#and keep them from throwing their lives away | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

knightjpg · 2 days ago

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chase

tags: 🔞plot what plot/pwp, fingering, unprotected piv sex, wall sex, chasing, established relationship, fluff

Sylus comes home to an empty house. This is not unusual. The twins are out for a scouting job, Mephisto is monitoring elsewhere as per Sylus’ instructions, and you...

Well, where are you?

Sylus looks at your shoes neatly lined up next to his in the hallway. This is also not unusual. But it has been a while since you've had the time to come to the N109 for a surprise visit: your work keeps you much busier than he likes, and you steadfastly turn down his offers to start working for him instead.

“Don't you feel sorry for your accountant? Think about what kind of HR nightmare that would be,” you told him while he was in the middle of unbuttoning your clothes.

“My accountant enjoys excellent benefits. She should be prepared for as much.” Sylus tugged at your shirt. “Arms up, my love.” You obliged—and after that he dropped it because his mouth was busy doing other things.

Sylus had been preparing for another long night spent with only a glass of wine and his vinyl for company; perhaps a phone call from you, if lady luck deigns to smile on him for once. These half-formed plans are rapidly abandoned at the sight of a trace of your presence. He misses you. He's been missing you. Could it be that you were missing him, too?

Sylus opens the door to his bedroom.

“Beloved?”

No answer. He checks the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room, the armoury, and the training hall; he even pokes his head in the private movie hall in case you fell asleep while watching something again.

But you're not there, and no one responds to his call. But your shoes are here. Did you step out? Sylus is just about to check the cameras when his ears perk up; he doesn't catch any footsteps, but there is very faint click that happens when the hallway door doesn't want to close properly.

He leaves the mini cinema with quick, decisive strides, and throws open the door leading to his study.

Empty.

Then, behind him through the walls, a soft laugh. He whirls around and looks—and finds nothing.

“So we're playing, kitten?” he says, lips starting to curl into a smile. His shoulders relax, steps growing softer and more cautious. His eyes search the area carefully. “Now where could a little thing like you be hiding?”

Sylus can just imagine the kind of smug grin you must be wearing right now, tucked away in your hiding spot. He retraces what he's heard from you so far; through his study, then back to the hallway, to the left, right down to...

He opens the door to his bedroom again. This time he's much more thorough; he doesn't satisfy himself with simply looking and calling for you. His eyes bore into the shadows, the corners, even under the king-sized bed; but you're not there. Are you playing tricks on him again? He doesn't think you'd pick the adjacent bathroom since it's a dead end, but if you are here it sure would be a convenient opportunity for you to slip away again were he to check.

He pretends to be at a loss, stroking one hand over his face. “I hope you know that people who play tricks on me will have to pay up once I catch them,” he says, gaze sweeping over the furniture. “It's not too late. You can come out now, and I'll be merciful.”

He waits, even though he already knows exactly what your answer will be. “Alright,” he says into the silence, smile widening. “Prepare yourself. Here I come.”

He struts confidently to the bathroom and then, once the exit is in his blind spot—

—his Evol slams the door closed in front of your nose. He delights in your little gasp, the funny jump-hop you do as you instinctively try to melt into the shadows again. But he's got you now, and you know it too. Once his eye has caught you you're not leaving again without his knowing.

“That's cheating!” you say in a breathless laugh.

“Then come closer and tell me the rules of your little game,” Sylus coaxes in a low voice.

“Maybe,” you say, shifting your weight when he takes a step closer. “If you can catch me.”

Sylus immediately takes two quick steps forward. You dart away before his hand can grasp you, backing away rapidly and effectively trapping yourself between the wall and his side of the bed. Sylus advances without pausing and you don't hesitate either; before he can reach out you jump-and-roll over the bed.

Sylus barks a laugh and climbs right after you, grinning wide with sharp teeth. You circle the bed, panting and laughing while Sylus’ fingers get ever-closer. He doesn't use his Evol; he can win without, and anyhow it's a lot more fun to see you working so hard. Your cheeks are flushed with exertion, and you laugh at him when he swipes at you again and you dance away.

You're locked in a stalemate—if he goes right, you go left. If he goes left, you go right. If he vaults over the bed you'll simply clamber away from him again.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asks, amused.

“Duh,” you laugh, jumping away when he tries to grab for you again. “I'm winning.”

Not for long anymore you're not. Sylus hums, pretends to lean into one direction, then charges forward. You let out a yelp and scurry away from him until you're on the bed and he's facing you, knees bent, ready to strike. You're right where he wants you.

“Here I come,” he mock-growls, then lunges at you right-on.

You gasp when his body collides with yours and you struggle against him, wrestling with the unfair advantage his size gives him. You hook your leg under his and he doesn't fight it, just lets gravity do its thing and collapses on top of you. You push against his shoulders, try to wriggle a knee out so you can leverage some weight, and Sylus laughs when you manage to get one arm free and go for an elbow in the gut.

He stops you, one knee pressing down on a mischievous leg that was in the middle of preparing a sneaky kick, and uses two hands, then one, to catch your wrists and hold them up by your head. You strain and puff and struggle, but the soft mattress under you is working against you. Without a solid surface to push against you're much more vulnerable to his raw strength, and eventually you slump in defeat.

“I win,” Sylus says smugly.

He's breathing hard, hair falling in his face, and chuckles when you wrinkle your nose. “’S not fair,” you complain, tugging against his grip. “You're, like, twice my size. This match has been rigged from the start.”

“Then should I let you win next time?”

Sylus lowers his head to nuzzle against your cheek and you laugh-wriggle away from him, leg jerking instinctively against where he has it trapped beneath his weight. “That tickles! And no, you're not allowed to let me win. I wanna do it myself.”

That's right. He loves you so much.

“Then I'll be waiting,” he smiles against your neck. “But for now...” He places a kiss against your pulse, teeth grazing against skin. “I'm going to enjoy today's catch.”

He lifts his head and kisses you, slow and deep, hand leaving your wrists to stroke your cheek, your neck, trailing down to your chest. You hum, arching into his touch, and wrap your arms around his shoulders. Sylus relaxes; he loses himself in your taste, and hums approvingly when you lock your legs around his waist.

“Sylus,” you say sweetly, pulling away to cup his face in your hands. “You forgot something.”

He raises a brow—and then he's flipped on his back with an undignified oomf.

You scramble away from him, half-slipping, half-falling off the bed that's now just a messy nest of blankets and pillows. “Forgot to keep up your guard,” you tease him, and dart for the door.

Sylus huffs and pushes himself up on his elbows. “And this from someone who cried cheating earlier,” he tsks, but he can't help the pleased smile on his face when he watches you try and fail to open the lock. With a snap of his fingers he materialises behind you, pressing you against the door. “Since you're playing dirty,” he murmurs into your ear, “don't think I'll be fair, either.”

You try to squeeze past him and you almost manage, like a cat that goes liquid whenever he tries to touch it. But Sylus is expecting it this time. He firmly wraps his body around your own, hand cupping your throat. His pointer finger pushes your jaw up until you're looking back and up at him. He feels you swallow.

So pretty.

Sylus presses his hard-on against your ass. His little cat. His Hunter and his prey. You wiggle against him in response, though it seems less like you're trying to get free and more like you're trying to get him more worked up.

He likes this game, too.

Sylus' eyes darken, and he slides his other hand up your blouse, over your breast, thumbing over your nipple. Your lips part, lashes fluttering, and you arch into his touch. A needy sound escapes you, and Sylus presses you a little harder into the wall.

“Was this wanted you wanted, sweetie?” he murmurs. “Wanted me to run around and chase you,” and he grazes his teeth over the spot behind your ear, “so I could have my way with you like this?”

“Mm-hmm,” you breathe. “Is it working?”

Sylus bites down in response. You whine so prettily when he does. The sound goes straight to his cock, and he rolls his hips against you to let you know that it most certainly is working. The pads of his fingers press down gently on your throat, keeping you in place so he can kiss you while his other releases your breast and travels down. Past the button and the zipper, petting gently over the curls on your mound, and then he dips two fingers inside your dripping cunt.

You gasp into his mouth, body jerking against the sudden intrusion; he usually works you slowly, meticulously, making sure you're ready until you're begging for him to hurry up and put it in already. But—

“So wet already,” he rasps against your lips. “Did you like it that much? Hm?”

He curls his fingers, fucking into you a little deeper, and you buck your hips with a choked moan. He takes that as a yes. Sylus keeps holding you there, up against the wall, his body flush against yours. The wet shlick of his fingers overlaps with his groans and your reedy whines.

You've melted against him, throat bared, trusting him to keep you upright. Sylus breathes harshly, pupils dilating. That's right. He caught you. You're all his, now, and he won't let you leave this room without the reminder dripping out of you. That said—

When your breath picks up and he feels you start to tighten around his fingers he stills.

“What,” you whine. “Hey, no, why'd you stop?” You try to move your hips, desperate for friction, but Sylus has you pinned against the wall too tightly to allow for movement. A little punishment for your antics.

“You want it?” Sylus rolls his hips. “Ask nicely. Hm? Beg me. Beg for my help.”

Exasperated, you lean your head against his shoulder. “You're so stingy,” you complain. “You already won, and now you want me to—”

Sylus promptly thrusts his fingers back inside, thumb pressing on your clit, and you hiccup with the sudden intensity of it. He works you right back to the edge, and when you start to shake he stops once more. The sound that leaves your mouth is close to a sob, now, and he doesn't have to prompt you again:

“Please—fine, please, please? Please, Sylus—I need it, I really need it—”

You make an indignant sound when he removes his hand entirely, but he doesn't leave you dissatisfied for long; his trousers are unzipped, shucked down, and then the head of his cock presses against your entrance.

“Hands on the wall,” he instructs. You oblige. You look over your shoulder with dark cheeks and glittering eyes while Sylus' Evol works your pants and underwear down to your ankles. Sylus spits in his hand and coats his cock with a few impatient pumps; then he slowly eases himself inside.

“Oh,” you whimper, and Sylus answers with a groan. It steals the breath from him every time, the tight heat of you around him. He keeps going until he's sheathed as far as he can go, fingers working your clit, and when he bottoms out you stiffen, back arching, pulsing around him with ragged breaths and a choked whimper.

You're killing him.

“Oh, sweetie. Just from that? You really did need it.” But Sylus’ voice is wrecked, and any teasing he might've done flies straight out of the window when your walls clench around him again, riding out the last waves. It's too much. His hips roll against your ass without thought, a little too rough and a little too deep and you moan openly, trembling, and Sylus wraps his arm around your waist to keep you pressed against him when your arms start to buckle.

When he bites down on your shoulder you tighten around him again, hot and wet and fucking delicious, and Sylus widens his stance to fuck into you harder with a grunt. He's sweating, still fully dressed in his work clothes, and the edge of his belt digs into his pelvis uncomfortably. His breath is hot in his mouth. Spit clings to his lips when he removes his teeth from your neck.

“Sylus—wait, 'm gonna fall, wait wait wait hang on—” you whimper when a particularly hard thrust makes your knees start to give out. He pulls out with wet shlick and impatiently tugs one leg of your pants free completely before spinning you around and picking you up in his arms. Yes. This is much better. He holds you up with one arm and pushes back inside you with his other hand, and then he pins you against the wall again. This way he can kiss you while he fucks you. His beloved always has the best ideas.

You wrap your arms around his shoulders, ankles locking behind his back while Sylus slots his mouth over yours. “Oh god,” you choke out in between gasping for air. “You're so—slow down, I'll—”

“Give me one more.” Sylus presses his nose against your cheek, skin sweaty and hot. “You feel—so good, beloved, I know you can give me one more—”

Sylus hitches you higher in his arms so he can hit you just that little bit deeper, pelvis flush against yours, and you let out a helpless moan, face buried against his shoulder back while he continues to fuck you until you give him what he wants. You come on his cock with a tremble and a cry.

Sylus follows immediately after, no longer able to stave off his pleasure when yours is milking him like that, and he fills you with a low groan in his throat. You twitch in his grasp, tired and hot and full of his cum.

When Sylus gets ready to lower you back to your feet you squeeze your arms around his shoulder tighter. He pauses; your face is still buried against his neck, and he turns his head to kiss your hair. “What's wrong?”

“Give—” your ears burn red. “Give me a minute. My legs are numb.”

Sylus laughs and squeezes you against him in a hug before his hands move down to cup your ass. He carries you to the bed like that, lowering you onto the sheets gently. By doing so he pulls out of you, finally, and you make a dismayed sound.

“Ugh. I'm going to leak all over the sheets.” You shimmy your hips, angling them up to postpone the inevitable drip. “Can you hand me a towel?”

Sylus hums. “I could.” He stays where he is. He strokes your face, then down to your sides, then down again to put his hand over your lower stomach. Something of his is still inside you. He's loathe for it to disappear. You jerk a little when he thumbs over your slit; the first few pearly-white drops are beginning to appear. He pushes them back gently, first with one finger, then two; you exhale sharply when he curls them against your inner walls.

He's still hard, but this would've been enough to put him at full mast again.

“Or I could just keep it inside instead,” he murmurs. “Like this. Or would you prefer my cock?”

He looks back up. He's amused to find you flustered; your cheeks are flushed again, and you avert your eyes. “Aren't you tired? You were carrying me for a while.”

Sylus scoffs. As if holding you would ever tire him. He keeps curling his fingers, lazy and soft. Pushing his cum back in whenever it threatens to spill. “Is that a no?”

“Not a no...”

Sylus smiles wide. “Excellent.” He pulls his fingers out and flips you on your stomach. He pulls off his pants completely and rips open the buttons of his blouse, impatient and sweaty with the afterburn of need. When you start to push yourself up, looking back over your shoulder, you're pressed down again by his hand between your shoulder blades. “Not so fast,” he says, lips curling up. “Did you forget that I ‘caught’ you? You're not going anywhere anytime soon.”

You shiver when he grabs your hips, angling them back and up to notch his cock against, and then he sinks into you again.

He keeps you there for a long time, in the mess you made of his sheets during your rough-and-tumbling, taking what he wants and giving back whatever you ask for. All the things you don't ask for, too; he kisses you, holds you close, tells you how beautiful you are, that he loves you, adores you, needs you, again, just one more time. One last time. Just one more.

“You said that last time,” you pant when he slumps over you again. Your voice comes out funny; his weight has squashed you against the bed, and you wriggle your hips against him helplessly. Despite your fatigue you sound fondly exasperated.

“You said okay last time too,” Sylus counters. He buries his nose in your neck and inhales. The room smells like sex, hazy and warm. “This is a great game. We should play more often.”

He places a kiss on your shoulder and rolls off you, then, and you laugh. You turn your head so you can look at him and smile. “Okay. Maybe next time it can be you who hides, and I'll come find you.”

Sylus’ pupils dilate. “Are you sure you don't want—”

“No!” you smack his chest playfully. “Enough! We need water. And food. I'm hungry, and if you keep going you're going to be so dehydrated. You'll have a headache all day tomorrow and complain.”

Sylus catches your hand and uses it to pull the rest of you to him. He tucks your head under his chin and curls one hand protectively around the back of your neck, thumb resting on your pulse. The thump of your heartbeat puts him at ease. He thought he was going a little crazy before; before you allowed him close, before you allowed him to take care of you, before you allowed him to love you. When you retreated back into your shell and disappeared from him for weeks on end.

Although getting to have you like this—smiling, in his arms, kissing him, touching him—has done wonders for his cortisol levels the stress has not, to his dismay, disappeared. If anything he feels more anxious now. The thought of you getting hurt is unbearable. It's not because he's worried you can't handle whatever you're tackling, or that you're not strong enough, or not smart enough. It's the world he mistrusts. He knows hurt, and he knows hatred. He wishes badly to keep you from becoming equally intimately acquainted.

“Baby?”

His heart swells. “Yes?”

You pull back to look at him. “You okay? You got quiet all of a sudden.”

Sylus hums and dips his head to kiss you. “I'm fine. I was thinking about what I should make you for dinner.”

“Pasta. With the nice wine. Please and thank you.”

Sylus chuckles. “The ‘nice wine’ is called Chardonnay. But alright. Pasta it is.”

You snuggle closer again, tucking your head against his chest. You nudge for Sylus to lift his arm so you can slip yours around his waist. “Oh, I know Chardonnay. I have some at home, actually. Tara and I are planning to get wine drunk next weekend and they had a sale at the corner store, so I bought two.”

Sylus mentally files away that appointment in his head; he'll have painkillers and a hangover tonic delivered to you the next morning. “You can hardly compare the dishwater in those bottles to what we're drinking tonight. Just because they call it the same doesn't mean it is.”

“My god, you're a snob. Dishwater...”

Sylus laughs, low and soft. “That's right. And I'll spoil you with Domaine d’Auvenay until you are, too. You can bring your wine here and try drinking it after you have some of mine. See what you have to say then.”

“Hey, don't underestimate the power of growing up poor. My corner store Chardonnay is perfectly adequate, thank you.”

You're poking fun at him, but Sylus can't bring himself to smile. All these years, and you were right there. Growing up poor. Lacking what he could have provided for you. For all that he has now, loss continues to haunt him like a second shadow. You, of course, are the light source.

“You must have been very cute as a little girl.”

“Don't be disappointed, but I looked kind of goofy when I was a kid.” You push yourself up on your elbows and look down at Sylus, smiling slightly. “I could show you, if you want. Not a lot of photos survived, but I do still have some.”

“You do?” Sylus says eagerly.

“Mhm. Buuut if you wanna see them you have to promise you'll say you think I'm really pretty. Even when I was wearing braces. And when Caleb tried to cut my hair for the first time and it looked so bad.”

Sylus laughs. “I promise,” he says. The easiest one he's ever made. “I always think you look pretty. You steal my breath away. You keep getting cuter and prettier every time I see you, did you know that? One day I might have to eat you.”

“Don't threaten me with a good time.” You sit up, tugging on Sylus’ arm. “But not right now. I'm super sweaty and I'd taste so bad, your snob tastebuds couldn't handle it. You know what else we can eat though? Pasta. With nice wine.”

Sylus is dearly tempted to disprove your claim; he knows that if you'd let him lick every inch of you clean he and his snob tastebuds would enjoy themselves immensely. But his kitten is hungry. Like you said, not right now. Perhaps after. His cock twitches when he thinks about fucking you, feeding you, and then fucking you again. A perfect way to end his day.

“Alright. Let's go get your pasta on the way.”

You beam and press a quick kiss to his lips before getting up. Sylus watches you grumble about your back while you rifle through his drawers for clean clothes, and thinks, not for the first time, that he could have this every day and not ever tire of it.

You think you can go back after tasting the difference between corner store wine and high-end Chardonnay? Now that Sylus has had a taste of finer things the empty house he comes home to is bland and lifeless. Without your presence even his shiny baubles lose their charm.

Sylus rises from the bed and takes the shirt you're holding, motioning for you to lift your arms so he can put it on for you. He wants to keep you here. He wants this to be every day. Moments like these, ones where he has you all of you, fully, etch out their painfully lonely counterparts with stark clarity. How is he meant to survive tomorrow night without seeing your disheveled hair after you change clothes? Without hearing you mumble in your sleep? Without watching you look around the room, puzzled, wondering where the hell your underwear ended up this time, with your hands on your hips?

It seems impossible altogether. Perhaps it's time to put aside the work contracts he's been dangling in front of your nose all this time. There's other things you can sign that will bind you to him forever, too.

When you've both cleaned up and are dressed in comfortable clothes you hop up on your tiptoes to kiss him. “I love you,” you smile.

With those three words the worries of the world fade. Sylus smiles too. There was once a time he dreamed of this. “I love you, sweetheart,” he returns. You hold his hand all the way to the kitchen.

He comforts himself with this. You're as reluctant to let go of him as he is of you. You'll spend tonight together. You'll fall asleep in his arms, and he'll close his eyes listening to your heartbeat. Before you drift off he'll tell you he loves you again, and you'll mumble, half-asleep, that you do too.

Sylus takes great solace in the thought that this is not unusual, either.

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butyoudidthis4what · 3 days ago

Note

Congrats on 1k!!!

Frothing at the mouth for "I'm taking care of you now." And/Or "Let's get you in the shower and we'll take it from there." With Jack Abbot.

Thank you so much! I'm happy to have you here with me and thank you for sending in this prompt! ♥️ I went with "I'm taking care of you now" since I did the shower line with Jack in Tepid and this is a little follow on. It also involves showering but not quite that exact line! I hope you enjoy and it's okay!

I didn't originally think this is where the "I'm taking care of you now" prompt would go, but when I got an ask about whether I had something in mind where Jack got sick after taking care of Reader in Tepid, I felt the "now" in the prompt made it a good fit for doing just that!

Lukewarm (or Tepid Part 2)

Jack Abbot x F!Reader

1.6k || All my content is 18+ MDNI || CW: None, really. General cold/flu discussion. Some sadness about getting Jack sick. Use of Jackie because it's my favorite and I've decided to embrace it. 😂 Fluff. No use of y/n or related.

Summary: Jack gets sick after taking care of you.

AN: Another fluffy sick fic but this time Jack is sick! I hope it's okay, for some reason I really don't like this but can't say why and was convinced to post.

“You know, if I didn’t feel so fucking awful about it I would absolutely be saying I told you so.”

You’re not quite completely over the flu that has had Jack taking care of you the last two days but you are now doing considerably better than he is. Because, like you were worried about, he did in fact get it from you. You knew the second you woke up to Jack’s sweat-dampened skin and sheets.

He’s still incredibly sleepy, having just been woken up by your kisses to his face, and you’re sure he’s groggy from the flu. “I think you just did.” His voice is already pretty raw.

You run a hand through his sweat slicked curls but keep your body away from his as much as possible so your body heat doesn’t make him feel even hotter. “You know I feel awful for giving it to you,” you murmur.

Jack opens his eyes and blinks for a couple of seconds until you come into focus. “I do. But it’s not your fault. It just happens when you live together and take care of the person you love.” He gives you a tired but genuine smile.

You don’t like seeing Jack sick and in pain. He’s had too much pain in his life already, he shouldn’t have to endure any more. “Yeah,” you shrug, “but it could have been avoided if you had avoided me and let me just take care of myself.”

He gives you a look. “And if I had it first you would’ve not taken care of me to avoid the risk of getting sick?”

“No,” you admit. “But that’s different.”

“Oh I can’t wait to hear this explanation,” Jack mutters.

“It doesn’t matter if I got sick and was miserable. It matters greatly if you are.” You truly believe it too.

Jack just stares at you for a couple of seconds, eyes glassy and bloodshot from the flu. “I genuinely don’t even know what to say to that bullshit.” He starts to cough and winces at the pain it flares in his throat. He feels awful knowing this is how miserable you felt. And he hates that you think you deserve to be miserable and how guilty he knows you’re feeling. Jack looks at you with soft eyes. “It matters just as much. It matters to me.”

Even with the significantly darkened eye bags he’s still unfairly handsome. You try not to let your guilt and sadness come through too much because he’ll start focusing on taking care of you and your mental health and not getting better and letting you take care of him.

So you move on. “I’m going to get you some water and meds, okay? Do you want a zofran?”

“Probably, yeah. The nausea isn’t bad but I’d like to keep it that way and not have the meds hit my stomach and immediately throw them up.” Jack forces himself to sit up and groans. “God the body aches, you weren’t kidding about feeling like you’d been hit by a semi.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry Baby. Hopefully it’ll pass quickly for you and the pain meds will help. I’ll be right back, okay?” You lean in and give his forehead a kiss before sliding out of bed.

You head to the bathroom and grab the same combo of meds Jack had been giving you the last two days. With you taking them and now Jack, you’re going to need more soon. You know he’d be more than fine but you don’t really want to leave him here alone. You head to the kitchen and grab some water, before making your way back to the bedroom.

“I’m texting Robby asking him to bring more meds and to let him know you won’t be at work tomorrow,” you tell Jack as you walk to his side of the bed and give him the zofran to put under his tongue first.

“Don’t.” He shakes his head and then winces at the movement. “I’m sure I’ll be fine to go to work tomorrow.”

It’s your turn to give him a look. “I’m pretending I didn’t hear that.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Not happening, Jack.” You put the meds in his palm when he holds it out for you, give him the water in his other hand. “I’m taking care of you now, okay?” You rest your hands on his bare chest and rub soothingly. “And part of that with you is preventing you from pushing yourself and making yourself worse or prolonging how long you’re sick.”

Jack sets the water back down before looking back to you. “You don’t have to. I’m a big boy, can take care of myself. And you’re not even completely better yourself. I should still be taking care of you.”

You sigh and shake your head at him, playfully enough for him to know there’s nothing serious behind it. “I’m much better, more than well enough to care for you. And I distinctly recall saying that if you got sick from me I was going to take care of you and didn’t want any pushback and you agreeing to that.”

“You weren’t supposed to remember that conversation.” He smiles at you and tilts his head.

“Well I do.” You move your hands to his face and use your fingertips to gently massage his inflamed sinuses. He groans softly in relief.

“Thank you,” he mumbles as his eyes flutter closed and he basks in the relief your fingers are providing. He thinks back to the first day you were sick. “There’s going to be a delay in making that wink up to you.”

You laugh softly. “I’m really not worried about that right now, Baby. I’m worried about getting you feeling better.”

He hums in acknowledgment. “I’m mad I could have been kissing you on the lips this whole time.”

You laugh softly. “Is that your way of asking for a kiss?”

Jack smiles at you. It’s still a bit weak and his eyes betray just how tired and shitty he’s feeling but they also show how excited he is at the prospect of getting to kiss you again.

You move your hands to cup his face and then lean in, let him take all the kisses he wants from you. When he’s done for now he rests his forehead on yours. “You’ve definitely got the same fever.” You frown a little, hate that he got it from you so much you could scream. “I’ll take your temp in a minute.”

Jack shrugs in a don’t worry about it way. It doesn’t work. You’ll still be taking his temperature in a minute. “I’m sorry for getting you and the sheets sweaty,” he murmurs as he pulls his forehead from yours.

“You have nothing to apologize for.” You smile at him and push a few curls stuck to his forehead back. “We should get you into a lukewarm shower before you get the chills, though. It’ll be far more enjoyable for you I think.”

Jack whines. He’s slowly letting himself have this and lean into it. Being sick and miserable and getting taken care of. He hasn’t had that for a long, long time. And it’s not just that you take care of him, you enjoy it, you love it. He knows it makes you feel good. “I’ll be fine here.”

“Feeling cleaner will make you feel at least a little better.” You tilt your head as your smile becomes knowing as you repeat his words to you back to him. “It did for me. It made me feel a lot better. I’ll change the sheets and then once you’re showered we’ll come back to bed, okay? And if you’re feeling cooler and up to it you can snuggle and cuddle up to me however you want.”

“I might get you and the sheets all sweaty again.” He suddenly gets why you felt so bad and were so worried about it.

You give him a little smirk. “Good, I love it when you get me and the sheets all sweaty. Not for this reason but, you know. I don’t mind.”

He groans but there’s a laugh to it. “Don’t make me think about the sex I can’t have with you, cruel woman.”

“I’ll make it up to you once you’re feeling better, I promise.”

You help Jack get in the shower after you take his temperature, and then like he did for you, you change the sheets and meet him back in the shower to help him. He’s not as hot once you get him back in bed, isn’t sweating anymore. Not that you would care if he was, you’re just glad that he’s cooled down enough to not be. You’re also glad the chills haven’t hit him yet and are hoping they never will.

And as promised you let him snuggle up to you however he wants which ends up being both of you naked and Jack laying nearly completely on top of you, his head resting on your chest with half of his torso on your body, leg and arm thrown over you. It’s adorable how quickly he starts to fall asleep on you.

“You gonna be okay?” His voice is a little slurred with sleep.

You start to run a hand through his wet curls, scratch at and massage his scalp a little. “I’m going to be just fine, my love.”

He hums in appreciation, forces out a few more words. “Wake me if you need me.” “I will. And if you wake up and need something and I’ve dozed off you wake me, okay?” You don’t expect much of, if any, answer from him. Your hands in his hair in bed while cuddled together always knocks him out fast, but especially now when he’s sick.

“Mhm,” he hums.

You smile to yourself. His hum is adorable and makes your heart ache with how much you love him. So even though you know he’s already asleep on you, you still tell him. “Love you, Jackie.”

I hope it was alright and enjoyable! Thank you so much for reading! Your support and your interactions mean the world to me! ♥️

I'm not using my complete Jack tag lists on the drabbles, so if you're on that list and didn't get tagged that's why!

Want more Jack? Check out my masterlist here.

Interact with this post if you'd like to join my Jack tag list, this post if you'd like to join my Robby tag list, and this post if you'd like to join my Andrew Pope Cody tag list! (Each tag list is a separate post!)

Divider by @saradika-graphics.

#followers celebration #jack abbot #jack abbot imagine #jack abbot x reader #jack abbot x you #jack abbot fanfic #jack abbot fanfiction #jack abbot fluff #jack abbot sick fic #the pitt fanfic #the pitt fanfiction #the pitt x reader #the pitt x you #jack abbott #jack abbott x reader #jack abbott x you #dr jack abbot #dr jack abbott

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aspoonofsugar · 2 days ago

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What do you think of Shisui in The Apothecary Diaries?

Hi!

I love her, she is my favorite character <3 She stole the season as the (fake) villain she is!

Shisui is a foil to both Maomao and Jinshi, which is why their respective confrontations with her in the finale are them facing themselves.

Maomao and Shisui are both daughters of important politicians. Lahan and Shisu are respectively the fox and the tanuki of the imperial palace and they are foils themselves. Lahan was the heir of the La clan, but was considered unfit because of his disability. Shisu was instead adopted by the main family of the Shi clan because of his ability. Whatever the case they rose to power because of their intelligence and had their life marked by a tragic love. Lahan left his love waiting for too long, while Shisu waited for his love far too long. Maomao and Shisui are the fruits of these complicated loves and have had opposite upbringings as a result. On the one hand Maomao is technically a noble, but since she was born outside of a wedding/when Lahan was absent she is brought up in poverty in the pleasure district. There she still receives love and care by the courtesans and Loumen. On the other hand Shisui is a noble, but she is brought up in a cold and controlling environment. She is shown no parental love and is treated like a doll and a weapon of revenge.

Superficially their lives may seem opposite, but the two girls are actually quite similar. Both suffer the consequences of an absent father and an abusive mother, but they still love their parents and work to give them as much happiness and peace as they can. Season 1's finale is Maomao's scheme to solve her father and mother's tragic love. Season 2's finale is Shisui's scheme to give peace to both her father and mother. Both send off their parents by dancing on a roof. Maomao's dance is a celebration of life, while Shisui's is about accepting death.

So, why is Shisui so important for Maomao? By meeting Shisui, Maomao really meets a different version of herself. Shisui is just as smart as Maomao and just like the apothecary she has been conditioned to repress her feelings. And yet, no matter how much Shisui appears as an uncaring doll she can't help, but to love her family, to love people, to love the world. Maomao is the same. She keeps saying she is selfish, cold, unfeeling. She insists she only minds her own safety and business. And yet, she is always the first to jump into the fire for others. Shisui kind of makes this part of Maomao clear to her, as Maomao's thoughts in her last meeting with her convey:

"You should just run. Just throw it all away and run with Suirei. Politics, your parents, the clan, just throw it all away. I don't care about other people, either. I'm the most important person to me. Do you realize how much I went through after being dragged here? But, still...Why can't I stop myself from reaching out to her?"

Maomao and Shisui are both selfish, right? And yet neither of them can't help, but to look out for others.

Jinshi and Shisui are two nobles who are trapped in their respective roles. Jinshi is trapped as the Crown Prince/Imperial Brother and tries to escape this reality by becoming Jinshi the eunuch. Shisui is trapped as Loulan the Concubine/the Shi Clan heir and tries to escape this reality by becoming Shisui the maiden. Both act as if they are of humbler origins to find true bonds outside of their status. Still, both know these masks are only temporary.

At the same time, I would say they have an opposite relationship with their "fake identities". Jinshi's personality as the "beautiful eunuch" is in itself a shallower version of himself. It is only through his relationship with Maomao that his childish, but also more noble self starts coming to light only to truly bloom when he steps into his role of Imperial Brother to save her. In Shisui's case, it is the opposite. It is Shisui's personality as "Loulan the Concubine", which is the lie. She presents herself as a shallow beauty only interested in clothes and fashion, when her real self is far more modest and in love with bugs. She acts as her mother's doll, when she is far smarter and a potential better leader than Shenmei. So, differently from Jinshi, Shisui's true self can only shine when she escapes her "Loulan" persona to embrace who she truly is (as Tamamo).

Finally, both Jinshi and Shisui are blamed for their parents' actions. Jinshi is blamed for the Previous Emperor's sins because he looks so much like him. Shisui is blamed for Shenmei and Shisu's crimes, even if she sabotages the rebellion and saves Suirei, the kids and as many of her people as possible. This shared tragedy is why Jinshi and Shisui's final meeting is all about solving these generational conflict.

On the one hand Shisui fulfills Shenmei's wish to "hurt" Jinshi, who looks just like the man who refused her and broke her pride. On the other hand Jinshi welcomes Shenmei's hate and anger by taking responsibility for the Previous Emperor. By doing so both Shisui and Jinshi really free themselves from their respective curses. Shisui fulfills her mother's revenge in her own way. A revenge without real victims. Jinshi aquires a scar, which sets him apart from the Previous Emperor. Finally, his face is his own. This is highlighted by Maomao's words:

"Master Jinshi is too beautiful. That causes ripples in the heart of the people around him, making them focus only on his beauty. But Master Jinshi's true essence isn't flamboyant, like his appearance. He's much more solid and practical".

Jinshi isn't defined by his beauty, but by his heart like the kindness he showed Shisui by accepting her scar.

So, Shisui forces Maomao to accept her own heart and Jinshi to step into his role. She scars both in a sense:

She scars Maomao psychologically, as she leaves the apothecary to grapple with feelings of love and grief

She scars Jinshi physically by forever changing his face and "ruining" his beauty

In short, Shisui embodies a trial for both our protagonist. It is a painful trial which ends with losses. Maomao loses a loved one and Jinshi loses his comfortable mask as the "beautiful eunuch". Still, it is also a trial that helps both grow up. In a sense it marks a passage from "adolescence" to "adulthood".

Maomao goes through an adolescence phase where she enjoys Xiaolan and Shisui's company, which comes to an end with Shisui's disappearance.

Jinshi traps himself in an eternal adolescence by taking the medicine to suppress his sexuality and fake himself an eunuch. The Shi clan's rebellion forces him to grow up.

The end result is that both Maomao and Jinshi mature and find themselves closer as a result.

Not only that, but their bond does bring life. Like, it is not by chance their kiss/sex scene gets interrupted by the kids being reborn. It is symbolic of Maomao and Jinshi's relationship (symbolical sex) saving the children (creating new life). Once again this is something both Maomao and Jinshi do thanks to Shisui.

On the one hand Shisui asked Maomao to care for the kids and help them when the medicine brings them back to life (immediate care / microchosm). On the other hand Shisui asked Jinshi to forgive those that have already died once (political scenario / macrochosm). So, it is only thanks to both Maomao and Jinshi that the kids survive and can have a future. Symbolically it is Shisui the one who entrusts the couple with this future. At the same time, it turns out Shisui herself is one of the kids who is given a second chance of life thanks to our two protagonists.

The silver hairpin is a metaphor for Jinshi and Maomao's bond, as Jinshi clearly gives it to Maomao as a token of love. Later, Maomao gives Shisui the hairpin and the object ends up deflecting the bullet and saving Shisui's life. This is a perfect commentary to Shisui as a character.

Shisui chooses to love everyone even if she really does not have to. Actually, it would be easier to leave behind her family and her people and to escape with only Suirei or even on her own. Still, Shisui chooses to stay and to die out of love. It is important she isn't really planning to survive. She plans to ensure everyone's survival, but her own. And yet, her friendship with Maomao saves her and grants her freedom. The girl who chooses love is saved by love.

As a final note, Shisui's rebirth is commented by several motifs.

First of all, there is her insect motif. Throughout the series, Shisui compares herself to an insect, specifically crickets. She is scared of becoming like the "cricket wife" of her horror story who "consumes" her husband. This is why she keeps taking abortion medicine. At the same time, she sees herself as an insect that has to die, so that the kids can live. She is the one generation evil who won't survive the winter, but will ensure the young ones' survival. Well, "Loulan" dies, but "Tamamo" is reborn and chooses a cicada as her symbol. Cicadas are symbolic of rebirth and are insects, which spend the winter hidden, so that they can start singing in the summer.

Secondly, there is her tanuki/fox motif. She spends her life as the Tanuki's daughter, changes her looks like a tanuki and goes to face Jinshi looking like a tanuki. Still, she herself is far more similar to a fox, as Jinshi calls her a fox twice. In the end, she can leave the tanuki behind and fully embrace her "fox self" as Tamamo, whose name comes from Tamamo No Mae, a fox spirit.

Finally, Shisui says goodbye to the viewers and the series twice. The two scenes are complete opposite and interesting to compare.

Shisui's first goodbye is her final dance under the snow. It is winter and she is in the mountains surrounded by snow. She is accepting the death of "Loulan", the Tanuki's daughter and the cricket who can't survive the winter.

Shisui's second goodbye is her send off, as she runs towards her new life. It is summer/spring and she is by the seaside, surrounded by water. She is reborn as her new self "Tamamo", a fox and a cicada who sings in the summer.

Two sends off, one rooted in death and the other in life, one tragic and the other hopeful. One is fake (a mask) and the other is true (her real self). It is really the perfect goodbye for a character so rooted in duality.

#the apothecary diaries #the apothecary diaries meta #kusuriya no hitorigoto #shisui #loulan #tamamo no mae #my meta #asksfullofsugar #anonymous #jinmao #jinshi #maomao

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currentfandomkick · 10 hours ago

Text

To add to the angst? Danny is aware and trying to fix all that, as that’s his big brother who 1) wants him around 2) respects his privacy apparently and 3) is not demanding he cut contact with his family but will actively shield him from BOTH of the creepy billionaires prone to kidnapping him.

Danny is arguing with frostbite, who really believes Danny’s whole family line is just perfectly cursed to be medical marvels.

Frostbite is trying, as the body and core are separate so the goal is help Jason develop a healthy core. Danny largely is filtering the gross out of Jason’s ecto with actual ecto filters in their home and a number of ESBGs (emotional support blob ghosts).

Fright knight is in contact with Danny on possibly sealing Joker in the Fright Realm, or if he’s the prey for the ancient of Jesters as that is being debated.

Danny isnt telling Jason much about this as his big brother’s got a lot of shit to do as an ethical crimelord (?) but he isnt hiding it either.

The blobs love jason and are feeding his core.

Jason just accepts the goop loves him, and knows he feels livelier after they run amok.

Batfam? Searching for Danny desperately.

Jazz? In school in another state and happily updated by Jason regularly as he tries to help Danny deal with guilt for not being a vigilante despite having done so before.

Jason is intent on keeping everyone but Damian and Talia away from Danny… who just matches the al Ghul freak.

Yes danny is disabled in his human form. What makes you think he doesnt throw down with them in ghost form as family bonding?

Danny is of the opinion that Joker not being dead already by anyone is proof of Bat Paranoia by the gen public and decides he’ll pull the plug on joker asap once he’s on life support once Frostbite gives the okay.

Batman can’t kill for whatever reason, and apparently his civilian self wont either. His brother deserves to be avenged by his standards and feel loved, not be told it while living as a replacement for someone else.

Jason does the big reveal and comes home injured, with a scar on his neck and in shock.

Blobs snitch on batman.

Danny is Pissed.

He asks fright knight what to do to get back at his brother’s adoptive father for almost killing his brother a second time when all his brother asked for was to be avenged.

Fright knight suggests breaking out Dan from the LongNow.

Danny looks at Jason, the goons helping him and tells them he’s calling up ‘his paradox’ for backup.

Batfam has a wraith version of Danny after batman. Exclusively batman for ‘killing his son, not his son’s murderer’.

Danny is helping with the crimelording between classes online and cuddling Jason, loudly affirming his loyalty to his Frightmate and comforting him through a frightbond implosion.

Danny promises he and Dan have Bats on the ropes in the meantime.

Tucker and Sam volunteer to help make Bruce’s life Hell if given the chance.

Damian, upon being told his father chose Joker over Jason by an enraged Danny, informs him of Bruce’s ID as a civilian.

Danny tells Sam, who agrees to attend galas with her parents IF she gets to cause problems ‘by accident’ and they let her choose which ones.

Sam is being a menace to Bruce in Mid Western Debutant. Bruce is fluent in it, and would like to know why this teen has beef with him. She does let slip ‘Jason saved a friend of mine. Stop aiming for the jugular if you don’t kill.’

Bruce is now trying to work out how she knows any of that. And realizes he may have actually killed his son.

Bruce depression era.

With Dan being a nuisance on patrols by assaulting ONLY batman. And commenting on him having killed his older brother while “the baby manages for him. He’s reforming.”

Confirmation Jason is Undead is not good.

Tim is trying to find out what’s happening, but is locked out of bat systems. Dick is hitting a similar wall.

Then joker manages to grab Danny and publicly broadcasts it as “looky here, doesn’t he remind you all of lost wayne? Or did you forget crime alley’s biggest class traitor? What was his name again? He was so, forgetable.”

Danny—visibly a disable cane user with a leg brace and electrical scaring up his arm—is glaring at joker while being gagged.

Jason is STILL in recovery.

Tim sees the stream and is BOLTING.

Nightwing is in Bludhaven but halfway to the stream location already. This is the first time they’ve seen Danny in almost a year.

Hood has been too quiet, and when the gag is taken off danny for joker to try and get Danny to talk or scream Danny bites his hand hard enough to make the man lose a finger mid-stream, spit it out, and with a bloody mouth grin as he says “you may have caused my brother’s funeral, but not mine. Too many paranoid friends after the fifth fruitloop kidnapped me.”

The lights go out and briefly fright knight is seen, the stream only catching the phrase “you bothered the Realms’ savior” before cutting out.

Hood’s goons are seen leaving with Danny in tow a few blocks away.

Joker is found being beaten by a number of the homeless population, with them scattered before the bats can stop them.

Danny comes home to find Jason in his ghost form, his first one, only for Jason to tackle him and flip into his human form.

Frostbite adds to Danny’s abilities the unique skill of turning familial frightmates into halfas should their circumstances place their death and life alignment into abnormal circumstances.

Gotham is partying over Joker’s death, sure, but Jason is losing it over his baby brother(s) caring about him enough to avenge him, and make sure he can stay alive without stressing him about it but also you two are assholes for not letting him be the adult!

Bats have no idea if Danny is alive or not, bruce is feeling Even Shittier but the ghost following him is gone.

Tucker is spamming Danny’s phone with memes about the events and demanding Jason appear at the next Fenton and Adjacents convention. Tucker goes every year as Danny’s best friend from diapers. Sam does not join in, as her parents stop her.

Dan is a miffed paradox who wanted to rip Joker limb from limb, and whines about being late to that and about his big plan to do destroy him once he was done tormenting Bruce.

Danny is snuggled into this branch of his fright vibrating happy-relief-content and wanting to also make more weapons… jason he is upgrading your suit.

And also his ex (Val) is spaming his phone with tucker so he must confirm his non-corpse status.

Bruce is not having a good time. Nightwing is having flashbacks. Tim has a mystery.

And jason has a whole ass new meta status and realms denizen thing to adjust to.

But for now? Jason is humming, attached to HIS brothers that see him as their family and would kill for him as Jason, not dick’s replacement, but their big brother.

Jason knows he’s avenged and loved.

And hey, what’s stopping the Giw with Waller from joining the fray after this?

Mistaken identity shenanigans

Danny, having just been kidnapped by a sleep deprived Bruce Wayne and texting Jazz: Got kidnapped by another billionaire lol

Jazz, getting the creep stick: WHAT

----------------------------------------------

The batkid he looks like: Who the fuck are you????

Danny, pointing at Bruce: you according to him

Bruce, suddenly realizing his mistake: Oh no

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chevxyn · 1 day ago

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BEST THING THAT’S EVER BEEN MINE.

/w shidou ryusei, syp; things he’s done that you could never guess he’d do.

sfw, headcanons, fluff, estb. relationship.

— you would fall asleep first, and he would purposely throw your hand around him so that the two you both would wake up cuddling; “goodnight, ryu.” you muttered, drifting to sleep holding on tight to your body pillow— as shidou was still awake and scrolling on his phone.

when you were fully asleep, he finally laid next to you, before sneakily taking your arms away from the pillow and throws it around his torso— as he slithered his hands around your body.

so when the morning came and you woke you, you wonder why you and shidou ended up cuddling when you clearly remember you were holding your pillow, “ryu?” you called as he opened his eyes.

“hm? oh— you’re very close to me [name].” he smirked and you moved your left arm, to grab your pillow and hits his face with it, he grunted and you rolled your eyes, “i don’t even know how we ended up like this.” well, he did.

— you would have a very bad day, and he would do the most random things to cheer you up; “ryu, did you made me this?” you asked as you took the scrapbook that’s poorly made.

“yeah, you like it?” he knows you think it’s fugly, he purposely made it like that so that you could atleast laugh at it. “it’s horrible.” bingo.

but you won’t lie, when you first saw it on the living room table— your mind that’s swirled around the bad day you had earlier went away for a minute, whatever he is doing; it was working.

“i know it is.” he said, “did you like it though?” he raised his eyebrow, “i got the idea thinking about you.” hearing that, you let a small “awww— wait. are you saying i’m fugly?” and he laughed as you went up to him.

— even though he hates it, he would learn things that you love to feel connected towards you; you would be learning about astronomy, and when you talked to him with sparkle in your eyes, he lets out a snort, “you yap alot about stars.”

“well it’s beautiful,” you feigned offense on his friendly insult, “you got a problem with that?” you just nudged his shoulder with your fist and he would touch your side to make you giggle. “well it’s boring.”

what you could not expect that in the middle of the night, he would google stuff about astronomy, so that he could tell you that it’s common knowledge— but he does that so that he could impress you.

“okay so did you know that astronauts reportedly told that space smells like burnt steak?” you asked and as if he knows it, he says; “it’s common knowledge, you didn’t even know that?” and you would raise your eyebrow, how on earth would he know that when he said astronomy was boring?

— he had kept your photo when he left to go to france, as a good luck charm from you; karasu was at the dorm when he saw shidou pull out a photograph; a photo of someone he never saw before.

when he told you he was going to france, you had been so supportive for him to go and that you would watch him from home— so when you gave him the photo as good luck, he took it and stuffed it into his pocket.

“is that your partner?” karasu smirked and shidou let out a small a huff— letting a grin out and looked at him, “jealous, crowhead?” his eyes widened and went closer to threaten him if he dares to say anything about you as the atmosphere changed around them.

“nope.” he said and shidou let out a snort, before backing away from him— looking back at the photo that’s remained untouched and almost in perfect condition as when you gave it to him; and as long as he’s in france, he will keep it dear to him until he comes back home to you.

happy birthday zestfest, love u insect 😽

©chevxyn

#blue lock x reader #blue lock #bllk x reader #blue lock x you #bllk x you #bllk #shidou x reader #shidou ryusei x reader

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w1w2 · 2 days ago

Text

Don’t Fly So Close To Me

Karina x Fem!Reader

Word Count: ca. 11k

Synopsis: Amid the crowded lecture halls and quiet corners of Yonsei University, two students fall into a bond neither of them meant to form. But as closeness begins to blur into something more, one of them finds herself caught between the comfort she craves and the fear she can’t outrun. Some hearts are too loud to ignore, and some silences cost more than they should.

English isn’t my first language so I apologize in advance for any mistakes.

♡ Enjoy! ♡

The dorm was too quiet.

Not peaceful quiet, in the way that makes your skin feel too tight and every sound hit too hard. The kind of quiet that creeps into your bones and makes you think about things you’ve spent months trying to bury. The kind that forces you to listen to your own thoughts.

Most of the rooms on her floor were already empty. Their doors hung open like hollow mouths, stripped bed sheets dangling at the corners, half used rolls of packing tape abandoned by the trash bins. Earlier in the week, the hallway had been buzzing, girls shouting last-minute reminders, the dragging screech of suitcases on tile.

Laughter, motion, life.

Now it was a ghost town, what was left behind felt abandoned more than finished. And she hated it.

But maybe that was fitting.

Y/N stood in the center of her room, surrounded by piles of clothes, shoes, chargers, and notebooks. Organized chaos, or so she told herself. Her suitcase sat open on her bed, half-full, with a duffel on the floor beside it. Her desk was already cleared, drawers emptied, books packed. She moved mechanically, folding shirts and pants, pressing them flat like keeping the fabric smooth might keep her heart steady. She didn’t even realize how fast she was moving until she stopped to catch her breath and noticed her hands were shaking.

It was almost over.

Just one more night here, then a train to Busan and a month at her uncle’s place near the coast. She told everyone it was for a reset, some time to think, get away from the city, be with family.

That was only half true.

She wasn’t going home, she didn’t have one. And the only person who ever made Yonsei feel like one… Well.

Y/N swallowed hard and turned toward her dresser, grabbing the top drawer by habit. Socks, underwear, pajamas. She folded them quickly, shoving them into the bag without looking. She moved to the second drawer. Shirts, more hoodies, random notebooks.

Then came the last drawer, the one at the very bottom.

It stuck slightly when she pulled it, it always did. Like even it knew there were things inside that were better left untouched.

She hesitated.

Then, with a tug, she opened it anyway.

It stuck slightly when she pulled it open. It always did, crooked on its track from the one time she slammed it shut so hard the mirror cracked above it. She told herself it was just the hardware, just poor construction. But part of her had always wondered if the drawer was holding something back on purpose.

She gave it a tug, fingers curling tightly around the handle, expecting the usual mess inside. The old shirts she never wore but couldn’t throw out, mismatched socks, the sweatpants that had lived in that drawer since freshman year. Faded, stretched, safe. The kind of forgotten fabric that came with no weight, no memory.

Her breath caught.

Tucked at the very back, like it had been deliberately buried beneath the rest, was a flash of white cotton. Soft, familiar, and heart-stopping.

She froze.

For a moment, she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t trust her eyes. Her brain scrambled to rationalize it, tell her it was something else, a different shirt, something that didn’t matter. But even from where she stood, she knew what it was.

Jimin’s shirt.

It was crumpled into itself, sleeves twisted like it had been hastily shoved away, but Y/N would’ve known it anywhere. The fabric was worn thin in places, the collar stretched from being tugged over Jimin’s head in too many sleepy mornings, the hem curling in that way it always did when Jimin would fiddle with it during their late night conversations.

The sight of it shouldn’t have knocked the air from her lungs.

But it did.

Because it wasn’t just a shirt.

It was everything she hadn’t let herself feel for weeks, everything she’d tried to outrun. Every moment that she pretended hadn’t meant anything. And now? It was here, sitting in her drawer like a trap she’d set for herself and forgotten until it snapped shut around her ribs.

She stared at it for several seconds, unmoving, like touching it might confirm the worst. That part of her still wanted to go back, that part of her had never left. When she finally reached in, her hands moved slower than her thoughts. Hesitant, careful, like she was handling something fragile, like it might fall apart if she touched it wrong.

She pulled it out and let it fall into her lap.

The fabric was still soft, softer than she remembered. Somehow still warm, like it had been waiting for her.

Still hers.

Still Jimin’s.

She let her fingers curl into the cotton, gripping it tighter, then lifted it closer to her face. She inhaled, and just like that she was wrecked.

It didn’t smell like Jimin had just worn it. No. The scent was faded now, diluted by weeks of being trapped in the dark. But it was still there, that trace, that impossible, specific blend that Y/N had never been able to name, only feel.

Citrus and vanilla, something floral, something deeper. And something else entirely, something that didn’t exist in any bottle.

Something that was just... her.

It clung to the collar like a memory refusing to let go, and that was all it took.

Y/N sat down hard, back thudding softly against the frame of her bed. The shirt bunched in her hands as she clutched it to her chest like she could squeeze the memory out of it if she just held on tight enough, like if she pressed it hard enough, Jimin’s voice would come back, soft and teasing in her ear.

The room blurred at the edges, not from tears, but from everything inside her suddenly collapsing inward, folding in like a house made of paper.

And still, she didn’t cry.

She just held the shirt like it was the last tether she had to something real, something beautiful.

Something already broken.

Her chest felt heavy, as though her ribs had folded in on themselves, each breath thinner than the last, shallow and insufficient, like the air in the room had thickened without warning. There was a pressure just beneath her collarbone, a weight she couldn’t touch, but could feel pulsing steadily through her bloodstream. Sharp, quiet, unforgiving. Her throat ached with the kind of restraint that came from years of teaching herself not to show anything, not even when it hurt, not even when it split her open.

And still, her face remained blank.

Emotionless, controlled, still.

There were no tears, not even the sting of them. No trembling chin, no wavering breath, no release of any kind. Just that dull, suffocating silence that filled the space between her lungs and kept everything locked inside. Because that’s what she did, she held it all in. She always had, from the moment she was old enough to understand that vulnerability could be weaponized, that softness invited disappointment, that love, real, messy, terrifying love, was too dangerous for someone like her.

Even now, in the quietest version of goodbye, she couldn’t cry.

Not when she was alone in a half packed dorm room, surrounded by the remains of a year she didn’t know how to talk about, staring down the barrel of a month long exile to a town she didn’t belong to, with a plane ticket paid for by someone she barely spoke to anymore. Not when she had no one to say goodbye to, no one waiting on the other side.

She just sat there.

Motionless, back pressed against the side of her bed, legs folded beneath her like she was trying to make herself smaller, less visible, easier to forget. Jimin’s shirt sat in her lap like a wound she hadn’t noticed was still bleeding, her fingers curled into the soft fabric until her knuckles ached.

The sound that escaped Y/N’s throat wasn’t quite a sob. It was smaller than that. Less audible, more internal, like the first fracture in something ancient.

“It’s funny,” she murmured, her voice barely more than a breath, lips barely moving. “I didn’t mean to fall in love with her. I didn’t think someone like me could.”

And then, silence again.

Not the comfortable kind, no. The kind that stretches long and thin, where you start to wonder whether you’re the only one left inside your own body. The ceiling above her blurred slightly, though not from tears, and her eyes dropped to the shirt again, to the little rip in the seam near the sleeve, the one she used to tease Jimin about fixing but never did. She ran her thumb over the fabric slowly, tracing it like a map she no longer had the right to follow, and felt something shift low in her stomach, something she couldn’t quite name but had lived with for too long to ignore.

She should’ve returned it.

There were chances, so many of them. She could’ve folded it neatly, slipped it into a tote bag, brought it to her door with some half smile and said, “You left this.” And Jimin would’ve taken it, maybe smiled back, maybe said “I was wondering where that went.”

But she didn’t.

She hadn’t returned it, hadn’t let go, not really.

She kept it. Kept it the way she kept everything that scared her, hidden, quiet, buried under things that didn’t matter. Pretending it meant nothing, pretending that what they had wasn’t something she still carried in the most fragile parts of herself.

Because even though she’d told herself she walked away, even though she had turned off her phone and avoided her eyes and cut the string between them with a blade that shook in her hand, some part of her had stayed, and maybe it always would.

She let her head fall back against the frame of the bed, the edge pressing into the back of her skull, her eyes slipping shut as the fabric in her lap grew heavier somehow, as if it were carrying everything she refused to say aloud.

The memories came back slowly, uninvited but familiar, rising up from the quiet like smoke curling under a door, soft at first, almost bearable, before it filled the room. Not the loud ones, not the ones that haunted her in dreams.

But the beginning.

The quiet glances, the unexpected kindness. The sound of a name that hadn’t meant anything yet. The way time started to move differently, all because someone sat next to her when no one else ever did.

She could still remember the first time Jimin spoke to her, how it felt like being called out of hiding. And even now, with the shirt clutched to her chest and the campus emptying outside her window, she couldn’t stop herself from going back.

The first week of fall semester always carried the same predictable scent, fresh paper, overpriced coffee, and the faintest whiff of anxiety masked under new perfume. It was the season of fresh starts and empty promises, of pristine planners meticulously color-coded for two weeks before they were abandoned, of campus bulletin boards buried in fliers and orientation emails nobody read.

Students walked around with purpose, as if simply showing up early and dressing like they had their lives together could rewrite the mess they’d left behind the semester before. There was a kind of forced optimism to it all, this collective lie everyone agreed to participate in. “This year would be different.” they’d get better grades, they’d finally sleep more, drink less, care less, get over the person who didn’t text back last spring.

Y/N didn’t believe in any of it.

She arrived fifteen minutes early, not because she was trying to impress anyone, but because she preferred to claim her solitude before the room filled up. She slipped through the door with her hood still half up, chose the seat in the far back corner near the window, and set her bag down with practiced precision. Movements quiet, deliberate, invisible. The goal was always the same, don’t be noticed.

Her earbuds were already in, though no music played. It was just habit now, a convenient way to signal disinterest without having to say a word. She flipped open her notebook to the first blank page, uncapped her pen, and laid both out in front of her like armor. Her handwriting was already in the margins, sharp, small, even. Her notes always looked like they belonged to someone who cared more than she did.

The classroom itself was too bright for her taste, wide and newly renovated, with whitewashed walls and floor to ceiling windows that let in the kind of light that made people think too loudly. The overhead fluorescents buzzed faintly, like they were straining to keep up with the morning sun.

Modern art prints were framed and hung around the room, slightly crooked, mostly abstract, jagged lines, empty color blocks, ink splatters pretending to be genius. They were thematic, she guessed. A visual echo of the course’s name scrawled across the syllabus she'd skimmed in the registration portal Art and Society: Cultural Expressions in Modern Life. It sounded like a class designed for overthinkers who liked to hear themselves talk.

It wasn’t her kind of course.

Too vague, too subjective. Not enough data, not enough structure. But it was one of the only electives that fit her schedule and didn’t require studio work or weekly presentations. It counted for her humanities credit and, more importantly, it was open to students outside the arts. Econ majors like her usually avoided it, too risky, too touchy-feely, but that suited her just fine.

She wasn’t here to make friends, so she sat. Silent, distant, still, and watched the room slowly begin to fill.

Groups of students filtered in with the usual early semester energy, still clinging to summer, still dressed in tank tops and linen pants, still laughing too loud like nothing yet mattered. Some dropped their bags loudly beside chairs, some hugged friends they hadn’t seen during the break, some scanned the syllabus already complaining about the group work mentioned in paragraph three.

The front rows filled quickly, the social ones. She could already tell who would dominate discussions, who would make “devil’s advocate” their whole personality, who would volunteer for every activity just to be seen.

Y/N leaned back in her seat, eyes flicking from face to face, forming quiet conclusions she would never say aloud. She wasn’t judging, no, just cataloging. It made the world easier to survive when she knew who she was dealing with.

She barely glanced at the door when it opened again.

But she noticed the change.

It wasn’t loud, but it was instant, the subtle shift in tone, the way a few conversations dipped in volume, a collective hush so slight you’d miss it if you weren’t paying attention. But she always was.

And then came the pause.

Heads turned, not all, but enough to signal something.

She looked up, instinctively.

And there she was.

She walked in late, ten minutes past the hour, but with the kind of ease that made it look intentional, like the room hadn’t really started until she arrived. No apology, no glance toward the clock, no quickening of her step. If anything, she moved slower than the rest, as though time bent around her.

And somehow, she didn’t look out of place, not in the slightest.

She wore an oversized charcoal cardigan that slipped halfway off one shoulder, draping like it had been pulled there by the breeze outside, layered over a fitted white tee that clung just enough to suggest she hadn't rolled out of bed like the others. Her jeans were high waisted, soft denim, the kind that looked vintage but expensive, cinched perfectly at her waist with a belt she probably didn’t need but wore for style. Her black tote hung low at her side, scuffed at the corners, worn in a way that said well loved, not careless.

Her hair was long and dark, falling over her shoulders in effortless waves that, Y/N suspected, had taken no less than forty-five minutes to get just right. Slightly tousled, slightly glossy, strands tucked behind one ear in a way that framed her jaw perfectly. Her makeup was minimal, barely there liner, a soft wash of color on her cheeks, lips tinted like she'd bitten into a cherry on the walk over. Casual, but studied. Natural, but not.

Y/N knew girls like her.

Girls who turned heads without meaning to, girls who didn’t need to speak to be noticed, girls who had something magnetic in the way they existed, like they knew a secret the rest of the world wasn’t privy to. But what caught her off guard wasn’t the entrance, or the way the classroom seemed to tilt subtly in her direction.

It was how she smiled. Soft, relaxed, like she didn’t need anything from anyone.

She paused in the doorway only long enough to scan the room with a quiet confidence that made Y/N’s stomach twist for reasons she couldn’t name. She was searching, that much was clear, but not for someone in particular, more like she was choosing.

And then she started walking.

Not toward the front, where the open seats were clustered and laughter still lingered. Not toward the side row, where two girls were already waving her over, half-standing in their chairs.

No.

She walked straight to the back.

To Y/N’s row, to the one empty seat beside her.

Y/N glanced to her left, pretending to shift in her chair, her eyes flicking toward the aisle without turning her head. Then back down to her notebook, heart ticking just a little faster than before.

“Please don’t,” she thought, not even fully sure why.

The chair beside her scraped lightly against the floor.

Of course.

“Hey,” the girl said, voice smooth, threaded with a kind of warmth that didn’t ask, it assumed the greeting would be returned. She slid into the seat beside Y/N like she’d done it a hundred times before, like it was hers.

Y/N gave the smallest of nods in response. She didn’t pull out her earbuds, didn’t offer a smile or a hello. She kept her pen poised over the page, her eyes fixed forward, every muscle in her body trained in the art of disinterest.

But it didn’t seem to matter.

Because the girl just smiled to herself, like she was used to silence, like she didn’t take it personally. Like she’d already decided that Y/N was worth sitting beside.

The professor arrived precisely five minutes late, juggling a coffee cup, a leather messenger bag, and a stack of paper that threatened to collapse in his arms. He had the disheveled energy of someone who lived more in his own head than in the real world, a man built from books and chalk dust, with hair that stood up in odd directions and thick glasses that he adjusted constantly without actually fixing the tilt.

He introduced himself as Professor Song, waved off the use of PowerPoint slides like they were beneath him, and launched into a monologue about how art is resistance and culture is chaos with a heartbeat.

He spoke with his hands, broad, sweeping gestures that knocked into the edge of the desk more than once. He quoted French philosophers and underground performance artists in the same breath, scribbled phrases like “beauty as protest” and “the aesthetic of survival” across the whiteboard. Most of the students looked dazed, trying to decode what was expected of them.

Y/N didn’t flinch. She’d seen enough eccentric professors to know when to tune in and when to simply take notes.

Her handwriting was small, neat, effortlessly uniform, each bullet point aligned with surgical precision, margins untouched, no room for chaos. She wrote in black ink only, no highlighters, no doodles. Notes were for facts, not decoration. She never rewrote or revised them, she got it right the first time.

But out of the corner of her eye, she saw the opposite unfolding.

Jimin wrote like her thoughts were dancing across the page.

Purple ink, big, looping cursive, arrows that curved like vines between paragraphs. She underlined things twice, sometimes three times, added squiggly brackets and messy little stars in the margins. Her handwriting wasn’t just expressive, it was emotional, like she was already invested in ideas Y/N hadn’t even registered yet.

It should’ve annoyed her, but somehow, it didn’t. It was just different, unexpected, and alive in a way that made her stomach twist.

Halfway through his second tangent, Professor Song clapped his hands and said, “Now, let’s talk about the semester project.”

Around the room, people stirred, pages turned, phones were tucked away.

“You’ll be working in pairs,” he continued, “on a thematic presentation and written report connecting one contemporary artistic expression to its sociopolitical impact. Think big, think bold and think personal.”

Y/N straightened slightly. She hated vague instructions, no parameters, no rubric.

Then he added, as if it were an afterthought, “You’ll be working with the person seated next to you.”

She didn’t even have time to brace for it.

Jimin turned toward her instantly, that slow, easy grin spreading across her lips like it had been waiting for the right moment to arrive.

“Well,” she said, voice low and playful, “looks like we’re stuck with each other.”

Y/N pulled one earbud out, not both, just enough to acknowledge her, though her expression didn’t change. “I guess so.”

Her voice was flat. Polite and carefully neutral.

Jimin tilted her head a little, eyes narrowing, not in irritation, but in thought. She didn’t look offended. She looked curious, like she was trying to figure Y/N out with no pressure to do it quickly.

“You’re Y/N, right?” she asked. “Economics?”

Y/N nodded once. “Yeah. And you’re…?”

“Jimin,” she said, then paused. “Music department. But most people know me as Karina.”

Y/N blinked.

She knew that name, everyone on campus knew that name.

“You’re that Karina?” she asked, more surprised than impressed. “Like the festival stages and performance clips that got reposted a million times?”

Jimin gave a sheepish shrug, like she was used to the recognition but didn’t quite know what to do with it. “That’s me, unfortunately.”

Y/N raised a brow. “Unfortunately?”

“I mean…” Jimin smiled, soft and self-deprecating. “I like performing, but the stage name thing? It gets exhausting, sometimes it feels like people only know that version of me.”

There was something about the way she said it, lighthearted, but with a thread of honesty pulling just beneath the surface, that made Y/N pause.

“You can just call me Jimin,” she added, nudging the strap of her tote off her shoulder and letting it fall softly against the side of her chair. “I hate being called Karina in real life.”

Y/N didn’t respond right away. She glanced back down at her notebook, let her pen hover above the page without writing.

There was something about this girl that felt bright. Like sunlight on a window she hadn’t realized had been closed. Not warm enough to burn, not yet, but enough to make her shift in her seat, enough to make her uncomfortable in a way she couldn’t explain.

She cleared her throat, eyes still fixed on the paper.

“We should meet after class,” she said finally, her voice quieter than before. “Figure out how we’re splitting this.”

Jimin didn’t answer immediately. And when Y/N looked up, the other girl was watching her with a look that was hard to place, not judgmental, not amused. Just present, steady in a way that made Y/N want to retreat and lean in at the same time.

Then she smiled again.

“Sure,” she said easily. “Or we could just work on it together.”

They weren’t alike.

Not in the way that made sense, not in the way that made partnerships easy or natural or inevitable. In fact, if you laid them side by side, it almost looked like someone had made a mistake, matched two people who moved in completely different directions and hoped they’d meet in the middle.

Y/N was quiet in a way that wasn't shy, but practiced, intentional. Every word she spoke in class felt measured, like it had been chosen from a long list of discarded alternatives and delivered only when necessary. She thought in terms of efficiency, what needed to be said, what needed to be done, how little emotion could be shown without seeming cold. She never rambled, she never raised her hand unless silence stretched too long, she didn’t speak to fill air, she let air settle around her like armor.

She sat in every class the same way, arms crossed, posture rigid, pen in hand but rarely used unless it was for notes. Her gaze was steady, but unreadable, like a locked door with no keyhole. Her expression gave nothing away, if she was bored, no one knew, if she was irritated, she never let it show, if she was interested, that secret stayed between her and the back pages of her notebook.

Jimin was the opposite.

She moved like her thoughts arrived mid-sentence, like she was always catching up with herself but didn’t mind being a few steps behind. There was no hesitation in her voice, even when she was unsure. She leaned in when she spoke, smiled with her whole face, eyes crinkling at the corners in that way that made people soften, she asked questions just to hear someone else’s answer, she doodled in the margins of her notes, wrote little jokes to herself in pink pen, tapped her pencil against her chin when she was thinking.

She was vibrant, undeniably so. Where Y/N retreated, Jimin reached out. Where Y/N observed, Jimin engaged. She used people’s names when she spoke to them, she remembered things, she laughed easily, freely, like she didn’t care who was listening.

And somehow, none of it came across as performative.

She was just like that.

And it shouldn’t have worked. Not on paper, not in theory, but something about it did.

It wasn’t obvious at first. It wasn’t like Y/N looked at her and felt something massive crack open inside her chest. No. It was quieter than that, slower, more dangerous because of how subtle it was. Like water dripping through stone, finding the cracks, working its way deeper with every accidental glance, every shared joke, every moment Jimin smiled at her like she wasn’t difficult to love.

Y/N didn’t understand it at the time, the pull. The slow, steady gravity of someone who didn’t push, but never backed away. Someone who treated her silences like spaces instead of walls.

It wasn’t a crush, not then, it wasn’t even interest. Not the kind she knew how to recognize.

It was something smaller.

A flicker, a shift in temperature, a warning. But it lived in her chest, even then, quietly threading itself through the spaces she thought she’d boarded up for good.

A spark.

One she tried to ignore, one that refused to go out.

They met twice a week at first. Quietly, without fanfare or expectation, just two students working on a shared grade, nothing more. The library on Tuesdays, always the second floor, far corner, tucked beside the philosophy stacks where no one ever looked. On Fridays, they moved outside, settling on the lawn behind the humanities building if the weather cooperated. Jimin would bring a blanket, worn and floral, and Y/N would pretend not to notice that it always smelled faintly of detergent and vanilla.

There was no lingering after, just notebooks, laptops, and the increasingly fragile illusion that this was still about the project. But even in the beginning, there was a rhythm forming, one that Y/N wasn’t prepared for.

Jimin always brought drinks.

She never asked what Y/N liked, never texted first to check. She just showed up with something different each time, as if guessing had become its own kind of game. Cold brew with oat milk, plum juice, matcha with way too much honey, a lavender latte that Y/N claimed tasted like soap, even as she finished the entire cup.

One afternoon, Jimin handed her a bubble tea without a word. There was a bright yellow post it stuck to the lid, its writing slightly smudged from condensation "for the most serious person I know."

Y/N rolled her eyes, said nothing, but she folded the note and tucked it into her wallet later, wedging it behind her ID like something worth keeping.

Y/N, for her part, insisted on structure.

Everything was outlined, roles divided, sources color coded in a shared document. Meeting agendas, timelines, deadlines. She’d walk in with bullet points and walk out with action items. Efficient collaboration, no distractions.

Jimin rarely listened.

She’d start on task, then veer off course without warning. Midway through citation formatting, she’d look up and say something like, “Do you think people are born creative, or does the world just beat it out of most of us?”

Y/N would blink, sigh. “That’s not relevant.”

And Jimin would just grin. “Didn’t say it was. Just wanted to know what you thought.”

It happened more often as the weeks passed. Not questions about the project, but about her. Personal ones, uncomfortable ones, questions dropped like smooth stones in the middle of their sessions, leaving ripples long after she brushed them off.

“Do you think you’re more like your mom or your dad?” “Why economics?” “Have you ever been in love?”

Y/N deflected, shrugged, redirected. Masked truth with dry sarcasm and safe indifference. But Jimin? Never looked disappointed, she’d just smile like she saw the dodge and didn’t mind, like it told her something anyway.

She never pushed, but she never walked away either.

One afternoon, while editing their final draft, Y/N referred to her as Karina. Just once,just out of habit. It slipped out, unthinking, like a reflex.

Jimin looked up from her laptop, fingers pausing over the trackpad. “Call me Jimin.”

Y/N glanced over, brow raised. “I thought that was just your stage name thing?”

“Karina’s a mask,” she said softly, her voice lower now, less playful. “You don’t wear one, I shouldn’t either.”

Y/N didn’t respond right away. She just nodded once, and turned back to her screen.

But she didn’t use Karina again.

They finished the project a week ahead of schedule. On the last day they met to finalize their slides, they didn’t talk much, just worked side by side, laptops glowing in the fading afternoon light, the silence between them no longer awkward but companionable.

Comfortable, unspoken.

On presentation day, they stood at the front of the classroom together. Y/N wore a blazer over her hoodie, an accidental compromise between formal and familiar, and Jimin had her hair pulled back in a sleek braid, all calm confidence and quiet charm.

She spoke first, introducing their theme with the kind of poise that made people sit forward. Her voice didn’t waver. She made eye contact, used her hands when she talked, turned dry theory into something alive. And when Y/N stepped in to explain their economic framework, Jimin didn’t interrupt. She didn’t check her notes, she just listened. And smiled, slow and proud, like she’d been waiting for Y/N to show them who she really was.

They received one of the highest grades in the class, the professor called it “a compelling balance of artistic inquiry and pragmatic application.”

But that wasn’t what Y/N remembered.

What lingered, what etched itself quietly into the space behind her ribs, wasn’t the grade or the applause or even the way the presentation felt easier than it should have.

It was the way Jimin didn’t walk away.

The way she turned to her afterward, after the clapping had died down and the seats were scraping against the floor, and said, “So… same time next week?”

Y/N blinked. “For what?”

Jimin smiled, biting the inside of her cheek like she was fighting the urge to laugh. “You didn’t think I was just here for the assignment, did you?”

Y/N opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Jimin didn’t wait for an answer. She just walked out of the classroom with that same calm grace she always carried, like she knew Y/N would follow. And against all logic, all instinct, all the protective walls she’d built and reinforced for years.

She did.

Most people faded out after the project deadline. Partnerships dissolved like sugar in coffee, sweet while they lasted, forgettable the second the class moved on. Messages stopped, shared folders gathered digital dust. No hard feelings, no formal goodbyes.

But not Jimin.

Jimin didn’t treat endings the way most people did.

She kept texting. Not constantly, never enough to be overbearing, but just often enough to make Y/N pause when her phone buzzed. She sent playlists titled things like “for thinking too much” or “for breathing slower”. She sent blurry photos of campus trees lit up at night, or the sky outside her practice studio when the sunset made the world look unreal “this reminded me of something you said about light and stillness,” she’d write.

Sometimes she sent voice notes instead of typing. Little bursts of warmth in Y/N’s ear, laughter from a group chat she wanted to share, a random thought. Once, an entire monologue about how she burned her tteokbokki.

Y/N never told her how often she replayed them.

One morning in late November, Jimin showed up five minutes before class and dropped something into Y/N’s lap without warning, a scarf, soft and dark gray, folded with surprising care.

“You keep pretending it’s not freezing,” she said, sitting beside her with a grin, “and I’m starting to take it personally.”

Y/N opened her mouth to protest, but the look on Jimin’s face made it clear the scarf was non-negotiable. So she said nothing, held it awkwardly for the duration of the lecture, and later, when no one was looking, tucked it into her bag.

She didn’t wear it right away, but she never gave it back.

Late night study sessions started picking up again during finals, but they didn’t feel like studying. Not really, they’d start with open textbooks and notes, and end with their laptops forgotten, lights dimmed, legs curled under blankets as they drifted into conversations neither of them planned to have.

Y/N learned more about Jimin in those quiet hours than she had during the entire semester. About her older sister, who dropped out of college to start a café in Jeju. About the song Jimin wrote after her grandmother died, and how she still couldn't listen to the demo without crying. About the dance teacher who told her she'd never be good enough, and how she practiced three hours a day more just to prove him wrong.

Jimin’s words weren’t rehearsed, they fell out of her like breath, unfiltered and fragile.

Y/N listened.

She always listened.

But when the silence turned toward her, when Jimin asked something personal or let the quiet stretch, offering space, Y/N would pivot. She’d change the subject, make a joke, ask a deflecting question. And Jimin, for all her brightness, never made her explain.

She never pressed. She just stayed, kept showing up, slowly, steadily. No demands, no guilt, no pressure to trade secrets like currency.

And somehow, that made it worse.

Because Y/N began to expect her.

She waited for the messages that came late at night, buzzed low against her pillow. She started checking the front of lecture halls a little too early, looking for a familiar silhouette. She began noticing the silence on the days Jimin didn’t text, checking her phone with a vague ache in her chest she refused to name.

She caught herself watching the door.

That boundary, clean, simple, safe, had blurred without permission. And now there was something else growing in its place, something unnamed and increasingly undeniable.

And that terrified her, because when people stayed, they expected things.

And Y/N had nothing good to give.

On the surface, Y/N was fine, always fine. She showed up to class on time, sat in the same seat, took notes in the same pen. Her hood up just enough to shadow her eyes, her answers were always just right enough to not invite follow up questions. She turned in assignments early, her desk was clean, her voice was calm.

Her expression? Always unreadable.

Fine.

It was a lie so well rehearsed that even she started to believe it during daylight hours. But the second the world slowed down, when the halls emptied and her phone screen stayed dark, reality came rushing back, uninvited and overwhelming.

Because inside? Everything was chaos.

Not the loud kind, not visible. Her mess lived beneath the skin, in tangled wires of self doubt, in broken glass thoughts she tiptoed around every night. It was a carefully contained implosion. From the outside, she was still. But on the inside? Everything was bleeding.

She didn’t remember the last time she slept through the night.

She’d lie in bed, eyes open in the dark, staring at the ceiling like it might offer answers. The smallest sound, someone shutting a door down the hall, a heater kicking on, would send her spiraling. She’d replay conversations from weeks ago, dissect texts for things never said, overanalyze every expression that crossed someone’s face when she walked into a room.

And in the quiet, the voices returned.

Her father’s voice came first. Crisp, measured, tired in that disappointed way that didn’t need to be loud to cut deep.

“Why can’t you be more like your cousin? She’s in med school now, did you know that?” “You always take things too seriously. That’s why no one wants to be around you.”

Then her ex. Slippery, cold. The kind of voice that didn’t yell, but dismantled.

“It’s exhausting, being with someone who always thinks they’re broken.”“You make everything harder than it has to be.”“I never knew love could feel so heavy.”

And then, the cruelest voice of all, her own. The one that whispered, all day, every day.

“You’re a burden.” “You ruin everything good.” “You’re too much but the same time never enough.”

It lived in her like a parasite, feeding on every crack in her foundation. Every moment she pulled back from someone, every time she flinched when someone got too close, every time she made someone laugh and then immediately convinced herself they were only being polite.

It didn’t matter how much progress she made, or how much she achieved. Her brain always found a way to twist it. If she succeeded, it was because people had low expectations. If someone liked her, it was because they didn’t really know her. If she smiled too long, she felt fake. If she cried, she felt pathetic.

And yet, there was Jimin.

Soft, persistent Jimin. With her messy handwriting and her oversized sweaters and her stupid habit of leaving voice notes instead of texts because “words sound better out loud”, with her playlists and her scarves and the way she looked at Y/N like none of the sharpness scared her. Jimin who laughed at her dryest jokes like they were love poems. Jimin who never flinched at her distance.

Jimin who stayed.

And that? That was the worst part.

Because every time Jimin smiled at her, genuinely, openly, without hesitation, Y/N felt her chest tighten like it was being pulled apart at the seams. Like her body didn’t know how to hold something that soft without breaking it.

Because if Jimin looked too closely, if she really saw the way Y/N’s thoughts tore her apart, she’d leave.

Or worse, she’d stay, and be ruined by it.

“You’ll ruin her,” the voice hissed. “You always do.”

Y/N believed that voice. “She thinks you’re someone worth loving. She’ll learn. They always do.”

She fed it, because it was safer to believe that she wasn’t made for love than to risk needing someone who might walk away.

And yet, when Jimin was around, the voices quieted. Not gone, not silenced, but hushed. Dulled like a radio turned low in the background, still there, but bearable. When Jimin touched her arm, or smiled like the world hadn’t hurt her yet, or looked at Y/N like she was worth listening to, really listening to, the storm inside her stilled.

Sometimes, in those rare and terrifying spaces between words, when Jimin sat close enough for their shoulders to touch and didn’t ask her to speak, Y/N could feel the static of her own panic slowly soften.

Sometimes, she even believed, almost believed, that maybe, for once, the voices were wrong.

And that terrified her more than anything else, because hope was a dangerous thing. And Y/N had never learned how to hold it without cutting herself on the edges. But the thing about quieting the voices, even for a little while, was that it made the silence feel worse when they came back.

And they always did.

They returned on the nights when the world moved too fast, or when she sat too still for too long. They returned when her phone stayed dark, when her reflection looked wrong, when her hands shook and she couldn’t explain why.

They returned on a Thursday night in December, after Jimin posted a new dance video. The video had gone up in the evening, quietly, without a caption, without a filter, without any of the polished edges that usually wrapped Jimin’s work in distance and design. It was a single shot in a dim practice studio, just her and the mirror and the floor beneath her feet, the lights flickering slightly overhead as she moved through something that didn’t look choreographed so much as surrendered to.

Y/N had watched it once, then again, the first time in awe, the second with something tight forming in her chest that she didn’t want to name. Jimin’s body moved with an aching kind of honesty, arms trembling slightly, head tilted back like she couldn’t stand to carry the weight anymore, not even for the camera. She looked unguarded, exposed, like she had laid something bare and then hit “post” before she could think better of it.

It was beautiful.

And the internet, as always, couldn’t leave something beautiful untouched.

By midnight, the ripples had turned into a wave. The reposts began, then the edits, cruel, cheap distortions with captions that twisted her vulnerability into punchlines. There were clips that mocked the way her body had faltered mid turn. The comments multiplied, some encouraging, but most weren’t. They picked her apart, word by word, frame by frame, line by line.

Y/N saw it unfold in real time. She didn’t know why she checked, only that she did, and once she started scrolling, she couldn’t stop.

The last message from Jimin had arrived around 10 p.m. and after that? Nothing, no “goodnight loser”, no playlist link, no voice note.

Just silence.

And Y/N, who’d learned how to exist with silence like a second skin, suddenly found she couldn’t sit still in it anymore. She waited, checked her phone too many times, told herself not to spiral, told herself it wasn’t her place.

But by one in the morning, she was pacing her room, hoodie zipped up to her chin, earbuds in without music, and every instinct she’d buried under logic and boundaries and self-control was clawing its way back to the surface, loud and urgent and shaking her hands.

By 2:47, she was outside.

The walk across campus was cold. Not freezing, but raw in the way late fall could be, quiet air that cut through fabric and made every breath feel heavier. She walked quickly, hood up, shoulders tense, not entirely sure what she’d say if the door opened, not sure what she hoped would happen if it didn’t.

She knocked once. Then again, softer.

She didn’t expect an answer.

But the door eased open, and there Jimin was, wearing one of Y/N’s hoodies, sleeves pulled over her hands, her hair up in a loose knot that had mostly fallen apart, face stripped bare of makeup, eyes red and swollen and barely focused, like she hadn’t decided whether to let herself break down or hold it in a little longer.

She blinked once, slow, as if unsure whether Y/N was real or something her brain had conjured up out of longing.

“You didn’t text,” Y/N said quietly, the words catching in her throat halfway through, but holding steady.

Jimin’s lips parted, then pressed together again. Her voice came out hoarse, barely audible. “I didn’t want anyone to see me like this.”

Y/N didn’t think, she didn’t measure the risk. She just stepped forward, she moved into the room like she belonged there, like there had never been a question of whether she should, and closed the door behind her with one hand, the other already reaching out. She opened her arms, not wide, not performative, just enough, and Jimin fell into them like it was the only thing she’d been waiting for all night.

There were no words.

Just weight and breath and skin and the warm pressure of two people holding still because movement might shatter something. They slid to the floor together, backs against the bed frame, Jimin curled into Y/N’s side with her face buried in the curve of her neck, her fingers twisted into the fabric of Y/N’s sleeve, like anchoring herself there might keep her from drifting off entirely.

The room was quiet except for the soft sound of the radiator clicking on in the corner and the slightly uneven rhythm of Jimin’s breath as it caught and stuttered against Y/N’s skin.

Y/N rested her chin against the top of Jimin’s head and let herself be still.

After a while, she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper, “Whoever edited that video clearly failed art class.”

Jimin let out a small sound, half a laugh, half a broken exhale, and didn’t lift her head.

Y/N added, gently, “And karma’s real. So, honestly, they should be scared.”

That time, Jimin smiled. Y/N felt it, faint but real, pressed against her collarbone. She didn’t move away.

And neither of them spoke again.

When Jimin finally dozed off, head resting against her shoulder, Y/N moved with excruciating care, laying her gently on the bed, pulling the blanket over her legs. She stood there for a second too long, eyes tracing the outline of the girl who had, somehow, let her in, even like this.

She left without a note, without a word.

And neither of them mentioned it the next day.

But something had changed. After that night, Jimin stopped knocking. She just came over, sometimes with snacks, sometimes with nothing at all, and curled up on Y/N’s bed like it belonged to both of them. She started leaving her socks under the desk, her charger on the nightstand. She used Y/N’s shampoo in the morning and never apologized for it.

They never kissed, never labeled it.

But there were nights when Jimin would fall asleep with her hand curled just under Y/N’s shirt, like she needed skin to skin proof that Y/N was still there. And there were mornings when Y/N would wake up to Jimin’s hair on her pillow and pretend it didn’t mean anything.

But it did.

It meant everything.

And Y/N could feel it now, settling in her bones, making a home in the softest, most dangerous parts of her. Because if she admitted it, if she let herself have this, even for a moment, she didn’t know who she’d become when it was gone.

And that was the part that scared her the most.

Spring had come early that year, or maybe it only felt that way because of how long winter had lasted in her chest. The cold had held on through March, gray skies and brittle wind, but now the days were stretching longer, softer, full of golden light and the scent of thawing earth. Everything smelled like the promise of something new, blossoms beginning to crack open on the trees, sidewalk chalk smudged beneath sneakers, cigarette smoke curling lazy from dorm balconies.

Even the air had changed, thicker somehow, laced with warmth that clung to skin and made people linger. It was the kind of weather that made it easier to laugh, easier to stay. Easier to believe, for a night or two, that maybe things could be good.

Y/N hadn’t planned to come out. She almost never did, bars weren’t her thing, and neither was pretending to belong in a circle of people who lit up every room they walked into. But Jimin had asked in that gentle, offhand way that meant she really wanted her there.

So she went.

The bar was small and vaguely hipster, wedged between a bike shop and a flower stand that only opened on Saturdays. It had old vinyl posters plastered crookedly on the walls, mismatched chairs that wobbled when you leaned too far back, and a smell that was half beer and half fries.

It was loud, but not in a bad way. The music was old R&B, the kind that made people dance in their seats, and the chatter around them was constant, shouted greetings, clinking glasses, the high, sharp notes of someone laugh.

Y/N sat near the end of the booth, tucked between the wall and Jimin, who had slid in beside her with practiced ease, legs crossed under the table, elbow always just grazing Y/N’s. Her presence felt easy, like gravity, like something Y/N had stopped resisting weeks ago.

Jimin had ordered for her without asking, something citrusy and light, not too sweet, and placed it in front of her with a grin. “Trust me,” she said, like it wasn’t a request.

Y/N sipped slowly, not because she didn’t like the taste, but because she liked having something to hold when she didn’t know what to say.

The conversation moved quickly. There were too many inside jokes to follow, memories that belonged to dorm rooms and dance studios she’d never stepped into, but it didn’t matter. They made space for her, Winter leaned across the table to tell her about a disastrous blind date, Aeri asked if she’d ever had milk soju, Ning offered her fries and told her about her job at the campus radio station, about how she still got nervous speaking live even though no one really listened on Tuesday nights.

Y/N listened more than she spoke, but when she did speak, they listened back.

She laughed. Not just the small, polite ones she gave to fill silence, but real ones, sudden and surprised, the kind that made her feel like maybe she hadn’t forgotten how.

And all the while, Jimin was beside her.

She wasn’t loud tonight, she didn’t need to be, she chimed in here and there, offered teasing commentary, tucked her hair behind her ear every time she leaned in to whisper something to Y/N, something small and unimportant that still made Y/N’s pulse skip every time she turned to meet her eyes.

Their shoulders touched more often now, not by accident. Jimin’s hand brushed against hers on the table when she reached for her drink, lingered a second too long, and didn't pull back.

And Y/N didn’t move away.

Jimin’s cheeks were flushed from the heat of the room, or the beer, or maybe from laughing too hard, her eyes shining under the dim lights, mouth curling into that crooked half-smile that always looked like she was about to say something kind.

Y/N looked at her, really looked, and felt her breath catch.

There was a strange, dizzying warmth pooling low in her chest, not sudden but steady, something she’d been keeping at bay without realizing it. A shift, an ache that didn’t hurt, not yet.

And just for a second, just long enough to feel dangerous, she let herself believe “Maybe I can have this.” Maybe she could hold onto this version of herself, the one who belonged in this booth, in this noise, in this moment. The one Jimin kept looking at like she wasn’t afraid of the dark inside her.

But then Jimin excused herself to the bathroom, sliding out of the booth with an easy smile and a touch to Y/N’s arm that was too brief to hold onto.

And in the space she left behind, something shifted.

The warmth didn’t go away, but it wobbled. Y/N felt her fingers tighten around her glass like something was about to fall.

The moment the bathroom door swung shut and her absence settled into the booth like an exhale, Winter leaned forward, chin tucked into her palm, her cheeks flushed with alcohol and something softer, sentiment, maybe, or just the ease of knowing she was safe among friends. Her eyes were glassy, her voice low and familiar, the kind of tone people only used when they weren’t guarding their words.

“God,” she sighed, slow and lazy, “I really wish I had someone who looked at me the way she looks at you.”

Y/N blinked, confused at first, her glass halfway to her lips. “What?”

Winter’s grin curled, crooked and knowing. “Don’t what me,” she said, eyes narrowing like it was all so obvious, like they’d all known something Y/N had somehow missed, or refused to see.

Aeri leaned over from her spot at the other end of the booth, one elbow braced on the table, the gold of her rings catching the light. “Seriously,” she said, her voice lighter but no less certain. “You do realize she looks at you like you hung the stars, right?”

Y/N stared at them, her body still but her thoughts suddenly thrashing, something hot pressing against the edge of her ribs.

“What?” she repeated, softer now, barely more than a breath. It didn’t sound like denial, it sounded like fear.

Winter opened her mouth again, probably to elaborate, probably to soften it, but this time it was Ning who cut in, quiet and clear, her tone a shade more sober than the others, her gaze steady.

“Jimin’s in love with you,” she said, and there was no teasing in it, no laughter. Just the truth. “You idiot.”

And it didn’t hit like a slap, it didn’t explode. It landed like a weight, like something that had always been there, just waiting for someone else to say it out loud.

Y/N didn’t respond, she couldn’t.

The world didn’t tilt, the music didn’t stop, the lights didn’t dim. But something inside her shifted, subtle and irreversible. Like a thread being pulled, like a single crack in glass that had been holding for too long.

It wasn’t that she didn’t believe them, it was that part of her already had.

That night, Y/N didn’t sleep.

Not because she couldn’t, but because something inside her refused to let her. She lay still in the dark, fully dressed, the stiff fabric of her jeans pressing lines into her skin, the hem of her hoodie bunched at her ribs, her phone resting on her chest like a warning. The light blinked once, then again. Every pulse of the screen was another breath she forgot to take.

“hey loser, text me when you get home safe.” The message was simple, familiar, harmless on its own.

But to Y/N? It felt like standing at the edge of a cliff, like if she moved even slightly, she’d fall, and there’d be no coming back.

She stared at it until her eyes burned, until the letters blurred, until she could hear her heartbeat louder than the words themselves. She typed a reply once, something easy and meaningless “Made it back. I’m good.”

Then erased it before it was fully formed, as if the mere act of acknowledging the message would make the night real, would solidify everything Winter and the others had said in that booth with their knowing smiles and careless truths.

She tried again, deleted it again. Eventually, she just closed her eyes and pressed the phone face down against her chest like it might quiet the noise inside her.

But it didn’t.

The silence that followed wasn’t peace. It was pressure, it was the kind of stillness that scraped raw, heavy in her lungs, thick in her throat, the familiar weight of panic settling back into its usual place beneath her ribs. Her body felt too small for all the things she was trying to hold, guilt, want, fear, the echo of Jimin’s laughter still ringing in her ears.

And then the voices returned.

Not new ones, not sudden. Just the old ones, louder now, braver in the quiet.

“She’s in love with you,” they said, “and she shouldn’t be. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She doesn’t know what you are.”

“You’re going to break her, like you always do. You don’t mean to, but you will. You ruin everything you touch.”

They piled on top of each other until they blurred, until her own thoughts were no longer her own, just borrowed lines from old arguments, old mistakes, old nights when someone walked away and never came back.

She sat up around four, her hands trembling in her lap, her palms damp, her mouth dry. There was no clarity, just the horrible, relentless certainty that the closer Jimin got, the more inevitable the fall would be.

Because Jimin didn’t see it, not yet, but she would. She’d see the cracks in Y/N’s foundation, the sharp edges hiding under silence, the fear behind every guarded smile. She’d reach for her one day and come back cut.

And Y/N wouldn’t survive that.

So when she saw Jimin on campus the next morning, walking toward her with a coffee in one hand and her jacket sleeves rolled halfway up her forearms, her face lit with a smile that was probably meant for her, Y/N crossed the street without a word. She didn’t look back, she didn’t need to. She could feel the moment unraveling like thread between her fingers, and still, she kept walking.

The next day, she pretended to be asleep when Jimin knocked at her door, three soft, hesitant knocks, a beat of silence, and then another. She lay perfectly still in bed, her body tense, her heart hammering in her ears, waiting until the footsteps faded down the hallway before she allowed herself to move again.

Her phone buzzed that night.

Once. Twice.

“Made you something, it’s dumb but here” A link, a playlist. And the title? “if i made you a mixtape, would you finally get it”

She didn’t open it, didn’t press play. Because if she heard her name in those lyrics, if she heard the unspoken truth layered between chords and choruses, she might break the rules she’d set for herself. She might answer, she might stay.

And staying felt so much more dangerous than leaving.

So she didn’t explain, didn’t apologize, didn’t offer closure. She just stopped. Stopped answering, responding, showing up. She disappeared from Jimin’s orbit like it had all been an accident, like she had never been there in the first place.

And she told herself it was mercy, that it was better this way. That if she left now, before Jimin said the words, before Y/N admitted she wanted to hear them, she could protect them both from what would happen after. Because she knew how this ended, she’d lived it before. People left, and it was always her fault.

She told herself Jimin deserved better.

That someone else would come along, softer, steadier, more whole. Someone who didn’t carry a war behind their ribs, someone who wouldn’t destroy the one person who made the world quiet.

But even as she said it, even as she turned her phone to silent and buried it beneath a pillow, the ache didn’t leave.

It just sank deeper, colder, more permanent.

It had been days, maybe a week, maybe more. Time had stopped making sense after the third day of silence, the moment Y/N realized she had started counting how long she could go without hearing Jimin’s voice. Every minute stretched out too far, then collapsed in on itself. She lost track of hours, ignored her classes, let her inbox pile up with reminders she didn’t read. Sleep came only in brief, restless intervals, her mind too loud and too full to rest. Her body still moved through the world, barely, but it was muscle memory, not will. She was keeping herself upright, nothing more.

She hadn’t responded to any of Jimin’s messages.

Hadn’t listened to the playlist, hadn’t let herself so much as open the photo Jimin sent the day before, the one of her coffee cup and messy hair and the caption “this is what heartbreak looks like ☕️💀”

Y/N had stared at it for ten minutes before deleting the notification. She told herself it was better this way. That if she just stayed silent long enough, the damage would be minimal, contained, like a controlled burn that cleared the forest before the fire got out of hand. She was trying to be careful, trying to be kind, or maybe just trying to escape the guilt of having wrecked something good without leaving visible wreckage behind.

But the knock came anyway.

Three sharp, certain taps against her door, no hesitation, no warning. For a second, she told herself it wasn’t her. Just someone looking for a roommate, or a package mix up, or anything else that wasn’t what it had to be.

But then it came again, louder this time.

And Y/N’s stomach dropped, sudden and violent, like something had been kicked out from under her ribs.

She didn’t move right away.

Just stood in the center of her room, heart hammering, the kind of dread pooling in her chest that always came right before everything cracked. She thought about not answering, about waiting it out, pretending she wasn’t there. But something in the knock, its clarity, its insistence, made that feel pointless.

So she crossed the floor with slow, mechanical steps, every part of her already bracing for impact, already composing the lie she’d need to tell to get through the next few minutes without bleeding all over the floor.

And then she opened the door.

There she was.

Jimin.

Standing in the hallway like a ghost that hadn’t realized it was haunting something, dressed in a hoodie Y/N remembered from winter break and black jeans that clung to her hips like an afterthought. Her hair was tied up in a knot that looked like it had been redone three times and still didn’t hold. Her makeup was minimal, smudged slightly around the eyes, like she’d wiped tears with the back of her hand and forgotten to check the mirror before walking over.

Her arms were crossed, her jaw was tight, her spine held straight like she’d spent the entire walk rehearsing what not to say. But her eyes? That was where the exhaustion lived. Not the kind that came from too little sleep, but the kind that settled into the bones after too many nights of hoping for something that never came. She looked like someone who had run out of options. Someone who wasn’t angry yet, but was close.

Y/N blinked, swallowed.

Forced her mouth into something neutral, nothing warm, nothing familiar, just blank enough to hide everything clawing at the inside of her chest. She didn’t step aside, didn’t soften. Didn’t offer a word of comfort or apology or anything that might be mistaken for hope.

“Hey,” she said, voice flat and distant, like it was someone else speaking through her.

Jimin didn’t smile.

Didn’t return the greeting, she didn’t need to, she was already here to burn the rest of it down.

“I thought you weren’t like the others,” Jimin said, and her voice wasn’t loud, it didn’t need to be, but it carried the kind of weight that didn’t ask permission to land. It was steady in the beginning, but trembling by the end, like she was holding her composure in her mouth like glass and could feel it cracking. “You said you didn’t do lies. So what the hell is this?”

Y/N blinked, slow, as if that would give her time to build the mask back over her face. Her hand was still on the edge of the door, gripping it tight enough for her knuckles to pale. Everything in her screamed to pull away, to close the door, to bury herself beneath the weight of her own silence until the moment passed, until Jimin gave up.

But Jimin wasn’t giving up, not yet.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Y/N said finally, her voice flat and cold, practiced. A performance she’d perfected long before she ever met Jimin. Detached, dismissive, as though the past months hadn’t happened at all.

Jimin stepped forward, not inside, not enough to cross the threshold, but just close enough that the scent of her perfume filled the doorway. That familiar note of citrus and something warmer, something sweet, hit Y/N’s senses like a memory she didn’t ask for. It made her want to lean forward and run at the same time.

“Don’t,” Jimin said. Her voice didn’t raise, it didn’t need to. “Don’t act like I imagined everything. Don’t do that to me.”

Y/N looked down, jaw tight.

“You don’t get to do that,” Jimin said, firmer now. “You don’t get to disappear and pretend I misunderstood. I was there.”

Y/N’s lips parted, her mind scrabbling for something cruel enough to push Jimin further away. Something sharp enough to cut deep without letting her see that her hands were already bleeding.

“You’re overthinking it,” she muttered, but the words felt thin, paper thin, like she could hear them disintegrate the second they left her mouth.

Jimin laughed, bitter, wet. Her eyes were shining now, red at the corners, and her mouth twisted like she was trying not to let the rest of her face fall apart.

“You don’t even believe that,” she said. “I felt safest when I was with you. You knew that, you knew what you were to me. And you still—”

“It wasn’t serious,” Y/N snapped, cutting her off like the truth might kill her if it got out.

Jimin’s expression crumbled, just slightly, just enough.

“You read too much into it,” Y/N added, her voice sharper now, trying to wedge space between them with every word. “It was... it was nothing.”

The silence that followed was brutal.

Not like the quiet they used to share on the floor at 3AM or tangled in sheets as the sun came up, those silences had been soft, safe. This one was a noose, tightening.

Jimin shook her head, eyes glistening.

“No,” she whispered, barely getting the word out. “No. Don’t rewrite it now, don’t you dare pretend I made this up.”

Her voice broke, and this time, she didn’t bother hiding it. “I was there too, remember? I saw how you looked at me. I felt it when you held me, when you showed up at my door in the middle of the night just to make sure I was okay. I know what that was, you don’t get to take it back just because you’re scared.”

Y/N turned her face away, then took a step back, not in fear, but like someone preparing for impact. Like someone about to detonate something they couldn’t undo.

She had to say it.

She had to make it final, make it cold. Because if she left even the smallest crack open, Jimin would find a way through it. She always had, and Y/N didn’t trust herself not to let her in, she didn’t trust herself to survive what would come after.

“It didn’t mean anything,” she said, quiet, steady, but there was something hollow in her voice now, something that echoed. “We weren’t anything, you were never mine.”

The words sat in the air like broken glass.

Jimin flinched, actually flinched, like the sentence had struck her in the chest.

And Y/N knew how cruel it was, how false. But she said it anyway, she had to make it hurt enough that Jimin wouldn’t come back. Because if Jimin begged her to stay, Y/N would crumble.

She always did.

Jimin didn’t speak for a long time. She just stared at her like she didn’t recognize her anymore, like she was trying to reconcile the girl in front of her with the one who had tucked a scarf around her neck and made jokes in the dark and whispered things half-asleep that sounded too much like I love you.

Then, without a word, she stepped inside the room.

Y/N didn’t stop her.

She watched as Jimin moved through the space like a stranger, walking to the bed they used to share, picking up the book she’d left on the nightstand, the gray hoodie she always wore after dance practice. Her movements were fast, sharp, mechanical, like if she let herself slow down, she’d break.

She turned toward the door with her things tucked in her arms, her hand trembling where it gripped the hoodie, but her back held straight.

She paused.

Just once.

Her eyes met Y/N’s, one last time. And her voice, when it came, was soft and raw and broken open.

“I don’t know what’s worse,” she said. “That you’re lying to me, or that you might be telling the truth.”

Y/N’s throat closed, her fingers dug into the sleeves of her hoodie to keep from reaching out.

And before she could say anything, before she could backpedal or apologize or confess, Jimin turned, and walked away.

No final plea, no slammed door.

Just silence.

And Y/N stood there for a moment, completely still, like if she moved too fast, the floor would give out beneath her. Then, as the silence thickened, as her chest caved inward around the weight she had tried so hard to carry without breaking, she dropped.

She sank to her knees like something inside her had finally given out, the tshirt Jimin didn’t take still crumpled at the edge of the bed, her name still echoing like an unanswered question in the corners of the room.

She pressed her face into her hands and sobbed, not delicate, not cinematic, but guttural and ugly and real. The sound of everything she never said crashing back in at once.

And the awful, inescapable truth that she had done this to herself. That she had chosen this ache, that she had called it mercy and wore it like armor, that she had let go of something that felt like home and then stood still while it burned.

The room had gone quiet again by the time the last breath left her lungs in something like a gasp.

Only then did the memory begin to loosen its grip, only then did the weight of now return. And when it did, it landed with a kind of cruel clarity, because she was no longer at the door, or standing frozen while Jimin walked away, or wrapped in the wreckage of that final goodbye.

She was here.

On the floor.

Alone.

And the shirt, the only piece of Jimin she hadn’t returned, hadn’t been able to return, was still there in her lap, bunched up between trembling hands that had forgotten how to let go, the material wrinkled and warm from where she’d been holding it like it meant something, like if she just clung tight enough, it might somehow make everything that followed un-happen.

It should’ve been returned weeks ago.

But Y/N hadn’t, she couldn’t. Because even when Jimin left, even when her voice vanished from the hallway, when the knock didn’t come again, when the playlist stopped updating, this was the only piece of her that stayed.

And now it was all that remained.

She lowered her forehead to her knees, eyes closed, breath catching in shallow bursts as her fingers curled tighter into the cotton. She wasn’t sobbing, not really. The crying had happened earlier, maybe an hour ago, maybe three. But now she was just unraveling, quietly, silently, in pieces.

She remembered the sound of Jimin’s laughter, not the kind she gave to everyone, the one that made strangers fall in love with her in seconds, but the real one, the one that only came out when she thought no one was listening. The one that crinkled her nose and made her shoulders shake. She remembered how Jimin used to trace her scars with gentle fingers, never asking what happened, never pushing for details. She never needed the full story, she just held the hurt like it belonged to both of them, she treated it like it didn’t make Y/N broken, like it made her brave.

And she remembered the way she looked at her. Like she was something precious. God, how could she have believed that? How could someone like Jimin, warm, luminous Jimin, have ever thought she could build something safe inside a person like her?

Y/N had never said it.

Not once, she never said the words. Never let them slip past the walls she’d built around her mouth, her heart, her whole damn life.

But she had loved her.

Quietly, deeply, and in every way she didn’t know how to explain.

She loved her in the way she memorized her coffee order without ever asking. In the way she waited for Jimin’s goodnight messages, in the way she kept Jimin’s scarf folded in her drawer all winter and pretended it was nothing.

But she hadn’t said it.

“I wanted to be enough for her,” she whispered, her voice raw and so quiet it felt like it might dissolve in the air before it could finish forming. “I really did.”

She pulled the shirt higher, pressed her face into it, the scent hitting her all over again, fainter now, buried under the salt of her tears, but still there.

“I thought leaving would protect her,” she said, as if saying it might make it true. “I thought if I walked away before I ruined it, before I ruined her, it wouldn’t hurt as much.”

But it did, god, it did.

It hurt in places she didn’t know could still feel anything, it hurt in the space where Jimin used to sleep, in the air where her voice used to fill the quiet, in the part of Y/N’s chest that had gone still ever since that final knock, the one that never came again.

“I thought if I stayed,” she said, barely breathing now, “I’d become the worst thing that ever happened to her.”

She closed her eyes and bit the inside of her cheek so hard it tasted like blood.

There was no one there to tell her she was wrong.

No one left to correct her, no one left at all.

And in that silence, deep, absolute, the kind that settles in your bones and never leaves, she curled tighter around the shirt, the scent, the memory, the absence, and let the final truth settle in her chest like the weight it had always been.

“People like me... we break beautiful things.”

#kpop imagines #girl group imagines #gg x reader #kpop x reader #aespa karina x reader #aespa x fem reader #aespa x reader #yu jimin x reader #karina x fem reader #karina x reader #aespa karina

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holylulusworld · 20 hours ago

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Our story (2)—High School

Summary. Steve, Bucky, and you. The holy trinity. No one gets in between you.

Pairing: Young!Bucky Barnes x Young!Reader x Young!Steve Rogers

Warnings: heavy angst, mentions of awful parents, golden child syndrome, world building, high school AU (for now), mentions of violence (slap) against the reader - her father, mentions of emancipation of minors, fluff

A/N: We will follow their story/friendship/relationship throughout their lives.

Catch up here: Our story (1)—High School

The ride toward the unknown didn’t scare you. It was the opposite. For the first time in your life, you felt hope bloom in your chest.

The spare money from your part-time jobs would help pay for food, and you still got the inheritance your grandmother left you – the only thing your parents couldn’t steal from you because your grandmother’s lawyer made sure of it.

She was the only one on your side. Your grandmother always stood tall to protect you. With her passing away, your life got even harder.

She was the ray of light keeping you going. Even if you could only spend a few days of the month with her, they were the best days of your life.

“You don’t have to be afraid.” Yelena grabs your hand, squeezing it. “I know this is all new and scary, but we are here with you. Okoye’s uncle will come around. He’s a cop, and his wife is a damn good lawyer.”

“We talked with them before coming here. My aunt said that you can avoid ending up receiving a court-appointed guardian. You can live with us and make your own decisions.” Okoye tries her best to explain everything her aunt told her.

“It’s called emancipation of minors.” Okoye pats your thigh. “Trust me, my aunt will rip them a new one if they try to fight you on living with us. She’s a beast in the courtroom.”

“I don’t have money to pay a lawyer. I got my grandma’s inheritance but won’t get a buck until I turn eighteen,” you sniffle. “They will force me to go back, and then it will only get worse.”

“Like hell,” Natasha slams her hands onto the steering wheel. “You live away from them now. You have your grandmother’s inheritance securing your future, and you have a job to pay for everything you’ll need. No one will stop you from living the life you deserve.”

“My aunt will explain things to you after school. My uncle is waiting for us at our place. He’ll take your statement of what happened tonight. Please do not hold back. You must tell him what your father did. It will make things easier for you if we have proof of their abuse.”

“I’ll do anything not to go back to them,” you sniffle, but don’t show how scared of the future you truly are – not of living alone, but that your parents may force you to come back.

Bucky, Steve and Sam helped you carry your things upstairs while the girls prepared snacks and beverages for all of you.

Okoye’s uncle was already waiting for you. He had offered to pick you up, but Steve and Bucky refused. They didn’t want to scare you even more by sending a cop to your home.

After Natasha showed you around the house and everyone claimed a seat in the living room, you had to face another obstacle on your way to freedom.

“Y/N, hi,” Okoye’s uncle is a tall, but not scary, man. His voice is soft when he looks at you. “Please just tell me what happened tonight, and anything else you can remember. If you want us to help you, I’ll do anything in my power to make sure they’ll never hurt you again.”

“He hit her!” Bucky throws his hands up. “Sir, look at her swollen cheek, and eye, and her lip is bleeding. What proof do you need?”

“Son, I know you are angry and want revenge, but please calm down. I’ll take pictures and document her injuries, too. I need a statement first. We won’t let them hurt her again, okay.”

“My uncle knows everything about abusive parents,” Okoye places her hand onto your shoulder, squeezing it. “He grew up with a violent father and an indifferent mother. If you can trust a cop, it’s him.”

“I—” you take a deep breath and start talking. When you start talking, the room falls silent. Most of them already knew your parents and sister are the worst, but they didn’t know how awful your life has been.

While the girls fight with their tears, the boy falls silent and tries not to leave to burn your parents’ house down.

You don’t see or hear them. Right at that moment, you try to remember every incident, every punishment, and any harsh words. If you are doing this, you’re doing it the right way.

“I think that’s all,” your voice cracks when you finish your statement. Okoye’s uncle nods, unable to reply right away. He swallows thickly before he finally speaks again.

“That was very good, Y/N. You did so well,” he praises and hands you his card. “My colleague will be here any minute. She will take pictures to document your injuries. If you feel like it, you should also see a doctor.”

“We will drive her,” Natasha immediately says. “Is it okay to do it tomorrow, or is it better to do it tonight?”

“It’s better to do it immediately, but she already gave me a statement, and my colleague will document her injuries. You can do it tomorrow.”

“Alright, she needs a break.” Steve is quick to stop you from hyperventilating when realization dawns on you. From now on, you won’t have a family. No mother. No father. No sister.

You didn’t know if it was a bad thing, but panicked, nonetheless. “I’m alright,” you murmur. “I want to do this. They never wanted me. I only fulfill their wish and will vanish from their lives…”

After they documented your injuries, you were left alone. At least for the night, you’d be able to forget about your family and what will happen after they realize that you are gone.

Bucky and Steve insisted on staying the night. They didn’t want to risk your father coming over to cause more trouble.

You were more than alright with them sleeping on the floor in your room. They both proved that you could trust them.

“We are having a sleepover,” Bucky snickers while Steve tries to get comfortable on the floor. “Steve, do you have any snacks?”

“Where should I hide snacks?” Steve cocks his head. “I threw on clothes and drove to Y/N. No snacks included.”

“I’m sorry,” you start to weep. “I didn’t want to wake you or cause trouble. Oh, no! What will your parents say?”

“Hey…whoa!” They both jump up to sit on the bed with you. Steve is patting your back while Bucky holds your hand. “Doll, we told you to call us. We are not mad. Bucky was cracking a joke.”

“Sorry, Y/N,” Bucky says, squeezing your hand. “We didn’t want to scare or make you feel bad. You’re safe with us and the girls. No one is ever going to hurt you again.”

“Not on our watch,” Steve adds. “We will protect you from now on.”

You smile. These boys are not much older than you, but somehow you know, they are telling the truth. Steve and Bucky will never let you down. You’re sure about it.

#steve rogers #bucky barnes #highschool au #young!steve rogers #young!bucky barnes #steve rogers x reader #bucky barnes x reader #Our story (2)—High School

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dreamescapeswriting · 6 hours ago

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BTS Reaction || Someone Walks In On You Getting Intimate [MATURE CONTENT]

⤜Copyright: © DreamEscapesWriting - July 2025

⤜MASTERLIST

MINORS DNI!!! MATURE CONTENT AHEAD

SEOKJIN:

Your lips brushed together as Jin gently laid you down on the bed. It had been too long since the two of you had been together like this, and he was savouring every second of it. Clothes were strewn around the room haphazardly as you made out hungrily with one another. It had been almost four months since you’d seen one another, and neither of you was going to waste a single minute.

“Fuck I need you,” He moans as you roll your hand down toward his crotch, about to take his cock into your hand when the door burst open. The boys were excited to see you and didn't want to wait as Jin had asked them to. Jin immediately grabs a blanket to cover himself and you, his cheeks burning bright red, yelling,

“Close the door! I’m worldwide handsome, not worldwide indecent!” He yells, making you giggle as you hide in his chest. Jin was doing his best to keep you decent in front of the others as they yelled and left the room. Jimin was pouting the whole time, mumbling about wanting to see you after being away on tour for so long.

Later that night, when you were all having food together the boys were teasing you for bouncing on Jin as soon as he was home, and you whined, tried to ignore them,

“She couldn’t keep her hands off me, can you blame her?” He says before winking over in your direction, making your skin heat up, you knew he was trying to take some of the heat off you. The boys would easily stop teasing you about it, but every day from that day forward, Hoseok would whistle whenever Jin went by, and Jimin would always knock before entering a room the two of you were in. Even if it was clear nothing was happening.

YOONGI

Things between you and Yoongi were always very heated, it didn’t matter how long the two of you had been together you always found ways to keep the passion alive and tonight was just like that. A night in his studio, one thing lead to another and you were laid naked beneath him on the sofa, kissing and sucking on his neck as you reached between you and lined him up with your entrance.

"If you don't hurry up and fuck me I'm going to combust," You whined at him, looking into his eyes as he gave you a devlish smirk, tempted to tease you a little longer but he knew he wouldn't be able to hold out himself much longer.

"Whatever my lady wants, she gets." He chuckles darkly, about to push into you when it feels like someone has poured ice down his back.

“Hyung!-” Jungkook screamed mid-sentence and covered his eyes while Yoongi cursed covering you with his own body. He’d been sure he locked the door but clearly he was wrong.

“Close. The. Door!” Yoongi growls out, throwing his shoe at the door as Jungkook yells to the others about a warning of not going into the studio, or sitting on the sofa again while you couldn’t help but laugh into Yoongi’s chest.

"I'm never going to hear the end of this," Yoongi whines a little only making you laugh harder.

HOSEOK

Hoseok looked down at you as you sank down to your knees in front of him and he felt his palms getting sweaty. He had no idea how long it would be until he got another moment alone with you and he just wanted to soak all of it up now,

“B-Baby, fuck…I-I don;t know if I’ll last,” He hisses as you free him from his boxers and smirk at him,

“Just relax and let me handle it.” You say as you wrap your fingers around his cock and slowly begin to pump him in your hand, about to take him into your mouth when the door hit the wall, bouncing off it. Chaos completely took over within a matter of seconds. Screaming started, Hoseok rushed to hide you behind him, but completely exposed himself. Taehyung was dying of laughter, practically doubled over, while Yoongi was biting back a smirk

“Can you guys knock for once in your lives?!” Hoseok screams as he covers himself with a pillow. Your face hidden in the crook between his neck and shoulder, and shaking your head.

“Relax, baby, they missed you too.” You try to reassure him, but he grumbles back at you,

“Trust me, I missed you more than I did them,”

Hoseok didn’t hear the end of it for weeks on end, Taehyung would constantly make little jokes about it while Jimin would reenact the way Hoseok had shoved you behind him to protect you.

NAMJOON

Namjoon was sure everyone was out of the house, he was positive that no one was going to be around.

“Joonie, please,” You moan loudly as he teases your entrance with the head of his cock for wheat felt like the milliontih time,

“I thought you wanted to savour this moment,” He whispers into your ear, softly nibbling on the skin as you hiss at him, bucking your hips a little, trying to get more of him inside of you,

“That was until you started teasing me, please Joonie. I fucking need you,” You moan out and he chuckled deeply, slowly pushing himself into you right to the hilt when the door swung open,

“NOONA!” Jungook screamed happily at first to see you until he realised what exactly was happening in front of him and he screamed again, covering his eyes and screaming fr the others,

“NOONA!” He yelled again, this time sounding completely horrified at what was happening. Namjoon was quick to cover your bodies with the blanket and you were hiding in his back., completely mortified.

“Jungkook! Out!” Namjoon growled out, not caring that he was embarrassed but more concerned about you at the end of all of this.

“You okay?” He asked once Jungkook had left the room and you nodded,

“My place next time, no arguments,” You whine at him, looking around the room for your pants to get back into.

The teasing from the boys was relentless of course. The group chat was even changed to “Namjoons Ass” and later “I need you Joonie.” just to ease Namjoon that little bit more.

JIMIN

The boys had always teased Jimin for being innocent looking, he might have had that flirty side to him but they endlessly teased him about being the cute one of the group…That was until tonight. You and Jimin had a long standing date since he’d come back from his service and you were determined to make it work, even if they were all downstairs. It would just be like the old days of sneaking around together. Jimin had told the members the two of you were going to watch a movie - Mistake number one.

Jimin moaned into your neck as you did your best to keep quiet, wrapping your legs around his waist and drawing him deeper into you.

“Jimin, fuck, I missed this, I missed you.” You whisper, tears falling down your cheeks in an intimate and passionate moment but it was then that everyone decided to barge into the room without even so much as a knock.

“We heard the movie was good and we were going to join-” Jin stopped mid sentence as he looked at the sign in front of him. Luckily enough you and Jimin were under the blankets so nothing could be seen except from Jimin on top of you clearly in an intense moment. Namjoon covered Jungkook’s eyes, Taehyung screamed and Jimin looked the most mortified out of everyone, pulling a pillow over his head as you did your best to fight back laughter.

“Leave then!” Jimin yelled as the boys continued to stare, slowly backing out of the room and slamming the door shut behind them.

Jimin refused to go out of his room for the rest of the night, cuddled up to you as he apoligised and promised the two of you would get a doover when the time was right.

For weeks he couldn’t stop blushing whenever the boys would mention your name or “going to bed”, it would instantly make his cheeks turn pink.

TAEHYUNG

The night had started brilliantly, the two of you were having a nice night in together. Candles were on around the living room, soft music was playing, it was the perfect night. Taehyung’s lips were kissing down your neck, shoulders and stomach, about to finally reach the point where you were craving him mostly and the boys walked into the house.

“Hyung! Movie night and AHH!” Jungkook screeched dropping the bag of popcorn to the floor, his hands flying to his eyes to cover them when Jimin walked in he froze. Taehyung simply lfited his head and smirked at them. He knew you were covered by the sofa and the most that they could see was his naked ass, something they’d sene plenty of times of the years.

“You could have knocked, or you know, texted first, I’m bust.” He said, not even the least bit bothered. You giggled beneath him as you heard the scramble of the boys leaving, the slamming of the door behind them before you pushed Taehyung’s head down to where you wanted him once more.

Later on in the week though Taehyung sent a photo to the group chat of a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign and he’d written,

“Next time, learn to read.”

JUNGKOOK

Things had escalated fast between you and Jungkook. Your shirt is somewhere on the floor, his pants were somehow on the lamp in the corner, it had been almost a month since the two of you had a second alone together and tonight was the night. The boys were supposed to be out to dinner giving you time alone in the dorms, but right as Jungkook was finally about to enter you the door barged open. Jungkook seemed to scream louder than anyone else in the room and used himself as a shield for you, unforunately for the other members his manhood was on full display to them,

“GET OUT! I’M AN ADULT!” He screams but that only ensued total chaos around him. Hoseok tried to run out with his eyes closed but ended up running into the wall, taehyung and Jimin were losing their minds in fits of giggles were Namjoon was trying to get everyone out while apologising to you both. For the next two days Jungkook avoided everyone not wanting to even show his face but eventually he had to since he had to work alongside them.

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manmadeseraphim · 2 days ago

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An Essay on Angron from Warhammer 40K

Angron Thal’kyr, The Lord of the Red Sands, The Red Angel. A being born a demi-god, turned to a beast, then reforged as a monster of the warp. A man born to be the personification of the empathy of the Emperor of Man. This birthright was stolen from him, and in its stead was placed the butcher's nails. The creation of an emissary of apathy–and how poetic is that? A man made to hold the burdens of others, LITERALLY possessing the ability to take away the feeling of pain of all kinds, made to be an uncaring, cruel, and vindictive bastard–scourging the stars for blood and skulls in service of his enslaver.

When many think of the soft or gentle aspects of warhammer, many minds float to Vulkan, the primarch of the Salamanders as well as the legion themselves. They show compassion and love to the humans they save. Often depicted more as ‘super heros’ in the fandom rather than inhuman warmachines (of which is still acknowledged). But this stage was built for that of Angron, one meant to be a bastion of empathy and compassion (in the sense of the 41st millennium). This shines through his gene-seed impact on his sons, the XII legion–then War Hounds. While they embarked on some of the most brutal and messy battlefields, the War Hounds are quite different from the berzerkers of the modern World Eaters who live blissfully in their violence, and in agony when not.

The War Hounds were unlike other legions during the great crusade, they had no war cry, they were not melee frenzy fanatics, they were slow and measured warriors. Those who would dredge across the battlefields with organized shield formations, combing through the obstacles. It was said that the War Hounds would march across their battlefields in all but complete silence, focused on cutting through those marked for death. Often deployed to the most brutal objectives as shock troops, the War Hounds took to the field with a mission to pursue.

I will stand to argue that in the brutal darkness of the far future, the War Hounds showed the most empathy to those they felled before meeting Angron. They do not relish in the pain they inflict, but work in quiet efficiency to see the deeds done. Even in the World Eaters of today you can see a hint of this ‘empathy’. They will not maul you, torture you, or make you into a room of living and conscious; in worship to their lord, they work to take skulls, cut heads. In comparison to those like the Night Lords, Emperor’s Children, or even Dhrukari–this is an extremely merciful fate. Nothing more than skulls for the skull god, a death usually by decapitation.

Before the primarch of the 12th became a ghost of a man at Desh’elika ridge–he lived to fight for the freedom of his brothers and sisters of the gladiatorial Nuscerian pits. He lived to stand beside and die with the slaves he was in bondage with. To bring peace and freedom to those enchained as he felt and lived the same paint as them. In his first ever conflict in the gladiatorial pits as a child, he chose to snap his adversaries' necks rather than simply throwing them into the acid rising beneath them. To spare them from the agony the fluids of pain would bring to his opponents, a gesture of empathy. It is almost ironic, that the primarch of empathy was never shown any himself. His own was violated and stripped from him–a rape of his own mind by the barbarus tech of Nusceria.

In its own twisted and macabre way, the enforcement of the butcher's nails unto his own legion was an overall display of forced empathy. Making his sons experience and understand a fraction of the pains he did (as the implemented nails were ‘cheap knockoffs’ when compared to the original Nuscerian technology). Until that moment, his legion was literally physically incapable of keeping up with their primarch on the battlefield. Angron’s lust for violence and slaughter forced him to hurl himself into the fray of melee without regard for himself–only the engagement of brutality. The delegated position of bodyguard to the primarch, the devourers, had become a job of redundancy, as not even them could keep up with their primarch to ensure his safety.

Angron’s apathy enforced by the nails can be seen by his slaughter. His complete lack of care as to who he was fighting, who he was hurting, all to sooth his own paints. Furthermore, while one could argue the implementation of the butcher's nails unto his legion IS an example of forced empathy, it is also apathy as to the promised harm it imprints into his sons. Angron did not care for his sons to see his perspective. He didn't care to be understood–he wanted to hurt others. To claim some form of measured control over the galaxy he resides in. When his legion could not complete a worldly conquest in 31 hours (1 Nuscerian day), he would force them to decimate themselves (purge 10% of their ranks). Over and over again Angron exhibits behaviors of callous regard for the impact of his choices on those around him. He wants to inflict pain on others because it is truly the only thing he can remember living through. In spite of life itself, he wants others to join in his misery.

Most of this apathy results from the butcher's nails, but its true enforcement comes from Angron’s depression and self destructive desires. Decimating his legion brings only pain to his future objectives, but he doesn't care. Angron hated his life under the emperor, he wanted nothing more than to have died with his siblings in the mountains of Nusceria. How he acts is without regard to himself. For two years even, Angron ran away from his legion. He went to a death world to find something that would be strong enough to kill him. A dramatic attempt at suicide. He only refused to see to it personally, as he deemed it a dishonorable end. For those two years he did nothing but fight other creatures, hoping that one would finally kill him. Unfortunately he was so successful at killing the beasts, he began to be worshiped as a god by the natives of the world.

A demi-god of empathy and compassion–given no chance to even live. His choice to show his father figure empathy in the gladiator pits, his choice to refuse to kill him because of their bond, sealed his fate. His display of self, stripped his very purpose from his soul. Marking him for ruination, ownership to yet be held by Khorne. Angron could have been a leader like that of Guilliman, but was damned from the start. A tale of Greek tragedy in true, someone who never had a chance to live, never given permission to die, only promised the perpetual continuation of pain. With his only escape being the apathetic violence enforced onto others. He was never allowed to truly be.

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parkerellis · 21 hours ago

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wait i'm loving all your takes on Samira! i'm not the biggest fan of people reducing her character into some vanilla er princess who can do no wrong. i mean, in general, fandom loves reducing the character to either their wrongs or their rights to fit an agenda, and i think losing all that nuance takes away everything that makes the cast compelling characters. there's usually a few posts calling out stans of other characters, but everything Samira related that I see is so mind-numbingly positive, so mind sharing more Samira takes or predictions for s2??

putting this under a read more because i gotta get this out of my system.

i think there's a problem in the fandom (tbh i mostly see this on ao3 but it happens here too) that pittfest is accepted as The Worst Day of Everyone's Lives - "the shift from hell" as it's often called - and it's absolute rock bottom and everyone can only go up from there. and yes it is traumatizing and yes the characters will be dealing with it for a long time but it's not that bad for everyone, particularly samira, she thrives. yeah she's running on fumes by the time the mci starts but that's a shift she could've finished if it was any earlier in the day. and this is to say that it can always get worse. murphy's law n all.

i don't think s1 fixes samira one bit. i don't think we see her open her beer at the park after the shift and just because she can look herself in the mirror and say "okay you're tired and you can't keep going right now" doesn't mean she's fixed her workaholism. i'm assuming that she gets handed a bunch of langdon's r4 responsibilities starting her next shift and she wants it too badly to be able to say no.

you have to understand that samira thinks of herself as two hands attached to a strong brain, not as a person. she doesn't care about herself yet she has all these stupid human feelings that she can't get rid of and she tries to throw them away on other people like robby does because that's what he taught her.

she's already burned out by the time we see her, she just doesn't know it yet. a lot of people like to consider her crying in the work bathroom for a max of 120 seconds an epiphany-level Mental Breakdown but it's so tame relative to what burnout really does to someone. she's headed down a much darker path, one that's not really Girl Boss or fun to talk about or romantic to have abbot fix. supriya said in an interview that she's not sure if samira would even have food at home when she gets in at the end of s1. she's not just being held back from perfection by a bad boss, she can barely take care of herself.

there will be a time where she sleeps for 18 hours straight on all of her days off and doesn't remember any of her shifts when she works nights and she doesn't brush her teeth and her hair gets terribly matted in that claw clip and eats maybe one meal a day and works two doubles in a row because they're down a senior resident and she's a really good doctor, and that's all gonna detonate one day.

i won't make s2 predictions because i'll just make myself upset when it comes out.

#this is so disjointed lmao. disregard if it's just bullshit #asks #anon #the pittcourse #samira mohan #the pitt

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smtown-tourist · 2 days ago

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Fan Theory about the Saja Boys’ Backstories:

Since I’m on my K-pop Demon Hunters kick right now, I thought I’d share my theories about the other Saja Boys’ backstories of how they became demons.

First off, I want to say that I do lean on the side of thinking that they were a K-pop boy band that sold their souls for fame, connecting back to that picture we saw in the Doctor’s office. Otherwise, how else would they all be musically talented? So, collectively, yes, I do think they damned themselves in that way.

However, I do think there is more to that. I think each member had an additional request they asked of Gwi-ma that further made them into demons and possibly made them more evil. Jinu only having the one request, I think, helped save some of his humanity, why he still had a soul to give Rumi in the end.

I think their names give us a hint as to what they sold their souls for. These theories also connect back to how they could’ve sold their souls for fame because what they asked for would’ve helped them in that aspect. I’ll go in alphabetical order.

Abby

Abby’s name, obviously, stems from him having a perfect body, particularly rock-hard abs. It’s safe to say that he is the Visual in the group. In order to be a successful Visual, you must have a handsome face and body to match. We can see that he can sing and dance but perhaps his body never met the standard of a K-pop idol. Maybe he used to struggle with his weight or was super scrawny. I think Abby sold his soul in order to be the Best Visual.

Baby

Baby’s name heavily implies that he is the Maknae of the group. Fans adored him from the start for his youthful look. He quickly realized that success in the K-pop Industry comes from being young, being the “baby.” Yet, as we all know, being young and looking young doesn’t last forever. I think Baby sold his soul in order to remain young, not only to preserve how he looks but to also preserve his body so it won’t wear out with age.

Mystery

Throughout the entire movie, we never see Mystery’s face. Because of this, I have two theories for why he sold his soul.

As we know, it’s hard for an idol to keep their lives a secret and even harder for them to keep their images squeaky clean. At the fansign, Mystery barks at one of the fans. While it’s possible that this was meant to be humorous, his “demon side” peaking out, I believe that it hints at Mystery possibly having a wild side, something that would tarnish his idol reputation and cause a scandal. That’s why I think Mystery sold his soul in order to preserve his image and never get caught - to save face.

The second theory has to do with privacy. After debuting, Mystery quickly realized how invasive fans can be, wanting to know everything about him and possibly intrude on his personal life. Eventually it got to be too much and he wanted to return to his normal life. However, that’s virtually impossible when everyone recognizes you. That’s why I think Mystery could’ve sold his soul in order to hide his identity and never again get recognized for being an idol.

Romance

For Romance, I also have two theories. The first is based around the Idol Dating Ban. I think after becoming an idol, Romance realized how hard it would be to not only date but find true love. That’s why my first theory is that Romance sold his soul in order to date without it having any consequences on his idol career.

My second theory has to do with the fans. An idol’s fame is largely dependent on them being loved by their fanbase. Romance became dependent on this love: obsessed with being biased by their fans and afraid of losing their love. That’s why I also think he might’ve sold his soul in order to be able to charm every fan and make them love him no matter what.

So those are my theories. Keep them or throw them away. I hope the creators give us something in the future that reveals their backstories so we can find out if any of our theories are true or not. A spin-off series would be preferred but at this point, I’ll take anything.

#k pop demon hunters #saja boys #abby saja #baby saja #mystery saja #romance saja #jinu #backstory #fan theory

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bigproblemsfunnylife · 2 days ago

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Omg the arcana writer in the big 25?? Can I req some general Julian hcs pls

Of course! Here you have some headcanons about this silly doctor! (Sorry if there are some angsty ones)

The Doctor’s Head: Julian

Title: Headcanons

Characters: Julian Devorak, Portia Devorak & Mazelinka.

Pairing: Julian Devorak x GN! MC

CW: Some angst, sleep issues, low self-worth, mentions of crying and fluff.

—Julian will throw himself into danger for others, often without thinking. Hero complex? A bit. Guilt-driven? Definitely.

—Talks with his hands, constantly. Even when whispering.

—Whenever he catches you watching him with a soft expression, he gets flustered.

—Sleeps very little. Nightmares, insomnia, or just staying up overworking or brooding.

—Keeps random trinkets in his pockets—coins, feathers, half-finished notes, etc…

—When he is deep in thought, sometimes he paces in tight circles and mutters to himself.

—Frequently stains his gloves or sleeves with ink, wine, or blood (he tries to look put together, but he’s messy by nature).

—Believes deeply in redemption, but not that he deserves it.

—He’s a touch-starved mess. Once he knows you won’t push him away, he’s constantly reaching out—hands on your waist, kisses to your knuckles, curling beside you like a cat.

—His living space is chaotic—books piled everywhere, half-drunken cups of tea, medical notes pinned to walls.

—Owns more coats than shirts. The man is coatsexual.

—Never sits properly — chairs are for draping oneself dramatically across, not sitting upright like a respectable person.

—Loves falling asleep with his head in your lap while you play with his hair or read to him. He’ll pretend not to fall asleep. He always does.

—Writes poetry when drunk, and it ranges from surprisingly profound to completely unhinged.

—If you get hurt—even slightly—Julian goes full dramatic medic mode. “Oh no. No no no. I must inspect the wound. You may need… at least three kisses to heal properly.”

—Terrible at keeping secrets, unless it’s about someone else’s safety.

—He loves doing chores with you. Not because he’s good at them—he’s terrible at folding laundry—but because he likes being near you while pretending he’s helping.

—He keeps a letter to Portia and Mazelinka tucked into one of his coat pockets, written during a night he was convinced he wouldn’t survive. He never meant for them to find them.

—He spends long hours by candlelight writing in journals—sometimes in code, sometimes poetry, sometimes medical issues. The ink is often smudged by the side of his hand… Or by tears.

—He has a strange fondness for rainy days. They remind him of his first winter at Vesuvia with Mazelinka.

—He hums lullabies under his breath when you have nightmares. He never says anything, never asks questions until you’re ready. He just holds you like you’re the most fragile, sacred thing in the world.

—He collects old books, even the damaged ones. Especially the damaged ones.

—He never believed he’d grow old. Part of him still doesn’t.

—If you fall asleep on his shoulder, he won’t move for hours. Not even to eat. He just sits and read.

—His favorite mug is cracked. He insists it has “character.” He refuses to let anyone throw it away.

—Despite everything, he keeps trying. That’s what defines him. He always tries. Even when it hurts. Even when he thinks he’ll fail.

#julian the arcana #julian devorak #ilya devorak #portia devorak #portia the arcana #mazelinka the arcana #the arcana #the arcana game #headcanons #the arcana headcanons #julian headcanons #dorian games #nix hydra #julian x reader #julian x mc #julian x apprentice

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werezmastarbucks · 6 hours ago

Text

14. olive branch

flowers over boys masterlist

in which you faint like in a k drama

word count: 3761

warnings: slowburn burning slowly; swearing

Hoseok's fox eyes are scanning the room. the shutters haven't been closed for almost a week during the day. every morning as you arrived, you opened them, and then closed for the night. you try and give him instructions so that the state of the room remains like this and he tells you it's now your job to keep an eye on it. he also notes you need a new hanbok and need to let go of that single ribbon in your hair.

"distracting".

he inspects the work like he's never seen beautiful things before. his cheeks go up as he gives a non-smile, pressing his lips together.

"it's different".

"i was wondering who occupied this position before me".

"i do not remember her name".

he notices your pleased face and adds,

"because she was a good florist. nobody saw or heard her until she died".

"i thought you executed her".

"doesn't mean i needed to know who she was".

"what was she excuted for?"

"angel's trumpets in his Highness' chamber. he happens to be allergic to poisonous plants".

"lots of people have a grudge against him, huh?"

he gives you a testing side eye.

"he's the king".

"has he tried being a cooler king? so that everybody loves him and nobody wants to plot against him".

Hoseok shakes the bangs away from his face in a motion that's impossible to ignore. there's threatening precision to his movements. his upturned, delicate, arrogant nose tips up.

you expect him to say something about being happy to execute you, too, but he goes,

"you are still on that democracy thing".

without letting you reply, he turns shortly.

"now to study. but before, you need to go to the garment-maker and get measured. or perhaps... stay in the other parts of the palace. tapestry room needs colour, and the main corridor, too. move to the study when the new hanbok is ready".

you scratch your face.

"why are you the one who inspects me? isn't it the palace's handler's job? you know? the butler? or whatever you call them".

"the grounds handler is unavailable for you. do not seek his company. if you have questions..." he sighs and his long lashes flutter, small oval mouth sighs, "approach me or ask your garden maids. don't bother others".

with that, he retreats and you start feeling a little isolated. there's something circling your brain for sure. perhaps even a smart thought. but you're positively hesitant. you take another look at the pretty throne room and think that magnolia branches were your most genius idea so far; and you kinda want to see Yoongi sit in between them, but at the same time, you're too proud to picture it.

you barely have any hope for others' help in finding the garments maker. you understand what Hoseok was talking about: the staff is repulsed by you. women hide eyes and men simply turn around without even throwing a look at you. they behave not even as if you were a ghost, but like you are plagued. you get a sudden desire to act out a mini zombie apocalypse to egg them on, to punish them for their insufferability. not even the king behaves like that, he might be a jerk but he acknowledges your presence and doesn't stare you up and down like you are all covered in shit. you keep your head high, reminding yourself that you can't help that you're that gurl. different face, different step, different outlook. you see Taehyung back on his duty, patrolling the corridor in the inner quarter, and he is the only one who waves at you timidly. you know where the tailor lives? you mouth at him from a distance. what? he mouths back. YOU-KNOW-WHERE-GARMENTS-MASTER-IS? you mouth again. what? he mouths back, innocently, cocking his head to the side. it goes on for about two minutes, then a bunch of servants enters the view, and he turns away. you feel like everybody's got a bad case of being a dumbass. you waste about an hour before you finally claw out a girl, distracting her from her work, and she points the way to you.

it's a portion of the palace closer to the gardens; Garden of the South is visible from the open windows. fresh windy air coming inside. the old man, a head taller than you, retreats into the inside rooms when you enter calmly, nods at a quiet woman who takes scissors and comes up to measure you. she doesn't talk; simply moves you around in little tugs.

"how long will it take?"

she looks at you, her huge brown eyes lined up with black paint, like she didn't expect you to speak Korean.

"two days".

"i want it in purple".

her eyes make a full circle. you've never seen anyone roll their eyes like this. it's as if she is praying.

"it's going to be salmon".

"why?"

"because palace staff wears salmon".

you clear your throat as her fingers brush over the neck where the bruises are still visible. the bruise is slowly turning from dark to yellowish.

as you are released, it's almost full evening. there's nothing to do; starting the new room in darkness is no point, and there's no one to talk to. you wander around the palace in hopes of bumping into Jungkook or hear the bamboo stick clicking and busting his training. but it's boring, nothing going on. the throne room stands still enveloped in creamy, sweet scent of flowers, and the rest of the palace awaits your touch.

in the morning you return and cover the tapestry room in bold, orange birds of paradise. they contrast with the green walls and highlight the mighty tiger displayed above.

a day later you get your new hanbok, complete with all its parts. beautiful, light fabric of soft salmon colour goes well with the tone of your skin. you keep the lilac ribbon in your hair against the General's advice because you feel connection to Jiyoung, as if she is holding your hand, that way.

palace is still too new for you, so it takes time to find the study. even though you've been there before, it's a labyrinth. you only remember the rooms you worked in, like they are the completely explored areas in a video game. and yet, in all its vastness, it's a small place. you bump again into Hoseok who is making Jungkook spar with him in the Western Garden, surrounded by peacocks. if you had a camera, you'd take a picture of this. one of the blows lands on a pine and it shudders.

"hey!" you yell sharply from the corridor. the voice is back. throat is at the full capacity, to everybody's despair.

"no PE in the garden! what do you think it is, your own training ground?"

Hoseok's eyebrows crawl together above his eyes. Jungkook lands himself firmly on the ground and smiles, a little breathless.

"you look pretty".

"look at what you've done!" you shriek, seeing his foot standing on the head of an alpine flower. you want to grab a stick and throw it at his head. weeks of work, you know how the garden crew breaks their backs to keep everything around here as heavenly beautiful as possible. peacocks scatter away from your screams as you make your way to them.

"lower your voice", Hoseok warns. your finger points at him accusingly.

"you have the inner yard for these things. why do you have to kick around in the garden?"

you squat to see if the flower can still be saved.

"there's troops rehearsal in there".

you click your tongue.

"move your thigh", you push him away with your forearm and Hoseok steps up with his hand outstretched, but Jungkook actually stands between you.

"no, uncle, please".

you look up from the ground and unbend your knees, stepping to Jungkook's shoulder. it's believable that he'd protect you. it's very on brand for him. you look at Hoseok with a challenge.

"people work their bones off in here not for you to stomp out the flowers", you say coldly.

for some reason it's so hard for him to accept that you have autonomy. it's nasty to think about, but nobody has ever opposed him? bangs too scary? legs too long? Jungkook comes to rescue:

"we will move further to the stones, alright? is that fine?"

you have to give in because he is really trying.

"yes, of course, Jungkookie", your anger is gone in a second. you want to escape this unfriendly stare that turns into a grimace of annoyance.

"at least don't call him pet names in king's presence".

you bite your tongue, not willing to rile him up further, and walk away, trying to remember where you had been headed. oh, right. the study. you pick up the basket where you dropped it and then realize.

"hey, General!"

he turns around with a sigh.

"how do i look? Mona Lisa?"

his eyes are hooded, clouded in exhaustion.

"you look alarming".

"huh?"

"it's a compliment", Jungkook smiles, then his arm wraps around the General's shoulder. he is a couple centimeters taller.

you slide the door open and enter the study without a worry because you do not expect Yoongi to be there. finally it occurs to you why Hoseok told you to change hanbok first. you frown upon seeing him; he doesn't raise his head from what he's writing behind his little desk. his feet in taesahyes (you heard that's what people call these slippers) crossed under it. you refuse to acknowledge each other further; his pupils can't be seen from under his brow as he moves the brush over the paper. the room where he was trying to cut your wrist off. good times. it's bigger than you remember it; the stress of the moment probably squashed it in your mind. your eye, when it leaves the sight of the king, starts assessing the corners and the walls immediately. there are no old flowers here so the basket isn't needed for now; you drop it on the floor, and Yoongi instantly purrs, as if he's been waiting in the wings,

"not here. put it to the wall".

you kick the basket softly with your foot, moving it out of the way.

"not that wall. can't you see the cushions".

the childish part of you wants to act up and just leave, after you put the basket onto his head. instead, you give yourself a second to unwind, moving your jaw, then bow down and pick it up and move away, to a clear space at the wall.

"how's the Namjoon op going?" you ask, only to cut him off. Yoongi raises his head, eyebrow cocked at you. looks deliriously elite. he just never looks tired or dishevelled, like every morning he plunges his angelic face into a bowl of ice with plum petals floating in it. you get why women are forbidden to look at him.

"it's going. i am a man of my word".

"i know. just asking".

you walk along the wall looking around like you are in a museum. there are small vases on the sides of the desk; an array of medium-sized blades is displayed on the wall, together with a scroll with some writings in Chinese. a small picture of a stork, the bird very frequent in this land, pretty and elegant, with red legs.

"are you here to demonstrate me your new hanbok?" he asks. you turn to him, scowling.

"Hoba chan sent me here to decorate".

"i don't need flowers in my study", Yoongi retorts calmly. looks you directly in the eye. his gaze lingers on your neck for a little.

"yeah, i am better, thanks".

"not from what i hear".

"apology half-accepted".

Yoongi's head tilts sideways and he resembles a British Shorthair, his eyes almost astray.

"have you picked the morning glory?"

you mimick his expression so instinctively like you're a begrudged married couple.

"why would i pick them?"

"for the roof decoration?" he presses, non-blinking, "or is it another thing you don't know because you haven't bothered to ask?"

you are completely lost.

"there were no orders for morning glory in any room. i thought i choose flowers myself".

"you do, but not when it comes to the seasonal games. morning glory is the symbol of my dynasty", he pauses, "do you wish to change that, as well?"

you scratch your brow, frowning, picking your brain, but nothing comes up.

"okay, what are you talking about? what seasonal games?"

he sighs, chewing on the upper lip, and carefully puts the brush away not to stain the paper. pushing himself off the desk, he stands up, motions for you, and you obey out of curiosity.

the Night Garden is beyond his study window. his chamber is upstairs on the same spot. stepping up, you look outside at the sea of late lilies, almost all white and pink, and the beautiful purple vines running all around the delicate display. morning glory.

"they are grown throughout the year", Yoongi says, his shoulder almost touching yours, "to be collected at the end of the tenth month for the roof of the small pavillion, where the seasonal games are held".

"aa-ah", you hum, "what kind of games are they?"

"games to celebrate wit, might and mirth of Joseon people. you have four days".

he stands back and sits down again at the desk as you observe the garden. you thought before that morning glory serves exactly this purpose: to be pretty together with lilies. always thought it was unconventional choice, but with the abundance of things to learn from Jiyoung, never got to ask her specifically that. you turn your head to look at him. his pale finger runs along the edge of the scroll gently, the veins on the back of the palm blue like his familial flowers. your own hands are fucked. wrapped and sore. manicure? no manicure for commoners. maybe you need to trick him into marrying you so that you can get manicure as king's wife. after seven weeks here, this sounds like a reason enough.

"are they collective, or more like Olympic games?"

"no more questions".

"do you participate?"

Yoongi stares in front of him.

"i don't. i'm the king, i observe the judges".

"maybe you should participate. you know, practice your wits a little".

"that would have been sublime had Joseon been a democracy", he murmurs, then a shadow of a grin touches his lips. "but it is not, and will never be".

"yeah, Joseon, never", you nod. that warrants a look from him. you shut up. this is the loop territory. you chew on your lip and he doesn't look away, his eyes becoming lazy, like he's about to fall asleep. a stray seagull flies above and yells a profanity.

"you could form a team with Hoseok, Taehyung and Jungkook, and dalyeora bangtan this shit up".

"that is quite enough for today".

"alright", you wave him away and go. his voice bears a hint of a Sunday cheer.

"y/n".

"what?"

"basket".

you slap the side of your dress.

"oh, right".

it takes a certain technique to pick the vines so you ask Jiyoung for help, and soon, together, you return to the Night Garden, where you're trying to ignore Yoongi's absolutely straight back with the head tilted forward, in the window. he is visible from the garden, and Jiyoung talks in whispers and tries not to turn her back that way. tries to show you and get out as quick as she can. you'll be fine, she keeps repeating, just sever the runner here. keep them about a forearm's length. not yours, mine. you'll be fine. it's all said in a whisper, her face low.

"have you found the second ribbon?"

you shrug guiltily.

"no, i even tried asking the maid who sweeps the rooms. she hadn't found anything".

Jiyoung mirrors your shrug and scurries away from the garden. thankfully it's a cloudy day, so it's not hot. you crack your head about how to install the water pouches on the roof, so, with the first testing vine you had cut, you walk over to Yoongi's study window and take the wet pouch from the basket. he keeps writing, then comments your humming:

"i have palace musicians for that".

"your palace musicians don't know the D-Day i bet".

he shuts up.

you practice by taking a pouch and carefully attaching it to the outstanding edge of the outside window frame. you had found that the inner laces of the hanbok, those that you had cut earler to mark the flowers, stretch pretty well, so after a washing, you snuck into the garden two nights ago and stole all the laces from all the maids' hanboks. they have proved to be great replacements for hair ties that aren't invented here yet, the design of which you were craving. they worked really well in keeping the pouches intact. against the rough wood, no matter how polished and smooth it is, they stick well because they are made of silk, and get broken down a little once you rub them against the edge. you put the tip of the stack into the pouch and fix the other to the frame as well with one little needle tipped in honey. the needle goes under the wood plank and through the vine and keeps it in place. you think you have figured it out. now you need to repeat that about a thousand times on the double roof of the pavilion. Yoongi doesn't pay attention, letting you concentrate for once. well, at least partially. as he writes, he keeps purring musingly, and you want to sue him, but you will probably lose this case.

you pant like an animal, enraged to the point of wanting to spit in someone's face. the sun has come out from under the clouds, and it's hot again. it is utterly ridiculous that you have to heave this gigantic ladder against the building, rubbing the horizontal bars against your new dress, and getting splinters from old wood, and not a single motherfucker is willing to help. moreover, when the ladder is put in place, you realize you now have to climb at least four meters up with the huge motherfucking basket in your hands, and then not fall down from it while you work. you let your eyes observe the size of this thing. they call it the "small pavilion". in reality, it's a huge-ass pavilion, but guess you should be thankful the games aren't hosted in the main yard, in front of the enormous pavilion. you haven't started yet, and a drop of sweat already rolls down your temple, and you anticipate a day full of swearing and frustration.

amazing unpaid job for which you get food and a thin futon, AND your coworkers avoid you with the stink eye. you don't know how many more daechwitas you have in you, and you're not sure complaining about this task will work.

so you just get to it.

you wonder why the hell Yoongi wouldn't allow anyone to help you. you'd bring some of the garden maids to your rescue, but Hoseok said no. like it's a form of punishment for you. you, your salmon hanbok, and the foreign swear words they will all learn really well before the four days are out.

you climb. you power through. the basket full of vines on your shoulder. the ladder sways and you yell out. you hold on for your dear life. you scream out everything you think about the king, his seasonal games, and this tyranic country. you work, strapping the pouches, poking the needles, handling the vines with care. you put them slightly below the closest edge of the roof so that they are well seen from the ground and protected from the sun. you shout songs to keep yourself steady and not think about how afraid you are of heights. you wonder whether it's been enough role playing for one adventure and how your pride can't take it anymore, adhering to Yoongi's orders when you'd seen him dance in pink pyjamas and no underwear. given, it was not the same Yoongi, but details are irrelevant.

"ah! one is falling off!" the voice calls. you freeze in your place, eyelids heavy. Jungkook the vine pinching ceremony observer is the last thing you want to see now. you turn your head carefully, holding yourself on the ladder with one hand and by the edge of the roof with the other.

you are, in fact, so incredibly high above the ground, that you can see the whole palace territory from here. breathtaking, scenic view. small people walking around, all the gardens visible, including the Night Garden. greenery around the territory: right beyond the market, the forest begins. you can see the slope of the hill and the river where maids wash the clothes. Jungkook is behind you, in the center of this yard which you believe is in the west to the center of the palace. standing in the sim position and pointing.

"y/n, it's falling!"

your head snaps there. you can see the needle sticking out from the stubborn piece of wood, letting the edge of the vine slip. you reach there and put the needle back, carefully placing the flower onto it.

"hey, careful! the ladder is moving!"

"Jungk-"

"i think you need to add a second row to your left!"

the thing that pisses you off the most is the sun. realizing you're about to lose your freaking marbles, you start to get down slowly.

"not, not below, to the left!"

"Jungkook, for the love of fuck", you never thought you would be pissed with Jeon Jungkook, but there we are. the kid is so fundamentally bored, apparently. you feel your head get light and the root of your tongue, limp. it means only one thing: sunstroke. your hands grab the bars of the ladder and you move your feet quickly, but the sun works quicker. it feels like the ladder sways, wobbles, while in reality it's your brain lacking oxygen, and dehydration. you can hear his steps suddenly apparent, clip-clapping behind you, and you fly. you have no idea how far you are from the ground. but you fly, the sky white because you start blacking out. the hit to the ground never comes, instead, in the stuffy darkness, Jungkook's ever cheerful voice:

"i got you :)"

taglist: @cerulean1riz , @kiki-zb , @mar-lo-pap , @ashyiiy , @enfppuff , @coolpeanutskeletonpersona , @jajabro

#yoongi x reader #bts x reader #bts imagine #bts au #yoongi imagine

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400badrequest · 15 hours ago

Text

CHAPT TEN: selfish fuckers | Mikey Berzatto x F!Reader

SUMMARY: Mikey fucks up. His attempt to fix things is... questionable.

CW: age gap, unprotected sex, FILTHY sex, Catholic guilt, canon typical anger, suicide mention

WORD COUNT: 4812

A/N: okay i do think i could've split this up. but. i did write it in one go so it feels like that one scene in "The Simpsons" when the purple haired twins get separated lmao. i am telling you now there is NO ACCIDENTAL PREGNANCY

TAGLIST: @kate654 @allinourprivate-traps @far-beyond-infinity @pearlstiare @navs-bhat @zomtart @somewhere-in-dreamlandd

They don’t talk about it.

They should, obviously. Any halfway functional adult relationship would call for it - one of them leaning over coffee or prep or invoices saying, hey, so, that happened. What now?

But neither of them are halfway functional. And you, for all your razor-edge intelligence and freakish emotional fluency, decides - maybe selfishly, maybe hopefully - that they don’t need to talk about it. That it meant something. That it was obvious. That Mikey wouldn’t kiss you like that, wouldn’t hold you like a lifeline and shake through it like a man starving, if it wasn’t real.

So you leave it be.

Lets it live, tender and sacred and unbothered.

And then Mikey walks in three days later with a goddamn hickey on his neck.

Not even one that could be explained away - no mysterious curling iron burn, no collarbone bruise passed off as kitchen slapstick. No. This is a mark. Red and fresh and deliberate, peeking out from beneath his shitty hoodie like it wants to be seen.

You see it immediately. Of course you do.

You don't say anything. Just blinks, once, slow and sharp, like someone punched the wind out of your lungs without even touching you.

And Mikey knows. Sees you go still. Feels the air leave the room like a shift in barometric pressure.

Because he did it.

He fucked up.

Not even with intention, not even because he doesn’t want you - God, he wants you. You’re the last thing he sees before sleep takes him, the first thought when the day breaks. He’s had dreams about you so vivid he woke up aching, shaking, mourning.

But Mikey is still Mikey.

Still a fucking self-destructive bastard.

Still the guy who doesn’t know how to be happy, not really. Who self-sabotages the second anything starts to feel real. Who says I’m gonna be good and then walks straight into the fire because the burn is familiar, even if it hurts like hell.

You don't scream. Don't cry. Doesn’t even flinch.

But you don’t look at him that day.

Don’t brush his arm when you walk past. Don’t smile. Don’t offer bites of whatever you’ve been testing in that morning. Don’t exist in his orbit.

It fucking kills him.

What really sets things off is Ritchie, of all people.

Because Ritchie sees it. Sees the bruise, sees you - sees the shift.

And he loses it.

“You are such a dickhead, man,” Ritchie snaps at Mikey behind the dumpster during a smoke break. “You know what she is? She’s fuckin’ good. That girl’s the best thing that’s happened to this joint since Carmy went to fuckin’ France or whatever. And you - you just what, couldn’t keep it in your pants?”

“Don’t-” Mikey warns.

“Nah, fuck that. You kissed her, didn’t you? Thought I didn’t notice her walkin’ around all soft and stupid-faced for you? And now what, you run off and get your dick wet with someone else and show it off like a badge? Jesus Christ, Mike, do you want to die miserable?”

Mikey throws the cigarette. “I didn’t show it off-”

“You wore a fuckin’ tank top,” Ritchie roars. “In March.”

They’re yelling, both of them, voices cutting into the hum of the alley like broken glass.

You finds them mid-argument, and for a second, you just stare - and then you erupts.

“Are you kidding me?” you snap at Ritchie. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You don’t get to white knight this. I don’t need you fighting my goddamn battles.”

Ritchie’s eyes flash. “He hurt you.”

“And I’ll handle that,” you snapped. “You think yelling at him makes me feel better? You think he doesn’t already know he fucked up?”

The silence after that is vicious. You don't even look at Mikey when he turns and walks back inside. Mikey stands there, shaking, staring at the wall like it might have the answers. And somewhere, in the dustiest corner of his brain, he starts thinking about the barrel of a gun.

Not in the big loud way.

Not in the drama of it.

Just in the quiet.

Just in the thought: this doesn’t get better. This doesn’t stop.

And then he lights another cigarette with trembling fingers and says nothing at all.

---

The Bear’s closed for the night, the lights out and the burners cold, but the work never stops. Permits, fucking permits, are due tomorrow, and of course the city’s made the forms just convoluted enough that you need help - real help - not the kind you can Google.

So they’re at his. Because despite everything, he still is your boss.

Sprawled across his kitchen counter, papers strewn between empty plates, half-drunk tea, your laptop open and buzzing with spreadsheets, while Mikey leans over the mess and watches you chew your lip like it personally offended you.

You haven't eaten enough.

He knows it. Knows the way your leg bounces under the table, the way you stare through things instead of at them. Knows that when you’re anxious, your stomach shuts down. So he cooks something light - a noodle bowl, clean and balanced, brown sugar and chili and ginger. Flavorful but soft. Comforting without drawing attention to itself.

And you eat it.

Without prompting. Without pushing.

You eat it like it tastes good. Like you trust him.

It makes something in his chest splinter.

They don’t talk about what happened - either of the what-happeneds. Not the kiss in the back kitchen. Not the hickey he showed up with like a fucking open wound. Not the way you stopped looking at him for days, then started again so carefully it made his eyes burn.

He doesn’t deserve you. Not your trust. Not your presence. Definitely not the little smile you give him now, all proud and sharp and worn thin by work.

You sigh and set your pen down, wrist aching. “This is hell.”

“You’re doing great,” he says hoarsely. “You’re a fuckin’ machine.”

You smirk, crooked and tired, and that should be it. That should be the whole thing.

But you lick a bit of brown sugar glaze off your thumb, casual and distracted, and Mikey sees red behind his eyes.

He doesn’t mean to kiss you.

God knows he shouldn’t.

God knows - the actual God, who he hasn’t prayed to in years but still clings to in panicked breathless moments like some half-drowned sinner at a confessional booth, when he stands in the walk-in and prays like an idiot - knows Mikey Berzatto has no business putting his hands on you again.

Not after how he hurt you. Not after how you looked at him, crushed and small and trying so hard not to be.

But he does it anyway.

Because he’s selfish. Because he’s weak. Because you’re right there, the taste of dinner on your lips and you hands smudged with ink and effort, and you smell like the kitchen, like home, like everything he’s not allowed to want.

He kisses you hard.

No hesitation. No sweetness.

His mouth crashes into yours with the desperation of a starving man, one hand fisting in your shirt and the other splaying low on your back to pull you flush against him. And you - God, you moan, this soft, startled, breathy thing that he feels more than hears, that vibrates through your chest into his.

You open for him, no hesitation, lets him shove his tongue into your mouth like he owns it - like he’s claiming ground he doesn’t deserve to touch. Your hands are on his face, his arms, everywhere, nails digging in as if you’ve been waiting for this, aching for this.

And he fucking hates himself.

Because this isn’t gentle. This isn’t right. This is want. This is sin in every sense, indulgence and hunger and taking what isn’t his. This is a confessional booth with no priest and no mercy. This is coveting. This is his mouth and yours colliding like it’s punishment, like it’s penance, like it’s the only goddamn way he knows how to say I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I want you, I don’t deserve you.

When he bites at your bottom lip, you gasp and presses closer and he feels his cock twitch hard in his jeans. He pulls back, panting, forehead against your, his hands shaking where they grip yours like lifelines.

“Fuck,” he breathes, wrecked and wretched. “I’m gonna go to hell.”

You, eyes heavy, lips swollen, don't answer.

But your fingers tighten in his shirt.

And that’s enough to damn him a thousand times over.

You’re just as unhinged as he is.

That’s the part Mikey never accounted for - never let himself think about. Always saw you as this sharp, composed thing. Sweet when you wanted to be, efficient always. A little weird, a little unknowable. But grounded. Stable.

Turns out that’s just because you never let yourself take.

Because the second he presses you back against the counter, his tongue still hot in your mouth and his hands rough with guilt and desire, you grab him - fingers in his hair, sharp and possessive, dragging at it like you want to rip it out. You groans - groans, filthy and desperate - into his mouth, like you’ve been waiting to snap this whole time.

It nearly makes his knees buckle.

You pull him in like you own him, like his size doesn’t matter, like you want it, like you needs him big and solid and crushing up against you because you’re not afraid, not even a little. One of your legs wraps around the back of his thigh, needy and grounding and so fucking hot it makes him grunt low and animal against your neck.

And your skin-

Jesus, your skin tastes like lotion and sweat and something distinctly feminine, that thing he’s always loved about soft girls and warm necks and pretty collarbones. He mouths at your throat, rough with stubble, and you gasp, clawing at his back through his hoodie, writhing against the counter like you want him to take you there.

He’s a big guy - always has been, always will be - and he uses it.

Lifts you easily off the ground, one arm banded under your arse, the other gripping your ribs like he’s afraid he might let you go. Your breath stutters, legs scrambling around his waist, and he doesn’t even give you time to protest. Doesn’t ask.

Just takes you - carefully, reverently, ferociously - to the goddamn bed like you belong there.

Because you do.

And even though the shame’s already pooling low in his belly, even though he knows every thrust of his hips into the mattress will be haunted by the image of a confessional booth and whispered Hail Marys, he doesn’t stop.

Because you’re in his arms. Because you want this. Because he wants to ruin you in the softest, dirtiest way imaginable and pretend for a few goddamn minutes he’s not broken beyond repair.

He’s got you spread out underneath him, bare and flushed, your skin hot and tacky with sweat. Your shirt’s somewhere on the floor, your bra snapped open at the back like he’d needed to get to your tits with more urgency than his hands could handle. He’s breathing like a freight train, mouthing at the soft skin of your hip, stubble dragging over you, leaving heat in its wake.

You gasp, moan, make these noises he could bottle and live off of.

And then-

You tense.

Not full stop, not no - but something pulls inward. Something uncertain.

Mikey stills immediately. Lifts his head, eyes flicking up your body to your face, and yeah - there it is. The tightness around your mouth, the way you’re avoiding his eyes, the subtle pull of your knees inward.

“I-” you start, hesitant. “You don’t have to. I didn’t… I didn’t really have time to- uh, shave. I know that’s- like. A thing.”

Mikey blinks.

Then he looks down. At the thick, soft curls between your legs, dark and damp and real. A few strays climb up the gentle curve of your belly. You look, to him, like something honest. Like something grown and alive. Like something his.

And fuck him, he remembers.

Remembers that you’re twenty three. That the men before him - boys, really - probably never took their time. Probably never made you feel adored. Probably only went down on you under fluorescent lights and conditions.

He sits back a little on his knees, palms still resting gentle and firm on the meat of you thighs. His voice, when it comes, is gentle, husky.

“Kid.”

You still won’t meet his gaze.

So he leans forward, presses a kiss to the inside of one trembling thigh, then another.

“I don’t give a fuck,” he murmurs, and kisses higher, “what you’ve got goin’ on down here.”

That gets you to huff a laugh, a breathless little puff of noise.

“I’m serious.” He finally catches your eyes. “You think I wouldn’t want you just because you didn’t wax for me? Sweetheart, c’mon. I’d want you if you had fuckin’ teeth down there.”

You let out a startled, wet laugh.

“And for the record?” he adds, voice lower now, head dipping between your thighs, “I want to.”

He doesn’t do anything until you nod.

A small movement. But yours.

Only then does he press a kiss to your mound, reverent. Then your thigh again. It’s the nod that undoes him, though.

Not the moan. Not the way you smell or the heat of your thighs against his forearms. Not even the way your hands clutch the blanket beneath you like it’s the only thing keeping you tethered.

It’s the fucking nod.

Small. Almost shy. Not performative.

Just - yes.

Yes, you can.

Yes, I want you to.

Yes, I trust you.

And Mikey - fucked up, selfish, not-even-clean Mikey - nearly sobs into the crease of your thigh because he doesn’t fucking deserve it. Doesn’t deserve your body or your trust or your bravery. You’re young, yeah, but that’s not the point. The point is - you’re open. You’re willing to give him something he doesn't believe he ever earned.

So he’s careful.

He’s fucking delicate.

Like your communion, like your sacrament, like he’s got you on the altar of his bed and he’s finally, finally doing something right. He mouths at you - slow, reverent, starving. Your body jolts under him, breath catching, hands flying to his shoulders like you’re afraid you’ll float off the planet.

He doesn’t care about the hair. Of course he doesn’t. It’s yours, it’s real, and he presses kisses into every inch of it like he’s trying to teach you to love it the way he does.

And when he finally parts you - thumbs dragging soft over the folds, slick and warm and already trembling - he groans so low in his throat it almost doesn’t sound human.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters into you. “You’re- fuck, sweetheart. You’re perfect.”

You inhale sharply.

Not because of his mouth - though he’s sure you’re close - but because of that. The words.

And that breaks his fucking heart.

He works you slowly, so slowly, like he’s memorising you. Like he’s praying. Your hips twitch, your thighs tremble, and you keep making those noises - quiet, breathy, not trying to be sexy, just honest. Like you don't even know you’re making them.

He wants you to feel held, not consumed.

He wants you to know this is yours, not his.

But he also wants, with a raw ache in his belly and behind his ribs, to give you everything. To make you worshipped. To kiss the softness of your belly and mean it. To taste you and not just in the carnal way but in the way that feels like devotion.

His hands are shaking. From adrenaline. From guilt.

Because part of him still thinks he’s using you.

Because part of him knows that if he dies tomorrow, the best thing he’s ever done in his miserable life will be loving this girl the right way, for however long you let him.

He comes up for air when you moan his name - his name, like it means something, like it’s not a mess of pain and loss and shame - and when he looks up, your face is red and damp, eyes glassy, bottom lip bitten near through.

“You good?” he asks, hoarse.

You nod again. That same little nod.

And then: “Mikey…”

He waits.

“You don’t have to… be careful. I trust you.”

And fuck, if that doesn’t damn him.

Because you’re giving him permission to have you, and all he can think about is how he has to earn it. Every kiss. Every touch. Every single thing.

So he leans in, presses his face to your hip, and whispers, barely audible:

“I’m gonna try to be good, kid. I swear to God, I’m gonna try.”

You’re still shaking a little, once he makes you cum on his face. From aftershocks, from adrenaline, from the soft rumble of his voice that keeps saying things no one’s ever said to you.

“Atta girl,” Mikey breathes, nosing at the inside of your thigh, voice like a rough exhale. “Took it so sweet, kid. So fuckin’ good for me. Jesus Christ…”

And you are - good, that is. Good in ways that crawl under his skin and lodge in his chest like a splinter. Your skin’s flushed, sticky with sweat, eyes half-lidded, dazed from the come down. You look ruined. He wants to frame the image of you wrecked like this. And he hasn’t even fucked you yet.

He’s hard. Painfully so.

Has been for what feels like years. His boxers are wet at the front, obscene. He wants you so bad it makes his teeth hurt.

But when he lines up, just to try, you still again. Not like before - this isn’t uncertainty. This is discomfort.

Your breath catches. You bite your lip hard.

He stops.

Immediately.

Your voice is tight. “I’m fine.”

But you’re not. Your body’s tensed, just slightly, not from fear but effort. Like you're trying to take too much at once.

“Hey,” he murmurs, kissing the corner of your mouth. “We don’t have to. We can stop.”

You huff. “No. I want to.”

He blinks. You’re not looking away, not avoiding him - your eyes are blazing. Determined. Frustrated.

“I just-” you pant. “You’re not small, Berzatto. Give me a sec.”

His breath catches, startled and wrecked and somehow proud.

You squirm, visibly annoyed. “God, would you stop looking at me like I’m gonna crack in half? I can handle it.”

Mikey just stares.

Because Christ, you’re angry. At him, at your body, at his caution. And it’s so you. So fucking you that he has to bite his lip to keep from moaning.

“You sure?” he rasps.

You grab his face with both hands and pull him into a kiss that’s messy and full of teeth. “I’m sure. Just stop treating me like I’m glass. I’m not.”

He exhales through his nose, forehead pressed to yours.

“Kid,” he says, voice low, reverent. “You don’t get it. You’re not glass. You’re fuckin’- you’re crystal, babe. Cut sharp. Precious. You think I wanna break something like you?”

“God, Mikey,” you groan, “shut up and fuck me.”

He laughs. Actually laughs, even as his hips roll just a little. You’re wet, he can feel it, the slide obscene. But there’s resistance still. Not enough space for all of him.

So he takes it slow.

One inch. Another. You gasp. He kisses you.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, “that’s it. Look at you. You’re doing so good, sweetheart.”

You whimper - embarrassingly loud - and clutches at his back, nails digging in.

He doesn't move more than a few inches deep, not yet, just rocks into you gently, helping you stretch around him, kissing every inch of you he can reach.

“Fuckin’ perfect,” he whispers. “So tight. Jesus. Gonna make me lose it just from this.”

You hide your face in his neck and moan again, louder.

“Y’sound so sweet, kid. Didn’t know you’d be this loud.”

“Shut up,” you mumble, and you buck your hip.

He groans into your shoulder. God, he loves you like this.

And when you finally relax, just a little, and take more of him with a slow grind, he nearly loses it. The slow burn of his control is a goddamn war inside him.

At first, Mikey moves carefully, almost reverently, like he’s handling something too fragile to bear his full weight. His hips roll in gentle, measured strokes, each one calculated not to break the spell. He keeps his voice low, murmuring praise and reassurance, watching the way your skin flushes pink under his touch.

But you’re not glass. Not by a long shot. You’re fire wrapped in silk, and with every quiet moan and soft gasp, Mikey feels the tight grip on his control start to slip.

Your hands roam, bold and sure, threading through his hair, pulling at the back of his neck. Your nails rake lightly across his skin, sending electric jolts down his spine. You want more. He can feel it - the way you buck your hips upward, pleading wordlessly for something harder, something less careful.

His breath hitches. The addict in him - the man haunted by ghosts and guilt - wants to stop, to hold back, to be the good guy. But the man in him who’s been starving for this, for you, for the raw need in your eyes, the warm heat of your body pressed to his - that part is losing the fight.

His hands tighten around your waist, gripping like he’s anchoring himself. His hips snap harder, faster, and your breath catches in a sharp, breathy cry that fills the room.

“Fuck,” he growls low in her ear, voice rough with hunger and something darker, “you want me to fuck you, sweetheart?”

Your answer is the arch of your back, the wild flutter of your lashes, the desperate little noises you can’t quite keep inside.

That’s when he leans into it - just a bit - letting go of the gentleness that’s been choking him. He’s still careful, but his rhythm sharpens, hips pounding out a fierce, steady beat that matches the rapid thrum of his heartbeat. He moans, braced over you and fucks, the slap of his hips against yours an obscene noise as you respond in turn.

“God, fuck- yeah, just like that baby, so fuckin’ good,” He grits out, trying to listen for what makes you go from smaller noises to gasping stupidly, watching your face, your tits, how everything bounces with the force of it. When he nails it, snug to your cervix in a way that rubs perfectly against your g-spot, he hones the fuck in. He’s relentless - he stays constant, hard, anchoring you so you can take it.

“Goddamn, you’re so good for me,” he pants, biting at the shell of her ear. “So goddamn loud, too.”

You grab him harder, nails digging into his skin, hands gripping his back like you’re holding on for dear life.

“Don’t stop,” you beg, voice trembling with need.

Mikey’s control shatters then, like glass breaking underfoot.

His hips slam harder, faster, hands gripping your thighs, hauling you up as close as he can get. Every thrust is a claim, a promise, a desperate worship.

“You’re mine,” he rasps. “So fucking mine.”

Your cry is raw and beautiful, and it tears something open inside him - the part that’s been shut tight by fear and guilt and shame.

And even as the chaos of desire consumes them both, Mikey keeps a thread of tenderness running beneath the rough edges. Every word, every touch, every growl is a twisted kind of prayer, a confession he can’t speak aloud.

You look like a fucking vision on his bed like this; lamp light from outside illuminates the curve of your face, the faint sheen of sweat looking like sacramental oil on your brow as you whine, panting, mouth open. He grabs your jaw with one hand on instinct, looking at that pretty wet tongue.

And spits.

You moan, loud and caught off guard with how fucking filthy it is, but swallow instinctively; his hips seize at that, how easily you took it, balls drawing up. “Oh shit- shit, yeah baby, you like that? Huh? You like it when I give you what’s mine?” He rasps, holding your face as he ruts, feeling your cunt tighten, creamy and thick.

“Ngh- F-uck- Mikey, Mike, I’m gonna-”

“Yeah baby, c’mon, c’mon, one more,” He rasps, letting go of your face to slap your clit, once, twice- you squeal, gasping and he moans as you tighten like vice, tight enough that he can’t tell if your cunt is trying to push him out or snap off his fucking dick.

He fucks you like a sinner desperate for absolution - and, for one blazing, fragile moment, it feels like maybe, just maybe, he’s forgiven.

---

After, you’re boneless. Loose and soft and humming like something melted.

Mikey moves slow.

It takes effort - his legs feel like they’ve been put through a cement mixer - but he manages to peel himself away, murmuring something soft into your hair as he does. You make a tired noise of protest, one hand reaching for him even half-asleep. He kisses your wrist.

“I got you,” he says, quietly. “Just for a sec.”

He pads to the bathroom, finds a clean towel, wets it under warm water. His reflection in the mirror is a stranger - hair a mess, eyes wild, mouth still red. There's a smear of something girlish across his collarbone from your lipstick or your cheek or maybe something else entirely. He doesn’t look like the kind of man who should’ve been holding you the way he just did.

When he comes back, you’re still sprawled on his bed, blinking slowly, like a cat in the sun. He presses the cloth between your thighs gently - too gently. You still wince a little. He whispers an apology, cups your hip in one hand and presses a kiss to the soft skin of your inner thigh.

“You okay?” he asks, voice a little hoarse.

You nod. Murmurs something that might be mmhmm or yeah or Mikey, he’s not sure. But you smile when he curls in beside you, when he tugs the blanket over both of them. He keeps you close, pulls you against his chest until your bare back is tucked along his front and his chin rests in the dip of your shoulder. Your hand finds his, and your fingers together.

And you fall asleep like that.

So quickly. So easily.

Trusts him that much.

And that’s when it hits.

Not in a slow, creeping way - but all at once, like falling into freezing water.

He stares at the ceiling, wide-eyed, frozen. His heart is racing again, but not from desire. From panic.

Because what the fuck did he just do?

What kind of grown-ass man - grown-ass, addicted, fucked-up failure of a Catholic man - sleeps with a 23-year-old employee, raw, in his bed, in the same sheets he used to puke in after benders?

What kind of man hears you crying a week a ago and still takes from you like this?

His gut twists.

No condom. No fucking condom. He was so far gone he didn’t even think. Your body’s still pressed to his, sticky and warm, his cum slowly leaking out of you, and he’s thinking about babies, for Christ’s sake. Not in a romantic way - in a terrified way. In a this is her whole goddamn future you’re gambling with kind of way.

You’re just a girl. A woman, yeah, but young. Bright. Good. You could do anything - you could leave this city, this restaurant, him, and make something beautiful. You’re already better than he is. Smarter. Sharper. Cleaner.

And here you are, curled into him, asleep, like he didn’t just take advantage of your affection and vulnerability and loyalty and trust and love.

He can feel it - feel the shame crawl up his spine, acidic and cold. The kind that was built into his bones in catechism class. The kind the priests call sin with the kind of gravity Mikey never took seriously until just now.

Because what he feels - lying here, still inside the wreckage of something that tasted too much like grace to be allowed - is worse than being bad.

It feels like blasphemy.

Like he just took something sacred and dirtied it.

He turns his face into your hair, trying not to shake. Trying to breathe.

But guilt is a current, and Mikey’s drowning.

And the worst part - the most awful, unbearable part - is that if you turned to him right now, blinked up at him with those sleepy eyes and murmured his name-

He’d do it all again.

Because for the first time in a long time, Mikey Berzatto felt wanted.

And that might be the most unforgivable sin of all.

#mikey berzatto #mikey berzatto x reader #the bear

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