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pies-writes-and-more · 4 years ago

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Karasuno boys when you wander away

Characters: Tsukishima Kei, Dachi Sawamura, Asahi Azumane, & Kageyama Tobio, all with a Fem!Reader

Warnings: probably some swearing but nothing besides that :)

A/N: So this is somewhat based on my IRL relationship haha. I’m very bad with just walking away or getting distracted by something and always worry my partner xD thought it would make for some cute headcanons! Let me know if you’d like more!

Haikyuu Masterlist

Tsukishima had only looked away for a moment. He walked towards a fresh fruit stand, glancing at the peaches and wondering if you wanted one to snack on on the way home. He glanced back and his lips parted to ask you, but you were no where to be seen.

His lips turned into a frown, trying not to give into that small moment of panic as his eyes scanned the outside market. You were no where to be found nearby. His heart pulsed harder against his chest as his mind reminded him of that news story of girls going missing in public places. Tsukishima pushed through people, giving half-assed apologies as he thought about you being dragged away and no one noticing. How had he not noticed? How would he find you? What should he do now?

His heart raced as he continued to look for you, giving out a small yelp when he felt someone grab his hand.

“Tsukki?” You were suddenly next to him, smiling innocently up at him. “Are you okay?”

The rush of relief that came with seeing you next to him was followed with frustration. “Idiot! Where did you wander off to?” He scolded, his hand tightening on yours.

“There was a puppy,” you admitted with slight embarrassment, smiling shyly. “I just gave him a couple of pats - he looked so lonely. Everyone was ignoring him,” you explained, nodding towards an older man who was dozing off on a bench. He had a leash in his hand and a large dog sat next to his feet, eagerly watching people was if begging for someone to pet him.

Tsukishima shook his head in disbelief, “You scared me for a dog? Moron,” he grumbled, pulling you further into the market. He didn’t want to be in such a big crowd right now.

You giggled, trying not to note the redness in his ears, “Aw I’m sorry Tsukki, I didn’t mean to scare you.” You tugged on his arm gently, trying to give him an apologetic smile but he kept looking away from you.

“Whatever, get yourself lost for all I care,” he pouted slightly and you tried your best not to laugh at how such a tall boy could act like a 4 year old.

“I’ll stay with you, promise. Won’t ever leave your side!” you insisted, clutching his arm and beaming up at him.

Tsukishima glanced at your smile, noticing it looked... almost playful? “What?” He raised an eyebrow, already knowing he wasn’t going to like the answer.

“You care about me,” you teased, reaching up to poke his nose playfully. “You were worried about me because you careeee about me.” You had expected him to pull his arm away, stomp off until you apologized for making fun of him.

But instead he just rolled his eyes, flicking your forehead gently, “Maybe just a bit.”

That surprised you just a little, your heart skipping a beat or two in response, “I am sorry, Tsukki, I didn’t think I went off that far. It just got really crowded,” you told him sincerely, squeezing his hand gently. “But lucky for me! You’re so tall so it’s easy to find you!”

Tsukishima scoffed some more but blushed anyways, feeling now like he had overreacted, “Whatever. You’re buying me a snack to make it up to me, idiot.”

“Mmkay!” You beamed, the two of you roaming the market together. Tsukishima pretended like he had completely forgotten the whole thing, but you noticed that he never let go of your hand that easily after that. And he always kept you close in crowded areas.

So yeah, maybe Tsukishima Kei really did care for you.

Daichi is a calm cool collected dude. Calm. Cool. Collected. It was as if he was chanting these words in his brain, eyes frantically trying to find you. CALM COOL COLLECTED, he desperately tried to remind himself. Everything is FINE.

But that still didn’t answer the question: where the hell could you have gone off to?

It was one of the first big matches that Daichi ever invited you too and the crowds were 10x bigger than anything you’ve been to. Daichi’s whole body trembled with the idea that you were completely lost and waiting for him to find you.

“I’m sure she’s alright, Daichi! Y/N’s probably just exploring,” Asahi clapped a hand onto his friend’s shoulder, though Daichi could tell he was nervous too.

“Stop being such worry-bums,” Suga insisted, smacking both of their arms. “Y/N can be as scary as the rest of us! No one would pick on her!”

You were fully capable of dealing with things yourself, Daichi knew this. But he felt a surge of protective energy anytime he felt you needed him. “I’ll be right back,” he mumbled to his friends, his feet quickly running around the gyms to try and catch a glimpse of you.

“Daichi!” Your voice made his eyes widen, darting around to try to find you. Suddenly, he was attacked with a full on jump hug, staggering backwards to keep them upright.

“Y-Y/N! Where’ve you been?” Daichi asked with a laugh, holding you tightly and trying to avoid showing you how nervous he was.

“Coach Ukai told me Hinata left his shoes in the bus so I went to grab it before the game! Shimizu-san and Yachi were both busy so I wanted to help!” You explained, smiling up at him while holding the little bag up for him to see. Your eyes flickered over Daichi’s for a moment, noting the slight blush on his cheeks and the way he couldn’t fully meet your gaze. You couldn’t help but let out a giggle, your lips turning into a little smirk, “Were you worried about me, Daichi?” You teased and laughed as his face turned even more red.

“Well I can’t win without my lucky charm on the stands,” he chuckled, ruffling your hair.

“Oh and I just thought you liked me,” Y/N shot back with a laugh. “Didn’t know it was just cause of your game.”

You turned on your heel, starting to walk back to the gym, Daichi following while stammering out a, “I-I do liked you!” He tried to laugh off his nerves, rubbing the back of his neck as he gave you a smile, “Don’t make me all nervous before a game, love!”

You two shared some more laughs as everyone warmed up, and just before you headed to the stands, you pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. Daichi tried to play it off cool but he was wobbly the whole walk towards the team and the group of boys just laughed, all slapping his back in pride.

Unlike the Cap’n, Asahi is not calm, cool, or collected. I mean I think he’s cool but not in this sense LOL.

Asahi and you decided to have a picnic for lunch in a nearby park. But while he was setting up, you magically disappeared and Asahi felt all of his panic just intensify.

Did you? Leave him? To be on his own? Was this your way of breaking up with him?

No, Asahi tried to convince himself, you loved him. You guys had been together for almost a year now, that’s not how you’d end thins... is it?

Maybe you got lost? Did Asahi walk a little too fast to this spot? He knew sometimes you had a hard time keeping up with his long legs but he thought you had been holding his hand this whole time.

His eyes scanned the somewhat busy park. He couldn’t find you anywhere. His heart was starting to beat way too fast and his fingers were shaking while he tried to text the other third years to ask what the hell he should do.

Suga: LOL knowing Y/N she probably saw some cute chipmunk or something and stopped to take a photo of it

Daichi: don’t worry, Asahi, she’ll probably find you soon - you’re this gigantic dude in a park. I doubt she’d lose you

That didn’t help. Now Asahi was noticing how parents and kids were specifically avoiding him. His bottom lip pouted as he wondered just what he could do to seem less intimidating. Should he sit down? No, what if you were trying to see him? Sitting would only make it harder!

Just as he was considering climbing up the nearby tree to see the park from a higher distance, you popped out from some nearby bushes, holding a few wildflowers.

“Asahi?” You blinked in surprise, finding him trying to find a foothold on the tree. “Are we... eating in the tree?”

“Y/N!” The poor boy almost knocked his head on the tree when he turned around to see you, eyes widening. He immediately ran over to you and twirled you around in a hug, “God, you scared me!”

You quickly apologized profusely seeing how nervous he was, “I’m sorry, Asahi! I saw some pretty flowers over there and thought maybe it would be nice to decorate our tablecloth with!” You kiss his nose and cheeks over and over again trying to get him to calm down (but really that’s just making him more flustered).

The two of you share a gorgeous meal together, and you spend the rest of the day with his head in your lap and you braiding his hair, intertwining some of the flowers you found. The two of you talked about everything and anything and Asahi made sure from that day forward, he could always spot you. Any time you guys weren’t holding hands or standing next to each other, everyone noticed that Asahi’s eyes would dart over to you every now and then, whether consciously or unconsciously.

When he got home that night, he pressed the flowers you put in his hair in a book and kept them as a keepsake. And then gave them to you in a gift for your anniversary later.

Kageyama would start feeling panic and wouldn’t even know why. The game was starting soon and something just didn’t feel right. His muscles? No… he felt in tiptop shape. He stretched a little extra today too to make sure he wasn’t feeling stiff. His stomach? No, he made sure to have some food and milk a little earlier. And he wasn’t feeling nauseous so it couldn’t be that. His hands? No, they felt perfect in fact. He was so excited for this game earlier, he had felt the anticipation running to his fingers to just set the perfect ball. So why was he feeling so uncomfortable?

His eyebrows furrowed as he tried to think about what was making him feel different. His eyes scanned the crowd unconsciously before realizing what it was.

You weren’t standing up there with the rest of the Karasuno fans.

Where the hell were you?

His feet moved towards the gym doors before Ukai yelled at him, “Where the hell do you think you’re going, Kageyama? The game is staring soon!”

Kageyama’s eyes widened, noting the whole team watching him curiously. Why did Kageyama seem so nervous? He never seemed nervous.

“Don’t worry, Kageyama, with my spikes better than ever, we’re definitely going to win!” Hinata grinned, trying to lighten the tense air in the team.

“I’m not worried, just don’t be stupid on the court,” Kageyama replied, shrugging it off. But his eyes still scanned the stands. Where were you? You had said hello to the whole and wished Kageyama luck just a few minutes ago? So how come you weren’t standing up there with Coach’s friends and Yachi?

The whistle blew to indicate the game starting and Kageyama felt his stomach turn. Why was he feeling like this? You were probably fine so what did it matter?

You had been buying some milk from the nearby vending machines to make sure that Kageyama had some after his game. You knew that he had accidentally finished all the ones he had packed earlier and had been kinda crabby about it so you thought maybe it would cheer him up. You had stood in line for the vending machine for what felt like forever but it was all worth it knowing that you could throw the milk boxes into your lunch bag to keep them cool. Knowing Kageyama would be excited about it made you really happy.

As you walked back towards the gym, you could hear cheering. Your eyes widened as you realized that the game had already started and you ran towards the stands.

“Y/N! There you are!” Yachi’s smile looked oddly nervous. Not that she wasn’t normally nervous at these games, but this one seemed different. “I think something’s wrong with Kageyama.”

Your eyes shot down to the court, seeing how stiff Kageyama looked next to everyone else. They were patting him on the back, yelling “We’ll get the next one!” and Noya screaming, “BRING IT ON!”

“He was looking for you in the stands earlier I think,” Yachi told you with a small giggle, “He looked really nervous when he couldn’t see you.”

Your heart swelled slightly, wondering if Kageyama was off his game because he hadn’t been able to see you. “Kageyama!!” You yelled from the stands, cupping your hands around your mouth. The dark haired boy’s head shot up to look at you, a sense of relief growing on his face. “You can do it!!” You screamed some more, the people on the stands behind you yelling in support.

Even from far away, you could see his lips turn upward in a smile.

Alright, you both thought to yourself. Now we can get started.

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skzsauce01 · 3 years ago

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Clementia

Anniversary Request Special

Description: You’d always had a special place in your heart for Lee Minho even though he gives you countless reasons to hate him. How long will your patience last?

Warning: alcohol, sexual assault

Word Count: 2.5k

Pairing: fem!reader x Minho

“Y/N—”

“Go away, Minho.”

“Y/N, look at me.”

“I said no!”

“Well I said I’m sorry.”

You snap around to face him. “Sorry isn’t going to cut it, Lee Minho. You screwed up. You. Screwed. Up. I gave you one request, and you couldn’t even do that.”

“I had my reasons!” he protests.

“Yeah? Well let’s hear them.”

He emits a few noises but can't come up with anything. His face flushes red, but not as red as yours.

“There’s no excuse for breaking someone’s heart ever. Remember that.” You turn on your heels and begin walking away until he says something even more repulsive.

“Why do you care so much? She’s not even your real sister!” he calls after you.

You pause, unable to comprehend how such words could ever enter your ears. You then slowly walk back to him as he stiffens with every step you take.

“Not my real sister?” Your voice is soft, but it is effective.

“I mean—”

“You’re saying the girls at Epsilon Phi aren’t sisters?” Your voice begins to rise. “We’re more sisters than you and I were ever friends, Lee Minho! We love each other more than biological families do, but of course you wouldn’t know how that feels, would you? All you have in your chest is a cold, hard piece of coal!”

You turn away and break off into a run this time. Tears stream down your face from being insulted and betrayed by someone you held with high esteem.

You like Lee Minho. Of course, you’d never admit that. To the world, he is just some kid of your mom’s friend who annoyed you to no end, but through the arguments and time spent trying to prove each other wrong, your feelings grew bit by bit. When he had a relationship with your very own Little, you held in your feelings and wished them both the best. After all, you love both of them, and their happiness together was good enough for you.

That is, until Minho broke things off as nothing but a fling.

Minho has always been a huge flirt, but he’d promised to take her seriously this time. You made him swear it, and you emphasized how much your Little meant to you. Now, because you’re his family friend, your Little won’t even speak to you. Minho had ruined your and her relationship, and evidently yours and his too.

He didn’t used to be like this, all manipulative and amorous. You remember he used to follow you at the heel, caring about nothing more than sticking gum in your hair. It wasn’t until senior year of high school did he start hanging out with random girls and trying daredevilish things. You missed the old Minho, but you thought you’d accept him for all his changes since you did, after all, like him.

Until this moment, that is.

What he did was too much. What he said was too much. You know he is becoming toxic, and if he is going to continue down this path, even your love isn’t going to bring him back to your heart.

Minho watches your waning back then slams his fist against a nearby tree with a curse. You didn’t give him enough time to explain, not that he would have been able to in front of you.

You’d forgive him though, right? You have to. When he messed up before this, Minho could be sure you would. But now, he isn’t so certain. He has never seen you so angry and disappointed before, and he did that to you. Him. Minho lets out another string of curses and trudges back to his room.

He tries making it up to you the very next morning. He shows up to your 8 AM class with a cup of coffee and slides it onto your desk before sitting down himself.

You don’t even look at him. You just take the cup and slam it down in front of him, causing its contents to spill and burn your fingers. He quickly takes your hand in his and begins wiping it with his sleeve, but you recoil your arm and take out your own napkin.

The next place he tries is at your neighboring frat party. He knows you would be there, so he wears his tightest black jeans and a loose button-up. This trick has worked with other girls, so he hopes it would on you.

He takes the dance floor with his powerful dance moves and charisma. He can see you deliberately turned away from him and chatting with someone else, so he dances towards you. The cheering circle that has formed around him moves as well, engulfing you into the crowd.

You finally turn to make sure you don’t bump into anyone. Minho takes this chance to shoot you a wink which draws the crowd’s attention to you. They cheer and push you towards him despite your protests.

Minho takes your arm and leads you in the dance. You used to like dancing with him; your and his flow matches perfectly, and the two of you could revive a dying party just by dancing together. Today though, you just aren’t having it.

Minho puts a hand on your shoulder and scoops his hips low earning a cheer from the crowd. You can hear them calling your name, anticipating your response. You look down at Minho and immediately recognize his choice of clothing.

I wonder who’s going to have her heart broken tomorrow, you think with a dry laugh. Minho flinches, recognizing that sound. You take his falter as a chance to fling his arm off of you before walking away.

A chorus of oohs fills the room, and the crowd splits like the Red Sea for you.

You hear your name from his lips again. “Y/N!” It is more strained now than it was last night. Desperate. Defeated.

You gave him some thought after hearing the sincerity in his tone, but you are glad you did not turn around that night when you see him in class with some other girl on his lap. Whatever. He’s dead to you now, so why should you care what he’s doing?

Minho watches as you walk farther and farther from him. He pushes the girl off and continues to stare with narrowed eyes at you as you greet your new seat neighbors.

This isn’t how he predicted you would react. Truthfully, he kind of knew this attempt wouldn’t work. For one, it hadn’t worked once since he first tried it in high school. He thought hanging out with other girls would make him more attractive, more desirable by competition. At least, that’s what some then-college kids told him. Once he started, he just found himself unable to stop. It was a self-feeding cycle, really. Holding onto other girls and charming them numbs the void in his chest, but you ignore him whenever he acts like this which only further widens the gap.

What is he to do though? This is the only life he knows, and so, it is the life he leads. Not all love stories can end happily.

And his sure doesn’t seem like it is going to.

Sirens wail in the background. With the amount of girls he’s fooled around with, he kind of had it coming. Minho stares at his wrists, not daring to think, but one thought keeps recurring in his mind: you. He is going to disappoint you yet again. You already hate him, and now you are going to see him handcuffed too.

The cold wind makes him shiver when you, his emergency contact, open the door and step into the station. Your eyes immediately find him, and you make your way over.

“Y/—”

“Are you hurt?” you ask plainly.

Despite your icy tone, those three simple words fill him with a warmth he hasn’t known for a long time.

“I’m okay.” His hands reach forward, wanting to grab yours and keep you with him, but you’ve already walked away to announce your arrival to an officer.

“Miss L/Y Y/N?” a young official greets a little too enthusiastically. She looks familiar, you note.

“Yes, I am she.”

The officer looks pleased by your annoyed attitude towards the defendant. “Mister Lee is here tonight because of an accusation by Miss Choi of assault,” she informs you coyly.

You look at him. “Minho,” you said with a chilled voice. “Is it true?”

“No! Y/N, I wouldn’t—”

“It’s okay. I believe you.”

“Excuse me?” the officer sputters.

“I believe him,” you repeat. “He’s been going out with more people than I have fingers, but he never laid a finger on them.”

“But Y/N, that doesn’t mean he can’t start now,” the officer protests. “You’re his contact, but you hate him now. Surely, he’s changed”

“First of all, it’s Miss L/N to you, Officer” —you read her name tag and pieces begin to fall together from her eagerness to convict Minho to the inkling you felt the moment you saw her— “Yoo. And secondly, is it not against the law for you to be working on a case where your cousin’s the accuser?”

“How did you—!”

“Nothing escapes us Epsilon Phi sisters, even news from other sororities. Besides, Minho never plays with the same girl twice. As expected, this report is filed for an incident two months ago. You, Officer Yoo, knew I was his contact and waited for us to get into yet another fight before having your cousin put in the accusation, didn’t you?”

She scoffs in your face. “That’s a bold accusation from yourself towards law enforcement.”

“Where is the accuser right now? Shouldn’t she be here for interrogation as well?”

“Well she—” the officer looks increasingly flustered. “She needs rest after having to relive the memories of what happened. We’ll call her in tomorrow. Anyway, Mr. Lee Minho, I can hear your testimony now in room #3.”

Minho stands obediently.

“Wait. I request someone else interrogate him,” you object.

“We’re busy right now,” Officer Yoo huffs. “We can’t just let you choose who does the job.”

You cross your arms. “Sure. Interrogate him and have the entire case be nulled after I file a conflict of interest.”

Officer Yoo grits her teeth but returns to her station to call for another officer.

In the meantime, you turn to Minho. “Don’t answer anything you don’t want to, especially if they start leading you on with questions. It’s in your rights to remain silent, alright?”

Minho nods numbly at your words, still confused as to why you are so nice to him. Before he can figure it out though, an older man appears from the back and takes him to an interrogation room.

“Mr. Lee Minho?”

“Yes.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Chief Jeon. I’m just going to ask you a few questions today; is that alright?”

“Yes.”

The chief nods and pulls out some papers. “Would you mind describing what happened with Miss Choi?”

“Well I was with—” he gestures towards the papers with his accuser’s name on it— “and we were hitting it off. She bought me a couple of drinks and at some point leaned in to kiss me. I realized something at that point, and I stopped her. She got angry, saying how she spent all that cash on alcohol for me, and threatened to accuse me of assault if I didn’t do what she said, but I knew I couldn’t do it.”

“Because of what you realized?” the chief repeats.

“... Yes.”

“And what was it you realized?”

“Do I have to say it?”

“According to the law, no, but if it can help you with your case, you might want to.”

Minho fidgets with his cuffs. “They can’t hear me from outside, right?”

“No. They most certainly cannot.”

And so, Minho tells him.

Minho turns around while the metal bars clang shut behind him. The chief thinks he has a pretty good chance, but due to the gravity of the accusation, they still decided to keep Minho in holding to give the accuser more time to make her case.

You stare at him from the other side, arms crossed. Minho takes the fact that you’re still here at two in the morning as a good sign for him.

“Thanks for being here,” he tries to start a conversation.

“I didn’t really have a choice.” So cold.

“I’ll change my emergency contact.”

“Please do.”

He winces. “Look… Y/N, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for insulting your sisterhood and for hurting your Little. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”

He looks at you with those doe-like eyes of his. For once, you don’t feel anything while looking back at them.

“That’s not why I’m mad anymore. In fact, I’m not even mad,” you tell him. “My Little told me what really happened. She told me that she was actually the one who dumped you after you adamantly refused to kiss her. I asked some other girls you’ve seen and they all said the same thing. That’s why I was so confident with the officer earlier. I guess I owe you an apology for getting angry when you weren’t at fault.”

“Then”—he holds out a hand sheepishly— “truce?”

You look at it but keep your arms crossed. “Taking a step back from you has made me see things I wasn’t able to before, Minho, and that’s made me realize how much you’ve changed. You were my friend, my rival— someone who never failed to get on my nerves but also someone I couldn’t go without. But now” —you drop your arms and shake your head— “I can’t even recognize you anymore.”

You take a step back to leave. You’ve done this many times before, like when he stuck a plastic spider down your shirt or when he called you stupid in front of your crush in fifth grade, but something about this time feels different. Something about this time tells him you aren’t turning back around once you left.

A sudden despair grips Minho and he runs into the bars. “Wait!”

You pause, offering him one last second.

“Your Little,” he gasps, “did she tell you why I wouldn’t kiss her?”

You nod. “The others I asked did too. They said you were thinking about some other girl while you were with them.”

“Not ‘some other’ girl. One other girl.”

“I know.” You begin to walk again.

“Then why are you leaving?” He reaches a hand out, trying to grab any part of you. “Stay with me. Please, Y/N, stay.”

You don’t pause a second time. Out of desperation, he cries out, “Y/N, I love you!”

That makes you stop midstep. He holds his breath as you put one foot back then the other next to it to face him. You are so beautiful when you look at him. He melts under your gaze as you focus on him and only him. He’ll cherish you this time when you give him another chance. He’ll quit this playboy lifestyle. He won’t take advantage of your patience anymore. He’ll give you all that his heart has to offer. He’ll make sure you’re the only one in his eyes. He’ll love you. He loves you.

“Minho.” You relax your shoulders and straighten your back. You tilt your head just slightly forward and erase the edge off your tone. “I loved you.”

#lee minho #lee know #stray kids #stray kids fic #minho fic #lee know fic #stray kids imagine #lee know imagine #minho imagine #stray kids angst #lee know angst #skz #enemies to lovers #fem reader #2nd anniversary special #20210815

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emeren · 4 years ago

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birthday boy - eren jaeger

shameless birthday fluff for the boy who deserves a happy ending and a happy birthday

pairing: eren jaeger x fem!reader

word count: 2.1k

content warnings: absolutely none, 100% fluff!

notes: i’m emerging from my request writing hole to post this lil one shot for my love’s birthday. i did not read over this so there may be errors or whatnot, but enjoy!

SUMMARY: reader shows eren what it means to have a good birthday.

eren had never been one for birthdays.

he’d tried, he’d really tried to love them just as much as everyone else did. he could vividly remember all of the kids in his class bringing in donuts and ice cream and handing out little handmade invitations - invitations he never received.

after two or three failed birthday parties thrown by carla - birthday parties that only armin and mikasa showed up to - eren had stopped trying. he insisted that he hated march 30th and that it was the worst day of the year. his mom always made a big deal out of it anyway, insisting on taking the three kids out for ice cream and a movie in celebration.

eren would’ve never admitted it, as his pride was too strong, but he liked the small celebration his mom would throw. just him and his two best friends, building blanket forts and being allowed to watch one PG-13 movie for the special occasion.

he remembered his tenth birthday being the last one that he even bothered acknowledging. that was the last birthday with his mom, the last birthday that didn’t go forgotten on grisha’s busy schedule. that was the last birthday that he went for ice cream and got to watch a PG-13 movie.

as he got older, birthdays became less of a big deal to his peers. they weren’t large scale, festive events, but rather small group hangouts that involved getting drunk in a field. some sad, petty part of eren enjoyed watching everyone’s special day become exactly like his had always been: just another of 365.

he didn’t remember telling you what day he was born. in fact, he was sure he hadn’t told you. it’d been a conversation topic he’d narrowly avoided in the past; lucky enough to have met you around april in order to skip over the awkward ‘oh, it’s my birthday’ chat.

so he was confused.

he was confused when he pulled his apartment door open, only to be met with your figure holding a carefully wrapped gift. hell, even eren didn’t realize that it was his birthday. he’d stood there in the doorway, gawking at you with a half-asleep look in his eyes.

“what’s that for?” he’d asked incredulously, pointing at the gift. you laughed, the sound music to his ears as you slipped into his apartment.

“happy birthday!” you squealed, setting it down and wrapping your arms around his slim figure. eren frowned for a moment, mind counting through the days of the calendar until they landed on march 30th. oh, i guess it is my birthday.

he hugged you back, eyes still warily focused on the gift. “who told you?” he’d questioned.

you smiled up at him, placing a light kiss on his cheek. “i have my ways.”

eren didn’t know what emotion it was that burned in his chest at your soft grin. he desperately wished for it to be annoyance, but it wasn’t, so he resorted to feigning it instead.

“i’d rather we didn’t make a big deal about it,” he grumbled, slipping from your arms and walking towards his kitchen. he didn’t see the way you rolled your eyes or the way you mocked his voice, only turning around to see you approaching him with a bag he hadn’t previously noticed.

“that’s alright, i was just going to make you some breakfast, if that’s okay?” eren normally would’ve protested any other special treatment on his birthday, but it wasn’t very unusual for you to cook him a meal. eren had a big stomach, and absolutely no skills in the kitchen. he resorted to shrugging, not wanting to show you the way your suggestion made his heart skip.

and so he watched you. he watched you flit around the kitchen and make him his favorite breakfast (waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, extra side of bacon). your movements were so mesmerizing he’d nearly forgotten about this rotten day, the day that his younger self had declared the worst of the 365.

“here, shithead. enjoy your meal,” you hummed playfully, sliding the plateful of food in his direction. eren flipped you off, too hungry to pick a fight as he dove into his meal.

he tried to ignore the feeling of you staring as he scarfed down his waffle. he’d hoped you wouldn’t say anything else about his birthday. “do you wanna open your gift after we’re done eating?” you’d asked.

eren paused his feast to look up at you, your eyes focused on your own plate as you waited for a response. he was apprehensive, but decided to take the bait nonetheless. “uh, sure.”

eren could remember the best gift he’d ever gotten. it had been a handmade terrarium from armin and mikasa for his eighth birthday. they’d gone out in the woods behind their houses and rifled through the bushes and weeds to put together a jar filled with all sorts of creatures and plants. eren’s favorite had been the spider - whom he’d lovingly named peter - as he would catch flies and other small insects to feed to him. he’d been so excited about their cheaply made gift that nothing had ever come close to topping it (not that he ever got much in the ways of gifts, anyway).

as you sat him down on the couch, carefully placing an oblong box in his lap, he was unsure. he loved you, no doubt, but he didn’t know what on earth you could’ve gotten him.

his previous confusion only grew when he opened the box to find a bundle of wildflowers. they were a mix of baby hues, soft and simple. he looked to you, brow raised in question.

“flowers?” he’d asked, mind pondering all the possibilities. you laughed lightly in response, standing from your seat next to him.

“c’mon,” you gestured for him, eyes scanning his bare chest. “go put a shirt on and come with me.”

eren sighed, standing himself as he set the flowers on the couch. “listen. i love you, i really do. but i would just rather we don’t make a big deal out of today, alright?”

he watched you roll your eyes, watched you fold your arms over your chest.

“i’m not making a big deal out of today,” you’d responded, a hint of annoyance in your voice. “just go put a shirt on. it’ll just be the two of us.”

eren talked a lot of game regarding his self-proclaimed willpower, but he would never understand how easily he caved to you. thirty minutes later, he was sitting in the passenger seat of your car, eyes mindlessly gazing out the window with the bundle of flowers in his lap.

you were playing his favorite music, humming along as your fingers tapped against the steering wheel. he’d just stared at you, admiring your beauty as you turned up a desolate road that he’d been too focused on you to recognize.

it wasn’t until the car stopped; surrounded by newly blooming flowers and freshly greening trees, did he piece together where he was.

“mom?” he’d breathed, eyes glancing out the window. you just smiled in response, unbuckling your seatbelt and getting out of the car. eren looked down at the bundle of flowers in his lap, wildflowers, his mom’s favorite.

in that moment he felt like crying. sure, he’d cried on his birthday before, but this was different. it was a cry of appreciation, one that burned in his chest as you impatiently pulled his door open. he was quick to blink the tears away, putting up a front as he got out himself.

his mom’s cemetery was atop a hill, located away from the city amongst the trees and wildlife. he remembered picking it for her because of how freeing it felt - it was more of a place for remembrance that mourning. he knew that was what his mom would’ve wanted.

eren showed his appreciation by wrapping your hand in his, intertwining your fingers as the two of you approached his mom’s headstone.

“what made you think of this?” he’d asked quietly, setting the bundle of flowers right beneath her name carved within the granite stone. he remained kneeled in front of it; long fingers coming up to trace the words. he’d been surprised by your answer.

“i know you hate your birthday,” you’d started, watching the moment in front of you. “and i know your mom was the only person that ever tried to make you enjoy it. i hope it wasn’t insensitive of me to bring you here? i just thought maybe you’d want to spend the day here with her.”

and there it was again: that burning within his chest. he pulled his fingers back from the cold stone, relieved you couldn’t see the mix of emotions on his face. it was on the contrary. he’d never had someone think of him this way, think of what he truly wanted to do. he smiled as he stood to face you.

“thank you.” he’d said sincerely, wrapping his arms around you and kissing the crown of your head.

the two of you sat for hours, hands wrapped together as eren told stories about his mom and talked to her gravestone as if she were really there, too. he talked about his tenth birthday; how his mom had rented some barely scary movie, but how armin couldn’t sleep for weeks following their watch. he talked about the time mikasa had beaten up one of the popular kids for only excluding eren from his birthday party. before he knew it, he was wrapped up in stories upon stories.

all too fast, the sun began to dip past the horizon. the two of you stood from the grass, pants slightly damp with mud but neither of you cared. eren leaned down, pressing his lips to the stone as a parting goodbye - something he’d started doing as a kid.

as you drove away, eren felt content with how the day had gone. he watched the sunset from the window, face flushed and a small smile on his lips. he enjoyed the sweet moment, but couldn’t help the perverted thought that crossed his mind. he’d never had birthday sex before, and oh boy was he excited to try.

the car stopped outside of his apartment, the two of you walking up to the door hand in hand. he grabbed his keys, about to unlock the handle when you stopped him.

he loved when you looked at him like that. when your eyes were big and doe-like, filled with a mix of adoration and excitement. your hands carefully wrapped around his jaw, pulling his lips down to meet yours in a tender, warm kiss.

he could feel his heart clench at the action, pulling away with a smile on his face. “what was that for?”

“i just love you, ‘s’all.” you hummed in response, motioning for him to open the door. eren hated that you could make him blush, looking away with a playful roll of his eyes.

he wasn’t expecting what waited for him behind the door.

with the flick of the light switch, all of his friends popped up from around the apartment, yelling ‘surprise!’. his eyes widened in shock, a large banner that read off ‘happy birthday eren!’, but the words were all scrunched together at the end, the banner not large enough.

“connie made that!” armin explained hurriedly, as if noticing the way eren’s eyes traced over the decoration. eren couldn’t help the burning in his chest as he looked at all of his closest friends.

sasha, connie, jean, mikasa, armin, you. you, who had clearly planned this all. eren wasn’t ever very sappy, at least not since he was in high school. but the burning in his chest had become too much to bear, overwhelmed by all of the decorations and confetti, and thoughtfulness.

he looked at you, tears in his eyes. he’d never had a big party before. he’d always wanted one, and here it was. “thank you.”

“goddammit, this is what you get for taking him to the cemetery before his surprise party!” jean yelled, pointing at his friend. “i don’t think i’ve seen you cry since you were an annoying ass teenager!”

“oh, shut the fuck up,” eren replied lightheartedly, embracing each of his friends. he wasn’t even embarrassed to cry. it’d been so long since he’d felt so loved.

and so you all sat, eating ice cream and watching a horror movie. eren was in the middle, you curled up on his one side and armin on the other. as all of his friends enjoyed his birthday, squealing at the unnecessary gore, he couldn’t help but smile.

maybe march 30th wasn’t the worst day, afterall.

<3 <3 <3

#eren jaeger x reader #eren jaeger fluff #eren jeager x reader #eren jeager fluff #eren yeager x reader #eren yeager fluff #eren yaeger x reader #eren yaeger fluff #eren jaeger #eren jeager #eren yaeger #eren yeager #eren jäger #emmy writes

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myelocin · 3 years ago

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Postcards From: Kanazawa | Tsukishima Kei

Synopsis: The fear that comes with love is the realization that it isn't always just light. Love, rediscovered as both the fear and the drive that depicts the push and pull of whether it's worth it to say "I do," if the unknown is what's to come beyond the vow. In which it's a week until the wedding, and the both of you return to Kanazawa--to day one--as strangers.

Characters: Tsukishima Kei

Genre/Tags: Engagement!AU, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with Happy Ending | WC: 10,200+

A/N: this is a piece commed by @tsukishumai ;w; tq for trusting me w u and ur bb boi ily to the moon n back

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commissions | ko-fi

The illusion of the soul is the false belief that love must always—always—be just light.

The truth is, it’s not. Love is many things. Primarily, love begins from desire. Then, that desire seeps into a drive that pushes you to keep wanting. Then finally, when it’s seeped in through the skin deep enough, love pools in the soul.

Love is bound to be raw at the very core. A desire. To say, “I want you,” and think it holds as much credibility as “I love you.” To look at what you know is only the tendrils of something at the very most, and trick yourself into thinking that it’s enough. A beating heart—bloody red. The line just barely hanging in-between what’s selfish and selfless, before it ultimately sways and becomes selfish sometimes.

Sometimes, being right now, Tsukishima thinks.

Sandwiched in-between you to the left, and Yamaguchi to his right, he finds his eyes flickering towards the clock a lot more often than he would have liked. Akaashi, who sat across from his seat on the table, was the first to catch on.

He quirked a brow, presumably in question earlier, and mouthed the question if he was in a rush. Tsukishima’s never been known for having too many words, but because Akaashi pauses and insists to relieve his question with an answer, he shrugs, waving him off and mouthing back that he’s alright.

“So,” Bokuto starts, his voice already slipping into somewhat of a slur. “How’s it feel to be the first to pop the question?”

You laugh, finding amusement in the man’s enthusiasm. Turning to Tsukishima, you sit and wait, expectant of a reaction.

In response, he just shrugs, but a smile breaks through and redefines the nonchalance of his expression anyway. Raising the glass to his lips, he takes a quick sip before answering smugly, “It’s nice to finally settle down. You should try it sometimes.”

Bokuto waves him off, cheeks flushed and eyes already drooping from the inebriation. “Nah,” he slurs, shaking his head. The exaggeration warrants a quick laugh from Sugawara, who sits on the other side, nursing his own drink. Continuing, Bokuto huffs and takes a slight pause before he connects the last of what he says with, “—getting married is nice and all, but I don’t know, man,” he laughs. “Just feels like I’ll end up hitting a fucking blank space after I do or whatever. Not my vibe.”

Visibly, Tsukishima shifts a little, the smile on his face maintained but the lighthearted energy that earlier fueled it just slightly more drained now.

From the corner of your eye, you notice it. Though, Akaashi’s the one who gives him a pointed stare, to which the former simply ignores.

“But—“ Bokuto continues, as if trying to remedy the cracked part of the atmosphere that isn’t even visible in the first place—“If that’s your thing, then I’m obviously not going to judge you for that.”

Tsukishima responds by his silence. Bokuto, with his head still warped around the heavy state of his inebriation, doesn’t do so much other than sip a little more of his barely filled glass of beer, Tsukishima’s apathetic expression just a blur in his eyes now.

“You seem happy, though,” Bokuto notes, then raises his glass towards you.

Blinking at being the sudden subject of his interest, you raise your own glass of water. The ice inside shifts, clinking against the sides of the glass, and slowly, Tsukishima watches. There’s familiarity in the way it moves down: trickling slow like the patience inside him that’s suddenly running by the clock. His palms just barely gripping the utensils, clammy. While his head, still whirs at Bokuto’s halfhearted words.

It’s halfhearted, he reminds himself.

The thought of hitting a plateau after “I do,” in a way is terrifying.

But he is happy, right?

The way his palms respond solely through tensing suddenly spikes the fear that maybe his ring will slip. So he looks at you, trying to find an anchor to keep the love he pushes to stay intertwined with his truth afloat as he responds, “Of course I am. I’m happy.”

You look back at him, eye to eye, though you find something waver just for a split second— wondering if there’s credibility in the saying that gold will always deliver truth.

The rest of the night flows easy.

Almost naturally, he’s quick to wave off Bokuto’s invite for more drinks at the bar just down the street, tugging your interlaced hands towards the parking lot as soon as the group found its way to the exit.

“You know he probably just wanted more company,” you laugh. Thirty minutes after making it back home, instead of jumping straight into the shower and getting ready for the night routine, you instead take out the suitcase and take your place, seated on the floor in the living room.

“We needed to pack,” you hear him respond, his voice a little distant from the bedroom down the hall.

You shrug. “Yeah, but we could have made time.”

“Sometimes we can’t just make things, if we don’t have any to make it with in the first place,” he sighs.

You chuckle. Perhaps it’s just one of those nights again. In the ten years you’ve known Tsukishima Kei, you found that he had a tendency to become a multitude of things.

A stranger, at the start, because that’s where every connection begins. The neighbor who lived with his grandfather across the street from your childhood home. Kanazawa was a long way from Sendai, but before his parents had whisked him off to Miyagi some years later, he had been the friend that oftentimes spent his afternoons with you.

Strawberry cake and tiny sips of boxed juice from the convenient store down the street, and not much conversation exchanged between the both of you. He’d tell you about the things on his grandfather’s old encyclopedia, and you’d listen with rapt attention, finding it nice how he seemed to carry a little bit of the stars the more his eyes gleamed. He just talked about dinosaurs, you remember. At ten, Tsukishima had always been a wonderer.

Then he moved.

From the friend who told you stories and shared his juice boxes with you under that tree, to the occasional email that would pop up on your phone, when you were in highschool and weaving your way in and out of pathways and dead-ends. Miyagi was a little like Kanazawa, he said. There was a lot of quiet in the two cities. His email would come once a week, then twice when you reckon he felt a little lonely.

You’d reply with the same kind of enthusiasm as he had established, though you still couldn’t deny the fact that the notification with his name on it never failed to have you smiling—at least just a little bit. At fifteen, Tsukishima was far from a stranger, but he was also falling just a little short in making it to the halfway mark of being a friend too.

The once-a-week emails were welcome, none the less. It stayed like that, until once a week turned into twice. Though most were just the customary how-are-yous and obligatory holiday greetings once the seasons came and went, one year it turned into emails about the little nothings.

‘I had strawberry cake today,’ it once read. ‘The one we used to share tasted sweeter.’

‘I joined the volleyball team.’

‘Winter here is a little colder. I remember your puffy green jacket.’

‘I don’t know if you want to know…or if I should tell you...but our team won, and we’re going to nationals.’

Somehow, you were managed to be convinced by one of your friends that same week to travel with your own highschool’s volleyball team to assist in the preparation for nationals in Tokyo. It was just a coincidence, you used to reason. You were there, and so was he. There was a hundred other courts his team could have played at, and your priority was assisting your own team in what they needed.

But still, you couldn’t help but wave back and cheer the loudest from your stands when he perfected the block and scored the winning point for the first set.

It was then, where you realized that perhaps Tsukishima Kei wouldn’t just be a stranger.

Kanazawa to Miyagi, but somehow Tokyo became the in-between. Childhood friends to the sort-of friends from the other ends of the country sharing a few scattered memories in slices of strawberry shortcake and random dinosaur trivia from an old man’s outdated encyclopedia.

He was the first to approach you after that match. A hand held out to shake, perhaps to commemorate the evident shift between strangers to friends—but it was nice.

Because after that, friends turned into something more.

Maybe Tokyo really was the middle ground. After you graduated and moved out of your respective cities, Tokyo became the third place of hello.

Then things just slipped into place. He was here, and so were you. He had plans to stay, and you just signed the contract that bound you to the city for the next two and a half years. The apartment right down the hall from yours was recently vacated, and he was looking for a place to stay.

His new work place, coincidentally enough, was just a stop away from the train station closest to your place.

You had always doubted the presence of serendipity and everything that had to dictate with the celestial control of fate, but the ease that came with the relief of him signing the lease the very next week almost seemed to validate what had been just a farfetched something.

From strangers, to friends, to lovers, then to this:

Ten years later, a ring on your finger, and an I do, bound to be said just a little over seven days from now.

Tokyo was kind to the both of you. His mother’s close enough to visit on the weekends, while Kanazawa was just a shinkansen away from Tokyo station. A new apartment with enough space for two, plus maybe an extra, and a bakery right down the street with the best strawberry shortcake made fresh every day.

The wedding’s just a week away. His grandfather, still living in Kanazawa was meant to travel with Akiteru to Tokyo last week, but because plans changed, the both of you were instead tasked with going there yourselves to travel with him. While Tsukishima hesitated, you didn’t. Yes was easy to say in a situation like this. Though your parents had moved to Tokyo some years ago, you were aware that his grandfather didn’t.

The house across the street was still his, while the one you grew up in just now became a summer home your family would frequent to when Tokyo became too swarmed with tourists.

You look at the half-filled contents of the suit case on the floor in front of you. The right side’s meant to hold your clothes, while the left was left bare for Tsukishima’s. You turn and look at him.

“You can just grab the stuff you need me to bring for you and I’ll fold it in. We should probably catch the first train tomorrow if we wanna get there before sundown.”

What comes as a reply is only prolonged silence.

You let what he started stay for a little, but because you had never been the type to be fond in gouging out answers from the blank spaces, you sigh, and break the impending silence before it could get a chance to even settle. “You’re quiet again, Kei.”

When he makes it to the living room, instead of coming back out with a stack of clothes, he stands by the wall with his hands in his pocket. His eyes shift from wall to wall, but skip over you.

Knowing that you’ll just prompt another conversation again the more he keeps his silence, he sighs, swallowing the hesitation and clinging onto the bits of courage that floats by him in the moment. Grasping at the very tips of it, he forces the words out of his mouth. “Are you really coming with me?”

You raise a brow. “Back to Kanazawa? Of course. I’m from there too, you know. Plus I haven’t seen Grandpa in a while.”

He shifts his gaze to the side, thankful for the blur that came with forgetting to slip on his glasses. He’s always had a tendency to give in the moment he looks at you, so the vagueness in the blur was a welcome change. “It’s just for a week,” he mutters. “I think I’ll handle the trip just fine.”

“Plus,” he adds, the hike in the tone of his voice giving away his panic. “—I heard there was a problem with the florists? Maybe one of us needs to go in and fix it ourselves just in case.”

In the ten years you’ve known him, you’ve always considered it a given that you’ve well perceived him by now. In front of you, he’s stammering. While Tsukishima has never been the face to poise and perfection—because at the end of the day he still is just a boy—you knew he only stammered when he was nervous.

Perhaps trying to manipulate the situation through a wordless exchange was his way of doing so. In your head, you chuckle. Tsukishima Kei is many things, and is witty when it counts—but he could never be blunt when it came to the things he was unsure of.

You try to gouge out his truth. Speaking straight to the point, you let him know that there’s no purpose in trying to skirt around. You turn to him, his sweater half folded on your lap. “You know I could have believed what you just said, but,” you pause, giving him a pointed look, “—you’re not even looking at me.”

“Is this about what Bokuto said earlier?”

The way he shifts his weight from one foot to the other awkwardly, confirms your suspicions that that it is about that, before he can muster up the courage to even say it. “Tell me,” you initiate. You’ve never been afraid to speak what needs to be said. “What’s got you so afraid?”

Once more, he hopes for the silence to speak for him. And like before—it doesn’t. Silence was never meant to fill in the blanks. What it did, rather, is add three seconds more on the clock that’s ticking regardless. Tsukishima bets on a timed clock to speak for him, and because you’ve never been the type to shrink at the presence of raw truth, you huff and poke into what obviously hits for him just a little deeper.

“You’re afraid we’ll hit a blank space after we get married, aren’t you?”

He doesn’t look away, but little by little, his body language starts slipping bits and pieces of the truth you’ve already long sensed. “I think I just need to think this through.”

“What?” you scoff. “You planned to go to Kanazawa by yourself for a week to what? Soul search? To decide if you even wanna marry me?”

“I’m sor—“

“That’s what you’re not supposed to say,” you interrupt him. “You don’t say you’re sorry for how you’re feeling, because you’re allowed to feel it how it is, but shit, Kei,” you exhale, pausing to suck in a quick breath. “You couldn’t have just said this earlier?”

He looks away again, the guilt evident on his features. “You’re mad.”

“Do you blame me?”

This time, he turns to you. “No,” he murmurs. “I don’t, but I’m gonna be blunt here—“

“—first time—“

He gives you a pointed look, but in the moment, you don’t really have much in you to care too much.

“I think I need space to clear my head.”

“Sounds like you’re contemplating on whether you wanna stay with me or not,” you respond. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about that.”

Tsukishima’s steady, this time. “Of course I wanna stay with you.”

“But,” you counter. “You aren’t sure if you want to marry me.”

He looks away. “What if—we hit a plateau after.”

“That’s still not an excuse to back out before we even try, Kei,” comes your reasoning.

“You’re right,” he sighs. “It’s not.”

Then it’s you, who shrugs this time, giving in a little and throwing him what you hope he doesn’t see as a lifeline. There’s no comfort found in knowing that an out is a means of mercy when it comes to love. Why should there even be an out?

You settle for just cracking the door open instead. Though it was never locked, the fact that it remained close must have been understood differently by him.

“Let’s go back to Kanazawa separately, then,” you propose. The open suitcase in front of you still has the right half filled with his half folded clothes, so you reach in, taking it out one by one. “You stay with your grandfather and I’ll stay at my parent’s house.”

Tsukishima raises a concern. “He’ll wonder why we aren’t staying together.”

In response, you shrug. “Just make something up then.”

“Is this just a passive aggressive way to say you’re mad at me?”

You scoff. “When have I ever been passive aggressive, Kei? I’ve said shit as it is since day one.”

He flinches, maybe because of what you said or the tone of the deliverance, but either way, you decide you can’t give much of a shit. It’s a given that you’re angry, but because being hurt just paves the path to silence more than lashing out, it’s not much of a surprise that you probably look deflated in front of him.

“What I’m saying is,” you explain. “Let’s go back to Kanazawa as strangers. Do what you gotta do, however you’ve gotta do it to get your head sorted out, and then we’ll talk. I’m not dancing around in circles with you on this. Either we get married next week, or we don’t.”

He panics. “I don’t want to lose you—“

“You’re already talking like you’ve decided that you won’t be at the other end of that aisle, Kei.”

Words feel lacking all of a sudden, so you pause. The absence of the split second brevity has Tsukishima standing still, his breath held, throat dry.

But like always, clarity seems to weave its way through the cracks in the room and find you first. “Yes or no isn’t easy to decide between,” you finally mutter. Eyes to the half folded sweaters you meant to tuck into the other half of the suitcase, you realize that you’ll need to switch to a smaller trolley now because you won’t be needing this much space anyway. “I don’t know what I should tell you, because I don’t know that we’d be having a possible fallout a week before the wedding. But at the same time—I don’t want to say you’re despicable for feeling like that, Kei. It just—“

“—fucking sucks,” you sigh.

“If you feel like you need a week to figure whatever this shit is, then okay,” you nod. “Okay. Let’s be strangers for a week and by the time we’re back in Tokyo, you give me a yes or no and be fucking blunt with it.”

Later that night when you turn your back against him and face the wall, his whisper breaks through the quiet. “Why are you still patient with me about this? You could have just left me.”

You shift, laying on your back and sighing to the makeshift glow in the dark stars stuck to the ceiling of your room. “Because I love you,” you sigh. “Loving someone just means you have to exhaust every other option before even thinking of throwing in the towel.”

He sleeps that night, feeling heavy.

He woke up later that morning, feeling the same too.

In a sense, things admittedly started weird. You woke up before he did this time, when he usually would be the one trying to be quiet when he slipped out of bed. Even though early mornings had never been a thing for the both of you, there was still something unpleasant in waking up to an empty bed.

The sheets on your side were done, and your phone that usually would be pinging with email notifications by now wasn’t there.

It’s odd, he thinks. While he agreed to be strangers for a week, the walk to the train station was the same. Silence was normal, but the five extra inches that added to the distance between the both of you wasn’t. You nodded his way when he pointed at the shinkansen’s direction, and wordlessly would hand him his usual brew when you stopped at the coffee shop just before going in.

Seated beside you in the train, he tries to ignore the urge to poke you on the side and make conversation. Words have always come easy when it came to moments with you, he noticed.

Tsukishima’s aware that he’s always been dubbed as the kind of person who never preferred to say too much, and while that was true—to an extent—he realizes that there is some truth to the saying that silence kills.

You’re seated beside him on the train, eyes to your phone, and earbuds in place. He resorts to just staring at you through his peripherals, caught in between wanting to satiate the want to talk to you by breaking the silence, or keeping it as is.

This is where fear grips him a little tighter. The deal was, as you had pointed out just last night, that the both of you would move through the week pretending to be strangers again. You’d stay on your side of the street, while he stayed in his.

It’s a given that his grandfather’s bound to ask about you, and so in the event that it does happen, you would just spend a few hours with them and pretend like everything was fine.

You made it clear that you’d try to exhaust all the options before resorting to that, though. And it’s easy, he thinks, doing so. It doesn’t take much to fake a phone call from work or a last minute meeting with an old friend that wouldn’t be able to make it to the city for the supposed wedding.

The lines were drawn, and the outline of what was to be expected in the next week was made clear.

He thinks of what you said before you slept. Love, as that one drive that has you exhausting all your options before even thinking of quitting. It’s fair, he thinks. You’ve always been the rational thinker in the relationship.

But then again, he doesn’t doubt your hurt either. A week was lengthy, he realizes, and to act as strangers again just a week before the wedding was a different kind of test when it came to your patience.

Still, he owes you truth.

You’ve always told him to lay things bare, and even though what’s bare is ugly, because love always pushes to try—he stays, doing just that.

Undoubtedly, this is a jump. There’s no question in the fact that the possibility of reaching the peak and coming face to face with a plateau scares him. But still, his thoughts counter, to face a drop that doesn’t guarantee a landing somehow terrifies him even more.

The sound of your phone vibrating snaps him out of his thoughts. Before you answer it, he snags a look of the name written on the screen—Akiteru’s.

Tsukishima sighs, shooting you a cautious stare as you pick up the phone and turn to him.

The tone of your voice is easy, though you look at him, unbothered. “Hey,” you answer. “Just got in the train, so Kei should be calling you in about three hours when we’re there.”

In comes a pause, before you chuckle a little. Unconsciously, Tsukishima scooches in, curious. But before he could get a chance to lean in too close, you pull away a little, looking at him curiously, an eyebrow raised. “I meant to tell you,” he hears you say, and as you look at him, he chooses to hold your stare.

“Kei and I will be staying separately for the week.”

Beside you, he shifts, fighting the urge to turn away and face forward.

Assuming that your flinch afterwards was only a response to what he’s only certain is Akiteru’s sudden outburst, the prior nervousness of his stare shifts into concern. Understanding the are-you-okay that he mouths, you wave him off. “We’re fine,” you laugh. “I just miss staying at the house that’s all, and I’m pretty sure Kei wants to spend quality time with his grandfather.”

You stay silent after that, which truth be told, doesn’t exactly help with his nerves.

“He’s right next to me,” you add. “We’re fine, I swear. Just wanna enjoy Kanazawa in different ways that’s all.”

To put it bluntly, the first day is awkward.

His grandfather’s waiting from outside the gate the second you make it to that familiar street. Nothing much has changed, the two of you notice. The gate’s rusted a little by the edges, and the door’s still got the same chip on the left side he always said he’d take a look at.

“Heard they were cutting down that tree,” his grandfather says, when it’s a little over three hours later and you’re all seated at a local restaurant for dinner. His old friend owned the place, he explained. Low lights, home cooked meals, and a family run business you vaguely remember your father talking about when you were young.

Tsukishima pauses, eyebrows rising in question. “What do you mean that tree?”

“The one you used to run off to,” he laughs.

Elbowing him, you nod towards his grandfather before pointing out, “We met by that tree, you know.”

His grandfather’s quick to responding, laughing at Tsukishima’s perplexed expression. “Seems like your grandfather’s memory is doing better these days than you, boy.”

You suppose that at the end of the day, it shouldn’t have been a big deal that he forgot. You’ve never been one to dwell too deep within the symbolic little nothings that’s bound to come with life. Rationally speaking, maybe you’re just a little miffed because of what he said the night before. And maybe that’s the reason why you’re taking this a little harsher than you would have on a normal day.

But strangers, you remember. Strangers wouldn’t care if the other forgot.

So with that, you shrug. You take another spoonful of the food in front of you and shift your body just slightly to the left—to which Tsukishima took noticed—and leaned forward. Without even saying much, his grandfather already has his attention on you, the smile on his face kind.

He’s always been kind, you remember. With a smile, you choose to keep the peace in the room at bay, willing yourself to ignore Tsukishima’s stare boring holes into the side of your head from beside you.

“Now that I think about it, I don’t remember a lot of people stop by that tree,” you comment, as you take a step into nostalgia.

His grandfather shrugs, absentmindedly nodding his head as he mulls over your word through a spoonful of broth. “It was in the middle of a residential area. Bound to get taken down if you ask me. People nowadays need a place to park.”

This time, you really feel his stare beside you almost intensify. Truth is, you can make sense of what you know he only fears. The point in life was to brave through the unfamiliar to establish a consistency in familiar grounds. To continuously rise from day one, only to hit the peak and possibly come face to face with a plateau instead of something greater than even the height of all highs—you admit that it’s terrifying.

The plateau, that perhaps works sort of like that tree.

It’s been there, so here it still is.

You’ve both been at that tree—at the start—so here you both still are. Side by side back in Kanazawa, sharing a meal like I do, isn’t hanging on the line.

His grandfather’s voice snaps you out of your thoughts. “You’re not wearing your ring.”

Tsukishima’s voice is quick to cut into the conversation, his voice smooth. “She just doesn’t wanna lose it.”

You nod along to his lie, undecided with how to feel in regards to how smooth he seemed to have delivered his lie.

“You know, now that I think about it, it’s good that they’re cutting down that tree.”

Tsukishima speaks his mind this time. “Last week, you said you were looking forward to coming back home so you could visit that tree again.”

You don’t look at him when you answer. “I know, but your grandfather has a point. When things change, what else can you do but get rid of it?”

“Oh nothing’s changed,” he laughs across you. “Even before the two of you were born, people would always talk about how it’s just there when the space could have been used for parking.”

“Then why put off cutting it down this long?”

“Who knows,” he laughs. There’s an unfound wisdom in his eyes that read through your soul when he looks at you. “Maybe cutting down what people already see as a permanent fixture will do more harm than good in the long run.”

“Even if it doesn’t contribute anything?”

Tsukishima thinks of his fear, then of the plateau.

Through the rim of the glass, he keeps a steady eye on his grandfather, breath held as the anticipation for his words begin to really settle.

“People these days just see what’s the most obvious from the surface and consider it as the only fault then run with it. Maybe it’s not the tree,” he laughs. “Maybe it’s just the people. They want convenience so they cut off everything around them instead of adjusting to it.”

The food tastes bland in his mouth, suddenly.

“Goes to show how selfish people can get sometimes,” his grandfather finishes, as an afterthought. “A shame, really. That old tree’s done nothing but give people shade.”

At the end of the day, you really had to give his grandfather a lot more credit than what was due.

The second and third day was awkward. Even though you tried to stay inside for most of your day, venturing outside and meeting up with old friends was inevitable. And really, you should have remembered that he often started his day with a couple laps walked around the block.

On day two, he hinted that he could sense something was off. Tsukishima had been a lot more silent lately, he pointed out. First, as just a passing comment, then by the third time he’d bring it up and wouldn’t get too much of a response out of you, there came more emphasis to what he says.

He passed by the tree every time you’d round the street too. It occurs to you that passing through it was a shortcut, and contradicted his prior statements to having a route that catered towards the long way home, but you chose to not comment much about it.

The second day was curiosity, and you figured that you could live at least just a week with it.

The third day, on the other hand, gave you a little more trouble than you had bargained for.

You’re on your way home from an old friend’s house, and ironically enough, both Tsukishima and his grandfather are out by their front door, tending to the weeds of a garden that doesn’t even look remotely grown.

Tsukishima’s the first to look at you.

Stubborn, and frankly intent on upholding your end of the deal in staying strangers, you attempt to wave them off with a passing greeting as you look through your bag, feeling around for the keys to the gate.

“You don’t have to think of an excuse,” you hear him say. “He’s back inside now. It’s just you and me here.”

It’s funny how ever since you’ve made it back to Kanazawa, he’s been the one to break the silence a lot more lately.

You don’t turn. Strangers, you think. The deal was to pretend the other was a stranger.

“Cam,” he calls out again, the desperation in his voice inching more and more out of its shell. “I’m really sorry.”

You turn around, the buried anger getting the best of you in the moment. “You know the more you say that, the more convinced I am that I should just give you back your ring right now and go back to Tokyo alone. You talk like the only thing you’re sure of is the fact that you won’t be marrying me next week, Kei.”

The moment you shift your gaze from the ground to his eyes, a part of you aches at the idea that you may have to bid farewell to gold. Swallowing down the mass of emotions you hope isn’t entirely just made of anger, you steady yourself and sigh.

It hits you that it’s been a long day.

“It’s just you and me here,” you repeat, slowly. There’s a flutter in your heart that tells you it’s still love that stares back when you look at him. “Then why do you feel so far away, Kei?”

He doesn’t sleep that night.

Day three of being strangers, but he hasn’t had anything figured out. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but what only grew was the silence. The distance is really just a few feet away—across the street and through the leaves of that tree that your father would always say he’d get to.

The light from your room is still turned on, though the curtains are drawn.

8PM and it’s early. 8PM, and on a usual day, you’d usually be seated beside him in your Tokyo apartment’s living room, mulling over the nothings that went on in your day.

It’s nice to talk about the rest of the world as if all they’re meant to be is just a passing blur in the background, he thinks. He’s never been much for words, but you were.

Then again, you had always been one for truth.

Reality is, he knows he could always swallow his doubts, walk across the street, cover the distance, and apologize to you with an I’m sorry, that covers all that needs to be addressed in a standard apology. Life can be lived as easy as that. You swallow your own thoughts, adhere to what they say needs to be done in the way they tell you how to do so, and be done with it.

But he knows you just as well as he knows himself.

You’d call him a coward—and truth be told, he’ll think the same.

Present wise—he does think he is a coward.

Tsukishima sighs, knowing that blinking at your closed curtain visible from his window won’t do much of a difference. Begrudgingly, he sits up, grabbing his glasses from the bedside table.

The streets around the neighborhood are quiet this time of night. The perks about living away from the city was the silence, he thinks. As soon as he tugs on a sweater, he makes his way downstairs, carefully, so he doesn’t stir his grandfather he presumes is sleeping on the room across the hall.

He exhales, relieved at the barely audible creak the door clicks to as soon as he shuts it and turns the lock from the outside. The keys, jingling in his pockets, is the only sound that rings in the quiet.

It isn’t lonely, but it isn’t comfortable either.

Kanazawa has always been a town he’s considered as a piece of constant that’s meant to drift inbetween.

Neither like Tokyo or the towns by the outskirts of Okinawa, it stays as is. Twenty years ago, the crack on the sidewalk was there, and now, twenty years later, it remains.

There’s comfort in recognizing constants, Tsukishima admits. The tree just down this road, the crack on the asphalt, and the fact that your room is still the second window to the left visible from his on the second floor.

When he was younger, he remembers he often would stand under your window, caught in between wanting to knock on your door and ask permission from your parents if you could accompany him for the afternoon, or just wait around until you’d come down yourself.

While he left a lot of things on chance, the conscious choice to stay rooted in the spot by your window remained constant.

The gravel under his feet crackle everytime he’d take a step. The moon’s hazy behind the clouds tonight, he muses. While you’d wish for the stars, he found a temporary safety in the midnight clouds. A timelessness felt when it’s midnight, stays.

Before he turns to the corner that would lead home, he stops midway—recognizing the tree from a good few meters away.

There’s a sense of feeling an urgency to let something go, the more he stares at it. Nearing autumn, the colors start to change, and just like that, he’s reminded of the impermanence in life.

As the earth eventually changes throughout the years, he fears that perhaps in love—it would too.

“You’re out late,” is the first thing Tsukishima hears as soon as he enters the room.

From the genkan, he peers over the shelf, noticing the lights from the kitchen is what floods into the dim living room. Slipping on his house slippers and making his way around the corner, Tsukishima gets a feel of the warmth that’s radiating from the familiarity of the space.

After his grandmother had passed, his grandfather stayed in Kanazawa. Though his mother often expressed her desire for him to move with the rest of the family in Tokyo, every time, he’d only wave them off and say that there’s too much rooted here for him to just up and leave.

Walking into the kitchen, his grandfather’s the first to raise a mug his way and offer a smile. “I’d ask you if everything’s fine, but I think I’ll just wait around and see if you’re even willing to tell me.”

Tsukishima chuckles airily. “Sounds like you wanna ask anyway.”

He takes a slow sip. “Okay then,” he nods, smiling like he’s just struck a deal. “First question is—are you okay?”

In response, Tsukishima smiles, pulling the chair and taking the seat across his. He nods. “’Course I am.”

His grandfather’s eyes don’t leave him. “You’re not wearing the ring, and neither is Cam.”

Suddenly feeling like he’s caught in between a blocked exit and the spotlight, Tsukishima freezes, but wills himself not to look away. “Just needed some space, that’s all.”

“To think?”

He sighs. “To reconsider.”

“Ahh,” the older man sighs. “Cold feet. Pretty normal, if you ask me.”

He raises a brow in question. “It’s normal?”

“To be nervous, yeah,” his grandfather laughs. “But looks like it’s a different case for you.”

Tsukishima doesn’t respond, his eyes fixated towards a spot on the wall that feeds more into the blank space of his thoughts than anything more.

“You’re afraid,” Tsukishima hears, and as soon as the retaliation he tries to string together at the very last minute don’t come—he realizes the core of all the chaos in his head is meant to be just like that—

Blank.

“What are you so afraid of, boy?”

In the silence, he lets the rawness of his truth slowly spill. “What if I hit a plateau after this?”

His grandfather wastes no second in countering. “How is it life if we just keep climbing? What’s the point in doing all that work if we never get rest?”

Tsukishima laughs. “You know, by that logic it can just go the other way around too.”

He settles in his seat, trying to appreciate the silence instead of looking for company in the noise, before he adds, “What if we decide we don’t love each other anymore?”

“That’s not all there is to a plateau,” he laughs. “It’s a valid fear, but being afraid isn’t all there is after you marry someone.”

“Then what’s there?”

With a smile, his grandfather leans back, raises the mug to his lips, and relaxes—his eyes looking fondly at a faded photograph hung beside the wall clock. “Everyday,” he answers. “What’s there after I do is just everyday.”

Sensing that his grandfather means to say more, he chooses to retain his silence. Sighing softly, his grandfather keeps his smile steady as he continues to speak. “Everyday you wake up. You roll over in bed, you think about the checklist you do to consider a day done, then you come home, eat a meal, rest a little and start the whole day over the next day. Everyday’s like that.”

He shifts, leaning forward with his arms crossed supporting his weight on the table as he eyes his grandson with a smile. “Best part is, you can do all that with someone you love. Makes the boring part of the plateau a lot more bearable.”

“You wake up with them and complain about how boring the rest of your day will be, then come home and eat a meal with them. Wash the dishes, share the silence, and just go to bed knowing you’ll wake up with somebody.”

The smile on his face is honest, then he shrugs. “It’s nice, though. The plateau after you hit a certain point in life is just inevitable, Kei. You can either complain about life alone or complain about it with somebody. At least there will be two pairs of slippers by the genkan waiting for you everytime you come home. You’ll say you’ve made it home and someone will greet you. You’ll roll over in bed at 2am and someone will be there with you. The point of climbing in life is to get somewhere, not ascend past the norm.”

Tsukishima stays quiet, pondering over the truth in his grandfather’s words. “So life’s just meant to stay in the middle?” he asks, slowly coming into terms with his grandfather’s redefinition of the plateau. “Life’s meant to find a consistency in everyday,” he corrects.

A few moments pass before he stands back up, pointing to the counter with a thermos. He knows it’s yours. The old one that your mother refused to throw away, because there’s a crack by the lid and a couple faded sailor moon stickers stuck by the side.

“Look at that,” Tsukishima hears. He turns his head just in time to see the old man offer him a patient smile, the message in his eyes delivered without a hitch. “That old thing’s seen a couple of decades, but it still gets to you when you need it, right?”

It’s not so bad to have an old thing be your constant, right?

Twenty minutes after his grandfather climbs back to his room upstairs, Tsukishima’s seated on the side of the table beside the window. Peeking through the half-opened blinds, he can still see that the light from your room is still flicked on.

Without mulling over the decision, he takes his phone out, scrolling through the contacts until he taps your name. A swipe without too much pressure, because even his thumb’s memorized where your name is by now. Kind of like muscle memory, he supposes.

Bypassing the unannounced rules about what to do as the strangers you had claimed from the start of this week, it results to the lack of hesitation as he types a quick text and presses send without a thought that would counter it.

I love you, it reads.

From his spot in the kitchen, he leans back and smiles, pouring himself a cup of the tea he knows you brewed yourself on the nights where he can’t sleep.

The lights from your room stay on for a few more moments before it dims, but before the metaphoric silence could take root, the screen of his phone lights up.

Stop walking around at night. Drink the tea and try to get some sleep.

Exhaling almost in relief, it’s the slow beating of his heart that resettles him back into the love he’s known everyday.

It’s not quite the end, but it isn’t exactly somewhere unpleasant either.

Two days before you’re meant to return to the city, instead of spending the day in your room—like you had initially planned—you somehow found yourself in the passenger seat of his grandfather’s old car, with a grocery list in hand.

You sigh, understanding what his grandfather’s trying to do.

As you look down, there’s nothing much written in the grocery list. He had complained about some back pain earlier, followed up by his insistent request of desperately needing his groceries done so when Akiteru was to arrive later on, dinner would be taken care of.

Beside you, with his hands on the wheel, Tsukishima sighs. “We could have just ordered in food for dinner. It’s just Akiteru coming,” he mumbles.

Keeping your eyes to the window to your left, you shrug. “He likes making the ordinary special, I guess.”

Tsukishima stays silent after that, mentally thankful for the green light and the empty roads. The more stops, the longer silence would stay. And even after the sort of middle ground from the night before, he doesn’t know what to say to you.

After making a quick turn, he pulls up into the parking lot and kills the engine. Unbuckling his seatbelt, he turns to you, with an expectant look. “You can just stay here if you don’t wanna go in with me,” he offers. “It’s a short list, I can be in and out in a bit.”

You wave him off, already slinging on your bag and opening the car door—the list on your hand. “It’s alright. I think I’m more familiar with this area than you are, so we can just meet back in the car in thirty minutes if that’s okay with you.”

“You don’t need me to come with you?” he raises a brow.

You shake your head no, but upkeep the smile on your face anyway as you exit the car and close the door.

Something about what you say sticks with him, the more he thinks about it.

He can distinguish the hesitation laced each of your decisions. You look past him, but not exactly at him. You speak to him, but keep the conversations short. Though conversation was rare between the both of you this past week, the times that you did speak to him, your words often were clipped short.

It’s your means of upkeeping your end of the deal, he realizes.

You’ve always been one for communication, but then again, patience can only stretch so much.

He respects your wish for distance and walks the opposite way from the grocery store, towards a building he doesn’t really known. It’s a gallery, he realizes. Three steps past the entrance, he notices that he’s one of the few that’s in the room.

Traditional artwork line the wall, hung in frames that have rusted throughout time.

Tsukishima stares, eyes drawn to the pieces of art he recognizes from the few scattered memories in his childhood that relate to his time in the city.

A fieldtrip, when he was seven. He remembers leaving the house upset over the yellow hat he had to wear, and the rain boots his teacher wouldn’t let him change out of. Unlike the present, rain was present that day. He stood beside you in line, and had to tilt his head up at the piece of art he always thought was the prettiest out of the bunch.

And now, almost two decades later, he still thinks the same.

He smiles at the memory, finding the comfort of returning to what’s familiar, pleasant.

As if caught by an epiphany, and suddenly enveloped in a sense of a rediscovered home, here, within a room that’s familiar, he finds purpose in the permanence of love.

Love, that’s never meant to be stretched into the likeness of what the poets declare as the absolute form of love after “I do.”

Staring at the piece of art with the rusting frames, the strokes within the canvas still depict the same story. It still is beautiful.

It’s doesn’t become more—but it stays as is.

And maybe that’s what his grandfather was trying to convey.

To fear a certain phase in love is something that comes and goes, but it often never stays. It can linger, but eventually, it too, fades.

What stays is what’s rooted.

Primarily, just you. Truly, just love.

That tree in that old street, these paintings on the walls, and the kind of serenity that washes over him at the thought of you.

The fear in life comes in the form of thinking that beyond the peak lays a plateau. Beyond “I do,” what’s next to come is love, dwindling until “I don’t love you anymore,” is the only thing left to be said.

It’s fear, that spoke to him the past few weeks, so this time, as he gives in, he listens to love.

It’s quiet.

But through the smoke in the room, the message that’s meant to deliver truth comes in full clarity. Illuminated, it appears before him as it is. A painting that’s struck him as beautiful then and now, and the thought of you as the face that’s always been the first to greet him every morning for more than just a few years now.

An old man stands not too far from him, hands clasped behind his back as he stares—with a smile on his face—at a similar painting on the wall. Sensing Tsukishima’s presence, he looks over and redirects the smile his way. “Been coming here for years, and looking at this still feels the same.”

Poking at the doubts, Tsukishima responds, “Are you afraid that it won’t get old?”

The gentleman laughs, though soft enough so it doesn’t echo too much in the halls. The joy lingers around Tsukishima, on the other hand. “To have something grow old with you isn’t a bad thing. Day one, this piece was beautiful, and now, almost forty years later, I look at it and think the same too.”

A beat of silence passes, but the man speaks once more.

“My wife, when she was alive, showed me this piece. Maybe I look at this and still find it beautiful after all these years because I think of her, but I don’t think trying to focus on that matters much. The feeling’s the same, even if it grew old.”

Reciprocating the older man’s goodbye with a nod to the head, it’s then where he laughs, a little bit more of the truth unraveling as each moment comes and goes. Thinking of his words, he dwells on its meaning.

Standing there, alone in the museum hall, the smoke clears, and he presents himself his words of blended truth and patience.

Love is timeless, his thoughts say. The plateau after the peak is as possible as the drop, but life’s meant to be lived in the lows and in betweens as much as the highs. Time moves in waves, and perhaps love doesn’t always grow stagnant. It can be timeless, even though the frames rust. His hair will grey, and maybe you’ll stop linking your pinky with him beneath the sheets during the rainy season’s thunderstorms, but the root of love stays.

Within the plateau, time will move, and you’ll both grow old, but the taste of the tea you’ll brew for him will remain the same.

And thirty minutes later, when he makes it back to the parking lot with you waiting by the door, the love that steadies his beating heart will be the same too.

Steady, present, and timeless.

Eyeing the dashboard, you’re the first to break the silence. “Why’d you buy a postcard?”

Rolling into a stoplight, he eases on the brakes and shrugs. “Lived here for so long, and I don’t even own a postcard from here.”

“Me neither,” you blink.

A couple minutes pass, and the car’s rolling again, but he misses a turn. Assuming that he’s just not used to the usual route, you stay quiet—until about he pulls up to a familiar street.

Parked to the side, through the windshield, you find yourself face to face with a familiar tree. “Kei.” He hums.

The coming autumn has a few leaves beginning to change its colors, you notice. The summer hues, unbalanced, as bits of red begins to bleed through the green. “You were supposed to turn there, not here.”

He shifts the gear into park, then takes his hands off the wheel, leaning back. “I know.”

It’s quiet after that, but it isn’t all that unpleasant either.

This is the part where the questions begin to poke at you, the what-ifs in love let out in the open as you voice a little bit of your vulnerability. And because the truth is daunting, you hope he understands you through the metaphors. “Do you really think they’ll cut it down?”

He doesn’t allow the silence to take more than a moment. “I think so,” he nods his head.

“It’ll be good though, I think,” you add, nodding your head.

It’s quiet in the room even though the words of your truth coaxes the unhealed wound to resurface. As it comes into light, it doesn’t sting.

Sitting shoulder to shoulder beside him in the car, the tree that witnessed the first hello stays rooted, and watches.

He doesn’t turn to you as he speaks, but in a way, you feel as if a farewell was the finale that was meant to be delivered somehow. “It’s good,” he starts. “Letting go of something that needs to be let go of.”

Tokyo

Tsukishima’s the first to speak.

“I’m not good with words,” he starts.

There’s a hush in the crowd, so you stay with it, knowing you’ll only add to the silence should you choose to respond. It wasn’t your turn anyway, so you will yourself to be still and listen.

“Hey Cam,” Tsukishima continues, choosing to begin his vow with a hello. “I think a lot about what love’s supposed to have meant, mean, or eventually mean in the long run. I thought too much about it to the point where it…” he trails off, blinking at the piece of paper before flicking his eyes up to you with a slight shrug. “—to the point where love began to scare me.”

For a brief moment, he closes his eyes, confident in the fact that when he opens them, he knows he’ll see the world in clarity this time. With the smoke cleared and the scattered pieces of all his doubts set in order, the words of his truth may not speak of the most tender poem of love—but within the lines lies his truth.

As he lays his truth on you, he holds a breath and lets it all go. “I wanna wash the dishes with you for the rest of my life,” he laughs, exhaling softly, his shoulders shaking a little. “Never occurred to me how much of a liar the downside of your thoughts are when you listen to everything that isn’t love,” he continues.

Your shoulders relax, and even through the blur of the veil, you can tell his eyes are steadily watering.

“I’m sorry,” he says, the microphone just barely picking up what he says. You nod your head anyway, wishing you were holding his hands instead of the bouquet. Reassurance comes in many forms, but you know he’s always been the type to receive it well through physical touch.

A kiss on the cheek, your head on his shoulder, or your hands squeezing his. But the smile you give him suffices for now, you think.

“I wanna wash the dishes with you for the rest of my life. I’ll wash, and you dry. Nothing much happens in our day usually, but nothing has to. I’ll listen to you talk about how shit the traffic is in the city, because I know you’ll listen to me talk about the same complaints I have from Monday to Friday anyway.”

You realize he’s written his vows in the back of a postcard—the one you saw on his dashboard a few days ago, from Kanazawa.

He sniffles a little then looks up, laughing to himself at how emotional he’s getting. Allowing more than just truth to trickle out slow is a part of love too, he realizes, so with a soft laugh, he lets the tears be and speaks again. “What needed to be let go of was let go of,” he exhales, like he’s been holding his breath for this long.

In a sense, maybe he has. Sometimes fear grips you tightly enough that it shifts your point of view from one thing to another. What’s love, becomes fear. Then what’s fear, becomes the smoke that buries the core of truth too deep within the haze.

“I let go of the thought the thought that after marriage, if nothing great would come then that would be the end of love,” he breathes. “I stared at that tree and thought of Grandpa’s words again and again then wrote my apology and I love you on the back of a postcard that only had one a couple of blank lines at most.”

He waves it for you, then to the crowd, to see. The words, jumbled up together look almost incomprehensible written so closely together, but in a way, you have a feeling that he’s just speaking the rest of his truth as it comes in the moment.

The truth in love, you realize, is that its truth comes, fully unraveled the moment the initial plan falls apart.

He puts down the postcard, and just looks at you.

“There’s a lot I don’t think I will ever understand when it comes to love, but maybe I’m here to just feel it and not try to decipher it.” He pauses, ignores the few tears that roll down, and shrugs his shoulders, admitting to himself that the truth in his love is the first thought that comes.

“Love doesn’t have to the greatest,” he tells you. “I just wanna wash dishes with you for the rest of my life and hear about how traffic was unbearable.”

You smile, and your assurance reaches him.

“I think that counts as love too,” he finishes, the smile on his face tender.

As he leans in after I do, he murmurs a question in your ear that you’ve been expecting since the start.

You could have just left, he said. How did you deal with me and still choose to stay?

Your answer was said without a hint of hesitation. With a shrug, and an honest smile, you told him, “Because I love you.”

“I think we both had to let go of the thought that to love always means to have the biggest reasoning behind it. We do things for love, and because of love. That’s just how it is,” you shrugged.

Oddly enough, it’s in that same exact moment where he remembers Bokuto’s question from that dinner a week and some days ago.

How does it feel? he recalls, and even though words have never found him first nor met him in the middle easy, he gathers what he can and just settles on the conclusion that it just feels like love.

Wherein love, is this.

An identical band on his and your finger, and the taste of I do pleasant on the tongue. I love you, as a truth that’s easy to fathom and healing to hold, and the fear of what comes next just a passing thought that goes as soon as it comes.

Later that evening his grandfather sits him down and asks him what he really thinks about why people have been putting off cutting down that tree for a few decades now.

With a laugh, the hesitation that often turns decisions is made clear to him. “You know I think that people would decide things and think they’re so solid on it before even being face to face with it. The second they get to that tree with a chainsaw, I promise you they changed their minds. You think you go there and cut off or let go of one thing, then realize you’re cutting off something else in the end. They go back to what’s been there and realize that it’s not the problem at all.”

Tsukishima sighs, and his grandfather watches, the smile on his face easy. It’s like watching some emerge from a smoked out room, he thinks. Clarity’s always been a blessing, and he’s glad his grandson’s finally found it.

“Sometimes going back to the start is the one thing you need to be reminded that it’s worth it to keep going.”

“Sounds like you’re not talking about the tree,” his grandfather comments. Looking at you, Tsukishima smiles. “You could say that too.”

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jobean12-blog · 4 years ago

Text

America’s Sled

Pairing: Bucky x reader

Word Count: 1,079

Summary: You convince Tony to host a Christmas in July party then you get the best idea ever...Steve’s shield would make the perfect sled!

Author’s Note: This is for the @redhead-wine-and-literature-club Love in Bloom Challenge and day 29: Magnolia which means love of nature. So I included a magnolia tree in this as well as some outdoor fun in nature haha enjoy! Thank you all so much for reading! Much love always! ❤❤❤ Divider by the lovely @imerdwarf

Warnings: funny, fun fluffy fluff :)

THIS IS SPOILER FREE!

Thank you so much to @august-walker for this gif :)

Imagine this is the look Bucky gives you when you tell him your amazing idea :D

Love in Bloom Masterlist

Bucky stands at the counter and listens to you and Tony chattering on about the Christmas in July party. Your hands are flying this way and that as you talked excitedly over the snow machines.

“We need tubes and sleds! And definitely the kind that are big enough for more than one person,” you tell Tony, while throwing Bucky a wide grin.

Tony relays all the information to Jarvis, giving you a high five before excusing himself to start the preparations. You rush over to Bucky and grab his shoulders.

“BUCK! BUCKKKKK! I have the greatest idea EVER!” you squeal.

He looks at you expectantly and you drop your voice to whisper. “We are so gonna steal Steve’s shield and go sledding!”

Bucky wraps his arms around your waist and pulls you into his chest. “Baby girl, we are not stealing Steve’s shield to use as a sled.”

“Yes we are,” you state plainly, sliding your arms around his neck and leaning up to kiss him.

“No, we are not,” he says against your lips.

His mouth silences any additional response but just as fingers graze the skin of your back you pull away.

“Yes. We. Are,” you whine.

“Steve’s gonna get mad doll face,” he warns.

You bat your eyelashes and hook your thumbs into his jeans. “Not at me, he’s not.”

Bucky’s eyebrows shoot up but before he can respond you kiss him again.

The day of the party arrives and you walk outside to see the giant snow machines spewing out white fluff that now covers the large hill near the compound. It’s really starting to accumulate and you hop up and down, excited to try it out.

“It’s so weird to see all that snow but also see the grass and flowers,” Bucky says, coming up behind you. “And I’m pretty sure I saw an ice cream truck.”

“Yep. You did. That was my idea too! We have to have ice cream!” you say, as if it’s totally obvious.

“You’re so sassy today,” he tells you playfully. “I like it.”

“Good, because I need your help. Let’s go,” you say and pull him away.

When you get back inside you push him onto the couch and straddle his waist. His hands immediately settle at your waist and his eyes darken.

“Now listen. I need you to distract Steve for like ten minutes. You can do it any way you want, just make sure you have his full attention,” you say quietly.

“Why are we talking about Steve?” Bucky asks, looking disgruntled. “I thought we were about to do something fun.”

You giggle and push him back against the couch, leaning close to his ear and whispering, “I promise we can have all the fun you want if you just do me this favor.”

His grip on your waist tightens and he smirks. “I think that sounds fair.”

You hop off him and sneak away, waiting until the coast is clear. Once you see Bucky has Steve distracted you slip into Steve’s room and search around for the shield. It’s leaning against the wall in the far corner and you grab it then rush out.

By the time you meet Bucky back outside the party is underway and the snow machines have created a more than adequate sledding surface. You watch as Sam and Steve fly down on a large tube, crashing at the bottom and rolling into the grass.

When you finish laughing you shout, “OOOOO COME ON! Let’s go!” and grab Bucky’s arm.

Bucky looks at the sleds and tubes before asking you, “which one do you wanna try first?”

Your smile grows devious and you reach behind one of the snow machines, pulling out Steve’s shield.

“THIS ONE!!!” you screech.

Bucky’s eyes go wide and he shoots you a glare.

“I can’t believe I FORGOT ABOUT YOUR TERRIBLE IDEA!!! No wonder you wanted me to distract Steve!” he grumbles, dropping his head into his hand. “I’m so gonna pay for this!”

You give him a quick peck on the cheek and agree, “yep,” with the pop of the P.

Steve and Sam are making their way back up the hill and you shove the shield in Bucky’s arms.

“Hurry!” you tell him.

He narrows his eyes with a sigh and puts the shield down before placing his butt right in the center.

“This is not comfortable,” he complains, holding out his arms for you.

You sit in his lap, between his legs and tuck yours in with a squeal.

“Let’s do this!!!” you hoot.

He lifts his feet and pushes off with his metal hand, sending you flying down the hill at top speed. You pass Sam and Steve and you can hear Steve yelling something as you zoom by.

You’re nearing the bottom but not showing any signs of slowing down and you grip Bucky’s thighs while screaming.

Bucky’s metal arm shoots out and grabs at the snow, slowing you only a little as you approach the grassy bottom and a very large magnolia tree. You bury your face in Bucky’s chest and close your eyes, waiting for the impact.

With a loud thud you hit the trunk of the tree and roll off the shield, Bucky’s body covering yours.

“Are you ok baby girl?” he asks, hovering over you protectively.

You open your eyes and peek up at him, laughing when you see that he’s covered in magnolia leaves, most of them in his hair.

“THAT. WAS. AWESOME!” you shriek. “Let’s do it again!!!”

Bucky sits up and takes you with him, shaking his head but smiling wide.

“Come on! I’ll take ya again. Anyway, I like you sitting in my lap,” he simpers.

You giggle and hold his hand as you walk back up the hill.

Steve is standing at the top, his arms crossed over his chest and his jaw set in a hard line.

“Really Buck?” he asks. “The shield!?”

Bucky just huffs out a sigh and looks at you. You ignore him and glance at Steve.

“I tried to tell him it was a bad idea but…” you trail off, trying to hide your mischievous smile.

Steve holds out his hand and Bucky reluctantly hands over the shield.

“She wanted to go again pal,” Bucky tells Steve, giving you a squeeze.

Steve glares at you both before breaking out into a grin. “She can. After me,” he says, and walks over to the top of the hill.

@addikted-2-dopamine @book-dragon-13 @drabblewithfrannybarnes @eurynome827 @hiddles-rose @jhangelface0523 @jeremyrennerfanxxxx123 @jewels2876 @loricameback @lorilane33 @lookiamtrying @la-cey @lizette50 @ironmansuucks @marvelgirl7 @mardema @moonlacebeam @meetmeatyourworst @nano--raptor @pinkdiamond1016 @randomfandompenguin @starlightcrystalline @white-wolf1940 @loveitorleaveit20 @nikkixostan @moonlitskinandcrimsonribbons

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky x reader fluff #bucky #bucky fluff #bucky x you #steve rogers #rwlc love in bloom challenge #magnolia

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tpwkjerii · 4 years ago

Text

fool’s mate

there’s only one way to lose a game of chess in two moves, and hwang hyunjin managed to figure out how to (subtly) steal your heart with exactly two moves.

pairing: student!hyunjin x student!reader

warnings: fluff, some cursing, y/n likes reading & books, y/n is kinda a teachers pet, y/n is kinda mean, hyunjin is a simp

genre: high school au, fluff, minor angst if you squint, kinda enemies to lovers and fools to lovers

word count: 4.1k+

a/n: first hyunjin fanfic pls enjoy loves!! also a big happy birthday to hyunjin! send him some love if you can :’) xx

Hwang Hyunjin was an asshole. Or at least he was in your eyes.

Why he decided to bother you every morning without fail? You didn’t know. Usually, you brushed it off in favor of talking to your friend Mina, but this morning you couldn’t. Why?

His clumsy ass spilled warm coffee on your white uniform blouse. Now you were sure he didn’t mean to do it on purpose since he never resorted to any physical annoyance, but after the morning you had (let’s just say you shared some rather unsavory words with your project group members), you could only place the harsh blame on him.

You cursed at the same time he apologized, shooting up from your seat with dark brown coffee dripping down your shirt and onto the table.

“I’m so sorry! Really! Sorry!” Hyunjin said frantically, his hands desperately grabbing onto napkins and awkwardly pressing them onto your chest as a futile attempt to pat away the mess.

“Really? You’re sorry?” you huffed, extremely agitated. To make matters worse, everyone was watching your interaction with Hyunjin, and they were all laughing.

Who were they to laugh at your misery? Even Mina was stifling a laugh! Your friend Mina!

“I meant to give the coffee to you and I tripped over your bag! I didn’t see it I swear!” Hyunjin explained, although it did nothing to calm you down. He faltered over his words when his fingers accidentally brushed against the exposed part of your chest, and you ignored the way it made your heart skip, instead choosing to verbally attack him again.

“You expect me to believe that, Hyunjin?” you exhorted dryly, watching as his long black hair shook rapidly while he nodded.

“Yes because it’s true!” he cried, shrivelling inside when you only scoffed and pushed him away.

Your teacher coughed awkwardly once Hyunjin returned to his seat, gathering everyone’s attention. Well, everyone except Hyunjin, who was staring at you like a kicked puppy.

“___, why don’t you take a trip to the nurse’s office, I’m sure she has an extra shirt for you,” your teacher instructed you, sympathy evident in her voice.

Your face burned red as you nodded and stood up, hating the way everyone looked at you and your coffee soaked shirt. Damn Hwang Hyunjin. You all but ran out of the classroom, and left just as Han Jisung leaned over to Hyunjin and said, “I told you she wouldn’t like the coffee.”

Thankfully, you ended up getting a new (and clean) shirt from the nurse, and you were in a much better mood once lunch hour arrived. Everything was going well as you walked out into the courtyard with Mina. You had your lunch in one hand and drink in the other, ready to replenish yourself after long hours of boring class. In the moment, you thought that the worst of your day was truly over.

But, of course, you were a fool to think that you could ever have a truly good day.

Hyunjin and his group of friends walked up to you, their own drinks and foods in hand. Instinctively, you put a hand up, saying as he approached, “If you’re thinking about spilling another drink on me, don’t.”

At your snarky comment, Hyunjin winced and his shoulders visibly sunk. The sight was so sad it almost made you feel bad for him. Almost.

“It was an accident! It really was!” Hyunjin defended himself weakly, obviously ready to continue but stopped when one of his friends - Seungmin, you recognized - cleared his throat and elbowed him. With Seungmin’s interruption, Hyunjin remembered why he approached you in the first place, and his entire demeanor shifted. His shoulders lifted, chest popped out, and an effortlessly beautiful smile took over his face.

Looking unimpressed, you gestured at him to continue. “I don’t have all day, Hyunjin.”

He nodded, and confidently asked, “___, how do you feel about accompanying me to Yellow Wood Cafe after school?”

You furrowed your brows at his proposition and stifled a laugh at the way his friends reacted to his request. If you looked closely, you could see Felix mutter “that’s not how we practiced.”

“As much as I would love to go and get another coffee spilled on me,” you started dryly, and Hyunjn visibly deflated as he realized you would never let that go, “I have Book Club after school.”

At that, Hyunjin’s face contorted into one of confusion. He swore he double - no he triple checked that you would be able to go today. According to the club website and a trusted source, Book Club wasn't supposed to meet again until next week.

“I thought we weren’t going to meet until next week?” Seungmin asked, thankfully voicing Hyunjin’s concerns. Although it wasn’t because Seungmin could read Hyunjin’s mind, but because Seungmin (aka trusted source) was also in Book Club.

You nodded at Seungmin, and Hyunjin ignored the jealousy he felt when you smiled at his friend, informing him of the board meeting that the club was having.

Hyunjin slapped himself internally. He forgot you were the vice president of Book Club. How could he forget such a crucial detail?

Seungmin nodded in response, and you took the newfound and rather awkward silence among the group as the chance to leave. “Sorry, Hyunjin. I won’t be able to make it today,” you said with a twinge of actual sympathy.

Once you were gone, Hyunjin sadly walked away, his friends in tow. As they sat down at their usual table, a light bulb emerged and lit up in Hyunjin’s mind. He had a plan.

“Seungmin,” Hyunjin started, effectively capturing his friend’s attention, “you play chess, right?”

Seungmin nodded, sarcastically stating, “I’ve only been in Chess Club for two years.”

Hyunjin grinned, “I know I know. Anyways, what’s that one thing called? The one where you can win a game of chess in only two moves?”

“Fool’s mate?”

“Yes!” Hyunjin exclaimed, now having the attention of his entire table (and directly surrounding ones). “I know how to woo Y/N with only two moves.”

“Who uses the word woo anymore?” Jeongin said, his face scrunched into a grimace. “And how exactly do you plan on doing that when she hates you?”

Hyunjin frowned at his younger friend. “She doesn’t hate me. And it’ll be simple, just listen…”

Move 1: King’s Pawn to E5 — Avoid Y/N (“absence makes the heart grow fonder or some shit like that, right?” - jisung someone)

Expected Response: Y/N will start to realize that she actually likes Hyunjin and his presence.

4 days.

It had been 4 days since Hyunjin last talked to you. Were these arguably the best 4 days of your life? Absolutely.

No coffee spills. No obnoxious locker slamming (yes, Hyunjin had the locker next to yours). No yelling across the classroom. Just pure, unadulterated peace.

But you couldn’t shake the feeling that you were missing something. Did you know what that certain something was? Yes. Did you want to admit it? Fuck no. There was no way you actually missed Hyunjin’s presence, no way.

As you walked into the classroom again, your eyes reflexively darted to the corner where Hyunjin and his friends always sat. As usual, Hyunjin was sitting on the table with Felix at his side, Jisung and Seungmin were sitting in their seats, and Jeongin was leaning against Seungmin’s shoulder. Normally, Hyunjin would see you enter, shout your name, and gesture for you to sit by him.

However, it’s been nearly a week since the last time he did that. The first day, it was a relief to not have the entire room’s attention on you at 7:50 AM. Now, it was slightly irking.

For a split second, as you walked to your seat, you made eye contact with Hyunjin; and for a second, you thought everything was about to return to normal. But instead of calling you out like you thought, he looked completely past you and waved at the person behind you.

It took almost all of your control to maintain a neutral expression and not turn around to see just who that person was.

Begrudgingly, you set your school bag down on your table and sat down in your assigned seat. With two minutes before the bell, Jeongin runs out of your classroom to go to his and Mina walks in to take her seat next to you.

“What’s got you so upset?” she asked, faux innocence laced in her voice and a knowing look in her eyes. Mina caught on easily two days ago when you accidentally let slip a hurt expression when Hyunjin ignored your greeting.

“Shut up,” you muttered, hearing her stifled laugh as you took out your notebooks.

Luckily, your first few classes passed by rather quickly. For once, your groupmates actually contributed and spared you the trouble of doing all the work. Soon enough, it was lunch period, and you and Mina found yourselves walking to your usual lunch spot.

As you approached your unofficially-claimed bench in the courtyard, you eyed Hyunjin’s unusually quiet table. On a normal day, they would all be very loud (at this point, everyone knew what Jeongin’s scream sounded), but today they were hunched over the table in what appeared to be a deep discussion.

With this newfound silence, you could actually hear the wind rustling the trees and the light chirps of the birds. It was relaxing and peaceful, exactly as you thought lunch should be. For a second, you let a smile grace your face and forgot about how you missed Hyunjin’s constant annoying presence.

Of course, good things can never last long for you because soon enough, it was too relaxing. The birds’ light chirps became annoyingly loud and the blowing wind just became an inconvenience as your hair kept flying into your face regardless of how you angled yourself. And then, as if the clouds opened up and shined a ray of the heavens onto the planet, you heard his laugh.

The laugh, which you previously associated with pure anger, filled you with a surprising warmth. Any negative words you had for mother nature fell silent on your tongue as you shifted your gaze to look at Hyunjin. You watched as he tilted his head back, a harmonious laugh erupting from his throat as his eyes crinkled into beautiful half moons.

You found yourself hypnotized by him as he calmed down and leaned back, running his hands through his long, black hair with a content expression on his attractive face...

You stiffened as he turned and met your gaze. Hoping that he didn’t see the intense blush on your face (he totally did), you quickly looked away and grabbed Mina’s arm, effectively startling her.

“Wh-what are you doing?” Mina asked, slightly choking on her lunch as you rushed her to stand up. “You didn’t even touch your food!” the disgruntled girl continued as you dragged her away.

“I-it doesn’t matter,” you stuttered, praying for the heat across your face to go away. “I’ve lost my appetite.”

“Well I haven’t,” Mina muttered.

“Mina,” you started, whirling around to stop both of you in your tracks once you were out of the courtyard and in an empty hallway. She looked at you expectantly, her feet tapping impatiently. “This is an emergency,” you stressed.

Mina looked both unimpressed and concerned. With raised eyebrows, she asked, “Emergency meaning what, exactly? Do you need me to take you to the nurse?”

You groaned and looked down at your feet in embarrassment. Raising your hands to your face, you sighed as you mumbled, “I… I think I like Hyunjin.”

Pretending that she couldn’t hear you and deciding to make you more miserable than you already were, Mina held back her laugh and said, “You what? I didn’t quite hear that.”

Suppressing a loud groan, you begrudgingly repeated, “I think I like Hyunjin,” a hard annunciation following each word.

“Ah,” Mina laughed. “I thought so. We all did.”

You shot up, making direct eye contact with the girl in front of you. “What do you mean?” you asked, your eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Mina laughed again, saying, “You know, you’re pretty blind sometimes.” With that, she started walking away, only picking up her pace when you started following after her.

“What’s that even supposed to mean?” you shouted after her, groaning internally as she broke into a full on sprint.

Move 2: Queen to H4 — Invade Indirectly spend more time with Y/N by attending the same activities (“but hyunjin you hate readi - ” “shut up jeongin”)

Expected Response: Y/N will realize that she loves doing stuff with Hyunjin and will like him more.

“You joined Book Club?” you asked the long-haired newcomer, trying to control the shakiness in your voice and thanking god that you were sitting or else your weak knees would betray you.

Hyunjin nodded, a beautiful smile spreading across his face. “Seungmin,” he paused, pointing to Seungmin, who waved from the door, “suggested that I pick up a new extracurricular.”

You raised your eyebrow pointedly. “And you chose Book Club?”

He nodded proudly, hoping that he didn’t appear as nervous as he felt inside.

“Hyunjin,” you sighed, and he ignored how the way you said his name made his heart feel like it was about to collapse after a marathon, “the only books I have ever seen you read were all for class.”

“And they were all great!” he lied through his teeth, but painted on fake enthusiasm in hopes of convincing you. Evidently, it worked as your confused gaze dropped and you shrugged.

“If Seungmin thinks you’ll enjoy it then I guess you’re free to join us today,” you told him, your voice soft and lacking the usual bite it had when you talked to Hyunjin. Your gentle tone shocked everyone in the room, who all expected you to kick Hyunjin out instantly and permanently ban him from the back library office the club met in once every two weeks.

“Oh,” he said, his lips parting in shock and his heart pounding wildly as you gestured for him to take the empty seat next to Seungmin. “Thank you,” Hyunjin managed to breathe out, turning around to walk towards the open seat with a hand dramatically clenched over his chest.

“Alright,” the sound of your voice again startled Hyunjin, who barely sat down. You stood up from your seat, a book in hand and a friendly smile on your face. “Hopefully everyone finished the last book, which was recommended by Sunwoo,” you announced, smiling as you lifted up the book 1984 and gestured kindly towards Sunwoo, a boy in your class.

Hyunjin ignored the twinge of jealousy as you nonverbally praised Sunwoo for his book choice. He could choose nice books to read, too.

“Usually Joon leads the discussion,” you continued, and Hyunjin recognized the advanced Literature TA’s name, “but seeing as both him and Haechan aren’t here, I’ll be leading the discussion for today!”

Hyunjin felt his heart swell at the proud grin on your face as you talked about your passions. To be honest, he hated reading and would prefer to be at the dance studio with Felix for extra practice, but being here with you made him quickly forget about those two things. He would read 1000 books if it meant he got to spend more time with you.

In the front, you animatedly led the discussion, willing yourself to not stare at Hyunjin and lose your train of thought. It was harder than you thought it would be to ignore the way he casually ran his hands through his hair and how he pushed up the sleeves of his uniform shirt. It was enough to make you both curse and thank Seungmin for bringing him today.

After ten long minutes of discretely ogling Hyunjin while attempting to lead the discussion on a book you barely managed to finish in time, you were finally able to sit down. Everyone else was deep in conversation, and mostly everyone had their attention off you. Key word: most.

Hyunjin kept an unreadable gaze on you while, shockingly, participating in the group discussion. Your eyes clashed with his, and you found yourself struggling to breathe properly as he mentioned his favorite part of the book.

“When Winston and Julia realized they liked each other and took the risk to be together.”

At his words, your breath stopped. The intense gaze he held on you and the slight shakiness in his voice led you to assume that Hyunjin was feeling the same way as you, and that his sentence was just a shove — a way of indirectly putting his feelings into the air. You knew that your relationship wouldn’t be nearly as risky as the two characters’ of 1984 and that you and Hyunjin were far from the two, but somehow, Hyunjin’s words managed to excite you.

Was it a risk to open your heart up to the person who used to annoy you to no end? Was it a risk to like someone at all? Years of building walls and pushing people away were crumbled by a beautiful boy with a smile that took your breath away. You didn’t know what this meant for you, but one thing was for sure: for once, you hoped that Hyunjin didn’t stop hanging around.

Soon enough, Book Club was over, and you all but ran out of the library. With your backpack securely on, you put in your earphones and began the usual walk to Yellow Wood Cafe. It was a usual tradition to meet Mina, who was really your only friend now that you were thinking about it, after Book Club to do homework and eat together.

With music playing loudly in your ears, you failed to notice Hyunjin and Seungmin behind you; conveniently, both of them were also headed to the Cafe to visit their friend who worked there. Or, at least Seungmin was — Hyunjin had an ulterior motive.

After a short eight minute walk, which was all taken up with you screaming internally over your newfound feelings for Hyunjin, you arrived at the bright storefront. Through the decorated glass walls, you saw Mina sitting at your usual table, her neck craned down to copy notes. You walked into the store with a happy smile and headed straight for the empty seat across your friend.

As you set your bag down, Mina looked up, and her smile turned into a mischievous grin when she moved slightly to the side to see the familiar faces that entered behind you.

“What are you looking at?” you asked, your brows furrowed together as you turned around.

You recognized him instantly and you quickly whipped around, hoping he didn’t see that (he definitely did). “Oh my god,” you whispered, your eyes wide in panic, “I can’t believe he followed me.”

“Follow?”

You inhaled sharply, hesitantly turning around and gasping when you saw how close Hyunjin was standing to you. His head was craned down to look at you, and there was barely a foot between your faces.

“___, I didn’t follow you. My friend works here and I wanted to pay him a visit,” he told you, waving to the guy behind the counter as his evidence.

“Oh,” you dumbly responded, your voice uncharacteristically shaky. “Well, I take my words back.” You subtly cleared your throat and turned back around, hoping your face didn’t appear as warm as it felt.

Hyunjin cleared his throat, causing you to stiffen slightly, and asked, “Want a drink? My treat.”

“N-no thanks,” you managed to reply, internally cursing at the stutter. How did Hyunjin somehow manage to completely dissolve your composure?

You didn’t even get to think about the answer to your question as Hyunjin said, “I insist. You usually get a Jasmine Green Tea with boba, right?”

“How do you know my or -”

“Hey Changbin, can I get a Jasmine Green Tea with boba and a Brown Sugar Milk Tea with boba?”

You watched as Hyunjin inserted his card into the chip reader and took it out, the receipt proof that he really did get you a drink.

“Er - thanks,” you mumbled as he approached, feeling incredibly awkward. By now, Mina had moved to talk to Seungmin since they shared the same math class, but you didn’t miss the way they eyed you and Hyunjin.

If any of your awkwardness was showing, Hyunjin chose to ignore it as he seemed as cool as ever. “No problem,” he said, his hands moving together to clasp each other tightly. “Since I got you a drink,” he started, his voice wavering slightly, “I was wondering if we could talk? Just for a few moments?”

Your eyes widened and you felt your heart pick up its pace. “Just us two?” you asked, your voice mirroring your shock.

With his nod, you slowly walked towards an empty table with him and awkwardly sat down at one of the sides. You kept your gaze firmly on the white table in fear of looking up and losing what was left of your composure. Silence prevailed for a few seconds until Hyunjin spoke.

“I know that we haven’t been on the best terms the past year,” he started, and you nodded at his true statement. “I did a lot of things that I didn’t realize really bothered you -” you thought back to the amount of times he would purposely distract you in class and randomly hug you when he was sweaty from dance or swim practice.

“- but I really did those things you get your attention,” he paused, causing you to look up just as he looked down bashfully, “which didn’t work out too well when I really thought about it. And I know that now you probably think I’m annoying -” your breath hitched and you stopped yourself from blurting out ‘not anymore’ “- but I still want to let you know how I feel.”

He looked up, and the genuineness in his eyes made your heart feel like it was going to beat out of your chest. “I…” he weakly started, “I don’t know if anything changed how you felt this week but I know that I’ve liked you since you stood up for me last year.”

Right, you thought back to the time when you and Hyunjin were mere classmates (basically strangers) and you defended him from an older student. You couldn’t stand to see them abuse their authority as your elder (by only one year too), and decided to use your influence as a teacher’s pet to teach him a lesson. It was safe to say that Hyunjin was never bothered after that.

“After that I just wanted to be around you more,” Hyunjin continued, “but you usually kept your distance from people and I was stupid and couldn’t think of better ways to get your attention than annoy you.” The long-haired boy in front of you was blushing now, and his hands were clasped together so tightly you had to fight the urge to reach out with your own and relax him.

“I understand if you don’t feel the same, but I’d really appreciate it if you gave me the chance and allowed me to take you out on a date -”

“Yes,” you said instantly. But Hyunjin, amidst the panic of his mind, seemed to hear something else as his face immediately fell and he instantly moved to stand up.

“I guess I expected that - wait, yes?” He plopped back down on his seat ungracefully, shock absorbing his features as if a light had turned on in his brain and properly registered what you said.

You nodded, a bright red blush staining your cheeks. “Yes, you can take me out on a date, Hyunjin.”

“Is this a dream?” Hyunjin asked, the shock still clear on his face as he held back an excited smile.

You shook your head with a small laugh. “Nope, completely real life, I’m afraid,” you answered, gently pinching his hand for extra emphasis.

Hyunjin broke into a large grin and moved to cover your hands with his own. “I’ve dreamed about this moment,” he shyly admitted with a bashful blush that slowly spread across his face, “and I didn’t think you’d ever say yes.”

You took a second to admire his smile and how his eyes seemed to shine even in the cafe’s fluorescent lighting. Hyunjin really did have the most beautiful smile you had ever seen.

“I’m curious,” you started slowly after collecting yourself. He nodded, a silent gesture to continue. “Was this a plan? The past week, it felt different, and that’s how I started to realize…” you paused, a blush spreading across your face, “I liked you.”

Hyunjin’s smile never faltered, and he tightened his grip around your hands as he asked, “have you ever played chess?”

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genshin-obsessed · 4 years ago

Text

My (f/n) | Zhongli x Reader

Hello! This was originally a collab idea from a friend between like 5 people. The friend who suggested the collab pulled out and idk about others lmao so it might just be me. BUT I COMMITED AND DELIVERED SO! Cuz I’m responsible and amazing💖 anyway. It’s a reincarnation AU! Banner made by 🎭 anon! Thanks to @squeaky-ducky and @solies-scripts for helping me edit this💖

Extra sidenotes: Your previous self’s vision is pyro but you can choose whatever for the reincarnated version even tho it’s not mentioned. Also, Yehara and Lilith are my OCs (yes... more)

Length: 2.1k Summary: Zhongli loves and cherishes you above all else. One day, you’re snatched away from him and the world turns black for him. Yet somehow, a thousand years later, he sees you again.

The bright sun beamed down at the land below, illuminating everything in a golden glow. Zhongli stepped out into the light and closed his eyes, inhaling the fresh air.

Days like these were beautiful but they became a blessing all thanks to one person. A smile graced Zhongli’s beautiful features at the thought of them. His hand found its way onto his chest and he felt it steadily beat. He felt an overwhelming sense of serenity and it was all thanks to this person. You.

You, yourself, were a blessing in this archon’s life. He never thought he would ever feel like this. That he would ever feel love. What was love to archons? They usually loved the lands they resided over. The original archons held love for humanity and guided them.

For Zhongli, love was something of a general term. He loved the sun, the lands… today. But his love for you was something he couldn’t describe. Something the man of wondrous knowledge couldn’t understand.

Zhongli came to realize that love wasn’t something that could be easily explained nor did it need to be. Love gave him overwhelming happiness, so why bother trying to understand every aspect of such a beautiful idea.

The Geo archon walked through the city of Liyue and although he felt great joy, there was also a certain uneasiness. He paused and touched his chest once more as the anxiety grew.

Ultimately, the man ignored it, unable to find the root cause of such dread. He instead opted to find you, so you could settle his nerves a little.

***

“Zhongli!” You beamed once you saw him. He chuckled as you ran to him and wrapped your arms around his slim figure.

“You’re rather excited today,” he commented as he hugged back, “what brought on such elation?”

“Hmm, a very pretty man.” You said, cheekily. There it was, that smile of yours washed away any and all discomfort he felt.

“Oh, is that so? I’m quite jealous.”

“I wouldn’t be.” Zhongli chuckled once more as you leaned in and gave him a kiss. The sensation of your soft lips remained on his even after you’d pulled away. “What brings you here today?”

“I was thinking we could spend some time together. We could go for a walk, maybe set up a picnic since that’s what you wanted to do last time.”

“Really!? You’ll go on a picnic with me?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?” Your radiant smile was contagious as he found himself smiling in return.

“I’ll set it up!! It can be a late night picnic or- oh! Oh! Let’s watch the sunset! Then we can have our picnic. I’ll set up candles!” Your enthusiasm was always something Zhongli loved. It benefited him more than he could admit.

“Alright then. Where?”

“Our spot!” Zhongli teasingly tilted his head making you pout.

“What spot? I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“Yes you do! Come on, Zhongli!” Zhongli leaned in and pecked your pouty lips before nodding.

“I do. Then I’ll meet you there?” You nodded with a bright smile.

“Yes! Exactly! I’ll have everything set up and I want it to be a surprise.”

Zhongli spent a little more time with you before he left, since you needed to prepare for the date. Only a few minutes after he’d left you, the anxiety returned. He touched his chest once more with furrowed brows. What was this?

***

You smiled as you started to place the items down onto the blanket. You’d been planning this picnic for weeks now and you finally had the chance to do it.

You set the cushions and small table you had brought, placing the candles and wine bottle. The food would remain in the basket to keep it safe from bugs since you had to wait quite a while. Hopefully your pyro vision was enough to keep it warm.

“Hello, are you (y/f/n)?” A soft voice called from behind. You turned around and saw a shy, but beautiful woman with long pink hair. The clothes she wore indicated she clearly wasn’t from here. She fidgeted with her hand, showing she was nervous.

“Um… who’s asking?”

“Ah, sorry! My name is Lilith but you can call me Lily. I was told you knew where I could find a um… Mr. Zhongli?”

Zhongli? Why was she looking for him? Finding her safe enough, you opted to direct her to your boyfriend rather than giving information about yourself.

“Oh, yes I do! He’s back in Liyue but you’ll find him at Wangshen Funeral Parlor.”

“Thank you so much!” But she didn’t leave. A giggle escaped her lips and she met your eyes, giving you a dreadful feeling.

“Y-yes?”

“So he’s not here with you… good.” In the blink of an eye, Lilith was in front of you. She threw you back causing you to fly into a tree. You let out a scream as your weakened body hit the ground. Pain shot through you and you weakly looked up at her.

“Wh-why…”

“Pitiful. You’d think he’d choose someone of his caliber but no. He chose someone weak and pathetic like you. Your pyro vision was wasted on you.” Woah, where did her soft voice and shy demeanor go?

“Zh-Zhongli…” you called out as Lilith picked you up and slammed you into the tree once more.

“Call him all you want. But he won’t get here in time.” Lilith repeatedly slammed you into the tree before a sickening crack was heard.

A weak whimper escaped your bloodied lips as the light faded from your eyes.

“H-help m-me… Zh… Zhong… li…” Lilith caught your limp body and picked you up. A wicked smile played on her lips as she walked to her destination.

***

It had happened all so suddenly. Zhongli was meeting an acquaintance to talk about his work at the funeral parlor when he felt a sharp, intense pain in his chest and back. He just knew.

He threw everything away, apologizing to his friend and practically sprinting to where you two were supposed to meet. There he was met with a grim sight.

The picnic had been set up almost completely, but the large tree behind it was covered in blood. The Geo Archon knew exactly who it belonged to. He finally noticed the letter sitting on the table.

Once he read it, he ran to the nearest Statue of the Seven in hopes of finding you and whoever took you. But it was too late. When he finally reached the statue, his heart shattered.

Your body was on top of the statue, laying across the lap of the stone man. Blood trailed down your arm that hung over the edge and dripped from your finger. Your lifeless eyes stared into nothingness, the final sign of your death.

A large pillar solidified in front of him and he quickly climbed up to get to you. Zhongli’s shaky hand slowly and hesitantly touched yours. Cold. You were so cold. Where was your usual warmth? Where was that dazzling smile that often chased away his sorrows? Where was the light in your eyes? Where was the joy you brought him?

“M-my… (f/n)...” he murmured in a sorrowful tone, “what’s… no. No, this isn’t happening.” He pulled you down and into his arms, wincing at how lifeless you were.

You couldn’t be dead, you couldn’t have left him. He jumped down to the ground with you tightly in his arms. His eyes stung and his vision started to get blurry. Crying? An archon, crying? The tears slowly slid down his pale cheeks. His voice cracked when he spoke up.

“Wake up, my love. Please wake up.” He begged looking down at you. The blood trickled down your mouth, a clear sign you’d been killed recently. Within the hour, actually. “P-please blink… please wake up. Please come back to m-me. I just… I can’t do this without you. I…” what could he say? What could he do?

Zhongli had failed. He’d failed to keep you safe and alive. He’d vowed to always protect you and he vowed to never let you get hurt.

The tears spilled down his cheeks and the pain in his heart grew. He took your face in his free hand and took a good look at his consequence. At his failure.

“Tell m-me this is just s-some cruel joke, w-wake up and tell me this isn’t real. I-it’s just a n-nightmare, right? Right?” Zhongli held you tightly with his head pressed against your chest. Nothing. He heard nothing.

You never blinked, you never looked up at him with that adorable giggle, and you never exclaimed it was a joke.

You really were gone.

***

How many years ago was that now? Almost a thousand? Zhongli had never gotten over your death and how could he? His first and only lover had been ripped away from him and he still hadn’t found the murderer.

There had been a significant change in Zhongli since then. He was much more reserved and defensive but he was also very protective of anyone he came to call a friend. Ever since losing you, he found it hard to love and care for people the same way.

There was a constant emptiness, a loneliness that never left. No matter how many friends surrounded him, he always felt empty. Food and drinks were tasteless and the world lacked color. No smile matched yours, no warmth matched yours, and he never found a pair of dazzling eyes such as yours. And he was sure he’d never see them again… or so he thought.

“Zhongli! Are you coming?” Yehara asked, making the man look toward her.

“Oh, sure. Let’s go.” Zhongli had met Yehara a few years ago and had helped her during a commission. She hadn’t been doing so well and he’d practically saved her. Ever since then, she stuck to him like glue. Although he wasn’t terribly fond of her from the beginning, he grew to like her. Once they were close enough, Zhongli finally opened up about you and your death.

Yehara swore she’d help solve the murder and wouldn’t rest until he knew. Zhongli had grown much closer to her than he anticipated. The relationship gave him complicated feelings, ones he didn't want to even deal with.

At first, he wondered if he had feelings for Yehara or else why did he feel so comfortable with her? Why did he feel so safe? Why did he often find himself seeking her out when he felt alone? He was scared because you were long gone but for him it was just yesterday. Zhongli didn't want to move on, no matter how healthy it was. He only wanted you, nobody else. Not Yehara, not another archon, no one but you.

There were many things he felt with you that he didn’t with Yehara. Her smile didn’t light up his world, her laughter didn’t echo in his ears, her hugs didn’t leave him tingling, and her words never stayed with him for more than a minute.

There were many nights he spent thinking about himself and Yehara. Was he in love with her? It took some time, but he eventually came to the conclusion that didn’t. He hoped she didn’t either.

“Zhongli! Stop dozing off!” Yehara said, making him look down. He chuckled and patted her head, before looking away.

“Sorry, sorry. It won’t happen ag-” Zhongli stopped abruptly, his golden-orange eyes widened. No…

“Oh come on Zhongli, you just said this wouldn’t happen again.” Yehara huffed and followed his gaze. He was looking into a group of people but after a few moments, her red eyes widened as well.

A person, looking EXACTLY like you was smelling some flowers at a stall. You smiled and Zhongli’s heart sped up immediately.

“It’s them… that’s my (f/n)... I know it.” The archon whispered.

“That can’t be… I thought…” Yehara looked at Zhongli only to look back at you. The duo watched as you nodded and purchased the flowers and turned towards them. When your eyes landed on them you froze, almost as if you’d seen a ghost.

“They saw us.” Yehara gasped, bringing Zhongli out of his trance. You did. You were looking directly at him with the same look of shock. Without wasting any more time, you ran towards him and stopped right in front of them. Zhongli’s heart was beating out of his chest and he clenched his hands. Why were you looking at him like that?

“You’re… Zhongli, right? I’m (y/f/n)... I know you from my dreams.”

“Dreams?” Yehara asked and you nodded, giving her a soft smile. You were more beautiful than Zhongli had described. She could see why he was so infatuated.

“I began dreaming about you when I turned 20.” That was an odd coincidence, since you were 20 when he first asked you to be his.

“You… know me?”

“I do. I only know things from dreams and as dreams not memories… but since you’re here in front of me, there has to be some truth to them. So will you tell me more?” A smile of relief appeared on his lips and he nodded.

“Of course, anything for you… my (f/n).”

#genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact imagines #genshin zhongli x reader #zhongli x reader #zhongli imagines #reincarnation au

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peralta-guaranteed · 3 years ago

Note

After that Jake-Mac-Rosa fic, you dropped this queen: 👑 Next time, a Jake-Mac-Holt piece?

Oh dang, THAT's where I left it. Thank you for that. 🤪

Grandpa Holt is always a pleasure to write, but let's try for some Dad Holt too...

"Is everything alright, Peralta?"

Jake has been sitting off to the side of the group for a while now, so Holt finds it necessary to inquire. He's not used to the eager detective being so closed off and quiet unless something is wrong, and nothing he can think of right now strikes him as 'wrong': they have been celebrating the end of a rather arduous case for Diaz and Boyle, and Peralta had been as helpful as he could be as a tertiary, which was not his preferred position at all. The first round at Shaw's had been paid by himself as Captain, obviously, and the next by Diaz, so Boyle has promised to shoulder the third, were it to happen. Ergo Peralta could not be thinking about his usual money problems, which have lessened anyway ever since Santiago took over his budgeting.

That means something else entirely must be 'wrong' in order for Jake to keep out of the conversation, only reply when he is mentioned by name, and drift off to a corner of the bar while the other congregate around the various game options of the room.

"I'm good, Captain, thanks." Jake answers with a smile and an obvious lie, so Holt doesn't even bother replying, just raises one of his eyebrows a quarter of an inch, which he knows usually gets him results with Peralta. The ensuing sigh shows that it is still working.

"It's just..." Jake shrugs and rubs the back of his neck, another tell of his discomfort. "This is my first night out alone since the baby."

"Indeed." Holt replies. "I remember your phone call to Amy to inform her you would be back late today."

"Yeah." His hand is still on his neck, the other one clutched around his half empty beer bottle. "She told me to have fun. But..uh... I still kinda feel like I shouldn't be here."

"Do you think having a child robs you of autonomity? I know I am not speaking from experience, here, but it does seem to me like you are allowed to enjoy time away from your family, especially if your spouse insists you do."

"Getting drunk at a bar while my kid might be crying at home doesn't feel like the responsible thing to do, is all."

"Ah, I see." Holt nods, and he does see - he actually sees a lot more than what Jake might be trying to imply in his statement. He remembers how he used to self-medicate with alcohol in the past, after ending his relationship with that defense attorney, or even before, while feeling heartbroken over Santiago. He also remembers anecdotes about his father's drinking, not from Peralta himself, obviously, but from the rest of the squad, whenever Jake would cancel on a promised night out after Roger Peralta's visits. As much as Holt hates idioms, one of his most despised is probably 'the apple doesn't fall far from the tree', and Jake seems to fear it as well.

"Here is my solution, then, if you are willing to listen." Jake looks up at Holt as he's standing in front of him, and his hand drops from his neck. "You make the beer you are currently drinking your last for the night, and spend some quality time with your colleagues instead, enjoying a few parlour games, and then you head home at an agreeable time and still see your child before he falls asleep."

Jake grins and takes a sip of his beer.

"Sounds like a plan, Cap." He nods, and Holt doesn't ignore the fact that Jake has been using this shortened nickname for him a lot lately, and how eerily similar it sounds to 'Dad' in his voice.

(An hour later, he receives a picture on his cellphone from Peralta: The man himself, asleep on his couch, with his infant son equally asleep on his chest. Santiago must have commandeered his phone, and Holt is glad for it.)

-*-

"Grampa!"

The sound of that little voice echoes through the hallway as loudly as the ensuing footsteps, and Holt feels something warm and solid wrap around his legs.

"Hello, McClane." He smiles down at the little boy currently clutching his knees, and he smiles back before raising his arms in an obvious demand to be lifted up. Holt obeys it immediately.

He notices Mac looks surprisingly tired for an otherwise very energetic two year old, and Amy, who's now following him to Holt's side, looks equally exhausted.

"Good afternoon, Captain. I'm so sorry, I should've messaged you that I have to bring Mac in for an hour, the babysitter cancelled and the day care couldn't keep him longer than-"

"It is quite alright, Santiago. McClane knows how to behave himself at the precinct, right?" He gives the little boy in his arms a look, and receives a strong and eager nod in reply, the curls on his head bouncing back and forth. If anyone were ever to question Peralta's parentage, that alone would classify them as an imbecile. "I can watch him for the time being, if you have paperwork you need to get in order before leaving for the day."

"God, Captain Holt, would you- that would be so- I was going to ask Rosa, because I know she's at her desk-"

Amy seems far more frazzled than usual, and Holt realises that her regular schedule must be in quite a disarray, considering she has been a single parent for about a week now. Mac must not have been making it easy for her, either, nor must the baby currently growing in her stomach, which has started to show about a month ago, at which point they finally informed the squad about it (when everyone had already figured it out just like last time).

"RoRo!" Mac yells, happily, almost leaning out of Holt's arms, but he quickly hugs him tighter.

"Your aunt Rosa is working, McClane, and we should not interrupt her. We can spend the time in my office, and you can draw if you would like."

"Roro working." He echoes like a little parrot. "Like Daddy."

"That's right." Holt has learned from the parenting homepages he's visited that you are to encourage a child trying to talk and string together a coherent topic, no matter how long it might take.

"Daddy's working away." Mac continues, and out of the corner of his eye Holt sees Amy's forehead wrinkle in worry.

"Yes, your father is in New Jersey for the week to work on a special case." It's not a dangerous case at all, rather a boring standard task that happened to involve some out-of-state suspects, but Jake had still been trying to hand off that trip to anyone who might be willing to help him out. Seeing his son with bags under his eyes and his wife with stresslines around her mouth and her hand on her belly, Holt understands why.

"He comes back." Mac says next, and it is a statement, but the look in his eyes makes it a question, and Holt is quick to answer. He's glad that he has a definite answer to that, instead of the empty promises and assurances he sometimes has to make as the head of a police department.

"Yes, your father will be back soon. In two days, in fact."

Mac holds up two grubby little fingers, and Holt nods with so much fervor it surprises himself.

"Very good, that is two. Only two days and two nights until your father is back home." The worry in Mac's eyes seems to dimish a little at that as he stares at his own fingers. "If we go to my office, we can check on the calendar exactly how long that is." He barely waits for another nod before taking the diaper bag out of Santiago's hands, who whispers a quiet, but relieved "Thank you" to him. He understands again that it means far more than to thank him for taking care of the child for an hour so.

(If he uses that hour to assure Mac several times that no matter what, his father will always find a way back to him with far more emotion in his voice than he'd usually use, well, no one needs to know. Peralta certainly seems happy about the picture he sends him of Mac with his captain's hat behind his desk.)

-*-

"Congratulations." Holt's hand on his shoulder is heavy, but not uncomfortably so, and it gives a quick squeeze before dropping.

They've done the whole customary introduction to the newborn baby, the apparently necessary picture round, and now Kevin is having an amicable chat with Amy in her hospital bed. They've waited two days for their official visit, to give the new parents a chance to get at least a few of their bearings. (Holt was there merely an hour after the birth, of course, with the rest of the squad, but that was a moment of joyful chaos and many voices.) Now the room is filled with an almost serene quiet, Amy's and Kevin's voices low and comfortable in the background as Holt watches the man he truly considers a son hold up his new granddaughter.

"Do you want to hold her again? I know you already did for the photos but-"

Holt only nods and takes the infant out of his hands with perfect ease. He's more used to a wriggling toddler now, but he still clearly remembers the days when Mac was equally quiet and frail in his arms. The little one in them now is asleep amidst all that is happening, her tiny mouth open just a fraction, and he feels her arm bump against his chest while she seems to be having a dream.

"She is as perfect as her older brother, Jake."

"Yeah." Jake smiles, and there's nothing of that boisterous, loud, cocky detective grin left in it that he used to know. It is soft and kind and full of love, and it might be one of Holt's favourite expressions. "Amy did a superb job again."

"As did you."

"I'm sure I don't gotta explain this to you, Cap, but I didn't really do much." Jake jokes, and Holt can tell he's trying to divert the attention to a simpler topic, but sometimes things must be said.

"You do a lot, Jacob." He continues, then. "Far more than a lot of fathers do. Far more than many would expect of you. And you do it all perfectly right, with heart and determination."

Jake nods, swallowing down a lump in his throat, it seems, and it might be a step too far for his already emotional state, but Holt feels like it needs to accompany his accolades.

"I am very proud of you, son."

Jake is very obviously fighting back tears as he replies.

"Thanks, dad."

The little girl in Holt's arms stirs right at this moment, and Jake seems to want to interject immediately in fear that she'll start crying, but she simply stares up at Holt with impossibly big, brown eyes for the first time. And he realises, just as he did two years ago when Mac's little hand tightened around his finger for the first time, that there is a child in this world that he would literally do anything for. There are four of them now, even if two of them have not fallen under the category of a child for several decades.

"Hello, Maya." He says to the little face that seems to be inspecting him. "I'm Captain Raymond Holt. Your grandfather."

He looks up at Kevin and Amy, who've stopped their conversation while Amy is lifting her phone in their direction, and then at Jake, who's looking at Maya as well with shining eyes. Then he looks back down at Maya, stretching her arms out of her swaddle as if she's reaching for him.

"You are a very lucky little girl."

#b99 #brooklyn 99 #jake peralta #amy santiago #peraltiago #mac peralta #maya peralta #raymond holt #captain dad #my writing #ficlet

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heylookitsyc · 3 years ago

Text

Bad Breaks and Pancake Dates

Pairing: 2p!Canada/Matt Williams x Reader

Anime: Hetalia / 2p!Hetalia

Genre: Angst/Fluff

Synopsis: Your boyfriend (well, now ex-boyfriend) left you out in the rain, and your older brother Philippines is stuck in a World Meeting between the first and second player countries. He asks Canada’s second player to come get you, seemingly unaware of the Canadian’s little crush on you.

Warning(s): Swearing, slight mentions of a toxic/unhealthy relationship

Note: Just a reminder that none of you deserve to be in an unhealthy relationship !! You all deserve to be happy, and I wish you all nothing but happiness and good health in your lives (´･ᴗ･ ` ) please enjoy!

Story is down below!

You hugged yourself in a weak attempt to stay warm, the trees above you doing little to defend you from the rain.

It was difficult to tell if the drops running down your cheeks were from your own tears or the rain. You didn’t expect it to rain; it was supposed to be a fun day out with your boyfriend, so you had dressed in some of your best attire. Unfortunately, it did little to protect you from the rain.

After breaking it off with you, your asshole of a now ex-boyfriend had left you off at the side of the road. He had responded to your protests with a few not so kind words before driving off, leaving you to stand outside in the cold.

Your phone rang, and with slightly numb fingers you managed to press the “answer” button before holding it up to your ear.

You were met with Matt’s gruff voice. “Hey, where are you?”

“I don’t know,” you said weakly. “There aren’t any street signs nearby.”

“Can you send me your location?”

“I think so.”

“Alright.” You heard the sound of a vehicle starting up. “I’ll be there in a few minutes. Your brother sent me to come get you.”

“Oh. Thanks, Matt.”

He simply gave a small grunt in response before hanging up, leaving you to yourself once more.

You stared out the window mindlessly. Music played from the radio, the volume too low for you to know what kind of tune it was. Matt had given you a spare sweatshirt that he had in the backseat of his car; you noticed that it was the same sweatshirt that you had given to him one Christmas. You could smell the faint scent of maple syrup and cigarette smoke coming from the article of clothing.

A small smile formed on your lips. You remember how Matt was when you had given him the sweatshirt; his face had become a bright red, muttering something about how stupid your gift was. He had said that he would never wear such a thing, but that obviously turned out to be a lie.

Matt suddenly cleared his throat, bringing you out of your thoughts.

“So what happened?” he asked. Though he sounded uninterested, the glance he gave you showed the complete opposite. “You were crying when I arrived.”

You felt your cheeks warm at his statement. “You noticed that?”

“Of course I did. You don’t usually look that unhappy.”

“I guess.” You fiddled with the sweatshirt, taking notice of how the sleeves fell well past your fingertips. With a small sigh, you decided to tell him. “My boyfriend broke up with me.”

You didn’t notice the way that Matt’s grip on the steering wheel tightened, eyes narrowing behind his dark shades.

“Are you fucking serious?”

You were caught off guard by the Canadian’s response. You felt the anger radiating off of him, and it started to make you nervous.

“Yeah, I am,” you said, tugging on the sweatshirt sleeve now. “He broke it off when we were coming back from the movies. He parked somewhere, and he…”

You suddenly went quiet, letting out a shaky breath.

“He wanted to do some things,” you went on, after a few seconds had passed. “I told him I wasn’t ready for that stuff just yet. He kept trying to convince me, and eventually he got angry and… well, we broke up.”

You felt your throat tighten, and you realized that you were now close to crying again. You felt a small nudge on your hand, and you looked down to see that while Matt still had one hand on the wheel, the other was now holding out a handkerchief.

As if sensing your confusion, Matt gave a small sound of annoyance. “What?”

“Nothing!” You quickly took the piece of cloth from him. “Thanks, Matt.”

“Do you wanna eat somewhere?” he suddenly asked. You didn’t know if you were seeing things, but you could’ve sworn that there was a faint blush on his cheeks. “We can talk more about this over dinner or something.”

You felt yourself smile at his words.

“Sure.”

The sweet taste of maple syrup filled your mouth as you took a bite of pancake. Matt had taken you to a local diner that he visited quite often; despite his initial plan to take you somewhere nicer, you had been quick to remember his love for pancakes. (“I haven’t had breakfast for dinner in awhile,” you had told him. “Let’s go get pancakes so that the both of us can enjoy!”).

“You know, I don’t eat pancakes often,” you said, “but these are great. Thanks for taking me here, Matt.”

“Don’t mention it.” He took a sip of his coffee, his attention on the stack of pancakes in front of you.

You took notice of his stare, head tilting slightly. “Do you want some?” you asked.

“I’m fine.”

In reality, he just couldn’t bring himself to look you in the eye. It didn’t help that he was so close to you; the two of you were sitting right across from each other, and he could feel your gaze on him as he spoke. It made him feel strange, to say the least.

The diner was mostly empty. A small number of tables were filled; it seemed as though some people also had the idea of having breakfast for dinner. It was mostly quiet, save for the double doors leading to the kitchen occasionally swinging about and the faint chatter coming from the few customers that interacted with one another.

“I still don’t understand why you didn’t order anything,” you said, stabbing another piece of pancake onto your fork. “You love pancakes, Matt.”

“I’m good with my coffee,” he said. He was about to take another sip of his drink, only to pause when you held out a piece of pancake to him.

“Here,” you said, smiling. “You can share with me.”

He stared at you in shock, the lack of shades allowing you to look into his violet eyes.

“Come on, Matt,” you urged. “I can’t finish these on my own, anyway.”

Knowing that you wouldn’t stop unless he gave in, he gave a small grumble before reluctantly opening his mouth. His cheeks were now a faint pink, and you couldn’t help but feel your own cheeks warm as you fed him the bite.

“I put extra maple syrup on that one,” you said. “I know how much you like that stuff.” You gave a small laugh at your own words, remembering that Matt had also poured some syrup into his coffee when he thought you weren’t looking.

A comfortable silence fell between the two of you as you continued to eat, occasionally giving Matt a bite in between his sips of coffee.

Heavy footsteps followed your own as you made your way up the front porch steps. Your brother had rented the house for a month; while the world meeting was held in Canada and only lasted for a day, he had rented the home for a month so that the two of you would have more time to explore the country.

“Thanks for today, Matt,” you said, reaching the front door. “I had fun.”

The Canadian stood at the bottom of the steps, not bothering to make his way up entirely. It was already late; he had to leave soon in order to avoid a lecture from Oliver once he got home.

Hands shoved into his pockets, Matt gave a small nod at your words.

“Get home safe, okay?” you said. “And message me when you do. I want to make sure you get home safely.”

You really were too nice. He watched as you took out a key from your pocket, unlocking the front door.

Matt couldn’t stop himself. “Hey, (Y/N)?”

“Hm?” You had been halfway inside already, and you turned to look at him. “What is it?”

“Your ex-boyfriend,” he said. “Forget about him, okay? He was a fucking asshole.” He looked off the side, and even in the dark you could see his slight blush. “You deserve someone better. Someone who’ll do things when you’re comfortable.”

“Matt…”

He didn’t have time to react as you made your way back down the steps, grabbing him by the front of his flannel in order to pull him down. He felt a slight pressure on his cheek, and his eyes widened at the realization that you had kissed him.

“Thank you,” you said softly.

He couldn’t do anything but stare as you let go of his shirt and headed back up the stairs, giving him a small wave before disappearing into the house.

After a few seconds of standing there, Matt shook his head and began to make his leave, unaware of the fact that he now held a slight smile.

[Bonus]

“Ha! I knew it!”

“Kuya...”

Your older brother gulped at the sound of your voice, turning around slowly. He had been watching the two of you from his bedroom window.

You stood there, a smile on your face. Though your smile was usually sweet, the way you stared at him sent shivers down his spine.

“Were you watching us?” you asked.

Your brother gave a nervous laugh in response. “Aha, (Y/N), you know-” He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence, for you had already thrown a slipper at his face.

“Mind your own business next time!” you huffed, ignoring his groans of pain and weak apologies as you headed towards your room.

Translations:

Kuya - older boy/older brother

#axis powers hetalia #hetalia #2ptalia #2p!hetalia #2p hetalia #2p canada #2p!canada #2p canada x reader #canada x reader #2p!canada x reader #matt williams #matthew williams

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ranhaitanisgf · 4 years ago

Text

;; 𝖛𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖎

otherwise read as: venti is purposely avoiding you for a reason

❧ masterlist

"Venti, hey-"

"Sorry, (Y/N), I have a show to go to! Let's talk some other time!" You inwardly groaned as he made another excuse.

You had been trying to talk with Venti for the last month, but he had been consistently ignoring you and making excuses. You weren't sure if you had done anything wrong, but it was making you nervous.

What if he hated you?

You were fine if he didn't like you that way, but you wouldn't be able to stand it if you had done something to make him hate you. You had asked Aether, Kaeya, Lisa, and many more, to try and figure out what was wrong with him, but they just changed the subject. They definitely knew something, and just weren't saying anything.

You walked to the General Goods store, making small talk with Blanche before buying a bag of apples. The most you would get to interact with him was when he finished a performance, and you would leave a bag of apples for him.

You watched him sing, and as always, he sounded like an angel, although you would suppose that him being an Archon could somehow be an advantage.

Before you left the bag of apples, you slipped a note in. You weren't going to rest until you found out what was going on with Venti, and why he was ignoring you.

Venti, meet me at Windrise tonight. -(Y/N)

Commissions had taken longer today, so you weren't able to meet Venti at Windrise until quite late into the night, around 11:30. You hoped that you hadn't come too late, because you might have been looking forward to this meetup more than you should.

But, as you reached under the big tree, you realized that maybe you had come a little too late. Venti was nowhere to be seen in his usual spot, and you frowned.

I knew I shouldn't have spent all that time helping Pallad... (this is a pallad hate account‼️)

Nonetheless, you sat under the tree anyway, pulling your legs up to your chest as you looked at the stars peeking out from beyond the leaves of the tree. It had been a long day, and you were utterly exhausted. Two commissions in Dragonspine, and two ruin hunters to defeat was quite a day in your opinion.

"(Y/N)! I was wondering when you would show up!" You jolted from the sudden voice, looking around to see where it was coming from it.

"Up here!" You looked up into the plentiful branches to see Venti, casually waving you over with a couple of empty bottles of dandelion wine.

You heaved yourself up, climbing the tree and making your way up to Venti, who had a small smile on his face.

Slightly panting, you sat down next to him, quirking a brow at him.

(for reference you guys are sitting like this but facing each other and on a tree branch cause I didn't know how to explain it, but ignore how this idiot is literally about to cut himself off the branch okay that's the only picture I could find)

"So...first of all..." You paused, taking a glance behind him.

"Are you drunk?"

"No! Why would you think that?" You merely pointed to the empty bottles of wine beside him.

"You really think I could get drunk off of that!? I feel offended (N/N)!" You flushed at the sudden use of a nickname, coughing awkwardly to try and hide it.

"Anyways! To get straight to the point, I know you've been avoiding me. Did I do something wrong, or something to offend you? If I did, I'm sorry, just please tell me what's going on." Venti's face faded from happy to what looked like a troubled expression. He sighed, looking at you for a moment before turning his head to the side, gazing out into the landscape.

"Venti...is something wrong?" You looked at the side of his face, trying to glean something from his expression, but all you could see was sadness and confusion.

"Are you in love with someone?" The sudden question made your heart beat a little quicker, and your whole body felt nervous, but you decided to answer anyway. You just hoped that he wouldn't ask more than that.

"Um, yeah..."

Please don't ask more.

Being in love with Venti is a confusing thing, especially since you knew he was the Anemo Archon. It was hard to know that someday he might fly away and never return; that he might go dormant for another millennium. What would your purpose in this world be then?

"What are they like?" He asked. Your eyes widened and you started to panic.

How am I supposed to describe Venti, to Venti, without him noticing that it's him?!

"Well, uh...they live in Mondstadt...and they annoy me a lot, and I always buy apples for them-"

Wait, Venti is the only person I buy apples for-

"SUNSETTIAS! I buy sunsettias for them, not apples...my bad, haha..." You played with the hem of your shirt, looking at Venti to see if he had any reaction.

"I see..." A slightly awkward silence fell, and you weren't sure what to say in response.

"Uh, are you in love with anyone, I guess?" Venti gently laughed, but you could hear pain laced in it. Your eyebrows furrowed; what was wrong with him?

"Yes." He suddenly turned to you, and you were able to see the tears welling up in his eyes.

"Venti..." You murmured. Your arms wrapped around him, pulling his face into your shoulder. You could tell he was surprised at first, but he eventually warmed up to it, his arms going around your waist and holding you. You could feel his silent tears against your shirt, and you gently rested your cheek against the top of his head.

"You didn't answer my question before." You whispered, playing with the hair on the back of his head. He could probably hear your heartbeat skyrocketing, but you were just going to play it cool, and hopefully, he would forget about it.

"What question?" He asked in a soft voice. You sighed, laughing a little bit at how he tried to change the subject when you asked him the first time.

"What's going on? Did something happen?" You asked. He didn't say anything for a good five minutes, but you didn't want to rush him. You weren't sure what it was that could be troubling him so much; he is an Archon after all, so was it something he couldn't fix even with that sort of power?

He mumbled something, but because you were so caught up in your thoughts, you didn't quite catch what he said.

"Huh? Sorry, I didn't hear you." Venti pulled himself up and took his hat off, laying it in between the two of you.

"(Y/N), you're the one I'm in love with." His eyes were cast downward towards the hat as he spoke, but as soon as you heard them, you froze.

Me?

You weren't even sure what to think; you had never thought it was possible for him to love you back. You had come to this universe looking for a new home, not to fall in love. You never would have imagined a future with somebody else, but here you were, thinking about him every night as you gazed at the stars.

"Venti...I-"

"The person you spoke of before, they're nice, right? They'll treat you like they should?" He cut you off, looking up at you for reassurance.

"Well, I would hope so...considering-"

"I need to go have a talk with them and make sure that they treat you well and don't break your heart, okay?" You started to laugh, wondering how long he was going to go on rambling about it.

"Hey, why are you laughing? I'm being serious here." You apologized in between laughs, before eventually calming yourself down.

"Okay okay, I'm sorry, but if you gotta have a talk with them that badly, then you might wanna go find a mirror and try talking to the reflection." Venti looked at you with a disheartened look, and you stared at him, waiting for him to figure it out.

It took probably a whole minute.

"(Y/N), you...?" You sighed, an exasperated smile on your face.

"Took you long enough you idiot." You leaned your forehead onto his, feeling a little confident.

He just looked at you with wide teal eyes, looking like he couldn't believe it.

"Hey Venti," You murmured, "-I'm sure you've figured out by now that I'm not from this world. Wanna know what I used to be?" A smile played on your lips as you looked at his questioning look.

"A half-god." When the whisper slipped from your lips, he looked at you in complete and utter shock, then he smiled one of the purest smiles you had seen. You looked to the side, trying to keep yourself from squealing.

It's too bright!!

His hand gently grabbed a hold of your chin and turned your head towards his before placing a gentle kiss upon your lips. All of a sudden, it felt like there was a wind current around you, and it felt like it was throwing your heart up in the air. The warmth that spread throughout your body felt like it could last forever.

So, this is what it's like to be in love.

He pulled away, and the wind around the two of you slowed down before coming to a stop. You rested your head on his chest, letting out a sigh of relief. This felt amazing; you never would have thought that love could feel like this.

Relaxing against him though also reminded you that you were exhausted from today. You might be immortal, but being a half-god meant you still needed sleep.

You could feel yourself starting to nod off, but tried to stay awake to be with Venti. His hand rested on the top of your head, his other arm securely around your lower back to keep you steady against him.

"Sleep, my cecilia, I will be here when you wake up." You frowned against him, trying to fight off the sleep, but you knew it was no use.

"Do you promise?" Venti gently laughed, his chin resting on the crown of your head.

"I promise."

#venti #venti x reader #x reader #readerinsert #reader #fanfic #oneshot #genshin #genshin impact #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #gi #;; hana writes genshin

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smoochkooks · 4 years ago

Text

—golden boy (m.)

⟶ pairing: jeon jungkook/reader

⟶ genre: smut, fluff, disney hercules au, meg!oc, hercules!jk

⟶ summary: jungkook finally has you all to himself. and oh, is he going to cherish the moment wholeheartedly.

⟶ word count: 2.7k

⟶ warnings: virgin!jk, switch!jk if you squint, exhibitionism (they do it outdoors but it’s ancient greece so it’s not even surprising), soft to kinda rough sex, heavy petting, oral (f receiving), slight dirty talk, hair pulling, unprotected sex, creampie, jk in a man bun, pegasus cockblocking his partner in crime

a/n: i got cherry vodka drunk and wrote this in two hours. it’s jorny hours so please forgive me for the sins you’re about to read with your very own eyes. hercules is one of my favorite childhood disney movies and watching it today i just couldn’t stop imagining jk as the greek god. if you see any mistakes - please ignore them. it’s almost 2am. enjoy!! xx ps. I had some major difficulties with posting this one so if you were one of the first people to read it and sth was off: read it again now thank u

Jungkook thinks you're the most beautiful person in the whole world.

He hasn't seen many goddesses in his life (hell, he's sure of it, judging by the short period of time he spent on Olympus as a newborn baby-god) but he's positive you would make his aunt Aphrodite jealous. You’re the epitome of his perfection, a walking daydream, his muse and an object of desire.

He could die happily staring at you, though it's impossible due to the fact he's very much immortal. He could travel back to Hades and fight every titan that rots in the pits of Tartarus, just to see you batting your long eyelashes at him or hear you call him ‘golden boy’ again. You quite literally have him wrapped around your finger, not even his father Zeus, the most powerful god in the entire universe managed to convince him to stay on Olympus and bask in the glory with the rest of his family.

Jungkook chose to live his life with you, on Earth, and there's not a single smudge of doubt or regret clouding his brain. Not when he can finally hold you in his arms and kiss stupidi just like right now when it’s dark out and you’re sitting comfortably on the ground near a small pond.

“You saved me once again, golden boy,” you murmur, fingers lazily threading through the dark locks on his neck. It almost makes him purr into your mouth.

“You weren't really in trouble the first time.” He bites your lip in return, eliciting a giggle from you.

“But am I not your favorite damsel in distress, Jungkookie?” You place your palm on his rock-hard chest and push, until he's laying flat on the grass, the starry sky above reflecting in his black orbs. “You're my hero, you know that, right?” you whisper, straddling his lap.

Jungkook's been to Olympus and knows what heaven looks like but this: you above him, your hair cascading down your shoulders, dress bunching up around your waist and revealing smooth expanses of honey skin– is incomparable. It's sweet ambrosia on his tongue, the finest of all tastes, the greatest feeling in the world.

“Am I?” he asks just to hear you say it once again. Instead of responding verbally you lean down to kiss him, your lips molding perfectly together. He groans into your mouth, two calloused palms itching to touch the bare skin of your thighs. Growing bolder, his hands reach further, cupping your asscheeks and pulling you even closer to him.

You smirk into his mouth. “Someone's eager,” you tease but give in anyway, brushing your core over the hard length beneath his tunic.

Jungkook all but moans at that and you relish in the sounds he makes, repeating the movement and slowly grinding yourself on his cock. His face twitches in pure ecstasy and you swear you've never seen anything more beautiful in your entire life– the son of Zeus being at your mercy, helpless to the pleasure you're giving him. “You're going to be the death of me,” he sighs, angling your head to kiss you again. You don't hesitate to oblige, accepting the tongue he slithers inside with a whimper of your own.

“Thank gods you're immortal.” you say in between kisses.

He chuckles lowly, sending shivers down your spine. He bunches the material of your dress in his hands and lifts it off you in one, swift movement. Your nipples harden feeling the soft breeze fanning over your flesh. Looking down, you're met with Jungkook's blown out pupils. He looks so dreamy like this, the most perfect golden boy you’ve ever seen. His lips are swollen from your kisses, hair a little tussled and falling from his bun. A sight for sore eyes, truly.

“You're so beautiful, love,” he murmurs, his palms engulfing your breasts. You moan when he sucks one of the nipples into his hot mouth, fingers threading through his hair and ready to pull. “My goddess,” he chants, switching to the other breast. He flicks the pebbled bud with his tongue and then bites lightly, making you cry out in pleasure. “I love the sounds you make. Want to hear you moaning for me. Give me more, love, please.”

He places his hands underneath your thighs and lifts you off him, laying you on your back. You don't complain about the change, not when he trails kisses down your chest and stomach, not when you feel his hot breath on your womanhood. He's determined to please you, it seems, so he mouths over your undergarments, alternating between kissing and licking you softly through the material.

“Take them off,” you mutter, growing impatient. Jungkook looks up, a devilish smirk on his lips. Oh, how many sleepless nights you spent dreaming of him staring at you like that and practically devouring you with his eyes.

“Won't you beg for me a little, love?” He's too cocky for his own good but you decide to let it slide for now, your urges getting better of you.

“Please, Jungkookie, make me feel good.” you keen in saccharine sweet voice. He doesn't need to be told twice, ripping the undergarments off your body. “Oh, yes!” you moan when he gives you first, experimental lick up your slick folds. He swirls his tongue over your clit, making you choke out a, “Right there, darling, right there.”

Jungkook's certain his newfound favourite place in the world is going to be between your thighs. He's already addicted to your taste, to your smell. He lavishes your cunt with passion, devouring you like the finest meal. He loves the sounds you make, love the little whimpers and breathy moans. He wants to listen to them forever.

He groans into your heat when you pull his hair, pulling away from your pussy with a wet pop. “Do it again,” he rasps against your core and that's probably the hottest thing you've ever heard. You grant his wish, repeating it every time he delivers a toe-curling suck to your sensitive bud. “You're dripping, my love. Is this all for me?” Jungkook asks, lifting his head up enough so you could see his lips and chin glistening in your arousal. He’s getting bolder again but you’re too consumed with your own pleasure to pay mind to it.

“All for you,” you murmur, the pads of your fingers trailing through his locks lightly. He closes his eyes, lets you massage his scalp for a brief moment. “You're doing so good, darling. You're going to make me come.”

He takes it as a sign to continue, diving right into your cunt. He shows no mercy, bringing you to the edge of release. You wonder how could he possibly be so good at this already but then you remember who exactly your lover is– a son of Zeus can only be either a fast learner or natural.

With one, final flick of his tongue on your clit the coil in your stomach tightens and you're coming, more slick gushing out of your and coating Jungkook's face in translucent release. He doesn't seem to be bothered though, licking his lips and chin obscenesly and moaning at the taste. Your hole clenches, needing to be filled.

Jungkook discards his tunic and now you have a perfect view of his sturdy muscles, the byproduct of his training with Phil. You almost drool at the sight, running your palms greedily over the wide expanses of his chest. When your finger ever-so-slightly brushes his nipple, you feel him chocking out a tiny moan. Smirking, you repeat the motion.

“Y/N, love, please don't tease me. I need to be inside you so bad.” he husks when your other hand travels down his abdomen and trails over his aching cock.

“As you wish, darling.” With shaky limbs you manage to turn him on his backside again. Right when you're about to pulls his undergarments down, you hear something rustling between the trees. You stop abruptly.

“Did you hear that?” you whisper, squinting your eyes to see better although there's no use for that during the night.

Jungkook furrows his brows. “Hear what?” he mumbles and props himself on his elbows to look, but then you see it yourself. A glimpse of white fur that can only belong to–

“That stupid horse!” you shriek, covering your bare breats with your hands.

“What?!” Jungkook yells, equally as shocked as you. He scrambles for his tunic to cover your modest figure. “Pegasus! Get out of here!” The magical creature neighs in response and peeks from between the bushes, looking at you pitifully.

“Oh gods, he saw me naked!” you wail, mortified, as Jungkook gets up to scold Pegasus. “I'm gonna die from embarrassment!”

Jungkook angrily gestures to the horse to leave you two alone, standing only in his undergarments. You want to laugh at how absurd this whole situation is. Pegasus nods with his head bowed down. Fulfilling the order, he spreads his wings and flies away somewhere. You hope far, far away from here.

“Hey,” You hear Jungkook's soft voice. He takes your hands in his and uncovers your red face. “We're alone.” he says, smiling apologetically at you.

“I can't believe your stupid, magical horse almost watched us fuck."

“Keyword: almost.”

You cry out, burying your face in his neck. “It's not funny!” you huff, punching him in the chest however you know he probably hasn't even felt it. But you did feel pretty much though; it hurts like you've hit a stone.

Jungkook chuckles, placing a kiss on the crown of your head. “Do you want to continue?” he asks, rubbing your back soothingly.

You look up to meet his eyes. “Do you?” you repeat with raised eyebrows.

There it goes again, the damned sly smirk. “I'm still very much hard, love, and I'm afraid it won't go away that easily.”

“Yeah?” you murmur, thoughts about Pegasus and his prying horse eyes showed to the back of your head. “And what are you gonna do about it?” You push him onto his back, fingers grasping the material of his undergarments.

Jungkook swallows before saying, “I'm gonna fuck you so hard you will never even think of leaving me.”

Biting your lip, you slide his undergarments down his toned legs. His cock is just as perfect as the rest of him–long, curved at the top and flaming red, craving to be touched. Using the precum that has gattered at the tip you smear it along his shaft, watching in awe as his face confronts in pleasure. He lets you play with him for a while like that, drive him to the insanity with your teasing.

Just when you're about to position yourself over his cock, he stops you. “Have you ever done this before?” he asks, although he already knows the answer.

“I did. Once,” you answer honestly. “But it didn't mean anything to me.” You slowly sink down on him, welcoming the slightly burning stretch with a satisfied moan.

Jungkook hisses, digs his fingers into your waist and you're sure he'll leave bruising marks. “And what does this mean?” he asks, almost chokes out feeling your hot canal enveloping his length.

“Everything,” you breathe out, lifting yourself off him just to slam down hard afterwards. “You mean the world to me.” you say; it’s priactially a whisper. As you're staring into his wide eyes, you can see your love for him reflected in them. It all feels like a dream you don't wanna wake up from.

“I love you, Y/N,” he confesses and you know he means it. “From the moment I saw you for the first time I knew you would be the one for me.”

A lonely tear slides down your cheeks and he catches it with his thumb. “I love you too, Jungkook.” you murmur.

He smiles like a fool, opens his mouth to say more but you shut him up with a kiss and your hips establishing a steady rhythm on his cock. You pull away from his lips, saliva dribbling down both of your chins but you don't care, bouncing on him like your life depends on it. Maybe it does a little.

“So good,” you whimper, the tip of his cock almost hitting your cervix with every stroke.

Underneath you Jungkook looks like he might die right here and there, his chest sweaty and heaving with every breath he takes. He has a vice grip on your waist, guiding you up and down his cock. To your surprise you find yourself liking that side of him, the rough touch of his hands on your skin. You wonder what he's capable of if you push him a little further.

“Oh, gods!” you keen when his cock brushes past the spot that makes you see stars. He fucks into you just in time for you to add, “Just like that.”

As much as Jungkook enjoys seeing you bouncing on top of him, he grows tired of just laying still and taking it. In one, swift motion, he flips you onto your back. You squel after the sudden change of positions but that quickly morphs into a loud moan as he rams his cock inside your cunt.

He picks up the pace, making you feel every inch of him. He stares down where your body ends and his begins, watching his cock disappearing in your hole. You urge him to look at you instead, pull him down to leave a messy kiss on his lips. “Shit, you're so perfect,” he marvels, palms squeezing every part of your body he could reach. “Look at you, taking my cock like a good girl,” he spits, leaning to suck a mark on your neck. “Tell me how much you like it.”

“I love it. Love your cock,” you say over the slapping sounds of your skin meeting his. “You're so good to me Jungkookie, so good.” As you feel another, powerful orgasm approaching, you slip your fingers down your body to toy with your clit.

Jungkook catches it and snatches your hand away, replacing with his own. He rubs your sensitive bud fast and hard, making you cry out his name in a broken moan. “Are you gonna come for me, love? I want you to cream my cock like a good girl.” he rasps, slithering himself inside you with enough force to knock the breath out of your lungs.

“Yes, yes!” you chant, feeling your cunt spasming around his length. He curses, fucking you through your high. “Kiss me, Jungkookie–please,” you nearly sob and he obliges right away, plunging his tongue inside your mouth to dance with yours. It's messy and wet but you're relishing in it.

He pants against your mouth, his pace getting sloppy. “I'm not gonna last longer,” he stammers out. “Your pussy feels too good, I'm–”

“Shh,” you whisper, cupping his cheeks in your palms. “It's okay. You did so good, darling.” He moans at the praise, leans down to bury his face in your neck.

“Oh gods, I'm gonna–ah, shit,” he groans, thrusts into your cunt a few more times and then he comes, spilling himself inside. “I love you, I love you.” he repeats, breathing heavily down your neck.

You wrap your arms around him, smiling to yourself. “And I love you.” you respond. “But please, for the love of Zeus, get off me or you'll suffocate me.”

Jungkook chuckles, lifting himself off your body. He props himself on his hand and stares down at you. You’ve never felt so happy. It’s right here, with him, that you feel the most acomplished. You wish to make it last forever. He places a kiss on your mouth, a sweet, quick peck before he crashes his body next to yours.

He pulls you to his side and you could feel his heart beating underneath the palm you placed on his chest. It beats with the love he has for you.

“When do you think you will be able to go again?” you ask.

Jungkook cocks his head. “What? Are you proposing a round two?”

“Not exactly,” you quip, your nail ever so slightly brushing over his nipple. “Want you in my mouth this time.”

“You little minx.”

You smirk. If his already semi-hard cock is anything to go by, you have a long night ahead of yourself.

#jungkook smut #btsbookclub #btswriterscollective #btswritingcafe #ksmutclub #bangtanarmynet #smutcentralnet #bangtanhq #jungkook x reader #bts smut #my writing #bts fanfic

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