#angst is my comfort

[bigblackbbnny]

Somewhere, the sky is blue

✁- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ╰──➢  ✧;── table of contents ──; ✧ ╭       ⁞ ❏. Media ⟶ .·. Arcane Season 2 ┊       ⁞ ❏.Warnings  ⟶ .·. Spoilers, Character Death ┊       ⁞ ❏.Notes ⟶ .·. So I had in mind to write something about the last chapter of act 2, but I've been very busy. I feel like this is too much half-assed and I'm a bit disappointed my creativity has been drowned these years because I'm focusing on art. I love writing, I'm just very hesitant, unsure and have a hard time putting things into words. ┊     ⁞ ❏.Summary ⟶ .·. In the undercity, where the sky is never clear, some colors burn too brightly to fade.

What kind of courage does it take for someone so small to jump into danger's harm? To look at death in the eye and think 'You can take me, but not them. Not them.'

How do you decide someone's life is worth more than yours?

There's laughter somewhere, there's dancing and giggling and bright colorful paint all over the place. There's blue in her hands and red eyes grinning at her. A surprisingly gentle pair of hands combing her hair, a reluctant guardian lingering in the corners, a place to go back to.

But there's also violence, outside. Just right out the door amidst polluted air, cold glares and souls filled with powerlessness and resentment.

They deserve to know too, that there's more to it than gloomy streets and aching bellies if you find a reason to look forward to another day. To keep moving on.

The feeling was something warm, like the sunlight Piltover took for granted. And there was blue and pink hues so beautiful that could overwhelm you. It was warm and then it was fierce and burning, because whatever you are given can be taken. Whatever you protect can be harmed.

Isha had never been afraid of broken things. She touched everything like it was alive—like it was worth saving. Jinx had taught her how to use a wrench, how to make bombs, how to turn a room into an explosion of pigments and chaos. How to create and how to pull apart. Isha soaked it all in, her quiet smiles and huffs doing what no words could.

That day for a moment, everything slowed.

Isha glanced back at Jinx, her face streaked with soot. Her eyes were bright, somehow they were always a little bit too bright. There was a trace of tears. She smiled—brave, warm and heartbreakingly young—and raised her hand in a mock gun, her thumb cocked like a trigger.

'Pow.'

It was barely a whisper, but Jinx could swear she had heard it amidst the muffled noises of a battlefield, of her world crumbling.

Three blue orbs loaded into a familiar gun.

“No,” she choked out, stumbling forward. “Don’t— ISHA!”

It was loud, unbearably loud. Someone held her back from going after the child that had become her light in the darkness for the last months.

The explosion ripped through the air. Jinx fell back, her ears ringing, her vision blurred by the afterimage of Isha’s silhouette. When the smoke cleared, Vander was still. ...

Turned into ashes blown away by the wind, scattered like it was never there, a little bird opened its wings and peeped “It’s alright for things to be this way...” A cub cried, “but must it be?” ...

Did your hands have slight shake to them? Was your heart beating wildly, making it difficult to breathe?

Did you feel that buzzing behind your eyes? Was your throat tight and your lips trembling when you smiled?

Would you do it all over again, just to see that blinding blue one last time? I give you six months, you give me a lifetime. Somewhere, the sky is blue. The water is clean and you can see the ground underneath. The rocks don't hurt your feet, only dig quite some. There's a place, and there's a family. And we call it home. --- Stop searching Give me a hug Just quietly forget I'm fine the way I am

---

[arcielee]

Aemond's fuckery was coming. I could sense it with his actions. Poor Chips was allowing him space and he took it to the next level. I feel bad for whatever was budding between Hel and Cregan, the love shared between Aegon and Rio.

Also, that moment between Chips and Rio?

“Sophie and the baby are waiting for you in Odessa. You have to believe that until we get there.” “Because if they’re not, my life is over?” he asks bitterly, this man you have never known to be wrathful, defeated, weak, hopeless. But these are beasts that live inside all of us, waiting to be shaken awake by the perfect string of calamities.

I need baby Otter to be alive 😭

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 10: Nobody Likes You, Everyone Left You]

A/N: I sincerely apologize for the delay, but Maggie Sundays are back, besties!!! And we have a new poll! Be sure to check it out AFTER you finish Chapter 10 🥰

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Series title and chapter title are lyrics from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Word count: 6.8k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

Here’s how it happens.

Let’s say you’re on a subway, or at a bus stop, or walking in or out of a grocery store, maybe fumbling with your purse or corralling small children, or talking on the phone, or wondering how you’re going to make rent, or trying not to drop one of your shopping bags, and out of nowhere some stranger lurches over and grabs you. They are filthy and noxious and moaning, and you assume they are insane, or on hard drugs, or maybe both. Your fellow upstanding citizens rush to your aid and the assailant is apprehended and carted off, unbeknownst to you surely to infect many more blithely unaware victims.

Maybe you notice that you were bitten, even just barely, even just a scrape of the teeth hard enough to scratch the skin; maybe you don’t. If you do notice and you seek medical attention, the best a doctor will offer you is disinfectant and antibiotics, maybe a rabies shot if they’re extra ambitions. Perhaps you have too much on your plate already without a detour to the doctor’s office (or perhaps you don’t have medical insurance), and you opt for at-home remedies, a vigorous scrub with hydrogen peroxide and a large rectangular Band-Aid slapped on top. Of course, none of this will do you any good. It was over the moment a drop of zombie saliva slipped painlessly into your bloodstream and began to replicate there like an invasive species, like an insurgent force. It only takes once.

You go home, and maybe when you start to feel really bad you call an ambulance and go to the hospital, and when you turn you bite anyone you can get your claws on there. Maybe you die at home and then attack your partner, your children, your parents, your roommates; maybe this new version of yourself ends up chewing bits of gristle off the bones of your dog or cat or ferret. And if any of your victims manage to escape once you’ve gotten a taste of them—no matter how fleetingly, no matter how trivially—they are sure to die in agony and reanimate too, and to pass along this plague you’ve gifted them, the bloodiest game of telephone.

Now millions are getting sick, fevers, headaches, purging, bleeding, but where do people go when they need a doctor? The hospitals are overrun, the clinics are swarmed, and doctors and nurses are falling ill too. There are unimaginable reports of the carnage. There is censorship to smother the panic. There are public figures vanishing from sight. There are zombies-in-progress boarding planes, checking into hotels, tottering onto cruise ships with armfuls of luggage, sweating through their bedsheets in crowded military barracks, silently ticking timebombs as the world as everyone knows it hurtles towards its end.

You would be amazed what people can refuse to believe. Once you believe something, that makes it real.

~~~~~~~~~~

There are no shovels, so Cregan tills the earth with his axe and then you dig with your hands. There are no headstones, so Rhaena finds a large sand-colored rock and writes on it with a jagged piece of slate: Baela and Briar, Summer 2024. Then she hesitates, the slate hovering in afternoon air, amber sunlight and eighty degrees, dust thick in the wind. She wants to say more. There needs to be more. How can two lives end with five words? At last Rhaena adds: Mother and child who perished en route to California. They were loved. They mattered.

“That’s good, Rhaena,” Luke tells her, voice gentle, hands on her shoulders. She stares at the grave for a while, and you don’t have time to waste; the bear could return, there might be wolves or mountain lions, eventually the sun will set and you will be stranded in an infinite darkness like the ocean at night. But Aemond waits until Rhaena is ready. She tucks the shard of shale into her backpack, and then you are fleeing once again: from this day, from this world.

You hike back to I-80 and walk west towards the next ranch. All of you are here in south-central Wyoming, and yet none of you are: you are in the earth with Baela, you are back in Nebraska where Jace died, you are in Ohio where he was swept away by a river, you are in Pennsylvania where you and Rio climbed down from a transmission tower, you are in your lives before the world ended: Saratoga Springs, Boston, cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a part of Kentucky called the Wildlands. Aegon is limping along on his own and shoving Rio away each time he tries to pick him up.

“Stop,” Aegon says, wincing and exhausted, his bandages coated with dust.

“Come on, Honey Bun. You’re going to rip your foot open—”

“Stop it!” Aegon demands. “I’m not going to slow you down anymore! I’m not going to be a burden!”

There is a sound you don’t immediately recognize: a rumbling, a squealing. A car is pulling up alongside you. Instinctively, you unholster one of your M9s and raise it as you turn.

“No, no, no, we’re cool!” a woman says, showing you both of her hands. She is around fifty and driving a Subaru Outback; there is a man in the passenger’s seat, perhaps her husband, and two wide-eyed, hoodie-swathed teenagers in the backseat. “Are you…are you guys okay?”

All of you stare blankly at her: shellshocked, distraught, covered in dirt and blood. “Yeah,” Daeron says eventually.

The woman peers around, east, west. “Do you have a car or something?”

“We have a Tahoe,” Cregan says. “It’s out of gas.”

“We have a few cans in the trunk,” the Subaru woman replies. “I can give you one, five gallons. That will get you to Rock Springs, and you should be able to find more supplies there. We came through that way, it wasn’t too bad.” And then, before anybody can ask if she’s serious, the woman steps out of the car and opens the hatchback. She lifts out a red can and hands it to Rio, who is standing the closest.

“Thank you, lady,” he says, astonished.

“I’m sorry about that,” you tell the woman, meaning the fact that you were prepared to shoot her.

Rhaena adds: “We’ve had some…bad experiences.”

The Subaru woman smiles. “Haven’t we all. Where are you headed?”

“West Coast,” Aemond answers quickly: vague, guarded, inviting no further disclosures.

She nods; she can’t trust you, and you can’t trust her, and everyone agrees, an unspoken acknowledgement of what the world is like now. “Well, you don’t want to go anywhere near Salt Lake City.”

“But that’s the only direct route,” Aegon says, crestfallen.

“I know.” The Subaru woman is sympathetic. “And it’s going to burn a hell of a lot of gas and time to drive all the way around, but you have to. There are tens of thousands of zombies, and a lot of people are trapped there without fuel. I’m telling you, if someone sees you driving by in a working vehicle, they’ll try to put a bullet in your head so they can take it. So don’t give them the opportunity.”

“Okay,” Aegon says glumly, already pulling his map out of the pocket of his khaki shorts to plot a new course.

“Stay far away from Chicago,” Rio offers the Subaru woman in return. “And any nuclear power plants.”

“We’re headed south,” she says, then grins. “I’ve got a sister in eastern Tennessee. We’re going to learn how to fish and cook moonshine and make clothes out of deer hide, and live up in the mountains where nobody will ever bother us.”

People glance at you, the resident Appalachian; and you remember the crackling of woodstoves, flecks of ice in the creek, kicking up snow as you ran through the woods, following tracks of deer and opossums and raccoons. “It’s a beautiful place. I think you’ll like it.”

Rhaena asks the Subaru woman: “Is there anything we can do for you? To thank you for the gas?”

“Oh, I couldn’t take from a bunch of bloodied people who are stranded on the side of the interstate.” But her eyes catch on the pistol in your hand and stay there, envious, longing. You have another, so you give it to her.

“The safety is on. There are only nine bullets left, unfortunately.”

“That’s nine more than I had before,” the Subaru woman says as she takes the U.S. Navy’s standard-issue Beretta. Then she says to everyone: “Good luck.”

“Same to you, ma’am,” Cregan replies. The Subaru woman gets back into her car and disappears eastbound with her family. The nine of you that are left—ten, if you count Ice—trek back to the Tahoe, where Rio pours five gallons of combustible liquid gold into the gas tank.

Rhaena climbs into the driver’s seat and turns the key in the ignition. The rust-red Tahoe growls to life, the engine idling. Then she rests her arms on the steering wheel and breaks down sobbing. In the passenger’s seat, Aegon looks up from his map—which he is annotating with a glittery green gel pen—to gaze at her with shining, wounded eyes. After some hesitation, he extends a hand to hold one of hers. From the seat behind Rhaena, Luke is rubbing her shoulders and murmuring words you can’t hear.

Aemond says softly: “Rhaena, you can take some time if you need it.”

“No,” she insists, her voice quivering but determined. “We can’t wait. We have to get as far as we can before dark.” She shifts the Tahoe into drive, guides it onto I-80, and speeds west towards Rock Springs and the Utah border.

Rio is saying something to you, but at first you can’t grasp it. Helaena is scratching Ice’s ears as the massive grey wolfdog lies sprawled across her lap. Daeron is sniffling and wiping his eyes with the sleeves of his orange t-shirt. Cregan is talking to Aemond about needing to find an auto shop so he can get supplies to change the Tahoe’s oil and filter. One of Aegon’s mixtapes whirls in the CD player:

“My face above the water

My feet can’t touch the ground, touch the ground

And it feels like I can see the sands on the horizon

Every time you are not around…”

You are watching Aemond, your heartbeat growing loud in your ears. He won’t look at you at all.

~~~~~~~~~~

As the sun begins to set, you find a vacant house on the outskirts of Coalville, Utah overlooking the Echo Reservoir. You wash away the remnants of Wyoming in the cool blue water, dried blood and caked-on dirt, hopes eclipsed by horror. Dinner is soup spooned out of cans from the pantry—Dinty Moore beef stew, Campbell’s condensed chicken noodle—and caffeine-free sodas, Sprite and Fanta and Seagram’s Ginger Ale. Then Rhaena and Luke go straight to bed, and Helaena scuttles through the house with a flashlight to search for clothes, making each person a separate pile on the dining room table: large flannel shirts for Cregan, pastel-colored polos for Aegon. Aemond and Cregan are outside on the front porch, Daeron is carving sticks into arrows on the kitchen floor, Aegon has been passed out in one of the children’s bedrooms since Aemond debrided his burns again and dosed him with the last of the Vicodin. Fortunately, Helaena found a translucent orange prescription bottle of Tramadol in the upstairs bathroom, so Aegon won’t have to suffer too much tomorrow.

Rio tosses and turns on the living room couch. You know what’s wrong, but you have to wait for him to say it. You stay with him, kneeling on the beige carpet in the murky artificial luminance of Rio’s Moonbeam flashlight, threading your fingertips through his dark curls. And then at last Rio asks something that you know must have crossed his mind a thousand times since you left Saratoga Springs, but he’s never voiced aloud: “What if Sophie and the baby are dead?”

“They’re not.”

“But you don’t know, nobody knows—”

“Bryan, they’re not dead,” you say, and he is listening.

“I joined the Navy for Sophie.” And of course, you’ve heard this before. “I was just a stupid kid who couldn’t commit to anything, not work, not school, not a future with her, so she dumped me. And I decided I was going to get her back by proving I could make commitments after all. I could sign my life away for five years, and come out of it as someone who would be a good husband and father. And now…what if by enlisting and being so far away when everything happened, I abandoned her? What if…what if she’s gone, and she died terrified and in pain and alone, and I’m the reason why?”

“Sophie and the baby are waiting for you in Odessa. You have to believe that until we get there.”

“Because if they’re not, my life is over?” he asks bitterly, this man you have never known to be wrathful, defeated, weak, hopeless. But these are beasts that live inside all of us, waiting to be shaken awake by the perfect string of calamities.

“I believe they’re still alive.”

And Rio looks at you, wanting desperately to be convinced. “Why?”

You’ve never believed that you are someone who knows the right things to say; but you have to try. “If your parents’ community in Odessa is like you’ve always described it to me, I can’t think of a better place for someone to hide from all the disorder and the violence. It’s remote, but there’s support from other families who are living the same way. People have gardens, cows, goats, pigs, chickens, enough canned food to live on for years, homemade clothes and systems to collect rainwater. There are women who’ve had five homebirths and men who’ve built houses with their own hands. And the people in Odessa have guns and know how to use them. I think when you told Sophie to go there, you saved her life. And now she and the baby are both waiting for you to come home.”

“We’ve crossed this country by raiding dead people’s homes.”

“Yes. And we’ve seen plenty of living ones too.”

Rio takes a deep breath, staring up at the ceiling; and now he is calmer. “Okay,” he says, grabbing your hand where it rests on his head and smacking a noisy kiss onto your knuckles. “I’m sorry. Thank you. I think I’m done freaking out for tonight.”

“You good?”

“I’m good.”

“Try to sleep.”

Obediently, Rio closes his eyes, and within five minutes he’s snoring.

You rise and open the door to the front porch, thinking of what you’re going to tell Aemond when he is low, distracted, wary: You did everything you could, Aemond. It’s not your fault. It’s this world, it’s poison, it’s cursed, and you can’t turn back the clock to when it wasn’t. You’re just one man. But you can try to save the people who are left.

Yet Aemond does not speak to you, doesn’t even notice you; when you peek outside you are on his blind side, and he is deep in conversation with Cregan as they keep watch in the moonlight.

“I mean, yeah, I’ve been thinking about that too, man,” Cregan is saying. “A mansion by the ocean sounds nice and all, don’t get me wrong, but that ain’t me. I don’t see myself somewhere like that forever. Hell, I’ve never even seen the ocean, and to be honest I never really cared to. But a community of folks who are living off the land out in the woods? Those are my kind of people, that’s a place I could be useful…”

You retreat back inside the house, flashlights and shadows, doubts and fears. You stand there in the quiet for a while, then go to Aegon’s bedroom, where he is awake now and snuggling with Ice in a child’s bed shaped like a red racecar, listening to his pink Sony Walkman—Ava, the gleaming rhinestones proclaim—through one earbud.

Aegon coos as he ruffles the dog’s shaggy grey coat: “You’re so sweet, Blue Raspberry Icee. You were always my favorite flavor. Do you miss 7-Elevens too? Wrinkled old hot dogs and taquitos on rollers, drenching tortilla chips with the nacho cheese and chili dispenser? Did you guys even have 7-Elevens in Iowa? No offense, but your home state kind of sucks. It’s just fields and barns and whatever. You would have loved Boston. You could have fetched my golf balls when they rolled into ponds.”

Then he sings along to the song he’s listening to, effortlessly melodic but so softly you can barely hear him:

��You really had me going, wishing on a star

But the black holes that surround you are heavier by far

I believed in your confusion, you were so completely torn…”

Aegon spots you in the doorway. He smiles, then turns serious when he gets a good look at your face. “You okay, Mint Chocolate Chip?”

He feels like the only person you can say this to. You confess in a weak, hoarse whisper: “I hate this world.”

Aegon offers you the other earbud. “Then let’s go somewhere else.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“Come on,” you say to Rhaena as Rio and Luke rummage around inside the Shell gas station for food, drinks, batteries, medicine. You know they’re fine; you’ve already cleared the store, and you can hear them in there laughing. Rio is telling Luke about the bizarre Thanksgiving dinner you once had in Chinhae, South Korea: duck instead of turkey, fried rice with pears and squash instead of stuffing, candied sweet potatoes for dessert, a choir of solemn schoolchildren brought in to sing—for reasons you will never understand—Africa by Toto. You take your remaining M9 out of its holster. “Target practice.”

“Really?” Rhaena asks excitedly. She volunteered to stay back at the little blue mobile home with Aegon, Daeron, and Helaena—only a mile away—but you knew she needed a distraction. Truthfully, you do too. Aemond is in the Tahoe somewhere searching for gas with Cregan, a strange new alliance. He still hasn’t really spoken to you. You are trying to give him what he needs, but you don’t understand what that is.

It took all of yesterday to navigate around Salt Lake City, stopping every few hours to scrounge for gas, gallons siphoned piecemeal from cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats on trailers, four-wheelers left forgotten in garages and backyards. It was after nightfall when you rolled into Battle Mountain, Nevada, a gold mining town in what is known as the Cowboy Corridor, beginning at West Wendover just over the Utah border and ending in Reno. Today supplies must be replenished; tomorrow I-80 will take you to Winnemucca, where U.S. Route 95 branches off north towards Oregon while remaining on I-80 leads southwest through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and into the Bay Area of California. A decision needs to be made, which means Aemond will have to talk to you tonight. You’re relieved. You don’t want to have to be nervous and watchful with him, studying every inflection of his voice, reading some dire premonition in each line that creases his face. You’ve spent enough of your life that way already.

Battle Mountain is cloudless and hot and sandy, dry shrubs and gnarled mesquite trees, flat secretless earth. Staggering towards the Shell are three zombies, all dressed in faded blue uniforms like a mechanic’s or a miner’s. You hand Rhaena your M9.

“How many bullets do you have left?” she says, still a bit giddy.

“Fifteen. And you can have five of them.”

She raises the pistol and closes one eye. “I’m going to miss.”

“Well you’re not going to hit anything if you don’t turn off the safety.”

Rhaena giggles. “Oh, right. Whoops.” She clicks the tiny lever, then takes aim again.

“Line up your sights. Front looks like an I, back looks like a U. Put the I in the center of the U, and keep looking at that front sight. That’s where your bullet is going. Don’t blink when you fire. Don’t be scared of the recoil, that’s not your problem, your priority is getting the shot. Your arms are a little stiff…yeah, perfect, nice and limber. The recoil won’t hurt so much that way. Don’t try to fight it, just accept that it’s going to happen. If you’re all tensed up because you’re anxious about the recoil, it’ll throw off your aim, so forget about it.”

“Okay,” Rhaena says. “I am actively attempting to forget.”

“Remember, try not to blink.”

“Don’t tense up. Don’t blink.” A few seconds pass, and she pulls the trigger. There is a spray of dark curdled blood from one of the zombie’s collarbone, but it’s still stumbling towards the Shell. “Damn,” Rhaena says defeatedly, then tries to pass the M9 back to you.

“What are you doing? You have four more shots.”

“But I’m going to miss. I’m going to waste them.”

“Practice isn’t wasteful. You have to know how to do this in case something happens to me.”

“You do it,” Rhaena insists. “I’m terrible.”

“Is it alright if I help you?”

“Yeah,” she says, her doe-like eyes brightening. “Okay. Totally.”

“Go ahead and aim.”

She raises the pistol and peers through the sights. You stand behind Rhaena, place your hands lightly over hers, adjust her angle just barely. When she fires—she’s still tensing up just before she pulls the trigger, a common mistake—you hold the M9 steady. The bullet explodes through the same zombie’s rot-soft skull and the corpse tumbles facedown into the dust.

Rhaena gasps, exhilarated, triumphant.

“No celebrating yet. There are two more.”

“Right.” Very businesslike, she lines up the next shot. You provide your slight adjustments; a second zombie receives a lethal dose of lead.

“Want to do the last one on your own?” The third zombie is quite close now, maybe ten yards. It should be an easy kill.

“Okay…but if I miss, you have to save me.”

“Obviously.”

All on her own, Rhaena aims and pulls the trigger. She hits the zombie near the top of its head; an inch higher, and it would be functionally unharmed. But the corpse’s skull snaps back and its blood and brains spill out onto the asphalt of the parking lot, and it is of no further danger to anyone. It is carrion for the scavengers: raccoons, foxes, condors, vultures, crows.

“And with one of your allocated bullets to spare,” you say with a smile, accepting the M9 when Rhaena surrenders it. “Good progress.”

“That felt great,” she admits, perhaps a little dazed.

You know what she means. “It’s nice to have some control over what happens in your life.”

Luke is saying to Rio as they reappear from inside the Shell: “Maybe those Korean children were singing Africa because they knew your unit had been in Djibouti. Maybe they thought you were homesick for it or something.”

“Oh my God, you know what, kid? You might be right. I never even thought of that.”

“Find anything?” you ask.

Rio shrugs, adjusting the straps of his backpack. “A few bags of trail mix, a box of Band-Aids, some Life Savers, cans of Arizona tea. Oh, and Marlboro Golds for Honey Bun.”

“You shouldn’t be encouraging Aegon to smoke. It’s bad for him.”

“Give him a break, he’s sad and crispy.”

You can’t think of a rebuttal. The four of you walk back to the mobile home.

In the small patch of parched dirt that serves as the driveway, Cregan is—with great difficulty—shimmying out from beneath the Tahoe. Then he reaches back under to grab a pan of old motor oil. “Just about done here,” he announces. “Gotta put the fresh oil in and then we’re set for another 5,000 miles.”

You glance around. Ice is panting in the narrow aisle of shade of a mesquite tree. Aegon is napping on the tiny front porch, sprawled on his back and snoring, his plastic neon green sunglasses shielding his eyes; Helaena is surrounded by a jumble of empty cans and stirring a pot of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs as she heats it over a fire. She begins dishing out bowlfuls of it. Rio, Rhaena, and Luke all graciously accept their dinner.

“Did you guys find gas?” you say to Cregan.

“Not much. A few gallons.”

“Where’s Aemond?”

“Said he’d be back soon.”

“What?” You are incredulous. “You left him? He can’t be alone out there, Cregan. Someone has to watch his blind side.”

“He ain’t alone. He took Daeron.”

“What’s Aemond looking for?”

“He didn’t say. I didn’t ask.” Now Cregan is pouring a bottle of Pennzoil into the Tahoe, and Rio is prodding you with a bowl of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs, and Aegon is waking up and yawning loudly.

“What’d you bring me?” he says, lazy and grinning; and when he receives his pack of Marlboro Golds, he immediately sticks one between his teeth and lights it. Luke goes to sit by a shrub and then jumps up when he hears a rattling noise. Almost too swiftly for you to process it, a streak of red-gold scales slithers across the earth and vanishes into the desert.

“Western diamondback rattlesnake,” Helaena notes. “Venomous. Potentially fatal.”

“Great,” Luke says, carrying his bowl towards the front door of the mobile home. “I think I’ll eat inside.”

Aemond and Daeron don’t return until shortly before dusk, the sky turning to rust, lavender, gold, fire, blood. When they walk in, Rhaena is curled up on the floral couch—shredded in spots by a cat, though there are no signs of it now—and reading Mockingjay. Luke is sitting with her and keeping watch with periodic peeks out the window. Ice is resting with her muzzle propped on her large front paws. You, Rio, Cregan, Helaena, and Aegon are playing Uno on the floor.

“What color?” Aegon asks Helaena when she puts down a wild card.

“Blue.”

He groans. “How do you always know what I don’t have?!”

“Rhaena,” Aemond says, and then tosses something to her that glints in the artificial, sickly yellow radiance of the flashlights. She catches them in midair: a set of keys. She is mystified.

“What are these for?”

“The Ford Expedition that’s parked outside.”

“What?!” Luke says, twisting around in his seat to snatch the curtain aside and peer through the window. “Oh wow. Yeah, it’s out there.”

Rhaena is staring confoundedly at Aemond. “Why do we need a Ford Expedition?”

“Because that’s what you’ll be driving tomorrow.”

“What’s wrong with the Tahoe?”

“They will be driving the Tahoe to Oregon,” Aemond says, pointing to you, Rio, and Cregan. “We are taking Expedition to California.”

Everyone is too stunned to speak at first; even Daeron looks at Aemond doubtfully, as if this is the first time he’s learning of it. Aegon’s hand hovers frozen in the air above the draw pile of Uno cards. Ice whimpers.

Rio chuckles uncertainly. “You’re…you’re joking, right?”

“No, I’m not,” Aemond says. “When we leave Battle Mountain tomorrow, you’ll take I-80 to Winnemucca. We’ll take Route 305 south to Austin and then head west so we can get off the interstate and avoid the Reno area.”

Your voice comes out dark and poisonous. You can feel your eyes glaring, searing; Aemond won’t look at you. “What are you talking about?”

“We can’t stay together?” Luke asks.

“No,” Aemond says again, and now he’s getting impatient. “We have two different destinations. That’s been the situation since the day we met, and now it’s time to split up.”

“Why can’t we all travel to one place and then the other?” Rhaena says. “We could drive to the Bay Area, see what’s going on at the beach house, and after—”

“I can’t wait,” Rio interrupts. “My wife and baby are in Oregon, I’m going straight there even if no one else is.” As distracted as you are, you touch your palm to one of his broad shoulders. You’re going too. You promised.

“So we’ll drive to Oregon first,” Aegon says agreeably. “Right? We could do that. Go north and then swing by the Bay Area later.”

Aemond shakes his head. “It’s almost impossible to find gas now. There is just enough in the Tahoe to last it until Winnemucca, and just enough in the Expedition to get it down to Austin. There is no guarantee we’ll be able to find more. Every day there’s less gas and food and bullets, because there are less places that haven’t already been looted. There are 400 miles between where we are right now and either Odessa or San Franscisco. There are another 400 miles that separate those two destinations from each other. So let’s say we drive all the way to Oregon and then can’t find any gas to go south to the Bay. How long do you think we’d last like this on foot? A month? Because that’s how long it would take us, assuming not a single rest day. So if we travel to one location together, there’s a good possibility we’ll all be trapped there.”

“Maybe I’m okay with getting trapped in Oregon,” Aegon mumbles.

Aemond lashes out fiercely. “Are you serious? What about Criston, what about Mom?!”

“Maybe there are some things about home that I don’t miss!”

“Then go the fuck to Oregon!”

“You know I have to stay with you!”

Aemond scoffs. “Because you’re so capable of protecting anyone.”

Aegon rubs his sunburned face with both hands. He murmurs softly, miserably: “I’m trying, Aemond.”

“So that’s it?” Rhaena says, staring at you and Rio and Cregan, stunned and mournful. “We’ll just never see each other again?”

Aemond shrugs and averts his gaze. He doesn’t have an answer; maybe he doesn’t care.

Aegon turns to Cregan accusingly. “You helped plan this?”

“Nah,” Cregan says, avoidant and downcast, which is unusual for him. “I mean…I said I didn’t really see myself spending the rest of my life with a bunch of millionaires in a California mansion on the seashore, and that’s still true. I’d rather live in Oregon with people who are more like me. But that’s different than wanting to split up forever. I could always try to find y’all later for a visit, I guess…”

“Sure,” Aemond replies briskly. “Whatever you decide to do afterwards isn’t my problem. But you get them to Odessa first.”

Rhaena bursts out with sudden urgency: “This feels wrong. Don’t you see how this is wrong?! We’ve been through so much together, and now we’re just going to wave goodbye and disappear? Leave them to fend for themselves?”

“You want to add 400 miles to our trip?” Aemond asks her, and Rhaena falls silent.

“You know,” Luke begins. “We…we’ve already lost people. Maybe Aemond’s right. Maybe we’re forgetting how dangerous the world is now. It would be great if we could stay in contact, but the most important thing is to get everyone safely to where they need to be.”

“Exactly,” Aemond says, and something jolts awake in you as you remember what he told you in Nebraska, and in Wyoming, and in so many quiet moments that you’ve shared since you met, each an oasis in the desert. He said we would figure it out. He said he wasn’t going anywhere.

“So you were lying when you pretended not to know what we were going to do when we got to Nevada.”

Aemond nods towards the front door. “Can I talk to you outside for a minute?”

You stand up; Rio watches you apprehensively, wondering if he should follow. Your eyes flick to his. I’m fine. He relents, redirecting his attention. Aegon is slumped and despondent; Helaena is starting to cry, and Cregan tries to console her. She’s saying that something bad is going to happen, but she doesn’t know what.

On the porch of the mobile home, beneath a lilac sky pierced with stars, Aemond does not attempt to hold your hands or kiss you goodbye or give any other indication that you have ever been someone who mattered to him. “This isn’t personal. This is what gives everyone the best chance of survival.”

“You’re afraid of making a mistake and getting hurt,” you tell him. “And I understand, I know what that feels like, but Aemond…with the way the world is now…you can’t afford to wait for things to happen or cut them loose to see if they’ll come back to you. You might not get another chance.”

“You’re going to be fine,” Aemond says flatly. “Your route is safer than ours. Less cities, less zombies.”

“You’re honestly going to act like you are completely unbothered by the thought of never seeing me again?”

“I don’t know what you expected. I’m just some guy who helped get you off a transmission tower back in Pennsylvania.”

“Really? That’s all you are?”

And then Aemond smirks to himself, a cynical, mocking twist of his lips, something so dismissive and so cruel you almost believe for a razor-thin second that you could hate him. “Look, I’m not the one for you. Go to Oregon. Fuck Cregan.”

“There is nothing romantic between me and Cregan!”

Now Aemond seems annoyed. “Well, you two seem exceptionally suited for each other.”

“Because we both grew up shopping at Dollar General and know what it’s like to have an alcoholic parent?! That makes us soulmates, that’s the end of the calculation?!”

“Then find a man like him!” Aemond flares. “That’s what you really wanted, right? That’s what you were after this whole time. Some hero to convince you he’s worth it. Someone to break you in.”

You are seething, thunderstruck. “And you just said that in the most hurtful way possible to…what, prove how little you care about me?”

“I didn’t say I don’t care about you.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“We were never going to end up in the same place.”

“Except we were, you told me that, you told me we’d figure something out, I mean, you…you…you said you’d be there if I wanted kids someday, what was that if not some kind of commitment?!”

“You don’t trust me,” Aemond says, so sharply and so abruptly it startles you.

“I do,” you object softly.

“No, you don’t. And I don’t blame you. But there’s nowhere for us to go from here.”

You can feel yourself becoming young and powerless and desperately afraid. “Please don’t do this, Aemond. It won’t bring Jace or Baela back. If we don’t have a plan before we split up, this is over. We’ll never find each other again. We’ll never have another chance.”

And he shakes his head like this was such a needless mistake. “I knew you’d fall in love with me.”

He’s leaving, you think, hazy and omnipotent like a nightmare, the present inseparable from the past and the future. I left my family and now my family is leaving me. “I’m not in love with you,” you reply as ruthlessly as you can. “I think you’re right. Cregan is a better man.”

“Yeah,” Aemond snaps.

“And I need someone like him.”

“Yeah,” Aemond says again, staring into the west where the last rays of the sun are sinking below the horizon, you erased as you stand where his left eye would once have seen you.

“And you need someone who’s going to fuck with your head so much you can’t possibly mistake it for something real.”

You walk back inside the mobile home and leave him speechless in the dying light.

~~~~~~~~~~

“I drew this for you,” Aegon says, handing Rio a folded piece of paper torn from Helaena’s spider notebook. It’s a map, illustrated in forest green gel pen ink. “Your route is actually really straightforward, it’s impossible to get lost. You’ll follow I-80 northwest to Winnemucca, then Route 95 north until it intersects with Route 140, and you stay on 140 all the way to Odessa. The only real city you’ll go near is Klamath Falls in Oregon, and I’ve marked that. Route 140 mostly stays along the outside, but you can cut it wider if things look dicey. The whole trip is just a couple days by car, assuming you don’t have to spend too long hunting for gas. But listen…” He points to the green dot labelled Winnemucca. “Between here and Denio up by the Oregon border, there’s 100 miles of nothing, just desert. So make sure you have more than enough supplies to last you in case something happens. Then from Denio to Adel is another 85 miles with no towns in between. So just…be careful, okay? You’re not back east anymore. Things are a lot farther apart, and it’s harder to find everything. If you run out of gas or bust a tire, you can’t just call AAA to come pick you up.”

“We got it,” Rio says, touched but trying not to dissolve into too much sentimentality. The three of you are standing in the short dirt driveway the next morning, Aegon putting most of his weight on his good leg. Cregan is waiting behind the wheel of the Chevy Tahoe that once belonged to his parents. Ice is peering out at you through one of the rolled-down windows. “Thank you, Honey Bun.”

“No problem. Now flip it over.”

Rio does; on the back of the first map is another, this one from Odessa south to the Bay Area, a place just north of San Francisco called Bolinas.

“Go all the way to the coast and follow it down,” Aegon says. “You don’t want to bump into Santa Rosa, Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto, San Jose, any of those places. Too many people.” Then he smiles, kind and warm. “I’m going to see you guys again, one way or the other. But first I have to make sure Aemond is safe. And Rio has to meet baby Otter.”

Rio laughs. “Man, don’t even joke about it. I’m seriously concerned that’s my firstborn’s name.”

“If you end up not staying in Odessa, leave me a note carved into a tree trunk or something so I can track you down.”

“You do the same at the beach mansion.”

“Totally.” Then Aegon turns to you; and although he’s still smiling, his eyes—those pools of murky, melancholy blue that remind you of the Gulf of Tadjoura, Corpus Christi Bay, the East China Sea, the Indian Ocean—are catastrophically sad. “Tortilla Chip, it’s been real. Don’t forget about me.”

“I don’t think I could even if I wanted to.”

He pats your backpack and winks, and you don’t understand why until ten hours later when you’re lying on the rooftop of an abandoned RV in Winnemucca, Nevada, gazing up at the stars as Rio and Cregan swap stories to weave affinity until it’s thick like a braid: Rio hiding a dead lemon shark in the Jeep of an officer he hated when you were stationed at Key West, Cregan’s fiancé leaving him after she got a field hockey scholarship to the University of Iowa. You haven’t found any gas for the Tahoe yet. You’ll have to search again tomorrow. You reach into your backpack for a pack of Life Savers and instead are surprised to discover Aegon’s pink Sony Walkman. The rhinestones spelling out a doomed little girl’s name glint in the moonlight.

You slip in both earbuds and press play. Aegon left it paused at an Enrique Iglesias song; you assume he must have been thinking of Rio.

“You look at me and, girl, you take me to another place

Got me feelin’ like I’m flyin’, like I’m out of space

Something ‘bout your body says, come and take me

Got me begging, got me hoping that the night don’t stop…”

You try to see constellations in the night sky instead of random, indifferent distant suns. You try not to remember the way Aemond was when you thought his mark on you was permanent.

“Girl, I like the way you move, come and show me what to do

You can tell me that you want me, girl, you got nothing to lose

I can’t wait no more

I can’t wait no more…”

You spot a gimmer of light among the stars and choose to believe it is a comet rather than a fighter jet, or a forgotten satellite, or the refracted remnants of a solar storm, or something you only imagined and that never existed at all.

[erabu-san]

Hug

[imfinereallyy]

you can pry happy endings from my cold-dead hands. It can be the most heart stopping, gut wrenching fic that has every existed and I will read every drop of it if I get my happy ending. I have had enough painful endings in real life, give me happy in my fantasy world. It can be at the last second, it can be a single sentence, even a single word. Give me all the angst and hurt in the world for 500,000 words, but please give me the comfort I need in the ending. please and thank you.

[avisminutia]

@inkypawprint

Hello! It is I, your secret gift giver, here to give you Donnie shell angst with comfort from Raph! I got really into Brains and Brawn lately so this was extra fun. Happy holidays!

[retiredteabag]

Chilled to the bone

When you were enlisted as a sidekick with The Genius Office agency, you had been hoping to work as a supporting hero for Best Jeanist, you were, in fact, not expecting to be sent into the mountainous wilderness to aid in the apprehension of a snow villain.

Even more so, you were certainly not expecting to be working alongside pro-hero Dynamight.

And yet here you were.

You had been assigned plenty of gear for the mission. The support team at TGO was renown as one of the most competitive in the country for UA support course students. That being said, they were incredibly cautious about the safety of their heroes. They had even provided an earpiece system so your communication through the torrential snowstorm wasn't so tedious.

Your pro counterpart on this mission, however, insisted on screaming over the wind, determined that he didn't "need that nonsense."

And anyway, It had been all for nothing, unfortunately. The mission had been a bust, the villain you were trailing had been apprehended by the time you had reached his hiding point on the mountain and it was fair to say Bakugou was pissed.

There were several expletives shouted into the wind before he eventually fizzled out. He ranted on and on about poor communication between agencies and regional hero work.

The comms between the agency and yourself had given way hours ago and Bakugou now trudged ahead in the snow. You felt as if your body was fighting against every element as the storm pushed you away from your destination.

No matter how often you clicked your ear piece to try to call for help, all you heard was the gentle *da-ding* before static resounded.

You were stuck. Wandering in a complete wasteland, and since the trip had been all for nothing, you couldn’t even feel content.

You had no idea how the lumbering man in front of you was able to pick up his steps so readily and march onward. Lucky as you were to (literally) follow in his steps (deeply planted in the icy snow) it was still difficult to not be discouraged by the blizzard ahead.

After what felt like hours, and a fully uphill climb, the sun finally began to set.

Your ham radio buzzed suddenly in your ear and you realized as it startled you how drowsy you were.

“Are ya still followin’? Ain’t got time to slow down.” Your vision was blurry, but you couldn’t tell if it was because of the snow, or another reason. Dynamight had his earpiece roughly grasped beside his head while he spoke to you.

“Copy. I’m here.” You say, and even just those words seem to take a lot out of you.

Dynamight hums gruffly, “Good. Cause we’ve got a ways to go before civilization.” And eventually, “God it’s cold.”

His words are a huge discouragement, you aren’t sure what to say, so you simply agree, “Yep. Freezin’ my balls off.”

He coughs out a single ‘ha!’ And continues onward. But with everything happening: the raging storm fighting against you, the icy cold frosting your bones, and the sun now beginning to fade, you’re starting to wobble where you stand.

Eventually you cannot even keep your head high enough to watch your partner, maintaining to follow his footprints, one step, then the next, then the next, over and over.

It’s strange, after a bit, it almost starts to get easy, to walk on, your cheeks and ears are starting to feel hot, and it’s as if your legs are floating as you stomp into the large shoe print left for you.

You start to tilt but catch yourself, making an embarrassing sound, luckily your comms weren’t on and Bakugou couldn’t have heard you over the wind.

You rip the covering from your face, the heat becoming uncomfortable now. When you lift your neck, you see the crux of the hill you had been climbing, but the motion thew you, and blood seemed to rush to your skull. It was as if one moment you had been marching onward and then next you were face up in the hard and icy snow.

Awe damn it…

You tried to click your comms, to connect with Bakugou and call for him but it was as if the snow had your arm caged where you had landed.

It didn’t take long for you to accept this position. Your body had never felt so weak. This was nowhere near your first mission, in fact, you were a colorfully decorated sidekick. Who would have known that a little snow would take you out. This was it…

Your head was pounding so you closed your eyes to help block it out. You were so sleepy… maybe it wasn’t so bad here.

You truly and no idea how long it had been but what felt to be all to quickly, you felt your eyes being forced open.

There was shouting, but you couldn’t understand the words.

Bakugou was before you, his hero costume was unbuttoned at his mouth as he yelled at you, condensation puffing out around his face.

He kept brushing you with his hand, he was doing it rather harshly as well.

“S-haap-“ was all you could get out, you made an effort to push him from you but it was fruitless. You were properly immobile.

A new sensation, a strong wave of nausea came over you as your world was thrown upside down. Quite literally, Bakugou had reached under your back and thrown you over his shoulder.

Blood rushed to your head once more as you stared at the back of his uniform. Sick grunts left you as his weight shifted quickly from foot to foot.

He heard none of it.

This time, when you fell asleep, it took much longer to wake you.

When you were finally roused, there was a crackling fire to your back and a broad black and orange chest directly in your face.

You pressed with as much strength as you could harness in your state and realized that it was real.

He was real.

“Huuuua?-“ you gasped, attempting to roll from him. Only to be met with a firm grip on your waist.

“Quit moving you idiot! First you try to freeze to death and now your want to go up in flames??!” You could feel him speaking aggressively into your hair.

There were a million things racing in your mind, but the first thing that escaped you was, “It’s hot…”

A tight hand was roughly making friction on your arms, Bakugou was aggressively petting you. “No, that’s your mind playing tricks on you.”

“Oh…”

Later you would look back on this and bang your head against the wall, throw a fit in your apartment, maybe even consider putting in your two weeks, but in this moment, you burrow your head into the large man’s chest.

“Th-e” you cough, your whole body shutters, “the villain-“

“It’s handled. No thanks to us. But they’re coming out to get us. Helicopter and everything. I’m gonna kill Jeanist.” He’s gnashing his teeth.

“Where are we?” You attempt to turn to the fire you know lies behind you. But a firm hand keeps you from turning.

“Made it to the town, apparently they were expecting us. Agency called once our comms gave out.” He grumbled. “Told ya it was useless.”

You just hum, successfully ignoring how insane it is to be sharing body heat with a top hero that you had previously shared so much as 10 words with.

But as your eyelids began to droop again, you felt his hand grace your cheek, sliding down your back and lifting you towards him once more and he leaned his head back and waited for the agency to retrieve its cold lost hero’s.

〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰

No, I don’t know where this came from, and no I didn’t edit it

[runraerun]

Steddie Amnesia Fic: 1/3

-> Part 2 | Part 3 | AO3

cw: lots of head trauma/brain injury/recovery stuff.

Steve wakes up in the hospital with someone snoring loudly on his leg, mouth open, drool getting soaked up into the scratchy hospital blanket over him.

Steve just stares.

It’s… Freddie? No, that’s not right... Eddie! Eddie ‘the freak’ Munson, known delinquent and drug dealer… resting his head on Steve’s lap.

What the hell…?

Steve reaches up with a wobbly, IV-ridden hand to clumsily pat along his head, but instead of meeting messy hair, he meets a thick wad of bandages. He flinches when he hits an especially tender spot.

It’s not much but it’s enough to wake Eddie Munson up with a jolt, and a random jumble of words that sounded something like, “the dice have spoken!”, but Steve can’t be sure. Not with the sharp ringing still going off inside his skull.

“Steve? Steve! Oh thank fuck, Jesus H. Christ, you scared the ever loving shit out of me.” Eddie stood and grabbed at one of Steve’s shoulders, shaking him enough to elicit another wince.

“Oh, damn, sorry. I’m like a fucking bull in a china shop here, man. There’s way too much expensive, breakable shit here. I’m not used to it. I accidentally ripped your IV out the other day... Fuck. The nurses hate my guts.” Eddie chuckles, eyes wide and solely on Steve, talking like they were old friends or something.

But that can’t be right. Steve doesn’t remember saying more than two words to Eddie Munson during the entire time he knew he even existed, and even then it was just to discuss weed prices.

“For real though, talk to me Harrington, how you feelin’, hm? Loopy? Gonna yak again? Apparently they got you on the good stuff,” Eddie flicks a liquid filled bag hanging above Steve and shakes his head, “but they keep cutting you back. Dicks.”

Steve’s eyes try and follow Eddie’s erratic movements but his eyes ache the more he moves them. He blinks against the harsh fluorescents and tries to open his mouth. And thank God, Eddie Munson seems to take this as a sign and shut up.

“What happened?” Steve finally croaks.

One of Eddie’s brows jumps. “You don’t remember?”

Steve gives his head a small shake. Did Eddie hit him with his car or something? Is that why he’s sleeping at his bedside and talking to him like they’re buddies?

“You fell, Stevie.” Eddie makes a whistling noise and mimicks something falling with his hands, then makes a crashing sound when his hand lands on Steve’s bandaged head. “Like a coconut out of a tree. Landed right on that big ol’ melon of yours. There was blood everywhere. It scared the shit out of me and the kids. Especially when you wouldn’t wake up.”

Steve’s throat feels like sandpaper, but he manages to swallow, his throat clicking as he did, and gets out, “The kids?”

Eddie seems to notice, even before Steve can ask, and reaches for a water bottle with a straw already in it, and half chewed. Eddie’s own, no doubt. Against his better judgment, Steve accepts it when Eddie offers it to him. He was just so goddamn thirsty.

“Don’t worry, they’re all fine. They were just shaken up. I’ll radio the little gremlins and give ‘em the good news in a sec.” Eddie’s smile falters a little, seeming lost for words. Like he wants to say something, but can’t quite get it out.

Steve finishes swallowing his few, meager gulps of water before he asks, “What is it?”

“Don’t freak out—“ Eddie begins.

And, okay, that’s exactly the thing you tell someone before they freak the fuck out. Steve’s stomach is subject to a growing, sluggish panic. “What? Dude, tell me—“

“It’s your hair.” Eddie seems genuinely pained at having to deliver this crushing of a blow to Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington.

Steve can hear the beeping from the monitors he’s hooked up to begin to pick up speed as his heart begins racing. “My hair?”

“It’s okay! It’s okay, it’ll grow back! They just had to take a little bit off where the stitches went, you can hardest notice it—well, that’s a fucking lie, you could spot that landing strip from space—but I think if you part it to the other side it won’t look so… y’know.”

“No, dude, I don’t know.” Steve says, eyes wide, brows pinched.

“Like a drunk toddler took a pair of rusty kitchen shears to your mop.” Eddie says, huffing out a nervous sort of laugh.

Steve groans, half due to the bastardization that’s happened to his favorite feature, and half due to the migraine that’s looming on his horizon.

“You’re still pretty, Stevie, don’t worry.” Eddie grins, eyebrows raised, like he’s trying to be cute or something.

That weirdest part is, it’s kind of working.

Steve must have hit his head really, really hard.

The doctors eventually come in and perform all sorts of tests, and he tries his best to comply with them and jump through whatever hoops they make him jump through. He just wants to get the hell out of this hospital bed.

Unfortunately for him, Steve hadn’t exactly aced any of the tests.

In fact, he had failed most of them pretty fucking dismally. He couldn’t remember the date, who the president was, where he lived, couldn’t say the alphabet backwards… although, who the fuck can do that? He stands by that failing grade.

A couple of CAT scans later and it’s clear that Steve’s brain got smacked around a little more than they had originally thought.

Among a pile of other stuff, the thing that sticks out the most to Steve is his diagnosis of something called short term amnesia. They explain it like the past 2 to 3 years has just been wiped from his brain. The last clear thing he really remembers is getting the shit beat out of him by Billy, and then it all sort of gets jumbled. Fragmented. The doctors explain that this is pretty typical for head trauma patients.

He’s a head trauma patient, now.

It’s normal for memories of trauma to link, creating spiderwebs throughout your brain.

Which, that’s great. So when he gets beat up again, there’s always a chance his brain will try and erase his easy, happy years and revert back to a trauma default. Really helpful brain, thank you.

And the thing that sucks the most is that his years after the Billy beat down sound pretty great. Traumatizing, sure, but great. Once the Upside Down shit was locked up, with every scary nightmare fuel monster inside of it, life in Hawkins didn’t sound all that terrible.

He lived with Robin, who’s his best friend, (his ‘platonic soulmate’ even, as she explains it), he’s working a retail job, (also with Robin), and coaches the high school basketball team during the evenings. He’d even been talking with Hopper about joining the force.

Well, he was. Now he’s more or less useless, working full time at re-learning his life, along with a couple of fine motor skills that got glitchy after the fall.

And then there’s Eddie.

Eddie, who’s apparently also his best friend, only their soulmate link isn’t platonic at all.

The strange and weirdly exciting reality was that Steve Harrington had woken up from his 3-day medically induced coma with not only a full fledged relationship, but a boyfriend.

It’s a lot to digest, and part of him still doesn’t even know how to process it, but hearing the stories being told around him, seeing how Eddie is practically living in his and Robin’s two-bedroom apartment, and just… the way Eddie looks at him?

It’s with love—Steve can see it. Feel it. Eddie’s practically vibrating with it.

What’s even crazier is that when Steve looks at Eddie, he feels the exact same way.

It’s like looking at the stars. Steve’s heart skips a beat when those dark eyes of hit him, and Steve wants nothing more than to make Eddie smile—no, better than that, to make him laugh, just so he can watch Eddie’s adam’s apple bob up and down and hear that manic, unhinged cackle. It’s downright delightful. Steve loves being in relationships like this, where it’s all consuming.

Steve may not have the memories of falling in love with Eddie, but he has all the feelings.

No one talks about it with Steve, of course. Maybe they think it’s going to be too heavy for him to process that he’s into dudes now, but Steve isn’t a big dumb baby. Sure, he’s got a pretty severe brain injury, and yeah, alright, it takes him a minute to remember people’s names sometimes, and he has a harder time controlling his emotions, but he isn’t a complete invalid. Only a little bit of one. He’s working on it, dammit.

And Eddie is so painfully, frustratingly patient with him. He never pushes. He’s clearly letting Steve retrieve his memories before he makes a move, because despite his whole outward appearance, Eddie Munson is a goddamn gentleman. He never so much as reaches for Steve’s hands, but Steve can tell by the way their pinkies graze when they watch movies late at night that he wants to.

Steve can tell by the way Eddie teases him, the way he’s there with him through his recovery, that he doesn’t ever make Steve feel stupid when he asks the same questions over and over again, when he cries at the drop of a hat or when he gets sort of confused about the lay out of his apartment—he doesn’t care about that of that.

Because he’s in love with Steve. It’s so painfully romantic, it brings a painful lump to Steve’s throat every time he thinks too much about it.

The two of them are driving to one of Steve’s therapy sessions, Eddie in the driver's seat, Steve in the passengers, listening to a low racket of some kind of heavy metal music. Eddie always keeps the volume low now, for Steve.

He’s just been so intensely good about everything that Steve needs to try and do something good for Eddie in return. He needs Eddie to know that there’s a light at the end of this tunnel that they’re both currently lost in.

“I’m sorry about this, y’know.” Steve says when they finally pull up the building that has ‘Brain Injury Recover Center’ written on the front. So all the boys and girls with scrambled eggs for brains know where to converge.

“Don’t worry about it, man. I work the evening shifts, remember? My days are free.” Eddie explains, and Steve wonders if he’s had to be told this bit of information a couple of times now. Sometimes it takes a few times before something sticks to his brain now. His short term memory is still majorly flighty. But no, Steve remembers that Eddie bartends at a local bowling alley most evenings. He’s gone a few times. Not to bowl, of course—too much hand eye coordination involved—but just to hang out with Eddie. He’s pretty decent at Ms. Pac-Man though.

Steve shakes his head. He knows his mind must have wandered because there’s been a lull where no one’s spoken. Eddie never seems to care about that though. “I don’t mean about the drive. I was talking about… y’know.”

“Wha’dy’mean?” Eddie mumbles as he backs into his parking space, hand on the back of Steve’s headrest.

Steve sighs and decides to just come out and say it: “I mean having your boyfriend forget everything about you and your relationship. I just… that must be really tough.”

Everything in Eddie Munson comes to a jarring halt, hand frozen over where he’s turned to ignition off.

It’s sort of unnerving—Eddie is always moving, fidgeting. Damn near bouncing off the walls. But now it’s like someone hit the poor guy with a freeze ray gun.

Steve chuckles softly as he reaches out and touches Eddie’s arm, giving him a playful jostle, to loosen him up a little, “it’s okay, Eddie. I know. You don’t have to keep going easy on me. I’m gay! Or, bi-sexual. Whatever.” Steve shrugs, “see? Not falling apart. I can handle being in love with another dude. You don’t need to keep babying me.”

The side of Eddie’s mouth twitches into a downturned smile that he seems to be trying to hide.

“I know, I know. Not just any dude.” Steve rolls his eyes, a smile still firmly on his face. He takes Eddie’s hand from the steering wheel, and Eddie seems to watch it go in a detached sort of awe. Steve wonders if Eddie’s proud of him for being so cool with it all. “In love with you.”

“Steve, I don’t think—

“Wait, just let me finish.” Steve asks, and Eddie blinks and works on closing his mouth. Knows it’s important to let Steve get his thoughts out quickly, lest they be lost to the giant black hole inside of his beat-up brain now. “I know that I don’t remember any of the important stuff with us. Our first date, or our first kiss or, y’know, any of our other first firsts. So maybe it feels like you’re cheating on the old Steve with me? But… Eddie, I know it’s crazy but even though my brain forgot all of the specifics; my heart didn’t. I look at you, and it’s all there. I’m still so into you, dude. I can feel it, even though I don’t remember how I got here. I’m in l—“

“Steve! Stevestevesteve wait, holy shit—!” Eddie’s eyes snap up from his intense stare at the place where their hands are linked. “Steve—”

“Yeah?” Steve prompts when Eddie doesn’t seem to be able to find the words. He runs his thumb gently over Eddie’s knuckles. It feels so nice to finally be able to hold his hand again. They fit together so well, and Steve wonders briefly if it’s some kind of muscle memory.

Eddie opens his mouth a few more times before he remembers how to make the words come out.

“Steve. Buddy. We’re… we’re not dating.”

Steve’s face falls, and he can feel a lump form in his throat, but he keeps a firm hold of Eddie’s warm hand in his own. “Yeah, I know, I know. We haven’t had any time to be a couple. And it’s probably been torture for you, man. You’re so busy taking care of me and making sure I don’t freak out over everything that you’ve clearly been neglecting your own hierarchy of needs.”

Eddie raises a brow.

Steve chuckles, “Shut up. It’s a therapy term.”

Eddie laughs in his throat. “Steve, you gotta slow down and listen to me.”

He turns his shoulders so that he’s fully facing Steve while he reaches his free hand over and tugs at one of his earlobes. “Got your hearing ears on?”

Steve rolls his eyes, but he nods just the same.

“We… we weren’t dating before your accident,” Eddie speaks slowly, his voice warm, gentle. “Hell, I didn’t even know you were, y’know, into dudes like that. Much less me.”

Something throbs dully behind Steve’s eyes. It’s the start of a migraine—the one that makes it hard to process much of anything. Steve squints, trying to make sense of what Eddie’s saying. “…you’re not my boyfriend?”

Eddie shakes his head very, very slowly. “No.”

Steve snatches his hand back like he’s only just now noticed how burning hot Eddie’s hand is.

He settles back in his seat, staring out the front window. The sounds from the outside world are muffled, and everything feels far away and sort of… Made up. Just like everything he’d imagined was going on between him and Eddie. Not real.

He feels painfully detached from reality. Unmoored. Maybe this was the disassociation thing the doctor mentioned might happen…

“Are you sure?” Steve asks, risking another glance over to Eddie, who hasn’t taken his eyes off him for a second.

“Pretty fuckin’ sure.” Eddie snorts.

“Oh, God. This is… I’m—sorry. I’m so stupid. Fuck, I gotta—“ Steve suddenly attacks the door handle with a clumsy fury that has his hand fumbling with the handle for way too long. Fucking busted up, bruised as fuck fucking brain-!

“Steve, it’s okay, dude,” Eddie says from behind Steve, but that’s easy for him to say; he didn’t just humiliate himself in front of his not-boyfriend, definitely-crush, possibly ex-friend—“Steve, wait!”

Steve flees the van on unsteady feet, not daring to look back.

[maxtermind]

Can I request some more angst 🫠🫠 I’m a sucker for your sad fics

tell me, why'd you have to hit-and-run me?

★ : summary :: finding out your boyfriend was dared to date you ★ : feat :: max verstappen, lewis hamilton, carlos sainz, charles leclerc, lando norris ★ : genre :: ANGST; no hea ★ : word count :: 4k+ ★ : a/n :: how are we feeling with the daily posts ending tom and shifting to alternate day posting🤭 babe you asked for angst and i delivered, lmk how you like it <3 bet y'all thought you needed tissues for something else😏

Max Verstappen

“Mate, you still haven’t told her?” you heard Lando whisper, making your eyebrows shoot up. What were they talking about? As you finally decided to approach your boyfriend and his friend, you heard Max whisper.

It was low, so low that you almost didn’t catch it, but the way your hand froze on the knob and the utter stillness of your heartbeat indicated that you heard him loud and clear when he slowly said, “I don’t know how to.”

That. That was the reason you froze. You were processing what you heard. Your heart pulled from its rightful place—no, it was ripped out.

God, you thought, anything but that. Anything but cheating because how could you even confront him if he confessed to cheating on you right there on the spot in front of one of his friends?

“It has been going on for too long, Max.” Lando took a deep breath. “You should tell her you love her; she’ll understand.”

Ah. Okay, he loves you; this was okay. But then why was your heart still beating so loudly that you could hear it in your ears?

“How do you think I should go about it?” Max asked, and that was when you finally had enough. You turned the knob, but Lando was already speaking, and his words had you freeze again.

The boys' heads snapped up, eyes wide when they saw you walk in. You felt your eyes burn as Lando’s last words finally processed.

“You should’ve thought about it before you decided to make a stupid bet with those dumb men.”

“Bet?” you wondered aloud as you saw Max stumble over to you. What bet?

“No bet!” you heard your panicked boyfriend almost scream. You were so confused you didn’t even know what you were saying out loud.

“For fuck’s sake,” Lando said as he stood from the couch, glaring at Max. “Y/N deserves to know.” You kept your eyes on Max, trying to gauge an explanation from his clearly messed-up state.

“I’m sorry, Y/N,” you finally looked at your boyfriend’s best friend. “I clearly shouldn’t have trusted Max to—”

“I think you should leave,” Max groaned out as if it pained him to hear Lando talk, almost hissing out the last word. They started bickering back and forth, and through your hazy mind, you could only make out a few words.

But they were enough. You took a deep breath as you stepped away from Max towards the door. He was too busy focusing on Lando anyway.

“Y.. you’re saying I was a bet?” Your voice cut through the chaos, and it was Max’s turn to go dead silent and freeze on the spot.

“You asked me ou—” Oh god, you didn’t want to cry, “—because of a dare?”

Max’s eyes were wide with horror, his face pale as he took a step toward you, his hands reaching out in desperation. “No, Y/N, it’s not like that, please, let me explain.”

You shook your head, tears streaming down your cheeks uncontrollably. “Explain what, Max?” Your voice cracked on the last word, the pain too raw to hold back when you saw Max was also crying. “How a…all i have be— this relationship has been is a fucking lie?” The moment you said it out loud, you heard Lando take in a sharp breath. Max looked disheveled, he could just tell that this was the only time he could repair this. You looked a minute away from walking out and the thought of that had him talking even through his closed up throat.

His voice broke, choked with emotion. “No, Y/N, I swear, it wasn’t like that. It started as a stupid dare, yes, but then... then I fell in love with you. I fell so hard, it—” His words stumbled over each other, barely coherent through his tears. “I called the whole thing off.”

You cut him off, your voice trembling and thick with hurt. “You should have told me right then. As soon as you called it off, you sho—” Your body shook, barely able to stand under the weight of your heartbreak. “How could you do this to m.. me?”

Max rushed forward to hold your hands, breathing heavily to get himself under control so he could talk as he sobbed. “I was so fucking scared, Y/N. I didn’t want to lose you. You mean everything to me.”

You looked down at your joined hands, feeling your heart shatter all over again. It was one thing to know someone’s apology was sincere and another to know that they had faked being sincere from the very beginning. So how could you even tell the difference now? Your voice came out in a broken whisper. “How can I trust you now? How can I believe anything you say?” You were almost gasping for breath, each word an effort as you tried to hold back the sobs wracking your body.

Lando’s voice was soft but firm from behind you, though his own eyes were hard. “He’s telling the truth, Y/N. He was an idiot, but he’s been head over heels for you for a long time.”

Max’s tear-streaked face looked up at you, his eyes pleading. “Please, Y/N. I’ll do anything to make it up to you. Anything. Just... don’t leave me.” His voice broke, the last word coming out as a wail of despair.

You turned away, unable to bear the sight of him, your voice barely above a whisper but laced with raw agony. “I can’t be here.” You could barely see through your tears, your entire body trembling.

Max’s anguished sobs followed you as you walked away, your heart feeling like it was being torn from your chest with every step. The pain was unbearable, and you stumbled, nearly collapsing under the weight of your sorrow but Lando caught you as he held you by your shoulders.

You needed to be alone, to process everything, and to decide if love could truly overcome betrayal. But right now, it felt like your world was ending.

Lewis Hamilton

“Y/N, baby please—”

Lewis’s voice pleaded as you shut the door behind, your heart splintering into a thousand pieces. Tears blurred your vision as you staggered away from your apartment, the weight of betrayal crushing your chest.

To think that you used to gush about him, about this, the vague lie you had to others. Not even a few steps away from your apartment, you were bent over, retching into a nearby dustbin.

How could luck be so cruel? How could you have been so blind?

You wandered the streets, tears falling down your cheeks as your brain replayed the moments when Lewis first approached you at a random club party, despite your friends warning you that someone like him must have nefarious reasons. But you were smitten.

“I’m sorry, but I don't know what you’re doing here,” you had said to him, feeling your heart beat faster when a smirk adorned his face in return. He looked majestic under the club lights. “Where else would I be?” he muttered, mesmerized as he looked at you, “If not with the most beautiful girl in this club?”

He made you feel special, validated in a way you had never felt before. Now, the memory turned sour in your mind, leaving you feeling sick and disgusted. You dry heaved again.

At least he had the decency to confess. Standing here in the cold, his words from when he sat you down with him echoed in your ears— his pleading, his apologies, his desperate attempts to explain. But what did it matter now?

“How could you?” you whispered, thump! thump! thump! your heart pumped as you heard it in your ears, your voice barely audible through the tears streaming down your cheeks. “Was I just a game to you?” That was the first thing you said after his almost ten-minute rant.

You had stopped listening though, right when he had told you what exactly made him approach you. Your first meeting was so magical, so precious to you, but it was all ruined now.

His friend had dared him because Lewis’ morale was down. He was having the worst day of his life after losing an almost sure race win, and his friends knew the only way to cheer him up was through a challenge.

Lewis reached out when he saw that you were lost in your thoughts, his voice desperate and shaky. “No, Y/N, please listen to me—”

You shook your head, cutting him off. “Don’t. Just don’t…”

“Please,” he pleaded, looking nothing like the man you loved, his voice cracking with emotion. “I love you, Y/N. I messed up, but I love you more than anything.”

You felt your heart breaking all over again because you genuinely couldn’t recognize the man standing in front of you— the man who had played you, was probably still playing you. “You should have thought about that before…”

Unable to bear another moment, you left, leaving his words hanging in the air like a dark cloud. You were nothing more than a pawn in his game of masculine pride and insecurity. The realization hit you like a freight train, leaving you gasping for air as you collapsed against a nearby wall, sobs wracking your body.

How could someone who once made you feel so alive now leave you feeling so broken?

Carlos Sainz

The evening was warm, and the restaurant buzzed with laughter and conversation. You sat with your boyfriend, Carlos, his friends, and a few of your own. It was a casual dinner, the kind you rarely held since Carlos was so busy.

“I can't believe we wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t dared Carlos to ask you out,” Javier chuckled as he saw you lean forward to kiss your boyfriend.

Laughter erupted around the table but quickly died down when they realized the utter horror on your face. An uncomfortable silence settled in, and you noticed the tension.

Your wide eyes moved from one face to another, finally landing on Carlos, whose expression had turned serious. He glared at Javier, and you sensed something was wrong. You felt uncomfortable, and the need to flee clutched you.

“What do you mean?” you asked, your voice small yet cutting through the awkwardness as you held Carlos’ hand under the table. He squeezed it in return.

“Uh, nothing,” Javier stammered, realizing his mistake. His discomfort was evident, triggering your fight-or-flight response.

You turned to Carlos. “What’s going on?” Your voice held a very tiny hope, hoping this was all a prank that would be over soon.

He sighed as he squeezed your hand again, his frustration evident. “We should talk about this at home.”

You pulled your hand away from his, your confusion and hurt growing. The others at the table exchanged looks of pity, further igniting your anger.

“No, we’re talking about it here. What’s going on?” you demanded as a shaky breath left your lips.

Carlos looked around nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. “I didn’t want to tell you like this.” He stopped himself again.

“Tell me what?” Your voice grew louder, drawing the attention of nearby diners.

Before he could respond, one of your friends, Beatrice, chimed in, “Just tell her, for God’s sake!” You looked at her in solitude, glad that you had some kind of support here.

“I dared Carlos to ask you out as a joke!” Javier blurted out just as you were managing to form a small smile to pass to your friend.

Your heart pounded in your chest. “What?” The chair creaked under you as you pushed it away from the table, and your boyfriend held your hand again.

“Please, it wasn’t like that,” Carlos tried to calm you down, but he was panicking himself. He was still whispering that you could not feel anything else in the world anymore. That was enough evidence.

You stood up, knocking your chair over as you once again snatched your hand away from his. “Wasn’t like what? You made me believe this was fucking real!”

Other diners began to whisper and pull out their phones, recording the scene as he stood up as well. With a desperate look, Carlos reached out to you, but you stepped back.

“This whole time, I was just a fucking… dare to you?” you shouted.

People around the restaurant started filming, their phones pointed at the escalating scene. Carlos's anger boiled over. He grabbed a nearby phone and smashed it against the table. The room fell silent, shocked gasps filling the air.

“Carlos, stop!” One of his friends tried to pull him back.

“You all think this is funny?” Carlos yelled at the onlookers, distracted now, and you knew what you were going to do as he turned around to yell again. “Get your own fucking life!”

You stood up, tears streaming down your face. “I’m done with this,” you said, your voice breaking. You were already walking away when you felt your friend follow you.

As you left the restaurant, you could hear the whispers and see the flashes of cameras. You knew this would go viral, but at that moment, you didn’t care. Your heart ached with betrayal and anger.

Carlos realized a bit too late that you were gone. Frustrated, he ran out to catch up with you and tried to call you again and again.He didn't know at the time that he would never catch a hold of you after this.

Charles Leclerc

You were scrolling through social media when a notification from an unknown sender caught your attention. Despite knowing that you shouldn’t, curiosity got the better of you, and you clicked on the thumbnail showing your boyfriend at a party.

The video started playing. It was from months ago, showing Charles in an outfit that you recognized but couldn’t remember from where. Ethan's voice could be heard clearly over the music. “I dare you to ask that girl out,” Ethan said, laughing, but you still couldn’t tell who he was pointing at. “Bet you can't do it.”

Charles grinned, looking a little tipsy. “You're on,” he replied, to the cheers and jeers of his friends. The grainy video ended with Charles approaching you. A deafening silence enveloped you when you realized this was from the day you first met him.

Charles had a determined look on his face, but the video faded into the background. Your thoughts echoed painfully in the emptiness, the truth of your lover's betrayal reverberating within you.

Your heart sank further as you sat in silence to process. You felt a rush of emotions— betrayal, hurt, and anger. Tears welled up in your eyes as you replayed the video, hoping it was some sort of sick joke. But the evidence was right there, undeniable.

At that moment, the door to the apartment opened, and Charles walked in, a smile on his face. “Hey, love. What are you up to?” he asked, not noticing your distress at first.

You turned to him, your eyes brimming with tears. “What is this?” you demanded, holding up your phone with the video paused at the damning moment.

Charles's smile faded instantly, replaced by a look of horror. “Baby, how did you—” he started, stepping towards you as he felt the room spin a bit, all the blood rushing to his head.

“Does it matter?” you snapped, your voice shaking with anger as tears gathered under your eyes. “When you only even looked at me because of a stupid bet?”

“It started as a bet, yes,” Charles admitted, his voice pained. “But it's not like that now. I fell in love with you, Y/N. Everything we've had since then has been real.” He was quickly getting closer to you, but you flinched away and that stopped him dead in his tracks.

You shook your head, unable to believe what you were hearing. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” You were so angry, your ears so warm that it wouldn’t be impossible if smoke started coming out of them.

Charles reached out, but you stepped back once again. “Please, Y/N. I was an idiot. I shouldn't have agreed to that dare, but I did. And yes, that's how it started. But the moment I got to know you, everything changed. I love you more than anything.”

“Do you have any idea just how humiliating this is?” you shouted, your voice breaking. “I thought what we had was special. I thought it was real. And now I find out it was all… a gamble to you.” You hated that you were showing him so many emotions but fuck, it hurt so much and you wish you could hurt him back.

“It is not a gamble,” Charles pleaded, tears forming in his eyes. “Not after I got to know you. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me. Please, don't let this ruin us.” He could actually feel you slipping through his fingers.

“Fuck you, you’re the one who ruined this!” you said, turning away, trying to gather your thoughts, willing yourself to leave and hating yourself when you couldn’t. “Seriously,” you said quietly, not looking at him. “Fuck you.” You laid emphasis to show that you actually meant the words. “You’ve ruined me”

“Baby,” Charles's voice broke when he heard you say that he ruined you, but the way you glared at him because of the nickname had him backtracking. “Y/N, please just let me show you how that was all a lie. I love you. I can't fucking lose you over this.”

You walked to the door, needing to escape the suffocating atmosphere. “It is still all a lie,” you declared in a voice that showed you were shutting down, barely above a whisper.

As you stepped out of the apartment, you heard Charles crying behind you, but you didn’t stop to mend his heart because you couldn't even feel yours in your chest.

Lando Norris

Lando’s phone buzzed with notifications as he stepped out of the room and you glanced at it absentmindedly, not intending to invade his privacy. But the screen lit up with messages from his friends’ group chat, and the first few lines caught your eye, seeing your name in them.

“Can’t believe Lando actually went through with it.” “I know, right? It’s hilarious that she still doesn’t know!”

Your heart sank as you read further, each message a dagger to your trust. They were discussing you— about Lando making a bet involving you. Your hands trembled, and you scrolled through the conversation, your worst fears unfolding before your eyes.

“Thought he’d be gloating but he hasn’t contacted at all.” “Shit, man, he’s been with her for a year. I'm not paying him that much!”

You felt sick to your stomach. The room spun around you as you struggled to comprehend the magnitude of the betrayal. All those times you believed in Lando, trusted him with your heart— were they all just part of a cruel scheme? A fucking game?

You heard Lando approaching, unaware that you had seen everything. His smile faded as he saw the look on your face, the phone still clutched tightly in your hand.

“What’s wrong?” he asked cautiously, sensing the tension in the air as he approached you with wide eyes.

This has happened before. Lando was always scared of coming home and finding it empty because you had found out about something he was afraid to tell you but in the past he was always wrong. It was a show, a friend, a book making you cry but today was different.

You held up the phone, your voice trembling with a mix of anger and hurt. “Care to explain this?”

Lando’s expression shifted from confusion to dread as he realized what had just happened. He opened his mouth to speak, but you cut him off with a bitter laugh.

“Fuck, you really had me convinced!” Your voice was sharp, cutting through the air like a knife. “You made a bet? How much have you made so far, Mr. Norris?”

“Don't say that,” Lando looked like you had slapped him across his face. He reached out to you, his face pleading for forgiveness. “Y/N, I swear it wasn’t like that—”

“How much was it?” you demanded, the words laced with bitterness. “Bet you made a lot the day you finally got laid, huh?” “No!” Your boyfrie— ex-boyfriend screamed. His eyes were carrying moisture and you couldn’t help but scoff but he carried on. “I never took a single penny, Y/N. I.. I promise, I hadn’t even talked to them since the day i realized what assholes they were and—”

Lando’s face fell, his words faltering as he rushed forward to catch you in his arms, his tears finally falling once he saw your wet face. But the truth hung heavy in the silence between you, suffocating any hope of reconciliation.

Tears fell down your cheeks onto his arm as he kissed your head and whispered sweet nothings and sorry, I’m so sorry so so sorry sorry sorry, again and again against your head, blurring your vision. “I trusted you,” you whispered, voice breaking. “I loved you.”

The weight of it all settled on you, and you sank deeper into the couch, overwhelmed by the betrayal. The anger that fueled you moments ago now gave way to a deep, searing pain. How could he have done this to you?

Lando kneeled down before you, his own tears betraying the magnitude of his mistake. “I’m sorry,” he choked out, reaching for you. “I never meant for you to find out.”

He carried on but your ears started ringing when the words registered. Wouldn’t a person with nothing to be guilty about, accept the truth and make up? Why was he so hell bent on keeping it under a hush?

His words felt hollow, empty promises in the wake of his betrayal and you cut him off as you pushed him away from you . “Get out,” you managed to say, your voice hoarse.

Lando hesitated, torn between wanting to explain and knowing that no explanation would mend what was broken. “Please,” you whispered and it was so small, so scared that he got up immediately and nodded.

He kissed your head again and you let him linger as you closed your eyes,“I.. I’ll be back, baby.” With a final, agonized look at you, he turned and left, leaving you alone in the wreckage of your shattered trust.

The silence enveloped you, broken only by your ragged breaths and the echoes of his footsteps fading away. You hugged yourself tightly, trying to hold together the pieces of your heart that he had callously shattered.

As the tears continued to fall, you felt a different kind of ache—the ache of knowing that the love you had believed in was now a painful memory because yes, he was coming back but you wouldn’t be here.

Later, Lando would enter the house in hopes of finding you but just like his worst nightmare, you wouldn’t be there. You wouldn’t be there to hold him as he’ll slowly lose it running across the house while he’ll look for you. None of your things would be there.

Yes, he destroyed you but also himself.

( writing masterlist \ main masterlist \ drop a request ) ©maxtermind // do not copy, rewrite or translate any of my work on any platforms.

[anintrovertedechoe]

no thoughts just hugging mammon with everything you have and crying into the nape of his neck while he hugs you just as tight, just as hard, just as desperately, but also so gently because he’s afraid he’ll break you with how delicate you are right now.

no thoughts just slumping against him after crying out everything left in you and falling asleep while he still holds onto you and kisses the crown of your head because he knows you won’t notice.

no thoughts just his heart breaking because if he had his way he would take your pain onto himself in a heartbeat but he can’t and that’s what hurts the most.

no thoughts just mammon staying with you like that the whole night and checking your pulse occasionally and feeling relieved at it’s presence because it means you��re still here with him.

no thoughts just falling asleep with your first man and having him treat you like you’re the most precious thing in all of the three realms.

no thoughts; just mammon being your rock like he always is.

[reidmania]

opposites attract | s. reid

summary; spencer would give the world to be your person, even after you argue that you two are too different.

warnings; fem reader, pining!spencer, lowkey pining!reader, bombshell!reader, rejection, reader is described as confident and more of a black cat, insecurities, doubting, a bad date mentioned, happy ending, spencer lowkey gets frustrated, reader has tattoos.

an; messy and switches perspectives whoopsies. Idk how many words, a lot. Too many.

Two years. That was how long Spencer had been a complete and utter mess. Two years since his brain didn’t quite function the same, he remained intelligent, sure, but god so incomplete. Two years since you started at the BAU, two years since he met you.

You were out of his league. He had decided it the moment he laid eyes on you. You were stunning, absolutely perfect in anyones gaze. You were everything he could ever want and more, not just physically. Your laugh, your voice, the way you spoke to everyone around you, gentle, warm. The way you sat quietly in the corner most days, not because you felt out of place, nor shy, not because you didn’t enjoy being there, but just because no matter where in a room you were, your presence was known. Especially to Spencer.

He tried to pretend that he didn’t fall completely in love with you the first time the two of you ever had a conversation and you spoke to him with a smile, listened to him, he tried to pretend the scent of your perfume didn’t make him lightheaded, and the sight of your tattoo that he only saw on occasion’s didn’t make him wonder if you had more, what made you get it, was there meaning?

Spencer wanted to know everything about you, he wanted to live in your brain and know your every like and dislike, what made you smile a little wider, what made you unable to stop laughing, what your favourite drink was, what colour you liked the most, where your family was from, your middle name.

Spencer would stop the world to know you.

That was impossible to hide, even two years later. He tried, so many times to get your attention, to be the subject of your fascination. It didn’t help that every-time you looked in his direction his skin grew ten temperatures too warm and his head spun.

He tried asking you out, twice. Sort of.

The first time was too subtle, too rambling and hidden in the mix of stutters and hot cheeks, fidgeting hands. Because you were looking at him, with a gaze so intense and caring, patient.

How was he ever suppose to talk when you were looking at him like that? Like there was something that made him worth the gravity the warmth in your eyes held.

“Would you date me?” It was blurted out on a Tuesday afternoon, you were standing beside him as the buzz of the bullpen had calmed down, your gaze was focused on reorganising the files on his desk, his gaze was on you. You were reorganising because you didn’t like the way he had done it, and it had been ‘bugging’ you for weeks.

Spencer loved the way his files were organised, but he loved you more.

It was stupid, he didn’t even mean to say it. It was out of place leaving his lips and he knew it the moment your head turned towards him and a sweet laugh left your lips, not mocking him, god you would never. It was a laugh of shock, confusion, maybe even surprise.

“Are you asking me out?” You asked, raising your eyebrow slightly as you met his eyes. His cheeks heated before he could help it, eyes went wide because he had no idea what he was doing.

“What- I- no.” His voice was an octave higher, a tell sign he was nervous, if you needed any more tell signs between the fidgeting of his hands, his bright pink cheeks and his avoidant gaze. You smiled as you shook your head, looking back at the files on his desk, he watched your hand as your ran your finger along them once they were organised neatly, anyone else he might’ve cringed at the sight, but it was you.

“I don’t think so” You had mumbled in response and Spencer felt the world shift into an imbalance. You said it so casually. He didn’t know if his heart was beating too fast or if it was breaking. You turned your head back to look at him, a frown on your lips when you saw the frown that had snuck its way onto his features before he could even realise.

“Not because you aren’t great. Or attractive. You are — You definitely are. I just think we are too different.” You said. His eyebrows knitted together as he met your eyes. He hated the fact you were frowning, he hated the fact he was frowning. He hated what you had just said, god he loved you.

“Right” he didn’t know what to say.

“Spence” You spoke through a warm huff of laughter, shaking your head as you twisted your body to face him fully, your hip leaning against the desk as you crossed your arms over your chest. He watched your hair fall down the sides of your face, over your shoulders. He wondered if you had changed your shampoo since the last time, the only time you had hugged him a few weeks ago, when he had gotten the chance to breath it in, and then it was all he thought about for weeks.

You smiled at him and it was contagious, despite the ache in his chest and overwhelming sense of illness in his stomach, you were smiling. “I think you’re amazing, i always have” you started and his cheeks warmed more. “But we are complete opposite’s.”

He wanted to argue you. Say that he could change and be more like you, more like the guys he had seen pick you up after work, he could be whatever you wanted. He could be someone. Someone to you.

But he didn’t.

That was the last time Spencer had attempted to ask you out, you never bought it up. You never questioned it again, you didn’t push you ask why he wanted to know. Spencer remained sickeningly in love with everything about you, you remained pretending to not notice.

Why were you here? You couldn’t quite remember or find the time to think about it properly between the noise surrounding the fancy restaurant you were in and the sickening long rant the boy in front of you was going on. Something about a business, something about saving it, something egotistical and sickeningly boring.

The date starts out fine. It’s all small talk at first—work, hobbies, the usual pleasantries. But soon, you realize that Mark has a lot to say. About himself. A lot.

“And then I closed the deal,” he says, recounting some work story about how he single-handedly saved his company from financial ruin. He leans back in his chair, smiling like he’s just told you the most fascinating thing in the world. You nod politely, but your mind starts to wander. His voice fades into the background as you think about something else, someone else.

Spencer.

You wonder what he’s doing right now. Probably at home, curled up with a book, or maybe he’s watching a documentary. You can almost picture him, pacing around his apartment, muttering facts to himself about some obscure topic that no one but him finds interesting. But you love that about him. He’s so passionate about everything, even the things that most people would overlook. And he’s never trying to show off. He just loves sharing what he knows.

You try to pay attention to the guy in front of you, you really really do. But god he is so boring. You wonder how quickly you could get one of your friends to come save you from this horror of a date. You wonder how long you would have to hide in the bathroom for before he disappeared.

Mark’s voice pulls you back to reality. “So, what do you think?” he asks.

“Hmm?” You blink, realizing you’ve missed the last five minutes of whatever he was talking about.

“I was saying,” he repeats, a little slower this time, “I just think it’s amazing how people like me can juggle so many things at once. Don’t you think?”

You smile, but it’s strained. “Sure, that’s impressive.”

As the date drags on, you start to notice little things. Like the way Mark talks to the waiter, snapping his fingers for attention, barely looking up from his phone when the waiter brings the food. He doesn’t say thank you. Not once. It’s subtle, but it grates on you. You find yourself cringing, wondering if anyone else notices.

He was much more interesting when he asked you out a few nights ago at a bar, when you were drunk. Why had you agreed? Maybe drunk you saw something sober you didn’t. Or maybe drunk you just saw a male who was conventionally attractive and made you laugh. You wondered how low the bar was

You didn’t have a lot of time to wonder before you heard your name from behind you, your head spun and you almost cried with gratefulness when you saw Penelope standing there, a wide grin on her face, and then Spencer standing beside her, he offered you a gentle shy wave that made your heart warm.

“Oh my gosh! Do you guys want to come sit?” You asked, praying they said yes, praying that Penelope noticed the wide urgent look in your eyes and understood that you were begging. You were genuinely begging for a conversation about anything other than Mark’s biggest accomplishments.

“Oh- We don’t want to interrupt.” Spencer mumbled, looking between you and Mark, the two of you sitting opposite sides of the booth you were in. You noticed the look in Spencer’s eye, you knew what it was. He didn’t want to sit there while you were on a date with someone else. Clearly he misread the urgency in your gaze.

“No! Mark doesn’t mind? Do you mind Mark?” You asked, spinning your head around to face Mark who was confused on the two people and why they were talking to you. Why they had interrupted him. You had to hold back the urge to roll your eyes.

“Uh..” he started, you cut him off. “He doesn’t mind. Come sit.” You shuffled over to make room for the two.

Penelope slides into the booth beside you, while Spencer takes the seat across from you, next to Mark. He looks nervous, his fingers tapping against the edge of the table, but he offers you a small, shy smile.

“What are you guys doing here?” you ask, trying to suppress the excitement bubbling up inside you.

“Oh, we were just nearby, and I figured we’d grab something to eat,” Penelope says.

Spencer fidgets with his napkin, glancing at you, then back at the table. “I-I was telling Penelope about this, uh, documentary I watched the other night. It’s about the history of the subway system in New York. I think you’d really like it.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Really?”

He nods, his eyes lighting up as he starts to explain. “Yeah, it’s fascinating, actually. They had to navigate all these geological challenges, and the engineering behind it is incredible. I know you mentioned once that you’re interested in architecture, and I thought you might appreciate how they designed the stations.”

You stare at him for a moment, surprised. You don’t even remember telling him that you liked architecture, but he did. And now, here he is, rambling about a documentary he thinks you’d enjoy, not because he’s trying to impress you, but because he genuinely thought you’d find it interesting.

Meanwhile, Mark is looking more and more uncomfortable, clearly not enjoying the conversation. He cuts in, talking over Spencer to launch into another story about himself, but you’re barely listening anymore. Instead, you’re watching Spencer, noticing how different he is from Mark. Spencer, who’s always so considerate, who listens more than he talks, who looks at you like you’re the most important person in the room, even when he’s nervous.

And then there’s Mark, who hasn’t asked you a single question all night, who’s rude to the waiter, and who’s more interested in hearing himself talk than getting to know you.

“I think I might head off..” Mark muttered, clearly annoyed at the fact you had not only been interrupted on your date, but also frustrated that you were paying more attention to Spencer than him. You couldn’t care less.

“Oh okay! Have a good night” You smiled, sickeningly nice as he shuffled his way past Spencer to leave the table. He glanced at you once, not saying anything before he walked away.

“He was an asshole!!” Penelope bursts out into laughter the minute Mark was out of earshot, you immediately joined her laughter while Spencer remained quiet, shuffling around on the now empty side of the booth.

“Those are the type of guys you go out with?” He asked, his voice was quiet, almost offended. You wish you understood why when you stopped laughing at met his gaze. You opened your mouth to talk as the tension around the table grew.

“Hey! Don’t judge!” She gasped out, pointing her finger dramatically at Spencer, clearly not noticing his underlying feelings and why he had even said anything, you did. “It’s slim pickings out here!!”

Spencer hummed, tapping his fingers against the table as he avoided meeting your gaze. You frowned slightly. Soon enough the conversation fell back into rhythm, flowing like it did any other time. They ate, you paid since it was your date. Then Penelope left.

You stood outside of the restaurant, looking around the busy streets. “How are you getting home?” Spencer asked, his gaze meeting yours as you tilted your head upwards to look at him, you couldn’t not smile. It was impossible not to smile around Spencer.

“Uh- Walking. I walked. It’s really not far.” You nodded to support your words as you buried your hands inside the warmth of your pockets. You had been in a state since Spencer had gotten there, a state you couldn’t quite explain. Silently lost in thought, a state of confusion? Maybe realisation.

“I’ll walk you home. Its late.” He said it like it was a no brainer. Like it was the most obvious thing for him to do. No date you had ever been on had offered you walk you home.

Every time Spencer speaks, you feel yourself softening, smiling without even realizing it. His nervous energy, the way he fumbles over his words, it’s all so endearing. He’s not trying to prove anything to you. He just wants to share the things he loves with you, and it’s the sweetest thing.

“Okay.” You breathe out the silent agreement before your feet find rhythm next to Spencer’s as you walk down the street, the post lights causing an orange glow across the ground, across his face.

“Theres a study.” Spencer started, his breathe coming out warm against the cold air causing a fog of steam to follow his breath, you watched it for an moment before your eyes flickered to the side of his face, you’re still walking, his gaze doesn’t meet yours.

“That uh— Shows that opposites attract, it’s more of a theory, since scientifically it doesn’t actually work like that — although negatives are attracted to positives if you’re looking at electricity — but uh- People believe that a lot of people are attracted to people opposite them, because each person offers something the other lacks, making the relationship feel more complete.. Majority of relationships that are built off of opposites work better than people who are too similar because theres more of a balance.. its chaotic but, it uh — it works.”

He was nervous. You could tell. Your breath hitched slightly as he spoke, as he brought it up again. Your mind tried to process the overload of information he had mumbled out. You tried to process it.

“So scientifically we wouldn’t work.” You huffed out. He laughed. Genuinely laugh, it was breathy and quiet but genuine and it made your heart warm.

“Technically— but theoretically—”

You cut him off, a rare occurrence, “I thought you were a science guy.” You mumbled.

He was quiet for a moment before he spoke. “I think I am just a you guy.”

You didn’t know what to say. It was sweet in a way that your brain couldn’t process. He was going against everything he believed to be correct because he wanted you?

“I thought data and statistics are the most reliable source of information.” You mumbled the response, words he had said, probably months ago. Why were you fighting him on this? Why were you fighting yourself on this? You weren’t sure.

“Sure; most of the time. But they are subjective. Especially when talking about psychologically. Each couple, each set of people — they’re different.” He said, his gaze didn’t meet yours. You pulled your eyes away to focus on the street in front of you. You were getting closer to your house, yet part of you wanted to stay right here.

“You think we could work?” You asked. It was a whisper.

He paused, you could see him nod in your peripheral. “I do. I’d make it work, i’d do anything.” Maybe it came out more desperate than he had intended, you found it sweet.

You found him sweet.

“Spencer” you paused your movements and his stopped with yours. His body turned to face you as you looked up at him. His eyes were pleading, desperate, hoping. It almost made your heart ache at the slight fear in them, that you were going to maybe reject him again.

But you found him sweet.

“Id date you.” You answered the question he had asked maybe months ago now, you didn’t realise until now that you had conveniently stopped outside your house. You turned your head to look at the front door before back at Spencer.

“Can i- uh- Will you- I-“ He stuttered and your heart warmed at his nervous attempt to ask you out.

“Yes.” You answered gently, saving him the hassle. Maybe being different was a good thing. Maybe you could beat the statistics that proved otherwise.

Maybe opposites did attract.

[just-qonika]

"i really, loved the literature club."

id like to think after monikas "deleted" this is how it feels to look back on everything that happened; she has a guilty conscience once she realizes how far everything got taken, and how bad it really was.

ᵐᵒⁿⁱᵏᵃ ᵍᵉᵗˢ ˢᵒ ᵐⁱˢˢ ᶜʰᵃʳᵃᶜᵗᵉʳⁱᶻᵉᵈ ˢᵒᵐᵉᵗⁱᵐᵉˢ ⁱᵗ ᴴᵁᴿᵀˢ :⁽ ˢʰᵉˢ ⁿᵒᵗ ᵃⁿ ᵉᵛⁱˡ ʸᵃⁿᵈᵉʳᵉ

[nightthinker-08]

Touch averse vs Touch starved

Pomni: You can just ask next time. Ragatha: I don't like taking too much... Pomni: You never do.

[dyaz-stories]

JUJUTSU BOYS + POST SHIBUYA HURT/COMFORT

following Shibuya, the Jujutsu boys are in dire need of some comfort

featuring: nanami, yuuji, megumi, maki, inumaki, yuta, gojo

word count: 4.7k (600-700 words per character)

cw: canon divergence for nanami and gojo, season 2 spoilers, heavy angst, hurt/comfort, descriptions of injuries, everyone needs a hug, some fluff ig, established relationships, not proofread

NANAMI

“He woke up,” Shoko informs you, closing the room to Kento’s door behind her. She doesn’t bother with small talk, gives only the necessary information since Shibuya. You don’t blame her. You understand why she would choose to keep her energy for what she thinks is essential. So when she approaches you, hands buried in her pockets, you know there is something she believes is that important to tell you.

“Is he— Has he said anything?”

“He thanked me — you know how he is. But, um— he’s lost an eye, and he’s badly burned. There’s nothing I can do about that. I’m sorry.”

She sounds genuinely dejected, but you shake your head.

“It doesn’t matter. Without you, he wouldn’t be alive. Can I—”

She gives you a faint smile.

“Sure. You can go in.”

You don’t wait for her to have finished her sentence to open the door. Kento looks up at you, and you take him in for a second. An eye patch covers his left eye, and that whole side of his body is burnt, badly, with fresh bandages covering it. It doesn’t stop you from launching himself into his arms, and he catches you without missing a beat.

“You’re alive,” is all you can say, repeating it like a mantra.

“I am,” he answers. “I apologize for worrying you.”

So very like him, apologizing while he’s lying on a hospital bed after suffering from horrific injuries.

“Thank you for coming back to me,” you whisper into his neck, tears rolling freely from your cheeks. “I don’t— I don’t—” I don’t know how I would have kept living without you.

His eye is filled with fondness and love, when he looks at you.

“Does it hurt a lot?” you ask, gesturing at his left side.

“It does not,” he answers. “Shoko’s abilities are quite remarkable for that. I am healed. The bandages are mostly to stop the skin from becoming too dry — due to the size of the area, she couldn’t do it all herself.”

“Then… can I kiss you?”

He swallows around the lump in his throat. If he is honest, when Shoko talked to him after he woke up, one of his greatest fears was that you would be disgusted by him. He knows you find him handsome — found him handsome, at least. He knows that this was thinking far too little of you, and yet relief washes over him at your question.

“You can always kiss me.”

You’re cautious when you do, don’t want to risk hurting him, despite what he’s just told you. Your lips feel like coming home, and he loses himself in you, if only for a moment. All too soon, he feels the need to pull away for air. Even with Shoko’s miracle work, he feels weak, a sensation he finds himself hating with his entire being. He likes being strong, likes being your rock, likes supporting you in any situation. He despises the fact that that has been taken away from him.

“I think it would be for the best if I spent the night here,” he tells you. “The chair isn’t very comfortable, so if you wish to go home, I wouldn’t—”

You shake your head immediately.

“I’m not leaving you anytime soon. I’m spending the night here. I’m sure I can find a pillow and a blanket somewhere, and I will be just fine with that.”

Aren’t you just adorable when you’ve made up your mind?

“If that is okay with you, that’s fine with me,” he nods. “But, first…” He opens his arm on the right side. “Would you join me?”

There isn’t much space in the bed for the two of you, but you make it fit, leaning against the wall so he can have his head against your chest. Even though he wants nothing more than to revel in the moment, he feels his eyes closing, lulled by the beating of your heart and your fingers carding through his hair.

He loves taking care of you but he supposes that, for the time being, it won’t be too bad if he’s the one being taken care of.

YUUJI

Finding Yuuji following the Shibuya Incident requires you to venture into the belly of Tokyo, making your way through curse after curse, stepping over the bodies of sorcerers and humans alike, never taking the time to stop. At least Megumi had warned you that he was likely to keep moving, so you hadn’t given up hope yet, but you’d be lying if you said you weren’t afraid for him. Not physically, no, you didn’t think there was anything left here that could actually hurt him, but, based on what Megumi had told you, his head hung low, you can only imagine how devastated he must be.

You spot him when he finishes off a curse, on a rooftop near you. It isn’t long before you land there yourself, and there he is.

“Yuuji!”

He freezes when you call out his name, and turns towards you oh so slowly. When he looks at you, you could almost cry with relief. There he is, your Yuuji. A little worse for wear, but alright. You take a step towards him, ready to run into his arms, when he takes a step back.

A tall man wearing a kimono, his hair tied into two buns, lands in front of him, between the two of you.

“Who is that?” he asks Yuuji. “Do you want me to take care of it?”

There is quiet resolution in his voice. He doesn’t sound like he wants to kill you, but you don’t think he would hesitate to do it.

“N-no,” Yuji says, his voice hoarse. “No, it’s alright, Choso. Would you mind…?”

The man nods, still not showing any emotions.

“Of course. I’ll give the two of you some space.”

He throws you a threatening glance — as if you could ever be a threat to Yuuji — before jumping off the building.

You take another step forward. This time, Yuuji doesn’t move, but he refuses to meet your eyes.

“Don’t,” he says. He sounds weak.

Another step.

“Why not?”

He closes his eyes.

“I’ve killed—” A deep, shuddering breath. “—so many people.”

Step.

“That wasn’t you.”

You say it softly, gently, but you’re not sure that he can hear you, as he is now.

“It’s still my fault.”

His voice is no stronger than a whisper.

“It was Sukuna’s doing.” Step. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” Step.

You’re close to him now, close enough to see his hands balled up into fists, his lower lip trembling, how he scrunches his face so he doesn’t cry.

“Yuji,” you call, and in your mouth, his name sounds like a term of endearment. “It’s not your fault.”

He shakes his head, but doesn’t have anything more to say. He wants so, so badly to believe you, but his heart, his mind, and Sukuna’s voice in the back of his head are all whispering that you’re lying. When you reach him, your hands go up to his face, cradle it like it’s a precious porcelain. You trace the scar on his forehead, stroke the one on his lip with your thumb, and then you press your lips against it with great care.

And he falls apart.

Your arms are around him as he lets himself fall to the ground, and you let him bury his head in the crook of your neck as he sobs, let him hold on to you like a drowning man to a lifeline. You stroke the back of his head gently. The motion is soothing. Soft. Loving.

“I’m a monster,” he chokes, and tears fill your eyes.

“You’re not,” you promise, voice breaking. “You’re not. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

He gasps like he’s breathing for the first time in days, and you keep him there, in your arms. He’s not okay yet — won’t be for a long time. But he’s alive. He’s breathing. He’s moving forward, one small step at a time.

You will be here to support him until he can stand on his own again.

No matter how long it takes.

MEGUMI

Megumi has always been the quiet type. He keeps his feelings close to his chest, lets people in on his thoughts only in spare, carefully chosen sentences. He turns away if emotions overwhelm in, deals with the worst of it privately, would never let anything spill out if he could help him. Emotions are his problems, and he cannot bear the thought of them hurting someone other than him.

Still, you’ve always been able to read him. The softness in his eyes when he looks at Yuuji and Nobara, the smile he doesn’t quite allow to make its way to his lips when Gojo decides to spoil him, the way he wraps his arms around your waist, pulling your back against his chest so he can hide his face in your neck, even if you can spot his ears turning red. The way the corner of his lips turn down, too, when his mind drifts towards Tsumiki, the twitch in his jaw when someone brings up his father, the clench of his fists when he feels hopeless.

You can read him like a book.

He is even quieter when he comes back from Shibuya, and his emotions are expressed even more minutely, blink and you’ll miss it.

You can only watch from the audience in one of the numerous meetings that follow his return. Him and a number of other sorcerers testify, and you have to hear him recounting the same details over and over. You’re here to see, helpless, how he lowers his gaze when several sorcerers recommend Yuuji’s execution, and how his eyes dull when his sentencing is pronounced.

But he never comes to you. At first, you assume he can’t — there are a number of physicals for him to clear. You reason that he must be exhausted, must want his space for now, and resolve to give it to him. It’s on the day of the last council, when he averts his eyes to avoid meeting yours, that you realize what was happening.

He’s been avoiding you.

It’s a half-hearted attempt, one that comes to an end when you knock against the open door to his room. He doesn’t look up at you when he answers.

“Come in.”

His room is almost bare, but you know he keeps pictures from the two of you in his drawers.

You sit on the bed next to him, let your knee brush against his. He doesn’t move away.

“I haven’t seen you since you came back,” you say. You know better than to broach the subject directly, wouldn’t want to spook him.

“I know,” he sighs. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be. I just came to check in on you.”

He’s quiet for longer than he should be.

“…I have to go back out there. I have to talk to Itadori.”

You read between the lines. You know that he would give you more than that if he felt he could, understand that he is trying to make this as painless for you as he can.

You reach for his hands and squeeze it.

“Okay.”

There’s a pause.

“…you sure?”

You know that’s not the question he’s asking. You know he wants you to feel able to yell at him, protest, scream until there’s nothing left of the two of you, all so that you will feel better, even if he leaves unloved and a little more shattered than he was when he arrived.

“I’m sure.”

The sigh of relief he lets out sounds more like a sob. Next thing you know, he’s letting his head drop onto your shoulder, black hair tickling your neck.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’m sorry. Can I— Can I just stay like this a little longer? Please?”

You keep yourself still, reach up to cup his cheek, stroke it softly.

“As long as you need.”

He moves his head so he can press a kiss to your cheek, lets his lips linger there longer than he needs to. When he turns around, you see he’s turned crimson.

The outside world might have turned into hell, but this room hasn’t yet.

In here, the two of you can hope that simpler, happier times will come again some day.

MAKI

Maki supposes that there are worse ways to wake up than with her head in your lap. By the time she comes to, Reverse Cursed Technique has done its job — mostly. If she could muster it, she would be glad that she wasn’t awake to feel it processing. It’s always felt foreign to her, and she hates feeling it on her body.

What she hates more, though, is the tingling of the burns on her face and body.

“Isn’t there anything to be done about that?” you’re asking Shoko when her eyes flutter open. You’re mindlessly running your fingers over the scarred skin, and it feels fresh and soothing.

“I’m sorry,” Shoko says, sounding exhausted but always taking the time to answer students’ concerns. “RCT can’t fix burns. Non-sorcerers have done some progress in that domain, I think. Maybe she’ll want to look into it.”

“I hope she won’t care,” you mumble.

“Why,” Maki asks, and you look down at her in shock, “is it that bad?”

She pushes herself up, looking around for her glasses, but stops when she realizes both you and Shoko are staring at her, mouth gaping.

“You’re something else,” Shoko finally comments, a tired grin forming on her lips. “Thought you’d be asleep for at least another day. Well, if you need anything, I’ll be in the next room, alright?”

She leaves with a wave of her hand, some of the weight of the past week taken off her shoulders, now that she’s done her work.

When Maki turns to look back at you, you already have her glasses in your hand. You’re careful when you pass the branches over her ears to put them on her, and she lets you do it, studying your expression. Your eyes are red from crying, and you look tired, too, but at least she cannot see any injuries on you.

“So?” she raises an eyebrow at you, and her skin stretches uncomfortably. “Do I really look that terrible?”

You shake your head and smile at her, reaching up to cup her cheek.

“You’re as stunning as always. I’d just hate it if you thought otherwise.”

She leans into your touch, closing her eyes. Her whole body aches. She cannot pinpoint any real physical pain, but there is an overall soreness  that she wants to stretch out. She would, if she could bear the thought of losing your touch, if only for a second.

“What about my hair?” she asks, trying to add a playful inflexion to her tone. “Don’t tell me you let them do whatever they wanted with it.”

You shake your head, mirroring her expression.

“It’s like you don’t even know me,” you say with a fake eyeroll. “I’ll have you know it looks super stylish.”

She nods, then turns her head to kiss the inside of your palm. She likes the way it flusters you, how you bite your lip and glance away to hide it from her.

“Do you— do you want to hear about what else has happened?”

Her smile dims, and she shakes her head.

“Can I get a minute of this first?” Her voice comes out hoarser than she would like. “Y-you can tell me afterwards. I just— I just need a minute.”

“Of course,” you reply, softly.

When you open your arms, she doesn’t hesitate a second to plunge in. She rests her cheek against your chest, and you wrap her in a tight hug that she returns without missing a beat. You’re warm and soft, as you always are.

She’ll get back to fighting, to throwing her whole body in the line of fire soon enough, that is a promise. She’ll mourn the dead, she’ll shed tears.

But first, she gets a minute of respite, in the arms of the only person that can give it to her.

INUMAKI

You rush through the emergency room, unbridled fear in your veins. The place is a morgue. There are more dead than living in here, and you’d be horrified if your mind wasn’t focused on one person and one person only — one that you cannot find. Cursed energy is no use right now, not with the place being such a mess.

“Ieiri!” you finally call when you see her passing by, pale as a corpse, not examining a body for more than handful of seconds before moving on to the next. “Where— Where is Toge?”

She looks straight through you. The dark circles under her eyes are even deeper than usual.

“Alive. That way.”

She point vaguely in a direction and then she’s gone, but it’s all you need. You find yourself running, unceremoniously opening and closing doors in your desperate search for him. When you find him, you could almost cry in relief.

“Toge,” you call, and you’re afraid your legs will give in underneath you.

He looks at you with wide eyes — eyes that you love so much, because they always say everything his lips can’t. Despite everything that’s happened tonight, they’re full of life, and that is the sight you’d been hoping for the most.

It’s only after looking inside that you realize what’s happened to his arm.

You walk over to him, sit on the chair next to his bed. He holds his hand out for you to take, and when you do, he squeezes it between his fingers, three times. His own, silent way of saying ‘I love you’. You lean forward, resting your elbows on the bed and hanging your head low.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” you whisper. “I was so scared.”

You feel his lips on the top of your head, and you cannot help but smile. It feels selfish, smiling in such circumstances, when so many people have lost their lives and their loved ones. But you’re reunited with him, and it is the only reaction that feels appropriate. You look up at him. Without his usual clothes, the seal on his mouth is on full display.

“Do you want a scarf?” you ask, gesturing at your bag. You always carry one, as well as cough syrup, just in case.

Fondness flashes in his eyes, but he shakes his head. Reluctantly, he lets go of your hand to tap on his phone. The movements are clumsy, and a knot forms in your throat, watching him do it, but you can’t think of anything to do to help him.

‘No need,’ the phone reads when he turns it back towards you. And then, after a line break ‘Sukuna attacked.’

You’d hear about that. You… had just hoped it wasn’t true.

“So, Itadori…?”

“Bonito flakes,” he answers, shaking his head. Silence falls on the room.

You usually like silence with him. It feels comfortable, like an old friend you’re happy to welcome. Tonight, though, you feel the need to blurt out “I’m so happy you’re okay.”

His lips turn downward, and he gestures at his arm dejectedly, but you shake your head, and you stand up so you can sit on the bed, by his legs. You grab his hand in both of yours.

“I would take anything as long as it means you’re back here with me. I know— I know it’s selfish, but I just— You’re everything.”

Toge presses his forehead against yours when you start crying. Gently, he frees his hand so he can wipe the tears running down your cheeks. He doesn’t get to express his emotions freely, so you do it for the two of you, that’s how it’s always been between you. That doesn’t stop him from tilting your chin so he can press his lips against yours. The kiss is soft and gentle.

“I love you,” you say for the both of you.

He wishes he could tell you that he hasn’t felt like he’d truly made it back from Shibuya until he saw you walking through the door.

When he kisses you again, he thinks you’re aware of it.

YUTA

“They agreed to entrust me with Itadori’s execution,” Yuta tells you when he finds you, anxiously waiting for him to come out of his meeting with the higher-ups. “I had to take a binding vow, but that won’t be a problem.”

He says it so casually, and you can’t help but sigh. Immediately, his eyes fill with worry.

“Is something wrong?”

You can feel his eyes scanning you, looking for an injury, and that brings a faint smile out of you. As if anything could hurt you here, in one of the last jujutsu strong place in Japan.

“I just wish you wouldn’t have to do that,” you admit with a shrug. “I wish there was another solution.” I wish you didn’t think the weight of the world is yours to take now that Gojo isn’t here to bear it.

“Oh!” He lights up, and you hate that he feels relief, because to him, it is inconsequential as long as it’s happening to him. “That’s okay. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Well, someone has to, since he won’t do it himself. You reach for his hand, fiddling with his fingers, and you can’t help but smile when you feel him freeze. You can’t believe he still reacts to your touch that way, no matter how many times you do it.

“Breathe,” you say, glancing up at him.

He flushes when he realizes he was, indeed, holding his breath.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. He doesn’t have to apologize, but he always does.

“Then I’ll go and keep an eye on Toge and Maki,” you decide. “I heard Maki’s recovering well, but I’ll see if there’s anything more they need. Maybe I’ll help Toge get back to his family.”

Yuta hesitates.

“You don’t— You don’t have to do that for me, you know?”

Ha. Guilty as charged. You’re just trying to take some of the weight off his shoulders so he won’t have to carry it all alone. You wrap your arms around his neck, smile when he turns even redder. He doesn’t move away from you though, and, after hesitating, he even closes his hands on your waist. The touch is feather-light, and you think he’d take them off if you breathed a little too hard. But it’s there, and he’s come a long way, truly.

“I know. I just want to.”

He’s crimson, but his eyes still soften at your words. With a sigh, he leans his forehead against yours.

“What have I done to get this lucky?” he marvels, and he sounds so loving you think you might just melt in your spot.

“You deserve the world,” you answer truthfully.

He lets out an embarrassed laugh that you interrupt with a kiss. His lips are soft and cautious against yours, and he is nothing but tender. You know he’s doing his best to restrain himself, both because you’re in a public space where someone could walk by and because it takes a lot more to get him out of his shell.

“Wh-what was that for?” he asks when you pull away, a pout in his voice.

“For luck,” you hum in reply. “You better come back to me.”

His fingers tighten on your waist. He doesn’t want to let go. If he could shut the whole world out and live only in your arms, he thinks he would do it in a heartbeat. But there are people out there who need saving, and you know even you can’t stop him from going to help them.

“I’ll keep your friends safe until then, okay?”

No matter what you tell him, he still doesn’t think he’s done anything to deserve you. That means he should let go of you, be on his way and wish you well on yours. Instead, in an impulsive move, he wraps his arms tighter around your waist to pull you flush against his chest in a tight hug.

You laugh in surprise and hug him back, and in that moment, he is absolutely certain that there is nothing that could stop him from coming back to you.

GOJO

“Guess who’s back!” Satoru calls when he walks into your home as if nothing’s happened, as if you haven’t spent hours on the phone with various sorcerers, trying to understand what on earth was happening and if he was even still alive.

You turn to look at him with daggers in your eyes, and you want to scream, but you don’t find the words when you take in the sight of him. There’s blood on his face that he hasn’t bothered to wipe off, his clothes are torn, the blindfold he’s holding in his hand is in an even sorrier state, and despite the smile on his face, you don’t think there is a muscle to his body that isn’t in a state a tension.

“Are you okay?” you ask.

He shrugs, walks across the room to grab a towel that he vigorously rubs against his face.

“I’m always okay.”

The sentence sounds empty, and you’re about to go up to him when he drops the towel to move towards the bathroom with a groan.

“It’s not coming off,” he says before splashing his face with water.

You follow him and watch as he repeatedly rinses his face. The blood has long come off, but he doesn’t seem satisfied with it. He pours generous amounts of soap on his hands, but there is nothing more to take off there. You wait a few seconds more before joining him. You still his hand with a pressure of his wrist, clean off the remaining soap, and cut off the water. He lets you do it, just as he lets you guide him back to the bed to sit down.

“What happened?” you urge him, keeping his hands in yours. He feels so far away, even if he’s sitting inches from you, and you’re desperate to bring him back to you.

Long seconds go by before he answers you.

“I made a mistake,” he finally says, words pulled out like teeth. “That’s what happened.”

You would tell him that everyone makes mistakes, but you know what’s prompting this. He isn’t everyone. He doesn’t make mistakes. He is Satoru Gojo, the strongest sorcerer, the one in charge of preserving the balance of the world after he’s irremediably altered it simply from being born.

Your hands come up to his face, and you trace his jaw with careful fingers. He closes his eyes. Lets you ground him. He can’t think of anything else he needs more right now.

“You’ve done so much,” you whisper. “I’ve been talking to Shoko — she says that without you, human losses would be much worse.”

He lets out a humorless chuckle.

“That is always true.”

Coming from someone else, it would sound like bragging, but you know that Satoru is only stating a fact. He always saves the day, which makes this so, so much worse. You climb on the bed behind him, start massaging his shoulders. Despite himself, he can’t help but relax into your touch. He doesn’t feel like he deserves that, deserves the comfort you’re bringing to him, and yet, as always, he’s powerless against you.

“But wasn’t the point always that your students would be able to take over?” you ask, softly. “And they did. They saved you. Sounds to me like you did well, Satoru.”

Did he? Sure doesn’t feel like it.

“Hm, I guess Yuji and Megumi did real well tonight,” he admits, and he lets himself lean back into your arms fully. “Just wish… Just wish it hadn’t turned out like that.”

You press a kiss to his temple, and he sighs. He doesn’t think he will be okay again tonight. Probably not tomorrow, either — maybe not before a long time.

“Do you want me to run you a bath?” you ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “That’d be nice.”

His eyes follow as you walk back into the bathroom.

“You’ll join me?”

A smile flashes on your face.

“Sure.”

He won’t be okay any time soon, but with you by his side, he thinks he can at least try to get there again someday.

thank you for reading! as a note, gojo's piece is written under the hypothesis that he was unsealed but unsealed before the end of the night. I hope you enjoyed these pieces, please consider reblogging and/or letting me know your thoughts in a comment, interactions are the best way of supporting me and of keeping me writing ^-^

more jujutsu kaisen x reader here (primarily gojo x reader)

[frickingnerd]

dabi with a s/o who has a healing quirk

pairing: touya todoroki / dabi x gn!reader

tags: hurt/comfort, painful quirk / quirk with drawbacks, league of villains member!reader, protective!dabi, touya has a crush on you

you met dabi when you joined the league of villains

you were responsible for patching up the villains after their assaults against the heroes

at first, dabi didn't think much of you

but the two of you started to chat with each other a little each time you were healing him

he realized that you were too nice to be a villain and yet you had decided to stick with them

you could've joined any hero agency you wanted to with your quirk and yet you had landed here – with the villains!

he was intrigued by you and he couldn't help falling for you

dabi started to ask more questions about you, to learn more about your past, trying to understand you better

and it was during all of that that he discovered something about your quirk. something you had been hiding from him and the league of villains

your quirk had always seemed a bit too perfect in his eyes. you could heal any wound and it would barely even leave a scar

but there had been a drawback to your quirk. one that you had been keeping a secret from everyone

whenever you were healing someone, you could feel their pain

all those times when he came back half dead and let you heal his wounds, you could feel his pain as well…

as soon as he realized it, dabi started to feel horrible about it

he had put you through so much pain, without even realizing it! you were suffering all those months with him…

and you were healing the other members as well!

he couldn't even imagine how painful it must've been to be burdened with everyone's pain each day

now that dabi knew about the drawbacks of your quirk, he tried to avoid letting you use it

and he started to scold anyone who depended on your quirk too much

dabi would much rather prefer to watch his comrades suffer than you…

[cringefail-clown]

comfort

a birthday gift for @borzoilover69 !!! happy borth dude, your dirkjakes bring me so much joy <3

[jibberjibbsart]

Link is a Hylian of few words, he wouldn’t dare inconvenience Sidon with his feelings for him. Especially not in the middle of a nationwide disaster. Besides… Sidon is already engaged to someone else.

Sidon is a Zora of too many words, but he wouldn’t dare let Link know his true feelings for him. Besides… it wouldn’t be fair to Link, because Sidon is engaged to someone else.

IF YOU ARE READING MY OTHER SIDLINK COMICS THERE IS NO ORDER IM SORRY IM JUST MAKING THEM UP AS I GO