#WHAT CAN YOU BRING SOMEONE WHO HAS MAYBE LOST A LIMB. HELLO
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binch-i-might-be · 2 years ago
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have just been informed that a family friend got either an unknown number of fingers or his whole HAND torn off in a construction accident recently???? like two weeks ago recently???? and my best friend's dad was there for it?? and they had to FLY HIM OUT ON A HELICOPTER? AND I HAD NO IDEA THIS HAPPENED EVEN THOUGH I LIVE LIKE 900 METERS FROM WHERE IT OCCURRED?
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p-e-n-i-s-c-o-r-e · 4 months ago
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Obsession
He has to have you.
Warnings: Lando dies, obsessed!Max, knife usage, kidnapping, cursing, murder, use of Y/N
A/N: Hello! This is my first lil story on here. Im pretty proud of it if I do say so myself. Enjoy please! 😼
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He had been watching her. Ever since Lando brought her to the paddock he'd been hooked. The way her eyes looked in the sunlight. Her smile when she congradulated him on his win. God she was perfect, but she was with Lando. And he hated that. Hated that she wasn't his. Oh he was obsessed. He couldn't help it. He knew what had to be done.
A stench filled the room as her eyes fluttered open. A low tick being all that she could hear.
tick
tick
tick
She couldn't move, her limbs tied to the chair she was sitting in. Where is she? An what is that smell?. A stream of light seeps in as she sees a door open, followed by someone.
"You're awake."
He said, voice rough, like he had just woken up himself. She lifts her head to meet him. Max?
"Max..? Where...-where am I..?"
He chuckled slightly before speaking once more, his dutch accent prominate with his words.
"Don't worry about it liefde. All you need to know is you're mine now."
What? What is he talking about? She thinks. Wheres Lando? Why does it smell so bad in here?
"Where's Lando..?"
She asks, fear etching her voice. Max smiles widely, like hes proud of something.
"I took care of him."
He says, not explaining further.
Four days prior
Max had knocked on Landos door, she was at a party, so he knew this was his time to strike. Lando opened the door, surprised to see the dutchman in front of him
"Max! Whats brought you by mate?"
"Just wanted to chat."
Max says coldly, Lando smiles bright, allowing the dutchman in. Lando takes a seat on the couch, Max following.
"Anything up with redbull?" Lando says, looking at Max.
"Not really, Christians thinking about replacing Checo though. Not sure with who yet."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah, something how hes lost his touch, that hes just bringing the team down. Which I can see, we've had to pay alot to repair his car from the constant times hes crashed it."
Lando nods. Understanding. Checos performance at redbull hasn't been the best lately. So maybe retirment could be in the bag for him. Lando decides to change the topic bringing her up.
"Y/n's at a party right now. Won't be back til late. I really love her mate."
Max keeps a stoned face. Not wanting to show his emotions at the moment
"Really?"
"Yeah, Im pretty sure she might be the one. Even got a ring picked out, let me show you"
Lando gets up, walking to his bedroom, the one he shared with her. Max followed him, playing with the knife that was in his pocket. Lando rummages in his dresser, searching for the velvet box that held the ring.
"I really love her mate. I really do. I hope she says yes. I don't know what I'd do it she didnt."
Max listens, twirling the knife around with his fingers, flicking it open as Lando talks. Stab and twist. Stab and twist. The knife connects to Landos side. Stab and twist.
Landos eyes widen, a sharp, burning pain shooting through his body, he grabs onto Max's arm, trying to keep himself upright.
"M-max? Wha..-what..?"
He stutters out, pain steadily running through his body. Max looks at him, a cold look, like he didn't care.
"Sorry mate. Can't let you take her from me."
He states coldly, not a look of guilt swimming in his eyes as he pulled the knife out, sticking it in Landos stomach this time, twisting.
Lando coughs, specks of blood landing on the dresser in front of him, trying to push Max away as he cries out in pain, his hands covering the stab wounds.
"You...-you're fucking insane.."
Lando coughs up. Stepping back, hitting the dresser, his hands covered in blood.
"No..Lando.." He chuckles, walking towards him slowly, "I'm in love."
Landos face twists into a mix of confusion and pain as he holds his hands out to keep Max away.
"Thats..-thats not love. Thats f-fucking obsession."
Lando coughs out more blood, this time splattering onto Max's face. The crazed look on his face intensifying.
"So what?"
Max stabs this knife into Landos stomach again, deeper this time, twisting the knife.
He cries out again, collapsing to his knees from the pain. His eyes wide with disbelief as he coughs from the pain.
Max uses the tip of the knife to lift Landos chin up, forcing him to look Max. He smiles at him, as if he wasn't about to take the young drivers life.
"I'll take good care of her." Max says softly, before sinking the knife into the pulse point of Landos neck.
He tried to protest, his words being cut off by a soft gurgle as blood flows through his airway. He slumps forward, landing on the ground with a soft thud. A trail of blood leaves his mouth, pooling onto the floor, and his body shivers in pain, the life leaving his body.
Max leans back on his heels. Looking down at the body of the man who was his friend and fellow driver. He didn't feel bad.
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stormoflina · 11 months ago
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Hello again! It's the same overly talkative anon from the last ask lol
I wanted to talk more about the social media thing, which it sounds like you have a lot to talk about too! I didn't follow Dom when he was at Leipzig but I'm going to go out on a limb and assume the spotlight and reaction to him on social media was not as big as it now but I know he's like the king of Hungary (in a good way) anyway I say that because when it comes to the prem the fans and media are a lot less forgiving and love to put players in a box.
For instance Dom is very handsome (as are a lot players in Liverpool) but he's gotten labeled as the pretty boy who cares more about his hair than he does about his performances which is silly because every player cares about their outward appearance that's why they get haircuts and tattoos and etc. It's kind of similar with people screaming from the rooftops that Trent can't defend if he makes one missed tackle.
Anyway I think if Dom was less attractive or less confident people would stop raging about him loving the camera, if anything it's just a reaction to how good he looks on camera. Personally I already know he has a nice face and I still get caught off guard when he pops up on the TV, bless the dinosaurs that made the fuel to bring his parents together 🤣
Hii! 🫶🏼
Apologies for the late answer! I started writing a whole ass novell to you, then lost internet connection and I lost everything. But maybe it's for the better, because I was borderline psychoanalysing people lol. 😭
I admit, I couldn't really stomach following RB Leipzig just for him lol, I only started paying more attention to them (well Domi, and they came with him) after Marco Rose became their manager - I really like that man - so, I don't know tbh how he was perceived by their fans or even in the media really. What's evident is that he was a favourite of the social media team, judging by their insta haha. In Hungary, it's very hit or miss. He is either perceived as basically the Chosen One from the Footy Gods, or very harshly, unfairly criticised hated on for everything. There are a surprising amount of miserable people who are hoping that he will flop hard as a rock in Liverpool, but then again, he is still much more beloved, especially ever since he became the captain. Our sports media, hmm, let's just say, very amateur, and because Dominik is our most successful player he gets his ass kissed ever since he signed for Liverpool. The thing is with that however, is that they try to frame it more like a Hungarian success story, rather than the success story of Dominik, if that makes sense. So it's not really about the persona of Dominik, but rather the Hungarian who did something that not many could in the last few decades. Or at least that's how I see it overall.
However, all this vain, egoistical gimmick is not something that has been present in his usual criticism until recently. I mean it makes sense, the media needs characters, easily noticeable one or two traits they can give to players to sell the stories and the narrative better, and let's be honest, Dominik is a very easy target for that. For one, yes, that he is objectively a handsome man, but what I think is even more important is the way he carries himself. I think he is not someone, who will 'bow down' if that makes sense, he has a strong personality, a strong trust and sense of himself and his abilities, and he is very honest about that. The media loves underdog stories, especially for people like Dominik, but it's very evident that he doesn't lean into that. Even in Hungary, he asked the journalists multiple times, to stop listening to all his achievements, calling him the nt's best player, trying to sell the story of the 'poor hungarian lad who somehow did the unthinkable'. He seemed pretty rejective towards these underdog PR questions they tried to do with him in the start, which honestly from a straight PR point turned out to be a mistake for him, for sure hahah. But I can respect the dedication to be true to his morals and character, rather than playing the well-crafted PR character.
This turned out into me, rumbling I'm so sorry. I truly can talk a lot. 😭😭 Please, don't be shy to do the same, I absolutely love reading all your options!! 💗
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wolferine · 4 years ago
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Heart Skips a Beat - Part 4
Natasha Romanoff x Reader
Summary: Natasha faces her worst nightmare when a rescue mission goes wrong…
Warnings: Violence, blood, torture
Word count: 2843
Part 3
Tags: @blkmxrvel @blackxwidowsxwife @marvelwomen-simp @phoenixofash @marvels-bitch-boy @when-wolves-howl @bitterlime13 @hallecarey1 @orangewheein @unexpected-character
AN: I apologize if some tags don’t work! Tumblr can’t find some of your usernames.
After listening to Steve’s plan, all four of you—technically five, since Bucky had to tag along—take the Quinjet to Siberia. The goal was to break out the five soldiers in Bucky’s former task force and bring them back to the Avengers Tower, where there was the technology to free their minds from HYDRA. 
Each of you were armed with a mask which would spray a powerful sedative into the face it was applied to, keeping the victim unconscious until it was removed. It was the simplest solution to taking down the super soldiers—when Bucky had been skeptical, Natasha had slapped a mask on him and he was out before he hit the floor. You were pretty sure you pulled a muscle from laughing so hard.
Now, you and Natasha sat in the cockpit while the others sat behind you.
“Hey, Y/N,” Bucky says suddenly.
“Yeah?” You don’t even look over your shoulder.
“I’m…sorry for shooting you.”
“Twice,” you clarify. “I didn’t forget the count.”
“Sorry,” he repeats.
“Well, as long as you don’t mistake me for Steve again, I’ll be okay,” you say with a chuckle.
“So, just to reiterate our plan, Bucky will be with me and Clint, and Nat, you’ll be with Y/N,” Steve says.
“Even Captain America knows better than to break up the power couple.” You grin and reach over to put your hand on her thigh. Without taking her eyes off the controls, she takes your hand and interlocks your fingers.
“Yeah, so you two just do your thing—” Steve catches himself. “Wait, not that kind of thing.”
Clint explodes into wheezy laughter and Natasha shakes her head, her cheeks reddening. You’re not embarrassed like she is, but you’re still quick to defend yourselves.
“It was one time!” you protest. It had been a mission where everything that could’ve gone wrong did, and you and Natasha were convinced it would be your last. You two decided to end it wrapped around each other, but then the rest of the Avengers had barged in and said there had been a miscommunication and it wasn’t the end of the world after all. It was the one mission you would never live down.
“Just keep it professional, please,” Steve begs. “No matter what happens, we’re all going home alive, okay?”
Bucky looks completely lost.
Natasha lands the Quinjet in a flurry of snow and all of you exit the warmth of the plane.
“I should’ve brought one of your hoodies,” she mumbles, walking as close to you as she can without tripping you. 
“It would’ve clashed with your uniform,” you say, putting your arm around her waist. The super soldier serum in your veins causes you to run a higher-than-average body temperature. You feel as comfortable as if you stepped out of hot shower.
The facility is the only building for miles. It looks big enough to fit a space rocket and has a dull, concrete exterior. The only security is a chain-link fence with a frozen padlock that Steve breaks open with his shield. You file through the gate, and Bucky inputs a code into the door to grant everyone entry. The interior is just as disappointing as the outside. Nothing but a maze of concrete halls with metal doors. The ceiling has dripping water stains and an uncomfortably musty, moldy smell hangs in the air.
“I bet you’re really glad you escaped this rust bucket,” you say to Bucky. He only shakes his head.
“Stay alert,” Steve advises. “We’ll split here. Keep us updated on your position and if you find anyone.”
“Copy that.” You and Natasha turn right while the others turn left. She finds a flight of stairs and you follow behind her. You unholster your gun, holding it at the ready by your side. Natasha makes random turns and ignores every room you walk by. You listen intently for any sort of noise that would indicate a person lurking in the shadows, but so far, there’s nothing.
“Do you even know where you’re going?” you ask.
“Do you?” she snaps.
“Hey, I’m just following you.” You back off. Even though you know this is no time to be making jokes, you still can’t help yourself. High-stress situations make you nervous, especially when you’re with Natasha, because anything that could happen to you could happen to her.
When you pass by a room with its door open, you see a large glass tank big enough to fit a human and filled with murky green water. For a reason you can’t explain, you feel yourself drawn towards it and you step into the room, a chill raising goosebumps on your skin. You reach out to touch the tank’s wall and close your eyes.
You’re floating in a tank of your own, tubes running out of your nose, mouth, and down every limb. You jerk around wildly in the water tinged pink with your blood. Your lungs seize for air, but every breath you inhale is wet and salty.
“Shall we go another round?” you hear someone on the other side say.
“Might as well. No pain, no gain, right?” someone replies.
You want to bash your hands against the glass, but you’re too weak to have any control over your movements. You feel a sharp pain in your lower back, at the base of your spine, and your body arches as more drugs are pumped into you. You have no breath to scream with as your body twists in agony. It feels like a fire eating you from the inside out, burning through your bones, and you want nothing more than to wither away to ash...
“Hey.” You jump when you feel Natasha’s hand on your shoulder. “What are you doing in here?”
“Um, I…I thought I heard something,” you lie. Natasha frowns. Like Steve and Bucky, you had been a lab rat yourself, although not to SHIELD or HYDRA. You had been passed around other government agencies—at least, that’s what you think. Most of your memories of that time were fuzzy, which you were fine with. The ones you did remember weren’t worth reliving anyway.
“Y/N.” Natasha looks concerned.
“We’ll talk about it later, okay?” You don’t want to interrupt the mission with your personal problems.
She knows better than to push you, especially at a time like this. “Okay,” she says, leaving the room. You take a minute to collect yourself. When you finally turn around, you see a black-haired woman, shorter than Natasha even, standing in the doorway in the same vest Bucky had worn the first time you met him.
“Hello,” you say, holstering your gun. You’re not going to shoot someone who looks like she’s barely of age. “You must be one of the super soldiers Bucky told me about. Who was your target supposed to be? Romanoff?” you tease.
“Thor.” The woman’s voice is dainty. Her body is literally the size of one of Thor’s arms. There’s no way she’s telling the truth.
You laugh. “That’s cute. But this is no place for a kid,” you say, walking towards her. But she sees that you’re too casual, your guard let down too low, and takes advantage of that. “Now all I need is for you to put this mask on and—”
The woman launches at you with a speed you don’t even process. She swipes your legs out from under you, causing you to crash on your back. Then she’s on top of you, hands around your throat. You reach into your pocket for your knife, all jokes lost with her attempt to take your life.
You flip the blade out and swing at her face, but she’s quick to dodge and rolls to the side. You jump to your feet, wondering where Natasha is. But you’re too embarrassed to call for her help, even if this soldier claims she was given the task of taking out the god of thunder.
The woman is impossibly fast and she lands blow after blow on you while you stagger back and slash out helplessly with your knife. When she kicks you in the stomach and your back collides into the water tank, you’ve had enough. 
You switch your knife to your left hand and aim for the woman’s neck. She grabs your wrist and twists it around so the knife turns towards you. Your eyes widen as she puts her entire body weight behind the knife. The blade sinks into your shoulder.
“What the—” You don’t even register the pain, more upset that you’ve been harmed with your own weapon. The woman grins, distracted, and you punch her in the throat as hard as you can. Her eyes bulge and she coughs, her hands flying to her neck. 
You take the mask out of your pocket and shove it onto her face, hearing the hiss as the sedative is instantly released. The woman immediately goes limp and you have no problem letting her drop to the floor.
“Y/N!” You look up and see Natasha staring at you, arms crossed over her chest.
“I got one.” You puff out your chest proudly.
“Why didn’t you call me?” Natasha comes over and inspects the soldier’s limp body.
“I didn’t need to. I handled her all by myself,” you say, a little annoyed by her doubt in your abilities.
“Is that a knife in your shoulder?” she asks.
“I…Oh, yeah—” 
“Is that your knife?” Being called out hurts more than the actual pain of having the knife in your shoulder.
“Uh…maybe…” You can’t even look her in the eye.
“Y/N,” Natasha growls. “Here, let me take it out.”
You back up until you hit the tank again. “Wait, shouldn’t we—ow!” you yelp as Natasha jerks the knife out.
“You’ve been through worse.” She tries to hand you the knife, but you shake your head, too embarrassed to continue carrying it with you since you obviously can’t be trusted with it. She shrugs and pockets your knife, taking out some gauze and tape to patch up your wound. You rotate your left arm in circles; besides an uncomfortable twinge, it works fine. 
“So, what do we do with her body?” you ask.
“We’ll come back. We need to find the other three first.”
“Three? I thought there were four.” You try to do the math in your head. Bucky had said there five super soldiers, and you had just defeated one, meaning there were four left—
“Three,” Natasha repeats and you look at her in confusion. “Mine’s outside.” Unlike you, there wasn’t a single scratch on her. Together, you leave the room and find a man slumped on the floor, a mask on his face.
“When did this happen?” you ask.
Natasha shrugs, but you can tell she’s extremely proud of herself. “When you were busy dealing with that little girl.”
“Excuse me. According to her, her target was Thor,” you say. “So, I just took out the soldier who was supposed to take down the god of thunder.”
“Yeah, you can keep telling yourself that.” Natasha nudges you playfully.
“Whatever.” You roll your eyes.
“Hey, are you two okay?” Steve asks in your earpiece.
“We disabled two soldiers on the second floor,” Natasha responds.
“Perfect. We got two down here as well.”
“Who did you take out?” Clint asks.
“This tiny woman and a guy,” you answer.
“How big was the guy?” Bucky asks.
“Maybe around your size?” you estimate, staring down at the soldier Natasha subdued.
“Okay, because the two we took out were also average-sized dudes. The last one—I was hoping it wouldn’t come down to this—he’s an absolute beast. I think he’s almost seven-feet tall and could bench press a plane with one hand,” Bucky says.
“So whoever takes him out wins,” you say. Between you and Natasha, you were certain you could win any fight.
“You’re on,” Clint says.
Natasha and you leave the soldiers where they lay and search the rest of the floor. This time, you take the lead, a little more cautious since you know what to expect. You head up to the third floor, expecting the last soldier to jump out at any moment. The tension of waiting to find him is almost unbearable and your muscles ache from being coiled so tightly.
“You guys find him yet?” Natasha asks through the earpieces.
“Negative.”
Suddenly, a moving shadow catches your eye and you throw out your arm to stop Natasha. A man steps out from around the corner and Bucky wasn’t lying about his size. He’s so tall the top of his head disappears behind the ceiling beams and he looks like he would sweep any bodybuilding competition he entered.
“Never mind, we found him. Third floor,” Natasha mumbles.
“Don’t engage him alone.” That’s Steve’s voice. “Try to stall—”
“Too late” you want to say as the man charges towards you. There is no way you two are taking him down without the use of any weapons; plus, you don’t have any more masks to use. But if you punched or kicked him, you wouldn’t be able to reach his face without catching airtime. You run backwards, fumbling with your options. An idea pops into your head.
“Maybe he has a safe word, too,” you say, crashing into Natasha and shoving her back. “Lizzie! Karen!” you scream the first names that come to you. “It could be a guy’s name—can’t assume anything, right? Chris! Tom! Mark!” The names have no effect other than making you look like an idiot.
“Shut up, Y/N—” Natasha hisses.
The man roars and reaches out, grabbing a fistful of your shirt. He throws you like a javelin and you can’t believe how far you fly, landing on your stomach and skidding another 30 feet.
Natasha tries engaging him, and although she’s faster than him, any punch or kick she lands goes completely unnoticed by him. The man flings her aside like a sack of flour and comes towards you.
You reach for your gun, but before you can bring it up, he kicks it out of your hand and stomps on it. The barrel literally flattens before your eyes, and you roll onto your back to face him. He lifts his foot, which is easily as big as your calf, and brings it down on your right knee.
CRUNCH.
The pain of your leg snapping in half is so blinding and nauseating you don’t even scream. It feels like someone is holding a blow torch to your bones and your entire body starts trembling in shock. The man scoops you up with an arm leveraged underneath your chin, and once you’re upright, you feel the lower half of your right leg dangling like a broken branch.
He lifts you high enough so your feet don’t touch the floor, leaving you scrabbling at his arm and choking on your saliva. Your vision flashes white and you feel the overwhelming urge to vomit as he spins you around to face Natasha.
She has her gun out, pointed at his head. “Put Y/N down,” she orders.
“And what if I don’t?” the man says in a voice that sounds like it came from the depths of the ocean. “You think you can shoot me before I can break a neck?” He squeezes you harder and you whimper.
Natasha pauses to think, and her eyes dart to the side before looking back at the man. “Okay, okay.” She sets her gun on the floor and raises her hands. “Just please don’t—”
“Kick it towards me.” The man crushes your windpipe like a straw and your eyes water.
Natasha reaches out with her foot and sends the gun spinning towards you and your captor. Suddenly, the man tosses you away and when you crumple on your broken leg, you swear you see purgatory. 
“Get on your knees,” the man tells Natasha. She doesn’t obey. “I said, get on your knees!” Very slowly, with a defiant look on her face, she drops to her knees one at a time. The man picks up her gun and holds it in front of her face. “I’ve been waiting years to finally meet you, Agent Romanoff.”
“Well, sorry for not coming around sooner.”
“My comrades may not have been successful in eliminating their targets, but I don’t fail,” the man says.
Natasha looks away from him to you. “I love you,” she calls, as casually as if you two were lounging on the couch watching a movie together.
You blink away tears to make eye contact with her. You can’t move, you have no weapons, and he has a gun pointed at her head. The complete helplessness you feel hurts more than your broken leg, more than Bucky’s gunshots had, more than any pain you’ve ever felt before. There’s a thousand things you want to tell her, but you only have time to say one.
“I love you t—”
But there isn’t even enough time for you to finish your sentence, because suddenly Natasha’s face is covered in blood.
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Click here for Part 5!
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midday0nightmares · 4 years ago
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27 - pry on the weak (m).
Previous chapter in your arms (m).
m.list.
warnings: this series contains themes of yandere\mafia, blood, violence, mental health, drugs, non-con.
author note: this is pure fiction and it is not intended to romanticize any of the situations mentioned bellow.
The door was shut, it won’t open, it was cemented on every side expat for the small slit under it, you try knocking, shout for someone, anyone, but to no avail.
you try the window, it opens, but the sight is even scarier. The city is quiet, too quiet. No traffic in its usually busy streets, every window in the near buildings were closed, no birds in the sky, not a single sign of life, even the sun seems stuck in its place, time isn’t moving.
Outside the closed door, you can hear muffled sounds, you peak under the door and see the familiar white socks on a pair of feet moving around the room, it’s jaemin. you shout and scream for him, but he doesn’t even flinch, he just keeps going through his day. 
You were forgotten, lost forever in his room.
You jolt out of the claustrophobic nightmare, everything around you looks sound and in its right place, including jaemin, who’s sleeping next you, it was a nightmare.. you didn’t think that a nightmare would have the audacity to visit you while you were sleeping in his arms.
You snuggle closer to him, too close, not minding if he wakes up right now, it would be ideal if he can listen to you telling him about the rude nightmare and sho It away..  
.
.
.
He buckles under your pleads, 
“fine.. you can come too”  
The high pitched squeal you let out almost made him change his mind.
You wore a simple, body fitting black dress, a safe choice, you walked to the living room where jaemin was waiting for you, he was wearing a black suit, the black trousers making his long legs look extra inviting.
Jeno whistle from behind you when you spun to show jaemin your outfit, you roll your eyes at his ungentlemanly behavior, 
But the way jaemin’s eyes were shinning, and the compliment “you look beautiful” made your heart flutter, but the butterflies were shot dead when jeno’s hand landed on your ass in a sharp slap.
You link arms with jaemin and make the short trip to the door across the hallway to chenle apartment, the door was open, you were welcomed by upbeat classical music, not what you’ve expected.
Inside, the apartment looked like an entire house by itself, it was three times bigger than your apartment, the atmosphere was intimidating, everyone looked expensive and beautiful, there was three type of guests, men, gorgeous women, and you. 
Bite sized appetizers and trays of champion were being served along side an open bar at the corner, chandeliers were hanging off the ceiling and the big glass door opens to the terrace.
Your heart sunk and your stomach turned over inside of you. You cling to jaemin’s arm when you spot that face, haechan’s face.he approaches you and they all greeted each other, you keep looking else where, doing your best to ignore him. 
“Hey man! Long time no see.. what are you doing here? You know chenle?” Yes good question jaemin, what is he doing here?
“Yeah yeah..” He leans closer and lowers his voice “he’s one of my top clients” he gestures to the tens of girls around.. and it clicks in your head that they were all escorts, brought by haechan, they were his girls. you didn’t even try to hide the look of disgust that was showing on your face.
“Hey handsome” a tall, brunette, doll like girl throws her arms around jeno, “haven’t seen you in a while” she seamlessly pout. He giggles and turns into a harmless puppy in her hands, she must be one of haechan girls too, of course he will pay for company, who would want to spend time with him.
Your attention turns back to the hushed conversation between haechan and jaemin,
 “… no, his father is the of a one the leaders of the Chinese communist party, powerful man. and he’s the sole hire of multiple companies” haechan says.
“What is he doing here?” Jaemin asks. 
 “don’t know.. but based on what I have heard, he’s not staying for long..” haechan cuts himself as soon as he notice your interest in their conversation, “And how have you been doing sweet thing?”
oh the rage that went through you, you wished you could claw his eyes out, your distain is loud on your features. jaemin’s hand reach and hold yours, giving you a gentle squeeze, silently apologizing for breaking his promise of not having to see haechan again. 
And of course Hacehan is anything but dumb, he reads your mood and turns back to jaemin “come, I want you to meet someone” .. “haa you never stop working, don’t you?” Jaemin let go of your hand and slips deeper into the crowd, leaving you standing awkwardly next to jeno and his baby.
You stomp with no destination in mind. you look around, amazed by everything, but you feel misplaced, the looks that were thrown your way, you didn’t belong here and everyone knew it, there was an underlining screech the luxuries mood.
You catch the back of jaemin’s head through the crowd, an unsuspected punch of something was delivered to your heart, throwing your mood completely off. he’s with a group of giggly girls, practically drooling over them.  
you regret insisting on coming with him.. you should have known, but it’s too late now, you look else where and meet the sister eyes of haechan staring at you. he winks at you, you throw him the dirtiest look you have and move out of his sight line.
You pick a glass of champagne and lean against the wall, tipping the tall glass and drinking it in one go, and another.. starting to feel better. Chenle’s bright hair stands between the crowds, he gracefully moves around greeting everyone, you didn’t notice before but he’s quit charming.. he catches you staring at him and smile at you, rising his glass towards you, you fumble almost dropping your half empty glass.. when you mange to get a grip on yourself and rise your glass he had already return to his conversation. 
“Hello, mind if I join you?” The stranger man stands next to you even before you could’ve answered him, “what’s your name?” He looks like he was operating on twice the normal human energy, fidgeting and unable to stay still for more than three seconds, his smile twitches, the look in his eyes is frantic.. his pupils are blown, he’s on something. 
He speaks again before you can answer “hi Im yangyang, what’s your name?” why does his friends have wired names? 
You watch him like he was a train wreck happing in slow motion, “here try this” he hands you one of the two glass he was holding in his hands, a pink cocktail with raspberry, you smile politely and take the drink, he stares at you with his frozen smile.. but something behind you catches his attention, he kinda looks like a cat, just like that he leaves as fast as he came, he’s kinds cute.
You move to the open terrace for some fresh air, the breeze flowing through your hair, you zone out as you watch the city lights.. a hand graze the small of your back brings you back, you jump in surprise. “sorry didn’t mean to scare you” chenle apologize, placing a tall glass of champion in front of you, his round cheeks flushed, he looks breathtaking in this proximity, or maybe it’s just the alcohol in your system.. 
“To be honest sera, Im a little offended” he confess, your eyes grow double the size “offended.. why?”, 
he gives you sad puppy eyes and looks around “you don’t seems to enjoy my party”.. 
“oh no, I do. Your house is very beautiful and everything looks amazing” you try to convince him but he’s not buying it, you just give up and sigh, “im just tired” looking down to the busy streets..
He hums “tired or jealous?” Pointing at jeno who was too busy sucking that girl’s face, you roll your eyes and chenle laughs.
 “im not” you bring the glass to your lips, drinking more, a pathetic attempt to suppress whatever have been twisting your insides. 
Someone calls for him cutting your interaction short, “Alright.. well if you need anything come find me” he says before leaving you. You stay at your spot, distracting yourself with silly thoughts while the party behind you was growing wilder.
Your stomach growls, you feel sick and about to throw up.. heat rising through you, you sweat and feel lightheaded, you must have had too much to drink you are not used to it.
You stumble inside and through the crowded room, looking for the closest bathroom before it’s too late, haechan grabs your arm “sera.. are you ok?” His voice is far away although he’s standing next to you, you yanking your arm out of his hold “don’t touch me..”,
The room starts spinning, you hold the wall for support, after that it all went dark.
.
.
.
When you came back and opened your eyes, you were laid in a bed, the strong cologne filling your noise, upsetting your empty stomach. For a minute you don’t remember where you are or what had happened, the unfamiliar bedroom doesn’t ring any bills, your head is pounding, threatening to explode you move too much, you try to get up but a sharp pain shots through you, your hips feels like they were dislocated, your thighs bruised and had blood on them, your pulled up dress and torn underwear, it all indicates to one thing. 
You mange to hold yourself through the initial shock, not breaking down. With a plan to find jaemin you fix your dress to cover your exposed breast, you force yourself up, picking up your discarded heal off of the floor. You limb your way out of the room, the party has quite down, it has turned to something else.. 
everyone looked like a living zombie, you look for jaemin, you open every door on your way, you open a door to a bedroom, and you see group of men gathered over a passed out girl, watching them felt like an outside body experience, like you were rewatching yourself. They were unfazed by your presences as they continue their assult.. 
you close the door to the hellish scene, you keep looking for him but he’s nowhere to be found.
You reach the main area, being met by jeno and haechan snorting whit powder of the coffee table, surrounded by loopy girls.. jeno tries to grab you, to pull you down with them but you escape his claw like hand.
You can’t take this anymore, you were starting to crumble. you did’t feel safe anymore. you head to the door and walk out, you seek the comfort of a familiar surroundings, their apartment, a hot shower, clean clothes, your bed.. but you don’t have a key and you don’t know the passcode, you try random combinations but nothing works, the door stays closed, duff to your cries.
You break down, tears streaming your face, you give up on the door and slid to the ground, leaning against the wall you sit alone in the hallway waiting for jaemin’s return.
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uwuwriting · 4 years ago
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Soulmates w/ Dabi, Shirakumo and Keigo
Request: Hello! I just read a few of your writings &I'd just like to say they're amazing! Anyways, may I request some hc's for a soulmate AU w/ Dabi, Shirakumo, & Hawks?(all separate)- anonymous
Soulmate Aus have a shit ton of tropes so I went for a different trope on each boy bc I love them all. My man Dabi has dipped the last few chapters and I’m getting kinda deprived, although I appreciate him not burning my baby Shoto to a crisp so we good. Love ya.💖💖💖
masterlist II rules
warnings: angst with some fluff
 Dabi/Todoroki Touya II Interchangeable eye color
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-Dabi’s outlook on love is really negative. 
-Growing up the way he did and in the environment he did, the possibilities in him believing or cherishing love and soulmates was low. 
-When he got his soulmate sign he was around 12. 
-It was the darkest moments of his life and he hated himself to no end. 
-When he woke up on that fateful Sunday morning he thought that he was hallucinating. 
-Then he imagined that this could be an after affect of his trauma, just like his hair. 
-His mind though drifted to his soulmate. 
 -He didn’t have a mark up until now and your eye color changing was one of the many soulmate signs out there. 
-As he stared at his left eye, the e/c orb staring back at him, he began to cry. 
-Sobs wracked his body as he clutched his eye. 
-This was unfair. 
-He shouldn’t have a soulmate, what good could he be to anyone?
-He is a failure and he is gonna bring down his soulmate as well. 
-So he hides it. 
-Puts a patch over his eye to conceal the new color blooming around his iris and when his family starts questioning it he buys contacts. 
-Natsuo helps him even though he doesn’t understand why his brother doesn’t want a soulmate. 
-Years pass until he finally meets the person that has changed his life. 
-Shigaraki was being a brat as usual, whining about needing new members for his little group. 
-Dabi couldn’t care less.
-This  whole charade with these losers would only aid him reach his ultimate goal. 
-He didn’t care about Shigaraki’s shitty ideologies and otherworldly desires, he just wanted his revenge. 
-His eyes scanned the so-called hide out in utter boredom, his gaze landing once again at the bar’s door left slightly ajar in case someone came looking. 
-He didn’t expect for the door to open though. 
-And as the grease old door creaked open a figure stepped into the room, clad in black from head to toe. 
-A mask was covering half of your face leaving only your eyes visible. 
-You scanned the place before your eyes landed swiftly on him, knocking the breath out of him as you locked gazes, e/c orbs baring into his own. 
-The vibrant blue on your left eye had him gasping for air. 
-It was stunning. 
-You moved to talk to Shigaraki, your voice albeit monotone and cold, sent tingles up his spine making his hairs stand at attention. 
-His eyes were glued on you, one of his hands subconsciously going to the left side of his face where his mark should be visible.
-It felt as if his contact burned his eye and he quickly took it off, not minding about possible infections since he didn’t wash his hands before touching his eYE DAMMIT YA NASTY AF. 
-His body was drawn to you, his mind screaming at him to talk to you to go close to you. 
-You knew he was your soulmate. 
-You had known the moment you stepped into the bar; no one had such a beautiful blue hue in their eyes other than your soulmate. 
-Despite your mutual desire to be close to each other you  held off for months. 
-Months of keeping distance, months of giving each other the cold shoulder. 
-It would all reach a tipping point soon and Dabi would finally understand what it’s like to truly love someone. 
-Until then though, suffer in your mutual pining. 
Shirakumo Oboro II Red string of Fate
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-The string around his pinky finger always lay motionless for years. 
-It was slack and lifeless, no sign of his soulmate being remotely alive. 
-It really worried him, he thought that he might be one of the few unfortunate individuals who didn’t have a soulmate. 
-He talked to his friends about it and they all reassured him that his soulmate was just too far away from him so even if they tugged at the string he wouldn’t be able to feel it. 
-This reassured him all throughout middle school. 
-He started getting a little discouraged when he saw all his classmates getting their soulmate signs whether it be names tattooed on their wrists, one of their eyes changing color or a strand of their hair, other could hear faint music if they concentrated hard enough while others were unfortunate enough to feel their soulmate’s pain. 
-Shirakumo was left staring at the red string surrounding his finger. 
-He had thought about tugging at it, making the first step instead of waiting for the person on the receiving end.  
-But on this day, the day when both Aizawa and Hizashi got their respective signs he found himself tugging at the string. 
-At first he pulled lightly watching the string grow taught slowly and then go slack again. 
-He waited for what felt like a century before tugging again and again, more force being put in his pulls every time. 
-After an hour of waiting and tugging he was done. 
-Eyes downcast with a frown on his lips, he was ready to let this whole soulmate thing go. 
-At the end of the day he doesn’t need the universe to tell him who he should fall in love with; who he is destined to be with. 
-Then he felt it. 
-The lightest tug at his finger. 
-His eyes followed the red string as it straightened a few times before going limb again. 
-Aizawa walked in on him pulling the string like crazy, excited giggles leaving his lips when his soulmate responded with their own pulls. 
- “Shota I did it. T-they answered!”
-This whole string communication business lasted until the first day of high school. 
-As Oboro walked through the halls of UA he felt the string shift on his finger. 
-It was as if it was wrapping tighter around his finger, almost to the point that it hurt. 
-Maybe he was about to meet his soulmate that’s why the string was thinning. 
-Wait, meet them??
-He wasn’t ready to meet them!!!
-What if they didn’t like him? What if his hair was a bit too cloudy for their likes? Oh god his hair must be a mess because he flew here. Maybe he can dash into one of the bathrooms and fix it real quick. Will he be too loud for them? What-
-Lost in his own thoughts he completely missed the person standing in front of him and soon he was crashing into them, a small grunt leaving his lips as he maneuvered himself to cushion their fall. 
- “Oh God I’m so sorry, I was totally zoned out. Are you alright?” 
- “Why are you apologizing? I ran into you.” 
-He let out a chuckle as you scrambled off of him, dusting off your skirt before offering him a hand. 
-As he took it he felt his pinky being released from the pressure. 
-Right before your eyes you witnessed the red string that connected you both unwrap for your fingers, illuminating for a moment before completely disappearing leaving a sense of familiarity and warmth in its wake. 
-You both stared wide eyed at each other before awkwardly introducing yourselves. 
-It didn’t take long for you two to actually fall in love and if you’re being honest it’s was so easy to fall for him that you believed that even if you weren’t soulmates you would have loved him. 
-Even after years, even after that fateful summer, the sense of his presence and his warmth never left you; it was as if he wasn’t gone and he was still somewhere out there. 
-You were half wrong in that one….I think. 
Takami Keigo/Hawks II Name tattoos
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-He got his tattoo when he was 13. 
-It had really awful timing if he was being honest. 
-The hero commission was isolating him completely, even from the few friends he had made around the facility he trained in.
-He couldn’t even begin to imagine what they might do if they find out he had a soulmate. 
-He truly wished he had a different soulmate sign or no soulmate at all. 
-He did everything in his willpower to hide the calligraphy of your name on his left wrist. 
-Bandaging it up, covering it with a watch even scribbling over it like he used to do when he was 9 and bored. 
-But at some point it became harder to hide it, harder to conceal the beautiful name that was printed on his wrist. 
-So he confided in someone. 
-One of the caretakers at the commission had taken him under their wing ever since he was a wittle toddler, he trusted them with his life. 
-When he approached them frantically grasping his wrist in attempts to hide the letters, they were both delighted and saddened. 
-It was nice knowing that this poor child had someone out there that was meant for him and would make him happy, replace every single one of these awful memories with new ones.
-Memories he would like looking back to. 
-But just like Hawks himself they knew that the commission wouldn’t allow this person to get involved with him, at any costs and they knew how far these people could go in order to guarantee Hawks’s undivided concentration. 
-So they helped him; they bought him some make up to cover it up and taught him how to apply it correctly. 
-By the time he was out of the hands of the commission *at least not in close reach* no one apart from them knew of his soulmate’s name. 
- “Now listen here Keigo, I want you to take good care of them when you finally meet them. And never forget that you deserve nice things, don’t let anyone take your happiness away.” 
-He did find his happiness. 
-It didn’t happen right away but it did come sooner than he expected. 
-He had learned about the new transfer student who began attending UA in the middle of the year. 
-He never heard their name but he knew they existed. 
-Turns out they were quirkless but were determined to become a hero despite their shortcomings. 
-After a few months he bumped into them and oh lord his wings have never been puffier. 
-He was  relaxing on the roof, away from prying eyes and loud people, just him and the birds *he found his people at last*.
-When he heard the door open he almost leaped off the building but paused at the sound of a soft voice. 
- “Oh I’m so sorry I didn’t know someone was up here.” 
-Turning around he came face to face with the most beautiful person he had ever laid his eyes upon. 
-For the first time in his life he stumbled over his words, a swift ‘It’s alright’ escaping his lips and before he knew what he was doing he was inviting you to sit with him. 
- “Wow you can see everything from here.” 
- “The view is better up in the sky if you ask me.”
-After a long pause he added. “I could show you if you want.” 
- “How can I trust you? Hmmm?” you teased. “I don’t even know your name.” 
-He let out a chuckle before continuing. “Could say the same for you but since I’m a gentleman I will grace you with my name. I’m Keigo Takami or Hawks if you wanna go with my hero persona.” 
-He saw your eyes widen as you stared at him, your eyes darting to his covered wrists. 
-Quickly you composed yourself straightening your shirt and extending your hand, the black letters of his name delicately engraved on your smooth skin. 
- “Nice to meet you, I’m Y/N L/N.”  
TAG TEAM AY:
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shorkbrian · 5 years ago
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Hello I went to IKEA yesterday and got myself a BLÅHAJ (giant plush shark) now I have TWO giant shark plushies on my bed and I’m in heaven. ANyways it got me thinking? A yandere and plushies?? 
Warnings - NSFW, non con, dub con, Tamaki is a voyuer without your consent, Kirishima is sweet but deluded, Bakugou is mean but caring, and Dabi is straight up AwfulTM
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KIRISHIMA
Would be so soft, notice how you have plushies littering your bed at home so he’ll buy you some. Even if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t have plushies crowding their bed, he’s still gonna buy them for you.
He likes giving them to you, thinks it’s romantic when he presents them with a bundle of flowers. You think it’s anything but,  yet still accept the stuffed animal begrudgingly because it’s so soft and cuddly. 
It becomes a comfort object, something you can’t seem to let go of. If you’re watching tv, the stuffed animal is on the couch too. Making food? The plushie is set next to you on the counter where you can grab it. At night-time it’s clutched in your arms, suffocated against your chest the very same way Kiri clutches you to his.
Getting fucked silly? The plushie is crushed in your arms as you cry, and Kiri thinks it’s so cute and it makes his heart clench. Something about it makes him go wild, maybe it’s how small you seem, how innocent with a stuffed animal wrapped in your arms as if it could protect you from his relentless kisses.
He loves you so much, he’s always buying you plushies. Kirishima catches on the fact that they’re a comfort object for you, something that you use to ground yourself when something stresses you out.
He always brings your biggest plushie to you when he’s gonna fuck you hard, like the kind, considerate man he is. It’s so big that you can wrap both arms around it while you sob, while he ruts into you like a wild animal.
Likes laying you over your plushie and watches you cry into it as he fucks you so good you’re screaming in ecstasy. Kiri especially loves fucking you early in the morning or late at night, turns you on your side and has sleepy sex while you sniffle and hold your stuffed animal.
He accidentally rips one of them one time while he’s fucking you, he got too excited and wanted to see your face as you came, tried to pull the plushie out of your arms and ended up ripping it in half.
You had cried so hard and he felt so bad, bought you ten more plushies and giant candy bar to make up for it. For the next few weeks he was so, so gentle with you, pushing down his primal urges to get feral and use you like a whore whenever he saw you being unwittingly cute and sexy as you went about your day.
Although, to be honest it’s not hard for you to be sexy. You bend over and he wants to rip off your clothes, bury himself into your pussy. You stretch to get a glass off a high shelf and he wants to lift you onto the counter, make you kneel so he can eat out your pussy. You literally walk across the floor and the big man is salivating at the sight of your breasts bouncing slightly underneath your top, wants to pull and suck at them until they’re red and sore. But like a good loevr, he holds himself back and only pulls you to the bedroom and treats you gently. For a few weeks at least, until he can’t take it anymore.
Then it’s back to rabid fuck-sessions whenever you do so much as breathe
If you upset him (please try not to), The plushie will get ripped out of your hands, discarded onto the floor. He won't let you grab it before he’s lifting you up against the wall, tearing off your shorts and sheathing his cock inside of you. 
When that happens, you have nothing left to hold but him. Kirishima doesn’t like getting upset with you, but deep down he really relishes the way you grab and clutch at him like he’s your lifeline. 
BAKUGOU
Doesn’t really think much about it, but maybe he sees a cute ad or something pretty in a store window and it reminds him of you. Probably he saw the plushie bought it for you cause he wants to see you holding it. 
Gives it to you, but doesn’t really think much of it after that. Thinks it’s cute how you had blushed when he pulled the silky soft stuffed animal out of the bag. You had been surprised, because usually Bakugou is buying you lewd outfits or lingerie, not cute plushies. You were honestly kind of grateful that you wouldn’t have to model your gift for the man; he always insisted you do with everything else he bought for you.
It doesn’t bother him that you leave it on the bed. Honestly, he doesn’t even think of it. But when he sees you tucking it underneath the covers like a little kid, he gets lost in thought.
Dude probably hadn’t even thought about kids, but seeing you be so soft and sweet to a inanimate toy had him fantasizing about the future with you. You would be a great mother, and he’d be a good father. 
And that’s how Bakugou ends up with a breeding kink. 
When he crawls over you the first night, groaning about making a kid that’d be so smart and strong and great, you panic. You don’t want a kid with him, he’s volatile and explosive and abusive, it’s a recipe for disaster. 
You beg and cry and plead with him to keep you on the pill, and you do to so sweetly and utterly humiliate yourself while doing so, and Bakugou can’t tell you no. So he promises that it won’t happen just yet.
But if you’re bad? He’s gonna hold you down and fuck into you so fast that you get dizzy, threaten to flush the birth control pills down the toilet. He runs his mouth, goes on and on about how he’ll fuck you until you’re swollen with his kids, how your tits will get so big and round and full of milk and he’ll suck and bite at them everyday.
After that threat, you try your hardest to always be good.
TAMAKI
Obviously is too shy to kidnap you just yet. The ravenette gets you one of those nanny-cam bears, one that has a camera inside without it being obvious.
He stutters as he gives it to you, ears bright red, shuffling his shoes and not able to meet your eyes. Says its because the little animal reminded him of you, that they’re his favorite and immediately bites his tongue after he admits that.
You probably think it’s cute, smile as he pushes it into your hands. You can’t tell that the poor man is almost cumming in his pants when his hands brush against your arm. You know he’s shy, so it’s not surprising that he immediately bolts as soon as he’s given you the stuffed animal.
A camera doesn’t even cross your mind, Tamaki too innocent and you too trusting. The stuffed animal gets placed in your armchair, the one in your bedroom that you sit in to read. Lucky for Tamaki, it faces your bed.
He watches you quite a lot, laying down in his own bed with his laptop on the nightstand. The man likes to imagine the two of you sharing the same bed, but can’t get far without blushing and covering his face with a pillow at the slightest dirty thought.
When you masturbate for the first time, Tamaki cries. He cries because he’d been watching you ever since you got in bed, had watched as you slowly kicked off your shorts and had cum the second you peeled your panties down. He cries because he’s overstimulated, unable to stop jerking his cock as he watches you pleasure yourself, the man almost numb and shaking as he orgasms for the third time in half an hour.
By the time you finish, Tamaki is blubbering, can’t stop watching, can’t stop pumping his overstimulated cock in time to your fingers plunging into your pussy.
He doesn’t turn his TV on anymore.
DABI
Is the type to get some awful, scratchy, over-filled abomination like the stuffed animals you get from the fair. It’s an ugly one, horribly deformed and badly sewn, eyes bulging and one of it’s limbs shorter than the others. 
Probably doesn’t think to give it to you until he’s headed home, knows it’s what couples do and thinks that maybe you’ll stop screaming when he touches you. 
He barely got his dick out one time and you had cried so hard you passed out. Now if he goes anywhere near you you’re immediately alert, wide eyes never leaving him. If he so much as touches you he has to be prepared for you to scream and cry and try to bite him.
He guesses that’s what happens when you kidnap someone.
Getting you a stuffed animal does not make anything better.
But Dabi’s tired of you refusing him, of you crying and being a little bitch. He’s been blueballed for the past two weeks, just because he was trying to be nice and let you adjust.
So he takes the deformed stuffed animal he stole and shoves it in your mouth. 
It muffles your cries while he grinds his dick into your sensitive walls, and really, that’s all he needs. You feel so good, Dabi doesn’t care that behind your makeshift gag you’re cursing his existence.
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notmrskennedy · 4 years ago
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Noticed
Spencer Reid x GN!Reader
A/N - Howdy! Here’s another little something from my drafts. It’s a draft and a half again so be gentle with it. Also, I’m touch averse and I would be so happy to find someone I wasn’t upset with touching. But c’est la vie! I hope y’all enjoy!
Summary - The touch averse agent starts getting touchy....
W/C - 2.5k
Warnings - none I think, but lmk if there is something
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If Morgan was being honest with himself, he thought you were dying. Or maybe ill. Or so feverish you’d abandoned every single principle you had. Because he’d been there that first day of yours, waltzing up from the coffee machine to see you nervously trailing behind Hotch. It was painful to watch, he remembers, so terribly nervous you’d envy the kid on one of his bad days.
He had smiled at you and stirred his coffee and remained optimistic that someone so obviously terrified would be a decent field agent. (You’d been decent and then some, especially in an interrogation room). There’d been one non-committal wave—distinctly reminiscent of a certain genius—and the first full sentence of, “I’m sorry, but I just don’t do the touching thing. Handshakes included.”
Every little touch plagues you. You’re six inches away at all times, lest someone accidentally bump into you or get the wrong idea that you might be willing to brush shoulders. There’s no friendly pats. No high fives. Certainly no hugs. Garcia is furious in her attempt to loosen you up—to no avail—but Morgan knows better than to push. Something makes you hate skin to skin contact and he’s not looking to share trauma stories with you. Not yet.
So this, Morgan thinks as he wanders into the bullpen while stirring his coffee, is a sign that you’ve lost your mind.
He watches as you carefully extend one palm to one Dr. Spencer Reid. Perched on the edge of his desk, you’re a regular fixture, just another cute figurine to add to the collection. It’s the end to some wild discussion he could hear in the kitchenette, full of flailing limbs and butchered sentences. Everyone always thought it was cute, if you stripped away how irritating it could be.
This is the point where you two are caught up in whatever moment you’re having, so much so that you extend an upturned palm between the two of you. Reid threads his hands through his hair, stunned at your peace offering. Or maybe an offering of something more than friendship. Morgan assumes its something more; not only because you have the softest grin he’s ever seen, but because your fingers are practically begging the kid to hold your hand.
Reid’s careful in how he asks his question—Morgan doesn’t know what it is, but he can just tell. The wide eyes. The scared contemplation. The are you sure parting the kid’s lips.
Grinning and blushing, you just wiggle your fingers. Murmur something that Morgan isn’t allowed to hear. Something only for Spencer. There’s surprise before he grips onto your hand, wriggling all ten combined fingers together. You giggle as you spin him around in his desk chair and get tangled up.
Dropped jaw and grinning, Morgan can’t believe you, so touch averse you, are willing engaging in such risky behaviour. There’s a weird few moments when he wants to remind both of you to wear protection in such endeavours.
And as he’s wondering if hands need condoms, the two of you let go and move on like nothing’s happened. You go back to punctuating your points with your flailing hands. Spencer goes back to distracting from his blush with paperwork.
Morgan goes to get more coffee, trying to stop imaging that you two were his kids, growing up without his consent. And maybe also the hand condoms.
#
It’s shortly after JJ’s wedding—about midnight as the cleaning crew are picking up the straggling drunks—both Hotch and Rossi notice. They’re leaned up against the bar, each smoking a cigar, watching a slightly tipsy you teach an awkwardly sober Spencer Reid how to swing dance.
It’s no secret that you and Reid get on like a house on fire, two nerds that couldn’t shut up about whatever weird ass shit was on your brains. Rossi never made much move to care. Hotch was too stressed to think about what the pair of you did off company time. Everyone, them included, imagined that what time you did spend together was three feet apart. In museums. Wherever. No one questioned what kind of weird nerd shit you did, especially stuff that they couldn’t really be bothered to care about.
Now, they’re forced to carefully consider the implications of how touchy you’re getting. With Reid.
He’s even more gangly and uncoordinated than normal, as Hotch and Rossi watch on, getting thrown around like a rag doll. It’s kind of adorable, Rossi thinks and shares a well meaning look with Hotch. The two of you would be cute and he’s hoping that you do get together. Rossi always knows about these things, even if Hotch is positive that you two are just friends. And as two professional gentlemen do, they made a bet.
Twenty bucks.
Your laugh—one that no one gets tired of hearing—echoes around Rossi’s whole yard, even into his house. Reid’s voice is about two octaves too high as you spin him around on his wobbly feet. You go from three feet apart to chest to chest and back again. Rossi remembers high school dances vaguely and Hotch absently thinks about Hayley’s old infatuation with Grease.
Rossi takes another long drag from his cigar, grateful for the indisputable proof that you two are shacking up. There is no way that two people so touch averse could be touching this much without prior exposure. The yard is a ruckus of both of your laughters, year after year of awkwardness falling off you both in sheets. They’re no denying you two shut in nerds are finally having some fun.
It’s warming both Hotch and Rossi’s hearts.
And their bet.
#
Penelope notices next. Who knew that such a simple interaction could leave her speechless? Stammering and stuttering over not even a full minute of insanity.
She didn’t know how she’d gotten sick, or what she’d come down with, but the only thing that was keeping her in her work chair was you. And the endless buckets of soup that you kept pouring down her throat. Without a case—thank god—for the last couple days, all that you’ve done is sit in the bat cave, keeping her and her soup warm.
It’s as you are finishing some corny ass joke that she thinks how sweet you are. How loving. Penelope’s love language has always been touch—she’s given too many hugs to count—but it’s taken her a minute to figure out yours. And as she stares into the chicken soup in her hands, she realises that it’s everything you do for her. Your love is literally palpable.
It’s in the bright keychains you bring back. Or the crazy pens. Or the way you always drive her home after drinking.
As she’s opening her mouth to tell you, tell you just how much she appreciates everything, when Reid pops his head in, whole body following. He’s got too much of a grin this early. But when he’s far enough into the room, he spreads his fingers out over your shoulder and squeezes. Says something about a case and you follow behind him with a wave of your hand at Penelope. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Like Penelope hasn’t been the one furiously trying to break you out of your shell. The predetermined first to get a hug in the office.
You’re still up and still waving and by the time she’s got her wits about her, she’s asking, “You let Reid touch you?”
The empty room and the closing door don’t answer.
#
JJ is nearly the last to find out. Well, your little touching relationship with Spencer has been the only topic of gossip between anyone for the last six weeks. They can’t believe they hadn’t picked up on the little bits of affection passed between the two of you.
Hand touches. Shoulder squeezes. Quick brushes. The mystical hug Morgan claims he once saw.
For the rest of the world, you and Spencer were nothing but friendly. Maybe even best friendly. To the team of highly trained profilers who had been friends with the pair of you for a combined 15 years, this was marriage material. This was you and Spencer screaming the pair of you had eloped.
You two crazy kids had to be together, but the team was left to sussing it out for themselves. Neither of you two would ever say anything, never give anything up. But surely, the three of them—using Penelope would be cheating of course—could figure out when you two had started up. Because you had to have. There was no way all of this was just friendly.
And it isn’t. That much is clear when JJ gets a phone call from you while she’s looking a crime scene over for what feels like the gazillionth time. Some un-sub with the usual cocktail of daddy issues, anger issues, and a healthy dose of narcissism.
It’s rare you call anyone without good reason. You aren’t the type to just chat—everyone has speculated you got enough of that from Spencer. And once JJ says hello, you start bawling.
You’re sobbing and JJ has no idea what to do.
“Y/n, y/n,” she tries, hoping you’ll calm down enough to breathe properly. “You have to tell me what’s wrong.”
“It’s—it’s Spencer,” you hiccup. JJ can hear you sniffling into your sleeves. Can hear the blinkers go as you change lanes. “He’s not answering—not answering his phone. And he said he’d—that he’d call, but he hasn’t. And JJ something’s wrong.”
By the way your breath hitches and your sobs crackle into the phone, JJ knows exactly how bad it has to be. Spencer, however, is supposed to be following up a lead with Emily. Some paint huffer in his mom’s garage—nothing more than a routine witness report. She almost can’t believe something would go wrong.
“What happened? Where are you?”
“JJ,” you sniffle before the flood gates open again, “I can just feel it. Something’s wrong.”
JJ’s mind scrambles. As much as you played it off, you had a sixth sense. Every time, every countable time, someone got hurt, you knew before it happened. You had a gut for these things and JJ didn’t want to think about how bad this was going to be. How bloody. So she scrambles for her car and doesn’t wait for the other detectives to figure it out.
JJ’s halfway to the witness’s house when you make it there yourself. You’re still on the phone, doing a horrible attempt at trying to keep each other calm. You’ve traded the sobs for hiccups, thankfully. JJ can hear you climbing the porch stairs. She’s taking corners at 65 miles an hour.
Nothing seems fast enough when JJ hears the phone clatter to the floor and the shout of “oh my god, Spencer!”
Nothing is fast enough when you’re sobbing out, “You can’t die on me like this.”
Nothing is fast enough when JJ quietly but distinctly hears, “I love you too much for you to fucking die, Spencer Reid.”
#
Spencer Reid always thinks he’s the last to find out. He’s blunt and oblivious and thinks too much to just see what’s in front of his face. He was so sure they had all seen how in love he was, just how desperately he was clinging to the hope they wouldn’t notice. If they didn’t notice, you wouldn’t. Not while wearing the same sort of blinders he wore.
But once everything had come out? He was positive everyone else had known. That he’d come into work one morning and there would be a cake engraved with the words, “Congrats on Shacking Up!”
It never happened. No cake. No lights. No surprises. No one seemed to know or notice or anything. Spencer and you went on like nothing had changed—it really hadn’t anyway. He liked to laugh when you told him the two of you had been practically dating since the first time he’d offered to take you to a Korean film festival.
Two years later and he’s become very aware of you. And also the ache. All of the very dull and consistent ache in his body. Another scar to add to the collection, he bitterly thinks, out of anaesthesia enough to know that he’s in a hospital. That he’s been hurt. That someone’s holding his hand.
It’s calloused and soft and just perfectly latched onto his. A hand he’d waited to hold for too long. One that he’d be holding for the rest of his life.
Attached to the hand is you, sleeping haphazardly between his bed and a plastic chair. Your fingers are tangled in his, head rested on the crook of your arm and the bed. There’s too much of you curled up in a chair. It’s one of his favourite bits about you, just how dedicated you could be. How you were always there when he woke up and always would be.
He smiles and chuckles despite the pain in his ribs. You wake with a start, one startled gasp followed by a shuddery exhale as you realise again where you are. That nothing’s changed. That everything’s changed.
Through lidded eyes, he watches your eyes light up, matching you grin for grin. He watches the anger flash across your face for not even a second, and he knows exactly how bad you want to murder him for scaring you so bad.
Instead, you press frantic kisses to the back of his knuckles, message fully received. You missed him. You’d been terrified. You’d cried so hard, he can still feel the salt on your lips.
“Spencer,” you breathe, giving his hand one more kiss for good measure and pressing his knuckles to your cheek. “God, I’m so glad you’re alive.”
“I’m alive, y/n, I promise,” he whispers back. Hoarse and adorably okay. It’s one thing to expect to get shot going after un-subs. It’s another to get attacked by a PCP addled grandmother.
He wiggles a finger against your cheek. Even though he can’t see your red rimmed eyes or the dark tear tracts on your cheeks, he can feel the tear that pools on his finger. But before he can reassure you one more time, you shush him and tell him to get some sleep and that you’ll both worry about this later. Maybe over jell-o.
He grins.
#
The team, visiting the next morning, doesn’t have the heart to wake up either of you. Reid looks happy for the first time in—years—with you carefully curled into his side. Sure, there’s a scratchy hospital gown and some pesky lines overriding everything, but it’s cute. No denying that. Thank god you two knuckleheads are finally being open about it. Even if you’re sleeping.
Emily smiles to herself as she readjusts her sling. Morgan and JJ are trading exclamations of shock, while Hotch passes Rossi twenty dollars. You readjust and Reid’s arm moves to rest across your cheek. JJ isn’t subtle when she takes a photo, sniggering.
Emily is even less subtle when she snorts. “I guess I can finally let the cat out of the bag.”
Everyone perks up; she swears she sees Reid open an eye.
“Nearly six months ago, y/n drunkenly confessed to dating Reid. She’s a real wild card on tequila, let me tell you.”
“You knew?” Morgan screeches, “and you didn’t say anything?”
Emily shrugs, winces with her busted up shoulder. “Does it matter? Didn’t we all know?”
603 notes · View notes
unloved-cadillac · 4 years ago
Note
(angst prompt 1) 1,9 and 10
modern au
reader is dating mikasa but mikasa and eren have been hooking up for a while even before they started dating so mikasa breaks it off and the reader wishes them the best and luck even though they are really sad and stuff but eren and mikasa doesn’t last very long to him being an ass and mikasa realizing she doesn’t love him like that and she tries to win back the reader but it takes a lot of convincing
C/n: whoa SHIT! You have no idea how much I love this request. It’s the perfect angst. Thanks for requesting and I hope that you enjoy🤍
——————————————————————————
Is It Too Late? (Milasa x Reader)
Mikasa laid next to Eren as she smoked a cigarette. Her arm propped behind her head as she looks at the boy who made a home in her heart ever since she could remember. Eren had been there for her ever since she could remember and to have him in more ways than one made Mikasa the happiest girl in the world.
Her thoughts are pulled away as her phone rings. The caller id made Milasa frown but she answered it anyway.
“Hello?”
“Mika! Hi, babe. Listen I’m at the grocery store and I saw this cereal you like. Captain Crunch or something? What flavor do you like?”
Mikasa runs a hand down her face and puts out her cigarette. “Uh, why..are you getting me cereal?” She asks and you stop looking at the cereal. “I just thought you’d like it. I saw it at your apartment and I just wanted to confirm.”
“Don’t get me anything, Y/n. I’ll get it myself. I gotta go.”
“Ok. Bye. Lov-..”
Mikasa hangs up before you could tell her but you just sigh and put the cereal back on the shelf. This wasn’t anything knew. Mikasa and you had been dating for a few months now and even though she was the one who asked you out, she seemed to keep a lot of stuff to herself. She shuts herself out from you and hardly makes time for you. You thought it was just the way she is but if Armin’s Instagram stories tell you anything, she had time. Just not for you.
When you arrive home, you unpack your groceries and shoot Mikasa a text.
‘Hi babe. I’m making dinner tonight. Come over?’
You wait for her reply and even though she was active she didn’t reply to you as soon as it delivered. You shake your head and put your phone down and begin to make your supper. Five minutes later, your phone dings.
‘I’ll come over.’
~~~~
As you were cleaning up from dinner prep, a knock sounds on your door and you smile knowing who it is. Checking through the peephole, you quickly unlock your door and smile at Mikasa. “Hi. Come in.” You greet and she walks in. She doesn’t take off her jacket, something she always did when she came over.
Mikasa turns around and scratches her head. You pick up on her sudden mood and you start to get a bit anxious. “Mika? You good?” You ask as you walk to the kitchen island.
“No. Listen, Y/n. We need to talk.”
Oh no. You stop fidgeting with your hands and lay them on top of the counter. “Sure. What’s up?” Mikasa sighs and looks at you. That look..it was so empty. Nothing. It scared the shit out of you.
“We..shouldn’t continue this.” She motions between the two of you. “I’ve been seeing someone else and I just feel like what we have isn’t what I need right now.” She says and you lips part. Did she really just say..that she was seeing someone while dating you? “Mikasa. You were cheating on me?” You ask and she nods. You scoff and look down at your hands which were shaking.
“How long?”
“Ever since we’ve been together. Actually, way before that.” Mikasa tells you like it was so normal. Like it was a thing everybody does. “Is that why you hardly had time for me?”
Mikasa nods and you furrow your eyebrows. “How are you so calm about this?” You cry out and Mikasa looks up at you. “I don’t know. Y/n, Eren has been..” “EREN?! Eren fucking Yeager? Are you kidding me? The friend who introduced me to you? The person you told me that he was a “close” friend of yours? Well, obviously I was mislead about that.” You run a hand through your hair.
“Y/n, listen. I love you and I love him. But it just so happened that Eren and I seemed, I don’t know, better together?”
You look at her, dumbstruck. “How can you love two people at the same time? That’s ridiculous. I don’t even think you love me because if you did you would never have done this. We’re over now. You don’t need to defend yourself anymore. I hope that you’re happy with him.” You start to walk to the door and open it. “Y/n.”
“Please, Mikasa. Leave me alone.”
You tell her and she walks out the door. When she turned around, the door gets slammed on her face and she sighs. Well, at least she didn’t have to sneak around anymore. She lights a cigarette and makes her way to her car.
~~~~
Three months later, Mikasa laid on Eren’s bed as he played on his Switch. She looked at him and ran a hand on his bare chest but he clicks his tongue. “Mikasa move your fucking hand.” He shrugs her hand off and sits up and groans. “Now look. I fucking lost.” He rolls his eyes at her and wakes up rom his bed and heads to the bathroom. After he shuts the door, Mikasa leans up and sits against the headboard.
Normally when you and her chilled on your bed, you always had a limb on her no matter what you were doing. And you would always kiss her whenever you had the chance. She missed having that affection.
What is she doing? Why were you clouding her mind all of a sudden? It’s not like she still loved you...did she?
Mikasa opened her phone and went straight to her gallery. The stupid, funny selfies that you took of yourself were still there and she watched the videos you sent her. The one of the flock of cool birds flying over you. The cute dog you met. Everything.
Eren didn’t even send her pictures or a text apart from telling her to come over. She missed seeing your name pop up on her screen at 4am to tell her the weird dream you had. She missed how happy you made her feel. She missed those little moments with you.
She missed you.
Quickly putting on her pants and shirt, she headed for the door and left Eren to go back to the person she took for granted.
~~~~
When Mikasa arrived at your apartment, it was locked. Looked like you weren’t home and she wanted to call you but she was certain you had blocked her number. So she waited for you. And waited. And waited.
Finally, a car pulled up and you stepped out of it with..another guy. You smile and kiss the guy’s cheek and face your door to see Mikasa sitting there.
“Mikasa? What the hell are you doing here?”
“Can we talk?” She asks as she shoves her hands in her pockets and you roll your eyes. “The last time you said that I found out you cheated. So no. We can’t talk.” You say and shake your head. “Please, Y/n. I won’t take much of your time. Please.” Her voice trails off at the end and puts her head down.
The guy you came with whispered in your ear and you smiled. “Okay. I’ll call you later.” He smiles and kisses your temple. When the guy leaves, you cross your arms over your chest and stare at Mikasa.
“Who’s that?”
“Why do you care? What do you want, Mikasa? Why are you here?”
“Can’t we talk inside?”
“No.”
Mikasa sighs and bites her lip. “I..broke up with Eren.” She whispers and you chuckle. Mikasa did not like that. She hated how there was so much of mock in that chuckle. “And? What am I supposed to do about it?”
“No. You don’t understand. I broke up with him because I love you.”
You sigh out an irritated breath and shake your head. “Mikasa, you can’t do that. You can’t come here after three months expecting me to take you back because you “love” me,” you say with air quotes, “you cheated on me. If I did the same thing would you forgive me? If I betrayed your trust like that would you forgive me?” You ask and she walks to you.
When she reaches for you, you slap her hands away. “Y/n. Let’s just try again. I promise I’ll do whatever it takes to earn your trust back. I love you. I always have and I was so stupid for thinking that I loved Eren too. I’m an idiot. I’m a selfish, self-centered idiot who broke up with the only person who loved me for me.” Mikasa let a tear fall from her black eyes and you felt your heart stop. You never saw her cry before since she always wanted to be the strong one in a relationship.
“Every day for the past three months, I hoped you would call me. Not even to say anything sweet. Even if it was just for you to cuss at me, yell or anything. I just wanted to hear your voice. You made me feel so loved and all I did was throw it away. I just...want a second chance.” She looks deep into your eyes and you shake your head. In all the time that you knew Mikasa, she never showed emotion. In the words she was telling you now, it had more emotion in the entire time you dated her.
Mikasa holds your face and close your eyes. “Please, Y/n. You’re the only good thing in my life and I can’t go on without you. Please.” She kisses your forehead.
You slowly pry her hands away from your face and wipe your tears. “We can’t try again. We would only come back to square one. Arguing, bringing your cheating up again. Mikasa, it’s broken. We can’t fix it anymore.” You whisper and she shakes her head. “No, Y/n. Don’t say that. You’re my whole heart, Y/n. Just give me a chance. I’ll be better. For you, for us.” She rests her forehead against yours as she holds your hands.
It’s silent. The sounds of passing cars and rustling leaves filled the void and you couldn’t give an answer right now. So you pulled away and cupped her face. “Let me..think about this. I need time.” You whisper and she nods. “I’ll wait for you, Y/n.”
You let her go and head inside your apartment before giving her one last look. Maybe this could be saved.
——————————————————————————
“You’re my whole heart.”
🖤🤍Thanks for reading🤍🖤
-Caddy.
142 notes · View notes
blossom-hwa · 4 years ago
Text
Constellation - FELIX
The last week and a half has been hectic, to say the least. I don’t think I need to go into detail about why, but hopefully this story will bring back a bit of levity :) I’m really excited that it’s finally finished, and for a) the comeback and b) Felix’s birthday no less! Happy comeback, happy late birthday to the one and only Han Jisung, and happy birthday to the lovely marvelous wonderful Felix Lee, one of the best boys in the whole world! I hope you all enjoy :)
Pairing: Felix x fem!reader
Genre: fluff, angst, nature spirit!au
Word Count: 11k
You swear an oath to return your fallen star to the sky.
SKZ Masterlist | Whispers of Nature
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Felix’s head hurts. It really hurts.
Something liquid starts trickling down his hair when he tries to move, something that he’s pretty sure isn’t the starshine Donghyuck so loves to splash in his fellow stars’ faces. It’s much thicker. Stickier.
Where…?
Groaning slightly, Felix forces his eyes to flutter open slightly. Immediately a round of dizziness rushes into his head and he slams them shut, willing the nausea to fade away.
What happened?
Mentally, Felix starts going through everything he remembers doing tonight. Nothing much, really – he sent dreams to the children, shone in the Sky, mediated a squabble between a few younger stars, ran away from Donghyuck’s antics, then… falling?
Wait, falling?
His eyes snap open to cold air brushing his skin and dusky green dotting his vision. A stark horror starts to fill his mind, overtaking the growing pain in his head.
I’ve fallen. I’m on Earth.
Panic rises in his chest but he forces it down, if only for a few moments. He must’ve hit his head when he fell. That would explain the throbbing pain. He probably blacked out for some time – he doesn’t know how long, but the Sky’s light is already turning gray in the east so it must be near dawn by now.
If he weren’t immortal, he would be dead right here, right now. Felix gulps at the realization, sitting up slowly. His limbs work, even though they ache a lot. But even that pain can’t compete with the feeling in his head. 
Something shiny glints at the corner of his vision and he turns to see bright ivory ichor on the grass. He slowly reaches a hand to the back of his head and feels a sticky, wet lump. When he lifts his fingers to his face, smears of ivory glitter in the faint daylight.
By the Mother Earth and her child the Sky, how did I get into this mess?
For how long he sits there, trying to get a grip on the situation, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what to do – should he try to find people? Should he try to figure out a way back home on his own? Should he just lie down and wait and hope that the Sky will take him back tomorrow night? Why did he even fall in the first place?
A rustling of grass jerks him out of his spiraling thoughts and his head whips to the right. The throbbing intensifies and Felix watches in mute horror as someone emerges from the trees.
For several seconds that could be minutes or even hours, Felix stares at you and you stare at him. Terror adds to the growing pile of emotions in his head and he can’t even act on his instinct to flee because his body feels so tired and pained that it won’t let him move. The fact that you’re a human nearly sends him spiraling again but he forces his mind to cooperate.
Felix has seen many things from his vantage point in the Sky. War. Famine. Greed. Disease. Destruction. So many atrocities that humans have committed against each other and against those they deem different, inferior.
What would they do to a star?
Slightly more mobile, Felix scoots backward as best he can. His eyes remain locked on yours and he can feel himself trembling in your presence.
A being of the heavens, a child of the Sky and the night, trembling in front of a small human. The other stars would laugh if he shared this story with him.
He wonders if his powers still work on earth.
But for now, he doesn’t need to find out. For instead of pressing forward, you back away, holding up your hands in a gesture that does not scream danger to him. Curious eyes look at him with wonder and a little fear, but not enough to warrant harm. It is natural to fear the unknown, but thankfully for Felix, it looks as though you have not given in to the fear so much as to hurt him.
“I’m sorry for scaring you. My name is Y/N.” Your voice is soft, like the one he uses when comforting a startled moon rabbit. “I saw you were injured. Do you need help?”
Yes. Yes, he does. He needs a lot of help, but he’s not sure if he trusts you enough to rely on you.
You sit down, keeping a safe distance away from him, though Felix isn’t sure if the distance is for your safety or his. “You’re bleeding,” you say patiently. “I’m a maiden at a shrine not far away. If you want, I can take you there and clean your wound, then give you directions to wherever you’re headed.” A small, worried smile plays on your face. “The shrine is very deep in the forest, you know. You must be lost.”
Almost against his will, Felix nods. He is lost.
So very lost.
“May I take you to the shrine?” you ask again. “I can help you better there.”
Felix notices his muscles have untensed. He’s relaxed in your presence. He vaguely thinks he should be upping his guard, but the pain in his head has rebounded and the throbbing has turned sharper. He raises a hand to the wound again and his fingers comes back still covered in blood.
Ivory blood.
Hiding his hand is of no use but he does it anyway, heart dropping when he sees your widened eyes.
Dead silence reigns, broken only by the slight rustling of the leaves.
“Ivory blood?” you finally say, smiling tentatively. “It’s okay. At the shrine, we take care of many magical beings. We’ve had pixies, nymphs, a few fae, even a demon, once. Red blood, golden blood, black blood. I’ve never seen ivory before, but we care for all, so long as they show us no harm.”
The momentary panic cleared his head but now that he thinks you still mean no harm, Felix finds himself relaxing again. He nods sluggishly.
You come forward, touch slow and gentle against his bruised skin. You loop one of his arms around your neck, then support him with an arm around his. Step by slow step, you help him across the soft grass, deeper and deeper into the forest.
. . . . .
The bruises are easy to treat – a few dabs of cream, and you promise the boy in front of you that they will be good as new in a few days. The wound on his head takes more time. Ivory blood oozes from a nasty lump on the back of his head, and it takes a lot of water, a lot of flinching, and a lot of murmured apologies before it’s clean and bandaged.
“Done.” You finally give what you hope is a reassuring smile and begin putting away the bandages. “I need to go do my morning chores, but you can stay and lie on my bed awhile. I don’t think many people will come by here, but on the off chance that they do, they won’t hurt you. I promise. I’ll be back soon, probably around midday.”
He nods, luminous eyes staring at you with something unreadable in their depths. Even as you begin walking to your bedroom door, he doesn’t lie down on the bed. He’s still sitting as you close the door quietly behind you.
Your heart pounds as you rush down the hall, hoping the priestesses won’t scold you for being so late to your chores. They know your fascination with the forest, know the long walks you take every morning. Maybe you could just say you got lost in the sunrise? They wouldn’t hold that against you, would they?
Thankfully, no one comes by as you snatch a broom from the shed and begin sweeping the front of the shrine clear of dead leaves. Your stomach scolds you for missing breakfast but really, what’s a missed meal in the face of helping one of the lost?
Even if this lost boy is unlike any being you’ve ever seen before.
A lot of magical beings have strange-colored blood. That didn’t faze you. Fae, sprites, nymphs – golden blood runs through all their veins. Hell, you’ve seen black blood from the demon you helped that one time. Ivory isn’t so different.
But white hair that glows? Eyes as pale and silvery as the moon? You’ve never seen that before. As you finish the chores and begin walking back to your room, you puzzle over what the boy is.
He reminds you of something, but what is it?
Lost in thought, you bump into a heavy table full of small relics. But just as the curse leaves your mouth and pain starts blooming in your hip, a yelp from the sleeping quarters pushes all thought out of your mind and you run to your room.
You nearly smack into Priestess Jeon, the head priestess of fire, who’s standing outside of your room with a shocked look on her face. Peering anxiously into the room, you see the boy, looking scared but thankfully unharmed.
“Y/N.” She turns to you, not angrily, not fearfully, but with confusion. “Why is there a star inside your bedroom?”
It hits you.
A star.
Of course.
He is a star. It explains the glowing candlelit hair, the luminous eyes, the way he seems to exude the calm of night. That’s what he reminded you of – a night sky full of stars.
“A star,” you finally murmur. “I-I’m sorry, Priestess. I found him in the forest and he was hurt, but when I came back I was already late for chores and I saw no one around so I tried to patch him up as best I could and left him here to rest until I finished. I was just coming back to check on him.”
Out of the corner of your eye, you see the poor star’s gaze flicker from you to the priestess to the door and you feel terrible. He’s a star, one of the luminous children of the sky and night, being forced to face two impure human beings.
How did he even end up on earth in the first place?
Priestess Jeon steps forward slightly and your eyes rivet between her and the star sitting on your bed. She kneels down so that she is eye-level with the boy and beings to speak.
“Hello, little star.” You know the smile she has on her face – it was the one that persuaded you and your brother to stay, and you only hope it has the same calming effect on the star. “I am Jeon Jiyoung, priestess of fire, and one of the head priestesses of this shrine. We are a shrine, but we are also a home for the lost. We welcome all – nymphs, demons, fae. We have never hosted a star before, but it would be our greatest honor to do so. If you are lost, we will take care of you until you can return to the sky.”
“I don’t know how.”
Had it not been so full of anxious terror, the startlingly deep voice that the star speaks with could have belonged to a man. But all you can see is a scared boy in front of you. Cracked, soft, terrified, his words make your heart clench.
“Would our witch know anything about stars?” you ask. “She might have suggestions. Or maybe Changbin?”
“Perhaps.” The priestess stands. “Our witch is very skilled – she might know something. Changbin is a moon child, too. He might know or be able to ask someone how to return you to the sky,” she tells the boy. “But until then, little star, do not fear. The shrine is safe for you. Y/N –” she looks at you – “can I entrust you with caring for our star?”
“Me?” you squeak. “Aren’t there… shouldn’t one of the older maidens… I’m not –”
“Do not doubt your capabilities.” Priestess Jeon puts a hand on your shoulder, smiling gently. “Besides,” she whispers, “I think our star is a little afraid – naturally so. Since you found him, I think he will trust you the most. You have not given him any reason to distrust you, have you?”
Biting your lip, you shake your head. She turns to the star, satisfied. “Is this all right with you?” she asks him.
His pale eyes bore into yours, as though he’s seeing right through your soul. Trapped beneath his gaze, you cannot move until he nods slowly. “Yes.”
“Then it is settled.” The priestess claps her hands. “Y/N, you are excused from the rest of today’s chores. Take our star to the healing ward and check him for any more extensive injuries. He may stay there until he can return home.”
. . . . .
Felix lies awake for most of that first night in the healing ward. He doesn’t like it there. It’s too clean, too silent. He would have preferred sleeping in your room and he wishes the priestess had suggested it, but she didn’t and his shyness prevented him from asking.
Faint sunlight shining through the windows tugs him out of a light sleep the next morning. You come in just as he’s swinging his legs out of the bed.
“Good morn – oh.” You cover your eyes. “I’ll just… wait outside until you… put on a shirt?”
Confused, Felix looks down. Then he remembers that humans have strange rules about covering up their skin in the presence of others. “Sorry,” he mumbles, hastily fumbling for the shirt he was given yesterday.
After a light breakfast – the milk and the bread taste good, but not so much the sour, crunchy thing you say is kimchi – you take him on a walk in the woods to meet the witch.
“I don’t know exactly why she came here,” you explain on the way there. “She just showed up one day, pregnant, and asked for shelter. I think only Priestess Jeon knows truly what happened to her.”
Felix doesn’t know much about witches, but the one he meets is kind. She has a child, a young boy who has her hair and nose and eyes and who quickly takes a shine to Felix. His skin is a little paler than hers, though, and their smiles aren’t quite the same. Maybe those are traits from his father.
“I’ll be honest with you – I don’t know exactly how to return you to the sky.” The witch closes her book and Felix looks up from the cooing little boy you’re holding in your lap. Little fists grab onto Felix’s pants and he almost yelps in surprise, but the boy’s chubby cheeks and laughing eyes render him silent and he deals with it, even though it feels strange. You laugh a little, adoring gaze focused on the child, and Felix pauses at the love he sees within your face.
The witch holds out her hands to her child, who immediately (thankfully) abandons your lap and Felix’s ragged pants to enter her arms. “I do think there is a library in the moon palace where there might be more books on the stars, however. I’ll ask Changbin to help me find some. Until then, I will give you a potion that will help you adjust to life on earth. It will change your sleeping pattern, as well as prevent serious sunburns. I’ll also ask Changbin for one of his moonflowers – I think the moon’s magic will help keep your body stable.”
Felix nods, a little overwhelmed by the information and disappointed that the witch doesn’t know how to return him home, but thankful nonetheless. “Thank you,” he says, dipping his head in respect.
“Thank you,” you echo, standing up from the floor. “Do you know when Changbin will be around?”
“Not exactly,” she replies, detaching her child’s hands from her hair and settling him firmly on her lap, “but he’ll come soon. It’s almost that time of the year, you know.”
A dark silence falls over the small house, something you and the witch understand but that Felix doesn’t. Clearly something bad happened to this Changbin, and he isn’t exactly sure he wants to know what.
Then the child starts babbling and the spell of silence is broken as the witch focuses her attention on him and you laugh at his antics. “Thank you, again,” you say, looking fondly at the small family. “If there is anything you ever need from the shrine, simply ask. You do so much for us.”
A faraway look comes into the witch’s face. Felix wonders what she’s thinking of. “It’s no problem.” She smiles warmly, but with a tinge of melancholy that a less perceptive person might not notice. “Oh, wait.” Hefting her son onto her shoulder, she stands. “Would you give me one of your hairs? I will need it for the potion.”
Bemused, Felix reaches up a hand and plucks out a strand of hair.
“I know it’s strange.” The witch takes it with an embarrassed smile. “But this is a specialized potion, specific for just you, and these potions often need something from the person they will be given to. It’s to ensure that it will be effective on you.” She smirks. “Blood is often temperamental, so I don’t use it unless I have to. And I don’t feel like you would want to drink what used to be one of your nails or a sliver of your skin.”
Felix makes a face. He would not.
“I suppose we should take our leave now.” You bow slightly and Felix scrambles to do the same. “Thank you so much again.”
“Thank you,” Felix echoes, hoping his expression conveys the depth of his gratitude.
“The pleasure is mine.” The witch smiles, patting her son on the back. “I’ll bring over the potion sometime tomorrow.”
Then the boy starts crying, so you quickly leave the hut.
. . . . .
“I need to complete my chores,” you tell the star as you two enter the shrine. “Do you want to come with me, or do you want to stay in the healing ward until I finish?”
A slight grimace crosses the star’s ethereal face when he hears your second option. You’re not surprised by his choice to come with you, but you are surprised by his offer of help.
“It’s awkward just standing here, watching you work,” he mumbles shyly. “If I’m staying here for some time, I should at least learn to help out.”
So you fetch him a broom and teach him to sweep, then attempt to teach him to cook. He’s surprisingly good at sweeping – he even looks graceful while doing it, which doesn’t make sense at all – but he’s a terrible cook. You have a hard time stifling your simultaneous laughter and yelps of fear when he nearly cuts off a finger and sends carrot peels flying all over the floor.
In the end, you send him back to the healing ward with a plate of food and a promise to join him after you’ve finished serving the other maidens and priestesses. But by the time you enter the ward, he hasn’t even begun eating yet.
“Are you not hungry?” you ask, sitting on the bed next to him. “We can wait to eat until later, it’s not a problem.”
The blush that settles across his freckled cheeks is strangely adorable. “Um… no.” He holds up his chopsticks. “How do you…?”
“Oh.” You laugh. “It’s not hard. Let me show you.”
So the star learns to use chopsticks as quickly as he learns to use the broom – so not long at all – and within minutes, he’s carefully putting food into his mouth. Silence falls as you fill your stomachs.
“Do you want to go outside?” you finally ask, putting your plate on the floor. Then you look more closely at his face and see pale pink beginning to burn on his skin. “Wait, are you already burning?” You touch his face, alarmed.
He shrugs, leaning back slightly. “I don’t know,” he mumbles. “Is… that what the pain is? Burning?”
“You felt pain?” you half-screech. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
He shrugs again. “I thought it was normal?”
You sigh. “Have you ever been out during the day?”
The nonplussed look he gives you is enough of an indication of how dumb that question was. “I’m a star,” he says by way of reply.
“Sor-ry.” You roll your eyes, embarrassed. “Sunburns are common if you stay outside in the sun too long – the heat literally burns your skin. But normally you don’t get burns from walking under the forest canopy. I guess your skin is just extremely sensitive.” You rummage around a nearby drawer, pulling out a bottle of aloe. “Can I put this on you? It’ll soothe the pain.”
Swallowing, the star nods assent. You sit next to him and begin applying the gel to his skin.
“How do you have freckles if you don’t see the light of day?” you mumble, brushing gel over some of the tiny dots on his face. They don’t really look like freckles – they seem to have a pattern, and they’re a little darker – but that’s the best word you have for them.
“Freckles?”
There it is again – that lost, confused expression that he had while holding the chopsticks. He doesn’t know what freckles are.
“Uh, freckles.” You wave your hands somewhere near his cheeks. “The… dots? The dots on your face?”
His mouth forms a little ‘o’ as he realizes.
“Yeah.” You drop your hands. “People are either born with them or get them from the sun. Most of us get them from staying outside too long, it’s not a commonly-born trait.”
“I didn’t get them from the sun,” he mumbles. “They’re… the constellation I’m part of.”
Silence falls again as you put away the aloe. “By the way,” you finally say, trying to start conversation, “may I know your name? I don’t think you ever said anything…”
The star swallows. “I’m sorry. In the sky, we don’t usually give our names to anyone but ourselves. Because to give our name to someone like a fae or another trickster race would be disastrous.” He smiles a little. “You’re not a fae and you’ve been kind, but I don’t think I can give you my name just yet.”
You give him a small smile with the last dab of aloe. “Don’t worry. I know the weight of a name.” Happy memories bring a smile to your face. “We had a fae here once – his love brought him in after he fell out of a tree, trying to impress her.” You roll your eyes. “The priestesses had to give up their names and all of the maidens’, too, to know the fae’s and his lover’s. It was worth it, though.” You close the drawer, smiling at him. “The fae and his love are some of our favorite and most frequent visitors now.”
“A fae,” the star murmurs. “You have a lot of strange visitors.”
“We do, but it makes life interesting.” You lean forward. “Did I tell you about the demon?”
He shakes his head slightly. “You mentioned it, but didn’t go into detail.”
“Well, let me tell you, he had the wildest blood pressure.”
And so story after story turns afternoon into evening, the light outside the window dimming until you have to light a candle and one of the maidens comes in with food for you too. Guilt-stricken, you apologize for not cooking, but Jiae simply waves you off, reminding you that your duty is with the star and a few missed chores are nothing. Felix doesn’t speak much, but his features begin to relax as the hours tick by and that’s all that matters, really.
The candle has almost burnt out by the time you decide you should leave. “I think it’s time to sleep.” You can only just see the faint outline of his face in the flickering candlelight, but his hair almost glows in the dark while his silvery eyes still bore into yours. “I’ll go now.”
Fear and another indecipherable emotion flash across the luminous eyes as you stand and you stop. “Do you need anything?”
The star swallows hard. “I…” He takes a deep breath. “It’ll sound stupid.”
“I’m sure I’ve heard stupider things. After all, I grew up with my brother.”
A small smile twitches at the star’s lips, but the uncertainty remains on his face. Patiently, you wait, and finally, he speaks.
“I don’t like being alone here,” he admits almost shamefully. “Could I stay somewhere where there are more people?”
That throws you for a loop. Where could he stay? In someone’s room? Maybe with Jeongin or some of the other messengers? But their quarters are all the way across the shrine grounds…
“You could stay with me?” you offer. “Do you want to go to my room or stay in here?”
A look of relief passes over the star’s face. “… Your room? If that’s alright.”
Hopefully the priestesses won’t scold you for this.
“Of course. Come on.” You take him to wash up first, then lead him to your room. He follows behind you so soundlessly that you look back sometimes, half-expecting him to have vanished. He’s always there, though.
“Take the bed,” you order, spreading out a blanket on the ground for yourself. Felix immediately begins to protest, but you hold up a hand. “You are the guest, and you are injured. Take the bed. Don’t argue.”
He takes the bed.
Satisfied, you lie down on the floor, pulling the blanket around you. Then another one drops on top of it.
“It’s too warm,” the star’s voice rumbles. His silvery eyes, peeking over the side of the bed, dare you to argue.
You sigh but smile. “If you say so.”
And so you fall asleep.
. . . . .
Several weeks pass, and Felix becomes more comfortable with the shrine. Trust is something hard to give and easy to take back, and he vacillates between the two as he explores the world little by little. You seem understanding, though, never showing impatience or annoyance with his periodic silences. That comforts him.
Life goes on. He settles into a routine, and as the days go by, Felix starts taking your presence as a comfort, rather than something to be viewed with suspicion. A month later, he feels comfortable enough to tell you his name.
“Felix,” you mumble. His name catches on your tongue, but he likes the way it sounds from your lips.
A flash of doubt courses through his body. “Please don’t give it out so easily.” Felix’s eyes beseech you. “I must return to the Sky.”
“I won’t.” You squeeze his hand gently. “I promise.”
The witch comes by with Felix’s potion after the first week and he can finally go outside. The other maidens and priestesses make him nervous at first, so you only take him deep into the woods to sit in silence.
Sometimes you talk. Sometimes you don’t. At first, the silences are awkward, but they later turn warm. Comfortable. You bring a pad of paper and sketch things when it becomes quiet. Felix likes to watch you draw, fingers moving smoothly along the pages and etching flowers and grasses and trees onto the paper. The silences are almost as pleasant as talking.
But when you talk, Felix is reminded by how nice your voice is. Soothing, sweet, kind. It washes over him in gentle waves and calms him like the starshine used to. Now, he’s too far away from the Sky to feel the starshine as much as he used to, but it’s okay. Your voice and your stories are good substitutes. They help him feel at peace.
One day, you bring a different book with you on the walk into the forest. It’s not your rough sketchbook. This book has tattered pages and a heavier cover embossed with faded golden characters. You stop him at the edge of a sparkling pond, right under a large willow tree that drapes over the water.
“What’s that?” Felix asks, pointing at your book. He can’t read the words on it.
“It’s a book of stories,” you reply, opening it up. “Since I’m running out of stories to tell you about the shrine, I thought I could read you some instead.”
You read to him for hours, stopping only to pass over some bread you packed for lunch, and Felix loses himself in your voice and the stories you tell. Witches, dragons, pirates, brave princes and princesses – he revels in every tale.
Being the star of everlasting childhood, he always knew humans had the ability to come up with these fantastic stories. But too many lose that ability as they grow older and their innocence slips away. It’s been a long time since Felix has had a reminder that people are still born under his star, born with the gift to remain a child despite their age.
The Sky has darkened by the time you close the book. Felix pouts a little when you say it’s time to go, but the firm expression on your face convinces him to stand.
“The forest isn’t safe at night,” you explain on the way back. “Daylight may keep the dangers away, but once the cloak of night falls, the sprites like to come out to play. Han isn’t here and I think Chan had to visit another forest, so we have no guarantee of safety right now. If you’re lucky, the sprites will leave you alone, but you’re a star. That’s strange enough. Better safe than sorry.”
“Who are Han and Chan?” The names are unfamiliar on his tongue.
“Chan is the guardian of this forest, and Han is the fae I told you about.” You grab Felix’s hand to pull him around a large tree root. Your skin is rough, but it feels so right against his. “Han is not the fae’s real name. Chan is, though. He’s protected by the magic that binds him here, so I can tell you his name. Han isn’t as safe.”
Felix likes your touch. Your hand may not be soft and white like a star’s, but it’s comforting and gentle in its smooth roughness and he trusts it.
Your voice pulls him back to reality. “But anyway, if you’re so put out by story time getting cut off,” you laugh, “I can teach you to read, and we can try to read together tomorrow. All right?”
Blushing slightly, Felix nods. “All right.”
. . . . .
Changbin finally arrives several weeks later, eyes hollow and reddened. They regain a little of their normal sparkle when you wrap him in a large hug, burying your head in his neck. His expression turns to one of wonder, then respect as he meets your star for the first time.
Felix is too starstruck at the sight of a moon child to say much, only wordlessly handing over a strand of hair for the witch and taking the moonflower necklace Changbin hands him. You tease him about his pink cheeks after the moon child closes the door.
“I’ve just never met a moon child before,” Felix grumbles. “He’s the son of the goddess I serve!”
Rolling your eyes, you push him out of the room to get ready for bed. The two of you settle down in comfortable silence after you blow out the last remaining candle, and you’re on the cusp of sleep when Felix mumbles something.
“Hmm?” you mumble.
“He didn’t look lost,” Felix whispers to the dark. “Changbin, I mean.”
Confusion shakes you awake. “Lost?”
“Priestess Jeon said this shrine was a home for the lost.” Felix rolls over in the bed. “I… just thought he didn’t look very lost. He looked quite sure of who he was. Where he was.”
Sympathy and sadness fill your heart, and your mouth twists into a small frown. “Changbin found this shrine after he lost someone very precious to him.” Your throat closes up, just remembering his story. “She was his world, for a while. When he lost her, he lost a part of himself. That’s when he found his way here.”
Contemplative silence fills the room.
“When were you lost?”
Under the bright rays of the sun, you don’t think you would be able to tell Felix your story. Allowing him to see the terror and joy and desolation of the memories on your face would make you feel far too vulnerable in the daylight. However, the darkness of night cloaks your expression and comforts you.
So you tell Felix of your manipulative and abusive father, leaving out the worst details but keeping enough that he realizes the gravity of your situation. You talk about your mother, the woman who tried to shield you and your brother from the worst of it but ultimately succumbed to sadness, illness, and injury.
“We left on a particularly bad day,” you murmur. The night hides your face, but it feels like Felix can still see the tear making its way down your face. “It was night, and our father had just gone to sleep. Jeongin and I just ran for it. We couldn’t stay any longer.”
Half-starved, you eventually found the shrine. The priestesses took you in, fed you, and allowed you to stay.
“Jeongin likes being a messenger. I like being a maiden.” You blink the tears away in favor of a smile. “We’re happy. I think I’d be happy here for the rest of my life.”
“What about Jeongin?” Felix asks.
Your smile turns wry. “He likes being a messenger. He gets to travel a lot. And if I’m not mistaken, he’s found a special someone already.”
“What?” Felix sits bolt upright, his silhouette dark against the window full of stars. “Who?”
You snicker. “I’m not sure,” you reply truthfully. “But I think – I think! I’m not sure – she’s the nymph in our wishing well.”
Felix falls back onto the bed with a soft whumph. “I’m so going to tease him tomorrow.”
“You’re terrible.” You sit up in the darkness, fixing him with a mock glare that he can’t see. It’s teasing, though – if there’s anything you’ve learned about your star from the past few months, it’s that he has a sense of humor. “What happened to being so solemn and sober in the beginning, huh?”
He rolls over. “Tch. I’m the star of everlasting childhood. I can be however I want.”
“… Everlasting childhood?”
A sad smile settles on Felix’s face. “Yes.”
“Isn’t that just immortality?”
“Not quite.” His silver eyes shimmer into yours. “You can age, but still be a child forever.”
You lie back down. All you say is, “I see.”
An idea begins brewing in the back of your mind. All this time, you’ve been choosing random stories to read Felix from the shelves of the shrine’s small library, but now you think you know one that he’ll enjoy for sure.
It’s one of your favorites, after all.
. . . . .
The next day, you’re buzzing with excitement, to the point that you drag Felix away from his breakfast to the tiny library in the shrine. When he starts complaining that you took him away from food for a dusty book, you just laugh. “I think you’ll like this one,” you grin.
That afternoon, after chores, you read to him the tale of Peter Pan under a shady tree, warm sunlight dappling through its leaves. It’s a children’s story, full of mermaids and pirates and young boys fighting, and it’s a little overwrought, but even so, Felix falls in love with it. He falls in love with John and Michael and their exploits with the Lost Boys. He falls in love with Peter Pan and his rivalry with Captain Hook. But most of all, he falls in love with Wendy Darling, the girl who trusted in her innocence and ability to fly.
Wendy reminds him of you, Felix thinks. Mother-like girls, caring for the lost souls around them without a thought for themselves. With a pang, he thinks of all that you’ve done for him during his time on Mother Earth.
He can see why you thought he would like the story, as the star of everlasting childhood, the star of those who stay young at heart for their lives. Peter stayed young forever, literally. But Wendy’s spirit was passed down through the generations of girls after her.
There’s one line he loves, one line that doesn’t have too much real meaning (they’re just directions, after all), but that resounds deeply within him, for some reason. It’s when Peter tells Wendy where Neverland is.
“Second star to the right, and straight on till morning.”
It’s childish, really. A bit stupid. Where is the first star to the right? How can one figure out the second star Peter speaks of? And depending on when you start out, how can the distance ‘straight on till morning’ be the same for all those who journey there?
But it’s the simplicity of thought that rings with Felix. The pure, innocent certainty of Peter Pan that he will find Neverland again and again, based on such minimal direction.
It makes dreams seem so direct, so simple, so real.
It gives him the hope that he’ll be able to return to his home in the Sky.
. . . . .
It’s a peaceful day when things begin to fall apart.
Felix is reading, his deep voice stumbling and uncertain and beautiful as he works his way through Peter Pan on his own. You’re taking advantage of the time to sketch, lulled by the errant rhythm of the star’s halting words. You haven’t picked up your sketchbook in some time, what with helping Felix adjust and all, but now that he’s picked up a penchant for reading, it’s nice to go back to one of your older hobbies.
Mina is the one who finds the two of you in the clearing, sun shining warmly through the trees. You look up, ready to greet her, but a frown slides over your face when you see her panicked expression. “Mina?” You stand. Felix stops reading. “Is something wrong?”
“Our witch,” she says quickly. “She wants to speak with you.”
It’s with a racing heart that you enter the shrine and see the witch waiting for you there. “Y/N,” she greets, kindly but hurriedly. There’s something terrified in her eyes – however, they’re steel. Whatever she’s decided she’s going to do, she’s set herself on it. “I’m leaving for the war.”
“War?” Felix echoes, eyebrows furrowed.
“There is a battle in the west,” the witch explains. “I’m not going to fight. I’m going as a medic. I’m letting you know now because I know the star depends on my potion, so before I leave, I’ll need several more hairs to lay in a supply. Changbin has the instructions to make more, if I don’t come back in time.”
Everything’s happening too fast. Just moments ago, you were sitting in a grassy clearing without a care in the world. Now you’re being told that one of your favorite people is leaving for a fight you can’t even see.
There’s no convincing her otherwise, though. You’ve seen the set in the witch’s eyes before. It was there when she arrived at the shrine, pregnant and on the brink of exhaustion. It was there when she gave birth.
You don’t know why this war means so much to her, but that’s not for you to know unless she explains. So you only nod. “I wish you luck.”
Felix echoes the sentiment, but as the two of you dress for bed, his expression remains pale and uncertain. You ask him if something’s wrong.
“I’m… I’m just wondering if I’ll ever go home,” Felix whispers.
With that short sentence, something in your heart breaks. You sit on the bed next to him. “I’m going to give you a hug,” you state.
Felix nods.
You squeeze him between your arms, patting his head until it falls limply onto your shoulder. His shoulders shake a little. “We’re going to get you back,” you whisper, stroking his hair. “If you don’t believe anything else, just believe this. You will go home.”
Felix sniffles, though the tears aren’t coming yet. “I know it’s selfish, but… why is she leaving?” he mumbles. “I just want her to stay and just work on a cure. I know she can’t, but…”
A sigh leaves your lips. “Our witch works in strange ways,” you say heavily. “She has a lot of secrets. She doesn’t say a lot about herself. But she does have a large heart. One thing I can say is that she wouldn’t have left you if the war wasn’t so important to her. She cares about you. She cares about everyone she helps. It would have been a very difficult choice for her to leave.”
The tears start falling, soaking into your shoulder. You huff a small breath, holding your star tighter. “Trust in her and trust in me. Or, if you can’t, trust in Changbin. He’s a moon child. He knows things that we don’t, and he isn’t completely through searching his mother’s library. We can find a way.” You lift Felix’s head out of your shoulder, making him look you in the eyes. “We always do.”
(You fall asleep in the bed that night, arms wrapped tightly around Felix’s small body. When you wake up, he’s turned around, one arm draped over your shoulders, breaths puffing softly onto your face. Tear tracks stain his cheeks.
You hold him until he wakes.)
. . . . .
The witch leaves quickly, dropping off her child at the shrine the next day with Felix’s supply of potion. As he watches her disappear into the forest, Felix can’t help feeling like the last thread of hope he had is about to snap.
He asks if you can stay at the shrine that day. Reading by the pond is relaxing, but he needs something to keep his mind from drifting. He needs chores, messages, something to do that’ll occupy himself.
“Of course.” You smile, squeezing his hand in the gentle way that reassures Felix’s trust in you. “Come on, I’ll teach you how to actually cook. None of the disasters from before,” you tease.
Felix feels his face grow hot with embarrassment. He smiles, though, in the wake of your sparkling eyes.
He’s still terrible in the kitchen. Bowls clatter to the ground, knives draw cuts on his pale fingers, and more than once you have to rescue a pot from charring itself on the stove. But it’s fine. Everything’s fine. The other maidens only laugh and smile, kindly helping him wrap up his fingers, finish cutting the carrots, and pick up the bowls scattered on the floor. They eat his bland food without complaint, telling him he’ll do better next time.
And for all those hours in the kitchen, you don’t leave his side. Not once.
So the days in the forest turn to days in the shrine, with Felix finding every little thing he can do in order to keep his mind away from the Sky. When he feels himself wavering, feels himself becoming jaded or hopeless or depressed, you nudge his side or hold his hand or call his name, and he comes back. He feels hope.
(You told him, once, to trust in you and the witch to get him home. And if he couldn’t, he could trust in Changbin.
You don’t know that he would trust you over the other two combined.)
The stories don’t stop, of course. He trades happy memories with you while sweeping the floors, tending the gardens, and washing the clothes. Every night, you read to him from another book, or you sketch by candlelight as he works his way through another few pages of Peter Pan on his own.
Your presence comforts him, wraps him in warmth that reminds him of starshine streaming down his skin. Felix knows that when (if) he leaves, you will be the one he misses the most.
Still, he has to go. He has to return to his home, the Sky. Mother Earth may be kind, but she isn’t his home. He isn’t meant to be here. It’s unnatural, his new sleeping pattern, the way his skin has slowly darkened over time. And though he revels in the sunlight, loves its caressing warmth against his bare arms, it isn’t meant for him.
The sun is meant for Mother Earth. The moon is meant for his Sky. The sun and its warmth weren’t made for his pale skin and silver eyes.
Which is why when Changbin returns, pressing a heavy, ripped book into his hands, Felix feels his heart soar and drop at the same time. He stares at the tome, unable to comprehend its weight between his fingers.
“There’s a spell inside that will help a fallen star,” he says, “one who has fallen due to a mistake of the universe, not one who fell of their own misdoings.” Changbin looks Felix steadily in the eye, dark eyes boring into silver. “This was not you?”
Felix racks his mind for anything that could have caused him to fall. He comes up with nothing. “No,” he answers.
The moon child nods. “There isn’t much to it. We need your blood. There are herbs in the witch’s home that she has given me access to, and we can get the rest from the garden here at the shrine.” Changbin’s gaze slides to you. “We also need the blood of one who cares for him. One who will be willing to sacrifice a day of their life for his return.”
It’s clear who he thinks that person should be.
A lump grows in Felix’s throat. It all rests on you. He wants badly to say something, to ask you if you will, but he can’t. You’ve done so much for him already.
He doesn’t have a right to convince you to do more.
Silence seems to stretch for an eternity as your gaze shifts between the moon child and the star. Felix doesn’t know what you’re thinking – your face, for once, is unreadable.
Then you nod. “I can do it.” You swallow hard, like something hurts, and say it again. “I’ll do it.”
Felix doesn’t miss the glance Changbin sends you, full of something he doesn’t understand. A prickle of uncertainty grows in his heart, but then the moon child is nodding, moving on to something else. “The spell can only be cast on the sixth full moon of the year,” he says.
Next to him, you make a small noise of surprise. Felix feels like he’s been punched in the gut.
The second full moon has just passed. There are only four left to go.
On one hand, he’s soaring above the clouds in excitement, elated that he can return home so soon. On the other, his heart is dropping like a stone, upset that he has to leave so quickly.
“Okay,” you finally say, breaking the silence. “That’s good.” You turn to him, a smile on your face. “You’ll be home soon.”
Your smile is genuine. It says so much, and Felix knows you truly are happy for him. But after all these months of standing by your side, he can see the underlying emotions conflicting beneath the surface of that smile.
“Yeah,” Felix breathes, unsure what else to say. “Home.”
His home, the Sky.
. . . . .
It’s easy to avoid Felix for the next day. You disappear into the forest with Changbin, citing the excuse of practicing the spell that you have to cast to bring him home. It’ll be boring, you say. He should just stay back at the shrine and maybe talk with Jeongin. You’ll figure it out.
As you walk to Changbin’s small home, he gives you a sidelong glance. You stubbornly don’t return it because if you do, he’ll see the truth lurking in your eyes.
And the truth is, you don’t want Felix to go.
You are happy for him, you truly are. When Changbin brought in the book, seeing that light flicker on in Felix’s eyes gave you so much joy in that moment that you almost felt like crying in happiness.
Then you realized that if he was going home, he was going to leave the shrine.
You still wanted to cry, but for a very different reason.
It’s stupid, you know that. Obviously, if Felix was to return to the sky, he would have to leave you behind. Just as stars don’t belong on earth, humans don’t belong in the sky. You don’t even think you’d want to live in the heavens, at least not forever.
But for the past months, you’ve managed to push that thought to the back of your mind. Felix is here, you told yourself. He’s here now, and that’s all that matters, isn’t it?
Clearly, it isn’t.
Everything happened so fast. It was like whiplash. One day, the witch was leaving and Felix was crying in your arms over the thought of never returning to the sky. The next, Changbin had found the book and there was a way to send your star home.
It happened too fast.
You’re being selfish, you know. Even though the sun is kind and the Earth welcomes him, this isn’t his home. He belongs in the sky, with the moon and the sun and the darkness of night. He doesn’t belong to the tainted impurity of the Earth.
And yet your heart doesn’t want him to leave.
“Copper for your thoughts?” Changbin pokes you with the book when you zone out for umpteenth time. With a jolt, you come back to the present, staring blankly at the sheet of paper in front of you. Written on it in Changbin’s neat scrawl is the phonetic translation of the symbols in the book.
You chew on the inside of your cheek. “Sorry. I’m… tired.”
It’s a lie if you’ve ever heard one, and the moon child knows it too. He puts the tome down and looks at you expectantly.
“What?” you snap, feeling cornered.
There are times when it’s hard to remember how old Changbin is, times when he seems more like a friend your age than an ages-old son of the moon. Right now, he’s a mix of the two, posture mimicking a slouching teenage boy, but eyes piercing with wisdom.
“Something’s on your mind,” he states simply. “And I think it has something to do with the star.”
Felix. The star. Your star.
Yes, it has very much to do with him.
The words slip out. “I don’t want him to go.”
A lump grows in your throat after you speak those simple words, staring at Changbin as though he holds the answers to your dilemma. But you already know the answer, the only correct answer – you must let your star go.
The problem is, you don’t want to.
The moon child brings you close after that, books and translations forgotten in favor of soothing hugs and quiet tears. He doesn’t tell you to do anything, doesn’t tell you to talk to Felix or the priestesses or even to avoid them. He just embraces you in silence with hands that hold the wisdom of an eternity.
You cite a headache as your excuse to go to bed early that night, curling up in your blankets on the floor and burying your head in the pillow. It takes some time, but you’re starting to drift off just as the door slowly creaks open and Felix pokes his head in the room. Immediately, you pretend to be asleep.
Mistake.
The star pads in with quiet feet, then picks you up with gentle arms and settles you on the bed. You can’t even protest or he’ll know you’re awake, so you lie in smoldering silence as he arranges the blankets over you.
He falls asleep on the floor while memories of his gentleness squeeze tears from your eyes.
. . . . .
Felix knows you’re avoiding him. There’s no doubt about it – no matter how much you claim you need to practice the ritual with Changbin, there are only so many times that excuse can hold merit. And anyway, there’s no reason he can’t be there too.
He thinks he knows why. It might have something to do with the fact that when he returns to the Sky, he will leave the Earth behind. Felix isn’t so oblivious as to believe his departure will leave no impression on you.
He isn’t so oblivious as to believe it’ll leave no impression on him, either.
The Sky is his home. There will never be any doubt of that. But he’s come to love the Mother Earth too, much more than he used to. He’s come to love her greenery, her creatures, the gentleness and care she showers her inhabitants with. He’s come to love the shrine, the priestesses, the maidens, the messengers.
And he’s come to love you.
If he stayed longer, Felix thinks, he would want to explore this tentative love, this blossom of affection in his chest. If he stayed longer, he might be disappointed, but he wouldn’t be sad. At least, not all the time.
The stars lure him in, though. Sometimes, he pretends to sleep, but he’s just staring out the small window in your room at the darkened sky studded with lights. His friends, his family. His home.
But he won’t go home without making peace with you first.
It’s hard to corner you when you don’t want to be caught, Felix finds. You disappear easily, quietly slipping between trees or into unknown rooms of the shrine. Even when you’re in plain sight, you’re busy – sweeping, cooking, gardening.
Then it rains.
Felix doesn’t normally care for the rain. It’s cold and wet, heavy and about as far from the gentle lightness of starshine as it can get. But the clouds heeded his prayers, perhaps, because the rain gives him the chance he needs to finally get you to talk.
You’re glancing out the window when he walks over, as though hoping a miracle will stop the pouring rain. When you notice him, your eyes turn slightly panicked, and you move as though to leave through the door.
The words escape him before he can hold them back. “Please stop avoiding me.”
You freeze.
For several moments, his broken, soft voice hangs in the silence, expanding to fill the room and thickening until he thinks he’s suffocating under the muffling words.
Then you drop your head. “I’m sorry,” you murmur, voice thick. “Let’s go to my room.”
. . .
Silence falls again when the two of you are seated on the small bed. You look smaller than ever, hunched over slightly, hands entangling themselves in the sheets. Felix wants to gather you up in a hug, the way you always did with him, but restrains himself. It isn’t the best time.
“Why were you avoiding me?” he asks quietly, just to dissolve some of the tension. He’s pretty sure he knows the answer, but he needs to hear it from you anyway.
Your fingers curl tighter into the blanket. “You’re leaving,” you mumble. “I just…”
The silence hangs heavily once more.
“I want you to go home,” you finally say, looking up. The sky outside the window is still dark gray, pouring rain, but you look at it like there’s something beyond the clouds that only you can see. “But I don’t want you to leave. Does that… does that make sense?”
Felix nods, once, twice. “Yes,” he manages. “Yes, it does.”
“I needed time to get my thoughts in order,” you continue, turning your gaze back to him. “I thought avoiding you might be the best way for a bit. But I’m a coward, I guess. I just kept trying to hide, even after I knew what I thought.”
“Do you still need more time?” Felix prods softly. “It’s fine. We have…”
He stops himself. He was about to say you two had all the time in the world.
You don’t. You only have around two months.
“No, it’s okay.” You shake your head. “I know… I know myself now.” Sad eyes stare into silver. “What about you?”
Felix knows his answer. It’s on the tip of his tongue, and if he could just get rid of the lump in his throat, he’d say it. Rain pounds on the window, mimicking the dull throb of the thoughts in his mind. He opens his mouth with difficulty.
“I don’t want to leave Earth,” he says slowly. “I don’t want to leave you.”
Your fingers loosen slightly on the sheets, then clench them even more tightly.
“But I have to return home.” Felix breaks his gaze, his head lowering. “I don’t… I don’t belong here, Y/N. I have to go home. I want to go home.”
Belatedly, he realizes how childlike he sounds. He sounds like a newborn star, newly formed of the moon and the sky, scared and terrified of the expanse of space in front of him. Shame crawls up his pale cheeks.
Then he feels a tender warmth around his shoulders. The thin mattress dips as you shift, wrapping your arms around his body – since when was he trembling? – and bury your head into his neck.
“You will go home,” you mumble into his skin. “You will go home. I promise.”
“I wish you could come with me,” he chokes out. “But you wouldn’t, even if you could, would you?”
The sigh you heave is all the answer he needs. “No,” you murmur, pulling back gently. “I wouldn’t.”
There are no apologies. No “sorry” for your decision, no “sorry” for his. There’s no blame here. Just facts, ways of life, and decisions.
A stray strand of hair falls into your face. Felix pushes it back gently. “You have too much here to give up for me.” He smiles sadly, his hand falling to cup your cheek. “As I have too much in the Sky to give up for Earth.”
You nod slightly, fingers rising to touch the hand on your cheek. Felix basks in the gentle warmth of your roughened skin.
He doesn’t know who leans in first, exactly. The memory is slightly hazy. But when his mind clears, he’s pressing his lips to yours gently, warmly, sadly. Your fingers intertwine, falling to your laps, and Felix tries to memorize the feeling. To memorize the way your hand fits into his, the way your lips feel so connected to his.
Two months. He has two months left before he must go.
Two months left before he leaves this warmth behind.
. . . . .
You pass the days with as much levity as possible. You don’t speak of leaving. Neither does Felix. Every day, the two of you work together on your chores, traipse into the forest, sit together in the sunshine. At night, when darkness falls, you crawl into bed together and hold each other until the sun rises.
Morning turns to night far too slowly, but far too quickly. In the back of your mind, there’s always a little voice reminding you just how long you have left. One day passed turns into two, then three. A week turns into two. Two weeks turn into four, and then there is only one full moon left to pass.
The night of the year’s fifth full moon, the last you will share before Felix leaves forever, you sit on the steps just outside of the shrine. Your star’s hair glows in the bright moonshine, bathing him in pale light.
A lump rises in your throat. You swallow it away. “Wait here,” you say.
You come back with your sketchbook and a few pencils. “Can I draw you?” you ask.
Silver eyes softly stare into yours. He nods.
This isn’t just a rough drawing. It isn’t one of the half-baked sketches you’ve done in the forest. No, this time, you want to capture the sparkle in your star’s pale eyes, the airiness of his blinding white hair, the exact location of each of the starry freckles dotting the sky of his cheeks.
It takes several nights to complete, sitting under the comforting rays of the waning moon, studiously ignoring the voice in your head that keeps chanting two weeks, two weeks. You sketch and resketch, rubbing bits of charcoal away, until on the third day, the sun is beginning to rise, and you have a portrait of the star you love.
You don’t cry. You promised yourself when you decided to draw the portrait and you promised yourself again when Felix sat, eyes expectant and soft and warm and gentle and kind. No tears will fall during the last few days you have together.
Your eyes still sting. Your throat still chokes. But even as Felix leans in, pressing the gentlest kiss upon your lips, you don’t let a single tear slip down your face. Not today, not tomorrow, not the next day.
And then it’s time.
. . .
The night is perfectly clear. Deep blue, so deep it’s almost black, ripples across the sky. Stars dot the landscape. The forest is silent, save for a slight rustling of trees.
Felix stands in a patch of moonshine, pale light glinting off of silver eyes. His eyes close as you begin to read from the book Changbin places in front of you, chanting strange words as the moonlight grows brighter.
Your eyes begin to sting. Your fingers begin to shake. Your throat begins to close, and your voice grows hoarse. But you keep speaking, words unwavering, until the chant is almost over.
Changbin pricks your finger. A drop of blood falls into the tiny bowl, already half-full of crushed herbs and two drops of Felix’s silver ichor. He gives the mixture to the star. Felix drinks it.
A wave of dizziness blows through your mind. You close your eyes, feeling a tear slide down your cheek, as the sky takes a day of your life away.
A day of your life for your star’s return to the sky.
It’s worth it.
As soon as the dizziness comes, it goes, leaving your mind clear once more. You finish the chant, voice trembling. It’s over.
Come dawn, your star will be gone.
Changbin leaves quietly, picking up the heavy book and disappearing back into the shrine. For a few moments, you sit with your star in silence, cool grass tickling your skin.
“Wait here,” you whisper eventually. “I have something for you.”
It’s a simple gift that you lay in his waiting hands, a worn, well-loved book with a torn leather cover and faded gold lettering. It’s familiar, and the corners of Felix’s lips lift in a ghost of a smile as he takes it.
“Thank you,” he says, clutching the book. One shiny tear drips onto the cover.
“I know it’s your favorite.” You try to smile, but it’s too hard. “Keep – keep learning to read, all right?”
He only squeezes your hand in reply. “Give me a moment,” he murmurs. “I have something for you too.”
He’s in and out of the shrine in seconds, carefully cradling something between his hands. A crown of wildflowers and leaves, interspersed with several delicate moonflowers. The ghostly petals glow in the moonlight as he places it in your windblown hair.
“It won’t decay,” he promises. “Changbin helped. I made it, but he gave it the magic.”
It’s too hard to not cry and you bury your face in your star’s shoulder, dreading every second that passes. Felix’s arms automatically loop around your waist, thin and warm and strong. “Hey, look up,” he whispers, his soft breath caressing your ear. “Look up for me, Y/N.”
Shakily, you comply.
“See that?” He points, finger glowing in the moonlight, at a patch of the sky. His constellation.
You nod.
“That’s where I used to be,” he murmurs. “Remember Peter Pan?”
“‘Second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning,’” you recite, a shaky grin coming over your lips. “How could I forget?”
“Well, maybe I’m not the second star,” Felix says, pulling you close, “but I’ll always be there, all right? I’ll watch over you. You’ll know where I am, always.”
You take a breath. Nod. “Always,” you echo.
Little by little, as your quiet whispers and tiny laughs disappear on the wind, midnight begins to turn to dawn. Starlight fades, the sky turning from deep blue to pearly gray.
And as the moonlight disappears, Felix begins to turn translucent.
No, no, no, no…
Your heart races. Tears begin to pour down your cheeks. Felix looks as calm as ever, save for the slight panic in his eyes and the deep sadness etched in his face.
“Don’t forget me, Felix,” you beg, voice strained, words pleading. You try to breathe. “Please. Remember me.”
“How could I ever forget?” Your star smiles through the tears sliding down his cheeks. “You mean more to me than the earth itself.”
Minute by minute passes as you hold him, memorizing the weight of his body against yours, the warmth of his skin, the silver of his eyes, the gentle pressure of his lips on yours.
“I love you, Felix,” you whisper, even as his freckles begin to disappear. The tears roll down faster. “Truly.”
“I love you too.” Even his voice sounds thinner. You strain to catch the deep tones of his words, the slight rasp in his throat as it fades away.
For a second, his entire body disappears. You almost scream, tears streaming down your cheeks. “Felix!”
“Hey, hey.” He holds your hands tight, even as his fingers flicker in and out of existence. His silver eyes sparkle with unshed tears. “When you’re lonely, find me in the sky, yeah? I’ll always be there.” Your star smiles. “You’re never alone.”
You lean in desperately, lips crashing against his with terror and love and everything in between. His fading hands rise to cup your cheeks and you tangle your fingers with his, trying to feel everything about him before he leaves.
The sky takes him mid-kiss, and you’re left holding air.
. . .
They find you there after dawn breaks, silent tears streaming down your cheeks as the sun rises. Jeongin holds you close, saying nothing as he helps you back to your room.
You see the portrait of Felix you drew so many nights ago sitting neatly on the small nightstand. His smiling face stares up at you, starry freckles dotting his nose and cheeks, silver eyes glittering on the paper.
It hits you in the gut that he is truly gone, that your star has left forever.
(Jeongin catches you when you collapse to the ground.)
A week passes before you find the courage to speak to the sky. The moon is dark but the stars twinkle mischievously, throwing bits of light onto the grass.
Felix’s constellation glows, a silver map of his freckles sparkling in the sky. There’s a star, small but very bright, that wasn’t there before.
Your throat chokes, but no tears fall. The constellation that dotted Felix’s cheeks is now complete.
“Hello, my star,” you whisper. His flower crown sits on your hair, glowing in the dark. “It’s been some time, hasn’t it?”
Speaking to him hurts a little at first, stings a bit in the heart. You keep wanting to look over into his eyes of silver, see his pale hair glow in the moonlight. But as you talk to the constellation, imagining the freckles dotting your star’s cheeks, the lump in your throat fades, and you begin to smile.
A few tears fall that night, dripping onto blades of grass and your clothes, but not too many. Just a few. You talk of anything and everything, from new shenanigans to old memories to plans for the future. You promise him things, to love and honor him as long as you live, to stay a child, to remember the story of Peter Pan, even though the book has gone with him to the sky. You talk until your words are strong and the silences comfortable, broken only by the rustling of trees in the wind.
Wind wisps around your shoulders as you eventually stand, staring at the new star in the sky. It seems to glow a little brighter.
“I love you, Felix.” You smile up at the blanket of night. “Thank you, my star.”
The star glows even brighter. You can almost feel his presence by your side.
Second star to the right, straight on ‘til morning. I’ll be there, always – you’re not alone.
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voiceless-terror · 4 years ago
Note
20. “I can’t see anything!” for Jonmartin if you are so inclined. I so enjoy reading your fics.:)
Hello there! Thanks so much for the prompt! I also got a similar request from @balanced-to-a-tea, so this is for the both of you. Post Season Four, but Martin managed to disrupt Jonah’s ritual, and these are the consequences. Hope you enjoy!
“Martin, tell Tim I need that follow up as soon as possible.”
“Okay, Jon.”
Sometimes, it’s easier to play along. When his mother was deep in the throes of her dementia, they told him to stop correcting her, to stop asking what she remembered. There’s no use in making someone relive their trauma all over again, like a new and open wound.
Martin made that mistake with Jon.
“Love, Tim...Tim’s not here. You know that, right?” Jon’s brow furrows and those cloudy, unseeing eyes don’t blink.
“I- I don’t understand-”
“He’s...he died, Jon. Remember?” As soon as the words left his mouth he ached to take them back. It took all night to calm Jon down and even then he stormed off to their room, stumbling over unfamiliar terrain. 
He never really gets used to being blind. Mostly because he never remembers he is.
Martin had been in the other room when Jon began to read the statement; the familiar, gloating cadences alerting him to Jonah’s attempted ritual. He managed to wrestle it out of Jon’s hands, trying to hold it out of his reach. The look in his eyes was wrong, filled with a sort of desperate, primal need as he screeched and yelled until Martin grabbed that lighter- the one with the strange, twisting web design- and set the thing alight.
Then, he went quiet. And Martin watched in horror as his eyes went from that strange, bright green to a cloudy white and Jon collapsed on the floor.
He hasn’t been the same since.
It’s like situations...meld together, for him. Like the Eye lets him see some things, but only in his mind and never the right ones. Sometimes he’s back in the archives, playing at being Head Archivist. Martin will set him in a chair, put some papers in front of him. Bring him tea. He hates these times worst of all. Because it means soon, he’ll have to feed him a statement. And Jon hates statements now, but he needs them all the same. 
When things get bad, he sits him on the couch. Makes sure he’s comfortable, ignores his confusion as Martin starts to read a statement aloud. He holds down his hands when they inevitably move to claw at his eyes and cover his ears. But soon Jon settles and listens, like a child sitting rapt at a campfire while someone narrates a ghost story. He comes back to himself, remembers where he is. Apologizes, goes quiet. They get a few days of companionable grief- a sadness that comes with a shared history like theirs. Jon gets used to the cottage again and doesn’t flinch at the touch of Martin’s hands. It’s nice. And then it starts all over again.
Jon tries to light a cigarette and almost burns the house down. Martin doesn’t know how he found the lighter, tucked away as it is. And he doesn’t know where the cigarettes came from. Jon apologizes, face bewildered. “I didn’t mean to,” he stutters but Martin only sighs and tells him it’s okay.
Basira calls. No sign of Jonah, no sign of Daisy. She’ll send more statements when she can. Is everything alright? How’s Jon?
Everything’s fine. Jon’s fine.
Today he finds him outside, standing in the sun. Jon likes the heat. Just a few weeks back Martin remembers the two of them strolling through fields, basking in the sun. But now the light shines on his silver strands and he’s crying, tears streaming down his face in two neat little lines. He looks beatific, like some sort of blinded saint from a painting or a stained-glass window. 
“I can’t see,” he weeps as Martin gathers him in his arms and takes him inside. “I can’t see anything.” When it's early days, Martin can remind him. Give him little nudges in the right direction and Jon puts the pieces together himself. It’s an odd, liminal space between awareness and illusion. Martin never quite knows where he stands at those moments. Jon pulls away and he feels desperately lonely once again. 
The house gets colder. Jon wanders. Martin makes tea and calls Basira and tells her everything’s fine. The cycle repeats.
Perhaps it's some sort of punishment. A divine retribution from the Eye. Martin heard enough of the statement to know Jonah’s machinations, what he’d been preparing Jon for. How much horror he holds with no way of releasing it. Jon makes no statements, records no follow ups. He just sits and lets Martin spoon-feed him these bits of knowledge that barely sustain him. The days he’s lucid remain few and far between now, each period of relief lasting only a day or two before he’s somewhere else entirely and Martin is alone again.
Maybe he should have let it happen, he thinks in his most desperate moments. What would the world be like? Would Jon still be Jon? Would he have him back, powerful and knowing but still him? He curses himself for such selfish thoughts. The destruction of the world is not worth the happiness of two people. Damaged and barely living, at that.
When Martin wakes that night, the bed is cold.
That’s not right, he immediately thinks. This is their only sanctuary, where even in his far away moments Jon clings to his warmth, desperate for any kind touch. Martin will wake with Jon’s limbs entwined with his and raven hair in his face. But tonight it’s freezing and the bed is empty. There’s no Jon to be seen. 
He calls his name. No answer. The words echo and the house is unbearably big, cold and uncomfortable. The window’s open.
When did he let the fog pour in?
It’s all over the house, in every room and every corner and he’s back, back there where Jon came for him and pulled him back but Jon’s not pulling him back this time, there’s just an endless sea of fog and he’s gone-
It should feel comfortable, though. Gentle. But it doesn’t, because Jon is out there somewhere, lost and afraid. And Martin’s going to find him.
There’s a beach by the cottage. There shouldn’t be. He follows the coast for hours, calling Jon’s name until his voice grows hoarse. He can feel him in here, somewhere between the salt and the brine and the numbing sea spray. 
When he finally finds him he’s sitting on a rock, completely unresponsive, his eyes finally closed. He doesn’t turn at the sound of Martin’s voice, doesn’t so much as show a sign of living until Martin takes a cold hand in his, squeezing it tightly. 
“I can’t see you,” he finally whispers, his voice a shade of what it once was. Martin remembers the man who once strode on this beach, destroyed Peter Lukas in his seat of power and smiled gently at him, taking him by the hand and leading him out. “I can’t see you.”
“I know.” The words are a cold comfort, but he cannot give Jon his sight back. He can only give him this strange half-life, terrible as it may be. “But I can see you.”
Martin pulls him to his feet, tries to rub warmth back into his arms as the fog dissipates. “C’mon. Let’s go home.”
“How?” Jon asks, though he follows Martin’s lead as he turns them toward the land. He stumbles but Martin catches him when he falls, urges him on.
“Don’t worry. I know the way.”
The cottage is still cold but the fog is gone. Martin lights a fire, throws a blanket around Jon’s shoulders and talks of nothing in particular. Jon has yet to smile but the color is returning to his cheeks and he leans into his side. It’s a start. Martin will call Basira tomorrow and give her an update.
Maybe he’ll be a bit more honest this time.
ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27633482
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phytocondria · 4 years ago
Text
Regency Fluff
So... me and a couple friends were gushing about discussing a wonderful Recency AU and @themerrypanda suggested a Regency Era AU prompt. "Mayor Lewis is holding an early summer ball at his residence. Everyone is invited and the valley is very excited." Word Count: 1,275 Summary: The first two dances of a ball are quite significant, but not more than friendship. “I think Mr. Kent, has been looking a great deal at our little corner since his arrival.” For as meek and quiet as everyone accused the young redhead of being, there was nothing less than mischief and merrymaking at Maru’s expense in Miss Penny’s words. Maru flushed and turned away from where her friend was peering, swallowing down both butterflies and a heavy lump in her throat.
“Perhaps, he’s finally realized the mistakes he’s made against someone so angelic.” Maru hadn’t meant to whisper back so sternly. Miss Honeyfield looked away from where the young gentleman was playing cards with his friends and back to her friend, startled by Maru’s clear barbs against him.
“Maru...” Penny finally whispered back, so tender and sweet, Maru’s heart bled in her chest. She knew what her friend would say, Penny was too good and Marus too close not to know. Maru stood up from where they had been sitting and moved towards the refreshments. Penny’s mother, Mrs. Pamela Honeyfield always seemed to make it her business to test any drinks the town enjoyed, and Maru was thankful her most common amendment was to fortify the punch. Maru let the alcoholic warmth spread into her limbs. She had half a glass down before Penny joined her again, careful not to bring anyone else's attention onto them as they pretended to take a tart from the table of snacks before supper.
Penny was always so much better at that than Maru. She was graceful and kind and feminine where Maru was “spirited” and “enthusiastic”, which ultimately meant she was clumsy, blathering on on odd topics when she got nervous, but how was she expected to be a proper lady in such a tiny hampshire when she had a “spirited” mother and a father who encouraged her interest in “unladylike” subjects? Maru hadn’t meant to snap at her friend, but the mistake had been made and still, Penny was more benevolent than Yoba herself, because she let her friend continue to drink her punch while slipping her hand into the empty hand and held onto it like when they were little girls. Yoba, Maru wished the punch could dull her mind enough to quiet the constant buzz of thoughts.
For all Maru’s cleverness, she’d trade it all… maybe half… okay a third of her wits to have half the sense as her friend needed to remain quiet. Penny let the cup empty and Maru to settle down before offering her a biscuit. Maru noticed one with strawberry jam and relented. “It’s been years now Maru.” Penny started, voice soft enough even Mr Smith, barely a meter away picking at the exorbitant spread Lewis had prepared, wouldn’t be able to overhear. “A childhood fancy, we both grew out of before even coming out into society.”
Now that the biscuit had been swallowed, Maru’s lip fell tightly between teeth as she kept the rest of her turbulent mind in check. She waited for Mr. Smith to walk away with his mince pies and cold meats before gathering the courage to speak up again.“I know” Maru tested the power of her will into forcing her words to behave for once. “Penny, you’re as dear to me as my own mother and father, dearer than any sister I could have ever had, or ever will have.“ Now that she’d begun, the floodgates had begun and Penny did her best to lead them into some quiet corner as Maru continued her admonshing. ”Samson Kent is a scoundrel who treated my friend with such absolute injustice, he should be sent into the mines to battle whatever creatures dwell there until Yoba sees fit, because if it were left to you, you’d forgive him this instant and-”
“Maru, I was the one to end it.” Penny interrupted so calmly as to completely subdue Maru’s fever. She stared dumbstruck as the older girl continued. “We were children, him especially, and while it was… flattering, once my father’s home was entailed away, I- “ Penny paused, her eyes full of sorrow, but smiled with the grace of an angel. “All I’ve ever wanted was peace, adventures contained in books I can set aside. He was good then, but I could never stand to let him join his father in the army, and I’m grateful he didn’t. So,” she continued, the delicate chin raised in determination and sporting humor returning to her countenance.”You must promise your oldest friend whom you love more than a sister, if Mr. Samson Kent asks you to dance, you will accept and have a merry time, is that clear?”
Maru chuckled wetly, dabbing the beginnings of tears from her eyes as she smiled back. “Only if you promise, even if it’s the faintest nettle of a past displeasure at seeing us, tell me,” Maru begged. At the slightest word, Maru would set herself to marry the doctor who viewed her more like the daughter he never had the opportunity to have with his late wife or better yet, become an old maid and never dance with anyone past this day. Her father would be sure to agree to the latter with ease.
“I give you my word, Miss Maru Oakly, but do not think just because I am your senior, I will not manage a comfortable, little home for myself.” Penny bristled with a lively, playfulness few knew lived within the quiet school teacher of Pelican Town.
“Never” Maru laughed along with their friend, an easy air falling between them, until a sudden fuss brought their attentions back to the front of the Mayoral home.
“It looks as if the Governor and his niece have finally arrived.” Penny murmured as she craned her neck over the crowd. “Should we head over to be introduced?”
“Ah, Miss Oakly, Miss Honeyfield” Almost as soon as the two began to move forward, a voice intreated them for their pause from a few feet to the side. “Might I escort you two into the entryway?” the very same young man with wheat coloured hair and fair eyes the ladies had been discussing probed. Maru glanced at the other lady, who was all gentle smiles but gave her hand a squeeze of reassurance before speaking up.
“That would be most agreeable Mr. Kent.” she assured, before moving to take his left arm. The complete lack of awkwardness between the two was almost enough to fully reassure Maru and quiet the what ifs. Maru took his right arm when it was offered, and her thoughts began to buzz into non language as a fluttery excitement bubbled up at his closeness.
Even when each lady had been settled within their expected place in the line to greet the newcomers, Samson stayed close to Maru. After they had all made their hellos, an unspoken awkward nervousness kept them close, before his own restlessness finally got the best of him and he turned to her with flushed cheeks and hopeful smile. “I was hoping... If you don’t already have a partner of course… Umm, might I please request your hand for the first two dances?” he stumbled at the final bit, rushing to say it before he lost his nerve.
“Yes” The word surprised them both, each releasing an anxious sigh that quickly shifted to a relieved chuckle.”I may not be the best dance partner though.” she mumbled, cheeks aflame.
“I could never want for a better one.” He offered, his face as red as hers felt. He was wrong of course, Maru was ill practiced for dancing, but he hardly seemed to mind, asking to dance with her again more than once that night.
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kyber-crystal · 5 years ago
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Back to the Future
Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader
Words: ~1.9k
Warnings: none except fluff and my bad writing bc this is kinda old, btw this is an AU 2017 timeline shhh steve is 33/99 in this hehe
Summary: In which you give Steve the best birthday present possible, with the help of a few genius Avengers and time travel. 
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"Hey! It's one of my favorite kickass superheroes!"
"My favorite Baskin Robbins employee!"
Scott squeezed you into one of his signature tight bear hugs. "Hi! It's been a while."
"Two months is pretty long, yeah," you nodded in agreement. "Where's Cassie?"
"She wanted to come, but had to go to a friend's birthday party," he explained. "I can bring her here next time she's free, though."
"Sounds good."
"So, what'd Tony call me over for again?"
You quickly looked around the lounge before lowering your voice to a whisper. "Steve's birthday is today and we wanted to plan a special surprise for him."
"Ooh, surprises? I love surprises!" he said as you sat down at the kitchen counter together, taking a bite out of a chocolate chip cookie. "I'm listening."
"So..." you rested your chin on your hand as you spoke, "we're going to bring his mother back from the 40's..."
"That's amazing! So everyone else is in on this, right?"
"Yeah. I'm having Sam keep Cap out of the compound for at least another hour by making them take a run throughout all of Central Park. We should probably head out now. You got the van, right? And Luis?"
"Yeah, he's waiting outside by the curb. I'll let him know."
"Okay. Meet us in the hangar bay."
Sliding your army green parka, you grabbed your purse and took the elevator down to the giant hangar bay, where the rest of the team had all gathered. Tony was fiddling with the controls panel as Natasha opened the gates, allowing Luis and Scott to park the van inside.
"Aye, wassup, Y/N?" Luis stepped out of the vehicle as Scott prepped it for the time travel, giving you a high-five. "So I hear you're planning a surprise for your boyfriend?"
"Steve's not my boyfriend," you shook your head.
"Yeah? Then what's with all those lingering gazes?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sure you don't."
"When are they getting back?" Wanda asked you.
"We have about..." you tapped your watch a few times, "...exactly 52 minutes from now."
"I feel kinda bad," Peter admitted, "I mean, as soon as Cap wakes up we kick him out of the compound to go running and we're acting like we all forgot what today is."
"Don't worry, kiddo, this'll make up for it," Tony reassured him, clasping his shoulder. "I'm sure of it."
"Alright, so here's the plan," you clasped your hands together, "two of you will be sent back to 1935, a year before Sarah Rogers passed away. You'll explain the situation when you arrive and while that's happening, the rest of us will start setting up the party in the lounge. When you're ready, press the buttons on your suits and come back. Capiche?"
"Capiche," everyone replied in unison.
"Great. Who's willing to volunteer?"
"Clint and I can go," Bucky offered, glancing over at the archer for confirmation, and he nodded in response. "I know my way around there very well."
"Alright. Everyone else, you know what to do. Let's get to work."
Both of them being over six feet tall just like Steve himself, and having speedy and nimble limbs, Thor and Loki had the giant banner reading HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAP!, the streamers, and balloons up and ready within 15 minutes. Wanda helped you, Natasha, and Peter started laying out all the food on the counter, while Tony, Rhodey, Vision, and Bruce organized the gifts and got the cards ready for you all to sign.
By the time everyone was finished doing their respective jobs, you had roughly twenty minutes before the two men were scheduled to return from their mid-morning run. The elevator doors slid open to reveal Luis and Scott standing there with Clint, Bucky, and a golden-haired woman who had the same piercing eyes as your Steve.
"Hi," she greeted, "I've heard from these two gentlemen here that you are the Avengers. How is Steve doing?"
"He's on a run with Sam," you replied. "It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Rogers. I'm Y/N."
"You're even lovelier than James described," she smiled warmly, shaking your hand. "And please, call me Sarah."
"I'm really not," you grinned sheepishly, rubbing the back of your neck, "But thank you. I can see where he gets his kindness from."
"Oh, you're too sweet. By the way, how old is he turning today? I've lost track of time. I guess that's what age does to you, huh?"
"Well, aside from being frozen and all...33," you returned her smile upon seeing her amazed look, "Yeah, I know. I can't believe it either, even though I'm not much younger than he is."
"My boy really has grown up, hasn't he...Does he treat you well, Miss Y/N?"
"Of course!" you laughed as you set the cake on the dining table. "He's a great leader, and teammate." "I've always pushed him to try and find a lady since he entered high school. From what I’ve learned, you seem like the right one for him," she commented.
"Me? No," you brushed the thought off, "We're just friends."
"I may not have known you for very long, but I saw that little twinkle in your eyes ladies only get when they show interest in someone. And Steve, he's very lucky to have you, you know."
"Mrs—Sarah! We aren't—"
"See, even she agrees!" Bucky pointed over at her. "We've all been trying to push them together from the moment they first joined the Avengers."
"When is he getting back?"
"A little under 15, ma'am," Natasha responded. "That should be enough time for the finishing touches."
It was all chaotic from there; with everyone rushing around and making last-minute changes such as how everything was arranged and all. As soon as you got the text from Sam that they were on their way up, you looked up and immediately told the others, as Tony ordered them all to get in position.
"FRIDAY, turn the lights off," he commanded.
"Yes, sir."
The lights dimmed and turned off, and you, Natasha, and Wanda crouched behind the kitchen counter together, as the others hid behind the dining table or simply stood there when there was no more room left, and Peter curled himself into a small ball underneath. Sarah was standing around the corner, behind the pantry.
"Yes, that would be perfect."
"Hello?" Steve called out as he stepped out of the elevator with Sam by his side, looking around all confused. "Tony? Y/N? Nat? Where is everyone?"
"Don't know, man," Sam feigned cluelessness, "Maybe they went out or something."
You felt a pang in your chest upon peeking over slightly and seeing the hurt look briefly flash across his features. Locking eyes with Tony across the kitchen, you gave him a nod that signaled it's go time.
The lights flickered on and everyone jumped out from their hiding spots. "SURPRISE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STEVE!"
It took Steve a moment to register what was going on before he reacted, mouth dropping open slightly as he took in the scene before him. "You guys did this all...for me? When? How? And why?"
"Because we wanted to make this year extra special for you, Captain," Peter stated with a wide grin, spreading his arms out. "You deserve it. Happy uh...9..33rd!"
"Oh, wait! Before we get to the cake and all, there's one more thing!" Your face brightened as you spoke. "Sarah? You can come out now."
"Sarah what...Who are you talking about?" His brows furrowed together in confusion. "What are you..."
"Hi, Steve," she stepped around the corner, approaching her son. "Happy birthday."
"Ma?" A look of shock and disbelief appeared on his face, eyes widening slightly. "Are you...is this real?"
"Yes, dear, I'm real," Sarah reassured him. "I'm sorry for missing out on so much...I wish I'd been there to see you grow up to become this man you are now. James made sure to catch me up on all that's happened this century."
Tears began watering in his eyes and he was rendered speechless. "I..."
"Hey hey hey, don't cry, sweetheart," she laughed as she wrapped her arms around his broad frame, patting his back as his body began to tremble slightly from his sobs. "It's okay, I'm here."
"Aw, I'm getting all emotional now," Luis sniffed. "This is too much sentiment for me, man."
Steve pulled away a few moments later, laughing as he wiped away the remaining tears from his face. "I can't believe this."
"It was Y/N's idea!" Peter exclaimed. "You have her to thank, not us. You can thank Wanda and I for the cake, though! But this, was all her idea."
He immediately pulled you into his arms, rocking you from side to side and pressing a kiss to your forehead.
"You're the best," he mumbled, burying his face into the crook of your neck, as your arms circled around his torso. "I can't thank you enough. How am I supposed to payback for this?"
"It's fine, there's no need to thank me," you chuckled. "As long as I get to see you happy, that's enough as it is."
...
Sarah agreed to stay for the week so she could make up for lost time with Steve before returning back to her normal timeline. After eating Wanda and Vision's delicious feast of Salisbury steak and potatoes, you got ready for cake and presents, sitting around on the couches in the living room together.
"So, from what James has told me here," Sarah spoke up, "Steve has seemed to taken a liking to someone not long after joining the so-called initiative? He talks about you nonstop when you depart for missions without him, Y/N, and you do as well."
All heads immediately whipped over to face you.
"Oh, ha ha, that..." you chuckled nervously, feeling your face heat up. It didn't help that Steve was sitting right next to you, and could probably see how red your cheeks were. "We're just friends, nothing more. Neither one of us has feelings for the other."
"LIES! LIES!" Pietro shouted. "That's a lie!"
"I'm not gonna deny that, because why lie when the answer's already been made obvious?" Steve shrugged. Everyone's jaws dropped at his statement.
"Okay, the ice cream cake's gonna melt if we keep sitting here and watching the lovebirds," Tony cleared his throat and began lighting up the candles one by one. "Let's do this."
After a quick chorus of 'Happy Birthday' (which was surprisingly good to the point that Wanda videotaped it since she claimed you sounded like a church choir) you were on to cutting the cake.
"I just wanted to ask something really quick. I know it's your birthday and all, but...where's the engagement ring, Cap?" Peter questioned, a mischievous grin on his face. "Are you gonna pop the question?"
"There's an engagement ring?"
"No, Ma, he's joking," Steve chuckled, though his face was now a deep shade of scarlet. "We haven't taken that step yet."
"Yet?" You looked over at him, confused. "So we're dating now, huh? Didn't know that."
"I guess we are," he smiled, holding your gaze for a second longer than normal.
"Well then," Sarah beamed, "you have my approval. I wish you the best of luck in your relationship."
"Hahaha, we will never let you fair Midgardians live this moment down!" Thor boomed, voice muffled by the piece of cake stuffed in his mouth.
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come-on-shitty-boys · 5 years ago
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The Soldier. Miya Atsumu
Warnings: none :)
Word Count: 2K
Notes:  The first installment to my mini-collection entitled “Soldier, Poet, King,” inspired by the song of the same name by The Oh Hellos.  That song really makes me want to dance in a meadow of wildflowers in a white flowy dress, no front.
June 28
My love,
I pray that this letter finds you well.  The months that have drifted by where I have not been able to see your smile have caused nothing but heartache.  But, the prospects of seeing you once again fills me with even more determination to come home to you.  Each night that passes is one night closer to this war being over and one day closer to being by your side again.  
I sense that this will draw to a close soon.  There is talk amongst the troops that our final attack will be launched within the coming months after the adequate preparation is made.  I hope that you think of me during these trying times.  Knowing that I have crossed your mind for even an instant is enough to stay alive.  My love, I wish to return to you as soon as possible.  We can finally seal our love and begin a new life together, that’s a promise.  Please know that I think of you each minute of every day.  You are in my head at this very moment while I scribe this letter to you.  Waking and asleep, I yearn only to have you in my company once more.  
I hope that you write back quickly.  While I am many miles from you, these letters that carry the faintest hints of your perfume are my only piece of you.  It is nothing compared to the real thing, but I will gratefully take what I can.  Until the next, my love.
                                                                                                Yours,
                                                                                                 Miya Atsumu
The small piece of parchment is folded and slipped back into the drawer of a nightstand where it will wait to be read again the next day.  The ink had begun to fade, the edges worn from constant handling.  It had been nearly three months without any sort of communication from your beloved.  There had not been a single letter come through the post with your name written across the envelope in his messy script, but every day you still ran out to greet the postman, that tiny light of hope still shining brightly within you, even if only for a few moments.  But, it would only be diminished as the mail was handed to you and just as it had been for the past three months, the postman would smile sadly, knowing just as well as you did that there was no letter from Atsumu.  
Your heart kept repeating over and over that he was fine, that maybe he was so busy getting ready for the end of the war that he didn’t have time to write to you.  Maybe his letters were getting lost in the mail and there were half a dozen envelopes with your name on them sitting in a pile of letters.  But, even you knew that that was a far stretch of the imagination.  The others who had found love in the arms of military men had been hearing from their own sweethearts.  It was the height of conversation during every encounter.  “Have you heard from him?” “Yes!  I just got a new letter last week.  And you?  Has he written to you?” And each conversation was only met with a saddened expression when you explained that, no, he hadn’t written to you in a while.  You were always assured with a delicate embrace that he would write soon, but as time ticked by, those reassurances began to make you feel worse and worse.
He promised that he would be back.  He promised to make you happy, grow a life with you.  If there was one thing you knew better than anything, it was that Miya Atsumu never broke his promises to you.  But, that heavy feeling that you found sinking further and further in your stomach each night was becoming difficult to ignore.  Each day that passed without a word from him was just another day where you came closer to believing the worst.  Surely, though, if something had happened to him, someone would’ve told you.  One of his friends from the military would’ve written to you or, at the very least, you thought that Osamu would’ve told you about how his brother was doing, but there was nothing.  No one was able to inform you of Atsumu's condition and the unknown was eating away at you with every passing hour.  
Still, you clung onto the lingering promise that was beginning to fade from the parchment.  He would be back.
But, then another moon passed and your reality began to sink in.  You had unfolded and read that final letter so many times, the creases beginning to rip from the wear.  There were smudges in the lingering ink where shaky sobs had fallen to the parchment in the privacy of wavering candlelight.  You would grow old all on your own, your one love being buried in the ground with thousands of other men who had fallen on the battlefield at such a young age.  
“Have hope.  My Kita says that the war is coming to a close.”
But, it was so very easy to have hope when there was something telling you that he was alive and well.  How were you to continue holding on to this idea that was kept trying to fly away from you?  While the dove flittered away, a large raven loomed behind you.  How could you possibly focus on keeping the dove in your grasp with the chilling gaze of the raven’s beady eyes boring into your soul, constantly reminding you of its presence?  You couldn’t, no matter how much you struggled to keep that little white bird contained, it kept slipping out of your hands, leaving you with the scary alternative.  
Each day became harder to bear.  Each day that passed where you couldn’t hear Atsumu’s warm laughter, see his lazy gaze that never failed to be so full of adoration for you, each day that he wasn’t bringing your hand up to his lips in a kiss, one that told the world that you were his while still abiding by the social norm, was like living another day in your own personal hell.  To share those hasty kisses in the privacy of your home, but still not letting lips be attached for long in fear that someone might see an unmarried couple engaged in such a taboo act of love, the feeling of his lips pressed against your own in such fevered declarations of his fondness for you felt like a dream that had happened one too many eons ago.  The knot that grew in your chest with each thought of him brought your sobs closer to surfacing all over again.  But, rather, you choked them all away, keeping your head high in a way that you knew would make you Atsumu proud.  You could almost hear his low chuckle, feel his hand patting your head gently, “You’re really something, aren’t you?  Always so confident.  You’ll be fine without me for a little while, princess.”
The thought alone was enough to make you snort.  If only he could see inside your mind right now, see that you were anything but fine as the worst possible outcome played over and over, never pausing to give you a break.  The image of Miya Atsumu laying out in the heat of a battlefield, bloodied and wounded, trying to fight for one more breath kept weaving its way into your mind, but it always ended the same way.  Those bright brown eyes that always held an air of excitement would fall dim, his toned chest would struggle to rise and inevitably fail, head lolling limply to the side as a fellow platoon member closed his eyelids for the last time.
“I hear that the soldiers are returning this week,” Ayaka said as she sat across from you one afternoon, the tea cup rising to her lips.  You hadn’t touched your own cup.  It still sat on the table in front of you, two sugar cubes waiting to be stirred in.  Your thoughts had been gnawing at you non-stop, but this prospect-
He could be coming home.
It brought the dove back into reach, even if only for a moment.  You were able to forget about that steady gaze of the raven, focusing solely on the white bird that had returned to you.  
“Do you know when?”
“Thursday, I believe.  My sister and I plan on coming into town to greet them.  Would you care to join us?  Even- even if he’s not there, you could at least get a sense of closure.”
You didn’t want to think about the possibility of Atsumu not marching along the ranks of men, you just wanted to see him one more time, to tell him that you loved him all over again.  But, even as you weighed the idea that your friend could be right about his fate, you found yourself nodding in agreement to her proposal.
The letter had been read three more times, each night ending with clutching that wrinkled piece of parchment to your chest, wishes made to some nameless being in hopes that he would come back to you.  “Please. . .”
Blue military jackets adorned by weary looking men lined the streets, people smiling and cheering that their loved ones had returned home after such long months of being gone.  Ranks were broken as people rushed to the awaiting arms of their families, but as much as you scanned the rows, you couldn’t find that familiar blonde hair poking out from under the issued cap.  Each row that passed had you slinking further into yourself, the truth bringing that all-to-familiar tug at your heart.  
“‘Samu, give me that!  You’re just being an ass, come on!” 
“If you want it so badly, come get it.”
“How?!”
The tears flowed down your cheeks for a whole new reason.  At the very end of the ranks, a group of men were clustered together.  They all fared worse than the others.  Some were missing limbs, most were just covered in bandages, deep stains of red contrasting against the stark white.  Bringing up the very rear, a young man bickered with another, desperately reaching for the wooden crutch that was being held just out of reach.  
“Atsumu!”
That beautiful sound was the only thing he wanted to hear.  His name from your lips.  It had his heart racing and a wide toothy grin spanning across his features.  The gunshot wound on his thigh throbbed with each crutch-less limp in your direction, but he didn’t even care.  You were running towards him, slowing only enough so that your momentum didn’t take him to the ground.  Arms flung around his neck, his easy laughter being the only sound in your ears.  It felt just so surreal, the soldier finally returning to the arms of his beloved.
“I was so worried about you,” you whisper, burying your head in the shoulder of his uniform.  
“I know, princess.  But they wouldn’t let me write to you or anyone else while I was in the hospital.  If I could have, I would have sent you a hundred letters to remind you just how much I love you.”  Atsumu leans away from you, wincing as he tries to place weight on his injured leg, but despite the pain, he takes your hand in his.  Lazy brown eyes never leave your face as he brings it to his lips, a loving kiss placed to your knuckles.  There’s no denying the happy smile on his face as he lets you caress his cheek.
“I made a promise to you, princess.  And I don’t break my promises,” he starts, reaching up to lay his hand over yours.  “I can’t wait to marry you, princess.”
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prurientpuddlejumper · 5 years ago
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Strangers [18+]
Toshinori x Female Reader
Did someone say “traumatize poor Toshi”? Hello, I am here to make All Might hate himself for losing control of his pent-up sexual urges. Feral sex and angst! Mmmm
Warning: Dub-con (sex pollen/”fuck-or-die” fic)
Summary: Your neighborhood gets blasted by a new quirk-based drug that makes you irresistibly, painfully, potentially lethally horny. Your libido won’t stop growing until you fuck someone - but you haven’t completely lost your mind! There’s no way you’re going to bone a friend. It has to be someone you don’t know so you never have to talk to them ever ever again. 
That blond scarecrow over there will do! 
6,264 words | NSFW
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You never worried much about getting caught in a love dust attack. It wasn’t that hard to just not have sex with someone, no matter how horny you were.
It was all over the headlines for the past month. An unsolvable string of crimes with this stuff at the center. The media was calling it “love dust” because, well, it was dust, and you can’t say “orgy-riot fuck dust” on the evening news. Think of the children.
After the first attack, authorities thought they were looking for a villain with natural quirk, but a new synthetic drug soon surfaced as the culprit—a concentrated, fine-tuned derivation of a seduction quirk, sold under the street name “Hathor.” Anyone with the right underground connections could get their hands on it, and criminals were getting creative. Release it into the air at a bank, and the guards will open up the vault on the promise of a handjob. Assassinate a CEO and walk out the front door as the heroes sent to stop you turn into a quivering mess on the floor. There have already been a dozen scandals with big-name heroes caught sleeping with civilians at love dust crime scenes.
Kind of pathetic, honestly. Considering how important their reputations are, you’d think they could manage to keep their pants on. Have some self-control.
Although… The effects only last until you do the nasty, so maybe heroes should have a quickie with the nearest volunteer and get back on their feet before the criminals escape.
Or, you know, wear a damned mask.
Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. There were physical symptoms, too. They say those who are unable to find anyone to “satisfy their urges” with experience increasingly severe libido, elevated heart rate, capillary damage, and all sorts of hormonal spikes that sometimes last days. One guy actually died of a heart attack. But you were young and healthy. It couldn’t be that bad.
If you don’t want to fuck someone, just don’t do it.
The night the dust rains down on your neighborhood, you finally understand.
You are sitting at the outdoor café in front of your apartment complex with a few friends when there is a loud pop, like an engine backfiring. The sky fills with a pink haze that glimmers with iridescence in the street lights. It’s beautiful. A few wiser residents scream, cover their faces, and run, but you watch the glittery powder in awe, not making the connection until you’ve breathed it in.
It has a cloyingly sweet scent, like cherry blossoms and bubble gum. Your throat tightens, and your mouth begins to water. A warm tingle spreads under your skin and you start to feel the urge to go home and watch porn.
There is a change in your companions, too. The conversation abruptly stops. Someone next to you moans, and it sends shivers racing straight down between your legs. Your thighs clench together trying to satisfy the growing need as you try not to moan yourself. Hot… it is getting so hot. Your breathing is starting to come out shamefully hard as your arousal rapidly builds, and suddenly watching porn doesn’t sound like nearly enough. You want to fuck someone—anyone, honestly.
Shit.
It finally hits you what you’ve been caught up in. And now you realize why this drug is so dangerous.
It’s the feeling of being on the cusp of an orgasm, where nothing feels more important, more urgent. Rational thought gives way to the singular focus on finishing. You’re so close, oh god… Your walls clench around the nothingness inside you. So empty. Fuck… you want to come, but you need to be filled. You need it.
You could resist the physical symptoms, but the problem you never accounted for is, you don’t want to resist.
All around the street, people are falling on each other, mouths smashing together in wet, sloppy, passion. Your next-door neighbor is dry humping the waitress at the café as she works to undo her uniform. The florist is already fucking a customer’s mouth. Their wet noises and grunting rise into a sexual cacophony that has your cunt dripping, aching. You need to find someone.
Your friend Ren grabs your arm, eyes heavily lidded, a crazed look in their eyes. “Do… you wanna?” they slur, voice thick with the same lust you are drunk on. Your cunt spasms painfully at the offer, and a throaty vibration rumbles deep within your chest. A primal part of you almost starts ripping off your clothes, but the small voice in your head that is still rational forces you to pull your arm out of their grasp. This isn’t right.
Not with a friend. Things would be too weird later. It can't be someone you know.
You mumble something that was meant to be words, and run from the table. Mei grabs Ren’s shoulder and their bodies instantly intertwine in a mess of limbs and sultry moans. She was just starting to get over them. That’ll be trouble tomorrow. That’s why it can’t be a friend—no ruined relationships or awkward next days for you!
The small rational voice says you should go back and pull Mei away—stop her—but if you did that, you’d definitely end up in a threesome. It's all you can do to keep your feet moving away. 
You need a stranger.
A spontaneous orgy breaks out around you, bodies tangled and undressing right in the road, cars honking at them, people stumbling out of cars and joining the fray. You pick your way through them. No, no, your inner voice scoffs. None of this is right. As much as you’re burning to be filled, none of this was right.
The musky smell of sex is overpowering. Your walls expand wide as if expecting to be filled, yawning open until the muscles burn, then crashing shut and clenching down hard against nothing. The contractions rock your body so hard it’s difficult to walk, and it isn’t long before the muscles start cramping with overexertion. 
Why didn’t you just join one of the writhing piles on the sidewalk? Your heart is beating out of your chest, and you’re deafened by all the blood pounding in your ears. Your eyes dart between faces and exposed body parts, frantically searching, but none of them click whatever primitive part of you is hunting for a mate. With every breath, it feels like you can’t get enough oxygen. You’re drowning.
A convulsing ache rips through your body again. It hurts. It hurts being so empty. What are you waiting for?
Something slips into the front of your pants and starts rubbing your clit—you realize it’s your own hand. It feels good, but doesn’t help. Rational voice reminds you that it won’t help. Skin-to-skin contact was a necessary condition of the quirk; something about pheromones or something? You stagger on, rubbing and fingering yourself, not even caring who sees, none of it bringing you over the edge of the climax that feels like it’s almost there—just a little more! Please!
You turn into the alleyway behind the apartment building. A short passage leading nowhere with a 90-degree crook that serves to hide unsightly utility boxes and storage containers for the complex. It’s quiet here, away from the chaos in the street. Except you hear it… breathing. Deep, half-stifled grunts of a man trying to keep quiet, labored breathing, and a soft, rhythmic slapping emanate from behind the corner.
Struggling toward the source, you see a tall yellow-haired man doubled over. He braces one hand on a metal box set against the wall with wires snaking out of it, while the other hand furiously works his cock. Slap. Slap. Slap. It’s glistening with precum, but his teeth are grit in distress at an orgasm that will never come.
A scarecrow of a man, he looks to be middle-aged, and has a face like a skeleton, with sunken cheeks and eyes lost in deep shadows—all bones and sinew. Definitely a stranger. You would’ve remembered a guy like that.
Something primal thrums within you. Blood surges red-hot in your veins. 
Him. 
He is perfect.
“Help!” you call out, voice shaky and fevered. 
He startles and tries to hide what he was doing, shoving his dick back under his waistband and crossing his legs before turning to you. As if everyone else on the entire block isn't doing the same thing. 
When he sees you, desire clouds his eyes. They’re a shocking vibrant blue, though watering with frustration, and they linger on you for what would have been an uncomfortable length of time under normal circumstances, but right now his overt desire is exactly what you hoped to see. 
Encouraged, you close the space between you, but he takes a quick step back, staying just out of your reach. At this distance, you realize “tall” was an understatement. He towers above you.
At your close proximity, his hips start rocking of their own accord, his cock striving for relief against the fabric of his pants. You are too close. You smell so good, he wants to devour you. He has to squeeze his legs together and bite his lip hard enough to draw blood to regain his composure.
“I... I can help you, young lady. E-everything will be fine... Are you hurt?” With every ounce of willpower in his narrow body, he forces his voice to sound normal and helpful, and not like he wants to tear all your clothes off. No damned pink dust is going to make him—
He doubles over not in pain, but arousal—a spasm pulsing through his frame—and has to fight to shove it down again. He bites his thin lower lip, but the gesture only makes him aware of the string of saliva dripping out.
“Yes, it hurts.” You’ve still got your hand between your legs and must look as much of a mess as he does. He can’t pretend not to know what you’re asking. “Please… help me,” you ask again, this time dropping your voice into a husky whisper. You lean into him, splaying your hands out on his chest, running them down the rippled bones and muscle beneath his white t-shirt. His hands place themselves instinctively around your hips.
“Do you have a boyfriend? A partner? I’ll h-help you find them.”
Would he really take you to someone you’d be more comfortable having sex with when he could have you for himself? It’s obvious how much he wants you—how much his body is screaming for you just like yours screams for his. 
You shake your head. “There’s no one else.”
“I… I can bring you to the hospital…” 
He trembles, his breathing is hard and fast, fanning in hot bursts across your neck. You get lost in the smell of him, the salty smell of his precum driving you wild. Your core twitches painfully again, but you’re so close to relief, you let yourself moan with it, and reach for the hard erection in his pants. The outline through the fabric is massive. Beyond massive. You shudder and stroke it greedily.
He draws in a sharp breath at the contact, and the warmth of him spreads out under your palm, spreading through your whole body. His muscles tense, still trying to fight it, but his cock pulses under your touch, betraying his desire.
“Let me feel it,” you beg, slipping your hand through the fly of the pants he was too distracted to zip back up. Your fingertips find it, hot and velvety, and hard as steel.
Even though he’s just as deep under the spell of the dust as you are, he manages to pull away again, another step back, trapping his back against the alley wall.  
“N-no, you don’t have to… to do this. I’ll take you to the hospital!” 
Not, I don’t want this, you note his phrasing. You don’t have to. How can he be flustered with this need overpowering his every sense? Your entire life is narrowed into a tunnel where all there is and all that matters is being fucked.
Without warning, he doubles over, coughing. Coughing up blood. A lot of it.
He wipes his mouth, grimacing, in obvious pain. A convulsion wracks his body, and he squeezes his thighs together, moaning.
You put your arms out—an honest, compassionate instinct to help him stay upright, but then you’re touching him again, and suddenly you’re pulling at his tall, scarecrow shoulders to bring his body close again. 
He’s so strained, blood trickling through grit teeth. Maybe coughing blood is a symptom of resisting the effects for too long. Your own lungs are starting to burn with such intense continual use. Why is he trying so hard to fight it? 
“Don’t want… a hospital. Just… fuck me. Please. I want you. So empty... it hurts. I need you to fill me… please,” you pant, desperate to convince him. To talk him out of his shy, moral rigidity.
He swallows, prominent Adam's apple bobbing in his thin neck. He's cute, too, a small, still-conscious voice says, though you barely notice through the pounding, driving urge between your legs. Your clit is so hot it burns, and your pussy is dripping, soaking through your panties so much it’s made a wet spot through your pants. You grind against his leg. It doesn’t give you any relief, but makes you want to fuck him even more desperately.
“I don’t want to take advantage of you...” He looks so sad, so protective when he says those words in his soft, deep voice. Then he cringes as another convulsion hits him, and his hips drive themselves into you as if acting on their own. He’s horrified. A wave of pleasure surges through you, leaving you a babbling mess.
You whimper, desperate for more. “I’m going to die if you don’t fuck me! Help me. I want it, I swear. I want you, please… please.” You're like an animal, mindlessly humping his thigh, grasping at his shirt. “I’ll find someone else if you won’t. Please, it’s the only way to make this stop!”
It’s too much. The urge was so strong even when he was alone, and your body is all over him, awakening things in him. 
You’re drugged! 
His cock won’t stop throbbing until it finds a warm body to fuck, and your pussy is grinding his thigh, inches away. Relief is so close. It’s unbearable. You’re so cute and helpless—
He shouldn’t!
—disheveled, begging for him to take you. You’re so lewd. It has been so long since he felt desirable, and here you are, begging like the sluttiest of his fans without even knowing who he is, without his power. Driving him wild. Every second like this is torture—his heart pounding so hard, his single lung can’t take it much longer. You want him… You want him as much as he wants you. Why was he refusing, again? All the reasons seem to fall away…
A dam within him breaks.
He lets out a long, shaking breath as if he had thrown open a valve shut off half a lifetime ago, and all the pressure repressed and denied was finally being released. He crumples around you, lanky arms closing around your back, his face burying into your neck with a sob. A line of teeth bite down on you hard enough to bruise. 
Your body responds, hips bucking into his, your nails digging into his back, as you scream out in pleasure and pain, “Yes!” 
He snarls into your skin, leaving a trail of bruises claiming the length of your neck.
“Fuck, I need this,” he growls between bites, sounding like a completely different person. Sounding starved. With the last pretense of control given up, he is a beast freed from its cage.
His hands slide under your shirt to roughly palm your breasts. You unclasp your bra, and he artlessly pushes it up out of the way, too hurried to remove it. 
“I want you so bad...” He kneads your breasts, pushing them together and rolling them apart, thumbs abusing your hard tits while his teeth sink into your shoulder. He is ravenous. 
Fuck, he feels so good. You can only helplessly cry out as your body spasms with warmth, pulses of electricity running down your back, your cunt dripping and clenching, but still so empty.
Your lips clash together, wet and eager, nearly missing his mouth as you part and smash together again, but you don’t care. His tongue sloppily reaches for yours, and you open for him eagerly, saliva mingling, his taste entering your mouth—coppery and sweet. This is right, your body tells you. He is just right.
Another torturous spasm rips through your body. This isn’t the time for foreplay. You already feel like someone has been eating you out for five days straight—it’s time to fuck him. You tug your pants and underwear down and let them hang around your calves, not bothering to take them all the way off. 
Now. You need him now. 
His cock is back out of his pants, slick with precum, and rubbing your entrance. It’s so huge, you wonder how it will ever fit inside you. You would never expect something with that much girth from a guy so narrow. How does he have enough blood to support this thing? 
Normally, you wouldn’t actually want a dick that big, but your sex-crazed brain starts drooling. You want to lick it from head to balls, to worship it. The size doesn’t intimidate you. All your muscles are loose and stretched and aching for something to fill them, and only his cock could fill you enough to satisfy this artificially-heightened need.
Rubbing the blunt, throbbing head over your opening, his intense eyes study the way your folds part and twitch around him, and the adorable way you struggle to open your legs wider with your ankles still shackled in your pants. 
“Look at you... fuck, you’re perfect.”
So small and cute. So breathless and needy and whining for him.
Before he pushes inside like every muscle in his body is urging him to do, he checks in with you one last time. His sharp blue eyes meet yours, and, sweating and trembling with the effort of holding back, he asks, “You’re sure?”
“Please!” you cry, voice cracking. You jerk your hips to help push the swollen head inside, gasping as you feel the pressure of it spreading your opening. 
He needs no more encouragement. 
Releasing control over his inflamed libido that took every ounce of his willpower to wrestle down, he thrusts sharply inside you. It knocks the air out of your lungs. A scream tears from your throat at the intense pleasure and discomfort of being finally, finally filled all at once by something so large. He grunts into your shoulder, large fingers digging into your skin as his body shudders and trembles. He pulls back out a little, and thrusts in again. 
You clutch at his shirt and his yellow hair, balling them in white-knuckled fists as you sob out, “Thank you. Th-thank you.” 
It’s almost too much pressure—almost. Your walls twitch and contract happily around the thick shaft. Satisfaction. This is what your body has been demanding. The pain stops, but the need urges you on stronger than ever.
It won’t let you go until you come.
After a few rough, choppy thrusts, he can’t get enough leverage standing facing you. He pulls out, and your entire body sets off alarm bells in protest, your hands clutch at him, trying to pull him back in. Empty! So empty! It hurts. The fevered look in his eye tells you he’s still as desperate for this as you are. Strong hands flip you around and bend you over the metal utility box, your ass in the air, presented to him.
“There you are,” he purrs.
He meant to enter you again right away, but the view triggers something voyeuristic in his brain. He grabs your whole pussy possessively, rubbing circles over your bare skin with his thumb, spreading your lips apart.
“Look at you. So beautiful.” His voice is thick and husky—drunk. His whole body shudders as you moan for him, pussy twitching around his thumb, hips writhing, whining for him to enter you. “You'll look so beautiful wrapped around my cock…”
Why is he looking at it? If you had any shame right now, you’d be dying of it, but your whole face is already flushed and sweating. Just put it in already!
A low chuckle. “Be patient.” Did you say that out loud? “Fuck, I want you… I need this,” he growls.
“Need it... need you…” you echo, drooling.
His warm chest leans over your back, soft bangs hanging down next to your cheek, his hot breath in your ear. “I deserve a reward, don’t I? Something for myself for once,” he murmurs, more to himself than to you, barely audible even with his lips so close. His cockhead rubs against your drenched slit without pushing inside, the pressure of it maddening, teasing.
His muscles tense suddenly, and you brace yourself against the cold steel surface, fingers curling as he penetrates you from behind and sets a relentless pace.
The aphrodisiac already had you dripping and ready, so you feel deliciously split open and stuffed, and not torn by the sudden invasion. The friction and pressure drive you insane, mewling and whimpering as you reach between your legs to stoke your clit. The heat that’s been building up and pooling between your legs without getting any closer to relief is building toward a crescendo now that he’s inside you.
“More,” you whine, even though you’re already past your limit, “Give me everything!”
He starts thrusting wildly, uncontrolled, eager to obey you. His movements are unrestrained and so fast—inhumanly fast. “So good, you feel so good,” he praises, words hitched and slurring. “Fuck, you’re so tight.” A moment of hesitation breaks through the fog, “Am I hurting you?”
“Don’t stop,” you snap, “don’t you dare slow down!”
His sharp hip bones collide with your ass, leaving bruises with every hard thrust, his balls swinging against you, slapping your fingers working your clit, as he frantically jackhammers into you. He’s completely feral, head thrown back, not holding back his strength as he hits you so deep and hard you could break, but it’s exactly what your body wants right now—to be animals.
“Harder!” you urge, trying to jerk your hips up to meet his thrusts, and spread your legs farther apart—but your efforts weren’t enough. However hard he's going, you want even more. Deeper. You want him to rip you in half. 
Obeying, his bony hands grip the soft fat of your thighs, yanking you down onto his cock as he thrusts into you. You yelp as he hits something deep and sensitive, and your muscles quiver and melt with gratitude.
It could be minutes or hours that he has been pumping into you with forceful abandon, turning you into a sweaty, quaking mess, sobbing into your arm for his frail body and powerful cock. You’ve lost all sense of time, all sense of sense—of anything besides the sinful friction and being stuffed full to bursting. You may as well be stray cats rutting in the alley. The dark echoes with the steady percussion of flesh smacking into flesh, and a harmony of your own whimpering cries melding into his hard, ragged breathing.
“Don’t stop! Don’t ever stop! It’s so good,” you sing out for him. It must be the effect of the drug, but you have never felt so complete.
He growls low in return, “Mine, you’re mine.”
His arms cross around your chest and he leans his body over you, pressing himself closer and closer to you as his thrusts hit you deeper and longer. Beads of sweat drip from his body, wetting your clothes and your neck. His strong hands serve the dual purpose of holding you firm against him and grasping your breasts, roughly pinching the hard peaks, twisting and pulling. 
The sensation is overwhelming—jolts of pleasure ripping through you, shooting through your spine, winding you tighter and driving you closer to the crest. Your fingers work your clit faster until he forces them away with his own hand, taking over, abusing your sex with long, calloused fingers with the same reckless abandon as his fucking you. His erratic breath is humid against your ear. Something breaks inside him, and he starts grunting loudly with every wild buck of his hips like an unhinged beast. Every forceful thrust throws your body forward, thighs striking the edge of the metal container.
“More,” you urge. “More!” You’re so close. 
The muscles of his lower abs twitch and contract against your ass, and he bites you hard on the shoulder, bearing down until it draws blood. He lets out a helpless, unrestrained noise that is almost a roar and almost a sob as he empties himself into you, filling you up with so much hot seed you can feel the pressure of it inside you, his release trapped tight against your cervix by the nudging head of his thick cock stuffed as deep as possible. 
His fingers circle powerfully over your clit, and it drives you over the edge after him. Your hips jerk, riding his cock as he comes down from his climax, walls clenching around him, milking every drop from his twitching, overstimulated cock.
“Thank you,” you mutter, breathless and slurring, cum dripping down your thigh. “Thank you…”
It's over.
It's over.
Like a veil being lifted, your brain function returns to normal. The fog of lust evaporates and you're back to rational, non-horny you.
What. The fuck. Are you doing?
Oh my god.
An alley. You're in some filthy alley with a total stranger and no condom. Fuck. What the fuck. You're going to have so many diseases.
Your “partner” pulls out, and a flood of semen gushes out from between your legs. Oh, god. How is there so much? Does this guy have some kind of disorder, or is it the love dust’s effect? Either way, it's gross, and starts to feel chilly as cool air hits it and it runs down your thigh.
Purse.
That's right, you have a purse. It's somehow, by pure luck, still attached to your body. You rummage through it, pushing aside keys, and—oh, look, a condom. You roll your eyes. Where—aha, there it is! You knew you had a little pack of tissues. You wad up a few sheets and catch the copious glob of cum before it can run all the way down your leg and sully your pants.
“Uhhh, here,” you offer tersely, really not looking forward to making eye contact now that you’re remembering your actions through the eyes of a sober person. So embarrassing! He probably thinks you’re a slut. Worse—what if he’s some weirdo who thinks you’re his girlfriend now?
You hold out a few tissues so he can clean his sticky red cock, still impressively large even as it softens and begins to droop downward.
Why are you looking at his dick stop looking at his dick!
He doesn’t seem to notice you peeking. 
He’s struggling to catch his breath, bangs stringy and clinging to his face and neck with sweat. More than that, he’s vacantly staring at his hands like they might not be his own. Like he hopes they’re not. His eyes snap to the source of movement, and he tentatively takes the tissues you’re holding out to him. The action brings him back to reality somewhat. He blushes and turns his back to you, and gets to work wiping himself off.
Good. He’s not trying to talk to you or anything. He’s embarrassed too. That’s good.
When you’re both dressed and as decent as you’re going to look (though it’s impossible to hide that just-been-ravished glow), you turn to him, lips pressed tightly together. 
“Well, that’s that, I guess. Um. Are there any STDs I should know about?”
He jolts out of the quiet stupor he was in, face growing redder at the implication. “Oh! N-no.”
“OK, good. Me neither. Though we should both get tested again anyway.”
It’s unclear whether he processed that, eyes unfocused, only giving a slight nod. “Oh! Oh god!” He lurches backward against the wall, remembering something even more devastating. “We didn't... I didn't use—”
“I’m on the pill. No babies.”
His shoulders relax by a few millimeters, at least that weight off of them, but he's far from relieved.
“Alright, well…” you back away, making finger guns out of nervous, idiotic reflex, eager for this embarrassing scenario to be over with and forgotten. “Thanks for helping me out with… a medical emergency, let’s call it. Hopefully we never see each other again, and never think about what happened today. Ever again!” Yup, that’s about that. “Bye.”
He nods weakly as you walk away. The adorably oversized Adam’s apple bobs in his skinny neck as if he’s trying to say something, but only a small, choked noise comes out. He’s still too dazed to give any other acknowledgment.
No contact. No reminders. You did what you had to do, and that’s it. He agrees that this is for the best, right? At least he will once he… processes what happened.
You sigh.
Pausing at the mouth of the alley, you chance a look back. He’s slowly sliding down the stained wall, and coming to rest on the ground with his head between his knees. He looks devastated.
He isn’t processing, is he?
This is your fault, you know. He was trying to avoid people until you found him in his little hiding place. How many times did he offer to take you to the hospital, to tell you that you didn’t have to have sex with him? You could have fucked anyone else tonight, but you chose a sensitive old man.
You broke him. So, go fix him.
You lean back against the concrete wall beside him and lower yourself to the ground by his side. Eyes forward. You wrap your arms around the top of your knees, mimicking his pose. Your eyes flick to the side to observe him. 
“Hey. Are you OK?”
He doesn’t look up or acknowledge that he heard you, but a low, wavering voice emerges from his hidden face: “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I lost control. I took advantage of you. Violated you. I should turn myself in to the police…”
Despite how somber he sounds, you snort a laugh. “Is that what you’re so worried about? I asked you to, remember? I literally begged you.”
His hands clamp down over the back of his head, pulling at his messy yellow hair. “No. You were being controlled by a synthesized quirk. You had no way to consent, but I did it anyway.”
You wouldn’t have guessed he was such an anxious guy when he was pounding your insides into oblivion, or from the bruises you were going to be covered in by tomorrow. He’s falling apart. Well, you’re here, and there’s no way you’re going to let him beat himself up over this.
“By that logic, I’m as guilty as you. We were both hit with the same stuff, completely out of our minds. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I should have been able to resist,” he says firmly, voice rising. “I’m…” he makes a noise from his throat and trails off.
“Even heroes have trouble with this stuff—that’s why it’s, like, the cover of Villain’s Digest, you know? At least you tried, which is more than I can say.”
“I have to be better than that!” he snaps. What will the world do when it comes out that Japan’s number-one hero is a rapist? That even All Might was helpless against a simple aphrodisiac? He sets his jaw. “I was the one who ultimately went through with it. It was my fault. I failed to protect you.”
You rest the back of your head against the wall, letting out a long, pitying sigh. “Do you want me to punish you? Are you just going to keep saying it’s your fault until I agree? Because that’s not going to happen.”
He doesn’t answer.
“You don’t have to better than everyone else in the world, you know. I thought I’d be able to resist, too, but there’s a reason nobody ever does. That stuff rewires your priorities so you don’t want to resist. It… all felt really good in the moment…” You blush and suddenly look anywhere else. Why’d you say that last thing? “The point is… it was stupid to think I was somehow above the hundreds of people who’ve been victims before. So, stop holding yourself to some higher standard. If you want to blame someone, blame me. You… you should blame me.”
His head shoots up from his lap to lock eyes with you, his gaze protective and firm, horrified that you would feel at all culpable. “I don’t blame you.” Just as quickly, he looks away—down, to the side, anywhere else—hand gripping the back of his neck.
“Then why do think it’s your fau—oh my god, you’re married aren’t you?!”
Blood sprays from his mouth as he coughs and sputters denials. “I wasn’t cheating on anyone! I just… shouldn’t have.”
At this point, you’re more interested in the coughing-blood thing. Since the dust wore off, your breathing has gone back to normal, so it seems it wasn’t a side effect after all. Does he have Ebola? Can you catch Ebola from sex?
“Is that… something I should be worried about?”
He gapes in confusion before following your gestures to a blood stain on his shirt. “Ah! No, it isn’t contagious. It’s from an old injury…” 
He pulls up his shirt to show you a scar disfiguring the entire left side of his body. It’s not just marring the surface of his skin—it looks like a whole chunk of his chest was removed, with pink arms of surgically reconstructed flesh spiraling over his torso, as if the center of it were a black hole slowly pulling the rest of his body inside.
You forget to not stare.
He shakes his head and chuckles darkly, misinterpreting your stunned silence. “Of all the people you could have come to your senses with… must be disappointing to find yourself with a sickly old man.” He stops laughing. In a quiet but biting tone, he adds, “You must be disgusted.”
Maybe it’s a bad idea, considering how much trauma you’ve already caused him today, but you can’t help it. You lean against him and let your head rest on his shoulder. “I’m not. I’m glad it was someone sweet, and not some gross perv.”
A touch of warmth comes to your cheeks, feeling the pressure of his body against yours again. It’s comforting. You can only hope it’s comforting to him, too.
He doesn’t push you away, at least. 
“You shouldn’t have to try to cheer me up,” he sighs after a long pause. “It must be hard to be near me, after what I did.”
“It isn’t, really.” 
Strangely, that's true. You had wanted to get as far from him as possible and avoid any reminders of the humiliating act, but oddly, being close to him is nice.
“As far as I’m concerned, I was suffering, and you helped me. Have you read the articles about this stuff? Those symptoms only get worse the longer you don’t… you know.” Why are you blushing like a virgin to the guy whose dick you came on five minutes ago? His cum is still leaking out onto your panties. “I was in agony, so I’m glad we got it over with instead of spending days in the hospital. ‘Met the conditions of the quirk,’ as they say. It was the best possible option.”
“That’s a very practical way of looking at it.”
“What can I say, I’m a pragmatist!” you grin.
He nearly returns your smile out of reflex, but his face falls again. “But I wasn’t thinking about helping you… I was being completely selfish.” I enjoyed it. How could he tell you he enjoyed it?
“I don’t care.” You give a pointed look at his bony frame and flecks of blood clinging to his lips, and raise an eyebrow. “No offense, but I don't think you’d have lasted 48 hours under that kind of stress.”
He grumbles and lets out a sigh, but he doesn’t have any argument. You were probably right. There was no antidote but to wait, usually sedated. That would have been a long time to not be able to do any hero work. This was the best way… But not at your expense.
“I’m sorry, you were trying to leave earlier. You don’t have to stay any longer because you’re worried about me. I’ll be fine.” He smiles like the wounded soldier in a movie telling his brother-in-arms to leave him behind and finish the mission, while the violin soundtrack hits a dramatic crescendo in a minor key.
Should you take the opportunity to escape? 
Your plan was to get the drug out of your system with a stranger. Getting to know him any better will throw a wrench in that plan, but the thought of leaving his side makes your throat tighten. 
This guy… he’s sweet. He carries so much sorrow inside of him, you want to stay and help him with his burden. A primal instinct urges you to throw a blanket around him and feed him soup. He’s handsome, too. He doesn’t seem to think so, but you understand why your drug-soaked brain latched onto him over anyone else. Excessively tall, with sharp features, and electric eyes. If it had to be anyone, you made the right choice picking him.
You want to get to know him better. You want to learn everything about him.
“It’s OK,” you coo softly, like you were approaching an abused dog. “If you want me to go, I will. If it’s hard for you to be around me. But I’d rather stay with you for awhile.”
He looks up from his own lap at last. Two blue halos study you from within broken, dark-shadowed eyes, finally really seeing you. He looks like he’s about to cry, but does not. He glances down again, but tugs the corners of his mouth into the best effort of a smile he can manage, and this time, it doesn’t suggest he’s going to die in the next scene. “Thank you.”
You sit with him for awhile, talking. Reassuring him, while mentally kicking yourself for hurting the sweetest man on the planet.
“Yagi Toshinori,” he introduces himself. 
So much for staying strangers, you think, smiling as you tell him your name in return.
294 notes · View notes
spacemilkies · 5 years ago
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Hello there! Since you said I could send in requests here we go! I was wondering if you could do a a Cal fic where you were friends before Order 66 happened but after you two were separated due to being in hiding and Order 66. Then on one of his adventures Cal finds you and it’s like an adorable reunion for the two of you and then you two kiss and it’s kinda like “I’ve wanted to do that for the longest time” thanks I hope this works!
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pairing: cal kestis x reader
word count: 6k+ (phew)
summary: “ all that mattered was each other “
a/n: it feels good to finally complete a request after a good drought. i hope you enjoy! thanks for requesting c:
                                                      _______________________
It was really something to say that you were a Jedi. Not just to boast about the otherworldly powers and the connection it threaded you with the Force. For you, it was a feeling like no other. To have the ability to not only protect yourself but to bring some sort of salvation to the rest of the galaxy against the First Order. 
It was a grand feeling for someone as young as yourself at the time. 
It was also a short lived one. 
You were still at the Temple, fresh into your abilities as a Jedi when the Clone Wars began. After living years under the safety of known peace it was jarring to suddenly be thrust into the fierce uncertainty of war. The news began as distant stories, brief recalling of your brethren fighting the good fight with Clone allies. 
For the first time in your life since discovering your sensitivity with the Force as an infant the Temple suddenly felt like less of a covenant and more of a fortress. A wall of defense to protect the rising Jedi so they may soon bring hope to the failing war and draw it to a close. 
As one of the older students, it wouldn’t be long before you would soon find yourself on the opposite side of the barrier.
It was natural to feel fear, a necessary emotion to show that you were thoughtful about what the future held and how your impact could change it. It bred into cautiousness and prompted the call for consciousness so that one did not fall short of their expectations.
A commandment of the Jedi Code fortifies that mindset by reminding one that there is no ignorance, there is knowledge. To only move forward, a young Jedi must first know its surroundings so that they can make the right step forward. 
Still it didn’t make it any less jarring. 
“Master Udu told me I might find you up here.”
You stiffen briefly, your arms tightening around the legs drawn to your chest as your shaken out of your thoughts. For the longest it has just been you and the two moons above you on your place of meditation on the hillside. It goes without saying that you had not exactly relayed such information before departing but very few masters were unable to keep up with their apprentices. 
From here you can see into the villages below. There is a multitude of individuals milling about on the streets, carting their belongings too and fro. Hardly any of their movements are rushed, not one gait altered by the implications of terror. 
By now everyone is aware of the war and its progress, yet for this village its as if the very possibility of it affecting their lifestyle doesn’t even factor as a possibility. You know their proximity to the Temple and assurance of several Jedi backing it up has something to do with it. But those Jedi are you. 
You and all your classmates who have their own doubts. 
All these people. The galaxy. Are all relying on you. 
And that’s enough to ignite true horror. 
The footsteps behind you are slow and even as your current state of mind is vocalized and in need of caution. An impossibly warm body eventually settles beside you, long legs curling under them as they lean back. It’s unnecessary, but the sight of bright ginger hair accented by the moonlight gives you all the identification you need. 
“And you took that as an invitation?”
If he takes your words to be crude, he doesn’t show it. Instead he too takes the time to observe the bodies moving below. “I didn’t realize it was a private party.”
It was determined rather early after your initial meeting that Cal Kestis would become your best friend. As most codes were written into the stars, it was just another predestined thing for two likened souls. Attracted by your mutual ambitions and pinchent for trouble, most of your years were just naturally spent together. 
Some of it was sort of due to the fact that your masters had also been acquainted since the coming of time. 
For that reason, and many like it, you knew that he was no more offended by your words than you meant for them to be. To make a point, rather than be pushed away, he only leaned in closer. 
Your body rocked softly as his shoulder nudged yours upon impact. It’s almost embarrassing how quickly you give up your resolve and turn to hide your face into his neck. 
Cal doesn’t speak just yet, instead bringing an arm around to draw you in closer. Yoo many minutes pass for you too keep count before you finally break the silence. 
Your fingers fumble in your lap, nimble limbs entangling with each other without purpose. “Are you scared?”
Cal lets out a puff of air that curls outward from the cold. His gaze has lifted to the sky now, distracted by something flicking across in the infinite darkness. He knows what you’re referring to but he makes the jest anyway. “ Of Madam N’lie catching us out after hours? I would be stupid not too.”
As expected, you don’t take the joke lightly and his hands dart to catch yours before you can retaliate. What you don’t expect is for him to hold onto them tighter when you try to separate from the grasp. 
You watch, enraptured as his larger calloused hands tease apart your fist to give his own fingers room to weave between the gaps of yours. He brings them both to his mouth, offering a few heated pants to warm them up.
“It’s okay to be scared. Hell, we all are regardless of what Deaton says.”
If you and Cal were mischievous, the absent mentioned party could only be described as callous. Fueled by his own pride, he was one of the more confident apprentices in his own abilities. He often spoke the loudest and provided the most opinions when it came to strategies. When the time came he would run headfirst into battle. 
As first, you found the notion too headstrong and ignorant. But in the face of fear, what wasn’t better to be blinded by boldness?
Especially if you were going to get killed anyway?
“It’s going to be tough, yeah. There is no doubt that the war will be at its peak when we arrive. People will die-” Your breath hitches and he responded swiftly with a kiss to your crown. “But you will live on. I promise you that.”
The way he’s twisting your fingers is awkward, but you realize what he’s attempting to manipulate and your pinky aids the struggle by wrapping around his. A childish gesture but a lifelong commitment. 
You couldn’t admit it, but in that moment, for the briefest of time, your heart felt like it might burst. And you were okay with it. Because if it did come a time for you to finally pass on. If it could be done at your best friend’s side, maybe it wouldn’t be so scary after all.
                                                     _______________________
You’re in pain. So much pain. But you’ll soon meet death if you don’t wisen up quick. Because you’re alone and you don’t know where your allies are- where he is- and you would not accept defeat until you were certain. 
The ground is scorched and scarred by the wrath of the lightsabers, many battles before your own. Now you’ve officially made your mark in the war. Not only by the burned line in the ground but equally by the bodies covering them. 
The rendezvous point isn’t far, but communications are down and you’re not sure if its even safe anymore. No one wanted to admit it, but they were losing. Terribly. In the many numbers you’d lost, too many faces were familiar and the ache was growing in your heart. 
Order 66 was the reckoning of the very Jedi populace and its unrelenting force would draw the conflict to a close just by sheer annihilation. 
The crunch of incoming infantry men fatigues you more than it drives your fire for survival, yet you ignite your lightsaber regardless. It’s a brutal fight. They all are. It’s an endless cycle as you parry, roll away and come back just a little bit weaker than before. 
You Are littered with contusions and lacerations deep enough to scar if you lived long enough for them to heal properly. You’re past the bring of exhaustion now, saber piecing the ground as you lean against its handle. Breathing in and out harshly, you inhale a mixture of earth and blood. A familiar taste to you now. 
By the time your ears catch up to the quickened pace heading your way, you’re too late to react in time. Your body nearly gives away as you stumble to your feet. 
“I’m so glad I found you! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
It sounds like Cal but you’re unable to differentiate between between now and the last time you spoke to him. It seems right that you would hear him now, so close to death. Your gaze is dull and heavy, unable to fully raise high enough to see his face- you think you see a wisp of red though. It’s enough you think. 
Who cares if the Force is playing tricks on you, as long as its him. 
“Hey, Cal … I think.” the cough that racks your body hurts. It hurts so bad as it rattles your lungs and threatens your bruised ribs that might even be broken. Your head spins as you feel your body being lifted and you know this is it. You’re finally ascending. 
“No, no no! Hey, stay with me okay.”
The Force really had a grasp on your memories of him. He sounds as determined as always, stubborn to a fault. You want him to know that you’re okay with this. Happy to at least be given this moment, even if its not real. 
You wish you had enough strength to touch his face. Would your hand connect or just fall through the vision?
You try anyway, pleased when it grants you this much. The hand finds the cut of his jaw, slick with sweat or blood you don’t know. It guides his face down- not as close as you want- but enough to catch the turn of his lips. You wish they would flip the other way. Grace you with one last smile. 
“I really hope … that the Force lets you hear this one day because I-”
There are more voices now, way too many of them as they swarm you from all angles. Your ‘Cal’ curses vulgarly and you wonder why he’s worried at all, it’s all over now. He draws away from your touch before you can protest and you hear the tell tale sound of a lightsaber activating.
This was it then.
But not before you-
He calls your name one last time, desperate with an emotion you weren’t aware that you had stored in your memories. 
Then it all went black. And you’re left to float in the abyss. 
‘I think I love you.’
                                                     _______________________
“Phew, I don’t know what we would do without those Jedi mind tricks of yours.”
Well for one, you’d all be dead. You certainly should have been all those years prior. Staying back briefly, you take the opportunity to catch your breath as your companions leaf through the newly revealed ruins. 
It had taken a lot of planning to make it here before the Order a feat that thad been evading most of the galaxy for quite some time. Even then, you wouldn’t be surprised to find the entire planet littered with their white uniforms by the time you made it out. 
It was a pretty good indicator that if you managed to tire yourself out by testing your connection with the Force, it was likely that you would be discovered by it. Fortunately, it seemed that these archives favored Jedi and your enemies would have to wait until you emerge or risk falling prey to the various traps and puzzles. You just hoped you would get a nice enough break before tackling that conflict. 
In order to survive, however, these conquest often required more on your part than most. When you first come across the band of scavengers and their rickety ship, it hadn’t been the most gracious meeting. That day was still hazy, some odd five years ago, but from your best knowledge and your recognition they had just found you. 
Badly patched up and barely breathing just short of the next village. The worrying part was that you were found on a planet far from the last one you remembered fighting on. From what they could tell you, the war was just about done by that point. Not that it surprised you. 
What hurt was knowing that the Jedi had all but vanished with it. 
For years you’d scoured the networks for any indication of your brethren surviving- of him still being alive. But all clues lead to the complete purge of the order. 
In the beginning of your time together, they had been doubtful of your heritage. Likely for the best as you were injured and in the midst of strangers. It was very apparent at the beginning that they had a habit of selling things off to the highest bidder. Your life alone would have made them richer than most of the galaxy. Still could. 
You suppose the truth eventually came at the trade of saving one of their lives by utilizing stasis to pause a beam in its tracks. It became a test of trust in that moment when their gratitude overcame their greed. 
That had really been it after that. 
Once a Jedi apprentice, you were reduced to a mere pirate that used the Force for cheap tricks to rob the departed. 
Wouldn’t your late master be proud. 
Still deflated by your exertion, you laughed humorlessly as the Twi'lek, Gran and human trio that made up the bandits of four pillaged through the remains. Previous trials had taught you to limit greed over time. 
While you couldn’t hide your presence, you were all fortunate enough to keep your faces hidden. The feat only possible by getting out before the enemy got in. And that timers was quickly counting down. 
“Oh, isn’t this just gorgeous?”
Ashi’ti, the ever eccentric Twi”lek, bounded over to you boasting an agreeably pretty piece of jewelry. You didn’t fight her as she draped the golden necklace over you. It would certainly earn you decent credits. 
Hosting a burst bag of his own, your Gran friend seems to share your eagerness to depart, “This terrain didn’t give us the opportunity to hide our ship as well as it should be. We need to get moving.”
Staring for longingly at all she couldn’t carry, you briefly wondered if you would have to drag Ash’ti out again. There is a familiar pout on her lips but to everyone relief she snatches a few more trinkets before shouldering her own bag. “Tsk. Always interrupting a woman’s shopping time, Blague. “
The Gran can only roll his eyes as she flounces by, not missing the opportunity to brush against him as she does so. He shares a look with you and you hope your smile doesn’t resemble a grimace too much. By the mirror you receive, it’s unlikely. 
“Alright, let’s move out. Hoods up, masks on.”
Taking one last unhindered breath, you obediently go through the motions of disguising your appearance. From a glance, they would be able to make out your differing species but as some of the more common ones in the galaxy it wasn’t much to go by if you haven’t given them too long to observe. 
Fortunately, the way out was easier than the way in and required significantly less of your abilities. The intricate puzzles were apparently more for those entering and rewards those who leave. 
Blague speaks up again as you near the exit.
“Keep confrontations to a minimum. I’d rather take the time for stealth than direct conflict.”
Blowing out an airy breath beside you, Ash’ti fails to refrain from commenting,” No bravery for the wicked.”
“Or the living,” you shoot back under your breath. She doesn’t make any indication of hearing you. 
Just before you reach the final chamber, Blague brings everyone to a halt and you all tense in anticipation. The shortcut had led you back to the entrance, one of the less hindered rooms. Anyone without utility of the Force could make it that far, certainly a few stormtroopers. 
Readying her blaster, Ash’ti lines herself with the nearest wall. Battle partners aside, when it came to protecting her cash-out, no one was fiercer,” Are they getting that much better at tracking?”
There was an odd look on Brague’s face as he stalled as if questioning his own intuition. His lips parted at the cusp of words but never managed to form them. 
You realize late that he didn’t need to. 
The feeling doused you like a dip in an icy river, paralyzing you by the veins. The pressure was indescribable despite how much you didn’t want to believe it. It probed at your consciousness, first demanding then hesitant as if it realized just what it was sensing. 
All signs led to what you’d been trained to know and yet.
“Alright, enough of this.”
“Ash’ti, no!”
The fire of her blaster just missed Brague’s intervention but did not miss its intended target. The return fire came from more than direction as various white suits made their appearance known, shouting commands over the increasing chaos as you all readied for battle. 
The lack of witnesses that you would leave behind meant that you could use your Force more freely but there was a sense of hesitation as you couldn’t quite shake off the second strand connecting another soul nearby. 
Had they lead them here? Or was it just another squad following your trail?
More importantly, were they alone?
The shout of your third companion came as a late warning as the earth above you crumbled from a stray blast. Your eyes went wide as a slab of rock broke from the ceiling. Thrusting your hand up you immediately called upon stasis only to be beaten to the command. 
All suspicions were confirmed, you found yourself dumbfounded under the impending fall as you stared up in wonder. After all this time, in all the moments you could reunited. There was finally a voice beneath the weight of the purge. 
A voice gruff with aggravation growled just before it collided with your body, throwing you both aside to safety. 
Groaning, your head spun from the impact. When you tried to roll over, you found yourself pinned still by your savior. 
Your savior. 
A Jedi. 
Kicking back as you in your attempt to crawl backwards, you boot collided none too kindly with their side. A cry of pain left them as they curled into their injury with grumbling complaint. 
From the opposite side of the rubble, your friends called out worriedly. The lack of gun fire meant that you were all safe for now but that wouldn’t last for very long. For any of you. 
Kriffing! An actual Jedi. 
Where did you even begin? What faction were they part of? Where did they serve? How had they escaped?
“That is not how you thank your savior.”
You were thankful for your mask as the figure slowly unraveled itself as the phantom of pain faded. It was a man, lean and lithe. But that wasn’t the defining feature that caught your breath in your throat. 
His hair mimicked a dim flame that you thought had extinguished years ago and yet. 
“Woah, woah!” 
Showing his hands first, his attention completely left you as it focused instead on your approaching teammate. Still primed for a fight, Ash’ti kept her blaster leveled and prepared. 
“And who the hell are you?’
You didn’t waste a second scrambling to your feet, hand already going for your mask to free your face. 
“Ash, no its fine. I know him.”
She hesitated, but she didn’t look convinced. “You just happen to know every Jedi that you come across?”
But her mitrustful nature couldn’t phase you as you were already enraptured by his wide eyed gaze as he turned to face you fully. The years had done him kindly but not without a few scars from the past. The most prominent stark against the bridge of his nose. 
It was still undeniably your best friend. 
Pure elation took hold of every note in your voice, “Cal!”
The distance was short, but you crossed it with the gusto of a preemptive sprint into battle. All your strength darted to your legs as you jumped, feet pushing off the ground as you launch yourself. And his arms were waiting to catch you with ease. 
Your heart hurt from the way it hammered against your chest. The sharp throb pounding in your ears as a smile split your face. He stumbled briefly, not having to counter your weight in years and sorely out of practice. 
He managed to counter well, however, as your legs clamped around his middle. Cal’s arm steadies you round the waist, only having to take a single step back to adjust for the impact. Your hands were already proding at his face, combing through his auburn locks and inspecting his scars and-
You wanted to laugh until you were delirious. For years all you wanted was a sign and you got this.
“That night- I thought I died. I thought you died. I-” Happiness had weakened the damn and the first trickle of wetness began to trail down your cheeks. His free hand came around, moving away the strands of hair already sticking to your face and cupping your cheek to tip it toward him. 
“I’ve missed you so much, starfly.”
The joy seeping through your bones could bring life to a garden. 
“Okay, what the hell?”
Jerking around, the two of you stared at the forgotten group with a mutual flush. 
Brague looked like he was ready for the day to be over, twenty four hours ago, no doubt not prepared to factor in a second Jedi to his plans. Ash’ti looked an interesting mix of distrustful and amused, turning her pretty skin an interesting shade. Lark, your ever quiet human companion, was already making his way toward the exit. 
Cal was reluctant, but eased his grip to allow you to slide to your feet. However, his arm remained around your waist. Still reeling from the shock, you continued to stare up at him with glee, feeling lighter than air for the first time in a very long time. 
Reaching for his hand, you curled your pinky securely with his own.
“Guys, this is my best friend.”
                                                     _______________________
To say things went smoothly was an understatement. Naturally everyone had questions, but the pressing matter of reinforcements weighed down everything else. Apparently, Cal had come to the tombs for a reason but seemed reluctant to continue on with his quest. The threat what ultimately got everyone to move. 
The conflict of transportation came next. 
Your own vessel was tucked away in the forestry while Cal insisted that his companions were waiting for him on the ledge. It was obvious that neither of you wanted to part but it eventually came down to who would pull whom. 
Brague ultimately made the decision for you, dragging off a sputtering Ash’ti while Cal dragged you toward his own ship. For now the two of you would part ways to confuse the enemy and meet back up when it was safe. 
Warm fingers touched your wrist before squeezing reassuringly. Less than half an hour later after an impromptu meeting with his skeleton crew, Cal had you holed up in a cabin for a proper reunion. One that didn’t come too easily. 
You eyes hesitated for a moment before flickering upward. You didn’t trust your words just yet but the silence was slowly building an ache within you. 
It did give you the chance to check out his room. He didn’t exactly style it to his taste, or at least the ones you remember from all those years ago. Cal did have a few knick knacks of his own, however. You wondered how long he’s been with this crew. Had he been scouring the galaxy all this time?
You swallowed all the greedy questions, not wanting to bombard him all at once when he certainly had his own. 
“I thought you were dead!” You blurted, a reoccurring theme between you. There was no reason for either of you to believe the other survived. You had less of a recount than he did, only remembering that last fated battle. 
Settled side by side on his bed, Cal still kept your hands securely in his own. His thumb brushed slowly over your knuckles as he spoke. “I found you in the forest that night. You were so overrun and then more came. I tried to fight them off. We- got separated and when i managed to come back you were gone. “
His eyes searched yours pleadingly, hopeful that you could fill the gaps. But you honestly didn’t have much to offer. 
Your trapped hands only offered a stiff shrug,” I don’t really remember much after that. Somehow I got off that planet.” Over the years, you theorized about another Jedi or Clone who might have escaped with you only to ultimately get separated in the end. After awhile, you just gave up probing for the truth. You were alive but at the cost of everyone you loved; what was worth remembering?
His chin came to rest on the crown of your head, voice raw with emotion,” I was so convinced- I shouldn’t have given up.”
Immediately you protest, words muffled by his clothes as you pressed into them. “We didn’t know. But we survived. That’s what’s important.”
His fingers ghost along the side of your face, sliding underneath your jaw. Just when you think he’s going to tilt your face up it falls away to rest at the nape of your neck as his body shudders. 
You find yourself recalling your life up until now. Before you’d been content- not happy with your choices- but alive and well rested with your choices that kept you that way. Now that you spoke them aloud to your closest confidant, you almost felt ashamed. 
At the end of the day, you were a thief that stole and sold what you could to survivor. It didn’t make it any better just because you made a living off of it. 
But he didn’t judge you or make any indication of ill thoughts towards your lifestyle. In fact, he did the opposite, laughing sheepishly as he told you about his life as a rigger. Told tales of extra metals and ores he would steal off old ships and sell off market. A lot of his stories revolve around a single figure. Prauf, he called him. 
When you asked about him he stilled. 
“He died before I escaped trying to protect me.”
Startled, your face flicked between remorse and uncertainty, unsure of how to progress. The death seemed fresh on his mind and still painful in his voice. 
“I’m sorry.”
From this position, you couldn’t see his face, but he pulled you closer in response. 
He continued on about how he was rescued by Cere and the short span of adventures he explored before he met you. What it all summed up to was what had you drawing away in surprise.
“You want to revive the Order?”
The idea had never crossed your mind as a possibility. Why would it? Everyone had been obliterated. And now, not only were they outnumbered but they wanted to try it again. 
You found yourself rescinding any compliment you had for his new companions that had saved his life. They were selfishly making him repay a debt that would get him killed.
Before you could get to your feet, prepared to contact Brague he was drawing you back in. There was a new pull to his lips, a childish turn that aged from your appreciation days. 
“I know it sounds crazy but we have to do something.”
No. You didn’t have to do anything. You were lingering fragments of a broken organization. The cards had already fallen and now you would deal with them. Not pick them up and challenge the table again. 
“Cal, it’s not that easy. You can’t just-”
You hated that. The determination storming in his blue gaze. You were already too late. He’s made up his mind a long time ago and you could only accept his decision or cut ties…
As if you’d even consider the later. 
Pinching the bridge of your nose, you tried fruitlessly to fight the grin tugging at your lips when his lips pressed firmly into your cheek. 
“You don’t have to decide now. I’m just happy having you here.”
                                                     _______________________
You end up sort of just lingering on the Mantis. Partly your reluctance to leave Cal’s side and his own persistence to keep you there. For the time being, the expeditions have been suspended as Cere suspects that they should wait for Empire activity to settle. 
Apparently, your combined presence brought more attention than intended. As Cere planned to eventually introduce more Jedi as they were found to their cause this wasn’t unexpected but sooner than planned. 
She saw it more as a chance for everyone to get their bearings and an opportunity for the two of you to properly catch up. And that you did. 
In the meadows of Bogano, Cal excitedly introduced you to a vocal BD-1. His reliable companion that followed him into every skirmish and saved him more than once. You of course found the little robot utterly adorable. 
It continued to bounce around the two of you as you lounged in the grass. 
“Man, remember when Eli tried practicing his stasis by pranking Madam Lou. I’ll never forget her face when the bucket toppled over on her.” His laughter was infectious as he recalled the memories of the past. 
You were resting comfortably with your head on his chest as his fingers card idly through your hair. The way you resumed your relationship come at no surprise to you. Nothing was left unsaid between you, leaving no barrier to impede your reconnection. 
Reaching your hand up towards the sky, you grinned unabashedly when his immediately sought it out and tangled them together. There were few moments where you weren’t attached at some form, bringing up the embarrassing question from Greez as to watch your relationship was.
‘They’re my best friend.’
Which was true in every sense of the world and yet. 
Maybe if you hadn’t lived the life you had maybe things would have been different.
No.
That’s a lie. You know explicit in every lifetime you would fall in love with this same boy. The one whose mere existence was enough to teeter you off balance when he smiled in your direction. He was as charismatic and enigmatic now, all these years later; a systematic habit for you to relish in. Just when you thought it was all over and you would have to scrap from the leftovers of the world, he plowed right back into your life to break the darkest days into light. 
He was a hero to every arc of your story. And you just lo-
“Hey, you listening to me?”
The poke between your brows startles you. You lift your head and meet the brilliant blue somehow managing to smile at you from the seas. Still lost in your thoughts you wonder how easy it would be to just lean in. Would he reciprocate?
Remembering your place, you ask him to repeat himself with nervous laughter on your lips. But he doesn’t. Instead he continues to meet your gaze with a new intensity you can’t fathom. 
His lashes are longer than you remember or perhaps you’d just never been this close. Lips, soft and pink, you speculate what the pressure would feel like against yours. You try to swallow but there isn’t enough saliva on your tongue to justify the attempt leaving you to embarrassingly clear your throat.
“We should-”
“The night I lost you. When I had you clutched in my arms while I fought off the Empire. You told me something.”
Almost immediately you know where this is going. There is no doubt in your mind. But Cal is quicker, is arm preventing escape. 
“I carried it with me all this time. Even when I gave up on the idea-” he pauses to swallow down the memory. The regret. “It was just enough to live by to know that.”
You close your eyes because it’s the only way you can briefly escape. The entire mood has changed, the air thick with so much promise yet your scared. It’s Cal. You know him almost as much as you know yourself. Even as he brushes against the topic, you know where it will lead. 
At least for the moment.Nothing about the future is certain anymore. The realization of that apparent all those years ago. And still prior to that, he’d made a promise. And he remained here to this day to hold it true.
His hands seems to have made a new home at your cheek. It tends to reside there in the off chance it’s not clutching your hand or hanging from your pinky finger. There is a light pressure at the nape of your neck, urging you closer but not pushing. You close the distance upon your own inhibition. 
“Will you tell me again?” he whispers, lips inches from your own. 
“I love-”
He silences you with a kiss before you could complete his request, always too ambitious and headstrong. Pent up nervous energy on both parts keeps it chaste. There is a pretty flush against his cheeks as he realizes his error.
“Oh, sorry- you hadn’t-”
Rolling your eyes with a huff, you lean in for a more proper kiss this time around. Cal whines against you, pulling you tighter still. Oh to finally really kiss him. The feeling washes over how desperately you’d been waiting for this moment even before the downfall. While your relationship had always remained within friendly limits, the love had never lost its potency. It was fierce and bright, immersive in a way only the two of you could create. 
This was your first honest taste and you were already starved for it. Teats bubble from the corners of your eyes unbidden as you down in the affection. He spots them when he finally breaks the kiss. 
His gaze is knowing as a thumb swipes at your cheek. Those blue eyes look as though they wished they could communicate how right everything was with the world even despite the turmoil. 
Burying your face in his poncho, you wipe away the rest of the tears.
“I love you, Cal.”
His chest shakes with relief and rises with laughter as his hand runs along the length of your spine.
“I love you too.”
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