with the device, he took it as a cue to leave her alone for now.

Once her bedroom door was shut, Y/N finally lifted her eyes as sadness clouded her features at once. She carefully looked around the room. There was a strange melancholy feeling in her heart to be back in her childhood home after two years. Everything looked almost the same as the day she left for college, but it didn't feel the same because she was the one who'd changed.

Through that window, she used to secretly watch Harry return home from school every day. In this bed, he used to hold her as they both fell asleep on nights when her parents were both out of town, and her irresponsible aunt didn't care if there was a boy in her room. On that desk, she'd written countless pages about him, for him, that he might never get to read. She looked around this room and all she could see were their ghosts lurking in every single corner.

After all those years, the boy next door was still so far out of reach. And she was still the same fourteen-year-old pining over her older neighbor who didn't love her in return. That bitter truth made her eyes well up, but she was too old to live in Wonderland anymore. It was time for her to go back.

The new ringtone blasted from the old phone shocked Y/N to the point that she almost tossed her dad's Blackberry across the room. Fortunately, she didn't. She sighed in relief the second the name Isey appeared on the screen. Wiping away her tears, she pressed answer immediately.

"H-Hi..." Y/N exhaled a nervous laugh, hoping he wasn't able to tell what a wreck she was. But he already knew that when he decided to call.

"Smiley, are you okay? Where are you? Are you safe? Are you with someone?"

"I'm fine. What's going on?" Then the answer just appeared in her head on its own. Her smile faded soon as realization sank in. Her voice was soft and careful as she questioned, "what did Harry tell you?"

"That you two got into a fight and you ran off in the storm."

Y/N scoffed, looking down and shaking her head slightly. "It's no big deal really."

"What happened?"

"Well..." She pursed her lips, trying to come up with a white lie good enough to convince him she was okay. "We just had a small disagreement and, yeah, like we always do. It's not that big of a deal."

"I still think you should call him back," Isaac said. She could imagine the frown upon his face. "He was so worried."

"Hmm," she hummed, pressing her lips to form a straight line, not knowing what else to say.

"Where are you now?"

"I'm...in Holmes Chapel."

"What are you doing there?"

Hiding.

"I'm back for my father's wedding in two days." She chuckled nervously, eyes glancing at the spinning fan above her head. "Don't you worry about me."

There was a long pause from Isaac's side when all she could hear was his soft yet heavy breathing. She wished she could tell him what had happened, but neither her heart nor her head agreed it was a good idea to confide in Harry's best friend. So she just sat in silence and waited for him to speak. Eventually, he did.

"If you're sad, just say so."

Y/N nodded in response to those words, yet she soon realized that he couldn't see her so she quietly reassured him that she was fine. Though Isaac could probably tell she only said that so he would stop worrying about her, he was nice enough to not call her out for being a terrible liar.

"Look, I gotta go now..." She said fast, her brows pinched together as her eyes squeezed shut. "Talk to you another time?"

"Alright." He let out a short breath. "Have a great day, Smiley."

"Wait! One more thing!"

"Yeah?" His light chuckle caused her to smile a bit.

"Please don't tell Harry I'm here...I'm gonna talk to him myself when I'm ready."

"Okay."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Knowing that Isaac always kept his words, Y/N trusted him entirely as she muttered a goodbye and waited for him to hang up first.

She put her phone down, staring at the window where came the new daylight welcoming her back to the small town of Holmes Chapel. The girl smiled sadly as she curled up in a ball on her childhood bed, her eyes fell shut in an instant. The exhaustion caused her body to hang limp like wet laundry on a winter day, now every one of her muscles was giving into gravity.

Taking a deep breath, she could feel the sorrow in her chest waiting to take over, yet the fear didn't seem to exist like many times before. She knew the feeling of losing someone she loved, physically, emotionally, or both; and knowing it probably made it less scary. But what was worse than fear was the emptiness that followed when that someone was gone. She was learning how to deal with it, but slowly.

#harry styles #harry styles smut #harry styles angst #harry styles fluff #harry styles writing #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfics #harry styles fanfictions #harry styles imagine #harry styles imagines #harry styles series #older!harry #actor!harry #bestfriend!harry #my girl series #harry and bambi

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fyrapartnersearch · 5 years ago

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HxH and Inazuma eleven nostalgia

Hi! Welcome to my partner search. Before going into detail I'll explain "my rules", I know it's a boring part but it helps us both to know if we are compatible. I roleplay mainly on Discord/ e-mail, with the first contact being on this e-mail: [email protected] - I prefer to roleplay with +18 people, I'm uncomfortable roleplaying with minors. -Quantity. I've been told that I'm on the literate side, but I know that sometimes one doesn't have the energy or just not enough to work to make a +1000 words post. So Quality> Quantity but please give me something to work with (my "lazy/small" usual is around 600 words per character I guess, if you need numbers. And again, if I have something to work with). You get stuck? Let's talk about it. I'm also here for the long term. - Doubling is required. I like to play both Canon and OC (CanonxOC trash here) and I intend to keep doing it. At least in this fandom. Do you want to play a canon for me? Please tell me you have a canon you want me to play against your OC. I get easily bored when I don't get to play more than one main character, and I like to build different kind of relationships (friendships, rivalries...and I'm talking bewteen the OCs, the Canons, both...) on my RPs, so I expect you to like, like me, playing multiple characters (it can be summarize in having two mains and then the others being like NPCs to build the scenes that we share). And I prefer to double with a male canon character usually. Why? I don't know to be honest but that is how it works for me, I guess it's because I grew up roleplaying like that?. This should be a given, but EQUAL EFFORT ON BOTH CHARACTERS, I love coming up with ideas for my partner's wanted canons and.... it's a bit sad when you're the only one who seems to be enjoying doubling (I know there are lots of people who said "I double!" but only to "make it fair" and "get their canon". Most of the time they don't even enjoy doubling, and well I can understand how desperate they could be for their fandom/canon but if that's your mindset we aren't really compatible). IF YOU DON'T DOUBLE/ DON'T LIKE IT DON'T FORCE YOURSELF, just keep going, I'm sure you'll find someone interested in playing your canon! -About OCs.... I used to accept any kind of OC but I've gotten tired of Mary Sues and all angst kind of characters. I know, it doesn't mean your OC is bad, but bear with me, I've had enough with those characters. This doesn't mean that your character can't have a sad story or that they need to have a friendly personality. The problem is when the only thing they do is a constant monologue about their tragic past and they never move the story forward. It gets boring. I want to be hyped about your OC! Choose songs, pinterest boards... -MxF is what I'm looking for in mains (playing both male - the canon - and female - the OC -). I don’t roleplay F// and M// pairings with partners I haven’t roleplayed with before. -Let's both contribute to the story. Maybe one has more ideas one day, or one suffers writers block, or one wants to surprise the other with a plot twist... but let's work/move the story together yeah? I also prefer if we use both 3rd person, it can be present or past, as you prefer, but 1st is a bit difficult to read and write for me. -When it comes to romance , love at first sight isn't my thing, I usually go with the slow burn/ "organic" path . Maybe you're more impatient, it's ok (besides, having crushes it's normal, not anything new or surreal), I don't mind speeding up things a little, but not just saying hi to each other and wanting to marry instantly. I like to keep the main genre of the series and focus on our character's development more than having romance as the only focus too. - Don't feel forced to answer everyday. I can't stress this enough. This a hobby, not a job. Even if I answer at the speed of light one day I'm not expecting that from you. There will be times that I won't be able to answer for days, life comes first. And I like OOC chit chat , share all your memes, silly headcanons, and feel free to chat with me even if you haven't replied to the RP. I've seen some people hiding that they are online to not be pressured about their RPs. I won't pressure you! -I'm very ditch friendly. At first I thought that people that were selective were just being a bit annoying/ hypocrites, but after roleplaying for around 10 years you get their point. I want to feel comfortable with what you write and I want YOU to feel comfortable with what I write. There is no need for hard feelings! No need to make an excuse too, just say ''Hey, let's just drop this'' and I'll be ''Ok, I'll keep searching then''. Ah, and I don't close my searches until I'm fully plotting with someone, like characters already been shared and all of that. When I find a partner I think will stay and that I feel confident about, I'll put the roleplay request on hold and lately if everything goes fine I'll close it. I think that those are the basic rules. I have triggerings and so but I think I prefer to talk about those matters with someone already interested in roleplaying. Now, the fandoms (Aged up friendly, since these fandoms have children on it, anything that goes beyond an innocent crush // holding hands, kiss on the cheek, you get me // is reserved for +18 characters. They may be super powerful and stronger than adults - at least in HxH -, but they are still children). Usually I'm open to try new canons, but I'm afraid that due to time limitations I'm only interested in playing the characters I have played before/ I feel more comfortable playing as when it comes to HxH. I'm also super open and I love to be honest, to do like an age progression. For example make an arc longer so the characters start to age up and as such face the consequences of growing and becoming adults. I think it's interesting. HunterxHunter I've watched the 2011 and the...1998? Anime, plus read the manga (I'm not up to date, I left in one of the.... endless hiatus - no shade to the mangaka btw, health and so comes first -, but if you're interested in knowing when I left it, ask, since I don't want to put spoilers here). The character I'm searching to play against is Killua. (Sue me. I made an OC and I felt like him and her could have an interesting dynamic.) Characters I'm comfortable playing as/ I've played before are: Leorio (love him), Kurapika (love him too), Gon (my son at this point) and Shalnark (had a good time playing him tbh, better than I had expected). Again, don't ask me to try different canons, I'm afraid that this time I'm not open for it.

Inazuma Eleven

There are so many characters in this series! But I'm mostly familiar with those appearing on the first season (Axel and Mark's age range). I'm searching to play against Haruya Nagumo, since the Alien arc was by fart my favorite one, and I'm open to try many canons for you ^^. I'm more inclined to age up the characters in this fandom from the beginning.

Important note regarding canon characters. Everyone. Has. Their. Own. Approach. When. It. Comes. To. Canons. I'm not here to be like "I'm going to check every single time that you follow the canon perfectly! And if you don't guess what I have in mind for them I'll riot!" Not only that but as we roleplay the canon character may change because they may have different experiences from the canon source! That being said, if you for example, give me a Bakugou Katsuki (just you know, a quick example now that BNHA is pretty popular), that isn't an ass, or turns into a cheesy character in like 3 interactions, yeah, I'm going to be like "... What are you doing?". Share your headcanons! Your vision of the canon! I try to do the same so I don't end up with an uncomfortable partner, or uncomfortable myself! Thanks for reading and have a nice day! Btw it gets pretty obvious when someone doesn't read the rules, and I'm a bit tired of it to be honest. Yeah I highlighted the most important info, but just for you to have a way to quick check everything if at some point you forget about a rule or are having doubts about it. Not to fully skip everything. Ah! And this is also a copy paste of my old rules, so if you see something weird, like me referring to several fandoms when in reality I'm just searching for one, I'm sorry. I didn't want to repeat all my rules from 0 and I just copy pasted and edited some parts.

#multiple paragraph #para #long term #email #submission

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ryouverua · 6 years ago

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Trial 6 - Flashfiction (4)

FLIP THAT CHESSBOARD, SWEETCHEEKS!

Trial: 1 / 2 / 3

it’s what kokichi would have wanted

DRV3 HOW DARE YOU HOLD OUT ON THE CUTEST DAMN TSUMUGI SPRITE OF THE ENTIRE GAME

how can mirrors be real if our eyes aren’t real

And we found it in Kokichi’s lab of all places. Why? Had he been able to get access to it ater all? Why was it just lying there so awkwardly - not hidden or neatly put away at all, but just tossed on the floor like an afterthought?

...... thinks about the state of Kokichi’s dorm room

yeah the chance that he left it on the floor like a bored 12 year old or me is not 0%

Wait.... is there??? The only one that stands out to me is the method of applying vs being scouted...

So we go over the events again, or as the game would probably put it, comb over The Longest, Most Ridiculous, Most Despairing Backstory to look for discrepancies.

Don’t look so pleased with yourself!

YES THANK YOU SHUICHI THANK YOU FOR STOPPING HER BEFORE SHE GOT STARTED AGAIN

It.... it doesn’t???

as;dflksdjf

U-Uuuuh Monokuma??? Are you just allowed to namedrop the title like that???

A-Anyway, this one was sort of vague - not sure if the game did too good a job of hiding it or not, but I certainly didn’t clue into this immediately because, well, I’d argue that Junko was ultimately the cause of this? And she was the original Ultimate Despair, even if Mukuro got roped into it with her? This felt a bit like being at a multiple choice exam where there are a few answers that are sort of right but not exactly right and then I cry

AND MUKURO!!! I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS MUKURO ERASURE, DAMN IT!!! can you tell she was one of my favourites in the first game if not my favourite

“And that’s why, even though you are technically right, you are also wrong, and therefore will not get any points for your answer to this question.” sweetcheeks you sonuvab -

despite the mukuro erasure, consider me team maki

“Can it, nerd.”

It would have been really nice to have Maki in the first game.

We really are going over this piece by piece.

Okay, so now we’re reviewing the first game. They were forced to kill each other, then Junko was found out and killed herself in the end, which led to the eventual end of the Despair side....

Shuichi is clearly onto something that I haven’t quite latched onto yet. 8′D

This makes me think of how cool it would have been to have this text style in the previous games. Have I mentioned enough about how much I like the typography in drv3? Because I don’t know if that’s possible.

OOOH that’s right - I forgot! Or, well, I didn’t forget, but it didn’t really occur to me that we were remembering that they were literally trapped in the school by Ultimate Despair, I guess.

I guess the gist of it is that they’re remembering - well, not witnessing the events, but being told things were one way vs another. They would have been too young to have been alive at the time though, right? It seems to me that, though the game clearly wants us to take it a different way, we can also interpret this as them just being told the wrong thing within the memories themselves as opposed to the actual memories being entirely falsified. What if the reports at the time or the commonly-known story was that they had been locked in by Ultimate Despair, and it’s only the properly researched books like this that have the correct accounts? It’s not exactly an uncommon phenomenon for there to be widely-held mistaken knowledge/generalizations of famous events, unfortunately... 8′D

Anyway, I’m getting distracted because like I said, this is really not the angle the game is going with at all.

BULLSHIT

AND ALSO

WHY WOULD A BOOK EXIST THAT DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS THE MEMORIES YOU GAVE THEM

WHY DOES IT EVEN EXIST IN THIS PLACE AT ALL

I’m seriously fixated on this book!

also

I love Shuichi just casually ignoring Junko!Tsumugi lmao

I’m calling her Junko!Tsumugi I refuse to call her Tsumugi!Junko I REFUSE TO GIVE UP ON TSUMUGI’S AUTONOMY

This.... this one has to be it, right? This was the one thing I remember getting really confused by when they talked about applying! In fact, I had thought the whole reason Shuichi was considered the Ultimate Detective was because of the homicide case and if that resulted in him being at Hope’s Peak, it was because word of that had traveled - but then if it was an application, that means either his parents or his uncle would have applied on his behalf, right?

this was a detail I remember remarking on and loving btw I got really sad when in Chapter 5 it started looking like they were all in the same class

I think more than the others, this is the big one. All that other stuff can be attributed to mistaken hearsay - but this? This is something they would have ‘directly experienced’.

Oh apparently he chose to come... despite feeling awkward about his title.

I wonder if he was pressured into it by his family....?

Or, uh. Let me correct myself. I wonder if, in this mistaken memory, he remembers being pressured into it by his family?

I-I feel like I would trust the book over you guys especially considering the whole ‘we remembered Kokichi Ouma as a Remnant of Despair and got him killed as the fake mastermind’ situation tbh.

well technically ultra despair girls is

That is a good point. I mean, it could quite possibly happen underground, but I suppose the same could be said of the Jabberwock Island one - there’s no reason that should be public knowledge.

“I mean, I know it’s nothing new, but bear with me here.”

H A L L E L U J A H

REALLY

MAKI, REALLY

YOU OF ALL PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW BETTER

FUFCKFUCKING HELL GUYS YOU’RE KILLING ME HERE

sdfkdslfj fukging

noOOONONO

aND YOU! YOU SHUT UP TOO!!!!

“Also have you seen their outfits? Do you realize how terribly they would clash? ‘Oh Saihara, why would that matter what do uniforms have to do with anything surely Kokichi and his uniformed clown posse could just be a branch under the Remnants’ NO THAT WILL NOT FLY WHEN THE HEAD OF THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION LITERALLY DOUBLES AS THE ULTIMATE FASHIONISTA!!!”

this level of reasoning is possible for saihara shuichi

.... what do you think, everyone?

And he still has the Supreme Leader title, even if these aren’t really their talents... there has to be something to that, right?

Shu -

Shuichi

The words DICE were written in big words over his giant hella awesome throne

He has a checkered scarf which brings about a certain ‘game’ feeling

he literally challenged you to card games

I’m.... I’m just gonna throw it out there, but there’s a pretty good chance the group he led was called ‘DICE’.

YOU SAW THE VIDEO YOU SAW IT DAMN YOU MAKI I KNOW YOU’RE BETTER THAN THIS YOU ARE SMARTER THAN THIS!!!!

“Maki also said he literally said he didn’t know what she was talking about when she interrogated him with a crossbow literally aimed directly at him but surely that’s unrelated -”

s o b s

I 100% bet Tsumugi was not counting on them finding this room. So.... beginning the trial, she tried to do a Kaede/Kaede’s twin mastermind thing. Then she switched tactics to being solely ‘Junko’ and her lackey Kokichi setting up the game with the last survivors of humanity as... revenge for Hope’s Peak, I guess? Or something.

So where are we going from here? Are we about to discover this was all a simulated scenario then?

Sort of like they’re trying to test different outcomes and scenarios - with different talents, maybe? Is there the selected 16 (15? 14?) talents that can be switched around at will, or is there a larger database of students’ talents? That’s what I really want to know.

But “there are an endless possibilities for lies,” a certain person may say.

why are you all ganging up on me also how when two of you are literally the same person and the other one is an AI acting as an extension of you -

It sort of hit me but this is a weird echo of Korekiyo’s trial, with Junko and Tsumugi switching back and forth with each other the way Korekiyo and his sister did. I wonder if there’s something to that, or if it says something about Tsumugi in general...

(one hangman’s gambit later...)

TALENTS ARE NOT THEIRS AND POSSIBLY ARBITRARY CONFIRMED

I WOULD KILL FOR KOKICHI TO POP OUT OF THE GRAVE TO SHOUT IT’S A LIE RIGHT NOW

FUCK YOU BEAR

ghggkhgkh

that is a dangerous precedent to set

But you weren’t planning on revealing this, right??? Right???? Your hand was totally forced! Don’t play this off like it wasn’t!

I swear I had a similar idea when I was coming up with how they could see themselves in photos/pictures if the students weren’t actually who they thought they were - about how their brain filled in the gaps and placed their own faces where they’d expect to see them (like in the funeral scene with the portraits, etc). Glad to know I was kinda right on that regard!

I really like it when they combine Junko and Tsumugi here. There’s probably something to that - when it’s Tsumugi herself acting as the mastermind, as opposed to just being ‘Junko’.

T-Those are some pretty big inconsistencies though? Why would there be incorrect options in those flashback lights in the first place? What was there to gain for their being options where ‘Ultimate Despair trapped the first class in’ and ‘Junko is the end-all of Ultimate Despair’? At least Kokichi’s made sense to have on standby, but the other stuff? Isn’t their existence a bit weird?

It’s... nice to see Shuichi focusing on Kokichi. Being posthumous and all it’s a bit late, but it’s still nice - especially after all that talk of ‘not understanding him’ and ‘the embodiment of a lie’, having him finally clue in to Kokichi’s real place in all of this - a victim of the mastermind - is good. It’s the perfect example of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ and Kaito figured that out last chapter, so it’s long past due for Shuichi to drag himself and everyone else to that conclusion, kicking and screaming if he must.

(he was jealous of Angie)

because he was trying to stop the game!!!!!

Which, honestly, was pretty clever on her part. I think overall Kokichi will come out of this looking the best - he had so little going for him and almost succeeded in his coup - but the fact that Tsumugi was able to counter his surprise attack still says a lot about her own intelligence and her ability to adapt, because in that moment she also had limited options.

THANK

YOU

LORD

WE HAVE GATHERED HERE TODAY TO SAY FAREWELL TO REMNANT!OUMA THEORY

REST IN PIECES AND NEVER COME BACK

Pretty damn successfully, too.

While the fact that her first inclination was to straight-up murder Kokichi was very Not Good, it’s at least good to know that it took the extra nudge of the flashback lights to push her over the precipice. Basically, it took turning Kokichi into a complete monster in her eyes - Despair with a capital D - to strip away his humanity entirely. I do wonder if she still would’ve staged a rescue mission of sorts to rescue Kaito? For that matter, I wonder if Kaito had been on the outside (with the Flashback Light used on him and everything) and it was someone else being held hostage like Shuichi, would he have been able to talk Maki down?

It’s interesting how they’re turning hope itself into a weapon here. I think Junko talked about this in the first game, the idea of giving hope out to maximize despair, so it’s not the first time the mastermind has actively used hope as a weapon - but it’s never felt quite as dirty as it does here.

!!! We’re seeing her as herself in the room!!! I guess it’s the flashback light classroom, but still!

That is so unfair considering they were all being threatened with death, you were straight up messing with their brains and also that airlock exists??? And they straight-up collapsed after being exposed to the outside??? I’m

I think Shuichi managed to break away from that a bit at the end... maybe. He seems more motivated by righting the wrong in Kaede’s case at this point, and of avenging everyone who died - but the same can’t be said of the others.

Man I even wondered what it would be like without Kaito and Kokichi there considering they’ve been the strongest ‘movers’ on both sides - and the answer ended up being ‘I’ll give you artificial motivation to act’.

SHE’S.... REALLY A KILLING GAME FAN GIRL AFTER ALL..........

Oh, this does feel dirty. She’s lusting after them in an abstract way - like pieces on a chessboard. Kokichi was able to compartmentalize and make people take certain actions to an extent, but even he had attachments that he wasn’t able to shake. I knew it felt like she had managed to keep herself from getting too close to them, with the sole exception of the protectiveness she felt for Gonta (which?? I want to know if we’ll hear anything about that specifically???) but this is... wow.

Actually, this is very Komaeda-esque isn’t it? She wants to see them succeed in their battles against each other in a similar way...

Junko only gets that look when she’s actually mad. So if Tsumugi is sporting that... well, she must be smarting a bit underneath all the gloating she’s doing. She was happily spouting off ‘hints’ before, right?

Oh??

me too tbh

OH THE TURNABOUT MUSIC IS HERE

THAT TRANSITION WAS SO GOOD AND SMART WHAT A GREAT WAY TO USE THE PORTRAIT STAND

oooh! OOOOH! OH WHAT A FANTASTIC POINT!

SHUICHI MY BOY YOU’RE ON A ROLL NOW! GET HYPED GET HYPED GET HYP -

AAAAAAAAAAH

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hajimemed

#Ryou plays drv3 #Shuichi Saihara #Tsumugi Shirogane #Himiko Yumeno #Kiibo #Keebo #Maki Harukawa #K1-b0 #spoilers #drv3 spoilers

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espship18 · 5 years ago

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Kpop ship for quentin anon

Howdy doody everyone! hah, we’re getting creative with intros now lol. Today, I have a ship for an anon who goes by quentin. If you are reading this quentin, 1) hello! and 2) I hope you enjoy <3 PS, I missed y’all :(

Based off of your request, I gathered these facts about you;

You are 5′6 and have brown hair and hazel eyes

You’re kind of introverted

But you like to let loose and have fun

You’re friendly

You have a monotone/expressionless expression not a bad thing!

You take no bs and always stands up for what’s right

You love to laugh and you can be loud sometimes

You also love making others laugh

Your interests/hobbies are: drawing, writing, and dancing

In your request you have been asked to be shipped with Day6, Got7, NCT, and VIXX! Let’s go shippin(I’m so sorry lol)

Day6: Jae

The first thought I had for you and Jae was the famous ‘American Gothic’ painting by Grant Wood. Visually, you’d both have that expressionless look on your faces but in reality, you’re actually a happy sunshine couple. As I was thinking about how you two met, I thought you starting out as roommates would be so cute and clever. You would be new in the city, and the only apartment you could afford was Jae’s and he needed a roommate. The pieces all fit together perfectly. Based on first impressions, seeing all his amps and guitars and other musical items would be a little over-whelming, but he would assure you that you would never need to mess with anything or help him- he’s a big boy. Band practice would be a little hit and miss, sometimes they would be there, sometimes they wouldn’t, then if they were, you would leave so you can get a piece of mind. The first six months of living together would be awkward and you wouldn’t talk much. However, one rainy day when both your and Jae’s plans got canceled, you would start to bond, and you two would develop a relationship. As you two would get to know each other, you two would see each others humors, and you’d see the best and worst in each other. You both would be so blunt with each other in the funniest ways, you would never take comments seriously. Slowly, as time would go on, your friendship would slowly transform into romantic feelings. Jae would be very soft for you, and you admired Jae in a way you could never fully explain, so eventually you two said you were together. You fit together like two peas in a pod and when you became official, it was very liberating. Your friends and Jae’s friends weren’t surprised, since you two fit together so well, it was a matter of time before they called it- they were all happy for you regardless. You two would also be a very domestic couple btw. Hear me out, cause this’ll sound crazy but, Jae is the best worst housewife ever. When Jae would try to do household stuff he would fail but if he wouldn’t try he would succeed. He wouldn’t be the best at cooking, but would be a really good baker. That means a lot of sugar which means a lot of random decisions, like teaching you how to play guitar. There would be a lot of screaming singing followed by that by the way. Pillow talk would be huge for your two as well! Lastly, I would like to talk PDA/affection. A LOT of hand holding. He would love the softness of your hands. He also would love to droop his arm over your shoulder, then you would hold it, you would look so comfortable, and adorable, like the king and queen you are.

Got7: Jinyoung

Much like my last ship went, there will be a lowkey theme to this ship: domestication. I don't know why I’ve been into themes recently, but it’s here. You two would be a soft couple that would love to admire one another. You two would also be an artsy couple. Rooting from a college type of au, Jinyoung’s art would be photography while your art would be writing, writing to your hearts content. Being the artsy couple you are, you two would spend so much quality time together! You two would also have your fair share of going out and being active and staying at the apartment together. Staying home isn’t always a bad thing either. You two are still equally as giggly and peppy with each other, so you two never have a dull moment and there are smiles and sunshine all around. I want to touch on quiet time real quick because I love the thought of it. Quiet time would include a lot of snuggles. Any kind of snuggles you can think of where you’re either laying on top of each other, or he’s snuggled to you, or you’re snuggled to him, SNUGGLES. Quiet time also includes you two working on your interests. While Jinyoung is on his laptop editing some pictures for his portfolio, you are right by him, jotting down the thoughts in your head, coming up with new ideas, or continuing another idea- the world is your oyster. Moving right along is date night. Park Jinyoung on date night is the best boyfriend material ever. If you’re at home, he sets up fairy lights all over the apartment, he cooks, and he gets a little dressed up. He wants to look clean for you, and just imagine forehead Jinyoung in this scenario #yesmama. Also, a little thing Jinyoung would love to do is slow dance with you. Then when you two go out, you got to so many different places- basically til you get tired and want to take a nap lol. Personally, Jinyoung would like to take you to your favorite places such as to eat or do an activity with. He would LOVE going out for karaoke, so of course you two would go out and do the stuff he enjoys too. You also have an amazing food taste, so who could argue with that, right? A lot of dinner topics include deep talks about what you want to accomplish separately and together, and you also love to talk about your futures together, a fan favorite. Then when you would get home, some major pillow talk sessions. These sessions would be more playful like small debates over how to toilet paper roll should go, a lot of giggles and smiles. Lastly more PDA. Gentle hands holding yours, he would handle you like you were made of glass. So many forehead kisses, and the sweetest eye smiles you’ll ever see.

NCT: Jaehyun

You and Jaehyun yet again scream such a soft puppy like love aesthetic and it’s hard not to uwu over it. Jaehyun is your sunshine while you are his flower, like, you to need each other. Jaehyun would be absolutely head over heels in love with you tbh, like this bub is going to FALL. You two are that type of couple that is a get and go type of couple, and the world is your oyster. Traveling would be your thing, Jaehyun would want to take you everywhere he possibly could. With his occupation being a huge help in your wishes to travel, you would get to tag along on trips and such, and you and Jaehyun would travel anytime he got free time tbh. And this is super cute, listen up. So, you two would keep EVERYTHING you would get from traveling. Whether it’s plane/bus tickets, post cards, souvenirs, and of course your pictures, everything gets saved. Everything that can be put in a scrap book goes in a scrap book. It would be super cute if you two would have little books dedicated to every trip, and you’d keep them nicely organized on a ship by date or by location. Keeping those scrap books are great for always reliving the memories you two shared. Then, if you two aren’t out and about traveling or on a date, Sunday’s are your golden days- specifically if they’re rainy or it’s winter. Those Sunday’s are your time to relax and cuddle, and you also take those Sunday’s to work on your scrap books! Jae is also the type of boyfriend that loves to take great interest in your interests. Another one of those Sunday’s include making cute little stories together. Jae would love to collab on little stories with you! Again, those rainy days are full of endless possibilities, so, if you or Jae have an idea, you best believe that you two are coming up with a full out plot and characters, and even getting as far as getting a chapter or two written down. And a lot of the time, those little stories get tossed into a notebook, and it’s always fun to forget about it then come back at a later time and find it again. Moving on, you and Jae wouldn’t necessarily have date nights. You two spend so much time together, that every time you’re together is like date night. Of course Jae will take you out on special occasions like anniversaries or birthdays, but making homemade pizza or take out it the best way for you two to go. And omg so many game nights! Card games are your shit, and tbh, UNO would get crazy. Lastly PDA wise, Jae is all about that hand holding and cheek and lip kisses. He also loves to hug you, all the time, so prepared to have a koala bear attached to you.

VIXX: Hakyeon

When I think of you and Hakyeon, you two would be the perfect wild and mild couple. Joking and cracking jokes is always a must by the way. You two have interesting senses of humor so, you two always are playfully picking on each other and being playfully sarcastic to each other. Part of that playful sarcastic antics you two would do is being overly-sensitive with each other. I know that sounds weird but hear me out. It’s super cute when you two pick at each other. Hakyeon would like to pick at your quirks- mostly because your quirks is what makes you unique and your quirks is also one of the many reasons why he loves you. When you playfully roll your eyes as he picks, Hakyeon would just smile at you and he would say “I love you”. It’s actually super soft at the end of the day tbh. And overall, Hakyeon is very considerate of you. Hakyeon is also a very protective boyfriend, and he will always make sure you know that as well. And he isn’t sorry about it either and you don’t mind it either, it helps you feel safe and wanted. Dancing together is your everything by the way. From Hakyeon teaching you a new dance to even learning new dance styles together, you two dance so much. Filming your dances together is also always a thing, you have a camera that is specifically for dancing. And it’s always fun to go back and watch those videos and seeing how much progress you’ve made since you started learning a specific dance. Also, you two are the king and queen of practice room antics. Teasing each other, pinching each others tushies(to be specific) is only the beginning. And of course, anytime you get to dance with Hakyeon’s fellow group members, you all stay in the practice for literally hours just dancing and goofing off. Learning the choreo and the boys love to pick at you, and then if you’re doing the choreo better than one of the members, you can see a roast fest in your future. Moving onto date night, date night is always a surprise with Hakyeon. Double or triple dates with your friends, or cute little pop-up dates like carnivals or little shopping trips- curtesy by your lovely boyfriend. Spoiling you is one of his specialties, he loves it so much. You’re his number one, so of course he would want to treat you like a number one. And, you are also as protective of him like he is to you. And tbh, Hakyeon would love that you are protective over him, you’re his little fire cracker. Lastly, PDA. He’s very hands on, he loves to have a hand holding something, he loves to know that you are around him. Back hugs, and forehead kisses, especially quick pecks, it’s a cute little detail enough to make an impact, because it would leave you in a flush.

~STA

#quentin anon x idol ship #kpop #kpop writing #kpop ships #kpop reactions #shipping blog #Reaction blog #day6 #got7 #nct #vixx #day6 ships #got7 ships #nct ships #vixx ships #jae #jinyoung #jaehyun #hakyeon

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breeeliss · 8 years ago

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[Miraculous Ladybug]: Misdial

now that authors have been revealed i can finally post my spring exchange fic!

this is a chlonette story that i wrote for @megatraven based on her chlonette bullet point fic (which you should totally read btw). i always love and excuse to write chlonette, so i hope you all enjoy it :)

Link to Archive of Our Own: [AO3]

Title: Misdial

Summary: When Chloe wakes up in the middle of the night, she desperately tries to call Sabrina to help her get back to sleep.

She misdials and calls Marinette instead.

Misdial

Chloe needs to hear Sabrina’s voice.

Her eyes feel heavy with the pressure of tears she’s forcing herself to swallow back, and she can hear herself pulling lungfuls of air into her chest while she yanks her phone off the charger. Her fingers are shaking so terribly it takes her four tries to correctly type her pass code, but she sees Sabrina’s name on her recent calls list and her thumb mashes down on the screen.

She presses the phone tightly to her ear and rocks back and forth on the bed as it rings once, twice, three times. Chloe thinks it must be at least two in the morning, and she knows that Sabrina isn’t ever up this late. She tends to sleep through phone calls in the middle of the night, and Chloe is prepared for the sound of her voicemail and the crippling resignation that’ll come when she’ll have to get through this alone. Chloe bites down on her lip and nods to herself. That’s okay. Sabrina needs her sleep. She understands.

Chloe’s about to give up when the sixth ring is cut off and the line picks up on the other end. She doesn’t waste time with greetings or apologies. The words are already tripping out of her mouth.

“I-I had it again,” she chokes out, her voice thick with tears. “It was the same dream again but a hundred times worse, and I woke up with my heart in my throat and there was no one around and I panicked. I-It felt really real this time, Sabrina, and I was all alone and I couldn’t hear anyone or see anyone and I feel like I’m about to throw up a-and I just…..I just, I don’t know what to do and I’m too scared to go back to sleep, please , I can’t calm down and everything feels so wrong!”

The panic in her voice is starting to make her hyperventilate, so she stops and places a hand over her mouth so she can breathe in through her nose, just like Sabrina taught her the first time she called her in the middle of the night. Chloe’s heart is still racing, as if her body still thinks she’s in danger, and she’s patiently waiting for Sabrina to respond so that she can finally relax.

She hears a voice on the other end — one filled with worry, words slurring together out of exhaustion — but Chloe freezes up in horror when she realizes that it isn’t Sabrina’s.

“Um….wha’s wrong now?”

Chloe rips the phone away from her ear and lets out a hushed curse when she realizes she hadn’t called Sabrina. She called Marinette Dupain-Cheng, phone number still saved in her contacts because of the French assignment they were paired for last week.

She hears Marinette yawning over the phone, and suddenly waves of sick humiliation are shocking Chloe out of her previous meltdown, making her throat close up and her tears run dry. The worst part is that neither of them are hanging up and the severity of everything that had just come pouring out of Chloe’s mouth is just hanging between them, heavy, shameful, and inescapable.

Chloe’s phone shakes in her hands and she doesn’t know how to work back from this. Because the parts of herself that she compartmentalizes and reserves for school don’t include weakness, don’t include nightmares, don’t include pleading for someone to listen. She’s put far too much effort towards keeping all of that exclusive only to freely hand it over to someone who’d sooner rather give her a hands on lesson in karma than bear the burden of understanding.

“Forget I ever called you!” she shouts into the phone, the crack in her voice taking away from its bite. “Forget I said anything! This never happened, and we’re both hanging up. Got it?”

She waits for an affirmative so that she can hang up, hold herself in the dark, and hope she can stop her thoughts long enough to get even a couple of hours before school in the morning. But she hears Marinette shifting and the sound of a lamp being clicked on.

“Wait wait, hold on, don’t hang up,” Marinette rushes out, her voice sounding alert and urgent. “Chloe, I don’t. I mean I dunno what’s going on really but I’ll….I’ll listen ‘til you can fall back asleep. And I guess.” She pauses to stop a yawn. “I guess I could talk to you, if you need it. I can tell you some stories or something.”

Chloe notices how smooth and calming Marinette’s voice is when she’s tired, and it’s exactly what she needs this late at night when her brain still replaying bits of her nightmare and making her want to curl up into a ball again. But Marinette sounds almost too sympathetic, and it’s odd to be at the receiving end of such treatment. It’s a pull that she’s not sure she wants to indulge in. “I-I don’t know about that.”

“I don’t mind, I promise,” Marinette told her. “It’s okay, you know. To call me.”

It’s tempting to just say no and hang up — this is Marinette, after all, and the one thing that Chloe knows about her relationship with Marinette is that they only barely tolerate each other on their best days. But Chloe doesn’t think she can fall asleep when she’s this riled up, and more than anything, she doesn’t want to be left alone in her huge bedroom with nothing to keep her company other than the sound of her own breathing. She’s reluctant to speak the words, but she clutches the phone tightly in her hands, and nods to herself to work up the courage.

“Okay.”

Chloe tells her about empty classrooms, white voids of endless space, and long lines of familiar faces — some smiling, some stoic, most sad, angry, and disappointed. She says that when they speak, no sound comes out, and when she runs to touch them, they move further and further away until they’re specks in a distance she can’t reach. When she calls for help, her throat strains and becomes sore, but even her voice is rendered silent and no help comes. So she sinks to the floor, hopeless, lost, and confused, somehow feeling more isolated than she’s felt in her life, and also no different than she feels everyday.

When she finishes, she’s crying and breathing much too quickly again. So Marinette tells her to breathe in through her nose for a count of five, breathe out through her mouth for a count of three, and starts telling her stories so that Chloe can focus on something simple.

Marinette tells her about the time she stuffed a stray puppy into her jacket when she was six and kept it in her room for two weeks before she was caught. She tells her about the six tiered cake she made her parents for their anniversary last year. She describes all of the designs she wants to finish sewing before the year is done. She even admits to the time she almost burned down the kitchen in the bakery trying to bake a baguette for the first time without supervision.

“I shoved the paddleboard in the oven to take the bread out and it comes out charred and on fire,” Marinette laughs. “So I start screaming and dump it into the sink so I can douse it with water, except the smoke alarms start going off and my parents catch me standing on the counters, waving a wet towel in front of the detector to try and clear the smoke away. Then they just stare at me for a long while before they burst into laughter right there in the middle of the kitchen.”

Chloe chuckles tiredly, and Marinette feels a small swell of pride for being able to make her laugh. “You must’ve looked like an idiot.”

Marinette grins. “I’m sure I looked like a crazy person when they found me. I was probably covered in flour, yeast, and burnt pieces of bread.”

By the time Marinette tells her about the half hour fire safety lecture that her father made her sit through after the baguette debacle, she hears Chloe’s breathing finally even out into gentle snores. She lays the phone on the pillow by her ear, and for a moment it feels like Chloe is right next to her, calmly sleeping. Marinette isn’t used to a Chloe so subdued and quiet, and she finds the sounds of Chloe’s gentle breathing incredibly relaxing.

Her exhaustion catches up to her quicker than she realizes, and Marinette closing her eyes for just a few seconds turns into her falling asleep as well.

Chloe’s alarm goes off at seven in the morning, she realizes that she’s successfully slept through the rest of the night without any troubles.

Her phone is still laying on her mattress next to her head, and she notices she’s still in a call with Marinette.

Chloe picks up the phone and can just barely hear her breathing on the other end. She wonders if she’s going to be able to get to class on time today.

She smiles, whispers a “thanks” into the receiver, and hangs up.

The energy between them is considerably subdued in class the next morning, and everyone notices.

Marinette bumps foreheads with Chloe as they try to enter the classroom at the same time, and everyone inside noticeably tenses up in preparation for the impending explosion. But Marinette merely bows her head and gestures for Chloe to go first. Chloe nods, holds her bag close to her side, and heads straight for her seat. There are no biting comments made for the entire morning — not even when Chloe comes up with a poor excuse for her missing homework, not even when Marinette’s foot hooks into the strap of her bag and leaves her half-stumbling down the stairs.

They sit next to each other during visual arts, and normally they can’t last through the period without causing at least one fight. It’s when they go through the period without even staring at each other that Alya notices something wrong.

“Did the two of you sign onto some silent pact that I don’t know about?” she asks Marinette in their next class. “Seriously, you two are normally at each other’s throat right now.”

Marinette shrugs and starts copying the day’s assignment from the board. “Just a little tired. Not in the mood.”

“That’s it?” Alya asks incredulously. “You’re a little tired…”

“Mmhm,” Marinette replies absently, and Alya knows that a satisfying answer isn’t within her reach.

Marinette darts her eyes across the aisle to see Chloe shrugging off Sabrina’s questions and Sabrina patiently nodding and settling back into her seat. Chloe looks up at Marinette’s desk and their eyes meet briefly before they both bunch up their shoulders and force their gazes away. What happened last night wasn’t trivial, and its power and importance are bleeding into their normal interactions, leaving them without the vocabulary to put a name to what this new energy is. They sprinted over a line that they silently agreed during their rivalry to never cross, and now that they’re sitting on the other side of it, Marinette finds herself feeling confused and thoughtful — perhaps even longing for something that might take a bit of courage to ask for.

When the lunch pause arrives, Chloe grabs Marinette’s wrist and pulls her aside into an empty hallway, eyeing both directions to make sure that no one has followed them, that no one can hear.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, her gaze resolutely focused on the ground by her feet. “What happened last night was a mistake and it won’t happen again. I won’t call you again.”

Marinette isn’t meant to respond, because Chloe doesn’t give her room to give one. Instead, Chloe looks up to search for any sign of protest in Marinette’s eyes, finds none, and turns to leave without waiting for any sort of answer.

She can tell that Chloe’s forced a wall between them that didn’t need to be erected, and Marinette wastes no time breaking it back down, Chloe’s ulterior motives be damned.

“I didn’t mind!” she calls down the hall, and this has Chloe pausing and looking at her over her shoulder.

“I didn’t mind,” Marinette repeats. “I meant what I said, you know. You can call me anytime.”

Chloe frowns at her — as if her kindness is a foreign taste on her tongue that she’s still deciding if she wants to swallow or spit out. Perhaps she’s decided to accept it, or perhaps a fight isn’t something she can pull out of her belt today, because she simply nods, continues on her way, and leaves Marinette standing in the hallway alone.

It isn’t until a few more nights pass that Chloe calls Marinette again.

She’s hiding under her comforter, hugging a pillow to her chest, and cursing loudly when Sabrina doesn’t pick up the phone. Chloe wants to be able to swallow her pride and not seek out any further help, but she knows that she’ll be too scared to go to sleep without someone to talk her down, so she ignores the shame creeping into her chest and dials Marinette.

She answers on the third ring. “What’s wrong?”

Chloe laughs breathlessly — both out of relief and out of a lack of knowing where to start. “Everything….I don’t know. I feel sick to my stomach.”

“Another nightmare?”

“Mmhm” Chloe hums, feeling her tears hit the fabric of her nightgown.

“It’s okay,” Marinette soothes. “You can tell me about it.”

The impulse inside of her telling her to not share anything personal with someone like Marinette is much easier to ignore tonight, and she only hesitates for a few seconds before she’s telling her about her nightmare.

She was four years old again, sitting in the vestibule of their hotel suite with her birthday dress pooled around her. Her mother was standing by the door with her back to Chloe, holding two suitcases in either hand. Chloe kept asking her to come back and open her presents with her, but her mother didn’t answer. Instead she kept her back turned and her grip tight on the handles of her bags. Chloe crawled over and yanked on her mother’s long, scarlet coat, begging her to turn around and say something to her, to at least say goodbye. But her mother simply pried her little hands off of her coat and left without saying a word. Time passes differently in dreams, but it felt as if Chloe had been banging on that door and screaming after her mother for hours, terrified that she’d finally been left alone, and that no one cared to come back and find her.

It takes Marinette almost a whole minute to respond after Chloe finishes. “What happened to your mother?”

“She and my father got divorced when I was really young,” Chloe mumbles. “They fought a lot, that’s all I remember. She moved out on my fourth birthday, and gave custody to my father.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I don’t hear from her, really, and my father never told me why she didn’t want to stay with me. She just….left.” Chloe laughs mirthlessly and scrubs a hand down her face. “I mean, that’s so fucked, right? What mother just willingly leaves her kid and doesn’t tell them why?”

Chloe leaves the question hanging, but the insecure, lonely, and confused parts of herself — tinier and younger than all the rest — already fill in the answers without her prompting. There must have been something wrong with her, something that her mother could detect even when she was too small to notice it, and it must have been enough to make her mother not want to put in the effort. It’s the same something that makes it hard to make friends at school, that made Adrien drift away from her in favor of other people, that makes the thought of losing what little she has absolutely terrifying. So terrifying that it wakes her up at night, makes her want to retch into her sink, and makes her feel so cripplingly lonely that even comfort from someone she can’t stand is better than trying to trudge through it alone.

Maybe she’s just tired and disoriented, but it’s hard to find motive for that hatred and dislike when Marinette’s voice is smooth, sweet, and easy to match her breaths to. “Do you want me to stay on the phone with you until you fall asleep?”

Chloe needs Sabrina on nights like this because she needs to know that, even in the dead of night with no one else around, someone wants to put time into her. It’s a high standard to hold anyone to. Being there for someone so fiercely is close to impossible, and Chloe loves Sabrina for being willing to try, even though she’d never say it aloud.

It’s because of a stupid accident, but suddenly Marinette’s tapped in to help lift the burden. She’ll want the reasons later, but for now it’s a delightful relief to know that Marinette is here, Marinette is staying, and Marinette isn’t going to leave.

“Yes please.”

Marinette suspects that Chloe’s mother was a rubber stopper keeping in years worth of pent up insecurities. The moment she came up, everything else came spilling out.

These aren’t like the polished, rehearsed stories Chloe tells in between classes where she is staying in beachside resorts in Sicily, going on shopping trips along the Champs-Élysées, dining with celebrities that come to meet her father. Here on the phone, Chloe is tripping over details she can’t quite remember, stuttering through memories she’s reluctant to reveal, and desperately waiting for Marinette’s hums to let her know that she’s still listening and that’s it’s still alright to continue. They sound like stories that have never seen the light, and Marinette wonders just how long Chloe’s been holding onto them.

“She sent me a porcelain doll with blonde hair for Christmas when I was five,” Chloe rambles. “A silver jewelry box when I was six. A velvet New Years’ dress when I was seven. And a gift card when I was eight. After that, she’d just keep sending cards of money until I was eleven….and then she didn’t send anything at all. It was the same week my father was away for his campaign. So my butler sat with me on Christmas Eve, and we ate alone. He cut me just one slice on my favorite cake, and I went to bed early. And I never opened my presents the next morning.”

Marinette hears the tremble in her voice. “I’m so sorry,” she breathes. “That must’ve been awful.”

“You ever see someone hit their child?” Chloe asks. “And you sort of feel your stomach turn? You feel gross and sick and you know that what you’re looking at is just wrong? That happens when I see a mom hugging their kid. Adrien understood. We used to call each other when we were younger when we had nightmares about our parents. But Adrien stopped having them a while ago, and I….I guess I felt bad for calling him.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind,” Marinette says. “Adrien loves you.”

“I don’t want to bring up awful memories for him,” Chloe explains. “That’s why I call Sabrina. She doesn’t ask questions much. She just listens.”

“And me?”

Chloe stays silent and Marinette can hear her shifting around in her bed. “You offered to let me call.”

Chloe’s stories are so horribly sad — full of loneliness, longing, and bitterness — and she wonders if it matters more to her that people offer to do things for her as opposed to simply doing what she says she needs.

Marinette smiles softly. “I did.”

Eventually, they talk themselves out and the two of them lay in silence without bothering to end the call.

Chloe can hear Marinette’s breaths getting longer and deeper and knows she’s about to fall asleep. It’s horribly late, and Chloe’s own exhaustion is starting to pull her under as well, but there’s a question mulling around in her head that she knows she’ll hate herself later for not asking. “Marinette?”

Marinette suddenly breathes in sharply, as if she were pulled out of the doze she was falling into. “Hmm?”

She thinks she has the question ready on the tip of her tongue, but she pulls it back and reworks it at the last minute, afraid of the answer she’ll receive. Nights like this feel surreal and separated from the reality that Marinette and she build up during school where everyone is privy to their interactions. It almost feels wrong to try and attach rationality to it, but Chloe needs to feel like this isn’t some cruel joke or elaborate fluke that’s going to fall out from underneath her when it’s finished playing out. It feels strange that Chloe would actually be worried about Marinette hurting her for once, but she realizes how much she’s given Marinette in just two evenings, and it’s important that she knows what all this baggage is being shouldered for.

She swallows. “Why are you doing this for me?”

But her answer doesn’t come. Marinette stays silent, and after a few minutes pass, Chloe realizes that she must have already passed out on the other end. “Guess I should’ve asked before you were falling asleep,” she jokes to no one.

Chloe cards her fingers through her hair, the anticipation built up in her loosening and releasing into a mix of relief and disappointment. “Whatever,” she sighs. “I guess it doesn’t really matter now.”

She checks the clock and calculates that she’ll get in about three good hours of sleep before school in the morning, and immediately dreads the news. She knows Marinette can’t hear her, but she whispers to her over the phone anyway. “Thanks, though. Night.”

She drops the phone on the pillow next to her and stares at the molding on her ceiling. Her body is already begging for rest, and it doesn’t take long before she’s falling into a dreamless sleep.

Marinette waits for the line to disconnect before she locks her phone and places it on the night table behind her. She flips onto her back and stares at the few stars she can see through her skylight, knowing that being able to stay awake in class tomorrow morning was going to be close to impossible.

She chews on her bottom lip — Chloe’s question still echoing in her head — and wonders herself what the answer to it could possibly be.

They’re both still silent the next day at school, but when their eyes catch in the middle of class, they don’t rip their stares away.

It’s as if Chloe’s trying to attach the voice to the face — to convince herself that the same Marinette who sits in that seat in class everyday is the same Marinette who is patient in the late hours of the evening and is willing to lull Chloe with silly tales and comforting words that she’s not obligated to give. It’s a looming enigma that she craves a resolution for, and she knows without having to see it for herself that her eyes are imploring, almost as if she’s silently asking the question again and begging for a response.

But Marinette gives none, and instead stares back at her looking unabashedly apologetic. Despite her lack of answers, Marinette doesn’t attempt to shy away from Chloe’s prodding. Chloe hopes that it’s a sign she’s just as confused as Chloe is — perhaps wishing she had something to give but is reluctantly coming up short — but she realizes that the one shortcoming in all this is that, despite two nights of talking, they don’t really know each other very well. So all Chloe can do is hope she’s reading Marinette correctly and isn’t setting herself up to be disappointed, or worse, humiliated.

They’re eyeing each other long enough for Sabrina, Alya, and even Adrien to notice. It isn’t until their teacher snaps at both of them to keep their eyes up front at the demonstration that they both square their shoulders and leave the uncertainty dangling.

Chloe doesn’t have a nightmare that night. Instead, she finds herself unable to fall asleep, and she just needs noise to fill up the room. She calls Marinette and puts her on speaker phone.

She doesn’t have the time to open up with a lame excuse for her call when Marinette interrupts her and says, “I do it because I want to do it.”

It sounds rushed and breathless, like Marinette had to force all the words out for fear of bottling them up again. Chloe sits up and puts the phone closer to her lips. “...what?”

“Me, talking to you?” Marinette explains. “I do it because I want to. I mean. Does there have to be some other, more complex reason for that? I want to help you if you’re feeling so bad. I want to be there if you need someone to talk to. So as long as you keep calling, I’ll….I’ll keep answering.”

Chloe clutches the fabric of her pants. “You care that I’m feeling bad and that I need someone to talk to?”

Marinette makes a shocked noise. “Of course I do. Why would you think I’d never care about your pain?”

“Because we don’t care for each other in general,” Chloe replies. “I just assumed it all carried over.”

“This has nothing to do with school. It has everything to do with making sure that you have someone to support you when you need it. Everyone deserves that. You deserve that.”

In the past, Chloe has always resented that do-gooder, selfless, and morally upstanding personality that Marinette touted about so often. It’s always felt like a demand for attention, and Chloe resents anyone who would try to make her feel invisible and ignored. It’s never appeared like a sacrifice until now, never appeared like a sincere and effortful desire to want to make a difference that has nothing to do with herself. That’s the sort of thing Chloe admires Ladybug for — for helping people because it’s what should be done and not for any other reason.

But Ladybug is a superhero. Marinette isn’t. Somehow, that makes the admission feel much heavier.

“Oh….” she mumbles. “Um. Thanks.”

Marinette chuckles. “No problem.” She clears her throat. “Ah, I’m sorry, I cut you off. Did you have another dream?”

“No,” Chloe says. “I just….felt like calling.”

“Do you still want to talk?”

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

Marinette rolls onto her stomach and covers her mouth to smother her laughter. “Wait, how long were you wearing that around the house?”

“At least until I was ten,” Chloe admits with a chuckle. “I really liked bees. They were selling these stupid bee antennae headbands in front of a craft store and I thought it was the coolest thing on the planet. I slept in them.”

Marinette wishes she had pictures to show, because the imagery alone is enough to shave off most of the threatening and cruel front that Chloe loves to put up in front of her. “And your father let you do that?”

“He didn’t want to see me cry,” Chloe shrugs. “I sort of think he was out of his element raising me so he just gave me anything I asked for because he didn’t know how to shop for me. One time I asked him for this really specific makeup kit for my birthday, and he just bought all fifteen of them because he didn’t know which one I’d like better.”

“Well, he’s….trying.”

“I mean, I can’t even complain. Talk about having perks.”

“Yeah, I imagine being filthy rich helps.”

“Oh come on, your parents never spoiled you on holidays?”

“Not until recently, actually,” Marinette thinks back. “And by recently, I mean we’ve only really splurged the last three Christmases or so. My parents started the bakery up when I was around two I think? So money was tight until we were in the black, and we kinda just kept up the whole frugality thing for a while. One Christmas present, one birthday present, no extraneous expenses, shopping off season, things like that.”

Chloe pauses. “Oh….um….I didn’t — ”

“Don’t worry about it,” Marinette assures. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. That’s why I started babysitting. Gave me a ton of extra spending money.”

“How’d your parents start the bakery?”

“They pooled together all their savings for a lease and one oven. After that it was just a matter of getting in customers to make up the difference. My father was always sure it was going to work out, but my mother was a lot more intense about it if that makes sense.”

“Like she took it more seriously?”

Marinette hums. “Not more seriously, per se. My father was plenty serious, he was just more easy going and optimistic about it. My mom’s like me — she’s a major perfectionist. She was spending nights staying up late getting recipes just right so that people would buy our stuff. She didn’t want to make a mistake, and she wanted everything to be just right so that we wouldn’t lose any money. She was a lot more paranoid about losing what they had.”

Chloe snorts. “And that’s like you? You don’t strike me as the paranoid type.”

“I try to keep my cool about it, but no, I freak out about everything,” Marinette sighs. “I have to keep a color coded calendar to make sure I’m on top of Class Rep stuff, I start designs over if one stitch is crooked, I study until I fully understand everything and get all the practice problems right, and….I dunno, I get really annoyed with low grades. Makes me feel like I didn’t try hard enough.”

“Jesus….” Chloe comments. “You do fine in school though.”

“I do fine because I study my ass off. And I’m not really a natural at designing. I’m good at it because I worked hard at it.”

“See, I’m not like that.”

Marinette frowns. “Yeah, Sabrina does all your homework.”

“Yeah, but you don’t get it, I can’t force myself to do stuff like projects and homework and studying. It’s just so pointless, you know? Like I don’t get wasting my time doing homework assignments and projects if I understand everything already. Sabrina offers to do it, and I don’t say no because she likes it. But I could be doing something that doesn’t make me want to shoot my brains out. Plus I do fine on tests anyway, so I don’t know why teachers complain about me so much.”

“I always thought you get high scores because you cheated off Sabrina.”

Chloe scoffs. “Give me some credit. I’ve only ever done that twice, and it was because I forgot to study or studied the wrong thing or something. I do fine on tests.”

“So you getting like the top three scores in the class is just you being a secret prodigy?” Marinette smirks.

“What do you mean secret? I’m freakin’ brilliant, that’s not a secret.”

Marinette laughs again and smiles brightly when Chloe joins her over the phone. She doesn’t think she’s ever heard Chloe laugh in a way that wasn’t derisive or mocking. It’s a nice, relaxed sound and Marinette finds herself wishing she could hear it more often. “I feel like I owe you an apology.”

“For what?”

“I dunno,” Marinette mumbles. “I feel like I had you pegged all wrong this whole time. Like with school. I sorta just thought you were being lazy and conceited. Didn’t think you studied to be honest.”

“My father would kill me if I flunked out of school, Marinette,” Chloe says. “But….I guess I can say the same for you. I just thought you were a natural at everything and loved to show off about it. Didn’t think you were the type of person to kill yourself to get everything done.”

“Well, that’s what happens when two people don’t talk to each other, I guess.”

“Yeah….”

Marinette remembers Nino telling her that he and Chloe were in école together, and she was pretty normal. It wasn’t until they all started coll ège — right around the time Chloe’s mother stopped sending cards, Marinette realizes — that she started being so nasty to everyone, especially Marinette. Although, considering Chloe’s admission just now, Marinette thinks that suddenly makes a whole lot of sense. It’s not enough for her to excuse all the horrible behavior, but being able to just talk to each other like this and learn more about the other makes their rivalry, which had before been so positively perplexing, deceptively simple to comprehend.

Along the same vein, Chloe wasn’t as simple a person as Marinette thought.

It’s hard to force someone like her into a box when Marinette takes the time to realize that Sabrina is her only real friend and she frequently has nightmares about being alone and abandoned. It’s impossible to scrounge up the energy to continue such a ridiculous rivalry when Marinette now has all these pieces of Chloe to carry with her.

At that moment — exactly two weeks after their first call — Marinette feels something shift between them.

“Marinette?”

“Sorry,” she apologizes. “Spaced out for a second.”

“Are you falling asleep? I can hang up.”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Marinette assures. “I don’t want to stop talking yet. Unless you do.”

“No,” Chloe grins. “I’m good.”

It feels so silly to ignore Marinette in school now.

Chloe knows and understands too much about her for there to be any heart behind the antagonizing act that used to be so much fun to keep up. Plus, if she’s being honest with herself, she doesn’t want to keep it up anymore. It’s on par with publicly embarrassing Sabrina and putting her down for everyone to witness. Despite what others in class may think about her, Chloe is loyal, and she does her best to keep those who matter in a higher regard than everyone else. Marinette has slowly and carefully slotted herself into a category with two other people who matter to her greatly.

“Can I run something by you?” Chloe mutters to Marinette as they sit next to each other in visual arts.

“No, I’m not changing my mind, Erin didn’t deserve to win Project Runway.”

“We are not talking about that again. Plus, her line was amazing and you’re really just being immature right now.”

Marinette lifts her head from her work to smirk at her. “What is it?”

Chloe stares down at her sketch and shrugs her shoulders, trying to seem nonchalant. “Don’t you think it’s kind of weird we don’t really talk to each other in school?”

“We’re talking to each other now.”

“Yeah, because we’re doing a project and we have to. That’s not what I meant.”

“Wait….you mean like….like just in general?”

Chloe can feel her face getting warm and she shifts her hair over one shoulder so that Marinette can’t see her ears getting red. “Forget it. It’s stupid.”

“No, I wanna hear,” Marinette asks, moving her chair a few centimeters closer. “You want us to talk more?”

“Yes and no,” Chloe sighs. “I just….I dunno, I’ve been thinking and it’s kind of obvious that our whole ‘make each other’s lives miserable’ shtick got old already.”

Marinette sucks on her bottom lip. “Yeah, I guess it did.”

“So,” Chloe continues, “I just figured that we might as well make it an official truce.”

Chloe isn’t sure what she was expecting as an answer, but it certainly wasn’t Marinette beaming at her with all of her teeth showing and bouncing excitedly in her seat. “Oh my gosh,” she whispers, “you wanna be friends!”

“Shut up!” Chloe snaps. “Stop making it sound so sentimental.”

“But that’s what it is, right? You wanna be friends! Like say hi to each other in the mornings, make small talk in between classes, study during library blocks, and cute stuff like that.”

“Oh my God , forget I asked.”

“No, no, no!” Marinette laughs, placing a quick hand on Chloe’s arm that feels very foreign but not at all unpleasant. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tease too hard. But I’d like that!”

Chloe nervously twirls her pen in her hands. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Marinette agrees. “I feel like it makes sense at this point. We already talk so much over the phone, it wouldn’t feel weird or sudden at all. Besides, I like talking to you if that wasn’t already obvious.”

It’s strange being at the receiving end of Marinette’s kindness when it’s in the form of touches and smiles. It’s much different than her words said over a phone when Chloe can’t see or be near her, and it feels intimate in a way she hadn’t expected it to feel. She hadn’t bothered to notice before but Marinette with a smile on her face — apples of her cheeks high and blushing — is simply pretty, and it warms Chloe’s entire chest to know that Marinette is reserving such a pretty smile for her because she actually enjoys talking to her. Chloe has always envisioned the two of them hating each other for eternity, and all of this pleasantness is a development she never would’ve expected and certainly doesn’t know how to handle yet.

All she knows is that she wants to keep Marinette smiling at her like this. She doesn’t want to lose something that feels this nice.

“Perfect,” Chloe grins back. She holds out her hand. “So truce?”

Marinette smirks and shakes it in agreement. “Truce. Although I hope this doesn’t mean we have to stop bickering. Bickering with you is quite fun.”

“Oh please,” Chloe chuckles, leaning in closer to whisper conspiratorially so that no one else can hear. “Don’t think this means I’m just gonna hand you my good graces on a silver platter. I will still work to kick your ass and everybody else’s asses when I have to.”

Marinette cups her chin in her hand, looking positively smug. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from a person as competitive as you.”

Chloe sticks her tongue out. “Winky face emoji.”

Marinette suddenly looks taken aback and stares back in amusement. “What?”

Chloe frowns. “What?”

“Are you being cheeky with me?” Marinette gasps in delight.

“Shut up .”

Marinette pouts and hangs her head to the side like a kicked puppy. “Frowny face emoji.”

“See, now you’re just being childish.”

Marinette winks. “You get a kick out of it, admit it.”

“I can already feel it. You’re just going to start being a completely different brand of annoying, aren’t you?”

“Hey, I never said you were getting any silver platters from me, either.”

Marinette ignores the incredulous stares from her classmates as she walks towards Chloe’s desk the next morning and gently squeezes her arm. “Hey, Chloe.”

“Morning, Marinette,” Chloe smirks. She turns in her seat and catches Marinette’s hand. “Oh! Before I forget. I found that old maths study sheet my tutor gave me a couple of weeks ago for the next unit. I have it photocopied if you want it.”

“Oh seriously? That’d be amazing thank you. I’ll have your croissant payment tomorrow in exchange, I promise.”

Chloe pouts. “Ooh, put a chocolate one in there for me?”

Marinette rolls her eyes affectionately. “I’ll remember.”

“Thank you!” Chloe grins and lets Marinette go so that she can sit in her own seat.

There’s a hilariously long silence that permeates through the classroom while the two of them start to get their books out for the next lesson. It lasts about twenty seconds before Alya cracks and breaks the silence.

“What in the holy fucking hell was that!?”

About a month later, Chloe notices that she can’t remember the last time she’s had a nightmare. But calling Marinette every few nights to talk themselves to sleep has become a habit that Chloe still hasn’t broken.

It never occurs to Marinette that Chloe’s cease fire would ever extend to the rest of their classmates until Chloe is leaning across their study table, tapping Rose on the arm, and complimenting her new haircut.

Rose reaches behind her to rub at the back of her head. “Really? Oh, I’m so glad to hear, I’m still getting used to it.”

“It’s nice,” Chloe shrugs, as if she doesn’t realize the weight of what she’s done. “Looks better when you keep it short in the back.”

Rose giggles and thanks Chloe before smiling down at her assignment and humming to herself while she works. Marinette shoves her elbow into Chloe’s side and raises an amused brow at her, but Chloe merely sticks out her tongue, rolls her eyes, and turns back to the geography assignment that Marinette spent close to an hour over the phone last night convincing Chloe to attempt.

Sabrina, on the other hand, leans over from the other side of Chloe and mouths a surreptitious “oh my God” before darting her eyes towards Chloe and covering her mouth in shock. Marinette’s shoulders shake as she laughs silently in return, trying to not make a bigger deal out of it so as to avoid Chloe’s annoyance.

She plays a small game with herself where she tries to count the amount of times Chloe picks a fight, throws an insult, or mocks someone in their class over the course of the day. With the exception of a brief tantrum over their upcoming maths test and a snappy insult aimed at Alix when she told Chloe that her makeup was clashing with her clothes, Chloe is on her best behavior. Marinette can’t even attribute it to a lack of opportunities. Nathanael clipped shoulders with her in the hallway that morning, but she merely rolled her eyes and said nothing. When Nino gently teases her for the late slip she gets after coming back from their lunch pause too late, she merely gives him a quick bras d’honneur without the teacher seeing and hurries to her seat without any words spoken.

It certainly isn’t perfect, but Marinette knows Chloe enough to discern containment and control when she sees it, especially coming from someone who usually bursts from the seams with contempt and desperately begs to be seen. The timing of all this is not lost on her either.

She thinks that it shouldn’t be easy for Chloe and Marinette to be huddling together in the hallway, shoulders pressed together, gushing over the Fall makeup line that Chloe had been praising last night on the phone. But the gigantic rift that’s separated them for years has suddenly been filled in one fell swoop, and Marinette is still sitting in awe at how something so incredible could have happened. It feels like a slate that was never meant to be filled in the first place has finally been cleared and everything is as it should be.

It sounds narcissistic, but Marinette can’t help but wonder if their new friendship is pivotal in some way — central in a way that Chloe’s friendships with Adrien and Sabrina haven’t been. All of that hatred that Chloe had thrown her way for so long suddenly feels like a veneer covering something deeper that she never planned for Marinette to see.

A veneer for dreams, fears and thoughts — maybe even something far more precious that Marinette hasn’t even gotten the chance to see yet.

Things start to shift when Marinette drapes her arm over Chloe’s shoulder for the first time.

They’re sitting on the steps in the courtyard crouched over Chloe’s phone while she scrolls through all of the new Ladyblog footage posted last night. She’s tapping her screen in frustration, trying to get the next video to load, when Marinette slides her arm around Chloe’s shoulders, leans in close, and swipes her fingers across Chloe’s screen to try and get the video to buffer more quickly.

It makes Chloe raise a brow, but she doesn’t bother to say anything about it. She sees how clingy and affectionate Marinette and Alya can be, and it’s easy to chalk it up as lingering muscle memory bleeding into her interactions with Chloe. Besides, it’s not a bad thing and something as innocuous as an arm over her shoulder doesn’t seem like something worth getting worked up over.

But when they’re staying after school to study off the detentions they both got for that day, Marinette dozes off in the middle of her French reading and drops her head on Chloe’s shoulder. Chloe’s suddenly aware of their thighs pressing together under the table, of her hand just barely brushing against Marinette’s, and of the feel of Marinette’s warm cheek against her bare shoulder. She doesn’t know why a head on the shoulder feels more intimate than an arm around the shoulder, but it simply does. It makes her smile, brush Marinette’s hair out of her eyes, and lean her head against hers as she keeps reading and annotating her book. It’s so different from a friendship that exists in words and thoughts — this feels unmistakable, something that no one looking from the outside in can possibly deny.

Sitting like this feels so clean and simple. There is nothing to decode and no ulterior motives to sift through because somewhere along the way Marinette has started to look at her with pure, honest sincerity. Marinette’s already told her that she does things because she wants to, and not because she’s trying to achieve an end or intrude where she isn’t welcome. Their friendship isn’t heavy with uncertainties — it simply is, just like Marinette snoring on her shoulder simply is.

Their fighting was always something Chloe wanted the whole class to witness, so that no one could possibly misunderstand where they stood. She wants to do the same thing again.

So when she sees Marinette in the morning, talking to Alya near the entrance to their classroom, it’s so easy and so lovely to just wrap her arms around her waist, rest a chin on her shoulder, and compliment her on the fishtail braids she’s decided to wear to class. The best part is that Marinette doesn’t even bat a lash despite the incredulous and amused look that Alya gives them. “You told me I’d look good in them,” Marinette says as she gently knocks her head against Chloe’s. “I thought I’d try them out for a couple of days.”

Chloe hasn’t gotten the chance to experience something this fresh in a long time. She loves being able to give her a peck on the cheek as they say goodbye for the day and know that Marinette is only going to smile back. She loves seeing Marinette come towards her and warm in anticipation for the feeling of their arms linking as they walk to class. It’s still such a beautiful thrill to be able to just touch her and know that it isn’t strange or wrong.

It’s such a sweet relief to know that Marinette is always there.

“Okay, if I outlined Chapter 10, Sabrina outlined Chapter 11, and Marinette photocopied all of the practice problems from the past month, what the hell are you contributing?”

Chloe looks up from filing her nails. “I’m your calculator, sweetheart.”

“I know this is a bit of a learning curve for you,” Marinette explains, “but Chloe’s actually really good at maths. Like. Really good.”

Alya shakes her head. “No, I call bullshit. Because you don’t do a scrap of homework. And you’re always getting marked down for not submitting corrections.”

Sabrina starts shuffling through all of their notes and pulls out a worksheet covered in eraser marks and cross outs. “This was the homework problem you were having trouble with, right Alya?”

“Yeah….”

Sabrina slides the sheet over to Chloe and pulls out a timer on her phone. “Ready, Chlo?”

“Yup, I’ll tell you when.”

“Alright. Start!”

Chloe immediately picks up a pencil and starts writing out equations in the margins of the sheet while Sabrina leans back in her seat and waits. “Her maths tutor used to reward her with shopping trips. Worked wonders.”

Alya turns to Marinette. “Are we serious right now?”

Marinette snorts. “I’m telling you, just wait for it.”

It only takes forty five seconds for Chloe to announce she’s finished and hand the completed solution back to Sabrina. Sabrina thumbs through her binder for the answer sheet and hands them both to Alya with a flourish.

Alya lines up both sheets, darts her eyes between both of them, rubs her eyes, and stares up at Chloe in horror. “How in the fresh hell did you do that?”

Chloe shrugs. “By doing it?”

“You two totally suck!” Alya exclaims, throwing a pencil at Marinette and glaring at Sabrina. “You’ve been sitting on a gold mine this entire time? All I had to do was be friends with Chloe for me to do well in maths?”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Chloe says, holding up a hand. “Who said I was going to help you do well? I’m not that nice.”

Alya smirks. “Oh please, ever since you and Mari have been hanging out you’re like a broken in house cat. Only scratches when her tail is stepped on.”

“I resent that comparison.”

“ C ome on,” Marinette adds, poking Chloe in the cheek. “We all agreed to help each other study. You taught me this stuff last night. You can teach Alya.”

“Um, Sabrina pays me in homework and you pay me in coffee and baked goods,” Chloe explains. “I expect payment from Alya as well.”

Alya clicks her tongue against her teeth and nods. “Alright, I’m game. You teach me all this crap….and I will let you interview Ladybug this Saturday.”

Chloe’s eyes blow wide and she sits straight up in her seat. “Shut up! The one about the akuma at the Notre Dame last week?”

“That’s the one!”

“Oh my God, deal!!”

Marinette frowns. “You pay attention to the Ladyblog?”

Chloe turns to Marinette and stares at her flatly. “Honey….don’t insult me.”

“I’ll text you details but remember you will be representing my brand and my livelihood,” Alya warns. “And you have to attend a mandatory interview question screening and pass before you get to sit in front of her.”

“Holy shit, fine,” Chloe groans.

Sabrina gets up from her seat and stares at the clock near the entrance of the library. “Alright, I’m losing steam. Someone wanna help me sneak coffee inside?”

“I’ll go,” Marinette offers. “I have to stretch my legs. Black for you Alya, right?”

“You got it, babe.”

Chloe reaches out for both of Marinette’s hands. “Wait, get me a large latte. But put two extra shots in it.”

Marinette rolls her eyes. “You had two extra shots in the last one. I’ll put in one.”

Chloe whines, pulls Marinette towards her, and links their hands together. “Noooo, this’ll be the last cup I promise.”

“Actually promise?”

“I’ll….do my best.”

“Ugh, fine. Large latte, two extra shots.”

Chloe kisses the backs of Marinette’s hands. “Thank you!”

Marinette pinches Chloe’s cheek and laughs when she bats the hand away. “Yeah, yeah. See you guys in a bit.”

Chloe blows a kiss at the both of them and turns back to shaving off one of her hangnails until Alya slaps her on the arm and stares at her smugly. “What?” she asks.

“What do you mean what? ” Alya counters. “I saw that.”

“Saw what?”

“The kissing and the hand holding and the hugging and the whole ‘ please get me a coffee’ thing.”

Chloe sniffs and raises a delicate brow. “If you’re trying to make fun of me, it’s not working.”

“No, no,” Alya laughs. “That’s not what I mean at all. I guess I’m just….still getting used to this. You guys got close awfully quick and Marinette’s been so tight lipped about it. Which is fine, but I didn’t expect for this to become so serious.”

“Serious?” Chloe questions. “Is a friendship serious to you?”

“Oh is that what you’re calling it?”

“Is there any other word for it?” Chloe turns to Alya and leans in closer to her so that they can’t be overheard in the library. “You’re getting at something. What is it?”

“Nothing!” Alya chuckles. “I’m not trying to accuse you of anything. I’m just observing. You two are really close and I’m sort of in awe about it.”

“You and Marinette are just as close if not more so,” Chloe counters.

“Yeah, but Marinette and I are just friends.”

“So are we!”

“I’m not denying that,” Alya says, cupping her elbows. “But I’m a reporter, and I also have eyes. So I can tell when things are a little more than that.”

Chloe bites her lip and starts fumbling around with her nail file. “I don’t know about that…”

“Why not?”

Anticipating more than what they have — whatever form that may take — isn’t something Chloe is interested in. For once, she has no desire to be greedy and ask for more. Marinette isn’t easily replaced, and there is still the paranoid, terrified feeling in her chest that wonders if she’s still capable of scaring her off somehow. Marinette tells her often that her mother leaving and Adrien growing closer to Nino instead of her isn’t due to an inherent fault of hers, and Chloe does her best to try and make her body believe it. But the fear has been dwelling there for years, and it’s a hard one to shake, especially when Marinette’s companionship still seems like an almost godly stroke of luck that Chloe doesn’t want to lose.

“Don’t break what isn’t broken,” Chloe finally responds. “Especially when it’s one of a kind.”

“What makes you think you’re gonna break something?” Alya frowns. “Feelings like that aren’t destructive, they can’t break anything. Marinette would agree, I know it.”

“We haven’t been friends for that long and I don’t want to start putting pressure where it doesn’t have to be,” Chloe sighs. “Besides, we both hated each other for almost three years before this, it’s kind of hard to expect so much to change in that short a time.”

Alya tilts her head and stares at Chloe strangely. “Marinette never hated you.”

Chloe scoffs. “Are you senile? Of course she did. We both did. That was kind of our thing.”

“She may not have liked how rude and mean you were, and she may have thought you were stuck up and entitled,” Alya explains, “but she never hated you. If anything, she was always trying to figure you out.”

“Figure me out?”

“I’ll admit,” Alya begins, “Marinette is a huge reason why I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt right now. I admittedly never liked you much until recently, but I’m sure that feeling was mutual. But Marinette wasn’t like me. She always had these theories about why you did and said the things you did. I swear, after your worst fights, once she got all the angry tears out, she’d feel sorry for you. Because she always thought there had to be some horrible thing that explained why you treated her that way.”

Chloe lets out a breath she doesn’t realize she’s holding. “She….never told me that.”

“Eh, not surprised,” Alya laughs. “She’s notoriously horrible at articulating herself when it comes to how she feels. She shows it better than she tells it.”

“She wasn’t showing me that,” Chloe insists. “I swore she hated me.”

“That’s because you seemed to legitimately hate her back and I think that blinded you. And hey! I get it! Things are different now. But, that’s not what I wanted to tell you.”

“Well, then what’s your point?”

Alya leans over and places a comforting hand over Chloe’s. “I mean that Marinette’s a very honest person. She wears her heart on her sleeve, and even though she’s not good at articulating her feelings, she isn’t subtle about them in the least. Getting good at reading her is the best way to understand her. So if you’re feeling something from her, it’s not your imagination.”

Chloe never really took the time to wonder about what she’s been feeling, only that what she’s feeling has been warm and inviting and she doesn’t want to lose it. They’ve been calling it a friendship because that’s what the two of them proposed when they were sitting together in class and deciding that they could not lie to themselves about what they have now become. But Chloe isn’t close with many people and isn’t used to this complicated process of decoding what things mean. Differentiating friendship from other more powerful things seems like an advanced skillset that Chloe will privately admit she lacks. The advice is appreciated, but now it just leaves her whirling.

Alya sees the confusion on Chloe’s face because she squeezes her hand and waits for Chloe to meet her eyes. “Look, I get it,” she tells her softly. “I do. Just don’t hold yourself back because you think you’re picking up the wrong signals or because you’re afraid you’re going to ruin something. If you see something, or if you feel something, I think you should pursue it. For both of your sakes.”

One weekend, Chloe’s father is away on business and Sabrina is having dinner with her parents. So she calls Marinette and asks her if she wants to come over, simply because it’s depressing to be in the hotel suite all by herself.

Marinette hesitates only because of the novelty of the invitation, but she has nothing better to do this weekend, so she packs an overnight bag and tells her mother she’ll be home tomorrow afternoon.

Chloe opens the door to her bedroom sans makeup, hair down, and in a fluffy, yellow robe that seems like the perfect thing to wear when you want to spend a day laying about. It’s a charming image that Marinette allows herself a few seconds to burn into her brain so that she’ll never forget it and always be able to think back fondly on. She kisses her cheek and offers her a box of macarons and a small stack of romantic comedies as payment for her entry.

They spend most of the day curled up in blankets and lying on the mounds of pillows on Chloe’s bed while they cackle through movies and gorge on sweets, ignoring the guilt gnawing away at their stomachs the more they indulge. They sing loudly along to musical numbers, attempt to quote entire scenes from memory, and play silly little Rock, Paper, Scissors games to choose the next movie.

Eventually, they decide to stream a season of an old sitcom they haven’t seen in years. At some point, Chloe’s head ends up in Marinette’s lap, and Marinette is massaging the tips of her fingers into Chloe’s scalp while idly twirling the ends of her hair in her other hand. During boring episodes, they simply sit there with each other and talk as the sun slowly dips below the horizon outside and makes Chloe’s room darker and lit only by the illumination of the television on the wall. By the time it’s midnight, Chloe is dozing off in Marinette’s lap. Their hands are interlocked, and Marinette keeps rubbing her thumb along the inside of Chloe’s palm to lull her into a calm sleep, free of awful dreams and intrusive thoughts.

She lets the last episode end and nudges Chloe awake, suggesting they should probably turn in for the night.

“Um,” Chloe mumbles tiredly. “I guess you can take my bed. And I’ll just take the chaise.”

“Why the chaise?” Marinette frowns.

“You’re the guest,” Chloe shrugs. “Plus you’ll have more room.”

Marinette shuffles her bare feet against the carpet and tugs at the hem of her t-shirt. “I-I don’t….I mean, if you’re okay with it I don’t mind….sharing the bed. It’s big enough for us both.”

Chloe stares at her with wide eyes and then slowly turns towards her bed. “Y-Yeah. That’s fine.”

They crawl into Chloe’s bed and curl up on their sides to that they’re facing each other. This is usually the time of night where one of them initiates a nighttime call, but this is the first time that they can do it in person. It feels just as private with the added pleasure of being able to see Chloe’s cheek smushed against her pillow and watching her eyes grow soft as they search for something to say. Marinette quite likes being able to lay here with her like this. It shaves away all of the harsh, defensive edges that still sometimes crop up while she’s around others in school and leaves the two of them suspended in a small, private little moment that only ever has to make sense to them.

Chloe pulls the comforter under her chin. “This isn’t weird, right?”

“No,” Marinette whispers. “Why would it be weird?”

“I dunno,” she admits. “I’m sort of still waiting for us to hit a point where we just stop clicking. Or hit another snag. And go right back to where we started.”

“Why? Did I make you think that?”

“No. Opposite actually. I think it’s just a force of habit. It happened with Adrien a little. Not that I mind, he deserves to make friends but….”

Marinette shimmies closer to her and grabs Chloe’s hand in her own. “You’re afraid I’m gonna leave you.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Chloe protests weakly. “You’re here, and you don’t flinch away, and I like it. It feels nice. But I don’t want to do anything to push you off. I have a habit of doing that.”

Her vulnerability seems so untapped when it’s laid out in front of Marinette like this, and it’s so easy to stop living in a past full of ugly moments and simply hold what’s in front of her in her hands and promise to keep it safe and unmarred. She understands the insecurity. She doesn’t want to lose this either. Marinette takes the hand she’s holding and holds Chloe’s knuckles to her lips. “I don’t put effort into things that aren’t worth it,” she explains. “Remember what I said when you asked why I let you call me?”

Chloe nods. “Because you wanted to. You wanted to help.”

“That hasn’t changed. I want to be here. I want to do this. I want to do things like this with you. I wouldn’t be doing any of it if I didn’t like you.”

She realizes in that moment she’s never really vocalized this in a manner so straightforward, and it feels almost silly that they’ve skirted around the words. She smiles and says it again. “I like you, Chloe.”

There’s a long moment where Chloe doesn’t say anything — just stares at Marinette with her mouth pulled into a small ‘o’ and her fingers clutching even tighter onto Marinette’s. Her head shifts against her pillow as she moves closer to Marinette until their knees are knocking together under the covers and Marinette can feel Chloe’s exhales against their hands. “Doesn’t that feel strange on the tongue?”

Marinette grins. “Not strange. Just different. Good different.”

Chloe bites her lips and pulls Marinette’s hand back so that Chloe’s lips are pressed against the tips of her fingers. “I like you too,” she mumbles, so softly Marinette almost doesn’t hear. “And your company. And your talking, and just….being not as terrible as I always thought you were.”

She feels her chest fill and suddenly she’s too excited to fall asleep. “That means a lot.”

They talk until the gaps in between Chloe’s curtains starts to turn from black to blue and the occupants of the hotel below them are only just beginning to stir to life. At some point Marinette’s hand moved to rest on Chloe’s hip, and one of Chloe’s legs had slipped in between her own. They’re both blinking against the desire to fall asleep, and Marinette knows that they’ll inevitably sleep well into the afternoon, skipping breakfast and staying wrapped in their blankets like they usually do when they talk late on the weekends. The covers are warm, and Chloe is warm, and Marinette dreads the moment when she’ll have to move.

She’s almost asleep when she hears Chloe sleepily say, “I’m sorry, by the way. For everything. For the past three years. For just….all of it.”

Marinette squeezes Chloe’s hip. “I know.”

Lately, Chloe’s thoughts have been drifting to Ladybug.

Chloe has never genuinely admired someone before. There have always been people she liked, people she respected, and people she loved, but not anyone who represents everything that Chloe wishes she could be. Because Ladybug is willing to risk her life to save people because it’s the right thing to do and for no other reason. She’s such a young girl under that mask, and Chloe knows that she must be scared and daunted sometimes. Any normal person would. But Ladybug cares fiercely for her city, cares fiercely for the people in it, and stands up to forces and evils that she can’t even comprehend and swears to rid them for the safety of those she’s sworn to protect.

Seeing Ladybug face up against Hawkmoth on the very first day of her appearance took Chloe’s breath away, and the only thing that rang through her head that day was how wonderful and beautiful Ladybug was.

It was the closest thing to love at first sight that Chloe ever had, and she wanted it desperately.

She’s always known it was a long shot, but it’s the first time that Chloe was ever willing to work for something. She wanted Ladybug to like her back, to see her appreciation, to see her adoration, and to see how much she cared for her. In the very deep, private parts of her head, Chloe always hoped that if she worked hard enough, Ladybug would feel all those things back.

But recently, Chloe’s come to admit that Ladybug’s aloofness is not only necessary but inevitable. She watches the newscasts and Ladyblog interviews where Ladybug and Chat Noir explain how pertinent their secret identities are to their safety. Silly things like love don’t fit into such a strong sense of duty, so Chloe’s slowly been realizing that her admiration will always be platonic, and from afar. Ladybug is a civilian who deserves to find love without hiding behind a mask, and Chloe knows that someone will come to her that is more within her reach.

Then, Chloe remembers a thought that she had early on in her nighttime calls to Marinette. That Marinette, just like Ladybug, was a person who cared about doing the right thing over anything else — who cared more about bringing down a frightened girl over the phone than dwelling on a rivalry.

Marinette is loud. Marinette believes strongly. Marinette has convictions that she defends with a ferocity that Chloe fears even rivals her own. Marinette tries so hard to be good, and admits that over the phone with her some nights when she worries about making sure that everyone is happy, everyone is cared for, and no one is disappointed. It’s a burden, just like being a hero is a burden, and Marinette takes it all on with a grace that Chloe’s come to find is so reminiscent of Ladybug.

So some days, when she’s watching Marinette out of the corner of her eye, she feels the stirrings of what she felt for Ladybug start to crop up whenever Marinette laughs hard enough for tears to come to her eyes. She feels it, the very thing that Alya told her to reach out and take.

But when Adrien innocently asks her in the middle of maths class whether or not she and Marinette are dating, all of those wonderful feelings suddenly paralyze her and leave her uncertain as to how to answer his question.

It was never something the two of them had discussed because there was never really a need to. Things between them formed and grew and stretched so easily and naturally that there was never any need for them to stop and question why or how. Naming things wasn’t as important as learning each other from the ground up, and pinpointing what their behavior meant wasn’t as important as simply doing and being .

But Chloe can see the the benefit of having just a small touch of clarity. She knows that, if she lets herself, she’ll start reaching for something in the distance that she’ll realize only too late isn’t even within her grasp. She doesn’t want that to happen again. She wants to be able to want something that won’t slip away when she least expects it.

Late that night, after they’ve both been silent for almost an hour and when Chloe feels herself about to slip off into sleep, she asks, “Mari, are we dating?”

There isn’t an answer, and Chloe doesn’t expect for there to be. She always had a bad habit of asking serious questions when Marinette was already asleep. She tries to tell herself that she didn’t just do it this late at night because she was scared — because she almost didn’t want to hear the answer for fear that it would be one that she didn’t like — but she’s too tired to bother convincing herself of that. One day, she’ll get up the courage. She promises herself, right before she goes to sleep, that she’ll start taking chances, doing things that are hard, doing things that may seem scary because that’s the kind of person she wants to be. That’s the kind of person that Marinette has made her want to be.

Chloe isn’t as vapid as people like to think and isn’t as flawless as she says. If there is anything she’s learned from growing up, it’s that everyone is flawed and everyone has gaps to fill. Chloe has much to prove and much more to fix. Chloe still finds herself struggling with how to be brave for other people and not just for herself. But her misdial all those months ago feels like a sign — a second chance to make things right and surround herself with people she cares for and who care for her back. Marinette makes her want to do it. Marinette makes her feel like she can do it.

The next day, Chloe is walking to class and looks up to see Marinette dropping her bag at Alya’s feet and sprinting in Chloe’s directly. She barely has the time to lift her arms before Marinette is throwing her arms around her, burying her face in her neck, and laughing more sweetly than Chloe has ever heard her laugh before.

“Yes,” Marinette nods. “Yes, yes, of course, yes.”

Chloe doesn’t have to ask what Marinette means by the answer. She already knows.

#miraculous ladybug #chlonette #chloenette #chloe bourgeois #marinette dupain-cheng #chlonette fanfiction #miraculous ladybug fanfiction #my writing #misdial

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hencethebravery · 7 years ago

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If you're interested I'd love some fic commentary for Alive.

Oh, yes, very much so. btw, sorry to take so long answering this. I was far and away this weekend. If you’d like to read “Alive,” without my obnoxious commentary you can do so here. xo

I’m (still) doing author commentary!

One day, I plan to love so loudly, my body abandons every demon harvesting me. — Arati Warrier, “Alive”

A/N: I didn’t mean for this to happen, but this fic turned into an exploration of trauma and anxiety. The Killian in this soon-to-be universe ended up being a war veteran with OCD and illogical, rampaging thoughts and I ended up choosing the poem after the fact.

It’s a tricky thing. Once you’ve known the taste of someone’s lips and found it to be a far more momentous occasion than you had initially anticipated. Beforehand, one might think you’ll only know it the one time, and the odds of it happening again are unlikely, so… you do it, aye? Curious. How do you not do it again? That’s the question, isn’t it? Especially if it was a little bit unexpected, let’s say—it had failed to show up on the calendar for the month of June, and now the rest of your life is totally fucked to hell.

It’s not possible that anyone else’s lips could throw such a wrench into his schedule. Not even much of one, to be fair. Working freelance as he did, odd hours and odd jobs, one unexpected, life-altering kiss does not a fucked up schedule make. If anything, there was an added flair to his rather mundane existence that hadn’t been there earlier. Spike the coffee, eat an egg, walk the dog, kiss your mate, do the shopping—and what was that last thing?

You: “What was the what thing?”

Your Brother: “Kiss your who?”

Doesn’t matter. Point is, when you’re talking to your brother about sharing an all too brief kiss with the bloke you once rode the bus with, you try and keep it casual. After all, Liam Jones has no reason to know that you’ve circled June the 5th in an expensive black ink that’s bled through the page—all the way through to August, in fact, when there’s supposed to be a boat trip scheduled for the whole lot of you, and you have to ask yourself, “How do you not do it again?”

A/N: I’m really excited, because I’m in the middle of writing a tiny prequel to this fic (quite by accident), and having the opportunity to provide commentary on this is super helpful. Anyway, a lot of the anxiety and OCD-esque thoughts seen here often show up in my own brain, which is why they show up here. Sometimes if my schedule gets disrupted, even a little bit, it’ll ruin the rest of the week or the month or the year or whatever, so I ended up relying on the whole “schedule” thing a few times. Making it vaguely humorous is the only way to deal, hence, Killian treating his own coping strategies as objectively silly is a common enough mechanism.

The answer to that question is that you bloody well don’t. You keep that tongue of yours firmly ensconced inside your own mouth unless you’re shouting down bar maids or showing up your know-it-all brother at trivia night. You manage to live your life for a whole two months without screwing anything up. Well done, you.

You manage to abide by the calendar you’ve kept since naval training—the calendar that, for all intents and purposes, saved your life once upon a time. Being the roughed up, dramatic younger brother had its perks, but in the end, rampant alcoholism, a suspicious rash, and a series of exceptionally burned bridges had taught him the benefits of following a careful schedule. It hasn’t managed to buff out all the sharp corners; rum tastes too sweet and his memory is a little too good, but no price is too high when you’re trying to avoid the odd skin allergy. Which is what it was.

Regardless, August arrives and it’s hotter than the East Coast has any right to be. He’s quite confident in his assertions that even Afghanistan wasn’t this hot, and considering the fact that Afghanistan was actually hell, he’s not sure what to make of the temper tantrum that the state of Maine seems to be currently throwing.

“Just last week you were complaining about how cold it was,” comes David’s muffled voice from below deck, “enjoy it.”

David Nolan is of an optimism so profound it’s certain not to be believed. The man has thought exceedingly well of almost everyone and everything in their lives since they were children, which, to Killian’s mind, can only end badly. He’s not written it down, but it has been inscribed within the gelatinous valleys of his brain somewhere, this unspoken responsibility—don’t let it ruin him. Having people like David Nolan in the world is a very important thing, and the only way to keep them around is to have people like Killian picking up the pessimistic slack.

A/N: Killian as a black sheep has become a common trope in a lot of my OUAT fic where he makes an appearance. I love his brash selfishness in contrast with the “Charming” family’s own tendency to be selfless. I love that he probably sees it as his responsibility to use his darker impulses to help those people who have managed to retain their own lighter impulses. God. I love him so much.

“It’s my boat, mate,” Killian shouts down the hatch, “I’ll complain where I like.”

On the side of his monthly calendars there’s a designated “Notes” section, set aside for various odds and ends. He’s been known to put some poetry there on occasion, either verses he’s written or found, a phone number or two, an exceptional cocktail, what have you. For the month of August there’s a sailboat at the top (nothing too fancy), followed by wave, after wave, after wave, and then, down at the bottom, there’s a capsized sailboat. Hence, pessimism.

The heat is physically uncomfortable, to be sure, but it’s also demanding. For example, it demands that two men working on a boat out in the hot sun remove some of their clothing in order to avoid fainting or otherwise feeling ill in such unreasonable weather. This, however, requires him to confront the somewhat uncomfortable question of how he avoids doing the thing he had done only the once—with no intention of repeating said thing. His calendar said so.

A/N: @phiralovesloki loves “His calendar said so,” and I love her because she loves it so much. It’s like an endless cycle of love.

David Nolan in a t-shirt is not unlike David Nolan wearing nothing at all. If anything, it might be worse. Without the shirt, it’s almost as if he’s existing in a moment of unreality, wherein there’s nothing especially remarkable about that chest over there other than the fact that it is one. He’s got one of those too—if anything, his is better, covered in a masculine dusting of hair as it is. David’s white t-shirt looks like it’s been run through the wash a couple hundred times. There are barely-there tears at the sleeves and around the collar. Today it is stained with sweat beneath his arms and lower back.

A/N: Josh and Colin are two of the most aesthetically pleasing humans I have been #blessed to witness. I know this seems kind of like a female Gaze moment, but whatever, we deserve it. Women get “Gazed” at everyday of our lives, so it’s only fair that I write a poetical fanfiction wherein I get to think about two handsome men on a boat in tight, ratty t-shirts. Leave me alone.

The heat is overwhelming, like the desert, only there’s a wetness in the air that makes it harder to breathe. For a moment, he misses the feeling of having a gun in his hand so he grabs a beer from the cooler and holds it against his neck, his pulse tapping against the glass like machine gun fire. Interrupt.

A/N: To use the word “interrupt” in the middle of obsessive thoughts is something my therapist taught me. The more you know.

“You see those clouds?”

David’s voice is soft at his side, his own mouth wrapped around the lip of a bottle and he has to say that no, he hadn’t even noticed. The poorly drawn “ship” sailing on the pages of his calendar starts to sink in the wake of poor weather and his heart aches—keeps beating quickly in his chest and he knows a panic attack when he feels one. Inconvenient things, they seem to be.

“Killian,” David says, apparently for the second time, and he puts a hand on his shoulder. Definitely not in the calendar.

Killian doesn’t much feel like answering. Killian wants to write about the sky in his notebook. Not any sky, mind you. This sky, because it’s somewhat of a nightmare to behold. Even with the boat tied to the dock and the sight of safe, dry land in the distance, the sky at this moment is a wild thing. Moments ago, the air smelled like salt and bubbling yeast. The sun was a large, imposing spotlight on the deck of his ship, making the wood warm, their skin sweat.

In June the air smells like earth. Certain parts of the farm are freshly turned at this time of year, and no matter where you go, it emanates over the property. Through the fields, over the lake, between the trees. Over hill, over dale, point made. June is new. They are, the both of them, new. When Killian kisses David, it’s because he can no longer bear it.

“The wanting.” Answering the question, what was it he could no longer bear? Because he was starving in his little house by the sea full of dry, winter air that had given him nosebleeds. It was probably all that dirt in the air—all those trees in bloom. All that pollen in his hair, the perpetually dirty state of his hands.

The answer is a little bit dramatic, but David seems to take it in stride, either because he’s known Killian for most of his life, or maybe because he understands, either way, he smiles. When David smiles it’s a thing you don’t need to see, and sure, you should, of course you should, but Killian is exceedingly grateful that in this moment, he doesn’t need to open his eyes.

A/N: When Josh Dallas smiles it is literally like looking into the sun. That’s what this is about.

It’s his gut that’s empty, not his gaze. He is, quite frankly, sick of opening his eyes. All he needs to do is feel it, and he knows that his friend “wants” too—just as frantically, as hungrily, as poetically. He plays the follow-up question in his head on a tortuous loop the next few days. He even writes it down so he can stare at the shape of the letters and hate himself even more than he already does.

“How is it you smell like that?”

Because it is something… indescribable. He can wax poetic on the state of the air in June all he likes, he has words on words on words to describe it, but all of a sudden, the smell of this man is the scent of which he cannot seem to describe. And he answers, “Like what?” and Killian can only answer with his mouth against his, because it’s not about the words suddenly—it’s about the breath. It’s about David’s forehead against his, their lips barely touching, and he answers with a kiss because he’s a fucking idiot.

August doesn’t smell new. It smells tired. Or maybe he’s just tired. Either way, the bright, overbearing sun is lost behind a sky of heavy, dark clouds and the man at his shoulder smells like beer and sweat. Like the moth-eaten blankets he had kept below deck all winter. The trees are gone but he can still feel the bark against the skin of his back.

“We’ve got to tie the lot of this down,” he answers suddenly. He had wanted to avoid the inevitability of turning around to face him, the tree at his back—with that concerned look on his face. Killian smiles, but it’s not like David’s in June. You’d have to see it, or you wouldn’t even know it was there. “She’ll be fine tied to the dock, but I don’t want to lose any of this gear.”

He’d savor the refreshing feeling of the breeze if there were any time for it, but they seem to have run out of it, and thankfully for him, David seems to have adopted a similar sense of urgency. Moving around deck as he is, his hands wrapped deftly around thick rope, one knot after another. The thunder continues on in the distance, unperturbed, and there’s a flash of lightening that leaves an echo across a purple sky.

There’s another crack followed by a second flash, and the sky opens. Despite the maddening anxiety he has contended with all day, there is something undeniably satisfying about knowing he was right about the “shirt on being worse” thing. David pauses in his run about the deck to enjoy the torrent of rain that’s been unleashed on the two of them, a loud yell of relief passing his lips, and Killian wonders what they taste like in August. At sea, in a storm—like salt? Like rain? Like the beer they’d been drinking earlier. Like dirt, like himself, lingering on his tongue for months.

When David dashes across the deck, clothes clinging to his form, every muscle carved beneath wet fabric as if he were a statue, Killian is busy trying to forget about the sinking ship in his calendar. He’s trying to remember what it was his therapist had said about “being in the moment,” and suddenly David’s lips don’t taste like June. They taste like August, in the rain. Wet and messy and just as hungry as before.

“Aren’t you sick of it,” David not quite shouts against his lips, the rain and wind lashing against the deck, “that ‘wanting?’” He’s smiling again, that wide, sunshine-smile that he has worn everyday of his life and Killian can see it out of the corner of his eye. In between the heavy, wet drops hanging from his lashes and the hair falling against his forehead—of course he can see it.

“Yes!” Killian shouts over yet another thunder clap, both of their faces turned towards a manic sky. “Bloody exhausted!”

A/N: For all my talk about Killian Jones being a black sheep he’s also a dramatic garbage human and someone needs to make fun of him sometimes. Re: David, calling out Killian’s Extra™ ass, mumbling about “wanting,” when it’s just a kiss and he needs to fucking relax.

The sound of the storm is softer below deck, as if it were a record playing in another room. The ship tugs on her moors but she’s steady, tied against the dock as she is. The only other sound is that of the air heaving in and out of their lungs, heavy with anticipation and adrenaline.

“You smell good too,” David admits between each, tired breath, “I’m sorry I made you wait.”

“Sometimes the waiting is the best part,” Killian answers gently, and there’s something in his tone, a note of understanding that he’s impressed to find he actually believes. “I’m good at waiting.”

As David moves closer he peels the wet t-shirt off his back and chuckles, shaking his head. “No, you’re really not.” The shirt falls with a decisive, wet splat against the ground, but Killian is too distracted by the return of David’s forehead, his hand against his neck. His fingernails are short and blunt against his skin, the scratch of an almost, but he feels his skin prickle all the same. Standing still in wet clothes, the warmth of the sun a fleeting memory, he knows he should feel cold but there’s this heat inside of him—flickering and alive.

A/N: Canon tells us that Killian Jones can wait, but does he do it well? idk about that. Dude turned Emma Swan into a ship for a year.

“If that’s the case,” he whispers, his own hands hovering at his sides, “what are you waiting for?”

The kiss is gentler this time, the shelter of the cabin urging slowness, carefulness. Here, they are beyond the reach of the whipping wind and stinging rain. The gaze of a seaside town, the towering pines. Their breath is softer, less like they’re running out of time, and there’s a drag between each pass of his lips. He feels as if he’s being savored and it’s not a thing that you deny yourself a second time.

“You should—” David’s voice is rough, like he hasn’t spoken in years and Killian’s pride does a little victory dance at the thought of its return, “You should change.”

Logically, Killian knows that David means “change clothes,” he knows this unequivocally. But he also has a tendency to err on the side of unnecessarily meaningful and he takes it to mean something else. Not in a negative way, he does not, by any means, feel that David wants him to be somebody else. This he also knows, unequivocally. What he also knows, what he has come to learn, is that his heart in its current state? It’s not sustainable. “You should change,” his heart speaks in David’s voice, “you need not want quite so much, when you can so easily have it.”

A/N: That was basically a long-winded way of saying that you should stop getting in your own way, which is usually my main problem.

He shivers at the sensation of cool air hitting his bare flesh, but there’s hardly a moment to feel uncomfortable. There’s David’s hand against the soft skin of his stomach, his fingers trailing through the fine hair beneath his belly button, and the warmth, it feels as if he’s slipping into a soaking tub. The rain continues it’s harsh pitter-pattering against the side of the boat as they move towards the small bed, clumsy step after clumsy step.

It smells like dust as they land, like the attic in the farmhouse, but the pile of blankets manages to catch them just fine. The cotton, washed one too many times, coming up to swallow their legs and shoulders, keeping them in a soft, dry place. He secures his own lips against David’s jaw, that sharp corner just beneath his ear and the moan that follows is more of a feeling than a sound—more of a sob than a gasp.

When he returns to his lips to catch yet another, quiet moan, it tastes even better than it had in June, then it had above deck moments earlier. Again, indescribable, and he feels a bit frustrated by the fact that words might fail him sometimes. After all, they do sit so well on his tongue, they feel manageable in a way that his thoughts don’t, that his heart doesn’t, and without them he worries that he’ll lose any sense of control he might have.

At some point the rain must stop, but it’s hard to notice, what with the hands and the lips and the feeling of his stomach as it moves against his own, in and out with every breath, sometimes quick and sometimes so slowly he’s worried that he’s holding it. At some point, in between the feeling of David’s lips against his rib cage and his hands at the button of his jeans, the sun very briefly returns before evening falls.

It’s his favorite time of day, those few moments before twilight. The rich, buttery light of the setting sun falls through the porthole over the bed, warming their entwined bodies atop the mussed blankets. The darkness behind Killian’s closed eyes turns a muted red color, and he can feel the warmth of the sun as it slowly sets against his skin, the fleeting light of day a gentle goodbye.

The water is calm against the boat, rocking them carefully back and forth, and his mind has never been quieter. The steady torture of a mind that refuses to settle, that must be shaken up and poured out over each and every month, everyday—that must be considered and thought over and applied and re-applied. Where no one means what they say, where he rarely means what he even says, but here, in this moment between sleeping and waking, it is blessedly silent.

He hears David mutter something against the back of his neck, and he knows, even without being able to see. He smiles.

A/N: I really hope that this fic was familiar to people who live with anxiety everyday, because it was certainly familiar to me as I was writing it. I know it’s also Captain Charming and CC is magical to be sure, but I still hope all the anxiety-related stuff was interesting for people.

#@hencethewriter #attn blogging #yayimallamaagain

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