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lokilickedme · 3 years ago

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The Way

I’m writing horror again. I guess it’s that time, you know, that time that has nothing to do with Halloween or the seasons or whatever, that time when it just hits me for some reason. And just like I always do, I’ll say I don’t know why.

Even though I know why, and you know I know why.

Because the truth is always so much weirder and worse and more disquieting than any excuse I could make up for it, and sometimes I just feel the need.

Today I felt the need, and I couldn’t make it go away.

And so I sat down, and words I didn’t want to write were written.

8592 words I would rate this Mature 18+ if it was a fic, strictly because of the subject matter.

Warnings: Death, mostly. Religious trauma, brief descriptions of abuse, mentions of mental illness, domestic violence, grief, familial dysfunction, religious abuse, emotional abuse, medical conditions, brief mentions of drug use/abuse, mild gore in reference to corpse decomposition, psychological unease and mild terror, child abuse (mental/emotional/psychological), brief allusion to physical child abuse, cult references, loss of faith, attempted murder, possible actual murder.

A Note: I love you guys, you’re always so quick and willing to be helpful and offer advice and suggestions and such, and I adore that about you. But on this piece of work I ask that nobody offer any theories about what happened to my brother - medical, criminal, or otherwise - and please no suggestions on things we could do to pursue investigation, that ship has long sailed. It’s been 23 years and he’s a cold case. We spent years trying to sort it out but in the end it’s just something that happened, and we moved on because we had to. There are a lot of open ends, a lot of question marks, a lot of suspicious details that never connected to anything - and we tried, we truly did. If anyone out there knows the truth, they’ve never shown themselves to us. We do have our theories, but my brother was a secretive person living a life none of us knew about, and the people he knew weren’t people we knew. Everyone involved is either dead or moved on or got away with whatever it was they did, and there are only three of us who still care. It’s over.

Until today, I’ve never put these events into words.

It was something I needed to do, finally.

This is PART ONE. There may not be a part two, unless doing this ends up making me feel better.

Please feel free to comment if you wish. As you can see, pretty much nothing triggers me. I just ask that you please refrain from the type of comments noted above.

And thank you.

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This is, regrettably, a true story. Nothing has been changed but the names, because the dead don’t like being talked about, and James was just enough of a shit to haunt me for it.

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They made up their minds And they started packing They left before the sun came up that day An exit to eternal summer slacking But where were they going without ever knowing the way

They drank up the wine And they got to talking They now had more important things to say And when the car broke down They started walking Where were they going without ever knowing the way

Anyone can see the road that they walk on is paved in gold And it's always summer They'll never get cold They'll never get hungry They'll never get old and gray You can see their shadows wandering off somewhere They won't make it home But they really don't care They wanted the highway They're happier there today, today

Their children woke up And they couldn't find them They left before the sun came up that day They just drove off and left it all behind them But where were they going without ever knowing the way?

You can see their shadows wandering off somewhere They won't make it home But they really don't care They wanted the highway They're happier there today, today

- The Way, Fastball, 1998

That was the year James died in his sleep.

Or that’s what they say, anyway. Asthma, the likely cause based on his medical history, our first and least disturbing assumption. Undetermined, the official determination based on the hastily scraped-together autopsy, the best that could be done under the circumstances. We tell people he had breathing problems, and they nod their heads and agree because they knew he did, and now he’s been gone so long that nobody asks. Most of the people who ever met him have long moved on or disappeared or died themselves, or just remember him as the enigmatic middle son from the Keithley family that nobody really knew very well. You know, the odd one, the one that showed up at meetings maybe once a year and smiled nervously but didn’t really talk to anyone and always seemed anxious to leave? The one who died under mysterious circumstances? That one.

He left the way he always came in. Quietly, unexpected, without anyone being aware of either his entrance or his exit.

But me and mom know some things, and she’s not talking. She probably never will.

So maybe it’s time I did.

December 1998. I’d gotten married two years previous and moved back to the family land with my new husband. He hated it there, but we had an affordable place to live. It wasn’t bad. He’d tell you otherwise. The land never sat right with him, but I’d lived there too many years to see it. I’d been fifteen when my father uprooted his large family from the city and hauled us out to the great back door to nowhere, and even though I’d left several times to wander elsewhere, I always came back.

I didn’t realize why at the time, at any of the multiple times. But now I know. That place gets you, and it holds you, and unless you’re goddamned devoted to staying gone you will always be pulled back. It took me till I was 49 to funnel the necessary amount of devotion away from the religious dedication I’d had jackbooted into me and turn it toward getting out, but against a great number of overwhelming odds I finally did it.

But this isn’t about that, not yet anyway. This is about my brother James, and how he went to sleep one night and found his own way out.

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It was snowing, had been for days, a bit unusual but not unheard of. The part of the state we lived in was notorious for extended ice storms and we knew a bad one was coming, but until it hit we played in the snow like it was a gift and we were deprived children who knew it was all going to be taken away soon. My brothers and I were adults but you wouldn’t know it, watching us sneak around in the woods staging elaborate commando attacks on each other. James was the best of us, a stealth king who could stand in the middle of a room for an hour without a single soul seeing him. Perception bias, he said. Your brain ignores me because I obviously don’t belong, like those puzzles where you circle what’s wrong but it takes you forever to find them.

He crept around in the forest scaring the shit out of people, dropping his long tall self out of trees, appearing from nowhere to administer a well aimed snowball to the face of whoever happened to cross his path and then disappearing just as quickly. We called him a wraith and it wasn’t a good natured jibe. We meant it. He made people nervous. He was the stealthy kind of quiet you associate with danger, and he knew how to do things an average person doesn’t ever have any need to know. It was a quiet cool that we admired him for, because none of the rest of us had it.

The religion we were raised in kept a tight lid on us, but me and James, we never really let it get into our bones. We were the smart ones, in retrospect. I went through the motions by force of habit and a sense of self preservation, doing what was expected and demanded of me, following the rules and making myself a perfect example of a young member of the church so I wouldn’t bring shame on the congregation and my family. But mostly the congregation. It was always more important than anything else. And I had behaving down to an art form, but mostly when people were looking. Usually also when they weren’t.

But sometimes, not quite.

And then I prayed for forgiveness about it later because God was supposed to forgive you if you asked him to, right? The tenet of willful sin being unforgivable never took root with me even though that was what the church conditioned into us through fear and constant repetition. They said it from the stage two nights a week and again on Sunday to hammer it home. Two nights a week and again on Sunday my head silently disagreed. God’s not like that. And then I did the praying for forgiveness thing even though I knew I was right, because I was disagreeing with the church, and the church was God’s channel here on Earth, wasn’t it? I committed a mortal sin at least three times a week on that subject alone, and though the dread of divine punishment was hardwired into me, I never could reconcile the concept of a loving and forgiving God destroying me simply for knowing better.

I’m not sure the comprehension of an overwatching deity ever actually established itself in James’ brain. A moral code, yes. But isn’t that what God is, really? Maybe he understood more about God and forgiveness than the rest of us. But he was considered an unapproved fringe member of the church because he couldn’t suffer people and noise and being looked at and he refused to preach, and he was soft-shunned as a result. Because if you weren’t all in to the point of being willing to die at any moment for your faith, you were as good as faithless.

And faithless meant condemned. And the congregation couldn’t be bothered with condemned people, regardless of their reasons for not having both feet in the water. The first and only option on their list was to put the person out and let them find their own way back once they realized they had nobody left in the world who cared about them.

James escaped that somehow. He was supposed to be shunned whole scale, but he wasn’t trying to convince anyone to leave the faith and he presented no threat to anyone’s strength of belief, and so far as anyone knew he’d committed no grave sins other than disinterest. So the rule that dictated we cast him out was bent enough to allow him to remain living on the family land, though at one point during a fit of overzealous righteousness my mother had tried to have a family meeting to vote on whether or not we were going to let him stay. I refused to vote and when I walked out of the house the meeting fell apart.

I’ve never forgiven her for that. Her son’s life being put to a vote with her presiding over the proceedings, vengeful and unfeeling and devoid of compassion on behalf of God himself. It takes my breath away, the anger, still to this day. The only thing I ever truly learned from my mother about parenting was a long and intensely detailed list of what not to do to my own children, and I suppose I should be grateful for that. It’s a bitter thank-you to have to give, but it’s something.

We knew James as much as he would allow us to, and not an inch further. Which meant the extent of our knowledge of him pretty much stretched to include the singular fact that he was different. What that meant, I still don’t really know - but it was there from the day he was born, that slight off-ness, the oddly off center calibration that you can’t really see so much as sense in a person. I know now he was likely on the autism spectrum and he walked through life seeing and reacting to everything differently than most of us, but that wasn’t a thing back then. You were just weird, or you weren’t. And I’m not convinced that was a bad thing for him, strictly speaking. But in the confines of our religion and our family’s devout and sometimes violent dedication to it, it took its toll almost daily.

He stood out, and he was very much a person who didn’t want to. He wanted to fade into the background, to not be seen, to not be known. And our religion didn’t tolerate that kind of nonsense, because we were commanded to be bold bearers of The Word Of God, and no exceptions were made.

None.

I’m going to stop calling it a religion now. I beg your indulgence as I shift to calling it what it is, because calling it a religion is an insult to actual religions that don’t destroy peoples’ lives with callous indifference and murderous glee.

We were raised in a doomsday death cult. There’s no other name that fits.

And we were trapped in it and its ugly cycle of neverending mental and emotional manipulation and abuse until we were adults, and some of us are still bound to it. My oldest brother worked his way up to the upper levels of oversight in the local congregation and was solidly entrenched in it until his death, which is a story for later. My youngest brother, the last remaining living blood sibling I have, is still deeply in it to this day and will likely never leave it.

I took the hard way out, three years ago, by walking away.

James, though. He took the easy way. He simply closed his eyes, and he was free.

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December 22, 1998. Three days before Christmas, though that meant nothing to us. The cult told us Christmas was a filthy demonic pagan ritual that was condemned by God, so to us the season was just a nice chilly time of year with lots of time off from work. We’d had an unusual amount of snow, the most we’d had in years. The roads were impassable and everyone was home except my husband, who worked close enough that his boss at the glass shop came and picked him up that morning with chains on his tires. Lots of windshields had shattered from the sudden violent cold that had struck the previous night and Scott had the only glass shop for sixty miles.

I think it must have been around noon, and likely my mother had sent my dad up the hill to see if James wanted to come down for the lunch she was making. He and his wife had split up against the strict rules of the church after a few years of suffering through an ill advised marriage, an important detail to this story that will come into the tale later, and he was alone up there at the top of the hill a lot. Sometimes he forgot to eat, or he got so busy that he just didn’t bother, so our mother always made something for him because even though he was in his 20′s he was still a kid who needed looking after and her zealous fervor against him had died down with time. I think he let her believe he was helpless because it worked in his favor and there was always lunch waiting for him in her kitchen as a result.

He was different, he wasn’t dumb.

We all lived on the hill back then with the exception of our youngest brother. He’d moved to the city with his new wife not long prior. The locals jokingly called the place a commune, and I guess they weren’t completely wrong. Thirty-eight acres of wooded land far beyond the city limits that we’d painstakingly spent years carving a livable space into, with five houses, all built from the ground up and inhabited by an extended family of well known culties from a well known cult. It’s almost comical, looking back on it, knowing now how they kept an eye on us for years to make sure we weren’t doing anything weird up there.

They should have run us off with pitchforks and burning stakes at the very beginning.

Things might have ended differently for us if they had.

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My grandparents lived at one end of the property, an old couple as simple and solid as salted soup, devoutly religious and devoted to the cult and very much cut from the can survive anything and probably will cloth like so many old country folks of their generation. They were waiting out the end of days up there in their little wooden house, expecting the final hour of this old system to come long before their own demise. I liked my grandmother, she had a sweet smile and fell asleep every time granddad started talking about the Bible and she paid me five dollars every Wednesday to drive her into town to get groceries, and years later, when she was dying, she told me she’d had a dream where she met my unborn son. I was four months pregnant and didn’t know yet that I was having a boy. She died before he was born, but to this day, fifteen years later, he tells me he’s sure he met her, he just can’t remember when.

I was scared of my grandfather. Not terrified, but there was nothing grandfatherly to him and I always suspected he never actually liked kids much. He’d once told us a story about the great Fort Worth flood that wiped out most of the city when my mom was a baby, and how he had told my grandmother to let go of my 2-year-old mother while he was struggling to get them across a rushing flooded creek in water up to their shoulders. My grandmother couldn’t swim. We could make another Ruthie, he said. But I couldn’t get another ‘Nita.

He said it proudly, like he was to be admired for his choice. I was young when he told that story, but it settled into me that this was evil.

Even when he was old as dirt and dying of a brain tumor in hospice care, he made me uneasy. I was never close to him. But for some reason, in his final days, he forgot who everyone was except me. I had been living in another state for years and he hadn’t seen me since before the tumor started taking his life. But when I walked into the room he turned his head and looked at me, and he mouthed my name.

He couldn’t speak. I don’t know what he was trying to say, struggling with words that nobody could hear. And I felt bad. I didn’t want to be the last person he recognized. My cousins adored him and had spent the last few years constantly at his side, and they were angry, maybe justifiably, that I was the one he reached for.

I didn’t want that at all.

I don’t believe he was a bad man, but he never spoke of anything except the cult’s interpretation of the Bible, and it was as tiresome as it was terrifying. Granddads are supposed to be fun. Ours quoted doctrine at us in a deep loud commanding voice that you couldn’t interrupt and you couldn’t tune out, and once he got going you had to just settle in and wait for him to run out of zealous steam. And then he would suddenly stop and command grandmother to turn on a John Wayne movie and bring him some ice cream, and it was over until the next time.

I know my mother resented him. She knew grandmother was the one that had refused to let her go, the one that had held onto her even though she almost drowned by the simple act of holding on. She knew her father had been willing to let her wash away and drown. That he thought she was interchangeable with whatever baby they would have next. How she could spend her entire life with that knowledge and not be deeply affected by it was something that never made sense to me, but now, when she’s in her 70′s and I’m in my 50′s, I finally understand. It affected her. She’ll just be damned if she’ll let anyone see it. And she had stood there in that hospice room watching him mouth my name with resentment burning in her eyes, though she would have rather died than let anyone know what it was for. He’d forgotten her weeks ago.

The house in the center of the hill was mom and dad. The homestead. The house we’d all lived in together, that we’d built with our own hands, the first thing that marked that wild overgrown hill as a place where people actually lived. A long path through the woods connected it to the grandparents’ house, and it was the epicenter of everything in our lives. James and I had lived in the upstairs rooms of that house until we both moved out and married our respective mates years later, a reprehensible act on our part that was never okay with my mother and that she never forgave either of us for. She’d wanted us all to stay. We can all live here together until the New System comes, she always said. That’s how the Bible says it’s supposed to be. We can all keep each other safe and on the right path until the end comes, and then we’ll all be here together forever.

A decade later when I sat up on the hill watching that house burn to the ground, there was as much relief as grief billowing into the sky with the black smoke. It was the end of an era, and it was far beyond time for it.

Nobody saw it but me. James was dead, had been for years. Robbie was dead now too. Dad was gone, so was granddad. Me and my youngest brother David were the last two left of the kids, but he had moved to a neighboring city when he got married and he has never seen things the way I see them. We were of different generations, we weren’t raised the same way, and he’d never experienced the abuse I lived with for the first half of my life. And he had dedicated his own life to the cult with all the honesty and lack of guile that I didn’t have when I’d made my own dedication vows at the too-young age of sixteen.

It was the end of an era, but apparently only for me.

James’ house was up the hill, past a clearing where my dad used to keep old cars that he cannibalized for parts. Our oldest brother Robbie, long married with kids of his own, lived at the bottom on the farthest corner of the land. And my house was on the slope to the west, built on the spot where we’d cleared off an old half-fallen homestead from the late 1800′s, dutifully paying no mind to the fact that a grave was nestled into the slope, right where the yellow daffodils grew. The cult told us superstition was tied up with the demons and false religion, so we didn’t have the built-in human instinct that tells most people to stay the hell away from certain things.

We just pretended it wasn’t there, and put no importance on it. It was just an old grave. The soil was good and the garden I planted next to it did well, though those strange daffodils always wound themselves through everything I put in the ground. My husband said something wasn’t right about it, but I didn’t pay any attention to him. He hadn’t been raised as devout as me.

My dad knocked on my door around lunchtime and I opened it. He backed up, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket, the fancy leather coat the dealership had awarded him when he was designated a five-star Chrysler technician and given the state’s first and only license to work on the new Vipers that had recently rolled off the prototype line. It was a cool jacket. Made him look like the old pictures my other grandmother had shown me of him from the early 1960′s, when he was young and very much a product of a fancier era. He’d never stopped greasing his hair back and was still so thin that he and I wore the same size jeans.

I’ve never understood the look on his face when I opened the door. To this day I can’t sort it. It wasn’t a blankness like so many people who’ve seen death wear without awareness. It wasn’t grief. It wasn’t even shock.

He was sorry.

Those were the first words out of his mouth.

I’m sorry.

I stood there, not knowing what he was sorry for. It was cold. I couldn’t push the screen door open very far because of the snow blocking it. And my father was standing at the bottom of the steps James had helped my husband build, his hands shoved down far into his pockets like a penitent child about to get in trouble, telling me he was sorry.

James is dead, he finally said. He’s in his house. I went up there and he’s dead.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I do now - just now, this very moment in fact, I know that I was the first person he told. He came straight from James’ house to mine and told me my brother was dead.

I don’t know what I said back to him, I just remember sitting down on the top step and feeling the cold bite of the snow through my pajama pants. There’s a vague recollection of putting my face in my hands, and the embarrassing knowledge that I did that simply because I didn’t know what else to do. And dad just stood there, nervously stepping from foot to foot in the snow, because he didn’t know what else to do either.

I think I asked How at some point. He said he didn’t know. He had something in his pocket but to this day I don’t know what it was.

I don’t know if it was important. Something tells me it was. Or maybe it was just the eternally present handkerchief he always kept on him.

I’m sorry, he said again. He seemed to feel like it was his fault somehow. I’m sorry.

What do we do? I asked him. I’ve never felt more blank. What are we supposed to do?

I don’t remember what he said, other than he was going to get my older brother. I remember thinking that was a good idea. Robbie would know what to do. He always did. Brash and blustery and bigmouthed, he got things done while other people stood around debating how to do them. He would get on it, whatever needed doing. He would figure it out.

I went back in the house and dad walked away, headed down the path through the woods that connected my house to Robbie’s, hands still shoved deep in his pockets, the big retro vintage Chrysler emblem on the back of his jacket the last thing I saw before I pulled the screen door shut. I stared down for a minute at the mound of snow it had scooped into my livingroom, still with no clue what I was supposed to do.

No clue at all.

I kicked the snow back outside and shut the door.

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It’s an odd thing, watching the coroner’s van drive away with someone you know inside it. Someone you saw just yesterday. Someone who was alive. Someone who should still be alive but isn’t, somehow. And since there’s really no way to earn a ride in a coroner’s van without dying, there’s an awful unsettling sensation to it that you can’t get away from. The last time I saw James he was laughing that devious little laugh of his, his eyes red and bloodshot from the ever present asthma he’d suffered with his entire life. I don’t count the sight of the coroner’s van leaving the hill via our long steep driveway with his cold corpse tucked into a black zippered bag, because I didn’t see him. I never saw him. I didn’t see him dead in his house and I didn’t see them carry him out, I didn’t see them put him in the van. I didn’t see him later, when it was all over with. And if I try hard enough I can imagine that van empty, with that long black bag tossed crumpled in the back without a body in it, and James somewhere else living his life however the hell he pleases.

I hold onto that. Some days it helps. And some days I think I see him, walking by the side of the road or getting out of a car in the post office parking lot, and it makes me happy thinking he escaped. I see him in every hitchhiker, in every wandering traveler making his way down the interstate, in every tall thin man I glimpse from the corner of my eye as I go about my business in town.

He’s out there.

I hope he’s happy.

The ice storm hit the next day.

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For the next two weeks we were stuck on our hill. Power out, no electricity, no heat, no lights, roads iced over and impassable. We all piled up in mom and dad’s house, quietly grieving James, trying to stay warm. Most of the state lost power for days, including the city 150 miles away where his body had been taken to the state coroner’s office. There was no apparent cause of death, so the state ordered an autopsy.

His body had just been placed into cold storage to wait its turn when the power grid went down. And then, by some unholy stroke of nightmarish luck, the facility’s generators failed.

Nobody could make it in to work because of the ice. By the time someone finally got into the morgue the cold storage had been down for four days.

Six bodies melted, including James.

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No viable autopsy could be done, though they tried their best I suppose. The end report was obtained two months later. It was mostly inconclusive due to the long delay and resultant decomposition of tissue. There was apparent scarring on James’ heart, but it was old scarring and had nothing to do with his death. His lungs were scarred as well, but that was no surprise, he’d had severe asthma his entire life. There was no determinable cause of death, no inflicted trauma, no presence of illicit drugs as far as they could tell from the limited toxicology report they managed with what they had to work with.

No reason.

He’d simply died.

It seemed fitting, to me at least, that the end of him be enshrouded in an unsolvable mystery. He was a secretive person, intensely private. He would have loved knowing nobody had a clue what happened to him.

And so we drew our own conclusion as a family. He’d had an asthma attack in his sleep. There had been an inhaler next to his bed, but it was new and still in the box. He simply hadn’t woken up to use it. Dad didn’t participate in the drawing of this conclusion, his input kept stoically to himself, like he knew something the rest of us didn’t.

We pretended not to see it.

He and mom braved the last of the ice a few days later to make the 150 mile drive to see James one last time.

They came back different.

You couldn’t tell it was him, my mother said. He was melted, literally. It was like one of those science fiction movies where they melt you with a laser beam and you turn to goo.

Dad had nothing to say. He went to bed and stayed there until the next day.

You can go see him, mom told me. I’ll go with you if you want to go. But I don’t recommend it.

I decided not to go.

And so I never saw my brother dead. I never saw any proof that he was gone. He just wasn’t there anymore. There was no funeral, he was cremated and his ashes were sent home weeks later, and I went on with my life with the image in my head of James, alive, somewhere else.

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Dad was different from that day on. He’d always been stoic, terse, strict. My childhood had been spent in fear of him, an eternal dread of making him mad and feeling his temper erupt keeping me from showing any hint of a personality during my formative years. The cult had forced him to abide by the violent tenet of Spare the rod, spoil the child and there was never any risk of me being spoiled.

James being gone flipped a switch in him. He was nicer suddenly. Mellow. Kind. After the trauma wore off his humor discovered itself and he was funny. The dour angry demeanor fell off and revealed a man that I was sad never to have known before. He and I became friends. I could sense in his new attitude toward me that he regretted how he’d raised me and respected the way I’d always stood up and been my own person despite it. But my mother was falling off the deep end and for all the newfound easygoingness of my father, she counterbalanced it with an extremism born of the religious fervor of a mother determined to gain enough favor with God to see her dead child again. And she was going to make sure the rest of us did too.

We all had to get good and straight on the path, get completely right and stay that way, or we’d never see James again. He’d be in the New World and we wouldn’t, and how would she explain that to him? She and I worked together in a law office at the time and as she became more unhinged and unpleasant, I reacted by becoming more outgoing and accomplished. Our boss changed my work designation from receptionist to Executive Assistant and started teaching me how to do everything from filing papers at the courthouse to photographing accident scenes. I no longer answered to my mother, the office manager. I answered directly to the boss.

That didn’t go over well. She was a control freak with heavy untreated trauma, and the one person in the world she felt the most obsessive need to control was suddenly no longer under her thumb in a workspace where she considered herself the supreme authority. She countermanded every order the boss gave me and tried to load me up with general office chores that left me no time to do the important assignments he’d given me. I had no choice but to tell her she wasn’t my superior anymore.

She chose that day to have her nervous breakdown over James, jumping out of my car at a red light on the way home and storming angrily through a shopping mall with me trailing frantically along behind her, yelling for security to arrest me while I tried to get her to calm down. I ended up telling her she wasn’t the only person who lost James but that none of the rest of us were allowed to experience our own grief because we were too busy catering to hers.

She sat down on a bench outside the sporting goods store and glared at me with a cold hatred I’ve seen on very few other faces, ever.

I knew it would be you, she hissed at me.

That moment changed our relationship forever. It changed me forever. That was the day I decided my life was my own, that she not only didn’t have authority over me at work, she didn’t have authority over me anywhere else either. She could no longer dictate my actions, my behavior, my thoughts and feelings.

For this she disowned me. It was the first of several disownings over the next few years. I got used to it. We went to work the next day like nothing had happened, and I didn’t do a single thing on the task list she slapped down on my desk. It was a metaphor for the rest of my life, but I didn’t know it yet.

My husband and I moved out of state a couple of months later, away from that hill, away from her increasingly controlling paranoia and bitterness, the first of many small steps toward freedom.

As we were driving away with our trailer full of personal belongings behind us, he said one thing that I tried to argue against, but that somewhere deep inside I knew was probably right.

That land is cursed, he said.

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A few weeks before we moved my youngest brother came to town and we went into James’ house together. It was exactly like it had been the day my dad found him. The only thing that stood out as different was the bare mattress on the bed - the men from the coroner had wrapped him up in the sheet he’d been laying on and took it with them, leaving just the naked springform mattress James had bought for Jessica right before her final breakdown and their subsequent separation.

It took me a while to go in the bedroom, but I knew from the moment I walked into the house that I was going to end up there. I needed to see it, the place where James had closed his eyes and left us.

There was a small puddle of dried blood near the foot of the bed, brown and stained into the fabric. James always slept backwards, with his head at the wrong end. The blood had come from his nose.

I touched it. I don’t know why. It was dry.

He was gone.

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David and I laughed a lot that day. James had been funny in a way that was distinctly him, quiet and of few words, but those words had always counted. And as we sorted through his things and talked about him and moved some of his stuff into boxes to be stored away, I felt as much awed respect as befuddlement at what was around me. He’d never been a conformist, which I knew was why the cult had never gotten a firm grasp on him. He was unknowable and therefore unbindable. But his house was proof that he didn’t conform to any human expectations either, and nothing in it made sense unless you’d spent time around him.

There was an engine in the bathtub. I’m not sure what it went to. Another engine, in the beginning stages of disassemblage, rested on a blue tarp in the center of the livingroom floor, obviously the last project he’d been working on. There wasn’t much furniture - his wife had taken most of it when she left and it would have never entered his mind to replace any of it. Jessica’s cookware was in the kitchen cabinets, unused, some of it still in the original boxes, some not even fully unwrapped from their wedding shower years before. Jessica didn’t cook, she microwaved. David asked me if I thought it would be okay for him to take a glass Pyrex measuring cup because he’d broken his. I told him to take it. It had never been used.

I didn’t want anything, but knew I needed to take something. One of my husband’s solo CDs was sitting on the entertainment center and the cover, the cover I’d designed, caught my eye and brought me to the CD player to pop the tray open.

Inside was a CD single of The Way.

It was the only thing I took.

----------

My husband told me some time later that my dad and older brother had altered the scene before the police arrived. After the phonecall from me his boss had rushed him home and he’d gone up to James’ house without my knowledge. He’d thought it strange that he’d had to step around at least a dozen empty compressed air cans scattered haphazardly around the place as he entered, like they’d been used and tossed aside one after another. There had been several more on the floor around the bed. My father had told him to go back down and see how mom and I were doing, and when he returned to James’ house after the coroner’s departure, the cans were gone. Other than that he said things seemed different, but he couldn’t say quite how. Just not the same.

He told me my dad didn’t call the police until after he and Robbie had been in there at least an hour, alone with the body.

It’s not something we’ve talked about often, because there’s no satisfactory explanation for it that either of us can come up with. My mother says they probably didn’t want the police to assume the cans meant he was huffing compression fluid and accidentally killed himself, because Look at the shame and reproach that would bring on the congregation if anyone thought such a thing! We all knew he used the compressed air to clear the valves on the engines he was working on, all mechanics do, it’s common. Wouldn’t the police have accepted that explanation? Dad was the only one that spoke to them. They wrote down whatever he said, and then they left, and then the coroner came and took James away and that was that. My father, the most upright straight-and-narrow devoutly dedicated man I’ve ever known in my life, misled the police for a reason that he took with him to his own grave.

The only other person in the world who knew the truth about it took it to his grave too.

At the same time.

In the same car.

Four years later, on October 18, 2002.

----------

The big garbage bag of empty air cans and whatever else that was removed from James’ house that morning had been stashed in my dad’s garage and stayed there until a few weeks after he and Robbie’s joint funeral, when my mother asked my husband’s old boss to come and dispose of it. Scott was a man who knew people who could do things.

The evidence, whatever it was evidence of, vanished.

----------

The mystery around James never dissolved and eventually no one talked about it anymore, I guess because there was no way we could ever truly find out what happened without him here to tell us. There were a lot of details that we could never find a way to weave together into anything that made sense and a lot of it was probably inconsequential anyway. There was a girlfriend that he’d tried to keep hidden from us, a woman that was quite a bit older than him who wasn’t a member of the cult and therefore needed to be kept a secret. In the end she had convinced him to stop hiding their relationship and he’d bought her a ring. We met her all of twice before he died, and within days of his passing she left town with her brother and never came back, taking whatever she might have known with her.

James’ ex Jessica had sneaked onto the hill and broken into his house to put a dead raccoon in his kitchen sink a few days prior to his death. We were shocked when he told us she trespassed on the land often without anyone knowing, and my mother made my father fix the electric gate down at the road so that it wouldn’t open without one of three clickers in the possession of herself, my father, and me. James would have to come to her house and get hers any time he needed to leave the hill, an arrangement he agreed to because Jessica stole things from his house all the time, she would absolutely take a gate opener if she saw it.

He told us the gate wouldn’t keep her out though, and that she didn’t come in that way anyway. The only way to protect ourselves from her was to lock her up and he doubted even that would do it.

He died less than a week later, and twenty three years later we still don’t know how or why.

----------

We never felt safe on the hill again. Jessica was deranged in the worst possible way, we’d known it for a while, and James was her obsession. She’d threatened to kill him multiple times and had tried twice. We hadn’t known this, because James, big strong stoic Clint Eastwood type that he was, wasn’t about to tell anyone he was violently abused for years by a skinny little woman that everyone believed was not much more than a meek dormouse with shyness issues and a case of painful awkwardness. But we knew she was evil. We just didn’t have any proof.

The first thing my mother said after the initial emotional breakdown of finding her son dead was Jessica did this, I don’t know how but I know she did it.

I believe she was probably right. But if Jessica was anything she was wily and devious with a strong survival instinct and an uncanny ability to lie convincingly and draw sympathy onto herself. She’d convinced us for years that she was the perfect combination of sweetly harmless and endearingly clueless, but that only lasted until the day she called 911 screaming that James was beating her and then threw herself face first into a tree in their front yard and sat, calmly singing and coloring in a coloring book on the porch with blood running down her forehead, waiting for the police to arrive. The act she put on when they got there was one for the Academy, but the officers didn’t buy it.

James calmly rolled up his sleeves and showed them his scars where she’d burned him and slashed him with a kitchen knife. He pulled up his shirt and pointed out the marks she’d left on him with her teeth and nails. He hooked a finger into his mouth and showed them the empty hole where she’d knocked one of his teeth out with a baseball bat. One of the officers asked him why he hadn’t killed her and buried her somewhere on the land already.

She left in the back of the squad car, and my mother took James to the courthouse to get divorce papers started two days later.

Jessica came to his memorial service when we finally had it, several weeks after his death. She wasn’t invited but we couldn’t keep her from coming. She wore black like a widow and created a dramatic disruption complete with loud wailing and declarations of undying love, and afterward she stood to one side of the room, smirking at us with the kind of icy malice that you only see on the dangerously deranged, and then usually only in the movies. Several people commented in hushed voices, asking why she’d been allowed to come. At one point she started wailing They killed him!!, but everyone with the exception of her mother ignored her.

Her mother, who was still in our congregation, flitted around the room chatting with everyone, sobbing her heart out like it was her own son we’d just memorialized. She was an ER nurse and had been famously fired from her job at the hospital for taking locked-cabinet medications home by the purse load. She claimed she put them in her pocket to use on her shift and forgot to return them to the cabinet before leaving.

Jessica had been staying with her for a while.

----------

We fed the crowd at mom’s later that afternoon with my husband and his boss guarding the gate, making sure she didn’t try to come into my mother’s house. The police were called preemptively, and because this was a town of 300 with not much of anything else to do, a squad car was dispatched and stationed near the inlet to the main drive.

Jessica showed up not much later, like we knew she would. She drove past the police and parked a few yards down from them in plain sight, just sitting there by the side of the road, far enough away from our property that we couldn’t legally do anything about it. The officers got out and talked to her, warned her not to cause us any problems, and she fed them a woeful tale about being banned from her beloved husband’s memorial service and denied the right to say goodbye to him.

The officers knew there was no body at that service to say goodbye to. They also knew her.

My husband came up the hill and told us she was down at the road and that Scott was blocking the driveway with his truck to keep her out. I told my mother it was time to file a restraining order against her. She was living in fear and Jessica was known to be trespassing on our property frequently. No, she told me with tears in her eyes but not a sign of distress on her face. It was a look I knew, because my mother rarely showed emotion unless she was angry and the rest of the time it was this cold detachment. That would bring reproach on the congregation because everyone knows what we are. I can’t do that. I won’t let her win that way. I won’t let her cause us to bring shame on God’s name.

God’s name. I took it in vain that day.

More than once.

I was leaving in a few weeks, moving a thousand miles away. My husband and I weren’t going to be there to help her keep an eye out, and thirty eight acres of heavily wooded land is impossible to protect and easy to sneak onto from a hundred different directions, James had shown us proof of that.

God will protect us as long as we do the right thing and leave it to him, she said. He knows what she is.

I think it was just a coincidence that nothing terrible happened in the following weeks, because my faith was getting tenuous and a lot of prayers were going unanswered. But Jessica quietly disappeared back to her own world after a couple of infuriating weeks of putting herself in our paths every chance she got, and not long after that my husband and I moved away, and as we left the driveway for what we thought would be the last time he sighed and shook his head with the exasperation of a man about to say I told you so.

“That land is cursed,” he said.

I tried to disagree, though I don’t know why.

----------

Less than a mile up the road we passed a man walking. He was tall and thin and covered in the dust of a long journey with a ratty backpack strapped to his back, and as we passed him I caught his reflection in the side mirror.

It was James, I knew it in my heart every bit as strongly as I knew it couldn’t be.

He was walking away from the hill, toward the west. The way we were going. And I swear on whatever holy relic you wish to place under my hand that he raised his head and met eyes with me in the mirror, and he smiled.

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fangirlovestuff · 4 years ago

Text

Smile - Thor Odinson x reader

a/n - hey lovely people!! this is for this lovely request by @cotton-candy-clouds-26 , thank you!! i just couldn’t bring myself to write Steve cheating, i love him and i just don’t think he’d do that, but i hope it’s okay. enjoy!<3

Summary: you and Steve break up and it’s rough, but luckily there’s someone out there that helps you get over it. you could say he’s worthy of your affections (i had to hehe)

Word Count: 3k

Warnings: Some curse words and a little angst

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Steve?" you called out, "you ready to go?"

"Just a couple seconds!" he replied, and you sat down on the couch, scrolling on your phone while you waited for him.

It was your six months anniversary, and you were getting ready to go to dinner with Steve. He's been acting a little weird the past few days, and it was starting to raise your suspicion.

Maybe he's getting me a surprise, you tried to shrug your worry off. You knew Steve wasn't that good at keeping secrets, especially from you, and you'd try and get it out of him tonight.

"Ready t-" you began to ask, but stopped once you saw he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. "Stevie, you know I love your t-shirts," you said, appreciatively eying the bulge on his muscles revealed by the sort, tight sleeves, "but I was under the impression we're going to a fancy restaurant tonight. You know, the kind that won't appreciate anyone, including Captain America, coming in a t-shirt and jeans," you smirked.

"I'm not going," he sighed, sitting down next to you.

"You're not goi- is everything alright? Are you feeling unwell? I mean, I didn't even know you could get ill, but-"

"I'm not sick," he shook his head, "I just… I thought I could give you this one nice night, but I can't."

"What do you mean you can't? Steve, what's going on? Are they calling you on a mission or something?"

"No, no mission. Not today anyway." He took a deep breath before he continued. "I think we should break up."

Your mouth agape, it took you a couple of seconds to register what he just said. You closed your mouth and swallowed. "What?" you asked, your voice nearly a whisper.

"I'm sorry," he said, averting his eyes to the floor, "I just… I don't think I feel the same way about you anymore, and I don't wanna hold you back or anything. I thought the right thing to do was to treat you to a nice dinner before I…" he trailed off, his eyes fixed ahead of him, away from you, "Anyways, I couldn't do it. I didn't want to lie to you, or lead you on. You deserve better than that," his gaze finally turned to you, waiting for your response.

You didn't know what to say. You knew he was acting weird, but you'd have never seen this coming. "So this is it?" you asked disbelievingly. "This is how we end?"

"Look, I'm so-"

"Sorry, yeah, I know." You took a deep breath, willing your tears away. "I think I'll just go home," you got up, getting your stuff.

"Wait, I didn't cancel the reservation. If you wanna go yourself you— can," he called after you, the last word after you'd slammed the door behind you.

Outside of Steve's room, you let out a shuddering breath. He was living in the Avengers compound, so you had to keep yourself together until you got out of here, in case any of them saw you. You started getting outside, but your distracted state of mind probably led you to take a wrong turn in one of the corridors, because now you had no idea where you are.

"Shit," you mumbled under your breath before turning to look around you. You heard what you thought was the noise of a TV from behind one of the doors, and you knocked on it tentatively. You heard some shuffling and then the door opened to reveal none other than Thor. You know, God of Thunder Thor. God of Thunder Thor that was standing in front of you right now, waiting for you to say something because you were the one that knocked on his door.

You willed your brain to go back to functioning. "Um, hi," you said hesitantly, "I was just… I was on my way out of the compound and I got lost. Could you, um, point me in the right direction?"

"Of course," his voice was deep, you could almost feel it rumbling around you when he spoke. "Who are you looking for?"

"Oh, just the exit," you shrugged.

"Alright. I apologized, I just assumed, from the way you're dressed…"

"No, it's alright. I was supposed to go to this fancy restaurant for dinner, but then… anyways, I wouldn't want to go alone," you sighed.

"Well, in that case, would you like me to accompany you? I wouldn't mind dining with a lovely lady such as yourself," he smiled.

"Oh," you blinked in surprise. You weren't really planning on it, but you were actually kinda hungry. And hey, eating in a fancy restaurant with Thor does sound a little nicer than eating at home and wallowing in self-pity. The wallowing could wait. "I mean, if you'd like to," you smiled back at him, "but you'd have to put on a suit, something fancy."

"Oh, I'm sure I have one of those," he said, leaving the door open and heading back inside. "Come in," he said, loud enough for you to hear it. You guessed he headed into the bathroom to change, since when you got in all you saw was the room itself. It was simple, not a lot of personal touches. Makes sense since he's probably not here most of the time, but in Asgard, which would also explain why you hadn't met him yet.

"How's that?" he asked, getting out of the bathroom. The suit was slightly tight on his tall, broad frame, but it was more than okay with you.

"Perfect," you smiled, "we'll blend right in."

You drove the two of you to the restaurant, spending the time making small talk about 'Midgard habits', as Thor called them, or, as you called them, social norms.

When you got there, the hostess smiled at you and asked for the name of your reservation. By that point you had nearly forgotten it, but your shoulders sagged as you mumbled "Steve Rogers."

"I'll let you right in," she smiled and led you to your table.

"Wait, so Steve was going to come with you?" Thor asked once you got to the table. "Are you his girlfriend I've heard so much about from Tony?"

"I'm… not his girlfriend anymore," you said, averting your eyes to the table, playing with the napkin.

"Oh."

"He broke up with me today," you said, your voice breaking before you could get your emotions under control.

"My apologies," he offered, and put his hand over yours, "I know how unpleasant it is to be… broken up with."

"Yeah? Who'd ever dump Thor?" you chuckled, raising your gaze to meet him.

"Quite a few people over the years," he smiled, lighthearted.

"Well, I'm sorry," you squeezed his hand in yours.

When you were waiting for the main course, you had an idea. "Hey, you can't get drunk, right?"

"Not on your Midgardian version of booze, no. Why?"

"Perfect. Hey!" you signaled for a waitress to come over, ignoring Thor's questioning look, "Can we get a bottle of the most alcoholic wine you got here?" you smiled.

If the waitress thought the request was weird, she didn't show it. She just told you how much it costs, which nearly made you give it up but you really needed this tonight.

When you were done ordering it and the waitress went to bring it, you turned to Thor. "I know we just met each other, and this probably isn't the best first impression, but please can you just call me a cab at the end of dinner? Because I'm kinda planning to get drunk."

He chuckled, again making you experience the illusion that you could feel the sound between you. "Of course. If that would help."

"That would help a ton, thank you," you grinned at him, just as the waitress came back with your wine and the first course.

A whole bottle of wine consumed exclusively by you and a few dishes later, you knew it was time to go home. You paid the bill, trying not to freak out at how expansive it was. Thor wanted to pay too, but you assured him that it was fine, and it was you that dragged him out here anyway.

While you were standing outside waiting for a cab you could hail, you shivered a little in the cold.

Steve always gave you his jacket when you got cold.

Maybe it was the drinks, the late hour or just plain old breakup sadness, you felt tears come to your eyes, unable to stop them from flowing out.

You started sniffling and Thor noticed, his head immediately turning to look at you. "What's wrong?"

"He left me, Thor," you cried, "I thought everything was fine and he dumped me. And he was nice about it, so I can't even be mad and blame him, and that just means that," you barely contained your sobs, "it means I'm not enough. Everyone leaves me because I'm never enough." You buried your face in his bicep, too wound up in your misery to even notice how nice it was.

"Now, now," his other hand lifted to stroke your hair. It was a little awkward, but in your inebriated state you couldn't care less. "You're more than enough. I met you today and even I know you're wonderful."

You lifted your head to meet his eyes. Sniffling once again, you tried to stop crying. "Thank you," you said once you felt you gained enough composure. "I'm sorry I sprung all of this on you. I'll get a cab, go sleep it off," you said, awkwardness now prominent. God, you just made a fool of yourself in front of… a god. A literal god. Fuck.

"Where do you live?" he asked, seemingly unbothered. You gave him your address. "Well, I believe it's not that far. Do you need to wait for a cab or can you walk home?"

"I mean, I could walk, it's just that New York City at night isn't the safest place for a girl to walk alone," you smiled awkwardly.

"Oh, yes," he frowned, "I suppose you're correct. I could walk you home, if you'd like?"

You looked around. No cabs in sight. "Actually, yeah. That'd be cool."

The chilly night air sobered you up a bit. Once you got to your building, you bid Thor goodbye, thanking him again, before going up to your apartment and stumbling tiredly onto your bed, where you fell into a dreamless sleep.

The next morning, you woke up still wearing yesterday's dress and with a slight headache, groaning as you got yourself out of bed to shower, change and drink some water, get an aspirin.

Once you had done all that, you checked your phone for any messages. You weren't supposed to come into work today, so you weren't expecting anything, but just to make sure. Surprisingly enough, there was a text from a number you hadn't recognized.

It said it was Thor and he asked how are you, but there was no way that was true, right? I mean, you didn't think Thor even had a phone, let alone your number. On the other hand, you couldn't think of anyone else who'd know enough to text you that.

Skeptical, you texted back that you were fine, not too far from the truth but still kind of far, and were planning to spend the day watching movies and eating ice cream, which was the truth.

How'd you get my number? You texted again before he could answer.

Jarvis had it, he texted back. He's quite useful. I do wonder why he won't leave his room.

You laughed. Either this was actually Thor, or it was someone really, really good. Before you could think up a reply, you saw the three little dots signifying he was typing again.

Would you perhaps want some company while you watch these movies?

You gasped out loud even though there was no one there to hear it. Was Thor really asking to come over and watch movies? With you? It was hard to believe. Maybe it is someone else after all.

You texted him he should come over if he wanted to. Thor knew your address, if it was really him, he'd come over. If it was some crazy stalker, you just wouldn't let him in and continue in your plans of bawling in front of some sappy movies. If it was actually Thor… well, you'd have to cry in front of him, you guess.

You already started on your ice cream and started The Notebook, figuring it was a good way to start your wallowing fest, and you were starting to get really into it when you heard a knock on the door. You moved as quietly as you could towards the door, looking through the peephole. To your momentary relief, it was Thor and not some stalker. Why momentary? Because holy fucking shit Thor was standing at your day and you were in your pajamas.

"Just a sec!" you called out. You figured you didn't have time to change, but you at least tried to get your hair in some sort of order before you opened the door, hiding your PJs clad body with it.

"Hi," you smiled bashfully once you closed the door behind him.

"Hello," he said, smiling. "Ah, I see you've already started. What movie is that?"

"Well, it's called The Notebook. Do you know it?"

He replied that no, he didn't, and you explained the plot briefly to him as you sat down, wrapping yourself back up in a fuzzy blanket before taking your ice cream back.

"Oh, where are my manners, would you like some?" you gestured the ice cream towards him.

"Yes, sure!" he nodded, and you were glad he at least knew what ice cream was. If someone hadn't bothered to introduce him that would just be cruel.

You went to get the ice cream, the blanket dragging behind you like a cape, and you returned with another tub of ice cream and a spoon, bringing them to him before sitting back down and starting the movie.

You two didn't speak much throughout the movie. When it got to the really sad parts you started crying silently, but by the ending you were just fully sobbing, and, as it seemed, so was he.

"That was so… sad," he said, "is this the entertainment Midgardians always enjoy?"

"Not always," you said, stopping to blow your nose, "we have happy things too. It's just, I got dumped last night, so I'd like the chance to cry a little, you know?"

"That's fair. And it was very beautiful. They loved each other."

"They did," you said, your eyes filling with tears again.

"What's next?"

You watched some more sad movies, and then introduced Thor to the wonderful world of takeout food while you changed to some rom com, a little more cheerful. He laughed the whole way through, and the movie wasn't even that funny, but you giggled along as well, unable not to join his roaring laughter.

You ended up falling asleep on the couch in the evening, exhausted, mostly emotionally. The next morning when you woke up he was gone, but he did text you that if you needed anything you could tell him.

Over time, you and Thor started hanging out some more. Mostly at your place or outside, since you really didn't want to risk running into Steve.

It took you time, getting over Steve. Time and tears. And really, Thor being there helped. A lot. He was a rock, a shoulder to cry on.

A broad, muscular shoulder to ugly cry on.

At first, the thought of starting something with Thor didn't even cross your mind. Sure, he was sweet, but it was platonic, and you were busy getting over your breakup anyway.

But then, you realized it became something… more. To you at least. Because despite the tears, he didn't leave. Never wanted to.

Long story short, when Thor invited you to go to dinner one night, a few months after you met each other, you tried really hard not to think of it as a date. A friend-date, if anything.

"How's it going?" you asked, sitting down in front of him in the small diner.

"Good," he smiled at you, "You?"

"Great," you smiled back.

"So, I have some news," he started, continued once you gave him an encouraging nod, "I have to go back to Asgard in a week or two."

"Oh," you said. It made sense, Thor being on earth as long as he already has been should've raised your curiosity, but you didn't really want to think about it until this moment. "I guess you're happy to go home."

"I am," he hummed, "But… there was something I wanted to ask you before I leave. And be honest. Would you like… well, would you give me the opportunity to court you?"

You sat in stunned silence for a few moments. "Like, you're asking me to date you?" you said incredulously.

"I am," he chuckled nervously, "But you don't have to- I know you might not want to because of Steve and-"

"I haven't thought of Steve for a really long time," you cut him off with a smile, "mostly thanks to you. You make me really happy, and I would love to let you court me," you giggled.

"Really?" he asked, awestruck.

"Really," you smiled, leaning across the table, intending to press a kiss to his cheek. At the last moment he turned, making you plant your lips on his in a soft kiss.

You pulled away smiling, and so was he. He took your hand in his from across the table, and you continued to eat your food like you two usually do. Well, almost. Now there were timid exchanges of looks, gently hand squeezes.

And a breathtaking goodnight kiss.

But it was so natural, so normal, you couldn't bring yourself to admit the absurdity of him being a literal god and you being… just a human.

You spent the week he had left together, making the best of it.

In the future, you'd visit his home, he'd visit yours. And he'll always make sure to remind you you're not just a human, you are, in fact, his favorite one.

It never failed to make you smile.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

this was my first time writing for thor, i hope i did him justice:))

Taglist: @horny-nd-bored @shannon124 @perfectlyharolds @wintersoldierslut @iceebabies @sleepingpapermouse @steverogerswasalwaysworthy @holtzkinnon @angelicl-y @stydia-4-ever @thatoneperson5000 @fangirlfree @kaitcordx25 @bequeening @steve-barry-damon-logan @itscrazycherryblossomcollection @hollandxmarvel @stargazingfangirl18 @readsreblogsfics @onetwo3000 @beritmetal @harrystylesholland @jazbot2000 @anobscurename @xxxtwilightaxelxxx @peggycarter-steverogers @evansphnx12 @starlightcrystalline @procrastinatingsapphictrash

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#thor x reader #thor x you #thor odison x reader #steve rogers x reader #thor odison imagine #thor x y/n #thor x female reader #thor odinson x y/n #thor odinson x you #leila's valentine's sleepover

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smellyfootboy · 4 years ago

Text

SMELLY ENCOUNTERS WITH ETHAN PT. 4: A Grand Finale.

It had been about 4 days after I started staying with Ethan at his house while my floors were getting done in my own house. Each night, Ethan has used my mouth as his own personal masturbation toy at least twice a day. Which I certainly did not mind, but I think I’ve eaten more of his cum than I have real food. We did not sleep together in the same bed… He would make me sleep on the couch. Honestly I kind of loved this friendship the way we had it going. What shocked me though, is that he hasn’t made me smell his feet or do anything foot related for a few days. Just yesterday I checked his laundry bin and couldn’t see any used socks, which brought me to the conclusion that after the last time he did laundry, and must have been wearing the same socks since… and he was probably waiting for the perfect stink to “torture” me with… and he had to be on at least day 4 or 5 by now. The dirtiest I’ve ever smelled his socks was my very first foot encounter with him. He had worn them for 4 days back then and basically made me put them in my mouth. That was about 7 months ago.

Ethan came into the living room while I was playing on my phone sitting on his couch.

“Hey man- I’m going to have a couple of the guys come over tonight for some beer pong. You down?” Ethan asked.

“Yeah, sounds good to me… anyone I know?” I asked.

“Joe from my college that you met before and my brother, Riley.” Ethan said. Joe was a quiet, skinnier guy, but really cute, and Riley I had not met.

Later that night, after Ethan came back with beer and snacks, I helped him put up the pong table, which we placed next to his dining room table. We set up all the snacks and cups.

Joe was the first to show up. He wore a white button up shirt, jeans, and white adidas shoes. We talked for a little while before Riley showed up. I was shocked to see how much he looked like Ethan. He wasn’t as built, but they definitely could almost be twins. Riley was wearing a black t shirt, black shorts, black crew socks, and a very similar pair of converse as Ethan was wearing. He looked about the same age as Ethan as well. Maybe a little younger, mid 20’s possibly.

We made some drinks, talked about our jobs, and got a little buzz before we started on the pong. Ethan and Riley were on one side and me and Joe were on the other. I was pretty terrible at beer pong so I hoped Joe was a little better than me.

We started the game.

“Hold up… we should make this more interesting. Make some bets and shit.” Riley said. Oh God, here we go, I thought.

“What like money? I don’t have any cash on me.” Joe said. I saw Ethan’s eyes light up. I knew what was coming.

“Losing team has to sniff the winning team’s feet for 2 minutes.” Ethan said proudly.

Joe made a grossed out face. Riley kind of laughed.

“Bitch- I grew up with you, I know how rank your feet are… do you still wear the same socks for multiple days.” Riley asked.

“Depends…. I think these bad boys are on day 4.” Ethan said. I wasn’t going to bring up that I’m pretty sure they were day 5.

“Dude, I’ll throw up.” Joe said.

“Then… don’t lose…” Ethan laughed.

“Whatever… man- I went running today so I might be pretty ripe myself.” Riley said. We all continued to play. I may have purposely missed the cup a few times and Joe was not very good. So things we looking pretty grim for us.

“My feet feel really hot and sweaty, how about you bro?” Riley said to Ethan jokingly as Joe missed another shot.

“Fuck man, I can smell both of our feet through the shoes.” Ethan said back.

“Oh God…” Joe said.

We only had one cup left. Riley was taking the shot.

“You think I’ll make it?” Riley asked

“No way…” I said

“If he makes it, yall gotta add some tongue to our feet…” Ethan added.

“And if he doesn’t, we skip all the foot crap.” Joe said nervously.

“Deal.” Riley said.

It seemed like time went in slow motion for that shot. And sure enough… he made it in the cup.

Riley and Ethan high fived each other. Me and Joe looked at each other and he kind of shook his head.

Ethan walked over to the dining room table and kicked his feet up.

“Joey, get over here and take my shoes off.” Ethan said. Joe sighed and walked over and sat across from Ethan.

“Just two minutes right? Someone time it please.” Joe said sadly.

Riley nodded and we both just watched what was unfolding. I’m sure it was my turn next.

Joe pulled off Ethan’s shoes one by one. The smell hit the air so fast. Ethan was wearing black socks with white heel and toe. I actually felt bad for Joe… He had no tolerance to Ethan’s feet.

“Oh man… it’s so bad.” Joe said as his eyes began to water. Riley was laughing pretty hard.

“Come on, nose in the foot.” Ethan said.

“Dude why… I could smell this even if I was standing across the house!” Joe said.

“Joe don’t be a bitch!” Riley yelled to him. Joe shook his head again before burying his face in Ethan’s socked foot.

Ethan used his toes to pull off his sock on one foot, and then the other.

“Tongue…” Ethan said as he wiggled his pudgy toes. Joe hesitantly stuck his tongue out. Ethan slid his toes across Joe’s tongue. Joe gagged.

“How’s that taste Joe!” Ethan yelled.

“Ok… that’s enough.” Joe said as he stood up.

“Yeah that’s good… you were sniffing for about 4 minutes.” Riley laughed.

“Are you fucking kidding me man.” Joe said. He ran to the bathroom and we could hear him spitting and rinsing his mouth out.

“Alright buddy- your turn” Riley said as a looked to me. He went and sat in the corner and pulled off his converse. I followed him over there.

“Lay on your stomach.” Riley said. I did what he asked trying not to come off so willing. His black socks were kind of shiny and almost looked greasy. He stuck his feet side by side on my nose. His stink was definitely not as strong as Ethan’s where it would fill the room, but I could 100% tell he went running that day, his odor was almost cheesier than Ethan’s. He kind of cupped them around my nose. I was getting an erection, taking in Riley’s stink, I’m glad I was laying on my stomach so no one could tell. Ethan was watching from across the room, smiling. Riley took his sock off.

“This is what happens to bitches that lose. How’s that fuckin smell man?” Riley said, only turning me on even more.

“It smells like a greasy cheese…” I said muffled by his foot.

“Cheese? Good, maybe you’d like a taste then… tongue out.” Riley demanded. I slid my tongue across the bottom of his toes. They taste just like they smelled.

“How’s my foot taste? Ethan I think he likes this…” Riley said laughing. Ethan walked over and placed his rank foot on top of my head, pressing my nose and mouth even harder into Rileys foot.

“He’s just used to it, I make him worship my feet sometimes.” Ethan said. Riley laughed. I was slightly embarrassed but I felt almost hypnotized at the scent of Riley and Ethan’s feet mixed together.

A few more moments passed and Riley stood up and Ethan took his foot off my head. Joe finally came back in the room.

“Alright guys, I gotta work early�� Thanks for a gross night.” Joe said, still looking a bit ill from licking Ethan’s foot.

We said goodbye and Joe left. Shortly after Riley took off as well. It was just me and Ethan on the couch.

“What a night…” I said. I could still smell Ethan and Riley’s foot stink on my face.

“Yeah it was…” Ethan said. He reached his hand down and started feeling his bulge in his pants.

“Hey, take your pants off. I wanna try something.” Ethan said. I stood up and took my shoes off and my pants.

“Now face the other direction.” Ethan said. I turned around. I could feel Ethan start to touch my butt. We had never done any butt stuff before, so this was new. He pulled my underwear down and put his finger in his mouth. Then into my shaved hole. It hurt a little at first and I was a little tense. It slowly started to feel very nice. He then switched to two fingers and I moaned.

“Fuck boy, you are so tight.” Ethan said as he thrust his fingers in and out.

Suddenly to both of our surprises, Riley popped out of the corner.

“Guys, I don’t think I can drive yet… that beer…” Riley started before he noticed what was going on. He kind of stood there in awe for a few moments. Ethan and I didn’t say anything. We just looked at him, his fingers half way up my hole.

“Uhhh. Some kind of bet I didn’t know about?” Riley said, confused. I noticed he was starting to get hard as the crotch of his shorts started to rise.

“Just a condition of him staying with me… I get to use him as my cum rag…” Ethan said with confidence.

“Huh…” Riley said, still taking in what he was seeing. Riley started to inch closer and ended up sitting next to Ethan. I was shocked to feel that Ethan continued to finger me. I could see Riley out of the corner of my eye on the couch. He had pulled out his cock and was stroking it while watching Ethan finger me!

“I aint gay. But hey, a hole is a hole right? And this boys got a whole other one not in use.” Riley said. He stood up and came around to me. He pulled my head down so his dick was right in my face. He was cut unlike Ethan. He was a bit hairier too.

“Lick my balls.” He said. What was it with this family and always wanted their balls licked first? Not that I minded. I started licking his smelly musty hairy balls. The texture of the hair on his nuts was something I wasn’t used to but I totally got into it. I could feel Ethan push me forward a little and bend me down a bit more. I heard him spit into his hand. It was finally happening. I felt Ethan’s cock start to go into me. It was easier since he used his fingers first. After he got the head in, I felt him slam the rest in behind it. I moaned in pleasure. He felt so good. Meanwhile, I started sucking Riley.

“Yeah suck my fat sweaty fucking dick, bitch.” Riley said, incredibly drunk. He was a lot bigger and thicker than Ethan in that department. Every time Riley tried to push in down my throat I would choke. I could see Riley and Ethan fistbump each other as they destroyed me. Ethan was banging me so hard that I could feel his huge nuts slapping my ass.

“Yeah boy, take my cock.” Ethan demanded. Riley grabbed my head and shoved his cock down my throat all the way to his nuts. My eyes watered .

“I’m gonna paint your fucking face…” Riley said. He abruptly pulled his dick out and jerked it aggressively and blew his load all over my face. I could feel it all dripping down my lips and chin.

"Fuck bitch. You like my hot nut dripping off your face don't ya" he said as he reached down and used his thumb to move a big blob of his cum into my mouth. I cleaned his thumb off. Riley backed up a little bit. Ethan suddenly pushed me down to the ground face first and planted his stinky foot on my face so that his toes were right over my nose. Im not sure how he had it readily available but he shoved one of his disgusting black and white socks from earlier into my mouth. Riley took his shoe and sock off and put his foot on my head next to Ethans. Ethan was still inside of me and banging me while they had me pinned with their feet. He started to go harder and harder. My hole was so sore. But it felt so good.

“Fuck boy… You like that dick wrecking your tight fuckin pussy.” Ethan said as he just kept going harder and faster.

“You gonna take my load while you taste that nasty sock and smell our feet? ” Ethan said.

“Fuck yeah…” I said.

“He loves the cock, taking both our loads…” Riley said.

I suddenly felt Ethan empty himself inside of me. He was out of breath and covered in sweat. He took his foot, now covered with his brothers cum from my face, off my head.

“Now clean my foot off.” Ethan said. I began to lick the cum off his foot, making sure to get it all.

“Damn Ethan, I need a house slut like that.” Riley laughed.

As Ethan’s hot load leaked out of my hole, and I continued cleaning his brothers cum off of his stinky foot, I couldn’t think of anything else I would rather do.

“Yeah… I think he should move in permanently.” Ethan said.

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chinchillinbb · 4 years ago

Text

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐭

rating: t warnings: strong language word count: 929 requested: no summary: after a long day at work, you come back to your cat, who, after a year of being cursed by an eldritch deity whose name you can't pronounce, can now talk. and boy, is he snarky.

You blew a puff of hot air into the back of your already frozen car. Winter had decided to not only bare its teeth this year, but clamp firmly down onto any exposed skin. This was especially unfortunate when you worked in a combination bookstore/coffee shop. Lots of coffee orders, and no working heater because “the humidity is bad for the books”.

The one upside of working here was the pay. The owners knew the working conditions were only for the strong willed, especially during the winter, and took pity, along with offering a free coffee on your break. That meant you could afford to take care of a cat, which made your days infinitely better.

Today? Not even your fluffy orange cat, Squish, could restore your energy. You walked through the door before taking off your wet boots and throwing your extra 2 layers onto the floor with a grumble and a half. The space heater you bought at a garage sale 2 years ago was still chugging along, but you didn’t have it up very high while you were at work. Just because your pay was good didn’t mean that you were about to get freaky with your electric bill.

Finally wrapped up in a thick blanket, with the heater and some fluffy socks both on, you could cuddle with Squish. “How’s your day been, babes?”

“Fucking miserable. You?”

You froze. (Figuratively.) Maybe the hypothermia was getting to you. Could hypothermia make you hallucinate? Maybe you were mentally ill. File that away in your brain for a later Google search. But what kind of crazy person was gonna look at their normal, totally not talking cat, and ask them to do it again? You. “Hey Squish, I know you don’t like, talk, but um… on the off chance that you do, could you do it again?”

“Yeah, trust me, it’s been a real doozy having to keep my trap shut while you stumble around like an idiot, burning pasta and banging your hip into the table making dinner. Alas, it’s been 1 life since the beginning of my sentence, and now I can finally articulate just how dumb that shirt does make you look.”

While you were busy floundering at the revelation that your cat could, in fact, talk, and had strong opinions about your wardrobe choices (much less the fact that they’d somehow already lost a life), Squish was audibly sighing and groaning about how stupid you were, and how all cats are superior, and how they “might not even want to change back at this rate.”

“So… I mean, is this a thing all cats do? You sorta mentioned a punishment or a, um, a sentence, or something? Oh my god, I don’t have the money for a mental hospital, much less schizophrenia medication.” You lamented your issues, and wondered if maybe you had imagined your cat all along. Maybe they’d never actually been real.

Squish spoke up before you could panic more, “Okay, okay, chill. Not all cats are as great as me, no. I’m a special case. You know how Arachne got turned into a spider? I angered an eldritch being, and got bippity boppity booped into a house cat. Something about the experience being humbling, but to be honest? You feed me, and let me stay. It’s even warm in here, most of the time. Hey, speaking of which, what’s with the whole “no heater while you’re gone” thing?”

“My cat angered an eldritch being. Does that make me cursed, by extension, for pitying you?” You spluttered, pointing a finger accusingly in Squish’s face. If cats could look indignant, Squish was the best at it by far.

“You’re probably fine! Jesus, what a drama lord… Anyways, the only way to un-cat me is for me to either wait out nine lives, or to learn how to be humble. I picked you, because you seem to have cripplingly low self-esteem, and I’ve heard that being humble is supposed to make you undervalue yourself. You work in a freezing coffee shop/bookstore duo for objective pennies, so I figured you were the best fit.” Squish finished by jumping up onto the coffee table to eat your fake flower centerpiece.

Leveling them with a warning glare, you huffed, “Well, you did wonders for my “low self-esteem” by saying my top is ugly, thanks. And the heater stays off when I’m gone is to save money, not that you’d know anything about that, Sir Lap of Luxury.”

“I didn’t say the top was ugly, I said it made you look stupid.” Squish stared back with an even more intense scowl. It’s probably the fact that they have cat eyes, and by extension, thin, intimidating slits for pupils. Maybe that should be their new nickname. “Slits for Pupils”.

You plopped down on the couch and looked at the quickly cooling box of takeout you got. “You know, I have half a mind to toss you out right now. What if the elder deity you angered decides being a cat isn’t a good enough punishment, and comes back to finish the job? What if they kill me for being hospitable to what I thought was a slightly ornery, but cuddly, domestic cat?”

Squish continued staring in that apathetic, far off way that cats do sometimes, as though they know all the secrets to the universe and are trying to shoot them into your brain. It was oddly reassuring, considering the circumstances, and you supposed that this conversation could wait until you had eaten, before your food was wasted.

(a/n: discord is here)

#beast #catboy x reader #cat #shapeshifter x reader #gender neutral y/n #gender neutral reader #eldritch gods #unnamed eldritch gods #to be precise #i wanted to be fluffy today #beauty and the beast au #except it's healthy and the beast learns to be humble <3

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wingsofkpop · 4 years ago

Text

Hiraeth - I.X: Was it Worth it in the End? Part Two

pairing(s): Hybrid!Im Jaebeom x Reader, Witch!Mark Tuan x Reader, Werewolf!Jackson Wang x Reader, Vampire!Park Jinyoung x Reader, Supernatural!Got7 x Reader

genre: Supernatual!AU, Dark Magic!AU, very heavy Angst, eventual Smut

warnings: Mature language, violence, explicit descriptions of fighting and injury, weapons, blood and gore, brief mention of a mutilated animal corpse, minor character death, description of trauma and mental illness, brief mention of suicide, mentions of murder, satanic themes and ritual, etc.

Trigger Warning: This chapter does contain graphic and explicit themes regarding violence, trauma, and death. Please do not read if this will harm you. This is your final warning.

word count: 10,6k

synopsis: How far are you willing to go to find out the truth about Moon Dye Bay?…

chapter directory

The nighttime is hushed, almost anxious as Minho maneuvers his way past gravestones and overgrown shrubbery. It’s almost like nature itself is too afraid of accidentally provoking the witch, sensing the torpedo of dark magic and violent sorrow stirring through his veins. He peers up at the crimson moon, grateful for the illumination it provides, and continues down his path—ignorant of the cold air bleeding into his flesh.

Minho knows this is probably not the best time for a visit, aware that his ex-covenmates are likely plotting some sort of mission to overthrow him, but he doesn’t care—he can’t care anymore. A part of him, the shameful, guilty part of his mind. actually hopes they will succeed, at least then, he would no longer have to endure the pain that comes with bearing this black magic. He can feel its poison rushing through his veins, seering his body from the inside out, killing his soul over and over and over again…

But isn’t this what he wanted? Revenge? Retribution? Minho performed that spell to hurt the very friends that hurt him—to hurt Mark, and he got his wish… so why does it feel like the world is caving in around him, swallowing him whole?

Once he reaches his destination, Minho collapses to his knees, unable to bear the weight of his burdens. His eyes burn with tears, but he doesn’t allow himself to cry. A silent gust of wind strokes his cheeks, painting his skin red with bitterness and anger. He welcomes the cold air, accepting the punishment, before lifting his hand to splay his fingers against the even colder surface of the headstone.

“I’m sorry…” Minho whimpers, “It didn’t have to be like this…”

The silence heightens his anguish—deepens the wounds in his heart.

If he could take it all back, he would… but he can’t.

“I wish you were here, noona…”

His murmur is lost to the wind, but it doesn’t matter. He climbs back to his feet before sparing one final glance at the burial place of his lost friend. After a deep inhale and a wordless goodbye, Minho turns and hastily begins back toward the mausoleum.

He was allowed this one moment of weakness—now he must get back to the horrible reality he manifested for himself.

☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾

“Can you be any more obvious…?”

Mark quickly awakens from his mindless trance, discovering, to his dismay, Dahyun looking down at him with a single raised, all-knowing eyebrow. He fakes a cough into his elbow before shrugging his shoulders, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re kidding me, right?... You literally haven’t taken your eyes off of her since we met up in the forest.”

Heat immediately rises to Mark’s cheeks. As if on instinct, his eyes trail back to his subject of interest, watching as you wipe the sweat from Jaebeom’s girlfriend’s forehead and neck before shifting to do the same to Felix. It’s such a simple action, but you somehow look so ethereal—almost like an angel sent from heaven.

He curses himself for his own cheesiness, then releases a defeated sigh.

“We got into a pretty big fight earlier.”

“Then don’t you think you should—I don’t know—talk to her instead of staring her down like a creep?”

“I think the last thing she wants to do is talk to me.” Mark drags a hand through his hair. “I… said some really stupid shit in the heat of the moment. She probably hates me.”

Dahyun scoffs, “God, you are such a fucking idiot.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you need to get your ass over there and apologize to that girl.”

Her harsh tone doesn’t falter beneath his glare, nor does her tenacious expression as the two proceed with their silent staring contest. After a minute or two, Dahyun breaks off the competition with a long, heavy sigh. Her eyes are soft when she looks back at him, and suddenly Mark finds the dried mud on his shoes a lot more interesting.

“Mark, anyone can see how much you care about her—how much she cares about you.” Even when a gentle hand caresses his shoulder, the witch keeps his attention to the floor. “(Y/N) could never hate you—no matter how much stupid shit you pull.” She snickers, “And you pull a lot of stupid shit, so that has to account for something.”

He can’t help the amused chuckle that falls from his own lips.

“Thanks, Dubu.” Mark says, tilting his head to finally meet the warmth of her gaze.

“She’s a good one—a really good one, Mark.” The wolf hums, “Don’t let it be your fear that pushes her away.” She doesn’t give him a chance to reply further, pacing to a nearby corner to join a conversing Bang Chan and Yugyeom.

Sparing the wolf trio one final glance, Mark musters up the remaining courage he has left and pushes from his perch against the kitchen countertop. He forces himself to walk in your direction—each step releasing more butterflies into the confines of his stomach. Once he reaches you, close enough to touch your turned back, he almost chickens out, content with spending the rest of the night watching you like hawk, but the sound of Felix’s breathy voice locks him in place:

“—Channie-hyung and I have always wanted to go to Chicago… Is-Is it as windy as they say?”

“Even windier.” You say with a laugh. “I can’t tell you how many scarves I lost, and don’t get me started on how freaking cold the winters are.”

Felix laughs too, although it resonates as more of a wheeze than anything.

You shrug, “It’s a gorgeous city though—probably my most favorite place I’ve ever lived.”

“Then why did you leave? If you loved it so much?”

Mark’s interest piques when he notices how your figure grows tense at the young boy’s croak. He’s heard his fair share of stories of your heartfelt time in the Windy City, but he never quite figured out why you ultimately decided to move to Moon Dye Bay. You’ve always been reluctant to reveal certain details from your past, especially regarding your time in the foster system, but even then Mark has been able to pry the worst memories from your brain.

This subject, however, has been a brick wall.

“Because I couldn’t stay.” You finally answer, “It’s complicated, but something happened and basically I—”

“(Y/N)?”

He silently cusses as Felix interrupts your explanation, but his annoyance dissipates at the panicked expression etched along the teenager’s sweaty face.

“What is it, Felix?” You shift your position on his bedside to better face the boy, leaning forward to place a gentle hand on his forehead. Mark can only imagine how hot the skin is to the touch.

Felix’s words crack as they leave his lips, slicing at the witch’s heart like a dagger:

“Am… Am I gonna die?”

“Of course not.” You immediately say, but Mark can sense the uneasiness in your tone. “Everyone is doing everything they can to help you, okay?... You’re gonna get through this, and one day you and your brother are gonna go see Chicago yourselves and try not to get blown away into the next century.”

Felix sleepily chuckles, “Thanks, (Y/N).”

“You should get some sleep.” The moment the command leaves your lips, Felix is already closing his eyes and diving headfirst into dreamland. Not wanting to startle you, Mark waits a couple seconds—partly to give you time to regain your composure, and partly to give himself time to think of what to say. However, he doesn’t have much of a choice when you suddenly turn, growing aware of his presence. A frown overtakes your face, and he instantly regrets ever leaving his countertop.

“Did you need something?”

“No—yes, I mean—shit.” Mark buries a hand in his tresses to tug at his roots, attempting to juggle between putting together the right spoken words and reminding his body to breathe. “(Y/N), I—”

“If you came to apologize, I don’t want to hear it.” He helplessly watches as you rise from the bed before tossing your used rag on a nearby table. “I think you made yourself pretty clear back at my apartment.”

“I shouldn’t have said what I said—” Before you can storm away, Mark latches his fingers around your wrist. “—please. Just give me a chance to explain.”

Your shoulders rise and fall in a heavy sigh, but you make no move to tear away from his grip and he takes it as a chance to continue:

“After my mom died, I was so fucking angry…” Mark notices your surprised gaze when you lift your head, but he doesn’t meet your eyes. “I was angry at the world, at her, at myself… and when my magic began to show up, things got a whole lot worse.” He shakes his head, “I thought about just ending it—jump into the bay or maybe drink myself to death—but then I met…”

“Then you met Jackson.”

“He taught me how to deal with the anger—to use it as a tool, not a weapon.” His eyes begin to burn at the countless memories that reel through his mind. “It was because of him I learned how to control my powers, and I was able to bring the coven together—hell, he was the one who told them to nominate me as Regent, which right now, seemed like the worst fucking decision on the planet.”

Mark takes a moment to blink away his tears before taking a seat on an empty cot. He still can’t find it in himself to glance at your face, keeping his eyes trained to the wooden flooring.

“But when Jackson had an idea, there was no stopping him.” He chuckles sarcastically, “The bastard was as stubborn as a goddamn mule.”

“What happened to Jackson, Mark?” Your voice is both a sweet lullaby and a screeching siren against his ears. “How did he die? Really?”

“The initial plan was to infuse enough magic into Jackson’s werewolf form so his venom would be lethal to the Primes, or at the very least, to Jinyoung. It all went smoothly in the beginning, I was able to channel enough power to complete the transformation… but something went wrong—

“—Jackson was different when he shifted. He was ruthless… He didn’t want to just kill the Primes—he wanted to slaughter every vampire along with those who protect the secrets of their existence… no matter if they were witch, werewolf, human—they all deserved to die…

“The combination of his determination and the bloodlust drove him fucking mad… If Jaebeom hadn’t ripped out his heart, there’s telling what he would have done—who he would have killed…”

Mark leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees, attempting to hide his shame beneath the curl of his bangs. “—Jaebeom may have dealt the final blow, but Jackson died because the dark magic I used turned him into a monster—he’s dead because of me…”

Silence encompasses the room like a vice grip to the throat. For a moment, Mark believes you left him, too disgusted and ashamed to even breathe the same air as him, but the entrance of your worn boots into his vision proves otherwise. The image is replaced by your face when you kneel in front of his broken figure, laying your hands over each bicep. He notices your touch is gentle, but not hesitant, and warm—always so warm.

“You can’t blame yourself for his death, Mark.” Mark doesn’t realize he’s crying until you wipe a tear from his cheek. “How could you have known what that spell would do? You couldn’t have—”

“Magic always comes with price—especially dark magic.” He whispers, unable to hold back more liquid sadness as it trails down his skin. “(Y/N), if I ever lost you the same way I lost Jackson, my mom, I—”

Mark’s voice cuts out into a sob, and once your arms wind around his form, he completely breaks, releasing every ounce of repressed sadness and despair and pain into the crook of your neck. He knows he’s selfish for melting into your embrace—for consuming your comfort like a demon expelled from the heavens—but he doesn’t care.

When you guide his eyes to meet your own, Mark can spot the glassiness of your own orbs in the artificial light—along with enough compassion and ardor to send another flood of tears down his face.

“I’m not going anywhere, okay?” You affirm, your tone unwavering and stern. “I’m here—and no matter how many times you fall, I’m gonna be here to pick you up…

“I’m here, Mark… Do you understand me?”

He nods with a sniffle, tightly squeezing your hands between his own.

“I’m sorry.”

You smile at his apology.

“I’m sorry too… for everything.”

“Just… No more secrets. For real, this time.”

“For real, this time.” Mark’s heart rate picks up when he suddenly notices how close his face is to yours. From this angle, he can count the constellations glistening within your eyes and map the delicate curves of your facial features. If he were to lean just an inch closer, just one tiny inch, his lips would be on your own—

“Sorry to interrupt, but we have an issue.” At Yugyeom’s statement, you and Mark immediately wrench away from one another, almost as if having been caught engaging in forbidden territory. Mark pretends he doesn’t miss the weight of your hands inside his own as he rises from the cot, making sure to put an appropriate amount of distance between his and your shoulders.

He clears his throat before humming, “What’s going on?”

“Chan wants to go and find Chaeyoung’s body.” Although Yugyeom’s face remains neutral, Mark can see the sadness lingering within his eyes at the mention of his fallen packmate. “He doesn’t remember exactly where she was, so him, Dahyun, and I are going to search the forest.”

You immediately shake your head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Sunrise isn’t for at least another hour, and we have no way of knowing Youngjae broke the curse yet.”

“I’m with (Y/N) on this one, Gyeom.” Mark agrees, “We’re safest here in the bunker.”

“We can’t just leave her out there. I mean, she—” Yugyeom cuts himself off with a heavy sigh, before continuing in a softer tone, “You know how it feels to lose someone, hyung… Chaeyoung is—was… our family.”

Mark takes a moment of silence to ponder, conflicted between his common sense and Yugyeom’s pleading gaze. As you said, sunrise is an hour away—but Youngjae, the coven and the Primes should have overthrown Minho by now, right? Plus, he literally blew Changbin’s head off with that shotgun. There’s no way his body could regenerate that quickly…

“We’re all staying together.” He finally says, moving toward the kitchenette to grab his weapon from its perch on the counter. “And if anything seems shady, it’s an immediate retreat.”

Yugyeom delivers a nod before heading off to gather the other wolves. Mark moves toward the bunker exit, but is stopped by your form. A heavy sigh cascades from his lips—just from your expression, he knows this conversation isn’t going to go his way.

“(Y/N)—”

“If you’re gonna tell me I can’t go with you, don’t even bother.”

He shakes his head, “It’s too dangerous…”

“If someone tells me that one more goddamn time—” He can’t help the tiny smile that spreads across his face at the sassy way you roll your eyes. And he doesn’t protest when you move to follow Dahyun up the ladder.

☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾

Youngjae inhales a deep breath, taking the moment to feel his lungs expand, before releasing the air in an even deeper exhale. Even with the relaxation attempt, his body remains tense and his thoughts disorderly. He can’t help but feel as if Minho is waiting somewhere in the darkness of the crypt, ready to pounce on him like a predator to its prey.

Would he toy with his catch first? Or would he skip the pleasantries and go right in for the kill?

A hand appears on his shoulder, wrenching Youngjae from his morbid daydream. He angles his head to meet Lia’s concerned gaze and immediately tries to mask his fear beneath an expression of indifference. Unsurprisingly, the female witch sees right through his facade:

“I’ve known you practically my whole life, Youngjae. Whatever it is, you can’t hide it from me.”

His shoulders sag in defeat as a sigh blows past his lips.

“I’m just… worried about Mark-hyung. He’s powerless out there.”

“Mark is smart—he’ll know what to do if he finds himself in trouble.”

“And if he doesn’t?... I-I mean, what if Minho or Changbin found him before he could warn the pack? He could be dead for all we know—”

Lia silences his desperate quip with a shake of her head, “You shouldn’t think like that right now—”

“What else am I supposed to do?” Youngjae runs a frustrated hand through his hair before gesturing toward the main exit of their underground penitentiary. “Even with yours and Jisung’s energy, I don’t have enough power to take down the barrier spell.”

“Help is on the way—”

“How do you know that for sure?”

Lia remains silent, simply continuing to stare at Youngjae. He feels almost uncomfortable beneath her gaze, resisting the urge to shrink back and become one with the shadows.

“I don’t know… but I have faith.” She murmurs after a brief moment. “We’ve lost a lot, but I still believe that we’ll all somehow manage to come out of this alive. You should try doing the same.”

With that, Lia leaves to speak with a dangerously quiet Jisung. Youngjae spares the pair a single glance before heading toward the crypt entryway. A single beam of moonlight illuminates the exit stairway, almost as if mocking him about his inability to escape the dingy prison.

Youngjae knows Lia is right—of course she’s right. Worrying about the possible pitfalls of this plan won’t help him, or Mark, or anyone. He can only pray that his mentor safely found his way out of the cemetery and is sending backup right this very moment.

He needs to have hope, if nothing else.

“What if we somehow lure Minho down here?” Youngjae’s thoughts quiet at Lia’s suggestion, angling his head to meet her gaze. “Technically Youngjae just needs to touch him to siphon his magic… so why don’t we bring him to us?”

“Minho-hyung won’t step past the barrier.” Jisung dissents, dragging his fingers through his already tousled hair. “He probably knows we’re planning something against him, so there’s no way he’ll believe whatever ruse we try to pull.”

“Then we have no choice. Youngjae, are you sure you can’t take down the spell?”

Youngjae sullenly shakes his head.

“Is there something else you can siphon? Maybe the crypt itself?”

“The crypt was built by humans.” He answers, “I can only draw power from the supernatural—”

“Then it’s a good thing my dear brother and I weren’t turned into superwolf bait.”

Youngjae, along with the other witches, nearly leaps a foot in the air at the sudden voice. He whirls around to face the stairwell, which to his surprise, is now occupied by the last person he ever expected to see:

Im Jaebeom.

Jisung chokes, scurrying backward into the shadows as the hybrid approaches the trio. After taking purchase against the doorway, he offers his signature sly smirk.

“Evening, Harry Potter and friends… Funny meeting you down here.”

“Now is not the time for games, hyung.” Youngjae breathes a sigh of relief as Jinyoung’s voice echoes throughout the stone walls. Seconds later, he comes hustling down the staircase before shoving Jaebeom out of the way. The vampire then peers into the crypt, his gaze burning with the determination of a man at war. “Is anyone hurt?”

“No. We’re okay.” Lia steps forward. “If you’re here, I’m guessing Mark reached the wolf pack?”

“Your guess is correct.” Jinyoung nods, placing a hand against the invisible doorway. “My brother and I will do everything we can to help disarm the rogue, but I think it’d be best to free you all first.”

Youngjae joins the conversation. “I can take down the barrier spell, but I’ll need to draw energy from one of you to do so.”

“Let’s do this quickly then.” Jinyoung goes to roll up the sleeve of his white shirt, but is halted by his immortal companion. Surprise filters through Youngjae’s veins as Jaebeom shrugs the leather jacket from his shoulders with a huff:

“With my luck, he’ll drain you dry and I’ll have to deal with this voodoo fucker myself. I think it’s best we use my energy—sorry not sorry.”

“Alright, then.” Youngjae hums, “I’ll need you to push through the barrier just enough that I can touch you… It’s gonna hurt. A lot.”

“Good thing I’m a sadomasochist.” Jaebeom snickers at his brother’s unamused expression, “Too much?”

“Move your hand through that goddamn barrier before I throw you to the superwolf myself.”

The hybrid rolls his eyes, but follows Jinyoung’s instructions and proceeds to force his limb past the invisible blockade. He remains silent, but Youngjae can spy the uncomfortable twitch of his eyebrow and the tension along his stone-cold features. Blood begins to bud along his knuckles like a patch of blooming roses before flowing down his pale skin the more he presses against the barrier.

The siphoner raises his hand in preparation. “Just a bit more.”

A mere couple seconds later, Youngjae feels Jaebeom’s bloody flesh brush against his own. The skin-to-skin contact is slight, but enough, allowing the hybrid’s energy to spread through his veins like wildfire. Youngjae almost cries in relief as the magic conquers his entire body—a new kind of hope sparking somewhere within his chest.

“Phasmatos Siprum… Emnis Abortum…” Youngjae murmurs, positioning both hands against the invisible wall. He feels it crumbling beneath his fingertips, unable to withstand the power flowing through his figure. “Fasila Quisa Exilum San… Fasila Quisa Exilum San…”

A proud grin stretches along his features as the barrier buckles, then completely shatters. With Lia and Jisung in tow, Youngjae beelines out of the crypt and into the stairwell where Jaebeom, who’s cleaning the crimson from his knuckles, and Jinyoung reside. The latter nods, which Youngjae is quick to return.

“‘Kay, they’re free… Now what?”

“Now we find Minho and end this once and for all.” Lia answers, not sparing the hybrid a glance as she dashes up the stairs. Youngjae and the rest of the group try to keep up with the female witch as best as they can, not faltering until they reach the surface. The cemetery is quiet when they emerge from the crypt, Youngjae notices—almost too quiet.

He takes a short moment to breathe in the fresh night air before turning to a tense Jinyoung, “I need to get close enough to siphon Minho’s magic to perform the counterspell. You think you and your brother can find me a way in?”

Jinyoung nods. “You can count on us.”

“Stay close…” Lia warns with a sigh, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the bastard already knows we’re free—”

Lightning suddenly strikes a mere few feet from where Lia is standing, earning a chorus of screams and surprised gasps from the witch trio. Youngjae watches as Jinyoung speeds forward, grabbing Lia just in time to avoid being burnt to a crisp by a second bolt. With Jisung at his side, Youngjae quickly takes shelter underneath the overhang of a nearby tomb as even more lightning bombards the earth. He surveys the area, searching for the perpetrator responsible for the weather abnormalities.

“Minho!...” Lia screeches from behind a large tree, her tone far less than friendly. “Quit being a fucking coward! Come out here and face us goddamnit!...”

Youngjae huddles closer to Jisung as the wind suddenly picks up, ripping at his hair and clothing like a vengeful spirit. He moves to speak to his younger companion, but his words die on his tongue as the subject of the hour waltzes into view. The heavy gusts don’t seem to affect him, though that’s no surprise since the wretched weather is his doing.

Minho smirks, “They say lightning never strikes one place twice… You must be really special then, Lia.”

“Oh fuck off! We’re tired of playing your stupid games!”

“This only ends one way, Minho—” Jinyoung says, cautiously moving from Lia’s side to approach the powerful witch. His steps, however, are halted by another vicious bolt of electricity. Youngjae attempts to make out Jaebeom’s form through the blurriness of his wind-induced tears, but the hybrid is nowhere to be found. “—so we can do it the easy way, or the hard way! The choice is yours!”

“Last I checked, this isn’t your fight, Prime.”

“It became my fight the moment you threatened my family and my friends!”

Minho snickers, “Trust me, I had every intention of ridding this town of you and your brother’s filth.”

“Was it also your intention to kill an innocent werewolf girl!?” Youngjae’s heart drops at the vampire’s following statement. “Son Chaeyoung is dead because of Changbin—because of you!”

“Every war has its casualties.”

“And what of Felix!? Will his death just be another trivial loss in your obsession for revenge!?”

This time, Youngjae notices the cockiness melt from Minho’s features into something akin to trepidation. The wailing of the wind picks up to a screech, nearly drowning out the dark-haired witch’s weak inquiry, “What are you talking about?”

“Felix was bitten… and is dying as we speak!” Jinyoung shakes his head frantically. “Do you believe he deserves this, Minho!? Do you believe Chaeyoung deserved to die!?... You can fix this—make this right!”

Minho remains silent, and for a moment, Youngjae wonders if the witch will actually come to his senses and call off this whole ordeal. But just as soon as it appeared, the pained look along his features transitions into something more sinister.

“We’re all gonna die someday, so what does it even fucking matter!?”

“Are you hearing yourself!?” Lia screams from behind a nearby tree, “Look what you’ve become, Minho! How would Nayeon see you right now!”

“Don’t bring her into this!” Minho’s hiss blends with the moans of the wind. Massive raindrops begin to pelt down against the earth, immediately soaking Youngjae to the bone. For the first time, he notices the dark witch’s position in relation to his own. Realistically, Youngjae can be at Minho’s side in mere milliseconds, before he has a chance to blink. If only he can get him to move a bit closer…

As if reading his thoughts, Jinyoung attempts to coax the witch another step forward.

“Please, Minho… I don’t wish to hurt you.”

The latter shakes his head with a chuckle. “It’s too fucking bad that you think you can.”

Minho raises his hand, harshly forcing the vampire down against the muddy earth. Youngjae watches in horror as Jinyoung’s limbs begin to contort and rearrange against his own will—the sound of cracking bones and the vampire’s pained groans filling his ears like a haunting melody. He forces his gaze away from the gruesome sight and prepares to advance on the dark witch, but Jisung stops him with a hand to his shoulder:

“Not yet, hyung.”

“But Jinyoung—”

“Trust me.” His eyes are wide with determination—Youngjae can’t remember a time he’s ever seen Jisung so fierce. “I have a plan. Wait here until my signal.”

Though filled with confusion, Youngjae does as the young witch requests and stays in place while Jisung himself carefully maneuvers his way through gravestones and buildings, attempting to remain out of sight. A sudden burst of lightning cracks through the atmosphere, and at first, Youngjae fears Jisung has been caught, but quickly realizes Minho has his sights set on another party:

“I was wondering when you’d join the fun—I looked forward to tearing your bitch-ass apart.”

“I would say I’m flattered, but I rather like my ass.” Jaebeom saunters across a nearby rooftop. In the midst of the storm, he almost reminds Youngjae of a superhero—or more likely in his case, the psychotic supervillain. “Look, you’ve had your fun, kid. Now I suggest you release my brother and cut out all this petty-teenage bullshit before I break your body in places you never thought possible.”

“That’s it?... And here I thought you’d want the antidote?”

Jaebeom’s face darkens.

“...So there is a cure?”

“Of course. Every spell has its loophole.” Minho finally lowers his hand, ceasing the painful reconstruction of Jinyoung’s skeleton. Youngjae watches in confusion as the former retracts something from his pocket—some sort of vial, it seems—and offers it toward the hybrid. “The blood which Changbin drank to turn—it’ll heal anyone fallen victim to his bite.”

“You better hand that over before I rip your teeth from your skull.” Jaebeom growls darkly, hopping down from his overhead perch.

The witch shakes his head, “Not so fast, Mr. Wolf… See, there was only so much left—enough to heal one lucky soul.”

“You’re a sick fucking bastard,” Jaebeom spits. “You wanted this to happen—”

“Your little bloodsucking girlfriend is dying, isn’t she?” Minho tosses the vial toward the hybrid, who effortlessly catches it between two trembling fingers. “If you want to save her life, then I suggest you go before the venom does its job.”

“Jaebeom-hyung, don’t—!” Jinyoung gasps, slithering across the muddy earth like an earthworm lost to the world.

“You know she doesn’t have much time—”

“We can’t do this without you—we need you!... I need you, hyung!”

Jaebeom, staring at the tiny container in his grasp, doesn’t reply to his incapacitated companion. Youngjae curses the smirk that spreads across Minho’s face—a sign of victory—and attempts to spot Jisung and Lia somewhere between the ferocious raindrops. He has no such luck, and instead decides to pray for a miracle instead.

“If you hadn’t fucked around with the few people I care about, I might have actually liked you.” Jaebeom murmurs with a sigh before tucking the vial into his pocket and sending the dark witch a malicious sneer. “Well isn’t that too fucking bad.”

Youngjae leaps almost ten feet in the air as lightning strikes for what seems like the millionth time, although this time, it’s inches from where Minho is standing. After searching the area, Youngjae discovers Lia and Jisung across the way, hands clasped, eyes bright with passion, uttering some sort of offensive charm. Minho attempts to sprint in the opposite direction, but Jaebeom easily tackles the witch before he can get far.

“Now Youngjae-hyung! Do it now!”

At Jisung’s cue, Youngjae takes off into the rain. The bitter feel of Mother Nature’s tears against his skin quickens his movements, wanting nothing more then to end this hurricane, both literally and figuratively, once and for all. He reaches Minho in what seems like hours and hurries to grab his wrist—but just like the tides during a storm, the tables quickly turn.

At the wave of Minho’s hand, Jaebeom goes flying across the cemetery, crashing into a stone statue and collapsing into the resulting rumble. White-hot pain spreads through Youngjae’s veins like a poison, freezing his muscles and immobilizing his limbs from any further movement. He collapses to the ground, where mud immediately clings to his clothing.

Minho rises to his feet before stepping on Youngjae’s hand with a cackle, “Don’t you fuckers get it!? I’m untouchable! You can’t fucking win!”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Minho…” Youngjae chuckles, curling his fingers around the tread of the dark witch’s boot. Minho realizes his mistake as soon as the former’s hand begins to glow, foolishly attempting to squirm from his touch.

Thunder roars in the distance as Youngjae grins in triumph:

“Because unlike you… we’re not alone.”

The last thing Youngjae sees before he loses consciousness is a flash of white and the bewildered face of the dark witch as he collapses beside him.

☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾

“I take it Mark apologized?...” You nearly leap out of your own skin at the sudden inquiry. With a less than agitated frown, you turn to acknowledge the culprit for your almost heart attack. If you didn’t know any better, you’d swear some of these supernaturals have powers of teleportation or something…

“Goddamnit, Dahyun. Not all of us have superwolf hearing.”

“Sorry, dearie. Force of habit.” The she-wolf offers an apologetic smile, moving forward to hook her arm with your own. She allows Yugyeom, Chan and Mark to gain a bit of distance ahead before repeating again, “So Mark…?”

“We both talked it out and apologized… so everything’s okay now.” You hum—the tiny fib leaving a bitter taste in your mouth.

Truthfully, your encounter with Mark left you conflicted. Of course, you’re more than glad he finally opened up about his past, and even more glad that he trusts you enough to reveal his lingering feelings of trauma, but there’s still a pretty big fucking elephant in the room—one involving his dead best friend and the fact you can talk to him beyond the grave.

You should have told him then and there—right after you promised to abolish all secrets—but something inside you couldn’t do it… and you don’t know why.

“Why are you so interested in Mark and I’s relationship anyway?” You utilize your curiosity as a distraction from the guilt breathing down your neck, angling your neck to peer at Dahyun’s side profile. “Is there… history between you two?”

“No, no—nothing like that. Mark and I have just known each other since we were kids. Our moms were close friends, so Mark, Yugyeom and I pretty much grew up together.”

“He never told me that.”

“Don’t take it personal, sweetheart. Mark doesn’t like to talk about his past—” Dahyun sighs, “—too many bad memories between his dad and the bullshit that happened with his mom. He’ll come around eventually… he just needs more time.”

“I know his mom passed when he was a teenager, but Mark never actually mentioned how she died…” You bite your lip, sending a curious glance to your wolf companion. “It’s really not fair to ask you, but—”

“Mark found her in their own kitchen with her entire throat ripped open.” Dahyun’s blunt answer leaves your throat dry, unable to speak another word if you wanted to. “The sheriff ruled it as an animal attack, but I’m sure you’re smart enough to figure out what really happened.”

Your heart sinks, and you choose not to say anything further.

“Dahyun! (Y/N)! Don’t get too far behind!” Chan’s voice echoes from somewhere up ahead. With the black of night beginning to fade, you can just make out his, Yugyeom, and Mark’s silhouettes a couple dozen feet away. Dahyun gives your forearm a gentle squeeze before releasing your conjoined limbs to catch up with her packmates. You do the same, meeting an armed Mark about halfway.

His eyes glitter with concern underneath the fading starlight.

“Everything okay…?”

“Yeah, Dahyun and I were just catching up.” You inhale a deep breath before releasing it in an even heavier exhale. “But there is something I need to talk to you about—about Jackson and the whole resurrection thing.”

Mark shakes his head, “You have every right to make your own decisions, (Y/N), but I wish you and Youngjae would have come to me.”

“I know that, but it was more complicated than that—” You try to gather your thoughts while also attempting to make sense of your words. “I couldn’t tell you because, well—because Jackson told—”

“Mark-hyung! We’ve got an issue!” Yugyeom’s warning immediately cuts off your explanation. Mark shoots you an apologetic glance before hurrying the two of you forward to join the wolf trio. It only takes seconds for you to distinguish the cause of the beta’s distress.

A deer carcass lays precariously on the forest floor, and albeit it’s practically torn to shreds, you can just make out a single word carved into its bloody flesh:

Die.

“Shit—we need to go. Now.”

“We’ve already come this far. Chae should be around here somewhere.” Chan ignores Mark’s directive, stepping over the animal corpse to traverse further through the forest. He barely takes a step before the witch is grabbing his wrist. “Let me go, hyung.”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“Don’t tell me what to—”

“Shut the fuck up. Both of you.” Dahyun quietly hisses, “Listen.”

You try to do as the she-wolf says, but all that meets your ears is the combination of your own labored breathing and uneven pulse. Judging by the confused expression along Mark’s face, he’s probably dealing with the same situation.

“What is it?”

“We’re being watched.” Yugyeom answers Mark’s inquiry in a whisper. “Mark, you and (Y/N) need to find somewhere to hide right now—Chan, Dubu, get ready to fight—”

As soon as the command leaves Yugyeom’s lips, Mark takes you by the arm and drags you behind a broad tree trunk. You fish Jinyoung’s pocket knife from your pocket while Mark cocks his shotgun in preparation. Who knew the day would come that you’d actually be grateful for the presence of two dangerous weapons…

“If anything goes wrong—you run like hell, got it?”

You shake your head at Mark’s demand. “I’m not just going to leave you—”

“Yugyeom! Above you!” At Chan’s warning, you’re suddenly shoved to the ground by the witch, watching in horror as a deranged Changbin descends from the treetops onto the beta himself. His skin is a sickly ashen shade, and his black veins so prominent it would make a nurse weep. There’s no human emotion left inside his dark eyes as he strikes Yugyeom over and over again with his lengthy sharp talons, tearing open his skin like a birthday present—he’s a complete animal.

“Bin, stop!” Chan throws his arms around Changbin’s shoulders in an attempt to pull him from Yugyeom, winding a tight arm around his throat before thrusting a knee against his spine. “Think about what you’re doing!”

With Dahyun’s assistance, the two wolves manage to separate the dark wolf from that of Yugyeom’s wounded self. Even so, Changbin clearly does not appreciate being stolen away from his prey. He easily escapes from Chan’s hold, landing a couple heavy hits against the latter’s nose before shoving him to the ground. Dahyun takes the moment to strike, bringing the dark wolf to kneel with a harsh kick to his knee, but the action does minimal damage. Changbin punts the she-wolf a dozen feet away as if she weighs nothing. You wince as Dahyun connects with a nearby tree trunk with a vocal thud before dropping to the ground with no movements of rejoining the fight.

“Shit…” You curse to yourself, “They won’t be able to take him down by themselves—he’s too fucking strong.”

“Watch your ears.” You notice Mark aiming his gun toward the dark wolf, waiting for an opportunity with his finger on the trigger. At his discretion, you cover your ears just in time for him to fire a first and second shot. A ferocious growl echoes through the trees, spreading goosebumps across your flesh like wildfire.

You watch both Chan and Yugyeom take advantage of Changbin’s distraction. The alpha delivers a swift, yet heavy hit against his wounded shoulder while the beta goes for his legs. Similar to Dahyun, they manage to pin Changbin to the forest floor. For a moment, you almost believe the fight has concluded in your team’s favor—but the tides shift. In the blink of an eye, Chan is impaled with a large jagged branch and sent tumbling into some foliage whereas Yugyeom is dealt punch after strike after kick, unable to escape the barrage of Changbin’s wrath. He eventually, like the former two, collapses to the earth and makes no move to rise.

Changbin cracks his neck before stalking toward where you and your companion stand.

“Mark—”

“I got it!” Mark quickly feeds another couple shells into the shotgun barrel, cocks the weapon, then aims down sight. He manages to sink a bullet into your target’s abdomen, followed by another in his bicep, but Changbin merely releases an annoyed snarl and continues charging forward.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck—(Y/N), move!” You leap out of the way just in time to avoid a powerful strike. Changbin’s hand splinters the trunk of the tree, sending pieces of bark in every direction. A particular shard catches the bridge of your nose, causing blood to warmly cascade down your skin. You quickly wipe the liquid from your right eye, ignoring the nausea fluttering inside your gut, before focusing back on the situation at hand.

You look up in time to watch Mark swing his shotgun harshly against Changbin’s skull. Taking advantage of his disorientation, you rush forward to stab your pocket knife into the wolf’s back. Changbin practically roars in fury, angling backward to land a hit to your face before you have time to react. The force of his strike throws you to the ground, a sharp pain lingering in your left cheek.

“Don’t fucking touch her!” Mark throws himself against Changbin, delivering hit after hit to anything and anywhere. Still, Mark’s human strength does little to outbeat the dark wolf, and you watch in horror as Changbin effortlessly pins the witch against his chest with a bloody hand around his throat. You desperately search for something, anything, in hopes of saving Mark from whatever deadly fate awaits Changbin’s bloodlust, but fate doesn’t seem to be on your side.

“Changbin—please don’t do this!” You cry, praying to some type of deity that the wolf is sane enough to understand your words. Even so, your confidence is low, seeing as talking clearly had no effect during your last encounter, but you’re fresh out of options at this point. “You know this isn’t who you are!”

To your surprise, Changbin actually answers, “You don’t know anything about me.”

“Maybe not, but I know you don’t actually want to hurt anyone…” You cautiously rise to your feet with a shake of your head, wary of the tight hold Changbin currently has on Mark’s jugular. “Your thoughts are all sorts of fucked up right now because of the dark magic, so why don’t you just let Mark go and we can—”

“Don’t you fucking get it! This fucker—” He yanks at Mark with more force than necessary, “—took everything from me! He took my pack, my alpha—the only people I ever felt safe with!”

“I understand you—”

“No, you don’t!” Changbin wails, “You can’t even imagine how I feel! How fucking hard it is to wake up in a world you know you’ll never belong! How much it fucking hurts just to go on and pretend like everything’s normal when it’s fucking not!”

“Tell him it’s okay to feel angry—” You whirl your head around to find a seemingly exhausted, yet wild-eyed Jackson Wang at your side. “—but none of this was Mark’s fault.”

You’re mortified at first, having never encountered the ghost anywhere outside your bedroom—but whether it’s the desperation etched along his features, or the flush of purple that overtakes Mark’s complexion—you quickly transfer back to reality:

“Changbin, it’s perfectly normal to feel angry and cheated, but this wasn’t Mark’s fault—deep down, I think you know that.”

“What does it fucking matter anymore? I’m all alone anyways.” The pure agony etched along his face has your heart splitting in two.

You’ve never seen a creature so strong and so powerful look so… vulnerable.

“You said the exact same thing to me when we first met…” Jackson murmurs softly.

“You told Jackson you were alone at one point too…”

An obvious wave of tense silence washes through the forest, making the beat of your heart that much more prominent in your ears.

Changbin’s whisper is dark—dangerous. “How the fuck do you know that?”

“Because… Because he’s here, Changbin.” You say, your eyes meeting Mark’s as the words leave your tongue. “You’re not alone because Jackson is still here.”

You don’t know what kind of reaction you expected from your revelation, but it certainly is not the heinous laughter that spills from the dark wolf’s lips.

“You must have lost your goddamn mind… Jackson-hyung is dead!”

“Maybe physically, but his spirit still remains.”

“You mean—” You turn to discover a bewildered Yugyeom unsteadily leaning against a tree, “—his… ghost? You—You can see his ghost?”

You nod.

Changbin sneers with a low growl. “I don’t fucking believe you.”

“There’s a cliffside back along the bay about twenty miles from the lodge,” Jackson begins, his tone a blend of nostalgic and sorrowful. “Changbin and I used to go there to watch the full moon rise before we turned into our wolf forms… I-I’ve missed that so much…”

“You and Jackson would always watch the full moon rise on a cliff overlooking the bay before you transitioned,” You repeat. “He says he misses those moments with you…”

“Stop it!” Changbin frantically shakes his head, “You’re lying!”

“He’s here, Changbin… He’s really here.” You move forward again, more confidently this time, and raise your hands in a sympathetic gesture. “And the last thing he wants is for you to make the same mistakes he did, so please—let Mark go and let us help you…”

It’s as if time freezes for a moment. Changbin seems to fight a battle with himself—countless emotions rushing through his teary eyes. You watch the dark wolf glance toward an unconscious Dahyun and Chan, then to a silent Yugyeom, before finally setting his focus back to you. You can only pray your face reflects the hope swirling throughout your veins—pray that Changbin will do the right thing.

To your delight, the blackness of his veins gradually begin to fade and the sharp claws protruding from his fingertips recede. You don’t realize you’ve been holding your breath until Changbin finally retracts his hold from Mark’s neck. You’re quick to take the unsteady witch in your own arms before sending the now normal wolf a thankful smile.

“Thank you, Changbin…”

He nods shyly before wiping a couple tears from his cheeks. You watch as Yugyeom cautiously makes his way toward the younger boy, murmurs something, then tugs the latter into a tight embrace that pulls even more liquid sadness from his eyes. The sight has your heart melting into a puddle of warmth—the emotion doesn’t last though, not when Mark’s dark croak enters your ears:

“You… can see Jackson…”

You shrug sheepishly, “I wanted to tell you, but he said not to… He didn’t want to hurt you anymore than he already had.”

Mark remains silent. You try to search for his features for some kind of anger or disappointment, but are only awarded with his surface level blank stare. Worry flooding through your veins, you look to Jackson for any possible guidance, but the ghost merely shakes his head.

After a couple tense seconds or so, Mark finally murmurs, “Jack… I—I’m so sorry. For everything.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” Jackson says immediately, “If only I had listened to you, then maybe things would have played out different.”

“He says it wasn’t your fault—he should have listened to you.”

“We both made some pretty shitty mistakes.” Mark hums, “I miss you, man. So fucking much.”

You don’t wait for Jackson to reply, already knowing his answer.

“He misses you too, Mark. Just as much.”

“How is this even possible…?” You and Mark turn to find the shocked gaze of Yugyeom, who is closely followed by the despair of that belonging to Changbin. “Supernaturals can’t even see spirits, much less mortals…”

“We never exactly figured that out. Jackson said he felt drawn to me from the Other Side—he kind of just showed up in my bedroom the night after Mina and Momo died.”

“Any contact with the dead usually requires some sort of spell or medium.” Mark bites his lip in confusion. “I’ve never seen anything like this before, not even in any of my mother’s grimoires—”

“Jackson!” Your body grows rigid as Jackson suddenly collapses to the ground with a pained groan. You hurry forward, kneeling next to the man, and reach for his shoulder. The realization of his phantom existence hits you like a bag of bricks when your fingers phase through his form. You settle for calling his name again instead, “Jackson—what’s wrong?”

“What the hell is going on?” You hear Changbin stress from somewhere behind you, but your focus is completely on the ghost in question.

Jackson lifts his head with a gasp, revealing a line of blood dripping from his nose. “I-It’s the witches!... They know about our plans—they’re trying to force me back to the Other Side—”

“(Y/N)?”

You shake your head feverishly, “It’s, uh, it’s the witches on the Other Side—they don’t like Jackson crossing over, so they’re trying to bring him back…”

Mark nods. “Witches, dead or alive, will do anything to maintain the balance of nature.”

“(Y/N)—shit—I don’t have a lot of time—” Your chest tightens at the urgency behind Jackson’s words. “I know so much just went down, but—”

“Don’t worry, Jack. I won’t let you disappear again.” You affirm before climbing to your feet to face your new subject of interest. “Mark—I need you to perform the resurrection spell.”

“Woah, wait—” Mark shakes his head, “(Y/N), I can’ t—”

“If we don’t resurrect him now, then Jackson is gone forever!” Your warning spreads a new tension across the atmosphere, manifesting in the form of sullen and panicked expressions. “Please, Mark—we have a chance to bring him back!”

“I can’t do the spell because I don’t have any magic…” Your heart sinks at Mark’s revelation. “Minho absorbed all my magical energy back at the graveyard… I’m so sorry, Jackson…”

“Hold on, you told me that there’s different types of magic…” You push, “Can’t you draw energy from something? Like the forest, or the moon, or, or—”

“Or me.” You turn, discovering the speaker of the response to be none other than a determined Changbin. “Minho-hyung’s spell may be gone, but I can still feel the magical energy lingering through my body.”

Mark hesitates, “I-I don’t know if it will work… and if something goes wrong—”

“Do you want Jackson-hyung back or not?...”

A moment of silence passes after Changbin’s question. You keep an eye on a repeatedly wincing Jackson, and the other on the witch’s face, attempting to decipher his thoughts inside the glow of his gaze. For a moment, you wonder if Mark will even provide an answer, until the words finally leave his lips:

“Fuck the balance of nature. I’ll bring you back, Jackson—I promise.”

☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾

Jinyoung stares at the sun as it gradually rises past the horizon, bathing his skin in a warm, celebratory light. His gaze wavers across the cemetery to the notorious mausoleum, where he watches Lia and Jisung carefully assist a barely conscious Youngjae past the doorway. After this crazy night, the siphoner definitely deserves a good, long rest. Then again, so does everyone else.

He releases a heavy sigh before shifting away from the witch trio. After sparing one final glance to the sunrise, Jinyoung allows his feet to carry him through the early morning glow, past countless tombstones and other structures, and settles beside a second figure in front of a particular burial site. He silently reads the engravings along the headstone before addressing his companion without so much as a glimpse:

“I assumed you would be halfway back to the bunker by now.”

Jaebeom doesn’t respond, not that Jinyoung really expects him to. He peers at the hybrid through the corner of his eye, attempting to seek meaning beyond his blank features. Centuries later, Jinyoung still can’t predict the workings of Jaebeom’s inner thoughts. Especially when it comes to the situation at hand.

“Mark called. Changbin is no longer affected by Minho’s spell.” He explains, “They’re also preparing a ritual to resurrect Jackson Wang—”

“Tzuyu…?”

Jinyoung’s chest tightens as the name falls from Jaebeom’s lips.

“Their youngest, Ryujin, is looking after both her and Felix.”

“So she’s still alive…?”

“It seems so.”

A brief moment of silence passes between the pair. The earth grows brighter and brighter as the seconds roll by, reminding Jinyoung that time is a friend to no one.

“Hyung, did you… truly switch off your humanity?”

“I did, at first.” Jaebeom’s answer is quiet, and Jinyoung can detect the subtle hint of vulnerability hidden beneath his gruff tone. “But I guess I can never completely turn it off.”

“It’s alright to feel, hyung—be it anger… or passion… or fear…”

Jinyoung notices Jaebeom shift uncomfortably before glancing down at the glass vial in the palm of his hand. For once, he can actually distinguish the emotions present within the hybrid’s dark eyes. The knowledge only jabs at his heart.

“Everything is taken care of, right?”

“The night has ended, and Minho is safely sealed away in the crypt.” Jinyoung nods, “We live to see another day.”

He watches his companion tuck the precious vial into the pocket of his jeans before turning away from the headstone. Jinyoung is not sure where the urge comes from, but he abandons his perch, grabbing Jaebeom’s shoulder before he can leave the cemetery. He ignores the hybrid’s confused expression and pulls him into a tight embrace.

“Thank you for staying, hyung…” Jinyoung’s murmur is slightly muffled against the fabric of his jacket, but he knows his companion heard them loud and clear.

Jaebeom hesitates for a moment, clearly taken aback by the sudden act, but eventually winds his arms loosely around Jinyoung’s back with a gentle murmur of his own:

“You will always be my family, Jinyoung… Always and forever…”

☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾

“I’ve never used magic like this before, so I can’t promise this will work.” Mark glances to where he assumes Jackson’s spirit is located inside the white circle makeshifted out of a bag of flour Dahyun managed to find in a bunker cabinet, before glancing to the companion at his side. “You sure you’re up for this? It’ll feel like I’m literally sucking the life force out of your body…”

Changbin nods, “If it means bringing Jackson-hyung back.”

“Okay, then.” Mark turns to the surrounding crowd next, “In order to do this, I’ll need to lower the veil to the Other Side. This will create a temporary door that Jackson can pass through to physically enter our realm. Once he crosses over, he should become mortal again.”

“Seems easy enough.” Dahyun snickers, although the sound is dry and forced. “Anything else we need to know?”

“Whatever happens, do not enter the circle.” His eyes drift from the she-wolf to your silent form. As if sensing the scrutiny, your gaze connects with his own, and knowing he has your attention, Mark continues in a darker tone, “Just as spirits can pass into our realm, we can cross to the Other Side… so for the love of god, don’t do anything stupid.”

Your and Mark’s staring contest ceases when your head snapes toward the circle. Seconds later, you break the tense silence with a soft murmur, “Jackson says it’s getting worse. He can feel the witches trying to drag him back.”

“Then I guess that’s our cue.” He sighs before nodding toward the circle one last time, “I’m gonna do my best, Jack. Just hold on.”

With one final glance to the grimoire you gave him earlier, Mark inhales a deep breath and takes Changbin’s outstretched hand into his own. He closes his eyes, focusing every part of his brain on the electrifying sensation of the magical energy coursing through the wolf’s body. Bit by bit, he feels Changbin’s power bleeding into his own veins, awakening the slumbering supernatural nature of his soul. Once he’s sure enough he’s acquired enough magic, Mark opens his eyes and begins the incantation:

“Vita mortem, mortem vita est… Partis inferioris velum, partis inferioris ante illum vetum…” Almost instantly, the wind picks up while the air grows uncomfortably cold. He ignores the violent shivers wracking through his limbs and proceeds to repeat the words as the temperature continues to drop. With each spoken syllable, Mark’s head becomes dizzy and his flesh feels as if it’s being scorched off, but he continues.

No amount of pain could ever dull the hope of seeing his best friend alive once more.

“Holy shit—it’s actually working!”

Mark doesn’t realize he had shut his eyes until he opens them, nearly yelping in delight when he discovers the image of said friend standing in the center of the white circle. Jackson looks no different than the day he last saw him, and he can’t decide if he wants to laugh out of irony or burst into tears.

“The veil is down! I’m gonna start the spell to cross you over!” Mark yells over the howling of the wind, clutching Changbin’s hand tighter as he transitions to the next phase of the spell. “Ohto eestanay as vazat esvet ohnaz eespalit… Ohto eestanay as vazat esvet—fuck!”

A brutal force comes down against his head, almost resembling that of a punch, before spreading hot fire down his neck and to the rest of his body. Mark doubles over with a wheeze, attempting to fight against the painful sensations by grounding himself in Changbin’s touch. However, as soon as the first wave concludes, a second, even more excruciating one follows. He feels as if someone is trying to crush his brain—to kill him from the inside out.

“Mark-hyung! What’s wrong!?”

“It’s the witches!...” Mark is thankful that Jackson answers Yugyeom’s panicked inquiry, “They’re trying to break the spell!”

“Like… hell they will…” Mark hisses, righting himself with a pained groan before grabbing Changbin’s other hand. “I’m not going down without a fight—hold on!...”

He jumps back into the spell, weakening the manipulated pain through the absorption of more of the wolf’s energy. Borderline high off the power, he pushes everything he has into the ritual, determined to see it through to the end. After a minute that passes like a decade, Mark detects a shift in the atmosphere, indicating the near completion of the spell, and shouts:

“Jackson—get out of the circle! Get out now!”

As if in slow motion, Mark watches Jackson quickly move to escape the white border. But just as soon as his toe brushes the edge, he is wrenched away and lifted from the ground.

Dahyun cries, “What the hell is happening!?”

“They won’t let me cross over!” Jackson squirms and writhes, attempting to escape whatever invisible grip is holding him hostage. His efforts are futile, and he continues to rise higher and higher off of the ground.

“Hang on, Jack!” Mark releases Changbin’s hands and raises his own palms in Jackson’s direction. However, the same torturous pain from before returns once more, hitting his nerves like a sledgehammer to a brick wall, and throws him to the earth. “Shit—no! H-He has to pass through the circle!”

“(Y/N)! Don’t!”

Mark raises his gaze at Dahyun’s shriek, only to watch in horror as you rush past the flour boundary and grab hold of Jackson’s hand. A blinding light immediately erupts from your clasped palms, expanding through the area until all Mark can see is white.

After a long moment, his vision eventually returns, and he finds the forest completely silent. The temperature is no longer frigid, he notices, and the strain within his brain is gone. For a moment, Mark is filled with prowess, victorious at the fact he successfully carried out an ancient resurrection ritual, however, his triumph is temporary, especially when he notices your form laid motionless in Dahyun’s arms.

“(Y/N)—fuck!” Mark hurries to where you lay, stealing your figure from the she-wolf to cradle you in his own hold. “Shit, shit, shit—she’s not breathing! Fucking goddamnit!”

His panic only grows tenfold when he hears the murmur cascade from Dahyun’s lips:

“Mark… where’s Jackson?”

☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☽ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾

Jaebeom scales the final rung of the ladder before making his way toward the corner where the snoozing trio resides. He moves cautiously, mindful not to awaken the young werewolf caretaker, yet eventually finds himself perched on the edge of a familiar cot. His heart thunders inside his chest, and he cannot tell if it’s out of anxiety or hope. Though at this moment, Jaebeom can really care less to find out.

“It’s about time you showed up…” He winces at the broken husk of his companion’s voice, attempting to keep his expression as neutral as possible. “I thought you were actually going to leave me to die in the hands of a neurotic teenage wolf…”

Jaebeom doesn’t respond to her quip—he can’t find it in himself to do so.

Tzuyu raises an eyebrow, “What’s with the face? Did you take down the witch or not?”

“We did.” He hums, “The spell is broken.”

“Good thing—” The vampire pauses to cough, and the sound is like broken glass against his ears. “—you and your brother are safe for the eternity to come.”

“Tzuyu… I found the cure.”

“What are you waiting for then? My consent?” She snickers playfully, “We fuck for over a century and this is the most gentlemanly behavior I’ve ever seen from you, Beomie.”

Again, Jaebeom remains silent.

Recognizing the obvious tension in the room, Tzuyu’s face falls. “But… I guess it’s more complicated than that, hm?”

“There’s only enough for…” He’s unable to finish his sentence, not when his companion’s eyes are gazing at him with such sullenness and sympathy. Jaebeom has to look away for a moment, though the action does little to relieve the tightness of his chest.

“Ah, I see.” Tzuyu hums, glancing across the way to a slumbering Felix. Her pale lips twitch, as if attempting to upturn to a smile, but it instead appears as a weak grimace. “You know, I really never meant to hurt (Y/N)… or you.”

“Tzuyu—”

“I’ve known you for decades… but I’ve never seen you look at someone the way you look at her.” Another violent cough wracks through her body, expelling a mass of dark blood past her lips. Jaebeom is quick to wipe the splotch from her skin with the blanket, trying not to dwell on the fact that her skin is ice cold. “I’ll admit, I was jealous at first… I’ve always wanted someone to look at me like that…

“I know you’re afraid to care—to love, Jaebeom.” Tzuyu murmurs sadly, lifting a hand to rest against the hybrid’s cheek. “Especially someone like (Y/N)… and you’re right to. She’s too good… too human.

“One misstep and you could lose her forever.”

“I want to be selfish…” Jaebeom whispers, “I want to be selfish so fucking bad—”

“But you can’t be, Beom. Not with her.”

“Then let me be selfish with you.”

Tzuyu smiles.

“I’ve lived over three lifetimes, and he is barely a ways into his one—so you’re going to give the cure to that damn kid, Im Jaebeom.” He leans further into her touch as she caresses the apple of his cheek. “Promise me that you’ll stay away from her—to keep her safe?”

He nods.

“Good… Can you hold me for a moment? I’m cold.”

“I’ll hold you as long as you want me to.”

And so Jaebeom takes Tzuyu into his arms. However, it’s not until the vampire grows still does he allow a single tear to cascade from his eye, staining the bloodied bed sheets with the agony of a heart that has been broken too many times to count.

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mypoisonedvine · 5 years ago

Text

Love, Theoretically | Sebastian Stan x reader (Chapter 1)

for @evnscvll‘s 3k celebration challenge, I immediately broke the rules and took only one prompt: Love, Actually. then I made it into a series. oops. but she made me that lovely moodboard anyways!

summary: having lost your husband, sister, and best friend all to the same extramarital affair, you ran away to a secluded villa in the Hungarian countryside to write and get a little time away from the life you’d left behind. you were only looking for peace and perhaps some inspiration for your novel, but instead you found an unlikely connection with the immigrant repairman-- even though the two of you don’t speak the same language.

word count: 2.3k

warnings: mention/description of infidelity, awkwardness, me teasing y’all by making this a slow burn

(quick note: I’m not fluent in romanian but I did my best to translate the dialogue as accurately as possible, rather than as literally as possible. if you don’t speak it I would recommend not translating seb’s lines so you get the full experience of having no idea what he’s saying just like the reader in the story but I won’t tell you how to live your life)

You usually trusted your intuition, but up until now you'd convinced yourself that you were being paranoid by worrying about your husband. Trusting him was more important than anything, and definitely more important than a strange feeling in your gut that something was wrong.

The sad thing is, you would've never guessed that he was having an affair with your sister. Not in a million years. All the sneaking around, the strange stories that didn't add up… you would've put your money on a secret gambling addiction (pun unintended but welcome), or maybe that he'd secretly lost his job.

But even with all your suspicion, all your low self-esteem, all your fear that he was too good for you… nothing could've prepared you to walk in and see him with his face between your sister's legs.

He didn't even do that to you; he said he didn't like the taste. You realized now, as you stared out the window of the train at the trees flying by, that that should've been a red flag from the start. For a man who had claimed to be a feminist, things were never really equal in your house. You both worked full time but you were saddled with more chores; you made more money than he did, but for some reason, you found yourself asking for his approval on large purchases; and of course, whenever you'd talked about children, he'd always just assumed you would stay at home forever and do most of the child-rearing. He told you that you'd need to handle them when he was too tired from work-- but what about when you were tired from watching them all damn day while he was working?

God, you needed to stop thinking about this. If you cried on this train people would probably look at you funny and you did not need that right now. You couldn’t take any more reasons to believe people dislike you. Even as much as you wanted to say that you didn't want or need your husband’s approval anymore, you still felt so shitty, so fundamentally worthless that he'd chosen your sister over you. He hadn't wanted to touch you in months. You wondered if it had been going on longer than that: when you'd blown him after that company party half a year ago, were you putting your mouth on something that had been in your sister's--?

"Something to drink, madam?" the attendant asked as she rolled by with her cart, pulling you from a very dangerous cycle of thought.

You jumped a little and looked over to her as she smiled at you-- no hint of judgment or confusion as you wiped a tear away. In her shoes, you would be nosy and want to know more about the woman crying on the train. Then again, maybe it was obvious to her: a woman, alone, who bought the last ticket just before the train left, carrying only a small briefcase and a few hastily-packed suitcases… a woman with nothing to lose, going nowhere as fast as possible. Could it be anything but her having been done wrong by a man?

"Tea, please," you nodded with a smile of your own-- weaker than hers, more awkward. You'd make a bad stewardess.

"Black or green?"

You didn't trust them to steep the green tea at the proper temperature, so you asked for black and nodded in thanks when she handed you the warm paper cup and rolled on by to the next passenger.

What really made your head spin, you considered as you sipped at your drink, was not your husband’s actions but your sister’s. You remembered when you were both teenagers and her boyfriend had cheated on her, she’d gotten so upset with the girl he’d done it with rather than him. You had thought that was ridiculous because the girl didn’t owe her anything. You understood better now, and of course, your sister did owe you something. You two had had your rough patches but overall, she’d been your best friend for most of your life. So much so that she was the one you went to when you were worried about your husband. She told you to give him space. You would’ve never imagined that was her way to get you to back off, to cover her own sins and give her more freedom to shag your husband in your goddamn bed.

Yes, that was the real betrayal. Lots of people have ex-husbands, but you couldn’t exactly turn her into an ex-sister. You were stuck with her, but you had no plan as of yet to face her again.

The night in the sleeper car was restless, literally. It was so dark out that you couldn’t see the trees or mountains anymore, but if you focused really hard and made sure to turn off every light in your room, you could just barely see the stars in the sky. You hoped that you would have plenty of time to spend looking at the stars once you reached your destination. As much as you’d loved the city lights of London for the past several years, you really needed to be somewhere that was actually dark at night. And where the air was clean. And, best of all, where nobody knew who the fuck you were.

You stepped out of the train and onto the platform, feeling very much like you were surrounded by people ending their stories-- reuniting with loved ones, finishing vacations-- while yours was just beginning. Well, you supposed it made sense that most of the people travelling from London to Nyíregyháza, Hungary were probably from Nyíregyháza, Hungary. Unlike you, who had only been here once while backpacking through the area in college and fallen in love with it. You were lucky that the owner of the secluded cottage you’d crashed at back then had picked up the phone when you called from the train; you were especially lucky that she was willing to pick you up from the station, you not being quite dressed or prepared for backpacking.

Exiting the station and finding the cobblestone street, you were nearly tackled by a portly old woman as she tried to get your attention.

“Mrs. Alberti?!” you asked with wide eyes.

“You should at least pretend I haven’t aged a day,” she frowned, her words coated with her thick Hungarian accent.

“I was just surprised that you’re still running the cottage! I figured you and Mr. Alberti retired ages ago,” you explained, following her back to her car and putting your luggage in the boot.

She seemed a little crestfallen, wistfully considering your assumption. “Well, it’s not quite what it used to be but yes, I am still the owner. Sadly, Mr. Alberti passed away several years back.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” you replied, hoping to be as comforting as reasonably possible, “he was such a sweet man.”

“Yes, but he had a long illness-- and before that, lived a very full life,” she smiled confidently, walking to the driver’s seat as you followed along the other side and got in the passenger.

“It’s too bad he won’t get to see you again, though,” she continued as she started the vehicle. Considering how old it looked, you were impressed that it worked on the first try. “He would’ve been amazed to have a repeat customer from somewhere so far away. I certainly am!”

“Yes, well, I have great memories from staying in the villa, and decided to go in search of some of the lust for life that I had back then-- chasing after youth never backfires, right?” you joked.

“I wouldn’t know,” she replied with a smirk.

You knew you were getting close to the old house when the roads turned from asphalt, to cobblestone, to gravel, and finally to dirt. As much as you figured trees and grass looked basically the same everywhere, you appreciated that it somehow managed to look totally different than England. Maybe it was the scattering of blue wildflowers, or the way the wilderness was dominating the few signs of human existence rather than the other way around. Driving it was different than hiking it, certainly, and you wondered if you would find the time or energy to climb the foothills on the other side of the lake like you had before. Maybe you didn’t want to find out how much athletic ability you’d lost since college…

“Here we are!” she announced as she made one last turn and yep, there it was: a lonely stone cottage, with flowers all along the walls and pink wooden shutters.

You could tell it had aged since it had looked how you remembered, but if anything it had gained a quaint charm, with its moss and ivy and old trees which sagged under their own weight. Figuring you would have more time to take in the scenery in the indefinite time you planned to spend here, you decided to make good time and gather your things first.

As you opened the boot and reached in to grab your luggage, someone appeared beside you and pushed your hands aside, saying something that you couldn’t parse at all. You stepped aside and realized that it was a young man-- not horrifically young or anything, but certainly… strapping. He shot you a smile, and you couldn’t think of the last time somebody had looked at you with so much joy on their face.

“Oh, thank you,” you nodded, letting him lift your suitcases (which he did with ease, just to make it all extra cruel).

“This is Sebastian-- he lives here and does odd jobs for me,” Mrs. Alberti informed you, "Don't waste your time talking to him; he doesn't speak a word of English."

"Oh, he only speaks Hungarian?" You turned to him again; "Szia, hogy vagy?"

He shook his head and smiled awkwardly.

"No dear, he only speaks Romanian," Mrs. Alberti explained with a laugh. "Can't you tell I can only afford to run this place by using cheap immigrant labour?"

"Salut," he greeted. At least you could figure what that meant. You chuckled uncomfortably and looked to the ground.

You followed Sebastian and Mrs. Alberti into the house, admiring how little the interior decorations had changed-- it was all macrame and flowers in old-fashioned ceramic vases, with lots of oddball Hungarian trinkets to round it all out. Perhaps the only thing you could notice that was different was new floorboards.

“You like the new floor?” Mrs. Alberti asked, as if she were reading your mind. “Sebastian put that in for me.”

Sebastian seemed to perk up as he set your bags down briefly, clearly aware he was being talked about.

“Remember?” Mrs. Alberti addressed him, motioning to the floor. “You put in the new floor, huh? Új emelet?”

You wondered why she’d seemed to laugh at you for trying to speak Hungarian to him, when she was doing the same thing.

“Da,” he smiled, pressing his shoe down onto the floor to apparently demonstrate the lack of creaking. “Ți-am făcut un etaj nou.”

“Alright, go ahead and take her bags upstairs,” Mrs. Alberti instructed him, motioning to the luggage and then to the staircase. He nodded and picked them up again, starting to walk across the room. “He knows where your room is, just follow him,” she told you.

The stairs, unlike the new floor, did creak, and you weren’t sure how far behind you were supposed to be on the staircase to avoid having his ass right at eye level. You didn’t want to stare at it… but either the jeans were doing him a lot of favours, or Mrs. Alberti’s ‘odd jobs’ do a body good. Maybe a little bit of both.

He used his back to push open the door to your room, setting your bags just inside before turning to leave again, like he thought it would be rude to step inside.

“Wait,” you requested, but he kept going-- probably the whole ‘not understanding English’ thing. God, you were going to look so stupid at least a few more times trying to get through to this guy, you could sense it. Forced to get his attention another way, you reached out and grabbed his arm; not hard, but it was definitely a slightly aggressive thing to do anyways. It worked, though, and he turned around with an expectant look. “Could you help me unload?” you asked, gesturing towards the bags.

His brow knitted with confusion as he tilted his head. You sighed, not sure exactly how to pantomime this.

“One of my bags,” you began, pointing to one of them, “is heavy--” a lifting motion-- “could you--” you pointed to him-- “unpack it?”

That seemed to make more sense to him, and he stepped back into the room with you. “Voi încerca,” he said, somewhat to himself, as you opened the suitcase. Inside was your typewriter; he nodded with understanding and scooped it up.

“Unde?” he asked, and regardless of what it meant, you were going to show him where to put the typewriter anyways.

“Just over there, the table by the window,” you pointed to it. He nodded again and walked past you, setting it down, and even adjusting it a little to make sure it was centered.

“Thank you!” you piped up when he turned back to you. And just like that, you were plunged back into awkward silence. You pointed to him, and then the typewriter as you pantomimed typing. “Can you type?” He seemed to understand what you meant.

“Nu,” he shook his head, “când eram mic, trebuiau înregistrați anual.”

“...huh,” you mumbled, not sure what to do with that.

“Plec acum,” he announced as he started to step past you again.

You cleared your throat and let him walk out the doorway. “Right, um, have a good afternoon…”

He gave a little wave as he walked down the hall, and you sighed once he was out of sight and making his way down the creaking stairs. You impressed yourself with your ability to embarrass yourself constantly, even with total strangers. But, all that aside, you were finally ready to settle in and properly enjoy your change of scenery.

#sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan x y/n #sebastian stan rpf #sebastian stan au #sebastian stan fanfic #sebastan stan x you

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kaysayshey · 4 years ago

Text

off paper || e. kirishima

This is a work inspired by a struggle that a lot of those suffering with mental illness experience, particularly those with depression and bipolar disorder; however, it can be applied to a lot of mood-altering medications that cause sexual dysfunction. While medication is a life changing and stabilizing aspect of many lives, it doesn't come without its cons. I think Kirishima would be incredibly understanding in this situation. Please keep in mind that bipolar disorder presents in many ways. There is no one-size-fits-all in mental health treatment or in its subsequent treatment. I wanted to write a bit about the side effects of SSRI medications.

Songs that I listened to while writing include:

Serendipity by BTS' Jimin

Bumper Cars by Alex and Sierra

That Kind of Love by MAX

Warnings: Angst, Fluff, NSFW (no smut, however this work contains sexual topics), mention of prescription drugs, bipolar disorder, minors DNI.

On paper, Kirishima Eijirou was perfect. An impressive sidekick working underneath Fatgum, his cheery disposition more than capable of reassuring even the most terrified of civilians. A hard-hitting, defensive quirk paired with determination unlike anything you'd ever seen. Easy-going enough to work with the difficult heroes - and by difficult, everyone meant Dynamight. Intelligent, reliable, and just the right amount of competitive.

Off paper, he was even better. Hell, the moment he'd asked you out, you'd almost done a double-take. Was he sure? Kirishima could date, well, anyone. However, you'd blurted out 'yes' before your brain had time to catch up, even more surprised at the gorgeous pink that graced the tips of his ears.

And the date went wonderfully. Were you expecting anything different? He was a magnet, and you were willing to be the refrigerator he stuck to - at least, for as long as he wanted. How he managed to remember what flavor of milk tea and boba you preferred, following it up with a quick delivery while working twelves at the agency, was beyond you. Good morning texts wishing you an easy day of your own hero work, good night texts hoping that your dreams were "sweeter than you." The moment a bouquet of roses was sent to your office, you had to admit it.

You were embarrassingly attracted to Kirishima Eijirou.

Not that he minded, no. If anything, he returned the feeling tenfold. After the first date came a string of others before finally labeling it as a relationship. Movie nights, walks through the park, chaste kisses interspersed by giggles as you both laughed at whatever came to mind. The quick meetings between your lips turned into full-on sessions that left your knees weak. Being with Kirishima was easy in a way that nothing else had been.

But let's face it. Working as a full-time hero with bipolar disorder made life, well, tough. A pharmaceutical cocktail and therapy helped, turning what was the disaster of your life into a manageable mess. Episodes were few and far between, the prickling anxiety was quelled by coping techniques and medication when necessary. The days spent in a daze of your own "self-medicating" were long gone, thank whatever higher power was out there. No, life was on the upswing for you in pretty much every aspect of the phrase.

Except for your sex life.

And no, that wasn't to say that Kirishima was doing anything wrong. To be quite honest, he was doing every just right. Kissing the places you loved most, calloused hands lingering deliciously over your skin. A voice like honey whispering in your ear, beautiful moans of how gorgeous you were, how he absolutely adored you. Saying that it left you with weak, knocking knees was an understatement. He was an emotional hurricane, sending butterflies through your stomach as he showered you with praise and carefully placed lips.

Other than a complete lack of climaxing, it was amazing.

You knew this was a possibility once you had started taking medications. A loss of libido was one thing, but being unable to finish was starting to wear on you. Before you could stop yourself, you were doing the unthinkable: faking orgasms.

After all, who wants to spend close to an hour between someone's thighs just to be met with frustrated sighs and potentially awkward conversations? No, Kirishima didn't need to spend so much time on your pleasure, not when there was a high probability that you wouldn't finish at all. As long as the moans weren't straight out of a low-budget porno overly exaggerated, you figured you'd get away with it.

Getting away with it turned out to be the least of your issues. The struggle was real. Outside of the sweetest lovemaking with Kirishima, you desperately tried every trick in the book to reach an orgasm on your own. Something. Anything. You were beginning to feel pent-up, needy. The money spent on toys was starting to reach an uncomfortably high number. Time was wasted and followed up by flopping onto the bed in frustration. No amount of lube, porn, or fantasy was helping. Once you hit the hour mark, you basically gave up.

And you were now pacing the hallways of your apartment, irrational tears pricking at the corner of your eyes. Why did it matter? Orgasming was not the end all, be all of life. But the memory of before the medications, the euphoric bliss that would force your back from the mattress, that memory reared its head more often than you cared to admit. God damn it, you just wanted to feel the shudders, the rush of pleasure surging through your body, insatiable heat quenched. And you wanted to stop lying to him. The tears rimming your lash line made their arrival known, long tracks staining your cheeks.

This is, of course, when Kirishima decides to knock on your door. After all, you had planned to have a comfortable night in, a delightful line up of rom-coms at your disposal. Movies that you now wanted to throw out the nearest window. Why, why did you have to try again? He deserved so much more than a broken partner, a partner who would never be able to match him. Someone who could crash at the slightest struggle, who broke when their insecurities were brought to life.

Another set of knocks. Time to face the music.

As you gently opened the door, the drop in Kirishima's face was visible as he took in your state. Where a bright grin had been settled now featured lips drawn into a tight, worried line. After all, you did everything in your power to keep him in the dark in regards to your mental illness. Not necessarily your smartest move, in retrospect. Hindsight, you know?

The moment the door clicked behind him, Kirishima was gathering you in his arms, a large hand gently stroking the back of your head. A kiss to your temple, his forehead pressing against your hairline. Deep breaths weren't helping you at this point. Because regardless of how frustrated you were, Kirishima was safety, the warmth of his embrace a haven for you to let out the sobs that were wracking through your body.

And as the tears fell, darkening his gray tee shirt, Kirishima ran his hands up and down your back, the comforting heat of his body providing temporary relief. After moments of crying, you pressed your head against his chest, eyes glued to the linoleum floor beneath you.

A thick finger and thumb tenderly met your chin, slowly lifting your face to meet his eyes. Those usually warm red irises were dark with worry, the pad of his thumb running circles over and over against your skin. Another reminder of just how good he was. No man had ever made you feel as desired or important as Kirishima.

"Baby, what happened?" he murmured, still caressing your face so gingerly that it brought the threat of more tears.

"It's nothing, nothing important," came your quick response, avoiding any lingering eye contact. It wasn't that important. Sexual gratification came second to emotional connection, and you had that firmly in your grasp with Eijirou. Why would you risk losing someone like that?

His eyebrow narrowed at your words, and he kept your face cradled in his hands. "Please tell me, baby. I want to help."

God, that expression of pure concern. Like you were everything to him, like your hurt was his hurt. It was in that moment you knew: you couldn't keep lying to him. Whether it meant he'd leave for someone else, someone perfectly, indescribably normal; that didn't matter. If anyone deserved a picture-perfect romance, it was Kirishima.

Eijirou, I-" Your voice broke from the nerves, unable to hold his unflinching gaze. How could someone be so earnest? He nodded, those same reassuring circles urging you to speak.

"I think you deserve someone better."

He looked like you'd honest to goodness slapped him. So many emotions flashed over his usually cheerful face that it scared you. Oh, god, this wasn't what you wanted to do, but how could you not? No one wanted someone like you. Once he knew, he'd leave. Better to push him away first and just let it end now before-

"What are you talking about? Baby. I don't want anyone else. I want you." His words came out stammered, tripping over his tongue and falling into the otherwise quiet apartment. Kirishima shook his head slowly, searching your face for some form of reassurance that this wasn't what you wanted. That you didn't want him.

"I don't know why. I just, I'm too much. You'll end up getting frustrated with me and I just, I just can't take that kind of heartbreak."

"Too much? You're never too much, what are you talking about?"

The words fell before you could stop them, faster than should be discernible to the human ear. But if there was anything Eijirou was, it was attentive.

"My medicine is driving me crazy, and I know without it I'll go over the edge again. But I want to feel normal, Eiji. I can't handle feeling like I'm not normal." And it was true. Sex was so innately human, and knowing that there was a chance that you'd never be able to gain that ultimate satisfaction was driving you mad. Was this just an overreaction from a brain exhausted from constantly fighting itself, or was this a logical, albeit emotionally charged, reaction?

"Your medicine?"

There it was. What you wanted to avoid mentioning. Sure, it wasn't fair to keep it from him. But let's be honest, you'd been expecting this to end after the first few months. And now? Now you were shaking in his arms, knowing this confession would be the end of the dreamy love you'd been experiencing.

"My medicine for uh... for my, um. I have bipolar disorder. It's why I can't work on Thursdays, too. I have to go to therapy. I know I should've told you from the beginning but I just, you know, I really, really like you, and I don't-"

One finger met your lips followed by soothing shushes from his own. As if the world's weight had been lifted from his capable shoulders, Kirishima let out a heaving sigh of relief. The arm around your waist pulled you closer, his large hand splaying comfortably against your back.

"I'm not going anywhere. I just want you to be okay. What can I do for you?"

And that left you tearfully admitting it all. Longing for the physicality that would bring you closer together, the bliss of coming undone at your partner's hands. Disgust when you listened to your friends' bragging of delicious, gratifying one-night stands. Aching heat desperate to be relieved by your man only to be left at the edge, the warmth still tingling through your body. How you felt caught halfway between "normal" and "crazy" even with the drugs. And Kirishima nodded, hanging on every word.

"I'm glad you told me," he began, slowly trailing his fingertips up and down your back. "If I had known, I would've worked ten times harder. Will you let me make you feel good, honey? Please?"

How did those few sentences send you into another fit of tears? Clutching the lightweight fabric of his shirt and apologizing for the damp stains, you nuzzled against his chest in embarrassment. But he continued his motions, adept fingers working at your tense muscles.

That night, he gave you everything you wanted and more, eager to please you in a way he never had. Eyes focused, sweet nothings spilling from his lips, tender hands and featherlight kisses. Teasing and romance and dedication over hours, something you'd never experienced before.

On paper, Kirishima was perfect. Off paper, he was even more. And he fulfilled his promise to you, "I love you" slipping from his lips when you finally reached your euphoria.

"I love you too, Eijirou."

"I'll always love you more."

#kirishima eijirou #kirishima x y/n #kirishima x reader #bnha #mha #bnha x reader #bnha x y/n #bnha x gn!reader #bnha kirishima #mha kirishima #tw bipolar #tw medication #kaysays #i'm super nervous posting this one #ngl

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beckydoesthings · 4 years ago

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various fics of hxl that i adore reading! this list is quite lengthy, but feel free to message me if you have any questions!

*will continue to be updated. also, if i mistagged you, i apologize, i do not know how to tumblr*

Love Is a Rebellious Bird

E | 134k | @100percentsassy and gloria_andrews

AU in which the boys still make music. Louis is the concertmaster of the London Symphony Orchestra, Harry is the New! and Exciting! interim conductor/ex-cello prodigy who "has made Mozart cool again" according to Esquire Magazine (Louis hates him immediately, which is definitely why he internet stalked him in his dark bedroom late at night that one time), and Niall is the best. Zayn and Liam are around too.

Don't hum Bolero.

i think this tickled every bone of my musical self and also made me cry (are you seeing a theme here??) one of the first fics i fell in love with and one i keep coming back to.

Collision

E | 226k | @tequiladimples

Mythology/Fairytale!AU in which Louis is a dainty fairy with a temper who wants to be intimidating and Harry hurts people. Naturally, they hate each other.

(Featuring Liam, the big and not-so-bad wolf who’s got a thing for humans, Zayn, a human with supernaturally good looks, and Niall, the cupid who just wants his job to be easier.)

the world building in this one is insanity - so much good mythology mixed in and it made me screech with joy. i think i can firmly say that i did not expect where the plot went, but that made the story so much better.

Flour and Chocolate

M | 145k | @danosphere91

It was nice, for a bakery he supposed.

Then he approached the display cabinet.

And the foreboding slammed into him. Because every product had letters next to it. Letters. GF, DF, V, O, VGN.

What. The. Fuck?

Lifting his eyes to the chalkboard menu spread across the back wall Louis felt physically ill. ‘Gluten-free’, ‘organic’, ‘vegan’, ‘paleo’, ‘dair-…’ Wait, what the fuck was a paleo? He had entered some hipster-trash establishment and it was more than time to get out.

Louis is a single dad and Harry works at the newly opened bakery down the street.

the miscommunication in this fic is SO REAL and makes for a good read. the rest of the flour and chocolate series is also fantastic. i thoroughly enjoyed both the ziam and ed/niall arcs that bring the whole story together.

run away home

E | 106k | @hattalove

Louis stands, in the middle of a clearing with his hands in his pockets, and stares. This boy—God, this gorgeous, gorgeous boy. He seems so clumsy, confused at the best of times, but there’s a wisdom about him as he speaks, a maturity that belies his age.

Louis is hopelessly, wildly attracted to him.

or, louis is a successful jockey down on his luck, struggling to get his life back on track after an injury. harry has a horse, a house fit for a prince, and a broken heart.

it takes them a while to figure out that they need each other.

this makes my inner horse girl extraordinarily happy - even if i don’t know anything about horse racing. louis’ story in this is beautiful and makes the whole piece worth a read.

waiting for the tides to meet

E | 60k | @nauticalleeds

Louis lets out a deep breath, thinking about Harry’s soulmate. Thinking about how Harry’s soulmate is probably as beautiful as Harry, some person that Louis cannot compare to, and how the universe has chosen them to be Harry’s. Fuck the universe. “Fuck you,” he calls out to the universe. He’s aware of how crazy he sounds.

Maybe he is crazy, with how he’s falling for Harry. And fuck that, too.

Soulmate AU. Everyone is born with heterochromia — one eye is their own eye colour, while the other is the colour of their soulmate's. It's only when they meet their soulmate for the first time that their own eyes match properly. After a hazy night at a frat party, Louis wakes up to blue eyes and the shocking realization that he had met his soulmate, without any sober recollection. Seven years pass where Louis comes to terms with the fact that he'll never know who his soulmate is. Then one fated summer, a beautiful green-eyed photographer arrives at Louis' workplace, with promises of endless laughter and a familiar feeling in Louis' heart.

Featuring a lovely cup of OT5, a road trip down the coast, and a scene where Harry eats a whole head of lettuce. Don't ask why.

gorgeous soulmate AU that gives me summer cruising vibes. worth the read for the lettuce scene alone (i kid, i kid)

Do Not Go Gentle

E | 70k | @afirethatcannotdie

“This is all a game to you, isn’t it? Well, it’s not for me. This is a real life or death situation,” Louis says, spitting the words at him. “And I just don’t think you’re cut out for it.”

For a moment, they stare at each other in complete silence. Harry can feel his blood thrumming between his ears, can see Louis glaring at him, feels red-hot anger. And then all he feels, oppressively and desperately, is lust.

Suddenly Louis is surging up to him to press his lips against Harry’s. Harry walks the two of them backwards, pressing Louis back against the door. Louis oomphs in surprise and brings his hands under Harry’s scrub top, scratching at his lower back.

“Lock — oh — lock the… fucking door,” Louis mutters.

When Harry Styles starts his first day as a surgical intern, he expects a lot of things: to treat patients, to observe a surgery, to feel a bit overwhelmed. What he definitely doesn't expect, however, is that the handsome guy he kicked out of his bed this morning is also an intern.

A Grey’s Anatomy AU where tensions are high, Harry and Louis are hooking up in secret, and no one has time for love. Or do they?

okay i’ve watched maybe 3 episodes of Gray’s Anatomy, but i feel like this encompasses the vibe of the show: medical stuff with a hefty dose of angst and sexual tension

Falling For Me Won’t Be A Mistake

M | 58k | @all-these-larrythings

Harry is married to his job and so overworked that he doesn't know how to stop. All it takes is a forced Hawaiian get-a-away, the warm tropical breeze of the island, and the most beautiful, elusive man he's ever seen to make him remember what living is like outside of work. Well, that, and the little souvenir he accidentally takes home with him.

one of my favorite mpreg fics so if that’s not your cup of tea, then don’t read it. i love surgeon harry with a vengeance, but honestly Gems and Niall are iconic in this one.

Watching the World Fall

E | 11k | @crazyupsetter why won’t it let me tag :(

This segment has been going on long enough that Louis knows what’s coming before James starts in on it, trying to sell him on something he knows that Louis wouldn’t normally be buying. But there’s four cameras surrounding him, and an audience watching him expectantly, so if Louis wants to continue convincing people that he’s doing just fine, he’s going to have to go along with it.

“We have a whole host of single men backstage waiting to meet you, Louis,” James tells him. “We want to help you find love tonight, on Late Late Live Tinder. Is this okay? Do you want to play?”

It actually kind of makes sense that his first date after the break-up is going to be just as public as said break-up. Something like coming full circle.

“Alright, James,” Louis agrees, hopping down off his stool.

“Okay, come down to the stage,” James says. Louis can’t even tell whether the excitement in his voice is genuine or not. “Right now, come on down!”

i have a soft spot the size of Antarctica for Late Late AU fics (we stan James Corden) and for exes to lovers so this checks all the boxes.

autumn leaves

E | 27k | @suspendrs

“Brave?” Harry frowns, caught off guard. “No, not particularly.”

“You seem brave,” Louis decides, pushing off the wall and stepping on the butt of his cigarette. “You are strong, and you are not mean. That’s good,” he assures, touching Harry’s arm gently.

“Thank you, but that’s not true,” Harry smiles ruefully. “I’m really not anything special.”

Or, Harry is an American soldier in France during World War II, and Louis is a French waiter that doesn't mean to fall in love with him.

love love french AUs and while this one isn’t sunshine and rainbows, it’s a beautiful yet heart wrenching piece. warning for period typical homophobia

caught up in your love affair

NR | 8k | @disgruntledkittenface

“And the corgis took to you straightaway,” Harry remarks.

“That’s true,” Louis chuckles.

“I’ve spent the last 29 years being barked at,” Harry deadpans, jerking his hand toward Louis, “this one walks in, absolutely nothing.”

Louis outright giggles at that, saying, “They were just lying on my feet during tea.”

“Wagging tails,” Harry says, shaking his head.

“It’s because they don’t understand flirting,” Louis tells him, “you can’t charm them the way you do everyone else.”

Royal AU. Prince Harry announces his engagement to Louis Tomlinson in an interview with longtime friend and BBC host Nick Grimshaw. Inspired by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

just. 8k of royal fluff. that’s literally it and i adore it so much.

Apples Always Fall (As I Do For You)

M | 54k | @rainbowsandgucci

”Due to unforeseen circumstances, help is needed here at the orchard for the impending apple season. Looking for someone able to start within the next week or two at the most, is willing to do whatever miscellaneous tasks are needed, such as picking & packing apples, running the cash register, and other handywork that may need to be done. Must be good with customers, and able to lift up to 50lbs. Help will be needed until at the least the end of October. Please contact the number found on this page, or come out to the orchard and ask for Harry. All the love xx” --- Louis is staying at his Aunt's farm in a small town in Minnesota for four months. To deal with the boredom that sets in a week into his stay, he starts working at the local apple orchard, owned by twenty six year old Harry Styles. Louis quickly finds himself falling in love with the orchard, and he finds a family in Harry's friends Niall, Liam, and Zayn. He also starts to fall in love with Harry. Falling in love with him turns out to be the easy part.

i never thought i would enjoy an apple orchard fic?? but it’s so good?? farmer harry makes me laugh to think about, but the heartbreak in this fic is so. real.

Mine Would Be You

E | 114k | @crinkle-eyed-boo

Louis blinks his eyes open, his eyelids fluttering as the room swims around him. He takes several gulps of beer once he confirms that he’s definitely not hallucinating, that the very first portrait Harry Styles ever painted of him is hanging on that wall.

Louis stares at the wall, his heart jackrabbiting in his chest as he realizes that there’s not just one painting of him, there’s five, the portraits lined up like they’re some sort of storyboard depicting the rise and fall of his deepest love. His greatest heartache. A pain that cut him so deep that he left the fucking country, severing all ties with his life in New York, now suddenly surrounding him as if he’d never left.

Fucking shit motherfucker fuck.

Louis returns to New York City five years after he left it – and the love of his life – behind. He didn't intend to see Harry again, but fate has a funny way of pulling them together, whether they like it or not. After making a begrudging truce, they both start to wonder: Would it be so bad if history repeated itself?

exes to lovers drama but make it extra sad. the fact that we see so many facets to this story just makes it all the more painful, yet beautiful. this fic also reminds me of how much i love one mister niall horan.

One for Luck

E | 96k | @leavingonatrain

The very first time Louis remembers hearing Harry Styles' deep, deep voice, he's just won gold at the World Equestrian Games and he's officially back on Great Britain's Olympic team. He's also three sheets to the wind, drunk on victory and champagne, and there's a gorgeous boy whispering in his ear. Life's grand.

(AU: Louis and Harry are professional riders on the British Olympic team.)

again, i know nothing about horses, but i like to pretend i do for the sake of this fic. it’s beautiful, it’s smutty what else could you ask for?

Nothing But You On My Mind

E | 83k | @absoloutenonsense

Louis Tomlinson is a PR manager hired to improve the image of royal bad-boy Prince Harry Styles. Unfortunately for him, that means being faced with the Prince's constant innuendos, incessant dirty jokes, and relentless flirting. Louis just wants to make it to Princess Gemma's coronation; once she's crowned Queen, his contract is up and he never has to see the Prince again.

i absolutely. definitely. sobbed tears at this fic. it’s just so beautifully painful to read. don’t want to spoil anything, but this is a must.

Adore You

M | 67k | @isthatyoularry

“We invited our new acquaintances from uptown. You’ve simply got to meet their oldest son!” said his mother with a flourish, and suddenly it became abundantly clear as to why his parents had so adamantly demanded he join them in Deansville for the entirety of the summer.

Against his wishes, Harry spends the holidays at his family’s summer estate, and is reluctantly pulled into a courtship he didn’t ask for. Harry doesn’t want to get married, but Louis does. They don’t fit, but then again they really, really do.

Vaguely set in the 1920’s. Headpieces, jazz, fashionable canes, and flapper dresses, and that.

i strongly relate to harry in this one! one of my favorite historical AUs and honestly i love the thought of louis in well fitting suits.

leave it to the breeze

E | 81k | @hattalove

Louis couldn’t be prouder of his bake, but there’s something—there’s something. Something about Harry Styles and the earnest way he measures, pours, mixes, scrapes. Something about the tip of his tongue poking out of his mouth as he knocks the air out of his batter.

or a great british bake off au in which louis cares about winning and winning only, harry is made of sunshine and rainbow sprinkles, and niall sticks his nose into other people's business. also featuring liam as louis's best friend-slash-concerned mother, and zayn as a macaron connoisseur.

i. love. the. great british baking show. baking + h&l is amazing. and another reminder as to why niall is the absolute best.

Paint The Sky With Stars

M | 62k | @icanhazzalou grrr let me tag

On 10 April 1912, Harry Styles boards the finest ship the world has ever seen. Still grieving the death of their mother, he and his sister are being sent to America to live with a callous uncle who cares more about his business connections than family. Harry prepares himself for a long, disappointing voyage alone in his stateroom.

Louis Tomlinson has borrowed and saved, and finally has enough to purchase a Third Class ticket to America. With all of his belongings in a single ruck sack, he boards the Titanic filled with hope for a brighter future. Never one to sit still, he can’t resist exploring the massive ship, and soon goes sneaking into First Class in a stolen steward’s uniform.

By a twist of fate, Louis finds himself in Harry’s stateroom, entranced by the most attractive man he’s ever laid eyes on. He keeps returning day after day, even if he doesn’t understand what it is about Harry that continues pulling him in. That’s all right; Louis has a week to figure it out, and Harry is plenty willing to help.

Except they don’t have a week. They have four days. Because on 15 April, their entire world will be turned upside down.

Or, the historically accurate Titanic AU with a happy ending.

gorgeous historical fic that’s so accurate and painstakingly written. i keep coming back to it!

When It’s Late At Night

M | 25k | @all-these-larrythings

Louis has zero interest in an ex-boybander turned solo artist when his appearance on the show gets announced, but that's exactly who he gets stuck with when Harry Styles shows up at the Late Late show to promote the release of his debut album. For an entire fucking week.

The Late Late prompt that we all need to get through this excruciatingly hard time.

remember when i said i love Late Late AUs? yeah. i love that louis gives absolutely zero shits in this fic until he gives all the shits.

Chasing Empty Spaces

E | 79k | @domestic-harry

The year is 1934 and Harry Styles was to inherent the largest tobacco firm in the south. His parents have picked out the “perfect” girl for him to marry and he has the privilege of receiving the highest education possible. The problem was, Harry hadn’t realized he didn’t actually want any part of that future until he met a mechanic named, Louis Tomlinson.

gorgeous historical AU that goes through Harry’s struggle with his sexuality wonderfully. this one also made me cry.

Resist Everything Except Temptation

E | 100k | @domestic-harry

The lethargic sound of heels clicking against wood resonated across the sea. Footsteps descended the staircase, every assured step creating a menacing aura as it grew closer. Perspiration gathered along Louis’ palms as the rhythmic sound halted in front of him.

“Captain,” Malik greeted.

Louis watched out of his peripheral as Malik’s boots shuffled back a few steps. Sweat matted the hair along the nape of Louis’ neck as he waited for something to happen. He felt as if a sharp blade was twisting his gut as the silence became tangible. There was a metallic slide of a sword being pulled out of its sheath, the sound startling Louis out of his cocoon of sterile shock. His shoulders jumped as the tip of a blade flattened underneath his jaw. Louis’ distorted reflection stared back at him in the polished metal. Engraved rose petals twisted his appearance as they crawled up the length of the sword. The sword lifted and took Louis’ chin with it.

Standing in front of Louis was Captain Styles.

The one where Louis is the commodore's son who is forced to become a part of Harry's crew when he is captured.

love this pirate AU that’s got one badass gemma styles. also, harry as a super cool pirate in gorgeous clothes makes me super happy!

i’ll make this feel like home

E | 49k

Harry to groans himself and then takes a deep breath. “Okay, well. Here’s the thing. I peed on a stick.”

Louis isn’t able to get more than a shocked “What!” out before Harry’s steamrolling on.

“I peed on a stick and it says it’s positive, but you always prattle on about how it’s best to go to the doctor’s before you get excited, you know to confirm it because sometimes hormones are off or you have like a tumor or some shit and get false positives and what if I’m dying and-”

“You’re pregnant?!” Louis shouts out, stomach dropping as the words leave his mouth.

“Um, yeah… maybe.”

[the one where Louis' hopelessly in love with his best mate... who just happens to be pregnant with another man's baby.]

baby momma harry with hot mess!Louis is a recipe for disaster, but this one has plenty of fluff to make up for it.

Hands Clasped Tight

E | 44k | @afirethatcannotdie

“What am I looking at here?” Harry asks.

“This, my friends, is a ‘proof’ Instagram account, run by your students,” Liam announces.

“It’s got all this stuff about how the two of you are together,” Niall adds.

“I heard about that,” says one of the math teachers. “Confiscated a kid’s phone today when they were looking at it. I have to say, the evidence that you’re dating is pretty damning.”

“Really,” Louis says dryly. “Do you think being married for three years might have something to do with it?”

Or the one where Harry and Louis are high school teachers and their students have been playing matchmaker for over a year. Little do they know, Harry and Louis are already married.

love love teacher harry and louis that’s mostly funny fluff with a little angst. just a teeny amount. reminds me of my own experiences with meddling students haha.

*updated 2/16/21*

#fic recs #hl #hlcreators #ao3 #in no particular order #message me for other fics!#yourlarrysource

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rons-hermiones · 3 years ago

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Come Find Me

by rons-hermiones

Summary: Unplanned, Hermione is forced to spend Christmas at the Burrow due to her grandmother falling very ill. After being ignored by Hermione for weeks, Ron is determined to show her how much she means to him. Just before he gets the chance to tell her, Bellatrix Lestrange shows up with other plans for Hermione. Can Ron get to her before it's too late? (Ron/Hermione Half-Blood Prince AU)

Rating: M for language & dark themes in later chapters.

Chapter Forty Two

Ron goes back to his room with a lot on his mind.

He hopes he doesn’t let it show because Hermione always has been and always will be inquisitive. The second she realizes something’s off she won’t be shy about asking him about it.

And he’s always been a shite liar and she’s always been persistent and both of those things are amplified given their current situation. He isn’t even sure he could lie to her again if he tried.

“She’s always just wanted you Ron.��

Harry’s word plays over and over with every step he climbs up to the attic.

Admittedly, Ron’s been nothing short of emotional as of late and he knows Harry wouldn’t play with his feelings or get his hopes up. Especially now.

When he faces his door he does his best to drop all the selfish thoughts he has about Hermione wanting him. About her admitting as much to him as the two of them live out the rest of their days not only as best friends, but as lovers.

Shaking his head, he takes a deep breath and wipes his sweaty palms on his jean clad legs.

Healer appointment. Focus on the healers appointment.

With that last thought, he turns the brass knob and pushes his creaking door open.

Thankfully, Hermione’s awake and looks better than she did when he left. He was afraid she was going to be sick last time he saw her. The look of disgust and the palness across her features after repeating Bellatrix’s words was an image pungent in his mind.

However, now she looks calmer. Her nose is in a book, the book he gifted her no less, as Narcissa sits behind her and gently strokes her hair which is now in a loose plait.

“Hey.” He says softly.

She peers up from the text and offers a shaky smile. Though it seems forced, the look in her brown eyes lets him know she’s grateful for his presence and that alone makes him feel like he can do anything.

Soon Harry appears from behind him, breaking whatever trance he and Hermione were locked into.

“Hello.” The Chosen One says a bit stiffly, no doubt because of the fourth person in the room. “Did Ron tell you the plan?” He asks aloud.

The ginger inwardly groaned at his abruptness, “I was getting to that, thank you.”

“What plan?” Narcissa asks as Hermione also perks up.

“Just that Harry will stay at The Burrow with Narcissa while you and I go to your appointment. This way he can keep Mum from poking around.” Ron says casually, knowing the subject of her going to St. Mungo was a bit sensitive ever since she found out about her magic. Or rather, lack thereof.

“Very well.” Narcissa says slipping out from behind Hermione and rising from the bed. “Do you mind if I use the loo before the lot of you leave? Two footsteps will be less suspicious when there are three of you up here.” She says.

Weasley flicks his eyes to an annoyed looking Harry before he sighs aloud.

“Alright, I’ll show you.” He agrees half heartedly as he walks out of the room.

Once they leave Ron shuts the door softly before stepping further into the room and sitting at the edge of his bed, by her sock covered feet.

“Your hair looks pretty.” He tells her.

At this, Hermione twinges pink as her uninjured nimble fingers softly caress the intricately woven hair.

He swallows, willing himself to ask what he needs to say, “Are you ready for the appointment?”

The blush immediately leaves her cheeks as her entire face turns a ghostly white.

“Mione.” He says sadly, placing his hand gently on her uncasted calf and giving it a small squeeze.

Suddenly her nose scrunches as a small sniffle sounds.

“No, come on, please don’t. It’ll be alright I swear.” She tips her head down, “Hey, you’re still as much of a witch as you ever were.”

Hermione’s eyes remained trained on the orange quilt. Gently, Ron reaches out and tips her chin up with two fingers.

“How many witches or wizards, for that matter, can say that they’ve gotten all O’s? Or how many underage wizards have apparated without a license, without so much as a lesson? Not even Dumbledore.”

At this she lets out a watery chuckle. It sounds strangled, but it’s something.

“There she is.” He smiles as her eyes finally meet his. His face turns serious, as he goes on, “No witch or wizard can say they’ve endured the Cruciatus Curse as much as you and still be alive, to still be brilliant. And besides Harry, not many can say they even survived You-Know-Who.” The voice grew quiet hoping his words wouldn't upset her, but help her realize how special she is.

A few tears leak out of her eyes but after a moment she bites her lip hard and slowly nods.

“Brightest Witch of Our Age.” He whispers softly as he leans in close to her.

At the feeling of his breath tickling the loose strands of her hair she allows her eyes to flutter shut as she revels in him.

The smell of him, the feel of him.

The feeling of the boy- no man she’s come to love.

It’s strange really, when did her brave Gryffindor keeper, once a little boy whose biggest fear was spiders and greatest desire was to be locked alone in Honeydukes, become a man?

Somehow it just makes her realize she loves him even more than she thought possible.

That’s why this appointment was so important.

It was the one thing giving her hope to one day talk again, so that she could talk so much he’d get tired of her. That she could work up the courage to share her experiences, but also tell him thank you.

Tell him “I love you’.

Sighing, so her breath mingles with his, she leans forward and presses her forehead gently against his. Letting him know she hears him, that she’s grateful for his words.

In turn, he presses against her, shifting one hand to her hair to hold her more firmly, but still gently against him.

One of her shaking hands works its way to his cheeks as she speaks, “R-ready.” She promises.

They wish they could stay in this moment forever.

...

Mr. Weasley had taken some time off of work to drive Hermione and Ron into London.

She felt terrible she drew him away from such important duties on her behalf, only growing her frustrations about not being able to travel more efficiently.

Of course Ron had sensed her guilt when his father mentioned as much. He was becoming rather inquisitive these days. So, he took Hermione’s hand in the back seat and whispered to her that she was the most important thing right now to him and his family.

Though the comment made her blush like mad and didn’t do a whole lot to ease the fact she felt like a burden, she just nodded.

It’s not like she could say much anyway.

However, what it did make her think of was something else. A terrible thought, if you ask her.

The fact of the matter is, it shouldn’t be Ron’s father driving her to St. Mungo’s, it should be hers.

And if they were alive right now, she’s sure that would be the case. Her father behind the wheel and her Mum in the passenger seat. She was never one for driving through London traffic.

God she missed them.

She missed them so much that they seemed to be everywhere.

When they pass a fabric shop on the way in, she’s reminded of how much her Mum loved to sew. Or when they were at a stop light and on the corner was a father buying his young daughter an ice cream cone, she’s reminded of when her father would do the same with her at the park by her house.

Her house. She misses that too.

She misses the memories there. She misses what she used to know she was coming home to.

Her parents.

Now it was just full of things.

Full of things that she wanted. Things that represented her parents and things that they loved.

Things that would help her feel closer to them.

If she even deserves to feel that way. Wherever they are, they’re probably ashamed to have her as a daughter.

She’s a liar. She got them killed. They died because she was caught up in the magical world and now she can’t even cast a bloody charm anymore.

None of this was worth it.

Hermione’s doing her best not to cry. Knowing if she does, Ron will surely comfort her, something she doesn’t deserve.

She doesn’t deserve to be told her parents loved her and that they’d be proud of her and everything she’s done. Because even if that were true, her parents shouldn’t think that of her.

Not after all she’s done.

Whether it's a good or bad thing, her thoughts come to a stand still, as does the car, as it pulls up to St. Mungo’s.

Arthur turns in the drivers seat to look at the teens, “Alright, Ronnie you help Hermione out, I’ll open the door.” He instructs his son.

Complying, Ron unbuckles his seat belt and goes to the boot to take out her chair. At first he struggles to unfold it, but soon he gets it as he wheels it to her now open door, thanks to his Dad.

Bending down and into the back seat he looks at her, noting the far off look in her eyes, but choosing not to comment. He’d fear this would happen.

“I’ll lift you alright? Only for a moment, just don’t want you to get hurt.” He tells her, knowing how much she must hate needing all this help, even though no part of him minds giving it to her.

She nods slowly, awaiting his embrace.

When it comes, she grips onto his jumper tightly during the transition before being placed down effortlessly on her new companion, which she loathed.

Hopefully this visit won’t be a total bust and they’ll give her crutches at the very least.

Ron grabbed the handles and began guiding her through the front doors as his father followed next to them. Once inside, Arthur stopped, turning to face the pair.

“Would it be alright if you guys headed up on your own? Kingsley told me earlier he’d be here to help work on an appeal for Hermione’s apparating underage and unlicensed fine. He needs some of your records to prove it was a necessity and I’ve got to sign off on it.” He told the pair.

Great, just another thing the Weasley’s and now Mr. Shacklebolt had to worry about.

Hermione just nodded. If the poor man was missing work to take her, at the very least she’d let him get some done here.

“Very well. Good luck. Remember, third floor Ronnie. I’ll come up when I’m done.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ron said, shooing him off as he made his way to the lift.

When they finally reach the Spell Damage ward, Ron looks as if he may be ill. Hermione supposes he spent a lot of time in this waiting room, worrying himself sick.

She contemplates reaching out and grabbing his hand to let him know it was okay, that this time she was here with him.

Just as she’s about to go through with it, she becomes distracted by two voices across from her.

A woman and a man. They look to be middle aged and the matching rings tell her what she needs to know. They’re clearly married.

“Your Mum’s signing some paperwork now, your Dad’s with her as well.” The man told her gently.

The shorter one, with glasses, nods, “I reckon we’ll need to start the arrangements won’t we?” She sniffles.

“Arrangements? What arrangements Delia?”

“The funeral for Gran. Mum will be a wreck, we should help…” The words fade as she stops listening.

Hermione’s eyes grow wide at the words as she peers up at Ron, gently tugging on his sleeve.

He looks down at her, she looks so small, so fragile, yet so gorgeous.

“W-want th-at.” She croaks with doe-like eyes.

Could this be it? Could this be the moment? She was just watching that couple snogging in the corner, after all.

“What do you want darling? Anything you need and I’ll give it to you.”

And he means it.

Weakly she points to where the two of them stood, now embracing, rather than engaged in a lip lock.

A hug? Does she want a hug?

Merlin, just ask! Don’t eff this up.

“I’m not sure I understand.” He tells her softly, definitely not the first time he’s said that to her.

“A-a,” he can tell she’s getting emotional as his stomach pulls in anticipation, “fu-funeral.” She whispers brokenly.

And shite, he wants to punch himself in the face for being such a prat and getting his hopes up in a hospital of all places, while she's grieving on top of that all!

“For your parents?” He asks knowingly.

She nods slowly, moving one hand to wipe at her eyes.

It breaks his heart.

“Alright, we can do that.” He promises her, reaching out to squeeze her hand. He would do anything she asked. “I’ll talk to Mum about it when we get back. We’ll prepare it just how you want. Something to honor your parents… and your grandmother.”

Okay, now he really wishes he punched himself in the face! That really was not at all how he intended to break that news to her, but it just sort of came out. The couple in the corner was whispering about their own grandmother and he just- ugh! He hates himself.

Her bottom lip quivers before the floodgates open.

Instantly, he crushes her best he can to his chest, quieting her cries with the front of his jumper.

“Sh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it- I-” He inhales a shaky breath, “I have the letter at home that your parents sent. They said it was peaceful, that she thought of you and that she’s with your grandfather now.”

At his words her glassy eyes grow wide again. The words offer a little comfort to her. To have something from her parents and something about her grandmother waiting for her.

Something she knows she can have.

“I’ll give it to you first thing when we get back to The Burrow.” He swears, unashamedly pressing a kiss to the crown of her head.

Thankfully, he feels her nod into him, taking it as a good sign that she’s still receptive to his words.

“Hampstead.” It takes her a while to say as her voice shakes over every syllable.

“You wanna have it in Hampstead?” He tries.

She shakes her head.

“G-go.” She feels stupid, honestly. Babies can form fuller sentences then she can but she really is lacking the energy to have at it right now.

“You wanna see your house?” He whispers slowly into her ear.

Thank god Ron knows her as well as he does.

She nods.

Without a thought, he pulls her closer and responds. “Of course. I’ll talk to Dad about it. I’ll talk to my parents about everything you want, it’s the least I can do. And if they say no Mione, I promise I’ll bring you there myself darling.”

He supposes it really is a conversation he and his parents need to have, not only for travel purposes but also for Hermione’s own sake. Arthur saw her house after the attack, he needs to make sure nothing there will set her off in any way. And if there is something, he wants it gone.

Because Hermione wants to see her house and if he can give her anything, he was sure as hell going to.

And maybe because she’s exhausted both physically, from traveling, and emotionally from all she’s just found out, but she can’t bring herself to verbally thank Ron.

Instead she snakes one hand to rest on his cheek and gently places her lips there.

Her lips on his skin makes him feel warm and tingly inside. He’s briefly taken back to the first time she’s done this, before his fifth year quidditch match.

He remembers a time not too long ago where he thought that would be the closest he ever got to kissing Hermione.

Having her here like this again, he knows to never take advantage of that again.

Of her.

When she pulls back a pretty blush is on her cheeks, as he feels his own face burn red.

He offers her a grin, one that Hermione could only describe as purely Ron.

She has no choice but to offer a small, real, genuine smile in return.

“Hermione Granger!” A shrill voice calls out, ruining the moment.

He sighs, but stands up, maneuvering her chair to the mediwitch.

“Hello.” He tells the woman.

“You’re Hermione Granger?” She asks, not looking up from the clipboard, not bothering with a hello.

“Well no, she is.” He says, as if the wheelchair wasn’t a dead giveaway. Oh yeah and the fact he was a bloke.

“Will you be coming in with her?” She asks next, scrubbing something onto the parchment with her quill.

“Uh…”

“Well?” The woman finally looks at the pair, glasses pushed down to her nose as she taps her nails against the board impatiently.

Hermione nods for Ron, making him breathe a sigh in relief, he didn’t want to assume anything, but he hoped.

“Very well. This way please.” The witch says next as she walks along the corridor.

Soon enough the witch leads them to a room, which much to both Ron and Hermione’s relife, looks nothing like the one she was staying in for so long.

It’s more of a standard exam room. A high up table with a thin sheet pulled over it, a chair next to it, as well as a scale in the corner. It reminded Hermione a lot of her Muggle physician’s office.

Hermione sat idly in the chair, not even bothering with mounting the high table, waiting for the mediwitch to check her vitals, or something. After all, this was her first healing appointment.

Instead, the woman places the clipboard down and turns to them. “Healer Jamison just finished with another patient. He’ll be in soon.” With that, she leaves.

In her wake, Hermione can’t help but find the fact she didn’t examine her at all very odd. It soon dawns on her that if the unhealed bruises and cuts aren’t enough of a reminder, that her body can’t handle magic.

Before Ron can even speak to her, ask how she is, things like that, a knock sounds on the door.

After a moment, the door is pushed open. Hermione doesn’t remember him all that well, but she knows it's Healer Jamison. He’s a plump, older man, with a scruffy white beard and thin white hair to match.

“Hello Miss Granger.” He says before turning to Ron, “Mr. Weasley.” he nods.

“Hello sir.” Ron says, knowing Hermione probably felt rude for being unable to properly greet the man.

“Before we begin with anything else, I have to ask, have you been able to speak?”

Hermione gulps and shakes her head, almost in embarrassment.

“That’s alright.” The healer assures, “I’m just going to take a look at your throat. Better for us to be safe.”

In acknowledgment, Hermione nods, knowing what this entails. However, instead of pulling out a flashlight, the man lights a lumos on the tip of his wand.

“Open.” He tells her.

The brunette does as she’s asked, sticking her tongue out as far as it can go so he can get a good look. After a moment, he seems satisfied, because he pulls his wand away and she closes her mouth.

“There’s a bit of phlegm building up in there. Have you been having trouble breathing?” He asks her.

She shakes her head.

“Alright, if you notice, please come in immediately. Also, keep an eye out if you begin coughing every now and again, but there’s nothing to worry about right now.”

Yeah, except for the fact I can’t even string along a sentence.

Next, Jamison checked her cuts and bruises. He redressed a few wounds and put new bandages on the nastier ones. After, he asked her about her leg and arm, both in casts, asking her to hold up a number from one to five on how bad the pains were.

Ron’s chest tightens when she holds up a five.

“Now, for the next part of the exam, I’m afraid this is going to be a bit of a risk.”

“Risk?” Ron asks as Hermione goes stiff.

“Yes. I need to perform a scan to check on the remnants of dark magic in her system.” He says to Ron before directing his attention back to Hermione. “Our hope is that some of your cells killed it off, but we can’t be sure. The scan doesn’t require a lot of magic on my end, therefore a lot won’t be put into your body Miss Granger, but there is a possibility it could do a lot of damage. Do you consent to a scan?”

Ron turns to look at her, hoping she’ll refuse.

Of course she doesn’t.

“Y-yes.” She chokes out.

Jamison seems pleased with her words and the fact she spoke aloud.

“Very well. Give me a moment to page Healer Evangeline. We’ll need another professional in the room just in case.” With that, he exited.

“Mione.” Ron moaned painfully, not even being able to fathom the thought of her hurt or worse again.

She looks at him and frowns.

She had to say yes. He knows that. He knows how much her magic means to her, he just wishes things were different.

“I know. I know, I just- I don’t wanna see you hurt love, not again.” Never again.

Hermione reaches over and squeezes his hand. Trying to let him know she’ll be okay. Deep down he knows she will be too, she’s too strong to let a medical scan best her.

At least he hopes.

Not even a moment later another knock sounds as Jamison walks in with a younger looking woman with dark brown hair and glasses perched at the end of her nose. She looks vaguely familiar.

“Hello Miss Granger. I’m Healer Evangeline, we worked a bit together but you were pretty out of it.” She tells the girl.

Hermione likes her, she seems sweet.

“Hello Ron.” She adds after the fact.

Ron waves weakly, too stressed about what could happen to form coherent words.

“Now, we’ve discussed the risks, but one thing I can assure you is that you’re going to feel very tired after, alright?” Jamison informs, making Hermione nod weakly. “Mr. Weasley, would you mind laying Miss Granger down on the table?”

Ron complies, gently lifting her onto the scratchy sheet. Once he sets her down, he grabs her hand, and she accepts by weaving their fingers together and trying to offer a smile.

He sees it falter, he knows she’s as scared as he is.

“Alright, are you ready for me to begin?” The older man asks.

Reluctantly Hermione nods, as her grip on Ron’s hand tightens.

The edge of Jamison's wand lights a tealish color as the light stretches forward and works its way up Hermione’s body.

Upon the impact she jumps slightly as her eyes shut tightly and her face contorted in pain.

“Stop!” Ron roared.

Evangeline placed a hand on his shoulder, “it’s almost done. She’ll be fine. She’s strong.” The woman reminds him.

Trying to ground himself, Ron focuses on the feel of her hand as he begins whispering to her quietly, “Come on Mione. You’re okay, love. You got this.”

It’s eerily similar to when he’d talk to her whilst she was unctuous, when he was unsure she would ever wake again.

The thought makes him sick.

Thankfully, the light soon goes back into Jamison's wand as the room fades back to normal and Hermione’s body visibly relaxes.

“Very good.” He praises.

Meanwhile, Ron wipes some sweat from her forehead, placing a light kiss in his hands wake. “You’re brilliant.” He whispers.

Tiredly, she looks up at him.

“I’m going to go read the results.” Jamison interrupts. “It’ll just take me a few minutes. In the meantime Healer Evangeline has some of her own examinations to perform on Miss Granger, yes?”

The woman nods, “Yes. Ron, would you mind giving us some privacy?”

While he didn’t love the idea of leaving her alone he understood some things he shouldn’t see. Like if she was checking any cuts on her chest or ribs, knowing she had broken a few. Or maybe in more personal spots.

Though she surely didn’t have an injury down there. Right? Wait, what even was Healer Evangeline’s title anyway?

“Right yeah. I’ll be right outside.” He tells Hermione more than anyone else, as he follows Jamison out of the room.

In the waiting room, he can’t help but let his curiosity get the best of him as he walks over to the information desk.

“Excuse me.” He says to the little wizard behind it.

“How can I help you sir?” He asks politely, large improvement from the mediwitch.

“Hi, I was wondering what Healer Evangeline specialized in?” He gulped, wow he sounded like a right tosser.

“Evangeline is our leading gynecologist here at St. Mungo’s!” He praised.

Ron went pale.

“Is your girl pregnant? She’s the best with stuff like that.”

“Uh- uh.” He stutters unsure what to say.

“I won’t tell, don’t worry. Good luck kid.” The man smiles before returning to his paperwork.

Slowly, Ron sauntered back over to the door. He pressed his back against the wall next to it and hunched over. He placed his hands on his knees and took a few deep breaths.

He wasn’t daft, he knew what women's healers did.

It was just standard, wasn't it? Relax Ron. Nothings wrong. You’re overthinking. Death Eaters aren’t that bad right?

Part of him knows he’s kidding himself.

Images and thoughts flash in his brain that make him think of nothing but pure murder. His fists clench at his sides as his jaw tightens.

Deep breaths Ron. Deep breaths. Just ask Mum when you go home if it's routine. Don’t freak out. Not here. Don’t do that to Hermione.

Over and over Ron told himself it was procedure until Jamison returned.

“Alright my boy?” He asked, noticing his heaving.

Taking a shaking breath Ron nodded.

Jamison furrows his brow but doesn’t say anything more. Instead, he knocks on the door and after hearing a ‘come in’ from Evangeline, the pair enter.

Upon seeing Hermione again Ron eases a bit knowing she’s okay. That she’s here. That whatever they did to her they will never be able to do again.

With a flick of his wand a large image is projected of what seems to be a white outline covered in black blobs.

“Here’s your scan.”

Ron tenses, now focused on an entirely new problem.

That’s a lot of dark magic.

“Not much has changed, just the magic moving throughout your body. There has been slight improvement and it’s good news that you were able to withstand the scan today. The hope now is that as your external cuts heal, your body will then be able to exert its energy on internal matters. So while it isn’t the best news, it’s not bad either. Keep taking it easy. It is crucial that you heal in order to do magic again, alright?”

The news upsets Hermione. Like Jamison said, it's not terrible, but it’s not great. She wants to cry at the imprint Bellatrix left on her.

At the fact that she’s essentially made her into the thing she always taunted heart as being, magicless.

But right now, she’s too exhausted to even think properly, her body so spent from undergoing magic.

“I can tell you’re exhausted. If any questions come up please floo me.” Jamison comments, signaling Ron to move her to the chair.

She’s so limp in his arms, clearly fighting off sleep. Once he places her down he squats and brushes some of her hair back. “Rest now, love. It’ll be okay.” He promises.

Weakly she nods as her eyes flutter shut as her head luls to the side.

“Thank you both so much, but I reckon we should get going. I know my Mum will want to floo you Jamison so you’ll hear from us soon. I know this one will have a lot of questions as well.” he says weakly.

“Of course son, let me get the door for you.”

With another exchange of thank you’s, Ron leaves. He finds his Dad in the lobby as they walk together to the car. On the way he fills him in best he can, biting his tongue about the questions he has about Healer Evangeline. The good news is, his father says the fine for Hermione apparating without a license should be dropped within the week.

Other than that they don’t speak.

Ron just enjoys Hermione’s sleeping form across his lap as he strokes her hair. Letting the feeling be a reminder that she’s here with him.

The whole way home his thoughts are plagued by the things Hermione probably underwent in that place. Unforgivables. Starvation. Physical torment. Torture. Maybe even worse things.

It makes him sick.

He supposes the thought of not knowing almost makes it worse, like he has no choice but to theorize the worse. This is certainly something he and Narcissa will need to discuss.

Then he thinks of her wish to have a funeral.

The promise he made her of going to visit Hampstead.

He knows he should do it before Hermione wakes up, hoping it’ll take one thing off her plate. Like Jamison said, she needs to rest. To heal.

Soon enough he sees the crooked shape of The Burrow come into view as his father pulls up onto the grass.

Ron opts for carrying her into the house, not bothering with the chair. It worries him a bit that she doesn’t even stir.

“Go put her upstairs, then come down. I’m sure your Mum will want to know about the appointment.” Arthur says, clapping him on the shoulder.

Ron nods and takes the steps two at a time.

He lays Hermione in his bed gently, tucking the quilt around her.

“I’ll be back soon, darling.” He promises before going back down the steps.

When he arrives back in the living room he finds his parents talking in hushed whispers and his Mum, for whatever reason, looks right pissed. She has her arms crossed against her chest and a scowl on her face.

“Mum, Dad I need to talk to you about something.” He says gently, hoping that her anger wasn’t directed at him.

“Conveniently, I need to discuss something with you as well. Shall we go to the kitchen.” She’s not asking as she’s already pushing her way there.

Ron isn't sure why she’s so angry. He was surprised and almost a little embarrassed that she didn’t even ask about Hermione’s appointment. Nevertheless, he follows, trying to recall whatever the hell he did to piss her off.

Just last night she was praising him, telling him how proud she was of him.

His eyes bulge at the sight he’s met by, as do his fathers.

“You wanted to talk to Ronald? Let’s talk.” She bites out.

Ron’s eyes flick over to where Harry is standing, looking uncomfortable and apologetic.

He mouths a quick ‘sorry’ to his best mate. Ron ignores it, eyes too focused on the fact that standing next to Harry is Ginny and next to Ginny, is Narcissa Malfoy.

#Ron and Hermione #Ron Weasley #rons-hermiones come find me #ron x hermione #romione #romione fanfic #hp fanfic #hp #sixth year #Hermione Granger

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crystxlclear · 4 years ago

Text

sudden desire

chapter six: previously on: chaotic stupid

part seven of sudden desire

prologue / one / two / three / four / five / masterlist

in which two best friends won’t admit they’re in love so decide to have a baby together instead.

pairing: marcus pike x original female character (coraline meyer)

word count: 8.2k (oh yikes)

warnings: no beta read, brief mentions of pregnancy i guess?

author’s note: this took me weeks to write oh my god

Coraline hasn’t told anyone about Marcus’ offer. Not even Loren, when they’d met for the first time in months, when her boyfriend finally got a night off work to look after Maisie. Not even when they’d drunk too much wine and her head was so fuzzy that she probably would have told anyone anything, if they’d asked. She’s not even sure where she’d start.

Coraline has never been the best at keeping secrets. At least, not her own, and definitely not when she was younger, and she’s always wondering whether that’s why the media seem to think she’s easy prey for their rumours. It never seemed to bother Scott; he was the same, so open and willing to talk about anything and everything with anyone who asked. But it’s different with Marcus. He’s private by necessity but he’s also private by choice, too. She wonders if he’s always been like that, if before the heartbreak he’d told her about occurred, if he’d opened up to people. If what had happened to him had made him closed off. He’s never seemed like a closed book before (and, hell, maybe he isn’t, maybe he just doesn’t want to relive those times; and he doesn’t have to tell her anything, anyway) but he’d opened up to her after he’d made his ‘baby suggestion’. And all she can think of now, since he’d recounted the stories, was that those women - the ex-wife who’d claimed he was too ‘nice’, who’d claimed he was too ‘clingy’ and ‘needy’, and all that utter bullshit, and the one who’d left him for another man, left him alone in D.C. without a single person to lean on - must be completely insane to think that he isn’t good enough for them. Marcus Pike is too good for anyone, she thinks. He’s the best person she knows. Marcus Pike makes Coraline want to be a better person. They didn’t end up ordering takeout that night, like they always did. Coraline had found herself reaching to the back of her cupboards, searching blindly for some ingredients she wasn’t even sure she had, just for him. Marcus loves breakfast. Like, he really loves it, she’s come to find. And at any time of the day, really. And there’s a diner he frequents; it’s near his office, on the other side of town, tucked away just out of Cora’s reach. Though, he has taken her there once before - just after they first met, when she’d tagged along with her older brother to the FBI debriefing, to check his gallery was secure; she’d thought it was a date, until he’d prefaced his offer with an insistence that it was ‘just as friends’; Marcus had spent the whole time raving about the pancakes he ate every Friday — a treat for a long week’s worth and a change from his usual burger and fries — how he’d found the place by accident and it was part of his daily routine, now, until Coraline had given in and let him order for her, since he knew the place better than she did - most of the time, they see each other when it’s late, when he’s already been for his almost daily pancake-fix and she’s collapsed to the sofa with her legs draped over the armrest. They haven’t been back since, though she’d jump at the chance if he ever asked again. Coraline may be a pretty awful cook, and she may not be able to make pancakes as good as the ones he likes, but surely it’s just the sentiment that counts. He’s spent far too many evenings eating greasy Chinese food at her behest, insisting that he’s fine with it, because it makes her feel better. It’s the least she could do. She’d spent an hour making perhaps the world’s worst pancakes - even as Marcus insisted that she didn’t have to cook for him, that they could just order pizza or something if they wanted a change - pancakes so bad that she’d had to drench the damn things in syrup just to disguise the odd sour taste that somehow tinged every mouthful. Marcus had eaten it without issue, even as she’d apologised endlessly for her dreadful culinary skills and insisted that he didn’t have to eat them if he didn’t like them. They’d made him smile, though. And it melted away the last dregs of awkwardness between them. That was the pancakes’ purpose. It didn’t matter that they were utterly terrible, borderline inedible and a little lumpy.

But, when Monday rolls around and her older brother, Daniel, comes to her with his regular insistence that she brings that ‘nice FBI agent she’d made friends with’ to their weekly dinner at his house, she took him up on the offer, for a change. She’s never asked because she’s always assumed he would say no; they weren’t dating and it was a little weird. Surely an invite to weekly family dinners was something couples did.

She always ignores Daniel, used to the persistent insistence to ask him. Relenting — finally — comes with the sense that she feels as if she owes him now, though. To make it up for her dreadful pancakes with Daniel’s wife’s cooking, which was always amazing. To make up for the week of unforgivable ignorance. To help them move past the ill-thought-out offer of a baby. She’s sure he’ll still say no, when she calls him on his lunch break, when she knows he’ll be sat at the counter in that same diner, enjoying that brief moment of time away from paperwork. Their lunch breaks line up, those rare and all-too-rare moments when they have time to relax, the tension in their shoulders owed entirely to their morning workloads melting away at the soft sounds of the other’s voice.

His voice is pleasant, like it always is; Marcus Pike’s voice is like serenity to her, all gentle and familiar, and, this time, he sounds amused when he answers the phone. “Well, this is a nice surprise.” His voice crackles through the phone. The reception in the diner is terrible - it’s the only thing he ever seems to complain about - but she can still make out the sound of the smile in his voice. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Good afternoon to you, too, Marcus.” Coraline hums, shoving the last of her laundry into the washing machine, her phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear. “I’m calling with an invitation.”

“An invitation?” He ponders, musing over the idea. “To one of those glamorous celebrity parties you’re always telling me about?”

She scoffs. “Oh, you wish, Pike. It’s an invite to my brother’s for dinner. Incredibly glamorous, I know.”

There’s silence on the other end of the phone for a few moments. She almost regrets asking. She does when he replies. “Are you sure?” He questions. “I’m not sure-”

Coraline nods as if he can somehow see her through the phone. “I’m sure,” she insists, “Besides, Daniel and Kimmy want you to come.”

“Coraline, I don’t know-”

“Marcus, don’t make me beg.” She chuckles, but it’s a nervous chuckle. She knew he would say no; that’s why she hasn’t asked him, to avoid this awkward conversation between them when he was uncomfortable and looking for a subtle way to turn her down without hurting her feelings. “Please.”

There’s another pause as he lets out another muffled laugh. His tone is teasing when he speaks again; she can practically see the smirk as he sips his coffee. “And what’s in it for me?”

She bites the inside of her cheek, stifling a giggle.

She could think of a lot of ways to repay the favour.

Cora pushes through the onslaught of entirely… inappropriate thoughts, especially to have about your best friend and offers up the most innocent of offerings, though her voice slips to find that low, rumbling register reserved only for the discrete. Mundane words tipped in something intriguing. “I’ll never make you pancakes again.”

“Deal.” He snaps far too quickly through the phone.

Her mouth falls open. “Marcus,” she gasps, mock offence in her voice.

There’s silence for a moment. “Sunshine,” Marcus calls out through the static, like he’s sure he’s actually offended her. Like he could ever do that. “I thought your pancakes were great.”

Even a lie sounds like the truth coming from his lips.

“Damn right they were,” she insists.

When she lies, even when it’s laced with laughter, it sounds like one. She’s glaringly aware that’s a complete contradiction, given her job.

“Pancakes- real pancakes, diner pancakes- on me for a month.”

“Tempting.”

“...Two months?”

“Fine, fine. If you insist.”

The rush of breath that escapes her in relief is so embarrassingly loud, she’s sure he can hear her. She’s glad he’s not there, watching her, so he can’t see the wide, uncontrollable, entirely tooth-filled grin that splits across her face; she’s sure she looks maniacal, sat in her trailer on set, covered in thick dustings of fake mud from that morning’s scenes.

She’s never been more thankful for the solitude of a phone call before.

“I do insist. I’ll pick you up at five.”

Amusement, again, peeks through in his tone. She’s sure he’s eating pancakes — those blueberry pancakes with mountains of ice cream — because they’re the only thing that makes him happy like this, especially on a heavy workday. “In that super-fancy car of yours?”

She’s had her car for twelve-years. But it’s even older than that, fixed up by her father in his garage for what seemed like years. It’s an old run-down black Camaro from the seventies that she’s had since she was sixteen; far too trusty and sentimental to let go of, driving her cross-country from LA to DC without a hitch those six-months ago. It lives in the private parking lot down the street from her apartment complex, tucked away, out of use most days, because the traffic of DC is far too heavy in the mornings and it’s easier to walk or take the Metro instead. Weekly nights spent at Daniel’s on the opposite end of the city gave her an excuse to pull her car from its designated parking space and navigate the busy streets to the comforting hum of the engine.

Coraline knows Marcus loves her car, as much as he jokes about it. It’s evident in the way his face lights up when he sees her sat there, parked down the street outside the FBI headquarters; his smile illuminated by the harsh street lamps overhead, cutting through the darkness alongside the bright nearby office lights and flickering neon signs that cast stained glass shadows on the sidewalk. He’s watching her as she taps her fingers in time to a song she doesn’t recognise on the radio.

Marcus ducks into the car with a ‘hello’ lingering on his lips and ducks to kiss Coraline’s cheek; it’s a friendly gesture that lingers, not unfamiliar as a display of friendly affection between them, but still swelling that giddy sense of happiness in her chest like it’s the first time.

“I brought the beer.”

Coraline glances over at him warmly as she starts up the car. The engine rumbles to life, almost sounding unhealthy. She reaches over and squeezes his shoulder a little, fingers falling down his arms.

Marcus had insisted he bring something; a repayment for dinner, for Daniel and Kimmy inviting him over. She’d insisted he didn’t need to — neither of them would mind; they just wanted to meet the lead in so many of Coraline’s stories, for real this time — but then he’d insisted that he had to, that his mother would never let him live it down if she found out he forgot his manners and turned up without a thank you gift. So she’d told him to bring beer (not wine, definitely not wine, for Daniel’s sanity’s sake). And he’d obliged.

Not just that cheap beer, either. But the expensive kind, the kind you could only find in certain places if you were looking for it. He’s spared no expense.

He doesn’t need to impress them, though. They already like him well enough, on the basis of Coraline’s endless stories.

“Is what I’m wearing okay?” He questions as he smooths his hands over the front of his suit jacket. “I didn’t have time to change.”

He’s still wearing his work clothes — somehow still relatively undisturbed even after hours of the paperwork he’d been half-complaining about to her the night before — yet he still looks great. He’d probably look great in just about anything. Coraline looks entirely underdressed next to him; just blue jeans and a white shirt, and the thin golden pendant her mom had given her the night before her wedding hangs against her chest. She doesn’t wear it much anymore, not since the divorce. But Marcus had seen it the other day, while he was waiting for her to finish getting ready, perusing the expanse of her drawers, intrigued by the jewellery that hung from a stand. He’d said it was beautiful - with the delicately carved bird in the middle, surrounded by flowers - and she found herself reaching for it every morning since.

She’s not sure why. She just likes to wear it, now.

“You look great.” As always.

He scans what she’s wearing, casual and, as the wheels being their customary groan when she sets the car in reverse. “It’s not too much?” He’s shuffling awkwardly, hands tugging at the lapels of his suit jacket. Is he nervous?

She watches as he moves, shifting slightly in his seat; she’s watching from the corner of her eyes, half her focus on Marcus, the other on pulling out onto the busy road. He’s staring straight ahead, out at the car ahead of them, like the license plate is somehow the most interesting thing in the world right now. His brows are furrowed. The air between them is thick with anticipation and it’s like something has changed; for good or bad, she’s never sure with them anymore, not these past few months, but his hand is gripping his knee and somehow everything seems heavy again.

He’s met Daniel before, it’s not that. Briefly, sure. But that couldn’t be it. He’s usually so relaxed and laid back, especially around her, never worried about making a joke or goofing off. She doesn’t like seeing him like this.

She reaches over and squeezes his hand; he steadies himself and tilts his head towards her. Her smile is warm and bright and comforting, and the gentle brush of her fingers over the hand that grips his knee relieves the inexplicable anxiety that has strangled him from the moment she’d invited him to dinner. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know what it means, what any of it means. Why things are suddenly so different between them after six months of being nothing but friends.

Why he, for some godforsaken reason, thought suggesting they have a baby together was a good idea.

Did he really want that?

Either way, he’s pretty sure Coraline doesn’t. Not with him, at least.

Cora hums, eyes dropping to herself and the wrinkled jeans she’d fished out from the back of her wardrobe. “Least you made an effort.”

…

Daniel Meyer is seven years older than Coraline. He’d always been fiercely protective of his younger sister when they were growing up; not in that abrasive, overbearing and destructive way, the way when your life is governed strict and rigid, but Daniel Meyer didn’t take kindly to people hurting his sister. Growing up, he helped her deal with things - the bullying in high school, the heartbreak of her first breakup - so it only seemed fitting that, when she’d moved to D.C., the same place he’d called home with his family for eight years, that he would do the same. That’s how their weekly family dinners were born, from his insistence to help his younger sister settle into her new home, in a new city she barely knew.

For the longest time, Scott Meyer was public enemy number one to him. Sometimes she wonders, now that it’s all over, the divorce is final - now that he’s out of her life for good - if he still is. Or if they’ve really all moved on like she thinks they have.

The second they arrive at his front door, greeted warmly by the smell of pie and a grinning Kimmy, wearing an apron and slightly flustered, looking just as welcoming as always. Her blonde waves - the waves Coraline has always been so jealous of - are pinned up haphazardly out of her face, half-spilling down her back from the clip that tries to hold it in place.

“Good evening.” Her voice sounds like a song, light and sweet, and her smile is even wider than usual as she glances between her sister-in-law and Marcus, who stands a little behind her, radiating that familiar confidence that Coraline is used to. The half-hour drive had relaxed him enough that, now he’s met with Kimmy’s friendly face, he’s the one that’s comforting her, with a gentle hand on her back and the silent reassurance that things will be okay.

Coraline is mostly worried about him. She's still not entirely sure he wants to be here. She doesn’t blame him.

Kimmy leans forward and kisses Coraline’s cheek in greeting, the usual gesture.

“This- well, you know Marcus.” Cora ushers towards her best friend beside her when she pulls back.

“Marcus, of course!” Her face lights up even more. “I’ve heard a lot about you since we last met.” Kimmy’s tone is amused. Her eyes waver towards Coraline, a knowing look in her eyes.

“It’s great to finally meet you, for real this time.”

Kimmy’s eyebrow quirks up at Coraline for a moment, the hint of a smirk as Marcus introduces himself, that same FBI Agent-trained surety tipping the edges of his voice, before she finally ushers them inside. It’s starting to get cold; the evening chill is creeping in from the river beside the house, reaching out towards them. Coraline is glad she’d tossed a coat onto the backseat of her car before she’d left and Marcus tugs his suit jacket tighter around himself. “Come in before you both freeze to death.”

The house is alive with the joyous yet shrill screams of children. Coraline’s nephews, to be exact. It always is. Every night. Every week she turns up and they’re running around, playing whatever game they deem fit that evening. Half the time, Coraline gets pulled into their games, whenever she’s not helping Kimmy in the kitchen (which isn’t often, because she’s hopeless at it). Of course, today’s no different.

The two of them are darting around the living room, screaming bloody murder as they wear themselves out; Finley, the oldest, is chasing Elliot, his curls falling haphazardly over his eyes. She can’t tell what they’re yelling about - she never can; it’s just a tangled mess of screamed words - but Elliot is giggling so much that he has to stop every couple of minutes to catch his breath. Finley stops with him, pulling himself from their games for a second to wait as they both regain their composure and carry on. They wear themselves out before dinner and then everything seems to go off without a hitch.

Cora hangs her coat on the hooks by the door and kicks off her sneakers, and Marcus follows suit with his jacket and dress shoes. He looks to her for guidance, that immediately understandable hesitation of being in an unfamiliar house, and this silent agreement settles between them as she sweeps her way into the living room. Her footsteps were light; so light, in fact, that she reached her nephews without disturbing them, startling Elliot when she scooped him up in her arms and spun him around. He complains at first, ducking his head away as she tries to kiss his cheek, letting out the most dramatic and exaggerated noises. Eventually, he gives in and curls his arms around her neck, pulling her close for a second, before he starts to kick again, restless in her arms.

Finley takes to wrapping himself around her right leg and suddenly the three of them end up sprawled out and giggling brightly on the carpet.

Marcus watches from the doorway. He thinks she’ll be a great mom someday. It’s the little things she takes in her stride.

“Hello to you too, Cora.” The low, amused voice of Coraline’s brother, Daniel, comes from inside the living room.

“Hey there.” She’s still giggling. She can’t help it. Finley and Elliot unhook themselves from her and each other and resume their endless laps of the couch.

Daniel stands over her with raised eyebrows. His tie has long-since been discarded and he cuts a casual figure as he cradles the youngest of the Meyers, Piper. She’s only six months and the smiliest baby Cora has ever seen. Usually, she’s asleep by the time Coraline arrives, either cradled in her father’s arms or tucked away in the crib upstairs; today, her legs are kicking back and forth and her hands are fisting into his dress shirt. She’s restless - she knows sometimes that she is, that when they finally cradle her to sleep, it’s best that they leave her or risk jolting her awake for the rest of the night - but she’ll let her wriggle around in her arms for hours if it means catching up on the time she’s missed with her niece all those nights she’s been asleep.

“I brought Marcus.” Cora points towards Marcus as he leans against the doorframe, watching her with fond eyes. She tilts her head back to look at him; he’s smiling and she wants to reach for him. She reaches for Daniel’s extended hand instead, pulling herself up from the floor. She groans uncomfortably, her back aching a little. “Marcus, you’ve met my brother, Daniel.”

Coraline reaches out for her niece; that brooding feeling swells bright and burning again when she takes her, cradling her close into her chest, and she can’t help but glance up at Marcus as Daniel moves to greet him - just barely acquaintances but familiar enough to avoid those awkward initial introductions. He’s watching her, still, as she says ‘hello’ to her niece and gently rests her cheek against the top of Piper’s head. It’s like they’re both wrapped up in that moment where it’s just the two of them - all too fleeting, cut short by Daniel’s greeting and the persistent shouting of children - but it feels lovely. Even if this moment is all they’ll ever get.

Coraline savours the moment with her niece because it’s rare and often fleeting; her, Daniel and Kimmy’s schedules are crammed tight with work and unavoidable commitments and that weekly dinner is the only time each week they can spare to see each other. If Piper is asleep, then Coraline won’t get to say ‘hi’ to her niece. It’s an unfortunate consequence of their careers.

“That’s Elliot-” She points her finger at her smallest nephew. “-and that’s Finley-” Then to the tallest of the two. “-and this… this is Piper.” She bounces the tiny baby lightly in her arms, turning her body so Marcus could get a glimpse at the small smile that pulled at Piper’s lips as her small fist grabbed at Coraline’s shirt.

She’s already told him about them all before. He knows their names. But this is the first time he’s ever met the kids. And it’s somehow maybe the most terrifying thing he’s done in a long time, including that one warehouse shootout his team found themselves in a few weeks earlier.

He feels overdressed and a little ridiculous, just stood there, looking like a lost puppy in the entryway, in his suit and tie. Unsure what to do with his hands or his eyes, or what the hell to say to cut through his quiet. He usually brought a change of clothes to the office if he knows he has somewhere to be but, somehow, in his blind panic at the idea of meeting the family, he’d forgotten to grab anything to change into. And that ease in meeting new people, that effortless skill he’d built up over years of practice, the perks of the job, just seems to have melted away the second he stepped into the house behind Coraline, under the well-meaning scrutiny of Kimmy. This is all normal for her - this weekly routine she’s fallen into - but it’s unfamiliar territory for him.

It almost feels like something it isn’t. Meeting the family. That point in a relationship when you first realise things are serious. Only this isn’t a relationship. And he’s already met Daniel and Kimmy before, even if it was briefly, and while he was working and distracted with planning a stakeout. And Coraline. Always Coraline. But something about her smile just commanded attention, back then - it still does - even when she tries to blend into the background. Once he noticed her. Sat alone at an empty conference table, comically-oversized name badge pinned to the front of her dress, her lips curling up a little as she sipped the sour FBI coffee.

Everyone else had passed the glass-walled room without even a second glance.

He, on the other hand, was convinced he’d just seen a ghost. She’d almost startled him, breath leaving his chest. An utter cliche.

Marcus had recognised her face from TV - though, admittedly, he wasn’t really up-to-date on pop culture, definitely lingering a couple of decades behind, age and time catching up on him, spare time buried beneath a mountain of paperwork to distract himself from Teresa and the unfamiliarity of D.C. - but he always remembers thinking she was pretty. Really pretty. But he always finds it a little embarrassing how much she a hold over him that day, how he’d had to take a second to psych himself up, talk himself down from that nervous ledge he was staring over, before he even thought about entering the room.

It’s weird, looking back, thinking how much has changed. But the changes keep coming, thick and fast, and sometimes it becomes less and less obvious what they are anymore.

“Marcus.” Daniel reaches out a hand for him to shake. He shakes it graciously and says his hellos. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

That’s the second time he’s heard that today. Coraline rolls her eyes a little. It’s not the first time she’s heard it, either. It almost makes Marcus laugh but then she smiles again, half-concealing a grin, and he forgets what he’s thinking about for a moment.

But then he wonders what she tells them about. Whether those stories are good or bad, whether they paint him in colour or in black and white.

With Coraline, he figures it’s probably the brightest landscape of technicolour, regardless of who she’s talking about.

“I’m glad Cora finally asked you to come.”

“Well, you talk too much. I didn’t want to bore him.” Cora shrugs, her full attention on Piper.

“More like scare him away.”

He’s not sure she could ever scare him away.

“Finley is terrifying,” she admits with a giggle but she seems distant. She looks up to raise an eyebrow at him again. Her words are slow, almost drawn out. “I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to get out while you still can.” It’s meant to be light and joking, and Daniel laughs at her words. Given the way she’s looking at him, he’s not sure.

She just keeps looking at him like there’s no one else around.

She can’t help it. She keeps trying. It isn’t working.

“I’m so sorry about that,” Daniel insists as the boys rush past Marcus; he has to step out of the way to avoid them, smiling as they manoeuvre around him and race out of sight into the back of the house. He smiles fondly as they pass. “They’ll calm down in a second.”

“You hope they’ll calm down.” Coraline jabs her older brother in the ribs playfully. He chuckles as lightly as he can but it's obvious he’s tired; his shoulders slump and his eyes linger closed a little longer than normal, Coraline notices. He’s been working flat-out at his gallery every day, then running home to help with the kids. And Piper is a restless baby - difficult to get to sleep which means that, if she’s asleep when she arrives, she can’t say hello for risk of waking her up - so, unless Daniel or Kimmy are holding her while the house is still alive and humming around her, she refuses to fall asleep. “I think-” She looks towards Marcus. He’s inched closer into the room, now, but he’s still lingering like he needs to be invited in. “-you’ll just have to get used to it.” She hums.

“I’m still not used to it and they’re my kids,” Daniel grumbles, almost to himself.

“Piper seems okay with it.” Marcus points out. He watches as his best friend cuddles the tiny baby close to her chest.

Piper’s looking up at Cora with the brightest eyes. They’re Coraline’s eyes - Daniel’s too, he assumes - that light emerald green that sparkles beneath the warm living room light. Her mouth is in an ‘o’ shape, fascinated, as she stares. She looks utterly transfixed by her aunt’s face as she carries on their idle, gentle conversation, lightly bobbing her up and down, cradling her softly to sleep. Her eyelids were drooping, sleep gently pulling her in. She’s humming gently, whenever she’s not speaking; Marcus isn’t even sure she realises she’s doing it. That it’s just some subconscious instinct inside her, telling her to sing to the baby so she can sleep. She’s drawing gentle circles on her back through her onesie. Slow, idle circles that slow the wriggles and the kicking of his legs, lulling her off to sleep ever-so-slowly.

It’s like she’s a natural. She knows exactly what to do every time; with Piper, with Maisie. It’s like second nature and there’s this even brighter glow, brighter than usual, when she settles into the role. She takes it all in her stride and seems to forget the world around her just for a moment.

“How do you do that every time? Can you come and do that every night?” He jokes. But he doesn’t seem to be entirely joking.

She hums. “Perhaps-” She rests her cheek against the top of her head as lightly as she dares without disturbing her. “Perhaps I’m just a superhero.”

The yells of kids echo through the house, the hammering of feet pounding against the wood floor. Kimmy’s muffled exasperated calls for quiet come from the kitchen, falling on deaf ears as the boys continue to charge through the back of the house.

Coraline catches her brother’s gaze. “Go and help.” She’s noticed the way he’s been watching his daughter anxiously, worried that she won’t fall asleep through all the noise and excitement and the gentle hum of Coraline’s made-up song. “I’ve got her,” she insists.

“Are you sure?”

Piper is slowly drifting off to sleep, even despite the noise. Just at the warmth of her aunt cradling her and the gentle hum of her sweet voice lulling her asleep. “I’ve got her,” she repeats. “Go and help Kimmy.”

Daniel’s shoulders slump in relaxation. He mouths a ‘thank you’ as he jogs from the room, calling out to his sons to stop them from charging around, insisting that they wash their hands and settle down for the sake of their sister.

Now, it’s just Coraline, Marcus and a half-asleep Piper left alone in the living room.

The tension in the air is thick and heavy for a moment.

“Marcus, you’re staring,” she points out. She’s not even looking at him, just can just feel the weight of his kind gaze and it sets her heart racing at a hundred miles an hour. “I’d let you hold her-“ She says as he steps a little closer; now Daniel is out of the room, he’s relaxed. It’s like, without him there, he can pretend it’s just the two of them and Piper curled up content against Cora’s chest, even despite the yell of children’s voices and the unfamiliar surroundings. “-but, if I did that, we’d never get her off to sleep.”

“It’s alright,” he whispers, “I think she’s happier with you.” He settles beside her.

Coraline’s thumb brushes over Piper’s cheek and the baby smiles a tiny smile, eyes still close and fisting her hands tighter into the white material of her shirt. There’s a blissful silence that settles between the three of them — just for a moment — when she looks up at him beside her, watching the pair of them sway gently to a seemingly silent song. The weight of the moment engulfs them like a tidal wave.

“Marcus-“ she breathes out, barely loud enough for him to hear. But he does, in the relative silence, and the way she says his name rips the air from his lungs, like the first time she’d surprised him the day they’d met. Her green eyes are wide and wild and she’s looking between him and Piper like they’re the only things left in the world.

They could do it.

He knows what she’s going to say, if she had the chance. If Daniel hadn’t returned, calling out to them that dinner was ready.

They could do it. He knows they could, she knows they could. They could have this fleeting moment for as long as they both live. Their own little version of paradise, together. No matter how terrible the idea seems to be, they could. But Coraline knows she can’t stay in that world forever. It’s temporary and, as much as she wants that, all day, every day, for herself and not through someone else, she knows she can’t let herself get too in over her head.

Still, Marcus really does think she’ll be an amazing mom.

...

After much persuasion — and the promise of candy after dinner — Finley and Elliot finally settled down long enough for them to eat. Coraline had set Piper down to sleep in her crib upstairs, lingering perhaps a little too long to marvel down at her only niece, wondering what it would be like if she was looking down at her own daughter.

She knows it’s a hopelessly bad idea. That the feelings will catch up with her and pull her under again. Sometimes she just can’t help it.

She returns with that fake smile Marcus has become a pro at noticing. She looks wistful, longing in her eyes, disguised by the small smile that takes over her face when she slides into the seat at the dinner table beside him. She smooths out her shirt and jeans, wrinkled from the baby. Another smile, an assurance that Piper is okay and sleeping soundly upstairs, and the conversation moves on to mostly idle chatter, and Daniel asking Marcus questions about himself. Coraline keeps shooting her brother glances whenever he asks a new question that almost seems too personal. He doesn’t mind one bit, though.

Marcus finds Coraline’s free hand under the table and squeezes at some point. She doesn’t want him to let go.

“Auntie Cora?” Finley asks, leaning his chin on his hand to stretch across the table. His questioning call of her name breaks through the idle conversation they’re all having, like he’s demanding all their attention, and not just Coraline’s.

It steals a moment of quiet between them all.

“Nephew Finley?” She replies, mimicking his stance and the curious, furrowed-browed expression on his face.

“When are you going to have a baby, like Piper?”

It’s a loaded yet completely innocent question on his behalf. He’s merely a curious five-year-old with no ill intentions, and no reason to believe it’s anything other than a normal question; Coraline doesn’t even flinch, even when Kimmy scolds her son sharply and insists he eats the rest of his dinner. Though, Marcus still sees the flicker of hesitation in her eyes. Instead, she just smiles and laughs that brightly enchanting laugh, tilting her head to the side in response to her nephew as he sinks back into his chair and pokes at his potatoes.

“Well, I don’t know,” she replies truthfully, “Soon, maybe.”

Marcus almost thinks her eyes waver towards him but it’s so quick that he reasons that, perhaps, he’s seeing things.

“Soon?” Daniel catches up with her words. “You seeing someone?”

“Oh-“ Coraline swallows thickly. She shakes her head. “No, no, not at all. I’m just- optimistic, I guess.”

“I’m sure there’s someone out there for you,” Kimmy poses.

Coraline hums. Marcus doesn’t see the way her gaze trails towards him. “I’m sure there is.”

...

The rest of dinner passed without any more questions on the matter, Finley’s attention switching towards Marcus instead. He was persistent, firing questions at him across the dinner table like he was leading an interrogation, but Marcus kept answering just as enthusiastically as the first time. He’d skirted around the facts a little - it wasn’t exactly a great idea to tell a child, seemingly without a filter, that you were an FBI agent - but the whole exchange had been wonderful. Coraline was sad to see it finish when Kimmy announced the boys could have dessert and they'd leapt from their seats to race towards the cookie jar.

Marcus had offered to help Kimmy wash up as a thank you but she’d brushed him off, and, eventually, he’d resigned to the living room with Daniel. It had taken Coraline months to convince Kimmy that she should let her help clean up, there was no way she would have accepted Marcus’ offer immediately.

Instead, it’s just Coraline and Kimmy, working in tandem to clean the dishes, while Daniel spends time with the kids after a long day at work, and pulls Marcus into their conversation like an old friend.

“I’m sorry about Finn. He’s-” Kimmy shakes her head as she sets another plate down in the drying rack. “He’s been going through one of those... phases lately.”

“It’s fine, Kim, truly.” Coraline sets a couple of dry plates down on the counter and turns to smile at her, before carrying on her job. Sometimes Kimmy jokes about how ridiculous it is that they use so many plates since Piper was born. “He’s just curious,” she insists. “And he makes everything a little more colourful.”

Kimmy chuckles. “That he does.” She washes down another plate. “So, Marcus is great.” She hums, changing the subject towards her with a quirk of an eyebrow and a small, knowing smirk on her face.

Coraline smiles. Though, it’s more to herself than Kimmy. “He really is, isn’t he?”

“Are you two… y’know… is there anything there or-?”

“Oh, no! No, no. We’re just-” Friends. “Just friends.”

“Well-“ She quirks an eyebrow at her sister-in-law. “-maybe you should? Just see how it goes. One date at a time.” Kimmy’s suggestion is as innocent as Finley’s question over dinner. She doesn’t understand the weight it holds. And she doesn’t expect her to, anyway. They’re close but just barely close enough. “Things might surprise you and it’ll do you good to get back out there again after, y’know-“

“No, we-” She shakes her head and turns to finish putting away the plates in the cabinet. In the quiet, she hears Marcus laugh from the living room. It’s one of those whole-hearted laughs, when his head lulls back and his eyes screw shut and crinkle at the corner. She wonders which one of them made him laugh like that, or what made him laugh like that. She hopes Daniel hasn’t pulled out the picture albums; he’s worse for that then their parents. But, since Daniel had made his fortune as an art buyer, eventually to the point he’d made enough to buy his own art gallery, a year ago, Coraline should have known that he and Marcus would get on. They had a lot in common. She’s so glad he likes him, though she can’t imagine a reason why he wouldn’t. “Friends. Friends.”

There’s another silence and she can feel Kimmy’s eyes burning into the back of her head. She turns to see the tail-end of a raised eyebrowed glare, amusement tugging at the corner of her lips. “Well, you never know unless you try, Cora.”

“There will be no trying,” Coraline insists, jabbing Kimmy in the side with her nail. She grins and lets her blonde tresses fall over her shoulder. “Of any kind. He doesn’t see me that way.” She finishes.

“Do you see him that way?”

Another pause.

“No.”

Maybe that’s a lie.

Maybe Kimmy knows that.

Maybe Marcus knows that.

Coraline isn’t sure whether she knows that, though.

“Sure about that?”

Coraline scoffs and turns to continue packing dried, clean plates into the cupboards. “You’re worse than Dan, sometimes.”

“Oh, I take offence to that.”

“Shut up and finish the dishes.” Coraline chuckles, crossing her arms and scowling at the lack of crockery left to dry.

“Just don’t write things off so quickly,” she insists, “It might surprise you.”

...

Daniel and Kimmy had tried to persuade them to stay for drinks late into the evening. The boys were shipped off to bed at the usual time, complaining that they wanted to stay up instead, as usual. But Marcus has work in the morning and Coraline has a long string of interviews; the idea of a late-night sounds less than ideal, her eyes already stinging at the idea of staying up any later than they had it.

Instead, they’d make their excuses and leave, ducking away into Coraline’s car with an exhausted groan. The boys had run wild right up until they went to sleep, nagging Coraline and Marcus to play with them every five minutes, even as Kimmy and Daniel insisted that they settle down and get ready for bed. It’s still late when they leave, though. D.C is eerily quiet as they weave through the roads, small crowds of people scattered through the repeating streets of suburbia.

The car ride home is silent of their voices. Not that uncomfortable silence, from before, when things had been awkward between them and neither of them were sure where the other stood. But that kind of satiated, happy and, admittedly exhausted, silence that pools over them. The low hum of the car engine and the radio is persistent in the space between them. Marcus keeps stealing glances over at her as she drives; he can’t help it, but he doesn’t think she notices, her eyes far too focused on the road ahead of her. And, if she does, she doesn’t mention it. Just keeps letting him glance over at her as the street lights illuminate the gentle angles of her face.

He’s glad she never mentions anything. He’d be too embarrassed if she did.

Instead, she’s lost in the music. That blissful flicker of emotion that crosses her face when she hears a song she likes, when her eyes light up at the sound of one of her favourite songs. Her radio is always tuned into some old rock station - he has no idea what it’s called, it’s usually just a continuous loop of different songs cut with the low gravelly voice of a man who sounded like he’d smoked one too many cigars - and most of the songs are the same songs she’s playing on her record player when he arrives at her apartment and she’s dancing around the kitchen while she cooks. He recognises a lot of them from his college days, songs he used to play with his band. It makes him feel old, sometimes, when she tells him they’re songs she spent her teen years with, even though there aren’t too many years between them.

It’s I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing that plays now; she’s a sucker for those objectively-cheesy rock ballads. They’re her mom’s favourites, too. And, maybe he won’t admit it, but Marcus has heard her favourites enough to count them amongst his, now. Maybe he just likes the way they make her smile. Coraline is humming along, her fingers drumming a steady rhythm against the top of the steering wheel idly as her eyes follow the road ahead. Every so often, a flicker of neon tints her in colour when they pass a takeout, the only things still open and busy. The curve of her profile and each curl of her hair is highlighted in red.

It’s these moments of distracted bliss, when everything seems to exist without a care in the world, that he likes the most.

It never lasts long enough.

He insists she just parks in the garage she usually uses, by her apartment building, and he’ll walk her home. She protests - because of course she does - offering to drive him all the way home instead, but it’s dark and even in this quiet, well-off part of town where the streets should be safe, you never know who might be lurking. Maybe it’s the things he’s seen and heard of in the FBI - everything he’s seen during his training, heard through whispers and stories in the office - but sometimes he can’t shake the simple action of making sure someone is safe.

It’s still silent between them as they near Coraline’s apartment complex. That short two minute walk down the quiet, tree-lined street that sparkles with chains of fairy lights. It’s lethargic and lingering, each step heavy with the weight of something that echoes through the quiet neighbourhood.

“Cora, I’m sorry.”

It comes out of nowhere and it worries her. And Coraline has absolutely no idea why Marcus is apologising to her. As far as she’s concerned, he hasn’t done anything wrong. At least, not that she knows of.

“For what?” She questions, brow furrowing up at him as they walk. Their hands keep brushing but she doesn’t have it in her to move her hand away.

“I had no right to drop the baby bomb on you like that,” he admits. He reaches up to scratch the back of his neck uncomfortably. When his hand drops, his fingers brush against her knuckles. “I’m sorry if I made you feel trapped. It was a terrible idea. I should have thought-“

“Yes,” she blurts it out before she can stop herself. She’s not entirely sure she’s thought this through. But she can’t help it.

“Yes, what?”

“The offer.” Her whisper is loud in the suddenly-stifling silence of the street. “If it’s still on the table- yes. I’ll have a baby with you.”

“Coraline-” He gulps and stops dead in his tracks. They’re outside her gate, now. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“And you won’t.” Coraline insists. She steps closer to him, sea-green eyes staring up at him with heavy expectation. He’s the one that suggested it. He’s the one that had laid in bed until the early hours of the morning, losing precious moments of sleep as his brain swam with questions, wondering whether he should suggest this to her in the first place, or if it was an awful idea. But, somehow, he can’t seem to convince himself that this is a bad idea, that he should just let her down easy, now. It’s seeing her with Piper, seeing her with Maisie, seeing how she lights up around them.

If he can make her that happy, every single day, why the hell would he turn that opportunity down?

Besides, he’s pretty sure it would make him equally as happy. He’s thought about having kids since he was just a kid himself. And god knows the world seemed to have it out for him when it came to love, things aren’t happening any time soon; he can’t really think of anyone better than Coraline to have a baby with.

And, as much as Coraline knows how recklessly stupid the whole idea is, she can’t bring herself to want anything more or less than this. Than him. “It is a terrible idea, y’know?” She finds herself insisting, blinking up at him with those beautifully-wide eyes.

“Truly awful.”

“And there are a hundred different things that could go wrong.”

“Hundreds.”

“But-“

“Maybe we should… try? Maybe just for a little while. See what happens.”

“Maybe we should.” He exhales long and deep out of his nose. “Maybe…” He tilts her chin up towards his with one finger and suddenly he’s kissing her. His fingers brush her jaw, curving up towards her ear and brushing into her hairline at the nape of her neck. Even the soft touch of his hand against hers as they walked was driving her insane but this, this is on another level.

It’s more than the first time they kissed. Less of a brief touch of lips, more of a wave of relief flooding through them both, unfamiliar feelings surging up inside them. This kiss is full of urging anticipation. She’s pulling him closer to her before she can stop herself, their chests flush, lips and hands strong and insistent against each other.

The fumble to her front door seems like the most practised thing they’ve ever done. Familiar when it shouldn’t be, even as they bump into things on their way.

taglist: @wheresthewater

#marcus pike x reader #marcus pike x oc #marcus pike x female reader #marcus pike x fem!oc #marcus pike #sudden desire #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal x oc #the mentalist #original character #oc

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greekbros · 4 years ago

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"greek-Bros: Character Headcanons prt2: The Boys ™️"

Heracles:

He is literally the 2nd strongest individual in all of Greece. The first is Atlas and the 3rd is Dionysus.

Every single thing that has happened to him is canon. The labors, the romantic nights of crossdressing when he was a slave, everything. He doesn't give a flying fuck about what you think he did. There is a likely chance he may have done it, whether he wanted to or not.

He's the tallest and most heavily built of Zeus children. It continues to baffle Hera and Zeus how Heracles is so large. When he started to grow olders, Zeus was worried if Heracles was the "prodigal usurper" that would over throw him, but solved this by having more children.

Heracles doesn't have any weaknesses nor fears. This effectively makes him the biggest threat to.... literally every other devine entity.

He doesn't hate Hera. Oddly enough he is fully aware of her frustrating marriage, so as penance, he tries everything to help her with whatever ever meaningless task she wants him to do. He basically is an unwanted adopted son to her. On Hera's side, she despises him, and she equally hates the fact that he's even alive, but it breaks her heart everytime Heracles does something nice for her.

After years of enduring cruelty, he still doesn't hold a lot of ill will. It's just a part of his strength.

Inspite of his polite and stern demeanor he actually does have a short fuse, he just chooses when it would be inappropriate time to lose his temper.

He has been married 1 1/2 times. His first marriage was rather normal until Hera ruined it, he was "pretend" married to Queen Omphales when they were doing their thing, and is currently married to Hebe.

He's actually a big softy, when he smiles it's considered as rare as a blue harvest moon, it's just that his face is so muscular that his default expression is "resting death face".

He actually enjoys hanging out with his more powerful siblings with the main exception of Ares and Aphrodite. He considers Ares to be "too immature to fight him" and he's too much of a legendary dude bro to fuck Aphrodite, he just wants love not fuck.

He can be bashful at times, mostly when he is told to either display himself or flaunt. He became bashful after his year of slavery with Omphales. It was more of a time of discovering he genuinely may have some deepseeded issues and Omphales helped him out figure out his insecurities.

Perseus:

He's considered Zeus's favorite demi-child. Mostly because Zeus considers him a "little earthly version of Apollo". Perseus however dispises this comparison.

He's currently in his mid 30s, yet he's still concerned the greatest hero in all of Greece. In some arguments he's always compared to Heracles, much like how one would compare Superman and Batman.

If he had a voice actor, it would be William Defoe. He's gives off this vibe of an old school kind of man with a side of chill.

He isn't too proud of his status as a demigod. It all started when he had to kill Medusa. The thing is that Medusa was the more prettier sister of the three legendary Gorgons however she was also considered the kindest out of the three. So when he kept being pressured by not just the fact that he had to save his mother from the marriage she did not want, save Andromeda from a sea monster that was being sent to kill her, and extra pressure from the gods too reclaim his honor as the son of Zeus... He had to basically do something he really did not want. Little did he know at the time, there were other means to be successful in his mission, years later when he discovered this he had become disillusioned with the glorious image of being a demigod. This ended up affecting him personally, affecting his marriage and ultimately a motivation to continue his quest to be a hero for the sake of helping those who need it most...not for glory.

He has this charming tooth gap that he's had since he was young. It's a distinguishing feature that basically separates him from being compared aesthetically to Apollo. He's also has a little stubble, riddled with small scars and abrasions from his many battles.

He with do a background check on you and your request, he has had plenty of experience with people trying to take advantage of him. Being a man who is willing to do the job correctly and as best as possible, people tend to hire him in order to give rid of whatever creature is just mildly inconveniencing them.. a good example would be if a farmer notices there's a griffin nearby but the Griffin isn't doing anything so he hires Perseus to kill the Griffin so it doesn't kill the goats, Perseus will find every way to either remove the Griffin from location or the farmer himself. He tries nearly everything to make sure he doesn't end up killing anything in the end, ironically this is what makes him an effective hero.

He's currently divorced with andromeda, due to his own personal and our struggles it's affected his love life to an extent where he is considered emotionally distant or just uninterested in being married. he doesn't have any infidelity issues or anything he just genuinely lost his motivation as a person but regained the motivation to be a better hero. Turns out Andromeda was the one who was cheating on him, he doesn't have any ill will against her surprisingly and he can't blame her either.

He has a 5 year old daughter who lives with lives with Andromeda. He always finds a way to secretly stop by to say hi and give her a gift.

The only person he tolerates from Olympus is Hermes, he still seems to see him more as a mentor and older brother than anything. He has a more professional relationship with Athena but after the conflicting information both her and Poseidon gave him when he had to kill Medusa, he tends to be very cold to both gods.

You actually never had ambrosia until Heracles introduced it to him, that was the day when he was deemed a full strength demigod. He's still angry at that because he wanted to die in peace of old age or in battle. It's the only thing Heracles is genuinely remorseful for.

He actually sees Pegasus less like a pet and more like a really oddly shaped brother. Turns out after he dug further into the situation, he found out that technically Pegasus is a half brother. so he just has full blown conversations with a creature that can't respond to him in human language, nobody really understood it at first until he explained it to Heracles and only Heracles.. because he loves being spiteful that way.

Theseus:

This is although equally as handsome as many of Zeus's sons, he's probably the least intelligent. It's even argued that he's actually less intelligent than Ares.

He's a complete himbo, outside of his lack of intelligence, he's also extremely vain. Both Perseus and Heracles theorize that if it wasn't for the promise of marrying minos's daughter, he probably wouldn't have helped in the first place.

In between heracles, perseus, and the rest of Zeus's sons, he's the second shortest. The shortest is Hermes. Hermes continues to be any perpetual cycle of distress and mild apathy because of this.

He's also the top person on Dionysus's hit list. For abandoning Ariadne, Dionysus cursed him to consistently get attacked by random animals.. specifically leopards and or animals of the felide family. Theseus still hasn't any idea that his lack of animal magnetism is actually a curse.

He genuinely does not know Ariadne is still alive, he's convinced himself that she abandoned him or just went back home for some bizarre reason. It's also never occurred to him that he may have accidentally left her on an island, it is not known rather or not he actually abandoned her on purpose or just because of unbridled ignorance.

He's surprisingly resourceful for somebody who couldn't figure out how to get through the labyrinths correctly the first time, he actually took one turn before he went directly back to the entrance and tried his best to go any deeper but still went back to the entrance. His resourcefulness may come from Poseidon's side of the gene pool.

Ironically, Zeus actually has no idea if this one is even his kid. There's an ongoing rumor amongst the Olympians that Poseidon and Zeus may have accidentally slept with the same woman, unfortunately it is not known rather or not Theseus it really is Zeus's or Poseidon's son. The two brothers rather not fight over this because it really doesn't matter in the end.

Due to Theseus's self-righteous arrogance, many of his ventures usually results in his god-given resourcefulness helping him out. Most of his success is attributed to either giving himself all the credits or simply assuming that he actually did something. this angers Perseus and Heracles quite a lot actually. And oddly enough unlike the two, Theseus never actually had to do anything above simply appearing and "solving the problem". His most iconic triumph right next to killing the Minotaur, was actually slaughtering a few Amazons. Ares is till this day trying to formulate the worst and most painful way to kill Theseus.

He's actually a bit of a coward.

He maybe currently king of Athens, but mostly because Athena directly influences him from time to time. Apparently he doesn't have the mental fortitude to resist Athena's control. Good for her because he isn't a really good ruler.

Achilles:

He's the sturdy brother. Prior to his injuries, he actually was similar to Ares but he was a little more clever. He was the best warrior in his army and he was the assisting tactician.

Post injuries, he has lost an eye, Perseus had to amputate his messed up leg thus he had a prosthetic foot made by Hephaestus, and he two more mental injuries. PTSD from his battle at Troy and the brain damage from an arrow that went through his eye.

Because of his brain damage, he can speak in incomplete sentences. He also has outbursts of wrath and acts out his battles. When he's speaking in full sentences, he's going through a thing where he genuinely believes he's back to his old life, going as far as referring to anyone around him as people he use to know, this actually maybe a side effect of his ptsd. Heracles and Perseus are aware of these quirks of his and does their best to make it less problematic for Achilles.

It's been century since the downfall of Troy, after somehow surviving the process of death through means that even he can't remember, Achilles seems to be immortal in both senses of the word. He neither aged since the downfall of Troy and it doesn't seem that he died from his wounds like he should have. Because of his prolonged existence in the underworld, he has also gained the ability to see ghosts, unfortunately the others think he's just simply talking with "the ghost of his past" and think nothing else of it.

Hades actually wasn't aware of Achilles's existence in the underworld until many of the residents started complaining of disappearances. After some thorough investigations, Hades found him basically living feral in the more isolated portion of the underworld where it seems he was surviving off the flesh of anything that would come across his path. At first Hades tried to help him pass on, but Achilles had other plans so he battled Hades instead and survived. Hades may have won but he has a large scar on the base of thigh from his encounter.

His invulnerability didn't actually come from his mother dipping him in the river Styx, or at least that wasn't fully the way he could have became invulnerable. One actually has to consume a little bit of the River to become fully invulnerable. When Achilles was a child, he was just merely dipped in it thus it gave him invulnerability until his skin was broken by the arrows, when he found himself in the underworld, he couldn't find any fresh water so he drank from the Styx instead. That is when he became fully invincible to the point of godhood. Now he's arguably even more indestructible than Ares.

Achilles actually seems to be have been completely hardwired differently after his experience. He isn't a genius, but he does seem to find solutions to things in unexplained ways.

He sees Perseus and Heracles as proxy soldiers and brothers-at-arms instead of biological half brothers. Never having any knowledge of them until they rescued him from the underworld.

He REALLY doesn't like Poseidon and Ares, the interesting part is that he doesn't understand why. It's as if he can't remember why he hated them so much, he has a passing apathy twords Apollo. He also doesn't understand why occasionally Apollo stares him down like an angry dog, infact Apollo never really elaborated on the fact that it was Achilles who desecrated his Temple back at Troy. Many of the gods actually don't fully understand what is going on with Achilles with the exceptions of Hermes, Ares and Dionysus. Since all three gods understand how mortals physically work, they can sympathize with him. However, every time when Ares interacts with Achilles, it always seems to look like someone put two male honey badgers in the same room with a shiv and a pocket knife tied to their heads when they're done fight.

He's likes horses, he actually tries to talk to them like as if it was his fellow soldiers. In reality, many horses he talks to are actually reincarnated warriors from various parts of Greece. some have no memories of their past lives, and some are fully aware that they've been reborn into a completely different life. In some bizarre senses Achilles accidentally may have coined the idea that horses are just reincarnated soldiers who died in battle. Strangely enough it's the only set of individuals he has fully constructed conversations with instead of just incomplete sentences perfectly summarizing his thoughts.

Achilles knows how to use almost every single weapon you can give him and for some reason he can learn how to use a new weapon that he's never seen before in just a matter of minutes. This is because he apparently has really good muscle memory and half of the time he just accomplishes so many interesting things because of it.

He genuinely enjoys watching Hephaestus and hangout with him in his workshop. He likes the dimly lit but warm workshop, he find it far more comfortable than the cold and damp cavern he'd stayed in after he "died".

No one is certain how he even survived to begin with. Some of the rumors that have stemmed from this situation say a Fury took him in out of pitty and nursed him back to moderate health, to Eris being responsible for his survival.

He's surprisingly stubborn for somebody who may have lost 10% of his brain function, memory, and who consistently goes through War flashbacks much like an old veteran would. At this point basically he has the physical strength and energy of somebody in his mid-twenties but the demeanor and temperament of somebody in their late eighties. The only way you can coax him to do anything is to simply trade with him. This could be either new weaponry for him to practice with, or just a snack.

#greek bros #greek-Bros #the boys™️#achilles #heracles #perseus #Theseus #greek gods #greek mythology #greek myth #character study #hellenistic

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agentnico · 4 years ago

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Soul (2020) Review

Ah, I get it, Soul as in both jazz and blues music and also the human soul....ahhhh I see what you did there Disney. You and your clever clever puns. So wise Disney, so very very wise. Look at you being all clever and witty. Oh Disney, Disney, Disney...........I’m not sure where I’m going with this. Look, Christmas has only just passed, I’m still recovering from the abundant intake of alcohol and food, so give me a break, okay?!

Plot: A musician who has lost his passion for music is transported out of his body and must find his way back with the help of an infant soul learning about herself.

So following the controversial Premium Access release of Mulan on Disney+ (the studio’s streaming service) where subscribers were expected to pay an extortionate additional charge in addition to their subscription to be able to watch the film, Disney has decided to redeem themselves by putting their new Pixar film Soul on the service at no extra cost. Look, I tend to speak against Disney when I can, as I don’t like them as a business, but this I do admit was a good movie. So touché Disney, Merry Christmas to you too! This will be that one rare review where I won’t complain about you and your evil corporate ways.... Wait, hang on, I already did by referencing Mulan’s release. Ah well, I can’t help it. We are meant to be enemies by nature. Anyway, let’s talk Soul!

First off, let’s get the obvious out of the way - the animation in this is amazing! That goes without saying though, as stating that a Pixar film is well animated is like saying you would burn in moments if you decided to have a swim in a molten lava fountain because you were bored. It’s obvious! Pixar has some of the best animators in the business working for them, hence why all their movies look great. This one is no exception - Soul manages to use the animation to create and rationalize images, worlds, characters and concepts so complicated and imaginative that usually can only find their form inside minds. Yet their is a peculiar simplicity to it all. Visually this piece is an artistic masterpiece! Goes without saying....even though I said it. I know, quite the paradox!

Secondly, there’s a lot of jazz in the music. So much so that Jeff Goldblum has probably watched this film 20 times by now, and this thing hasn’t even been out half a week! So yeah, if you don’t like hearing the blues, you might hate the soundtrack of this film. There are a lot of light hits to the drum, trumpets belting out their sweet serenades, and the soft notes of the piano that make you think of Ryan Gosling from La La Land flicking his hair as he performs “City of Stars”. In fact many of the musical sequences in this film reminded me of La La Land’s style. Whiplash also comes to mind and even the recent Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is here in spirit. So, as the Blues Brothers would say, this film is on a mission from God!

Now of the narrative itself. The reason this movie truly works is due to its empowering great message of morality, and how simply being alive is the greatest gift one has. 2020 has been a tough year on all of us, due to the virus and all these restrictions and the bad things happening on the news on a daily basis, and of course many of us have suffered lots, through missing loved ones and ensuing mental illnesses. This film shows how to cherish the little things. Those small moments that we should be grateful for. We can get so consumed in material things and its the small things that we need to remind everyone about. Yes, we live in difficult times, and it’s hard as knuckles to keep a straight level headed outlook, but things will be okay in the end. We will be okay. Try and enjoy the little things, and we shall all get out of this mess eventually. Heck, I’m willing to get sentimental here. I’m lucky enough to be in a relationship with someone who loves me and I love them back. Yes, we cannot see each other lots due to social distancing restrictions, but I’m still so lucky to have her in my life. That is something I can be grateful for. Hopefully you all too have something special in your lives that even now you can properly appreciate. This earnest message is what makes Soul so special. In fact, in moments I felt like this didn’t even feel like a Disney film - the message was very complex but also really humbling.

Soul is truly worth the watch. It’s a surprisingly small and touching film, and is an honest piece with incredible artwork, a solid voice cast with stand out turns from Jamie Foxx, Graham Norton and Rachel House. This one is definitely worth your time. Merry late Christmas everyone, stay well and safe.

Overall score: 8/10

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redisriding · 4 years ago

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The Right Swipe - Chapter Eight

A Court of Thorns and Roses Modern AU Fanfic

All character’s belong to the wonderful Sarah J Maas.

Tags: @superspiritfestival @duskandstarlight @perseusannabeth @courtofjurdan @omg-aelin @keshavomit @rainbowcheetah512 @queenestarcheron @mis-lil-red @queen-of-glass

Cassian sat in his truck, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the music playing on the radio. It was some classic rock channel that his truck had picked up on the drive out of Velaris to the hiking trail where he had agreed to meet Nesta for their second date.

He had been waiting for almost an hour. Not that Nesta was late, but because Cassian had arrived excessively early.

He had woken before his alarm that morning and was too restless to try and go back to sleep, so he had got up and padded around Azriel’s plush apartment making himself breakfast.

But even the elaborate spread he concocted disappeared sooner than he would have liked. He sat at Azriel’s kitchen table trembling with energy that he didn’t know what to do with.

After cleaning up, he decided to make himself useful. Locating Azriel’s tool box, which was some search, he set about hanging the paintings that Rhys had ordered to brighten up the grey minimalist box that Azriel lived in.

He had only drilled the first hole in the wall when Azriel emerged from his room, bleary-eyed and grumpy. “Cass, what are you doing?”

“Hanging the art Rhys bought.”

“I can see that, but do you need to do it before 8am on a Saturday?! The neighbours are going to complain.”

“Right, yeah. Sorry.”

“Why are you even up so early?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Well, go watch TV or something.”

“Do you want to—.”

But Azriel had already retreated back into his room, presumably to hide under his duvet for another few hours.

Cassian closed the toolbox with a sigh.

Lying down on the floor he began scissoring his arms and legs, making dust angels, while trying to decide how best to kill his morning.

He wasn’t nervous about his second date with Nesta, for everything that could have gone wrong already had. Today’s date was a lucky second chance he didn’t think he was going to get, so he was determined that today Nesta was going to get to know the real him, and if she didn’t like it, well he didn’t lose anything he hadn’t already anyway.

Climbing off the floor, he headed for the bathroom.

He didn’t think he had ever showered before a hike, it was the kind of thing you did after you got all sweaty, but given this hike was really a date, turning up smelling ripe wouldn’t do him any favours.

He did however take the opportunity, while he stood under the warm cascade of water, to stroke himself to completion…twice. Nesta’s presence already did things to him, he didn’t need to add unreasonable levels of horniness to the mix.

After towelling off, he spent longer than necessary arranging his hair into a loose man bun, a style that Emerie always told him was sexy. He choose to assume she was an authority for all women and that Nesta would approve.

Grabbing his phone off the vanity, he sent her quick message.

Looking forward to seeing you today :)

Nesta’s rely came a few minutes later.

Hope you can keep up ;)

Cassian’s chest clenched, that stupid grin he’d recently started sporting spread across his face.

Don’t worry about me sweetheart ;)

Adjusting his towel, and himself, Cassian padded from the bathroom back into the room he was staying in at Az’s.

He pulled a pair of trousers from the drawer he had hastily stuck the few clothes he brought with him into when he arrived. He then spent longer than he was prepared to admit debating which of his three flannel shirts he should wear. Cassian was just grateful he didn’t have to borrow anything ill-fitting of Az’s this time.

After lacing up his boots with shaking hands, he decided that he couldn’t sit around in Azriel’s apartment any longer, he was going stir crazy, which is how he now found himself at their date spot, early.

A few hikers who had passed in the hour he sat there had thrown him dirty looks. Men who sitting alone in trucks in the forrest tended not to be up to any good. To be fair to them, about half an hour in, Cassian did debate unzipping his trousers to rub a quick one out just to ensure that any lingering horniness was drained. In the end he decided against exposing himself, given, to do so would be to commit a criminal offence.

It was then that he had started tapping his steering wheel and singing along to the classic anthems.

The radio had just cut to a commercial break when a little red spots car appeared in his mirror. He laughed as it came to a stop behind his truck.

Of course that was what she would drive.

————

Nesta parked her car behind a massive truck. There was absolutely no reason for it to be the size that it was. She was sure that it was owned by some Velaris douche who thought anything outside the city limits could only be enhanced by the smell of exhaust fumes and the sound of an engine revving. She was nervous parking her car behind it, for fear the driver would simply reverse over her car, but it was the only space available in the small lot at the foot of the hiking trail.

Switching off the engine she pulled her phone just her bag and sent Cassian a message.

Hey! I’ve just arrived :)

She hadn’t seen him while she was searching for a parking space, so maybe he was still yet to arrive. He didn’t really know Velaris particularly well after all.

She shucked off the tennis shoes she had been wearing to drive and pulled her hiking boots from the back seat. She had her head down, lacing them up, when a knock on her window startled her.

Jumping, Nesta looked up see a smirking Cassian crouched down looking in the window at her.

Her stomach lurched, brain short circuiting.

Gods.

This was not the man she had met 10 days ago for dinner at the House of Wind.

He was spectacular.

Gone was the nervousness, dressed in clothes that didn’t fit him, with hair that was gelled like a helmet to his head.

Instead, today, Cassian looked at ease. He was wearing a dark green flannel and his hair was tied in a messy bun. Loose tendrils framed his face. She wanted to touch them. She bet his hair was soft. Probably nicer than her own.

If she could just run her hands through…

Nesta realised that she was gaping at him.

Quickly righting herself, she swung open the car door. “Hey!,” she said.

“Hey yourself.” He kept that easy knowing smile, like there was something she was missing.

“You been here long?”

“Nope just got here.”

“Cool, let me just get these boots on and we can hit the trail.”

“Take your time, sweetheart.”

A little thrill went through Nesta at the casual way he called her that.

She ducked her head to hide her blush, focusing instead on her laces. She didn’t look at Cassian but she could feel his eyes on her, watching her.

Her hands shook.

She felt vulnerable, exposed, sitting in her low sports car, his presence looming.

He was so much taller than Nesta remembered, broader too. She was eye level with his powerful thighs wrapped in black work trousers.

There was something predatory about the way he stood. Dangerous. Not to her. Just that he was a powerful man, taking up space in a way he hadn’t the first time they met.

Nesta’s blood heated.

Finished tying her lace, she grabbed her backpack from the passenger seat and made to stand up. Cassian was beside her in an instant, arm outstretched like a gentleman to help her out of her car.

With anyone else she would have not so politely told them where to go, but with Cassian, she was happy to accept any excuse to touch him.

“Ready?” She asked, when she found herself parallel with his chest.

“Yep, you know the way?”

“Yeah I come up here all the time.”

“It seems nice,” Cassian said.

Nesta snorted a laugh, “This is the car park.”

“Yeah,” pink tinged Cassian’s cheeks. Something inside Nesta twisted, she didn’t know how it could go from intimidating in one moment, to adorable in the next. “I just meant the forrest…it seems like a nice spot to go hiking.”

“If you’re impressed by this, the view at the top is going to blow you away,” she said, setting off down the trail.

Cassian chuckled, he was behind her now, following her up the narrow path cut into the undergrowth. It would widen soon and they would be able to walk beside each other, but for now Nesta swayed her hips a little more than she normally would. “And if I’m not blow away?”

“Oh you will be.”

“Willing to bet?”

“Sure.”

Cassian paused for a moment, but when he spoke again, Nesta could hear the daring in his voice. “If you make me walk all the way to the top of this mountain and I’m not blown away by the view I want a kiss.”

“A kiss?” That liquid heat slicked through her again. Where was this bold Cassian the last time they went out? Trapped in that terrible hair perhaps?

“A kiss.”

“And if you make to the top and are blown away by the view?”

“Well then I’ll give you a kiss.”

She snorted, “So either way, we get to the top of this mountain and we’re kissing?”

“Sounds like good odds to me.”

“Sounds like rigged odds!”

“The first rule of gambling, sweetheart, the bookie always wins.”

She snorted a laugh.

“So what do you say, Nes, do you accept those odds?”

“Ask me again when we reach the half way point.”

Silence fell between them then. Heated. Until they rounded a corner and the path widened. Cassian fell into step beside her.

“Do you hike much in Illyria?” She asked him.

“No. I wish I could do it more, it’s so beautiful up there, but it’s…messy.”

“Messy?”

“Yeah,” Cassian shrugged, “There used to be great hiking all over Illyria, but now, the land has all been carved up and sold to logging companies and private developers. The paths all cut through private property so you’re trespassing if you want to hike a trail.”

“Ah, messy.”

“The old-timers really hate it.”

“I can imagine.”

“All of this wild land they had the free run of in their youth, now it’s all gone. Well, it’s still there but no one can use it.” Cassian ran a frustrated had through his hair. The movement showing off the size of his bicep. Nesta was sure it was bigger than her thigh. “There is this old guy in the town nearest me, real grumpy, his name is Beron. He always said that no one could push him off his ancestral lands, ya know?”

Nesta nodded. This was a story she knew all to well.

“So one day, he goes hiking on this trail that cuts through land owned by some development company, they want to log the forest and then extract minerals from the soil or some shit,” Cassian rolled his eyes dramatically, “Anyway, a week later, old Beron get’s a cease and desist letter in the mail from the development company. Apparently they have cameras all over their land and were able to identify him. It’s fucked up.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“No?”

“No. Stuff like this is happens all the time.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, Velaris and Hewn City are growing exponentially, and developers are swooping in to try and make a fast buck.”

“Illyria is not growing, it’s the opposite. Nobody under 40 lives there.”

“You live there.”

“Yeah well I’m special,” Cassian said with a wink.

Nesta gave him a playful shove with her shoulder, it did nothing to move the mountain of a man walking beside her. His shove back however…

It was enough to push Nesta off balance. Her foot caught on a rock. Her ankle twisted.

And then she was falling.

Her arms propelling in an attempt to grab hold of something.

To keep her off the ground.

Just as she toppled backwards a thick arm wrapped around her waist catching her. Pulling her tight against him.

“Shit sorry Nes, I didn’t mean…” his voice trailed off as is he realised the position they were in.

How close he stood to her.

One big arm wrapped around her tiny waist, pulling her body tight against his. Her hands clutching onto his thick arms, a reflex from when he grabbed her, but now she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to let go.

She liked the feel of him against her.

A zing went through Nesta as she realised her breasts were pressed up against his solid chest.

Her breathing hitched.

He noticed.

The laughter in his hazel eyes dying, only to be replaced with something more fierce, determined.

Their faces were so close together it wouldn’t take much for her to close the gap, to press her mouth against his full lips.

Her gaze flicked down in time to catch his tongue flicking out to wet his bottom lip.

His grip tightened on her.

The blood pounded through Nesta anchoring her to the moment. She was surrounded by Cassian, his strong body cocooning her. All she could see was him. All she could feel as he held her against him. She could hear her pulse beating in her ears, the shallowness of her breathing, the deep breath that Cassian took to steady himself before he learnt down, closing the distance between him.

Their lips met, tentative at first but soon Nesta found herself deepening the kiss. Her hands gripping at Cassian’s thick arms as she melted against his body.

She was on fire.

Never had she felt a kiss like this.

This was it.

Whatever it was.

She had found it.

————

Elain’s saw her hands trembling as she pushed the elevator button. The doors slid closed and she found herself staring at a mirror image of herself. She was dressed in a soft pink coat, with a matching pink scarf. Her makeup was simple but emphasised her eyes. Her hair was curled softly.

She had just finished fluffing her hair when the doors slid open. Taking a deep breath, she stepped out into the hallway, and froze.

There were two doors in the hallway, Azriel hadn’t told her which one was his. He had just said the penthouse.

Pulling her phone from her pocket she sent a message to Azriel. They didn’t text very often, preferring to talk on the phone. She just hoped that now he would reply quickly.

Hi Azriel, I’m outside but I don’t know which door is yours.

Standing in the hallway waiting for him to reply, Elain was suddenly overcome with a bout of nerves. She had been so excited to finally meet Azriel she hadn’t be worried, it felt like she had been going to meet an old friend, but it was in that moment she realised that she didn’t know this man. Had never met him. He could in fact be anyone.

And she was meeting him in his home.

This wasn’t safe.

She needed to get out of here.

Elain turned back to the elevator and pressed the call button just as the one of the hallway doors behind her opened.

“Elain?”

Hesitantly, Elain turned around to look at Azriel.

Oh. My. Gods.

His face was exactly how it appeared when they video called.

No.

It was even more beautiful in person.

His dark features, his floppy hair, his hazel eyes that were both shy and kind.

But the rest of him…

He was a hockey player. She knew that. What she hadn’t fully considered was what that meant.

He practically filled the door way. Long lean muscle.

He was wearing a grey jumper and dark grey slacks, so at odds with her pink.

“Hi,” she whispered, her voice failing her.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes…I just…”

“You just?”

“Er…I just realised that maybe this was a bad idea.”

She didn’t miss the hurt that flickered across his face. He moved then, tucking his hands into the pockets of his trousers. It was only this movement that drew her attention to them; the scars that marred his hands.

A hockey injury?

“Was I not what you expected?” He asked, distress settling in his features.

“No, not at all.”

“I—.”

“No, I didn’t mean like that,” she exclaimed when she realised the way he must have taken that. “I just suddenly realised that it it maybe not a good idea to be in the apartment of some random man I don’t know.”

A small smile played on his mouth, as if he was trying not to laugh at her, and Gods was it not the most beautiful thing that Elain had ever seen. She wondered then what he must sound like when he laughed. Some subconscious part of her decided it was her mission to find out.

“I would say you know me pretty well.”

“I feel like I know you.”

Elain could have sworn his smile broadened slightly. “But I understand if you are uncomfortable.”

“I think the whole reality of the situation just suddenly hit me.”

“Yeah I get that.” He settled himself, leaning against the doorframe. He seemed in no rush to usher her inside, a fact that somehow set Elain more at ease. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Of course?”

“I’m terrified.”

Elain’s eyes went wide. “Why?”

“It’s been a long time since I was last on a date.”

“Sure.”

“No, it’s true! I haven’t been on a date in I don’t even want to know how long. I was with my last girlfriend for ten years and we broke up three years ago. I haven’t been on a date since.”

“But you’re so handsome.”

Azriel smiled now, a broad one, that lit up his whole face, and Elain felt something warm spread across her chest. “I’m flattered you think so.”

“It’s true.”

“Well that makes it all the more embarrassing then doesn’t it? Thirteen years since I last had a first date, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“You’re doing pretty great so far.”

“You think so?”

“I do.”

“When was the last time you were on a first date?”

Elain hesitated. Her first date with Lucien had been just over two weeks ago. Her sisters had told her that dating multiple people was normal now, but after what Tamlin had said to her at dinner the other night…

She cut those thoughts off. If Azriel was the kind of guy that would speak to her the way Tamlin had spoken to her, the way Greyson used to speak to her, then it was better she found out now when she was able to turn around and flee in the elevator.

“Two weeks ago.”

“Oh wow.”

“But I also got out of a long term relationship.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, two years ago. That was the first date I’d been on since.”

“How long were you with your last boyfriend?”

“Five years.”

“You’ve been on two first dates in the last seven years, and you still have more experience that me.” Azriel was fully grinning at her now.

Elain felt her own smile match his. “It appears that way.”

“I understand if you feel too uncomfortable,” he swallowed, “but if you want to come in maybe we could figure this whole first date thing out together?”

With a buoyancy in her heart, Elain stepped towards the door.

————

Elain.

God’s Azriel had been struck stupid when he opened the door and she had just been standing there. Pretty in pink.

He understood her nerves. Gods he felt them too. All the time. He had been so overjoyed when she agreed to have dinner at his place that he didn’t think about what that might mean for her.

He was so grateful for her now, as she stepped across the threshold and into his apartment, that she had agreed to go through with it.

He wouldn’t have just let her walk away. Not after seeing her standing there in the hallway. Something in his chest had begun singing to him then. He would have asked her to go to a restaurant instead. Not that he ever went to restaurants. His anxiety didn’t allow it. His life was spent in his apartment, at the rink, or holed up in a hotel room whenever his team played an away game. He absolutely hated being in public, but for Elain, maybe he could try.

“This is for you,” Elain said, thrusting the potted plant that she had been hugging against herself, towards him, “It’s a snake plant. You said that you needed some plants to make your place more homely and this guy is pretty hard to kill. They don’t mind shady spots, or draughts, you can pretty much ignore them and they’ll reward you by purifying the air.”

Azriel smiled down at her, “Thank you,” he whispered, “you didn’t have to bring me anything.”

Elain flushed pink, “I know…but I wanted to.”

“You’ll have to help me find a good spot for him.”

She smiled then, that shy smile of hers that stirred things within him, “Sure.”

Gods how had he let it go so long.

Now he was finally around a woman and he didn’t know what to do with himself. He suddenly felt too hot and too cold at once. His gut twist, his heart pound, while other parts of him that he would never dare mention in the polite company of a lady began to throb.

“Let me take your coat.”

“Oh thank you.”

As Elain shrugged off her coat all of the electric heat in Azriel simmered to something closer to concern. He frowned. She was wearing a pink dress, with long sleeves and flowy skirt, it was beautiful on her but it did nothing to hide just how thin she was.

He hadn’t noticed when they had called, but she was absolutely tiny. He was sure her waist was about as thick as his thigh.

He hoped she was okay.

Hanging her coat up, Azriel led her down the hallway and into the open plan living space. “So where do you think this guy should go?” He asked, gesturing to the plant.

Elain paused, looking around the big room. “Maybe he should go over there?” She said, pointing to table near the window that held only a lamp.

Azriel padded across the room to position the plant on the table. “What do you think?”

“Looks good,” Elain smiled that smile again, “something smells good too.”

“I hope you’re hungry. I’ve got loads of food.”

“Spend all day in front of the stove?”

A sheepish smile spread across Azriel’s face, “I was going to try and pass the food off as my own, but I can’t take the credit for work I didn’t do.”

Elain giggled, “You ordered in?”

“I ordered in.”

She rolled her eyes, “I thought you promised to make me dinner?”

“I think I promised to get you dinner, you definitely don’t want to eat anything I make.”

“You can’t cook?”

“I can barely make coffee.”

“I’ll teach you to cook, if you want?”

Making future plans, clearly Elain felt more comfortable in his presence after their initial wobble. Good. “Are you a good cook?”

“I’m an amazing cook.”

Azriel chuckled, “Then I might just take you up on that offer, at leasts I can sample some of your amazing cooking.”

Elain laughed again. Gods that sound was so refreshing, Azriel didn’t think it would ever get old.

“So can I get you a glass of wine?”

“Yes, that would be nice.”

Azriel padded to the kitchen, to pour two glasses of wine. When he returned he found Elain staring dreamily at oneof the brightly coloured canvasses that Rhys had bought. He had hung them up this afternoon in preparation. He wanted his apartment to feel homey, not like he just moved in.

“Pretty cool, huh?” He asked, coming to a stand beside her. Gods she was dainty. Her head didn’t even come past his shoulder.

Elain took the glass of wine from his outstretched hand. Her fingers brushed lightly against his, causing a bolt of electricity to shoot through Azriel. “Where did you get it?” She asked.

“My manager bought them, but I can find out for you?”

“No, it’s okay. I know the artist.”

“Oh yeah? Cheers,” he said, clinking his glass against hers.

“Cheers! Yeah, it’s my sister.”

“The artist? No way?”

Elain nodded, “I just didn’t realise she was selling her work again.”

“Apparently so?”

“Indeed.”

“So, ugh, do you want to eat?”

The mention of food seemed to snap Elain from her reverie. “Sure.”

Padding back to the kitchen Azriel plated up to large plates of food. One for Elain, and then double for him.

Elain’s eye’s went big when he sat the plates down in front of her at the table. “You eat a lot of food.”

Azriel shrugged, settling himself across the table from her. “Food is fuel for me. I need it to keep up with training.”

And it’s nothing to be ashamed of he almost added. To Azriel’s great surprise however, Elain polished off the plate of food her served her, and then joined him for seconds. She did tap out before thirds, but it was still an impressive showing.

Azriel just hoped that it was a sign she was in some sort of recovery, and she wasn’t going to punish herself later. Or that she was sick in some other way.

After they had finished dinner they settled themselves on the couch to watch a film. Azriel preened over how close Elain sat to him. Their legs touching. He took it as a sign that she liked him, or at the very least that she was comfortable with him.

As the opening sequence began, Azriel stretched his arm across the back of the chair. Elain glanced up at him, smiling, she knew his game, but she didn’t stop him. She seemed content to allow his arm, slowly over the course of the film, drift down until it was slung around her shoulders.

By the time the film ended, Elain was snuggled into his side, her head resting against his chest.

Azriel hadn’t been paying close attention to the film, he tightened his arm around her as the credit began to roll. He didn’t want her to move. He was just so comfortable with her. Physically, as they lay together on the couch, but emotionally too. Elain was so easy to be around, his anxiety didn’t flare up.

Azriel knew he was starting to develop feelings for her.

It was just their first date and he was already a goner.

He could only hope that she felt the same way.

————

“You know when you said that I could hang with you tonight, so I could give Azriel his space?”

“Yeah?”

“I kinda figured you meant we could go to a sports bar or something.”

Rhys looked up at his friend. They were standing in the Velaris Gallery of Art, one of Rhy’s clients had a big installation opening tonight. Rhys had only planned to stop by for a short time, to show his face and congratulate his client on her big night, but Rhys had alway enjoyed art. What harm, he’d thought, if he just glanced at the exhibition. An hour later however, and he had only seen half of it.

Cassian had patiently trailed along behind him, making the occasional confused comment as to what exactly he was looking at.

The only paint strokes Cassian cared about were the weather proofing he slapped on his wooden cabin every summer to protect it in the winter ahead.

Gods bless him, he did not fit in here. He was just so big. He kept awkwardly twisting his body to avoid knocking over any of the exhibits. At any moment, Cassian risked bumping into something and the place falling like dominos.

His friend was clearly uneasy, in his work boots and a green flannel, he had come straight from his hike to the event so that Azriel could have his apartment for a date of his own. Rhys couldn’t help but feel bad for him, “I’m sorry man, I just got carried away.”

“It’s okay.”

“Nah, give me a half an hour, I’ll talk to my client and we can get out of here.”

“Yeah?”

“Just let me find her,” Rhys said, craning his neck to see if he could find her amongst the crowd. “There’s food over there is you want to park up and I’ll come find you in a bit?”

Cassian glanced to the table with a frown. “Is it, like, real food?”

“Real food?”

“I thought it was part of the museum?”

Rhys laughed, “It’s not part of the exhibition, no.”

Cassian nodded seemingly relieved, “I’ll be at the food table then.”

“Half an hour, and we can go, I promise.”

Cassian just waved a hand dismissively, as he headed for the snacks, “Take as long as you need.”

————

Feyre kept her head ducked as she made her way through the crowd. She was supposed to be working tonight, well she was working tonight but only in the sense that she was physically at work. She was supposed to be working the crowd, making introductions, chatting with artists, schmoozing potential buyers, but it was taking all her strength not to cry, and she wasn’t even succeeding at that.

It had been 48 hours since Tamlin proposed.

48 hours since he had got down on one knee in the middle of the street and asked her to be his wife.

48 hours since the tears had started spilling, not with the joy that Tamlin had first thought, but with fear.

48 hours since he started screaming at her in the street. How dare she reject him? She was nothing without him. Everything she had in her life was because of him.

48 hours since he left her sobbing in the street.

It had been 48 hours since she had last talked to the love of her life and it hurt.

Gods she needed a drink.

Sniffling she made her way to the drinks table, and took a large gulp from the first glass of wine she could lay her hand on.

“Eh…are you okay?”

Feyre looked over to the man who had spoke, a snotty laugh spluttered from her. The guy was huge, like a giant, dressed in outdoor work clothes. His shoulders curled protectively over the napkin he held in one hand and the cheese laden cracker in the other. As if anyone would even attempt to steel it from him anyway.

She wondered which artist had dragged him along to support them this evening.

He watched her with big hazel eyes. There was something about him that looked familiar. Comfortable. That was the only reason why the next words fell from her mouth. “I think I broke up with my boyfriend.”

“Aww shit,” the giant said, shaking his head like it was the worst thing he had ever heard. “That really sucks. Were you guys together long?”

“We were serious, he proposed,” Feyre’s voice caught on the last word and the sob racked her.

The giant swore. “No girly don’t cry, it’ll be okay.”

He somehow managed to ease himself around the table without knocking anything over, coming to rub Feyre on the back as she continued to so uncontrollably.

She didn’t know this man who was comforting her, but she sound herself turning into his chest, her tears wetting his t-shirt as she cried against him. One hand continued to rub her back, the other, she felt rather than saw, popped the final cheese and cracker into his mouth, before he pressed the crumby napkin into her hand. “Here, have a tissue,” or at least that sounded like what he said with a mouthful of cheese.

They stood like that for a few minutes until Feyre was able to get her breathing under control. She took a step back to look up at the man, dapping her eyes with the napkin he had given her. “I’m sorry,” she sniffed.

“Don’t worry about—,” the giant frowned, “You kinda look like some I know, you know?”

“Oh yeah?” Feyre wiped her nose, couldn’t be anyone good if her swollen tear stained face was anything to go by.

“Do you have sisters?”

“Two?”

“One of them called Nesta by any chance?”

Feyre froze, her eyes going wide as she looked up at the giant, “How do you know Nes—.”

A hand came out to clap the giant on the shoulder, “Hey man, you ready to go?”

Shit.

Well wasn’t this the last person she wanted to see right now.

The giant’s friend took one look at her and purred. “Feyre, darling.”

#the right swipe #acotar fanfiction

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wreckofawriter · 5 years ago

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Magnolia Part 2

Part 1

Paring: Prince!Sirius Black x reader

Word Count: 2.8k

Warnings: Violence, blood, swearing

Song to Set the Vibe: Legends Never Die ~ Leauge of Legends

A/n: Holy shit this one went darker than I thought it would. Please excuse some awkward writing I wrote part of this while faded and I edited it best I could. I'm probably going to have one or two more parts. Hope you enjoy!!

Your legs had gone numb, you had been running for far too long. The heavy skirt you wore dragging in the dead leaves and catching on branches. Your hands were already skinned from being thrown to the ground. Your knees gave up, buckling, raw cuts dug back into the ground.

Panic had consumed you, the smell of smoke thick in your nose even though the flames were miles behind you, the screams echoed around you. Your lungs burned, embers still caught in your hair. You swore you could smell the cooking flesh.

You still heard the faint whispers. “What an unfortunate accident” they mocked “Your father must have forgotten to set a timer. The oven always got too hot.”

They smirked at you, breath hot in your ear, “The building was flammable, it must have caught quickly. Too quick for them to escape.”

“It was such a terrible mistake.” They laughed.

But it was no mistake.

"I said no!" You screamed at no one, the woods answering with your echo. "I said no." You dropped to the ground, you were too tired to cry anymore. You had said no, but I didn't matter anymore, what was done was done. Death wasn't reversible. The only reason you were still living was because you hadn't died.

You no longer wore heavy skirts. You had traded the ribbon in your hair for beads and braids. A satchel was replaced by a holster, books by guns, pastries with knives. You had adapted, the world wasn't simple and you couldn't pretend it was anymore. So you changed. You made yourself strong, you gave yourself the power and then you used it to stay in command. You decided what happened to you now, you made decisions for yourself and no one else. You lived for you. You had no one else to live for.

The white sails in the distance brought you excitement, your thirst for blood hot in your mouth. You recognized the symbols upon them, they had been plastered onto flags and banners around you for 18 years.

"The cannons are set," Adrie spoke, you could see the glee in her own eyes.

You nodded, “Good.” you felt a grin take your lips, “They aren’t stupid, they will be prepared for a fight.”

“So are we.” She grinned, her curved blade spinning in her hand.

“Good.” You repeated, “We burn the ship to the ground.”

You were true to your word, you and your crew overtook the royal vessel with ease, their soldiers were ill fit for the brutality of your own men.

Your blade slid easily through the knight’s throat, he tried to intake a breath choking on his own blood in a disturbing gurgle. You kicked him off your blade and sent him flipping over the side of the ship. You snapped the sword down, blood whipping onto the dark planks of the deck.

The fighting around you had died out and shouts were now replaced with laughter as gold and jewelry was loaded onto your own ship, there wasn’t as much as you anticipated, but there was still plenty. Not to mention the six barrels of liquor that had been found below deck.

Your pleasant mood was ruined by a harsh cry.

“Stowaway!” a scream followed the reveal.

You sprinted towards the sound your boot thudding heavily on the swaying boat. You jumped bellow deck ignoring the latter completely and wincing as you landed harshly on your left ankle. You continued regardless, turning a corner to face Adrie.

Her bright eyes were wide, the shine of a blade decorating her neck. A man in a dark hood held her against his chest, “Back away now!” he shouted only tightening his grip on your friend.

The man’s eyes lifted to meet yours and the sword gripped in his hand slipped to the ground with a clatter. He began to speak but was cut off as Adrie struck his shin, turning swiftly and cracking her knuckles under his chin.

The man crashed backward, managing to get his hands out to catch himself before he was pushed by the blonde’s foot into the ground, his head hitting the hardwood, hood dropping behind him.

You felt your world spin as you looked into the stowaway’s eyes, they were wide with fear and confusion, his dark hair spilling around him.

Adrie dropped to one knee, a knife held in her hand as she prepared to split the skin of his neck.

“Stop!” You shouted, desperation laced into your voice.

She looked up at you confused, her blade paused just above his Adam’s apple which bobbed as he took in a sharp breath.

“I can’t beli-” he began.

“Shut up.” You hissed, your mind reeled, you tried to think clearly but all that would come to you were muddled memories of pink flowers.

“Captain?” Adrie asked, her knife still hovered.

“Don’t kill him.” You spoke sternly, finally regaining part of your sanity.

Her face twisted in anger, “Why the hell not?” she spat.

You scoffed eyes still locked on the deep grey, “His life is worth double ours and more”

She furrowed her brows, “Do you know him or something?”

“Or something.” You replied.

“Well, who the fuck is he?”

“This is the Prince of Altair.” You answered, “There are a lot of people willing to pay a pretty penny for his head.”

She frowned, “He doesn’t look much like a prince, how can you be sure?”

You didn’t respond, “Tie him up. I want him bellow deck.”

You made it back to your ship in a slight daze, an absurd mixture of anger and sadness clawed from the back fo your mind as your eyes flooded with years of unshed sobs. You moved quickly, locking yourself in your quarters before anyone could catch a glimpse of the tears spilling down your cheeks.

You swore, kicking your desk and sending a bottle of ink to the ground. You couldn’t believe what you had just seen. What was he doing here? He should be running his kingdom, what the fuck is he doing on a ship in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea?

You had done everything you could to avoid your past, yet it came knocking at your doorstep just as things were beginning to become easy. You should have known something was going to happen. It had all been too easy. The gods were punishing you for your momentary pleaser, reminding you that you were nothing more than the baker girl they had created. You had sins to burn for.

The scent of fire filled you and for a brief moment you thought you were standing in the dark grass of your yard, you could hear the screams and whispers again. You fell to your knees, burying your head in your hands as you tried to collect the broken mess you considered your reflection. You were falling, but there was no one to catch you, no one to pull you to your feet.

You were snapped from the nightmare you created for yourself with a sharp knock at the door. You inhaled a deep breath, “What?”

“Captain, the Prince is being difficult, things have gotten out of hand.”

“Knock him out.” You replied bitterly.

“We have tried, he is being difficult.” There was a brief pause, “He’s asking for you.”

That brought you to your feet, you thew open the door glaring at the man in front of you, “Where is he?”

Sirius was in a wave of panic. You had been right there, you had commanded that woman, stopped her. Yet you were nowhere in sight. All he could think about was the deep y/e/c of your eyes. The men holding his shoulders laughed at something behind him.

Sirius eyed the low overhanging beams of the cramped room he was being led to. His eyes then flirted to the gun in the man to his right belt. He stopped abruptly.

“Move it scum.” One man hissed.

Sirius stood still eyes locked ahead of him.

“I said move!” As the pirate went to push him Sirius ducked, snatching the gun from his belt before dodging the first and second beam and leaping at the third. His hands which were tied in front of him caught the unpolished wood and he pulled himself into the small space between him and the ceiling.

He raised the borrowed weapon pointing it at the taller of the two bellow him. “Where the fuck is she? I know you bastards have her. Where is y/n?”

“You’re batshit if you think you’re getting our captain.” The tall one growled.

“What the hell is going on down there?” Someone shouted from above.

“I don’t want your captain, I want y/n y/l/n she was on this ship.” He cocked the gun, “Now tell me where she is or I will blow a hole in your skull.”

“The prince escaped!” The shorter one called, “Get the captain!” There was a scurry of footsteps and suddenly four more people entered the room, two women, one tall with reddish hair another a short blonde. The other two men were massive each brandishing firearms of their own.

“I will kill you!” Sirius shouted, in a fury, the image of you being held captive by these criminals burned itself into his mind. “Give me y/n and I’ll leave.”

The short man scoffed, “I’ve already told you we ain’t given up our captain.”

Sirius supposed these were some of the dumbest people he had ever met, “Why the hell would I want your Captian?”

The pirates threw a glance at each other, they supposed this had to be one of the dumbest people they had ever met.

“I’m going to ask you one more time.” Sirius snarled, “Where is y/n?”

“We aren’t fucking giving you y/n you bastard!” The blonde yelled her bright green eyes flashing dangerously.

A gunshot sounded and the hold erupted into shouts, Sirius’s ears rug as he tried to regain his scattered thoughts.

Just as suddenly as the commotion had begun it ended.

“Hey!” Your voice rose above the mob and in seconds silence fell like a weighted blanket.

Sirius found your form bellow him, emerging from the crowd which parted for your ease. You stood just bellow the man your eyes narrowed as you sneered up at him.

“Drop the gun, Sirius,” you commanded, the eyes of your crew widening as he complied, weapon clattering to teh ground.

You growled looking just past the man, “Jesus fuck Martin, you blew a hole in the fucking deck.”

The short male who you had addressed as Martin grimaced as you turned your glare on him.

“Y/n, thank god you’re alive, I’ve been looking-”

“Shut up or the next bullet will go between your eyes.” You snarled whipping back to face him, a small handgun’s barrel winking at him.

The silence that hung in the air was sickening. The mix of hatred and disgust that lingered in your eyes was worse.

“Adrie, set a course for Rigel.”

The blonde nodded.

“Everyone else out.” The crew glanced around at each other, “Now!” You shouted and they scampered out of view.

Sirius scanned you, truly taking in your appearance for the first time since he met your eyes. Your hair which was swept into untidy braids was held from your face by a black cloth with a deep red flower painted on its front. You wore a white tunic with a worn brown leather jacket thrown over it. Your belt held two knives and a small sword. Black boots that almost reached your knees adorned your feet. Scars riddled your neck and hands, a deep white mark cut over the bridge of your nose and onto your right cheek.

“Y/n, I can’t believe I actually found you.” The man lept down from the beam landing in front of you

The gun you held never lowered.

“Y/n?”

You didn’t respond your hands were shaking now, gun rattling slightly. Your eyes glazing over and from a moment Sirius thought you were going to pull the trigger.

“Get on your knees.” You croaked taking a step back as he took a step towards you.

“Y/n/n, what th-”

You cut him off, “Knees! Now!.”

Sirius stood stunned for a moment before lowering himself towards the ground.

You stared down at him, the gun still quaking in your grasp as you tried to calm your nerves. “One wrong move and I will not hesitate Black.”

Sirius felt his mouth go dry, his eyes fogged over as the words you just spoke sunk in, “You would kill me?” his voice was weak, a second from breaking.

You didn’t know the answer to his question.

You dropped the weapon to your side, tucking it into its holster before leaning down and taking the rope wrapped around Sirius’s wrists and undoing it. “Fuckin idiots.” You mumbled, “I always tell them to tie the hands behind the back.” You followed your own instructions as Sirius kneeled unmoving at your feet.

Once you had sinched the rope around his wrists checking the knot twice you walked back in front of him crouching down to his level. You could feel the mud of nostalgia get whipped away as you took his chin roughly into your hands.

“We aren’t friends Sirius.” You began, your nails digging into his pale flesh, “We sure as hell aren’t lovers, and for all I care we never were.”

You watched as Sirius’s face contorted.

“To me, you are only worth the highest bidder.” You dropped his chin, “Which you best hope is your mother.”

A small glint of light caught the corner of your eye. You glanced down to see a large diamond strung around his neck. You picked it up examining it between your fingers.

“It was yours,” Sirius mumbled, “Do you remember the night I gave it to you?”

You stared at the gem, its purity mocking you.

“It was the night before your sixteenth birthday and you were crying because your father had smashed a cake you had spent hours on because he-”

“Forgot to set a timer.” You finished and in a flash your smallest knife was held to his neck, “Like how he forgot to set a time when my home burned to the ground, right?”

Sirius drew his neck back and you only pushed harder.

“The night you proposed to me? The night your mother sent her vile soldiers to my home and lit it on fire?” You spat, “Or are you going to try and sell me some bullshit about accidents too?”

The man stared up at you, “Y/n I had nothing to do with that.”

“You had everything to do with it.” You seethed, “You were the reason she did it. You and your fucking engagement ring. I was ruining her life so she ruined mine.”

Sirius gritted his teeth as your blade broke his skin.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now and ruin her life just a little more.”

“Because I loved you!” He shouted and you jerked your blade away as he pushed toward you, “I still love you.”

You felt hot tears build in your eyes, “You don’t love me.” you hissed shaking your head, “You loved a naive little girl who was stupid enough to fall for a prince.”

“That’s still you.” He argued and you felt your hands tighten into fists.

“No, it’s not!” You yelled, “I’m not a fucking baker girl anymore!”

“I don’t care if you’re a baker girl or a goddam pirate your still y/n and I’ll care about you either way!”

You let out a snarl, your eyes narrowing further as you raised a foot and kicked Sirius in the chest. He fell backward with a groan as his head collided with the floor. You straddled him leaning down until your noses were inches from each other. “Don’t lie to me Sirius, you could never care for the women that killed dozens of your men, the women that tracked your kingdoms ships and burnt them into the sea with people still on board, you could never love a murderer.” You panted lightly, “You could never love me.” with that, you raised your blade, flipping it in your hand before connecting its blunt handle with his tempel.

His body went limp beneath you

“Welcome to the Black Magnolia, Sirius.” You murmured turning on your heel and heading up the steps. You had ransom notes to write.

Taglist:

@accio-rogers @roslea @k3nz-doodl3 @theseuscmander @sleepingalaska @chloe-geoghegan1 @songforhema @wangmangagavroche @evyiione @atomicpunkrock @fairywriter-oracle @moon-zodiac @april-showers-and-flowers @fleurmoon @somethingchaotic @re-zerohora @pregnant-piggy

Masterlist

Part 3

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