#and he wishes he knew sooner and could have tried harder to fix things between them before Fushimi left

[ridiasfangirlings]

I wonder if Yata ever realized that he is the hero of Fushimi?

I feel like this is something that would eventually dawn on Yata at some point post-ROK, that after he's always wanted to be a hero and tried to become someone strong like Mikoto and all that he was already someone else's hero just by being a sweet middle school kid who saw something amazing in his lonely gloomy classmate. Like imagine post-ROK the two of them have reconciled and everything though Yata's still trying to really understand Fushimi properly (which is not easy, after all, and for all Fushimi's promising to say things in a way an idiot can understand I think there's a lot about himself that Fushimi can't really find a way to articulate at all). He knows that Fushimi still gets touchy whenever Yata mentions Mikoto and that he grumbles when Yata talks about Mikoto being the 'hero' who 'saved' Yata from the streets. Yata doesn't really know why it bothers Fushimi so much, especially since one of the reasons Mikoto was his hero is because Mikoto literally saved Saruhiko, Yata's most important person, and yet Fushimi as the person who was saved doesn't seem to care at all.

He's discussing it at some point while at the bar, maybe just venting to Kusanagi a little that he's trying his best but feels kinda inadequate because he can't understand Saruhiko as much as he likes. Akagi speaks up and says that he doesn't really know much about Fushimi, since he joined after Fushimi had already left, but he always thought it was weird that two guys like them were friends and he wonders how they even got together in the first place. Yata can't resist sharing old fond memories so he talks a little about how things were when they were in middle school, maybe not like quite giving away Fushimi's entire past – since that's not really his place to be like let me tell you all about Saruhiko's shitty parents and abusive upbringing – but he does talk about how Saruhiko was alone a lot and didn't have any other friends and used to not even go home so Yata just wanted to make a place where Fushimi could feel safe, like he belonged. Akagi's like 'so you were kinda like his hero, right?' and Yata's like 'well no, not...' and then he trails off and his eyes get wide as he realizes wait a second that actually makes sense.

Yata's meeting Fushimi for drinks after this and he keeps thinking about it, thinking about all the times Fushimi scoffed at Mikoto being a hero and how upset he always seemed to get whenever Yata talked about Mikoto saving 'them both.' As Yata walks into the bar where they're meeting Fushimi immediately notices something's wrong and Yata tries to wave it off a little, like yeah we were talking about something back at Homra and it just made me think a lot. Fushimi clicks his tongue all 'made you think, that's a new one for a bunch of idiots.' Yata glares at him but can't really feel annoyed, ordering his drink and just turning over the idea in his mind, that he was a hero to someone. Fushimi's maybe getting a bit annoyed (and possibly slightly on edge) that Yata's not rising to the usual bait and finally Yata just looks at him plainly and straight out asks it 'Saruhiko...was I a hero to you?'. Fushimi looks surprised and his initial reaction is probably to try and deny it but then he stops, like recalling his own promise to try and say what he actually means more in ways Yata can understand, and instead he hides his face and murmurs '...You were. There was never anyone at all by my side, until Misaki.' Yata suddenly just grabs Fushimi and gives him this fierce hug that makes Fushimi squirm a little and complain that Yata's going to suffocate him and Yata's just like say that kind of thing sooner you idiot.

[cloudteawrites]

chapter: six ( 15.5k ) rating: mature (death, past abuse, eventual smut) genre: mystery | romance | hurt/comfort tags: bts x reader | ot7 x reader | hybrid | poly summary: when an estranged uncle leaves you his massive fortune you wonder if the universe is playing a joke on you. when that fortune comes with seven hybrids, you know for sure that it is. << first < previous | next > last >>

what is hybrid marking

8.2 million results. 

While scent mixing (heretofore referred to as ‘scenting’) is temporary and lasts a maximum of twelve hours if left undisturbed, scent marking (‘marking’ in common parlance) is semi-permanent. A ‘mark’ is created when the pheromones present in a hybrid’s bodily fluids are applied directly to their markee’s skin. When said chemical compounds seep below the epidermis and bond to the sweat glands found within the dermal layer of the skin, the target has been officially ‘marked’. Between domesticated hybrids and their human caretakers, this is most commonly done by applying hybrid saliva to the skin of the neck, where a human’s scent tends to be strongest. While the behavior involved in marking resembles some aspects of human foreplay, it is a non-sexual expression of mutual trust and affection. It is important to note that most hybrids of age are able to mitigate the oral secretion of pheromones and cannot mark accidentally-

“How do I look?” 

The sound of Jimin’s voice makes you jump. You fumble with your phone, trying to exit out of the website, shove it in your pocket and look at the leopard hybrid’s outfit at the same time.

“You look great!” You tell him once the device is safely tucked away.

He rolls his eyes at you. “You’ve said that about everything I’ve shown you.”

You had, but only because it was true. No matter what the trio of hybrids tried on, they all looked great. You weren’t sure what it was, but seeing them in something other than neutral sweat suits made them look even better than they already had. You were discovering they all had unique senses of fashion too. Taehyung preferred earth tones, soft fabrics and slouchy cardigans, Yoongi tended toward plaid overshirts and dark denim and Jimin had just come out of the dressing room in his sixth button down and second pair of chelsea boots. 

When the four of you had arrived at the mall that afternoon, you’d told them to go wild and call you when they were ready to check out. There was an entire section of the shopping center that catered specifically to hybrids and you were certain they’d be able to find everything they needed and more. You’d been all set to sequester yourself in a booth in the food court and indulge your hybrid research habit, but Taehyung had fixed you with a forlorn look the moment you tried to part with them and Jimin had insisted that you personally review every piece of clothing he put on. You wouldn’t deny that you were having fun, but surreptitiously trying to google what every little thing they did meant without getting caught was getting harder and harder. 

Jimin breezes past you to the semi-circle of mirrors on the far end of the fitting rooms, brushing his tail against your shins as he passes. That was another thing that had changed. Since the talk you’d had with the boys last night, it seemed like they were always finding some excuse to touch you or brush up against you . You didn’t know if it was a manifestation of their cat genes or them just wanting physical reassurance that you were there, but it seemed like every time you turned around there was a tail curling around your calf or a nose tip against your ear or a shoulder brushing your own. You were practically wreathed in them. Even Yoongi hadn’t seemed to mind when your fingertips had brushed against each other at breakfast when you’d passed him the juice. You didn’t know if you should count that as progress, but you want to. 

You’re not entirely used to physical contact and nearly every time Taehyung rubs his cheek on the top of your head or Jimin reaches out to link your fingers together, you jump. It feels strange, to have people be so blatantly physically affectionate with you. It’s not like you dislike it, exactly, it’ll just take some getting used to. Whatever adjustments you need to make, you know you’ll need to make them quickly. You don’t think the hybrids will give up on friendly hugs just because you never initiate them first.  

“Y/N-ah,”Jimin calls, catching your attention. He’s twisting this way and that on the platform, trying to catch his reflection in every possible angle. He hums in disappointment as he turns back to the front, tail waving behind him. “This collar,” he says, tugging on the offending band of bright green plastic around his neck, “-is ruining my outfit. We’ll need to get real ones today.” 

You feel like a stone has settled in your stomach. Your shoulders sag, but if the leopard hybrid notices, he doesn’t say anything. “Yeah,” you reply. “Yeah, you’re right.” In truth, you’d hoped to put it off for a little while longer. Collaring and leashing a hybrid had always seemed odd to you. After all, weren’t they people too? The law was the law, you knew, but something about publicly and visibly marking someone as property...well, the morality of it was gray at best. The temporary collars had provided you with a stay from the inevitable, but there was no avoiding it any longer, you supposed. They’d have to get collars. 

“I saw a store for them a couple shops down,” Taehyung supplies as he steps out of his dressing room in a white linen shirt and cream drawstring pants. “We could go there?” 

“That works for me...Taehyung, one of your buttons is in the wrong hole.” 

The tiger hybrid squints down at his shirt, feels blindly for the hole he missed, but can’t seem to find it. 

“No,” you tell him. “Not that one, the other- do you just want me to fix it?”

He pauses and looks up at you for a solid three seconds before giving a single, slow nod. 

You come to stand in front of him and start undoing the buttons from the top. There’s only four of them but each one you pop open reveals more and more of his honey brown skin and prominent collar bones. Your fingers brush his skin accidentally and he chuffs happily, one hand resting on your lower back as you start buttoning him up again. Heat starts crawling up your neck unbidden. Even through the fabric of your t-shirt, you can feel the warmth of his palm, how long his fingers are. He presses you closer until your arms are nearly flat against your chest as you try to finish buttoning him up. It’s hard to move squished between the insistent pressure of his hand and the- surprisingly- hard line of his body, but you make do. “There!” You pat him gently on the chest as you finish the last button. “All done.”

He dips forward and rubs his cheek against your forehead, rumbling so deep in his chest that the vibrations pass into you. “Thank you.” He releases you and pulls away, but as he does, his lips brush against your hairline. You try not to read too deep into it. 

The tiger hybrid sidles over to his friend in the mirror, wrapping his arms around the smaller man’s waist and dipping his head into his neck. Jimin reaches back and scratches behind one of his ears and your heart swells in your chest. It was nice to see them be so openly affectionate with each other. They’re so close in a way you can’t even begin to understand. It’s beautiful. 

Your phone buzzes in your pocket and you thumb the screen to life. An incoming call from Mr. Seo. “You guys keep trying stuff on,” you tell the pair, already standing to make your way out of the dressing room. “I’ve gotta take this.”  They both call at you to hurry back and you give them a shout of assent as you rush away. 

The second you’re outside the store, you answer. “Hello?”

“Ms. L/N,” Mr. Seo’s voice crackles on the other end of the line. “I trust you’ve settled in well.” It isn’t a question and the tone of his voice makes it clear that he doesn’t wish to spend what precious time he has exchanging pleasantries with you. 

“Yeah, everything’s okay.” Everything had most certainly not been okay when you’d emergency dialed him two days ago about the tiger on your couch. The text he’d sent you back six hours later had told you to figure it out. You had and you knew you weren’t his responsibility, but him tossing you in the deep end was still a sore spot for you. 

“There’s been a change of plans.” 

You grimace. Straight to it, then. “What’s going on?” 

“Black Mountain Canines- the company your uncle purchased two of the hybrids from- changed their pick-up date. They want you to come get them in person today.”

“Pick-up?” You frown. “No, they were supposed to drop them off.”

“They were,” Mr. Seo confirms, “But it’s apparently no longer profitable for them to drive all the way into Seoul to hand-deliver two of their charges. They also claim they’re incurring additional expenses by feeding and housing two hybrids who’ve already been purchased, but we’ll see about that when we arrive.”

Your anxiety spikes and your fingers wrap tighter around your phone. You’d promised the boys a whole day out. All you’d done so far was get them phones of their own and furniture for their room. There was still so much to do, so much to see. “What about Yoongi and Jimin and Taehyung?” You blurt out.

Mr. Seo sighs and his breath crackles over the receiver. “Those are the cats, I assume? I suggest you let them know sooner rather than later that they’ll have to share their space.” There’s a flurry of movement on his end of the line, the sound of someone calling his name and papers shuffling. “I have to go; they need me to look over some case files.” He tells you. “I’ll be at Haneul Tower to pick you up in three hours. Be downstairs waiting.”And the line clicks off. 

You sigh and hang up. What were you going to tell the boys? Day one of your new friendship and you were already breaking promises. 

“Trouble?” Yoongi’s voice right behind you makes you flinch and whirl on him. His ears press back against his head and he takes a step back at your sudden movements. 

“Sorry!” You tell him, forcing your spine to relax. “Sorry, I didn’t notice you there; I thought you were still shopping. ”

“I can tell,” he snarks, but there’s no heat behind it. His eyes trace the line of your shoulders, still tense and flick to the phone in your hand. “I dropped my stuff at the register. What’s going on?”

You gnaw on the inside of your cheek, nerves making your stomach ache. “C’mon,” you tell him, walking back into the store. “Let’s pay and grab some lunch. I’ll tell you when we sit down.” He follows after you a few paces behind, trying not to let worry prick in him at the anxious shift in your scent. Something was about to change, he was sure, and not entirely for the better. 

Twenty minutes later, the four of you are sitting in the food court, a mess of shopping bags at your feet and a bowl of tteokbokki between you. Yoongi and Jimin had picked out all the fish cakes first and were bickering good-naturedly over who the last one should go to, but Taehyung seemed content to just gnaw at his rice cakes. You’d hardly touched anything, your eyes flicking back to the time on your phone. 1:20 P.M. Two hours and forty minutes ‘til Mr. Seo would be at your apartment to pick you up and bring you to get two more of the hybrids your uncle had bought. You push a rice cake around on your paper plate with the end of your chopstick. Well, no point delaying the inevitable. 

“Hey, guys?” You call softly. Three pairs of ears swivel toward you immediately. The words die in your throat and your tongue feels like lead as they look at you, all their eyes focused and expectant. You clear your throat and force yourself to continue. “So...you know how I…” You search for the right word, but there’s really no other way to say it. “...inherited you guys from my uncle?” 

Taehyung’s eyes flick toward Jimin and the leopard hybrid brushes his tail against the tiger’s. Silent communication you couldn’t even begin to decipher. “Yeah,” Yoongi says, tossing his chopsticks down and leaning back in his chair. “I told them.”

That was right. What you’d blurted out at Yoongi yesterday on the street you had yet to disclose to his juniors. “Thanks, Yoongi,” You tell him, meaning every word of it. He’d spared you from yet another uncomfortable conversation. 

“...For what it’s worth, we’re glad it’s you,” Taehyung tells you, his tail twining around your ankle under the table. He looks at his hyungs for confirmation and when neither of them deny it, he settles his amber gaze back on you. “We like being here with you, even if you didn’t pick us. It’s...It’s nice.”

You can’t help the smile that tugs at your lips at his words. He beams at you, his boxy smile soft despite the sharp incisors poking his bottom lip. “I like having you guys around, too,” you admit, taking the time to meet each of their eyes. Jimin purrs as you look at him, the corners of his mouth curling. When your gaze meets Yoongi’s, his ears twitch but he doesn’t look away. He doesn’t blink either, just holds your stare with an intensity that makes heat crawl up your neck. You suddenly remember the warm stretch of his body over your’s, the sensation of his lips against your neck. You snatch your eyes away and cough to cover your lapse in speech.  “It would’ve been scary, I think, if I had to deal with all this alone.” 

You couldn’t even imagine it.That clinically clean apartment with its blank white walls and its imposing emptiness would have driven you down until you couldn’t stand it anymore. You’d always had a little pit of loneliness inside you. You didn’t know how long it’d been there. Maybe it always had been, a seed of something sad and dark at the core of your soul. You’d done well keeping it contained. You felt it in your goshiwon, but your room was small. It couldn’t grow beyond your keeping. In Oliver’s penthouse, it would’ve had endless room to sprawl and with no one to clip it back, you would’ve choked to death on vines of doubt.

“There are others,” you tell them, before you can down spiral into the mire of your own thoughts. “He bought other hybrids before he died. They weren’t supposed to be coming until next week but their company wants me to come get them today.” 

The mood at the table shifts almost immediately. Taehyung’s ears and tail sag, Jimin’s smile goes sharp at the edges and Yoongi’s lip curls. “How many others?” He asks, crossing his arms over his chest. You notice he does that when he’s nervous or uncomfortable. It’s a defense mechanism, no matter how at ease it makes him seem. 

“Four,” you answer and the bobcat hybrid’s ears tilt back in irritation. “Two are coming home today and the other two toward the end of next week.” Jimin doesn’t say anything, but you see the tip of his tail flicking back and forth. He’s annoyed. Taehyung drops a hand onto the smaller hybrid’s back and rubs circles in it, trying to soothe him. 

“Maybe it’ll be okay?” The tiger hybrid offers. He’s trying his best to be diplomatic, but you hear the strain in the deep timbre of his voice. “Having other cats around again might be nice. We used to live with a lot back at the center…”

You wince. “...they’re canines.” Almost immediately, all of their ears go flat against their skulls and they hiss in unison. Yoongi stifles himself the quickest, setting a hand on Jimin’s knee and squeezing to get the leopard hybrid to get a hold of himself. 

“Hybrids of different species don’t play well together,” he explains. “Especially not when our animals are solitary in the wild. The only reason Jimin, Tae and I are able to stand sharing the same territory is because we’ve known each other since we were kids and we’ve had to do it before.”

Before? A question forms in the back of your mind, but now isn’t the time to ask it.

“We don’t like sharing what’s ours,” Jimin continues for his hyung, interlocking his fingers with yours on the plastic table top. “It’s instinctual.”

“I know, I know.” You squeeze his hand lightly, trying to reassure him. “But the apartment is big; can’t you avoid each other starting out?”

All three of them give you a strange look and Jimin’s lips curl in a way that isn’t quite a smile. “...right,” he purrs, a little delayed. “The apartment.”

You chew on the inside of your cheek, anxiety sinking its claws into you. “I’m really sorry to spring this on you guys, I know it’s not great, but…” Your shoulders sag. “I don’t want to have promised someone a home and rip the rug out from under them, you know?” You knew what that felt like. You wouldn’t wish that feeling on your worst enemy. “I’m just...I’m worried that they’re not being treated well.”

“They were up for sale,” Yoongi drawls. “They definitely aren’t.” 

The taxi ride back to Haneul Tower is uncomfortably quiet. Jimin still holds your hand and Taehyung still leans on your shoulder, but nobody says a word. You help them carry their bags upstairs and drop them off in the master bedroom. You’d told them they could have separate rooms if they wanted, but they’d insisted on sharing, so you thought it was only fair that they get the largest room in the penthouse. Clothes went onto hangars and into closets and before you knew it, there were only ten minutes until Mr. Seo’s arrival. 

“You don’t have to go,” Taehyung huffs. He’s got you wrapped in a bear- well, you suppose a tiger hug and his cheek is mashed against the top of your head. You don’t even think he’s actively scenting you at this point, just keeping you from leaving. “Send your assistant instead and stay here with us.”

You let out a puff of laughter and pat the hybrid on the back in a way you hope is soothing. “Mr. Seo isn’t my assistant, buddy, he’s my uncle’s attorney.” You give a little tug away from him and he lets you go, albeit with a sad little mrow that makes him sound just like a disappointed cat. “I couldn’t ask him to do that. The only reason he’s coming is because they broke the contract. And I can’t drive.” 

The look Taehyung gives you is so downtrodden that you toy with the idea of calling the whole day off and staying with them- but no. You can’t bail out now, especially not with what you’d put Mr. Seo through when the first group of hybrids were delivered. “I’ll be back before you know it,” You tell him with a steadfast smile. 

“You’d better,” Jimin says, nudging the taller hybrid out of the way. Taehyung gives a half-hearted growl, but settles as Yoongi squeezes his shoulder. “The longer you’re away, the longer you’ll have to sit in the stench of those mutts.”

You frown. “Jimin-”

“Only joking,” He soothes, bringing both of your hands up to his cheeks. You don’t believe him, but you don’t press it. The leopard hybrid nuzzles into your palms, purring happily at the feeling of your skin against his. Your palms nearly burn from how warm he is. You feel a warm puff of air against your fingers and tense as Jimin presses all ten of them against his lips. 

“Jimin.” Yoongi’s voice is hard, but his junior’s lips curl up in a satisfied smile, one of his incisors pricking at the pad of your index finger. 

“Hurry back,” he murmurs. You try not to shiver at the feeling of his plush lips moving against your oversensitive fingertips. 

“I’ll do my best!” You say,  a pained smile tugging your lips apart. He hums in response and drops your hands, his fingers trailing across yours as he lets you go. 

“Hyung,” he calls over his shoulder. “Is there anything you’d like to say to Y/N-ah?”

“Don’t let them scent you.” Is all Yoongi says as he breezes toward the stairs. “You know better now.” 

It’s as much as you were expecting. “I’ll see you guys later,” You tell them as you head out the door. “Finish setting your phones up and text me if you need anything!”

True to his word, Mr. Seo is parked out front at 4 o’clock on the dot. You haven’t seen him in a little over a week and you’d almost forgotten how imposing he was. He cuts a sharp figure against the backdrop of the bustling street, dressed in all black and leaning against a brand new Buick Enclave. The poor valet stationed at the front door looks like he’s been trying to work up the courage to ask to park his car for the past twenty minutes and sags in relief as you start heading over.

The lawyer dips his head in acknowledgement at you and checks his watch. “Miracle of miracles,” he says, popping open the passenger side door for you. “You’re on time.”

“I was late one time,” you huff, sliding past him and into your seat.

“And that was enough,” he snips back, closing your door before you can come up with a retort. You grumble to yourself, but don’t press him. You know he’s right. He’d gone out of his way to help you and you’d put him out. 

“I’m sorry,” you tell him as he settles into his seat and reaches for his seatbelt. “It won’t happen again; I know you’ve got other things to do.”

He stills and looks at you over the gold frames of his glasses. For a long moment he holds your gaze, unblinking. You gnaw on the inside of your cheek. Had you done something wrong? 

Finally Mr. Seo blinks and finishes buckling himself in. “I apologize for staring, I wasn’t sure if I’d heard you correctly.” He push starts his car and pulls away from the curb. “I never thought I’d see the day a L/N would apologize to me.” He edges the car into the steady stream of Seoul traffic and you’re off, zooming toward the freeway.

Silence fills the car again, but as Mr. Seo takes on-ramp, you work up the courage to ask your question. “Did Oliver never apologize to you?”

Mr. Seo snorts and it’s such an undignified sound that you almost can’t believe it comes from him. “You could tell your uncle the sky was blue and he’d argue that it was red until he was. And your grandfather-” He seems to catch himself, reigning back whatever meager bits of his personality had managed to slip through the cracks in his normally flawless veneer. You’re all ears.

Up until a week and a half ago, you hadn’t known you had any family, much less an uncle who owned buildings and bugattis. Now you were finding out that you had a grandfather too. “What about my grandfather?” The word feels strange in your mouth. It’d been years since you’d followed the word ‘my’ up with any type of familial relation. 

Mr. Seo cuts his eyes at you, and flicks them back to the front. “Nothing,” he replies, clearly done talking about him. “I spoke out of turn.” He reaches forward and turns on the radio, the sound of national news filling the silence.

You pout and slouch in your seat, disappointment setting in as the promise of new information slipped out of your grasp.

The rest of the drive is easy. Mr. Seo takes the highway out of Seoul and up into the foothills but you’re asleep before he even finds the exit. You’d slept more in the past two days than you had in the previous three weeks, but it seemed like years of bad habits were catching up to you.

Last night, you’d passed out halfway through the second movie snuggled up between Jimin and Taehyung. They’d been so warm and soft and the quiet thrumming of their heartbeats had lulled you to sleep before you knew what was happening.You’d woken up with them still curled around you and -maybe most surprising of all- Yoongi plating breakfast in the kitchen.

Still, it seemed even twelve hours of the best sleep you’d gotten in years and a peaceful morning devoid of stress -for the most part- hadn’t been enough.

You wake up just as the asphalt transitions into gravel, the sound of it crunching under the tires and the car’s shaking waking you up. You’re bleary-eyed and confused, but a sign up ahead snaps you to wakefulness. Standing like a guardian over a chain link fence topped with barbed wire is a metal sign, imposing as it is tall: Black Mountain K-9s, written in stark font.

“We’re here,” Mr. Seo says, as if it’s not obvious. He kills the engine and without its purring to distract you, you feel nerves starting to boil in your belly. What kind of place was this? You half expect sinister organ music to kick on and lightning to start flashing from black clouds. Neither of those things happen, though. The sky remains startlingly clear and the only things you can pick up are the sounds of whistles being blown, dozens of people doing call and response, and one voice, louder than all the others screaming for people to ‘Run faster! Get those knees up!’

You pop the door and step out of the car before Mr. Seo can open it for you and head around to the nose of the car, taking in the compound. 

“This facility produces some of the highest caliber bodyguards in the country,” He says, coming to stand beside you. The attorney rebuttons his suit jacket and flicks his sleeves up before settling his arms over his chest. “Politicians, celebrities, even a few former presidents all have hybrids from this training center.”

“It looks more like a prison,” You remark, nodding toward the barbed wire. “First big cat hybrids, now this...Why didn’t Oliver just get regular pets if he was lonely? Was he worried someone was after him?” 

“Anything I can tell you would be pure speculation,” He replies, walking away from you and heading for the callbox. “Your uncle very rarely confided in me.”

“But you were his attorney.” 

For just a second, the tight grip Mr. Seo has on his composure slips. His lips press together and his shoulders sag- but just as quickly as it’d lapsed, his mask is in place again. “Yes,” he says after a beat. “I was.” And he presses the button on the call box before you can pester him with any more questions about the dead men he’d known.

The call box crackles to life, speakers squealing with feedback. You flinch and slap your hands over your ears to protect them from the splitting sound. Mr. Seo doesn’t react at all and you’re stunned, wondering how he can stand it.

“Seo Seunghan and Y/N L/N for Lim Hangyeol.” 

The person on the other end doesn’t respond. The speaker cuts and a second later, the metal gate before you starts rolling to the side, pushed by invisible hands. It’s like a curtain going up at the theater. 

Before you lies a wide, dusty yard, devoid of any plant life. The thick-trunked trees and lush grasses of the surrounding mountainside had been stripped down to the roots here. All that remains are a few weeds poking out around the base of the long metal buildings that ring the fence, and even those seem like an intrusion. People are making use of the space in whatever way they can. A group of people with matching cropped black ears and docked tails run past you in four straight lines, all perfectly in step with each other. Over to your right, there’s a pack of teenagers working in pairs to scale a ten-foot tall sheer wooden wall and in the center of the field, twenty kids are running through taekwondo forms, supervised by a widely smiling instructor.

You’re in awe of it all. Every single person is like a cog in a well-oiled machine, all in the same black tactical pants and compression shirt. You’d never seen so many hybrids in one place before and certainly not all of the same breed.

Mr. Seo places a hand in the center of your back, steering you away from staring and toward a squat cement building.You let him lead you.

“When we get inside,” the lawyer begins, his voice quieter than you’ve ever heard it. “Let me speak first. If we can get him to admit to breaching the contract right away, it’ll be much easier to get him to agree to a settlement.”

You frown at that. “Why would we settle?” You ask him. “It’s not like I need the money.”

“It’s a matter of principle, Ms. L/N.” He sighs, pulling open the heavy metal door and ushering you into the building. “He did something wrong, and it’s most easy for him to bear the brunt of atonement financially. Without requiring damages be paid for breaches, contract law would collapse.” 

“Can’t you just have him apologize?”

Mr. Seo’s mouth twists up like he’s just tasted something unpleasant. “As you attorney, it is my duty to advise you against accepting restitution in the form of an apology. You’ll get a reputation for being a pushover.” 

You wanted to be anything but. “Alright, alright,” you concede, “Do whatever you think is best.”

The building you’ve ducked into seems to be an office. Along one wall are a set of metal folding chairs doing their best impression of a waiting room. Along the other is a metal door covered in peeling paint and one suspicious dent bearing a plaque that reads ‘DIRECTOR LIM’. Set between you and it is a desk covered in a mess of paperwork. An old desktop stands among it like an island in the ocean and middle aged hybrid woman in coke bottle glasses is hunched before it, tapping away at the keyboard at a mind-boggling speed. One of her ears twitches as the pair of you approach. 

“Take a seat,” she orders in a reedy voice, not bothering to look up from her work. “The Director will be with you shortly.”

“Send them in, Eunjung!” Someone shouts from behind the metal door  just as she’s finished. She doesn’t look up or stop typing or even acknowledge you two again. Mr. Seo takes it upon himself to breeze past her desk and open the door for you. 

The office is militaristically organized, all right angles and bare metal surfaces. There’s a black leather couch that’d seen better days to your left as you enter, a half empty water cooler to your right. Bookshelves lined with trophies and textbooks dominate the western wall. You scan the titles as you pass: Predatory Instinct: The Teaching and Training Canines, The Utility of Force, On Raising Hybrids, The Art of War, all dangerous and daunting as the man they belonged to.

Lim Hangyeol is the most grizzled man you’ve ever seen and the only other human besides yourself and Mr. Seo in the compound, it seems. He looks like a drill sergeant from an old action movie, his salt and pepper hair buzzed short and his face craggy with frown lines. There’s a semicircle of pockmark scars marring the skin of his right cheek and as you get closer, you realize they’re teeth marks. You shoot a concerned look to Mr. Seo, but he’s more focused on giving the director a shallow bow than allaying any of your fears. 

“Director,” He says, straightening back up. “Thank you for having us-”

“Spare me the bullshit,” The older man orders, kicking back his office chair and sinking back into it. “Take a seat. Let’s talk business.” 

A cold smile settles on your attorney’s lips and you see a cord twitching in his jaw, but he merely nods and replies in a breezy voice, “Of course.” 

The two of you do as you told, settling into two metal chairs in front of his desk. These ones are nicer than the folding ones in the waiting room, but no more comfortable. You try to slide yours forward only to find that it’s bolted to the floor. 

“Stops the dogs from throwin’ em when they get bad news,” Director Lim tells you as you uselessly tug at the legs. “Got tired of replacing windows.”

You grimace. If the awards on the bookshelf, what Mr. Seo had told you and the dozens of hybrids running boot camp drills outside were any indication, the man before you must’ve had some idea what he was doing. You didn’t end up providing security for high profile public figures without a smidge of credibility, you knew, but the bite marks on his cheek, the little crack about people throwing chairs at him and the way he’d referred to them as ‘dogs’ didn’t inspire confidence in you. 

This was your first time visiting a place that produced hybrids, you realized. You’d never even been into a shelter before and certainly not a breeding center. Were they all like this? Devoid of anything soft or comforting, rigid with rules and regulations? Had Yoongi, Jimin and Taehyung come from a place like this? You don’t know and you’re not sure you’d like the answer if you did. 

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with us on such short notice,” Mr. Seo starts, popping open the hinges on his briefcase and pulling out a few sheaves of paper. “After the sudden cancellation of your company’s contract with Ms. L/N, I was concerned for the state of our business relationship.” He slides one of the packets across the desk to the director. 

“If I remember correctly,” Director Lim says, scanning the lines of ink and unintelligible legalese, “Me and your boss signed for delivery, not me and whoever this little girl is you brought.” 

Your eyes narrow and your lips curl, but before you can give voice to the nasty thing crawling up your throat, Mr. Seo gives a subtle shake of his head and taps you twice on the knee, out of eyeshot of the director. You grumble, but cage it behind your teeth. 

“See?” The man jabs one gnarled finger at the page, right over your late uncle’s flourishing signature. “It says it right there: L/N Oliver. Last I checked, he was dead. I’m not holding on to a dead man’s dogs. ”

That same muscle tenses in Mr. Seo’s jaw. “The contract states that Black Mountain Canines would deliver the hybrids my client purchased to his residence on December the eighteenth and that they would be received by a proxy if he was unavailable. You were made aware of the fact that he was unavailable, as well as the fact that he now has a proxy-

“I’ll pay the goddamn fine!” The Director barks, throwing his hands up in the air. “Christ above, I don’t know why he wanted those two fuck-ups in the first place, but I don’t want them on my property a second longer.” 

You shoot Mr. Seo a look of confusion, but he just watches, blasé, as the Director rifles through his desk drawers. The man finds what he’s looking for and drops two manila folders on top of the contract. “The pair of them are useless. If it weren’t for my reputation, I’d’ve had them both sent to shelters years ago. Or put down, but you know how touchy the law is about that.”

“I don’t.” You say, your voice edging dangerously close to a snarl. It slips out before you can stop it. Mr. Seo shoots you a warning look and you ball your fists up in your sweater sleeves, fingernails biting crescent moons into your palms with the effort of keeping your mouth shut. 

You can’t stand this man, you decide. He’s awful. You should’ve known that from the moment you saw elementary school aged hybrids stumbling through taekwondo drills with their ears taped and bandages on their tails. You’re going to take whatever hybrids Oliver bought, get them the fuck out of there and never look back. 

If Director Lim had heard you growl at him, he gives no sign of it, just flips open the folders. “To be honest, I should be paying you to take them off my hands. They’ve been nothing but a pain in my ass since they aged out of training. I told your uncle he could have his pick of the litter for what he was paying, but he wanted a wide-eyed buffoon and a mutt who’d rip your hand off soon as look at you.” Clipped to the insides are photos of two men, staring back at you in black and white. 

One has the same black and tan cropped ears as every other hybrid you’ve seen thus far. Unlike them, he’s smiling. His eyes are little upturned crescent moons and he beams at you through the photo paper. There’s so much light in his face it’s nearly blinding. 

The other is not nearly as inviting. The photo is taken at an odd angle and it’s blurry at the edges, like whoever took it was much shorter than the subject and had to zoom in to even get the shot. His ears, larger than any of the other hybrids and longer furred, are pinned back against his head. His jaw is clenched and he glowers down into the lens, one eye soot black and the other piercing blue. 

There are stats listed on the pages behind their photos: height, weight, shot records and the like. Among them, you see their call signs, highlighted in yellow: Hope and Monster. 

“I don’t know where I went wrong with him,” the director says, tapping Hope’s photo. “He went through all the training, passed all the tests, but when it comes down to it, he just doesn’t have the instinct.” He gives a single shake of his head, clicks the tip of his tongue against his teeth. “No one wants a guard dog that’d sooner talk an intruder’s ear off than actually guard what he’s supposed to. He’s not good for much but nannying the pups, but he’s too soft on them too.”

A light bulb clicks on and you realize the hybrid in question had been the one instructing the kids outside in the center of the yard, his tail wagging a mile a minute as they completed another form correctly.

“Now this bastard…” the director continues, jamming a finger onto the second photo with so much force, it rattled the cup of pens on his desk. “Is my biggest failure.” He crosses his arms and kicks back in his chair, his dislike of the hybrid in question obvious. “His mother was the cornerstone of this facility for nearly a decade. I sold her pups to assemblymen and actors alike. Centers around the country wanted pups with her genetics. If it weren’t for her, we’d never have grown to this size.” He sounds wistful as he spreads his hands out, gesturing around himself like a king taking in his holdings. “But all good things come to an end,” He sighs. “A pack of wild hybrids settled a little higher up on the mountain.” His face darkens and his lips twist. “Wolves,” he snarls with all the disdain he can muster. 

“All that about them being noble and self-sacrificing? Complete and utter bullshit,” He scoffs. “They’re transient lowlifes who’d slit your throat as soon as look at you. At first I didn’t care. They stayed on their side of the mountain and I stayed on mine, but then they started sneaking down here at night to steal my food and fuck my dogs. By the time I managed to get the cops out here, they’d cleared out and my top breeder had gone with them.”

He let out a low chuckle and shook his head. “I tell you, I thought I was ruined. But wouldn’t you know it, she came stumbling back here six months later, barefoot and howling to be let in and heavy with some wild thing’s pup.” Director Lim snaps both the folders shut and slides them to you across the desk. “The thing about breeding hybrids is, the money’s all in the bloodlines. No one wants a dog with mystery genetics. The only way to solve that problem is to cut it off at the root- but it was already too late by the time she got here.” 

You feel sick to your stomach. You hope he isn’t implying what you think he is- that hybrid children he hadn’t planned out himself were mistakes in need of correction- but you know he is. Deep in your gut you know.

“And she spoiled him. She let him run roughshod over everyone and everybody in this compound. I tried telling her wild hybrids need a firmer hand- he certainly did if we were gonna break that wolf he’s got inside him, but she wouldn’t hear it. I tried to crop him with the other pups his age, he gave me these,” he said, gesturing to the teeth marks in his cheeks. “We keep him shut up away from the others, now, in the back when he can’t bother anyone. He gets his meals delivered but we don’t ever let him out.” The grizzled man shakes his head. “A drain on resources is what he is.”

“And his mother?” You ask, quietly. 

“Eunjung?” he questions. “You met her on the way in.” The director stands and unclips a ring of keys from his belt buckle, making his way around the desk and gesturing for you and Mr. Seo to follow. “I’ve got her doing desk work now. Gotta keep her close so she doesn’t cause any more trouble.” He pushes open the door to his office, barks something at his secretary and steps outside, not looking back to see if you two are following. 

You shoot Mr. Seo a look before you stand and he meets it, evenly. “We’ll discuss this in the car,” he says, stuffing papers back into his briefcase and flicking the clasps shut. Oh, you most certainly will discuss ‘it’ in the car. 

You don’t really know what it is or where to even begin. The kids with bandaged ears? The fact that Director Lim seemingly decided who was allowed to see the sun and who wasn’t? You think back to the conversation you’d had with Jimin, Taehyung and Yoongi last night. Right now, it seems years away, in some unreachable, idyllic past before you knew how breeding centers worked and how security hybrids were made. You feel foolish. Who were you to try to get them to let go of their pain and their hurt? If what they’d been through was even a little like what was going on here, they wouldn’t be able to for a long time. You’re angry. You’re disgusted. You are unquantifiably fucking sad. 

You pass Eunjung on your way out. In your time in the director’s office, she’s pulled her ash brown hair into a low ponytail at the nape of her neck. Peeking out of the collar of her sweatshirt you can see a faded scar in the shape of a ring, little puncture marks pale and glossy. It looked similar to the one on the director’s cheek, but this one was a complete circle and not ragged at all, like she’d stayed completely still while it was given. Teeth marks. 

You swallow. You want to do something, to give her some words of encouragement, but you have no idea what to say. You still don’t as you slow to a stop beside her desk, but you open your mouth to speak anyway. “I’m sorry,” You tell her, with all the sincerity in your heart. 

She doesn’t answer, but one cropped ear flicks toward you and her fingers slow in their incessant race across her keyboard. 

You turn to go. Mr. Seo was holding the door open for you and you can hear the director barking orders at a group of trainees to run an obstacle course faster. Just as you set foot over the threshold, she speaks. Her voice is so quiet, you have to strain to hear her over the steady clack-click-clack of her nails on the keys. 

“He likes green things,” she says, not looking up from her work. “And old books.” 

You look over your shoulder at her. Her face is a mask of neutrality, her eyes clear and her mouth set in a relaxed line. She looks fine, but there’s an ocean of meaning behind her words. You see her, just for a moment, as she’d been all those years ago, barefoot in the snow and begging for shelter, her stomach full with one of the moon’s own children. You commit the sight of her to memory. Then you turn and you go.

The director is waiting outside, shielding his eyes from the sun and regaling Mr. Seo with some long-winded explanation on the best way to treat hip dysplasia in Doberman hybrids. “Where to?” you ask, effectively cutting him off mid-sentence. 

The man gives you a disgruntled look but despite the anxiety you feel spiking in your belly, you meet it evenly. Once upon a time, anyone in a position of authority looking at you the way he was would’ve sent you into a tailspin of self-doubt and nerves, leaving you shivering as your heartbeat thrummed in your ears, warning you of non-existent danger. If you were honest, it still did- but you didn’t have the luxury of running away and hiding anymore, not when there were people who needed you. 

“Hope’s bags are in the barracks. He just needs to grab them, and he can be on his merry way,” The direction grunts. “Monster’s still locked up, so I’ll-”

“I’ll go.” You can feel Mr. Seo stiffen beside you. 

“Ms. Y/N-”

“If he’s really that aggressive,” you start, your eyes not leaving the director’s for a moment. “Wouldn’t it be better for me to meet him now instead of when we’re packed into a car on a two hour car ride?” Director Lim narrows his eyes at you, but you don’t falter. You hold your hand out for the key. Your boldness surprises you. He drops the key ring into your open palm and you wrap your fingers around it, stuffing it in your pocket before he can snatch them back. You turn on your heels and march off in the direction he tilts his head in, nothing but a hiss of your name from Mr. Seo’s lips to accompany you. 

You walk quickly, eyes straight and willing your legs to go faster with every stride. It’s a long way across the compound but the less time you spend walking, the less time you have to stew in anxiety. None of the hybrids training in little packs spread across the yard pay you any mind- except for Hope. 

Your path takes you directly behind the group of kids he’s working with. You give them a wide berth, not wanting to disturb them, but you get a little distracted. Your steps slow for just a moment as you drink him in. He’s tall- the same height as Taehyung, if you’re judging it right, but there’s an ease about him the tiger hybrid hasn’t yet mastered. Everything about Taehyung is pulled in. He’s always coiled tight, like he’s preparing to spring forward at any moment, all his energy drawn into the center of his being. Even last night, when you’d been cuddled up with him on the couch, he’d pulled you tight against his side, shifting and rearranging himself til you both fit on one cushion. He’d held you tight through both films, his tail curled around the both of you and his spine tight, like if he let himself relax for a moment, you’d both turn to dust on the wind. 

Hope has no such fear. Everything about him is spread wide open, from the heart-shaped smile on his lips to his arms as he demonstrates a series of punches to his little pack of students. They all watch him with rapt attention, ears perked up and bandaged tails wagging. One of them asks him a question and he laughs, ruffles their hair. He laughs in a way you’ve never seen before, shoulders shaking like he can’t contain the force of it alone. It makes your heart flip. 

His ears twitch, picking up the change in the cadence of your footsteps. He looks up and your eyes meet for the first time. He looks surprised to see you, for a moment, face blank- but then it melts into a soft smile, brimming with affection you’ve done nothing to earn. You snatch your gaze away and fix it to the dirt in front of you, embarrassed at being caught. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see him cock his head to the side in confusion, but he doesn’t go after you. All the better, you’re all but running away from him now. 

You shuffle across the compound in a blur of scuffed sneakers and frayed nerves. You barely give yourself time to look up at the small cinder block building before you, shoving the key in the padlock before you can lose what unearned confidence you have left. You twist it, yank the rusted thing open, take a deep breath and enter.

You don’t know what you’d been expecting, but it’s certainly not what you find. The way Director Lim had spoken about him and this place, you’d been expecting cobwebs on the ceiling, blood spatters on the wall and rusty nails on the floor. What’s before you is almost entirely the opposite.

The room is a veritable Eden. 

There are vines climbing every available wall, wrapping around structural posts and digging their way between concrete blocks. Every surface is crammed full of flowering plants in makeshift pots: lilies in old water jugs, violets in a worn out boot, black-eyed susans dripping orange petals from an upturned helmet. The floor is in a similar state, ferns and foxgloves turning what little space around his bed there is into a meadow. It’s beautiful. 

“He likes green things,” you marvel, stepping into the room and pushing the door shut behind you. It seemed every living thing that’d been uprooted to expand the compound had found a second life here, sheltered from the Director’s violence. Maybe the hybrid who lived here had too. 

A plant different from all the others catches your eye. It’s set up on the cardboard box serving as his bedside table and it’s the only one in a real pot from what you can tell. It looks just like a miniature tree, complete with knobs on it’s trunk and tiny leaves. You let out a little sound of wonder and crouch in front of it, your fingers reaching out on their own to trail across the delicate branches-

A massive hand wraps around your wrist, stopping you cold. “Don’t touch that.” 

You hadn’t heard him approach, but now you knew he was there. You could feel his presence behind you, heavy and warm. He’s looming over you. You swallow and make your arm go limp in his grip. No need to give him a reason. “I won’t,” You tell him. “Will you please let go of my wrist?”

He drops your arm without protest and relief floods your body. You weren’t sure if there was a hybrid version of lockjaw and you certainly weren’t itching to find out. You sit back on your heels and struggle to your feet, still hyper aware of the person behind you, his eyes boring holes into the back of your head. By the time you turn around, he’s back where he came from, standing in the entrance for a bathroom you hadn’t seen, half hidden behind a curtain of vines. 

He looks different than the others. You’d been expecting that, but the full-length fluffy tail held stiffly behind his back and the long-furred ears pointed away from you are still a surprise. His fur, instead of being in rigid black and tan points, is marked by whorls of black, brown and gray. Instead of the lean musculature all the other hybrids had -all trim waists and narrow ankles- he’s sturdier, his shoulders broad and the veins in his forearms popping as he clenches his fists. He’s looking at you with that mismatched glare, his chin tilted toward his chest and his eyes shining aquamarine and obsidian. 

“If you’re new,” he starts, voice raspy. “They should’ve told you: you’re supposed to knock before you come in.”

“No, I’m not-”

“You can leave the food over there.” He nods toward a little plastic folding table jammed into one corner. It’s the one surface in his room that’s devoid of plants and there’s nothing on it besides a metal cafeteria tray, licked clean. “I won’t move when your back is turned.”

“I’m not here to deliver your food.”

He frowns, brows drawing together as his shoulders tense. “Then why are you…?”

You ball your hands up in your sweater sleeves and turn to face him full on. “I’m here to take you home with me.” You tell him. “They didn’t tell you?”

He laughs, but it’s a cold sound, devoid of joy. “Nobody tells me anything.”

Based on the short conversation you’d had with Director Lim, his sudden cancellation of contracts and the way he seemed ready to bulldoze over anything and everyone that didn’t fit his agenda, he didn’t seem the sharing type. Still it was hard to believe he hadn’t told him he’d be leaving the compound that’s been his home for over twenty years. 

“You don’t have to come with me,” you add, softly. “If you don’t want to. I know I’m a stranger. But you can leave-”

“I can’t go anywhere.” He taps the collar around his neck. At first, you’d thought it was the same as the ones every other hybrid had been wearing. You can see now that it isn’t. Theirs had all been leather with thin silver buckles holding them in place. His was leather too, but the band was broader and double-layered. There’s a little box on the side with hinges and a small drawing of a lighting bolt. A shock collar. 

Your stomach turns. 

You take a slow step toward him, but the second you do, his ears go flat against his head and he pulls his lips back, revealing sharp teeth. You freeze, hands held up and the keys dangling from your thumb. “I have the keys,” you say, extending them toward him. 

His eyes flick from your face, to the keys in your hand and back again, like he doesn’t believe what’s happening, like he can’t believe you’d actually want him free. The silence drags out into a little eternity before he speaks again. “If I try to unlock it, it’ll shock me.”

You blink up at him and risk another slow step forward, hoping you’ve caught his meaning correctly. This time, he doesn’t growl but his ears stay pinned back as he watches you through narrowed eyes. You close the distance between the two of you. 

When you were six, your mom scraped together enough money to take you to Busan for your birthday. You’d spent the day down at the beach, building sand castles with sea shell windows and wading through tide pools. After the sun had set, someone had set off fireworks and you’d watched them cuddled up in your mom’s arms, eyes wide and filled with a riot of colors you had no name for. It’s strange, you know. The ocean is miles away, but that’s what he smells like: the sea and the sand, and the last curls of smoke from homemade bottle rockets. He smells like that day. 

You lift your hands to the clasp on his neck and slide the key home. You twist it and the collar falls to the ground, a monster that can’t hurt him anymore. His skin is warm under your fingers, but puckered with scar tissue. There’s a ring of it around his neck, branching with whatever current had run through him in different directions. There’s no way this was legal, no way anyone with half a heart could treat another person like this. Your fingers trail one of the splits over his adam’s apple and he swallows beneath your touch, snatching your wrist again. 

“Dont.” His voice is cold. You blink, shaking off whatever spell you’d been under and shuffle back quickly, eager to give him space. He cradles his throat with one long-fingered hand, massaging the skin. He rolls his neck and you look away. You shouldn’t stare; the last thing you want is to make him uncomfortable. “I’ll go with you,” he rasps, answering the question before you can ask it again.

You gape for a second. You really hadn’t expected it to be that easy. “Really?” You can’t stop a note of relief from creeping into your voice.

“Anywhere’s better than here.” He answers back. So, you were a means to an end. It doesn’t bother you. You’ll be whatever you need to be to get him away from this place and that man who seemed to only want to drive him down. 

“Do you need time to pack, or-?”

He gives a firm shake of his head. “There’s nothing from this place I want to keep.” And that’s the end of it. You push open the door and stride back out into the cold mountain air, trying your best to exude the confidence you know you lack. The hybrid slinks behind you, head hunched between his shoulders and every step stiff. He hesitates at the threshold and looks up at you, uncertainty written in the rigid line of his spine. He’s nervous. He has every right to be. 

How long had he spent in that little cinderblock room, shut away from every living thing? How long had he spent being told that he was a monster? You didn’t believe it, not for one second. No one who was as violent as the director had painted him out to be could’ve raised that garden. 

He leans out of the door frame, sniffs the air and lurches forward, out of the shadow of his room, His shoulders bunch up even higher around his head and he goes stiff like he’s waiting for a shock or a shot or a shout- but none comes. The sun is still shining and he’s barefoot in the sand, standing for the first time in years under the open sky. He exhales in a short puff and it looks like he’s going to walk beside you- but he turns on his heels on goes back inside. 

You make a little noise of distress in the back of your throat. Had he changed his mind? Did he not want to come with you anymore? You go to call his name out of concern- but realize you don’t know it. All you have is the call sign he’d been given and you sure as fuck aren’t calling him ‘Monster’. You don’t have to flounder for long. He comes back out two seconds later, cradling the bonsai that’d caught your attention to his chest. 

“I’ll take this,” he mutters, shuffling into place behind you. You can’t smother the smile that starts tugging at your lips. Yeah, no one hateful would hold a little tree with as much tenderness as an infant. 

You give him a little nod. “There’s a terrace where I live,” you tell him, starting your trek across the yard once again. “It’s got a garden and a little greenhouse on it. It’s not very big, and it’s not as pretty as your’s, but you could grow new things there, if you wanted.”

His ears twitch in response, but he keeps his glower firmly focused on the plant in his arms as he shuffles along beside you. It’s then you notice he’s barefoot. “Do you wanna go back and get your shoes?” You ask, trying to make the question sound as innocuous as possible.

“Don’t have any,” he grumbles back. “Don’t need them; I never go outside.” 

Alright, that was understandable. Your first stop when you got back into the city would be a shoe store to get him a pair to wear- or maybe not with the way he kept flinching every time a whistle blew and his ears were swivelling like satellites at each new sound that reached them. You chew the inside of your lip. You don’t want to ask, but you know you should. Better to rip the bandaid off now, than get surprised later. “How long were you shut in for?”

“Fourteen.” He bites out. 

“...weeks?” You venture. There's a hopeful uptick at the end of your words. Even that would’ve been horrible, even that would be worthy of the litany of profanity you’re mentally lobbing at Director Lim- but it’s still better than the truth. 

The hybrid cuts a flat look at you out of the corner of his eyes. “Years.” 

A wall of your scent hits him like a freight train, vacillating between the thick, cloying odor of sadness and the burn of anger. His nose wrinkles at it, brows drawing together in confusion. 

However little you might’ve known about hybrids, however limited your view of them was, you knew they weren’t supposed to be locked up. Domesticated hybrids like hamsters and cats might’ve been fine inside a house all day, assuming they still had regular interaction with people- but dogs weren’t. And he was half wolf. Wild, he’d have had dozens of square miles to roam over, and he’d been limited to a four-by-four yard room for fourteen years. Your goshiwon was a similar size, but it hadn’t been your whole world. All he’d had was one tiny window and what narrow view he’d managed to glimpse in the doorway when his meals were delivered. 

You open your mouth to say something, anything, but you’re cut off by a scream of delight and a snarl keying up in the hybrid next to you’s chest. Your jaw snaps shut with a click. 

A few yards ahead, there’s a group of kids wrestling in a massive pile. They’re all giggling and rolling over each other, tails wagging a mile a minute as they play bite and make grabs for the person at the center of their puppy pile. A head of black hair and a pair of cropped ears pop up and you see that it’s Hope, smiling bright as the sun as his students try to pin him. 

“You can’t leave!” One particularly determined kid yips, adamantly pushing his shoulder back to the sand. “Who’s gonna teach us?”

Hope just laughs.”Lisa is gonna teach you with the older kids-“

A chorus of disappointed barks and howls breaks out. “Ms. Lisa’s classes are too hard!” A little girl complains.

“Yeah!” Someone else chimes in. “And she’s strict!” 

The hybrid ruffles both kid’s hair affectionately, careful of their bandaged ears. “Just because she won’t let you get away with skipping night practice doesn’t mean she’s strict,” he laughs. He’s only met with more grumbles and complaints. 

It warms your heart to see. Even if these kids were at the mercy of their director -for now, at least- it was good that they had him to rely on. Your eyes meet and the sheer force of light in his face makes your own heat up. You look away, but he’s spotted you. He disentangles himself from the mess of kids and draws himself up to his full height. He’s in the same uniform he was in before, albeit with a black tactical bag now strapped to his back. He takes a step toward you and the wolfdog hybrid's ears go flat against his skull. He’s not deterred. “Joonie?”  It takes you a second to realize he’s talking to the hybrid next to you. “Kim Namjoon, is that you?” Hope takes one step forward and the hybrid - Namjoon - takes a step back to counter him. Hope looks like he’s going to advance again, but a small pair of hands wrapped around one of his own stops him. 

A little girl is holding on to him. She can’t be more than six years old. Her tail is still long and her ears are still floppy and she looks so small in her child-sized boots and cargo pants. “Mr. Hobi,” she whines, her head craned back to look up at him. “Please don’t go.”

He falters. His eyes flick from the pair of you back down to her, then he crouches, holds both of her hands in his. “I have to, Sowon-ah,” he says softly. 

She sniffles pitifully and juts out her lower lip.”But why?” 

It’s a fair question. You’re about to tell him that he doesn’t have to come with you if he  doesn’t want to, but he beats you to the punch. “Because it’s my job, sweetheart,” he tells her, smiling softly.

“Y-your job is to teach us,” she hiccups back, face growing blotchy as tears well up in her eyes. Hope swipes one of them away with his thumbs. 

“I teach you so you can grow up well and protect your person, right?” She nods, little hands balling the fabric of her cargo pants up in her fists. “Right. Well this,” he continues, turning and looking at you with a soft smile. “Is my person. And I’ve gotta go make sure she stays safe.” 

You feel your heart jump into your throat. He’s looking at you like you hung the stars in the sky and you don’t deserve it. You’ve done nothing to warrant that much unearned loyalty. Sowon rubs at her eyes with the back of her hands and Hope pulls her into a tight hug. 

“Ah, don’t cry, Sowon! You’ve gotta make sure you get stronger so someone takes you home, okay? You don’t wanna get old and still be here like me, right?” He squeezes her and goes to stand, but gets mobbed by his students again, all wanting their own hugs and making him swear to write them letters. It takes another five minutes of tearful goodbyes and Director Lim approaching for them to turn him loose.

“Get back to your training, all of you!” He barks, stomping out of the office and slamming the door, Mr. Seo on his heels. The kids scatter to the four winds almost instantly, not wanting to be underfoot for whatever scolding the director was about to deal out. Hope’s face remains the same but you catch his ears droop just a little as his students leave him. The wolfdog hybrid- Namjoon, you remind yourself- on the other hand has his ears flat against his skull. A growl bubbles up in his chest and rips past his lips. It’s a dark, full bodied thing that has you taking a step back and Hope shrinking with a whine. 

“Joonie-” he pleads. 

“Don’t fucking call me that.” All the fur on Namjoon’s body is standing on end, from the points of his ears to the tip of his tail. Even his hair has fluffed out. His mismatched eyes are narrowed, lips pulled back in a snarl that reveals his incisors and all that fury, all that rage, is leveled on Director Lim. 

To his credit, the grizzled man doesn’t shrink back an inch before the enraged hybrid. His lips twist and he yanks a little remote out of his pocket, mashing a red button in the center. Namjoon flinches, his hands fly to his neck- but nothing happens. The shock collar is gone and the director has no power over him anymore. 

The man in question’s eyes widen, flicking between the remote to the column of Namjoon’s throat, now devoid of his one element of control. “Where’s his collar?” He demands. “How the hell did you get your collar off?” He advances on the tall hybrid, his hand in the air and though he doesn’t stop snarling, Namjoon ducks his head, anticipating the blow. 

You don’t know what moves you. Maybe it’s Hope pleading for it all to ‘stop, just stop!’. Maybit’s how Namjoon knows exactly how to move when he’s about to get hit. Maybe it’s your own lack of self-preservation. Whatever it is, you blink and you’re in front of Namjoon, your hand up and clutching the director’s forearm, stopping him from striking the hybrid behind you. You’re not strong enough to stop him, not fully. Your elbow buckles in and you stumble back, your back pressing into the wolfdog hybrid’s chest.

The director yells something at you, red flooding his face. You can’t hear him over the rushing of blood in your ears, the pounding of your heart. You force a dry swallow down your throat, put on your bravest face and glare up at him. “Don’t hurt him anymore.”

He reaches out with his free hand to tug you out of the way, but before he can touch you, Hope is there. He presses close to your side and holds the director’s wrist firm, his eyes on the sand and his shoulders hunched up by his ears.

Director Lim looks angry enough to spit. “Hell of a time for you to grow a backbone,” he snarls at Hope, making the doberman hybrid flinch. “I want all four of you off my property now.” He snatched his arms free and you don’t miss the nasty glare he casts at Namjoon. “And if this mutt ever shows his face around here again, I’ll-”

“Director Lim,” Mr. Seo cuts in, his voice cool. “You’ve made yourself clear; we’ll leave. You needn’t make threats.” There’s an underlying warning in the attorney’s voice. The director locks his jaw.

“Get out.” He breathes. Hope ducks around him, his head low and his docked tail pressed close to his back. If he could tuck it, you think he would. You follow after him, eyes fixed straight ahead and your back ramrod straight. He might’ve scared the shit out of you, but you weren’t going to let him see that. Mr. Seo fixes you with a hard look and the second you’re within arms reach, he presses a hand to your back and ushers you toward the gate. The only one who remains is Namjoon.

He looks like his anger has rooted him to the spot. His ears are still flat against his head, his lip still curled. 

“Do it, boy,” the director taunts. “Give me a reason-”

“Namjoon.” At the sound of his name, his ears prick up and you turn around. It’d come not from Hope- which you’d expected, seeing as he seemed to be the only one who actually knew his fellow hybrid’s name- but from the open door of the office building where Eunjung stood. She looks at him, her expression unreadable and he stares back. All the tension in his body has shifted and for a moment, you think he’s going to spring toward her and fall into her arms- but she gives an almost imperceptible shake of her head and his face hardens. His arms tighten around his bonsai. You think you know, now, why it was the only plant in his room that had a pot. 

“Go,” she says and all the tension leaves him. His shoulders curve in and he drags himself past the director, out from the fence and toward Mr. Seo’s car. There’s something final about the way the gate rolls shut after him. If you hadn’t known better, you’d’ve sworn you heard him whine as it locked. 

The car ride down the mountain is...interesting to say the least. Hope insists that the seating arrangements inside the Buick be done to his specifications,( “You’ve gotta sit in the middle,” he tells you, pointing to the narrow center seat. “And Joonie and I will sit on either side of you to protect you in case we crash!” His tail is wagging a mile a minute behind him. You’re surprised it can move that much, given how short it is. Mr. Seo looks affronted at the unintentional jab at his driving and Namjoon just looks irritated. “I told you to stop calling me that.”) and he keeps throwing an arm across your middle everytime the car hits a bump. You’re going down the side of a mountain. There are a lot of bumps. He also keeps pressing his nose against the glass of his window, ears pricked up and trying to take in every tree that passes by. Namjoon, on the other hand, slouches back in his seat, his body curved around his plant and ever so slightly away from you. He still watches the world pass by, but he doesn’t acknowledge any of you or speak- which would be fine if anyone else would. Hope seems to be doing his best to appear stoic and alert every time you look at him and Mr. Seo seems comfortable with the quiet. So, you’re left to ride the two hours back to Seoul in silence. 

You almost cry with relief when your phone buzzes with an incoming text. You fish the device out of your pocket, thumb it to life and scan your notifications.

Unknown Sender [7:13 PM] where are you

You frown. Very few people had your number or any reason to text you. You’re about to chalk it up to a wrong number when the second text rolls in.

Unknown Sender [7:14 PM] it’s yoongi

Now that’s a surprise. When you’d hurriedly told the boys to text you, you’d been expecting Jimin to urge you to hurry or for Taehyung to ask for updates, not for their hyung to check your progress. A little smile pricks at your lips as you rush to reply

You [7:14 PM] We’re on the way back now!

Unknown Sender has been changed to Yoongi 

Yoongi [7:14 PM] can i call

You bite the inside of your lip, suddenly nervous. You know there’s no reason to be. After all, you tell yourself, what’s scary about a pair of roommates talking on the phone? You give him the go ahead and not three seconds after the delivered notification pops up, you get a call. You answer it on speaker.

“...Hello?”

“Did you just start driving?” Yoongi’s voice is thick with sleep, like he’s just woken up. It’s different than normal, his usual smooth drawl gone gravelly. 

“Y-yeah,” you reply, trying to ignore the way Hope is watching you out of the corner of his eyes and Namjoon’s ears have swiveled back toward you. “It’s gonna be awhile, still. Are Taehyung and Jimin-”

“They’re fine; They ate dinner earlier and they’ll be asleep til you get back.” He yawns and you picture him slouched on the couch, his hair mashed up on one side and his face puffy.  “Why do you sound nervous?”

“I’m not,” you counter. It’s a blatant lie and he knows it. He hums in doubt, but doesn’t press you.

“I’ll see you when you get back.”

“Do you want me to text you when we’re close?” It’s an innocuous question. There’s no reason you can see for him to pause as long as he does. For a second you think you’ve lost him- after all, mountains aren’t known for having great reception- but then you hear his breath fan over the receiver. 

“...Yeah.” 

You give a little nod you know he can’t see. “Okay.” He makes a little noise of assent and then his line clicks off. You hang up. Just as you do, another text comes through. 

Yoongi [7:16 PM] don’t let them scent you

“Who was that?” Hope asks in a small voice, pulling you away from your phone screen and Yoongi’s insistence that you remain scent-free. His tone is open, but you can tell by the way his knee is bouncing that he really, really wants to know. “Is that your husband?”

The bark of laughter that rips past your lips is out before you can think to stop it. Namjoon flinches and you wince at him in apology, your hand flying up to cover your mouth. Hope is frowning at you in confusion, his head cocked slightly to the side. You force yourself to calm and answer him. “No, Yoongi is not my husband.” You weren’t sure if you even really qualified as friends at this point. “He’s another hybrid that lives with me.”

Hope perks up in his seat. “You have another hybrid? Director Lim always told us that once we left the center, we’d be alone.” Your expression sours at the mention of the ill-tempered man and you shake your head. 

“No, there’s a lot of hybrids in Seoul,” you tell him, eager to dispel some of his misconceptions. “The three that live with me are named Yoongi, Jimin and Taehyung. Yoongi’s around your age, I think. Jimin and Taehyung are younger.” The doberman hybrid sits at rapt attention, soaking up every bit of information you give him and waiting eagerly for more. What else could you tell him about them? You remember the boys’ reaction that morning when you told them you’d be bringing dog hybrids home. “...They’re all felines,” you say, slowly, trying to gauge their reactions. 

“So that’s why you smell like that.” It’s the first words Namjoon’s spoken since you all piled into the car. You turn to him, but he’s not looking at you.

“What do you-?”

“You smell like other hybrids,” Hope says, covering for him. “But I’ve never smelled any that weren’t other dogs before.” He leans closer, his seatbelt stretching. You tense and lean away from him, but he’s not deterred. The tip of his nose brushes your neck and you have to fight off a shiver as he breathes you in. “They smell the same…” he starts, his breath fanning over your throat. “...but different? And one of them isn’t as strong as the others-” He presses closer, trying to catch the scent that’s eluding him. You make a noise of mild distress and lean further back, pressing into the solid wall that is Namjoon. 

“Hoseok, let it go .” Hoseok. That was his real name then. To your surprise, the dog hybrid pulls back as instructed, settling back into his seat without so much as a whine.

“I’ve never met a cat before,” he muses, turning his attention back to the window. “I hope they’re nice.”

You think about the chorus of hisses you’d been met with when you told the boys they’d have to share their space. You hope so too.

It’s 9:30 by the time Mr. Seo drops you off back in front of your building. He wishes you a good night and promises to call later in the week to discuss Black Mountain Canines. You’re not sure if there’s anyone to report him to or anything you can do, but you want to try. What you’d seen at the compound was wrong any way you looked at it. It made you sick to leave anyone there knowing how the director treated Namjoon and Hoseok. No one was useless. No one deserved to be locked away for years at a time for the sheer crime of existing. You’d make them see that. 

The moment you step out of the car, Hoseok is all wide smiles and exclamations. “Woah, you live here?” he asks, tilting his head back to take in all fifty-one floors of Haneul Tower in their sparkling, glass-paned glory.

“Yeah,” you tell him, handing him his bag. In his excitement to get out of the car, he’d abandoned it and Mr. Seo had nearly driven away with it. “But I just moved in a couple days ago, so it’s still pretty empty.”

Hoseok nods, scanning the windows like he’ll be able to pick out which one’s your’s. Behind you, Namjoon is lingering on the sidewalk.

He’s still got his bonsai clutched close to his chest and he’s hunched down around it like he’s trying to stop unseen hands from picking at it. His shoulders are bunched up by his ears, and he flinches with every car horn, every siren that comes to you on the wind. He’d grown up in the mountains and spent the better part of his life indoors. It only made sense that he’d be sensitive to the sounds of the city. 

“Is there a security system?” Hoseok asks, still enamored with the building. “How many entrances does your apartment have?”

“Just one second,” you tell him, forehead wrinkling as you take in Namjoon. You slide slowly toward the wolfdog, not wanting to startle him. “Namjoon?” He flinches when you call his name, head whipping toward you. “Do you wanna go inside? I know it’s new, but it’ll be quieter, I think.”

His mismatched eyes flick from you, to Hoseok, to the building and back to you before settling firmly on the concrete at his feet. He seems different than he had in the mountains. He’s smaller, quieter, less sure of himself. Was it because this is all new territory for him? Or had the snarling hybrid in the mountains just been a roll he was forced to play, the mythic monster to the director’s tyrant king. 

“You don’t have to go inside if you don’t want to,” you tell him, in a voice you hope is reassuring. “We can wait, if you need to.”

“I’ll wait with you, Joonie,” Hope chimes in, giving the larger hybrid the same soft smile he’d given his students earlier. 

He swallows, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “It...it’s fine,” he mutters, “We can go in, I just…” He takes a few hesitant steps forward and huddles closer to you. There’s still an inch between you, but it’s closer than you’d thought he’d come. 

You peer up at him. “Okay?” You ask. He gives a single nod and your little group moves through the double doors and into the lobby. 

It’s quieter at this time of night. You don’t recognize the woman standing behind the reception desk. There’s no one really around except one man, pacing the width of the lobby looking thoroughly put out. You can’t really see his face, but there’s something familiar about the slant of his body. He whirls around as the glass doors click shut and you catch sight of a fringe of gray hair, pointed ears, narrowed yellow eyes and an all too familiar pout. 

Yoongi. 

“Fuck.” You’d completely forgotten to text him. Judging by the look on his face as he stalks toward you, he wasn’t happy about it. To his credit, Hoseok does his best to guard you, sliding in front of you and pushing you behind him. You can’t see Yoongi’s ears beneath the hat he’s wearing but if his curled lip and narrowed eyes are any indicator, they’re pinned straight back. 

“Move.” He snarls at the doberman hybrid. Hoseok is taller than he is, but the closer Yoongi gets to him, the smaller he seems to shrink. There’s fire in the bobcat hybrid’s eyes. Hope whimpers and slinks out of his way, ears low. 

You wince. “Heeeeey, Yoongi. I’m sorry I forg-“ before you can even finish the sentence, he tugs you toward him by the shoulders. His face roves your neck, sniffing in earnest as he tries to pick up the scent of the other hybrids on you. All is well until he reaches the right side of your throat and grazes over the exact spot Hoseok had nosed earlier. He pulls away slowly, his shoulders tight. His head turns slowly to the doberman hybrid, mechanical. 

“You.” He hisses at the other hybrid with so much virulence it makes your blood run cold. He takes one step toward him, teeth bared in a snarl, but Namjoon slides in front of him bumping him back. A growl bubbles in the bobcat hybrid’s chest and the wolfdog matches it, both their ears pinned flat against their skulls. 

“Hey-” If either of them hear you, they don’t react. They’re too focused on having a staring contest. “Hey!” You push between them, a hand on either of their chests. Namjoon snarls as you touch him and Yoongi looks ready to skin him alive for that alone. He pushes against your hand, trying to get closer to the taller hybrid. You ball your hand up in the fabric of his shirt. “Stop it!” The receptionist already has the lobby phone in her hand. She’s whispering earnestly into it and you’re sure security will be on the way any second. You exhale and squeeze your eyes shut. “Everybody, elevator.” 

Yoongi hurls an accusatory finger in Hoseok’s direction. “These fucking-”

“Yoongi, please,” you plead. That gets him to stop. His arm falls to his side and he glowers down at you for a few seconds before stalking over to the elevators and slamming the up button. “I’m sorry,” you murmur to Hoseok and Namjoon. The smaller of the two hybrids is still hunched in on himself and the taller has Yoongi fixed in his mismatched gaze, his lips curled in anger. 

This was not the way you wanted this to go. You’d wanted them to have time to settle before you discussed next steps and gave them the same talk you’d given the felines, but it didn’t look like that was in the cards. You don’t know what’s gotten into Yoongi. You’d thought the bobcat hybrid was calm, cool and collected, completely unflappable in the face of anything. Apparently not. He seemed upset that some of Hoseok’s scent had gotten on you, but there’d been no way to help that. You’d been packed in a car with him and Namjoon for two hours. It was inevitable, wasn’t it?

“It’s not okay,” you tell them, wanting them to know you didn’t condone the way Yoongi had acted. “I don’t...I don’t know why he’s acting like this; he doesn’t normally. Do you wanna go up separately?”

It’s Hoseok who answers. “No, we’ll go up together,” he assures you with a small nod. “If...maybe if we get used to each other, it’ll be okay?” 

You’re not optimistic, but you give him a pained smile you hope is reassuring. “Yeah, maybe?” You cast a look back over your shoulders. Yoongi is waiting by the elevators, his arms crossed over his chest and his tail flicking in irritation. The elevator dings and the doors slide open. Well, there was no avoiding it. “Come on,” you tell them. “Just...keep to the other side, for now. I’ll stand between you and him.” 

The four of you pile into the elevator, all tucked into your own corners. It’s strange, you think. It’s never seemed small until now. Hoseok keeps casting worried looks over at you, Namjoon keeps subtly shifting closer and Yoongi is still glowering at the both of them, angry for a reason you can’t quantify. 

“If it helps,” Hoseok starts softly, his voice an intrusion in the awkward silence. “I really didn’t mean to, honestly-”

“Don’t apologize.” Namjoon counters. “If it bothers him that much, he can speak up” 

You don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s too late that you realize the canines aren’t addressing you. Suddenly, Yoongi’s fingers are hooked through one of your belt loops. He yanks you backwards and you stumble, falling against the length of his body. “My bad,” You shoot out, before the hybrid can hiss at you. “I just lost my bala-” The words die on your tongue as Yoongi fixes his mouth to the soft skin of your throat. The elevator goes quiet.

The canine hybrids avert their eyes almost instantaneously, instinct telling them they’re witnessing something they shouldn’t be. Yoongi keeps them fixed firmly in his sights, a dark growl bubbling in his throat. 

Your fingers flex uselessly at your sides, hands clenching unclenching as the hybrid works over the sensitive skin of your neck with his teeth and tongue. ‘Don’t make a noise,’ you plead with yourself. ‘This isn’t what it feels like. Don’t make a noise, don’t make a noise, don’t make a noise-’ Yoongi’s incisors graze over a vein and a little whimper slips past your lips before you can stop it. The grip he has on your hips becomes bruising. You feel your legs turning to jelly beneath you. Any more of what he was doing, and they’d have to mop you up off the elevator floor. You force your throat to swallow. “Y-Yoongi, I think that’s enough-” You don’t know if he hears you over the noise he’s making, so you lace your fingers through his and untangle them from your hips. He releases you with a wet pop and you slap a hand over the skin he’d marked. Heat floods your face and a smirk spreads across Yoongi’s, his teeth flashing at the canines. He leans in again to rub his nose against the mark he’d made- but a hand on his chest stops him. 

“Can you stop?” You ask in a small voice. Honestly, you’re embarrassed. Regardless of what the articles said about mark-making being platonic, it doesn’t feel friendly. It feels possessive and mean and you don’t like it. “I’m sorry I didn’t text you like you asked, but what is with you today?” Yoongi’s expression changes from smug satisfaction to confusion and then surprise, like he hadn’t expected you to protest. “I know what I said about you being ready but…” You rub a hand over the mark, wiping away saliva and your sweat. The bobcat hybrid visibly deflates. The elevator chimes for the fiftieth floor and the doors roll open slowly. You rush out before any of them can and start punching the code in your door with shaky fingers. You don’t know what to say. You’re tired and stressed and you don’t know what’s going on. Was this about the apartment? You knew the felines wouldn’t be happy about sharing their space, but why had Yoongi gone this far?

“Y/N…” He trails after you, his ears drooping. You shake your head, You can’t talk to him right now. 

“In the morning,” you tell him as the door swings open. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.” You can’t deal with everything that’s happened today, and Yoongi flipping out and getting the canines settled. You weren’t that good at juggling. 

By the grace of all that’s merciful, Taehyung and Jimin are still asleep when you walk in. You’d need to have an extended meet and greet tomorrow, you decide. Maybe do some icebreakers or team building exercises. If they reacted anything like their hyung did, you were in for one hell of an adjustment period. 

Hoseok and Namjoon trail you into the penthouse warily, sniffing the air. You want to give them time to explore and get their bearings, they deserve that, but with the way Yoongi still seems agitated when they venture anywhere but exactly in your steps, that’ll need to be saved until tomorrow morning too. You give them the most spartan tour you can muster up and show them each to a guest room, promising to order them furniture and get them the things they need tomorrow. 

By the time you collapse into your own bed, it’s damn near 11. You groan and drag a pillow over your face as you ask the universe for the thousandth time why it had decided to continuously kick your ass. Having three hybrids had been hard enough. Having five of all different species was likely to prove impossible and having seven was going to be a sisyphean task you’d had no training for. You groan and kick your feet in the air, allowing yourself the brief respite of a temper tantrum before crawling under your covers and flicking the lamp off. Maybe in your dreams there’d be no stress and no snarling hybrids with behavior you couldn’t explain.

[milenadaniels]

Actually, Truly, 14k - Buck/Eddie, Helena POV, post-s4 (AO3)

Isabel calls to tell them Eddie's been shot on a Thursday afternoon and by lunch on Friday Helena and Ramon are landing at LAX. When they land, they learn Eddie's already home recovering and has been for two weeks.

----

Or, Helena (and Ramon) tries to find a way back into Eddie's life and doesn't know what to make of finding Buck around every corner she turns.

Isabel calls on a Thursday afternoon and by lunch on Friday Helena and Ramon are landing at LAX. Their son’s been shot, again, in the line of duty. But this time, instead of being thousands of miles away and out of reach, he’s just a short plane ride away.

Isabel insists they come to her house before going to the hospital but she doesn’t blame COVID protocols for keeping them away from the hospital, so they spend the car ride over imagining the worst.

A complication with surgery.

Permanent damage.

A coma.

The news they receive is that Eddie’s fine, and he’s been home and recuperating for two weeks already.

Helena retreats to the living room while Ramon and his mother fight in the kitchen. They’re yelling in Spanish and for once she wishes she’d never learned.

“Escúchame, Ramon,” Isabel tries to interrupt. Listen to me.

The yelling continues because Ramon doesn’t listen. It’s not his strong suit. Nor is it Helena’s.

Helena paces the length of the living room and holds her phone in her hands, thumb over Eddie’s name in FaceTime, not pressing down.

Eddie’s been home for two weeks.

Isabel hadn’t told them for two weeks.

But Eddie hadn’t either.

They hadn’t seen him in person in nearly two years, and he hadn’t called them since their last fight over a month ago.

Still, Eddie was shot in the streets by a sniper and he didn’t call them.

Mom, listen...

The last time they spoke, it was a phone call, not a video chat, maybe because at that point just the sight of each others’ faces was enough to set them all off. In that phone call, Eddie spoke of a friend whose family was somehow worse off than their own, but who, miraculously, were finally making the effort to fix the broken ties between them in therapy.

“Mom, listen… I spent a long time being angry with Shannon instead of trying to reach out to her and now Christopher is never going to have her in his life again. I don’t want that with you,” Eddie said, his voice brusque but calm, measured. “I don’t want to grin and bear it when you call or when we visit. I want to be glad to pick up the phone, I want to be excited to see you all at Christmas, I want you to be part of our lives. But I can’t do that without you meeting me halfway.” He was resolute, but he was pleading too. “I don’t want to spend the next ten years of our lives like this.”

But the idea of therapy was anathema to the Diaz family and it took only Ramon’s dismissive scoff to reinforce her own distaste of the idea. They called Eddie back to say they had no intention of paying a stranger to tell them everything was their fault and he was blameless.

They didn’t get another call after that.

“— my son!” Ramon yells at Isabel in the kitchen.

“Because, mijo, when you come here, you don’t see your son! You don’t see him living here, growing, Christopher thriving! You don’t see how when you come up here you bring sadness and misery when you should bring joy and comfort.” The words are too close to what Eddie said for them not to have spoken about it together. “By the time I knew he was hurt, he was already out of surgery and doing well. If he wasn’t, I would have called immediately.”

“Oh bueno, so you’ll tell me my son is dying but not that he’s okay?”

“Ramon! Escúchame.” It’s not often that Helena gets to bear witness to the steel in Isabel’s voice, the one she passed down to both her kids. It’s in fine form today. “He was doing well, and had all the help he needed. As soon as things stabilized, I called you. Keep acting like a fool and see if I call you at all next time.”

“If you call? Are you —”

Mom, listen…

“Ramon!” Helena snaps, surprising them all.

“Ramon,” she repeats, more calmly this time. “Listen to her.”

The shock on Isabel’s face almost makes her smile, but her heart is too heavy to commit to it.

“Helena, two weeks she —”

“Our son was shot, and he didn’t tell us.” Helena says, her voice trembling. “Our son was shot, he could have died, and the last thing we would have told him is we weren’t willing to fight for him and Christopher. Weren’t willing to — what? — put our egos aside? Our pride? For one fucking minute to listen to him. To listen to what he needed.”

Ramon’s eyes widen and he hangs his head with a sigh.

Helena faces Isabel, her phone tucked in her palm against her stomach.

“What can we do? We’re listening.”

——————-

Ramon walks it off and Helena helps Isabel in the kitchen in exchange for a promise they’ll go over to Eddie’s for supper. She’s been making care packages for Eddie and Christopher since the shooting, and she’s working on a pasta sauce while Helena starts on her famous banana brown sugar bread — Eddie’s favourite.

“How is he, really?” she asks once her dish is tucked into the oven.

“As well as can be expected,” Isabel replies, throwing spices into the pot with an ease Helena never grew into. “He was tired for the first few days, but now it’s like a broken arm. Uncomfortable but not so painful.”

“How long is it supposed to take to heal?”

Isabel casts a suspicious eye her way as if she can anticipate the date of Helena’s return flight adjusting already, but answers, “they say 6 to 8 weeks. It’s for the bone to heal, mostly, in his back. The rest should be sooner.”

Helena broke her wrist years ago, when the kids were nearly teenagers, and it was three months of hell trying to manage a household one handed while Ramon spent most of that time travelling across Texas.

Who’s helping him? Is Carla back in the picture? Is she working overtime? How can he afford that on sick leave? Is Pepa or one of the cousins going over? Is his girlfriend there? Who’s helping with Christopher? How is he managing?

The questions — all genuine and well-meaning, all a shade too accusatory — are on her tongue, pressed to the back of her teeth to keep from escaping. She’s entitled to answers, even if she doesn’t like them. She knows she has the right to at least know how her son is caring for himself and her grandson while he’s injured. If he’d told them when it happened Helena could have been here in a heartbeat to help, but no, Eddie’s just as stubborn as they are, just as prideful. He’d rather suffer alone than accept their help. Fine. But she’s still his mother, and Christopher’s grandmother. She raised them both. She has a right to—

Mom, listen…

Helena takes a deep breath in, anchors herself in the mixed scents of the rich sauce and the sweet bread cooking, and breathes out. Isabel sends her another look but says nothing.

————-

Helena cries when she sees Eddie, and cries a bit harder when she sees the apprehension in his eyes. Her baby boy looks a bit pale, but he’s standing on his own two feet and answering the door himself.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she murmurs, wrapping him gently into her arms, mindful not to press into the sling or his back.

“Hi, mom,” he says quietly, like he’s trying to gentle the stiffness in his voice.

She releases him, but not before pressing three kisses into his temple, always three. One for each of her kids.

Ramon steps into the space she leaves when she continues into the house and from the corner of her eye, she sees him cup the back of Eddie’s head and take a good look at him. For Ramon, it’s the equivalent of collapsing to the floor in tears.

Helena quickly toes off her boots and makes room at the entrance for the others behind her, which also puts her first in line to catch a sight that nearly knocks her down.

“Who is this young man I see?” she cries, throwing her hands wide to gesture at her grandson. “Last I saw you, you were just a little tyke. Now look at you, you must have grown three feet!”

Christopher giggles and Helena smiles in return as she folds him into her arms, but it’s forced. She’s not lying — he’s grown so much more than she expected. She hasn’t seen him in person since Eddie’s graduation and while video chats are priceless, they didn’t capture this growth spurt.

She can’t believe she let this happen. That she went from spending most of everyday with this little boy and now she’s missed out on two years of his life. Can’t believe Eddie kept him fro—

Mom, listen...

Supper goes well enough. Eddie never truly shakes loose the tension in his shoulders; he trades many looks with Isabel, seemingly spooked by his parents’ behaviour. He talks a lot more than he usually does, probably out of nervousness. But overall, they let Christopher take the reigns; they’re all more comfortable with that. It’s been too long since they’ve last spoken and Christopher is full of stories about his school and his friends.

“Buck says we can go to the Griffin soon. It was closed because of COVID. But before, I went with my class and they made a comet right in front of us!”

Buck. It’s the third time his name has been dropped at the table since they sat down.

She first met him, briefly, at Eddie’s graduation, but didn’t really register him as someone in her son’s life until Eddie and his crew stopped off in El Paso for dinner on their way home from fighting Texas wildfires. Buck had been cropping up in Christopher’s and Eddie’s stories for months by then and she was curious to properly meet him in person. He had seemed...young, she remembers.

“The Griffith Observatory,” Eddie corrects fondly. With Christopher, at least, it’s impossible for him not to soften.

Eddie’s only eaten half the pasta on his plate but Isabel seems satisfied. Helena bites down on the impulse to encourage him to eat more. To remind him he needs his strength to heal quickly for his little boy. She does lift the basket of garlic bread in his direction, because she can’t help herself. He eyes the basket warily as though he expects her to do more, but when she doesn’t, he shakes his head with a small smile of thanks.

“Yeah,” Christopher agrees, “it was cool but we didn’t get to stay long enough to see everything. And if we go later, Buck says we can see real meteors in the sky.”

Fourth mention.

“Christopher is on an astronomy kick,” Eddie adds redundantly.

“Wait, I gotta show you —” Christopher is sliding out of his seat before anyone can stop him and racing down the hall to his bedroom.

“Oh, honey —” Helena grips the arms of her chair out of reflex to jump up and help him — he doesn’t have his crutches, he’s only using the wall for support and he’s wearing socks — but Eddie looks over when her chair creaks.

He can’t really expect her to just sit here while Christopher—

Mom, listen…

They can hear Christopher make it to his bedroom without injury, so Helena slowly settles back in her chair and Ramon clears his throat. “He seems...okay. More okay than I would have expected.”

Eddie keeps his eyes on his father for a beat too long, assessing the comment for any hidden messages.

“He’s a resilient kid. Buck stayed here with him while I was in the hospital, so his routine wouldn’t get messed up. I think that helped a lot.”

Fifth ment— wait.

“Buck stayed with him?” The words — the tone — are out of her mouth before Helena can stop them.

On the shortlist of people she expected to hear stayed with her grandson to watch him and care for him, alone, while his father was in the hospital — Isabel, Pepa, Carla, or even Ana — Buck’s isn’t a name she expected to hear. A coworker — an unrelated man with no children of his own, over Christopher’s family? Over Christopher’s own aide? Over a schoolteacher?

Eddie’s jaw squares up and he sits up in his chair. Like light gray rain clouds suddenly turning dark, weighty with an incoming storm, a heavy tension builds in the air between them.

“Look!” Christopher exclaims as he rounds the corner, nearly throwing a thin, blue hardcover book on the table. Eddie catches it before it can slam into Christopher’s leftover pasta and sets it down on the table for him. “It shows all the things we can see in the sky over the whole year!”

Christopher climbs back into his chair and opens the book up to a random page, describing everything he seems to have nearly memorized already. By the time he reaches the upcoming meteor shower, the tension at the table has dissipated enough for Helena to excuse herself to the bathroom and not have it come off like a passive aggressive storm-off.

She washes her hands with soap pumped out of a fish-shaped dispenser that wasn’t here the last time she visited and trains her eyes on the basket of gauze, scissors and tape tucked away on the shelf above the toilet. That wasn’t there last time either.

Her baby boy was shot by a sniper. In LA.

A bullet tore through the body she created and almost took her son from her forever.

Mom, listen...

But only after she’d almost pushed him so far away he might never come back.

The tears well up again and she sniffs through them, blinking up at the ceiling until she’s back under control.

As she pivots to turn the light off, she spies a purple toothbrush resting on the ledge just above the sink. The other two toothbrushes are electric — one adult-, one child-sized — and stand on the counter.

—————-

Helena and Ramon meet the infamous Ana by accident.

When they leave Eddie’s house on Friday, Helena sends a text message to say what she couldn’t manage to say to his face — that they’re here for him, in whatever capacity he needs, that they’ll take their cues from him, even if that means giving him some space.

To that, she receives a, Thank you.

When she asks for the contact information of the therapist he had scoped out for them, she gets a phone call.

“Not to look a gift horse in the mouth,” her son says, “but are you just doing this because I got shot?”

“Honestly? Yeah,” she laughs mirthlessly. “I’m sorry to say it took our baby boy nearly dying to get our heads out of our ass.”

Eddie huffs a laugh on his end. “Well, I’ll take that silver lining.”

After that, Eddie invites them to a restaurant for brunch on Sunday, but when they reach his doorstep, they find it already occupied by a woman who’s just rung the doorbell, holding a casserole dish in her hands.

When the door opens, Eddie takes in the three of them, his eyes wide and apprehensive.

“Ana, I wasn’t expecting you,” he says, his eyes darting over her shoulder to his parents. He’s smiling, though there’s a clear strain in the corners of his eyes and mouth. They’ve been critical about Shannon for so long — and with good reason, nothing will change Helena’s mind on that — no doubt he’s expecting them to hate this new woman on sight.

“You’re Ana!” Helena exclaims with a wide smile, imbuing her voice with as much welcome as she’s capable. “Hi! It’s so good to finally meet you!”

When Eddie releases the breath he was holding, she knows she was on the mark. Ramon follows her lead and invites Ana to brunch with them on the spot and won’t hear her protests about intruding.

Eddie, of course, doesn’t protest at all but invites them in so Ana can store the casserole in the fridge — it takes both Ana and Helena’s organizational skills to find a spot for it among Isabel’s and Eddie’s tupperwares already invading all available space — and he can finish getting ready. He was already dressed in a nice polo and jeans but when he comes back from his bedroom it’s in a smart button-down he must have struggled with out of sheer stubbornness. Both his parents and his girlfriend are in the house and still he didn’t ask for help.

Eddie and Christopher decide to hop into Ana’s car and Helena asks loudly for directions to keep Ramon from insisting they should all ride together.

“So how long have you kids been seeing each other now?” Ramon asks when they’ve been seated at the restaurant.

“Nearly 7 months now, I think, isn’t it?” Ana replies, looking at Eddie with a dazzling smile — she truly is gorgeous. Eddie was still talking to them when he started dating her so they know she’s a schoolteacher turned vice principal but to meet her in person blows all their other expectations out of the water. She’s lively and sweet, patient and understanding, Latina — a big plus in Ramon’s books ironically. Eddie picked well this time.

Eddie hesitates a moment and nods. “Yeah, that sounds right.”

Every now and again, he squirms in his chair, like he can’t quite settle in and Helena wonders when his last painkiller was taken. But when he catches her face, she smoothes her worry out into a cheeky smile that says I like this one. He smiles back and there’s nothing she can pinpoint exactly but something about it makes her uneasy.

Eddie’s too quiet as they wait for their food, his face pinched, and just when Helena’s about to break, Ana does her the favour of asking gently, “Are you feeling okay? Do you need to take anything for your arm?”

But Eddie shrugs off her concern. “No, thank you. Next one isn’t until noon.” He taps his phone twice and she smiles.

“Sorry, I forgot. He’s got them all on timers with a special ringtone. He’s so organized,” she tells Helena and Ramon with a sunny smile, rubbing her hand down his good arm. ���I have one multivitamin and I forget to take it half the time.”

“Buck set it up,” Eddie defers, and Helena schools her face not to react; even at brunch Buck is with them in spirit.

Ramon either takes no issue with the mention or doesn’t register it. He takes the opportunity to share how his new pharmacy pre-packages his heart and arthritis medications into AM and PM slots and Ana listens attentively. Eddie’s fingertip taps absently against the phone case until their food arrives.

Christopher ordered a waffle, and with Eddie indisposed, Helena is already moving to help him when Ana beats her to the punch again. Helena tucks a smile away as Ana leans over and starts cutting the waffle up into smaller pieces.

“He can do that,” Eddie says when he notices Christopher sitting back in his chair, realizing only when Ana startles that his tone is sharp. His voice is softer when he follows up with, “Right, buddy?”

“Yeah,” Chris agrees, picking up his own cutlery with enthusiasm despite his hands being nearly too small for them.

Eddie throws an apologetic grin Ana’s way and brunch continues peacefully, though the stiff line of Eddie’s shoulder never does quite soften.

Mom, listen…

————-

Their first therapy session takes place in Isabel’s kitchen at Eddie’s request. Isabel thinks it’s so he has the option of leaving when he needs to (in other words, when he gets fed up and runs) but Helena hasn’t missed how Eddie has been careful to keep them away from his home since the first day they saw him.

They’ve seen Eddie and Chris numerous times in the week and change they’ve been in LA — more than they’ve seen them since they left El Paso — but always outside of the house. Sometimes they pick Chris up from school, sometimes Eddie and Chris come to Isabel’s for supper, sometimes they go out to restaurants or other outings, but they haven’t been invited back to his home again. She wanted to believe it was because he was hiding the news that Ana had moved in but that’s been shot out of the water both by her ringing the doorbell and an errant comment at the end of brunch about how she hadn’t seen him since the welcome home party.

So it’s out of pettiness, then. Stubbornness. Out of pig-headed inability to accept that he needs help and willingness to believe that they’re making an effort to meet him on his own terms.

She tries not to let it rankle her, tries to find some of that resolute commitment to letting things be and not push. But the next thing she knows, she’s yelling about it to a stranger at Isabel’s island counter.

To be fair, the session with Dr. Jamieson wasn’t going great to begin with. It’s awkward as hell, the three of them balancing on stools, squished in next to each other to try to fit into the screen, but also trying to keep the laptop close enough to still hear her and not have to shout. It’s happening while Chris is at school so they don’t have to worry about keeping him distracted but they can’t exactly ask Isabel to go wait in the LA sun for an hour so she doesn’t overhear, so it’s basically a given that she’s the fourth person on this virtual couch from the next room over.

And beyond that, Helena has kept her mouth shut for over a week which is frankly more time than anyone would have bet on, including herself, and given the opportunity to express herself freely...well…

“You want space? We’ve given you nothing but space since we got here. How much more can we give you, Eddie? You’re hundreds of miles away from us already. Forgive us for feeling the need to check in on our only son who almost died last week,” she yells, her hand nearly colliding with her coffee mug as she gestures.

“Last week?” Ramon echoes with a bark of dark laughter.

“Oh, no, that’s right,” Helena picks up. “I’m sorry! Not a week ago! Nearly a month ago! Because apparently we don’t warrant even a text when our only son almost dies, but that’s not enough space?”

Eddie rakes his fingers aggressively through his hair, his lips pursed.

“We have to move to Mexico,” Ramon continues blithely. “Is that enough space? No, better yet! Sweden! Your family still lives out there, no? We can live on their farm. Completely different timezone, we won’t even be reachable.”

“Yeah,” Eddie bites back, a sour grin blooming on his face, “that’s what I want. I ask you to give me some breathing room — to respect me, my life — and you translate that into living in a fucking commune in Sweden. And you wonder why we’re in therapy. I can’t talk to you, you don’t listen!”

Mom, lis—

“Listen to what, Eddie?” Helena yells, getting out of her seat to pace. “Listen to the months of silence you’ve sent our way? Because we either get on board and blindly cheer on every mess you get yourself into or we don’t get to know you anymore? Don’t get to know our grandson?”

“I never kept him from you — you have our number, the phone didn’t ring. That’s not on me.”

“Because you would have picked up?” Ramon exclaims, pushing away from the island to better look back at their son. “Easy to claim when it’s after the fact in front of the doctor.”

“So now I’m a liar! You raised a liar?”

“I think we’ve gotten off-track,” Dr. Jamieson’s tinny voice interjects from the laptop.

In the bottom right hand corner of the screen, only Eddie remains in the frame.

————

Firehouse 118 was a lively crowd at Eddie’s graduation but it’s nothing compared to the party thrown at the Grant-Nash house in honour of a new probationary firefighter.

Dr. Jamieson pointed out the self-fulfilling prophecy that Eddie protecting himself from criticism and pressure by withholding details about his life in LA was leading to his parents’ growing insecurity over not knowing anything about their son and feeling the need to intervene more and more.

The solution? Let them in on his life and trust that they could hold themselves in check.

For that, even Ramon was in agreement that maybe therapy wasn’t a load of shit after all.

So here they find themselves welcomed into this beautiful and loud home nearly three weeks into their stay in LA. They were allowed to pick Eddie and Chris up so they arrive together but Christopher peels off immediately to find kids his own age.

It’s impossible not to feel the warmth of family radiating from every inch of the home so when Eddie’s shoulders seem to loosen a little as they walk in, Helena can’t find it in herself to begrudge him.

“Well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” a woman around Helena’s age drawls, crowding into Eddie’s space for a delicate hug he doesn’t hesitate to return. “Though I could have done without seeing another one of these for a few hundred more years,” she says, gesturing to the sling. “How much longer?”

“Another month if everything checks out,” Eddie says, releasing a sigh.

“It better,” she warns with a twinkle in her eye that says if she learns he’s been aggravating his injury there will be hell to pay.

The woman, they find out, is Athena Grant-Nash, wife of the 118’s captain and consummate host. While Eddie splits off “for a minute”, she leads them to the main area for drinks and introductions before leaving them to mingle. Captain Nash — Bobby — meets them with appetizers and introduces them to the Lees, the de-facto parental figures of the young man who just joined the team.

From the spot she claims at the edge of the dining room, Helena keeps an eye trained on Eddie outside. She feels an itch under her skin knowing it’s been nearly twenty minutes and Eddie hasn’t checked on Christopher, but she knows she shouldn’t go herself. Eddie can do everything on his own, right? He can look after his own kid at a party.

She can, however, go to the washroom and take a peek at what Christopher’s up to while she’s wandering, and that’s exactly what she intends to do.

But for now, she watches as Eddie criss-crosses through the crowds of the patio, prompting a localized burst of cheers at each stop as he reunites himself with teammates he hasn’t seen since the shooting. She recognizes the woman who was on the trip to Texas but the rest conjure only the vaguest memories of Eddie’s graduation and the occasional picture on Instagram — before he stopped posting that is. Just one more way they’ve been iced out.

But he seems happy, almost carefree in a way she realizes she hasn’t seen with her own eyes in...longer than this trip, actually.

Probably years, if she’s honest.

And it occurs to her, slowly, creepingly, that her son is outside, smiling freely and easily, surrounded by people he’s made his new family, while Helena stands inside watching his life through a glass window in a stranger’s house.

Mom, listen…

She swallows past the lump in her throat and sighs. Ramon’s arm comes around her waist and without looking at him, she knows he’s had a similar revelation.

Their next therapy session is in a few days, and they’re not going to fuck it up again.

There’s a late arrival to the party, one of the only people in Eddie’s life she can recognize — Buck. He’s as tall as she remembered but he looks a shade less young now maybe. He greets everyone with a hug or kiss on the cheek as he moves through the party, and bestows a cheer and an enthusiastic hug on Albert, the guest of honour.

When he moves on to the patio and approaches Eddie’s circle, however, the cheerful, long-awaited reunion of best friends she expects doesn’t happen. They catch each other’s eyes for a few beats and share a welcoming smile, then the conversation resumes as if nothing of consequence has happened. Buck doesn’t even linger long, heading back into the house after a few minutes.

When the cake starts being doled out, Eddie returns to meet them at the table and accepts the plate Helena offers him. Helena is scouting the yard for a chair he can sit on to eat when Buck reappears.

“He couldn’t be pulled away?” Eddie asks in surprise.

“Nope,” Buck replies with a grin before turning to them. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Diaz. Good to see you again!” Before they can return more than a smile, Buck continues, “he’s cheating at Unicorn Temple with Harry. Not even cake can pull him away.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and smiles. “My son is not a cheater.” To them, he says, “Buck thinks that whenever he’s losing at a video game, it’s because his opponent is cheating.”

“Not always! Just when they are,” he replies with exaggerated emphasis before scooping a piece of cake onto a plate. “I’m gonna go hide this in the fridge for him for later before it’s all gone.”

Eddie ducks his head and smiles down at his plate, and the questions are building up behind Helena’s teeth again.

Christopher’s been playing video games all this time? Is it an age-appropriate game? Why is Buck checking on your son? Why is Buck saving him cake when nobody asked him to? Why—

But Eddie looks up with an uncertain expression and says, “there’s a table out there if you guys want to join me.”

So Helena stows her questions and says, “that’d be great.”

They eat the overly-sweet cake in peaceful silence until Ramon casts an eye around and says, “you must be glad about the new firefighter. You won’t be the baby on the team anymore.”

Eddie snorts. “I’m 33 and my kid is nearly a teenager — and that’s totally not freaking me out at all,” he adds wryly. “Besides, I was never the baby of the team. Buck is younger than me and forever a kid at heart so I was never in any danger of it.”

“Oh god, don’t remind me that Christopher’s growing up,” Helena only half-jokes. “I can still barely believe he’s old enough to hold his own head up.”

Eddie huffs a laugh and Helena banks it as a win.

“Do any of your coworkers have teenagers?” Ramon asks. “Might have some words of wisdom to share.” Since you won’t ask us, is unspoken and politely ignored by all.

“Athena’s daughter May is just leaving the teen years now, but after her, Christopher’s the oldest. Harry, Athena’s son is 9 and Denny, Hen and Karen’s son just turned 8. It’s great for play dates but not for getting advice on what’s coming up unfortunately.”

“Karen,” Ramon echoes.

Eddie’s fork pauses on its way to scoop some excess icing off his cake and his back straightens.

“Hen’s wife,” he says curtly, daring.

Helena wants to roll her eyes at the posturing. It’s 2021, who cares who anybody loves. She knows Ramon doesn’t, not really, not anymore. It’s a 50-year-long reflex to make a comment, one they’ve been working, if only to have some semblance of a civil conversation with Sophia while she works through a degree in women and gender studies.

But she knows that excuse isn’t going to fly with Eddie.

It hasn’t flown since Eddie was 20 years old and realizing he’d lost a good friend to his father’s caustic words. And Helena can’t ever go back and examine the hurt in Eddie’s expression with fresh eyes. Shemanages to forget about it most of the time until something happens to dig it out of the cold, hard ground and shove it in her arms.

Mom, listen...

But she’s come to LA because she wants to be in her son’s life, in her grandson’s life and she can’t be a coward now.

“They’re a gorgeous couple,” she says, almost too loudly in her enthusiasm. “Are they thinking of having more kids?”

Eddie turns his assessing eyes to her and is mollified by her effort. “Yeah, they’re foster parents now. They’ve fostered three kids so far.”

“That’s great,” she says sincerely. Then, accidentally on purpose and only in part to bring Ramon back to a safe topic, she asks, “Does Ana want a large family?”

Eddie sees through her attempt, but nods. “Yeah, she loves kids.”

Helena doesn’t miss Ramon’s approving nod, or the dark look that passes over Eddie’s eyes when he catches it.

“Was Ana not able to come tonight?” Ramon asks.

“I didn’t ask her,” he answers, his voice a shade too casual. “This is more of a team thing.” As if they hadn’t just been discussing the other families all around them.

“That Ana—” Ramon begins but is interrupted by the arrival of Christopher with a hint of blue icing on his nose and Buck following behind him with two paper plates filled with cake.

Christopher sits backwards on the picnic table bench and uses his arms to lift his legs over while Eddie watches but doesn’t offer to help, and when Christopher is set, Buck places one of the plates in front of him with a plastic fork stuck in the top like a flag.

“Buck was finally able to pull you away, mijo?” Eddie asks as Christopher digs in.

“No, May took her room back so we can’t play on her tv anymore. Harry’s gonna ask his mom if we can play in her room.”

“Yeah...” Buck draws out, sharing a dubious expression with Eddie over Christopher’s head, “I wouldn’t hold out for that, bud.”

“Maybe you can teach the others how to play Scrabble!” Eddie suggests.

Christopher’s nose wrinkles, “Scrabble is boring.”

“Hey!” Buck protests and takes a forkful of Christopher’s cake in retaliation, which prompts Christopher to yell and attack Buck’s cake back, taking much more than a forkful.

The commotion draws attention to their table and Helena’s gearing up to tell Christopher to settle down when she catches Eddie’s eyes on her, waiting.

Helena looks back out to the backyard to say, People are staring.

Eddie looks back impassively as if to say, Let them.

Mom, listen...

Helena swallows her impatience, her anxiety, her embarrassment.

“Hey,” Buck calls, his mouth half full of icing, “did you take your 6?”

Eddie hesitates and that’s enough for Buck to swallow and look put out, already turning and lifting a leg out of the confines of the picnic table.

“Did you turn off your alarm again?”

“I didn’t turn it off the first time, I don’t know what happened.”

“What happened is it woke you up at 6am and you turned it off because sleepy Eddie makes bad life choices.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “You don’t have —”

“Right pocket?” Buck interjects, already walking away.

“Yeah,” Eddie sighs.

Christopher looks at him and shakes his head with exaggerated disappointment.

“Don’t you start,” Eddie warns, scooping a fingertip of icing and dabbing it on his son’s nose too quickly for him to duck.

Christopher shrieks and reaches for his cake fingers-first.

“Oh no, no,” Eddie laughs, catching Christopher’s fingers with one hand. “Truce, truce.”

Christopher doesn’t look interested in a truce and Eddie’s other arm is in a sling, so Ramon quickly pulls the cake out of Christopher’s reach, and then Buck’s abandoned piece and Helena does the same with Eddie’s.

“Not fair!” Christopher cries, still reaching.

“Your dad’s hurt, mijo, you can’t attack him with icing while he’s healing,” Ramon says reasonably. “Wait till he’s all better.”

“He’s fine!” Christopher declares with the confidence of a trauma surgeon as he tries to climb up on the bench.

Eddie’s not in a position to pull him back down and Helena doesn’t know how far they can take their non-interference but she’s not about to let her grandson hop over a table to fall into three plates of cake. She’s half-decided she’s going to pick up the cake and walk it back inside when Buck returns, depositing a glass of water on the table and a small white pill into Eddie’s palm before swooping in and tickling Christopher’s sides.

He shrieks loudly, gaining looks from all around the backyard, but it gets his butt back down on the bench and Buck sits back down next to him, boxing him in between himself and Eddie.

“What happened to our cake? How’d it get all the way over there?” The plates are very easily within Buck’s reach; it’s a question for Christopher’s benefit.

“Dad got me like you did!” Christopher cries indignantly, pointing to his nose. “I’m getting him back!”

“Oh man,” Buck nods seriously before his finger darts forward, swipes the icing from his nose and brings it to his mouth. “Mmm, this is better than the one I got you with. You sure you don’t just wanna eat it?”

Christopher looks unconvinced.

“How about this?” Buck ducks down to whisper loudly. “You call a truce with your dad, and then I’ll steal all his icing and we’ll eat it.”

The icing on Eddie’s cake is mostly piled in a corner of his paper plate. He’s never been able to stomach the pure sugary sweetness of store bought icing.

“Okay,” Christopher nods back, reaching out again for his plate but without making grabby hands.

Ramon assesses him for a moment before taking the chance to push the plates back within reach.

“Hey, Eddie,” Buck calls deliberately. “You should take your medication now.”

“Thanks, Buck,” Eddie replies with a smile that conveys an eyeroll. “I’ll do that now.”

While Eddie pops the pill and takes a very long drink of water, Buck “sneakily” pulls his plate towards them and scoops all the piled icing onto his own plate before pushing the cake back to Eddie’s side of the table.

Christopher laughs and pushes Eddie’s plate an extra few inches away out of spite.

Eddie plays the disappointed victim passably well with a half-hearted gasp and a shake of his head. “You little thieves.”

As promised, Buck doles out some of Eddie’s icing to Christopher who immediately protests at the amount left on Buck’s plate.

“Hey, when you’re a big guy like me, you get more icing. Keep eating your proteins and you’ll get there in no time.”

Christopher accepts that easily enough. “I’m gonna be tall like dad.”

Buck scoffs, “Aim higher, kid. Literally.”

“I am barely two inches shorter than you,” Eddie laments, not for the first time, it sounds like.

“It’s practically three. Are you really going to lie in front of your parents?”

Wouldn’t be the first time, is on Helena’s tongue because it’s been hours since she could speak her mind, but she holds it in.

“How was the trip from Texas?” Buck asks them suddenly, bringing them back into the fold of a scene they'd never left but somehow stopped being a part of. “Flights have new restrictions on them now, don’t they?”

Mom, listen...

When the party is winding down and they walk outside to the driveway, Eddie surprises them by offering them both a hug.

“Thank you for coming,” he says sincerely, though Helena hears the underlying “and behaving” and can’t help but bristle.

“Thank you for inviting us, mijo,” Ramon says; his turn to save Helena from herself.

And when Eddie lets them know he and Chris will be getting their ride back from Buck, Ramon takes Helena’s hand and they smile almost sincerely as they say their goodnights.

—————-

The next week happens to be Isabel’s 80th birthday and Helena and Ramon keep themselves busy by helping to throw a party that will reunite every vaccinated member of the family in the area (they’re not about to take a chance on Isabel’s health).

Things have been getting better with Eddie. They had a second therapy session, again at Isabel’s island counter, where they lasted a good 25 minutes before devolving into yelling. The next day, Eddie asked Ramon for a ride to physical therapy, and easily accepted his father’s offer of lunch after the appointment.

Then, when Helena asked if she could pick up some groceries for him and Christopher, she was refused — in no small part, she thinks, because he still won’t let them in his house — but instead of going off on him, she channeled that anger and resentment into nearly buying out Costco for Isabel’s party. It felt like progress Dr. Jamieson would be proud of.

That’s why, despite the party officially kicking off around 11am, they’re just past supper time and all tables and counters are still nearly buckling under the weight of the food. They’ll have to send everyone home with leftovers if the flow of people stops. Isabel’s front door has been a turnstile since this morning and Helena knows from experience it’ll likely stay that way until the late hours of the night. Most recently, Helena’s daughters made their appearance, and it’s not at all the reason Helena is back in the kitchen.

Despite coming from opposite ends with different travel distances, Adriana and Sophia arrived within a half hour of each other, a move Helena saw through instantly. The idea that her children coordinated to arrive together instead of risking the possibility of facing their parents alone sets a fire raging in her heart, and she realizes suddenly that she isn’t prepared to be hypervigilant of her every word with all three of her kids here now to push her buttons.

So, she retreats to the kitchen.

She doesn’t expect one of them to follow her in.

“I heard you guys were doing therapy,” Adriana volleys as she approaches.

Helena cracks open the tray of chocolate chip cookies and starts plating them, her face angled down so any kneejerk expression of distaste isn’t as visible. “Apparently, that’s what the cool kids do nowadays.”

“It is,” Adriana agrees, the bangles on her wrists clinking on the countertop as she reaches for the box of oatmeal cookies to plate. She’s a year into her Master’s in communication. What she intends to do with that is a mystery to them. So much of their kids’ lives are a mystery now. Helena closes the lid of the cookie tray hard and relishes in the snap of the plastic groove into the tongue.

“Paying a stranger to tell us when and how to talk to each other is cool,” she bites. It’s not posed as a question, just a bitter acknowledgement.

Adriana is quiet and Helena starts plating mini quiches onto the cookie platter just to stay occupied while her daughter walks away. Sophia is a yeller, she stands her ground and gives as good as she gets. Adriana, however, is a runner, just like Eddie.

But Adriana doesn’t leave in a huff. She turns to the counter and grabs a second platter, moving the mini quiches onto that one.

“It’s cool that you’re open to trying,” she says. “I think that, in any family where there’s love, there’s going to be hurt. And the longer we stay stuck in that hurt, the harder it becomes to talk about it without causing more. We get stuck in patterns that we can’t break out of, and people on the outside can be the best ones to point out those patterns and help you break out of them to get to what you actually, truly want to say.”

Helena knows what she actually, truly wants to say. That’s not the problem. The problem is that none of her kids want to hear it.

“I see a therapist,” Adriana continues. Helena stills and looks at her daughter, calmly arranging the mini quiches into concentric circles. “Since my last year of undergrad. When things got really hard and I couldn’t understand why. They helped me. A lot. Helped me figure out what was wrong and how to get myself through it.”

“You didn’t tell us,” Helena says, her voice thick.

“I know,” her daughter replies simply. “I didn’t know how. I’m telling you now because what I actually, truly want to say is that I’m proud of you and dad for doing this. And maybe if you don’t hate it...maybe we could try a session later too.”

There’s an offer in her daughter’s words, an open hand reaching out. But in that hand, Helena sees her failures as a parent, the judgement of the world for failing her kids, and she doesn’t want to reach her own hand out.

Mom, listen…

Helena looks at her eldest daughter, almost a stranger to her, with an entire life Helena is only starting to realize she has no part in. It hurts — it always hurts when the kids pull away but to realize she didn’t even know the extent of it...she wants to hurt back.

Mom, listen…

But she’s trying so hard to break those patterns Adriana speaks of. So instead, Helena thinks of the therapist’s advice leading them into a piece of Eddie’s life they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten to see and swallows past the indignation in her throat to reach down and find the words she actually, truly wants to say.

“You say when, and I’ll be there.”

———-

The sun is setting when Helena finally agrees to get off her feet and just enjoy the party outside while the cousins take over the serving and cleaning. There are four generations of Diazes gathered around but for the first time ever, most of the cousins are young adults, not teenagers, and it’s nice to be able to pass on the hosting responsibilities to them for a bit.

The sky is clear, the sunset resplendent from Isabel’s backyard, and the conversation is flowing easily. It’s a beautiful evening, warm with a gentle breeze cool enough to let her lean back against Ramon in his lounge chair, one of his arms wrapped loosely around her hip.

For the first time since getting Isabel’s text, Helena feels something like peace wash over her and she almost feels bad for the thrum of vindication in her stomach when she spots Eddie slumped comfortably in an armchair, his legs propped up on another chair.

He’s at home here.

Yes, he was at ease at his captain’s house but this is family, this is where he can really sink into the love and comfort and rest. With his aunts and uncles, cousins and sisters around to take care of him. And Christopher, who spent the afternoon running around and chomping down on all the sugar he could get his hands on, slumped against him, nearly asleep. This is family.

She knows he could find that peace back in El Paso, they both could. Eddie had friends there, and his parents, who knew his son better than he did for most of his life. And there are fires in El Paso same as there are in LA, but less smog, less general insanity.

But Eddie’s a lot like his parents, too much like them maybe, and once he’s decided on a course of action he can’t be swayed. So Helena has made peace with it. Rather, she’s made peace with pretending to be okay with it while she waits for him to come to the realization that he should move back.

And in the meantime, if they can mend this thorniness between them, then maybe she and Ramon can make more of these impromptu trips. Maybe even convince Eddie to come home for Christmas this year. At the very least, go back to regular video chats.

But all that ruminating feels far away right now. She’s moving gently with the rise and fall of Ramon’s chest, and she’s so close to slipping away to the feeling of contentment when a new arrival makes her open eyes she didn’t realize she’d closed.

“Feliz cumpleanos,” she hears someone say in half-decent Spanish from the front door on the other side of the side yard fence.

She doesn’t recognize the voice as yet another cousin or uncle, but Eddie shakes Christopher’s shoulder gently, and says, “hey, guess who’s here.”

It takes a moment, but the words penetrate Christopher’s sleepiness. His eyes pop open and he shimmies out of Eddie’s lap and into his crutches to power walk over to the gate just in time for it to open, admitting Isabel, holding a beautiful bouquet of flowers, and a sheepish looking Buck behind her.

“Buck!” Christopher yells.

Buck’s smile widens and he immediately opens his arms. “Hey, superman!”

Buck crouches down and Christopher throws his arms around his neck, crutches and all. When it’s time to break apart, Christopher’s still hanging on and Helena feels a stab of dark vindication at what’s about to happen, and the look Ramon sends her way tells her she’s not alone. Because Christopher is now officially in the double digits, and while he’s always been an independent kid, becoming 10 years old was a big deal for him and his perceived level of maturity, and apparently the year he decided no one was allowed to carry him anymore.

And now Christopher’s tired and in the grip of a powerful sugar crash. He’s not going to suffer any indignities, and Helena knows she should feel bad about not trying to stop Buck. About just watching this play out to see him be rejected. But she wasn’t expecting to see him here, in this safe haven of Isabel’s backyard, in this space for family and loved ones, and it rankles her. It feels like everywhere she turns in LA, she finds him there. And his being here is just another nail in the coffin of Eddie stubbornly refusing to let his parents back into his home. That he would call his friend to this party just to avoid letting them give him a ride…

So she’s a little bitter, a little resentful of the persistent, low-key rejection. Sue her. Eddie has made it clear he doesn’t want them interfering anyway so this is on him.

“Christopher,” Eddie calls, a warning to not make a scene.

Buck looks over Christopher’s shoulder and smiles. “He’s fine,” he says.

Then he’s heaving Christopher’s body up into his arms and onto his hip and Christopher…

...Christopher slumps down over Buck’s shoulder like a baby koala. No sound of protest leaves his lips. His face, if it shows any displeasure, is hidden behind Buck’s neck.

And when Eddie gets up, it’s not to intercede, it’s only to grab the errant crutches before they hit something, and to pull his own armless chair out for Buck to sit on because apparently Buck is staying, and apparently Christopher is staying with him.

“He’s a bit old to be carried around, no?” Ramon says with a bite, because he can’t help himself.

Eddie, who’s been watching his son fondly, barely bats an eye. “He gets cuddly when he’s tired, and Buck’s nearly the only one left who’s big enough to carry him.”

“Ah, that’s why you spend so much time developing these,” Pepa says with a sly smile as she pinches at Buck’s bicep. The same familiar pinch she gave her own grandkids’ cheeks.

“Gracias a Dios,” Isabel adds meaningfully.

“That was adrenaline,” Eddie dismisses with a teasing grin.

“That was 100 squats and 50 pushups a day,” Buck returns blithely. “...and maybe a little adrenaline.”

“What’s this?” Ramon asks before she can.

Instead of prompting more teasing, the mood falls slightly and everyone looks to each other.

Finally, Eddie sighs. “When I got shot, Buck army crawled under a ladder truck to get me out and lifted me into the truck to get to the hospital.”

It strikes Helena suddenly, shamefully, that in the shock of finding out they’d missed the event itself, the hospital stay, and two entire weeks of healing, that they’d never circled back around for details on what actually went down the day it happened.

She never thought to wonder how he got off that street. How he got to the hospital. Who might have saved his life.

And she wishes she were a better person then. Wishes that learning Buck saved her son’s life overpowered her irritation at having him sitting here in Isabel’s backyard like he belonged here when Helena herself barely felt like she did herself. It does help, though.

“They released the street footage of the shooting,” Pepa continues quietly. “It’s on YouTube. Before I even knew it happened, Marguerita from church just sent me a link saying ‘they said it’s a Diaz, do you know him?’ and I saw.”

The idea of her son’s shooting being passed around like a cat video makes Helena sick, but Pepa lamenting how she hadn’t known when she learned about it in a matter of hours and sat on it for weeks…

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Pepa says decisively. “But they have an angle where you can see our Buck here go and get Eddie, pick him up like he doesn’t weigh a thing and get him into the truck to get to the hospital. Probably why he’s alive today. So gracias a Dios for those squats.”

Eddie and Buck are both looking away, both looking safely at Christopher while the table digests the news.

“If you were looking for a story of something really dumb, I can point you in the direction of another video of Buck,” Eddie says, his tone jovial but his eyes strained.

“You need to let that go,” Buck says in a definite whine.

“Do I?” Eddie asks. “Abuela did you see the video of the firefighter who went up the crane all alone?”

“Dios mío, Buck,” Pepa laments.

“Did you send it to me?” Abuela asks her, pulling out her phone and her glasses to check.

“No, mamá, it was an idiot firefighter but I didn’t realize it was the one we knew.”

“In the middle of an all-out declaration of war on firefighters,” Eddie begins, quietly for Christopher’s sake, but impassioned, sitting up in his chair, “this idiota and his squat count climbed up a crane ladder, completely exposed and defenseless—”

Buck looks pained. “I was wearing a bulletproof vest and a helmet. And that’s the job sometimes—”

“The paramedics’ job, actually, which you aren’t. So, no, that wasn’t the job.” Eddie’s tone edges into something darker without his meaning to. He takes a drink of his lemonade looking for all the world like he wished it was a beer. “And you know that or I wouldn’t have found out about it from Chim a month after the fact.”

Helena clenches her jaw tight and squeezes Ramon’s hand even tighter so neither of them can say, So you have a problem being left in the dark too?

“Buck,” Isabel sighs with disappointment.

Buck winces. “It was before— ” He cuts himself off, his wide eyes darting towards Helena and Ramon of all people.

“Hmm,” Isabel answers noncommittally, as if to end the conversation.

Just then, Sophia brings out a platter of bite-sized desserts, making the rounds of the whole circle for people to pick at before leaving it on the table. The opportunity to move on is there. That doesn’t mean they’re interested in taking it.

“Before what?” Ramon asks, his tone is forcibly casual.

The silence that greets Ramon’s question is heavy. Guilty. When Helena casts her eyes around, she’s greeted by stiff shoulders and a mix of apprehension shared between her son, her mother- and sister-in-law, and Buck.

Mom, listen...

“Before what?” Helena repeats, her voice uncompromising.

———-

The fight they have in Isabel’s guest bedroom is a Hall of Famer. It’s a screaming match, no doubt about it. The doors from the bedroom to the yard are all closed but there’s no question every member of the family — and Buck — can hear every word.

“Do you really hate us that much?” Helena demands. She’s crying but she doesn’t know if it’s heartbreak or fury, she just wishes it’d stop so she could lean into her anger. “Genuinely, honestly, Eddie.”

“I don’t hate you,” he protests, keeping his own voice down, making it seem like they’re irrational for their anger.

“Bullshit,” she spits.

“You must!” Ramon adds. “You hate us so much that you have to hate your sisters too? Your cousins? You would rather leave your only son to a stranger, some gringo coworker, than with family? That’s how much you hate us? Hate our name?”

“Our name?” Eddie shoots back incredulously. “What are you talking about, our name? We’re not royalty, papi, and Chris’ name would never change.”

“You would leave him to your coworker,” Helena stresses, disgust dripping from her tongue.

“To my best friend,” Eddie retorts, “who Christopher adores, if you haven’t noticed. And who adores Christopher right back.”

“That’s not normal, mijo,” Ramon warns.

“Jesus christ,” Eddie seethes. “Please do not star—”

“What kind of single adult man bonds with another man’s child like that?”

“You’re describing a tío, you understand that right? What, you think it’s weird that Pepa loves me like her own? You think Sophia should stay away from Chris too?”

“That’s family,” Helena argues.

“And they’re women!”

“Ramon, shut up,” Helena snaps.

“Buck is our family, and he’s a man, and he’s got the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met. If anything happened to me, Christopher would be taken care of like if I was still here.”

“Buck, the one who nearly got him killed in the tsunami? That’s the same guy right?” Ramon throws out, his eyes a little wild as he paces.

“The one who saved his life in that tsunami, despite being injured and then some. And the one who’s saved my life more times than I can count, including from being gunned down on the street. We’d both probably be dead if not f— ”

“Isn’t he the one who’s family is worse off than ours?” Helena recalls. “So he has no family, no support, no girlfriend even! So a worse position than you’re in now. That’s what you want to leave him with.”

“He doesn’t need a girlfriend to raise Christopher right, I don’t! And he has a great sister, he has the 118, he has Carla, and he has our family. You think Abuela and Pepa would shut the door on him? He’d be here every Sunday, with Christopher, just like I am.”

“And what does your girlfriend think of this?” Ramon presses. “The vice principal, she thinks this is normal?”

“Ana doesn’t have anything to do with this,” Eddie says, frowning.

Helena balks. “You think the woman you’ve been seeing seriously for nearly a year has nothing to do with long-term decisions about your son? You think maybe she wouldn’t want the option of taking Christopher in if something happened to you?”

“That’s not happening, he’s going to Buck and that’s final.”

“What’s going on with you and this gringo?” Ramon asks suspiciously. “Are you even going out with Ana or was that another lie?”

“Ramon, don’t go there,” Helena sighs, her heart clenching. That’s all they need in this clusterfuck, that layer of pain.

“No, let’s go there because you know what?” Eddie asks darkly. “There is no one on this planet I trust with my son more than Buck and yeah, if we need to lay it all out there, that includes the two of you. I know you love Christopher, just like I know Shannon loved him, but that’s not always going to be enough. Buck isn’t going to fill my son’s head with ideas about the wrong kind of way to love someone. He’s not going to tell him he’s not good enough for his family to love him or support him. Buck’s going to make sure Christopher grows up to follow his heart and find whatever makes him happiest in the world, no matter what that looks like.”

“How could you think—”

“What if he grows up to be gay?” Eddie asks pointedly, staring his father down. “You’re telling me you’re going to be the one to help him pick out a suit to go to prom with his boyfriend?”

Ramon purses his lips but tries, “it’s a different world now,” as if he hadn’t just tried to make crass insinuations just to hurt his son.

“Okay,” Eddie says, not believing him for a moment, “what if he’s trans? Tells you at 15 that he’s a girl and he wants to transition. You’re going to get him on hormone therapy?”

“Eddie that’s not—”

“What if he’s 20 and he tells you he got a girl pregnant by accident and he doesn’t know her enough to love her, and he’s not ready to be a father let alone a husband?”

Helena tries to speak but her throat is suddenly too tight for words to get out.

“You gonna tell him he’s not a man if he doesn’t marry her anyway?”

Ramon says nothing.

“Christopher is going to Buck, and that’s final.”

——————-

Helena and Ramon don’t show up for the third therapy session.

Their plane tickets were only for three weeks, originally, and as the days run out, they don’t talk about extensions.

———-

Helena is sitting out in Isabel’s backyard, trying to conjure up that feeling of serenity she got to bask in for all of two minutes the night of the birthday party.

It’s not working.

They’re going back to El Paso tomorrow, leaving their relationship with Eddie in worse straits than when they arrived.

There’s always been a tension between them and Eddie, but there’s also always been love and respect, and that love and respect formed a polite barrier around the things they couldn’t talk about. It kept their relationship safe. Kept them from getting too close to real honesty where things hurt in ways that couldn’t be walked back.

It feels now like that barrier has fallen. That Eddie’s finally reached the limit of what he could hold back and now there’s nothing to help them pretend everything is okay. Nothing to help Helena believe this is all something that could blow over.

That’s to say nothing of Christopher, who’s never felt as far away as he does now, even while they linger in the same city, only a couple dozen blocks away.

Helena scrolls listlessly through her phone’s camera roll for the last few weeks. There are pictures of Christopher mostly, but Eddie and the rest of the family are there too. It hurts to notice how Eddie is markedly happier in the shots where he’s looking away from the camera. Away from her.

Mom, listen…

Helena opens up Instagram and lets herself forget for a moment that anything is wrong. On Instagram, there is only joy and fun. And Buck.

Eddie hasn’t posted anything to his account in months but starting from the end and working backwards, Buck features heavily. He’s in at least a third of the pictures, usually with Christopher. One of the posts includes a short video that she watches. It’s of the day they unveiled the adapted skateboard, and it nourishes her soul. There’s no sadness here, or tension, only pure radiating happiness and excitement. It’s magical.

And it’s meaningful.

Mom, listen…

Helena is out of her chair and pocketing Isabel’s car keys before she can talk herself out of it. The drive to Eddie’s house is made with a carefully blank mind. She knows if she lets herself think about what she’s going to say, she’s going to spiral and get to a place where all this fear and sadness turn dark and ugly, and she can’t afford to risk it.

Finally, she’s knocking gently on a front door she’s only seen three times in the weeks she’s been here.

Buck answers the door.

————-

The house is quiet when Helena steps in.

She doesn’t bother taking her shoes off this time, she’s not sure how long she’ll be allowed to stay. But she notices that the space where her shoes would have gone is taken up by a pair of large boots she imagines fit perfectly on Buck’s feet.

Buck disappears into the living room and she follows quietly after him. The lights are off but the muted tv glows brightly enough for her to see Eddie reclined on his back on the couch, sleeping, and Buck sitting down on the edge of the coffee table to shake his arm.

Eddie’s always been a light sleeper, especially after the army and Christopher. He doesn’t wake easily now.

He’s wearing the sling, but it’s the only indication that anything is amiss with him. There’s no sign of pain or worry on his face, no tension in his shoulders. He’s practically melted into the recesses of the couch. He’s a picture of comfort. And why shouldn’t he be? He’s in his home, away from family, from expectations, and judgements. Just him and Christopher. And Buck.

Eddie finally takes a deep breath that shows his body is coming around but his eyes stay closed. Buck is murmuring something but she only catches, “ — mom — here.”

Then, at last, Eddie’s eyelids part, and the deep laxness of his body disappears almost in the blink of an eye.

“What?” he croaks, already trying to sit up.

Buck’s hands are already moving to support his back.

“ — says she wants to apologize.”

Eddie scoffs and sits upright, feet firmly planted on the floor as he blinks himself awake.

“Mom?”

“I’m here,” she says, stepping closer into the light of the tv.

Buck catches Eddie’s eye and they have an entire conversation in five silent seconds that ends with Buck nodding and getting up from the table, watching Helena warily as she approaches further.

“Watch your eyes,” Buck says quietly to Eddie before flipping the wall switch and illuminating the room. He lingers for a moment, clearly undecided about leaving, before saying, “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

Finally, Helena is alone with her son in his home. The quiet is almost peaceful, she doesn’t want to break it. Eddie does instead.

“Buck said you wanted to apologize, so I’m assuming he misheard,” Eddie says wryly.

There are pillow creases on the side of his face and Helena can’t remember the last time she saw him look so disheveled, so at home. It makes her heart ache for the days when she’d have to force him out of bed at noon on weekends, drive him to wrestling practice early in the morning, watch over him as he slept sometimes, just to make sure he was okay.

“Shockingly, no,” she smiles sadly.

Eddie blinks up at her for a moment before shifting down on the couch, leaving her some room to sit. She takes the invitation, but once she’s sitting down with Eddie’s full attention on her, she realizes not preparing what she wanted to say might have been a mistake. She has no idea where to begin. What scab to pick at that won’t cause more bleeding.

Then she remembers Adriana’s words.

What is it, under all the posturing, all the hurt feelings, all the history and baggage...what is it she actually, truly wants to say?

“I’m sorry I missed therapy.”

Eddie huffs a surprised laugh. “Of all the things…”

“I know, I know,” she rolls her eyes. “But I am. I…” She forces herself to slow down and consider her words. “I realize that therapy was an olive branch for you. One we took way too late and I’m...I’m just so fucking grateful we were able to take it at all, in the end.”

The tears are coming and there’s nothing she can do to stop them. They gather in the corner of her eyes and she tries to blink them away but has to settle for wiping away the ones that fall anyway.

“You were right,” she says. “You said — and your sister said, and the therapist said — that there’s a lot of hurt, and it’s become too hard to...to connect with each other because of it. And therapy is probably the only bridge through that. So even though I was pissed at you, I should have showed up.”

She hazards a look up at Eddie to find his brown eyes wide and cautiously wondering.

“Therapy is what’s going to help us and the only way to fail at it is to not show up.” It’s what the therapist had said in their first session. It had sounded like an easy thing to do then. “And that’s not okay. I’m not going to do that again.”

Eddie nods and looks away. His fingernails are flicking nervously against each other — a habit he picked up from her. “Is dad on the same page as you?”

Helena takes a deep breath, and blows out, “No, your dad is looking for a match to light the page on fire.”

Eddie rolls his eyes but there’s heavy hurt behind the indifference.

“I hid all of them,” Helena offers, “and left Abuela with the fire extinguisher.”

That gets a small smile.

“I really expected you to be more pissed about it than him,” Eddie says, he reclines against the arm of the sofa but no part of him looks comfortable with this conversation.

“Oh, I am—” The rage swells up in her. The outrage and indignation. But again, Adriana’s voice comes to her. “I...am...really, truly hurt, Eddie. I feel...I feel like you told me I’m not good enough to love Christopher how he needs.”

Eddie’s face collapses with disbelief. “You mean the way you’ve been making me feel since he was born? Are you kidding me?”

“What?”

“Since the moment Shannon got pregnant, you’ve both been hammering it in on us that we’d never be enough, we’d never be good enough for him. Why do you think I joined the army? Why do you think Shannon ran?”

The accusation makes her breathless, it makes that familiar rage bubble up closer to the surface. “Shannon made her own choices, you’re not going to pin that on us. And so did you.”

“No, I can’t pin that on you. She did choose to leave,” he concedes, his voice hardening. “But you spent five years telling her over and over that nothing she ever did was good enough, and when I got back you did the same to me! ‘Don’t drag him down with you.’ Does that ring any bells?”

“I spent five years helping her, being a second parent to Christopher when she was in over her head. She needed help. She wasn’t cut out—”

“No, she wasn’t,” Eddie agrees. “Neither of us were. We were stupid fucking kids who barely knew each other. She was supposed to get back on a plane to California when the semester was done and instead we got married in the backyard because you told us that’s what we had to do.”

“Jesus Christ, Eddie. You want to blame me for Christopher being born? For raising him in a family with two parents?”

“You’re not listening,” Eddie spits.

“I’m listening to you say over and over how I ruined your life because I didn’t let Shannon get an abortion. And that’s somehow the reason to keep us out of Christopher’s life now?”

“No, you’re not—” Eddie closes his eyes and clenches his jaw. “I love Christopher with everything I am. If I had the chance to go back and do everything differently, I wouldn’t. I would never. Being his father is the most important thing I’ve ever done.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying, I was a kid in over my head and my parents didn’t know what was best for me. Didn’t know how to help me. And I figured that out on my own, I grew up and became the man I am now on my own.” She wants to argue but he’s on a roll. “And that’s fine, no parent is perfect. I know I’m going to make mistakes and I hope to god Christopher can forgive me, so I need to forgive you yours. But I need you to see me, now. I need you to look at me and realize I’m not that kid you put in a suit in the backyard. I’m not the kid that signed up to get shot at instead of facing his life. I’m not that kid anymore, mom. I’m not.”

“I see that, Eddie.”

“No, you don’t. Because if you did, you wouldn’t constantly be telling me I need to move back to El Paso to take proper care of Christopher. You’d see that our lives are here now. I have a job I love and pays what we need. Christopher loves his school, his friends. He’s a popular, genius kid. He’s happy. I’m happy. And we’re doing good. But you don’t see that. You see that dumbass, scared kid making his next mistakes. And I’m sorry but I’m not going to let you drag me back into that spiral. If you need to be the parent to that kid, I can’t be the kid you’re parenting. I’ve grown up, mom.”

“So,” Helena clears her throat, hoping the waver in it will clear too. “That’s what the guardianship is? We...lost sight of you growing up. We didn’t give you what you needed. So you’re punishing us?”

Eddie sighs as if she didn’t understand.

“No, you know what? No, I’m sorry,” she switches tracks, her voice hard, “how are we supposed to see this new person you’ve become, Eddie? You left El Paso, left us behind, you won’t come home for holidays, you even stopped posting on Instagram, and when we come here to see you’re alive you won’t even let us into your home. So how? How are we supposed to see this magical transformation when you won’t let us in?”

Eddie watches her for a moment, weighing his words. “You show up for therapy.”

And that takes the wind out of her sails.

That’s what she came here for.

To apologize.

Not keep yelling.

Mom, listen…

Helena takes two deep breaths and crooks a smile. “Yeah.”

“You yell a lot.”

Christopher’s voice startles them both, pulling a short grunt of pain from Eddie as his shoulder jerks back. Christopher is leaning against the wall into the living room, wearing the disgruntled pout of someone who was woken up for no good reason.

“Christopher…” Eddie begins, trying to leverage himself off the couch.

Helena pushes him back down, and turns to Christopher, opening her arms.

“I do,” Helena admits softly, as Christopher comes over and leans into her side. “I do yell a lot. I’m...trying to yell less.”

“Dad never yells.”

Eddie smiles tiredly.

“Hmm,” Helena agrees, “I think there’s a lot of things I need to learn from your daddy.”

Christopher nods, his eyes drooping. “He’s the best,” he says, snuggling into her shoulder. She’s getting on a plane tomorrow so she takes the opportunity to relish in this hug, and press a long kiss on his curls.

“Ah, I thought I heard an escape artist on the prowl,” Buck says as he turns the corner.

“We woke him up,” Eddie says redundantly. “We’ll keep it quiet now, buddy.”

“K,” Christopher mumbles.

“Okay, buddy, let’s get you back to bed” Buck says quietly as he leans over to carefully scoop him into his arms. Christopher’s arms loop around his neck like he’s done it a million times, and his head falls to Buck’s shoulder.

“Buck’s the best too,” Christopher mumbles.

Buck’s ducks his face away.

“That’s what I hear,” Helena allows in a tone she hopes is gracious.

As they leave, they can hear Christopher say, “they stole your bed.”

Buck responds but it’s too quiet for them to follow the rest of the conversation.

Eddie ducks his head and sighs.

“That’s why you were keeping us away?” Helena asks, her voice more gentle than she thought she could muster at this point. “Because Buck’s crashing on your couch?”

Now that she’s looking, she spots the folded duvet stacked on the chair in the corner, the pillows tucked neatly below. It only makes her more aware that she found Eddie sleeping soundly on the very same couch.

“I didn’t — I didn’t want questions. I didn’t want dad’s look, the same look he has every time Buck comes up. The same look—” Eddie sighs harshly. “I didn’t feel like fielding questions. He was here for Christopher when I was in the hospital and when I came home… He helps. A lot.”

Helena nods pensively, and surprises herself by finding a kernel of gratitude towards Buck burgeoning in her chest.

“So, speaking of fucking up as parents,” she begins with a crooked smile that fades by the end of the phrase. She doesn’t know how to finish that sentence so she starts a new one. “The...hurt that piles up, that makes it hard to talk through...does some of it come from Matty?”

She can see an instinct flare up in her son to shake his head and dismiss the topic, but he doesn’t let it take hold. It’s time to face this.

“It didn’t help,” he admits.

Eddie and Matty met in sixth grade and became best friends almost instantly. They spent weekends in sleepovers, fought off other classmates to be each others’ group project partners, and spent every summer going to the same camps. Matty was an honorary Diaz before they even hit their teens.

Five years later, Matty came out to his family, and then to theirs. His parents took it well, Eddie’s parents didn’t.

The sleepovers stopped, the summer camps stopped, and if Ramon could have sent Eddie to another class he would have.

The day he came out to them was the last day he stepped foot in the Diaz home, a natural consequence of Ramon having run him out with caustic, angry words.

“We…” Helena licks her lips and looks away to gather her thoughts. “There’s a lot of reasons we reacted the way we did. Ignorance, more than anything. It really was a different world back then. But...the world has kept turning, things have kept changing and we can’t pretend to be ignorant anymore.” She looks Eddie in the eye to say, “we were wrong. We were wrong to chase him away. And if the day comes that Christopher is gay or trans or any of the other words we haven’t learned yet, we’re going to love him just as much as we do now.”

Eddie keeps her gaze for a moment before nodding. “I’m glad to hear it.” The way his shoulders gather near his ears says he doesn’t believe her though he’s trying.

Because when Eddie and Matty stood shoulder to shoulder to tell Ramon and Helena the news, Matty wasn’t the only one crushed. And they know, somewhere deep down, that their reaction was as extreme as it was because they were never fully sure if the hurt in Eddie’s eyes was on behalf of his best friend, or if they exploded before more news could be told.

And it still scares Helena to this day, to this very moment sitting on her son’s couch. It’s why they welcomed Shannon at first, the first girl Eddie really brought home, even though they didn’t approve of her overall.

But she knows now that there’s nothing anymore, not her pride, not her ignorance, that will stop her from trying to bridge the gap between them. So she continues deliberately, “and if this new, grown up version of you comes with any of those words, we’re not going to love you any less either.”

His eyes widen and for a moment she’s looking at her 17 year old son in the living room, eyes wide as Matty runs out of the house. She wishes this moment could replace that one, stamp out that mistake forever. But it can’t, so she has to make this one count even more.

“I’ll still be here, and I’m listening. I...I see you,” she says. “You and Christopher. I see you settled in so well here, even now with your injury.”

Eddie remains quiet, but apprehension creeps across his face and his eyes dart behind her where Buck and Christopher disappeared.

“I see the boots at the entrance,” she continues, her voice pitched low, “the extra toothbrush you forgot to hide away. The tupperwares full of food Isabel and Ana didn’t make. But more than anything, I see Buck. Everywhere.” A smile creeps up her lips. “The only place I didn’t see him was at brunch with Ana and call me crazy but I feel like you would have preferred he was there too.”

Eddie’s lip is being chewed to within an inch of its life, and his eyes are trained on the couch cushion.

“Hey,” she taps his knee. “You...grew up to be a good man, and a good father.” The words are so many years too late but she’s grateful to see them land as Eddie’s eyes begin to shimmer. “And you deserve everything you want for Christopher. Happiness, whatever that looks like.”

Eddie swallows thickly and clears his throat. “And dad?”

“Dad...has his head too far up his own ass to see or hear anything,” Helena admits. “But he’s due for a colonoscopy soon so I’ll work on it.”

Eddie chokes on a laugh that catches him off-guard and suddenly they’re both laughing, quietly so they don’t wake Christopher up again.

When they recover, Eddie invites her to the kitchen for a drink, where Buck is packing Christopher’s lunch for school tomorrow.

When she leaves, her stomach is in knots she imagines won’t smooth out for a few weeks yet, but a weight’s been lifted off her chest and her heart is full in a way it hasn’t been in years.

When she lands in El Paso, her phone pings with a message from Eddie: Hope you had a good flight. Free Friday for a call?

———-

When Friday comes, after catching up with Christopher, Eddie tells them he broke it off with Ana.

Helena digs her nails into Ramon’s knee instinctively, but she prepared him well and despite his continued reservations, all he says is, “That’s too bad, mijo.”

———-

Two months of virtual therapy and video chats later, Eddie tells them he’s bisexual. They react the way they should have all those years ago, and Helena tries to be grateful they got to have this moment at all instead of mourn for the years Eddie lost because of them.

There’s no mention of Buck, but Eddie’s eyes flit fondly over the laptop screen every once in a while at Christopher and someone else off-screen.

The call takes place at 8am LA time, and the sling has been gone for nearly three weeks.

———

At Christmas, Eddie and Christopher are waiting for them with smiles on their faces at LAX’s baggage claim. When they get home, Buck is there opening the door and helping them with their luggage.

Isabel isn’t there to mediate but supper that evening goes smoothly. The tension that lurks is anticipatory on all sides, a feeling of this being too good to last. But by dessert, everyone is sitting back in their chairs and smiling. And when Buck rounds the table to start the clean up, he places a hand on Eddie’s shoulder, his thumb brushing the back of Eddie’s neck, and Helena watches as the last bit of strain melts out of his body.

The basket of gauze is nowhere to be found in the bathroom, nor is the purple toothbrush. Instead, there’s a third electric toothbrush standing in line with the rest.

Helena’s been keeping an eye out for opportunities to follow Adriana’s advice. To find the words she actually, truly means, and say them before she runs out of time. So before turning in, she takes Eddie aside and tells him, “I’m really happy you found your home here in LA. I’m really proud of the family you’ve made.”

And when she closes her arms around him, she can feel him fold into her like he used to as a kid, no polite distance or anxiety. Just comfort.

[ohheyitsokay]

heartbeat

pairing: Din Djarin (the Mandalorian) x reader

wordcount: 2.2k

warnings: brief mentions of violence and death, extremely tender moments

summary: sometimes in love, the body says more than the mouth does 

Also, thanks to @scribbledghost for yelling about this with me until I had coherent ideas! She is, as always, an inspiration

>>

It had been a little over a week when the Mandalorian had decided that you were his.

His what, exactly, he had no idea, but he was more than sure. You belonged to each other.

He liked feeling your back against his as you shot your blasters with precision and intention, liked how you grinned at him while you’d kept shooting as he grabbed you and jet-packed away from the troopers.

He liked the sound of your footsteps when you walked around the Crest, liked that he could tell by them that you already knew where to go. And when you took off your boots, he liked those footsteps, too.

He liked the way your eyes looked as he spoke, the way he could make them dilate just a little as you listened. He liked that when he stepped closer, instinctively, so did you.

There was no reason for him to reflect on it, and really, no time for things like that. It just fit, you and him, protecting the child, against the world.

And so it went.

Until one day, the Mandalorian found himself turning in slow circles at the edge of a smoldering city, ashes still suspended in the air, the forms of families still huddled together disintegrating as their souls returned to the galaxy. Something in him changed.

Always, he wanted you by his side, wanted to protect you but… he had never felt that he could lose you, really, before this moment. Had never known the dangerous thing that was, to love someone and risk that love every moment of every day.

Did you know? Did you know that he loved you so much he feared for you, and yet still selfishly needed you within arms reach?

He wanted you to know.

But maybe you already did? Maybe you saw how he stepped in front of you when the hairs on his neck were raised. Maybe you knew what he meant when he’d taken you to a remote village to lay low, and told you his name under the stars. Maybe he didn’t have to tell you, just had to keep working at showing you that your life being intertwined with his and the child’s was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

He thought about it that day, and every other day for awhile, and again as he followed you through a the thicket of a jungle towards the spot where your quarry lay. There were ways you showed him… something of your own.

You had stuck around, for one. Beyond that you looked after him too, covered for him countless times without even needing to be asked, looked after the child and the ship as though they were your home. And sometimes he would come back and find something he forgot he needed, placed just outside his door, or something fixed before he got around to it. Even better, you were vulnerable with him, in ways he’d never seen you be with others. Your eyes talked to him, when your mouth couldn’t, or wouldn’t, and the tension would slide out of your limbs when you felt him nearby.

You turned towards him, warning him not to step on a strange plant, when a glint appeared over your shoulder. Din was hardly aware he had drawn his blaster before two shots rang through the humid air.

He was facing you, your eyebrows drawn together, mouth pressed into a line, breath still in your lungs as your whole form held still as stone.

You were pointing your blaster over his shoulder, mirroring him.

Somewhere, on either side, two mercenaries fell to the ground with lifeless thuds.

There was a smile on your face, then, and he watched for his favorite moment as you held his gaze – the one where your eyes softened. It came, and you said quietly, without fear, “I love you, Din.”

The air was too thick, then, he almost couldn’t breathe.

“Yeah,” he forced out, half choking on the word, wishing he was functional enough to manage three, or maybe four more. Instead he grasped your neck, his hand engulfing the whole side, and the thumb of his glove twitched over your jaw, almost on your cheek. Your smiled widened, knowing and miraculously content, and the two of you split to collect your prizes from the earth below.

-

It was awful, sometimes, existing in this universe. Seeing terrible people do horrible things, trying to help and not saving enough lives or changing things in time or being shoved away when he was needed most.

This was one of those times. The Mandalorian had tried to help, tried to be good, he really did. But it wasn’t enough, would never be.

He was a warrior, was raised as the strongest of strong, to look out for his own and slay anyone who tried to stop him. In his warriors arms, you had almost died, and his strength was all but gone as he trembled with triumph and fear as you lay limp against his chest.

The man had not been slayed, but Din had succeeded enough to carry you home, clinging to the warmth that still seeped from your skin. Your chest rose and fell, slowly, slowly, as it had in those quite moments he’d caught you sleeping. He had seen your eyes before they slid closed – you were alive, you would be fine. That moment replayed itself in his mind the whole trip back to the Crest, and for long hours and he cradled you against him, unable to feel his own wounds. 

The weight of the day, of the fight and the losses settled on him, heavier by far than that of your person. His blood felt thick under his skin, numbness oozing from the top of his head, down, down, down to the floor.

Finally, he took slow, rattling breaths, and found the strength within him to place you in his bunk. Movements mechanical, he tucked the blankets around you, trying to be gentle but needing you to be warm, safe. Seated next to you, Din took your hand, and lowered his head onto the edge.

He slept, dreaming of plants, pushing through the metal of the ship, growing until they encompassed you both, preserving you like the heroes of old, hands clasped.

When he woke he was as stiff as though it were true, but you were not a legend yet, because you were looking at him. There was a puffiness around your eyes that told him you’d just woken up, but you were sitting, tracing his knuckles with your free hand. Din sat up, too, bones creaking and muscles groaning, but overwhelmed with relief and joy. His blood, so thick before, was now pumping fast at the beauty of you, each beat in his chest feeling like a chant, a prayer.

The heaviness was still there, the weight of the galaxy was looming just outside the ship and he needed you to know he loved you. Needed you to know how badly he had it for you, how thoroughly you completed his life - how when he dreamed of the future, he dreamed of you.

But the thickness of the numbness was taking to long to slide away, it was too slow and before he could think he was fumbling with the side of his chest plate. It was clumsy with only a single hand, but he needed the other to tug yours closer, to push it inside of the armor, pleading silently with you to feel it.

His heart beat for you.

-

It was hard, leaving his riduur in bed, harder than he’d anticipated.

He knew you would be following him sooner than later, but… Din just wanted to feel you a moment longer, see your skin and hair and eyes in his blankets without a filter for just a little more.

Each piece of cloth was a shroud of mystery, each proud piece of beskar a sharp edge between his soul and the world. That was a good thing, outside this room, but in here, between you, he hated it.

It felt wrong, to cover skin that could be pressed against yours, to create a tough shell that you weren't allowed to pass.

He couldn’t even fully enjoy your adoring eyes as each piece slid into place, building him into the Mandalorian.

You could see his hesitation in his eyes as he held onto his helmet. As always, Din knelt like a knight, and pressed a deep, final kiss onto your mouth, longing in his eyes. A glove stroked your cheek, as gentle as if you were still asleep.

He asked you, then, if you would do something for him. It was a silly thing, to others maybe, but your riduur wouldn’t ask unless he needed it.

You were content to oblige the first few days. It had never occurred to you as a solution, to move your schedule just a bit to rise before he did. It was hard to have him watch you, loving brown eyes and tussled curls and warm skin, but it made sense.

As you pulled on your own gear, you reflected. This solution was good, for him to put up his walls after you’d moved on with the morning, but it didn’t feel quite right. Even still, when he would find you in the cockpit, the fingers of his gloves would hover, his longing rolling off of him like guilt.

A seed of thought planted itself in your mind, and you nurtured it a few days more before it was ready to share with him.

The time had come, as it has every morning, when his touches loosened and his kisses slowed, and he would sigh against your skin, ready to send you off.

As you stood, blankets slipping off your half-bare form, you pulled at him. His face betrayed confusion, and a touch of hurt, and you bent to kiss him, whispering about trust.

When Din rose, it was as though you were dancing, floating around the room to find each piece and helping him put it on. One by one, you explained to him , telling him the words what he needed to hear.

You loved him as Din, vulnerable and trusting and bared for you, but you also loved him as the Mandalorian. Whispers and kisses to the cold metal promised you loved all versions of him, cherished both fighting by his side and sleeping against it. And he watched as you put him together with pride, awe in his eyes.

It wasn’t the first time he said it, but that morning, as your fingers finished the final clasps and you handed him his helmet, Din Djarin told you he loved you.

-

The first sign that something was very, very wrong, was that Din's footsteps were loud. They echoed through the metal walls of your flying home without real purpose, only anger.

You searched for him as they slowed, of course you did. You had never been properly afraid if the Mandalorian, and indeed, he had never hurt you.

Under the layers his muscles were filled with tension, his heart riddled with self loathing and confusion and guilt. He had never meant the harm he’d caused. It all went wrong so fast. He was just… trying to help.

Eyes glazed over, still clouded with red, his mind was still lightyears away, replaying the smoking scenes again and again. The yelling rang in his ears, his own voice telling them to trust him.

He felt something, something strange and soft, slipping sideways across his chest, settling over his heart. It bypassed the pain, the aches, and the hurt easily, effortlessly carving a path for you to him.

You were there, had pulled off his chest plate as he sat, stewing, pulled away his walls just enough to touch him. He was your riduur, alive, and human.

The numbness was held at bay as he began to thaw under your touch. It had become a wonderful thing, for you to put in his armor in the mornings encouraging his strength with every movement but… the evenings were his favorite part of the day, especially during ones that left harsh, dark marks on his soul.

Fingers careful but quick, you began to undo the pieces. It was quiet- you were always silent, letting him process if he needed to, however he needed to, and the sounds of scrapping fabric and the thuds of metal being gentle placed aside was soothing. You scrubbed the marks off his soul as best as you could, before your movements slowed and you regarded him.

Din’s hands, now bare, brought yours to his helmet, enjoying your gaze through your lashes as you accepted, taking it off. When he kissed you, time slowed to a stop.

He could feel your heartbeat as his skin pressed into yours. On the side of your neck, the insides of your wrists, through your ribs - as fast and steady as his own. 

<<

taglist:

@fangirl-316 @scribbledghost @writeforfandoms

[ekaterinatepes]

Nothing But The Best

Author Notes: once again I apologize for how long this took to update. Schedule is still hectic and will remain so for the following month or so. But fear not. I shall continue to update at least once a week. Once again reblogs and comments are appreciated!

XVI

Our ability to survive depends on our skill to change and adapt. Everything in life is about transformation.

The drastic changes in your life seemed like a never ending avalanche of heart break and tough decisions… once again, transformation.

Your own choices placed you exactly where you were at, there was no one else to blame but yourself.

Satoru chose to remain in New York for another two weeks during which he had invested himself into re-discovering you (in his mind you never stopped being his. In the sanctuary of his thoughts you are always referred to as his wife, his one and only Mrs. Y/N Gojo. The woman of his life and owner of his heart).

Satoru tried a gentle approach with you. Not wanting to push you too far not to leave you alone all together. Using all his knowledge of your personality and preferences he slowly inserted himself in your life once again.

At 5:30am sharp he would meet you at the entrance of your building wearing his training clothes, he wanted to show you he supported you and your career. He would go for a run with you around the park. This, of course evoked memories of when you both first started dating and Satoru would show up to workout with you or take you out to dinner after training.

You got to know he had been working harder to help Yuuji control the curse inside him but it was a hard endeavor. He didn’t have to specifically verbalize it for you to know it was a loosing battle and he felt responsible for it but he was trying his best to find a way to help the boy. You missed the kids, they were like family. So you made sure to ask Satoru to tell them you missed them.

But despite your ex-husband’s best efforts you still wanted to be alone. You needed some clarity, the opportunity to sort out your feelings. Gojo wasn’t particularly thrilled with you pushing him away but he promised to you and himself that he would change and would do an effort to respect your wishes so he gave you your space.

But Satoru wasn’t stupid, he knew you missed Suguru and felt guilty for choosing your own husband (ex-husband) over your best friend.

And that’s why you kept pushing him away. Saying you needed time to think.

His time was running out, he had to return to Japan. At least for now, he had unavoidable responsibilities with his students as well as the rest of his missions. He went to your apartment the night before his flight and explained to you why he had to return but he also promised to come back to New York as soon as possible.

“It’s alright Satoru, I understand… I’m gonna be just fine” you reassured the sorcerer who didn’t look convinced at all about leaving you alone. “Please, at least answer my calls and messages. I’m gonna be worried sick if you don’t” you nodded and then he hugged you tightly, inhaling your intoxicating aroma as if he wanted to commit it to memory. His lips soon found yours and before either of you knew it you were in your bed ripping off each other’s clothes so you could express with your bodies how much exactly you would miss one another.

He had taken you for granted once, he would never make that same mistake.

-

-1 Week Later-

It had been three weeks since you last saw Suguru, he wouldn’t answer your calls, texts nor your emails. You didn’t even know if he was still in New York for that matter. Not knowing was slowly killing you, consumed by guilt you knew you deserved this treatment.

And yet, you wanted to find him and explain… try to make it up to him somehow. He didn’t deserve the pain you had inflicted upon him.

-

From: Kitten 🐱

To: Sugu

I need to talk to you, please give me a chance to explain. I don’t want to lose you Suguru. I know it’s selfish on my behalf but I can’t let you walk away without explaining. Please Suguru.

I miss you.

-

Another message sent, he wouldn’t answer your texts. At least he didn’t block your phone number. (Not yet, supplied your tortured mind)

The whole reason why you held back from actually having sex with Suguru although you both had wanted that very much during the last 6 months was because you wanted to give Geto everything. Not only half of you. He deserved someone who would chose him completely. At least that’s what you knew was right.

You didn’t want to toy with his emotions. Then again Satoru’s sporadic presence in your life didn’t help at all. Everytime he showed up you were back to the beginning.

There was no other way to explain this other than saying…you could never resist him.

-

It was a Monday evening, you just got home after your training at the academy. Sitting on the couch eating some salad when the doorbell rang. You were not expecting anyone. And most importantly someone who didn’t need to be announced by the guard downstairs. There were only two people who could show up at your door in such fashion.

When you opened the door the first thing you saw was a broad torso covered in a very familiar black fitted t-shirt. Long black hair framing a handsome face and those beautiful amber pools looking at you. Without hesitation you threw your arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. Suguru responded to your embrace by surrounding your firmly in his arms lifting you a few inches from the floor.

His sweet lavender and sage scent welcomed your senses once more. It wasn’t until he dried the tears from your cheeks that you realized you had been crying.

“Yo..you are here… Suguru! I am so sorry! I-“ he stopped you by placing his right index finger upon your lips. “You don’t have to say anything. I am here because I have to tell you something important. Come Kitten, let us sit” he took your hand and guided you to the couch where as soon as you both sat next to one another you threw yourself into his arms once more making the raven haired sorcerer chuckle “I missed you too Kitten” he whispers against your h/c tresses.

“Listen…. I was angry… I was mad at you because I thought you would choose me and instead chose Satoru. But these past weeks without you, I have been a wreck to say the least and then I realized… I have always known you loved Satoru from the beginning and that never bothered me before.” Sighing he made a small pause before continuing “Granted… I do resent him for hurting you but I never expected you to completely loose your feelings for him.“ you were about to explain to him that you were trying to sort those feelings out but he interrupted you with a little kiss on your lips “let me finish Kitten” a tender smile spread across his lips making you blush again.

“I realized that I don’t want to renounce to you, I don’t want to give you up. Because there simply is no other person who I want to be with. No one can replace you. And you don’t have to choose between Satoru and me…. At least on my behalf I am ok with sharing you with him. I don’t want to lose you and I don’t want to put you in a position that only will hurt your heart.” Stroking your cheek softly Suguru leaned in and kissed your lips once more, just this time the exchange was sweeter and lasted longer. His tongue teased the entrance to your mouth before fully delving in to revel in your warmth and sweetness. Pulling back and looking into your eyes Geto assured you “I love you… and I want you to be happy. I am not going to make you choose because I don’t want to lose you Y/N”.

To say you were shocked to the core and touched beyond words was an understatement “Suguru… I don’t know what to say…” you start but Geto chuckled

“You don’t have to give me an answer right away.. I und—-“

You cut him by crushing your lips against his, kissing him throughly. Your legs straddled his waist immediately so you could feel his strong and warm body against yours. Was this man even real? I mean… Suguru Geto was a remarkable person but at this point you started questioning your own sanity. Did you make this man up in your imagination? Because you have never met someone sweeter, nor kinder nor more loving than him. And this was without counting all his very alluring physical attributes.

By the time you pulled back you were out of breath and so was he.

Now, the thing was… is this what you wanted? Did you want them both? Wasn’t it too greedy to have them both as lovers?

There was also the possibility Satoru would flat out reject the idea but… you didn’t want to choose between them. You…. Loved them both.

Before you could speak once more you ‘felt’ someone behind you stroking your back.

Almost jumping out of your skin you turned around to find Satoru in his usual jujutsu high uniform sans blindfold.

“You’re late…” Suguru comments as if he had been expecting his best friend to teleport right then.

“I know… Yaga was being a pain in the ass as per usual” added Satoru with a grin before taking a sit next to Suguru with the biggest shit eating grin you could imagine.

“So? Did she agree?” Questioned smirking and moving his hand to stroke your hair away from your neck while you still sat on Suguru’s lap.

“I am not sure… I think we broke her…” added Geto amusedly before chuckling and kissing your cheek.

“I know how to fix that!” Excitedly announced the white haired man. Cupping your face between his hands he pulled you in to kiss you deeply. His tongue voraciously licking the inside of your mouth and enticing you to kiss him back.

This was surreal…. Were you dreaming? You had to be dreaming or maybe you hit your head and now we’re in a coma. Yeah… you have to be hallucinating this.

When Satoru pulled back he laughed “Princess… don’t look so surprised… you must have known this would have happened sooner or later… Sug and I would never give you up and we know you wouldn’t pick one over the other either… and well, we didn’t want to give you the chance to pick neither…” they knew exactly how you were. Even before you knew it yourself. They just knew you would bolt and choose no one if that meant not hurting the other so they had to figure out a solution where all of you were happy.

Tags: @sleepyamaya

@jxvajxy

@okkotsuoasis

@my-reality-is-in-my-head

@dok-ja

@jscarlet06

@fiona782

@thatsharklovingwoman

@heichoustheoryofcleanliness

@syynnaaah

@shaylove418

@coldvillainess

@vampgguk

@sukuna1stwife

@tampon-earrings

@actualdeemon

@darenolilbitchahkoredesuka

@bloombb

@redbircl

@heizenka

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[animedaddymilkers]

Kinkmas 2020: Day Eight

Prompt: Breeding w/ Jiraiya

Genre: Smut/18+ || Tags: Breeding, Creampie, Dirty Talk, Slight Impregnation, Sex Worker, Mutual Pining, Oral, Fingering || Characters: Jiraiya, Female Reader || read it on ao3 here

Three hours, three agonizing hours until your favorite client checked in. Three hours filled with you anxiously doing your makeup and little odds and ends to make sure your appearance was as enticing as possible. It wasn't usually like you to go all out for customers, but this particular one was special. Not to mention he was also your highest paying one. Andddd you may have caught some stupid, school-girl crush for him. Though you wouldn't dare say anything to his face, or to anyone for that matter. It wasn't worth risking your best client. Being a sex worker was hard enough as it was.

Jiraiya was a different breed of man, probably a different breed of human if you were being totally honest. He was so suave and smooth, yet put on a sleazy front, driving away most of the civilian women. You had your suspicions that he did that on purpose, but it wasn't your place to pry. He definitely attracted all the women who worked in similar professions as you, that was for sure. Even though he was known to be a cheapskate, drunk, and always tried to get more than he paid for, he wasn't like that with you. You heard once he found a favorite he was the exact opposite of his reputation and now you were living through just that.

The white-haired man appeared in the doorway of your designated hotel room, a bright smile on his face. This time the room had to be the presidential suite, it was comparable to a whole ass apartment for Kami's sake. After hearing the hotel door open you scurried out of the ridiculously large bathroom, your heels clicking along the marble floor to greet your client. His roaring laugh filled the room as he watched your delicate appearance not-so-delicately enter the room.

"Well, look at you! Shit, darling, you look amazing today. You're going to kill an old man like me," his cherry tone made you smile and you stopped in front of him.

"Oh please, you're harder to kill than that! So, what were you thinking today?" Your hands trailed up his still clothed chest, taking in the feel of the muscles you knew laid underneath.

Jiraiya's hands went to your waist, thumbs running over the lingerie you donned," Always so straight to the point, aren't you? Always loved that about ya. Anyways, thought maybe today we could just do something… soft? Just got back from a rough mission and could use some soft lovin'."

"Oh, yeah definitely! I can be whatever you need, handsome," you leaned up and kissed his cheek, using the other hand to caress the opposite cheek.

If he wanted soft, soft was what he was going to get. He knew it was dangerous to request sexual favors that included gentle actions from you. He knew your soft touches would fan the ache in his heart, but he couldn't help it. Maybe somewhere inside of him he just wanted an excuse to hold you close and "accidentally" let some sweet nothings be whispered in your ear. Your lips came together much slower than they usually do, gently pressing together as your eyes closed. His large hands rubbed your hips, fingers kneading into your soft flesh as he easily lifted you from the floor. As if from muscle memory alone, your legs wrapped around his waist as much as they could, happily clinging onto his built figure. The oversized king bed came too soon, your back meeting the plush sheets as Jiraiya's kisses began to trail down your jaw. His lips were warm and harsh against your skin but far from unwelcome. You knew what was coming but you still gasped quietly the first time he sucked the skin of your neck into his mouth.

"You drive me wild," his voice was low and rumbled against your throat, sending a shiver down your spine.

His hands wandered from your hips to your chest, playing with your boobs through the thin bra you wore. One of Jiraiya's favorite things was to leave love marks on you, all over you to be exact. Usually, you wouldn't allow it, marking up the merchandise and all. But for him, it was worth it. Not only did he pay more than enough to mark you, but you always felt almost proud to wear his hickeys on your neck and body after a session with him. It definitely helped you pretend you were truly his until they faded that is. Then you'd just have to wait until Jiraiya's name showed up on your booking schedule again. Though unbeknownst to you, your customer felt quite the same about the love marks. He knew very well he was lucky you allowed him to leave them and he'd be lying if he said he didn't go into the village the next day just to get a glimpse of you proudly displaying what he left you.

You tried not to rush things, going at whatever pace he set for the session, but it was hard not to get slightly greedy with such a mountain of man within your grasp. Thankfully, your partner picked up on your gathering impatience and began to slowly unwrap you from the lingerie you had on. The action wasn't empty of affection, quite the opposite. Each time he revealed more skin, his fingers lingered, his touch warm and gentle against you. Once you were naked it was more obvious how overdressed he was. So, you set about fixing that fact. His layers were peeled off one by one until he was left in his mesh shirt and underwear. This part, you loved to lay back and watch as he slowly stripped the rest, his shirt pulling up and revealing more of his abs and toned chest. Ugh, Kami, he was so hot for an older man. So many of your clients were tolerable at best, but Jiraiya? Quite literally the definition of 'you'd let him hit it for free'. But again, you had rent to pay.

Once you were both naked came the part where you two adored the other's body, not a usual part of your rendezvous but he wanted softness today. His rough fingers played with your nipples, shit-eating grin spreading across his face as you moaned and whined when he tugged them. Meanwhile, your hands roamed over every inch of him that you could reach, which currently only entailed his shoulders, head, and top of his chest. But that was enough for you to reach down and play with his nipples in return. The way his face reddened with blush almost made you giggle, but he twisted yours teasingly to get back at you. Jiraiya could seriously tease you for hours on end if it were any other day than today. Today, he had other plans, he needed emotional sex but he also needed it sooner rather than later.

His fingers were tracing along your slit, gathering up some of your wetness to spread it around more. He lazily rubbed at your clit as he kissed you, teeth nipping at your lips just lightly enough to make it hurt but not draw blood. It was a bit dizzying to have a man above you who could so easily kill you with minimal effort, yet each of his movements was filled with nothing but adoration. Part of you hated how tender he was with you every session and the other part that was head over heels in love begged him to continue. Your hips ground down against him, a whine falling out of your mouth before you could even help it. He exhaled a quiet laugh at your desperate reaction and did it again, only slightly harder this time. Teasing was a given when it came to Jiraiya unless he was really drunk. But hell, this time you were almost sure he was completely sober. It really must have been a rough mission if he didn't stop at the bar first. The thought made you want to stop him and give him all the extra attention in the world. The only thing stopping you was your business professional side. It'd just be too much, too risky to make a move like that. You'd be able to pamper him in due time and then it wouldn't seem out of place.

In the meantime, Jiraiya finally slid a thick finger inside of you, probing your insides like he was trying to test something out. His tongue stuck out slightly, caught between his teeth with a determined look on his face. If there wasn't a finger curling inside of your pussy you would have laughed at the expression. He pumped it in and out slowly, gently prodding for your g-spot. As he explored your insides he slipped another finger in, taking care to slowly stretch you out for him. He leaned his head down and let his tongue join in on the party, pressing it flat against your clit. Your head fell back against the bed as your fingers tangled into his expanse of lush, white hair, tugging gently to try and get more out of his mouth. He grinned against your thigh, a third, thick finger pushing into you. The stretch was now slightly uncomfortable, but you both slightly knew you had to endure it, or else the main event wasn't going to be as enjoyable. And Jiraiya always wanted you to enjoy it. Truly, he was the best client you ever had and it wasn't fair that this was just no strings attached business.

His tongue circled your clit before his teeth grazed your bundle of nerves, sending a shiver down your spine. Then he started a session routine, spelling out his name against your clit with his tongue. Again, you wish you could laugh during the cheesy action but it felt too damn good. The low rumble of his voice against you had your hips grinding down against his fingers. His fingers which still thrust in and out of you, changing positions and angles every now and then, intent on finding your g-spot. When his fingers finally made you gasp, he grinned devilishly and your grip tightened in his hair, knowing you were in for a ride now. Once they zeroed in on their target his fingers barely changed angles, repeatedly hitting your sweet spot. His mouth wrapped around your clit, sucking gently as his other hand slid down to your other hole. At first, he just teased, swirling his pointer finger around the puckered hole before using some of your pussy juice to slowly push in. The pressure from the extra finger had you gasping out his name, the assault on your other private parts far from ending. Your legs defied your intent to hold out longer and began to shake, the warm spasm in your lower stomach fast approaching.

"Fuck! Oh Kami, Jiraiya! Fuck I'm cumming!" cuss words continued to fall from your lips between moans as you came on his face.

Your juices properly soaked his stubble-covered jaw, more proof he didn't even bother going home before seeing you. As your legs spasmed he kept sucking your clit, welcoming the feeling of your plush thighs wrapping tightly around his head. A good three minutes later he finally let you have some reprieve, removing his face and hands from his body. Your eyes met his gleaming ones as he brought one hand to his mouth, sucking his fingers off. The skilled tongue that made you fall apart, swirled around his fingers, intent not to waste a single drop of your sweet juice. He had little to no reservations when it came to sex, happily sliding his finger from your other hole into his mouth, sucking it off just as he did the others. Next time you just might have to ask him to use his mouth on your ass… but for now, it was your turn to get your mouth busy.

Jiraiya had other thoughts, leaning up to kiss you again and slowly grind his hips against yours. He kissed you for a while, savoring the taste of your mouth, and went to line himself up at your entrance before you stopped him. Concerned, he looked up at you and was about to ask if something was wrong before you gently pushed to flip him over. Now with a look of understanding he chuckled softly and laid back against the pillows, arms tucked behind his head. Hair sprawled around him and arms flexed he looked like a true Adonis before you, even including the brutal scar on his chest. If anything, the scar just made him more god-like. It was a testament to what he did for a living, how self-sacrificing he was. There was only one thing that could make the view better: a lower perspective.

Your hands rubbed against his skin, just taking in the feel of it. The feel of his scars, the feel of the tensing muscles beneath, the intoxicating feel of his pulse beating beneath your fingers. You grinned as you brushed your fingertips along his pelvis, savoring in the shiver he always gave you. His hips were so sensitive it was almost cute. You leaned forward and kissed a trail down his abs, leaving little love bites along the way. Time didn't mean anything right now, so you took as long as you wanted, paying extra attention to leave darker marks along his hips and purposely avoiding where he wanted your touch most. He sighed heavily and closed his eyes, trying not to think too hard about the sweet ways you touched him. Oftentimes, he had to remind himself that these affections from you were bought, if he hadn't bought this time with you, you wouldn't be here. The kisses and marks you left all over his body were just for sexy times. The gentle way you admired his body was just to keep him coming back, to keep him thinking you cared for him on a personal level. Damn, his thoughts got carried away again. He couldn't help but think of what waking up next to you would be like, you smiling-

His eyes flew open and he groaned as you licked up his cock. The grin you had on your face made him groan again, damn your sinful actions. Your lips wrapped around him and he locked eyes with yours as you slowly sank your mouth down his length. The gleam in your eyes drove him wild, watching as you took him inch by inch, careful not to gag. That is, until he gave you a cocky little thrust of his hips. You gagged and choked at the unanticipated movement, taking your mouth off of him, your hand relaxing it.

"You bastard! You ruined my rhythm!"

Jiraiya chuckled before grinning, "Oh but you sound so cute gagging on my cock, darling!"

His happy go lucky tone laced his words, making you roll your eyes as you pumped him. Taking a deep breath you wrapped your mouth around him again, determined to make it all the way down him this time. You knew he'd thrust again, but now you were expecting it and you were able to relax your throat more, grinning around his cock when you didn't gag. Jiraiya only grinned, proud that you caught onto his little game and resorted to letting you have the reins again. One of his large hands reached down, gathering your hair from out of your face to help you and so he could see better. Your head finally met the coarse white curls at the base of his cock and you held yourself there for a few moments. You swallowed a couple of times just to hear the man beneath you moan before you slowly began to slide back up, swirling your tongue around his tip. Kami, his face looked so good with the blush dusting his cheeks and chest. You'd give him all his money back just to have this view all to yourself. Still, you had the power to make him fall apart even more and you had every intention to do just that.

Again, your mouth surrounded him and you went down his length quicker this time, although you didn't go down all the way. Your rhythm took a few tries to perfect but you finally found it. Hollowing out your cheeks a bit you bobbed your head on his cock, twisting slightly as you went up and down. For a bit of cock you didn't force your mouth to go down on, your hand picked up the slack, rubbing around it while your mouth worked. Jiraiya's other hand came down to join his first in your hair and when your eyes met his he groaned. You looked so good when you were desperate to please him. He was comfortable enough with you now that he didn't even think of holding back all of his noises, even if they were the high pitched whines he let out when you played with his balls. Or the gasps when you gave him a taste of his own medicine and pushed a finger into his asshole. His hips twitched at the sudden pressure and he almost comically began to fall apart beneath you.

He panted and moaned, thighs tensing when you pushed another finger into him, "Damn it, fuck, (Y/N)... Darling please…"

You moaned around his cock before popping his cock out of your mouth, pumping it with your hand, "Mmm, what is it dear?"

His face was beet red and his chest near heaving, "Don't wanna cum like this…"

"Ah, that's right, I forgot geezers like you can only go so long." you grinned at him and let his cock free.

If it had been any other client, you wouldn't dare speak to them like that, but for Jiraiya, it only fired him up more. He smirked back at you and easily leaned down, lifting your body from between his legs. Before you could comprehend you were on all fours, ass properly displayed for the man behind you. His hands spread across your rear and massaged your ass before spreading your cheeks. The tip of his cock pressed at your entrance and you whined, trying to push yourself back onto him. He laughed at your desperation but still obliged, pushing into you slowly. Kami, he filled you so well, dragging along your walls perfectly. He didn't stop until his hips met yours, pushing his pelvis into your ass, staying there for a long moment. With a grin, he ground his hips against yours before pulling out almost all the way and then slamming back in.

It made you gasp and grab at the sheets for balance, the pace was both torture and pleasure. His hands gripped your hips, no doubt going to leave bruises as he continued fucking you. After a few minutes, he finally sped up, his cock hitting against your deepest parts. He leaned over your back and pressed kisses into your shoulders before trailing up your neck. His hot breath against your skin was enough to drive you wild and mixed with his groans you felt tingles fire through your body from your ears straight to your pussy. Your whines egged him on and he once again sped up, fucking into you with vigor now. The lewd sounds of your skin slapping together was like music and only sounded better accompanied by the noises you both were making. One of his hands slid from your hip and a thick finger rubbed at your clit, the extra stimulation making you groan and bury your face deeper into the blanket beneath you. You could feel your thighs shake, threatening to give out as your pussy clenched around his cock. Your cum properly wet his cock more and a bit of his thighs too, but that wasn't going to stop him.

Jiraiya fucked you through your orgasm, slowing as you came down before he roughly flipped you over onto your back, taking in your post-orgasm face, "You look so gorgeous like this darling. I could stare at you for hours."

His voice was deep and you sighed softly at his words, legs opening wide so he could slide back inside of you. Gently, he took your legs and pushed your knees towards your chest, leaving some room so he could lean down between them and kiss you. The position let his cock slide in deeper and you moaned feeling him hit your cervix. "Kami, Jiraiya, just fuck me already, I want your cum!"

He smirked and thrust roughly, making the breath catch in your throat, "You want my cum, pretty girl? You want me to fuck my baby into you?"

The words weren't supposed to come out. Not like that. But he always was a sucker for dirty talk so he wasn't really surprised with himself. You, on the other hand, were slightly shocked. Or at least you would have been if you weren't so horny. His words made you moan at the thought and you knew you wouldn't be satisfied until you felt his cum inside of you now. He did prefer to go in raw, but every time before this he had no qualms about pulling out. Briefly, you wondered what changed and if maybe it was all talk, but regardless, you couldn't help but lose all inhibitions at the thought of feeling his cum inside of you.

"Yes! Fuck your baby into me! Fill me up, Jiraiya, I want everyone to know what you've done to me!"

He growled and pushed your legs closer to your body as he nearly laid down on top of you. The heaviness of him added an extra warmth of protection, bringing you two closer physically and a bit emotionally as well. Now, you were so close you could lean up and kiss him, his hot breath on your lips, his intoxicating smell filling your nose while his hips quickly thrust in and out of you. Cuss words and praises fell from his lips, muffled by your skin as he fucked you harder, barely holding back at all. It was appropriate that he had you positioned in the mating press, adding to the feeling of the moment. You let yourself get absorbed in the fantasy, pretending he was saying those words under different circumstances, that he really meant what he said.

"Fuck I'm so close," he growled and his arms wrapped around your back, holding you closer, "You ready for it, darling? Let me hear you. C'mon."

As if you really needed any more convincing, you let it out, legs once again starting to shake as they wrapped around him, "Please, please, give me your cum. Oh, Kami~"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you? Being forced to be mine, huh? You want to be my little breeding slut?"

"Yes, yes yes! Make me yours!" Your high pitched whines sent him into a frenzy and he roughly began to rub your clit again.

You were already over sensitive so when you felt him bury himself to the hilt inside of you, you let yourself go. He groaned your name as you could feel his hot cum fill you up, your pussy spasming around him. Part of you couldn't believe he actually just came inside, though the majority of your lust clouded brain was absolutely satisfied that he did. You panted hard and was thankful as he helped stretch your cramping legs. He himself was breathing hard in the crook of your neck. Your arms wrapping around his neck as you played with his hair before he began to slowly pull away. His eyes locked with yours as he sat back on his feet, soft cock slipping out of you. When he did his eyes wandered down, watching as his cum slowly dripped out of your hole. But he gathered the drips onto his fingers and pushed it back into you.

"You're going to look so cute, big and round with my baby."

The words shook you from the bliss and you looked up at the white-haired man. The full possible repercussions of your actions crashed down onto you. Before you could voice any concerns, Jiraiya sighed and leaned down, putting his head in the crook of your neck again before filling the quiet of the room.

"I shouldn't have done that."

"I wanted it too."

"Did you really? Or just because I pay you to want it." his voice was gravelly and almost laced with guilt.

You had to say, you've seen Jiraiya through many post-orgasm moods, but this one full of something akin to regret was new, "No. I really wanted it. And… If it happens, then I'll happily welcome it."

He didn't lift his head, he didn't think he could even if he wanted to. Instead, he only held you tighter and finally let himself embrace his feelings for you, "I love you. I don't care about your line of work. I don't care how much I have to pay. Just…let me see you more?"

The breath you didn't know you were holding was exhaled and you looked down at him, "Jiraiya…"

"You don't have to like me back. I'd understand. I just couldn't keep it to myself any longer. (Y/N), you're the only thing keeping me returning to this village."

He looked almost scared as he confessed his feelings, his hands stroking over your skin, eyes avoiding yours, "Jiraiya, I love you too…"

Quickly his eyes snapped up to finally meet yours, his heart felt like it skipped a beat. It took him a minute to fully comprehend your words before he pressed his lips to yours again. The rest of the day was spent together, telling the other all the things you'd been holding back for who knows how long. Not to mention a few more rounds in the bed. Never in a million years would you have guessed a shared breeding kink would finally be the thing that brought you to confess your love for each other.

hope you enjoyed! remember likes & reblogs help me reach more people! :D

[lantsovsupremacist]

tiberias (cal) calore vii: illicit affairs

i’m only on the 3rd book so a) pls don’t spoil you’ll break my heart and b) my perception of the characters has only been developed to this point so if you come for me do it with the correct context lmao!!!

you knew what it was.

leaning your forehead against the cool metal post of your bed frame, a shaky exhale escaped from your lips. you wished just like that lost breath, you too could leave behind your body and with it, mind. a few minutes was all you needed, really; some semblance of relief.

even with your door shut tight with a deadbolt, the danger contaminating the palace lingered outside of it. you were not foolish enough to deny the cracks it could slip through. you would give any adversary a worthy fight, though. you could not afford not to, especially now.

for the first time in your life, you had truly encountered a problem that you could not use your abilities to maneuver out of. as much as your lungs screamed and your legs ached to run, you could not. being a swift, your first instinct was always to run. your speed always gave you the advantage in pursuit.

a familiar knock at the door broke you from your trance of pity. you stood up, sniffling as you ran the back of your hand across your nose and mouth. the action of clearing your throat sounded more like a whimper, but you managed as you gathered your skirts and headed for the door. you pushed down the nausea and wrung your hands to settle yourself.

your fingers shook on the deadlock before you pried the door open. the amount of weight on the wood, the length of the echo, and the momentary pause before the second, lighter knock gave away the identity of the person on the other side. you were in his arms before you could take another breath.

despite offering you the comfort you had craved all morning, his touch triggered the sobs caged in your chest. perhaps, it was because your heart was only safe in his hands. but, without the key to let them out, they messily tore through and paved their own path.

a year ago, your greatest worry would be the shame brought to your family on account of conceiving a child out of wedlock, let alone to the crowned prince. now, it seemed the impending war took precedence. you could have laughed; a red threatened your livelihood. a girl, really.

you were always careful, and it did not even happen very often. both you and the prince were very busy people, after all. send offs and reunions.

“we can fix this,” cal murmured into your hair.

“no, you don’t get it,” you broke out with a defiant shake of your head, “there’s nothing to fix.”

he pulled back, stroking your hair and pushing it behind your ears. your golden strategist was at a loss. your heart fell further into the pit of your stomach. you chewed on the inside of your lip, desperate to look anywhere but his eyes. yet, in the space of the same moment, you never wanted your gaze to leave his.

“i won’t leave you,” his warm hands ran up your arms, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake, “and i won’t let my father have a say in any of it.”

“it’s not the king i am frightened of,” you admitted with a sour taste in your mouth.

cal nodded with a grimace, “then i’ll be sure she is controlled until the end of the month.”

but who could control the queen who could twist minds? you chewed on the thought to avoid choking on it, forcing it down in distaste. both cal and yourself needed time neither of you had the privilege to claim.

cal communicated the importance of waiting until the traditional queenstrial to propose publicly. while the larger part of you agreed with this position, a small piece of your heart reserved for crippling doubt and senseless paranoia wondered if he was stalling for a different reason. if you could at any time expect desertion, it would be now but true to his word, cal had done no such thing—a loyal soldier until the end.

“and if they don’t chose me?” the secret fear you had harbored far before you had even become aware of your current condition felt a traitor to expose to the boy who had given you everything, kept every promise he could.

he studied your face carefully to ensure he held your full attention (though he was foolish to ever think otherwise), “make them, my dear.”

despite the event’s purpose of selecting a bride for the princes themselves, all of the noble houses knew the eldest had little choice in the matter. while your relationship with cal was not overt due to the inherently illicit nature of the affair, servants were known to talk. even in your deepest frustrations, you could not necessarily blame them.

his confidence in you was endearing but what other choice did you truly have?

you pulled away from his arms and lingering stare, wrapping your arms around your middle. pacing the length of the room, you suppressed a bitter laugh, “and then what? when a baby is born after less than eight months? and that’s to say we can persuade your father to rush a royal marriage.”

“let them talk,” his fingers twitched at his sides and you caught the scent of smoke, “nobody will be able to do anything.”

he thought he could protect from anything. sure, there would be little opportunity for any political action after a marriage was solidified but rumors would swirl. born into the pressures of eyes always watching you, they did not cut deep, but a queen needed a reputation demanding of respect. you did not want to be cruel but you decided that if need be, you could.

you wanted so terribly not to cry but willing it away only drew your focus to it more. you did not think the act made you weak but you would rather avoid the complete exhaustion it often caused. you were already so tired. but, some things were inevitable.

cal caught on before you did, “baby,” his voice was croaky, maybe laced his emotion of his own, “please don’t cry.”

you giggled at the irony. it was watery and your voice was nearly gone but it was there. confusion spread across cal’s features. you studied his face as he began to understand. a slow, crooked smile spread across his freckles and indicated the transition.

“suppose i could have chosen better words.”

“mhm.”

you had not noticed he was slowly rocking you in his arms. calm rushed into your senses. cal radiated your favorite kind of warmth. he monitored his body temperature around you, never too hot but always comfortable. it reminded you of home. he was your home. he smelled of pine and dying embers.

now nearing nineteen, you met the prince at fourteen. your elder sister married sooner than your parents expected, hastening your introduction into political meetings as a representative of the swift house of nornus.

who could blame a young and inexperienced teenage girl for falling in with a powerful, older boy who dared throw her an extra glance. what began as a benefit to palace life at fifteen soon turned into a vice. it was easy to tell yourself that you could stop any time you desired but you were addicted to the way he touched you, the way he tasted, the way he spoke your name.

for a while, you were foolish enough to believe he maybe even loved you. when you turned sixteen, you understood you were a pastime for the prince. so when at seventeen he told you he loved you, you did not believe him. he was gone for service quite a bit and your training schedule stole away any time for secret meetings when he was home. you began to purposefully avoid him but the withdrawal from the high that was cal left you dizzy.

when he did not make a move to find you, you tried even harder to move on. you had both made a mess of your hearts, left bleeding and shattered on the floors of the palace. you watched him escape the palace more often, always finding another place to be. one night, however, you followed him. you told yourself it was curiosity that caused you to slip out of your covers and into a warm coat, a coat you would not have needed if you left with him.

you caught up easily with your inhuman perception and speed and yet, he still saw you coming. he always did. that night, you wandered through a village and blended in. that night, you could be normal. he helped you clean up the mess between the two of you and things were different but the same again. they were better. you still took the long way to his room and pulled him into hidden corridors but the longing stares across meetings reignited.

you cleared your throat, “when you returned from delphie.” you tone held the pace of a simple comment, not the answer to the unspoken question pressing down on both of your minds.

cal turned his lips into his mouth and nodded, taking a deep breath, “i remember.”

it was a good memory, a good time. slow and gentle and loving. rane had worn you ragged sparring evangeline from sun up to sun down. you enjoyed the younger classes attending for the exposition but your muscles felt like weights lodged into your body and your breath had not yet fully returned after running circles around evangeline.

usually when one of you returned from an excursion outside of the palace, you wasted little time in attaching to every piece of each other. but, you were both exhausted—exhausted but greedy for the attention of the other. it had been a month ago, nearly to the day.

you and cal never discussed the prospect of children. even if one of you did not favor the idea, there was no choice in the matter. cal, as a future king, needed heirs, and if you wanted to be queen, you would have to bear them. but, you did want them and secretly, you knew cal did, too. it was more than a superficial requirement.

cal always looked at you, found you in a crowd, so it was hard to study him in secret. when he was with children, however, all attention transferred to those at his feet. it was then you saw him fully relax, the weight of his crown falling off his back. he loved them. you loved him more for it.

“and i don’t regret it,” he continued, dipping his head to place it gently on your shoulder. he kissed you neck once, twice, and then dropped his head back down.

[justatidalwaveoffeelings]

Ok, so I don't write. I have never written a fanfic. This doesn't have a name and it's probably poorly written. It's Rachel's point of view around the time of Cammie's second kidnapping attempt. I was bored and I had this idea stuck in my head so here it is. I debate not even posting it but what the hey🤷🏼‍♀️

@averagejoesolomon you totally got me hooked on the Rachel only calls Matt, Matthew. So all the credit to you on that one!

This whole thing is basically read at your own risk. Haha

Just like that, what she had left of her world was crumbling. It happened so quickly. Rachel hadn't seen what had happened. She just knew that one moment she had been talking to Cynthia McHenry and the next she felt her instincts as an operative hit her like a swift punch to the gut.

Something was wrong. She looked around the ballroom looking for Cammie but she didn't see her. She didn't see any of her freinds or even that Goode boy. Never one to be dissuaded from her mission, she  decided to look for Abby. She at least she might know where her neice was.

As much as her sister annoyed her, she was happy to have her back in her life. However temporary it might be. She was aware how an operative's life gets crazy. She knew her sister was dedicated but she didn't know how far they would be pulled apart when she stepped out of the field after Matthew's passing. They had just recently talked about why there hadn't been much contact between the two of them in recent years. Why Abby had walked farther away from Rachel and Cammie and deeper into her various covers. Rachel knew the guilt the came with losing Matthew. The countless nights that kept her up thinking about what might have happened if she told if him to stay home. If she had pulled the "wife card" and asked him not to keep secrets. She knew that Abby had been hurt. Rachel had never lived through anything harder. It didn't surprise her that everyone else who also loved him felt the same. When he died there was a very real whole in each of their hearts. She had suspected Abby just didn't know how to miss Matthew with her. After all, her sister had never been one to grieve in front of others. Rachel hadn't know just how deep routed her sister's guilt and regret had dragged her. Rachel regretted not going to get her baby sister back sooner after Matthew's passing but she hadn't wanted to press Abby too hard in a time of grief for both of them.

Now, if only she could FIND HER.  Her sister always had a knack for being where she wasn't supposed be. So, if Rachel could think if the most inconvenient spot for someone to be she might find her.

When she had finished looking around the ballroom the hair on the back of her neck started to stand on end. She felt a cold sweat start. Her blouse was too tight. She pulled at her collar and silently chastised herself being so obviously uncomfortable. Rachel wanted to tell her instincts to shut up, that nothing was wrong. She knew better though, something was off.

She felt eyes. She pretended to check her make-up in a small compact while checking behind her. She locked on a familiar pair of green eyes staring back at her. Of course he was there. She had just checked the whole room and hadn't spotted him once. If Joe was about to poke fun about her being off now was not the time. When she turned to face him she realized that he wore an expression just as grim as her own.

"You got the same sick feeling in your gut?"

Before she could respond something seemed to dawn on Joe.

"Where's Cammie, Rachel?"

"I don't know. I've been looking for her, or her roommates. Even Abby."

"Zach". Joe mumbled the boy's name. "He's probably with her, right? Did you see them slip out?"

"No, well maybe, but if I knew that I wouldn't be so gosh darn worried now would I, Joseph?!" She hadn't meant to snap but she was feeling worse by the second. Now her instincts seemed to be at work on her stomach.

When the shot went off they didn't question where it had come from. They didn't need to wait for some sort of command. Old habits did truly die hard.  They were across the ballroom in seconds. Not drawing the attention of a single onlooker. They slipped out the back door into a dark ally. The Circle. They were there. Beside her Joe started to speak into thier comms unit. There was a big problem. Rachel looked for Cammie. She was being snagged back down the ally, toward the safety of the door by Zach. Neirher of them was bleeding. She was able to breath agian. The bullet could have been a warning shot. It didn't feel that way though. Where did it land?

She brought herself back to the scene. They were after her daughter and she had to protect her daughter. The kids were fighting like operatives. That was something the headmistress in her couldn't have missed and was quietly proud of. Now only if they could all get out of it. Other gallagher girls rushed out beside her, ready for the fight, ready to protect Cammie.

The second that Rachel could she ran at Cam. Yelling Cammie's name she threw herself against her daughter, deeper into the shadows of other gallagher girls. Farther into safety. Only after the immediate securing of Cammie did Rachel realize that people were still screaming. It was Macey standing over.....

Abby. Abby. Abigail. She knew Cammie was secured. Joe would help make sure of it. She needed to get to her sister. She needed to help her sister. She was bleeding from the shoulder, there was so much blood pooling beneath her. Rachel couldn't breathe. She couldn't catch her breathe. Rachel had always been cool under fire; a natural operative. This felt so different. The operative in her was mad for missing the fight. For not getting there in time. The mother in her was scared and hurting for her daughter. The sister in her felt cheated and so very crushed. She couldn't lose Abby on top of everything else. Her heart beat to one terrible pulse-  She was not ready to lose anymore family. She dropped to her knees beside her sister. She didn't know if she had told Macey to go back to her roommates but she got up and walked away. Rachel pressed some leather jacket into her sister's wound. She didn't realize that she was crying until she saw her own tears falling on Abby's face. Rachel was screaming. She really. couldn't. breath. She heard screaming and crying in the background. Cammie. She couldn't take this or rather she didn't want to. Her sister way dying in front of her and her daughter was being emotionally tormented. She debating getting up, but she couldn't stop crying. She didn't want Cammie to see her so emotionally distraught and she couldn't bring herself to her feet. Cammie would have to be strong.

Joe was on the seeminly knew what she was thinking because instead of coming toward Abby he commanded the women around Cammie. Keeping her safe. Cammie's sobbing became softer. Rachel's didn't.

She didn't get up when the paramedic team arrived. She wasn't going to leave Abby. She couldn't lose her. She didn't feel like a good operative in control. She felt like a big sister, weak from all that crying. She felt Joe behind her. Pulling her up from her knees. Trying to tell her to let go of Abby's hand. She forced Joe to let go of her arms. Desperate to be the one who fixed it. To do something, anything. All she could do was tell the medic what she saw, and tell Abby that she was going to be ok.

When she turned back around he was there. Teary but not crying yet.

"She's strong. She'll pull through". He tried to reassure her but his voice shook. His hand on her arm felt unsteady. Joe never cried. It was going to be a long night. She had to keep busy. She went to check on her daughter. She couldn't lose any more of her family. 

Rachel saw the footage. She knew in that it all happened in a few minutes. It felt like this night would never end. She watched that security footage obsessively outside of her office, sitting on the corridor floor with her head on the wall, right underneath Gilligan's sword. Cavan's sword. Maybe Abby was right. They should have thrown it in the lake. Her daughter was asleep inside her office, away from danger for now. Abby was in surgery. Abby might of died. Abby could still die. Every time she let herself linger on that fact she felt like crying all over again. So, she didn't let herself think of it. She watched the security clip again waiting and watching for a clue. Something. She couldn't truly focus on it though. She was too tired or emotionally distraught. It didn't matter the reason, she knew that a truly great operative had to know when to wave her white flag. In that moment she didn't even feel a little guilty about turning off the video.

Joe stepped out of her office. She did a double take, the last time she had seen him look that way was the night he told her about Matthew. He had been crying. Joe Solomon does not cry. There he was though. He face was streaked eith tears and his shoulders shook slightly. She braced herself for the worse but he just stood there. He looked awful. She moved forward to give him a hug. She couldn't help herself, she started crying again too. Rachel hated to cry in front of anyone but she figured that this secret was safe with him, just like any of the other she had shared with him.  She was thankful that she had a freind in him. Thankful that someone else loved Cammie and was willing to fight for her. 

After a moment they separated and sat down on the corridor floors.

"I'm so sorry Rachel. I'm so so sorry."

"For what?"

"For everything."

"Joe. After everything that's happened tonight, we are not going over this again..  Its not your fault". Joe started to cry again. Rachel hadn't seen Joe cry so much. She couldn't resist asking him

"What?"

He looked at her pitifully. "You don't know whats my fault, belive me. I.... I think you should think it's my fault."

She wasn't suprised that he was saying these things. She knew of course that he felt guilty. Matt went on the mission he was supposed to. She just wished that he didn't get so hung up on it.

He continued "This never would have happened if Matt were here. He would have taken care of it, you know?"

Of course she didn't know that to be true but she had felt it as well. She didn't want to dwell on what it could have been so she told him that they didn't know that. That he couldn't control who the director sent on that mission. The circle might have come after Cammie even if Matt was alive. Matthew was just a human being, who made mistakes. They didn't know if Matthew being alive would change everything. Joe didnt seem convinced though and Rachel couldn't blame him. It was well worn territory in a familiar conversation. They didnt truly fight, but when it came to blame about Matthews death they didn't exactly see eye to eye. Rachel thought about Matt. It struck her though that as bad as it was at times it could also be worse. Rachel thought about losing Cammie or Abby or even Joe and shuddered. She didn't want to lose anymore family.

She tried to reassure him

"Hey, it will be ok. We will take care of it together ok? We'll all take care of one another. We will do the best we can. Just promise me we will try. Ok?"

Joe had stopped crying but his attention seemed to be drifting.

"I'll try...ok?" It sounded so defeated. Rachel didn't want to press him further. Everyone had already had such a rough night. She let the conversation go until he quipped.

"I feel like I should be telling you these things."

They couldn't help each giving a small laugh

They sat there. They waited for a doctor to come tell them that Abby would make it. They sat and waited for Cammie to wake up. Theorized ways to keep her out of harms way. They talked about surviving. All of them. Together.

Rachel rested in knowing that at least for that day. She wasn't losing any more family. 

[kining-the-evil]

Best girl

1940!bucky x reader

Summary: Y/n Stark has known Bucky and Steve for a long time, but pushed aside her feelings for Bucky. But she losses her two best friends in only a few days

Readers POV.

"Are we almost done here?" Steve asks as I wrote something down on his sheet. As one of the few people that worked on the super soldier serum, and the only living one around, I had been put in charge of making sure Steve was always healthy.

"You know, some patients would do you good." I mumbled as I took everything off of him. "Ever since you went into the field I have to work over time to make sure you aren't dead."

"Please we've been doing that for years!" I heard a voice say. I turned to see Bucky stroll into the lab, a huge smile on his face. "I can hardly believe this is the same kid we had to save every other day"

"I can, he's still a stubborn headed asshole."

"Watch your language y/n!" My brother called from the other side of the lab. I glared at Howard rolling my eyes.

"I'll watch my language when you watch your drinking."

"I do watch it, I watch it go right into my mouth." He joked walking up to us, Steve's shield in hand. "Got it fixed up for you, but do me a favor, stop damaging it."

"Sorry." Steve mumbled scratching his neck clearly embarrassed.

"Howard can give you directions when he almost single handily takes down all of hydra." I huffed.

"Excuse me?" Bucky said drawing our attention.

"I said almost!" I defended putting my hands up. Bucky's own hands were quickly at my sides, tickling up and down. "No! Wait fuck!" I screamed trying to twist out of his grip, both of us oblivious to the knowing looks between Steve and Howard.

"Excuse me, the group is ready to leave. We need the captain and Sargent." Peggy called sticking her head in the room making Bucky finally stop.

"Asshole." I mumbled making him smile.

"You know you love me." He winked as he walked towards the door.

"Don't die Sargent." I called out to him as he turned to walk backwards.

"Don't worry doc, if I did I would send you a letter first."

"I'm holding you to that." I said as he and Steve disappeared down the hall. I turned back to my work to start putting it away, but I caught Howard staring at me. "What?"

"So when are you two gonna stop dancing around those feelings?"

"What? Are you talking about me and Buck?" I asked surprised making him roll his eyes.

"Obviously y/n. You give each other the puppy dog eyes more then Carter and Rogers. You really should say something, you never know when you'll see him again."

"Please, Bucky is one of my oldest friends. Me, him, and Steve, the dream team at school. Plus, I know I'll see him again, he didn't write a note.

——————————

“Y/n?” I heard a voice call out. I looked up to see Steve wall towards me. I could tell I looked a mess, my eyes had to be blood shot from crying, and I had a half empty bottle of whiskey next to me that I had been nursing for a couple hours. I felt Steve slid down the wall next to me, and I offered him the bottle.

“Already tried that.” He mumbled, but took it anyway and set it to the side. We just sat in the dark room not saying anything.

“I should have said something sooner.” I whispered. “Should have told him, now I’ll never have the chance.” I felt a fresh set of tears in my eyes, and I pulled my legs up to my chest resting my head on them. “I loved him...” that was the first time I’d admit it out loud.

“I know.” Steve said his arm wrapping around me. It had been nearly 2 years since Steve got the serum, but I would never be used to his large form. “I don’t know if it’s a good time, but I was looking through Bucks things and found this.” He said pushing something on my lap. It was an envelop with my name written on it.

“I’ll give you some space.” He said squeezing my shoulder lightly before standing up. I waited until he was gone until I opened the letter. I pulled it out and when I unfolded it a picture fell out onto my lap. It was one of me, him and Steve years ago when we were in high school, one of the few we had taken. The date was written on the back and I believe Steve’s mom had taken it.

I turned my attention to the letter and it said:

Y/n,

If you get this it ether means something happened to me. I’m not dumb,

I know what happens in war, and know something may happen. I promised

That I would send you a letter if something happened, and I don’t break

Promises. I want to ya you that I’ve loved you a long time. The moment I

Saw you at school I knew you were the most beautiful girl I would ever

See. Getting to know how smart, brave, kind, and funny you are only

Made me fall harder. I hope when you read this I will have already told

You in person how I feel, but you never know. I will always have wished

I could have taken you dancing, but I hope you find another man who

Won’t make you wait. You’ve always been, and always will be my Best girl.

James Barnes.

I felt more tears fall as I read the letter. He felt the same, and I had lost my chance.

————————————

“Steve, give us a moment. Howard is on his way and we will find somewhere for you to land.” I said over the com.

“Y/n, there’s no time, I’m gonna smash into New York if I don’t take it down right now.”

“Steve you’ll die.” Peggy said from besides me.

“I know, y/n, can I have a moment with Peggy?” He asked. Peggy looked over at me, clearly unsure of how I would react.

“Ya. But listen punk, if you die I’m gonna beat your ass.” I whispered, a tear running down my face. I could here him chuckle from the other side.

“Yes ma’am”

I pulled the com off and turned to walk away, not wanting to hear when it happened. I walked away, not even wanting to be in the room, and Howard practically ran into me.

“Y/n, what do I-“ but I just shook my head. He looked over to see Peggy clearly crying, and looked back at me who was trying my headrest not to breach down. “Oh.” He whispered reaching out and pulling me into his arms. Being held by my older brother was the tip I needed that caused me to break down. Howard just badly held me up as I cried. In the corse of a few days, I lost my closed friends.

[gainaxvel3o]

Clark x Bruce for the imaginary love lives please! If you do this, thanks and I’m excited to read it :)

He heard the alarm and went as fast as he could.

Superman moved at the speed of sound. Bruce made it a general rule to the League that they stay out of Gotham. If he used the JLA Communicator for this that meant things were bad. Clark tried not to think of the various worst case scenarios as he reached the Acme Warehouse.

Upon his ears picked up a cough, Clark flew faster.

Smashing the wall with his bare hands, Superman surveyed the situation. Bruce, still in the Batman costume, was coughing while lying on the bed, an infusion pump dumping a yellow liquid into him. The Joker was on another bed next to his, smiling his ever sickly evil grin while he was tended to by Harley. She panicked. “Big blue’s in town! Shit!” Harley cheered. “Mistah J we need to run! I was expectin’ the birds or the kajillion Batgirls but not this!” “Oh quiet Harley,” Joker responded. “We already threw the gag out there, we might as well go all the way with it! Come on, welcome to the party!”

Superman didn’t waste any time. “What did you do to him?!? “Now settle down Boy Scout you shouldn’t be so angry until I explain everything.” Joker smiled. “Which I will! See, I was taking a stroll around town, borrowing the usual materials I use to bring all the laughs to the dour city when I happened to come across something interesting.”

The Joker pointed at the pump.

“A unique chemical compound that slowly drain the life out of the people. I’m not one to kill my favorite people, but I thought it would be funny if I shared it with your old pal Batman and see if anyone wants to try saving him.” “You diseased maniac!” Superman shouted. “Where’s the cure?” “The cure? Well…” Joker laughed, the same infuriating laugh that made Superman’s skin crawl. “There’s only one way to cure him. Catch!” He tossed a syringe to Superman, who looked at him confused.

“See, in addition to be a clever comedian I’m a brilliant scientist! I pumped the stuff inside of me to check how it works. Turns out my unique chemistry turned the chemical into antibodies. Only drawback is that if you take my blood, I die.”

“Don’t…” Bruce, trying desperately to remain conscious, begged. “Don’t do what he says… it’s a trick…” “You can’t be too sure of that Batsy!” Joker grinned harder. “So what will it be Supes? You want to save him, you’re gonna need kill me! Not save him and he dies while I live. Your code or your friend! Ohohohohoho what a lovely decision!”

Harley glanced back and forth between Superman and her Mistah J. Being his disciple (and girlfriend even if he won’t admit it) she was familiar with this kind of trap. Batsy’s only in a severe degree of pain but not actually dying. She wasn’t sure if Superman could detect it given the X-Ray vision and the hearing and the other powers in his arsenal. Harley was actually curious. What would Superman do? “Tick tock Superman,” Joker said. “Made a choice yet?” A laugh. It didn’t come the Joker, like one would expect. No… it came from Superman. He held the syringe steady. “Okay. You win.” He said. “I’ll draw your blood.” Harley had to check her ears for that. One she made sure there wasn’t any left over ear wax from this morning, she allowed her jaw to fall. “What…” Joker was also pretty gobsmacked. “I mean- what?” “Yeah. Raise your arm.” Superman smiled. It wasn’t out of joy, more a sneer. “I don’t like the situation, but if it means saving Batman I’ll do it.” For a second, Batman struggled against the bed, trying to say something, break out, but his body was too weak. Whatever he said, Superman didn’t register it. He didn’t need to. He knew what he was doing. “Whoah let’s not get crazy here!” Joker took a step back. “No objections or anything? No third option no nothing?!? You’re just giving up?!” “Why not?” Superman said. "Someone’s going to die either way. Better the mass murdering lunatic from Gotham than it’s favorite son.”

And his husband, though Superman left it unsaid. He didn’t want this monster to know anything. “Wow, the great Superman just gives up!” Joker laughed. “I wish I had a camera so I could record it! I won, you lose and snooze and-“ “Yeah yeah yeah, you’re playing five dimensional chess against me and this is somehow going all according to your master plan even though when the dust settles you’ll be dead, I won’t go crazy murdering everyone for no reason and you won’t get your ultimate final battle with Batman.” Harley had never seen the Joker’s eyes twitch so violently. His hands were shaking in bitter spiteful rage.

“Come on Joker,” Superman said. “You wouldn’t want to leave this Earth without pulling a great gag. This? Just pathetic really.” “Oh you want funny! I’ll give you fucking funny!”

The Joker punched Superman in the chest. He clutched his hand in pain, now realizing he had broken it.

“Okay thanks for that.” Superman grabbed Joker’s hand, readying the syringe. “Be ready!” “No… no wait I was kidding!” Joker’s eyes widened and his voice broke. “The chemicals won’t actually kill Batman! It’s temporary! Please don’t kill me!” 

“Mistah J!” Harley cried out. “I thought we were supposed to go all the way with a gag!” “Nuh uh, not me! I quit! Not going to lose to the big blue boy who can’t wear his undies in the right direction.” Superman smirked. “All edge, no bite… you really are a bad comedian Joker.” _____________________________________________________________________________________

After locking up Joker and Harley in Arkham, Superman took Bruce to the Bat Cave.

Alfred tended to his master, wiping the blood drawn from disconnecting the pump. Bruce looked over to Clark.

“Thanks Clark.” Bruce said. “It was an impressive bluff you made there.”

“Learned it from the best,” Clark smiled, kissing Bruce’s cheek. “Didn’t think you’d call me to be honest.” “The children were out on a mission. You were the only one that could get here fast enough.” “Love you too Bruce.” “Brrrrr. Using that word. Don’t repeat it.” “What? I love you?”

“There you again.” Clark laughed. Alfred rolled his eyes. “Well you’re clearly content in your lover’s quarrel,” Alfred walked up the stairs, “See you both in the morning.” They were left alone. Bruce searched his husband’s face and body, while Clark stood there and smiled.

“About that what happened Clark…” “Hm?"

“If the Joker hadn’t been lying…” Bruce said. “Would you really have let him die?” Clark sighed. “Bruce…” “Really Clark?!?” “If it was between you and him, I would have.” Clark decided to stand his ground. “You know I despise killing anyone as much as you do.” “Then why contemplate it at all?!” Bruce was shouting now. “No one deserves to die!” “No one does. But Bruce, it was between him or you. If it turned out killing him would save you… I’d feel horrible for the rest of my life, I would be ashamed, I would take anything you say afterwards… but I’d do it. What kind of hero would I be if I let a single innocent life die just so I could feel better about having unstained hands?” Clark looked away. “I only hope when the time comes you’d do the same.” Neither said a word. Bruce was no doubt furious, whether himself or Clark it didn’t matter. Superman sighed.

“I’m going to head to bed. Care to join me?” Bruce got out of the table. “In an hour. There’s things I need to check on the Bat-Computer.” Clark nodded. He didn’t want to admit it, not now, but he knew a rift had formed between them just now. He just hoped it would resolve itself sooner rather than later.

Author’s Notes:

I had a surprisingly good time writing this. It’s a bit of a fix fic for Action Comics #719 where Joker similarly infects Lois with a poison and Superman IS ABOUT TO LET HER DIE instead of killing him. It was such a bad display of Superman’s no kill rule that I decided to call a do over. No I don't want Superman to be going around snapping necks constantly but there’s ways to portray the no kill code that don’t involve making your heroes look like self righteous assholes and that comic ain’t it!

As for Batman… well, I don’t have a lot of positive feelings about him these days but writing his interactions with Clark felt natural and the idea of them having a conflict over the no kill code was an interesting idea. I liked doing it. That’s all I’ll say. 

[nct-oli]

IPYTM EP 4

I just feel like saying all of my IPYTM ep 4 thoughts now that I watched the episode, before I read any other posts on here. Raw thoughts minutes after closing the episode.

I feel like I need to say this first. I do not agree with Oh reading Teh’s logbook and invading his privacy, but I do appreciate that he told him later that he did. I also do not like the hitting Teh with the bouquet. Okay, just wanted to get that out of the way.

TEH (AND JAI)

I’m still mad at Teh. I do not forgive him. But I do want to say that Jai is a piece of shit for manipulating Teh the way he did. This episode made it so clear to me how Jai used what Teh wrote in that logbook to his gain, recognizing how vulnerable Teh was and seeing how weak his relationship with Oh-Aew had gotten and using that to his benefit.

Now honestly, I can’t tell if that truly was his plan from the start or if he saw the way Teh had fallen for him and what happened with Oh and decided to say that it was never real in an attempt to stop it as soon as possible.

Regardless, if he was a good friend as well as a good director, Jai would never have used Teh’s broken relationship the way he did. He could have tried to help Teh rekindle things with Oh, work through some of his fears and anxieties that were keeping him from feeling close to his boyfriend. That very likely could have solved both problems–Teh’s relationship issues and his acting barrier–but instead, Jai manipulated Teh’s feelings.

However, I’m not letting Teh off that easily either. There was a moment when I actually did feel a little bad for him, when I started to recognize how Jai was using him and playing with his feelings. And when Teh and Oh started doing a little better, I allowed myself to think that maybe they could figure it out with more communication.

But no, Teh wandered off at the after party to see Jai, and any tiny flicker of forgiveness I felt went out the door. The way he showed no genuine guilt or shame with Oh too made me honestly sick. Like Oh said, did he think he was stupid? Did Teh think he was being subtle? It gave me secondhand embarrassment to see him believe he was being anything except disgustingly obvious about what was going on.

And then for him to call Jai the Fang to his Akin, with his too-forgiving boyfriend sitting in the other room?? Again, do you have no shame, Teh???

Also, the way Jai and Teh both gaslit Oh-Aew, trying to make him think he was overreacting and overthinking when both of them knew Teh’s feelings were not just the result of his great acting. That the kiss was never just an exercise (at least from Teh’s side, which is the side that mattered most). Watching them both lie to Oh’s face like that lit a rage fire within me.

Now, the scene of Oh-Aew and Teh singing on stage and the music going quiet as Teh’s attention drifted from Oh to Jai was heartbreaking in a really good way. I’m so proud of Oh-Aew for finally deciding that moment was enough, that Teh deserved no more chances, and that he needed to walk away. I’m so proud of him for choosing himself.

I appreciate Teh’s roommate. I don’t have the sympathy in me at this very moment so soon after the episode to wish Teh such kindness, but I’m sure tomorrow morning I’ll be a little more open to him having the emotional support I know deep down he needs. So I’m glad he has his roommate extending a hand.

And it was incredibly sad to watch Teh realize how he’d isolated himself to the extreme all for this one dream, maybe forgetting along the way to dream about his relationship with Oh-Aew, his long term friendships, etc. All of the other dreams you can and should have as well. I think he started to realize everything he’d given up for acting and how less glamorous and fun it really was now that he was here.

And that hit him even more when he got casted and potentially signed, only to face the reality that it also meant erasing the digital footprint of his relationship with Oh, one of the few things he still had left. This life he had envisioned kept getting less and less glamorous by the second.

I’m not saying I want him to give up on his dream of acting, but I do hope that everything that has happened is his much needed wake up call. That he finds more empathy for the people he judged for drifting from acting, for the people he pushed away for not trying hard enough. I hope he sees how selfish and ignorant his actions and his words have been over the past few years and that he takes this as a starting point for a more understanding and accepting outlook on not just his own life but the lives of those around him.

And I do hope he heals one day. Or, well, I will hope for that tomorrow. Tonight I’m still mad at him.

OH-AEW

Now on to Oh. As I said before, I don’t condone the invasion of Teh’s privacy or hitting him with the bouquet. But otherwise, I really am proud of Oh-Aew. Do I think he handled everything perfectly? No. In an ideal world, I would have liked him to confront Teh sooner so he could have given him the opportunity to be honest early on.

But given everything, I think Oh’s level of compassion and his willingness to try to understand are more than most people are willing to give in his shoes. I genuinely do respect how level-headed he went about it. I wish he had been better rewarded for his grace, and instead he got a boyfriend who lied and continued to go behind his back even after Oh had given him an undeserved second chance.

But what I am most proud of is how Oh-Aew handled breaking up with Teh. Telling Teh that he was hurt and asking him to have pity on him. Oh chose himself again, more permanently. In that moment, he understood that Teh’s apology did not warrant forgiveness and that he was allowed to stay hurt, to stay angry, to stay unwilling to take Teh back.

Oh was vulnerable and still stayed firm in his decision to respect himself anyway, to trust his feelings and prioritize his healing. Teh was there crying before him, and he still understood that he had no responsibility to fix Teh’s pain. That the pain Teh was feeling was pain he had inflicted on himself.

You can see in the way he turned back to look at Teh leave and then the way he sobbed afterwards that it took all of his strength to not give in moments earlier. How easy it would have been for him to take comfort in the familiarity of Teh’s embrace once again, to give him that second chance and hope for the best. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he did; it’s hard to give up someone who once made you feel safe. Who once felt like home.

But I am so proud of him for choosing himself anyway. For knowing that, however hard it was in that moment to let go, it would have been even harder to live every day sacrificing his mental and emotional security for a relationship he knew would never feel the same. For a man he could never fully trust again.

Oh-Aew has grown so much.

OH’S FRIENDS

Also, Oh has the cutest, sweetest friends in the world. This was my favorite scene in the entire episode. I’m so glad he found his group and that they love him so much.

The contrast between Teh and Oh-Aew throughout this season and especially in this episode has been really apparent as they’ve drifted apart. And I think this scene really highlighted that. Teh verbally acknowledged how he had no one to turn to anymore, how he’d ruined his relationships with everyone over time, meanwhile Oh was surrounded by people ready to love him and take care of him until he was better.

Oh’s honesty with himself and the people around him resulted in a community of friends supporting him as his authentic self, while Teh’s lies to himself and the people around him resulted in solitude.

It’s tragic for him, really.

EP 5?

Honestly, I have no idea what will happen with episode 5. At this point, I want Oh-Aew to find happiness away from Teh and for Teh to fix his insecurities on his own. I don’t want them together.

Maybe one day they’ll find each other again. I don’t know. But after this season’s storyline has unfolded, I think Oh deserves better. And I don’t think they make sense anymore.

AND BECAUSE IT NEEDS TO BE SAID

Oh-Aew dying his hair from red to black again? Yeah. He is Teh’s red no more.

[likeiwishiknew]

Azriel x Gwyn - Small Fires

Read on AO3

They had agreed to meet at Rhys and Feyre’s house by the river. 

It was easier to have Lucien meet them there than to have him winnow part way to the House of Wind.

Azriel would admit he was in no rush to see the firey male. However, this wasn’t about what he wanted. But rather what Gwyn needed. 

He’d truthfully never seen her angry before. Frustrated, stubborn, fierce, he’d seen that. Her anger at Devlon’s inaction, on the other hand, had been another story entirely. At first, Azriel had thought he'd imagined it. The shimmer to her skin, the spark just under the surface. Until he’d felt the heat rolling off of her and caught sight of fire flaring to life in her hands. Only then had he been certain it wasn’t his imagination.

He knew in that instant that he had needed to get her the hell out of that camp. The Illyrians had hardly been welcoming, but they’d be even less so if they further learned Gwyn's origins. They'd already considered her an outsider. The last thing anyone needed was for the Illyrians to deem her a threat.

Azriel did not fear them, not in the slightest. But he also wasn’t stuck living among them. Emerie was. And if Gwyn had done this for anyone it was Emerie. To see all her efforts de-railed by the blood that ran through her veins, something she had no say in, he refused to let that happen.

When they’d arrived at the house Lucien had been standing silently / sitting silently observing Elain with a thoughtful look on his face. 

Elain appeared to be ignoring him as usual, though, as always, she did not send him away. She never did. Azriel had never noted so before, but now it was plain to see. Although an undercurrent of unease sat between them, neither of them ever fled the other’s presence.

Strangely enough, neither the realization did not bother him.

Instead, it was the fact that as soon Gwyn stepped into the room Lucien’s head turned her direction. The other male’s awareness of Gwyn, that bothered him. 

What’s more, as soon as Lucien’s eyes landed on her he smiled. 

Lucien stood up from where he sat and approached them. Elain did not move from her seat, but Azriel did not miss the brief flicker of her eyes toward Lucien’s back as he moved away from her.

Gwyn stepped forward to meet the male halfway.

She smiled at him fondly, earnestly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And Azriel found himself disliking the other male more than ever.

- - - 

Gwyn was surprised when Azriel had been the one to suggest bringing Lucien to meet her. She had a distinct impression that the two did not get along and that the feeling was entirely mutual. Which was a shame, because she quite liked both their company.

“Is everything alright Little Red?” Lucien asked as soon as he was close, “Rhysand was rather vague in his request that I come and see you.” 

“I’m okay,” she assured him, “But there is something I think you should see.” 

Lucien’s face grew concerned but he remained silent, waiting for her to elaborate. Rather than say anything, Gwyn decided it best to try and show him. 

Exhaling, she focused on her hands, tried to summon the flames and ignite her palms as she had in Devlon’s presence. 

But nothing happened.

Maybe focus was not enough. 

Gwyn thought about what she’d been feeling when the incident had happened. Her anger, her frustration, her desperation to not feel helpless. She attempted to recapture those feelings as she tried harder to call upon the fire. 

Gwyn glanced down at her hands as she began to feel the tiniest kiss of heat. 

No flames lit, but her skin had begun to glow a faint orange and she could sense the heat further building beneath her skin. Thus, she doubled down on the negative feelings she’d felt back at the camp and soon enough the tiniest flames flickered to life at her fingertips.

Looking up, she saw those very flames reflected in Lucien’s eyes. A slight smirk graced his lips. 

“I suppose you truly do have fire in your blood, Little One.” 

She could tell from his smile that he was remembering their previous conversation, and so Gwyn found herself smiling back. Far easier than they’d come, the flames faded. But she could still feel the warmth sitting just under her skin. 

Lucien must’ve sensed it as well because he reached for her, but before he grasped her wrist he looked to her for permission. She gave him a single nod. And so, Lucien took her wrist in one hand and ran a finger along her veins. Likely getting a feel for her power. 

“You’ll need training, to control it properly,” he commented. 

She nodded again. 

She’d had the same thought. Fire was a beautiful but equally destructive element. Gwyn knew well enough that she could not afford to lose control of it. 

Like any skill, she would need to work on it, hone it. That was surely why Azriel had asked for Lucien to be brought to her in the first place, and she was grateful he’d had the foresight to know that she’d want to learn. 

They were the same in that regard, she and Azriel. Both of them were always eager to learn, to acquire more knowledge. 

She’d learned that back when they’d first grown close. It was one of the reasons Gwyn had known she could trust him. 

Those willing to learn, who sought knowledge, were rarely if ever, bad people. 

Gwyn would certainly have her work cut out for her though, with all the revelations this week. 

She had hoped to learn more about her heritage and wound up discovering new abilities she knew next to nothing about. At least, they were new to her.

But the sooner she could get some grasp on them the better. 

Lucien’s voice cut through her thoughts.

“Come stay with me, I will train you.”

- - - 

Lucien wanted to take her away. That was the last thing he caught of their conversation. 

His shadows cried out their objection, to which Azriel agreed. He all but glowered at the male standing not so far from him. Not that Lucien noticed or even cared.

Before he could speak up in objection, Nesta beat him to it. 

“Not a chance on hell, Vanserra,” the eldest Archeron sister spat, probably with more venom than was necessary.

He could always count on Nesta to speak her mind. Though at times it was to her detriment. 

“Nesta,” Gwyn chastised, looking back over her shoulder at her friend, “Should it not be my choice?”

From the shock, upon Nesta’s face, it was clear the female had not been anticipating her friend’s response. Azriel had certainly not. 

“You wish to leave the Night Court?” Nesta asked, her surprise evident in her voice. 

“I did not say that, but I should like to have the chance to think about it,” Gwyn replied, turning back Lucien who'd kept his eyes focused on her the entire time.

“May I?” she asked the male.

Lucien nodded, “Of course.” 

No one else in the room spoke up in favor or against the idea. 

Elain was silent but her hand stilled on her flower arrangement she'd been working on the moment Lucien had made the suggestion. Nesta was clearly not excited about the prospect. Feyre, of course, eyed her sister worriedly, no doubt fearing Nesta would say something damaging she couldn’t take back. And naturally, his two brother’s moods were reflective of their mates. Cassian ready to step in should he need to, and Rhysand no doubt communicating silently with Feyre through their bond. 

While Gwyn didn’t see Lucien as anything other than potential family, Azriel wasn’t so sure about the other male. Gwyn may very well belong to the Autumn Court, but that did not necessarily mean they were actually related. 

And while Lucien might be mated to Elain, perhaps the other male might finally be considering abandoning the effort. It had been years now, and not all males were as foolish as himself. Content to wait around years in the hopes that something might change. It was quite possible, Lucien might entertain the idea of walking away.

Hearing Gwyn’s words to Nesta, that she would consider going off with Lucien to stay with his band of misfits left Azriel feeling cold. As though, if she went, Azriel would again find himself losing to the Autumn Prince. But as soon as he had the thought, he chased it away. Gwyn was not some prize to be won or lost. He knew that. 

It took a moment, but Lucien finally seemed to read the tension in the room. 

“If the idea of leaving makes you uneasy I have no issue with coming here to see you,” he offered, then, seeming to give it some further thought, looked to Feyre and Rhys, “Assuming I’m welcome move about the Night Court freely?”

Rhys appeared to consider this, whereas Feyre answered almost immediately. 

“Of course you can,” his High Lady spoke with a smile. 

Once upon a time, Lucien had been her first and only friend in the realm of Fae. Though Feyre never admitted it, he knew the rift in their relationship saddened her. Rhys knew it too. But there was nothing that could be done to fix it. Too much had happened, too much time had passed. One day they might find their way back to each other, but it would be no easy task. 

Personally, he did much like the idea of seeing more of the Autumn Princeling. But if it was for Gwyn’s sake he’d learn to deal with it. 

It was far better than the alternative. 

- - - 

Sometime after dinner, as talk again returned to a discussion over Gywn’s situation, along with that of the remaining mortal queens, Elain had managed to wander off. 

As Gwyn was busy speaking with Nesta and Lucien, Azriel took it upon himself to check on the middle Archeron sister. 

Unsurprisingly, he found her in the garden with her rose bush. The gloves Lucien had gifted her all those years protecting her delicate hands. She’d never thanked the other male for the gift, but Azriel had noted countless times how often she’d used them. 

“How are you feeling about Lucien being here more often?” he asked. 

She said nothing at first, only halting briefly in her pruning. 

“He won’t exactly be here, will he?” Elain responded. Her tone sounding odd. 

No, he supposed she was right. He wouldn’t be visiting the river house, but rather the House of Wind. But who was to say, given free reign, that he would not try and come to see his mate. Then again, as much as he disliked Lucien, the male was never one to appear uninvited. 

“Have you ever thought about how much easier things might have been if you and I were mates?” she questioned softly. 

Azriel blinked once, surprised by the turn-in conversation. But he knew the answer well enough. 

He had.

But the cauldron had not seen it fit to bless him with a mate. 

However, he had once coveted the beauty before him. Their attraction mutual, as far as he could tell. 

“Yes,” he found himself admitting, “I have.”

- - - 

Gwyn wound up in the small library of Rhysand and Feyre’s home. Though to call it small might’ve been a bit of an insult. It simply wasn’t as large as the once housed in the House of Wind. But it was nice, tidy, private. And she needed that bit of privacy right about now.

Gwyn dropped into one of the chairs by the window. 

Azriel had wanted Elain for a mate. 

The very idea broke her heart. A new crack forming among the many scars that already ran across it. 

A single tear escaped from the corner of her eye, but she wiped it away almost as quickly as it came. Which was just as well, because not a moment later she heard a knock. 

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Lucien standing in the doorway. Normally, she’d have no issue detecting him. But clearly, her heightened emotions had her distracted. 

It took a mere second for him to take in her face. His mood immediately shifted as he approached her. His long strides closing the distance between them with ease. Lucien sat down in the seat opposite her and placed a gentle hand on her knee. 

“Little One, what’s wrong?” he voiced, concerned. 

Gwyn pressed her lips together, inhaling deeply she forced herself to push the feelings down and keep the tears at bay. 

“I’m an idiot,” she confessed. 

Lucien straightened at that, “What?”

Her foolishness did not require explaining. It was Elain. It’d always been her. The necklace, everything...

Why had she done this to herself? Why had she gone and allowed her hopes to flourish again?

Gwyn shook her head, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

From the look on his face, Lucien obviously did not want to let it go at that. But he conceded to her all the same. 

“Alright,” he let out reluctantly. 

The male stared at her with thoughtful eyes. 

“My offer to take you away from this place still stands,” Lucien spoke softly, as though fearing someone might hear, “Clearly, something here has upset you. I will take you away from it, should you wish.” 

She appreciated his willingness to help her by any means. In truth, Gwyn hardly knew anything about Lucien. Only second-hand stories she’d heard from Nesta and the others. But she found something about him inherently trustworthy. Her gut insisted that he would not hurt her, and she was inclined to believe it. 

She’d been honest when she’d said she would consider his offer. The idea of leaving the comfort and security of the library, the Night Court, left her feeling a tad apprehensive. But in recent months Gwyn had started to learn to push past that feeling.

Lucien’s idea made sense from a practical standpoint. It would get her out of her comfort zone, and she’d have a teacher readily available. She knew she’d be safe. After all, if Emerie could manage to live among men she loathed. Gwyn could certainly learn to live with Lucien. 

Yet despite knowing that, she still felt uneasy. 

“I don’t know if I’m ready to leave,” she admitted. 

She’d miss everyone, Nesta, Cassian, her fellow priestess’...Azriel. 

Lucien said nothing in response, only sat there quietly, ready to listen. 

“I know it sounds silly. It’s not as though I’m leaving to never return again. It’s just, the idea of being away...it feels strange. For years now, this place, this court has been my life. My home.” 

But then Gwyn was struck with the realization that she hadn’t this way when she’d wound up staying at the Illyrian camp. She hadn’t felt as though she’d left home at all. 

Because Azriel been there with her. 

Her throat ached at the thought. 

He wanted someone else. Had always wanted someone else, despite the fact that the female already had a mate. A mate who happened to be sitting right in front of Gwyn now. She wondered if Lucien knew. Though she supposed, he had to.

He might not have been as old as three males of the Inner Circle, but he’d certainly been around long enough to learn how to read other’s intentions. 

And yet he did nothing. He did not pressure Elain, nor did he seem to hold any resentment toward her for entertaining the company of another male. He also never returned her coldness toward him. Lucien was only ever the patient mate, waiting on the sidelines for the female the Cauldron destined for him to make her decision. 

Gwyn wondered how long he’d be willing to wait. 

She found herself almost envious of the other female. She wondered what that must be like, to be wanted, to be adored. Until she remembered something her mother had always said. That envy was one of the worst sins. It could twist even the purest hearts into wicked things.

She refused to go down that path.

Gwyn had plenty in her life to be thankful for. She would not ask nor demand more. 

She was content. Gwyn had friends who were like family. A possible family that she might one day reunite with. Every day she grew stronger and more skilled in combat, more capable of fighting for herself and those she loved should war descend upon them. 

If she could gain mastery over her fire, she would prove stronger still.

“A home will always be a home, if it is where you are meant to be you’ll always find a way back,” Lucien said, his voice close to a whisper. 

She stared up at him, to find him watching her. 

“I will never force you to do anything you do not want to or are not comfortable with. I only want you to understand that you will always have options and that in your life the only one with the right decide what you do is yourself.” 

The way he spoke, she could tell his words were as much a reminder for him as they were for her. 

“I know first-hand what it feels like to believe you have no other choice. It leads one to make mistakes one can never take back.” 

Gwyn eyed him with concern, “Have you done something you regret Lucien?” 

His eyes saddened, “Far too many things.” 

She wanted to reach out to him, hug him, and tell him that she believed in his goodness. That his mistakes alone surely did not define him. But Gwyn wasn’t sure that was what he wanted, and so she held back. 

Lucien rubbed her head and gave her a small, almost bittersweet, smile as he rose from his seat. 

"Let me know what you decide, Little Red,” he said briefly before departing without another word. 

With him gone, she was once again left alone in the library with her thoughts. And what a great many she had. 

- - - 

They’d returned to the House of Wind rather late that night, after having had dinner at the river house. 

Cassian and Nesta had gone off together almost immediately upon their return. In the months since their mating, their hunger for each other had yet to subside. Though, if they were anything like Rhys and Feyre, it was likely it never would. 

He was happy for his brothers, even if it left him feeling a bit green with envy at every reminder. 

Gwyn had not said much to him on the way back. But he’d overheard her telling Nesta that she intended to work out in the training ring despite the late hour. Something about needing that time to think. 

And so, after he’d gotten his own affairs in order, Azriel headed up to the ring to find her. 

As he neared Azriel could sense his shadows begin to dance. They moved as though in time with a song he himself could not quite hear. 

Reaching the archway, he caught sight of Gwyn. Her movements were rhythmic and fluid, the sword she was wielding a perfect extension of her arm. 

She must’ve sensed him because she stopped what she was doing and turned his way. 

Their eyes met, but her expression did not change. It remained perfectly neutral. A practiced look that he all too easily recognized, because it was one he enacted almost every day of his life. The sight of it on her face fed his growing concern.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked. 

It took her a moment, but she nodded, “I have a lot to think about.” 

In that regard, he agreed with her. The last few days had no doubt proven life-changing for her. She’d awoken abilities she’d never even known she had. But something in her tone, in her voice, in her steady effort to keep her neutral expression in place gave her away to him. 

“You’re honestly considering leaving with him.” 

Neither of them needed to clarify who it was Azriel spoke of. They both knew. 

Yet for some reason, Gwyn appeared surprised at his directness. Her beautiful eyes widening a fraction in response. But she did not speak up in denial. They stared at each other a moment longer before she managed an answer.

“Perhaps,” she admitted. 

Azriel found himself stepping into the ring, closing the distance between them. 

“Why?” he found his voice rising, “Lucien has already offered to teach you here.”

And he’d come to terms with that, but the idea of Gwyn leaving? He had not prepared himself for that. 

She inhaled, before answering, “I know.”

Then why were they having this discussion?

“But it might do me some good to see what lies beyond the borders of the Night Court.” 

Azriel did not want to trap her here. He would never dream of it. He had always been supportive of her broadening her horizons, seeing the world. She deserved a chance to learn, to live. 

Yet something had him fearing her leaving in this current state. As though, if she left now she might not come back. He could not explain why he thought this, but he felt the certainty of it in his very bones. 

“You said you wouldn’t leave,” he attempted to say, only to realize that wasn’t what they'd agreed on.

“When did I say that?” she naturally responded. 

He corrected his wording, “You said you wouldn’t run from me.”

- - - 

His words struck her, leaving her unsure as to what to say. 

She wasn’t running from him. Was she? 

“I’m not running from you, Azriel,” Gwyn found herself insisting, “This isn’t about you. It’s about me, how I feel.”

She wasn’t lying about that, not exactly. Gwyn had tried to put her growing feelings for Azriel aside to protect their friendship, but the more time they spent together the harder that was proving to be. 

Gwyn had believed she’d been successful right up until their time in the Illyrian camp. When she’d come face to face with the prospect of Azriel with another. The sight had left her with an ache in her chest, and though he’d run after her to assure her there was nothing going on between him and the female it did not mean that he wouldn’t have a relationship with someone else in the future. 

That someone might be Elain or it might not. All that mattered was she could not behave the way she had at camp. Little by little she had to learn to let these feelings go. Because locking them away clearly wasn’t working. 

Distance might help save what was between them. 

“You’re lying,” Azriel insisted, “I’m not sure why but there’s something you aren’t being honest about. I can feel it.”

His observation left her feeling angry. 

“Stop that,” she shouted, “Stop trying to see into my head, my heart. You have no right.”

For the briefest of moments, Gwyn found herself blaming him for her inability to let go. He was the one sending her mixed signals, acting as though he might want something more with her only to turn around and admit to wanting another female as his mate.

Her feelings were to mostly blame, but he was not faultless. How could she let him go when he seemed to not want her to? 

“Gwyn,” he said almost pleadingly. 

But she could not do this. Not now when her emotions were running high, clouding her judgment. 

“I need to go. Try to get some rest. I’m sure I have a lot to catch up on with Merrill in the morning.”

His face shuttered.

“I see.”

He said nothing else.

And so she moved past him, leaving him standing there in the ring alone. 

- - - 

It had been days and still nothing. 

After her discussion with Lucien in the library, Rhysand had found her there. 

When she’d started to apologize for wandering off, he’d brushed it off and reassured her he did not mind her presence in the library. 

Instead, he’d asked her a favor. The High Lord had explained to her his suspicions about the book she and Azriel had encountered in the library. Both he and his second in command, Amren, believe that the book was related to one of two things. True witches or the true immortals. Both of which would prove dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. 

When she’d questioned the High Lord about owning the book he admitted that he’d never come across such a thing, had not even known it existed amongst the vast collection of books he’d inherited. 

Rhysand had tasked her with finding the book, by any means necessary. Gwyn had been trying for the last week or so and still she had nothing to show for it. She’d tried asking the House. She’d checked the library archives for any mention of such an ancient tome, and she’d all but searched every single shelf on the floor she and Azriel had been on when it appeared. 

Wherever the book was, she felt rather certain it was content to remain hidden there. 

The hours she’d spent had not been a complete waste though. It gave her a distraction. 

Busy as she was, she almost forgot about the argument she’d had with Azriel. If it could be called an argument. 

But he needed to understand that if she chose to leave it would be because it was what was best for her, not because she was running away from anything. She knew better than anyone that there were two things in life you could never outrun, the past and your own feelings. 

So for now, she would remain in the Night Court. Not for Azriel, but for herself. Because she felt there was something she was meant to do here, and she had a strong inclination it had something to do with the book she'd been tasked with finding.

And she would find it, one way or another.

- - - 

He sat with Nesta and Elain in the living room of Rhys and Feyre’s home. 

Elain held Nyx within her arms, the little rascal giggling wildly as she played peekaboo with him. 

Azriel himself wasn’t particularly familiar with the game, but both Nesta and Feyre had assured him and the others that it was a common practice in the mortal realm. Along with pretending to steal a child’s nose, which, personally, made no sense to him. 

Then again, many mortal traditions did not. 

Cassian was speaking with Rhys and Feyre. Nesta had intended to join them, but Azriel had asked to speak to her first. It was something that had seemed to surprise all of them. 

In fact, Cassian had made some joke about it. Not that he’d paid much attention to it. 

No, he’d kept quiet until he and Nesta were alone. Well, aside from Elain and Nyx. 

The four of them sat under the warm afternoon sun in the garden that Elain tended to.

“Gwyn wouldn’t be avoiding you over nothing,” Nesta remarked. 

He knew that of course. But days had passed since he’d last seen her and he was no closer to figuring out what it was that had caused the sudden shift in her attitude toward him. She still hadn’t chosen to take Lucien up on his offer to spirit her away from the Night Court. 

According to Nesta, the other male had agreed to come once a week to meet with Gwyn. And so he was due for a visit soon. Azriel needed to fix the rift between him and Gwyn before then.

“Do you think she could’ve overheard our conversation in the garden that day?” Elain spoke up, as she lifted Nyx off the ground to spin him around. 

Nesta eyed Azriel, “What conversation?”

He gave it some thought and realized Elain might be right. 

Usually, his shadows alerted him when anyone approached, but that often wasn’t true when it came to Gwyn. And the timeline made perfect sense. They’d been fine when they’d left the Illyrian camp and when they’d first arrived at the river house. It hadn’t been until after dinner when they were getting ready to return to the House of Wind that Azriel had noted the strangeness in her mood.  

If that was the case he could easily understand how his words might’ve been misconstrued. 

Azriel had admitted to once wishing that Elain was his mate. It stood to reason Gwyn might think he still felt that way.  

But, if so, why hadn’t she said anything to him about it? 

He considered this a mere second before the answer grew obvious. 

What reason had he given her too?

Closing his eyes, Azriel took a deep breath.

He knew now what he needed to do. 

~ ~ ~

Notes: Sorry this one is coming to you a little late. I’ve been a bit of a mini rut this week between writing this fanfic and working on my own original story. I also haven’t been reading much these past few weeks, my free mostly spent watching baking shows, so I’ve been a bit short on inspiration. And I do not like putting anything out that I do not enjoy reading myself. Anyways, I hope you all enjoy the end product of my toil. 

As always, any feedback is appreciated =) 

~ ~ ~

@azrielsshadowsdanceforgwyn @bittermuire @ofstarsanddreams @corrdolium @toolazymyguy @inkdrinkershadowsinger @itswrongsong @dealingdifferentdevils @rhysmoira

@brucexselina @inejjg @rhysmoira @gwynnight @fairytamy @bluegold08 @amandapearls @highqueentaey @lioness-says @chosenfamily-valkyriequeens​ @princessofmerchants-reads @cantkeepmyeyesoffofyou-x

@my-fan-side @spookylightkidranch @velaaaris @keramzinskies @itswrongsong @mirubyjane

@lovelywordsandwine @ladygwynriel @parisakamali @mirubyai

[explosionshark]

how to live here!

here's a special deleted scene that was supposed to go in one of the chapters after rachel and chloe start fighting, but i never really found a place where it made sense. but i always liked it too much to delete it.

The first time Chloe had talked about hanging out in a junkyard, Max had kind of assumed she’d been joking.

She’s been here a few times already since her return to Arcadia Bay, but the novelty of it still hasn’t worn off. Chloe doesn’t seem to mind, letting her wander off, camera in hand, to explore and take photos by herself until she’s halfway through a roll of film and finally satisfied.

Max lets the sound of breaking glass lead her back to Chloe and snaps one more picture. Chloe, broken off hockey stick poised at the highest arc of a big swing, aimed at the sun-bleached head of a mannequin perched atop a splintered milk crate like a fucked up golf ball on a tee.

The arc of the swing is completed. The head goes flying with a sharp crack, landing in a pile of scrap a few feet away. Chloe holds the stick up over her head and cheers.

“You get that, Max?” she calls over her shoulder. “One for the highlight reel.”

“Got it,” Max confirms, reaching up to withdraw the Polaroid as it’s ejected from the camera. She closes the distance between them to show Chloe the shot.

“Sick,” Chloe says, and then twirls the stick in her fingers. “Y’know, I never used to allow press in here before, but maybe that was a mistake. A few more like that and maybe I can finally catch some attention from the big leagues.”

“I can’t imagine they can ignore skills like yours for very long,” Max grins, leaning up on her tiptoes and craning her neck to try to spot the mannequin head in the garbage.

Chloe grins again and mimes another swing. “Wanna take a shot? Ride out my hot streak?”

“I’m good,” Max says.

Chloe nods and shrugs and swings again abruptly, for real, putting the end of the hockey stick through the screen of a boxy old TV on the ground suddenly and loudly enough to make Max jump.

“You sure?” She props a boot on the corner of the TV to hold it in place as she yanks the stick loose. “It’s hella cathartic. You’ve always struck me as having more rage than you’re willing to own up to.”

“Do I really?” Max asks, a little alarmed.

“Maybe I’m projecting,” Chloe concedes.

They wander further, Max trailing behind as Chloe beats the ever-loving shit out of anything even vaguely breakable in her path.

“Remember when you actually played?” Max asks, after the fifteenth minute of uninterrupted smashing.

Chloe pauses, turning on her heel and drawing the bandage on her arm across her forehead to wipe away a bead of sweat. “Oh hell yeah. They called me The Destroyer.”

“No they didn’t,” Max rolls her eyes. “Only you called yourself that.”

“Me and both our dads,” Chloe points out. “Yours even made a sign.”

“Oh yeah,” Max laughs. “Y’know, I think you were the hockey hooligan kid he always wanted. I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or relieved when I quit the team.”

Her dad was a huge hockey fan and had been elated when she and Chloe had agreed when he showed them the newspaper ad he’d found seeking players for the local youth hockey team. William and their mothers had been a little more hesitant, Max remembered, but no one enough to really object to their joining.

Chloe took to it immediately, aggressive, competitive, and already more naturally athletic than Max had ever been. Max’s tenure was only a week long, but she’d remained a devoted fan of the team long after, going along with her parents to every game, home and away.

“Relieved, I think,” Chloe speculates. “You were a really small twelve year old.”

“I was appropriately sized for twelve,” Max protests. “You were tall.”

“Pint-sized,” Chloe teases. “Microscopic. Besides, you never had the heart for it. The bloodlust.”

“I liked the skating part. But yeah, you always had more fun with it than me. Did you ever get back to sports?”

Chloe shakes her head, quick and jerky, almost offended. “I never liked sports. I liked hockey ‘cause you guys would always come to my games and stuff. But then…after…”

Chloe missed the first couple weeks of practice, after William had died. It was Max’s dad that got her to go back, at Joyce’s insistence, hoping that the sport could be an outlet, that trying to preserve as much normalcy as possible would help Chloe deal with her grief.

Max and her dad had stayed in the bleachers through that first practice without William. Chloe’s play had been sloppier, and she’d left the ice early, face splotchy and red, thick hot tears running down her face into her jersey. It hadn’t gotten easier from there. It made sense that Chloe had stopped going entirely once Max’s family had moved.

“Anyway, can you even imagine me playing for Blackwell?” Chloe scoffs, brings the hockey stick down on the windshield of an old beat up car. The first blow sends a spiderweb of cracks all through the glass. The second penetrates, a small, fist-sized hole. The third, fourth, and fifth obliterate it completely.

Max closes her eyes, chases the images of a young, grief-stricken Chloe from her mind with this new fantasy. Chloe, hair undyed, strutting through the halls in a red and white letterman jacket. Chloe doing keg stands with Logan and Zach. Chloe with girls like Victoria and Juliet hanging off her arms. Chloe completely and totally ignoring a nerd like her.

“Okay, it’s a little weird,” Max admits, feeling a little embarrassed for the irrational churning in her gut. “You’ve never really been a joiner, huh?”

“Organized sports are so not punk rock,” Chloe says obnoxiously.

“It’s kind of hard to imagine you at Blackwell at all,” Max admits. “I wish I’d come back sooner. Y’know, before you left.”

Chloe’s quiet and Max knew it was a risk to go there at all, but it feels too true to keep to herself so she keeps speaking.

“I didn’t choose to be gone, but,” is it brave or stupid to do this now, actually? Has Chloe been waiting for an apology or will this just make things needlessly awkward and uncomfortable and painful? “I mean I wish I’d handled it differently. That we’d talked more while I’d been away.”

“Yeah,” Chloe shrugs. It feels like Max is on the verge of losing her, so she hurries on before the silence between them stretches too far.

“Can I be honest with you?” Max asks, stomach twisting in knots.

Chloe raises an eyebrow and nods for her to continue.

“I kind of thought,” she pauses and winces. “I mean, I was a little afraid that after I left you just. Wouldn’t want anything to do with me. That you’d replace me.”

“Max, what the fuck?” Chloe lets the words out in a harsh exhale and Max knows that tone of voice. Knows she’s pissed off for real, now.

“I know,” Max cringes, scrubbing a hand down her face. “But, I mean, you were always the cool one, right? And you were going into high school and I was still sleeping with a teddy bear and—”

“This is such bullshit,” Chloe’s voice cracks and Max was not expecting that. “You’re not just— You can’t just replace a best friend! I fucking needed you. I was so… I needed you so much and you hung me out to dry because you were scared I’d stop thinking you were cool?”

“No,” Max hurries to clarify, feeling appropriately breathless for the desperate, drowning sensation overwhelming her. “No, not like that. I just… I didn’t know how to handle it. So, I just kept putting it off, y’know? Like with homework. Remember how many times my mom had to bail me out because I’d wait too long on finishing a project and it wouldn’t be ready by the due date? Only no one could bail me out this time. And the longer I waited, the worse I felt, the more sure I was that you hated me, that you’d scream at me and tell me to stay out of your life. And I was too scared to face that so I…”

“I never hated you,” Chloe says, face caught somewhere between fury and despair. “Fuck, for the longest time all I wanted was to leave here, to be where you were instead.”

“The night you called me,” Max cuts in gently, proud at least when her voice doesn’t shake, “when you tried to run away, I was so scared for you. And I felt guilty because I realized I was wrong, that you still wanted to be my friend, and I knew I didn’t deserve it. I cried myself sick on the ride down with my mom to pick you up. It really freaked her out. But when we got there you just hugged me and you let me hold your hand the entire way back to Arcadia Bay.”

Chloe stays silent, chewing her lip hard enough to make Max wince.

“And even after, even though we were talking again the entire time I was away I’d think about being back here instead. I think about all the years I missed with you and I get mad because it feels kind of like my fault. Like if I’d tried harder it wouldn’t have taken this long. But I can’t fix that now, I know, I’m just glad we’re here now.”

Chloe shakes her head, rough, and throws the beat up hockey stick into a pile behind her. “Max, you fucking—”

She cuts herself and stomps over and Max isn’t sure what she was expecting, but she’s definitely surprised when Chloe wraps her arms around her, drags her close until there’s almost no space between them.

As tight as the hug is, Chloe’s hands hovering over her back are gentle. She’s quiet but her breathing’s rough. It takes a long time for her to speak again; when she does her voice is shaky, quiet. “I never, ever hated you, but I was pissed at you for a really long time.”

“I’m sorry,” Max tries to say but Chloe squeezes her tighter until she falls quiet.

“I got tired of it,” Chloe says. “And it wasn’t fair, either. Not really. We were just kids. God, I fucked so many things up so much worse than that. You don’t know how bad. If you did, you’d think I’m so pathetic. You’d hate it.”

“Chloe Price, you’re so many things, but pathetic has never been one of them,” Max insists, a little startled by the steel in her voice. Chloe tenses in her arms, but doesn’t move away so Max continues, gentler, “I wish I’d been here more. I know you weren’t alone the whole time but still, if I could go back and change anything it’d be trying harder to be a bigger part of your life. It’d be not letting it take so long to get here.”

It’s stupid, she knows, it’s ridiculous to think she could have prevented any of the hard knocks Chloe had taken in her absence but the thing is she’ll never know and Max thinks that she’ll probably always feel responsible somehow.

“God, imagine if we’d had a few years together at Black-Hell,” Chloe says and releases her, finally. She stays close, pushes some hair out of Max’s face. “We would have gotten into so much trouble. Me, you and…” She trails off with a wince but doesn’t linger. “You could have cheated off my science papers. I’d trade you rides around the Bay for homework.”

“Hey,” Max laughs. “Presumptuous. How do you know I would have compromised my morals like that?”

“Oh, you would have,” Chloe says, laugh all low and breathy. “When have you ever been able to say no to these baby blues?”

She bats her lashes facetiously, but the blush staining Max’s face is very real. “Okay, whatever. What else would we have done?”

“Oh, pranks,” Chloe says. “No doubt. We would have pranked it up so hard on those nerds. I always had this idea about semi-permanent hair dye and Victoria’s shampoo bottles, but I never lived in the dorms. And for some reason, Rachel refuses to be my inside man on this one.”

“I’d be down,” Max blurts out, not sure what the sudden pained look on Chloe’s face could have been leading to, but desperate to head it off.

“Wait, for real?” Chloe asks, appropriately distracted and Max realizes suddenly that her hypothetical assent to collusion had just been offered in practice.

“Uh, I mean—”

“No take-backs,” Chloe crows, gleefully. “Holy shit, dude, yes. Okay, I’ve got it worked out pretty well, this is something I’ve been sitting on for a few years at least. First, we’ll need a distraction…”

Chloe’s plan is elaborate, but thorough, and by the time she’s done laying out the details Max isn’t sure she’ll be able to follow through, but she does know that whatever lingering doubts about their friendship she’d had this morning were founded in one-sided insecurity.

“Let me sleep on it,” she says, finally.

“Max,” Chloe whines. “You promised.”

“I did not.”

“I mean, practically.”

“No, I didn’t.”

It’s almost like being a kid again, arguing about something pointless under the midday sun, a little dehydrated but having too much fun together to do something sensible like go back inside. Max has missed this for so long.

She’s deliriously happy she won’t ever have to miss it again.

[loki-hargreeves]

Loki x Reader - A soul for a soul

Warnings: major character death (kind of), angst 

Word Count: 2,5K+

Summary: Instead of sending Natasha and Clint to recover the Soul stone, the team sends Loki and you.   Prompts: “Just let go of me. It’s OK.” “This isn’t funny anymore!” “A soul for a soul...how ironic.” Author’s Note: This was requested by @blackroseyaz​. I only proofread this once!

THIRD POV

It had all happened so fast. One moment they were standing in a ring, Y/N and Loki right next to each other. They had thought they looked funny in the white and red suits that they absolutely had to wear. It was supposed to be a simple mission; go back in time, get the soul stone and get back. Well, it was simple on paper.  One moment they were in the present and the next they were back in the past.

”I can’t believe we’re going back in time and this is the place we’re visiting!” Y/N complained light-heartedly, wrapping her arms around her body. They had only been on the strange planet Vormir for a little while, but she was cold.

”Do not worry, dear. Next time, we can go and see the Vikings,” Loki tried to cheer her up. He was happy that he was paired with Y/N, the love of his life. It had been strange to adjust to life with the very people who viewed him as their enemy before, but Loki had proved himself worthy to the team. Besides, it was all worth it because he could be with her.

They continued their journey, walking closer to the tall mountains in the distance. Although they didn’t show it, they were worried. This was a one-way ticket. If they messed up now, they could ruin everything. Therefore, the couple had to be cautious with every step they took. Who knew what could happened if they misplaced their steps.

All of a sudden, a figure appeared in front of them, levitating easily above the frozen ground. Loki grabbed Y/N’s arm gently, stopping her from walking towards the mysterious creature. The dark hood made it look intimidating, but it hadn’t attacked them yet. Just barely, they could see an outline of a face underneath the hood. He looked...red? Although they were quiet, Loki and Y/N were both aware of each other’s thoughts. They were confused.

”Loki of Asgard and Jotunheim,” The man spoke first, somehow knowing who Loki and later who Y/N was.

”How do you know who we are?” Loki questioned him fiercely. That’s when the hooded man neared the ground and eventually stood on his own two feet.

”It is my curse to know all who journey here. I also know you are here for the sacred stone,” The man explained.

That’s when Y/N stepped forward, ”Can you take us to the stone?” She was not here to waste any precious time.

The man sighed, revealing his skull-like face. ”Are you sure you are willing to pay the price?”

The price? Y/N and Loki exchanged looks, both wondering what the mysterious stonekeeper meant by that. Feeling confident, Y/N decided to continue, ”We will do anything for it.” Anything to save half of the universe…

Somehow, Y/N’s reply made the man look miserable, but he didn’t fight them. It seemed like he knew the price was too high to pay for many, but he wasn’t going to stop them. ”Come with me,” He finally said, willing to lead the way to the Soul stone. Y/N and Loki followed him closely, staying beside one another. With every step they took uphill the mountain, their hearts began to beat a little harder.

Finally, they reached the top. Although the view was fascinating as the sky was painted purple and pink, they didn’t see where the stone was. Had the stonekeeper lied to them? Surely, Loki would’ve realized it if the man was a fraud.

”What you seek lies before you. As does what you fear,” The man explained, extending his arm towards the edge of the cliff.

Y/N was still confused and she worried they were running out of time. Listening to nonsense was irritating her and she wanted to go straight to the point. Perhaps a little angrily, she scoffed, ”This isn’t funny anymore!” She continued, ”Can you please tell us how we can get the stone?”

Loki was surprised as he heard that. Usually, Y/N was more patient. Perhaps this mission wasn’ so simple as it seemed at first. ”That would be very helpful,” Loki added, hoping that they could finally get it. The sooner they could leave this place, the better.

”You must pay the price. The stone has to ensure that whoever possesses it understands it, its power and wisdom. It demands a sacrifice,” The stonekeeper explained. Suddenly, the air around them felt heavier, colder.

A sacrifice…

He continued, ”In order to take the stone you must lose that which you love. A soul... for a soul. ”

”A soul for a soul’?” Y/N wasn’t sure if she had heard right. The man nodded, confirming her thoughts. ”...how ironic,” Y/N chuckled sadly. Of course, the soul stone would demand a soul sacrifice! Of course the mission had to be terrible! Nothing could ever be easy.

Loki wasn’t stupid. He knew this sacrifice would take a life. But he didn’t want to believe it. He couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that one of them would have to die just so they could get a shot at saving billions of lives. When he put it like that, he knew how selfish it seemed that he didn’t want to do it, but he knew they had to. He looked at Y/N who was dumbfounded by the revelation. His heart clenched in his chest painfully. If it had to be one of them, he was willing to take the leap. The last thing he wanted was to live, knowing that she had died when he could’ve.

He loved her too much.

It wasn’t going to be easy.

Now the pair looked at each other, both at a loss for words. They realized how heartbreaking the situation was, that most likely their ways would part soon - - one way or another.

Tears stung Y/N’s eyes as she looked at Loki. Her heart was breaking in her chest the longer she stood there, and breathing air felt like knives in her lungs. She didn’t want to lose him. They were just fixing their lives and starting anew. Now it would all come to an end.

And she knew she couldn’t let Loki die. Not now, when he was getting back on his feet. He had suffered enough.

They both loved each other too much to let each other die. It was going to be a brutal battle.

”Loki, I-” Y/N tried to speak, but she lost her voice. Instead, she stumbled forwards into his arms, hugging him tightly. He hugged her back, finding comfort in her presence. Loki squeezed her a little tighter, afraid to let go because he knew that when he did, it would be farewell.  

Loki didn’t find himself at loss for words that often, but now he did. He was struck by shock and misery. He was angry that the team had sent them, almost as if they knew that this mission demanded a true love’s sacrifice. Why else would they have been lucky enough to go together?

Wiping his thoughts away, Loki focused on the moment. He took a deep breath, her scent filling his lungs and somehow calming him down. Not much, but it was better than nothing. He felt her body once more, remembering every crook and curve that he had caressed and kissed so many times before. He wished the moment could last forever, because he’d rather live a hundred years like this, with her, than whatever would come next.

”I love you,” Y/N said it first. Would it be the last time they would exchange their words of love?

”I love you too, my darling. So much,” Loki replied softly, struggling to keep his tears at bay. It was hard as they burned his throat. He wanted to stay strong, if not for him, then for her. ”Which is why I’ll have to do this-”

”No!” Y/N protested, digging her fingers into his suit so he couldn’t break free from her grip. Her love and fear gave her more strength than she ever knew she had. ”I won’t let you do that!”

Loki hated arguing with her. But he couldn’t possibly just blurt out that ’yes, my love, I will allow you to sacrifice yourself’ just like that! Not only would it be wrong, but it would haunt him forever.

And Y/N thought just like him.

She glanced at the edge of the cliff that was so close. Although the thought of jumping terrified her, the thought of losing Loki was worse. She was closer to the edge than he was. Y/N had made up her mind.

In order to distract Loki, and somehow herself, she pulled Loki closer to herself and met him with her lips. They melted into a bittersweet kiss and just for a moment, they weren’t there. They existed in a realm that was sculpted from dreams just for them. Their lips met with such love and passion that it nearly made their hearts burst. When the salty tears mixed with the kiss, it felt like they were at a stormy sea together.

Y/N’s entire body was trembling and she noticed she wasn’t alone. As they parted, they locked their eyes one last time, looking at each other silently but their eyes said more than their mouths ever could. It hurt to look away.

”I love you, don’t ever forget that,” Y/N told Loki and leapt away from his arms. He almost caught her, but she was quick. When he realized she was running towards the edge, his stomach dropped in a sick way and it felt like time froze around them. He blocked out everything else around him but her. He acted on instinct as he ran after her. His goal was to catch her.

By using his magic, he tried to reach her.

He was just a little too late.

He watched in horror how her feet left kissed the ground farewell, and she was now facing a fatal free fall.

His magic embraced her. Just for a moment, Loki could keep her in the air safely. He wanted to bring her back on the cliff, but he couldn’t. He didn’t have time to wonder why because she made it clear. Y/N was fighting his magic with her own.

”Y/N!” Loki yelled loudly, his voice echoing through the realm. By now, he felt tears rolling down his face. He stood by the edge and used every ounce of magic and strength he had just to keep her alive. The terror and anger in his body made it hard. His usually steady and skilled hands were trembling as he lingered on the fine line between calm and panic. This couldn’t be happening.

Y/N was sobbing as she fought him. She felt terrible for using her magic against his, because usually it was them against the world. Nevertheless, she tried to smile as she looked at him. Knowing that Loki would be safe was enough to ease her nerves, although she was in the air, hundreds of meters above ground.

”I-It’s okay! It’s okay, Loki!” Y/N sniffled. She knew she was supposed to be more upset but something made her feel calm. She already embraced death, as crazy as it was. Perhaps her brain was trying to numb out the sheer horror of the moment. Y/N tried to catch her breath as she streamed all her power just so she could escape Loki’s magical safety net.

Loki looked horrified. His face was surely paler than before and the sorrow in his eyes weighed him down. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He had made a vow to keep her safe, even if it meant it would cost him his own life! And now he was failing. Oh, what he’d do to be anywhere but here. To hold her and not worry about anyone else. He’d do anything just for that…

”I can’t lose you,” Loki admitted sadly, not caring at all that his strong demeanor was gone. He was a fragile man now as he feared losing the one person he truly cared about. It made him sick.

”You won’t lose me, I’ll….I’ll always be with you,” Y/N smiled despite the fresh tears that stained her face. Loki had always admired her and he still did. ”Just let go of me, it’s OKay.”

He didn’t want to do it, but he had to accept his defeat. There was no way he could save her when she used her powers against him. There were no tricks up his sleeve, no words he could use to change her mind. The situation was more than overwhelming.

Y/N noticed that Loki’s magic was slipping. She found a weak link and she knew if she struck her magic, she would fall. After taking a deep breath, she looked at him one last time. It took all the strength she had not to fall apart. ”I love you, never forget that. You’ll get the stone, you’ll save everyone. It will be alright, Loki. You-” Her voice got stuck in her throat. Y/N blinked away her tears and tried to speak again, although her lips were trembling. ”You’ll be okay, Loki. And I will too, I’ll watch over you from Valhalla.”

Loki wanted to tell her no, she won’t be okay. That she won’t go, that she wouldn’t join the other gods and goddesses in Valhalla yet - - but he wasn’t going to lie. He had to face the truth, which was so far the most painful thing he had ever done.

Y/N struck her magic powerfully at the weak link and Loki flinched when he felt his grip on her slip away. His eyes widened in horror as he realized what she had done. He ran towards the edge, trying to do something – anything, but he couldn’t. He only had to watch her fall and then...she was gone.

”No!” Loki yelled out in pain and fell on his knees since his legs struggled to carry him.

Tears blurred his vision and he blinked. Suddenly Loki found himself in another place. It was much warmer, the storm had stopped. Everything was soft, orange and red. He felt water underneath him. But it gave him no comfort. Loki had just lost the love of his life and it felt like someone had ripped his heart out of his chest.

As he opened his palm, he was met by a bright, golden light. It made his skin tingle warmly. Loki felt just how much power and wisdom it held. He had the stone, but it had cost him everything.

”I will make this right,” Loki whispered, hoping that somehow she could hear him. He wouldn’t give up on her. This couldn’t be the end! It was just too unfair.

Loki would get her back.

💚💚💚

A/N: I haven’t written in a while, so it was fun to write proper angst. I hope you liked it! (If you too are an angst-junkie)

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[ohdearhiddles]

request: What about a one shot where there's a really big age gap between reader and tom and one night the reader tells him that she feels like she's holding him back from settling down/family etc. and he comforts her..... basically fluff please? thanks!!

TITLE: With You

WORD COUNT: 1914

AUTHOR NOTES/WARNINGS: fluff fluff :) i have a problem with writing too much. i hope this was okay!!

The door to your bedroom opened softly, revealing a tired and disheveled Tom. He had been out all day for interviews and public events, working hard even when he was technically not meant to be working at all. His curls were more than just a little messy; he looked as if he had run his fingers through them a countless number of times throughout the day. As your eyes locked with his, he smiled. You smiled back at him, knee bouncing up and down as you sat at the edge of your bed, book in hand. 

“How was your day,” you questioned him, curling your leg underneath you in order to turn in his direction. Tom loosened his tie and sighed before plopping onto the mattress beside you.

“Long,” he responded, nothing more and nothing less. You knew that Tom was having a rough time recently from all the new interviews he had to take part in as his latest work premiered. He was always so kind when being asked questions about not just his work but his life as well. Despite his kindness, it still took a toll on him when interviewers seemed to ask all the wrong questions. From the way he was acting, he most definitely had gotten asked all the wrong questions today.

Instinctively, you reached out to run your fingers through his hair, earning a soft hum of appreciation from your older boyfriend. You knew better than to pry into what’s upsetting him immediately after he had just found a second to relax. When Tom wanted to talk, he would talk. He always did.

You maneuvered yourself closer to him, laying on your side with one arm propping your head up as the other rested on his chest while your hand remained in his hair. By this point, Tom’s eyes were closed as he enjoyed the small gesture you were displaying. As your fingers continuously ran through the locks on his head, his hand made its way onto your thigh where he, too, began administering gentle caresses. It was almost as if he was finding solace in being able to reciprocate the comfort you were providing.

The two of you sat in silence for a few more moments before he opened his eyes and tilted his chin up to look at you. “How about you?”

“Hm?” You hummed in response, not quite sure what he was referring to. “Oh, my day was alright. I just got home from work not too long ago.”

It had been only a month or so since you started your job, and it was safe to say that your employers never failed to remind you that you were a newbie. Sure, it was tough on you, but you didn’t let that stop you from getting the job done. Tom knew it wasn’t exactly easy for you at the workplace because many of your coworkers had already recognized you as a celebrity’s girlfriend, poking fun at the significant age gap between you both.

Tom was 39 years old, a bit older than anyone you had dated in the past, especially because you were still {Y/A}. Between the two of you, the age difference wasn’t that big of a deal, but not everyone saw it the way you did. At first, this was something you said you could accept. Love was about acceptance; at least, that’s what Tom would say. One year later, and these words alone didn’t seem to be quite enough to hold your worries at bay. Looking into his eyes, you could see how tired he was, and you wanted nothing more than to wipe his worries away, but you didn’t know how.

“They kept asking about you today,” he sighed, not because he was upset but because he didn’t want to worry you about it.

“What were they asking about,” you asked, not sure if you wanted to know the answer.

“Well,” Tom started, “they were asking if we were planning on getting married, how our schedules work, if you plan on being a stay-at-home mom since I travel for work.”

Your eyes wandered around the room until they settled on the buttons of his shirt. If you had kept your eyes on Tom, you would have noticed that his eyebrows had knit together at your reaction, his worry only increasing. A minute of silence passed before you realized he was probably waiting for you to react to what he was saying. If you were being honest, you didn’t know what to say. 

Was there a wrong or right answer? Were you supposed to tell him what you had planned for the future?

As your mind raced a hundred miles a minute, Tom’s hands had found your hips as he urged you to straddle his lap. With your knees on either side of him, Tom placed his right hand on the small of your back, holding you steady as his free hand pushed his body to an upright position. You were slightly elevated and his eyes were level with your neck. The position only granted him the access he needed to leave soft kisses along your collarbones and up your neck. Your fingers grasped the back of his neck when he stopped, and you took the opportunity to press a gentle kiss to the bridge of his nose.

“Y/N,” he exhaled, grip tightening around you. “Their questions had me thinking.”

You stilled, not wanting to know where this conversation was going at all. In an effort to keep him from talking, you pressed your lips to his. Of course, Tom knew what you were up to, but even for a split second he also enjoyed the distraction from an otherwise serious topic. The distraction only lasted a few seconds before you felt his hands on your cheeks as he pulled you away from him. In the blink of an eye, his expression had turned serious once again. 

“Y/N,” he tried again, this time holding your face centimeters from his own. “We’re going to have to address these things sooner rather than later.”

You sighed, leaning back from his grasp as your hands fell to your sides. “Okay,” you replied.

“I love you,” he started; his words sent shivers down your spine. “I don’t want to be the reason this relationship falls through, though.”

You tilted your head, not quite understanding what he meant, and he noticed this. He grinned sheepishly before letting out a sigh of his own. You had a feeling these sighs were only the first of many to come in this relationship.

“Your job, are they still giving you a hard time?” He questioned.

“Well, no,” you tried to say, but the look in his eyes immediately showed that he didn’t believe you. “Yes, yes they do, but it’s simple stuff. It’s not like they’re harassing me or making my life entirely too difficult. It’s just a little extra workload here and there.”

His right hand reached up to rest on your cheek, brushing the area beneath your eye. Tom smiled sadly before speaking again, “Darling, I don’t want to be the reason your job is difficult, nor do I want to be the cause of the bags under your eyes. If this continues, you’ll be working yourself to death by the time you’ve fully settled into things.”

Shaking your head adamantly, you firmly disagreed, “It’s nothing coffee and a few days of overtime can’t fix. I can handle it.”

“I’m sure you can, but,” he paused. You wish he hadn’t because your heart stopped beating the second he stopped speaking, impatiently waiting for him to carry on. “This is your dream job, yes?”

You nodded.

“Who am I to make your dream job more of a nightmare?”

“The man I’m in love with,” you answered quickly, knowing where he was going with this already. If he wanted to end this relationship because your job was getting a little too much, what was he going to do when other things started to go south? “You think you’re holding me back from loving what I do?”

It was Tom’s turn to nod. You laughed, almost bitterly, at his thoughts.

“Thomas, you think you’re holding me back?” You asked, voice rising in pitch. Standing from your spot in his lap, you let it all out. “You’re 39; you want to settle down. You want to have a family. Your family wants you to settle down and have a family. I’m not quite sure I’m ready for all that, and you want to say you’re holding me back? I can barely wrap my head around finally starting my career, let alone starting a family right now.”

Tom was standing now, worry etched into his features as he took in your distraught stance. Your hands were in your hair, gripping tightly as if you wanted to rip it out. Your eyes began to sting as tears of worry threatened to fall down your cheeks. With your chest heaving as breathing seemed to get harder by the second, you turned your back to him. You didn’t want to see him get worried over your own feelings of not being able to give him what he wants, and as much as he would like to pretend he didn’t know that you were uncertain about the future and what it might bring, he couldn’t ignore it now.

Tom’s hands reached forward to lightly grip yours, attempting to gently pry your fingers from your hair. As he wrestled your arms to your sides, he pressed his lips to your forehead, softly shushing you until you finally allowed him to comfort your mini meltdown.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured as he wrapped his arms around you. “I didn’t know you were carrying all that with you, I’m sorry.”

You shook your head, knowing that you needed to apologize for semi-yelling at him for something you shouldn’t have even gotten mad at. “No, I’m sorry. It’s just - I sometimes think maybe it’s better if you find someone else, someone who can give you that family and kids because I’m not ready. I’m not ready for marriage, and I’m most definitely not ready for motherhood.”

At the sound of your suggestion, Tom released his hold, eyes now trained on your face. When you looked up to meet his gaze, he looked almost mad. Before you could say anything else, he closed his eyes and let out another deep sigh.

“If it’s not with you, then what’s the point?” He spoke with his eyes still closed. “Yes, we have things to work out, and the future to talk about. And yes, Y/N, I want a family and I want children, but I want that with you. Don’t tell me to find another woman when I’ve already found the person I want to be with. Age, race, or whatever, none of that matters to me as long as it’s with you.”

You stared at him blankly, not knowing how to respond to his declaration. It was almost as if he was proposing to you; part of you wanted to glance around to see if he had a ring in plain view, but you knew he wouldn’t propose like this. 

“But-” you began.

“No, no ‘buts.’” Tom opened his eyes and was quick to cut you off this time. “Take all the time you need until you’re ready to take those steps. I’ll be here waiting alongside you every step of the way.”

[emwritesfootball]

American Girl | Mason Mount

Word Count: 1,949

Warnings: light sex mentions

A birthday gift for my girl @lionspridetingz. Happy birthday, Ads! <3

- - -

When you’d told your friend Christian you were coming to England as part of your study abroad program for a year, he’d immediately offered his place up for you to be his roommate and you’d gratefully accepted. Oddly enough, his place was closer to the university than any of the housing options that were listed, and you were excited to spend time with your childhood friend.

The day before you were set to arrive, however, you got a panicked call from Christian. He was muttering unintelligibly and you couldn’t really hear him over the sounds of the London storm, but you heard enough to know that the room he’d prepared for you had flooded and he was asking his teammates if they would let you stay there while he got that part of his house fixed. Too stunned to say anything other than ‘okay’, you hung up, shaking your head at the insane situation that would only happen to Christian.

Your friend picked you up at the airport the next morning, both of you grinning from ear to ear as he spun you around in a big bear hug. “Fuck, I missed you,” he drawled, instinctively grabbing your massive suitcases that you’d barely managed to haul off the conveyor belt at the checked bag station.

“I missed you, too,” you replied, playfully bumping his shoulder with your own. “So, where are you taking me?”

“Mason’s place. Some of the other guys also offered to take you in but he’s the one I trust most, so I picked him. I hope that’s okay.”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” you hummed absently, but internally you were reeling. You’d never met Mason Mount in person but you’d met him plenty of times over FaceTime while you’d been talking with Christian, and somewhere along the way, you’d managed to fall for the England player. You knew you’d be meeting Christian’s teammates at some point, but you hadn’t expected to be living with the one you had a crush on.

You zoned out on the drive to Mason’s place, telling Christian you were just taking in the sights when he asked. It wasn’t a full-on lie - you were taking in all the new sights that were so different from Pennsylvania’s Americana charm, but you were also thinking about Mason and wondering what it would be like to live with him.

Christian shutting off the engine to the car brought you out of your daydreams and you stared at your new home for the next few months.

***

Mason walked out when he heard Christian pull into the drive. He couldn’t believe his luck, having such a beautiful girl live with him while Christian got his place fixed after the flood. Not that you’re gonna do anything about it, the internal voice in his head screamed. Christian had made him promise he wouldn’t try anything with his friend, and Mason fully intended to keep that promise.

She was even more beautiful in person. Mason felt his throat go dry and his palms start to sweat as he took her in. She was in travel clothes - leggings and an oversize hoodie; her hair up in a messy bun - but he couldn’t help going speechless. If she looks this good now, imagine how good she’ll look dressed up for the awards dinner at the end of the season, he couldn’t help thinking, but quickly tried to regain composure as Christian’s voice brought him out of his own head.

“Mase! Thanks again for doing this, man - I really appreciate it.”

“No problem. Glad I could help.” Mason turned his attention to her. “Hey. Nice to finally meet you in person.”

You giggled, hoping your blush wasn’t obvious. “You, too. Thanks for letting me stay here.”

“Of course.” Mason reached for the duffel you were holding, his fingers brushing yours as he took the bag. “Any friend of Christian’s is a friend of mine.”

You felt a little dejected at the statement, but you tried to tamp it down. Just because you had feelings for Mason didn’t mean that he had to have feelings for you. Plus, as one of Christian’s teammates, he was definitely off-limits - no matter how badly you wanted him. You followed him through his house, trying to keep your eyes ahead of you instead of on his toned back or ass, which proved harder than you thought.

The room was beautifully decorated and you held your breath for a moment while you took it in. It was a beach theme, whites and light blues everywhere. The decor told you a woman must have decorated it, and you felt a pit in your stomach when you remembered that he and Chloe had recently broken up, but that it was entirely possible that she’d been the one to design this. “It’s beautiful; thank you, Mason,” you murmured, setting your bags down. Christian set your large suitcase down next to the dresser, and Mason put your duffel on top of it.

“Let me know if you need anything. This place is yours now, too, so make yourself at home.”

“We’ll be in the living room playing FIFA but if you want help unpacking just let us know.” Christian gave you a smile that you returned and both boys exited, leaving you alone with your thoughts.

***

Two weeks into living with Mason, and the two of you were the best of friends. Of course, you were still closer with Christian, but Mason was getting there. You did your uni work during the day while he was at training and the two of you would cook dinner at night, planning out the following day’s meal afterward so you could go shopping for fresh ingredients in-between your classes. On the nights you weren’t prepping for the following day’s uni classes, you and Mason relaxed on the sofa with a movie or some trashy British reality show. It was the best part of your week, honestly, and you couldn’t believe how easily the two of you had fallen into a routine. On the colder nights when you were both snuggled under individual blankets, you couldn’t concentrate on the movie because you were distracted thinking about how badly you’d like to snuggle under one blanket with Mason.

***

“Are you coming to the match tomorrow?” Mason asked the night before the first match you’d be attending in London.

“Yeah,” you said smiling, turning to face him. The two of you were unwinding on a Friday night, and you were once again wishing you could be snuggling with him instead of sitting on the opposite end of the sofa.

“Do you, uh, do you need a kit to wear?” Mason couldn’t believe he was stuttering over his words, feeling incredibly awkward in front of you for no reason. Well, he knew the reason but he wasn’t going to dwell on something that wasn’t going to happen.

You paused, your heart racing. “Oh. Uhm, I have one of Christian’s that I was planning on wearing?” You couldn’t believe you were turning down the opportunity to wear Mason’s kit in the stands but you knew Christian would get suspicious and wearing Mason’s kit felt too intimate for you - even though nothing was happening between you and Mason.

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

You felt bad, watching Mason visibly blush and run a hand through his hair as he chuckled awkwardly. “Don’t worry about it - maybe one day.”

Both of you could feel the tension in the air at the last part of your sentence, but neither of you acted on it. It was a line you weren’t ready to cross, but something told you it would be happening sooner rather than later.

***

Over the next month, the two of you got closer on the sofa. Soon, separate blankets became one blanket and you snuggling into his side became your legs over his lap with your head on his shoulder. You hadn’t kissed yet, but both of you knew it was going to happen sooner or later.

You shared everything with him - your thoughts and feelings on anything; your childhood; your past - and he did the same with you. Mason soon came to know what mood you were in by the tone of your ‘good morning’ and you could read him better than Christian. You knew that Mason was worried about not getting a call-up for this latest round of World Cup Qualifiers - something he hadn’t told anyone on the team - so the morning he got the call was huge.

“It’s Southgate,” he’d whispered when his phone went off at breakfast one morning.

“You got this,” you reassured him, watching him like a hawk as he picked up the phone.

Mason’s expression was neutral as he nodded and said, “Yes, sir,” over and over into the phone.

“Well?” You asked when he hung up.

“I got the call-up,” he said, the disbelief in his voice evident.

“Oh, my god! Mase!” You stood up, enveloping him in a hug. “I’m so proud of you!”

Mason returned your hug, so overwhelmed by emotion that he didn’t even realize he’d kissed you until you were pulling back, looking at him with an odd look on your face. “I-”

“Shut up and kiss me again, Mase,” you murmured, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck and pulling him in for another kiss.

***

Your relationship grew from there, but the two of you kept it a secret, not wanting to tell anyone until you were ready. Slowly, your things moved from the guest bedroom to his bedroom, and you spent every night in his bed. Mason loved having you in his bed, drifting off to sleep to the sound of your American accent as you told him stories. You loved getting to spend your nights in his bed, the feeling of waking up next to him better than anything else in your world at the moment.

Slowly, you started wearing Mason’s kit underneath Christian’s, making sure Christian’s wasn’t visible when Mason bent you over the sofa and fucked you senseless after matches.

“I think I’m ready to tell everyone,” Mason said one night as the two of you were cuddling in bed the night before another big match. “That is, if you are, too.”

“Yeah, I think I am,” you murmured, pressing a kiss to his sternum. “After the match tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

***

Chelsea’s unbeaten streak under Tuchel continued, a big win coming against United. You hadn’t seen Christian before the match so you’d switched out his shirt for Mason’s, the ‘Mount 19’ on your back feeling lighter than air as you ran onto the pitch after the match and immediately kissed him. “I’m so proud of you, baby,” you said, kissing him again for good measure. He’d scored a goal and you couldn’t wait to congratulate him.

“What the fuck is this?” Christian’s voice cut in and you and Mason jumped apart.

“She’s my girl,” Mason explained, the words filling you with warmth as he pulled you back into him and slung and arm around your shoulder.

“We’re together.”

“I can see that,” Christian grumbled, looking between the two of you. “It’s a little weird so it’ll take some getting used to, but okay. You,” he said, pointing at you, “don’t hurt him. And you,” Christian pointed at Mason, “if you hurt her, I’ll hurt you.”

You rolled your eyes. “We know, Christian.”

“C’mon, Angel,” Mason murmured, pressing a kiss to your temple, “let’s get home so we can celebrate your birthday properly.”

“You remembered?” You asked, shocked.

“Of course. I’ve been into you since the moment you moved into my guest bedroom - how could I forget?” He leaned down, kissing you properly. “Happy birthday, Angel.”