#I just wished I’d looked where she was before she died

[gendiebrainrotreceipts]

God i miss her so much. I wish I could go back in time and find her before she died. She was so young

[mysunshinetemptress]

I love you

Alexia Putellas x sisters best friend reader

Warnings: fluff, slight angst,

Alexia hadn’t always liked you let alone love you, to her you where her little sisters annoying best friend who would do anything possible to annoy her daily. She would huff and roll her eyes every time you would bounce over and ask for her to watch a dance both yourself and Alba had just come up with, or slam her bedroom door in your face anytime you knocked, you where a constant pain back then.

But to Alba you were her best friend who had been there for her through her worst and best times. Alexia and Albas father had died when Alexia was 18 and Alba was 15 with you still being 14 and you had been Albas constant being there from the beginning of their worst nightmare until Alexia decided to shut you out. It was something you always brushed off stating it was understandable you weren’t family and Alexia simply wanted to mourn such a massive loss with her sister and mother in private much to Albas dismay who constantly stated she needed you and Alexia had no right to push you away in that manner, especially when she knew how much you loved her sister.

Alva had been there for just as much as you had for her especially when her sister had began to date her teammate Jenni Hermoso breaking your heart in the process. Alexia didn’t know of your feelings swearing Alba to secrecy but her constant show of affection towards Jenni at the Putellas family home saw you avoid the house much to the older girls delight.

Alexia didn’t think she could dislike you anymore until in her words you “tried to take Alba away from her home.” You had been accepted into the Paris Opera Ballet School at the age of 18, she had screamed at you much to your, Eli and Albas horror, once again you had left the Putellas house on the older girls wishes only this time you didn’t return, instead you said goodbye to your best friend and boarded a plane. A year later Alba flew out to you and never looked back instead she began flying around the globe with you as you began your professional Ballet career stating you need a reminder of home (her).

But now at the age of 25 you where heading home for the first time, you where taking a well deserved break before your next contract started up opting to travel home to spend time with family and friends.

That’s how Alexia found you relaxing on the couch in her family home “Y/n.” You turned looking at the eldest Putellas smiling softly “Hola Ale.” Alexia looked at you stunned “you…you are home.” You nodded “Sí for a while I have a break in my contract so I thought why not.” Alexia nodded unable to take her eyes off of you “well eh..it’s nice to see you.” You smiled brightly at her “it’s nice to see you too Ale.” Alexia let out a nervous laugh before rushing into the kitchen to find her mother as Alba trotted down the stairs “what was that.” You let out a huff “that was me realising I might still have feelings for your sister Al.” Alba smacked you laughing “dios mío, y/n you told me you where done with her the night you left.” You shook your head “I know but Al, I forgot how hot your sister was.” Alba through a pillow at you head as you laughed.

You spent nearly every day at the Putellas house like the old days only this time Alexia didn’t seem to care as much, maybe it was the fact she had her own place now but you often found her sitting watching movies with you and Alba or sitting at the dinner table having coffee in the morning. What blew your mind altogether was when she invited you on a night out with her teammates, “Alba will be there, but I just thought I would ask you know incase you wanted to meet them or just go out for the night.” You smiled happily nodding “I’d love to, eh I’ll be here at 7pm.” Alexia couldn’t help the butterflies in her stomach “sounds good Osa.” You couldn’t help but blush at the nickname remembering back to when the word adesoso used to follow after it.

You had been panicking since 4pm on the phone to Alba “I don’t have clothes Al.” Alba huffed “yes you do amor, wear the black corset and trousers you know the leather ones and your boots you look hot in them.” You rolled your eyes “ok are you sure.” Alba rolled her eyes “you could wear a bin bag and Ale would think you are hot.” Three hours later you were stood outside the Putellas house nervously talking yourself up to ring the doorbell looking up suddenly when you head Alexia’s voice “Joder, eres preciosa.” You looked down as your face reddened “Gracias Ale.” You finally looked up staring at the older girl “wow Ale you look wow.” Alexia shook her head before grabbing your hand and pulling you in the door shouting out to Alba that you were here and ready to go.

Arriving at the club you scanned the room before catching eyes with Barcelonas best known defender “Mapi.” Maria turned on a dime laughing as she ran to scoop you up “Bebé pequeño.” You laughed at the nickname you kissed her cheek as she put you down not turning as you felt a hand on your back thinking it was Alba “how are you amor, what are you doing here, oh I have someone I want you to meet.” You laughed at Mapi’s excitement “Más despacio,Maria.” The hand left your back as Mapi dragged you towards the crowd “Mi Vida I have someone you have to meet.” You froze slightly at the sight of the tall Norwegian until she smiled brightly at you “Maria did you kidnap a ballerina.” Mapi looked confused “eh no, this is Y/n mi Bebé pequeño.” Ingrid shook her head “no you kidnapped one of the best Ballerinas in the world.” You laughed shaking your head before putting your hand out to shake Ingrid’s hand “Hola, I’m Y/n.” Ingrid looked surprised as you leaned into Mapi “how do you two know each other.” You both looked at each other and laughed “Ale and Alba.” Ingrid looked even more surprised before you began to explain “I grew up with Al, and then when I moved to Paris to study Alba followed me over a year later.” Ingrid looked stunned “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched you perform either live or on screen you are incredible.” You felt your cheeks reddening at her compliment before a hand grabbed your back again, once again assuming it was Alba you relaxed into their arms “My friends are actually trying to organise seeing you in Vienna.” Finally the voice behind you spoke causing you to stiffen “Vienna.” You turned looking at Alexia “sí, I leave in two weeks to begin rehearsals and then my next show is in Paris and then my agent said something about dancing in London.” Alexia felt her stomach drop “so when are you coming home.” You looked at Alexia confused “probably not for a while, why you aren’t going to miss me.” You laughed half heartedly but stopped at Alexia’s frowning features “of course I will.” You shook your head “you hate me.” Alexia sighed “I don’t hate you Osa, I’ve never hated you.” You wanted to push further but Alba grabbed your hand “Come on show off those moves we all know you’ve got.” You couldn’t help but look back at Alexia eyes softening as you looked at the frown spread across her face.

You had been dancing for hours getting lost in the moment with Alba like you both normally did, although this time you couldn’t help but look for Alexia sighing every time you noticed her talking to someone else before shaking your head and going back to dancing. You stiffened suddenly as an unknown hand wrapped around your waist before someone began speaking to you “Hola, guapa.” You turned looking at an unfamiliar face before smiling nervously “hola.” You turned looking for Alba before seeing her talking to a girl “it’s ok she’s with my friend.” You looked at the strange woman confused “ehh ok.” You quickly looked at the table of Barcelona players trying to catch someone’s eye but finding no one, you couldn’t help but squirm uncomfortably as the girls hand stayed on your waist squeezing it before you turned to Alba grabbing her hand “Al Por favor.” Alba simply brushed you off to busy batting her eyes at the girl she was flirting with “Al.” You tried again only to feel the random girl pull you towards her “hey why don’t we go get a drink.” You shook your head “no gracias.” But she wasn’t taking no for an answer as you put your hands on her shoulder trying to push her off you. You gasped quickly as you were pulled into a different pair of arms relaxing immediately as you took in Alexia’s perfume unable to stop the gasp you let out “Ale.” Alexia ignored you pulling you before she grabbed Alba “Al we are leaving.” Alba turned to argue before she caught your eyes and a worried expression spread across her face “what, what happened Y/n.” Alexia huffed “you would know if you took your head out of that girls ass and stopped flirting with her.” Alba huffed pulling her sister back towards her “why do you care.” Alexia shook her head “leave it Alba, I’m not doing this here.” Alba shook her head not taking that “no we are, you have hated Y/n since our friendship started, you haven’t made it a secret so don’t try to deny it.” Alexia huffed “I don’t hate her.” Alba cut her off “yes you do.” Alexia was getting angry “no I don’t, I love her.” Alba looked at her sister surprised “I love her, I’m in love with her.” You looked surprised at Alexia “you love me.” Alexia turned to you shocked “well….i…..ehm.” You grabbed the older girls face pulling her into a searing kiss “I’ve wanted to do that since I was four years old.” Alexia laughed kissing you again “let me take you home Osa.”

You groaned lightly turning to see Alexa’s relaxed features as sleep took over her body until she groaned at the sound of the knock on door until Eli pocked her head in “Gracias a dios, you grew a pair Ale.” You couldn’t help but laugh “hi Eli.” Eli smiled at you “Papa would be so happy.” Alexia looked at you smiling softly “I know, he told me if she wasn’t going to be his daughter in law he would disown me.” You laughed pulling the older girl into a kiss “slow down mi amor, you only admitted to your love to me yesterday.” Alexia sighed happily “yeah but I know this is forever.”

[mxigo]

i remember everything (wish i didn't, but i do) | part 2

SERIES SYNOPSIS: logan saved the timeline, but the consequence is that he doesn't remember anything after 1973. now back in 2023, he has missed 50 years of history. including any history of your relationship with him.

WARNINGS: 18+, angst, swearing

WORD COUNT: 2.02k

MINORS & AGE-LESS BLOGS DO NOT INTERACT. YOU WILL BE BLOCKED. YOUR AGE MUST BE SOMEWHERE IN YOUR BIO OR YOUR BYF.

SERIES MASTERLIST | NEXT CHAPTER

The next few hours were a blur. After falling apart on the bathroom floor, you somehow were able to get yourself into the shower, albeit the water was scorching hot, and you once again ended up on the floor. It was only when the room became so hot that you couldn’t breathe did you finally shut the water off and uncurl from around yourself.

You still didn’t feel the same after changing into some lounge clothes, lying on his side of the bed and staring out into nothingness. The room felt too dark, too empty, too hollow. Even though all of his belongings were still here, it was now just your room.

Another stuttering breath left you as you realize that it felt like he died instead of just forgetting you, but he might as well have.

How were you going to explain this to anyone? Oh yeah, this Logan wasn’t the Logan that you’d come to love wholly and completely with every fiber of your being. He wasn’t the Logan that you’ve just spent the past four years with. He wasn’t the one that held you during your darkest moments, or let you shine during your brightest. He wasn’t the one that still managed to make every day a surprise.

And he won’t be ever again.

A gentle knock on your door pulled you out of your stupor. You don’t answer, but the door opened anyways. A soft shadow blurred out the hallway lights, but you didn’t have to turn around to be able to guess who it was.

You still didn’t say anything as she entered your room and shut the door behind her. Even though your back was to her, you could still see the look of pity on her face as she slowly approached you, settling at the edge of the mattress by your feet.

A hand came up and rested itself on your calf. “I’m sorry about what’s happened to Logan. I can’t even begin to imagine the kind of pain that you’re going through right now, Halo.”

“Please, Jean, I just wanna be alone,” you begged, pulling the sheets tighter around yourself.

A beat passed before she spoke again.

“I know, but friends don’t let friends wallow in misery. Besides, there’s a frozen strawberry margarita and queso from Louie’s with your name on it in the kitchen.”

A watery laugh left you, some tears making their escape as you finally sat up, wiping them away. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Jean.”

“Probably rot away in here until the end of time.”

“Probably,” you sighed, peeling away the sheets.

It was late, so you didn’t bother changing out of your lounge clothes just to go the kitchen. The two of you didn’t run into anyone on the way down thankfully. The lights were on, and sure enough, a to-go back from Louie’s sat on the kitchen counter with your name sharpened on the side of it.

You wasted no time settling into a stool and diving into the bag, pulling out the margarita and the still hot styrofoam cup of queso, along with a brown bag of tortilla chips. Despite not actually being there with Logan, you guess this would have to suffice as your after-mission treat.

Jean had chosen the stool next to you, occasionally picking a chip out of the bag to snack on. It was quiet for a few moments while you slurped down your frozen drink before you broke the silence.

“So…Did you see him yet?”

Jean’s eyes snapped over to you, surprised that you brought him up.

“I did. He had just woken up and came into the professor’s office. He was looking around like everything was new, like he was surprised to be where he was. He still looks the same, obviously, but it’s like he holds himself completely differently now. It’s hard to explain without seeing him.”

You hummed in acknowledgement, bringing a cheesy chip to your mouth. Jean looked at you for a moment, a look passing over her face before it disappeared, deciding to redirect her focus to the outside. You were about to ask another question before you heard heavy footsteps coming down the hallway, and like a cruel joke, Logan walked past the doorway.

Speak of the devil.

He stopped dead in his tracks once he realized the kitchen wasn’t empty, back tracking just a couple steps to stand in the doorway. He was dressed in his signature leather jacket and t-shirt, holding the keys to his bike in one hand. You assumed that he just came back from a bike ride.

You brave yourself to meet his eyes, but instead of them looking back, they’re looking just next to you. Confused, you look to your right and realize that Jean’s looking right back, unblinking with a look on her face.

“Jean.”

“Logan.”

It had completely escaped you how this Logan’s Jean had been dead for years, and since he had never met you, of course his feelings for Jean had never waned after all this time. He was looking at her like he used to look at you.

Your margarita suddenly soured in your mouth, and the rest of your meal became completely unappetizing. Instantly your stomach began to roil, and all your once hidden feelings of inferiority began to rear their ugly heads. It’s only once you pushed the cup away and abandoned it to leave did Logan turn his attention towards you, meeting your eyes. It’s almost comical how fast you turned breathless and mindless, unable to think about a damn thing to say to him, but what could you say?

You mumbled a thanks to Jean before high tailing it towards the only entrance in and out of the kitchen where Logan was still standing. You kept your eyes trained on the floor while you walked, but in a moment of weakness, you let your eyes flick up to him. You expected him to still be staring at Jean, but it startled you to find that he was looking down at you with an indiscernible look on his face as you all but pushed past him.

If Jean called out to you, you didn’t hear it, focusing only on getting back up to your room to wallow in grief again. You were so stupid to think that this Logan would look passed Jean as he had in the past. She died before he ever could. So now that she was here, and he had her, of course he would overlook you and look towards her.

You never had a chance.

~

Logan watched as you fled all the way down the hall before disappearing around a corner, and he still listened as you flew up the stairs before letting your bedroom door snick shut. He let his eyes drop to the floor as he thought about your face just then in the kitchen, completely frozen at the sight of him. Your wide eyes were frozen on him like you saw a ghost, and he guessed that you sort of did.

He's brought back to reality as he heard Jean sigh, getting up from her seat in the kitchen. She picked up the leftover food before throwing them into the bag and throwing all of it away, brushing her hands on her pants. He still stood in the doorway as she approached and had no choice but to stop in front of him.

“Do you really have no memory of who she is?” she asked, letting her eyes drift up to his.

Wordlessly, Logan shook his head, dropping his eyeline to the ground. “No, but I know that I should.”

“Yeah. Listen, Logan, I know that things are drastically different for you now, and that you probably feel like you’re just floating with nowhere to go, but Halo was probably the one person that you let yourself truly attach to. And there’s a reason for that.”

Then she left, leaving Logan speechless alone in the kitchen.  He shook his head and sighed, rubbing his face as he continued his way up to his room. This was a mess. Everything was a mess. This entire day was spent trying to figure out what his place was in this new present, and he had been left with little to no answers. Sure, he still had mostly the same relationships with people with just small variances in them, but two of the biggest were completely different to him. It was still a punch to the gut every time he saw Jean, completely taken away by seeing her in the flesh when he had only seen her in his dreams. And you…he had no clue how to navigate.

While he made no outright effort to find you, he still kept an open eye wherever he went in case he did see you. He was curious to the kind of person that could have made him forget about pursuing Jean, especially since she was still alive here. You were much different than Jean, at least from what it looked like, and damn it he wanted to know more.

He had just made it to the stairwell when he heard one of the back doors slammed shut, rattling the walls. It was late and a school night, so there was really only one guess to who was going outside at this time. It took only a single look up the stairs before Logan decided to follow, dropping his keys into his pocket.

As soon as he took his first step outside, he already picked up your scent, leading out into the forest that lined the back part of the school’s property. It wasn’t hard to follow where you had been, and it didn’t take long before he came to the other edge of the forest. When he broke through the tree line, he was taken aback by the sight of a large lake spanning at least a couple of miles. The rocky shore was stunning, and the surface of the lake was so still it was almost eerie.

His head snapped to his right when a sniffle broke the serenity, finding you with your arms wrapped around your legs, staring out at the lake, but not really seeing. In the moonlight, he could see twin tear tracks on your splotchy red cheeks.

Taking a quick breath, he searched for the words that he could say to you as he approached, but you beat him to it.

“She was right,” you mumbled when he was near enough. Your eyes were still staring into nothing across the water.

He stopped just ten feet from you, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

“Who was right about what?”

“Jean. She was right about how even though you’re physically still our Logan, it’s like there’s a stranger wearing your skin.”

You picked up a rock next to you, taking a cursory glance at it before skipping it across the lake, breaking the glass surface.

“I feel like I’m wearing someone else,” he answered, keeping his eye on the last of the ripples.

Your head turned slightly to let your eyes look up at him.

“Even though I’m technically still the same person, everyone is slightly different. Their pasts are different, so they’re not the same from the people that I knew. It’s difficult gauging people because I already expect one thing, but then a curveball is thrown at me, and I don’t know what to do with it. But you, on the other hand,” he paused, letting his eyes drop to meet yours, “are someone completely new.”

You broke contact first, dropping your eyes back to the stony shore.

“God’s greatest joke,” is all you said before pushing yourself up.

You shoved your hands in your pockets and started the walk back to the mansion wordlessly, but Logan was just a handful of feet behind you the entire time. He didn’t bother making conversation, thank God, you thought, only keeping his distance as your shadow until you were safely in your room for the night.

taglist: @facelessfionna (if I didn't tag you, it's because you are either underage, or there is no age posted on your profile)

[serpentandlily]

Untouchable X - Azriel x Reader

Untouchable - Azriel x Rhysand'sSister!Reader

Summary: For as long as you can remember, you have always had feelings for Azriel, your court’s spymaster. But after centuries of watching him pine after your own cousin, hoping he’d eventually move on, your wish came true. He moved on—with Elain, your brother’s mate’s sister. Unable to watch him fall in love with someone else again, you flee from Velaris, from him. But things are a lot more complicated than that—more complicated than you ever imagined.

Warnings: smut and fluff, pure fluff 

Author’s note: omfg guyssss, I can’t believe this series has come to an end! I had so much fun writing it and I hope y’all had just as much fun reading it! Thanks for all the love and support you guys have given me throughout it all! Hope this is a fitting ending! 

─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───

Part X: The Finale 

─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───

“Are you sure about this?”

You looked at Azriel, at the vulnerability in his warm hazel eyes, at the love and adoration they held but the lingering insecurity dampened it just enough that you turned to him fully. 

“I’ve never been more sure of anything, Azriel,” you whispered, gently. 

“I just don’t want you to feel rushed,” he sighed. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to make this decision before you’re ready. I’ve waited five hundred years for you, I can wait more. I can wait until the sun and moon collide, princess, as long as you’ll be mine in the end.” 

He pressed a gentle kiss to your forehead. You were standing outside the doors that would lead to the Priestess’ chapel. Just a few steps away from being mated—from being tied together for all of eternity. 

“I’ve waited enough. We’ve waited enough,” you replied. “I want this, Azriel. I want you. I can scream it from the rooftops if you wish. Nothing will change my mind about you.” 

His lips twitched into a smile. “Okay, okay. Then, let’s not keep the Priestess waiting.” 

He pushed open the doors to the chapel, holding them open for you as you strode inside, the small train of your dress trailing behind you as you went. Your mother had sewn you this dress before she died, for this very moment. It was pure white with a long, sheer draping cape covered in silver diamonds. The bodice had a sheer underbust with those same diamonds carefully placed to make a beautiful, intricate pattern. The skirt fell to the floor, shimmering in the faelights of the chapel also covered in diamonds. It was beautiful, truly, and Azriel’s breath had been stolen away the moment he had seen you in it. You looked like the goddess of the moon, herself. 

Your brother, who you allowed to help you get ready since you had decided on a private mating ceremony, had teared up at the sight, himself. Rhysand had given you a loving speech before sending you and Azriel off to your ceremony knowing he wouldn’t see the two of you for at least a few weeks as you would leave immediately after for your mating honeymoon. 

Azriel himself was dressed in all black formal wear, finely made and tailored to his body perfectly. Your mouth had gone dry when he had stepped out of the shadows, his dark hair tousled and looking like a true Angel of Death. The dark side of your moon. 

Standing here now before the Priestess as she read out verses of love and unity, you couldn’t focus on anything but your mate. He stared back at you with the same intensity, his wings held out proudly and his shadows encasing the two of you, swirling around in delight. 

“You may say your vows, now,” the Priestess declared, shutting her book and bringing out the ribbon that was to be tied around your wrists and hands. Azriel held out his hand for you and you took it, holding them up for the Priestess who began to wrap the ribbon around them. 

“I have prayed to the stars every night since the moment I fell in love with you, Azriel, that a day might come where you’d be mine and I’d be yours,” you breathed out. “Despite all that stood between us, the magic that kept you from me all these years, I wouldn’t change a single thing if it meant that this was our ending. I will love you until I no longer exist, through death and all that comes after.” 

“There would be no shadow without light,” Azriel whispered, resting his forehead against yours as you stared up at him. “And you have been my light, princess. I live and breathe for you. My body, my soul, my mind, were made to love you and only you. Because you are the light in whose shadows I exist in. You are the guiding star that I will follow until the end of all things. I vow to love and cherish you for all of eternity. Nothing shall keep us apart from this moment on. No magic, no God, no death can separate us. You are mine as I am yours.” 

You blinked the tears in your eyes away as the Priestess finally tied off the ribbon with a smile. “As witness to your love, I bless thee with the sanctity of the Mother and all that is holy. May your love serve as a reminder of the good this world can offer. You may seal your vows with a kiss.” 

And so you did. The kiss Azriel gave you was full of love and passion—a promise to all that he planned to give you. The Priestess held out a small tray with the pastry you had baked for him—a small pear tart that you knew was his favorite sweet treat. She winked as you took it from her before winnowing away to allow you privacy. 

And the Gods knew you’d need it if the heated look Azriel was giving you could be seen from heaven.

─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───

You barely made it through the door to the villa the two of you would be staying in for an indefinite amount of time before Azriel’s lips crashed against yours. You met him with the same intensity as he pressed you against the wall, caging you in with his taut body. 

He groaned as you parted your lips for him, allowing him the chance to taste you—to claim your mouth as his. One of his hands stayed against the wall while the other traveled down the length of your body, somehow finding your leg in the mess of your skirt and hooking it around him. 

Still, there were far too many layers between the two of you. Your body was on fire with want, with need. Sparks were igniting in your lower stomach, a terrible ache that only Azriel could soothe was taking over. The mating bond was singing its beautiful tune. 

“Bed,” you managed to mumble out between his kisses. “Now.” 

His shadows encased you once more, taking the two of you to the lush bedroom upstairs. You pushed him towards the bed but he stopped you, pulling away from you as you whined in disapproval. 

“No teasing,” you pouted. 

Azriel grinned. The sight of it was so breathtaking. 

“I assure you, princess, I have no intention other than ravishing you tonight.” 

He twisted you so your back was to him and he gently began to unbutton the bodice of your dress, pressing a kiss each time a new inch of skin was exposed to him. You melted into his delicate touch, allowing him to undress you completely until you were naked before him. 

“I’ve waited a long time for this,” he growled against your skin, pressing kisses down the length of your back until he was on his knees. He placed his hands on your bare waist and turned you around to face him, staring up at you with a reverence that had your heart jumping in your chest. 

He kissed your stomach, hugging your body with his arms. You could feel his muscles flexing—his hazel eyes so dilated, they appeared black—and you knew he was holding himself back for a moment. 

“There is no part of you that I am going to leave untouched, princess,” he groaned, his eyes trailing down your body, full of hunger. “Now that I can touch you, I’m going to make you wholly mine.” 

“What are you waiting for?” You whispered, so full of need. Your words had the desired effect, his restraint finally slipping. He pushed you backwards until your knees hit the bed and you fell down on the soft cushion, your hair fanning around your head like a halo. 

Azriel rested on his forearms above you, capturing your lips again with a new frenzy that left you panting. A hand slipped underneath your neck, tilting your head back so he could deepen the kiss, caressing your tongue with his. He tasted as good as sin.

His lips began to trail down your throat, sucking on the tender skin and leaving love marks in their wake. Your hands slipped into his hair, fisting his dark locks between your fingers and he continued his path down your body, staying true to his own words that no part of you would go untouched tonight. 

He explored every inch of you, leaving you to moan and squirm underneath him. You arched into his touch, wanting more. So much more. 

“Azriel, please,” you whined as the ache between your legs became unbearable. Azriel looked up at you with his dark eyes from where he had taken your breast into his mouth. 

“Keep begging, princess,” he growled. “You will not rush me.” 

Your head fell back against the pillow as he started his ministrations on your breast again, using his hand to caress the other one. His kisses were soft but his hands were not. Not as they groped and squeezed you with a bruising grip that only heated you further. As if having handfuls of you was simply not enough. 

His mouth traveled down your stomach, licking and biting a path on your skin until he pulled away, standing up at the edge of the bed. You rose onto your elbows, eyes glazed with lust. 

Azriel drank in the sight of you laying bare before him, a muscle in his jaw flexing, his hands itching to touch you again. 

“So beautiful,” he murmured. “My mate. My love. All mine.” 

“I’m yours,” you whimpered, sounding far too needy. “Please, take me.” 

He leaned over, running his hands down the length of your body before he pressed a kiss against your belly again. “My mate.”

Another kiss between your hips. “Mine.”

He fell to his knees, pushing your legs apart so he could kiss the inside of your thigh. “All mine.” 

And then he hooked his arms around your thighs and yanked you to the edge of the bed. You let out a gasp, raising onto your elbows again to look at him. He kissed the back of your knee before moving his way up your thigh. 

“I need to taste you, princess.” His voice was a near whine as he left marks all along your leg—sucking and biting. You moaned his name repeatedly, begging and begging him just like he wanted. 

That set him off because a moment later, he was devouring you with a hunger only a mate could have. Your wanton moans had him palming himself through his pants, trying to relieve some pressure. He sucked and licked your core, not stopping until you fell over the edge, his name coming out of your mouth like a prayer.  

You were still coming down from the high as he made his way back up to you, kissing your lips, letting you taste yourself on him. You pulled back, grabbing his face in your hand. Gods, he was so beautiful. Everything about him was so beautiful. 

Your heart fluttered at the love in his eyes, you were smiling without even realizing it. You kissed him as you reached for the buttons on his shirt. “Take this off. Now.”

“Anything for you, princess.” He smiled against your lips and helped you undress him as fast as he could until he was as naked as you. 

You could feel his hard cock pressed against your stomach. 

You ran your hands down his chided chest, raking your nails over his skin. He groaned at your touch and you pressed a kiss to his jaw, his throat, enjoying the noises you were causing him to make. Your hands continued their way down his body until you were about to finally grasp his cock but he grabbed your wrists in one hand and slammed them into the mattress above your head. 

You let out a noise of displeasure.

“I can’t wait any longer,” Azriel groaned. “I need you. Now.” 

You hissed as he took his cock in his hands and lined it up against your entrance. He hovered for a second, glancing at you, seeking permission one last time. 

“Please,” you begged. “Don’t stop.”

Azriel held himself up over you with a hand on either side of your head, lightly brushing his lips against yours. He slowly slid inside of you, inch by inch. Savoring the way you wrapped around him. You groaned, wrapping your hands around his biceps, your nails digging into his skin at the slight pain. 

But the pain was worth the pleasure. Was worth the feeling of your bodies becoming one. You wanted that feeling to never end. 

He stopped once he was buried inside of you, allowing you a moment to adjust as he hid his face in the crook of your neck, breathing deeply.

“I love you,” he mumbled against your skin. “You are mine. My mate, my love.”

“And you are mine,” you whispered back. 

“Until the end,” he agreed. 

He started to move, pulling all the way out and thrusting slowly back in. Azriel let out a curse and bit down on your neck, his canines piercing your skin. He licked the new wound as he pulled back out and thrust again. 

“Gods, please,” you moaned at the feeling of him inside of you. 

“No gods here to beg, princess,”Azriel growled. “Just me.” 

He fully unleashed himself then, his restraint snapping, as he lost himself in the feeling of you wrapped around him. You closed your eyes, melting into the mattress. He took every part of you, claimed every inch of you with him. You weren’t sure where your body ended and his began. 

With every frenzied thrust came a declaration of how much he loved you, how good you felt, how beautiful you looked with him buried inside of you, between his growls of pleasure. You became hyper aware of every brush of his skin, the feeling of his warm breath against your neck. 

The pleasure inside of you grew and grew with every stroke of his cock until his name was slipping from your mouth with a string of curses and pleas. Your hands trailed his body, down his back until you reached his wings. He groaned as your fingertips brushed against the cool membrane, his pace quickening. 

His thrusts grew more frenzied at your touch as the bond shined like starlight between the two of you. It was blinding, all consuming. 

“I love you,” Azriel murmured between his kisses and it was those words that finally sent you over the edge. Stars exploded behind your eyelids, your darkness taking over the room as you reached a high you’d never felt before. 

At the feel of you coming on his cock, tightening and pulsing around him, Azriel fell over the edge right after you with one final thrust, burying himself inside of you as a hot stream of his cum filled you so thoroughly.

Both of you were panting as you came down from that high. Azriel collapsed on the bed next to you, wrapping an arm around your body and dragging you to him. You rested your head on his chest, listening to his heart that beat to the same rhythm as yours. The same rhythm of your mating bond’s mesmerizing song. 

Azriel lazily ran his hand up and down your spine. His touch was soothing and you never wanted it to stop. Not when you had once been untouchable to him. No, you wanted to feel his skin against yours at every waking moment and you knew he felt the same way by the way he clung to you now. 

“I love you,” you whispered, tracing over his tattoos with a finger. 

“I love you too,” he mumbled into your hair. “You are my everything. I’m never letting you go again now that I have you.” 

“Good,” you smiled, propping yourself up to look at him. “Because I'm never letting you go either.” 

─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───

100 years later

─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───

Your heart was warm as you sat cuddled against Azriel, watching your family open their solstice presents. Your hands were intertwined, as they always were since the day the two of you had your mating ceremony. Azriel had never considered himself a publicly affectionate person but after centuries of not being able to touch you, he would never stop now that he could—no matter who was around. 

Rhysand and Feyre sat on a settee across from you guys. Nyx and Selene stood beside them, smiling down at their two younger siblings as they ripped open their presents from them. Cassian and Nesta were on a couch next to them, a bundled up babe held in her arms. 

Mor and Emerie were giggling in the corner together, like they were in their own little world. Elain stood with Lucien, three younglings that shared the same red hair running around her legs with laughter. Even Amren was smiling, sat with Varian. 

You placed a hand on your bulging tummy. You were due any day now with your first babe with your mate. Azriel placed a scarred hand over yours, his warmth seeping into your skin. Azriel’s shadows wrapped around your belly in a protective cocoon of sorts and you batted at them with a huff. 

You had thought your brother had gone overboard with protecting Feyre all the times she was pregnant but Azriel by far took the cake. 

The baby wiggled, causing both of you to gasp lightly at the feel. 

“I can’t wait to hold him,” Azriel murmured to you. “He’s going to be beautiful. Just like you.” 

You smiled, kissing him on the cheek. “I think he’s going to look just like his papa.”

Azriel chuckled, the tips of his ears turning a bit pink. He had been fussing over you and the baby since day one. He had built the entire nursery himself, with his own hands, claiming he didn’t trust anyone else to make things for your child. 

“Either way he’ll be perfect,” Azriel said, kissing the side of your head. 

“Yes,” you breathed out, lovingly rubbing your belly. “He will.” 

And three days later, the next chapter of yours and Azriel’s love story began. 

─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───

The end. 

─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───

Taglist:

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[blkgirl-writing]

Everything you written for Gale is so good 😭 I love your head cannon that he would be super needy and desperate for Tav. If requests are still open, I’d love to read about their first kiss. I’m sure there would be some major grinding involved too, considering he even does it in his sleep haha. I’m desperate to see how Gale manages to confess his romantic feelings to Tav with how nervous and cute he is.

First kisses- Gale x reader + Astarion x reader

This seemed just too perfect to not also do for Astarion, I hope you don't mind, anon!

Gale:

Gale had a bad habit of licking and biting his lips when he was nervous. Tara usually was there to swipe at him when he started, but she wasn't here to regulate him this time, instead, his lips started to peel, which only made him self-conscious. This never-ending loop is what made him want to put off anything more than longing glances, midnight cuddles by the fire as an excuse to keep warm, and occasionally connecting your pink fingers together as a reminder, that you're both alive.

But he really, really wanted to feel your lips on his, feel your soft touch on his jaw, cradle your waist. So that night by the fire, when all others were asleep, and it was just you and him staring up at the stars, he looked at you, with such brightness and care, you nearly melted away, but he held you together, with words of beauty coming from his lips. How wonderful you looked under the starlight, how he wished to suspend time so you could live in these peaceful, unharming moments forever. How he wished to kiss you.

A silence fell between you for a second, before you reached out and kissed his cheek, a small blush appearing on his face. It didn't take but a few seconds for him to lean in closer to you, only a small gap between your lips, waiting, for you to let him in fully.

Sparks flew when your lips touched, he swore it, every time he retold the tale of your first kiss. He said he knew in that moment you were his forever.

Astarion:

Looking back, the first kiss you shared wasn't when you first had sex, that was an exchange for safety, no, it was when he opened his heart to you, ready for judgment, but you had shown him love, instead. It was unfamiliar. Astarion was taken aback by your embrace, tight and long, and he realized he had never felt such kindness in this world, when he was alive or after he had died and been reborn, no one had shown him true acceptance, until right then.

His fingers played with your hair, his other hand at the very bottom of your back, when he leaned away he pressed his index finger below your chin, lifting your head off of his shoulder, and asked to kiss you. Your lips felt like serenity, finally peace in his world, where there were no intentions from either person, just love.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ���: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

@shyminnie07 @makers-breath @claryvoyantfray @black-sapphic @fapqueen

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

(Consider supporting me on Ko-fi)

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

[inkspiredwriting]

A Lifetime and even longer

Five Hargreeves x reader

A/N: I had the idea for this story because I thought of my grandparents. My grandparents knew each other as children and then became a couple when they were teenagers. When my grandma died, my grandpa died a week later. And somehow I thought it would be the same with Five and his wife.

Warnings: Angst, Death

In the golden hues of a fading afternoon, the garden was bathed in warm sunlight. The gentle breeze carried the scent of blooming flowers and the soft rustle of leaves, whispering through the old trees that had witnessed years of life, laughter, and memories. It was a peaceful, almost timeless setting—an oasis where Five and Y/n sat together, side by side, their hands entwined as they rested on a large lounger beneath the shade of a towering oak tree.

Five's once sharp, piercing green eyes had softened with age, his silver hair still cropped close, but with deep lines now etched into his face—a testament to the battles fought, the worlds saved, and the years that had passed. Y/n, beside him, looked as graceful and gentle as ever, her own hair now streaked with silver, her smile still as warm as the first day they met. Her hand rested lightly on Five’s chest, feeling the steady rise and fall as they both took in the tranquil scene before them.

Their world had grown quieter in recent years. All of Five’s siblings were gone now—save for Klaus, who could never truly leave this world. Klaus stood a little ways off, watching them, his eyes a mixture of sadness and acceptance. He had made peace with his eternal life, even if it meant being the last of his family left to witness their passing. He could always see them, his brothers and sister, as ghosts lingering in the edges of his vision, but today, it was Five and Y/n who held his attention.

“Klaus is here,” Y/n said softly, her voice like the wind, barely a whisper. “He’s watching over us.”

Five nodded, his grip on her hand tightening ever so slightly. “He always was the one to stay behind, wasn’t he?”

Y/n smiled gently. “Always the one with the most heart. He never lets us go.”

They sat there in comfortable silence for a long moment, the weight of their shared life resting between them. Their children had long since grown up and moved away to start families of their own. Maddie and Milo, the lights of their lives, had visited not too long ago, saying their goodbyes, knowing that this chapter was coming to a close. But right now, it was just the two of them—the way it had always been, ever since that day Five first realized he loved her.

“I’ve had a good life,” Five murmured, his voice soft but steady. “No regrets. Not with you by my side.”

Y/n leaned her head on his shoulder, her voice filled with quiet emotion. “I’ve never been so happy, Five. I didn’t think, after everything, that I’d get this. But you—” she squeezed his hand gently—“you gave me the life I never even knew I wanted.”

Five turned his head slightly, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. His voice broke just a little when he spoke. “I never deserved you, but I’m glad you found me anyway.”

Y/n smiled, tears welling up in her eyes. “You deserved everything, Five. You’ve saved the world countless times. You saved me.”

They sat there in the garden, wrapped in love and the kind of peace that only comes from a lifetime spent together. The sky above them began to shift from golden to soft pinks and purples, the sun dipping lower on the horizon. Klaus, watching them from afar, shifted uneasily. He could feel it—the weight of what was coming. His heart ached, knowing that this was their last sunset together, and he wished, just for a moment, that he didn’t have to witness it. But then again, he knew it was his place to be here. To bear witness. To say goodbye.

Y/n turned to look at Five, her eyes filled with love that seemed to stretch back through the years. “Do you remember the first time we met?” she asked softly.

Five chuckled, his voice rasping with age. “How could I forget? You were a disaster.”

Y/n laughed, shaking her head. “And you were so grumpy. I didn’t think you’d ever like me.”

“I didn’t,” Five replied, though the corners of his lips twitched into a small smile. “But then you grew on me. I had no choice.”

“You had every choice,” Y/n whispered, her voice trembling with affection. “And I’m so glad you chose me.”

Five turned his head to look at her, his heart swelling with emotion he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in so long. “I’d choose you a thousand times over, in every timeline.”

They fell silent again, their breaths steady and synchronized, their hands still clasped tightly. The warmth of the day began to fade, but neither of them felt it. There was only the steady beat of their hearts, the memories of their life together, and the knowledge that they had loved fiercely, truly.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, Y/n’s breathing began to slow. Five, his own heart faltering, squeezed her hand one last time. “I love you,” he whispered, his voice barely audible.

“I love you too,” Y/n replied, her voice soft as a lullaby.

And then, together, they closed their eyes, their breaths growing shallow. Five’s arms wrapped protectively around his wife as the world grew still.

Klaus, standing at a respectful distance, felt the shift before he saw it. He sighed deeply, wiping at his eyes as he approached the lounger. His heart clenched in sorrow as he saw them lying there, side by side, holding each other in death just as they had in life.

With a sad smile, Klaus knelt beside them, murmuring softly. “Rest easy, brother. You earned this.”

As he stood, the air around him shimmered slightly, and suddenly, he wasn’t alone. He turned and saw them—his family. His brothers and sisters, all of them standing there, their ghostly forms bathed in soft light. Luther, Allison, Diego, Viktor, Ben… all of them were there, watching over Five and Y/n. And standing beside them now, were Five and Y/n too, their forms glowing gently in the dim light.

Klaus smiled, tears in his eyes, as he saw the look of peace on their faces. His family, whole again, even in death. "Well," he said with a sniff, "I guess we’re all together now."

Five and Y/n, their hands still clasped even as spirits, looked at Klaus with quiet smiles. And though Klaus knew the pain of eternal life would never leave him, in that moment, surrounded by the ones he loved, he didn’t feel so alone anymore.

[sunnie-angel]

Nothing Fucks With My Baby (Part 2)

link to part 1

jason todd x f!reader

summary: jason has always feared he’d be the monster of his life. what he doesn’t realize is that between the two of you, you will always be the bigger monster, and you will love him anyway.

tags: violence, murder, implied child abuse, manipulation, implied sexual content

rating: mature | wc: 5.8k

a/n: this plot bunny took over my brain and wouldn’t let me go until i’d finished it. reader’s pov can get pretty twisted, so please mind the tags on this one and let me know if i’ve missed any.

Lucy Nesbit dies remarkably young. Only eight years old and she had drowned in a stormwater overflow. Poor thing, the adults had all said. Should have minded her step better, shouldn’t have been playing in dangerous places. The school had held a week of mourning. A tragedy. It hadn’t taken much effort to kill her. A sharp shove, then kneeling on her back until the bubbles stopped, and suddenly there went Lucy. Stones thrown at recess, scissors searching for your hair, harsh names and turned backs all stopped with just a few moments of effort.

The killing of Lucy Nesbit is likely the most important lesson you learned from that school. No one at the foster home had noticed you come home soaking wet, blood on the tip of your shoe. No one had asked you any questions when you didn’t gasp with the rest of your class as the principal announced the death of poor little Lucy, gone too soon. Nobody had noticed that you had been the one to make the world a less scary place. It is a lesson you keep close to you.

Only Jason Todd had noticed anything different at all. Found you in the corner of the yard staring down at the pavement during recess. Tucked his hands and looked up at the sky, squinted.

“Don’t need me to look out for you anymore,” he sighs. Nudges your shoulder with his and says “Lucy won’t be pickin’ on you again.” He’s right, of course. She won’t be doing anything important really.

“Sometimes I wished she’d die so they’d leave me alone,” you whisper. “‘Cause it was bad when you were there but when she’d wait for you to leave it was always worse. Does that mean I’m a bad person?” It’s a thought that’s crossed your mind before. Is there something so wrong, so terrible about you that the well-fed well-heeled could just look at you and know there was something awful about you? The same thing that led to getting left behind, bullied, belittled. Had Lucy Nesbit taken one look at you and known you were something to be destroyed?

“Nah. You’re my best friend and I wouldn’t be best friends with anyone bad.” He grins at you, front left tooth still missing from where you’d helped him pull it out three weeks ago. The bell rings, shrill and discordant, signaling the end of recess.

It’s only years later that you understand the tremble of her lips and the wobble of her chin before she would call you names, dig her nails into the meat of your arm, lead the other girls in pretending you didn’t exist. Lovely Lucy Nesbit, sweet cheeked with glossy curls, had been afraid. She should have been. The new girl who’d only moved to the Alley recently after her father’s embezzlement conviction, oh she should have been afraid of the children chewing her up and spitting her out like a rotten peach. Instead, she chose someone else to make afraid. The little girl with only one friend and no one waiting for her at home. All of that glitz and Diamond District shine wasn’t enough to bury the ugly truth of Lucy.

Jason Todd dies at 11 years old. He dies at the hand of the Batman, Gotham’s own protector.

Three weeks after Catherine had died and two weeks after he stopped showing up to school, Jason shows up at your foster home. More particularly, at the window of the bathroom you’re currently hiding in. The knocking startles you, hands coming away from where they’d been pressed to your ears to block out the fighting. He grins and waves at you through the window, suspicious smears across his nose and temple. You have to stand on the very tips of your toes to push open the latch but you manage it. He presses his face to the bars, hands wrapping around the solid metal.

“Jason?” you ask, tone tinged with wonder. “What are you doing here?”

“Jus’ wanted to tell you I’m okay.” Something smashes within the house and the voices raise. “Couldn’t stick around for long after the funer— after. Didn’t wanna stick around to see if they’d stick me in a place like this.”

“But what are you going to do? Where do you live?”

“Found an empty building that’s pretty warm. Sometimes I find stuff and Mr. Baker at the garage buys ‘em from me so I can buy loads of snacks. You know—” there’s a loud pounding on the bathroom door, staccato sharp, that causes you both to jump. One of the older foster kids yells at you to hurry the fuck up, then slams on the door again for good measure. In a hurried whisper, Jason continues “You know the old building across the park with the purple window sills? Come find me there.”

The night Jason Todd dies, you’d managed to sneak out again. Knew from previous trips the best way to get to the old house was to go out the back and use the garbage bins to boost over the fence. Jason’s not there when you let yourself in, hands careful to put the loose board back exactly the same. He does this sometimes. ‘Finds’ things to sell to Mr. Baker so he can come back with candy from the bodega to share with you. You settle yourself in to wait in the blanket you’d snuck out for him when there’s a noise from the lane behind the house. Clutching the scratchy blanket closer to you, you feel your way through the dark, breath held in your chest like a treasure. The slats nailed over the painted window sills have just enough of a gap that you can see between them without being seen yourself. What you see out in the night causes you to grip the old wood until splinters dig into your palms.

The Bat holds Jason in his grip even as he struggles, even as he swears. Jason’s angry, snarling face is nothing like his smiles for you. The Bat shakes him as Jason tries to twirl out of his grip, head lolling like a doll’s. Jason goes limp as he is bundled into the looming machine parked down the lane. The last thing you see of him is his eyes, wide and fearful.

Jason Wayne puppets the body of your friend for years after. He is not the boy that stood between you and Lucy Nesbit and matched her stone for stone. This Jason Wayne smiles for pictures without baring his teeth as a warning. He doesn’t remember cruel words or the way the world works. He doesn’t remember the lessons and the secrets the two of you had passed between you. No, this Jason Wayne doesn’t remember you at all. The only explanation is that your friend is dead. The fine sweet thing with his round cheeks and charming school uniform you only glimpse in the paparazzi photos printed in gossip rags half-melted into garbage heaps is not your friend. Just another leech of the city with pretty powder and paint, fattened on too much while there exists too little.

You get the news that Jason Wayne has died while at your third foster home since the one Jason had found you in. You find out the same way everyone else in Gotham does, the public broadcast of Bruce Wayne’s press conference. It steals the breath from you, the anger that slams into you. Heat surges through you and it is all you can do to uncurl your fingers from their fists. It hadn’t escaped you that four months after Jason Todd died there was a new Robin in town. That this Robin had a gaped tooth grin that would make even the dull mourning for a girl you hated seem bearable. The red rimmed eyes of Bruce Wayne on the staticky screen of the common room television confirms what you already know: Bruce Wayne is the Bat and he has killed your friend twice over.

Screaming into your pillow that night, your understanding of how the city works crystallizes. The Bat does not protect you, does not make your city better. He takes and he takes until there is nothing left for you. He throws out in a week food that would sustain you for a month, drops money on batted eyelashes and shiny new toys for him to destroy more of the city with. He is not the saviour some people say he is. He will not save you.

You are the Alley girl with the strange knobbly knees and the eyes that see too much. You will save yourself. You will keep your lessons about the ways the world works and what it takes to change them close to your heart.

The City of Gotham is never short of two things: crime and government money to prosecute it. Certifying as a court stenographer isn’t cheap, not with juggling your ejection from the foster system at 18 and having no funds to speak of. Second and third jobs keep you afloat until the scholarships and grants kick in. But by 20 your future is secured, government pension squirreling away into your accounts. You even manage to buy the house with the purple windows. It goes for a song on account of the murder that took place there all those years ago, but brand new flooring takes care of the more suspicious stains. It should be enough, to have saved yourself. It isn’t.

Every day you go to work and dutifully take down every damning word said. You record the lies and the horrors and the not guilty verdicts and every word you transcribe breaks your faith a little more. You have not saved yourself. The world has not changed, you aren’t any safer than you were at 13 and scared that the drunk man calling out crude words might actually carry them out on your walk home. No safety exists save for the pretty little lie you had painted for yourself. The only thing that has changed is that you are not scrabbling in the dirt.

Somewhere along the way, in the mess of bureaucratic paperwork that had become your life, you had forgotten the lessons you were meant to remember. Forgetting had not served you well. It takes a drunken night out gone badly to force you to remember.

A coworker pressures you to come out with the rest of the stenographers, a newly opened bar just close enough to the edge of the Alley to give the old money blood suckers the illusion of danger. The dance floor is crowded but you choose to stay hunched over your drink, wary of this glittering crowd. A man sidles up to you, rests his forearm against yours and offers you a smile that reeks of Texas oil wells and Manhattan construction firms. You look him in the eye as he fumbles through some pickup lines, nearly sick with the realization that he doesn’t recognize you. DUI, ran through a school crosswalk at the end of the school day, one child dead and two permanently disfigured. Got off with community service and a hefty donation. He wants to fuck you.

The police find him behind the bar the next morning, throat slashed and wallet missing, and chalk it up to a mugging gone wrong. He should have known better than to go flashing so much cash so close to where criminals live, the news anchors tut. Unable to withstand the scandal, the bar closes. You savour the top shelf whiskey bottle you’d bought at their closing, the same one he’d tried to buy you and drug you with, and attribute the glow in your belly to having done a good thing. His driver’s license finds a home under your living room floorboards.

The Red Hood arrives and the Alley almost seems to reverberate with the shockwaves. Still, pretty young things with a hankering for a bit of rough to tell all their friends about with champagne glasses in their hands and haughty titters wind up dead. You don’t recognize all of them from work, some of them you simply want power over. To reveal to these silver spoon fed creatures exactly how fragile their influence is. Disposing of them does not save you, but it makes you feel safe to know that the world does not turn solely around those shiny, fragile things. You are careful and you are not caught.

At the courthouse, you watch the aftermath of the Hood’s vendettas play out. Chat about cases with your coworkers between trials just to get a feel for what his game is. He’s an unknown to most of them, but not to you. You look at how the number of drug convictions of minors plummet this quarter, watch at how fewer pimps get brought in for killing their girls, note the way gang violence reduces down to just the Hood’s own orders and you understand. Whoever the Hood is, whatever he is, he knows the same lessons engraved on your heart. That the world is not safe unless you make it, and that the world doesn’t care what methods it takes to get it done.

Your first run in with Gotham’s newest crime lord isn’t planned. Quite specifically, you had never intended to make your way onto his radar at all. He had different plans, however. Taking out the garbage, you all but trip over his feet one late night. He’s slumped against your fence with one hand pressed against his neck. Blood dribbles between his fingers, dark under the fluorescent burn of the street lights.

The gun pointing at your head does not dissuade you from attempting to push him into a standing position.

“If you wanted to die in my yard, the least you could have done is climbed in through the back,” you say, voice measured and cold. “I’m not letting you bleed out in my front yard and make me a target for whoever carved you that second smile.” That jolts a reaction out of him, gun wavering from it’s unerring focus on your face. “So what we’re going to do is get you out of the open and then I’m going to call whoever you want to come stitch you up.”

A man of his size dwarfs the chair set in your kitchen but he will not be moved from his vantage point. Defensive, back to the wall and all entrances in sight. The wound still bleeds sluggishly. Determined not to have this man die in your kitchen, not when he’s actually out there doing some good in the world, you lay out your first aid kit and go for his throat. The gun jamming into the side of your ribs immediately lets you know just how badly you’ve not thought this idea out.

“You’re still bleeding, pretty badly too. I just want to take a look to see if I can patch you up long enough until whoever gets here can do something.”

The moment draws out, neither of you saying anything. With every breath you can feel the muzzle of the gun dig into you further. Something must read as sincere on your face, not that you’d ever be able to name what it was, and he reaches up for his helmet. Pushes a button at the nape of his neck to release it, before deliberately placing it on the kitchen table one handed. He smiles at you with bloodied teeth and, oh, that’s your boy.

“Well,” he rasps, “get to it.”

At that exact moment you press down with gauze, forcing a grunt out of him. Good. Jason’s scared you enough for a single lifetime. Trying to secure the gauze with medical tape and spite, you’re forced to lean into him until the feverish glow of his skin warms your own.

“Not afraid ‘m gonna bite?”

“I know you’re not going to hurt me because you’re my best friend and I wouldn’t be friends with a bad person.” Leaning back, you inspect your work. Shoddy, but it’ll do until someone actually medically trained can stitch him up. Finally, you let yourself actually look at him. Behind the domino mask you’d swear there’s slack jawed wonder. A brusque knock at the back door interrupts the moment and then great big hulking men are carrying Jason away. You know he’ll be back.

The next time you run into the man who might be Jason, you are tripping out of a bar on the arm of your next pretty bright thing, too whiskey-headed to tell that you’re nowhere near as disoriented as you should be after what you’d knocked back. He knocks over a homeless man’s collection bowl and snickers when the coins get knocked down a grate. Grabbing your wrist, he tugs, pulls you into the side alley and tries to pin you behind the dumpster. The broken bottle shard is already in your hand when the man drops down dead. A neat hole in his head sending droplets all over your blouse. There’s no way dry cleaning will save it. The Red Hood steps into sight, gun muzzle lowered. And just like that, Jason Todd — not Jason Wayne — is back from the dead.

Jason kisses you sweetly for the first time after he drives you home from the traveling fair that had set up on the outskirts of the city. The feeling of his lips — soft, chapped, heartbreakingly gentle — slots something broken back into the hollow between your ribs. He kisses you and the axis of your world shifts. He kisses you, and you know that he will look at you like you are everything good and kind that you pretend to be if only you will love him back. The tender thing in your chest growing claws, fanning hunger into conflagration. Loving him will save you both.

He pulls back and you let him. Look up at him from below mascara-lengthened lashes and allow yourself a smile. Fiddle with the hem of your dress and tell him haltingly just how much you’d enjoyed the evening and how excited you were to do this again. Jason’s declared himself as yours for the taking and you will not let him slip through your greedy fingers.

You let Jason court you. Accept the flowers he brings to your door with quiet murmurs of appreciation. Wear soft dresses that invite him to touch but are just enough out of season for the weather so he’ll wrap his own jacket around you. Send him off to patrol with packets of his favourite candies tucked into his jacket pockets and laugh with him over the meals he cooks for you in the same kitchen he had nearly bled out in. You would have done most of these things for him anyway, but now they are your weapons. Each action meant to pierce another hook into his heart until he is as unable to leave you behind as you could him. You will never believe the world is safe without him in it.

The number of Gotham’s most elite reprobates coming to unfortunate ends zeroes out. You’ve got the prettiest up and comer on your arm these days, with his many scars and fearsome attitude. Jason in his many forms makes the world a better place, makes you safer with every bullet lodged in a skull. He is not the same boy that yelled at Lucy Nesbit for you or split a chocolate bar with you in an abandoned house. The cracks show through. Violence drips out of his every pore despite his hand wringing to you late at night. You are his confessor and absolve him of any sin. A fangless creature is useless to you, though you would grudgingly love it nonetheless.

The first time Jason sleeps with you, you engineer it, encourage it. Why? Because it ties him to you. Binds him through sweat and flesh in a way that nothing else but the kiss of death can. Lean in and wrap your arms low around his stomach as he drives you home on his motorcycle. Linger in his good night kiss before inviting him in to see how the flowers he gave you are doing. Sweep your hair away from your neck as you bend down to place his mug of tea on the rickety coffee table. You close your eyes and smile where he can’t see at the feeling of warm lips pressed to your spine.

It’s slow. It’s sweet. You’ve never felt like a more precious thing than in his arms. He looks at you like you’ve hung the moon in the sky and set the sun to burning. You kiss his scars and tell him to give you his stories when he’s ready. One day there will be nothing you don’t know about him. If Jason wasn’t in love with you before tonight, he is now.

You are told the tale of Jason’s deaths and rebirths only once, but it is enough to open up the yawning chasm of fear under you again. The world is not safe, not for Jason, not for you, not when so many of your enemies still walk this side of the grave. Gotham is safer after the Red Hood. Jason is still in as much danger as he ever was. The horror, the possibility that he could be cut down — by Falcone, by Sionis, by the Joker, by the Bat — it shakes you to your core. You want to scream, to rage. What you do instead is kiss Jason on the forehead and let him go to pieces in your arms.

Jason always says you bring out the best in him. If that is true, then he brings out the darkest parts of you. The parts that twist and grow cold until you see the world as sets of acceptable losses for acceptable benefits. In your eyes, any loss is acceptable for Jason’s sake. He becomes lighter after the revelation, no more secrets between you he says. Accepts your heartbreak on his behalf with teary eyes and a wry smile. The day he tells you that Bruce — his father, the Bat — had been the one to carve him open the time he’d turned up in your garden is the day he becomes wholly yours.

“Jason, Jason he shouldn’t have done that to you,” you say gently, cupping his wet cheeks in your palms. He won’t look you in the eyes.

“He was— he was lookin’ at me like I was the monster, like my murderer wasn’t standing there too,” he confesses. “I just wanted him to love me like when I was a kid.” He shatters. “I just wanted to feel safe again.”

“Oh honey,” you coo, shears tucked into your hand. “I love you, and you’re no monster to me. You know me, do you think I could love something truly evil? You do so much good, you help so many people and you ask for so little in return,” your gaze is tender, loving. “I’d keep you safe, Jay, if I could. And I’d do it because I love you. Someone that won’t do that, well, it’s no kind of love at all.” You see the blow land, have already calculated its trajectory and velocity.

“I don’t— but he loved me. He loves me,” Jason insists, plaintive and raw voiced. “Doesn’t he?”

“I think he might’ve once. When you were younger, sweeter. But Jason, everything he’s done since then hasn’t been love. If he still loves you, it wouldn’t matter that you came back different, came back changed.” You can feel the last threads of his relationship with the Bat fraying under the blades of your words. It’s time to make the final cut. “Can you really say he loves who you are now?”

Jason asks, once, if you ever thought about kids.

“I thought maybe I’d foster some day. Save some poor kids the same trouble I went through, so that others don’t run off scared like you did.” It’s a lie, of course, but you know it makes him feel better to think of you as anything but selfish. “Not now though, not with the way the world is.” You rest your head on his shoulder, curl your fingers into his shirt. “Besides, the life you lead is dangerous enough. It would be cruel to bring children into our lives right now. Maybe one day, if the world ever becomes a little safer.”

He hums, thoughtfully, and leaves the matter there. But the seed has been planted in the dark corners of his mind and one day they will bear fruit.

The house with the purple window sills is officially only a home to you, but Jason comes round for dinner, to spend the night in your bed so often, that it may as well be his home too. He listens to you talk about your long days at work, the court cases that worm their way under your skin and won’t leave until you purge yourself of them. Really, he’s more horrified than you were at the beginning of this at how badly broken the system is. You give no names, simply the crimes and the sentences, and even those details are too much to bear.

One night you come home from work silent. Red rimmed eyes dry and sightless, you collapse into him. It takes an hour, more if you count the time spent panicking over a hypothetical injury, to coax the story out of you. A snake in the grass of a financial adviser, stolen pensions, and three suicides. All charges dropped. The testimony of crying grandchildren still not enough to make a difference. It is the first time he demands a name from you. It is not the last.

The day your old foster father comes across your judge’s docket is the day the world finally feels less terrifying. He is acquitted, of course. The testimony of trauma victims are notoriously inconsistent after all, if the witness is truly traumatized and not just lying for attention. It hurts to hear his public defender say those things, but it does make what you have planned easier.

The moment Jason comes through the door you are on him. Clinging to him all weak limbs and fought back tears. He holds you gently and strokes your hair.

“I need… I need you to do something for me Jay,” you whisper into his chest.

“Just gotta ask baby.”

“I need you to kill somebody and I need you to let me watch.” He stiffens under you, but you will not lose him here. “D’you remember when you came to find me at the foster home, the one with the yelling?” He nods, presses a kiss to the top of your head. “That foster father walked free today, acquitted and all charges dropped. I need to know he’s not gonna stay that way Jay, that someone cared enough to stop him, or otherwise I’ll go crazy.” He exhales sharply through his nose.

“I’ll take care of him, jus’ like I take care of all those names you give me. But do you hafta be there? Isn’t it enough to just know he’s dead? I don’t wanna drag you down into the dirt with me.”

“You’re not tainting me, honey. You’re freeing me.”

You watch the man die, a slow drawn out thing as he begs for kindness. His pain means nothing to you. Only the final blow, dealt by Jason’s bloodied hands, shifts the burden of memory from you. You stop being afraid of this particular threat. The body is found scattered across the railroad tracks. Police mark it down as a suicide.

This victory is twofold. Your world is a little safer and Jason has killed for you, on your express order and with you as witness. There is no greater high than this, the power that sings through your blood. Jason will reshape the world to keep you safe. Now you will reshape the world for him.

It takes three more months of witnessing his work and not flinching before Jason brings him to you. In the end, it’s really quite simple. You ask for the chance to show Jason how much he is loved, to let you take care of this one thing to keep him safe. He puts up a token fight, insistent on keeping your hands clean of his business, but the two of you know that your hands are far from pristine. The Joker is bound at your feet by the end of the day. A quick drag of your wrist and he is just another thing to be taken out with Saturday’s trash to eventually be illegally dumped in the harbour. Jason sobs in your arms that night.

He is not the boy you’d wished to have returned to you as a child. Jason is not quite the Bat’s son, or the weapon of the League either. He is some half-raised creature of the city’s own design and you love him because of that. You know he does not see you half as clearly as you see him, but you will accept his wonderful naïveté for all the ways it will let you protect him. Protect you by extension. Jason’s trust, his devotion to you, it is everything you’ve ever wanted. It is more than you have ever expected to have. That forgotten little Alley girl, now the centre of someone’s world.

And so you plan. A list of names a mile long of people who make this city worse just by breathing. Kingpins and crime lords and all their networks, culled from your networks and court cases. Heroes and vigilantes who already work tirelessly to hamstring the work the Red Hood does, uncaring of all the lives he’s saved. A list that, when all of the occupants are dead, will mean you are finally safe in a world that belongs to Jason. Convincing Jason, with all of his infinite love for you, to wipe the slate clean of them all is still no easy matter. Instead, you let the Bat make your argument for you.

Another bar, another drunk cell-less jailbird, only this time you know that Jason is waiting in the shadows, that the Bat is in the rafters. The man stumbles, his too shiny shoes catching on the cracks in the pavement. Jason moves to raise his gun and a flicker of metal sends his aim wide. The man on your arm shies at the sound of gunfire but your grip is iron. A body slides between Jason and his prey and you refuse to let this one escape. The pen knife lodges beneath the jaw bone, catches on something and sticks. His death rattle is unsightly but he goes down easy, life slipping away down the sewer grate. A booted step, heavier than Jason’s, causes your head to snap up.

A wraith looms over you and it’s pure terror that sends your stomach into free fall. The Bat turns on you, advances until your back is pressed up against the brick. A gloved hand reaches for you but pulls back like stung when a bullet narrowly misses a finger.

“Last warning. Back. Off.” growls the modulated voice of the Red Hood. He prowls forward, legs eating up the distance. The Bat simply grunts. Back to the wall, you try to inch away, but the feeling of cold metal stops you. The cuff around your wrist cinches shut so tightly you can feel the bones of your wrist grind together. You whimper, high in your throat. Jason’s fist goes crashing into the cowl.

“I said back off!” the Bat catches his next punch, before returning a hit of his own.

“She just killed someone in cold blood, Hood. You’re protecting a murderer.”

“At least she did something, Bruce! D’you even know what that man did? What you let him do to this city?” he screams the last word then headbutts the Bat.

The alley descends into a flurry of blows, bodies colliding with metal and concrete. Neither of them notice you pick yourself up from knees and flee. Home’s not safe, not until Jason tells you. But he’ll come back for you. You’ve gotten so good at waiting for Jason, what’s a few hours more?

He finds you in the safe house he’d made you memorize the address of way back in the infancy of your relationship. Nerves have you sitting in the dark, too afraid that even a light will give you away. It is a cold kind of silence that blankets the small kitchen with its empty cupboards. Dried blood has started to flake off of your skin and you begin to pick at it. For a moment, the repetitive motions distract you until you can’t bear the prickly feeling on your skin anymore. With a clatter you rush to the tap, the trailing handcuff clanging against the metal sink. A stone rolls in your gut and you retch until there is nothing left in it. Everything rests on this. The future rests on this. You lean back and rest your forehead on the cool edge of the sink.

The sound of the window jimmying open causes you to jump, whirling around to face the threat. It’s Jason, only Jason, flailing around in the dark. The streetlights reflect off of his helmet, revealing the cracks in the patina. You launch yourself at him, fingers curling into the collar of his coat. He smells of blood and grime, but beneath it all, warmth. Jason crushes you to him, hand cradling the back of your head with a tenderness that overwhelms you.

“M’sorry I’m late baby,” he murmurs. “Why’s it so dark in here?” Unable to form words, you simply shake your head and press yourself closer. Fear has always dogged you, but never have you gotten so close to the source of it. Jason raises a hand and wraps it reassuringly around your wrist. “Let’s get some light and we’ll get this thing off of you,” he says while stroking a thumb over where the cuff digs into your skin.

You have to stifle a giggle at the absurd parallel to the night he tore back into your life. The two of you sat at a table tending to wounds inflicted by Gotham’s self-titled vengeance, the uncertainty of the future hanging over you. Hands gentler than they’ve ever been, Jason traces over the blooming bruises on your wrist, handcuffs discarded on the table.

“He’s never going to stop chasing me, is he?” you whisper, slow fear poisoning your voice. “He’s never gonna stop trying to take me away from you. Not while I’m alive.” Jason trails his grip to your palm and turns it over, brings it to his lips and places a featherlight kiss on your fourth knuckle.

“No, baby. Not while he’s alive.”

[lovedrruunk]

My Arcane Season 2 Scene Wishlist

Season 2 in LESS THAN A MONTH!!! So here are some things I hope to see :3

1. I NEED TO SEE CAIT FIND OUT VI AND THE OTHERS R WHO BLEW UP JAYCES APARTMENT!!! I DONT CARE IF IT DOESN’T MATTER ANYMORE!! I feel like that was the big catalyst that started everything and it’s crazy to me that Vi and Cait r gonna get together without her knowing it was Vi

2. I need to see Jinx actually mourn Silco… or have an item that symbolizes him kinda like Claggors goggles yk? Just anything that rlly shows the influence he/his death had on her. I don’t just wanna see her suddenly be all gloomy in a cloak I wanna see her break down and start hallucinating his bitchass

2.5. I need her to have a good cry oh my gosh. Like just a really sad pathetic sob where she doesn't scream or talk to herself or hear voices... this would be my final straw

3. Speaking of Claggor, I need more mentions of him and Mylo like please… with Vander resurfacing I hope we’ll get maybe a flashback or something but ik this is such a reach cuz I feel like we won't get any flashbacks this season just because like we got so many in the first season and I feel like they’re done with world building BUT I’m fine with even a name drop at this point like PLEASE I miss their family dynamic sm and I’d love to see more of their relationship, even if it’s not shown as a flashback I hope they’re at least mentioned, and I mean REALLY mentioned

4. Caitvi FUCKING… hard.

5. Viktor and Jayce break up scene. I don't even fuck with yaoi, I don't care for it, I wouldn't even say that I ship these two but HOLY FUCK are they so gay. This is PEAK doomed yaoi. I need to see Viktor break up with Jayce after he starts making hextech weapons and dickrides Mel harder and sloppier than before because she just almost died and he feels indebted to her

6. Caitlyn absolutely losing it. Everyone is talking about some “Caitlyn redemption arc” REDEMPTION FROM WHAT? At this point Caitlyn gets a free pass from EVERYTHING. The bitch BLEW UP HER MOM!!! I wanna see her go crazy, maybe give her some PTSD, have her hallucinate Jinx or some shit idrk I’m kind of on the toilet rn

7. I don’t think I’m gonna survive if Jinx doesn’t have a happy ending. Like I’m not even exaggerating I NEED HER TO BE OKAYYY!!! My prediction for the ending is that she’s gonna like turn a new leaf or whatever and end up leaving everything behind

8. Sevika backstory. Again, it might not be a flashback or anything like that but I think it's so interesting how she's been in every single act/90% of the episodes yet we know nothing about her. I also think there's a chance they're gonna kill her off SO I feel like they should give us more to work with, also the directors KNOW how to give side characters depth, we've seen it, so I just hope they think Sevika's worth it. But no like srsly I rlly think she's gonna die and I have so much evidence for it please... save me...

And last but CERTAINLY not least I wish to see Caitlyn face flushed, hair messy, body sweaty, titties out, laying on her silky bed sheets looking straight into the camera (and whispering my name but like that part's optional), thank you. ( ᵔ ᴗ ᵔ )

[2knightt]

IM SORRY, I KNOW U GOT A REQUEST ON THIS SO MUCH ALREADY BUT…

Your motherly!reader fics are so good 😭! can you pleasee do another? platonic with the gang!! no romance 🥰 thank youu ❤️❤️❤️ your work is amazing btw!

the gang x motherly!reader

!warnings!

1.i did headcanons i hope thats okay😭

2.fem!reader

3.swearing and a small mention of violence.

Johnny Cade ;

like i’ve said before in other fics, he loves you so much.

honestly, you might be one of his favourite people!

when he walks down the street and he just so happens to see a cute flower, he picks it and gives it to you!

when he first met you, he refused to see you when he was injured in anyway. he thought you’d think he was weak and never see him again.

but as time went on, and you showed that you genuinely cared for him, he showed more of his vulnerable side.

johnny likes it when you patch him up now!

he thinks it’s calming, relaxing, and a, ‘nice change of things rather than lettin’ mother nature cure it.’

when he unknowingly/accidentally vents to you about his home life, he does get embarrassed.

he didn’t want you knowing, but when you hugged him real tight and told him sweet nothings?? he teared up ngl.

johnny wishes you could’ve been his mom.

when or if you have kids, johnny wishes they don’t take the, ‘how was your day?’ and the, ‘how’s school going?’ for granted.

because to johnny cade, that would be his perfect fairytale.

having someone as sweet as you to turn his life around, makes him excited to see tomorrow.

Dallas Winston ;

another bitch with mommy issues who is glad to have you.

mrs.curtis was definitely the mother he never had but always wanted and when she died, he was devastated.

but when you came along and started being that mother he missed??? he was both annoyed and over the moon.

he didn’t like that every time you bailed him out of jail, he got an ear full. however, he did like to know verbally that someone cared about him

he doesn’t show you any sort of affection, but he will tell you how he feels when drunk.

“thank you, so much y/n. i-i don’t know where i’d be without you.”

for mothers day, he doesn’t do anything special.

BUT—you didn’t hear this from me, before the clock hits 12, expect to hear like a cute little knock at your door, and open it to see a single flower on the ground with a pack of cigarettes.

dally ran off before you or anyone else could see him.

even though he didn’t sign his name, you knew it was from him. so, next time you see him, say thank you.

Ponyboy Curtis ;

he’s like a toddler around you???

ponyboy definitely pretends to be like, your own bodyguard.

but really, who’s scared of ponyboy?

he tries though!

when he watches a movie and some character reminds him of you, expect that to be the first thing he tells you.

“ya know, when i went to the drive in, you really reminded of this one character.”

“oh? why’s that?”

“well because-“

and now you have to sit there and listen to him.

he’ll draw for you so much :(.

if you tell him your favourite flower, he WILL give you a drawing of it the next day. he’ll stay up all night if he has too!

Sodapop Curtis ;

he’s literally your #2 fan. first place goes to johnny.

he’s your biggest hypeman??? omg???

“gee, y/n! you’re lookin’ real fancy!! gonna get all the guys, eh?”

when ponyboy and darry argue and he just can’t take it anymore, he calls you and asks to come over.

and of course, you say yes everytime.

so please, PLEASE, just let him cry into your arms!!!!

when he’s done, he’ll try to go home but i’m begging you to tell him he’s welcomed to stay the night.

and if he does stay? ponyboy will be at your doorstep too.

he’ll share his famous chocolate cake with you!! he’ll make sure steve doesn’t touch it.

“STEVE THAT WAS FOR Y/N! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!”

“OH SHIT SHIT SHIT! WE MAKE MAKE ONE TOGETHER! THE MORE PEOPLE THE FASTER THE CAKE WILL BAKE RIGHT?!”

“DO I LOOK LIKE A SCIENTIST??”

Darry Curtis ;

he is so thankful for you i legit can’t stress that enough.

you keep the gang in check, you keep ponyboy happy, and you help him around the house. what more could he ask for?

you legit force darry to relax while you look after the gang to make sure nothing bad happens.

“we’ll be fine, darry. go to bed, your dark circles are gettin’ darker by the minute.”

“yeah super-man! we’ll be fine with y/n!”

“yeah!!”

“fine, but if she wakes me up to tell me about any of you, so god help me.”

if you welcome him home with a newspaper and his favourite cup of coffee after a long day at work, he might ask you to move in.

Steve Randle ;

steve pretends that he doesn’t like you that much.

but he really does. like, the second he hears some soc threaten or insult you? he’s after them.

shit, he might be chasin’ after them in two-bits car while two-bit yells at the person.

he will legit go to war for you if you asked him nicely.

he will rant to you about cars if you let him😭.

he’ll rant to you about anything, honestly.

“and then the old bastard asked for a refund! the ‘no refunds’ sign was right on the door! how could that old bat not see it?!”

“steve! don’t call people that, but yes, it was very rude of that man to do that too you.”

“RIGHT?!”

Two-bit Matthews ;

he forces you to relax and watch mickey mouse with him.

he says it’s for your own good but when really, he just wants to spend time with you without the gang interrupting.

“guys! you’re stressing her out with all your STUPID questions! c’mon, y/n, mickey mouse is calling our names. can’t you hear it?”

“or maybe its the booze you had at 10AM.”

“i will sock you in your fucking throat steve.”

he plays with your hair…he finds it fun!

please tell him how to do some styles so he can go home and impress his little sister :(.

he offers you beer every once and awhile just so he can say he got you to loosen up.

“so y/n…you want some?”

“oh! no thank you, two. you know i don’t drink.”

he calls you mom in a joking way, ya dig?

“momm! steve called me a dumbass!”

“steve, be nice! apologize.”

“what the fuck?!”

author notes ;

1. i like totally rushed near the end LMFAO.

2. i never thought you bitches would eat motherly!reader up like this??

3.are you guys okay??

4.THANK U SWEETHEART OMFG??

5.i think theres no romance??

may 15th, 2023. 6:39PM

[beemochi-art]

Thoughts on the transformers one movie?

Me? you wanna here my thoughts about the TF one?

SURE!!

First off the movie looks amazing, the ost is incredible, the voice acting is pretty good and the writing is Awesome! The pacing a little fast, the story movie kinda quickly which is fine, I’d rather have a fast movie then a slow one.

You can tell the actors really cared about this movie, I have never seen actors get this much into the marketing for anything! Brian Tyree Henry did an amazing job for Megatron, by far he was the best.

There was plenty of action! The fighting and weight of the character was great, you can tell they were really hitting each other hard. This movie had a lot of love put into it. Incredible watching experience.

D16 was the star of the show! In my opinion at least! They were able to capture the innocence and the loss of that innocence really well. The slight character tics also didn’t get past me and did a lot to add to the emotions the character were showing.

I loved this movie, and I will be watching more as soon as I can! I accidentally missed that end credits scene. We were just too excited and wanted to talk about it!

!!SPOILER REVIEW!! ⬇️

Alright! This movie fulfill something the fans have been asking for year for. The Orgin of Optimus prime and Megatron on the big screen. We all knew it was going to be a tragedy! Whether you ship Megop or not, we can all appreciate the loss of someone close, when we think we know someone but then seemingly out of nowhere, they flip. But I assure you, the flip was not out of no where.

But before I get to the main two I want to talk about everyone else first.

ELITA AND BEE

Sorry Oplita fans, Elita is on a path to get that promotion and get that bag! Elita is in fact a mean boss babe, but that not all she is. She is a strong and determined worker. Even tho she is one of the lower classes bots she does everything with a sense of pride, no matter what she’s doing. She cares a lot, her gruff and aggressive attitude may try to hide it but I see past that. Although she really didn’t have an arc to her character you know? Idk I might have to watch it again.

Bee is the goofster to the group. Very cute and very funny. He really didn’t have an arc either and I wish he did. Bee was mostly there to serve as the comedic relief. And honestly I think we all needed. He wasn’t ever too annoying or obnoxiously stupid. I very much enjoyed him!

Sentinel Prime

God what a fantastic villain he was! Kinda sad he died. I always knew Dee would kill him. He was just as pompous and trashy diplomat as I hoped. Such good lines from him. He died like a dog and couldn’t be happier. We didn’t get to see his alt mode which made me kind of sad. He’s like a mega church pastor! They are usually secretly evil. Him turning the tides of the battle with the primes is something else dude.

ORION

Oh god here we go. His character was just fantastic! I’m really happy we are getting an origin story. His personality being the adventurists, rowdy, troublesome questioner is so cool! And such a big contrast to the usual iterations of Orion pax. He’s stray kitten coded. His young age makes him optimistic, selfish and naive. It also causes him to mistreat Dee; having the best intentions of course, even tho he completely disregards what Dee feels. It started off as him just wanting to be seen and help his people to everything quickly getting out of hand and him losing his best friend. I’m sure he regrets making Dee participate in that race. His issue just being childlike innocence and being self centered.

DEE (aka Dean. Aka Megatron.)

Oh god y’all aren’t ready for this one!

Dee starts off as the goodest boy. Will of whimsy! But like most villains all it takes is one bad day. Oh Dee you poor thing. If robots could cry he would have like four times in this movie.

Good Christian boy. Followed the rules, didn’t ask questions and had unwavering love for the Primes. Megatronus and Sentinel being the big two.

It’s cool to think of Dee eyes being a dead giveaway to how he’s feeling. Betraying him even in the final scene.

“NO, I WANT TO KILL HIM!”

This part! This is my favorite part of the whole movie. Dee had the audience full attention. The desperation, sadness and anger in his voice. Fantastic! As D16’s friend, this needed to be addressed immediately. But I can understand Orion not knowing what to say or how to comfort him, cause as a kid yourself what do you even say to that?? Orion always knew something was wrong, he was the questioner, but to Dee this was his life. To Orion, Sentinel Prime’s betrayal wasn’t that deep. But this was Dee’s life, he followed them without question, just to see his hero struck down in cold blood. His anger is something Orion can’t comprehend, he never knew he had that in him. I think Orion could probably right this off the first time but it wouldn’t be that last time D16 would start scaring Orion.

I’ve always heard people describe Dee has flipping his personality. There is no flip. Dee is deceptively passive. His whole life has been flipped and need Orions support. But sadly that moment would never show up. I don’t even think Orion would know how to go about it since he was so focused on his goal. My mom said Orion was a bit irritating because  he couldn’t properly read his friend.

At first I thought he had carved this into himself. Which is bad, really bad. But I think Sentinel doing it to him actually makes it worse. He hasn’t just mutilated Dee once, But twice. He took something he liked, something that was special, something that was a symbol of him and Orions friendship and made it cause him pain. It’s like the last of his innocence being taken away from him.

So when he was trying to kill Sentinels and Orion was holding him back he said “He needs to die.” And that last part sounding so emotional hits so hard. He loved Sentinel. You can hear the hurt and sadness in his voice for megatronus prime, sentinel the other miners, but mostly for himself. And almost all that hurt Orion had to say “you’ll be like sentinel.”

Oh brother that was no the move. Immediately upon it being compared to sentinel by his best friend, the rage returned. Blinded by his rage he accidentally shot Orion.

Finally we have Megatron. Bro is on his Kratos arc. Sentinel was driven by greed. Megatron is driven by his hate and anger.

This by far the best transformers movie. I think ever.

[eoieopda]

FORCE QUIT // EPISODE III: SPIDER

somebody has to make sure you make it through the firefight alive.

pairing: lee minho x reader | series masterlist (3/4) | prev. episode series summary: it's 2077, and life's a fucking nightmare. corporate titans ate the state and shat it back out, leaving citizens of the new republic to fall in line, or fall to their knees. a reckoning is coming — where will you fall? au: series — dystopian, cyberpunk; episode — mutually-pining fuck buddies. ➢insp. by: cyberpunk 2077 + the true lives of the fabulous killjoys genre: smut + angst word count: 23.5k rating: 18+ — minors do not have my consent to interact. series warnings: violence (hand-to-hand, firearms, explosives), depictions of injuries (blood/bruising/burns), some characters have cybernetic modifications, class conflict + poverty, surprise - corporations are bad!, unethical medical/tech experimentation, self-indulgent references to non-skz idols, reader is afab and uses she/her pronouns. episode: above + combat leader!minho, disabled!hacker!reader, pov switches, time skips, loss of limb due to injury (not depicted, minimally described), ref. to hospitalization + recovery, sunshine/storm cloud dynamic, minho is kind of a dick, depictions of combat violence, minor character death(s), unprotected p in v penetration. reader notes: afab and uses she/her pronouns; has a prosthetic/cybernetic leg; wears minho’s shirt at one point. ➢ notes added/expanded upon during 8/6/24 inclusivity review a/n 1: this part required a lot more external resources than anything else i’ve written, so i’ve kind of… footnoted? what i used. see the note at the end of the fic for the list! a/n 2: each episode features a different member x reader pairing, but the plot is linear, so you'd need to read them (in order) to get the full picture! you can sign up for the taglist to be notified of the next uploads. thank you to my beloved @sailoryooons for beta'ing this and @jihopesjoint for being my emotional support internet wife even though she doesn't stan skz. ily both endlessly!

Yours is the Black Screen’s worst kept secret.

The irony of that isn’t lost on you. Professionally, your most marketable skill is your ability to lower others’ defenses; to build and break walls as needed to take what you want for keeps. With finesse few can imitate, you vault over boundaries. Unfortunately for you, you don’t personally have any of those.

You’ve always been this way — no poker face, no affinity for bluffing, no discernible self-preservation instinct — and just the same, you’ve always wished you weren’t.

Time and again, your cards are on the table the second they’re dealt. If that alone wasn’t shitty gameplay, you and that relentless optimism of yours raise the stakes, double down. There’s no hesitating before you go all in; and there’s no surprise when you lose it all, either. Nothing you’ve ever felt has shocked anyone because they saw it coming in the previous turn.

Like Seungmin, for example, who won’t stop rolling his eyes at you from the other side of the room.

“If I took a shot every time you looked up at the door…” He sighs, gesturing from your corner of the Hub to its entrance, “I’d have died of alcohol poisoning six times over by now.”

The grimace you don’t want to concede can’t be hidden, so you rein your gaze in and direct it back at the screen in front of you. You don’t absorb any of the information flickering in front of you, however, because Seungmin has a point. Any second you haven’t spent staring wistfully out of the room is wasted on glancing at the clock. 

It’s close to nine o’clock now, which means your not-so-secret distraction is due any minute.

That reminds me…

You check again, wondering how many minutes have passed since you last looked, only to learn that it’s been less than one. That’s when the reflex takes over. Without your permission, your eyes wander from the glowing, green digits on the wall to the door — just in case.

No dice.

Damn it.

In a feeble attempt to cover your chronic — terminal — hopefulness, you try to refocus on your work. All it takes is a few seconds of staring before your eyes glaze over again. That disinterest isn’t reflected in your rigid posture, though. Your brain may be a flat tire, but your body is a bow drawn back, ready to fire.

Anticipation is a hell of a drug, isn’t it?

Seungmin crosses his arms. From the corner of your eye, you can see the knowing look he shoots you. He may not speak his favorite words, but that doesn’t mean you can’t hear them, loud and clear.

Told you so.

“It’s kind of funny, actually,” he says instead. 

You know better than to be thrown off by his trademark, flat affect. This is the most amused you’ve seen the weaponsmith in weeks. The corner of his mouth even twitches slightly; it might be the closest he’s ever been to smiling. “He only steps foot in here when you do.”

With all the heat you can muster, you aim to warn him — to puff out your chest a little, just this once — but it just sounds like a whine. “Seungmin…”

As if on cue, light footsteps sound off from down the hallway, shifting closer with every muffled step and cutting your would-be bickering off in the process.

Even with Seungmin’s judgment focused elsewhere, you continue to pretend that the glaring, blue light in front of your face has garnered any amount of your attention. It doesn’t. It hasn’t and won’t, so long as you can feel the seconds tick by in your chest.

He snorts. “Like clockwork.”

Damn it.

For being as light on his feet as he is, Minho tends to drag them more, the longer the day lasts. You never point that out to him; he doesn’t need to know that you’ve noticed. That fact sits among the million others you try to keep to yourself, just like your ability to identify him by gait alone.

Besides, you think, he’d never listen if you begged him to slow down, even if it’s just for a night. Rest doesn’t feature on the short list of things Minho wants from you. Come to think of it, neither does advice or concern for his well-being.

“Well, well, well. Look who it is,” Seungmin sings out when the shuffling stops short. “You lost, hyung?”

The way your head snaps up has nothing to do with Seungmin’s mocking tone and everything to do with the flutter in your chest. You’d attempt to keep that a secret, too, but then Minho walks in, and it’s game set. 

He’s fatal with his tattered, grey t-shirt half-tucked into ripped, black denim; and you have to clench your jaw to keep it from dropping. Before your dry throat can choke you, you clear it, swallowing down the thought that Minho and his jagged edges are the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen.

It gets easier to get a fucking grip on yourself when Seungmin starts needling again: “No, seriously, are you lost? What are you doing here?”

Dark, cat eyes flick to you, then back to their target. Deadly, you think, just like the rest of him.

“Wishing you weren’t,” Minho responds without missing a beat. 

As usual, his tone is carefully balanced between bored and annoyed. You suspect that’s purposeful. A tactic. It leaves listeners in the dark about his feelings, so they have to guess whether or not they should run.

Nine times out of ten, they guess wrong.

This time, Minho deigns to give a hint. It’s quick enough that you would’ve missed it if you hadn’t been staring. Thankfully, his target sees the microscopic flex of his eyebrow, too. 

All that bark leaves Seungmin in a hurry, no bite to follow. With his tail between his legs and his palms raised in defeat, he skirts around Minho before slipping wordlessly out the door. 

You frown slightly as you watch him flee, although you sure as shit won’t mind his absence.

“Seungmin’s harmless,” you remind Minho quietly, although you don’t know why you bother. He’s never felt threatened in his life, as far as you can tell. You don’t necessarily hate it when he flexes that fact in front of you, but that doesn’t mean he should. “You don’t need to scare him off.”

Minho crosses his arms and tilts his head in a way that makes you only the slightest bit insane. “I’m not scary,” he rebuts matter-of-factly, as if that’ll make it true.

You make the mistake of looking him in the eye then. Like it always does in moments like this, heat immediately rushes to your face like a backdraft.

Like he always does, Minho senses the spike in temperature. To crank it higher, he meanders his way across the room to you, eyes glittering impishly all the while. Your heart thuds harder with each footfall. Stupidly, you wonder if he can sense that, too.

“In fact, I’m offended,” he corrects you as he closes in.

His palms press down against the opposite side of your desk once he reaches it. This close, you can read the mischief scribbled all over his face, which only serves to tear you in two — equal parts fucked up by his assertiveness and the rare playfulness that only comes in flashes, only with you.

Minho looms over you now, his hardened stare softening just slightly. Whispering through what almost looks like a pout, he adds, “And you’re mean.”

For a second, you think that the hand inching its way across the tabletop is seeking yours. Anticipation makes your fingers twitch. Try as you might, you can’t think of a single fucking thing you want more than to slip them between his. 

Proving once again that you’ll never read him right, Minho’s hand darts out to your side instead. You watch in slow-motion as he snags the bag of honey twists from its resting spot near your left forearm, which is nowhere near fast enough to catch him before he pulls away. Useless, your empty hand drops back onto your desk. 

You stare longingly at the stolen packet, so dejected that you really could cry, and mumble, “It took so much effort to get those.”

“It shouldn’t have,” Minho counters with a shrug.

He isn’t wrong, and you hate that.

The Black Screen’s demolition expert, Lee Jihoon, is as hard to crack as the shit he blows to pieces. His footlocker full of snacks — a rarity, given the whole everything going on in the world — is even more impenetrable. Charming your way through his stony exterior had been your only option to gain access. It took months, as well as unrelenting friendliness administered in small, persistent doses.

Just like —

Minho wouldn’t have wasted his time with flattery or nuance. He never needs to open his mouth to get what he’s after because his presence — from his stance to his intense, vaguely violent gaze — does all the talking for him. All he would’ve needed to do is blink in Jihoon’s direction, then he would’ve walked out of there with the older man’s treasure trove and the jacket off his back.

Having just been robbed blind yourself, you keep your mouth shut about that.

Shrugging once again, Minho throws down the gauntlet: “Finish your shit quickly, and I might decide to share them with you.”

How thoughtful.

If he’s expecting a verbal response, he won’t get one, you decide. The most you give is a disgruntled sigh. Dying star that you are, you collapse in on yourself, sinking deeper into your chair until you wind up as a half-crumpled heap on the desk below your monitors. It’s a perfect picture of abject failure, making this the only thing you’ve gotten right all day.

You don’t expect Minho to ask after your current state, so you’re not disappointed when he doesn’t. Or, at least, you will yourself not to be. In reality, your bated breath is held for a second or two before you remember who you’re dealing with. 

He does speak, though, which surprises you. Your first guess would’ve been that he’d give a hard pass on your dramatics and wander back out the door while your face was buried in your arms.

“Spider,” he sighs, and his tone is so gentle that it shocks the hell out of you. Intimate, almost, even if it is just a caricature. “Call it a night.”

More curious than cautious, you lift your head enough to blink up at him. Between his eyebrows, there’s a small crease that you don’t see often enough to competently translate. You stare at the tension there for a beat longer than you mean to before your gaze drifts downward to meet his.

See? Beautiful.

The second Minho sees your eyebrows raise slightly in question, a switch flips. He shuts the light off, irons out his expression. Whatever softness you found there is gone as quickly as it came.

He clears his throat, then huffs, “Come on.”

You frown and gesture to the screen ahead, pointing out the program you’ve spent all goddamn day working on to no avail. The silent protest doesn’t work on Minho. His stare only becomes more expectant the longer he levels it at you.

“Seriously. Fuck it.”

Having chosen the hill you plan to die on, you envision roots tying your unmoving body to the floor beneath you. Your frown deepens. No, you think emphatically, as if making your internal monologue shout will make him listen.

Minho tries again. “It’ll be here to ruin your day tomorrow.”

You don’t budge, and it pulls an exasperated noise out of him. Curling his right hand into a loose fist, he taps the knuckle of his index finger lightly against your elbow, like the contact will force your mental task list to shut down. 

“I’m bored.”

You know exactly what that means.

“Come up to the roof with me.”

Strike that.

“The roof?” You peep, hardened expression smashed to bits before you can blink.

Minho looks a little too pleased by your sudden concession. He even makes one of his own, chuckling slightly before he rolls his eyes and elaborates, “It’s nice out.”

It’s nice out, so you want to fuck me… on the roof?

The hand at your elbow pulls away and re-routes towards the back pocket of his jeans. When it returns to the space between you, there’s a dented, silver flask glinting in his grip. He shakes it, arches one eyebrow, and tops it all off with a wolfish grin that makes your stomach flip. 

“Stolen whisky tastes best in restricted areas, I hear.”

He nods his head towards the door, beckoning you to give in, and you’re on your feet without needing the invitation to be repeated. 

The sudden movement after sitting for so long means that your body isn’t as enthusiastic as your brain. A sharp pinch pulls a slight gasp out of you. That’s the extent of your own reaction, but Minho isn’t used to this the way you are. Alert eyes flick down to where your residual limb slots into your manufactured one, then back up to search your face. 

Once again, he asks without saying a word. You answer with a wave of your hand, “All good.”

Minho’s concern doesn’t immediately dissipate. To prove that you meant what you said, you snatch the packet of honey twists out of his unsuspecting hand and circle around the desk until you’re face to face. 

“If I’m on my ass for too long, my leg forgets how to leg,” you explain, grinning more out of triumph than reassurance. Then, you dangle your reclaimed prize from your fingertips because you are nothing if not a little shit. “I’m not a doctor, but I think science says that food helps.”

“Science says?” Minho snorts. 

You nod authoritatively, then you turn to the spare folding chair near your work station. Your jacket waits for you there, carefully folded on the cracked, plastic-coated cushion. Shrugging it on, you shove the honey twists in your right pocket and tease, “Sure does.”

The corner of his mouth tugs slightly upwards, and you swear there’s an affectionate smile threatening to break loose.

It doesn’t.

Instead, after pushing off his palms, Minho stands fully upright, nods his head towards the door a second time, and starts making his way towards it. You follow because you always do, biting back your lips to keep your giddiness to yourself.

As the pair of you exit and head down the hallway in comfortable quiet, you note his proximity to you. It’s always the same; he’s always close by but never near enough to touch. The edge of his shirt sleeve brushes against your arm, although his skin never does. 

You stopped wondering about that a long time ago, unwilling to figure out if this is a tactic, too.

Halfway to the nearest stairwell, Jeongin appears in a doorway. The room he emerges from used to be an office for the human resources department, back when the factory was operational — back when employers bothered with pretending to give a shit. 

Now, the room’s function lands somewhere between a bar and a bedroom. The latter only comes into play when the former makes staggering upstairs to the residential area too much of a hassle. From what you can see over the younger man’s shoulder, that’ll likely be the case tonight.

Jeongin gives you a cursory smile before directing his full attention to the man keeping cursory distance at your side.

None of it makes sense to you, all this effort spent to hide intentions. Maybe, you think, that’s why you’re so fucking terrible at it.

“Hey, hyung!” Jeongin chirps as the pair of you approach. He lifts his hand to wave, but it just looks like he’s shaking the deck of cards in his hand at Minho. “Do you want to —”

Without slowing down, Minho cuts him off mid-ask and at the knees. “No.”

And then his finger slips into the belt loop of your jeans, tugging you along beside him as he keeps up the pace. You’re gone before you can see Jeongin’s face fall, but you’re sure it does. 

Yours would.

When you reach the stairs, Minho matches your careful pace, albeit much less awkwardly. For as life-saving as the chunk of metal and carbon fiber on your right side has been, there’s at least one problem it hasn’t solved: going up steps is a bitch. 

To compensate for your less dynamic knee, your left leg takes stairs two at a time so you can simply step straight up with your right. And even though you’re a bit out of breath from the extra effort, you open your mouth to comment on what you just witnessed.

Minho stops you before you can start. Shooting you a look you know far too well, he sighs, “Don’t.”

You’re as good a faker as you are a listener.

“He’s just trying to —”

He releases his grip on your belt loop. It’s the only reason you realize he’d still been holding on. Stopping at the landing, Minho turns to look back at you. “Can’t think of anything I want to do less than sit next to someone and have to hear about their fucking day.”

Eyebrows raised, you stare up at him. This time, you don’t say a word, letting your expression speak for you.

“With the ever-present risk that I’ll be murdered by the state tomorrow, forgive me if I’m not wasting today by listening to shit I don’t care about.”

There it is, you think.

The combat leader’s insistence that his life will only end one way: too soon and bloody.

That unexploded ordnance drops heavy between you. You step over it, joining him on the landing, and you don’t look back. Just at Minho, who watches you carefully for a reaction; whose tension leaves his muscles when the slight, upward curve of your mouth says, I understand.

Together, you climb the remaining flight until you reach the thick, steel door leading out to the roof. It’s barely functional, like the vast majority of the factory, and can’t shut all the way. With more force than is even remotely necessary, he kicks it fully open. The thick, rubber tread of his boot thuds against the metal. It’s quickly drowned out by the strangled squeak of its hinges.

You’re at least slightly thankful that those hinges don’t explode into a cloud of rust.

On his way to the ledge, Minho grabs two empty buckets from the pile of discarded odds-and-ends near the doorway. The rest of the pile — mainly two-by-four planks too busted to rehab and similarly spent range targets — threatens to collapse without its foundation, but neither of you stops to fix it. He leads, and you follow, ultimately coming to a stop near the ledge.

“So?” 

His insufficient question is underscored by the two buckets landing mouth-down on the concrete with twin thunks.

You’re still blinking through your confusion when he unceremoniously drops himself on the furthest bucket and when he stretches out his leg to tap the remaining one with the side of his boot. Coincidentally, you’re still waiting for the rest of his inquiry when you sit — much more gently — next to him. This time, it’s you who moves, nudging your chrome knee against his flesh-and-bone.

Minho finally takes the hint and continues, pulling out his flask as he does. “How was your day?”

The whiplash makes your neck ache.

Remind me again about the last thing you said to me.

After taking a swig without incident, he passes the flask to you. You take your sip — small, cautious — and immediately let out some clownish, choking noise when the strong notes of wooden barrel hit your taste buds.

“Oh, that’s —” You cough, nose scrunching. Whisky-laced breath slips out of your teeth in the form of a hiss. “Absolutely wretched, I fear.”

For the first time all night, Minho’s mask cracks, and a full-fledged laugh tumbles out of his mouth, high and clear as it cuts through the otherwise dead air.

“It’s not,” he counters. Without taking his eyes off your pout, he lifts a hand to catch the flask that you toss at him. “You’re just childish.”

In recompense, you swat his arm. 

He lets you.

“Shut up.” Your distinctly childish comeback is breathy because, like always, your laughter isn’t something you can successfully hide. “Am not.”

Another swig, no further incidents.

“Think you need to be demoted. Maybe I should start calling you baby instead of Spider.”

The violent flutter in your chest doesn’t seem to care that what it heard isn’t at all what he meant. For now, you let it happen. You focus instead on his creased eyes and barely-crooked smile; drink them in as quickly as you can, knowing that your window is closing.

As rare as it is, levity looks perfect on him.

While your laughter ebbs, the wind kicks up slightly, bringing a chill with it. You pull your jacket tighter around you as you watch browned leaves spin in pirouettes near your feet. Their presence here is surprising, given how devastating the War was to the ecosystem, but it’s welcomed. It’s a reminder sorely needed: nothing’s ever truly fucked beyond repair.

Minho pipes up suddenly, “You never answered me, you know.” And even though his voice is low, it startles you.

He’s too busy fiddling with the cap of his flask to see it when you turn your head to look quizzically at him. He probably missed the way you jolted just then, too, which is fine by you. Your goldfish brain is still trying to recall what he asked that went without a reply.

When you remain quiet, he supplies, “Your day.” 

As it turns out, you’re just as stunned by his question the second time he poses it. Part of you wants to remind him that he could be murdered by the state tomorrow, just in case he wants to reclaim his wasted time. The rest watches as his absentminded fidgeting stops, and his head lifts to look at you — not impatiently, not sardonically, but with the tiniest bit of insecurity scribbled into his slightly furrowed brow.

Oh.

Now, you’re frozen into silence for an entirely different, entirely devastating reason: he wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t genuinely want to know.

A self-effacing laugh serves as a smokescreen for how fucking flustered that realization makes you. 

“Well, I had plans to go phishing, but they fell through.”

“Beach advisory?” He feigns a frown, making your lips curve upwards at the corners. “Those hypocrites at Thanotech really need to stop dumping their shit into the reservoir.”

At this, you laugh outright. 

This is the Minho that no one but you could pick out of a lineup: the one that will take a bit and run with it, who lets his guard down and catches you off yours. This one may not be yours — you know he isn’t, not really — but at times like this, when it’s just the two of you alone, it feels like he is.

“I’ll make sure to tell them you said so.” You pat his thigh, which tenses slightly in the second your palm rests on it. Redirecting your thoughts from where they’re headed, you pull your hand back and tuck it into your jacket pocket. “I really think they’ll listen if they know Lee Minho’s the one asking.”

His eyes roll in response, but the amused smirk he wears doesn’t dissipate. It’s still there when he slowly leans closer, making your breath hitch. His hand shifts closer, too, and your pulse hammers harder with every millimeter that’s cast aside.

There’s an old saying about where the shame should fall when a person gets fooled twice. You practically feel it collide with your thick skull when, for the second time, Minho turns the tables. He nearly turns your pocket inside out in the process, hand snatching the yet-untouched packet of honey crisps before you even know what’s happening.

Just like last time, you put up no fight when he settles back into his own makeshift chair with a smug glint in his eyes. A forlorn sigh is covered by the racket of plastic ripping, followed soon after by a faint crunch.

“Speaking of bait,” he snickers once he’s swallowed. “What are you dangling?”

You really want to hate him for that segue, along with all the rest of his committed atrocities, but you can’t. So, you offer up the only thing you still have: 

Technobabble.

“The plan is to sneak in a program to mine data. So long as nobody interrupts me —” You pause to shoot him a pointed look. “— I’ll finish coding it tomorrow and fire it off at some grunt in Ulsan’s fiscal department using a cloned, corporate email account.”

“You think they’ll fall for it?” Minho asks, curiosity piqued.

You flash a grin. “I know they will. Nothing spooks a low-level employee quite like an overdue, mandatory, cybersecurity compliance attestation.”

If you didn’t know better, you’d swear he looks almost proud when he hears about the form of your Trojan horse. It’s certainly what you feel blooming in your chest, especially when you pluck the crisp from between his unsuspecting fingers and pop it into your own mouth.

“Once the program installs, it’ll start reaping what they have access to,” you explain. “I’m sure it’ll be limited at the start, quarterly budget reports and such.” 

You shrug dismissively, then look down at your hands. There’s no way this is interesting to someone that isn’t you, but he asked, and you’re answering, and you can’t seem to stop talking. 

“But those point me in the direction of invoices and their line items, which gets me to payment accounts, recipients, and other shit they don’t want me to know. It’s a paper trail leading to a paper trail, honestly, but it’s —”

“— how you weave a web.”

It stops your brain in its tracks, leaves your would-be sentence to peter out. You can’t remember the last time anyone followed where your explanations led, let alone saw the importance of all the tiny, tedious steps you take. All the intricacies of your carefully plotted architecture.

With you stalled out, Minho finishes that thought where he left off. “Strand by strand.”

“Yeah,” you exhale, warmth creeping from your chest to your cheeks. “Strand by strand.”

You sit on that bucket on the roof for however long it takes for your ass to go numb, and then you sit some more. Hours, maybe a day or two — irrelevant, as far as you’re concerned. You have Minho next to you and a burgeoning sunrise ahead; and you’ll bask in the glow you’ve found there for as much time as you can.

Minho, it seems, has other plans.

He sighs and flattens his palms against his knees before standing, causing the bucket he’d been occupying to scrape against the concrete. The noise is what gets your attention, not the movement. You turn to look up at him. Your disappointment is more than likely broadcasted all over your face.

“Stay with me,” you whine before you can stop yourself.

Needy isn’t normally a word you’d use to describe yourself; you’re far from it. Now, though… In this moment, it might be written in blaring red letters on your forehead, judging by the extremely brief flash of surprise you see in front of you. It’s gone as quickly as it came. The twinge of embarrassment you feel sticks around to keep you warm.

Minho is quiet for a beat, like he’s got something to consider. Whatever he decides on, it makes his head tilt to the side. A devilish look takes over his features, washing from his narrowed eyes to his tilted lips. All mischief, he counters, “Fuck me.”

Why do those things have to be mutually exclusive?

You don’t voice your question out loud, even though you kind of want to scream it, because he holds his hand out to help you up, and instant gratification together feels so much better than waiting through a delay alone. So, you take his hand, just like he knew you would, and you follow. 

Back to the door, back down to the second level of the factory, back to your room in an otherwise unoccupied wing, until the door is shut softly behind you.

Every single one of your rendezvous has been different from the last. The time, location, everything varies, not unlike the version of himself that Minho lets you see. Even though the steps change completely from tryst to tryst, they still feel like they’ve been choreographed and rehearsed ahead of time.

For example, he’s never caged you against a wall and pinned your wrists one-handed above your head before, but your body reacts as if this is the sole position it was made to occupy in life.

His teeth nip at the side of your neck, and your head falls back instinctively. You don’t give a shit about the muted thump of your skull against the brick, but Minho seems to. 

“Watch yourself,” he murmurs, lips fluttering against your throat. Despite the muted volume, his tone carries an authority to it that makes even your chrome knee weak. “If you wind up with a concussion, I’m not explaining it to Doc.”

You gasp when his tongue flicks out to soothe the sting his teeth leave behind. Beyond desperate, you push up on your toes to bring yourself closer to his mouth. It’s further out of reach than you remember — it shouldn’t be. Barely a week has gone by since he last had you like this. 

Embarrassingly breathless already, you ask, “Have you gotten taller? What have they been feeding you?”

His knee comes forward slowly to nudge yours apart. You make room, letting his thigh press into the gap created. If his left hand wasn’t keeping you stretched up to your full height, you’d be riding that thigh by now.

“You know what I eat.”

Your eyes roll back. You’re not sure if that’s a reaction to his line or the way he clenches his thigh, shifting it further into the space between your spread legs. Either way, that taut muscle is only millimeters away from your cunt now; the low hum that rumbles from his chest says that he can feel the heat rolling off you in waves.

You want so badly to be able to touch him, cling to him, scratch your nails across his scalp and pull him in by his hair. You want him to touch you — really touch you — not just to tease you the way he is, threatening to mark you up with his mouth without following through. 

If you try to tug your arms down, will he let you?

Part of you hopes that he doesn’t. 

At least, not without consequences.

Minho can tell how fucking restless you are. You’re not surprised; you vibrate with want at a frequency he’s always been attuned to. Speaking any of it out loud would be redundant, so you save your breath. His fans warmth over the shell of your ear, pulling the hammer back: “What’s the matter, Spider? You don’t like being the one in the trap?”

You can’t help but tremble at that.

“Fine,” he tuts, finger on the trigger.

Your eyes widen in anticipation when his hand drops its hold on your wrists; and your arms fold slowly back down when he retracts. There’s a muted ache in your muscles from the strain they’d been put under. You can’t say that you mind.

His hands move next to his belt buckle, deft fingers making quick work of the metal before the two pieces dangle on either side of his zipper. That’s the image burned into your brain when he leans in close enough to kiss you. He doesn’t kiss you — he never does — but he finally fires at point blank range:

“Turn around.”

Bang!

It’s so unexpected that you don’t register it as real at first. Neither does Minho, whose demanding gaze stays glued to you. The noise comes again, louder than the first, and you hear the cry that comes with it through the door.

“Spider, are you there?”

Hyunjin.

It’s his voice, you know, but it doesn’t sound right at all. The air of self-assuredness he usually carries is long gone. Whatever’s replaced it sounds completely unlike him in a way that makes your stomach turn.

Minho puts distance between your bodies in the time it takes Hyunjin to push open the door. You notice that he forgot to address his belt buckle, but you suppose it doesn’t matter. The youngest among you is too visibly shaken to see it as he stumbles inside with red-rimmed eyes.

Oh, fuck.

Panicked, you shoot a quick glance at Minho, hoping he’ll see your alarm and know what to do with it. His eyes are locked onto Hyunjin, who comes to a stop in front of you; Minho’s expression is the definition of illegible.

Your hand lifts instinctively to Hyunjin’s shoulder. Apparently, that reassuring touch is all it takes to break the dam; to break him down into sobs.

“Hey!” You gasp, knitting your arms around his frame and hauling him towards you. His face slots into the space where your neck meets your shoulder, allowing his hyperventilated breaths to hit your skin directly. “Hey, it’s —”

You know better than to lie and say it’s okay. 

Minho may be fearless, but it’s Hyunjin that’s the least flappable in the entire group by a long shot. If you were to search back through the last decade, you wouldn’t be able to find a single moment where he seemed annoyed or anxious, let alone fucking devastated to the degree he currently is.

This is the farthest from okay things could possibly be.

You can’t tell if it’s heartbreak, nausea, or both that swells when you fill your fists with the back of his jacket and hold on tight.

From his spot two meters away, Minho cuts to the chase. “What happened to you?”

Hyunjin can’t answer, not at first. 

Maybe, you think, saying whatever it is out loud will confirm the reality of the situation. You don’t push him. Instead, you stop holding him long enough to pull him over to the far corner of your makeshift bedroom, where he drops down to sit on the mattress held off the floor by two wooden pallets. Despite his wiry frame, the force of his collapse makes the wood clatter against the concrete floor below.

When you take a spot beside him, it’s much less quickly, no more graceful. Hyunjin doesn’t mind the hand you place on his shoulder to keep yourself steady. If he hears the click at your manufactured joint over the sound of his own barely-regulated breathing, he doesn’t say so.

Still standing where he was left — where he left you, more like — Minho’s narrowed eyes hone in again on Hyunjin. The expression on his face is just as unreadable as before, and he still won’t look at you.

As much as that bothers you, your own feelings are never your first priority. You turn your head to look from Minho to Hyunjin, whose hands grip the black denim of his jeans like a lifeline. When the latter finally does speak, the explanation hemorrhages out of him, spilling and flooding until there isn’t much air left in the room to breathe.

Three things in particular hit you like a train:

The Bliss Beta is infinitely more insidious than you could’ve imagined — even for Ulsan — and its mass rollout is closer than you ever would’ve guessed.

You now have the data you need to find the servers running the Beta, which means there’s a chance that the way things currently are is the worst they’ll get.

There’s a guillotine blade looming over the Professor’s neck, and it’s your hand on the rope, obligated to let go. It’s your scale that’s tasked with weighing lives.

Nausea, you realize, almost too late.

You grab hold of the wastebasket near the foot of your mattress and squeeze your eyes shut while your honey twists leave you in a hurry.

He loves her.

He loves her, he loves her, he loves her, and there are fifty-one-million faceless reasons why he can’t have her. You feel the weighted stares of every single one of them on you when he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, silver datashard. It’s thin, flat with sharp edges, but it’s a bullet if you’ve ever seen one.

When Hyunjin places it in your hand, your fingers don’t close around it. You can’t even look at it without feeling faint; your body won’t accept the weight of it in your palm. You avert your eyes, praying that your object permanence disappears along with it. 

And then that reflex kicks in again, craving some semblance of safety.

Minho is already watching you intently when you turn your head his way. The relief you feel is immediate, and you don’t have the energy left to pretend that’s not the case.

You love him.

You love him, you love him, you love him, and this goddamn horror show you’re living through feels survivable while he’s around, even if it isn’t. 

Maybe, you think, if you live to see the end, his presence will help you hate yourself less for the things you’re about to do to get there. That’s been the case so far, anyway. You’ve got a decade’s worth of scorched bridges behind you, and the ash on your face has never made him see you any differently.

Hyunjin clears his throat, dragging you back into the moment you don’t want to be a part of. 

“She said there’s multi-level encryption on this thing,” he mumbles, voice weak. His hand envelops yours and gently folds your fingers over your palm, as if he knows damn well you won’t do it yourself. “I don’t have to tell you this, but be careful, Spider. One move too many, and we’re all dead.”

You freeze; he stands, wiping invisible dirt from the front of his jeans. Nothing he attempts will make him feel clean, you know, but you don’t fault him for trying.

Before he can take a single step back towards your door, you reach out and grab his hand, preventing him from leaving.

“Keys,” you croak.

His eyebrows knit together.

“Cryptographic keys — characters. Numbers, usually.” You shake your head to realign your thoughts. It doesn’t do much; your explanation still comes out sputtering. “Each encryption is going to have a different algorithm altering its data, and it’ll be faster if I don’t have to write a separate program to try and find the strings I need.”

Judging by his face, the explanation makes sense, but he still looks as if he has no fucking idea what the answers might be.

For the first time in nearly an hour, Minho speaks. The suddenness of his participation makes both you and Hyunjin flinch.

“Dates,” he offers gruffly. “Ones that are significant to the two of you, maybe.”

The suggestion cracks against your skull like a baseball bat. 

Of all the things you could’ve expected him to say in the presence of someone other than you, something sentimental didn’t even come close to making the list. Hyunjin, it seems, is just as startled by this — by the appearance of your invisible friend, who’s spent ten years refusing to let this side of him be seen.

You make a note to ask Minho where this idea came from. If there are any dates he holds onto, with no one the wiser.

Hyunjin’s brow furrows for a moment while he thinks. Then, the light bulb behind his eyes flashes.

Eureka.

Dashing now towards the door, he calls out to you over his shoulder. “I’ll make you a list,” he promises breathlessly before he disappears altogether.

Without Hyunjin’s voice to fill it, the silence of your room roars in your ears. You need to shrug it off you, physically; move around so that you stop feeling like you’re being hydraulically pressed. 

In a wordless request for help, you hold your hand out to Minho. The jury’s still out as to what you want when he takes it: to drag him down to you, to be hauled to your feet, or to simply have it held. 

For the first time — possibly ever — he doesn’t take it.

Well-practiced hands drop to his belt buckle instead of reaching out to you. He re-fastens it quickly, and over the clink of metal, he grunts, “Stop looking at me like that.”

You blink rapidly when that sucker-punch statement hits you. “Looking at you like what, Minho?” You ask gently, as if your excess will make up for his lack.

“Like I’m your future.”

And just like that, he’s gone without another word or a backwards glance.

Eleven days crawl by without you seeing or hearing from Minho. You struggle to keep count as they pass. You’re so preoccupied that there’s no real difference between them, leaving them all to bleed together. It doesn’t help that all ten nights so far have been more or less sleepless.

While you’d love to say that all your time awake has been productive, you’d be lying. Sure, you spend the vast majority of it with the bright light of your monitors boring into your retinas, but that doesn’t mean you’re actively engaging with the shit displayed there. Between your program and your spent brain, it’s your neural pathways that are most in need of re-writing.

“Goddammit,” you hiss when a shock jolts through your upper right thigh for the umpteenth time today alone. 

Halfway crazy from frustration, you glare down at your quad and see the remaining muscles there twitching violently. And even though it’s been over a year, your brain is still surprised to find that the source of your pain doesn’t exist at all.

That outburst from you certainly isn’t the first, yet it’s the one that catches Chan’s attention. Like you, he’s spent an unhealthy amount of his time in the Hub over the past week and a half, pouring over who knows what. It’s safe to assume that’s how he’d describe your work, too.

“Been especially bad lately, hasn’t it?” He asks, head popping up from behind a stack of files.

He probably doesn’t expect you to squeak out a laugh at the sight of him, but you can’t help yourself. 

“You look like a meerkat when you do that.” The frown you get in response only makes you giggle more, despite yourself. “Like an overworked, overtired, under-caffeinated meerkat.”

Chan works overtime to control his expression, steel himself. It doesn’t work. It never does, no matter how obnoxious you and your comrades are around him because at the end of the day, all he ever is, is fond.

He sighs as he sits up fully in his chair. “Spider.”

It’s funny, you think. He sounds just like your father when he takes that tone with you, although the name he uses is nowhere near the same.

“Talk to Doc.” Realizing he sounded more stern than he meant to, Chan’s mouth softens from a thin, straight line to a slight smile. He adds, “Please.”

And because you’re the best behaved of all his pseudo-children, you don’t put up a fight. You don’t roll your eyes the way Seungmin does, or do the exact opposite of what you’ve been told, like —

Don’t go there.

You just get up, ignoring the strong urge you feel to buckle at the knees and hit the floor, and push your chair back with the underside of your thighs. Chan sees the pained look on your face immediately and moves to stand up and help you. You wave him off.

“All good,” you lie through gritted teeth, bearing weight on your palm as you maneuver your way around your desk. 

Chan may not believe you, but he listens, nonetheless. While you guide yourself from your workstation on the far side of the room towards the door, you try very hard to ignore the thought that keeps ricocheting around your skull like a bullet, shredding whatever grey matter gets in its way.

There’s one person that line wouldn’t have worked on. 

It takes a considerable amount of time to hobble to Doc’s clinic, which is clear on the other side of the compound, but you eventually make it there without breaking too much of a sweat.

In a past life, the space was an employee locker room that featured shower stalls and toilets on one side, and numerous lockers and benches on the other. Jeongin tried his best, but the plumbing was fucked beyond repair; all the utilities were scrapped. Whatever useful parts remained were repurposed elsewhere, while the broken bits wound up in that pile of assorted garbage on the roof.

Don’t.

Due to the size of the space, there’d been a multi-day debate on what to use it for. In the end, the decision was made to give it new life as a makeshift field hospital because Minho was right. The tile and drainage system is ideal for —

Stop it.

When you push through the swinging, double doors and stagger inside, you learn that you’re not today’s only patient. On one of the cots up ahead, Doc’s nimble fingers work to stitch Scraps’ left eyebrow back together, while Felix paces in the background with his hands in his hair.

“I’m so —”

“Felix!” 

Scraps slaps her hands down onto her thigh. The sound echoes off the tile walls like a thunderclap, but she doesn’t flinch at the contact. Doc does, however. She freezes solid, needle-holder in hand.

If Doc is frustrated, she doesn’t show it. That bedside manner of hers is unparalleled. Her gentle voice sounds suspiciously like Chan’s when she pleads, “No violence until I’m done holding a needle near your eye.”

Scraps nods in acknowledgment, which only contributes to the panicked look on Doc’s face. You bite your lips to hold your laughter in as you amble closer and dump yourself onto a nearby cot.

“Seriously — stop apologizing,” Scraps calls over her shoulder. 

If it wasn’t for Doc’s gentle hold on her chin, you suspect that she’d turn her head to look at Felix outright. 

“I told you to raise the stakes, and you did. So, I owe you a gold star for being a good listener, I guess.”

The way he looks at her when she can’t even see him kind of makes you want to sob. That ache only grows when he puts his hands on either side of her head, leans down, and plants a kiss on her hair.

Meanwhile, Doc is muttering, “Please stop moving, please stop moving, please stop moving,” like those are the only words she knows. You feel as guilty as you do grateful; her distress is a sufficient distraction from your own.

“Done!” She chirps moments later. Relief washes over her in a heartbeat, releasing tension from every single muscle cell she has — like she’s successfully disarmed a bomb, rather than sutured a minor injury.

And even though she’s too polite to say it, you swear you can hear her thinking it:

Please leave now.

And they do. They fall into lockstep, with Scraps tucked under Felix’s arm and hers wrapped around his waist.

And you’re still staring at the door once it swings shut again, so lost in all your conflicting thoughts that Doc has to call your name twice to get your attention.

“You’re not due back in for another month or so.” She frowns. “What’s on your mind?”

As usual, you don’t know where to start. You don’t know how to turn the faucet on without overflowing the bathtub, either, so you just let it all pour out.

“Everything was fine — perfect, probably. Or the closest it’s going to get, I guess. Then — I don’t even know what happened, but he won’t fucking look at me now. Won’t talk to me, walks out of a room when I walk in, like he can’t even stand to ignore me in my presence.”

You suck in a breath through your teeth to make up for all the ones you skipped out on while you rambled on. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean you stop rambling.

“And I think it might be breaking my heart. I don’t know. I don’t — I don’t know what to do now. It’s very distracting,” you mutter, frowning. 

A laugh slips out to signal how uncomfortable you are with the sudden intentional vulnerability. It sounds more like the sort of hiccup that precedes a sob. 

“Stupid thing to fixate on when the world’s on fire, isn’t it?”

To say that Doc is taken aback would be an understatement. Her eyes go wide; her lips purse. She pauses for a moment before she ultimately whispers, “I meant your leg.”

You’d go dig your own grave out back if you could walk that far.

“Oh.”

Doc does you the favor of averting her eyes. She focuses instead on her lap, eyes widening without blinking, as if she’ll be able to see her way out of the conversation more easily that way.

Self-conscious now to the point of nausea, you play with the frayed edge of denim that lays over the end of your residual limb. You can’t help but wonder how many right-side pant legs you’ve chopped off over the last twelve months, and what those bits of fabric ended up being used for.

Maybe they’re in that pile on the roof.

“Is mirror therapy helping at all?”

You glance up at Doc. “Not as much as it used to,” you sigh. “I think my brain figured out I was trying to bamboozle it and threw another wall up. Those are all it has at this point — walls and holes.”

It’s quiet for a few moments. Now, you wonder if you’ve taken Doc out of her depth. You were her first — and thankfully remain her only — amputation. If anyone’s gonna stump her, it’s you.

You snicker at your own unspoken joke.

Get it?

“How much do you remember?” She asks, catching you off-guard. It was the fact that she asked you anything that surprised you, not the question itself, but she assumes she’s offended you. Quickly, she apologizes. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to talk about it.”

The truth is, the before and during are both incredibly vague. You know that you went with a small group to Ilsan, planning to fuck up one of WraithCo.’s supply lines, and that their ghouls caught wind of your plans. 

Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess. The audio underscoring this montage in your mind is warped to all hell; the faces and voices are blurry, as if they’ve since been censored. Deleted, just like the lower two-thirds of your leg.

As for the after… All that comes to mind is pain, in one form or another.

Fighting off an infection, which left your waking hours in some fever-filled daze that only stopped when the various meds worked their magic and knocked you back unconscious.

Being bed-ridden for an eternity after that fever broke and the infection cleared, too exhausted and depressed to keep your eyes open. 

Aching all over as you forced your body to remember how to walk, too obsessed with your newfound crumb of independence to let anyone see you stumble.

Self-imposed isolation to hide the toll it’d all taken on you, and the frustration that came with knowing what you were doing but being unable to stop yourself.

“Nothing I wouldn’t mind forgetting,” you finally say.

Doc hums thoughtfully but offers nothing beyond a tiny frown. The part of you that wants to know why she’s asking is overrun by the part of you that fears what she’ll tell you; clearly, she’s similarly torn.

Add this to the list of things you’ll have to learn to live without.

Time continues to both slip and crawl by. Days are gone before you can blink; nights encase you in cement, trap you in place. You know it’s not a coincidence. You’re only alone after dark.

Still, it’s not all bad. You’ve certainly been more productive lately, whether or not you truly want to be. That’s not a coincidence, either. You’re capable of accomplishing quite a bit when the only person you truly want to talk to has no interest in listening.

If he did want to listen, you might tell Minho that he was right about the keys to the encryption being linked to dates. You could thank him, if he’d hear you out. Maybe you’d finally summon up the courage to ask where the idea came from.

What if…?

These little hypotheticals of yours only get more painful, the longer you steep in them, and you’re no good at reining your mind in when it starts wandering. It runs off in the same direction every time it goes — back to the night you finished peeling back all the layers.

You know there’s no point in imagining the ways Minho would’ve distracted you then because he didn’t. He was nowhere to be found; and you cried alone in your room, overwhelmed by both the relief of having answers and the all-consuming guilt of knowing what — and who — it cost to get them.

A familiar, prickling feeling at the corners of your eyes pulls you back to the present. You tilt your head back and blink rapidly to keep the dam from breaking. Part of you is proud. This might be the first time you’ve ever managed to keep your feelings to yourself.

“My halmoni always said that holding back your sneezes like that takes a year off your life.”

With a jolt, you snap to attention. Your neck does the same, head falling back down so quickly that your teeth click painfully against one another. The surprise — and the inadvertent scowl it prompts — melts away when you register Jeongin in the doorway.

You frown, although you laugh a little. “That’s horrifying, kid.”

If Jeongin sees you swipe the back of your thumb over your cheekbones, he doesn’t say so. He simply ambles into the Hub and finds his usual spot at the far side of the central table. 

“She said the same thing about being under streetlights when they burn out,” he tuts, taking a seat. He blinks through thoughtful silence for a moment before re-focusing newly-widened eyes on you. “Now that I think about it, she did die young...”

You would’ve loved to hear that theory play out, but the opportunity flies out the door as soon as Hyunjin walks through it. The comment you want to make about his surprising punctuality is swallowed down just as quickly as it bubbles up. His expression tells you that he’s not up for much of anything, let alone teasing. With a cursory nod, he acknowledges that he is, at the very least, capable of noticing his surroundings.

Unfortunately, you’re not capable of looking at him — seeing the state of him — without your bleeding heart cracking right in half.

Chan serves as a sufficient distraction, thankfully. He enters shortly after Hyunjin with both Seungmin and Doc in tow. He ignores the former’s nagging about who knows what and ushers the latter to the chair next to the head of the table. He doesn’t sit, though you wouldn’t have expected him to; he never does. Instead, he stands at the back of his chair with his eyes flicking expectantly over to the door.

In the time it takes you to cross from your workstation to your usual folding chair, the guest list doubles. Holding up the wall in the corner, Jihoon stands with his arms crossed loosely over his chest. To his right, Scraps sits on a rare patch of free space on Chan’s desk, legs swinging idly as they dangle; and to his left, you spy the cat-eyed girl whose name you still haven’t learned. All you know about her is that she works under Hyunjin, and they’re so in-sync that people have taken to calling them siblings.

You see no similarities between them now, however. She has light left in her eyes.

Several others filter in as the minutes pass, most of whom you haven’t yet crossed paths with. Well, you might have. Your days all run together; your short-term memory isn’t firing on all cylinders. You don’t take the opportunity to register their faces now, though. Your eyes only linger for the second it takes to confirm who they aren’t.

Chan turns his head to you, earning your attention. “Where’s —?”

Doc shoots him a look that interrupts his question before he can finish it. She knows what he doesn’t, after all: You’re currently the worst person to turn to for information on Minho’s whereabouts, even though you used to be the first.

Behind you, a heavily-accented voice chimes in, “He’s with little Yongbokie on an errand. They should be back soon.”

You don’t have to turn around to know who’s speaking. Sierra, as she’s known within the collective, has the sort of presence you can feel, even when she can’t be seen. It’s still unclear to you how she wound up a world away from the island she grew up on, but you’re glad that she did, and that she’s on your side. If she wasn’t —

Well…

Suffice it to say, there’s a reason why this foreign mercenary is called what she is — two reasons, actually, according to her native language — and neither bodes well for enemies. Specifically, there’s a mountain of bodies behind her, all of them hacked to bits by those blades she’s so fond of. 

Yeah, you think. Definitely better to keep her close.

“Just start without them,” she snaps at Chan, eye roll evident in her tone. 

Despite outranking her, Chan can’t hide the uneasiness that comes with being addressed by Sierra directly. You watch him swallow the lump in his throat before he clears it fully. “Everyone, listen up,” he says with the sort of gentle authority only he’s capable of. 

You can’t help the smile that tugs at the corner of your mouth. It’s such a stark contrast to the tone that goaded him to speak in the first place.

Still, a hush falls over the Hub immediately.

“I know some of you have heard whispers about this. I don’t necessarily trust that the rumors swirling are accurate —” 

Pointedly, Chan looks at Jeongin, who’s often the point in the relay where things go horribly wrong. The youngest never intends to pass on off-base gossip, but his attention span is about as poor as his audio processing. Jeongin ducks his head down; the tips of his ears go a dangerous shade of red.

“— so I’d like to make sure our record is straight.” Chan claps his hands, and as he rubs his palms together, he turns on his heel towards your side of the table. “Take it away, Spider,” he sings, beaming.

You turn your head quickly to the left and then to the right, searching for whoever the hell he’s truly cold-calling because it simply cannot be you. He knows better; he has to. For the decade you’ve worked together, you’ve hidden behind your screens because you don’t have the stomach for this leadership shit — especially not public speaking. It’s why you nominated him to run the show.

Eyebrows disappearing into your hairline, you stare incredulously back at him, silently begging him to pick the gauntlet back up.

Meanwhile, at least twenty pairs of eyes burn holes into you, like sun rays through a magnifying lens.

Fitting.

“Well,” you eventually manage to squeak out. “I — um… I spent the last month or so spelunking into confidential files relating to the — uhh — the Bliss Beta?”

It’s not a question. You don’t know why you made it sound like one.

Collapsing in on yourself, you knot your fingers on the table in front of you and stare down at your hands. “There’s a facility, it turns out, in — umm —”

“Is this going to take long? If it is, I can go and grab snacks.” Seungmin, from his spot across the table, smirks at you in such a way that you might — for the first time in your life — choose violence. 

That is, if his jokes at your expense didn’t have your nervous stomach churning even harder, sending bile up your throat.

That is, if a cold voice didn’t fly out of nowhere, primed to eviscerate Seungmin before you can even process your own reaction. 

“It’ll be a bit hard for you to chew after swallowing all your teeth, don’t you think?”

You hadn’t noticed Minho enter, but you find him easily now that he’s given himself away. He leans casually against the door frame with his hands in his pockets, leaving his tone as the only indication that he is, in fact, bothered. Everyone that had previously been standing near the door must’ve cleared a perimeter at some point — undoubtedly without being told to.

In response, Chan’s warning look is bifurcated, shot off to both men with equal, albeit subtle force. Seungmin’s face gives way to something apologetic. You can see it in his eyes that he thought he was being funny; that there’s no malice, only an inability to read a fucking room. To the contrary, Minho’s expression is pure venom, jaw set so tight that his teeth could crack.

He may have just interjected on your behalf, but he doesn’t look at you for more than a split second, as if he didn’t mean to concede even that much time.

And even though it feels illegal somehow, you keep your eyes fixed on him, as if you’ll catch another sliver of acknowledgement.

“In Cheongju,” you continue shakily. Your voice barely registers above a whisper, like you’re speaking to a single person, rather than a room full of them. “There’s a facility in Cheongju. All the servers currently associated with the Beta are operating out of there.”

Despite your anxiety, you manage to laugh. “They’re sitting ducks, really. Terrible planning from a security standpoint — either stupidity or arrogance.”

“Both,” Jihoon adds gruffly. If you’re not mistaken, he directs his next line at Seungmin. “Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”

You know it wasn’t his intention, but you crack a tiny smile, nonetheless. “Comorbidities, aren’t they?” 

As soon as you say it out loud, your cheeks set to burning. You send a panicked glance to Doc and duck your head, like your fear of looking stupid isn’t on full display. “Please tell me I used that term correctly,” you mutter, feeling instant relief when she nods and a profound sense of comfort when she pats your still-clenched hands.

“So, what are we going to do about it?” Sierra cuts to the chase, as she often does. “Arson?”

Her eyes sparkle at the suggestion. You find yourself surprised that she’s offered something so tame. Only a week ago, her response to seeing a cockroach in the canteen was to shoot at it.

Not for nothing, you’re also surprised by how endearing you still find that little anecdote — but maybe you shouldn’t be. It’s not the first time you’ve developed a soft spot for someone so sharp.

Reflexively, you look over at Minho. You see his eyes flicker, like he’d averted them just in time to miss yours. It’s the only reason you have to believe that he’d been watching you, save for the inexplicable warmth you’d felt crawling up your neck.

You don’t know what to do with any of that.

“Destroying the servers would only be a bandage,” you sigh. “I want to fully eradicate the program itself, which means those servers need to remain intact — for now.”

“So, we do it like Daegu, then?” Felix suggests. Judging by his sudden participation, he’s overjoyed to have something to contribute to a conversation he wouldn’t normally follow. “We broke in and set up that…. thing for you, in that room that was like an…. air-conditioned microwave?”

You bite down on your lips to keep from laughing. It’s a miracle that he remembers the Thanotech raid at all with the concussion he sustained in the process. It’s even more incredible that he remembers the non-technical explanation you gave for the server room within that data center.

Shaking your head, you frown. “I need to be on-site for this one.”

“Absolutely not. Fuck no.”

Across the room, Minho now stands fully upright. His hands are no longer in his pockets; they hang at his sides, clenched tightly.

You can’t help the incredulous scoff you let out. Bold of him, you think, to write you off completely and then attempt to dictate where and when you get to exist. That slap in the face still stings, but you keep your tone as light as possible. 

“If something goes wrong, or if things have changed from the schematics I was able to access, I won’t be able to handle it remotely. I need to be there to troubleshoot.” And even though it goes without saying, you remind him anyway: “We’re not getting a second crack at this.”

“I know you don’t remember Ilsan, but I do,” Minho glowers, tone as dark as his eyes. The rest of the room falls into a charged silence; everyone is too tense to breathe, let alone speak. “I remember carrying three-quarters of your body out of Ilsan and spending weeks at your bedside.”

Just like that, the air in your lungs turns to cement. 

How do you admit to not knowing he was even there? 

And what the hell are you supposed to do with this information now that it’s reaching you for the first time — a year after the fact — in front of an audience? 

You try to start somewhere. “Minho —”

“No. I won’t do that again.” His voice is sharp when it cuts you off, but there’s a crack in the blade, so microscopic that you wonder if you’re imagining things. He clears his throat to try and keep himself even. “You don’t get to make that call.”

Here comes that prickling feeling again, causing tears to spring up at the corners of your eyes. You clench your jaw and try to wish them away.

It’s Chan that speaks next. “You’re right. Spider doesn’t get to make that call,” he concedes. Then, his expression turns to stone. “I do. She said there’s no way around it, so she’s going —”

Minho seeks to interrupt, but Chan raises his hand and stops him in his tracks. You want to argue, too, because you’re right here and don’t need to be spoken about, as if you’re not in the room. The leader plows through, unaffected.

“— and because you know what the stakes are, your only job is to keep her safe.”

If the anguished look on Minho’s face says anything, it’s that he wants nothing to do with the burden of keeping you — what’s left of you, rather — in one piece. 

The briefing continues after his outburst, but Minho doesn’t hear a word of it. It all flows past him, waterlogged and warped, without sinking in. He finds it hard to give a shit about that fact, though. 

Clearly, his input doesn’t matter. Worse, the sole order that’s been made of him is fucking redundant. He can’t imagine that the rest of them would mean much, so what does it matter if he didn’t pay attention?

He’s halfway out the door by the time Chan wraps up. Dodging eye contact, Minho turns to leave outright, to disappear somewhere and lick his wounds. One last lash manages to hit him as he goes: 

When you cross the room, you’re not headed his way. No, your quick steps take you straight to Jihoon.

Minho knows that he has no right to feel this bitter. He should be grateful that his pushing you away is having the intended effect — that you might’ve found someone other than him to lean on — but the relief he’s been waiting to feel is nowhere to be found.

It never is.

The quick fixes he’s gotten of you in back rooms and shadows didn’t satiate him, either. Cutting you out completely has only proven to be more of the same ache.

Unwilling to watch the consequences of his own actions unfold, Minho turns sharply out of the doorway. Automatically, his feet carry him down the hall, up the stairs towards the roof. His brain might tell him otherwise if it wasn’t currently swimming, but his body acts on its own, seeking out the last place and time where he didn’t feel like this.

It’s a bad call, he realizes as he ascends.

He’ll never be able to recreate a scene with half the cast absent. The stage directions are fucked now. There’s no reason to take the steps one at a time now that he’s alone, but he still does. Without context, his motivations make no sense; and his hands don’t know what the hell to do without a belt loop hooked underneath one of his fingers. They twitch in the absence of denim. 

With every step, he repeats his only line:

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

And when he reaches that busted fucking door and kicks it with everything he has, no one looks at him with amused disapproval.

It’s all wrong.

Steel hits cement with a sickening clang that’s still ringing out as he stalks over to the ledge and drops himself down on a familiar, overturned bucket. Its counterpart sits unoccupied at his side. Minho can’t look at it, can’t get up to throw it off the fucking roof, can’t do anything except simmer in his rage because —

Your only job is to keep her safe.

He tilts his head back, closes his eyes, and shouts into the void above, “Fuck!”

As if he needs to be told. 

As if he hasn’t been trying to do exactly that for all the years he’s known you, driving nails further into his own goddam coffin with every second spent in your web.

Elbows come to rest on his knees. His face falls, too, until it drops into his palms. No matter how hard he tries to control his breathing, it comes out through gritted teeth, seething.

The fucking audacity.

Even if Minho hasn’t given you a reason to know better, Chan should. He’s seen better, firsthand.

Every time Chan stopped by the clinic to check in on you, he found Minho already sitting next to your glorified cot, watching your sleeping form like a hawk for any sign of distress. 

Chan didn’t need to ask how your hair ended up in poorly-executed braids because the unskilled hands that made them were wringing themselves at your side. He never needed to ask why, either. When you finally stopped thrashing through nightmares, you didn’t wake up to find yourself tangled in inescapable knots.

Keep her safe.

That’s the fucking problem, isn’t it? 

When his candle gets snuffed out — and he knows it will, can feel it in his bones that this is it — who’s going to keep you safe? 

Hyunjin doesn’t have the capacity — not anymore. Minho was there with you the night Hyunjin’s whole world exploded into pieces. You saw love, but Minho saw your future. He sees it every time he looks at Hyunjin, who’s still listless, still lingering on the periphery like a fucking ghost. Hyunjin will never be the same, and if Minho lets himself get any closer to you than he already has, you’ll wind up just as empty.

Then who?

Chan is too busy. Doc is just as preoccupied, and as kind as she is, she’s never understood you — not really. Felix and Scraps can barely manage themselves; you’ll fall through the cracks amidst their bullshit shenanigans. Neither Seungmin nor Jeongin can be trusted with anything —  or anyone — this important. They’re both fucking disasters in their own right, although Jeongin may eventually grow out of that. Changbin is too reclusive, and so is Jihoon; Jisung’s an anxious mess. Sierra is, at absolute minimum, insane.

And Minho may be the worst of them, but he tried his best for you. He’s still trying, even though that means keeping you as far away from him as possible.

“Fuck,” he repeats, albeit much less strongly.

That pathetic, choked-out word hits the air and dissipates quickly, leaving Minho alone in self-imposed exile. He stays there until sunrise, when the unoccupied bucket to his left becomes too visible to tolerate.

The next time Minho steps foot in the Hub, it’s much less crowded than the last. In fact, for what might be the first time ever, he’s beaten everyone else in. It’s no wonder; his stomach has been churning for hours now, and it was useless to keep laying in a bed he couldn’t sleep in.

Because life is far from fair, you’re the second to arrive. He doesn’t have to see you enter to know it; definitely doesn’t need to look up to confirm that it was your deliberate, slightly uneven footfalls he heard coming up the hall. It’s a reflex, though. His gaze lifts just in time to meet yours.

“Oh,” you peep, eyes bright despite the dark circles below them. “Hi.”

You seem startled to find Minho here ahead of you. Warranted, he thinks. The sunshine you cast on him isn’t, but you don’t try to withhold it — or maybe you can’t. As much as he loves that about you, it confuses the shit out of him and scares him just as badly. You either didn’t get the memo when you chose this life, or you don’t feel the crushing weight of it yet: 

Sparks like yours can’t last forever.

His voice sounds like gravel after last night’s anxious reflux, but he echoes you, nonetheless, “Hi.”

And then Chan walks in. He stops short when he sees the two of you, eyes flicking from your face to Minho’s with barely-hidden intrigue. Somehow, he misses the daggers Minho shoots at him with eyes alone.

“I re-routed everyone else to the vans and told them to load their shit. You ready?” Chan poses the question to both of you, but his focus is fixed solely on you. It lingers for a moment, settles in somewhere between the lines. 

Minho doesn't know what’s going on, but he does know that he hates whatever it is.

You nod. Whether that’s in response to what was asked or what wasn’t, he can’t say. Your mouth sits in a tight, straight line. That, Minho can easily translate to feigned confidence. You’re not ready; you’re not good at bluffing, either. 

He sees his window in that bit of doubt and tries to leap through it. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

It doesn’t sound as firm as he wants it to. If you listen closely — and you always do — it probably sounds like he’s pleading, which feels both alien and illegal to Minho. He clears his throat. “We can do this without you, Spider. I’m serious. Tell me how to get you set up for remote access, and I’ll —”

“I don’t know how many more times I have to say this for you to understand: You can’t do this without me. You need me.”

Despite what you say, there’s no heat in the way you say it. It sounds like you’re pleading, too — scratching at the door to be let in. He knows you well enough to catch the subtext; to know that you’re not just talking about the job. But Minho can’t make his mouth move. Likewise, he can’t turn away.

Stop looking at her like she’s your future.

Chan doesn’t have time for the thousands of things going unsaid, so he interjects with an exasperated grunt, “Vans.” He points to the clock before gesturing between you and Minho. “Ten minutes, or you’re both walking to Cheongju.”

Neither of you moves once he clears the threshold and disappears again. Say something, he tells himself. Say anything.

He doesn’t.

“You didn’t sleep last night,” you muse, eyes narrowing slightly with concern. It’s not a question. There’s no uncertainty in the way you look at him, although that’s nothing new. “I read somewhere that peppermint gum helps with reflux.” 

You shrug, like it’s simply a fact you’re sharing. It’s not. It’s the millionth way you’ve found to say “I love you” without using those words.

Minho slips off the empty workstation desk he’s been sitting on, dusts off the back of his jeans once he’s back at his full height. With a nod of his head, he gestures to your workstation. “Take what you need,” he advises quietly.

When he moves towards the door, you move forward into the room. Your paths cross in the middle, but Minho keeps his distance, too aware of that magnetism of yours to take any risks now. Upon reaching the door, he pauses and looks back over his shoulder to call out your name. As if you were anticipating it, you look up from the desk drawer you’re combing through.

He freezes for a moment, although he doesn’t mean to. You might be the only person capable of catching him off-guard. Once his brain stops lagging, he says only half of what he wants to: “Don’t forget your mask.

Hurriedly, like you really would’ve forgotten, you pull open a drawer and fish out a black gaiter, which you then tuck into the zippered pocket of your jacket. Instantly, Minho’s posture gets a little less rigid. Not for nothing, yours does, too.

“Thanks,” you sigh. The corners of your mouth raise slightly. From what he’s been hearing lately, this might be the closest you’ve been to smiling in weeks. Your reaction stops when you notice the way he’s halfway out of the room. “No need to wait on me. I’ll meet you in the loading dock in a minute.”

Minho stalls, feet unwilling to move, until you go back to gathering items. He nods once, as if you’ll even see his acknowledgment, then slips off into the hallway without you.

The loading dock he’s headed for is on the opposite side of the factory, but his anxiousness propels him there in half the usual time. His team is loitering around the two vans when he reaches them: one unmarked, one branded, both stolen.

Felix grins from the hood of the primary vehicle, where he sits cross-legged. He slaps his hands on the white metal below and proudly states, “I told you it would work.”

“Let me guess.” Minho looks over at Scraps. “You were the one who hot-wired them.”

She glances apologetically at Felix, then turns back to Minho with a shrug and a sheepish smile. “He tried his best,” she sighs. “If we had all day, he probably would’ve succeeded.”

At this, Felix’s grin droops into a cartoonish frown. “What do you mean probably?”

Minho rolls his eyes. “Enough — and go put a hat on, or you’re getting a full balaclava.” He points to the mess of blue hair spilling onto Felix’s shoulders. “If your fashion statement gets us pinged on a security camera, I’ll kill you myself —”

A laugh rings out behind him. He turns on his heel to find Sierra snickering at Felix’s reddening cheeks, both tattooed hands covering her mouth as she does.

“— and you know better,” Minho snarks, pointing straight at her. “Gloves. Now.”

Scraps’ eyes are as wide as the moon when Minho swivels back towards her. She doesn’t give him the opportunity to say it; she’s already shoving her decorated arms into the sleeves of a plain, black jacket and zipping it up as high as it’ll go. He hears relief leave her in a quiet sigh when his focus finds who he’s truly been looking for.

A few meters away, Jeongin is buried so far under the hood of the secondary van that his feet barely touch the ground. With his target now acquired, Minho crosses to the neighboring bay.

“Well?” He demands, “Did you find them?”

The younger one startles at the sudden questioning; there’s a dull thud when he smacks his head on the underside of the hood.

Jeongin groans, “Aigo,” and carefully ducks his head until it clears the obstacle above him. His cheeks are pink and smattered with both dirt and grease — and the mess only gets worse when he mindlessly wipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his semi-blackened hand. 

“Behind the radiator on this one.” Jeongin then thumbs over his shoulder to the van Felix sits on. “That one was attached to the undercarriage, near the fuel tank.”

With a grunt, Jeongin exhumes himself from the engine compartment and hops to his feet. It’s completely unnecessary, but he drops the tracker he just detached onto the concrete and smashes it under his steel-toed boot. 

“You won’t need the GPS blocker anymore, so make sure to turn it off,” he advises. And he clearly didn’t learn his lesson thirty seconds ago because he taps one of his temples, leaving a dirty fingerprint behind. “Otherwise, it’ll interfere with your comms.”

Jeongin then blinks up at Minho like he’s expecting a pat on the head. 

Over my dead body. 

Minho instead points at the shards of plastic littering the ground. Affect flat, he tells his junior to clean that shit up, which is the closest he will ever fucking get to you did good, kid. The second Minho steps away, Jeongin drops down to hurriedly scoop the broken bits into his palm.

While he waits on the rest of the group — namely you — to roll up, Minho busies himself with checking supplies. 

The unmarked van will carry the backup team to a rendezvous point half a kilometer away from the Ulsan facility, just in case. For this reason, it’ll also carry the big guns, which — like the vans themselves — were nicked from corpo rats. The seats inside were gutted immediately to clear out a cargo area. The trip sure as shit won’t be comfortable, but six people and a few ammo bags will fit inside without much issue. 

Most importantly, there’s enough room for Minho’s crown jewel: a goddamn, motherfucking anti-tank gun. He’s been dying to try it out since the WraithCo. raid that brought it into his possession, but he has a sinking feeling that he never will.

Moving on to the primary van, Minho notes the logo emblazoned on the side. This one was harder to steal than its counterpart, but you stressed the necessity, and he made it happen. Now, when the infiltration team drives up to the facility, it’ll be under the guise of the outsourced IT company that Ulsan uses for routine maintenance. 

According to the data you managed to reap, Ulsan’s made two glaring security errors, likely because they assume they’re infallible — not handling their own shit in-house, and scheduling their tech contractors to pop by on the same dates every month. Both details were barely footnoted in the reports; anyone but you wouldn’t have thought twice about them.

Something twinges in his chest when his thoughts start wandering in your direction, so Minho shakes his head to clear them. It doesn’t work. Instead, it seems to summon you. You step onto the loading dock a few seconds later.

You’ve changed since Minho left the Hub. The lapse in time makes sense now that his eyes sweep over your frame. The black jeans you’re wearing now aren’t chopped halfway up the right side. In order to conceal that highly recognizable part of you, you struggled through the significant extra time it takes to get your artificial foot through the openings — and he didn’t have to tell you to do any of this, unlike the rest of the team.

It’s been so long since you’ve been one of the boots of the ground that he underestimated you. Clearly, he shouldn’t have because you haven’t skipped a single detail. The treads of your boots have been filed down; but the platform sole remains intact, concealing the brand and size, as well as your true height. Specially-designed black gloves cover your hands, so you can utilize whatever touchscreens and keys you come across without leaving your trace behind. Likewise, the gaiter you grabbed at the last minute rests just below your chin, ready to cover your mouth and nose.

His breath catches in his throat when he sees the long-sleeved black top hanging loosely and hiding your figure. He wants to ask if you remember, but he doubts you do. You borrowed it from him so many years ago that it might as well be yours now.

To stop himself from staring, Minho starts to address the group. “Now that our guest of honor has shown up —”

“We still need Jihoon,” you interject with one finger raised, gently asking Minho to wait.

“What?” Minho can’t keep the confusion off his face, and he can’t wrap his head around this curveball you’ve thrown. Incredulously, he scoffs, “It’s a covert break-in.”

There isn’t a single reason he can think of to include the demolitions expert in something requiring finesse.

You don’t respond with words; your eyes flick to Chan, which is enough of a hint. The two of you are planning something — keeping him in the dark about something — but Minho can’t figure out what or why. The leader doesn’t provide much in the way of explanation. All he offers is, “We need a driver and an extra pair of eyes,” as if that’s the whole truth.

Whatever.

The second Jihoon finally walks through the door, Minho immediately starts his briefing.

The main team — including you, Chan, Felix, Sierra, Jihoon, and Minho himself — will head straight to the facility. The reinforcements — Scraps, Changbin, Eunjae, Sunwoo, Hongjoong, and some fucker from Texas known only as “Cowboy” — will wait just outside the property line with range weapons, ready to party with any gatecrashers.

On site, Felix and Sierra will take out security at the gate; only two men guard that post at any given time. Meanwhile, you’ll slip in and disable the remaining security measures: cameras, mainly, although the alarm system is your biggest priority. To get everyone inside, you’ve cloned the badge of a mid-level researcher who, like the Professor, has authorization beyond the front desk.

From there, the interior group will divide into watchdogs and infiltrators. Given the relatively small size of the building, it shouldn’t take long to get you to the control room, where you’ll take a crack at the main computer housing the Beta’s program. If everything goes as planned, you’ll be in and out within 30 minutes.

Nothing ever goes as planned, though. That Ilsan mission was simpler with significantly lower stakes, and it was a fucking nightmare. Minho can’t think about anything else when he crawls into the back of the van next to you.

For over two hours, Minho has been sitting cross-legged on the floor of this godforsaken van. His brain, unlike his body, is wholly fucking incapable of staying still. No matter how hard he tries to ground himself, he can’t shake the chill running down his spine or the voice in his head. It just keeps repeating the same thought, over and over: 

This van will be missing passengers on the drive back.

“It’s your turn, Minho.”

His head snaps up. Instead of Atropos and her scissors, it’s Felix staring back at him, smiling curiously. Warmly. Minho’s pulse should ease up at the realization, but it doesn’t.

He clears his throat, although his voice still comes out jagged. “My turn?”

“He’s asking everyone what they’re going to do with their lives when this is all over,” you explain. Minho turns his head to look at you. For once, he can’t decipher the look on your face. You laugh when you squeeze his bent knee gently, adding, “Don't worry. I didn’t have an answer, either.”

But it’s not an answer that he lacks, it’s time.

Don’t you know that I’m already dead?

The van slows considerably, shifting from paved roads to gravel. Then, it stops entirely. Jihoon turns in his seat and squints through the holed, metal divider between the cabin and the back of the van. 

“Spider?” He calls out over his shoulder, and it’s no wonder he struggles to identify you. Everyone sitting in this unlit area is cloaked in black from head to toe. 

To help him out, you raise your hand and wave. Even if the dark gloves you’re wearing aren’t visible, your smile is. Your voice is just as bright when you chirp, “Over here!”

Minho sees Jihoon smile for the first time in all the years he’s known him. If he was anyone else, that flicker at the corner of his mouth wouldn’t count for shit; but Minho’s no stranger to steel or your uncanny ability to bend it. He knows your impact when he sees it.

“End of the line,” Jihoon reports. “The next time I stop, you’ll need to sneak out the side. I can see a camera positioned directly above the security vestibule, pointing downward from the left. The van will create a blind spot if you stay low to the ground.”

Now, Jihoon’s involvement is starting to make sense. He’s one of only four people who joined the Black Screen within the last year — after the Ilsan disaster, which led to the incorporation of masks into all field ops. Out of the entire organization, his face is one of the only ones that won’t tip off the guards.

Until the next news cycle, Minho thinks ruefully.

Once the driver is satisfied that the passengers are on the same page, he turns around and sets the van back into motion. Every dip in the uneven road below throws your shoulder against Minho’s; and every time you collide, he wants to wrap his arm around you to keep it from happening again. He doesn’t. Eventually, the opportunity disappears along with the faint crunch of gravel beneath the tires.

The brakes squeak slightly when the van stops a second time. Minho can’t hear the conversation Jihoon is making with the security staff from where he sits, just the slow-motion movements of you, Felix, and Sierra as the three of you inch the side door open and spill onto the driveway like molasses.

All Minho has left to do is wait — for you to come back or for shots to be fired. His pulse picks up when seconds slip by without either of those options playing out. 

It’s funny, he thinks as he pulls his rifle into his lap, that the thing bringing him comfort now is designed to take it away. His thumb hovers over the selective fire switch, flexing in anticipation. Any second now, all his best laid plans will explode. 

It’s only a matter of time until —

“All clear,” comes your voice through static.

Minho flinches. In all the tense silence, he’d completely forgotten about the earpiece he’s wearing. The breath he’d unknowingly been holding leaves him in a hurry, taking the tension in his shoulders with it as he deflates.

“Meet us at the fire exit on the northeast side. I shut off the emergency alert system, too, so we shouldn’t have any issues getting into that stairwell.”

Jihoon is already pulling the van around by the time you finish speaking. In a matter of seconds, he pulls up to the door in question and shifts gears to park. 

You’re standing in the doorway when Minho’s feet hit the ground, eyes crinkling when you see him with a smile he can’t otherwise see. He doesn’t know what to do with that, so he addresses Sierra first. She’s got blood on her temple, and Minho can’t tell whose it is. 

“You didn’t make a mess, did you?” He asks, frowning slightly.

“This is business, not pleasure, so no.” She rolls her eyes. The sigh she lets out reeks of disappointment. “Wrung out their necks like chickens and shoved their bodies into cabinets.”

Glancing quickly at Minho, Felix figures out where his leader’s eyes are focused. “Not hers,” he clarifies, nodding to Sierra. With the back of his sleeve, he reaches over and gently wipes the blood from her face, like he’s cleaning gochujang off a child. “Didn’t leave a trace, though.”

That’s all Minho cares about, so he asks no further questions. Instead, he checks his watch before looking up to check on you. He doesn’t pose the question, but you answer him, regardless; and when you do, you accompany it with your thumb raised.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“All good!”

You then gesture with that thumb to the stairwell over your shoulder and ask, “Shall we?”, as if you’re inviting him to dance.

“You two —” Minho points to Felix and Sierra respectively, drawing their attention. “Station yourselves along the main hallway. If anyone so much as pokes their head out of a doorway, blow it the fuck off. No witnesses.”

Both nod in acknowledgment, but it’s not enough, not when your life is in his hands. He glares expectantly at them, waits in silence until they get the hint.

In tandem, they repeat, “No witnesses.”

Good enough.

Wordlessly, Minho waves his hand and sends them on their way to the second floor. He doesn’t budge until he sees the tops of their heads through the window, disappearing past the landing. Seconds later, Felix’s voice sounds off in Minho’s ear to advise him that the area is clear.

He turns back to the three people standing behind him to ensure they’re ready to move in. The second he sees the pistol in your grip, his stomach lurches so violently that he really might vomit on his boots. 

It’s categorically fucked — so fundamentally, intrinsically wrong — that you’re standing here now with lethal force in your hands. Over ten long years, you’ve never fired a single shot in combat; never stolen the light from someone’s eyes while you’re staring into them. Still, no matter how nauseous the image makes him, the irony of it all can’t be ignored. 

You only know how to shoot because he taught you.

“Let’s move out,” Chan says when Minho doesn’t.

Minho takes point with you close behind him. Behind you, Jihoon follows with an inexplicable duffle bag strapped to his shoulder. By now, Minho knows better than to question what’s going on here. He wouldn’t get an honest answer if he did; and Chan makes no excuses for it as he trails after Jihoon up the stairs.

At the top of the landing, you tap Minho’s shoulder, prompting him to stop. When you gesture up ahead, his eyes follow, gaze sweeping down the long corridor towards the southwest side of the building. Near the end of the hall, a pair of glass doors interrupts the path to the server room, which sits further down on an intersecting corridor. Somewhere between that server room and the bulletproof barrier in front of you is your target: the main computer running the show.

All the signage he can spot declares the area secure and for authorized personnel only. You’re neither safe nor sanctioned, but the badge you pull from inside the neck of your — his — shirt will let you pretend to be. 

Lim Namseok, it reads.

That poor bastard will probably be dead before sunrise for the things you’re about to do. Minho doesn’t have any higher hopes for himself, but he wonders whether or not you’ll be able to sleep when this is over.

No, he ultimately decides. You won’t.

You keep glancing down at that man’s photograph, swallowing hard like you’re choking down an apology. Committing those features to memory, as if you’re obligated to remember each one of the creases in his forehead.

It’s not a question of if that face will pop up in your nightmares but when.

Minho’s both unwilling and unable to let you keep torturing yourself, so he shifts his assault rifle to his non-dominant hand and reaches out to you. Neither of you says a word as he gently removes the badge from between your fingers and lets the lanyard unfurl. You watch the ID flutter downwards until it rests against your chest; his eyes don’t leave your face.

“Come on,” he says softly. “There are fifty-one-million Namseoks out there that still need their asses saved.”

You don’t want to laugh. Your furrowed eyebrows inform him that you’re trying very hard not to, like your half-hearted glare will override the muted chuckle that slips through your mask. His attempt at levity worked, though. You start moving again when he does.

On the way to the first set of security doors, the four of you pass both of your lookouts, who’ve taken up posts half and three-quarters’ way up the corridor, respectively. Not for nothing, both look bored by the lack of action.

When Felix sees Minho, he complains, “Why is it always unpaid fucks like us who have to work on weekends? Shouldn’t these goons be here to justify their salaries?”

He’s not wrong. This place is a fucking ghost town, and although the datashard you combed through said this would be the case, the emptiness still makes the hairs on the back of Minho’s neck stand up. Whether or not he can put his finger on it, something feels off.

“Wouldn’t mind a desk job,” Chan muses, more to himself than to the rest of the group.

Minho leans into the assumption that he wasn’t meant to hear it. If he was, he’d have no choice but to point out that Chan hardly leaves his fucking desk as it is. So, to keep the peace, he keeps his smart mouth shut.

When several more meters come and go, the four of you reach the security checkpoint. With the badge back in hand and nerves evident in your tone, you hold it to the scanner and mutter, “Here goes nothing.”

Nothing is precisely what you get. No sirens wail, no trap doors give way to swallow you all down. The glass panels simply part with a click before sliding outwards along their respective tracks. Your shoulders sag with relief, unlike Minho’s. He carries tension in every single one of his muscle cells; and he only grows more rigid with each passing second.

To keep his pulse down, Minho counts each step he takes towards the control room. It’s an exercise in futility, of course. He’s a goddamn mess, no matter how hard he tries to hide it.

16…17…18…

Present moment excluded, he can only think of one other in which he’s ever experienced fear. Real fear, that is; the kind that begs his limbs to lock. It’s no coincidence that he can barely function now. How could he, with the common denominator trailing behind him like a shadow?

19….20…21 —

Suddenly, you hiss, “Shit!”

By the time he wheels himself around, you’re frozen in place with your pistol aimed through a doorway that wasn’t open when he passed it. A woman in a lab coat stands there with her hand still on the handle, eyes doubling in size when they land on you. Immediately, the coffee mug in her hand drops, sending both liquid and shards of ceramic flying. Both of her hands are in the air before the pieces can settle at her feet.

You fire once, panicked, and strike her in the upper arm. It’s a shit job, one that’ll give her time to call for help before she bleeds out on the floor, so Minho’s instinct takes over.

“Turn around,” he tells you. 

You do. 

From her knees, the woman clutches her bicep and begs Minho to lower his weapon. She still wants to have kids someday, she tells him, sobbing. She’s too young to die.

Unaffected, Minho aims at the space between her brows. “Aren’t we all?”

Bang!

Her body drops to the floor like a bag of cement, lifeless. Although the shot still echoes, it’s otherwise dead silent until you whisper, “I’m sorry.”

Stepping to the side to look at you, Minho furrows his brows. “Don’t be. We can’t leave witnesses.”

“I’m sorry that I didn’t do it right,” you clarify, voice wavering but louder than before. “You taught me better than that.”

For a minute, he forgets where he is; loses track of the two people standing on eggshells behind you both. There’s definitely still a corpse lying two meters away, but all he sees in his peripheral vision is proof: You may have chosen this life, but this life hasn’t chosen you.

Despite the bullets and the viscera making a mess of the tile nearby, you’re still the person he met a decade ago — someone with the instincts to do what’s needed but too much heart to be swallowed by them.

He hopes you never change.

“There may be more people that we haven’t accounted for.” Chan’s reminder forces three pairs of eyes to focus on him. He urges, “We need to get this done. Spider, where’s the control room?”

With his gun and without a word, Minho gestures to an office several doors down from where the group currently stands. In giant, black letters, it states, “CONTROL ROOM”. Your answer would be redundant at this point, so you don’t bother giving it. Moreover, Chan can fucking read.

“Oh,” is all the leader says before the group presses onward.

You swipe the badge again when you reach the control room. As was the case with the previous door, this one opens without any theatrics. All four of you slip inside before they close on their own, several moments later.

As soon as he steps foot inside, Jihoon whistles. “Damn.”

Damn is right.

The room feels even larger than the dimensions he saw on the blueprints; and with the forced air flowing from the overhead vent, it’s far less welcoming than Minho expected. Halfway between an operating theater and an airplane, the crisp whiteness of his surroundings seem both sterile and stale. He’d wash the feeling off himself if he could, but he can’t, so his skin continues to crawl.

Consuming the back half of the room, a U-shaped desk boasts multiple monitors, keyboards, and switches. Minho has no fucking clue what any of this equipment is supposed to do — he doesn’t give a shit, either — but he sees your eyes go wide with that childlike wonder he’s always been stupefied by.

Your hands twitch, likely from a desire to touch every surface they can find, so you hold them close to your chest while you look around. After studying all the options at your disposal, you take a seat behind the monitor at the left end of the desk.

Jihoon asks what everyone else is wondering: “Is the main computer not the one in the middle?”

Normally, this is the sort of thing you'd laugh at. You don’t, though; you barely seem to have heard it. Transfixed, you simply mumble something about that computer being hardwired to the server room. Minho doesn’t catch the rest of your explanation, but he hears the words “temperature control” and “ventilation” before concentration makes your voice peter out mid-sentence.

The next few minutes pass by without you noticing. Nobody speaks, nobody breathes too loudly for fear of interrupting your train of thought. That’s not to say it’s silent; far from it. Your rhythmic typing takes over the room, and the effect it has on Minho is borderline hypnotic.

A siren song, sort of.

In response to its call, Minho’s mind picks up and races from the room you’re in — back to the Hub, where this all started; to the countless hours he’s spent just like this, watching you work. As mundane as those moments might be in the grand scheme of things, they’re still his happiest.

Maybe he’d count this moment among them if the Sword of Damocles wasn’t swinging so blatantly overhead.

Out of nowhere, you slam your fist down on the desk, startling everyone else enough to flinch. It’s not just the noise that has Minho, Chan, and Jihoon on high alert; it’s the fact that none of them have ever seen you explode like this.

“Goddamn it!”

Immediately, Minho rushes over to where you’re sitting. His eyes dart from your face to the screen, then back again, finding no obvious answers for your distress. 

“What?” He demands, “What’s wrong?”

Eyes glued to the monitor, you continue to mutter, “No, no, no —“

“Spider, talk to me. Tell me what’s going on, so we can fix it.”

“They fucking —” You smack the desk again, like hitting something will knock your thoughts loose. “Fuck!”

For a second, you let the rage simmer. Then, the defeat you still haven’t articulated settles in. You slump down in your chair with your face in your hands, forcing your breathing to slow. 

“They must’ve added it after the Professor defected. I can’t — It wasn’t referenced anywhere on that datashard, Minho. There was nothing.” 

All your panic is funneled directly into the palms of your gloves, making it difficult to decipher what you’re saying. Minho leans closer just in time to hear you cry, “They built a failsafe.”

Minho is out of his fucking depth. In fact, he’s drowning. 

“A failsafe?” He asks, “What, like a back-up program?”

“No, as in, any attempts to delete or alter the program data will invalidate the study.” 

Based on your phrasing, Minho assumes you’re quoting something directly. Swallowing back the acid rising in his throat, he opens his mouth to ask you what the fuck that means. Before he can hurl his question out, you look up at him with abject hopelessness in your eyes; and suddenly, he can’t speak.

“All of their research subjects will be purged,” you spit.

On the other side of the desk, Chan and Jihoon exchange a look — a grim one, but not one of surprise. They’ve arrived at the conclusion before Minho can leap to it, and they’re still talking without saying a single goddamn thing out loud. 

Minho can’t take it anymore. He shouts, “What the fuck does that mean?”

“If Spider wipes the beta, everyone with that chip goes with it,” Chan sighs. He scrubs his hands over his face until it’s red. “If they don’t drop dead immediately, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that their brains will be permanently and irreparably fucked as a result.”

Now what?

Now what?

Minho’s legs grow less steady by the second. He presses his palm flush against the desktop to keep his knees from buckling. He knows damn well it won’t make a difference; his spinning head will bring him down if his body doesn’t. Everything — including the pulse hammering in his ears — is simultaneously too quiet and too loud.

What the fuck was this all for? The time, the energy, the lives everyone keeps sacrificing to this fucking cause — any of it. 

All of it. 

What’s the point of fighting this hard if Ulsan will always be ten steps ahead?

“Minho!”

His head snaps in your direction only to see that you weren’t the one calling his name. He blinks, confused. Who —?

“Minho, they’re coming! Lim Namseok — terminated yesterday. His badge — it flagged —” 

Scraps’ voice comes shrouded in gunfire. The weak connection makes it even harder to hear her; whatever isn’t exploding is crackling due to the distance. Each word fizzles at the end, as if lit by a fuse.

“— to get out —”

Hand flying to his left ear, Minho presses down the button at the center of his ear piece. “Who’s coming?” He barks, “Scraps, what the fuck is going on?”

When she doesn’t respond, someone else takes over.

“It’s the fucking retention team. A sniper took Eunjae out before any of us even saw them coming,” Hongjoong yells. “They’ve got a unit on the ground and one in the air. I’ll try to shoot the chopper down, but you need to get out of there now.”

“Hongjoong, do as much as you can to tear them up, but don’t push your luck. If you’re outnumbered, fall back before we lose anybody else. Do you copy?”

He doesn’t get a response.

Jihoon moves closer to the door to listen for any incoming footsteps. Hearing none, he growls, “Who the fuck called the boogeymen? Don’t they only deal with defectors?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Chan waves him off, “They’re here, and we need to be anywhere else.”

Despite what he just said, the leader doesn’t move; doesn’t budge a centimeter in any direction. Chan simply glances across the room at you, and when you stare back at him, it’s with the same, eerie calmness. Some quiet resignation that makes no fucking sense under the circumstances.

“If I can’t kill the program entirely, I can make it inoperable long enough for the existing chips to be removed,” you say, like you’ve already had this idea in your pocket. “Force quit, so to speak.”

You don’t elaborate, leaving Minho’s frustration to drive him halfway out of his goddamn mind. Worse, you ignore the way he’s staring so fucking desperately at you and address the person standing several meters behind him. 

“Jihoon, did you bring the party favors?”

In response, Jihoon slips the duffel bag off his shoulder and holds it out to you. Only then do you move. Chan follows behind as you cross towards the door; neither one of you says a thing when you pass Minho, who’s still cemented in place.

“What the fuck are you planning?” He demands, although his voice shakes. “What fucking secrets have you been keeping, and why?” 

Once you secure the duffle bag on your own shoulder, you finally bring yourself to look at him. Above your mask, your eyes soften. They crinkle at the corners, as if you’re smiling, but there are tears brimming at your lash line, threatening to fall.

Please don’t look at me like you don’t have a future.

“For what it’s worth,” you start. Then, you sniffle, breath hitching as you try to get the rest out. “You’ve always had my heart. All of it — every stupid piece.”

And with nothing more than a nod to Jihoon, you’re gone, running out the door with Chan towards the server room before Minho can say a single word to you; before he can even think of chasing after you. 

In the blink of an eye, biceps wrap around him like a vice, pinning his arms behind his back and gripping tighter with every kick he tries to use for leverage.

“Spider!” Minho yells.

He fights with all he has to break free of Jihoon’s hold, to throw one or both of them to the ground, to get to you, but the older man doesn’t bat an eye. As if Minho weighs nothing at all, Jihoon begins hauling him back down the hallway towards the fire exit.

“You’re going the wrong way,” he grunts as he thrashes. “Let me — go —” 

Jihoon doesn’t say a word, doesn’t waste a breath, doesn’t stop pulling. Whatever strength he has left in the reserves, it’s wielded against Minho, not on making apologies. 

Minho bucks again, throwing all the weight from his legs to his back. It does nothing apart from exhaust him, but he can’t stop. He’ll never stop. 

“Spider!”

Close to feral, his anguished shouts devolve to desperate, growling noises. “I swear to god, I’ll bury you for this, Lee —”

He digs his heels into the ground to slow the older man’s momentum. His knees could snap at the force with which he’s resisting. He doesn’t give a shit if they do; he’ll crawl to you if he has to.

“I’ll splatter your brains against the fucking wall when I get my hands on you,” Minho spits. “I’m your commanding fucking officer!”

The next time he kicks, someone grabs him by the ankles to help carry his restless body down the stairs. Felix, judging by that pathetic, apologetic look in his eyes. Minho resolves to kill him, too, when he gets his limbs back. He’ll burn the whole goddamn compound to the ground for standing in his way; for letting you do this.

It should be me.

You’re the best of them, and they’re letting you die. 

It should be me.

They’re going to stand here, watching while you —

A sob he wasn’t prepared for bursts out of his chest in the form of your real name. With it, his threats dissolve into pleas, so goddamn pitiful in comparison to the violent way he still flails.

“Please!” He cries, voice raw. Making himself louder doesn’t make him heard. Incapable of doing anything else, he begs, “Please don’t let her do this. She’s all I have — All I want — Goddamnit, please! I need to get her out of there —”

So useless.

“I have to get her out,” he sobs with one final burst of energy rattling through otherwise spent limbs. 

The arms and hands around him still don’t relent. Over and over, he repeats his only thought in rapid succession until his voice gives out: 

“I have to get her out.”

Two seconds before they drag his body over the threshold, the whole facility shakes, like the earth below has opened up to swallow it down. Even from the opposite side of the building, Minho can hear shattered glass hitting the ground like sheets of rain. With the heavy, black cloud swirling over the southwest section of roof, he might’ve believed in some storm.

He might have.

But now, Minho sees the flames licking at the sky above, and he no longer believes in anything.

There are 244 kilometers between Cheongju and Changwon. By car, the distance flies by in fewer than three hours, assuming the expressways aren’t clogged with corporate commuters. All things considered, it’s not a trip that disrupts a person’s day. It’s straightforward, and above all, it’s easy.

What isn’t easy is crawling on your stomach underneath a blanket of smoke, only to drag half of someone else’s body weight with you down a flight of stairs.

There’s nothing straightforward about slipping through alleyways and ditches, trying to avoid nearby police blockades as they pop up; or attempting to conceal clothes that are singed in some places and actively smoking in others.

That distance does not fly by in three hours, even though the expressways aren’t clogged, because there’s disruption after disruption: 

Starting on foot, only to steal — and later dump — a car when the walk becomes unbearable. 

Wandering blindly without a working mobile, unable to access assistance or a map, and learning that your best guesses are wrong turns more often than not.

Avoiding phones in general due to the localized surge in cell surveillance, knowing even a coded message could wind up with you and any recipients dead.

Stopping repeatedly with burning lungs to check on someone in far worse shape than you, pretending not to hurt for their sake.

No, the estimates are all fucked. 

It takes twenty-one hours to travel the 244 kilometers between Cheongju and Changwon; and you feel the weight of every single one of them when you hobble through the front doors of the factory just to drop, exhausted, onto the floor.

News of your survival spreads like dandelion seeds throughout the compound. Within minutes, it seems, everyone you’ve ever made eye-contact with swings by the clinic to pat you on the back. 

One of them — Sierra, of all people — does you the greatest kindness of all: bringing you a change of clothes and then refusing to stick around for a chat. 

Half of them have never spoken to you before now, though you try not to hold that fact against them. 

Almost all of them throw the word “brave” around like it’s weightless. 

You know better.

What you did was useless in the grand scheme of things, and knowing that is heavy. Crushing, even, so much so that you find it hard to catch your breath. No, you’re sure, what you did was peak cowardice.

You need to get out of this clinic. You need all of these well-wishers to stop looking at you like some tragic hero. You need —

You push off the cot you’re occupying without giving it a second thought. The lightheadedness threatens to take you right back down again, but the feeling passes as quickly as it comes. You stay on your feet, even though you sway, by sheer force of will.

That’s it. There you go.

Doc gave you a once-over when you were first hauled in. Neither one of you truly felt like you were a priority. She may have been justifiably distracted, but in forming her expert opinion, she saw your bruised — not broken — body and declared you “good enough”. You take that glowing assessment at face value now and promptly discard the bit about “needing to stay for observation”.

Her primary concern is that you shouldn’t sleep with your concussion. Baseless, you think ruefully. You’ve been awake for two days and don’t see that changing any time soon.

Before you attempt to make a break for it, you glance at the far end of the clinic. There, a white screen stretches longways across most of the area for privacy, leaving two exits on either side. You don’t see the point of it; it doesn’t hide a thing. Two work lights shine so brightly from their spots by the wall that every movement in front of them is broadcasted on the thin, nylon divider.

As expected, the shadow puppet you’re looking for is still hovering around an unmoving mass in the center of the screen.

Chan.

He’s alive, even though he doesn’t look it. He’s talking, too, which is a marked improvement from the state he was in just a few hours ago. The morphine drip must be helping, you figure. Until now, he had a belt between his teeth to quell the pain, which would’ve kept him quiet.

Otherwise, there’s only one explanation for the corner he’s turned over the past few hours: The love of his life hasn’t left his side since he was carried into the clinic; and he knows she’s there. 

You’ve learned the hard way that both of those conditions must be met to make a difference. 

One without the other isn’t enough.

You can’t hear what they’re murmuring to each other, and you don’t want to. It’s theirs. Thankfully, their hushed tones give you the only confirmation you need: neither of your pseudo-parents will catch and scold you for leaving against medical advice. They’re oblivious; they’re fine; they have each other. You have —

Do you, though?

The person you want to see is coincidentally the only one in the entire compound that hasn’t come by seeking proof of life.

At first, you feared the worst; ripped your cuticles to shreds when the faces passing by weren’t his. No one mentioned his name or asked you if you’d seen him, as if there was no him left to see.

Then, you saw Jihoon walking around with his cheekbone stitched together. There’s some sick comfort in knowing that Minho at least lived long enough to beat his knuckles bloody. You’ve apologized to Jihoon three times now for the effect you caused, but he’s shrugged off every single one of them, like yesterday was just another day at the office.

Wasn’t it?

You creep out the door undetected and make your way to the nearest stairwell. The quiet throughout the halls in the factory isn’t comforting in the way it used to be. No part of the deeply familiar landscape is. 

It should be.

It’s the only real home you’ve ever known — one you thought for sure you’d never see again.

But every empty doorway you pass may as well have a body in it. You still see that woman and her unspent aspirations everywhere you look. You still hear the way she begged for her life before she lost it.

And when the stairs ahead finally come into view — ones you’ve taken a million times — they’re insurmountable. Your body aches automatically, like you’re still pulling Chan’s phantom weight out of the fire. That memory is muscle-deep now, you fear. There’s no getting rid of it.

At the landing, you force yourself forward. The siren song only you can hear is far stronger than the call of your own bed. It lures you around the corner whether or not you’re ready to follow it.

You aren’t, you realize as your steps continue automatically. The guilt threatens to eat you alive, and frankly, you’re prepared to let it. You deserve it. 

Somehow, despite your bullshit insanity and your numerous violations of trust, you still managed to skate through with a life left to live. Considering what you did, you figure it’s only fair that you pay this price — feel this fucking awful — for the rest of your unearned years.

Maybe. 

You don’t know. 

You’re in uncharted territory now because your plan didn’t include an after. 

As your footsteps draw closer to Minho’s room, it dawns on you that you don’t have a plan at all now. You don’t know what the fuck to say to him, let alone where to start. You wonder whether or not you should bother at all. 

If Minho knows you’re back at the compound, that means he made a choice not to find you. You have no right — none whatsoever — to take away his options a second time.

He’ll never forgive you, you tell yourself. If the roles were reversed, you’d do the same.

Maybe.

You don’t know.

You can’t take those hypotheticals and draw conclusions because Minho has never — would never — put you in the position you stranded him in. He wouldn’t hijack a mission you created or exclude you from a half-baked, shittily-executed contingency plan. He’d never force a friend to make some destructive, deathbed promise; wouldn’t have you dragged out of blast radius, kicking and screaming and fighting and spitting, just to drop you in a front-row seat.

He’s the best of all of you, and you did your absolute worst to him.

It’s selfish, walking up to his door now. You know it is. Despite that, you can’t make your body stop moving now that it’s started; can’t keep that boulder from rolling down hill. One last look, you tell yourself. That’s all you need. 

Even if he never looks you in the eyes again, this can be enough.

You raise your hand and reach out to the scraped-up wood with your knuckles leading the way. They’re dirty, you note, caked with soot in every crease. They shouldn’t be. You scrubbed them raw to get the blood and plasma off your skin. It’s possible — likely, even — that your brain is fried beyond fixing, and that you’re imagining things.

Maybe.

You don’t know.

You don’t hear an answer when you finally bring yourself to knock. No, you correct yourself, that’s an answer in and of itself. Acting selfishly once again, you don’t heed that silent reply. You don’t knock again, either. Heart hammering against your ribs, you wrap your hand around the knob and twist.

Part of you wants to laugh. Of course, his is the only door in the whole fucking factory that doesn’t squeak horrifically on its hinges. His tolerance level for annoyance has always been low.

Inching your way over the threshold, you call out, “Minho?” 

And once again, you don’t hear a response.

Standing now inside his room, you don’t see him — not at first. He certainly doesn’t see you. His back leans against the window frame while he slumps on the ledge, presumably staring off in the opposite direction through the glass. His defeated posture is as telling as the position he’s in. 

The Minho you know never sits with his back to a door. It’s too big a risk and too broad a target; an invitation for a nasty surprise. He’s said it a thousand times: whoever kills him needs to look him in the eyes.

This is what it looks like when a person’s given up, you think. 

This is what you did.

Throat thick, you call his name again. This time around, it barely qualifies as a whisper; all your breath is caught up in that tangle in your chest. There’s no way he heard it because you barely did. Really, you should —

“Fuck off,” Minho growls without turning around. “I won’t tell you a third time.”

His words don’t carry the same venom they usually do in circumstances like this. He just sounds hollow, and it devastates you so completely to hear the emptiness that tears start falling without your permission. You don’t move from where you stand, too overwhelmed to process both ambulation and falling apart at the seams.

The lack of footsteps tips him off to your ongoing, unwanted presence.

“When will you people give up? ” After slamming his left fist against the window frame, he pushes himself abruptly off the ledge to his feet. “I don’t want your goddamn sympathy. All I’ve ever fucking wanted is —” 

He wheels around then, fists clenched and ready to swing. All the air in his lungs leaves him when he sees you standing there. The rest of that thought is strangled, and it drops lifeless on the floor.

“You.”

You can’t guess what comes next: screaming, blame, silence, violence. You don’t even know which of those things would be worst — just that he’s entitled to all of the above, and you’ve earned the lot.

What you end up with isn’t an outcome you ever would’ve anticipated. It’s him, his quivering mouth, and his exhausted, red-rimmed eyes taking several steps forward on shaky legs. It’s a desperate bid to close the distance, and a look built on so many conflicting emotions that you can’t even begin to take inventory.

At first, your hammering heart tells you to back away; that he may hate you enough to hurt you. 

But he doesn’t.

He falls to his knees in front of you when his legs ultimately give out. Boneless, he crumples forward onto his palms until his head hangs low between his arms. From where you’re standing, it almost looks like he’s praying. That is, until you notice the way his shoulders shake.

Of all the people you’ve met in your life, Minho is the only one who seemed to be incapable of crying. Nausea swells now that he proves you wrong. It feels like a violation to see him this way, especially knowing that you’re the reason for the state he’s in.

Through a clenched jaw, he begs for answers you didn’t anticipate needing to give: 

“I’m hallucinating, aren’t I? I’ve finally lost my fucking mind?”

Oh.

Without a second thought, you fall to your knees, too. Chrome and carbon fiber scrape against concrete as you scoot yourself closer, and you pray that your proximity will be proof enough that you’re here.

It’s not.

“I left you for dead, and now I’m seeing ghosts. Is that it?”

Heartbroken, you try your best to get through, “Minho, no.”

Tentatively, you reach out to touch his shoulder, thinking that you might be able to ground him, even if you can’t comfort him. Before your fingertips find him, he senses your movement and lifts his head. Your hands automatically reroute to claim either side of his face, fingers sliding into unkempt hair. To your surprise, he doesn’t pull away. Instead, Minho studies your features intently, like he’s ruling out translucence; like his sanity is on the line.

Maybe it is.

More desperately than you ever have before, you drink down the sight of him. Beautiful, you think, even like this. 

Now that you’re able to see his face in full, you find it tear-streaked. Somehow less alarmingly, his right temple is scraped to hell and back, while his left is black-and-blue. It’s a perfect portrait of the fist that struck him. The darkest shades of indigo demarcate where the knuckles dug in deepest; and the scabbed, scarlet lines on his other side illustrate the state of the ground he fell to.

Gravel.

You have to stop yourself from asking who hurt him. After all, it doesn’t fucking matter whose name he’d drop. You already know who’s to blame. 

Nevertheless, Minho sees the question in your eyes, and he tells you, “I tried to run in after you once the bomb went off. After the fire started.”

Of course he did. What did you expect?

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, as if that’ll ever be enough. It doesn’t and won’t erase what you did, yet you repeat it anyway, “I’m so sorry.”

Opening your mouth was a mistake, you quickly realize. The dam breaks, and you can’t keep the words from spilling out. They all pile up, overlapping in time and urgency. 

Every word you say comes out in one breath; sputtered, as if your head has finally broken through the surface of rushing water. “I should’ve told you about the contingency plan, but I knew you’d try to take my place, and I couldn’t —”

“I couldn’t leave you there,” he swears, as if you left him with any other choice. “Even if I was too late to save you, I needed to bring you home.” 

Minho suddenly shifts, prompting your hands to fall from his face. To erase the distance he’s created, he sits back on his knees and pulls you into the space between them. You melt into his body when his arms wrap around you. Just as easily, you give in to the thousandth conflicting reason you’ve found to cry:

He’s never held you like this before.

With his cheek pressed to the side of your bowed head, you can feel his runaway tears. Though his voice wavers, his intentions are rock solid. “I fought like hell to get back to you. They had to knock me out just to get me into the fucking van. I didn’t want to leave you. I swear, I wouldn’t —”

“I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t stop the rollout,” you cry. “Keeping you in the dark was the only way to keep you safe.” You bury your face into the front of his shirt and repeat it even more emphatically, “Minho, I’m so fucking sorry.”

For a moment, he stays quiet. As curious as you are about his silence, you don’t pull away to look up at him. You think you’d rather actually die than sacrifice a single second of the closeness you walked through hell and back to find.

Eventually, without prompting, Minho does speak. His voice is so soft that his question hardly reaches you. “Why did you do it?”

You pause, unsure of which part of your explanation he wants repeated. If he’s truly asking you to start over from the top, you will. You’re prepared to rake yourself over those coals forever, but you doubt he has the time. 

“In the control room,” he explains when you don’t arrive at the point yourself. “You told me that you love me, and then you ran off to blow yourself up. Why did you leave without letting me respond?”

Once again, you’re thrown; so disoriented that you can’t find the starting line. There were several reasons for running out the way you did: fear that he’d stop you if he caught on too quickly, or that he’d follow before Jihoon could drag him to safety. More than anything, as you sheepishly admit, “I didn’t think you’d say it back.”

He goes silent again. His arms pull you even closer, though you didn’t think it was possible. 

“I think Medusa had it easy,” he confesses, sounding almost self-conscious for the first time in his life. 

Though you’re caught off-guard, you don’t interrupt him. 

He hesitates for a moment, then adds, “I think my curse has it all backwards. I turn to stone when people look at me, not the other way around.”

At this, you finally unearth your face from where it’s buried in his t-shirt. His body goes slightly slack without your frame to hold him up; the look on his face is just as deflated. 

Turning in your spot to face him, you frown, but you tell him the truth. “I’m not as good at reading you as I thought I was.”

“Say it again.” 

You blink.

Minho lifts his hand and cups your cheek. “Please,” he begs, thumb brushing over your skin. “Say it again, so I can get it right this time.”

You lean into his palm, allowing the warmth of it to radiate until you feel it everywhere — feel him everywhere. From there, as is always the case, the reflex takes over. “I love you. I think I always have.”

“I love you,” Minho echoes emphatically. “And unfortunately for you, I think I always will.”

It strikes like a pickaxe, sending cracks through a well-built wall. You swear you can hear the pieces of it falling. If you look closely, you can see the light as it rushes in.

There you are, you think. I knew you were in there somewhere.

He kisses you then, scrambling your brain so thoroughly that you almost forget it’s the first time he ever has. But he’s no stranger to you, and he proves it. Calloused hands maneuver you into his lap without resistance, without interruption, and lean arms snake around you as you straddle him, pinning you against his chest.

In an instant, you thread your fingers through his hair, hellbent on clinging to whatever parts of him you can get your hands on. That desperate grip of yours has always made him lose his mind; tonight isn’t any different. He groans into your mouth when you tug those strands now, proving that you’re no stranger, either.

His tongue flicks over your bottom lip, like he’s scratching at the door to be let in. You let him, let out some needy, mewling sound as he licks into your mouth to claim it.

Yours, you think. Yours, yours, yours.

When he unexpectedly pulls away from you, those little whines of yours only get louder. Kiss-bitten, Minho’s lips flatten into a thin line that indicates he’s fighting off a smile. 

“Spider, I know vulnerability is your thing,” he sighs. His left hand releases its hold on the bottom of your thigh. With it, he gestures to the other side of the room. “But did you mean to leave the door open for this?”

Whipping your head around, you confirm that you did not, in fact, close the door behind you. Heat rises to your face before you can stop it. No matter how thoroughly you rack your brain, you come up short. There’s no excuse— not even a bad one — for a cybersecurity expert being this abysmally accessible offline.

You’re in the middle of questioning your qualifications for the role you occupy when Minho gently pats the side of your leg, wordlessly asking you to leave his lap. With great difficulty and a dash of awkwardness, you do. Just as soon as you’re back on your feet, your body riots. All the exhaustion and soreness you’ve been ignoring screams for acknowledgement.

Minho must hear it. 

“Bed,” he murmurs, punctuating his instruction with a quick kiss to your temple.

Also a first, you note. 

Despite your long history of entanglements, you’ve never once ended up in his sheets. Your heart flutters involuntarily at the prospect; the fever-grade burning in your cheeks only gets worse. Thankfully, with his back now turned to you, Minho doesn’t see how eagerly you stagger towards the stolen bed frame in the corner. You hope he doesn’t hear the relieved moan you let out when you collapse in an aching heap on his mattress.

Across the room, the lock clicks. Footsteps follow so quietly that you would’ve missed them if you didn’t have his gait committed to memory. The person walking back to you looks unfamiliar, though — somehow. There’s no trademark sharpness at the edges now. There’s no want darkening his eyes, but something delicate that softens them.

It’s need, you realize when he comes to drape himself over you. It’s gentle, the way he compensates for your strained muscles and takes it upon himself to shed your clothes, layer by layer. And it’s trust, finally letting him see the way you exist on your own — with your artificial leg removed from the equation and set carefully off to the side.

After positioning himself between your thighs, Minho pauses. His forearms rest on either side of your head, caging you in against the pillow below. Time doesn’t seem to pass while he gazes down at you, and you certainly don’t mind the delay. Of all your moments, this one — here, with him —  is your happiest.

“In case it doesn’t go without saying,” he murmurs, nudging the tip of his nose against yours. “I forgive you for doing what you had to do.”

Blinking quickly doesn’t do much to dispel the tears prickling in the corners of your eyes. You bite your bottom lip and nod to the extent that you can. “Thank you,” you whisper.

“Do me a favor, though?”

“Anything.”

“Kiss me,” he requests, and you do.

When your mouth is finally on his, he rolls his hips forward with deliberate precision, length sliding through your arousal until he enters you, groaning. He maintains that slow, careful pace; coaxes you open for him until the stretch melts from pain to pleasure.

Eloquent as ever, you mewl with your lips still pressed to his. It’s muffled, of course, but there’s no context to miss. “Oh, my god.”

Once you acclimate to his size, Minho could ramp up the intensity if he wanted to. He doesn’t. He takes his time, grinds against you so perfectly that you’d never dream of rushing through this. 

At this pace, every stroke hits deeper than the last; each languid drag of his cock along your walls converts more and more of your thoughts to static.

It’s such a change-up from every other time you’ve wound up underneath him. Part of you wishes that you could scrap all those trysts and pretend that this is your first. In a way, you suppose, it is. There’s a drastic difference between being fucked by Minho and being loved by him. For obvious reasons, you don’t plan on going back to the way it was before.

His length grazes your g-spot, pulling a whimper out of you. Dizzy from the sensation, you don’t notice the way your cunt clenches down on him until he curses under his breath.

“Shit,” he moans, “Wish you knew how perfect you feel wrapped around me. I swear, I’m not leaving this bed as long as you’re in it.”

Another stroke hits you exactly where you crave him most. 

“Please,” you gasp, back arching off the bed. He leans in to capitalize on the length of neck you’ve left exposed; the heat of his tongue on your flesh drives you absolutely insane. “R-right there, Minho. Please, I’m so close.”

Other people have described Minho as defiant, but you have to disagree. He does precisely what you beg of him, angling each thrust to get you gushing around him. And even after he has you shaking underneath him, he refuses to slack off.

The orgasm he pulls from you is so overwhelming that you feel it tingling in your scalp, resonating down your spine until every nerve in your body is a live wire. You’re still somewhere in the stratosphere when Minho unravels, twitching and spilling inside of you until he’s got nothing left to give.

Spent, he pulls out of your heat, maneuvers himself carefully around you, and collapses at your side to catch his breath.

His eyes are closed when you regain enough motor function to turn your head his way. Across his forehead, stray strands of black hair stick to a thin veil of sweat. The slow rise and fall of his chest says he’s halfway to sleep, and with how hypnotic you find it all, you’re nearly there yourself.

Just a few more minutes, you tell yourself. It’s too hard to look away from him. You’d never had the chance to see him this way before, and you know better now than to waste it. 

“Please don’t ever stop looking at me like that,” he mumbles with his eyes still closed.

Your quiet laughter doesn’t prompt him to look at you, but it does spark the hint of a smile. “Like what, Minho?”

“Like I’m your future.”

while likes are appreciated, comments/tags/reblogs with your thoughts are really what make my brain go brrrtt.

series taglist:

@saintriots, @mal-lunar-28, @dabiscrustyfeet @ldysmfrst @obeythemasters @moni-logue

stray kids permanent taglist:

@variety-is-the-joy-of-life @sourkimchi

multi permanent taglist:

@jihopesjoint @bahng-chrizz, @/variety-is-the-joy-of-life

resources used

regarding prosthetic limbs: tiktok users @/bren_hucks @/footlessjo @/alex1leg @/bionickick; amputee coalition regarding hacking + world-building: gurps: cyberpunk guidebook by loyd blankenship

[writteninlunarlight-years]

Hiya! Could you do a one-shot of Alastor x fem! reader who is like Art the clown (from the terrifier movies, all hallows eve and the ninth circle)?

Perhaps they met when Alastor first got to hell and reader wanted to kill him at first but due to his old fashioned ways (the courting and such) along with him being quite sadistic when it comes to killing, she became more curious about him and it led to a relationship?

How would their relationship be? Would it become more of a one sided thing? Would she try to harm him after he comes back from his seven year absence? I’d love to see your interpretation on this!

~ 🕷️

Terrify Me~

(Anon, I promise I did not forget you! I have never seen these movies and call myself a horror fanatic! So I watched them all as I had the time to try and be better at this writing! I hope you enjoy and stay hydrated!) TW: Torture, Death, assault, Suggestive, Sad, Comfort

Hell was far more entertaining than back up on the earth, though yes, it sucked dying to those damn cops. This was where it was at. You had free reign to torture and torment those around you; the good deal was that people didn’t die permanently as long as you used the right tools. This led to such an easy time finding prey to stalk. It also allowed you to develop incredible powers as people begged and pleaded with you for deals on being free from torment. 

You were a terrifying creature, a black-and-white marionette doll with no voice box. Your movements and attention to detail got you through your life in hell. You were sadistic and cruel to whoever became your prey for the time you spent stalking them, hunting them, and slowly driving your enemy mad. You were so good at the job that people recognized you as an Overlord before even discussing it with you. Of course, who would dare get in your line of sight less you make them the next target? 

You didn’t care about hell’s silly hierarchy or games; you only cared about getting your fill. Your mind was on the prize of listening to beautiful screams and cries. Like a masterful puppet pulling strings, your looks did not portray your abilities all that well. You may have looked like the prey, but you were the top predator. You were deadly, mind, body, and soul.

Years had passed of your reign as the queen of torture till a new man arrived on the scene. Alastor, the radio demon, died not too long after your rise to fame and began to make waves in the underworld as he broadcasted screams of the damned and tortured. His show quickly became one of your favorites, and you would play it as you killed and murdered innocent demonic souls, hoping to make a deal with you for safety. 

Eventually, though, your love and passion for the radio demon's show turned to disgust and hate as he began to take your place in the world of torturing the damned. You had found a new prey to stalk, and it was someone who was equally matched. 

Your stalk began small, with just hushed whispers and knowledge of the man you wished to end. You found photos and some video of him, but it was grainy and distorted. He was a handsome man. He would be so beautiful strung up. As you thought of many ways to torture and abuse him, the next phase of your plan was in order.

Though you were an ‘overlord,’ you never attended meetings. However, you did start when it came to hunting Alastor. Watching his every move and emotion, you saw he was good at mimicking and faking just like you. Yet you had to say you were just that much better at it. When you two first officially met, you could visibly see the disdain on his face when you couldn’t speak. Like many powerful beings, Alastor puts weight on words, something you have no control over, always giving you the upper hand. 

You found every excuse to be around and speak to the man. Eager to move on to stage three of your plan to capture and torment this soul. Actively seeking Alastor out, you began to carry a notepad to speak with him. Small conversations that would sometimes run long. You enjoyed his voice, at least. You thought it would sound lovely, screaming in pain and agony. 

Though you had these sick, twisted thoughts about Alastor, you couldn’t help but be curious about the other feelings he elicited. You wanted to hear him sing, watch him smile, and enjoy his murder. His many good qualities interested you even more. You even sought medical help in the man before you as you didn’t understand these stirrings you had around him and him alone.

As the final plan commenced where you would capture and torture him, you were caught off guard by a single black rose being placed before you. Looking at it and holding it gently, you felt your undead heart flutter. This situation happened many times over and over.

You would go to kill or capture Alastor, and right there, every time you would execute your plan, he would have a trinket or doo dad for you to keep as your own. He began to touch you gently, shoulders, face, sides. Things started to shift in you; you were being courted, and it wasn’t until you experienced this love that you realized it happened: Alastor had you under his spell. 

Your plans of killing Alastor were long gone; now, you just wanted to have the joy of torturing others together. Come a year of your stupid game; you were now officially Alastor's partner in crime. It was charming how he always let you get the first stab and helped you stalk and scare others. He even taught you how to cook and kill the dead sinners. Things were well between you two, so well that domestic life began to become a norm for two sadistic sinners. Yet it all changed one day suddenly. You had been out on a kill someone you and Alastor had stalked for months. However, when you returned covered in blood and a dead body in tow, Alastor was nowhere to be found. You waited a year in that small home you two made, and he never appeared.

After seven long years, you returned to the top of the food chain; you were vicious and cold-hearted. Bloodthirsty. You allowed yourself to be blindsided by a man who couldn’t even say goodbye. Anger consumed you as the years passed, and you became known as the terrifier. You were deadly on a much larger scale than your first time on the scene. You were always longing for Alastor just to come back home. You were longing openly to all that you would kill him and make him pay.

While on the town killing, you heard a familiar buzz. Your blood ran cold as the familiar sound flooded your senses. Running to the old home, you two shared the life long forgotten: you hoped so badly to see him standing there as he once did. Would you kill him? Let him live? Fall into his arms again?

As you entered the house, he wasn’t there. It was still empty, still intact, the same as you left it six years ago. Sighing, you left and walked to the nearest brothel to kill some easy dirtbags. That's when you saw the shadow. Was this a game? Some sick, twisted game to make you think Alastor had come back for you.

Following the shadow, you grew more rabid and curious. Eventually, you found yourself atop a hill where the Hazbin Hotel sat. Walking in, it was silent; it was late at night, and you assumed everyone was asleep. Stepping further into the forbidden territory, you looked around cautiously. It was homey and bright, too bright for your liking, yet some of the decor looked like what you saw in your old home with Alastor.

You felt the presence before you heard it, and suddenly, a bright smile overtook your face. He was here; he was back. Seeing before you Alastor, the radio demon, your lost love, you took a step towards him, afraid it was fake. You don’t know what emotion overtook you the most. You wanted to tear him apart, yet seeing him there, everything felt so surreal. His smile, for once, was authentic, and as he opened his arms out for you and you rushed in, you heard the faintest, “Oh, how you still terrify me…”

[suzukiblu]

Another excerpt from the one where Tim is trans and Kon is not the father, plus a read-more for length.

“Bart’s really back too?” Tim asks, his voice not quite cracking. 

“Back and also . . . okay, not the right age, but the age he was the last time I saw him,” Kon says. “Which apparently he was not for you guys for a while, what the fuck.” 

“Long story,” Tim says, smiling helplessly. 

“Yeah, I know, it took Bart a whole thirty seconds to explain it to me,” Kon says wryly. 

“Have you seen . . . Cassie, yet?” Tim asks hesitantly, because he’s a fucking glutton for punishment, apparently. Because otherwise he’s just ignoring the elephant he coaxed into the room himself. 

“No,” Kon says, shaking his head. “Bart went to go drop in on the Titans, but Clark brought me straight here. He figured I’d wanna see you and Kyra first. We had a very confusing thirty-first century conversation while he was trying to ease me into the ‘everyone knows you’re gay for your best friend’ thing and gently break the news about me being a dad, and then Bart just started talking his ear off demanding baby updates. It was, uh, interesting. I guess he died before she was born, but Clark didn’t realize he’d known you were pregnant?” 

“Yeah,” Tim says, trying not to wince. “I mean–I didn’t know what to do at first, so I just took medical leave from the Titans for an ‘injury’, but I told Bart and Cassie, and then . . . well, then Bart died before I told the Kents. It was only a couple months or so–I didn’t want to make them feel worse, in case anything went wrong–but . . .” 

But that’s how it is, in their line of work. A couple months or so is more than enough time for another one of your best friends to die. 

“Please tell me you weren’t patrolling Gotham knocked up,” Kon says with a grimace. 

“. . . technically, yes, but not after I realized I was knocked up,” Tim says, smiling weakly. “Not for . . . more than a week or two, anyway.” 

Kon groans, dragging a hand back over his scalp. He looks pained. Tim pretends it’s because Kon thinks he’s an obsessed workaholic, and not because Kon knows him well enough to know how messed up he’d been to actually do that. 

“I was in the middle of a case,” he says like it’s any kind of a defense. “And it was investigative work, not . . . I called Dick in to handle the violent parts, okay?” 

“Small favors,” Kon says, then glances towards Kyra’s crib. “So you’re . . . retired? You hung up the cape?” 

“I’m not Robin anymore,” Tim says. “And I’m not patrolling or running missions. But I can’t–if he ever finds out, if he ever finds her, I can’t be retired. I need to be–ready.”

Kon’s jaw tightens. Tim wishes he’d never had to say that. Wishes the lie had been true. Wishes–

Wishes a lot of things, some for Kon’s sake but most for Kyra’s. 

And one or two for his own. 

“What’s the new codename, then?” Kon asks, still looking at the crib. Tim’s grateful that he’s not . . . Tim’s just grateful. Grateful that this is Kon, and he’s alive, and he’s here, and . . . and that he’s going to let him lie. 

He��s so fucking grateful for that. 

“I haven’t exactly bothered rebranding,” he says with forced levity. “I’m not going out with anyone else and I don’t need a rep. I’m not a vigilante anymore. I just need to be able to handle any problems that might come up.” 

“You know how Jimmy Olsen has a watch with a distress signal custom-tuned for Clark’s superhearing?” Kon says, glancing back at him with a slightly disgruntled expression on his face. “I’m getting you one. I’m getting you five. And think up a name, man. Get yourself a color scheme and a bunch of weirdly-themed gadgets going. There’s a lot of other birds in the world.” 

Kon does have opinions about names, Tim supposes. For obvious reasons. 

That was why naming Kyra after him was the only thing he could’ve done, but also a terrible thing for him to have done. 

He really couldn’t have done anything else, though. He’d had to name her what he would’ve named her, if Kon had really been . . . if she’d really been . . .

He’d had to. 

That’s the best way to lie, after all: use the truth. 

“Okay,” Tim says. He might’ve been annoyed by the watch idea when they were younger. Felt like Kon didn’t think he could handle himself or was overestimating himself. He’s not annoyed now. Now it’s just one more contingency plan. 

He’d do anything for Kyra. Wearing a panic button that Kon would recognize the frequency of is the least of what he’d do for her. 

“Clark’ll help me get something around,” Kon says. “If, uh–especially if he thinks we’re, you know . . . together.” 

“I could make it,” Tim points out. “You don’t need to bother him with it.” 

“Clark knows the best frequencies to use. Plus then we can make sure it’s not gonna sound too much like Jimmy’s too,” Kon says, then flashes him a grin. “Besides, it’s more romantic if I’m the one giving it to you, right?”

“Fuck you,” Tim snorts, rolling his eyes as he shoves him, and Kon laughs and goes with it. Tim doesn’t know how to tell him he’s the best friend he’s ever had; the best friend he ever could have. He doesn’t know how to apologize enough for this. He doesn’t . . . 

Kyra makes a squeaky crooning sound from her crib, and Kon blinks, and–

Oh, Tim thinks, watching Kon’s pupils visibly dilate into pinpricks. Right. He . . . forgot. 

“What the fuck?” Kon says. 

“Some of her vocalizations are . . . like that,” Tim says carefully as Kon stares fixatedly at Kyra’s crib. She squeaks again. “Um–Clark reacted a little weirdly to some of them too, he said they were–” 

Kyra starts her usual melodic babbling, and Kon makes a low rumbling noise in response. Tim–blinks. Kon looks startled too, putting a hand to his chest. 

“Uh,” he says. “That was . . .” 

Kyra starts babbling louder, squealing for attention, and Tim rolls to his feet and heads over to her. She’s already reaching up before he gets to her, and squeaking excitedly for attention. She sounds like a little baby dolphin or something. Clark said there were resonances and undertones to her voice that human ears couldn’t pick up on, too. 

But of course Kon’s not human, is he. 

“Can I . . . hold her?” Kon asks awkwardly, stepping up beside Tim as he plucks Kyra up and staring intently at her. She dolphin-squeaks again. He bites his lip, clearly holding back whatever sound he wants to make in response; clearly holding back from reaching out for her. 

“Let me change her first,” Tim says. Her diaper’s definitely wet, and he doesn’t want her to get uncomfortable. 

“Can you show me how?” Kon asks, still looking a little awkward. “I haven’t been around too many babies, and I kinda just had to, like . . . improvise, the last time I was taking care of one.” 

“Uh–sure?” Tim blinks at him in confusion. “Why do you care, though?” 

“Dude, I’m not gonna be the kind of asshole co-parent who makes the one who got pregnant do all the diaper changes,” Kon says, looking dubious. “You should show me how to feed her, too. She’s on formula, right? It smells kinda like formula in here. And the kitchen did too.” 

“. . . um, okay,” Tim says, and almost bursts into tears on him again. Of course Kon would be like this, the bastard. “She–is, yeah. Clark synthesizes a mix for her in the Fortress. The AI says it’s better for her system than the store-bought stuff, and I had trouble producing enough milk to keep up with her appetite. Plus I kind of needed to get back on my meds as soon as I could anyway, so . . . I mean, they’re supposed to be safe, but I didn’t want to risk it with her physiology.” 

“Good, then I can help feed her,” Kon says. Tim blinks at him again, then just . . . takes Kyra to the changing table. She squeaks louder, clearly offended, and tries to reach for Kon. He trails after them, looking fascinated by her. 

Well . . . Kon’s never seen a Kryptonian baby before, much less heard one, so . . . of course he would be, Tim thinks. Kyra’s only a quarter-Kryptonian, obviously, but genetically . . . genetically, she might as well be half-Kon, and . . . 

And he’s never seen a Kryptonian baby. 

So it makes sense that he’d react strongly, yes. It’d make sense that he’d be a little bit fascinated. Clark had reacted to her too. He’d looked just as startled as Kon had, the first time he’d heard her chirp and squeak for attention, and then just as fascinated. 

Tim still wonders if Kyra’s the first time Clark’s ever fully felt any of the kind of instincts people normally feel, seeing a baby. Like–genetically speaking, he means. Instinctually. She’s seen more of him than Kon ever did, so . . . well, that might just be because they’ve been staying with the Kents, but Martha had mentioned how nice it was to have Clark around so often a few weeks ago, so . . . 

Well. Tim has some suspicions, that’s all. 

He wonders, very briefly–he wonders if he would respond to her like Kon and Clark do, if he ever–if he found out about–

He crushes that thought down into gravel and grinds it into his mental pavement. He doesn’t think about it again. Not at all. 

(Would it be worse if he did or didn’t, though? If he saw her, and was FASCINATED–

Tim stops thinking about it.)

He changes Kyra’s diaper, taking his time a bit so Kon can better observe the process, and Kyra fusses and chirps and screeches through it. Kon stays in a little bit inconveniently close, but Tim doesn’t say anything about it. Kon can do a lot more than just be a little bit inconvenient, after telling him he’d let him lie about this. He’ll deal with having to work around him. 

Kyra screeches louder. Kon makes a thrumming noise low in his throat, and she stops mid-screech and stares up at him intently. Her eyes are a human shade of blue–she got Tim’s eyes and hair, thank fuck, considering there’s no way he ever could’ve sold the alternative as being inherited from Kon–but Clark said there were . . . fractals, he’d described them as. He’d tried to explain, and then tried to draw the pattern, but it’s nothing Tim can see in her eyes for himself. 

But it’s a Kryptonian trait, apparently, so he is very, very grateful he’d chosen the lie he had. Even if the squeaking and chirping hadn’t clued Clark in, if he’d ever met her . . . 

Tim is very, very grateful he chose the lie he had. 

And even more grateful that Kon is willing to help him keep it.

[sammyvhs]

skin : 1.06 — jess’s sister.

“Oh my god. Sam!” Your heart almost stops right then and there, if there was just a little bit less oxygen in the room you’re sure you’d have fainted by now. Because Sam Winchester is here. Where you are. In the same room, despite him not knowing it.  

“Well, if it isn’t little Becky.” You can hear the grin in his voice and it makes you frown. Not because you’d wish he was upset, you wouldn’t wish anything bad on anyone, but because you haven’t so much as smiled since you saw your sister on the ceiling. 

“And you know what you can do with that ‘little Becky’ crap.” You can see them from the kitchen doorway, hugging, and you decide to take the deepest breath of your life before you make your way over. You’re not usually this soft spoken or shy but the greeting that leaves you is as broken as you feel.

Your name falls from Sam’s lips slowly. He’s processing it, before Becky moves back to invite both of them in. You wave at Dean too. 

You’re sure one of them is about to say something before you decide you don’t want to hear it and make your way to the kitchen where you’re sure they’ll all be gathering shortly. 

“She’s not doing so well, I was so surprised when she came here, wanted to be there for Zach. And he appreciates it, she’s been here for me.” It’s not hard to hear the distinct difference between pity and kindness. Beck’s kind, always has been. You didn’t know her much, mostly you hung out with Zach when you came to visit Jess, so much so that you both kept in contact when you were in your own university. 

All three of them walk into the kitchen. “Beer?” You ask them, already making your way to the cooler. Dean nods enthusiastically while Sam declines. You bring out three cups of water instead. Becky is already going through enough as it is, you tried helping as much as you can, cooking for her and letting people know what was going on. You even called her parents. She’s better now but she was a mess when she first heard.

“So tell us what happened.” Sam pries, his arms resting on the counter. Becky relays everything back to them, from the details of how Emily was found to the call to 911. “Maybe we could see the crime scene? Zach’s house.” 

You furrow your eyebrows, hands coming up to rest on her shoulder, more of a comfort than anything. Dean sounds surprised at Sam’s suggestion as he elaborates, “Dean’s a cop.”

“Detective actually. Bisbee, Arizona.” 

“He’s a cop?” You don’t even realize it’s your voice until everyone is looking over at you. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

“No, it’s— uh. Yeah, detective.” Who did nothing when your sister was burning on the ceiling? Who didn’t even talk with the police when they came to question you? Who didn’t offer you any kind of help when the cops said it was just a fire, no signs of foul play? 

You stay quiet after that and tell Beck you’ll hold down the fort while they go check out the crime scene. She leaves to get her keys and you’re standing there awkwardly behind the counter as the two men look over at each other. Eventually Dean clears his throat and says he’ll wait in the car.

“Hey.” His voice is gentler than you remember. Or maybe it’s the fact that you hardly remember it at all. Sam is… complicated. You know what you’re doing is wrong, holding onto someone else to help you grieve, someone who’s supposed to be grieving as well, but the truth is you can’t stop. You don’t know what else to do if not hope Sam will save you from drowning.

You repeat the sentiment as he walks over to you, both of you facing one another. “So, uh, I know I haven’t seen you in a while—”

“A month and a half. It’s been six weeks.” Since Jessica died.

“Right. I know. Me and Dean have just been busy.” When you don’t respond he sighs and keeps talking, “I mean, he just recently got on a break and when I left with him I’d join on cases occasionally, stuff like that. It helped take my mind off things.”

“Okay.”

“What— what about you? How are you holding up?” If you were a little stronger, you’d tell him to leave you alone. But he’s the only person you’ve wanted to see in weeks and he’s right goddamn here so instead you fling yourself into his arms and he hugs back just as tightly. “It’s okay. It’s alright.”

You know he’s hurting too, you just wish you could both take each other's hurt away. 

[ereana]

Neuvillette x Furina - I’d come for you. No matter what, when you need me, I will be there.

The news hits Fontaine like a drop of rain across a still pond.

Furina is gone.

It ripples out from the point of impact in waves.

Furina is missing.

It provides only a second of warning, enough time for people to look up and wonder, before the rest of the rain falls.

Furina has been kidnapped.

The sudden deluge appears from nowhere, pedestrians quickly flee for shelter and vainly attempt to shield themselves from the heavy drops of rain that pelt the land below as if in punishment. In his manmade lair of marble and glass the Hydro Sovereign feels five hundred years of control snap.

Had Focalors known what she was doing when she returned his power? Had she known what it would unlock inside him? Emotions, once dull and frustratingly out of reach, now howl in his breast. Neuvillette snarls and feels fangs in his mouth. There is no hiding from the vortex of rage and fear that consumes him, he embraces it.

He has to find her. He must find her. He needs to see her stand before him unharmed and unfazed, smiling excitedly as she talks about the new dish she is attempting to master.

The fools who have done this do not know what they have unleashed, what now hunts them with unwavering focus. People uneasily watch from the sides of the great lake as its waters swell and churn, mirroring the mood of the enraged dragon.

If Furina has been hurt they will wish the prophecy had taken them.

Messages are sent out, officers are given tasks, and Neuvillette clamps down on the growing need to walk out the Palais doors and start hunting by himself. Patience, he reminds himself. He needs more information, the sort that only comes from human networks and investigation. 

Clorinde eyes him with uncertainty as she reports back, seeing the promise of savagery that lurks beneath his human guise. Neuvillette does not try to hide it. His claws scrape across the grand wooden desk of his office as she tells him of the group of rogue scientists from the Fontaine Research Institute who had sought to experiment with Primordial Sea water. Their proposals had been soundly rejected by the Institute so they had left to look for other opportunities and had come across the news of the only Hydro vision bearer who could control the dangerous substance.

Clorinde does not look away as she relays this to him nor does she flinch when the arm of his chair splinters under the force of his grip. There is a satisfied tightness in her eyes as she stands before him having just condemned these men to death.

Neuvillette enters their hideout alone.

He ignores the concerns from the Melusines and the Gardes. It is misplaced. He does not bring them with him not because he doubts their abilities, but because he will not be able to ensure their safety once he steps foot inside the wretched hole in the ground. His power simmers in his veins ready to be called upon, to obliterate anyone who has dared lay a hand on Furina, and he cannot guarantee that any assistance would be caught in the crossfire.

This is where they have kept her? A rotting network of pipes and caves that reeks of chemicals which sting his nose.

Unforgivable.

The first sinner kidnapper that he sees dies without uttering a word, merely gargles as water in the air starts to condense rapidly in his mouth and lungs.

This is no trial. No arguments. No evidence.

They have dared to put their hands on Furina; the woman who holds the heart of the Hydro dragon in her hands, the woman who could command him to drown a thousand nations for her and he would do so gladly, the woman who never would because kindness is an intrinsic part of her very soul.

Everyone in this pathetic shelter has already received their final judgment and all that remains is for Neuvillette to carry out the sentence.

Corridor after corridor passes in a blur of yells and the crushing force of his power. With each step his panic rises. Not here. Not here. He hasn’t found her yet. She isn’t safe.

What if-

He rounds a corner and is met with the most beautiful pair of mismatched eyes looking at him from behind the raised hilt of a sword. The fight leaves him instantly and he almost staggers towards her.

Furina lowers her blade at the sight of him. Her familiars float around her, searching left and right for enemies, Mademoiselle Crabaletta snaps a claw in his direction. 

“Neuvillette? How did you….What are you…” She stutters, before her eyes widen. “Is that blood?! Are you alright?” She steps closer to him, hands waving wildly as she frets over the red splotch on his coat. Normally he would listen intently to her every word but not at this moment. Not when a wave of relief crashes over him with the force of a tsunami.

She is here.

She is alive.

He sees the tear in her coat and shirt, the telltale bruises around her wrists that could only have come from chains, and part of him wants to continue through the base and rip apart the ones responsible. The rest of him doesn’t want to leave her side.

“Are you listening to me?” Furina asks, waving a hand in front of his unblinking eyes. “I think I made it about halfway up before they noticed I escaped and I think one of them raised the alarm. I mean I didn’t expect you to come but we should-”

“Why?” Neuvillette asks hoarsely. “Why did you not think I would come for you?”

Furina startles at the interruption, before dropping her gaze to the floor. Her body language shifts from a battle ready stance to something smaller, weaker. It conjures fresh memories of a fateful trial and a broken woman sitting silently on her throne.

“W-Well, I-I mean you’re so busy with running Fontaine and I-I’m nobody important anymore, just a civilian. I know we’re friends but I know you have other priorities.”

Neuvillette listens to her and hears what remains unsaid.

And the last time I needed you, you left me alone.

He falls to his knees before her.

He doesn’t reach out to hold her like he so desperately wants to, not until she allows him to.

“I’d come for you.” He swears to her. “No matter what, when you need me, I will be there.” 

Furina freezes, her hands momentarily still in their fluttering before she clutches them to her chest. She looks at him with equal parts trepidation and hope, five hundred years working together and she’s never heard him speak so ardently.

His oath echoes in the room around them and outside the world itself seems to hold its breath.

She lets out a shaky breath, sniffs once. Twice.

And then she pulls him into a crushing hug as she starts to cry into his shoulder.

Neuvillette returns the embrace immediately, careful not to hold her too tightly lest he inflict more pain than he already has, and lets his goddess find the comfort she needs in his arms.

[cozage]

Hi Coza.  How are you?  I’m so happy to see request open again!  Also wanted to let you know I LOVE The Daughter’s Return and the headcanon where some of the boys teach their partner how to fight!!!  Can I please have a Zoro x female reader, where the reader is saved by Zoro and joins the crew (idk what job or dream she has but it could be anything).  Zoro decides to teach her swordsmanship so she is able to defend herself.  I don’t know if any of that remotely makes sense.  But thank you and can’t wait to see it!! 💙🤍

A/N: HI FRIEND MISS YOU HOPE ALL IS WELL AND I HOPE YOU ENJOY THIS LOVELY DISH OF ZORO Characters: Zoro x fem reader CW: Illusion to some spicy activities but nothing crazy Total word count: 1.1k

Sword Skills

You would’ve died if that green haired swordsman hadn’t stopped those men in the alleyway. They had cornered you, and suddenly he appeared out of nowhere to save you. 

And then he was gone again, racing back the way he came.

“Hey! Let me repay you!” you shouted. “Please! You just saved my life!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the man said, still walking briskly away from you. “I just took out some trash.”

“Please!” you begged. “Let me repay you! I have a sushi restaurant, let me make you a meal!”

That made him stop. He looked back at you curiously. “Got any booze there?”

You nodded. “Please, let me try and repay my debt.”

He sighed dramatically, but he turned and walked to you. “Lead the way.”

Ten hours later, he was still sitting in your shop. You had closed down early and the two of you had exchanged stories and laughed the entire night away. 

“It sounds like you have amazing adventures,” you said wistfully. “I wish I could do something that exciting.”

“Join our crew,” Zoro offered casually, taking another swig of alcohol.

You gave a dry laugh. “I couldn’t do that!”

“What’s keeping you here?”

You didn’t have an answer. You had no family, the job you worked was menial, and even the place you lived in was far too small for how much money you paid the owner. You had a few surface-level friends, but Zoro now knew more about you than any of your friends did. 

“I can’t fight,” you admitted. “I wouldn’t have anything to offer the crew.”

“Yeah right,” Zoro scoffed. “You can make sushi. You can prepare drinks. You can do plenty of things.”

“But I’d be a liability in fights. Which happens a lot in the pirate world.”

Zoro’s eye twitched in irritation. “You don’t have to be strong to be on our crew you know.”

“But I don’t know anything! Did you forget earlier today?”

Zoro clicked his tongue in disapproval, but he had to admit you were right. “Fine. I’ll teach you.”

You scowled at him in confusion. “Teach me what?”

“How to fight. Let’s go pick some swords out tomorrow before we get on the ship.”

“I’m not carrying around three swords.”

Zoro chuckled. “You couldn’t handle three swords yet. I’ve trained my whole life for three swords. With you, we’ll start with one.”

You nodded in satisfaction, a smile on your lips. “My flat is just upstairs, if you want to stay the night.”

Zoro shrugged. “Probably better for me to stay. Don’t know how to find my way back to the ship otherwise.” 

You were going to offer him the bed, but by the time you made it and went back out to the living room, he was already asleep on the couch. 

The next afternoon, you were staring at a giant ship with a lion-sun figurehead. 

“Ready?” Zoro asked. “You’ll just have to ask the captain, but Luffy is pretty accepting.”

You nodded, and the two of you walked onto the ship. 

You instantly found Luffy, the man Zoro had said was the captain. 

“Hi Luffy, I was wondering-”

“Who the hell are you?” the captain asked, looking at you with big, black eyes.. “Are you here to steal our stuff?”

You were taken aback by his question, and it took you a few moments to respond.

“Er..no. I was hoping-”

He cut you off again. “Awesome! That’s good. So, do you wanna join my crew? I’m going to be the King of the Pirates!”

He was direct, you had to give him that. 

“I would, actually. If that’s alright with you.”

Luffy broke into a wide grin. “Awesome! Nami and Robin will be excited to have another girl on the ship! Welcome aboard!”

And then he wandered off, as if nothing had happened. 

“Told you it’d be easy.” Zoro had a knowing smirk on his face. “Ready for your first lesson?”

“I suppose.”

“Alright then,” he said. “Raise your sword.”

You tried. You had to grip it with two hands, and it was surprisingly more heavy than you anticipated when you swung it. 

“The weight distribution always surprises people,” Zoro explained. He walked over to you, slightly adjusting your grip and your stance. 

“There, try that.” He took a step away from you. “Give it a few swings.”

You swung a few times. You had to admit, this stance was easier, but it was still extremely draining. 

“We’ll work up to a real sword. The next time you touch this, it’ll be a thousand times easier. But remember that feeling. Remember that struggle.”

And then he swapped your real sword for a fake, wooden sword that was much easier to swing. 

He trained you hard, but he also made sure you understood why you were doing certain exercises. He explained what muscles you were working, showed you what moves you would be able to do, and always gave the reasoning as to why a workout was important. 

He was good at this, explaining how things worked and why muscles need to be built. He worked you hard; only stopping when you collapsed with bruises littered across your body. 

But he carried you back to bed every night. And eventually, he started carrying you back to his bed every night. The two of you would sleep intertwined, bruises and cuts intermingling with one another. 

Some nights, he gave you another kind of workout, the two of you training all night long and sleeping all day. It was a trade off you were happy to do, though you often ended the night with far more bruises than you started with. 

Other night, he whispered sweet nothings into your ear, caressing your body as if it was the most delicate thing he had ever seen. This was the duality of Roronoa Zoro, and you loved that you were able to see both sides of him like this. 

After a month of various training exercises, he handed you back your sword. 

You were hesitant to take it. You didn’t feel ready. You were still the same girl who would get beaten in an alleyway, weren’t you? Surely you couldn’t have progressed that much. But you could see the confidence in Zoro’s eyes, urging you on. 

You grabbed the hilt and swiftly pulled out the sword, ready to start your next phase of training.