#I just cannot wrap my head around the AUDACITY some of you display on here | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mypoisonedvine · 4 years ago

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𝖙𝖜𝖎𝖈𝖊 I || professor!helmut zemo x reader

𝖘𝖚𝖒𝖒𝖆𝖗𝖞 : history is so much more interesting when he’s teaching it. you’d better be careful before the two of you end up with a history of your own.

𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉 𝖈𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖙 : 6k

𝖜𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘 : smut (incl. semi-public sex in an office and oral f receiving), significant age gap (reader is 20, zemo is 39; it isn’t actually mentioned though but it comes up in the next part), the slightest bit of angst?, nearly pwp at this point lol

You wouldn’t know it by the way you were enraptured with his lecture, but you weren’t even a history major.

Quite far from it, really, well outside of the college of liberal arts, and yet here you were in the front row, watching him gesture over a large map of Western Europe while he explained the sociocultural impacts of the Treaty of Versailles.

It was probably pretty obvious why you took such interest in all this, though. After all, you were the only one who dressed as well as he did, your blazers and skirts and loafers standing out amongst a sea of hoodies and sweats and flip-flops; and, you were the only one who paid close attention and yet never seemed to be taking any notes…

Why would you, after all? Looking away to write in your notebook would mean missing out on all the fun, and unfortunately you had found that when you copied down the words he spoke, his accent was not retained in writing.

Some kid in the back of the class had asked about his accent the first day; you thought it was kind of a rude question, if you were being honest, but he didn’t seem to mind too much (if perhaps a bit surprised that anyone cared). He explained he was from a small country called Sokovia, but that his accent was a bit unique since he spoke Russian, German, Spanish, and Italian as well.

Because of course he did. Like he was specifically designed to target all your weaknesses.

“Well, I could talk about that for the rest of the evening but I’ll spare you all and let you out a bit early today, how does that sound?” Professor Zemo offered. The other students weakly cheered, a few claps here and there as you heard binders shutting and backpacks being zipped, but you were disappointed. You didn’t want to go back to your dorm, all you were going to do there was think about him anyways.

Damn, I’ve really got it bad, you thought to yourself, shaking your head as you stood up and gathering your things, slinging your bag over your shoulder. You glanced up at the podium where another student was chatting with Professor Zemo, and either he said something really funny or she was trying way too hard to flirt with him. You rolled your eyes, irritated by the display and yet envious of her audacity to just go up there and talk to him. Imagine having a crush and actually being able to look them in the eye and hold a conversation; you could barely do that with people you didn’t happen to find attractive.

Just as you were about to make it out the door, you heard your name and spun around. You were shocked to realize it was the Professor trying to get your attention. If only you’d thought to pretend you hadn’t heard him.

“Could I speak with you for a moment?” he requested, motioning you over with two curled fingers. With a swallow and a nod, you stepped out of the flow of students exiting into the hallway and approached the desk at the front of the room.

“What is it?” you asked.

“I just wanted to discuss your most recent paper, if you have some time,” he explained, and your heart sunk. Of course it was garbage, you’d written the whole thing last minute during a near-all-nighter. “I still have the copy you turned in here in my bag.”

“Right, of course— sure,” you nodded. By now the classroom was empty spare for the two of you, your words echoing slightly; presumably that was intentional, since these places were built for acoustics, but it made you worry you’d have to hear whatever criticism he had for you multiple times.

He pulled out the slightly-wrinkled paper and took his glasses off of his vest to wear (fuck, did he have to wear the glasses, just to personally attack you?) as he glanced over the top page before folding it over the staple.

“This essay,” he continued, “it’s—”

Ridiculous. Idiotic. A blight on humanity and a waste of printer ink.

“Fascinating,” he finished, surprising you. “After I read it, I searched your student profile on my office computer—”

You gulped, trying not to take that as a compliment.

“I’m looking at your information and I’m seeing you aren’t even a history major— is this a mistake, when it says your major is computer science?”

“No, that’s my major,” you nodded.

“Well, that’s a shame,” he decided, “because you have some really interesting ideas in here, clearly you must have studied history before.”

“I mean, not really,” you shrugged. “I didn’t even care that much about history until, you know, you...r class,” you finished quickly, realizing it sounded too odd otherwise.

And that smile, the way he looked down at the floor suddenly, was he blushing? “Thank you. I’m always… glad to inspire.”

If only you knew everything you’d inspired in me, Professor.

“If you didn’t care about history, what would motivate you to register for an honors history seminar?” he asked suddenly.

“Well…” you trailed off, reaching up to scratch the back of your neck as you dodged his gaze.

“It couldn’t possibly be because I’m teaching it,” he realized.

“I came to your talk last year, the one you did about the Sokovian civil war,” you finally admitted, letting out a lungful of air as you said it and looking up at him sheepishly.

“Ah,” he nodded, “yes, that might make a bit more sense. But we still haven’t found the real reason, have we?” His eyebrow raised slightly and you felt like he was toying with you— but you liked it, the shiver that ran up your spine made that obvious. “Because the question remains of what would possess a computer science student to take time out of her busy schedule on a Friday night— if I recall the night correctly— to listen to some stuffy visiting scholar talk about a bloody war in a country she may not have even heard of before.”

“My friend brought me,” you defended.

“Under what guise?” he pressed.

“She… may have mentioned something about… a cute professor with a sexy accent…” you stammered, cringing slightly as you spared a glance back up at him. He was staring back at you with the most bewildering expression. His eyes said ‘you thought I was cute?’, and yet his smile said ‘I knew it.’

“You must’ve been horribly disappointed when I took the stage,” he finally replied, voice a bit lower, softer, not echoing around the room anymore.

“Not at all,” you returned, almost below your breath now, and suddenly you became very aware that you were standing too close to him, but you couldn’t move away, you couldn’t even look away anymore. “I’m here, aren’t I? Taking your class?”

“And you make it nearly impossible to focus, did you know that? I swear your eyes never leave me, I can feel them on me. It’s quite unfair, because I can’t stare back at you no matter how much I want to.”

Just as you looked down at his lips and back up to his eyes, which seemed to be following a similar pattern on your own face, just when you thought this might be it and you were about to do something you really shouldn’t (but really wanted to), you heard the door open behind you and you spun around so fast you nearly hurt your neck.

“Oh,” the man in the doorway mumbled, apparently surprised to see you enough to nearly drop the papers tucked under his arm. “I’m teaching the next class in here— Honors History of Islam?”

“Professor Waters, yes, my apologies,” Zemo nodded, “we were just… our discussion ran a bit long, we’ll get out of your way.”

You and Zemo awkwardly gathered your things and made a dash for the door as the older professor took his place at the podium. Once the two of you were out in the hall, you let out a sigh and gave each other a glance, like you were each waiting for the other to either acknowledge or ignore what had just (almost) happened.

“I have my next class across campus in a half hour,” he remembered suddenly, lifting his arm and pulling back the brown sleeve of his coat to look at his watch.

“Right, you should… get to that,” you nodded.

“Walk with me?” he proposed, and you hoped your smile wasn’t as beaming as it felt.

“I’d love to.”

So maybe you ended up skipping your evening class to sit in the back of his History of England course. And, perhaps, he ended that one early, too, this time to buy you coffee at the student center; and your discussion ended up going on so long that the coffee shop closed and you had to go to his office to finish the conversation.

But, in a certain sense, it could be argued that you never really got a chance to finish that conversation after all… because a few moments after he shut the door to his office, you, for lack of a better term, jumped his bones.

“Fuck,” he mumbled against your lips as you pulled him closer by his jacket, “we can’t do this.”

You nodded, reaching up to wrap your arms around his neck. “Mhm, yeah, you’re right,” you agreed breathlessly.

His hands took their place at your waist as you both stepped back, the back of your legs bumping into his desk which you jumped up slightly to sit on.

“I mean, we really can’t do this,” he continued, kissing your neck instead now while your legs wrapped around his hips, your skirt riding up slightly, your fingers fumbling with the buttons on his collar. “I want to, overwhelmingly so, but we can’t.”

“I know,” you sighed; your head fell back when his teeth grazed over your pulse, and his hand was right there to catch it and hold it up, gripping the back of your neck.

“This absolutely cannot happen,” he groaned when your legs pulled him closer, something hard and hot pressing up against your thigh through his trousers and you were really hoping it wasn’t just his cell phone.

Then he rocked his hips, just barely, and you felt the outline of the ridge of his head and it was definitely not his phone unless he had the most suggestively-shaped phone case of all time. You gasped and grabbed his face to kiss him again, shamelessly desperate now, weaving your fingers into the hair just above the back of his neck.

By now you had managed to get a few of his buttons open so when you slid your fingers down from time to time, they ran over his chest and the patch of dark blonde hair there. Funny enough, you couldn’t remember having any strong opinions on chest hair before this afternoon, but now you felt your walls fluttering around nothing.

He helped you shed your blazer just before tossing his own coat aside, never breaking the kiss, holding your face gently while he pushed you down to lay on his desk— he reached behind you to clear a few stray papers out of the way first.

Your back hit the glossy wood and his weight pinned you down, rough hands sliding up your legs and under your skirt as you tried to push your hips up for more friction where you needed him most.

He pushed your hips back down, not too roughly but definitely enough to get your attention, before sliding his hands up your skirt again where he toyed with the hem of your panties.

You wanted to say something, more specifically you wanted to beg him to touch you, but you had this fear that if you spoke now it would all become real and he would stop because, as he had so poignantly noted, this can’t happen. And both of you knew that… so maybe it would be easier to let it happen if neither of you really acknowledged it.

Luckily, he didn’t tease you too long, reaching under the fabric and swiping the rough pads of his fingers over your slickened folds. You choked on your gasp, accidentally digging your nails into his shoulders when he drew delicate circles around your clit. All at once, he suddenly pushed those fingers right inside you and your back arched; you needed so much more than just his fingers but the way they twisted and curled against your walls was nearly perfect as well.

They didn’t stay long, quickly pulling back as you watched him quickly open his trousers just before you felt the head of him pushing up to your entrance.

His eyes met yours, dark with need, yet somehow clearly asking you for permission, making sure this was what you wanted: and fuck, you wanted it more than anything. The moment that you nodded, he began to push forward— slow and deliberate, but unyielding.

Perhaps as a perfect healthy college student in a male-dominated major, you had no real excuse for it to have been so long since you’d had sex. As you liked to put it: dating as a woman in computer science means the odds are good but the goods are odd. Truth be told, you weren’t sure at this point if having had sex any time in the past year would’ve prepared you for him anyway. It felt like he was forging a new path inside you— certainly a wider one than anyone else ever had since he was so thick.

With his hips fully seated against yours, the tip of his cock just reached the end of you, just barely brushed over those sensitive spots you didn’t even know you had before.

It stung a bit to be filled this thoroughly, so it was no wonder you were biting down on your lip hard enough to bruise it, your fingers clutching at his shirt tightly.

“Am I hurting you?” he whispered, finally breaking the silence, voice strained like he was struggling just as much as you were (though in an entirely different way).

“A little,” you admitted. “Please don’t stop.”

He groaned a few curses as he started to move back, and forth, and so slow you could hardly stand it.

“Fuck,” you breathed, “oh my god, harder, please…”

A little smile crossed his face, a sharp exhale almost like a laugh, and it made your cheeks burn even hotter than they already were. But, he obeyed, regardless, more aggressive in his movements yet not any faster as he held your hips to keep you from sliding across the desk’s glossy wood surface.

Your moans were starting to echo around the office’s beige walls at this point, and he snarled as he bit down on your neck. “You need to stay quiet,” he hissed in your ear. “Can you do that for me? Can you stay quiet even when I’m making you feel so good?”

“I-I’m trying,” you whimpered, “your cock is… so deep…”

“Oh, I know,” he cooed, voice heavy with faux pity, “poor thing, you can’t take it?”

“No!” you yelped. “I can take it! Please, please don’t stop.”

“I won’t have to if you stay quiet, darling, we can’t have somebody hearing you now can we?” he chuckled, licking and sucking at your pulse point as your eyes rolled back in your head. “We can’t have somebody hearing you cry for me, and coming in here, and seeing you laying on my desk getting fucked by your professor, right?”

What the hell was wrong with you that that idea actually turned you on? Why did it actually make you want to moan louder until everyone could hear you?

And when his cock speared right against that spongy spot inside you, you did exactly that and he had to suddenly clamp his hand down over your mouth.

“Fuck,” he growled, “you’re going to get us both in trouble.”

Your attempts at apologies were totally incomprehensible with his hand over your mouth, not that they were likely to have made much sense either way.

Blinking your eyes shut, your legs began to quiver slightly as he rutted into you, your toes curling inside your loafers. You felt so full you could hardly stand it, stretched so wide that you were forced to feel every detail of his cock as it filled you. Already your walls were bearing down on him; you couldn’t help it, it was like your body was just his instrument now and instinct had taken control of your movements.

His accent was definitely stronger now as he whispered in your ear, praising you gruffly. You knew from the beginning that you loved high marks and encouragement from your teachers, but this… this was different, and you hadn't known how much it would affect you.

"Good girl," he breathed, "you're taking me so well, draga, you feel so perfect around me."

You whined from behind his hand and he chuckled at your obvious neediness.

"You like making me feel good, darling?" he presumed, his smile pressing against your neck between nipping kisses to your pulse point. "You like knowing that I can barely take this tight cunt gripping me so well, that I'm already addicted to your precious body and want to fill it with my seed?"

With your eyes rolling back in your head you nodded feverishly, heavy in your state of total delirium as he pumped his cock deep into you over and over.

You reached up to try to pull his hand away from your mouth, and he met your gaze with fire in his eyes.

“If I take my hand away, will you be good?” he challenged, and you nodded feverishly. He was a bit hesitant but slowly moved his hand down, and though you did have to keep biting your lip, you managed to restrain yourself.

Every drag of the ridge of his head inside you was somehow more intense than the last, somehow hitting right at your spot and it was like each rough thrust knocked his name out of your mind and onto your lips until you were chanting it like a prayer, or a plea.

And each time you said it, he fucked you harder, snarling and whispering your name back to you a few times, in between little praises; "Beautiful," he mumbled, "such a sweet little girl… such a perfect cunt."

“I— fuck, I’m gonna—” you stammered your warning.

“Will you come for me?” he finished for you, and you nodded quickly.

“Fuck, I’m so close,” you hissed.

It was obvious just by the build-up that you were going to come hard, pleasure tightening in your core until you were sure that it would spill over but it just kept going, making you wonder if it would ever reach the breaking point.

And oh boy did it, it slammed into you in fact, and your legs quivered as you struggled for air. He growled in your ear, fucking you harder through it all, stroking every place that had only become even more sensitive. The moment you could form words again, you were wasting the ability on a string of swears and promises you couldn’t keep.

“Yours, fuck, it’s yours,” you sobbed. He chuckled a little, pulling back to examine your face which must have given away how fucked-out and cockdrunk you were already.

“Say it again,” he demanded darkly, holding you tighter, fucking you a bit more deliberately though not any less aggressively.

“Yours,” you gasped, cut off by a rough and dominating kiss. Your moans were lost to his tongue but he didn’t need them to know you were coming, the way your body gripped him tighter than ever was sign enough.

“So good,” he whispered against your lips, “you’re doing so good for me…”

His words washed over your skin and soothed you like a salve, bringing some relief from the overwhelming feelings his body was assaulting yours with.

All things considered, he was still moving rather slowly, each of his thrusts measured and patient, and never really changing speed even as you were coming around him. Weak little cries fell from your throat each time his hips met yours and the tip of his cock kissed the deepest parts of you.

Your body went limp in his arms and you hadn't noticed before how good it felt for him to hold you, for his strong hands to support you like it was nothing. His thumb gently stroked your back through your shirt and you mewled weakly into his shoulder.

"So good, draga, so fucking good," he mumbled, holding you closer.

"Please… faster," you whimpered, "I want you to come."

"Is that what you want?" he taunted, ignoring the way you nodded immediately. "You want to make me come, darling?"

"Yes, please, want it so much," you gasped.

He finally sped up, though it was still nothing like the lightning-speed jackhammering you were used to from guys your age: it was better, certainly, especially when he lifted your leg onto his shoulder and pushed so deep you saw stars.

The second one seemed to hit you all at once, almost out of nowhere, and you heard yourself mumble, “Professor, I’m coming.” It sounded a bit pitiful, the way you said it, but he apparently didn’t mind as you felt him nod encouragingly in the crook of your neck.

You felt totally drained by now, exhausted even though all you’d been doing was lying there and taking it, but you knew he wasn’t done with you yet. But, if the way his thrusts were becoming more desperate and erratic were anything to go by, he might be done with you soon.

"I'm going to come inside you," he groaned against your ear. You were, like, 99.9% sure that if you told him not to, he would pull out, but the way that he phrased it, like a demand, like you didn't have a choice and he would do it either way… it had an effect on you, one he noticed when your channel tightened around him instantly. "Oh, you like that idea, hm? You want to be full of my come? Your sweet little cunt is already trying to milk every drop from me."

"Yes," you breathed, "fuck, I want your come in me, please!"

He sped up quite a bit then, each slam of his hips into yours making you choke on a whine, your arms weakly clinging onto him for dear life.

You could feel his cock swelling, flexing, pushing your body to its limits as he moaned lowly through his teeth, streams of come making you feel warm and full.

He didn't stop until every drop was in you, thrusting in time with each pump of his release until he slowed to a stop.

Strands of hair fell into his face as he hung his head, panting hard and fast. You melted back onto the desk, realizing this might be the first time in a solid half hour your back wasn’t arched.

It was a bit of a struggle to keep your eyes open against the heavy fog of afterglow that filled your mind; you couldn’t remember the last time you felt so… satiated. As a college student, you were always thinking about the next assignment, mentally re-evaluating your calendar, or preparing for something— and usually all on less than six hours of sleep.

But now your mind was as close to a blank slate as it had been in at least a decade. Even though you probably should’ve been, you weren’t even thinking about the potential consequences of this, the implications, the risks. No, you were just staring up at him, thinking about kissing him again.

He would have to lean down for that, though; there was no way you were going to sit up now.

You hadn't even noticed that you had closed your eyes, almost falling asleep right there on his desk, until you felt his hand cradle your face softly, a calloused thumb rubbing over your cheek.

In unison, the both of you sighed deeply.

As much as it felt like a real effort, you blinked open your eyes and looked up at him, watching him comb his fingers through his hair. It only messed up the style even further yet he looked better than ever.

He slowly moved his hips back, leaving you annoyingly empty, and readjusted himself until he almost looked put together again… but his collar was still uneven and his lips still looked bitten and there was still that precious pinkish hue on his cheeks. If anyone else saw him in this state, they’d either know what happened between you two or think he’d just run across campus or something.

If anyone else saw him in this state, you’d be a little jealous, to be totally honest.

You got back to work trying to right your appearance as well, though you knew the best you could hope for was only mildly presentable; he looked at you like you’d never looked better, though.

“Well, this was fun,” you chuckled breathlessly, “but it’s getting pretty late and I have an eight a.m. tomorrow…”

“Yeah, so do I,” he nodded, glancing away.

You picked up your bag from where you’d dropped it by the door, lifting the strap over your shoulder and starting to turn to leave.

"I… I should walk you back to your dorm," he announced, making you smile.

"That's sweet, but save your chivalry. I can take care of myself just fine."

"But—"

"I think it's safer if we're not seen together walking together by my dorm," you interjected, "especially when I'm walking a little funny…"

"I hope I didn't hurt you," he winced sympathetically.

"No, trust me, that was… exactly what I needed," you breathed. He smiled a little, looking down at the floor.

"Then I'll see you in class," he nodded, watching you closely as you stepped back and picked up your bag, starting to leave his office with one last small wave goodbye. “Wait, wait!” he whispered harshly just before you could let go of his door, and you giggled as he leaned out into the hall and glanced around to make sure no one was nearby.

When he confirmed the coast was clear, he smiled and grabbed your face with one hand, pulling you into a sudden kiss. And you smiled too— you couldn’t help it— as you kissed him back, almost ready for him to drag you back into that office and start this all over again. He did let you go, though, with one more whispered ‘goodnight’ and a look that made your heart do little somersaults.

As you finally did make your way back to your dorm, you tried to figure out if that was a goodbye kiss or a ‘see you soon’ kiss. Or maybe a ‘thanks for the one-time office quickie’ kiss? But you didn’t know enough about this sort of thing to know if that was even an option.

All you did know was that you really hoped it wasn’t the last kiss you’d have with him.

Can I speak to you in my office today after class? Thank you.

-Z

You may ask yourself: can one simple email, in only thirteen words, strike fear into the hearts of those who read it? And the answer is yes, assuming that email is from Professor Helmut Zemo and read by the lovestruck student who slept with him two days ago and hasn't stopped thinking about it since.

Only one of a few things could happen in his office after class, and there was a massive gap between the best and worst case scenarios. You dressed for the best but prepared yourself psychologically for the worst.

You caught him staring as you walked past the teaching podium to your seat in the front; you just hoped nobody else caught him. And if you'd thought paying attention in class was tough before, boy oh boy was it a challenge now. The nerves of what he wanted to discuss with you were bad enough alone, but that combined with memories from two days earlier randomly assaulting your psyche was just overwhelming.

When he pointed at the map with two fingers, you could remember exactly how those fingers had felt inside you, twisting and curling and getting you ready for his cock.

When he spoke, you could hear the difference in his voice compared to how he groaned out his praises while he was fucking you within a damn inch of your life.

And every once in a while, when he couldn’t help but glance at you for a moment, his gaze burned right through you; you were helpless to those brown eyes, completely paralyzed by them, and it must’ve been hours of that before class finally ended.

For the first time, you were the first person out the door when he released the class. As much as it was going to be a little bit weird to beat him to his office, it was certainly better than any of your other options. There was a chair in the hall beside the door, and you took a seat and pretended to read a book just to look busy (there was no way you could actually turn symbols on a page into readable language right now, not when you knew he’d be here any minute to talk about… something).

Your peripheral caught him coming down the hall, but you pretended to be deeply immersed in your book until he was right beside you, unlocking his door and opening it for you and himself. Tucking your book away and following him inside, you found him already staring at you, expression completely unreadable. Your gut sank in anticipation of whatever conversation this was going to become, and a moment passed in heavy silence.

"Hi," you greeted plainly, letting out a quick breath.

"Hi," he returned. "Close the door behind you."

You nodded and did as you were told, quietly pushing the wood back until the door latched before approaching where he had come to stand beside his desk. Though you didn't originally intend to, you found yourself standing a bit too close.

"I'm not quite sure where to start," he admitted, chuckling breathlessly as he reached up to rub the back of his neck. He looked cute flustered, which was a shame because his tone seemed to imply you needed to not be thinking about how cute he was. “Listen, you should know that what happened before… it was a mistake,” he sighed. “It can’t happen again.”

“Do you regret it?” you asked point-blank.

“It can’t happen again,” he repeated in lieu of a real answer, and you looked closely at his face; you didn’t find as much confidence there as you were looking for, it wasn’t the face of a man who knew he was making the right choice. You certainly didn’t think he was making the right choice.

“Why did you want to have this conversation alone in your office, then?” you challenged.

He cleared his throat slightly. “So no one would hear us.”

“Hear us talk?” you pressed. “Is that all?”

“That’s… definitely the plan,” he nodded, swallowing dryly. "Like I said, it was a mistake— my fault, not yours. And I just hope we can put it behind us respectfully."

“All the best mistakes are made at least twice,” you whispered, reaching up to trail your finger down his lapel. “Don’t you think?”

“Don’t do that,” he requested tensely.

"Do what?"

"That," he hissed. "Stop being… irresistible," he clarified, eyes darting from your lips to your finger to your eyes and back again. "A man can only take so much. I'm trying to do right by you."

"You already did when you fucked me that good," you smirked. "Nothing else could be as right as that."

Your fingers were just barely brushing over his belt when he grabbed you by the wrist. Jaw tight and eyes solemn, he shook his head.

You wrenched out of his grasp with a nod. It was worth a shot, but you didn't want to be that person who couldn't take no for an answer— so, you gave him a little smile and readjusted the strap of your bag. “Well, if it was just the once, then you should know that I’m still glad it happened. Even if it shouldn’t have.”

He nodded, strategically not speaking— but you knew he would agree, if he could.

“And if it’s any consolation to you now, you were the best I ever had.”

You reached for the doorknob, just starting to turn it and open your way out when he suddenly slammed it shut with a hand right above your head, making you gasp and spin around to look up at his dark gaze.

“Professor…” you whispered.

“The best you ever had?” he repeated, grinning proudly when you nodded. “Oh, sweetheart, I wasn’t even trying.” He leaned down to brush his lips against your ear as he whispered to you: “You don’t even know yet how good I can make you feel.”

A shiver ran up your spine; your tongue darted out to lick your lips. “Are you going to get on with it and show me?”

He didn’t even let you step away from the door, dropping to his knees right there and pushing up your skirt to kiss and bite your thighs. “Only if you ask very nicely,” he taunted with a brow raised in challenge.

“Please,” you breathed, “fuck, please, want you to taste me.”

His hands slid up your legs, grabbing the hem of your panties before sliding back down.

It wasn’t like you’d never been eaten out before, but this still felt like a first considering your skirt was pushed up to your waist, your panties were pulled down to your ankles, and even just one slow lick over your folds made it obvious he knew exactly what he was doing.

“F-fuck,” you choked, reaching down to weave your fingers into his hair. He grinned against your skin and kept going, exploring you carefully before finally sucking on your swollen clit. Your knees threatened to buckle, your head fell back against the door so hard it almost hurt, but all you could really feel was his mouth on you, moving like he knew your body better than you did.

So it was no wonder, then, that you already began to spiral towards your release, legs shaking around his head as he devoured you mercilessly.

"Oh my god, I—" you tried to warn him, but he already knew, and he pulled back to wipe his mouth with his sleeve and stand up. He grabbed your jaw and kissed you roughly, stopping to whisper to you so close that his lips brushed against yours.

"I'm sorry, draga, but you've spoiled me… now that I've felt you come around my cock, I can't imagine making you come any other way. I need to feel your cunt grip me so fucking tight… it's all I've been thinking about since I last saw you," he admitted.

"I thought about it, too," you sighed. "I was up all night trying to make myself come as good as you did but I couldn't… your come was still leaking out of me."

He growled and leaned in to nip at your ear. "Oh, poor thing… I can imagine it so easily, you laying in your bed with your legs spread, fingers getting exhausted from playing with your little pussy too much, these perfect lips whining for me because you need me to take care of you."

"H-Helmut, please," you whimpered.

"Yeah, something like that," he smirked.

"I can't wait any more, just fuck me. Need you inside me," you breathed.

"Then bend over my desk."

{part 2}

#baron zemo x reader #helmut zemo x reader #helmut zemo smut

2K notes · View notes

deepdarkdelights · 4 years ago

Text

Lady of The Night (Namjoon x Reader)

Pairing: Namjoon x Reader

Word Count: 13.3k

Warnings: 18+, Yandere, Obsession, Victorian Era, Time Travel, Misogyny, Jack The Ripper Murders, Forced Relationships, Forced Stripping and Dressing, Blood (Lots of it), Gore, Fear, Panic/Anxiety, Discussions of dead bodies, Depictions of a corpse, Depictions of Wounds, Use of Drugs, Illicit Behaviors

I do not condone the acts displayed in this story nor do I believe any members of BTS would actually engage in this type of behavior. This is simply written for entertainment purposes and should not be taken as a reflection of my own values, opinions, or morals.

Preview: You had been plunged backwards through time for a reason, and maybe this was the reason. This was the world’s most infamous cold case. What were the chances that a journalist would slip through the cracks in time and stumble into the East End of 1891? The only conclusion you could draw was that you were meant to identify who the ripper was.

You knew nothing about time travel regardless of the pop culture you had consumed. For all you knew, changing the events of the past would not create a ripple effect but instead a branch. And, as horrifying as this scenario was, your curiosity was going to get the better of you. You needed to know, even if it meant following around the egotistical self proclaimed genius that had sheltered you.

A/N: Yay! It’s my first fic up after my two week break! So, this is pertaining to the Jack The Ripper Murders. For storytelling purposes, the timeline of events has been altered as well as details of the crimes. This story may not be for everyone so please read the warnings and take them into consideration before reading. Your mental health and wellbeing should always be your number one priority. That being said, I hope you enjoy! 💜💜💜

You could see your blurry reflection in the glass of the watch face you held in your hands.

You wiped away your tears with the heel of your palm violently as you sniffled tiredly. It had been a long day.

You were coming to terms with the fact that you were the last living member of your family, everyone else had died and moved on. Your mother had been young when she had you, but she was also young when she left you. Mere moments after you had been given life and were brought into the world, she had departed shortly after.

All you had ever known was the warm, comforting embrace of your grandfather. He had been more like your father your entire life and now he had left too. And all you had to remember him by was his old, Victorian house, some grainy photographs, and his pocket watch.

Today had been the day you learned of his last will and testament, and he had left you everything he had ever owned, especially that pocket watch. He had carried it everywhere with him for as long as you could remember, the long, silver chain neatly clipped to his vest at all times. He would often remove the watch from his pocket, swiping his thumb over the sealed lid fondly before flicking it open and tracking the time. He had never once been late to anything, something he bragged about often.

If you closed your eyes, you could visualize a scene that was not unfamiliar to you. You would be seated on the floor in a pile of pillows by the fireplace, the flames crackling and emanating a comforting warmth. The scent of black cherry tobacco wafting under your nose as your grandfather settled a thick book on his knees, pausing his reading aloud to puff at his tobacco pipe. You would giggle happily, wrapping your quilt tighter around your body as you watched him attempt to blow smoke rings. He would then slip his hand into his pocket and remove the watch, the chain clinking about as he flipped the watch open.

“It’s almost half past nine, don’t you have school tomorrow?” He would ask you, raising one eyebrow in questioning.

You, at ten years old, were familiar with what this meant, and you absolutely refused to head up those creaky stairs to bed when the two of you were in the middle of embarking on an adventure.

“Please, just one more chapter!” You would beg, eyes wide and watery with a pout settled on your lips.

“Alright,” He would concede after a long pause of faux thinking, “We do have time, don’t we?”

But that's where your grandfather was wrong. You didn’t have nearly enough time. You were twenty two when time came and took a hold of your grandfather and left you in the dust. That was the thing about time, it moved quickly and was unforgiving. Twenty two years was not enough, you were far too young when you said your last goodbyes.

Fuck, and now you were crying again.

You laughed humorlessly to yourself, pulling the sleeve of your jacket over your hand and wiping your tears away again. Crying would do you no good, he would want you to be happy. Death did not mean the end of a life, it meant the celebration of one, was something he had once told you.

It was time to start celebrating then.

You uncorked a bottle of wine, throwing the cork into the sink and having a staring match with a wine glass before you sighed and grabbed the bottle by its neck and left the room. You lit the fireplace before sitting down in your grandfather’s chair, throwing a leg up on his ottoman and taking a swig from the bottle. That made you feel a little better.

You tilted your head back before turning your face into the fabric, the scent of black cherry tobacco still clung to the chair. Your eyes burned again with unshed tears as you nestled your head closer to it, breathing the scent in deeply before taking a longer swig of wine from the bottle. You were sure you looked pathetic.

You groaned in irritation, the last thing you had wanted to do was throw yourself a pity party yet here you were, drowning your problems in wine like a young mom who is questioning why she didn’t use protection.

You sat up, grabbing the neck of the bottle and setting it on the side table before standing up on weak knees. It was too weird being in that room without him. You weren’t ready to move on so quickly. So, you killed the fire and shuffled up the creaky stairs and headed to your bedroom down the hall.

Once the door clicked shut behind you, you flung your clothes off into the corner of the room and grabbed an old, large, band shirt you tended to use as pajamas. After you slipped the raggedy fabric over your head you slid beneath your sheets, fisting the comforter in your hand and pulling it up to your nose.

You could see the silver of the watch glinting under the moonlight on your night stand. Without much thought you reached across your bed and grabbed it, pulling it under the blanket with you. You twirled the delicate chain around your fingers as you pressed the latched watch to your chest. Your eyes fluttered shut as sleep tugged at your mind. But, despite that, your head was still filled with the memories of him that you tried to shake away.

You missed him, and you wanted to go back and see him again.

~~~~~~~

When you woke up the next morning, it was to the smell of warm food wafting throughout the house. In your delirium you rolled over and buried your face into your pillow, you were sure it was just your grandfather whipping something up.

And then you were jolting awake. There were two things you knew: one, your grandfather was a terrible cook who considered spam as breakfast, and two: he was dead.

You shot up in bed, your sheets pooling around your waist as you cocked your head towards the door, listening in silence. You could faintly hear the sound of pots and pans clinking and the clacking of heels along the wood floor of the hallway.

Someone was in the house.

You snatched your phone from your bedside table and slipped free from the warmth of your bed. The pocket watch swung into your thigh, the chain still wrapped around your fingers from the night before. You kept your phone on the ready, prepared to dial the emergency line in seconds.

When you opened the door you stuck your head out into the hallway, swinging it from right to left. You couldn’t see anybody, but the scent of food had gotten stronger.

You allowed your door to swing shut behind you, the knob clicking with an air of finality. The floorboards were cold beneath your bare feet as you made your way down the stairs, dodging each squeaky board from years of practice. You knew this house like the back of your hand.

Once you had descended the stairs you found yourself in the first floor hallway, the kitchen door to your right. Your eyes fluttered shut and you took in a deep breath before tensing your body with determination and flinging the door open so hard that it slammed against the wall.

A cry of shock echoed through the kitchen, the clash of pot and pans forcing a scream from your throat in response. Standing in front of you was what appeared to be a maid, her wispy brown hair tied into a bun at the base of her neck beneath a hat matching the long black dress and crisp white apron she donned. She looked like she had been pulled straight out of the nineteenth century.

The two of you stared at each other in shock for a moment after your scream had died down and fizzled out. Her hand laid limply on her chest over her heart as her shoulders heaved with surprised breaths.

Her gaze flickered up and down your form, her cheeks quickly reddening at your state of undress.

“I cannot believe this!” She suddenly cried, throwing down the spatula she held in her other hand. “I’ve told the young master numerous times to stop consorting with heathens like yourself!”

“Heathen?” You echoed in confusion. “Hold on, what the fuck are you doing in my house?!”

“In your home? The audacity! You lay with the young master once and you believe yourself to be the lady of the estate? I will not have a harlot like you traipsing around!” She yelled back.

“Lady, what the fuck are you on? You’re the one who broke into my house! Get out!” You screamed.

“Emmett, Emmett come quickly! The young master let in another stray!” She called.

In a matter of seconds a man entered the room dressed in a three piece suit and gloves, he looked much like a butler.

“Again? This is the third one this month, Mary.” He sighed in disgust, eyeing your form. “The indecency of this one, running around naked.”

You were speechless, all you could do was dumbly look down at your bare legs. The shirt you wore was fairly big, it covered everything important. Still, you grabbed at the hem and harshly pulled it down further, your mouth agape at his words.

“Come now...miss. It’ll do you little good to linger here, we wouldn’t want to get the authorities mixed up in this, they aren’t fond of your kind as you know I’m sure.”

You couldn’t think of anything to say until he approached you, gripping your arm roughly and tugging you out of the kitchen.

“Get your fucking hands of off me, fucker!” You yelled, struggling to free yourself from his grasp.

He tutted to himself as he ripped the front door open, “Such colorful language and such poor manners. Well, I suppose that is to be expected from women of your status.”

“Stop!” You cried, digging your heels into the floor. “You can’t throw me out of my own house! If you don’t leave I’ll call the cops, I swear!”

The butler merely shook his head, tired and annoyed with your antics. “Have a pleasant day, and for your own sake, find yourself a husband and stay off of the streets.”

And with that, he threw you out onto the front porch and slammed the heavy, mahogany door shut, the lock clicking into place. You spent the following moments banging your fists against the door and demanding to be let back in, once you realized how futile that was you unlocked your phone and dialed the emergency line.

But you weren’t met with anything, no ringing, no voicemail, nothing. Your face scrunched up in confusion, your phone didn’t have a signal...how was that even possible?

And that was when you realized, for certain, that something was very wrong. When you finally looked up from your phone, you were surrounded by trees.

You stumbled backwards in surprise, knocking into the front door behind you. All of the houses that once lined your street were gone. For miles around you all you could see was a dense forest and dirt and gravel roads. Your sweet, elderly neighbors house was gone, the ice cream shop that you could once see from your house was gone, the sidewalks and the fire hydrants were missing. It was as if they had never been there in the first place.

“What the fuck?” You whispered to yourself, your stomach turning and your heartbeat thundering violently in your chest.

Everything was gone, how was that possible? Where did everyone go? Where did all of the buildings go? There was no way that they could all have been decimated and replaced with trees that towered higher than your house in one night. What in the absolute fuck was happening?

You crouched down to your knees, weaving your fingers through your messy hair as panicked sobs wracked your body. You had no explanation for what was happening, you had no idea what the hell was going on. Your phone wasn’t working, you were kicked out of your own home, and everyone was missing.

You sat there for a moment, crying to yourself in a complete and utter panic before you realized that you needed to at least try and find someone who could help you. You allowed yourself a few more moments to squeeze out some more tears, heave your last sobs, and dry your wet face. You had done a lot of crying the past few days, enough tears to last you a lifetime. It was time to get to work now and figure out what was going on.

So, you stepped foot onto the manicured lawn before you and made your way to the dilapidated road ahead of you. The dirt and gravel dug into the bare skin of your feet causing you to wince and jump in pain. It was better and easier to walk alongside the road rather than on it.

The more you walked, and the further you walked, it became apparent that it was not only your street that had suffered changes overnight, but your entire town. What had once been a shopping district you frequented often in your teens was now a sea of never-ending trees. You hadn’t seen this much greenery since you went hiking years ago.

The home that you remembered was much different from the sights you were seeing now. Your house had been the only Victorian on the street, the others newer builds that had popped up over the decades. It looked like any other street you had ever seen, an amalgamation of history in a couple blocks. But now, it appeared to be a clean slate, devoid of noise, devoid of life, and devoid of structure.

In an eerie way, you felt like you were at the beginning of time, back before humanity had cultivated the earth and turned vibrant greenery into concrete jungles. It was as beautiful and it was lonely, if you hadn’t had that run in with the maid and the butler earlier, you could have assumed you were the only person on earth. How startling and stifling that would have been, to be just a house plopped in the middle of nowhere, with not a person in sight.

It was not unlike how you felt now, alone walking alongside an empty road surrounded by trees. You could feel the miles passing as dirt clung to the soles of your feet, the skin burning in protest as you continued walking aimlessly in search of any signs of another person or house in the area.

The thick layer of dark clouds hanging in the sky was not doing anything for your mood. You were certain you would be doomed to spend the day or possibly even the night in the trees trying to take cover from the onslaught of rain that was sure to come.

And, just as you had predicted, all it took was one roll of thunder through the sky before the clouds let loose a torrent of rain. Your only saving grace was that the rainfall was not ice cold, but lukewarm. Your other concern was that where there was thunder, there would be lightning. At least you weren’t the tallest thing in the area though, a tree was more likely to be struck than you were. But that would be the cherry on top of your shitty day wouldn’t it, to be struck by lighting as well?

But, just as your hopes were about as low and hell, you spotted something in the distance. The structure was familiar, you were certain you had seen those peaked roofs and stone walls many times before. Yesterday you had been driving on the highway when you passed the country club, and now you were certain that’s where you were. Where you stood now and once been home to a highway, and mere miles away was the country club you had passed everyday on your way to work.

If you were lucky, the staff would take pity on you and maybe you could shower and get some food in you before you called the authorities to deal with those intruders of yours.

By the time you finally made it up to the country club, you were completely soaked to the bone. The only pieces of clothing you had on, being your underwear and your oversized t-shirt, were drenched with water. You looked like a drowned rat if you were being honest with yourself.

But, even in your panicked and miserable state, you took notice of a few things. The signs that once held directions and the name of the club were gone, nothing there that even hinted at their prior existence. The parking lot was long gone as well, not to mention the caged in tennis courts and the golf grounds. It was all missing. The only thing that stood as familiar to you was the large, Victorian manor itself, and the grand water fountain in the center of the roundabout. This roundabout was made of gravel though, instead of the cement you remembered it being. And, to your disdain, the tiny pieces of gravel had returned to puncture the delicate skin of our feet once more.

You were tired, you were cranky, and you were wet. All you wanted to do at this point was run inside and collapse on the polished floor.

You sped over the gravel as fast as you could before running up the stone steps, sliding under the cover of the roof that was fixed over the front door. You raised your hand up and curled your numb fingers around the door knocker. And, with difficulty, you swung the door knocker against the rich wood of the front door frantically. If there was a doorbell you would have been annoyingly ringing it nonstop, so you had to settle for banging the door knocker violently instead.

While you were mid swing the door was ripped open violently, your soaked form almost being tugged inside as you were still attached to the knocker. A man stood in front of you, he too was dressed in a three piece suit, gloves adorning his hands and polished oxfords sitting under the hem of his pant legs. His suit was much finer than the butler’s from before, but the expression on his face was just as, if not even more, stern than the butler that came before him.

“Please,” You huffed out, using your best pleading gaze. “I need help.”

“I think you are mistaken, miss. I do not believe you have any business with the master of this estate.” He responded coolly, a harsh edge to his tone.

“Wait please!” You cried as he backed away and attempted to shut the door. You gripped the door frame, wedging your arm in place to keep it from closing. “I just need to use your phone.”

“I’m sorry miss, but -”

“Claude? Who’s at the door?” Another voice echoed from inside.

“Please, can I come in for just a second?!” You called inside as you heard the click of footsteps approaching the door.

“Master, I think it would be best if you let me take care of this.”

“It’s alright, Claude, step aside.” The voice responded. The butler, Claude, edged away from the door in uncertainty before disappearing inside the depths of the club.

Seconds later, a new man replaced him, opening the door much wider than the butler had. Your heart dropped into your stomach in astonishment and embarrassment. He was probably the most attractive man you had ever had the privilege of seeing and for a moment you were convinced you had fallen into an alternate universe because all of the men you had seen on a daily basis were nothing in comparison to him.

He was rather tall with tan skin, dark hair, and a set of dangerous dimples. It took everything in you to restrain yourself from delicately poking one of those smooth craters in his cheeks that was calling out to you.

With a sudden jolt you realized he had been staring at you just as intently as you had been staring at him. His lips had parted and his eyes had darkened. You could feel his gaze traveling over the dips of your collarbones and the exposed flesh of your legs and arms before settling on the thin fabric that stretched over your chest.

Heat instantly flooded beneath the skin of your face, your arms crossing over your chest. In your moment of hysteria you had forgotten your lack of bra and the rain. You were sure this man had seen more than you had wanted to show him.

His tongue swiped over his lower lip at your action, his dark, half lidded eyes flicking up to meet your own in a rather sensual stare.

“Are you a lady of the night?” He asked, his voice deeper than before.

Ah, that was a term that you had become rather accustomed to today. Well it’s synonyms at least: heathen, harlot, and now lady of the night.

“No!” You cried in frustration, you had no issues with sex workers, what you did have an issue with was that because of your state of dress everyone had come to assume you were looking for some!

“Please, I just need help.” You sighed, your shoulders dropping from the stress you had endured all day.

The look in his eyes had all but disappeared after your omission of the truth. You were not a lady of the night, you were just scared, confused, and in need of help.

“Come inside.” He said, opening the door wider.

You looked up at him in surprise, shocked to see a gentle smile gracing his lips. Before he could regret offering you shelter, you hastily entered the front room, your arms still wrapped securely around you as you felt the warmth of the building rush through you.

Yet again, though, you noticed things were different. The front desk was gone, the signs pointing to the bathrooms and the changing rooms were missing, and there weren’t any people other than yourself and the man that stood before you.

“Where is everyone?” You asked him, turning to face the man as he closed the door behind the two of you.

“What do you mean?” He asked you, equally as confused as you were.

“This is a country club...where are all of the guests?”

“Country club?” He laughed, his dimples becoming more prominent as his eyes filled with mirth. “This is my home, there isn’t a country club for miles.”

“What?” You whispered to yourself, the water from your shirt sliding off of you and tapping against the wood of the floor rhythmically.

“They’re still fairly new after all, not many around here I’m afraid. You must be lost then?” He mused.

“What do you mean they’re new? They’ve been around for years, this is one. I’ve been here numerous times!” You explained, exasperated.

“Are you feeling well, miss?” He asked, stepping closer to you without letting his gaze wander as it had before.

No, you weren’t feeling well at all, you were incredibly fucking confused. What he was saying didn’t make any sense, none at all. Country clubs weren’t new, they had been around for over a century now.

And that was when it all began to make sense. All of the pieces suddenly had fallen into place. All the houses on your street were gone, the shopping center, the highway, the signs and the parking lot were missing from the country club. Your phone was unable to get a signal in the hours that had passed. You had encountered four strangers that spoke in a manner you had not heard often and dressed like they were from a different era.

“What - what year is it?” You asked, your body trembling now from anxiety and from your wet shirt.

“1891, of course.” He responded, his face appearing even more confused than it had before. He was looking at you in concern as well, he wasn’t sure why you would be asking him such an obvious and ridiculous question.

“Oh.” Was all you managed to say as you began to stumble backwards, your legs going weak underneath you as you slumped to the ground. Your vision was focusing and un-focusing, your head feeling light as you could faintly hear his panicked voice in front of you. It was beginning to sound further and further away though as your bare thighs met the cold, wood floor beneath you.

You were having a stressful day.

~~~~~~~

When you woke it was to a cold compress against your forehead and the feeling of a plush mattress beneath you. For a moment you thought that you were at home again, that the past few hours had all been some fever dream and your grandfather was taking care of you in your state.

But the feeling of the thin, silver chain still wrapped around your fingers assured you otherwise. That had not been a dream in the slightest.

You jerked forward, the cold cloth flying onto your lap as your hands scrambled across the top of the duvet reflexively searching for your phone.

“It’s alright, relax, you’ll only worsen your condition!” A voice seethed as hands settled on your shoulders and coaxed you back against the pillows behind you.

It was him again, the man with the dimples.

“You have a fever, it won’t do you any good to move around too much.” He lectured you, his hand waving around as he scolded you.

You quickly caught sight of something wrapped up in his ringed fingers, it was your phone.

“Give that back!” You yelled, snatching your phone back from his hands and holding it tight against your chest. You were glad that your phone was password protected, not that he would ever know what to do with it even if he managed to unlock it by accident.

“What is it exactly?” He asked you as he relented, taking a seat in a chair that had been moved to your bedside.

“It’s none of your business, that’s what it is.” You replied, shooting him a look that he reciprocated with shock and astoundment. He probably had never been spoken to like that before, a man with what you could only assume held power, status, and wealth. There was a part of you while still shocked at your predicament enjoyed the idea of fucking with some rich people.

“As a guest in my home I think I have every right to know.” He shot back with a quirk of his brow, jerking his chin up.

The audacity. So, as petty as it was, you refused to dignify his statement with a response.

“Fine, if you won’t tell me then I’ll have to assume you don’t know what it is either and you stole it just like you did that watch. It’s to be expected of someone of your...nature.” He insinuated, his gaze flicking over your form from head to toe.

“My nature?” You replied, your skin going hot with untapped irritation.

“Well, a prostitute of course.” He answered with such certainty it made you want to scream.

“For fuck’s sake how many times do I have to say I’m not!” You yelled, throwing your head back against the pillows.

“Well of course you are, with that way you looked coming up here you were practically naked, how could you not be a pros-”

“First of all,” you interrupted, “The proper term is sex worker and you have no right judging women who have no other choice and even if they did choose it you still have no right to demean them for taking up a profession that employs a service and receives payment for it like any other job!”

“Secondly, the manner in which I am dressed does not mean you get to make baseless assumptions about me or my job without knowing why I look this way in the first place.”

He sat there for a moment, stunned. A long pause of silence passed between the two of you before a smile split across his face, those dimples returning in full force.

“I’m Kim Namjoon, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Did I ask?” You retorted, annoyed, and overall confused from his sudden change in demeanor. A voice echoed in the back of your mind that maybe he had a thing for women putting him in his place but you quickly shoved that down in embarrassment.

“Well it’s only proper, you’re already in my bed anyways I figured you should know my name.” He replied with a boyish smirk.

You choked in confusion and shock before softly muttering your name in response. You did owe him that much, he had taken you in and taken care of you. That was the only thing you would give him though, his prior attitude still stung.

“I’d like to inform you that despite your progressive thoughts not everyone will see eye to eye with you, miss. You’re lucky you found your way here, there’s a murderer stalking these streets.”

“A murderer?” You echoed, your blood chilling in your veins.

“You don’t know of Jack the Ripper? That’s what the public titled him at least.” He explained.

Holy shit, the timing was perfect. Namjoon had told you the year was 1891, whatever had caused your slip through time sent you right back into the tailend of the Jack the Ripper murders. You had been lucky that he hadn’t stumbled across you, because despite your beliefs that your attire didn’t mean anything, everyone you had met had mistaken you for a sex worker. It would be expected that the infamous ripper himself would have thought the same and your name would have joined the list of victims.

That was too close of a call for you.

“Has he killed recently?” You asked out of morbid curiosity, you were hoping, selfishly, that you had arrived after his last victim.

“He’s been rather active, I should know, I’m the one investigating him.” He said, a look of irritation falling over his features as he crossed his leg over the other, his tongue poking against the inside of his cheek.

“You’re an officer, then?” You asked.

He responded with an annoyed snort, rolling his eyes. “Thankfully no, I’m more of a private investigator. I’ve been employed by some officials high in the government to do the work the police have been ruining as of late. How embarrassing, three years and they still haven’t managed to pin the murderer.”

Ah, so you had struck a nerve. He didn’t like the police, noted.

“Tell me more.” You probed, your genuine curiosity winning over your unease.

Namjoon appeared to gather himself, his gaze that had once been far off returning to you. “Detail such grizzly deaths to a lady? I’m afraid not.”

“Where I come from we don’t take sexism lightly, Namjoon. And, not to mention, I’m a journalist. Trust me, I can handle it.” What you said was true, as a journalist you were receiving a once in a lifetime opportunity, you were given the chance to witness the investigation of the world’s most well known cold case.

“You’re a strange woman, unlike any other I’ve ever met before.” He said softly, an amused light in his eyes.

“You’d be surprised just how much we are capable of.” You shot back.

“Fair enough,” He smiled, enthralled with the back and forth the two of you had engaged in. “I’ll tell you more in my study, I’ll send for a maid to help you dress.” He said before standing up and heading towards the bedroom door.

“I’m interested to hear your thoughts.” He called over his shoulder before the door clicked shut.

As soon as he left, you felt like you could breathe freely, a deep exhale of air passing between your lips.

So, you had slipped through time. Your thumb rested between your lips as you nervously chewed at your nail. You were coming to terms with the fact that somehow, some way, you had retreated into the year 1891. The next issue that you needed to resolve was how you were going to get back to your own timeline. You didn't belong here, that was for sure. Just from your previous conversation with Namjoon you knew that you were drastically different from anyone of this era. At this point, you were sure that was bound to get you in some sort of trouble. It was probably best to lay low around people other than Namjoon who had already been exposed to your modern ideals.

As you sat, stewing in your thoughts, a series of gentle knocks echoed from the door to the bedroom. You peeled the sheets away from your body and stilled for a moment. Somebody had changed your clothes. Where you had once worn your faded tour shirt you were now dressed in a long, flowing, silk nightgown that just brushed the tops of your toes. It was rather pretty and ridiculously comfortable but that didn't lessen your anxiety from having a new state of dress from what you had passed out in.

Another set of knocks, less gentle ones this time, spurred you to move faster. As soon as your bare feet met the plush carpet beneath you, you rushed to the door. Upon opening it, a maid stood there. She held a few items in her arms, her face obscured by the dense pile of fabric she cradled. Without saying a word you moved aside and held the door open for her. You could faintly hear her mumble out a weak thank you, muffled by what she held.

She shuffled over to the bed and dropped everything on top of the mattress with a heave that swung her small body with it.

"Alright, Miss. Are you ready?" She asked, turning to face you with a pleasant smile.

"Ready for what exactly?" You replied.

"Well, to dress you of course."

Your face flushed in embarrassment, that was something you had conveniently forgotten, people of higher status like your host did not dress themselves in this period.

"Oh, that's alright, I can manage on my own."

"Are you certain?" She asked, an apprehensive look crossing her features as she stopped laying out the clothing items, her hands halting over a corset.

Fuck.

"On second thought I would love the help." Yeah, there was no fucking way you were learning to lace that thing on your own.

You hadn’t realized just how much of a struggle it would have been to dress yourself had you not appreciated the help the maid had given you. In Victorian fashion, layers were undeniable and you couldn’t help but flinch at the thought of how hot these women had to get in the warmer months.

You had also assumed the corset would have been troublesome, given how you always heard about its bad rep via movies and literature. In reality, it was quite comfortable. It wasn’t overbearingly tight and you could breathe perfectly fine without a single hint of dizziness. You couldn’t help but ask the maid about this in astonishment.

She giggled as she smoothed your dress, “Tightlacing you mean? Why, is there someone you’re trying to impress?”

Your face burned with heat at her insinuation, “No, no, I was just curious.”

“It is quite fashionable, but not very practical, no?” She said with a hint of a smile as she stepped back from you. “Well, if that’s all you’ll be needing of me the master is waiting for you in his study, would you like me to escort you? It’s not very far.”

“Oh no, I’m sure I’ve distracted you enough, if you could just point the way that’d be very much appreciated.”

“Of course!” She chirped, guiding you into the hallway of the manor. “Just head straight down that way, it’s the door at the very end of the hall!”

“Thank you for all of your help.” You smiled gratefully before your turn and began your walk through the hallway.

The manor was gorgeous with pane glass windows that stretched from the length of the floor to just below the ceiling that were framed with thick, velvet curtains. The floor beneath your shoes was parquet and a deep mahogany that shone proudly in the daylight that filtered into the hallway. You had not seen all of the manor but you knew, just from this glimpse, that the rest of it radiated wealth and power just like its master.

The clicking of your shoes against the polished hardwood echoed down the length of the corridor as you approached the doors to the study. You had never been to this floor of the manor in your timeline, it had been long since roped off and only elite members were allowed access. Now, it appeared you could roam freely to your heart's content.

Your knuckles brushed against the door, three knocks in quick succession sounding out into the quiet hallways and study.

“Come in.” Namjoon called, his voice steady yet distracted.

You pulled the heavy doors open and slipped into the study. Upon entering you noticed a number of things, for one the study resembled that of a library. The space was vast with bookshelves towering over you as well as everything else in the room.

Namjoon was seated behind a desk, his fingers resting at his temples while he flipped through a set of papers placed on the surface of the table. While the rest of the manor had appeared clean, almost sterile really, this space had gone untouched by the staff. Various books laid open or bookmarked on the floors, couches, and his desk.

Upon further inspection you noticed textbooks and medical journals strewn about, anatomy pages glaring back at you.

“Are you a doctor, Namjoon?” You asked, lifting one of the textbooks up to get a closer look at what he had been reading.

“A doctor?” He laughed, “I consider myself to be more of a scholar, really-”

Whatever else he had meant to say ceased, the words failing to part his lips. He was looking at you again, not unlike the way he had looked at you when you had appeared on his doorstep scantily clad and drowning in a torrent of rain.

He made you uncomfortable.

“Look at you, looking like a lady. You could have fooled me if I did not know any better.” He said, the corner of his lips tugging up into a sarcastic grin.

“Such a gentleman.” You huffed with an exaggerated roll of your eyes. “If you’re not a doctor then what is the point in reading things like this?”

“To catch a killer, you must think like a killer.” He hummed, tapping the tip of his forefinger against the side of his head.

“You’ll never catch him.” You said, the words escaping you before you could even think about the repercussions they would have.

“And why would you think that?” He asked, his eyes narrowing with a challenging look to them, the irises were dark and sent a cold chill down the length of your spine.

“Call it intuition.” You replied, thinking quickly on your feet. “If countless others who are far more qualified and knowledgeable have failed to find him, it’s improbable one individual will bring him down.”

You had unknowingly just challenged his intellect, if this were a dance you would have quite literally just stepped on your partner's toes.

Namjoon stood quickly, his chair shooting back as he rounded the desk and approached you. You stumbled backwards in surprise but did not manage to dodge him as he matched your pace. His hands had settled on your waist, spinning you around to pull you back into his chest.

His voice was soft and mellow beside your ear as he spoke, “Each victim was a prostitute, all found in the east end of town. Already there is a location and a motive, no?”

“Now, here is what I find interesting.” He hummed, swiftly gripping your chin and pushing your head back onto his shoulder. His fingers ever so lightly brushed down the column of your throat before drawing a line across it from left to right.

“Immediately he slits their throat, and right after? Disembowelment.” He said, his other hand that was settled on your waist migrated to your lower abdomen, his fingers caressing another line over the clothed flesh.

“Most people, those ‘investigators’ for example, would say he hates women. But on the contrary, I think he is quite fascinated. With every murder he takes something that is uniquely theirs, would you happen to know what that is?”

“Their womb.” You managed to say. You were trembling and you were certain that he could feel it. He was scaring you, the reality of your situation was suddenly becoming rather apparent.

That could have been you.

“Exactly, and to do something like that you would need some medical background, especially considering the speed and technique with which he does it.” He confirmed, his hands resting on your waist once more, this time turning you to face him.

“So, if I were a ripper who was fascinated by women, where would I be?”

“Well...everywhere?” You replied, stepping out of his hold.

“Yes and no. We have a pattern and a motive, someone who is targeting prostitutes in the East End. My money would be on a hub for illicit activities, and with my sources I have a clue as to where he will strike next.”

That piqued your interest. “And where would that be?”

“If I know anything, it’s that the rich don’t like to follow rules and love a good party. Every now and then viscounts, dukes, and aristocrats alike will gather and dabble in illicit activities together. These parties change location every now and again, but most commonly we see them in the East End. Chances are, we can find a doctor with devious intentions at the hub of them. So, do I seem qualified to you?”

“This was your way of proving your capability to me?” You huffed, shaking your head.

“Yes, and it appeared to work.” He smiled, leaning back against his desk with his arms spread behind him on its surface.

“Well, luckily for you, I’m interested.” You responded, jutting your chin out as you crossed your arms over your chest.

“Interested?” He echoed.

“If you want to catch a killer, what better way is there to do so than draw him out?”

“You’re offering yourself as bait? Are you neurotic?!” He laughed, shaking his head from side to side as he popped off of his desk. “Do you really think I would allow that in good conscience?”

“I don’t need your permission to do anything, Namjoon. What I am offering is an agreement of mutual satisfaction. You get a way to bait the killer and I get the story of a lifetime.”

You had been plunged backwards through time for a reason, and maybe this was the reason. This was the world’s most infamous cold case. What were the chances that a journalist would slip through the cracks in time and stumble into the East End of 1891? The only conclusion you could draw was that you were meant to identify who the ripper was.

“So, do we have a deal? You asked, extending your hand out to him.

The silence that hung between the two of you was unsettling. His dark eyes lingered on your hand for a moment before flicking up to your face and back down. His lips were pursed in thought and you could tell he was debating with himself heavily. There was a soft ringing in your ears as the quiet stretched on.

A sudden smile spread over his face, one that you thought almost appeared devious. He laughed to himself and then shook his head before breaching the space between you and gripping your much smaller hand in his own. He gave your hand a firm shake before tugging you forwards and pressing a light kiss to the back of your hand with a grin.

“We have a deal.” He confirmed.

“What a fucking flirt.” You grumbled to yourself beneath your breath, anxiously sliding your hand over the fabric of your skirt. “So, when will this party take place?”

“One week from now.” He said, raising his hand to hold up one finger.

That was much longer than you had wanted to spend in the Victorian era. Far much longer.

“And what will we do in the meantime?”

“Well investigate, of course.”

~~~~~~~

Days had passed in Namjoon’s company, and for all of the investigating the three of you (Namjoon, Claude, and yourself) had done, no results were accomplished. But, on the other hand no murders had been committed in the East End.

You were halfway through the week until the party, and despite your efforts there was absolutely nothing. You were becoming as frustrated as the inhabitants of the East End as well as your fellow investigators. Among all of your “resources,” you were caught at a dead end just as the police were.

You had heard of Jack the Ripper in your youth, you were once an avid true crime fan. But, for the life of you, you could not remember who the next victim was and where their corpses would be found. And for all you knew, protecting that individual would only cause someone else to lose their life. Time was tricky and fickle, and if it was set in stone, it did not matter who would die so long as someone was drafted into the void.

You assumed.

Your host had been...strange, to put it simply. You had thought to yourself that that was just in his nature, he was easily distracted, unfocused, yet insanely intelligent. But his mannerisms were unusual. He seemed completely unfazed by the case he had been assigned to, the only moments in which he showed a visceral response were when he dealt with you, or the police force. He hated them intensely, you could only assume because of how ineptly they were handling the case itself.

And, most frequently, you found yourself going head to head with him. And boy, did he enjoy the challenge. And, if you were bold enough to admit it, you would say he derived pleasure from the arguments the two of you would get into. He would constantly fix you with that confident smirk, the one that told you he believed he was always one step ahead of you. And fuck, did it piss you off. And he was very much aware of that. He loved a good challenge and you were far different from any of the women he knew of.

He often wondered how far he could push you before you snapped.

And if his cocky behavior wasn’t enough to piss you off, it was how much of a blatant flirt he was. There was nothing more frustrating than someone arguing with you while flirting with you at the same time. And your constant refusal and rebuttal to his advances only seemed to fuel the fire.

The cover of night time became your one refuge, that was when you had an excuse to stay away from him. You could have the whole night to yourself and be free of him until the morning.

Usually.

Normally, you slept through the night. But for some reason your body woke you. It was either late at night or extremely early in the morning. No sunlight entered the room, it was still incredibly dark.

At first, everything appeared to be perfectly normal. That was of course until you noticed a figure seated in the chair by your window mere feet away. You immediately jumped and began to scramble backwards out of the bed, the sheets twisting around your legs and slowing you down.

It was the call of your name that made you freeze.

Namjoon was sitting in your room at an ungodly hour...watching you.

“Namjoon?” You hissed, pulling the sheets back up to your chin. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“I didn’t want to wake you.” He answered, pressing his palms onto the armrests and pushing himself up to stand.

“I really wish you would have.” You grunted, pulling the blanket around you even tighter. “Do you know how creepy you -”

“Two more women are dead.”

Silence.

“What happened?” You whispered, your fingers going limp.

“One woman was murdered late last night and the other an hour ago. It was a double event.” His tone was flat, completely absent of affect.

The three of you could only hold him off for so long, and it looks like he lashed out as soon as he was given the chance. Two women within the span of a few hours were killed, and you couldn’t help but feel like that was your fault.

No matter what you do, someone will die.

“What do we do now?” You asked, sullenly looking to him from your point on the bed.

“We have to go meet with the authorities.” He answered, distaste evident in his voice when he uttered the word ‘authorities.’

“Come, we don’t have much time.” He urged you, snapping the sheets back to the foot of the bed while pulling you up to your feet.

You stumbled as he tugged you forward, your head spinning from the sudden motion. You were struggling to see, your eyes still heavy with sleep despite the dreadful news you had heard. The feeling of his hands at the back of your nightdress certainly shocked you awake.

“What do you think you’re doing?” You snapped, smacking his hands away from you.

He appeared frustrated, his eyes dark and his face set in irritation at your refusal. “I just told you, we don’t have much time. All of the maids are still asleep, it’s far too early to call one of them for help and you certainly don’t know how to dress yourself.”

“I can manage on my own, I don’t need your ‘help’.” You argued, stepping away from him in an attempt to create some distance between the two of you. “You don’t know the first thing about women’s clothes anyways.”

His jaw tensed, his eyes fluttering shut for a moment before releasing an annoyed sigh. “Trust me I have undone a few corsets in my time, it’s not as difficult as you make it out to be.”

“And just as I said, I can dress myself I am not a fucking child.”

Before you could move his arm shot forward and his hand wrapped around your forearm tightly. Despite your struggling he yanked you towards him, his other hand gripping your elbow.

“As stupid and insufferable as you like to think I am, I know you are not from here.” He said, his voice low and dangerously quiet. “You don’t speak, act, or even walk like you are from here. The more you hide from me the harder this is going to be. You need help, now you can either be a brat and I have to force you to do as I say, or you can play along and we can get this done and get to work. It’s up to you.”

He had just told you he knew you were a time traveler without explicitly saying it. At least that was the way you took it. But the way in which he spoke to you did not seem to insinuate that he meant that you were a foreigner. Many of your interactions with him would have led him to believe you were from a different time and, not to mention, you had done a terrible job of hiding your phone from him the first day you arrived. You had done a poor job of concealing that from someone as smart as him.

“And what if I don’t want you to see me?” You tried one last time.

“It wouldn’t be anything I haven’t already seen.”

So, he was the one who had changed you the first day you had arrived in 1891. There were many red flags waving in the back of your head, and like an idiotic bull you had failed to recognize a single one of them. Some journalist you were, you had missed all of the finite details.

“Turn around.” He finally said, his voice firm.

And, with no other choice, you did. It was incredibly awkward on your end. Despite the attractiveness of your host, you had no desire for him to strip and dress you. Unfortunately for you, he did not care. You understood the urgency to leave and your little spat had already delayed your departure. But you were a person who valued your dignity and autonomy, you weren’t built to live in a society such as this one.

You tried your best not to focus on the feeling of his touch, but it was incredibly hard to ignore. Instead of touching you as little as possible, it felt like he took every chance to caress, graze, and linger on every inch of bared skin.

For a moment, all movement stilled. You were only halfway dressed, your corset exposing everything upwards of your chest leaving your collarbones, arms, shoulders, and neck on display. You shuddered at the sudden feeling of fingers smoothing over the column of your throat, not unlike the incident in Namjoon’s study.

He was absolutely quiet as he pressed his face into the juncture of your neck and shoulder, softly breathing in and out as his fingers continued to stroke the skin of your throat from left to right in a gentle, slow, sawing motion. Your heart was pumping frantically in your chest in what could only be described as fear. Your back was ramrod straight, a harsh line in comparison to the relaxed form behind you.

Why were you so afraid of him? It was like every nerve and muscle in your form was begging you to leap away and run for your life. But he wasn’t dangerous, right?

You jolted at the feeling of lips just brushing against your shoulder as he pulled away from you and finished helping you dress, far quicker than he had been before. His demeanor was suddenly resigned, professional, and cold. It was like he had suddenly mustered a sense of self control in mere seconds.

Who exactly was Kim Namjoon?

Said man was retreating in the direction of your bedroom door, his hand grasping the doorknob as he called over his shoulder, “Meet me out front, and please be quick about it.”

That was when a thought suddenly intruded your mind.

“Namjoon? How did you get into my room? The door was locked.”

He stiffened for a moment, his hand tightening around the doorknob causing the muscle to strain and his knuckles to whiten. He said nothing, his head jerked to the side for a moment like he was gesturing in disbelief.

He raised his head and stared at you, and then without saying anything, he left.

~~~~~~~

You stared at the face of your pocket watch, the delicate chain wrapped around your gloved fingers. The hands of the watch were still, the familiar ticking of the watch was silent. It was like time had completely stopped. And in a way, maybe it had.

The carriage halted to a stop spurring you to snap the watch cover closed and pin it back into place.

Your companion quickly exited and stood outside, reaching his hand out to you to help guide you from the compartment. Despite the sudden animosity between the two of you, you placed your hand in his own and allowed him to help you down. The layered skirts of your dress swirled around your ankles, they were heavy and made it hard to climb in and out of transportation. Begrudgingly, you managed to say your thanks between gritted teeth.

“Try to behave.” He whispered beside your ear offering his arm to you.

You hooked your arm into the crook of his elbow and allowed him to lead the way. If you had it your way you would be fifteen feet in front of him carving your own path through the East End. But, your lack of knowledge of Victorian etiquette had already managed to get you in trouble and the last thing that you needed was more trouble.

“Where are we going?” You asked, quickening your pace to match his long strides.

“The previous crime scene has already been cleaned up by the task force, but the one from this morning is still intact. I have been instructed to go over their findings as well as conduct my own investigation.” He explained.

“Alright, what can I do?”

“What you can do is stay right here.” He instructed, bringing the two of you to a stop at the mouth of a narrow alleyway. It was already blocked off, warning the public to steer clear of the area.

“You have to be kidding? You really expect me to wait here for you while you go and investigate? I don’t take kindly to being told to just sit and look pretty, Namjoon.” You glared.

Namjoon titled his head back and let out a sound of annoyance, his shoulders rising and falling dramatically with an exasperated sigh. “For once, will you please listen to me? This is an active investigation and I am asking you, a civilian, to stay put. I swear, I will tell you everything you need to know for your story, alright?”

Another bitter silence passed between the two of you. He knew you were incredibly dissatisfied with what he had said. But he was just as stubborn as you were, that being the reason the two of you butted heads so often.

He shook his head, jaw tensed with anger as he stepped away from you heading in the direction of the alley way.

“Stay put!” He called over his shoulder, waving his hand at you as he disappeared, his form melting into the darkness of the alley that had yet to see the glow of the early morning sunrise.

Now that, that pissed you off. You were not some dog that would obey his every command, the more he told you not to do something the more it made you want to do it.

You waited for a few moments, for his sake and for the very fact that it would piss him off that you refused to listen. You were an impatient woman, and you would be damned if you listened to a single thing he said.

The air was crisp and cool with the lack of sunlight, your breath fogging the space in front of you as you slunk down the dark alleyway. You could hear Namjoon’s voice echoing down the brick tunnel, he sounded enraged. There were several other voices attempting to speak over him, but they were evidently failing.

And then there was the smell, it was horrid. The cramped space was packed full of the scent, it was indescribable. The only prominent smell that was familiar was the tangy, coppery odor of blood thick in the morning air.

But what you hadn’t been expecting was that the body was still there, slumped against the ground haphazardly like it was nothing more than trash. An officer was still there, knelt down next to her body. He was prodding her flesh with a grimace, holding a handkerchief over his nose to block out the scent.

“Christ, she’s still warm!” He called out, jumping up to head back to the investigators while giving you a full view of the carnage laid out before you. “He could still be close by!”

Multiple sensations bombarded you at once. A scream was caught in your throat as your stomach began to churn from the sight before you. You raised a gloved hand to cover your nose and mouth as you leaned against the wall, your knees feeling weak.

It was bad, worse than you could have possibly imagined.

There was blood, more blood than you had ever seen in your entire life. And whatever it was that was laying before you just barely looked human. But the parts that did look familiar was what made it so unsettling, so wrong, so horrifying.

Namjoon was calling your name.

You were still in shock when he grabbed you, his hand cupping the back of your neck and forcing your face into his chest blocking the grotesque view you once had. His other arm wrapped around your shoulders, cradling you closer to him.

“Her...her face.” You stuttered, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes.

“Are you that inept at your jobs that you couldn’t keep a civilian from entering a fucking crime scene?!” He yelled over your head, his voice vibrating deep in his chest.

“I told you to stay put.” He mumbled, his lips pressed to the crown of your head while his thumb stroked the side of your face as you shook in his hold. This was the gentlest he had ever been with you.

You had never seen anything like that before. Whatever words he had spoken were falling on deaf ears, a sharp ring was echoing throughout your head, numb tears streaking your face and ruining his jacket.

You could feel his hands slide to the curve of your jaw, forcing your head up to look at him and only him.

“From now on, you listen to me, okay?” He said, his eyes darting over your face to make sure you were retaining what he was saying.

You weren’t sure what was more concerning to you. The fact that he was suddenly so gentle with you, or the fact that he paid no mind to the corpse mere feet away from the two of you.

There was something wrong with Kim Namjoon.

~~~~~~~

Whatever investigation Namjoon had managed to conduct during your moments of shellshock provided nothing new. The choice of murder was the same, albeit the brutality was by far the worst of all the victims before.

Her body had been warm indicating the perpetrator could still have been close by, but despite that knowledge the search parties could not find the culprit that had been described. There was no man covered in blood hiding in the shadows of the East End, he had disappeared like he had never been there in the first place.

A few days after the murder had taken place, Namjoon had informed you the killer had made contact. His face was grim as he described what had transpired. A letter and a parcel had arrived addressed to the taskforce, inside was what appeared to be a human kidney and a letter signed with a flourish, “Jack The Ripper.”

He was playing with them.

Your dreams were plagued with the memories of the sights you had seen that day in the early morning light of the alleyway. And instead of forcing you into submission, it made you angry. The initial sight had rendered you imobile, weak, and defenseless. You had never seen a human look like that. But with each dream you dreamt as the week melted away, you festered in guilt and rage.

Your fellow Victorian journalists had called him a monster, but you knew better. He was not a monster, he was a coward preying on women in the veil of darkness. Cowards harmed the weak and the defenseless, he was a caricature of a monster.

And you wanted nothing more than to rip the Halloween mask off of that faux monster.

This thought is what lent you strength as you and Namjoon reentered the East End, prepared to once and for all unmask the killer that had escaped the two of you.

You were dressed expensively, and rather salaciously, to blend in with the aristocrats around you. Namjoon and Claude appeared comfortable in the environment and it made you wonder if this had not been their first time attending an illicit party. Namjoon had explained to you before that he was often hired by government officials to do the jobs the police often failed to do, so it would not be unexpected if he had been there more than once.

You were bombarded by various sights that had you sticking close to your companions. When Namjoon said “illicit” parties, he meant it. The amount of illegal activities taking place was astounding. No matter where you looked, something was going on. Various partygoers were drinking unmarked liquids, inhaling unidentified substances, or swapping large amounts of money for some unknown service (although you had an inkling as to what they may be).

At one point in the night you had tried to locate a bathroom only for Namjoon to pull you away from the door you had attempted to open.

“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.” He said with an all knowing, tight lipped grin.

“Really, and why not?” You asked, your hand resting on your cinched waist.

“I didn’t picture you as one for...group activities.”

“Group activities...there’s an orgy in there?!” You whisper yelled, frantically wiping your hand on your skirts with wide eyes.

Namjoon wheezed out a laugh, guiding you away from the room and back towards the center of the pseudo ballroom. “What can I say, this is a sinner’s paradise.”

“Sinner’s paradise, more like Chlamydia’s Palace.” You huffed, your cheeks hot.

Namjoon laughed again only to be stopped by the presence of his butler, Claude. His hand concealed his mouth as he whispered something to Namjoon. Whatever it was he said seemed to please Namjoon while also provoking an indescribable look to wash over his handsome features.

As soon as Claude stepped back, Namjoon spoke. “I need you to stay right here, okay? Don’t talk to anyone, don’t drink anything, just keep to yourself until I return.”

Your eyebrows pinched together in irritation and confusion, “But, Namjoon -”

“Remember what happened the last time you refused to listen to me?” He snapped, raising his eyebrows in emphasis.

You pressed your lips together, turning your head to the side. Yes, you did remember what had happened the last time you ignored his instructions.

Namjoon sighed, propping his finger under your chin and turning your head to look at him. “Please, trust me on this one thing.”

You thought to yourself for a moment, the last time you didn’t listen it hadn’t exactly gone well for you. This was just one thing he was asking of you after all of the things he had done for you, he was asking for just one moment of cooperation.

You lowered his hand from your chin and took a breath. “Okay, I trust you.”

A look of pure elation erupted on his face. He gave you a wide grin, his dimples deepening in his cheeks.

“I’ll be back.” He said before retreating into the crowd with Claude following close behind.

And then you were alone, but not alone for nearly long enough.

Your hands fiddled with the pocket watch your grandfather had gifted you as you walked, your head down and your gaze focused on the glass face of the watch. It was almost like everything had gone wrong after he had died and left it in your possession.

Far too distracted from your internal thoughts and the presence of the watch, you missed the incoming form barreling towards you. Within seconds you were knocked to the floor, the layers of your skirts luckily breaking your fall.

“Ah! Sorry, sorry, sorry, my bad! In a rush, I’m quite late I’m afraid.” The voice rushed out, a slight wheeze accompanying it as he appeared breathless.

You felt two hands grasp your own and carefully help you into an upright position.

“It’s fine, I’m fine.” You said, irritation clear in your tone.

“No really! Forgive me, it’s my mistake.” He said.

You adjusted your dress, making sure all of the important bits were in place before finally looking up to see who exactly this man was.

You were not expecting it to be him. Not at all.

“Grandpa?” You asked softly, taken aback.

It was him, he looked years younger than when you had last seen him, but it was him. You had gone through countless scrapbooks as a child and the face that was staring back at you was the younger version of the man that had raised you.

“What?” He laughed, his eyes crinkling as his shoulders shook.

Your gaze zeroed in on the chain of the watch clipped to his pocket. And, without saying a word, you pulled your own watch free and showed it to him.

All mirth completely left his body, like the flame of a candle being snuffed out. His lips parted in shock and distress as his eyes traced over his own initials carved into your watch. His hand patted his own chest frantically as he pulled the watch free and held it beside your own.

They were identical, down to every nick and scratch in the silver finish.

“How did you get here?” He asked, his voice low and serious in a way you had never heard before. “Did they send you?”

“Did who send me? Nobody sent me. I just woke up here, other people were living in my house and everything was gone.” You explained as he pulled you to a corner of the ballroom.

“This isn’t right,” He mumbled, flipping open his own watch. “You’re a time anomaly, there can’t be two of us here at the same time.”

“Two of us?” You echoed.

“Time travelers, dear, it runs in the family I’m afraid. What was I thinking about giving that to you without explaining?” He said, his words flying so quickly to the point that you were struggling to keep up.

“Then let’s leave, show me how to get out of here! There has to be a way!”

“You can’t just leave, you’re here for a purpose, you didn’t just come here by accident.” He said as a blue glow began to steadily thrum and pulse from his watch. “Oh no.”

“Oh no? What, what’s happening?”

“I have to go, I’m being called back. Whatever you do, you cannot change anything, do you understand? Who are you staying with, what have you done?”

“I haven’t changed anything that I know of. I’ve been staying with Kim Namjoon.”

His eyes widened as the watch began to pulse even stronger than before. “Kim Namjoon! Listen to me, you need to go, you need to get as far away as possible he -”

But before he could finish what he was saying he disappeared. It was like he had blipped out of existence, like he had never been there at all.

You spun around in a circle, trying to see if he was truly gone. All of the party goers did not appear to be phased, it was like they hadn’t seen a single thing that occurred. How was that possible? Fuck that, how was any of this possible?

All you knew was that you were going to follow his advice and get the fuck out of there and out of the East End.

You forced yourself through the thick crowds of people, pushing, checking, and elbowing away anyone that got in your way. You winced as one particular shove sent a whole glass of wine pouring down the cleavage and dress of one inebriated woman. It didn’t really matter though, you were sure she could afford another one with the way she had been slamming back drinks all night.

You threw open various doors in an attempt to find a way out, each time you were met with an increasingly more disgusting or disturbing sight. You didn’t even know some of those positions were possible for fuck’s sake.

Finally, when you threw open a door you were met with the smell of crisp, fresh air. A way out.

It was a slim alleyway of the East End, just barely illuminated by the crescent moon that hung in the pitch black darkness of the sky. A sudden sense of paranoia washed over you, the last time you were in an alleyway it had ended poorly. But you knew you didn’t have time to think about that.

Oh, if only you did.

The minute your heeled feet met the ground you were greeted with that all too familiar scent. There was blood nearby and lots of it. You could hear shuffling a few yards away, and you knew that you fucked up.

Your throat felt tight as you attempted to swallow, you were certain you could taste the blood on your tongue from how strong the smell was. And, when you finally turned to face whatever was in that alley, you were horrified.

A few yards away you spotted three figures, two on the ground and one leaning against the wall. And beneath the three of them, a crimson river steadily flowed through the cobblestone.

You took a step back, your heels scuffing the stone spurring only two of the figures to look up at you. A scream bubbled in your chest at what you saw. Claude was hunched over the figure of a woman, blood splattered over his face and down the leather apron he wore over his clothes. You could see bloodied tools in his grip as he settled back on his hunches, pausing his motions mid incision.

And then there was Namjoon, the once blank look he wore on his face suddenly lighting up with intrigue at the sight of you.

“Claude? Why don’t you take the lady home.” He spoke, gesturing to the corpse.

Claude looked between you and Namjoon for a moment, appearing conflicted. But he did not hesitate any longer as he scooped up the woman’s corpse and retreated down in the dark depths of the alley.

Namjoon was quick as he approached you, you barely made it a few feet away before he grabbed you by your forearms and pinned you up against the wall, hushing you as panicked cries parted your painted lips.

“I’m sorry, darling. But, I did tell you to stay put didn’t I?”

“Why?” You managed to say as you trembled in his hold, ugly sobs wracking your entire form.

“Women only want me for one thing I’m afraid. My money. I thought that maybe I could help those women who had nothing, that they could give me love in return if they didn’t know who I was. But they were just the same, motivated by money. I would give them my love and beg them to stop selling themselves but they just wouldn’t listen to me. Every single one of them failed my little test. They were greedy, and selfish. They didn’t deserve to be women. So, I hurt them just like they hurt me.”

You didn’t know what to do or what to say, you could only focus on the rising feeling of panic in your chest.

“I knew someone would eventually catch on to what was happening. But how ironic was it that they assigned me to the case out of all people? Those fucking investigators are so inept they never saw it coming. And Claude, well his loyalty was extremely helpful. If you don’t want to be caught, don’t commit the crime yourself.” He whispered.

“All I wanted was to give them my love, but each and every single one of them broke my heart. All of them except for you.” He said, pressing a kiss to your cheek that made you violently flinch.

“You were such a little spitfire, and when you showed up to my door I thought I was going to have to kill you on sight. But you proved me wrong, you’re the only one deserving of my love.”

A blue light suddenly lit up the space between you, the glow of the watch casting sinister shadows over the ripper's face.

Immediately he reached for the watch at the same time as you, and without much effort he wrenched the watch free from your hands and shoved you down to the ground. Your head met the stone first and on impact black spots blurred your vision.

The watch pulsed vibrantly in his hands, humming like a heartbeat. A wicked laugh shook his shoulders as he flipped the face open.

“So this is how you did it?” He asked, swinging the watch by it’s chain recklessly.

“Namjoon, don't’!” You cried, struggling to stand.

But it was too late. A feral scream ripped its way out of your throat as you watched him slam the watch into the ground and violently dig the heel of his shoe into it. The glass shattered, the metal bent, and the blue glow stuttered, weakly thrumming before fizzling out and plunging the alley into darkness.

The ripper stalked down the alley and stood over you, a viscous smile pulling at his cheeks as he slowly tilted his head to the side.

“Don’t look so surprised my love, there is only one way I’d ever let you leave me.”

#bts #bts namjoon #bts x reader #namjoon #kim namjoon #namjoon x reader #kim namjoon x reader #yander #yandere bts #yandere namjoon #bts fanfic #yandere namjoon x reader #yandere kpop #yandere bts x reader #bts rm #rm x reade #yandere rm x reader #jack the ripper au #victorian au

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giorno-plays-piano · 4 years ago

Text

Crimson Gods

Pairing: vampire!Steve Rogers x Reader

Warnings: non-con, yandere, kidnapping, mentions of death and suicidal thoughts, allusion to breeding.

Words: 2362.

Summary: Living in the world where most lands are governed by the Noble, ancient vampires who shed human blood simply for their own amusement, you try leading a quiet and secluded life along with your mother. Sadly, you aren’t prepared when a vampire comes to your town.

P.S. When I was younger, I really, really loved Vampire Hunter D. I watched the movie again yesterday, and here’s the result ahahah.

______________

It was way past midnight, but you couldn't force yourself to sleep, tossing and turning in your comfy bed while thinking of your travel tomorrow. You were supposed to leave the town for the first time in years to visit your grandmother who lived in the Northern Frontier Sector, and now you dreamt of how you were going to embrace her, kiss her cheeks despite her scolding you for not behaving properly in public. You hadn't seen her in 7 years. After the incident, you had never even once left the town, and your grandmother could hardly travel so far due to her age. Of course, you kept exchanging letters, but how could a cold letter, though written with great respect, replace a live communication?

While you kept wondering how your encounter would go, all of a sudden it felt cold under your cozy cotton blanket, and you reluctantly got up to take a huge comforter out of your heavy wooden chest. Why was it freezing tonight even with the windows closed? You were just in the middle of September. To be honest, you hardly remembered the last time the weather was so bad as you wrapped a comforter around your trembling shoulders, thinking whether you have to take your winter nightgown instead of light muslin one you were wearing now.

Throwing a glance at your window, you saw the frosted panes and furrowed your brows, refusing to believe it. Dear Lord, you lived in the Western Frontier Sector, not far to the North! Was it really going to snow out of nowhere tonight? As you moved closer to look at an empty street, you realized that a huge cross on top of a building on the other side started crumpling with a disgusting sound as if it were made of paper, not pure silver to protect citizens from the creatures of the night. Several crosses on the buildings down the street had been destroyed, too. Quickly, you looked down only to find the flower beds withering within seconds despite your beautiful roses blooming just a couple of hours ago. Now they all turned black.

You stilled on the spot, unable to believe your eyes and covering your ears from that horrifying noise. You had only seen something like that once, and it was the time when most villagers had already been dead, turned into beasts without a soul who craved for blood as much as their masters did. That night you had lost your beloved father as you fled your house in a rush, just a little child back then, and, once you arrived in the town, had never even once left your new home.

The crumpled crosses, dead flowers and a sudden temperature drop could mean only one thing: a vampire had come to the town. It wasn't some upyr, oh no, it was one of the Nobles, maybe even an Elder if you were unlucky.

Dear Lord, what a Noble wanted in a peaceful town like this? There were neither treasures nor mechanisms of the ancient, nothing that could potentially interest a Noble. Except that they might be simply eager to shed human blood for their own amusement...

Before you screamed at the top of your voice to wake up everyone around, you heard the sound of a large mirror in your room breaking, and then felt somebody's strong grip on your throat despite no one being in front of you. The world turned black before you uttered a single word.

_______________

Moving a heavy crimson curtain a bit so you could look out the window, you gasped, watching the corn fields far beneath looking like neat pieces of cloth. The view was incredible! You had never seen anything like this before, though you certainly didn't remember travelling in such fine carriage ever before either. It was truly stunning, made of black steel, shining in the sunlight as if it only been made yesterday. Steven laughed when you said it out loud, explaining that this carriage had been more than a century old. Apparently, the Nobility's carriages were miraculous since you couldn't find even a single scratch on the surface.

"Be careful, sweetheart." The man behind your back said, gently bringing you closer to him and further from the window, curtain falling back and hiding the two of you from the outside world. "Night does not fall yet."

"Forgive me my curiosity. I have never seen anything as magnificent." You smiled sheepishly at the handsome blonde-haired, blue-eyed man in a long black cape with red lining.

He let out a low chuckle, taking your hand and kissing it briefly while you forgot how to breathe for a second, deeply embarrassing by such outpouring display of affection. You lead a rather quiet secluded life in the town, pretty much never being around men of your age: your mother was going to choose a respectable husband for you herself, so you never worried about it before. Now, however, you felt ashamed for being so close to a man despite loving him dearly. Oh, what would your mother say if she saw you now? Wouldn't she be worried? Would she approve of your marriage to a No-

You blinked as you stared at the handsome man's pale face, feeling all your worries fading away. As long as you stayed with the love of your life, nothing else mattered, right?

"If that is what you wish, we will travel by air a lot more right after I present you at Western Frontier Court, sweetheart." His deep, silky voice made you let out a nervous chuckle as you felt your cheeks growing hot. "My, aren't you adorable?"

"Please, Steven, stop it!" You furrowed your brows as he grinned at you, baring his sharp fangs you paid no attention to. "I cannot believe I am getting married to you so soon. It feels... strange. A little unsettling."

"And why is that?" There was some wariness to his voice.

"It's just... I have never imagined myself being married to anyone. Surely, I thought of having a family at some point, but it was so distant. I have never even pictured myself close to a man, let alone a High Lord like you." You admitted honestly, biting your lower lip and averting his gaze. "You have never been married before, too, have you? Aren't you frightened even the slightest bit?"

"A little." He answered too soon, yet you disregarded it as well. "But I have no doubts we will make a good couple, sweetheart. I will cherish you like no other man ever would."

Embarrassed to the point your face was on fire, you decided to drop it, not knowing how a nobleman like Steven Grant Rogers could have an audacity to say such things. He was completely shameless! You hoped he was going to be more reserved while presenting you at court; you pictured your grandmother fainting if she heard him speaking like now.

What was Western Frontier Court like? You had never been there, not than any human ever could: as far as you knew, not even all vampires could serve the Nobility living in the high castle surrounded by mountains. You heard its peaks were covered with snow all year round.

"Have the king ever visited your castle?" You suddenly asked, back to your curious self.

Steven's face became even paler. "He did on several occasions, but it was a long time ago way before I was even born. I have only seen him once, and I do not think I will ever forget this encounter."

"Oh, is he as frightening as the legends say?"

"You cannot describe it with words, sweetheart. But do not be worried, he had been asleep for more than a thousand years now, and he surely won't wake up just to attend some Noble's marriage." A faint smile twisted Steven's lips as he drop a soft kiss to your forehead. "Actually, please do not refer to him as a king. The Nobles call him the Great One."

"Oh, I see. Thank you." Nodding, you turned your face back to the window covered by a crimson curtain, biting your lip again. "Can I watch the sunset a little? I won't be long, I promise."

"As you wish, sweetheart. Please come back to me once you are done, it is going to be a long night."

Gesturing to the large black coffin laying in the middle of your carriage, the man brushed his cold soft lips against your cheek and got up from his seat, smiling at you watching him. You remembered being very unhappy once you learnt there was only one coffin: you had never thought you would lay close to your betrothed with your head on his chest before your marriage. How terribly bold it was of Steven to make you sleep so close to him! However, you were content he had never even once tried touching you inappropriately, always treating you with respect: he said he admired your purity and innocence while not many Noble women were bothered by them.

Once he got inside the coffin, you lifted the curtain again, squinted as rays of bright light pierced the darkness of the carriage. Oh, how incredibly beautiful was the sunset in front of you. You had seldom seen such lovely sight as this. Would you miss the sun once you reach the high castle? You surely would, you thought. Hopefully, your betrothed would keep his promise to travel with you, and when he fell asleep during the day, you would walk in daylight all by yourself.

As you kept staring at the bright sky coloured in orange and pink, all of a sudden you thought why did you have to live in the high castle with Steven while your home was far away from the white mountains, in a little human town where you spent the last several years. Oh, right, you were engaged to the Overseer of the Western Frontier Sector, the highest Noble guarding the lands where you were born and raised. He was a peerless warrior and a fierce leader, a vampire respected by other Nobles.

A vampire? Steven was a vampire? Why would you be engaged to a vampire, let alone the Noble? The Overseer of the lands you were born and raised, the one who had taken advantage of those poor humans living in the Western Frontier Sector and let other Nobles ravage your cities and villages, destroying everything on their way.

You were engaged to the vampire overlord, a ruthless, cold-blooded being who could wipe out every human in these lands if he desired so. No, he was not your betrothed, the man you promised to marry willingly. He was the one who kidnapped you from your own bed at night, casting some spell over you to make you forget who you were.

You clamped a hand around your mouth to stop the pathetic sounds you were making as you cried, hot tears streaming down your cheeks. Dear Lord, why was the Overseeker doing it to you? What could he gain from this cruel game? Seemingly nothing, except for having some fun with a silly human girl. But that what the Nobles were doing once they got bored, wasn't it? No, you wouldn't give him the satisfaction, you thought, happy you were given a chance to escape - even if it cost you your own life, it was still for the better.

"The Overseeker of the Southern Frontier Sector did, not that I expect you to know. Now, please, come back here. You had enough time watching the sunset."

You couldn't believe your eyes, watching him say it with such confidence. Was he willing to keep playing his twisted game even when his sweet facade fell?

"Why do you pretend as if my death matters to you? You will kill me soon anyway. Does it bring you so much pleasure to murder one more pathetic human?"

"I won't kill you, sweetheart. It has never been my intention."

There was something to his voice, some emotion you struggled to describe that made you feel bitter and regretful. Was it all truly going to end like this? You were so young, supposed to have your whole life ahead of you, now faced with a choice to either let a vampire consume you or jump out the carriage and fell to your death.

"Than what was it? I assume you have been living for more than thousands of years. Aren't you a little too old for playing these games still?" You chocked on a sob, barely containing your tears as you trembled in front of the Overseeker.

"I am not playing a game." He admitted tiredly, suddenly taking the black glove off his hand. "All I wish for is a loving wife who can bear my children and bring peace to my lands. I have been wandering human cities for a great while before I found you, strong enough to carry a dampiel after a few genetic enhancements. Please, do not struggle. I have not come to make you suffer eternal torment."

For a couple of seconds you stared at him with your mouth slightly open, unable to utter a single word. You had expected the vampire to say anything but this. Was it still a game? Now you hoped it was because even being drained till the last drop of blood was better than carrying a dampiel, a child of both vampire and human, feared and loathed greatly by both races. When you recovered, however, you quickly turned the door handle and pushed the door, willing to wait no longer.

But the door did not give to your pressure. To your horror, it stayed still as if it were a solid piece of steel.

Feeling the iron grip of the Overseeker's fingers on you shoulder, you yelped as he dragged you back to his coffin with force, closing the lid before you had a chance to escape. The next second his fingers were on your neck, suffocating you before you lost consciousness just like the night when Steven Grant Rogers kidnapped his human beloved.

______________________

Tags: @finleyjayne @alexakeyloveloki @helenaeisenhower @villanellevi @hurricanerin @abyssaint @heeeyitskay @chris-evans-indian-fanfic @navegandoaciegas @rosalynshields @brattycherubwrites @sllooney @angrythingstarlight @lookiamtrying @buckysbunny @soleil-dor @stargazingfangirl18 @dillybuggg @literate-lamb @cosicas-cuquis @sarge-barnes-sir @lovelydarkdaydream @ninefuckingoneone @jaysayey @megzdoodle

#captain america #mcu #mcu fanfiction #yandere #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers #dark steve rogers x reader #dark steve rogers

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fvrxdrm · 4 years ago

Text

Last Night (Leon Kennedy x Reader)

Pairing: Infinite Darkness!Leon x GN!Reader

Warning(s): Implied sex

This is about a dream I had a few nights ago. I added a few things at the end bc the ending in my dream didn’t make sense but I’ll explain it later at the end notes.

*****

“Ugh! She’s a fucking headache!”

The coolness of the air conditioning in the briefing room dried up the remaining sweat on your back and forehead and your hands went disgustingly sticky with the clamminess clinging into your palm. Fatigued and dozy you were, you were sure you were going to pass out right there in your seat.

You, along with your partner, Leon, were tasked to save Ashley Graham again, this time in a more urban part of Italy. When the president told you about her getting kidnapped again, you legit rolled your eyes and Leon nudged your side when he saw the subtle gesture you displayed. Had Leon had the audacity to disrespect people who had higher power than him in his line of work, he would’ve flipped the president off and took the both of you to a nearby bar. He wasn’t like that though, much to your dismay. He still had that “mama’s boy” attitude in him even when he left some of it during his “rookie day” or night or something.

You were close to rioting that time. They were going to send you to that fucking mission again with only the two of you and hand you both shitty-ass pistols with ten fucking bullets. Who the fuck does that? Wouldn’t you send the whole team if you, the president of the United fucking States, had a daughter that’s been kidnapped? Also, why the fuck didn’t they enhance the fucking security level? Hello? Parenting 101?

Leon crashed onto the couch beside you, making you bounce a bit, before shaking his hair from the grease and dampness his locks held. “Agreed. I might’ve lost my ears right there…again,” he grunted as he stretched his arms above his head and managed to pop a few joints in the process. “Wanna grab a few drinks after this?”

With your head leaned against the back of the couch, you turned to look at your friend with jaded eyes and a lazy smile. You nodded in response and slapped a hand on his thigh. “Sure.”

*****

You may or may not have had one too many drinks and danced around like a fucking worm on crack. Leon had one of his arms wrapped around your waist and a glass of whiskey in his free hand as he ground against your skirt-clad ass while you responded back with the same enthusiasm as him. Both of you were drunk, that’s for sure. Not only with pure intoxication, but also with a sinful desire; something you two unknowingly shared on nights where fingers worked their magic to bring you both to a blissful high. You knew they weren’t enough to satisfy your wants, but they were enough to calm your racing thoughts temporarily instead of committing to a one-time thing and bringing awkwardness in the atmosphere, at least you thought it would’ve been a one-time thing.

Leon whispered naughty things into your ear, things he wouldn’t have said had he been conscious enough to stop himself from making a move, and boldly dipped a finger in your skirt and rubbed your pussy through your underwear. He was going to make love to you, he said, and he would make sure that you would be his. You bit your lip as you moaned at his words. He was hot and you would gladly let him fuck you anytime, anywhere. And so, you agreed.

*****

Ring. Ring. Ring.

The provoking sound of your phone pulled you away from your dream. Your fantasy was so close to getting to the good part. Leon was about to fucking kiss you and then somebody decided to fucking wake you up! You sighed. If somebody woke you up this early then you guessed it was really important. So, despite being piqued and groggy from the sudden sound, you picked your phone up from the night stand beside your bed, not even thinking about how different your room looked, and checked the time before answering the call. “Hello?” You spoke, your voice raspy and your throat feeling like a thousand knives were stabbed into it. You also took note of how your head felt like you were banging it against the wall with so much speed and vigor and attempted to ease it down with a simple massage but to no avail.

“Morning, Y/N!”, the voice from the other line boomed, causing your agonizing condition to aggravate even more.

Ashley

You groaned at the contrasting enthusiasm the girl had and you had to slam the phone on the mattress to ground yourself and keep you from dying. “Can you keep your voice down? I have a headache right now and it would be much appreciated if you could calm down,” you said after bringing your device back to your ear.

“Oh, sorry. I was just going to ask if you could meet me in the church later? I wanted to talk to you about something while we get everything set for my wedding tomorrow. I tried calling Leon, but he wouldn’t answer. Can you do me a favor of telling him about it too?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll call him.”

“Thanks, Y/N! I’ll see you later,” she said. The call ended with a series of beeps and you slammed your phone on the bed again with your eyes shut tight in irritation.

I cannot deal with that girl again. Especially now that I’m hungover… But who am I to deny the president’s fucking daughter…?

You sighed.

Welp, time to call Leon.

You raised your phone up parallel to your face and was about to press Leon’s saved contact name when you suddenly felt an arm wrap around your torso. Your heart pounded. With eyes opened wide and brain waking up from its slumber in an instant, you slowly turned your head towards your left and almost screamed at what you saw…or rather who you saw.

Leon.

His chest was exposed to the warmth of the morning air, hair strands clamped together by oil and sweat that was starting to form on his skin. He was still deep in his slumber and you noticed how the round bulge tucked in his eyelids moved around as if he was exploring something in his dream.

Never had you and Leon shared a bed together. Those times where he would come over to your place for a drink? He would always insist that he could just crash into your couch in order to avoid invading your privacy.

You panicked at the situation you were in. You grabbed the hem of your blanket and yanked it up to check if anything did happen, and surprise, surprise; something did. You were both naked and you felt something drying up down there. You also started taking notice of how your vagina felt sore from probably getting pounded and fucked silly last night-

Oh, right! Last night.

You vaguely remembered how Leon touched your body while you two were getting drunk. You two were getting a bit too flirty and began groping each other here and there, getting more and more suggestive as minutes passed, pie-eyed and unconscious with how you were treating each other as more than friends.

Every corner and every wall your eyes passed was becoming a void of something dark, something you became anxious of. What happened would forever change your friendship and your relationship with him for sure. Hell, you weren’t even sure if he was going to stay by your side starting from when he wakes up in a few minutes. And as much as you wanted to go back and prevent that from happening, you couldn’t, and you had to face the music whether you liked or not.

*****

Sure enough, when you woke Leon up, everything was awkward. No words were exchange from when you prepared for the day, breakfast, and until Leon drove you both to the location Ashley had told you to go to. The silence rose hysteria in both of your minds. You were going fucking crazy. You were fidgety when you sat beside Leon in the passenger seat and the man would bounce his leg up and down when you hit a red light. You both were trying to avoid taking a glance at each other, but those inevitable moments that you did, you would forcefully smile at each other and then gaze back out the window again. That was the cycle you lived on for a few hours and you decided to let it stay like that until one of you broke the atmosphere.

You waited inside the church as you were told. It was only the two of you inside but you acted like a handful of people were sitting beside you with the amount of space that was left unfilled between you. You were biting your lip and focusing on the pillars and stones that made up the building until you couldn’t process anything that was happening anymore and stood up, studying the interior as you roamed. “Hey,” you heard somebody whisper behind you. You looked down to your wrist when you felt something warm and saw a fairly large hand loosely gripping onto it before looking up to see Leon’s eyes gazing into yours. You nearly got lost in them but thankfully, he spoke before you got stuck into your own stupor. “I just wanna say… I’m sorry. I-it’s not gonna change everything that happened but I don’t want to break what we have. I value you and our friendship too much for me to let it go. I don’t think we can forget about last night but if it makes you feel better…I-I-“

“Can we talk about this outside? I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to talk about it here,” you chuckled. Leon nodded in agreement before leading you out to where a garden caught your attention. “Listen Leon, I know we can’t just pretend nothing happened but… I don’t wanna let go of this either. I value this as much as you do and it would be crazy stupid for me just to just hate you for something we weren’t even conscious about or something,” you said. You both laughed in relief as the weight on your shoulders dissipated into thin air before you placed a gentle palm on his cheek. Again, no words were shared but this time, no anxiety was present. Instead, you felt like this was an intimate moment only the two of you shared. Something was being written in the stars and you saw every word the gods wrote in the eyes of the person in front of you both.

As cheesy as it sounded, you two felt like magnets were pulling you towards each other, physically and mentally, and in a matter of seconds, you found your lips being pressed against Leon’s.

It was like you were recreating what happened last night without even knowing the details, except this was slower, more sensual, and certainly more emotional, and you couldn’t help the tears that flowed freely against your cheeks.

“Come on, let’s ditch Ashley. Maybe we could relive what happened last night?”

*****

Okay, so in my dream, Ashley’s not getting married and she didn’t call me. Instead, what happened was after the bar scene, Leon and I got teleported in front of the altar and just fucking talked. And then we walked outside and what happened in the end of this fic happened in my dream. Lol.

I rushed this bc I’m tired.

#leonkennedy #leon kennedy x reader #leon kennedy imagines #leon s kennedy x reader #leonxreader #leon kennedy x you #leon+kennedy+fanfic #leon+kennedy+imagine #resident evil #resident evil x reader #resident evil fanfic

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heauxplesslydevoted · 5 years ago

Text

Home Again Ch. 1 (Liam x MC)

Summary: AU TRR fic. Four years ago, Kendall fled Cordonia and the love of her life. But when she’s forced to come back, she’s also forced to confront long buried feelings and painful revelations.

A/N: I’ve been toying with this plot for over a year now, and I finally got around to actually working on it. Yay me! As always, let me know if you want to be tagged or untagged, or if I missed you.

Tags: @drakewalker04 @canknot @lapisreviewsstuff @akacalliope @senseofduties @badchoicesposts @sirbeepsalot @texaskitten30 @ao719 @eadanga @hopefulmoonobject @janezillow @ramseyandrys @aestheticartwriting

~v~

The water. If there was one thing Kendall missed about Cordonia, it was the gorgeous water of the Mediterranean, always warm, always blue. And the sun. There’s just something different about the warmth in her native country.

Stepping off of the private jet, she breathes in the slightly salty air. After almost 5 years of being away, Kendall isn’t sure if she’s happy to be home or not. While she did love Cordonia, she hates that she’s coming back under such awful conditions.

When her mother called yesterday and told her that her father had a heart attack, it was a no brainer for Kendall to drop everything and come back home. Her dad is her own personal Superman, she’s never known him to even have a cold, so hearing that he had a heart attack threw her for a loop.

“Kendall!”

The sound of her name being called makes Kendall whip her head around. She sees Gladys, the daughter to her estate’s majordomo poking her head out of the window of a sleek black Escalade

One of the flight attendants grabs Kendall’s luggage as she rushes towards the car. Flinging the passenger side door open, she leans in and wraps Gladys in a warm hug.

Gladys is taken aback by the huge display of affection, but she hugs Kendall back. “It’s nice to see you too, my lady.”

“What have I told you, it’s just Kendall. You don’t have to be formal with me, Gladys.”

“Very well.” Gladys turns her head and sees the flight attendant putting the last of Kendall’s luggage in the trunk. “Get in, get in.”

“I do not have to be told twice.”

The ride from the airport to the hospital in the capital was mostly silent. Kendall knows the older woman probably has questions for her. They haven’t seen each other in years, and Kendall swore she’d never step foot in this country ever again. But now she’s back. But it’s not like she’s back, back. She’s only here to see her dad through his recovery. Nothing more, nothing less.

“So how was school?” Gladys asks, breaking Kendall out of her thoughts. “Columbia right?”

The mention of her Ivy League alma mater brings a smile to Kendall’s face. “I loved it. New York is amazing, the school is amazing.”

“What are you doing now? My dad mentioned it was something to do with money, but he’s awful at explaining things.”

“Financial analyst.”

“Do you work on that fancy street? The one with all the walls of money?”

“Wall Street,” Kendall corrects with a chuckle. “And yes. But it’s not literally made with walls of money, Gladys. Just lots and lots of tall buildings.”

“Do you have a big office?”

“I have a cubicle. It’s not fancy, but it gets the job done.”

They spend the rest of the car ride in silence. Kendall can’t bring herself to care about the usual court gossip right now, her mind focused solely on her dad.

They make it to the hospital fairly quickly and Kendall barely remembers talking to someone at the nurse’s station before rushing off again to find her father’s hospital room.

She isn’t sure what she was expecting to see, but she definitely didn’t anticipate so many wires and machines. Her father is always so...strong and commanding, but in this moment, Stephen Mason looks incredibly frail. And her poor mother, Victoria, looks equally exhausted, hunched over his bed, their hands clasped together.

Stephen notices her first, and a smile slowly creeps onto his face. “Victoria, did you really call our daughter and tell her to come home?”

“Thank God she did,” Kendall says fully entering the hospital room.

“I’m fine. You could’ve stayed in New York.”

“You had a heart attack, dad.”

Stephen dismisses the statement with a flick of his wrist. “It was minor.”

Kendall ignores him and wraps her arms tightly around him. Tears prick the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over. She tries to relax, breathing in her dad’s scent. He’s alive, he’s here. She can breathe.

Stephen rubs a comforting hand up and down Kendall’s arm. “Don’t cry. I’m fine, sweetheart.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. My doctor said I was very blessed. I didn’t even need surgery.”

Kendall takes a shuddering breath and wipes her eyes. “So what caused this? When are you getting out of here? What’s your treatment plan? Do you have to do physical therapy?”

Stephen chuckles and turns to his wife. “She burns through a lot of topics, really fast. She gets that from you.”

“Oh, hush. For now, he’s going to have to take aspirin daily,” Victoria explains. “And we’re meeting with a nutritionist and physical therapist in order to get a diet and exercise plan.”

“Good.” Kendall visibly relaxes at her mother’s words.

“They hope to discharge me the day after tomorrow,” Stephen adds. “All of my tests and bloodwork have come back good so far.”

“Okay.”

“Why don’t you go home sweetheart?” Stephen suggests. “It’s your first time back home in a really long time, I’m sure there are more interesting things you can be doing other than staring at me.”

“I’m fine.” Kendall can’t leave, not yet. She hasn’t even met his doctor. Despite his words, she won’t feel at ease until she knows without a doubt that he’s going to be okay. His words are comforting, but they aren’t enough.

“I had to send your brother away,” Stephen says. “He was hovering as well, but he actually listened to me and went back to the estate.”

Kendall’s younger brother Zachary was always the more obedient child.

“That’s nice for Zach, but I’m staying with you for now.” Kendall sits down in an uncomfortable chair adjacent to her dad’s bed. “So stop trying to get rid of me.”

“Very well. But no hospital talk. Tell me how work has been.”

The three of them get wrapped up in a pleasant conversation about Kendall’s job, with her sharing funny office anecdotes and complaining about her least favorite coworkers.

She also gets to meet her dad’s cardiologist, Dr. Locke. He’s a nice, older guy and he doesn’t bat an eyelash when she grills him on his credentials and qualifications. Kendall isn’t the first overly concerned family member he’s encountered during his career and she won’t be the last.

“Ms. Mason, your father is doing incredibly well, and I expect him to make a full recovery.”

“About how long is the recovery process?”

“It depends on the patient, but your father is due for a follow-up in a few weeks. We’ll assess his progress then.”

“How long until I can go back to work?” Stephen asks.

“Oh you won’t be touching work for at least 2 months,” Dr. Locke replies seriously. “Work is inherently stressful, Mr. Mason, and stress isn’t good for you.”

“I’ll make sure he relaxes,” Victoria says, affectionately squeezing her husband’s hand. “I promise.”

“Good.” The Doctor checks the time on his watch. “A nurse should be coming in a few minutes to check your vitals, but it’s time for you to get some much needed rest.”

“Only if you kick this one out,” Stephen says, pointing to Kendall. “I won’t be able to relax with her here.”

“Dad! You can’t just kick me out.”

“Go home,” Stephen orders. “Get some rest, call one of your friends, I don’t care, but you cannot stay here and stare at me until I fall asleep.”

Dr. Locke’s eyes shift back and forth between the father and daughter. “Miss, if your father wants you to leave, then you have to leave.”

Kendall glares at her father, shocked that he has the audacity to remove her from his hospital room. “Fine. But I’m coming back tomorrow.”

“I’ll see you then, sweetheart.”

She huffs and collects her belongings. After kissing her parents goodbye, she steps out into the bustling hallway, trying to stay out of the way of the nurses, doctors, and patients. Once she’s out of the way, Kendall grabs her phone and scrolls through the contacts before finding the number she was looking for.

“Kendall, what a pleasant surprise.”

“I’m in town,” Kendall says, cutting straight to the chase. “And I need a drink.”

“Beer garden?”

“I’ll meet you there in an hour.”

~v~

King Liam strides down the hall to his study, a folder full of notes and documents in hand as Bastien trails closely behind. He has a meeting to attend to discuss the budget for Cordonia’s upcoming fiscal year.

Instead of seeing the Chancellor of Finance upon entering his study, he sees his father.

The visit catches him off guard. “Father! What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“Can it wait? I’m supposed to be meeting with Stephen in a few minutes.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Constantine says. He walks over to Liam’s drink cart and surveys the decanters of various alcohols. He settles on a vintage scotch and pours himself a glass. “You won’t be meeting with Stephen today.”

“It’s unlike him to cancel a meeting, especially one as important as this. Is he okay?”

“Victoria called Regina a little while ago. He had a heart attack last night.”

The admission shocks Liam. “Oh my goodness, is he okay? Is he…”

“He’s alive and stable. But he’s going to be out of commission for a while while he’s recovering. I told her that Stephen can take as much time as he needs, we will manage without him.”

Liam nods. His father and Stephen Mason were good friends, and it’s been that way since they were kids. It was part of the reason he and Kendall grew so close. Back when things were good between them, at least.

“Of course, he can take all the time he needs. How is everyone else holding up?”

“Victoria seemed to be in decent spirits when Regina spoke with her. She said Zachary was with them earlier.”

Liam bites the inside of his cheek. His mind can’t help but wander to her. “Any mention of Kendall? Does she know?”

“Victoria didn’t say, nor did Regina ask.” The parents made a point to never bring their children up in conversation. It’s a lot easier to simply pretend the elephant in the room doesn’t exist. “I assume she knows. She adores her father. He adores her as well.”

Liam snorts in derision. “Trust me, I know.”

Constantine quirks an eyebrow up in confusion. Snark isn’t usually his son’s forte, especially over Lady Kendall.

“I told Regina that I’d pass along the news. Please send a gift basket or flowers to their estate, on behalf of the family.”

“Of course.”

Constantine finishes his drink in one large sip. He sighs and puts down his glass. “And buy better scotch.”

Liam rolls his eyes. “Goodbye, Father.”

Constantine chuckles to himself and exits his son’s study. Liam sits down at his desk and rummages through his pockets until he finds his cell phone.

He finds Drake’s contact and clicks it. After a few seconds, his best friend answers.

“What’s up, Li?”

“Nothing. I had a meeting scheduled, but it was cancelled, so I have no plans for the evening.”

“Max and I were thinking about heading to the beer garden for the evening. Are you in?”

“Of course. I’m not turning down an opportunity to drink.”

~v~

“Cheers!” Kendall clinks glasses with Olivia and downs her drink.

The red headed Duchess watches her friend, a bemused look on her face. “Slow down, Mason, that’s your fourth beer.”

“What, are you afraid I’m going to drink you under the table?”

“Of course not. But we don’t need you getting absolutely shitfaced.” Olivia turns to the bartender and hands him a $50 dollar bill. “She’s switching to water.”

“You’re not being fun.”

“One of us has to be practical, you lush.” Olivia takes the bottle of water left by the bartender and slides it towards Kendall. “Drink up.”

Kendall stares at her friend, locked in a silent battle. Both women are stubborn to a fault, neither wanting to back down from a challenge. Olivia glares back, her emerald green eyes fixed squarely on the woman in front of her.

After a long while, Kendall relents and reluctantly opens the bottle of water, taking a tiny sip. “Happy?”

“Ecstatic.” Olivia hops off of her barstool and grabs Kendall by the arm. “Let’s sit somewhere else. We have some talking to do.”

Kendall allows herself to be dragged over to a table tucked in a far corner of the garden. It’s pretty quiet, with most of the patrons wanting to stick towards the middle of the space or close to the bar.

She looks around. It’s been so long since she’s seen the beer garden, and everything looks and feels exactly the same. Flowers still bloom all around, dainty lights hang from every surface of the room, giving off a calm and romantic vibe. Memories of happier times visiting this establishment flood her mind, but she shakes them away.

“How’s your dad doing?” Olivia asks, cutting straight to the chase.

“He’s...okay, I guess. Things could be better, but they could definitely be worse, so,” Kendall shrugs, “I don’t know. He’s alive and coherent. That’s all I can ask for at this point.”

“Your dad is a tough guy. He’ll be just fine.”

“When I got the call last night that he was rushed to the hospital, I panicked,” Kendall says. “My mom chartered a jet for me, thank goodness because there’s no way I would’ve been able to sit in the airport. I was so frazzled, I didn’t even call my job until I saw flying over Spain.”

“Do you like that job of yours?”

“Of course I do.”

“How long are you going to be in Cordonia?”

Kendall shrugs. “For as long as I can milk my job for family medical leave.”

“You should just come back,” Olivia suggests, circling the rim of her glass with a perfectly manicured finger. “Hana’s been in Shanghai for the past month, and you’re the only other girl I like. Well, besides Gabriella.”

“Who’s Gabriella?”

“I forgot you don’t keep up with the court anymore. Gabriella is Maxwell’s girlfriend.”

Kendall’s mouth drops in shock. “Maxwell? Maxwell Beaumont?”

“Yeah, I think you’d really like her. She’s just so...nice.”

“Is she a noble?”

“No, she’s a veterinarian assistant. They hooked up after an incident with one of the Beaumont peacocks. That was a few months ago, and they’ve been together ever since.”

“How cute,” Kendall coos. “But to circle back to your little suggestion, the answer is no.”

“Why not?”

“Because I like New York. I like living there.”

“I gave you a pass when you first left because you were going to school. But you graduated, it’s time to come home.”

“You can use your authoritative duchess voice on everyone else, but it won’t work with me, Nevrakis.”

“I think you’re wasting your potential in the States,” Olivia admits. “Do you know who your father is? His name, along with your degree, could get you a job in any financial sector in this country.”

“Trust me, I know.” The last thing Kendall wants to do is rely on nepotism in order to secure a job. “I don’t want him to make things happen for me, I can do it on my own. I love New York, I love my job. Stop trying to convince me to leave.”

Olivia pouts childishly. “But you’re staying for a while, right?”

“At least 2 months,” Kendall admits.

“Good.” She goes silent for a while, pondering if she should even bring this up. “You’re going to run into him eventually, you know.”

“I don’t plan on it.”

“Oh really?”

“I figured between the hospital, my dad’s physical therapy appointments, and taking care of him, I won’t even be getting out of the house much.”

“I don’t know if you're naive or delusional,” Olivia says with a snort. “Maybe both.”

“Look, I’m only back because of my dad. This isn’t a happy, social visit. Outings like this,” Kendall gestures to their surroundings, “are not going to be an everyday thing. Besides, I’m sure Liam will be busy doing princely things.”

“Technically kingly things.”

Kendall lifts her water bottle to her lips again. “Excuse me?”

“Liam’s the king now.” Olivia grimaces as Kendall spits the water out of her mouth. “Ew.”

“He’s king? Since when?”

“Leo abdicated last year. Literally left in the middle of the night and never looked back. Liam got crowned at the top of this year.”

To say the news shocks her would be an understatement. Kendall always knew Leo was flighty and impulsive, but this was an entirely new beast. “Wow.”

“Liam’s taken it in stride for the most part, but he refused to have a social season and pick a bride, much to Constantine’s dismay and he hasn’t spoken to Leo in months. The transition has been a bit...tough for him. Obviously he loves this country, but no one truly understands the weight of the crown, especially one that wasn’t made for you and that’s been shoved onto your head.”

Kendall doesn’t say anything else, trying to absorb all of the information given to her. Never in a million years did she ever think Liam would be the one running this country.

Olivia gauges her friend’s reaction to the news. She’s usually extremely stoic when it comes to Liam, shutting down the conversation when he’s mentioned or refusing to engage in anything about him at all. This is the most Kendall has spoken of him in years, it almost feels like a miracle that she doesn’t want to disrupt.

Kendall clears her throat awkwardly. “Can we please order another round?”

“One more, Mason. Then I’m cutting you off for–” Olivia abruptly stops talking as she sees Maxwell, Drake, and Liam enter the garden.

“You can’t cut me off,” Kendall says, not noticing Olivia’s shift in tone. “You aren’t the–”

A loud gasp cuts into Kendall’s sentence. “Mason!?”

Kendall’s head whips around and she sees the trio of guys heading over. Maxwell and Drake have broad grins on their faces, but not Liam. He looks as if he’s seen a ghost.

His heart hammers in his chest as he looks at her. It’s...crazy how many memories come flooding back to him. They all slam into him like a ton of bricks, one after the next.

“Liam!” 18 year old Kendall squeals as Liam buries his face in the crook of her neck, kissing her. “Liam, you’re distracting me.”

“You smell good,” Liam murmurs into her skin. She smells like coconuts. “You always smell so good.”

“Thank you. But you’re supposed to be helping me study! I have a test tomorrow for my government class.”

“Is that the only reason I’m here?” Liam pulls away from Kendall and smirks at her.

“Obviously,” Kendall teases. “What good is dating a prince if I can’t use him to help me ace my exams?”

Liam feigns shock, jumping away from Kendall. He wraps a hand around her ankle and tugs it hard, sending her flying forward. Her head flies back, hitting the pile of pillows she has neatly placed on her bed. She laughs at the action, a laugh that makes Liam’s heart still thud wildly in his chest, 3 years into dating her.

“Take it back,” Liam orders. Kendall kicks at him, but he jumps back, narrowly dodging her foot.

“Make me.”

The challenge causes Liam’s eyes to darken, mischief sparkling in their pretty blue depths. In one quick stride, he’s towering over Kendall, his arms braced at either of her sides. “You’re not with me because you can use it to your advantage.”

“Prove it, mister.”

“You’re with me because I make you laugh,” Liam says, leaning closer to his girlfriend. He kisses the tip of her nose. “Because I know how to make you smile after a long day.” He kisses the apples of her cheeks next. “Because I know you better than you know yourself. Because I’m your best friend, even though Olivia would murder me if I said that in her presence,”

Liam pounces onto the bed, his knees replacing his arms and barricading Kendall underneath him. His hands go up to cradle her face, touching her with care as if she were a piece of fine art.

“You want to know why I’m really with you?” Kendall asks rhetorically.

“Enlighten me, Lady Kendall.”

She turns her head slightly and kisses the inside of his arm. “Because I am absolutely, positively, head over heels in love with you, Prince Charming.”

Liam knows this. He and Kendall have never been shy when it comes to expressing their love for one another, but every time she says she loves him, it feels like the first time all over again. A wide grin breaks out on his face, something so bright and uninhibited, something reserved solely for her. “And I love you, Kendall. More than anything else in the world.”

Liam is pulled from the memory when he sees Kendall get out of her seat to greet Maxwell, her arms wrapping around his neck as they meet in a ferocious hug.

Maxwell kisses the side of her head. “I’ve missed you, my little blossom!”

“I missed you too, Max.”

“Is New York treating you well?”

“Yes. You guys need to come visit me again. I’ll take you to all the cool spots.” Kendall turns her attention to Drake next. “There’s a whiskey bar in Brooklyn that you would absolutely adore.”

“Is it better than the one in Manhattan?”

“Much.”

“Mason, you’re talking my language.”

“What are you doing out here?” Maxwell asks.

“It’s my dad,” Kendall says, sobering up instantly as she remembers the reason why she’s here. “He had a heart attack.” She sees the looks of panic flash across Drake and Maxwell’s faces. “He’s going to be okay, his doctors are optimistic.”

Maxwell nods. “Damn right he is. Stephen is going to bounce back better than ever.”

“If he stays on course, he’ll be released in a few days,” Kendall continues. “So I have a lot to get done within the next 36 hours.”

“Do you need any help?” Drake asks.

“No. I think I’ll call a cleaning service in the morning to make sure the estate is spotless. And once he meets with a nutritionist, I have to go grocery shopping. But for now, I’m okay. Thanks for the offer.”

Maxwell affectionately squeezes Kendall’s hand. “Don’t hesitate to reach out, Kenny, with whatever.”

Kendall’s eyes briefly flicker over to Liam. He’s still standing there, as still as a statue, and she looks away before he notices her. But she feels his blue eyes, burning a hole into the side of her head.

She feels dizzy, and she isn’t sure if it’s from being in such close proximity to him or the amount of alcohol she’s consumed.

Because while Liam can look at her and remember the good times, the sight of him is quickly unraveling her.

The night of their breakup is still so fresh in her mind, her senses overwhelmed by the memory.

Her heart thuds so loudly in her chest, she can feel it in her ears.

She can still recall the taste of the salty tears flowing freely from her eyes as she cried. She remembers the soreness, the way the muscles in her back and shoulders ached after she was wracked with uncontrollable sobs.

“Please, Liam!” The unrecognizable desperation in her voice rattles her as she drops to her knees in front of Liam. Who is she? “Forget about New York, forget about Columbia! I don’t need to go. I just need you, I want you. I’ll stay. I’ll stay and we’ll be together.”

Liam frowns sadly. “I can’t be the reason you stay. I need to let you go.”

“No! Don’t do this to us.”

Her breath hitches in her throat at the memory. It was the worst day of her life, and she’s tried for 4 long years to bury the memories and forget them entirely. But one look at Liam and she’s back to square one. In an instant, she’s that 18 years old girl again, the one that was hopelessly in love with him and got her heart annihilated in turn.

She turns to Olivia. “I think I should finally head home.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m tired.” It’s not a lie. Kendall is exhausted and it’s a decent enough excuse. But the gang knows better, they know her desire to flee is due to the monarch standing next to them.

“Are you good to drive?” Olivia questions.

“I’ll call Gladys or Zach to come pick me up.” Kendall grabs her purse and rifles through it with shaky fingers, looking for any random bills. “How much do I owe you?”

Olivia shakes her head. “Don’t worry about the tab, it’s my treat.”

“Thank you. I’ll call you when I get home, okay?”

“You better.”

Kendall turns to Maxwell and Drake. She plasters on a smile, one that’s rehearsed and doesn’t reach her eyes. “It was nice seeing you two again.”

The dig at the king’s expense doesn’t go unnoticed. Kendall treats him like he isn’t there, blatantly refusing to acknowledge his existence.

She gives them one last smile and wave, making her way out. “Goodnight guys.”

Kendall’s going to have to pass Liam in order to reach the exit, so he decides that now might be the only time he can talk to her. “Kendall, wait!”

He lightly grabs her arm, stopping her from leaving and that’s when things go south. Before he can react, Kendall turns around and catches his wrist between her fingers, twisting his entire arm at an awkward angle.

A pain shoots up his arm and he winces in spite of himself. Bastien, who had been keeping a respectful distance, strides over to the table, ready to diffuse the situation. “Unhand him at once, Lady Kendall.”

“Touch me again, and I swear I’ll break it,” Kendall hisses fiercely. She turns to Bastien. “That wasn’t a threat, it was a promise.”

“Let him go,” Bastien commands. He doesn’t want to escalate the situation by any means, but he can’t let the king get hurt, even if his ex is the one inflicting the wound.

Kendall drops Liam’s hand and he instantly goes to cradle it. When did she learn that move?

Without another word, she stalks off, not sparing another glance at her friends or the other patrons of the establishment who saw the incident.

“Are you alright, Your Majesty?” Bastien asks, surveying Liam’s wrist.

“I’m fine. She didn’t actually break anything.”

“Everyone here will be signing a non disclosure agreement,” Bastien continues. It doesn’t need to get out that that king’s ex-girlfriend nearly broke his wrist for all of the public to see. He says something into his earpiece about closing the garden down for a few minutes, but Liam’s not listening anymore.

The young monarch turns to the scarlet haired duchess sitting a few feet away from him. He narrows his eyes at her. “Pray tell, when were you going to mention that Kendall was back in town?”

Olivia grins like a Cheshire Cat and raises her glass at the question. “Surprise!”

#playchoices #choices: stories you play #the royal romance #the royal heir #king liam #king liam x mc #pixelberry

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thebibliomancer · 4 years ago

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #218: Born Again (And Again and Again...)

April, 1982

Avengers fill-in issues are so weird. Beast isn’t even here and things are weird as heck.

And geez this is an unsubtle cover. And for once, not a lie.

Although Yellowjacket being in the roster rectangle is one.

I do like that the And Again... And Again... wraps off the edge of the page.

Y’know, I don’t know that this is a fill-in. It says Jim Shooter co-plotted. Then again, there’s a regular creative team box instead of an essay. So co-plotted probably means Shooter offered some adjustments to the plot but mostly let J.M. DeMatteis get on with it.

This feels like a weird time for it, honestly? The fall of Yellowjacket arc is kind of humming along leisurely already. With setup in 212, the fall in 213, fallout in 214, then a pause in 215 and 216 for the Molecule Man plot, and finally picking back up with Hank in 217 to see him fall further. And then there’s going to be a stretch of issues before we pick up again.

But it is what it is and what it is is a weird fill-in.

The issue starts where a young boy just walks right up to the door of Avengers Mansion and rings the doorbell.

Somewhere, Henry Peter Gyrich is shaking his fist. Where are the door tentacles? He fought for those door tentacles!

The young boy is here to see the Avengers and won’t take a “the Avengers are quite busy today” for an answer.

This boy: “This is a matter of life and death!!”

He remains quite insistent that he see the Avengers.

Luckily, Wasp (who I guess is not quite busy today?) shows up and decides to let this boy in for the best reason of all.

Wasp: “Turn away an adorable well-spoken little boy like you? Never! I know you were just doing your job, Jarvis -- but I’m a sucker for a pretty face! I think I’ll give him the grand tour.”

Wasp, pls.

But what Wasp says goes, so Jarvis just shrugs and goes back to the chocolate mousse cake that he was making.

Leaving Wasp to deal with this unruly child.

Wasp: “What’s your name, sweetie?”

This boy: “Sweetie?! Madam -- I am not your ‘sweetie!’ As I explained to your butler, this is a matter of gravest importance! Now take me to Captain America and the others!”

Wasp: “Just one minute, young man! I know you’re excited about being here -- but that is no excuse for rudeness! I think you ought to --”

This boy: “Madam -- SHUT UP!!”

And then he shoves her and runs off.

Pretty sure he shoves her in the boob too. You can’t fool me by changing some letters, SFX that says BOONT.

Anyway, very rude, this boy.

Meanwhile, in the Avenger’s lab we get to see what the Avengers are so quite busy with.

Thor is holding up an incredibly heavy piece of machinery while Iron Man does some welding on the bottom of it.

Thor is also complaining about holding up an incredibly heavy piece of machinery because Iron Man has been at it for about an hour. Do they not have a jack or something that can do the job instead?

Also, the big thing is apparently an “inter-spatial monitor.” I assume it watches the space between spaces.

Cap is also here, being quite busy leaning against the wall and also complaining about how long this is taking.

He’s already worked out for three hours today and he wants to get on with the Avengers meeting.

And then This Boy runs into the room exclaiming “Avengers! I’ve got to talk to you!!” startling Iron Man just when he was finishing up the welding.

Startled Iron Man accidentally blasts Thor’s foot causing the God of Thunder to lose his grip on the inter-spatial monitor out of surprise.

Cap realizes Iron Man could get crushed underneath it and springs into action, tackling Iron Man out from under the monitor. The choreography almost makes sense.

Iron Man: “Thanks, Cap -- but I could have handled that myself, you know!”

Captain America: “I know, old friend -- but I didn’t want to... take any chances!”

And then they shake hands in a display of what good friends they are. Ha ha this is ironic in hindsight. But also: is DeMattias trying to ship them? This feels like a very shippable moment.

Look at Cap’s little smile.

Anyway.

Thor scoops up This Boy and scolds him for scurrying around and distracting thunder gods.

Thor: “Whoe’ver thou art -- Thor hath half a mind to give thee a sound spanking!”

This Boy: “I... don’t think I’d live through it!”

Hah.

Thor: “Worry not, child -- Thor shall not strike thee!”

So then Wasp shows up so the gang is all here for this boy to explain why he wanted to talk to the Avengers so badly.

This Boy: “Listen to me -- all of you! I am not a child! I am a man cursed with eternal life! I am a man who cannot die -- and I need your help!”

Iron Man: “Easy, son -- why don’t you tell us your name so that we can get in touch with your parents. I’m sure they’d like to know where you are...”

This boy: “My parents?! Fool! I was afraid this would be your reaction! But I must make you understand!”

And then he pulls out a gun.

Points it at his own head, like on the cover. And shoots himself.

Good grief.

It all happens way too quickly for the Avengers to react. Or maybe the audacity just stunned them.

HEY I THOUGHT THE AVENGERS’ SECURITY SYSTEM SCANNED FOR WEAPONS.

God, Gyrich would be rolling in his grave, if he were dead.

Anyway, as Wasp is crying into Cap’s star that a child just died, Cap goes hey look something weird is happening with the child corpse.

The child corpse just disintegrates into ash and fades away. Thus clearing the Avengers from having to explain this to anyone.

And more bizarrely, where the ash was-

I... I guess the way to explain it is that a fetus just sort of develops into a baby and then back into this boy right in front of the Avengers’ eyes.

Why is this happening

I do like the “Now do you believe me?” “They do...” caption.

Thor: “Methinks it be time for an explanation!”

YES. EXACTLY RIGHT.

This boy finally introduces himself as Morgan MacNeil Hardy.

So. This guy. Is an established character. He was established first in Spider-Woman #33 where he was Turner D. Century’s foster dad. Turner D. Century is a guy who just super loves the early 1900s because Morgan MacNeil Hardy raised him only in the values of that time period for some reason.

I’m getting off track, really. But this is a rabbit hole.

So. Even though Hardy seemed to die in Spider-Woman #33, he came back in Captain America #264. He invented something called the psi-augmentor to alter reality and make America moral again.

He did this by plugging four people into his machine, two of which I’m decently sure were a racist and a Nazi.

Cap intervened because some of the changes to reality were causing racism and Nazi stuff to happen and then when Hardy tried to wipe Captain America out of existence, he almost wiped out America instead. Because Cap is the symbol of America. Or maybe the machine missed the Captain part. Either or.

But Hardy was too patriotic to allow America to be retgonned so he drew the energy back and then died.

SHIELD came and mopped up the mess Cap left and buried the dead Hardy. But then three days later the man rose from the dead as this boy.

And in fact, the jolt from the reality altering machine freed Hardy’s repressed memories of all the lives he has lived.

Hardy: “I have lived innumerable lives, died innumerable deaths, yet time and again by body has somehow regenerated itself -- grown back to this youthful form! But, until my current incarnations, I’d believed every lifetime to be the first! Each identity to be the only identity! Hear me: since the dawn of time I have seen life as no other man has ever seen it -- as no other man should have to see it! And I am tired... infinitely tired. All I want now -- is the peace of death.”

Shot in the dark but you may be a Time Lord, Hardy.

Anyway, as dark as an infinitely regenerating suicidal child is, it gets worse. The psi-augmentor also dicked up whatever process makes Hardy regenerate. It took him three days to regenerate after the psi-augmentor incident. Now he’s back up in minutes.

Hardy: “I can’t bear much more of this! I can’t! That’s why you’ve got to help me! You’re all so wise -- so strong! You’ve the greatest super-scientific devices in the world at your disposal! Surely you can find out why this is happening to me!”

The Avengers are blown away by this story and Wasp speaks for all of them when she promises that the Avengers will do everything in their power to help him.

So the Avengers spend several days doing assorted science at a child. Or at least Iron Man does while Wasp watches in interest and Thor and Captain America watch in disinterest.

They’ve only got the one smart guy right now.

But after using all those big science machines and gazing at science glassware full of science chemicals, Iron Man finally sciences a science science.

Science.

Iron Man: “It seems our young friend is a true anomaly... a freak of nature... perhaps the first mutant the world ever knew. Simply put: his own lifecycle is somehow tied in with the lifecycle of the Earth itself! It’s as if the man and the planet -- were one soul... as long as the planet exists -- he will exist.”

How... how do you test for that?! What science chemicals told you that this boy’s soul was one with the Earth??

Also, another hat thrown into Actually the First Mutant contest. Get fucked, Namor.

Anyway, a distraught Hardy questions whether this means he’ll have to live forever but Iron Man says that now that he understands the problem, he can start working on a solution.

Which leads to a bit of a disagreement among the Avengers.

Iron Man sees a SCIENCE! problem to be scienced at. But he’s the only one.

Wasp: “Wait a minute! A solution? I know that this... boy has been through a lot -- but who are we to provide him with a means of suicide?”

And Cap agrees with Wasp. But for more different reasons.

Cap: “Captain America has always stood for the preservation of life! With all he’s been through -- all he’s learned -- this... Forever Man could help humanity immeasurably!”

Geez. Are you really standing for the preservation of life if you then follow it up suggesting that Forever Man should be (beneficially) exploited for everyone else?

And Thor just doesn’t see the problem at all. And maybe isn’t even sure what the Avengers have been bothering over for the past couple days.

Thor: “Thor hath yet to see if a problem doth e’en exist! Immortality be not a fate fit for mourning -- ‘tis a blessing that -- till now -- only the gods have known!”

And Hardy. Hardy is pissed at the way the conversation is going and all this not putting him out of his misery.

Hardy: “You sanctimonious morons! You can’t even begin to comprehend what I’ve been through! I haven’t had a god’s life, Thor -- I’ve had the pathetic life of a man! I’ve seen the death, the suffering, the loves lost, the hopes denied! Forget what the movies tell you about the immortals who’ve walked with Methuselah, Moses, Jesus! I’ve known no great me and, with the exception of Hardy, I’ve been no great men!”

Iron Man cuts him off to go why not go to bed kiddo while the adults talk things out.

I mean, not exactly, but the spirit is there.

And maybe not the right tack to take because upon being sent to his room, more or less, Hardy decides well fuck this. Inspired by an article he sees in a newspaper, he runs away from home/Avengers Mansion, hitches a ride on a train, and threatens with a gun some vagrants who I’m pretty sure are Laurel and Hardy.

Morgan MacNeil Hardy rides the rails all the way to Cape Canaveral.

Upon which he lies his way onto the base by pretending to be the lost grandson of the base’s general, sneaks off, and then sneaks into a rocket that is being prepared to launch.

“He stands, dwarfed by the mammoth spacecraft, gazing up at it the way some men would gaze up at the face of God. For this NASA probe -- ‘Star Core Three’ -- is a god of sorts. A god that will carry him to the heart of the Sun; a Sun that, he hopes, will succeed where he has failed... a Sun that will consume him... and grant him the peace of final death.”

Damn, Hardy.

You sure are serious about this death thing if you’re willing to go so far out of your way to throw yourself into the Sun.

Did you even consider just throwing yourself into a volcano? Its less of a trip!

The rocket is Star Core Three and is going to orbit the Sun and get all kinds of SCIENCE data.

It also wasn’t meant to have passengers so Hardy dies and dies and dies again from the lack of oxygen and the cold. Just death and rebirth for the weeks it takes the rocket to travel to the Sun.

This story is pretty messed up, if you think about it.

Anyway, during those “brief, agonized moments of life” Hardy reprograms Star Core Three’s guidance system.

So that when the probe arrives at the sun, it plunges into it instead of orbiting it.

Cool. You just sabotaged a millions dollar space probe to try to kill yourself in the Sun, Hardy. You dick.

After the probe’s destruction, General Nelson calls the Avengers and asks if they know of any cosmic nonsense or anything else that could have caused Star Core Three’s guidance systems to shit the bed.

He’s also asked the Fantastic Four so really he’s just checking the Avengers off a list just in case.

Wasp asks if anything weird happened on the day of the launch and Peter Parker looking General Nelson says that there was a small boy intruder but that’s about it.

Wasp is like gasp! We’ve misplaced a small boy! Is it possible, nay even probable that Hardy launched himself into the fucking sun in a grand suicide attempt??

Iron Man decides that’s far fetched.

“Far-fetched, Iron Man... and true!”

“But, if it is death the ageless child has come to the sun seeking... it is something far more horrible that he has found! For, as he is swallowed by the staggering energies of the sun; as he dies, screaming, ten thousand times in ten thousand seconds... an awful change occurs!”

“Whatever the creature is that rises in the boy’s place, it is not human. It is a thing of plasma and pain; a pain that, the creature senses, has been its lot for centuries.”

“It knows it must end that pain -- at any cost! And so it arcs out towards space, toward home... toward Earth!”

So. Yeah. Yeahhhhh. Yeah.

Hardy dunked himself into the Sun and found a fate worse than the fate worse than death he was suffering.

Pro-tip to all immortals out there? Looking at you, Lestat. Unless you’re absolutely sure that dunking into the Sun really will kill you and not consign you to an even more hellish existence, maybe don’t?

Anyway, an undisclosed amount of time later, Jarvis runs into the Avengers meeting room (which once again has a decently sized table - although the chairs look a little cramped) and tells the Avengers that he was watching the news on his tea break and saw a bulletin about a fire creature on the loose.

I do make fun of it a lot but the Avengers sure do rely on the news to keep on the ball, huh?

Also, is it just me or have the Avengers been fighting a lot of fire monsters? Not in a short time span but still. They fought that Inferno guy in a two-parter. Pyron when Wasp was the cool hero. And now a child who swan dived into the Sun and became a monster.

Anyway, Fire Hardy is menacing Midtown because he vaguely remembers failing to die here once.

The police and even the army are failing to do much to stop Fire Hardy’s rampage. And some are getting discouraged because of it.

A police officer: “Why are we even doing this? The blasted monster’s unstoppable! Why don’t we just give up and let it kill us?”

Iron Man: “Take it easy, officer -- the situation can’t be that bad!”

So the Avengers tell the army and police to armscray because this looks like a job for the AVENGERS.

Fire Hardy sees the Avengers and their gaudy costumes stirs a vague memory, perhaps of them being unhelpful, and he AROOOOs angrily, like Futurama Nixon.

Cap also claims that Fire Hardy is like a living sun, generating heat that is almost unbearable.

But, Cap, c’mon. C’mon. Really? C’mon. Look, you can’t do the Pyron story where the Avengers all had to wear heat resistant suits and Jocasta started melting and expect me to take any fire threat as seriously if you’re confronting it in your red, white, and blues.

Wasp takes initiative. I was wondering whether, since this smacked of filler, it would remember that she’s the leader of the team. But at least she gets to go first.

She shears a lamp-post with one of her sting blasts and has it fall on Fire Hardy.

It doesn’t work. The lamp-post just catches fire and melts on contact. But, hey, blasting a lamp-post in half in one go is a good showing for Wasp’s vaguely powered pew pew.

Wasp goes uh Iron Man, you’re up.

And Iron Man has a good idea.

He borrows the shovel from a steam shovel and uses it to dig a hole.

Then they can trip the monster so it falls into the hole and uhh look its a good first step. They’ll figure it out as they go.

Thor: “If only thy words couldst make it so, Iron Man! But methinks the creature hath other plans!”

And Fire Hardy melts the asphalt ground molten with a touch and allows it to fill in the pit.

The monster is clearly more intelligent than the 8 whole panels before this one have led the Avengers to believe.

Now its Thor’s turn. Because I guess they’re just going one at a time.

Good teamwork, Avengers!

Anyway, Thor’s plan, unsurprisingly, is to do Thor things. Which as you might recall, isn’t limited to just hitting things really hard.

Thor: “Let this lumbering sun-beast brace itself! -- For it is about to face -- THOR, god of thunder! I now call down the living lightning that be mine to command -- the roaring gale -- the full, unfettered fury of the storm! May the floodtides of heaven surround yon walking star -- and drown its fires in life-giving water...”

And Thor brings the storm and the thunder. But. Remember when Cap (laughably) claimed that Fire Hardy was as hot as the Sun?

Do you know what the evaporation point of water is? A lot lower than the heat of the sun, probably??

So Thor’s storm just evaporates from the heat before even touching Fire Hardy.

So another dud.

Cap’s up!

Not sure what he can do that Thor couldn’t do. Lets be honest. They kind of spent their biggest gun already. What’s Cap gonna do?

Did you guess... run up and throw his shield at the problem? Good guess.

Cap: “We’re facing one of the most dangerous menaces we’ve ever faced! Unchecked, it could wipe out every man, woman, and child in this city -- perhaps in the world! But I have no intention of letting that happen!”

I’ll give him credit for stubbornness and a Corellian-esque hatred of knowing the odds.

But throwing his shield actually does do a thing.

It elicits a NOOOOOO from the monster.

The voice sounds familiar to Iron Man but before he can ponder it, he tackles Cap to stop him from burning his hands off.

Iron Man: “Despite the fact that your shield’s made of some strange, powerful alloy, Cap -- it still gets mighty hot when you toss it into a mini-sun!”

Cap: “That’s one I owe you, Shell-Head!”

Sometimes I suspect that Cap may be a beautiful idiot. Who specifically doesn’t know how thermodynamics work.

Although to be fair, the shield was in Fire Hardy for a couple seconds at most. That’s an impressive heat transfer coefficient.

Anyway Fire Hardy has more to say such as FOOLS! AT LAST -- I REMEMBER!

And Cap realizes what Iron Man suspected just a five lines ago. That the fire monster sounds like Hardy.

Cap puts 2 and 2 together and realizes that Wasp was right that Hardy threw himself into the Sun and realizes that obviously because of science, he must have mutated into a fire monster.

Of course. That’s just science.

The Avengers try to reason with Fire Hardy but Fire Hardy claims HARDY IS GONE! ONLY HIS PAIN AND RAGE REMAIN!

So the Avengers shrug and go back to doing what they do best. Fight scenes that resolve in eyebrow raising ways.

Cap figures that hey his shield had seemed to hurt Fire Hardy before so why not do that again but better. And he throws his mighty shield so hard that it lodges in Fire Hardy.

Uh. What is it.... lodged in? Fire Hardy is made of fire. Which is not known for its tangibility.

But with the mighty shield lodged in his gut somehow, Fire Hardy goes NOOOOOOO

Iron Man figures that something in the shield’s unique molecular structure is janking up Fire Hardy and decides ‘hey lets all concentrate on the shield!’

This makes as much sense as anything else.

So Iron Man blasts the shield, Wasp blasts the shield, and Thor throws Mjolnir through Fire Hardy.

Wasp worries that they may be killing Hardy but Thor argues ‘hey he said he wasn’t Hardy! We’re free and clear, morally speaking!’

More seriously:

Thor: “And tell me -- can we truly slay a thing that ne’er hath died?”

Good point, Thor, good point.

Problem is that either Fire Hardy has had enough of these shenanigans or they’ve hit the weak point for massive damage too well.

Because Fire Hardy starts glowing white hot, almost as if he’s going to explode.

And with the heat that he’s allegedly putting out, its an explosion that could destroy the entire western hemisphere!

Or Iron Man says so anyway!

He asks Thor to make a vortex with Mjolnir.

And Thor is like ‘oh right that is a thing I can do’

So he spins Mjolnir around and around and around so fast that it creates a tornado that picks Fire Hardy up and shoots him into space.

Where he explodes.

“At last, a wildly-spinning vortex forms about the brilliantly-glowing sun-thing... sucking it up, up, up -- out of the Earth’s atmosphere... into the dappled heavens... where, with a soundless, scintillant explosion... the threat of the man who lived forever... ends! Or does it?”

Wild.

Even though the blast was all up in space and contained by the vortex, it still shakes the Avengers off their feet. AND CREATES A NOT-WIDE BUT PRETTY DEEP CRATER!

Cap: “If I had any questions about Hardy’s living through that -- they’re gone now.”

Wasp: “Then -- he’s finally found the peace he was looking for.”

Thor: “Aye, Wasp -- but at what cost?”

Iron Man: “Uh... I hate to be the one to put the damper on this impromptu memorial service -- but considering we’re talking about a guy who’s survived since the dawn of time -- don’t you think we ought to check?”

Pfft.

I love that exchange.

So the Avengers jump down into the crater and find two ludicrous things.

Cap is talking about how he lost his shield in this nonsense and would like to look for it.

Thor: “Captain -- art thou daft? Thy shield hadst no more chance of remaining intact in that inferno than--”

-Cap’s shield perfectly intact-

Iron Man: “... you were saying, Thor?”

Thor: “Heimdall’s beard! Surely thy weapon must be as enchanted as mine uru mallet!”

And then Cap just picks his shield up.

Not by the metal, obviously. That’d be silly! It’d be way too hot to hold!

No, he picks it up by the straps! The presumably leather or cloth straps which are perfectly intact after being at the center of an explosion that reached all the way from space!

Good lord, what is that presumably leather from? The legendary tarrasque??

Even if the leather straps were indestructible, wouldn’t they still be very hot?

Anyway, that was just ludicrous thing number one.

Ludicrous thing number two is that Not-Fire Hardy regrows to his child form at the bottom of the crater.

And he has AMNESIA!

-soap opera sting-

Because. Of course.

Thor and Wasp immediately accept that this is a thing which has happened because of course.

But Cap is more doubtful. About that and about this whole misadventure.

Cap: “Despite the fact that he’s managed to resurrect himself -- we killed a living being today!”

Iron Man: “But -- is it really killing when the being you’ve slain... doesn’t stay dead?”

Cap: “That’s something we’ll all have to wonder about -- for the rest of our days.”

And then the Avengers fly out of the crater. With Cap riding on Thor’s back.

God, I love this comic sometimes.

And Hardy being wrapped in Thor’s cape and held in Wasp’s arms while Iron Man holds the both of them.

But Iron Man is wondering a thing himself.

“What if the boy’s amnesia isn’t legitimate: what if it’s an act, meant to lull them into a false sense of security. What then? Indeed... WHAT THEN...?”

And given Hardy’s little smirk at the end, yeah, its implied that he’s faking amnesia to get away with having tried to kill the Avengers as a monster of solar fire.

Does anything come of this?

HECK NO!

Nothing is done with the character after this! You’d think that an alleged First Mutant would be more important but I’m not attached enough to this character concept to want to argue for that.

Especially not for man who builds psychic device to bring back traditional values.

I kind of wonder whether this whole exercise was to sort of take his death in Captain America #264 off Cap’s hands by having him come back to life.

Anyway... yeah. Very fill-in. Reading it feels like a speedbump. We’ve got the Hank Pym thing spinning its wheels in the background and we gotta deal with this for a month.

I don’t mind one-offs but aside from sheer lunacy (solarcy?) this doesn’t have much to recommend it.

Next time, at least, the Shootering continues with our old friend.... workplace acquaintance? Yeah that sounds better. Our old workplace acquaintance, Moondragon.

She’s the worst. Which makes her the best.

You should follow @essential-avengers because I cover the Avengers issues that nobody else will because they have better things to do. I assume. Also, like and reblog so I feel appreciated.

#Avengers #Morgan MacNeil Hardy #the Wasp #Captain America #Iron Man #Thor #essential avengers #essential marvel liveblogging #cw suicide #this issue is memorable if nothing else #what with the on panel child suicide #thanks JM DeMatteis #and also the child stealing a spaceship to fly into the sun #a bunch of child endangerment happens and the avengers are vaguely around it

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elissastillstands · 6 years ago

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Lights of No World

Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery Rating: General Word count: 1,423 Characters: Michael Burnham, Spock Summary: After Talos IV, Michael and her brother talk about what happened between them. Takes place after 2.08 “If Memory Serves.”

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18065921

The trip to the Section 31 headquarters will take them a little over a day at maximum warp. Michael leaves her brother to debrief with the captain and goes back to her quarters. She leans against her window and stares out at the warp trails beyond. The bright streams, generated in the in-between places of space, never fail to fill her with a sense of wonder.

Her doorbell chimes. Identification: Lieutenant Spock, her computer announces. Michael calls for the door to open.

“Michael,” her brother says. He hovers outside of the entrance to her room. In the reflection in the window, she can see him standing, hands clasped behind his back.

“Spock,” she responds. “How was your debriefing with Captain Pike?”

“It was routine. He was concerned about my wellbeing.”

“We’re all glad to have you back safe and sound.”

He doesn’t respond. They stand in silence for a long moment.

“Come in,” Michael says at last.

He steps into her room, and she turns to face him. Her hands fall behind her back as she studies him. They stand the same way—shoulders square, chins high, hands tucked away so they cannot impinge on the spaces of others. Just as they were taught.

“I wanted to see how you were faring,” he says stiffly. “Interaction with the Talosians can have a significant toll on psionically inert species.”

“You came here to ask me how I was doing?”

“Is it not a reasonable action, to question how my own sister might be doing? I simply wished to—”

“You haven't done that for me in years,” Michael says, smiling a little. “Not since we were little.”

He clears his throat, turning his face away. “I—wish to speak to you. About that.”

“Do you?” Michael raises her eyebrow. She tries to keep her voice light and level. He's made his peace with it; she should make hers. At least they're on speaking terms again. “Spock, it's fine. I understand. The best thing at this stage for us both is to try to move past that—”

“And yet you are clearly displaying signs of emotional distress—”

“You made it patently clear on Talos IV that my emotions are irrelevant.” Her voice is sharp and loud. They are no longer mirrors—her fists are clenched in front of her, her shoulders tense, her whole body straining. She wants to shake him until he feels as unmoored as she does.

Spock looks uncomfortable. “I was simply referring to the fact that our time was limited. I did not mean to diminish your distress.”

Michael laughs abruptly, and they both cringe at the sound. She turns away and paces to the window, staring out at the ribbons of warp light in the space beyond.

“You know,” she starts, “my memory of that night is hazy, only half-there. I sometimes think back to it, and I wonder—I was mean to you. I said cruel things that capitalized on your vulnerability, your ostracization and loneliness. But you realized even then that I was trying to protect you, and—and you still hated me.” She’s half-shouting now. “You kept hating me. And every time you looked at me like you didn't want to know me, my memory of what I did became a little worse, until I was convinced I had betrayed you and the rest our family. Until I thought that I didn't deserve any more. For the longest time, I thought that you should hate me.” Michael looks away from the lights of no world and back over to her brother, trying to keep her chin high. “For the longest time, I thought I was a monster.”

Her brother flinches. “You are hyperbolizing the situation, Michael.”

“Am I?” His words would sting more if she couldn't see the concern on his face, which verges on alarm. She forges on. “You can do better than accusing me of hysteria. I had killed my mother and father on Doctari Alpha through my selfish curiosity. I brought danger to you and Sarek and Amanda.” She is shaking. “I hurt my little brother, who looked at me like I hung both the suns in the sky. What other word can I use?”

“You never killed anyone, Michael; you are not to blame for the violence others inflict. You act like you have to take responsibility for every misfortune in the world around you, like everything is your fault—”

“—but no one has ever told me that it isn’t.”

Spock stills. Michael stiffens. She only half-recognizes the words which came from her mouth as her own.

“Did you ever consider that?” Her throat feels raw, like she is dragging out her phrases by force. “I was the one who wanted to see the supernova. I was the one who had the audacity to try to be Vulcan. I was the one who pushed you away. Why shouldn't it be my fault?”

“Logic dictates that it is incorrect to assign blame—”

“Logic dictates one thing, and individuals another. You blamed me. I was provably a source of danger to our family. Sarek pushed me away from Vulcan when I failed to gain entry into the Vulcan Expeditionary Group. I tried to protect you, and to fit into your world, and when I left Vulcan, I tried to be the best representative of our family I could be—and I tried—”

Michael swallows hard. “And then—then I was convicted for mutineering. Every death in the Klingon War fell on me, and I had to make amends for that as well, and I tried, and I tried, and I'm still trying to make up for everything I have done, and I—” her voice breaks, thick with unvoiced tears. “I’m tired. Maybe this makes me even more selfish, but—it feels like I've spent my whole life trying, and I am so, so tired—”

“No.” Spock is shaking his head. “Michael, no—” He goes towards her, reaching out his hand and stopping short of touching her. “Please, do not say these things. You are not a monster. It is not your fault. You lost your parents to a deed of unspeakable violence, and then you died when you were still a child, attacked on a planet that was meant to be your sanctuary. You—you are not to blame for the violence others inflict on you,” he repeats. “Please, it is not—you are not to blame. It is not selfish, to be tired.”

He hesitates for a moment before crossing to to the window and wrapping his arms around her shoulders. The last time they hugged, Michael was taller than him by a head and a half, and now she barely reaches his chin. She laughs again, a choked little sound, and the tears start rolling down her cheeks as she hugs back. Spock shifts uncomfortably at her crying but keeps holding her.

“I—apologize,” he says slowly. “I apologize for still showing so much resentment towards you for what you did when we were both children in an effort to protect me. I apologize for pushing you away.”

“You apologize,” Michael repeats. She lets go of him to wipe at her eyes and cheeks. Her hands knock against Spock's arms where they're still awkwardly looped around her—she might be unused to crying in front of others, but not as unused as he is to holding someone who's crying. “That's a start, I suppose.”

He's staring at her wet face with concern. “Do you—feel better, Michael?”

“One spoken apology isn't going to preternaturally alleviate my emotional distress.” She still wants to shake him, but she hugs him instead, tighter this time, until she feels him loosening and leaning into her hold. “But thank you.”

“Mother told us that crying is cathartic and not to be shamed.” Slowly, hesitantly, he leans down so that his head is next to hers. They’re mirroring each other again, uncertain in their touch, unpracticed. “But I did not believe her, until you told me that it was—okay.” He sounds out the world deliberately, like he did with all Standard idioms when he was younger. “You used to hold me often, when I cried. I found great comfort in it.”

Michael feels herself smiling a little. “I’m glad.”

“I know that interpersonal relationships are not easily repaired. But I hope I can be a source of some comfort now. To you.”

They stand next to the window, hugging until her tears die down. Their reflections in the glass are still, the warp trails behind them lit with silver.

-----

This was written immediately after the episode airing. Deepest thanks to @starfleetdoesntfirefirst, a miracle worker who gave this the world's speediest and most thorough read-through and made sure that it was suitable for outside eyes and not just me raving on Michael's behalf.

#star trek: discovery #michael burnham #spock #if memory serves #fanfic #elissa? using the name of michael's brother multiple times in a fic? it's more likely than you think #i just.....#i wish they wouldn't do this to her :((#her brother can be dramatic and awkward and their relationship can be strained without michael being blamed for everything bad ever #i just want them to have a relationship which is reciprocally supportive #her brother needs to just......sit down #what bothers me the most is that he KNOWS she was trying to protect him and he STILL resents her even though it's been over a DECADE #i wrote this immediately after i watched the ep so assume that chronology

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klaineanummel · 7 years ago

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just a kiss on your lips (in the moonlight) 3/6

After months on the road in search for his future husband, Kurt Hummel has finally found somebody he can see himself spending the rest of his life with. The only problem? Blaine isn’t the one being presented to Kurt; it’s his older brother.

A love story told in stolen moments.

Here is chapter three! There’s some smut in this one ;) I’m hoping to get chapter four out soon, but I’m not 100% sure of when “soon” will be. Sorry about that :/ Hope you guys enjoy!

Read on AO3 | Read Chapter One | Read Chapter Two

Kurt knows he just made a terrible, impulsive decision. He knows that he’ll have to do damage control tomorrow. He knows that Mercedes is going to kill him. He knows all this.

Right now, though, he doesn’t care. Right now he is frustrated, hands clenched at his sides, muttering under his breath as he stalks through the halls of Castle Westerville.

The night had been going well. Kurt had only danced with each of his suitors once, and he’d managed to keep his eye on Blaine for most of the evening. Then, he was able to escape Baron Kiehl and Prince Cooper, finding solace with Princess Sunshine, second in line to the Westerville throne.

The conversation was flowing easily. He wanted to make a good impression on the Princess, as he knew they would be ruling simultaneously at some point in the future. Any precautions he could take to avoid a war with Westerville, he would take. It also helped that Princess Sunshine seemed far closer to Blaine, personality-wise, than she did to Cooper.

Then, of course, everything fell apart. Prince Cooper approached Kurt and Princess Sunshine, wrapping a far too possessive arm around Kurt’s waist.

“I’m surprised you’re smiling so much, Sunshine,” he said, a bite in his voice that Kurt didn’t like one bit. “I would have thought it would be absolutely destroying you, knowing that your silly cousin, eighth in line for the throne, is soon going to have more monarchical power than you could even imagine having.”

Sunshine’s eyes widened in shock, and Kurt turned to Prince Cooper, jaw already dropped. “Excuse me?”

“She’s always thought she was better than me, because she’s going to be queen and I’ll never be king,” Prince Cooper says to Kurt, loud enough for Princess Sunshine to hear. “Must be unbearable to have the tables turned, eh, Sunshine?”

“I have never thought I was better than you,” Princess Sunshine said through clenched teeth, at the same time as Kurt pulled himself out of Prince Cooper’s hold.

“You presume too much, Prince Cooper,” Kurt said, voice cold. “I can assure you that I have not made a decision yet on who will be my groom, and this display of pettiness has done you no favours. You would do well to apologize to your cousin for your rudeness, and to myself for your presumption.”

With that, he turned and stormed out of the ballroom, fully aware of the sheer number of eyes watching him.

Kurt shakes his head as he reaches his guest quarters, throwing the door open and then slamming it shut once more with far more strength than necessary.

“Your Highness,” his personal servant, Mike, stands from where he’d been eating a bowl of soup. “I’m surprised you have returned so early.”

“I’d had enough for the night,” he says, hands clenching into fists. “The nerve of some people… to be so bold as to presume…” he shakes his head as he starts to pace.

There’s a knock on the door, and Mike hurries over, though not before sparing Kurt a worried glance.

“Hello,” the voice is Blaine’s, and Kurt toward the door in an instant. “I’m… I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that-”

“Mike,” Kurt says, cutting Blaine off. Mike turns to him, a questioning look on his face. “Please go to the ball and inform Mercedes that I do not wish to be disturbed, no matter how angry she is at me. There will be no need for you to return with haste, so please, enjoy the ball. You’ve been cooped up in this room for too long anyhow.”

Mike simply nods, though he does smirk as Blaine passes him. Kurt knows that he will be in for one hell of a teasing later, but for now, he just wants to be alone with Blaine.

“Kurt,” Blaine says, shutting the door behind Mike quickly. “Are you alright? I saw what happened.”

“Your brother is a buffoon,” Kurt spits out. “To be so bold as to presume to know my heart, especially when he has been nothing but obnoxious since I met him.” He shakes his head. “The utter audacity…”

“Please, don’t hold it against him,” Blaine says. “He’s rash and impulsive, and rarely thinks before he speaks, but he means well. He just… he wants to be king. Always has. I think his ambition has blinded him.”

Kurt stares at Blaine for several moments, trying to process his words.

“Why are you defending him?” he asks, eyes narrowing. “Do you… do you want me to marry your brother?”

He must admit, the thought hurts. He thought they’d had a connection, the previous night. To have it flipped so soon, for Blaine to practically beg Kurt to give Prince Cooper a second chance…

Blaine glances down at his feet. He is quiet for several moments, and then, quietly, says, “If you married Cooper I would get to see you on occasion. You would not disappear from my life forever when the festival ends.”

Kurt hurries to Blaine’s side, wrapping the man in his arms. Blaine melts into his embrace, and they hold each other for several moments.

“I will not disappear from your life,” Kurt promises. “Not unless you wish me to.”

“I could never wish that,” Blaine whispers.

“Then I never shall,” Kurt replies.

Blaine stares up at him, lips slightly parted. He is far too tempting, and Kurt cannot help but lean down and press their lips together, remembering how wonderful it felt the previous night.

Blaine kisses back for a second, then pulls away. “We shouldn’t,” he says quietly.

“Why not?” Kurt asks, remaining close, but keeping a safe distance.

“My reputation,” Blaine whispers. “I told you yesterday, I may not be marriageable, but it still matters. The southerners won’t respect me if they see me as a hussy.” He blushes as he looks away. “Besides, you’re here to find a husband. Is it really wise for you to be… philandering with me?”

Kurt presses his lips together, trying not to laugh. “Philandering?”

“You know what I mean,” Blaine says, still not meeting his eye.

Kurt smiles at the blush on Blaine’s cheeks. “Blaine,” he says, squeezing Blaine’s shoulder lightly. “I have not met a single man on this entire journey that has captivated me even half as much as you do.” Blaine glances at him, and Kurt can see the hint of a smile at the corner of his lips. “I would much rather spend the remaining three evenings philandering,” he rolls his eyes as he says it, and Blaine chuckles, ducking his head, “with you, then out there with them.”

Blaine chuckles again, looking up at Kurt from under his eyelashes. “Prince Kurt, you sure know how to sweet talk a man,” his tone is teasing, and it makes Kurt grin.

“Well, what can I say. I’m a philanderer, apparently,” he winks, and Blaine laughs.

This time, when Kurt leans in to kiss him, Blaine doesn’t pull away. Instead he kisses back, softly at first, but slowly becoming more assertive.

Kurt drapes his arms over Blaine’s shoulders as they trade lazy kisses, heart pounding quickly in his chest. He clasps his hands together behind Blaine’s neck, pulling the man closer. Blaine tilts his head up to kiss Kurt better, slipping his tongue into Kurt’s mouth and making Kurt moan.

Kurt can feel himself becoming aroused, but he doesn’t want to push Blaine into anything. He pushes Blaine away carefully, and quietly says, “We can stop, if you’d like.”

“Why would we stop?” Blaine asks, breathless.

Kurt raises an eyebrow, then rolls his hips forward, his erection meeting Blaine’s thigh. He bites down on his bottom lip to stop from moaning at the contact, especially when he feels Blaine’s erection against his own thigh.

“Oh,” Blaine whispers, eyelids fluttering shut. His lips part, and his head tilts back slightly. “That’s, um. Not a problem.”

“Really?” Kurt asks, tightening his hold around Blaine’s neck.

Blaine shakes his head, opening his eyes. His pupils are blown wide, and Kurt’s heart skips a beat. “Just… we can go slow, right? It’s been a while.”

Kurt smiles, leaning in and pressing a soft kiss to Blaine’s lips. “We can go as slow or as fast as you want. You set the pace.”

“That’s not a very philanderer thing to say,” Blaine says, and Kurt chuckles.

“What can I say, I’m a new type of philanderer. The type that respects the desires of my partner.”

“Me,” Blaine whispers, a breathless awe in his voice. Kurt knows exactly how he feels.

“You,” he repeats, just as breathless as Blaine had been.

They move to Kurt’s bedroom, which makes them both blush. Kissing on Kurt’s bed feels different than kissing in the common area of the guest chambers, and it barely takes any time at all before Kurt’s erection begins to grow desperate in his breeches.

He rolls his hips against Blaine’s, and Blaine moans. “Can we…” Blaine rolls them over, so that he is straddling Kurt’s lap. He moves his hips down into Kurt’s, and Kurt’s eyes roll back. “Just like this?”

“Of course,” Kurt says. He leans his head up and kisses Blaine again. They find an easy rhythm, and even though Kurt knows this would feel much better without their trousers in the way, he doesn’t want to push Blaine into more than he’s ready for. Although he still thinks it absurd that Blaine does not feel as though he should be allowed to indulge in this type of pleasure, he also wants to be respectful of Blaine. As far as he knows, the last man Blaine did this with betrayed him and ruined his reputation throughout the kingdom of Westerville.

Kurt refuses to repeat Prince Sebastian’s mistake.

“I know I’ve already said this,” Kurt whispers against Blaine’s lips. “But you are unlike any man I’ve ever met.”

Blaine blushes, though his hips never stop moving. “The implications of that statement better not be that no other man would do this with you only three days after meeting.”

Kurt’s hands fly down to Blaine’s hips, stopping their movements. “Blaine,” he says, voice soft despite his desire. “You are unlike any man I’ve ever met because you are kind, and honest, and you don’t treat me like a gateway to the crown of Lima. I feel closer to you after only three days than I have with any of the men I’ve met on this journey after two weeks.” He tilts his head up to kiss Blaine gently on the lips.

“Oh,” Blaine replies. “You… oh.”

Kurt smiles, bringing Blaine’s hips down against his. “It was a compliment. I promise.”

“I believe you,” Blaine says, kissing Kurt.

Kurt wants to keep talking. He wants to tell Blaine about how he hasn’t stopped thinking about him since they met. He wants to tell Blaine about how desperately he wants to reject all his other suitors and beg Blaine to be his husband. He wants to promise Blaine that sexual impurity means nothing, literally, and that if he married Kurt, nobody would ever look down on him for doing something as common as sleeping with his fiancé ever again.

He doesn’t, though. Not yet. Instead he starts moving his hips in tandem with Blaine’s, creating the most delicious friction.

Blaine moans into his mouth, grinding down quicker, more erratically. “I’m not going to last long,” he whispers. “It’s… it’s been a while.”

“I won’t last long either,” Kurt admits. “It’s okay.”

Blaine’s entire face goes lax, and he rolls his hips down one, two, three more times, and then he’s coming against Kurt.

The pleasure written all over his face makes Kurt’s cock throb, and it isn’t long before he is coming as well, all over the inside of his breeches.

Blaine manages to roll over so that he falls onto his face next to Kurt instead of on top of him. He sighs, and Kurt hopes he isn’t just imagining how pleased he sounds.

“That was wonderful,” Blaine says, turning his head so that his cheek rests against the pillow. He smiles at Kurt, who shifts closer to him, moving to his side.

“It was more than wonderful,” Kurt replies. He stares at Blaine, at this wonderful man who has come into his life so unexpectedly, and knows he never wants to let him go.

“What are you thinking?” Blaine asks, running his fingers over Kurt’s cheek.

Kurt’s eyes flutter closed at the action. “About you,” he whispers. “How I want you to be in my life forever.”

“So… you’ll marry Cooper?” Blaine asks. Kurt can’t tell if he looks hopeful, or worried. There is yearning written in his eyes.

Kurt bites down on his bottom lip. “You… you don’t wish to marry? Ever?”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Blaine replies.

“I know,” Kurt says, looking deep into Blaine’s eyes. He imagines them being the first thing he sees in the morning, and his heart skips a beat. “Answer mine, and then I’ll answer yours?”

Blaine exhales deeply. “No. I don’t wish to marry.” He removes his hand from Kurt’s cheek, letting it fall to his side. “After everything that happened with Sebastian I knew nobody would want me. It was hard, at first, but I eventually grew accustomed to the idea. I don’t need a spouse to run the Southern estates, as Santana has been trained her whole life to run them as well as I have. It’s better like this.”

Kurt swallows thickly. Blaine is staring at him, clearly wanting him to answer the question he posed him. “I don’t know if I’ll marry Cooper,” he says. “I want you in my life but… Blaine, I know he’s your brother, but he’s not really…” He thinks of the scene Prince Cooper caused earlier and cringes. Could he marry a man like that just to ensure that Blaine would remain in his life?

“I understand,” Blaine says. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to do something you don’t want to just for me.”

His heart aches as he says, “I would do anything for you.”

They lean in for a soft kiss, and Kurt wishes he could stay in this moment forever.

He can’t, of course. Reality comes knocking on his door, literally, making him pull away from Blaine.

“Um, Your Highness?” It’s Mike, and Kurt sighs.

“Yes, Mike?”

“Several people have mentioned Prince Blaine’s disappearance,” Mike’s voice comes through the door. “And Mercedes desperately wants to speak with you.”

“Of course she does,” Kurt grumbles.

“I should return,” Blaine says, sitting up. He glances down at his lap and pulls a face. “Maybe I should change first, though.”

“I should do the same,” Kurt says, registering the disgusting mess in his trousers.

“I’ll… I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” Blaine asks.

Kurt smiles. “Nothing could keep me away from you.”

They share one final kiss before Blaine scurries from the room, bidding Mike a soft goodbye.

Kurt looks up to the door to see Mike leaning in the doorway. “Thank you for your discretion,” he says.

“You know I’d do anything for you,” Mike replies. “But, Your Highness, are you sure you’re being wise? I mean, sleeping with the brother of one of your suitors…”

“I know,” Kurt says, rubbing a hand over his face. “I know.”

Mike winces, and Kurt sighs.

“Mercedes is waiting for you. She’s on the warpath.”

“Right,” Kurt says. “Just… let me change first. Send her in in five minutes.”

Mike raises an eyebrow, then smirks. “Yes, Your Highness,” he says, exiting the room and shutting the door behind him quietly.

As Kurt changes, he thinks of Blaine. It is just his luck that the only man he wishes to be his husband doesn’t want to marry anybody, ever.

Next Chapter

#klaineanummel fic #klaine fic #klaine au #klaine #datshitrandom #multi chapter

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castawxayaway · 8 years ago

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Neighbour

been a while so here’s a cute luke one shot :)

(side note: I have a new calum series coming later this week, and I am excited for you all to read!)

+ thank you for being you

masterlist / request / submit / preference list

Sludging from the lift over to my front door I could hear the water dripping from my clothes, completely drenched and forming puddles wherever I stood for more than a minute at a time. Letting out a loud apparent sigh I fiddle for my keys in my numb fingertips before picking them up along with the various momental key rings and unlocked my door.

Hearing the gentle click of the lock sent a wave of relief through my system. Already I could hear the shower, the water pouring over my skin and the calling of my name. Temptation becoming all too irresistible.

Closing it behind me I lean against it, feeling the weight of my wet clothes holding me down as I threw my bag over onto the sofa and heard a crash on the floor. Past the point of caring I drag my feet towards my bedroom, the sounds of my shower calling my name more apparent as I felt like I was in a trance; only focused on getting out of the fabric that clung to my flesh and into the invasive warmth.

Removing the clothes that held tight to my flesh, refusing to part with me like a plaster on a scratch I tossed them to one side, hearing the sludge sound as they made contact with the wooden floor. Grabbing onto a fluffy towel I inhaled the fresh scent, goosebumps began to form on my skin, spreading at a dramatic speed.

As I turn the shower on I let out a sigh, peace at last. Steam immediately forms causing me to cough loudly as I put some music on my phone and place it on the ledge by the window. Placing my towel over the radiator I run my hand beneath the water and feel it's heat pulling me in.

Everything began to melt away, I moved to cover every inch of my skin. For in this moment nothing else existed. Worries merely washed off of me down the drain as I focused on the enticing warmth of droplets of water running across my skin like a hot knife in butter.

I could never help but sing along to whatever I was listening to, unfortunately I don't have the audacity to say I was a good singer in the slightest- but who was around to hear me? Out of tune and in complete content I applied my foamy shampoo, the fresh smell of raspberries made me smile as I left it in whilst I went to dry my eyes.

As I turned around to wash my shampoo out the shower wasn’t as forceful, I checked the dials and they were on full blast. The amount of water began to decrease and I began to swear, I forced my head underneath it with little luck as all that remained was a drizzle. “Shit.” I muttered under my breath as I stood there with a foam mountain perched on the top of my head as I shivered.

Now standing wrapping my arms around myself as I sadly looked to my shower I got out and wrapped fluffy towel on my damp skin, ashamed. Walking out of the bathroom followed by a trail of steam I got changed into something loose before picking up my bag, towel and shower supplies and doing the only thing I could think of; going to my neighbour.

Standing by my front door I desperately tried to rack my brain for his name, and how weird this will be for both of us, especially if he says no. Pushing all thoughts aside I opened my door, mumbling something to say, a form of explanation for him to hear. Bringing my knuckle to his door I let out a sigh as I forced myself to knock it, praying that any other neighbours wouldn’t walk past any time soon.

The door opened within moments of me knocking it, as he opened it I could see a confused expression muddled on his face along with the urge not to laugh at my hair. Smiling brightly to him I spoke before he could start laughing, “Hi Liam?” Questioning myself the name didn’t sound right.

“Luke.” He stated with a sweet smile and internally I felt myself wanting to crawl back to my apartment and never leave but I had to be persistent, no matter how cute he is or embarrassing this may be.

“Right.” I laughed lightly, hoping to break the tension I felt slowly suffocating me. “Can I use your shower? I know as weird as that sounds but my water just shut itself off, there’s been a fault with it for a few weeks now and it’s too late to call someone so I have to wait til the morning and I just need to wash this mountain off of my head you know?” Rambling quickly his eyes widened as he tried to keep up with my nonsense, inhaling a deep breath after that I relaxed and glanced to him with a look of pity.

Almost in an instant he moved aside from his door, holding it open for me. “Come on in Y/n, I can’t have you wearing a foam hat for the next 24 hours.” He joked and eased the suffocating that I felt, he walked me towards his bathroom but I couldn’t help but glance around at the things he had on display.

The books, the endless amounts of albums, instruments and bits of paper scattered too. Curious I glanced back to him and struggled to ignore how cute he actually was; and more importantly warm and kind hearted. Opening the bathroom door he indicated how to work the shower and left me to it. “Oh,” He called and I opened the door back up, smiling to him which he reciprocated. “do you want a hot drink, when you’re done?” I could see no mislead intentions in those blue eyes as he sweetly smiled, I nodded, unable to resist.

Closing the door I turned his shower on and finally removed the foam from my hair. I tried to wash away any of the stresses from today but as I stood there I could feel them growing, multiplying as I reflected over the things I will have to do once I’m home again. I’ll have to find a plumber, find enough money to pay them, go back to work, back to my stupid job in a building I cannot stand. Get on with my pathetic existence and-

“Do you take sugar in your tea?” His angelic voice called through the door as I stood there on the verge of tears. Clearing my throat I could feel his presence lingering on the other side of the door, patient.

“I erm, no thank you!” I said a little too cheerfully, regretting it as I stood there picturing his smile on the other side, how I wished I paid more attention to him before now considering he is my neighbour.

Changing into some fluffy warm clothes I dried my hair off lightly with a towel, being careful to clear the black that scarred under my eyes and I wiped it away leaving raw red in its place. Sighing as I always did at my bare face I braved seeing Luke, hand in bag I quietly closed the door behind me, trapping the steam inside.

Standing in the hallway I looked around at the things he had on display, the few photographs hung on each wall. I assumed they were his friends and family, some of pets and even himself when he was younger- always a musical instrument in shot. Wandering back into his main space I placed my bag down next to the sofa and looked at the books he had and picked up a piece of paper on the floor. “You write your own music?” I called out and all went quite.

Turning around I saw him place two cups down in front of the sofa on the wooden table covered in papers. He let out a soft chuckle and walked over to where I was looking at his guitar. “I erm, yeah.” Scratching the back of his neck I could see out of the corner of my eye a light blush cross his cheeks, making me smile to myself.

“How come I’ve never heard you? I mean, I’m only next door.” I joked and we moved towards the sofa. Sitting down next to him I rested against the arm of the sofa and picked up my tea, ignoring the gentle drips of water on my chest.

“Well, in order to hear me you would have to stop singing yourself.” Spluttering my tea I coughed loudly, causing him to laugh but as I continue to violently cough he voices his concern. “Oh shit, can I get you something?” It died down a he patted my back, not that it helped much but by the time I was done.

Inhaling and exhaling deeply I cleared my throat and looked over to a rather concerned Luke who relaxed in his seat and the worry melted from his blue eyes. “Yep, that pat on the back did the trick there Luke.” I joked easing the tension as he sat there just observing me.

For a while we talked, I got to learn about his friends at home and how they used to have a dream of being a band but it never really worked out. He wanted to be a musician when he quit school, moved here hoping to find something. He asked about my life, my story- so I told him.

By the time the two of us had finished my hair was borderline dry and glancing up at the clock on the kitchen counter it had gone midnight. Yawning I placed my cold mug of tea back down in between paper and stood up. “Well Luke, as lovely as this has been I better go. I’ve got work tomorrow.” The weight immediately fell back on my shoulders as I thought about tomorrow, this having been an effective distraction, but not enough.

“You know, I know a few people. They could help you find a more suited job?” He suggested with such care and a warm smile plastered across his face. As I took a step towards him he lowered his head, as if he regretted the idea entirely.

“Really? You’d do that, for me?” He slowly lifted his head and then nodded.

As an immediate reaction my arms laced around his neck, I held onto him tightly and then slowly, he reacted. His arms crossed over my waist as I remained on my tip toes, but it felt right. “Thank you Luke.” I whispered in his ear and could feel his smile.

Pulling away I opened his front door, bag in hand and said goodnight as I went back into my own apartment. Standing against my own door I couldn’t hide the smile from myself, the one he had caused effortlessly. I got changed into some pjs, tied my hair up and as I neared my bedroom I paused, unable to force myself to settle down. Walking away from my room I found myself standing by the wall that connects our homes together, I placed my ear against the thin wall and carefully listened.

A gentle voice sang an unknown song followed by a strum of an acoustic guitar, smiling I found myself fixating on his voice. It was different to what I had expected, but a good different, something I needed. Then it stopped, I pulled away from the wall partially disappointed to have the soft melodies end but walked back to my room.

“Y/n?” Turning around I pause, convincing myself I’m just hearing things. Then a light knock at my door sounds and cautiously I walk over and open the door.

There stands Luke, his hair a bit more of a mess and a half hearted smile worn but still the joy etched in those eyes that reflect moonlight. “You alright Luke, don’t tell me your heaters off.” I joked and he sort of stayed quiet, causing my heart to race a little bit faster.

“I just wondered, and please don’t freak out.” Immediately I was internally freaking out, I couldn’t help it. “What shower gel did you use as it smells really good in my place now.” I let out a laugh of relief at his question, wondering if he was being completely serious.

“Are you being serious?” I looked over to my clock then back at him. “Well it’s nearly 1am so I’m guessing you must be. Here come in I’ll go grab it.” He stood in my doorway as I walked back to get it and then gave it to him for preference.

He held it in his hand and took a photo of it before giving it back then awkwardly standing there as I rubbed my tired eyes. “There was something else I wanted to ask you.” I nodded and he fidgeted on the spot before continuing, “Job interview, radio show tomorrow afternoon. You up for that?” I struggled to hold back the joy I felt again and was unable to control my emotions in term of a reaction.

“Obviously!” I squealed and saw how delighted he looked at my answer, he leaned towards me as I opened my arms out for a hug, yet what I received was not what I expected.

His lips against mine with such delicacy I could feel how nervous he was, after a few seconds of realisation I kissed back. Pulling away I just looked at him with wide eyes as he wore a sweet smile. “I’ll see you in the morning then, well later in the morning.” He walked out of my door and towards his own, leaving me slightly stunned. “Cute pjs.”

Glancing down to my own attire I forgot I was wearing Mickey Mouse shorts and a slightly see through vest along with my camouflage jacket. Shaking my head and laughing quietly I shut my door and hummed the unknown tune as I headed to bed.

#5sos #5 seconds of summer #5sos oneshot #5sos imagines #5sos preference #preferences #imagines #writing #oneshot #oneshots #5 seconds of summer imagines #5sos luke #luke 5sos #5 seconds of summer luke hemmings #luke hemmings #luke hemmings imagines #luke hemmings au #5sos au

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in-which-i-travel · 7 years ago

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In which living in a castle is the least magical thing that has happened to me in recent days

It’s easy to understand why Germany has a somewhat more strained history than most of its fellow European countries. It’s also easy to understand why Nuremberg, more than perhaps any city beyond Berlin, has a particularly tenuous relationship with its recent past, especially considering that unlike either Berlin or Munich, it doesn’t have a wealth of other history point to (at least in comparison to other European cities; it still has more than just about anything in Canada). This, along with an allied bombing campaign that left most of the city in rubble, has lead to something of a strange sensation, at least for me. It was rebuilt to ‘look’ historic, without any actual history. Grand archways topped with sculptures lead to starbucks. Old-world facades house modern cell-phone shops. The train-station exits into a Hudson’s Bay-style mega-store. New businesses in old buildings aren’t exactly unique, of course, but the scale and completeness of the overwrite left me somewhat confused. It wasn’t just ‘old buildings evolving into new markets’, it was a modern city skinning an old one and wearing its face like an ill-fitting mask.

The dissociation didn’t stop at just the day-to-day streets, either. The assembling grounds for the Nazi party, a gigantic coliseum built with the intention of putting the one in Rome to shame but never quite finished due to the war, was half-blocked by a sprawling circus, and I could hear more than one mini-motorcycle revving up and driving by as I walked towards it, looking at the advertisements for fire-spitters and clowns in the same glance as the brutalist monument that towered above me. Getting inside found that it was a normal (albeit extensive and well done) museum tucked inside the guts of what could have been a stand out attraction on its own right, the walls and hallways covered by displays and the building itself hidden from view save for a well-hidden (and distressingly bouncy) walkway that led out into the middle of the coliseum for viewing.

The castle was likely the most ‘authentic’ of the places I visited, though I struggle to write much about it beyond it simply being a rather nice castle from the time of the Holy Roman Empire. It had a fun experience where you were able to watch a candle go down an impressively long well that they had used for groundwater in times of crisis or increased need, but that I need to bring that up says a lot about how little I can say about the rest. Adjunct to the castle, however, were the old stables and the wing constructed around them, an impressive building in its own right and the main reason I had come to Nuremberg at all (beyond it being a convenient stopping point between Munich and Prague). At some point, it had been converted to a ‘’’’’’’’youth ‘’’’’’’’ hostel (and I cannot possibly use enough quotation marks around youth without overflowing the page), and my desire to stay in a castle overrode my desire to avoid hostels as much as possible. It was frustrating, to say the least. For those of you who have felt my last few posts were entirely too serious, you’re in luck, because this is the point at which this post becomes a comedy of errors.

The rooms were clean, but that’s about all that I can say about them in a positive sense. For the rest, it was as though they had been designed by a drunken howler monkey. Or someone who was actively trying to create the least-functional multi-person room imaginable. Seeing the results, I’m not entirely sure which is the more likely option. Two power-outlets were shared among four people, one of which being in the dead-centre of narrowest part of the main walkway and in just the right place to ensure that any electronics that deigned to actually *use* it without constant supervision (which would need to be provided by literally standing over it like a mother-hen) would inevitably be crushed underfoot by some drunken or still-sleepy roommate. The other was in the alcove by the window. I still have not been able to figure out why. The lightswitch for the entire room was by the bathroom, the lightswitch for the bathroom was immediately to the right of the main door, the lightswitch for the shower was on the other side of the main door, and this caused just as much confusion as you would imagine, leading to an almost inevitable Germanic curse as frustration set in.

Then there were the beds. It should be rather hard to fuck up a budget bunk-bed, considering the utter lack of springs, mattresses or complexity, but someone they found a way. The fixed ladders were in just the wrong place for the bottom bed, forcing whoever was sleeping there to crawl around through the restricted space, shaking the top-bunk like a leaf in a hurricane whenever they did so. Top-bunkers, meanwhile, had to deal with the fact that for some godforsaken reason they had been ‘gifted’ with a thick overhang of mortar and plaster which covered a full half of the top of the bed, leading to a half-dozen near concussions as I sat up or tried to reposition in the pitch-black of the room at night before the instinctive head-juke became ingrained in me.

Last but not least, the roommates. Because these are where things shine. I had three over the course of the two days I was there, each strange enough to earn their own appellation in my head. First is Mr. ‘Youth’ hostel, someone that was easily in his late fifties, if not his sixties. Despite, supposedly, not being allowed to stay if you were over the age of thirty. Not all that bad, besides the fact that he snored like a buzz-saw, but more than strange enough considering that, not only do you have to be below thirty (on paper, at least) but you need a card with the international youth hostelling organization to stay, which requires government photo id to obtain, at least within Canada. How he got in, I may never know. Then there’s the Incredible Naked German. So named because, despite only returning to my room a handful of times over the course of the two nights I was there, I managed to walk in on him nude at least a half dozen. It was well over 80% of the time I opened the door. And for the life of me, I cannot understand the reason behind any of these instances of nudity. At no point was he wrapped in a towel, or out of the shower. He was never getting changed, as far as I could tell… He was just hanging out. Naked. Waiting for one of his unsuspecting roommates to walk in to satisfy his strange voyeuristic fetish. I have no other explanation for how it was that he seemed to be eternally nude. Finally, there was asshole. I don’t like asshole. He seemed fine, when I met him on the first night. But then he showed that he didn’t quite understand the basic bits of hostelling decency that I inferred just from existing within one. Things like, ‘don’t come back into the room at three AM, turn on all the lights and make a lot of noise getting ready for bed’. And ‘if you do come back into the room at three AM, don’t snap at people for having the audacity to crack open a window at 9:00’.

I’m gonna be trying to avoid hostels from here on out.

#InWhich #Germany #nuremberg

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adambstingus · 7 years ago

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The age of banter

The long read: It used to be just a word now it is a way of life. But is it time to get off the banter bus?

Its the most fucking ridiculous story, isnt it? We went to watch fucking dolphins, and we ended up in fucking Syria. Last summer in the Mediterranean party resort of Ayia Napa, Lewis Ellis was working as a club rep. I mean, it was fucking 8am, he told an Australian website soon afterwards, and the last fucking club had closed, and we thought, We can still go dolphin watching. Well blag our way on to a fucking boat and go dolphin watching.

But when the boat sailed so far that Cyprus disappeared from view, Ellis explained, they started to worry. Why are we so far from land? they asked the crew. Were fucking miles away and weve got no fucking wifi. Something, Ellis said, had been lost in translation; his exuberant season as a shepherd for the resorts party pilgrims had gone terribly awry. The crew wasnt taking them to watch dolphins: they were going to a Russian naval base in the city of Tartus, on Syrias Mediterranean coast. Yeah, it is a little ridiculous.

It was, nonetheless, a story that had legs. Hungover lads boat trip boob lands them in Syria, wahey-ed the Mirror; British holidaymakers board party boat in Ayia Napa and end up in war-torn SYRIA, guffawed the Express. If you saw these headlines at the time, you may dimly remember the rest. A stubborn trawler captain, chugging doggedly onwards to Tartus, where he turfed the friends out upon landing; interrogation at the hands of Russian intelligence officers; mutual hilarity as the Russians realised what had happened; and, after a hot meal, a quick tour of the area, and a good nights sleep, spots on the next fishing vessel headed back to Cyprus. It was never made clear why the captain had let them on the boat in the first place, but whatever. Everyone lapped it up.

Reflecting on the whole thing five months later, Ellis, a 26-year-old with a business degree and a marketing masters, couldnt totally wrap his head around it. I think I found 35 stories about us, he told me. I read about myself in the Hawaiian Express, do you know what I mean? (Notwithstanding that there doesnt appear to be any such newspaper, yes, I definitely do.)

What made it really weird to see the media pile in with such unstinting enthusiasm was that the story was total cobblers. I could not believe how gullible they were, Ellis said, a top note of glee still in his voice. We were just having a laugh! It was banter!

Lads: this is the age of banter. Its long been somewhat about the banter, but over the last few years, it has come to seem that its all about the banter an unabashedly bumptious attitude that took up a position on the outskirts of the culture in the early 90s and has been larging its way towards the centre ever since. There are hundreds of banter groups on Facebook, from Banter Britain (no memes insinuating child abuse/dead babies!!!) to Wanker Banter 18+ (Have a laugh and keep it sick) to the Premier League Banter Page (The only rule: keep it banter). You can buy an I banter mug on Amazon for 9, or an Archbishop of Banterbury T-shirt for 9.99.

There are now four branches of a restaurant called Scoff & Banter. When things were going badly at Chelsea FC under Jos Mourinho, it was reported the team had banned all banter in an attempt to focus their minds, and that terminology appeared in the newspapers, as if you would know exactly what it meant. Someone has created a banter map of London using a keyword search on the flatshare website SpareRoom, showing exactly where people are looking for a roommate with good banter (Clapham tends to feature prominently). When a 26-year-old man from Leeds posed for a selfie with a bemused aeroplane hijacker, Vice declared it the high-water mark of banter.

Lewis Ellis (left) and friends in Ayia Napa, pretending to be in Syria. Photograph: Lewis Ellis

If you are younger than about 35, you are likely to hear the term all the time. Either you have banter (if you are funny and can take a joke) or you dont (if you arent and cannot). The mainstream, in summary, is now drunk and asleep on the sofa, and banter is delightedly drawing a penis on its forehead.

As banter has risen, it has expanded. Long a word used to describe submerged expressions of fraternal love, it is now also a word used to excuse uninhibited displays of masculine bravado. Today, it is segregated by class, seized on by brands, picked over by psychologists, and deplored by cultural critics; it is dominant, hotly contested and only hazily understood.

And so, whether he intends it to or not, Ellis use of the term raises some questions. Is he throwing his lot in with the most pervasive branch of the blokeish mainstream, a sanitised and benevolent hilarity that stretches from lad-dad panel shows to your mates zinger about your terrible haircut? Or is he lining up with the misogynist imitators of the Bullingdon club, a sprinkling of racists, and, as we shall see, an actual murderer purveyors of a malicious and insidious masculinity that insists on its indivisible authority and calls you a slut if you object?

Ellis isnt preoccupied by these questions, but for what its worth, he does say that he and his friends never had the slightest intention of going to Syria. We werent really trying to fool anyone, he told me, although Im not sure thats entirely consistent with the facts. We were out for a stroll, and we came across this area that looked really run down, we thought it looked like Syria. So we put it on the club reps [Facebook] page that thats where we were. And everyone started liking it. And then one of the people who contacted us was from LADBible which is like the Bible, but for LADS so we said, well have a mess around here. Well tell a completely ridiculous story, see if the media believes it. See if we can become LADBible famous.

It did, they could. Eventually, the truth came out, not thanks to any especially determined investigative journalism, but because Ellis cheerily admitted on Facebook that his tale of magnificent idiocy was a fiction. Hahaha what a prank, he wrote, with some justification.

The confession only brought another cycle of attention. Publications that had picked up the story in the first place resurfaced it with new headlines to reflect the audacity of the invention; social media users adduced it as evidence for their views of young men, or the media, or both. The Russian embassys Twitter account called it a telling example of how many Syria (and Russia) stories are made up by UK papers, which was great geopolitical banter. The attention entertained Ellis, but he says it wasnt the point. We just thought it was funny, he said. People are too serious. I keep being told to grow up, but I still want to have a good time. Ive had the jobs, Ive got the education. But when Im off work, I want to escape.

Ellis is an enthusiast and an optimist. He is, he told me late last year, desperate to take every opportunity, just to say yes to everything I can. We were on a night out in Manchester with his friends Tyson, John and Chris. In the course of the evening, the following things found their way into my beer: fingers; salt; vinegar; mayonnaise; a chip; saliva; a 10 note; and, I hazily remember being told after the fact, at least two shots of vodka.

Everyones got a thing in the group, Ellis said, as we walked from one bar to the next. One guy, hes not even that ugly, we say he looks like a Peperami. Tysons got this mole on his face, its like a Coco Pop, so youve got a Coco Pop on your face. I looked like Harry Potter when I was a kid, so they call me Potter, thats my nickname. Every single one of us has something. So you youve got Chinese eyes. Youre Chinese.

For the record, I didnt think this was OK, but coming after such a harmless litany, it didnt seem malicious enough to confront. Of course, tacit endorsement is what makes such offensive epithets a commonplace, and so it troubles me that it made me feel mysteriously welcome, just as it had when John punched me lightly in the balls when I arrived. There was no doubting Elliss sincerity: as he spoke, the sheer daft beauty of male friendship seemed to amaze him, almost to the point of physical pain. We just take the piss out of each other, and thats how we show our love, he said. So many group chats on the phone, and you just take the piss until they cry. And its like, when youre really killing them, you go, Ill stop if you want, because you know they cant say yes, so you just keep going. Then we arrived at the next bar, where I was made to drink something called a Zombie.

Early in the evening, before any of this had undermined my ability to take useful notes, Ellis broke off from talking as we walked down the street and sidled into a window display at Next Home, where he Tracey Emined a carefully made bed by climbing into it and rolling around. Everyone cracked up. Give the world a laugh, Ellis tends to think, and the world will smile back at you. Jump on a boat, and youll end up somewhere great; make the boat up, and youll get there faster. Its all about having fun, its all about the banter, he said, after hed rejoined us outside. Banter is about making the world a more exciting place.

If nobody can agree on what banter is, thats hardly a new problem. The first usage of the word recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from noted Restoration lad Thomas dUrfey, also known for his hit song The Fart, in a satirical 1677 play called Madam Fickle. Banter him, banter him, Toby, a character called Zechiel urges, which may be the first time that someone called Toby was so instructed, but certainly wasnt the last.

The OED also notes early attempts at a definition by Jonathan Swift and Samuel Johnson. (Swift mentions a banter upon transubstantiation, in which a cork is turned into a horse, and fair enough, turning a cork into a horse would be classic banter.) Both are a little disgusted by the word, and neither unearths much of an origin story: by their accounts, banter is so coarse that it emerged, fully formed and without antecedent, out of the mouths of oafs.

As it turns out, though, the OED is not at present fully able to handle the banter. According to Eleanor Maier, an associate editor on the dictionary, a search of earlier English texts reveals that a number of previous examples are missing from the dictionarys definition, which was first drafted in 1885 including a quote from a 1657 translation of Don Quixote. (After examining the history, Maier told me that she would be adding banter to the list of entries that are up for review.)

dougie stew (@DougieStew)

Welcome to London #BagelGate pic.twitter.com/KcJoz0ycZU

February 26, 2017

In recent years, banter has barged into our lives at a remarkable clip. Googles Ngram Viewer, a tool that assesses (with some limitations) the frequency with which a term appears in a large database of written sources, finds that banter popped up about twice as often in 2008, the most recent year covered, as it did in 1980.

But banter plugged away for a long time before it became an overnight success. In the 19th century, it often denoted a kind of formal sparring. Even as the term evolved over the 20th, it continued to seem a little prim. In the House of Commons in 1936, Ramsay MacDonald, the former Labour prime minister who had returned in a new seat after losing his old one, was subjected to a good deal of banter Dear old Granny MacDonald!, among other witticisms.In 1981, a Guardian report that chess champion Anatoly Karpov and his handlers had successfully protested at his challenger Viktor Korchnois constant cross-board talk ran under the unlikely headline: Chess banter banned.

Such stories do little to prepare us for what banter has become. Consider the viral video that became known as #bagelgate earlier this year. In the recording, a minor scuffle broke out on the 00.54 train from Kings Cross to Huntingdon, and then for no obviously related reason a woman who had a large bag of bagels decided to put one on the head of the guy sitting in front of her, and then another after he took it off and threw it out of the window, and another and another, and then everyone in the carriage started chanting hes got a bagel on his head, and eventually the slightly spoddy victim who is me when I was 13 and someone filled my pencil case with Mr Kipling apple pies (squashed, oozing) because I was fat lost it and screamed Get the fuck out of my face!, and then another fight broke out on the platform, and then the police got on to the train, and every single person fell into not-me-guv silence: this is not Granny MacDonalds banter any more.

If it is hard to understand how these activities can fall under the same umbrella, it should be noted that a phenomenon may predate our choice of term to describe it its just that the act of definition makes it more visible, and perhaps more likely to be imitated. At some point, though, banter became the name for what British men already regarded as their natural tone of voice. There is a very deeply embedded folk culture in the UK of public ribaldry, extreme sarcasm, facetiousness in other words, of laddishness, says Tony Thorne, a linguist and cultural historian. What you might think of as banter now is rooted in that tradition.

That tradition first lashed itself to banters mast in the early 1990s, and controversy soon followed. In June 1992, a Guardian story headlined Police fire sex banter officer, about the dismissal of a sergeant for sexual harassment, recorded an early skirmish in the modern banter wars, and an important new layer to its meaning in the wild: The move is seen as part of the Metropolitan polices desire to reassure women officers that what has previously been tolerated as banter is no longer acceptable. Two years later, the lads mags arrived.

The first edition of Loaded magazine appeared in May 1994, with a picture of Gary Oldman on the front smoking a dog-end, under a banner that declared him a super lad. What fresh lunacy is this? the editors note read. Loaded is a new magazine dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of sex, drink, football and less serious matters Loaded is for the man who believes he can do anything, if only he wasnt hungover.

If banter dismays you, James Brown, the magazines first editor, is quite an easy bogeyman. As he acknowledges himself, he created a title that defined a genre. Loaded was swiftly recognised as a foundational text for a resurgent and ebullient masculinity that had been searching for public expression. While it was always overtly horny, the magazine was initially more interested in a forlorn, slackjawed and self-ironising appreciation of A-listers (one reversible poster had Cindy Crawford on one side and a steam train on the other) than the grot-plus-football formula that successors and imitators like Maxim, Zoo and Nuts milked to destruction. But it also flirted with something murkier.

To its critics, Loaded and its imitators aimed to sanitise a certain hooliganistic worldview with a strategic disclaimer. Banter emerges as this relentless gloss of irony over everything, said Bethan Benwell, senior lecturer in language and linguistics at the University of Stirling and the author of several papers on mens magazines. The constant excusing of sexist or homophobic sentiments with this wink that says you dont really mean it. Benwell pointed to Loadeds emblematic strapline: For men who should know better.

Brown denies that his magazine invented banter. Instead, he says, it captured a zeitgeist that the media had previously failed to acknowledge; the folk culture that Tony Thorne refers to, brought out into the open. Before Browns intervention, GQ had run John Major and Michael Heseltine as cover stars, for Gods sake. I took the interests and the outlook of the young men that I knew, and I put them in a magazine, Brown said. Im not responsible for the tone of the later entrants to the market. We were criticised because we fancied women, not because we belittled them.

The thing about Loaded was that the way we wrote reflected the way we were with our mates, he went on. Theres definitely a thing that exists in the male outlook: you take the piss out of the people you like, and you ignore the people you dont.

Accept this as your starting point, and objections become exhausting to sustain: what youre objecting to is an act of affection. Of course, this is what makes it insidious. Because Browns account rests on the intention behind the magazine, and Benwells on the effect it had, they are impossible to reconcile. Its a very difficult thing to resist or challenge without looking like the stereotypical humourless feminist, said Benwell. But by laughing, you become complicit.

Loaded gave this new kind of banter escape velocity, and it began to colonise other worlds. On BBC2, for example, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner were staking out their own territory with Fantasy Football League, a mixture of sketches and celebrity chat that managed to be enthusiastic and satirical at the same time, and reached its peak when the pair became national icons, thanks to their Euro 96 anthem, Three Lions. While a long-running joke about the Nottingham Forest striker Jason Lees pineapple haircut seems flatly racist in retrospect Baddiel did an impression of him in blackface by and large, the tone was milder and more conventional than the magazines were: this was the sensibility of the university graduate slumming it before embarking on grown-up life.

Baddiel implied that laddism could easily occupy a spectrum from ogling to literature, drawing a line to Nick Hornbys memoir of life as an Arsenal fan, Fever Pitch. Hornby once said to me that all this stuff you know, fantasy football and his book is men talking about things that they like and for a while in the mid-80s they werent allowed to, he said in 1995. Ive always liked football and Ive always liked naked women, and its easier to talk about that now than it was eight years ago. Those comments reflect a kind of sneer at its critics that you could often detect in Fantasy Football League, even as its hosts protested that they were just having a laugh though Baddiel himself denies that view. Twenty years on, he, like Brown, is at pains to draw a line between the approach that he and Skinner popularised, and the forms that came later. I guess me and Frank did specialise in banter, he said in an email. In a time before it was known as bantz.

Over the next 10 years, two things happened that ushered in the age of banter. (You might call it mature banter, except that its also the opposite.) First, instead of just being a thing that happened, it became a thing that people talked about. Then, as it became a more tangible cultural product, everyone started trying to make money out of it. The watershed moment, the forms equivalent to Dylan going electric, was the invention of Dave.

Like most good ideas, it looks simple enough in retrospect. Before Dave was Dave, it was UKTV Gold 2. The predecessor channels audience share was 0.761%, and no one could tell who on earth it was supposed to be for. But we had the content, says Steve North, the channels brand manager in 2007 and content of a particular kind that the existing name did very little to communicate: Have I Got News for You, They Think Its All Over, Top Gear. Viewers said they loved the repartee, the humour. It reminded them of spending time with their funniest friends.

The first issue of Loaded magazine, from May 1994

The target audience was highly specific. It was men married or in relationships, maybe with young children, not going to the pub as much as they used to, says Andy Bryant, managing director of Red Bee, the agency brought in to work on the rebrand. And they missed that camaraderie.

Their purpose thus fixed, North started to run brainstorming sessions at which people would shout out suggestions for the name. One of the ones we collected was Dave, he says. We thought, great, but we cant call it that. But then we thought, Its a surrogate friend. If the audience really sees it as that, if they see it as genuinely providing the banter, maybe we can really give it a name.

They put their hunch through its paces. The market research company YouGov was commissioned to test Dave alongside a bunch of other names (Matthew and Kevin were also on the shortlist), but nothing else had the same everyman resonance. For us, Dave is a sensibility, a place, an emotion, a feeling, said North, his tone thoughtful, almost gnomic. Everyone has their own sense of who Dave is, thats the important thing. Its hard to find anyone who doesnt know someone called Dave.

Now the channel had a brand, it needed a slogan. Lots of people claim they played a part in the naming, says Bryant. But it was just as important to encapsulate what the channel was all about. And at some point someone, I dont know who, wrote it on a board: The home of witty banter. The rebrand added 8m new viewers in six months; Dave saw a 71% increase in its target audience of affluent young men.

Conceived by the first generation of senior professionals to have grown up with banter as an unremarkable part of their demographics cultural mix, the channel crystallised a change, and accelerated it. In 2006, The Ricky Gervais Show, in which Gervais and Stephen Merchant relentlessly poked fun at their in-house idiot savant Karl Pilkington, became the most popular podcast of all time. In 2007, the year of Daves rebrand, Top Gears ratings shot from below 5m to a record high of 8m. The following year, QI moved from BBC4 to BBC2. (A tie-in book published the same year, QI: Advanced Banter, sold more than 125,000 copies.)

North saw the kind of fraternal teasing that was being monetised by his channel, and the panel shows that were its lifeblood, as fundamentally benign. The key thing is that its two-way, he said. Its about two people riffing off each other.

But like his 20th-century forebears, he can see that something ugly has evolved, and he wants to keep his brand well away from it. Bants, he said with distaste. That thing of cover for dubious behaviour we hate and despise it massively. When we launched, it was about fun, being light-hearted, maybe pushing each other without being disrespectful. When people talk about Ive had a go at that person, great banter no, thats just nasty.

By the turn of the decade,as other branding agencies mimicked the success of Dave, banter was everywhere, a folk tradition that had acquired a peculiar sort of respectability. The men who celebrated it werent just lads in the pub any more: they had spending power and establishment allies on their side. But they were, by the same token, more visible to critics. Aggression from an underdog can be overlooked; aggression from the establishment is serious enough to become a matter of public concern.

Take Richard Keys and Andy Gray, Sky Sports brand-defining football presenters, who got themselves up to their necks in some extremely bad banter in 2011. Keys blamed dark forces, but everyone else blamed him and Gray for being misogynists. We knew this because there was footage.

The firestorm, as Keys called it, centred on claims that the two men had said and done heinously sexist things off-air. Most memorable, at least for its phrase-making, was the clip in which Keys eagerly asked his fellow pundit Jamie Redknapp if hed smashed it it being a woman and asserted that he could often be found hanging out the back of it.

Gray went quickly. In the days before he followed, Keys burned hot with injustice in a series of mea-sorta-culpas, particularly focused on the tape in which he expressed his derision at the idea that a woman, Sian Massey-Ellis, could be an assistant referee in the Premier League.

It was just banter, he said. Or, more exactly, just a bit of banter, as he said Massey-Ellis had assured him she understood in a later telephone conversation in which, he added, much banter passed between us. She and I enjoyed some banter, he protested. It was lads-mag banter, he insisted. It was stone-age banter, he admitted. We liked to have banter, he explained. Richard Keys was sorry if you were offended, but also, it wasnt his fault if you didnt get it. It was just banter, for goodness sake!

Up to their necks in some extremely bad banter Andy Gray and Richard Keys in 2011. Photograph: Richard Saker/Rex

Keys insistence that his mistake was simply a failure to move with the times was nothing new: banter has always seemed to carry a longing for the past, for an imagined era before male friendship was so cramped by the tiresome obligations of feminist scrutiny. But while his underlying views were painfully dated, his conception of banter was entirely modern: a sly expansion of the words meaning, and a self-conscious contention that it provided an impregnable defence.

The Keys variation understood banter, first, as a catch-all means of denying responsibility if anyone was hurt; and, second, as a means of reinforcing a bond between two people by being cruel about a third. The comparison wouldnt please a couple of alphas like Keys and Gray, but both strategies brought it closer to a style of communication with classically feminine associations: gossip. Deborah Cameron, the Rupert Murdoch (lol) Professor in Language and Communication at Oxford University, argues that the two modes of interaction follow basically the same structure. People gossip as a trust game, she said. You tell someone your unsayable private secret, and it bonds you closer together. Theyre supposed to reciprocate with a confidence of their own. Well, banter works in the same way now. You say something outrageous, and you see if the other person dares to top your remark.

The trust game in banter was traditionally supposed to be: do you trust me when I say were friends in spite of the mean things Im saying about you? But now theres a second version of the game: do I trust you not to tell anyone the mean things Im saying about other people? I think originally it was a harmless thing, said Cameron, whose analysis is rooted in an archive of male group conversation, mostly recorded by her students, that goes back to the 1980s. But then it started to be used as an excuse when men were caught out engaging in forms of it that werent so harmless.

It comes down to context and intent, says the comedian Bridget Christie. The gentler form of banter is still knocking around, she suggested, but now it exists alongside something darker: I found The Inbetweeners adolescent banter hilarious, because it was equal and unthreatening. But there is obviously a world of difference between a group of teenage boys benignly taking the piss out of each other, and a bigot being racist or misogynist and trying to pass it off as a joke.

Trace the rise of banter, and you will find that it corresponds to the rise of political correctness or, anyway, to the backlash against political correctness gone mad. That phrase and just banter mirror each other perfectly: one denoting a priggish culture that is deemed to have overreached, the other a laid-back culture that is deemed to have been unfairly reined in. Ironically enough, just banter does exactly what it accuses political correctness of, seeking to close down discussion by telling you that meaning is settled by category rather than content. Political correctness asserts that a racist joke is primarily racist, whereas banter asserts that a racist joke is primarily a joke. In the past, the men who used it rarely had to define it, or to explain themselves to anybody else. Today, in contrast, it is named all the time. The biggest change isnt the banter itself, says Bethan Benwell. Its the explicit use of the word as a disclaimer.

By sheer repetition and by its use as an unanswerable defence, banter has turned from an abstraction into a vast and calcified description of actions as well as words: gone from a way of talking to a way of life, a style that accidentally became a worldview. He bantered you, people sometimes say: you always used to banter with your mates, but now it often sounds like something you do to them. Once it was directionless, inconclusive chatter with wit as the engine that drove it, said the comedian Russell Kane. Now, if I trip you up, thats banter.

You might think the humiliation suffered by Keys and Gray would have made banter less appealing as a get-out, but not a bit of it. Banter, increasingly, seems like the first refuge of the inexcusable. In 2014, Malky Mackay, who had been fired as manager of Cardiff City Football Club a year earlier, was caught having sent texts that referred to Chinese people eating dogs, black people being criminals, Jewish people being avaricious, and gay people being snakes all of which were initially optimistically defended by the League Managers Association as letting off steam to a friend during some friendly text message banter. The comedian Dapper Laughs, whose real name is Daniel OReilly, established himself as banters rat king, with his very own ITV2 show, and then lost it after he suggested that an audience member at one of his gigs was gagging for a rape. A man was convicted of murder after he crushed his friend against a wall with a Jeep Cherokee after an argument over badger-baiting, a course of action that he said had been intended as banter. Another slashed the throat of someone he had met in a pub and described the incident as a moment of banter after 14 or 15 pints. Both are now in prison.

By any sane measure,banter was falling into disrepute, as often a disguise for malice as a word for the ribaldry of lads on the lash. Still it did not go away: instead, the worst of it has mutated again, asserting its authority in public and saving its creepiest tendencies for the shadows or, at least, for the company of five, or 10, or 20 of your closest mates.

At the London School of Economics, it started with a leaflet. Each year at the universitys freshers fair, LSE Rugby Football Club distributed a banterous primer on rugby culture. In October 2014, says the then-president of the student union, Nona Buckley-Irvine, a student came to her in tears with a copy in her hand. The leaflet talked about trollops, slags, crumpet, mingers, and the desirability of misogyny; there were passing references to the horrors of homosexual humiliation and outright homosexual debauchery. Anyone charmed by all this was invited to sign up for the club and join the banter list, entitling them to participate in the exchange of chappish email conversation.

To anyone with a passing knowledge of university laddism, it was hard to imagine a more ordinary iteration. Still, after the unreconstructed chappishness of the leaflet came to light, the club knew it had a problem. It issued a collective apology acknowledging that we have a lot to learn about the pernicious effects of banter, and promised to organise a workshop. But there was reason to be sceptical about the depth of that commitment.

When Buckley-Irvine and her colleagues published a report on the incident, they noted a string of others, including an antisemitic assault on a university ski trip to Val dIsere in 2011. And there were other indiscretions it didnt mention. According to two people who were present, one club dinner at an Indian restaurant on Brick Lane ended with a stripper having bottles thrown at her when, already intimidated, she refused to take her clothes off. She hid in the toilet, and had to be escorted out by a member of staff as the team vandalised the restaurant.

Photograph: Alamy

According to five people who were either members of the rugby club or closely associated with it, one notorious senior member was widely thought to be responsible for the leaflet. (He did not respond to requests for comment.) But when they came to defend themselves to the student union, members of the club fell back on one of the most revered pillars of laddism: all for one, one for all. Theyd clearly worked out a line, says Nona Buckley-Irvine. No one individual was responsible. They were sorry. It was just banter. Thats what they all said.

The accountancy firm KPMG, which sponsored the universitys wider Athletics Union, decided that banter was not an especially helpful brand association, and withdrew funding worth 22,000. The students union decided to disband the club for the academic year. The decision moved some observers to disgust. It was a gross overreaction, a former team member told me. We were the best-behaved team when it came to actually playing rugby but they banned that bit and they couldnt ban any of the rest.

Others took a less measured tone. I had old members emailing me and calling me a fascist, says Buckley-Irvine. Asking me if I didnt understand that it was just banter. Rugby players chanted abuse at her on nights out, she told me. They shoulder-barged her, and called her a cunt.

These kinds of interactions would tend to take place on Wednesdays, also known as sports night, at a bar in Leicester Square. Sports night was the apotheosis of the rugby clubs bleak solidarity. In deference to what you might call the wingers-before-mingers code, for instance, members of the club who were expected to dress in suits werent allowed to speak to women before 9pm. So they would just shout abuse instead, one female former student, who Ill call Anna, remembered. One chant, she said, went, Nine nos and a yes is a yes. At the time, Anna thought that it was all a joke. People would say, Its just banter all the time. After everything. Absolutely everything, she said, sitting in a cafe in south London. If you were meeting someone new, saying they had good banter, that was a pretty high compliment. Whereas if you dont go along with that stuff, its seen as, you cant take the chat, you cant take the banter. And its not seen as having a stance against it. Its seen as not being able to keep up.

After the rugby club was disbanded, nothing much changed in sports night social life. Many members of the club still went on the same nights out; they just colonised other teams. They still addressed girls as Sarah 2 or Sarah 8 depending on how attractive they considered them out of 10; they still had shouted conversations about their sex lives in front of the women they had slept with but refused to acknowledge.

That culture was not confined to Wednesday nights. Anna remembers a guy who took her picture as she slept, naked, in the bed they were sharing, and circulated it to another non-university sports team via WhatsApp. She wasnt meant to see it on his phone.

Ask anyone well-informed where banter resides now, and theyll give the same answer: WhatsApp groups and email threads, the safe spaces of the lad class. What youd get out of those WhatsApp threads, its another world of drama, one former member of the football club said. The details of girls bodies that youd read, a few funny jibes, that was the limit for me. But when it moved on to, like, really, really bad stuff, always about sex it was too much. Those threads are the source of everything.

If the threads were an outlet, they were by no means the limit. Banter, by common consent, wasnt confined to mocking each other: it was about action. If you dressed up for a night out, one female student remembered, it was just kind of status quo that you could have your arse grabbed. It was just like, Oh, that was kind of weird, but OK, thatll happen. Like everyone else willing to speak about it, her view of that culture was perplexingly nuanced, sometimes contradictory. It sounds scary, she said, but that being said, some of my best nights were there, and like it was fun. But then she said: What was defined as serious just got so pushed. I think for someone to lodge a complaint they would have to be actually hurt.

Anna remembers lots of sketchy incidents. She recalls nights when her choices faded into a blur, and she wondered if she had really been in control. But at the time, I would never call it out, she said. And then, youre all living in halls together, and the next day, its like: What did you do last night? Thats hilarious. Thats banter.

When Anna thinks about the behaviour of some of the men she knew at university, she finds it hard to pin down exactly what she thinks of them. Theres one in particular who sticks in her mind. On a Wednesday night, he was a banter guy, she said. He was a Wednesday animal. But the rest of the time, he was my friend.

Controversial though all this was at the time, no one seems to think that it will have cost the perpetrators much. Ive tried so hard to leave all that behind, said the former member of the football team. But those guys theyre all going on to run banks, or the country, or whatever. The senior rugby man who many held responsible, by the way, has landed on his feet. Today, he has a job at KPMG.

In 2017, every new instance of banter is immediately spotted and put through the journalistic wringer. (Vices Joel Golby, who wrote the definitive text on the bagel thing, has made a career from his exquisite close readings of the form.) But when each new absolute legend emerges, we dont usually have the context to make the essential judgment: do the proponents tend towards the harmless warmth of Ellis and his mates, or the frank hostility of the LSE rugby boys? Is their love of irony straightforward, or a mask for something else?

As Richard Keys and Dapper Laughs and their cohorts have polluted the idea of banter, the commercial entities that endorsed its rise have become uneasy with the label. They wanted it to go viral; they hadnt expected it to go postal. Dave, for example, has dropped the home of witty banter slogan. Its not about classic male humour any more, its a little bit smarter, says UKTVs Steve North. We definitely say it less than we used to.

<source media=“(min-wid

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/02/the-age-of-banter/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/163730951422

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samanthasroberts · 7 years ago

Text

The age of banter

The long read: It used to be just a word now it is a way of life. But is it time to get off the banter bus?

Lewis Ellis (left) and friends in Ayia Napa, pretending to be in Syria. Photograph: Lewis Ellis

dougie stew (@DougieStew)

Welcome to London #BagelGate pic.twitter.com/KcJoz0ycZU

February 26, 2017

The first issue of Loaded magazine, from May 1994

Up to their necks in some extremely bad banter Andy Gray and Richard Keys in 2011. Photograph: Richard Saker/Rex

Photograph: Alamy

<source media="(min-wid

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/02/the-age-of-banter/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/08/02/the-age-of-banter/

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allofbeercom · 7 years ago

Text

The age of banter

The long read: It used to be just a word now it is a way of life. But is it time to get off the banter bus?

Lewis Ellis (left) and friends in Ayia Napa, pretending to be in Syria. Photograph: Lewis Ellis

dougie stew (@DougieStew)

Welcome to London #BagelGate pic.twitter.com/KcJoz0ycZU

February 26, 2017

The first issue of Loaded magazine, from May 1994

Up to their necks in some extremely bad banter Andy Gray and Richard Keys in 2011. Photograph: Richard Saker/Rex

Photograph: Alamy

<source media="(min-wid

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/02/the-age-of-banter/

0 notes