#also it helps that we aged alongside each other and our birthdays are next door.

[nbmudkip]

i dont care if liking steven universe in 2024 is cringe it was a good show that was highly influential to me throughout literally the entirety of my teenage years and i continue to enjoy it to this day

[deceitfuldevil]

Snap Out of It!

Pietro Maximoff X Reader

Summary: You grew up with the Maximoff twins, even agreed to be experimented on at HYDRA with them. You and Pietro were clearly falling for each other the older you got, but HYDRA sent you away and told the Maximoff’s you were dead. So what happens when you show up at the Avengers compound with no memory of your past?

Warnings: a little bit of angst I think?? Mentions of bombs, HYDRA experiments, some fluff and kissing ;)

Word Count: 3.69K

You were born during the start of a terrible war in your home country, and about two months later your parents introduced you to a new set of twins who lived just a few doors down from you. Of course you don’t actually remember meeting them, but your earliest memories were all filled with the Maximoff twins. You practically grew up right alongside them, you three did everything together. Birthdays, playdates, dinner when your parents weren’t home, all of it. It was also nice to grow up alongside others who were your age, especially when your country was at such a low place; it was a good distraction.

You were 10 years old when your apartment complex was bombed, your father had just walked in the door coming home from work. He and your mom fell into the hole in the floor immediately, that was the last time you ever saw them. You sat curled up in a ball in the far left corner of what used to be your kitchen. Frozen with fear and trauma for two days, until you were rescued. You were brought down to a large police van, the doors were opened for you and you saw two other children huddled together under a blanket, both of them immediately turned to see you and screamed with joy. It was your best friends, the Maximoffs. You ran into the van and hugged them immediately, all of you breaking down into tears. You sat in the back of the van together and chatted about the bombing. The main question on your mind was “are there any survivors?” but as it turned out, not only were you and the Maximoff twins the only children that survived. You three ended up being the three lone survivors of the entire apartment complex. Newspapers printed out articles on “the miracle trio” for weeks to come.

From that day on you three jumped from homeless shelter to homeless shelter, never once being allowed to stay in once place for too long. You even agreed to volunteer for HYDRA’s experiments with Wanda and Pietro when you were all 17. You tried to stay in communication with your friends but HYDRA made that near impossible with their constant experiments and isolations. The time you did get to spend with the Maximoffs was cherished, especially your time with Pietro. You two were definitely drawn to each other as you grew into your mid teens, but you never truly allowed anything serious to happen in fear of how Wanda might react.

About a year into your experiments at HYDRA, you gained healing like abilities along with some telepathy as well. After learning and controlling these powers you were excited for when you got to see Wanda and Pietro next to see what powers they had gained. But you never got the chance. HYDRA saw more use in you than petty armed fights, and shipped you off to god knows where and gave you the improved and experimental “super-soldier” serum. HYDRA informed Wanda and Pietro that the experiments became too much for you, that you were weak and had passed on. Pietro cried for days on end, and Wanda could hear him every night from her neighboring cell. Thinking you were dead killed his spirit, his soul. He never even got to tell you how he really felt. That you were so much more than just a fling to him. Meanwhile you trained for months on end and every week and were forced to have shock therapy to erase your past memories. HYDRA was making you into nothing more than a weapon, a shell of a person. After a few successful missions, that's all you were good for. So if you weren’t out on business, you were put under cryo-sleep. This went on for years.

It wasn't until 3 weeks after the battle of Sokovia when Sam had been questioning Wanda and Pietro about their time with HYDRA, he was able to locate another one of their secret human experiment facilities. Steve was hoping they’d make a break in that missing persons case of his but to no avail. However, they did find one abandoned soldier in cryo-freeze. You.

Now, of course it took months of isolation and small bits of normal human activity and interaction to erase what HYDRA had brainwashed you into. After about 4 1/2 months Tony decided it was time to move you into the new compound, but kept you restricted to your room. Others were allowed to visit you if they’d like, it was encouraged really. Get you the human interaction you needed.

Three days and no visits later, which you didn’t mind. It was nice being isolated somewhere with TV service.

Clint walked over to the kitchen island where Wanda and Pietro were having a conversation over a snack.

“Either of you meet the newest recruit yet? I hear she’s still in isolation.”

“There’s a... new recruit?” Pietro said, his accent thick as he spoke with a questioning tone.

“Yeah, Y/N something. Found her in cryo-freeze at that HYDRA base we raided a few months ago.”

Wanda froze, immediately looking to her brother who looked like a deer caught in headlights.

“Pietro... it can’t be her. You remember how she died in trials” Wanda tried to reason with her still love stricken brother after all these years.

“That’s what they told us, what if they lied? It wouldn’t be the first time.”

She just shook her head “it’s impossible, do you even think she’d still remember you?” Wanda inquired.

“There’s only one way to find out!” Pietro said, speeding off leaving a trail of blue streaks behind him.

He busted through the lab doors and stood about 5 feet from Tony, breathless. “What’s her name? Her full name.”

“Okay speedy, next time knock, yeah? And half of our team here is “her’s” so I haven’t the slightest clue who you’re talking about.” Tony spoke calmly, but frustrated that Pietro bursted in out of nowhere.

“The new recruit, Y/N.”

Tony looked over to the quick man and quirked a brow at him

“Well you’ve already got half her name down. She’s Y/N L/N, an ex HYDRA super soldier. You should go visit her actually, she just moved into the compound a few days ago. No ones even visited her y—“

“Where is she staying? what room is she in?” He asked, cutting Tony off.

“Floor 2, room 315... you know it’s impolite to cut off your—“ but before Tony could finish, Pietro had sped off again.

You sat into your room watching an old sitcom from the 2000s you felt drawn to. But before you could invest yourself any further there was a knock at your door. Something you weren’t used to. You hesitantly spoke, “come in” you said sitting up in your bed, fixing your hair a little in the process.

A silver haired man slowly walked in, he had broad shoulders and a toned body. He was attractive, no doubt. But he almost looked familiar to you. Why?

“Hello dragâ” he spoke with a Eastern Europe accent, but one not one you could exactly pinpoint. But you recognized the foreign word he spoke

“Hello... domnule. How do you know Russian... and why have you come to visit?” You questioned, swinging your legs over the side of your bed. The man at your door, he looked sad now. His face fell, but you didn’t understand why.

“You don’t remember me?” He walked closer to you, as you stood up from your bed.

“Well I don’t remember much after HYDRA brainwashed the hell out of me” you said with a slight chuckle, but he still looked disappointed.

“But maybe if you tell me your name and why I should remember you” you said with a smirk, stepping closer to the handsome man that stood in front of you.

“Can I show you instead?” He said, stepping so close that now your chests were touching. You enjoyed the human interaction but with your past training, this still left you on edge.

“Show me?” You questioned, but he took this rather as the go-ahead and snaked a hand around your waist and leaned down, placing a soft kiss on your lips. You wanted to melt into his touch but it was all too soon, and you didn’t even know his name. You pulled away abruptly and slapped him. Backing away as you sat back down on your bed and stared at your hands.

“Please leave.” You said just as quietly as you said when you allowed him to come in. When you looked up, the mysterious man was gone; your door left a crack open.

No one visited you for five more days after that. It was early into the evening and you sat alone in your room reading a book. There was a knock at your door but you didn’t answer it. The last time you agreed to let someone in they violated your boundaries. But regardless your door was still opened, but a new person you had yet to meet walked through.

She stood a bit taller than you and had long red hair, a kind smile and warm eyes.

“I hope I am not intruding.” She said, with the same accent as the man who invaded on your days before. Which again, put you on edge.

“Who are you?” You said, keeping your eyes on your book— desperately avoiding eye contact.

“Wanda Maximoff, but you can just call me Wanda.” She said sweetly

“Oh how sweet of you” you said dryly, still bitter over your last encounter with someone in the avengers compound.

“All you remember is pain” she said in an as-a-matter-of-fact kind of way. “But that’s not all you know, you just need to remember.” You now dared to look up at her. She was still at the door, keeping her distance from you.

“And how am I supposed to remember what you think I know?” You asked, and she took a step closer to your bed.

“I don’t think, I see. I can see inside your head, they did unspeakable things to you. Made you carry out violent missions that still haunt your dreams. You’ve forgotten what you know, your life before them...” Wanda paused, your eyes welled up gently with tears but you refused to let them fall. But she noticed.

“I think I can help you, if you’d let me” she took another step towards you, waiting for your reaction. But you stayed silent, fighting with yourself internally.

“We used to be friends, you know. You, my brother and I. He came to visit you a few days ago, and he knows what he did was wrong. He just missed you terribly. We have similar pasts. I want to help you, but if you don’t want my help. That is okay too. Regardless of what you choose, I still want to be your friend.”

You took a deep breath and stood up out of your bed. “How will you do it?” You asked, wanting nothing more than to feel normal again.

“A little bit of my magic, a little bit of love, and a lot of stories.” She smiled sweetly, taking your hand in hers. “I’ll be right back, okay?” You nodded quickly as Wanda left your room. You sat back down on your bed and racked your head wondering what you were about to learn about yourself. Wanda came back in with a fairly large box labeled “amintiri” which you knew meant “memories” in Romanian.

“Is everyone here Russian like me?” You questioned, giving Wanda a laugh “no, just my brother and I. Coincidentally, the only two who have visited you since you moved here.” You frowned slightly at her comment

“Why has no one else come to visit me?”

Wanda sighed “no one else knows you like my brother and I do. All they know is what you have done in your past, and that scares them.” She took the lid off the box she brought in and picked up a stack of photos that were tied together with a rubber band.

“But lucky for you, Pietro and I know more.” She said with a smile

“Pietro?” You said, quirking your head to the side a bit.

“He is my twin brother, the one who visited you last week. You two have... a history of sorts together. But we’ll get into that later.”

So with that, for some reason, you felt that everything was going to be okay.

And okay it was. Wanda showed you hundreds of pictures everyday and told the story behind every picture she pulled. Although you didn’t remember any of the memories she retold, it was still nice to hear what your life was like before HYDRA.

A week and a half later, she used her powers on you. At the time you remembered nothing, but later that night when she was showing you more pictures you pulled one picture out of the  box. It was three little kids, all surrounding a brown chest that seemed to be filled with various sitcoms on VHS tape.

“This was on your 9th birthday, your father had bought a chest full of old American sitcoms. Not only did you love comedy but our family saw it as a great way to practice your English. Your favorite was The Dick Van Dyke Show.” You immediately recalled with great memory as you picked up the picture. Wanda jumped with joy and hugged you.

“You remembered!!” You nodded happily and hugged her back. “I remembered...” you said back quietly, almost in shock of yourself.

From then on memories came back to you not only easier but also a lot quicker. Soon enough, you remembered everything HYDRA had tried to erase out of your head. Even your feelings for Pietro. But you kept those memories to yourself, afraid that he would hate you after your first encounter with him when you came to the compound.

The last step Wanda had for you in what she called “Becoming You Again Project” was to have dinner with the rest of the compound, and finally be properly introduced to them.

So a dinner you all had. It was casual, but still felt formal as everyone greeted you so politely. Of course Wanda kept them all updated on your status. Even though they hadn’t met you yet, with her seal of approval they all trusted you now.

The last person to greet you was a face you could never forget now. Pietro Maximoff.

“Y/n... I know you’ve met a thousand times before, but I’d like you to meet my brother, Pietro.” Wanda said, elbowing her brother to stop staring at you and shake your hand. You felt weak at the knees under his gaze, was this how he’s always made you feel?

Pietro bowed down before you like you were some kind of princess and kissed your hand sweetly.

“Hello again, dragoste mia“ you felt hot under his touch and knew you were turning a beet red. You nodded quickly and smiled at him. He looked up and winked at you, walking to his seat. Which almost dreadfully, was directly across from yours.

After that you all sat down for dinner, Pepper had made a nice pasta dish for everyone. You ate quietly as everyone went around and told you stories of all kinds. Of past missions together, of personal life stories, and so much more. Truly it was a very enjoyable time. You loved getting to know everyone more than the files you were left in your room to “get to know the avenger” as Tony called it.

The night was almost perfect, if you hadn’t felt the gaze of a very familiar Sokovian man on you all night. He never even spoke, not that he had many stories to tell that you weren’t there for. The more stories that were told, the more you tuned them out and fell victim to his gaze.

But when the room fell quiet and you realized everyone's eyes were on you, you snapped out of whatever trance Pietro held you captive in and laughed nervously.

“I’m sorry, what did I miss? My mind was... somewhere else.” A few others laughed awkwardly, it was no doubt that everyone else noticed the constant looks you and Pietro were sharing. Tony stood up abruptly taking it upon himself to avoid the awkward silence.

“It was nothing important, Y/n. Anyways I believe this dinner was long overdue and very welcomed. We will be seeing you at training tomorrow?” Tony asked, starting to clear up his place.

“She can start on Monday, Tony. Let the kid have the weekend before she officially becomes an avenger, yeah?” Steve said, also standing up. Tony looked back at you and said “Captain's orders kid, see you Monday.” He said walking off, plate in hand. The others followed suit as you said your thank you’s for the warm welcome and goodnights to everyone.

Even if you didn’t make the dinner, you insisted on cleaning up. It was a nice way for you to feel helpful and to debrief after the dinner. Wanda left you alone and you cleaned the dishes happily while F.R.I.D.A.Y played some tunes for you.

“Mind if I lend you a hand, printsessa?” You heard a thick accent call out. You turned around to see none other than Pietro standing at the kitchen island with a smirk on his face.

“You’re not afraid of me?” You asked in a playful tone, although you weren’t entirely joking.

“Hardly, you could choke the life out of me and I’d say thank you.” He said, cheekiness radiating in his voice.  You only laughed at his comment shaking your head.

“But just so you know, I used to do the choking in this relationship.” He said, daring to step closer to you. Your legs felt like jelly but you challenged him.

“Oh did you now? It’s a shame I don’t remember that.” You said teasingly

“But you remember other things? You remember me? Us? What we were?” His tone remained challenging, but his words were serious. You flirty front dropped at this, a small fear that he didn’t feel the same now coming back to eat you alive. You didn’t answer, rather turning back around to finish off the last of the dishes.

“You do remember me, and the times we shared together... no?” He said, carefully coming beside you.

“How could I forget? Of all the memories I was able to recall, those were the best” you said half-heartedly... not meaning to sound so bitter.

“But surely you’ve moved on...” you said quietly, staring at the dish you scrubbed aggressively in your hand.

“Oh dragâ mea” he said, taking a risk and placing one of his hands at the side of your face, gently forcing you to look at him.

“I never believed them when they told us you had failed your trials and passed on. I knew you were stronger than that, and the memories of what we had, kept me strong enough to escape from those bastards. I always had hope that you were still out there.”  

You smiled brightly and tears brimmed your eyes, only this time you weren’t afraid to let them fall.

“I never stopped loving you, Y/n. Even when I thought you were dead.” And there went your tears, falling down your face as you turned to fully face Pietro as you wrapped your soapy hands around his neck.

“I love you too Pietro, the memories I have with you are the best ones I’ve remembered since I came back.”

He laughed lightly and brought his forehead to yours “so glad to hear you finally snapped out it, my love.”

“How could I have been so blind? I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you when you first visited me.” You admitted shyly

“It’s okay, I waited so patiently for years. A few more weeks wasn’t going to kill me” you laughed as your noses touched. His breath was fanning over your face and you didn’t dare break your eyes away from his.

“If you can promise not to slap me... we could always try that kiss again?” He said slyly, but you only sighed happily.

“I promise.” And that was all he needed. Pietro closed the small space between the two of you and pressed his soft lips to yours. The moment was nothing but pure bliss as you inhaled his sweet scent.

You pulled away somewhat reluctantly and smiled up at the man in front of you.

“Does that mean we’re together again?” He asked kindly

“Oh yeah, and good luck getting rid of me this time speedy.” You joked, tangling your fingers in the ends of his hair at the back of his neck.

“I wouldn’t dream of it, dragosté” he said, leaning down and bringing you in for a much more passionate kiss.

—

A/N

Ahhh hi everyone!! I truly haven't gotten this many imagines out in years and it feels so good. I turned on “The Greatest Showman” and five minutes later was struck with inspiration and somehow came up with this, which is actually kind of based off the song “Snap Out of It” by the Arctic Monkeys. I’ve been so obsessed with Pietro Maximoff/Arron Taylor Johnson lately, honestly it's ridiculous. Anyways I really hope you all enjoyed this imagine and remember, feedback is always welcomed and requests are encouraged!

Much Love,

—Skyler

[laskyy]

Hey everyone! Sorry for the wait, but I didn't have much inspiration this week. This imagine that I wrote is probably not gonna be my best, but I hope you enjoy it, because I still worked hard for it! Love you 💖

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Took you long enough

Tw: food, kissing (let me know if I missed something pls)

Genre: extreme fluff

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It was around 8:30 a.m. when you heard your phone ring, so you picked it up without looking at the caller ID because you were to sleepy to care at this point.

"Hello?" You said in a groggy voice.

"Hi sleeping beauty, did I wake you up?" The voice you couldn't get out of your head giggled.

"Oh Intak! Hi there, and well kind of, but I was about to wake up anytime soon so it's fine!" You said as your voice just sounded happier, because of Intak.

Oh and by the way you had a big fat crush on Intak and you were pretty sure he felt the same way, because you guys shared a lot of affection with each other that friends don't. Like kissing the corners of each other's lips, you have slept together in the same bed and you shared longing hugs that neither of you guys wanted to pull away from, but you were still being cautious as you didn't want to move to fast and scare him away.

"Okay then! I called to ask if you wanted to come over and have breakfast with us! You know, to catch up since we've both been busy and I want to see you, if that's okay with you." Intak said in a soothing tone and at this point you were thankful he couldn't see you blush.

"I'd love to come over Intak! I also want to see you." You said and you were sure that Intak could tell by the tone of your voice that you were smiling.

"Alright! I'll see you in 20 cutie!"

"Okay, see you!" You said as you hung up and couldn't help but blush at the nickname.

You got ready and passed by your and Intak's favourite bakery to buy some croissants and other pasteries for everyone to eat.

As you got to the dorm you texted Intak instead of knocking on the door, because you didn't know if the other boys were already awake or not.

As soon as you texted him the door opened and your favourite boy was standing right in front of you with his slightly messy hair.

"Good morning Y/n! Come in!" Intak said as he closed the door and pulled you into a warm hug.

"Good morning! How are you feeling today?"

"I'm great! And you love?" Yeah, you weren't that great after hearing that nickname, it drove you wild! And you guys weren't even dating yet!

"I-I'm good too! And I brought some food!" You said happily as you pulled away from the hug and showed him the bag of pasteries.

"Aww Y/n! You're just the sweetest! Come here, let's go to the kitchen while the other get ready to come down to eat." He said as he grabbed your hand and guided you to sit down on one of the chairs in the kitchen next to him.

"I really missed you Y/n! Can I hug you again?" He said as he gave you those puppy eyes you could never say no to.

You didn't even hesitate, you obviously accepted as Intak englufed you in a beat hug as he put his arms around your shoulders and you put yours around his torso.

"You smell really good!" You said against his chest.

"Oh, thanks I showered!" He said as you both laughed and pulled away from the hug.

Intak was the most handsome guy you had ever laid eyes on. And as cheesy as it sounds you could not stop looking at him. He was just that impactful (Intaktful - no? Sorry, moving on).

"What's wrong cutie? Is there something on my face or you just can't get enough of me?"

You laughed "Oh, you are so full of yourself. But yes I was admiring you, I have to admit it"

"It's good to know you're as smitten for me as I am for you" He said and kissed the corner of your lips softly.

You couldn't help but blush and hide your face in his broad chest as you felt it vibrate with laughter.

"You're so cute when you're shy." He said as he gave you head pats.

You guys pulled away and were just updating each other on your livres while you played with Intak's fingers, a habit that always made you feel at ease.

Eventually, the boys started coming to the kitchen and they couldn't miss the small acts of affection and little looks and giggles you shared with their member Intak, and honestly they just wanted you guys to stop tip-toeing on your feelings. They wanted you guys to realise you were, in fact, perfect for each other.

"Good morning lovebirds!" Jiung said as he softly laughed.

"Good morning!" Both you and Intak answered at the same time.

"Oh who brought food?" Soul asked as he saw the bag from the bakery down the street.

"It was Y/n! They were kind enough to bring food for breakfast!" Intak said as he pulled you closer to him.

"You brought quite a lot as well, but since you were so considerate I'm sure Intak won't let it go to waste!" Keeho said teasingly.

Intak blushed as he looked at your interwined hands.

"Aww look at them being awkward!" Theo said as he looked at Intak and you.

"Yeah They're cute! But I'm hungry and we have work later on so we need to eat!" Jongseob said as he sat down on one of the chairs as well.

You guys were eating and you lost count of how many times Intak wiped your lips or even got hair out of your face. You also lost count of how many times the members gagged! Yeah, they sure love pda.

Once you all finished eating you offered to clean up since they needed to recharge for work later in the day.

You were cleaning the kitchen when Intak wrapped his arms around your waist and softly backhugged you.

"Hey cutie, need help?"

"Hey! It's fine I'm almost finished!"

"Good, because I wanna cuddle!"

While you and Intak shared this sweet conversation in the kitchen, the other members were talking in the living room.

"Don't you guys think it's about time they start dating?" Theo stated impatiently.

"Yeah, but they just won't make a move to ask each other!" Keeho said.

"Maybe if we say something they'll consider it?" Soul said in a questioning way.

"THAT'S A GREAT IDEA! But they won't listen to just anyone. How about Jongseob says something about that! Since he's the baby and yeah you get it!" Jiung suggested while the other nodded in agreement.

Later on in the day the guys had to head off to the van so they could go to the company and it was also time to get the plan in action!

"Can we meet up tomorrow?" Intak asked as he caressed your cheek softly.

"Yeah, I'd love that actually." You said and pecked his cheek while he giggled softly.

"Look at them! We really have to do something! They've been in this stage for ages! They already look like a couple why do they assume themselves as friends? My God Jongseob do your thing!" Jiung said as he just wanted his two friends to understand they both wanted the same thing.

The boys went to the door and blocked it as Jongseob went in front to talk.

"Intak, Y/n. I just wanted to say that the both of you would look like a great couple! I mean you already do, why not make it Official! Please! You guys want this so bad! And we're not letting you get out until you're both dating each other, so good luck!" Jongseob said as he exited the dorm alongside the other members and let you two stay inside.

"Wow that was... Wow!" Was all you manage to say as you were still in shock.

"Yeah! But well we wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of them would we?" Intak said as looked you in the eyes.

"But do you really want this? I don't want us to date just because of peer pressure!" You said as you wanted to make sure Intak really wanted to be with you.

"I really want this! The reason I hadn't asked you yet, was because I never found the right moment to do it but now that they sort of gave us this oportunity I'm not wasting it! Do you want this as much as I do?" He said as he held both of your hands as a way to calm you down.

"I really do! I've been waiting for this for a long time! I didn't ask you before because I didn't want to scare you away!" You said as you smiled shyly.

"Well then, do you want to date me officially?" Intak asked as he looked at you hopefully.

"Of course I do bub!" You said as you hugged him tightly" You said and you could hear the members on the other side of the door cheering for you.

When you pulled away Intak kissed you right away and honestly it felt better than you could have possibly imagined.

"I love you Intak" You said as you pulled away from the kiss.

"I love you too Y/n" He said while leaning in for another kiss which you gladly accepted.

After a while you opened the door and were met by the members cheering for you.

A chorus of "Awws" was heard when Intak kissed your head softly.

"Took you long enough!" Theo said as the rest of you laughed.

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Hope you guys liked this imagine! And once again happy birthday to our puppy Intak! Hope he has a great day! And I hope you guys have a great day as well!! Love you 💖💖💖

[ijustwant2write]

Grow Up Fast-Fred Weasley x Reader (Part 2)

(GIF credit to @everygif​)

Part 1

Masterlist

Prompt List

‘OMG! I loved Grow Up Fast-Fred Weasley x Reader! I’ll love to see a part two where they go get the baby back! Hopefully if you have time, it was so cute‘

‘Grow Up Fast was so cute and amazing!! Part 2???‘

‘loved you’re recent Fred piece on the baby! just wondering if you could do another one along those lines but the reader is pregnant with twins and the whole family is finding it special obviously because Fred’s a twin, just something along those lines 💖‘

Characters: Fred Weasley x Reader, George Weasley x Reader (brother-in-law), Weasley family x Reader (in-laws)

Meanings: (Y/N)=Your name

Warnings: Adoption, pregnancy symptoms/pregnancy talk (throwing up/check ups/scans/trimesters), lots and lots and lots of fluff

                                       *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Are we really doing this?” I excitedly breathed out, squeezing Fred’s hand.

He slightly nodded, looking apprehensive himself.“We really are.”

We were stood inside the orphanage, and this wasn’t our first time here. Ever since the baby had left our short care, something had felt off in our lives. In the beginning, we blamed it on the shock of it all; it’s not everyday that you find an abandoned baby behind your shop. Even George pointed this out, saying that our minds seemed to be elsewhere. So here we stood, waiting for the care worker to come back down the hall, but this time she wouldn’t be by herself.

I held back an excited giggle when she turned around the corner with the baby in a carrier. He was awake, kicking his legs about under his blanket, gurgling away as if he knew he was going to his forever home. I tried not to start crying, even though my emotions were all over the place, but it seemed that Fred was happy to let the tears fall. Smiling up at him, I quickly made him face me, giggling as I wiped away his tears. We didn’t exchange any words, but he nodded his at me as if I had asked if he was alright.

“Here he is, little Tommy.” the woman beamed, handing him over to us.

Fred held the carrier in both arms, and we cooed at Tommy. We had helped pick out a name for him when they couldn’t find any recent hospital records, they had no idea where he came from or who his mother was. And just like that, we were taking him home with us.

Once home, we found ourselves lying on the bed, with Tommy in the middle (just like we had the first time we brought him home), and just staring. We had fed him before, meaning he was now sleepy, slowly dozing off.

“What do we do know?” Fred whispered.

“I don’t know.” I honestly answered.“It feels so strange to have him home again, even after seeing him in the care home for so many months.”

“I wish we were there to see him properly grow, he’s so much bigger now.”

“Well he’s here now. And it’s almost his first birthday, we should start planning.”

Fred chuckled, eyes widening when Tommy stirred. Tommy opened his eyes, face scrunching up to cry when I pulled him closer, holding onto him. He calmed down, a few whimpers escaping him before he nodded off again. I glanced at Fred, who was already looking at me, sharing a smile. This was our life now.

A few more months passed, filled with getting used to being parents; the late nights, early mornings, dealing with the ear piercing cries and smelly nappies, but also the bursts of giggles, funny noises and cuddles. So many of our friends and family had come forward to help, giving advice and wanting to get to know the new member of the family. Molly had been extremely enthusiastic after finding out we planned to adopt Tommy. She had worried that there had been problems with us, that we weren’t able to have babies of our own, though even after reassurance, she was still excited. And she offered to babysit way too much (though sometimes that was used to our advantage). 

Now it was the day of Tommy’s first birthday. Since there were no hospital records to show his birth date, they had to give it their best guess. Nevertheless, Tommy was going to have a proper birthday. We had decorated the home, our presents were stacked next to the fireplace, the cake was displayed alongside the rest of the food, and I had picked out his outfit for the day, now all that was left to do was wait for the guests. 

“Wow, look at my handsome boys!” I exclaimed when I entered the living room, seeing Fred holding up Tommy to look at himself in the mirror. 

Fred gasped, turning around so that they were looking at me.“Tommy, look at mummy! Good thing she put in an effort too.”

I scoffed a laugh.“Is everything ready?”

“Yep. Guests should be arriving any minute.”

“Today is all about you Tommy.” I tickled his stomach, laughing with him as he squealed.

The party went amazingly. My family and Fred’s turned up at the same time, all loudly entering our home, gifts in hands, talking over one another. It was hard to take it all in, trying to answer all their questions as they passed me their coats and took off their shoes. Although all their excitement got the best of them, instantly going to greet Tommy and Fred, I didn’t mind, relishing the sight of our entire family together; it was the simple things in life that you could miss, and this was one of them. The day was filled with laughs, too much food and bad singing. There were also nudges towards Ron and Hermione, as well as Harry and Ginny about children, and poor George was being told to keep his search going for the right girl. Both grandmother’s wanted time with Tommy, but I knew he was going to become annoyed being passed around too much. Everyone was content watching him sit up by himself, cushions surrounding him in case he fell, playing with his toys.

Sitting back with Hermione, I found it hard to concentrate on her words. I suddenly felt tired, and also didn’t want to even think about the lunch I had served up. Trying to keep up with the conversation, I sipped at my water, feeling ill. Perhaps I was over tired from the late nights with Harry, we hadn’t had a gathering like this in a while, it was a lot to keep up with, especially when you were one of the hosts. I excused myself, quickly walking to the bathroom. Just as I was about to splash some water on my face, a horrible feeling rose in my throat, and I found myself bent over the toilet being sick. No, surely not, I couldn’t be could I?

Luckily I wasn’t throwing up for long, taking a moment to catch my breath, causing me to cough. Slowly standing, not feeling dizzy now, and quickly brushing my teeth as I flushed the toilet. Checking my reflection, I sighed when I saw how pale I had become. People would definitely notice, if not, then Fred certainly would. I had to act normal, be as bright and bubbly as I was ten minutes ago.

Upon my return, there was music playing, Ginny and Hermione swaying with Tommy on the floor whilst our parents conversed, and the lads talked about something unrelated to babies, families or weddings. Passing by them, I smiled, needing a glass of water. I realised Fred had followed me into the kitchen, sighing as I realised I would have to tell him.

“(Y/N), you don’t look well, are you OK?” Fred asked closely, his hands rubbing my arms up and down as he stood behind me. 

I nodded after taking a sip of water.“Yeah. I’m fine now.”

“What does that mean?”

I turned around to face him, leaning back against the counter.“I um...I was just sick in the toilet.”

“Should we take you to a doctor? Do you need healing? What are your symptoms?” he rushed.

“No, I’m fine really. Perhaps I ate something bad....or....”

“Or what?”

“Fred, your mum babysat for us a couple of weeks ago.”

“What does that have to do with any of this?”

“We were alone, all day and all night...can you connect the dots?”

It took him a few more seconds before it clicked, and as his eyes widened, I had to clamp a hand over his mouth to stop him from yelling.

“Yes, Fred, I might be pregnant.” I whispered.

“Uh, am I interrupting something here?” Ron said from the doorway, confused when he saw the position we were in.

“Uh, y-yes! Fred was about to yell about the cake, but...but we didn’t want Harry to hear and get too excited.”

Ron furrowed his eyebrows at us as he slowly stepped back.“OK. I mean, he’s only one, I’m sure he wouldn’t have realised.”

Removing my hand from Fred’s mouth, I let out a sigh of relief.“Look, we don’t know if that’s true yet, so for now, don’t even think about it.”

“But, if you are...” Fred trailed off, smiling to himself.

“Would...would you be alright with that?”

“Would you?”

We hadn’t come back to that conversation, instead trying to focus on the rest of the party. Because Tommy was easily tired out, they didn’t stay for much longer. At any other time, I would insist they stay, even after putting Tommy to bed. However, I wasn’t being a good host as I let them put on their shoes and coats, each waving goodbye to little Tommy. With the door closed, and just the three of us leftover, Fred and I flopped onto the sofa, letting Tommy roam and tire himself out.

“I’ll book an appointment for this week.” I mumbled, trying to not let my eyes droop.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Fred said.

“I...I don’t know. It would be nice but George might get suspicious.”

“Would it be so bad if he found out? You know he would keep it a secret.”

“That’s true. Alright, come with me. Let’s find out together.”

And that’s what happened. Unfortunately it was almost another two weeks before I was able to be checked over; there had been a strange atmosphere as we waited, that’s all we were concentrating on. Tommy still received as much love as he usually did, but there were times where I would stress about the future. Tommy was just one, and if I was pregnant, there wasn’t going to be a big age gap between the children. That would be hard. They would be toddlers together, there would be screaming, crying, toilet training, the money for nappies, clothes, toys....but every time I found myself down that hole, Fred was there to pull me out, consoling me, assuring me we would be alright with one more child.

I had been bouncing Tommy on my lap as we waited for the doctor to see us. Fred had to take him away from me, worried that I would cause him to be sick, but it was a nervous tick. I was extremely grateful to have Fred with me, concentrating on his thumb running over the back of my hand, and the gentle kisses he would place on my forehead. But the appointment went by in a flash, and as we walked outside, I couldn’t help but squeal in excitement and shock, exclaiming loudly to everyone around me;

“WE’RE PREGNANT!”

George obviously had to know first, seeing as we took the day off work. But he was sworn to secrecy. We wanted to keep it under wraps for a while, waiting to see what my first trimester was like. The excitement was almost too much for me, I couldn’t stop picturing what it was going to be like for Tommy to have a sibling. Another person to add to our family, someone else to give our love to. Things were going well, of course there were the horrible symptoms, though I said to myself over and over again that this would be worth. The weeks whizzed by, and soon, I was starting to show, meaning Fred and I couldn’t stop rubbing the tiny bump. I had bawled when Tommy rested his head on it one night, as if he understood his brother or sister was in there.

We knew it would be impossible to keep it hidden anymore, and I seemed very healthy so far. We were also bursting to tell our friends and family, trying to think of ways to announce it. Fred suggested huge fireworks that wrote it out, but I knew that would be too much. Instead, he settled for a cake where the icing would start writing out the message ‘We’re Pregnant!’ when the candles were lit. Once again, the family found themselves squashed together, this time meeting at the Burrow. Tommy stood on Harry’s lap, clumsily using his face to balance himself as Fred and I caught everyone’s attention.

“We thought we would bring you all something special, a thank you for supporting us through the entire adoption process and for helping us get used to being parents.” I explained, pushing the cake into the centre of the table.

The candles had just been lit, and as everyone licked their lips at the sight of it, they realised what was happening. Screams, hollers and cheers erupted throughout the small room, causing me to burst into tears at the happiness. This was good, this was going to be an amazing chapter of my life.

My mother and molly would send me pregnancy books, recipes for meals that were good for the baby, or just natter on and on about advice, side effects, and what childbirth actually entailed. Sometimes it was a bit too much, I would wish they held some details back. The checkups were going well, Tommy’s behaviour was getting better as he grew, also Fred’s enthusiasm seemed to never die down. However, it had come to that certain appointment, the one some couples longed for. It was time to find out the gender of our child. The results we were given weren’t what we were expecting.

Stepping into the shop, I relaxed when I saw it wasn’t too busy. Fred was desperate to tell his brother the news. As he went to get him, I laughed at Tommy’s wide eyes, taking in all the colours and noises. Fred gestured for me to follow him into the stock room, getting their workers to take over the floor. As I stepped in, flashbacks to Tommy as a newborn came to me. How strange, it was almost like a full circle.

“So, what’s it gonna be then?” George grinned.

I giggled at Fred who was almost jumping up and down in excitement.“Go on then, I said you could tell him.”

“Well, Georgie, it’s a boy-”

He threw his arms up in the air.“Yes! I knew it!”

“And a girl.”

“Wait, what?” his arms slowly sank down.

“We’re having twins! There’s going to be another set of Weasley twins!”

George responded with a loud cheer, throwing himself onto his brother in an engulfing hug. They were patting each other on the back, at first jumping about before they calmed down, swaying side to side.

“Freddie, that’s amazing! (Y/N), you’re going to be massive!”

I scoffed a laugh, knowing he meant no harm.“Thank you very much George. You’ve already earned yourself a whole weekend of babysitting.”

“Have you told mum yet?”

“No,” Fred said,“you’re the first.”

“She’s going to go crazy.”

“So is mine.” I stated.

“Who would have thought, eh? Another set of twins?”

“I’m going to finally know what it was like to raise you two. Perhaps I should have a masterclass from your mum.”

“She’ll give you lots of tips, and stories about how much of a terror we were.”

“Great, looking forward to that.”

Leaving the shop, Fred took over carrying Tommy in one arm, his other hand holding mine. We dawdled on our way home, seeming to be in no rush as we took in what news we were given today.

I smiled as I placed a hand on my bump.“Fred?”

“Hm?” Tommy was already falling asleep on his shoulder.

“Are we really doing this?”

He smiled back.“We really are.”

[briswriting]

forever and always

『 in which you fall in love with a prince but find out you’ve been bethored to another 』

pairing: prince!todoroki x fem!reader  genre: royal au, arranged marriage, angst, fluff wc: 2,858

a/n: this is a fic dedicated to @writeiolite because it’s now officially her birthday so happy birthday io babie!! i wrote a royal au for you because we’re always freaking out about this trope together and what better boy for a royal au than our princely babe shouto! this was longer than i was expecting, my longest fic i think ahaha, but i hope you still like it! i thought i was v big brained with this plot hehe ily and appreciate you lots io babie mwah!! hope your birthday is full of lots of fun and love ♡

Princess Y/N L/N of the L/N Kingdom is to be betrothed to the crown prince, the next heir to the throne, of the Todoroki Kingdom in order to strengthen the bond and alliance between the two kingdoms. With this marriage arrangement, Princess Y/N is to be taken in and cared for by the King and Queen of the Todoroki Kingdom as one of their own in order for the princess to understand and learn the ways of their royal customs before she can be fit to become Queen alongside her betrothed. If this contract shall be broken by any means, the friendly bond and alliance between the L/N Kingdom and the Todoroki Kingdom will cease to exist.

With these words written on a single piece of parchment, along with the four distinct signatures signed away at the bottom, you were betrothed to the crown prince of the Todoroki Kingdom, Todoroki Natsuo, the next heir to throne the after the death of his eldest brother, Todoroki Toya.

The years you explored the castle grounds with all three of the Todoroki siblings since moving to their palace at the young age of five had made you grown used to living within the palace walls of the Todoroki Castle. You were used to the sounds of the songbirds outside your window every morning, the soft whispers of the servants echoing through the halls while doing their chores, and the clattering of expensive chinaware behind the closed door of the palace kitchen.

Your life within these castle walls was almost like clockwork, a daily routine that never seemed to change. Wake up, eat, study, eat, attend important meetings, eat, sleep, repeat.

Being the same age as the youngest prince, Todoroki Shouto, you had grown up alongside him; you did everything with the prince by your side. The two of you attended royal lessons together, your seats at the large dining table placed next to each other. Together, the two of you explored every corridor and found secret passageways stowed away within the walls of the old castle.

Being with him, your daily routine didn’t seem all that dreadful. No royal titles when the two of you were together, no Prince Shouto or Princess Y/N, the two of you were just Shouto and Y/N, your Shouto and his Y/N.

“I’m to be what?” Eyes blown wide as you stood in the middle of the throne room, the two giant thrones in front of you occupied by the King and Queen, who requested a private audience with you after your meal with Shouto.

“Betrothed to Natsuo. That’s why you have been living within our kingdom rather than your own. When you were five years old, we lost our eldest son Toya and your parents decided to help out by giving the heir to the throne your hand in marriage to form a stronger alliance between our kingdoms.” Queen Rei’s soft spoken voice echoed throughout the room, informing you of the contract that they had signed along with your parents. A deal that sold your life away to someone you didn’t want.

You had no bad blood with the crown prince; you found him to be an excellent friend, an older brother to you as you lived all these years with his family. What you weren’t expecting was to be thrown into a life of marriage with him, a marriage built not from love but because of a piece of parchment that gave away your hand in marriage, when you were too young to understand why you were being sent away, for the purpose of building a stronger alliance between two kingdoms, a life where you couldn’t be with the one you loved.

“That’s- that’s ridiculous! You can’t force me to marry someone I don’t love!”

“Princess Y/N, you will do as we say. Being royalty comes with a price, and if marrying someone to benefit your kingdom is something you have to do, you will do it with no questions asked. Or have you not learned anything from your studies all these years? So do you understand?” King Enji’s voice boomed around the room, a vast difference from his Queen’s voice, who now sat silently beside him in her throne, one that would be yours one day.

You couldn’t say no to the arrangement; it was out of your hands, already agreed on and signed all those years ago. You also knew that without your marriage to the heir of the throne, there would be no alliance, and both of your kingdoms would suffer immensely. So despite not wanting to be married off, you understood the consequences that would happen if you did not go through with the arrangement. “Yes I understand.”

“Good. You may leave now; we have some other important matters to discuss.”

Silently closing the throne room doors behind you, you quickly dashed the one person you could confide in, Todoroki Shouto.

Knowing every nook and cranny of the palace, you ran down the halls, almost blindly, with tears in your eyes as you made your way towards his room, towards him, your safe haven from the world. The place where you exchanged laughter and tears in the dead of night with the one person you cared for the most. The one you shared all your secrets with, your first tender kiss with, your first romantic touches with, and your first everything with. Todoroki Shouto was, is, your first love, forever and always.

Crashing through his bedroom doors, you frantically looked around the room for the boy with the heterochromatic eyes that you fell in love with.

“So they told you I’m assuming.”

Whipping your head towards the owner of the voice, you come face to face with the man you are supposed to marry, Todoroki Natsuo.

“Natsuo! Wh-Where’s Shouto?”

“Not sure, but he’s not in here, princess.”

“Did you know?” Your question was kept simple in case the white haired man before you didn’t know about the arrangement between the two of you set up by both your parents.

“Know about what? About the arranged marriage between us? Yes, I’ve known for about a few years now.”

“And you didn’t say anything,” you breathed out, still trying to catch your breath from the run through the halls, your mind still whirring with the words spoken by the King and Queen to you moments before.

“I couldn’t. I wasn’t allowed to, and you know it. If I could, I would have told you the day I found out all those years ago.”

“B-but I can’t marry you!” You exclaimed, keeping the reason why you didn’t want to be married to him a secret.

“Because you’re in love with Shouto, right? Come on; you can’t deny it. The two of you aren’t very subtle, trying to hide the romantic relationship the two of you’ve built these past few years. I see how the two of you look at each other when you think no one is looking, like little kids trying to sneak cookies from the cookie jar. You do love him, right?”

“Of course, I love him, you idiot! Why do you think I ran to his room after finding out the news? It wasn’t just a mere coincidence, Natsuo. Why are you in here, anyway?”

“I wanted to talk to Shouto about something that’s been on my mind. I don’t know where he’s at. I was waiting for him to come back, but it’s been a while, he’s probably holed up somewhere reading a book or something.”

With the thought of Shouto, your heart skipped a beat, your mind stopping for a split second, before the question that’s been on your mind comes flying out. “D-does he know about the arrangement?”

“Are you really going to ask that? If he knew about the arrangement, do you think he would have continued letting himself get close to you? Continued to let himself fall in love with someone he knew he wouldn’t be able to have in the end because of our parents?”

And with his words, you grew silent, knowing that what he spoke was the truth. If Shouto did know about the arrangement, he wouldn’t have let you fall in love with him, wouldn’t have let himself fall in love with you. The gentle touches and caresses, the soft looks in each other’s direction when no one was looking, the secret meetups at night so no soul, but the two of yours would find out about the love you two shared. That all wouldn’t have happened if he knew, and your heart clenches at the thought of never knowing what it felt like to be loved by Todoroki Shouto.

As you sat on his bed, tears streaming down your face, contemplating what your life would be like from this moment on, Natsuo silently slipped out of the door, bumping straight into the person the two of you were just talking about.

“Oh! Shouto, I was looking for you. I need to speak to you about an important matter.”

“Do we have to do it now, Natsuo? I’ve got plans soon, and I need to get ready for them. By the way, have you seen Y/N around, was she in there?”

“It’s urgent, Shouto; we need to speak now. It’s about Y/N.”

“You’re going to do what?”

“Abdicate the throne, you’ll be the next heir and become king.”

“Natsuo that’s ridiculous! You can’t do that! We’ve been living our whole lives knowing that you’d become the next king, not me!”

“Shouto listen to me, it’s for the best.”

“For the best my ass, you’re being ridiculous! Why are you doing this? What’s the reasoning behind you wanting to abdicate your rights to the throne all of a sudden?”

“It’s because of you and Y/N! I- I’m to be married to her in the coming year Shouto, but I can’t do it knowing that the two of you are in love with each other. I can’t do that to you two,” Natsuo whispers out, hands clenching at the thought of a contract made years ago ruining the love you had for each other.

“You’re to be married? To Y/N? Says who?” Shouto exclaimed, thoughts running through his mind at the idea of someone sweeping you off your feet and away from him.

“A contract between our parents and hers. It was made when Toya died, that’s why she is living here with us. I didn’t think twice about the arranged marriage, knowing it is our duty as royalty to do what’s best for our kingdom, but ever since I’ve learned about the arrangement, I also learned that the two of you are in love with each other.”

“Does Y/N know about this arrangement?” The thought of his lover keeping such a big secret from him made his blood boil, how could she let him fall in love with her when she knew they wouldn’t be able to end up together in the end, did she even love him back or were her whispers of love all lies?  

“Don’t be mad at her, Shouto. She found out today and ran straight to your room to tell you about it. You should have seen the look on her face when she barged into your room; it was too painful to see.”

With that statement, Shouto let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding in, his brother’s words confirming that you were equally as heartbroken about the arrangement and he was and that the love you had for him was genuine.

But a question still lingered in the youngest prince’s mind. “How is your abdication going to help solve this problem?”

For the second time that day, the halls of the Todoroki castle had someone sprinting recklessly down it with tears in their eyes towards the same destination, his bedroom. The room where behind the closed doors, they exchanged sweet touches and loving words in secret, the room where his beloved Y/N was probably heartbroken and waiting for his return to their safe place.

Approaching the door and opening it softly, he quietly slipped into the room. His eyes frantically looking around the room for you before stopping on your sleeping form curled up and under the covers of his large bed.

Sitting down on the edge of the bed near your sleeping form, the creak and shift of the mattress caused you to stir awake. Your red and puffy eyes, an indication that you cried yourself to sleep while waiting for him, meet his heterochromatic ones that were glossed over with tears.

“Shouto! Have you been crying?” You asked frantically, quickly sitting up to cup his face in your hands, wiping away the few stray tears that happened to run down his cheeks.

“Maybe a little bit, but not as much as you have my love,” he whispers, cupping your face in his hands to gently rub away the dried tears stained on your face.

“Did- did you hear the news?” Your heart hurt at the thought that he was here to tell you that the romantic relationship between the two of you could no longer continue, that you now belonged to his brother.  

“I did. I ran into Natsuo on my way here, and he informed me about the arranged marriage.”

“It’s terrible, Shouto! I can’t go on with it; I don’t want to!” Your hands moving from his face to grip the edge of his sweater before burying your face into the crook of his neck. His own hands move to wrap around your waist, gently toying with the edge of the shirt, his shirt, you had thrown on while waiting for him, wanting to get out of the stuffy and confined dress you previously had worn for the day.

“So you don’t want to get married to me?” He ask his question so calmly; it took you a while to process the words that came out of his mouth before your head shot up to look him in the eyes.

“What? Shouto, what are you talking about? I’m to be married to Natsuo, not you.” Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion; you hadn’t misheard the information, right? No, that’s impossible. You talked to Natsuo about it too, you were supposed to be married to the crown prince, and that’s definitely Natsuo, not Shouto.

“Natsuo is abdicating his rights to the throne, he’s requesting an audience with the court and everything right now.”

“He’s claiming abdication right now? Is that why he was looking for you? How does giving up his rights to the throne help us?”

And with that question, the conversation Shouto had with Natsuo moments before came flooding back as he informed you on his older brother’s plan.

“How is your abdication going to help solve this problem?”

“I read the contract for the first time today, before they told Y/N the news. It states that Y/N must marry the heir to the throne, but it never specifies a name, never says who she must marry. So if I abdicate, you become the crown prince Shouto, you become the next heir to the throne, which means that you will get to marry Y/N. I know it’s not how you want to be engaged to her, but it works out this way.”

“So you’d give up your rights to be King for me to be happy? Why?”

“Because you’re my brother Shouto and I care deeply for Y/N too, I don’t want either of us to be forced into a marriage just for our kingdoms to remain allies; it wouldn’t be a happy life for either of us. Anyways, dad has a favoritism towards you; it’s no secret, he’ll gladly accept my abdication for you to become the next King rather than myself.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Why don’t you go tell Y/N the news, hmm? I’m sure she’d be glad to hear that she’ll be able to marry you instead. I requested an audience with our parents and the court, by tomorrow you’ll be the crown prince of the Todoroki Kingdom Shouto, do me, proud baby bro.”

“I will. Thank you, Natsuo.”

The silence between the two of you was eerie as your brain wrapped around Natsuo’s idea of giving up his claim to the throne for you and his little brother to be happy, Shouto waiting for you to say something as he watched your face comprehend the words he told you.

“If we’re to be married, then why were you crying, Shouto?”

“They were happy tears, my love, because now I can finally do this.” And with that, he reaches into his pockets to pull out a small velvet box, opening it to reveal a diamond ring. “So, Princess Y/N L/N of the L/N Kingdom, will you do me the honors of marrying me and becoming not only my Queen, but my beloved wife for the rest of our lives?”

“Forever and always, Shouto, forever and always.”

bnha taglist: @shinsousama @samwritesss @atsumubabie @zoppzoop @the-black-birb @dumbassbrigade @bokuto-simp @allywritesimagines @nekoglasses @asweetpotato1 @seijoh​ @casasstrash​ @shoutokageyamafan​ @miyuswriting​ @bnhabookclub​  lmk if you would like to be added!

[simp-for-mha-men]

𝕒 𝕔𝕠𝕦𝕡𝕝𝕖 𝕠𝕗 𝕔𝕒𝕟𝕕𝕝𝕖𝕤 (𝕜𝕒𝕥𝕤𝕦𝕜𝕚 𝕓𝕒𝕜𝕦𝕘𝕠𝕦 𝕩 𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕕𝕖𝕣)

Request by @oneseharuxo: So, Can I request a bakugo x fem! Reader fluff where it's the reader's birthday? I really loved the Aizawa fluff! And you can take your time dw!

A/N: My first request! I was so incredibly soft while writing this. It’s the cutest little thing for our favorite explosive boy. I hope you all enjoy this little bit of Bakugou positivity to get you through the week! Also, I was listening to Ghibli soundtracks so it got super romantic. Enjoy!

Genre: some cute pro-hero!Bakugou and pro-hero!reader banter/fluffy times, a little bit of swearing, a dash of angst in the beginning about the reader feeling terrified of the future during past birthdays 💥❤️

Word count: 3.9k

♥*♥*♥*♥*♥*♥*♥*♥*♥*♥*♥*♥*♥*♥

Birthdays are awful. No matter how you celebrate them, they always bring on the negative and looming thoughts of the future. You’ve known this since you were quite young.

Your mother told you not to worry about your 6th birthday party. You didn’t care about the theme, cake, or favors because you were too caught up in the idea about starting kindergarten. It was terrifying. You were going to need to make new friends, meet new teachers, and start the beginning of a full education.

On your 12th birthday, you began to worry about becoming a teenager. Sure, it was a year away, but it still scared you. The fact that high school was just around the corner made you want to vomit. Middle school was already a big issue in your life, and high school was just going to make it all worse.

When you turned 16, you were already done with U.A. You began to get anxious about your future as a pro-hero. Who would you intern with? Who would you do a work studies with? Who would you be a sidekick for? When would you get your own agency? All of these questions brought on a lot of stress, causing you to want U.A. to invest in one thing: a counselor.

Your classmates were a big help during this period, considering they were all thinking the same things as you. You got close with a certain group of “hooligans,” as Mr. Aizawa put it. He told you to be wary of those individuals, but he was so wrong. The Bakusquad, comprised of Mina, Denki, Hanta, Eijiro, and Bakugou, brought you so much joy and made you forget about your thoughts temporarily. However, you weren’t as close with Bakugou as you were with the others. You were never even on a first name basis with him.

Now, you were older and still stressed yourself out about the littlest things. You had officially become a pro-hero, after graduating as a sidekick to Best Jeanist, and worked at Bakugou’s agency due to him “owing you a favor” from high school. You wanted to start your own agency, but you were currently tight on money due to some issues with your apartment. Of course, the entire plumbing system needed to be fixed right before your meeting the bankers to ask for a loan.

Bakugou was “kind” enough to let you work alongside him, but he treated you the same way he did in high school. He was distant enough to not ask you personal questions, yet he always showed up when you had a bad day and needed to rant to someone. Today, it was the latter.

“He was so idiotic and rude!” you yelled to your co-worker.

“Yeah, what an asshole,” he replied, crossing his arms and leaning against his desk.

You were currently in Bakugou’s personal office, looking out the window and whining about a man you encountered after your recent rescue. It was already close to 10 PM so the building was empty. It was always like this, especially with the week just beginning.

“After he told me to come over later,” you sighed, “he tried to get my number.”

“Wait, really?” Bakugou asked, walking over next to you.

“Yeah! I mean, come on! You don’t just say that to a pro-hero. I’m not even that good looking.”

Bakugou fell silent. He wanted to say something, anything, but he couldn’t get anything to come out. He thought you were so gorgeous. How was he supposed to tell you that, though. He had acted as if he hated you until you both were 3rd years. He always regretted that. Maybe he needed to learn how to just “be manly,” as Kirishima would say, and tell you his actual thoughts.

“Hey, dumbass,” you said, flicking his forehead.

He rolled his eyes dramatically before grabbing your hand and flinging it away as gently as possible. “Oh, please. You’re the dumbass, dumbass.”

You giggled at your friend’s response. It was a classic exchange between the two of you. He had always called you a dumbass, and you had grown accustomed to it. You thought it was endearing and sweet, despite it being an insult the first time he said it. At least he wasn’t calling you an extra anymore.

“Well,” you began again, “what kind of paperwork do you have tonight? Is it some major damage paperwork due to your inferiority complex?”

“Shut up,” he growled. “Today, I actually didn’t go out. I had a couple of meetings with the damn nerd and pink cheeks.”

Huh, you didn’t remember him telling you about seeing Izuku and Ochako. You two weren’t the closest, but you both knew each others’ schedules inside and out in case of an emergency. 

“Oh,” you replied, dramatically. “Let me guess, you couldn’t take your eyes off of Uravity.”

That earned you a hard punch in the shoulder. While you were wincing in pain, Bakugou was churning over what you had just said in his mind. Did you think he had a thing for pink cheeks? You had thought a while back about him and Kirishima dating, earning relentless teasing from Raccoon Eyes, until he denied it.

“You know for a fact I wasn’t,” the explosive hero commented, walking back to his desk.

“Yeah, yeah,” you groaned.

“You just love getting in my head, don’t ya?”

“Obviously.”

“You’ve been doing it more recently.”

Oh no. He’s noticed. You admit that your teasing has gotten a bit heavier since the beginning of the month. Why? You were trying to distract yourself from a certain day. Today, if you want to talk specifics.

“You wish,” you uttered quickly.

Bakugou chuckled and bore his vermillion eyes directly into yours. Smirking, he commented, “You totally have. What? Finally developed feelings for me or some shit?”

Well, great way to get caught twice in the span of 30 seconds. You were way too obvious for your own good. However, Bakugou was oblivious. You’ve liked him since 1st year. I mean, how long is it going to take this guy?

Trying to cover up your embarrassment, you howled with laughter before saying, “Absolutely not! How low do you think my standards are?”

He started chuckling. You turned back to face the window again and joined in the hilarity of his accusation. Although both of you wanted him to be right, neither of you wanted to admit it. With Bakugou’s pride and your fear, a confession was not in the near future.

Bakugou’s laughter subsided first, causing him to look down at the mahogany desk. A faint blush crept up on his cheeks from your sweet voice filling the air before fizzling out. Damn, he really thought he had you there. Apparently, he read the signs wrong.

“When are you leaving?” a tone of bitterness lining his voice that he wished wasn’t there.

You flinched at the sudden hostility and glanced at your watch. “Now, I guess. I mean, all I’m doing is going to my shabby apartment to freak out over my ever-growing age.”

“What?”

“What?”

Both of you were looking at each other. You just let slip your biggest flaw: your tendency to overthink your future. Also, it was your least favorite day: your birthday. The fact you admitted it in front of Bakugou, your only crush in history, was like being bound up my Hanta’s tape. 

You couldn’t move. You had always kept up a stronger guard around the blonde than with the others because you had another fear. You had never even let this slip to Mina, and that’s saying something. Your biggest fear besides the future was losing Bakugou.

Throughout your time at U.A., he constantly pushed you to do better. Whether you were doing a simple training exercise or working on getting stronger for the sports festival, he was always there to encourage you. Of course, his encouragement was telling you to get your ass in gear or face the consequences from him, but it was still sweet of him. 

Suddenly, the opening of desk drawers sounded through the room. You tilted your head to the side, wondering what your angry Pomeranian of a friend was doing. All you could hear was grunting for a couple of seconds.

Then, pens and pencils were thrown out. Next, pieces of paper went up in the air. Whether they were contracts for new sidekicks or just blank binder sheets, you ducked so you wouldn’t get in the crossfire of flying office supplies. After a couple of other things, like paper clips and sticky notes, were scattered across the office, Bakugou finally sighed.

You looked between your hands covering your face and noticed he held...a calendar? Since when was King Explosion Murder organized? You had known this man for years and understood his habits. You even understood why he went to bed so early in high school. This, however, was very different.

“Ugh, what the hell?” he muttered.

Just as you were about to ask him what was up, he grabbed his bag off the back of his chair. He jogged over to you, grabbed your hand and bag, and opened the door.

“You’re an idiot,” he said, shoving you into an elevator. “How long? How long have we known each other? You still never told me.”

Your brain couldn’t keep up. What was he talking about? Did you forget an important dinner meeting he had? No, he usually only scheduled those on Fridays. Then, what was going on.

Before you could ask him, you felt your whole body being yanked by the muscular man. He took you both down to the parking garage and walked straight to his BMW convertible. Letting go of your hand, he went to the trunk and dropped both of your bags in. He opened your door, practically shoving you in, and slammed it closed when all of your limbs were safely inside. Bakugou got in the driver’s seat, buckled his seatbelt, and started the car.

You felt very hazy. You know Bakugou can get...intense about certain topics, but he’s never dragged you into it. The calendar was weird. Him dragging you to his car was weird. The aura was weird. All of this was weird.

“Bakugou?” you asked.

“You’re such a dumbass,” he scoffed.

“Bakugou, please tell me wh--”

“Shut your damn mouth.”

He was acting strange. You weren’t phased by his attitude since you’ve known each other for ages. Deciding to give up, you sighed and looked out the window. The scenery passed by quickly, making your mind wander to the moment you realized you liked him.

It was a normal day at U.A., and exams were just around the corner. You were planning to study alone until Bakugou asked you to join Denki, Eijiro, and himself. You agreed and immediately regretted it. Bakugou was constantly yelling at your other two friends because they were being absolute idiots. In his defense, they were. Denki didn’t even know his body was made of cells, for crying out loud. Despite this, Bakugou indirectly complimented you on your notes. He even smirked a bit at your flustered response. You knew from the way your heart picked up its palpitations that you had fallen hard.

“Out,” Bakugou huffed, scaring you out of your flashback.

Opening the car door and getting out, you looked up and noticed his apartment complex. You heard from Eijiro that it was nice, but it was beautiful. It was made with a light gray cement, almost looking white in the light of the moon. The wood accents were all dark oak, and each apartment had a secluded balcony. You’d definitely have to hit Red Riot the next time you saw him for calling this complex “nice.”

Noticing Bakugou had already grabbed your bags and started up to the door, you began walking to catch up to him. You both got in the elevator, and he pressed the button to the top floor.

You turned your gaze to him. He was deep in thought. His eyes held a purpose, but they were a bit muddy. The reason he had dragged you here must’ve been important. Could it be a reconnaissance mission of some sort?

Soon enough, the ding in the elevator signified your arrival. Instead of a long hallway lined with apartments, there was only a single door. Bakugou slid his key in and turned the look. Holy mother of All Might...Bakugou owned a penthouse.

You were expecting minimal decorations from your friend, and you were right and oh so wrong at the same time. Everything in his apartment was classy and modern. From the wood floors to the paint color to the granite on the counters, his house looked like it had been done by a professional designer. You decided in that moment that you were never taking Bakugou to your apartment.

“Well,” he sighed softly, “go take a shower. The bathroom is down the right hallway over there. You can use one my shirts and a pair of shorts once you’re done. Just don’t waste all the hot water, got it?”

You blinked your eyes a couple of times before meekly nodding your head. Carefully walking over in the direction he pointed, you admired the living room from a new perspective. You also got a chance to see the paint color up close. It was a beautiful soft blue that held a lot of gray tones. It was perfect for a man of his caliber, despite his anger issues.

Once you got to the bathroom, the clothes were already there for you. Bakugou had either gained your former class president’s quirk or you were walking extremely slow. Either way, you smiled when you recognized the top: his iconic black skull t-shirt. He’s had it since high school. The fact he chose that one for you, or maybe just yanked it out of the depths of his closet, made your heart flutter.

The warm shower helped clear your senses. You had to figure out a way to make sure you kept your cool around Bakugou. You had no idea why your crush had acted so strangely before dragging you to his apartment. However, as strange as this whole thing still was to you, despite living in this reality for almost an hour, you couldn’t let him know anything.

After using up almost all of the hot water, you got out of the shower and put on his clothes. They felt so comfortable and reminded you of some of the craziest things you both had gone through. From the USJ attack to witnessing All Might’s fall, you two had seen a lot of crazy things. These thoughts helped give you courage. With that, you checked yourself in the mirror one last time and went to the living room.

Upon walking into the open space, you felt your heart stop. You had only been in the shower for 15 minutes, but Bakugou had done some work. The angry boy you had watched grow into a man had changed, but what you saw was completely beyond you.

On the coffee table, a little strawberry cake with fluffy white icy sat in all its beauty. Next to it were two forks, some napkins, and two cups of tea. There was a card with a picture of you and Bakugou messing with each other that Denki had somehow snapped after the concert had been executed perfectly in 1st year. The reason he had rushed you to his house wasn’t because of hero work. He knew it was--

“Happy birthday, dumbass,” he said, causing you to look up to him.

He held the softest expression you have ever seen. Bakugou’s eyes entranced you and held something similar to...adoration? He was holding some candles in his right hand, but his left hand was hidden behind his back.

“But,” you began, “how? How did you even remem--”

“We were in Yokohama at the hero conference a couple of years ago,” he stated. “Jeanist told me your birthday was coming up, and I asked him what specific day it was. After that, I marked it in my calendar.”

He sauntered over to the coffee table and sat down on the ground. He placed each of the candles meticulously onto the birthday treat. It was almost too perfect.

“I then tried to find you a gift,” Bakugou continued. “Of course, I suck at remembering what people like. I couldn’t get you anything. I did remember something, though.”

Once the candles were placed, he activated his quirk, barely creating a spark, and lit the candles. There were only 4, but it was even sweeter than him leaving out his shirt. 

“At U.A., you always distanced yourself around this time,” Bakugou said, looking up at you. “I thought you had a family thing happen to you or something, but Dunce Face explained it to me. This year, I wanted to change that for you.”

You were speechless. Never in your life did you expect such a gesture from your friend. At this point, it didn’t even feel like you two were friends. It felt as if you two had been together since the dawn of time.

Bakugou then slid on the floor and propped himself on one knee before you. He took his left hand from behind his back, revealing a black and orange box. When he slowly opened it, you gasped at what you saw. It was a Cartier simple black band adorned with emeralds and jaspers.

Tears welled in your eyes as Bakugou extended his hand to you. You placed yours gently in his, allowing him to stand up and slide the ring onto your right hand. It was a perfect fit. Never in your life had you received such a perfect birthday gift. It was a sign from the universe, you thought. It was now or never.

“Baku--” you began, inhaling a sharp breath before starting over. “Katsuki, I can’t keep it from you anymore. I think I like you.”

“No,” Bakugou stated, trying to contain his laughter.

“Excuse me?”

“Try it again, (y/n). Tell me how you really feel.”

You were too infatuated with this man to get angry at him now. Screw your pride. This was your man standing in front of you. You had to say it. You had to say the words he and you both wanted to hear.

“I love you, Katsuki Bakugou,” you announced, causing warmth to flood to your cheeks.

He smiled and sighed. Rubbing a hand over his face, he groaned, “You know I suck at words so get your ass over here.”

Listening to his command, you stepped forward into his arms. He glanced at your lips before you both instinctively closed the gap. You had never felt more alive. It was as if you were both perfectly molded for each other. Whatever god or goddess had created you had also created the handsome specimen you were kissing. The genuine passion and love his kiss held spoke to your heart. It made you realize that the time you had spent waiting to confess to him was wasted time. He wanted you just as much as you wanted him. This was the moment you had been waiting for.

After pulling apart, you both stared into each other’s eyes. Every romance manga you had ever read could’ve never prepared you for what this man was about to say to you.

“Be mine?” Katsuki questioned.

“Absolutely,” you smiled, kissing him once again.

Your entire world changed in those two words. His entire world changed in the response you provided him with. It was meant to be. It was the best thing to ever happen to him. You, (y/n) (l/n), were the best thing to ever happen to him. It was because of you his anger subsided drastically in 3rd year. It’s because of your positive personality that he ended up deciding to take a social ethics class to be kinder to civilians. It’s because of your smile that he kept going, even through the events you both had been through.

Breaking off the kiss, you giggled before saying, “I should blow out those candles. Wouldn’t want your fancy place getting burned to a crisp.”

Playfully punching your shoulder, Katsuki sat down and held open his arms. You got on the ground and crawled into them, feeling peace and security enter your system. Leaning forward, you thought for a few seconds before blowing out your candles. You did make a wish, for the first time in your life, despite having everything you could’ve ever wanted holding you tightly to his chest.

“Wanna break the rules and tell me what you wished for?” he whispered in your ear.

“Sure,” you replied, turning your head to look into his eyes. “I wished for our new relationship to be even better than our friendship.”

Rolling his eyes, he leaned in and kissed your temple. “Now,” he said, grabbing the forks, “let’s dig in.”

You both sat together on the floor of Katsuki’s apartment for the next 3 hours, talking, laughing, and eating the strawberry cake. You both reminisced on how you met, gave your genuine first impressions of each other, and even talked about your first thoughts on the life threatening situations you guys had been in.

For the first time in your life, you weren’t worried about the future. You were actually excited by it. Why? You finally had your partner...no, soulmate. Katsuki was meant to be with you, and you with him. Everything had finally fallen into place. This was the best birthday you had ever had.

Together, you cleaned up the dishes at 3:22 AM, and Katsuki headed off to take his shower. During this time, you began to wander around the apartment again. There was a wall, secluded from the others, that caught your attention.

On it were multiple sleek, black picture frames holding many different photos. There were a couple from the sports festival in 2nd year, one of the first photos the Bakusquad took with you, a couple of Katsuki and Izuku when they were kids, and a single photo of you.

You recognized it. You were at the beach with Mina and Hanta because they begged you nonstop to go. You ended up having a lot of fun, and Mina captured this photo when you happened to look back at her with the biggest smile on your face. When did she give that to him?

“She gave it to me graduation day,” Katsuki stated, as if he was reading your mind. “It’s my favorite photo on this wall.”

“Of course it is,” you smirked. “Who wouldn’t love a photo of me on their wall?”

“That’s it.”

Suddenly, Katsuki charged you and threw you over his shoulder. Laughing like a maniac, you hit his back until he was laughing with you. After a couple minutes of this, he put you down and hugged you. He really did wonders through his actions. Who needed words when Katsuki’s hugs were the best in the world.

“We need to go to bed,” he said into your hair.

“I know,” you yawned.

He picked you up, much more gently, and led you to his room. He plopped you down on the bed and got under the covers. Quickly, you scrambled in next to him. He instinctively wrapped his arms around you. His warmth caused your heart rate to quickly slow and your eyelids to flutter shut. Before you completely fell asleep, you heard the one sentence that made you remember that this birthday was not a dream.

“I love you, (y/n).”

[babygirlgalitzine]

i have everything i wanted (ao3)

for anon, who asked for this x

The days start to go on for longer, the earth holding off on the dark nights for just a few hours each day, and it starts to get closer and closer to Ben’s birthday. Every year, Lexi is always taken to the shops on a weekend, where she picks out something to be Ben’s present with the help of an adult - but this year, she wants to do things differently. This year, she wants to make Ben’s present, and she’s already asked Callum for his help. 

It’s only a few short days until Ben’s birthday, and the rain has been battering down all day. It’s the kind of rain that lashes against the pavement, only to bounce up harshly and fall to pieces, puddles all over. It’s that bad that, when Callum first walked into the house in the late afternoon, his coat was dripping onto the floor, leaving puddles in the hallway. 

Now though, he’s resting on the sofa, all warm and dry and his hair is flat against his forehead, all lazy and relaxing. His arm is around Ben’s shoulders, holding his boyfriend close to him. The television plays a film, and Ben’s laughing along softly, letting his fingers play with Callum’s absentmindedly. The door squeaks open to the side of them, and Lexi creeps in, wearing her pyjamas and her hair is still wet from her bath. She sits beside Callum, and for a second he thinks he’s about to have two members of the same family cuddling him, but then she puts her tiny hand to his ear, and stretches up so she can whisper into his ear. 

Callum grins at her words and when she pulls away he nods, and brushes the hair out from her eyes, hooking it behind her ears. “I’ve got everything sweetheart.” He explains. “We can start tomorrow.” 

And that’s it then. From that moment on, all Ben feels is confusion and he makes it his life mission to get the secret from Callum. 

It first starts later that night, when they’re in bed. The bedside lamp provides the only light in the room, warm and cosy until it filters out and the far walls fall dark, shadows temporarily painting them. Ben’s been at it for ages, asking Callum what the secret is between hot, open mouthed kisses and loose fingers on skin. Callum’s having none of it though, a secret is a secret as far as he’s concerned, and he’s not about to tell anyone the truth. Ben pulls back from a kiss, staring at Callum with an incredulous look on his face. Callum pulls an imaginary zip over his mouth, and then grins brightly. He lets his hands fall to Ben’s waist, fingers warm and inviting and it’s enough to make Ben forget. Ben leans down for another kiss, conceding that Callum won’t tell him. “I can’t believe you and my daughter have a secret and I’m not even allowed to know about it.” He sighs softly. 

Callum chuckles slightly and runs his thumb over Ben’s cheek. “You should be grateful we get on.” Callum admits. “I never liked any of my dad’s girlfriends.”

A laugh falls from Ben’s lips because, yeah, that is true. He loves that though. He loves that Lexi and Callum have a relationship, and they get on amazingly, as if she’s known Callum her entire life. He’s truly grateful for that, he is. But there’s still a pang of jealousy in his heart, because what if Lexi decides she likes Callum better than she likes Ben? 

 The sun rises the next day, and with it, Ben heads off to work. Lexi’s off school, something about a teacher training day, but with nobody else able to take time off of work to watch her, Callum stays with her. 

It’s still the morning when she asks to start Ben’s present, though time edges closer and closer to lunch. They’re sitting at the table, Lexi sitting cross legged on the chair, pushing herself higher up, though she’s still tiny in comparison to Callum. Strewn all over the table is photos and glue and pens, cut off pieces of paper in all different shapes and sizes. It’s like a bomb has gone off in a craft shop. 

Callum’s in charge of cutting out the photos, making sure they all fit onto the page. He then passes them over to Lexi, who glues them down and turns the page to do it all over again. Occasionally, she’ll ask Callum when the photo was taken, and then Callum looks over to find her writing those little notes down with a glittery gel pen, taking her time to make sure everything looks as neat as possible. 

Lexi puts the lid to the pen back on, and sets it down on the table, watching as it rolls away slightly. “Callum.” she asks, looking up at him with sincere eyes. “When did you know you loved my daddy?” 

She’s always been inquisitive, asking Callum questions to get to know him better - but that’s a question he never thought he would hear. 

Callum opens his mouth to speak, trying to think of what he can actually say to the young girl. A million things are running through his mind, when he first started to feel anything for Ben, when he first told Ben his true feelings, when Ben finally told Callum too. His mind is awash of memories, so much so that he doesn’t hear the door opening. He finally collects himself enough to speak. “Before we were boyfriends.” He says, because that’s the only time he can think to say without sounding stupid.

Lexi gasps though, “When you first met?” She asks giddily, her smile beaming and lighting up her entire face.

Callum chuckles, but nods anyway. “Let’s go with that.” 

A short little squeal comes from Lexi and she picks up her gel pen’s again to draw a border around a newly stuck down photo of Ben and Lexi, one where they’re both wrapped up warm and Lexi is sitting on her dad’s shoulders. “Callum.” She repeats again, in a drawn out voice and Callum just knows she’s about to ask another question.

“Yes darling?” Callum asks, cutting out the next photo - one of him and Ben on the night that Ben first introduced Callum and Lexi properly.

“Will you be my daddy one day too?” She innocently asks. 

There’s a hitch in Callum’s breath as Lexi’s words hit him. A blush grows exponentially on his face, suddenly turning a shade of crimson. “Maybe.” He says. “If that’s what you and your dad wants.” He answers honestly, because secretly, he would love to, but it’s not just up to him. 

They both get back to creating Ben’s scrapbook present, but neither of them notice that Ben has come home unexpectedly and overheard everything. 

Night falls upon them, and Ben’s been home for a few hours now. They’ve all eaten and Lexi’s washed all the glitter gel pen stains off of her hands and arms. It’s a normal night, or, it would be, if Ben wasn’t in a mood.

He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, facing away from Callum. He’s barely spoken but a few words, and even those have been short and snappy. Callum sighs softly and gets onto the bed too, balancing on his knees as he sits behind Ben, wrapping him up in half a hug, pushing his hand down on Ben’s chest, letting his fingers hook under his shirt and brush against his sensitive nipple. He leaves a soft kiss to Ben’s neck, and again and again, until Ben rolls his shoulder back and pushes Callum off of him without any real malice. 

Callum moves back to his own half of the bed and watches as Ben gets under the covers. “What’s wrong?” He asks.

Ben just shrugs by way of response.

Callum rolls his eyes. “Ben, we said we’d always talk about our feelings. What’s wrong?” He repeats.

Ben tilts his head to the side, and with a sigh he concedes, knowing that Callum’s right and they should talk about this, rather than Ben keeping it to himself. “I’m jealous, alright?” He explains. “I’m jealous that you and Lexi have this secret that I can’t know about.”

A smile makes its way onto Callum’s face, unable to keep it hidden now. “You do realise how ridiculous that sounds, don’t you?” He says, and upon looking at Ben’s forlorn face, he instantly knows that’s the wrong thing to say. He sighs. “Lex loves you. She adores you Ben, you are her entire world. She takes after you so much, you know? I realised that today. You’re both as cheeky as anything but so lovable and caring to. I’m not replacing you Ben, and you know that I never could. She just wants me to help her with something. 

Ben looks up at Callum, feeling slightly better after hearing his words. “But why couldn’t she ask me for help?” He quizzes.

Callum grins softly, and leans down to press an even softer kiss to Ben’s lips. “Because it’s for you.” He admits. “It’s your birthday present.” 

“Oh.” Ben lets out, and suddenly everything just falls perfectly into place. 

“Yeah, oh.” Callum chuckles. “Honestly, the pair of you will be the death of me.” 

A grin appears on Ben’s face, finally, and he puts his hand on Callum’s cheeks, letting his thumb run over his skin and his fingers thread through Callum’s hair. He tugs ever so slightly, pulling Callum down into another kiss. 

---

A few days pass, and suddenly it’s Ben’s birthday. He’s been opening cards and presents for the past ten minutes, and now it’s Lexi’s turn to give him her present. She sits on his lap and hands the present over to him. He looks up at Callum, who sneakily nods, and Ben knows that this is the secret they’ve been keeping. Ben rips off the wrapping paper and reveals a leather bound book, and embossed in silver lettering, the word memories on the front. He opens the book up, and sees photo after photo of himself and others. Photos of him, Jay and Lola as troublesome teenagers; pictures of him and Lexi cuddling onto each other and it’s almost upsetting to see how much she’s grown up in such a short space of time. There’s photos of Ben and Callum too, ones taken on phones throughout their relationship. Alongside all the photos are words, written in Lexi’s handwriting, all sparkling and glittery. They say when the photos were taken, or where, or what was happening. Drawings done by Lexi also accompany the photos too. 

“Do you like it Daddy?” Lexi asks, looking at Ben’s face as he flicks through the page. “Daddy Callum helped too!” 

Ben looks at Lexi and then Callum catches his eye and he notices that tears are starting to well in Callum’s eyes as well as Ben’s. He kisses the crown of Lexi’s head. “I love it princess, it’s my favourite.”

[laprincesaelena]

EOA Discord Ship Appreciation Week Day 3: Growing Old Together

a/n: hey everyone! sorry i’m a day late on this one, once i start writing something, i tend to like, not stop, and that’s what happened with today’s fic lol, it took me much longer than i expected! but, regardless, here it is! today’s fic is a bit different, focusing on a different couple (though, there are mentions of gabelena lol, but you could always fill in gabe’s name with your character of choice :) ), our beloved king raúl and queen lucía!!

basically, this fic is a what if. what if the king and queen of avalor’s story had gone slightly differently? what if king raúl and queen lucía hadn’t even left to work on the carnaval floats before shuriki arrived? in this au, raúl and lucía receive the happy ending they deserve, and they live to see many more family moments and milestones than they would in canon.

(also, for the sake of the fic, let’s just say in this au, avalor gains a new ruler once the heir becomes of age, not when the current ruler dies. okay? okay :) )

anyways, before i do exactly what i did while writing this and write wayyy too much, i’ll stop myself here. a quick thank you to everyone who’s been liking, reblogging, and leaving wonderful comments on my fics so far, you don’t know how happy they make me!! and a very special thank you to @procrastinateland , for providing the beautiful art to go along with the fic!! hope you all enjoy!!

fic is below the cut!

“Got everything, cariño?”

The queen of Avalor was busy packing the carriage with boxes full of colorful decorations to decorate their latest float for the upcoming Carnaval celebrations. Carnaval was Lucía's favorite time of year, and she always looked forward to designing, building, decorating, and of course, riding aboard the kingdom's infamous Carnaval parade floats. She and her husband, King Raúl, were headed to Castillo Park to check up on the progress of the floats, and to add a few touches to their own.

"Yes, yes, everything's here!"

One could barely see the king steadily walking down the steps of the palace, for he was carrying a stack of boxes that rose to practically over his head. Lucía couldn't help but shake her head as she turned to see this sight, and met him at the bottom of the stairs to help him out. She reached up to take the box at the top of the stack, revealing her husband's face behind it.

"Need a little help there?" she joked.

"I may have underestimated my balancing skills.." Raúl replied, beginning to place the rest of the boxes in the carriage. "But luckily, everything arrived in one piece!"

"We aren't even to the park yet, don't speak too soon!" Lucía responded.

"Have fun, you two!"

The royal couple turned to the sound of Luisa's voice, who stood at the door of the palace with her husband, Francisco, and Princess Isabel, who was waving goodbye to her parents. The two waved back, and Lucía blew a kiss to her youngest daughter.

"Thank you!" Lucía called to them. "We'll see you at dinner!"

Just as the king and queen were about to step into the carriage, the sky suddenly began to turn gray. Large clouds rolled in, some of them having a dark green hue to them. Raúl protectively wrapped his arm around his wife as they stepped back, trying to get a sense as to what was going on.

Suddenly, floating out of the green haze, emerged a figure. The closest royal guards rushed to step in front of the monarchs, their swords drawn, ready to protect their rulers at any given moment.

Lucía tightly held onto her husband, and noticed how his face began to grow pale. As the shadowy figure approached, Raúl instantly recognized their identity.

"Shuriki.." he whispered.

At the very sound of her name, Lucía could feel her heart sink. For the past few months, Avalor had been involved in various defenses alongside their allied kingdoms against the wicked sorceress. Thankfully, all of these efforts against her had been successful, and Shuriki had not been able to take over any of these kingdoms. But as it turned out, Avalor was the next target on her list, and they were gravely unprepared.

"Everyone, inside! Now!" The voice of the captain of the guard echoed throughout the courtyard as the royal family quickly made their way into the safety of the palace. But they knew a few troops were no match for Shuriki, she could infiltrate the palace in a matter of minutes. A plan had to be put in place, now, or Avalor didn't stand a chance.

For little Isabel, all of this happened in the blink of an eye. One moment, she was waving goodbye to her parents on the palace steps, now her and her family were running for their lives, having mere moments to reach a safe haven. A moment later, the princess had a sudden realization. Her abuelos were here, her mamí and papí were here, but one member of her family was nowhere to be found.

"Elena!" she called. "Where's Elena?"

Raúl had been calling out orders to royal guards and staff members as they rushed through the halls, but hearing his eldest daughter's name immediately shifted his strong demeanor. His Elenita was nowhere to be found, and was possibly unaware of the danger she was in. He frantically looked around for a moment, hoping Elena would miraculously appear.

"Elena!" he called, quickly checking in each room they passed. "Elenita!"

Lucía too, joined in on the frantic search for her daughter, but a moment later, she felt just the slightest bit of hope.

"The amulet!" she cried. "The amulet, the one we gave her for her birthday last year, will always protect her from harm!"

"But what if this sort of magic is an exception?" Raúl asked, fearing the worst. "Or what if she doesn't have the amulet on? We have to find her, Lucía!"

"Ay, don't put those thoughts in my head, cariño!" Lucía replied. "I hope we find her before we escape, I truly don't want to leave without her, but she has magical protection, we don't! Hopefully this will all be settled before we even need to escape, so we can-"

But before the queen could finish her sentence, a magical blast was heard from behind them. Shuriki was closer than they thought, they had absolutely no time to waste. The royal family picked up their pace, before they encountered their royal wizard, Alacazar.

"Come, come quickly!" he called out to them. "I have a spell to protect you! But we must perform it now, or it will be too late!"

The royal family had no time to decide on where their hiding spot would be, or where they would escape to if Shuriki did manage to take the throne. Their safest and fastest option was Alacazar's spell, so that would have to do. The wizard quickly explained that this spell would protect them inside of an enchanted painting, one that not even magic as powerful as Shuriki's could touch. As the family posed together for their 'portrait', Lucía couldn't help but think of her oldest daughter. In her final moments outside of the frame, she prayed for Elena's safety, that the amulet would protect her from harm, and that once Avalor was freed from the wicked sorceress, their family could be safely reunited. The Castillo-Flores family held each other close as the incantation was recited, and a moment later, a new family portrait, with one missing princess, was displayed on the wall.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

41 years later...

"Tlahcuilolli apartad, tlahcuilolli apareced, tlahcuilolli vivid!"

Elena bit her lip and clasped her hands tightly together as she watched Mateo recite the spell that would hopefully free her family from the enchanted painting. She had missed her family so much being separated from them for forty one years, and so hoped that she'd be able to finally reunite with them.

A moment later, a magical haze encircled the painting, and soon, the silhouettes of her family were pulled out of the portrait. Once the haze had cleared, Elena saw her family, safe and sound, as if no time had passed at all. Tears of relief filled her eyes as she ran right over to her family, being met by a tight embrace by her little sister.

"Isa!" she cried as she held her sister close. "Oh, I've missed you so much.." Elena then pulled back, just to take in this moment that she'd been dreaming of for so long. Isabel was still the adorable, intelligent, and innocent little girl she had last seen all those years ago, even down to the dirt stains on her dress.

Then, Elena looked up at her parents, who looked just as relieved to finally be free and reunited with their family.

"Mamí, Papí!" she exclaimed, and pulled them both in for a hug.

"Oh, Elenita.." Raúl said, holding his baby girl close. He feared if he let her go one more time, he would never see her again.

Lucía too felt her eyes fill with tears as she embraced her daughter for the first time in decades. "We were so worried about you, mija.." she said, before cupping her daughter's face in her hands. "You're alright..you're safe..the amulet really did protect you!"

"It did.." Elena replied with a nod, placing a hand on top of her mother's.

Elena then wrapped her abuelos in a hug, she had missed all of her family so, so much, and it felt so good to finally be reunited with them. But, Shuriki was still on the throne, their fight for the kingdom wasn't over just yet.

After a short but sweet family reunion, Elena, along with the Enchancian and Avaloran royal families, made their way onto jaquins to join the revolution stirring in the villages below. With the help of the brave people of Avalor, the forty one year reign of Queen Shuriki was brought to an end. Avalor was finally free once again, and the royal family was reunited for good. It was the happiest day in all of Avalor, and kingdom would rejoice for weeks on end. That day, it seemed as if life couldn't get any better. But, the kingdom's most prosperous and happy years were yet to come.

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Four years later..

Raúl and Lucía stood proudly beside the Avaloran throne, in a ballroom filled with dignitaries, family, and friends from all over the world. Their beautiful Elenita was turning twenty years old today, but that wasn't the only event the kingdom was celebrating. After four years of experience as Crown Princess, along with learning plenty about ruling from her parents and grandparents, Elena was finally ready to become queen of Avalor.

Trumpets sounded to announce the princess' arrival, as the chief of the castle announced, "Crown Princess Elena Castillo Flores, please come forward!"

The doors to the ballroom were opened, revealing the future queen. Elena was dressed in a breathtaking blue gown, with floral embroidery across the bodice and bottom of the skirt. A red velvet robe trailed behind her as she carefully walked down the staircase. As she made her way to the throne, Elena smiled at all who had come to celebrate this day with her. Though her stubborn sixteen year old self insisted she'd be able to rule all on her own from day one, she knew that she wouldn't be the ruler or woman she was today without each and every person she passed by entering her life.

But, who had supported and guided her the most of all through this difficult journey was her family. Elena would often think of if her family hadn't survived the ordeal with Shuriki all those years ago, and how she would have ever become queen without their love, support, and guidance. She was so, so grateful they were here with her today to crown her, she had no idea where or who she'd be without them.

Once Elena reached the throne, she pulled each of her parents in for a hug, before turning to face the crowd. She stood as regally as she could for her last few moments as crown princess. Armando gently handed the crown to the king, who would have the honor of crowning his daughter the next queen.

Holding the crown above her head, Raúl took a moment to look down at his daughter, so proud of the woman she had become. He then announced, "It is with tremendous pride, that I crown you, Elena, Queen of Avalor!"

The golden crown was placed upon the young queen's head, and the ballroom erupted into cheers. Elena lifted her head with a smile, she had worked so hard and been through so much to finally achieve this moment.

Raúl stepped back and wrapped his arm around his wife, who took his hand tightly in hers. The former king and queen looked over at their Elenita, their baby girl. Even though they had mentioned it hundreds of times that day, and they would certainly continue to, they were just so, so proud of their daughter. They had no doubts that she would be one of the greatest queens to ever reign, and that Avalor would continue to thrive under her rule.

The next part of the ceremony would soon commence, where the queen would choose a partner for the first dance of the evening. Elena stepped forward, and approached her three closest friends. She bestowed a new title upon each of them, even naming her younger sister the Royal Inventor. But, she still had not chosen a partner to dance with.

Elena paused for a moment, and pretended to be in deep thought. "Now, I believe I have a decision to make.." she said, before turning towards her parents, and reaching her arm out to her father.

"Papá, no one has helped me learn how to rule more than you. Would you honor me with the first dance?"

Raúl couldn't help but gasp, as he could've sworn Elena would've chosen one of her closest friends to dance with, or even her grandfather. Sure, he knew he had been a mentor to her on her journey to become queen, but this came as a pleasant surprise to him. And of course, he would accept. He placed his hand to his heart, and bowed his head to his daughter.

"Of course, mija." he said. "It would be my greatest honor."

Raúl approached his daughter and took both of her hands in his. He leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead, and looked down at her with the proudest smile possible. "I'm so proud of you, Elenita."

"Thank you." Elena replied with a smile. "I couldn't have done any of this without you. Now, about that first dance.."

But, before they could begin the first dance, or even before any music started playing, Francisco spoke up.

"Wait!" he cried. "I didn't stay up all night writing a song for everyone to play for you for nothing!"

Elena tilted her head in confusion. "What do you mean, everyone?" she asked.

Then, Lucía, Isabel, and Luisa, along with Francisco of course, stepped forward, and reached their hands to the side.

"Guitars!"

Their guitars were then handed to them, and the quartet began to play a song written and composed specifically for the occasion.

Elena couldn't help but smile, she couldn't believe her family had gone through all the effort to write a song just for her first dance! But, said first dance hadn't begun just yet, what was she waiting for? She took her father's hands in hers, and the two of them began the first dance of the coronation ball.

By the end of the song, Elena and Raúl weren't alone on the dance floor. Just about every guest was dancing in their own ways alongside them, having a wonderful time. As Elena went over to dance with her friends, Lucía pulled her husband right over for a dance. The two of them laughed and smiled as they danced to the beat, they felt as if the golden days of Avalor were returning again. Brighter days were ahead for the kingdom, and they both knew that their Elenita, their shining light, would be a guiding light for Avalor.

¡Viva la reina! Our Elena! Our love will always shine so bright!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Approximately two years later...

In the kingdom of Avalor, every day is bustling, busy, and bright. Today was no different. But today, excitement was in the air for a very special reason. Villagers were lined up and down the streets of the city, waiting for the moment to arrive. Some had claimed their seats days in advance, either paying extra money for it, or by having a bit of a camp out on the sidewalk. Children waited eagerly with small Avaloran flags in their grasps, some even held up posters or drawings that they had made themselves. Their parents were quite tired, but they knew that being here was a once in a lifetime event. But, it wasn't only the village that was filled with both chaos and excitement.

Inside the palace, the staff was busy preparing the castle for this very special event. Rulers and dignitaries from all over the world would be visiting Avalor, so the venue had to look its very best. Every member of the royal family was busy getting themselves ready for the day, but Queen Elena's room however, was where the most activity was happening.

Lucía held back tears as she placed a veil over her daughter's head, her Elenita was to be married today. The moment she stepped back to see the bride's final look, her breath was taken away. Elena wore a strapless dress, with red and gold embroidery swirling across the bodice. The bottom of the dress was long and flowing, including small details of lace, with a six foot train trailing behind her. Her long, dark brown hair was rolled into a bun, one of her favorite formal styles. Underneath her veil was her usual tiara, the rubies casting a scarlet glow whenever the sunlight hit it. The young queen was the epitome of a beautiful royal bride.

"Oh, mija..you look absolutely beautiful.." she said, having to wipe a tear or two from her eye before they fell down her cheeks.

Elena couldn't help but tear up as well as she watched her mother's reaction. "Mamí, stop it, you're going to make me cry too!" she said.

"Oh, no, no..no crying until at least the vows, you can't ruin that beautiful makeup of yours!" Lucía replied. "You look absolutely perfect, Elenita." she added, taking her daughter's hands in hers.

"Thank you.." Elena responded with a soft smile. "I still can't believe this is actually happening.."

"Neither can I!" Lucía agreed. "It feels like just yesterday you were born, it was one of the happiest days of my life..and now look at that little princess! She's all grown up, she's now the queen, and she'll soon become a wife.."

"It only took me forty six years." Elena joked with a laugh, referring to the four decades they had missed while being trapped in enchanted objects.

Lucía laughed as well, she needed a quick laugh to distract her from how fast her daughter had grown up. "Well, I'm sure those forty six years were well worth the wait, right?" she asked.

Elena smiled and nodded at the thought of her soon to be husband. She was so thrilled to be marrying Gabe, she was the happiest woman in the world with him. Thankfully, her entire family had known him for just as long as she had, so he fit right in with the royal family, and Raúl had no hesitation on giving Gabe his blessing to marry his daughter.

Then, a knock at the door signaled that it was time for members of the wedding party to begin their journey to the cathedral, and that included Lucía. The former queen held her daughter's hands tightly and kissed her on the cheek.

"Good luck, mijita." she said with a smile. "I'll see you at the altar."

A few minutes later, Raúl entered the room to escort his daughter downstairs to the carriage that would bring them through Avalor City, and to the ceremony. He too had to pause for a moment to take in the beautiful sight that stood before him. He simply couldn't believe how his little Elenita had grown so quickly, into a strong, confident, and beautiful woman. Each and every day, he would be reminded of how proud he was of his daughter, and how far she had come.

"Elenita, you look simply breathtaking." he said as he approached his eldest daughter. "I changed my mind, I don't think I'll be able to let you go at the end of that aisle." he joked.

Elena couldn't help but laugh at the thought of that, even though she knew, if it were his choice, he probably wouldn't let her go, not wanting to accept how fast she had grown. "You should've thought of that before you gave Gabe your blessing!" she joked.

"I know, I know," Raúl said. "But I'm just joking, mija, I'm thrilled for you both." he added with a smile.

"Thank you," Elena replied, returning the smile. "I'm thrilled too, a little nervous, of course, but still so, so excited."

"I'm sure you are." Raúl responded with a nod. He then sighed, and looked his daughter over one more time. "I'm so proud of you, Elena." he said. "From the moment you were born, I always have been the proudest man in the world to have been your papí. As each day went by, I thought I couldn't possibly love you any more. But each new day, I was proven wrong. I am so incredibly proud of the young woman, queen, and now, well, almost wife that you've become. I love you so much, Elenita."

Elena wrapped her arms around her father and pulled him in for a hug. She was just so grateful to have such a loving and supportive family as she did, she wouldn't want anyone else by her side to celebrate this special day with her.

Once she finally let go, she turned to pick up her bouquet of poinsettias, perfect for her mid-December wedding. She then took her other hand and held her father's tightly. "Ready to go?" she asked.

"As ready as I'll ever be." Raúl replied with a proud smile.

Elena and Raúl walked hand in hand to the front door of the palace, where a carriage was waiting for them. The coachman opened the door with a bow, and both he and Raúl helped Elena to get inside. It was quite a task with her long train, but thankfully, everyone fit comfortably.

A moment later, the carriage began moving, and they were off. On the way to the cathedral, they passed the many villagers who had been waiting for hours for the queen's carriage to pass by. Elena waved to the people of Avalor with a smile on her face, and even gave a special wave to small children who were seated atop their parent's shoulders. After a carriage ride full of smiling and waving, they finally arrived at the cathedral.

Isabel smiled from the front doors, and began to walk down the steps to meet her sister. As the maid of honor, it was her job to make sure her dress stayed in perfect condition, which meant she was in charge of the long train on the way inside. The coachman opened the door, and Elena began to step out. With that came the cheers of the villagers who had managed to get a spot close by to the cathedral. Elena looked around and took everything in. The cheering villagers, the bells pealing, the thought that in just a short while, she would be Gabe's wife. Isabel took the back of her sister's train in her hands and lifted it up, and Raúl  began to lead her inside. Before she reached the entrance, she turned around and waved to the cheering villagers with a glowing smile. She took her papí's hand in hers and held it tight, as they began to walk inside.

Inside the cathedral, she was greeted by her wedding party, who were all in position, ready to walk down the aisle the second the music started. They all gave Elena a smile, and Naomi shot her a reassuring 'thumbs up'. Isabel made her final adjustments on Elena's dress, and began to walk to her place. Once everything looked perfect, and everyone was ready to go, Elena took a deep breath, and the music started.

The journey down the aisle felt like miles for Elena, tightly holding onto her father's hand as he led her closer to the altar. She smiled at each person she passed by, the joy and excitement of the occasion had spread to practically every person in attendance. Elena's smile grew even bigger the closer and closer she grew to her future husband, this still felt so surreal. But, this was a reality, and she couldn't be happier.

It was a bittersweet moment for Raúl once they reached the altar, especially as he passed Elena's hand over to Gabe. But, with a nod of approval and a warm smile to his son-in-law, he knew that his Elenita would be in the best hands. He kissed his daughter on the cheek before heading to sit beside his wife, but before he could, Elena pulled him in for a quick hug.

"I love you," she whispered to him.

"I love you too, Elenita."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eight years later...

"Abuelo! Abuela!"

Lucía and Raúl turned to the sound of their granddaughter's voices as they ran into the parlor. Six year old Catalina Blanca and Carolina Lucía were dressed identically, quite fitting for them being identical twins. They wore a dress of ruby red satin, with short puffed sleeves and an attached ribbon at the waist, tied into a perfect bow in the back. Along with the dresses, they wore matching paten-leather shoes, and a red bow headband to keep their long, dark brown hair out of their faces. Occasionally, even their abuelos had a tough time telling them apart, but the easiest way to differentiate the two was by their personalities.

"Oh, mijitas, you both look so beautiful!" Lucía said, as Carolina fell right into her arms. "You're going to be the best looking girls at the parranda tonight."

"You think so?" Carolina asked with a smile. "I think I'm the best looking girl every day!"

Lucía laughed softly and held her granddaughter close, Carolina was always the one to take pride in her looks. "I know so." she said.

"Abuelita, which songs are you going to play at the parranda tonight?" Catalina asked, already cuddled up in her grandfather's lap. Her and Raúl were particularly close, as Catalina was the heir to the throne, and would follow in her mother's footsteps to become queen one day.

"Oh, just the usuals," Lucía replied. "Let Love Light the Way, Hearts Full of Cheer.."

"I wanna play!" another little voice cried.

Three year old Luis Raúl poked his head into the room, and had clearly overheard some conversations about playing a song. He was absolutely enthralled with his family's love of music, and couldn't wait until he was old enough to learn from his bisabuelo Francisco, his abuela Lucía, or his mamí.

"Well, I do have my guitar handy, if you'd like play a song for us before we go," Lucía offered with a smile.

Luis nodded excitedly, and sat right beside his abuela as she reached over to pull out her guitar. Lucía placed their guitar in front of the little prince, and he began to 'strum' a song for his family. Of course, he played about as well as any three year old could, but to Lucía and Raúl, it was music to their ears.

Just then, Elena and Gabe made their way into the parlor, with two year old Marcelo Roberto in his papí's arms. Elena almost didn't want to interrupt this sweet moment between her children and their abuelos, but they did have a parranda to get to!

"I didn't know we were having a concert before the parranda!" Elena joked with a soft laugh. "Your guitar playing sounds wonderful, mijo, maybe you can lead the parranda next year!" she said to her son.

"Well, he will be learning from the best, won't he?" Raúl asked, looking over to his wife with a smile.

"Oh please, if that's the case, Elena learned from the best, and turned out to be even better!" Lucía replied.

"No, no, I think he should learn from his abuela, so he can grow to become a better guitar player than the both of us!" Elena suggested.

"Now that's more like it!" Raúl responded. "One day, I'm going to see this little one's name up in lights!" he added, reaching down to ruffle Luis' hair, which made him giggle.

"So, is everyone ready to go?" Elena asked.

With a unanimous yes, the royal family made their way downstairs to head into town to begin their annual Nochebuena tradition.

As the family made their way downstairs, a thought crossed Elena's mind. She had a gift for her family that she wanted to give them tonight, but by the time they came home from the parranda, the kids would be going to bed.

"Oh uh, wait!" she said, to catch everyone's attention.

The rest of the family stopped and turned around, wanting to know what may have been forgotten this time.

"How about we go and put the stockings on the mantel? We haven't yet, and by the time we get home, it'll be time for the kids to go to bed. Let's go!" Elena told them and motioned to her family to follow behind her.

Lucía raised an eyebrow with a smile. Her daughter had something up her sleeve, but she didn't know what. She glanced over to her husband, who shared a similar expression.

They soon entered the family room, which was decked with traditional decorations passed down from generations, and some that had been handmade by Elena and Isabel over the years. All of the children's stockings, which had been customized by Isabel, were laid on the table, and the kids rushed in to take theirs and hang them above the fireplace. Gabe helped to hold each of his children up one by one, so they were able to reach the metal hanger. Elena put up hers and Gabe's, but there was still one left on the table, one that was smaller than the others. Elena stood back and waited for a moment, curious as to who would notice it first.

Surprisingly, it was her youngest son, Marcelo, who toddled over and picked it up. He walked over towards his abuelo, not knowing what to do with it.

Raúl picked it up and looked it over. It was small, and it didn't have a name written across its top like the others. "Elena, what's this?" he asked.

Elena simply shrugged, and waited for her other children to make a guess.

"Do I get another stocking?" Carolina asked, hoping it would mean more candy for her.

"No, it's Marcelo's, they're both small!" Luis said proudly. That made sense, that had to be it!

"Catalina, do you know what it is?" Elena questioned. Catalina already seemed to possess logic beyond her years, so Elena was curious as to what her daughter would come up with.

"It doesn't make sense, we each have a stocking, with our names on it, and Luis, Marcelo has his own, so it can't be his, but I'm not sure who it belongs to!" she said.

Catalina was stuck. No matter how many situations she came up with in her head, none of them seemed right.

"Well, it does belong to someone, someone in our family.." Elena hinted.

Carolina's face suddenly lit up. "Is it abuela or abuelo's? They didn't hang a stocking yet!" she exclaimed, confident that she had solved her mother's riddle.

"Oh, we'll gladly take an extra stocking!" Lucía joked, pretending to reach over for it. "More dulces for us!"

Elena laughed and shook her head. "No one's gotten it yet!" she said. "Here, I'll give you another clue. This member of our family is not here to celebrate Navidad with us this year, but they will be here next year!"

Catalina was sitting in deep thought, putting all of the pieces together in her head. Not here this year, will be next year, a member of the family, no name, and the size of the stocking had to symbolize something. Suddenly, Catalina gasped.

"A new sibling?"

With that, Elena looked at Gabe, whose eyes were wide. All he could say in response was, "oh no..."

Elena laughed and smiled. "Yes!"

Catalina and Carolina held hands and jumped up and down in unison. Luis was also very excited, clapping his hands and smiling wide. Marcelo didn't truly know what was going on, but he knew it was something good. "Yay!" he shouted excitedly, though it sounded more like he was saying 'ray!', which made his reaction even cuter.

Lucía and Raúl were thrilled as well, they absolutely adored being abuelos to their four beautiful grandchildren, they couldn't wait to welcome one more.

"I'm so excited for you, mija!" Lucía said, wrapping her daughter in a hug. "You're certainly going to have your hands full, now aren't you?"

"I sure am!" Elena agreed with a nod. "But I've managed to survive with four, how bad could one more be?"

"Oh, I've heard that before, about three children ago." Lucía joked.

"And you two thought you had your hands full with this one, huh?" Raúl chimed in, as his youngest grandson reached up to him, wanting to be in his abuelo's arms. He picked Marcelo up and tossed him in the air, making the toddler screech in delight.

"Well, though our hands may be full, our hearts are even fuller." Elena said.

In the moments leading up to the parranda, Raúl and Lucía took in this moment surrounded by their ever growing familia. They couldn't help but wonder what would've happened on that fateful day over fifty years ago if they had left to work on the Carnaval floats even a moment sooner than they did. There was a good chance that they would've never lived to witness their daughter take back their kingdom and free Avalor from Shuriki's reign. Raúl may have never been able to place the crown upon his daughter's head to crown her queen of Avalor, or proudly walk her down the aisle on her wedding day. Lucía may have never been able to see how breathtakingly beautiful her Elenita looked moments before she was married, or witness the moment her daughter became a mamí. They thought of their four, soon to be five, beautiful grandchildren, who they never would've been able to meet. Becoming their abuelos was one of their greatest joys in life. While they couldn't help but wonder about if a single thing had gone differently, they wouldn't have wanted their lives to have turned out any other way.

[multific]

Your Love Story

Xavier Plympton x Reader

Warnings: Swearwords, this is considered to be an AU, because it follows the original storyline, but I modified the majority of it.

Summary: Your father is a businessman with connections and power, you were always considered to be a rich kid and a brat so you spent all your life trying to prove that you didn’t need your father’s connections to start your own life. And that is why you went to Camp Redwood.

 Your love story started at a bar where you worked, near the camp. You worked alongside two of your great friends, Nora and Tory. Nora and you met when she was drunk at a bar and a guy was trying to get her to go with him but you interfered and helped her, the two of you had been best friends since then.

When she told you about the restaurant/bar her father wanted to open near a camp, you knew that this will be your chance of finally proving to everyone that you didn’t need your father to help you out and that you were capable of living alone. He always wanted you to live in luxury and wealth, that was one of the reasons why he didn’t want you to leave, but at the same time, his hand reached out everywhere, so he knew, you’d be safe. When the bar opened, you were excited and happy, but it soon became evident to you that you did need the help of your dad. But you kept most of your dignity and only asked him when it was absolutely necessary. So, in the end, you did start your own life, but at the same time still received the help of your father. After two years of working at the bar, you just didn’t care about what others had to say and started to really enjoy your life. You bought yourself a caravan and you were living in it now, you got your car from your father for your birthday.

And as soon as the red sports car was in front of you, you accepted your fate as the rich kid and stopped fighting against it.

Obviously you used a fake last name, you didn’t want everyone to know who you really were, so your made-up name was Y/N Green. Not a very creative one, but everyone seemed to believe it, even Nora went along with your plan.

Tory was what you’d call a typical black girl. And you loved her, her attitude slowly started to stick to you and you began to change. You stopped taking shit from others and had a big mouth with a no fucks given attitude. Nora told you one time that it’s like a part of Tory was stuck to you while a part of you got stuck to her.

Each year you had a plan for summer and that summer you had two promises, one, you’ll have a great time no matter the consequences and two, no boys. Since your ex was an asshole and broke up with you over a simple fight, you didn’t need the drama. You wanted to sunbathe, get a nice tan. Give all the boys hard-ons and then walk away. That was your plan. A plan you wanted to execute, but as soon as you met with a certain blonde, it all went out the window. Margaret brought all the counselors over to introduce all three of you to them.

His name was Xavier Plympton. He was around your age, handsome, gorgeous eyes and great physique, but there were problems with him, of course.

First, Montana, his ex, she seemed to be around him all the time, and you even caught them kissing once, however when you asked Chet about them, he said that it was nothing in between them other anymore.

And second, he gave you major gay vibes. You saw him giving an aerobics class to the others and just the way he moved set your alarm off. But if he was gay, why would he flirt with Montana? Maybe he wanted to hide it?

Even so, you didn’t care. There was something about him that you liked so much, not just his appearance, his attitude, the way he carried himself. You never imagined you’d have a crush on a guy like him, but there you were. Standing at the bar staring at the glass in front of you while thinking about ways to get closer to him.

You felt pathetic, never once a man or boy made you feel like that.

“Alright, I have big plans for tomorrow. There will be a party and we NEED to be there.” came in Nora after her coffee break.

“Okay. I’m on for anything, but why do we NEED to be there?”

“One name, Greg.”

“Oh no.

“OH YES.” Greg was the local handsome guy, well not counting the new counselors at the camp and Nora was head over heels for him, well more like she wanted him to do her at least once. “He’s holding the party at his house, Y/N you’ll be our designated driver since you have a car and Tory really wants to drink, so you can’t drink.”

“So, you are making me go to a house party and I can’t even drink? Doesn’t sound like a great time to me.”

“You can always just sit here and think about the new blonde counselor while daydreaming.”

“I don’t daydream.”

“So, you’re not denying it?”

“Should I? He’s good-looking but an idiot at the same time.”

“Great, so you’re coming! Tory, Y/N’s in!”

You heard her talking to Tory  in the kitchen while you let out a long sigh, there was no way you wouldn’t go to a party like that, but the fact that you couldn’t even drink bothered you.

***

The next night all counselors of the camp were sitting outside drinking beers while talking. They slowly got used to each other and all the guys called dibs on the girls, they were having a great time.

“Chet, you have no chance with Y/N, she’s too good for you. She’ll definitely choose me.” said Trevor.

“Right on, man. I bet she likes your moustache.”

As everyone laughed at Chet’s joke, they noticed a car pulling up. You got out of the car and walked over to the bunch. Everyone was quiet. You looked like you just walked out of a party, which you were. You stopped and everyone was looking at you.

“Alright Mr Muscle. I need help, come.” you said as you pointed at Chet. Chet didn’t believe it and could only watch as you started walking back to your car. Suddenly he came to his senses and as everyone looked at the other for answers, Chet had a grin on his face. “Don’t get excited, Muscles.” they heard you call back and everyone laughed except the man in question.

Everyone observed in silence as you got to the other side of the car opened the door and motioned for Chet. Chet got someone out and picked the person up. You started walking back to the bonfire and turned to look at Brooke.

“I will need a bucket.” without a question she stood up and ran to get one. Meanwhile Chet got back with an obviously very intoxicated Nora in his arms. “Sit her down.” you said and pulled a hairband out of your purse and pulled her hair back to a ponytail.

“What happened?” Ray asked.

“We went to a party, she had too much to drink. And there was this guy. I think they drugged her.”

“Why did you bring her here?” Montana asked. “She needs to go to the hospital!”

“No. I know what to do. Just watch her for a while. I need to phone someone.” Your eyes went from Montana to Brooke who just came back with the bucket. You thanked her and knelt down to Nora.

“If you need to puke, in this please, I don’t want to clean up after you. I need to call someone. Tory is at home, you are safe. You are at the camp with the others. Ray, Montana, Xavier, Trevor and Brooke are all here okay?” she gave you a weak nod, you knew she didn’t or barely understood you. You turned to the others and locked eyes with Xavier. “Please look after her. I will be short.” when he gave you a nod you stood and left to call you father.

To say that you were angry would be an understatement.

You left for that party in hopes, Nora will finally have the night of her life, instead after a toilet break you found her drugged and nearly getting raped. You quickly got out of there and dropped Tory off at her place.

You were angry, but your father was angrier. To have someone hurt his daughter’s best friend was an unforgivable sin to him.

“He’s about 6.2, has short blonde hair and is dressed in a green top with jeans, he’s still at the party if not, I know what his car looks like, he has a white Pontiac. I don’t care what happens to him, Dad. Just…”

“I know, Sweetheart. My men are already on the way. I will call you when it’s done. Tell Nora that I’m sorry and be strong Sweetheart.”

“Thank you, Dad. I wouldn’t have called you, but this son of a bitch needs to be taught a lesson or two.”

“Got it. Consider it done.”

“Thank you, Dad. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

When you put the phone back and turned around you nearly got a heart attack. Xavier was walking your way and since all you saw at first is a dark figure, you nearly dropped dead.

“Hey.” he called out.

“Hi. Thank you for looking out at Nora.”

“Yeah, she seems to be in a bad shape. Are you okay though?”

“Me? Oh yeah, I’m fine, thank you. I think I’ll take her home now.”

“Good idea.” the two of you walked back to the others while he was saying reassuring things to you and you told him what happened.

You felt a lot better after talking with him and you also felt closer to him now.

***

The next couple of days were pretty uneventful. You and Tory ran the restaurant while Nora was healing and trying to get over the trauma.

You didn’t talk with anyone from the camp either. Pretty boring days.

Until one night you were the one to close the place up. After you did, you walked out and saw a very familiar car pass by. It looked exactly like one of your father’s business partner’s car. The plate number also matched. You got curious and followed him.

You left your car behind when you saw him enter a small road and followed by foot. He went to the camp.

And your instincts were right. You found him trying to strangle Xavier while pointing a VHS at the guy. You got fed up with his shit as you heard Xavier plead.

You came out from behind the tree and kicked him off of Xavier. The man got really angry and was on his feet ready to kill whoever dared to kick him, but he instantly stopped as he saw you out of all people. Xavier was both confused and stunned.

“Mr Blake. I assume that what I’m seeing is only a misunderstanding and you were just asking for directions, right?” Xavier looked from you to Blake and noticed something in his eyes he never thought he will see, fear. But not just regular fear, genuine fear. Blake looked terrified of you.

“Miss Y/L/N…” Blake couldn’t find his words.

“I really hope that it is just a misunderstanding otherwise I might have to think that you lied to my father.”

“No no no. I was just talking to Mr Plympton over there.”

“Talking? And what does Mr Plympton says about that?” you looked at Xavier who was still on the ground mouth, agape in shock.

“I-“ he started but Blake cut him off.

“Please Miss Y/L/N, I just… You have to understand I need to earn money and-“

“And what? In order to do that you trick guys, I know your method. You promised to my father that you’ll stop once you get the loan from him. And yet here you are. Blackmailing another guy for what Mr Blake?” Xavier was now standing slightly behind you, taking your words in, he didn’t understand why Blake called you on a different name, but you seemed pissed.

“I-I-I’ll stop. Like I promised, Miss Y/L/N. I really will.”

“If you ever just think about him or any other to trick, I’ll make sure my father hears about it, Mr Blake. And we both know if one thing he hates more than something happening to me is liars. Right?”

“Yes, yes. You’re right Miss Y/L/N.”

“Now go back to whichever sewer you crawled out from. And forget his name.”

Without saying another word the man basically ran back to the backseat of his car. But you stopped him once again.

“HEY! Leave that here!” Blake understood and dropped the VHS on the ground hopped back into the car and sped off. “What a disgusting rat that man is.” you said to no one in particular. You went to pick the VHS up and got your lighter out. You handed both to Xavier. He just looked at you then at the items in your hand.

“What just happened?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you in the car, but I just can’t let you go back, so you are coming to my place for a little chat. Shall we?” he got the tape out of your hand and with the lighter he burnt the thing in a bin.

You waited in the car for him and when he was finally sitting next to you, you started the engine.

After a good five minutes of silence you began to talk.

“I bet you have like billions of questions. Let me start off with this, my father is, what you’d call a gangster a mob leader. He has connections all over the world. When I was born, his standards changed. After my mother’s death, he promised to always keep me safe. Imagine that, a teenager girl having money, all I had to do was call Dad, and I got it. Anything. So, after my rebellious years ended, I began to get interested in his business, I went to meetings with him and whatnot. Then Blake came in one day. He said he needed money for a movie that he was making so he loaned money from the father. About a week later, I found out just what kind of movie it was, and I wouldn’t have problems with it, you know, we are all different, but when I learnt that Blake emotionally pressured the guys, I just couldn’t leave it at that. So, Dad called him in. Blake promised he’d stop and it was only a one-time thing. It wasn’t, you are not the first nor the last he promised great roles and whatnot in exchange for a short movie. Don’t think that I’m judging you or anything. You are a victim, he entices you with his sweet words and then you find yourself in this.” Xavier just sat there watching you as you drove. So many things made sense now. From your expensive clothing to the red car even the phone call he overheard after Nora was drugged. He knew he should be scared and thankful but he just felt at peace.

“I-I don’t know what to say. Thank you, yeah thank you. But… why did you help me?”

“As I said, he disgusts me. The method, forcing guys into porn and then blackmailing them with it is just, angers me.”

“Okay. Okay. Why are we going to your place?”

“Well, I needed to lie about my last name for a reason. I just want to be sure you won’t tell to others. And since you are still in shock, you might spill the tea, so you are going to stay with me and tomorrow when you’ll be able to think clearly, I’ll drive you back.”

“Sounds reasonable. But really, Y/N, thank you.”

“You’re Welcome, Xavier.”

Shortly after, you arrived at your caravan and Xavier looked at it like he never seen one before. You lived about away from Camp Redwood, about a fifteen-minute drive, on a piece of land with a great view of the woods.

“You live in that?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you said you’re rich.”

“Well, my dad is. But don’t judge a book by its cover.” Xavier definitely should have. It might have looked simple from the outside, but on the inside the place had everything and it had a nice homey feel to it.

“Go take a shower if you want to.”

“Thanks.” Xavier got into the bathroom and stopped for a moment. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He couldn’t believe that his knight in shining armour was you. He never thought that you the sassy bartender that he actually pretty liked would turn out to be a help to him. He felt like he could cry out of happiness, which he ended up doing. All the emotions came flowing into him, all that fear he felt when Blake called him and when he was in the car with him. All the relief when you made Blake look like a scared child as he ran with his tails between his legs.

It was certain. If he wasn’t in love with you before, now he truly was. From your appearance, your attitude, how hardworking you were and now, like an angel you came to his rescue and saved his ass. As he was taking a shower while slightly sobbing, you were outside, doing what you best at, calling Dad.

You explained the situation to him and he was pissed, just as you said the one thing he hated right after if someone messes with his only daughter is liars. When your phone call ended Xavier came out of the bathroom. He was obviously crying and it made your heartache.

“Awww.” you said as you stood up from the table and went to caress his check and get rid of his tears, but as soon as you touched his check with that gentle hand of yours, fresh tears rolled down from his eyes as he desperately hugged you.

“Thank you, Y/N. Really. I don’t even know how to properly thank you.”

“I really hope that those are happy tears, Xavier.” you said as you pulled back from the hug, but you were still holding each other. Your comment made him smile a bit. “See? Much better.”

“They are, happy tears.”

“Good. Now sit, I have some drinks in the fridge, drink something while I take a quick shower.”

At Xavier was left alone with his thoughts again as he sipped his coke and looked around the caravan. It had cassettes laying around, flowers and plants it even had a small TV and a very modern looking phone. The phone started to ring, alerting Xavier. He contemplated picking it up. Then Xavier looked at the clock, it was so late and yet someone was calling you? What if it’s an emergency? In the end he picked it up, thinking he’ll just say that you are in the shower and to call you back in a few minutes.

“Hi, Y/N is in the shower now, can you call her back a bit later?” the other end of the line was silent before a man started talking, a deep manly voice, it spent chills down Xavier’s spine.

“I assume that you are Mr Plympton, right? I’m Y/N’s father.”

“Right, sir. I-I would like to thank you, your daughter really saved me today.”

“Oh, I know. I’m actually in the car right now. You see, I thought I might need to have a short conversation with Blake. Would you like me to tell him something in your name?”

“No, thank you. I’d rather forget all about him.” Xavier felt his palm getting sweaty.

“Very well. You know, Mr Plympton, you are a great guy, My Sweetheart told me about you before, treat her well.” the last part of the sentence was so intense it left Xavier both speechless and breathless. Before he could reply, the phone call already ended and only the annoying beeping sound was heard.

“Did he scare you?” you were now out of the shower wearing your pj’s and standing in front of him. “Don’t let him scare you. He won’t hurt you.”

“O-okay.” you smiled reassuringly at him.

“So, are we sharing the bed or do you plan on sleeping on the floor?”

You shared the bed.

Xavier was never anxious around women before, especially not if he was in a bed with them. But with you, he was facing the other way while he felt your back against his, he just couldn’t sleep. He was relieved, yes, but what scared him more, admitting his feelings towards you or your father? Then you spoke up, he thought you were already asleep.

“You know, I always liked you. The day Margaret walked in with you guys, I just knew, I will have a thing for you. I feel like my old shy and anxious self when I’m with you. No, I feel like I can be myself. Everyone thought that I was just another rich kid, a bitch who got everything from Daddy, and don’t get me wrong, they were right, but what they never saw is that I never used that against anyone. Only against those who deserve it. But being titled from the first second… that’s why I used a fake name. To start fresh. I will always have my dad behind me, taking care of me, buying me stuff, but I felt like I could finally be me.” Xavier felt you turn around and he didn’t dare to move, your words were so sincere, he wanted you to continue, he wanted to know more about you.

“Are you awake?” he heard you ask and felt your hand against his back. He still didn’t move. “I think I might be in love with you. And it slightly hurts because I’m sure you don’t see me that way. I saw you with Montana at the lake, kissing and I saw you flirting with Brooke, I always wanted it to be me, selfish right? And then I saw Blake, my blood boiled. I know his technique and I immediately knew that he was using you for something.” you began to run your hand up and down his back, it got him relaxed. “I’ll take you back to the camp tomorrow, I don’t care anymore if you tell the others or not. Sleep well.” you gave one last stroke and pulled your hand back. You wanted to go to sleep, but he turned around. Your eyes locked with his and you weren’t sure what you saw in them. You felt shy for some reason. And when he started to speak you noticed just how close to you he was, you left his hot breath on your face, you felt his body heat, and you felt the vibrations that his deep voice caused as he spoke.

“I love you too. I don’t know how to express it well since I never felt like this before. But I’m pretty sure about my feelings, I love how passionate you are when something happens to your friends, you have an amazing smile and personality. I also have to admit that your father scares the living hell out of me. But that won’t stop me. Even if I have to face him, I’ll tell him that I love his daughter. I only flirted and kissed Montana to get you jealous, which apparently worked, so…yay. But you saved me. I used to be a drug addict, nearly got myself killed and Blake found me on a bench passed out with a needle in my arm. I guess you can say that he saved me. But he soon showed his true side. He promised to get me into real deals, movies, and commercials whatever, if I do that one thing for him. I ended up doing it, even though I’m not gay. I thought I escaped him but he came back to haunt me with it. I feel like such an idiot.” he looked away from your eyes and closed them, when he felt your hand on his cheek once again, he opened his eyes and looked into yours, you looked so sad yet so happy at the same time, just like how he felt.

“You are an idiot.” he let out a small laugh, “But you are my idiot.” when you said that all of his sadness disappeared. He began to lean closer to you and when you did the same, he placed his lips against yours. It was a small, slow yet passionate kiss. It was a kiss shared between two souls that finally found each other and became one.

***

You never slept better than in his arms. With your head on his chest listening to both his heartbeat and his breathing.

Both of your sleep were abruptly interrupted when your phone began to ring. You let out a loud groan and leant over the bed to pick it up. Xavier meanwhile moved to a new position in order to get back to dreamland.

“Yes?” he heard you say. He heard the voice on the other end of the line but obviously couldn’t make out what the person was saying. Suddenly he felt the air in the room change, it got so cold. He looked behind his back and saw you frozen in one place with your mouth agape.

“What?” he asked but you didn’t answer. “Baby, what is it?” he asked again. You held a finger up and talked to the person on the phone.

“I understand. We will be there.” you placed the phone back down.

“What happened?” he asked for the third time. When you looked at him, he felt it, something was wrong.

“They are all dead. It was Tory. She came to the bar thinking that Nora would be there, but she wasn’t so she went to the camp to look for her and…and… all she found were bodies. All of them are dead, Xavier. Everyone, Chet, Trevor, Montana, Brooke even Nora is…dead.” you couldn’t believe it, so many emotions rushed through you.

“What do you mean? Who would do such a thing?”

“The police said that it was Mr Jingles. But... we have to go. Leave I mean. Get this thing attached to the car and leave.”

“What? And leave without knowing what happened to my friends? No, I can’t.”

“Tell me one movie, scenario or whatever where the people left behind were safe, where they didn’t die when they went looking for a killer, Xavier. We need to leave. We go to my home. Dad will get this case solved. I’m not dying the day after I finally had courage confessing.” you stood up from the bed and began to rearrange stuff. Xavier thought it through. You did have a point. And he didn’t want to die either. “I know that running is for cowards and running back to my dad is just... looks bad, but I say fuck it. I rather be an alive coward than a dead ‘at-least-she-tried’.” you said while packing.

“Okay. We leave. I’m too pretty do die.” Xavier said in hopes of lifting your spirit, it was obvious to him that your survival instinct was better than his and that you still didn’t fully realize that Nora was dead, but he will be there when you finally will.

***

This is it, your love story, of how you met Xavier Plympton and ran back home with him. But at least the two of you were alive and together.

When the fact that your best friend was dead finally sank in, you mourned her for months. You went to the funeral with Xavier who held you while you cried and broke down.

The two of you never went back to Camp Redwood. You barely talked about it, only when you spoke about how you met. It was a bittersweet memory.

In the end, your father found out who the real killer was and that’s when both you and Xavier found peace again. Knowing that the murderer was behind closed bars and to be executed.

After five years of dating, Xavier asked you to marry him. After your father gave him the blessing the two of you had a small yet meaningful wedding. Well, as small as you can get with your father in the picture.

Xavier felt like he got the ending he truly deserved. With such a tough background, he ended up being a well-known actor with many roles, he ended up being the perfect husband to you and what he never thought he would achieve, Xavier Plympton became the perfect father for his three children.

Truly a happy ending to your love story.

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[buckybabybaby]

Mr Hollywood Finale (Chapter 17)

Summary: Bucky Barnes, an underpaid teaching assistant in a small English village, dreams of a movie career back in his home country of America. He finally gets the break he's always wanted, and if it wasn't for you, his best friend, he wouldn't have been able to take it.

But is that fact enough to save your friendship when it's tested by the pressures of Hollywood?

Pairing: Bucky Barnes/Reader (Gender Neutral)

Word count: 1394

Chapter summary: the last one...

A/n: This is really late, and I'm super sorry, just life :( But we've finally reached the end! If anyone is still reading, thank you so much!! there might be an epilogue, we'll see...

(If the picture is all blurry, opening it in a new tab in browser helps!)

Warnings: nothing but fluff

Previous: Chapter 16

Mr Hollywood Masterlist | Main Masterlist

*****

Blinking awake early the next day, the warmth against your back is a welcome reassurance that yesterday wasn't a dream, however much it felt like it was. How can it be that only one full day has past since you arrived? So much has happened it feels like at least a week, surely your first kiss with Bucky wasn't only a couple of hours a go?

Pressing a finger to your lips, the memory of his touch causes a wide smile to spread across your face, which only grows when you turn onto your other side to watch him sleep. Safe in the knowledge that now you're 'official' if he wakes you won't have to pretend you haven't been staring, you study his steady breaths and the way his hair falls across his forehead.

He really is so pretty. These past days away from the set have done him good, a regular sleep pattern clearly makes all the difference, as does the lack of criminal managers making his life hell. His cheek is warm as you gently trace down to the smooth skin of his neck, resting your hand over his collar bone where you can feel his heartbeat. The regular pulse is soothing and the comfort of knowing he's right there with you lulls you back into a light slumber.

*****

When you next wake, the need to stretch your body wins over the desire to stay in bed with Bucky. With slow and careful movements, you peel away the duvet and sit up, replacing the covers once you've stood to keep the heat in and allow him to get the rest he deserves.

Sneaking out of his room just like yesterday morning, your plan to make breakfast in bed and surprise Bucky when he does eventually rise is delayed as the photographs in the hallway you briefly saw on your first night capture your attention.

Sophia's wedding dress was beautifully elegant, exactly as you would expect, and there's one particular picture that showcases it so well, the wispy veil catching the light from the sunset as she and Dayton walk along the shore of the lake, just down from the hotel where they were married. The next photo on also contains Bucky, taking his best man duties seriously. He looks more relaxed in the following shot, celebrating with the rest of the guests as the newly weds emerge from the venue into a shower of confetti.

“Biodegradable petals, of course.”

Winnifred Barnes seems to have materialised out of thin air. Trying to hide your shock at her appearing beside you without warning, you turn to face her, nodding politely with a small smile.

“Mrs Barnes. Good morning.”

“Good morning sweet Y/N. And again, call me Winnifred.”

“Okay,” You whisper, still not daring to address her by her first name. She doesn't push the issue, instead continuing to comment on the images of her youngest son's wedding.

“And the flowers for her bouquet and the tables came from our garden. Picked and arranged that morning.”

“It all looked beautiful.”

“It was.” Tapping her freshly manicured nails against the glass face of one frame, behind which rests an image of Bucky dancing with his new sister-in-law, she sighs. “I remember wishing that day that sometime soon he would be just as happy as Dayton. Little did I know that Day's tragic crash would lead his brother to the one to make him so.”

Opening your mouth to respond, your reply dies on your tongue as you meet her eye, her knowing gaze freezing you in place.

She's not finished. “Maybe we'll have another set of wedding pictures to put alongside these in the near future.”

You gulp. It was late when you got back last night, everyone long retired to bed, so you're sure the family can't know about the change in your relationship status with Bucky yet.

Her smirk tells you different.

“I...” Lost for words, you wish you were wearing something more sophisticated than your new pyjamas for this conversation. This is the first time you've properly talked to Bucky's mother and you can't stop yourself from thinking it's a test, her friendly expression doing nothing to calm your nerves, because if you don't meet her approval then you don't know how you'd survive.

Now you have him you don't ever want to let go.

She can see how uncomfortable you've become and takes pity on you, gently taking your hand and leading you down to the other end of the landing, stopping in front of the photograph of yourself and Bucky.

“This is one of my favourites.”

You look from her to the image of you.

“I didn't expect to see myself up here. I'm not sure I deserve-”

“Of course you do!” She interrupts. “Bucky sent it to me last year and I've been looking forward to welcoming you into my home ever since.”

“Oh.”

She squeezes your hand kindly. “You make him so happy, you don't know how glad I am that you made things up.”

“So am I,” You say, your voice catching.

Mrs Barnes stands up straighter, face turning serious.“I want to thank you for looking after him all that time he was away. He moved to England and we didn't see him again for nearly two years. Knowing he had you, though, I wasn't worried.”

“I don't think I did much.”

“Oh, but you did. Just being there for him was enough.”

There's a moment of silence as you will the tears away.

“I wished, and still do, that he would come home more, but I think he's found a new home. You.”

Now you really are crying.

“Oh, sweet child, come here.”

She holds you tightly as you try not to ruin her jacket with your runny nose. The perfume you helped Bucky pick out for her birthday a few years ago invades your senses, you'd taken an age to find one you thought would be perfect for her, and the realisation that she liked it enough to continue wearing it warms your heart.

A door opening behind you is the cue for her to let you go. You hurry to wipe away the evidence of your crying from your face as Winnifred's own lights up, waving at the newcomer as she winks at you and leaves you alone.

You turn around to find Bucky, all endearingly sleepy eyed and fluffy haired, standing in the middle of the corridor, also in his pyjamas.

He's pouting. “You keep leaving me. Am I ever going to get you to stay in bed?”

You chuckle quietly. “Maybe. With practice.”

“Good job I've got you here for a few weeks then.” He steps into your personal space, hesitating before his next words. “Can I kiss you?”

Again choosing to answer without saying a thing, your mouth meets his as your arms come around his neck to pull him into you. If kissing Bucky is always like this you are sure you'll never get used to it.

Not that you'd want to.

He pulls back eventually, littering soft kisses over your face as you giggle.

“Well,” You breathe, light headed from his simple touch. “Good morning to you, Bucky.”

“And to you, Y/N.” His chin rests on the crown of your head, his arms crushing you into his chest. “What were you and mum talking about?”

“Nothing much.” You lean into his hold. “Just how you need to come home more.”

Nodding against your hair, he hums. “That's fair. I swear I'll try harder.”

“I know it's not easy.”

“Nothing about this life I've chosen is.”

“We'll make it work,” You say, winding your fingers with his and pressing a kiss to each tip. He murmurs his agreement.

“Oh, and by the way, I think your mum is already picking out her outfit for our wedding.”

Bucky snorts, unsurprised. “That's just her way of saying she thinks you'll be around for a while.”

“Yeah? And what do you think?”

“I think I agree. She's always had excellent taste, knew Sophia was made for Dayton before he'd even started dating her,”

You smile at the thought. “That's so sweet.”

“Hmm. And she's never been wrong so I guess you're here to stay.” He smirks at you, bringing you into another kiss, grinning with you when it ends. “Welcome to the family, Y/N.”

*****

The end! Epilogue Part I

Again, thank you so much for reading, it means the world to me!! Lots of love to you all!

[mxrcayong]

the avatar series: 01.09

masterlist.

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The sharp silence echoed throughout the small bungalow. Tension rippled with every moment. The atmosphere was killing them – none of them daring to look at each other in the eye for longer than a second. They were much more preoccupied with everything around the room.

Bak Mei Island was much more different than Kilari had heard in stories from the Sage families. It wasn’t like pure training grounds nor was it a religious temple, it was a community. The island was separated in two parts; a fourth dedicated to a village where there was a gazebo at the very edge of the island while the other three fourths were dedicated to the main courtyard. That was where the main temple, the training grounds, the animal barn, the infirmary, the canteen, and the Avatar’s bungalow was located.  The whole island was elevated – if anyone were to use a boat to come to the island, they would have to climb up a set of stairs to reach the top of the cliffs. Kilari was grateful that Sukiara had insisted on giving them a tour after their short trip to the infirmary, where ‘the best water healers’ checked them for any injuries and then gave them spare robes to change into after a shower.

Johnny studied the room like he would be tested on it, Doyoung stared at the ceiling as he tried to make sense of his thoughts through meditation, Kilari was fidgeting with her fingers on The Avatar’s bed, and Sonan was sitting in the chair in the corner. All of them were trying to make sense of the very world that shattered beneath their feet.

Standing in the cabin, Johnny felt Tari’s presence like a ghost. Everything here lingered of her. There were lines marked on the wall, indicative of her height as she grew with the years. There were postcards framed on the shelves; photos of what they presumed to be her family. She always told them her family was distant and she lived with guardians growing up. A small lie, Johnny presumed – his arms now crossing as he continued to scan the images. How many small lies or hidden truths have she told us?

His eyes lingered on a photo that seemed to be recently framed by her desk. Did Tari come here during that time? He thought to himself as he saw the quite recent photograph. It was from a year ago, but Johnny swore he saw it in Tari’s room at least two months ago.

The photo was taken during Doyoung’s birthday party; the group of them made a makeshift bar on the rooftop and invited all of Doyoung’s friends. They stayed there until the sun came up, talking about absolutely anything and everything that came to mind as alcohol coursed through their veins. The photo in particular was of the five of them sitting down – Tari was sitting on the edge, her legs thrown over Johnny’s lap. Both of them were covering their faces, stifling their laughter. Doyoung was in the middle – looking annoyed as he wore a tacky, neon birthday hat that continued to sing. Sonan and Kilari were posing – Kilari sticking her tongue out and Sonan adding bunny ears behind Doyoung.

Back when the world was normal, he thought. Why didn’t she tell us then? He asked no one in particular, remembering the story Johnny had told her about the first time he had felt insecure about not being able to bend. Why didn’t she talk to me about it then?

“Fuck this silence!” Kilari exclaimed, cutting the silence with a knife. “We can’t keep ignoring what just happened.” She jumped up from the bed, “We can’t keep avoiding the topic by talking about the stars or about our jobs or about anything!” Her voice faltered, cracking nervously as she had to face the facts. She failed in noticing her friend was the Avatar. Her heritage came from people who could identify the Avatar. Not only did she fail at understanding and knowing her friend, but she failed at being a Fire Sage. Not to mention, Kilari spoke to Tari about all of her problems. Did Tari not tell me because I couldn’t help her? Because she couldn’t trust me? She bit her lip, Did I fail Tari as a friend?

Doyoung sighed, “You’re right. We can’t keep ignoring the silence, but we don’t have all the facts. Uhm, whats-her-name-“

“Sukiara.” Sonan reminded him, still in the corner but now staring at her feet. Out of all of them, she was the least shocked. She knew something was up with Tari; from the fact she was never cold to her being practically a master in multiple fighting techniques. Sonan also offered Tari to replace her plants when they died, but she never had to. Tari’s plants had never died – no matter if their life span was supposed to be for a few months. But Sonan couldn’t be bothered if Tari hid something from her. If she needed to know, Tari would’ve told her. Sonan trusted her, and if Tari wanted her to know or think she needed to know, she would’ve told her. It was

“She said she’ll come and tell us them soon.” The airbender tried to keep a level head. He was disappointed in himself. I lived with her, he chastised, how did I not notice these things? But like Kilari, he was disappointed in himself for disappointing Tari – for being someone she couldn’t trust. He was trying to keep levelheaded, trying to rationalize why Tari might have kept it a secret. Doyoung didn’t know anything from Tari’s perspective. He used to think that they can understand each other like an open book – a skill he gained from living with her, but now it’s like he found out the book had secret pages.

Johnny rolled his eyes, balling his fist as he crossed his arms. “We found out our best friend has been lying to us.”

“Tari probably has a reason,” Sonan mentioned, trying to calm Johnny’s rage. “She always does.”

He had the urge to punch the wall. “A reason for lying to us for two years?” Doyoung was quick to walk to Johnny’s side, grabbing his arm as it unlocked itself from being crossed. It was the first time they made eye contact for a long time since they fled. Johnny saw Doyoung’s disappointment, his sadness reflected in his glossy eyes while Doyoung noticed Johnny’s look of betrayal.

They both had found out something crucial about someone important to them. Everyone here did. But now they don’t know if they’ll ever see her again; the last image they had of the arena as they flew away was it being consumed by flames.

Almost as if she had sensed the tensions were getting hot, Sukiara had opened the door. Everyone stopped in their tracks, turning to the lady who had promised to give them the answers they sorely wanted. She too had changed out of her prior outfit; but unlike the rest of them (who were in spare Order of the White Lotus black traditional wear), she wore a wrap top that mimicked the traditional water tribe shirts with a long skirt that made it look like she was gliding.

As soon as everyone received their cup of tea, Sukiara stood in front of them like a teacher. Her head was held high, there was no sense of doubt or regret. “What would you like to know?” She said so casually, as if she was asked someone’s name or age.

Johnny was about to open her mouth, but Sonan was quick to take over – unsure of his rage. “Can you tell us as much as possible?”

Sukiara dropped her head, still unsure where to start. So she started at the beginning. “We found out she was the Avatar when she was four years old. Teachers of water bending in her hometown reported a girl of exemplary skills, only four years old.”  She told them everything – from how many years she stayed in Bak Mei to how long she spent in each nation’s traditional temple to how she trains once a month.

“Why didn’t she tell us?” Johnny let the words slip past his lips like venom, full of suppressed rage and betrayal.

Sukiara sighed, “I woul-“

The door slammed open and one of the members of the White Lotus busted in. “Come to the canteen,” They panted, “The arena is on the news.”

It felt like everyone in the White Lotus facilities sat anxiously in the canteen, watching the monitor as the bright orange flames raged on screen.

“Last night, police officers came down to the arena to notice a group of benders planning a terrorist attack. The people planning also happened to be apart of the underground illegal bending matches.” The news – it was twisted, it was lies. But Johnny knew the reporter – he worked alongside them and was aware of their acceptance of benders. Consequently, he has a feeling if he didn’t have any bending friends or he wasn’t there – he might’ve believed the same thing being fed to him by the higher-ups. “G-Dragon and the Big Bang Crew were identified as the leaders and have been taken into custody.” The four of their jaws dropped; watching as the clips turned into videos of G-Dragon and the Big Bang Crew being put into police cars. “A number of benders have gotten arrested, but this number has not been released yet. There are numerous officers in the hospital being tended to for their injuries. The same can be said for the attackers, but they are expected to be arrested as soon as their injuries are healed.” The reporter let out a pause for dramatic effect. “The authorities also revealed that the Avatar was in there. They couldn’t identify who during that chaos, but we can confirm the Avatar is in SM City.”

Which can be healed quickly if they didn’t fire all the water bending nurses…, Johnny thought, feeling the anger bubbling in his stomach.

“Tari isn’t back yet.” Sonan gasped. Their minds went to praying to the Spirits that Tari was not one of the people arrested.

Sukiara stared at the floor. “The police may kill her on the spot if they find her.” She recalled all the governmental talks, the threats from the mayor. “The government has been asking for her identity…we just better hope they didn’t see her bend.”

The next hour was like waiting for a pin to drop. Everyone was tense. The head chefs passed around hot drinks; trying to calm everyone down as they worried for Tari’s safety. The facility members thoughts focused on the little girl they saw grow up, while her friends thought of their memories and the future they have yet to have and all the answers she has yet to answer.

People were either sitting, eyes closed as their heads fell onto the table, or pacing around the canteen space.

And when they heard the sound of a bison outside – the sound of an animal’s groans and paws landing on the ground, everyone ran outside. Johnny and Doyoung were first.

They saw Tari with two others. People they couldn’t recognize. One had an undercut and white hair while the other had black hair with a blonde streak in his fringe who was a bit taller. There clothes were ripped; obviously having been in a fight, but it seemed that Tari healed them on their way over. It was mostly evident from the blood staining the tears, but the lack of blood on where the wounds should’ve been.

As soon as Tari made eye contact with her friends, they tackled her. Johnny practically lunged into her, carrying her into the air and spinning her as much as she could. Her other friends had to fight for her attention, showering her with questions – so many questions she couldn’t distinguish them apart.

Once her feet touched the ground again, Tari let out a small smile. “Sukiara, can we get Yuta and Jisung fresh clothes?” The members of the union helped guide everyone inside the canteen, Sukiara barking out orders to the chefs to prepare something hot for the three people who just arrived.

“You guys sit down.” Sukiara instructed. “We’ll bring you food and some clothes. Taemin, can you get the boys some clothes? Sunmi, can you get Tari’s clothes? Everyone else, please back off and move away. They need air.” And people listened, except for Tari’s four friends Sukiara gave an encouraging nod to. “You guys stay here and please, let them breathe.”

The two strangers awkwardly waved to the four people who seemed to be analyzing every one of their movements. “Hi, I’m Yuta.” The one with the undercut introduced, “You might’ve seen me as the Osaka Prince.” With that, Kilari’s jaw dropped. Much more attractive without the mask.

“I’m Jisung, or, uh, the mouse.” The taller one said more timidly.

“Jisung, Yuta,” Tari has refused to look her friends in the eye. Once the initial relief of her survival came through, she saw their anger – their disappointment. I’m losing them, she thought, I’m losing them like I lost everyone else. Without looking up, she used her arm to motion to each of her friends. “Johnny, Kilari, Sonan, and Doyoung.”

“Oh, no way!” Yuta exclaimed, “You’re the girl who holds the Kyoshi fan lessons!” Sonan nodded, grinning at the recognition while Kilari was still starstruck. She could barely speak, just looking at Yuta and checking him out.

Jisung was quick to speak, “And you’re the dude who writes those great articles! I loved the photographs you include in them.” He enthused.

“It’s an honor meeting the new Team Avatar.” Yuta bowed his head slightly.

As soon as Yuta said Avatar, it seemed that everyone took it as their cue to interrogate Tari. Their words and voices blurred into the same; undistinguishable from the other. Her head was pounding, her eyes went wide – she felt herself curling into herself. Panic started settling through her heart- she felt like she was going to explode. Her vision went hazy, her heart was pounding. Everything they were saying was more overwhelming than the stun guns and the bullets the police were shooting at them. She couldn’t even look them in the eye – to heartbroken to see their expressions, to see their disappointment. She didn’t want them to leave like this; she was planning that if she must tell them, she’d leave one night and not say anything. Then, she wouldn’t have lost them due to something she can’t control.

“I-I-“ She couldn’t distinguish their voices or how they responded when she started to let out broken pieces of words. “I need to go.”

Before anyone could object, Tari’s feet had a mind of their own and sprinted towards the farthest edge of the island.

request anything for future parts / penny for your thoughts here

[fuelcut]

A thought experiment on Silicon Valley’s third era

[ read the tweetstorm if you’re in a rush] 

June 19th marks the end of American slavery, July 4th American Independence and July 14th the storming of the Bastille. It’s also my 40th birthday, and I’m exploring what we can learn from the past to help navigate today’s struggles for racial justice and economic freedom. 

1940-1980: “Atoms” and the military-industrial-labor complex

My dad arrived in the Bay Area in 1970-1971 to get his PhD at Berkeley - just as the area was being rebranded as Silicon Valley.  

Free from the stifling hierarchy of the East, the Bay was America’s center for social, technical and institutional change. Black Panthers policed the police in Oakland, shiny BART trains crossed the Bay to SF where the Gay Rights movement was flourishing. My family tree waited a millennia for India to recognize intercaste marriage. My parents would see radical social change in America across every axis in a single generation. Bold leadership in the 60s expanded civil rights and embraced immigration. They (and I) benefited greatly from an economic and social foundation that had been laid over many decades. 

Caterpillar Tractor - founded in the Bay Area - embodied the spirit of this era. It went from liberating France in WW2 to building a massive middle class, unionized labor force. Cat later moved its headquarters to Peoria, Illinois - because in this era, cities across the country - not just the coasts - had the ability to compete. Since WW2, America pursued an intentional strategy of geographically broad-based economic development - via highways, airline regulation and distributed national labs.  

Caterpillar didn’t just give Peoria a chance, it also gave my dad a chance to put down roots in America by sponsoring his green card. There was no H1B limbo. The nexus of military, industry and labor unions brought immigrants, Women and Blacks into the workforce - with paid apprenticeships (not exorbitant higher education) and technically-focused community colleges paving the way for millions. My mom learned COBOL while her toddlers played in the back of class. Even Hunter’s Point in SF was vibrant during much of this period.  (Of course, it was far from a halcyon era - the war machine had massive human cost globally and civil rights were far from evenly enforced in America.)

And while atoms reigned supreme during this era, the military and government patiently invested risk capital in advanced manufacturing, semiconductors and software/networking to prepare America for its future. 

1980-2020: “Bits” and global capital, jackrocks and polarization

In 1980, Reagan was elected President - and I was born. This would also be the peak of private sector labor employment in the US and the beginning of global capital (and the multinational companies they backed) as the leading force in forging the social contract.

They promised us that countries with McDonald’s would never go to war with each other. Indeed the Berlin Wall fell, Asian laborers got jobs and Americans could buy cheap stuff at WalMart. Global capital (bits) put atoms inside shipping containers and sent them around the world - abstracting consumers from the manufacturing base. 

The writing was on the wall for unions.

As a middle schooler, I saw Cat management and labor (UAW) locked into a multi-year strike over the future. The front line was not in a boardroom or on the picket line. It was neighborhoods, schools and community groups. I remember when a classmate whose dad was in the union talked about how folks in the factory were peeing on effigies of management - including my dad.

Naturally I knew which side I was on. Cat needed wage concessions and freedom to operate to be globally competitive.  I’d read Akio Morita, TPS and Lee Iacocca. I worried about Japan Inc. eating our lunch (yes as a 12 year old!) UAW workers and families were much more grounded. They needed a livelihood and wanted certainty for their future.

---

War continued to wage into high school. We came home one day to find “jackrocks” outside of our driveway - a tool used in feudal Japan to thwart the advancing armies - horses, chariots - etc. of those in power.  In <60 years, Caterpillar had gone from transforming America’s agrarian society to becoming the enemy of American workers. We had the GOP’s Contract with America (stored in my Trapper Keeper) and Clinton signing NAFTA within a couple years. Both parties supported global capital and global capital supported both parties. Maybe jackrocks worked better than voting?

Corporate America soon figured out that if your workers were in China, Mexico or the South, it’s harder for them to stick jack rocks in your driveway. If your kids go to private school or you live in a quasi-private suburb, they’ll be insulated from the wrath of the have-nots in heavily policed, declining urban centers. No peeing on your effigy or having your kid hear about it!

---

After college, I became an analyst at Bain & Company. Once an auto parts company hired us to do a “portfolio review”. I meticulously compared the costs of building mirrors in Eastern Michigan or Malaysia - creating a zero defect Excel model. Guess which location won? The auto parts company - like Cat - had the freedom to choose where to put jobs. 

But what freedom did the workers have? Marie Antoinette once said “let them eat cake”. The elites of our era now say “let them move”. Social capital is critical for folks navigating change. The educated elite take the portability of social capital (embedded in college degrees and iMessage threads) as a given. 

But place and social capital are deeply intertwined especially if you’re poor or a minority. While the deep introspection elites once had during 2016 has now been paved over by new crises, we should never forget that there’s a cost to society of losing its manufacturing base and jobs. How do you model the costs of broken families, drug addiction and a polarized electorate in Excel? 

---

I grew disillusioned with management by spreadsheet. But I saw a bright spot on the horizon: tech. I remember opening my first iPod, getting 1000 songs in my pocket and believing that America had a shot at leading a new generation of consumer electronics when everyone a decade earlier had written us off in favor of the Japanese. Perhaps tech could bring jobs and prosperity back to the country? I wanted to be part of it. 

So I moved to the Valley in 2004 and joined a VC fund. I saw how the VC funding model that Silicon Valley was built on incentivizes high-risk, high-leverage and massive-scale. It encourages companies to cherry-pick top-end talent (immigrants, marquee college grads) to build the differentiated bits. Pick the highest leverage point in the stack, outsource everything else - by building in China and/or pushing the last-mile to an ecosystem that you can control at arms length.

Tech companies could more than pay back the largely fixed costs of software / semiconductor design from the large and homogenous American market. This dynamic attracted massive amounts of private risk capital and enabled aggressive expansion abroad. This model didn’t work for everything (I got burned with cleantech) - but it worked amazingly well for broad swaths of enterprise software, consumer services and marketplaces. I saw how tech could be an incredible lever for wealth creation. But every visit back home to the Rust Belt made me wonder - wealth creation for whom?

---

2020+ - A thought experiment on institutional innovation and putting people first

July 14, 2020 - Q2 Earnings - CEO, MEGA TECH CORP - Hi everyone. These aren’t normal times. We’re not going to talk about our 10Q on this call. We’re here to talk about the next 10 years. So if you’re here for DAUs, ARR or CPC, you can drop off now.


We’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the race, health and economic crises our country faces. Over the last few weeks, I’ve asked our exec team to leave their homes, their Zoom calls, their DoorDash deliveries - to join protests and explore our community through new eyes. 

Race & Place: On Juneteenth, we biked from Sheraton Place to Hunters Point to Tanforan. We saw the real life impact of redlining, mass incarceration of Blacks and the lack of jobs from decades ago - and how our headquarters sustain - rather than disrupt - the region’s policies of de facto segregation. We also remembered how political demagogues once imprisoned our neighbors of Japanese descent. We see today how their rhetoric affects our Black neighbors and colleagues. What might it do tomorrow to folks without legal status in ag/service industries that California depends or the H1Bs we depend on? What does diversity & inclusion mean in this context?

Jobs: The next Friday we biked from SRI to PARC to Sunnyvale and Moffett Field. Our industry once dreamed of a bicycle for the mind and embraced technical education and apprenticeship as a path in the door for Women and Blacks. Meanwhile we’ve pushed vast swaths of work to contractors or platform-mediated transactions - making it harder to use up-skilling as a talent lever like manufacturing employers did in the last era. What’s the impact on income mobility? At what point will 40 million unemployed Americans affect our share prices and the stability of society?

Climate: On Independence Day, we biked on the Bay Trail past landfills, superfund sites and the 101 - alongside poor and minority neighborhoods with terrible health outcomes. We talked about the Bay Area weather forecast for 2060 “fire with a chance of flooding”. We passed abandoned railways and dreams of regional transport - the result of which is folks commuting hours each way from the central valley to work service jobs in our campuses.  We wondered about the long run political consequences of isolating our employee base inside the WiFi confines of a private bus network. Where is the voting base to drive institutional change? How many axles or tires will our commuter buses need to keep them safe from jackrocks on the 101?

Health: Last week, we rode from the old Permanente cement quarry to 101 (built by the same cement workers.)  We talked about how Kaiser - a private employer of low-skilled workers - internalized their healthcare needs, pursued disruptive innovation and faced fierce clashes with the medical establishment. We thought about how COVID is exposing the brittleness of our employee’s isolation inside a private insurance bubble. No one can be healthy in a pandemic without competent public health infrastructure. Meanwhile, the growing cost of private healthcare makes it harder for tech - let alone the rest of the country - to employ American workers across the wage spectrum - exacerbating job loss and instability. 

And as we spoke with others, we saw how the issues that Silicon Valley faces are not unique to one metropolitan area or one industry. It just happens to be the ultimate archetype of Global Capitalism and de facto segregated American metros.

What we now see - more clearly than ever - is that our entire company, our entire industry, our entire Valley - is built on a flawed foundation. 

We can no longer just focus on the magical software bits and hope someone else figures out racial equity, employment, climate and health. This is Joel Spolsky’s Law of Leaky Abstractions on the ultimate scale. The abstractions are failing - and we’re seeing bugs and unintended consequences all around us. And the more we invest to deal with one-off bugs, the more likely we are to calcify change and imprison ourselves inside a failing stack.

It’s like we decided to build the world’s notification service on Ruby on Rails - or building an iPhone competitor on Windows CE. Fail Whale everywhere. Unfortunately, America’s democratic institutions are in poor condition. They are struggling to deal with inequality let alone looming environmental disaster.  A polarized electorate - particularly at the national level - leads to populism and makes it hard for these institutions to execute meaningful, long-term plans.

We talk a lot about speech, misinformation, fairness of targeted ads etc. But it’s becoming clear that UX, linear algebra/training data and monetization in our products is just the tip of the spear to address polarization. We believe polarization is a product of the underlying conditions of civil rights, education, health and climate debt that affect Americans differentially based on race, wealth, neighborhood and region. e.g. If we care about justice, how far does focusing on the fairness of employment ads get us in a world when many people lack the skills and negotiating power to secure a living wage?

So will today’s peaceful protests for racial justice expand into tomorrow’s revolution(s) for economic freedom? If you don’t think things are bad now, think about what happens when the stimulus checks run out. Take a look at the amount of debt in the public sector, use any imagination about COVID, work out what happens to their tax base / pension returns and consider the impact on public services, public servants and their votes.  MMT better be a real thing. Maybe we didn’t start these fires, but that refrain won’t save us when the flames come our way. 

We’re done debating why we need to act. It’s clear America needs our help. Let’s talk about how we’re going to rise to the occasion. Our mantra will be “internalize, innovate, institutionalize”.

First, we’re going to internalize our problems. I’m here to tell you that issues of racial and economic justice are not just moral issues but they’re financial issues. Racial debt, education debt, health debt, climate debt  will hit us harder and harder each year.  (By the way, revolution probably won’t be great for your DCF models.) So we’re going to recognize these off-balance sheet liabilities - which amount to a few hundred billion in the US alone over the next 10 years for a company at our scale. 

Second, we’re going to innovate against these systemic problems - but our only shot at making progress is if we realign the entire company’s mission to address them. This is not about optics. This is not about philanthropy. This is not another bet.  We’re putting all our chips behind one bet - America. It's the country that backed us in the first place, it's where most of our people are and most of our profits.  The job for our existing products, platforms and cash flows will be to advance four areas: place / race, skilling / manufacturing, health / food and climate / mobility - starting in America. The board will measure me based on job creation and diversity.  It should go without saying that we’re pausing dividends and buybacks for the foreseeable future. Every dollar will serve our mission.  Every senior leader will need to sign up for our new mission - and those who choose to stay will receive a new, back-end loaded, 10 year vesting schedule.  We want them focused on the long-term health of society - not the whims of Robinhood day traders or strengthening the moats of existing products. We will need to invent entirely new ways to operate and ship products. As Joel Spolsky said, “when you need to hire a programmer to do mostly VB programming, it’s not good enough to hire a VB programmer, because they will get completely stuck in tar every time the VB abstraction leaks”.  We need engineers, designers and product managers that will look deep into the stack, confront the racial, job access, health and climate debts that our products, our companies and our communities are built on top of. This is not about CYA process to protect cash cows or throwing things over the fence to policy. We will need to innovate across technical, cultural and organizational lines. This requires deep understanding and curiosity. This will bring more scrutiny to our company - not less.  Not everyone’s going to be on board - so for the next 12 months, we’re giving folks a one-time buyout if they want to leave. 

Third, we can’t do any of this by ourselves.  The problems are too big. Our role will be to provide enlightened risk capital (from our balance sheet or by re-vectoring operating spend) alongside R&D, product, platform leverage to help leaders and innovators pursue solutions in these areas.  Of course we will work with our peers and the public sector wherever possible - buying/R&D consortia, public-private partnerships, trusts, etc. But the new era and landscape demands that we explore institutional models beyond global capital/startups, labor unions, NGOs or government. We need models that can more flexibly align people and purpose, that innovate on individualized vs. socialized risk/reward - and that ultimately help build and sustain local, social capital.  It’s difficult to say what these will look like - but increasingly figuring this out will be existential for our core business too. Right now, it doesn’t matter if you’re designing the best cameras in Cupertino or the best way to see their snaps in Santa Monica - we’re all just building layers of an attention stack for global capital. Our Beijing competitors have figured this out. ByteDance is already eating our lunch. They’re using the same tech inputs as us - UX, ML and large-scale systems - which are now a commodity - but with vastly lower consequences for the content they show - creating a superior operating / scaling model. They’re not internalizing social or political cost.

 What we need in this era is the accumulation stack - where each interaction builds social capital.  This is not about global likes. This is about local respect. We’ll create competitive advantage when we build products that reach across race / economic lines to harness America’s amazing melting pot and do so in ways that build livelihoods / property rights for creators and stakeholders.  

With this operating model in place, we’re committing to fundamental change in four areas:

Place & Race - We’re done with de facto segregation. Over the next 10 years, 100% of our jobs will be in diverse communities that embrace inclusive schooling, policing, housing and transit policies. (Starting tomorrow, we’re putting red lines on our maps around towns with exclusionary zoning.) This is not about privatizing cities or an HQ2-style play to extract concessions. This is about investing our risk capital and our reputation to innovate alongside government. How do we bring world-class education to neighborhoods with concentrated poverty? What is the future of digital/hybrid charter schooling? Unbundled, community-driven public safety? We’ll embrace “remote-first” as a means to this end. The Bay will become one physical node alongside others (e.g. Atlanta, DC, LA) creating an Interstate Knowledge System that develops diverse talent across the country. We’re going to coordinate our investment with leading peers - since after all, this isn’t about cost savings or cherry-picking. It’s about broadening our country’s economic base.

Skilling & Manufacturing - We will 10x the tech talent pool in 10 years - by inventing new apprenticeship models that bring women, minorities and the poor into the workforce. We’ll start with our existing contractor base, convert them to new employment models with expanded benefits and paths for upward mobility.  Next, we will invent new productivity tools for all types of workers - from the front office to mobile work to call center - that brings the power of AI and programming to everyone. These will be deeply tied into new platforms for work designed from the bottom-up to build social and financial capital for individual workers and teams.  Last, we’re going to manufacture most of our hardware products - from silicon all the way to systems - entirely in the US within 10 years. This will require massive investment, collaboration and innovation. It may require a revolution in robotics - but we will pursue this in a way that makes the American worker competitive - not a commodity to be automated away. If we’re successful, the dividends of our investment here will have massive spillover benefits to every other sector of manufacturing in the US - autos, etc. - including ones we have yet to dream up. 

Health & Food -  We’re not going to tolerate a two-class system for healthcare anymore. As we convert our contract workforce to new employment models, we’re going to have to innovate on the fundamental quality/cost paradigm across our benefit stack. This may feel like a step down but it will put us (and the rest of society if we’re successful) on a fundamentally better long-term trajectory.  Food is part of Health, and we’re going to innovate there too. Free food for employees is not going to come back post-COVID. Instead, we’ll use our food infrastructure to bootstrap cooperatively-owned cloud kitchens. We’ll provide capital to former contractors - mostly Black and Hispanic - to invest and own these. We’ll build platforms to help them sell food to employees (partly subsidized), participate in new “food for health” programs and eventually disrupt the extractive labor practices we see across food, grocery and delivery. 

Climate & Mobility - Lastly, we’ll be imposing a carbon tax on all aspects of our own operations - which we’ll use to “fund” innovation in this space - with a primary focus on job creation.  This is an area where we’re going to be looking far beyond our four walls from the beginning.  As a first step, we’re teaming up with Elon and Gavin Newsom to buy PG&E out of bankruptcy and restructure it as a 21st century “decentralized” utility.  It will accelerate the electrification of mobility - financing networked batteries for buses, cars and bikes along with charging infrastructure - and leading a massive job creation program focused on energy efficiency.  Speaking of mobility, private buses aren’t coming back after COVID. Instead, we’re teaming up with all of our peers to create a Bay-wide network of electric buses (with bundled e-bikes) that will service folks of all walks of life - including our own employee base.  Oh and one more thing - we’re bringing together the world’s most advanced privacy/identity architecture and computational video/audio to bake public health infrastructure directly into the buses. For COVID and beyond. None of this is a substitute for competent, democratically accountable regional authorities. This is us investing risk capital on behalf of society - with the goal of empowering these authorities. Yes the New York Times will have a field day with this. Maybe in time they’ll leave their bubble, enter the real world, see the sorry state of their institutions - the behavioral health and infrastructure crises on their crumbling streets - and get on board. Until then, our job is to be patient longer than they can be inflammatory. 

Open technology for global progress - While we have to prioritize America given the scale of problems, the intent is not to abandon the rest of the world or hold back it’s progress. We feel the opposite - that over the coming decades each country’s technology sectors will thrive. To get there, we will continue to invest patiently - hiring, training, partnering, investing and innovating - but with a clear north star to help each country develop local leaders in new areas. Long-term, we’ll continue to contribute open technology that others can build upon. 

America should be the proverbial city on a hill for everyone - not a metaverse for the rich with the poor dying in the streets. We don’t have much time so we’re getting to work now. See you next quarter.

----

This call may be imaginary but none of this is sci-fi or requires MMT. What it requires is us to care. To act. Join me on bike rides to explore our past and discuss what tangible actions Silicon Valley’s leading companies can take in the coming quarters and years. Logistics here for rides on June 19, June 26, July 2 and July 10!

[luvknow]

out of my mind | lee minho

genre: lee minho x fem!reader feat. jisung, woojin, & chan | angst ; fluff ; science experiment au ; kind of soulmate au ; “maniac” tv series au ; au within an au ; mentions of mental illness summary: you and minho are two of ten strangers who are test subjects for a series of pills that supposedly cures all disorders of the mind. while under the influence of the pills, you fall into your dream world that overlaps with minho’s every time. as you two live multiple lives as partners in crime, lovers, or simply strangers in passing in the dream realm, the bond between you only strengthens as the testing continues.  wc: 15.6k a/n: based off of the netflix show “maniac” and this gifset i made! this is a wild genre i’m not used to, in both writing and reading, so i hope it’s not too far-fetched for this fandom and i hope you guys like it!

You can’t count on your hands how many e-mails your school would spam you with about participating in some sketchy experiments with promises of some pocket cash. What you did know though was that each time you received one, you trashed it right away. What was the point in wasting so much time for such little money? Might as well just get a job.

Last week’s email was the only one you didn’t throw away.

Essentially, the email went like this:

Participate in District Pharmaceuticals’ trial for their new and radical product, The ABC pills! Designed by Dr. Kim Woojin, The ABC pills are a sequence of pills made to cure anything and everything about the mind, from mental illness to heartbreak, without any side effects. Our company is in the final stages of testing, just before we are able to release this on the market, where participants will test out the effectiveness of the full sequence for the very first time. With your help, you will be helping us change the lives of billions.

As a participant, you will:

Stay at our facility for an extended period of time (food and housing provided).

Consume and test the potency of the pills within that time frame.

Answer post-testing questions to help us better understand the effectiveness of the pill.

All participants who complete the entire testing scheme will receive a whole year of free tuition, regardless of whether or not testing passes FDA approval. Are you interested? Stop by District Pharmaceuticals for more information.

This company was obviously catering to your young adult needs, as nothing else could convince you to do something this stupid besides being offered a whole tuition-free year at school. It was one thing when hospitals would ask to monitor your sleep patterns or your diet and exercise or take multiple pints of your blood, but this company was asking you to ingest not just one drug, but a whole sequence of them! That meant they would only get stronger as the pills progressed, which could mean a high potential for you or someone to experience side-effects that the company claimed wouldn’t happen, develop a dependency, or even die of overdose. For a reward that generous though, you expected the risk would be at a maximum.

For now, as you stood in line at District Pharmaceuticals, the only thing you had to worry about was whether or not they would allow you to test. You would think that most people in line have seen a professional and have been diagnosed properly with whatever they had, so obviously their chances were much higher than yours. You’ve never been to a therapist, or a psychologist, or a psychiatrist, but you didn’t need a professional to determine that something was off about you. When there were days you couldn’t get out of bed; or when you cried for three hours straight so you could sleep; or when your wrists bled but you felt nothing; you figured that they would up your resume even if it was just a little bit.

Even with such a high reward, you had to be out of your damn mind to be signing ten pages worth of consent forms along with a questionnaire with only a backpack full of your belongings in the building today. Maybe the pills could cure your stupidity, too.

After completing the forms, you walked back up to the counter to hand them to a lady behind the counter. She told you to wait so she could confirm a denial or approval of your stay in just a couple of minutes. You took the time to look around and see who else was willing to go through such high-risk testing. Though your email provided promises of free tuition, some of the people here looked way beyond their years of college. Sure, they could be just older folks who decided to go back to school, but there was no way all of the potential participants here were like that... You had to have been the youngest person here.

You finally saw someone your age next to you in another line. A boy with dark brown hair handed his consent forms over to the same lady and waited patiently alongside you. He must have felt your gaze on him as he turned to face you and gave you a friendly smile.

He looked exhausted - like maybe the testing was his last chance at something.

After shyly returning the gesture, you quickly turned away, deciding that maybe it was best that you mind your own business in a place like this. Who knows what kind of skeletons people were hiding?

The same lady came back and stood between you and the boy on her side of the counter. She handed you and him laminated cards on a red lanyard. You had number one and he had number nine.

“Take a seat in the waiting area. When it’s time, we’ll call you both up.”

You and the boy gave each other a quick look, questioning the vagueness of her statement. Did this mean you both passed and were approved for testing? You decided not to question her though, as she looked annoyed that you both hadn’t moved since she said anything. Before she took your badges away, you did as you were told and walked towards the waiting area with the boy following closely behind you.

Minho sat across from you in the waiting area and tried to figure out what was it about you that made you familiar. It wasn’t the clothes you wore, or the way you tied your hair, and it certainly wasn’t the way your eyebrows raised as you read your badge, but there was just something about you that made him believe he knew you.

Maybe it was in a dream.

The way you looked at your badge must have meant there was something interesting on it, so Minho took a look at his, too.

9. Lee Minho Occupation: Student Defense Mechanism: 7 Level: X X X X X

Nothing else was on it. Not his birthday, height, weight, IQ, literally nothing else that would indicate he was a good candidate for testing. It seemed like District Laboratories only cared about his occupation and his defense mechanism, but he was unsure what ‘level’ meant and if five X’s was a good or a bad sign.

He wondered what was on your badge.

“Hey.”

Your voice pulled him away from his thoughts. As if reading his mind, you openly exposed your badge to him and pointed to the bottom line, where your ‘level’  held the same five X’s. Your name was _____ _____, you were also a student,  and your defense mechanism was four.

“What level are you?” you asked, hoping it didn’t sound as stupid to him as it did to you.

“U-Uh, I also have five.”

“Really?”

“The Level just means the risk of the study,” another voice chimed in. “It has nothing to do with you personally.”

A couple seats down was a boy with blond hair who was also around your guys’ age. He didn’t look up from his cell phone as he said those words nonchalantly, indicating that he seemed familiar with this whole process.

“Have you done this before?” the boy across from you asked.

“A few times. Enough for them to pay for a bit of my schooling, at least,” the handsome blond boy finally turned his attention to the both of you, finding it amusing that you two seemed terrified of what’s to come. “I only participated up to Level Three testing, though. I have no idea what Level Five entails, but hey, high risk high reward.”

“You're not scared or anything...?” you asked.

“Nah ~ I’ve tested here plenty of times to know that these things are harmless, regardless of which Level I’m in. Is this your guys’ first test?” Both you and the other boy nod. “Ah, not surprised - you two seem like newbies.”

“Odd numbers, please report to Gate Three. Odd numbers, please report to Gate Three,” said a voice over the intercom.

“That’s us,” the blond sighed, slinging his roughed-up duffel bag over his shoulder. As his tag swung around, you noticed that the number on his ID was five.

Numbers one through nineteen lined up in numerical order at the gate, where two heavy-set body guards stood at the entrance and one walked up and down the line confiscating all electronics, including cell phones. You should be intimidated and feeling vulnerable without your phone, but somehow you felt calm in their presence, like you hoped they would be the ones to protect and save you throughout the duration of this experiment.

When the doors swung open, you saw the most handsome man you’ve seen in your entire life wearing a long white coat.

“Hello, everyone,” he greeted happily. “My name is Dr. Kim Woojin and I will be leading this experiment for the entire duration. If you will all follow me, I will take you to the facilities and we will have an overview of what’s to come.”

Dr. Woojin gives you a gentle smile before gesturing you to follow, to which you gladly obliged. With a man like him being the lead, maybe the testing wouldn’t be so bad after all.

He led you and the single file line behind you through a long, dark corridor with no windows. You and the other nine subjects followed Dr. Woojin mindlessly while trying to pay attention to the history lesson he gave you as you walked through a confusing series of different doors and hallways. He talked about the time his father found the cure for the common cold, how his grandfather found the cure for HIV/AIDS, and how his older brother just released the famous cancer-killing pills out on the market for hospitals all around the world to purchase. Dr. Woojin had some big shoes to fill.

He must have recited the history enough times to know that as soon as he finished, you all arrived to the facility. Through the sliding doors, you were the first to enter a huge room shaped like a perfect cube with no windows to the outside. In the center was a circular table with ten chairs meant for all of the test subjects with a bright, white light that simulated a sunny day shining down on it. On one of the walls was a huge window that looked into another room with another set of ten chairs and two metal plates at the headrest - a room you promised to look into more later. The third and only thing that mattered to you was the wall that contained all of the beds. Well, more like sleeping pods or incubators arranged like a morgue. No matter the look, since the mattress was soft and the blankets smelled like fresh linen.

When you popped out of your pod, you noticed that number nine took the pod right next to yours. For that, you were thankful, hoping that either he or number five could be your friend until this was all over, whenever that was.

You sat next to each other at the round table and you wondered if he felt the same familiarity about each other as you did. You’re not sure what it was, but you found yourself dangerously less nervous than you should be and you think it’s because of number nine. Not knowing his real name was killing you, so without him noticing, you took a peak at his card.

His name was Lee Minho and his defense mechanism was seven, which doesn’t seem much higher than yours, but if this was on a scale out of ten, then you were screwed.

Lee Minho... the name was unfamiliar, but you thought it suited him nicely.

“Welcome to your testing facility,” Dr. Woojin began. “You are sitting in the common area, where all of you will stay when we are not testing or conducting a post-testing review. You can talk to each other, read a book, do some crafts, play a game - we have provided endless amounts of entertainment during your awake hours. The room over there,” he said, pointing to the huge window, “is where the actual testing takes place. I will explain more later tonight when we conduct our first test. Next, are the sleeping pods, which you all have already settled into, the bathrooms are over there, and lastly, this is the round table, where all meals will be served.”

“Question,” the blonde boy piped. “How long is this testing?”

“Six days.”

“Wait, a week? That’s it? For a Level Five testing?”

“Correct.”

Dr. Woojin didn’t elaborate further on the topic, raising the suspicion of all the test subjects. As much as he wanted to, Number five didn’t press the matter further.

“The testing scheme will go as followed: as I said, tonight we will conduct our first test, which will be for Pill A, followed by a post-evaluation. Tomorrow we won’t test. The following evening will be Pill B and a post-evaluation, then another day of no testing. On the last night, we will be testing Pill C, which will go into the morning the next day. A final evaluation will be recorded, and from there, we will determine whether or not you are cured.”

“Just like that, we’ll all be cured?” Minho muttered incredulously.

“I wouldn’t say ‘just like that’... It may not work the same way for you as it does with someone else who was cured. That’s what this study is for, though, to make sure that everyone will be cured.”

“In just a week...” you trailed off. There was no way this only took six days. There had to be a catch.

“We will discuss more later tonight in the testing room. For now, please enjoy your dinner. I will see you all at midnight.” With that, he left the room.

“Cryptic, but ok,” you scoffed as a plate of food was placed in front of you. At least it looked good.

“He has to be hiding something from us, right?” Minho whispered to you. “There’s no way this is that easy...”

“Like he said, it may not be that easy.”

“But come on, look at all of us! Clearly we all have a lot of damage and it’s impossible that three pills would be capable of curing all of us in six days, right!?”

“Well, people once said curing the common cold and HIV was impossible and look where his bloodline got us.”

“You’re uncomfortably optimistic.”

“One of us has to be. Lee Minho doesn’t sound like an optimistic name, anyways.”

An embarrassed blush spread across his cheeks when you said his name. “Agree to disagree then,” Minho sighed.

He prayed that this would all be worth it in the end.

Dinner was quiet due to the fact that everyone was still trying to get used to the fact that testing had technically already started. Jisung, number five’s name you found out, was the most calm out of everyone. Naturally, since he’s done this plenty of times, but he was still wary.

“Something doesn’t add up,” he told you and Minho in secret by the sleep pods. It was only 9:00 PM when you three met up. “Never, in my two years of being a test dummy has the testing scheme lasted shorter than a couple of months. A couple of weeks is one thing, but six days? To complete an entire Level Five testing scheme!? That’s sus, you know?”

“Do you think we’re in danger?” Minho asked.

“We might be. Even so, we signed a contract and consent forms... We knew what we were getting into when we signed them. Legally, we can’t back out.”

“You think we’ll die?” you asked nonchalantly while casually flipping through a magazine. After listening to Jisung and Minho panic for over an hour, you were begging to get bored and desensitized of the fear.

“No ~ They wouldn’t let that happen to us...! I think...” Jisung gulped.

Until midnight, you three stayed together and talked about life outside of these sleeping pods. Turns out, all three of you had a lot in common. You all also agreed that despite going through your own struggles with mental illnesses, the other test subjects probably had it much worse. Everyone else’s IDs had a green sticker on them, while the three of you had red, which Jisung said it indicated that everyone else was mature enough to actually seek help while you three didn’t have the time, money, or patience for all of that.

The one thing you noticed about Jisung’s ID was that his defense mechanism was eight - double the amount of yours.

“Do you know what it means?” you asked.

He shrugged. “I’ve never had that section on my ID before. If it’s out of ten, I think Minho and I are good. You, on the other hand...”

“Lucky me, huh?”

“Maybe it’s not important,” Minho reassured. “Could be just a random stat. Like your blood type, or something.”

“Even if it was important, it’s not like they would just blindly throw you into knowing that.”

That, and Minho’s gentle smile, calmed you down a little bit. “Thanks, guys.”

A few minutes before the clock struck midnight, the entire cube fell silent, anxiously awaiting orders from our doctor. Everything was so up in the air at this point that the best you could do was expect the unexpected.

On the dot, Dr. Woojin walked into the room.

“Good evening,” he greeted. “Let’s all go to the testing room.”

The testing room was a lot bigger from the inside. Ten reclining chairs were nailed down in a circle all facing each with two large metal plates hung on each side of the head rest. The security guards instructed all of you to choose one to sit in and you, Minho, and Jisung decided to sit next to each other. Once the seats were chose, the security guards handed each of you a small cup with a pill shaped like the letter A.

“Tonight we will be studying the effects of Pill A. Out of the three pills, Pill A has the lowest concentration of the active ingredient, so the team behind the double mirror,” Dr. Woojin paused, pointing behind him, “will be making sure that everything is within the range of that concentration. All of our data is measured through the metal plates on each side of your head. The data measured is just like any other sleep study - brain waves and eye movement are measured through the built-in electroencephalograph and the electro-oculogram. The duration of the test will take six hours, around the average time a person spends going through all of the sleep cycles. That’s about it - the other two tests will be conducted similarly. The only precaution that I have to offer is that you may experience extremely vivid dreams to the point where you remember every detail, to which we will use in our post-evaluation. Are there any questions?”

No one raised their hand even though it looked like you all had a million questions to ask.

“Perfect.” Dr. Woojin and the body guards exited the testing room to go in the room where his team would be monitoring your sleep. “Please take the pill,” he ordered over the intercom.

You, Minho, and Jisung gave each other one last look before downing the chalky, cherry-tasting pill without water. You felt the sedative kick in right away like it was the strongest form of Nyquil you had ever experienced.

“Lights are dimmed. EEG and EOG are on. Pills are ingested. Testing will begin in three... two... one...”

You’re in a coffee shop sitting at one of the tables in the corner by the large window-wall, casually flipping through one of your many dating apps waiting for your partner to arrive. He was always fashionably late. Even if you purposely told him to come at an earlier time, he saw right through you and would still arrive later than you expected. Luckily, you hadn’t ordered anything yet, so at least your drink wouldn’t be cold.

“Sorry I’m late,” Minho said half-assed as he plopped down on the chair in front of you. He held two cups of coffee in his hands, to which you gladly took one.

“No, you’re not.”

“I bought our drinks, so we’re even.” From his backpack, he pulled out several folders stuffed with papers and documents and dropped all of them on the table. “Are you ready for this?”

“Why are we doing this here? This is so not discreet, like what kind of a spy are you!?”

“That’s the beauty of it, love - they would never expect us to be this stupid that we’d be discussing our business in the open like this.”

“If I die on the clock, I’m blaming it all on you and will spend my time in the afterlife haunting you until you join me,” you scoffed before sipping your coffee. “So who’s our target this time?”

“Son Chaeyoung, heiress of one of the country’s most popular airline companies. She’s supposedly one of ten people in the entire world who owns a pair of the famous pink diamond heart-shaped drop earrings.”

Her name sounds painfully familiar. You recognized the stinging pain in your chest at the sound of her name, but chose to ignore it, unsure of why this was happening to you.

A whistle escaped your lips upon hearing her history. “Must be nice to be rich.”

“Actually, her fiance gave it to her.”

“That must be nice, too.”

“... Anyways, the plan is to go to the party she’s hosting at her mansion and steal it then.”

“You and I are going to steal from her own home?” Minho nodded casually as if it was a simple favor he was asking of you. “How do you plan on doing that without getting caught!?”

“Seduce her, of course.”

“Yeah, like you could seduce an heiress,” you scoffed.

"Wanna bet on it?” he challenged with a smirk.

“Didn’t you just say she’s engaged? Isn’t this really risky?”

“When have either of those factors ever stop us before!?” You fell silent at his truthful statement. Seduction was just one of your’s & Minho’s many fields of expertise. Sure, you’ve had your fair share of flirting with engaged men just for Minho to snatch up whatever was on the wanted list, but that didn’t mean you never felt bad about it. “Look, the resell price we could make from this set is far too good for us to pass up. Think about it, we wouldn’t have to heist for months! We can take a break and buy a ticket to any corner of the world - just you and I. You’ve always talked about going to Singapore, right? Let’s go there!”

There’s something in you that says that seducing this poor girl for her beautiful jewelry given by her fiance is totally wrong and that you should move on to some other poor rich sucker, but there’s a stab in your chest whenever you hear her name and for whatever reason, you really wanted to take those earrings away from her.

“Fine, I’m in.”

“Yes!” Minho cheered, rubbing his greedy little hands together. This was the type of adrenaline that he lived for. “Let the heist begin.”

For the duration of your time at the coffee shop and up until the weekend, you and Minho spent nearly every waking hour together coordinating the master plan. You were in charge of getting the blueprints of her mansion, finding out what type of man she was into, and somehow receiving an invite to the party. Minho was in charge of the attire, the equipment, and the itinerary. The blueprint was the most important tool in the heist, which allowed you two to gauge where her bedroom was so no time was wasted aimlessly wandering around. Of course, her bedroom was at the farthest corner relative to where the party was being held, but you’ll make your way there somehow. You just hoped Minho would be able to distract her long enough.

“How did you manage to get an invite?” Minho called from your room as you were getting dressed in the bathroom.

“I had Jeongin hack into her assistant’s laptop and add us to the guest list. We couldn’t get a physical copy of the invite, but apparently that’s just for aesthetics - they still check off names at the door.”

“That’s incredible! We should hire that Jeongin kid one day. Maybe we can be a threesome.”

“That sounds like a great idea as long as you don’t call us a threesome.”

Minho halted his snickering when you waltz out of the bathroom head-to-toe in the ensemble he picked out, jewelry on and everything. He’s seen you in this type of clothing all the time, but you were always a sight for his sore eyes.

He whistled lowly while cheekily eyeing you up and down. “Lookin’ good, partner.”

“Not so bad yourself,” you grinned while you smoothed out his suit. “Are you wearing your Bluetooth set?”

He tucked his hair to show you the little pod in his ear. “Yup. Got your cute and tiny gun?” he teased.

"It’s not cute and tiny, it’s stealthy and practical,” you pouted while exposing the gun strapped in by your garter.

“Whatever you say. But anyways, I think we’re set. Are you ready, partner?”

“As I’ll ever be. Let’s get our tickets to Singapore.”

Minho drove his fancy all black car that had those butterfly doors that opened upwards just so he could flex on all the other rich men who thought they were all that. You thought it was a bit too extra and might raise suspicion from some wary guests, but there was no turning back now. On the way to the mansion, you quizzed Minho on the topics that would make Chaeyoung fall head-over heels for him.

“Ok, so she collects art pieces from all over the world, right? She loves the Baroque period, but she’s gained a huge interest in Surrealism so I’ll say some shit like I have an original Dali piece, or something.”

“Hey, that’s pretty good. I'm feelin’ pretty seduced right now.”

“Really!? That’s a good sign coming from you,” Minho chuckled cutely.

The mansion was nothing short of what you expected it to be. It was huge, with white columns, each covered with flowers that were different shades of pink. The valet took Minho’s car keys once he approved both of your names on the guest list and that was the green light for you two to start the heist.

The inside was naturally even more stunning than the outside. From the marble tiles, to the staircase, and to the shining chandelier, everything was all-white and gilded in gold. You’ve seen more extravagant mansions, but for an heiress no older than you and Minho, this was pretty impressive.

“All right, partner - seduce away,” you teased.

“Will do. Don’t get caught or die or anything, ok?"

“No promises. Give me the green light whenever you’re ready.”

With that, you both went your separate ways. It still felt like you were near each other though, because every once in a while one of you would comment on some cool thing you saw in one of the infinite rooms or hallways. While exploring the depths of Chaeyoung’s palace all the while trying to layout the blueprints you memorized, you noticed there was a tall staircase just as beautiful as the main one that was closed off with a velvet rope.

“I think I’m close,” you muttered to Minho in your earpiece. “I found the staircase that led up to one of the corners of the second floor.”

“Hey, great. But don’t go in there yet - I think Chaeyoung’s still making her rounds.”

It wasn’t until two hours into the party after you and Minho devoured in hors d’oeuvres and painfully resisted champagne when Chaeyoung finally approached your handsome partner who was eyeing the Vanitas Flower Still Life by Willem van Aelst.

“This is one of my favorite paintings in my collection,” you heard Chaeyoung say through your earpiece.

“A fan of the Baroque period?” Minho replied.

“Oh, yes. I can’t explain why, but there’s something about this style that just draws you in, right? Maybe it’s the way the pastels sit on a dark negative space.”

You wondered if he understood what any of those words meant. “I’m more of an Impressionist kind of man.” Minho ignored your ugly snort when he said that. “Monet is a classic favorite, you know?”

“Agreed!”

“But do you know what my absolute favorite movement is?”

“What is it?”

“Surrealism.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I have an original Dali piece hanging in my study.”

When Chaeyoung bit her lip and grabbed Minho’s hand to take him to God knows where, he figured he got this in the bag. As the two of them were walking through a crowd of loud and drunk guests, he took this opportunity to talk into his earpiece.

“Go now.”

“Huh... That was easy.”

“So is she, I guess.”

As quick as you came in, you hopped over the velvet rope and ran up the stairs. You ditched your heels in one of the laundry chutes in the process, as you found out that even the second floor was laid out in white marble. If you remembered the blue prints correctly, you knew that her bedroom was on the other side of that floor level, which might not sound so far in a normal home, but considering that was the size of a hotel, you had to figure out how you would make your way over without getting caught.

It was hard to stay focused when you could hear sloppy kissing on the other end.

“Can you be quiet, for Christ’s sake!? All I hear is saliva!” you whispered.

Minho ignored you scolding and continued on with his task. So you wouldn’t puke all over her nice floors, you lowered the volume and kept going. This was going to be a long night.

After avoiding Chaeyoung’s house staff and running down several long hallways, you were finally face-to-face with the only black door in the whole house. This had to be her room.

“Hey, I think I found it,” you told Minho.

“Mm,” was all you received, either as a confirmation or he was in the moment still with his new heiress friend.

The door was unlocked and inside was a man dressed in his pajamas casually sitting on the ginormous king-sized bed. Panic began to rise in your chest and you think you have to use your gun, but he didn’t seemed startled when he saw you. Rather, he gave you a gentle smile that flipped your heart and a simple wave. There’s something familiar about him and it pained you the same way when you saw or heard of Chaeyoung.

“Hi,” he greeted. “Can I help you...?”

Fuck. “O-Oh...! This isn’t the bathroom?” you burst out into a loud giggle that hid your panic. “Silly me! I must have drank too much champagne.”

“Yeah, that can happen. There’s a bathroom around the corner if you need it.”

“Oh, thanks!” Before the handsome man could say anything else, you run into the room next door.

On the other end of the line, you heard Minho excuse himself to find a bathroom of his own. “What happened!?” he whispered.

“Her fiance is in the bedroom! What do I do?”

“Guess you have to seduce him, too.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Do you want to get the fuck out of here, or not!? I’m sacrificing myself by seducing Chaeyoung, you should, too!”

“Oh, shut up, you’re enjoying this way more than you should be,” you mumbled. “Fine. I’ll let you know what’s up.”

“Ok, good. I guess I’ll get back to making out with my target now...”

You ignored his last remark and check the time on your watch. The hands read 00:00, but that couldn’t have been right... You swear that you and Minho have been there for hours beyond that. The seconds hand was stuck right on the twelve mark and you’re not sure if that’s a coincidence or if something was up. You let it slide, thinking that your watch was simply broken.

You invited yourself into their bedroom once more, making sure to give the fiance a knock on the door as a warning. Again, the man is not surprised nor is he upset. Instead, he found this quite amusing.

He found you quite cute, too.

“Can I help you again?”

“Yeah, uh... I’m not feeling too hot. Do you mind if I sit with you...?”

“Please,” he encouraged, patting down a spot next to him. “I’m watching some trashy drama. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, not at all! I love shitty dramas. But why aren’t you downstairs with everyone else?”

“Ugh, I just hate huge parties like this. I tell Chaeyoung every time that I never want to attend these functions, but you know her, she just goes and does whatever she wants. I’m just her fiance, after all,” a tired chuckle escaped his lips. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I ever introduced myself. My name is Bang Chan.”

There’s a sting in your heart that felt like several nails were being hammered in at all angles and all crevices when you heard his name. You know you’ve heard it somewhere before and you know there’s a reason for all the heartache, but you can’t put your tongue on it. But that was crazy for you to believe you knew his name - you’ve never met this man in your entire life! You didn’t even know what Chaeyoung’s fiance looked like before this heist, and yet there’s something about him that made you believe you’ve spent at least one lifetime together, just by hearing his name.

Maybe it was in a dream.

“And you are...?” he trailed off.

You swallowed hard. “_____ _____.”

“Nice to meet you, _____.”

“Bang Chan, have we met before?”

He thought for a moment and shook his head. “No, I don’t believe so. I would have definitely remembered you if we have.”

Your cheeks warmed so quickly so embarrassingly, but Bang Chan thought it was charming, so he laughed. It sounded like hearing your favorite song for the very first time.

“_____, get out of there!” Minho hissed, breaking you away form your broken thoughts. “Chaeyoung is wearing the earrings right now and she’s going up to her room to change!”

“U-Uh, I have to go,” you muttered, hopping off of the bed.

“Oh, ok...” For a moment, you thought he was sad you’re leaving, but that couldn’t be it. “I’ll see you again sometime?”

“Sure.”

“Promise?”

You didn’t answer. “Good bye, Bang Chan.”

You then slipped away from the bedroom and hoped to never see his beautiful smile ever again. But the feeling of leaving his side was more painful than when you met him.

When you turned the corner, you bumped into the ever-so famous and beautiful Son Chaeyoung, who looked annoyed that someone had dared to touch her other than Bang Chan or art-enthusiast Lee Minho.

“Watch where you’re going!” she scolded, not even questioning why you were up there in the first place.

You didn’t let her snobbiness bother you. How could you let it, when one of her pink heart-shaped diamond drop earrings fell on the floor right in front of you?

You snatched it off of the floor and sprinted down the stairs, where an impatient Minho waited for you.

“Go go go!” you giggled, grabbing the hand of the confused man. He didn’t question it though, thinking that your giggling was a good sign.

Minho grabbed his keys from the valet, telling the nervous boy that he’d retrieve his car himself, since you were already halfway to the parking spot. Never in either of your careers had you two so messily escaped a scene just now and never had he heard you laugh like a hyena before.

“Why are you being so weird!?” he asked after speeding away from the mansion. “I’m sweating so much right now.”

“Look!” you beamed, holding up the one heavy earring, and soon Minho joined you in your wild laughter.

“You know how that happened?” Minho began his story, rather than making it a question. “While I was, you know, ‘doing my job’, I would have my hands on the back of her head and I’d try to loosen the backing of the earring. I can’t believe it fucking worked!”

“I feel like crying,” you said once your giggles subsided. “Ready for Singapore, partner?”

“Yeah, but we only have one earring, so spend your half wisely.”

You awake in your chair sweating like your finished a marathon. It took a second for you to realize that yes, you are definitely breathing, but you should calm down before you pass out. Other than the heavy breathing and gross amounts of sweat, you feel just fine - as fine as you were before taking Pill A.

Oh, that’s right - you must have completed the first phase of testing just now. You were in District Pharmaceuticals, you were a test subject for a sequence of pills, and you just had a vivid dream with Minho in it. Dr. Woojin warned you and the other subjects six hours ago that these dreams were possible, yet knowing that Minho, a complete stranger to you, was in them felt... not necessarily wrong, but it definitely didn’t feel right, either.

Next to you, Minho was thinking and feeling the same thing. He was sweating, it was hard for him to breathe, and when he looked at you, it was like he knew what you dreamed about just now because hes was in there with you. Maybe that’s what happened when a bunch of people are dreaming and are surrounded by all the rays that measured their brain activity. Maybe other subjects’ dreams overlapped with each other’s, too.

“No, I was alone in mine, with only people that I knew poppin’ up here and there,” Jisung said when you asked him. It was just you two sitting at the table drinking some water while Minho went straight for his sleeping pod, clearly not wanting to socialize after something like that. You didn’t blamed him. “Were you not alone?”

“No, Minho was in my dream.”

“Really!? That’s crazy! Were you in his?”

“I have no idea. But you what else is crazy?” Jisung leaned in. “I have this feeling that he and I were having the same dream.”

“What? Like you two had two separate dreams and you just somehow appeared in each other’s?”

“No, even weirder - I think we had the same, single dream bubble.”

“Maybe Dr. Woojin can help you figure it out during post-evaluation.”

“Number one, you’re up first,” ushered one of the security guards.

“Speaking of. Good luck in there, friend. Let me know how it goes,” Jisung reassured.

“Will do.”

The security guard led you through an unfamiliar hallway that you swear you didn’t pass through yesterday. Who knows though, maybe you did and you just didn’t realize it. All of the hallways were starting to look the same at this point.

It’s been about half an hour since you woke up from you vivid dream with Minho. You could still picture every second of that scenario and could describe it in detail if Dr. Woojin asked that of you. You didn’t question why that specific plot line was how your dream went because did any of your dreams ever make sense? No, but you couldn’t figure out why Bang Chan and Son Chaeyoung, of all the fucking people in the world, appeared in your dream. After today, Dr. Woojin was probably going to tell you how your traumatic experiences with them contributed to your well-being, or some bullshit like that, but you didn’t need an expert to tell you that. Somehow, though, seeing them felt... relieving?

“Welcome, number one,” Dr. Woojin greeted as you stepped into the room. “It’s _____, correct?”

You were too mesmerized by all of the cameras surrounding the chair you would sit in that pointed at different angles. A bunch of monitors hung on the wall behind you and you were starting to get nervous. You didn’t like being recorded.

“Y-Yes, _____ is right.”

“Please, have a seat.”

And so you did, with the eyes of at least eight cameras staring right at you. Then, with you barely noticing, Dr. Woojin linked you up to some heart rate monitor or brain wave monitor - you couldn’t tell the difference when only your hand was connected.

“I will be asking you a series of questions and monitoring your answers as we go along. Do your best to answer as clearly, concise, and honest as possible, ok? This won’t hurt, or anything.”

His reassurance was enough to calm you down just a little. “Ok,” you replied.

“Good. First question. Describe your experience when you took Pill A.”

You take a deep breath to calm you beating heart. “Pill A was chalky. Kind of like those Flinstones vitamins you used to get when you were a kid, you know? Cherry flavored is what I can recall. After that, I fell asleep.”

“Would you say your experience was satisfactory?”

“If the purpose of it is to knock me out, then yes, very satisfied.”

“Excellent,” he jotted down several words you couldn’t read and check marked several boxes. You hoped that was a good sign. “What was the first thing you noticed after that?”

“I noticed that I was out in public.”

“What did you see?”

Minho. “A coffee shop. I was in a coffee shop.”

“Did you see anyone you recognized?”

You lied and shook your head. “No, not there.”

“But somewhere else?”

“Yeah, I... It was weird. I was like, a spy or something? I was on a mission to steal some really expensive earrings so I could travel to Singapore.”

“How did the heist go?”

“It went well - I got one earring, hopped in the car, and drove away. The dream ended there.”

“So you saw someone you recognized sometime during the heist?”

Your jaw was beginning to hurt from the grinding your teeth. “Yeah, I saw my ex-boyfriend and the girl he cheated on me with.”

“What was their role in your dream?”

“I was stealing the earrings from her and my ex was her fiance. Weirdest fucking dream I’ve had in my entire life.”

“How did you feel after that?”

“Invigorated. Like they got what they deserved, and I didn’t even have to punch them in the face for it. But god, just seeing them was so painful... I mean, really I should be over it by now... It’s been over a year since that happened. But I could never seem to let it go.”

“Would you say you could now?”

“Well, since I’m not actually in Singapore, not 100 percent but... I feel like I’m a one step closer to doing so. It’d be the most progress I made since it happened.”

“That’s good. I’m glad,” Dr. Woojin gave you a calming smile. “Your evaluation is over. You may return to the common area.”

A heavy weight lifted from your shoulders and you’re starting to see the purpose of the study a bit clearer than last night. You initially thought you were just going to pop some pills and call it a day, but oh no, this was way beyond your expectations and you’re not sure if you should be glad you took up this opportunity or terrified that this could actually work.

And where did Minho tie in with all of this? You had to find out.

When you arrived back in the common room, you spot Minho’s head lift up from his book to catch your gaze. He looked both terrified and unsettled as he made his way back to his sleeping pod and shut the curtains.

You needed answers from him. You needed to know if he dreamed the same thing.

“Hey,” you muttered, opening his curtains just a tad. His back was hunched over facing you, not wanting to acknowledge you even a little bit. “I need to ask you something.”

“Please close my curtains,” he asked, not turning around.

“This is important.”

“Can’t it wait until later?”

“What did you dream about last night?”

Minho’s brief moment of silence was enough to answer your question. For some reason, he just wasn’t as excited or interested in this as you are - you, on the other hand, found this fascinating. How was it that two complete strangers were able to experience some form of life together? In that dream, you felt like Minho was your best friend. Was it destiny or some weird fate that brought your dream bubbles together?

Minho sighed and turned around to face you, surprised that you made yourself comfortable inside of his pod. Clearly, you wouldn’t be leaving without an answer, and in a way, he knew that. “You know what I dreamed about.”

“I knew it! You were totally there with me!” you beamed. “That’s crazy, right!?”

“Yeah...”

“How do you think this happened?”

“Computers and testing go wonky all the time. Maybe they accidentally crossed us over, or something.”

“For the whole duration of the dream? No way.”

“I don’t know.”

“You know, you weren’t this shy in our dream.”

“Do you want me to steal jewelry for you, too?” he scoffed. He gave up trying to ignore and turned around to face you, who was already inside his pod uninvited.

You only rolled your eyes. “Hey, tell me something - did you see anyone you knew in our dream? Like, a friend you know or like a teacher while we were separated?”

Minho shook his head. “I was confused, if I’m being honest. Usually when you dream, your brain uses faces you recognize to form the people that pop up in your dreams. But I didn’t recognize anyone. Did you?”

“Yeah, a couple.”

Minho didn’t press you for an answer, thinking your matter was private and he respected that. He had to in a place like this.

“By the way, about the post-evaluation,” you whispered, leaning in closely. “I didn’t tell Dr. Woojin that I saw you. I was afraid he’d throw one of us out, or something if he found out we’re overlapping.”

He nodded and understood. “Thank you. I’ll do the same.”

“Thanks!”

Minho kind of liked the way you smiled and leaned back against his pod like you were at peace with this moment in such a place like this. You seemed to be taking this whole testing thing a lot lighter than everyone else here, aside from Jisung who was used to all of this by now. Maybe that was the right attitude you needed to survive all six days, but then again it was only day two.

He can’t explain why, but he’s glad it was you of all people he got to share his dream bubble with. If it were anyone else, he’d probably beg to be taken out of the experiment saying some shit like he was unstable to continue forward. But he trusted you as much as he could trust just any random girl he met at a testing facility. And he enjoyed his dream with you, at least. You were fun to be around in that world, like he had experienced it with you hundreds of times before.

“Do you think we’ll see each other again tomorrow night?” you asked, breaking his thoughts.

He shrugged, "It’s possible. I won’t be too surprised this time around.” Though he secretly hoped he’d see you.

“Let’s hope the next time won’t be as dangerous,” you teased.

“Oh, but Danger is my middle name.”

“As long as we don’t die. You know what they say ~”

“You die in your dream, you die in real life?”

“Something like that.”

“I’ll make sure to be extra careful then.”

You were oddly excited for the following night. You couldn’t wait to see what type of dream you would have next, and whether or not Minho would be there to join you. It wasn’t that you needed him to be there, and was fun having a buddy with you to live a life you could literally only dream about living, but if the rest of your dreams would be as traumatic as the first, then having him there would help a ton.

You wondered what kind of dream you’d have next - maybe you would pass through a different era? Maybe this time you’d solve a murder mystery? The possibilities were endless! But you couldn’t control anything, so all you could do was hope.

And there was something about him that you couldn’t put your finger on - it was on the tip of your tongue - that made you feel a sort of natural attraction to him. He pulled you in without any intention. It was like you were meant to meet here. All the more reason for you to figure him out while you run through more adventures in your dreams together.

The daytime went about calmly. You, Jisung, and Minho were just hanging out talking more about your lives before any of this. Jisung tried to see if there was any kind of overlap with your’s and Minho’s lives that would explain why you two experienced the same dream, but nothing was connecting. You and Minho came from two different sides of town, different social class, different universities - pretty much nothing about you and Minho was even remotely similar, so yeah, Jisung concluded that this was some act of fate.

“Wow, nothing adds up at all,” Jisung said, completely baffled.

“Pretty cool, right?” you admitted.

“I don’t know if cool is really the right word...�� Minho mumbled.

“Maybe you two were fated to meet.”

“In our dreams as test monkeys?”

“Fate is fate, Minho. Who knows, maybe you guys are soulmates, in some twisted way. That’s kind of romantic, right? Are both of you guys single?”

“Shut up, Jisung,” you and Minho said simultaneously.

Although you couldn’t wait to take Pill B, when you entered the testing room for the second time, the chairs and head plates were still terrifying. To maximize the likelihood of merging dreams, you and Minho sat in the same chairs right next to each other. Pill B was then given to everyone in a small dixie cup. This time, the pill was blue.

“We will now commence the testing of Pill B,” Dr. Woojin said over the intercom. “Ingest Pill B.” You all did as such with much less hesitation. This one tasted like blueberry. “Everything is set. Testing will begin in three... two... one...”

The first thing you saw was yourself as you looked into the mirror, dressed in an elegant jewel tone gown ready for a night out. You must have been inside your bathroom and not a public one, as you saw all of your expensive make-up, perfumes, and some jewelry scattered all over your side of the Jill sink. On the other side with the Jack sink laid shaving equipment, skin care products, and cologne untouched as their owner was out of sight.

Just as you were thinking about him, a pair of warm, strong arms wrapped themselves around your waist.

“Hi,” Minho whispered, nuzzling his head against yours in the softest manner. His stray hairs, all messy from bed still, were tickling your neck. “What are you looking so beautiful for?”

“Nuh-uh, don’t even try to compliment your way out of this one. We have your parents’ wedding anniversary, remember?”

“Mm, I was hoping you’d forget so we wouldn’t have to go.”

You turned yourself around so you could face your loving husband who now pressed you to the side of the sink. He wanted to be as close to you as possible because he could never get enough of touching you. It was his way of telling you how much he loved you without having to say a word.

“Don’t be so pouty tonight, ok? Let’s have some fun - tonight’s a night to celebrate love.”

“We can do that in the bedroom ~” he mumbled lowly, lips travelling to the crook of your neck to that one spot that made your knees weak.

Playfully, you shove your handsome man off before you caved in and made your way out of the bathroom. “I’ll be in the kitchen whenever you’re ready.”

“We can celebrate there too, if you want!”

You ignored his whines and waited a patient half hour in the kitchen while he got ready. Tonight was your in-laws’ celebration of their 25th wedding anniversary. Before meeting the Lees, you’ve never even heard of an anniversary celebrated before the 50th year, but the Lees were a special kind of expensive family who celebrated anything and everything. If you thought their 24th anniversary party last year was huge, this year’s was going to be ginormous.

Mr. Lee Minho, CEO of the Min Hotel and your loving husband, slyly walked towards you with his signature smirk that made you fall for him at first sight. He wore some designer suit you couldn’t pronounce and his cute dangly earrings.

“Hey, handsome. Come here often ~?” you teased.

“Can you imagine if that’s what you asked me when we first met?”

“Instead of ‘hi, would you like to try our special peppermint latte today?’ No, I can’t imagine.”

“Did I ever tell you that was the best peppermint latte I’ve ever had?”

“Only every other day. Are you finally ready to head out?”

“Do we really have to go...?”

“Yes, we do. We don’t have to stay long. At least to go see your mother.”

“Fine, but don’t you dare leave my side unless it’s for food, booze, or the bathroom.”

“Ok, whatever you say ~”

Minho’s driver pulled up to meet you at the front door. He was also your driver, but you’ve never found a need to use him so often when you could just drive yourself. You don’t think you could ever get used to your husband’s lifestyle, no matter how long you two have been together.

The car ride was spent with your head on Minho’s shoulder while holding his hand. He liked playing the game of drawing little shapes and words on the back of your hand and you’d have to guess what he drew.

“That’s a star,” you said.

“Mhm.”

“That’s a... cat face?”

“Soonie or Doongie?”

“Soonie!”

“Wow, you’re good. How about this one?”

“That’s inappropriate, Mr. Lee,” you scolded, slapping his hand away.

Minho chuckled and held you closer, peppering little kisses all over the top of your head until you finally looked up and pulled him in for a real kiss. Neither of you could stop smiling nor kissing like newly weds on their honeymoon.

“We have arrived,” your driver announced through the crack of the partition.

“I really don’t want to go,” Minho sighed into the kiss, feeling a painful sting in his chest.

“Just for a little bit,” you reassured. “C’mon, we’re already here.”

Hand-in-hand, you and Minho walked into The Min Hotel, the number one luxury hotel in the country. Minho was already overworked running this place and now he had to actually socialize and attempt to enjoy such a place. You could tell he was tense the second you both walked through the doors, so you squeezed his hand reassuringly.

“Remember to have fun, ok? You’re not working today or anything.”

“I’m here with you, so of course I’ll have fun,” he said.

The ballroom was decked out in twinkling lights and white lilies, the same decorations that were arranged at his parents’ actual wedding. Only the finest plates and crystal glasses were at the tables with open bottles of expensive champagne ready to be poured. Even if you could think up the biggest most expensive wedding reception of your dreams, this venue could not even come close to your imagination.

But that’s ok, because you already lived your dream wedding - just you and Minho, alone with the minister in a rose garden as you said your vows. Neither of you needed a huge audience to witness.

“Minho!” you both heard his mother call.

Like a true mama’s boy, he ran up to his mother happily and gave her a big hug. She was dressed in a beautiful long, white gown and looked like she hadn’t aged since she got married twenty-five years ago.

His father was nowhere to be seen.

“_____, you’re as stunning as ever,” his mother complimented, immediately going in to hug you.

“I’m nothing compared to you,” you said back.

“Ah, you always make me feel so young ~” she gushed happily, blushing as pink as a rose.

“Where’s Dad?” Minho asked reluctantly.

“At the bar, as usual.”

“Well, that’s one corner I know to avoid.”

“Hey, be nice tonight, ok? It’s our anniversary, for God’s sake,” his mother scolded, pointing an accusatory finger at her pouty son. “Now you kids have fun, ok?”

“Yes, mom...”

For the first half of the night, you and Minho delved into the luxuries of the party. You both snacked on caviar and capers that the waiters handed out on silver platters, drank golden champagne from the crystal glasses, and spent an eternity at the dessert table. The entire affair was too way too extravagant for such an occasion, but at least the food was to die for.

While you were trying to have fun for the both of you, Minho couldn’t shake off the anxiety he felt whenever he saw his father. He was boring holes into his stupid, designer tuxedo, yet he never gave him the time of day. He didn’t stop to say hi on his way to the bar for the fifth time, didn’t wave, and didn’t even look his way. Even though he was the star heir to the hotel, Minho might as well have not existed to his father. It was like he was the child of disappointment and regret all over again.

This dream was starting to get too real... Then it clicked.

Fuck this pill.

“Hey,” you said, tearing him away from his moment of existential crisis and self depreciation. “Dance with me?”

You must haven’t realized this was the effects of Pill B yet, but your smile was so warm and loving, how could he say no? In this lifetime, in this world, this version of you, you were so deeply in love with him and he needed that so desperately right now.

In this dream, he loved you so much, too, so he’ll play along until it was time to wake up.

“Of course, love,” he said, taking you to the middle of the dance floor where the whole venue could see.

You delicately wrapped your arms around his neck while he rested his at the small of your back. For three dances, your husband was quiet, eyes drooping lowly like he was about to fall asleep. Was it that late already? You checked your watch for the time.

00:00, with the seconds hand stuck on the twelve.

Everything clicked.

The space around you both began to change and it did not go unnoticed. By the fifth song, the twinkling lights dimmed to blackness. No longer could either of you see the rest of the guests and even his parents, who you thought were approaching you two just a second ago, were nowhere to be seen in the darkness. All you could see was Minho’s handsome face just centimeters from yours.

“Are we still dreaming?” you whispered, though already knowing the answer.

“I really, really hope so,” he admitted.

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah.. Uh hey, since we’re dreaming... can I kiss you?”

You only nodded in response, and before you stopped, Minho immediately leaned down to press his lips to yours. Even if this was a dream, it felt so, so real - his lips were soft, warm, and desperate, finding solace by molding with yours. You felt ever bit of sadness he experienced in the dream in his kiss and you figured this was something he needed.

The second he pulled away, he disappeared and your vision went black.

You awoke in the same manner from two nights ago - covered in sweat, gasping for air, with a sped up heart rate. Minho woke up the same way, and neither of you could look each other in the eye after that dream.

Pill B contained a higher concentration of whatever active ingredient it had, and you supposed that correlated with the intensity of the dreams. Compared to the dream from Pill A, Pill B felt much shorter, almost half the time you experienced in Pill A, but the realness of the dream felt like it was ten times stronger. This dream was about Minho and his relationship with his father, but the minor details of the dream were meant for you to delve in.

You had complete and entire memories in that dream bubble. You and Minho had memories of when you first met, of your first date, of the day you got married, and every kiss, fight, and laughing fits you ever experienced. Truly, you two lived an entire life filled with love under the influence of Pill B - a life you could only ever dream about. When your ex-boyfriend Bang Chan left you for Son Chaeyoung, you never thought you could experience a love so true ever again. You lived in constant fear and pessimism that love was never real and that everyone was only lying to themselves when it came to the matter. But in this dream, you experienced a life full of love that you’ve always wanted with Chan. And even if you would never experience that with Chan - even if you experienced it with a stranger named Lee Minho - you knew this was something you wanted in your next relationship.

Soon you would learn and accept that a love like your’s and Minho’s would come easily - as easy as it would in a dream.

Again, you were the first to give your post evaluation. You said all there was about it, from beginning to end, and what you thought it could mean. You didn’t say you were with Minho. You said you were with some faceless man and said how that represented the void that you felt when Chan left you. Or some bullshit like that.

You didn’t care about the post evaluation. You just wanted to talk to Minho again.

But maybe you would be over-stepping your boundaries. This was pretty much his dream, after all. You didn’t want to be nosy by asking him what the dream and the kissing at the end meant to him.

Maybe you were taking this testing too seriously. You would never see him again after this was over anyways, right? But for some reason, just thinking about that made your heart drop to the pit of your stomach.

There was something in Pill B that made you feel extra light headed after your evaluation, so you headed straight for your sleeping pod, ignoring the curious stares of Minho and Jisung. Today, you were the one not up for any socializing.

Hours passed as you not only napped in your pod, but read a few chapters of some book, ate your breakfast and lunch, and did a couple of puzzles in your pod, also. You had to keep yourself occupied in a prison like this. How else were you going to survive such a powerful and painful mental cleansing? Even after all of that, your light headed-ness was still present. Didn’t Dr. Woojin say there were no side effects? Maybe that was due to your level four defense mechanism.

To your surprise, sometime at around 8:00 pm, your curtain was pulled open.

“Hey,” Minho greeted shyly. “Can I come in?”

Wordlessly, you nodded, scooting over so he could sit next to you. You could really use his company right now.

“I, uh, figured I should explain why our dream was like that.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“I want to, if that’s ok.”

“Of course, Minho.”

Hearing his name sent a shock through his body. “You met my mom in the dream. She actually passed away a couple of years ago. Since then, my dad hasn’t been able to keep a job or complete any regular daily tasks other than downing any alcohol he can find. He’ll put the blame for her death on himself and then on me, and soon I really began to believe it was my fault. He can’t even look at me anymore.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“It’s ok.”

“Why are you telling me this, though? I’m just a strange girl in your dreams, for all you know.”

He shrugged, not really knowing the answer himself. “I don’t know. I just... wanted to talk to you. I also thought me giving you some background information would somehow justify me asking to um, kiss you earlier, but it really doesn’t, does it?” he chuckled nervously.

“Is that the reason you ended up here?”

“Yeah... that, and other personal struggles, but yeah. I miss her a lot, you know?”

“You look a lot like her.”

“Do I really?”

“Yeah,” you smiled. “I bet she would be proud of you for coming here and trying to seek help for yourself.”

Cautiously, Minho laid his hand on top of yours, painting the same little shapes on the back with his thumb. “Thank you for saying that.”

“Wanna hear my story?”

“I would love to.”

“You know our first dream with the heist?” Minho nodded, listening attentively. “Chaeyoung is the girl my ex-boyfriend cheated on me with.”

“Ouch...”

“Yeah. Her fiance I met upstairs in her room was my ex. I caught them at a party one night last year. He left my side and said he was just going to make his rounds and say hi to his friends, but when I went to look for him after a while, they were in some stranger’s bed. It really doesn’t sound like a big deal - other people who get cheated on, they could just drop him right away and move onto the next person just like that. But how could I when he made me feel like I could fly for those years we were together? It wasn’t even him cheating on me that made me lose my sense of self, you know? I was just so dependent on him for self-worth... It was like I didn’t know who I was without him. This past year without him has been really hard, to the point where I almost flunked out of school. And so I ended up here, because my heart is so very weak and pathetic and I need to fucking fix it.”

“You’re not weak or pathetic. Just fragile.”

“That’s just a nicer word for it...”

“Eh, yeah. That’s what my mom used to say to me. My dad would call me weak a lot and then afterwards, my mom would wipe my tears and say that I wasn’t weak, I was fragile. I just needed to be taken extra care of.”

“Your a soft dude, Minho,” you teased. “Is it weird to say that I really enjoyed being married to you for those five fake years?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You took extra care of my fragile, level four defense mechanism of a heart while we were together. It really, truly felt like you did that for five years.”

A dark blush burned his cheeks. “I’m glad you thought so.”

“Mm. I hope to feel the kind of love I felt for you for real one day.”

“Me, too.”

“Tell me your life story, Minho.”

“Ok. I was born on October 25th...”

You spent the next couple of hours talking to Minho like he was your best friend while you both continued to play with each other’s hands. He gave you a very detailed timeline of his life from the day he was born up until he met you and you did the same, losing track of time completely. Then the next morning you continued on talking about your favorite movies, books, foods - anything you could think of to fill in the gap until it was time to test the very last pill, the strongest of them all.

“What do you think we’ll dream about this time?” you asked excitedly.

“We’re both idols.”

“Ugh gross, I don’t wanna dream about that! Besides, I don’t think Pill C would be called the strongest pill if that’s all we end up dreaming about.”

“Ok, how about we’re cowboys in the wild west with those weird American accents? We have guns and stuff.”

“Ooh interesting, I like that one. Or how about assassins?”

“A little risky considering if we die in the dream, we could die in real life.”

Then midnight came around. After tonight, everyone would have their final evaluation and then you’d be cured! Well, maybe. One thing for sure was that in a matter of hours, you would no longer be with Minho. You two would move on with your lives like you never met, like those fake five years married together and being partners in crime meant absolutely nothing.

It broke your heart, just a little.

“Welcome to the last test, Pill C,” Dr. Woojin said over the intercom after everyone was settled in their seats. “Pill C has the highest concentration of the active ingredient. You will experience the most vivid and possibly violent dreams you will ever experience in your lifetime. The final test and the evaluation that follows will ultimately determine if you have been cured - a confrontation of some sorts. Although my description remains to be as mysterious as ever, I hope by now that you all have faith my testing scheme to continue forward through completion. We will now commence the testing of the last pill. If you will now please ingest Pill C.”

The flavor was grape.

“Excellent. Pill C has been ingested, instruments are operating, and the last testing will begin in three... two... one...”

You see black; you smell blood; you taste fabric that’s been wrapped around your mouth to keep you quiet; you feel your wrists chafing against the rope that held them together; and lastly, you hear a gun cock before it’s being pressed to your forehead.

The gag in your mouth gets yanked off and you can finally breathe, though you’re not sure for how much longer.

“Who do you work for?” an unknown voice threatened lowly in your ear.

“I work for no one,” you said as you were always taught.

A hard slap hits your cheek and you feel high levels of heat rising to the point of contact. Your whole body stung in various ways so a slap to the cheek just added to the pile.

“Who do you work for?” he repeated.

“I work for no one.”

Another slap to the other cheek and this time you think you taste blood.

Your sweat-covered blindfold finally gets taken off and thrown to the floor. It takes you several seconds for your eyes to adjust to the single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. Your surroundings are familiar - you’re in a clean, smooth-walled room with no windows, a table, and a single man standing in front of you inspecting his shiny glock. You were still in their interrogation room.

The cold metal of the gun rested on the bottom of your chin and forced your head up to look at the handsome man straight in his catty eyes. Despite his position in front of you at the moment, you would have never expected such playful eyes to take part in the mafia.

“Are you a cop?” he asked.

The longer you refused to answer, the more the gun was being pressed to your throat until the back of your neck hit the chair and you were trapped in between.

“No, I’m not,” you spat out.

“Then who do you work for, hm? That snake Seo Changbin?”

“No.”

“If you don’t work for anyone, why were you at our rendezvous spot?”

“Mere coincidence.”

“Coincidence?” he scoffed, finally letting the gun fall so he could twirl it around careless like a toy. “You think it was a coincidence that you ended up at our spot while our drug-moving got busted? At the fucking pier?”

“I like to jog by the ocean.”

The young mafia lord burst into a loud fit of laughter, really surprised that you were keeping up this facade for as long as you could. He had to give you props - no one had ever sat in front of Minho without confessing right away or pissing their pants on the spot. Either you really didn’t care to live or you were extremely loyal.

He’ll give you credit for that.

Your not sure what’s taking this guy so long to just pop your head off. There’s something he wants from you, and you know it, but he should know by now after days of interrogation that you weren’t going to spill. And it wasn’t like the precinct was going to find you anytime soon. It would be so easy for him, too - like ok, you weren’t going to give him any sort of information? Fine, he’ll just end it there, saving both him and you tons of time and unnecessary torture.

But maybe that’s what he wanted - to torture you and starve you to death. He would never actually shoot you. No, that would be way too easy. Lee Minho, The Boss of his Mafia in District 9, wanted to squeeze you dry until the very last drop where you’d confess everything and he’d let you go.

If that was the case, this guy was a cruel man, though you didn’t expect anything less.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

Why did it matter? Shouldn’t he have asked you this two days ago? “_____.”

“_____,” he repeated with honey dripping from his voice. “Such a pretty name for a pretty girl.”

“I guess...”

“And what does _____ like to do for fun?” The man was now sitting on the other chair with the gun on the table, not really interested in using it at the moment, accompanied by his feet. We he trying to make small talk with you?

“I like to read...”

“That’s not very fun.”

“What do you like to do for fun?”

“Do I look like I have time for fun, my love? Well, actually this is quite fun.”

“Is this a normal thing in daily Mafia Boss life?”

“For Lee Minho it is.”

“Why even bother? Can’t you just shoot me and get it over with?”

“Because there’s no fun in that, silly! Besides, I kind of like you,” he winked.

“Wh-What?”

“You’re not scared of me, you’re loyal to your team, and you’re obedient. It’s a shame you don’t work for me - I would have loved to have you on the team.”

“It’s not too late ~”

“Ah, nice try. You’re funny, _____.”

There’s an odd shiver that traveled down Minho’s spine whenever he said your name. It felt hot, as if someone spilled hot coffee down the back of his shirt. There’s a weird familiarity about you that he can’t put his tongue on, but he pushed that thought to the back of his mind when he saw you falling asleep again.

“What’s your favorite food, _____?” he asked, jolting you awake.

“I don’t know... pizza?”

“Hm, good choice. I’m more of a fried chicken guy.”

“Fried chicken makes me break out.”

“Ah yeah, it can do that.”

“Lee Minho, is it?”

Another hot sensation runs down his spine. “Yes it is, my love.”

“Do you like being the Boss?”

“Do I like it? Huh... Honestly, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know...?”

“I’ve never been asked that question before.”

“How did you end up in your position then?”

“My father was the boss before me. When he saw that it was time I took over, I did. Whether I wanted to or not, I didn’t have a choice. So I can’t really answer your question if I’m here against my free will.”

“You either like murdering people and pushing drugs or you don’t, which one is it?”

Minho shrugged, too lazy to punish you for such a tone. “Asking if I like what I do is a hard question to answer. I have to do it, so why go through the trouble of trying to like it when I’ll be doing it anyways?”

“Are you always this difficult?”

“Are you?”

“I’m still here on day three, aren’t I?”

A sharp tisk left Minho’s lips. “Maybe I should have just killed you...”

Suddenly, the entire room began to shake. The table, the chairs, and you and Minho start to vibrate with the floor and nothing is heard but a low hum for a solid ten seconds. Panic was rising in both of your chests, unsure of what the source of such a phenomenon could be. You constrictions only raised the panic even more.

An army of footsteps could be heard from above followed by an overkill of gunshots.

“Fuck,” Minho cursed, grabbing his gun. “Looks like your crew came and found you. At midnight on the dot, too.”

“Midnight?” you muttered, swinging your head around to where Minho saw the time.

A white clock is hung high on the wall, completely mismatched from the environment of the interrogation room. You saw your trigger - all three black hands are on the twelve, with the seconds hand struggling to pass. In the midst of all the madness, you thought to yourself that Dr. Woojin was fucking insane for formulating Pill C this way.

You see Minho start to panic, unsure of whether he should kill you first before making a break for it.

“Minho!” you cried out. “It’s me, _____!”

“No fucking shit, Sherlock -”

“Listen to me, we’re dreaming right now. This is it, this is Pill C! Do you understand?”

Minho tried to understand. Your words made sense, but they didn’t make sense to him, at least not fully. Pill C... what was so familiar about Pill C?

“Pill C, Minho! We’re testing, remember? You’re number nine!”

The gears in his head clicked. Number nine, Lee Minho, with a level eight defense mechanism.

“Fuck, we have to get out of here,” he said, rushing to your side to untie you. 

The footsteps and gunshots sound like they’re coming closer and there wasn’t much time left to lose. After successfully freeing you from the ropes, Minho worried deeply about your well-being, as your wrists bled from all the chafing and it really looked like you were roughed up those past fake-two days of interrogation. But that didn’t matter now, because you thanked the heavens that Minho snapped out of it before you died in your own damn dream.

Mafia Boss Minho took your hand and ran out the only door in the room with the gun in his free hand just in case. He has a faint fake memory of the layout of his base and if both of you could get to the elevator, you would both be safe for the time being.

A bullet whizzed by you before breaking a window.

“Guide me that way. There’s an elevator that can get us out of here. I’ll shoot,” Minho ordered, already taking down a bunch of unknown men.

“Who are those people!?” you asked while gripping onto Minho for your life. Shooting enemies while running backwards was not an ideal tactic.

“I think it’s your defense mechanism? Dreams have that, right? They must have sensed you were in danger.”

“That’s so fucking stupid. Way to go, Minho!”

“What!? I didn’t do anything!”

“In front, in front!” you screeched as you saw some men sprinting.

With ease, Minho eliminated them like it was nothing. He handed you a gun from a fallen soldier on the way to the elevator and you thought that probably wasn’t the best idea, considering you haven’t held a gun in your entire life, but anything can happen in dreams as you eliminated with one-shot kills each time. Minho never thought that he could be attracted to you in this way.

“This is supposed to be level four!? What the hell would level seven be!?” Minho cried out.

“Just be happy we won’t ever have to know!”

After shooting dozens of men down, cutting hundreds of corners, and nearly dying every five seconds, you both made it into the elevator. As soon as the doors shut, you both fell to the floor with a heavy thud, still hand-in-hand.

Neither of you were willing to let each other go.

“Where do we go from here?” you asked after catching your breath.

Minho shrugged. “Try the star button.”

So you pressed it. “What do star buttons mean in regular elevators again?”

“The lobby.”

“Do mafia properties usually have a lobby...?”

“Not mine.”

From whatever floor you were at below ground level, the elevator began to take you all the way up to the star floor. It was a long, torturous, raggedy ride and you thought at any moment, the elevator was going to give out and drop you all the way down. Minho figured you were nervous for what was to come as you haven’t loosened your grip on his hand since he freed you from your ropes.

You flinched when he ran his thumb across your wounds.

“I’m so sorry I did this,” he whispered, unable to look at you.

“You didn’t do it. Maybe one of your minions did,” you teased.

“But what if I did?”

“We’ll never know. Even if you did, you were just being Big Scary Mafia Boss Minho, right?”

“Still...” He returned his hand for you to hold again, which eased his anxiety tenfold. “Were our guesses for what our dream would be way off, or what?”

“I don’t know, I think my assassins guess was pretty close.”

The elevator made a dinging noise and stopped at level nineteen. You and Minho stood up, getting ready with your guns in your hands with whatever was to come at you next. But as the doors slid open, you see test subject number nineteen still living in their dream bubble, running through a meadow of sunflowers without a care in the world.

“This testing scheme is... elaborate...”

“I can’t believe Dr. Woojin did all of this. Why weren’t any of our dreams like that?” you pouted.

The next level the doors opened for was seventeen, and you figured the elevator was going to open its doors to everyone’s dream bubble until the very last subject, which was you. This must have been how everyone else got to this point - this very elevator.

“This must be what that confrontation thing Dr. Woojin was talking about,” Minho sighed. “Do I have to face my dead mom, or something?”

“Pill C for confrontation? Clever.”

Level nine was next and the last thing Minho wanted to do was leave you in the elevator to face what was to come. But he made it to the very end - both of you did. You both came all the way from opposite sides of the country to make yourself better again and neither of you were going to back out of this one like you backed out of all the other important decisions of your lives.

Level nine was here and the doors opened to reveal Minho’s beautiful mother sitting on a couch reading one of her many books she’s read many times over. She looked up to you two with a bright smile and waved like you were coming to visit for some lunch.

“I can’t do this,” Minho told you.

“Do you want me to go with you?” He only nodded in response. “Ok. I’ll be right behind you. But you have to do this on your own.”

He bucked up the courage to leave the elevator first and you soon follow, only taking a couple steps out. From afar, you watched Minho join his mother on the couch and pull her into a long, warm hug.

“I miss you, mom,” he told her.

“I know you do, dear. I hear you’re not doing so well?”

“No, I’m not,” he admitted, holding back his tears. “I don’t have you, I don’t have Dad, I have no one. How am I supposed to go on without you?”

“You just do,” she said. “I know it’s not something you want to hear, but sometimes people leave and you don’t know why. You can’t keep dwelling on my death, love. You have to live your life to the fullest and go see the world! You can’t do that if you’re stuck here with me.”

“You expect me to get over this just like that?”

“Of course not. It’s not easy losing your mother. But I promise you, with time, it will get easier. You love me, don’t you?” Minho nodded. “Then live your life the way you would if I was still around.”

“Ok... I’ll try.”

“That’s all I ask of you.” She pulled her son in for another loving hug. “I’m so, so proud of you, my son.”

“I love you, mom.”

“I love you, too. Promise me something else?”

“Anything.”

“Try to be more understanding of your father. It’s not easy losing someone you’ve loved for twenty-five years.” With tears in your own eyes, you watched his mom wipe away her son’s tears gently. “Now leave. You’re almost done.”

Before he changed his mind to stay, he followed you back into the elevator. He grabbed to hold your hand again hoping it would fill the empty void of what was left of his mother.

“How do you feel?” you asked.

Through the tears, he gave you genuine grin, one you haven’t even seen in your dreams. He looked so beautiful this way.

“I feel good.”

“I’m happy,” you smiled back.

“Are you ready for yours?”

“No. Can you come with me?”

“Of course.”

Level one - the last level before the star. The doors revealed to you a patiently-waiting Bang Chan at a coffee shop, the very one where he asked you to be his girlfriend.

He saw you once the doors opened and shot you the same dimply smile you fell so deeply in love with and you think to yourself that there’s no way you can do this. Then Minho’s hand is at the small of your back and he guided you out the elevator.

“I’ll be right here,” he told you.

You made your way to the empty chair in front of Chan. In front of you, he ordered your favorite drink, customized just the way you liked it. He always paid attention to the littlest details about you.

“Hello, _____,” he greeted first.

You wasted no time jumping right into it. “Why did you cheat on me?”

“You know I can’t answer that when you don’t know the answer yourself. I’m your subconscious, remember?”

“But I need to know why!”

“Are you going to let that question keep you from finding love again?”

“Yes, because you made me believe that you were in love with me as much as I loved you! What if I never meet someone who will love me the same way? What if my love is never reciprocated? What if I’m not lovable!? I can’t trust myself to find that person.”

Chan reached across the table to wipe away the one tear you allowed to fall. He took your hands in his and looked at you with the same intensity of the sun.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be the person who you wanted me to be. But there is someone out there who is. He’ll love you and care for you way better than I ever did. He’ll make you feel like you’re flying above the heavens among the Gods. You have to believe that one day you’ll find a man who will look at you like you’re the only thing that matters in this cruel world.”

“I hate that you made me feel this way for so long.”

“I know.”

“I hate that I thought I couldn’t be loved because of you.”

“I know.”

“And I hate that you’re right.”

“I know,” he chuckled lightly.

“But I can’t forget about you...”

“Maybe you can’t now, but when you find that someone, you will.”

“Promise?”

“I pinky promise.”

“It was nice loving you, Bang Chan.”

“I’m glad. Now go back - you’re almost done.”

Before you reached the elevator, your vision went black.

You woke up clean and dry without a single drop of sweat on your forehead, which was surprising considering the dream and the confrontation. You were the last to wake and the last to enter the common area where Dr. Woojin and his crew were waiting with bright grins on their faces. You and all the other test subjects looked the same - confused, exhausted, and ready to go home.

“Congratulations, subjects,” Woojin greeted. “You all have completed the final test - the confrontation. From your results, I can conclude that you are all cured.”

“Just like that!?” Jisung exclaimed.

“Just like that.”

Nothing made sense. Sure, the dreams had their purpose, but literally nothing made any fucking sense, I mean how as Dr. Woojin supposed to confirm something huge like that!? But no one argued, and you weren’t about to either because you think, well... maybe he’s right.

Like zombies, everyone gathered all of their belongs they came in with and mindlessly and silently walked out of the common area back to the main lobby of the company building. The same lady who you handed in your evaluation to six days ago handed you a pamphlet and said something about making sure you completed a satisfactory rating and that a follow-up email would be sent regarding your tuition, but it went in one ear out the other. All you wanted to do was leave and take a taxi home.

Wait, where was Minho?

You were afraid it was too late when you lost sight of him. He was nowhere to be seen in the lobby nor among the crowd of people and you think that was it. Not ten minutes out of the testing facility and you already lost the only person you wanted to see. You would never see him again.

Begrudgingly, you walk outside to the line of taxis. You were about to get into one until you saw Minho sitting alone on one of the bus benches staring off into nothing. You ran to him.

“Hey, handsome. Come here often?”

Minho didn’t have to look up to see that it was you. He smiled at your flirty comment, but he wished you didn’t find him.

“Why did you leave so quickly?” you asked.

“I just want to go home. I’m so tired. I want to sleep for days and dream of nothing.”

“Did you... not want to keep in touch...?”

He dared to look at you and instantly regretted it, seeing the hurt look written across your beautiful, gorgeous face.

“What happened in there was crazy, right?” he began. “Never in a million years did I think I could live as a spy with my best friend, or be happily married for five years, or even a damn Mafia Boss all within a span of six days and sharing that experience with you. I’ve lived three fulfilling, loving, and thrilling lives with you, and you’ve seen the deepest parts of me that no one else ever has. It’s as if we really knew each other for those five years, and there’s something telling me that maybe you’re meant to be in my life, but... I can’t think anything of this.”

There’s a sting in your chest, but you’re unsure why when you wholeheartedly agree with what he’s saying. Regardless, you asked, “Why not?”

“We barely know each other, _____! We spent what, a couple of hours actually talking and getting to know each other? That’s nothing!”

“Then let’s get to know each other.”

“You don’t understand. The same thing happens every time I meet someone or get close to someone. I mess it up. You don’t know me outside of that facility. I’m gonna get frustrated with you one day and… and then you’ll stop calling back. I’ll be so deeply in love with you, but I’ll get frustrated and you’ll change your number and it’ll break my heart,” his voice cracked somewhere in between. “I wish you stayed a dream. It’s just easier if you’re not real...”

“But I am real,” you insisted, taking his shaky hands in yours. He forgot what it felt like to hold your hands and he begins to miss the feeling even while you’re still holding them. “I really like you. I want to get to know the spy Minho, the Mafia Boss Minho, and even the husband Minho.”

“What about the emotionally unavailable Minho?”

“He can me the emotionally unavailable _____.” You take Minho’s chuckling as a good sign. “Why can’t we just start off simple? Will you grab food with me?”

His mom’s words echoed in his head and he can’t believe he’s about to spend the day with a stranger he stole with, fell in love with, and almost murdered in his dreams.

“As long as it’s not caviar and capers again.”

“Ok, then you choose - pizza or fried chicken?”

“I think you already know my answer to that question.”

[grouptalekindnesssoulstories]

Old to new

I guess you could call me weird. My name is Animal but everyone calls me Ani. I have brown hair and green eyes. I’m 3 feet 6 inches. So you could also called me tiny. The problem is, that’s  my full height. My doctor says I’m done growing. But that’s not even the weirdest thing. The weirdest is: I hear voices no one else hears. If you ever see me really wild I’m probably hearing one crying for help. Those are the worst for me. I’m very peaceful. It makes me want to scream for help myself. I never do that, because I’m a really quiet person. Unlike my dear parents. They’re tall, loud, and forceful.Which is the exact opposite of me. They’re both almost 7 feet. So I’m not hard to deal with,being almost half their size. At school everyone thinks I’m in kindergarten, not 6th grade. I’m called shrimp and other names. The only place where no one can affect me is outside. I wish I could always be outside. Little did I know my wish would come true. Now where it began to become true was my room. I go to bed when I want. But I’m responsible and go to bed pretty early. I picked my sheets, so they have animals and plants as the design. I love them very much. The day before my 12th birthday. My birthday is the last official day of spring. So it’s the most beautiful.. Not sick or anything just… off. I tried reading think maybe I was just really excited. That didn’t work so I just went to bed. I actually was kind of excited for the next day. Strangely I didn’t dream that night. I normally dream. Now I know why but then… I didn’t. When I opened my eyes I was trapped. At first I thought I was finally dreaming but then I heard my alarm. I wake up to the songs of birds. Today was a chorus day. So it was a bit louder then normal. So I was awake, and curled up in the middle of my blanket. But when I stretched, I barely moved. When I looked at myself I realized… I was only ½ an inch tall! I had been shrunk, which is why I was feeling off yesterday. I wanted to call for help, but first, I had to get out of my blanket. 

“Look at the tiny ones struggles!” a voice rang out...laughing. 

“So funny now she’s smaller than us,” another voice rang out- also laughing.

“Be nice to her. She was always so nice to us. Greeting us by name,” A third voice rang out. But this one was scolding. By that time I had found the edge of the blanket and climbed out. I recognized Berry (a Blue Jay), Rosy (a Cardinal), and Owl (a Mourning Dove). Owl was glaring at the others. 

“We’re sorry, we didn’t mean any offense. It was just funny to us,” they chorused 

“No offense taken” I told them. Berry flew over then.

“Climb on little one,” she told me and i obeyed. As soon as I was settled she spread her wings and flyed. Rosy and Owl imitated her. But Owl soon parted company with us. I was too happy to notice. Flying was amazing! When I did Owl was soaring back but, someone was on her back. Someone who looked exactly like me except... more comfortable flying. But as we neared each other I felt like something had been reawakened in me. Owl pulled up alongside Berry. The girl stared at me and I stared at her. We might have started talking if both birds hadn’t curved downward all of a sudden. I fell off surprised at the sudden move. If my instincts hadn’t taken over this story would already be over. I grabbed a near by leaf. I made it into a parachute, and when I reached the ground I let go of it and rolled. As I got to my feet my “friend” dropped beside me. 

“Explain. now,” she commanded me

“My name’s Animal and I was shrunk last night. I don’t know why or how. Then Berry took me here.” I told her all I knew. 

“How old are you?” She sounded curious now. 

“Today’s my 12th birthday.” She looked confused at me

“That’s the same as me. My name’s Flower by the way. But everyone calls me Flow.” she told me sounding...hesitant 

“Well everyone calls me Ani, it just sounds more normal they say.” I told her cheerfully.  

“I had a twin sister with that name. If that name, if you’re her then that would explain the feeling-” she started

“That some part of you were woken at the sight of me?”I interrupted. She nodded. “I had the same one” her eyes widened at that. 

“So it could be…. Ani?” she asked quietly. “Maybe that’s why we’re so alike. Maybe that explains the feeling. I’ll take her to Mom.” I didn’t see Flow’s mouth move, yet I heard her clearly in my head. Was I hearing her…. Thoughts? She started walking away before realizing I wasn’t following, not understanding what she was doing. Or so she thought. She beckoned for me to follow. I did still confused. “Ani can you hear me? I’m just testing if we really are twins.” once again I heard her thoughts but this time they were aimed towards me

“Loud and clear.” I told her by thought.

“Thought so. But you’re not like me. You were big.” She informed me speaking out loud this time.

“Key word is 

in that sentence,” I told her. She just snorted and sped up. I rolled my eyes and grabbed a low branch. I swung after her. She didn’t tell me I couldn’t act like a monkey. Besides it was fun. She followed the path to the mushroom patch that could never be removed. But they weren’t just mushrooms. They were mushroom houses. When we were close enough that I had to stop, I swung down. As I walked behind Flow, people stopped and stared at me. That happened all the way to a blue-green mushroom house. Which was Flow’s house. She approached and knocked on the door calling out:

“Mom you home?” As she finished a woman poked her head out. She beamed, opening the door to amite us. As soon as Flow stepped inside, the woman swept her into an embrace. Both had a brief conversation that I didn’t catch. They turned to me curiosity in their gazes. But then they noticed I was still in my PJ’s. Flow slipped off, she returned and tossed me some clothes. I was shown the bathroom, where I changed. They fit perfectly. Of course, they were probably some of Flow’s clothes. I reemerged now dressed and very awkward. While I had been changing Flow and her mom had gotten busy. Flow’s Mom was cooking a meal. Flow herself was cleaning and repairing the place. I realized that just like me she had a power. But hers was plant powers, mine animal. Hence our names. That suddenly made a lot of sense to me. Named after our powers but how everyone calls Flow something different as if they are trying to cover her powers up. As if something had happened to her at a young age. Like the disappearance of her twin sister. My thoughts would have wandered farther if Flow hadn’t butted in. 

“Yep. You are very much correct. But now that my twin has returned I’m not sure I’m happy about it,” she sent me the message telepathically. Which was very rude, listening to my private thoughts. I would have started on her if an alarm hadn’t started blaring just then. I vaguely recognized it, remembering it warned of danger. Flow and her mom ran out the door as soon as they heard it. I knew I should do the same, but I didn’t. I was very confused. How did I recognize it, if I had never heard it before? Then I remembered.The night I was stolen. I was only 1.  The same alarm started and my parents grabbed us and ran. My father was too slow. He and I were caught. I never saw him again. but before I could remember more, a foot caved the entrance. That jutted me crudely out of my thoughts. I scrambled back, not sure if the other foot was coming. I heard a bellow and the foot lifted. Someone must have hit it. I crawled to the window. By the time I looked the two people had reached the door and entered. But not before I saw they were carrying jars. I needed to know more about my past. I don’t remember much before my 8th birthday. But I could remember more. I just had to find out how. But first I needed to stop the Rufins. I don’t know why I remembered that now of all times but it helped to have something to call them. Other than big people. I know they aren’t my parents. They never were. But my real parents don’t really know me. I didn’t know where I belonged anymore. I decided to figure that after the Rufins were contained. So I started on my journey. I moved the rubble that had been the door. Then when I was able to crawl outside, I called for Berry. She didn’t respond, so I started walking. Flow must have noticed, because soon after she caught up and tossed me a pack. In it were clothes, a sword, food, and other survival necessities. She had an identical pack. I realized she was there to help. Plus, she didn’t leave once she gave me the pack. I probably could use the help though. So I didn’t mind she tagged along. Besides she was really stubborn so she would have stayed even if I told her to go. So really I had no choice in the matter. Besides she was useful. She apparently spied on the Rufins often. We camped in a well used spot. That was about half way. When we started out again in the morning a rumbling noise began. It was an earthquake. An earthquake that forced us into a small crack in the ground. The crack wasn’t too deep. But it was deep enough that we couldn’t get back out again. We tried going the same way we had been heading. But we got lost. So we just sat down where we were. To pass the time, I asked how there came to be little and big people. So she told the story.

“Once there was only big people. Some had powers like you and me. They would become that small people. The powerless people got jealous. One day, one of them found a chance to get rid of the powers. The powerless squashed one young child . He died. But to prevent others from suffering the same fate, he turned them small. The now big people were thrilled! We were easier to catch. But we became hard to find. That’s because we all had nature powers. So we hid with nature. For a while no Rufin could find us. But in the end, they found us. But by then we were like ants. There were a lot of us.” She finished with a flourish. But that’s when the cat turned up. The cat’s name was Swipe, and he technically belonged to the Rufins. But he’s a wild cat. He hunts for himself. But he thought we would make good prey. 

“Swipe stop” I told him before he could leap at us. He froze when he heard me speak cat. I grabbed Flow’s hand to drag her to him. “It’s okay. He‘s our ride to the Rufins!”I whisper to her. She nods and climbs on. I climb on behind her. “Alright Swipe take us to the house,” I instructed him. He shot off to the destination set for him. Both Flow and I were clinging on for dear life. When we reached the basement of the house we slipped off and started climbing the stairs. When we reached the top we have to climb the cabinets. We find the jars that contain the others and free them. They run down the stairs to be carried away by Swipe. Flow and I hide, getting ready for the Rufins to return home. Both of us draw our swords as we hear the front door open. It was slightly comical. The sword was basically a very sharp thorn on a handle. But it was still dangerous. The kitchen door opened. I tensed, ready to strike when Flow gave the signal. His hand reached for the cabinet above me. That’s when Flow gave the signal. We struck in harmony. He tried to swipe us off, but we just leaped to a new place each time. We stopped and surveyed our work. It was…. Amazing. He had many cuts. He wouldn’t forget our message in a hurry. 

“So will you stop terrorizing us?” Flow demanded.

“Yes! I will” He bellowed in pain. 

“And will your wife do the same?” I inquire

“Most likely. Once she sees the damage you did.” he whimpered. We smiled pleased and leaped off the counter. 

“So what now? How will we get out?” Flow murmured to me. 

“The bedroom I was forced to use? Last I knew the window was open,” I suggest. She nods and heads for the stairs. When we reached the room, I called out for a little help.

“Owl, Berry we need a little assistance.” They flew in the open window. We mount on them and take off. When we flew out the open window a cheer went up. Everyone from the village and all the animals were cheering for 

 When we reached the village, the mayor came to have a chat with Flow. I wasn’t to be included. Everyone moved after Flow and the mayor. I went to my welcome back and congratulations party. All the animals were proud of me. Well I knew I was welcome 

 If no one in the village wanted me I could live with any of the animals. Even Swipe. Soon Flow turned up and had me come back to the village. Apparently the mayor thought I slowed Flow down and was only a little help. She shut that down right away. She had told him half of it was thanks to me. 

“You didn’t have to do that Flow!” I told her

“Did too little Ani!” She told me telepathically. I smiled at that. Nowadays you couldn’t tell us apart, if we weren’t using our powers. But I was happy. I was where I belonged. With my twin Flow, and our mom. 

    I’m Home.

[im-tops-bottom]

Natasha opens the door after the bell is rung and sees a crying baby. She picks up the basket and brings it inside. She picks up the baby and calms it down. Keeps it warm as it's only got a nappy on.

Natasha's husband Clint picks up the letter and reads it.

"dear hopefully kind hearted people,

This is my son Tony. Me and my husband Howard weren't planning on a baby. He got drunk one night and had sex with me. He is obviously gay and we only married so no one found out otherwise this would cause a scandal.

He doesn't know about the baby and hopefully never finds out. He said that if I ever got pregnant then he would kill the baby and divorce me making sure I never get a job or house ever again.

Please look after him and make sure he turns into a bright young lad. As soon as he is old enough on the back is my number so he can call me and we can sit down and talk about everything he wants to know.

I have a necklace with a photo of me under his pillow so he knows what I look like. Then again with Stark Industries he will know soon enough who his parents look like. Do not let him make contact with his father.

If anything should ever happen to me then please contact his Aunt Peggy. The number is also on the back.

Apologies dear people and i cant begin to thank you enough. I understand if you don't want to keep him but please keep him and everything safe when you find a nice loving home.

Love Maria Stark"

Natasha and Clint take a look at each other and let out a smile.

"I'll do some quick baby shopping"

"and I'll order in the furniture for tomorrow. I think we have a baby pouch in the fridge from when your niece and nephew came over"

"okay Tony dad is just going down the road"

Baby tony looks up and grabs Clint's index finger and giggles. Clint smiles before kissing Tony's forehead and leaves.

Natasha gets to online shopping while playing around with the baby waiting for Clint to come back with clothes, nappies and food.

"Tony we are your new parents now. Don't you worry about a thing because we will take real good care of you"

As Tony grows up he is taught different forms of fighting, how to be a great assassin, interrogate, how to live through a torture with fight left, how to use different types of weapons (especially bows) and instruments as well as how to dance, sing, draw, and several different languages.

Tony becomes really smart from a young age and in his spare time he loves doing science and creating stuff. He also learns first aid so he is prepared for almost any kind of situation.

Natasha and Clint spend most of their time mother Henning and being over protective of Tony. Teaches him how to respect people who deserve it and how to be sassy. They loved him like he was actually their own.

By the time Tony is 15 is when he asks about his real parents. They sit down and talk about everything that happened. Tony thanks them for telling the truth.

Next day they get a surprise visit from none other than a Peggy Carter. Peggy explains that Howard had found out about Tony and murdered his mother. She gives them coordinates on a safe house owned by a company called shield.

Peggy tells Nat and Clint that Shield have been after the two for awhile. Not to take down but to recruit. Tells them not to be surprised if someone from shield comes in every now and again.

When they ask why they have to move Peggy gives them a small smile and tells them that Howard knows where they are.

"At first he wanted to murder Tony however Hydra got a hold of Howard and now they are working together to bring Tony In as both sides made their own version of super soldier serums. There were 2 friends who joined they army but had split during the fight. One was Steve Rogers who became Captain America and the other is Bucky Barnes also known as the Winter Soldier"

"wait hold on are they still working for them? We are trained assassin's and have gone up against the Winter Soldier. There's no way we can go up against 2 super Soldiers"

"have no fear Natasha. Steve rescued Bucky and they did a runner when everything went downhill. Shield recruited them. Bucky has gone through brainwashing and torture so our team are finding ways to help him out. The mind wipes had been doing the most harm"

"wait a minute I have an idea"

"Clint no! We are not doing that to him. No way. We trained him incase something happened to us not so he can do shit like this"

"mum it's okay. I think I know what dad is trying to say"

"what's happening?"

"Aunt Peggy right? Your the aunty my real mum said i should contact if anything were to happen to her"

"that's right"

"great. So I have a blue print of a machine that I want to create. It would help with the memories. The only problem is I don't have the things I need to create it. If I can do that for him then maybe we can have it as payback for you guys giving us a place to stay."

"and what's the catch?"

"well I don't trust people around my things except for mum and dad. I would need full access to everything, be kept alone while building it, only access being mum and dad until it finishes and I would also need to meet this winter soldier fella so I can do some readings and tests on him."

"what about tests?"

"I'll be testing it on myself and if you could find me some people with memory issues then that would be great"

"deal"

"I don't like this. Not one bit. Trust is something hard to come by"

"I understand but let us prove that we have very good intentions"

"I'm going to regret this. Fine. Ok guys let's pack up everything. Nothing is to be left behind."

"we have a quinjet waiting out back so you guys can bring all the stuff there. We also have hands on deck"

"great then get them to do the heavy lifting while we pack"

"Steve! Bucky! Come on in! We need all hands on deck"

"they're here?"

....

Everything has been going well. Steve, Tony and Bucky have been getting along. Natasha still has trust issues but has decided that she can work for shield. Clint also decides to work for them.

The machine now known as BARF is built and all the tests are done. On Tony's 18th birthday is when everything is complete and a day later they use it Bucky.

They would have given it more time but Stark Industries and Hydra have located the main SHIELD building and is planning an attack to bring back their super Soldiers and Tony.

The machine works and Bucky recovers most of his memories. Tony manages after some hard work to remove the trigger words attached to Bucky's mind. He also puts in a word to send Bucky to sleep just in case it doesn't work. Tony also uses the machine on Steve just in case.

Since working alongside each other everyone has started noticing that Steve and Bucky have become very protective of shields new baby genius. It really shows when tragedy strikes.

2 days before Tony turns 19 is when Hydra strikes. There have been a lot of casualties between Hydra and shield. They couldn't capture the super Soldiers but managed to grab Tony who got hurt from the blast.

Tony is sent to one of their business partners in Afghanistan where he gets a battery in his chest to keep him alive while he gets tortured. They never give their names just in case. They send a video to shield telling them that they have tony and will keep him alive if shield hands over the super Soldiers.

Bucky growls at the video as a spoon breaks in his metal hand as soon as he sees the battery in Tony's chest. Steve hugs him promising that they will get him back.

The group that has Tony finds out he is very smart and tells him to build them some weapons. Tony is tortured beyond what he can handle because his parents never taught him how to handle this kind of torture. He says yes and gets tortured a week later when they find out he built something better to keep himself alive first. After someone is shot in front of him, he gets a new person to help. Yinsen who is a doctor that was taken from his family.

They devise a plan to make an armor with weapons to break them out. they plan it out as they make shitty weapons for their kidnappers.

It's not until a few weeks later once the suit is built is when trouble strikes. The kidnappers find out about the plan and murder Yinsen on the spot before Tony could reach his suit.

They are just about to shoot Tony when bullets come flying through their heads sending them to the ground. Tony looks up in surprise to see who is standing there.

"Bucky"

"come on let's get out of here"

Tony smiles as he runs over to his suit.

"meet me outside. I got something I want to test trial first"

"Tony now is not the time"

"Bucky trust me. I got this"

"fine but if you aren't back out in the next 10 minutes then I'm sending Steve in and you don't want that"

"absolutely not. See you soon"

Tony watches Bucky go before he gets into his suit.

"this better work"

Much to Tony's delight the suit turns on and he can feel his arc reactor vibrating as it powers the suit.

"I'm gonna need to work on that one when I get home"

....

Bucky is surprised when he looks up and sees people running out of the cave. He notices a machine come out and snorts because he saw it in the cell Tony was kept in.

"everyone weapons down, that's Tony"

He watches Tony set off flamethrowers from his arms turning everyone into kebabs before he destroys the weapons and tanks waiting outside. The enemies are done for.

"wait where is Tony going?"

Bucky notices steve following his line of sight to see Tony flying up in the air. 5 seconds later a large rocket flies past Tony and he starts chasing it.

"eyes on Tony. Follow him and do not let him out of your sights. The idiot is going after the rocket"

"as soon as we are done here, he is absolutely grounded"

After 20 minutes they find Tony in an open desert surrounded by broken parts of what looks like his suit. The quinjet lands and Steve races out to collect the genius who is unconscious.

As soon as they are on the jet, Steve and Bucky sit by Tony's side protecting him until they reach a new shield building where Tony is rushed to the medical bay.

They find out that whatever is in Tony's chest is acting like a magnet and keeping a piece of shrapnel away from his heart. They try to take the magnet out and race to put it back in as they see the shrapnel moving.

As soon as Tony wakes up, he demands to be taken to a lab. He's surprised when they tell him that he has his very own lab. Steve and Bucky requested it for a welcome back present.

"speaking of, where are they?"

"after rescuing you, they stayed by your side until Agent Carter demanded they get some sleep. I was to inform everyone on when you wake up."

"great then inform them as soon as I'm taking down to my lab"

"but t-"

"no buts just do it."

Tony is shown his new lab and locks the door as soon as he gets in. He gets to work right away.

"ok let's see if we ha-"

"good afternoon sir"

Tony jolts before looking everywhere.

"who's there?"

"I am an artificial intelligence known as Jarvis. I was created to learn and help you with anything you may need. No matter where you are I can be installed into whatever device or room you want."

"great we'll get to know one another and I'll question my sanity soon but first help me out here"

"what would you like help with boss?"

"I need to build a new arc reactor because this one in my chest won't last long. Oh and I want to open up another project called hmmmm tin man? Nahhhh that sounds dumb. Robot man? Nah. RoboCop? No I call Buckaroo that. Hmm hey Jarvis what would a good project name be for a robotic suit I'm about to make"

"iron man has a good ring to it"

"hmm that will do for now I suppose. I won't be making all my suits out of that."

"Project Iron Man is underway"

[thecoolkidsbasement]

Basement Corner: Writing for the F.A.M.I.L.Y. Initiative/Procreation Law of Vault 101

Welcome to the Basement Corner! Basically a little sector of this blog where, as Faerie, I talk about writing! It’ll mainly have to do with my fanfictions, since this is a fanfiction-driven blog, after all, but once in a while I’ll make posts about writing in general. Spoilers lie ahead for my fanfiction Inventor’s Absolution so proceed with caution if you haven’t read up to Chapter 18 - The Culling (P2) at least! The fanfiction can be found at either of these sites; AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12490448/chapters/28433148 FF.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12694845/1/Inventor-s-Absolution ============================================================= Other warnings: The content/topic discussed here might be considered upsetting, so those who read on please understand that this is a fictional assessment in a fanfiction. Thank you! ============================================================= I wanted to address the ‘behind the scenes’ of writing the F.A.M.I.L.Y. initiative into IA. What is it, exactly? Well, it’s a questionnaire featuring a whopping 150 multiple choice questions to fill out, and it covers everything from simple questions like “what’s your favorite color?” to situation-based assessments like “you’ve been stranded on a deserted island with no sources of food alongside your soul mate, your mother, and your pet. You have been stranded for the last week with no foreseeable hope of rescue. Who would you vote to eat for sustenance (or would you sacrifice yourself)?” Okay, that last question is more like a fun gag, but honestly Vault-Tec would probably put down something like that, wouldn’t they? I’ve always been curious about the experiment of Vault 101 in having to keep the door shut indefinitely and relying on the unpredictable rise and fall of the population. We see promotional messages and posters littered about the vault that encourage procreation, detailing it as the civic duty of each and every vault dweller, but after 200 years we can assume that everyone is a distant cousin of another resident (save for the Lone Wanderer and James). This, obviously, can create unwanted mutations and will cause the population to steadily go stagnant in number. Lucy Palmer tells us during our 10th birthday party that the vault was packed when she was young, and though we don’t see the assumed entirety of Vault 101, or see how many people were initially let into the vault when the bombs fell, we can assume that the vault was huge--especially if they had enough food sources to feed everyone for 200 years (I like to think that they had crop farms, though, because having nothing but packaged food for 200 years sounds unreasonable). Concerning the meat of the F.A.M.I.L.Y. Initiative, I wanted to create a program similar to the G.O.A.T. that felt lore friendly. The biggest issue was coming up with a name that was comprehensive and would actually spell something (like the G.O.A.T. and S.P.E.C.I.A.L.); I originally considered titling the Initiative after another farm yard animal, but after much trial and error I couldn’t find an animal/acronym that felt realistic. I also considered shortening the name to F.M.L.Y., as inspired by the shortening of W.I.C.K.E.D. to W.C.K.D. for the Maze Runner movies, to a simple Future, Marriage, Lineage, and YOU spell out, which would have worked just as well but it bothered me that it wasn’t a legitimate acronym that spelled out FAMILY. I also considered something a little more silly that implied obvious foreshadowing with the acronym D.O.O.M., but I, again, couldn’t find anything to represent each letter in the name, and it felt a little too ‘on the nose’ to be taken seriously (even if it was meant for a dumb chuckle). A note for anyone who wants to come up with an acronym for anything in the future; it always helps to start with an idea, and a thesaurus will be your best friend! Always write down any words you find interesting or could be worked into your acronym and just keep playing around with it. The process is mainly exploring and trying out different options. A definite drawback to the F.A.M.I.L.Y. Initiative in Vault 101 is the fact that anyone who doesn’t identify as ‘straight’ isn’t welcomed or tolerated. The vault can’t have any residents trying to initiate same-sex relations or marriages because it goes against their basic civic duty in 101. Yeah, people can adopt unwanted or orphaned children, which nullifies the need for straight relationships, but the vault believes this will curb the genetics applied to the vault for future population if the Initiative is in effect. As well, due to the time period that Fallout is inspired by, I doubt that, socially, people would’ve been okay with same sex relations. Another issue with the Initiative is that it wouldn’t have been accommodating for residents who can’t have children due to health or mental concerns... after all, before taking the official exam, any residents who qualify in age (19-45) and marital status (single and without children) have to firstly undergo a medical exam to ensure they’re in top shape to bring in the next generation of dwellers. Side note: I think that Winona would’ve actually been considered underweight (since she’s described as rather scrawny/small in some descriptions of her body) in her medical evaluation prior to taking the Initiative, but it didn’t warrant marking her as ‘unqualified’ as a potential breeder... much to James and Jonas’ fear. Otherwise, I’ve actually thought about writing up the 150 test questions as a playful thing, so people can actually take the F.A.M.I.L.Y. Initiative’s questionnaire and get a result (through me) of who their ‘potential match’ would be! Suitors would include Butch DeLoria, Amata Almodovar, Susie Mack, Paul Hannon, Christine Kendall, Wally Mack, and Freddie Gomez from Vault 101, and some other NPCs you can find in Fallout 3. I also thought about doing it plainly for my own fanfiction OCs and characters I write for otherwise. Would’ve kept it all in Vault 101, but then there’s not very many single options. Plus it sounds more fun this way to include other characters! Writing the test would be a big undertaking, though, as I’d feel the need to get super technical with it an have answers that link to the proper results, with questions that cover various topics of dating... plus, the more suitors that are available to match with, the harder it would be to deliver a ‘compatible candidate’. Maybe I’ll spoof a draft and see how I feel about it, huh~? Anyway, thanks for sticking this random Basement Corner post! If I didn’t address something about the topic that you’re curious about, or you want elaboration on anything that was said, feel free to ask me anything! (picture attached was compiled by me; graphic of Vault Boy courtesy of Fallout Shelter) ~Faerie