#Trump is sleeping on the floor | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

leonsdolly · 10 months ago

Text

Canto V

Plagas!Leon Kennedy x fem! reader

Synopsis: Leon's back from Spain, but there's something off about him.

CW: nsfw 18+, p in v, dubcon, implied somnophilia, breeding kink, bruising, titplay, cunnilingus, creampie, unprotected sex, forced orgasms, overstimulation, lots of spit, choking, reader passes out during sex

WC: 2.4k

It may as well be a universally known concept that when you’re in a relationship with a government agent, you’d better get used to being strangers with the finer details. Who, what, when, where, and why made themselves at home in your vocabulary while you were dating Leon. It was all futile; he couldn't ever tell you where he was going for his next mission or when he was coming back to your grabby hands. Swearing confidentiality with your left hand on the Bible trumps a loving, concerned girlfriend apparently.

Leon had been gone for a few days this time around, and you weren’t sure when exactly he’d be back. You prayed to every divinity who cared to listen that he would come back home safe and sound to you. You did so every time he left. The government calls, he runs, you make your deals with Jesus.

The clock strikes midnight as you flit around your apartment, closing the kitchen and ensuring everything is locked up for the night. You got home from work rather late, and you’re looking forward to falling into a deep slumber, especially since you’ve taken your everything shower, completed your skincare routine, and changed into a cute teddy bear print cami with matching boy shorts. While your heart aches for your absent boyfriend, you throw your shoulders back and keep your chin high, braving another night of sleeping alone in your queen-sized bed. You slide under the covers and turn off your bedside lamp before closing your eyes and ultimately slipping into a welcomed state of unconsciousness.

Scratching, more scratching… Huh? You blearily open your eyes before squinting at the time displayed on your alarm clock - 1:48 am. Did something wake you? You don’t hear anything, yet you have the sinking feeling that something did lull you out of your sleep. You fumble to turn the lamp on - thankfully, there’s nothing standing in the corner of your room or anything else that would have you screaming bloody murder until your lungs collapsed. The covers are pulled aside as you sit up in bed, planting your feet on the hardwood floor.

Once your feet lightly hit the floor, a terrible shuffling resounds from the living room which makes your blood freeze over. Your limbs are immobilized, but your eyes move towards the door, like you’re in a state of sleep paralysis and your demon’s lurking around the corner. Heavy footsteps grow closer and closer to your door, and you watch the doorknob turn in slow motion.

The door swings open, and your body dissolves.

“Leon?” Your eyes blink at him, unsure for a second if he’s the product of a sleep paralysis induced hallucination.

Your lover stands before you with a somewhat dazed expression himself - dark circles engraved below his exhausted eyes, faded bruises on his face, dark veins trailing across his pale skin. He stands transfixed for what feels like forever before he blinks. “Baby.”

The sound of his voice breaks you out of your own stupor, and you launch off the bed and straight into his arms. You bury your face in his chest as you wrap your arms around him tightly. “You’re home.”

He shudders violently before his arms encircle you as he buries his face in your hair, inhaling the smell of your shampoo - ah, figs and camellia, a breath of fresh air from guts and mold. “I missed you… I almost didn't…” His voice is unsteady, wavering in a way that makes you want to never let go of him.

“It's okay, my love. You're home now, you’re safe.”

“I almost didn't make it… You don’t know what happened…” His hands shake slightly as he grips onto you a little harder.

A lump forms in your throat at the realization that he could have very well perished during this mission. It’s not often that he lets you see him in such a vulnerable state, so hearing the fear decorate his tone causes your heart to squeeze painfully.

“What happened?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Fine, at least tell me where you were. S’not like I can head there and foil the government’s plans after it’s already over. ”

“...Spain.”

You wonder what kind of horrors had transpired in Spain, but you know better than to inquire further. You hold him close and rub his back soothingly, trying to make him feel as loved as possible. “It's over now, right?”

“Right…” A hint of worry colors his tone as he presses a kiss to your head. “Can we just go to sleep?”

“Of course,” you reach up to gently rub the shadowy veins visible underneath his eyes and creeping up his neck. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah. Guess my body just went through a lot back there.”

You take his arms, turning them over and over and examining them closely for any serious wounds. Thankfully, you don’t see anything except for the occasional minuscule scrape, though the unnaturally dark veins worry you. You’re afraid they may be the result of some sort of vascular impairment, so you make a promise to yourself that you’ll drag him to the doctor’s office soon for a proper assessment. You help him wash up, letting him use your products so he’s soft and smelling like you. You hold each other close in bed, relishing the feeling of finally being able to sleep in each other’s arms after time apart.

Ouch. You wince slightly as you wake up to the sun streaming in through your lace curtains. You drowsily fumble for Leon’s hand to hold first thing in the morning like you usually do, but the space next to you is empty. You certainly hope you hadn’t just dreamed of his homecoming.

“Baby?” You croak as you wince again. Are you naked? And why are you so sore? Your eyes trail down to your arms which are littered with bruises. Eyes wide like cherry pies, you tug the comforter off to discover that the rest of your bare body is marked in a similar fashion - bruises bloomed across your neck, teeth marks engraved in your breasts, handprints stamped onto your hips like someone had been gripping onto them for dear life. Trembling, you slowly raise yourself up to a sitting position. You squirm as you feel slick in between your thighs, how fresh it is, you can't say for sure.

“Leon?” Your voice sounds foreign to your own ears as you call out for your lover.

You’re dazed as you take a step forward, feeling your body spinning like a ballerina, a delicate little thing that’s been used and abused and stuffed in a box marked FRAGILE. A strong pair of arms wrap around you from behind, anchoring you to his bare chest- they’re so much warmer than your Leon’s. Your eyes flutter as they gaze straight up into a pair that look like your Leon's except they’re murkier, hungrier.

Inky blood vessels coagulate underneath his skin, giving him a mottled appearance. They interweave throughout his body like morbid ribbons decorating his limbs for a funeral. He breathes heavily as he squeezes at your already tender body, causing you to whimper.

“Leon, ‘m sore… What did you do?” A low growl reverberates within him as he pulls you back onto the bed, shoving you onto your back. Before you can interrogate him further, his lips smash against yours. His kisses are all teeth and slobber, filled with nothing but the desire to ravage everything you hold near and dear.

“Mine, all mine,” he groans as he latches his lips onto your neck, decorating it with his very own artistic flair. “Mine to keep forever.” You whimper at the way his lips assault your most sensitive point like a wolf ready to tear out the wide eyed fawn’s throat.

“Fuck, feels so good,” you moan which further ignites that primal instinct in him that wants to give you the greatest pleasure you’ve ever known, all for the sake of claiming you as his very own mate. He squeezes your tits together and spits on them before rubbing it into your nipples with the rough pads of his thumbs. You squeal at the stimulation as he takes a nipple in his mouth, suckling at it as hard as he can before letting go with a pop.

“God, Leon,” you cry out as he continues to suck on your tits. He pushes them together as hard as he can and forces both nipples into his mouth so he can lap at them like a creature who stumbled across an eternal spring in the vast desert.

“Love these tits,” he groans. “Sweet fucking nipples, made to suck on all day and night. To think they’re gonna get even bigger when they're full of milk.” He pushes his face in between them before finally pulling away with a slap to each one, watching them jiggle with a carnal gaze.

“M-milk?” You whimper as he kisses across your abdomen and lowers down to your leaking pussy.

“Yeah,” he pants as he spreads your dripping folds open with his thumbs, inspecting the remnants of the now stale cum he had dumped inside while you slept like an unsuspecting angel. “Your body has accepted my gift.” A tinge of fear courses through your veins at this last line; you can’t put your finger on why it makes your skin crawl, but they don’t sound like your Leon’s words.

“Gift?” You involuntarily moan as he lets himself drool on your pussy before pressing sloppy kisses straight onto your clit.

“You’ll take my seed.” He starts lapping at your pussy ruthlessly, but not before grabbing your thighs and forcing them to clamp around his head, keeping him fused to your most intimate parts. Your sweet noises overflow the room as your back arches like he’s possessing you, dragging you down to flail around for eternity among the powerful black winds. Your voice turns shrill as you cum on his salacious tongue. Canto V.

When he finally emerges for air, his eyes are now murkier than before - the once serene blue that inspired such tranquility is now charred, tenebrous. “Leon,” your eyes tear up as you gaze down at him with your elbows propping you up.

“Shh,” he smirks as he raises himself up to pump his hard cock a few times before aligning himself with your pretty hole. “My baby, my lamb. Gonna get your beautiful belly all swollen for me. Gonna creampie you as many times as it takes.” He pushes himself inside your sopping cunt as you wail for the heavens. Your pussy allows him to enter with ease, clenching around him like it needed him to breathe - which it did. He begins to thrust into you with all the vigor of a madman.

“So good for me, my fucking girl,” he pants as he continues to pound into you. He leers at the way your tits bounce at each thrust before leaning over to spit on them. Your chest gleams with his saliva as you moan louder than you ever have before, like your throat really is being ripped out by the big bad wolf. His cock reaches deep, hitting all the spots you know nothing else can, and before you know it, you’re cumming all over him as he continues to pummel into you. Your nails dig into his back as you try to claw onto anything that can keep you physically grounded through your orgasm.

He laughs a little to himself as he continues to fuck you despite the fact you just came. “L-leon,” you cry out. “S’too much, too sensitive.”

“You can take it, been taking it all night.” His balls slap against your ass as he leans down to jam his lips against yours, licking into your mouth until your head’s all dizzy again. He rears back to push your legs up against your chest as his cock pounds into you; the new angle’s making your eyes roll all the way back into your head. “Oh, fuck,” he murmurs to himself as his breath hitches and he stares down at you losing yourself in the mating press. “That’s a good breeding bitch.” His words are hushed, but they bounce around in your head and yank another orgasm out of you, leaving you sobbing from the overstimulation.

“S’okay baby,” he coos as he kisses your salty tears away and wraps a hand around your smooth throat. “You’re doing so well, accepting my gift.” His eyes unsettle you, damn near pitch black as they peer right into yours. Your battered pussy tightens in tandem with the hand gripping your throat. Your tongue lolls out as you start seeing stars, and he sucks on it. “Give me another one, little lamb.”

“C-can’t,” you slur as your limbs dissolve. You want to give him another one. Want it, want to bear his child, want to exist for him. Want to breathe him, let him pump through your circulatory system. His breathing becomes erratic, damn near hysterical, as he nears his own high. He rubs your swollen clit to bring you closer to yet another orgasm, though you wonder if you’ll live to tell the tale once you reach it. He pounds into you as hard as he can, unrestrained growls falling from his lips as he dumps his load into you. You manage to cum yet again, release so intense on your already wasted form, that it shatters your senses. You’re vaguely aware of someone shrieking, and it takes a while to realize that it’s coming from your own mouth. You did it. Your vision goes black, and you slump into unconsciousness.

The first thing you perceive when you regain consciousness is the calloused hand gently caressing your face as if you’re a china doll. “Leon?” Your mumble brings him to slowly gaze at you with concern and shame.

“Baby.” He raises his other hand to hold yours with all the love and tenderness he could muster. “How are you feeling?”

“Sore… tired…” You frown slightly as you try to sit up, but he stops you from straining yourself. “What happened, Leon?”

“I’m so sorry.” His eyes are cast downwards as if the floor will be more forgiving than his own lover. “I’m not okay.”

“It’s okay,” you frown as you squeeze his hand reassuringly. “You didn’t hurt me.”

“I could’ve. I thought this thing had resolved itself in Spain.”

“We’ll figure this out together.” You gently tug his arm, signaling to him that for now, you just want him laying with you. He slides into the bed and cautiously rolls you over on your side so that he’s spooning you from behind. He buries his face in the crook of your neck and gives your belly a pat.

#leon kennedy x reader #leon kennedy smut #leon kennedy #leon kennedy drabble #leon kennedy x you #leon kennedy fanfic #leon kennedy imagine #leon kennedy angst #leon kennedy oneshot #resident evil x reader #resident evil smut #resident evil

4K notes · View notes

spider-stark · 7 months ago

Text

SWORN PROTECTOR

Criston Cole x Targaryen!Reader

Summary - After sneaking back into the Keep from a night spent out in the city, you find your sworn protector, Ser Criston Cole, waiting for you in your room.

Warnings - fem!reader, targtower!reader, not edited, reader has mommy/daddy issues, duty turned devotion type bullshit, criston can't just guard a woman without falling in love ig, yearning

Word Count - 2k

!MINORS DNI!

// masterlist // send me your thoughts // comments & reblogs appreciated! //

Soft footfalls echo in the narrow corridor of Maegor’s passages. You keep a palm cupped around the candle in your other hand, protecting the flame so it won’t gutter out. Secret doors are scattered throughout the corridor, each leading into bedchambers or solars or other forgotten passages. Having already left your brother, Aegon, at the secret door leading to his room, you keep count of your steps.

One, two; seven, eight; thirteen, fourteen; twenty, twenty-one.

At just over twenty-five paces, the exact distance between his room and yours, you stop, turn to the left and blow your candle out, setting it on the ground for next time you go sneaking through to passages.

Cold stone bites at your palms as you press them against the aged door. You cringe with every scrape and groan as you push it open. When there’s a gap just wide-enough, you turn sideways and shimmy inside.

You’re greeted by warm light, candles flickering from all around your room, chasing the shadows of dusk into faraway corners. If you weren’t so preoccupied with heaving the door back into place, adjusting the tapestry that hides its seams from view, you may have noticed that there are more candles lit now than when you slipped out earlier, having abandoned the Keep in favor of a night spent in the city lying below Aegon’s High Hill.

When all is as it was, the secret door shut and covered, you turn around. Heaving a sigh, you shrug your cloak from your shoulders, letting it fall into a heap on the floor. Gooseflesh immediately forms along your arms, kissed by the chill breeze blowing in from the open balcony.

You walk to the vanity on the far side of your room, rolling your neck and shoulders, muscles sore from hours spent dancing among the smallfolk in a Flea Bottom tavern. Exhaustions made your bones weary, fantasies of crawling into warm sheets plague your mind. They tempt you, urging you to forego your nightly routine in favor of sweet, sweet sleep.

Your footsteps falter, casting a wistful glance down your shoulder to your bed when—

Seven Hells!

Your pulse jumps, a scream threatens to rip from your throat at the sight of a figure sat on the foot of your bed. You react quickly, clamping a hand over your mouth to muffle any sound, not wanting to raise alarm amongst the guards. Recognition washes over you in a matter of seconds, taking them in one detail at a time: their weathered boots and polished armor, tanned skin and ever-present frown.

Lowering your hand, you have half a mind to curse Criston for frightening you like this, for not announcing himself as soon as you snuck in—

Rational thought trumps what remains of fear.

He had to have seen you—sneaking in from the passages, hiding the door upon entrance.

Fuck.

The air turns thick. Every breath is like sucking treacle into your lungs, slow and suffocating. Criston’s stare is heavy, his expression like weathered stone. Armor grinds against itself as his arms cross over his chest. “Where have you been?”

There’s some relief that he doesn’t first question you about the passages. Does he already know about them, you wonder? After all, before Criston became your protector, he was sworn to your half-sister, Rhaenyra—who, in your youth, was said to be quite rebellious.

A trait Criston finds to be alive and well within you.

You look away from him, continuing to your vanity. “I was out,” you answer, purposefully curt. “Obviously.”

Nudging the vanity stool with your foot, you take a seat upon its plush velvet cushion. Criston pushes off your bed, and you fight a smirk at the sound of his footfalls, heavy and fervent as he strides to your side.

“Out where?”

You pull your neatly plaited hair over your shoulder, watching yourself in the mirror as you untie the ribbon binding it. “In the city,” you tell him, tossing the scrap of silk onto the vanity top. “Where else would I go?”

“Were you alone?”

You reach for your brush, begin combing. “What does it matter?” Before he can answer, you catch his gaze in the reflection, eyes playfully narrowing as you ask, “If I said that I wasn’t, would you be jealous, Ser Criston?”

He certainly looks jealous.

The knight’s breathing is shallow, tanned cheeks flush with frustration. At your question, a muscle feathers in his jaw, clenched so tight that you can nearly hear his teeth grind together. There’s a dark gleam in his eyes, a shadow of rage—not at you, you don’t think. But at whoever may have been graced with your presence tonight, showered with your favor and affection.

“As your sworn protector,” Criston says, voice strained, “I have a right to ask if you were escorted by another member of the Kingsguard.”

There’s such emotion in it—the way he said: Your sworn protector. A trembling betrays his fraying restraint, revealing the raw nerve beneath and exposing Criston’s desperation, a desire to not only be sworn to you, but to be wholly possessed by you.

Your sworn protector—no longer a title, but an identity.

Your sworn protector—no longer an oath, but a sacred devotion.

You set your brush down, holding his stare with a faint smirk. “I’m afraid that doesn’t answer my question, Ser.”

Something snaps. His mouth twists into a scowl.

“Are you truly so thoughtless, princess?” Criston asks, his tone maintaining a delicate balance between respect and disappointment. “Do you understand it’s your very life you play with? And that it’s not only you who would suffer the consequences of this… this utter lack of duty! This wanton negligence!”

You could have him dismissed from the Kingsguard for this.

For speaking so freely. For interrogating a princess. For trespassing in your rooms.

Criston continues, “If something were to happen to you, my life is forfeit. The king would–”

He’s interrupted by wood screeching against stone, the vanity stool thrust back as you rise to your feet. You turn to stand toe-to-toe with the knight, chin tilted to lock eyes with him. “The king,” you hiss with a sickly smile, contradicting the venom in your voice, “would do nothing—just as he’s done all my life.”

The energy shifts. Criston’s scowl morphs to a pitying frown.

“He is your father,” his protest is a tentative breath, laced with underlying uncertainty, “if something happened to you, he would seek justice.”

You laugh, low and bitter. Shake your head and shove past the knight. “If he mistook me for Rhaenyra, perhaps,” you say, kicking off your shoes as you head to the wardrobe next to your bed. “If not, then I imagine he wouldn’t even notice I’m gone. My life—the lives of my siblings—has never meant anything to him.”

Criston redirects, facing you now. He argues, “It means something to your mother.”—And to me, he holds back.

A scoff, throwing the wardrobe open.

Your mother loves you, of course—but it’s the kind of love that hurts. It’s cold distance and piercing scrutiny, violent words and stinging cheeks. If you were to die, she would certainly mourn. But it won’t change that she failed you. It won’t make her a good mother.

When you don’t respond, mindlessly digging through a drawer of nightgowns, Criston knows better than to broach that particular topic any further.

With a hesitant breath, he says, “It’s my duty to protect you. To keep you safe.” He takes several steps, decreasing the distance between you by coming to stand at the foot of your bed. You stay facing the wardrobe. “It’s true that I cannot tell you what to do—if you wish to fraternize with common-men—” such distaste laces this word—“then that is your will.”

There’s a pause. Your hands falter, swathed in a mess of silky fabric as you wait for him to continue.

“I only ask that you heed caution, princess. For you to allow me to accompany you and do my job—to safeguard your life, your virtue-”

Genuine amusement floods your chest. It spills from your lips in a string of vivacious giggles. “Is that what this is about, Ser Criston? My virtue?” You settle on a nightgown, turn around and toss it onto your bed. You glance to the foot of it, at Criston and his ever-present frown. “You truly are a jealous man,” you muse, smiling, “aren’t you? Thinking I go into the city to fuck common-men.”

His fists tighten at his sides, the blatant mockery in your voice having invited a wave of embarrassment.

“It was not my intention to imply that—”

The words catch in Criston’s throat as you turn the opposite way, slip your shirt over your head and shimmy out of your trousers, leaving the smallclothes beneath. All he can see is your back—the smooth column of your spine, brushed by tendrils of long, silver hair—but that’s enough.

Enough to make his heart jolt, hammer against his ribcage. Enough to make his knees weak, threaten to buckle beneath his weight. Enough to light a fire inside him, flames licking at every inch of his skin.

Grasping at the final shreds of his restraint, Criston averts his gaze to the floor.

He swallows on a too-dry throat. “King’s Landing is full of vile men, princess,” he tells you, a sense of guilt pricking at his conscience. “And vile men are known to commit vile acts.”

You reach out an arm, grab the nightgown and pull it over your head. Silk glides over your skin, covering the exposed flesh that tempts the knight so.

Whirling to face him, you ask, “And what about you?”

Criston doesn’t answer, still studying the rug beneath his feet with a staggering intensity. You catch his brow furrow, though, a small wrinkle forming there. You elaborate on your question.

“You’re a man in King’s Landing,” you tell him, leisurely placing one foot in front of the other, gliding to where he stands at the end of your bed. “Are you as vile as the rest of them, Ser Criston?”

Again, only silence.

You take another step. Less than a foot of space separates you, close enough now to scent the earthy musk of his armor. “Some might think it vile,” you continue, taunting him, “for you to be here right now—hiding in my bedchambers well after dark.”

Criston stammers, his words broken-up by serrated breaths, “I merely wished to know that you were safe, princess.” Dark eyes flutter up from the floor, drawn to yours. “My intentions were pure.”

“Were?”

His blood thrums. His lungs ache.

You continue, “Do you mean your intentions have changed, Ser Criston?”

Criston tells the truth. “No.” With you, his intentions are always pure. It’s his desires that complicate things. “My intentions are the same,” he tells you, clearing his throat, “I only wish to know you’re safe. That you’re well-protected.”

Your mistrust in his answer is evident. Lips pursed, your eyes scan his face, searching for something. At this moment, he feels every bit like prey. A cornered animal trapped beneath the searing gaze of a dragon, left entirely at your mercy.

A part of him is terrified. Another, utterly entranced.

Finally, you click your tongue. Reaching out a hand, you place it against his chest. His gaze falls, staring at where your palm is pressed to his armor. He wonders how it might feel against his skin. “You’re an honorable knight, Ser Criston,” you tell him, smiling. “A good man, too.”

Criston doesn’t remember the need for oxygen until your touch falls away.

Turning your back to him again, you stride back around your bed, pull the blankets back, and sit on the edge of your mattress. His mind is still reeling when you next speak.

“I was with Aegon.”

Criston blinks. “What?”

“You asked if I was alone,” you say, reminiscing on his earlier question, “I wasn’t. I was with Aegon—who was accompanied by Ser Erryk.” Sliding your legs beneath the blankets, you lean back against a stack of plush pillows. “So I was well-protected from those vile men you speak of.” Chewing on your lip, fighting a wider grin, you add, “I just thought you might like to know—despite how unjealous you are.”

Criston’s own lips twitch, curving upwards.

“Good,” he says, a bit awkward. Then: “And about that secret door…”

You groan, tossing your head back against the pillows. Criston softly chuckle, another lecture already poised on the tip of his tongue.

It’s going to be a long night.

a/n - idk man. I randomly decided at 8pm that I needed to write 2k words about this man after never writing for him a day in my life, and this is the product of that. any and all feedback is welcome and much appreciated!

707 notes · View notes

small-sinclair · 10 months ago

Text

Night, Darling

Bo Sinclair x reader

******

Bo sneaks into your shared bedroom tired and aching. He huffs and sighs quietly as he undresses to his boxers. He felt his arms aching and his head pounding, but it fades when he ears you stir under the blankets.

“Bo?” You voice sounds like a coo from a dove. “Baby? What time is it?”

“Go back t’sleep, honey,” he drawls, covering his mouth as he yawns. “It’s half-past midnight.” The floor creaks under his feet and his bones crack with every steps. The weight of the bed sinks down and he lays on his side, pulling you close. “Back t’sleep.”

There’s silence for a moment as the crickets sing their good-night songs and fireflies dance to the beat of the swamp. Then it’s cut as you sleepily asked, “Did ya turn out the porch light?”

Bo groans in annoyance at himself and sits back up. “Shit,” he whispers as he stands and hobbles across the floor.

Sleep filled your voice as you called, “Bring back water.”

“Get yer own water,” he spat through a yawn. He was already half way down the steps when he called back, “Yeah, I got it, y/n.”

He turns off the light and locks the door (even though he doesn’t have to) then goes into the kitchen. He gets you a glass of water with two ice cubes; he knows how much you like ice. He looks through the kitchen window and out into the woods. It’s all peaceful out there; it almost scares him. The moon was half full but it lit up the forest. He could see coyotes trumping through the tall grass without care and glow from faded stars. The train whistle was distance and he felt its wheel through the floor like thunder. He smiles to himself before heading back to you.

By the time he gets back, he finds you dead asleep. He smirks and shakes his head. He places the glass on your nightstand then goes on his side of the bed. Bo fixes his photo of you and him before laying down next to you. Just like a puzzle piece, you fix perfectly in his arms once more.

Sleepily, you planted a kiss on his cheek then went back to sleep. He kisses your forehead in return then your lips.

“Good’igh, darlin’,” he whispers. “Love ya.”

#house of wax #house of wax 2005 #bo sinclair #house of wax (2005)#house of wax fanfiction #house of wax fanfic #bo sinclair x reader #slasher x reader #bo sinclair fanfic #bo sinclair x you #bo sinclair x s/o #bo sinclair house of wax #bo sinclair imagine #bo sinclair headcanons #bo house of wax #slasher x s/o #slasher x y/n #slasher fanfic

505 notes · View notes

inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 6 months ago

Text

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Epilogue: It’s Not Over ‘Til You’re Underground]

A/N: We've finally reached the end of the Oregon Trail, besties!!! Enjoy this one last treat to celebrate the conclusion of Martyrs 🥰

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Both the series title and epilogue title are lyrics from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Word count: 4.1k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Autumn is the harvest, ripping up roots, preparing for the starving time of winter, and so you step through the threshold of your new life as the world is ending again.

“I knew the chances,” Sophie says when you tell her what happened; but she can’t look at you, because of course she wishes it was Rio who made it to Odessa instead, and you don’t blame her. She breaks down and leaves the house, and you sit there—silent, sorry, self-loathing—for a long time with Rio’s weeping parents and Aegon’s arm draped across the back of your chair. But then Sophie comes back inside, and through tears she says it’s nice to meet you in person at last, and then she asks if you’d like to hold Rio’s son.

Here it is commonplace to see M16s and AR-15s, marijuana growing in gardens, a myriad of flags flying from homes—Don’t Tread On Me, Trump 2024, American flags, rainbow flags, porcupines of the Libertarian Party—and order is maintained by an elected council of longtime Odessa residents. For anyone to be allowed into the community, somebody already here must take responsibility for them, and so the seven of you—eight, counting Ice—spend the first few months sleeping on Rio’s parents’ living room floor and eating meals out of their cellar, enough self-stable food to last for years. You join the construction crew and help build houses, Cregan cuts down trees and fishes and hunts, Helaena shows Aegon how to garden and Sophie teaches Luke to bake bread. There are no doctors here, but there are several unlicensed midwives and a veterinarian named Ian Whitted. Rhaena studies under him—attending every appointment and taking copious notes in the spider notebook Helaena gifts her, sharing what she learned from Aemond—and before long her sutures are quicker and cleaner than Ian’s. Daeron, considered too young and inexperienced for the most dangerous work, is posted with his compound bow inside the village to serve as a guard. He resents this until he realizes there are far more women to flirt with here than out in the forest where wolves and bears prowl and the dead rove with incurable hunger.

You work from dawn to sunset; you work so you have no time to think. The baby doesn’t feel real, and neither does Aemond being gone, and the future is so unimaginable you’d rather not try to imagine it at all. Because you’re a good shot, they want you for patrols and raids of nearby towns to search for supplies, and you take every shift you’re offered until Rhaena says you have to stop. She tells you that each time you leave, Aegon watches the door until you walk through it again, that it’s not good for him, that it’s not good for you either. She says you can’t keep running from what’s happened.

“I’m not trying to run away,” you tell her where she’s cornered you by one of the wells, lilac twilight sky and glimmers of stars, hoots of owls and children laughing as they roast marshmallows over crackling fires. “I’m trying to find my way through.”

“Fine,” Rhaena replies firmly, no room for argument. “But you’re going to do that in here where it’s safe.”

The new houses have wooden walls and kitchen fireplaces made of stones, beds with feather mattresses, plots for gardens and pens for ducks, chickens, pigs, sheep, goats, turkeys, cattle. Helaena and Cregan move into one cabin, Rhaena and Luke share another, and you have the last to yourself, the first time you’ve ever lived alone. Aegon and Daeron float around between the houses, more often than not ending up in yours as the sun is dipping below the tree line into the west, Daeron carving wooden cutlery with a hunting knife, Aegon cuddling with Ice on the deerskin rug, luring you into disastrous baking attempts and games of Uno and telling stories about Washington D.C., Djibouti, Key West, Corpus Christi, Chinhae, Diego Garcia, Saratoga Springs before the dead began to walk.

Thanksgiving dinner is at Rio’s parents’ house, Sophie’s baby sound asleep in his blue sling, candles flickering and Ice lying beneath the table to gulp down scraps that fall to the floor: roasted turkey, hazelnut stuffing, buttered carrots, mashed potatoes, pickled beets, salad with homemade ranch dressing, pumpkin pie for dessert.

“God, I miss chilidogs,” Aegon mutters beside you, and you laugh—a real laugh, loud and helpless, a lightness flooding into your arteries and the marrow of your bones—for the first time since Aemond died.

“You have to try this,” Sophie says, pouring you a small glass of moonshine distilled with apples and cherries and cinnamon. Everybody else has already had a taste except Aegon. He doesn’t drink anymore, doesn’t smoke the weed people grow here, only keeps a few tobacco plants in your garden to enjoy on rare occasions.

“I can’t,” you tell Sophie, staring at the amber-colored moonshine. You are over three months along and will be showing soon. It materializes all at once, shifts from a hazy apparition to something in full focus: next Thanksgiving you will have a fatherless infant of your own.

Sophie is puzzled. The glass of moonshine waits untouched on the table. “Why not?”

“Because I’m pregnant,” you say.

Aegon chokes on his pumpkin pie. “You’re what?!”

And everyone except Helaena drops their forks and leaps up to engulf you: How long have you known? How far along are you? Why didn’t you tell us? How can we help?

You stop lifting heavy things and stay off of ladders. Helaena brings you kale and mushrooms, Sophie knits you baby clothes, Rio’s mom makes you candles infused with essential oils, lavender, chamomile, ginger, and you lie and say they make a difference. Aegon helps you build a crib; you don’t need his help, but still, he insists. Smiling to himself, he etches two words into the headboard: Mini Chips. Wheat is planted in the fields to the north of the village. Scrap metal is scavenged for the blacksmiths to melt down to make nails and bullets. You learn to sweeten desserts with honey instead of sugar and to hold your hand flat when you feed the baby goats so they won’t nibble your fingers. You wait for winter to thaw and summer to come back around again.

It is what people would call a bad birth: hemorrhaging and lots of stitches, Rhaena squinting in the glow of the flashlights trying to piece you back together, rain outside and no lidocaine. You can’t stop crying. You feel like you’re going to die, and you’re shaking too badly to hold your own child, and you want Aemond. He would know what to do, he would know how to make the world go quiet. And the truth that he will never meet his daughter hits you over and over again like cold lethal waves, like bullets that pierce the heart.

Aegon is here instead, and you want to cling to him but you can’t; if all the others could die, so can he. But even when you look away from him to stare at the wall he stays, his hand clutching yours and never complaining even when you squeeze it hard enough to leave bruises that paint him maroon and indigo, tilting glasses filled with fresh pomegranate juice against your lips, asking Rhaena and Ian what you will need from him as you recover. Slowly the house empties and everyone goes home, but Aegon stays through the night and never leaves again.

Harmony cries a lot, as if she already knows she’s lost someone. She has trouble nursing and only sleeps for a few hours at a time. People are always coming in and out of the house: Sophie with handknit clothes and blankets for the baby, Helaena with flowers and fruit and vegetables, Rhaena with loaves of Luke’s fresh-baked bread, Cregan with firewood. At first Aegon is better with Harmony than you are. You love her, of course, and you mourn for the life you cannot give her; but you can’t shake the feeling that someone left her on your doorstep, this fragile bewildering creature you are so unequipped to soothe. Yet Aegon picks her up and she stops crying. He carries her around the house and murmurs nonsense—rules of golf, sailing knots—and she gazes up at him mesmerized; and in the peace that grows from him like weeds, wild and inevitable, you can heal.

Aegon helps you walk for the first week after the birth. He brings you meals, overflowing plates you can never finish. He respectfully averts his eyes when you nurse the baby and when he passes the bedroom as you’re changing clothes, slowly and inelegantly, every muscle feeling shredded. He falls exhausted into bed beside you with his arms crossed over his chest so he won’t reach for you in his sleep. You keep waiting for him to start craving marijuana and moonshine, to meet someone who makes him wayward again while you are left here alone, morose and unglamorous and bleeding. You care about Aegon—entirely, violently—but you are convinced you’ll never love a man again. Perhaps love is something that is always doomed to be broken, ruinous, poisoned.

When Harmony is about four months old, you begin to see Aegon differently. You can’t stop staring at the way his hair shags over his eyes when he’s bent low in the garden, you hide behind walls and listen each time you catch him singing to himself, you feel a dark desperate sense of loss when other women flirt with him, though Aegon is never more than polite in return. You find excuses to touch him, and he always acquiesces: Let me bandage the cuts on your hands, let me dab honey on your sunburn.

One night you wake to find Aegon with Harmony in the kitchen, humming and rocking her in his arms as he paces back and forth across the wood floor in his bare feet, the full moon radiant through the window, the fireplace crackling. He glances over when he notices you standing in the doorway and says: “I think this is the only thing I’ve ever been good at.”

“Aegon?”

“Yeah, Chips.”

“I’m in love with you.”

At first he is startled, and then he smiles in the firelight, a slow mischievous curve of the lips that puts stars in his eyes and shows his teeth. “Took you long enough.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Nearly ten years ago, you were learning how to be a builder at Class A Technical School in Gulfport, Mississippi, salt and sun and sweet tea and humidity that lies heavy like a second skin you can’t shed. Today you are hammering nails into boards that will be a wall of the new meeting house, twice the square footage of the old one. The community here keeps growing.

“Watch out for your fingers, Zack Attack.”

Zack looks over at you. He’s a kid, nineteen, and he’s only been here a week. He left Beaumont, Texas with a group of thirty people, one of them the cousin of a council member here. Twelve were left when they arrived. “Huh?”

“You’re holding the nail too close to the bottom,” you say. “If you swing the hammer and miss—and you will miss, everyone does sometimes, even me—you’ll crush your fingers against the wood. But if you hold the nail up near the top, the hammer will kind of knock them out of the way as it comes down, and you won’t have to worry about Rhaena or Ian popping your bones back into place.”

“Oh, cool! Thanks!” Zack readjusts his hands. “Where’d you learn to do all this?”

“The Navy.”

“Right. That makes sense.” He gives you a crooked, conspiratorial grin. “I heard you’re a good shot.”

“I am, I guess.” You don’t do patrols anymore, but you’re on the list of people to call when there’s a security breach, and you go because you have to. If Odessa is ever overrun, that will be the end of the life you’ve made here. The last scare was two months ago, a hoard that wandered up from the south, probably out of Klamath Falls. Someone knocked and you answered, leaving Aegon standing in the doorway with troubled eyes, Noah in his arms asking: Where Mama go? And Aegon had told him She’ll be back soon, buddy, but of course no one had known if that was true.

Now Zack says admiringly: “A real killer.”

You smile and give him a slap on the shoulder as you start climbing down the ladder. “I’d rather be a builder.”

“You heading out?”

“Yeah, my kids probably miss me.”

“See ya tomorrow. Bring more of Aegon’s raspberry crumb muffins.”

You laugh. “If there are any left.”

Down on the ground, bumblebees orbit tufts of wildflowers and cats prowl for mice. Sitting cross-legged on the grass are kids rubbing nails against bars of goat milk soap; it makes them go into the wood easier. They play the same way you did as a child: in the dirt, in the wild, tracking animals and building dams in the creek. They wave as you pass by. Everyone knows each other here. Everyone knows what you can do with the Beretta M9 in your holster.

Beside one of the wells, Daeron is helping a flock of tittering, blushing women pull up their buckets and plucking stray blades of grass and pine needles out of their hair. He is easily the most eligible bachelor in Odessa, and in no hurry to take himself off the market. By the schoolhouse, two teenagers are petting Ice as they listen to Aegon’s pink Sony Walkman and rap along to Gold Digger: “You will see him on tv, any given Sunday, win the Super Bowl and drive off in a Hyundai…”

But at Sophie’s house, the song you hear is Darius Rucker’s Wagon Wheel, drifting from a battery-powered boombox containing one of Rio’s dad’s cassette tapes. Aegon is already here and dusted with earth, your children clamoring around his legs as he chats with Sophie at the edge of the garden: zucchini, snap peas, tomatoes, strawberries, spinach, potatoes, cucumbers, carrots, kale. When Aegon sees you, he lights up and says to the kids: “Look! Look who’s here!” And you crouch down and open your arms so you can catch all three of them as they barrel into you on small, wobbly legs.

The second birth was much easier, the third only lasted an afternoon. Opal, three years old, is named after a gemstone that Sophie told you symbolizes hope and clarity; Noah, two and with unruly blonde hair like Aegon’s, shares a name with the man who started over when the world flooded and all the generations before were lost. You pick him up before he can trip over his own feet.

“Mama, come see!” Harmony shouts, grabbing your free hand and dragging you to a hutch full of fluffy, multicolored rabbits. Aegon is walking over to join you, his hands in his pockets and a soft smile on his lips, long blonde hair and stubbled cheeks.

“Are these the new meat rabbits?” you say without thinking, and Aegon widens his eyes at you.

Harmony peers up with a worried frown. She’s getting too smart to be shielded from such harsh realities. “Why did you call them meat rabbits?”

Aegon swoops Harmony off the ground to distract her. “Because they’re so excited to meet you!” he says as she giggles and kicks through open air.

“What are their names?” you ask to change the subject.

“Arrax,” Opal says in her toddler lisp, pointing to a grey one. And then, indicating a rabbit with long, reddish-tan fur: “Morning.”

“Those are such nice names!” you gush, a bit perplexed. Children have a certain mystery to them, one foot still in the Great Beyond, wherever souls wait to be born and reunited.

“And this one is Sunfyre,” Harmony announces proudly, reaching through the wire to scratch its straw-colored coat.

“Sunfyre?!” Aegon says. “Well now you’re just making shit up.” A pause. “Stuff. You’re making stuff up.”

“And Sunfyre is married to Dreamfyre.”

“Cute,” Aegon says. “Incestuous, but cute.”

“The post-apocalypse dating pool is limited,” you remind him.

“Have you met the Texas people yet?” Sophie asks you as she wanders over to the hutch in a handknit yellow dress, wearing elephant earrings that Rio once mailed home to her from Djibouti.

“Yeah, some of them are working on the meeting house. They seem really nice. And apparently they know how to barbeque, so that’s exciting. New recipes!”

Sophie smirks. “When they dropped by to introduce themselves, I had to have the whole conversation again.”

“Well…you did name your kid Otter.”

“Wait, wait, hold on,” Sophie says, chuckling, showing her palms. “I did not name him Otter.”

“You named him Bryan Otter Osorio. And you call him Otter.”

“Because he’s a little kid and it’s a perfectly fine nickname for now! And then when he’s older…you know…he can decide who he wants to be.”

You smile. “Sure.”

“I think it’s great, personally,” Aegon says. “I’m hoping I’ll get to name my next one Softshell Turtle.”

“Absolutely,” you deadpan. “And what if it’s a girl?”

“Softshell Turtle is obviously unisex.”

Sophie is laughing and shaking her head. “I hate you guys.”

Helaena and Cregan arrive to pick up their children, two sets of twins, all named after species of butterflies: Skipper, Adonis, Tiger, Sara. Rio’s parents bring them outside to the garden to be collected. They and Sophie like to keep the house full of children, especially now that Otter is getting older. And when they need meat or firewood or their roof patched, they know who to ask.

“I’m so sorry,” Sophie tells Helaena and Cregan as they wrangle their brood. “I’m mortified. Adonis ate Harmony’s oatmeal raisin cookie and made her cry, so Otter smacked him in the head with his golf club.” Aegon has carved miniature, lightweight clubs out of pine wood for each of the children; they zip around putting acorns and walnuts. “Adonis was freaked out but I think he’s fine now. I couldn’t find a bruise or anything. Again, I’m so, so, so sorry.”

“You okay, buckaroo?” Cregan asks, and his oldest son—brunette man bun, already pestering his dad to take him hunting—nods adamantly.

“Duh. It didn’t even hurt.”

Cregan guffaws and turns back to Sophie. “See? No harm done.”

Otter trots out of the house, rubbing his eyes like he just woke up from a nap. Harmony immediately runs over to hug him. He’s already six inches taller than her and is always giving her gifts that end up on the fireplace mantle at your house: flecks of quartz, pinecones, bracelets woven from buttercups.

Sophie asks Otter: “Did you think about what you did earlier?”

“Yeah,” he replies cavalierly.

“Would you do it again?”

“Probably.”

“Oh dear,” Sophie exhales, exasperated.

You beam down at Otter. “He’s exactly like Rio.”

“Yeah,” Sophie says wistfully, combing her fingers through his dark curly hair. “He really is.”

Rhaena and Luke happen to be strolling by and stop to say hello. Luke teaches English classes at the schoolhouse, founded the Cultural Preservation Committee, and writes and directs a new play each month. When he is in the lull between original ideas, he draws from pre-zombie pop culture. The June production is Free Britney.

“Hi!” Rhaena says, waving. “Are we still on for dinner tonight?” All the adults offer greetings and confirm they’ll swing by her and Luke’s cabin in a few hours. Then Rhaena shields her eyes from the sun as she sighs incredulously. “Do you realize there are ten women due in the next two weeks? I spend all day rushing around because they’re panicking about Braxton Hicks contractions. If I get one full night’s sleep between now and mid-July, it’ll be a miracle. Am I the only human alive who knows how to use the rhythm method? I explain it! I give lessons!”

You laugh and say: “I think people just really want babies, Rhaena.”

“They’re so sweet,” Helaena coos as she snuggles Sara against her chest.

“Gotta repopulate the planet,” Cregan adds.

Rhaena is disturbed. “I don’t feel ready for that.”

“Totally cool,” you assure her. “Helaena and I are keeping the average up.”

That night, logs pop and hiss in the fireplace and wind howls outside through the forest. On the walls are photographs of Aemond and Helaena and Daeron, drawings that the children have scribbled of you and Aegon. Propped in one corner of the living room is Aegon’s acoustic guitar; Harmony’s current favorite song for him to play is Big Girls Don’t Cry, though a slightly censored version of Fergalicious is a close second. Tomorrow is Aegon’s birthday. You have a cake hidden in one of the kitchen cabinets—cinnamon, honey, buttercream frosting—that you baked this morning before leaving for the construction site, along with 35 small homemade candles dyed green with chamomile. Every year he assumes you’ve forgotten, but you never do. You’re so thankful he was born. You are eternally finding new ways to convince him of this.

All five of you cuddle up in the big bed for story time. You begin as you always do, struggling to capture the kids’ attention as they crawl around giggling and rolling on top of each other: “Hey, hey, everyone look at me. You remember what we say.” Harmony knows this part my heart, Opal has the words mostly right, Noah gives it a solid effort as he mauls on a teddy bear Sophie knitted for him. “You’re beautiful. I love you. You’re doing the right thing.”

“What story should Mama tell tonight, huh?” Aegon asks as you open the book of fairytales borrowed from the makeshift community library, another one of Luke’s projects. “The Little Mermaid, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Beauty and the Beast…oh wait, I think I might be in that one…”

Harmony says to you: “Tell the story about how Aemond saved us from the tower.”

Children understand death here. People get infections, people succumb to cancer or heart attacks or strokes or diabetes, people go out on raids or patrols and never come back, one man contracted rabies from a bat bite and was—at his request—euthanized via gunshot. Harmony is aware she had a father before Aegon, but that he had to go to heaven early, and so Aegon is her father now and loves her completely. She knows Aemond’s face from the photographs Helaena took from the beach house on the Pacific Ocean. She knows the kind of person he was from the stories she’s been told. Harmony envisions a fantastical castle keep instead of a stark metal transmission tower draped in dead wires, and she’s a bit unclear on the chronology of when she entered the picture, but she has heard about the journey to Odessa. Aegon’s map, annotated with glittery green gel pen ink, hangs on the kitchen wall.

You close the book, looking at Harmony: your hair, Aemond’s eyes. “Okay. I can tell that one.”

“Mama…” Her little forehead crinkles, questions she is at last getting old enough to start asking. “Why do some people have to go to heaven before they’re old?”

You hesitate, trying to decide how to explain; and now embers are glowing hot and scarring in your throat. It’s a fire that cools and rekindles but never burns out. Aegon speaks instead. “Because they’re heroes, Mini Chips,” he says gently. “They go to heaven so other people get to stay here longer. Aemond went to heaven so you and your mom could live here in Odessa with me.”

“So Otter’s daddy was a hero too?”

Aegon leans down to kiss the top of her head, his eyes shining. “Yeah. Exactly.”

Not just a hero, you think. A martyr. Someone who dies for a cause.

Harmony is patting your arm with her tiny outstretched hand. “The tower, Mama. Tell us about the tower.”

Now you are there again with Rio: sixty feet off the ground and clinging to metal beams hot enough to put blisters on your palms, cascading June sunlight and wild emerald fields, blood and madness behind you, the mirage of Oregon ahead, believing without reason that someone out there will save you.

And they will; they will.

174 notes · View notes

violexides · 4 months ago

Text

before people get vicious i want to remind you all of a few things, starting with the fact that third party voters are not to blame for the results of the election, but rather that (1) the democratic party refused to end their genocide at every opportunity and, most influential in this specific case, (2) there has been a substantial rise of right-wing sentiment in this country that is what contributed most directly to the Republican victories we have seen in Congress and in the executive office.

regardless of who entered office, there would have been a substantial need to organize, and we are seeing that now more than ever. this is obviously horrifyingly scary shit, but queer people are resilient, Palestinians are resilient, the Black and Brown and Indigenous people of this country are resilient, the colonized people of the world are resilient. we will be able to organize until every last one of us is dead, so know that there is always something you can do. and that hope is a stronger thing than something one tyrant can end.

this is an interconnected struggle and at no point does our work stop. we don't owe candidates or politicians shit. volunteer with a hotline. call/sign petitions. go out into the streets. create art. form connections with people you may not have talked to before. cook for your friends. connect with unhoused people in your area. talk to the elders in your community. find sanctuary online if you cannot find it in person. politically educate, starting from the absolute basics because that is what is most lost in discourse sometimes. take everything one painful step at a time. maybe you got out of bed, maybe you brushed your teeth, maybe you ate breakfast, maybe you changed clothes-- these are all substantial things, and the movement suffers without you so keep doing them.

this is a terribly scary time in the world for all of us, but it has been a terribly scary time for a while across the world. don't let hopelessness stop you from fighting for the end of the genocide in Palestine, Congo, Sudan, and many other places in the world. know that if you are queer, we have survived worse shit throughout our history, and there are so many more options now for us. we need mutual aid for queer people but also and especially for our siblings of color and our disabled siblings and our poor siblings and our altogether marginalized siblings, from here to Palestine, from Sudan to West Papua, from Tigray to Kurdistan, from Armenia to Congo, from the world to the world.

i don't take a second of my time on earth for granted and i haven't for a few years. i am really fucking scared right now, i have been for months and months but it's taken a new form. but, today, the sun is out and shining on my bedroom floor. i brushed my teeth and i'm going to eat some grapes now. my professor sent a kind email. i have a lot of work to do. i have to get busy loving a lot of people.

eat what it takes to survive. sleep what it takes to survive. talk what it takes to survive. learn what it takes to survive. love what it takes to survive. live where it takes to survive. these are our fundamentals. and know that from there, we organize and we fight for something better than survival.

i am not losing my family, my found family, my friends, my peers, my professors, my roommates, my community like this. we gotta get busy.

take as long as you need to grieve. i have been grieving for a long time (this past year, for Palestine; my lifetime, for Iraq) and will grieve these results for the next four years. but understand that no matter who wins any presidential election, we have to organize. we can learn from our past here. i don't care if it's a bush in office, an obama in office, a trump in office, a biden or a harris in office, we have work to do because they won't do it for us.

Palestine and the occupied nations and people of the world will be free. they will not make martyrs of all of us. the struggle will continue so long as we are all free. victory is assured so long as the struggle continues.

i love you. i love you. i love you. i love you as hard as i hate the empire. this hate and this love forges what we need to keep this struggle alive, until victory and liberation for us all.

#i'll make this my temporary pinned post #ok to rb

137 notes · View notes

writingsoftarnishedsilver · 25 days ago

Note

just a thought but sebastian and Anne are trying to get mc and sebastian' baby to come to them to prove who it likes better lots of come to daddy/auntie only for the baby to go to uncle ominis the true favorite

Picking Favorites | Sebastian Sallow x OC

THIS WAS SO FUCKIN CUTE TO WRITE AHHH THANK YOU ANON

Words: ~800

Tags: Post Canon, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff, More Fluff

Read more stories about Sebastian and Evangeline

Evangeline was not allowed in the room.

Not this time.

The last few attempts to prove who Noctua Sallow loved most had ended in swift and humiliating defeat for both Sebastian and Anne—because every single time, Evangeline and Sebastian's little girl, with her chubby cheeks and wispy dark curls, had made a beeline straight for Mummy without a second thought.

It had become so predictable that Evangeline barely had to do anything; Noctua would take one look at her, light up like a star, and immediately beeline into her arms.

It was obvious in hindsight.

How could they expect to win against the woman who carried her, fed her, soothed her, and rocked her to sleep every night? It was practically cheating.

So, for this round, they had resorted to drastic measures.

Evangeline, amused but cooperative, had been banished to the kitchen under the pretense of fetching more tea and biscuits, leaving the playing field perfectly level.

Or so they thought.

Noctua sat in the middle of the sitting room rug, blissfully unaware that she was currently the subject of an all-out war for her affection, her big hazel eyes flicking between her father and her aunt, who were crouched at opposite ends of the room.

Sebastian leaned forward, resting one hand on the floor, his other still extended toward his baby in open invitation.

“Alright, my little owl. Mummy’s not here to steal you this time, so it’s time to make the right choice.” He wiggled his fingers encouragingly, flashing the same charming, lopsided Sallow grin that had gotten him out of trouble countless times before. ��Come to Daddy.”

Anne let out a very loud, very pointed scoff, rolling her shoulders like she was about to enter a dueling ring.

“Oh, please.” She waved a dismissive hand in Sebastian’s direction before tilting her head dramatically at the baby. “Noctua, sweetheart, we both know who spoils you the most.”

Her voice was pure syrup, sweet and inviting, with just a hint of smugness. She grinned, her eyes twinkling as she played her trump card.

“Come to Auntie Anne, darling. I always have biscuits, remember?”

Sebastian snapped his head toward her so fast he nearly cricked his neck.

“Bribery? Really? You’re resorting to biscuits?”

Anne smirked, utterly unbothered. “It’s called strategy, dear brother.”

Sebastian groaned, tilting his head back for a moment before shaking it off and refocusing, his face softening back into the picture of fatherly warmth.

“Noct, don’t listen to her. She’s trying to manipulate you.” He wiggled his fingers again, lowering his voice into the gentle, affectionate tone he used when rocking her to sleep. “Come to Daddy. I’m the fun one. Who gives you the best broom rides? Who lets you sit on his shoulders whenever we go outside?”

Noctua, sitting with her legs splayed out, blinked at him, then at Anne, who, not missing a beat, upped the ante.

“That’s all very nice,” she said airily, “but who makes the best silly faces?”

Without missing a beat, she scrunched up her nose, puffed out her cheeks, crossed her eyes, and stuck out her tongue, contorting her features into something truly ridiculous.

Noctua let out a delighted giggle.

Sebastian shot Anne a deeply unimpressed look. “You look like a deranged diricawl.”

Anne snapped back to her normal expression instantly, eyes sparkling with triumph.

“Who lets you tug on their hair whenever you want? Hm?” She pointed at her own head meaningfully. “Because I don’t recall your Daddy ever letting you yank his hair whenever you please.”

Sebastian scowled. “That’s because she doesn’t need to. I actually keep my daughter entertained.”

Anne smirked, unbothered. “Oh, do you?”

Sebastian doubled down.

“Who,” he said, “is the undisputed champion of animal noises?”

At this, he let out a deep, overly dramatic imitation of a Hippogriff call, complete with a ridiculous flap of his arms.

Anne’s face twisted into something that could only be described as secondhand embarrassment. “Merlin’s sake, Sebastian, you sound like a dying mandrake.”

Sebastian ignored her, keeping his gaze fixed on Noctua, who was still staring at them with fascination.

“Come on, my little owl.” His voice was full of soft, loving encouragement, a gentle push toward inevitable victory. “Just one tiny step. You know I’m your favorite.”

The room fell into a tense, eager silence.

Noctua wiggled slightly. She shifted forward onto her hands.

Anne and Sebastian tensed, barely breathing.

And then—

—Noctua turned away from both of them and speed-crawled in the complete opposite direction.

Straight toward Ominis.

A heavy silence fell over the room.

Seated in an armchair, book in hand, Ominis Gaunt had not been participating in this nonsense.

In fact, he had barely been paying attention, only half-listening to their ridiculous competition as he sipped his tea and enjoyed a moment of peace. He hadn’t even been aware he was in the running.

And yet, before he could fully process what was happening, a small, wobbly weight collided with his leg.

He blinked.

Slowly, he lowered his book—only to find Noctua clinging to his pant leg, looking up at him with pure adoration.

The corners of Ominis’ mouth twitched.

A slow, satisfied smirk curled across his face.

Sebastian and Anne remained frozen, their expressions a mirror of sheer, utter betrayal.

Evangeline, from the doorway with her tea in hand, burst into laughter as Ominis, smug and delighted by his unintentional victory, carefully lifted little Noctua onto his lap.

“…Well, well.” He ran his fingers over her tiny back as she cooed happily against him. “Looks like she’s made her choice.”

Sebastian’s jaw dropped.

“ARE YOU SERIOUS?!”

Anne groaned, throwing her arms up. “You weren’t even playing!”

Evangeline, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, shook her head. “You two were never going to win. Uncle Ominis has been the favorite all along.”

Sebastian collapsed onto his back, staring at the ceiling in defeat. “My own daughter. My own flesh and blood. Betrayed.”

Anne crossed her arms, scowling. “She's technically my flesh and blood too! I demand a rematch.”

Ominis, smirking wider now, lightly tapped his fingers against Noctua’s back. “You can try, but you won’t win.”

Noctua gurgled in agreement. Sebastian and Anne glared.

The battle for Noctua’s heart was far from over.

93 notes · View notes

mavnagerie · 1 year ago

Note

hi! i never done this before but i saw your requests were open!!

I wanted to request zoro?

basically you were in love with zoro and he knew but he thought you were annoying to him and he rejects you. you grow distant from him mainly and then someone else (your choice, idm!) helps you through it and you start exhibiting the behavior you did with him and he gets jealous or upset? and he realizes he messed up and he wants to win you back? can end any way you want :3

if not, its fine! thank you! ∩^ω^∩

we can’t be friends

* jealousy is a bad habit

roronoa zoro x reader

part 1, part 2

summary: mihawk tells zoro “no girls” and when zoro comes back home to the strawhats, is blinded by the fact that mihawks training trumps how much he misses you.

warnings: straw hat! reader. no smut! slight angst + fluff, past relationship ish (close flirty friendship, possible fwb) brief luffy x reader (x zoro). totally a set up to a poly ship but whatever, what’s new with me. no proof read we die like men.

*authors note: requests are open

your bed was coziest on the early mornings you couldn’t sleep, staring at the window to the room as nami and robin quietly snored in their own beds and you practically shivered as you sat up, getting out of bed and finding yourself freezing from the early morning at sea.

you grabbed a jacket and threw it on before walking out onto the deck. you knew zoro was up for lookout in the past night so you expected to find him somewhere on the deck. you padded around in the cold grass of the sunny while the sun peaked over the horizon. you were shocked robin hadn’t even stirred awake yet.

your thick jacket covered your arms and the fluff of the hood cuddled around your neck. hearing footsteps, the obvious footsteps of the man who’s lookout shift was almost over. heavy and loud from his boots.

“whatre you doing up so early” he asked you with an annoyed look, not wanting to be bothered so early in the morning.

“uh i don’t know.. i woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep” he gave you a once over, watching as the giant jacket held your frame like a warm hug.

“mh” he grunted before walking past you. he had gotten yelled at last time he fell asleep while on lookout so now when he gets super tired he walks around the ship, especially when it’s early in the morning so there’s no reason for him to be in his training room.

“zoro..” you looked at him, following him. he ignored you. he tried to ignore the pink that flushed his cheeks when he saw your in your small pajama set and thinking to himself ‘no wonder you were so cold.’

“what..” he groans, turning around, looming over you.

“nothing. i- i don’t understand the cold shoulder you always give me! we used to be so close before you went to train with mihawk. did i do something?” your words almost stabbed through him like your thoughts had been stabbing through your heart like knives for months.

your words struck a chord with him. a chord he didn’t really know how to handle, something that stirred up anger in him but not anger he wanted to take out on you, although, that didn’t stop him.

“yknow what, princess? if you really wanna know how i feel?? you’re annoying and you always get on my nerves, im tired of you parading around here in your cute little outfits trying to get my attention! i don’t want it. just leave me alone!” he snapped. he snapped at you. you of all people, he snapped at you. his words fell from his mouth like a babbling water fall.

he turns away from you and walks away, leaving you standing there with a shaky hand and a tear in your eye. with a soft sigh you just walk away, no other words to be said as you find your way back into bed, tears landing on your pillow with your jacket scattered on the floor. hours passed while you fell back asleep, but as it reared noon , someone came back into the bedroom looking for you. with all of your heart you hoped it was zoro but as namis soft voice filled your ears you were sorely disappointed.

“hey, y/n…you gotta wake up at some point, sanji is getting worried but we won’t let him come in here..” she lets out a small giggle between words as you feel your bed dip at the end as she sits on it. she gently grabs your leg through the blanket. “you feeling okay?”

you turn to her, tears in your eyes again. nodding your head. she sees your tears and while feeling a little uncomfortable, she leans forward and pulls you into a hug. “you’re not, but that’s okay. cmon get up and get dressed so we can go eat something” she smiles as you pushed your face into her shoulder.

as you pulls away, she stands up and picks out some clothes for you before getting out of the room so you can change. you standup, get undressed and pull the clothes on, watching your self in the mirror. once you pull your shoes on, you step out of the room and are met by a loud luffy and the sound of the strawhats somewhere on the ship.

you walked to the kitchen and found sanji there, waiting for you. “you missed breakfast, my love” he spoke softly, seeing the look on your face. “what’s wrong?”

“i’m fine sanji.. can i just have my food?” he understands immediately and grabs your lunch and breakfast. “do you want one or both? i saved your breakfast so luffy wouldn’t eat it.”

“i just want my lunch. luffy can have my leftovers from breakfast” your smile to him was gentle but he knew something was wrong.

“whatever you want, beautiful girl” he smiles before sitting the plates down. he walks to the door of the kitchen and shouts for luffy and sooner or later you head the bumbling idiot come prancing to the kitchen. sitting down in front of you like an obedient dog.

“hi luffy” you smile at him from across the table, he just stares at you. “what’s wrong?” you ask.

“whats wrong with you?” he tilts his head to the side, seeing you’d been crying with puffy eyes.

“um nothing!” you try to shrug it off but soon he’s slipping under the table and onto the seat next to you, he grabs your face and is staring at it.

“you’re lying to your captain.” he says with a small smile on his face, his rough hands lovingly holding your cheeks.

“mh..” you hum as he wipes your tears away that were stuck in your waterline. “eat your food luffy, im okay” you smile into his hand as he pulls away, reaching over the table to bring his plate closer to him so he could eat sitting next to you. he stuffed his face full, watching you eat your lunch from the corner of his eye. luffy had noticed weird behavior with his crew recently but more specifically with you and zoro.

which hurt him, he was zoros best friend and you were someone special to zoro. the three of you all had been close before running off on your breaks to train and get stronger.

it was almost like you were zoros and zoro shared you with luffy but that bond had broken after zoro trained. although luffy and zoro still got along, luffy had noticed the cold shoulder zoro seemed to always give you now. he knew this had something to do with his green haired swordsman rather than your behavior as you’ve done nothing to change the way you treat zoro.

time passed in the day and while you and luffy hung out on the grass deck, the two of you were practically alone, sitting under the tree laying with each other. this was nothing new, you’d be doing before and after, just missing one person.

you laid with luffy, his arm wrapped around your back while your head rested on his chest. the two of you didn’t have anything engaging to talk about but were talking about stupid things like the shapes the clouds made in the sky. but all you really could think about was how you hadn’t seen zoro since dawn. the two of you had eventually drifted off into a sleep, basking in the sunlight until it fell over the horizon. sleeping almost until dinner call. everyone had walked past the two of you at least once by now, everyone except zoro.

but as dinner was called, who was better to ask to go wake you to up other than zoro??? nami had ordered him to go out and wake yall up, blissfully unaware of the behavior he had shown you before, not knowing this was why you had been sleeping and crying in bed till 12 and sleeping and cuddling with luffy all day.

zoro found himself walking up on the two of you, kicking the bottom of luffys foot, hoping to shake him awake. so it did, and he grumbled about dinner being ready before walking back inside. clearly his mood hadn’t changed up, but seeing you cuddled up onto luffy hadn’t changed his mood for the better.

watching you stir awake, luffy began to stand up, helping you up as well. the night proceeded as usual, dinner being eaten, dishes being washed and nightly activities being enjoyed. the light up in the lookout was on as zoro worked out for the night before patrol and lookout started. tonight was luffys turn, allowing zoro to get a good nights sleep, unbeknownst to him that you’d be sitting in the crows nest talking to luffy almost the entire night… whining about zoro.

you had gotten a little booze in you, just enough to loosen you up about what zoro had said to you and to talk about the way you had been made to feel in the last month or so.

luffy didn’t mind. sometimes he wasn’t a good listener but when it came to you, he liked hearing you talk, so hearing you talk about something he worried about was even more important to him. he hadn’t really noticed the way zoro had suddenly changed until after you explained it to him and suddenly it was all very clear. luffy missed the way you were with him when you and zoro were so close. it was just different.

luffy knew that zoro at one point had feelings for you but he assumed with how little you hung out as a trio these days that those feelings just dwindled but now luffy was just confused.

the night slowly turned into day, though you had fallen asleep a long time ago on the couch of the nest. the moment luffy saw the one of his crewmayes on the deck he was down for the count, asleep right next to you his head finding a cushion on your thighs. the two of you slept soundly until the sound of the crows nest opening filled your ears, causing you to shake awake, looking down to see luffy on your legs, a pool of drool forming on your skin. you fake gagged before looking at the door, seeing zoros head poke through, the two of you staring at each other like a deer in the headlights while luffy was still cluelessly snoring.

“sorry.. i didn’t mean-“ hie cheeks were red, flustered and embarrassed to not only find you here but to see luffy intimately using you for such a mundane thing.

“it’s not what it-“ you sputtered before the door was shut again, the sound of the rope creaking below as he clamored his way back down.

you sighed loudly as you pushed luffy off of you, waking him up. he shook awake and realized it was late in the morning, watching as you put your shoes on to leave the nest. “good morning” he mumbled tiredly.

“good morning luffy” you said, almost sounding discouraged as you opened the door, stepping out of the nest to go down to the deck once more. this day almost felt like a repeat with yesterday, with just a different embarrassing scenario with the big green haired swordsman.

although the day passed awkwardly, you spent time with nami and robin that day, wanting to participate in whatever book reading or tanning either of them were doing rather than involving yourself in whatever the captain and the second in command had formed with you. although you had suspected that luffy was with zoro, talking to him most of the day as you hadn’t spotted zoro napping anywhere at any point in the day.

though as the day turned into night, all of you sat at dinner and chowed down. dinner proceeded as usual and everyone was getting ready to possibly find land tomorrow and dock for a day or two.

it was a late night for most but most of the ship had finished up everything but of course, you were this nights lookout.

the lights above in the crows nest were still on at the time you assumed you needed to begin lookout, knowing zoro was still in the top, working out. you sighed dramatically, knowing the only way to go up there was to confront him or just wait. so you decided to just wait.

standing on the deck near the hull of the ship, you stared off at the ocean, leaning against the railing. it was chilly but you hadn’t expected to stay outside in the wind this long. it felt like an hour had passed that you had been on the deck, just waiting for the swordsman to come down.

you sat there, staring at the ocean cluelessly as a pair of rough hands wrapped around your waist as a warm body pressed against your back. his voice was recognizable, feeling your heart drop to your ass as his face pressed against your cold skin.

“i’m sorry, princess..” he mumbles, his voice muffled by his cheeks smooshed against his face. “i’m sorry for how badly i’d treated you since we got back” he pressed a kiss to your shoulder, his fingers rubbing along your stomach. you shuttered against his touch, although his warmth was so comforting.

“i couldn’t stand seeing you all over that straw hat.. i want you to be mine. i need you to be mine.” his voice is so raspy but needy, almost begging for you.

“zoro..” your words were weak, feeling tears prick in your eyes. knowing this was all you had wanted from him in the last two months. for even longer than that. the last two years that you had been without him. you turned yourself around in his arms, finding his face in the darkness. you grabbed his cheeks into your palms, rubbing your thumbs over his skin, feeling his scar underneath the pad of your finger.

“i’m sorry..” he looked defeated. clearly luffy had told him something today that broke him. he saw the tears in your eyes and brought his strong hand up to your face, tenderly wiping them away. “i know what i said hurt you. i didn’t mean it.” he has a small smile on his face, a smile of comfort.

“i know…” your smile was just as forgiving, pulling him in closer. “zoro can i please kiss you..” your face was close to his, your lips practically ghosting over his own. though he could see the way your lidded eyes looked up at him through those thick lashes. he hummed an approval and your lips were suddenly against his.

he pulled you by the waist, bringing you in close to him, his jacket that rested over his shoulders was soft against your arms. his hands found the dip above your ass, holding you close to him as you kissed him once and again and again. you hadn’t kissed him in so long but no other time had any passion or drive to it like this one did. they had all been while drunk, jokingly flirting or in passing without a second thought. they all lingered with emotions deeper than either of you ever thought to process. now leaving you with your tongue pressed against his lips, feeling the roughness of his chapped lips against yours, becoming softer with your exchanged spit.

slowly you pulled away, your eyes meeting his again.

“i love you just like i did two years ago, princess.” his voice was gentle as he pushed his face down into the crook of your neck. he just wanted to love on you like a needy cat.

“i love you too zoro..” your fingers found their way to his hair, gently pulling at the soft strands of mossy green hair. he gently placed kisses up your neck, biting down on the connection from your shoulder to your neck. when a soft moan left your mouth, he almost smirked against your skin. he was claiming you as his, although everyone knew this. sanji knew this.

it’s just taken time to grow back close to each other again, and zoro needed that push away from the behavior mihawk instilled in him for the girl he loved so much.

*authors note: i hope you enjoyed! i will write a part two plus smut for this if yall would like! just make sure to suggest in my inbox :))

#one piece #one piece imagine #mavnagerie’s fic #monkey d luffy imagine #zoro roronoa x reader #monkey d. luffy #roronoa zoro #roronoa zoro imagine #zoro roronoa x you #zoro roronoa smut #mutual pining #reqs open

276 notes · View notes

assassinmidnight · 5 months ago

Text

Flufftober day 17, Only one bed

Jason/RedHood xVigilante!AFAB!Reader

Reader's vigilante name is Score

Not proof read, I have dyslexia and a test tomorrow(sorry for any mistakes)

Summery: You need a place to crash for a bit, but Jason only has one bed.

The world was ending, legit ending. Lex Luthor must have planned this because this is pure evil. The thoughts run through your mind as Jason gives you the keys to his place. “I know it’s not ideal, but we don’t really have a choice in the situation,” he flashed his signature grin before heading further into the run-down studio.

It was one medium sized room with a door that led to the bathroom, the plumbing was probably illegal in some way, knowing Jason. The place had a portable stove, a microwave and a mini fridge in one corner. Work out equipment and a huge computer set up in another, and there was a singular bed pushed against the only window in the building. Only one bed, not even a couch.

“Um and you’re still sure about this, you know, sleeping in the same bed,” you mutter out, eyes darting about as to not meet his eyes. “I told you it's fine, ill shower before and i’ll wear a bodysuit if it makes you feel better, but no way that you are sleeping on the floor,” he held up a one piece as to show he was telling the truth, he wouldn’t let you sleep on the cold floor, and you wouldn’t let him do that either. “Okay, um thanks, for letting me stay for a while,” he looked over at you, putting down a dumbbell. He felt the need to let off steam and the mere thought of sharing a bed with you, but seeing your face fall trumped any jitters. “Hey it’s okay princess, I'll always be here for you, in any capacity you need. Promise,” he smiled, having walked up to you. You smiled back, though you felt your heart tug, he couldn’t be there in the way you wanted.

—

“Score, do you have eyes on them?”

Red Hood’s voice echoed through the com in your ear, voice laced with something you couldn’t place. “Yeah, three men, 6-6’2 I’d say, all armed with guns.” Currently you were sitting on the roof of a building in downtown Gotham, scouting the area before you and Hood went down to ‘take care’ of it. You could feel the goosebumps grow on your skin, you wanted to blame the cold but knew that it probably had more to do with Jason speaking so slowly into his comm. You knew it was to avoid detection and to help the voice manipulator in his mask a bit more, but still, it sent lightning up your spine. “Are you ready?” “Yes,” your response was immediate and automatic, you knew it was because of Jason’s voice, otherwise you’d probably spend 5 more minutes preparing mentally for all the loud noises.

—

You wobble into the studio, exhausted, with Jason on your heels. It had been fairly easy, but the guns had been louder than you had anticipated, and with the amount of close combat that had been required you felt overstimulated to the max. Just wanting to sleep you barely got out of your suit before hitting the bed, somewhere behind you Jason mentioned making you some tea if you took a short shower and changed into something else. Just by being Jason he convinced you, and you would’ve felt bad if he had to sleep next to you while you were smelling of sweat and gun residue.

Jason heard how the shower turned on and wondered if maybe he should tell you. He didn’t want to, but maybe it would be better if he did, he didn’t want to be selfish like this. The decision whirled around in his head as he prepared your cup of tea.

Getting out of the shower, feeling more refreshed, your mind noted on something you had missed, you hadn’t felt uncomfortable at the thought of sharing the bed with Jason, despite feeling overstimulated, it had even been a pleasant thought the more you mulled over it. You felt Jason’s eyes on you as you opened the door to the bathroom. He walked to the bed and sat down, waiting for you to come. When you did he made sure to get you comfortable and then handed you the cup. The look on your face when you took the sip must’ve been something because the look on Jason’s face was intense. “It’s good, you got my favourite brand,” a smile broke on his face, his shoulders dropping slightly, “Yeah, of course I did princess, wouldn't want to disappoint you,” he winked at the last word, and if you blushed, it was caused by the tea and shower, not by him. “I’m gonna shower, just yell for your prince charming and I’ll come running,” he joked before grabbing a towel from one of the boxes on the floor and heading into the bathroom.

He came out 10 minutes later, to see you already curled up on the left side of the bed, cup washed and put to dry. He also spotted the toothbrush on the table next to some toothpaste. Shaking his head slightly, he double checked the door before lying down next to you. He was still thinking about telling you, but if you were sleeping he didn’t want to wake you, or for you to wake up while he’s gone. “I can hear you thinking,” your voice rang like bells in his ears and he laughed slightly, “What?” you turned over, meeting his blue eyes, feeling them pierce straight through everything you were. A silence fell over the two of you, spell bound by a single moment in time that seemed to last forever.

“I really like you, like a fucking lot,” your mouth fell open at the words. Jason’s mouth closed rapidly after uttering the words, a bright red flush rising on his cheeks, clearly not knowing what to do in the situation. “I am so sor-” “I like you too,” now it was his turn to be surprised, having cut straight through his apology, your confession made him feel high. Before you could think, both you and Jason were laughing, faces filled with glee. After another few minutes you closed the distance between the two of you, pulling yourself in his neck so you could rest your forehead on his chest, his beat being a lullaby you’d missed despite not knowing it.

“When did you know?” he slowly threaded his fingers through your still damp hair, “Just now, realised that even when I’m overstimulated, I want you to comfort me. You?” You can hear the smile in his voice “I’ve always known, just didn’t know when to say it,” playfully you hit his chest, muttering out “dork” before closing your eyes. Kissing the top of your head, Jason too goes to sleep.

—

You wake up to the sound of the door opening, Jason making a quick move to hide you behind him as he pulls out his gun.

“Whoa, just me,” Dick says, waving a brown bag in the air, based on the smell you can tell it's some sort of pastry. Jason relaxes and puts down the gun, getting out of bed to prepare some breakfast. As you also get out of bed, you see Dick looking between you and his brother.

“He let you sleep on his bed? He always makes me sleep on the extra mattress” Dick groaned, “It hurts my back like crazy,” at the mention of a second mattress your eyes darted over to Jason, who seems to be very interested in the water cooker. Idiot.

Yeah he's an idiot, but he's your idiot

*I DO NOT ALLOW THE PLAGIARISM OF MY WORK, FOR IT TO BE USED IN AI OR FOR IT TO BE REPOSTED ELSEWHERE*

#flufftober 2024 #reader insert #jason todd #autistic reader #red hood #jason todd x reader #fluff #flufftober #flufftober day 17 #only one bed #getting together

124 notes · View notes

yooglefics · 9 months ago

Text

Intentions don’t mean much.

Pairing: Min Yoongi x fem!partner Wordcount: 670 words Genre: Angst. Hurt / comfort. Established relationship. Song drabble. Summary: Yoongi is having some bad days and, in the end, deciding to keep it to himself to not worry his partner is not the best idea. More info under read more.

Includes: Mentions of bad mental health, implied depression. Nothing too dark but Yoongi overthinks a lot. Lack of communication. Author's note: A little drabble inspired by The Craving ( Jenna's version ) because I just had to write something after listening to it. Is pretty short but I kind of like it as is, because it can be read with the song in the background uwu. Hope you like it! If you do please remember to leave a reblog, like, follow, comment or send an ask, donate on ko-fi and what not. As always, thank you for reading <3

He is scared of putting too much weight on her shoulders, of driving her crazy because of his thoughts, and fears; the problems in his head, the ones that don't even have anything to do with her.

On bad days he tries to be reassuring. Holding her hand while sharing a cup of coffee and cuddling with her on the couch. Yes, it’s a bit selfish because it does good to him too, knowing she is with him even when his psyche reminds him of the possibility that they, too, are part of something temporary. That it could end sooner than expected, which is not much to say since he doesn't want it to end at all.

Is not that he doesn't believe she loves him, of course not. He believes everything she says, even the little conspiracy theories she rambles about at night in their bedroom. But, his brain tells him, life is unpredictable and the world goes around and around and around and…

When it gets too bad he spends most hours of the day in his studio. Even sleeps (or at least tries to) there. She brings him lunch and he kisses her cheek or forehead, sweetly and full of love. An attempt to not worry her.

Some nights, as he lays on the leather couch, he hopes she will knock on the door, looking for him and asking him to come to bed. He would say yes, even if that meant just playing with her hair as she fell asleep on his chest while he lays with his eyes open and his mind never shooting down.

But it doesn’t happen.

Is still dark outside when he hears her socket steps against the wooden floors, the beeps and trumps of the coffee machine following close behind, and he decides to join.

“Isn't it too early for coffee?” he asks, leaning in the doorway.

“Is six, just one hour early.”

“Oh.”

“How did you sleep?”

He keeps quiet, a bit confused with himself as to how he didn't realize so much time passed.

“Did you sleep?” She asks instead, tone different this time and he doesn't like something in it.

“Don't worry about it.” He tries to dismiss, coming closer and wrapping his arms around her waist, chin resting on her shoulder while they wait for the melancholy sounds announcing their beverage is ready.

But a sniff comes instead.

It takes a second for his tired brain to register it, yet is quick to react when she tries to move away, hugging her firmly against his chest. “What is it?”

“Nothing. Is silly.” she murmurs back.

“Tell me anyway?”

“Is just… after so long, I don’t know a lot about you still. And I wish I did.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cry about it. I don’t know what just—”

“Hey,” he softly calls out, turning her around as he looks for her gaze, “don’t apologize for it. Is on me, I’m going through some shit but I’m okay.”

She worries her lip between her teeth before asking, “Have you slept at all in the last few days?”

“A little bit.” Pretty vague, not wanting to bring concern around his insomia. But her eyes get glossy again and his open in surprise. In realization that doing that is what is upsetting her. He hates that. “I slept a couple hours yesterday after lunch, maybe that’s why I’m still awake.”

“You aren't tired then?”

A different kind, he thinks. And considers answering that while she fixes his hair, but he still isn't sure. “Maybe you just need to do that for a while so I don't wake up until tomorrow.”

That makes her smile and her eyes fall to his again. But is hard to ignore the bags under them and the bigger issues. “I'm going to the store later, I'll bring you that tea we saw the other day. We can drink that before going to bed and see if it helps. Deal?”

“Deal.”

♡ Tag list: @n33mesis , @sexytholland , @mggv97 , @wobblewobble822 , @bbou-doir , @m00njinnie , @itsmina29 , @nariee02 , @ktownshizzle .

134 notes · View notes

elvenhub · 5 months ago

Text

midnight’s embrace, before dawn’s wake ⁞ 𝓕t. legolas

𓋜 human!reader . gn!reader ◞ established relationship ◞ fluff ! ꪆৎ ⎯⎯ him coaxing you to sleep ◞ wc. 0.6k

The room has been devoid of its usual sounds for far too long; a quill’s hurried scratch on parchment, fire’s clatter, your sighs that vary from frustration to satisfaction. Point is, something is clearly amiss.

He enters the room, soundlessly so as not to break your spell of concentration, notes the chill sensed in the air as the once lively fire has now succumbed to a dim glow confined to its hearth. He spots the untouched plate of food that rests on the floor, the crumpled parchment scattered to and fro in disarray, and his eyes finally land on you—slouched, head rested on your arm, a small pool of drool smudging ink on the paper beneath you. Was that snoring he heard?

“Meleth nîn.” [my love] His touch is tender yet firm, a hand on your shoulder and the other stroking your head, and as usual with his attempts to rouse you from sleep, you are bound to slumber like an oath. You respond with a groan, turning away from his touch in favour of delving further into the cocoon of your arm. In most cases he would forbid any and all from disturbing you from your sleep the way Eru forbids mortals to coast sails towards Valinor, but this is entirely unacceptable. Propriety permits it, you’re his beloved after all—you deserve to rest your head upon the softest of pillows in the warmest of beds (with his arms around you, of course).

It takes a soft shake (or ten) for your eyes to crack open, grumbling incoherences, casting an accusatory glare until your fuzzy vision catches sight of that signature look of concern he’s got written on his face. “I fell asleep.” You mumble, yawning while you correct your posture. You run your hands over your work in search of your quill, wince at the soreness of your neck. Clearing your throat, you cast your gaze to meet him, “Will you restart the fire for me, please?”

‘No,’ weighs heavy on his tongue, ‘you must sleep.’ Begs to depart his lips. He doesn’t understand why you willingly choose to overextend exhaustion’s presence, chalks it up as one of Ardas’s most curious mysteries. He knows not to pose the question, he’s a gentleman, not an imbecile, and if one thing is clear it’s your detest for ‘silly questions’ when there’s ‘work to do’ (your words, not his).

“Perhaps you should lay with me—for a moment.” It comes off more as a question than the gentle demand he meant it to be, he can’t help it. Your dedication (bordering on obsession) to your work is one of the many things he loves about you. The offer of his open palm awaiting your hold trumps any refusal you’ve prepared in the mere seconds that pass, and when you take his hand he smiles. “You will thank me later.” Now he’s pleased with himself, but he’s quick to bring his lips to your forehead before you can retort.

Your head hits the pillow once he’s led you to your bedchambers, and you pull the covers to your head, “You win.” You grumble, and he pulls you into his arms. You melt into him like honey on bread, and you’re far too tired to conceive a clever rebuttal, yet you have the energy to press your lips to his jaw, to inhale his scent, to bring yourself further into his warmth. You hold him tightly with the delirious hope of bringing him into your dreams.

He waits until you’ve fallen asleep to release the soft chuckle that’s been brewing in his throat. He’s certainly won, in more ways than one.

#legolas x reader #legolas x you #legolas drabble #legolas fluff #lotr x reader #the hobbit x reader #legolasposting

113 notes · View notes

lucaswithnoshirt · 4 days ago

Text

i really want to stay at your house ; k.dy

pairing: doyoung x reader

genres: cyberpunk au, FLUFF (because cyberpunk is depressing enough and i want these two cuties to be happy), angst

length: 6.6k

description: in which doyoung's so used to taking people apart and then back together, he can't fathom wearing weakness when you could be wearing metal instead. then you come along and teach him some things are better off flawed.

alternatively, doyoung turns people into cyborgs and is less than impressed when little old you starts undoing all his handiwork.

a/n: love love love this request! researching the cyberpunk universe was so interesting because there's so much you can do with it, so a huge thanks to the anon who requested this.

you don't need to know anything about cyberpunk to read this! it's pretty self-explanatory!

also, alternatively alternatively, watch doyoung fall like a hot sack of shit in love with you while you break all his toys

It's well past 3AM when Doyoung is summoned back down to the clinic. He slings his stethoscope around his shoulders and shoots for the door, all traces of sleep forgotten as he receives the silent alert that his clinic's security system has been breached. Cracked. Like a walnut.

He rearranges the access protocol and draws his gun from its hoster, nudging the door a little further ajar. It opens, and his pistol finds itself staring down at Johnny’s forehead.

Johnny grins. There's blood on his cheekbones.

"Hi, Doyoungie."

Doyoung briefly wonders if it's some sort of fucked-up training exercise from Taeyong. Like, surprise! we're here and now we're going to give you a ten-hour explanation on why biometric scanners trump hardware security systems! But no. There's four mercenaries huddling in various states of disarray in his clinic. Jaehyun's got his own weapon concealed by his jacket but undoubtedly aimed his way, and is leaning against the wall with a hand to his stomach.

Mark looks like he's just watched his favourite car get t-boned, doused in gasoline, lit on fire and then tossed off a cliff while he's been forced to watch. Then there’s you, curled up atop his filing cabinets- he doesn't recognise you- with a superficial gash above your left eyebrow he's surprised isn't self-healing.

"So," Johnny starts, running a hand through his hair and leaving a streak of crimson behind. "Get this. The job, funnily enough, was not a simple in-and-out. Who would have thought?!"

"Who would have thought." Jaehyun repeats, darkly, gruffly.

The fact Johnny is still his usual irritatingly chipper self, and Jaehyun looks ready to murder him means Doyoung allows his shoulders to drop and a sigh to leave his mouth. The tiredness creeps back all at once. His adrenaline says, fuck you, this isn’t like the time Jaehyun took a machete to the kidney, and retreats, angrily, leaving him to deal with this mess himself.

Johnny is sprawled out in the operating chair, legs spread with an expectant eyebrow raised, though it’s Mark who speaks next with nothing more than a high-pitched squeak:

"Can you take a look at my arm? I think I'm going to vomit."

Doyoung's eyes go wide. "Hey, hey! No vomiting in here! Johnny, move!"

You tuck yourself under Mark’s armpit and help him limp over to replace Johnny under the spotlight. Jaehyun grabs the latter by the collar and yanks him to the floor, while Doyoung manages to find a surgical bucket just in time for Mark to empty his guts into it, blood and all.

"I hate my life." Doyoung hears Mark warble once the vomiting has subsided, and thinks, same.

"Whaat?" Johnny slurrs, still on the floor. For all his usual bravado and macho, he’s taking too long to find his feet. "Where's that fighting spirit?"

"It died." Mark moans. "It's gone. Buried."

You shuffle away from the makeshift operating space as Doyoung slips on his exoglove, gently loosening Mark's protective grip on his clavicle to examine the damage. The exoglove refines his movements, steadies his hand as he inspects the damage to reveal a small tear at the glenohumeral joint. Nothing more and nothing less.

"Wimp." A grin flicks up onto Johnny's face as Doyoung announces the good news. He gives Mark a shot of metoclopramide alongside the local anaesthetic, and even though it’s only an anti-sickness drug, Mark goes limp, placid, too tired to respond, and that allows Doyoung to finally begin repairing the bioware inside him.

But he’s distracted. From the corner of his eye, he watches you shuffle over to your fearless leader, squat down and begin to work tinker with Johnny’s cyberware. You pour over the biomonitor readings flickering above his arm, brow furrowed in concentration, and he can’t help but mimic the expression. Haven't you ever heard of ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’?

"I can't believe we walked into that." Jaehyun mutters from behind him, mulish. It’s accompanied by the petulant scuff of a boot against the floor. "Should've known they weren't gonna leave military-grade weaponry with just a few foot soldiers to guard it."

Even though it physically, physically pains Doyoung to do so, because it's still 3AM and he truly couldn't care less about what’s brought you to him today, he asks the forbidden question:

"What happened?"

"A dead-man’s trigger!" Johnny announces with a flourish, grinning at Doyoung over your hunched body, before jerking his chin down at you. "Good job we brought the part-timer along."

He gives you a cheery punch to the shoulder and you glances over at him, soulless. The cut above your brow still hasn't healed.

"And what, you blew a hole through a wall or something?" Doyoung asks sarcastically. A dead-man’s trigger activates as a last resort when all security systems are compromised, cages the victims in by locking doors until backup arrives, and the day Doyoung sees Taeyong's team of muscle use their brains instead of their fists is the day hell freezes over. He’d put Johnny in charge, after all.

"No. I rigged their behemoth's engine." You mumble hoarsely, so quiet Doyoung almost misses it. "Sent it through the walls when they trapped us in. Couldn't bypass the mainframe security system without activating a bloodhound program, and that’s suicide.”

“It was an explosive strategy,” Johnny chimes in.

“The behemoth hit a structural pillar on the way out. Mark ripped his implant when the ground gave way beneath us."

Doyoung mulls the situation over in his head and then confirms, again, that he does not care about your team’s little escapades. Instead, he narrows his eyes at you, still curled up on the floor, patched into Johnny’s software as you give it a once-over. Little walnut cracker.

"Exactly," Johnny breathes, like a proud papa. "The two of you were just... hanging around."

In the darkness of the clinic, Jaehyun barks out a forbidden giggle that cuts quickly into a hiss of pain.

“You’re fucking sick, dude.” Mark moans, eyes shut.

“I caught Y/N as they fell, right?! I contributed more than enough.”

“Actually,” Jaehyun has recovered from his muscle spasms. “I caught Y/N. You were too busy making sure the truck wasn’t damaged.”

“Can we please focus on the extent of your injuries?” Doyoung says, exasperated.

"Mark has extensive damage to his neural network and pain receptors because I didn't adequately calculate the building’s critical nodes." You reply flatly, obstinately. Doyoung does a quick check of Mark's neural network and yep, there it is. Quick, jerky motions and falling debris will do that to a person.

"You got us out of there with nothing but the neuroport you were born with!" Johnny counters. Doyoung's scalpel knicks Mark's epidermis as he stops, pauses, and decides he wants to shake Taeyong by the shoulders and tell him that team debriefings need to happen outside the clinic from now on. "No-one's perfect, Y/N!"

Instead of giving in to his baser instincts, Doyoung finishes the repair listlessly, checks Mark's vitals, launches an ice pack at Johnny's face once you determine he has a mild concussion, and then lets Jaehyun slink into the chair and lift his shirt up. When he catches you out of the corner of his eye, you've moved on from Johnny, drawn in by the mantis blades sitting pretty on his desk like a moth to a flame and ghosting a fingertip along the the long, scythe-like claws protuding from the synthetic metacarpals.

"Do you want them?" He asks, curious and quiet, because he thinks a raised voice will startle you if it's not Johnny. He doesn't know why he thinks that, but he knows metal packs a punch and you look like you bleed too much red to take that.

You recoil. "No."

Well, ouch.

"They're the best you'll get outside of a specialist," he retorts, tongue poking his cheek, but it doesn't matter because you're now squatting down next to Mark who’s slumped against the wall, tilting his head and connecting your personal link to the neural port in his neck.

Because it's his patient, Doyoung activates his own neural connection and tunes into your frequency, sees you going over his work with a fine-toothed comb. When you graft several damaged nerve endings to reinforced cells, he tells himself it's down to personal preference.

He takes a backdoor entrance into your systems when you're distracted and basks for a moment in the quiet glory of victory. There’s walut-cracking residue all over your systems.

"You're good," you murmur to Mark, like honey in hot water. "Thank you, buddy."

The next time you see Doyoung is at an admittedly more respectable hour. He works tirelessly until Donghyuck is patched up, denies Johnny the custom cyberlegs he's working on, offers you yet another set of cyberoptics, before exiting the clinic and disappearing into the night.

Alternatively, Doyoung spends at least three hours fixing Donghyuck’s glitching neuroport, ignores Johnny’s non-stop commentary of the former, gives you one last chance with an offer for the state-of-the-art cyberoptics he's just had delivered, before cracking.

He kicks open the clinic door (walnut cracked again. He’d been five minutes late!), stalks around the corner, through the door, and wades through the seas of dancing bodies until he reaches the back room. He ascends the two flights of stairs and nods at Yuta on the door, then he enters Taeyong's office and says, "You need to fire them."

Taeyong, to his credit, glances up and mutters a quick, "Call you back," to whoever is on the other end of his holophone, then beckons him further into the room. If Doyoung didn't know any better he'd say their years-long professional relationship had flourished into something genuine. But he does know better, knows that the price of Taeyong having a medic and ripperdoc on standby means Doyoung will be listened to.

"I kept quiet when you brought in Donghyuck because at least if he gets caught out, he's got some physical offensive capability, physically and mentally." Doyoung snaps, "But this is where I draw the line. They are clearly not interested in getting cybernatic augmentations or enhancements and I'm not sticking around to watch that liability ruin everything we've built."

Taeyong stays silent, watching Doyoung watch him with nothing more than his usual quiet, unreadable expression. It only serves to rile him up further.

"Well?!" He demands, impatient. "Are you operating a business or a shelter?"

"Y/N got into your clinic." He finally says. "What do you call that?"

"Luck."

"I call it an investment."

"It is not-" Doyoung has to slam his palms together and bring the tips of his fingers to his lips. "An investment. It’s an accident waiting to happen. A walking catasrophe. An expendable. You cannot compare the security protocols on my place of work to actual safehouses and containment areas. Sooner or later that kid wont be able to keep up!"

Taeyong rises, swallowed up by the sharp charcoal edges of his suit. His hair is the same gunmetal gray colour of the pistol strapped in its holster, sitting patiently at his hip.

"I'm aware of the risks,” Taeyong replies eventually, cool, stone-line, “and I cannot be so stupid as to let talent slip through my fingers when it comes looking for work."

That makes it even worse, because Doyoung understands the inherently predatory nature of gang recruitment, even if Taeyong’s philosophy operates differently. He knows this world is a fight-to-survive, kill-or-be-killed environment, where places of safety are few and far between.

What he doesn't understand, however, is the sheer imbalance between your evidently high IQ and your apparently nonexistent common sense to be parading around, following Johnny like some infantile lackey, like, hi! i have no cyber enhancements and can be taken out by a common cold! hire me!

He tries again. "Talent means nothing if it can't withstand pressure." Pressure in this world usually comes in the form of broken bones and bullet sprays. "What happens if she meets a junkie looking for a quick fix? Or someone with a sandvestan? What happens when someone catches wind of the fact you've now got two new kids sniffing around on the net and one is easy pickings?"

"I’m going to ignore your infantalisation of your co-workers because you’re obviously upset, but I am not going to disregard what’s good for my business just because you're worried. Though if it helps, both Jaehyun and Yuta shared your concerns but have come round to the idea. You will too."

"You're putting everyone in danger because you want a techie who has no cyberware!" Doyoung snaps, stepping closer. "And I am not worried. In fact, I couldn't care less, I just don't want to be caught up in your mess when it all hits the fan."

"Anything else?" Taeyong bites out, blithe and snappish. The end of his tether has been reached. His business-like facade split at the eyebrows, irritation seeping through the cracks. “Anything else the lowly doctor thinks I care about?”

"No," Doyoung sneers, "but my price has just gone up. Ten percent increase for any patch-ups."

"Ah, Doyoungie!" Taeyong's face splits into a cajoling smile as he watches the younger man turn on his heel and stride away. "Don't be like that! Be reasonable, let's make this work. I totally understand what you're saying!"

Doyoung does not stop. He kicks open the door and marches out, leaving Yuta to slink in with a shit-eating grin on his face. "Ten percent, huh?"

"Fuck off," Taeyong’s face falls again, and he pouts.

Doyoung think's it's a real fucking shame that no-one uses his calendar, even though it's one of the most accessible things about him, because if they did use it then he may, one day, experience that sweet, sweet luxury they call free time.

He marches up to his door and finds the- fuck- the fucking system hacked again. Because he's having a bad week (Jaehyun flat-out refused to pay the extra ten percent, and that set a precedent), he allows himself to kick and stomp and swear while he fixes his security protocols and gets himself inside, surprised to find you perched at his desk once he does so.

It's only when he sees your guilty expression that he remembers it's not him that should be feeling caught out.

"Get out!" He barks, striding forward. "And stop messing with my security systems!"

"But," you skitter away like a pingpong ball and Doyoung carves his territory back, rearranging the datashards you've been examining. "You weren't around. I didn't want to wait outside."

I have a calendar! He wants to scream, but you're looking so dejected and genuinely clueless that all he can come up with is, "This place is for emergency repairs or appointments only. Seeing as you have nothing to repair-" He jerks a thumb to the door, "get out."

Your frown deepens. "You just have some stuff I've been asked t-"

Someone thuds against the door, trying the handle. He flicks the feed up instantly on his monitors to show a client doing a perfect imitation of Doyoung only a few minutes prior, albeit with a lot more passion.

"Open this fucking door, Kim Doyoung!" Comes the static scream that the two of you can hear through the metal walls. "Fix my fucking arm!"

You hesitate, gnawing on your bottom lip, and fix Doyoung with a doe-like stare.

He takes one look at it, sighs, and points towards the depths of the room where the back door is. You're gone by the time Wooseok and his crew come tumbling in.

"You fucking changed the locks?" Wooseok accuses, slamming himself into the chair. "I told you we were coming!"

"I had a bug in the system," Doyoung's replies, noncommital.

"How about that?" One of Wooseok's cronies watches him slip on the exoglove and flick on the lights. "Lee can't keep the rats out, huh?"

"Nothing I can't handle." Doyoung replies, icy. "What do you want?"

Wooseok gets comfortable in the chair, pulls his shirt sleeve all the way up to his shoulder and- holy shit. What's left of his right arm is a mangled, twisted mess of wires and metal. "What I want, is the person who did this to me dead. If you can't do that, then fix this."

Doyoung stares. "I installed this for you last month."

The taller man snarls, enraged. "And charged me pretty fuckly highly, if I remember correctly."

"This is near military-grade, Wooseok. What the hell did you stumble into that could do this?"

Doyoung is going to find whatever ballistic or crude little instrument did this and reforge, replan. This was supposed to be his finest work. "IED? Power surge?"

"Not what," Crony #2 mutters sullenly, "Who."

Doyoung barks out a laugh of disbelief and then turns to Wooseok for the real explanation, except his client isn't smiling. All the blood promptly drains from Doyoung's face.

"Was it a- like a cyberpsycho?" He tries, then tries again, "Military? Exoskeleton?"

"We didn't see." Wooseok grinds out. "One minute I'm doing a perimeter check down at the docks for some cargo, the next minute I’ve lost my arm, my visuals, and all my fucking comms!"

"Must have been a sniper or something." Crony #1 decides.

“Had to have been.” Crony #2 murmurs in assent. "We had all exits covered and any cyberware activity woulda come up on our radar. The fuckers that did this scrambled us then took off with the payload. Fuck."

A quick scan of the cyberlimb's RAM confirms it. A single ballistic round had hit the shoulder joint and sliced through the upper arm power conduits, and if that wasn't bad enough, the riccochet had shattered most of the outside casing on its way out. There’s no sensory response when Doyoung pokes at the twisted digits.

"Just give it to me straight, doc," Wooseok watches him, shifts his weight from one side to the other. "How much is this gonna cost me?"

Doyoung decides "an arm and a leg" would be a joke in poor taste, so settles on offering up a cheaper replacement he’s got laying around somewhere.

"And you're sure it was no implants?" He presses. "No gun modification traces or anything nearby on the net?"

"Nope." Crony #1 pops the p. "Just some serious firepower from some fucker hoping to strike lucky, I guess. They better hope we never find ‘em, though."

Doyoung installs state-of-the-art, cybernetic technology for a living. There is no such thing as striking lucky.

"I guess." He says, and gets to work.

"Please stop this," Doyoung asks, politely, weakly, when he next sees you. Because it's the fifth time this month he’s had to install another firewall on the clinic's security program, and because strapped on your back is a tsunami-tech sniper rifle which, a quick digital analysis reveals, takes ballistic rounds. Serious firepower.

You point your finger to the culprit: a banged-up Jaehyun who’s already stabbing a round of hemozal into his upper arm.

Jaehyun shrugs, unrepentant. "Doesn't this increase business?"

You nod sagely. "Circle of life."

"I like Junmyeon," he protests, because he truly does, "and Junmyeon liked his legs. Quite a lot, actually."

"He shouldn't have gotten in the way then." Jaehyun states, matter-of-fact.

You inch towards the chair with round, wide eyes, even if another forensic scan of the weapon reveals you’ve fired and hit no less than eight targets tonight.

Doyoung looks at Jaehyun.

Jaehyun looks at you.

Doyoung sighs, defeated. You hop up and show him the shrapnel poking out of your calf and he gets to work. It's only when he’s halfway through and you're rolling up the jeans on your right leg that he sees a flash of metal where your left fingertips should be.

He moves, quick, and snaps his hand around your wrist. You yank and tug but can’t pull away, watching him watch you as his other hand gently rolls up the sleeve to reveal-

Metal. Rusted and prosthetic, at least 10 years old which means even if it wasn't well and truly useless back then, it certainly is now. A hollow laugh leaves Doyoung’s chest at the irony, the sheer irony, while you finally snatch your arm back and cradle the cold metal to your chest. Your chest rises, lips parted in a silent snarl, and you’re glaring at him.

"Seriously?" He moves to take your hand in his again, but you won't let him. “You got this when you were, what, ten? Eleven? That’s the age people usually start getting enhancements, not stop."

“Don’t care.” You wiggle your leg for emphasis. "Get on with it!"

So he does. Setting his hand just above your knee and splaying his fingertips across the skin. Soft, warm, skin. Real. He glances up and finds you already watching him, lips still parted just enough for your breath to escape.

"You want anaesthetic?" He murmurs, not sure why he does, because Jaehyun's already tuned out in favour of his own little world, tucked away in the corner as he nurses his wounds in the corner.

"No." You murmur. Both your hands- one metal, one flesh -curl into fists as he begins to remove the shrapnel. He wants to cradle them against his own. He doesn’t know why.

Then a piece of shrapnel nicks your skin and the spell is broken.

"Hi," You slide into the booth one rainy morning as Doyoung is hunched over the cyberware laid out in front of him. The club is empty during the day except for a few mercenaries who never like to stray too far from Taeyong’s territory. The man in question is squabbling with Jungwoo at the bar, while Jaehyun nurses a coffee and watches over Donghyuck, who's splayed out in a booth with VR goggles covering most of his face. Yuta's nowhere to be seen, but then again, he usually never is. "What are you working on?"

You've bonded quick and fast with the team, like neuron synapses after injury. They normally forge new connections rapidly, growing stronger with every impulse, so he knows if it weren't for Donghyuck's affinity- and addicition -to surfing the cybernet, you wouldn't even be with him right now. He doesn't know why that annoys him.

"Upgrades." He peels back part of the tactile sensor with his tweezers, feels your thigh press against his own as you peer over his arm, and decides to just stay still. If your lonely neuron has decided to bond to his, so be it. Who is he to fight against neurobiology?

“You're awfully interested for someone who has nothing better to do.”

"I wanted to be a ripperdoc once," You shrug.

Doyoung sets down his tools and turns to look at you.

"What?" You ask, a touch defensively, when you catch him staring, and he can't help but laugh at the indignant expression on your face. You soften slightly at the sound.

"Nothing," he settles on, even though you've stolen his tweezers and have reached the dual processor deep within the cyberlimb's core, severing it neatly from the cooling system. "I just don't know many who would trust a ripperdoc to install cyberware if they don't have any themselves. It would be like letting someone tattoo you without seeing their portfolio."

You're quiet, too quiet. He thinks it’s just concentration at first, that he’s lost you to your (his) work. Both you and Donghyuck share the affinity for netrunning, able to bend and slither your way through firewalls and into places you shouldn't rather than Jaehyun, Yuta and Johnny’s “punch first, think later” philosophy, but only you have shown interest in the more mechanical, tangible side of cyber augmentation.

"I guess." You mumble, finally, into the table.

It doesn't make logical sense. Doyoung hasn't done anything wrong, hasn’t said anything false, yet you've ceased tinkering and your face is turned away, hidden, and even though you're right next to him he feels like your mind is even further away than Donghyuck’s. The synaptic connection has been severed and even though it’s a stupid fucking metaphor, Doyoung reaches for it again.

He stands, drops his hand to your head and lets his fingers intertwined with your hair as he ruffles it up. "Let me get us some coffee, walnut. Okay?"

"Walnut?" You wiggle out of his grip, staring up at him in disbelief. "I'm not a walnut!"

He shuffles out the booth, points to the cyberlimb, and grins, wide and infectious. "Keep up the good work!"

Your slow and budding friendship is tested on a Saturday night downtown when he pokes the bear.

(Not friendship. Synapses don’t cling to each other with the hope that it works out. You don’t hack a security program in halves, asking permission before you eviscerate. You don’t hesitate before you pull the trigger, or go for the non-lethal shot. Synapses cling and don’t let go. It’s a methodology and a mantra. He’s only returning the favour.)

"I just think," he puffs, veering to the left just as a slug embeds itself in the far wall, where his head had just been, "that having some offensive arsenal would be of great help right now."

"Shut up!" You yelp, hand tangled in his as you jerk him along. Behind the two of you, Johnny covers your six, stopping occasionally to return fire and muttering, "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck," as he does so.

Yuta is several paces ahead of you and cracking skulls like eggshells once you join him at the door.

"Won't open," he explains simply as you examine the bullet-ridden control panel by his side, before lifting up his gun and emptying a few rounds into Johnny's pursuers.

The two of you drop to your knees while Doyoung grips a panel on the wall and yanks it away.

"I'm just saying-"

"Don't care, Doyoung." You snap, moving into grab at the wires.

"-you're quite literally putting yourself at a disadvantage just letting it just sit there like that. Were you too broke to purchase anything other than the basic shell?"

"Not the time!" You worm your way past the thick cabling and link yourself to the port. Yuta never does anything by halves so it's no surprise to find the code scrambled, programs just begging to be put out of their misery. You gather them up and start coaxing.

"Well can you at least let me put some sythentic strengthening coating on it? So it matches the human one?"

Johnny, ever the brightest spark, reaches the door and just starts punching. It bends but doesn't break. "Stop talking and get this thing open, metalheads!"

"I didn't fucking sign up for this!" Doyoung snaps back, equally as frustrated, before deciding enough is enough and joining you within the door's systems. "Just- Y/N, let me fix the arm, make it better-"

You yank the code he's reformulating from his grasp and slot it into place against your own. "It doesn't need to be fixed!"

The program sings with delight and the door slides open. Yuta's large fist clamps around your jackets and he hauls the two of you through. "I'm not broken, so I’d appreciate it if you stop trying to fix me."

Mark waits outside with wheels smoking and the gas hot. Yuta launches the two of you into the back seats, leaps in after, and Johnny's not in the passenger seat for even a second before the warehouse is nothing but dust behind you.

"Can't argue with that, dude," Yuta pants from beside him.

Yeah, your finger says as it pokes him in the side. Doyoung wants to bite back, truly, but the adrenaline has left him now, so all he can do is rest his head against your own as the two of you wait for the comedown.

“Sorry.” He mumbles into your hair. It’s silent, but it’s there nonetheless.

You tell him on a cool summer Wednesday night, when he wakes to find your silhouette curled up in on itself, tracing the metallic lining of your left arm. He still hasn't gotten used to you being in his bed, never will, because he's Kim Doyoung and he doesn't deserve nice things, but it had been a late night at the clinic and you’re nothing but quiet, persistent and persuasive.

"Y/N?" He shifts upright, reaches out to draw you closer. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," you say into the darkness, then, "I used to have a brother."

He pauses to imagine it: someone with the same slant of your jaw, same shade of hair, same laugh. It's not hard. He thinks about you far more often than he'll ever admit, even if Johnny and Donghyuck have been trying their hardest to wheedle it out of him.

"He was three years older than me but it never felt that way. I followed him everywhere. Mom used to call me his little shadow." You laugh hollowly. "He used to take me with him to the clinics when he'd saved enough money, sneak me out of school because he knew I was obsessed with technology and how it worked. He'd explain to me what he was getting and where, how it was gonna get us out of this shithole.

"And it got better, for a bit, except he kept borrowing to afford the surgeries, kept saying he needed more to keep up with everyone else. You know how it is."

He does. If you haven't got the highest specs on the market you might as well quit while you're ahead. It's what keeps him in business.

"He kept going," Your voice is clogging up now, thick with emotion on the precipice of eruption. "I told him to stop. I didn't care how awful our life was at the bottom, all I cared about was that we were together. No-one told me you had to look out for the signs. I thought the aggressiveness was just him being a teenager."

You turn to face him, a bitter, twisted smile on your lips. You gesture to the useless metal appendage attached to you, sitting limply at your side.

"I came home from school one day and it wasn’t him that answered the door. One of the neighbours called the psycho squad, I think. He kept me in the apartment for so long it’s all a bbit fuzzy. They went through him to get me, in the end, blew a few holes in him once he opened the door. Didn't stop him from blowing one into me first."

You gesture helplessly to your prosthetic arm. "I didn't get a choice; I woke up in hospital and they'd already attached it. Once I was released I went straight down to the ripperdoc to get it covered or upgraded or something-" You reach out with it, twisting it around, testing it out like it's the first time all over again. "But all I could think about was my brother, how that technology rotted him from the inside out. I'd never even stepped into another clinic till I met you."

Doyoung remembers it like yesterday, the way you'd curled up in the corner, let guilt gnaw away at you until you'd physically checked Mark was okay. He reaches out, ghosts against your shoulder, then lets his arm fall.

You stare out into the night sky.

"I don't think I'm made to love metal." You admit, quietly, finally, into the dark expanse of his room, Night City humming with life below.

Softly, so softly, he comes to cage you in from behind, tucking you against his chest. His fingers come to rest against your cheek, taking your right hand in his hands and cradling it to his own face. He feels your heart beat against his chest as his own settles into an identical rhythm.

"Feel me, Y/N" implores, ghosting a kiss onto the skin of your palm. "I am anything but."

So you peel back Doyoung's layers, piece by piece.

He's warm in the mornings, arms open wide to tuck you against him before he hands you a coffee. He wraps you up in his hoodies on days when the heating dies out and watches with Jaehyun at the bar, fondness in his eyes, as you and Mark and Donghyuck squabble over the songs on the jukebox.

If he finds you waiting for him in the afternoon, twirling around in his desk chair, he moans and whines with playful chagrin, walking you back to the door and begging you to fix it, so he can make it better, so he can fix it.

When he gets called out in the early hours of the morning to find Donghyuck curled up and snoring on your shoulder, once he melds metal back to flesh and stops the screaming, the two of you steal away to his apartment. He makes you a warm drink and runs you a shower, washes away the blood and sweat and draws circles into your shoulder under the covers. The touch lets the livewire codes buzzing around in your head die down, grounds you to him like an anchor, lulls you to sleep even when you close your eyes and still find yourself deep in the net, surrounded by nothing but 1's and 0's.

You can’t do much in return except watch. Doyoung’s hands never shake when he works, his eyes never widen as he swings into the clinic and takes in the scene in front of him. He’s steady, always.

Yet when you watch Jaehyun barrel out of the van and pound on the clinic's doors, watch Doyoung's sleepy head emerge and then startle as he's dragged forwards, you realise you've never seen him truly scared.

Donghyuck's body writhes in the back of the van. Your knees pin his arms down as you cradle his head between your legs. His eyes are closed, seared shut in pain. He cries out occasionally, legs kicking out until Doyoung composes himself and can steady them. He turns to you, hopeless, wide-eyed and panicked.

"We were out on a job," you whimper, tears glistening like jewels in your eyes. "I- He was netrunning to grab us some data. A bloodhound virus got wind of him, it's keeping him in the net. I don't know what to do."

"Hyuck?" Doyoung leans over and gives him several sharp taps to the face. "Hyuck, can you hear me?"

He moans moans, then falls silent again.

There's several variables that bounce between the two of you in quick succession. First, the location. If Donghyuck stopped moving the bloodhound would lock onto his location and then you'd have every mercenary within a five-mile radius knocking at your door to collect the bounty. Second, there's the sheer terrifying fact that if Donghyuck can't fight this thing, he's going to lose complete and utter access to his body. And-more urgently, his mind.

You stare down at your friend, unable to get him to a properly-resourced location, unable to bring him home, and make a decision. "I'm going in."

"Nope." Doyoung reaches out and snatches at your wrist, stopping you from preventing the link. "You can't. If that thing catches you-"

Bullets spray into the back of the van. You yelp and duck, immediately crushed by the weight of Doyoung pinning you down.

In the driver’s seat, Jaehyun swerves a sharp left.

"Gun!" Johnny snaps, leaping over the front seats in one fluid motion. He snatches up your discarded rifle, kicks open the back doors, and takes aim. Doyoung watches it power up with a sickening hum until a shot is released. It goes straight through the chassis of your attacker's vehicle, riccochets, catches the engine- and explodes.

Heat licks at your face, Johnny yanks the doors back shut and retreats to the front, leaving Doyoung free to allow you back up, nudge you out the way and hold out his own wrist to acccess his neuroport. "I'll do it. It has to be me-"

"No," this time it's you stopping him. "Work on his cyber enhancements. Disconnect them from his neural network so it can't get to them through there, it'll reduce the strain on his cerebral cortex. I'll try and pull him out."

"Y/N," Doyoung slows, turning to cradle you to him, even though you wriggle, even though there's no time, "Hyuck isn’t your brother. He's still in there. I promise we'll get him out."

"It's not- It’s not-" You splutter, beside yourself, but Doyoung has already let you go and you have nowhere to sink your anger into.

Before Doyoung can stop you, you tilt Donghyuck's head and connect your personal link to his neural port. The bloodhound is greeted with fire and fury and even though your body goes limp while you ascend to cyberspace, it's only minutes later that Donghyuck splutters to life, eyes flying open and panicked yelps tearing from his mouth as he's torn away from the net and into the world of the living.

"Jesus!" Johnny cries out, "Jesus, fuck, don't do that again, kid!"

"Welcome back," Jaehyun grunts, turning the truck into a drift and then straightening back up. "Let's go the fuck home."

You emerge milliseconds after Donghyuck, severing the connection, blinking slowly as you come back to yourself. Once you do, you find yourself cradled to Doyoung's chest.

"Dont ever do that again," he murmurs against your temple. He presses a kiss there, then another. "Please please pleasepleaseplease."

"Get a room," Donghyuck warbles pathetically from the floor.

"Idiot." You send a half-hearted kick to his calf. "I can't believe you did that to us. Drinks are on you for the rest of the year."

The panic is passing. Adrenaline ebbing, retreating, until all you're left with is the hum of the engine, the sound of your own breaths.

Trumping all that is Doyoung, the feeling of his skin on yours and his presence all around, holding you tight, keeping you safe.

It's well past 3AM when Doyoung wakes, roused by your absence. His arm reaches out to find you next to him but falls onto the empty sheets instead. It’s so easy to notice you when you’re gone now that he can’t quite remember what he did before you.

He slings the covers off and settles onto the balls of his feet. He moves quickly, because there's no point sleeping if you're not with him, and because the window is wide open.

It had not been like that a few hours earlier.

He checks the access protocol on his way out and lowers himself onto the fire escape. Clambering up, he ascends to the rooftop of his apartment building just as the advertisement billboard across the way lights up neon. It bathes you in a cerulean glow.

You turn to smile at him. "Hey."

"Hey." He joins you on the edge, letting his feet swing over and knock against yours. The advertisement dies down so he can join you in tilting his head back and mapping out the stars. The moon shines the brightest.

"I always wonder what life is like up there." You say softly. "If anyone ever regrets it."

Doyoung knocks his head into yours, gentle, affectionate. "C’mon, walnut, I doubt it. Aren't they all rich fuckers anyway?"

You sigh. "Probably. It's so beautiful though. Ever thought about going?"

"It is." He agrees. You turn, he's not looking at the moon. You chase his lips as he laughs and tries to move away. He gives in quickly.

When he next speaks, it's a sentiment you both agree on. Finally, like settled metal, done right so there's no chance of erosion, he says, "I have everything I need right here."

23 notes · View notes

bellaxgiornata · 2 years ago

Text

All These Years [Part 3: "Betrayal"]

Pairing: Matt Murdock x Fem!Reader

Summary: You met Matthew Murdock unexpectedly at Columbia University and you couldn't deny that there was an instant attraction–for you. But for Matt, you became as close of a friend to him as Foggy did. As the years pass by, your feelings only grow for your best friend, but all you can do is watch as he dates and sleeps with every other woman on campus and eventually in New York City but you.

Warnings/tags: 18+ for this series; contains emotional hurt with no comfort until the final installments, angst, pining, friends to lovers, slowburn, and eventually smut

Word Count: 3.8k

a/n: This one is a very angsty installment because we get Elektra in it! And I know some of you probably love her (and I have no qualms with that), but she's definitely not good for Matt and I definitely played that up in this series because, well, angst. So I hope you enjoy because this one hurts... You can find the entire list of installments for this series on tumblr here. And y'all catch that foreshadow? Because the next one is titled "All the Broken Pieces" for a reason...

Tag list: @theetherealbloom @rotscinema @magnumstyles @roseallisonparker @ofmusesandsecrets @acharliecoxedfan

"Dude, no, how can you possibly think ramen sounds better than pizza right now?" Foggy asked.

"Because," you began, shooting Foggy a pointed look as the pair of you exited the elevator onto the floor of his dorm, "we had pizza last Saturday night. It's been over a month since we've gotten ramen. Therefore, ramen sounds better."

"There is no way soup trumps pizza!" Foggy disagreed.

The pair of you turned the corner of the hallway, Foggy and Matt’s dorm room coming into view. Shaking your head, you readjusted the weight of your backpack on your back.

"Ramen is so much more than just soup , Fog," you argued. "That's an absolute insult to ramen."

"It's glorified soup at best," Foggy stated firmly. "But pizza reigns supreme–especially supreme pizza."

The two of you came to a stop in front of his dorm room door, Foggy pulling his key from his pocket as he waggled his eyebrows at you, clearly proud of his joke. You laughed lightly, rolling your eyes as he turned and unlocked the door.

"Okay,” Foggy conceded as he opened the door, “how about we just order–"

But the sight before you both in the dorm room immediately cut him clean off. Your jaw dropped as you witnessed Matt, who was clearly naked under the covers, quickly rolling off of his very clearly naked girlfriend. Though she looked less bothered by the intrusion than Matt as she leisurely pulled the sheets up to cover herself.

"Oh, shit, sorry buddy," Foggy apologized in a rush, his cheeks turning pink. "I didn't–didn't realize you were here and doing things of a particular nature."

Matt held the sheets over his lower half, his bare upper torso exposed. His shoulders were heaving as he tried to catch his breath, an uncomfortable smile spreading on his flushed face as he focused his attention by the door where Foggy had spoken. All the while you tried hard not to stare at Matt’s exposed bare and muscled chest–something you noticed Elektra noticing.

And then jealousy abruptly unfurled in your gut once the scene before you really settled in over the surprise of seeing Matt shirtless. You hated Elektra. And you knew the sight of catching them having sex was going to be forever painfully seared into your mind now. Your heart felt like it was withering in your chest as she settled in comfortably beside Matt in his bed. Stomach twisting into knots as you tried to regain your composure, you closed your mouth and clenched your jaw. You were not going to cry in front of Elektra.

"Uh, didn't realize you would be coming back so soon tonight," Matt said awkwardly.

"Or with your little girlfriend," Elektra added, gesturing a hand at you.

"She's not my girlfriend," Foggy stated, his annoyance at Matt’s girlfriend only just barely contained.

A very sly smile slid onto her red lips as she watched you intently from across the room. You crossed your arms over your chest as you tried hard to fight back the heat steadily growing in your cheeks. She was so infuriating, you couldn't understand what Matt saw in her to keep her around as his girlfriend. And you didn't understand why he would have a relationship with someone like her when he so often had praised you for your kindness and compassion–things she greatly lacked that he seemed to greatly admire.

It had also been awhile since Matt had really hung out with you and Foggy. Three months, to be exact. The exact length of time he'd been seeing her . Elektra Natchios. Or the Soul Sucking Snake Devil as Foggy and you had both taken to referring to her whenever Matt wasn't around. Because that's exactly what she'd done the moment she popped into Matt's life.

He'd been different ever since she'd shown up. He often prioritized her above his class work, on occasion even skipping classes. And if it hadn't been for Foggy staying on Matt's ass about it, his grades probably would've slipped by now. He was always out late with her doing who the hell knew what –you could only guess. Foggy had even told you that sometimes he would wake up to find that Matt wasn't even in his bed in the mornings. And you both noticed how Matt had been drinking more with her, too–to get drunk, not even just the social drinking the three of you usually did. He'd also been quick to anger, and he certainly never had much time for you and Foggy anymore.

You’d honestly barely seen Matt much since she’d appeared. He was hardly ever around when you were here with Foggy, especially on Saturday nights, which used to be a weekly ritual for the three of you. Even at mealtimes he was oddly missing from the dining hall. The last time you’d seen Matt was over a week ago, and it was just in passing as he was leaving his dorm to go meet up with his soul sucking girlfriend.

"You still seem quite prudish, darling," Elektra called out to you in that irritating accented voice of hers. "It's like you've never walked in on two people fucking before. Which, by the sounds of your roommate, shouldn't be such a shock."

Slowly your hands curled into fists where they were crossed over your chest, your nails biting into your palms. Anger burned in your blood, the urge to punch her growing steadily the more she continued to look at you. As if she knew exactly what you were thinking, she flashed her teeth at you in a very threatening smile.

"Maybe you should take some pointers from your roommate," she purred. "Then maybe you'd get out of the friend zone with whoever it is that's got you crying so much."

One of her dark brows rose high up onto her forehead, a knowing smirk pulling the corner of her lips upward. Her hand reached out to Matt’s chest, her nails running along the length of his torso in a clearly territorial manner.

Your eyes had slowly gone wide when her words registered in your mind. Sucking in a sharp breath, your eyes flew to Matt. An ache hit you right in the heart, white hot and painful, as he sent you an abashed, apologetic smile.

"You told her that?" you asked in disbelief.

"She was asking about you the other week," Matt admitted awkwardly, one of his hands rubbing at the back of his neck. "If you were seeing anyone. I didn't think it was a big deal–"

"You didn't think the personal details about myself that I shared with you in private weren’t a big deal and that you could just share that information with whoever the hell you wanted?" you asked, your anger only growing.

"Dude, that's not cool," Foggy pointed out, shaking his head.

"Well she wanted to know if you were seeing anyone!" Matt defended. "How was I supposed to know I couldn't tell her the situation?"

“Because I told you that in confidence , Matt!” you yelled. “You’re a fucking law student, you’d think you’d know what the fuck that meant!”

“Oh darling,” Elektra said cooly, her arm wrapping possessively around the back of Matt’s neck as she spoke, “maybe if you’d just told this gentleman what you thought of him sooner, instead of pining for months , you wouldn’t be in this situation, hmm?”

Your lip curled back in disdain, watching the smug smile she sent your way. She damn well knew this 'gentleman' was Matt. You swore she'd known months ago when you'd first met her, and then she intentionally tried to goad you whenever you were around the pair of them. Only Foggy ever seemed to notice, Matt somehow not believing that she was being intentionally cruel to you.

And now once again you found yourself fighting back tears because of Matt. You were so tired of crying over him. You didn't want to feel like this anymore.

Spinning on your heel, you stalked off away from their room, no longer in the mood for pizza or ramen. Or social interaction. You were going to go find somewhere quiet where you could cry, which you couldn't even do in your dorm because your roommate was no doubt there with her new boyfriend.

Hands tightening around the straps of your backpack, you hurried down the hallway. You felt the tears coming now despite how hard you were struggling to keep them back. She was such a bitch . So heartless and callous. And you hated that Matt somehow fell for her, that he somehow couldn't see what she truly was like. You knew he was blind, but how was he that blind? What the hell did he see in her that made her more desirable to him than you?

Slamming your finger into the call button for the elevator, a soft sob fell out of you. She somehow always managed to make you feel like shit, but you couldn't believe Matt had told her something so personal. He'd occasionally asked you about your crush on and off for months ever since he'd first found out about it after that night at the bar. He knew how much you didn't even want to talk to him about it–because it was him you had feelings for–so how could he have thought it was okay to share that with Elektra?

You heard footsteps coming down the hall behind you and you straightened, sniffling loudly as you wiped a hand across the dampness on your cheeks quickly. You didn’t need someone to see you crying, that would only make you feel worse. And you didn’t want some awkward elevator ride where the person beside you was pretending you weren’t crying while you stood awkwardly beside each other.

But then you heard your name uttered from Matt's lips and your eyes slowly closed. You wanted to disappear at the sound of his voice. Just fucking melt into the floor and avoid whatever awkward and uncomfortable conversation this was about to be. You didn’t want to have it.

"What do you want, Matt?" you asked, an edge to your tone.

You didn't bother turning around because you didn't want to look at him; you didn’t think you could. The moment that elevator came up to the floor you wanted to jump in and close the doors on him. What he'd done, betraying your trust like that, hurt you.

"Hey, I'm sorry, I didn't think it was a big deal," he said gently. "She just asked because she was curious if you were seeing someone. She thought maybe the guy you were interested in was Foggy. I mean, I sort of always wondered that myself."

You pulled a face, surprised at what he'd said. He thought the guy you were upset over was Foggy ? All this time?

"You think I like Foggy?" you asked in shock.

"I mean, it makes sense," he answered slowly. "You two are always together. You have a lot in common. And you are good friends," he finished weakly.

Eyes widening, you spun around to face Matt, about to tell him that he was wrong and that you and Fog were strictly friends, but you faltered the moment you took in the sight of him standing there. He'd only managed to throw on a pair of jeans, his torso still bare and exposed–you would be lying if you said your eyes hadn't lingered on the sight of his bare chest yet again. You saw that he hadn't thrown on his glasses either, apparently in a rush to chase after you. His hair was a disheveled mess on his head, mussed no doubt by Elektra's hands. That knowledge only drove the knife further into your heart and twisted it.

He was so unbelievably handsome that it physically hurt to look at him right now. It didn't help that you absolutely hated who he’d become because of Elektra these past three months. When he hadn’t been with her he was the sweetest guy you'd ever met, always considerate of you; he was even considerate and incredibly kind to strangers he didn’t know. And the way he talked about wanting to use his degree in law to help those who weren't fortunate enough to be able to afford good legal representation, especially with that inspiring passion he always spoke about it with, had only ever made you want to just grab him and kiss him senseless. He was so goddamn smart and so well-spoken. So passionate about what he was doing and so driven when it came to his education. And he had the most beautiful heart you had ever seen in someone on top of it all.

Which was why it absolutely killed you to see him with Elektra. She had ruined all that goodness in Matt the moment she appeared and sunk her claws into him. She didn't even look at him the same way he looked at her. He always gazed at her with a warm affection that lit up his entire face whenever she was near; and you’d often thought what you wouldn't give to be the one he looked at like that, to have him feel like that for you. Instead you saw how she looked at him like he was a toy to wind up and play with, which is exactly what she was always doing with him. Calling him at all hours and demanding he drop everything for her. And he would go running to her like a lost puppy every goddamn time, not caring how it was destroying his friendship with you and Foggy or beginning to affect his grades. And you swore she had only mentioned you being interested in Foggy as a way to push Matt further away from you, though you didn't understand why considering she already had him.

"Foggy and I are just friends, Matt," you stated firmly. "Always have been. He likes that girl Marci. Which you'd know if you were ever around anymore."

"I'm around," he said defensively.

The elevator opened behind you with a ding and you forced your attention off of his half-naked body, turning and stepping into it. Matt instantly rushed forward, throwing a hand out and holding the doors open. You exhaled sharply, irritated that he was drawing this out as you reached out and roughly pressed the button for the main floor.

"I'm around," he said again more firmly.

"I don't even remember the last time you joined us for a Saturday night," you told him.

"Because you and Foggy openly dislike Elektra!" he snapped. "Both of you are so rude to her. You make her so uncomfortable that she doesn't want to spend time with either of you."

Your jaw dropped, shock written all over your face at what he'd said. And then a bitter, humorless laugh flew up out of you. Matt's lips curved into a deep frown at the sound, his left eye twitching a little.

Of course she made it seem like you and Fog were the ones being hurtful and cruel. She would do anything to try to shove a bigger wedge between Matt and his friends, making it so he’d just be all hers. It was such an Elektra move that you were more shocked you hadn’t realized she was doing that to begin with.

“Foggy and I don’t like her because she’s not good for you,” you shot back.

“What are you talking about?” he countered, his brows furrowing. “She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. She understands me like no one else ever has.”

You winced at his words as if they’d somehow struck you themselves. Elektra was the best thing that had ever happened to Matt? That sure as shit fucking hurt to hear. Especially considering the way she treated him and how she was slowly but surely tearing apart his life.

“Foggy and I have known you far longer, Matt,” you said, trying to hide the hurt in your voice. “I think we understand you a little better.”

Matt shook his head instantly, his lips thinning out on his face. “No,” he replied. “Neither of you get me like she does. She’s the only one who truly understands me.”

“Wow, ouch, Matt,” you snapped.

His eyes narrowed as he focused along your chest. You shifted your backpack, the weight of it starting to bother you as he silently scrutinized you, his hand still holding the elevator doors open. You wished he’d just let them go already.

“I’m tired of the way you and Foggy treat her,” he finally said, his voice almost a low growl. “She deserves better than that. And I’m sorry I told her about your little crush and that it hurt your feelings, but it’s not that big of a deal.”

His words felt like they’d cut you, your breath catching in your throat as you stood there speechless. It felt like you couldn’t take a full breath, your ribcage feeling like it was collapsing in on your lungs at the callousness in his words.

And I’m sorry I told her about your little crush and that it hurt your feelings, but it’s not that big of a deal.

This wasn’t Matt before you, not the Matt you knew at least. Not the one you were head over heels for, the one who’d often walked you back to your dorm or understood all of your ridiculous jokes. The one you’d had serious conversations with when Foggy inevitably passed out early on Saturday nights, the pair of you side by side on Matt's bed. You didn’t know who the hell this version of Matt was before you, glaring and saying such hurtful things, the one who so clearly didn’t care about your feelings.

You hated the way your lips had begun to quiver, that pain and hurt causing tears to once again form in your eyes. Anger and heartache mingled inside of you, boiling in your blood and twisting in your gut. You let out a deep breath, one that shook as it left your lips. Matt’s expression swiftly changed at the sound of it, as if he’d suddenly realized he’d upset you.

Taking a step forward, you grasped his wrist on the hand he was blocking the elevator doors with. You glared back at Matt, jaw clenched as you grit your teeth. You never thought there’d be a time you’d want to hit him, but right now you certainly wished you could.

“You’re a shitty friend, Matthew Murdock,” you spat.

Yanking his hand from off the elevator doors, you tossed it back towards him. He’d been so surprised by your outburst that he hadn’t even reacted. And as the elevator doors finally started to close, the last thing you saw was Matt’s stunned face.

Your back had begun to ache from its place against the tree trunk, the bark rough through the thin fabric of your sweatshirt. It was cold this evening, Fall really starting to settle into New York City now. You assumed it was still a bit too early for you to head back to your dorm, but since you’d turned your phone off, you didn’t really know what time it was or how long you’d been sitting under this tree. After awhile you’d eventually stopped crying, though that hollow ache in your chest seemed to be taking a permanent residence tonight.

“Hey, thought I’d find you here.”

Turning at the voice, you looked up to spot Foggy slowly lowering down to the ground beside you. You shifted, making room for him against the tree trunk. For a few minutes neither of you spoke, Foggy just sitting beside you as you continued to stare at the distant traffic on the nearby street that was just a little past Columbia’s campus.

“I’m sorry about Matt,” Foggy eventually said, breaking the silence.

You shrugged. “Not your place to make apologies for him,” you muttered.

“I know, but I feel bad,” he replied. “He shouldn’t have told Elektra you had a crush on someone. He knows how much it's torn you apart for months now. Even if he doesn't know that it's about him. That was still an incredibly shitty thing of him to do.”

“It was,” you agreed. “And his apology about telling her was fucking terrible.”

Beside you, Foggy nodded. “Yeah, he ended up sending Elektra away when he came back from talking with you. He seemed pretty hurt and upset, especially with what you’d said.”

“Good,” you growled. “He deserves to be the one hurting for once. He was an asshole.”

“He was,” Foggy agreed. “But I think there’s just something about Elektra that’s gotten into his head. He hasn’t been himself lately. I don’t–don’t think that’s Matt. I don’t understand what she’s doing to him, but…he’s not acting like the guy I’ve known for a while now.”

“She’s definitely sucked his soul out of him,” you grumbled, toeing the grass with your shoe.

“I don’t even know what to do anymore,” Foggy said, exasperation evident in his tone. “I can’t break them up, and Matt clearly can’t be reasoned with lately. But he’s slipping. I’m worried about him. And I’m worried about what’s going to happen when she breaks his heart, because I think we both know she’s not going to stick around for the long haul.”

Your heart twisted at the thought of the inevitable day where Elektra broke up with Matt. Foggy was right, there was absolutely no way Elektra was the long term girlfriend type. It was a shock she’d been with Matt for three months already. It felt like the expiration date for their relationship was fast approaching, and you weren’t looking forward to the mess she was going to leave behind in her wake.

“It’ll kill him,” you mumbled.

Foggy let out a deep, dejected sigh as his head fell back to rest along the trunk of the tree beside yours.

“Yeah,” he agreed softly. “And he won’t even see it coming.”

“Nope,” you muttered, shaking your head. “Because she’s perfect . She could never possibly do any wrong by him.”

“And in the end, we’ll be the ones left picking up all the shattered little broken pieces,” Foggy said. “Trying to piece our friend back together. Despite how he’s treated us for the duration of this relationship.”

Your eyes closed, the sting of tears once again returning. Because you knew Foggy was right. You’d still be there with him, helping Matt pick up the pieces of his heart that he willingly let Elektra smash to tiny bits.

Because, like the incredibly foolish idiot you were, you’d gone and fallen in love with him. And for some reason you were too stupid to just walk away.

“Yup,” you whispered, a lone tear falling down your cheek. “We’ll still be here. Doing what friends do.”

#matt murdock x reader #matt murdock x you #matt murdock angst #matt murdock x fem reader #matt murdock x f!reader #matt murdock series #matt murdock fic #matt murdock fanfic #matt murdock

513 notes · View notes