#Puppeteer airy au | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sylphidine · 2 years

Text

[Fic] Call Signs, Chapter 25

Fandom: Deltarune

‘Verse: Human AU

Pairing: Swatch/Spamton [Swatchton]

POV Characters: Ballew Addison, Kirov Rouvin, Regina "GiGi" McCray, Indigo Dyer, Catechu Dyer

Out-of-focus characters: Swatch Paletta, Spamton Addison, T.M. Tanner

Rating: Mature

Chapter title: Behind The Black

Chapter summary: A kaleidoscope of varying viewpoints, during what may or may not be a significant week in the lives of our characters.

Author notes: The usual content and trigger warnings for discussion of alcohol abuse, emotional manipulation, misgendering, intellectual hypocrisy and guilt-tripping. The chapter title "Behind The Black" refers to the change of focus from Swatch and Spamton to some of our secondary characters, told from their own POVs. It can seem sometimes like they've always been slightly offscreen, when in actuality they've been here the whole time.

___________

Monday, February 21, 2022

Ballew Addison's office door was closed, as it usually was on Mondays.

His employees knew not to disturb him on Mondays and were accustomed to funneling their questions about workflow through his personal assistant.

This practice served Ballew well this morning, although at the present moment he was not working on anything urgent.

To any casual observer, it would look like he was trying to find an empty place on one of his bookshelves for an antique cloth doll, dressed in satin and stuffed with sawdust. It was a jester garbed in black-and-white motley and sporting rouged cheeks, like the joker card found in very old decks of playing cards.

Anyone who knew Ballew more fully would recognize that the CFO was lost in thoughts deeper and darker than simple redecoration.

He'd thanked his new girlfriend Nixie for the late Valentine's gift during the weekend they’d just spent together; she had wanted to give him something from her own childhood. He was fairly sure he’d hidden any sign of discomfort from his face or his body language; they didn’t know each other terribly well yet.

She couldn't know how much of a devastating emotional trigger puppets and marionettes had become for him in the last few years.

Friday, September 20, 2019

The Javits Center always seemed both airy and stagnant during the Electronics Expo. The beautiful crisp skies of September could be seen through the glass walls of the atriums and walkways, but inside the ballrooms of the trade show itself, the crowding together of demo booths fostered an atmosphere that could sometimes feel oppressive.

Eos had begged off from the Expo this year, claiming “gadget fatigue”, but Ballew still enjoyed the chance to get out from behind his desk and do the meet-and-greets that would accomplish business-to-business lead generation.

Harvard Business School had given him the social polish and the managerial background to coordinate the financial success of the company that bore his family's name. If Ballew had ever regretted the missed opportunity to study engineering, as Eos had done at MIT… well, that was old, old water under a long-gone bridge.

Addison Cybernetics didn't usually take a booth at events like this. The company dealt mainly in streamlining solutions, rather than in research and development, but it kept on top of such cutting edge improvements in fields like MEMS sensors, IoT technology, and biochips for prosthetics.

Ballew wandered the trade show floor wearing his usual poker face, not revealing the giddiness he still felt at the sheer inventiveness surrounding him. He collected business cards from various sales reps, both startups and established businesses. They ranged from companies that aimed to revolutionize medical consultation through augmented reality and artificial intelligence, to firms that dealt in safety management for drone operations, to businesses that handled illumination applications, and so much more.

He made a mental note to tell Eos later about the startup that was producing affordable 3D printed musical instruments. His older brother would react like a sweets-loving kid being given a lifetime supply of candy.

It was a great time to be alive.

And then Ballew’s mood soured as he rounded a corner and saw an unexpected face.

The person was a good thirty feet away from him, but there was no mistaking who it was. Ballew’s younger brother Gainsboro stood under a banner reading “HAVE YOUR HOME RUN LIKE CLOCKWORK!” in the GASTER Smart Homes Hub booth.

The younger brother who Ballew hadn’t seen in more than two years.

The younger brother who had left home in anger, taunting Ballew that he, Gainsboro, was not going to let Ballew turn him into a puppet the way Ballew had done with Eos, and had gone to work for a shady, shifty, fly-by-night company that seemed to have sprung up from nowhere.

From a distance, Gainsboro looked older. Well, of course he did. He was two years older. But there was something in the way his face was lined and the way that he carried himself that reminded Ballew of the grandfather who had died before Gainsboro had been born. A pale, lined face, stiff arthritic joints.

Ballew couldn’t help himself. As angry as he was at his baby brother, he also missed him terribly. So instead of following his first impulse and turning around, he walked towards the GASTER booth, noting the old-fashioned text and the image of some kind of child-robot on the banner. As he got closer, the realization as to why Gainsboro looked so unnatural became clear.

The youngest Addison still had his hair dyed jet black, as he had when he came home for that last shouting match and his final break with the family. But what made him look so odd was that he wore theatrical makeup styled to make him appear like a ventriloquist’s dummy, and he was handing out cards to passersby with motions that mimicked a wind-up toy.

Really? The best use that this two-bit, shady, shifty, fly-by-night company could make of Gainsboro Stanton Addison was as some sort of…booth mascot?!

It boggled the mind.

It took every ounce of restraint that Ballew had, but he made only the briefest eye contact with his youngest brother as he took the card held out to him. Gainsboro’s face was frozen in a rictus grin, and his eyes gave nothing away behind his two-toned sunglasses.

Ballew couldn’t help tossing a parting shot over his shoulder as he walked away from the booth.

“So who’s the puppet now? Seems to suit you. Hope you’re enjoying it.”

His feet suddenly felt heavy, as did his heart.

Monday, February 14, 2022

In Yantal, it would have been grounds for severe punishment for Kirov Rouvin to publicly celebrate Valentine’s Day, even if his tastes had run to women. As a man who was attracted to other men rather than to women, that punishment might have led to imprisonment or worse, as had been going on for years in Argun.

Here in America, though, he was safe.

Well, safer. There were still reports in the newspapers about beatings and deaths in this country, but such crimes were usually committed by private citizens on each other.

Kirov knew how to joke and laugh with women so that they knew he was bantering rather than flirting with them. He knew how to joke and laugh with most men in a way that led those men to believe that he liked women as much as they did.

He’d learned what his American sponsor had termed “protective camouflage” over the last two years that he had been in this country. He’d had casual dates with a few interested and interesting men in the last year, but there was only one man for whom his heart thumped as though it would tear itself out of his chest.

Luck had been with Kirov lately, in finding ways to gaze upon that enchanting, incomparably beautiful man. Bless the fates that had arranged that chance encounter with Stanton at the library yesterday, and bless his own ingenuity for arranging a purposeful encounter tonight.

Although he didn’t even really have to manufacture an excuse… he really DID need to use one of the library’s reserve copies of Harington’s “Orlando Furioso” to complete his “compare and contrast” assignment with the Waldman version for Dr. Nagle.

After his two reserve hours were up, Kirov waited until there was no one else in line at the circulation desk. Stanton’s back was turned to him while he was sorting some titles on a shelf; he was wearing a black cable-knit sweater over a white turtleneck. No tie today. Pity.

Trying to seem casual, he carefully put the Harington folio back on the counter and placed his gift-wrapped box of Twinings next to it. He had tied a red satin ribbon around the box and had pinned the samovar badge to the ribbon. He then cleared his throat politely and Stanton walked over in response.

“Thank you for the use of the text. It was most helpful for my assignment.” Kirov turned to go, as though he had forgotten his parcel, and as he expected, Stanton called after him.

“W-wait, Kirov! You left something.”

Kirov turned back, trying hard not to smile too widely at the flustered look on Stanton’s face. He said, “No, I did not. It is for you. A small token of my esteem. Is today not a day to give such tokens to a person one esteems?”

Stanton stared back at him without speaking. His thin cheeks became flushed. He blinked rapidly, and Kirov’s confidence started to falter. The seconds ticked by.

Finally Stanton seemed to find his voice again. “I’m - I’m v-v-very - flattered, Kirov, but I c-can’t accept this. I thought you knew I w-was seeing someone. A romantic - romantic s-s-someone.”

It took all of Kirov’s acting skill, but he managed to pull off a realistic-sounding amused laugh and to reply, “No, not a romantic gift! It is just tea, a gift for a colleague whom I esteem! To repay you for your good teaching last semester.”

“Ah,” said Stanton after a long moment. “I ap-apologize if I got the - the wrong idea.”

“No, it is I who must apologize!” Kirov gave a big exaggerated wink and took a step back from the counter once again. “Please share the tea with your… romantic someone. He must be a very special fellow.”

His former tutor nodded and murmured, “Yes. Yes, they are.”

They?

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

Regina McCray smoothed one hand over her lacquered helmet of blue-black hair while texting her roommate with the other.

Tabbycat I Can’t Believe I’ve Been Dating The Same Guy For Six Weeks Can You???! Me!!! Hard As Nails Me LOL!!!!!

The reply came gratifyingly quickly.

GiGi it surprised me too but i think you got a good thing going

And nice to see you happy

Only real surprise is how good you are with Leroux’s kid

GiGi smiled, even though T.M. couldn’t see her do so from the other end of the dorm suite. She picked up her oversized blue martini glass and waggled it in an impromptu salute, somehow managing not to spill a single drop of her Mountain Dew.

Lance Is A Brat Sometimes Like Any Other Kid But He Can Be Really Sweet Too Did You Know He Gave Me A Nickname???

A little longer pause this time, before T.M.’s new text appeared.

Oh what is it

Does he call you queenie😃

She took a big swig of soda and set the glass off to the side safely away from her phone.

Nope He Calls Me Girldad

A much longer pause this time.

It can’t be easy for the poor kid with one of his dads in jail

But don’t you think his bonding with you is rushing things a bit

As always, T.M. could be counted on to cut through any tangle to get to the heart of any matter. GiGi typed back quickly before she lost her nerve.

I’m So Scared WHat Do I Do Now

She didn’t wait for a reply, but shut the phone off and stumbled, blinded by panic, to T.M.’s room. The other woman was standing in the doorway, as though reading her mind as to what she needed. GiGi let T.M. wrap her arms around her and didn’t resist when she made her lie down with her on the bed.

They were very nearly the same height, although T.M. was much curvier than GiGi.

GiGi sank into those curves like a drowning sailor. She buried her face in T.M. 's shoulder and concentrated on the scent of her roommate’s English Leather cologne.

She didn’t cry.

GiGi never cried.

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

It had been two days, but the rejection still stung.

Walking from one end of the hilly Inwood campus to the other, multiple times, had not helped. Burying himself in his coursework and starting to work on assignments that were not due for weeks had not helped. There was no one left back home to write to and pour out his broken heart.

Perhaps it was time to take the advice of some of his friends in the freshman dorm and drown his sorrows like a man.

And so Kirov found himself on a Wednesday night looking up at the very tall, very stern-looking bartender at Plato's Cave and holding out a $10.00 bill.

"A Smirnoff Ice please, good sir!" He plastered what he hoped was a winsome grin on his face.

It was apparently not winsome enough, because the man did not return Kirov's smile, nor did he take Kirov's money. Instead, in a surprisingly light tenor voice, the bartender asked, "May I please see your ID?"

“Of course!” He continued to grin, not wanting to show how annoyed he was that yet again, he’d have the disconnect between his class year and his age to explain. To forestall the inevitable, Kirov put the money down on the polished bar, pulled out both his campus ID and his New Jersey state-issued photo ID, and pushed all three in front of the brooding brown giant, feeling his own lack of height keenly and sure that his own face was pinker than ever.

The bartender, who wore an intriguing pair of eyeglasses and had long curly hair pulled back in a ponytail, picked up the two IDs, which were dwarfed in his massively large hands. Kirov waited for, and got, the apology he was expecting, as the man handed back the laminated cards and said in that same mellifluous voice, “I do regret the inconvenience, but I am not supposed to serve alcohol to underage patrons.”

“You are only doing your job, sir, and I congratulate you on your thoroughness. Although babies drink vodka where I come from. Since I am a Joisey boy, you know.”

That got the bartender to smile slightly, as the line usually did. The man replied, “I can imagine. Someone with such a distinguished manner of speech could only be from New Jersey." He pulled out the requested bottled beverage and continued, “I’m afraid we only have the black cherry flavor at present.” He deftly popped the cap off with a bottle opener and asked, “Would you like me to pour?”

“Certainly, if you’ll join me in a glass.”

“I’m afraid that we wouldn’t both fit, sir.” The bartender smoothed down the front of his somewhat gaudy half-black, half-white vest. He then turned to ring up the sale and make change, displaying a VERY nice backside in snug-fitting black jeans.

Kirov laughed, pleased at having someone to flirt with again.

Thursday, February 17, 2022

As Indigo Dyer propelled his shopping cart towards the produce section, a familiar fluffy head of gray-streaked hair, attached to a familiar short skinny white dude in a familiar red hoodie, caught his eye.

He used his long-legged height advantage to catch up to Spamton. “Hey, Spam-man! Long time no see!”

Spamton’s gurgling laugh accompanied his protest. “You j-j-just saw me yesterday for lunch! It’s n-not like it’s been - it’s been YEARS.”

“I know, man, I know.” Indigo fell in step beside the shorter man as they both pushed their carts through the aisles between displays of fruits and vegetables. “But five minutes here, twenty minutes there, every couple of days… it’s not like it was.”

“I g-guess.” Spamton tilted his head to look his former roommate in the eye. “Why - why do I g-g-g-get the feeling you’re trying to ask me for a f-favor?”

No flies on this guy . Indigo grinned to himself. He was tempted to spin a long rambling tale to wind Spamton up, but then he thought better of it. Honesty almost always worked out best in the long run.

“Okay, you got me. And it’s not really a favor so much as me hoping both you guys might be open to a little tweaking on this Sunday’s plan.”

“Oh? I’m l-listening.”

“Good. Tabsy and me were talking, and first off, we love the idea of fraction birthdays. You are a genius , man, for coming up with that.”

Spamton nodded as he grabbed a bag of carrots and dropped it into his cart. “My - my sister st-started it, and it kind of - kind of c-caught on.” He moved further along the corridor of vegetable bins, and said in a mock-sarcastic way, “If I ever g-gave T.M. a cutesy n-nickname, you’d be scraping b-b-bits of me off the wall.”

Indigo hooted and slapped the handle of his own cart. When he was able to stop laughing, he got back to the mission of selecting produce while returning the conversation to the celebration for Swatch.

“As I was saying, Tabsy and I wondered if maybe we could invite a few other people to this shindig. Make it something separate from our Sunday family dinners.”

Spamton seemed to be giving it serious thought; Indigo could almost see the wheels turning in his head. At least it didn’t look like the Spam-man was taking offense at the idea; he hadn’t started yelling or carrying on. In fact, it almost looked like Spamton was trying very hard to not bust out smiling. But the little guy was definitely holding some of his cards close to his chest as he answered, “How m-many extra p-people are we talking about? The house isn’t - isn’t that b-big, remember.”

Score! That almost sounds like a “yes”.

Indigo tried to sound casual as he counted off on his fingers, “Well, obviously, you, Swatch, me and Catto and Tabsy. Then I was thinking about Catto wanting to bring Kendra, and that means some of the other fencers that Swatch knows, like Nishay and Liam, might want to come. And then there’s some guys on the basketball team that Swatch has been close to for years, like Romar and the two Adams —”

He broke off as Spamton interrupted him with a handwave, saying, “You’ve s-sold me! I'll ask Swatch t-to-tonight what - what they think. And I’ve b-been trying to - to think of a way to thank Leroux and GiGi for their help m-m-m-moving me and Swatch in, last m-month, so I’d invite them, t-too.”

The shorter man was practically glowing when he finished speaking, and Indigo had a sudden sneaking suspicion that Spamton had known of this plan the whole time and had just been waiting for Indigo to bring up the possibility.

“I’d be happy to do all the cooking and have the party at Overlook,” Indigo blurted out.

Spamton seemed taken aback for a few seconds, but then he chirped cheerily, “That’s v-very nice of you. And cheaper than t-t-takeout for a gang of - of athletes - ”

“Hey, we’re not a GANG, mister - “

“Okay, okay! Truce!”

“ - but I insist you make a couple of pots of your chicken soup. Me and Catto have missed that good stuff, man."

“Oh, the truth c-comes out, you d-don’t miss me, you just m-miss the soup.”

Spamton’s voice was a bit softer now and not quite so cheerful. Indigo looked around to make sure that the two of them were not blocking any shoppers who might want to get past them, then knelt down to give the shorter man a bear hug. So that no one would suspect him of turning mushy, he also gave Spamton a noogie on the top of his head.

Spamton sputtered at the indignity of the noogie, but clapped Indigo on the back a couple of times, like he was playing the bongos.

Sunday, February 20, 2022

This party couldn’t have been timed more perfectly, in Catechu Dyer’s opinion.

The men’s basketball team was coming off three straight wins, two away games earlier in the week and a home win just a few hours ago. He had his arm around Kendra, who was also coming off a winning tournament round in both saber and epee, and was smiling fit to beat the band. She was channeling her idol Nikki Franke this year with her close-cropped ‘fro. “Saves on shower time,” she’d told Catto the first time he’d spent the night with her.

His twin and the Spam-man both seemed to be in their element, bringing out various platters of appetizers and finger food as soon as they were ready from the oven. Of course, Indo had somehow convinced their former roommate to make some of his signature chicken soup, but neither Catto nor his current roommates were going to complain. He’d noticed Ryan and Watson going back to the kitchen for seconds and even thirds.

Everyone seemed to be mixing well together. The guy with the SERIOUSLY long silver beaded braids who ran the radio station was having a grand old time trading lighthearted Shakespearian insults with Nishay from the fencing team. T.M.’s roommate was perched on the clanky old radiator like it was some kind of rocket-powered throne, holding court with an attentive group of basketball players.

T.M. herself was circulating, never in one spot for long. The air seemed to be crackling with electricity around her; Catto made a mental note to try to catch her tomorrow for lunch and see if something was bugging her.

Indo stopped in front of the couch with a tray of pigs in blankets; Catto snagged a hot handful and dropped them on his plate. Spamton followed with a tray of broccoli bites, and Kendra took some in a far more civilized manner for herself. As they moved away to offer food to the other guests, Catto heard his brother tell Spamton, “You know, you really should think about joining the hospitality industry. You’d be a natural at it!”

Spamton shot back, “Only if - if I can wear a sharp suit like Swatch does at P-Plato’s.”

The little guy’s stutter was barely noticeable tonight.

In a corner, Swatch was standing and talking with Romar, their old teammate. They were both leaning up against the wall, a pose that Catto hadn’t realized how much he’d missed from his cousin. You couldn’t guess from looking at Swatch that just three months ago their leg had been smashed to bits.

Romar was apparently continuing the harangue he’d gone off on during the bus trip back Tuesday night. Some of the players on the opposing team had been suspended earlier in the year for sneaking “lean” into team afterparties, and Romar wanted no part of that. He was audibly thanking Swatch for making sure this party tonight was a dry party, without overtly saying that he knew where Swatch was coming from regarding mutual experience.

Aunt Claudine had thought she had the kids fooled when she called her homemade red wine coolers spiked with cough syrup “grape juice for grownups”. Those had been her downfall, literally.

Catto was grateful to his grandmother Fairlight that she had never outright forbidden him, Swatch, or Indo to drink alcohol on occasions when the extended family got together, but let the three of them make their own decisions as they went through puberty and high school. She also didn’t shy away from discussing in graphic detail what the abuse of alcohol had done to her daughter’s brain wiring, something that even his own mom and dad downplayed.

He didn’t abstain the way Swatch did, but if he had a few beers every couple of weeks, that was a lot for him.

Watching Swatch’s face now, he could venture a guess that Swatch had Aunt Claudine on their mind as well, and not in the “happy memories” way.

And almost as if the two of them had the same near-telepathic link that Catto and Indo had, Catto wasn’t surprised to see Spamton cross the room to Swatch and gracefully extricate Swatch from what was becoming a difficult conversation by asking for their help in tasting whether the macarons were ready.

“That’s true love for you,” Catto said out loud, and squeezed Kendra tighter. She started to snort derisively, but her dark face softened when she watched Swatch walk into the kitchen, arm-in-arm with their partner for the whole room to see.

“Yeah, that’s love.”

Monday, February 21, 2022

Ballew was jolted out of his reverie by the vibration of his cellphone. The incoming text was from Swatch Paletta.

May I set up an appointment to discuss business with you? And also possibly the topic of love?

#swatchton #deltarune chapter 2 #swatchton au #sylph writes #fic: call signs

1 note · View note

k-439 · 5 months

Note

Could you give a list of your characters? I want to ask questions but I don't see any information on any of them. I tried going on your toyhouse and it leads to nothing.

Oh my gosh, I haven't been on this account for a while, my apologies.

Yes I can! Its under the keep reading. I have over 100s of characters haha so It's pretty long. My toyhouse is here! Sorry it doesn't work on the blog, I will try and fix that. Thank you for being interested in my characters and oc blog :). My artfight has some of my fleshed out characters that I really love.

CHARACTER LIST:

always growing!

○ Abby

○ Airis

○ Alcott

○ Alfie

○ Allison

○ Amael

○ Anaiah

○ Anolo Cruz

○ Argo

○ Axe

○ Beau

○ Berri

○ Bird man

○ Camillo

○ Circus workers (4 no named)

○ Circus owner + family

○ Circus owner mistress

○ Citali

○ Crawly

○ Crawdons

○ Cupid

○ Dino Juice

○ Donotspeakofthem

○ Eterni

○ Eve Campbell

○ Flopsy

○ Freddie

○ Ghosts of Karaa (2 no named)

○ Giegue

○ Gwen

○ Half-Pink

○ Heart Collector

○ Hollie

○ Iggy Alfonso

○ Iggy's hot sister

○ Iggy's other sister

○ Iggy's parents (The alfonsos)

○ Illusionist

○ Imara Akshaya

○ Ira

○ Irene

○ Ivo

○ Jirou

○ Juggler

○ Kahu

○ Lorelai

○ Leilani

○ Luca

○ Lulu

○ Luni

○ Lutuya

○ "Lovers men" (2 no named)

○ Maggie

○ Malacoda

○ Marshall

○ Max

○ Miffy

○ Miley

○ Milo

○ Msa

○ Naomi

○ "Night and Sun" (Nox Dawn and Daisy Dawn, sadly not a Fnaf AU.)

○ "No Arms" (2 no named)

○ Odyss

○ Penny

○ Puppet Master

○ Ray

○ Rex

○ Ringmaster (unnamed)

○ Ringmaster family (unknown number of people)

○ Robin

○ Ruby

○ Serentiy

○ Sevyn

○ Sol

○ Sick Rick

○ Singing Clowns (unknown number of people)

○ "Strong Softy" (no name)

○ Sui Nyx

○ Suki

○ Suerte (its a cat)

○ Tani

○ Teeth

○ Tru

○ Traffic Cone Girl

○ Twins (2 unnamed)

○ Valentina

○ Vanny

○ "Witch" Crystal ball reader (unnamed)

○ Yuno

○ Zuri

#oc blog #my ocs #my babies #original character #ask blog

1 note · View note

novaazurite · 1 year

Text

Alright! Proper intro post!!

Helo my (user)name is NovaAzurite!!

But ya can call me Az, Pin, MePhone, whatever ya like! (Except for Nova please.) Im currently 18 and I go by any pronouns really lol.

Im mostly into Inanimate Insanity, BFDI, Paper Puppets Take 2, Animatic Battle, Its Time For The, Obselete Battle Show, Objectified, I.O.N., Object Invasion, and The Daily Object Show! (And thats what content I make of mostly!) Uhh yeah basically im a OSC artist. Also, I REALLLLLY LOVE COINPIN.

Other stuff im into: PHIGHTING(kind of), Roblox HOURS, Item Asylum, Star Glitcher, Regretevator, Midnight Horrors, Fruitger Aero stuff, 2000s stuff, Pokemon, Legend of Zelda, Webcore/Old Web stuff, Scenecore.

I made a BFDI AU, its readable on my AO3 account, heres a link to most of the information thats relevant to the au!!

I tag it sometimes with #BFDIALG and #BFDIAzurianLandsOfGoiky

I also made an II AU if ya interested (its still a consistent WIP) ⬇️ I use #InanimateOverdriveIIAU for tagging art/lore!

Heres a link about my Inanimate Insanity AU!

My Irls/kins:

Pin(BFDI), MePhone4(II), Book(BFDI), Paintbrush(II), Firey(BFDI), Four(BFDI), and Ice Cube(BFDI). Anyone listed here if you happen to be a double of, I dont mind you interacting still, I dont mind irl/kin/fictkin doubles at all, yall are good :]

Other socials:

YouTube

Twitter

ToyHouse

Wattpad

AO3

DeviantArt (Inactive/Abandoned)

DNI: You ship Liam x Airy, ship anyone with Firey Jr, Grassy, or Rocky, NSFW accs (may be an adult but I am uncomfortable around these), pr0ship, z00ph1l3s, sh accs, zionists, Rocketzuka shippers, Subkit shippers, anyone who ships Biograft with another phighter in Phighting, bash on me or others consistently about a ship we like that you hate.

Thin Ice: Heavy Dave and Bambi fans, heavy FNF fans, heavy Dandys World fans.

#novaazurite rambles abt bs #dumb intro post #Intro post thingy

53 notes · View notes

multi-maker · 3 years

Note

soulmate AU where the first words your soulmate says to you are written on your wrist!! i've been thinking about the concept lately.. as for the character what about scara?? since you wanted to write for him!! maybe he was sent to attack reader who's a vip or some diplomat or just an important position in an enemy nation and then he just bruhs when they say the words on his wrist??

flowery words.

summary. the words tattoo’ed on your wrist is the words your soulmate will first say when you meet them.

pairing. scaramouche x gender neutral! reader

notes. SCARAMOUCHE ?!?!!! SCARAAAMOUUCHE MY LOVEEE !! it’s my first time writing for that tiny ball of anger so i hope you liked it! spoilers for scaramouche’s backstory as well as inazuma’s archon quest! warning for morally grey reader & well … scaramouche?

in the world scaramouche lives in, the tattoo’ed words on his wrist brings him comfort. he deals in death and violence — solely relying on his prowess to survive and keep his title as the sixth harbinger strong. he isn’t weak, nor is he merely “all talk”. he actually has the power to back up his quite arrogant words.

despite being created and made by the raiden shogun as a puppet, the words that decorate his wrist like a bracelet was enough for her to assume that even the gods of celestia pity puppets like his.

(he scoffs at the notion. the gods of celestia are not merciful.)

whenever he felt stressed or feel his thunder-like wrath in his chest, he would take a look at the words that wrap around his wrist. he longed for the day to hear it, to hear the voice speak the words that litterl his wrist.

he just didn’t expect it to be you.

he was sent by the tsaritsa to dispose of you — a high ranking noble in the land of hydro. he snuck in easily, blending with the people of fontaine. the tsaritsa told him that you were being a nuisance to the fatui, easily disposing of the camps with your sharp mind and quick wit.

“balladeer, my child,” the tsaritsa’s soft yet cold voice rings in the frosty air of zapolyarny palace. he loathes that he kneels, but he must do so, lest he might get his own head cut off. “be careful. this person is quite … difficult for you to beat.” the tsaritsa says airily, a fragile snowflake dancing on the iced tips of her fingers.

her cold eyes turns to his kneeling form, uncrossing her legs as she stands. scaramouche withstands the temptation to shoot a shock of electro towards the archon of cryo. the god of love steps down from her ice throne, her cold hands tilting his head up to meet her icy gaze.

“perhaps you’ll meet your love in the land of hydro, balladeer. but do not forget your mission and forsake it.”

he could almost laugh at the sheer irony of everything. standing in front of you, with surprise in both of your faces, scaramouche questions himself. did the tsaritsa know you were his soulmate.

he glances at the flowy words drawn on his wrist.

“quite brave of you to enter my dominion.”

he glances at the words written on your wrist.

“your dominion is nothing to mine.”

you meet his glowing eyes.

scaramouche thought he’d see disgust flare on your face upon realizing who your soulmate was. a fatui member, a harbinger, nonetheless. the balladeer, the sixth harbinger who served the god of cryo and whose hands are bathed in the blood of both the innocent and the sinners.

yet your lips quirked.

“so i’ve found you, my soulmate.”

your voice is airy and dangerous at the same time, eyes twinkling. he feels goosebumps rise, eyes darting to the cryo vision that rests on your hips. he could almost smile.

electro meets cryo.

“you’ve found me, my dearest soulmate.”

silence ensues, before you softly sigh and settle on the couch. crossing your arms as a gentle smile graces your lips, you motion for him to do what you did as well.

“why do you act so calm?” he couldn’t help but ask, but takes a seat instead. he doesn’t lower his guard, not even for his … soulmate. you shrug at his question, summoning an icicle and twirling at the tips of your fingers.

he thinks he can see why the tsaritsa blessed you.

“i’ve had my … suspicions.” you admitted, meeting his dark gaze head on. “after all, only someone who is on equal footing with me could utter such blasphemous words to a noble of fontaine.” a smile graces your lips.

“so, balladeer. i understand that you were sent by your god to kill me,” you muse, leaning back and willing the icicle to disappear.

“will you go through it?”

scaramouche pauses, before he tilts his head.

“should i?” he echoes your question. an infuriating smile slides on his fair face. you blink for a moment, before a calculating sheen glazes your eyes.

“you are not loyal.”

you say simply, eyes narrowed. he shrugs at your statement, leaning back. “i serve no one.” he counters, correcting your original statement. an amused smile takes over your face. “not even for the archon who saved you?” you press, but scaramouche does not take the bait. “the tsaritsa didn’t save me. i saved myself.” he says with a voice that could rival sneznhaya’s winter.

“i found you, soulmate.” scaramouche started, crossing his arms. electro touches cryo, and he is pleased to see that there is no fear in your eyes. “you found me.” you agreed.

standing up, he offers you a hand. the words on his wrist glows in response.

“so will you engulf the heavenly thrones with me or shall i dispose of you right now?”

your lips quirks.

you take his hand.

“i thought you’d never ask.”

#💫 dawn #genshin impact #genshin impact scenarios #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact scaramouche #genshin scaramouche #scaramouche #genshin impact scaramouche x reader #genshin scaramouche x reader #scaramouche x reader #balladeer #scara x reader

400 notes · View notes

gordiegordgord · 4 years

Text

PREVIEW FOR THE CORNBUGS AU FANFIC

So just a quick heads up!

This fic will have alot of triggering topic such as blood, gore, cannibalism and mentions of family trauma and loss so just be warned there!

If anything other triggers besides these end up in the fic I'll be sure to put a warning on the chapter!

Also this is my first time fanfic in a while, so please, any sort of criticism is very much appreciated! This is only a quick draft btw, not the finished product!

Enjoy!

_________________________________________

Living wasn't easy for Chop Top at the moment, he had gone from a nice, run down amusment park to a winnebago by himself. The scar on his torso would've be healing fine if it wasn't for the fact he'd pick on it every so often and had to stitch it up himself. And finally, food didn't taste the same anymore, there was none of that Drayton Sawyer kick that made it special, instead it just tasted like, well, campfire human meat. Chop Top definitely missed his family, that was the hardest part about this, Sawyers worked and lived best together and as far as he was concerned, he was the only one left. Not a single familiar or brotherly bond. Until the crash happened of course. He was on his way felling from the Texas state because he was getting too well known there and it'd be a nice change of scenery.

It was too late at night to be driving, but Chop Top had to push on. He was already so close to his destination that it wouldn't make sense to just up and stop.

As he made his way down the highway he noticed somthing up ahead, 'probably just a deer... it'll run ahead before I get there.' He thought and kept on pushing, however has he got closer Chop Top noticed it to be taller then a deer. When it came into view, he noticed it to be a person and tried his best to slam on the breaks. A person and a Winnebago with one working headlight do not make for a pretty combination. And before Chop Top could stop, he crashed into them.

The winnebago finally stopped and Chop Top's head started ringing like crazy, a result of the air bag puffing up and hitting him in the face. He sat there for a bit after calming himself down, processing the crash and letting his head rest, the ringing finally stopping but a pain still residing. Soon enough he started coming back to reality, thinking to himself 'oh god I just killed someone', blood was on his hands and he was responsible, he took another human's life and now the body was just lying over the hood! After much deliberation, he jumped out the driver's door, figuring it'd be best to go pay respects to the body, take it off the hood and rest it down, call someone and have them sort it all out instead of him.

After some more thought however, he remembered he was a Sawyer, and Sawyers only have one thing on the mind when they see a dead body.

"Hey. Free food."

Chop top carefully approached the body, making sure one hand was rested on the blade closed in his front side pocket. From the looks of it, the person was dead,,, and fairly tall. He was surprised at the bodys's height, it's knees buckled as it slumped over the hood and it's arms that hung almost touched the ground. "Just how tall is this freak-" Chop Top mumbled and peered at the body's face. Or what would be it. instead of a regular human face like what his victims usually had, this body had a white mask on. It was your average white mask that could be bought at any costume shop and it was, just there, sititng perfectly on it's face.

"Shit must be a person going to a costume party or somthing... people might be wondering where this sack of flesh is-" As Chop Top reached out to pry the mask off and get a good look at his victim, the body's arm suddenly reached out and grabbed at Chop Top.

"Damn! The bitch is still alive!" He fished out his blade and quickly hit the button on the side, immediately slashing at the body's arm and taking a couple steps back. The body slumped up and ragged doll almost, looking like a puppet being hung from a string, it soon after took a couple steps twords Chop Top and reached out to him. "Damn freak!" Chop Top yelled out and slashed once more at the body's hand, instead of the regular blood coming out, wiring flew out and sparked a little, prompting the body to recoil in fear.

"don't hurt!" A voice softly came from the body as it brought its arms to its chest, the voice didn't sound human at all, it was airy and too... forced to be a humans, like almost somthing mimicking a human. Protecting the wiring that got forced out of it's hand, the body started shaking and slumped over some more, almost meeting Chop Top's height now. Chop Top lowered his weapon after noticing this, placing his free hand in his pocket and staring at the body in front of him.

"What the fuck are you."

_________________________________________

There you have it! I wrote this half asleep so excuse any mistakes ^^;

Finishing and writing up the rest as this is posted! Should take a little while longer so expect the first chapter next week or so!

#cornbugs #chop top sawyer #texas chainsaw massacre 2 #slasher fanfiction #buckethead

34 notes · View notes

cormorantgospel · 4 years

Text

We’ll never be those kids again

Canon-divergent AU of Harry’s fifth, sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts. In fifth year, some of Harry’s self-destructive behaviour is channelled into hooking up with Malfoy, and this is enough to tip the scales and make Draco accept Dumbledore’s offer and desert the Death Eaters. Part 1, Part 2

This is how the last year of the second wizarding war passes: before the summer has ended, the Ministry falls to the Death Eaters, and in the same breath, so does Hogwarts. There are puppets put in place; the school and the government keep running under the thinnest veneer of normalcy, but it takes more effort to pretend now. Pretending is a luxury reserved for those who do not feel the looming closeness of September and mandatory Hogwarts attendance as a death sentence. Those who do not have to decide between trying to flee abroad and going underground. Those who do not have to wonder which of their friends they can still trust if they reach out.

It’s the last year of the war and Ginny is the only Weasley who returns to Hogwarts. By the time she boards the train, she has not heard from Harry, Ron or Hermione since the wedding, where they disappeared. She keeps quiet when people speculate about their disappearance. People still ask her about Harry. She was popular before, but this year her popularity is different. The younger students all know her name for some reason. She notices the way people glance her way during quiet common room conversations, when the names of the muggleborn students who haven’t returned are mentioned, when people dare to complain about Snape or the Carrows. For a while she thinks it’s because they want her to be Harry. If he had been here, they would all be looking to him, not her. It’s just that some of his infamy has rubbed off on her.

It’s Luna who tells her otherwise, in the greenhouses, during Herbology.

“You don’t look scared,” she says. “Everyone can tell.”

“That’s bullshit,” she says. “Of course I’m scared.”

Luna just hums.

“But not of the Carrows. Not of Snape.”

Ginny shrugs.

“They’re just bullies.”

“Most people are scared of bullies.”

The first part of the school year they spend their free time in the seventh-year boys’ dormitories. You never know who’s listening in the common room or the library. They’re a mixed group, some sixth-years, some seventh-years. Of course, it’s bothersome because they can’t invite their friends from other houses. Really, that’s all the conversation is at first – all of them wondering aloud if there would be a better place to hang out. It’s Dean who brings up the Room of Requirement. It’s Neville who mentions Dumbledore’s Army, who brings out the galleon as if he’s embarrassed to still have it.

“Other people might have kept theirs too,” he says with a shrug.

That’s all it is at first. A small group of Gryffindors who activate the galleons, just to see if Hermione’s protean charm still works. Who wait in silence in the Room of Requirement to see if anyone will show up. That’s all it is at first, but it quickly becomes something more.

Outside the walls of the castle, a war is raging. Inside, everything is the same. There is the sorting and house points and quidditch games. In so many ways, Voldemort is still the scared, abandoned child who found a home there, just as Harry did, and he cradles the traditions of the old school, guards them out of reverence and nostalgia, having forgotten long ago that these traditions are not the things that made Hogwarts a home.

There is a war outside the walls of the castle, and one inside it too. There may be classes and homework and feasts, but there is no safety there. It is not a home. The children learn magic, but mostly they learn to hide, to become invisible, to cast silencing charms on their beds and cry only when no one is there to see. It is, once again, a place where detentions leave scars. Where Luna squeezes Ginny’s hand under the table when Amycus Carrow’s vicious eyes fall on her and she is called to the front of the class. A girl in red and gold and a girl in silver and green face each other in front of their classmates, but only one raises her wand. She hesitates, but only for a moment. Ginny waits, and she is quiet and she is brave, and she might not be afraid of bullies, but she is afraid of the pain, because it is not the first time she has done this. They have Dark Arts once a week. The Carrows have favourite targets, and she has made sure she is one of them. She can feel her heart like a panicked bird in her chest. She wants to run. She wants to raise her wand to defend herself. She doesn’t.

There are more members of Dumbledore’s army than just Luna in this class. They all sit quietly and watch as Ginny drops to the floor. Their war is a quiet one. There is nothing stoic about the way she writhes on the floor or the way she screams. The Slytherin girl lowers her wand quick. She is praised by her teacher. Ginny slowly gets to her feet and both students take their seats. Another pair is called on.

Luna puts her arm around Ginny’s waist when they leave class. The Slytherin girl locks herself in a bathroom stall and waits for her hands to stop shaking.

There is a small group of students who meet in the Room of Requirement, and as the year goes on, it grows bigger. Luna leaves stacks of the Quibbler in there. Neville talks quietly with the younger students, though Ginny can’t imagine what he tells them. He brings murtlap essence and willow bark for the ones who get hurt. Ginny sometimes teaches hexes, or shield spells, but less and less often as the year goes on. You can’t fight Death Eaters with bat bogey hexes, or at least, you can’t when they’re running your school and your government. She doesn’t want anyone to get hurt because they tried to fight when they should have complied.

“We’re not exactly a defence club this time,” she tells Neville the first time they stay in the room overnight.

It’s late, but neither of them can sleep. Neville looks at the hammocks that appeared as soon as they needed them, for the students who can’t go back to their common rooms anymore.

“No, I guess not,” he says.

“We’re barely even a resistance movement. And we’re definitely not an army.”

“Does that bother you?”

She hesitates. She’s so tired her bones ache.

“I don’t know,” she says finally. “I just hate that we can’t do anything.”

“We are doing something.”

And they are, she supposes. Refusing to participate in the brutality of Dark Arts lessons. Smuggling as many copies of the Quibbler into the school as possible. Showing the younger students the secret passages to get around the castle unseen. They’ve made a safe place in the Room of Requirement for the ones who need to hide for a while. They disrupt the daily life at Hogwarts as much as possible, sabotaging hallways and classrooms whenever and however they can. They have managed to start fires during three “muggle studies” lessons so far. It just feels so small. She sighs. “I know,” she says. “But I want to fight. I want to… I want to fucking kill them.”

Neville nods solemnly.

“Yeah”, he says. “Me too.”

There’s always at least one of them staying in the Room of Requirement overnight. When it’s just her alone, she lies awake until the early hours, listening to the breathing and the restless sleep of their refugees and their soldiers. When Luna is there, she crawls into Ginny’s bed without asking and puts her stick-thin arms around her. She seems so fragile, with her odd, airy speech, her easy smiles and her wide eyes, but she isn’t. Ginny used to put herself between Luna and her bullies, tell them to piss off when Luna couldn’t. She has never been scared of bullies, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t scared. And she probably wouldn’t be able to explain it to anyone if they asked, but she knows that somehow, this, Luna climbing into her bed and holding her until they both fall asleep, is the same thing. A way of letting someone else borrow your strength.

It’s not like people don’t know. It’s not like they don’t see the way her and Luna touch each other’s hands and hair and shoulders. She waits for one of them to bring up Harry, all her angry arguments lined up in her throat, but no one ever does. She almost wants them to, just so she would get to make her case out loud.

She does feel bad. She misses him so much. She is so scared for him. That doesn’t mean she isn’t angry with him too. For breaking up with her. For leaving her behind. For taking Ron and Hermione with him, but not her. For the way he was watching Draco Malfoy over the summer.

This is how the last year of the wizarding war passes for the kids who have to end it: They spend the year roaming around the English countryside in an old, ratty tent, following up on vague clues, chasing gut feelings. They fight too much and bicker when they aren’t fighting, and none of it feels very heroic.

Harry lies awake too many nights, trying to sleep and giving up on sleeping, staring into the dark instead, trying to make himself believe that this is going to work. And sometimes he’ll pull out the marauder’s map and look at Ginny’s dot in the girls’ dormitory, or feel his heart beat fast and hard in his chest when she walks the hallways long after dark. Sometimes, more and more often as the weeks go on, her dot disappears, even at night. He knows that means she’s in the Room of Requirement, but it still leaves him feeling sick with nerves. And it’s so fucking unfair that Ron thinks Harry doesn’t have anyone to worry about.

Sometimes his mind slips, and he realizes he’s been watching the wrong common room, following the winding corridors of the dungeons instead of the towers, looking for a name that he knows isn’t there. Old habits die hard and all that. When he catches himself at it, he tucks the map away and feels guilty.

(The rest of this story will be uploaded to AO3, with updates every Sunday.)

#my writing #start of nothing #drarry #hp #harry potter #harry potter fanfiction #drarry fic #we'll never be those kids again #fic #my fic #fanfic

70 notes · View notes

puppeteer-airy-offical · 5 months

Note

you get png

hehehe hahaha hohoho

Thank,,, you….

#onehfj #osc #hfjone au #Puppeteer airy au #airy hfjone #ONE osc #hfjone

4 notes · View notes

outroshooky · 5 years

Text

the aces up your sleeve | jjk

this is the third time i’ve posted this fic; let’s hope tumblr’s tags decide to actually show the post this time.

⇢ genre: series; part 2 of simmer down and pucker up (friendswithbenefits!au, friendstolovers!au)

⇢ pairing: jeon jeongguk x unnamed oc

⇢ word count: 12.05k

⇢ warnings: heavy angst (excessive drinking, hangovers, foul language, unhealthy coping mechanisms, jeongguk lets his heart get ahead of his head), implied and also brief smut, fluff. vomit tw. there are some darker themes here, read with caution

⇢ a/n: i started working on this fic five months ago to the day i finished it. 12,057 words and so many hours later, it’s done. i hope you enjoy aces as much as i enjoyed writing it, and a special kudos to all of the people who’ve helped along the way- @a-heart-full-of-javert and @yoonsgiggle for reading revision after revision and being my number one supporters always, and those mutuals whose feedback helped hone this piece (@pvrpletae @taeholic, and any other friends i missed). also, a nod to @genderfluid-jaredkleinmann, because anything is possible with twenty bucks and a metro card. thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your love!

“Come home with me,” she whispers. “We’ll figure out the specifics later.”

“‘m okay with that.”

He stumbles with her to her apartment building, ignoring the questioning glances and stares of strangers. He looks up at her and thinks she’s never been more beautiful, not even when she’s naked and writhing under him. He wants to immortalize this forever- her features glowing in the soft light of dawn, her arm supporting him, keeping him steady. He still believes he doesn’t deserve her, but oddly enough, he can’t find it in himself to worry too much, because he believes in her so, so much more. They��ll figure out the specifics later.

It’s cold, he thinks.

The air is chilly as it kisses his bare arms, burns his sore throat as he inhales, exhales. Breath after breath passing through his lungs, every single intake of sweet oxygen a reminder that he is still here; he hasn’t yet drunk himself to death. Everything is still a little fuzzy at the edges, something he attributes to the entire bottle of Delas Cotes Du Ventoux he’d downed on top of a vodka shot or two. He’ll apologize to his liver once he’s completely sober.

Step after step, his beat-up sneakers plod over an endless concrete plain. Exhaustion wears on him; he can’t even bring himself to avoid the gray gum stains, and every so often his foot sticks just a half-second longer to the pavement.

Jeon Jeongguk has seen sunrise after sunrise limping home after a night of indulgence, and yet something about this one is different.

Reds and pinks and oranges blot the sky like the misshapen wine stains on his t-shirt, a celestial canvas that, to his foggy brain, must’ve only been painted by God himself. God, an entity he’s never believed to be real, yet he’s never felt more spiritual hunched over and crawling home in yesterday’s clothes and tomorrow’s promises. There must be a god, some sort of master puppeteer defying the impossible and stringing together the inevitable, because there’s an arm around Jeongguk’s shoulders keeping him grounded and good fucking god, it’s her.

Her.

There’s no other word for her, no other name that can possibly summon that raw, unbridled feeling that resides deep in his chest. Rather than the term defining her, she defines it all on her own. She brings a new meaning to a normal, ordinary, everyday word that isn’t near worthy enough to refer to a personal succubus, midnight companion, best friend. His succubus, companion, friend.

Salmon and peach pour over the piercing tops of the skyscrapers, leaking color onto the endless streets, monotonous in their grid-like ways. The same convenience stores, sex shops, traffic lights direct the flow of cars that cough and sputter like the smoke wisping from grates in the asphalt. Life goes on, and yet above, seemingly unnoticed, is a display of Elysian grace, empyrean beauty. Light seeps into a world of mist and twilight, and it paints over her skin too, illuminating her from the side. Her, a divinity in her own right, with two feet on the ground and five slender fingers in his own.

I must be dreaming, Jeongguk thinks. Dreaming, because the sun is oozing over the horizon like a lazy yolk and for once, he’s thinking straight. Dreaming, because this is the drunkest he’s ever been in his entire life, yet he’s never seen it like it is now, laid out before him. His cards are on the table and his heart is on his sleeve, whipping free and loose in the wind that tousles his already-messy hair. Dreaming, because he’s having a divine revelation that men of old have only when the life is seeping from their bones, and as far as he’s concerned, he still has years ahead of him. Fuck it, he could die tomorrow but he wouldn’t care; it’s as if he found the very essence of life itself, and it lies not in the cracked-egg sky nor in the lazy plumes of smoke, not in empty alcohol bottles nor bodies slotting together in twisted sheets. It lies in the only one who matters, the smart mouth who stumbled into his life when she tripped up the stairs and her books flew into the backs of his tweenage ankles.

Her.

Maybe Jeongguk is still drunk. Maybe he’s high too, lost in the clouds of delirium and pacificity. Maybe he’ll wake up in a mess of blankets and dirty laundry, noon’s glow filtering in through the kitchen window. Maybe it's the weariness that bears down on him like a train, pulling at his tired limbs and drooping eyelids, weighing on his shoulders with a divinely brutal burden.

And yet Jeongguk stumbles on through the fog, ignoring the looks of faces unknown. He stumbles on, trusting fate and God and the bleary, bleached world that seems so full of color now. The world is gray through cracked eyelids as he stares at slab after slab of concrete, dull only until he can tear his vision to the masterpiece that paints the heavens up above. Has it always been this beautiful? Or has he just never been able to look up and see it?

He mulls the question over as his feet move with a will of their own, pondering over and over until he finds himself in an apartment he’s only ever known in darkness. His shoes slip off, his shirt comes over his head; he's handed sweatpants and boxers and her fingers dance over his bare skin like she's known it all her life. Jeongguk’s head lolls and rests against her shoulder, and it's only then that she speaks, murmurs for him to stay awake with her just a little while longer. He's pretty sure his eyes are already shut by the time his body hits the mattress, and he sinks into a five-hundred thread count haven of her conditioner and her perfume.

Every fiber of Jeongguk’s body aches, with exhaustion or emotion he’s not quite sure. He’s wrapped in sheets that smell like her, but something is missing. His eyelids crack open to see her retreat from the bedside, and he extends one arm as if reaching for a lifeline. A drowning man, the life preserver skimming away across the waves. “Please-”

“Jeongguk...” She hesitates.

“Please just stay with me, please,” he pleads. “Just hold me.”

Maybe it’s the rasp in his voice that makes her pause; it doesn’t even sound like his own. Maybe it’s his frame, broken and small in an ocean of blankets. Maybe it’s the fact that in one night, her entire world has been thrown upside down without any way of making out what’s right and what’s wrong.

She takes a step forward.

Then another.

“Please stay,” He whispers.

Maybe it’s just him.

By the time she eases herself down next to him, he’s already snoring quietly, the shipwrecked victim clutching desperately to his life raft. Yet as hard as she tries, her tired eyes refuse to rest, mind working, thinking, processing. What else can she do?

And so she lets herself go a little, and then a little more until she’s sinking into the warm feeling that envelops her heart, cradles her soul. For the boy she loves is curled into her, head on her chest, and oddly enough, it’s in the midst of the chaos where she finally finds peace.

Mortal fucking agony.

The only three words that Jeongguk can summon when his sticky eyelids slit open and the light, airy feeling of sleep fades to be replaced with what feels like just about every cell in his body painfully throbbing as one. His head is spinning, limbs trembling, bile threatening to rise in his throat, bitter on a thick tongue.

It couldn’t possibly be worse than this. This is, without a doubt, the worst hangover he has ever had.

Thank god it’s still dark outsi-

The blankets are ripped off of his head, and Jeongguk screeches as the pain in his head intensifies to a nearly unbearable degree. Bright light floods the room, casting warmth and comfort across a neatly kept apartment, the eggshell walls doing their absolute best to reflect the sunshine. He swears the sun itself is driving a railroad spike through his skull, and he wonders what he ever did to personally offend a massive ball of burning gas hundreds of thousands of miles away.

“Morning, sunshine!” A folded towel smacks him in the face next, perches on his head. “Time to get up!”

“What the actual fuck?” Jeongguk groans, rolling over and wrapping his arms around the towel. At least when it covers his eyes, he’s back in the dark.

“Oh, I think not, Gukkie. It’s four in the afternoon. You’re getting your lazy ass out of my bed and showering, because you smell like a personal minibar and puke.” The towel is wrenched out of his hands, and he whines in complaint. She chuckles. “I never knew you were such a baby.”

“Fine, fine, I’m getting up,” he pushes himself to a sitting position, scrubbing at his eyes with deadweight arms. “Where the hell is my shirt?”

“In the wash, along with the rest of your shit.” She pauses. “Shampoo and soap are in the shower caddy, towel and washcloth are right next to you.”

He pokes his tongue in his cheek, stares up at her standing over him through squinted slits. “Do I have a choice?”

She folds her arms. “Absolutely not.”

He stands, gathers the things she’s laid out for him, wanders around her bed. He’s closing over the bathroom door when he sighs, winces as a particularly agonizing wave of pain rolls through his head. “Oh, fuck me.”

“For the record, I have!”

His only response is the squeaking of the shower handle and the rush of water pitter-pattering a familiar melody.

The first thing Jeongguk is greeted with when he emerges from the sauna of a bathroom is the smell of scrambled eggs. The second is something burning, and that’s when the fire alarm goes off.

“Oh, shut up!”

He leans against the doorframe with his ears plugged, watching her bat at the detector with a damp hand towel, waving at the ceiling furiously. “Need some help there?” he asks when it finally quiets.

“Oh hey, you look a little more alive. Smell a lot better too.” She scrapes the eggs out of the pan, dresses them next to two pieces of blackened charcoal that he assumed to have once been toast. She can’t admit to either of them just how good he looks in a plain white tee, lanky frame drowning, and so she slides the plate across the table without a second glance. Jeongguk tucks one leg under him as he settles, reaches for the salt and pepper. “Find everything satisfactory?”

“Water pressure could use some work.” He gestures with his fork. “Whose clothes are these?”

She shrugs. “My ex’s.”

“Excuse me?” Jeongguk coughs. “I thought it’s been months since you’ve seen-”

“It has been,” she busies herself at the sink. “He left them here.”

“And you never got rid of them?”

She scrubs particularly hard at a bit of grizzle on a dirtied plate. “That’s a waste of a forty-five dollar shirt.”

He takes a bite, chews. “To each their own.”

Silence falls thick and heavy. Jeongguk swallows, clears his throat. Says her name, and when her eyes meet his, something in his chest hitches. “Thank you.” He pauses. “Really, I mean that. Thank you for everything.”

She freezes, water still pouring down her hands, soap bubbles swirling, leaking into the drain. Silence.

His heart thumps once. Twice.

“Jeongguk, what are we?”

It’s like a cavity has opened up inside of him, chasm splitting far and wide, and inside is roiling emotion, waves crashing and cascading with abandon. He isn’t sure if he’s about to vomit or weep- perhaps the former, because his head is still pounding, but his own heartbeat outweighs the drum thudding in his skull. “What do you mean?”

The knife she’s holding slips from her fingers, clatters against the basin of the sink. “What do you mean, ‘what do you mean’? You nearly drink yourself to death and I’m the one who goes out and saves your sorry ass, coincidentally the same person you’re fucking on the weekends, by the way. Are you just going to casually play off what happened last night? God Jeongguk, you’ve got to be shitting me!”

It’s easier to push people away when you’re about to crack, because they don’t have to watch you fragment into pieces that you can’t even hope to put back together without slicing your own palms into ribbons. It’s easier to watch your own blood run than see the ink of the ones you love stain a blank page crimson. She can’t breathe; her page isn’t blank, there’s scribbles all over in black and blue and now they’re running maroon. Messages embedded in gestures and actions, and she grips the edge of the sink white-knuckled. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”

It’s foggy, misty in his head, the memories of last night. Concrete smooth under his fingertips, sacred confessions in a city of sin, but what did he confess? It’s blurred at the edges; her face is reflected in the surface of a still pool, but when he summons answers, he’s only left with more questions.

Her voice is a mere whisper, broken and raw. “Please don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”

He rises from the table. “Tell me what I’ve forgotten.”

It’s a few steps to cross the kitchen, to see her trembling, still clutching onto the worn sponge. Silence is an old friend by now, sickening quiet, and the tumbling waves inside him threaten to break forth, gushing like a flood. He reaches out to touch her and she jerks away.

“What did I do?” he begs.

Silence.

“Did we fuck?”

Nothing.

“Please tell me, I don’t even know what I di-”

“There are no fucked-up people in this world,” her voice is shaking. “Just good people who do very, very fucked up things.”

Jeongguk freezes, arm outstretched to touch her, fingers stilling.

“Drunk words are sober thoughts,” her voice cracks, and she bends over the sink, head between her arms. “If you can remember what it is you even said in the first place.”

“What did I say?” he nearly whispers.

Her shoulders shake and she’s crying now. It’s killing him to see this, killing him that he’s destroying her and he doesn’t even know how he possibly drove a knife through her back. When she speaks, her voice is so soft, he can barely catch each word. “‘You told me you fucked up, and you broke the rule,’” She quotes, pauses. “‘And now it’s my turn. I fucked up,’” she sniffles. “‘I broke the rule.’” Oh god, please don’t finish the sentence. Please- “‘I love you.’”

Ringing.

Pounding.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Air filtering through his lungs, but it’s as if there’s a vice crushing him, squeezing every ounce of oxygen from his fragile body.

Confessions are told behind closed curtains, doors locked with the intentions of secrecy and intimacy, spilling the worst of your intentions to the holiest of the holy. They penetrate the curtain, the wall between you and your savior, separating human and divine with shame, guilt, the need to atone, repent for the one who’s given their everything for you. In the ultimate act of love, you’ve been saved from what you fear the most, blood spilled on fine sand, pierced by nails and a spear. Nails and a spear, except this time it’s vices and virtues, and tears prick at his eyes like thorns brushing skin.

“That’s what you did, Jeongguk.”

You knew?

For so long.

“You told me you love me and I told you I love you, too.”

She cries quietly, hiccups jerking her small frame.

Jeongguk wishes he could say something, do something to stop the agony. But it’s all his fault and his head is spinning still; he wants to comfort her, protect her from the torment she’s locked in, except he’s the one that’s spurred on the waves, and now she’s desperately trying to stay afloat.

Slowly, he reaches out to her. A life preserver, something, anything to help. His fingertips brush the top of her head, and he’s forever shocked by how soft her hair is, like flaxen strands of silk.

It’s coming back to him now, in bits and pieces. Her sweatshirt, bundled in his arms, his only protection against the biting cold. The world spinning in black and neon and twilight gray until a face comes into view. Her face.

His hand strokes the top of her head, slowly, stiffly. She leans back the slightest into his touch.

His savior. His sins, laid out for the sheep to bear. He had to go and fall in love with the one thing he couldn’t touch, couldn’t have, couldn’t attach himself to.

“I’m so sorry.” The words pale in contrast to the situation no matter how much magnitude they carry, and his voice cracks. It’s too heavy for her to bear alone.

She reaches out to him, for him, and in an instant he’s pulled her against his chest, and she’s sobbing. The lamb’s back has broken, and there’s nothing left.

Her fingers twist in his shirt, face buried in his shoulder as he strokes her hair, lowering onto one knee and then the other. When he eases himself into a sitting position, she collapses with him and he cradles her close, like she’ll fragment any second if he lets go. Perhaps she will.

He rests his head on top of hers as she finally lets herself feel the stress of trying to keep it all together for him. He traces patterns on her arms, her thighs, her knees and her calves, lets her shake and tremble and break against him. He doesn’t care how much she’ll cut his palms, if he’ll even have any left by the time he’s done piecing her together. She’s worth it.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers into her hair. “You deserve better than this.”

“Don’t,” she croaks, screws her eyes tighter. “Don’t push me away with an excuse like that when I’m crying in your arms on my kitchen floor.”

“Okay,” Jeongguk says. “I won’t.”

And so he doesn’t.

He holds her until she has no tears left, until her face is blotchy and her cheeks are damp. She doesn’t see the way he weeps too, his forehead against her own, eyelids fluttered shut. I love you. The statement doesn’t burst forth from his chest, but leaks like the sunrise filtering over the tops of jagged skyscrapers, oozing like the warmth of a yolk, spilling the reality he can’t hide from anymore.

The dying sunlight casts the room in dusky reds and yellows, patchy opals and milky blues. The day is coming to a close, but he feels like it’s just begun.

He noses at her cheek, watching as she blinks up at him through tired, sticky eyes. “You asked what we are.”

“And what are we?”

Jeongguk hopes he’s being reassuring. “We are whatever you want us to be.”

She snorts. “So specific, coming from the guy known for running from his problems.”

He rolls his eyes. “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”

“Somehow you ended up making more sense when you were drunk, Jeongguk.”

“No, I-” He sighs. “So we’re in love with each other. We’re best friends that fuck on the weekends when they’re stressed, and we’re in love with each other. And I- I think I’d like this- us- to happen more often.”

“So you’re saying you want to hold me as I cry on my kitchen floor every day? Jesus Christ, I know you’re secretly a sappy bastard, but even t-”

“I’m saying I want to hold you like this more often, minus the tears,” Jeongguk interrupts. “I’m saying I want us to happen more often.” He stops for a moment when he sees her brows furrow, her face soften. “I’m saying that I want to eat shitty takeout with you on Tuesday nights and watch Finding Nemo as many times as you want to, because I know you love animated movies and Nemo is your favorite. I’m saying I want to kiss you before I fall asleep at night, and this time I’m not kissing your neck, I’m kissing your lips because I’m tired of being ashamed of kissing you, any part of you, when I know you’re not mine. I’m saying I want to argue and drink dollar store wine and forget about it all in the morning. I’m saying that I want to say I love you and not be afraid of it. Or be afraid to show it.” His fingers tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. “Did you not believe me when I told you while I was drunk?”

“To be fair, you told me and then threw up on the sidewalk,” she remarks dryly, cheeks shimmering with wetness. “Your vomit had more conviction than your over-emotional drunk self did.”

Jeongguk rolls his eyes. “Just let me love you, Jesus Christ.”

“That’s more trouble than it’s worth.” She sniffles.

His heart twists. “We’ve come this far.”

“You still haven’t answered my question. What are we?”

He lets his heartbeat echo in his ears once, twice before he responds. “Let me prove it to you.”

“Prove it to me?” She lifts her head from his shoulder, eyebrow raised. “I’m sorry, do I need to bring up my previous rant about how I’m the one who goes out and saves you when you attempt to murder your liver? You have a lot of proving to do, Guk-”

“Let me take you out on a date.”

And then it all goes quiet.

It’s like someone’s pressed pause on an old VHS tape, playing quietly on an old television. The room is dim with afternoon light slipping lower, furniture and faces illuminated with a soft golden glow. Everything is frozen; it’s as if he’s watching from outside the screen as her face freezes in an expression of pure shock. A Renaissance painting, perhaps- Boy Nearly Shits Himself Hoping Fuckbuddy Doesn’t Leave Him, Jeon, 1591.

She can’t do anything but gape at him, mouth moving and jaw working, except no sound comes out. When she does find her voice a few seconds later, all she can splutter out is every other syllable, spewing consonants at him until he holds up a hand. “If you don’t want to, that’s okay, I just- I dunno, I figured that’s what guys do when they wanna impress a girl-” She’s talking with her hands now, gesticulating wildly, still unable to formulate an actual word. “-I’m sorry, if you say no, I’m not gonna push-”

“Jeongguk, would you shut up and listen to me?”

“Oh look, you’re actually intelligible now.”

“I’m not saying no.”

It’s his turn to freeze in shock, eyes wide, his arms still around her going rigid. “So what are you saying?”

She hesitates. “Well, I’m not saying yes either.”

His mouth goes dry. “W-what?”

“Look, Jeongguk, I-” she pauses, buries her face back in his chest because there she doesn’t have to worry. It’s a familiar patch of skin; she knows every birthmark and freckle, and she traces the constellations over his shirt with one finger. “I don’t know yet. I need to think about it.”

Anxiety, growing in his mind like so many vines, overgrown and flourishing, creeping into his thoughts and constricting his throat. He swallows hard, resists the desperate urge to pull her closer. A drowning man and his life preserver. “I can’t blame you for that.”

“Thank you for understanding,” she murmurs. Her lips brush his chest over his shirt and for a moment he’s in a dark bedroom, hands gripping her curves, whispering sin in her ear as she grinds on his lap, a whimpering mess. Not now.

He cracks a small smile somehow, squeezes her hip gently. “I try.”

“Guk?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you just hold me for a while?”

Forget for a while that she’s not yours.

His hands slide under her legs as he lifts her up seemingly effortlessly, carries her through the kitchen into her bedroom, settling down on the bed next to her. He opens his arms and she crawls to him like she has so many times before, except this time there’s no post-sex haze, no panting of breath nor eyes that shine with a certain satisfied, mischievous look. It’s just her and him, as she settles between his legs with her head on his chest and he traces gentle, slow circles on her back. Neither of them will admit just how comfortable it is, just how right it feels- nor will they admit that it’s happened before, and indeed Jeongguk does his best to push the thought out of his mind. Live in the now. You may never get to do this again.

And so he calms her until her breathing slows to an even rhythm, and she drifts off peacefully into a deep, calm sleep.

jeon jeongguk: so

jeon jeongguk: did u think about it

Read, 2:23pm. Yeah I did.

jeon jeongguk: aaaaand?

Read, 2:24pm.

jeon jeongguk: cricket cricket

Read, 2:36pm.

jeon jeongguk: i feel like i should be playing the jeopardy theme song rn

jeon jeongguk: do do do do do do do

jeon jeongguk: do do do do DO do do do do do

Read, 2:37pm. You’re so irritating.

jeon jeongguk: ty

jeon jeongguk: it’s a talent ive perfected

jeon jeongguk: especially with u

jeon jeongguk: anyways

jeon jeongguk: im picking u up on friday at 3 outside ur apartment building

jeon jeongguk: be there or u have to eat my ass for a week

Read, 2:38pm. I never knew you were into that.

jeon jeongguk: there r a lot of things u don’t know about me

jeon jeongguk: but

jeon jeongguk: if u see me friday at 3

jeon jeongguk: u’ll get to find out

jeon jeongguk: it’ll be lit

Read, 2:41pm. Please never use that word again in my presence.

jeon jeongguk: ur no fun

Read, 2:43pm. img.jpg

jeon jeongguk: sending an uno reverse card does not change that fact

Read, 2:43. I’m at work; my break just ended. See you Friday.

jeon jeongguk: peace

A date.

It’s Thursday night and she’s still trying to wrap her head around it.

A date.

With Jeon Jeongguk.

The person whom she refused to kiss on the cheek in middle school, scrunching her nose because he was a boy and he was gross. The person who caught her when she tripped and fell in high school at the ice skating rink, likely saving her from a broken ankle, but certainly not a busted ego. Also the person who she fucked a handful of times. Okay, more than a handful.

An actual fucking date, with all of the romantic aspects thrown into the dish, rather than garnished on top with a mockery of true aesthetic design. No more dancing around the truth, no way to fuck it out in the comforts of a messy bed and hazy midnight vision. Real consequences to be felt… as if none of their behavior had had consequences already.

Oh my god, I can’t do this, she thinks.

What is she even supposed to wear?

Jeongguk, what should I wear tomorrow?

jeon jeongguk: um

jeon jeongguk: probably clothes

jeon jeongguk: for once

Read, 10:14pm. You’re an actual dick.

jeon jeongguk: is now an appropriate time for me to send my own uno card

jeon jeongguk: anyways wear something nice but like

jeon jeongguk: not ridiculously nice y’know

Read, 10:14pm. That’s… incredibly unhelpful.

jeon jeongguk: don’t wear a wedding gown but don’t wear a t shirt n booty shorts

jeon jeongguk: even tho u look good in a t shirt n booty shorts

Read, 10:15pm. When have you ever seen me in a t-shirt and booty shorts?

You know what, don’t answer that question. I’ll figure it out. Ty

jeon jeongguk: bye

She tosses her phone to the bed and frowns, flips through the clothes hangers in her closet, pauses to finger a shirt sleeve. What could he even have to offer on a date? Where would he take her? Would they stay in? Go out? What could you offer to impress someone who’s seen every facet of you growing up and knows you inside and out whether or not either of you like to admit it?

Is she enough?

She shakes her head. She can’t be thinking like this before the date’s even happened.

She’d just have to wait and see.

Oh, how she hated waiting.

At 2:47pm on Friday afternoon, her phone buzzed.

jeon jeongguk: leaving now bc traffic, be there in 15

Read, 2:47pm. See you in a few.

At 2:59pm, a black four-door pulled up in front of her apartment building, and at 3:01pm, she pulled open the passenger’s door and slid inside.

“Hey,” Jeongguk said, taking the car out of park. “What’s good?”

“Only you could begin a date by saying ‘what’s good’,” she teased, shifting the buckle so it fell comfortably across her shoulder. “And for the record, I’m good, thanks.”

A smile tinged his lips as he spared a glance across the car, looking her up and down. “A leather jacket and combat boots. You look more than good.”

It was her turn to appreciate him- lean thighs clad in tight-fitting black jeans; off-white dress shirt tucked neatly at the waist, rolled at the elbows, unbuttoned at the collar. “As do you.” She snickered, elbowing him. “I didn’t even know you owned anything other than monochome tee shirts.”

Jeongguk raised an eyebrow, sparing a quick glance over his shoulder before merging into traffic. “Again, there are a lot of things you don’t know about me.”

She glanced over at him, tongue in cheek. “Care to tell me about them?”

He smirked, foot tapping the brake. “Oh, you’ll find out in time. Oh, and speaking of time-” he checked his watch. “-we have a long drive ahead of us. Aux cord is yours.”

“Did you really just give me the aux cord? So I can play my, oh, how did you put it- ‘shitty ass spawn of country music and dollar-store trap’?”

“Old Town Road is not real music, don’t you dare tell me otherwise-”

“Mm, but you gave me the cord-” she teased, swinging it around her index finger. “It’s my radio now, country boy.”

“Can we compromise with Post Malone?” Jeongguk begged, a hint of a whine in his voice. “Beerbongs and bentleys is where it’s at, plus I’d rather claw out my ears than hear ‘I got the horses in the back’ one more time-”

“Done,” she tapped at her phone, and as the opening chords of Sugar Wraith sang through the car speakers, they both visibly relaxed.

Perhaps she’d been anxious for absolutely nothing. It all felt the same here in his Jeep, like every day by his side had been before he’d turned a cold shoulder and disappeared for months. Nothing new, everything familiar, too familiar.

Had it been this easy to be with him all along?

By the end of the first half hour, Jeongguk had rapped more than half of the album, and she was impressed by the fact that his singing voice wasn’t, as she’d assumed in the past, absolute shit. “When were you going to tell me you can sing better than an autotuned Post can?”

He raised and lowered one shoulder, hand comfortable on the rim of the wheel. He looked so damn fine, effortless with a sharp jawline and a gentle smile. “I’m not that good. I can carry a tune and that’s about it.”

“Lies, Gukkie. You have a lovely voice.”

She noticed a hint of pink in his cheeks.

By the end of the first hour, the impenetrable rows of buildings had faded to flat land and open road. She gazed out the window, elbow propped up on the sill, and Jeongguk allowed himself a look at her. Not a hair out of place, finely polished, not too much makeup. Perfect. So utterly, wonderfully perfect.

He wondered when she would ask how much longer, and five minutes after the first hour, she answered his question. “Are you planning to take me on a romantic roadside picnic, Guk?”

“And if I was?” he hummed quietly to the melody filtering through the speakers.

“You wouldn’t drive an hour out of the city to do so; this is the person who walks everywhere, god forbid his bicycle leave his apartment.”

“You’re right,” he affirmed. “Just a half hour more. I think.”

“You think? What happens if we get stuck out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“I have twenty bucks and a working Metrocard, we’ll be fine.”

“We’re not even in the city!”

“Shhhh.”

At an hour and twenty-eight minutes exactly, the car slowed, bumping along as Jeongguk pulled into a parking lot that was more dirt than asphalt. She’d dozed off about twenty minutes ago, cheek smushed against the seatbelt, and his heart glows warm when he parks and finally looks over at her. His hand finds its way to hers, and he rubs the back of it gently. “We’re here.”

She wakes slowly, eyelids fluttering in a moment of confusion, and his thumb rubs over her knuckles. “Where-” She sees him smiling, and she’s instantly alert. “Oh no.”

He lets her hand fall with a final squeeze. “Oh yes.”

“I don’t trust you,” she chuckles breathlessly. “Where the actual fuck are we, Je-”

The rest of her statement is cut off by Jeongguk hopping the few inches from the lip of his Wrangler to the ground, and when he circles the car to collect her, her face is scrunched in confusion. “You drove thirty miles outside of the city for this run-down shack of a restaurant? It’s barely anything Gukkie, are you sure we’re in the right place?”

He turns to regard the one-story restaurant, pop-up roof signs peeling in their age, before nodding firmly, decisively. “I’m sure.”

She follows him inside, mumbling something about being assaulted by the dinner crowd, and Jeongguk strolls up to the maître d′ like he’s done this every day of his life. Maybe it’s the over-starched dress shirt. He swears it’s hugging his frame just a little too tight.

She misses the reservation name, spoken too softly and too quickly for her to hear, but she has no reason to suspect anything, not even when they settle at a corner table set with two places and a vase of four roses. She’s handed a menu, which she accepts with a polite word of thanks, and it’s when she sees the name of the restaurant in bright block font at the top of the page that she pauses. In one moment, the oxygen drains from her lungs, and the past comes alive before her eyes like a film reel, rewound for his and her pleasure.

She’s frozen across the table, lights dancing in her eyes in neon hues, flickering in her irises, countless bursts of color in pink and green and yellow. When he glances up to ask if she’d like to order appetizers, he swears he can hear her heart explode in her chest, crashing and roaring and perhaps aching just a little, too. His own beats just a little bit faster when he sees tears glimmer in her eyes, pinprick stars in her cosmos. “Jeongguk, how did you-”

“Find the only Moonlight Diner in three hundred fifty miles?” He relaxes, nudges the table leg with the toe of his shoe. “Turns out there’s only two in a thousand mile radius. One of which is at home, the other of which is, well- here.”

“Y-you-” she can barely get the words out, so overwhelmed is she with nostalgia and heartache and just a little bit of relief. “You found our childhood diner chain and you brought me here on a fucking date, Jeongguk, I-”

Her hands tremble on the corners of the menu as Jeongguk makes incredibly awkward eye contact with the impending waitress, who turns on her heel when she sees the scene in front of her. Something in his throat seizes with anxiety. “Is this okay? Did I do something wrong? Fuck, I-”

“Jeongguk, shut the actual fuck up and let me bask in the fact that you did this for me,” she chokes out. “We spent how many years going to this diner back home, having french fry sword fights, spraying each other with ketchup, truth or dare rounds involving coleslaw in your-”

“I try to forget the colesaw incident,” Jeongguk winces. “But- But is it okay? I-” He squeezes the edge of the sickly green leather seat, white-knuckled. “I’m not crossing any boundaries?”

“I swear to god,” she’s crying now, out of her control, but for the first time in so long it’s a good kind of cry, and she curses her tendency to cry for him at the drop of a hat. “How the fuck- you know what, I don’t even want to know how you came up with this or what else you have planned. You son of a bitch, I love you.”

Jeongguk bites his lip. “That’s the most contradictory sentence I’ve ever heard, but I’ll take your word for it.”

She sniffles, wipes her eyes on the back of her hand. He passes her a napkin, and she dabs at her face. “Are you getting the bacon cheeseburger? With extra bacon and ketchup on the side, because you know I’m going to steal some?”

“Yes,” he admits gently. “That was the general plan.”

She smiles through her tears, chokes out a laugh. “Nothing’s changed, has it Jeongguk?”

He’s starting to well up now, eyes shining with pride and adoration and remembering, because he remembers now. He remembers what it’s like to joke, to laugh, to love without the vices of the everyday world surrounding him. It’s been so long since the feeling bubbled up in his throat; a memory flashes before his eyes of dancing in the rain, and just like the flow of water down a storm drain, it’s gone before he can grab it, explore it. It’s okay, let it go, he thinks. There’s a more important memory he needs to make here with her, and as she reaches for her fork to playfully poke his arm, he finds himself falling in love with her all over again.

It is with full bellies and warming hearts that the two leave the run-down diner, clutching strawberry milkshakes and reveling in memories long-forgotten. There’s a bounce in her step and he’s beaming like the moonlight that lies silver across the breadth of the parking lot, shines off of the hood of his worn-out car. He can’t remember the last time he’s felt alive like this, without the help of his vices. He had thought he never would again.

He slides into the driver’s seat, pulling the door closed behind him, and she hops into the passenger’s side. “Home, now?”

“I mean, if you really want to.” He buckles himself in. “But there’s one more place I wanna take you.”

Her teeth shine bright as she smiles. “Where to, Gukkie?”

His heart flutters at the use of the nickname. “You’ll see.”

As the moonlight stretches long across the cracked road and his hand finds hers on the center console, Jeongguk turns the car back towards the city, heart beating just a bit faster than before.

Flat land rolls, tumbling end over end into buildings that grow longer and taller until the city envelopes the single black Jeep. The ride is spent in a comfortable silence, her thumb running over his knuckles, lazily playing with his fingers. She doesn’t miss the smile that graces his face, the way his eyes gleam with the nebulae of a thousand swirling galaxies. She wouldn’t mind getting lost in them more often.

He marvels at how small her fingers are, how easy it is for two of them to wrap around merely one of his. He wonders what it would be like to kiss each knuckle, treating each with care before they fall asleep with interlocked hands and limbs, and for the first time, he doesn’t feel guilty about imagining the possibilities.

A few blocks before her apartment, Jeongguk pulls over and parks. The sidewalks throng at this hour, individual faces blurring in the crowds, and when they meet around the front of the car, she takes his arm. “Are you absolutely positive you didn't just bring me home?” She teases.

“Nope,” he gives her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “There’s one more place we’re going, promise.”

He knows the way by heart, the place he discovered three months ago by accident that had ignited a little-known nostalgic streak in him. It’s a right on 65th West and a left on 15th North, go straight four blocks (five?) and a right on 53rd and then it’s there in front of him in all of its childhood glory. He pats his pocket, makes sure its contents are still intact.

“We’re here,” Jeongguk announces.

“A playground,” she murmurs.

“Do you know why?” He asks.

“Where would we go after the diner?” She laughs quietly, disbelievingly. “The playground.”

“It’s got the three swings and everything,” he offers. “And the little ship’s bow with the climbing nets.”

“I can’t believe you.” She stands on her toes and kisses his cheek. His skin tingles where her lips press. “You’re incredible.”

“I’m really not,” he answers shyly. “I just think about these things is all.”

“Hey.” She pokes his ribs, a hint of teasing in her voice, and she’s off in a flash. “You’re it!”

“You- Get back here!” Jeongguk staggers back and then lunges forward, sprinting after her, past the monkey bars and the climbing wall. The playground is deserted save them, two fully-grown adults playing a chaotic game of tag, and he can’t even stop to think how ridiculous it may look to onlookers. He realizes then that he doesn’t care, because she’s within arms reach, nearly his, just a little bit farther, and he reaches just an inch more and snags her by the waist.

She trips over her own feet and tumbles, bringing him down with her, but he rolls to take the brunt of the fall. Loose stones on the colored rubber dig into his back and she’s heavy on his chest, but he’s breathless with laughter and her teeth flash as she too dissolves into giggles. His ribs ache as he wraps an arm around her, but it’s a good sort of ache, and as she hoists herself to her elbows resting over him, a loose lock of her hair brushes against his cheek.

“You’re such a brat,” He teases, his tongue poking his cheek.

“You’re such an dunce,” She responds, head tilting cockily.

“Dunce? When’s the last time anyone said dunce? Come on, you can come up with something better than that!” He pokes her ribs and she squeaks. “Asshole, thrice-cursed bastard, son of a fu-”

“Enough out of you,” she kids. “I’m not feeling creative today.”

“What if I was?” He lets his head fall back, tresses flopping messily on his forehead. “How about douchebag? Dickwad? Bi-”

“Shut up!”

“Make me.”

“And how would I go about that, hm?” Her fingers walk up his chest.

“Like this.” And in a rush of movement and fear and elation, Jeongguk closes the distance between her lips and his own, the oxygen draining from his lungs as he presses a kiss to her mouth.

It’s as if the entire world has stopped to take a breath with him, the rustling of the trees and the creaking of the swings frozen in a moment of infinitesimal, earth-shattering stillness. Her lips are soft against his; she tastes like strawberry Chapstick and vanilla milkshake, a drug on his tongue like any other. His hand is at the base of her spine and hers is at the back of his head, threaded through his hair. He is drunk and sober all at once, dizzy yet alert of a thousand sensations at once; he can feel her exhale and the way her weight shifts on his hips and the way her nose grazes his when he pulls away.

Her breath is faint on Jeongguk’s lips, a rush of dizzying intimacy, and then she’s pressing her lips to his, mouthing at their soft plush; he snags her bottom lip between his teeth as his fingers tuck under her jacket, settle against the curve of her side, crave the warmth of her skin against his.

Her fingers twist, the long, shaggy locks knotting around the slender digits as her nails meet his scalp and he groans from the feeling.

He sighs her name against her mouth, held sacred in the coveted pause of the universe, and when her eyes flutter open, he is locked into the emotion that sings so freely from her dark pupils. It entrances him, ensnares him in her web, a siren singing from her rock. He is utterly transfixed by her, and when she blinks once, twice, the haze is lifted. He is suddenly aware of the leaves scraping the ground, the slightly colder air that settles over them as wispy clouds roll in front of the moon. He leans in just a little bit, hoping to get that much closer, desperately chasing the high, but a finger to his lips stills him.

“Hi,” he says, breathy and unbelieving.

“Hey you.” There’s a smile on her face, but it’s matched by an expression he can’t quite read. His hand trails down her arm and she hesitates. “Guk, I-” she begins, stops.

“What is it, baby?” His fingers dance down her spine, settle at the base.

“Jeongguk, I don’t know if I’m ready for a relationship yet.”

And that’s when his world comes crashing down.

“I just- I don’t know if I can do this yet. I don’t know if I can be who you need me to be right now. I can’t come find you every time you get yourself shitfaced and need someone to bring you home.” She rolls onto one elbow, pushes herself into a sitting position next to him; his arm slips to the side. “I’m sorry.”

“Is that what this is about?” He too sits upright, matches her position. “My habits are the make-or-break for you?”

“That’s not what I said,” she gently corrects. “Because I know you told me that you want to get clean, you don’t want me to be embarrassed of you, and I’m not, Jeongguk. I’m really not. But I don’t think I am who you need in a girlfriend. You deserve someone who’s going to be able to give you time, and right now that’s one thing I don’t have.”

“Who do you think I need in a girlfriend, then? I don’t ‘need’ anybody except for you. You don’t see what I see,” he insists, gesturing widely. “You’re brilliant and warm and you’ve got everything ahead of you. I don’t even deserve you but I want you. Can’t you see? I’d do anything for you.” His cheeks heat; his arms fall. “Is casual fucking easier for you than a relationship because you don’t have to dedicate time to it?”

Her own face flushes in the dim moonlight, rosy hues darkening the apples of her cheeks. “That’s not true and you know it, Jeongguk. What about all the times you stayed over till morning? Or I stayed over your apartment for two days straight? I’m trying to be honest with you, I really am.” There’s hurt in her voice but the blood rushing in his ears drowns out the world around him, the pit in his stomach swallowing every good feeling. “I’m telling you the truth not because I want to hurt you, but because I don’t want you chasing a ghost of something for the rest of your life.”

“But you love me back,” he sounds small even to his own ears. “You love me back.”

“I do.” She takes his larger hand in two of hers. “I love you Jeongguk, so fucking much, but right now I don’t know if I’m ready for us.”

“But what about tonight? What about this? The diner, the playground? You can’t tell me you didn’t feel something,” he begs. “I felt something.”

“I did feel something, yes,” she admits. “Tonight with you was incredible, Guk. You didn’t have to do any of it, but you did anyways.”

“I did it all for you. Can’t you see that?” Jeongguk stands, shoulders tensing, heart breaking. “Can’t you see what I would do for you and more? Can’t you see what I want to do for you? I’ll buy you a dozen roses every day, I’ll raze a mountain, I’ll be whoever you want me to be if you’d just let me fucking love you!” He doesn’t even realize he’s shouting until the sound of his voice rings down the deserted block, and then it sinks in that he shouted at her. She’s shaking just enough for him to notice, and when guilt sinks its needle teeth into his gut, he deflates.

“I’m trying to protect you, Guk.” She stands too, head bowed, refusing to make eye contact. He hates himself for doing this to her. “My only hope is that you’ll realize that soon.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“It’s okay.” She smiles, but it’s painfully empty. She takes a step towards him, pats his arm. “I know the way to my apartment from here. Get home safe, Jeongguk.”

He can’t even bring himself to offer to walk her home, for it’s as if he blinks once and he’s alone, standing firmly planted in the middle of an urban playground, the swings creaking a faint melody as the street light winks a dull amber above him. He reaches into his coat pocket and withdraws a single red rose, examining the crushed petals, mangled from the impact of her having fallen on top of him.

She loves me. She loves me not.

Jeongguk runs his thumb across the stem, wincing as he snags the digit on a thorn.

She loves me not.

For the first time in what feels like forever, her phone is silent.

It doesn’t sigh with a seductive feminine air, the sound of his ringtone slicing through her apartment with a piercingly high-pitched moan. It probably made the neighbors raise an eyebrow on quiet mornings, but they kept her up with the sounds of their late-night trysts anyway. She guessed it was only fair.

Hey Guk, hope you’ve been doing alright. Call me tonight if you get a chance, I finally got around to watching Santa Clarita Diet and wow, you weren’t kidding when you said it’s oddly wholesome as fuck.

One day turns into two, and then three. The first post she sees on Jeongguk’s social media is of a blurry red cup in a filmy haze that is all too familiar, and a fire burns low in her gut.

Hey uh, so my shower head came off and I don’t know how to reattach it. Any advice?

P.S., I should note. In regards to the last text, it came off randomly, not because I sat on it or something. Seriously.

The second is of scraped palms and grinding bodies, heavy trap music blasting from a car stereo, bass thumping wildly. Four days turns into a week, then a week and a half.

img.jpg

Look at this dog I just saw on the subway. It’s dressed as Marilyn Monroe. I’m not shitting you. I found the costume on Amazon for $25.

The third involves a crowd of strangers and a beer keg, and she doesn’t care to describe it in any further detail.

Hi Jeongguk, I haven’t heard from you in a little while and wanted to ask if you’re doing alright. If you don’t want to hear from me, please just tell me and I’ll stop texting you.

Nothing.

He knows she’s seen his posts. He most certainly knows how they make her feel, too. He knows the game they play, for provocation is an old friend of theirs, made known in the pictures and videos he displays for the world to see. Bad habits, it seems, are easier to slip back into than to break after all.

Then, at the two-and-a-half week mark, late in the evening when she’s perched on the couch in pajamas and a face mask, she sees it.

A blurry photo, taken in a dark bedroom, flash illuminating a bare back, navy sheets twisted around the lower torso. Hair cascading down a pillow, pulled to the side just enough for a violet bruise to be visible, blossoming on the side of the mystery woman’s neck.

The candle flame dancing in her belly ignites into a fucking wildfire.

Before she can even think, she’s sent the text.

You asshole. I fucking hate you.

She doesn’t know if she’d prefer a response or utter silence.

Turns out, she gets the latter.

A month without him hurts.

As quickly as he’d tripped and fallen back into her life, Jeongguk was gone. Ten words out of her mouth and he’s fled back into the world he promised her he’d claw his way out of. The danger of betting your stakes on one person is that when they inevitably fall through, you’ll come crashing down even harder than anticipated. And he bet just about everything on her.

She throws herself into work, doing her best to forget. It’s hard, however, when everything reminds her of him. When a hooded stranger brushes past her on the subway, sandalwood and sage graze her nostrils; suddenly she’s wrapped in bedsheets, surrounded by cologne and the musk of sex. Instant ramen is a reminder of shitty rom-coms on snowy Tuesday nights and the warmth of a blanket covering tangled legs. Even an Overwatch figurine brings back endless numbers, countless statistics that were rattled off at the mere mention of the O-word. She misses him even more acutely than before.

Jeongguk seems to have made quick work of the past, the chronicles of his new present documented in late-night Snapchat trysts. She sees one, two, three girls decorating his page, and yet they last one post and never appear again. She wonders if they’re merely even just for show.

She gave up hope that week, the fourth week without him. The boy she loved, the man who slotted so easily into her life despite their differences. He was gone, having fled the scene of the crime with the evidence bag, leaving the splintered fragments of her heart behind. And he did so without a second thought.

It was so easy for her to hate him. It was so easy for her to burn the Polaroid photographs they’d taken together, to delete text messages and the playful reminders he set on her phone, to cut out every single scrap of evidence she had that he ever existed. It was so easy to scrub the physical reminders from her surroundings like blood from dirtied fingernails.

And yet, she didn’t. She couldn’t.

Jeongguk wasn’t the easily hated type. At least, not to her.

He had so much of her that he took for granted. The sides that she revealed of herself to him, the only one who even knew they existed, could never be taken back. Whether he liked it or not, he had held her in the palm of his hands, cradling her like a bird with a broken wing. And when it came down to things, he dropped her without a second thought.

After all they’d been through, she couldn’t bring herself to do the same.

That just wasn’t her way.

Bent over the sink, she brushes a strand of hair out of her face with a soapy glove, doubling her attention on a greasy pan.

Some said she forgave too easily. Some said she was too quick to leap to the defenses of others, too trusting in those who had access to her heart. She had always struggled to go against the grain, push back against the very thing that resonated deep in the marrow of her bones. Whether she could help it or not, it was simply who she was, for better or for worse, deep down at her core. It was, at least, who she thought she was.

She scrubs harder at a troublesome crumb of grizzle.

She wasn’t so sure anymore.

3:14am.

She stretches, blinks wearily, squints at the clock on the nightstand table.

She must’ve been imagining things.

Her eyes flutter shut, chasing the alluring clutches of sweet, blessed slumber.

SLAM!

“What the fuck- goddamnit.”

It must be the neighbors’ headboard again.

SLAM!

Her eyes shoot open, because there’s another, more primal sound that accompanies the earth-shattering noise that seems to be emanating from the opposite side of her apartment.

She throws the sheets back, inching across her apartment. Every impact against her front door sounds, to her groggy self, like a bass drum amplified to fill every nook and cranny of her skull. Surely, every neighboring suite would be awoken by the noise, wondering what could 31 could possibly be doing awake at this hour, and why it sounded like a rhinoceros was throwing a temper tantrum in the hallway.

She edges her way to the door, peers through the hole to inspect the contents of the hallway, but nothing seems out of place.

That is, save the choked, heart-wrenching sob that vibrates through the thin wall.

Her fingers close around the doorknob and she pulls, revealing an empty corridor, darkened and silent.

She looks right, and all is quiet.

She looks left, squints a little, and there’s a standing figure slumped against the wall, fingers gripping the chipped doorframe, head braced against the plaster.

“‘M sorry,” are the first words that tumble in a rush out of Jeongguk’s mouth, slurred and heavy.

She moves to close the door over, slowly so that she doesn’t accidentally slam his fingers in the gap, but he shifts to extend one leg, effectively trapping the door open. “Please-”

“Jeongguk-”

“Please,” he looks up at her for the first time, the utter brokenness in his eyes trapping her heart in her throat. His cheeks are stained with tracks of moisture, tears rolling from his waterline as he slumps. “Please.”

The microcosmoi in his pupils swirl, miniature galaxies that are flecked with dappled brown and raven black, eddy with agony and the deepest ache. They speak to her own, the conflict of her heart haunting her inner landscape, and she sighs, hating herself, hating this all-too familiar scene. “No matter where you start, you always end up back here.”

“No matter where I start, you always end up fucking with me somehow,” he exhales, alcohol-tinged breath fanning her face. She barely recoils.

“I thought you said last time was the last time.”

“‘M not as drunk as last time.”

“That doesn’t change a thing and you know it, Jeon Jeongguk.”

“Take me in again, maybe I’ll r’member it this time.” He shudders, hand relaxing on the frame, knees buckling.

She catches him as he lurches forward, arms linking around his waist to support him, stepping backwards into her apartment and stumbling to the couch, where she deposits him into the cushions with a huff. “You know, you’re lucky I didn’t leave you outside. I didn’t want the neighbors calling the cops on you.”

“And if they did?” An audible thump emanates as his head hits the back of the couch, lolling aimlessly. “You’d bail me out an’ways.”

“You don’t know that,” she hisses, dragging the garbage pail to the couch from its ready position by the refrigerator.

“May be drunk but ’m not stupid,” he breathes, running a hand through the tangled strands of hair that frame his damp face, spill over his brow. “Love makes people do things they wouldn’ admit to in front of God himself.”

“And when did you get so religious?”

“There’s something spiritual about this,” he gestures to the empty room, legs splayed. “The high an’ then the fall. It’s too good to be true an’ then you’ve got a taste and it’s all you want, over and over, ‘til it all comes crashin’ down and then cold reality fuckin’ hits an’ it stings like a motherfuckin’ bitch.”

She stares down at him. “You do it to yourself when you try to drown out the pain. We either learn how to cope or bury it deep down until it rears its head again and then you’re back where you started. Maybe it’s time you tried coping instead of pretending that your hurt doesn’t exist.”

“An’ why do I d’serve that after all the hurt ‘ve dealt you?” His jawline catches the faint light of the corner lamp, casting his profile in shadow.

“Because you’re a human being, Guk? You’re human like the rest of us, the same flesh and blood.” She kneels at his feet, hand cautiously brushing his knee, then settling. He intakes harshly, shuddering.

“‘M so fucked up an’ you know that an’ you stay. An’ that’s why you won’ date me, ‘cause of this. Disgustin’, fuckin’ asshole me-”

“Jeongguk, you know that’s-”

“‘M so fucked up an’ you know that an’ you stay ‘cause you love me, but you won’ confess to God,” his chest heaves and she stands over him, grabs the pail. “You won’ ‘fess to the one who really matters.”

“Who really matters then? God or you?” She shakes her head. “If you think other people need to see us together for the way I feel about you to be validated, you’re completely wrong.”

“Then why do you hide me?” He stifles a sob with the back of his hand, fresh tears threatening to spill.

Her careful ministrations on his knee pause. “Because I like having you to myself,” she confesses quietly.

“We’ve n’ver been a thing,” his gaze fixes steadily on her face. “N’ver been a real thing.”

“We’ve always been exclusive, though.” She gently squeezes his thigh. “I know you, Jeongguk. And I know that deep down, you commit even if you won’t open your mouth and tell me. I was your first just as you were mine.”

He goes to say something but pauses, eyes wide, face white. Without pause, she lifts the pail and he grabs at the base, burying his face in the mouth and retching. Her fingers brush his hair back from his face, the dampness of his skin clinging to hers, and his whole body shudders in dry heaves. He spits one final time and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “‘Ve been yours from the start.”

“I know, Guk.”

“An’ you never though’ to ask?”

Her eyes flicker to the tear in one cushion, the white stuffing a stark contrast to the dark couch. “I did.”

“An’?”

“You can’t just casually ask your best friend if they’ve been in love with you for your entire lives.”

“We n’ver kept much from each other an’ways.”

Her fingers pause in his hair. “If that’s the case, then answer me something.”

His grip around the bucket tightens.

She inhales once, twice. “Jeongguk, are you running from us?”

His jaw flexes, stiffens.

Her voice lowers. “If we never kept much from each other, why are you running away from this, right now?”

“Shu’ up,” he hisses.

She withdraws her hand; his bangs tumble in his eyes and he tosses his head. “You’re afraid of us, Guk,” she challenged. “You’re afraid of something that’s too good to be true, so you bury the way you feel because it’s easier than admitting you’re afraid of losing your best friend when shit goes south. You’re afraid of throwing everything we have away because one of us will inevitably fuck up, but you don’t have the security of knowing if we’ll make it through. So rather than give your heart away as one whole, you divide it up, partition it off, let me see bits and pieces while keeping the rest under lock and key. But Jeongguk, I’ve seen you. I’ve seen your heart bleed and sing and grieve and I’ve seen it love, too. I know you better than anyone else does. You don’t have to run from me.”

A moment of silence, weighted and thick, hangs low like fog.

When a horrible sob tears its way from his throat, she’s right there to hold him, let him wrap an arm around her waist and bury his face in her pajama shirt. Once again her hands find his hair, working out the knots in a manner she hopes is soothing. “You don’t have to be afraid of us, Jeongguk. You don’t need my validation to know that what we have is real.”

Words spill from the crumpled figure, alcohol seeping from the mouth of the bottle. “I love you,” he blubbers. “Love you so much.”

“I love you,” she assures. “I love you, and I’m not going anywhere.”

“Please don’,” he gasps. His hands cup her face with a tenderness only found in late nights, when the world is quiet and they have only the moon for company.

“I won’t.” She places her own over his before continuing, “You thought I turned you down because your habits are the ‘make-or-break’ for me. But Jeongguk, you were wrong. You weren’t ready then, and neither was I.”

He looks up at her, brows furrowing in confusion. “But my sorry drunk as’ is ready now?”

“You’re not afraid anymore.” Her arms link around his neck and she coughs once. “Neither of us is afraid anymore.”

When he says her name, she looks down, gaze meeting his. The warmth of her clasped hands heats the back of his neck; the strands of his hair brush her knuckles, and she toys with the clasp of the chain he wears. “‘M sorry.”

“It’s okay, Guk.”

“‘S really not. ‘M sorry for ignorin’ you an’ yellin’ at you back at the playground an’ jus’ generally being an’ asshole. Includin’ showin’ up at yer ‘partment an’ makin’ a scene.”

“It’s okay.” A tinge of a smile pulls at the corner of her mouth. “Thank you for the apology.”

He shrugs one shoulder. “You deserve that an’ so much more.”

She sees in his face the want to kiss her, and when he moves to reach her, she pulls away. “Please kiss me when you don’t reek of puke and Hennessy.”

He nods once. “Okay.”

She sighs, hands sliding to his shoulders, feeling the muscle flex under her fingertips as he trails his hands down her hips. “So it looks like we’re back to where we started.”

“Yeah,” he huffs, setting the pail down. “Goin’ in circles is our specialty, I guess.”

“Wanna try moving in a straight line for once?”

“Ar’ you sayin’ that ‘cause it’s like, four-thirty in the mornin’ and you wanna go back to bed?”

“Well, not completely.” She nudges the bucket away with one foot, the smell beginning to permeate the room. “I guess it’s my turn to ask again. What are we?”

A corner of his mouth tugs with a hint of familiarity. “Wha’d’you wan’ us to be?” “Together,” she says hesitantly, then more firmly. “Together, this time.”

“Together. I like that word.” His ministrations on her thighs, soft nondescript patterns traced by adoring fingers, spark heat under her skin.

“But Jeongguk-” she cuts herself off, then begins again. “Jeongguk, there’s gonna need to be some boundaries set.”

“Wha’d’you mean?” He hums.

“Well for starters, we’re going to need to communicate. Like, actually talk about the way we feel instead of just fucking it out, you know?”

“Done,” he says with way more confidence then she feels. She attributes it to the fact that he’s still utterly wasted.

“It’s not just that, Guk. You can’t run away from this boyfriend thing, and you can’t get completely shitfaced if we have a fight, because then I’ll be the one holding you as you cough your lungs up and then you’ll feel guilty and the whole thing will just repeat itself.”

Jeongguk waves his hand. “‘Ll figure it all out in the morning.”

And with a squeak, she’s hauled onto Jeongguk’s lap, his arms tightening around her as he gazes up at her and for the first time in a very, very long time, feels wholly and completely okay. “Can I kiss you if I brush my teeth firs’?”

“No, gross ass. And this isn’t really a figure it out later kind of thing-”

“Baby,” He hopes he sounds reassuring. “‘Ve gotten this far, right? An’ we’ll get farther, and we’ll figure it out, an’ whatever happens happens, you know?”

“I can’t tell if this is sober you trying to be wise or drunk you trying to be prophetic. Either way, it’s not working.”

“‘Ll figure it out.” He tries to imbue as much warmth and understanding into his voice as humanly possible. To Jeongguk’s ears, he sounds like an angel. To hers, he slurs every other syllable.

“Jeongguk…” she wavers.

“Promise.” He crosses his heart and hooks his pinky finger in the air, waiting for hers just like, she remembers, they used to do in the treehouse in his backyard whenever they made a pact that was supposed to last the rest of their lives.

She swallows her worry back and blinks, exhaustion tugging its subtle pull on her eyelids. “We will talk about this in the morning.”

“Talk, talk, talk. The firs’ thing ‘m doing in the morning is kissing you real soft an’ slow, because ‘ve got you to myself now, and ‘m gonna revel in it as much ‘s I can.” Jeongguk flexes his pinky. “C’mon. Promise.”

Her digit wraps around his as she murmurs, “Promise.”

His teeth glint as he smiles, a real, slightly loopy Jeongguk smile. “You’re precious.”

She taps the bridge of his nose. “You’re so drunk.”

“I know,” his eyes are glassy and he almost warbles. “I may be drunk righ’ now, but you’re beautiful even when ’m sober.”

She wrinkles her nose in faux disappointment. “That is no way to treat your brand-new girlfriend, Mister Jeon.”

“Girlfriend?” He relaxes into the couch, limbs limp, then sits up and moves to stand. “Jus’ fuckin’ marry me already, baby. Les’ get married-”

She pushes on his chest with ease and he falls without concern. “Ab-so-lutely not, good sir.”

His hands dance down her body to quickly grope her ass. “Why not?” Jeongguk squeaks as her nimble fingers slide down his chest, playfully pinching his nipple. “Fuckin’ love it when you call me sir.”

“I thought you preferred daddy. Besides, you gotta get past boyfriend status first, mister I’m-only-married-to-my-Twitch-Prime-subscription.”

“Tha’ was like, fifteen years ago.”

“Days,” she corrects.

“Whatever. Fuck, you’re an angel,” he groans.

“Not quite. I don’t think angel will be the name that comes to mind in the morning when you’re hungover as fuck. Again.”

“Last time this happens. Promise this time.” He kneads her thigh, causing warmth to blossom in her chest.

She leans forward to plant a kiss on his forehead. “We’ll see.”

Jeongguk suddenly wrinkles his nose. “Baby, wha’s that?”

“What do you m- Guk, did you knock over the garbage pail?”

“Oh fuck, uh-”

She clambors off of his lap, side-stepping the offending mess. “I’m about to clean an entire gut’s worth of cognac-infused vomit off of my living room floor. You’re really, really lucky that we’re back on unofficially-but-now-officially-dating terms, because let me tell you- wait, did you get it on the rug, too?”

“Y’know, is’ not too late to change those terms.”

“Shut up and go get me the spray bottle under the sink.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Are you always this obedient? You’re holding out on me in the bedroom.”

Jeongguk winks at her from across the apartment, sliding a casual arm behind his head. “Only for you, baby. Only for you.”

#bts #jungkook #bts smut #bts angst #bts fluff #kpop smut #kpop angst #kpop scenario #jungkook angst #jungkook smut #jungkook fluff #jungkook x oc #outroshooky

440 notes · View notes

othercat2 · 4 years

Text

Trip to the Mall

Crossover between Untamed and After the Storm by Hannah Birchwood, Key Dyson and Raymond Roach a fusion au in which Wei Ying is a geneticist who rescues a family of experimental soldier mods and moves to a city of ships out in the middle of Lake Michigan.

___________________________________

It’s been a month since their arrival as refugees to the Michigan Fleet. They’re still working their way through hours and hours of “prosocial education,” that takes the form of watching a children’s program and answering questions and talking to counsellors and their social worker.

Wei Ying has been living with Wen Qing, her brother and their little cousin Yuan. Qing has been barrelling her way through qualifications to become a medic, Ning got a job on a restaurant boat while taking psychology classes. Baby Yuan still has nightmares about the labs and the trip, but he’s recovering. Wei Ying has a job waiting for him: an “internship” working with another bio-engineer that’s mostly just a drawn out assessment period, from what the social worker says, but that’s a couple weeks away.

Wei Ying is half asleep with Yuan in his lap. Yuan's singing along with Nanna Dog the Librarian as she teaches a lesson about sleeping things organized and neat. Wei Ying wants to object to this on grounds of dog, and also, he already had to watch several episodes that are thinly veiled and not so thinly veiled discussions of ptsd and trauma. And also dog. (Even if it's actually a puppet.) Sadly, Yuan's piping voice and tendency to actually answer questions the puppet asks out loud is adorable, so he's trapped.

He also falls asleep, only to be woken up by Wen Qing, who's nudging him. "You need to get out," she says.

Wei Ying gives her a look of exaggerated hurt. "After all we've been too each other, Miss Wen?" He nudges Yuan, who's also fallen asleep. "Yuan, big sister is throwing me out!"

"Noooo," Yuan says sleepily, and clings like a limpet.

"Drama queen," Qing says with a snort. "You've been mostly hanging out on the couch since we got here. The neighbors have been politely wondering what's wrong with you that you don't come out of our quarters ever."

"So that means you're kicking me out?" Wei Ying asks, pouting.

"Just temporarily," Qing says. "I've uploaded a shopping list. Take Yuan with you."

Wei Ying whines about it, but his protests lack force. A trip to the Mall might help him shake off the fog that had been hanging around him since they'd reached safety. (Travelling cross country, travelling through countries, bribing and lying and praying no one saw under the Wens' makeup and realized they were looking at experimental gene mods. He'd been on a hyper alert adrenaline rush and this was the crash.)

He gets dressed in the Local Costume of sarong, sandals and a t shirt (his says in binary, "if you can read this you know binary"), gets Yuan dressed and takes one of the deck hoppers from the Sandy Button out to the Mall. The Mall was a huge former tanker, repurposed as a trade center for not only the fleet, but also most of the American Midwest. It was permanently anchored about a mile from shore and acted as a buffer between the Fleet and the cities surrounding Lake Michigan.

Yuan is of course immediately drawn to the toy and foodstalls. Wei Ying gets him bacon on a stick as they sightsee their way to the clothes and second hand vendors. He's working his way through the shopping list when he realizes Yuan is missing.

"The little boy who was with me, did you see where he went?!" Wei Ying asked frantically.

"Could've sworn he was here a minute ago!" a vendor says. "Should've had him in harness." The vendor tsks.

"I'll keep that in mind," Wei Ying says while trying really hard not to think of Wen Ning walking with the chains that had been used yo restrain him dragging. On the other hand he'd seen a really cute backpack harness with Wilimina Wolf, a character that mostly showed up in Family Fleet to talk about nature, weather and ship safety.

"If he's wearing data rings or a tracker shouldn't be any problem for the Mall to track him," the vendor says reassuringly.

Asking the Mall to track Yuan turns out not to be necessary, though Wei Ying almost needs a medic. Yuan is back at the toy vendors, bothering what looks to be off-duty Security. The officer, a cute guy with a solemn appearance, has Yuan balanced on his hip and appears to be listening intently to whatever it is Yuan is saying. "I'm so sorry, officer," Wei Ying says, running over. "He wandered off."

"If you or your caregiver is lost, you should find Security," Yuan says in a very definite tone. The Security officer nods approvingly.

Wei Ying isn't so sure about that. "Even if they're off-duty?"

"I am not off-duty in the case of a lost caregiver," the officer says with a faint smile as he sets Yuan down. The kid immediately latches onto Wei Ying.

"Excuse me? I'm not the one who wandered off!" Wei Ying says in mock offense. Yuan just giggles at him.

"He should have a harness," the officer says. "If it were rainy or windy there would have been a fine."

Wei Ying just barely manages to avoid snapping a childish, well it wasn't. Partly because the officer was so quietly genuine about it, partly because if he got in trouble with the police, Wen Qing would probably--no, definitely--kill him. "I promise it'll be the next thing I buy." To be friendly, he says, "How about I treat you to lunch, officer?"

"Zahn Lan," the officer says.

"Wei Ying, or I guess Ying Wei now," Wei Ying says. And because he can't help himself, and Zahn hadn't said anything one way or another, "so, lunch?"

There was another faint smile. "You said the harness would be the next thing."

"Want to make sure I follow through?" Wei Ying asks in mock offense. "Or just the right order?"

"Yes," Zahn says.

Wei Ying heads to the nearest children's clothing shop, giving a highly edited story of asylum seeking and immigration. He ends up carrying most of the conversation. Zahn seems quiet, not a talker. The kind of guy who's better at listening than talking.

They go to lunch in one of the small diners on board the Mall. It's a bright airy place with a good view and lots of rowdy gulls vying for scraps. Yuan gets nuggets pressed into dinosaur shapes and sweet potato fries and fruit punch. ( He immediately starts making them fight.) Zahn gets a tempura plate sampler and green tea. Wei Ying gets a burger, onion rings, and without thinking about it, a beer. Zahn says nothing, but Wei Ying could almost feel the weight of disapproval. "Just one won't hurt," Wei Ying says. "It won't even set off the alchohol detector on the deck hopper."

"Hmn."

The drinks arrive first of course, and Wei Ying starts to take a drink. Zahn immediately reaches out, stopping him. Wei Ying can't help the slight flinch. "Is there a problem officer?" Wei Ying asks. He tries for humor but misses.

"The lake must first be given her due," the security officer says, disapproving.

"What?"

"Pour some of the beer out the window," Zahn said patiently.

"For the lake," Wei Ying said blankly.

"The lake is thirsty?" Yuan asks, brow furrowed.

"It's a custom, to pay respect to the lake," Zahn explains. "Food dropped into the lake must not be retrieved, it belongs to the lake, and one must pour a drink for the lake before drinking yourself."

Yuan frowns at his punch, looking worried. "I don't want lake-jie to be mad at me," he decides, and before Wei Ying can stop him, he tries to toss the contents of his glass into the water. Unfortunately, the glass goes out the window along with the punch.

"Yuan!" Wei says in exasperation. He feels instantly terrible about the way the little boy freezes. At the same time, he feels a spike of anxiety about the cup, stupidly out of proportion to the accident.

"No harm was done," Zahn says.

"Harm!? You're security, Fleet littering fines are ruinous and we're still under probation!"

"An accident," Zahn says. "Is hardly littering. You are fine."

"Thanks I know," Wei Ying says, and immediately regrets everything. He unthinkingly starts to take a drink, only to be stopped once more by Zahn's hand on his arm. "Seriously?!"

Zahn just stares at him.

Wei Ying sighs, makes absolutely no comments about quaint folk religions (North America also having everything from radiation worshipping death cults to gene mods who thought they were literally gods to ancient web comic characters and saints invented by fantasy authors) and pours some his beer out. "There. Happy?"

Zahn nods. "Mn."

#after the storm #boat boys #the untamed #wei ying has the traumas

4 notes · View notes

amediesrobloxblog · 5 years

Text

LONG READ: Blue and Red Puppet AU: The Beauty and the Beast (JOKERP RELATED)

Hello everyone! Before we begin, I would like to mention this is JokeRP related! This involves my blog ( @shards-and-clouds ) and Florin’s blog ( @rescueteamrp ), which involves her au known as the Blue and Red Puppet AU. Check out her post on the Blue and Red Puppet AU for an understanding of her AU! However, since my AF3 AU was involved with her AU in JokeRP, she brought up a cursed line in a voice call regarding a recent (well, currently recent) fight between Shard and a HEAVILY corrupted Celesteal/Yawgate Puppet.

I went nuts with the AU.

Anyways, enjoy this cursed story!

Trigger Warnings: Manipulation, Forced Eating, (implied) Stockholm Syndrome

Yawgate, a puppet.

Shard, a Savior.

The two were duking it out in the first level of the troposphere, though redone for a battle. Yawgate’s body and outfit changed to have the signature blues and red stripes of Celesteal racing up his body, a sign he was not in control. Black cracks ran across him as well, indicating the corruption was alive and active. Shard was enraged, her hair white and her body showing the brilliant reds and blues of the stripes her Celesteal had given her.

However, she refused to lay a hand on Yawgate. She could not bear to lay harm onto him. Why?

She had viewed her Yawgate as a father figure and she was enraged when Celesteal took the hero’s Yawgate away. She thought she had lost her own father at that point.

But there was no time for such trivial thoughts. She needed to get through to him, but how? She attempted to get close to the puppet that was taunting her in Celesteal’s tone, though the voice was that of Yawgate’s. Reaching out to his head, surely the symbol-shattering that she saw hero Stratosfear do frequently would work.

But it did not.

She would be shocked by this, soon jumping back before the puppet could land a hit onto her.

“Wh..What..?” Shard stammered, staring at her hands. The puppet simply laughed, seeing Shard’s fear.

“Oh, did you think it would be that easy? For me to release a tool?” the puppet asked, though in a taunting manner. Shard would look up to the puppet, wide-eyed and in disbelief. “I would not do such a thing! After all, he always thought of himself as lesser and nothing more than a tool...”

Shard would soon become enraged once more, hating the term “tool” to describe an individual. Cracks would appear in her arms now but would spread into the reality around the two. The puppet would chuckle a bit, easily fixing the cracks in the reality with corruption.

“I really admire your willingness to.. Well... Interrupt my narrative... It’s certainly something I would want...”

“I only interrupt your narrative when you INVOLVE MY WORLD IN IT!”

Shard would try to charge at the puppet again, only to miss the puppet when it jumped above her. Time seemed to slow for Shard as she turned towards the puppet, preparing to strike her. Suddenly, Shard felt a sharp pain in her neck, causing her to gasp, seeing the puppet strike her with the side of their palm. She would tumble down, landing on her side. The puppet would land next to her, grinning, as the world went black.

----

Jolting awake, Shard would sit upright and grip her neck. She would wince when her fingers brush up against a bruise where the puppet had hit her. She would pull her hand back, staring at it until noticing where she had awoken.

The room, though mostly colored in deep grays and blacks, had sparse blues and reds to accent the room itself. Most of the room was filled with ornate and detailed sculpture and decor, and the bed could easily fit four people, yet she was alone. The canopy bed was covered with a light cloth, filtering some of the light out from outside. Shard would remove the comforter off of her, taking in the scene around her. She was a prisoner, right? Why was she being treated like this..?

Shard would crawl over to the edge of the bed, moving the light cloth out of the way to step out. Almost immediately, she was met by two Cherubs, one carrying an ebony wooden tray with a plate of confectionaries, a bowl of assorted berries, tea with the kettle, and a small vase with a rose that was mixed with blue, red, and white. The other Cherub would force Shard to sit down, pinning the light cloth up so it would not dare fall while Shard was eating, while the one carrying the tray would set the tray down in Shard’s lap and force her to eat.

Shard would resist at first but would give up trying to resist when the food entered her mouth. Wonderous flavors would take her by surprise, distracting her from the second Cherub currently brushing her short hair. The Cherubs would be chittering, though Shard would be overwhelmingly distracted by the food. She would only glance up to the Cherub forcibly feeding her when they mentioned her name.

“Shard, you will be meeting Celesteal in the Grand Library,” the Cherub spoke. Their voice was that of a young woman, likely Stormy. Shard would become lightly paler, swallowing what bits of food she had in her mouth at the time.

“We know how uncomfortable you are, but we have no control over our actions... He wants to see you personally, as far as we are aware,” the second Cherub would speak up, placing a six-pronged symbol into the back of her head, soon bringing out extensions to hopefully elongate her hair once again. Shard would be fearful since she would have to personally meet the mastermind behind this, but, oddly, was thankful he did not place her into a dungeon where she wouldn’t be able to see the light of day... or be turned into a puppet.

The first Cherub would take the tray away, seeing as Shard had completed the meal. They would leave the rose and its vase behind, but Shard would soon realize that the first Cherub allowed two other Cherubs to enter. She would be pulled to her feet, soon forced behind a curtain to change into a different outfit.

A dress. One with light airy colors, too, accented with gold. Shard hated the concept, but she didn’t exactly pack a bag for this situation. Reluctantly, she would slip on the dress, hanging her old clothes over the curtain which would be taken away by the two Cherubs, likely to be washed. Or Shard hoped. The cherub that was tending to her hair earlier, being another female, would slip behind the screen with Shard to help get the dress on.

Shard would soon look over to a mirror, seeing the outfit complete. The six-pronged star behind her head made it seem like she was wearing a crown of some kind, and the dress made her seem ethereal, perhaps divine.

Despite her hated for dresses, she actually... Liked this one. Everything was seemingly made for her, down to the size of the dress itself and to the accents. She gently traced one out, which formed the shape of a fluffy cloud. The Cherub that was attending to her would walk up to Shard in the mirror, gently taking her hands.

“Despite this all being his doing, he made sure it was perfect for you...”

Shard would look down a bit, a bit of color appearing in her cheeks.

“..I still don’t know why he’s doing all this... I’m his prisoner, aren’t I?” Shard would question, looking to the Cherub. The cherub would sigh slightly.

“Perhaps he will explain everything in the Grand Library,” the Cherub would respond, much to Shard’s dismay. “But you simply look divine, Shard.”

Shard would murmur thanks, soon stepping out from the curtain. The Cherubs in the room would surround Shard, making sure every detail of her was correct. Shard would let them do their jobs since she might ultimately have to appease Celesteal to get out of here...

‘Sure, he’s done terrible things, but... This feels oddly genuine...’ Shard would think, letting one of the Cherubs do just a bit of makeup on her cheeks. ‘It feels... It feels oddly like a warm hug from him. Just like the soft smile he had when I had freed Ploque...’

Shard would place a gentle hand on her forehead, trying to remove the thought. The Cherubs, now finished with their task, would back off as a Puppet appeared in the doorway. Ulipse, despite having the signature stripes and pale white skin of the Puppets, would have a calmer look to her eyes. Shard would look over to Ulipse, soon spotting the gentle look.

‘It’s that soft look again...’

“Hello, dear Shard. Are you ready to meet me in person?” the Ulipse Puppet would ask, causing Shard to become flustered slightly. Ulipse would hold out a hand, beckoning Shard to come closer. Mostly out of fear of what could happen if she resisted, she would walk to the Puppet, who would take her hand gently to lead her down the black hallways.

-----

The Grand Library. It was certainly grand in scale, as Shard would soon feel quite small compared to how high the ceiling is above her. Celesteal would be next to a large cyan orb, depicting many of the worlds he still controls, staring intently into it. Ulipse would bow, soon leaving Shard and Celesteal alone, their task complete.

Shard would watch Ulipse leave, now knowing she’s at the mercy of Celesteal...

Celesteal, who is completely corrupted, would still be wearing his signature outfit from 300 years prior, though tainted with black in some areas. He would turn to face the Savior, a soft smile appearing.

“Ah, dearest Shard... Lovely to see you here.”

Those lines would cause Shard to become flustered once more. Celesteal would chuckle, walking up to her, and gently taking her hands. Shard would look up to Celesteal, who would meet hers.

“I..”

“Wondering why I did not... End you? I had the perfect opportunity to let you sleep indefinitely... Well, Shard..” Celesteal paused, bringing up one of her hands to gently kiss it. “I would say that I was wrong about you. I had dismissed you as nothing more than just a side character, but once you revealed those brilliant stripes... I was stunned, to say the least.”

Shard would become flustered again, seeing not only his gentle gaze but his calm, non-insane tone in his voice. He was being genuine in front of her!

“Be my Queen, Shard.”

These words would catch Shard off guard.

“W-What?” she would stammer, not completely believing these words. Him? Wanting HER to be his Queen?! Nothing seemed to add up. And what of the puppets and her friends?! Celesteal would chuckle, seeing the fear and unwillingness in her eyes.

“Oh, don’t worry, my dear...”

“I’m not worried about you...”

“Then what are you worried about, Shard?”

Shard would look down but would look back up to Celesteal. She would take her hands out of his hands, keeping her hands close to her body.

“The others. The Points you’ve decided to strip free will from, the rescue team... My world! I don’t think I can ever your queen if they are not left alone!”

Shard would turn around, trying to keep her emotions inside of her. Celesteal’s smile would waver.

“Especially Yawgate...”

Celesteal would sigh, smiling once more.

“Oh, so it’s a deal you want? Well... I promise to free them all and to leave them all alone... If you become my Queen.”

Shard would widen her eyes but would look away when Celesteal walked up to her and held out his hand for her to take. She now had to decide what to do.

From the perspective of Shard, she knew all the horrid things this Celesteal had done: revive himself with corruption, puppet the points who had been unable to shatter their symbols, turn the second savior into Verfection with a ruined memory, hunt down the post-points, trick her into giving him a viewpoint into how Stratosfear can shatter symbols, abduct Iruelien for more corruption, abduct Yawgate and turn him into a puppet... And now abducting her. Yet, for some reason, treating her nicely since she is, by all logical means, Celesteal reborn proper.

Truth be told, Shard wanted to deny this but knowing how she doesn’t want anyone to be harmed and that she has, so far, been treated like a Queen in her own right appealed to her. Her Savior self wanted to save them all, but everything pointed to not believe him. But, why would he have the friendliest tone towards her if it was not genuine? Shard would become flustered again. Maybe she can be a Savior of something more than a shattering reality...

All these thoughts ran through her mind. She feared what would happen if she denied him, being a far more capable reality-bender than her. She would turn to Celesteal, soon raising a hand to his, and gently placing it upon his.

Celesteal would smile, placing his thumb on top of hers, sealing the deal. Shard looks up to Celesteal, soon smiling with a faint blush dusting her cheeks now.

“My Sharp Queen, Shard.”

“My Radiant King, Celesteal.”

#longpost #jokerp related #jokerp au #blame florin for the quote 'be my queen shard'#tw: manipulation #tw: forced eating #tw: stockholm syndrome

5 notes · View notes

thenovelartist · 6 years

Text

Who’s my Enemy

AU August - Day 4 - Enemy AU

He was her greatest enemy. But what could be expected from someone of his status? She loved fashion, but the industry was full of arrogant, self-absorbed, cut-throat, downright petty people.

Such as one Adrien Agreste.

Ever since the day he put gum on her seat some eight years ago, the day he came to class as Chloe’s best friend, they were enemies. And he’d grown into this… this… Ugh!

IMBICILE!

“Someone’s on a rampage,” someone purred behind her.

She spun on her heel, grinning at the sight of her white clad partner. “Nothing that I can’t handle, kitty.”

He hummed. “I know, but Miss Fortune usually likes keeping a spotless reputation. And I’m more than happy to do a bit of dirty work.”

She made a show of pouting. “But I hate that it means you’ll soil your suit.” She scratched under his chin, a smile curling on his lips as he leaned into it. “White shows everything.”

“Cat’s bathe themselves for a reason, missy,” he said, his voice distorted by a literal purr. “And we all know it’s the ones that look pure that you have to watch out for.”

She hummed her agreement as she moved from his chin to his ear.

“What are we hitting to—YES, right there!”

“Hear?” she said, putting pressure on the cat ear.

“Yes,” he purred out, melting into his touch.

“You didn’t cat-ch my pun.”

“It’s because puns are a terrible form of humor.”

“You broke them out today.”

“Because you love them and you’re the only person I live to please.”

She grinned, letting her hand fall from his head to knock his bell, getting a tickling ring from it.

He proudly lifted his chin as if to show off the silver bell.

She giggled, ringing it a few more times. “I know the purr-fect spot.”

“Lead the way, missy.”

…

He loved when she tore apart a Gabriel store. When she slashed his own face, the one that littered the ads all over the store, with a vengeance, not so much. But destroying the thing his father worked so hard to build.

It brought a twisted sense of satisfaction.

A crook hooked around his neck, choking him for a moment, forcing him to spin and crash to his knees.

Oh, but the backlash was so, so painful.

A black gloved hand grabbed his chin and lifted it high to face purple eyes.

“You really think your little stunt tonight would go unpunished?”

“I have to keep her trust somehow.”

The man hummed then yanked Chat’s jaw towards the ground. Before he could recover form that, the crook of his cane came down on his head hard enough to make a knot that would linger for the next couple days.

“She’s wrapped around your finger,” the man said. “She’s playing right out of your hands. I want her earrings, and I want them now.”

“Patience,” Chat Blanc pleaded.

“No, you see, I’ve been patient long enough.” The cane crashed into his chest, knocking him out on his back so black hands could grab the silver bell at his suit and yank it tight. “You forget who put this bell on you,” Hawkmoth warned.

“I’ll get you the earrings,” Chat said.

“And the broach she stole from me.”

“That will take longer,” he panted.

“You listen to me, boy,” Hawkmoth growled. He used his cane to snatch Chat’s hand from the ground, grabbing it tight and pinching a pressure point. Chat cried out but couldn’t rip his hand free. “You know why you have this ring?”

He nodded. “You worked really hard to get it for me.”

“Precisely. And do you know why I have to be transformed when you go out?”

“To give me more power.”

“Precisely,” he said, forcing Chat’s fist open and grabbing the ring. “And do you know what’s going to happen if you use your power to destroy my store again?”

The ring was slowly being pulled from his finger, his transformation partially fading back into his failure self. “Yes. Yes. I know. I know. Please.”

His father replaced the ring, allowing Chat Blanc to remain. “I want the location of the broach within the next few days. Am I clear?”

His heart was pounding. “Yes, father.”

…

She entered her room, and the first thing that she noticed were the feathers. Three of them. Her calling card.

“So, you trashed a store,” La Paon said in her monotone voice. “Very nice. But Chat’s going to start noticing you don’t touch the DC line.”

“He’s too busy wrecking the store anyway.”

La Paon hummed dismissively. “Nevertheless, no matter how many stores you trash, I’ll still be short a broach and a ring.”

“I’m not any closer.”

“I know.”

Miss Fortune cringed.

La Paon sauntered towards Marinette with a walk that would make any model jealous. “I don’t care how you get that information,” she purred out. “I don’t care if you pounce that poor cat and give him the only thing he wants from you.”

She almost said ‘That’s a lie,’ but she bit her lip before she could challenge her boss.

But La Paon was preceptive. “Men,” she began, “always have an endgame when it comes to toying with women. I wouldn’t expect you at your age to realize it, but let me make it clear for you.” Roughly, she lifted Miss fortune’s chin so as to lock eyes with her. “Men seek sex. They’ll play the cat and mouse game if they know they can win. And he’s showing the classic signs of it.” She left go of Miss Fortune’s chin and started circling her. “The flirting, constantly. The way he fawns over you, lets you lead, making you believe you’re in charge. It’s all so that you fall into his hands. Mark my words. Your cat, as you so affectionately call him, wants your body. It’s not because you have a sparking personality or anything.”

Miss Fortune’s gaze fell to the ground.

“So that being said, now that you know what he wants, you have all the power in the world to use it against him. I want that ring, I want that broach, and you can get them for me. Am I clear?”

She swallowed.

La Paon cooed, a smirk curling up on her lips. “The truth can be so bitter, can’t it?”

Miss fortune lifted her gaze to La Paon’s.

“I am still waiting for an answer. Will you get me those two things?”

Miss Fortune nodded. “Yes.”

“Good,” she purred. “Because next time, I’ll have to enlist some consequences. And neither of us would want that, would we?”

She shook her head.

“Then I’ll come back for a progress check. I’m feeling generous, so I’ll give you a week. Am I clear?”

“Yes, madam.”

“Good. Gabriel wouldn’t want to lose the designer of the DC line, would he?”

Miss Fortune’s gaze hit the ground as her master literally flew out the window.

…

Adrien had just about had it with Marinette. No matter that she was his father’s favorite designer, she was the rudest, most judgmental person he’d ever met in his life.

No wonder his father favored her. She was just like him.

She picked him with a pin for the fifth time today, and he knew it wasn’t accidental.

But it was the sixth one that made him snap.

He flicked his hand out, smacking her nose in the process. “Are you always this clumsy?” he snapped.

She glared up at him. “If you just stood still—”

“I stood still?”

Her nose scrunched up at him in a sneer. “Yes. You’re the model, right.”

“And you’re the professional designer.” He scoffed. “What am I saying? You’re just the rude, arrogant wreck that my dad picked to manipulate. You’re pretty; you’ll sell. Like you have an ounce of talent when I can see my dad’s flare is all over the line that ‘you’ supposedly sell.”

Her brow furrowed deeper. He smirked. “Oh? Hit a sore spot? Truth stings, doesn’t it? You’ll never be as good as my father. You’re just his puppet.”

In a flash, pain engulfed his left cheek. He stumbled off his perch, collapsing to the ground while his brain caught up with the fact she’d just slugged him.

“Stop it.” She said, her voice warbling with tears. “You know nothing about me.”

She left before he could force his stunned mind to even formulate an answer to that.

…

His father wasn’t up for transforming tonight. So he was out on the rooftop, his suit blacker than the night. It was odd, so very odd. He felt different. Not quite powerful. No quite liberated. Rebellious. That was the best term for it. Rebellious.

His ever-sharp hearing picked up the familiar pat of his partner landing on the roof behind him. He didn’t want to turn around. He was weak and vulnerable and shamed. But at the same time maybe he did. Maybe he wanted to see her face when she learned what he really looked like without the butterfly spell on him. Maybe—

“Kitty?”

He turned around, only for his jaw to drop. She was different. Her suit was now bright red and filled with large black spots instead of her normal black speckled with little blue dots. “Missy?”

Slowly, hesitantly, with a fear he’d never seen in her before, she came up and sat down beside him, only to curl her knees up to her chin and hug them close.

“Something’s wrong,” he observed quietly.

“You too,” she pointed out.

They stayed in silence for a while longer.

“Does it have to do with the bruise on your cheek?”

Chat turned to see his little miss looking at him from the corner of her eye. He sagged forward. “Maybe a bit. There’s… there’s a girl that I don’t really get along with at my job, but… she’s never hit me. It was kinda…”

“A slap to the face?”

He looked over to see just the hint of a smile picking at her lips. “Yeah,” he huffed, slightly amused. “You could say that. But what brings you out here, out of suit?”

She paused for the longest time that he almost thought she wasn’t going to answer. “I need help.”

Her confession was so quiet, so airy, he almost missed it. Instead, his stomach tightened and every nerve stood on end as he scooted closer. “What’s wrong?”

She took a shaky breath, and Chat immediate pulled her close because if she started crying, he wasn’t going to be able to stop them, and her tears hurt. “La Paon hates me.”

“Who?”

“The woman who give me stronger power in return for taking your miraculous.”

He blinked. “W…what?”

She sniffed and the tears poured down before she stopped them. “I don’t want to!” she cried, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I don’t want to. You’re the only person who actually says nice things to me. You never hurt me. I can always trust you and I know you don’t just want to sleep with me like La Paon says… right?”

His chest constricted. “NO!” he said, taking her cheeks in his hands. “Why would you even think that?”

“Because… because she’s right so often. A-a-and she said that… that you just want to use me because that’s all I’m good for and—”

“You listen here, Missy,” he said, stopping her rant. “Any guy who just wants you for your body is a terrible human being. I’d never use you like that. Ever. You have my word.”

She whipped the tears from her eyes. “Really?”

“Really,” he assured.

“Even though I don’t have any personality?”

“Who the hell told you that?” he demanded.

Her silence spoke volumes.

He sighed, then reached over to grab her hand. “You’re a good friend to talk to. To me, that counts for a lot.”

She rubbed her eyes, then hesitantly reached out to touch his bruised cheek. He let his eyes drift shut and leaned into her touch as her fingers slowly drifted down his neck and tapped his bell. It made a different sound now. Instead of a jingle, it let out a light sound, one barely noticeable, like an actual cat’s bell.

“You’ve changed, too.”

“I’m out here without my father’s power.”

Her brow furrowed. “Y… your father?”

“He has a miraculous gem, too,” Chat explained. “He uses it to enhance my power.”

Her fingers then rose to his chin, forcing it up to the sky. He submitted to her touch easily, allowing her to guide his head backwards though he hadn’t the slightest clue why.

Until she pulled his collar away from his neck and ran her fingers across the bruise that was forming.

“He has this cane,” Chat explained, his voice hoarse. “He got mad that I didn’t grab your earrings during our last outing.”

She removed her hands from him, allowing his head to fall back into a normal position. When he met her eyes, they were glassy and fear stood behind them. Still, she swallowed, and suddenly, her transformation vanished in a flash of pink light.

Leaving the girl he hated more than anything in the world in her wake.

“Hi,” she said, her voice weak and her bottom lip quivering nervously. “My name’s Marinette. And I need help.”

He stared at her until tears formed in her eyes again. He barely registered that she had pulled her hand away and was shying away from him. “I know you’d hate me. I’m sorry. I’ll just—”

He grabbed her hand and forced her back down to his side. “Don’t leave me,” he begged. “Please, because…” With a sigh, he dropped his transformation, revealing himself to her. “Because my name’s Adrien. And I need help, too.”

She stared blankly at him, likely feeling the same way he did. Shock, horror, embarrassment.

After a while, she swallowed. “This is…”

“Odd?”

She nodded.

A pause slipped between them, during which Adrien realized she had yet to pull her hand away.

“I still don’t like you,” she said. “But I need my partner.”

“And I need you,” he agreed. “No one else knows what I’m going through.”

“Can we work this out?”

He squeezed her hand, and the strength that passed between them was almost palpable. “Yeah. I think we can.”

#mlauyeahaugust #au yeah august #ml au yeah august #miraculous ladybug #fanfiction #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #Chat Blanc #Miss Fortune #What did I just write?#It got twisted real fast #PSA find help if you're experiencing abuse like this

358 notes · View notes

impishnature · 8 years

Text

The Light Keeper (Part 4)

AO3

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Rating: T

Summary: A beast lurks in the waters. Stan loses Ford to the waves, the lighthouse his only point of contact and hope of ever getting him back. …He used to love the sea, now it’s taken everything from him.

Lighthouse Keeper AU.

Series of One-shots.

AN: Commission and story collab with @garrulousgibberish based on their Lighthouse Keeper AU (link above) ^o^ Some of Ran’s art is included! ♥ ITS AMAZING ALL OF IT. So this was all meant to be one but it got huge so this one shot got split into three... it’ll make sense later! (Warnings for panic attacks and allusions to drowning)

Part 4: Navigating The Void - Lost

Where am I?

The man frowned, a struggle of a motion, his body refusing to co-operate, eyelids far too heavy to open. In fact, everything felt… heavy, lethargic, draining him with the smallest of movements. Even thinking was hard, his head full of dense fog that refused to budge as his synapses tried to fire.

Am I falling? Floating?

If he had had enough energy he might have panicked, might have wondered what had happened to him that his brain wasn’t working as it should be. As it was, he didn’t have the strength, didn’t have the willpower to more that push half-heartedly against the impenetrable barriers inside his head that rose whenever he tried to question anything.

It was as if something had sapped all the bad from him and left him in this peaceful daze, floating on air, devoid of anything but the blissful black void.

There’s definitely no ground… I don’t even know which way is up or down… does it matter though?

It really was much easier to just drift aimlessly than to worry.

He smiled softly. Something seemed to push towards him, just a small motion, teasing and light as if someone was running a hand through his hair, an undertow of sorts fluttering by him. The questioning thoughts pulled away with it, leaving him hollow but serene.

No, I guess it doesn’t matter…

He didn’t know how long he drifted in that state, time had no meaning as he slipped in and out of consciousness. Though there really wasn’t all that much difference between the two states, other than a sudden thought crossing his mind that reminded him that he was real, that he could move, albeit however slightly.

Wait. How did I get here? Where was I before this?

But then the weird cold sensation would overtake him again. Bubbles would fizzle at his fingertips as if something circled him though he couldn’t open his eyes to check. The swirling movements would catch him off guard, drag him out of his head as his body got caught in it and scattered the questions along with the current.

“Shhhh, you’re safe. He’ll come get both of us soon.”

Ye..s… everything is fine…

He didn’t know who this ‘he’ was or what was even talking to him, if anything was talking to him at all. All he knew was that any worry, any concern fled with it, a soft warmth emanating instead from his core to counteract the cold flow still spinning around him.

“You just have to wait. Wait and see.”

Yes, he’ll be here soon…

And with that the darkness came again, lukewarm and insipid but oh so welcoming.

Nothing could hurt him here.

And with just another cold undertow, the thoughts of even the voice and the mysterious ‘he’ were once again taken far out of his reach.

There was nothing in the void to remind him that this world was not his own.

Who… am I?

The question came like a punch to the gut. The omnipresent being seemed to have left him for a moment, his head clearing enough for the question to trickle through the lingering fog.

The fear of that particular unknown broke down the walls that had been put up in his head as if they were only paper, the fog becoming ice littering the floor of his head as everything shattered into panic.

He opened his eyes, his heart stuttering in his chest as it did nothing, reality as dark and empty as the space behind his eyelids that blinking was meaningless.

Who am I? Where am I? What is this place? I haven’t always been here, have I?

It was suddenly difficult to breathe. Loneliness seeped in, dread and anxiety at the sheer nothingness of it all clawed at his throat, yet he couldn’t scream, the sound bubbling into a similar nothingness when he opened his mouth.

He could feel liquid about him, feel the closeness of it all, that he struggled to move against as solid weights in wet unyielding clothing.

And yet he was fine, undamaged, just unable to move, unable to scream, unable to breathe as water poured into his open mouth.

Unable to do anything he desperately needed to do.

This was a prison cell.

Why am I here? What did I do?

Nothing answered him.

Please- please, I need to- I need something. Is any of this even real? Just show me- please-

A light flickered above his head. Tiny and distance but something in the darkness.

It swirled as if caught in an eddy, mesmerising and clear, a beacon that burned away the fog that resided, burned away the fear and the doubt.

Someone- or something had answered him, leaving him warm and hopeful, his arm reaching out towards it, cupping the tiny spark between his fingers as his mouth twitched into a smile.

The light vanished. His movements ceased as the darkness surrounded him once more.

“See? What was all that fuss about?”

The cold came again, quiet and unassuming. It drifted over him like a mask that sapped the warmth that the light had given him. His arm fell to his side again, heavy and unyielding, even as his heart hammered and his eyes widened, trying to see through the gloom.

A different light fell onto him, yellow and glowing it seemed to hold him in its grasp, aloft and unmoving, caught in its snare. Wherever it moved, his head followed, the smile dropping to a blank expression as his eyes glazed over.

“That’s much better. I told you, didn’t I? That you had nothing to worry about.”

Told… me…?

“Yes. I called out and you answered. Now we just have to wait until the time comes. But don’t worry, you’re nice and safe here.”

Safe… yes, of course…

He felt his eyelids drooping as the light swayed before him, the fog drifting back through his skull to take up residence again amongst his dwindling thoughts.

“It’s not like any of this is real anyway. You’re just dreaming.”

Just a dream…

He nodded along, or an much as he could when his head and body felt like lead and it was just so much easier to give in, to give up and accept the calming words being spoken.

A soft laugh echoed around him, the ice shards in each small sound slipping through the cracks in the peaceful shell that was being wound around him.

Wait- I still don’t know. Who am I?

The darkness didn’t wait for him to welcome it, as it drove back into his skull. Eclipsed the thoughts and the questions and the small almost spark of something vaguely human that he had mustered up again.

No! No- Please! I was so close. So close- don’t make me forget again, please- I don’t want to forget again-

The inky water drove it all away, stole his thoughts and his words, stole the scattered remnants of his being that fell away like sand to the bottom of the ocean floor, until he was just confused and relaxed again, a puppet on a string, waiting unperturbed and aimless.

“That’s it. Rest. Don’t worry, you’ve got a part to play in all this too.”

The laugh sounded again though this time the ice bounced off of him, swayed him in his small bubble but otherwise left his mind drifting away.

“You’re the key.”

A key…?

The soft words faded as soon as they had been uttered, in one ear and out the other with little comprehension.

Something changed with the light though.

He remembered the light next time he awoke.

He didn’t know how long it was until the light flickered on again.

He didn’t know how it reached him in his cocoon of solitude, buried far far below.

All he knew was that it did and that when it did, it felt like he could breathe again, a weigh vanishing from his chest. The world came into focus, his fingers twitched and the darkness seemed just that little bit less all consuming.

All he needed was the light.

He stared upwards at it, head lolling side to side as it moved above him until he started to realise it was getting closer. He felt light as a feather, no longer a solid statue that had sunk to the bottom of the abyss, now he was floating higher and higher as the light grew bigger.

Looks like I know which way is up now.

A bubble of airy giggles streamed out of him at the sudden realisation, the light catching each glistening bauble as it escaped his throat and mesmerised him more. His fingers twitched to touch them, reaching out to swirl them further, small mystifying light sources that felt warm to the touch and swum further and further out from him as he created waves with his movements.

Fascinating.

He may not know his name, who he had been or where he had come from, but his brain still stuttered into life as he continued his ascent. He could feel the grey matter making up for its time consumed by viscous fog, asking a million questions a second, sparking up odd theories behind his eyes, though nothing seemed quite as important as letting the light continue to drag him from the darkness. He let his mind ponder as his eyes stayed locked on the light, as his body was pulled upwards without any help from himself.

For some reason he felt like he would only hinder the upwards momentum if he moved.

The light split above him, a beacon that seemed to bend and sway with smaller droplets of light bleeding out around it. But the fragmentation didn’t really worry him, only intrigued, kept him coherent, lucid. Kept him thinking, wondering on its origins and patterns.

His mind trailed to the other light, the yellow, soft glow that calmed him down whenever he struggled against the hold the darkness had on him.

But it was difficult to keep hold of that trail, sand dribbling out of his hands as his mind speculated on whether he had imagined it, maybe he’d caught a reflection of this light instead. It was so easy to believe, his eyebrows furrowing as he pushed the image away. It can’t have been real, it didn’t feel real, not like this light did.

That small light would never have pierced the darkness, not like this white light did, it didn’t have the power.

But the voice…

A cold shiver swept through him, a sensation that felt oddly familiar and yet disturbingly foreign against the warmth wrapping around him like a blanket as the light bathed him. It was like a word on the tip of his tongue, a sudden sense of foreboding with no cause in sight. He had heard something in the darkness, a shape blacker than black moving behind the odd yellow luminescence as soothing cold swept away his distressing thoughts…

But then the image slipped away, evaporating with the last dregs of the mist, behind his eyelids.

Must have been me, trying to make sense of where I was. The brain does that, doesn’t it? Makes up things to make situations seem more conceivable…

Before he could ponder it much more, he felt the dragging motion grow faster, like there was a hook lodged into the back of his coat and he was being reeled in, up and up. The light above him was growing bigger and more distorted with every second, spreading out and rippling. The darkness around him suddenly wasn’t all that dark anymore, the ink shifting to royal blue interspersed with flecks of light that made patches brighter than others.

And just as swiftly, he hit the light, felt it shatter around him in a moment of dazzling white.

He flinched, hands going up to cover his face as his head and arms seemed to burst through something. It didn’t feel cold or warm on the other side, much the same as the darkness and yet he could feel a significant difference to his surroundings.

He chanced a peek through his fingers, disappointment welling up as the bright flickering light seemed gone from his immediate vision but curiosity soon crushed it, his eyes widening to take in everything around him as he still seemed to drift upwards.

I was in… water…?

His feet skimmed the surface, which rippled as drops cascaded off of him. The dragging motion had ceased in its persistent tugging, leaving him hovering a few inches above the waterline. The myriad of sparkling lights he had seen from the other side now made sense as the water flowed and crashed beneath his feet even though they no longer held the brilliant light that had been there only moments before. The foam was light, the moon dusting it all in a silver sheen but it wasn’t the moonlight that had shone strikingly down on him, cutting sharply through the gloom to wake him from his slumber.

He watched the waves until they hit the shoreline, listened to them crash against the beach before following the tiny pinprick glows through windows up to the night sky full of stars above them, but not one seemed like the light that had dragged him from the depths.

Part of him questioned how a light could even do that, how he didn’t feel cold or seem to need to breathe, nor coughing up water that should have choked him long ago. But the much larger portion of his brain was too busy thinking, too busy exploring all the nooks and crannies to figure out how much he knew before he started to focus on the very large portion of things he didn’t.

That and the last time he had gotten panicked, he’d seized up. It had all gone cold and his thoughts had slipped away from him until his body hummed at the bliss of ignorance. He remembered that much at least, even if he didn’t know what had suddenly sent him into the spiralling dread.

Stay calm, stay analytical, don’t want to shut down again.

And if he was complete honest with himself, this was far better than the perpetual darkness that sapped his strength and mind, no matter how tranquil and safe it appeared.

No, he really did want to explore far more than he was willing to let his mind race ahead into overthinking.

He shivered, not exactly cold but the warmth the light had bestowed on him when it drew him upwards was slowly leaving him hollow once more. He shuddered more violently, feeling himself drop slightly, his body growing ever so perceivably heavier. He looked about him again, this time more frantically, casting for a sign, a sudden thought to help him out of his predicament.

Please! I’m not ready yet. Don’t make me go back!

The light pulsed back to life, bright and blinding.

He raised his hand to his face, shielding his eyes from the welcome onslaught. The action felt oddly familiar, an unexpected flood of confusion overwhelming him as memories tried to flit before his eyes. Not much of it made sense, the emotions in discordance with those he felt at that moment as his body started to hover again, pulled upwards into the wind’s currents.

Relief coursed through him as the sea was left far below, warmth spreading to his fingertips, his core even, as he was blinded, unable to adjust quite yet.

So why was there a sudden lurching feeling from his memories? As if the light heralded something else… something far worse that waited in the darkness.

Can’t be this light. Must be another, something I don’t remember yet…

The thought could wait, that was for sure. He had a lot of things to figure out, why he was here at all being one of them, and all of which he didn’t think could be answered without his continued ascent.

So he let the worry vanish, took back hold of the childish curiosity that had sparked up. He pulled his hands up, cupping the light between his fingers. It had grown less dazzling within seconds, still tugging him up and facing directly at him but it was dim, as if something was missing. Or perhaps it was the building giving him that opinion. The lighthouse gleamed, imposing and robust against the cliff edge but as he looked down below at the distant waves, he was sure that the glimmering glow only seemed to be directed at the tiniest portion.

I’m sure that’s not how a lighthouse is supposed to work…

The glass was suddenly ahead of him before he thought much more, drawing him straight into the bulb and popping him back out into a vaguely recognisable room. The bulb gleamed back at him, a static drone filling the air even as it glowed fainter and fainter with every passing second. He stayed inside its small circle, arms raised towards it as he absorbed what warmth he could before it escaped him again.

I’ve been here before… it looks different though.

“What was that?”

There was a shuffling sound nearby that made him spin, a quite dizzying feat he hadn’t known he’d be able to do and he almost continued the rotation more than he had intended from his hovering state. A young man stood outside of the light, cast in thick shadows behind the bulb. All he could see really was the glint of his eyes reflecting the glow, which were narrowed suspiciously as he cast his gaze about him.

He waited, holding his breath even though he had no need to breathe until the man shook his head, going back to his work behind the bulb.

“Whatever, you don’t have time to be hearing things, remember? Last time you stopped working, the bulb went out as soon as you ran to the balcony. Gotta figure out how to keep it lit this time.”

Yes! Please do!

He beamed, excitement thrumming through him as the man worked. He tried to crouch down, irritation looming as he found it hard to navigate but he was able to fumble around enough to see what the man was working on. There were two books beside him, both pushed forward so they caught enough of the glow and filled with scrawling minute notes that caught his attention. One was left open, a reference that the man paused to look to every so often, filled to the brim with symbols and questionable meanings beside them, more plausible ones underscored repeatedly. There was a small jolt of recognition as he glanced down at his hands, remembering drawing out those sigils one by one in precise detail in a sudden moment of clarity.

Is that mine? It looks like it’s mine.

He went to pick it up, his hand slipping through its entirety disconcertingly, the pages not even fluttering at his approach. He gulped, pulling his hand back to grip his wrist nervously as it hit him just how little he could affect his surroundings, how his sense of touch was inadequate and lacking.

The light flickered, the man cursed and all thoughts vanished as he turned back to it with worry.

He gave a sigh of relief as it soldiered on, righting itself. He banished the sudden wave of panic to the pit of his stomach as he turned to the man’s other book in the hopes it gave some answers.

He frowned, perplexed but intrigued by the pages the man flipped through. The symbols had been copied hastily and marked against where they lay along the flooring of the bulb. There were tables upon tables, row upon row of each symbol with crosses against each one as if he was going trial and error through every possible sequence. The page turned again and the tables changed, now filled with sea levels and moon phases, weather charts and barometer readings.

His eyes widened as he took in the extent of the task the man had laid out before him. Not a day had been missed on the readings and not only that, but it seemed that from the ticks beside each one he had tested out every sequence of symbols on every day that he could see. He didn’t know exactly what the man was trying to do but whatever it was must be important for him to put that much effort into it.

Whoever you are, you must be a hard worker. Do you ever take a break?

The man’s head snapped up again, jumping from his spot to his feet in one swift movement, his arms and legs shifting into a fighting stance with little preamble. “Alright, that’s enough. Whatever you are-”

The light died abruptly seconds later, leaving them both in darkness. His heart thudded as the warmth slowly began to loosen again, his fingertips and toes starting to numb. The young man cursed loudly, he could no longer see him but he could hear him rifling around.

There was a sudden clunk that made him wince, an intake of breath before an explosion. “Son of a-”

Please be careful!

The scolding tsk left him before he could stop it. All movement and sound ceased for just a moment, as if time stood still. He could feel the numbness spreading up his arms, a tingle of fear slipping through his spine as there was a soft downwards tug that he tried to ignore.

There was the shuffling noise again, his minds spiral snapping back to attention as he squinted through the gloom.

A match crackled to life, a small lamp lighting as the man got back to his feet and raised it aloft, face once again suspicious but now brightly lit against the rest of the room.

His heart thudded in his chest as recognition, pure and unconstrained, raced through his skull.

The man continued to glare, rubbing at the side of his head with a pained grimace but he couldn’t bring himself to care about the sour expression. He looked older, different maybe, but there was something there that he knew conclusively, a name on the tip of his tongue that couldn’t help bursting forth.

Stanley!

He preened as Stan blinked, the glare slackening, his mouth falling open. He raised the lamp above his head, turning this way and that as he looked for the source of the noise.

Or that’s what he hoped anyway. He could feel himself starting to sink again, the warmth starting to leave his chest. He glanced at his feet, watching them hit the metal even if he felt nothing, before snapping back to Stan, part gleeful and part urgent. He didn’t have much time and he really wasn’t ready yet to forget when the world was so tantalisingly close again.

Stanley! Stan? Can you hear me?

Stan’s face shut down, the light left his eyes in a way that made him gasp. Somehow the look bit into him, cold and sharp, in a way that nothing so far had been able to. Stan stared out to sea for a moment, looking through him, his teeth biting down painfully on his lip as if lost in some horrible thoughts that made his heart stutter and his hand reach out to help him. Before he could move though, Stan had forced his eyes away, back to the bulb and the books as if nothing had happened, a heavy sigh leaving him. It was like the breath in his non-existent lungs had suddenly been forced out of him, ghosting out in a trail that Stan shuddered in, his hand coming up to rub at his arm doubtfully.

“God damn wind, I’m not falling for it this time.”

Oh.

There wasn’t much warmth left in him now, the water was calling to him again, pulling him down. But it didn’t matter as much as the fact that Stan couldn’t hear him.

He’d been so hopeful that he could be heard from Stan’s actions but perhaps it had all been wishful thinking, hoping that someone would be able to answer all his questions.

Of course it couldn’t be that easy.

It was just the wind that had made Stan jump.

Just the wind that had made him shudder and draw into himself.

He glanced back up as Stan moved once more, another bone weary sigh echoing through the room as he walked past him to the door onto the balcony. His hand slowly crawled up to the glass as he whispered words meant for no one but himself.

And yet he heard them, and they resonated through the muffling hollow cold to burrow into his heart and spark up new exciting potentials.

“Sorry, Ford, looks like it’s not tonight… but I promise, I’ll get you home safe and sound soon.”

Is that me? Am I Ford?

His head vanished below the metal floor as Stan spun around again, the small motion bringing with it a new nugget of hope. His descent became faster. His arms fell to his sides, his legs hanging limply as he became listless once more, solid and heavy as he plummeted towards the roaring waves.

His mind however was still coherent, running through everything it could as if it knew that soon enough it wouldn’t be able to, that soon he would be lost yet again, scattered foam cresting the waters. But he had to hold on to the kernels of knowledge he had been given, wrap each one safe and securely away.

Ford? Stan…Ford?

He’d remembered the light the first time, it wasn’t a surprise when he’d seen it again, perhaps if he was careful he could do the same with these memories. Keep them buried where the light could reach them, where the darkness couldn’t touch.

Stanford. Ford. Yes, that sounds right.

He smiled as the fog returned, the cold ebbing over him and wrapping him up into his silent, serene cocoon once more.

I know who I am.

AN: I HAVE GUSHED SO MUCH ABOUT THE ANGLER DRAWING AND NOW I GET TO USE IT DO YOU KNOW HOW ECSTATIC I AM. *coughs* I’m just going to melt in a puddle. tired ill but very happy little puddle. Also very very happy that people found the nightmare fic vivid ♥ that made my day xx

#gravity falls fanfiction #Gravity Falls #stanley pines #stanford pines #lighthouse keeper au #bill cipher #the light keeper

47 notes · View notes