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pit-and-the-pen · 8 months ago

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I’ll Crawl Home to Her- Prologue

A/N: Prologue for a reader x Azriel fic I've started writing. The events from under the mountain are told from the readers' perspective. There is some dialogue from the actual book so all of that, and the characters of course, belong to Sarah J. Maas.

Quick Flip to Azriel's POV somewhere in the middle because I wanted to.

Warnings: Cannon Typical Violence.

Word Count: ~4k

Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist for this series! I'm already working on the next part and have the rest of the series planned out!

Forty nine years. Forty nine years away from my court, from my friends. The only thing that has let me keep a semblance of my sanity was that I was here with my brother. Rhys. As selfish as it was, knowing he was here helped me from going out of my gods damned mind.

I laid in the room I had been assigned, bandages wrapped around my chest covering the latest punishment from Amarantha for my backtalk. She had made some vile comment about Rhys and when apparently threatening to rip her tongue out and nail it to the wall had not been the right thing to say to her. Wincing as I rolled over onto my side, I would do it over again just to know that I got under her skin. There were very few ways to have any semblance of fun here and antagonizing that bitch, much to Rhys horror, was worth every cut and bruise I had received.

A knock on my door interrupted my thoughts. All I could do was weakly call out for them to come in, anyone that bothered to knock was most likely safe. I pushed myself up into a sitting position and was met with Rhys’ violet eyes staring at me.

“I thought we talked about this.” He all but growled at me. I shrugged, biting down the pain that flashed through me.

“You should see the other guy.” Trying and failing at keeping the shake out of my voice. That earned me his signature glare.

“Try that again when you can sit up on your own.” He sighed, walking over to the edge of my bed. He put his head in his hands. “You can’t keep doing this. She’s going to kill you one day over some stupid comment.” I had never heard him this scared before. Guilt sunk like a stone in my heart.

“I’ll try to be better. It’s just so hard when I hear her talk about you like that,” I sighed heavily, regretting it at the ache in my lungs. “She can do whatever she wants to me. But you. At least I can pretend I can protect you from her.” We both know that was the furthest from the truth. If she didn’t have the tendency to call for Rhys longer when I spoke back, I would fight back more. But I refuse to allow my brother to suffer more because I can’t control my temper.

We both just sat in silence. I could feel my back desperately fighting to heal itself. It would still be a few days until it healed fully with the bits of my powers Amarantha had stolen. But anything felt better at this point and it was enough for me to finally let my shoulders sag.

Rhys stayed until I started to doze off. The adrenaline had finally worn off and I felt the tiredness in my bones. He pressed a small kiss to the top of my head as I curled up in the middle of the bed. I let my eyes flutter closed and drifted off to dreams of anywhere but where I was.

✦✦✦

A gasp left my lips as the attor dumped the poor girl onto the floor before the dais. Still wearing a thin nightgown she must have fallen asleep in.

“Bring him in.” Amarantha called wicked delight practically dancing around in the throne room. I felt the faint pressure of Rhys’ hand against my arm as they dragged Tamlin into the room kicking and screaming. As soon as I felt it the touch was gone.

When he was situated beside the red head, she asked, “Is this her?” Tamlin froze as he surveyed the shaking figure in front of him. His shouts died in his throat and he didn’t respond to her question. At the lack of an answer she repeated the question to my brother.

“Yes.”

That was all it took for Amarantha to lash out her powers. My ears rang as the girl in front of us started to scream. Rhys’ whole body went tense besides me. The all too familiar feeling of his power pulsed around us and I didn’t even what to think about the torture she was being put through. Rhys’ powers in his own hands could be deadly but in hers they became something far worse.

I tried to hold back the bile that raised in my throat. Tamlin didn’t so much as flinch, keeping that firm mask but there was something. Just a small tick in his right eye that hit me like a ton of bricks. Whoever this female was, this wasn’t the girl Rhys had seen in the spring court. Anger surged through me. Of course, a random human life wouldn’t be enough to get a reaction out of the High Lord. I wasn’t entirely sure how he would have reacted if it even was her. Maybe I was expecting just a glint of those claws, itching to sink them into the soft flesh of Amarantha, but he stood fae still. The rise and fall of his chest was the only indication he was anything more than a statue.

The hours dragged on. If this went on any longer I knew I was going to puke, I already knew the moment I moved again it would happen. Slowly, the screams started to ebb and I knew Amarantha was reaching the end of whatever fun she was pulling from this. With the lack of reaction from Tamlin, I knew she was growing bored. I released a breath I didn’t even realize I was holding the moment the girl, Clare, had finally stopped screaming. My head was pounding at the tension in my shoulders. And I could feel the slow healing wounds in my back roaring in pain.

“You’re all dismissed.” Amarantha called plainly. I didn’t need to be told twice. It took all my restraint to not run from the throne room. I felt Rhys walk behind me, stopping ahead of me as I paused behind a pillar. He didn’t look at me as I rose, just handing me a handkerchief as I went to wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. I muttered my small thanks as I took it from him.

“Are you…”

“Don’t even finish that sentence.” I groaned at him. I closed my eyes but quickly opened them when I realized that I could still see her sitting there on that dais, still smelling the coppery tang of her blood in the room. My stomach curled again but I swallowed the feeling down.

“It’s over. Our one chance is gone.” Rhys said plainly. My eyes darted around at his bold words. It’s one thing to talk about this in private, in our minds where no one else could hear us. But in the halls, with everyone vying for the chance to earn Amarnatha’s favor. It was as good as a declaration of treason. He said nothing else as he started walking again and I was never so thankful to not hear my brother's voice

✦✦✦

I had never felt horror like this in all my years under the mountain. My eyes grew to the size of saucers as I heard her speak those daming words, “I’ve come to claim Tamlin, High Lord of the Spring Court.”

My head snapped to Rhys, the horror frozen on his own face told me everything I needed to know. Panic surged through me. Selfishly not for the human in front of me but for my brother. She would not allow the action of lying to him to go unpunished. I reached out for his mind but he pushed me out so violently I almost gasped.

My mind was racing so much that I missed most of the exchange that was happening in front of me. I caught bits and pieces but I couldn’t string together a coherent thought let alone try to follow along with Amarantha’s scheming.

My heart was beating out of its chest as I caught up with the turn this conversation had taken. A riddle. You solve the riddle, and his curse will be broken. Instantaneously. I won’t even need to lift my finger and he’ll be free.

I flinched when I heard her voice ring loud and clear in the room. “Give her a greeting worthy of my hall.” My hand went to hold back Rhys as we both heard the sickening crunch of bones echo in the silent room.

✦✦✦

If I could have kissed Feyre on the mouth, I would have. As it was, I had to hold back the laughs that threatened to rack through my body as Amarantha stood stock- still in front of her. The bone Feyre had thrown at her feet sticking straight out of the ground. Pride racked through my chest because I knew if I was in her shoes I would have done the same thing. Except I wouldn’t have missed. Maybe if we managed to survive all of this, I would offer her training. I shook my head at the ridiculous thought. I knew that if she survived this, I would never see her again. I spoke into my brother's mind but he seemed far away when I risked a glance over to him. In perfect form, Feyre held Amarantha’s stare before she turned on her heel and walked out of the throne room. For the first time in a long time, I felt a kernel of hope.

✦✦✦

Rhys had officially lost his damn mind. He must have. That was the only explanation for the sight currently in front of me. Feyre dressed in black glossimer, a dress that would have made me blush to wear. But it wasn’t the dress that held my attention, it was the swirling blue-black mark that now rested on her hand. A bargain. What had Rhys promised her in exchange for the position she was in currently. I started to walk over to my brother, having half a mind to pull him from the room by his ear and cursing him out for bringing her into this viper den before I saw her freeze in front of Tamlin. Much to credit, she didn’t let her chin dip once during Rhys’ and Amarantha’s exchange. I truly questioned both of their sanity before I heard Amarantha dismissing the two. I didn’t want to think how much this little stunt would cost Rhys in the long run. The pair slinked to the back of the room, everyone's eyes trailing over them. Watching to see what Rhys was up to. He handed her a goblet and after a few moments of what looked like a very heated discussion, Feyre downed the cup of faerie wine.

Shit really hit the fan after her third glass. I watched the pink flood her cheeks and her eyes glass over. Rhys pulled her onto the dance floor and I decided I had enough. I walked out of the room. Refusing to watch her body move against my brothers. Realistically, I knew what state she had been in when she walked out of that last challenge. I knew what my brother had offered in return for her actions right now. And I knew from the way that the smirk didn’t reach his eyes that he was not enjoying himself at this moment. For whatever reason, he was protecting her from the consequences of healing her.

Eventually, I heard the music from the night fading away and I knew that the party must be over. It would be another few hours before Rhys would slink into my room to lick his wounds. When he did show up, the berating words I had planned died in my throat. It could wait for later I decided as he sat down in the center of my bed. I never spoke first. I let him decompress as he needed to. Sometimes we would never say a single word and I was perfectly content to just let him sit in the room with me. I had long given up on reading books here. But he was sitting in my room, the sound of the crackling fire filling the quiet space. If I closed my eyes hard enough, I could pretend we were both back in Velaris. The rest of our family loudly argued over some trivial joke. My mind wandered to what they were doing at this moment.

✦✦✦ Azriel POV

Azriel still doesn’t know how he has lasted this long. Mor and Cassian sit with him, the silence that has lingered around the townhouse for the last 48 years sits even heavier today. Heavier because Mor had said Rhys’ name, had said your name. And he felt the hole in his chest stretch just a little further, ripping itself open again. He had long stopped trying to listen for the all too familiar voice in his head, a power you and your brother both shared. But he couldn’t help it as the pair next to him were talking once again about a plan to get the two of you back home.

If he let himself think about it too much it was going to tear him apart. The terrified part of him that would spiral if he thought about how he might never get to hear your voice again. How he would never get to see Rhys smile. He longed for those stupid fights they would get into more than anything in the world right now.

Azriel will never forgive himself for telling her where her brother was heading that day. What use was the spymaster when he couldn’t see that stoney determination on her face as she turned and walked away from the too?. He should have known from that one look what she was planning to do but he and Cas had both been called away later that day on separate missions. He didn’t even get to say goodbye to either of them. What hurt the most was the simple message he received later that day from Rhys. Don’t come after us, stay in Velaris. The reminder that if all of the inner circle left Velaris’ centuries-old protections would be lost was the only thing that kept any of them put. It didn’t stop the hope that there was a way out of this but as the years dragged on it was hard to think of new ways.

As Azriel started to tune the now fighting pair around him out, he felt his shadows swirling around him. Letting the turmoil that was his mind show to his family. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Cassian placed a firm hand on his shoulder but knew better than to try to say any words of comfort, they had all been long spoken and neither of them believed them anymore.

✦✦✦

Days passed, and every night Rhys would parade Feyre around the throne room for everyone to gawk at. And every night I would tuck away in the corner until I could sneak out early.

The second challenge came and went. Feyre getting one step closer to breaking this curse. I kept the kernel of hope tight to my chest, refusing to truly accept it until it happened. Maybe not even then. I found myself dreaming more and more about life in Velaris once we got out from under the mountain. Hope wasn’t supposed to survive down here but in spite of myself, I trusted this human girl to be the thing to save all of us. It was an unfair burden to place on her shoulders.

The night of the final task snuck up on all of us. Everyone was called to the throne room as usual but something was different. This was it. Feyre would either survive and it would all be over, or she would fail and it would be over anyways. Rhys and I had spent the night in silence, the only sound was me sobbing. I didn’t know whether it was out of fear or relief.

Feyre was marched out, flanked on either side by attors. As if she would try to run now.

“Two trials lie behind you,” Amarantha let her voice ring around the room. The room was so silent you could hear a pin drop. “And only one more awaits. I wonder if it will be worse to fail now- when you were so close.” I tried to steady my ragged breaths. I caught eyes with Rhys and saw my own horror reflected in those violet eyes.

“I love you. No matter what she says about it, no matter if it’s only with my insignificant human heart. Even when they burn my body. I’ll love you.” And from her words, I knew she meant it. Somehow this brave, selfless girl managed to fall in love with Tamlin. The cruel words I once screamed at him flickered into my mind. The person who ever truly loves you will be the most miserable person to ever exist. I meant it but looking at Feyre, I know that could never extend to her. Not after all of this, not if she managed to pull this off.

Tamlin didn’t respond to her declaration of love and I realized how angry I was for this girl. He couldn’t break that mask enough to say it back to her. She was looking death square in the face for him and he didn’t have the decency to say a word back.

Movement in the corner of the room caught my eye and my eyes went wide as three faeries with bags covering their heads were marched in. My stomach lurched when I saw that ash dagger brought in behind them. She was going to have to kill them. A life for a life. When I looked back at Feyre, she looked truly horrified. Horrified at Amarantha’s reminder that they were all innocent.

Slow as a fae, Feyre took a step on shaking legs in front of the first figure. I saw the tremor in her hand as she reached for the dagger. Her skin turned a ghostly white as the hood was ripped off of the male in front of her. I closed my eyes, turning my head away. I couldn’t watch, couldn’t listen to the pleas of the male in front of Feyre nor the members of his court as they now recognized him. I heard a loud sob from Feyre and the sickening crunch of something cracking through bone and I knew she had done it. Tears ran down my face. I had killed people before but doing it in this setting, for this reason. I could only imagine how much this would cost her.

I couldn’t turn to look for the second death. I only muttered along with the desperate prayer I heard her whisper. Let me fear no evil. Let me feel no pain. Let me enter eternity. The most sacred prayer to our people. I fought the urge to reach out with what little of my power was left in my body to turn her pain off. To take her mind away from the death that was looming right in front of her but I couldn’t reach out. It was like my power was stuck in my body. Coward. It screamed at me when I reached for it again. When I heard the splatter of blood, I knew it was too late. One more.

The words that were spoken by Feyre were enough for me to snap my eyes open. “Not…Not fair.” She choked out. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rhys blanche. I felt like my own air had been ripped from my lungs as she just stared at Tamlin. She paused over the ash dagger. Freezing. I could see the gears turning in her head as she tried to find any way out of this. The whole room seemed to be holding their breath as she stood silent and still.

I heard Tamlin suck in a breath as Feyre went to reach for that last dagger. Her whispering “I love you” was enough to bring more tears to my eyes and I couldn’t find it in myself to look away as she plunged the ash weapon into the center of his chest.

Tamlin cried out in pain and I heard the clatter of metal against the floor of the room. It was as if an earthquake cracked through the room. When I looked at the dagger, I saw the bent tip. A heart of stone. The words pulled themselves from some deep part of my mind. The final part of the curse that Amarantha wouldn’t have known about. Something even I had forgotten about until it was staring me in the face. Feyre must have figured it out.

“She won. Free them” I couldn’t stop the words as they tumbled out of my mouth. And my heart threatened to completely stop as she turned to face me.

“I’ll free them whenever I see fit.”

Feyre seemed frozen to her spot when Amarantha turned back to her. You. I’m going to kill you. I didn’t stop the scream as I heard her bones crack. Time seemed to freeze around us as I was stuck, unable to look away and unable to move. I vaguely heard Rhys scream Feyre’s name over and over. Couldn’t process his movements as he went to collect the ash dagger and lunged at Amarantha himself. He went flying against the wall was what broke me from whatever had paralyzed me. I was over by his side before I even knew I was moving. I tensed my whole body, ready to protect Rhys with my life as she screeched at him, at Feyre.

Feyre was dying. I could sense it in the air. Could feel her fading away. The world seemed to completely freeze as she whispered. Love. The answer to your riddle is love. Her final words before the sickening sound of her spine snapping filled the room.

All hel broke loose in the throne room. The masks of spring court citizens fell to the ground and I felt my long- missing power flow back into my body. I stared down at my hands in disbelief. I could barely hear the cries of Amarantha as she pleaded for her life. I didn’t spare her another glance. She would be someone else's problem. I rushed over to the girls' side. Ignoring Lucien and the other High Lords that started to surround her. Each opened their palm to drop a small glittering substance onto Feyre. One by one, the high lords all repeated the action. Rhys placed a hand on my shoulder as he did the same. Tamlin was last. And we all held perfectly still as we stared down at the broken girl in front of us. When I looked up at Rhys the pain in his face was enough to make me start crying again.

Feyre gasped as she sat up, blinking heavily. She looked down at her arms and I saw the realization crash over her face. High Fae. The points of her ears and slight shimmer of her skin would make it impossible to deny. That was all I needed to see. I pulled my brother into my arms and rushed us out of the room. I hugged my brother for the first time in as long as I could remember. I crushed him as tight as my arms would allow me. I sobbed as I realized what this meant for us. I reached out my powers. They practically purred as I was finally able to use them again. I reached into the minds of my family for the first time in almost fifty years.

We’re coming home.

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jawllines · 2 years ago

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But how could she voice this? Nobody else had made her request it explicitly, so she really wasn’t sure what to request. Any version of her saying it just sounds more and more pathetic, to speak the words aloud would be embarrassing.

“You want me to stay?” Harry offered, after some time, and she was grateful for it as she nodded, “Just in the room?”

Her face feels warm as her eyes glance over to the other side of her bed, “It’s. . .it’s a big bed,” she told him, swallowing thickly, “You can lay down if you're tired.”

Harry’s lips quirk into a tiny, halfway smile, and Y/N had seen that look enough to know some form of a taunt typically follows it, “Oh I see,” he began, lifting himself up onto her bed and crawling over her body to get to the side she offered, “Was this a ploy to get me into your bed? You could have just asked, Sweetheart, but I would have asked for dinner first.”

Y/N finds out a secret and Harry finds a rat

part 1

part 2

iii.

Y/N has never been so embarrassed.

The hike was her idea; granted, she’s not a big hiker to begin with, and she hardly believes the sneakers she wore were meant for more than casual ambling in a park — but she thought it could be fun. After being cooped up in her flat for a little over a week, she was desperate just to breathe in the fresh air and feel the sun on her skin. It was one thing to be locked away when the weather was bitter and uninhabitable, but it was finally getting warmer, and whispers of Spring were carried in the wind. An open window could only preclude her feelings of claustrophobia for so long before she needed to go outside.

Since Harry could typically get Thomas to agree to things she’d never thought he might agree to before, he was the one she asked. However, due to the recent attempted kidnapping, even he seemed reluctant to the proposal and Y/N had imagined her plans had fallen through before they’d even truly been constructed. At least she did until Harry sent her a message a little past midnight the following night, with a link that directed her to a trail’s website. Would this be okay? His message read, and Y/N grinned so hard her cheeks were sore as she replied with “Yes!” ten times.

Y/N is not one who would find joy in exerting herself but she was filled to the brim and gushing with an eagerness she hasn’t felt since being a child, the night before visiting a zoo. She did not for a second consider how sore she’d probably be, especially from the number of hills this trail included along the side of what wasn’t big enough to be a mountain but was certainly large enough to give the illusion. All she could focus on was the thought of the wind kissing her face and the sound of morning birds singing. Aching muscles be damned, she could just take a hot bath when they got back, and maybe she could persuade Harry to massage her feet if it was that bad.

By the time Y/N woke up Friday morning, Harry was already in her kitchen preparing breakfast but that was hardly shocking. It was her second time witnessing him outside of a pressed suit and she couldn’t say that she was disappointed; Harry looked awfully cute in his hiking clothes. A hoodie that swallowed him up, athletic shorts pulled over black leggings, and a pair of bright red shoes that she could not imagine him plucking out of a store. A beanie was nestled over his head, but he had a hair clip locked around the edge of it, almost like he had it on standby in case he got too warm.

He turned to face her, smiling warmly as he flipped a pancake, “I didn’t know if you had a water bottle, so I brought an extra one,” he greeted her, “And I bought some of those warm packs you activate by shaking in case it’s chillier than we anticipated.”

“We need to get a stroller for your kitties so they can come too,” Y/N told him, as she hiked herself up on the barstool beside the counter, Harry working on the side adjacent to her. She rested her face against her fist, watching him putter around putting together the meal. There was something imminently gratifying about putting a man to work in her kitchen while she swung her legs and waited patiently to be fed, so she reveled in that feeling while he answered.

“I actually do have a stroller,” he told her, “But since this is our first time, I thought it would be better to see the trail before bringing them.”

With a sigh, Y/N agreed. Harry has brought them over three times since the first and Y/N enjoyed every second of it – he’d explained to her that as long as she doesn’t mind, he’ll bring them over often. This way he gets to spend extra time with them while he’s working and Y/N gets her animal fill as they meander throughout her flat, making it their second home. He’s even left them there overnight once, when he would be returning the following morning but wasn’t necessarily going home (their schedules make no sense to her, not even a little, and she wondered when the hell they ever slept), and Y/N really liked that. She woke up to Gremlin at her feet and Goose nestled against her breast beneath the blankets (and if she hadn’t been so sure that moving would stir them both, she would have taken a picture to send to him).

They ate breakfast and Y/N pulled on an outfit she hoped would be multifunctional no matter what weather they would face or how much exerting herself would make her sweat. Even the walk to the parking garage lifts her with excitement, happy to finally be leaving the flat.

“You’re awful chipper,” Harry remarked, following close behind her, his fingers looped around his keys, “Normally for this early in the morning, you’ve grumbled about something by now.”

Y/N rolled her eyes, “Of course I’m chipper,” she walked around to the passenger seat of the car, “I’m free for a little while! You forget that I’m fucking stuck in there until someone breaks me out, while you can come and go as you see fit, really.” She smiled at the thought of the sun hitting her face, “It’s going to be so nice today too – I can’t wait.”

“Mm, it is going to be nice,” he agreed mildly, “I’ll keep you out for as long as I can, yeah? But I’m sure Thomas will be blowing my phone up.” He smiled gently, “Things are still. . .fresh.”

Y/N buckled herself in, brows dipped, “Hm? Did you guys not catch the guy? I thought you did and that’s the only reason I’m being uncaged.”

“We did,” Harry’s lips straightened out, a dubious glint flickered past his gaze before he snuffs it out, “For the most part.”

“For the most part?” She repeated with a small sigh – she wasn’t in the mood for twenty questions, she just wanted him to be straightforward.

Harry hummed, “Yes, they found the “mugger” – it was his son,” Y/N’s brows raised, “Both have been dealt with appropriately for now but of course, everyone is still concerned that this wasn’t just an isolated incident. Things are going to be. . .a little tighter lately, so I was surprised Thomas agreed to this in the first place, but I did push pretty hard.”

She smiled and nudged his shoulder, “That’s why I like you,” she told him, “Dunno’ what you’re doing to bewitch him but keep doing it, I like doing things.”

The day had started out so well; Y/N isn’t sure how Harry had found this trail but it was pretty. It started out as a gravel patch of parking lot with a big wooden sign that read Green Haven Trail in big, bold letters, and to the left of it, a small brick building housing a restroom. It had rained last night, so the air smelled of moist earth and morning dew, and it’s a scent that she believes she normally takes for granted. Right now she isn’t though – right now she feels it slip through her nares, down to her lungs. She was more than pleased that it isn’t humid or else each breath would feel wet, and her skin would feel sticky, and she thinks that would have made her sad. Her first time out of the flat in how long, only to be accosted by unpleasant weather? Surely, she’d just lock herself in her room at that point.

Most of the trail was paved but there were clear sections deeper in, where people had broken off from the designated path and wore down the grass and foliage to create a new route. If she couldn’t see where this off-path trail led, then she wouldn’t have suggested they go near it, but she could make out that it guided them to a mini waterfall from a creak. And after the rain, she knew it would be overflowing and beautiful, so she suggested they go toward it with the best pleading gaze she could give him (though it certainly wasn’t necessary – she believes Harry is a man of strong will typically, but if she asks him for something he typically gives in pretty easy).

For a moment he seemed hesitant but eventually agreed, so they went toward it, and Y/N marveled at the rocks, the surfaces altering from smooth to rough and jagged, how the water toppled over them dropping down into the large well of the creek. If the weather was just a little warmer she would suggest sticking her feet in but it was still a little too brisk for it. So she made a mental note of this place for mid-June when the hike would undoubtedly be miserable in the summer heat, but the best part of it would be sinking their feet into this well of cold water and kicking them as they cooled down and ate a snack. Y/N assumed she would be with Harry again because. . .well, she usually is with him, isn’t she?

They stayed there for a while for a short break, since they’d been walking for about thirty minutes uphill at that point. Y/N’s legs were already tired and she was in the middle of trying to find an excuse for them to turn around and start making their way back before she was really tired – but there was no need. No, why would she need a reason for them to turn around when she unwittingly gives them one?

They had to trek down a small hill to get within closer visual distance of the waterfall and search the creek with their gazes for any potential fish or tadpoles swimming around in the greenish water. Going downhill to get there, meant going uphill to return, and while it wasn’t steep there was a decent-sized slope. Several jutted pieces of stone and rock and root should have made it a relatively easy way back up. Yet somehow, when Y/N tries to balance the sole of her shoe against the curve of a rock, she loses her footing. Her body rocks face first into the dirt, and she knocks her knee against a stone and cuts up her palm from the tree root she’d been gripping onto. Before she could tumble all the way down to the creek, Harry placed his hands on her to keep her steady, one at her hip and the other between her shoulder blades, “Holy shit!” He cried out, his voice echoing in the empty woods, “Are you alright?”

So now, they definitely had to turn back, because Y/N had dirt smudged on her face, a few leaves in her hair (though Harry did pluck those out for her while they walked), her knee was sore, and her palm was cut up. Y/N doesn’t cry but she wants to, not just because her knee aches, or her hand throbs, or the dirt makes her face feel gross and grimy. All of that she could deal with well enough.

What she couldn’t deal with, was the fact that she fell in the first place, in front of Harry of all people. How embarrassing – god, she couldn’t stop thinking about it but she wanted to wipe it from her brain entirely and pretend it never happened. But Harry is Harry, there is no way that he would ever let this go without making a sly comment about it every now and then. Especially once she’s all patched up and he knew for sure she was okay.

She kept replaying the moment in her head: the squawky sound that left her mouth, how dumb she must have looked as she scrambled to stop herself only for Harry to be the one to halt her movement. He probably thought she looked like an idiot – no, she knows he did because why wouldn’t he? If it had happened to anyone but her, Y/N would have found some humor in it, and maybe she was just a bad person but there were compilations of people falling on the internet for a reason.

Under different circumstances, Y/N would avoid the bathroom at all costs because it seemed like a staff infection waiting to happen but she tried to get into this one, only to find it locked. So not only did she embarrass herself in front of Harry, she had to sit in the car for forty minutes, uncomfortable, her knee aching and her face dirty. At the realization, she felt like she really could cry then, but the only thing that stopped her was the potential for further embarrassment.

“It could have been worse,” Harry tried to soothe her once they were back in the car, “Had I not been there to save your life, you could be in the creek right now.”

“Shut up, or I’ll shove you in a creek,” she grumbled, brows furrowed at him, “Didn’t you promise to return me unscathed? This is coming out of your paycheck.” He only chuckles at her.

The drive home was uneventful, and so was the walk up to her flat. As soon as they get through the doors, Harry directs her to the bathroom and says he’d be in there in a moment with a first aid kit, and Y/N has no fight left to argue. She went in, avoided looking at her face, and plopped down right on the toilet seat, waiting patiently for him. Harry appeared, looking a little too cute out of his leggings, now only in shorts that rode up pretty high on his thigh. He’s got nice legs – Y/N’s been thinking about them often lately.

First, he tends to her palm, flipping it over and pouting at the sight of it, “Your poor hand,” he muttered sympathetically, caressing the flesh just below her thumb, “Does it hurt?”

Y/N is unsure if he’s mocking her with how sweet his voice was, but she doesn’t fuss over it – honestly, she kind of likes it, “Yeah, a little.” She replied and he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

“Poor thing,” he reached inside the kit, “We’ll get you sorted.”

After he cleaned it, then slathered it in the antibiotic ointment, and wrapped it up with gauze and a bandage, he got a washcloth wet. It took her a second to realize what he was about to do, until he was suddenly closer to her face than she expected, tenderly swiping away at the dirt smudged over her face. Y/N has trouble keeping her breathing even then.

This is the closest she and Harry had been since the night they kissed, and she couldn’t keep her brain from conjuring memories of it. Especially when his lips were looking particularly soft today, and slick from whatever chapstick he was using, almost like they were begging for another mouth to press against them. The gentle curve of his cupid’s bow and the pout of his mouth supplicates for her lips to trap it between them. To relive last week, how eagerly he’d kissed her, how his hands had slid to her waist, how he squeezed her –

Honestly, Y/N couldn’t stop thinking about it. She was skilled at acting indifferent to things like this and she’s certain Harry didn’t notice it was dawdling within her thoughts because he would have brought it up – but that didn’t mean it wasn’t. Every day, a few times a day, Y/N is suddenly accosted with a slew of images, all of which involve Harry's puckered mouth.

Because she’d like to do it again – she wanted to do it again, but there was no way to just ask for it, was there? Not without being weird about it. At least that night they had been drinking, and if they really wanted to they could blame it on liquid loosening prior inhibitions. If Y/N was asking for it completely sober, then there was no turning back from that – then it was something they had to talk about and that’s difficult. Not to mention, she shouldn’t be canoodling with her bodyguards anyway. The time with Niall was a one-off, and she’d never had the urge or desire to do it again (well, maybe once or twice, but that was neither here nor there) – but she wanted it again with Harry. Honestly, she thinks she wants more than just the kiss with Harry.

And they hadn’t even really discussed the first one yet! Why would they tack on a second kiss?

With Niall, it was much easier; she sucked him off, and he came in her mouth, they laughed about it and then tried to finish the movie they were watching before both of them promptly fell asleep. When they woke up there was no awkward tension lingering in the air, she swatted him with a pillow so that he would get off the couch and go with her to a new cookie place as he’d promised. Life settled back in as normal, Y/N barely remembered what his cum tasted like after eating an iced sugar cookie, and that was that.

But with Harry, the whole night persists in her memories. How he admitted to being jealous thinking about her with Niall, and how he wants to be her favorite guard. The taste of his tongue and the impression of his mouth pushed against hers. How he pressed his thumb into her chin and pulled her lips open wider for himself, how heady the feeling was, the caress of his fingers on her hips, her wrists, her jaw. Her cheeks warm when she thinks about crawling into his lap, how she felt him hard beneath her before he pulled away – before he stopped it from going any further.

Y/N couldn’t help but wonder just how far it would have gone had he not withdrawn from her.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Harry murmured, and only then does Y/N realize that she’d been staring directly at him as he still carefully wiped away the dirt, “I’m getting shy.”

Brows pinching toward each other, Y/N frowns at him, “You’re like three centimeters from my face, where the hell else am I supposed to look?” She praises herself for willing the words so quickly from her mouth, instead of floundering how she wanted to when she’d been caught gawking (Harry always teased her that she reverted to her extreme “brat-ish tendencies” once cornered and she continuously proved him right).

Harry has a knowing smile that Y/N wants to flick off his face like he could read her mind through each of her pores. He always kind of had that look on him though, that would suggest he knew what Y/N was thinking and feeling before maybe even she did. It annoyed her more than anything.

“You’re being rather rude to someone who saved a clumsy little thing like you from drowning in a creek.” He murmured, standing up from the spot he’d been kneeling before her and tossing the wet cloth into the sink with a wet slap. He holds one finger out to her, a silent command to stay put, and Y/N finds herself listening to him until he returns with a bottle of water. With that in one hand, he pulled open her medicine cabinet and retrieved the paracetamol, popping the cap open and shaking two into his palm, “You need to take these or your knee is going to be sore. Say ahhh,” he held them in his fingers, hovering them over her mouth.

She scoffed, “My knee is already sore. Give me that, you dick,” she clasps her hands around his, swiping the pills and pushing them past her lips before grabbing for the bottle of water.

“There you go,” he ignored her insult, “That’s a good girl – y’know, you’re a brat, but you listen well when you want to. Kind of like a fussy cat.”

A flush of warmth ran from her face, down her throat, and across her chest – the praise, no matter how backhanded, was still praise and Y/N felt her veins twinkle with it. Harry doesn’t seem to notice how it affects her, and if he does, then he is kind enough not to be a pest for once and keep it to himself. He held out his hand for her to take, helping her lift off the seat, “You aren’t limping, which is good, but we’ll still ice it. If you show up to your parent’s house with a bruised knee and scratched-up hand, I’m sure it wouldn’t be appreciated.”

The reminder makes her grimace – she’d almost forgotten about that. Adam was the first to tell her about it weeks and weeks ago, and then her father reminded her just last week, yet she let it slip her mind again. Willfully she lets it slip from her mind, neglecting the thought – it was always a little awkward meeting with everyone. When she was little, they would coo over her and how cute she was which she had enjoyed at the time, but she had long since passed the age of being cooed at because she was in a pretty dress. And when she was little, she could fuck off and play pretend somewhere with her cousins or by herself and nobody questioned anything because she was like 7 years old and barely knew how to divide numbers.

Y/N longs for the solace of being little and not needing to be socially present during family events; life was much easier when she could check out and nobody cared.

“Are you going with me?” Y/N inquired as she followed him out of the bathroom, tugging down the zipper of her jacket and wiggling it off her arms.

“Hm?”

“To the family thing,” she dropped the jacket in her hamper, leaving her in a sports bra but she thinks nothing of it while she waits for his response, “Were you the one going with me?”

Harry pauses, if only for a brief second, and Y/N sees a look she’s never seen before flicker through his face before he’s smiling again, “Aw, cute! You want me to be there with you?”

She did, for some reason, she felt like it would be better with him there. Adam and Niall always get pulled off at things like this, but Y/N felt like Harry might stay by her side for it. She had nothing to base this feeling on beyond just knowing it in her gut.

And when she doesn’t grumble or call him an asshole for teasing her, Harry must realize she’s serious, because the gleam in his eyes softens to one that is gentle and pitying, “It won’t be me accompanying you, though I would love to,” he told her, “I’m wanted elsewhere that day.”

She frowned at him, already feeling the whine bubble in her chest before he could finish his sentence, “Just tell them that you don’t want to do that and you want to do this instead.”

“As much as the princess’s word is considered –”

“Eat shit.”

“ – I believe that request would be denied. Thomas wants me for a more delicate and potentially violent matter, so that’s where I’ll be.” He sighed, thumbing over his eyebrow, “Though you do manage to be delicate and violent as well, maybe I could ask for a trade.”

Y/N flipped him off before plopping down on the couch, watching as he began to kick off his shoes at the doorway now that they were settling inside. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if the reason Harry wasn’t going was more than him being needed elsewhere but she couldn’t come up with good enough logic to back the claim. Unless he was the Harry from her childhood, and he was desperately trying to avoid a situation where that fact may be found out, but even that doesn’t seem like his speed. He was much too casual and unconcerned for her to think he’d go to that level just to keep up some weird little secret.

That doesn’t mean she’s a hundred percent convinced, but she just dwells on it a little less.

“It’ll be okay, you know,” Harry says after a while, as he’s opening up her windows, pulling the curtains open to let sunlight pour into her room; it glitters off her coffee table and places a glare over her tv, and the sweet chirp of birds still singing early in the morning fills her flat (along with the sound of cars driving below them but the morning traffic had slowed considerably by that point), “Just a few hours of family shit, and then you’ll be done. Can come home and take a shower and relax afterward.” Y/N follows him around the room as he goes to her other window, “It won’t be so bad. Maybe you’ll even have a little fun.”

She doesn’t have it in her to fight him, “Yeah, maybe,” she offered quietly in return, leaning her head back and letting her eyes flutter closed, trying to ignore the throbbing in her knee, “It just feels weird to see them is all, and having nothing to show for the years that have passed since I’ve seen them last. Like. . .I dunno, I have to sit and listen to everyone else and their successes and I’m happy for them but I can’t help but. . .wish that I had something too. But all I’ve got is attempted kidnappings and a hobby that I haven’t perfected when I’ve got nothing but time to perfect it.” Y/N puffs a mirthless laugh.

“Self-depreciation doesn’t look good on you,” he clicks his tongue to the roof of his mouth and he sounds closer than he was before but she keeps her eyes shut, “Why don’t you start selling your art?”

That does make her peek an eye at him, “Listen, I know I’m having a little pity party, but I don’t need you being mean and adding to it.”

“I’m not being mean,” he retrieved a package of frozen vegetables from her freezer before he made his way to sit down beside her, body turned so he faced her directly, “I’m giving you an idea. Your art is good, and all the comments people have made on it in class tell you how cute the things you draw are. So yeah, maybe they wouldn’t sell in some smarmy art gallery, but they would definitely make a cute sticker on a water bottle or a laptop case. And what’d you get your degree in, wasn’t it business related? Marketing?” Y/N’s face pinches up.

“So?”

“So put two and two together, Darling, you’re smart,” he told her, “You make cute stickers and you have some understanding of marketing – start selling them online!”

It. . .wasn’t the worst idea she’s ever heard. The people in the class had called her drawings cute, even the instructor had told her they were charming in a cutesy way. If other people liked them – if Harry really thought that other people would like them enough to stick them somewhere they had to look often – that would give her something to do, wouldn’t it? Something to focus on. . .something that could entirely be her own, and didn’t have to be a question of her safety, with no worry about getting her from point A to point B, and her name wouldn’t be out there. She could do it all under a different name! Loads of Etsy shops and the like don’t have the artist’s real name at all.

It could just be her own little thing, and if it didn’t work, she could scrap the idea and pretend it never happened. But it was something. . .it could be hers.

“Hm.” That is all she replied, despite the cogs clicking and turning in her brain.

Harry sighed, plopping down in the space beside her, “I reckon you just like being difficult,” he told her, stretching one long leg out so it was sitting beneath the table, “Hm? I think you like trying to rile me up.”

“Maybe.”

. . .

Y/N has been having nightmares.

As a child, she used to get them a lot. Sometimes they could be vivid; feel as real as a memory and Y/N would have trouble separating what was real and what was a dream. It was an unfortunate byproduct of a burdened subconscious, or at least that’s what the child psychologist told Thomas. And he then took a far more strict and tender approach to isolate her from the world of her parent’s work, which Y/N never really understood. Why wait until a child begins to show emotional distress before keeping them from something potentially emotionally distressing?

They come and go, depending on the current state and status of her life. Times of stress brought them prolonged and heavy, bogging down her brain like waterlogged branches in a typically dry terrain. A monsoon of shadowy figures, hushed low voices, and crimson puddles. Trying to close her eyes but they’re being held open, trying to move through dense air with gelatinous limbs, trying to scream but her voice just barely leaves her throat. It’s nothing but frustration bubbling to her boil through her veins in the worst way, and when she finally does wake up, it lingers for a few minutes as she acclimates to being conscious.

Once she has one, she’ll have them almost nightly until the problem is addressed or they eventually wither away. She doesn’t bring them up much – Niall and Adam know about them, but Thomas isn’t aware, though she doesn’t think he’d actually care. And she isn’t sure if her parents were even aware of her first round of them when they had concerned the nannies and guards enough to report them to Thomas. If they did know, they never brought it up.

So she guesses it made sense that nobody alerted Harry to their existence if they were to ever occur while he was there.

They had started happening two weeks ago, shortly after the attempted kidnapping. It was scary, though it didn’t get very far, knowing that someone could find her location so easily was worrisome for future endeavors. And had this guy been more tactful and maybe a touch more forceful, then the situation could have gone horrendously bad – she could have been in a lot of trouble, and when her mind starts wandering to what could have been waiting for her. . .it’s awful.

For the most part, they had been pretty tame. Y/N wakes up disoriented and groggy around 4 AM, she wanders out to the living room to find whoever was there that night, and if they were awake she’d make them both tea and stay up for a while. Niall was there the first night, and when she suddenly appeared in front of him with her hand stretched out, holding a mug to him, he gave her a knowing look, “Hm? Nightmare?” She nodded, and he made room for her on the couch, moving his computer, his iPad, or whatever he had brought over to keep himself busy for the night, “Do you want to talk about it?” She shook her head, “Fine, then you’re g’na have to listen to me rant about this fucking series I’m watching because. . . .”

Adam asks fewer questions and most of the time is asleep when she wanders out but when her door clicks open he’s pulled from his sleep with a snort, “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Mm,” he would hum, “Go back to bed then, I’m not ready to socialize.”

“I’ll just be up for a little, you can stay asleep,” she’d assure him, but she didn’t want to be alone, so she would make her tea and then sit on her feather blue recliner (that she was surprised he isn’t inhabiting) with her phone. Adam would say he’d stay up with her but make no move to change his position, so he always ended up back to sleep anyway.

Bill and Martha were usually asleep too when she wandered out, but they were never ones for much conversation anyway. They would open their eyes, see she is in no imminent danger, then go right back to bed and that was that (nothing and nobody could make her feel more like a little kid than those two, and Thomas when she does see him). She would putter around her kitchen quietly, but take her tea into her room, wrapped up in her blankets and clicking through Youtube videos on her telly, comforted by the knowledge she isn’t alone in the flat.

Some days there is nobody there with her at night, maybe an extra guard lingering outside the building, but no one inhabits her living room. Those nights Y/N is suddenly confronted with the harsh reminder that she lives in a constant state of fear, gnawing at her lip, jumping at every creak or click that echoed against the walls. It makes her feel like an idiot so she doesn’t bring it up to anybody, that on a regular night being alone can be weird, but on a night she’s had a bad dream it could be weird and long. It was stupid and made her feel like a child.

Tonight, for whatever reason, the dream was a lot rougher than it had been. While the prior nightmares were more nondescript things and hazy situations that she could just tell were bad but did not have comprehensible images of – this was much more lucid. Every touch felt like a burn against her skin, the hand cupped over her mouth and squeezed her nose shut stealing her breath away, the heart racing panic struck her fast, and her fingertips felt numb. She was thrashing, her throat sore from screaming, she needed help – she needed it right then, but there was nobody there. She was alone, she’s always been alone, she’s never safe, never, never, never –

“Y/N!”

Her eyes split open, the beat of her heart pounding through her chest and ringing through her ears, and her trembling hands stay still at her sides. It took her a few silent, panicked moments before she realized she’d been woken up from a dream, staring at the figure who slowly, but surely, becomes Harry through her bleary gaze. Almost instantaneously relief floods through her, and icy spikes that dotted her vessels are now replaced with warmth, melting them. Y/N isn’t sure if the comfort is brought by the fact that she knows she’s awake so much as it is brought by seeing Harry – he usually showed up in her dream, and dream her was always reassured by his presence. His face usually meant whatever was plaguing her was finished – whatever shadowy, dark figure digging their nails into her arm dissipated.

It was not until Harry spoke her name again that Y/N finally realized she’d been dreaming but she was awake now. Her eyes burn and her cheeks are wet – she’d been crying? Her bones feel stiff and creaky as she pushes herself from the mattress, pressing her knuckles against her eyes to try and rub the sleep from them. “You were having a bad dream?” Harry’s voice is low, his tone gentle, like he was creeping up on a resting bear and was worried to startle it.

Y/N nodded wordlessly. The most he gets from her is a small hum as she tries to organize herself and her thoughts; she isn’t used to someone being here as she wakes up, staring at her warily, so she tries to force herself to speed it up. She didn’t want to worry him. And now that she thinks about it, when was the last time he’d spent the night here? He probably didn’t even know she had dreams like this to begin with.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Harry pressed carefully, and there was a small thud of four feet landing on the bed. She looked over to see Goose pad over to her, rubbing up against her torso and finding a spot in her lap before a low rumble of purrs overcame her.

“What time is it?” Y/N inquired.

Harry looks at his watch, “2 AM.”

“Too late to talk about it,” she murmured, though she still felt shaken up. Her hands tremble as she smoothes them down Goose’s back, searching for more comfort in the soft fur, a wobbly rise and fall of each breath from her chest, “Was I being loud?”

Harry gave her a small, empathetic smile, “Just a little,” he told her, “We could hear you,” it took her a second to realize we meant him and the cats, “And Goose was sitting outside of your door. At first I thought maybe you were awake, talking on the phone or something but you started yelling for help.”

Grimacing, she frowns, at the image of Harry clambering to get up and burst through her door, overwrought with worry and his adrenalin spiking. His job – the whole reason he is here – is to keep her safe. So how horrifying is it to hear that one objective may be compromised in the middle of the night, on a floor way too high for someone to have snuck through a window? “I’m sorry, that was – that’s probably scary.”

“Yeah, it definitely wasn’t my favorite experience,” he agreed, “But I’m glad I could wake you up from it.” She scratched between Goose’s ears, feeling warm that the cat was concerned enough to sit outside her door once she heard her. She’s sure Gremlin is still blissfully sleeping wherever he was originally. “Well, I’ll let you go back to sleep. Call me if you need anything.”

Y/N had thought that she was feeling better – she was awake, and she knew she was awake, so there was no reason for the same rimy panic that had been suffocating her to return at the mention of Harry leaving. Nor was there a reason for her to reach out and grab his wrist before he could get too far, a pitiful refusal pulled from her lips that feel sore and dry, she’s sure from her own teeth. Harry was safe – he couldn’t leave this soon after she’d woken up, she still needed a little bit – still wanted to be near him, and to hear him talk or even just sit silently at his side.

“You want me to stay?” Harry offered, after some time, and she was grateful for it as she nodded, “Just in the room?”

Her face feels warm as her eyes glance over to the other side of her bed, “It’s. . .it’s a big bed,” she told him, swallowing thickly, “You can lay down if you're tired.”

“Fuck off,” she grumbled, but it held little spite to it. Y/N wiggles back down beneath her covers, and Goose – disturbed but never grouchy – walks to the side, waits for Y/N to find a position she’s content in, and then returns. Y/N lays on her side so Goose tucks herself along her belly as she likes to, curling her face into her paws. Gremlin, who must have finally roused from his own blissful slumber, appeared on the bed at Harry’s feet before taking a seat, his tail undulating behind himself, waiting patiently for Harry to snuggle beneath the blankets.

“Had I known you slept on a cloud every night, I would have asked for this sooner,” Harry said quietly, breaking through the silence of the room, only previously broken by the whirring of her fan above them, “It smells good in here too.”

Y/N watches him closely, as his head is against her pillow. Nobody else has ever laid in her bed before, and Y/N only ever sleeps on the left side of it, so she’s sure the right feels just as it did when she bought it. It’s weird to see someone there – but it only feels natural that it would be Harry, for whatever reason. Among the cotton, rosy pink duvet cover, in a long sleeve undershirt, his body having disappeared up to his shoulders snuggled beneath the comforter. He looks cute, especially when he turns to face her, and gives her a big closed-mouth smile that she told him in the past made him look like a pleased frog.

“You’re comfortable?” Y/N inquired and once Harry nodded, she finally closed her eyes again, “That’s good.”

Some time passes. Y/N is unsure how long, but she’s almost certain that she’s fallen asleep until Harry's voice, syrupy and smooth as it always is, slithers into her ear, “I know you don’t want to talk about it and that’s fine,” he murmured, “But I just want you to know, I would never let anything or anyone hurt you. Never.” .

She falls asleep easily then.

. . .

Y/N used to have nightmares when she was younger, Harry had vague memories of that.

“I had a nightmare that a bad guy tried to kill me again,” she told him casually one day when they were on the swings, like it was the most normal conversation in the world, “It really sucked. They were super mean.”

“Did you get away?” Harry remembered being concerned, even as a child. Y/N was younger than him, not by much, but enough that he’d felt a sense of responsibility for her. Harry hated his bad dreams, so he empathized with her plight. Whenever he had a bad dream, his mum usually came into his room and comforted him, but Y/N told him once that her mum didn’t like being woken up in the middle of the night for something not urgent. If she had a bad dream and woke up scared but the sun wasn’t out, she would hug her teddy tight and will herself back to sleep – that’s what she had told him, at least.

With a shrug of her small shoulders, she kicked her legs back and forth in smooth glides, “Dunno’, I woke up before he could.”

He was concerned then and he was concerned now.

When Y/N offered him the spot next to her, Harry didn’t hesitate for even a moment. If she was scared enough to stuff away that prideful, bratty side of her to request it, then Harry wouldn’t make her second guess herself. Instead, he tried to make it as normal as possible, with a small tease as he crawled in beside her. He’d resigned himself to the idea of staying awake until he knew for sure she was fast asleep. It took ten minutes or so, but eventually, her measured, even breaths and sleepy sighs lull him into his own slumber.

Harry wakes two or three hours later, warm. Warmer than he had been when he fell asleep, which he wouldn’t have questioned if not for how icy cold Y/N typically kept her room. For a brief moment, he thinks that maybe her fan shut off and he made the conscious decision to get up and turn it back on for her, but when he moves, he feels a weight on his arm that stopped him. A weight that is different from that of Goose or Gremlin.

Once he opened his eyes, Harry found that Y/N was snuggled up against him.

It wasn’t in a sweet, movie-like way as things like this typically went in stories and movies. It was in a very Y/N-like way though – her left leg thrown across his hip, her body flush against him, her face halfway jammed in his chest and her arm stretched over his neck; she’s about one sleepy shuffle away from smothering him with her bicep if she moved just right. Harry thinks it’s very telling that she does not sleep with someone often because she had somehow rolled herself all the way over to his side when there had been a good distance between them to start.

Carefully, he began to reshape her, moving her arm from over his throat. Harry had been making a conscious effort to be gentle so she stayed asleep, but a small grumble lifted into the air around them that sounds close to “Stop it.” but when Harry says her name, there is no response. Instead, she wiggles her shoulders, her arm finding a place around his waist instead, and scooted closer.

Tch, he rolled his eyes but he could feel a fond smile pulling at his cheeks, She’s even a brat in her sleep.

Harry lets himself enjoy it for a little while. The warmth of Y/N pressed to his side, the peach-scented lotion still permeating from her skin, the feel of each rise and fall from her chest as she took a breath. His insides feel cotton-soft and melty, he traces circles in the center of her back and waits patiently for her to fall deeper into her head. Once she does, he tries again to carefully remove her from the glued position she’d been in, because while he likes being cuddled close to her, he knew she would be mortified if she woke up.

This time she goes easily, letting him lie her arm at her side before sliding his hand beneath her thigh, attentively guiding it off of his hip. Y/N stretches, and turned away from him, her arms sliding around a pillow and hugging her face against it. What a cuddly little thing, Harry thinks, she’s probably searching for something (or someone) to put her arms around the whole night. It makes his heart twist in his chest, a weird mix between an ache and a yearning for her. He wondered if these bad dreams would disappear if she always had someone there to cuddle to her body, like an oversized stuffy.

The idea of it has a pout forming on his lips. Y/N, in the time he’s known her, is driven heavily by physical affection that she is not receiving often. She may grouse when Adam touches her shoulder when he reaches over her head to get in the cabinet, but she leans into his hand. If Niall is around, chances are Y/N is touching him in some way, either with her legs across his lap, or their hips side by side (which. . .Harry has no right to feel an ugly twinge in his chest any time he sees it but that doesn’t stop it from happening). Martha wasn’t the soft type, but Harry had walked in on Y/N leaning against the pillow Martha held to her body while they watched the telly. When Harry had come to her room in a panic, just to see for himself that she was okay (after Otto’s botched kidnapping attempt), she melted against his knuckles that he couldn’t help but stroke against her cheeks.

Harry had met her parents several times – they were. . .kind as they could be, with what they do, but they were not the nurturing type. They were cool and distant, and even though Harry knows they love their daughter, and talk sweetly, they just didn’t seem like the type to cuddle and coddle. And instead of growing an aversion to touch, she grew too long for it, even in small doses, even from her bodyguards. Where else could she get it? Harry is certain if she went out with her friends she would be touchy and clingy, flopped over them in some way, shape, or form.

Gremlin moves relatively little with the change in positions, and Goose lets out an annoyed huff before following Y/N’s body, snuggling up against her back. It was almost disgustingly cute how much Goose enjoyed her girl time with Y/N; even though she was the less fickle of the two, she really didn’t warm up that easily to people but with Y/N, it only took a couple of days before she was sleeping in her lap. Harry thinks that not only are cats a good judge of character, but they seek out people who need healing, like little furry psychotherapists that say nothing but do plenty. Where he would normally be a bit jealous, he was glad that Goose had chosen Y/N to snuggle with and love on her.

Harry sighs to himself. It’s only a matter of time before Y/N realizes that she’s been right all along about knowing him, he was just holding his breath and waiting for it. In his head, when he’d started this, the idea of keeping it all a secret from her seemed easier. There would be no need to go into the details of why he left, to relive any of it, to divulge what he had done, or to break his promise to Thomas, to his father, to her father. He could go on with her like they were two strangers and his past didn’t matter. And Harry doesn’t know why it is so important to him that she didn’t think the sweet boy he was turned into the man he is today; it felt as though it broke the mirage of normalcy his childhood had there for a little while. If the image Y/N held in her head of him was altered, it would pull at his stomach and tug around his heart. The boy she knew was good, not a drop of blood on his hands – the man she knew now had hands covered in the murk and filth of gang politics, rivalries and wars, drugs and guns.

To keep the two mutually exclusive brought him more comfort.

But Y/N is perceptive and she recognized him almost immediately. As smart as she was, and as sneaky as she could be, he had a feeling deep in his gut that she would be seeking answers at her parent’s house. It would be easier if Harry wasn’t there too, so she wouldn’t have to sneak around him to do it. And if she finds out. . .well, Harry has accepted that it might happen and he could only hope that she isn’t too angry with him. In the grand scheme, it has changed very little of their dynamic. Harry is a completely different person than he was when he left this place – when he left her.

His biggest regret, looking back at it, was leaving her alone. Even before this title, when they were just kids playing, he always kind of felt like her unofficial bodyguard. Or even just a companion for her – she didn’t have many other friends, and for whatever reason, both of their parents (or more so his parents and Thomas) thought it was a fine idea to just have them play with one another. Harry thinks it would have been a one-time thing when his father was first getting heavily involved with them, however from what he had heard at the time, Y/N had requested him.

Or maybe requested was a strong word. He supposes the better way of phrasing it was when Harry's father told him that the little friend he made the week prior asked, “Where is Harry? Is he coming to play?” Which was a request enough for Thomas to invite him to a park that day. They saw each other pretty much weekly after that, depending on what was happening or the state of affairs the organization was in. Actually, Harry doesn’t even think Y/N remembers that much – he had a slightly bigger involvement in her life than he thinks she realizes. But when he speaks to Y/N about her childhood (or more, when she brings up a random anecdote), he finds that she doesn’t recall quite a few things about it. Like her brain had packed it away in storage boxes and stuffed it up in the attic – he’d once read that memory loss was an intrinsic, almost instinctual survival skill. Anything she deemed emotionally traumatic, she may have just conveniently booted from her head, and that. . .well, that might have been most of her years as a kid.

If he knows anything about her, he knew that she would be upset with him initially but he could only hope she moved past it. Harry would have loved to go with her to her family event, even if she found out with him there, then they could at least discuss it immediately or on the car ride home instead of her stewing over it. But Thomas and Garrison had pulled him aside for different matters – the ones he had described as much more violent than a dinner with a ton of members in a gang, surprisingly.

There might be a mole. That’s what Garrison had told him privately, that he didn’t trust Otto was in this alone; that nobody just knows where Y/N’s location is, barely anyone knows where she lives and this was an outlet mall 40-ish minutes away. It was just too convenient that Otto would know where she was without there being someone to tell him or some way of knowing. So everyone was under a microscope: Adam, Niall, Martha, Bill, and even some of the new people – Kai, Charlie, Betty, Rebecca. Harry understood why all of these people were on the list, but –

“Why not me?” He inquired, brows dipped, “I appreciate that I’m not, but I don’t understand why exactly.”

“You’ve been around since she was a kid,” he’d reminded Harry like he didn’t know, “There will always be a little more trust between us with you than the others. We know you wouldn’t let anything happen to her and you wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize your family.”

So while Y/N was with her family, he would be preoccupied snooping in places he probably doesn’t belong. It feels wrong to spy on the other bodyguards like this, and even the newbies; he feels guilt trickle through his chest when he is flicking through files of them. But he knew it had to be done. . .that Y/N’s safety was the top priority, even if it meant potentially betraying the trust of his colleagues.

He’s worried about what he might find. He’s worried about how Y/N would react if it was anyone close to her.

Worry soaks his brain, weighs it heavy, and drags his eyelids closed so he would stop watching the back of her sleeping head. He needed to sleep – maybe he should have kept her tucked against his side, cozy and warm because he’s sure he could have fallen right back to sleep then. He already knew he would spend at least ten more minutes contemplating what the next few weeks could bring them. The last time he’d had a little bit of trouble falling back asleep in her flat was after they kissed.

That kiss. . .Harry’s cheeks feel hot thinking about it. He could still feel her against his mouth if he focused hard enough; the taste of her tongue, how soft her lips were, the way she felt in his lap. He could also remember how embarrassing he’d been coming into her room saying he was jealous, which is the only part of the night he wants to forget. They probably needed to talk about it – when he’s speaking, and Y/N’s staring at his mouth, he feels like he should bring it up, but the words always stick to the back of his throat like honey.

It was inappropriate, Harry shouldn’t have agreed to do it but Y/N was so cute asking him and he’s human, after all. She wanted to kiss and Harry loved kisses and how could he deny her of such a simple pleasure in life? Especially when she said she didn’t get to do it often? It would have been criminal for him to refuse her! And Harry may participate heavily in unlawful, corrupt things, but he was no bloody monster – his job (in part) was to make Y/N happy, and if a kiss was what did that then so be it.

(At least this is what he convinces himself.)

Thinking about it either does two things for him: makes him hard, or gives him soft, twinkling feelings in his stomach. Thankfully, tonight it was the latter, so he revels in the sentiment and finds himself drowsy once again (he’d worked himself up enough that he felt wide awake which would not do – they still had a few hours to sleep and he wanted to make use of it). There is comfort in knowing that if Y/N starts to have her nightmares again, he’s right beside her – he wondered if he’d ever be able to be at her flat without wanting to be next to her.

What he said before she fell asleep, he meant – he wouldn’t let anyone or anything hurt her, and that includes a shitty dream.

. . .

The gathering comes quicker than Y/N would have liked, but she figured it was better than the worry of it lingering like a gloomy cloud over her. Y/N had woken up that morning with a sort of weird relief tied into her anxiety; a premature peace was brought on by the fact the day was here and she was one step closer to getting it over with. No matter how unpleasant she would find it, most of these people were family, and if not family, then held a deep-seated, often fear-induced respect for her parents. It wasn’t like anyone would be blatantly mean to her or quiz her too hard on what she was doing, why she was doing it, where she was doing it, because. . .well, wouldn’t that make them look a touch suspicious? These sorts of questions would only be acceptable from her grandparents and that’s if they could talk about something other than how hard it is to use the bathroom the older they get.

Y/N kept reminding herself of this in the hours leading up to the party and it made her feel much better. They were doing this because her grandparents were coming in from Dublin, where they had settled after passing the torch to her parents (neither was from Ireland, but both were drawn to the lush green hills and a seemingly endless supply of Guinness which is all they could wish for in their old age). Everyone would be much more intrigued by them than they would be by her – she felt silly for getting so worked up over going. Was it not a little self-absorbed to think everyone would want to know what she was doing? Who gave a shit about what was going on with her besides a handful of other people?

She had told this line of thinking to Niall who would be accompanying her to the party. “That’s awfully pessimistic but if that’s what makes you feel better then yeah, they’ll probably be focused on what your grandparents are chatting about. They’ve got some brutal fucking stories, but your Nan is so cute, you don’t expect her to be telling them.”

It’s true; her Nan wears bright-colored cardigans and keeps her hair styled neatly in feather white curls. She knits, sews, and bakes cookies. When she was in town while Y/N was a child, she would take her (bodyguard-less, because “If something goes wrong, I’ll take care of it,”) to feed ducks in the park, or to pick out yarn for a blanket. Very normal, Nan-like things, so you really wouldn’t have guessed that she used to shoot people’s feet if they betrayed the family.

The weather was much warmer today so Y/N wore a dress – her mum and Nan liked her in dresses, and though Y/N had a love-hate relationship with the garment, she’d like to make them both happy. A light blue, patchwork material that came just above her knees, with loose puffy short sleeves and a square neckline. Niall gave her a mocking gasp when she walked out in it, “I was half expecting to see you in sweats and a tank top, I never see you all dressed up.”

“Because I’ve been on house arrest, dick,” she retorted, pulling her socks over her feet.

With a snort, he pulled his phone out, “Harry’s g’na be so fucking jealous he didn’t see you in a dress.”

“Huh?” Y/N slid her left foot into her shoe (the mary jane like shoe but was lacking the buckle that really made it a mary jane), “Why would he care?”

“Because you look cute and he’s a sucker for you looking cute,” Niall says it like it’s obvious, confusion reworking his face into a confused frown, “He coos over like every cute thing you do.”

“He’s just teasing.”

A scoff leaves him, “Whatever you say – now smile for the camera.”

Y/N smiled nice, big, and pretty, her head tilted dramatically and her middle finger stuck out toward him. It is the opposite of a deterrent for the blonde, who chortles as he takes rapid-fire pictures from varying angles, muttering something about, “See how you like it when this one goes to your Nan.” After the pictures are taken, she stands and smacks his arm lightheartedly. She wondered if Niall had actually sent it to Harry and her suspicions were confirmed just as soon as they got in the car to leave.

I can’t believe you’ve had such a cute dress and never told me or Goose, you know how much she loves dresses. She’s going to be so hurt.

The memory of Goose rolling around in a few of her dresses (and other various items of clothing but mostly her dresses) when Y/N was going through her closet (in a fit of pure boredom), plants itself into her brain. It makes her smile, even though she knew she’d be removing remnants of tortoiseshell fur off the fabric; she just wanted to scent her and all of her things. Harry told her Goose was in the midst of trying to adopt her but the paperwork is hard for a cat so it’d been taking some time.

Rolling her eyes, she let her thumbs dart around the keyboard.

Don’t use the cat as an excuse, pervert

The drive isn’t as awful and damning as she thought it might feel; it’s about 30 or so minutes out from where she stays depending on what traffic is like and Niall is on some soapbox about a drama he’s currently watching. She watches as the cityscape changes to suburbia, and from suburbia closer to the countryside. Not the house on stilts beside a river and a boat beside the car countryside, but the smarmy, affluent kind – where it wasn’t really countryside, but there were acres upon acres of land to own. The trees they pass are a blur of brown branches speckling with green as they shift to Spring, and bushes that never lost their green, to begin with.

Anxiety still bubbles in her belly but more from the prospect of seeing people she hasn’t seen in a while, than it was from being worried they’d ask how she was doing. Because she realized she could A. Always lie, and B. Harry did give her a good idea the other week about opening some form of online shop. She’d started laying the groundwork for it down, so she could at the very least talk out of her ass about what she was doing. That was if anybody asked – she wouldn’t just bring it up on her own.

Y/N finds that she just needs to tap into that part of herself she uses with her friends when she is able to go out with them. The part of her that completely erases any possibility that she has a life outside of what they were doing at that moment; narrowly avoiding questions that probe too deeply into her day-to-day, steering the conversations toward the person she was talking to and their life. Everyone likes to talk about themselves if you show you’re willing to listen, Y/N found that out relatively quickly.

Her parents’ house, much like them, is gaudy and extravagant and too big. It’s a pretty place, but she just doesn’t necessarily see the need for columns lining the stairs leading up to the house, or the large brass lion knocker on the front door. The chandelier in the foyer when you first enter is about a thousand crystals that cast glittering shadows along the slate grey walls. From the foyer, directly in front of the door is a bifurcated staircase, and beneath either set of stairs splitting off from the main row, there was an entryway to the kitchen and a sitting area, both just on the side of too big. She could already see people moving around in the kitchen and could tell that most people were in the backyard where the majority of this would be taking place.

This wasn’t the house she grew up in so there was no personal attachment to the walls, the floors, or the doorways. She doesn’t stop to linger around a spot on the wall she remembered being measured against when she was little, nor does she see little mirages of a small her running around the halls in a moment of nostalgia. Y/N walks through the foyer, her shoes clicking against the hardwood as she makes her way to the backyard.

There were a lot of people to greet and she was feeling overwhelmed, but nobody noticed (nor seemed to care) about her arrival. It made it easy to slink around, seeking out her grandma who she knew would be sitting beneath one of the tarps they had set up shielding away the blinding son. She was in the middle of speaking to a group of people, so Y/N was going to stand and wait patiently off to the side, but her eyes flickered over, a smile broke out over her face, and she waved her closer, “Is that who I think it is?” Y/N lowered to hug her, “God, you’re looking like an adult! Where the hell is your grandfather, someone call the lazy sod over.”

It was easy with her like it always was. Y/N spoke to her for a while, and hugged her granddad when he made his way over, (“Is your hair longer? Looks longer – you know, your mother had long hair when she first met your dad, like down to her bum, it was ridiculous! We used to beg her to get it cut, we thought it’d get trapped in a door.”). She spoke to them both briefly, and they told her they wanted to plan a trip where she came to Ireland for a visit, and she agreed immediately. Her Nan cooed and doted over her for a moment, pinching her cheek and murmuring something about her needing to sleep more, “I can tell you’re tired, you get that same look your dad gets. Why aren’t you sleeping? Is your mattress comfortable?”

Y/N thinks, if her life was slightly different, these questions might annoy her but she revels in them. No matter how old you get, it’s nice to have someone worry over you a bit; to not see Y/N often but to know when she looks tired, to want to know why she isn’t sleeping, to wonder if it is her mattress. This is the kind of normal worry, about her sleeping habits, or how she’s eating, or if she’s happy – not about rivals and strangers to her that feel contempt for her parents but somehow translate that to hurting her.

“We’ll talk later,” her Nan promised her, swatting her bum and giving her a small push, “Go mingle with your family, they’re missing you. And find your parents, tell them to stop working and come pamper me, I haven’t seen either of them for more than ten minutes.”

She listens (her grandma is not someone you ignore orders from) and mingles. Y/N feels increasingly stupider for being so worried because really, nobody cares what she’s doing now, they mostly want to chat and reminisce over memories from years ago. She’s happy to listen, to laugh, to avoid any segues that might lead to delving into her life or opening a door where that might be a topic. Even if it was, she wondered if everyone just knew not to interrogate her – everyone is too worried about upsetting her parents to dig too deep into her shit. For all they know she could be doing under-the-cuff shit for them that nobody but she knew about (she isn’t but she could definitely could be – they aren’t above doing shifty things like that).

Eventually, she did find her parents and it was. . .as it always was. They almost seemed like they were mid-meeting, which she hadn’t known, but all talked among themselves and the several people sitting beneath the stone gazebo (besides the pond they had built, with fish swimming around in it and a small waterfall because of course they had that) once she appeared, “Hi,” she greets unceremoniously, “Nan says stop working and go dote over her.”

“Of course she did,” her mom smiled brightly, “Come here and hug me – where’d you get this dress? I love it, I’d be wearing that if I was just a few years younger.”

“Try a decade,” her father teased, reaching over to squeeze her arm, “How’s my girl, huh? You all,” he turned to the others, “Go ahead and socialize, we’ll spend some time with our daughter.”

They talk for a while, they’re the only ones inquiring about her life, and what she’s doing, and as she speaks it only then settles in her brain that they’ve got no clue. Y/N always imagines Thomas being puppeteer’d by her parents, doing as they say, but she forgets that for the most part, they do give him a fair amount of autonomy. Only relatively big notions (like her going to university) are discussed as a group. They do know that she’s being confined to her flat and they at least have the decency to appear like they feel bad.

“Once things settle,” her mum had patted her knee, “Things will be better, and you’ll be able to go out more. There’s. . .something going on right now, it’s better to air on the side of caution. Especially after what happened.”

“Yeah, I get it,” she doesn’t. . .she tries her best to though, from their perspective, “Figure it out quick though, I want to go loiter at a mall or something soon.”

She did end up telling them about her plan with art – after she told them about the art classes, which they seemed only vaguely aware of. Y/N went into it, about the cutesy drawings, about an online store, and they nod and say things like, “That sounds nice, Honey,” which is precisely what she expected. Something gentle, slightly dismissive, like they’re listening to a 12-year-old get overly enthused about her hobby. It was nice to talk about it with someone other than Harry though, even if she was certain they were only half listening.

Her mother is the one to bring Harry up, sipping from her glass of wine, “Hm? He’s your newest guard is he not? How’s it going?”

“It’s good,” she shrugged her shoulders, “He’s nice,” I kissed him the other week, “And he’s got two really cute cats that he brings over,” he slept in my bed the other night because I’m having horrible nightmares – do I look tired to you? Nan says I look tired, that’s probably why, “Yeah, it’s fine. Has he said anything?”

Her father cleared his throat, “From what Thomas has said, he does well at all aspects of his job,” he gave a tight-lipped smile, and there’s. . .a look there, in his face, that caught Y/N’s attention, “Which is always good to hear, when we’re trusting someone with you.”

“He does kind of remind me of someone,” her lips move before she can really think it through, bringing it up, but her dad’s disposition had changed ever so slightly – something that Y/N wouldn’t have noticed had she not been trying to read them the entire conversation, “I used to spend time with someone when I was little, who was named Harry. He just disappeared one day though.”

As soon as her mother opened her mouth to respond, her father cut her off, with a smooth, almost immediate precision, “Hm, I think I remember him,” he reached for his drink from the table, “But he and his family moved quite a while ago, I believe. There was a company in Australia I believe, that wanted to hire him. That is if I’m remembering correctly.”

Y/N thinks if her father had answered any other way, or even just slightly differently, she wouldn’t have questioned it. Maybe she would have finally given up, and let it go because even if she did know Harry from when she was younger he clearly didn’t want her to remember him for a reason. If she had anything else to do with her time, she probably wouldn’t have even cared that much to bring it up past asking Harry if she knew him from somewhere.

But it was weird how he’d answered her. It was too fast – and how do you think you remember somebody, but go on to explain they moved to Australia? Plus, from what Y/N has gathered through bits and pieces she hears from her guards and from what she remembered when she was little, people don’t just stop working for her parents. They don’t just go on their merry way unless they are exiled, and even then, the offense would have to be pretty minor to come out unscathed.

Once you’re in this world, you’re in it. There’s no dipping a toe in and deciding it’s too cold; the only option is to sink into it, down to the shoulders, and embrace it when the water lapping at your neck is finally warmer than the air blowing around above it.

“Ohh, okay,” she plays nice and dumb, smiling gently, “Well that settles that then. I was just wondering.”

The tension that had risen in his shoulders loosened, and he relaxed back in his chair, “Tell us more about this business you’d like to start – I know someone who specializes in marketing for start-ups and. . .”

It’s brushed under the rug because of course it is, and Y/N keeps chatting with them a healthy amount before excusing herself to the restroom. This is when her parents make their move to visit with her Nan (“What a joy it is to dote on your mother-in-law,” her mother sighed, grabbing her wine), so they split ways. Y/N does have to piss, that much is true, but she’ll also be taking a detour to the library, where the photo albums were kept. Nobody questions where she’s going or why she’s going there, but she does manage to narrowly avoid Thomas who would have definitely not trusted her when she told him she wasn’t doing anything to rouse suspicion.

The library, in comparison to the rest of the house, is actually one of the smaller rooms. She wondered if it was actually small or if the towering bookcases made it appear more compact than it was. On either side of the room, the walls were bookshelf-beside-bookshelf, filled to the brim with different novels, titles, hardbacks, and paperbacks (she doesn’t even think her parents are that into reading). Adjacent to the door, the wall is a window that reminded her of Edward’s room in Twilight, only this one was composed of bulletproof, thick glass and had large curtains that could be drawn if it was night. In the center of the room was a small couch, a coffee table, and a lamp (which has a very limited purpose when there’s a huge light fixture hanging from the ceiling that lights up the entire room as soon as it’s flicked on).

It takes her a moment to skim over different bindings until she finds the odd, large bindings of the photobooks. They aren’t labeled but she remembered that her mother, in all her perfectionist glory, had them color coded by years. Y/N knew that vibrant purples, blues, and greens were from a period starting with her birth so that’s where she starts. She pulled out all of them, bundled them in her arms, and went to the couch. Vaguely does Y/N remember a time when she was always posing for pictures whether she wanted to or not, and while it wasn’t necessarily either of her parents taking the picture – someone was. Thomas, any bodyguard, her Nan, uncles, aunts, and cousins if they were all together. So there are plenty of pictures to sift through, almost an annoying amount. She thinks she’ll be in here for hours.

Three photo albums in, she begins to lose hope. What was she even looking for? Some proof that Harry existed when she was little? Who was to say anyone had even taken a picture of them together in the first place? And for her parents to keep it, when one of them at the very least, was not interested in her knowing that he had existed in her life before a few months ago when he’d entered her flat, following close behind Niall? It was unlikely.

She nibbles at her thumbnail, heaving a sigh and almost irately flipping through pages now when she sees it.

When she sees him.

If Y/N had looked through it any quicker she would have missed it. A picture at the park, two children stood beside the obnoxiously bright blue tunnel slides: one of them was her, in a frilly pink sundress that had large yellow flowers printed all over the front, and jelly shoes she has a vague memory of regretting because the mulch from the ground kept scratching her. She had a big, front toothless grin, her head over-exaggerated in its tilt and one of her hands were held up like she was waving. Her arm was wrapped around a boy, just a little taller than her, who had awful cargo shorts you could only get away with wearing at 9 and a green shirt with a FIFA logo. His hair was brown, cut short, his eyes were light, she could tell, and he had two dimples just as she remembered. Looking at this photo, she knew for sure.

It was him.

That fucking liar.

She carefully slides the delicate paper from the plastic sheet and presses it off to the side, before continuing to flip through. One picture would be enough, she knew, but she wanted to build an arsenal of proof. He could try to explain away one picture, but not several. Not when she could tell the structure of his face, the way one side of his mouth has always pulled up higher when he smiled, the crinkles beside his eye when he grins.

Y/N is conflicted, about whether to be happy or upset or whatever she was feeling. She was happy that she had been right this whole time. She was irritated because he’d been lying to her and her dad just lied straight to her face, but she wondered for what reason it was important that she didn’t know. And she was confused, because. . .well, where the fuck had he gone? From at least four of the photo albums, she finds around five photos from each of them, up until she was around 10.

She’d worried a sore into the inside of her bottom lip biting at it with fretted teeth, and her forehead ached from the deep furrow she’d had the entire time she flicked through the albums. Y/N was ready to go home, but she knew she’d have to stay for a while longer.

Just as she was sliding the pictures into her purse, zipping it closed, the door of the library opened. She tenses until she realizes it’s Niall, who squints his eyes, “What are you doing in here?”

“Hiding and going down memory lane.” She dismisses him quickly, collecting the albums and walking them back to where she’d found them, “Have they started serving food yet? I’m fucking starving.”

“Watch your mouth, your Nan could be around any corner. She’s quiet on her feet,” he playfully scolded her, not probing any further into her reasonings for being in here, “That’s why I came to get you, the caterers finally have everything set up and I knew you’d fuss if I ate without you.”

She scoffed, “Thanks, and for the record, I don’t fuss, I hit.”

He pouted his mouth, rubbing his arm where she’d swatted him earlier, “Don’t I know it.”

. . .

Y/N loses her nerve.

For a while, she was riled up and ready for an argument (though she doubts Harry would actually argue with her); Harry was supposed to come to see her that night, so she had very little time to mentally prepare. But from that little time she did get, she’d prepared to let him walk in, sit down, then slam the pictures down on the table in front of him and demand answers. Like why he lied before, why her father lied today, and why he left in the first place. Does it matter? No, not necessarily, and she doesn’t think it would change how anything is right now, but at the end of the day, Y/N is nosy and confused and wants to know why everyone else is in on this and not her. Just like everything else in her life, she is kept in the dark, and she’d just been praising Harry for being the only one who ever kept her in the know, telling her more than anyone else.

And she thinks if it had been anyone else, she probably would have. If she had looked through those albums and seen a photo of Niall with her, she would have immediately thrown it at him and asked him what the fuck it was about.

Yet as soon as she saw Harry, who smiled brightly at her as he walked in, holding two strawberry shakes with a big grin on his face. . .she just couldn’t.

“I brought you a treat,” he told her, kicking the door shut with his foot, “It’s a celebration shake. Do you feel relieved having done it and gotten it over with?”

It almost felt silly, to think about doing it how she had planned. To show him the photos, like an I told you so! I’m right, you’re wrong, I did know you – it felt like a petulant way to approach the subject. And if there was a good reason that they didn’t want her to know. . .if there was any reason at all, really, why should she have to force his hand in telling her? To shove proof in his face, catch him off guard, guilt him into telling her. . .it just didn’t feel right. She wanted to know, and part of her felt she deserved to know, but maybe not like this.

She cleared her throat, and smiled gently, “Yeah,” she told him, “It wasn’t too bad.”

“See! I told you it’d be just fine,” he handed her the shake, “I’ll admit, I am jealous Niall got to go with you in that dress. It was adorable – you look so pretty when you’re all dressed up. Well, you’re pretty always, actually, but I do love dresses.”

Y/N feels her face warm, mouth pulled into a frown, “Don’t tease me,” she grumbled, pulling the straw of the shake between her lips, but she moves her legs out of the way for him to sit with her on the couch.

“I’m not teasing,” he defended himself, “Really, I think you’re pretty in whatever you feel comfortable in.”

Y/N nudged him with her foot, and let the words, I knew you when I was little, I have pictures – fizzle out in her throat. She wants to know – so badly does she want to know, but she just can’t give a reason why she would need to know. And she guesses part of her is a little scared that it might change things between them. There were a lot of things Y/N wanted but that wasn’t one of them; she’d like to keep getting closer to him, to keep looking at him and feeling safe, for that bubble of warmth and comfort to arise in her belly every time he stepped through the door.

She liked how things were now, so maybe she was okay not knowing. Not yet, at least. . .for a little while.

“Where’s your head at, hm?” Harry hums low, sweet, and soft; he’s in the usual attire, though the white button-up was loosened by a few buttons and the cuff links were undone. His suit pants were navy blue today, and he treated them with little care, his foot pulled up onto the couch, rolling the leg of the trousers up. He is turned to face her, the hand on his phone lowering so she had his full attention, “You seem far away.”

“Nowhere,” she lies easily, “I’m just sleepy.”

Harry gives her a smile – it’s gentle but still big, and she’s suddenly acutely aware of how her heart races when she witnesses it, dimples and all, “Liarrr,” he sing-songs, but uses his free hand to squeeze her calf over the pajama pants she’s wearing, “You can tell me when you’re ready if you want to talk about it,” his voice sinks into her muscles, melts them, “I’ll wait for you. Until then, I reckon we should watch that show. . .the new one with the zombies everyone is talking about?” He would have a good reason, right? Harry wouldn’t just lie to her. . .Harry doesn’t just lie.

Y/N nodded, her lips twitching up, “So you finally admit you want to see it,” she puffed a laugh from her chest, “After so vehemently denying that you’re interested in zombie shows at all!”

“To be fair, a lot of them can be shit!” He whined, “But I’ve seen a lot of good reviews, and I heard it’s about some mind-controlling fungus which is a slight deviation from other versions of the story. And legally, you can’t be mean to me because I’m so sweet and brought you a shake.”

She grabbed the remote, “You’re whiny.”

“I reckon I deserve to be the whiny one sometimes, you get to be 24/7.” He retorted and Y/N gasped, mouth falling open.

“I am not whiny!”

“Oh? Was that a whine I just heard?” When she huffs at him and starts turning her body away from him, he chuckles low, stopping her from twisting her body completely by laying a hand on her bicep, “C’mon, c’mon, I’m kidding.” He scoots to the other end of the couch, “Here, do you want to stretch out? I’m sure your feet must hurt after being in those shoes all day.”

Her response is to kick her feet up without hesitation, but she wiggles down so that they lay in his lap, “Will you rub them?” Because if he’s going to lie to her about knowing her and then suddenly return to her life as her bodyguard, she thinks she deserves a foot rub out of it at the very, absolute least.

“Ah,” he places one of her throw pillows in his lap, before delicately laying her foot on top of it, “You just want me here to dote on you.”

She nodded her head, “Correct.”

“Brat,” he digs his thumb into the sole of her foot anyway, just above her heel, “Get the show started or I’ll start tickling.”

Because it’s easy with Harry – it’s always been easy with Harry and that’s what she liked.

Why make it difficult?

Why bring it up?

. . .

The days go on as normal; eventually, they lessen their stringent rules on where she can and cannot go. It’s only a little bit, but she and Harry can finally return to their art classes, where Y/N found the excuse for their absence was they had taken a trip to Spain (she lies about how amazing the rooftop tour of Santiago de Compostela Cathedral is beautiful knowing full well she didn’t even know you could get tours on the rooftop). They returned just in time for a color theory lesson that goes from a fun grade school color wheel to something that melted her brain. By the end of it, it had turned into something so complex, even Harry seemed genuinely astonished by how deep into it they went.

“We’ll have to practice later,” he promised, “‘cos I’m going to forget everything she said after the first hour.”

Y/N goes to a brunch with her Nan, who – albeit reluctantly – lets Harry attend. Thomas was still hyper-aware of any possible danger (as he always is) and thought it would be dangerous for not only Y/N but her Nan (who has made plenty of enemies in her day) to be alone out and about together. Harry offered to sit at a separate table once he noticed her Nan’s displeasure but she waved the idea away, “Why should you be punished because I disagree with how they’re doing things? You’ll sit with us.”

If Y/N looked back on it, she thinks that Grandma always had a problem with how they raised Y/N. Very, very, very vaguely she has an indistinct and fuzzy memory of her scolding Y/N’s father, “This is no life to live,” she told him, “To force her in this house! To not even let her attend school? She needs friends outside of her cousins and a life. I didn’t raise you to be so stupid.” And Y/N thinks, relatively close to that, she’d been enrolled in a private school (though she moved around quite a bit following that).

It was nice to spend time with her, and she thinks – even without trying – Harry had managed to woo her Nan in about five minutes. If she let herself indulge, even just for a second, it was like having her boyfriend meet her family but she wipes the thought away as soon as it arises.

Because she’s been having a lot of thoughts like that; she’d begun labeling them her “senseless, delusional” moments where she even for a second considered having feelings for Harry. They started out infrequently, only every so often (especially when he did something particularly sweet) but with time they grew more recurrent. It seemed, like some sort of sick twist, that they came on stronger once she realized that she knew him from when they were little.

Which, Y/N thinks if she were more emotionally sound, the opposite would have occurred. She should be put off and repelled, but instead, she finds herself feeling more and more fond.

Now she notices things that she hadn’t before. All the little idiosyncrasies of hers that he remembered from childhood: how she liked jelly candies and her favorite flavors, the board games she used to play, the stuffies she always liked, the way she hated the sound of nails on a holographic picture, how she thinks the sandwich just tastes better when it’s cut diagonally. They were things that, for whatever reason, she never questioned why he knew before but now that she thought about it, it would be incredibly odd had he known them without knowing her.

And over time she just realizes that he brings the kind of comfort that only a childhood friend could bring. Familiarity, a tender warmth, the idea that someone still likes you even as you’ve grown and changed into the person you are today. Fundamentally, their relationship was always somewhat forced she guesses – their parents (or his parents and Thomas) probably arranged the first play date. And Thomas definitely arranged for him to be her bodyguard. They were compelled to be in the same space together, but enjoying their time with each other. . .that was them. Harry laughing at her jokes, the feeling that fizzles in her veins when his cheeks get pink, how excited she is to see him when it’s his night with her, the borderline domestic relationship she’s developed with his cats – all of that wasn’t arranged.

They were friends, Y/N truly believed that. They had been forever now, she guesses, if the decade-long gap in between was dissolved.

Y/N thumbs through the photos when she’s in her room at night, gnawing at her bottom lip, a zoetrope of memories flickering through her brain. Some things she recalls, some things she doesn’t, and she recalls feelings more than she does conversations or scenarios. She was always happy, she knew that, and she always felt like a normal kid with him. She could tell him things and they could play and things were good and normal.

She found herself wanting to kiss him more every day, which is a bit of a problem. They still hadn’t spoken about the first, logically they should do that before having a second, but the want for it itches beneath her skin. Y/N’s certain he had caught her staring at his mouth several times, probably more than she would like to admit, but he had never really brought it up before.

Until a random Thursday, at least, when she’d spent most of the day drawing and perfecting different sketches for the first round of stickers (she does a lot of random original cutesy drawings, then some that involve different tv shows and movies – people like to buy cute versions of characters they like, Y/N knows that because she does it all the time). Harry started talking about. . .something, Y/N couldn’t remember, but what she did remember was how his mouth went from forming around the word “apples” to smirking.

“You stare at my mouth an awful lot,” he taunted her, and Y/N. . .she was feeling more sensitive that day; less fiery than she usually was, so she tilted her head down and murmured an apology, “No, wait,” he clicked his tongue to the roof of his mouth, “I was only kidding, Sweetheart, you don’t need to apologize for anything.”

When she hummed and made no move to look back at him, she felt careful fingers on her chin, guiding her face toward him, “C’mon, Darling, don’t hide. It’s okay! You can look at my mouth all you want, lord knows I’m always looking at yours.”

Her face feels hot and she swallows thickly, “You’re looking at mine?”

“Mhm,” he hesitated for a moment, before the pad of his thumb grazed over her bottom lip, “More than I’d like to admit.”

“We could always,” she spoke against his petting thumb, “We could kiss again then if you want.”

He leaned in, moments from smearing his mouth against hers, but there was a knock at the door.

The pizza they ordered had come.

That was the closest they’d been to kissing again, but once Harry went to answer the door and sign for the food the moment had left them. Y/N is flustered, warm in her face, and has zero nerve to return where they had left off so she nudges him with her foot when he sits back beside her and calls him a wimp when he fusses over it. Things go back to normal – the same as they usually were.

(It was only later that night when she was alone in her bed when she felt inconceivably horny, did she remember that her period was coming. The weeks leading up to it always left her insatiable, sensitive in both her feelings and touch, and if she snuck her hand between her thighs to the thought of kissing him again, well that’s her own problem.)

The nightmares start to fade too, which is nice, though that means Harry spends less time in her room. He’d made a habit of sleeping beside her, or at least laying down near her until she fell asleep, and she’d always wake up the next morning alone. Though without fail, as soon as a dream seemed to sour, Harry was there at her side to wake her from it, always attentive, squeezing the shoulder he’d just been shaking, “S’just a dream, baby, you’re okay.” He’d calm her down, “Go back to bed.”

“Thank you, nightmare killer,” she would murmur, tongue feeling heavy in her mouth, and Harry would laugh, and she’d fall back asleep.

Things were nice, starting to feel a little normal again with the additive closeness she felt with Harry despite knowing what she did. She was starting to feel comfortable again, and not stuck inside all of the time, and she felt like she was getting somewhere with her drawings, growing closer and closer to being able to open her shop.

And then, one night, Harry is waking her up frantically.

Harry is not a frantic person – he is usually calm, collected, and measured. Y/N has never truly seen him in action but she’s sure he makes decisions with precision and tact that typically comes from years of experience, though she doesn’t think he’s been at this that long. He’s levelheaded and respectful and acts well under pressure – that makes him deadly.

So to see him urging her awake, moving quickly, telling her to, “Get up, we need to leave.” Makes her adrenalin spike and panic drip from her ears.

“What?” She was still foggy, disoriented – what time was it? Her clock says it’s three in the morning.

“We need to go,” he is reaching beneath her bed, dragging out a bag – her “Go” bag, is what she always called it, something Thomas had instructed her to make even when she was little. It was a duffel of clothes, toiletries, and things that would take too long to grab in the event she needed to leave an area quickly. She’d only ever had to grab it once before when she was younger, but she couldn’t remember why. Though now that she thinks about it, it seemed like it might have been close to the time that Harry had disappeared.

She doesn’t check her go bag often, beyond replacing the toiletries that may have lived past their shelf date, so she was also surprised to see Harry pull a gun from it. A gasp leaves her mouth, she’s still moving too slowly, trying to catch up with what’s happening as he’s fitting it into the holster, “Wait, what? What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

He’s zipping the bag up, “Bill was fired –”

“What?”

“- and it got ugly, he shot at Martha. There’s reason to believe he’s on his way here.”

“But why –”

“There’s no time to explain everything,” he threw the duffle over his shoulder, “We need to leave.”

Her head is spinning, she knows she’s probably annoying him, but she can’t help but search for something to say, for a question to ask, to try and understand what was happening, if she was dreaming or not, if this was another nightmare, “What –”

This time Harry cuts her off by taking her face in his hands – he was still gentle, but she could sense the urgency, “I will explain as soon as we’re safe, I promise you, baby, but right now we need to leave okay? Get your phone but turn off the location. We’ll go down the back stairwell to the parking garage.” She still seems hesitant, confused, but Harry runs a thumb over her cheek, “Do you trust me?”

And she does. . .she trusts him implicity, more than she should, probably.

“Yes.”

“Good,” he replied quickly, “Come on.”

#WRITING #WOOOOO #YAHTZEEEE #OKAY #I HOPE YOU GUYS LIKE IT :D #THIS IS A MEGA SLOW BURN IM SO SORRY #I DIDNT EXPECT IT TO BE #BUT YOU KNOW #EEEEEK #OKAY I HOPE YOU ENJOY #IT WAS FUN TO WRITE!#LOVE YOUUUU #WOOOOOOO

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magpie-jaybird · 2 years ago

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NSFW Miguel O'Hara Headcanons

I haven't even seen the movie yet but I'm hyperfixating on the man AND he's hot as fuck so here we go. More may be added as I go further down the Miguel whirlpool.

Reminder: these are just stupid personal headcanons to fuel my delusional lil gremlin mind, take them with a grain of salt

If any of my friends see this, no you didn't

He's a switch but more dom-leaning

His default mode is Rough™ but he has his gentle moments

He's got pet-names for days

100% loves to bend you over a desk or take you against a wall

A biter. Have you SEEN those fangs?

Lives for marking you up. He'll put those fangs and claws to good use

Possessive of his partner, regardless of the status of your relationship. He'll get grumbly and grumpy if he sees you hanging with someone else. Hence the marking kink

Also into cock-warming

Likes hunting/chasing you down. He enjoys the adrenaline rush

Will pull you into his lap and hold you against him while he gets all handsy with you

Has stamina for DAYS. It hardly stops at one round with him

VERY touchy. Will not leave a single inch of your body untouched

Doesn't matter what position you're in, he wants to see you. He loves seeing you fall apart completely

Very much into pinning you down. Good luck trying to get out of his hold, he's persistent and built like a damn mountain

He flip-flops between dirty talk and sweet talk depending on his mood

For the love of god, run your fingers through his hair. It's a weakness of his, 1000% drives him up a wall

His waist and the upper-middle part of his back are his weakspots

Good with his hands and mouth

He's not very loud. He's more of a grunt, growl, low groans kinda guy. Will absolutely mutter things into your ear whilst blowing your back out. When he gets closer, cue the incoherent Spanish mumbling

Provides damn good post-sex cuddles. Look at those fucking arms, those are CUDDLE ARMS AND I REFUSE TO BE TOLD OTHERWISE-

I feel like he's not the "villainous chin tilt" type. He's more of a "face grab" kinda guy, which reminds you how big his hands are. Also a throat grabber when the mood is right

Not really NSFW but outside of intimate scenarios, he's more reserved about outward displays of affection at first, but as he grows more fond of you, he has to touch you in some way (putting his hand atop of yours, a hand on your shoulder/back/lower neck when y'all are walking through a crowded space, his side brushing against yours, anything goes). In public/around others he's not AS upfront about it, but in private, he's very hands-on. This tired, angry man is touch-starved af because I said so

#miguel o'hara #miguel o'hara atsv #spider man 2099 #miguel ohara #miguel o'hara headcanons #n/sfw #suggestive #miguel o'hara smut #across the spiderverse #miguel o'hara x reader #atsv #atsv miguel #spiderverse #spiderverse 2 #spider verse 2

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makeyoumine69 · 1 year ago

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Unravel Desire

— PAIRING: Alpha!CatBoy!Patrick Bateman x Innocent!Omega!Reader

— SUMMARY: Being an Omega is hella hard, especially an undercover one like you, who has always hated the idea of belonging to someone just because of their biology. You have managed to keep your true nature a secret for a long time, but your mask of disguise begins to crack when the ever-cunning Patrick Bateman lays his eyes on you.

— CONTAINS: A/B/O dynamics, flirting & seduction, manipulative behavior, Patrick being a violent douchebag (not to the reader) and abusing his power.

— WORDS: 1.7k

— A/N: My new smutty miniseries is here! Tomorrow I'm going to make a full Masterlist for this story. I'm very nervous about this one, and I really hope you like it!

— LINKS: [MASTERLIST] [buy me a coffee]💓

Being an Omega was hella hard, especially an undercover one like you. You decided to hide your true nature because you wanted to be free and not belong to someone like an Alpha, who was so arrogant and brash just because of their biology. Even though you were an Omega, you managed to get a job at one of the best law firms in New York, and your boss was the only person who knew your secret. Why did you trust him? Well, because his daughter was an Omega as well, so he kind of empathized with you and that helped you to settle down in your life. And for a while you had even forgotten about all the shit you had to go through and how many times you were so close to the point of no return when some random Alphas almost kidnapped you.

Everything seemed to be fine until one day you met a mysterious yuppie — Patrick Bateman — in your office, his brown eyes caught you off guard the moment he spotted you, and not to mention that it was obvious he was an Alpha even before you got close to him because his pheromones were very strong. Probably if you didn't use any suppressors you would start soaking right away, but thank God you never forgot to use them.

Patrick was standing right next to the door to your boss's office and for a moment you even thought about turning around and coming back later, after Bateman leaves, but as soon as you turned to walk away you heard his velvety voice that sounded like a purr:

"I'm sorry, Miss. Maybe you can help me?"

Damn!

With a sharp inhale, you spun around to face him — his gaze was so fucking captivating that you even forgot, for a moment, who you were and what you were doing here.

"Miss? Are you okay?" He chuckled, and that helped you come back down to earth.

"Oh yeah… sorry! I've had a busy day," you smiled, and only now did you notice his furry ears that matched his dark hair perfectly. "How can I help you?"

Patrick smirked back and walked over to you, offering you a handshake. "Pat Bateman."

Confused by his sudden gesture, you looked down at his palm, which was so large, and slowly slid yours into it. The moment you touched, you felt a strange tingling in your gut, but you managed to act naturally.

"I know who you are." You explained, taking your hand away and trying to ignore his strong scent, which definitely had an intoxicating effect on you. It was so strange, that had never happened to you before.

"Really?"

"My boss told me, and speaking of him, I was supposed to bring him some documents, so I don't really have much time," the more you stared at him, the more embarrassed you became, and that was actually annoying. "Sorry, I didn't mean to sound rude."

"Ohh, I doubt a pretty lady like you could offend anyone," he crooned, looking around at the door behind him. "Well, your boss seemed like a very busy person."

"We live in a busy city."

Grinning, Bateman cocked his head to the side and glanced down at the exposed part of your legs, the parts that were not hidden under your skirt. He did it very quickly and casually, but you noticed it and your heart did a flip-flop in your chest.

"That's right," he moved even closer, his tall frame hovering over you like a mountain. "I would really appreciate it if you would help me make an appointment with your boss as soon as possible."

You couldn't help but swallow hard. "How soon?"

"Mmm, how about… right now?"

Patrick took another step and now you were standing face to face.

"R-right now? I mean… I..." you stammered, literally afraid to raise your eyes to meet his dark ones. "I don't think he'll be mad if you come with me."

"Good," he murmured almost into your ear, his fluffy tail caressing your hip in an almost sensual way, but it was enough to make you flinch, which made him laugh. "Sorry, I just couldn't stop myself from trying to calm you down. You look so adorable when you're... scared."

A nervous giggle escaped your dry lips. "I'm sorry, what?"

Bateman didn't answer and that really freaked you out — for a second you thought he could see right through you.

"So what about the appointment?" His sudden change of mood was both irritating and fascinating, as you didn't even realize you'd been looking straight at him for more than 30 seconds.

Coughing a little, you got serious and fixed your skirt twice — the way his hazel eyes glided over your body made you feel completely naked.

"Let's do it, but quickly!"

After you said that, you walked past him and knocked on the door several times. Patrick took out his cigar and put one hand in his pocket. The longer your boss didn't answer, the more anxious you got, because you could feel the artery on your neck beating so fast that the area around it literally burned. When the door finally opened, you rushed in faster than the speed of light, causing your boss to jerk to the side.

Please, could this day just be a bad dream?

Almost half an hour later, Bateman was sitting across the wooden table from your boss, puffing on his cigar and watching the golden liquid splash in his glass.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Bateman! If I only knew you were coming, I would invite you inside as soon as possible!" Your boss grumbled, nervously tugging at his tie.

"Forget it," Bateman hissed, throwing one leg over the other. "I want to ask you something. That girl — she's special, right?"

Your boss hiccuped and nervously downed his whiskey in one gulp. "What girl?"

With a loud thump, Patrick slammed his glass down on the table, causing a poor old man to jump in his seat. "Stop playing dumb! You know exactly what I mean!"

"I... I really don't," he raised his hands defensively. "Mr. Bateman, I..."

"Shut the fuck up and listen," Patrick got up from the chair and started to walk back and forth, puffing on his cigar from time to time, and when he got closer to your boss, he blew rings of smoke right in his face. "That girl who just left your office, she is special. I could tell from the moment I met her. And you," he suddenly grabbed the old man by the throat and squeezed hard. "Fucking idiot, are you trying to convince me that I'm wrong?! You think you're immortal?"

Bateman gritted his teeth around the cigar, revealing his white, sharp fangs.

"I'm s-so sorry! I really know nothing about her!"

Patrick was like a wild beast on the hunt, his eyes narrowed and his tail waving from side to side as if he was about to pounce on your boss.

"Have you forgotten that hiding Omegas is a fucking crime?" Bateman's voice lowered. "But luckily you're a fucking lawyer. Maybe that would help you, otherwise you would be in a fucking cell until your last day!"

Harshly, Patrick let go of him and the old man fell back into his seat.

Breathing heavily, your boss rubbed the red marks from Patrick's grip and whimpered. "Wha... w-what do you want me to do?"

A loud chuckle of satisfaction erupted from Bateman's broad chest when he heard those words. "That's what you should have said ever since the beginning, you old, stupid idiot," Patrick tapped his cigar, causing the ash to fall on your boss's suit. "My terms are pretty simple - you just give me the girl and I won't tell anyone about your 'little secret' so you can keep your puckered ass untouched… if you get my drift."

Bateman winked shamelessly at the old man and smiled wickedly as he saw his face getting duller by the second.

"All right, all right! What should I do?"

"You don't have to do anything," Patrick said before finishing his drink. "Just let her fall into my hands. Everything would flow naturally, because you know... nature is unstoppable," he put the glass back on the table, his eyes darkening at the thought of you. "Even if she doesn't know it yet, she won't have a choice."

With that, Bateman turned on his heels and walked towards the door.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," he turned back to your boss. "If you decide to play dirty, I'll make sure your little company ceases to exist."

And with that, Patrick finally left. Your boss closed his eyes from the searing pain in his chest, he thought he was going to have a heart attack.

This night was full of strange things, starting with the fact that you couldn't sleep and ending with the damn fever you had. At first you thought it was just a cold, but then you realized it was something kind of a heat, you remember a long time ago one of your friends, who just disappeared one day, told you about that strange feeling when your body was literally on fire and you wanted nothing more than to feel those big palms on your breasts...

Wait, what?

Panting, you sit on your bed and try to calm your heavy breathing, feeling little drops of sweat running down your forehead. Every time you closed your eyes — you had the images of him, his broad shoulders and dark, mesmerizing eyes in which you could drown.

Damn it, how did this happen?

You fidgeted on the sheets, rubbing your wrist — the place where he touched you. Slowly, and a little frightened, you brought your hand to your face, inhaling his masculine scent that made you gasp with… need? A sudden doorbell made you almost fall off the bed, but you managed to keep your balance at the last moment. Terrified, you got up and put on your silk robe before carefully stepping into your hallway. Trembling slightly, you decided to wait a moment in case someone could make it by mistake, but when the bell rang again, you pressed a hand to your chest and felt your heart beating so damn fast.

Who the hell could it be at this hour?

P.S. Thank you for reading until the end! Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I don’t have a taglist. You can follow my side blog @makeyoumineagain and turn on notifications to know when I update!

#american psycho #patrick bateman x reader #patrick bateman imagine #patrick bateman #patrick bateman x female reader #patrick bateman x you #slasher x reader #slashers x reader #slasher x you #patrick bateman headcanon #christian bale smut #christian bale x reader #patrick bateman reader #christian bale

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the-real-treasure · 6 months ago

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Treasure Treasure!

An OPLA Sanji x Reader

Master List Here

Previous Chapter: Shipwrecks and Hopeless Dreams

Chapter Two: Straw Hats and Treasure Maps

Summary: There's a boy looking for a map, and his dream echoes through you like his ringing laughter. His orange haired thief and green haired swordsman look less then infused.

Trigger Warnings: Threats and descriptions of violence, swearing, torture, threatening language and behaviour, Reader's Devil Fruit power is overwhelming and overstimulating, blood, Reader becomes animalistic and violent Word Count: 7,042 **Edited 12/09/24**

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

The music and the sounds of the bar around you rattled through your brain. The dull light cascading through the smoke addled air along with the pungent tang of beer made you grit your teeth hard enough to grind fine powder, and the man across from you drawled with such a lack of enthusiasm he may as well have been dead. Your canines, unnaturally sharp in your mouth, nicked the inside of your lips and the metallic taste filled your mouth.

"I tolds your boss, I wouldn't be negotiating no more when yous got here. I said 700 berry per lot, he said no, I said yes, I gots no response so that means yes. Now it's 700 per lot or you don't get nufink."

(Anotherbeerplease)(Letmetryletmetry!)

You want to rip your face off. You instead drop your head into your hands and started to knead at your scalp with your fingertips. The scratch of the clean dry bandages on your face was a soothing balm to pounding of your skull as everything around wished for something else.

"You got your response. It just so happened, I'm the one delivering it, not the mail coo. If you would take the damn letter you could read it yourself, and take the order while you're at it."

(Mostfamousmarine,that'llbeme)(Moneymoneymoneymoney)(Prettyladyatthebarwon'tyoulookatmeagain)(Moneymoneymoney)

You whack your hand down to the letter resting on the table and once again, push it over to his side, nudging it against his pint of lukewarm beer and cooling curry buns. Reeling back away from the table, you let your back arch over the back of the chair, face up towards the ceiling, listening to his scuffs and snuffles as he finally, finally rips open and reads Zeff's letter.

Why does he always send me?

You lean back further.

I am no negotiator.

Further still.

Maybe because he wants me to stop hovering at the kitchens. Says Sanji doesn't need me watching him like a hawk.

Further. Skin scraps over paper as the letter is flipped.

Could be right. Could be wrong. I made the promise, he doesn't know that.

You pushed away from the table fully, stretching your back out as far as possible, the tips of your toes just barely grazing the floor beneath you still. The very top of your head awkwardly grazes a red clothed back of the person sat behind you, straw hat perched on a nest of curly dark hair, head buried in a bowl. The dream, the wish, hits you so hard it's like a lightning strike, pure intense white hot energy coursing through you, sending you toppling fully into the boy in a shock.

(I WILL SAIL TO THE GRAND LINE)

(Your head throbs as energy cascades through you, the line ringing the centre of the world screaming with power and energy)

(I WILL FIND THE ONE PIECE)

(Something, something, pulses through the world's energy, a ringing echo cascading through mountains and islands and beasts and boats as something on the Grand Line wakes up)

(AND I WILL BECOME)

(Oh)

(KING OF THE PIRATES)

(Oh.)

You land on the floor with a thump. The boy flailed in his chair, knocking a plate over his pink-haired friend as he whirled around to look at you. You lay on the floor, eyes wide and arm outstretched and pointing to the south, heartbeat echoing in your ears.

He stared at you. You stared back. The liquor merchant sat across the table from you quietly dropped the letter on the table and shuffled out of his seat to the door.

"How do you plan on finding the One Piece?"

You sounded breathless even to your own ears, voice barely even a whisper, and as your blood finally started to move again, you watched his and his companions eyes widen.

"How do you know that?!" The frantic whisper poured out of the pinkette as he began to shake in his seat.

"I heard it." The straw hat boy cocked his head like a pup.

"Where?"

"In you." His eyebrows furrowed and he offered you his hand to help you up. You take it. "I ate the Treasure Treasure fruit. If someone has a dream, a really true wish I can hear it and guide them to it." You grimaced and rolled your shoulders in an awkward shrug, "In a roundabout sort of way."

His eyes gleamed as a smile erupted over his face. He hadn't released your arm and started pumping it up and down enthusiastically and talking quickly and what you assumed was quietly for him.

"I'm Monkey D. Luffy!" He gestures behind him, "This is Koby! We're going to steal a map of the Grand Line, get a ship and find the One Piece!" He released your arm and pointed a finger directly into your face. "JOIN MY CREW!"

You blink. The sounds of the bar around you dull as you roll the offer around in your head.

"No." His face falls. "Well," It brightens again immediately, "No." It falls again. "I, uh-I have important people, that I need to stay with." A beat. "I owe them a lot, I can't just leave them."

"They can't come with us?"

The pink haired boy waffled for a second and you blinked.

"N-no, he, they'd never leave the restaurant. Now, excuse me, I have to do my job here...?" You eye him as he shuffles the chair back in place.

"Hey."

"Yeah?"

"Your people, who are they, what do they do?"

"A cook, he's a chef!" You smile, but grab it in between your teeth to gnaw on your lip for a second. "He's the best in the East Blue. He has a dream and I'm gonna help him find it one day. I can't leave him to join some pirate crew. Not forever." You looked back up, eyes meeting Luffy's and you pause. His beaming grin had diminished, shrinking into a softer more thoughtful smile, crooked at the edge.

"Ok, you sit, we eat, we steal the map, we go get your friend and we set sail to find the One Piece." He nodded in decisiveness.

"That's-? What? No, I said no!" He pulls you to the table to sit with them.

"Come on, sit!" You fumble for a minute, he had completely dismissed your argument, but your heart and head thrummed with his energy and your feet wouldn't carry you away.

You sit.

The lady, the owner of the bar sets another plate down at your hand and you pull it away sheepishly.

"W-we already have our food.." Koby mumbles and Luffy shakes his head, lowering the plate he was licking clean.

"No, more is better, more is better, and our new friend hasn't eaten!"

"Y/n."

"Hah?"

"My name, it's Nakayoshi Y/n."

"Ah." Again, the smile stretches across his face. "It's good to meet you! Eat, you gotta feed the brain!" He leant forward and took one of the rice balls of the plate and looked down at the table contemplatively. "I can't get inside the base through the gate, but maybe... maybe... maybe what if I get inside flying? I can grab on to a bird or something."

Oh no.

"That's a terrible idea."

Koby looked around nervously at the marines at the surrounding tables. "Keep your voice down."

Hearing a thunk, you look over Luffy's shoulder to the door as a green haired man with three swords walked in, pulling a bloody sack behind him. You keep eyes on him as he approaches the bar, leaning back in your chair to keep him in eyeline.

"A bottle for me and one for my friend." His voice is completely monotone. He sounds exhausted, or maybe bored. "He's had a rough day."

You smile as she leaves to bottles on countertop, her daughter rounding the corner away from him giggling. Your eyes trail her as she comes back around carrying a plate of oddly coloured rice balls.

"What's this?"

She smiles up at him. "Rice balls! For you."

"You made them yourself?"

"Mm-hmm!" She pushed the plate closer to him.

"What's the brown stuff?"

"Chocolate! Makes everything taste better." You cringe internally, but perhaps that was the 'growing up surrounded by hoity toity customers in a fancy floating restaurant'.

Her mother calls her away, but as she turns she collides fully with a tall lean man with long blonde hair, knocking the plate out of her hands and on to the floor.

"You stupid stupid girl!" He snarls, and mushes one of the rice balls under his shoe. You pulled yourself up straight and saw Luffy watching as well. You knew Helmeppo. Most everyone who deals through Shells Town knew the spoilt bratty son of the Marine's captain. Most everyone also dislikes Helmeppo, the boy leaving a sour taste in the mouths of basically all who make contact with him. "Why don't you watch where you're going?"

"Rika, apologise to our guest!" The little girl shrinks into herself and does so.

"I'm s-so sorry."

Helmeppo mumbles and mocks the girl's apology, lip quivering fakely. "Next time, I won't be so nice."

"You dropped my food." The green haired man stands from the bar and crouches down beside the spilled plate and smashed rice ball. He pulls a mangled morsel off the ground and eats it slowly. Your stomach twists for a moment, memories of eating far worse driving to the forefront of your mind. "Mm. Delicious." The little girl smiles at his compliment. He puts the remaining rice ball back on the plate and leaves it on the counter top between himself and Helmeppo. "Now you eat one. And apologise to the girl."

Helmeppo is laughing his dimwitted, open mouth laugh at the audacity of the situation. "Do you know who I am?" Your eyes nearly roll into the back of your head as everyone's attention drops. No one wants to listen to his 'my father is important and that makes me important' schlick. The man's response has you whipping round to attention though.

"A shithead Marine with a bad haircut." Helmeppo snarls and pulls his sword from its scabbard as the man rests back on the bar counter. "I wouldn't do that."

"Oh come on, tough guy. Three swords?" He calls mockingly, cackling at his own humour. "I only need one."

"Okay. But its gonna hurt."

Helmeppo swings his sword down at the man's back, but he's easily blocked by the man's sheath. He pushes the sword back and knocks Helmeppo once in the side, pulling back and striking him across the face, all without drawing a blade. The hit easily knocks Helmeppo to the floor and he scrambles away whimpering. More Marines begin to circle as he easily knocks over a bar stool, kicking it into the legs of one and knocking him down as the other tries to advance on him. Using the Marine's own momentum, he sends him face first into the lip of the bar counter knocking him cold to the floor.

Koby had scrambled under the table you were all sitting at as the fight broke out, yourself and Luffy standing watching as the man launches a tankard into the gut of another oncoming Marine. Helmeppo attempts another strike from the side, but he dodges and sends him careening to the bar, lodging his sword in the wood. He disarms yet another Marine knocking him down and using another to block Helmeppo's third strike before kicking both in the gut and dropping them to the floor.

Jumping on to a table nearer the door, he drops two more with no effort. Stamping down on a sword, he leaps over the Marine's back and somersaults him over the bar. Luffy breathes out a "Wow" beside you.

"Good fighter."

"Yeah!"

Helmeppo whimpers pathetically as the man advances on him, yanking him off the ground and pushing him up against the bar.

"You shouldn't draw your blade unless you're prepared to use it." Sweat was already beading on the blonde's forehead.

"Don't kill me, please. My father will give you anything you want."

"Who's your father?" He really didn't know?

"Captain Morgan. He's in charge of the Marine base."

"Then he owes me money." He yanks Helmeppo up and leaves the bar, dragging the sack with him, leaving a thick layer of silence coating every person as the Marines begin to awkwardly lift themselves up and sort themselves out.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

Luffy and Koby lie side by side in the smaller sail boat you brought from the Baratie. You were only meant to place ingredient orders and confirmed the delivery periods, then head to final port of call but now you're sitting in the dark wondering when you'll arrive back if this loon is going to loop you into shenanigans without your say-so.

"I can't stop think about that fight." You weren't the only one laying awake thinking. The lights of Shells Town glowed behind you and the moon cast long shadows across the harbour water.

"That guy was amazing." Still Luffy's optimism persisted, a trait you were beginning to enjoy despite yourself. "And what's with the third sword?" You let out a snort.

"Yeah. Where does it even go?"

"Right?!"

"No!" Koby cut you both off. "He had to protect that little girl from the Marines, who were supposed to be protecting her." Your mouth drew into a thin line. You knew they were both younger than you, so you supposed this might be his first time meeting the reality of how the world worked sometimes. You don't blame him for his shell-shock, it must've been hard to consider.

"If there are good pirates and bad pirates, then... there are gonna be good Marines and bad Marines too." Luffy turned to smile at his friend. "You'll be one of the good ones."

"Maybe Alvida was right. I don't know anything about the world."

"But you were her prisoner."

"Yeah, but I knew who I was. Now I have no idea."

You stretched out and nudged the top of his head with your shoe, gently pulling his eyes away from the inky darkness of the sky.

“Listen, I don’t know what you’ve gone through, especially if you’ve under the command of that Iron Mace Alvida, the weirdo she it, but I do know people like her. Trust me, they don’t do much else but talk themselves up and not prove it when given the chance. It probably won’t mean much to you, but don't ever take someone's word as the only truth there is. Nothing out there is just black and white. Not Marines, not pirates. Not the sky or the sea or any of the people you’ll meet. You'll never know nothing about the world, same as you'll never know everything. Make some piece with that. People who think they know everything will try and take advantage of you for it, because they’re the worst. Don’t give them the chance.”

His lips wobbled in the darkness and Luffy began poking at his shoulder.

"Hey. Hey! I need to get into the base and find that map, and I could use some help." Koby sat up, looking appalled.

"You want me to help you steal from the Marines?"

"No." Luffy claps a hand on to his shoulder. "Of course not. How about you help me..." He looks up to you, perched at the sail rigging and you shrug, "Get the boat ready. You can handle that, right?"

"I guess so?" He looks round at you as well, wide eyed. "What are you gonna do?"

You follow Luffy's eyeline to the wall of the harbour, a small pipe empty out into the sea.

"I'm working on that."

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

Lifting Luffy up on your shoulders, you let him push up the grate in the middle of the yard of the Marine base, wincing as it clatters while he climbs out. Following behind him, you spot the green-haired man tied to stake in the sun.

"Oh hey. You're that guy from the bar."

"Get lost."

"I am lost. I'm trying to get inside the base." You look around the confines of the courtyard.

"There are doors all over. We may just have to start looking, try to stay lowkey." Luffy spins to face you.

"Can't you just magic point me in the direction of the map?" Both you and the (still unnamed) man looked at him in confusion.

"Huh?" "What."

"With your compass, the-uh, the Treasure Treasure fruit?" You blink and look up to the sky, sighing.

"That doesn't, that's not how it works, it can't do steps, it's like, the main focus of your dream, and that's it. It's that way by the way."

"How far?"

"I have no idea." Luffy looks down, pouting.

"Oh. That sucks." He looks around him. "Hey," He approaches the tied up man, "I saw the way you fight. How did they even arrest you?"

"They didn't. I gave myself up." Luffy looked at him gobsmacked for a moment before turning to look around the courtyard again.

"Interesting choice. I'm sure you had your reasons." The bound man glared up at him.

"You don't know anything about me."

"I know that you protected that little girl from those Marines last night. You're a good guy." You could hear more than see the smile on his face as he spoke.

"I'm Roronoa Zoro, the pirate hunter."

"Well I'm Monkey D. Luffy and I will be the King of the Pirates." Zoro's eyes flicked over to where you stood, bemused and watching the pair.

"And who's that." Luffy looked back at you and gestured for you to introduce yourself. You sighed but obliged.

"I'm Nakayoshi Y/n. I kind of just got roped into this, so I'm helping him now and then going home."

"They're my crew!" Luffy chimed helpfully,

"I'm not."

"And I think you should join it as well." Zoro laughed to himself.

"What makes you think I'd wanna play pirates with you?"

"You're a great fighter!" Luffy's reply was immediate. "I'd say that together, we'd make a pretty good team."

"I kill your kind for a living. Pirate. Hunter."

"We heard you the first time."

"Yea, you keep saying that, but is that all that you are? Is that all you want? What do you think Y/n?" A smile grew across your face.

Maybe he isn't as silly as he seems. You walk leisurely across the yard and stop, crouching down to make eye contact with Zoro.

"I think," you said, leaning forward, "that I want to know..."

(A forest made up of tall thin trees, dappled sunlight and a sticky wet heat clinging to your skin)

"...Why you dream of becoming the greatest swordsman in the world?" His face whips up to glare at you, through the sweat and the sun.

(A bright eyed girl with a white-hilted sword standing in a leafy clearing)

His eyes slid shut and he turned his face away. "I made a promise to someone a long time ago..."

(A memorial ceremony. A shrine)

"...To become the worlds' greatest swordsman."

(A tall man in a long black coat, an ornate cross mounted on his back, with yellow eyes like ring targets)

"Impressive." Luffy was stood behind you, a grin on his face as he looked at your arm, raised and putted, again, to the south. He moved around you both to begin untying Zoro's arms. You rose from your crouch to help him.

"You can untie me, but I'm still not gonna join your crew."

"Okay." Luffy answered plainly.

"I mean it. I don't owe you anything."

Luffy shrugged his response. "I just think it's a waste of time for you to be hanging out here when there's something you want," he pushed his finger up beside Zoro's face, pointing it in the same direction you had gestured to earlier, "out there. Good luck on the sword thing!"

"Hey, can you close this thing behind us?" You and Luffy began to drop back down into the drain.

"Thanks!"

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

"WOAHHH!"

"LUFFY!"

With a great smash, he tumbled through the grate, landing on and destroying a table directly below. You stuck your head through, peeking around for anyone who might have heard.

"You're awful at this whole sneaking around thing!"

"How was I supposed to know it wasn't safe to climb over?!" As you swung yourself down a tad more gracefully than him, he looked round and made eye contact with a girl in a Marine's uniform a few rows over. He ducked, pulling you with him and saw she had as well. Standing back up right, and nearly knocking you over, he hummed to himself and rounded the corner to find her, only for her to lift a staff and swing it around towards his head.

"Woah! Hey, hey, hey! No! Don't do that."

You both stared at him wide eyed as he tried to wave her staff down.

"I'm taking you both into custody for trespassing on a Marine base."

"I knew this was going too well." You began to remove your aqua coloured jacket, but Luffy raised a hand to stop you.

"Better take yourself into custody too, 'cause you're not a Marine."

"Am too." Oh she's definitely not.

"No, you're not. We heard everything. You stole that guy's uniform. And now you're looking for my map." You look at him incredulously over his shoulder.

"You heard that while falling through that grate in the ceiling?"

"Yes."

"Fair enough."

"Your map?"

"Yep! Our map to the Grand Line. Y/n can only point us so far, literally." You wrinkled your nose at him and knocked him on the top of the head with your fist. "AYE! It was a joke!"

"I'm still not part of your crew, remember?"

"It's my map, and I'm not leaving here without it." Luffy pushed passed her, heading for the stairs, you following closely behind.

"Suit yourself."

"Hey." She called after yous, but Luffy wasn't stopping, so you weren't either. "Hey! Get back here!"

Walking through a corridor decorated in blue and cream with shields and weapons across the walls, the orange haired girl finally caught up with the both of yous.

"Do you have any idea what you're doing?" She clung to both of your arms as you walked on.

"Looking for that Morgan guy's office."

"That's where the map is, so if you want it, that's where you need to be." You nodded along to Luffy's reasoning. You didn't notice, what with the girl clinging to your arm and your eyes on the windows, that Luffy had stopped and pushed open a random door. She pulled you back and pushed you both in through it.

All three of you attempted to peek out the small square window at the passing marines. Sneaking back out into the hall, you moved on.

"That's your plan?" She hissed at yous. "Just walk into Axe-Hand Morgan's office and ask him for the map?"

"We may have to fight him for it." Luffy walk sideways beside you. "Why do they call him Axe-Hand anyways?"

"Because-" She shushed you so aggressively you flinched away.

"You are going to get us all caught if you keep stomping around this place."

"He doesn't understand the meaning of stealth." You hushed to her, "Or subtlety."

"You're one to talk. Shush, we need a plan." Just as she finished speaking, you ran slap bang into the chest of the man himself.

Captain Morgan was tall (a trait he gifted his son), well built (one he did not) and generally intimidating demeanour. (Helmeppo wishes.) With the open tunic vest showing off his broad chest, his size alone would make most people hesitate to cross him. Add to that the metal lower jaw, the epithetical axe for a hand and the fact he was the marine to take down Captain Kuro of a Thousand Plans, and he was beyond a trifle terrifying. For you however, it was the cloying reek of

(famepowergloryfamepowerglory)

that turned your stomach, so overcome with his egotism that you nearly blacked out.

He glared down at all three of you, gaze shifting to the girl between and behind you, you and Luffy, whose quiet revelation of the name's meaning wasn't lost on you from your position beside him.

"C-Captain Morgan, sir, I was just escorting these prisoners to the brig." You squinted gently at her stutter. Big as he may be, between yourself and Luffy you were half sure he would be no problem to beat. "They were arrested for causing a disturbance in the square."

"Yeah, prisoners." The sigh that you caught in your throat was large at Luffy's addition. Once again, no subtlety.

"You're that one from Baratie. The dishwasher who does the orders. I better not have any of those cooks come and start something for putting you away for causing nonsense, you understand?" You give a quick nod as he leaned over the pair of you to peer down at Nami. "I've never seen you before." Her nerve held.

"I'm a transfer from the 77th, sir." He lifted her chin with his axe.

"What's your name, Private?"

"Nami, sir. I put in a request to serve under your command." Appealing to his ego, very clever. Morgan pulled away.

(FAMEpowerGLORY)

"Wise choice. I expect great things from you."

"Yeahhh. She's the best!" As Luffy whacks Nami's shoulder good naturedly, you grind your teeth and blow your breath out through your nose. You could pummel him. "I-I mean, she's the best of the worst. I hate Marines."

Morgan looked between yourself and Nami disbelievingly, and you hope the snarl on your face was convincingly directed at him and not your idiot idiot captain-to-be. He straightened and nodded to the orange haired girl. "Carry on."

He pushed down the centre of your trio, knocking you all out of the way as he passed. Luffy sighed with relief.

"That was amazing. Admit it, we do make a pretty good team!"

"We are not a team." Nami set off at a brisk pace, and you and Luffy followed.

"Whatever you say- Ah!" Moving past him, you gave him a firm whack on the back of the head. "Now all we have to do is figure out a way to get to Axe-Man's office." Nami pulled you all to a dead stop and took something from her pocket. You both stared at what was in her hand.

"Are those... his keys?"

"How'd you do that?!" He asked excitedly. Nami smiled at him shortly.

"I'm a thief."

"Ahhh. You know!" And off you set again, "You're really good at thieving... and a good talker too. You should think about joining my pirate crew."

In a flash, she had grabbed him and pushed him against a wall. You lunge forward and grab the shoulder of her uniform but stop as she does.

"Let's get one thing straight. I am never joining anything with you. I hate pirates. HATE them!" Luffy smiled after her as she stomps away down the corridor.

"That's because you don't know me yet!"

Finally reaching the giant wooden doors, Nami unlocked them and you all quietly pushed inside.

"This guy really likes himself." And that was an understatement. On both walls were giant, nearly floor to ceiling, portraits of the man and in the corner stood a giant statue depicting his likeness.

"I'm going to find the map. Pretend neither of you are here." Luffy answered as he spun about the room and you moved to look out the two large windows.

"But we are here."

"Why do you want the map so badly anyway?" He turned away from inspecting the paintings and came up behind her.

"I'm gonna use it to find the One Piece and become King of the Pirates." She scoffed.

"Figures."

"What?"

"Every idiot dreams of finding the One Piece. People like you believe in something and you don't even know what it is." Luffy spun the telescope at the window round and looked through it.

"Well yeah! Don't you?" Turning to direct the telescope at her continued searching, he asked "So why did you decided to become a thief?"

"I didn't decide. I needed to eat. You do what you have to, to survive."

You hummed in agreement and advanced on to the desk with her. "You're right. Nothing more important than food." Luffy grinned at you as she sighed.

"Just find the map." Luffy moved away from the window and inspected the collection of axe-hand-attachments mounted on the wall behind the desk. Twisting and pulling one, a loud clunk sounded and the entire desk rolled to the side to reveal a safe encased in the floor. You hummed.

"Clever. I thought safes were normally hidden in walls."

Nami lay on the floor ear pressed to the safe as she tried to crack it when the alarm claxon started blaring.

"Uh... Do you think they know we're here?"

"No, I think they're after the other thief and two idiot pirates trying to steal a map."

Luffy sniggered. "What are the odds of that?" He stopped as Nami glared at him. "Kidding! But you might wanna work a little faster."

"And I'm not a pirate!"

"No," she agrees pointedly, "You're a dishwasher. Which is so much more helpful."

A loud banging started echoing from the door.

"OPEN UP!" Morgan roared from the other side. "BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE 153RD MARINES!"

Luffy dropped to the floor beside Nami. "You need to hurry!"

"I can't rush this!"

"Please hurry!" A crack sounded as Morgan struck the door with his axe. "I have an idea." Luffy took hold of both handles and began pulling straight up.

"That's your idea."

"Genius. Absolute genius." Your flat face said otherwise.

"Yeah." As he pulled he began to step back and his arms...

Began to stretch.

You and Nami stare in shock horror for a second before moving to wrap your arms around him, helping to pull.

The rivets wedging the safe to floor finally gave way and all three of you were launched out of the window, down into the courtyard below.

Dust blew up around you as you all rolled away from the safe and tried to stand.

"How-how did you do that?" She turned on you as she threw her Marine jacket off, "Did you know he could do that?"

You shook your head, eyes still swimming from the fall as Marines swarmed the yard.

You all three began to attack any Marine around you, Nami knocking them back forth and down with her staff as Luffy launched his body around like a high powered slingshot. You, as always went for the 'claw nails across face and kick in the chest' method and, if that didn't do the trick, you lunged your teeth into arms and wrists and shoulders as Marines tried desperately to throw you off, shrieking about the 'rabid manic' scratching or biting them. There was blood under your nails, blood staining your bandaged hands, blood in your mouth and blood dripping down the outside of your newest aqua jacket with the glorious gold three detailing you had received only a few months prior from the whole staff of Baratie for your birthday. If it didn't come out, this place would burn.

Glancing up, you watch the sprinting figure of Zoro running past the chaos in the yard towards the wide open front gates. With a snarl, you race after him.

Rocketing down the narrow archway after him, you fail to spot he had stopped just before leaving and end up barrelling straight on and into the street outside. Stumbling to a dead stop, every person turns to look at you.

You strike a menacing figure. Your brown work pants and darker brown boats are coated in dust and dotted with the blood dripping from your nails, your hair whipping around you wildly in the long ponytail, pulled back with a winding strip of gold fabric. Nails unusually sharp, but able to scale and gut a fish with no knife. The shirt and belt you wore were dark already anyway, so nothing but a layer of dust showed on them. It was the gleaming of light of the aqua jacket on to your blood splattered face that really caused pause. Your lips, dry and cracked at this point from heat, were stained wet and red, with smears across the coat dripping on to the ground below. But it was your eyes.

Misty pale eyes with gold specks for pupils, swirling rings of glowing aquamarine surrounding them as the energy of Shell Town’s wishes echoed through you, and one oh-so-familiar whistled past you.

You glare around as whispers started and the crowd closed ranks. And out of the throng stumbles…

(MoneyMoneyMoney)

Zeff’s fucking liquor merchant.

You lunge forward, fighting inside the Marine base forgotten as you grab a hold of the skulking man and lift him square off his feet.

”You coward. You don’t ever run off on the crew of Baratie, do you understand?!” He gave a quivering nod, sweat beading on his forehead. “Listen to me now, and you listen good.” You pull him close to your face, blood and spit flicking on to his face. “You will get five. Hundred. Berry. Per lot. And not a coin more. If I get back, and those shipments haven’t been delivered, I will come and I will find you. No matter where you run, no matter where you hide. I will find your miserable excuse for a salesman arse, and I will skin you alive, pulverise your body into mulch and feed you to every Mail Coo across the entire ocean so that your remains will be shit from here to the furthest reaches of the West Blue. Do I make myself clear to you little man?!”

His head had been nodding almost the entire time, only speeding up when you had finished. You dropped him back on his feet and turned back to the base. Zoro was still standing at the door.

”That was a bit intense.”

”Zeff always says, 'be thorough with merchants if they try to back out of deals.'" You give a rough, raspy imitation of his voice, "I would have done that in a quiet dark alley last night normally, but you know.” You gestured into the yard and he nods in understanding as you speak as one.

”Luffy.” You shrug helplessly.

”What can you do. Don’t think I'll get the chance to come back here for a bit if Mr Straw Hat intends to lug me about like he's been doing, so thought I’d at least get my job done before accidentally abandoning them for who knows how long.”

”You sound hopeful.”

”And you sound like someone ready to mess up some Marines. You coming, or are you gonna stand there like a sorry sack of shit with a dumb outfit and an even dumber look on your face?” And you start to walk back in.

”You’re wearing an aqua jacket with gold accents, you don’t get to judge outfits.” He follows anyway.

”No comment about the face though, interesting.”

“Sorry I was too busy being blinded by the awful tack wafting off you.”

”This was a birthday present from my family!” You sprint back in to rip a Marine off of Nami, but you hear him yell over the din of battle.

”I’m so sorry they hate you!” You snort. Nami spins round to you and jabs a Marine in the face over your shoulder.

”Have a nice chat?” She grunted twirling her staff and knocking one to the ground.

”Oh yeah!” You duck under her swing and claw at a mans chest as he sprints past, only for him to be knocked forward by an elasticated arm. “Just tying up some loose ends.”

”LESS TALKING, MORE FIGHTING PLEASE!” She screams over the yelling. And you do, taking down Marine after Marine until you stumble back into your group just as Nami asks “Aren’t you that drunk from the bar?”

”Glad I made an impression.”

Morgan walks forward into the yard, most of his men back away as their leader finally appears.

”The imposter, the pirate hunter, the dishwasher and the prisoner. Fancy that, the four of you working together.” You, Nami, Luffy and Zoro straighten and glare at the oncoming captain.

”Yeah!” Luffy calls. “We’re a crew.”

“I didn't mean to get roped into this.” “We're not together.” “Nope, not a crew.”

Luffy looks back at you all disappointed.

”No enemy has ever escaped my wrath. I alone defeated the Black Cat Pirates. I alone captured Kuro of the Thousand Plans. And I alone keep Shells Town safe from the scum of the East Blue.” You scoff as he pulls his waistcoat off revealing the dark blue no sleeve shirt underneath.

Dropping it in the dirt, he raises his fist and axe. Zoro and Nami twirl their staff and sword through the air, and you and Luffy crack your knuckles. You were ready.

Zoro strikes first as he and Morgan move towards each other. Metal twangs of metal as his blows are blocked by Morgan’s axe. As Luffy swung at him from behind, Morgan catches his fist and attempts to chop of his arm, Luffy pulling away just in time from each of his swings.

You move with Nami back to the unguarded safe, leaping from advancing Marine to advancing Marine, bounding across the court yard the air electrifies with want to

(WIN WIN WIN)

The Marines scatter once more as you and Nami finally slow your assault, turning to watch as Zoro wields all three of his swords, one in each hand and the third in his mouth (so that’s where it goes.) and Luffy with his rubber gumminess, send Axe-Hand Morgan flying with a shout of “Gum Gum WHIP!”

Luffy lets out a whooping cheer and Nami and Zoro retract and sheath their weapons.

”Gum Gum Whip?” Zoro asks incredulously.

”Yeah!” Luffy replies with breathless cheer. You shrug and agree.

”All great fighters call out finishing moves.” Zoro and Nami turn their frowns on you as Luffy cackles and twists his rubber arms around your chest once, twice, three times in a hug that leaves you gasping but laughing along. Zoro sighs as you’re released.

”No they don’t.”

“Hate to break up this beautiful moment, but we need to get this safe out of here. Maybe if we find some rope or something.” You give the metal a gentle kick, and she raises her eyebrows at you as you shrug.

“Or we can do that…” as Zoro lifts the incredibly heavy safe on to his back and starts walking out of the yard.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

“Why are we using your boat and not mine?” Nami frowns at you from the mast.

”Because I don’t like your boat, now get over here.”

”You haven’t even seen it!”

”It looks like a sardine!” Luffy supplies cheerfully as Zoro drops the safe on the deck.

”Careful with that! And yeah, that confirms that I don’t like your boat Y/n, come on.” You growl but make your way on board.

At least the Harbour Master was a regular of the restaurant and would hopefully get word to the crew of the Guppy’s current location. You’re sure Patty would come and collect it, he was always good for putting things back on track. Or making an even bigger mess. It's a toss up.

”Whatever you say,” growled Zoro, “Oh wait, I don’t work for you.”

”I’m sensing a little bit of tension amongst the crew!”

”Not a crew,” Nami and Zoro called back to him, but you stayed balanced between the dock and the boat as Luffy looks up and down the wharf.

”I can’t leave without my friend.” He calls back absentmindedly.

”Can’t wait. The Marines will be here before you know it.” Speaking of the devil, Helmeppo, with the worst haircut you had seen in a while rounds the corner wielding two pistols.

”The Marines are here already. You’re under arrest.” You both begin to laugh as Luffy turns to Zoro.

”What’s wrong with his hair?” Zoro smiled smugly.

”Yeah, I might’ve done that.” In anger, Helmeppo fires off a round into the pillar beside Zoro.

”I won’t let you make a joke of me.” You snigger.

”It’s a bit late for that, genius.” He turns his nose up at you.

”Laugh while you can, dishwasher. I’m taking you in and handing you over to my father. I’ll be the hero. I might even get a medal, or something.”

That something ended up being a punch to the face as Koby launched himself around the corner at him.

"Koby?!”

”Well done! That was good!”

”God that hurt. It also felt really really good too.” Luffy grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him along the dock.

”No time to explain, but we gotta go. This whole island is trying to kill us.”

”I’m not coming with you.” You peered around Luffy as he stopped and turned.

”You sure?”

”Before we met, every choice was made for me. But now I’m gonna do what I want to do. I’m gonna be a Marine. I want to help people that can’t help themselves.” You stepped down on to the dock beside Luffy. “Next time we all meet, we might be enemies.” Luffy smiled.

”But for now, we’re friends!” Luffy clapped him on the shoulder and leaped on to Nami’s boat. Koby looked up at you shyly and gave you an awkward smile. You returned it and made a great show of pulling him in for hug before releasing him with a tight squeeze.

”Don’t let them get to you like they got to the likes of him.” You nodded your head towards the strewn body of Helmeppo. “Look for your own truth in that place, and I’m sure you’ll be fine. Take care Koby.” You follow Luffy on board and, after helping Koby push you away from the dock, you look back at Shell Town, skimming your eyes across the boats until you spot the Guppy and you smile. You doubt you’ll be coming back here. But that’s fine.

It’s not the first time you’d left a familiar sight like this one to the horizon behind you.

Next Chapter: Whispered Wishes and Demanded Dishes

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smolthealmighty · 4 months ago

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Spinaraki Week 4 Day 2: Enough & Load

Can I Be Enough?

Determination can go a long way, but even then a body needs to rest. So when Shigaraki's body finally forces a shutdown in the middle of fighting the monster that is Gigantomachia, can Spinner pick up the slack?

“Does you have are being stupid?”

Even with Gigantomachia beginning to recover from the boulder dropped on his head, Spinner couldn’t help but pause at Shigaraki’s question. “…What?” he asked as he regained his bearings and disembarked said boulder before Machia could try swatting him.

Shigaraki attempted to repeat his earlier question, “Is you are stupid be?” By now Spinner had reach Shigaraki’s side and judging by how far back his eyes were rolled into his head Shigaraki was not doing great.

“Are you seriously trying to call me stupid when you can’t string a coherent sentence together?”, Spinner exclaimed. “The plan worked didn’t it,” Toga yelled as she joined the two, panting somewhat from the aerobics she had to do to keep Machia distracted, “Now we know that the big guy gets briefly stunned by surprise boulders to the head!”

“Almost pancake danger!” Shigaraki hollered.

“It’s Machia, everything’s dangerous!” Spinner shot back. “Look, save the lecture for after your next three-hour nap, you sleep deprived dingus!”

Shigaraki took far too long to process what Spinner said, but responded with a simple flash of the peace out sign… then immediately face-planted the forest floor.

Rushing over, Spinner flipped his leader over to listen for a pulse as Toga checked his breathing.

“Oh thank fuck he’s not dead!” Spinner sighed in temporary relief.

“I’m surprised he was able to stay awake this long,” Toga fretfully commented, “but at least Dabi owes me money now.”

“Screw money! He can’t fight like this, we need backup! Where’re the others?”

“They should be finishing up their break!”

“Call them! Call them now!”

“There’s no service here!”

“Are you kidding me?! Find a hotspot!”

“I think service is better closer to the towns!”

“Then go!”

“Hold on I can buy you some time!”

Toga grabbed Shigaraki’s face and quickly licked off as much blood as she could, transforming into him as she gave Spinner one last bit of advice, “You’ve got five minutes before I change back, scatter!” With that, she started booking it down the mountain with Machia in pursuit, only slightly thrown off by Himiko’s evasive vanishing technique.

Refusing to waste any more time, Spinner quickly picked up his unconscious leader and maneuvered him onto his back, then yanked his scarf from around his neck to tie it around their waists, securing Shigaraki in a makeshift piggyback ride. As he began to run, Spinner ripped two pieces of fabric from his mask and tied them to Shigaraki’s pinkies to prevent any accidental decaying, knowing that he couldn’t keep his leader from getting killed by Machia if he himself died in the process.

‘He’s lighter than I thought he’d be,’ Spinner observed as he leaped over fallen logs.

‘I could’ve sworn he built some muscle while fighting Rockjaw McGee the past two months,’ he ruminated as he felt the ground rumbling as Machia pivoted to close in the gap he worked so hard to build.

‘Am I doing enough to help him?’ he questioned as he dodged the stones being chucked at him from afar.

‘Am I not carrying my fair share of the load?’ he pondered as he scaled a cliff face and cleared the edge just before Machia ran straight into it.

‘If I could just get a stab in, or maybe yeet another rock at his eye, would that be enough?’ he deliberated as he launched himself from tree branch to tree branch, with Machia swatting at the parts of the forest canopy where Shigaraki’s scent was but never landing a hit.

‘Fuck if I could just make this fight a little bit easier for Shigaraki once he wakes up, I wouldn’t feel so damn useless!’ he berated himself, Machia’s roaring engulfing all the sounds of the wilderness yet still unable to drown out Spinner’s own self-loathing.

It felt like days had passed, but was likely only a few hours after Shigaraki collapsed that Gigantomachia reached his 48-hour limit and ended his pursuit to bury himself into the ground for his nap. Every muscle in Spinner’s body was sore, but he had just enough strength to climb back down the cedar tree he had perched in, careful to make sure Shigaraki didn’t slip out now that the chase was over. He startled and moved to shield his leader when he heard the nearby rustling of foliage getting trampled, then relaxed as Toga burst through the bushes.

“We’re here,” cried Toga, with Mr. Compress and Twice hot on her tail, “Are you okay? Did you get squished?”

“We survived,” Spinner panted, shuffling over to the rest of his group, “barely, but we did.”

“Thank goodness you’re both okay.” Twice cried with joy, “We ran all the way up for nothing?!”

“Well look on the bright side,” Mr. Compress stated as he took in the mound where Machia had settled in for his nap. “Now that we’re here early we have more time to plan our next 48-hour match.”

“Shouldn’t we wait until Shigaraki wakes back up?” Spinner questioned. “Too late… ‘m up,” slurred a voice from behind him, and Spinner lowered down to let his newly awoken leader off his back. “What’d I miss?”

“You ate shit on the forest floor so Spinner outmaneuvered Machia while carrying your dead weight like a sack of potatoes!” Toga gleefully explained.

“Shit,” Shigaraki panicked, “did you die?!”

“Does he look dead to you?” Toga deadpanned.

“I mean did my quirk injure you?” Shigaraki clarified, checking Spinner over for cracks anyway.

“No I’m fine,” Spinner reassured him, “Just exhausted and frustrated that I couldn’t do any more than run away and try not to get us killed. I didn’t even get a single hit on Machia except that boulder.”

“Who cares if you didn’t land a meaningful blow? I don’t!” Shigaraki exclaimed, taking a second to face Spinner completely before continuing. “In the face of a man the size of a literal mountain, you held him off and kept me alive with only your physical abilities and intuition. In my book that’s more than enough. You’re enough, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise because I will fight them.”

Spinner really hoped Toga stayed silent because he knew he was flushed pink and if she chose now to start getting mushy, he would surely combust and undo all the progress he made in prolonging his friend’s lifespan.

#spinarakiweek #spinarakiweek4 #spinarakiweek2024 #spinaraki #spinner #shuichi iguchi #shigaraki tomura #smol’s stuff #smol's stories #smol’s weird ass shit

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psychopunky · 5 months ago

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Bad Break Alt. Hospital Pick up

Here's a alt scenario for the hospital pick up scene in my fic Bad Break on AO3. It didn't make the cutting room floor and I scrapped it. Take it as I finish editing the last chapter.

Dude glanced at you before looking back at the road. The car puttered forward appearing to struggle with being on. “Well Cindy said she would stop by at some point. Guess you’ll just be stuck hanging with me.” “Oh the horrors.” You joked looking back at the road. The sight of your home coming into view soothed some anxiety that had settled into your stomach over the week. Dude parks the car, turning it off before getting out. Coming over to your side of the car he opened the door offering you his hands. With effort along with Dude’s help you got out of the car. Your legs are not really working well, making you limp a little when you walk. The wound in your side made getting up and down a challenge. With Dude’s help you made it inside your house. Your legs started to cooperate more with each step but it didn’t stop the soreness. Making it to your bed you flopped onto the bed letting out a sigh. Stretching out on the twin sized bed as Dude moved about the house. Dude stepped out before coming back inside with that damn plastic bag. Sitting on the ground next to your bed Dude leaned against your bed. He started digging through the bag pulling out your few personal items. Along with a mountain of paperwork from the hospital. Some of it wound care, others being long billing information. “What's the damage?” You ask rolling onto your side to look at Dude. As he flipped through the papers you moved closer. Ending up behind him trying to look over his shoulder without having to sit up. “About $2,500 dollars.” You let out a groan rolling onto your back. “Hey, count yourself lucky. Say here before insurance it was $5,000.” Rolling back over you sit up. Leaning over Dude you place your chin on his head. Slowly reaching over the papers he was holding. “I don’t have that kind of money.” You whined rolling onto your back. Dude dropped the papers on the floor not caring for them. Leaning his head back onto the bed he smiled up at you. Taking his glasses off fixing you with a mischievous look. “Oh really you? The little librarian isn’t sitting on a pile of cash?” His voice drips with sarcasm as he looks at you. You narrow his eyes at him reaching over and smacking the top of his head. “Hey I don’t even know if you have a job! For all I know you're a drug dealer.” “Dear if I was a drug dealer in this town I would be set for life. Sure as hell wouldn’t be living in a shitty trailer.” Dude started to shrug off his coat getting ready to settle down with you. “Ya you’d blow through your own stash before you sold it.” You poked back at him. Dude picked up his coat digging through it looking for something. Watching him uninterested for a few moments you frown. “Great, what do you have now?” “Weed, You just reminded me I have a joint somewhere in here.” Dude responded. He pulled out a metal mint tin. Popping it open a few cigarettes along with a few joints sat inside. Dude pulled a joint out before digging into his pants pocket pulling out a lighter.

“Want some?” Dude asked as he lit up. “No thank you, I am still on pain medication. Who knows what kind of effects that will have.” Dude looked at you taking a drag of the joint before speaking. “Goody two shoes, think of it like an adventure.”

“You mean one I wont remember.” You pushed back, closing your eyes. The room was silent once again with the occasional sound of Dude smoking. Closing your eyes to take a nap. The studio home slowly smelled more and more like weed. Not that it mattered you’d probably get contact high from Dudes smoking. Just as you started to fall asleep Dude spoke up. His deep voice stirs you from your half asleep state.

“So wanna tell me what actually happened to you?” Dude asked. Opening your eyes you looked over at him only to find him still sitting on the floor. Dude was taking a drag of the joint not looking at you. “I got mugged, did you forget already?” You teased wondering why he brought it up again. “Then why is your wallet in the bag?” Dude gestured to the plastic laying next to him. Your heart sank for a few moments before you spoke. “Probably they didn’t get it because Cindy and Sam came to help.” Dude finally looked at you. You could tell on his face that he didn’t believe you at all. “Who's Sam?” “Cindy's husband.” “I don’t think you’re telling me the full story.” You shrugged at Dudes words not knowing what else to say. A tense silence dragged on between you both, neither of you breaking eye contact. Dude opened his mouth to speak until a pounding on your door cut him off. Dude looked at the door but not before you caught a glimpse of irritation on his face. Before either of you could do anything the door burst open. Cindy stumbled inside slamming the door shut behind her. Her eyes are going straight to you and Dude. “Are you guys smoking right after you got out of the hospital?” She asked, heading over to the bed. You gave another shrug, not ready to argue with anyone today. Bad enough that you were growing sleeper by the second. “My body hurts.” You said Cindy put her hands on her hips giving you a disappointed parent look. “Anyway, what's up? You kinda stormed in here.” You tried to change the topic. Cindy shot Dude a look before she looked back at you. “Tiffany is out of jail on bond.” You choked at the words. Sitting up quickly looking down at Dude hoping he wouldn’t ask questions. Either the weed was working or Dude was thinking as he sat silent for a moment. You didn’t dare speak hoping he would not put the pieces together. Cindy looked between you both before she spoke again. “I can’t keep lying.” Cindy turned to Dude who just took another hit of his joint. He picked up the metal tin before stubbing out the joint as he blew out the smoke. “Tiffany is-” Cindy started before Dude cut her off. “That did all this.” His voice was matter of fact and calm. Dude stood up, turning to look at you fully. You went to stand up only for Dude to put a hand on your shoulder making you stay seated. He kept his hand on your shoulder as he looked down at you. “So you did lie to me.” Dude mumbled. Scrambling to speak, panic rising in you. Looking at Cindy for help but she just shook her head letting out an audible sigh. Looking back to Dude you spoke softly hoping to not upset him. “Dude … I didn’t do it to hurt you.” “I’m not hurt I’m fucking pissed.” Dude snapped back his voice harshly. His hand gripped your shoulder tighter. “That's why I didn’t want to tell you. I already caused enough problems between you and Tiffany.” Dude scoffed. “Who gives a shit?” “About your wife? Shouldn’t you give a shit?” You wondered if Dude just didn’t give a shit about his marriage any more. Reaching up you tried to push his hand away. His hand stayed firm, not moving when you pushed.

“Tell me everything right now.” Dude skipped over the topic of his wife. Cindy shifted on her feet, nervous energy flowing from her.

Letting out a defeated sigh your shoulders slumped.

“I went to your place to see you. When I saw you weren’t there I tried to leave only to be stopped by Tiffany. She called me a bunch of names, got pissed and attacked me.”

“With a crowbar.” Cindy added

“Thank you Cindy.” You said sarcastically looking over at her.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me this in the first place?” Dude spoke through gritted teeth. His lips in a thin line frustrated clear in his green eyes.

“It wasn’t that important!” You protested. How were you being made the bad guy here?

“Not important?” Dude asked if his voice was low. He started to lean down to be eye level with you. Cindy however stepped in walking to the bed. Standing beside Dude who stood up straight, his eyes going to her.

“What’s done is done. Right now we need to come up with a game plan.” Cindy’s words had Dude and yours full attention.

“What are you talking about?” You asked. Trying to shrug off Dudes hand once again. He gave your shoulder a squeeze not removing it.

“With Tiffany out we don’t know where she will pop up next.” Cindy turned her attention to Dude. “Have you heard from her?”

“No not since we got into a fight after that she went to her moms.”

“Right well last time she didn’t stay there so we have to figure out where to put you.” Cindy ended her sentence by pointing at you.

“My house.” You suggested not wanting to bug your only two friends more.

“No idiot, we need to keep you somewhere we can keep an eye on you.” Cindy snapped back.

“Why not my place then.” Dude asked, looking down at you.

“That’s where Tiffany will go first. Also I don’t think that’s a good place for me to recover.” Looking up at him you rolled your eyes.

“Fine then my place.” Cindy said. She started marching around your house collecting things you’d need to stay at her place.

“Wait, I haven't even agreed.” Dude sat down next to you. Dropping both his hands into his lap.

“Like you have a choice.” Cindy quipped as she kept packing things away.

You watched Cindy move around the house. Looking over at Dude whose face was neutral you frowned.

“Listen I’m sorry I thought it was for the best.”

Dude looked at you before his shoulders slumped. Reaching up he ran a hand through his hair. “I need to be higher for this. I’m not mad at you, I'm pissed at that bitch.”

#postal 2 #postal dude #x reader #reader insert #postal dude x reader #no use of y/n #Take this I'm trying to wrap up this fic.#it’s a rough draft so if you see mistakes no you didn’t

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velocitytimes2 · 1 year ago

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Synergist (come. over.)

Rating: E Word Count: 8.7k. Pairing: Steddie

Read on ao3!

The line doesn’t flip to static, but stays on and lets Steve hear the clack of Eddie’s rings as his fingers jostle his hair and Steve wonders when he learned to discern that one specific sound. Then, oh but then. Then every noise that has ever been and will ever be is tramped out of Steve’s brain and all he knows, all he ever wants to hear again in his goddamn life is the soft groan that sounds like it’s been yanked from Eddie’s gut. “You’ll be the death of me.” - Or: the misuse of radios by teenagers in the 80's to get their rocks off.

The nightmares never really followed a discernable pattern.

And it fucking sucked.

It would be one thing if they were just replays of the events Steve had gone through the past two years. Those memories Steve had lived.

He’d fought and used his fists, and a bat, and cunning, and a jaw that ached when it got cold, all to get out of the sticky moments. The flashes of memories he had from every moment of the last three years were tamed with the knowledge that he had lived.

He’d gotten to the other side.

In all theorem he should come out victorious in his dreams and his nightmares. He’d seen the worst of it and at the end had been okay. He’d lived. He should be able to come out on top in the battles that raged in his head just like he had in reality. He should win.

The fucking issue is, he never did.

It was never that easy. It was never a simple replay.

It was new monsters every time; a different animal bastardized and remorphed. Mountain lions with loose maws stalking him from between cars in the parking lot of Hawkins High. Sharks jumping out of Lover’s Lake and wriggling their bodies until they grew the legs of alligators to chase and chase and chase. Monkeys without eyes raining from the trees in the woods behind his house, diving into his pool after him and tearing into flesh with fleshy, razor-fanged mouths.

Never Steve’s flesh, though. Always the person running or swimming just a step behind him, his shouts of warning never coming in time.

And damn if that wasn’t the worst part.

Always rows of teeth and claws striking out; blood oozing from a different person each night. Their screams the most haunting thing, the thing that kept Steve up when he heard them reverberate in his skull like they were right there. It wasn’t the blood or gore or wriggling tentacles that kept him up, shocked him back awake. It was the fucking screams.

Dustin.

Robin and Nancy.

Max.

Max and Billy combined as the Mind Flayer strikes true.

Mike and Will.

Lucas.

El as she holds both hands in front of her, their only hope.

Eddie.

Eddie’s heart stopping.

Steve screaming when he found them.

Steve’s hands clawing it back to life.

Eddie not breathing even as Steve begged.

The silence that followed.

It was the screams that haunted Steve.

They’d won, they were okay. Mostly. But he still heard their screams.

It usually happened every few nights. The nightmares pressing deeper and deeper until he’s suffocating with lungs ripped out of his body as he slams into the offending thing. Fully ready to sacrifice himself in the place of someone he loves so deeply he can’t fucking breathe. It’s Steve’s purpose in the part; it’s something he’s come to complete terms with. He isn’t smart like the younger boys, doesn’t have the uptake of Robin or Nancy, doesn’t have powers like El and isn’t willing to flay himself for the greater good like Max and Billy. He was Steve. He was strong and a bit stupid and would always – always and forever – put his body in between danger and someone he loved.

So, every few nights the him in his subconscious would try to die in a new and spectacular way, the sacrificial lamb for the good of the people who he loved.

It was an inevitability Steve was okay with. It had been something he’d accepted as he walked down train tracks with Dustin Henderson for the first time. That if something jumped out of the woods and screeched at them, Steve would be in between the kid and the beast. He would die there if the gods looked down and deemed that he should.

It was an odd place to exist, the one between scrambling to survive and being willing to go belly up if it meant a friend would live to fight another day.

It was the reality Steve survived in, somehow found himself constantly enduring perils to shield the ones who were truly important.

So he lets the nightmares be a thing, lets them shock him awake, tries to dull them with weed and booze and cigarettes but that only ramps his mind up for worse, so he really doesn’t do that much anymore either.

They’d been a plague since the Demogorgon had first burst in at Jonathan’s in fall of eighty-three. Back then they’d been vague things that Steve could wake up and chase away with a few gulping pulls from his father’s whiskey.

Three years and too many gasping breaths later it was an expected reality.

The sun rose in the east.

The tides follow the moon.

Steve Harrington can’t sleep, because any time he gets more than three hours he wakes gasping and sweat-drenched.

It’s one of those nights; the ones where Steve can feel the terror itching to get out from under his skin as he throws his body from side to side, twisting in his sheets until the panic pulls him under completely to choke him out to the point of waking up gasping. It’s one of those nights when the walkie-talkie the kids had bullied him into keeping close to his bed snaps to life and shocks his half-asleep brain into consciousness. It’s Mike’s voice, pitched low and shaking that comes first.

“Sound off. Over.”

Steve feels himself groan as he yanks the duvet over his head at the sound, almost asleep and chasing the calm that comes for a few moments prior to the terror taking the reins.

“Buckley over and out.”

“Max. Safe. Over.”

“Lucas. Over.”

Steve can distantly hear thunder rolling. The rain’s been tapping its nails against his window since noon. Storms always seemed to set Mike off. Probably something about Will talking about thunder for so long.

“El and Hopper. Safe and over.”

“Dustin. Over.”

Steve knows he should answer the call, it is the right thing to do, the thing he’s always done. But. But, this night, a storm brewing in the woods and his brain heavy with the fears of what’s hiding within, he feels overwhelmed. So close to the possibility of a few moments of rest prior to the fear gripping his chest. Just another minute. Five more in the quiet. That’s all he needs.

“Will. Over.” Will’s voice is the most sleep heavy, consonants dragging and slurred together.

“Jonathan and Nancy.” The exhausted and rough sound of Jonathan’s voice seizes something in Steve’s chest still, all this time later. Steve isn’t sure why. He'd gotten over his romantic feelings for Nancy a year prior but it still gave his heart a tug when she and Jonathan so easily fit into the box of a couple.

Least of his worries, romance. Shove it aside for later.

“Munson, over.”

It was sometimes still a shock, hearing Eddie’s voice. It’s the one that haunted Steve the most, when the nightmares came. Dustin screaming, begging, Eddie’s blood gurgling.

But.

He was alive. Everyone was alive. Steve hadn’t let anyone with him die during spring break. The sirens and the hospital and the government doctors had kept them all alive - after. Steve had got the heart started again. Cracked sternum, blood on lips. Eddie’s breathing a crackle but there.

He was close to sleep, so close to a few soft moments of reprieve. He was chasing it, head heavy.

Safe. They were all safe, confirmed so.

His eyelids are so heavy.

It’s his turn. He knows it’s his turn. ‘Steve, over.’ It’d be so easy, but something stops his hand, his mouth, his entire being. He’s frozen and exhausted, caught between sleep and awake and maybe he’s dreaming this, hopefully the coming silence meant he was dreaming this. Could sink deeper into bed.

“Steve?” Dustin’s voice cutting the night air, “Do you copy? Over.” Three beats. Let it g- “Steve. Do you copy? Over.” Steve counts them this time. One, two, three. “Steve!” Dustin’s voice has pitched up, worry coating it. “Do you copy?! Over!” One. Tw-

“He’s probably gettin’ all cozy with a pretty gi-“

“Ew, Eddie!”

“What the fuck man!” “Nope, nope, nope.”

“Look dweebs, I’m just saying, there’s reasons guys don’t answer late at night and it’s usually because of-“

“I’m not having sex, Eddie.” Steve feels like he’s suffocating, so fucking done with all of this and he’s heavy with the sleepiness of insomnia that won’t fucking leave his head. “Over.”

“Steve! What the hell! We called a sound off, are you okay? Over.” Dustin’s voice has a panicked quality and part of Steve feels bad, feels guilty. Part of him wants to scream. Just because.

“I was trying to sleep, Henderson,” Steve sighs, throwing an arm over his face, “Something you all should be doing, too.”

The line’s static fills the silence, radio silence. Maybe Steve will actually start screaming. It’d be cathartic.

“You gotta say over, sweetheart,” Eddie jeers, and Steve can see the smile on his face like a burn on his retinas, Cheshire-wide and goading, framed by black hair haloed across a pillow. “Over.” It made Steve’s sleep rattled brain trip on itself, the ease at which he could picture Eddie splayed out summer warm in bed.

“Yeah Steve,” it’s Robin’s voice now, “at least use proper radio protocol, come on. Over.”

“None of you did when Eddie was talking about-“

“No! No Steve!” Dustin’s voice had the pitchy height it got any time Robin or Eddie brought up Steve’s dating life. “No talk about fornication on this line! Over!”

“Just this line that’s banned?” Eddie’s voice dripped with mirth, even in low quality and volume from across town.

“Eddie, I swear, you saved the world and-“

“How about this,” Steve cuts in and rolls over to prop himself on an elbow, feeling like it’s more of the right positioning to take his frustration out in, “everyone goes to sleep now. Over.”

He flops down, face smashed into his pillow, listens as the kids all trickle off, El then Mike because he’d follow her lead to hell – fucking literally – then Lucas and Max, reluctantly Dustin. Robin, wishing everyone ‘sweet dreams loud-ass motherfuckers’, until it was just Eddie who hadn’t signed off properly. And himself.

“Hey Stevie, switch channels for me, over.”

“No. Over.” He knows that tomorrow, in the daylight, he’ll probably regret the blunt push off of his friends, but now it was taking everything in him to just choke words out.

“Steve,” Eddie draws his name out, a whine tinging it. Ever since the recovery, ever since getting everything back to Not-Upside-Down, Eddie had been plastered to Steve’s side. An incessant little thing. Steve hadn’t minded, because an Eddie in his line of sight meant consistent confirmation that Eddie was alive. What Steve had been taught his first-year lifeguarding had worked. Stayin’ Alive, thirty pumps, copper taste of blood on his lips, chest inflate, chest deflate, a coughing body in his arms, not a corpse.

Their friendship had started with Eddie sitting in Family Video with Robin and Steve as they worked. Because apparently saving the world or some shit from an evil superpowered thing didn’t mean you could just… not work. Well, financially it did, actually. The stipend for keeping your mouth shut was astronomical.

Spending it was an astronomical task.

Leaving Hawkins was an astronomical task.

Sitting at home, doing nothing, was an astronomical issue.

So. Job.

Eddie had infiltrated it, then got a job at the music and record shop that opened down the road as the town rebuilt.

Spent his lunch with Steve, watching a half hour of whatever he was watching that day.

Steve had started to bring the movies home each night, so Eddie could watch the end with him when he came over with a six pack, a rolled joint, and two pizzas.

That turned into talking through shit movies.

It turned into Steve telling Eddie about the dreams, about why he didn’t want to sleep alone at his own home.

It turned into Eddie telling Steve he sometimes still felt like his sides were wet, like they were still bleeding even though the scars had healed.

Had continued with Eddie crying, a little drunk, pressed into Steve’s side, thanking him for getting his heart restarted and dragging his body through the gate.

Had continued with Steve telling him he would have done anything but leave Eddie’s body in the fucking Upside Down.

It ended with Steve seeing Eddie every day. Spending their days off driving around or lazed in Steve’s pool or with Steve cooking dinner while the Hellfire Club met in his dining room.

It ended with Eddie in Steve’s life, orbiting him as he orbited Eddie.

It, apparently, ended with Eddie annoying the fuck out of him over a walkie-talkie at two in the goddamned morning.

“Pretty please, Steven? I’ll never ask you for anything ever again ever and ever and-“

“For fucks sake! Will you shut him up, please!” Mike Wheeler’s screech comes through and Steve screams a groan at his ceiling, “Over!”

Steve grapples with his walkie blindly and presses the stupid little button. “Fine. Fine! Munson. What fucking channel? Over.”

“Twenty-seven-point-two-seven-five,” Eddie’s voice is much too smug, Steve is too much of a pushover. Steve can see a clear image in his mind of Eddie curling over his radio, the smile he used in Steve’s dining room when he was DM’ing a campaign showing all his teeth.

Steve changes the channel.

“Yes, Edward?” He asks, pinching the bridge of his nose. A beat of silence.

A beat longer.

Steve screams.

“I’m not doing that nerd fucking shit, Eddie, I swear, I’m not playing this game tonight, okay? D1. I’m fucking dead, or something.”

“Did you… just make a reference to-“

“Please, Eddie.” Steve’s exhausted, his skin on too tight and he cannot. Deal. With. This.

“Bad night?” Eddie asks next, instantly knowing, voice snapping into something caring, softer. The edges are blurring. “You sounded awful.”

So, yeah, Eddie knew. Eddie knew Steve and Eddie knew about the nightmares. Eddie orbited Steve. He’d known since he found Steve screaming on his uncle’s bed, Steve unwilling to drive home in the dark because something had been prickling the back of his neck and he was scared. Didn’t want to be alone. Eddie had sat up with Steve that night, pulling out a stash he had Argyle bring from Colorado that worked quick, and let Steve suck down the entire joint himself while Eddie told him about all the nights he woke up, shaking but unable to sit up, scared he’d actually died and was stuck laying down and alone for eternity.

They’d forged something then, some kind of comradery that only came when you’re found with tears in your eyes and holding a pillow tight to your chest. It had taken three weeks after they’d both been discharged from the hospital before Steve had tried sleeping in his own damn house again.

“Yeah, man.” Steve scrubs a hand over his face, letting it fall to his chest with a thunk, letting his lingering animosity fall away with it. “The fucking wasp one.” Tiny bugs swarming the kids and crawling down their throats in the tunnel system, stinging their eyes and crawling between their teeth when they screamed. Rearing tiny teeth-rowed mouths back and taking chunk and chunk until blood made Steve’s feet slide on the floor. By the end of it he’s surrounded only by corpses filled with holes as the wasps turn to him in unison.

“When’s the last time you got some real sleep?” Eddie sounds tired, too, his words loose and open, voice pitched low as he sheds the persona that always got all shined up for the kids and becoming the lazy thing he spoke with when no one but Steve was in the room.

“You first,” Steve goads, rubbing his sternum in a circle, something feeling stuck in his chest easing talking to Eddie. Eddie got it. Eddie saw him, saw it all. Eddie didn’t hide from it. Steve orbited Eddie.

“Tuesday morning.”

“Shit, Munson.” Steve admonishes. It was early in the Saturday morning hours. It really never got that bad often, not to the point of almost a week of sleepless nights. It had been months and it was getting better but not whole. In the beginning it had been bad, Eddie’s record just three hours over Steve’s when they had finally drunk themselves into oblivion on Steve’s couch, waking up slumped together, hungover but at least somewhat rested.

“Yeah Stevie,” Eddie sighs and Steve can hear it because he keeps his finger pressed on the button through the pause, “C’mon, I showed you mine. How long?”

“Slept most of Thursday, but since then it’s been spotty.” It’s easy to be candid with Eddie, he’d seen it first-hand. Seen the broken shards of Steve shattered in the aftermath of the apocalypse. He’d been there. Robin had an idea but everyone else just didn’t talk about it the way Eddie did with him.

“You think you’re going to sleep tonight?” Eddie asks.

“Not now that I know the kids are still scared,” Steve admits, already feeling the fitful feeling of constant vigilance scratch behind his eyes, slowly understanding that Eddie wasn’t really here to annoy him. He wanted Steve the way Steve wanted Eddie right now. Someone there in the alone, in the wakefulness. Someone there to keep you warm while shaking to death under the weight of monsters and smoke and bats and red lightening.

Two suns, orbiting, chasing, on a collision course.

“Me either. Still got some of the last shit I gave ya?” Eddie asks, and as he talks the radio rustles with his movement.

“Yeah, Eds.”

“Roll one, smoke with me.” And Steve isn’t sure why, if it’s the need to be Very Much Not Alone Right Now, if it’s Eddie’s tone – the silent beg Steve knows is hidden there, if it’ll even help but not above fucking trying to stave off the demons, he agrees. He lets the walkie list to the side as he opens the bedside table, sitting up and starting to grind the flowers. “Stevie?”

“Yeah man,” Steve mumbles as he licks the paper to seal it, “I’m fuckin’ rolling, Eds. Hold your horses.”

“You are the slowest fucking grinder, I swear.” It’s said with a snigger, and Steve flicks his lighter to take the first long lungful before responding as he blows it out.

“The fucking mouth on you around the kids, dude.” He doesn’t let his button go as he takes another long, slow pull, knowing Eddie will wait for him if the static doesn’t come back. “Stop making the kids think about sex, Eddie.”

“Oh, mom,” Eddie laughs when Steve finally allows the rumble of static to return, his voice taking on revelry even when tired, “you don’t think their little brains are just chugging along with pure and wholesome thoughts twenty-four-seven, do ya?” There’s a breathless laugh and then Eddie’s choking and coughing and Steve knows it’s from laughing as he inhaled, having seen it happen on the edge of his pool too many times to hear the sound and think of anything else. “Have you seen the way Wheeler looks at El? Or how Byers looks at Wheeler? Kid’s probably-“

“Eddie come on man!” Steve groans, throwing his head back. Eddie’s cackling on his end when Steve chokes on his own pull.

“Come on, Steve, you don’t remember being a fifteen-year-old kid? Creaming your pants when you saw boobs for the first time?” Eddie can barely get the words out through his laughter at Steve’s disgusted noise, a hint of sleepless hysteria lacing it all.

“That’s fucking disgusting, Munson, what the fuck?” But Steve’s laughing anyway because Eddie’s laugh is an infectious thing, you catch it and the symptoms take over within seconds.

“Where’d you see your first pair of titties, Steve Harrintgon?” Eddie’s giggling, and Steve has an uncensored, weed-addled urge to reach through time and space to be able to touch Eddie then, feeling the giggles shake his body.

Collision course, creeping closer.

“Oh shit,” Steve says, holding the joint up and watching the smoke curl from the end of it lazily in the moonlight. “Fuck probably a movie? I dunno.” He thinks maybe Jaws, when Tommy had stolen it from his older brother and they’d watched it at twelve. “Maybe a Playboy I stole from my dad? Fuck, I was, I did that for years.” He’s laughing, the weight of the weed starting to press him down into the mattress on his back.

Eddie tsks as Steve giggles, “Oh Stevie, what a naughty little rich boy.”

“Oh fuck off, what was yours?”

The static crackles for a few moments and Steve’s worried he’s said something wrong, the anxiety that bubbled under his skin every moment of every day after that night in the Byers’ house years ago flaring up to a boil.

“Found one of my old man’s VHS’s when I was fourteen.” Steve closes his eyes to look at his mental image of Eddie, seeing him scrunching his nose up as his hands fidget. “That was an interesting damn day.” He sounds a bit short of breath when he adds, “Definitely learned that I was into one over the other pretty fucking quick.”

Steve’s not dumb, this time, he thinks. He gets it in a second, gets it because it makes things slot together in his brain in a way that hadn’t been there before. It’s the opposite feeling of when Robin had said just as little to him. He’s not sure how or why it feels that way, now.

“Yeah?” He probes, tries for as gentle and soft he can, even with his heart rate stuttering heavier in his ribs.

“Yeah, Steve.” Eddie in Steve’s mind curls in on himself and Steve can’t have that, doesn’t want that. “Robin told me she told you and you didn’t yell.”

“I was blindsided by that one.” Steve says simply, pulls again, joint half gone.

“And not this?” Eddie’s laugh has turned sour and Steve feels pushed off kilter by that.

“I mean, I’m not saying I expected it? But it… I dunno man it makes sense?” It feels right, is something he doesn’t say, unsure of how to even quantify it in any way except his stomach feeling settled by it all. “I’m cool with it, Eddie, if that’s what you’re fuckin’ chewing your nails over right now.”

“How did you?” But there’s a little laugh coming back, Eddie’s voice softening back down into warmth again.

“You do it when you're stressed.” Steve says simply, taking a deep breath, because it was that simple to him. Just part of Eddie that everyone had noticed at this point, they had to have had. Steve had. Knew the way Eddie’s teeth tore at cuticles as he watched a room he wasn’t comfortable in, always feeling like the outsider, always in motion. Knee jumping, head shaking, fingers twitching.

“Fuckin’ Christ, Harrington,” Eddie’s breathless as he laughs at Steve from the other side of town. “Full of goddamn surprises.”

“I contain multitudes or some shit.” Steve rolls his eyes, parroting Nancy’s words from some time junior year when things were easy and he was happy and the world hadn’t ended and he could sleep through the night and look at his pool without imagining Barb or see a blue car and not feel terror tug on his gut.

“That you do, Stevie.”

“I mean,” Steve feels loose, too loose because Eddie’s always giving him the good shit, and his mind is unlocking and picking up pieces he’d tossed aside haphazardly to look at later, “I get it, you know?”

“You… get it?”

“Yeah man, I mean, dudes, right?” It makes sense to Steve, so it has to make sense to Eddie, who was smoking the same shit. “Like, yeah. Guys can be hot.” The aerobics instructor comes to mind, arms that bulged out from a ripped shirt. “Girls are hot, too. But not to you. Guys are hot, but not to Robin.” It makes sense, Steve thinks. Total sense. Something he’d toyed with and rolled around in his brain for months and months now. Tried the taste of it when his parents had drug him to some party in the city and he’d immediately left after, found a bar that was dark, and hidden, and didn’t card him. It had been eye opening, not shocking when the man had kissed him. Not really. “I guess for some people it’s both.”

“O-kay,” Eddie drawls the word, stretching it longer than Steve really thought necessary as he sucks in a breath of smoke. “How about we resume this train of thought sometime else, Steve?” And there’s a shake in his voice, something that Steve hasn’t ever heard lately, in the Rightside Up. It sounds like uncertainty. Steve doesn’t like it, doesn’t like an Eddie who isn’t sure footed, isn’t commanding the room.

“Sure.” Steve rocks from side to side gently, feeling the mattress shift under his body. “Tell me what’s got you so worked up tonight.”

“Well I just came out to you,” Eddie laughs and Steve doesn’t like that it feels more forced than their previous giggles, “so there’s fucking that.”

“You didn’t die, Eddie.” Steve says, jumps three steps forward, knows that’s where they’re going to end up.

They always ended up there. With Eddie shaking and scared and with Steve holding his hair back as he pukes out the demons all while telling Steve the entire time he’d been gone, heart stopped, body ripped apart in an alternate dimension.

“Stop doing that, Steve.” Eddie’s voice is smaller, and Steve hates it, hates when Eddie isn’t laughing or smiling or full of levity and confidence.

“No.” Steve smiles small as he says it, feels a little less hollow because he’s needed, he’s here, Eddie’s here. Two suns on a collision course. Creeping closer. Impending doom. “You’re alive, Eddie.”

“I don’t particularly feel like it right now,” Eddie whispers, voice almost too low for Steve to hear over the walkie, his ears having to strain some to catch all eight words.

“’s okay,” Steve’s words are starting to slur just a bit, the weed finally washing over him in the big waves, full strength. Boom, crash, heartbeat slow. “What makes you feel alive, Munson?”

“I don’t-“

Steve cuts him off, knows what to say because he’s said it so many times. “Music. Eddie, music. D and D with your friends,” he starts listing things, “what else?”

“Playing with the band,” Eddie starts, voice already more even keeled. “Watching horror movies with Robin?” Steve laughs and he feels his own flame of life flicker at that.

“That’d make anyone feel alive, shit,” Steve responds, hoping the smile is coming to Eddie’s face, loves how it looks when it cracks his face open, like the sun finally bursting from behind the trees at sunrise.

“Good booze,” Eddie’s got some of the old him back, clawing a bit back to normal. It had gotten easier as the time had moved forward, to get themselves back when the Upside Down tried to drag them under. “Shit, this shit? Weed and music and booze and sex.” The last word is a groan and Steve feels a flash of heat all over.

They’d never discussed it, probably because of the elephant in the room Eddie had just shot with coming out, but now… now Steve wants to. Steve wants. It’s a terrifying realization to have with a head swimming with weed and insomnia. He has no other word for it, no clarity, but he wants.

“Have you…. Have you slept with anyone since everything?” he asks, feeling almost wild. Because the weed’s made his tongue loose and the radio static keeps the conversation just far enough past his grip to scare him.

Boom. Sudden impact.

Eddie’s voice has changed when it comes back through, sounding lower and headier and Steve’s lost in it. Fucking drugs. “Nah Cassanova, I haven’t. Have you?”

It would normally be so easy, so simple to turn on the typical Harrington charm to the point of casual deception. Of course, he had, of course one of the many, many dates had turned into something that sparked enough life in him for Steve to bring them back to his house where only ghosts of happiness followed him down the halls.

But, they hadn’t. The candle that had heated his heart up, had made him want in that way had been snuffed out two years prior, something final had fractured with the bullshit and left him drafty, hollow.

“Nah, Munson, you’re the only one to see the gifts those bats left me up close and personal.” He answers, head sinking further into his pillow as he sucks on the end of the blunt, the smoke warm as it traps itself in the recesses of Steve’s lungs. He holds it there, tries to remember what falling into bed with someone felt like. Tries to imagine hips, curves, tiny waists.

It really, for some reason he can’t find, can’t name, can’t finger, doesn’t work.

But when Eddie’s voice comes back, fills his ears and his mind and his ribcage, Steve catches a spark trying so very hard to flicker in his chest.

“Oh Stevie, you’re a damn flatterer.”

The breath whooshes out of Steve’s chest, smoke billowing from his lips and his nose at the same time as a laugh is dragged out from the place below his sternum.

“How’s it feel to be on the receiving end of some of then infamous Harrington Charm?” Steve asks, giggling, loving the way the static on the other end of the line doesn’t feel like an empty space, but a comfort. Like if he tried hard enough he could feel the weight of Eddie dipping the bed beside him, warming the sheets with his skin, thigh pressed into Steve’s.

It wouldn’t be like they hadn’t been in that position before, hadn’t been high and wrapped up with one another. Save the world, see a guy die, snap his breastbone with chest compressions in a hellscape while their other friends try to convince him to drag the body – the fucking body because that’s all Eddie had been for too many fucking seconds that drug and drug and drug – out, finally get his heart and lungs back online long enough to hoist the limp weight through a portal… well. The idea is there.

Steve had started the spring break with no interactions with Eddie Munson.

Now the lack of him next to Steve leaves something twisting raw and ragged in his stomach.

“I’m swooning,” and Steve thinks he hears Eddie’s voice catch on the end of the word, imagines smoke of his own trailing out from between Eddie’s lips.

It is a thought that shouldn’t trip Steve’s brain up so much. Yet.

“Well, you’re the first in…” Steve’s own voice trails and a giggle scratches his throat as the absurdity of it well and truly hits him. “Since Nancy. You’re the first one to swoon since- since Nancy.” It’s there, out in the open between them now, radio waves drifting through Hawkins, over roofs and between the clouds. Or however the fuck radios worked, he didn’t have a clue. Didn’t need to when Eddie’s voice is back, worming its way into every sliver of open space in Steve’s head.

“Then you must’ve only been dating blind broads, no idea what they’re truly missing.” Eddie’s voice comes with a tsking sound, the rustle of something in the background causing Steve’s brain to pop an image of Eddie lying in bed, a hand behind his head, all long lean muscle, tattoos crossing paths with scars, smoke hanging low in the air.

Steve’s heart jumps, because his brain had omitted a shirt on Eddie’s chest, had put the other boy in just boxers and socks because Steve had seen him like that. Sleepy eyes and ruffled one morning when Dustin hadn’t been able to get Eddie to answer on the walkies and Mike had pleaded Steve to drive. To make sure the gate was closed still, even though the old trailer had been gone, burned, the ashes watched over in a secure facility. The government had supplied the new one Eddie and Wayne lived in now.

Wayne had thrown a fit when the feds had offered a house closer to the size of Steve’s, saying they could take their hush money and double it, put it in an account so Eddie could have the best doctors in the world as he healed. His nephew had tried to die for them, it was the least the fuckers could do. Wayne’s words, not Steve’s.

Steve, however, had been inclined to agree.

Owens had a furnished trailer on the lot five days later as Eddie still lay prone in the ICU.

His guitar had been the only thing that had gotten out of his home before the feds had hauled it off to scorch and torch the big bad evil gate. Dustin had made sure, had delivered it like a trophy to the hospital and Eddie had made the most delighted noise around the breathing tube the doctors had refused to remove until the blood and fluid had completely drained from Eddie’s lungs.

Steve had also slept next to Eddie in that outfit. Two arched backs curling towards each other when the world got to be too much, too loud, when the backfire of a motorcycle down the road had Steve’s hands shaking. When the flapping of birds nesting outside the window had Eddie’s head whipping around.

Bare chest, curling tattoos sliced with scars, black hair across a pillow, long fingers-

“Stevie?” Eddie’s voice shocks Steve out of the drugged train wreck his brain was hurtling towards, imaging Eddie without all his clothes. Alone. In bed. “You there, babe?”

“Sorry,” Steve’s voice has changed and thickened and he really has nothing else to say, nothing he can say. Luckily, Eddie’s good at filling silence, pulling Steve’s brain from the sand it traps itself in on nights like this.

“Don’t be,” Eddie’s tone is still low and soft, scratched over by static, a buzz that Steve can feel vibrating under his skin. “You never got anything to apologize for, Steve.” He listens to the words Eddie gives him freely, kindly, woven in the hush of too late night or early morning, Steve’s lost the time in the haze the joint has put him under. He lifts it to his lips again, just for something to do. “Wanna know what I think?”

Steve’s brows crease together and he forces the smoke out of his lungs to answer, “Think about what?”

“Your dry spell.”

The laugh that is pulled from Steve is genuine this time. Eddie Munson had never met a topic that felt off limits. It had grated on Steve for a day, maybe two. Then they had had bigger shit to deal with and now… well now it felt like it was safe. Nothing flapped Eddie. He just said the thing he wanted to say, didn’t fuck with the thought of consequences. A stark contrast to how Steve had been raised.

“Fuck’s sake, fine, sure,” Steve’s still laughing when he answers, stubbing out the rest of the joint on an ashtray and turning on his side, “because even if I say no, you’ll tell me anyway.”

Eddie’s laughing again too, when Steve releases the button and the radio is able to pick up his voice again. It’s warmer than any high Steve’s felt and he doesn’t really even try to fight that thought off too hard, tonight.

“I think,” Eddie starts, and Steve shuffles in his sheets, shoulder popping as he pulls the blanket up closer to his ears, like if he covers his face and the walkie this conversation can keep existing in the floating place Steve feels his head is in right now. He can almost hear the lick Eddie gives his teeth as he’s getting ready to dive into something he feels will crawl under someone’s skin, “I think you just know none of those girls will touch you as good as you deserve.”

Steve’s breath hitches, high in his throat and he’s so so glad Eddie can’t hear it. Glad that Eddie doesn’t wait for a reply as he trucks right the fuck along.

“Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington, now that’s a man who deserves to be savored.” Steve isn’t sure if it’s the connection or the weed, but Eddie’s voice is getting strung out, pulling on the syllables, making the blood coursing through Steve’s heart heat up, warmth filling his ribs. He knows, in some logical corner of his brain that isn’t high, that it’s the feeling he got when Nancy had kissed him that first night they had in his bedroom. Desire, unfurling in his muscles, flush squirming its way over his skin. “You aren’t a quick fuck, pretty boy, are you? Need it nice and slow, hm? Seems like you, to want every touch savored so you can really feel it.”

It takes Steve almost too long of a moment to realize his fingers have drifted down to trail over the strip of stomach left naked from his shirt, fingertips skating over heated skin. “Christ, Eddie,” he’s able to choke out of his throat, words too tight to hide the shock in them. “You can’t just say that.” His heart had taken to speeding itself up of its own accord, blood thrumming deep in the veins.

“Mmmm,” Eddie drawls, “I did though.” It’s coy, so fucking coy and so fucking Eddie that Steve’s lungs are punched out because yeah. He did. “Should I stop?” And there it is, the easy out, the one Steve usually throws at a girl when she pulls back for air while kissing her on his couch, more than usually praying she says yes. They all have so far.

Steve though, Steve doesn’t want this to stop. His fingertips have tucked themselves, resting, in his waistband. His other hand is gripping the walkie-talkie like a lifeline, a preserver in the tide of Eddie Munson’s voice.

“Should I stop, Stevie?” Eddie asks again, sounding breathless, just as gutted as Steve is, and he isn’t sure, can’t think of a moment when this switch had flipped in the conversation. It’s sudden and feels like whiplash and it’s so incredibly hot that Steve’s dizzy with need and want and a high. He wonders if the weed’s been laced, but knows Eddie’s better than that. Wouldn’t, not unless Steve asked. Wouldn’t do anything unless Steve asks because he’s Eddie and Eddie is good and all-encompassing and here, alive. He was dead and he came back to life under Steve’s hands and maybe his voice will revive something deep and dormant in Steve.

So, Steve clicks the button on the side of the walkie and the word rushes forth. “No.” He squeezes his eyes shut and his hand presses a hot brand against the lower half of his abdomen. “You shouldn’t stop.”

“Fuck, Steve,” Eddie’s words are a breath as soon as Steve’s finger releases, then the line doesn’t flip to static, but stays on and lets Steve hear the clack of Eddie’s rings as his fingers jostle his hair and Steve wonders when he learned to discern that one specific sound.

Then, oh but then.

Then every noise that has ever been and will ever be is tramped out of Steve’s brain and all he knows, all he ever wants to hear again in his goddamn life is the soft groan that sounds like it’s been yanked from Eddie’s gut. “You’ll be the death of me.”

The static is back now, and so Steve chases after Eddie in the ether, chases the noise, prays it comes back. “You started it, Eddie.” And he should leave it there. Absolutely should. He doesn’t. “Don’t tell me you can’t finish it.”

Steve counts to five before the crackle of the line shifts, letting him know to anticipate Eddie’s voice. “Baby, I play to win. Always.” There’s a giggle there, something in the high that Steve’s body echoes without permission just because it feels good, it feels right, and that’s terrifying, dizzying; Steve leans into the feeling.

“Didn’t know this was a contest,” Steve butts in, thumb brushing the hair that scatters down his stomach and into his pants, wets his lips. “What’s the prize?” He isn’t even sure what the game here is, just knows that his skin is too hot in the greatest way possible and his cock is a thick weight below the hem of sweats and it’s all due to Eddie’s fucking voice.

None of that even touches the fact that it feels normal, feels like an extension of something they’d been circling for months, since Eddie’d gotten home and they’d taken to spending days in Steve’s pool or in a boat in the lake or on the top of the hill outside of Hawkins, joints and cigarettes and brushing fingers.

“Interesting question,” Eddie muses, and Steve closes his eyes again so maybe he can hear Eddie’s voice better, trap it in the space between his ears. He can hear Eddie click his tongue, and the sound jolts across Steve’s nerves like a shock. “The prize for me,” he draws it out, makes Steve hold his breath and he doesn’t even know why, “would be hearing you fall apart, hear the pretty little noises Steve Harrington makes when he finally reaches the breaking point.”

“And for me?” Steve asks, should hate the way his voice goes up and breathless and how his hand is inching down further into his pants.

“Well, I’d think, darling, that you’d like much of the same.” Eddie pauses, doesn’t let the static come, doesn’t let go of the button, Steve waiting like he’s about to leap from the ledge of the quarry. “Is that what you want?” And there’s a touch of uncertainty there, like Eddie is coming to and Steve’s fast to jump in.

“Yes, Eddie.” It’s a plea, a reassurance, it’s a little too close to everything, but Steve will worry about that in the sober light of morning, when his head isn’t being enveloped in the sound of Eddie’s voice and the hot rise of want in his veins. When his hand finally stretches down and he takes his dick in his fist, Steve goes completely taut, a moan ripped from his lungs.

“Holy fuck,” Eddie’s voice grounds Steve as he strokes down for the first time, thumbing the slit and catching the slick of precum that had beaded there. “That sound has to be illegal.”

“Your voice,” Steve tells him, shaking his head and squeezing himself on the next downstroke, “is a weapon.”

“Do you like the way I talk to you, sweetheart?” Eddie asks, doesn’t wait a second for Steve to answer as he groans and Steve echoes it, mind racing with snapshot images of Eddie in the same position as he is, splayed out in bed, sweaty and restless from nightmares and no sex, listening to Steve’s voice. “Want me to tell you how I’d take care of you?” Steve’s nodding until he realizes that Eddie isn’t here, Eddie’s hands aren’t on him, Eddie isn’t whispering in his ear.

“Ye-yeah. I. Yeah.”

“Oh my god, shit, this is-“s Eddie cuts himself off and Steve feels heavy, limbs unable to move when Eddie’s voice isn’t there. “I don’t think you know how much I want to devour you fucking whole, Steve,” he admits and Steve is breathless and never wants this moment to end. “I want to take you apart with my fucking hands and tongue and-“ he cuts himself off again and Steve whines, knows how the sentence ends but isn’t willing to fill the blanks in on his own.

“Thought you played to win,” Steve pants, his pace picking up, toes curling when Eddie comes back on and it isn’t words but a moan that Steve gets in response. He wants to swallow the sounds Eddie is making, wants to feel them against his tongue. He hasn’t been this keyed up in months, in years, maybe ever. Christ.

“God, I want to shut you up with my cock.” And that. Well that’s something entirely. It’s debauched and crude and Steve is so into it that he has to bite his hand to keep from coming undone right then, backing off from his strokes so he doesn’t have to stop hearing the things Eddie’s telling him. “The mouth on you, I fucking swear, gorgeous. Those lips were made for it, all pretty and pink?” Steve’s breaths are getting caught in his throat now, panting little things that he can’t control as he squeezes his cock at the base, tip leaking a puddle on his stomach. “Mess up that damn hair, shit I’ve wanted to pull on it since junior history. So fucking pretty, Steve.”

Steve can picture it, can feel the weight of Eddie on his tongue and the press of hardwood under his knees. They’re in his foyer, Eddie not being able to wait to get upstairs and Steve just sinking down to his knees because who says no to Eddie? Why would they? When he sounds like this? They’d be fucking crazy.

“Don’t-“ Steve grits out when the silence stretches too long and his squeeze on himself too hard and the whole thing too much, “holy fuck don’t stop?” He asks, unsure if he’s allowed, if he’s broken this thing between them but he hasn’t, thank fuck he hasn’t, when Eddie starts speaking again.

“You, fuck, Steve, god you’d be stunning. You are stunning, but god, fuck, I can’t, the way you’d look on my-on a bed.” Eddie’s voice pitches up and Steve can feel it, can feel the energy in his veins, can hear the energy sparking through Eddie’s, something deep in him unlocked and spilling its contents between the two of them and Steve finds himself chasing the little pieces, any little bit of Eddie he can find in the words as they static their way between houses, between worlds.

“Do you want to fuck me in your bed, Munson?” Steve asks as he starts stroking himself again, unable to stave off the need to touch and feel and chase the heat of Eddie’s words with his movements. He means it as a joke, as a little bit of a poke into Eddie’s side, but it comes out wanting and high pitched and needier than Steve’s ever heard himself sound in his life. He can’t take it back, but he doesn’t want to and that’s a problem but it’s a problem for morning because right now Steve is on the edge of and orgasm and something that feels a whole heap bigger and he’s gripping it, clutching it, chasing it down with gritted teeth and loose lips and holy shit. Eddie Munson is going to kill him and he’ll probably say thank you at the end of it all.

“Oh my holy fuck, baby,” Eddie’s tone is so close to sending Steve over the edge and he moans to the ceiling of his room, the blades of his fan spinning around the raw edge to it. “God yes, in my bed. On the fucking couch. The back of your car. Anywhere. Steve, anywhere.” And Steve’s imagination is working overtime, popping images in his brain of every scenario and he hasn’t gone there, hasn’t done that (yet, his brain goads, yet), but he wants so deeply his balls ache and his fingers tremble. Eddie bending him over, Eddie with one of Steve’s legs over his shoulders, Eddie sprawled on a pool chair with Steve on top, hips grinding down, cock spurting spunk across Eddie’s chest-

“Holy fuck, Eddie, shit, I’m going to-“

“Yes, baby,” Eddie’s voice cradles him as Steve’s hand speeds up, breathy moans punctuated by each stroke of his thumb over the head, “just like that. Lemme hear you, please, fuck, let me hear.”

And so Steve does. The line crackles for less than a second before he’s pressing his button down, panting into the receiver and then moaning throatily, head thrown back, hips fucking his fist as cum soaks the inside of his sweats. He thinks Eddie’s name is on his lips, thinks he sobs it, the weed enough of a dampener that he isn’t sure. He sees white, toes curl into the bed as his hips chase his fingers, oversensitive and pulsing in his fist.

“Holy shit.” Is what he gets when his body calms down enough for his hips to settle, for his breathing to fill the open space and his finger to relax, letting the static fill the room before Eddie’s back. “Holy fucking shit, Steve.” He’s high enough to soften the blow of it all, the realization that Steve just came from Eddie’s voice and nothing else something that he’ll have to deal with - of course he’ll have to deal with it sometime but not now because Eddie’s pants are matching his own and Steve feels like he could float away without Eddie’s voice anchoring him - rooting him to his bed.

“Guess I lose?” is what he finally is able to say after the line crackles for a second, his chest still heaving and hand rubbing off the cum on his sweats.

“I think we both did,” Eddie’s still breathless, and some part of Steve is so fucking proud that he did that, but also panicking that he did that, “I, um, well, yeah. When you did.”

He doesn’t let Eddie hear the absolute heady moan he lets out at that, cock twitching heavy in the crease of his hip and thigh. Holy shit. He’d cum to Eddie’s voice and Eddie had cum to him cumming. Steve was in heaven, this was too good.

“Fuck,” is all he gets out in response, because really nothing real had rebooted yet and his nerves were still pulsing from orgasming harder than he had in years.

“Yeah. Fuck, Steve.” Steve is shocked when he realizes he wants to chase those words with a kiss. Wants to kiss that tone from Eddie’s lips to see how it tastes.

So. Okay. It didn’t go away with the orgasm, the warmth in his chest and ribs and stomach. Noted.

“You good?” He asks instead of acknowledging it all because acknowledging it didn’t feel good with the wash of weed pressing in on him.

“Better than,” Eddie mumbles and Steve feels it too, feels his body lax enough to crave getting pulled under; to maybe close his eyes. He does.

“That was…” Steve trails off, grips at his hair before realizing how gross that was and shaking his hand away from his face.

“Hot as shit.” Eddie responds, and Steve can still see him, behind his eyelids, sprawled long limbs with tattoos, sheets kicked to the base of the bed, orgasm flush.

Oh god. This was going to be an actual problem.

“Yeah,” he agrees, feels the word thick in his throat.

“Yeah.” Eddie echoes, voice thick, maple syrup in winter, a worn soft quilt, the most comforting thing Steve can think of when it sounds like this. “Feel better?” Eddie asks, voice almost sheepish.

“Kinda, yeah,” Steve whispers back, head swaying gently. “You know, who knew weed and cumming would relax me?” He jokes, huffing a laugh.

“Real fuckin’ bewildering shit, huh?” Eddie asks, some of the swagger coming back to his voice, coaxing another laugh from Steve. He laughed so much around Eddie.

“Yeah man, yeah.” It’s all his brain can say, all it feels safe to say because if he starts talking he’s not sure what else will come out of his mouth. He’s high, and pumped full with endorphins and he thinks he’s a little bit in love.

Well, huh.

He must let the silence stretch on for long enough that Eddie thinks he’s fallen asleep, because as he blinks into the dark, hoping that each time he opens his eyes Eddie will actually materialize next to him for him to reach out and get to touch (he really, really wants to touch right now), Eddie says quietly, “Night Stevie. Sweet dreams only, ‘kay?” And then static. Nothing but a long, crackling line of it between him and Eddie.

He drifts in and out of sleep, starting awake any time Eddie talks in his dreams, thinking maybe he’d shown up in Steve’s bed after all.

Collision course.

Implosion.

Carnage.

No survivors.

Steve wakes up alone.

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie fic #lexi writes #stranger things #stranger things s4 #fix it fic #pwp #smut #steddie smut #Steve x eddie #walkie talkie sex #you know at least one of them misused the thing come on #stranger things fanfiction

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divine-misfortune · 2 years ago

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Mushy May, day 4. First kiss.

Rating: everyone

Pairing: Swiss/Mountain (swiss alps?)

Words: 1,119

Summary: Swiss has agonized and torn himself apart over the idea of it for months. It was one kiss, but what if he fucked it up?

How was he supposed to be calm about this?

Swiss was the furthest thing from calm, he'd say he was outright panicking, and if anyone could see the speed at which his thoughts raced they'd agree. On the outside at least he appeared collected, aside from the fact he kept wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans. He could blame that on the heat of the greenhouse.

All he could smell was herbs and flowers, and part of him was grateful. It was a distraction at least. If he'd been able to catch Mountain’s scent, he'd be done for. What little composure he had would have failed him entirely almost immediately. He could feel it already faltering but he kept the foolish hope that it might last until he could think of an excuse to smoothly leave the situation.

And the situation?

It was torture, that's what it was. Just the two of them in the narrow rows of plants, mingling with the fauna as they squeezed past each other. If Swiss had to feel Mountain's hand sliding against his waist again he might just bury his head into the nearest bag of topsoil.

Every touch and glance had Swiss fumbling over himself. Mountain nearly sent his poor heart beating out of his chest and it was disgustingly effortless on his part.

He bit his lower lip when Mountain set his watering can down, watching the way he folded his sleeves up with a fascination that could only be described as obsessive. His fingers moved so smoothly, the muscle under the skin flexing slowly with each movement. Swiss could feel his mouth run dry, his typically clever tongue sitting twisted up in his mouth.

"Swiss-"

The multi ghoul stared at the movement of his lips. His top fangs were crooked, how had he never noticed that before? He could feel his heart stutter for the hundredth time. Mountain's lips were plush with the faintest scar at the corner of his mouth, Swiss couldn't quite remember how he got it.

"Hey?"

And then there were those dimples, soft divots in his cheeks to accompany his lopsided grin.

"Swiss!"

He jumped, nearly out of his own skin, and dropped his own watering can. It spilled over the hem of his pants and his shoes. Great.

"Dude are you okay? You've been watering that basil plant for five minutes."

"...huh?" Swiss blinked and glanced at the poor plant that had fallen victim to his distraction. There was water spilling down the sides of its terracotta pot and pooling around the base. He felt his face grow warm and swallowed. "Fuck, sorry."

"What's got you so in your own head today?"

"You."

Mountain blinked and wiped his hands on his apron. The damn movement of his hands again. He took a step towards him and Swiss felt his stomach flip. He grabbed for the watering can and retreated for the hose on the far side of the small building. It wasn't much distance but it was distance.

The word was supposed to stay inside his head, silent admission and nothing more but it escaped despite himself. He debated hitting his head against the wall.

"Me?" Mountain asked, almost amused.

The wall was becoming more tempting.

"Yes! You!" Swiss groaned and dropped the hose. "It's always you, you're always in my head! You never leave!"

"Did I do something?"

"Yes! No? I don't know!" He dragged his hands down his face. "You're just, you're you."

"I'm…sorry?"

"You're you and you're perfect and it's driving me insane. I want to be around you because when I'm not my chest aches but it gets so tight when you're around I forget how to breathe. I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it. About you. About any of this shit!"

Mountain shifted and settled his hands on his hips, watching Swiss start to get more and more fidgety. He felt like he was about to vibrate right out of his skin at this rate. The thoughts had started, he'd let a little trickle out and the rest broke through like a fucking flood. He couldn't make himself shut up if he tried.

The look on Mountain's face was hard to pin down, anywhere from bewildered to bemused.

"You don't know what to do, okay…So, what do you want to do?"

"Kiss you."

Swiss wanted to rip the tongue right from his mouth when Mountain blushed. He tipped his head slightly, ear twitching a bit.

"What's stopping you?"

"I, well, um," he stammered. Swiss couldn't remember the last time he fucking stammered. "Because I know I won't get it right."

Mountain chuckled, a low rumble that felt like it rattled Swiss' brain.

"What?! It's not funny, asshole."

"It's a little funny, Swiss."

Swiss was torn between throttling Mountain or himself. Especially when Mountain moved closer to him. He couldn't back up any further when he stepped back into the table littered with tools.

"What's there to get right?"

"Everything."

Mountain was so much taller than him, he nearly forgot that fact. Being caged between the earth ghoul and the bench was the definition of being trapped between a rock and a hard place.

"I don't know about that, 's easy rosebud."

The taller ghoul graced his cheek with the tips of his fingers, rough in texture but gentle in touch. Swiss opened his mouth but nothing came out and Mountain breathed a laugh close to his parted lips. He could taste pomegranate on his exhale and had to grab the edge of the table behind him to steady himself before Mountain closed that space. He didn't trust his knees, for good reason.

His lips were chapped but moved smoothly against his own. Swiss' eyes fluttered. Better than he expected. He was sweet, he was soft, he was all encompassing and Swiss reached for a fistful of his shirt. Like this, Mountain clouded his senses. He could smell pine and honey, and the hint of whatever new laundry detergent they'd switched to.

It was a feeling he could live in. One that he'd gladly sink into and never resurface from.

Swiss had kissed others before. Every other ghoul in their pack, at least twice, and he'd never felt a lick of hesitation but kissing Mountain felt different. Like everything stopped and it was just them and that greenhouse. The rest of the world was irrelevant. Mountain kissed him like it was second nature, like it was the easiest thing he'd done in his life. As if this wasn't something Swiss had been agonizing over for weeks.

But Mountain pulled back and Swiss nearly fell over himself trying to chase the feeling.

"See? Not such a big deal."

#writing #mushy may #void writing #ficlet #the band ghost #the band ghost ficlet #the band ghost fic #ghost the band #ghost bc #nameless ghouls #mountain ghoul #swiss ghoul #multi ghoul #mountain/swiss

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nonnieapple · 11 months ago

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⛈ ☂️ Peach Pit, 7- Lift Back And See The Darkness Hid☂️ ⛈

• (Akura-ou x g/n reader x Tomoe) • r a t i n g: m a t u r e • 3 5 8 3 w o r d s • p o s t e d 04.02.2024 🌧 navigation 🍑 previous chapter 🍑 next chapter 🍑 latest chapter • s u m m a r y: you're a peaceful farmer in the mountains during the sengoku period. someone starts stealing your peaches, and the thief turns out to be a chaotic oni, and the events that ensue flip your life upside down. • c h a p t e r s u m m a r y: hangovers are wild, man. TW: brief d3ath

The next morning you awoke in confusion. And with a raging, hellish headache. You groaned as you got up. You looked around groggily.

It was a small room with a mat on the floor. The light was dim, either evening or dawn. You thought about what you did before you passed out.

You got your dagger back from two yokai. Tomoe and Akura-ou. Akura was in the large room, passed out in a chair. Tomoe led you to a balcony where you must've dozed off. Well, led, you followed him.

You were in the castle, evident by the architecture and the same incense smell, but no longer on the balcony. Had you walked there in a drunken haze?

You left the room silently, searching for a soul of any kind. Preferably one you were familiar with.

You heard whispers down the hall. A small furry creature with an odd face stepped out. It stared at you. You resisted your urge to run as hard as you could. You clutched your dagger.

"This dagger has cut down many yokai, and I'm not afraid to use it to cut down another." You scowled, straightening your posture. The uncertainty in your voice showed through the cracks in your facade.

The furry creature scuttered away.

You sighed in relief, slumping over.

You stood at the stairs with a dilemma. You headed upstairs. Your head radiated with a throbbing, crushing pain. Hangovers. Hangovers, dammit.

You looked around the corner. There were belongings of the treasure variety scattered around as well as some weapons and maps. What a mess. You weren't gonna clean that.

You peeked into a room. What the hell? It was empty. Just filled with rubble. You didn't expect any less of yokai... especially yokai such as them.

A breath on your neck startled you. You were picked up roughly and raised to a freakish height almost as tall as the ceiling. You exclaimed. A giant oni had crept up on you. You questioned your hearing and could not believe your eyes. You reached for your dagger. You struggled as the oni squished your back, flattening your aching body over his shoulder. You huffed. Too early for this shit...

You stabbed at his ribs, and he let you go with a horrific groan. You fell on your ass. You've had worse falls.

But that one was pretty damn bad. Your bloodied dagger dug into the wooden ground, hair obscuring your vision. An unpleasant smell of iron filled the air.

The head of the oni came off in one swipe, rolling to the side on the floor. He fell into a heap.

"Talk about clutter," Remarked Akura-ou as he stared at the body, kicking it with his boot.

"Akura-ou..." You whispered from the floor. His gaze shot to you, his smile falling.

"What are you doing here?"

You shrugged, leaning on your knees. A little blood got on your clothes.

"Takin' a stroll," You replied nonchalantly. He stepped over the body, pulling you off the floor roughly. You wedged your knife out of the floor. Awkward.

"I didn't know you were still here."

"I am. And my head's killing me..." You mumbled in pain, rubbing your temple. Akura wore a weird knitted long sleeve that mimicked mesh... or clothes eaten by moths. He had a thin leather belt around his waist, stacked necklaces, and a... belt around his neck. How strange.

"You should get out," He muttered, pulling you by the arm.

"A-a- hey!" You grabbed his wrist. He glanced at you in confusion, frowning.

"Do I have to leave?"

He rose a brow and chortled fruitily.

"You're crazy. Don't you want to?"

You tilted your head, averting your gaze.

"I don't have anything better to do. And my farm will be fine if I leave it for a bit..." You trailed off. You must've still been delirious since none of your words made sense to you.

"You're right! I should leave, I don't know what I was thinking." You laughed nervously. Loneliness must've driven you to madness.

Akura waved his hand.

"Whatever. Just ask Tomoe."

He turned away, going into a room and closing the door. You called after him hopelessly. He gave you a mocking "good luck" and you heard his footsteps disappear. You put your hands on your hips, kicking the oni on the floor. You huffed.

"It's just you and me, corpsie."

You stretched your arms as you explored a new part of the castle. You had wandered quite far, to a whole other quarter. It was a tad darker and neater.

A shape raced towards you. You strayed to the other side cautiously, watching the shape come into focus. It was a humanoid yokai with a strange face and a bouquet of... heads. How sweet.

He screeched to a halt near you, reaching for your head.

"Oh! You'd be a lovely addition to my garden!" He chirped, painted lips twisting into an unnatural, giddy smile.

Too damn early.

You thought quickly.

You squinted, scoffing, making the snottiest expression you could, posing like a pissed-off diva.

"It's me, Tomoe," You said lowly. The yokai halted. "I can't believe you'd mistake me with a human." You rumbled.

"O-of course, master! I'm so-sorry, your disguise was perfect! You looked just like a pathetic human!" He sputtered.

You scoffed, actual anger boiling over.

"You think I'm pathetic?! You better start runnin'!" You barked, raising your hand, an illusion of fire created by an ofuda of yours flickering.

The yokai ran.

You smiled triumphantly.

"Do you think that's how I talk?"

You flinched.

"Fu- can you all STOP doing that!" You whisper-yelled, clutching your chest. Tomoe smiled faintly.

You searched his eyes for judgment. He looked kinder than usual. What stupid thing had you said when you were drunk? This castle would wreck your nerves for life at such a rate. As if they weren't wrecked enough.

"Did you sleep well?" He said with a strange tone bordering on sarcasm. You raised a brow. Was he asking for real? Was he being an asshole?

"Eh... as well as a hungover sleep can get," You said, clasping your hands around the back of your neck.

"Horribly?"

"Precisely." You hung your head, your tone utterly defeated.

"And I had wandered to a random room in the castle..." You muttered unsurely. Tomoe's smile turned smug. You frowned in confusion. You didn't make eye contact. It felt like if you did, you'd melt.

"I wouldn't say you wandered," He lilted, holding back laughter. You fluttered your eyelashes, face heating up.

"W... What did I do?"

"Nothing." His smile was wide.

You blanched.

"Oh-" You touched your forehead. "Akura-ou told me to talk to you."

"You did just that."

You sighed.

"No. I don't want to leave the castle yet." You tensed your muscles, crossing your arms. The idea began to make sense in your head. You had gone mad. You accepted it.

He hummed, bringing a hand under his face, elbow propped up by his other arm. His sleeves, decorated with flames, shifted.

"Fine. Suit yourself, human." He swept his claws through the air, turning away from you and disappearing in a fog.

Your shoulders slumped.

"Why does everyone keep leaving me?"

You wandered from room to room, avoiding the ones behind which you heard strange noises. Not only did they aggravate your headache, but they were also highly disturbing based on previous events in this castle.

You walked into a room.

It was messy, filled with a lot of smaller objects. There was an unfinished go game. It seemed one of the players had a fit of rage during the game. There was a shogi ban with scattered koma.

There was also a ban-sugoroku, which people had gambled over judging by the remnants of sake bottles and glasses as well as loose coins.

You left the room.

You stumbled upon another room filled with residual smoke, clouding up the room made of warm-toned wood. You coughed. You squinted. The smoke felt more like fog. You could make out some larger furniture pieces. The smoke cleared up as you walked through the room. You studied the room. It was by far the most organized one you'd seen so far. High-quality kosode lay piled nicely. One was a kosode you recognized- it had a chrysanthemum pattern.

"How's my room?" Asked a soft voice from the direction of the sliding door. You turned your head, hiding your hands.

"Tomoe! This is... your room?" You looked around once more, pretending you hadn't figured that out already.

He breathed out smoke from a long pipe.

Awful manners.

"Of course. It's the only nice place in this castle, I'm sure you've noticed." Smoke spilled from his lips, engulfing him. He began walking to you slowly. You stepped back, hand finding your dagger.

He stopped in front of you. He eyed you up.

"Are you just gonna stand there?" You asked. His eyes were sheepish.

"Why? Do you want me to do something?"

You huffed, leaving the room.

"Oh, never you mind."

The main yard wasn't too eventful. There was a nice bonsai tree in the middle. You watched its branches softly move in the breeze that moved through your hair, soothing your headache after the hangover and the stuffy castle.

A small shadow scuttered across, and you recognized it as the furry one. You furrowed your brows.

You went into a room. Maybe it would be fine and you could stay in it for a while?

It was the largest room you had seen so far. It was truly impressive, and the ceilings were higher. There was a nice, giant bed hidden by curtains. The furniture was rich red. The sun had begun to set. You had spent the whole day wandering around. You had managed to snack on some of your roasted soybeans and washed it down with a small bit of leftover sake you found.

The room also contained screens and a table, as well as a lot of mats and scattered clothes in piles that probably made sense to the creature in the room. You didn't see anyone though, which gave you some hope. They wouldn't mind if you just took a nap somewhere there, right? No one minded when cats did it.

You approached the bed cautiously. It was dark behind the curtains, and the orange light from outside wasn't much help. You leaned in.

You froze when you were met with blood-colored hair and ox horns. You were about to- silently- bolt away when Akura-ou grabbed your wrist and pulled you into himself, hugging you tightly. You writhed.

He hummed in his sleep. He was suffocatingly warm, bordering on hot.

You felt his silky hair on your neck, engulfing you like the tendrils of a fire, arms long and smooth around you, pressing you into his flat stomach and chest. He was too strong for you to push his arms away. You stayed still in silent fear. His claws brushed your sides. You didn't want to get scratched by him again. Shit, being so close to him, you remembered the day you met him. The holes he left in your hip were still there as off-colored scars.

He was the raging fire through a house, a fire that could wipe out a village, and could level a forest, could level buildings you couldn't even imagine.

His silky hair and his warmth and his strong hold were such sick reminders of it all.

You slid out from his arms as best as you could, your clothes getting disheveled in the process.

He cracked open an eye. It shone golden through the low light.

"Who said you could leave?" He rumbled raspily. You felt your face get hot. He pulled you back down, and you couldn't do a thing as one of his arms wrapped around your chest and the other around your hips. He buried his face in your neck. You breathed in sharply.

What did you feel?

You felt like you were being torn apart. Pure fucking terror.

"You could be a fun game, human."

You didn't like how he said that. And you didn't like how your stomach did a flip at his voice.

What a demented sleepover.

You felt his teeth graze your neck. Your eyes widened, adrenalin rushing through you. You shut your eyes tightly, terrified of his teeth piercing your skin. Instead, you felt his tongue against your skin. You exclaimed, writhing and turning to face him as you uselessly wrangled his arms. He smiled innocently. A fire raging through a house? No, a fire raging around you, through you. You met his gaze. It was horrible, and his teeth were like knives, your chest rose and fell and you struggled against him as he was still.

"Wasn't that hilarious?" Akura-ou flashed a smile. You felt your heart beat feverishly.

"That was horrifying!" You whisper-yelled. Your hangover was receding and you knew then more than ever before that staying was a bad idea. It had hinged on you having control over your stay. Fuck that idea, that's what Akura thought, you assumed. You could see it on his smug face.

Still much more interesting than the farm. Overall, not the worst decision you have made or would make. It could be a lot worse.

"Humans are weird," He muttered as he rested his head against the pillow, gently stabbing the pillow with his horn, ear folded up awkwardly.

"Why are you holding me?" You frowned, tone unhappy.

He moved his ear up.

"'Cause I want to." Akura-ou held you more firmly. "I don't hear you complaining."

You didn't reply.

He was right. Unfortunately for you.

"It wouldn't do much of anything." You deflected. You didn't look away from his eyes. There was no escape as he held you.

Peaches.

The bastard smelled of peaches. And uh, blood, which sent you spiraling. Where the fuck would he get blood? God knew he had plenty on his hands, did he not? He looked like it, and the dark splotches on his boots were always there like fluttering red flags.

You missed those peaches.

You stayed tense in his arms. Your pride wouldn't allow you to relax.

Time seemed to pass by painfully slow. It couldn't have been that long, there was still that orange glow that was fading into red, but each second of his touch felt like a million years of carnal sin.

He had closed his eyes, either asleep or blissing out, unlike you, wide awake and tense as a string.

You sighed, finally relaxing. Your muscles loosened and your head drifted into his chest. You forgot that he wasn't wearing a shirt, at that point, you were just glad to relax the muscles in your sore neck.

It felt really good. It felt wrong. You put aside those thoughts as much as you could, letting your mind buzz with empty noise. Your eyes fluttered closed. Who knew you'd feel so comforted in the arms of the very thing you despised? You must've been loopy. Yokai- they were all sinful and evil creatures no matter how soft their skin or how silky their hair. Especially that one! He killed like it was a joke. And you stabbed like it was a greeting.... oh, well, maybe it was the fate you deserved.

Your slice of heaven was interrupted when you heard the double doors open, followed by hasty footsteps.

"Brother. I'm here to ask you about the human. You told the human to speak to me. What do you intend to do-" He stopped talking as he saw you together. Akura slowly opened an eye, glazing over Tomoe. You pursed your lips.

"Well, well, well. Seems like I missed a lot," Purred Tomoe from above you.

You pushed on Akura-ou's chest.

"It's not what it looks like!" You protested with pleading eyes.

"He dragged me down and forced me to stay!"

Akura pressed you against his chest sleepily and you gave Tomoe a worried look.

"Why are you being so loud..." The oni grumbled.

"Once again, you never fail to disappoint with your buffoonery. Let the human go."

Akura-ou untangled himself from you, and you nearly fell off the bed in your hurry to get away. He seemed unimpressed and annoyed.

You caught yourself and slicked back your hair, smoothing out your clothes. You left the room, fixing yourself up.

You flicked your eyes to the side. Somehow Tomoe was already there.

"Do you have a kitchen?" You asked, out of breath. His tail swung like a pendulum.

"Yes. Somewhere in here." He glanced to the side. "I'd have to wander to find it. And I happen to be very tired..." He feigned a yawn.

"I'll find it on my own then, pokin' through every room I find, happening upon the weird creatures in this place..." You began. His ears lowered and his tail flicked upwards aggressively.

"Somehow I don't feel tired anymore," Tomoe said tensely.

The kitchen could hardly be called so.

It was disheveled, smelled like mold, and the dishes present were enough to make you feel sick. You swallowed uncomfortably. You ignored the dark stains all over the room as best as you could

"Can you cook?" You turned to Tomoe with horror barely concealed in your eyes. Yokai didn't eat, so it'd be odd if he did.

Tomoe almost looked embarrassed, covering his face with his hand. He pointed somewhere and you followed his directions.

....

You were met by amorphous sludge in the corner of the room. You screamed.

"EUGH! That's awful!" You bent over, coughing from the mess.

"For the love of god, clean this up!" You begged, shutting your eyes which began to water.

He swung his tail low, ears pinned back.

"... I don't want to," He whispered, your horror rubbing off on him.

You cleaned the kitchen. After, it seemed like a whole other room, and if you hadn't seen it transform, you'd believe if someone told you it was another room.

Tomoe had graciously helped, after you encouraged him with some gentle threats, such as "I know where you sleep" and "I have a dagger" among others.

You washed remaining... substances off your hands.

You were determined to teach that fox how to cook for shit. Maybe it'd make him more human, and less of a mess. Give him more to do besides taking over castles and being annoying. Plus, think about it, you could force him to cook for you.

His pal was a lost cause though.

Poor bastard.

For the rice part, you had found some in the castle. It was a rather unfortunate treasure hunt and the things you saw during it... you wished you didn't have eyes for that whole sequence of events. You thought nothing could shock you. You were wrong.

As for the fish, you didn't have any on hand. Just when you leave your whole live fish at home you suddenly need it! Ugh! Tale as old as time.

You stood knee-deep in a rushing river. You stared into the water so hard nothing else seemed to exist. You stayed perfectly still until you saw a shadow. Then, you reached in and caught the fish by what you hoped were its gills.

You pulled it out of the water with a splash, stepping out of the river disgruntled.

"That would've been impressive if it didn't take you five tries." Tomoe watched you closely. You scoffed, throwing the fish at him. You ignored his comment.

"I'm going to go scrape shiitake mushrooms off some castle walls."

You instructed Tomoe as he cut the fish up after cleaning it. He got the hang of it quickly, clearly- concerningly- experienced with blades.

You cut the shiitake mushrooms into even slices. You arranged them in a burgundy bowl on top of fluffy rice, the other side taken up by fish.

Tomoe watched you arrange the composition with purple puppy eyes, tail still, and ears alert. Your knife went through smoothly, in calculated and rehearsed motions.

Once he tried himself, he focused, frowning as it didn't turn out right the first time. He had tried to line it up perfectly, but the slices were uneven, thicker at the bottom and thinner at the top.

"It's alright, you'll have plenty of time to learn," You soothed calmly. You instinctively began to lift your arm and hand.

"I have an eternity."

His tone was ambiguous. Your arm fell to your side.

You watched him out of the corner of your eye as you picked up the bowl and a pair of chopsticks.

Your vision blurred due to a thick fog that formed around you, clearing up once you were in another room, a small bedroom you hadn't seen before. You turned your head to Tomoe.

"You're letting me stay? I thought you hated humans."

He crossed his arms.

"You're no regular human."

Your worry was clear on your face.

"A mere human wouldn't use an ofuda."

"How did you know..." You frowned. You had used an ofuda before he appeared earlier, but that had been invisible. That meant he was talking about...

"Akura-ou tells me everything. You're a human god." A fan materialized in his hand from a sputtering of blue fire. He fanned himself, white hair fluttering.

"Stay out of trouble."

He was gone in a flash of fire.

You set your bowl down on a table, sitting down.

You had gotten yourself into quite a situation, hadn't you?

#akura-ou x reader #tomoe x reader #akura ou/reader #akura-ou x reader x tomoe #kamisama hajimemashita #w r i t i n g #☂️#k a m i s a m a k i s s

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