#anyway head full of thoughts but forming words is difficult so

[bluebnny]

Can u make a threesome friends with benefits theme with law and luffy woth a curvy short fem reader no double penetration please spit roasting is ok lots of creampies please

3-way “alliance��

trafalgar law x fem!reader x monkey d luffy

contents: after the battle of wano, you, luffy, and law have sex on your ship. Probably very ooc, but then again, the entire premise of these two agreeing to a threesome together already is lol

warnings: MDNI, smut, threesome, multiple orgasms, unprotected sex, oral (m receiving)

a/n: this would fix me, i think. also can you believe i wrote this while simultaneously juggling (ignoring) a million household chores that have to be done by tmr? yeah me neither lol. didn’t expect this to be done by today, so i’m super happy it did. thank you for requesting, and please enjoy <3

word count: 1.355

It’s the evening after the battle of Wano. The celebrations are in full swing, with loud music, mountains of food, and enough alcohol for the entire country. But the raging party is distant and muffled in your cabin.

The sounds don’t even reach you, much too focused on trying not to gag on Law’s thick length. He’s “helping” you quite a bit, as he’s a little bigger than what you’re used to. One hand lazily resting on the back of your head, he uses it to push you a tiny bit further each time you try to come back up again. Making you to take just a little more of him every time you sink down. But his treatment is still gentle compared to what the other captain is doing to you.

Luffy is kneeling behind you on the bed, rocking into your hips with deep, forceful thrusts. Stretching you to your absolute limits. He seems completely lost in the feeling of your tight pussy squeezing around him, hands gripping you so hard you’ll be sore in the morning. He uses his hold on you to impale you onto his length, meeting you halfway on every thrust. There’s a weight behind his movements that knocks the wind out of you every time.

The differences in how they treat you are like night and day. You hadn’t expected them to be like this in bed. If anything, you thought it would be the opposite; Law manhandling your smaller body onto his cock until you see stars, with Luffy being the one to give you encouraging smiles and head pats. Something about how they still overpower your smaller form has you clenching even harder.

Luffy’s harsh treatment makes it difficult to focus on what your mouth is doing. But Law doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest. You can’t see it, but he’s looking at you almost fondly, like he finds the sight of you struggling with his cock about halfway in your mouth adorable.

“Looks like stawhat-ya is giving you some trouble, huh?” He’s biting his lip, hand still firmly guiding your head to take more of him, feeling the back of your mouth tense deliciously before letting you come up again.

All you can do is moan with how full your mouth is, lips already stretched to their limit from just his head. It’s not like Law expects a response anyway. He guides you down again until his thick cockhead nudges your throat, making you whimper.

“Trouble?” Luffy teases. “She seems to be doing just fine if you ask me.” His hands give your plump hips a squeeze that has you squealing around Law’s cock, who only lets out a groan at the sensation.

“Fuck…” You feel his fingers digging into your scalp when your throat tightens around him again. “Then let’s see how much it takes for her to really start struggling, yeah?” He’s still showing his contented smile, but there’s something more sinister to it now.

“Way ahead of you.” Luffy’s pace increases to a brutal level, rendering you unable to even think properly. His thick member stretches you so deliciously, and you’re instinctively arching your back to better take him.

You feel the beginnings of an orgasm building incredibly fast, and they can clearly tell from the way you’re gripping Law’s thighs and whimpering around his cock. Still, they both keep you firmly in place, casting each other a mischievous smirk. And a few seconds later, you’re at your breaking point.

Your orgasm crashes into you, with Luffy pounding your pussy into a sloppy mess. You’re clenching and spasming around him, more and more of your slick covering his shaft every time he pulls out. It doesn’t take long for him to near his high as well with how tightly you’re wringing him. A few more hard thrusts have him spilling himself inside you with a loud groan.

“So- tight…” He breathes out, spurts of cum filling you up, making even more of a mess between your legs. You’re completely fucked out, a with drool and precum smeared all over your chin.

You’re shaking slightly from your orgasm, feeling stuffed full even when Luffy pulls out. The two men kindly allow you a moment to gather yourself; sitting on the bed, legs folded under you, hands planted on the mattress to support your heaving torso. You can feel them shifting around, but are entirely too blissed out to either notice or care.

Your attention is soon piqued again when you feel a different pair of hands caressing your waist. Law’s warm body presses against your back as he speaks into your ear.

“That was cute. Think you can take another?” You flinch a little when his tip prods at your entrance, as if testing whether you can handle it.

You respond by giving a little nod, but it’s cut short when Luffy grabs your face to kiss you. Law takes that as his cue to push into your tight heat, and you gasp from how sensitive you are.

The feeling of being filled again so soon after your first orgasm is overwhelming, and your eyebrows furrow at the intense pleasure. You’re on your knees, hands having moved to Luffy’s chest for purchase, while your hips are pinned in place by Law.

He quickly builds up a fast pace, thrusting deep and hard into you. He seems impatient to finally fuck you properly after having waited for so long.

It’s like your first orgasm never really ended, everything in your body still buzzing with adrenaline. So it’s not surprising when it only takes a few minutes for the next one to build. Here you are, pressed between the two, your already short height now completely dwarfed by their sheer size. Law has to bend down to suck hickeys into your neck. And Luffy’s hands fully cover your breasts as he teases them, playing with your smaller body to see what makes you moan the loudest.

You bend down a little from how good it feels already, hunching your back as your stomach tenses. But Law snakes a hand around your neck to pull you back up again, pressing you flush against his chest.

You let out a loud whine at that. He isn’t choking you; he knows exactly which parts of your neck to avoid. He’s simply holding you up, only applying as much pressure as needed. His other hand is still on your hip, and you feel like you’re going to snap in half any second now from how roughly he’s handling your tiny body against his much larger one.

Your attention snaps to Luffy, who has taken to kiss your chest now, cupping your breasts, pinching and nipping at your sensitive buds. It’s like his fingers are everywhere at once. And when one unexpectedly starts rubbing your clit, it’s over.

With a scream, the tension inside you snaps, and you’re gushing around Law’s cock. There are tears in your eyes. Your entire body writhing in their tight hold as they make you come harder and harder with every second. If your eyes were open, you would see them sharing another smirk, but you’re much too far gone to notice anything around you.

All you feel is Law spilling his seed inside you as he lets out a rough moan; new spurts shooting into you every time your pussy clamps down on him.

When you’re both done, Law lets go of your neck, and you slump forward into Luffy’s chest. He’s kissing your face to soothe you, while Law rubs your hips. You’re a complete mess, sweat covering your body, tears clumping your eyelashes together, and both their loads dripping out of your messy folds.

But Luffy’s next words snap you out of your daze.

“Want to lie down for the next round? You seem tired.”

You look up at him, then down. His energetic smile paired with his already hard cock making your fucked out brain short-circuit. But the hesitation lasts only a moment, and you flop down on your back with a smile.

It’s going to be a long night…

Thanks for reading! This is my first time writing a threesome, so i hope i did ok :)

Dividers made by me

This is my fic, don't repost or use in any AI training programmes! Reblogs are always appreciated <3 Here are my rules, and my masterlist.

[quillvice]

to be honest i can't stop thinking about tommy “all this just to fuck men” kinard (context). buck doing all the queer culture research to Catch Up and he texts tommy asking him what subtype of gay is he, and tommy is just. “i don't know. the gay type.” and buck sends him the link to a quiz to find out because he needs to know, tommy! sending him articles on queer history. asking him for fashion advice for what to wear to pride. asking when are we going to a drag show. tommy just comes back with “i don't know” and buck is like “you have a lot to learn about your own culture” and tommy is like. what have i done. i have unleashed a little gay minion.

okay this ask made me google "subtypes of gay men" so I could respond because, like Tommy, I don't really know anything. I'm just here. I'm just existing. anyway... learned that apparently "foxes" is a gay term (last I heard the terms were "twinks, otters, bears" so this is a new one To Me).

anyway okay like... yes -- Buck sends Tommy a link to a quiz to find out what subtype of gay he is but also like the ONLY reason Tommy ends up doing it is because Buck then starts texting him like, "I think you're a [blank]" and explaining why then going "or maybe you're a [blank]" and finally he relents and does the silly little quiz for Buck.

(he still does not really know what any of the words mean.)

(Buck does suggest he might be a fox (which is apparently the same thing as an otter, just older) and also while not a gay subtype it is gay subtype adjacent (and what I mean by that is it was mentioned on the wikipedia page of "terms for gay men") -- Buck definitely jokingly suggests Tommy is a daddy. Or that he's a "twunk.")

also at some point Tommy stops asking Buck for explanations of terms and phrases and stuff because he has decided he simply does not need to know. (but he does read all of Buck's messages and listen to all of his infodumps because he yanno loves Buck.)

also he's absolutely like "what have I done I have unleashed a little gay minion" BUT he's also like... idk he finds it kind of adorable/endearing?

anyway just yeah all around very obsessed with this thanks

[moonymeloncholymoney]

Rid of him🍁

summary: no matter how hard life gets, one thing was for sure. You were never getting rid of Joaquin Torres ;)

Warnings: none, bad grammar ig, cocky joaquin (he is still a softie tho), fluff, reader being emotional

Word count: 2.2k

Author's note: I am so sorry for the late update. I was suffering from the worst writer's block and I have strict parents so😭😭. Anyways tysm for barring with me. This one is for @teamredlvr ik reader isn't exactly grumpy but I tried my best. Hope you guys like it 💗💗

Being a teacher at abbot is hard, heck being a teacher in general can be a catastrophe if you become one without ever having the true calling and love for teaching. When you do what you love, all the difficult things that come with it become a tad bit easier to handle but that still doesn’t take away from the fact that you have your hard days too.

and just like that you found yourself climbing the stairs of your exhaustingly long apartment because the lift wasn’t working, which didn’t really help in your case as your day wasn’t going very well to begin with.

After dealing with indecisive children and uncooperative parents you finally decided to head home, You had an entire class’s test to grade, a banner to make for the upcoming fest happening in your school and a truck load of paperwork from the school district inquiring about the progress of your children. You could deal with all of this but you didn’t want to, not when there were tears running down your face, snot on the shoulder of your favorite cardigan and not when you were carrying a bag full of test papers which were causing a deep burning hole to form in the skin beneath your bra strap. Everything about today felt like an unspoken burden that you had to carry because you made the mistake of doing something you love.

You finally reach your apartment door. You feel your bag dropping directly from your shoulders all the way to your fingertips and then hear it falling to the ground. You close your eyes, resting your head on the cold wooden door of your home. The scent of old linen and new laundry hitting you with a sense of comfort and security, you felt like home already. You decided to take the house keys from the back pocket of your jeans, when you feel yourself fall in front and collide with a warm body. You look up to find Joaquin in front of you, confusion and warmth in his coffee brown eyes.

 You hadn’t seen your best friend in about 8 months or so after he came to visit for Christmas last year. He had been deployed at Tunisia and you were swamped with work, the only form of contact between the two of you being, the letters he sent, the cards you wrote and the endless calls you both slept off to.

So, to see him standing there with a spare key in his hand, your favorite movie on the tv and a pair of cup noodles set on the table, does things to you that you can’t even comprehend.

You jump into his arms causing him to stumble a few steps behind him.

“Hey hey hey, you okay? Y/n?” he doesn’t hug back right away, trying to get you to face him and tell him what’s wrong but you’re too busy trying to get the most of him as you bury your face in the crook of his neck.

“Shhh…just be here, be here with me.”

He hugs back this time.

He knew you needed that hug but he didn’t realize how much he needed it too until he hugged back. You both poured all the year’s exhaustion into that one hug, easing into each other like two intertwining souls. He sighed into the hug and pulled you closer, making sure he gets enough of you to last at least another 8 months of deployment. It wasn’t until your cat purred at your leg when you both let go of each other.

“I guess someone missed me?” He tried to be cocky but failed miserably due to the fresh tears that had appeared in his eyes.

 You let out a teary laugh before continuing to speak, “I thought you weren’t supposed to come back till after next week? how i- oh my god I had a whole thing planned for your welcome party!” You admitted as you flung your hands in your face.

“The mission got over earlier than we expected and then I remembered that I have my beautiful best friend to tend to, now are you gonna tell me why you are crying? And don’t say it’s because you’re happy to see me, I know something’s up” you know arguing with Joaquin was only going to end up in vain. So, you decided to pick your bag up from the floor as he led you through your door.

You knew lying to him wont work, it never had. He was the kind of person who would poke you to death until you revealed what was bothering you. He cared and he would make sure that you knew of it, even if that meant that he had to be a bit annoying at times.  Life was good when you both were constantly in each other’s life. You remembered when he took you to McDonalds after your first boyfriend dumped you on prom night.

“One iced mocha coffee for you and one large-large big mac for both you and me cause I don’t want to die eating all of this alone” you wiped your eyes on Joaquin’s blazer which now sat on your shoulders, as you felt him slide down beside you on the floor outside McDonalds.

“hey” He shifted his gaze to you.

“hey” you said looking down, not wanting him to see the mascara stains that ran down your face smearing your cheeks black.

“If there is anyone who should be crying right now, it’s that pathetic fuck of a guy who even thought about leaving a girl like you on prom night, not you”

“He has a name you know?”

“yeah well, I don’t care”

“ Also…Joaquin Torres, did I just hear you curse?”

“you won’t let me kick his face so I might as well curse” he said as he took a big bite of his big mac.

“look,I just wanted to say thank you and that I am sorry...for making you miss prom night” you admitted quietly ad you hugged your body tightly.

“wait why are you sorry?” Joaquin made a face so atrocious you thought he choked on his food. He turned completely to sit facing you.

“Well, I did ruin your prom night and I mean didn’t you finally ask that cute blonde out…wait what was her name again?”

“Jessca” he said going back to his original position, shoulder to shoulder to you.

“Jessica, yeah”

“no-no, jess-ca like she has no ‘i’ in her name” he laughed.

“Are you for real?”

“I am so for real, she almost had a seizure when I pronounced her name wrong but continued to call me jack the entire time. Now that I think about it, I don’t know why I even wanted to go out with her.”

“Yeah well me too. I should’ve known he was a dick when he said ant-man wasn’t a legit super hero”

you hooked your arm under his elbow, kept your head on his shoulder and opened your mouth for him to give you a bite of the big mac.

“Oh yeah then this one’s definitely on you.” You smacked his arm as he kept his head on top of yours.

there was a moment of silence, comfortable silence. The one where you appreciated each other’s company through unsaid words and through a million little actions that made you question if you two were just good friends.

“Also you never have to thank me or apologize for that matter”

“what?”

“I said you never have to-.”

“No, I heard that but why?”

“because then you’ll end up saying thanks way more than you can ever imagine, cause you’re not getting rid of me anytime soon” he said he looked down upon you.

“You’re this big sap aren’t you?”

“Says the person who is going to start crying again” he says with a smile that says all you need to hear.

“Okay shoot.  What happened, who made you cry and do I need to kick someone because now I legally can” Joaquin said as he sat on the sofa in front of you. He handed you the takeout he got the both you.

“No you don’t have to kick anyone and I really wouldn’t want you to do that either”

“You’re no fun”

“and you’ve got sauce on your face”

“Y/N” he said while looking at you dead serious.

“Joaquin” you said as you wiped the sauce of his face and ate it of your finger.

“I am serious, tell me what’s wrong.”

You sighed and kept your food on the center-table beside you and sat with your knees to your chest.

“i…do you think I am a bad teacher?” your voice went quite, and Joaquin’s throat went dry. How could you be a bad teacher? You, who spent hours teaching him 12th grade mathematics one day before the exam so that he didn’t fail and that too without losing your patience. You, who made an entire batch of cookies for your student book club after they finished reading their first book as a reward. Teaching was not an easy profession and definitely not a financially wise one either but you knew how much a good teacher impacted the kids so you wanted to be the same for your students and try to be bring change in any which way you could.

“Y/N, angel why would you think that?” he shifted close in front of you.

“Because a student’s mom literally said it to my face today, told me that I’d be a better teacher if I focused on teaching them out of textbooks instead of silly little novels” you said as a few tears fell from your eyes.

“but reading books helps increase their vocabulary and not just that it also helps them focus better” Joaquin admitted it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Exactly! Well, I tried telling her that but she lashed out on me and walked out of my class, I felt so stupid…so unwanted. And its not like Barbabra didn’t make me feel better, it’s just… I try my level best to make sure all the kids are learning in a way that expands their horizon. I just don’t want them to by heart the textbook, I want them to understand why the textbooks say what they do. I just wish the parents also looked at it that way instead of trying to make their job easier and getting over with their child’s homework as soon as possible”

Barbara was the senior teacher in the school and even though she did assure you that you were one of the best teacher’s out there, you needed to rant out your feelings to make sure that all your feelings don’t spill like a bottle of wine manhandled.

You were full on crying now, shirt drenched with tear drops and mascara smeared across your face the same way it did all those years ago. Joaquin kept his take out beside him and pulled you towards him through your elbow forcing you to sit with your head on his shoulder and your arm hooked under his elbow.

“Well according to me, someone who can’t even sit with their child and help them do their homework doesn’t get to call you a bad teacher.”

“Joaquin i-.” he shushes you with a finger on your lips, “Let me finish.”

“and you’re not the parent’s teacher, you are your student’s. So don’t you dare let any parent tell you otherwise, when you know damn well how much your students adore you. You are a great teacher and the class’s grade says all it has to. Also, you made Shakespeare interesting for me, do you know astounding that is for someone who barely got through 10th grade English. So, yes I don’t think you’re a bad teacher, I think you’re the best and the most fun teacher these children will ever have.”

He wiped your mascara smudged cheek and pressed his lips to your forehead.

“Thank you, I don’t know what I’d do without you”

“ Yeah well I don’t know what I’d do without me either” he sighed as he picked up his takeout again.

You smacked his arm and opened your mouth to take a bite of the noodles he was having.

“Hey, that was mine!”

“Whatever is yours is mine” you said ad you grabbed the takeout from his hands and left a opened mouthed and a little offended looking Joaquin to stare at you.

“Oh you’re so going down” he said as snatched the takeout from your hands and put it on the table and got on both his knees on the sofa.

“Joaquin what are you- No Oh my god” your laughter echoed through the room as you felt your back touch the soft material of the sofa and Joaquin's fingers dug into the sides of your waist as he continued to tickle you.

You were crying from how much you were laughing, he was laughing from how much you were. And in that moment all was forgotten because you knew that you were not getting rid of him anytime soon and that was all you needed to know.

Taglist: @brittnicki @buckyytorres @halliejaade @joaquinwhores @cruel-seduction @fireinmoonshot @badboysupremelvr @teamredlvr @nathanbatemanfucker @glader13

[dissolvedprincess]

For you

PART 1 of the ‘Party 4 U’ mini series.

✷ A yearning reader that is eager to please nonchalant Josh. ✷

(Not Proofread)

⭑ PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 PART 4

꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚ ꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚ ꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷︶

“Babe, literally everyone is coming, well..most of the freshmen anyway and some seniors.” you said, while casually typing away on your phone to send out more invites. “Even Chriiiiiisss.” you look at Ashley and wiggled your brows, her cheeks blush at the sound of his name.

“Ugh fine.”

“Great! It’s gonna be SO fun, babe!” you squealed excitedly, wrapping your arms around her.

“And I’m not going just because Chris is gonna be there okay…I just haven’t partied in a while, that’s all.” she says with false confidence, but you can clearly see a shy smile start to form on her face.

“Yeah yeah sure Ash, veeeery convincing. I’ll text you my address later okay, see you tonight.” You blew her a kiss and finally parted ways.

You felt giddy with excitement as you walked through the halls of your campus. The phone in your hand buzzed with a text from Sam, ‘I’ll be there!!❤️’ and you smiled at the message, just the thought of her attending was enough to soothe your nerves, just a little bit at least.

This party would be the most important party of your life. You were being dramatic, but valid. You’d do anything to please the source of your anxiety. His name placed last on the list with big, bold letters, impossible to miss.

‘JOSH’

“Shit.” you muttered to yourself.

You still went back and forth on wether you should talk to him face to face or just text him. ‘I mean, i could always ask Chris for his number’ you thought to yourself. But it seems like you’ve made up your mind. The idea of having his full attention, even if it’s just for a fleeting moment, would be enough to momentarily satisfy your urges.

You felt like a little girl with her first crush again. A little girl experiencing foreign and overwhelming emotions, it was embarassing.

The sight of him from your peripheral, pulled you from your thoughts. The outline of his build deeply embedded in your brain from months of wishful staring.

He looked to be deep in thought. Your eyes trailed down to his hands that were frantically writing into his notebook, clearly busy. But you decided to throw caution to the wind when he stuck his pencil inbetween his teeth and started biting on it.

The action triggered something in you, a juvenile desire that felt so intense. You wanted his mouth elsewhere, everywhere, leaving marks on your body.

As if on cue, the wind blew your way. Slightly pushing you to start walking towards him, leaving you with goosebumps all over. It felt like even nature has a hand in this. Wouldn’t that be so romantic?

“Hi Josh.”

The butterflies in you ribcage threatend to burst out the moment he looked up at you.

“Hey. What’s up?” he responded casually with a lazy smile. He still looked so handsome despite the tired bags under his eyes.

You never really got to know him properly throughout college, occasional helos and mutual friends was all that you had. He was a difficult person to get close to with all the constant people around him.

“Um, I don’t know if you’ve heard but i’ll be throwing a party at my house. Tonight.” you stated nervously; words stuttering a bit as he stood up to match you. Now it was your turn to look up.

“Oh yeah, i think Chris told me. Don’t know if i’m invited though.” he teased with a small laugh. His eyes crinkling beautifully.

“You are!” you responded, a little bit too fast for your own liking. His presence was…difficult to adjust to, and the cologne he’s wearing wasn’t helping either.

“Haha alright! That’s awesome.” His reply was short and minimal.

You scrambled for a response, it was pathetic; the kind of hold he had on you.

“So can you make it?” you asked expectantly.

He looked away for a moment and chewed on his bottom lip; contemplating. You wished to be inside his head for a while and watch those gears turn. What is he going to say next? Will he be too busy to come? Is he feeling under the weather? Does he have a date to go to? ‘Please don’t let it be a date, please, please.’ you plead to an invisible force.

The next thing he does is unexpected.

Your phone is suddenly plucked away from your hand. You didn’t miss the way your heart throbbed at the feeling of his fingers brushing against yours. The spring air suddenly felt too cool for your heated cheeks.

You would find the action strange and ill-mannered if it was somebody else. But this was Josh and you’d let him do anything to you. It was risky, being this close to him.

He types for a while and handed the phone back to you. The final contact of his fingers sent shivers down your back.

“I put in my number so you can text me your address. I’ll be there.” he assured you.

It took everything in you not to let your mouth gape.

“O-okay Josh. I’ll..see you soon.” you replied pathetically.

He sat down on his previous spot and looked up at you again. You’ve decided that he looks good under you, flashes of you him going down on you come and fade away as he said, “See you soon pretty girl.” and then that sweet smile is back again, with a little hint of sly this time if you look closely enough.

Then you walked away whilst looking at his name on your contact list, still in a daze. The urge to turn your head got the better of you, expecting him to be looking at you still. But you were left disappointed to see he was already back to his previous task.

The drive home was ridiculous to say the least, you forehead meets your steering wheel any chance you get; with an added groan of frustration of course. You felt lame. How could you mess up your first proper interaction with Josh that badly?

You slammed your car door once you arrived, a bit of added force would help blow off some steam you thought.

Your shoulders relaxed the moment you walked in through your door. It’s good to have the house to yourself for a while.

After making sure the house and drinks are up to par, you sat down to scroll through your unread texts. Quickly responding to your mom’s text, ‘Have fun tonight sweetie. Don’t break anything and good luck with Josh, be safe ;)’ Your cheeks warmed at her text and let out a scoff. ‘Thanks mom❤️ and ew, don’t say that😭. But i will ;)’

You dazed off for a while and decided to call Chris.

“Yeeee-llow.”

“Hey Chris.”

“Heyyyyy. What’s up?”

You played with the loose seam of your pants and mulled over the question on the tip of your tongue. Fuck it.

“Can you like, send me Josh’s favorite playlist?”

He paused for a moment and laughed.

“I mean-yeah, i can. What you need it for?”

You could hear the smirk in his voice.

“I’ve just uh- been asking for some of you guys’ playlists for tonight. Y’know-so that um-you could enjoy the party better?” you let out nervously.

“You haven’t asked me for mine.” he was full on teasing now, you just know it.

“Well i was gonna! I was gonna ask for it after you gave me his.” you scrambled to save the situation.

“Sure suuuree okay of course you were.” he let out a chuckle.

You found it funny how you were in a similar situation that Ashley was in.

You let out a groan, “Ugh just…don’t tell Josh about this okay, or anyone for that matter.”

“Yeah okay okay. I just sent you a couple of Josh’s AND one of mine, you’re welcome.” It felt nice to have a friend like him to depend on.

“Thanks Chris. See you tonight.”

“Catch yaa laaaaterrrr.” then the line clicked shut.

You then melted on the couch, leg bouncing with nerves.

“Oh fuck..” you rubbed at your eyes for some relief from the headache that was starting to form.

—

“Oh fuck…” you rubbed at your eyes again to stop the tears from flowing.

You appreciated the presence of Ash and Sam on either side of you. Each of their hands rubbing gentle circles on your back. The party has been going on for a good two hours and still no sign of Josh.

“I just..ugh-feel so fucking pathetic for even hoping y’know. At least text me to let me know that he wouldn’t come. He didn’t even reply to the last one when i sent him my address.” More tears threaten to pour as you rambled on.

“I understand hun.” Sam smiled at you sympathetically.

“And no, it’s not pathetic.” Ashley chimed in. You looked her way and smiled the best that you can.

“I mean-you know how i am with Chris. So…” she paused for a second, finding the right words to say. “I get it, more than anyone.”

Sam nodded and laughed, “It’s totally normal! And he’s horrible for doing this anyway so..one less guy to worry about.”

“Yeah..yeah you guys are right.”

You felt Sam grab your hand, “How about getting back out there, huh?”

“Alright, come on guys.”

After the three of you left the comfort of your bedroom, you felt light. It’s good to not have his constant weight on your mind. Sadness is a given but with it comes relief.

“I’m just gonna get another drink okay, you guys go on without me.”

You smiled after waving them goodbye. It’s exciting to see how the night could promise you so many more opportunities when Josh is no longer your fixation. All you have to do, is just choose.

Well, good luck with that.

“Hey pretty.”

You’d recognize that voice anywhere, warm and inviting.

It’s horrible, how easily he pulled you back in.

꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚ ꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚ ꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷︶

I apologize for being late my sweets! I wasn’t satisfied with the previous version and decided to revise some parts of the story. The whole thing also unexpectedly turned into a three part mini-series and the last two will be inspired by Charli XCX songs as well because they fit the narrative so well, i am so excited!

I also apologize for the lack of Josh in this one but he will be a very prominent part in the last two, so no worries.😙

I hope you enjoyed and yes part two is already in the works ;)

[no-name-omo]

hi ur literally a gem for doing this bc the lack of content for mha vigilantes is actually sending me into a frenzy

anyway!! would it be okay to request knuckleduster x gn!reader? maybe smth like strangers to lovers/fateful meetings almost? and the reader doesnt have to be a hero or vigilante they can just be a regular person that somehow got tied up in the middle of it or smth

hope that fits ur criteria and apologies if smths off😭

[A/N] the first post I made that isn't zzz... Nice, anyway I didn't know if you wanted a head cannon or one shot so yeah next time just make sure the I know what you want fully and maybe a little ooc so yeah; hope you enjoy

[type] One-Shot

[word count] 1,800+

[Summary] For some reason you a nurse nurse couldn't stop bumping into the vigilante to the point that a relationship form

[Genre] fluff / Strangers To Lovers?

[pairing / characters] Iwao Oguro (Knuckleduster) x Nurse Reader

You still don’t fully understand how you got wrapped up with the vigilantes. One minute, you were just walking home from your shift at the hospital.exhausted, still wearing your nurse uniform, mentally cursing out every difficult patient you'd dealt with that day. The next, your life was tangled up in something way bigger than yourself.

You turned into an alleyway, taking your usual shortcut like always. Behind you, faint at first, you heard people screaming sharp, panicked cries that prickled at the back of your neck. You paused, heart beginning to race. Then came another sound, closer this time. Not a voice, didn't even sound human. A low, guttural roar that rolled through the alley like thunder. It wasn’t a cry for help. It was something far worse.

You turned around slowly, not out of curiosity, but fear, heavy and cold in your gut. Down the alleyway, barely illuminated by flickering streetlights, you saw what you could only guess was a man. Or used to be one. His skin was an unnatural shade of blue, his bloodshot eyes wide and unblinking. Ice crawled up his arms and legs like armor, jagged and uneven, and you could see the tips of his fingers blackened with frostbite, just like his tongue when he let it loll out, panting like some kind of beast.

You’re frozen. Stuck. Your body refuses to move. The man or whatever he is stares you down with eyes full of desperation and rage. It’s not just anger. It’s hunger. You try to speak, to scream, but nothing comes out. Then, without warning, he lets out another guttural roar and charges. Ice explodes beneath his feet, spreading like a wave as he sprints straight toward you

You try to step back, but your foot lands on a glass bottle. It rolls, and you slip, crashing down hard onto the cold concrete. Pain shoots through your palms as they smack the ground, but you barely notice it. Your eyes lock on the charging man.he’s only three feet away now. One thought flashes through your mind, cold and final 'Is this how I die?'

But then, just as the thought forms, a fist swings past your head, fast, brutal, and perfectly timed. It slams into the man’s face with a sickening crack, sending him flying backward like a ragdoll.

A gruff, rugged voice came from behind you. “Heh, you’re not getting away from me that easily.” You turned, still sprawled on the cold pavement, and looked up. Towering behind you stood a man who looked like he’d fought through a dozen wars and didn’t bother patching up after any of them. He was broad-shouldered and built like a wall, dressed in a worn dark grey jacket with the sleeves rolled up, exposing scarred forearms. His face was rough unshabby and weathered. A faded mask covered his eyes, and there was something dangerous in the way he held himself.

You try to thank him for the save, but he doesn’t even glance your way. It’s like he didn’t hear you or just didn’t care. His focus is locked on the man he just flattened. Without a word, he strides forward and grabs the unconscious man by the collar, yanking him up with ease, like lifting a bag of trash. “Weak,” he mutters under his breath, more to himself than anyone else. His eyes narrow as he inspects the frostbitten tongue hanging out of the man’s mouth, as if it confirms something he already suspected.

From where you’re still sitting on the ground, you can tell he’s annoyed. He clearly wanted to ask the man some questions, but he’d hit him too hard and knocked him out cold. With a grunt of frustration, he drops the unconscious body like dead weight.

Then, finally, he turns his attention to you. “Hey. You.” The sudden acknowledgment makes you flinch, your heart jumping as you blurt out, “Y-Yes?” He jerks his chin toward the limp body. “Call the police, won’t you?”

“O-oh! I can do that,” you stammer, fumbling to pull your phone from your pocket. You start dialing the police, glancing down at the screen as you speak. “Also, thank you again for the—” But when you look up, he’s gone. Just like that. Only the unconscious man remains, crumpled on the pavement. “—save,” you finish quietly, the word feeling a little foolish now.

---

It’s been a week since you saw that man. You’re still not sure if he’s a hero at least, not in the legal sense of the word. But technically, he is your hero.

Ugh. That thought alone makes you cringe, and you mentally roll your eyes at yourself as you walk past the alleyway you used to take as a shortcut. Lesson learned. You’ve avoided it ever since.

But just as you’re about to keep moving, a familiar, gravelly grunt echoes from the shadows. You freeze. It’s faint, but you recognize it. Weirdly enough… it sounds like him.

You sneak a peek into the alleyway and there he is. The man that save you. One man already lies unconscious behind him, while he’s locked in a fierce brawl with another, much larger opponent. Somehow, he’s holding his own. Every move is fast, brutal, precise. It’s like watching a street fight choreographed by nature itself. You can’t help but stare until something catches your eye.

The unconscious man is stirring. Slowly, quietly, he starts to rise. Your hero hasn’t noticed. 'Oh no. What should I do?' The man behind him braces his stance, his arm beginning to harden like stone. Instinct takes over. “Watch out! Behind you!” you shout.

Your hero doesn’t hesitate. He sidesteps just in time, narrowly dodging the hardened punch, then spins on his heel and drives a crushing blow into the ambusher’s gut. The man doubles over with a choked gasp, collapsing like the wind’s been knocked from his soul.

After finishing off the second guy complete with another quick check of his tongue, for whatever reason your hero stood tall. You just watched again, hands at your sides, but at least this time… you’d helped. And then, for the first time, he actually acknowledged you. Properly.

“Thanks,” he said, flashing a big, toothy grin. Most people might have found it unsettling, like a wild dog showing teeth but to you, oddly enough, it was… kind of charming. He wasn’t acting like he did last time either. Less distant. More human.

You coughed into your hand and gave a small, awkward nod. “It was no problem. I mean, you saved me, after all.” He tilted his head, brows scrunching beneath his mask. “I did?”

That caught you off guard. You frowned, mildly annoyed now. “What do you mean, ‘I did?’ You saved me. Just last week. In this exact—” you threw your hands out, gesturing around you “—alleyway!”

For a moment, he just blinked. Then his eyes lit up with recognition. “Ohhh… right. You’re the good looking nurse from last week!” he said, followed by a short, rough laugh. “Didn’t recognize you without the panic face.”

Your face went hot in an instant. Good looking? He actually called you good looking. You opened your mouth to respond with something sharp, something witty but nothing came out. Just air and a frustrated groan.

The man chuckled again, clearly enjoying your reaction. “Didn’t mean to rattle you,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “it's just that I remember you being all skittish.”

You rolled your eyes, trying to recover your dignity. “Well, someone had to keep you from getting sucker-punched." He grinned wider. “Fair enough. Guess that makes us even now, huh… nurse?”

"... Fine"

---

As the weeks passed, you started running into the vigilante more and more. Almost too often to be coincidence. You eventually learned his name: Knuckleduster. And the more it happened, the more you began to suspect he wasn’t just “passing by.”

He never admitted it, of course. But the way he lingered a bit longer after fights, the way his eyes always found you in a crowd, the way he smirked when you called him out on it. it all said more than words.

You got to know his partners well more like students, really. One was a fast-talking guy who slid around like a hockey puck with a jetpack, and the other, a sharp-eyed girl who soared through the air like it was second nature. You found yourself patching them up from time to time. Nothing too serious, just scrapes, bruises, and the occasional sprain.

But somehow, he always seemed to be the last one to get looked at. The one who waited behind while the others left. Sitting there with that cocky grin and battle-worn jacket, tossing out lines like, “You sure you're qualified for this?” just to get a rise out of you.

And yeah… maybe you looked forward to those moments a little more than you should have.

---

It was late, past midnight and the city outside your apartment buzzed quietly with distant sirens and the occasional honk. You’d barely managed to unlock your door with one hand, the other gripping Knuckleduster’s arm as he leaned heavily against you. His jacket was torn, and blood soaked through the side of his shirt.

“You know,” you muttered as you kicked the door shut behind you, “you could stop taking punches with your ribs. Just once.” He grunted in response, half amusement, half pain. “Wouldn’t be much of a fight if I dodged everything.”

You guided him to the worn stool in your kitchen and flicked on the overhead light. Harsh. Too bright. But necessary. “Shirt off,” you said flatly, already reaching for your first aid kit. He raised an eyebrow at you. “Getting bold, huh?”

You rolled your eyes, heat creeping into your cheeks anyway. “Shut up and lift your arms.” With a smirk, he peeled the shirt off, wincing slightly as dried blood tugged at the fabric. His torso was littered with scars, some old and faded, others fresh and angry. You swallowed and got to work, cleaning a gash along his ribs. His skin was warm under your fingers, muscles tensing slightly every time you dabbed antiseptic as you tried to ignore the closeness; even though you know that it's impossible to.

“You really need to learn what ‘taking it easy’ means,” you muttered. “I don’t get the luxury of easy,” he replied, voice low and gravelly. But he wasn’t looking at his wound. He was watching you. You kept your eyes on the bandages, pretending not to notice. A beat of silence passed. Then, softer: “You always do this?”

“What, patch up stubborn vigilantes in my kitchen? No. Just the reckless ones who keep showing up like strays.” He huffed a quiet laugh. “Lucky me.” You tied the bandage off, your fingers brushing the curve of his side. His breath hitched, just slightly. Your eyes finally met his close, quiet, charged.

“Next time,” you murmured, “try not to bleed on my welcome mat.” “I’ll aim for the couch,” he shot back, voice rough but teasing. And despite everything, the hour, the blood, the danger

you smiled.

The silence lingered after your smile, thick with something unsaid. You started to turn away, to clean up the bloodied gauze and wrappers, but his hand caught your wrist; gentle, calloused, firm.

You looked back at him, your breath hitching just a little. He didn’t say anything, just searched your face for a moment. Eyes softer now, less guarded than usual. Like he was trying to memorize you in this moment, the quiet calm between chaos.

“I keep showing up,” he said lowly, “because I know you’ll be here.” That stopped your heart for a second. No sarcasm. No smirk. Just honesty. Raw and stripped down.

You didn’t even realize you were leaning in until he was, too. Slow, like either of you might still back out. But neither of you did. The kiss was brief. Warm. A little rough around the edges, like him but real. And when you pulled back, his hand lingered on your wrist, thumb brushing your pulse.

“Guess I’ll be bleeding on your welcome mat again sometime soon,” he muttered, the smirk returning, but softer now. You rolled your eyes, but your lips curled anyway. “Just try not to make a habit of it.”

[julesthequirky]

The Choice: Chapter Twelve

All my work is purely aimed at those 18+ so minors kindly, DNI.

Summary: You find three of your favourite characters in your home. It shouldn’t be possible, but there they are. In the flesh. How the hell did they get there? And surely there’s a way to get them back? But as you get close to each one, the thought of sending them back proves difficult to comprehend.

Characters: Fem!Reader, Dean, Beau, Soldier Boy/Ben.

Warnings: Language, typical Soldier Boy behaviour, smidge of angst,

W/C: 1,623

You closed the bedroom door as quietly as you could. It clicked softly. Ben’s form shifted, duvet rustling.

“Where’d you go?”

His voice rasped, full of sleep.

“Restroom.”

He grunted.

You pulled one side of the sheets back and slipped into bed. Ben didn’t wait for you to get comfy. His heavy arm wrapped around your waist, pulling you closer. He slipped his hand under your pyjama top, seeking skin, fingers splaying across the side of your body. He nuzzled your hair, beard lightly scraping across your scalp, lips moving as he murmured by your ear.

“Preferred it before you changed.”

You felt his lips spread into a smile before kissing you and settling back down.

You didn’t reciprocate. Just laid there, facing the ceiling, a million thoughts running around in your head.

He had the potential to impregnate you. Possibly more than any other male on the damn planet. You sure as Hell weren’t dumb enough to think he wanted more. No, it was just a bit of fun. And for you? You were already attached but weren’t dumb enough to believe he’d fall for you.

“We forgot to use a condom.”

Ben hmmed into your hair.

“So?”

He didn’t care.

How could you explain it? The differences between you both. He wouldn’t understand.

“It’s kinda a big deal…”

Ben huffed. He had been happy. Content, even. Now, he was annoyed. And that was down to you.

“Didn’t hear you complainin’ bout it earlier.”

No. You hadn’t, had you.

“ ’sides, thought you wanted to get knocked up anyway.”

It wasn’t like that. Yeah, you wanted a baby. But you wanted more.

“I want a family.”

He scoffed.

“Family fucks you up.”

His words left you feeling deflated. Empty. Alone. Hell, it wasn’t like you were proposing to him or even telling him you wanted to be with him. Then why did it feel like a rejection? Did you want him? To be with him?

Don’t be absurd.

But he was right. Family did fuck you up. You could attest to that. Just look at the fraught relationship you had with your mother. But you wanted to be better. You wanted to create happy memories with a husband and a kid.

“Go to sleep, sweetcheeks.”

Yeah. You should. But the thought of getting pregnant occupied your mind.

Ben said he was on the way to Vought Tower when he suddenly appeared at your home. And in Walmart he’d already mentioned Homelander being his kid. Both Homelander and Ryan were born biologically as Supes, not injected like the rest. It meant that if you did get pregnant, the kid would be the first Supe to enter the real world.

Fear slammed into you, taking the breath from your chest. You’d be all alone, with no idea how to raise a child with powers. How would you explain it to authority figures? Would they take the child away? A child you’d so desperately wanted. Gone. And probably used as a weapon by the government. No, you’d have to keep the child a secret.

*

When you managed to sleep, dreams of Ben’s kid coming into his powers and destroying the house, the town, and you plagued you all night.

You jerked awake after a particularly nasty dream where Ben’s kid erupted in a ball of flames in your arms. Cold sweat covered you, strands of hair stuck to your forehead, and your mouth felt like you’d eaten cotton balls.

The warm, calloused hand on your breast pulled you from your reverie.

“You kick. Whatcha dreamin’ bout?”

Yeah, you’d woken up a few times that night. You didn’t answer him. Couldn’t. You were unsure what to tell him. Guilt settled in your chest as Ben nuzzled closer. He was feeling extremely touchy-feely after last night. But you weren’t. Because if you weren’t careful, he would end up between your legs again.

Regretfully, you pushed his hand off your breast. The cool morning air caused your skin to break out in goosebumps. You missed the warmth of his touch on your skin as you moved away.

He huffed. “What’s gotcha ass so wound up?”

“Just tired.” Was your monotone response.

It wasn’t a lie. You were tired. But dear God, you couldn’t cope with another one of those dreams.

“Was hopin’ for some mornin’ nookie.”

His fingers slipped over your thigh, seeking the apex.

“ ’m not in the mood.”

Ben shrugged and removed his hand. “Suit yaself.”

Behind you, the sheet rustled, and you felt the mattress lift.

“I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but I’ve been nothing but a gentleman.”

You turned, ready to remedy the situation. Ben stood gloriously naked, sporting a semi. He looked like a Greek god, sculpted to perfection.

“I’m sorry. I’m just…I’m freaking out.”

Ben walked around the bed, moving to the built-in wardrobe.

“About what?”

You stayed silent for a beat. You stared down at your fingernails.

“What if I get pregnant?” It came out in a whisper.

Ben sighed. You looked back up and watched as he stepped into underwear, pulling them up his legs and tucking himself away.

“Then you deal with it.”

“I don’t know anything about raising a Supe.”

Ben turned to you, lifting an undershirt on.

”Who said you’d be on your own.”

Your brows furrowed, then. “You would stay if I did?”

“I’m saying I’d do the right thing. I wouldn’t let you drown.”

He kicked yesterday’s sweatpants back on and left you to ponder his words as he headed into the bathroom.

*

Downstairs, Beau and Dean were clucking away like hens in the kitchen. Your name cropped up on more than one occasion.

“You talking about me.”

Ben had decided to shower while in the bathroom, so instead of sitting there, you decided to grab a coffee and at least try to wake up.

Beau passed you a fresh steaming mug.

“Just natural concern is all.”

“You need to be careful—”

You eased yourself into a seat and held up a hand to Dean. You took your first sip of coffee and savoured the fresh taste. Fuck. There was no way you could go back to shitty instant. Dean had ruined you.

“Y/N.”

God. You didn’t want to hear it right now.

“Can I please have some peace for five minutes? Is that too hard to ask for?”

“He’s gonna break your heart, and you’re too dumb to realise that.”

You turned to him, mouth falling open, offended. And hurt. It felt like a punch to the gut.

“Woah, okay. Dean’s just looking out for you. We both are.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“Ain’t no one calling you one, darlin’,” Beau reassured. “We were just discussing if Ben’s intentions were the same as yours.”

Intentions? What the Hell was this? Some kind of weird intervention?

You scrubbed a hand down your face. It was far too early to be doing this.

“I don’t know what last night was. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did. I’m not stupid, okay. I know that it’s not anything to him. Just a bit of fun.”

Dean stood, leaning against a counter with his arms crossed over his chest. He quirked his brows at it being a bit of fun, and for some reason, you felt your neck and cheeks flame from embarrassment.

You gulped down some coffee, scalding your throat. Both Dean and Beau were quiet. Water dripped from the tap, and your stomach gurgled, reminding you that you hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.

“Maybe…maybe…and It’s a crazy thought. Maybe you shouldn’t sleep beside Ben.”

You blinked in surprise. Excuse me? What? Had you heard that right?

“You picked straws. Ben pulled the shortest. You know that.”

“Yes. I know that. I’m just lookin’ out for ya. And I know Beau agrees with me.”

You looked from Dean to Beau. He opened his mouth, looked at Dean, and then back at you.

“We’re concerned, that’s all. He ain’t a good guy, and what Dean’s proposing is not a bad idea. We’re lookin’ out fer ya.”

You couldn’t believe it.

“Your noses ain’t so clean either. You thought it was funny to take the piss outta Ben in the store. And you’ve left him out of whatever bromance this has become. You guys are the mean guys here. At least Ben’s just being himself.”

You didn’t want to hear any more. You pushed back the chair and left the kitchen with your coffee mug before they could say something else.

You hoped Ben was out of the shower. Hell, at this point, you were thinking of getting back at them by indulging Ben with some morning nookie, as he put it. But you knew you’d just feel guilty after, and you didn’t want to use Ben to get back at Dean and Beau.

You stormed into your room and plonked your mug on the dresser. Ben stood in the middle of the room, drying himself, smirking and shaking his head.

“What?”

“He likes you. Why’d you think he’s ridin’ yer ass so hard? Sweetcheeks, he prolly heard me fucking you so hard. And d’ya wanna know something? I bet it turned him on something real good. Hearing your screams. I bet he jerked himself off. I would’ve.”

You blinked.

“Stop being so crude.”

You barged into the ensuite, leaving Ben to chuckle to himself.

But Ben had got to you. Images of Dean flashed inside your mind. Images of him sitting in bed, head leant back, eyes closed, with his hand wrapped around his cock, fist surging up and down. Heat washed down your body, along with the familiar prickling of arousal. And you wondered. Were they the same size?

Tags: @yvonneeeee, @curlycarley, @angelbabyyy99, @sassy-pelican, @k-slla, @deans-spinster-witch, @ashdoctor, @eretsupremacy89, @fanfic-n-tabulous, @deans-number-one-fan, @afro-hispwriter, @tiredstrangerr, @zemosdarling228, @justjensenandhisalteregos, @ladysparkles78, @nescavaneck, @winharry, @stellasfictionalworld, @mishkatelwarriorgoddess, @freefallthoughts, @realityshifter111, @p33tamallark, @hobby27, @grxyveins

[dunmeshi-darlings]

Hello

Can I request a laios x reader, with the reader as laios ex-fiance, since their arrangements was broken off when he ran away without explanation reader have been sad and mad about it. But then someday laios mother told reader about laios become a new king after defeating a demon, reader decided to go there, because reader want to know why he ran away

I'm sorry if this is difficult to understand, English is not my first language, thank youuu

Oh you got no need to apologize its all ok. i understand what you meant. id be happy to do this. thank you so much for sending an imagine in.

Even though its been many years since laios cut off the arrangement and disappeared you still found yourself getting upset at him. He just cancelled it all and ran off to not be heard from again.

Of course over the years that anger and frustration faded greatly but every so often your mind would wander and you would feel your cheeks heat up at the thought of being abandoned like that. but over all you figure it was probably for the best anyway, you dont mind your life and that touden was always...strange to say the least even if he was a looker.

One day though as you are going about your day when laios mother approaches you, asking if she can come in. You agree and let her inside, despite your feelings about laios you had no bad blood with her. you get the both of you some tea as she starts speaking. "Did you hear about the rise of the golden kingdom?" she asks, you nod and say of course you had. it had been the talk of the entire world ever since it rose up out of the sea, seemingly out of nowhere one day. Apparently some group of adventurers defeated the mad mage and seemed like those rumors about becoming the new leader of it was true. You say casually as you take a sip of some tea. "yeah well apparently Laios was the one that defeated the mage and rules the golden kingdom now." she says so casually causing you to spit all the tea you were drinking out, shouting in confusion you ask her if you heard that right? she nods and explains what she had been told from letters from falin, you knew that falin had stayed in touch with there parents but laios had apparently cut them off a decade ago much to your surprise.

You decide to pay a visit, you feel like you almost HAVE to. you need to know why he just left you like that, why he did what he did all those years ago. It took you a bit to get to the new golden kingdom, laios definitely had travelled a far distance since your last time you saw him. By the time you reach the kingdom a full month has passed, you ask the guards to message the king telling him that "Y/N from his arranged marriage wanted to see him." of course you werent sure he would even respond, i mean why would he. he didnt want to marry you obviously so why should he care about seeing you, especially now that he is a KING of all things. However you were surprised when the guard came back and agreed to take you to the king.

When you entered you saw him sitting on a throne. To his left you see a young elf woman with twin braids beside him, This must have been his royal advisor maybe? you werent sure. However you did notice his sister beside her chatting with her...except she was different, she wasnt a tall man anymore..atleast not fully. you noticed a plume of fluffy white feathers poking out of the opening on her chest and down her arms. It was clear she had been changed by some form of magic.

As you walk closer laios asks if everyone can leave the room for a moment, he wants to talk privately with you as they agree and leave leaving only you and him. "So Y/N, how have things been?" He asks awkwardly, its clear he is uncomftorable and doesnt know what to say. You had thought of the things you would say to him for years now, over and over you had gone over in your head what you were going to say to the man that just up and left you like that. you would be furious and scream, sob and cry, all the words you planned to say just dissapear and all you can say is a single word. "why.."

He sighs as he rubs his neck and begins to explain, He tells you how he had began to despise his parents for how they let falin be treated, and how instead of supporting her and her talents they sent her away to the magic school on a different continent. He had grown to hate his parents (more so his father but he had no fond feelings towards his mother either) even though falin kept in contact with them. He also explained how he never felt comfortable around people, that he had always felt more comfortable around monsters...and that in truth he hated people. Plus he admits he wasnt the richest person in the world so would have been able to give you a proper dowry. All of these together made him feel like he wouldnt have been able to give you the life you deserved, he didnt want you to be stuck with a man that hated everyone around him and hated where he lived and wanted to leave and get as far away as he could. He figured that wasnt fair to you, and he didnt know how to properly convey this and let you down easily so...he ran.

The weight of his words hit you harder than you expected...all this time you thought he just didnt like you or hated you ever, or he didnt care about you at all. All this time you hated him for what he did and that you swore you would get answers one day...but these werent the answers you were expected. It would have been so easy to continue to be mad at him, if he said he just didnt like you or hated you that would have been fine..you expected it at this point, but no...he did this because he didnt want to subject you to a miserable life with him..he knew you would be miserable with him if he had stayed there and he didnt want to put you through that...god this was so much harder than you were expecting. "You know....now that im king of the golden kingdom money isnt an issue..and ive made sure the kingdom is a kind place that treats everyone with kindness." you see him slump down a bit. "and since monsters come nowhere near the kingdom...if you want, we can get to know each other better..and see how we feel about each other then?" he says softly, damn that man he was a looker. you sigh, almost relieved its turned out that way. saying you would like that

[heartbeatbookclub]

I've attempted cobbling together multiple different full-length essays on my thoughts on Yuri being autistic, something i've referenced multiple times on this blog virtually every time I do any deeper analysis of her character, partially as a means of pressuring myself, but mostly because I really don't think there's a way I can understand her character without this as a baseline. It's something that's really fundamental to how I see her character, and as something of an autist myself, it's something I feel pretty strongly about.

I've attempted making multiple full-length pieces on this. Emphasis on attempted. So, rather than doing a true full length analysis, I thought I'd just throw myself in and go a bit off the cuff.

Understanding is what follows Trust, quite literally immediately after. I think I've been underserving my point (and my own understanding) every time I've talked about the Side Stories directly without addressing the formatting and overall themes. I've got an extremely old draft trying to enunciate my fuller thoughts on it, but I doubt I'll ever take that anywhere, so here's this now: I think probably the broadest theme across all of them comes down to something like connection. Communication, miscommunication, words left unsaid and the fact that you never really know what's going on inside someone's head. And despite all of the individual problems which can create conflict and breed disconnect, the Literature Club is formed with the intent of being a club for everyone, where each person can come and feel safe expressing themselves, with the hope that they could find community. Which they succeed in.

I think, really, when you look at DDLC as a whole, its entire point can be condensed within this idea, and both the Side Stories and Base Game are just two different ways of viewing it. This post puts it pretty well, I think. There's this constant emphasis on the unseen side of someone, just beneath the surface.

"Can you hear me?"

Anyway, my broader point in leading with that is, each of the titles refer to specific ideas which the stories they contain deal with in great detail, usually as a central element to a given conflict, and revolving around some central thing that needs to be learned (further emphasized in Equals). They're obstacles to the connection they're trying to create. These traits are instrumental, both in terms of building the club as it comes to be, and in bringing each of the characters closer together, solidifying the connection between them in spite of their differences. I think in general you could also describe them as fundamental traits that go into creating the Literature Club as a concept, particularly on terms of the vision as a place people can feel comfortable expressing themselves in.

Trust is all about the relationship built between Sayori and Monika, and the...well, trust they build with each other. The trust they invest in one another, that leads to them sharing some of their deepest secrets with each other. It also, I think, represents the trust that's necessary in the environment they're trying to create (It's difficult to express your true self if you don't trust the people you're expressing yourself to, after all!) I think Trust sets out the modus operandi which the rest of the stories operate under; in order to create the environment which Sayori and Monika envisioned at the start, there are a few essential hurdles which need to be crossed.

I think Understanding having direct continuity from Trust is important in that sense. It's a direct showcase of their vision in action; from creating it in Trust, to making it a reality in Understanding. And in that sense, it showcases the first major hurdle they have to get over.

To get away from the whole subtextual analysis thing, Yuri's introduction does a lot in a short period to establish the kind of person she is. As Monika puts it: "intense". She jumps straight in to talking about her books as soon as she's sure she's in the right place, in a way that awkwardly (but effectively!) side-steps the attempt at introductions which Monika and Sayori give (a theme that becomes common as the story goes on), and gets straight to her point, that she wants to join their club, and that she really wants to share her books with them.

I also can't go on without at least mentioning this adorable little moment--

It's really obvious from the outset here that Yuri is very excited to have found a place where she can talk about her books; a place filled with people who seem to share a common interest with her, where she can find like-minded people to make friends with based on her love of fantasy literature. In fact, she seems so taken with this idea that she doesn't even seem to notice Monika or Sayori being put off at all by how overexcited she is. She gets so caught up in her own thoughts on the matter, in fact, that without a second thought with regard to the social consequence, she takes off to go and get her books once she realizes she didn't bring them.

I gotta be honest, I don't think Yuri was really paying attention to how this conversation was going, not to dig on her. There's a particular reason for that, I think.

I think she spent a whole lot of time running this entire moment over in her head, again and again.

That might seem like an obvious assumption, but I have some specific reasons why I think that, like the fact that she forgot Monika's name two separate times, or that she says she took the flier immediately but had to work up the courage to come in. I'd say even the fact that she feels the need to say that she "should be good enough" to join their club (as though there's a skill based barrier to entry in a school hobbyist club?) indicates that she probably spent a lot of time creating imaginary standards to check herself against just to be sure she'd be up to snuff in any serious literary debates.

I think her idea of a "Literature Club" is fairly similar to what MY idea of what a Literature Club would be when I first heard the title, and what I'm sure a lot of other people kind of envisioned: something like a book club. For books. And people who read books. Made for people to come in and talk about books. As a consequence, I think she excited herself building this idea in her head of a club at her school, filled with her peers, where she could go in person to meet like-minded people to talk with about something she's truly passionate about. It's all of these factors together that lead me to thinking she probably came in with a very one-track plan in mind, potentially as simple as "see if anyone there likes fantasy, see if anyone there likes annabelle dupont, makes friends by talking about annabelle dupont!" after doing a lot of thought on the matter, and considering a lot of what could go wrong.

I think that's why she pushes past the introductions quickly, and why she's so resistant to (or, maybe better put, uninterested in) small talk. When she came in, she had a few very specific, and very important thoughts in mind. She wanted to see if anyone in the club shared her specific interest, and she wanted to join their club. The introductions, the social element? That was mostly secondary to her real desire here. I'd say she even saw it more like an obstacle to what she wanted to do.

And this introduction, with this context in mind, leads me to a very particular idea about Yuri's whole deal.

Yuri is very passionate about literature, in particular a specific fantasy series by Annabelle DuPont, which she is very happy to gush about at length with likeminded people. Yuri lacks a great deal of intuitive social awareness, and has a tendency to get caught in her own thoughts pretty easily, social consequence be damned. This in conjunction with her obsessive interests can be very clearly seen to put off people around her, and impair her own ability to recognize when other people are put off by her. She takes a rather literal, straightforward approach to things, and is mostly uninterested in introductions as opposed to a conversation about her interests.

Guys...I think she might be Literally Me.

Okay, so I'm not going to pull out a full DSM-V diagnostic criteria list here, but the emphasis on her social dysfunction combined with her obsessive interest in a particular subject (in this case, with a particular overcomplicated fiction series) are some clear indicators, but it does go a bit deeper than that, imo. It's hard to really typify, but unironically, there are a lot of things to the way she's written that I just deeply identify with as an autistic person, coupled with some dense anxiety.

The moment of her pressing her knuckles against her cheeks is a pretty obvious example of stimming, something she does in this instance because she's too excited and happy to express the feeling in any possible words. Her immediate jump into asking about fantasy I think comes from the fact that this question was on her mind and she just needed to find a moment to ask it--something I find particularly relatable as a former child who could never find a good moment to interrupt a conversation. When you have something really strong on your mind that you really want to say and you're just looking for a good moment where you can finally break in and ask it and it just seems to never present itself so you just have to break in at some point even if it's awkward--whether that statement is "I want to join your club!" or "Do you like fantasy?" or "Is your shirt a reference to this band because their music literally changed the course of my life and if you like them I wanna be your friend". I view this as something of a consequence of autistic inertia (as in, the trouble many autistic people have of switching between tasks), particularly when you have to deal with engaging in a conversation you're currently in which you'd like to steer in a particular direction--or that you just want to jut this question into. This is, in my experience, one particularly common reason an autistic person might come off as blunt or tactless in conversation: sometimes you just wanna say something and you don't know how to do it naturally or politely. (At the very least, this is a common reason I've personally been called blunt or tactless.)

And of course, since I mentioned it without focusing much on it earlier: Yuri's intense focus on her books and what she's talking about leading to her not noticing how the other two are reacting is a neat little showcase of impaired empathy, though it's also a consequence of her hyperfocus on her own train of thought in that moment.

It's also a very nuanced, and I would say exceptionally real portrayal of autistic empathy. See, I've mentioned this before on this blog, here, but there's this funny little trope with autistic characters, where due to the idea of "impaired empathy" as an autistic trait being...rather ironically taken too literally, autistic characters are often presented with this unflappable confidence of having never been rejected by other people in their life, as though they can't even empathize enough with the idea of rejection to understand that they're supposed to feel negatively about it. As a consequence, autistic characters will often be written with this constant need to be insensitive, emotionless little weirdos, and any blunt, tactless, implied or explicit insults they share are just accepted because "they're autistic lolz", and they never advance from this perspective.

This is...needless to say, not a good way to portray autism, I can speak firsthand, hi, I know a shitload of autistic people and also I am one of those, what the fuck guys, at least make me a cool terminator robot or a Ryan Gosling character or something--anyway, more bluntly, it's also just inaccurate, and speaks to a misunderstanding of what autism even is. I think most portrayals of autism in Hollywood and TV are broadly misinformed about the autistic perspective (ignoring that there isn't really a universal autistic perspective...that's a broader discussion that's not important here tho), and the way they portray autistic people's experience with empathy is probably one of the most obvious examples.

Autistic people do not have some magical lack of empathy. It's not somehow impossible for autistic people to understand (or at least relate to) your feelings. It's just that there's often this extra little gap you need to bridge to really get there. It's a bit tough to really explain past general terms like this, especially since every person's experience with autism is different, but let me just elaborate on it on terms of Yuri, because she outright defies this very Hollywood idea of impaired empathy in a pretty nice way.

When the others react to Yuri's enthusiasm, she doesn't seem to really pick up that they're uncomfortable. She doesn't seem to notice their facial expressions, or the overall tone of the conversation, or how one-sided it really is. She gets one piece of positive affirmation from Monika ("Fantasy is cool.") and immediately latches on to that, ignoring the rest of the awkwardness of the conversation around it. She's not picking up the cues here that the others aren't on the same page with her, and it's only after she receives an admittedly very minor and well-meaning bit of pushback from Sayori that she realizes she might've gone a bit far. More specifically, it pumps the brakes on her excitement and forces her to be a bit more receptive to an actual conversation, which enables her to slow down, and in that way, reflect a bit more.

She doesn't let on anything about it immediately, but the following day, she apologizes, revealing that on reflection, she decided that she was being overbearing, and didn't consider anyone else's feelings in the matter. Here, even when Sayori pushes back on that, telling her she didn't do anything wrong, she's pretty set on apologizing, acknowledging she did do something wrong, and pulling back, instead letting other people take the lead. She states (her opinion) that nobody was actually interested in her book, and instead that they were just humoring her. When Sayori pushes further, indicating that she is interested, and it's something she really wanted to do as a club activity, Yuri immediately swaps to the other end of blaming herself, immediately questioning why she's being so resistant, when she wanted to do this anyway, then apologizing for "being like this".

The anxiety on display, the immediate turn to catastrophizing about how this situation can go wrong (or already has), something we saw briefly earlier when she talked about how she thought Monika might've spoken ill of her in the club when she received the flier, that's all one thing, but what seems plainly clear here is that there's a gap which isn't being bridged. Yuri doesn't actually understand Sayori's thought process, and Sayori doesn't understand Yuri's, and that's the fundamental conflict here. That's the real gap in understanding.

And that gap, between how one person looks at a scenario and how another views it? That is, in my view, the most fundamental element of autistic empathy. That's what fuels the disconnect. There's a lot of different traits which might make up an autism diagnosis, but the differences they create on terms of thinking and behavior aren't some magical other separated from neurotypicals as a class of people; there's always some fundamental logic to it, which you just need to take the time to understand.

Digressing--there's a lot of littler things around these moments that I tie to this view, like Yuri's issues with many people, or Yuri only seeking out people to talk about literature with online. I mean, when you consider it, it is kind of obvious to check around the posted clubs to see if there were any to suit her interest...so why didn't she? I think it was intentional, though unconscious. I think her decision to come to the Literature Club was actually fairly motivated by the fact that Monika outright placed the flier in front of her, creating an impetus for her to want to join, besides the fact that it seemed like it was perfectly made for her. There's now an active pressure for her to go, as opposed to a passive "oh that sounds nice..." you'd get from seeing it on the walls.

There's also that little back and forth between her, Sayori, and Monika, where she quickly focused on the framework Sayori created on the conversation rather than anything else (you say something, then I have to say something), then immediately struggled as Sayori broke that framework to do a quick bit with Monika, before turning back to her. Again, I think there's more struggle here with figuring out when it's her turn in a conversation, which is probably a big part of why she prefers to stay quiet.

On to them reading, there are even more little things, like Yuri's particular way of explaining the lore, introducing the series, and using paper to take notes and detail her thought process (which individually indicates that she seems to have a very particular and seemingly meticulous way she likes to enjoy her favorite series, and her desire to share it in EXACTLY the way she likes it, so she can be sure to get all of what she views to be most important about it, and of course, a need to be organized to keep all of her thoughts together and help visualize everything; this kind of alternative thing isn't just an autism thing, but autistic people tend towards using alternate forms of communication and visualization to help understand something in their own particular way, more on that disconnect), as well as that not so subtle example of her not picking up on Sayori's extremely mild sarcasm, or the fact that "you can't generalize intelligence" is quite possibly the most technical and autistic way of downplaying a compliment I've ever read committed to word. Oh, and Yuri's indignant little response to Sayori writing nonbook notes on the book notes page, minor and offhand as it is, indicates further that Yuri's a stickler for details.

Once they start reading, we see more of the actual issues Sayori has, which fills out the rest of the conflict. Both of them end up stuck in their head. In Sayori's case, her own inferiority complex builds this progressive sense that she's not doing good enough for Yuri, and that must be why she's not having a good time. Meanwhile Yuri becomes convinced that Sayori is just patronizing her (despite all appearances), in large part because of her past experiences with others, which I think is an especially important thing to address.

I've already touched a bit on the following conversation between Monika and Yuri here, but this part kinda just lays a lot of it bare. Yuri's great at talking about her interests, but struggles with anything else. She has a lot of trouble doing this kind of social reflection and trying to figure out what other people are thinking. She doesn't know how to bridge that gap. She's really bad with other people...and she's accepted that.

I think that's an especially important thing at play here, and it's where this whole conflict comes from.

Monika's able to bridge the gap in the first place, because she knows what to say to direct the conversation in a useful direction--to make Yuri trust her, and trust that it's okay for Monika to act in her interest, because she's club president. It's her job to try to help everyone feel welcome. Then, as they talk, she's finally able to work out what Yuri's actual problem is, peeling the wall back between them with trust, then bridging the gap with understanding. And Monika does understand! Because Sayori and Yuri...aren't so different.

Both Sayori and Yuri have this constant preoccupation with the fact that they aren't good enough. Yuri, in particular understands that she's an awkward, deeply weird person, and she can accept that about herself. Everybody seems to have one of a few different reactions to her. Realizing that she's weird, and awkward, and makes people uncomfortable...well, the only reason people must appear to be accepting of her is because they want to make her feel better about herself. To allow them to make themselves uncomfortable, to deal with all of her inability to be a more socially conscious and considerate person...that'd be evil. She'd feel guilty doing that. And the thought that she could be doing that to someone because she doesn't understand that they are just humoring her? That's one of the worst feelings in the world.

As a consequence of all of this, and her constant preoccupation with not doing that, with not taking advantage of another person's kindness, she overcorrects. She assumes that other people can only tolerate her being herself, being who she is, and not actually like her. They're patronizing her to pretend, and so the only way she can truly be accepted is by suppressing herself, or just not even participating.

She thought the Literature Club might be different, but the thing of it is, she is the problem. Not because she's somehow uniquely unlovable or because she's just gotta pull herself together and can't, but because her entire view of the situation is off.

I think a big part of this comes down to Yuri's previous experience with social rejection, which isn't directly detailed here, but is at least tacitly expressed. And I think a lot of this view of herself, as though she's some uniquely socially broken weirdo who will never truly fit in anywhere she goes, and can only find tolerance, not true acceptance, likely in some part comes from that rejection. That's probably why she focuses so much on her own interests, and in talking with people about them online.

That's probably why Yuri wasn't looking for a club that suited her interests at all. And it's why the Literature Club was something she really, really needed.

This...in particular, is why my view of Yuri's whole deal is specifically undiagnosed autism, and it's actually a pretty big part of why the entire thing sort of clicks for me.

Because fun fact! I didn't even have an inkling that I might be autistic until I was 19, despite plenty of evidence. The only reason I'm actually not diagnosed (shock, awe!) is the fact that my parents fought the school board on it so I wouldn't be placed in special ed. That's a whole other conversation, back to my point; A lot of Yuri's reflection on her social struggles is very relatable to me personally, particularly with her difficulties understanding why she is the way she is, and the shame that creates. Not even just in Understanding--a lot of what happens, a lot of what she talks about throughout the Side Stories is something I personally find relatable in a way that's hard to conceptualize for me without tying it to my own autistic experience.

To finish, I'll brush over a few quick thoughts and then talk about the conclusion in Understanding a little.

Both during the conversation with Monika and leading up to her breaking down in tears, Yuri has these sudden little outbursts; things she says before she even realizes she's saying them (This is something that happens in Self-Love, too!), and I just wanted to mention it, since I've done it too, sometimes. I've talked quite a bit before about how Yuri tries to keep a handle on her emotions, but when she does get emotional, things spill out. This is an especially common form of masking ("sometimes, masking is fighting to appear aloof at all times because emotion comes out too strongly to be controlled and expressed in a socially acceptable way"), and this particular kind of emotional outburst and breakdown is something which is a common consequence of it. It's gotta come out at some point, and when you're so used to maintaining that kind of control over yourself, emotional regulation can be especially difficult.

AND THEN SAYORI BRIDGES THE GAP BECAUSE SHE'S THE GOOOOOAAAAAATTTTTT--

ahem.

Sayori bridges the gap because she's the goat. finds her own way to peel back Yuri's walls. Just in time, too...

Creating a path for the two of them to be honest with each other, and (albeit...unintentionally?) preventing her from running away, all but forcing her to take her kindness to heart. Yuri finally just drops all pretenses and lets out all of the thoughts she's had this whole time. Monika created an environment where she could feel safe expressing these thoughts and not feel judged, and convinced Yuri that it would be the same with Sayori. So she's spilling her guts as a part of learning to trust other people. Now that she has, it's on Sayori to finish it, and bridge that gap. Mend the divide.

Yuri's speech, obviously, just reinforces everything I've been saying thus far. She wants to be a normal person, at her core. But she isn't normal. She knows that.

And the reason she's here is because she wants to make more friends...but this hasn't gone at all how she's expected. It hasn't gone to plan at all.

Sayori's here to show her that that's okay. Sometimes, things are messy. People are messy. It's not something that's easy to understand, and that's okay, you don't need to, totally.

And in turn, she shares her own anxieties, her own problems that she's been having, which shocks Yuri. This is another little element of empathy, but more of what I think this represents is self-image vs how others view you. Yuri points out--she did all she could to reassure her! She would never get frustrated with her while they were reading. She knows that.

But Sayori doesn't, and moreover other people can't just peek directly inside your head.

So to get these things across, you need to talk them out. Without communicating with each other, it's impossible to understand each other. People aren't mind readers.

But Yuri, being autistic, needs a great deal more help communicating, both on terms of understanding others, and explaining herself so others can understand. She says herself--she doesn't have good communication, so she needs others willing to reach out a little to bridge that gap, which is what the Literature Club is for.

Oh yeah and Yuri's comment about getting people's consent to be touched makes me chuckle because that's some shit I'd do. You know she was thinking about that from day one but didn't want to be rude about it, and now that they're being honest with one another, she's gotta say it, even just at the end of that huge emotional conversation. That's another point for bluntness.

This has been something I've had in the drafts for months, almost a year by now. It's the last major character analysis type deal I still had outstanding, and I've got piles and piles of notes. I've watched back over Understanding multiple times for material, and I have (as mentioned) multiple unfinished versions of this analysis. I wouldn't call this perfect, but it says most of what I've wanted to say for a while, including referencing most of the other major posts I've made on the subject. I might have more to say on the subject later, I might even correct a few things on this later, but as yet, these are my thoughts. She's got that certified autistic rizz guys

[placeinthemiddleofnowhere]

What were you thinking about when that buzzer sounded?

Pairing: König x Reader

Summary: You’re determined to find out why everyone thinks König is so scary, afterall he’s just some guy that’s taller than most people right? He’s probably harmless! Well, he’s a little scary, but you still like him anyway.

(No use of y/n or mention of gender/race)

AN: The latest chapter is finally here, and it is the penultimate chapter of the series. I hope to update this soon so you aren't left hanging too long for the finale, so fear not, I will put every effort into getting it written! Love you guys, and appreciate all the asks and comments you send me 🥰

Part 9 of A Rocky Start - Full Masterlist Here

-☠️- 

For a moment, while you swam between waking and sleeping, everything was dark. The floor felt like it was shifting from underneath you. Piercing noise filled your ears and rattled throughout your entire body. Barely a few seconds later your retinas were scorched by sizzling orange light. 

This isn’t right.

What’s happening?

You felt yourself frown despite the crackling ache that hammered into your skull, the wrinkle in your brow was more like a molehill. Even in the brilliant glow of the light around you, you couldn’t make anything out. You were only seeing hazy shapes and thinking thoughts that were barely more coherent. The piercing noise turned into a low buzz, though the room still felt like it was on an unsteady foundation. 

What happened?

Where were the others?

You strained a moment, breathing heavily and stretching your body out. Were you lying down? You looked downward at your crumpled form and groaned. You’d confirmed it alright, as if the cold damp ground weren’t proof enough. It was difficult to tell how long you’d been laying like that, however if the prickling in your arms and legs were anything to go by it had clearly been a while. 

You were struggling to try and work out what had happened. It felt like you were fighting for the last plank of wood in a shipwreck, your head feeling like it had been knocked and rolling in the foaming waves for some time before you’d come to. Though finally through the spray of racing thoughts you were able to grasp onto something more, a dull thudding sound that rhythmically beat behind you. A groan of anguish followed not long after, and then something that sounded like a string of choked curses. 

“Looks like your friend has awakened, Captain. Shall we give you a break…?”

You frowned deeper, but you didn’t get long to work out who those words belonged to before you were seized. Suddenly Your body was being hoisted up by a pair of rough hands and you were all but thrown down in a deeply uncomfortable metal chair. As if that wasn’t enough to contend with, the unexpected movement sent your stomach and head roiling into green sickness. As you slowly started to snap out of it, you came to realise you were being bound to the chair that you’d been slammed into. A couple of pairs of hands were grabbing you and fastening you tightly to the cold metal, leaving you all bound up like a christmas turkey. 

“You don’t look so good, Sergeant,” the voice from before taunted, sounding from somewhere above you. “But that makes sense, ah? My men already gave you quite the head wound back at the market. I wonder…are you even hearing me right now? Has your head been cracked open too many times now?”

You choked down the lump that had sat heavy in your throat and jerked your head up, facing the dark shape that had cast such an oppressive shadow over your eyes. Whoever it was, was standing in front of the light. You had no hope of seeing them, trying as you were.  

“Fu-...fuck you,” you muttered, blinking your eyes up at the silhouette of your tormentor. 

The man chuckled, a raspy sound that came from deep within his chest. 

“You’re not lost to us yet, I see.”

You gritted your teeth and continued to desperately try and focus your eyes on the man. Something within you was burning, there was bile trying to force itself upwards the longer you held your head up, though intuition told you it wouldn’t be much of a shame if you spat up on whoever it was that had captured you. 

“Who-oo are you?” you demanded, throat too dry to carry the threat you wanted.

“Oh, Sergeant, your condition might be worse than we’d feared. Don’t you recognise me?”

You shook your head up at the shadow man, growing tired of your confused state. Even tied to a chair you still couldn’t seem to piece together how you got there. The last thing you could recall was telling Soap and Ghost to run, warning them of an oncoming party of men that were approaching the back of the truck.

The trucks. 

That’s right, you’d stolen yourselves away on the trucks - you’d all been waiting to see where they’d set up camp. Except…. They hadn’t stopped at any kind of base. The trucks had stopped so that they could get some respite after having to quickly pack up and leave their old haunt - it had been Soap that had said something about that. Soap had translated something they’d said. 

Then König had said something through the comms…what was it again? He’d said-

“Am I not keeping your attention, Sergeant? How rude.”

If the disembodied voice wasn’t enough to tear you out of your thoughts, the slap that knocked your teeth together was. 

Fresh pain blossomed over your cheek and you groaned out. It only served to make you even more acutely aware of the sorry state your body was in. Everything was hurting and nothing felt right. You’d been in some scrapes in your life, but for the second time you were sure this was going to be the end of you. Slowly but surely, whoever it was that held you captive was going to rip you to shreds. 

At the very least, you decided you weren’t going to give him the satisfaction of finding it pleasurable. You weren’t going to beg for him. 

“Maybe you need a familiar face to wake you up properly.”

You glared up at the man above you, ready to spew vitriol that could outspark a petrol fire, but you didn’t get the chance. The wind was knocked from you when the chair was kicked on its side and you’d gone tumbling with it. Back on the grimy floor again, you thought, maybe if I’m lucky I’ll fall in a puddle and drown. 

Self pity had stopped you from immediately looking ahead. Though the moment you managed to concentrate on anything other than the searing pain that was winding itself around your wrists, ankles and back, you were unpleasantly surprised to see a thunderous face over on the other side of the room. One that looked much like you felt. 

“Price?” you croaked, locking gazes with his wide eyed stare.

He couldn’t answer you back. Price’s mouth was gagged with a thick piece of cloth, something like an old tshirt scrap. The fabric was wrapped tightly around his face and it was trapping all the expletives he’d normally be hurling from exploding into the tiny room. You strained as you looked at him, what was that that was dripping from his face? Had he been bleeding that much? It looked too thin to be blood alone.

You’d never seen the Captain like this before, he was in a sorry state. His face was sporting a rainbow of different bruises, and, from below that, swollen skin that had bubbled up into painful lumps. His armour and his weapons had been stripped from him, his jacket and hat as well, his hair was limply slicked back on top of his head. His shirt had been partially torn and that too was wet, it looked like they’d used a knife on him - you could see the bloody evidence in the form of a thick cut that striped roughly through his pecks.

“Price,” you said again, not quite sure what else to say. “Captain!”

You’d never seen him look so vehemently possessed by rage. He hadn’t even been this angry when he’d called you out for the whole König debacle. No, now that he was faced with you lying on the ground and lost for words he was the most furious you’d seen him in his life. If it weren’t for the gag, you’d have been convinced that he’d have spit fire.

“Speaking more confidently, Sergeant. This is good. Maybe now we can begin, yes?” 

“Begin what?” you spat. “You think you can learn anything from me?”

The man chuckled, the sound emanating as if from a wide rocky cavern. The sound filled the room uncomfortably, squashing you, causing you to wince just before you were picked up by the back of the chair and set right upright again. 

It was when you finally widened your eyes, that you were more clearly able to see the man in front of you. The sight of him made your heart drop. It was John Rousseau himself. His determined gaze was set on you as if he’d ripped himself free out of the photographs on your briefing documents and sprung to life in all his terrible glory. Though unlike the photographs, - taken when he’d been captured earlier on in his life- he was smiling now. He held something of a more deadly glint in his eyes. 

You were left speechless then. What were you to say to the man you’d been chasing all that time? Now that he was standing in front of you in the flesh, tight black clothes showcasing his rippling arms and powerful legs. You weren’t going to last long if he was going to keep kicking and hitting you, you knew that then. 

“This isn’t an interrogation, soldier - I don’t need to learn anything from you. We’re in the middle of making a very special video, a little gift for your superiors. They will get the benefit of seeing that you are alive - mostly. And they will know we are serious in our demands. In return they will give us back my brothers. If not then…you will not remain alive for much longer, will you?”

Rousseau’s widening smile reminded you of a venomous snake slithering out a dark crevice for the hunt. If that weren’t enough to unnerve you, the sound of something metal being scraped across the ground and the following rush of sloshing water lapping against its edges was enough to do the trick. All at once you realised exactly what Rousseau intended to do. 

Price roared from the otherside of the room, in the corner of your vision, struggling futilely against his impossible bindings. Though you didn’t focus much on him. A shadow crossed the room and you painfully twisted your head to meet the barbarian that made it. You watched as another familiar face, the man from the market that had killed his associate, stood silently above you. He held a cheap old digital camera aloft in his hands and smiled slyly, giving you your last glimpse of cruelty before a cloth was forced over your face and the world went dark once more. 

They were going to do to you exactly what they had done to Price. Finally you knew why he was so wet. Your body shook.. You could hardly breathe. Though you had to. Your training demanded it. You’d been waterboarded before, though now it wasn’t going to be a test. This was the real deal, there was no end goal in sight. You could hear the bucket being lifted off the ground, it was almost too late to remedy your panic.

No, you had to steel yourself. 

Deep breath in, soldier. 

And Hold it.

Hold it.

-☠️-

Ghost and Soap stood over the group in front of them with expressions so solemn that they could've dropped birds from the sky. Soap kept wincing as he’d shift his weight and forget his bad leg, and Ghost couldn’t stop staring off to the side, clearly replaying what had happened, turning it over and over in his mind until his eyes glazed almost grey. It was clear to see that neither one could reconcile with what had just gone down. 

After a moment of empty silence, considering what to say, both the men eventually recounted what had happened to the others, facing Laswell and the rest of the men with their blank eyes and flat voices as they tried to stay professional. No matter how hard they tried though, their minds still lingered on the soldier they’d left behind, ceaselessly wondering what had happened to you.

Around halfway through your impromptu truck ride, with you on top while the two men hid inside, Gaz had reported that his group had reached exfil and regrouped with the rest of the team. Most of the remaining soldiers had made it there, along with a very rattled Laswell who’d explained to everyone that the safe house had been compromised and Price had been taken by surprise, caught in a trap laid out by the first rogue truck that had left the compound. Ghost, Soap and you of course had heard this through Gaz’s comms, one of the last lines to remain working - the other’s had faced multiple blasts and close combat bouts.

From that moment, now that they had contact and were aware of where Rousseau was headed, everyone was concentrating on regrouping with your team. They were tracking your signal and speeding along in the last of the working vehicles, hoping and praying they could reach the trucks and bring everyone back.

The men’s eyes flicked between each other as they let the story unfold, remembering what it was like standing in the almost pitch black of the cargo container while you lay above them. The tension that had yet to leave their bodies, only had them straining their tired muscles more. 

Soap told everyone about you hissing over the line from above, telling him and Ghost about the trucks slowing down. You’d asked for orders and Soap had looked warily at Ghost then, watching as the man loomed over him and quietly searched for an answer. He’d curtly told you to lay low and stay quiet, tell them if anyone got out. It wasn’t long before you reported just that, and Soap had plastered himself to the doorway, straining to try and hear what they could be saying out there. 

His French was rusty, rustier than his Spanish, but he was able to make out parts of a conversation that had broken out. They were talking about how glad they were that they could finally stop, one said something about needing to piss, the other laughed with him and said it was a wonder he’d managed to hold it in through the blasts. Another man had approached them and shouted over, saying that they needed to check the cargo first and ensure it wasn’t damaged or he’d make sure they’d never piss right again. 

It was at that point, that it was evident that you all had to move. Though none of you could think of a way to make it past the small army undetected, especially if Ghost and Soap were required to burst from the creaking metal doors. Therefore, they’d decided to go with the distraction that you’d come up with, not a great one, but one that gave them a semblance of a shot to get away nonetheless. 

König had intervened, he’d cut into the conversation with a new level of fury and demanded that you rethink your plan. ‘You can’t do this! Don’t you dare go ahead with this suicide mission!’ He thought it was sheer stupidity to throw a frag out into the middle of the group and just hope that they were too distracted by the fallout to track the direction it had come from. He’d all but ordered you to wait for the team to reach you all, but you’d argued back, saying that they couldn’t count on not being discovered until then. They were too far away. 

You’d told him you loved him over the line, seemingly uncaring what the rest of the team thought of it now, and said that he had to let you work. Next thing they knew, you were informing Ghost and Soap that you were sending the frag out. It was difficult to hear König’s frenzied screams after that, they were just higher notes floating on top of the discordant din that was soon to follow. 

When you’d pulled the pin all hell had broken loose.

Ghost and Soap clattered from out of the truck and you scrambled down from the top, rejoining the two men before sprinting like hell into the thin treeline. The wood’s were no longer as lush in the place they’d stopped, probably by design so they would know if they were being approached. Unfortunately it meant they were able to track your group running away as well. You could hear the distant sound of their cries start to get closer again. 

Gunfire had broken out, peppering the air with loud shots. What seemed like hundreds of soldiers but was probably a group of around twenty, chased you all down and shot at your feet. They were demanding that you all stop, shouting in English and French and possibly other languages too. 

For a wondrous minute it had seemed like you all might get away with your lives, but just as you hit a thicker portion of the woods, a single grenade was tossed in your direction and all of you were sent flying. 

Ghost took over the report then. Soap’s voice cut out as he remembered the sickening churn of his stomach just before he’d blacked out. He was struggling to keep aloft. Only the thought of you out there somewhere kept him standing, the thought of your determined eyes as you fought like hell for the two men that had been intent on icing you out. All because they thought you were going to break up the team from your fooling around… And what did all that matter now?

Ghost slyly knocked his elbow into Soap, getting him to stay out of his mangled thoughts before he continued. He told everyone how Soap had been knocked out when he’d hit the ground, but you and he were still awake. 

Soap had managed to rouse again, but he was hardly up to walking after his dodgy landing - never mind running unassisted on that bad right leg. Ghost wasn’t feeling a hundred percent either after being slammed into a thick tree trunk, but he was able to carry on. He’d tried to insist that you should help with Soap and you could all run together, but you’d shaken your head and denied him any assistance. You’d told him to take Soap and send the others forward, he had to direct them to you, or they’d never find you all in time you’d said. You could defend yourself from there, you’d assured them you could do it.

Ghost had tried to reason with you, pleaded with you not to be a fucking idiot, but you weren’t hearing any of it. You pulled out your gun, like a knight drawing their sword for the last stand, and told him simply that he could insult you after the job was done and you’d recovered Price. You’d reminded him that when you were all home safe, there would be a meeting to discuss your forbidden relationship, and he could get all of his famous remarks on record as well. Ghost’s face soured at the memory, but from there everyone was all caught up on what had happened. 

He and Soap had reached the others and then they had pushed forward. Only, they didn’t find you by the rocks, or in the place where the trucks had been. That spot was empty save for a few men that had stayed behind to try and fight them off and prevent anyone from following. It was then that they knew they’d lost you and Price and the mission was over. They had failed completely. 

König had heard enough. He’d been listening to their little tale with a curled lip that quickly turned to a full sneer and with every passing second that he spent revising over the details of their quest of incompetence, he felt his body temperature rise by another degree. He was so angry, he was shaking. 

He stormed forward, slicing through the team of men that stood between him and Ghost with precision, ramming the Lieutenant down before he could think to do anything. It wasn’t possible to stop him, he’d borne down on Ghost with an animal force and soon he was swiping and clawing at him like he might take out his throat. The screams that were bursting out of him were nothing short of feral. 

“It should have been you! You should’ve stayed behind, you rat fucking bastard. You lead your team on a suicide mission and yet here you stand telling us all about how we failed. You failed, you failed Ghost! You failed Sneak! Do you hear me? I will tear you apart! I will rip the skin from your bones and burn what’s left of you and then I will piss on your ashes, you fucking swine!”

“König!”

Horangi tried to be his voice of reason, but König was too far gone. He was incensed. 

As if it weren’t bad enough that the love of his life had professed their love while they actively ensured their own destruction, he now had to listen to the Lieutenant prattle on about what had happened as if you hadn’t been pressured into being the sacrificial lamb. It was too much to bear. His head was ringing with your love confession and with the thoughts of what those men could be doing to you even as he tried to tear Ghost apart. The images were inspiring him to further cruelty, echoes of past sins and future vows. 

König continued to pummel Ghost, trying to target his weak spots with prejudice, but he didn’t get to keep the upper hand for much longer. The Lieutenant wasn’t going to allow himself to be turned into mince. He wasn’t any good to Price or you if he let himself face König’s punishment.

Ghost grabbed out at König’s wildly swinging fists and caught one, using the moment of struggle to punch him in the ribs and swing round so that he was on top of the Austrian. König howled and flailed like a banshee, but he couldn’t do much of anything once he was on his back. Gaz and Horangi had joined Ghost, they assisted in pinning König down and now his shouts were reduced to heavy breaths as he stilled against the pressure. He was like an alligator with its mouth taped shut, the moment that the binding came off he was determined to strike again, bite through his prey in one clean motion. 

Soap stood watching in horror from above the little skirmish. His face was paling to an ill shade. It was then that it finally occurred to him that maybe you hadn’t thrown away your position on a stupid fling. You weren’t turning your back on your family, you had just found someone else worth letting in. Why else would König sound as if he was ready to face death itself for you? You both had to be far closer than anyone could have comprehended. 

Soap was left blinking silently as he gazed up at Ghost and then to Gaz, wondering, had they realised the same thing?

“König you need to calm down,” Ghost advised, voice straining as he fought through the pounding headache that blossomed in the base of his skull. 

“Ghost…” König trailed, thinking on his words for a moment. “Unless Sneak is returned safely, I will never be calm again. In fact, I will make it my personal mission to break you. I will take you to some god awful hole somewhere and make sure that you live long enough through your torture to forget what daylight looks like. Only once you’re empty, will I bury the shell of you alive!”

Ghost’s left eye twitched, the lid took a moment to settle. König could hardly have known that he’d strike a nerve, but as he saw Ghost’s expression behind his mask he let his mouth curve into a smug grin behind his hood. Even if he couldn’t hit him physically he could settle for mental warfare. 

Ghost struggled not to take his revenge. There was a brief moment of inner turmoil where he wanted to reach out and smash every tooth out of the mercenary’s head, but there was a voice in his head that demanded he didn’t. They needed every resource they had to retrieve their missing Sergeant and Captain. As much as he hated König, he couldn't deprive the team of an effective member, and loathe as he was to admit it he knew you’d need someone to come home to.

Ghost rose up off of König then, silently glaring down at him before he looked over at Laswell. His golden lashes caught the light, and then so did his eyes, showcasing the dangerous glint that settled just underneath the surface. 

“Well, until we find Sneak and Price, why don’t you just keep yourself under control. Yeah?” He said gruffly, stepping away from König before he got second thoughts about beating him to a pulp. 

König was allowed back up again, only when the others were sure he wouldn’t try and tackle Ghost. He hated having all their eyes on him. He’d never felt so afraid in all his life and now he was being put under a microscope by people that, as much as he tried not to for your benefit, he despised. 

Horangi was his saving grace. His old friend turned to the others and shooed them off with a jerk of his head before he turned back and gave König a sympathetic tilt of his head. He knew better than to try and offer any words of comfort or to try and stick around. König was beyond calming, it was obvious to see from his flexing hands and narrowed eyes. 

König’s mind was a storm of emotions. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so much, so deeply. He was furious with you, upset that you would throw your life away just to try and save the stupid teammates that had gotten you into such a predicament in the first place. His heart tore thinking of you trying to salvage your relationship with your brothers while they let you fall to the enemy.

Most of all though König felt terribly frightened. For once he had no control over the situation. He couldn’t smash his hulking body at the problem, nor threaten his way to the outcome he wanted. He just had to wait and hope that you would be alive somewhere and that you were ok. He could feel his breaths shorten at the thought of you being hurt by those awful men. Men just like him - men with no qualms about ignoring any sense of empathy in order to get a job done.

Was the world punishing him?

For some reason König couldn’t help but feel that whatever happened to you was his fault. Was it the divine justice? After all the people he’d torn through, all the faces he’d beat unrecognisably in the name of getting the job done, was one of his most treasured people going to be lost to him in exchange for his misdeeds? You were the one that had called him out on it all, how could you be the one to pay? 

König felt dizzy, as if the world were spinning double time and the sky was waving and distorting in his vision. The light blue and purple hues were starting to fade with the closing light, and soon enough the sky would fall completely to black. Were you being kept somewhere dark? Did they have you bound and screaming? 

He thought he was going to be sick. 

All of a sudden he was locked in a glass cage, everyone around him was muffled and his body was constricted. He couldn’t breathe. He was cursing internally, gasping for air all the while. 

Why couldn’t you have fucking taken me instead?

“König.”

König’s eyes flicked up, he jerked when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Suddenly he realised he’d been standing with his arms wrapped tightly around his body like a safety harness and let his hands drop to his sides. He peered down at the man connected to that stupidly brave hand and then locked eyes with Soap.He sneered, throwing the appendage away from himself before he gave into the compulsion to break it.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” König hissed.

“Laswell’s ordered us to move, mate,” Soap answered softly. 

König looked off to the spot that everyone had been gathered in before, and realised that they’d all begun dispersing into the transports. Everyone was heading along to the beaten up trucks and piling in like cartoon clowns. Ghost was at the head of them all, König didn’t miss him, keeping a wary eye on Soap and König  as he directed everyone else. 

König laughed darkly to himself and started walking. Ghost didn’t need to worry yet. There was still time to save you, they were all safe for the time being. While you remained alive. 

“Kind of you not to leave me behind,” König said, his voice coming out harshly through his gritted teeth. “Better you stay away though. You’ll convince me give into my temptations if you give me too much opportunity, Sergeant.”

König expected Soap to turn tail and run ahead of him then, but was surprised and annoyed when he noticed him keeping pace as they walked to the trucks together. It made König wonder if Soap wanted him to break again. 

“You and Sneak have been seeing each other off base, haven't you?”

König stopped in his tracks again and locked eyes with Soap, looking for whatever evil had to be lurking in the abyss of blue. However if there was any ill intent, he couldn’t see it in his body language. Soap looked at him in earnest.

“Why would you bring that up?”

Soap ran a hand through his frayed mohawk and looked away for a second, nervously meeting König’s eyes again once he gathered his courage. 

“Well you’ve been…” Soap paused for a moment, searching for the right word, “datin’, right?”

“This is hardly the time for your morbid fascination with our relationship,” König sneered, finally walking ahead again. 

“It’s not morbid fascination.”

“Then what?”

“This team has been Sneak’s life for a long time now - we’re a family. When I thought they’d gone behind our backs and fooled around, was going to break up the team for the sake of some fun I was angry…but I know that’s not what it was now. So I just wanted to say I'm sorry.”

“Sorry? You’re sorry are you? I would never ‘fool around’ with Sneak,” König growled. “You all wanted to see our relationship with each other as a stupid crush because none of you think of me as a person. I’m not some dog that they picked up off the side of the road, I’m a man the same as you. I love Sneak with everything that I have. And now you’re claiming to love them too after the way you acted? Sorry doesn’t cut it. You and Ghost, fuck, the whole 141 failed Sneak. Don’t come to me with your pathetic apologies, Sergeant.”

König didn’t give Soap any time to answer his verbal lashing, not that he had much of anything to say to that. How could he stand and defend himself when he’d been the cause of your guilt and the reason that you’d felt pushed to send him and Ghost to their safety while you fell? He was motionless as König picked a truck to settle into, picking a relatively empty section of the bed that only grew more sparse as the other men inside scrambled to keep their distance.

Soap stared a minute longer, but he was forced to move when he realised he was one of the last to load up. His feet marched automatically, but his head never left the conversation. He’d think about it until the moment he knew you were safe again. He had to be able to get his chance to apologise properly, he had to prove that he loved you no matter what, even if Price wouldn’t let you stay on the team. He could live without working with you, but he couldn’t go on knowing he’d been the cause of your death. 

König watched Soap trudge toward Ghost and closed his eyes, willing his breaths to remain steady and for his tears to stay safely welled behind his lids. He couldn’t let himself cry. It felt too much like admitting that you were dead already. Then where would that leave him?

Instead, he put his hand into his trouser pocket and clasped at the little wooden bird that had stayed safely hidden inside. His thumb traced along the smooth stretch of the swallow’s back and towards its beak, gently landing on the tip. He silently hoped that wherever you were, you’d feel the gentle kiss of his spirit and know that you would be safe again. However improbable that was - it was the only thing that could give him any thought of comfort.

-☠️-

It’d been a long and sweaty ride over to the next town, for the start of the journey anyway. Toward the end, night was falling and the temperatures cooled dramatically, suddenly leaving the soldiers glad for all of the heavy layers they were wearing. It made some of them look at König, Horangi and Ghost jealousy, for once, wishing that they too had full face coverage in the chill of the dark winds.

Ghost’s eyes had remained far away for the duration of the ride. No matter what Soap or Gaz said, they couldn’t get him to focus much on them. He was completely distant. It was as if his consciousness was held hostage from within his body, like his mind was replaying the days events over for him and holding him to his mistakes. Though when Soap had been brave enough to try to confirm his suspicions of Ghost’s guilt he was greeted with a ‘fuck off’ for his efforts. 

Gaz put his hand on Soap’s shoulder, then gave him a gentle look. It had Soap swallowing thickly at the lump in his throat and soon enough he was looking away, doing everything not to turn into a screaming wreck in the wake of his dark eyes. Gaz looked away too. 

“We’ll get them back,” Gaz mumbled, patting Soap’s shoulder again before he removed his hand. “At least for now, we know that they have each other.”

“Aye, and how do we know that?” Soap said bitterly.

“What do you mean?”

“We don’t know that they’re together. They could be holding them separately or could have them blindfolded and gagged. Hell, they could’ve killed one of them and only taken one back with them - there’s a lot more risk having two soldiers. We have no idea if Price and Sneak are-”

“Shut the fuck up, Soap,” Ghost growled. 

Gaz and Soap’s eyes flashed over to Ghost in an instant. His tone was hard, and his slouched posture straightened back and returned all of his missing height. 

“We’ll get em’ back,” he vowed. “Or we die trying.”

Ghost had no way of knowing quite how daunting that promise would be in light of things to come. Though when they finally reached a safe place to stop and reconnect with command back home, the severity of the situation landed upon all of them like a ton of bricks. 

Laswell and Ghost managed to wrangle an empty room and took a private call with General Morrison. It was then, in the dark of that claustrophobic room, that they learned about the ransom video that had been sent over during their journey to their makeshift base - a tiny village with a few homesteads and farm land. 

The general didn’t seem to want to give much detail about the video, he was shifty with them both. It was only from some not so polite prodding from Ghost, that the General revealed that they weren’t permitted to have any dealings with the terrorist group. 

“They’re going to splash this all over the fuckin’ press general. This is going to be a disaster, and you’re saying that our response to this is to just do nothing?” Ghost spat.

“It’s all about optics, Lieutenant, you know that. The Captain and Sergeant will be a great loss, but we can’t be seen to be releasing criminals like stray dogs after said dogs were convicted of kidnapping civilians and blowing up markets. We can’t make the deal.”

“Then fuck the deal!” Ghost said, glaring into the camera lens with hot fury.

Laswell baulked, quickly realising that Ghost was going to get himself into trouble if she didn’t step in. She put a hand on his arm and looked pointedly toward the laptop, hoping to appeal to any shred of decency that might be lingering in the greying general’s arsenal. 

“I think Ghost is trying to suggest that we put a team together and we track them down. We get our people back and take down that bastard Rousseau once and for all, sir.”

The harsh lines in the general’s old leathery face settled and his stare was neutral once again. Laswell untensed too. Only Ghost was left seething, he wasn’t going to be calmed at a time like this. The only thing that would put him at ease was knowing that you and Price were going to be returned safely. That wasn’t going to be anytime soon.

“John Price is a good man,” the general said after a long pause. “I can grant you a small team, but it can’t be on record. If this blows up, you’re on your own.”

“And if it goes well it was all a great effort organised by the cunning officers who sat bravely by their desks.” Ghost muttered. 

Laswell kicked out at Ghost from under the table and was grateful that the general didn’t seem to catch his snide remark from through the terrible connection. She quickly smiled toward the laptop and nodded curtly. She could work with a few men, and she was pretty sure she knew of where to get a few more. 

“Thank you, General Morrison. We’re grateful for the aid. I’ll have my people try to find out what we can and once we gather enough intelligence we’ll move in on the target.”

“Good luck, Laswell,” The general said warmly, face going cold when he stared to her left. “Ghost.”

From there the screen went black. Ghost and Laswell were left discussing plans, Laswell messaging her contacts as they talked, both agreeing that they would find a way to reach out to Farah while they formed a potential team. It was all a matter of muscle memory. They sparingly used your names while they were talking. It helped to keep emotion out of it. 

However, they didn’t get to remain like that for long. 

They had to find the video so that Laswell could send it to her intelligence sources and as soon as they were exposed to those first few painstaking seconds, it was all so real again. This wasn’t one of their usual jobs, this was a rescue effort to save two of their own. Two of their family members, that as they were speaking, were being hurt in all manner of horrible ways just to emphasise the sincerity of Rousseau’s threats. He was so morbidly calm as he stood making his demands from in front of the horrible abuses just inches behind him. 

When it came time to tell the others what was going on, Ghost and Laswell were practically as flat toned as the general. It was taking a lot for them to go through it all, to explain that at that present moment they had to sit tight and wait for transport to take them away so that they could go back to base and refresh and resupply while you and Price passed the hours in unknown amounts of agony. 

No matter how matter of fact they tried to keep things, it didn’t stop König from speaking up and forcing everyone into reality. He waited until everyone had been dismissed to reappear in front of Ghost. His steps were heavy and slow, his strides purposeful as he got into the Lieutenant’s face once again.

“I want to see the video.”

“No.”

Ghost’s answer was simple, no nonsense. There was no room for discussion. He folded his arms and straightened his back, ensuring that he was able to steady himself against the bigger man’s potential attacks. Luckily for him he could see Soap and Gaz nearby should he try to start a scrap again. His personal animal control unit. 

“What do you mean no?” König grit out.

“It’s not a good idea” Ghost reaffirmed. “You don’t need to see that.”

“I have to see it. I have to know what they’ve done! Show me the Video!”

“It won’t help, König,” Laswell said, appearing at Ghost’s side. “We watched it to the end and it was…it’s something that will haunt me for a long time. It was bad, but Sneak and Price don’t seem to have any permanent damage. Take that as a comfort and refrain from watching that awful thing.”

König clutched harder at the little bird inside his pocket, holding it so tightly that the beak felt like it was going to pierce a hole through him. He was so hot. Even despite the dreadful cold of the night, he felt like he was going to overheat and his limbs were going to vibrate out of their sockets.

“No permanent damage,” König repeated. “What have they done then?”

Ghost and Laswell exchanged a brief glance. The air was thick between them, like they were looking through water. 

“We need to know,” Soap said, coming to stand by König. “When we find them, we’ll need to know how bad they are.”

“Soap, don’t do this,” Ghost sighed.

“He’s right,” Gaz said, taking his stand between the two parties. “Tell us what happened.”

“Or show us,” König said darkly. 

Ghost glared through the dark hollows of his skull mask,  it really did feel like he was the grim reaper. He was the harbinger of doom. It chilled him to have to think about the horrible sounds and the terrible things he’d seen. He even wished he had just looked away at some point, but he couldn’t, he had to force himself to face it. It was his fault they were suffering, he’d thought to himself.

“They were waterboarding them,” Ghost revealed, “beating them too.”

Everyone was quiet, taking in the information. 

“That’s not all, is it?” König asked.

“They stripped them down with knives and left em’ tied up and naked on the chairs while Rousseau spoke. They posted it up on social media, the video is everywhere despite the efforts to get it deleted. They weren’t doing very well. I think Sneak had taken in a lot of water, they were covered in sick.”

König felt his palm slicken and looked down, tilting his head when he noticed his trouser pocket turn from beige to bright scarlet red. One of the swallow's wings had broken off under the stress of his grip and lodged itself splintered side down into his hand. Now he stood motionless, looking down at the mess with empty fascination. He didn’t even feel the sting of it. He couldn’t get past the sight of his blood, the same colour as the tint in his vision. 

He slowly withdrew his hand and inspected the tender flesh, gently pulling the wing from his cut and depositing it back into his ruined trousers with the rest of the broken bird. From there his plasma continued to drip, a flow of bright red washing over his hands like a tiny trickling fountain. 

“You said, your people are on this Laswell, yes?” König asked, not looking up to see the disconcerted stares of the 141. 

“...yes,” Kate confirmed, hesitating to answer. “They’re trying to see if they can find a source or get any clues from the room they’re in.”

She was scared that this was going to König’s final tipping point. The room was too quiet, there was too much electric energy charging through the air. It felt too much like the calm before an earthquake. 

“Ok,” König replied, his voice sounding far away. “I should go deal with this…I will clean this up. I will fix it. It will all get fixed”

With that he disappeared like a spectre, trailing out of the room and out into the night as if he might completely disperse into nothing. It was like watching a plastic bag float away in the wind, no one could be sure of where he was off to. 

“Should one of us…y’know?” Gaz asked, directing his head toward the open doorway. 

“Maybe go find Horangi and see what he says,” Ghost shrugged. “He knows König best.”

“And the rest of us?” Soap asked, feeling his own fists clench at the thought of the video. 

“We rest up and wait until we can give those cunts the pincushion treatment,” Ghost said, looking down to Soap’s leg. “You think you’ll be able to heal?”

“I feel better already knowing we’ll take those fuckers down,” Soap said, a ghost of a smile playing on his face. “Payback’s gonna be a bitch.”

-☠️-

“Bloody hell.”

Your eyes snapped open and you looked over to Price, watching as he slowly rose up against the wall and struggled to right himself. Your gaze flashed off to the side as soon as the ratty old blanket that’d been draped over him started to slip. Not that you hadn’t seen what was underneath it already, at that point you were just trying to do him a courtesy. 

“Good to know you haven’t left us,” you said weakly. 

From out of the corner of your eye you noticed him rush to fix his blanket, the whoosh of material sweeping up his body was like music to your ears. Knowing that he had the wherewithal to cover himself seemed like a good sign. You offered him the best smile that you could, more of a grimace really, and scanned over his face. It didn’t look much better than from when he’d been sleeping. His left eye was swollen almost completely shut and his mouth was still flecked with dried bits of blood and god knows what else that had stuck to his beard. 

If there was anything to be grateful for in that moment it was the fact that they’d dropped the buckets of water over you after they’d finished recording that awful video. It’d at least cleared the putrid sick from crusting into your battered bodies. Some relief. Not that it helped with the pain that pulsed through you like a lightning strike. 

“Where the fuck are we?” Price groaned, spitting out a clump of phlegm to his side. 

You winced.

“No idea. I only woke up maybe a few minutes ago,” you sighed. “I remember them dragging us down a hallway and then being outside…I dunno, things are spotty for me.”

Price nodded and cast his sore eyes around the cell, looking from the dark metal walls to the crackling painted floors, to the little lamp in the corner that cast long shadows from your bodies and to the few feet between you, and finally he looked to the solid door on both your right sides. He groaned then and shifted his position, almost fumbling and crashing forward as he forgot to account for the bindings on his wrists and ankles. 

“Fuck me!”

You remained quiet, glueing your eyes to the floor. There was something that felt so inherently disrespectful about looking at Price when he was like that. You’d never caught him in such a moment of vulnerability before. It was like seeing your father cry. 

“I think we’re on some kind of transport, a truck maybe,” you said quietly. “They probably have us on the move so that they can’t be infiltrated again.”

Price grunted, barely acknowledging you as he struggled piteously from his side of the tiny cabin. 

You tested your own restraints again, peering down at the cable ties that were painfully stretching around your wrists from over the scratchy blanket. The fabric was old and stained, a faint smell of fish emanated from it that you preferred not to think too much about. Nothing about the situation gave you any hope- it seemed awfully like you were the characters in the movie that wouldn’t make it. Maybe they’d give you both a few medals for your sacrifices.

You shivered at the thought.

“Have you tried to break the ties?” Price asked, pointedly breaking you out of your stupor. 

“I attempted it when I woke up, but I don’t have much strength,” you said. “My ribs feel fucked. They’ve bruised them, if they haven’t broken them all the way. Hurts to move.”

“Bloody mediaeval cunts!” Price cursed. “They must’ve been planning this for months now. We fucked ourselves listening to anything those animals had to say to us.”

“I guess we underestimated how far Rousseau was willing to go to get his brother back. All those other men too.”

“Didn’t count on a snake like him to get sentimental.”

“Well, he seems plenty sentimental. Got us back something bad for that little redecoration job we forced him to make,” you noted, seething as you tried to laugh off your predicament. 

“Some upgrade he got,” Price said sourly, “Wonder how the fuck he managed to set all this up. By all rights he should barely have any men left after what we’ve done.”

“I dunno, he had a whole lot of pick up trucks and a couple transports on the move. Probably had about one hundred men still loyal to him in just that group. No telling who else he has scattered around.”

“There were other trucks? I only saw two. The one that I was chasing and the one that came up behind us. How many did you see? Matter of fact, how’d you even end up here in the first place, Sneaky?”

You held your breath - though not for long. Your lungs still dully ached from doing that too much already. At the sound of the whooshing air leaving your body and bouncing off of the metal walls, Price immediately narrowed his one good eye. 

“What happened?”

“It’s…a long story,” you said quietly. 

“I have time,” Price snorted, looking around the cabin for effect.

You huffed out a breath at him and clutched at your side, feeling the pain shattering up your ribs like the crack of a whip. This was it. Who knew if you were going to live to even see the end of the day. You didn’t even know what day it was, or if it was even day time at all. You were finally going to tell him the truth.

“Me, Ghost and Soap were all tracking the trucks after they blew the old base. Gaz, König and Horangi went to exfil to try and regroup with the other teams. We were all supposed to reconvene and try to find you together but...we got held down by their forces and Soap took a bad hit to his leg.  I told Ghost to take him and go get the others. They didn’t make it in time though,” you said, voice cracking as you recalled the foggy events like a broken down projector.

“Why the hell would Ghost leave you by yourself against an entire force of men?” Price growled, body snapping to attention. 

“Because I forced him to.”

“Why?”

“Because they can go on and do some good, they’ll be able to avenge us and keep taking down the Rousseaus of the world. I wasn’t worth saving,” you said bitterly. 

“Don’t you fucking dare say that. Why the fuck would you say that, Sneak?”

The look in his eyes was enough to shatter a million hearts. His anger could’ve melted the walls down, it beat so palpably between you both. It only made you hang your head in shame to think you were going to disappoint him. To think that that fierce protectiveness was going to be overridden by disgust.

You couldn’t keep lying to him anymore. You couldn’t leave the world weighed down by your secret. 

“Because I was only going to be kicked off the team after this mission. I…I went against your orders. I’ve been seeing König for months now. The guys found out about the relationship. It wasted time and caused an argument that could’ve got us killed if we’d hung around the base much longer. I fucked up Price, I went against my word to you and I’ve only gone and gotten us killed! This is all my fault!”

You threw your head against the metal behind you, feeling the tears weigh you down like canon balls and sobbed. No matter how pathetic you felt, you were at a complete loss of control. Everything hurt, your throat constricted and dried like sand, the noises you emitted were barely human. 

It was all crashing down on you, the full weight of your cursed  fate coming to fall on your lap. 

This was all you deserved for going behind the team's back. You were probably going to die a slow horrible death, getting thrown in front of camera after camera until there wouldn’t be enough of you left to send back home. Every piece of you would be ripped away by whatever dark hole they chose to make a stop at, until you would become another part of the world’s fabric. Another soul for someone with willing hands to take.

Even despite that horrible line of thought, the thing that hurt you most was knowing that König would remember your last moments together spent in bitterness, and that would be all he’d have to hold onto. He’d think that you had turned on him again, he would be so full of hatred for what you’d done to him. You’d burst down his walls only to go and reinforce exactly why he’d had them in the first place. You wished you’d told him more than just that you’d loved him. You wished you could tell him that despite everything that had happened, he was worth it all, you loved every second that he shared himself with you. 

You would still rather walk willingly to your death a thousand times than put König or anyone else at risk. 

“...Sneaky. Hey! Are you listening to me…fuckin’ hell. Oi! Sneaky!”

Price’s voice somehow managed to break through the impassable swell of your emotion and soon his face was in front of yours, demanding to be looked at. You felt yourself frown, sniffling as you wondered how on earth he’d managed to shuffle all the way over to you in his condition. Even with his hands and feet tied, and his vision probably barely there, he had launched himself over to you and exploded through the barrier of your guilt. 

“Listen to me. Breathe. In and out. In and out. Breathe with me! In and out. In and out…”

You gulped sickened gasps of air and tasted the salt of Price’s body in the back of your throat. It didn’t matter though. You didn’t care that he, and probably you, fucking stank. It was just nice to have him there, bringing you back from the brink of a full on mental collapse. 

The same mental voice that had coached you through your torture, was the same that gruffly directed you now. Price always had your back. He didn’t let any of his soldiers go easily, and he had always tried to do his best for you. Even if you had spited him for keeping you from König, he was always going to be the man that felt like another father to you. 

“Sneak, do you really think that this is your fault?” Price asked, finally breaking from his instructional regime. “Do you think it really matters to me who you’ve been shagging right now? I need you to stay on the level with me here Sneak, you’re not to blame for any of this happening.”

“Why?” you asked, coughing harshly as your throat tried to adjust. 

“Why aren’t you to blame?”

“No, why aren’t you angry with me?” you wheezed.

You could hardly believe it. Your Captain was perched in front of you, a blanket barely covering his battered skin, and he was telling you that he was ok with the fact that you deliberately disobeyed an order. Had the torturers knocked a screw loose after all? You gawped him as if to convey just that. 

“We might very well die here. I’m not going to waste my last moments angry with you. Especially when the reason I warned you off of that man in the first place, was in case he got you killed…It already happened once. I already lost Alex to love on the field, I didn’t want to lose you too, not to a man with enemies in the numbers of god knows what. Now you’re trapped here with me because you were too stuck on your own guilt to save yourself. You didn’t fail me or anyone else. I failed you, Sneak,” Price affirmed, bowing his head in shame.

The rough spikes of his hair were glistening and the skin on the back of his neck was washed out by the pale white light. He looked like a ghost of himself already. You shivered and bit the flesh inside your cheek, trying to process everything that he’d said. 

Had you really been absolved? Just like that?

“Captain…”

He slowly lifted his head up and offered you a small smile, his grime speckled moustache lifting cartoonishly with it. You found yourself choking back your stupid tears and smiled at him in return, relaxing into the wall and soon into Price as he ambled to the wall and laid back with you, settling into your side. 

“On the off chance we do find a way to survive this, I need you with me, Sneak,” Price said, his hoarse voice buzzing through you. “You can’t check out on me, ok?”

“Is that an order, sir?” you deadpanned.

“Affirmative. And If you go against this one, just know that my Ghost is going to make your ghost move puddles and dig ditches in the afterlife. Got that sergeant?”

“Loud and clear, sir.”

-☠️-

“Do you understand what you’ve done! You are sending your precious special forces to their deaths! Know this; fellow brothers and sisters around the world,” Rousseau shouted, his voice booming off the dour cement walls. “Your government does not care about you, it is you the people that must rise up from nothing and take what is rightfully yours. I will continue to take down your soldiers until you give me back my family and allow us to take our territories without interference. Let's see how many deaths it will take until your governments take us seriously, uh!”

You winced as Rousseau grabbed you by the neck, though you could barely summon the strength to fight back. He’d taken you out from the transport and into dark deserted buildings more times than you’re sure that you can accurately collect. There was so little of you left anymore, you could barely hold onto your promise to Price. That last blow would be the one that ended you. 

You cast a weary eye over to Price, tilting your head slightly to your left, watching him as he struggled to stay upright. He’d been wheezing for days now. There was a time you’d become convinced he’d already died on you. You couldn’t really remember when that was. They hardly fed you or allowed you to drink. They didn’t want to deal with the toilet trips - or the open bucket trips more like. 

You’d both held on far longer than what you might’ve predicted, but now your time had run out.

You’d kept Price entertained with your stories about König, tried to force him to stay awake. After telling him a little about your relationship, they started flowing out of you like a great epic. You'd told him about the time you’d made him wear a bright floral surgical mask after he’d lost a bet to you, and then an old lady had approached him to say how stylish he was. You’d laughed till you’d fallen into a coughing fit when you remembered him surprising you back at your little apartment that you shared together with a rose in his mouth, and you’d had to clean the blood after he forgot to remove a thorn - he’d moaned for days about his stupid cut lip. You’d melted at the thought of him hugging you tightly after, not telling Price that König had huffed out to you in a pathetic whimper, telling you that he was sad he couldn’t kiss you with his mouth so sore. 

Oh, König.

You whined, closing your eyes as you watched Rousseau arcing his thick metal bar high above you. Rousseau was ready to strike, this was really it. For both of you. He was going to make Price watch his Sergeant die and then he would surely be next. 

You zoned out, falling back into the dark recesses of your mind.

Even if he was far away, it felt like König’s lips were whispering quietly in your ears. His spirit was with you, even if his form was elsewhere utterly devastated. 

Think of better things. Think of me, Schnuckiputzi, and how you’d threaten to slap me for calling you that. I love you.

There’s nowhere you can be sent to that I won’t find a way to reach you.

Just keep your eyes closed and think of me. 

Next Part Here

[bnuyy2]

The First Snow

Gn! Reader x Masc! Fave

Synopsis: Your lover wakes to find the bed cold. He doesn't need to look long to find you seated at the window sill watching as the world goes white.

Word Count: 641

Warnings: fluff, domesticity, no pronouns for reader

Note: this is really short and just came to me as i was falling asleep like idk where this came from anyways i wrote this with many characters in mind, particularly the ones who are a little grumpy and jaded but so full of love 🩵

Something had woken you out of your sleep, and you opened your eyes to face the window.

It took you a moment to realise the brightness did not come from the sun rising at 1 o’clock in the morning, but from the street lights illuminating the sparkling snow layered on nearly every surface. You are careful not to wake your lover as you raise yourself from the bed and pad over to the scene, seating yourself on the wide windowsill to watch the cascading bits of fluff up close.

You had only meant to be away from bed for a moment, but you were thoroughly captivated and stuck in place. It took just a few minutes for the man you’d left behind to begin unconsciously searching for your warmth, scooching his body closer to your side and reaching out his arm.

When he realises there is none to find, he begrudgingly opens an eye in search of you, and finds your form sitting entirely too far away from him. He quietly grunts your name which coaxes a hum from you, but you don't face him.

"Come back to me," He mumbles, his eye drifting closed again as he awaits what he hopes will be your swift return to his side.

"In a minute," You respond, and there is no way he can sleep now.

He sighs, lifting himself from the mattress and trudging over to the ledge where you sit pressed against the cool glass, pulling close a chair to sit by you. Now you turn your attention to him and smile.

His hair is tousled in a way that only you are allowed to see, and though he would never admit it, his mouth has formed a pout. You reach your hand out to caress his cheek, and your smile grows as he snuggles his face into your palm, his stubble mildly abrasive on your skin.

"It's snowing," You quietly point out, and he nods. Only you thought in his exhaustion he wouldn't have noticed.

"Hurts my eyes," He mumbles, and you can feel his lips move against your hand, supple and warm. The brightness of the snow would surely sting eyes just woken from sleep.

You lean down and kiss his eyelids to soothe the ache, and he huffs a sigh from deep in his chest. When you straighten up again, you see the corners of his mouth have lifted a bit into a small grin.

"It looks lovely though," You reason, turning your eyes back towards the window.

He watches you, the shirt you slept in slipping to expose more of your shoulder. He sees the content look of your glowing face and your eyes sparkling with wonder.

"Yes. Very lovely."

Eventually he does move his gaze from you to the rest of the world, watching the first glimpse of winter.

From this, he sees roads made more difficult, a driveway that will need shovelling, and skin chapped with cold, and he doesn't doubt you are aware of those things as well.

What he loves about you is the space you make for beauty, letting your appreciation for it cushion you from whatever hurts may come. He has begun to learn to do so through you, his greatest beauty.

He will carry your sweet concerned voice in his mind as he drives with care and let you fret over his large frozen hands when he comes inside, frantically rubbing them between your own in an attempt to warm them before you go to fix him a hot drink. He also loves to see how your eyelashes catch the frost, and the endearing traditions you indulge in for the season.

"My love," You whisper. He had fallen asleep with his head on your thigh. You pat his hair down as you watch him shift at the sound of your voice.

"Let's go to bed."

You rise from the window sill and he lets you take his hand to return to each other's arms. There will be time enough to experience the pains and joys of winter in the morning.

[dawnoftime22]

"...and it just did."

| W.M ( -> N.R)

Undeserving of a Love Like Yours, Chapter 5

Chapter Warnings: A very emotionally packed chapter, relationship problems, cheating, arguing, anxiety, overthinking, andd...just be prepared.

Summary: The truth unfolds itself easily on a special day.

Series Summary: When you're stuck in a complete hole of confusion and hurt with the one you thought you loved most, a certain redhead finds her way into your life.

Word Count: 8.7k (...oops)

Category: Angst.

A/N: this chapter has been eeeeverywhere with me. I wrote it in the car, at work, in my bedroom, and even at a hotel room. but, I hope you all enjoy<3 it's a whole lot, so it was quite difficult to finish, but february's over and I have more free time again!

also theres a playlist for this series out now :] in case you need something to listen to while reading. be careful while scrolling the songs to avoid just bits of teensy spoilers<3

Series Playlist

| Started on 10/01/2024, 12:16 PM |

| Finished on 05/03/2024, 3:45 PM |

Masterlist | Series Masterlist | N.R Masterlist

<- Chapter 4 Chapter 6 ->

"What is there to say?"

|——————————— ᗢ ———————————|

You drag your feet across the wooden floorboards, making your way towards the kitchen. Here it is again, the same routine. But yet this time, you see a sticky note left on the marble counter, illuminated by a dim overhead lighting.

You furrow your eyebrows, but go over to read it anyway, the bright color a big difference to the white counter. 'might not be home until tomorrow,' was written on the piece of paper. Your heart didn't drop as much anymore. Your shoulders only droop a little, as if just a teensy bit more weight had been added.

A quiet breath leaves your mouth. Your hand picks up the sticky note and scraps it up within your palms, throwing it off to a nearby trashcan in the kitchen. Who else needed to read it anyway? It was only for you. Only for you.

You shook your head of the remaining thoughts you had of her, but she couldn't quite leave your mind at least once. Always there. Always lingering. As if you had been cursed. But in honest truth, the only curse you had upon you was the spell of love.

Today was a special day. Key word on the was. Some type of hope swirling in your heart maybe had you looking forward to this day, but all of it had just gone down along with the piece of paper in the trash. Your eyes also flicker to it once more, seeing the many other colored paper sitting scrunched up with the one from just now. At least she had the decency to still leave notes.

But, today was, of course...your birthday. And out of all the people, your favorite person was certainly not present. Maybe she had forgotten, you thought. Maybe she just didn't care enough this year...no, how could she?

You snap yourself out, having stared off at the sunlight shining in through the windows. You go to the fridge to see what was still in there. A bitten sandwich from last night, and some leftover chickens, but your lip forms a line and you close it, your hand dropping off to your pocket to retrieve your phone.

It was currently 9:45 AM, the digits frozen still on the same numbers until the full sixty seconds passes by. Your mind was in a haze, but your stomach was empty and it urged you to find some food. Were you just going to go out by yourself? Your body seemed to stop you from even going to the living room. Take-out was an option, but instead you simply laid your phone down on the counter, it making a small noise, the textures clashing.

You put your head in your hands, covering up your face and sliding your fingers across your skin, your palm cupping your own cheeks as a way to get a grip of yourself.

Your phone came up with a notification of your calendar, getting out with a reminder of your birthday. What great timing. You clear it off your screen and unlock your phone, roaming the apps.

Just as you were about to push yourself off the counter and grab the last of the food in the fridge, your screen changes without you touching anything. The contact name came up with...Carol?

Your face relaxes a bit and your thumb hesitantly goes to pick it up rather than tap on the red button, the ringing going away. The phone goes along with your hand when you put it against your ear.

"Hey Carol." You say casually, trying your best not to sound too questionable, as it wasn't usual that she'd call you. You hear some distinct voices whispering in the background of her side, one sounding like a young kid.

"Hey, just wanted to call and um...check in on you?" Her voice ended up sounding questionable instead, and your face goes into a confused reaction, although a smile growing on your lips. You let out a small chuckle, your eyes roaming the space of the room as you thought of your words.

"'Check in on me?' Come on, you rarely do that." Your hand goes to grab a nearby notebook that's been left on the counter, saved for recipes. "What's up?"

"I just wanted to say happy birthday to you. Maria reminded me and she and Monica got me to...call you." You assume she had a small pause in her sentence because she was looking over at the other two people in the room with her, which was who you had heard earlier.

"That's nice of her. And thank you." The pages of the book was soft against your hands, your fingers tracing and fiddling with some as you smiled softly at the thought of Maria scolding Carol for having forgotten.

"Well that, or, I would probably not have any pancakes for myself right about now." She says, her mouth nearly sounding like it was full. You'd guessed it was.

"Even though you were threatened to wish me, thank you." You add on, laughing gently as you did. There was a page you landed on in the notebook with a cookie recipe. One, specifically where you and Wanda had made together, having shared a wonderful memory that day.

You could feel your heart beat within your chest, the pace going quicker as your eyes looked over the words written on the paper that was accompanied with smiley faces and hearts here and there.

The smile on your face had definitely faltered. You take in a deep breath, letting it out once you let yourself close the book. Carol's voice snaps you back to reality, having remembered you were talking with her.

"I'm kidding, I would've called you up either way. Really though, how are you?" Your teeth sank down on your bottom lip, probably enough to puncture the skin or leave a small mark, but you let it go once you talked.

"I'm...fine. Other than sitting in my house alone not knowing what to do than sulk in bed or contemplating my life choices." With that answer, the blonde definitely knew something wasn't entirely right. She stays quiet for a while, perhaps thinking.

"Do you wanna go out and hang at the bar? We can do some karaoke if you want that as a birthday present." She offers, and the attempt makes you smile weakly. She never really knew what to do for your birthday, not being the type to do birthdays more than just a simple wish to them. But for you, she'd offer to hang out, which is what you love to do most of the time.

"Sorry, but I don't really feel like partying or anything right about now. Well, tempting, but, I just wanna relax." You say quietly, sliding the recipe book back to its original place.

"Okay, then..." Carol trails off as her mind tries to come up with some more ideas. You were about to think she was going to just hang up sooner or later, but then you hear her voice continue with a more interesting take.

"There's the mall." You raise your eyebrows. She couldn't see you with you being over the phone, but she just knew you were probably surprised. And you were.

"And what would we do there?" You ask, your mind unable to conjure up the slightest of an imagination of going to the mall with her in a casual situation.

"Well, we could grab some ice cream, buy some things, go to the arcade, go...I don't know." She suggests, just nearly giving up. She wasn't good at this type of stuff really, she's simply basing it off of the times she and Monica hangs out together. You could at least picture the straight line her mouth forms when she finished her sentence, and you had to resist a laugh.

"Ice cream does sound really good." Your mind opened a little with the simple thought of ice cream. Even though the comfort of your bed and the couch seemed nicer, it's not a lot of times she ends up inviting you to hang out like this anyway.

"The mall it is." The blonde says, and you can hear some clatter over the phone. She had finished her pancakes, you supposed.

"Am I driving or...?" You trail off, fiddling around with your fingers and sliding them against the marble counter, the coldness a difference to the sunlight coming from the window.

"I'll pick you up." You then hear the sound of keys, and you couldn't back out anymore. She was driving to your house to grab you, and it'd be impolite to cancel.

"Okay." You say under a breath, feeling heavier with every second that goes by. The guilt and anxiety was eating you up, but the date on the calendar just next to the recipe book had your mind getting out of the thoughts.

"I'll be there in 10. Please don't be glued to your bed when I arrive," She said, to which you let out a quiet chuckle. You couldn't really tell if it was in a stern way or a soft way, but it definitely pushed you a little more to get up and change your clothes.

"I won't. See you here." You say gently and the end tone sounds out, making you pull your phone away from your ear.

With that decided, you push yourself off the counter, slowly going off to the bedroom. The closet opens easily, revealing the same clothes you see every day. You shuffle through some of the hanged shirts, looking at what to wear.

Soon enough, you pull one out. It easily slides off, brushing against the many other shirts within the closet. Your eyes don't linger on the other ones that weren't yours, and you close the door after grabbing everything else.

Later on, you get finished up with changing your clothes, and now you were only waiting for Carol to arrive. There was something that prickled within your heart, like a roses stem with thorns, a worry that maybe she changed her mind and she actually didn't want to hang out with you. Maybe she was only doing it out of sympathy? But that can't be true. What about all the times she's driven you back home when you got a little too many drinks?

...You take a deep breath and turn away from the wall you were staring off into like it was the abyss. Instead your hands checked that you had everything on you, like your phone, keys, and your watch.

Then, the sound of a car pulling up at the front of the house made you look up, your eyes carefully watching the windows. You see a Nissan outside, and it was obvious it was Carol arriving.

Quickly, you got off the couch while your phone made sound, definitely a text message from her that she's arrived. You open the front door, going outside. Her blonde hair could be seen clearly through the car windows, confirming the person in your head.

You make your way to the car, opening the front passenger door. "Hey," you say gently, going in and and closing the door along with you.

"Hey." your greetings were simple, a usual thing to happen. Carol glanced at you while you buckled in, giving you a small smile before starting to slowly position the car back to the roads.

The car had some old soft rock playing, filling up the quietness. It also had you already moving just a little to the beats, staring out the window as she drove you both to the mall. She's always had good playlists. Sometimes you'd even have an urge to ask her to give you some of her cds.

"So, what are you aiming to steal my money for today?" She jokes after a song, her eyes focused on the roads. You let out a small chuckle, looking over to her.

"I'm not letting you spend your money on me for something that isn't a drink." You shake your head, fiddling around with your fingers in your lap. The blonde notices it when her eyes flicker over to you for a second before returning to the roads.

"It's your birthday, Y/N. You have to have a little fun. Let loose," she says, and you raise an eyebrow, turning your head to her. The last two words were new, at least when it comes out of her mouth.

"Maria's words, not mine." she quickly stated, making a smile grow on your face. You stop fiddling with your fingers and instead intertwine them with each other, your gaze going back to the window.

"Come on, any ideas?" The car stops at a red light, and she looks over to you. You stayed quiet in thought, although nothing much came up. She sees only the side of your head until you made your decision.

"We'll do yours," you say, having unable to think of anything. Your mind was clouded over. Honestly, a part of your body just wanted to lie in bed hopelessly the whole day, but something else pulled you.

"Then it's settled," she nods, the steering wheel turning with her hand as she made a right. You think over her words on the phone call earlier, 'Ice cream, buy some things, arcade', and you start to get just a bit more excited.

"Ice cream first?" You ask, looking to her with hope. She furrows her eyebrows and makes a face to you, and your lip forms a tight line, like a child asking for something and getting scared of the answer.

"Of course ice cream goes first." The car goes forwards once more, the light having turned green. You cheer quietly, and she gently shakes her head at your antics. At least she got you to release the emotional tension you had in your body. Even if just a little.

The rest of the car ride consisted of singing and dancing, the conversations being light. The weight on your shoulders got lifted up just a little bit more. When you were about to arrive and she was going to park, 'Please Mr. Postman' started playing and your face brightened at the intro.

She raised her eyebrows at your quick happiness at the simple song, but smiled and laughed at how fast you got into singing it. Really, it's always been a main song for whenever you hanged out, but it's been so long since she saw you sing it, she got surprised. Soon enough though, she sang with you, the two of you moving in your seats to the words.

When the song ends, she turns off the engine and both of you get out the car. The parking lot wasn't all that filled up, so it was a chance there weren't many people in the mall.

She puts on her cap and walks to the entrance with you behind her, the noise of crows and other birds made sound, echoing from somewhere afar as you made your way to the sliding doors.

The cold air of the mall quickly greeted you like a slap of reality in the face, like waking yourself up with a cold shower after laying in bed for too, too long. A way to make you feel more alive.

The ice cream shop wasn't far, and with how little amount of people were here, the two of you got to go to the counter right when you arrive to order your preferred flavour.

Your eyes watch the ice cream get put on the cone, and you do a little dance when your hand got ahold of it, while Carol was giving her money to the cashier of the total cost.

The cashier smiles at the two of you and says their 'thank you', making you smile back before turning around, Carol easily catching up with you from your slow walking.

The two of you walk and enjoy your ice cream, the coldness definitely making you more free feeling. There were clothing stores, shoe stores, little snack shops, and every other thing you could ever imagine. You passed by each one though, but you did point out some cool looking things here and there to Carol.

Soon enough, you come upon a pet shop and your eyes widen, your lips matching with a smile. You walk towards it, wanting to look at all the animals. Carol had to walk faster so she didn't lose you.

There were parrots, cats, dogs, hamsters, fishes, bunnies, and even some lizards. Your mouth was agape as you stared at some of them, but you walk over to the cats.

"Aw, look!" You point at an orange cat, who's sitting patiently with it's tail smoothly flicking back and forth as it watched people pass by.

Carol was looking at the dogs until you called, making her go over to you to see what you were melted at. As if you hadn't already from the other little animals.

"This one is so cute." You lean forward and capture the attention of the cat, making it stand up and walk closer to you.

Carol's head tilted slightly and her eyes squinted as she inspected the info of the cat. The name, the breed, the date and place of birth... "...Goose. Huh."

"I want to take it home." You blurt out as you let the cat follow your hand around, and its head moves here and there instead of its body. It was a playful cat, a paw going up here and there to reach out to you.

"You should get it if you love it that much." Carol says, with her usual deadpan voice that you honestly find amusing. Although, for this, your face turns deadpanned instead and you stare at her, making her raise your eyebrows at you. It was nearly a staredown.

"Danvers, I cannot take care of a cat...let alone myself." You gesture to the cat, and it looked at you questionably. Your shoulders slump a little at the last words of your sentence, and Carol frowns a little.

"I'm sure it'll be able to help you cope or something." Really, she was thinking in her head of surprising it to you as a birthday present for later tonight when she sends you home.

"Why don't you get it? I think Monica would go crazy." You glance back at her, and she purses her lips, staring at the cat. It was the most vibrant color of all the other cats.

"And Maria would go crazier." She said, turning to you for a second but then going back to the entrance of the shop instead, perhaps making her escape from you flipping the table to her.

"You can convince her." You say, the volume of your voice going up a little considering she's farther away. You take a quick glance back at the cat, hesitating to leave, but going away to catch up to the blonde.

"No, now, we are going to the arcade." You laugh when you hear her stern voice, although something in you knew she had a thought about getting it.

You looked around as you walked, seeing the arcade not far away now, the place lit up by machines and screens. But something caught your eye and made you look twice.

Were you dreaming? Well...having a nightmare? You felt like so. Your body definitely didn't react in a good way. Honestly, your heart felt like you were about to have a heart attack with how fast it was beating.

Carol's hat made shade for her face from the sun coming through the mall's glass roof as she walked. She stops along with you when she noticed, confusion filling her face at the sudden stop.

When she follows your eyes to where you were looking though, immediately her eyes widen and her face was in complete shock just as yours were.

A brunette, green eyes...green jacket...

It couldn't have been.

You look closer on the face, and it was. And her hand was not swinging by itself as she walked.

It wasn't with your hand either, because you were plenty of feet away from her.

It was with someone else. Something in the back of your mind felt like they were familiar, although you couldn't even dare focus on that.

Your whole day-- well, your whole world fell apart right then and there. Just like that.

You can feel your heart beating up to your ears, and it felt like time stopped. And not in the good way. Oh, you wish. You wish it was the time you saw her green eyes staring back at you and the whole world only felt like it held the two of you. But not anymore.

Maybe it was the numbing adrenaline rush of the shock coming through, but you take in a deep breath, ripping your gaze away. You couldn't bare to look at the sight anymore.

You clench your jaw, your hand gripping itself in a fist. Your eyes pooled with tears and Carol looked at you, her own misery at finding out the truth obvious on her face, although she was mostly worried about you.

"You know what? Maybe we can...do this another day." You say, trying your best to not let your voice shake entirely, but it did falter.

"You don't wanna--" She was about to suggest trying to distract yourself with the arcade, but at the same time, nothing could make you feel better after seeing such a thing.

"Just take me home." Your mouth moved quickly and you spoke quietly, your eyes flicking back to the spot where she was walking, but she was out of sights already.

You turn around and walk fast, not wanting to linger anymore. Carol walks with you. There was nothing said as you made your way out and to the car. The lovely sounds of the birds chirping now fell on deaf ears as your legs kept you moving.

The car door opens easily with the pull of your hand, and you get in, but you were careful to not slam the door. Carol gets in after you, and turns on the engine.

Her eyes go over to you. You already had your seatbelt on and had settled in your seat, staring out the window. She was about to say something, but she held her tongue, not wanting to make matters worse.

And what would anyone have to say in this anyway? Your lover left you, replaced you with someone else, and broke your heart. 'It will get better'? The only path to take was to go through the pain and that was it. Until you somehow get back up again.

The music starts up once more, and it didn't make you happy as much anymore. You couldn't even focus on it if you tried. You were trying to blink away the tears and ignore the way your throat was swelling up on the inside.

Carol drives you back home safely, keeping her eyes on you here and there. The ride was quiet other than the music, but it was obvious the tension was high.

There were questions unsaid, many going around in your head, but you didn't wanna trouble her with all of them, and she probably wouldn't know what to answer them with anyway.

Soon enough, you arrive back to your house, and you gently unbuckle your seatbelt. At the corner of your eyes, your tears were starting to seep out, just a little.

Carol makes sure she says something before she regrets just being silent, "Hey," she said quietly, and you look at her, your eyes shining with unshed tears. It was the softest you've heard her voice yet.

"I'm always here, if you need me," she says. She knows it won't be much, but it needed to get out of her head. You nod, and sniffle, trying your best to not cry just yet.

You don't say anything back. If you did, you would've broken right there. Instead, you pull on the car handle and open the door, getting out.

Carol watches you as you leave, and she makes sure you get into your house safely before getting out the driveway.

You close the front door of the house, locking it, and freezing in your tracks, taking in a sharp breath before letting it out as a sigh. You nearly hoped it didn't happen, that you would only do that and just wake up from sleeping right now.

But then you let out a sob and lean back on the closed door. You hide your face in your hands, closing your eyes as you started crying, and your chest wracks with broken sobs.

How could she do such a thing? Did she not love you? Were you simply not enough? Too much? You couldn't stop yourself with the questions roaming your head, overthinking everything as you go. The kindest soul with the warmest heart, now broken into a tiny million pieces just because someone couldn't talk about their feelings. Yet you seem to always find a way to blame yourself for every situation.

Sure, maybe even if she did talk to you, your heart would still break, but would it have felt like this? Would it have felt like your lungs were going to collapse from your cries?

You sniffle, and try your best to steady your breathing, but you couldn't, so you just let it do whatever it wants. You wipe your eyes with your sleeve, but the tears keep flowing, so it barely did much.

Fatiguely, with a heavy body, you made your way to the kitchen. You wanted to go to the bedroom, but it was so far, and everything in there would only make your head spin even more. The couch was a choice, but your eyes linger on that recipe book you had looked through this morning.

Your hand twitches to grab it, but you bite your tongue and instead grip the counter, letting yourself slide down on the kitchen floor. You clutch your legs and curl up. The grip your hands held with the fabric of your jeans were enough to probably rip them.

You still had hiccups leaving your mouth, tears leaving your eyes, and you were definitely about to sob once more. The kitchen tiles blurred from your vision getting clouded with tears.

Your hands clumsily reaches in your pocket to grab your phone, and you somehow made it to your homescreen.

The phone was set down on the floor, your hands shaking as your tears rolled down to your chin and dropped down to stain your shirt.

You look up, trying to gather yourself up, but of course you couldn't. Your body needed to let the emotions out, especially after such a situation.

For a few more long minutes, you sat helplessly on the kitchen floor, your breaths going with their own minds instead of your own. You take a few deep breaths, your legs splayed out in front of you before you sniffle and take one last deep breath.

You sat up a little more properly with the little energy you have, and slide your phone just a bit closer to yourself, your fingers gliding across the screen as you opened your calls app, and hovered your finger over the contact name.

You tap on it, trying your best to recollect yourself before she picks up. Your teeth bites down on your bottom lip, every tone of the calling sound making your heart beat faster.

It ends, and her voice comes through.

"Hello?" There's the soft voice. The gentle, soothing voice that lured you into falling in love.

"Wanda." Your voice nearly faltered, but it kept a little of it's stern tone. Your hand slid down to the kitchen floor, the texture keeping your emotions steady, at least enough for a couple minutes.

"Hey, what's up? Did you see my note?" She asks. She's been lying to your face all this time and you didn't even know it. How blind were you?

"Do you know what day it is today?" You ask, ignoring her own question. You sounded so calm in your own anger you honestly nearly even scared yourself.

"No...what?" She was confused, and you could imagine the innocent act of a face she made.

"It's my birthday." You put simply.

"Oh..." that was all that sounded on the phone, and you knew the call didn't get cut off. She just didn't know what to say.

"I'm sorry I didn't stay Y/N, I...forgot." She says slowly, and it was obvious she was trying to tread her tracks carefully.

"I can come back tonight, I promise." You almost didn't want her to, but you needed to talk it out. You didn't say anything else, not wanting to talk about everything else over the phone.

"Goodbye, Wanda." You whisper, your voice breaking at the end. You were sure she noticed it, but you'd want her to anyway.

You ended the call, tapping on the red button. That wasn't the end of it yet, of course, but for now, your hand only rests on the floor, your body falling limp against the cabinet.

She calls, but you don't hear it. The phone rings, on, and on.

You clench your jaw, tears filling up in your eyes once more. Your hand weakly silences your phone, and for the next couple more minutes, you lay crying, until your throat was dry and your muscles ached from sitting on the floor.

|——————————— ᗢ ———————————|

The sun had gone down by now, and the moon came out of hiding.

You were no longer on the kitchen floor, but you were on the couch, curled up like a cat. You haven't done anything but cry ever since you got home. Only right now, your tears had dried, staining your cheeks

You hear the front door unlock, and you feel it coming, the moment you've been dreading.

The brunette appears from behind the door, closing it as she went in the house. Her eyes roamed the place, and eventually, it lands on you.

She lets out a sigh of relief when she realized you were still here. You let out a heavy sigh as you sat up properly.

She heard it. Even with the distance, the quietness of the room captured it. Her heart beated harder in her chest.

"Y/N, please, I'm sorry." She pleads as she makes her way to the couch, having carelessly kicked her shoes off, leaving one tilted on its side. You haven't even said anything yet, and you almost feel sorry yourself.

"Hey,"-- You were sitting right beside the armrest, so, she leans over and gently puts her hand on your cheek. --"I love you. I'm sorry."

You gently push away her hand, turning to look at her with your jaw clenching. She can see the anger in your eyes and it had her giving you a little space.

"Do you?" You say, your head moving slightly, and she notices the way the corner of your eyes seemed a little red. You weren't even looking at her. That was only the second part of the situation.

"Yes!" She says her eyebrows furrowed. She raises her hands in exaggeration before moving one up to her hair, sliding it back as she let out a breath. "...Why is that difficult to understand?"

"Well, maybe because you didn't even say anything when I said it to you just a few days ago!" Her mouth opens, and you assumed she was about to argue that she was drunk during that time, but she lets out a scoff, and that's even worse.

"You're pissed off about that too?" She seemed mad, and you nearly regret even blurting out the sentence.

You close your eyes with your hands, just wanting this to end even though it's just started and just barely scratched surface of what you need to talk about...or argue. You hoped it was the first one.

"Of course I am, Wanda! Where have you been?" You try your best to keep calm, but your voice was laced with anger. Hers though, was higher volume than yours.

"At work!" She walks around to the front of the couch, and you slide your hand down your face. Her face looked so believable, but you knew it wasn't the truth. You saw it with your own eyes.

"Bullshit." You whispered, looking at her with tired eyes. She gets confused and sits down on the couch, her eyes focused on you. You shift your position.

"What? I'm not ly--..." Her voice was a little high of a volume, and she doesn't finish her sentence when she hears you take in a shaky breath.

"...I...saw you." You said quietly, and Wanda, having been caught up in trying to make you believe her had to go quiet in thought of what exactly you mean.

She swallows down a lump in her throat, her eyes catching yours.

"Saw me?" She asked, her voice reducing down to almost the same volume as yours.

"You...were with someone else." You were shaking and your breath was trembling. You willed everything in your body not to sob while trying to get the rest of the sentences out. Her eyes widened at your words, and that was it.

"And I know it's not another person, because I saw your face." You point your finger to her, gently pushing on her chest with it to enunciate your words. Gently. You were never the type to lash out or be rough even when you were angry.

She goes quiet. Both pairs of your eyes were welling up with tears, that much was obvious. Any other words she's had before had died in her throat.

You see a tear rolling down her cheek from the side, and you held your hands back from wiping it off.

She looks at you, guilt swimming in her eyes, and she takes a shaky breath in before letting it go.

"...There's really..." She looks away from you, unable to even stare back at you. Your heart felt heavier than you knew it could.

"...nothing I could say or do to make you feel better." She said tearfully, her lips going down as she thought of her next words. She swallows her collected saliva again. That hit you like a million little glass pieces piercing through every part of your living, loving soul.

There really was not much she could reason with other than the fact that it had been true. She's fallen out of love with you, but even she didn't want to admit it.

"I've been with someone else. I...wanted to tell you. I just didn't know how." She admitted with her shoulders going up at her last words. There it was. The truth coming straight out of her mouth. Your lips nearly trembled, but your teeth sank down on it.

"How...long?" You ask, and you almost didn't want to know, but for the sake of closure, you urged on. She stays quiet, her own hands gripping the couch.

"How long, Wanda?" You pressed. Was it a month ago? It couldn't have been longer than that.

"Only after eight months of us moving here." It was before you even had your break. You made the math quickly in your head. You moved in a little more than a year ago, so it's been...six months?

You had been in this devouring hole for six months, and you hadn't even realized it. And she didn't tell you or break up with you. Instead she requested a break. No wonder your hope had died to sparks and to nothingness.

"What?" You whispered under your quivering breath, your head tilting in disbelief as your eyes spilled out in silent tears.

"Wanda." You say her name softly. She looked down in her lap as you let out another breath that nearly sounded like a sob. She sniffles, and you know the both of your hearts are breaking.

"Why?" You ask, although it was more of a thought from your head that spewed out unintentionally rather than a logical question. She couldn't answer. She didn't have an answer herself. It just happened. That's how it always is.

"...I thought you loved me." Your voice was small, as if speaking any louder would make the entire universe disappear in fear, just like your love had.

"I did! Or, I do!! I don't know!!!" She blurts out, not being able to decide which one. Her body had deflated at the high chance of losing you tonight.

"So you fell out of love with me completely?" Your eyes watch her carefully, and just for a vivid moment, she hesitantly, just barely nods.

"And you didn't think to just...break it off." You whisper, although it was more of a sentence to yourself. But she heard it anyway. It was obvious what you were pointing towards in your sentence. She sighs. She knows she's taken a step she couldn't take back.

Really, how can someone bring theirselves to having a full conversation about falling out of love? It's a difficult thing to do. Sure, you'd be heartbroken either way, or somehow you would have been able to work it out, but you supposed something else in you just wished you hadn't suffered all those months hoping for absolutely...nothing.

The two of you sit in the silence of what you'd think is death, not knowing what exactly to do with it all. The love you once had was gone. Or at least...hers.

Something spins around in your head. It's been spinning for ages since she had called to take a break, and you had hoped you never had to say it, but what else was there? You could start over, but this love had already started over before. Or had tried to. Technically it was both. This was the end of the road.

"...It's over." You whisper out into the room, and Wanda finally glanced up at you, her face full of heartbreak. Even though she probably saw it coming. You've seen that look before, and your stomach was about to collapse at even a second of it. You kept the eye contact though, needing to fully close this.

In a way, you searched her eyes, for some reason, still searching for anything that once was. But there wasn't anything but hopeless desperation.

"No...no please, I need you." She says, taking breaths in between as she cried. You hated seeing her like this. But you hated going in circles just as much.

"If you really did, then you wouldn't have done such a thing." She had nothing else to say to that. It had been your breaking point. You averted your gaze and stood up, hesitating for a moment, but eventually going off to the bedroom as she sat there in the consequences of her actions.

You walk into the room and close the door, locking it right after. You gently lean your head against the door, while silent tears freely move down your skin. The supply of water in your body was definitely infinite for today. A part of you wanted to laugh at the mere thought, and just to cope, but you were too tired to even do so.

You take in a breath, looking up to the ceiling as you felt your throat swell up, but you try your best to be quiet. You'd hate for her to hear you sob in the other room. She might be doing the same thing herself. You squeeze your eyes shut for a short time, wishing for it all to just stop.

And technically it's about to.

Gently, you push off the bedroom door and your legs take you to the front of your closet. The next move was obvious.

Your hands clenched theirselves as your eyes stare at the closet doors. You take a look around the room, taking in the space with your eyes lingering on some parts. The book Wanda hasn't finished reading. She stopped reading it ever since she started to disappear. You should have seen the signs.

The little teddy bear she got, the daisies you got her in the corner of the room, the DVDs she has in the TV stand, the music collection you have next to it.

You rip your gaze away and let your hands open the closet doors. A travel bag and a luggage bag was just under the hanged clothes, sitting within a compartment.

With trembling hands, you slide both out, putting them on the bed and unzipping them. It was the same bags you used to move into the house.

You grab some of the clothes you once shuffled through just earlier this morning, making sure to remember which ones are Wanda's, and not yours.

They were placed into the bags, and you stared at the folded shirts. They looked wrong. You throw your head back with a sigh, frustrated. The bed dips when you sat on it, the bags moving along just a little with it.

What are you thinking? The promise to stay, to fight through it all, it had all fallen apart. The one person you didn't leave after just a few months, and yet here you are. Packing. You let your body fall down completely on the mattress, legs dangling while you stared at the ceiling.

How many times have you stared up there? You don't even want to know. Before you lost all motivation and your emotions ran slow, you slowly prop yourself up to your arms and got back up. If you stopped now, you won't be gone in the morning.

Toothbrush, toothpaste, everything else you need and all the essentials. The last of it gets stored in the empty parts, and with the quiet sound of the zipper zipping, it was done.

With a relieved sigh that you could now simply lay on the pillows, your arms splayed out, your body giving up the last of its energy. You definitely couldn't get up anymore to do anything else.

This was the last night you were sleeping in this bed.

The crickets couldn't be any more louder with filling up the silence. You hated it. It felt too short, but all at the same time, it feels like it's gone on for too long.

Your vision faded into black as your mind stayed loud, up until it crept into your dreams. She slept on the couch that night.

In the morning, you woke up heavy and go through everything as if you didn't even sleep. Not even a cold shower helped you. Honestly, it might have just helped numbing the pain in your chest instead. You gather your items, gripping your bags tightly.

What if you just drop them and simply isolate yourself in the room? No. You shook your head, walking over to the door.

Your hand remains on the cold door knob for a short while, and you almost stay long enough to have it warmed up from your skin. It gets twisted though, and you open it.

If not for the sleeping figure on the couch, it would have been an empty room. You walk out to the front door with your eyes lingering on her.

Maybe her love was too good for you anyway. You just couldn't give her enough. Or too much. It didn't even make sense anymore. There was no in between your heart and mind could agree on. Even you didn't know what you were thinking.

Just as you click open the lock and went to open the front door, she slowly awakes. The shuffling makes you turn to look at her. You catch the realization and sadness in her eyes when you locked sights. Damn the loud clicks and creaking sounds of the doors.

"Where are you going?" She asks, but it was more of a question, than her wanting to stop you.

"Somewhere that isn't here." You say quietly, like a secret thats not meant to be said. She stares off into a space in the room, lost in thought.

"I really am sorry." You hold your breath a little longer, waiting for her to say something else. But she didn't.

There wasn't anything possible to heal the broken love you held. Maybe if she gave in, but her hands had been touched by someone else and her lips...perhaps had met another's.

"I love you." You whispered impulsively, although quiet and quick, it made sound to reach her ears nonetheless.

But yet, she was silent.

You stare at her for a second more, and few seconds too long to say you're determined in leaving. She wasn't looking at you.

You take a step to turn, and the door slides open with the pull of your hand.

You take another, then when you're outside and the door closes gently, the quietness of it all consumed you.

You check your belongings, you had your bags, your watch, your phone. You have everything except for her.

You check your last pocket, and in it were the keys to the house. You slide it off and it clinks, a familiar sound that you hated made your heart skip a beat every time you heard it.

You leave it off somewhere at the front of the house, and you hope you don't remember where you put it.

It all blurred together as you went to your car, turned on the engine and drove off. Of course you had a plan in mind. You've thought about it a hundred times, but you never thought you'd go with it.

The car arrives to a stop, near the place of your favorite cafe. But you aren't going out. You just needed to drive away from the house.

"Fuck." You cursed under your breath and slammed your fist on the steering wheel, and somehow your hand had slid down to the horn, making you bump into it and the car beeped loudly. You jumped, and looked around alertedly, but no one was there. The sidewalks were empty.

You relievedly let out the breath you were holding once you made sure you were in the clear. Thankfully, it wasn't lunchtime or the weekend.

"God," the word comes out under your breath as you shook your head. The thoughts in your head were harsh, and your shoulders slumped at it.

"How could I have ever possibly thought I was actually the one?" You whisper to yourself, staring at the logo of the car, still somehow shiny, just sitting there in between the controls even from how much you've driven the car.

You grip the steering wheel, but then you notice your arms being covered in a certain cloth. One all too familiar, one you chose in instinct in the morning. You look down on the sweatshirt you're wearing, and it was obvious. It was Wanda's.

You clench your jaw and your hands move to peel it off yourself, the sweatshirt turning into a jumbled up piece of clothing that was inside-out. You didn't even want to look at it, so you threw it to the backseats. You'll deal with it later.

Soon, you went to grab your phone, your hand shaking as you turned on your phone, trying your best to find a certain contact. You hold the device tighter, trying to stop the shaking. But you couldn't.

When you found it, you were hesitant to tap on it, your mind loud of everything bad that could happen. But it was Kate. You take in a shaky breath and tapped on the call button, exhaling your breath as you put your phone to your ear.

"Hello?" Her voice comes out gently. The kinder tone almost makes you let out a breath of relief. Your shoulders relax only a little though.

"Kate?" You ask in a whisper, fiddling a little with your steering wheel and tracing the round shape, the texture brushing the skin of your fingers.

"Hey, what's up?" It was still gentle, but there was a hint of concern in it. She can already tell something was wrong even though you barely said anything.

"Um...I..." Your breath was shaky, and she could hear it. On the other side of the phone, Kate was frowning, but she stayed quiet as she gave you time to get your words out.

You were nibbling your bottom lip as you thought about how to talk about your situation, and in the midst of the moment-- "...Wanda and I broke up," you spew out the words, your mouth not even caring to follow your mind anymore.

"What? What happened?" She was certainly shocked, and you look out the window, trying to distract yourself while at the same time speaking to Kate.

"She was with someone else," you say. The florist you once saw a few months ago came out of his store, greeting a customer outside. It was like you were watching a scene you were once in, in another person's view.

"Oh, shit." She swore out unintentionally, the surprise taking over her mouth. "Sorry," she apologized quickly, and you can imagine her blinking to get ahold of herself. It almost made you let out a soft chuckle.

"...I'm sorry, Y/N. God, I could never imagine Wanda would have done that." Kate said quietly. She adored your relationship together, that much was true, but she also saw the parts of Wanda that you wish weren't true. Yet this, this was an unexpected turn.

"...And since I left the house, I can't even sulk in bed or anything." You let out a gentle breath of a laugh, but it was more of a nervous one.

"I mean, I should've had a plan but-- we'd just keep seeing each other and it just...hurts." The florist had said goodbye to the customer who bought the flowers. He seemed happy as he rewrote some things on his little chalkboard. That man was definitely living his best life.

"Where are you gonna go?" She asks, and you go silent. You couldn't go to Carol's. You wouldn't. She's living with Maria and Monica and you probably wouldn't have a room to sleep other than in the living room on the couch. You wouldn't want to intrude on her living conditions anyway.

"I don't...really have anywhere to go to, so anywhere, I guess." You sink into your seat, looking down in your lap to stop staring at people. Kate was silent for a moment, and you're guessing she either didn't know what to say, or is thinking about something.

"My place is available to you if you want to come. You're always welcome here," she offers, and your eyes relax while your fingers fiddle with theirselves, thinking it over.

"...If that's okay with you. I mean, I don't want to intrude on anything--" You add on after quickly, but you get cut off by Kate.

"It's fine. Don't worry about it, I've missed having you hanging around. And I promise you, I have two forks and spoons now so we don't have to share one or get a plastic one from Mcdonald's that'll break after a few minutes." She jokes, and that actually made you laugh.

"Okay. Okay, thank you, Kate. I'll be there tomorrow." You sit up more properly, getting ready to drive to the airport. You hadn't visited her in a while, so you already had money ready.

"I will be there to pick you up. Okay? Do not get a cab," she says sternly, and you take in a big breath only to let it out as a small sigh.

"Kate," You say sternly back, wanting to protest and not burden her more. But she hums in disagreement. You know she cared about getting you safe and being the best friend she is, but your head was killing you.

"No. No, Y/N. I am not letting you cry in a cab awkwardly first thing you get out the airport." She argues softly, and you let your shoulders down in defeat. At your silence, she waits.

"I'll let you know when I land." You give in, your voice small.

"Okay, good." You can hear the relief in her voice, and your lip tugs up into the smallest smile

"See you, Kate." You were about to end the call, but she speaks up again.

"Hey."

"Take care of yourself."

"I'll try."

"See you."

The call ends, and you start driving.

end of chapter 5.

Series Masterlist <- Chapter 4 Chapter 6 ->

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

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[morelikeravenbore]

How did Auralie get her scars?

🦋✨ Hello there li'l anon friend! Thank you sooo much for sending in this question and for taking an interest in my bebe!

Not gonna lie, I went full blown too-much for this one and ended up writing a ~1.3k word fluffy drabble instead, lolol. But if you'd like a tldr, Aura got her scars after obtaining a scratch from a Venomous Tentacular seedling in her father's greenhouse. Since the wounds were magical in nature, the scars weren't able to be erased, but thanks to the wise words of her plant-loving (slightly eccentric) Hufflepuff Papa, she learned to see the beauty in them.

Anyways, this little oneshot is based after events in How to Make a Villain that haven't been published yet. For anyone reading along, there aren't any hard spoilers, but there are hints that they've been through some ✨stuff.✨

🦋 TW: none! Mostly fluffy with a little bit of angst and a general air of trauma. Photo of Aura's scars by me, Sebebe's scars by @lorriiraine

Preview: Much to the chagrin of his peers, excelling in his studies was, to put it mildly, downright bloody easy, and though his natural proclivity towards excellence often put him on the receiving end of bitter remarks and jealous taunts, Sebastian took pride in the fact that despite everything that had been taken from him, his intelligence remained unfaltering.

That is, until he fell in love.

Sebastian Sallow was no idiot, by any means. Having been raised by two fiercely academic professors, he'd spent much of his childhood with his nose buried in a book, studying magical theory and practicing wandless magic well before he'd taken his epochal trip to Ollivander's. Needless to say, by the time he arrived at Hogwarts — armed with a dragon heartstring wand and an itching desire to point it at everything — his intelligence was rivalled only by that of his sisters: the Sallow twins, though grieving the tragic death of their parents, were the brightest pair of students the school had seen in recent memory, an unstoppable force of Slytherin brains, resourcefulness, and ambition who were destined for greatness despite their unfortunate beginnings.

In fact, so brilliant was Sebastian's studious mind that when those unfortunate beginnings turned into unfortunate endings — starting with his sister's curse and ending with his uncle's death — his grades remained so impeccably high that even the strictest professors were loathe to punish him too severely when he repeatedly broke curfew to steal books.

Much to the chagrin of his peers, excelling in his studies was, to put it mildly, downright bloody easy, and though his natural proclivity towards excellence often put him on the receiving end of bitter remarks and jealous taunts, Sebastian took pride in the fact that despite everything that had been taken from him, his intelligence remained unfaltering.

That is, until he fell in love.

Little did he know that the thing that would ultimately turn his brain from highly efficient machine into flobberworm mush would come not in the form of N.E.W.T studies or brutal exam revisions, but from a girl who was so beautiful she rendered him incapable of coherent speech, rational thought and, perhaps most difficult of all, an inability to restrain himself from pulling her onto his lap and staring at her all gooey-eyed like he was now, their faces so close he could count every sun-kissed freckle across her nose.

To think he'd once thought himself too smart to ever fall in love.

What an idiot.

'You have a scar.' Aurelie was the first to break the silence they'd been enjoying for the better part of the afternoon, tilting her head to inspect the two faint scars that adorned his bottom lip. 'What happened?'

Sebastian had to hold his breath as her fingers ghosted the corner of his mouth; though the great weeping willow they'd settled under for the day offered some privacy from the shrewd eyes and wagging tongues of their fellow Feldcroft residents, it wasn't quite an appropriate place to enact all the romantic fantasies he imagined whenever she was perched in his lap like this.

'Flying —' He cleared his throat. 'Flying accident.'

'Quidditch?'

'No, uh —' Me crash broom. Biiiig idiot. 'I borrowed my father's broomstick when I was seven. Crashed into the side of the house.'

'Silly,' she murmured, giggling so close to his mouth that he inhaled it.

Sebastian nodded: the only response he could reasonably manage as her breath fanned pleasantly across his face, as warm and sweet as the summer air in his lungs.

Yes. Me stupid. Give smooch.

'You have scars, too,' he observed, his feather-light touch mirroring hers as he traced the delicate scars along her jawbone.

Though they did little to mar her beauty, the three long scratches seemed somehow too violent for features so fine, like cracks in an ornately gilded mirror, or chips in an otherwise pristine marble slab. He'd often wondered how she'd gotten them, but the mere thought of her suffering any sort of pain was so intolerable that he'd never found the courage to ask.

Seeming to sense the disquieted tone of his thoughts, Aurélie caught his fingers and pressed them to her cheek, effectively short-circuiting his brain again.

Me like touch face.

'Oh, those,' she said mildly, leaning into his touch. 'Gardening mishap.'

Sebastian could only grunt questioningly in reply, struck dumb again by the warmth of her skin and how softly it yielded beneath his calloused palm. It wasn't often she let him touch her so willingly; after all, there were scars that ran deeper than her marked skin, barely healed wounds that were so fresh and tender that she flinched away if he wasn't careful enough, slow enough. Part of loving this tentative girl was learning to control the moments his brain flipped off and his rambunctious heart took over, when his once infallible logic and reason were trumped by his big, dumb heart.

Theirs was a love that had exploded into existence at the start of their seventh year only to smoulder away inexorably for the rest of it until the flames inevitably reared up to engulf them. Now, a month after graduation, both a little scorched around the edges, neither of them were quite used to being together together, still reeling from the events that had nearly torn them apart while trying to navigate a future they'd never seen coming.

Of course, Sebastian had known from the beginning that his future was bound to hers — but never like this.

'Papa raised Venomous Tentacular when we lived in France,' Aurélie explained, closing her eyes as he stroked his thumb across her cheek. 'Maman was not happy about it. She argued that it was too dangerous to keep such aggressive plants in his greenhouses, especially with a curious daughter in tow.' She cracked open an eye to peek at him, a little wry grin teasing the corner of her lips. 'She didn't approve of my enthusiasm for gardening. Apparently, "it's not becoming of a lady to have dirt caked under her nails all the time." But Papa insisted.'

'Hufflepuff's and their plants,' Sebastian murmured, surprised he was able to string together four words that actually made sense.

'Yes,' she said, glancing up through her lashes with a smile tinged with pain. Sebastian returned it in kind, his own smile heavy with the burdens he shouldered. He knew how it felt to have the warmth of every happy memory tempered by the cold indifference of loss, every fond recollection skewed by sorrow. Like a favourite landscape seen through a rain-lashed window, familiar yet distorted, so too were his own memories of his past, of Anne and his parents, his childhood.

With a patience that was new to him, Sebastian waited in quiet observance while Aurélie disappeared across that great chasm of death to visit a happier time, letting her own tainted memories sweep her away until the rustling of summer wind through willow branches brought her back to him.

'Well,' she said, shifting her faraway gaze to meet his, 'you can imagine her horror when a Tentacular seedling reared up unexpectedly and scratched me.' She gestured at her face, tilting her chin back to show him the full extent of the damage her gardening mishap had left behind. Sebastian instinctively leaned forward, wanting so badly to kiss, to soothe, to mend, but mindful, as always, of taking his time.

Pretty.

'It was the worst fight my parents ever had,' she sighed. 'Maman was distraught, said that I'd ruined my face and that Papa had been irresponsible to let me near them. She tried every remedy under the sun to erase the scars — magical and mundane, Healers and Herbologists... even a Curse Breaker when she got really desperate. But magical wounds leave scars, so...'

She trailed off with a shrug, and Sebastian thought that if he didn't kiss away the lingering sadness from her face right then and there, he might actually explode.

'And what did your Papa think?' he asked, his voice a reverent whisper as the tip of his nose brushed hers.

'He used to say that my scars were simply "physical evidence of my curious nature and adventurous spirit",' she whispered back, repeating her father's words with perfect recollection. 'And that they only made me more beautiful.'

'Wise man, that Papa of yours.'

No more sad. Me smooch now.

When he leaned in again, dipping his head to brush his nose along her jawline, she didn't move away.

[aiceofspades]

don't smile | ex!anakin x f!reader

headers: @strangergraphics-archive

pairings: ex!anakin x f!reader

warnings: really angst, fluff??

word count: 2010

authors note: yo yo yo yall this was lowkey a stream of consciousness i wrote this on the bus and i was so scared someone was looking over my shoulder and this is definitely inspired by don't smile by sabrina carpenter anyways enjoy <{•_•}>

masterlist here!!

anakin was supposed to think about you everytime he held padmé, but did he? you would never know. he never talked to you anymore, just simple thank yous here and there if you held the door open for him.

of course, you always liked to think that he expected you to be angry, but were you? you didn’t even know yourself, but since you never worked up the courage to talk to him, and he never realised you had unfinished business with each other, he would never realise you weren’t angry either. you also weren't popular and you didn't force your daily opinions on other people, like padmé did, so no one was bound to notice if you were angry or not. god, you hated padmé. but you also loved her, in the way that you wanted to be everything she was, but only platonically, if that makes sense.

there was something about her demeanour that took your breath away. now, you were publicly bisexual, so people didn't bat an eye when you stared at her before you and anakin got together, as they assumed you had a crush on her. but if you so much as glanced her way now, people would assume you wanted anakin back and you were jealous of them.

don't smile because it happened, baby

smile because it's over

you frowned as you heard the song lyrics come through your wired earphones in the middle of the Coruscant U library. it was so relatable, and it almost made you cry when you applied it to yourself. you always thought it was cheesy when people said that their lover was their whole world, but it just so happened that you thought that about anakin.

you shook your head slightly, picking your pencil up to sketch a quick drawing of a simple harmonic system from your previous physics class, where you had to endure two full hours next to anakin.

all you smelt was that stupid aftershave that you once bought for him as a christmas present, and all you saw was his gorgeous figure from out of your peripheral. it was like living a hell.

you sighed and again tried to focus on your sketch, but the lyrics of the song came flooding into your ears again.

i want one of them to take my phone

take my phone and lose your

number, i don't wanna be tempted

well, the next hour in the library was going to be difficult.

an hour later, the same song drifted through your earphones. not again.

this time, you couldn't help but to bite your bottom lip in the hope that the tears forming at your eyes would disappear. it didn't work, and one drop slowly rolled down your cheek.

you didn't want to cry in the library, but it's not like anyone cared. they didn't pay enough attention to you. you weren't popular.

you grabbed a tissue from your pocket that you conveniently had since you had a cold, and you used it to dab at your eyes. your breath became shorter and shorter until you were basically hyperventilating in your library chair.

your tissue became useless due to the amount of tears that were pouring out of your eyes. thank god you were in a small corner where no one could see you.

but someone saw you.

unbeknownst to you, anakin was also supposed to be doing his physics homework, but he got distracted when he noticed you with your headphones in doing your work. then he saw you get the tissue out and he noticed when your shoulders began to shake. he oh so badly wanted to go and take you back to his apartment and cuddle you until you fell asleep. but he was with padmé now, and may he state that it was the biggest mistake of his life to break up with you and use her as a rebound.

to be honest, he didn't think of padmé as anything more than a rebound, which was bad of him to think, but it was true. he wanted to go back to his old ways, but he couldn't. he was sure that you hated him now, and partly, it was true.

you hated how he was your whole world.

but, he watched you struggle to keep the tears in 10 metres away from where he was sat in silence. he should have stood up and given you another tissue, but he didn't. you wouldn't have accepted it. instead, you would have slapped him or said something profane.

he watched as you shoved your books and your singular pencil into your satchel before grabbing your useless tissue and walking out of the library with your head down. not that anyone was looking.

he should have followed you, but thankfully, your apartment buildings were next to each other, and your bedrooms looked into each others. this, however, reminded anakin of the time he’d brought padmé back to his bedroom to have sex since his roommate was out studying. he momentarily forgot that you would see everything, but as he was kissing padmé, he caught your reflection through the window in a mirror he had on the wall. you looked heartbroken, to say the least.

he never had sex with padmé ever again, just to be sure, but as you glanced out of the window at them that day, you found yourself remembering all the times when anakin kissed you like that. it was heartbreaking, to say the least.

anakin wanted to follow you home and say everything he needed to say, but he know that you would go home and just cry. if you did that, then he could torture himself all night long by watching you sob the night away in your dingy little room that hasn’t seen the light of day or another human being since anakin called it off. it was his fault you were crying, after all.

he knew he needed the torture. he couldn’t live with himself if he knew you were crying all alone and didn’t hurt himself with the sight. he had to, he needed to. it was his indirect way of apologising.

but anyway, he watched you walk out of the library before waiting 5 minutes and following you.

he didn’t see you though, as you were sat on a bench outside of the library. you had a feeling he would follow you when you caught a glimpse of him as you rushed out. you were right.

you watched him stride across the campus, trying to look for you. internally, you were angry at him. he should just leave me alone, you thought, the tears now slowing down and your shoulders stilling. but as you thought that, you immediately felt bad. he still cared for you as he came to look for you after he'd noticed you crying in the library.

he still cared, that was all that mattered.

he was still in eyesight, so you jumped up, threw you satchel over your body, and ran to where he was nearly by the apartment buildings. the clouds above were closing in and the sun was setting. i shouldn't be out any later, you thought as the new darkness in the sky reminded you of some stories you had heard from friends in other classes about girls who stayed out too late. this also reminded you of when anakin used to swear on his family's life that he would protect you.

"that's a brave swear on your family's life," you used to say in response.

he used to reply, "well, i know that no harm will come to you if i'm nearby, and so no harm will come to them either. but you're also my family now."

you wondered if he told the same thing to padmé.

you came within distance behind him to hear his heavy footfalls as he glanced right and left for any sign of him, but you faltered. what would you say? anakin, hey, it's been a while? no. anakin, i hate you for what you did? no. anakin, it's me? yeah, that would have to do.

"anakin, it's me."

he whipped around. those were the first words you'd spoken to him in four months. it had taken him a month to find padmé.

in his wisdom, he stood with his mouth hanging open. "you're there," he said. and those were his first words.

"uh, yeah. i don't want to assume or anything, but i was sat on the bench outside. i saw you storm past."

"you aren't assuming, i was coming to find you. i don't know why but i just... didn't want to see you crying anymore. that's all you've been doing for the past two months since i found- since i found padmé."

your face must have fallen when he mentioned her name as he immediately reconciled.

"uh, this isn't about her. i just want you to stop crying. it's torturing me, and i know that i'm the reason why."

usually, you would have hit back with a snarky but jokey line, like, "bold of you to assume," but you couldn't. you just couldn't.

instead tears began forming yet again as the sight of him in front of you finally set in, and you pushed past anakin to the apartment building. you pushed past ashoka when you got to the apartment, and something on her face told you she understood why.

after slamming your door shut behind you, you dropped your bag on the floor and curled up on your rug.

you didn't even have the strength to get on the bed.

after 5 minutes of crying your heart out, your door creaked open. big hand grabbed at your waist but you squeezed your eyes shut, blinking the tears away. someone sat you upright, but you refused to look, you didn't want it to be true.

"baby, i need you to open your eyes for me, okay?" anakin, oh god.

you refused again, but he pulled you forward so you were laying on his chest.

"it's okay," he whispered. "take your time."

"i don't know- why i hate you so much," you sobbed out, staining his shirt.

"it's okay, i feel the same way."

"you do?" you craned your head up at this, finally opening his eyes.

"yes," he said, rubbing your back, the way you told him your mother used to do it when you were crying. he knew you too well and it made you angry. "i hate you so much that i'm in love with you all over again. i don't know why either. s'okay, baby."

"stop calling me baby, i hate it," you said, resting your head against his chest again.

"no, you don't," he simply said. you didn't, not really, you just hated how vulnerable you were just like you were four months ago.

"will you swear to protect me?" you asked.

"on my family, yes. always, Y/N, always. it's always gonna be you. it was never padmé, it will never be her. i'm sorry for having sex with her whilst you were in your room, but the truth is, all i could think about during it was how we used to do it. as i came, i thought about you and only you. i couldn't face padmé without being embarrassed and she couldn't understand why."

"all this time..." you said.

"all this time," he said, grabbing your face. "it's been you. i don't know why i ended it, i was being stupid. but i want another go at us, please."

you nodded, wiping at your cheeks. he brought you in close and pecked your lips, smiling. "how about we get you off this rug and onto your bed?"

he picked you up with his strong arms and big hands and laid you in the bed, under your covers.

"join," you said, patting the space next to you. he joined you immediately, wrapping his arms around you from behind and nuzzling into you like a routine - like you'd never been apart.

"what about her? padmé?" you asked.

"i think she knows she's not the one. i think she's always known."

and then he snuggled into you, like it was any other night.

[cheynovak]

Sheriff’s Bargain - Part 2

Characters: Beau Arlen x F/Reader Y/N     

Summary:  Y/N, a seasoned con artist, is arrested after returning to Montana, where her past comes back to haunt her in the form of Sheriff Beau Arlen—the man she abandoned five years ago. Facing charges linked to a drug lord, she’s offered a deal to work as an informant. Torn between her criminal life and lingering feelings for Beau, Y/N must decide whether to help him bring down the crime ring or continue running from her past.

Warnings: Mentioning of breaking the law

English is not my first language 

*Please do not copy my work, reblog/comments/likes are appreciated* 

I worked with Beau and the sheriff's department as best as I could, but every day felt like walking a tightrope. No matter how much I helped, I couldn’t shake the feeling that they saw me as the devil in disguise—a criminal wearing a thin mask of cooperation. Beau, especially, kept his distance. Professional, detached. Like I was just another asset in his pursuit of justice. Maybe that’s what I was now.

The latest task was more difficult than I expected. I’d already given them all the intel I had, but most of it was old, whispers on the street, fragments of conversations from six years ago when I was doing jobs for Declan King. And in the criminal world, six years was a lifetime. They needed more than whispers. They needed something concrete.

So they wired me up and sent me back in. My target: King’s right-hand man, Grady. A dangerous guy with a reputation for sniffing out rats. I thought I could handle it—I’d slipped into and out of tighter situations before, but this one was close. Too close.

Grady wasn’t an idiot, and I felt him watching me the entire time, waiting for me to slip up. He got suspicious. Real suspicious. And he was right, all of the sudden I asked to meat pretending to be in trouble needing to loan money, I never asked my clients for loans, and they knew, but I played my part.

Things almost went south, but I kept my cool, spun a story about old times, and managed to walk out of there with a new bond, they would call me whenever they had a job for me. Whatever that may be.

I was shaking when I left their place, in desperate need for a drink.

But now, sitting alone at the bar, I could still feel the adrenaline coursing through me. I was shaking inside, no matter how calm I’d appeared on the surface. I’d been one wrong word away from being found out, and that scared me more than I wanted to admit.

The whiskey in front of me wasn’t helping. It wasn’t chasing away the cold fear that had settled in my bones, but I kept drinking anyway, hoping that eventually it would. The bar was dim, full of noise and life, but I felt distant from it all, lost in my own head.

That’s when I saw him.

Beau walked in, scanning the room like he always did, his eyes sharp and focused. He spotted me instantly, and I could see his jaw tighten as he made his way over. He didn’t belong here, not in this seedy dive bar with its sticky floors and cheap liquor. But then again, neither did I. Not anymore.

“Y/N,” he said, his voice low as he slid onto the barstool beside me. He didn’t order a drink. He just sat there, watching me, his eyes darker than usual.

I glanced at him, then took another sip of my whiskey. “Didn’t realize the sheriff was making house calls to dive bars now.”

“You should be more careful,” he said, ignoring my sarcasm. “Grady’s men hang around places like this. You don’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention.”

I laughed, but it sounded hollow even to my own ears. “I think I’ve already attracted all the wrong kinds of attention, don’t you think?”

Beau’s gaze didn’t waver. “What happened back there?”

I swallowed hard, my grip tightening around the glass. “I handled it. Just like I always do.”

“Barely,” he said, his tone sharp. “We were listening, Y/N. You were one step away from blowing your cover.”

His words stung, more than they should have. “What do you want me to say, Beau? I got in, didn’t I?”

Beau leaned closer, his voice dropping. “This isn’t a game. These people aren’t going to let you walk away if they find out you’re working with us. And if you go down, we can’t pull you out in time.”

I met his gaze, feeling a surge of frustration. “You think I don’t know that? You think I haven’t been living with that reality for years now? I tried to stay as far away from King as possible, I know what he is.” I set the glass down a little too hard, the sound sharp against the noise of the bar. “I’m doing this for you. For your case. Don’t forget that.”

There was a moment of silence between us, the weight of everything unsaid hanging in the air.

“For me? I didn’t start a life in crime, did I?” Beau finally said, his voice softer but rough. “No,” I said, my voice quieter now too. “But you asked me to help, didn’t you?”

He didn’t respond, just stared at me with those eyes that made it hard to breathe. I wondered if he saw it, the fear I was trying so hard to drown in whiskey, the exhaustion that came from years of looking over my shoulder. Or maybe he just saw me for who I really was, a criminal trying to play at redemption.

Beau sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Look, Y/N, I get it. I know this isn’t easy for you. But we’re in deep now. You keep going, and we’ll get King. But if it gets too dangerous, you need to tell me. You need to let me pull you out before it’s too late.”

I looked down at the glass in my hands, turning it slowly. “Look, don't pretend you even care for me after what I did.” Beau was quiet for a moment before he spoke again. “Maybe I am.”

There was something in his voice that made me look up at him, something I hadn’t heard in a long time. Concern. Real concern. For me. And that was what scared me more than anything.

“I can handle it,” I said, though I wasn’t sure who I was trying to convince—him or myself.

Beau’s eyes softened, but he didn’t push me further. Instead, he stood up, sliding some cash onto the bar. “I’ll drive you home. You’ve had enough for tonight.”

I wanted to argue, to tell him I didn’t need his help, but the truth was, I was too tired. Too tired of fighting him, of fighting myself. So I nodded, letting him guide me out of the bar and into the cool Montana night.

As we walked to his truck, the silence between us felt different. Not heavy with tension like before, but something else. Something almost… familiar. For the first time in years, I didn’t feel like I had to run. At least, not tonight.

But as Beau opened the truck door for me, the memories of last time I hopped in his car lingered in my mind.

The drive started off in silence, the only sound the steady hum of the engine and the occasional bump in the road. I stared out the window, the dark Montana landscape blurring by, trying to piece together the tangle of emotions that had knotted up in my chest since Beau walked into that bar.

I wasn’t sure how to explain it to him—or if I even wanted to. Finally, Beau broke the silence. “Why?” I blinked, caught off guard. “Why what?” He glanced at me, his jaw tight. “Why do this? Work with me. Was it just because I asked?”

I sighed, looking back out the window. “Yes, because you asked. What else was I supposed to do? It was either help or rot in a cell.”

He shook his head, like he was upset with the truth, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter. His voice dropped, more raw now. “Why date me back then? Was it just for the money? Another job?”

The question hit me harder than I expected. My stomach twisted, and I knew this conversation was inevitable, but I wasn’t ready for it. I could feel his eyes on me, waiting for an answer, and I stayed quiet, hoping that maybe if I didn’t respond, the question would disappear. But my silence spoke louder than words.

I owed him an explanation. After all this time, he deserved at least that much. “At first... yeah,” I admitted softly, the words heavy in my throat. “It was about the job. You seemed like someone I could get intel from, maybe sell it and make a quick score.”

I could feel him tense beside me, his grip on the wheel tightening. “Figures,” he muttered under his breath, but he didn’t interrupt.

“But then…” I continued, my voice almost a whisper, “I realized you were a good man. Different from anyone I’d ever met. And that’s why I left.”

Beau gave a short, humorless laugh, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips, but it wasn’t a smile that reached his eyes. “I’m sure you’ve stolen from good men before. What made me different?”

I looked down at my hands, fidgeting with my fingers, the weight of his question hanging between us. “You were different, Beau. You didn’t deserve to be dragged into the mess I was in. You were too… good for me... You still are.”

He was quiet for a moment, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. I could feel the frustration rolling off him in waves, the unsatisfied tension in his smirk. “Good men get conned all the time, Y/N. It’s not about deserving.”

“I know that,” I said, my voice trembling slightly. “But with you, it felt different. You made me see something in myself I didn’t want to face. That’s why I left, not because I didn’t care… but because I cared too much.”

Beau glanced over at me, his eyes softened, though the hurt was still there, just beneath the surface. “You could’ve stayed. Maybe we could’ve figured it out.”

I shook my head, tears prickling at the back of my eyes. “No, Beau. You deserved better than the mess I was, better than someone who couldn’t even be honest with you.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time, just drove in silence, and I wondered if I had said too much or not enough. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he sighed deeply.

“You know,” he said, his voice low, “ I was angry when you left. But what hurts more now is that you didn’t trust me enough to let me help you. To see who you really were, to get you out.”

I swallowed hard, feeling a lump form in my throat. “I didn’t what to get out, Beau." He looked at me, "And now?" "I-I, I don't know… at least I’m trying to, I guess.”

We didn’t say much after that, the silence between us heavy but not as suffocating as before. There were no easy answers, no way to fix the past. But maybe, just maybe, there was a way forward, even if it was messy and uncertain.

As Beau pulled into the driveway of the safe house where I’d be staying for now, I took a deep breath. This wasn’t over—neither the case nor whatever this was between us. It felt like we were standing at the edge of something, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready to step off or if I was going to fall.

I asked if he wanted to come in. He hesitated, his hand hovering over the keys still in the ignition, eyes locked on the house ahead. For a moment, I thought he might say yes. But then he shook his head, his jaw set. “Not tonight,” he said quietly, his voice rough, as if it took more effort to say those two words than he wanted to admit.

I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Okay.”

The air between us felt heavy, weighted down by everything unsaid, everything I couldn’t fix. I jumped out of the car and started walking toward the house, the cool night air biting at my skin. With each step, I felt a strange mix of relief and regret—relief that we had finally talked, that we’d gotten more out in that car ride than we had in all the weeks working together. But regret… because I’d hurt him. And seeing the hurt still lingering in his eyes twisted something deep inside me.

The porch light flickered as I reached the door. I fumbled with the key, but my mind was still back in the car with Beau. He’d been distant, cold even, for most of our time working together. But tonight, for the first time in years, he let some of that guard down, even if just for a moment.

I should have felt good about it. I should’ve felt relieved. But the truth was, knowing I had caused him that pain… it felt horrible. Worse than I’d imagined it would.

Once inside, I leaned against the door, closing my eyes for a moment, trying to calm the storm of emotions swirling inside me. I wasn’t used to this—feeling this way, caring this much about someone other than myself. It was easier when I was just a con, slipping in and out of people’s lives without looking back. But with Beau… I’d let myself care. And now I couldn’t escape the consequences of that.

I hurt him, and I didn’t know if I could ever undo that.

I opened my eyes, my heart pounding as I took in the sight of the trashed room. Furniture overturned, papers scattered, and the uneasy silence that followed the realization that someone had been here—looking for me. The blood drained from my face. I fumbled for my phone, my hands trembling as I dialed Beau’s number. He picked up on the first ring.

“Beau, someone’s been here. The place is smashed—”

“I’m still close. Stay put. I’m on my way.”

Minutes felt like hours as I stood in the wreckage, waiting, every sound making my pulse spike. When Beau arrived, he rushed to me, his eyes scanning the room before settling on me, his jaw tight. He didn’t say anything at first, just placed a hand on my arm, grounding me in the chaos.

His colleagues from the department showed up soon after, combing through the place, searching for clues, for any sign of who had broken in. But I already knew who. Kings men. He must’ve gotten wind that I was here. I was on their radar now, and the realization sent a chill down my spine.

Beau stood next to me as his team worked, his presence steady and solid in the middle of my spiraling fear. When the search was over, and the immediate threat cleared, he turned to me, his brow furrowed with concern.

“You can’t stay here,” he said, his voice firm. “We’ll find a new safehouse, but for tonight…” He hesitated, his eyes searching mine. “You’ll stay at my place.”

I didn’t argue. The fear gnawing at my insides left no room for pride. I nodded, my voice barely above a whisper. “Okay.”

--

At his house, the tension still clung to me like a second skin. I sat on the couch while Beau moved into the kitchen. He returned a few moments later with a cup of tea, setting it down in front of me. His eyes stayed on me longer than usual, a mix of worry and something deeper swimming in them.

“You’re scared,” he said softly, leaning against the counter.

I didn’t deny it. “I am.”

He didn’t say anything, just turned, rummaged through a drawer, and came back with a gun in his hand. He held it out to me, his expression serious. “Do you know how to work this?”

I nodded, my voice steady despite the fear. “Since I was five.” His eyebrows shot up, his concern deepening. “Five?” I smiled, but it was bitter. “Girls with normal childhoods don’t grow up to be criminals, Beau.”

He watched me for a long moment, the weight of my words sinking in. His shoulders sagged slightly, and I could see it in his face—he wanted to ask more, to dig deeper into the past I rarely talked about. But he didn’t. Instead, he sat down beside me, the space between us charged with unspoken things.

“You don’t have to be that girl anymore,” he said quietly.

I looked at him, really looked at him. But no matter how much I wanted to believe him, the fear, the darkness of my past, still felt too close, too much a part of me.

“Maybe not,” I said, forcing a smile.

Beau didn’t respond, but the look in his eyes said enough. He wasn’t going to let me run this time. And for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

“Tell me about her.”

I looked up, meeting Beau’s steady gaze. “Really?” I asked, a little surprised he wanted to go down this road.

He nodded, leaning back slightly. “I presume the stories you gave me on our dates were... false?” There was a hint of amusement in his voice, but the tension between us lingered.

I smiled, a little apologetically. “Most of them, yeah.”

“Come on,” he said with a teasing glint in his eyes, trying to lighten the mood. “You’ve got dirt on me too.”

I shook my head, my smile fading. “Yeah, but you’ve got dirt on me to put me in jail.”

His face softened, and he didn’t deny it. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, watching me, waiting. The easygoing sheriff was gone, replaced by a man who wanted to know the truth. I could see the weight of the years between us, the unsaid things that were about to come to the surface.

I took a deep breath, staring at the floor for a moment before looking back up at him. “You really want to know?”

Beau didn’t move, just nodded once. “Yeah. I do.”

I leaned forward, clasping my hands together, trying to figure out where to even start. My life wasn’t a story with a clean beginning or an easy ending. It was messy, full of jagged edges and broken pieces.

“I grew up in a place where trust got you hurt,” I began, my voice low. “My dad… he wasn’t a good man. He ran with the wrong crowd—gamblers, lowlifes. He was a con artist, too. I guess that’s where I got it from. But he wasn’t careful. He owed a lot of people money, people who weren’t too happy when he couldn’t pay.”

Beau stayed quiet, his eyes never leaving mine, but I could tell he was taking it all in. He didn’t interrupt, just let me keep going.

“I was five when I learned how to handle a gun,” I continued. “Because he wasn’t home most nights, and when he was, it wasn’t safe. My mom left when I was a kid, so I didn’t have anyone to teach me what normal was. I learned survival from the people around me—thieves, liars, con artists. By the time I was twelve, I was running scams with my dad. He called it ‘teaching me the family business.’” I laughed bitterly at the memory. “But really, it was just survival.”

Beau’s face hardened, but he didn’t say anything. I could see the way his fists clenched slightly at his sides, like he was imagining that little girl growing up in that world.

“Eventually, I got good at it. Better than my dad. I moved on from his small-time schemes to bigger things. By the time I was twenty, I was on my own, pulling jobs for some very dangerous people. And once you’re in that life, it’s not easy to get out. You know too much, and people don’t forget that. You don’t get to just disappear.”

I looked down at my hands, feeling the weight of all those years press down on me again. “That’s why I left you, Beau. I didn’t want to drag you into the mess I was in. I thought if I just disappeared, maybe I could protect you from all of it.”

I glanced up, searching his face for some sign of what he was thinking. For a long moment, he didn’t say anything. Then, finally, he spoke, his voice quiet but steady.

“I knew you were running from something, but I didn’t realize it was all that.”

I shrugged, trying to play it off, but the truth was, telling him all of this felt like exposing a part of me I’d kept hidden for years. “It’s not exactly first-date material.”

He gave a small, humorless smile. “No, I guess not.”

Silence settled between us again, and I could see the wheels turning in his head. He was piecing things together, seeing me in a way he hadn’t before. And I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse.

“You’re not your dad, Y/N,” Beau said after a moment, his voice firm. “You’ve made mistakes, yeah, but you’re not him. You don’t need to be like him.”

I let out a long breath, my eyes drifting back to the floor. “Sometimes, it feels like I am. Like I’m stuck in this cycle, doing what I know best because it’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at.”

Beau leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, closing the distance between us. “You’ve been trying to survive your whole life. That’s not the same as being a bad person.”

I looked up at him, his words sinking in, but I wasn’t sure I could believe them. Not yet, anyway. “I don’t know how to be anyone else,” I whispered.

Beau reached over, gently placing his hand on mine. “Then maybe it’s time you learn.” I stared at him, the warmth of his touch grounding me in a way I hadn’t felt in years.

“How?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. “You’re doing it already,” Beau said softly, his eyes steady on mine.

For a moment, the air between us shifted. The tension that had been simmering for weeks boiled over. My eyes drifted to his lips, and before I could think twice, I leaned in, crashing into him with all the pent-up emotions I’d been trying to ignore. His lips were warm, familiar, and for a second, he let me. He kissed me back, and it felt like the world was slipping away.

But just as quickly, he pulled back, his hands on my shoulders, gently but firmly pushing me away. His eyes were conflicted, full of emotions he wasn’t ready to act on. “Bad idea,” he muttered, standing up and running a hand through his hair.

I sat there, my heart racing, feeling the sting of rejection, but also knowing he was right. This was too messy. There was too much between us now.

Beau walked toward his bedroom, not looking back. “Goodnight,” he said, his voice low and strained.

I watched him disappear down the hall, my mind spinning. I wasn’t sure what I expected when I kissed him, but this—this felt like a deeper kind of hurt. One that came with the weight of everything we’d been through, and everything we hadn’t said.

I sat there for a long time after, the house quiet, the warmth of his touch lingering on my skin.

--

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[midnightsnyx]

what if i told you (i love you) part 3 - joel miller

pairing: joel miller!fem reader

chapter summary: with Joel and Ellie still in Jackson, you try to navigate your confusing feelings towards Joel. warnings: small mentions of violence, angst, fluff, swearing I think. let me know if i missed anything please! also this isn't edited at all. if you know tlou and wanna beta this story, that would be lovely <3 word count: 3k masterlist series masterpost ask box tag list form

authors note: thought I abandoned this story? same. so it's been a hot minute, and I'm not sure if anyone is still interested in this story but it's been in the back of my mind and then 3k words poured out of me at work today. I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter, but I hope you like it anyways. I'll tag the people who asked, but I know it's been MONTHS so if you want to be removed from the tag list, send me a message and if you want to be added to the list, fill out this form. if you've got any questions, comments or thoughts, my ask box is here or just leave a comment in the notes:). thanks for reading, like & hit that reblog button if you enjoy it🩵

When Jack was first born, you went through a rough time. You were a new mom in a post-apocalyptic world and still trying to get over the betrayal you felt from Joel. You spent many nights at the kitchen table with Maria or Avery, crying or sitting in silence and feeling numb. The hardest nights were when you missed him, because that meant feeling weak and you hated letting yourself feel like you needed him. 

Your task of avoiding him during his stay in Jackson is becoming particularly difficult because of the duckling you seem to have acquired. Ellie trails after you nearly anywhere you and Jack go and Joel has no intention of letting Ellie out of his sight for longer than a few hours. A small part of you is jealous that he seems to see the girl as a daughter when he wouldn’t even accept Jack but you can’t blame her, so you let her tag along while pretending Joel isn’t always hovering in the background like a mother hen. During movie night, you seat Jack with Ellie and go stand in the back with the adults. Brad, one of the men around your age immediately comes over and tries to strike up a conversation with you. He’s nice enough, and not hard on the eyes but you never really let yourself make time for dating. You have your hands full with your kid so you just smile politely but entertain him, listening to him talk about going on patrol but tune him out when he begins bragging about taking out a pack of clickers. You know his story isn’t true because Avery was on the same patrol as him and told you when the clickers showed up, he hid while everyone else took care of it. 

At some point, you can feel a pair of eyes on you and immediately you know who it is without having to look. You’re trying to ignore it but his eyes feel like they’re burning a hole in your head so you turn to look and as you do, he quickly walks out of the building. You don’t know what comes over you, but you excuse yourself from your conversation with Brad and follow Joel outside. He didn’t go far, you find him leaning against the wall near the door a few feet away, arms crossed and deep in thought. It’s close to impossible to sneak up on him unless he’s feeling safe or is with someone he trusts. You’re apparently neither anymore because his head shoots up as soon as you get close.

He stares at you, mouth opening and closes a few times before he looks back at the ground and scuffing his boot in the dirt. You’ve no idea why you even followed him out here in the first place and after a few more seconds of silence, you start to head back inside but his voice stops you just as it did a few nights ago. He still has this invisible hold on you and you can’t understand why.

“Sarah,” he mumbles so quietly you wouldn’t have heard it if it wasn’t silent outside. “Her name was Sarah and she was my entire world and she’s gone.”

Tommy had admitted to you on one of your bad nights while he and Maria were trying to comfort you that Joel had lost a daughter. You’d put two and two together after Tommy made the memorial with Maria’s late son and the name Sarah who you knew was neither of theirs.

“Yeah,” you whisper, hating the ache in your chest you feel for him. You can’t imagine losing Jack but you don’t know if you can accept what he is insinuating. You can hear him walk towards you and you fight the urge to leave because as much as you don’t want to be around him, this is the first time he’s opened up to you. 

“I thought it’d be replacin’ her,” he mumbles and you realize he means Jack. That accepting another child would mean replacing his late daughter. 

You turn around to find him closer than you were expecting and take a step backwards, almost toppling backwards but his arms reach out and catch you. He doesn’t let go immediately, hands firm and steady gripping your arms exactly how you remember. For a moment, neither of you move. It’s as if you’re in a trance and it only breaks when the door flies open and Jack comes running out the door with Ellie chasing after him.

You pull away from Joel, picking up Jack when he reaches for you. 

“Mama! The movie’s over,” he says and then frowns. “You were gone.”

“I came out for some fresh air.”

He grumbles and tucks his face in the crook of your neck. “‘S cold,” 

You’re about to respond when Joel shrugs his thick brown jacket off and drapes it over Jack but it’s big enough that it covers you as well. 

You mumble a quiet thanks, ignoring the curious look Ellie gives you both and bid goodbye to the both of them, promising the girl that you would see her tomorrow. 

It was inevitable, you realize, sitting at the table listening to Jack tell Joel and Ellie a story you’d told him too often. 

“And-and then the Prince saved the Princess from a huge monster who’s teeth go click click click and then they went to Fred and Bob’s house for dinner!” 

You can feel Joel’s eyes on you the entire time Jack is telling them the story. He’s clearly piecing together that this isn’t just some made up story you told your son but a kid-friendly version of something that happened between you and Joel. It was shortly before you left Boston, Joel and yourself going to Bill and Franks for something. You’d been distracted because it was just after you found out you were pregnant and hadn’t told anyone yet and you turned your back for a split second while you were in the wrong place and nearly torn apart by a clicker. Joel had been furious, saying you needed to be more careful but he couldn’t have been that mad because after lecturing you for ten minutes, he’d pinned you against a tree and kissed you until you couldn’t remember your name.

It was one of the last times he had kissed you before you told him you were pregnant and then left Boston. 

“Quite a story,” Joel says, looking at Jack who proudly smiles at the older man's comment. “Does the Princess have a name?”

Jack gives you a curious look and when you don’t say anything, he shrugs and looks back at Joel.

“Mama never said.” 

Ellie snickers quietly, obviously also realizing that the story is based on actual events. Joel gives her a look but she doesn’t back down despite his glare. She leans towards Jack and grins. 

“Do you have any more stories about the Prince and Princess?” 

Simultaneously, you and Joel both say “no” a little too loudly which earns the two of you some looks. 

“I think it’s time for someone to go to school,” you say, standing up and offering your hand to Jack who grumbles but climbs off his chair and requests to be picked up by you rather than walk. You know you’re probably babying him but he’s growing too quick and soon he won’t want to be carried around by his mom so you’re cherishing every moment. 

You chance a look at Joel before you leave and he’s wearing the softest expression you’ve probably ever seen on him and it makes your stomach do somersaults and cheeks warm. It’s probably a bad idea, no it’s definitely a bad idea but when it comes to Joel Miller, you always made bad choices. 

“You guys can walk with us if you’d like,” you say and Ellie is out of her chair before you even finish the sentence. Joel looks a little more hesitant but he still doesn’t like going far without the girl in his sight so he follows the three of you outside. 

Of course by the time you get to the small school Jackson has, Jack is more than happy to go in and play with his friends. He gives you, Ellie, and a startled Joel hugs before running inside without looking back. You’re grateful that you have a place here where Jack can have as close to a normal childhood one can have in this world. You can’t imagine if you’d stayed in Boston what kind of upbringing he would’ve had. You certainly don’t miss it there, aside from the nights you missed Joel which were far and few in between up until he showed up here. The reason he’s here is still unclear although you have a suspicion Tommy knows more than what he’s told you and even Maria. The length of Joel and Ellie’s stay is also not known. You were expecting them to just need to stop and get supplies before continuing their journey but they’re still here and you have no idea when they’ll be leaving.   

You’re not sure what possessed you to invite Joel and Ellie to your little house for dinner but here you are, chopping vegetables to make soup. Jack is still at school and the soup will take time to cook but Ellie insisted on helping you prepare it and Joel said he needed to go see Tommy. It’s kind of nice to have company even if it’s in the form of a fourteen year old. Said fourteen year old has been awfully quiet the past twenty minutes and you can tell she’s wanting to ask you something but is stopping herself. 

“Go ahead,” you eventually say, tired of her silence. 

“Joel is Jack’s dad, isn’t he?” 

You’re so tempted to say no, only for the fact that she obviously looks up to Joel and you don’t know who she would look at as the bad guy. And honestly is the best policy, right?

“Yeah,” you tell her, noticing when her shoulders deflate. 

She’s quiet for another five minutes before asking, “Did Joel tell you to leave?”

You’re quick to answer this question because as wrong as what Joel did was, it was your decision to leave Boston and you don’t want to put some wedge between them.

“No, I left because I wanted a better life for Jack.” It’s not a complete lie, Joel is part of why you left but you really did want a better life for your son than what he would’ve had in Boston. 

“Alright,” she eventually says and then: “Can you pass me another carrot?” 

And that’s that. You both chat about random things, she tells you some terrible puns and you buckle and reluctantly tell her some more stories of when you, Joel and Tess lived in Boston. She tells you that Joel won’t talk about Tess and she feels guilty about her death. You listen quietly, letting her spill out things she must have been holding in knowing Joel didn’t want to hear it. 

“I knew Tess really well,” you tell her. “She wouldn’t have done what she did if she didn’t think it was worth it.” 

Ellie looks at you hesitantly. “Yeah?”

You nod and she smiles a little before asking if she can come with you to pick up Jack, but you tell her that Avery is going to pick him up and drop him here. Since you’ve got some quiet time, you decide to do some cleaning while Ellie goes to the house she and Joel have been staying at to take a shower. 

It’s a couple hours later when there’s a knock on your door and you’re figuring it’s Avery with Jack so when you open the door, you almost drop the broom you’re holding when you see Joel standing in front of you and Jack in his arms. You start to ask why Joel has Jack and where Avery is when you see the woman in question standing at the bottom of the stairs with a sheepish smile on her face. 

“We, uh, ran into Mr. Miller on our way here and Jack insisted that he come with us,” she explains but you can’t stop looking at the duo in front of you. Jack is smiling, arms wrapped around Joel’s neck and telling him a story but Joel is watching you warily, like he’s expecting you to yell or something.

“Hi mama,” Jack says but makes no move to leave Joel’s arms. In fact, he looks very pleased that the older man is carrying him. 

“Hi baby,” you reply, unsure what to do. You don’t want to upset Jack by taking him from Joel but you can’t tell if the latter is uncomfortable. Avery, sensing the tension, smiles brightly and waves awkwardly.

“I gotta go feed Lucy,” she says, already walking backwards. “See ya, Jack!”

Jack shouts goodbye to Avery and you finally snap out of your stupor, stepping back to let Joel walk inside. He toes off his boots and you’re about to offer to take his jacket when you realize he’s not wearing one because you never gave him it back last night. 

“Dinner smells good,” he says, following you to the living room where Jack finally wriggles out of Joel’s arms but only to get a toy to show him. 

“Look Mr. Miller,” the boy says, offering a wooden train that you gave him for his birthday. An older gentleman in the town made it for you after hearing Jack talking about how much he loved looking at pictures of trains. 

“That’s a really nice train,” Joel compliments, sitting down on the couch. Jack immediately climbs up and settles down next to him, chatting about the toy and you watch as Joel listens intently, nodding at the right times and you remember that he’s done this before, it may have been twenty years ago, but he’s dealt with an excited almost five-year-old.

The front door opening and closing tears your attention away from them and you look to find Ellie walking towards you, shrugging off her jacket. She lays it on the rocking chair and then plops down next to Jack, shooting you a small smile. There’s something in her expression that is sadder than when she left and you wonder if something happened since she left but you don’t bother asking her now. Instead, you go set the table and check the soup to make sure it’s done before calling everyone to the kitchen. Jack makes sure his chair is as close to Joel’s as he can get it so he can keep talking to him.

You have heavily conflicted feelings about the relationship growing between them. On one hand, it’s kind of nice that Jack is getting to know his dad, even if he doesn’t know Joel is his father. On the other hand, if you let Jack get too attached to Joel, it’ll break his heart when he and Ellie leave. So, you decide tonight after Jack is gone to bed and Ellie goes home, you’ll sit Joel down and ask him why he’s here and when he’s leaving.

Of course that doesn’t happen because Ellie and Jack pass out on the sofa after reading every children's book you own and you and Joel end up sitting at the table, drinking some liquor Maria had given you that you never got around to drinking. You’re not drunk, but you’re tipsy enough that you feel relaxed around Joel and laugh at whatever he’s saying. It almost feels like Boston, when the days were so long and dark that all you wanted to do was sit and drink with him and eventually wind up in bed together. 

Except now, you’ve got two kids who are sleeping in the living room and no intention of going to bed with him. Well, maybe if you let yourself have a few more glasses and if there weren’t kids in the other room but that’s just the alcohol in your system making you think things you shouldn’t.

“Do you remember when Frank asked how long we’d been dating?” He asks and you snort at the memory. You didn’t know at the time why Frank would even think that since you and Joel had been bickering the entire time you were at dinner, and Tess had to tell the two of you to knock it off multiple times. She had choked on her water when you asked why Frank thought you were dating and he said that it was because the two of you reminded him of Bill and himself.  

“Yeah, Tess nearly choked because she was laughing when we simultaneously shouted no and then Bill caught us making out behind his house,” you say, smiling behind a sip of your drink. He doesn’t react to you saying Tess’s name and just shakes his head with a hint of a smile tugging at his lips. He tilts his head a little so he’s looking at you and not the ceiling. 

“If I thought it covered the pain I caused you, I’d say sorry,” he says quietly and a little broken. 

You look away, swallowing loudly. “Well, sorry would be a start.” 

You don’t say that you’re not sure if you can forgive him, even if he did say sorry. Even if he knelt in front of you and begged, you’re not sure if you could push past the last five years. Every night you spent sobbing into your pillow in Boston while you waited for him to come back after you told him you were pregnant. Every bad night you had here in Jackson, thinking of why he did it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers softly, like it’s a secret. 

Blinking back tears, you clear your throat and nod. “Thank you.” 

Thank you but I can’t forgive you, goes unsaid. But a little voice in the back of your mind whispers, I can't forgive you yet and you can’t help but believe it a little bit.

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[ordon-pumpkin]

Remembering (Alt Title: Apollo Gives The Best Hugs)

A short (2280 word) fanfic set after The Sun and The Star. (Tags: Hurt/Comfort, fluff, Solangelo, Apollo being a good parent)

Note: I read The Sun and The Star and I spent most of it hoping for a scene like this at the end to explain the whole Will forgetting about Apollo returning thing. Since the book seems to have… er forgotten. Quite a disappointing oversight but that’s what fix-it fics are for. So, here’s what I envisioned happening. From Apollo’s POV because I miss it. 💛

//////////////////

My son and his boyfriend had embarked on a dangerous quest. One that left me worried. I respected their choices, even if their journey was one I wished they wouldn’t take. The life of a demigod was riddled with danger, quests, and things unfathomable to a regular mortal. Yet, it was commonplace for them. It felt as though my relationship will Will as his father had barely begun. Now, he had journeyed far from me. My heart ached at the thought of losing him.

While they were away I continually checked Camp Half-Blood. After several unsuccessful visits the dread started to grow. Until one day I showed up only to see a head full of messy blonde hair running towards the infirmary for supplies.

Will!

My son.

My beautiful son!

Tears welled up in my eyes. He had survived! I could sense pain coming from him and see bandages and scratches across his form. He was drained from being away from the sun for too long. But the injuries were, thankfully, minor. I turned to look where he had come from. I saw Chiron and Dionysus talking with Nico. He too was pretty banged up, but all things considered he looked well. I thought I saw shadows shift near him. Perhaps my mind was playing tricks on me. Though, with a child of Hades who knew for certain?

Will had disappeared into the infirmary. I approached the doorway and leaned against the frame. My son grabbed supplies; fresh bandages and ointments. He paused to look down at a bandage wrapped around himself. It had bled partially though. The bandage needed to be changed, but of course Will would put Nico’s needs first. I shook my head and blinked away the tears in my eyes. He was incredible. My son.

“Don’t neglect your own wounds. What good is a doctor if they are fighting off infections?” I said simply. “You know… I could help with this.”

Will’s back remained turned to me as he filled a bag with anything he might need. He was focused and determined. “Thanks, but I’ve got it. I heal fast anyway.”

I hummed in amusement at the reply. “Oh, I’m sure you do.”

He froze.

Then, slowly, he turned around. The expression on his face was difficult to read, as if a million things were going through his mind. After a moment, he reached his hand up to run his fingers into his curly blonde hair. He sat down hard on one of the infirmary beds. A look of shock on his features. 

“Dad?” His eyes were watery. “Oh gods.”

“Will?” I approached him as if he were a frightened animal that might run away at any moment. I didn’t want to scare him away, not when I finally knew he was safe. 

“I-I’m sorry.” Will’s voice cracked.

“Sorry?! Whatever for?” I took another step in his direction. “My son! A hero that survived Tartarus! I’ll admit I was worried. But I knew if anyone could succeed it was you and Nico!”

A light blush dusted his cheeks at the praise, but he still appeared to be struggling. 

“When I was down there… I forgot.” Will began before stopping himself. His head tilted away from me as he squeezed his eyes shut tightly.

“What did you forget?” Again, I found myself concerned.

He looked down at his hand and picked at the sheet covering the bed. “I forgot you came back.”

The words left me speechless.

“When I was down there. I-I guess it messed with my head. I thought you went off to fight Python, became a god again and that was it. That you never came back. That I’d be lucky to ever see you again at all. I remember now. You’ve visited. We’ve sat around the fire together. But when I was down there I really thought you never did.”

A gasp escaped my lips. Will turned to look at me. His words felt like a knife to my chest. Because there was a time when I thought that’s how it would be. Finish my trials, become a god again, everything back to how it was before. It wasn’t what I wanted now. My experiences as Lester had changed me. Still, the Underworld had caused Will to forget that I had returned to him. 

I couldn’t help but think that such a thing was exactly what I deserved.

“You were…far from the sun.” I felt the heavy weight of shame cover me like a cloak. “The Underworld didn’t even have to do much to make you believe that I left for good. It’s what you rightfully should have expected based on my track record. I hadn’t been there for you like I should have in the past. It only seems fitting that you would think I returned to godhood and abandoned you.

Fists clenched at my sides, not angry with him, but certainly with myself.

“Will…” My eyes met his again and I hoped he could feel the sincerity in my words. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He studied me briefly. His eyes darted from mine to my hands, then my slumped shoulders, the tension in my neck. Will’s eyes were those of a physician looking for signs in the body language of a patient. Then his demeanor shifted, the studious look melting away. Finally, those same eyes rolled at me. The corner of his mouth twitched upwards into a smirk. “Stop that.”

“Excuse me?”

“I feel bad for forgetting. Even if it was temporary.” My son got up and walked towards me. I could see that his eyes were now watery, matching my own. “But you haven’t. You haven’t forgotten what you promised!”

I swallowed and the tears spilled. He was right. Jason’s sacrifice. My promise to remember what it was like to be human. How could I ever forget? The experiences I had as Lester, they changed me. Being around my children reminded me of the person I had become, who I wanted to be. I was determined to remember. Though it didn’t mean I still couldn’t be ashamed of my absence in the past.

“I haven’t forgotten, but I certainly couldn’t blame you or your siblings for being upset with me for being so distant before.”

“Seriously, stop it. You are standing in front of me right now!” Will stepped closer to me as he spoke his hands gesturing freely. “You are here checking up on me. Making sure I made it back safely. I’ve been back for less than 5 minutes! How many times have you checked while I was away?

A sheepish smile crept on my face. I wasn’t intending to go from absent parent to helicopter parent. But you try finding out that your kid is heading to Tartarus of all places! Can you blame me for being worried?

“That’s what I thought.” Will rushed forward and wrapped his arms around me. “It means a lot to me. You being here. Checking up on me. Checking in at Camp Half-Blood. It means everything. Thank you, Dad.”

Great. As if I wasn’t already crying! I returned his embrace and began to glow, pouring healing energy into him. I noticed Will glowing as well and felt him breathe out in relief as all of his remaining injuries and aches faded.

His voice was a bit muffled against my chest. “You give really good hugs. You know that?”

“The best in existence, I assure you.” I smiled.

He laughed at that, but made no move to leave the embrace. Which I certainly had no objections to. Will had been away from the sun for too long. I could feel him regaining strength in my arms. He could take all the time he needed.

“Oh.” Another voice came from the doorway. 

I turned towards it to see my son’s boyfriend. 

“Apollo.” Nico’s lips were curved in a subtle smile before he caught himself. He tried to hide by rubbing his hand over his mouth. “You’re here.”

It occurred to me that while in the Underworld Nico may have forgotten I ever returned as well. He did seem pleased to see me, which was quite a win in my eyes. It made me feel as though Will was happy for me to be in his life as well.

“Yes. I am.” I said. Nico was tough, as was Will. I didn’t interfere with their quest, but I didn’t see a need for either of them to be in pain any longer. My voice became stern. “And you are hurt.”

“It’s nothing I can’t handle.” He looked away.

Will scoffed in annoyance. “Always the tough guy.”

“Get over here, future son-in-law, and let me heal you.” It was as much me teasing them as it was sincere.

“DAD!” Will groaned.

I laughed in return. To be fair, I wanted to be there for my kids. But maybe the idea of embarrassing them from time to time was an added benefit.

To my surprise, Nico approached. Exhaustion was evident on his face. These two had been through a lot together and apparently the idea of feeling better was more appealing than keeping up a tough guy appearance. 

He stopped within arms reach of us, eyes squinting. “Never mind. I can’t say I’m the biggest hugger anyway and you two are a little…bright.”

I dimmed the glow and noticed Will doing the same. I reached out the arm that wasn’t around Will. “Let me help you, Nico. Please? Those injuries can leave you sore and achey for weeks, much longer if I wasn’t sure Will would be healing you. He needs to rest as well. It’s the least I can do.”

The son of Hades reached up his hand to brush along some partially healed gashes on his face. “Okay, but can you leave these?”

“Whatever for? Is there a deep meaning behind them.”

“No Dad, he just likes the look.” Will looked up at me. “And so do I.”

“Ah! It does go with his aesthetic!” I understood. They certainly suited him. “They will remain I assure you.”

Nico blinked at me before shrugging and allowing me to wrap an arm around him. In a moment I could feel him breathing easier. It’s likely that the boy didn’t realize how tense and sore his entire body was outside of the nicks, scrapes, and bruises until that pain subsided. 

When I felt that the wounds were healed I loosened my embrace. 

I looked into Will’s eyes. “I’m proud of you.”

Then I turned to Nico. “BOTH of you.”

Nico nodded appreciatively and stepped back, while Will wrapped his arms around me again and squeezed quickly. “Thanks Dad. It means a lot.”

He walked over to where he had been gathering supplies. 

“I guess I won’t be needing these after all.” He took off his own old soiled bandages, revealing no remaining cuts underneath, and disposed of them.

Nico stretched and rolled his shoulders. No doubt realizing just how banged up he had been before. He tried to be discreet in checking to see if his facial scars were still there, which I found to be amusing. They were fully scars now, and they did compliment his look. 

Behind him something caught my eye. Shadows moving in the doorway. Which must have been what I had seen near Nico earlier.

“Uh. Nico, your kids are here.” Will crossed his arms with a smirk.

“Kids?” I raised an eyebrow.

Nico sighed. “Not exactly. They are demons made from my emotions.”

“He calls them Cocoa Puffs.” Will offered like that explained everything.

Considering the many so-called impossible things I’ve seen in my thousands of years, I didn’t bother prying too much. Perhaps one day Will and Nico would recount their adventure to Tartarus but it would be on their terms if they wanted to share the details with me. “And are these ‘Cocoa Puffs’ friendly?”

“Yeah, they’re friendly.” Will replied. 

I crouched down and made sure I wasn’t emitting light. If these shadowy creatures were important to my son and Nico then I would not wish to hurt them even if on accident. Our natures were not all that compatible but I wanted to try. Darkness and light didn’t need to be enemies. One approached cautiously and I reached out a hand. The contact reminded me of interacting with other spirits, but these creatures didn’t seem menacing. In their own strange way, they were kind of cute. 

“Ah. Hello there little ones.” I suppose what I was doing was petting them, or some variation of the action. They seemed to find this acceptable.

Nico watched the interaction cautiously. His hand rested on the hilt of his sword, not in a threatening manner. It was more likely a reflex brought on by his desire to protect them from danger. I was the sun god, they were darkness. I couldn’t blame him for his concern. Will walked to Nico and brushed his hand against his free one. Their fingers intertwined and Will squeezed. Nico turned to him with a soft smile. The other hand fell from the sword. They seemed to be having a silent conversation. About me, I assumed, which made me quite curious. But the fact that the son of Hades was actually smiling was more than enough for me to recognize that it couldn’t have been a bad one.

After a bit of interacting with several of the Cocoa Puffs I stood and tapped my finger to my chin. “So these are Nico’s children?”

Nico huffed in annoyance as he’d already offered an alternate name.

I continued anyway in a sing-song voice. “So I’m sure that Will has adopted them! Which makes them basically myyy grandchildren!”

“Daaaaad!” Will rubbed his free hand down his face. He was blushing. Though Nico and I both noticed something else. 

“You’re glowing again.” Nico teased and elbowed his boyfriend lightly.

“I can’t help it! Is it not enough to just blush when I’m embarrassed?!?!” He glared at me.

I laughed. His pout was adorable. “Would it make you feel better to know that I do that too sometimes?”

“What? Really?!” Amusement danced in Will’s bright eyes.

“Yep. Your Aunt Artemis finds it entertaining.” I rolled my eyes. “I adore my sister, truly, but we are indeed siblings and often interact well… as you’d expect for siblings to do. She’s always finding ways to embarrass me to get that reaction.”

Will laughed loudly at the notion and it was like music to my ears. “Actually, that does make me feel better.”

After that we headed to the dining pavilion to meet with Chiron for dinner. The boys trailed behind me, but I heard their hushed conversation. 

“I’m not usually much of a hugger, but I feel a million times better. Didn’t even realize how sore I was before.” Nico whispered.

“Well, he is the god of healing.” Will pointed out. “I feel a lot better too. Not surprising that he gives good hugs all things considered.”

“Healing hugs.” Nico teased. “No wonder he has a care bear for a son.”

“Oh shut it!” Will snapped, but it was quickly followed by laughter.

Nico’s voice dropped even lower to barely a whisper. “I’m glad he’s here. You worried me down there. I knew the sun would help, but having your dad here is even better. It seems to be speeding up your recovery a lot. I know how much this means to you.”

There was no audible response from Will, but I could feel the warmth of his smile. Which was more than enough to make me have to wipe away a tear that had yet again escaped my eye. I wasn’t sure I deserved to feel as welcome as I did.

What is it about kindness? It’s a melody that overwhelms me. One I never want to take for granted.

////////////

Now, I don’t speak as the god of prophesy when I call Nico my future son-in-law. 

It is for them to decide their future. 

I do speak as someone who sees the love Will and Nico have for each other.

I do speak as someone who knows it takes a lot to go through Tartarus together.

I do speak as a dad who wants, more than anything, to see his children happy.