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clowncollectr · 1 year ago

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Arknights - Everything between us, as it should be (Liang Xun / Lee) - Chapter 6

Rating: G

Word Count: 6058 (this chapter), 28397 (whole story)

Summary: It’s Liang Xun’s second time visiting Lungmen. The circumstances are much better compared to last time. There’s no rush. Familiar faces, new faces. More happy memories to join the old ones. Between him and Lee, things are finally as they should be.

AO3 Link

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

__________ Chapter 6: Lost and found

“Been awhile since I’ve seen you this troubled.”

The detective’s eyes glanced up. He tried to stare down his opponent, but it felt pretty ineffective when the person’s entire face was covered. He stretched his arms out and yawned.

“It’s nothing. I’m just tired. Aren’t you supposed to be telling me about the mission? Don’t let me distract you.”

“I didn’t stop because I was the one who was distracted.”

Lee made a ‘tsk’ sound to show his dissatisfaction at being caught. This person is really nice to talk to about most things. They catch on fast, meaning he didn’t have to explain much. It meant both of them could cover a large array of topics together in a short span of time. Really useful for doing business. But there were times when they caught on too fast, and unlike most people, they had a tendency to say all of their observations out loud.

In the end, he gave up and scratched the back of his head, both in defeat and annoyance.

“Fine, fine. Doesn’t matter. I did all my homework before coming here anyways, so don’t bother trying to lecture me.”

As if to prove his point, he pulled out a set of files from the inside of his coat and set them on the office desk.

“Calais-Blason, right? That’s where you want to go. You know, it wasn’t easy gathering intel on that troupe of yours without being put on someone’s hit list. I’m afraid I might have to charge you three dinners for this one, Doctor.”

The Doctor reached for the files and skimmed through them, giving a nod of approval.

“It couldn’t be helped. It was a request from the lady herself.”

“The lady…Wait. You mean the cat?! Uh, I’ve had owners commission me to search for their missing pet before, but never the other way around.”

“She works in mysterious ways, alluring as the night itself. Who are we to question her motives? And regardless, Rhodes Island never turns its back on one of its own.”

“Well, nice to know that you’ll look out for those three too if something ever happened.”

“Of course.”

They spent the next hour going over the details of the mission. Although his mind had been a little preoccupied before, Lee was honestly thankful to have something else to focus on, and he discussed the matter seriously to ensure the safety of the other operators.

While he hates to admit it, there was something nice about someone being able to acknowledge his troubles so easily. Because it was so difficult to hide it, there was no reason to put in the effort. The productivity helped with his mood, and by the time they were finished, the tiredness he’d mentioned earlier had somehow dissipated.

Though he thought it’d be best to get more rest anyway. His team would be departing later in the day. So he said farewell to the Doctor and prepared to leave their office to head for the dormitories. The Doctor thanked him for his time but requested one last favor.

“I need you to deliver these files for me.”

Lee took the small stack of files from their hands, looking slightly surprised.

“That’s it?”

It was rare for him to get an errand like this nowadays. Partly his fault since around the start of his contact with Rhodes Island, he used to pretend to have a headache whenever they made him do anything tedious like sort files. Eventually, they just gave up on trying. Okay maybe it was mostly his fault. But he doesn’t actually mind doing stuff like this if he has to.

He waited on the other person for a bit, in case they wanted to elaborate on anything further. The Doctor just shrugged, as much as they could with their hands still in their pockets, and explained that the office number label was on one of the folders.

“You can thank me later.” they told him.

This person has a really unconventional sense of humor.

Usually when you ask someone to do something for you, you’re the one thanking them. But he’s long since grown accustomed to the Doctor’s strange jokes. They were quite the oddball, especially if you caught them shortly after they’d been working too much. Plus there were too many cryptic rumors about them floating around. Like how they wore their usual work attire to the beach or that one time someone saw them eating an originium slug at late hours of the night, when they thought no one was watching. All unconfirmed, none unproven. Scary stuff. There were some things that didn’t need to be investigated.

Since the office for the delivery was opposite to where the dormitories were, the task was a bit inconvenient. It was still a trivial errand in the end. One that shouldn’t set him back more than half an hour.

When he arrived, he found Miss Orchid there with a bored but otherwise neutral expression on her face. He did as he was asked and handed her the files. Lee wasn’t sure what he was delivering, only that when the woman opened the files to read their contents, she gave the longest sigh and muttered “Ugh, seriously?” under her breath. Maybe he’d been tricked into giving another poor soul more work.

Despite her initial reaction, Miss Orchid quickly resumed her professional demeanor. She thanked Lee for the trouble and once the latter had one foot out the door, he heard the faintest complaints about ‘having enough work to deal with’.

Another person that likes to complain about work but always does it in the end? What a troublesome personality. He thought to himself with some amusement.

Since the dormitories were a fair distance away anyway, he took the opportunity to take a pleasant stroll through the landship, walking lazily while he thought about the upcoming mission.

What the Doctor said earlier resurfaced from his memory. Rhodes Island never turns its back on one of its own. Even if searching for someone who went missing was troublesome, it was a nice sentiment. To know that if you disappear, your presence is important enough that people will come looking for you.

Now that he thinks about it, he’s also troubled someone else with this kind of thing. It was…impressive that they never gave up after all that time.

Lee shook his head.

Forget about it for now. We parted on good terms. There’s nothing to regret.

He’s been too gloomy lately, like a child at the end of their summer break. Not wanting his vacation to end. It was a natural reaction, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was a little too old to be acting like this. It really would be best if he got over it soon.

He let himself wander a bit more, slowly but surely making his way to the dormitories. While walking down one of Rhodes Island’s many connecting hallways, someone’s loud voice pulled him away from his thoughts. It sounded as if someone had lost their composure.

“How?! Augh, nevermind. Maybe we should check the reception room first...”

This kind of thing wasn’t uncommon at this place. The landship was home to all kinds of interesting characters. Yes, that part wasn’t all that strange. What was strange was that he recognized that voice. And it was the voice of someone who was supposed to be in charge of his house right now. So why was he hearing it here? It was a couple decades too early for him to be showing signs of old age. Nothing wrong with his hearing yet.

He made sure to keep his presence hidden while he peeked from the corner of the hallway. Sure enough, there they were. Three orange tails and hushed voices. As expected, trouble always came in threes.

He could hear the most reasonable member of their group trying to calm down the other two.

“There’s no sense arguing over who’s at fault. Let’s just think of what we should do before we run into-”

“Before you run into?”

Lee watched as all three of his employees jumped after suddenly hearing his voice.

Actually, he had planned to wait behind them until they noticed, but he couldn’t resist the dramatic entrance.

The three turned towards him in surprise, and it was Aak who mumbled a not so enthusiastic “Too late I guess” before falling silent along with the others.

Lee looked back at them. At their age, there was no point scolding them. But he knew the next best thing. Crossing his arms, standing there, and looking extremely disappointed. He tapped his foot expectantly, showing that he was waiting for an explanation.

Waai Fu was the first to step forward, and she explained nervously:

“Uncle Lee! You’re still here? We thought you would be on your mission by now. See, we were also called over for a mission and-”

Lee nudged his head to the side, not particularly impressed.

“Bad lie. Too easy to verify that. Next.”

Aak stepped forward and pulled a vial of strange liquid from his pocket.

“I left some important samples here for my new medicine, so I came to get them.”

Lee didn’t seem too convinced.

“Why did the other two come with you? Anyway, we’re on good terms with Penguin Logistics, who also work here. I’m surprised you didn’t go to them first. That’s what you usually do when you forget something.”

Aak shrugged indifferently, too lazy to put together any sort of argument. It felt pretty pointless, considering who he was up against.

Finally, when it was Hung’s turn to speak, the Perro simply said “We wanted to see you off properly. Don’t you think you left too suddenly? Who knows when we’ll see you again.”

The Lung was able to sense some honesty in his words. He closed his eyes and sighed. Probably a bit of the truth mixed in with a lie. He’s seen plenty of those before. Still, the thought was appreciated. Although it didn’t stop him from worrying about the obvious.

“So? What about our guest? No way you left him in Lungmen by himself, right? And bringing him here would be impossible on such short notice given that a background check is required.”

“We didn’t need to. He already went back to the capital. Uncle Liang said he didn’t want his work piling up.” Waai Fu explained.

“That’s good.” Lee nodded, seeming to accept her words. He felt more at ease knowing that everything was in order back home. Despite the way he acted earlier, he didn’t actually mind having the children come to Rhodes Island for, well, whatever reason they were here since they didn’t seem to want to tell him. They were all adults now and should be allowed to come and go wherever they please. It was just more amusing to question them the way he did.

Having settled the important business, he reverted back to his laid back state from before. The plan was originally to go back to the dormitories to rest, but since everyone was here anyway, he proposed the idea of getting lunch together. To his surprise, Waai Fu, Aak, and Hung just stared at him with nervous faces. They didn’t seem to like the idea too much. Very unexpected. These three rarely ever passed on an opportunity to eat. Not to mention, Rhodes Island’s kitchen is quite nice, and he’s already been granted permission to cook there. Even if the menu for today wasn’t good, there was no reason why he couldn’t quickly stir fry something up for them.

In particular, it was written all over Hung’s face that something was wrong. This guy had a bad habit of wearing his heart on his sleeve a little too openly. To the point that it caused trouble for him sometimes. But in situations like this, it made him the easiest person to go to when Lee wanted a straight answer. So he took one step toward the young man and asked him amicably.

“Hung, what’s the matter? Did you guys get into trouble again? Why don’t you tell me what the problem is and we’ll sort it out together.”

It seemed for a long time that Hung didn’t want to say anything, occasionally glancing to the side at Waai Fu and Aak. Lee was about to give up on getting anything out of him when Aak spoke up and caught his attention.

“Can I tell you something?”

“Sure.” Lee responded back.

“Only if you promise not to get mad.”

That phrase wasn’t a good sign, but he didn’t really have any choice but to encourage the other to continue.

“As long as it wasn’t illegal.”

“Ok cool. It was only against regulations. Nothing related to the law.”

“....”

Aak took a deep breath before saying everything in one go, talking at the same barely comprehensible speed as that young woman from the Lungmen Fire Department.

“So the truth is Mr. Liang didn’t go back home he changed his mind last minute because he said he wanted to see you and he seemed kinda desperate so we snuck him onboard and figured it would be fine if he stuck with us but then we lost him and now we can’t find him so he’s wandering around the landship somewhere without a guest badge or any papers and we’re trying to find him before security gets to him first”

There was silence for a while.

No one said anything.

It was a lot of information to process.

Once everything had settled in his mind, Lee found that he wasn’t sure how to feel about this situation. All he could do was let out a tired sigh and mentally say goodbye to his free time again.

“I can’t say I didn’t anticipate this scenario when I saw you three were here. Losing him was a surprise though. How do you lose track of a tall, fully grown, adult man exactly?”

“I dunno. It just kinda happened.” Aak replied with a shrug.

Waai Fu didn’t seem very happy with his answer and joined the conversation to elaborate.

“We were leading him around and at some point, we realized he wasn’t with us anymore. We weren’t watching him the whole time. I mean, he’s not a child we need to babysit right? And I really doubt he would wander off on his own so…”

She trailed off and looked down at the floor anxiously, unable to hide the guilt she was feeling at the moment. The situation sounded a lot worse now that she was explaining it out loud.

Lee was quick to notice and reassured her. It was weird that this was happening at all, but not something that was going to end the world either. He knew all three of them were good kids. They probably didn’t want to tell him because they felt bad about causing him trouble. So he wasn’t mad at them, and there was no reason for any of them to feel guilty. Honestly, he was glad they told him rather than trying to solve this problem on their own.

“Hey, don’t sweat it”, Lee gave her a gentle pat on the head. “With the four of us working together, we’ll find him for sure. I’ve only seen one male Kuranta around this part of the landship and that guy has blonde hair. We can just ask around if anyone’s seen a male Kuranta with black hair. Besides, Rhodes Island isn’t a dangerous place and that guy’s plenty capable.

Worst case scenario, you three will get a scolding for sneaking someone on board. Wait. That probably means me too. Uh, let’s hope it’s Miss Amiya and not Dr. Kal’tsit who does it then.”

Everyone laughed at the thought of the entire group being forced to sit through one of Kal’tsit’s infamous monologues, and the absurdity of it eased their tension a little.

While Hung, Aak, and Waai Fu were perfectly capable of settling things on their own, there was something reassuring about having their boss around to call the shots again. Even if they forgot half the time that that was technically what he was. After some discussion, everyone agreed to split up and cover different parts of the landship.

It was a difficult search since no one personally knew who they were looking for. There was also no way to anticipate where they might find him. But as Lee predicted, there were a fair amount of people who reported having seen him. It took some time, but they were eventually able to narrow things down based on the sightings. And it seemed that luck was on their side today because when they finally found him, Liang Xun was not with security or strangers, but rather, they saw him speaking with some familiar faces.

Familiar to both Liang Xun and Lee’s agency. Operator Kroos and Mr. Nothing appear to have run into their missing guest at some point. It was quite fortunate. Running into those two was probably one of the best possible outcomes. At least they knew who he was and could verify his identity. Lee and the rest of the group were relieved when they saw who he was with. It meant that very likely nothing bad had happened.

Kroos was the first to notice them approaching and she greeted them warmly, sociable and upbeat as ever.

“Oh! Hiii~ Mr. Lee, Waai Fu, Hung, Aak. Wow, so many people. We’re running into all our friends today.”

Mr. Nothing agreed with her. He opened his mouth and was about to say his own greetings when the sound of running footsteps and a flash of black raced past him.

“Lee! You’re still here. I thought I was too late. No one knew where to find you.”

He wanted to reply back with something like ‘Yeah the same goes for you’ , but Lee was more distracted by the fact that Liang Xun was currently looking at him like he’d just found water in the desert. The guy had a pretty mellow personality, and he’s never seen him move with this much urgency before. He wanted to ask him why but wasn’t given the luxury.

Before he could process it, Liang Xun had already grabbed his hands and placed their palms together, filling the space between them. Already, there were some confused and surprised reactions, including the faint sound of Kroos going “oh my” in the background. But Liang Xun ignored it all and focused only on the man in front of him. He stared at him seriously and spoke purposefully.

“About what you said before. I came here because I wanted to talk about it. Your confession. Let me respond to it properly. I-”

“Hold it.” Lee interrupted immediately.

He couldn’t believe what was happening. While he didn’t pull away from the other’s grasp, he looked around apprehensively before chastising him.

“You…you’re not thinking, are you? Look where we are right now.”

Those words were like a loud snap, which pulled Liang Xun out of his tunnel vision. He followed his friend’s advice and checked his surroundings, realizing that there were several people looking at the both of them. Fortunately, there was no one else around except the members of Lee’s agency and Miss Kroos and Mr. Nothing, who were so kind as to accompany him when he admitted that he had gotten separated from his friends. But that was still an audience of five more than the Lung probably wanted.

Liang Xun suddenly let go of Lee’s hands and stepped back. It was far too late now, but he realized from the flustered look on the carp’s face that he had just embarrassed him in front of everyone. He coughed awkwardly and glanced around, trying to think of a way to fix his mistake. But as always, Lee didn’t mind stepping in to help when he was in trouble, and the detective showed his talent for handling difficult situations once again.

Turning to face the entire group, he cleared his throat and explained as casually as he could.

“Sorry everyone. Looks like Liang Xun and I have some private matters to discuss.” He turned towards Kroos and Mr. Nothing and gave them a small nod of acknowledgement. “You two. Could you go tell the Doctor that I’ll be missing the squad meeting for my upcoming mission? We’ve already discussed it together anyway. And if you could, ahem…” He gestured towards himself and the man standing next to him. “Please keep this matter discreet. I’d appreciate it.”

Kroos straightened her back and exclaimed “Yes sir!”, assuming a saluting posture typically reserved for one of Dobberman’s training drills. She had a vague idea of what was going on. Her only real opinion on it was that it was a happy thing, and she needed to buy some congratulatory gifts for it later.

Mr. Nothing, in contrast, was fanning himself nervously. Of course, he also thought it was something to celebrate. But it felt like he’d just learned something he wasn’t supposed to. Considering the influence Mr. Lee and Mr. Liang held in their respective cities, isn’t the thought of their union kind of intimidating? Certainly, he wouldn’t want to be seen as a liability by either of them. So he remarked with earnest supplication that he was a trusted ally. Definitely not a loose end that needed to be taken care of.

“Rest assured, I would rather be shot and left on the streets to die twice over than do something disrespectful to you two, who’ve shown me so much generosity. Your wish is my command.” He bowed his head to show his sincerity.

A little dramatic, but their reactions were essentially affirmative. Good enough for Lee. He had bigger things to worry about right now.

Next, he turned his attention towards the other agency members, who didn’t look quite as surprised as the other two but still had an air of awkwardness around them.

“And you three. Uh, listen. We can talk about this later. If you even want to.”

It seemed that they were all feeling especially cooperative today, since the only reaction he got was a simultaneous thumbs up from all three of them. Great. He had their blessing. Probably.

Once the excitement settled down, the two men said goodbye to everyone and walked away. When they were both out of sight, Lee grabbed Liang Xun’s hand and started walking at an accelerated pace, dragging the other man along behind him. The latter had no complaints and allowed himself to be guided. It’s not the first time something like this has happened. Even if it’s been awhile, he’s gotten quite used to being dragged around by this person. Although by his own admission, this time he had been the one to cause them trouble.

Neither of them spoke at all during their entire walk to the dormitories, and Liang Xun was beginning to worry that Lee may actually be mad at him for what he did earlier. He wouldn’t blame him.

Eventually, they reached their destination, with Lee stopping in front of one of the many dorm rooms and using his ID card to let them both inside. The sound of the door clicking shut could be heard behind them, signaling that now it really was just the two of them. Liang Xun waited for a minute, in case the other person was angry and had any grievances to settle with him. But Lee said nothing.

He only stared at him with a difficult expression on his face.

Liang Xun knew that it was his cue to explain himself. There was no such thing as turning back. Not when he had already caused him this much trouble.

“I thought about it.” he started. His throat felt dry, and he had to concentrate hard to convey what he wanted to express into words.

“I couldn’t understand why I never noticed how you felt. And why I couldn’t decide whether I felt the same. But…”

He reached for Lee’s hands again. Slowly this time. So that they had the option of pulling away if they wished. When they showed no signs of discomfort, he continued.

“I think…I think I have been loved for a very long time. Ever since the start. The things which should have been precious to me became as natural as breathing.” Liang Xun squeezed the fingers that rested on his palms, thinking of unpleasant things, his regrets. Nevertheless, he kept going.

“It’s stupid of me to only realize how much I value something once I’m faced with the possibility of losing it. But I’m awake now. If it’s not too late, I want to spend the rest of my life making up for lost time.”

Frozen in place, Lee could only look at the person in front of him, completely unsure how to respond. Logically, it should have made sense. Why would this person come all the way here otherwise? Just to reject him? They weren't so cruel. Of course this was what they had been planning to say. But to hear such things come out of his mouth, it felt like Lee had completely left the realm of reality. Any second he would definitely wake up now. Just like all the other times.

Liang Xun could see that his words had been received properly, but Lee was having a hard time responding. This situation felt familiar. He recalled the last time they had a proper heart to heart. At that time, Lee had said nothing as well and only moved closer to embrace him.

This time he would be the one to do it. He’d had enough of being passive his whole life.

Without thinking twice, Liang Xun walked forward and leaned in to embrace him. He thought about the last time they said goodbye. About how the carp had been mindful to keep a respectful distance between them, and how much it annoyed him. He decided there would, quite literally, be no room for that possibility this time and pulled the other person in as close as he could. He heard the other person’s breath hitch, clearly started by the sudden intimacy. But he was satisfied to find that Lee only pressed into him further, burying his head into the space between his neck and shoulder.

Now that Liang Xun had time to think about it, these last few days have been incredibly stressful and tiring. His chaotic thoughts made him unable to think clearly, and he found that he could barely focus on anything at all. But it was just that. A couple days. How long has it been for Lee, who didn’t even know whether he was loved back?

On top of all that, everything from his last visit made a lot more sense. Especially that misunderstanding with Ning, which he had originally assumed was Lee’s displeasure at his time not being respected.

He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was all one big terrible joke.

If I were you, I would have hated me by now. Even if I’m considered innocent because I didn’t know, I’ve done nothing but hurt you. How can you still love someone after all that? Maybe I really don’t deserve to hold you like this.

He had such a thought. But the truth was, he’d finally realized something. Earlier, he worried over whether he was the right person. Whether he deserved such an important part in his life. Now he had his answer. Because despite everything. Despite his frustrations, his regrets, his uncertainty, his doubts. He couldn’t stand the thought of another person being in his place right now. So even if he didn’t deserve it, he would selfishly take this position. And he would earn the right to be here just like every other accomplishment in his life.

He doesn’t want to give this person up to anyone, and he certainly doesn’t want him to be alone either. Such a simple conclusion that took him way too long to realize.

It would never compare to the other’s experience, but he finally understood to some degree. Why Lee couldn’t let it go after all these years, despite all the pain it must have caused him.

Well, there was no point agonizing over the past anymore. Any pain in the future, they could bear it together. Besides, his personal philosophy has never wavered. Words are useful but it’s your actions that will speak for you in the end.

After some thought, he realized that he could start now. So while they were still locked in an embrace, Liang Xun turned his head to plant a slow and deliberate kiss on Lee’s neck. A message, clear and impossible to misunderstand:

I am no longer just your friend.

He felt the man in his arms jolt frantically, and he quickly thought to apologize for being too sudden. Before he could, the other person recovered and tightened their arms around him. From the direction he was facing, Liang Xun noticed a thick and beautiful tail swaying haphazardly. A reaction that was far too honest.

Lee, you are so…

If it were possible, Liang Xun wouldn’t have minded staying like this for a while. But eventually it was Lee who pulled away and cleared his throat to speak, doing his best to regain his composure.

“I never thought I’d be saying this, but…let’s hold off on things for now. I’ll be leaving for my mission in a few hours. It’s, uh, not good to get carried away.”

Liang Xun accepted his words. At the end of the day, they were working adults who have definitely spent too much time messing around. Anyway, the situation is as Miss Hoshiguma had told them earlier. Even if they were apart, it certainly didn’t mean the end. Rather, this was more like the beginning. An embarrassingly late one he felt, but better late than never at all.

Lee admitted with a yawn that he was still tired from traveling and honestly exhausted from the day’s events too. If it had been like before, Liang Xun would have excused himself so that his friend could rest. But he had nowhere else to go. Or maybe it was that he had nowhere he wanted to go. So he sat down and talked with Lee a bit more, while the other changed and got himself situated comfortably in the bed.

As expected, the Lung’s responses soon began to trail off, and he eventually fell asleep. Looking at him now, Liang Xun thinks that this really is just like last time. To be honest, it felt like only a few things had actually changed between them. But a lot more of it made sense now. Like all the small pieces had finally fallen into place, and the distance between them had been crossed for good.

The conclusion to what was already a lifetime’s worth of troubles, although there were certain to be many more. At the very least, he was glad that this person didn’t have to wait anymore. And neither did he, even if he never realized it until now.

__________________

When Lee opened his eyes, he woke up feeling groggy but well rested. He stared at the ceiling for a moment before turning to his side and found that someone had fallen asleep on the chair by the bed. The man had a reserved expression, the same as always, and his only indications of breathing were the light fluctuations of his chest. His posture looked too uncomfortable. The back of his head was unable to rest anywhere and instead leaned awkwardly on the back of the chair. It was impressive that he could even fall asleep in that position.

The impact of the day’s events slowly dawned on him as his mind began to wake up along with his body. He glanced at the clock on the nearby table and found that he no longer had the luxury of staying lost in thought. So silently, he got up and put on his usual coat, hat, and accessories. He grabbed the nearest pen and paper and began to scribble on it. In it, he left a farewell note as well as instructions in case Liang Xun wasn’t able to reunite again with the people who already knew him.

Having a note with his signature on it should get him far enough to get an audience with the Doctor at the very least. They could be trusted to handle the situation. The note was left by the bedside table where it would be easy to find. Before heading out, Lee looked back one last time to examine the man sleeping on the chair.

He thought about moving him to the bed but decided against it. If Liang Xun woke up in the process, it would just become harder for him to leave, and they probably wouldn’t want to go back to sleep either.

Instead, he just thought about how he would definitely make fun of him again later. This person has the guts to stay in his room and watch him sleep the whole time but apparently not enough courage to actually get inside the bed and sleep comfortably. Stupid. Bad for his back too. He doesn’t know what goes on in that guy’s head sometimes. Whatever. It was more ammo for him to use later.

Even though he was told that the mission was important this time around, the process was more or less the same. Report for the mission. Wait with the squad until preparations are complete. Board the aircraft. Compared to earlier in the day, Lee had no trouble focusing now. So he did his due diligence and took the time to talk to his fellow squad members. He apologized for his absence in the earlier briefing and assured everyone that he wanted to complete the investigation and get home quickly as much as everyone else.

Then, something unexpected happened. Someone giggled at him. He glanced around and discovered that it was the caster operator who always wore a strange hat, the one who went by the codename Haze.

Seeing the confusion on the detective’s face, the sharp-eyed woman clarified.

“It’s only natural to want to come back quickly when you’ve got someone lovely waiting for you back home, isn’t that right?”

She smiled back at him, as if what she said wasn’t particularly out of place.

When Lee heard her words, he only responded with a groan and complained about how he was unable to stop his friends from spreading strange gossip about him. In his defense, this was fairly unexpected behavior coming from Kroos and Mr. Nothing.

Haze observed his reactions with some pity but was not moved enough to bother hiding the truth.

“Hm? No idea what you’re talking about. The current rumor among the kitties is that you were seen holding someone’s hand while walking through half of Rhodes Island. Shocking for someone who isn’t fond of physical contact. And wasn’t the destination your bedroom? Not hard to put two and two together. Or are you saying several people imagined it?”

So it was his blunder in the end. He was so preoccupied at the time, it never even crossed his mind.

It was difficult to refute Haze's statement, so Lee gave up and chose to remain silent. He only did his best to maintain his composure. Too many people already have seen his embarrassing side today. Of course, some people nearby noticed and were beginning to look at him strange. Fortunately, he was quite familiar with the way gossip worked on Rhodes Island. There were too many people and interesting events going on most of the time.

The current topics would spread like wildfire but the contents were always changing. As long as he kept his head down, sooner or later everyone would lose interest. He could always ask the Doctor to keep an eye on things for him as well. Anyway, compared to the kind of secrets some people on that landship like to keep, being in a relationship with a politician is laughably mundane. Unexpected news just makes for juicy gossip. It’d sort itself out. Probably…hopefully.

Right now, he was fine with the way things were.

#miko the clowncollectr's fic tag #LiangLee / 梁鯉 #lee arknights #liang xun arknights

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naturallygravitatedtolondon · 3 years ago

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a little wooden boy: quick notes on OFMD and The Adventures of Pinocchio

Naturally I have not stopped thinking about the silly pirate show for a single second since having finished it and recently I have been especially fascinated by the way it incorporates storytelling and performance as such prominent themes and how that is used to explore identity. This show is good bread! Really good bread. Anyway, in my attempt to somewhat organize my thoughts on all that I decided to look into The Wooden Boy story a little more and OF COURSE stumbled upon an absolute treasure trove, what did I expect from these writers.

The Wooden Boy story we hear in the first episode is so good and works on so many levels just by itself: It is first introduced in the “do the wooden boy voice” scene (EXCELLENT) and then picked up again at the end of 1.01 with Stede reading the story as a bedtime story to his crew. That’s such a beautiful moment of community (god I love that scene) and gives us a really good sense of the characters. It establishes that despite the talk of mutiny earlier, the vibe for this crew is beautiful found family (I love them I love them I love them). And it introduces an interesting thing about literacy that I need to think about more. And just that very simple story we actually hear (though it is implied that Stede has read the entire thing to them) – a wooden boy who wanted to become a real boy – sets up some major themes of the show: 1) Stede and Ed both feel disappointed in their life, “treading water waiting to drown” etc, they feel like wooden puppets and want to feel fully alive again. And 2) of course this is also about masculinity and the question that comes up again and again: how to be a real boy/man? And the failure to live up to that toxic ideal and then the space that this in turn opens up for a variety of other ways of being a man! and the rejection of the very idea of “real men”. But that’s another post (such as this excellent one on masculinity in ofmd by @edwardsilkheart as well as this equally excellent one by @sitzfleischh on the queer art of failure).

So. I think it is pretty unambiguous that the wooden boy story is supposed to be 1883 Italian classic The Adventures of Pinocchio? There is an obvious timeline problem but I think by this point it is established that ofmd will not be constrained by the shackles of historical accuracy and is the better show for it so whatever. This did however make me think that there might be a more elaborate reason why the writers insisted on having the story of Pinocchio in their show about gay pirates despite the anachronism.

I looked up the plot summary of the Pinocchio story on Wikipedia because I was only very vaguely aware of the details of that story, though maybe other people are more familiar with it and got all the narrative links immediately (Probably more people have seen the Disney movie than read the original novel but I can’t remember what exactly happens in the movie either so I can’t say how similar it is to the book). I did not, so I just experienced a long series of oh shiiiit moments while reading that Wikipedia article. Here is a list of all the things that immediately stood out:

First of all, the plot of this children’s story is WILD. Jeez.

At the beginning of the novel, Pinocchio meets a cricket which “warns him of the perils of disobedience and hedonism” and then Pinocchio “throws a hammer at the cricket, more accurately than he intended to, and accidentally kills it.” Reminds me of a thing that happens in the first episode of a certain pirate show..? ALSO the cricket then “ comes back as a ghost to continue advising the puppet” come oooooon

Pinocchio visits a theatre performance. This seems to be a minor plot point in the novel, but with the aforementioned focus on performance in ofmd, it’s worth mentioning.

The director of the theatre is a man called Mangiafuoco who has “red eyes and a black beard that reaches to the floor”. Wikipedia says that “despite his appearances however” this character “is not evil”. This is literally Blackbeard. And he is the director of a theatre! It's perfect.

There’s a cat and a fox character that pretend to be blind/lame and then later actually become what they pretended to be. (Jim??)

Pinocchio arranges a meeting with the cat and fox but the meeting does not happen because he is betrayed by them. Just stab me in the gut will you.

Pinocchio is hanged at one point but is rescued. I mean COME ON.

A NOTE ON THAT Pinocchio hangs from that tree for a looong time and is completely fine afterwards, it seems to me that he can’t really die from that because he is, you know, a puppet. Sorry to fuel the conspiracy @knowlesian but make that sentence about Stede Bonnet and swap out one letter in “puppet” (I am JOKING mostly but also am I??)

Pinocchio buries coins in the ground, like a little pirate

A “judge sentences Pinocchio to four months in prison for the crime of foolishness” that one made me laugh

there is an enormous snake with a smoking tail that attacks Pinocchio and then literally chokes and dies from laughing too hard at his fear and vulnerability. Honestly not entirely sure if/how this is relevant, but it reminds me of the two times antagonists (the British and especially Captain Badminton as well as the fancy party guests) are shown to laugh hysterically at our main characters and then die because of it…

Pinocchio’s father figure is swallowed by a giant sea monster (!)

(quick note here, I have been thinking about how the flashbacks emphasise Ed’s and Stede’s fathers and how both Ed and Stede are traumatised by abusive fathers and how that shapes them both in different significant ways. Ed’s father being physically abusive, Stede’s father being verbally abusive, which corresponds with the whole stinging with swords vs. with cutting remarks thing! And that ties in so well with the Pinocchio story! He is a boy who is literally carved and shaped by his father figure! Makes me think that we should talk more about Ed’s and Stede’s childhoods)

Pinocchio is disliked by other children at school

Pinocchio and a friend of his “go to a place called Toyland where everyone plays all day and never works” and “have a wonderful time for the next five months”, ummm?????

And then beyond those plot details, and I’m just directly quoting from Wikipedia here by the way, there is this:

“The structure of the story of Pinocchio follows that of the folk-tales of peasants who venture out into the world but are naively unprepared for what they find, and get into ridiculous situations” Yeah. I think that’s pretty crystal clear.

Also: “The Adventures of Pinocchio, is a work in which a hero experiences symbolic death and rebirth”, which now makes me want to think a lot more about death and rebirth in ofmd

And last but not least: “Although they are part of a comedy, Pinocchio's adventures are not always funny. Indeed, they are sometimes sinister. The book's fictive world does not exclude injury, pain, or even death”

In conclusion. The writers of this show put such a shit ton of thought into every stupid little detail. And this is literally just what I got from frantically skim reading a Wikipedia article, I’m sure there is so much more I missed or misread. But that is some insanely intricate foreshadowing, and it seems to me that they must have based parts of the story directly on the Pinocchio story/at the very least took lots of inspiration from that?

So yeah. This show. I just think it’s neat.

#this got quite long but I just kept finding stuff #also am I missing some obvious reason why you would link a fictionalisation of Stede Bonnet with the Pinocchio story?#or is it just that this matched super well thematically with the story they wanted to tell in ofmd #I have no deep analysis here just putting this neat little treat of intertextuality out there #ofmd #ofmd meta #our flag means death

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nootqueen404 · 2 years ago

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Welcome to my Nightmare - Chapter Two

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Summary: Y/n and her friend Faye made it to Zombie Todd’s House of Sin, but will Eddie even recognize you? Is he the same man you remember?

Pairing: Vampire!Eddie x Fem!Reader

Warning (DNI if you’re under 18): All characters are over 18, swearing, hints of fighting, arguing, groupies mentioned, rampant fantasies,

A/n: I had to break this one down again. So WtmN might be more than 3 parts. Shout out to @reddeadgirl666for putting up with my bullshit and being my second set of eyes.

Tags: @groupies-do-it-better @reddeadgirl666

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Your best friend swung the car right into her drive way and the two of you made a B-line for the basement, or as Faye liked to call it, her “Cave of Wonders.” She lived with her grandparents since they needed extra help in their old age. Since she was the Head of Hawkins High’s Costume Department she did all of her work from home. Monster masks rested on mannequin heads on shelves, the floor littered with fabric scraps along with towering bins filled with props. Two of her three sewing machines still had unfinished gowns waiting to be altered for the next play and the walls were covered with both movie and band posters. With all of the cans of hairspray, fabric glue, and fabric dye the basement always smelled clean and fresh – mostly because her Grandfather was former Navy (making him a clean freak by default) and the laundry room was right next door. Trying to pick just one costume from the sea of clothing racks was almost impossible. Should you go as a witch? No, too basic. How about the Childlike Empress from the Never Ending Story? No, too elaborate and you’re way over 18. That would be weird! Faye suggested Princess Leia’s slave outfit, but you were worried about being arrested for indecent exposure. Finally you settled on a short black dress with lace accents along the hem and a built in faux corset and paired it with an cream-colored off the shoulder blouse with three-quarter bell sleeves, fishnets that Faye had bedazzled with red crystals, and knee high boots. “Vampire with a modern twist” you called it. Faye called it “Man Eater Material.” You paired it with a few long necklaces, vampy makeup, a short blood red cape, and teasing your hair to Jesus. Faye decided on being clever by going as her namesake – a fairy. She wore a dark green skirt that looked like leaves and was dotted with little white flowers and a sparkly lavender butterfly top. Her red hair was put up into space buns and dusted with glitter. Faye pulled on a hair of matching fingerless gloves, a pair of beautiful iridescent wings, and anklets that jingled when she walked. She slipped on a pair of white converse for comfort and you both were out the door as the sun started to set. By the time you reached the venue it was already 7PM. Faye didn’t tell you this place was an hour and a half away from Hawkins…or how run down the place looked.

“When you said the place was called ‘Zombie Todd’s House of Sin’ I thought you were joking…” you said looking the club up and down. The building looked really small and was covered with graffiti and old promo posters. Attached was an old hotel that could have doubled as a Victorian castle. There was a line out the door and the entrance was flanked with bouncers. Faye touched up her lip gloss in the rearview mirror of her baby yellow 54’ Ford Thunderbird

“Now Y/n, do you think I’d really make up a name as ridiculous as that?” You just stared at her. Yes, yes she would.

Your friend rolled her eyes at you and took your hand, leading you inside. You both showed the bouncers your IDs, stamped your hands, paid the $10 entrance fee, and went inside the so-called “House of Sin.”

The club was a lot larger on the inside; there were three levels – a balcony that looked over the entire club and had a few places to sit, the second one you and Faye were on that lead to the bar and some booths, and the finally one being the dance floor and stage. The walls looked like they were made of crushed red velvet and the stairs leading to the dance floor lit up. Crystal chandeliers that look like they haven’t been cleaned since Prohibition hung from the ceiling, the walls were decorated with local artwork, but the hardwood floors felt sticky underneath your boots. Stay classy Zombie Todd. But one of the most interesting things about the club was the cages.

“Are those fucking cages?!” you started to feel a little uneasy. No way in hell those were sturdy enough to hold anyone.

“Well yeah,” said Faye “remember hearing about go-go dancers? That’s where they would perform for tips. Now come on Y/n, Burgie needs her juice!” The tiny red head dragged you over to the bar and you ordered some drinks.

The bartender had to get his manager over to double check that Faye was in fact 21, and he begrudgingly gave her the dink she wanted. You settled for a rum and coke, though the Kick-Flip Faye ordered did sound amazing. You both made it down to the dance floor just in time for the shitty DJ to finish their set, Faye’s bells ringing with each step she took.

“Try it! It has pineapple in it!” shouted Faye, your ears still adjusting to the booming speakers. You took a sip and immediately felt the room spin.

“Holy fuck Burgie, what’s in this thing – Sugar and rocket fuel?” You thumped your chest with a closed fist trying to get burn out of your system.

She laughed “Close! It’s got three kinds of rum in it, some fancy-shmancy liquor called Galliano or whatever, vanilla syrup, pineapple chunks, and pineapple juice.”

You looked at her with some concern “Faye that’s a lot of alcohol for one drink!”

Faye just laughed “I’m also extremely Irish! I can handle it!”

Just then the lights go out and the MC came on stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Ghouls and goblins! The moment you’ve been waiting for has arrived! Please give a warm welcome to our very own…Corroded Coffin!!!” The whole club erupted in cheers and applause as the members ran on stage and got into position. “Hey! Put the bottle down and get your ass up here, Munson!” barked the MC as he stumbled off stage, clearly inebriated.

There he was – the man who had a vice grip on your heart since 4th grade – Eddie ‘the Freak” Munson. Long gone was the buzz cut, braces, and chubby cheeks. He was a man now, a man in his element. He waved to the crowed and flashed his signature grin. All of the members of Corroded Coffin were dressed up like classic Universal monsters: Jeff was the Wolfman, Gareth was Frankenstein, and Kevin was the Mummy. Eddie, on the other hand, wasn’t dressed up like any particular monster. It looks more like he made his normal wardrobe spookier. He had on black ripped jeans that had bat wings along the waist, a vintage blood red tee with Alice Cooper’s severed head on the front, black Vans, and his trademark battle vest layered over a black leather jacket. Eddie was also wearing makeup; his eyes lined with black eyeliner and some black and red eye shadow for dramatic effect. You don’t remember if he’s ever worn makeup before, but good God did he make it look good! If anything it made him twenty times hotter. His warm brown eyes looked darker, sultrier and almost evil, his fangs glistening in the stage lights.

“Fangs…?”

BWANG!

A soon as the first cord was hit you were up and out if your seat, the riffs slammed into your chest like a freight train. He was playing Metallica’s Master of Puppets. You almost forgot how great Corroded Coffin was live. You remembered the day Eddie gave you Coffin’s first demo, how excited he was for you to hear it. You remembered how pissed Dustin was that you got a copy before he did. Eddie laughed at him gave the young DM a copy before, as Ed put it, “creamed his pants.” When Eddie was on the run you played it almost every day because of how much you missed his voice. But he’s here now, standing on stage singing his heart out and blasting away on his most prized possession – his electric guitar “Princess.” It was silly but sometimes you got jealous of that stupid thing. You wanted Eddie to look at you like he looked at that guitar, hold onto you for dear life like the guitar. You constantly fantasized how those rough fingers of his felt on your skin…in your heat…

Faye was watching you watching Eddie. “Jesus fuck are you whipped y/n…” She waved her hand in front of your face trying to see if you’re even blinking. She understood your crush on him. You’ve always asked Faye how she didn’t possibly feel anything for the charming metal head. If anything it made more sense for Faye and Eddie to be an item. Faye was always the more outgoing one of the two of you and the chemistry between her and Eddie seemed to be there. But she always said it would be “too much chaos” for either of them to handle. Faye also said it would be like dating her twin. She only ever had eyes for Steve Herrington: All looks, no brains, big heart, but eager to learn, and willing to please. But Faye was getting tired of waiting for you to make your move. It looks like it was time for Faye Burgun to play Cupid. She had taken a break from watching you to slam back the last of her drink, and the next thing she knew you were gone.

Panicked, Faye scrambled out of the booth and started looking for you. It didn’t take long for her to find you. You were standing as close to the stage as you could without entering the mosh pit.

“How the hell did you get past those guys?” Faye mumbled to herself. She managed to squeeze past a particularly rowdy group of fans and put a hand on your shoulder. It looked like you were in a trance; just starting at Eddie Munson. Were you even breathing?!

“You can stop drooling now, Vampira…”

You broke out of your trance and blew a raspberry at the red-headed fairy “Shut up!”

Faye laughed but quickly stopped and forced you to look back at the stage. “Oh shit Y/n look he’s taking his jacket off!”

Sure enough, the fluffy-haired Munson had peeled his battle vest/leather jacket combo of. His freckled skin slick with sweat and the shirt he had on lifted a little to reveal his happy trail.

Fuck! You could feel yourself start to drool. He separated the two and tossed his beloved battle vest into the crowd while tying the leather jacket around his waist.

“Shit shit shit shit shit shit!”

Hands were flying everywhere trying to catch the singer’s vest and a small fight was on the verge of breaking out. People were falling over themselves to get that damn vest. But the vest, almost like magic, fell right into your outstretched hands.

You blinked a few times, trying to process what happened, and when it hit you that you had Eddie’s vest in your hands you lost it. You were on cloud nine and Faye was shaking your shoulder and screaming.

“Holy shit y/n that was THE BEST catch I’ve ever seen!” She saw a hand try to go for your prize. Faye whipped around and put the guy’s hand into a vice grip, and probably smacking him in the face with her wings. “Back off smeg-head, the vest is hers!” she snapped at guy wearing only a Swamp Thing mask and cargo shorts. The two started arguing, but you were too distracted.

Eddie’s eyes met yours and the whole world seemed to stop. He recognized you! With the biggest smile he can muster he mouthed your name before looking back at someone and pointing at you and the angry Faye. He said something to them then turned back to shoot you a wink and a grin before getting back to the show. You could feel yourself getting hotter.

He’s still got it.

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fanfic-scribbles · 3 years ago

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Crash Pad

Fandom: MCU Captain America/Avengers

Summary: You’re just minding your own business when the Winter Soldier crashes into your life. Literally.

Quick facts: Romance – established past Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes leading into Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes/Reader – Nondescript Reader

Warnings: Fluff, slight mention of blood

Words: 7801

A/N: I started writing this a few months ago and almost finished when my life got fairly shook up. Still, I’m quite proud of being able to eke out an ending. For anybody who only cares about this story, feel free to skip this note, but for anybody following my other stuff: writing is going to be slow for the time being. My mom died and things are pretty topsy-turvy right now. Writing is still a comfort, but head to hands isn’t working the same right now. Thanks for your patience; I hope this is a pleasant read for you in the mean time <3

You’re getting ready for bed and have just turned off the living room light when you hear a clatter on the fire escape. You haven’t gotten over to shut the window yet and you wince at the thought of maybe coming face to face with a giant rat, or a raccoon, although you haven’t yet seen a raccoon and you’re pretty sure they don’t live in the city but it would probably be better than a rat the size of a raccoon–

What you get is much, much worse as a fully grown man falls through the curtains, knocks over a side table and potted plant, and crashes onto your living room floor with a wheezed (but emphatic), “God damn it!”

You freeze, unsure of whether to run or yell or maybe both. However the man flounders on the floor, unable to otherwise move much as he holds his side and– is that blood on your floor?

“Are you okay?” you ask despite everything.

He yanks his head back to look at you and grimaces. “Fuck, I–” He tries to get up, slips in what you are almost positive is blood, and slumps over with a little sigh and a handful of muttered curses that might be in another language. “I am really sorry about this,” he says lowly, like he's embarrassed to be bleeding out in a stranger’s living room. Then he shifts a little more and moonlight gleams on his arm. His very…shiny…completely metal arm, and you find a whole new way to be concerned.

You should have known the reasonable rent was a goddamn trap.

You take a few steps back, barely avoid hitting the counter, and flick the light back on without taking your eyes away from the man on your floor. He squints at the brightness and shows you a face that is, both fortunately and unfortunately, familiar. Fortunately because Captain America and the Avengers somehow got him pardoned for potential war crimes and treason even without him being present for any of that circus of a trial. Unfortunately because…war crimes. And treason. And that is definitely blood.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out and looks a little woozy. “There were sheets– I thought the building was empty.”

“The sheeting is for the building right next to us,” you say and sigh. “I’m going to guess you are not in favor of me calling an ambulance?”

He just blinks at you a few times. Maybe he is secretly a raccoon.

“Please don’t,” he says, some life returning to his eyes, and he looks you up and down. The rubber duck pajamas must put him at ease because, while he is still tensely holding his midsection, his shoulders relax a little. “I’m so–”

“Sorry, yes, I know.” You point at the bathroom. “I’m going to get the first aid kit and hopefully I won’t have to explain to the coroner’s office why Captain America’s boo bled out on my floor.”

You’re just opening up the cupboard that hopefully contains at least some band-aids when he calls out, “What the hell is a ‘boo?’”

Two old t-shirts, one and a half rolls of dusty gauze, and his own homemade stitch kit later, the man is finally all patched up. “How are you not passing out from blood loss?” you ask, eyeing the mess on the nice hardwood that has definitely just lost you your deposit. But there’s no corpse to deal with, so at least things aren’t as bad as they could be.

“I’m built pretty hardy.” He sits up a little more and groans. Before you can beg him not to split his side again, he extends his hand. “James Barnes. But you can call me Bucky.”

You shake his hand (gently) and tell him your name. “Do you let everybody call you Bucky, or just the people whose floor you bleed all over?” Something moving catches your eye and you sigh at the sight of your inexpensive (but still nice) curtains blowing slightly, showing off their new stains. “Floor and drapes…”

“I’ll clean it,” he says. “I can get blood out of anything.” He winces. “I…that sounds worse than it is.”

“I imagine getting blood out of anything is a good skill for an international spy-assassin to have,” you say.

Bucky scowls. And, you think, blushes a little, though how he has enough blood to do that you don’t know. You look at the spot again. It looks big to you but maybe you’re making a fuss over nothing. No, wait, there’s still dried blood on your floor. You’re allowed a fuss. “So you know who I am.”

“Your boy made it hard to miss,” you say.

He grumbles to himself, then says, “He’s always such a drama queen. I didn’t need to be pardoned.”

“Really,” you say and look at the bloodied handkerchief wrapped around a bullet he dug out of himself. “Looks like at least one other person disagrees with you.”

“This was Steve’s fight, not mine.” He huffs. “Story of my goddamn lif–”

He suddenly falls back and you reach out instinctively to catch him. He recovers quickly, wild-eyed and stiff and you scoot back just in case. He takes a few deep breaths and seems to force himself calm. It doesn’t look very effective and you’re honestly starting to worry. “You really–”

“I did not faint,” he snaps and maybe he has more blood than you thought, or maybe absolutely all of it has come to collect in his face.

“I was going to say you really need a hospital,” you say. “But yeah, you did.”

He grumbles under his breath and then, as if predicting your protests, stands up quickly enough to waver. Serves him right, you think, but when he scowls at you, you wonder if maybe he’s psychic too. “Try not to pass out on your way home,” you say, because if he wants to leave there’s really nothing you can do to stop him.

“Funny,” he says. He clears his throat and adds, much more sincerely, “Thanks.”

For the t-shirts, for the first aid kit, for not calling the cops, for not calling the Avengers so Captain America can hone in on him like a cartoon hound, for not bitching about the floor too much– the list is many and varied and so you give him a simple nod and hope you can get even a little bit of sleep tonight because work tomorrow is going to be hell without it.

He goes back to the window and before you can point out you have a perfectly good door, Bucky slips out onto the fire escape again. You shrug to yourself and go over to firmly flip the lock. You’ve done your part– in the event he slips and hits his head, someone else can be the good Samaritan. You’re going to bed and tomorrow this is going to feel like a weird dream, if there is even a single good deity in existence.

You’re not sure if it’s proof of or a mark against the existence of said single good deity when Bucky shows back up in your fire escape the next evening and taps politely against your open window before he lets himself back in, scooting your new plant just an inch out of the way.

“I have a door,” is the first thing that comes out of your mouth.

“Your hallway’s too well lit,” he says, much more hale and hearty and obviously not suffering major blood loss. His hair even looks like he just got out of the shower, all soft and shiny and bouncing a bit as he twists his upper body to start pulling stuff out of a backpack hanging off one shoulder. “I got stuff to clean the floor, and a replacement first aid kit. You outta keep it better stocked, so I got you one of the good ones.”

“O…kay,” you say, for lack of anything better. There’s a hysterical laugh building up in the back of your throat as the Winter Soldier brings out some rags and a cleaning solution for your bloodstained hardwood floor, but you cough it out and say, “Thanks,” when the formerly-feared international assassin looks at you like you’re crazy before he gets on his hands and knees and starts scrubbing.

It’s not fair no one would believe you. You’re not quite sure this isn’t an elaborate daydream, but then, you like to think you’d imagine something more fun than this. You clear your throat. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No thanks,” he grunts, glaring at the floor and rubbing at the stain like it has offended him personally. It’s a little worrisome when he goes at it hard enough to maybe rub a hole right through the floor– you’d rather deal with the stain– but there’s a hard edge to his eyes that make you think maybe it’s a good idea for him to work it out in a productive, non-violent way. And if it turns violent, hopefully he has some home repair skills to make up for it.

You busy yourself with making tea, using the nice pot and the nice cups you never get to break out, and by the time it’s almost done steeping Bucky isn’t rubbing quite so hard and, in fact, seems to have made the stain do a disappearing act.

“Nice,” you say. “You want some tea? I made plenty.”

He lifts his head and tilts it as he squints at you, like he’s still not sure of you. But he shrugs, says, “Sure,” and stands up, rolling his shoulders. He looks down at the floor and nods appreciatively before coming to sit on the other side of the counter. “It’s almost gone; just a little bit more and it’ll be like I was never here.”

That last part could have been a decent joke, but he said it so seriously you just clear your throat. “Thanks,” you say and start pouring. “My landlord is going to have to find some other excuse to try and keep my security deposit.”

Bucky snorts but otherwise makes no noise. At first it’s nice, if a bit awkward, as you don’t really feel the need to fill the silence, but it becomes clear by the way Bucky glares at the plant sitting in front of him on the counter that something is eating at him. You’re not sure whether or not to pry, but it seems polite to at least ask, “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he grunts and leans even lower to the surface of the counter.

You stare at him. “I appreciate what you did, but you didn’t have to come back,” you say gently, because a pissed-off former-assassin isn’t really a problem you want to have on your hands. “I’m not awful enough to actually expect you to clean up your own blood the day after you nearly bled to death.”

“What?” He blinks and then scowls and shakes his head. “No, it’s not that; it’s…” He picks up his cup and downs all of it, despite the fact that it was still steaming. Tentatively you pour him another cup, to which he says, “thanks,” before loading it with sugar again. “It’s good,” he says and this time he sips it.

“It’s one of my favorites. Very soothing,” you say. “Normally.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I wish anything was soothing. You know Steve almost ran into a goddamn minefield today?”

You didn’t know that, you don’t think anything the Avengers do is any of your business, really, and where does one even find a minefield in New York City– you don’t say any of that, but you apparently don’t need to, because Bucky is off like a shot saying more words than you’d have thought possible for him. All of it is ranting about what a reckless dumbass Captain America is, and a Brooklyn accent increasingly comes through, egged into existence by sheer aggravation. You sit and listen, transfixed not so much by the details (they’re too fleeting and sparse) but by how annoyed Bucky is with Captain Amer- with “Steve goddamn pain in the ass Rogers” and you’re never going to be able to see him again without snickering.

Bucky sighs heavily and rests his chin on the table. He looks very tired, all of a sudden. Maybe a relaxing tea and enthusiastic rant wasn’t the best combination. Then again, he also looks less tense, so perhaps it’s fine. “Why don’t you stop for the night and go get some sleep,” you say and take away his cup. “You can finish up tomorrow.”

He squints at you, squints back at the floor (that you honestly can’t tell is any different from the rest), and looks back at you. “You don’t mind?”

“Not at all,” you say and stack the cups. “When you come back refreshed you can tell me why Steve Rogers can never walk past that animal shelter without ducking his head in shame.”

Bucky’s smile is lopsided and he shakes his head. “Maybe,” he admits and hops off the chair. “I’ll just…leave the stuff here then, if that’s okay?”

You nod and he quickly picks up and puts the supplies in the empty bottom space of your side table. He goes for the window.

“I have a-!”

And he’s gone. You roll your eyes. If Steve Rogers really is as much of an asshole as Bucky says he is, then those two deserve each other.

For all that the Captain America mythos has been debunked for you, you’re still brought up short when you suddenly encounter Steve Rogers the next night.

On your fire escape.

He knocks his head against the railing in his scramble to simultaneously get up and face you, curses, and lifts his hands defensively. “I can explain.”

You rub your face with both hands. They definitely deserve each other. “I doubt that,” you mutter and sigh heavily. Thank goodness there haven’t been any actual fires; you don’t know how you’d get out with all these buff superheroes hanging around outside your window. “Have you lost something?”

Captain America looks at the ground for a moment, and then flashes you a smile. “…Yes?”

God, he is a smartass. “Do you want to come inside or do you want to risk some Nosy Nancy from the building across the street seeing a big shadow and calling the cops?”

That would never happen, but he slips inside almost immediately and then there he is, in all his uniformed, shield-holding glory. It’s too weird to think about, and you step back to give him (and you) space while you close the curtains. “Thank you,” he says politely and looks around. “Your apartment is lovely; it’s very…green.”

You’re not sure why he hesitates, until you see him looking at your yellowing majesty palm. “He’s coming back,” you say and go to adjust the plant for lack of anything else your nervous hands can do. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No thank you,” he says and stands with his feet shoulder wide and his hands clasped down in front of him. It is perhaps the least comforting thing he can do and for one ridiculous moment you wish Bucky was here to be in between you. You wish the Winter Soldier was here. To protect you. From Captain America.

You clear your throat. “So,” you say and grab yourself something. “Do you lurk outside everyone’s apartment at some point, or am I just special?”

For all his military posturing, Captain America squirms like a schoolboy. “I swear I wasn’t– okay, I guess I was but not intentionally? I was…looking. For something.”

“Something you dropped?” you ask him.

“A person,” he says, staring elsewhere. For a moment you have a paranoid thought he’s staring at the space where Bucky had fallen in that night, but no, he’s just looking at the window. At least you remembered to change the curtains.

“Pretty sure you can see one of those without squinting into the grates,” you say.

“He might have passed through on his way somewhere else,” Captain America says. “Have you seen a man outside?”

“Other than you?” you ask. He blushes even harder than Bucky does– and think of the devil, you have a moment where you’re not sure what you should say, but quickly come to realize that whatever is going on between the two of them, you do not want to get stuck in the middle.

You’re prepared to lie your ass off, but he apparently takes your response as a rebuke. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to make you feel unsafe.”

“It’s fine,” you say. Despite his previous answer, you lean into the fridge to get him a bottle of water. “I’m pretty sure Captain America isn’t going to murder me. And if you decided you wanted to, well, there’s nothing I could really do about it.”

He chokes on the drink he’s just taken. You instinctively lean in so you can slam his back but after a couple of hits he covers his mouth and waves you off. “Sorry, sorry,” he says and grabs a nearby dishcloth to wipe up what he just spit on the counter. “That was just…really dark.”

“I guess it’s a good thing I’m not the one lurking on fire escapes,” you say.

He rolls his eyes. The nerve. You laugh and he actually grins. Asshole. His smile softens though and he says, “I’m really–”

“Sorry,” you finish for him.

“Am I that predictable already?”

You shrug. You want to tell him it’s because he and Bucky seem very much alike in that respect. You want to but…you don’t. Whatever Bucky’s problem is, he seems to want to deal with it himself, and it’s not your place to get in between them and start snitching. “You seem the type. Don’t worry about it so much. You…look pretty worried. I’m not going to hold it against you.”

“Thank you.” His lips turn into a sad sort-of smile and he takes a slower drink. “I guess I am pretty worried. This man I’m looking for, he’s…important to me, and he’s been through a lot, and I just want to know he’s okay.”

You stare at him. He looks down. And looks down. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to babble like that,” he says and glances at you with a strained smile. “I don’t normally do that.”

“Hm.” You stare at him for several seconds and notice he is blinking an awful lot. “You look exhausted.”

“I’m a little tired,” he says, quietly, and some of the posturing seeps out of him and he lets himself slump a little more. He suddenly shakes his head and sits up straight again. “Thanks again for…” He looks around and settles for shaking his water bottle.

You hold back a laugh. “Sure. I uh…do you need me to call you a cab?”

He shakes his head firmly and, to his credit, he’s pretty excellent at pretending to be okay. You almost believe him. “I can get home all right.”

“Well, please make sure you do. I can think of a lot of people who’d be sad to think of you collapsing on the way home because you wore yourself down to the bone,” you say. “And from how you seem to worry about your friend, I bet you can think of at least one.”

He blinks, like he’s surprised, but a smile curls onto his face, warm and true. “Good night,” he says, and because you’re so nice, you don’t stop him when he goes back out the window. At this point, it’s beginning to feel like a lost cause.

“What did you say to him?”

“I know you don’t like the door,” you say, not even turning away from the plant you’re watering. Any time you put down the canister you forget where you left off and you are not going to kill these plants by overwatering. Not again. “But maybe you could at least tap on the window when you decide you’re going to enter my apartment.”

“Why do you leave your window open?” Bucky huffs. You can hear him sit at the counter behind you. “You know what kind of creeps can take advantage of that?”

You finish watering the last plant and turn to stare at him. “I’m starting to get an idea.”

Bucky scowls. “I’m not a creep,” he mutters.

“Polite society encourages doorways instead of windows,” you say. “It’s okay. Captain America, apparently, is also a creep.”

Bucky sits up straighter. “What did he say?”

“Not much,” you say. “He was squatting on the fire escape like he could make you spontaneously materialize. I invited him in for an explanation and after a little while he went on his way.”

“After a little while,” Bucky repeats and squints at you suspiciously.

You shrug. “He likes to vent to complete strangers, apparently. But I didn’t tell him anything about you, it doesn’t seem fair to tell you anything about him. If you want to know, I get the feeling you can go ask him.”

Bucky rolls his eyes but he stands up and stretches. “You said I bled on the drapes?”

“I already scrubbed that out, if you can finish the floor,” you say and go for the tea pot. “Do you like green tea?”

“As long as you do it right,” he says and starts scrubbing again. “I hate it all bitter.”

You go for the good matcha and start preparing it while he works out his frustrations on your floor. You glance at him a couple of times but he seems fully focused on his task, until you finish the tea and call him back to the bar.

“Steve Rogers is a pain in the ass and don’t let anyone tell you different,” he grumbles, but it’s soft and there’s a troubled look on his face as he takes his cup.

“Do you miss him?” you ask and blow gently across your drink.

Bucky shifts uncomfortably. Just as you're about to apologize for overstepping, though, he speaks. “It’s hard to go back when you’ve done the shit I have, you know?”

No. You have absolutely no idea what it’s like to live as a free man after decades of literal objectification and being used as a murder weapon for fascists. But it doesn’t seem very helpful to say that, so instead you say, gently, “I can’t even imagine.”

Bucky bobs his head and takes another sip of his drink. You’re delighted he seems to be drinking it fairly quickly, but also a little dismayed because a good matcha latte takes a decent amount of work and it’ll take a little time if he wants another cup. “I want to go back but I can’t yet. I wish he wouldn’t be so goddamn stubborn about it is all. Just because he thinks I didn’t do anything wrong doesn’t make it true.”

You nod, like any of this makes any goddamn sense to you. But maybe– maybe it doesn’t have to. Maybe Bucky’s saying all this because you’re an outside entity with no personal stake in, or knowledge of, what counts as treason, or what’s needed to lack culpability, or what it means to be an absent friend.

He rambles, a little bit, and though about half the words are proper nouns you don’t recognize, you nod along, and when he finishes his latte you make him another one, and when he leaves, you don’t mention the door. Even though you want to.

You’ve actually forgotten how nice it is to have someone come through the door. Case in point–

“Um, I hope this is all right,” Steve Rogers, dressed in casual civilian fare and holding a small pot of flowers, says as you can do nothing but stare at him. “I just wanted to stop by and thank you again for being so understanding. May I…come in?”

That snaps you out of your funk and you quickly stand aside. “Of course; sorry, I just…wasn’t expecting you.”

“I was just going to leave the plant with a note if you weren't here, but I’m glad you were,” Captain Rogers says and walks in, and sets the pot down on the counter.

You walk over to the fridge. “Would you like something to–” As you turn to finish the question you see him glance furtively at the window. Ah, of course. He looks down guiltily and you can’t help but roll your eyes and laugh. Well, he did come through the correct entrance and brought some pretty flowers. “All right, you did knock on the door this time; go sniff around the fire escape all you want.”

“I’m just checking something I forgot,” he says quickly and goes to the window. He’s only outside long enough for you to brew some tea and he comes back in just as you’re pouring his cup. It isn’t until he’s about to take a sip, however, that he says, “Oh– I know it looks bad, but Bucky– sorry, James Barnes– I swear he isn’t dangerous.”

“I know. I saw some of the trial stuff,” you lie. Well, you did see some of it, but it wasn’t until you heard Bucky mutter “Martha Stewart was right,” while fussing at some of the blood on his shirt that you felt safer. Strange as it is to think.

Steve relaxes his shoulders like some of the weight is off of them. “You have no idea how good that is to hear. You wouldn’t believe some of the things people say to me. I can’t really punch people anymore because I’m so much stronger now but it’s so tempting sometimes. At least when it’s online I can mime punching them.”

His annoyed tone allows you to laugh a little. “Maybe imagine the block button is a punch in the face?” you suggest.

He grins. “My friend Clint suggested printing out the most irritating comments and taping them to a punching bag. It didn’t really work but the thought was nice. The block button as a punch to the face though…”

The guy doesn’t really need more violence in his life, but he genuinely seems pleased with the idea, so you let it be. And when he starts ranting in detail about some of the comments he gets about Bucky, you make a new pot of tea– chamomile. For the both of you.

You don’t know how the flowers are dead already– it seems like Steve just brought them and they were so pretty you immediately looked up care instructions and followed them to the letter. Or so you thought. But now, only days later, you have a pot of dirt and withered petals.

And Bucky sulking at your counter.

“I told him I was fine,” he says petulantly.

You sigh and bring the pot over to the sink and think about what to do. “Did you tell him in person?”

“In a letter. He knew it was from me.”

The soil looks nice, so you’ll dig out the remains and try to plant some replacement seeds. Maybe that was the problem– maybe the flowers were sick or something. “Well reading and seeing are two different things.”

“He knows I cover him in fights.”

You slowly look at Bucky. His oh-so intelligent response is to bristle like a cat and go, “What?”

You roll your eyes. “He’s desperate to see you, knows you’re near when he’s fighting, and you wonder why he’s “so goddamn reckless?’”

Bucky just glares. Yeah, these two morons absolutely deserve each other.

You hope Bucky figures it out sooner rather than later.

He doesn’t, but he keeps coming by, as does Steve, and you resign yourself to hosting two pining idiots who keep dancing around each other.

Bucky drinks anything you give him without complaint. However he drinks the lattes and almost anything green tea a little quicker, though he tries to hide his cup from you when he does. Whether he’s ashamed of going through them so fast or embarrassed you don’t know, but you start to give him bigger cups, and that seems to help.

The first time you give Steve a cup of apple pie spice, he gives you a severe glare– which he then completely undermines by liking the blend immensely.

“I swore the next person who offered me apple pie would get popped,” Steve says, an amusing mixture of half-bluster and half-shame as he sips from the classic teacup you hope not to regret handing him.

“Lucky for me it’s not actually apple pie,” you say. “Do people really make that joke?”

The eyeroll Steve gives that is 200% sass. “You have no idea,” he says, deadly serious, “–how funny people think they are.”

This becomes…oddly normal. Listening to Steve talk about anything that’s on his mind, giving Bucky new tea blends just to see how he reacts to them; your apartment is no longer just you and a bunch of greenery that seems to wilt more often than not. Everything seems warmer, and better– even your plants seem healthier. (For that, though, you suspect Bucky is giving them a special mixture of something after you catch a glance of him messing with one of the pots. You want to ask him what he’s doing, but you don’t want to admit that he’s better at taking care of them than you are.)

It’s so normal, that you feel the silence only after the first few nights without a visit. They don’t visit every night, but they visit often enough that you know they’re off somewhere even without them telling you. For a couple of weeks you try to pretend the quiet doesn’t bother you, but you check the fire escape twice every night, and then once more before you go to bed.

The next time you see Bucky is during one of these checks. There was no tapping, no noise to otherwise alert you, he’s just suddenly back, sitting next to the window, hunched over in black clothes nearly blending into the darkness and staring out at nothing in the night.

“What’s wrong?” you ask and crawl out to kneel next to him. “Are you hurt again?”

“No,” he mutters and continues to glare at some imaginary point in the distance. “Steve was, though.”

It’s a little harder to swallow. “Is he going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky mumbles and buries his mouth further against his arms. “He’s fine, strutting around the hospital like a- like a- …” He huffs and sits back to wave his arms before he curls back in on himself. “But it was close, and he’s an asshole.”

“Mm,” you say. “Chamomile mint?”

He sighs heavily but he gets to his feet and starts to enter, only to stop and hold open the curtains for you.

“Thank you sir,” you say with only a hint of sarcasm and go on ahead to get the tea started. Bucky snorts but doesn’t say anything and you use the time the water needs to heat up to take care of some of your plants.

“Stop it.”

The snap comes so fast from Bucky you immediately stop what you’re doing. He doesn’t look as angry as he sounded, but he’s frowning pretty hard. “You're overwatering that one; jade plants are succulents. You don’t need to drown it.”

You look at the plant and set the watering can down. “Oh.” You knew that. You think. You’re just nervous. “Did you see him? In the hospital?”

“Briefly. I didn’t talk to him; just made sure he was all right,” Bucky says. “And he is. I wouldn’t leave him if he wasn’t.”

That does assuage some of your concerns. Steve is nice. You want him to be okay. And Bucky is– also nice, but god, they’re both so fucking frustrating. “You couldn’t have just–”

“Don’t start with–”

“I’m just saying–”

“And I’m telling you not to say–”

“I pay the rent for all that you sublet my fire escape; I’ll say what I want,” you manage to finish to Bucky’s consternation. You lift your head proudly and he frowns to one side. And then he…smirks. You’re not sure you like that.

“Crappiest space in the city,” he says and sits up. “You could at least get a chair.”

You roll your eyes and dole out the tea, fixing it the way Bucky likes. No sugar for this one, but plenty of honey. “If I ever have to leave for an actual fire, I’ll be in enough trouble trying to get around you.”

“Nah. I’d carry you out,” Bucky says and lifts his cup in a silent ‘cheers.’ He takes a sip and the sigh sounds content, so you assume you did it right. For a few moments a comfortable silence settles between the two of you as you sip warm drinks surrounded by greenery (that is mostly green) and life goes on in faint sounds outside the confines of your home.

Bucky sets his empty cup down with a sigh. “Do you think, if I show up to throttle him, that he’ll actually start watching his own fucking back?”

You give that some serious thought. “Will you give him time to moon at you first?”

Bucky sighs with disgust and flumps back onto the counter. “This is stupid. This all feels so stupid.”

You open your mouth because you do have a lot of opinions about honest communication and using innocent civilian apartments to dance around each other, but Bucky shoots you a glare to let you know that a, he knows, and b, he doesn’t appreciate it. You roll your eyes and go back to drinking your tea. It is a very good blend, and you’re not going to let it go unappreciated because two early 20th century boys can’t get their shit together.

Not that you’re complaining, really– you’re starting to feel like less of a disaster by comparison. Or maybe letting two strange men into your apartment makes you just as bad by default. You rub the bridge of your nose. Yeah, no one is getting out of this looking sane. You feel like that should bother you more than it does, but it’s just a fleeting thought before you go back to worrying about Steve and pouring Bucky’s cup back to full.

The next night when someone knocks on your door, you’re only mildly surprised to see Steve on the other side. And most of that surprise is because you can see fading bruises on his face, and also because he is holding a fairly big potted plant with tall green and yellow-edged leaves.

“Hi,” he says and lifts the pot slightly. “I got you a present.”

“Uh, wow; thanks?” you say and quickly step back to let him in, momentarily forgetting he can probably carry it around with ease. Steve places the plant on the floor near the end of your couch, where it actually looks fairly nice. He gestures at it proudly. “It’s a snake plant. The man at the nursery said it’s very hard to kill.”

“You’re not funny,” you say but you look at it appreciatively. It is nice, and you could do with ‘hard to kill’. Speaking of– “Should you be up? You look like you should be in a hospital.”

He shrugs and his face goes neutral. “I��m healing well enough that there’s nothing a hospital could do for me. And I felt so…restless.”

You nod. “Want some tea?”

“Please. I really like what you make,” he says and immediately takes a seat at the counter. Oddly enough, it’s not the one Bucky always takes. You don’t realize you squint at the space for too long until Steve looks curious and asks, “Is everything okay?”

You squint at the countertop. “Yeah, just…trying to figure out if that’s a stain or a spot.”

Thankfully there is a spot of spilled something and you quickly grab a towel and wipe it away. You think it’s a pretty good save, but Steve looks at you with a raised brow, like he’s figured something out. You freeze. “What?” What are you going to say? How is he going to react? What will you–

“Was that a coffee ring?”

You blink a few times, and then roll your eyes as your chest practically deflates. He smiles and winks. “I can’t believe you.”

“I am a layered human being who can drink many things,” you say defensively. “And if you want coffee you’ll have to ask another time. I’m not giving you anything with caffeine in it when you look like you got hit by a truck.”

“Train,” he corrects absently. “It barely clipped me.”

You sigh and go for the sleepy blend. One of you is going to have to bow out of this conversation due to exhaustion and at this point you don’t care if it’s you. However it might truly come in handy as Steve keeps looking out the window and shaking his foot. You set the cup in front of him and before you can ask what’s wrong, he takes the cup in both hands and blurts out, “I think I saw him.”

You look at the window and squint. “Seriously?”

“Not here.” Steve rolls his eyes. Like you’re the crazy one. He blows gently across the surface of the liquid and says, “Though it’s strange you’d think I saw Bucky out of your window.”

“Isn't that why you started showing up here in the first place? I distinctly remember someone with a big red, white, and blue shield lurking on my fire escape.”

“Oh, right,” he admits sheepishly, hunched over his cup. His eyes glimmer with mischief as he looks up at you through long lashes and asks, “Did I ever apologize to you for that?”

You’re brought up short by the amount of boyish charm this giant walking wall of muscle manages to pack into that look and you have to find your tongue to say, “I– y-yeah…”

Steve chuckles to himself and you give yourself a mental slap on the face. “Troll,” you mutter and sip from your mug. The liquid is piping hot and burns your tongue, giving you an excuse to grimace when Steve flashes you a beautiful smile.

You’re in trouble.

Not physically, not immediately, and perhaps someone on the outside might say you’re being dramatic about it, but they wouldn’t know shit about the situation. They wouldn’t know about how your hands felt as they slid over Steve’s when he handed you a new small pot of flowers; they wouldn’t know about the feeling of serenity that settled over you when Bucky abandoned some of his oh so careful control and rested his head on your shoulder for four long seconds; they wouldn’t know how it feels like you’re missing something until someone shows up at your door or taps at your window.

You’re falling in love with two people who have always been, and still are, desperately in love with each other.

Isn’t that just your luck.

In the end, Bucky takes your advice more to heart than you ever expected he would– you and Steve are quietly enjoying each others’ company, with you standing in the kitchen and Steve sitting at the counter as per usual, when the curtains move dramatically for Bucky to slip in, which makes Steve whirl around, and your hands jerk so hard from all the sudden surprise that your cup slips out and crashes to the floor.

“Shi-” You forget to watch your step and immediately catch a jagged shard that embeds itself right under the ball of your foot. “Ow, fuck!”

Your name is said in different voices but very similar tones of alarm and you suddenly find yourself gathered into Bucky’s arms, bridal style, and he carries you over to the couch. “Wh-” You swallow at the close proximity to Bucky’s chest and the way he holds you so effortlessly but so securely. “I’m fine; it’s just a little–”

Bucky sits down on the couch and doesn’t move you, which means you are basically sitting cross-wise in his lap. This is not something you need after your recent revelation, and it doesn’t get any easier when Steve comes back with the heavy duty first aid kit Bucky got you and gingerly takes your foot to examine the injury. His sympathetic look towards you gives you the warning you need to brace yourself before he pulls the shard out. It doesn’t hurt too terribly and he’s almost tender as he cleans your foot.

“Look at us, matching blood and all,” Bucky says lightly.

“It’s my floor I’ll bleed on it if I want,” you grumble, but you’re too distracted by how focused Steve is on fixing you up. “You…seem to be taking this well.”

“I knew he had been here since the first time I came,” Steve admits as he rolls the gauze around your foot. “There was a bloodstain on your floor still.”

“Seriously?” You had thought Bucky was being overdramatic about the supposed stain and humored him, but it…makes sense. Why else would he come back the next night. Why else would Steve continue to come by. And because Steve had kept coming, Bucky had kept coming, and…they won’t need to come back anymore, will they? They now have what they’ve wanted. Each other.

Someone says your name and you force yourself back to neutral as much as you possibly can. Steve looks curious though and Bucky says, “What’s with that look?”

“There’s no look,” you say. “And if there is, it’s only because you two have devised the weirdest meet-cute ever– decades after you actually met.”

“Hm.” Bucky continues to stare at you, but doesn’t say anything else.

They come back. And they both use the door.

You don’t know what you’re more shocked by– that Bucky and Steve, having come back to each other, are still coming around to you, or that Bucky is actually walking through the designated threshold. You don’t have a lot of time to think about it though because the place is…a mess.

“What happened here?” Steve asks as Bucky’s shoulders go up to his ears and he looks around the place like he’s going to find something unpleasant.

“It’s not that bad,” you say and glance around. You’ve cleaned out a few of the pots already and stacked them away in the closet, but some of the plants are still…slightly alive, for a little while. A couple are even doing fairly well– one of which being the snake plant Steve got you.

“What happened to the jungle?” Bucky asks, looking around shrewdly. You don’t like the sound of that. It feels so…probing, and raises your hackles. Why should he care?

“I wasn’t keeping them alive for very long.” You flick a yellowing leaf and keep your tone light. “I just got tired of it. What are…what are you doing here?”

You don’t look at Steve, but he clears his throat and his tone is similar to Bucky’s when he asks, “Is now a bad time?”

“For what?” You square your shoulders and face them. Like an adult. Like an adult who had two other adults just sort of crash into their life one day and start sharing space until such time as the two window-crashers decided they…didn’t need to come around anymore. “I’m happy you both found each other. You didn’t have to come back.”

Steve looks…well, he looks hurt. You don’t know any other way to describe it; it doesn’t show in his face so much as in his eyes, in the feeling you get watching the line of his shoulders lower. But before he can say anything, before you can explain yourself, Bucky speaks up.

“It isn’t like that,” he says.

You look down. It’s easier than looking at a man who feels rejected, and a man who has you completely pegged.

“What?” Steve asks.

“It’s okay,” you say, in perhaps the biggest bald-faced lie you’ve ever told.

“That’s not– no,” Bucky insists and lifts your chin. His fingers are warm and gentle and linger too long.

You pull back from his touch before you can embarrass yourself further. “You guys were literally circling each other.”

“Please.” Bucky rolls his eyes. “I don’t need to keep coming back here to be near Steve. I know where he lives.”

“And I leave my window unlocked,” Steve says. He aims a cheeky grin at Bucky and adds, “Guess I should have left it open though.”

“Shut up,” Bucky tells him but looks at you and says, “Point is: we weren't using you.”

Steve blinks. “Oh– no, of course not!”

“It’s all right,” you say, trying as hard as you can to assuage their discomfort even though you can’t put much into it. Even though you did very much want this meeting to happen, somehow you don’t feel very ‘all right.’

“No,” Bucky says and takes your hand in his. The flesh hand, which he runs up to the middle of your forearm. His touch is gentle and light, even when he grips. You can break away, but you don’t– you let him pull you in, close and closer, until there’s barely any room between you.

Steve crowds from the side and puts one arm behind Bucky, and one arm behind you. “If you only think we’re here because of each other, then it’s not all right,” he says softly.

“I know it isn’t– I know you weren't ‘using’ m–” You swallow hard. “And I know it’s not–”

They both swoop in for a kiss– for a kiss with you. Somehow they avoid bumping heads and the lip-lip-lip contact is barely there, with Steve at the corner and Bucky barely catching one side of your upper lip, but they're both there for a glorious moment that leaves you stunned.

“Oh…” you say, dumbly. You try to fight it, but a smile pulls at your lips. “Oh.”

“That good already, huh?” Steve asks quietly, slowly forming a small smile of his own.

You let out a little sigh that is immediately undermined by an uncontrollable laugh that swells from a bubble of relief at the base of your throat. “Bucky’s right, you are insufferable,” you say but you reach out to sweep your fingers in a gentle touch down Steve’s cheek and under his chin.

“You get used to it,” Bucky says.

You think about that. Even with how you’ve been, entertaining these two rotating planets over the last however many weeks or months, this would be an entirely new normal.

You think you can’t wait to get used to it.

#steve rogers x bucky barnes x reader #captain america fanfic #reader insert #stucky x reader #mcu reader insert

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akshstudios · 3 years ago

Text

The Lily Of Bangtan | Kim Namjoon

[ pairing ] rm × you (fem!reader)

Three: Kim Namjoon, Baek Nari And The Engagement Party

[ series ] [ matters of the heart in the mafia series ] this story is the first part of the matters of the heart in the mafia series.

[ previous ] [ masterlist ] [ next ]

[ genre ] mafia au × arranged marriage au × bestfriend's brother au × strangers to lovers au ( angst × fluff )

[ rating ] mature-rated

[ warning ] a wannabe steamy kiss scene. jealousy flared by insecurity. drinking. talking about death and deceased loved ones. swear words. calling others rude names.

[ author's forenote ] your name is baek nari. i've changed the name of the installments because I realised that having it named as series name: part one, part two and the like is a little lazy and counter-productive on my part and i've changed the names for all of the other installments too. I've listed the series masterlist above.

Three: Kim Namjoon, Baek Nari And The Engagement Party

[ chapter summary ] the engagement party and the preparations for the event itself.

"What do you think, Na?”

Madam Kim asks you as you examine yourself in the huge mirror set in front of you. You were in a showroom boutique, shopping for your engagement gown.

“It’s a little too—” The older lady looked at you expectantly, “much.” You finish, not knowing how to say the dress was flashy and not at all your style without hurting her feelings. The dress that you were wearing was her choice. It looked gorgeous when it was on the rack but when you wore it, you just seemed to have ruined it.

“Okay, what do you like and don’t like about it?” The sales assistant who had been appointed to help you, pries, “Do you like the color?”

“Yes, I like the color…” You take a breath, “But I don’t like anything else.”

“Do you have a specific style in mind?”

“I do, but I’m not sure if it’s.. appropriate for—” You say, shooting a glance at the lady standing behind you, listening closely.

“Oh honey, you are the Don’s daughter-in-law,” She assures you, giving a light chuckle, “If you want it, it’s appropriate,” She shrugs, “Now tell us, what were you thinking?”

“Jangmi and I were talking last night,” You start, smiling a little when Madam Kim rolls her eyes playfully. You and your best friend had spent the better part of yesterday and night looking at your options for a dress and you had some ideas.

“I was thinking something a little sexier,” You say, elaborating your ideas, “You know, maybe a thigh slit or a little more cleavage, or a figure hugging gown?” The sales assistant smiled, listening attentively as you described further about the kinds of dresses you’ve liked in the past and what you were comfortable wearing. When you finished, she grinned.

“I think I know the perfect dress for you,” She said and rushed away to get the dress. She drags out a filled rack of clothes to you, grinning excitedly. “These are your options,” She gestured to the rack, “You can take a look and see what you like,” She says, “But, I personally think this is what you are looking for.”

She pulls out a gorgeous gown with intricate detailing all over the bodice and skirt. Madam Kim lets out a tiny gasp at the beautiful piece of clothing and looks at you to watch your reaction. The gown was probably one of the more dramatic and fancier kinds of dresses you’ve seen.

“Can I try it on?” You ask tracing the material with your hand. The sales assistant nodded excitedly and quickly dragged you to change into the dress.

The fitting was expectedly little off, you might need to fix it to fit you right but the color looked beautiful against your skin. There was a thigh high slit and with the right fitting, the bodice would cinch in and the skirt would to show off your curves and your shoulders would be on display for the on-lookers. There was an overskirt which mimicked a ball-gown look and it only added to the gown’s grandeur.

It was a beautiful gown nevertheless, extravagant and subtly sexy.

“You look heavenly, dear.” Madam Kim said in awe, “Namu’s lucky to have you as his wife.”

You smile shyly, “Thank you,”

“We’ll take this one,” Madam Kim tells the excited staff, “Have it ready by next week and we’ll send someone over to pick it up.”

“Yes, ma'am.” She nods, “Would you like to look at the shoes we have?”

After getting your measurements taken and buying a few pairs of shoes to match your dress and a few other things, you and Madam Kim were out of the place.

“Where do you want to have lunch, sweetheart?” Madam Kim asks, when you are finally in the car with your purchases, “Is there something you are craving?”

“There’s a fusion place that serves amazing food,” You say, starting the car. You had requested to not get chauffeured on your shopping trip. You had picked her up in the morning and had driven her around the city. “Would you like to go there, ommo-nim?”

“Fusion place?”

“Yeah,” You nod, driving out of the parking lot, ignoring the cars that followed you. You had specifically requested to not get chauffeured, not without bodyguards, so you really did get what you asked for. “The chef trained in traditional Korean cuisine and now he serves them with a more modern, more western take. I enjoyed the food last time I ate there.”

“Do you eat there often?” She enquires and you indulge her in the conversation.

“Not very often,” You shake your head, “We take our foreign clients there. If they are adventurous, they enjoy more traditional flavours and if they are picky, something there usually satisfies them.”

Madam Kim nods in understanding, “Have Namu and you been talking?” She asks, taking a glance at you, “I know you haven’t really met again after the dinner, but I hope he at least has your number and that you are talking and getting to know—”

You keep quiet, your mind wondering at the last encounter you had with him; him pushing you against a wall, talking nonchalantly about taking you against it, his kisses and his ridiculous deep voice.

Even days after the incident, it still flared a sort of thirst within you. You had let your mind and hands wander away that night and let shame take over the next morning, but the thirst hadn’t vanished, merely subsided for a short while.

Madam Kim takes your silence as a no, and clicks her tongue in disappointment. “He hasn’t, has he?” She sighed, “I don’t get what is wrong with him?” She shakes her head, “I hope he is not hurting you with his actions, sweetheart. He’s just a shy boy,” You give an understanding nod, though you disagreed with what she was saying. The man wasn’t shy, not in the least. Your last interaction was evidence to that. He was just an asshole who wants to make sure you know what you are signing up for.

“Please take care of him, Nari. I know he isn’t a charming prince and his actions aren’t exactly swoonworthy, but he’s not a bad man.” Madam Kim tells you sincerely, “A little slow in the matters of heart, but he knows what’s expected of him and he will try his best to be the best husband for you—”

“I understand, ommo-nim.” You smile tightly, “I will try to be a good wife for him too.” You cut her off, as politely as you could, masking it with sincerity.

You didn’t want to have the conversation of him being a good husband to you. Being a husband was duty to him and you didn’t want him to be duty bound to you. You wanted him to do things for you, care for you, be with you because he loved you or at least because he felt something for you in his cold heart.

Madam Kim smiled at your words, but stayed silent from then on till you reached the restaurant. You wondered if she picked up on your discomfort at the subject or if she just felt heard and had gotten busy with her own thoughts. You had reached your destination, gotten a table at the open terrace that overlooked the city and had ordered for the food. It was then, Madam Kim picked up the conversation again.

“I get scared sometimes you know,” She said, making you perk up curiously. What could possibly scare Madam Kim, the strongest woman you know? “What would happen if we died suddenly? Joonhyung and I?” You blink confused at the sudden remark.

“Ommo-nim, I think you are worrying for no reason!” You laugh lightly, trying to ease the air. “I’m sure the two of you will live a long, healthy and lively life!”

“You can’t be so sure about that, Nari-yah,” She pats your cheek, “You never know with life and death, and with the kind of life we live, it wouldn’t be a surprise if we are killed.” She laughs, almost carelessly and cheerfully. You wonder if the carelessness was something she had grown accustomed to.

Living in constant fear for your and your loved ones’ lives must do something to you.

She had been married into Bangtan against her wish, decades ago from a perfectly law-abiding, poor family. Her family had a run-in with Bangtan and had been blackmailed into helping them commit crimes. Madam Kim, then twenty year old, had put up a fight and ultimately led to the goons getting captured by the police.

The goons were out within hours though, but the former Don found out about her and was impressed with her courage and skills in being able to put his son and his other men behind bars, in a country where the police were basically Bangtan’s uniformed goons.

He asked for her hand in marriage to his son and her parents accepted, because they had no choice. Madam and Don hated each other in the beginning apparently, so much that they didn’t consummate their marriage on the wedding night. It was blasphemy at that time and it had caused a whole issue for them.

Not many knew the intricate details of their early years of marriage but you knew the first few years were very hostile. Your father said if anyone saw them then, they’d never dream that they’d be this happy, in love and with two kids years down the line. They never pretended to even tolerate each other, until the Don brought home a new born baby girl, Saera.

The new born had apparently marked a new start or change in their relationship, while they didn’t have their own child yet, the Don had basically adopted the newborn when he picked her up. The newborn had brought them closer as a couple and eventually led to them falling in love, as hopelessly as they are now. They had Namjoon and Jangmi later of course, but Saera was their first child.

The Don and Madam’s love story was something that’s often told and repeated to all the young girls of Bangtan, so that they expect a mafia prince that’s chosen by the Don, to come and swoop them off their feet.

It was a fantasy of course, not everyone was lucky. You would be one of the unlucky ones. But it served its purpose well. It gave young women hope in the culture of arranged marriages, in the beautiful lie that everyone found love and in the sand-grain sized chance that you will find love in your partner even in the deepest ocean of hatred you held for them.

“Bangtan will go on of course,” She chuckles, “All of us could die and yet, Bangtan would remain strong. Everyone would be fine too.. but what about our kids?” You stayed quiet, knowing she had more to say. “Who will look after Kook-ie? Will he return to the dark place he was in when he lost his parents? How will Jimin and Tae feel about being orphaned again?” She continued, her eyes looking far away at the cityline. “Will Hoseok choose violence to remedy his sorrow? Will Yoongi grow more quiet and far apart from the others? Will Namu cry and wreck everything nice in his life? Will Jin be strong enough to hold everything together? Who will look after my darling Jangmi?” She laughs lightly, exhaling loudly. “Saera will do fine, I think.” She looks at you, eyes glassy. “Can you believe it? My most clingy child who refused to let go of my skirt for years into her teens is the one who barely needs me now..”

“Ommo-nim, you know that’s not how it is.” You try to console her.

But it didn’t seem like Madam Kim was listening. “Saera doesn’t need me when I’m alive, forget after my death.”

“Unnie loves you and Abeo-ji.” You state firmly. You knew she did, just as much she was loved by them. “She’s just.. angry and… hurt. Not only at you, but at everything. Life hasn’t been fair to her and she’s just trying to navigate through it quietly.”

“I know she’s hurt and angry at the world and I hope she’s angry at us too.. We failed her,” Madam Kim replies, “Not only as parents but as the Don and Madam.”

“Ommo-nim, it’s not your fault.” You are firm as you hold her hand across the table. “You couldn’t have stopped him. We know Youngho oppa was headstrong and he did what he did because he was a selfless man who loved his friend. It wasn’t your fault.”

Madam Kim was looking away now, eyes filled with guilt and shame. Everyone could tell her a million times that what happened wasn’t their fault, it was the way of life for Bangtan and Youngho was happy doing what he did, but it didn’t change the fact that one careless decision on their part had ruined a young woman and her child’s life.

“The food’s here,” Madam Kim clears her throat, discreetly pulling out a handkerchief to wipe her tears and smile brightly at you. The food and a conversation diversion had been served. “It looks delicious, Nari-yah. Tell me, which is your favourite?”

The engagement party was at the city's Grand Hyatt hotel, one of the nation’s most expensive venues. You had arrived at the venue early in the morning to get ready because you had to outshine the luxurious decorations and at the same time, not look like a christmas tree.

You had arrived with your family and had settled into your suite for the day. You had spent your time till the glam team arrived, eating your stress away and watching reruns of Running Man and taking full advantage of the exquisite jacuzzi situation your suite had.

Once they arrived though, everything was a haze.

There were at least three people working on your hair and make-up, two working on your nails, two fixing your engagement dress, taking care of your shoes, jewelry and a photographer in the back who was trying to make everything look as gorgeous as possible for a frame.

When your mother-in-law arrived at your suite, you were more or less done for the day. Your make-up was flawlessly done, your hair perfectly curled and set to show off your uncovered shoulders.

“What do you think, Nari-ssi?” Haera, the make-up artist asked, watching you inspect your look in the hand-held mirror.

“You did a fantastic job, Haera-ssi.” You smile at her in appreciation. “I would’ve never thought I could possibly look this pretty.”

“Make-up only accentuates what’s already there, young miss.” She says good-naturedly, “But, I’ll take the compliment.”

“Shall we get you into the dress?” Sungah asks and you nod, it was about time. You had been stuck to this chair for hours now. You stood up, dropped the robe you were wearing and put on the dress with help from them.

The dress fits you like a glove, the time of the seamstress coming to you to get the fit right is finally worth it. With the proper fitting, you really couldn’t ignore how stunning you actually looked.

There was none of your softness pudding out, instead all settling into pretty curves. The thigh-slit showing off your freshly-waxed, smooth leg and the bodice cinching and skirt flaring to make you feel as gorgeous as you looked.

“Omo! Did an angel come to visit us today?” You hear the giddy voice of Madam Kim and you turn to her and blush shyly, not being able to stop yourself from giggling.

“What do you think of ommo-nim?” You ask, twirling around in your spot, the overskirt train following you.

“An angel for sure!” She laughed, hugging you. “You look so beautiful, sweetheart!” You giggle out a thank you, “Where’s Sook?” She asked, looking around for your mother.

You wanted to be honest and say that you didn’t know and that you didn’t care where she went as long as she didn’t disturb you but refrained for the sake of putting up a front, “She’s probably with Appa or out socializing, ommo-nim. Both of us are in our high spirits and it gets exhausting, so she must be out somewhere relaxing.”

“Oh I understand, sweetie,” She shakes her head sympathetically, “Marriages and everything related to it is always stressful. I wish I could run away from all the weddings and the aftermath I’m supposed to handle too.”

In Bangtan, the marriages were handled by the Don and Madam. The Don began the process by announcing and getting the couple engaged and from there it’s all Madam’s job —the wedding preparations, the bride and everything after the wedding till the couple’s death. Their well-being as a couple was the Madam’s responsibility, making sure that they are happy, making sure that the women are not abused, their kids are well looked after and all.

“But I’m not here to vent,” She gives a mischievous look, “I’m here to deliver something.” You look at her curiously. She opens up the dark blue velvet box in her hands. The box held a beautiful diamond necklace, with matching earrings and a bracelet to complete the set.

“What do you think?” She asks, ignoring the gasps and mutters of appreciation from the others in the room.

“It’s gorgeous, ommo-nim.” You say and she smiles proudly.

“I’m glad you like it,” She grins teasingly, “—and I think it’ll look even more gorgeous if you wear it.”

Your engagement party was simultaneously the most boring and eventful party for you in a long time.

The party started officially with your families joining the guests in the party hall. You walked in with your father, arms linked with his and a bright, happy smile plastered over your face. You greeted a few familiar faces, your uncles, aunts and a few cousins.

You were escorted to the Kims who were at the center of the party, surrounded by the Elites and Jang Yeojin, Jin’s wife. All of them looked particularly good in their suits, but your eyes still managed to stay stuck to Namjoon.

It was a black-tie event, so you were expecting his suit to make an appearance but what you didn’t expect was him to look as good as he did. The dark suit made him look so much more authoritative and intimidating. His hair is slicked back and his sharp eyes roaming over your body hotly.

There’s a part of you that revels in the lustful way his eyes are eating you up but the larger part of you that’s not used to blatant attention from a made-man is flustered, making you blush which brings a smirk to his face.

You talk to the others present, pointedly ignoring him and his teasing smile. The Elites congratulate you and compliment you, giggling and cackling like five-year olds over an inside joke you didn’t understand, but you knew whatever it was, it was directed at Namjoon. He only rolled his eyes at them.

How they were Bangtan’s most capable and scariest was beyond you sometimes.

“Your necklace is pretty, noona.” Jungkook smirks, looking exaggeratedly interested in the jewelry.

“Thank.. you, Kook.” You huff out a little laugh, “I didn’t think I’d be getting compliments over jewelry from you.” You tilt your head, “Are you interested in jewelry all of a sudden?”

“Diamonds, noona.” He smiles wider, a cheeky lilt to his voice. “I’m really into diamonds these days.” The Elites snickered around you and Namjoon ignored them pointedly. Yeojin grinned and you wondered if she understood —she probably didn’t, no one understands Elites’ inside jokes but themselves and you just stayed quiet, wondering what they were finding so funny in diamond jewelry.

You knew there was more to it. There was more to whatever conversation all of you were having, but you weren’t included in the secret. You wanted to investigate but Hoseok was standing away from you and you knew you couldn’t bully the answer out of them if they were all together.

You stayed silent instead, carefully watching and listening to whatever they were saying and engaging them in their jokes and mafia gossip. Your scrutiny was cut short when it was announced it was time for the ring ceremony.

It took them minutes to get you and Namjoon at the center of the attention, with your parents by you. Jimin had grabbed the mic and was hosting the event, guiding and announcing what was happening.

You don’t remember what exactly he was saying, except that he was funny and you giggled endlessly at his little jokes and finally, when you were out of breath and happy, he announced it was time for the ring ceremony.

In a matter of seconds, the spotlight shined on the two of you.

Your heart pounds then, standing in front of Namjoon. You take a deep breath, holding it in as you raise your hand, palm-side down to him. You notice how his large, warm hands dwarf yours, as he holds them delicately, slipping a ring on your ring finger, treating your hand in the most soft way possible.

A round of loud applause and cheers broke out, startling you slightly. You smile, exhaling the breath you held.

It is done, now you are half-married to Kim Namjoon. You gaze up at Namjoon, who smiles sweetly, dimples on display and brings up your hand to his lips and presses a kiss over your knuckles.

You knew it was for a show, it was for the audience, it was for his parents and it was everything and for everyone but you. It was him playing a role, it was an act, it was not real but your traitor of a heart still fluttered and you blushed in betrayal.

You pulled yourself together, face still too red to act like nothing happened but you managed to link your arm around his as you thank and smile at everyone who were congratulating you and Namjoon.

Many of the Bangtan’s members came up to the two of you, congratulating and blessing you to have a happy marriage and of course, sons. If you were scowling at the words, you didn’t show it. You smiled amicably instead.

When it looked like everyone had congratulated you, you were left to your own devices. Namjoon excuses himself and your female cousins hound you the minute he walks away. You sigh as you sit on the couch, giving your legs the much needed rest.

“My legs hurt,” You pout to yourself, “When can I go home?”

“Not anytime soon,” Yeri pats your shoulder sympathetically, “There’s still a dance, dinner and the afterparty,”

“I’m tired,” You sigh, craving a drink. “Can you get me a drink, Yeri?” The younger girl nods happily and goes away with another cousin of yours. You recline back on the couch a little unceremoniously, pout still visible on your face.

“My my, Nari,” Jaein, your cousin giggles, looking at you with bright eyes. “RM can’t take his eyes off you, can he?” She shoves her elbow up your arm teasingly. You roll your eyes, wincing.

“He’s so smitten,” She gushes looking over her shoulder to him, “What did you ever do to him?” She asks, “Share your secrets with us, oh great one.”

You laugh and shrug, looking around to find yourself meeting gazes with the man. He was talking to someone, but his eyes wandered occasionally to you. You lock gazes but look away before you can stare. Yeri had come back with a flute of champagne for you. You thank her, taking a sip of the drink. You wanted something stronger but you weren’t going to complain.

The conversation was lively amidst you as you talked about everything and everyone; people’s hideous fashion sense and the obnoxious Bangtan members. You were so engrossed in the gossip that you didn’t notice Namjoon coming up to your little group.

“Can I have my beautiful fiancé back?” Namjoon asks no one in particular, smiling.

A chorus of yes, of course was heard and your cousins ditched you, murmuring congratulations and byes. You roll your eyes at their squeaky tone and scared demeanor. They can barely have a conversation with this man and you are supposed to marry him and have his kids.

You scoot a little away to let him sit beside you. You wanted to be petty and take up the whole couch but you didn’t want to do that in public where the whole of Bangtan was gawking at you two. He smiles, sitting unnecessarily close to you. His body is so close to yours that your shoulders and thighs are touching with how stretched out he is sitting.

You focus on your nearly empty drink, looking around to see if a staff was serving more. You feel awkward sitting next to him, without picking a fight or talking to him but you weren’t in the mood to start a conversation. If he started it, maybe you’d indulge him but you weren’t gonna rack your brain for a conversation starter. It wasn't worth it.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” He asks, probably feeling suffocated by the awkwardness that was lingering in the air between you.

“If I ignore the fact that I’m getting married,” You turn and smile at him, “—then, I’m having a splendid time.”

It’s almost comical how you can see his expression harden, from a happy, relaxed to a slightly miffed, irritated one. You knew you were being a jerk now, he only wanted to chat with you but you couldn’t stop yourself from saying something snide. He’s about to say something when Jihyo’s voice is heard.

“Namjoon oppa,” She draws femininely, playing with her hair. You roll your eyes, the hatred you held for her physically impossible to contain. “Nari,” She greets you, more as an afterthought.

“Jihyo,” You don’t even bother with a courteous nod.

“You look.. nice.” She says, her smile fake as she looks at you, checking you out from head to toe.

“Thank you, Jihyo.” You say, your tone is sickly sweet, “You don’t look that bad either.”

Her expression changes for a second before she gathers herself with a smile and asks, “Has anyone asked you for a dance yet?” She asks, looking around for someone. She doesn’t stop to listen to your reply, instead continues, “I’m so sorry that they haven’t!” She pouts in fake pity, “I’m sure it’s because Namjoon oppa’s here and not because you are not worth it,” You are this close to verbally ripping her apart when she turns her happy smile towards Namjoon and asks, “Can I have your dance? You can’t dance with Nari, of course, so dance with me?”

You are so sure that Namjoon would say no, that he’d stick up for his fiancé, stick up for you but no, the jerk agrees and stalks away for a dance with Jihyo and you are left fuming.

Engagement parties aren’t thrown for every Bangtan couple, only the high-profile ones get it and that too if and only if they requested it. In your case, it was more a necessity than a request. With these engagement parties came a lot more Bangtan customs that were simply a headache. Like this one for example, the newly engaged couple couldn’t dance with each other before getting married because it brought bad luck, but the two have to dance.

The first dance with any engaged couple is considered an honour, so you knew Jihyo snagging the next Don’s first dance is a step-up in the competition you had going on against her. It was childish and stupid, but you had this rivalry going on for so long that it felt insulting to be the first one to let it go. She wasn’t backing down, so why would you?

You couldn’t show her up with anyone, even if you tried. Who as a dance partner could be more of a catch than the next Don himself? You are begrudgingly admitting your defeat and cursing Namjoon for accepting her offer. If only he hadn’t accepted her offer and went to dance with any other girl in the party. It was also because you were his fiancé that no one has gathered up their courage to ask you for a dance.

It would’ve probably helped if you were nice to him before but you were a jerk and he was only repaying your behaviour by siding with your rival. You roll your eyes, maybe it’s time to find Namjoon’s rival and dance with him. You are busy plotting a murder or murders when you hear the Don.

“Nari-yah,” You turn to him, masking a happy expression, “Can I have the honour of your first dance?”

“With you, Abeo-ji?”

The Don was smiling widely at you, while you gaped at him. You knew the Don didn’t dance with anyone but the Madam. It wasn’t a rule but something he just stuck to. He started the dance with the Madam and she’s the only one he ever danced with.

“Yes,” He nods, extending an arm to you, “Don’t you worry, I’m not a bad dancer and I promise I won’t ruin your dress.” You chuckle.

“The honour’s mine, Abeo-ji,” You smile, feeling grateful and taking his arm and walking to the center of the dance floor. The dance hadn’t begun mainly because you weren’t on stage yet.

Once the two of you were on the floor, with your respective partners, the music began. It was a soft, melodious piano composition and as you began to dance you had to admit you were having fun. The Don was a very good dancer, he wasn’t swift and firm in his moves but more relaxed and gracious as he led you through the whole song.

When the song nearly ended, he smiled at you, “You don’t have to worry about Jihyo, Nari-yah.” You wince at being caught.

“Am I obvious?” You shoot him a guilty smile, “I don’t like her.” You don’t bother hiding the truth from him. Jangmi shared your feelings and you knew she expressed them to her dad more often than not.

“She’ll get married soon enough” He says like it’s a trivial matter, which for him it probably is, “—and as for my son, he’s only yours.” He says firmly, you nod in response. “You will never have to fight with anyone for his attention. He’s just trying to be nice to Jihyo, okay?”

That wasn’t true. Namjoon was pissed at you and rightfully so. You were hell bent on getting on his nerves, talking about the marriage being an inconvenience at every turn when he was only trying to be accomodating and to make this easy on the two of you. He was just letting you know that if you didn’t cooperate with him, he could have his pick of the litter and you would be left in the dust.

It was subtle, but you got it.

He clicks his tongue, when you don’t reply, as if he was trying to convince you to quit it and you were being adamant. “Why are women so stubborn?” He sighs to himself, “Okay, I’ll help you.” He says and you are pulled back into the conversation from your reverie, “All of the Elites minus my son will dance with you,” He mutters, looking around for them.

You are like his daughter and he’ll be damned if he didn’t try to help you win whatever you had going with Jihyo. He knew it was petty rivalry and that it didn’t matter much, but really, there wasn’t much in Bangtan to entertain young ladies, so such competition was the major drama.

You were his daughter-in-law and the Kims didn’t lose to anyone. He would make sure that you not only win this but also let others know not to mess with you. You were the next Madam and they will have to learn to respect and fear you, even in trivial matters.

“Abeo-ji—” You try to stop him, feeling embarrassingly small at your childishness.

“Sh,” He shushed you, “I know you women always have a point to prove when it comes to other women and your man. So just take it and don’t let her show you down.”

You nod and let out a sigh. “Yes, Abeo-ji.” He smiles, muttering out a good.

“Abu-nim,” Jin grins at you, “I’ll take Nari from here,” The Don gives a firm nod, handing you over to him.

“You know what to do and—” He nods, “Take care of my daughter-in-law.”

“Yes,” He grins and pulls you back on the dance floor. “Come on, Nari. I need to flex my superior dancing skills.” You roll your eyes at him, but let him drag you around for a dance. He dances with you, entertaining you with his jokes. He was charming and handsome.

Truly a great man but wasted on the likes of Yeojin.

Just as the song came to an end, the next Elite had walked up to you. Suga gave you a small smile, holding out his hand, and in a soft tone said, "Grant me the honour of your next dance?"

When you had shot him an incredulous look, he only says, “You are the woman of the hour, of course, all of us are frothing at the mouth to dance with you.”

"Of course they are,"

After dancing with Suga, who was surprisingly chatty and gentle, you were handed over to Taehyung. You and Taehyung were friends, being the same age as him and Jimin.

When you were younger, all four of you, often being tagged along by Jungkook got into all sorts of trouble and were quite the havoc till you finished school and you went separate ways into college and Bangtan.

There was a time you could read him like a book, but over the years the soft boy had grown hard and now, he was mostly a stranger with the familiar boxy smile. You wondered if Jangmi knew that V was a different man from Taehyung but you didn’t dwell on it much as Jimin whisked you away.

“Hello, next Madam Kim.” Jimin greets you, placing a hand on your waist, holding your other hand up.

“Hello to you too, Park.” You greet him back, mimicking his tone. “Great job organizing this event,” You smile, appreciatively looking around the place. “It’s beautiful.”

He chuckles, “Well, a beautiful event for a beautiful couple,” He says, “Don’t worry, Nari-yah, I promise I won’t make Jihyo’s party as great as this one,” You gasp dramatically, “We can’t let her win this game, right?” He grins mischievously and you swat at his shoulder, making him double with laughter.

“Am I that obvious?” You ask, “Why does everyone know of this?” You wonder if you are really that obvious that everyone seems to know of your situation with Jihyo. Also, why are these scary men into your petty interactions with a fellow mob-woman, surely they have better things to do?

“Hm..” He thinks over, lips jutting in a pout, looking up like he was thinking over, “You are not exactly obvious.. but everyone already does know of your rivalry with Jihyo.”

“How—”

“I mean, think about it,” He says, twirling you around, “You two are of the same age, have the looks, the status and the riches. You two were at one point, equally eligible to be the next Madam Kim. I think you are better —don’t have me killed, please.” He looks at you with puppy-like eyes and you giggle, he shoots you a smile. “People are bound to compare and have you compete against each other.” He continued, “And thank goodness for us, you two naturally took to the competition and put up with it for so long. Every party and gala, we wait for you two to interact and see where this leads to —a slap or drink-pouring or a swordfight or a wrestling match.” He gasps exaggeratedly and you roll your eyes.

“No really,” He says, “You two make up a great percentage of the Bangtan gossip.”

“Too bad, it’s gonna end soon.” You smile pitifully.

“Too bad it is.” He grins, not very unhappy about it. “Jungkook’s next.” He says and you are pushed to Jungkook.

“Hello again, Lily noona.” He says, dramatically bowing and extending a hand for you to accept his offer. “Dance with me?”

“Of course, Jungkook-ssi,” You take his hand, grinning.

“Namjoon Hyung is looking at us, you know.” He says, when you sway with him, trying not to trip on your dress.

“Is he?” You comment making it sound off-handed but not so subtly look at Namjoon who is standing just around the dancefloor with a group of people.

Jungkook grins, “He doesn’t look too pleased,”

“That can’t be helped,” You snap, then muttering quietly. “He shouldn’t have picked Jihyo over me,”

“Oh my god, Noona!” Jungkook can’t stop himself from laughing, “Were you always like this?”

“Shut up and dance, Kookie.”

After Jungkook, it was Hoseok’s turn. He smiles as you settle your hand on his shoulders.

“Look at our little Lily, winning this competition of life against Jihyo,” Hoseok grins, as he turns you around to music. He was the last one to dance with you and honestly you couldn’t be more glad. Once you were done, you hoped to get out and get some fresh air. The air inside was mildly killing you.

“So petty, Nari-ssi,” He snickered, as you shot him a shocked look. “So fucking petty,”

“Hoseok, the bitch told me no one asked me to dance because I wasn’t worth it!” You scoff, “I’ll be damned if I let her win this petty competition after that. Also, Abeo-ji offered to make you dance with me, I didn’t ask for it.”

“But you accepted it nevertheless?” You nod shamelessly and he laughs.

“She’s lost the competition now,” He says, “We’ve made quite the statement. Actually, I think the Don did.”

You had to agree that a statement was made, it was subtle but it was effective. A statement to any other woman throwing themselves at RM, they might steal off a dance with him or maybe hours of his day, but he was yours and you were the next Madam Kim.

Normally you’d scrunch your face at the title, but today it felt good to have that at the back of your mind. It gives you confidence and strength. When the dance was done, you thanked him and quickly excused yourself to get out of the party hall, but your mother caught you on the way out.

“Now, where are you off to?” She asked, looking condescendingly at you. You look around startled at her rude addressal. What did you do now?

“To the restroom?” You say, “Do you want to join me?” You don’t know why you are asking her to join you, but you do and to your surprise she accepts. You curse at yourself, you were only being polite since you were out among other made-men.

“Let’s go then,” You want to smack yourself but you don’t, instead leading her out to the restroom.

“I didn’t come here to chit chat with you,” She says the minute you are alone, she closes the door behind you.

“I figured as much,” You breathe out, looking at the mirror.

“Do you know about the ring you are wearing right now?” She asks and you raise a brow.

“This one?” You raise your hand up and show your engagement ring. She nods and you shrug.

It was an emerald cut diamond, with a band of smaller stones around the diamond itself and the band, with pretty detailing. It was beautiful, but not your style.

“It’s a family heirloom!” She says, “The former Don’s father gave it to his mother when she bore him a son!” You nod, examining the ring on your finger. You wonder where she mined that information from. You knew the Kims weren’t the kind to engage in talks regarding jewelry, so this must’ve come from the other guests at the party.

“Do you know what that means?” She asks and you are aware of where this conversation is going. Only your mother could hear a story about a ring, find enough information on it and make up a whole reason for why you were receiving it.

“That I bear Namjoon a son too?” You take a wild guess.

“Yes—”

“What the actual fuck?” You scoff, “You do know that’s not how baby’s sex is determined right? I’m not the one in charge—” You stop yourself, “Actually, no. I’m done. I’ll see you next week or whenever.”

“Shouldn’t you be inside enjoying the party?” You close your eyes the second you recognize the deep, rich timbre of his voice. You weren’t even allowed a minute of peace in this world. You were out on the balcony, enjoying some alone time after all the hustle-bustle of the day. The air was chilly but peaceful.

“And shouldn’t you be inside enjoying Jihyo drooling all over you?” You snap, not turning to look at him. You sound jealous, even to yourself.

“You don’t have to be jealous of her, my darling.” You hear the happy lilt to his voice and the increasing volume as he nears you. Your stomach flutters at the nickname, but you choose to ignore it.

“I’m not jealous,”

“I’m a loyal man,” Namjoon comes closer to you, leaning against the railing using his hands, “I would never stray away from you.”

“I am not jealous,” You repeat firmly.

“It certainly felt like it, with how you were throwing daggers at her with your eyes,” He teases and you whip your face to him.

“Be glad it wasn’t her I was throwing from the tenth floor,” You mutter and he laughs. A deep, warm laugh. Probably the first time in your presence and your heart warmed at the sight.

“I am,” He says, “—that would’ve been very hard to explain to Cappo Shim,”

“Hard?” You turn to him in mock shock, “I’m sure Abeo-ji would’ve handled it all for me.”

“Oh yes, he would have.” He says, “He’d have helped you throw her if you’d asked. You are his favourite after all.”

“That I am,” You say, making a motion of flipping you hair and he laughs.

“I knew diamonds would look fantastic on you,” He says out of the blue and you look at him. “You were the first thing to come to my mind when I saw them,” He smiles softly, eyes grazing your shoulders and looks at your eyes again. “They fit you well,”

“You choose them?” Your shock is very visible, in your voice and your face. Were all made-man into jewelry or was this an Elite-only trait?

“I brought it home from my trip to Belgium,” He says softly, his voice low.

“Belgium?” You ask and he nods, “Did you like it?”

“Belgium?” He looks at you, tilting his head, “I didn’t get to enjoy it much. I was there to sign a consignment for Bangtan. We had a stop at Antwerp and I wanted to see the diamond market there, and I thought of you when I saw this..”

He touches the necklace, trailing his finger delicately over the gemstones, leaving behind goosebumps on your skin.

“Why diamonds?” You ask dumbly, all your strength melting away at the proximity of his body to yours.

“Diamonds are a woman's best friend, right?” He raised a brow, a little smile on his lips.

“I prefer rubies,” You say.

“Noted,” He simply smiles, moving closer to you. He places his hands on the railing either side of you, effectively trapping you. He drops his head to your shoulder, nuzzling you. You feel the goosebumps rising on your skin, but as his warmth as he slots his body against yours. He was warm and you let him be.

“Why are we getting married, Namjoon?” You ask when a few minutes have passed. “You know nothing about me,”

“Not true,” He pulls away, looking petulant like a child accused of something wrongly. “I know your birthday, I know your parents, I know Bangtan, I know where you live, where you work.”

“You know that’s not what I meant—”

He presses a finger to your lips, “Now, I also know you prefer rubies over diamonds, I know a lot about you.”

You scoff, challenging him. “What do I know about you then?”

“You know my birthday, you know my favourite flowers are lilies, whites ones. You know my sister, my parents, my friends, Bangtan. You know what I do for a living, you know where I operate from, you know so much about me.”

“I don’t know what you like for breakfast, how you like your coffee, if you even drink coffee, what your favourite color is, I don’t know your drinking habits, your sleeping habits.. I don’t know if you snore, if you cuddle, if you hog the blankets. I don’t know—” You are cut off again.

Namjoon was as impatient as you initially thought.

“I like sweet things for breakfast, I like my coffee milky and sweet, my favourite colour is green,”

“Again,” You huff, “Not what—”

“You will never know everything about me, darling. But we have our future to learn all about each other.” He sounds sincere, as he looks at you with softer eyes.

“You can know everything but later,” He ground out, pushing himself closer to you, “Now, I need to kiss you,” His voice drops lower getting all whispery towards the end and you are arching up your face to let him kiss you.

Namjoon smiles a little, seeing you so willing and brushes his lips against yours. His lips are soft and steady against yours, sweet as he runs his tongue over them. You are barely aware of your surroundings, his warm hands and scent taking you away to a different plane. You place your hands on his firm chest, barely aware of his viciously beating heart under your palm, stroking unconsciously, while his hand rested on your waist and other cupped your face, tilting it up for better reach.

He takes a few licks at your lips, pushing you up and letting you go quickly and you are slightly panicking. Did he not like it? Did you do something wrong? What happened? Were you kissing him wrong? Were you being too eager? Not eager enough?

Namjoon pulls away, mutters out a little fuck at your wide doe eyes looking up at him and crashes his lips onto yours, roughly this time. Your squeak barely has the chance to be out, when he pushes his tongue into you, lapping at you. His hands that previously held you so softly, were now hot against your waist, noticeably inching down to your ass and the other holding your bare thigh.

You gasp into the kiss, when he harshly grabs your butt, stumbling to link your arms around his neck and into his hair. He sucks on your tongue, your lips bringing out little moans and pants from you that he excitedly drank up. Your hands are holding him desperately, as his body is flush against yours and you are running out of breath. He gives you one last squeeze and lets you go.

He pulls away all too quickly, holding you in case you were too dizzy from all his action. He smirks at you looking disoriented, tucks your hair behind your ears. He chuckles lightly, at your blushy, lightheaded gaze and pulls you into a hug, one last time.

“Let's go inside,” He pressed a kiss to your shoulder, “They might be wondering where we are, we don't wanna give them any ideas.” he whispers in your ears, sending a pleasant shiver up your body. He smirks, presses a kiss to your cheek, wraps his hand around yours and pulls you inside.

[ next ] Four: Months Leading Up To The Wedding Of The Century

[ author's endnote ] completely unedited. I'll look over it again tomorrow. the makeout scene needs a little bit of cleaning up but for now, please let me know what you think! edit: I've edited it again, I'm not satisfied but I guess this will have to do now. if you have any questions, anything even anything random to say or just a quick hello, my asks and dms are always open. your thoughts and feedbacks motivates me more than the hearts —though hearts and reblogs are nice too. hope all of you are doing well, lots of love and take care.

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2021, September 27.

#rm mafia au #rm arranged marriage au #bts mafia au #bts arranged marriage au #rm fic #bts rm imagine #bts rm fanfic #rm imagine #rm fanfic #rm mafia #rm × reader #rm × you #bts fanfic #matters of the heart in the mafia #the lily of bangtan #bts #rm

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youarejesting · 4 years ago

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Sly like a… ? Part 8

[Master list] [Sly Master List] Beta: n/a (at the moment) Rating: All Pairing: Hybrid!BTS x FailedHybrid!Reader Genre: Hybrid au, fluff, action, adventure, angst, drama, slice of life. Some marked chapters will contain mature/smut scenes, BUT they will not have plot in those scenes and are 100% skippable without losing your place in the story. Words: 2.2k

Summary: Human’s strive to be better, faster and stronger looking to animal DNA. Thus Hybrids are born. As the rise for designer and Pedigree Hybrids increase, so do the failed attempts. There is one species scientists are unsuccessful in creating, but, folklore says they have been here all along, hiding and blending in with the humans for many millennia. How clever they are.

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With Yoongi hauled up in his room, you began speaking with each of the boys and discussing where their learning levels were, you started with Jungkook, Taehyung, and Hoseok, you sat them at the table and started to teach them the basics of the Korean language and Maths they were quick to learn as they weren’t children and by the end of the week, you had them at a mid highschool level.

You taught all of the Hybrids about internet and phone safety, not giving out their number to random people they didn’t know. They all agreed and after a long discussion on scammers and voice phishing, they all seemed to understand.

Learning how to use computer documents and the internet and more, you explained virus’ and online shopping and you explained that you wanted them to have free reign. So, if they had something they wanted to buy to go to you.

“Unless it is something you are not comfortable asking from Y/n then please feel free to ask me instead.” Jimin said, “I can also get you things you might want or need?”

“Okay, now onto the final topic of today is finding a degree, you don’t have to choose exactly what you want to do with your life right now,” You stressed, hoping they knew they had plenty of time to explore their options. “but, maybe think about jobs you might have seen in movies or read about or heard about and I will help you achieve that dream”

You placed down a few booklets of jobs and they looked at you, “Yoongi you are already halfway through your degree and you said you wished to continue it, so you start next week, please let me know if there is anything you need.”

“And afterward if you ever need a job, if this program gets approved, I will need someone like you in my team.” You smiled, ever since the outing to the shop, Yoongi has been quite cold towards you and it hurt but you knew he would understand soon.

Namjoon told you he wanted to be a businessman, you signed him up for a bachelor of commerce and he was speeding through the classes like they were a children's book. But though he knew everything he didn’t exactly understand the point of the essays and assignments.

You talked him through it and explained that they wanted him to show off what he learned so they knew he was smart enough to pass, he still had three more weeks before school started and you were worried he would have already finished all the essays and assignments.

You heard Taehyung saying he wanted to be an actor or maybe a photographer and you wanted his dreams to come true. “if you finish an acting course, maybe Jimin and I can put in good words in some agencies?”

That got you thinking where was the calico, he hadn’t left the house, maybe he was in his room listening to music or something. Your focus was taken up by the two young men in front of you both flicking through the booklets of perspective courses and careers.

“Ooh directing would be fun?” Jungkook pretended to film Taehyung who immediately started acting out a rather elaborate scene worthy of any K-drama, the two laughing at the silly monologue, “or maybe gaming?”

The cheeky grin on Jungkook's face made your heart flutter. He was almost twenty-four, his birthday nearing and if you remembered correctly so was Namjoon’s. They were all classified as adults but were they ever given the chance to just be giggly, playful boys?

It was almost dinner, you stood up and as you walked past the two hybrids you ran your fingers through their hair. Leaning between them, you held their shoulders.

“I will be back, keep thinking and mark any pages with these sticky notes, purple for Kookie and green for TaeTae,” it was strange but both young men turned their head into your neck and nuzzled you for a second a low purr from the feline and a rhythmic wag of the tail from the canine. You went to leave, your heart stuttering at their affection before anything awkward happened.

“Y/n smells nice, doesn’t she?” Taehyung’s voice was low and Jungkook’s answering purr left you feeling a little warm under the collar. The ghosts of their tiny breaths against your neck would not leave you, the skiing tingling under your touch.

Shaking your head trying to clear it of anything that could be deemed impure and strolling the hall until you reached Yoongi’s door. Knocking softly the door opened to reveal Jimin smiling.

“Hello love,” Jimin flashed the dangerous eye smile and you wondered if the boys were nearing their ruts, that would be a conversation after dinner. Yoongi was sitting on the bed looking at the unopened box of headphones, phone, and laptop.

“Am I interrupting something, I can come back later?” you rambled, gesturing down the hall, “I was just wanting to see where everyone was as I was thinking about starting dinner.”

“Yoongi and I were just talking, but I think we have both come to a comfortable conclusion of topics.” He smiled patting the older feline's shoulder, “Thanks for the talk, it's nice to finally have some brothers.”

“Yoongi, I-”

“I’m sorry,” Yoongi interrupted you and his cheeks were dusted pink, he didn’t look up from the bed where all the devices sat. His tail curled around onto his lap and his ears twitched listening intently for your reaction. “Jimin said you weren’t like that and you really just wanted to get us nice things,”

He opened the special hybrid headphones and grinned as they sat on his head like a headband and cupped his ears gently, you opened his phone and found his favorite song hoping to test the headphones.

“Tell me if they work okay, or if they need charge,” standing in front of him you turned the headphones on and attempted to Bluetooth them to the phone. Making sure to turn the volume down before playing the song. His eyes lit up and his tail gave a long elegant swish, he looked so cute and you had to suppress a laugh at how his hair was all bunched up in the headband.

You moved a little closer still and began running your fingers through his hair until it fell over the headband, Yoongi tensed and surprised you by clutching the hem of your overall shorts and nuzzled his face into your stomach, his neck bright red. You froze and gently finished with his hair and stepped back and smiled pausing the song.

“I fixed your hair, cause it was all caught in your headphones,” you explained and he looked down growing almost impossibly red. You reached out and carded your fingers through his hair affectionately. In a gesture that had often calmed Jimin as a child, you rubbed your bare wrist against his neck.

A purr almost ripped through Yoongi as his tail swished dangerously. You stepped away heading for the door, “I just wanted to ask if you wanted to help me make dinner?”

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shihalyfie · 3 years ago

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Kizuna itself vs. the two versions of the novel

Written on request from a friend who wanted to remain anonymous. This is more of an editorial than a meta, and while I usually have a policy of “this is an analysis blog, not a review blog” it goes into more of my personal impressions and opinions than usual, but it’s something I write hoping to be helpful.

There are basically three “official” full versions of Kizuna: one being, of course, the movie itself, one being the Dash X Bunko version of the novel, and one being the Shueisha Mirai Bunko version of it. While it’s certainly not to say that any of the three is an “incomplete” version of the narrative, if you really want as full of a picture of the story as possible, somehow, each of all three versions of the story happens to have really important information that the other two do not. If I had to pick only one of these three versions to recommend to people, I would of course pick the movie itself; it’s obviously the base story everything else is based off of and was the one the production centered around as a priority, but the novelizations have a surprising amount of info that provide a lot of insight into the movie’s story and themes.

I get the impression that the creation of Kizuna involved making a lot more story and background details than could fit in a 95-minute movie, so these novelizations, which were based directly off the original movie script, ended up being an outlet for a lot of these details (and as much as I could be harsh on the movie itself for being a bit “reliant” on extra material, I have to admit that Adventure and 02 were both like this too -- a lot of our current understanding of the series comes from the Adventure novels and drama CDs -- so frankly I’m thankful we at least got this with a 95-minute movie instead of a yearlong series). On the flip side, while I'm not going to say that the novels are completely and utterly inaccurate representations of the movie, in a perhaps too-close approximation of Adventure and 02's writing style, this is a movie where even the nuances in a single line or split-second moment carry heavy implications, which become much blurrier or harder to identify when they’re presented differently (or not even presented at all) in the novel’s context, especially when they emphasize very different things from what the movie itself was emphasizing.

The short version of this is that I believe the Dash X version contains the greater amount of “plot and story” information but significantly misses out on the emotional themes and presentation, whereas the Shueisha Mirai version abridges and cuts chunks of content but is much better at conveying the intended message. More on this below the cut. (Note that the following post spoils Kizuna’s plot events.)

The movie itself

Since the following parts are more “in comparison to the movie”, I’m not going to go too much into this in this section, but one thing I will say is that the official English subtitle translation for the movie is really not great. Even if you take out nitpickiness about the fact it misses several significant nuances (the difference between “unchangeable fate” and “changeable destiny”, or the fact that Gennai refers to partnership dissolution as a “case” and not like it’s something that happens overall) at really plot-important moments, some lines (thankfully, usually not plot-important ones) are just straight-up incorrect. And worse, there’s evidence the official English dub was based on that translation! (I’m not faulting the people in charge of the dub for this, but whoever handed them that translation to work with.)

The dialogue in the Dash X Bunko version is transcribed effectively word-for-word from the dialogue in the movie (or perhaps vice versa, given that the novel is based on the original script), so I highly recommend checking that version as a reference for dialogue or if you want to do any intimate analysis on it. I don't want to go as far as to suggest not supporting the official version of the movie because of this, but at least please be aware that the translation used there is not entirely reliable.

Dash X Bunko

If you talk about “the Kizuna novel”, this is the one that people usually tend to be referring to, for two reasons. Firstly, it was translated shortly after the movie’s release, and due to the unfortunate circumstances of Kizuna being delayed in accessibility outside Japan for several months, this basically served as the only comprehensive source of info about the movie outside Japan for a very long time. Secondly, in Japan, this one was marketed as “the one for adults” in contrast to the Shueisha Mirai one being “for kids”, which meant that a lot of people assumed that the latter one was just an incredibly stripped down version that was otherwise disposable or replaceable. (This is very, very much not the case, and is extremely ironic when it comes to a movie that partially centers around the dangers of looking down too much on things associated with childhood.)

When it comes to “plot and story info”, this is the one that probably serves as the best reference (especially for fanfic writers or those who need a refresher on certain plot events or to look up something quickly), and probably has the most “comprehensive” listing of plot events surrounding the movie. The dialogue in it is a word-for-word recreation of the movie’s script, and actually includes more scenes than the movie itself does, including two that I suspect to be deleted scenes (a detailing of the specifics behind the initial plan to pursue Eosmon, and a conversation between Koushirou and Tentomon) and adaptations of the first and second memorial shorts within their context in the movie. It also contains some interesting background details and extra context for some things in the movie that you might think would normally be animation flair or something, but take a very interesting implication of story importance if they’re going out of their way to write this in the script. (There’s a scene where Agumon and Gabumon appear in front of their partners when they’d been behind them a minute before, and it’s easy to think this might be an animation error, but not only does the surrounding context make this unlikely, the novel itself actually directly states that their positions had changed.) Given that, I think it was very fortunate that this novel was available to us for those outside Japan waiting for the actual movie to come out, because this level of detail was very important to have on hand rather than fragmented spoilers on social media.

However, the part where I think the novel is significantly deficient in compared to the actual movie (and also to the other version of the novel) is that it describes the plot events in too blunt of a manner and doesn’t bring out its themes very well. (It’s kind of like having a long and very detailed Wikipedia article plot summary; it definitely got all the hard facts down, but the emotion is gone, which is still a pretty significant issue when media’s all about the feelings and message in the end.) While “considering the movie to be more cynical than it’s probably meant to be” happens regardless of which version someone’s working from, I’ve talked to perhaps an unnervingly high number of people who started with the novel and were absolutely convinced that the movie’s message was about adulthood sucking and needing to just accept it, until they saw how the actual movie pulled it off and the surrounding atmosphere and realized it definitely was not. (I think one really big factor here is that a lot of the visual imagery makes it extremely, extremely hard to miss that Menoa’s mentality is completely screwed up and her way of seeing things was dubious to begin with; prose descriptions really just don’t capture the way they slam this in your face with visual and musical cues during the climax of the movie.)

You can figure this out from the novel itself, but you have to really be looking closely at the way they word things, and on top of that it’s hard to figure out which parts you should be focusing on and which parts aren’t actually that important -- in other words, the “choice of priorities” gets a bit lost in there. Even the little things lose a lot of value; it’s theoretically possible to use the novel to put together that Daisuke is wearing his sunglasses indoors during his first scene, but you have to put together the context clues from completely different paragraphs to figure this out, none of which compares to the actual hilarity of visually seeing him wearing the thing in a very obviously dimly lit restaurant because he’s our beloved idiot. (For more details, please see my post with more elaboration on this and more examples of this kind of thing.)

I wouldn’t say that the movie itself isn’t guilty of (perhaps accidentally) having some degree of mixed messaging, but I would say this problem is rather exacerbated by the novel’s way of presenting it due to its dedication to dropping every single plot detail and event without much in the way of choosing what to contextualize and what to put emphasis on (as it turns out, treating practically everything in the movie as if it has equal weight might not be a great idea). So, again, for that reason I think the novel serves as a good reference in terms of remembering what happened in it and knowing the movie’s contents, but I also feel that it’s really not the greatest deliverer of the movie’s message or themes at all.

Shueisha Mirai Bunko

The second version of the novel was not translated until several months after the movie first released, and shortly before the Blu-ray and streaming versions of the movie itself came out anyway, so my impression is that on this end a lot of people don’t even know it was a thing. On top of that, even those who know about it often dismiss it as the “kid version” -- and to be fair, it did baffle quite a few people as to why this version even exists (Kizuna is technically not unacceptable for kid viewing and its plot is still understandable regardless of age, but since the movie is so heavily about the millennial existential crisis, it’s not something kids would really relate to). So a lot of people tended to just skip over it...which is really a shame, because it contains some interesting things that actually aren’t in the other two versions at all. For instance, did you know that, as of this writing, this is the only thing that plainly states the specific explanation for why Yamato decided to become an astronaut, for the first time in 20 real-life years?

While there are still some things that weren’t in the movie proper (mainly the Eosmon initial plan and the adaptation of the second memorial short), for the most part, the actual events are somewhat abridged compared to the movie and the Dash X version, and other than a few stray lines, there’s not a lot of extra information that would be as helpful for referencing the events of the plot. The version of the novel here is rather broadly interpretive of the scenes in the movie, so several things are condensed or taken out (and, amusingly, because it’s assuming that the kids reading this don’t actually know the original Adventure or 02, it has to describe what each character is like in a quick one-liner).

However, interestingly enough, it’s because it’s so heavily interpretive that it illuminates a lot of things that weren’t really easy to glean out of the Dash X version. For instance:

Some scenes are described with “other perspectives” that give you info on someone else’s point of view. (For instance, we see more of Yamato’s perspective and thoughts when he has his first phone call with Daisuke, or a bit more detail in the process of how Eosmon kidnappings work.)

We get a lot more information on what’s going through everyone’s heads during each scene, and what emotions they’re feeling at a given time. (This is something that you could at least get to some degree in the movie itself from facial expressions and framing, but would often be a lot blurrier in the Dash X version; here, it’s spelled out in words.)

When things are abridged, you get a clearer idea of what the intended point and theme of the scene was because it’s stripped down to include only that part. In one really interesting case, the scene with Agumon finding Taichi’s AVs has a “censored” equivalent where Taichi’s pushed to a corner because he can’t find anything non-alcoholic in his fridge -- so when you look at the two versions of the scene and what they have in common, you can figure out that the point isn’t that it was a lewd joke for the sake of it, but rather that Taichi’s forcing himself into boxes of “adulthood” that are actually meaningless and impractical.

Some of the descriptions of the characters, scenes, and background information make it a lot more obvious as to their purpose in the narrative (it outright confirms that Miyako being in Spain means that her personality is getting overly enabled there).

The scene where the circumstances behind Morphomon’s disappearance are revealed makes it significantly less subtle what the point is. In the actual movie, a lot of this involved visual framing with Menoa seeming to become more and more distant, but in this version of the novel they basically whack you over the head with the final confirmation that Menoa is guilty of neglecting her own partner, which contradicts her own assertions that “they were always together” (maybe not emotionally, it seems!) and helps clarify the commonality between her, Taichi, Yamato, and Sora in what exactly led to their partners disappearing.

Bonus: this version of the novel really wants you to know that the ending of the movie is about Taichi and Yamato fully having the determination to turn things around and lead up to the 02 epilogue. (The movie’s version of this involves the extended version of Taichi’s thesis and the credits photo with Yamato obviously next to a rocket, while this novel’s version involves more detailed fleshing out of how Taichi and Yamato decided to use their experiences to move onto their eventual career paths and what kind of hope they still have at the end. The Dash X version...didn’t really have a very strong equivalent here.)

In other words, while this version of the novel isn’t the greatest reference for plot or worldbuilding, it does a much more effective job being straightforward about the intended themes and message of the movie, and even if the scenes in it are much more loosely adapted, it’s much better at adapting the emotional nuances of the things that would normally be conveyed via visuals, expressions, and voice acting. (Although I would still say that the movie itself is the best reference for that kind of thing, of course.) If you just want lore or plot ideas, I don’t think it’ll help you very much, but since this series is so much about characters that had their ways of thinking fleshed out in such incredible detail, and about strong theme messaging, this is all still very valuable information in its own way.

#digimon #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #kizuna spoilers #shihameta

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triptuckers · 3 years ago

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Two Homes (part 2/7) - Nikolai Lantsov

Request: nope Pairing: Nikolai Lantsov x reader Summary: after receiving an invitation to a ball in os alta, you have no intention of attending. however your father has other plans Warnings: none Word count: 1.6K A/N: part two of the mini nikolai series! enjoy reading :) PREVIOUS PART | NEXT PART TAG LIST (two homes and/or all grishaverse fics): @godsofwriting @im-constantly-fangirling @ayushmitadutta @mrs-brekker15 @dancingwith-sunflowers @thegirlwiththeimpala @parker-natasha add yourself to my tag lists here

You wake up to the sound of your father pounding on the door. You don’t even have to get up to check if you’re right, the servants would never knock so loudly. Especially not this early in the morning. Did you forget something? An important date? Was today a birthday or anniversary?

While you’re still wondering if you’ve missed something, your father barges through the door, completely ignoring your privacy. He’s beaming at you, and you can’t remember the last time you’ve seen him this pleased about anything.

He doesn’t even wait for you to acknowledge him. Instead, he pulls out an envelope similar to the one you received yesterday night. You look at the double eagle seal on the back of it, and force yourself not to roll your eyes.

‘We’re going to Os Alta!’ announces your father. ‘You have been personally invited by King Nikolai to attend a ball!’

‘I’m not going.’ you say as you lay back down. ‘I got a letter yesterday, and I already made your choice.’

‘Nonsense!’ he says. ‘This is too good an opportunity to miss. Now get up, we leave within the hour.’

Just as you open your mind to protest, three servants enter your room, carrying an elaborate new dress. Before you can say anything else, your father has left the room and the servants start to dress you and do your hair.

Barely half an hour after you were rudely woken up by your father, you are out the door and on your way to Ravka.

You’re silent as you follow your father on his way to the docks. You had tried to convince the servants to let you wear a pair of pants instead of your heavy dress, but they told you your father wanted you to look your best when you left for Ravka.

So now you’re trying not to trip on your dress as you miserably follow your father. Maybe you could jump off the ship and swim back to Ketterdam. But you fear your heavy dress might sink you to the bottom of the sea before you could make it back.

As you get closer to the docks, you see two other merchant’s daughters who had received an invitation as well, and are happily chatting away. They seem very happy about it, which only causes you to get more annoyed. To top it all off, they don’t even spare you a glance as they walk past you.

When you get to the docks, you see a small crows has assembled to see you off. News travelled fast in Ketterdam, especially the news of three merchant daughters who were invited by the king of Ravka. You wished the docks were empty. All this attention was not something you wanted.

You look at the crowd as you board the ship. Among them, you spot a few of the crows. They wink at you and all have smug looks on their faces. Apparently, they thought you changed your mind.

But you shrug and lightly shake your head after pointing at your father, indicating you didn’t have a choice. You wave at them as the ship sails away. Unlike the others who are looking out at sea, you keep looking at Ketterdam until it disappears from the horizon. You barely left, and you couldn’t wait to go back already.

The trip to Ravka takes a couple of days, and when you finally get off the ship, you travel for another few days by carriage before you finally make it to Os Alta. The others are looking out the window of the carriage, pointing at everything they see.

You couldn’t even bring yourself to get excited or curious. Os Alta looked like any city in your eyes. All you wanted to do, was to go home to Ketterdam. The last thing you needed was to attend a ball. It all seemed so ridiculous. A waste of time and money.

But when you’re dreading something, time seems to go faster, instead of slowing down. The day of the ball creeps closer and way too soon, servants enter the room you’re staying in to help you get dressed.

All day long, you had been thinking of ways you could get out of the ball. You had tried leaving the Palace grounds, but if you wanted to do so, you’d need to be accompanied by a handful of armed guards. You could fight, but not fight off five tall guards with arms.

Climbing over the fence was not an option either. They were too tall, and you couldn’t find a spot where no one could see you.

Even if you did find a way to sneak out of the grounds, you’d still have to deal with your father. Even though you were far away from Ketterdam, he still followed you around like a shadow. Probably because you had made it very clear you didn’t even want to be there.

You even tried to pretend to be sick. But your father had called for a healer, who told you that you were in perfect health. You tried to pretend you fell down the stairs and couldn’t possibly dance all night long. But again, your father had called for a healer who confirmed your good health.

So, you had no choice but to attend the ball. No matter how much you dreaded it, there would be no escaping it.

When you’ve finished dressing, you feel like you might fall over because of the weight of the jewels. Apparently they thought it would be best to look like a shiny insect. Or maybe they just thought the weight of the jewels would prevent you from running away.

Your hair is put up with more jewels, and they had yet again refused to let you wear pants. Instead, you wear a simple but elegant silk gown. They wanted you to wear heels as well, but you had told them if they wouldn’t let you wear pants, the least they could do is have you pick your own shoes. You were pretty sure if you had to walk on heels all night long, your feet would be numb by the end of the night.

Your father had put on his best suit and is beaming with pride as you make your way to the ball room. He introduces you to anyone he walks into, keeping a firm grip on your hand on his arm, so you couldn’t slip away. Your cheeks already hurt from smiling so much.

You were told at the beginning of the ball, everyone would be introduced to the king, and the ball would start. Everyone else was excited to meet him, but you couldn’t care less. Your father had done his best at controlling you his entire life. And now, if he had it his way again, he’d marry you off to some royal you had never met.

Sure, you heard the stories. According to them, Nikolai was a war hero, charming, handsome. The boy king loved by his people. You didn’t care for stories. You wanted to go home, back to Ketterdam. Have a drink with the Crows, laugh at their jokes, play cards.

No matter how much you loathe the palace, your jaw still drops when you enter the massive ball room. It’s elaborately decorated and you have to admit, it’s gorgeous. You didn’t see a lot of this in Ketterdam. Still, you’d rather be in the Crow Club where the floor always seems to be sticky. And you keep looking around you, still trying to find a way out.

You’re waiting for everyone else to arrive and soon, the people around you start to move as everyone starts to introduce themselves to the king. And that’s when you see it. A door to a balcony, slightly open. You take a look at the people around you.

All of their eyes seem fixed on the king, your father as well. He’s got a weird sort of smile on his face as he looks at the king in the distance. It’s like he totally forgot you were there. It’s now or never. You hang back a little and slip between the people, making for the balcony door.

You open it and quietly slip onto the balcony. The cool air outside feels more welcoming than anything else you’ve encountered on your trip to the palace. It’s not a big balcony, and you’re still visible from inside the ball room.

But the ground is not that far, you notice as you look over the edge of the balcony. You’ve once jumped from a windowsill about the same height as the balcony, when you were on a job with Jesper. You take another look over your shoulder. Your father hadn’t even noticed your absence.

You take a deep breath and swing your legs over the balcony. Another deep breath, and you take the leap.

You had been right, it wasn’t that far. Still, you land rather clumsily. You’re not used to wearing silk dresses, and curse softly as you try to get up without tripping on it. Once you’re standing, you look up at the balcony, then ahead. In the distance, you see the palace gardens. They look beautiful in the dim light of the setting sun.

Smiling to yourself, you start walking towards them.

Meanwhile up in the ballroom, your father had reached the king. He’s hopelessly looking around him. All eyes are on him.

‘I swear she was right here, she must have slipped away. She was right here, I’m telling you!’ he says.

Most of the guests are sending him disapproving looks, but king Nikolai is the only one who looks amused.

A/N: If you want to request something, make sure to read my house rules Here’s the list of characters I write for. Everything that I have written can be found on my masterlist. Please don’t repost my work, as I spend much time and effort on it!! Thank you for reading! Much love, Marit

#nikolai lantsov #shadow and bone #grishaverse #nikolai lantsov x reader #nikolai lantsov fanfiction #nikolai lantsov fanfic #nikolai lantsov fanfics #nikolai lantsov fic #nikolai lantsov fics #shadow and bone fanfiction #shadow and bone fanfic #shadow and bone fanfics #shadow and bone fic #shadow and bone fics #two homes series

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wangxianficrecs · 4 years ago

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Follower Recs

There are nearly FORTY THOUSAND AO3 stories in the MDZS universe, and I am just a single person with limited time, so.... Here’s a bit of y’all doing my work for me!

~*~

Mojo, I know it'd probably be recced before, but I have to recommend stiltonbasket's Twelve Moons and a Fortnight. It has made me squee of cuteness, hold my breath with suspense, marvel over the worldbuilding and character interactions, and just awed me at how well every original piece of lore and HC ties back to canon. I cried over it, only to cry laughing the next chapter. it kept me going through an entire year of lockdown and is finally coming to an end, and the resolution was magnificent.

*[I’m subscribed to this and keep waiting for Part One to be completed, but instead later parts keep getting posted: is it completed but not marked? I am confused. And eager to read!]*

Twelve Moons and a Fortnight

by stiltonbasket (G, 267k, wangxian, WIP)

Summary: "Let me get this straight. You really want me to stand in for you while you help Jin Ling settle in at Koi Tower?"

"Who else do I have?" Jiang Cheng snaps, ears turning scarlet as Jin Ling tries to pretend he isn't listening. "Father trained you to serve as my deputy, didn't he? And don't say you don't remember, or I'll break your legs."

"Well, yes," Wei Wuxian manages. "Uh. I'll just let Lan Zhan know I'll be at Lotus Pier until you're back at home, then."

Or, the one where Wei Wuxian spends the year before his wedding as Yunmeng Jiang's acting sect leader, and the cultivation world's greatest love story finds its happy ending with the help of three juniors, a teenage romance, and one very involved (and exasperated) younger brother.

~*~

May I recommend fielty by milkpunch a sort of AU where lwj in order to save his sect from being destroyed by nine after wen rouhans assasination goes to work as a guard to Jin zixuan where he meets wwx the right hand of Jin guanguao... ~ @pastashouldbeeatenwithafork

Fealty

by milkpunch (E, 84k, wangxian)

Summary: Before, there had been two reigning kingdoms. Both claimed to be blessed by the sun, but with vastly differing views. One, under the name of Wen, was washed red with blood and violence, its soldiers fierce and stoked with a fiery blaze. The other, under the name of Jin, was bathed in golden light and glory, its soldiers proud and heavy with coin and prestige. The two kingdoms went to war for the true honour of having the sun’s blessing, fighting for many long years with many lives lost.

Jin Guangshan, emperor of the Golden Sun Palace, found that the sun favoured him more.

To prevent his kingdom from being crushed, Lan Zhan, second heir to the Lan kingdom, exchanges his freedom for that of servitude to the Jin kingdom. He is appointed as Jin Zixuan's personal guard, but there's more on his plate than just keeping the Jin heir safe. The Golden Sun Palace is not all that it seems, and the dazzling lives of the royals are less perfect than they appear.

~*~

Hey, I was wondering if I could rec a fic to you. My bestie wrote it for the Lunar New Year Wangxian gift exchange and it definitely did not receive the attention it deserves. It's a really fun mermaid/arranged marriage au! ~ @leahlisabeth

More Than This Provincial Wife

by ApprenticedMagician (T, 6k, wangxian)

Summary: The negotiations surrounding the Lan & Jiang alliance through marriage encountered a few snags in the beginning.

~*~

I love your blog! I saw a recent post where you listed some rec's from other people? [Thank you! And yes, I always appreciate and am happy to share your recs!] I just read the WIP A Corpse Called By Name jaemyun and LOVED it! It's a zombie apocolypse AU, where Wei Ying gets bitten by a zombie.... and I don't want to spoil anything from there, but it is amazing! No pressure to put it in your blog, but wanted to send a note just in case. Thanks for all you do!

A Corpse Called By Name

by jaemyun (not rated, 37k, wangxian, WIP)

Summary: A continuation of zombie drabble!

She loses her brother in a hoard of the undead.

She finds a corpse wearing his face in a convenience store.

The corpse calls her name.

~*~

Hi! I was wondering if I could rec this short fic that I recently found and really liked! The narrative is an inner monologue and I think it captures lwj really well :)

binding me in spells (till my heart's devoured)

by gaysgaysgays (G, <1k, wangxian)

Summary: His scars are a reminder of his hurt, a reminder that he had healed.

(or a study of lan zhan's scars)

~*~

I found a fic I had recently asked you about, so I thought I'd share it with you: Seasons of Falling Flowers by merakily (http://archiveofourown.org/works/28522326). I rediscovered it completely by accident after listening to spinifex's excellent podfic adaptation. This is the fic where Lan Qiren despises Wei Wuxian until Wei Wuxian catches a cold and Lan Qiren find out about his golden core. That part is about 3/4 of the way through. The fic is wonderful and shows a rigid but surprisingly introspective Lan Qiren. ~ @clmoryel [Oh! I just read this one yesterday! Here’s my bookmark.]

Seasons of Falling Flowers

by merakily (G, 40k, wangxian, lan qiren & wei wuxian, podfic)

Summary: Like a parasite, Wei Wuxian has this way of growing on people when you least expect it.

Over the seasons, Lan Qiren slowly pieces back together his relationship with Wangji and learns to like Wei Wuxian in the process.

(“Will you rejoin your sect?” As soon as the words leave his mouth, Lan Qiren regrets his wording.

He is not surprised when Wangji’s eyes narrow, flashing with offence. “There is no need to rejoin what one has never left. I did not turn my back on my sect. My sect turned their backs on me.”)

~*~

Hi! Can I rec a fic? "bring you home" by Alasse_Irena on AO3 is a modern AU and is one of the most beautiful and atmospheric fics I have read. Thanks for you work running this blog! I have new Wangxian fics to read <3

bring you home

by Alasse_Irena (T, 28k, wangxian)

Summary: Wei Ying rents a run-down cottage in a small town by the sea, looking for a quiet place to hide after the war.

Lan Zhan has always dreamed of the ocean. He returns to the town where he was born, and where his parents died, to find out why.

Instead, they find each other.

~*~

Good morning lady mojo, I hope you’re having a good day! I wanted to rec a fic, Breathing Firestorm by ladyshadowdrake. It’s 111k and great but barely has any love, which is unfair. You mentioned it in the last ‘in a mood for’ post but I think it should have more of a shoutout because it’s a lot of fun and I liked it a lot. Have a great day ♥️ [Oh! I was subscribed to this one and saw it had been recently finished. It’s def. on my list!]

Breathing Firestorm

by ladyshadowdrake (M, 111k, wangxian)

Summary: After years of a mad quest, Wen Ruohan is finally given proof of a powerful creature living among mortals. He is delighted to find that it truly believes itself to be only a boy named “Wei Wuxian.”

While Wen Ruohan tries to unlock Wei Wuxian’s secret, the sects unite against him. If he can achieve his goal before they arrive, even the combined might of the cultivation world would not be enough to humble him. Meanwhile, Lan Wangji dreams of Wei Wuxian in the Cold Pond Cave, and works tirelessly to rescue him from Wen Ruohan’s clutches. No one is prepared for what awaits the allied sects in Nightless City at the conclusion of the war, and it very well might mean the end of the world as they know it.

~*~

Hi Mojo, firstly thank you for all the hard work you put into running this blog, I’ve found so many fics that I probably would have never come across if it wasn’t for your fic finders posts and your personal review posts. [Aw, thank you!]

I don’t know if you’ve read this fic before or if it’s been mentioned before on your blog (I’ve done a quick search of your blog and couldn’t see it, so if I’ve missed it I apologise!) but if you’ve got a fic rec post coming up, I would suggest “The shapes a bright container can contain” by litbynosun.

It’s a case fic about 16k words long and set after canon. Whilst it’s not the main focus of the story it does delve slightly into chronic illness of wwx (the ailments of mxy’s body) and lwj (his continuous treatment of his scars) which might cover a few requests in the IITMF posts in future.

Thanks again for all the hard work you do! ~ @dulachodladh

the shapes a bright container can contain

by litbynosun

M, 17k, wangxian

Summary: "Lan Zhan, look at this," Wei Wuxian calls. "They don't have organs, but they're all… fuzzy."

He gently strokes the corpse's arm -- it's covered in soft, pigmentless downy hair, like a rabbit. Lan Wangji crouches next to him and nods. "Lanugo," he says. Wei Wuxian raises one eyebrow. "They were malnourished for quite a while before death," Lan Wangji elaborates. Wei Wuxian scans the bodies again. Indeed, they both have sunken cheeks, and their abdomens are empty of both organs and fat padding. “That’s a question,” he says. “Did they starve to death, and have their bodies desecrated after they were already deceased? Or were they murdered, and simply starving at the same time?” "We should stay," Lan Wangji tells him. This is not an answer to his question. It is an offer to search for answers.

Or: Wei Wuxian and his family solve a ghost haunting. Wei Wuxain's old enemy, societal injustice, rears its head again.

#follower rec #wangxian fic rec #I HAVEN'T READ THESE YET #wangxian #mdzs

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