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get-shiggy-with-it · 4 years ago

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Ch. 5

18 + MINORS DNI

Pairing: Tomura Shigaraki x fem!Reader

Word Count: 4k

Warnings: smut, blow jobs, vaginal sex, degradation, anal fingering, nipple play, face fucking, deep throating, nonconsensual photos, Shigaraki's big dick, rough sex, vaginal fingering, reference to exhibitionism, dirty talk, possessive Shigaraki, kinda unhealthy relationships, sort of loss of virginity for Shigs, creampie, brief reference to drug use, light cockwarming, praise and feels

Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6

Summary: In which Tomura bears all of his nasty soul and you get off on it.

AO3 Mirror

Taglist: @dillybuggg @husband-to-tomura-shigaraki @narcolepticroses (ask if you want to be tagged)

“I don’t—”

He couldn't finish the sentence, not when you were grinding down on him like that. How the hell did you even know how to move your hips in those little circles? Was there some "Being a Massive Slut for Dummies" book he was missing out on or?

“C’mon, Tomura, we’ve been through this,” you sighed and leaned down to suck a trail of sloppy kisses from his jaw to his ear, biting down on the soft flesh, “I know you’ve been thinking so much nasty shit about me, the least you can do is let me hear it.”

Those hands on his chest were moving again, curling into the hem of his t-shirt and tugging until it was over his head and tossed aside to the floor. On an embarrassing instinct, Tomura’s hands shot up to cover himself, only stopping when you leaned onto your haunches and tugged off your own.

“Shit,” Tomura whispered.

You weren’t wearing anything underneath.

He drank in the sight of those cute fucking tits he’d only ever caught glimpses of through those low cut tops you always wore. You grinned down at him, both hands coming up to play with your chest, fingers pinching and rolling the pretty buds. Tomura felt drool slip from the corner of his mouth.

“Is that all you got?” you challenged.

He wasn’t completely in control of his body as it catapulted off the bed to smash his face between your squished up tits, but neither of you were complaining judging by the sounds that followed.

You hummed happily as he pressed his cheeks to the warm, soft flesh and his lips closed around your nipple, sucking and laving his tongue over the pebbled skin.

“You really wanted everyone to see these, huh?” he meant the words to have more bite but it was hard to get the right edge with your fucking boob in his mouth.

And he wasn’t looking to stop suckling at you anytime soon so….

“They’re nice tits, what can I say,” you shot back and he couldn't wait to have you fucked so stupid all those witty one-liners would die on your tongue.

You fucking tasted so good. He hadn’t ever thought that tits would have a taste at all but the odd combination of skin and spit was addictive.

“Got a whole fucking eye full that first time you talked to me in class,” he growled, sinking his teeth in hard enough to leave a mark around your nipple. “Fucking parading them around every time you leaned over. Thought you were so fucking desperate for attention.”

If you really wanted to know all the vile, gross shit he thought on the daily then who was he to deny you that pleasure.

Cause you were definitely feeling some type of way about it based on the way your fingers threaded through his hair and held him to your chest as he tongued and bit at the skin.

“Think I’m just a stupid attention whore, is that it?” you moaned when he switched breasts, palm kneading at the one he’d abandoned.

“I think you’re a useless slut who’ll do anything to get a guy to fucking look your way,” Tomura gasped and sunk his teeth in again.

A shiver ran through him at the whine leaving your lips.

He did that.

He needed to do more of that immediately.

“You like it when I call you a fucking slut?”

Tomura didn’t know what came over him in that moment—what weird spirit of horny confidence possessed his body—but suddenly, with a surge of motion, his hand left your chest and latched onto the smooth column of your throat. The move had actually been quite graceful until he tried to flip your positions and got his legs tangled with yours, resulting in more of a...sexy pile than the smooth transition of power he was going for.

You didn’t seem to mind though.

You never did.

Tomura guessed if he was going to admit something nice about you, then it would be that at least you were consistent.

“I do like it when you call me that,” you breathed into his ear, hands under his arms to haul him back over top of you and replace the hand at your throat with a smirk, “and you love that it’s true.”

Fuck.

He really did, now that he thought about it. All those message boards always talked about finding virgins who you could mold to your dick just like they were meant to be, but…he was so fucking anxious at the best of times, having your eyes that pissed him off and knew it made this so much more fun.

There was probably a more eloquent wording than that, and you would probably more than willing to supply it, but the goal was to shut you up and he wasn’t gonna be okay with just coasting this time.

“God, you need to learn how to shut the fuck up,” he spat and subsequently yelped as you leaned forward, licking a wet trail up his chest before latching onto one of his nipples.

The flushed, pink skin disappeared into the heat of your mouth, leaving his dick twitching violently in his pants that had grown too tight and damp for comfort. The languid motion of your tongue over the rapidly pebbling flesh and the goldilocks perfect way in which you nipped at him was enough to corroborate all your claims of experience.

With the constant, electric spark pleasure running from his chest to his pants, Tomura found formulating sentences a little challenging, so he just said the first thing that came to mind.

“Why don’t we give you something even better to with that fucking whore mouth, hm?”

It was cliche as hell, stolen straight from one of the admittedly plentiful pornos he’d watched in his day, but you just grinned and popped off his nipple, nodded frantically at the innuendo.

Those clever little fingers that seemed to type without ever stopping dropped to the waistband of his sweats and tugged them down his thighs. He kicked a bit awkwardly to get them off his ankles but you were already yanking the elastic of his boxers. You smiled up at him through your lashes as you tucked the fabric just under his balls and let your eyes wander slowly from his splotchy red chest to the patch of hair just at the base of his dick.

If he hadn’t known better, he might have thought you were drooling.

Tomura felt a bit more in his element here, having had some actual frame of reference—as his asshole roommate was so generous to provide—so he didn’t waste any time. Falling onto his back, he squirmed up the sheets until his head was resting on a pillow and you were crawling between his thighs. God and you had your ass up too, wiggling it back and forth like you were wagging your tail at just the thought of getting his cock in your mouth.

Well, since you were so eager, Tomura decided to jump right in. You seemed to like things a bit rough anyway, so he reached out, burying a hand harshly in your hair and plunging past your lips.

The cute and kinda disgusting, choking gasp you let out was delectable.

And now he fucking knew Dabi was lying about his dick being small, cause you had a big fucking mouth to talk all that shit and it was absolutely stuffed full.

Your lips were stretched obscenely not even halfway down his shaft and your eyes were already pricked with tears at the edges. The fucking feel of your mouth was like how he imagined silk might feel, if it was soaked and scorching. Your throat constricted around him as you gagged and oh it was fucking cock sucking heaven he was in.

Tomura was almost tempted to grab his phone and snap a—

Actually, that was a fucking great idea.

His free hand fumbled for his pants, closing around his phone and unlocking it while you hummed and pulled back, bobbing your head twice before sinking back down, Your eyes flew open when the camera flash lit up the dark corner of his room. He could feel you trying to move away, to snap at him for taking his little keepsake, but he quickly fisted your hair and bucked his hips up to keep you firmly on his dick.

“Oh no, you were so excited to suck me off, you’re gonna finish the fucking job before you breathe again,” he panted, holding the sides of your face and fucking your mouth in earnest.

He’d found it easy to simply follow the instinctive rhythm of his hips, constantly seeking out the wet heat source. Your eyes rolled back in your goddamn head as his length slid past your lips over and over again

Holy shit it felt so good.

And it felt even better when he could see how much you loved it.

How much you loved his filthy fucking mostly virgin cock shoved down your throat and he finally felt the vulgar dam in his mind break once again.

“I think about you all the time,” he gasped, keening high when you ran your tongue over his slit on ever upstroke, just how he liked it. “I lay here at night and fuck my hand and think about sinking into your tight fucking cunt. I wanna fill you up so bad, it’s the only thing on my mind whenever I talk to you.”

The only thing stopping him from cumming straight down your throat in that moment was sheer horny force of will.

“When you mouth off in class, all I hear is you just begging for someone to bend you over and fuck that cocky fucking attitude right out of you,” below him, you reached a hand up, pinching hard at his nipple and humming at the squeal that slipped from him. “Fuck, and I want eat your pussy while you’re up there presenting this shit, so I can watch you try and keep it together. Such a fucking slut just for me.”

Something was washing over him.

Some weird, intense revelation of something that perhaps he’d always known but just needed the motivation of a fucking earth shattering blowjob to work out of him—that he wanted you. Really wanted you. Felt entitled to you. He’d spent so much mental energy obsessing over it: that really, no one else fucking deserved to touch you but him.

No one else would want you this much.

No one else would want him this much.

Your hands had found their way to his thighs and they were rubbing sweet little circles into the soft skin.

“You’d love that wouldn’t you?” his voice was wrecked, even more than usual from the near constant string of high pitched whining. “You’d love to have me fucking ruin you, make you cum all over my tongue in front of everyone. Let them fucking know who does this shit to you.”

You managed a nod, even with his cock buried deepdeepdeep in your throat. And Tomura was fucking twitching at the thought. The muscles in his legs jumped under your touch. A slimy mix of spit and precum was gushing down his length, slipping over his balls and slicking his ass. It was sloppy and the room was so full of the wet slap of his hips against your mouth.

It was so much, too much, oh shit, shit he didn’t want to finish like this—

“Wait, wait!” he cried, back arching with the agony of leaving the plush paradise between your lips. “Please—I wanna cum in you.”

You looked up at him, head hanging from his grip in your hair, with your jaw slack, dripping and nodded. He felt as though his ribs were filled with magnets instead of marrow that pulled him into your outstretched arms, kneeling as he pressed his mouth frantically to yours, uncaring of the mess or the faint taste of bitter precum.

There was something frantic in the air, like a switch had been flipped. The need to feel you, to be connected at every point—to get just a little bit more of what he’d earned—grew stronger with every passing second.

His lips were rough and raw and stung when you licked them but that only made it sweeter. You tongued at his teeth and sucked him into your mouth like he was warm food after months without. It was needy. Needy and ragged because you needed him.

You needed him.

What a fucking thought that was.

Your pants were quickly discarded along with his boxers, and for the first time in his life, Tomura didn’t care about all the exposed skin. He didn’t think about all the unsightly patches of irritation or scaring, because you never had. Not once had you ever stared or commented and you weren’t starting now. Your hands smoothed over every inch of him, just as desperate as he always knew you would be.

Because you were so—

Perfect.

Fucking disgusting.

Tomura let you fall back onto the mattress and whimpered at the feeling of your thighs hitched around his waist. He made the mistake of letting his eyes leave your mouth to glance down and oh, oh he was enraptured.

Dabi was right, he’d never actually seen a pussy in real life and holy shit.

His fingers gravitated immediately to your lips, fucking soaked, soaked in arousal that had smeared on your thighs.

“You get this fucking hot just from my cock in your mouth?” he asked, grinning as he collected some of the slick on his fingers and brought them curiously to his mouth.

Delicious.

“Yes—fuck—yes!” you whined and pulled him closer with your thighs.

“You want me to fuck you that bad?” his fingers ghosted over where he thought your clit might be and was rewarded when you moaned low as he brushed over a raised bud. “Does this nasty little slut want me that fucking bad?”

“Please Tomura…” his name on your tongue was better than any crazy ass party drug Dabi ever brought home, “you have no fucking idea how long I’ve been wanting you so fucking deep in me—”

Your words cut off with a sob as he ran his fingers down, searching for your entrance and sinking in hard when he found it. And it was so nice in there.

So fucking hot.

“What are you?” he asked, thrusting his fingers in and out, trying to remember how Dabi did it to him and what felt good, couldn’t be that much different.

He plunged them deep and curled up towards your belly and you sobbed, “A fucking slut!”

God he was so glad no one else was around to hear that.

This was just for him.

“And who’s fucking slut are you?”

He really could help himself, he just wanted you to say it so fucking bad.

“Yours,” you whined and rolled your hips down so his thumb caught on your clit. “I’m your fucking slut!”

“Shit,” he rasped and ripped his fingers from you.

He wasn’t entirely conscious of his movements. There was just one, very loud voice, screaming in his head to bury his cock in that perfect fucking heat and suddenly his was gripping himself and pushing in and—

“Ahh, fucking god,” Tomura whimpered, body going limp as his tip was sheathed fully inside you.

His forehead dropped down to rest against yours, arms like half cooked pasta on either side of your head, failing to hold him up. You moved your hands, sliding fingers through his hair and down his back as your ankles locked right above his ass to urge him forward.

Tomura’s cock sunk in inch by inch until he bottomed out with a groan. His mouth moved even when the rest of him couldn’t

“So tight…” he mumbled, head slipping into the crook of your neck and sucking lightly at the skin, feeling the comfort of it in his mouth. “Ngh...didn’t think it’d be this tight.”

“Are you trying to insult me or were you just a virgin?” you huffed out, but there was a laugh bubbling just behind the words.

He weakly held up two fingers to indicate the second, dropping them immediately to clutch at the sheets when you clamped down on his cock, nestled sweetly against your cervix.

“Wait really?” you asked, hands skimming up his back to grip his cheeks.

Tomura tried to hide himself in your shoulder, because the fucking dopey ass smile on his face would surely feed your ego and he didn’t need you knowing that your pussy had him fucking higher than a goddamn kite.

If only his bones hadn’t suddenly taken on all the physical properties of jello.

“I’ve fucked around before,” he said, which was technically true, “just never in a...uh, like this.”

He didn’t even need to move—which was really a lie cause he was burning with the urge to drive himself frantically into your dripping cunt—but he was so blissed out from just the soft, warm, tight hug of your walls around his cock which pulsed precum with every clench, that simply being inside you at all was enough.

What he wouldn’t give to have this all the time. Have you constantly sitting on his dick, keeping him warm and hard and cumming inside you.

Cumming.

Right.

At the reminder of why exactly he’d set out to do this, his body regained a bit of it’s former solidity.

“Oh,” you began, voice strained and hips shaking with the effort of not rocking back on his dick and making him blow his load too soon. “Well, you feel fucking amazing—”

Tomura cut you off with an experimental thrust. He pulled all the way back, watching as his tip just nearly popped out of your cute fucking hole and then snapped in again. You were a mess above him instantly, gripping at the pillows and then at his arms, dragging red scratches down the pale, fragile skin there.

It only spurred him on.

“You like that? Like my huge fucking cock in you?” he growled, flopping down fully so he could feel your nipples brush against his while he railed into you.

As much as you apparently enjoyed hearing all the filth that spewed from him, he really liked having a receptacle for it all to an even greater degree. It had been hidden inside him for so long, the release was only made sweeter with the addition of your slutty fucking pussy clamping on his length at every word.

“So fucking big, Tomura—”

You rocked up to slip your tongue into his mouth again, sucking softly at his rough lower lip and drinking down all the less than dominant cries that poured from him as his release grew again. He wasn’t really sure how to get you off, but you seemed to understand the intentions behind his hand wandering to nudge at the space he was driving his cock into.

Those soft fingers held his and guided them up to that nub he’d found before and moved his hand in little, rhythmic circles that had you fucking sobbing into his mouth.

Real tears streaked down your face as you moaned into him, “Oh fuck, yes Tomura, baby, just like that…!”

And for once, he had absolutely no qualms with doing exactly what you said. He wanted—needed—to know what it would feel like for you to cream all over his dick. Wanted to see the stupid fucking face you would make as he ripped you apart on his definitively massive length.

You were pushing back into each thrust, drinking in the sound of slapping skin, mouth permanently attached to his—tongues locked together.

The taste of fruit gum mixed with salty cum and the smell of sweat and sex and cleanlaundryshampoo was fucking everywhere. It was intoxicating and heady and all he had ever needed.

Really, you weren’t so bad when you were crying on his cock.

And you were fucking crying, screaming for him—his name, calling him ‘baby’ in a way that had his heart stuttering uncomfortably in his throat and babbling about how good, how fucking perfect he felt inside.

“C’mon,” he grunted, “c’mon, I wanna see my fucking slut cum for me, all over my cock.”

And for once, you actually followed an order.

His fingers on your clit never let up and he could fucking feel the orgasm wash over you. Your cunt spasmed and clenched hard like a vice, tighter than anything he ever could have imagined. And you choked out his name, so desperate:

“Tomura, fuck yes baby!”

God your face was so good, all scrunched up and then relaxing into a blissful, panting, open-mouth grin.

It was sort of beautiful.

But he wasn’t gonna fucking say that.

“Good fucking slut,” he whispered instead, arching his chest into yours so he could feel the swell of your pretty tits against his nipples.

And he almost fucking lost it right there but he needed more, needed to feel full too. The tightness of your pussy was so unmatched by any sensation, but he guessed Dabi always called him a greedy whore for a reason.

His hand grabbed at yours—hips only letting up when he couldn’t actively get his dick out of you as you came—and brought it roughly to his lips. Tomura was still slick, covered in spit and sweat but he sucked two of your fingers into his mouth anyway. His tongue delved between them as you watched with wide eyes as he spat onto your palm and whined.

“I need—oh shit—inside, inside...fuck…”

He could fucking get his tongue to make the words but he dragged your hand to his ass and prayed you’d get the hint. Prayed you’d fill him up too.

And you certainly delivered.

His hips started up their unforgiving rhythm again now that you’d rode out your release, slipping even more easily into your pussy with all the slick spilling out of you. God that would be his cum soon—his cum dripping out onto your thighs. Your feet dropped to the bed and Tomura grabbed your waist for leverage.

Your clever little finger circled his hole, wrist bent from the awkward angle below him but working nonetheless. His spit and precum made less than ideal lube but he welcomed the burn of you entering him. A second one joined behind the first and it was rough going for a moment until he was able to rock back fully, finding a certain bend of the knee and half thrust that had him simultaneously grinding into you and fucking himself on your fingers.

And then you managed to get deep enough to brush against that fucking spot, that magic fucking spot that had him seeing stars and screaming your name—not slut, not bitch, not some other fucking cruelty—your name and spilling rope after rope of hot cum against those searing hot walls.

Your eyes did that thing where they rolled halfway up and crossed like this was some fucking hentai and you weren’t knuckles deep in your creepy group project partner's ass while he came inside you.

Tomura went completely limp then, boneless like a cheap chicken wing and collapsed onto your chest, whimpering when your fingers left him empty but comforted by the rhythmic clenching of your cunt, warming his cock and keeping his cum safe inside.

“So good,” you whispered into his hair, soft palms smoothing over his back in slow circles. “Felt so good, Tomura. You were so good.”

He shivered in your arms, lulled by the feeling of your breasts under him and breathing in the mixture of soap and sex that radiated from your skin. Everything about it was strange, but in that wonderful kind of way that new games sometimes were. A tingling at the prospect of a new adventure, a new world, and a new journey to embark on.

You pressed your lips to his sweat slicked forehead and didn’t turn away in disgust.

No, instead you just held him on his cum soaked sheets and slept.

#tomura shigaraki x reader #shigaraki x reader #tomura x reader #shigaraki x you #tomura shigaraki x you #bnha fanfiction #bee.writes

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mae-gi-writes · 4 years ago

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Vaut Mieux Tard Que Jamais| Juyeon (The Boyz Christmas Series)

La Joie De Noel Series.

Vaut Mieux Tard Que Jamais : Better Late Than Never.

In which Juyeon blurts out a string of words that change everything as you decorate the Christmas tree.

-♡-

"We would make a pretty good couple."

Y/N's eyebrows are already raised up to her hairline when she turns away from the half-decorated Christmas tree to look at Juyeon. The latter has his gaze averted, obviously, fiddling with one of the Christmas ornaments in that nervous manner of his that she's come to know so well.

"Where did that come from?" She asks.

He lifts his shoulder in a shrug, "just a thought. You're single, I'm single...it's Christmas and you need someone to kiss for the new year."

A sarcastic comment dies on the tip of her tongue as she digests his words. To be fair, he's not wrong considering that they have been roomates forever and actually know each other inside out just like a couple would.

She'd be lying to say that she had not entertained the thought a few times whenever her thoughts stray towards the said man. The only thing that knocks her back to reality is that mere, singular fact that Juyeon is a player, a flirt, a chaser of hearts if only to break them.

So whenever these kinds of situations come up, she always ensues to close the doors to her heart.

"I do have someone to kiss at the end of the year, but thanks for your concern," she replies dryly.

"Who?"

"None of your business," she chucks an ornament at him.

"Liar, you don't have anyone."

"I'm not lying."

"Do you know you look towards your left everytime you lie?" A smirk splays across his lips as she feels a scowl imprint itself on her face. Fuck, he knows her too well. She should've known he isn't going to take no for an answer.

"You know what? It's not like I haven't thought about it," Y/N states while standing up with the lights in hand. She slowly places it around the Christmas tree, almost walking over Juyeon unapologetically in the process, "but let's face it Juyeon, you change girls like you change socks."

His glare practically burns through her back, "that's what you assume."

"So I'm the liar now?"

"I never said that. I just think you judge me too harshly without knowing the full story."

"Okay then tell me," she flings the last piece of lights around the tree before swivelling around, yelping upon coming face to face with Juyeon's rock hard chest.

"The truth?" He leans in, closer and closer, until they are practically nose to nose. Y/N refuses to back down though, staring straight into his eyes and seeing how their hard, opaque front slowly soften the more they gaze at each other in growing silence.

"The truth," his murmur is raspy, almost breathless. Slowly, he lifts the garland in his hand and lifts it over her head, around her figure, before he tugs her to him, "is that I haven't played. Not recently anyway."

She scoffs and tries her best to keep her face neutral, though the heat flushing through her neck is as palpable as the December heat, "your point being?" She lifts her chin, silently challenging him.

"That you're the reason why."

"Why you haven't played? Give me something more than that, Juyeon."

"You are one tough cookie," he tilts his head playfully, "so, do you wanna try it out?"

"Try what out?"

"That couple thing. You know, maybe kiss..."

Chortling, she pushes him away with her hand but he resists his hold on the garland still, gaze intense and dark on her own, "so?" He prompts, "let's do it. It's not like we have anything to lose."

"Yeah, just my reputation," Y/N mumbled, allowing herself to press against his chest albeit her reluctant protests. It is true, she doesn't have anything to lose. Her and Juyeon have lived together for so long that she's certain there will be no awkwardness whatsoever. They've become so comfortable with each other's presence that the idea of not having anything to say to him is foreign, weird even.

"I promise I won't try anything else," Juyeon says, reading her face like an open book.

"Don't put your hand up my shirt."

"Scout's honour."

Taking her silence as a form of agreement, Juyeon slowly leans in and tilts his head to the side as Y/N's eyes flutter shut, her stomach curling with half-dread and half-anticipation.

He halts just milimeters from her lips, so close she feels the heat of his breath that makes her skin erupt with goosebumps, "you good?" He whispers.

She nods, right before his mouth catches her own in a chaste kiss.

It's warm. She can taste the slight hint of coke on his mouth.

Totally unlike Juyeon's usual demeanor, this kiss is soft. Almost shy. It makes the air in her lungs constrict, mouth tingling with warmth.

Pulling away to gaze down at her through half-lidded eyes, she notes the uncertainty flickering in his dark orbs and something in her heart jolts in response.

When he speaks next, his voice is hoarse, "so? How...how did it feel?"

She thinks for a moment and replies through blazing red cheeks, "I have to admit, not that weird."

There's a soft exhale on his part as they lapse into silence, trying and failing not to stare into each other's eyes before a surge of courage overtakes Y/N's logic. Hands reaching up to grasp his t-shirt, she tugs him down to kiss him some more and all thoughts seem to fly out of her head once she does.

Y/n had always known that kissing Juyeon would be something else in comparison to the chaste, shy kisses of her former crushes and boyfriends. But what she isn't prepared for is the way her knees buckle at the mere sensation of his lips parting to cup hers in a slow dance of tongues that makes her mind go into a scrambled mess of nerves and goosebumps, gasping silently when Juyeon drops the garland to grasp her waist and pull her flush against his frame.

Everything just falls away from logic and the more he kisses her, the more she wants of that delicious desire throbbing through her veins. Juyeon's physicality is the only thing that keeps her afloat and Y/N is so wrapped up in euphoria that she doesn't realize he has backed her up to the side of the room until she feels the coldness of the wall seep into her back.

A small moan slips from her mouth then, the sound encouraging the young man to kiss her even more deeply, mouth staining hers with such passion that fireworks seem to explode behind her eyelids as she writhes against him, body melting right into his and causing a soft moan to rumble through Juyeon's chest.

When they part for air, the softness in Juyeon's face glimmers with a tinge of embarrassment, chest heaving and looking just as flustered as she feels. That makes her feel a little bit better.

He licks his lips, eyes sparing hers a glance, "well..."

"Well."

"That was..."

"Interesting," she finishes for him when he seems lost for words.

He hums while ducking his face towards her neck, making her shiver. His hand at her waist brushes over her side ever so gently.

"So my mom's organizing a dinner for Christmas," Juyeon casually drops in, words muffled against her neck, "you're welcome to join."

She gives him a pointed look even when it's useless since she can only see his tuft of hair tickling her face, "are you asking me out?"

"Maybe," a soft kiss at her neck. Her chest tightens, her skin tingling with every brush of his lips.

He's teasing her and he knows it! Heat crawls along the back of her neck at the thought.

Not knowing what to do with her hands, she settles for running them softly through his dark strands and jumps slightly when the man sighs against her, before he nuzzles her collarbone fondly.

She manages to find her voice, "It's either yes or no, Juyeon. I'm not going to play your stupid game."

He probably senses the wariness in her tone because he looks up, dark maroon orbs boring into hers and causing her insides to twist together. He's looking at her like he actually cares and it's an expression that is so foreign to Y/N that she can't help but look away before swallowing thickly.

"Yes Y/N," he says in a hoarse voice, "I'm asking you out."

"Oh," she chews onto her lower lip, "right. Cool, uhm..."

She hasn't expected him to be so direct. Since when has he stopped being such a coward?

"It's either yes or no, Y/N," there's a playful smirk on his lips as he throws her sentence back at her, nose brushing against hers and making her draw in a shaky breath.

"Fine," her chin juts out defiantly and almost makes their lips ghost over each other's, "yes."

He doesn't need more encouragement. Grabbing her chin before crashing his mouth onto hers, he swallows up any sound she makes and kisses her with such intensity Y/N is surprised she doesn't collapse altogether as she thanks the lord for his grip on her waist. That thought flies right out of her head the moment his hand hooks under her thigh to pull it up, wrapping it around his waist so that he can press his frame closer to hers.

She moans softly in response while her arms slide up to grip his hair. A muffled growl echoes from the back of his throat before he parts, peppering a bunch of kisses along her jaw and up her ear which makes her squirm in his hold. Gasping slightly when his heat slowly rolls into hers as his hand slowly caresses up her thigh, another breathless whimper falls from her mouth upon feeling the warmth of his lips nibbling on her ear.

"Don't know why we never thought of doing that before," he breathes before pecking her ear slightly and drawing away.

Y/N's eyes find his, still glazed over from the young man's earlier attack while her hands drop to his shoulders. She can still feel his touch ghosting over her leg and a pool of desire floods her stomach.

"Better late than never," she says, right when he captures her lips for the nth time that day, all thoughts of Christmas now forgotten.

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jeonsjiddies · 4 years ago

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8 letters | knj (m)

summary- If all it is is eight letters. Why is it so hard to say? If all it is is eight letters, why am I in my own way? Why do I pull you close and then ask you for space? If all it is is eight letters, why is it so hard to say?

8 letters - why don't we

or, emotionally constipated Namjoon is too scared to admit he's in love with you.

rating- explicit 18+

word count- 6071

pairing- namjoon x reader

genre- fluff, smut, angst

Warnings: mentions of jimin x reader, daddy kink, rough sex, edging, jealous Namjoon

a/n: thanks again to @sweetnspicy93 for beta reading and helping me bounce ideas back and forth. Love you <3

Find Jimin’s happy ending here (both stories can be read alone.)

Namjoon typically thought of himself as a pretty intelligent man. He was clumsy, but he was competent. He could solve an equation in his head in under a minute, he’d learned English on his own. He could read a novel in a few hours, and constantly sought out new knowledge. Namjoon was book smart. When it came to love though, Namjoon felt like an idiot.

He wasn’t in denial or anything, he was aware of how he felt and he could name it. It’s not like Namjoon didn’t know he was in love with you, he just couldn’t bring himself to tell you. He wanted to, god he wanted to. He wanted to tell you everything and pull you into his arms and show you everything he’d bottled inside over the past few years.

If he could just shut off his brain long enough to throw caution to the wind, he would tell you everything. If he could stop thinking about every possible thing that could go wrong, he would take a chance. If he could stop worrying about ruining everything, he would do something. But Namjoon can’t figure out how to turn his brain off, so he just sits. And stares.

You’d met Namjoon in college, both of you timid freshmen in a large lecture class who got paired together for a research paper. Namjoon had never seen a more beautiful woman in his life, and spent far more time looking at you than looking up sources to site for your paper. You were pretty sure your cheeks never went back to normal after that, permanently painted a slight shade of pink at the handsome man who couldn’t stop watching you.

Despite the heat in your cheeks and the way Namjoon couldn’t keep his eyes off you, you both quickly fell into a comfortable rhythm. You’d never felt so close with someone so fast in your life. Strangers one day, best friends the next. You felt like you’d known each other your entire lives within a matter of days. You’d both spent the entirety of your college career attached at the hip, and you still were to this day.

Now, you shared a two bedroom apartment with your best friend and spent every moment you could together. You never got tired of each other’s company. Lately though, you’d noticed Namjoon was acting a little weird. Namjoon wasn’t shy when it came to affection, and would often pull you into a hug or let you cuddle up to him while you watched a film together.

But the past few weeks he had been very hot and cold. He’d pull you in for a cuddle then stiffen and shuffle away, avoiding your gaze. He’d lean into your touch when you played with his hair then squirm away and mumble apologies before disappearing into his room for the rest of the night. It felt like Namjoon was pulling away from you and it was breaking your heart. You didn’t know what you were doing wrong. You were determined to revive your friendship to its’ former glory.

“Joonie!” you called, shouting down the hall as you made your way towards his room.

You knocked lightly on the door and he called for you to come in. His head lifted to look at you as you hopped your way over to him excitedly.

“What are you doing?” you grinned, leaning over his shoulder and pressing your body against his back as you surveyed the contents of his desk.

Namjoon coughed uncomfortably and leaned away from you. You frowned and stood up straight.

“It’s a proposal for work on Thursday. We’re going to be expanding the marketing department and launching a new social media campaign and they want me to come up with the pitch to give the director for our new campaign.” he explained.

“Why are you working at home?” you asked, your brow furrowing in worry.

“Because I need to have this done in two days.” he sighed.

“Oh Joon, please don’t overwork yourself. Look at the bags under your eyes! Aren’t you exhausted?” you cooed, letting your thumb run under his eye in an attempt to soothe the bags.

Namjoon closed his eyes and sighed happily while leaning into your touch, relishing the feeling of your skin on his for a moment. His breathing seemed to even at the comfort he felt when you were close to him. You smiled fondly at the soft man under your touch before Namjoon snapped back to reality and jerked away from you.

“I should get back to it…” he cleared his throat, avoiding your gaze.

“Joonie…” you sighed, wanting to reach out to him.

“Hm?” he asked, not looking up from his laptop where he typed away.

“Nothing. Good luck with your project.” you sighed.

A few hours later, Joon emerged and immediately fell onto the couch next to you, nuzzling his head into the crook of your neck and snuggling up against your frame.

“My head hurts.” he whined.

“You’ve been staring at that computer all day. Of course it does.” you accused, but began running your fingers through his hair gently the way you knew Namjoon loved.

He sighed and leaned into your touch, letting you bring comfort to his aching brain. Namjoon melted into your touch, and you hummed quietly, hoping to soothe the pain at least a little. You hated how hard Namjoon worked, you hated seeing him suffer in any way and just wanted to hold him and make him relax.

Soon, Namjoon’s weight against you grew heavy and you knew he’d fallen asleep. You maneuvered his head off of your shoulder and into your lap so you could watch him. His unconscious body seemed to seek yours out. He snuggled closer to your stomach, resting his cheek against it and smiling. You giggled quietly and let your fingers gently trail over his features.

You traced the bridge of his nose, up over his forehead, and he hummed happily in his sleep. You giggled and let your tender touches float down his cheeks and over his lips. You traced the outline of his full lips more than once, wondering idly what they might feel like against your own. They were soft and thick. You wanted to taste them so badly.

You sighed and moved your fingers back up to his cheeks, starting your journey over again. Between the soft sounds of his even breathing to the warmth of his body on yours, you didn’t really stand a chance and ended up falling asleep too, your hand on his cheek and your head lolled back against the couch.

You woke hours later in your own bed tucked into your duvet. You frowned at the cold air surrounding you and the lack of Namjoon in your arms. You huffed in annoyance and flung the blankets off your body, stalking towards Namjoon’s room to ask him just what his problem was. You were about to fling his door open and give him a piece of your mind when you heard a quiet moan from inside.

Was his headache that bad? Poor Joon. Maybe he’d just needed to lie in a dark place. You cracked the door to glance in and check on him, and froze as your eyes soaked in the sight before you. Namjoon lay naked on his bed, sweat slicked hair stuck to his forehead as his massive hand worked up and down his equally massive dick. Your own hand came to cover your mouth in shock but you couldn’t tear your eyes away.

Joon grunted softly, running his thumb over the tip and jerking his hips at the action. Moisture pooled in your panties while you watched his abdomen constrict with the pressure building as he tugged and moaned. Joon’s moans were sinful, beautiful, melodic. You wanted to draw the lovely sounds from the man, but you just watched him pleasure himself. His breathing picked up pace and his moans turned to whines as he got closer to release. Joon met his high and spurts of white shot from his length as he bit his lip to hold in the loud groan. You quietly shut the door so you wouldn’t get caught peeping on your best friend, but couldn’t shake the image of his body shuddering under his ministrations. The scene played on repeat in your brain the whole night, invading your dreams as well.

***

“You had a sex dream about Namjoon?” Jimin coughed, spitting out a little of the coffee he’d been drinking.

“Yes. Ugh. And… it’s not the first time.” you admitted, avoiding his gaze.

“Ooh, who would’ve thought you were such a dirty girl.” Jimin teased, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Ughhh. Jimin help me. The dreams didn’t used to be this vivid but when I saw him jerking off the other day-”

“YOU WHAT?” he choked.

“Oh yeah. Ummm… I kinda accidentally watched him masturbate?” you said it like a question.

“Accidentally?” Jimin raised an accusing brow.

“I was checking on him since he had a headache and… I saw him jerking it.” you hid your face in your hands.

“Oh my god.” Jimin laughed. “Wait how big is he?”

“Jimin!” You chastised, but grinned knowingly.

“I knew it. Damn. I feel insecure now. Joon really has it all.” He laughed.

“I’m sure you’re fine.” You giggled. “Now help me!”

“He doesn’t know that you saw, right?” Jimin confirmed.

“No!” You blurted out, a little too loudly for the small cafe.

The barista glared at you. You lowered your tone, sending her an apologetic smile.

“No. I could never look him in the eye again. I’d have to move.” You gushed anxiously.

“I bet he was jacking off to you.” Jimin smirked.

“Oh shut up Jimin. I’m the one with the crush not him.” You sighed.

“Y/N. You’re both clearly into each other and neither of you has enough balls to do anything about it.” Jimin tutted.

“There’s no way.” You shook your head in denial.

“Wanna bet on it?” He smirked. “$50 says he likes you too. He just needs… a push.”

“A push?” You asked.

“Let’s make him jealous.” Jimin grinned.

“How?” You asked, tilting your head to the side in confusion.

“Pretend you’re into me. We’ll flirt in front of him, cuddle a bit, see if he snaps.” Jimin’s eyes sparkled mischievously.

“That will never work because he doesn’t like me.” You argued.

“Well if you’re right you’ll be $50 richer. What do you have to lose?” He shrugged.

“Well… I guess you’re right.” You nodded. “Fine but only to get you to shut up about Joon liking me. And when I win you have to help me get over this weird lusting phase.”

“Phase.” he scoffed “Like you haven’t been dying to get that man inside you for years.”

Your face turned bright red and you flipped him off, but didn’t object with his words. You couldn’t. It’s not that you hadn’t been attracted to Joon before, it was just intensified after the events you witnessed the night before. It seemed to be all you could think about when you looked at him.

So for the next few weeks, you’d slowly introduced PDA with Jimin while watching to see if you got a reaction out of Namjoon. It started off light, hand holding here, a kiss on the cheek there. Namjoon seemed uncomfortable, but not jealous. You were ready to collect your $50 and call it quits but Jimin kept insisting that if you took it a little further, Namjoon would crack and be unable to hold back his jealousy.

And that was how you found yourself on your couch straddling Jimin’s lap.

“Jimin this is stupid.” You whisper-hissed, trying your best not to make contact with his crotch despite your position.

“Trust me, if Joon walks in on this, he’ll lose his shit.” Jimin assured you.

You heard the door unlock and sent Jimin a panicked look. He grabbed your hips and ground your body down on his and quickly moved his lips against your neck to leave a mark on the skin. If you weren’t so gone for Namjoon you might have actually enjoyed it. You did your best to put on a show, leaning your head back and letting out quiet moans.

A loud crash came from the direction of the front door of your shared apartment and you gasped, looking up to see Namjoon frozen in place with his jaw nearly on the floor. The grocery bags he’d been carrying had fallen from his now limp hands. Jimin’s lips stilled against your skin and you both looked towards Namjoon feigning shock.

You scrambled off of Jimin’s lap and stood up, smoothing your clothes. Jimin stayed on the couch, just observing.

“Joon! I didn’t think you’d be home so soon.” You squeaked.

“I-uh… yeah, I just… sorry.” He mumbled, ducking his head down and picking up the spilled groceries.

You dashed over to help, but Namjoon flinched away from you so you backed up and let him finish the task. You gnawed on your lower lip, waiting for him to say something else. You glanced at Jimin who sent you an encouraging smile and a thumbs up.

“If you guys don’t want to be interrupted maybe you should do that in your room, and not the shared living area.” Namjoon finally spoke, trying and failing to hide the venom in his tone.

Jimin stood up, walking over and wrapping his arms around your waist from behind, resting his head at the crook of your neck and peppering soft kisses at the exposed skin, licking over the previous lovebites he’d placed there, making sure Namjoon saw them. Namjoon stiffened.

“He’s right, let’s take this somewhere a little more… private. Poor Joonie shouldn’t have to witness the things I’m about to do to my dirty slut.” he purred seductively, hot breath fanning over your ear.

You shivered and glanced at Namjoon who was staring daggers at Jimin. A gasp escaped your lips as Jimin rolled his hips into your ass and you felt a very real erection. You turned to look at him and he grinned with no remorse, tugging your wrist to lead you to your bedroom. He closed the door and slammed your body up against it, hands pressing into your shoulders, but kept a distance from you now that Namjoon wasn’t watching.

“Jimin, what the fu-” you began.

“Moan. Loud. Make it believable.” he whispered. “If he thinks I’m fucking your brains out in here he’s going to lose his shit.”

“Jimin why do you have a boner?” you hissed.

“Y/N.” he scoffed. “I am absolutely team Namjoon okay? But I am a man, and a beautiful woman was just grinding on my dick. Sue me.”

“I-”

“It doesn’t mean I’m into you or anything, but that was hot. I’m not going to try anything but I can’t stop my anatomy from functioning properly. You can’t tell me you’re not a little turned on.” he grumbled, removing his hands from your shoulders and stepping back so you could peel yourself off the door.

“Okay. You’re right. Now what?” you asked.

“Be a good girl and moan for me.” he winked, sitting on your bed and pulling out his phone.

“Fuck, Jimin!” you did your best impression of a moan despite how uncomfortable you felt, sitting beside him and holding a pillow in your lap.

Jimin’s eyebrows shot up.

“Damn. Okay.” he whispered, then got louder as he groaned. “Fuck baby right there. Mmm… your pretty little mouth feels so good wrapped around my cock.”

You stifled a giggle and shoved his arm and he shot you the cockiest grin you’d ever seen on him, which was saying something. Jimin continued to moan loudly, until he decided it was time for things to kick up a notch.

“Okay, show time baby.” he winked, and stood up.

He began shoving your headboard against the wall rhythmically. It was loud enough it shook you, so you knew Namjoon could hear.

“Fuck, YN. You’re so tight.” Jimin groaned, sending you a pointed look.

“Ugh! Right there!” you whined loudly.

“Who owns this pussy?” Jimin smirked, wiggling his eyebrows at you.

“Jimin!” you cried out, then tried not to laugh when Jimin dramatically fanned himself.

“Harder! Oh god don’t stop!” you called out, and Jimin gave you a thumbs up while he continued shoving your headboard against the wall.

“Are you going to cum on Daddy’s cock?” Jimin grinned.

“Fuck fuck fuck!” you screamed, honestly a little impressed with how realistic you sounded.

Jimin joined in your chorus with loud moans of his own, and stopped slamming your headboard against the wall. You suddenly got very embarrassed he’d heard such intimate sounds out of you, even if they were fake. Your cheeks burned cherry red and you avoided Jimin’s gaze.

“Damn. That was hot.” he whisper-laughed, knocking his shoulder into yours as he sat beside you.

“Shut up.” you giggled. “Kinda was though.”

“If things don’t work out with Joonie, call me.” he wiggled his eyebrows.

“Please, you couldn’t handle all this.” you joked, gesturing to yourself.

“You’re right, you’re an emotional basket case and I am not as patient as Namjoon.” he laughed, flinching when you punched his arm.

“Asshole.” you giggled.

“Come here.” he suddenly said, reaching for your hair and messing it up.

“What the fuck!” you hissed.

“Do you want to look fucked or do you want to look like we faked it?” he narrowed his eyes.

“True.” you agreed, reaching over and doing the same to his soft tendrils.

“Ooh, scratch my neck. Wait no. Should I walk out there shirtless and have you scratch my back?” he smirked evilly.

“Take your shirt off.” you instructed.

“Damn round two already? You’re insatiable!” Jimin chuckled.

You rolled your eyes and waited for him to rid himself of his t-shirt, then thought about the most realistic angle. You put your hands up to assess, turning and standing and checking your options. You finally decided the only way to get realistic marks was to act it out.

“I think you’re gonna have to get on top of me.” you concluded.

“I thought you’d never ask.” he smirked, exaggeratedly rolling his bottom lip between his teeth.

“Shut up, I just want it to look real.” you hissed, laying back while Jimin hovered over you.

“Suuure.” he grinned, looking down into your eyes from his position above you. He smiled.

You wrapped your arms around his torso and dug your nails experimentally into his back. Jimin shivered involuntarily. You bit your lip to conceal a giggle and raked your nails down his back, making sure to dig into the skin a little so the marks would stay. A quiet whimper left Jimin’s throat.

“You’re enjoying this too much.” you accused.

“You’re probably right.” he laughed. “I’m going straight home to jack off after this.”

“You’re disgusting.” you laughed.

Jimin shrugged unapologetically. “You should probably do it a few more times to make it look like I fucked you real good.”

“You just like it.” you laughed.

“That too.” he agreed.

He had a point though, so you repeated the action a few more times, desperately trying to ignore the noises that erupted from Jimin as you did. If you weren’t so in love with Namjoon you’d probably jump Jimin’s bones at this point. You did your best not to focus on his toned abs when he finally rose from you, allowing you to inspect your marks.

“Looks good.” you smiled, giving him a thumbs up.

An idea struck you so you shimmied your pants off and slipped on some pajama shorts and changed into Jimin’s shirt. He nodded in approval.

“Show time.” he sing songed, pulling your bedroom door open and sauntering down the hallway.

You followed him, noting Joon on the couch watching some new Netflix documentary. You didn’t say anything as you breezed past him, following Jimin into the kitchen to brew some tea.

“I need a snack to replenish my energy. You really wore me out, baby girl.” Jimin teased, pinching your behind and causing you to yelp.

“Do you want me to make something?” you asked.

“Mmm… cooking for me? Maybe we could use some leftover whipped cream for round two.” he suggested playfully.

“Stop.” you giggled, covering your face.

“I really should get going though, it’s getting late and I have to work tomorrow. I wish I could just stay here, in your bed. I don’t think we’d get any sleep though.” he chuckled.

“Let me change out of your shirt real quick.” you offered but he grabbed your wrist and pulled you against his body.

“Mmm… keep it. Looks better on you anyway. Plus, I wanna show off my battle scars.” he wiggled his eyebrows.

Namjoon got up off the couch, turned off the tv, and stalked to his room, slamming the door shut without a word. You looked to Jimin in surprise. He smirked victoriously.

“Check. Mate.” he grinned.

“He’s probably just annoyed because we’re being obnoxious.” you sighed.

“Trust me, Y/N. He’s jealous and filled with rage. If looks could kill, you’d be planning my funeral right now.” Jimin assured you.

“If you say so… do you really not want this back?” you asked.

“Nah. I got a spare in the car.” he smiled, “good luck, okay? Don’t chicken out if the opportunity presents itself. You like him. He likes you. You guys could be happy. Let yourself be happy, yeah?”

You wrapped your arms around his neck and let yourself be comforted by your friend’s words and his warm embrace. He hugged you back even tighter, then pulled away, holding you at arms length so he could look into your eyes.

“I mean it. Let yourself have this. Don’t be scared.” he coached gently.

“Thank you, Jiminie. I love you.” you smiled up at him.

“I love you too. Now go get your man.” he grinned, walking out the door and leaving you alone in the living room.

You took a deep breath and walked down the hall past Namjoon’s room, slowing as you heard crashing from inside. You knocked lightly on the door.

“Joon? You okay? Did something break?” you questioned, hand on the knob.

The door flung open and you were greeted with Namjoon’s chest as he towered over you. The look he gave you made you feel even smaller though.

“I dropped something. Not like you can complain about my noise level, Y/N.” he huffed.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” you said quietly.

“I’m fine. I actually think it might be time for me to find somewhere else to live.” he stated.

You froze, panic filling your chest.

“What?! Why?” you squeaked, tears welling in your eyes despite your urge for them to stay away.

“If you’re going to be seeing Jimin, it’s clear that you guys need your own space. I don’t want to listen to you have sex with him all the time, and I’m sure you’d appreciate the privacy.” Namjoon sighed, avoiding your eyes.

“But I… we… it’s not-” you tried, but your mouth wasn’t cooperating with your racing mind.

“It’s fine. It’s about time you got a boyfriend. It’s probably weird that we’re both single and living together.” Joon shrugged.

“No it’s not!” you argued, a pout on your lips.

“Don’t you want to fuck your boyfriend in peace without having to worry about your roommate hearing?” Joon challenged.

“He’s not my boyfriend!” you blurted out.

“What?” Joon tilted his head in confusion.

“He’s not… he’s not my boyfriend. We didn’t have sex. We only pretended to. Jimin had me convinced that if I pretended to be dating him that you’d get jealous and that you’d make a move because I’m too scared to. I told him you didn’t like me and that it wasn’t going to work but he wouldn’t shut up about it, he kept saying-” you began but Namjoon cut you off.

“You made out with Jimin on our couch and pretended to have sex with him to try and make me jealous?” he clarified.

“I know it’s stupid I told him-” you rambled on, wringing your hands together anxiously.

“You didn’t fuck him.” Joon clarified one more time.

“No.” you confirmed.

“Oh thank god.” Joon sighed in relief, and before you knew it, his lips were on yours.

Your eyes widened in shock but you soon melted into his embrace, your entire body alive and buzzing with adrenaline. Joon guided you towards the wall until your back hit it with a gentle thud and he pushed his body closer to yours until you were flush against each other. His hands came to cup your face, thumb rubbing soft circles on your cheek. He pulled away, but remained just centimeters from your lips.

“That was extremely immature and childish.” he chided, “But it worked. I wanted to kill him.”

“Mmm…” you hummed happily.

“I couldn’t stand the thought of another man kissing you,” he sighed, letting his lips gently brush against your own. “Another man marking you,” he whispered, his kisses moving to your neck and sucking his own marks to claim you. “Another man touching you…” he trailed off, hand running down your side until his fingers brushed against your nipple, barely concealed by the thin fabric of Jimin’s shirt. Joon’s soft touch froze for a moment.

Without warning, he ripped the shirt you were wearing over your head and tossed it aside, revealing your shorts and barely-there bra. He smirked in satisfaction. “I don’t like you wearing another man’s clothes either.” he purred, bringing his lips back to the skin of your neck and allowing them to travel down to your collarbones.

Upon hearing your real whimpers, you couldn’t believe how fake you’d sounded earlier. The noises Namjoon managed to elicit from you were real, raw, and desperate. Namjoon grinned against the flesh of your collar bones, moving his kisses even lower to the swell of your breasts. Namjoon had fantasised about these breasts more times than he’d care to admit, and he was about to bust in his pants now that his fantasies were coming true. He was determined to give your body the attention and admiration it deserved.

He reached behind you and unsnapped the flimsy bralette you were wearing, letting it tumble to the floor unceremoniously. You shivered as the cool air hit your nipples, causing them to perk and harden. Or maybe that was the effect Namjoon had on you. You didn’t find time to ponder the reason because soon, he had those delectable, pillowy lips wrapped around one of the hardened buds, nimble fingers rolling the other.

A haggard moan left your lips and your head lolled back, hitting the wall while Namjoon rolled his tongue over your sensitive flesh. He let his teeth graze it gently, and your body jolted off the wall closer to his. He took the opportunity to guide you towards his bed, shoving you down onto the mattress. Your body bounced with the impact and he hovered over you, ripping his shirt off and tossing it aside. Your eyes locked on the smooth planes of his stomach. Your mouth watered as your gaze trailed lower to the trail of hair that led to the part of him you’d been dreaming about since you caught him with his hand wrapped around it.

You reached up and pulled him back down to you and Namjoon took the opportunity to slip his hand between your bodies, slipping it under the fabric of your shorts and panties.

“Mmm… so wet. Is this because of me, baby?” he grinned.

You thought about teasing him and saying it was Jimin but you’d waited too long for this moment to fuck it up now.

“All for you, Joonie.” you whined, bucking your hips up to get some friction.

“Mmm.. that’s not my name baby doll.” he smirked.

“Fuck… daddy.” you whimpered.

“That’s right baby girl.” he praised, “You want daddy to make you feel good?”

“Please.” you begged.

Namjoon smirked and began rubbing lazy circles on your clit, spreading your juices along the swollen nub. You groaned, leaning your head back. It felt so good, but it wasn’t enough. You needed to be filled.

“Fuck me, daddy.” you whined.

“So needy.” he tutted, dragging your shorts and panties off and tossing them to the floor.

He shimmied out of his shorts and boxers and your eyes locked on his cock. Thick, long, and leaking precum. Your tongue involuntarily darted along your lower lip, wetting the surface as you stared at Namjoon’s length with desire. You leaned up and tentatively licked at the tip, gathering the pre-cum on your tongue before swallowing and humming happily. Joon closed his eyes and enjoyed the feeling for a moment before pushing your shoulders back.

“We can try all that later. I want to cum inside of you, and I won’t last if you wrap those pretty lips around me.” he sighed, “but let’s get you ready, hm?”

You nodded and laid back against the pillows while Namjoon slipped two fingers in your drenched hole. You moaned loudly, finally feeling something fill your aching pussy. Joon curled his fingers and pumped them in and out of you, thumb rubbing circles on your clit. His lips crashed against yours again, swallowing up your moans and whines while he finger fucked you. The ridges of his fingers sliding against your velvety walls had you in a state of bliss. It wasn’t long before the familiar fire built deep in your belly and you were rocketing over the edge. Joon worked you through your high, never relenting in the slightest until you whimpered and pushed his hand away.

“Are you ready for me, baby?” he asked.

“Yes. Yes.” you let out breathlessly.

Joon smiled and rolled the condom onto his shaft before slowly sliding inside of you. Your eyes rolled back in your head at the way Namjoon fit perfectly in your walls. You could feel everything, like he was made to be inside of you. The stretch burned for a moment, but Namjoon remained still until you were comfortable. Once you gave him the signal that it was okay to move, Namjoon held nothing back.

His hips snapped into yours at a merciless pace, making your body bounce with the impact and incoherent gibberish leave your lips. Your arms found purchase around his neck while he rode you like there was no tomorrow. Namjoon had a lot of pent up sexual frustration when it came to you and he had every intention of unleashing it on you. He brought your nipple in his mouth once more.

You didn’t think you could last long with the way Namjoon was hitting that spot inside of you with every thrust, every time his cock landed against your walls it was just right and you were a mess beneath him in minutes, writing against his movements, bucking your hips up to meet his.

A chorus of his name slipped from you like a prayer, or a chant. You didn’t know. All you knew was that Namjoon felt so good and the only thing you could focus on was him and the impending orgasm he was unleashing inside of you with his relentless thrusts. Your nails dug into his back and your walls clenched around him as your orgasm built until you were just over the edge.

Namjoon stilled inside of you, and the orgasm ebbed away. A sob escaped your throat and you looked at Namjoon in confusion. He slipped out of your heat and you felt empty at the loss. He simply smirked and moved his head to begin kissing at your inner thighs.

“Joon, what-” you tried to ask, panting.

“Mmm… only good girls get to cum.” he hummed against your thigh. “Teasing daddy by grinding on your little friend… you weren’t being a very good girl, were you, baby doll?”

“But I…” you whined.

“I know why you did it.” he nodded in agreement, “and I agree. I needed a push. But I still didn’t like seeing your sweet little cunt grinding down on him. That pussy is mine.” he growled, possessiveness filling his eyes.

“Yes, I’m all yours daddy.” you sighed.

“That’s right.” he smirked.

He moved back up your body, leaving a trail of kisses as he went until his lips met yours again. His fingers brushed teasingly along your inner thigh and dipped in your heat, pumping in and out of you at an agonizingly slow place. His knuckles grazing your walls, his hot breath in your ear, whispering dirty things like a secret for just you to know, it was all too much.

Namjoon brought you to the edge over and over again before ripping your orgasm away from you each time. Tears welled in your eyes at the frustration. You were a complete mess beneath him and he only smirked in satisfaction, lazily rubbing patterns on your sensitive clit.

“Mmm.. does my baby want to cum?” he cooed.

“Fuck. Yes. Please. Joon please please please.” you nearly cried.

“Hmmm.. do you think you’ve earned it? Has daddy punished you enough? You sure did like showing off and making me angry.”

“Please, I’m sorry. I’m yours, only yours. PLEASE.” you whined.

Namjoon hummed and seemed to think deeply about your request. He nodded in approval and soon he was pounding into you again like he’d never stopped. It didn’t take you long to reach your end after that, so riled up and sensitive from the edging. You were so close, so close again.

“Cum for daddy.” Namjoon breathed in your ear, his voice low and husky.

You screamed his name as your vision went white hot and your back arched off the bed. Blissful euphoria enveloped your whole body while Joon rode out your high with you, soon meeting his own end. You were panting breathlessly to the point your lungs were burning as you both came back down. Joon discarded the condom and wrapped his arms around you, gently smoothing your hair away from your face and whispering encouraging things to you.

“You did so well for me baby.” he praised, kissing your forehead.

You nodded, snuggling closer into his frame. You were too exhausted to formulate a reply. Your brain was jello after the fucking of a lifetime you’d just recieved. Joon held you quietly, hands roaming tenderly to soothe your aching muscles. You leaned into his touch and when your heart finally returned to its’ normal rhythm, you looked up into his eyes.

“You know, I’m kind of thankful for Jimin.” Joon spoke.

“Hmm?” you questioned.

“I think if it weren’t for you assholes trying to make me jealous, I would’ve never pulled my head out of my ass.” he sighed. “I was just so scared that you wouldn’t feel the same way and I didn’t want to ruin everything we had, you know? You’re so important to me, Y/N. I don’t ever want to lose you.”

“You won’t ever lose me.” you confirmed, fire in your eyes and passion in your voice. “But I get it. I was scared too.”

“Every time I see you, I get these words stuck in my head. All it is is 8 letters and I’ve wanted to tell you for so long, Y/N, but I was terrified of being rejected.” he admitted, eyes downcast.

“Joonie?” you whispered warily, moving your head back so you could look into his eyes.

“Yeah, baby?”

“I love you.”

“I love you.” he smiled, kissing the tip of your nose

You bit your lip to try and hide the smile threatening to cover your face while looking into Namjoon’s eyes.

“But if Jimin ever puts his hands on you again I will kill him.” Namjoon grumbled.

You giggled and hid your face in his chest.

“I love you.” you repeat, unable to find a better response, and to be honest, it just felt good to say it out loud after all this time.

Joon’s grumpy expression morphed into one of fondness and affection, he caressed your cheek in his large hand, bringing his lips gently to yours in a chaste kiss.

“I love you too.” he sighed happily. . “So very much.”

#kim namjoon #namjoon #bts #smut #namjoon smut #namjoon x reader #rm #rm x reader #rm smut #bts smut

379 notes · View notes

xiaomomowrites · 5 years ago

Text

catch and release

Attack on Titan | Eremika

based off the 119 spoilers

Summary: “You want to talk to me,” Mikasa repeats instead, voice hoarse with disbelief. “Our last conversation ended in tears and a fist fight. Forgive me for feeling shocked at your sudden interest in my wellbeing.” Eren had always been her rock, her ride or die, the very embodiment of home and comfort. And now… well. She wanted to tell herself it was over, that the door was closed. And now, he comes in with his bullshit, forcing her to take a step back from the two she had taken forward.

you can find it on fanfiction.net once I post it lol {mikasa-heichou}

A/N: Alright so I saw the spoilers for 119 and I panicked. In my state of distress, I shit out this fic because I needed something to throw my feelings at. All I know is that Eren literally lost his head and then I saw a spoiler somewhere that Mikasa was injured?? I’m pretty sure it turned out to be fake, but I thought it would add some substance to this piece so I took it and ran lol.

Also! This is the rewritten and edited version of Change My Mind. That was my first fic I ever posted on ff and tumblr, and looking back at it, I saw how much I’ve improved since a year ago. So I took the dialogue of the fight and manipulated it to work well with the different circumstances, and here we are. The end piece turned out to be too different from the original (which I think is good!) so I had to rename it. I hope you enjoy, leave me some love! -u.n.

“Hey.” Eren greets nonchalantly with his face ridden of any emotion. Eren looks far off; his mind is elsewhere but he’s talking to her. Talking to her. After everything that had happened. Mikasa can’t say she wanted it, but she’s not horribly disappointed.

Mikasa looks up from tending to the injury at hand. There are trace amounts of blood on her hands despite her efforts to scrub them clean: pink tinges her fingers like she’s blushing with her whole body, and had the situation been different, it would have been cute. Though, she can’t say that almost losing your life in battle for the millionth time was cute. Looking at him now and seeing that his presence felt like an obligation, she almost doesn’t want to respond. For once, his aura was completely unreadable.

“Eren.”

His eyes darted to her bare neck, taking in the sight of the pale skin that’s covered more often than not. There’s a weird feeling starting in his belly, but he chooses not to pay mind to it. With his newly mastered skill of compartmentalization, the feeling is gone before he can even register what it was.

Eren leans against the door frame, long brown hair pulled back into a bun resting upon his occipital, and gives her a once over. It was a silent way of checking up on her, she thinks, because his eyes zero in on the blood spreading across the white fabric. She squirms under his gaze.

He tilts his chin up and back, gesturing towards her injury.

“You good?” he’s manages to make out. Mikasa’s mind reels at this. At first, she had simply thought he stopped by to grab something from the infirmary, not to chat with her. Besides, these days it seemed as though he wanted absolutely nothing to do with her. Her eyes narrowed a fraction and she focused her attention on her lap, something about the fit of her new pants suddenly became very interesting. Mikasa applied pressure to the wound and willed to the highest god Eren to go away before she exploded into an emotion really did not want to entertain.

“Fine,” she replies curtly, “everything’s fine.”

“You’re bleeding a lot.” Eren answers not a second too late, and Mikasa wants to huff in annoyance. He’s being very confusing.

This whole week he hadn’t spared a single glance at her, not having said anything to each other since the incident at the table where he confessed his true feelings. She might have thought that there was more reason for his actions, but lately she’s not sure what to believe at all. He loved them, and Mikasa was so sure of it up until now. He saved her when they were kids, and he didn’t even know her. Why would you spread yourself so thin and go so far as to put your life on the line, to save a girl you only knew the name of? Mikasa would rack her brain for an answer, but every time she tried, it always ended up inconclusive. And she remembers the scarf- of course she remembers the scarf- that stupid, red scarf that she held so dearly to her heart and clung to it for as long as she could. She remembers the comfort it would bring, the anxiety it would soothe, the depression it would hush, until the relic began to induce more harm than good.

Not to mention his relationship with Armin. They were thick as thieves, attached at the hip, practically brothers. Mikasa remembered when Armin woke up after claiming the colossal titan, and Eren had been the one to beat her to him. She remembers how he had flung his arms around his neck and held him close, relieved and emotional to see his best friend alive and well. She remembers the tears forming at the corners of his eyes and the anxiety physically leave Eren’s body when Armin sat up. You can’t fake that, she had concluded, that’s raw emotion.

He loved them.

But that’s it, he loved them, as in past tense. And no matter how much she might have wanted to deny that, his actions definitely backed up his claims. And even in the off chance that Eren really was just putting up a front, why would she want to get involved with all of that after every harsh word he’s thrown at her?

And now, all she had were hypotheticals.

Building up to that moment at the table, Eren had, sadly, disappointed her more times than she could count: insisting they stay at Marley when everyone wanted to go home, getting the corps more involved than they should, having three-hundred and maybe more soldiers killed by Armin’s hand, distancing himself, losing the light in his eyes that used to bring her comfort- Mikasa couldn’t pinpoint when the pain eventually numbed, and she began to expect less and less from him. Yet, no amount of detachment could stop the pain from stabbing her in the chest when he claimed to harbor nothing but hatred for someone who was a mere slave.

So when he waltzes in here with the audacity to check up on the woman he apparently despises- to even bother putting up a front that he cared about her wellbeing- Mikasa is bound to get a little irritated. Mikasa inhales deeply and notices how her chest constricts the closer he gets. She’ll have to tell Hanji about the discomfort later.

Or maybe, that was from Eren being in the room.

“I’m fine. I’ve had worse.”

“Suit yourself.” Eren shrugs, and shifts his feet in a way that makes it seem like he’s about to leave. He begins to shuffle out, barely making it past the door frame before he turns back around, but the tension was too unbearable to not say anything. It sat heavy in the air and suffocated him, and even though Eren had willed himself to create distance between them for both of their sakes, he found himself unable to tear his gaze away from her. He just needed to see that she was alright, even if he had no right to know. But as Eren thought for a fleeting moment that maybe it wasn’t worth rubbing salt in the wound, it was too late to change his mind. The brunet sighs, long and deep, before leaning against the wood. His arms come to cross his chest as he speaks.

“Okay. Let’s talk.”

Mikasa looks up briefly and meets his intense gaze before redirecting her eyes back to her hands. Words could not describe the amount of discomfort she is feeling right now, and the thought in itself pained her more than she’d like to admit. Eren had always been her rock, her ride or die, the very embodiment of home and comfort. And now… well.

“There is nothing to talk about, Eren. I have nothing to say to you.” Mikasa answers evenly. She almost applauds herself for maintaining her composure. Eren frowns, a sign that he was not going to drop the conversation that easily. Mikasa quickly remembers how stubborn he is; the trait is both a blessing and a curse.

“I think you do have something to say to me, otherwise you wouldn’t be fidgeting with your hands like you always do when you’re nervous.” Eren says sharply.

She blinks slowly and wills herself to breathe. “Okay,” Mikasa tries not to let any of her feelings seep through, “I don’t want to talk to you about it.”

“Alright,” she hears Eren huff, “I’m going to ask one more time, and then afterwards you’re not allowed to ask again: what is it?”

Mikasa recoils at his choice in words. Not allowed--

“Is there-” Mikasa chokes. He cannot be serious. The balls on this one. “You wanna ease up a little bit? You come to me, demanding answers, and then you say I’m not allowed to ask again.”

Mikasa watched him move with a look on her face that resembled a mix of disgust and curiosity, but nothing like respect. Eren drags a hand over his mouth and down his chin as he picks up the nearest chair. He’s making a big scene out of this, she knows. Unceremoniously, he drops the chair in front of her bed and straddles it, muscled forearms come to rest on the top of the chair as he looks at her heatedly.

“I want to talk to you to settle this because things haven’t been sitting well with me, either.” Had she known any better, it looked like this conversation was just as painful for him as it was for her.

'I wonder why,' she almost wants to say. But no, she refused to get her hopes up. Mikasa spent the past couple of days telling herself he was living his best life with her out of his hair, that he was able to move on faster than her. She wanted to tell herself it was over, that the door was closed. And now, he comes in with his bullshit, forcing her to take a step back from the two she had taken forward.

“You want to talk to me,” Mikasa repeats instead, voice hoarse with disbelief. “Our last conversation ended in tears and a fist fight. Forgive me for feeling shocked at your sudden interest in my wellbeing.”

Eren swallows. He licks his lips, eyes darting to the left as he composes an answer in his head. “I know that this situation is… unfortunate,” his voice was gruff, “but we’re in Marley, and these are my days in Marley that, one way or another, you’ve agreed to. I’m doing everything I can to work towards our freedom, and honestly, Mikasa, the way you’re reacting to it is unfair.”

“Eren,” she warns, “I don’t think you want to start a conversation with me about what’s fair.” Her shift in tone causes his gaze to harden. “This is way more intense than any of us could have asked for. Sasha died, Eren. I joined the corps because of you. Armin wiped out a whole naval fleet for you.”

Suddenly Eren is shaking his head like she said something that offended him. He holds a hand up to ensure he has the next word.

“You need to understand in case you haven’t yet: everything I do is for a reason. I would never- I would never hurt you like that not- not deliberately without reason, and I-” Eren inhales sharply, pausing to recollect his thoughts. His mind darts to their talk only days before, and reluctantly recalls the utter heartbreak written on her face along with the betrayal painted across Armin’s. Was he wrong to think he can just hit 'undo' on all of this? His chest squeezes. “I am doing everything I can, every week, to bring home something to our people in Paradis-”

“Eren, I- I am trying to make things perfect here,” Mikasa flails her free arm before aggressively pointing down the floor beneath her, “Okay? So that you can have everything that you want-”

“So I’m doing this just for me, is that what this is? I’m doing this just for me.” his words are laced with condescension, dipped in impatience. He leans forward, upset at the turn the conversation had taken, though he can’t say he didn’t expect this. “Mikasa, if that’s what you think, then this is a really sad conversation.” Eren bites, but the woman in front of him doesn’t so much as flinch. By now, she’s used to his temper. She knows it like the back of her hand.

“It wouldn’t be the first.”

Eren sighs, his nostrils flaring from the pot of anger that was boiling in his stomach. But he watches her expression, and something inside softens every so slightly. Despite the facade she’s tried so hard to put up, he can still tell that she’s… sad. “Look, Mikasa, I don’t know what to tell you. Sasha is gone, that moment is gone, but that’s not the first time we’ve seen someone we love die, you and I of all people should know this. So really, there’s nothing we can do about that but see this through. It’s what Sasha would have wanted.”

The mention of Sasha’s death strikes a chord in her. Her heart squeezes at the memory of her late best friend, and the look that spreads across her face depicts all five stages of grief in five seconds. Voice cracking, she says softly, “I don’t know, Eren, maybe you should have been there.”

It’s the most emotion she’s shown on her face today, and Eren knows he’s struck a chord.

Tongue in cheek, he decides to drop the conversation. They seemed to have reached an impasse anyway, and he didn’t come here to fight. Silence falls over the two, and Mikasa realizes only then that the wound’s screams of protest could no longer go unnoticed. She winces, visibly, and only then does Eren take note of her pain. The wound wasn’t even that bad, but it stung enough to demand medical attention. The shifter stands, ungracefully pushing the chair back to where it had been prior.

“I’ll go get Hanji.” he mutters when he’s halfway out the door.

“No,” she stops him. “No. Get Armin.”

Eren says nothing, only pauses to make sure he heard correctly, “Get Armin.” he repeats. His voice is flat and unnamed. The thought of the two together immediately puts an unwelcomed, ugly thought into his head.

“Yep,” Mikasa breaks eye contact applying pressure to the spot that has been annoying her for the past half hour. “Get Armin.”

Eren scoffs, and Mikasa pushes down the inexplicable anger that forces its way up her throat with her full body weight. “Okay, I’ll get Armin.” she hears him mumble under his breath.

Not too long after, Mikasa feels a gentle knock at the door that brings her an odd sense of comfort. Nothing like how she had been feeling moments prior.

“Heyaz,” a gentle, familiar voice greets her. Mikasa looks up, eyes glossy from her conversation with Eren. “You okay?”

She shakes her head, throwing her free hand up and letting it slap down on her thigh in frustration. “What am I doing wrong, Armin?” Mikasa exhales loudly. Armin comes up to kneel in front of her, and she duly noted how his aura is nothing like the aggressive one she had just faced. Instead, Armin brings a hand to cover her own- the one tending to the wound- and slowly pries it off so he can take a look.

“Nothing,” he says. “you’re doing the best you can.”

The blond reaches over and takes more gauze to wrap around the wound, but not after wiping it clean of any excess blood. He applies pressure to the wound before wrapping it smoothly around her body. Subconsciously, she leans into his touch. Armin offers her a light smile.

“Hey,” he cups her cheeks in both hands. “It’s just a tough situation. That’s all that it is.”

Mikasa pouts. “It’s getting tougher.”

“Yeah,” Armin wipes at a stray tear he knows she wouldn’t have wanted to escape, “I know.” Brushing hair away from her forehead, he palms at her nape to bring her head closer to his. Armin presses his lips to her forehead and physically feels the tension leave her shoulders. He coaxes her to lean into his shoulder, and Mikasa takes the opportunity and runs with it. She presses her nose into the crook of his neck and revels in the way Armin handles her delicately.

It was nice to feel protected.

Eren eyes the interaction from where he lingers by the door, his two (former) best friends too wrapped up in each other to notice his presence. His heart sinks into his stomach when he notices how gentle Armin is with her, how he always has been with her, and how he couldn’t seem to give her that.

He sees Armin shift, beginning to pull back, and Eren startles a bit. He really should get going before the others notice he’s been gone awhile, but he can’t seem to tear his eyes away from them. He aches all over. It’s not some sharp, immediate physical pain he can identify, no. It consumes him, spreading through his body like a wildfire just by seeing the damage he’s done to the people he loved the most. The silver lining that Eren kept having to remind himself of, however, was that at least they had each other to seek out.

When this was all over, Eren blindly wished, he’d take them both back in a heartbeat. He’d laugh and tell them all about how he hated every second of what he had to do. Hell, he’d even pat Armin on the back for the good punch he threw at him.

That is, if they survived that long. Eren wasn’t stupid, he knows better than to speak for the future.

“Thank you,” he hears Mikasa mutter. She pulls away to lightly press her lips to the blond’s cheek before pushing him by the shoulders, presumably telling him she can take it from there.

“You’ll be okay on your own?” Armin asks.

“Always. And Armin,” she calls him back. “I love you, okay?”

Armin smiles at her sadly and squeezes her hand. “Of course. I love you, too.”

“I just wanted you to know,” she gazes at him, an indescribable look on her face. “We just. We never know, you know?”

He chuckles. “I know.”

The moment is so tender, so sincere, and full of words Eren could never seem to bring himself to say. And oh god he can’t watch-

Eren stalks forward until he’s completely out of sight and leans against the wall. He takes an impossibly deep breath and wills himself to regain his aloof composure before anyone can see him vulnerable.

“Where’s your scarf?” Eren asks her the next day, unable to stay away for too long.

“I… don’t know.”

"You...misplaced it?" He hesitated, afraid of her answer.

"Um, I...yes."

He fiddles with the fabric in his back pocket, pulling it out when he's a comfortable distance. “You really need to keep track of this.” he teases, but she smiles warily at the fabric. Eren easily pinpoints her discomfort, but struggles with a way to confront it without starting anything.

“Eren, where did you…?”

“Uh,” he scratches the back of his neck sheepishly, “what’s her name… Louise gave it to me. She said you left it in-” Realization dawns on him, and his face falters slightly. The miniscule amount of confidence minutes before walking in was now gone. “You left it on purpose, didn’t you?”

He looks so sad, Mikasa doesn’t know what to say. She supposes that now it’s her turn to break his heart. “Yes, Eren.”

His posture slouches slightly, looking defeated. He tugs at the frayed edges anxiously. “Why?”

“Eren, that scarf,” she gestures towards the red fabric, “it used to mean everything to me. It brought me comfort and warmth, and it even smelled like you. Thank you for that, really. But ever since you called me a slave…”

“Mikasa,” Eren cringes, face scrunching up as he remembers crying so hard he almost threw up.

“That scarf is a leash.” she continues, resolve strong, “It’s a chain that binds me to you, and that’s all I can see it as now. It’s not the same.”

He sighs, fingers buried into the scarf, “You know I never meant it like that when I gave it to you. That was never my intention.”

“I know,” she reassures him with a pat on the shoulder, and he scolds himself for wanting to be closer when all he’s ever done was push her away. Mikasa smiles at him sadly, “Times change, though. Things change.”

“Well this… sucks.” He groans, embarrassed, but more hurt than ever, at how this was turning out.

Mikasa laughs. It’s been so long since she’s seen his ears tinged red with embarrassment. She reaches out and tugs on it like she used to when they were younger, and revels in the way he winces, but makes no effort to pull away. A wave of nostalgia crashes over them both.

“It doesn’t have to be a sad thing, Eren. You’re free, right? That’s what you’ve always wanted. I’m done.”

The words “you’re free” punched him in the face and called him lonely.

No, Eren’s mind immediately protests. The thought of being free from her felt so inexplicably wrong. So out of character, and that the two of them being together was supposed to be inevitable. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He wanted to reach out and grab her, hold onto her wrist like he’s done before, and keep her close to him. Eren wanted to protect her, put her in his pocket to shield her from all the bad things in the world. But as he looked at her, really looked at her, she seemed to say, “Just so you know, I’m perfectly okay with taking care of myself” without actually verbalizing it. Eren sees how happy Mikasa seems. She’s glowing; an obvious light twinkles in her eyes as she looks at him. Her cheeks seem fuller, posture straightened, an overall healthy vibe radiating off of her. Eren knows, that no matter how badly he wants to hold onto this, he can’t.

He won’t.

“So you don’t want it back…?” he throws the question at her as his Hail Mary, a final attempt, just to say that he exhausted all possibilities.

“No.” Mikasa answers, all traces of finality present. She steps closer to him and covers a warm hand with her own, pushing the scarf back down to his sides. As she begins to pull away, Eren twists his hand free from the scarf to hold onto hers. Her eyes widened in surprise at the contact, but she doesn’t move away. In fact, Mikasa lets him lace their fingers together.

Eren squeezes. “I’m proud of you.”

“Thank you,” she offers, “I’m proud of me, too. And so is Armin.”

Eren chortles. “So you and Armin, huh?” his tone teases her, but there’s no trace of malice or jealousy.

“What?” she blanches.

“I mean, it’s great. He’s so good to you. You deserve someone who appreciates you.”

“Oh, no, we’re not- Armin and I aren’t a thing.” she quickly negates the assumption before either of them can entertain the thought any longer. Silence falls over the two once more, no longer filled with tension, but with comfort. The growing tension between them had obviously weighed more on their shoulders than either of them would have liked to admit.

"I miss you.”

The words tumble out of his mouth before he can stop them.

“Oh,” Mikasa cooes and palms at his cheek, “I miss you, too.”

“Then I don’t understand,” he’s scrambling for some kind of purchase on her, “why are we breaking apart?”

Mikasa is quiet for a moment. She bites her lip, pondering, until, “I haven’t had a moment to properly grieve.”

“You don’t have to grieve alone,” Eren adds, “I’m still here.”

“Eren, I have to grieve everything, everything since the day of the Battle of Trost.” she tells him sternly, “There is so much to cope and you know that. I have a lot to undergo before I can be with anyone.”

“Mikasa-”

“But,” she puts her hand up, interrupting him. “I still choose you.”

“...Huh?” he cocks his head, clearly confused by her shift in decisions. “But you just said-”

“It’s one thing to be bonded to you because of my bloodline, Eren, but it’s another to choose you because I love you.”

There it was. Cat’s out of the bag now.

Eren stares at her blankly, dumbfounded. Despite his lack of a reaction, Mikasa feels no heartbreak or discomfort.

“I know, there was no huge, romantic or pretty way of saying it” she smiles a little. “I’ve lived with these feelings for so long, Eren. I think you know by now if you love me or not, and at this point, time won’t really change that. But it’s okay, I’ve made my peace with either outcome.”

For a moment he’s just looking at her, like a volcano that wants to- needs to- erupt, so badly that the magma begins to seep along the edges. He wants to tell her, but the fact that she had literally just told him she’d be totally fine without him seemed to be a pretty big barrier.

Mikasa seems to understand the intense look in his eyes. “What is it?” she watches him lick his lips in hesitation, searching for the right words in this semi-panicked state. He seemed to be measuring his next words carefully, as if saying the wrong thing could just send her away again, just like that. He’d already made that mistake once. Her voice coaxes him back into reality, however, when she says gently, “talk to me. You can tell me anything.”

“I do.”

She froze. “What?”

“Mikasa,” he grabs her hand and puts it to his chest desperately. “Mikasa I love you, what are we doing?”

“You…” the words die on her tongue as she hears her own heartbeat in her ears louder than his words. “Oh my god…”

“I shouldn't have waited until now, I know. It was stupid, and I'm sorry. But I love you. I love you.” He almost looked like a figment of her imagination at this point, saying these things she had only heard him declare in her dreams.

“Eren, I…” she pauses, really looking at him. His look of sincerity and puppy dog eyes she hasn't seen in years seemed to win her over. It seems so unreal and her knee-jerk reaction was to cling to logic: “We...we still have a job to finish, we’re not done yet, the...the war, our friends, I just…”

“But I want it now.” He states the obvious, halting any other reasoning she may have. Mikasa melts at his admission and she realizes how much tension she had been harboring in her shoulders when she felt them relax at his words.

“It's going be you, Eren. Just give me time,” she reasons.

“Do we even have time, though? I've just seen so much, we’re not guaranteed a tomorrow. You've never been more than a hundred feet away from me, and it took me ten years to get to you,” Eren tells her, his hand still holding onto hers as if she would just run away as soon as he let go.

“Okay,” Mikasa answers shakily. “Okay. So this, this is us now, right? We're done messing around.”

“Yeah, I- god, yeah I'm done.” He pulls her into a hug, so desperate, so tight, like Eren Jeager would be damned if he ever let her go again. He presses a kiss to her forehead as he feels her arms wrap around his own figure, “we're done being stupid.”

“Good because I don't wanna mess this up, Eren. I can't lose you again.”

“I know, I'm sorry. I love you.”

Her muffled giggles against his chest send him up to cloud nine. He can hear the smile in her voice as she tells him, “I love you, too.”

227 notes · View notes

mandowh0re · 6 years ago

Text

Baby For a Week

Day 2 Part 2

Fandom: Avengers MCU

Summary: Loki decides it would be funny to turn Peter into a two year old, thrusting Tony into the life of an actual parent for a week. Is he ready?

Word Count: 1383

Warnings: Swearing, fluff, angst

A/N: I’m,,, updating??? HI GUYS! Also, I made Stucky a thing in this. Sorry not sorry.

Happy Reading!

Part 1.1/ Part 1.2/ Part 2.1/ Part 2.2

It was a relatively quiet evening after May left. Peter went down for a nap on his own and Tony took him and placed him in the crib along with the Iron Man plushie and puppy.

Deciding takeout would be a good idea after everyone tired themselves out playing with Peter, Tony ordered Chinese food to the Compound.

“So, how’s dad life treating you?” Natasha asked, before popping a piece of orange chicken in her mouth.

Tony shot her a glare, “I’m not-”

“Oh for the love of God!” Bucky slammed his flesh hand down on the table, “If I hear you say you’re not the kid’s dad one more time I’ll slap Steve,” he jerked his thumb to the man next to him.

“Um excuse me, don’t bring me into this!” Steve’s hands flew up.

Bucky ignored his boyfriend’s protest, “You literally walk, talk, and act like Pete’s dad twenty-four-seven. I’m pretty fucking sure the only person who doesn’t realize that is you.”

Steve quickly slapped Bucky upside the head at the same time Natasha kicked him under the table and Sam scream whispered, “Dude!”

Tony blinked a few times before his brain caught up with him.

“What did you just say?”

Bucky’s eyes got wide and they shot around the table.

“I no longer feel safe in this environment.” he said as he slumped in his seat.

“Oh now you’re intuition works.” Natasha hissed.

“Barnes,” Tony said, “What did you mean by that?”

It was silent for a few seconds before Bucky rolled his eyes and sat back up, “Well there’s no point in hiding it now!”

“It’s not your secret to tell, Buck.”

“I’ll get murdered either way. I’d rather get murdered by the spider.”

“You’re gonna make the kid cry.”

“He made us promise, Barnes.”

“Hey!” Tony yelled, getting everyone’s attention, “I’d like to know what secret my supposed spider child is keeping from me. So if you be so kind as to enlighten me,” he raised a brow.

Before anyone could stop him, Bucky blurted, “Petercallsyoudadwhenyouarentaroundto-.”

Tony choked on his spit at the same time Steve tackled Bucky to the ground..

“That’s a bold faced lie,” He said, but with such uncertainty that is came out painfully wavered.

His eyes flickered to Bruce, who just shrugged.

“FRIDAY?”

“Sergeant Barnes is telling the truth. I could not tell you because Peter convinced me not to.”

There were so many things swirling in Tony’s head right now.

How long had this been going on? Was it an accident at first? He really hasn’t fucked up with Peter? How had the kid manipulated Tony’s own AI to withhold information?

So he just avoided it altogether.

Turning to Barnes he said, “Can I at least say it one more time for the satisfaction of seeing Rogers get slapped?”

The look on Bucky’s face was pure evil.

***

That night, Tony was woken up by Peter screaming his lungs out.

Pepper had left on a business trip earlier in the evening to China, so he was left to his own devices.

Looking over the paper May had given him, she listed a few reasons as to why Peter may throw a tantrum.

Ear infection

Sick

Overly tired

Frustrated

Peter had an enhanced healing factor that made it damn near impossible for him to get sick, and he was sleeping. So all of those possibilities flew right out the window.

Tony had been bouncing the boy and cooing at him for the last ten minutes but nothing even caused Peter to let up on the screaming. And because he was screaming, he couldn’t communicate to Tony what was wrong.

“FRIDAY, can you scan him to see if there’s anything wrong that I’m missing?”

“I have already done so three times, boss. I cannot find anything physically wrong with him. Perhaps you should call Bruce up to look at him.”

“Right, right, okay. Can you have Bruce meet me in the med bay?”

“Will do.”

Tony grabbed puppy and the iron man plushie that the kid now called “kitty”, which the others made fun of Tony endlessly for.

“I don’t see him clutching to a stuffed version of any of you shit heads.”

When he got to the med bay, Bruce was already there in his pajamas with a white lab coat on.

The screaming child in Tony’s arms made him wince, “Mam, FRIDAY wasn’t messing around.”

“Does she ever?” Tony asked as he walked over to the bed.

“Yeah, if you ask her to.”

“One time. That was one time and you all basically grounded me.”

Just as Tony went to set Peter on the bed, the screaming got impossibly louder and Peter latched onto Tony with his spider powers.

“Well shit.”

“Just sit on the bed and put him on your lap. He should be fine there.”

After an extensive check, Bruce finally concluded that there really was nothing wrong with Peter. Luckily, by the time he was finished, Peter had calmed down to the point of hiccups and sniffles.

“Peter,” Bruce spoke quietly, “Can you tell us what’s wrong?”

Peter clutched the stuffed toys tighter and looked up at Tony, his chubby cheeks red and stained with tear tracks.

Tony ran a hand through the boy’s curls and carefully wiped a stray tear away, “It’s okay buddy. You can tell us.”

Peter looked between tony and Bruce a few more times before settling into Tony’s lap.

“Bird.”

Wait what?

“What do you mean, bud?”

“Mean bird. Big a-and gween eyes. Hurt.”

“Peter, there aren’t any birds in the building,” Bruce tried to explain, but Peter shook his head violently.

“Drop me in water! Th-then big house fell down n I not move and nobody help!” Peter was beginning to hyperventilate.

“He’s talking about Vulture. Toomes. I think. I’m not sure what he means about the house though.” Tony told Bruce.

“So a nightmare.” Bruce stated.

“I thought he only remembered us and his powers. No events.”

Bruce shrugged, “Maybe he has memories of things in his sleep. It’s Loki. And it’s magic. Honestly, we have no way to control or predict anything from here. We just gotta play it by ear.”

“Wonderful,” Tony groaned, “Hey Pete. The big mean bird is gone, he isn’t gonna hurt you. It was just a dream. I promise you’re safe.”

Peter only whimpered in response, but Tony took that as an okay to take him back up to the penthouse.

“Sorry for waking you, Brucie.”

“Never a problem for Peter.”

“I see where I stand.”

“Against the world’s cutest kid? Yeah, you do.”

Tony chuckled but headed back to the elevator.

When he finally got Peter to fall back to sleep, Tony snuck out to the living room of his penthouse.

“FRIDAY, I wanna know what Peter meant by what he said earlier. Look for any collapsed buildings in New York City in the timeframe from when he first told Happy about Toomes to the night Toomes was arrested.”

“I have found five collapsed buildings reported within those constrictions.”

“How many are still open cases or listed as suspicious or unsolved?”

“Two.”

“How did each one fall?”

“One building was an old abandoned apartment that burned to the ground. No arrest has been made in the case, but it appears to be arson. The other was an abandoned parking garage, collapsed from possible structural integrity. No arrest has been made, but it happened the night of the plane crash. The call to emergency operators came in about twenty minutes before your plane crashed.”

Tony physically felt his heart drop into his stomach.

“Were there any security cameras around that night?”

A shop across the street had a camera with the garage partially in its frame. I’m pulling it up now.”

A video feed came over the tv screen that had a partial shot of the street, including the parking garage.

A few seconds played before a red streak flew through the frame.

“Stop. Rewind. Play that frame by frame and enhance the video.”

FRIDAY did as requested, and there on the screen was Peter, in his old homemade spiderman suit, swinging towards the garage.

Tony felt his heart beginning to beat faster. Faster than it should.

He watched patiently for another three minutes, before the structure collapsed.

***

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harryandmolly · 6 years ago

Text

The Emancipation of Ginny ~ 4

summary: shawn and ginny could’ve ruined everything six months ago, and sticking together despite their past could make or break them now as ginny stays on as his personal assistant. but what happens on tour doesn’t stay on tour.

warnings: Language, tequila-flavored nostalgia, Gertler on the loose

WC: 4.6k

Shawn and Ginny chatter while Shawn reaches for the aux cord and scrolls through his playlists. With a gasping chuckle, he seems to find exactly what he didn’t know he was looking for.

“Oh my god,” Ginny snorts, but her knee is bouncing and she’s nodding along so Shawn knows he’s got her.

The sharp clapping starts followed closely by drums, then the pulse of the synthy keyboard. By the time the breathy vocals start, Ginny is already there, ready to imitate them perfectly, the product of a thousand sing-a-longs.

Her warm voice curls around the “ah… yeah…” but Shawn steps in with a headbang and joins her for Whitney Houston’s iconic “WOO!”

They’re buckled into the backseat, dancing and wriggling to the intro of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.” Jake bobs his head with a barely there smile. They do this a lot, especially when they’ve clearly pregamed their evening. Shawn knows what to play to get Ginny moving and singing along even louder than he is. Whitney is always a safe bet.

Shawn claps in time with the beat and sings a lower harmony to Ginny’s eerily excellent Whitney impression. When the chorus starts, they’re both belting, laughing and shimmying and paying absolutely no mind to the relative audience they’ve gathered.

They’re stuck at a light on Curzon St. because a lorry fender bender has blocked up traffic, but the folks around them are treated to a show as Shawn and Ginny put their all into the 80s pop classic. What they also don’t notice is the stunned teenager in the car to the right and just ahead of theirs who has the perfect angle to film them out the window, capturing every wail, every head bop, every time they grab Jake’s seat ahead of them to encourage him to sing along.

Shawn and Ginny didn’t know any of this until the next morning, by which time the Twitter video had gathered 11 million views.

Andrew Gertler has a Ginny Dresden problem.

Andrew adores Ginny. Andrew’s pretty sure that at this point, without Ginny, he’d have lost all his hair and maybe accidentally strangled his artist to death (not that Shawn isn’t a delight 97% of the time, but his job is very stressful, ok?!).

Andrew remembers when they stepped off that first plane together in New York, already thick as thieves. He had a feeling in his gut, the kind of feeling that directs him wisely, when he listens to it. The feeling didn’t have an action attached, it was more a reaction, a sinking feeling of dread.

The feeling said, fuck, this will be complicated.

The feeling, as always, was right.

Andrew saw it, obviously, as did everyone. When three months passed and he noticed no evidence of a sneaky affair, he figured they were safe, the sexual tension would remain just that (though, Andrew would admit, it wasn’t just sexual tension. Because that would be easy to get past. This was always more than that).

When Shawn and Ginny sat him down three weeks into their secret relationship, about six months after Ginny joined the team, Andrew was frankly stunned. He was annoyed, of course, at his naive belief that they had skipped over the complications he feared, and even more irritated that he didn’t notice, especially given the way they were looking at each other like they had each hung the moon for the other.

It’s probably weird to everyone around him, anyone in the industry who heard about this, that Andrew never considered firing Ginny. He really didn’t. He just… knew that wasn’t going to fly. He accepted their fate, trusted them to be grown-ups if and when things went south.

And when they did, chaos reigned only for a night before Shawn managed to right the ship. Thank god.

But Ginny, sweet, thoughtful, intuitively organized and proactive Ginny, she was still a problem.

It’s hard to know exactly what the fans know. They were whispering about Shawn and Ginny long before it became a thing, and they’ve continued whispering long after. Some believe they never broke up at all, that they hid their relationship for privacy. Some believe he’s still in love with her and refuses to fire her so he can win her back. And then some believe Shawn’s fucking Cez, so really, you can’t spend too much time listening to fans because as lovable as they mostly are, they’re also so insane.

But the fans keep Ginny in their line of sight at all times. They monitor how closely she stands by him, how often they’re seen out in groups together. She’s never far from their minds, or their theories, or their tantrum fits on Tumblr about how if she had any self-respect at all, she’d have left Shawn’s team when he dumped her ass.

Those posts make Andrew irrationally angry -- that’s when he knows he has to log off and take some deep breaths.

But the truth is, he can’t ignore them, not entirely. Because when they start chattering about how Shawn is playing with her heart, reeling her in and casting her back out again as he pleases, keeping her on the team for his own comfort, that kind of shit gets press attention eventually, if it gets enough of a groundswell buzz on social media. And then it becomes his business.

It happened all at once for Shawn, kind of the way falling in love did. When it started, he lived with it for 48 hours before he piped up and let it all come crashing down.

He remembers holding her on the plane, a Learjet taking them from Sydney to Tokyo. It was an overnight flight but Shawn’s body clock told him it was noon, so he was nowhere near tired, but Ginny could always pass out on command. He envied it, but he made her as comfortable as he could while he did it.

She was curled up against his chest in their reclined seats, the armrest up between them. He had a blanket draped over their bodies, bunched up under her arm because otherwise she feels “all trapped and shit,” which he knows she hates. Her springy curls are positioned so they’re tickling his nose. When he moves his head to avoid them, somehow they follow. So instead, he embraces it and buries his face in her hair.

The smell of coconut oil and something that’s just somehow Ginny completely overwhelms him. His heart kickdrums in his chest. His breathing starts to speed, but the weight of her on his chest constricts his lungs. He holds her tighter, blinking quickly as he tries to find his way out of this unfamiliar feeling.

He’s sick with it, whatever it is. The panic doesn’t fade when she nuzzles her cheek against him and lifts her head, blinking sleepily, mumbling in a raspy morning voice something about “get some sleep, you minger,” but he can barely hear her over the rushing in his ears. He just nods with a shaky smile and closes his eyes long enough to make her think he’s trying to sleep. She goes heavy against him again and he knows he’s alone, as alone as he can be with her plastered to his side, overheating him, clinging to him. He coughs uncomfortably, choking on his breath.

And the panic still doesn’t fade over the next couple days every time he looks at her and she smiles that big, beautiful Ginny smile, perfect white teeth framed by the signature matte red lipstain that is a scientific marvel because as much time as he spends kissing her, it never leaves a smudge. It’s like she was never there.

But she was. She was everywhere.

It was terrifying.

Even with the rise of panic, he doesn’t let himself consider the Scary Solution until 36 hours into what felt like a prolonged, very well-hidden anxiety attack. If Ginny caught on to his weird feelings, she never showed it, especially not when he was cupping her breasts and rowing his hips hard into her ass as he took her from behind, fucking her a little harder than usual.

The Scary Solution, of course, was ending it. The fact that he was even considering it was scary, though maybe not as scary as continuing. Two days ago, the idea of ending it would’ve made him bark like a defensive dog. He couldn’t imagine letting her go. Now, to his combined horror and relief, because fuck, human emotions are weird, it feels like the safest option.

He let himself stew for a while longer, but he didn’t want to draw it out too much, he told himself. It wasn’t fair to her. None of this was. So the sooner he ended it, the better off they’d both be, and the less likely it was that she’d hate him forever.

He sat her down in the armchair across from his and held her hands. He forced himself to look straight into her deep, dark eyes while he spoke because she deserved that kind of attention.

The truth is, he doesn’t really remember what he said. He stumbled something out about how much he cares about her, how he’s enjoyed the last two months more than any he’s ever had out on the road, but that this had all become too much. Things had moved way too fast. He didn’t want to end things like this, especially while they were still on tour, but he had to be honest with her. He had to focus on the music, on the path he’d be taking next and that as wonderful as she was, she was a distraction.

He hopes he said it as nicely as possible. But given the stricken, dumbfounded look on her face, he’s sure he could’ve done better.

Her tears were pretty immediate. His welled up but never spilled. She stared at him quietly for a while like she was waiting for him to take it back, or like she was looking for something in his expression that told her to dive in and fight for him. Maybe she didn’t find what she was looking for.

She stood on shaky knees, swiped at her face and mumbled something about talking to Andrew, about finding a replacement for herself quickly to minimize disruption to the tour.

That’s when it hit him. She was leaving.

He did realize when he made this decision she might not want to stick around, but somehow it didn’t truly register what he’d be losing until she said it.

His brain scrambled, watching her walk out the hotel room door, sniffling gently as she unlocked her room across the hall. He blinked. She hadn’t slept in her own bed in two months.

She was leaving him.

He was selfish to panic about it. He made this decision for them. He couldn’t expect her to stay, to be his personal assistant of all things, arranging his laundry and paying his house cleaner and reminding him to call his grandmother on her birthday. He had no right to feel this empty at the idea of continuing tour without her. But it was there, nonetheless.

He let himself lose his mind over that long, sleepless night without her. When he stood outside her room early the next morning, hearing her singing Norah Jones under her breath, he felt like shit.

“Please,” he begged, voice shaky with unshed tears, “Please don’t leave. Please. I know it’s fucking unfair to ask. I hate myself a little. I really do. But, fuck, please, I can’t do it without you, Gin. Not because… because I’d forget to fuckin’ put on pants in the morning if you didn’t tell me to, but because you’re… Jesus Christ, you’re my best friend. I can’t lose you like this.”

Ginny had every right to kick him in the shins. She didn’t. She had every right to laugh and tell him to go fuck himself for even asking. She didn’t.

Ginny’s dry cheeks stung with her tears. She sniffed and toed at the floor, locking her arms over her chest. “Don’t really want to leave, you know,” she murmured, “This is a good opportunity for me. I’m learning a lot.”

“So don’t leave,” Shawn pled, lurching forward. She adjusted, taking a step back. Shawn noticed and shivered, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Don’t leave. Stay. I think we can do it. I honestly think we can. We were best friends first, remember?”

She did remember. She had never felt this way about anyone before. That had to be worth holding onto, right?

Andrew’s been internally groaning all morning, watching the video spring up everywhere. E!News has it on their Instagram, People’s retweeting it, Tumblr’s having a fucking field day. Even Niall reposted the video on his Insta story with the caption: “😂😂😂 go off I guess.”

Not helpful.

In the next room, Shawn and Ginny are chuckling, nursing hangovers as they pack Shawn’s shit to get ready for their rescheduled flight to Miami. They find their viral video very amusing, thank you very much. When The Rock retweeted it with three of the dancing girl emojis, Shawn and Ginny both had to stop what they were doing, they were laughing so hard. Shawn’s wiping tears away when Andrew knocks on his door.

Shawn lets him in and narrows his eyes at the grimace on his face. “What’s up?”

“Just want to talk to you guys,” Andrew begins steadily, resigned. Shawn feels Ginny stiffen up beside him. The bed squeaks when she sits on it. Shawn lowers himself beside her and doesn’t let himself reach out for her hand.

“So this video. It’s… y’know, obviously it feels innocent enough, you’re just singing, being the shitheads you are, but it’s… ugh, god, you guys know I hate these conversations.”

Andrew looks weary. Ginny is silent, curious. Shawn is tense from head to toe, leaning forward slightly.

Andrew continues, “The reality is, there’s a lot going around about how you guys are back together again, how Shawn has seduced you again, how you can’t keep your hands off each other, yada yada--”

“Andrew--” Shawn interrupts, the word so sharp it almost sounds like a swear. Andrew cuts back in before Shawn can continue.

“No, but listen, you guys both know where I’m going with this. This will become an image problem. All we need is for one outlet to start sparking stories about how Shawn’s fucking the only woman on his team, and we’re all up in smoke. We haven’t had to work that hard to preserve the good guy image because, wow, how novel, Shawn actually is a good guy. But the media will have a hell of a time batting around the idea that he’s a fuckboy if we don’t shut this down.”

It’s not lost on Ginny that Andrew doesn’t seem to be speaking directly to Shawn, referring to him by name, glancing more at Ginny than at his artist. Probably because he can see the look on Shawn’s face and knows talking him into this is a lost cause. He knows he can use logic and reason and PR strategy to get to Ginny, but Shawn’s ears are already turning red.

“What are you saying then?” Shawn seethes.

Andrew sighs. “I’m saying you guys need to spend some time apart. We can’t have you photographed together for a while, not by fans, not by paps. You need to lay really, really low. If Shawn’s at the front of the pack, Ginny, you’re at the back. If we’re all out as a team, Ginny’s on one end of the table, Shawn’s at the other. We just have to let this blow over. It’s annoying and it’s strategy and I know you both hate it, but it’s where we are at the moment. I’m sorry, guys.”

Andrew’s words are simple. There’s no talking him out of this, he’s delivering his decree and that’s it. Ginny nods, looking exhausted. To Andrew’s surprise, instead of quiet rage, Shawn opens his big mouth.

“No.”

“What?” Andrew hums, eyebrows shooting up under the frames of his glasses. Ginny also looks startled.

“I said no. I’m not doing that. It’s stupid.”

They can both see the way Shawn’s bubbling over. They pause for a moment, waiting for him to continue. When he doesn’t, Andrew starts again.

“It’s shitty, but--”

“No, it’s fucking pointless, Andrew, we’re not doing that. We’re singing. We’re singing in the car. We’re singing Whitney Houston in the fucking car and someone put it on Twitter and now I can’t be seen with my best friend? No fucking way, I’m not doing it. My fans know better than this. They know I’m not some womanizing creep who’s fucking a girl on my team just because she’s a girl on my team. They know me and they know Gin, too. What are we supposed to do? Not speak to each other in public for a few weeks and boom, problem solved? That’s so fucking stupid. I refuse to live that way. It’s false and it’s fake and I won’t do it.”

Ginny blinks. Her lips are parted. She looks between Shawn and Andrew, whose face is unreadable. After a moment that feels like ten minutes, Andrew eases up out of his chair and looks down at them both.

“We’ll talk about this later.”

He lets himself out and back in to his own room next door. Ginny swallows. Shawn drops his face into his hands and leans forward taking a deep breath.

Ginny drops a hand to his back for a second before she takes it back and wrings her fingers.

“Fucking insane,” Shawn mutters.

“Well…” Ginny sighs. Shawn sits up.

“What?”

“Well, I get it, though. I get how it might not look great.”

“I don’t give a fuck how it looks!” Shawn croaks, “You’re really ok with that? With standing minimum ten feet from me at all times just to shut up the idiots on social media who think because we’re friends means I must be some gross loser who can’t keep his hands off his female teammate?”

Ginny wets her lips. “I’m ok with playing the game we have to play so we can stay on the path we’re on. I’m ok with whatever protects us.”

Shawn shakes his head. “Ginny, we can’t live like this. We can’t live dishonestly like this. This is how this kind of shit starts. It starts with a stupid little lie to protect some lame image and then it snowballs and then everything around me is a lie. Can’t you see that?”

He looks up at her, pained and red-faced. This time Ginny does leave her palm on his shoulder, rubbing her thumb into his muscle soothingly.

“I get that, I do. I know where you’re coming from. But I also know that you know that we have to pick our battles here. And more than that, we have to trust Andrew. You know it wasn’t easy for him to march in here and lay that out. You know he hates this kind of shit, manipulating something just to keep people off our backs. But he does it to keep you safe.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not a fucking child. I get that maintaining my image is part of his job, but--”

Ginny interjects. “No. Stop right there. It is his job. It’s what he’s paid to do. And he knows this better than we do. He knows what can happen if we do this wrong. So we need to listen to him and play by the rules, just for a little while. I don’t like it either. I really hate it, actually. The idea that people think I’m some sunflower following you around waiting for you is frankly incredibly insulting. But I’m focusing on the bigger picture, which is that if I stay on your team, I learn every day, I meet people, I’m growing my network and I spend all day every day with my best friends. So… yeah. I’m going to take Andrew’s advice. If you want, we can develop a secret sign language so we can still talk even when you’re standing fifteen feet ahead of me and not looking in my direction.”

Shawn snorts, defeated and tired. “Ok. If I pull on my left earlobe it means ‘hi.’”

Ginny smirks and lifts the hand resting on his shoulder to flick at his ear teasingly. “Kay. If I scratch my nose it means, ‘Shawn, spit out your fucking gum.’”

Shawn found time over the next day or so to mumble out an apology to Andrew for overreacting. Andrew accepted it graciously in that way Andrew does where he makes you feel like you never had to apologize at all.

Ginny and Shawn stick to the “strategy” and keep apart for a couple weeks in public, riding in separate cars when they can, Ginny chatting animatedly with Cez and Brian, looking totally disinterested in her ex-boyfriend. All went according to plan.

One day during soundcheck for a radio festival in Vermont, Andrew and Ginny are bopping their heads in perfect time (without their notice), standing in front of the soundbooth.

Ginny, eyes fixed on the stage, tilts her head toward Andrew’s to speak. “Think Cez should move Zubin’s mike to the left like--”

“-- five feet? I was thinking the same thing,” Andrew finishes with a laugh. Ginny chuckles and bounds away, communicating the suggestion. When they’re back in place, Ginny returns.

“Last couple weeks were weird,” Andrew acknowledges, “But I just… I wanna say thank you. Whatever you said to him, it worked. You made my job easier. So thanks.”

Ginny shrugs. “You were right. He just needed to hear that from someone that… wasn’t you.”

Andrew laughs. “But being that person isn’t always easy. I have so much respect for him, you know? I mean, I know you know. But his insistence on living a totally honest public life is so, so cool. It’s just not always the best thing for him. And I never want to feel like we’re ganging up on him. I never want him to feel too managed. So when you can step in and get something across to him that I can’t, that’s a big fuckin’ deal for the whole team. You’re gonna be a kickass manager, Gin, maybe sooner than you think.”

Andrew nudges her gratefully with his elbow and strolls away to make a call.

Ginny looks back up at the stage, watches Shawn’s eyes close, his brow wrinkle as he kicks into a “Particular Taste” high note.

And she thinks for a very long second that she should feel better about what Andrew just told her.

The days following the breakup were… hard. Shawn’s head reeled, trying to wrap around his own actions. Ginny was mostly numb, trying not to look him in the eye. They mostly avoided each other except when it came to professional necessity -- Ginny checking in with him about arranging his flight home, Shawn asking where his old pencil case filled with guitar picks got packed. All of this monitored very carefully by Andrew, who was looking for any excuse not to send Ginny home but knew he had to be looking anyway, just in case.

But before long, Andrew stopped watching. It became clear disaster wasn’t to strike. Shawn and Ginny slowly and surely became a new version of Shawn and Ginny, a version that had gone through a stage of innocent, flirtatious friendship, intense and all-consuming romance, and now were settling into seasoned, tried-and-true partnership.

It definitely didn’t happen overnight. Andrew doubts Shawn and Ginny could put a finger on when exactly they really would’ve called themselves friends again after the spate of awkward tension, but the fact that they did it at all meant they were gonna be ok.

But if Ginny had to guess, it would be that night in Antwerp when she heard him in the next room strumming “St. Patrick’s Day” by John Mayer and felt completely, totally comfortable snagging her Gibson acoustic and padding over in too-long plaid pajama pants to knock on his door and be invited in to play.

They sat cross-legged and pretended to ignore that the last time they were together on his bed, they were making love, and now they’re making music, and Ginny thinks that’s a pretty decent substitute.

In another three weeks, the video is long since forgotten.

Though, to be fair, given how much of the bottle of Patron they’ve finished between the two of them, most things are, in fact, forgotten.

Ginny and Shawn are planted on a balcony, barefoot with their legs stuck through the railings, feet swinging over the streets of… Chicago, Shawn’s almost sure. Wherever they are, it’s the kind of city where Shawn feels like he can really breathe, not like New York or LA. He can breathe in London, too. He and Ginny both love London. He’d like to go back to London with her, hold her hand, walk around her hometown, kiss her neck and feel her giggle…

Shawn sits up and sneezes loud. Tequila always makes him sneeze.

“Does not,” Ginny quips, and Shawn realizes he must have said that complaint out loud, “That’s not a thing. Tequila doesn’t make you sneeze.”

“Does, totally does,” Shawn grumbles, taking another slug of it anyway. He follows it with a sip of beer and… a sneeze. He holds out his hands and makes a face at her.

“I rest my case.”

“You’re drunk,” she accuses, pressing her face into the railings like she’s testing to see if she could get her head through. Thankfully, she doesn’t try very hard.

“I am. ‘S good, haven’t been drunk in a while.”

“We were drunk last week,” she points out, sipping at the lime wedge she’s already mostly sucked dry. Shawn watches her cheeks hollow out and turns away, feeling his face get hot.

“You know I’m like, so glad you didn’t leave,” Shawn blurts, pivoting the subject on a dime. Ginny blinks cluelessly.

“When?”

“When we broke up. You could’ve left. You didn’t. I’m glad you didn’t.”

Ginny swallows. “I didn’t want to.”

“I didn’t want you to,” Shawn sighs, dropping his head forward against the railing.

“I wondered if maybe you did,” she confesses quietly, closing her eyes. She can feel him turning to look at her curiously.

“But…”

“I know. But I wondered if maybe you felt guilty about me losing my boyfriend and my job all at once and that’s why you asked me to stay.”

Ginny chances a glance at him. He looks gutpunched.

“But that didn’t last long,” she assures him, “I know why you wanted me to stay.”

Shawn blinks. His tequila-slow body feels like it jumps into hyperspeed. He grips the railings tighter and swallows, waiting for her to say it.

I know you were scared.

“You’re my best friend, too, Shawn,” Ginny assures him, light-eyed and wistful. Shawn tries not to feel disappointment at her dodging the opportunity to poke at him, make him really talk about why he let her go.

Sweet and stupid, they drunkenly sway on the balcony for another hour, muttering to each other about Shawn’s next album, about the record company anniversary gala coming up, about a weird dream Ginny had about pancakes a few nights ago that she worries might mean she secretly hates dogs. They talk until Ginny falls asleep with her face against the railing. Shawn wakes her up before she can get an impression on her cheek from the metal. He scoops her up as much as he’s able when he’s more tequila than boy and drops her on the bed next to his, drapes the duvet over her, bunches it up under her arm and collapses onto his own bed, heavy with exhaustion.

Pls help me keep Ginny in lime wedges and buy me a Ko-fi (link on main page)!

Taglist: @smallerinfinities @the-claire-bitch-project @achinglyshawn @infiniteshawn @stillinskislydia @singanddreamanyway @alone-in-madness @abigfatmess @shawnitsmutual @awkwardfangirl2014 @september-lace @grittyisathot @sinplisticshawn @mutuallynotmutual @rollingxstone @yslsaint @randi-eve

#shawn mendes #shawn mendes fanfic #shawn mendes fan fic #shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes fan fiction #shawn #shawn mendes fic #shawn peter raul mendes #shawn mendes fluff #shawn mendes angst #shawn mendes series

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dragondroid · 5 years ago

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Writing!

I'm writing a story about a team of modern operatives sent into the Feywild. It's been loosely inspired by SCP, hard science fiction, changelings, and the fey stories I've read around Tumblr. This is what I've got so far, let me know what you think- I'm always open for constructive criticism! So, without further ado...

“Sir, your son is stable. We’re still waiting for the test results back, but-”

“It’s not my son.”

The doctor fidgeted with her name badge as she sighed. “Professor Mann, I know it’s hard to accept that your child has a cognitive dysfunction, but this hospital has several qualified professionals who-”

“I know all about ‘cognitive dysfunction,’ you bitch. That thing is not my son. My son could feel. Could love. Could-” The man in the sweater choked slightly as he held up a hand, tears in his eyes. “Excuse me… I just…”

The one in the white coat looked down before looking at the one in the sweater. “You haven’t lost him, Professor. He’s still your son, he’ll just be… Different in how he communicates.”

The one in the sweater sighed as he put on his coat. “For the last time. It’s not my son.”

The one in the white coat raised her hand as Mann stormed out of the waiting room, before lowering it with a defeated sigh.

As Dr. Mann got into his car, he simply sat in front of the steering wheel, tears in his eyes as he looked ahead. Looked at the forest where that cursed creature came from. in the rearview mirror to the backseat where his son sat on the way to school. To the passenger-side seat, on which was lying a simple manilla folder with a sheaf of papers sticking out. He slowly looked out to the dark, strange woods surrounding this town before he started his car.

He was going to get his son back.

***

Jonathan Parker sat in the back of a nondescript white van, looking warily at the man across from him. Jonathan was wearing simple attire for this kind of mission- a simple shirt and jeans, on top of which was a tactical vest, containing magazines of rifle ammunition chambered for the ACR that hung from a sling around his shoulder. On his head was a simple combat helmet, a pair of night-vision goggles strapped to it along with a simple headset. On his arms and thighs were thick composite armor, strapped tight to his limbs with Kevlar and Velcro, and on his shoulders were two patches- one distinctive of the American Marines, and the other showing exemplary service in wartime.

The man across from him, on the other hand, was dressed in a black suit, with a red tie hanging in front of his black undershirt and Kevlar vest, which carried only a few magazines for the pistol that was no doubt holstered just under his jacket. His body was deathly thin, and his face deathly pale. What cemented Jon’s distrust, though, was the silver barcode running across the right side of the man’s forehead, accompanied by silver, mechanical eyes and two gloved hands that moved a bit too precisely to be human as the man looked Jon up and down.

“You got a problem?”

Jon was taken aback by the statement, before he spoke in an even, metered voice, choosing his words carefully. “What’s with the barcode?”

“What,” the man barked back in a thick Cockney accent, “you got some kinda issue with Amalgams?”

“No,” he lied, “I just know where they come from.”

“Oooooh, lookit big Mister Pureblood over here, thinkin’ he can judge anyone he frickin’ wants. Yeah, I grew up in the Lowers, so what? Ya think you know everyone’s story just ‘cuz they got augs? Ya don’t even know my name.”

“Fine… What is your name, anyway?”

“Steele Armstrong. Forensic Anthropologist for the FB-goddamn-I. Not all of us are loony cultists, ya prick.”

Jon nodded as he eyed the cyborg. “Steele… Virtue names, right?”

“Yeah. Virtue names. Wanna see why they named me that, ya bigoted arsewipe?”

“He has a point,” chirped a female, static-laced voice next to Jon. “Racism doesn’t tend to be the best first impression.”

Jon turned to look at the slim, catlike robotic frame sitting next to him on the van’s floor, looking rather like a dog as she sat. Her “face” was a small, simple screen, showing lines of diagnostic data as a camera mounted on top of the “head” stared at him, unblinking. An arm sat on her back, folded, but clearly ready for use if needed. Jon, nonetheless, spoke.

"You haven't seen what I've seen."

"If you're referring to your combat record, I’ve seen plenty of footage in your file. Including the seven Geneva violations committed during the Human-Amalgam war and the fifteen committed during your employment with Artemis, Inc."

Steele laughed as laid back in his seat. “Good girl.”

The robot simply looked at Steele in a way that almost conveyed a glare. “I appreciate the solidarity, but my designation is LY0726-B, or ‘Ellie’ if you are feeling cordial. Or 'sir,' if you wish to address me in your proper place," she chirped in an eternally cheerful tone.

“Oooooh,” Steele said as he chuckled some more, “I like this one.”

“If you wish, as your handler for this mission, I could always suspend your participation from this contract. That would, of course, nullify any payment you may have negotiated.”

That, for whatever reason, seemed to immediately shut Steele up. Now it was Jon’s turn to give a brief chuckle before clearing his throat.

“How far out are we?”

“Seven klicks,” said the van’s driver in a voice that exuded boredom.

“You know, I always wanted to see Ireland.”

Ellie turned her head to Jon. “Forgive me for stationing you in a place that values mission-relevance to tourist attractions.”

The two sat, the van filled with nothing but silent, constricting tension, Ellie looking between the two, as if sizing them up, evaluating whether they were really the type who could complete this mission.

“So,” Steele ventured, breaking the silence, “What do you make of the intel?”

Ellie tilted her head to the side. “I do not understand what you mean.”

Jon shrugged. “I’m with the bot. Doesn’t really seem to be anything to make of it. This Mann guy worked a blacksite, his kid went nuts, he blamed it on the stuff he worked with. Open-and-shut case of a pissed employee.”

Steele looked at Ellie, waving dismissively at Jon. “You gotta learn to question things, meatsack. The file said they just found some weird plant growth and a few undocumented species. Why the hell would they lock that down?”

Ellie simply turned her head and stood up. “We do not have sufficient information, and you do not have sufficient clearance, Mr. Armstrong.”

The van suddenly came to a halt, signaling the two to get up as Ellie’s arm pushed the van doors open, the bright light of the outside grating on Jon’s eyes as he climbed out of the van and shut the door behind him, signalling the driver to simply speed off down the road.

Immediately, Jon was on alert. The woods made him uncomfortable as his instincts from his Marine days kicked in. At any point, from any number of angles, a hostile could be watching. Waiting. Taking aim. It certainly didn’t help that, for some reason, in these woods more than any other, he felt as if there were hundreds of eyes staring at him, taking stock of his every move. As his ears strained for the sounds of crunching leaves or breaking twigs, Ellie’s voice cut through the still forest.

“Satellite footage indicates that Dr. Mann entered the forest on an unmarked path near this location. Mr. Parker, seeing as you are the most protected of us, I recommend you lead the way.”

Jon nodded as he shouldered his rifle and the three made their way forwards, slowly disappearing into the dark, warm forest.

#fey #writing #scp #writeblr #story

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tmntreasures · 6 years ago

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Prom Night (Michelangelo)

Author/Editor Comments: Obligatory “We’re not dead comment.” ;P Purple speaking! I just wanna give my compliments to the writer! Orange has been working on this for a while now, when she really didn’t have to. Both of our lives have changed a lot (more hers than mine), and she’s constantly busy; but she managed to finish this and I’m proud and thankful for her! So yeah! Love you Orange!

Now on to the story~

Prompt: A boy at your high school, named George, has asked you out; not because he likes you, but because you were his last option. Obviously, you turn him down since you have a turtle boyfriend who was going to meet with you behind the school. On the night of prom, you go outside to wait for your secret love. But the boy who had asked you out corners you outside. He acts very aggressive and clearly had brought in some alcohol to the school…

“Okay so, what did this guy look like?” Big blue eyes stared at you from across the table.

The moment you had gotten out of school you went straight for the lair. A boy had been harassing you to be his date to prom all day, and after each denial he became more aggressive. Even telling the pursuer that you were taken did not work. It had gotten to the point where you felt on edge just by walking down the hall.

You knew you would find solace in the lair and in the arms of your mutant boyfriend. Of course, as soon as you mentioned that you were being pursued, Michelangelo wanted to know all the details about him rather than how you were.

“Fine, I guess.” You shrugged, poking at an abandoned paper plate covered in old pizza grease. You thought that if you looked as disinterested as possible that he would take the hint. Then you remembered it was Michelangelo; and if other boys were mentioned, he needed to reassure his own ego.

“Wait. By 'fine' do you mean like, 'maybe I'd like him after a few drinks' fine? Or like, 'oooh, damn, he fine' fine?” He raised a brow at you, clearly reading for any sign of dishonesty on your face.

You couldn't help but smack the table rather harshly, “Be serious Mikey! The guy really creeped me out!” You scoffed a little as you recalled the events of the day. “I am serious!” He nodded fervently before giving you a sly smile. “I gotta make sure he's not as cute as me.”

You knew he was trying to cheer you up, but you were also quite sure he did not understand just how upsetting the situation was for you. “Michelangelo,” you saw him tense up when you used his full name and it just fueled the anxiety in your stomach. “He scared me.”

Something in your eyes made his expression soften and his body leaned forward to embrace you. “Woah, babe calm down. I was just messing with you.” As much as you wanted to pull away out of spite, you allowed him to wrap his large, warm arms around your smaller frame and gave in to his comfort. He squeezed you lightly and you could feel your racing heart start to calm down and your body relax. You had no idea you had been so tense until now and thanked him for the hug by wrapping your arms as much as you could around him and returned the wonderful squeeze.

“So this means I have to come to your prom right?” He said after a while. Although your head was buried against his chest, you could hear the cheeky smile growing on his face. “You know, for your own safety.”

You sighed obnoxiously, feeling your own cheeks ache from the smile that was suddenly coming from you. “Yeah. I guess you have to show up now,” you pulled away enough to give him a reassuring look. “I know you had other things to do tonight, but I got to have a bodyguard.”

He snapped his fingers and pointed at you with finger-guns. “I gotchu babe. I've even got the perfect disguise in mind!”

You let out a pained groan and winced. “It's not that trench coat and fedora again is it? That one is actually kinda creepy...” Flashbacks of the last time Michelangelo wore the coat flooded your mind and made the hairs on the back of your neck stand on edge. You shivered and pushed the thought out of your head and returned your attention back to him.

He put a hand on his chest and his jaw dropped in shock. “Excuse me! I would never wear something so casual to your prom night!” He gave you his signature grin, “I'm wearing a suit and tie for you~.”

“Aww, Mikey.” You leaned forward and gave him a sweet kiss on the cheek. Though you wondered where he would find a suit big enough to fit over his shell, the question did not linger long in your head. “Okay, I better start getting ready then. I'll meet you behind the school at nine-thirty. Got it?”

He nodded his head and began to wave you away. “Yeah, yeah I'll remember. I promise I'll be there in time. Now hurry up before we have our own prom night here.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively at you, causing your cheeks to blush a precious pink color.

“Alright I'm going,” you got up quickly and left the lair to prepare for the night ahead. It was, after all, going to be the best night of your life.

---

For Michelangelo, this was the worst night of his life. He had spent the majority of his time trying to find a tuxedo that would fit him in the junkyard, but he was unsuccessful. However, he did find one of those tuxedo t-shirts that was his size, but it was covered in dirt. So he had to run back to the lair to wash it. Then he had to dry it off which took a while too, so he went ahead to the school early to get his surprise set up for you; after all, his shirt should be done drying by the time he got back. Which it was, but once he had it on it was already nine-twenty. Without a moment's hesitation, he threw the t-shirt on and ran as fast as he could without being seen. He did his best not to think about how mad you would be once he finally showed up. Now he was very thankful he went ahead and set up your surprise; at least something would go right. At least, he hoped it would go right, assuming you wouldn't be too angry with him.

The upside to all of this though: he was pretty sure he made it to the school in record time. Unfortunately, after he perched himself on a nearby tree branch, he saw you outside with another kid; a teenage boy to be specific. Dread hardly had any time to cloud his thoughts once the strange boy snatched your wrist aggressively. Instinctively, his hands went to his sides where his nunchucks would be sheathed, but when his fingers gripped nothing but air he cursed under his breath.

Of course this would be the one night he forgot his weapons during his mad-dash to get ready. He had to think of something quickly before the boy escalated things further.

Oddly enough an idea came to him fairly quick, but only because the situation had reminded him of a movie the two of you had watched recently. He would just need to borrow something from the school's cafeteria first before he could truly help.

Without a moment to lose, the mutant turtle entered the school through an unlocked window and did his best to not get distracted by the high school environment.

–

“Let go,” you yanked your hand quickly out of his grasp. You could feel your eyes bulging out of their sockets as you stared wide-eyed in disbelief at your fellow classmate. It was still difficult for you to process what was going on but luckily your body seemed to be reacting on its own. Maybe it was just because you were mimicking the turtles after having watched them train on occasion, or maybe it was from all those old kung-fu movies Michelangelo made you watch with him; either way, your limbs were acting on their own and you were thankful for it.

The boy seemed to wince when you pulled away but it was hard to tell. “I just don't get it,” Despite his cracking voice, anger still swimmed in his eyes. “Why not me? What's wrong with me huh?”

He took a step forward and you took two back. If you weren't careful, this could turn ugly very quickly. Your heart began to race and somehow constrict in your chest all at once . Breathing felt like a difficult chore, making you take short, quick breaths. Why now? Why did all of this have to happen now and to you of all people? You don't know this kid. You've had a few classes with him sure, but you had never once said 'hi' to him and he had certainly never made his presence known to you before, let alone show any interest. Where was all of this coming from?

Something dashed through the darkness and your attention was taken away from the situation. It couldn't have been a fellow student; no one you knew could ever move that fast. Could it have been--?

Before you could even finish the thought, something warm grabbed your arm and yanked you back. Branches and leaves scratched and flicked against your skin and dress as you struggled against whatever had you. With all that was going on you started to let out a scream, hoping someone, anyone would hear you and help.

A large hand covered your mouth immediately. Strangely enough, the action did not panic you more but it did not calm you down either. Your eyes finally adjusted enough to the darkness for you to see a familiar orange mask and the baby blue eyes that peered through its holes. There was a brief wave of relief that calmed your racing mind; unfortunately for the mutant turtle in front of you, that meant your frustration with him showed itself.

“Hey, calm down,” Michelangelo whispered. Whether he said it because he saw an angry flicker in your eye or not, you could not tell.

Of course that did not stop you from letting your frustration out on him. You grabbed his wrist and yanked it off of your mouth before hissing in a whisper. “'Calm down?' You are late! That weird kid found me and started acting crazy. You pull into some bushes without warning, and you want me to calm down!?”

He seemed unfazed by your outburst; perhaps it was because you were still whispering, making it not as effective than if you had been yelling instead. “I know, I know. I'm sorry,” he grabbed your shoulder and squeezed it comfortingly. “I'll make it up to you, I promise,” he smiled at you and you could feel your anger dissipating. It was quickly replaced with disbelief and questions when he suddenly revealed a ketchup bottle. “But first, we gotta get rid of this goon,” he grinned as he twisted the lid off, clearly doing everything he could to contain himself.

“H-hey...where'd you go?” the boy's voice quivered as he called out for you. Cautious footsteps walked closer and closer to your hiding place. You could not help but peer through the breaks in the bush to see where he was. The boy was close. A few more steps and he could start parting branches. Although you trusted Michelangelo to have a plan, you could not help but feel anxious. If he saw the giant mutant turtle, who knows what would happen?

After a few more steps, the boy suddenly stopped in response to Michelangelo snapping some branches underneath his feet. Finally, he threw the contents of the bottle outward, making sure to keep a firm hold of the container itself. Ketchup splattered on the asphalt in front of the boy, some of it even getting on his shoes and pants. You could see him tense up as his eye widened in absolute horror; with the help of the night sky, even you admitted to yourself that the ketchup looked like blood.

The combination of the snapping noise and “blood” sprawled out in front of the boy had his mind racing. His mouth hung open in a silent scream and he grabbed both sides of his head as he tried to process what just happened. Your stifled laugh was turned to panic when you saw Michelangelo start to move toward the boy. You reached out to try and stop him but it was too late. There was no way the boy would not see him.

What in the hell was he thinking!?

Your question was quickly answered when you watched the two. The boy's eyes seemed ready to pop out of his skull when he saw Michelangelo. Luckily, he could not utter a peep, let alone a scream. His joints shook beneath his suit in fear as the mutant turtle reached down to swipe a thick finger into the puddle of ketchup. Michelangelo brought the finger to his own lips and licked the condiment off, never breaking eye contact with the shivering boy in front of him. You gagged a little at the gesture, especially since the liquid had been on the rough ground. But it was what happened next that made you gawk in shock and glee.

“No one will believe you,” the orange-clad turtle said ominously to your classmate before slowly returning to your hiding place. You did your best to contain yourself when he kneeled next to you. Both of you had big, cheek-burning grins on your faces.

You both watched through the branches as the boy stared at the puddle below. His face had become white as a sheet and beads of sweat rolled down his forehead and nose. He took a few steps back before finally running off into the safety of the school building.

The moment he was gone, you both let out big sighs of relief. You did not even realize you were so tense until you allowed your body to relax. “I can't believe you just did that,” you said through a chuckle.

“What? Eat that ketchup off the ground? That's nothin'.” The blue-eyed turtle grinned.

A giggle shook your shoulders. “Well that too. But I mean I can't believe you showed yourself to him.” You looked at him and shrugged, “You're not afraid he'll tell someone?”

He waved your concern away. “Nah. Like I said,” he leaned forward and tried his best to impersonate a horror-movie narrator. “'No one will believe youuuu'!... And even if he does, everyone’s gonna think he drank waaay too much punch when you show up to graduation unscathed.” He chuckled lightly.

“I guess that’s true...” You giggled again, but you still had some unspoken frustration toward him that you had to get out. “You know you were super late right?”

“Actually,” He held up a finger to interject. “I came early to set up. Buuut then I had to go back home to get my clothes.”

“Wait, what?” you furrowed your brows in confusion. Despite the mutant turtle's goofball attitude, he actually did put effort into your relationship and would even impress you with what he could come up with with his limited resources. But actually showing up early to get something set up to surprise you? That was unexpected.

He smiled at the look of disbelief on your face and crossed his arms smugly. “I know, I know. I'm an amazing boyfriend and you love very much and are lucky to have someone like me.” He batted his eyes and gave you a big, toothy smile. You shook your head and could not stop the smile that crept on your face. As tempting as it was to give him a hug, you still needed proof. “Woah, you're not off the hook yet,” you wiggled a finger at him. “I still need to see what you got planned. Then I'll decide if you're off the hook.”

Michelangelo followed as you stood up to wipe the dirt and leaves off your orange dress. “Sooo, me saving you from that guy doesn't count?”

“You wouldn't have had to save me if you were here on time though,” you argued light-heartedly. “That's why I gotta see if your set-up was worth it,” you gave him a playful wink before stepping out of the bushes.

“Alright, alright,” he held his hands up in defense and followed you out. Once you were both relatively dirt-free, he gestured toward the school. “So, we're gonna have to go up. Can you maneuver in that?” He nodded at your dress.

You looked down, forgetting that you were even wearing the nice garment and lifted your legs to test your range of motion. “I should be fine as long as we're using a ladder.” You looked up at him in concern, “There is a ladder right?” As cool as it was that he could, literally, jump off walls and climb them with little assistance, it was difficult when you had to follow suit.

A little scoff came out of him and he nodded. “Of course there is! Though...I'll have to give you a boost.” He pointed at the wall, showing you where this ladder was.

It was old but made from sturdy steel; there were only a few blotches of rust from the years of its installment and lead to the roof of the building. Clearly it was meant as an emergency escape route, for the start of the ladder was six feet above the ground to prevent any small children from climbing up and hurting themselves during recess.

You sighed a little, feeling the exhaustion start to overtake the subsiding adrenaline. “Alright. Let's get it over with,” you both started to walk to the ladder and a thought suddenly crossed your mind. You quickly spun around and pointed a finger at his snout. “Don't do anything funny when I'm climbing up. I don't want to slip because you're trying to look up my skirt.”

He laughed nervously as if you had just caught him doing something wrong. “Okay, okay. I promise. I'll at least wait until you're on the roof before doing any funny-business.”

You smiled and prepared yourself for the trek upwards. Before you had met the turtles, heights were on your top ten list of worst fears. After being carried from rooftop-to-rooftop so many times, participating in a mission here-and-there, and even having a close-call after a high fall has hardened your resolve with climbing. Granted you had never climbed anything in a dress before, but you figured as long as you did not look down you would be fine.

Michelangelo knelt down and cupped his hands. Luckily for him, you were wearing flats, making it easier for him to push you upward once you stepped into his palm. You gripped the rough rungs and took a deep breath before making your ascent. After a few feet, you heard Michelangelo mount the ladder to follow after you. Luckily, he was true to his word and did not try to do anything to antagonize you as you climbed.

When you a mere three feet away from the top, you heard the giant turtle leave the ladder and use the windowsills to finish his climb. You paused only for a moment until he had finished his climb before resuming. The last thing you had wanted to do was lose your footing while he was moving around so suddenly. You could only assume he had gone ahead so abruptly to get the rest of his mystery set-up ready. As you neared the top, the sound of slow music reached your ears and a smile began to creep along your face.

When you reached the end, Michelangelo was there to offer you a hand over the ledge. You gladly accepted and you stepped onto the gravel-covered rooftop to see quite the spectacle.

There were tiny lights that one would find in a college freshman's dorm room decorating the emergency door. A few bulbs were missing, but it was hardly noticeable. A large, clean blanket covered the ground with a pizza box and one of Donatello's speakers resting on top of it, still leaving plenty of room for the two of you to sit. You rolled your eyes playfully at the sight of the pizza box, but your warm smile was more than enough to show just how pleased you were.

When you turned to look at him you finally noticed just what he was wearing. Somehow, he had found a tuxedo shirt big enough to fit over his large shell. It was amazing that he had gone through so much effort, but the shirt did look rather silly on him; silly enough for you to snort and giggle at the sight of it. “What? What!?” He asked, thinking he had done something wrong.

“Nuh-nothing,” you said in between giggles, wiping away some stray tears from the corners of your eyes. “It's just...you actually found a shirt big enough for you.” Once the words were out of your mouth you finally started to calm down and stopped laughing.

He blinked in surprise at your answer but was quickly replaced with a sigh of relief. “Oh! Oh good.” He fiddled with his fingers and stared at you with a big grin. “Sooo...you like it?” His grin somehow got wider when he asked.

Any ounce of frustration, annoyance, or anger you had with him faded away. Your heart swelled when you looked at the setup one more time before turning to him. “Mikey, I love it.”

“So, it totally makes up for being late?” He asked.

“Definitely.” You stood on your tiptoes and gave him a kiss on his lips. When you parted, a more upbeat song came on and the mutant turtle seemed to perk up a bit. “Oooh, I love this song!” He took one step forward but stopped himself. “You wanna dance?” He flashed you a charming smile as his hand took hold of yours.

“I thought you'd never ask,” you replied teasingly.

The two of you danced the rest of the night away, ending it with pizza and snuggling together to look at what little stars you could find in the city sky.

#TMNT #TMNT 2016 #MichelangeloxReader #TMNTxReader #CharacterxReader

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minyoongijjangjjangmanboongboong · 6 years ago

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The Parting Chapter Five

Description: The only certainty in life is death, and it seems to follow Park Jimin. All his life, the icy shadow of death has hung closely by his side, along with the shadow of…something else. Reapers exist to guide the souls of the living to the world beyond. But what happens when a particular Reaper tampers with the natural order and saves a mortal boy’s life? What will they do once their fates become inextricably linked?

Genre: Supernatural, Drama, Fluff, Angst

Pairing: Jimin x (f) OC

Word Count: 10.3k

Tags: Flower Shop Owner!Jimin, Reaper!OC, Non-Idol!AU, Cop!Yoongi, Supernatural!AU

Warnings: Death, swearing and mentions of alcohol, although infrequently

A/N: WOW hi guys! The teaser images have dropped and so has my HEART. I’m neck deep in theories and I can’t escape haha. This week has been a little crazy, since my mom and my sister have back-to-back birthdays and I had to take some time to spend with them. It’s been nice though! I hope you guys are doing well, and I hope you’re all breathing after those images dropped. As always, I will respond to all asks received within a day of receiving them, so feel free and feel comfortable sending me anything! And please send feedback, criticism, comments or concerns my way so I can address them.

- Mercury

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Chapter One

Masterlist

Weekly updates: Sunday, 1PM (PST)

“You don’t look so good,” commented Jimin in the morning, staring at me as I rested my head on the dining table, my hot cheek against the cool wood. He bent at the waist to look at me seriously.

I met his eyes but as I looked at him, hair ruffled with sleep and eyes hazy from waking, I felt my throat constrict and turned my head the other way, towards the living room. “I’m fine.”

“Did you sleep okay?” he asked. I heard the old chair scrape against the floor and groan against his weight as he sat. “You really don’t look good.”

I shook my head. “I slept fine.”

“Are you sure nothing happened?” he asked, voice lilting with worry.

After Zero had showed me Injung’s name in The Book, I’d nearly collapsed. Zero, seeing my reaction, simply smiled and stood to his feet. He said he was glad to see that something had finally affected me. Then, satisfied, he had turned and disappeared, leaving me alone in the dark room, sitting on my bed with my hand on my lips, trying to stop the sobs I felt in my chest from bursting forth. How cruel was fate? To reunite Jimin with his only living family member only to shorten his life by half.

If Jimin knew…

I sat upright and rubbed my forehead. “I apologize. I don’t…I don’t feel myself today,” I said.

Jimin nodded and slid a carton of banana milk my way. I examined it for a moment, but my appetite seemed stunted. “It happens,” he said. “Is there anything I can do to help?” He smiled at me, bright and messy and vibrant.

I glanced away, towards the blank TV. “Are you opening the shop today?”

He cleared his throat. “Um…yeah, I’ll open as soon as Injung leaves.”

“That’s good,” I said, resting my cheek in my hand.

“Mornin’!” called Injung from Jimin’s room, stretching his torso this way and that.

Jimin and I turned to greet him, but I couldn’t match Jimin’s smile. This man…he was giving his life away without even knowing it. My chest felt horribly tight. “Morning,” said Jimin. “Want some coffee?”

Injung shook his head. “I won’t stay long. I’ve got a hotel for a reason, right?” he asked with a laugh. Smiling, he approached the small table, eyes on me.

“I’ll go get ready for the day,” I said, standing as quickly as I could and turning back towards my room.

“Ah! Wait, you don’t have to-,” began Injung.

Without turning I shook my head and ran my fingers through my hair. “It’s fine. I need to get changed anyway. Now you have a place to sit.”

“Oh, Nari! You can just keep wearing the stuff from Mom’s dresser, okay? Her clothes seem to fit you pretty well,” said Jimin.

Normally, I might have protested. I might have told him it was a waste to use such precious clothes on me. “Alright,” I said instead, twisting the doorknob and letting myself inside before shutting it behind me with a sigh, leaving the banana milk behind.

I opened the dresser as instructed and grabbed a loose white shirt and a pair of wide-legged pants, tying them tightly around my waist. I stared at the mirror for a long moment. I thought perhaps the girl reflected there might offer some wisdom, might have some answers in her frighteningly dark eyes. But instead I just saw a girl, small and gloomy and sad. A girl I was beginning to understand was me. A girl I was beginning to become comfortable with.

I shook my head and turned away. No. I couldn’t become comfortable. I couldn’t allow myself to be lulled into the false hope that things could just continue this way indefinitely. They couldn’t. Injung’s clock was proof of that.

I sat on the bed, but as it bounced under my weight, I heard a disembodied ghost of conversation from outside. Quietly, I tried to focus on it from where I sat, but it was too faint. I wandered towards the door and sat down on the floor, leaning my back against the wood frame.

“I know the timing’s weird,” said Injung with a laugh.

Jimin laughed with him. “No, it’s fine. I wanted to get a chance to talk with you anyway. Since you mentioned you had something to tell me?”

Injung sighed. “I don’t wanna drag it out since it’s…kinda sad, so I’ll just tell you,” he said before pausing. I could almost see Jimin’s face, eyes wide and expectant like a child. “It’s Dad.”

“Grandpa?” asked Jimin, tone puzzled.

“Yeah,” Injung said. “A few weeks ago…well, he passed away. Kinda suddenly actually.”

“Oh my God. How?” Jimin asked, but his voice was more sympathetic than sad. I wondered how he could take the loss of yet another family member so calmly.

“Naturally. In his sleep,” he said.

“I’m so sorry, Injung.”

Injung chuckled. “No, it’s okay. Old man was a bastard anyway. One of the reasons Mina left.”

Jimin clicked his tongue. “He’s your dad,” he said. “Even if he sucked, you can still be sad about it.”

Injung exhaled slowly. “I guess you’re right,” he said. “But that’s not what I wanted to tell you about really. It’s…a byproduct of Dad dying that I wanna discuss with you.”

“What is it?”

“His will.”

I backed away from the door. The longer I listened, the more I felt like an intruder. I sat back down on the bed and watched the ocean through the gaps in the curtains. His will? I wondered what that man had left behind that was important enough to warrant such a serious conversation. Was Jimin perhaps in the will? Why, then, would Jimin still remain so unaffected by the man’s death? Something was strange about it all, and I desperately wanted to know more.

I shook my head.

I was a Reaper. And Reapers do not trouble themselves with the lives of humans.

Reapers do not trouble themselves with the lives of humans…

I was hosing down a bouquet of roses when the front door bell tinkled, signaling the entrance of a patron. I turned to glance over my shoulder, finding the back of Jimin’s head as he watered the plants on the other side of the store. He startled and spun quickly towards the door, spraying water from his can onto the ground before gasping and readjusting his hold on it. I followed his eyes and found a young girl in a navy school uniform.

“Ah,” I breathed as I remembered her. She pushed her black hair behind her ears, like she’d done before. The girl who’d taken the lilies.

She peered at me curiously, lingering in the doorway, before sending a bright smile towards Jimin. “Hey! It’s Jisoo!” he called with a chuckle.

She nodded. “You remembered,” she said, then entered the store, holding her bag in front of her knees. “I heard you were in an accident and my mom told me to stop by with this.” She pulled from that bag a small plastic box. She held it out to him.

Jimin eagerly accepted the gift and lifted the box’s lid. “Medicine?” he asked.

She nodded once more. “Herbal medicine. My mom runs the natural pharmacy in town. She said she knew you from when your father used to sell dried herbs. Kwon Seonhwa?”

My back stiffened. Seonhwa? The name of that girl in my dream, the one talking endlessly about self-death. I walked closer to the pair as Jisoo explained what each herb was supposed to do, pointing into the box with her slender index finger. Jimin smiled as he listened, nodding attentively, until I drew near and he took notice of me, shutting the box and offering the young girl a smile.

“Tell you mom thank you for me, okay?” he asked. “This is very thoughtful.”

The girl peered at me, eyes scanning me up and down, before she furrowed her brow and returned her dark, probing gaze to Jimin. “Is she your girlfriend?”

Jimin inhaled too sharply and sputtered a cough. “G-girlfriend?” he asked, laughing and waving his hands.

I shook my head. “No. I’m a freeloader living in his spare room,” I said, still watching the girl. She was younger than the girl in my dreams, but not by all that much. Similar deep-set eyes, similar pitch-black hair.

She furrowed her brow at me. “You seem weird.”

“I am weird.”

She pouted her lips slightly before sighing. “I need more flowers,” she said, turning back to Jimin as he struggled to regain his breath.

Squinting from his coughing fit, Jimin, raised his eyebrows. “Oh! For-,” he paused to cough again. “For who?”

Jisoo’s expression fell serious as she sighed. “The same friend who lost someone recently. From last time.”

“This friend…are they going through a very hard time?” asked Jimin.

The girl nodded, eyes on her Oxford shoes as she scuffed them against the concrete floor. “Yeah. I’m worried about him.” Her eyes went far away, distant and lost in thoughts. Something about her expression made my chest constrict.

I nodded my head and walked quickly to the back of the store, grabbing a modest bouquet of mixed flowers. Vibrant purple irises poked out from the top, surrounded by yellow daisies. I set the bouquet into a vase quietly and carried the small bouquet out in my hands. I approached the two as they both watched me, Jimin quizzical and Jisoo yet unconvinced.

I smiled as I came nearer. She watched me with furrowed brows as I set the bouquet beside her on the counter near the doorway. “This one is good,” I said.

She tilted her head to the side and ran her fingers along one of the iris’s petals. “It’s pretty…but why this one?” she asked, pointing to the roses I’d been watering before. “Why not those?”

“Well,” I began, leaning a hip against the counter, resting my hand on the side of the vase. “Irises mean hope. They say that you are very grateful for the friendship you share with this person,” I said, then glanced at her. “And daisies mean new beginnings. You’re hoping he can find a new, happy beginning.”

She stared at the bouquet for a long moment, leaning down to give it a sniff, before leaning away and crossing her arms, staring up at me. “Really?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“You think he’ll like it?” she asked, screwing her mouth to the side as she thought.

I smoothed my hands over my thighs before pushing off from the counter and nodding. “I think…no matter what you give him, he’ll be able to feel your sincerity.”

She turned to me sharply with wide eyes. “My sincerity?”

“I felt it,” I said quietly. I picked up the bouquet and adjusted an iris. “I could feel your sincerity after just a moment talking with you.”

Her cheeks flushed slightly and she glanced away, back towards Jimin. “She’s not lying right? The flowers really mean all that?”

He nodded and ruffled her tidy hair slightly. “She’s not lying.”

“I don’t wanna be tricked by some weird lady,” she said, turning to give me a suspicious look over her shoulder. “Don’t trick me, okay?”

I laughed lightly, the sound surprising even me, and shook my head. “I wouldn’t know how.”

She pursed her lips before nodding. “I’ll take it then. Ah! And can I get a bow around the vase?” she asked Jimin with a big grin.

He smiled. “Certainly,” he said, taking the bouquet from my hands and leading Jisoo to the register. As he guided her away, still chatting, he glanced over his shoulder and offered me a warm smile, eyes squeezing shut slightly.

And guilt made my body cold.

“Ah,” I exhaled, jumping away from the chilly metal pressed against my cheek. I sat on the stone fence across from the shop, looking down at the rows of houses leading to the beach below, feet dangling over the edge.

I turned to find Jimin settling beside me, holding a can of soda to my skin with a laugh. “You resting?” he asked.

I swallowed hard and glanced away, back to the not-so-distant beach. “Yes. Legally, employees are required to take a break.”

“You’re not on the payroll though,” he said, chuckling and placing the soda on my lap.

I held it in my fingers, letting the condensation gather in my palms. “I forgot.”

He leaned forward and craned his head towards me, examining my face. “You seem distant. I thought we worked things out last night,” he said.

I leaned back on my hands, setting the can of soda beside my thigh, and turned my face away, gazing down the street. “We did. I’m not upset with you anymore.”

“Then what is it?” he asked, inching closer to me, still staring at my face. “Did Injung say something weird to you? Do you feel sick or anything? Are-,”

Finally, I met his eyes and shook my head, silencing him. “None of those things,” I said then sighed, rubbing my neck. How was I to articulate any of my worries to him? How was I to explain the things that troubled me so deeply I was beginning to develop a stomachache? “Jimin…I…,” I started, but paused as I found my lexicon empty. I glanced away. “Things are very complicated. I am wondering if the choices I’ve made have been the right ones.”

He cocked a brow. “How do you mean?” I watched the springtime sun play in deep russet streaks in his hair, watched the breeze pick up his buttoned shirt and toss it around his collarbone delicately. He was so very alive.

“I am worried. Now that I have a choice in what I believe in and what morals I will follow…I am very worried that those morals and beliefs are wrong,” I said, my voice growing lighter with each uncertain word. “Because even though I know I should feel guilty for what I’ve done, all I can feel guilty for is the way that choice affects you.”

“Nari…you’re kind of confusing me a little,” he said with a laugh. “Is there a way you can say it plainly?”

I shook my head. “No,” I said, but as his gaze probed me I felt my resolve shake. His kind amber eyes, his sweetly parted lips, his gentle, encouraging smile. I couldn’t stop myself from speaking. “Jimin…well…what would you say if I told you that the one who saved your life…is me?”

His eyes grew very wide as he stared at me before he leaned back slightly, staring out at the sea. “I…I would be…,” he paused, then with a smile he returned his attention to me and tilted his head to the side. “I would be very grateful.”

“You would?” I asked, relief crashing against my chest. I felt my posture slacken.

He laughed and nodded. “Of course! If that’s true, then you’ve given me the best gift anyone could ever give,” he said.

“Even if you being alive means that things have become extremely complicated?” I asked.

He smiled, placing a hand on the back of my head, smoothing my hair tenderly. “Nari, I’m really grateful for every second of my extremely complicated life,” he said. “Remember what I told you about the mugunghwa?”

I blinked at him, his hand still pressed softly against the nape of my neck, and nodded. “Your father liked them. The eternal blossom.”

He nodded. “When I was young, my mother passed away,” he said, pushing the straying locks of my hair behind my shoulder before dropping his hand to his lap with a smile. “She was a really great mom. She brought a lot of life into my childhood memories.”

I glanced down at my clothes and shifted slightly, uncomfortable in them once again. Of course, I’d known about his mother’s passing for years. But the thought of Jimin, this boy I’d watched for so long, explaining it to me so intimately was unfathomable. I glanced at him as the sea breeze picked up, playing with the hairs that curled softly against his neck.

“She raised a very lovely son,” I said, nodding.

His cheeks grew pink and he chuckled. “Ah, well,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. “My mom was sick, you know? So my dad and I knew it was coming when she eventually…succumbed.”

I inched closer to him, sensing the shift in his mood. Somberness. I wanted to meet it with comfort. “That must have been difficult for you. Knowing for so long.”

He shook his head. “No,” he said with a smile, playing with the hem of his slacks. “Because even though it was sad and painful, at least she was alive to experience those things.”

I blinked. “I…see.”

“She was grateful for every complicated moment,” he said with a chuckle. “Even the days that were really hard. She was still grateful to be alive while she had time.”

I swallowed something heavy in my throat. “That is…a wonderful attitude.”

He laughed and nudged my shoulder with his. “No need to be so serious. I’m actually very happy when I think about my mom,” he said with a shrug. “The point is…life is the most valuable opportunity. Even if it’s messy, I’m happy to be alive. Even if things get hard, even those hard moments are gifts. At the end of the day, nothing lives forever. There is no eternal blossom,” he said, voice slow and gentle, sitting in the air softly. “My dad knew it too. But nonetheless…he always loved the mugunghwa the best.”

“Why is that?” I asked carefully, watching his face as the sun caressed it.

He smiled at the rooftops below us. “Because it reminded him of it. It reminded him that life is short, even though we wish it wasn’t. So take each day as a blessing,” he said with a nod.

I scanned his features, searching for any pain, but saw nothing but peace. Somehow, the way he’d explained it had made sense to me. He was grateful for the pain, because it meant he was alive. Something in me settled slightly. I grabbed the soda he’d brought me and cracked it open with a fizz, startling myself. Slowly, I pressed the rim to my lips and took a sip. The drink was almost painful as it slid down my throat. I coughed into my hands and set the soda down again.

Jimin laughed and turned to me, taking my forearms in his hands and prying my fingers away from my face. I continued coughing, shaking my head and glancing away. He continued laughing, leaning close to get a proper look at me.

“What’s this? Have you never had soda?” he asked.

I coughed and nodded, arms still arrested in his grip. “No,” I replied between sputters.

He smiled and shook his head, laughter dying as he simply watched me. “Nari…if you’re the reason I’m alive right now…no matter what, I’m thankful to you, okay?” he asked.

I met his eyes, my own watering from the exertion of coughing, and blinked a few times. “Really?”

He nodded. “So don’t feel guilty or whatever. I don’t really understand why you would, but I wish you wouldn’t have so many worries.”

My cheeks flamed, skin growing hot as he stared at me seriously, a kind smile still touching his features. “I…I’ll try not to worry so much.”

He laughed and released my arms with a nod. “And don’t push me away, okay?” he asked, taking the soda I’d sipped on and pressing it against his rosy lips. As he swallowed, he stared at the can with a smile and shook his head. “Makes me sad.”

Sad?

That I was ignoring him?

My heart began to beat fast and loud against my ribcage, as if struggling to escape.

Sunset was fast approaching on the horizon. The day had been busy, filled with sympathetic neighbors and friends dropping by with gifts. Old regulars came to the shop too, oblivious to what had happened to Jimin. Most of them were elderly restaurant owners buying arrangements for their tables or shop clerks looking for window decorations. Jimin, ever gracious, greeted each of them with a smile. I was sure that to Jimin I appeared very odd. The longer I lingered in this body, the more I understood it. And the more I understood how strange my behavior would seem to any rational person: awaking naked in the street, insisting that I know him despite all evidence to the contrary, badgering him incessantly, and now taking credit for his life…I was sure I was making a fairly poor case for myself. But nonetheless, whenever there was a free moment between patrons entering and leaving the shop, Jimin managed to send a smile my way. A grin bright enough to strain my eyes.

My guilt was slowly subsiding as I watched him smile, watched the smiles he gave to those he spoke with. He brought too much to this world to leave it so soon. There had to be something I could do to save both Injung and Jimin. There had to be a way I could absolve myself of the choice between them.

Funny. Hundreds of years holding human lives in my hand, and only now did I feel the crushing weight of responsibility.

“Hey,” said Jimin in a quiet voice as he shut and locked the front door to the shop, turning to me as we stood on the sidewalk.

I glanced at him. “Hello,” I responded, offering a smile.

“Namjoon texted. He wants us to head to the station and answer some questions. Looks like probable cause isn’t quite enough to prosecute,” said Jimin.

I exhaled slowly and nodded. “Is that why your mood has been so good today?” I asked.

He laughed and rubbed the back of his neck. “How did you know?” he asked.

I laced my hands behind my back as we made our way down the sidewalk, following it as it curved easily around the cliffside. “Well, I suppose you’d be quite happy. You don’t think he did it, right?”

He nodded. “Right,” he said. “Ah, anyway I guess it doesn’t really matter what I think. The thing about truth is that, if you give it enough time, it always comes out.”

My heart raced and I looked up at him quickly, eyes wide. “What makes you say that?” I asked, but my voice was far more panicked than I would have liked. I cursed this human body, as the more I used it the more difficulty I had controlling its emotions.

He smiled. “Whoa, why do you suddenly seem like a person with a lot of secrets?” he asked with a laugh, rubbing the top of my head. “I guess I mean…the truth has a tendency to reveal itself. I have to have faith that, regardless of what I think, the truth will come out when it’s the right time.”

I exhaled slowly and crossed my arms. Some truths were never meant to be revealed… “That’s a fine attitude.”

He glanced at me out the corner of his eye as we strolled and gave the side of my head a slight, playful push. “Don’t be so serious, huh? All I’m saying is that things will work out how they’re supposed to.”

I nodded, but it was clear my mind was still racing. “I hope you’re right.”

I’d been to police stations before, but never one in this small beach town. Jimin had always been exemplary in terms of behavior, so I’d never needed to follow him to such a place. Few died in police departments, so The Call had never beckoned me either. So as I entered the friendly brick building, I walked close beside Jimin, careful not to move too far from him for fear of encountering something — or rather someone — that might expose a string in my web of lies.

Once inside, we were greeted with rows upon rows of desks, almost all empty save for a few in the center — which housed photos of friends and families, office supplies, and all manner of knickknacks — and one in the back corner, home to only one old computer. Just looking at that lonely desk and I knew who it belonged to. I sighed and resolved to avoid it. No use actively seeking Yoongi out, especially after our odd and unresolved interaction from nights prior. He’d seen that teacup on the table. He’d seen me flustered and panicked. He’d seen far too much. And he wasn’t the type to just…forget about something like that.

I steeled myself to greet him as Namjoon approached with a smile. “Hey,” he said, clapping Jimin’s shoulder. “You look good, Jimin. Healthy.”

Jimin laughed and swatted Namjoon’s hand away. “Of course I do,” he said, peeking over his shoulder at me. He gave a bashful smile before turning back to his friend with a chuckle. “I’m doing really well.”

“Probably because you have such a good nurse with you,” said Namjoon with a joking grin my way.

I raised my eyebrows and pointed to my chest. “I’ve received no formal medical training,” I said, shaking my head.

The two laughed and Jimin shook his head, gently placing a hand on my back between my shoulder blades. “Anyway, we’re here to give more information?” he asked Namjoon who led us with a swooping motion to his desk in the center of the room. We followed slowly behind and settled into two stiff chairs. “But I already told Yoongi everything.”

“You’re not the one we wanna talk to,” said a voice I recognized at once.

I shut my eyes and rubbed my forehead, already fatigued from the simple thought of entertaining that cheerless, unwelcoming man. I heard the sound of a chair being dragged along the floor and heard that chair protest against the weight of Yoongi’s body as he collapsed against it. Opening my eyes slowly, I turned to face him and saw his grim expression was exactly as I’d predicted. He sat, straddling the chair backwards, scanning me as his face loomed close to mine.

Luckily for me, I was too exhausted from the idea of a conversation to offer much in the way of expression, so his scanning was fruitless and he turned instead to offer Jimin a somber look. Namjoon sat across from us, separated by his well-decorated desk, his chin resting atop his laced fingers as he watched the scene with a sympathetic smile. I envied him, having such distance between himself and Yoongi.

“I don’t know how much help I’ll be,” I said, sliding my eyes towards him. “I’ve told you everything I remember.”

Yoongi cocked a brow and scoffed with a smirk. “See,” he began, pointing at me with one lazy finger. “I think you’re hiding something. Probably a lot of somethings.”

I shrugged. “You are entitled to your wrong opinion.”

Jimin sputtered a laugh which he concealed, poorly, as a cough and Yoongi shot him a glare. “Well, we’ll just have to see. I’m conducting a thorough background check on you alongside the investigation. Don’t think that just because you haven’t been arrested you’re not a suspect.”

I rubbed my temples. “Okay. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” I said, and almost smiled. What sort of background check could he conduct on a person who didn’t, and shouldn’t, exist?

He smirked and leaned away slightly. “Jungkook,” he started, piquing my attention, “is gonna get out soon. His bail’s being posted.”

How strange. That gang didn’t seem like the type to have such dispensable income…

I nodded. “Good. Then his friends will stop bothering Jimin,” I said, glancing towards Yoongi and crossing my arms. “Unless you’d rather him be at risk for no reason besides…probable cause.” The last words left my lips like a curse, and Yoongi’s dark eyes narrowed slightly.

“Things would go more smoothly if we had all the information,” said Yoongi.

“Is it not part of a detective’s duty to piece together the evidence available and create a case?” I asked. “Why am I being pressed to do your job for you?”

He set his lips thin and stared at me, right into my eyes. I wished I could frighten him the way I’d frightened Hyungwon. I wished I could look back at him with that same bloodlust, that same fierceness which had rendered Hyungwon not only speechless but immobile. But I simply hadn’t the contempt for this man. He was bothersome and frustrating, but as I looked into his eyes I didn’t see any evil. And furthermore, I didn’t see anything I could exploit. I didn’t see the insecurity and fear that Hyungwon had. This man was iron-clad and cold as stone. Even if I could muster the hatred to intimidate him, there was a high probability that it would result in nothing.

“Deliberately hindering a police investigation is criminal activity,” he said seriously, voice deep and rumbling.

I nodded. “Fascinating.”

He roughly shoved his chair against the ground, pulling himself closer. The sudden, loud movement startled me and I jumped slightly, staring at him with wide eyes. “You’re the only one who saw this guy, Jane Doe. You’re the missing link to solving this whole damn thing. I would’ve thought you’d be jumping at the opportunity to help,” he said, then flashed his eyes towards Jimin. “It helps him after all.” His words dripped, acrid and accusing.

I glanced between the two. What sort of history bound them together in such a hostile dance? And why, hen Yoongi’s acidic voice attempted to corrode him, did Jimin simply sit with his eyes on his lap and take it? It was almost as if we were outside the shop again, fighting with Jungkook’s gang. Like he felt he deserved it…

I shifted slightly so as to obscure Yoongi’s view of Jimin and crossed my arms. “What would you like from me, Officer?” I asked.

He stared at me, eyes probing, and tilted his head down. “If you’re not gonna cooperate and tell me everything, then…at the very least I need you to come look at the kid. Jeon Jungkook. Since you saw the attacker, you might be able to tell if he matches.”

I stood and nodded. “Let’s go then.”

Yoongi scoffed, joining me standing, and crossed his arms. “That easily?”

“If you ask me to do something possible, then I’ll gladly do it. Up until now, you’ve been requesting I give you information that doesn’t exist,” I said, the lies falling from my lips more easily than ever before. Something about this man ignited anger in me, and a dash of something else.

Competitiveness.

I didn’t just want to placate him.

I wanted to win against him.

Jimin sighed and placed a soothing hand on the small of my back, peering down at me with a soft smile. “Listen, you don’t need to be so involved. If you don’t wanna go back there you don’t have to.”

I met Jimin’s eyes before turning slightly towards Yoongi. I smiled. “Lead the way, Officer,” I said, slipping out of Jimin’s grasp and following Yoongi towards a hallway in the back.

Namjoon and Jimin fell in line behind me, and I caught Namjoon say quietly to Jimin with a chuckle, “Don’t worry about her too much.”

Indeed, I was fully capable of defending myself against this pale man. I was a Reaper, taker of lives, bringer of death. What did I have to fear from an officer with thin limbs and purple bags beneath his eyes?

We entered an interrogation room together and I stood with my arms crossed, lingering in the back of the sterile room. Jimin entered too, but his steps were hesitant, even the echoes timid. He stood beside the door as Namjoon shut it behind us. I could deduce the source of Jimin’s obvious discomfort, because sitting across from us at a small wooden table with his sharp eyes on the floor by Jimin’s feet was that boy. Jungkook. His shoulders were broad, but slumped. With a single motion of Yoongi’s wrist, the young boy stood and finally he lifted his eyes and met mine. I scanned them, searching for something there like I had with Yoongi. But again, there was nothing fundamentally evil there. Frustrated and perhaps a little hurt, but no ill will. He just looked…

Tired.

“No,” I said, shaking my head as I looked him up and down, scanning his build. “The attacker was slimmer. Shorter too.”

Yoongi exhaled loudly and turned to me, pointing at Jungkook as he stared at me, angry eyes now wide like a child. “You’re telling me our only suspect who not only has motive to attack, but also set the stage for the event to occur just…isn’t him? Because you say he’s not?” His voice was getting louder, but I’d seen too much in my years to be frightened of him anymore.

I threw my hands up. “I don’t know what to tell you! It seems you’re looking for the answers you want and not the truth itself,” I said, crossing my arms. “I wonder if you’ll ever believe me if I don’t say what you want me to say!”

Yoongi stalked towards me and stood close, standing above me with an expression all too easy to read. He was holding himself back from really exploding. Why did I want to provoke him? “You’re walking a dangerous line, Jane Doe.”

“My name is Nari,” I said sternly, holding my ground as his piercing gaze bore into me.I felt the full force of his rage upon me, but all I could do was smile slightly. “And I’m your key witness.”

Yoongi scoffed, as if in disbelief, and rocked on his heels before stepping away from me and pounding a fist on the table in front of Jungkook. The younger boy, startled, jumped slightly and stared at me, eyes still wide and round. I looked at him and tilted my head to the side, shaking my head.

“The more I look at him, the more certain I am. He’s not your killer,” I said, shrugging.

“And how can you be so sure?” asked Yoongi, turning towards me and raising his brows. “Divine intuition? A…gut feeling?”

Namjoon placed a hand on Yoongi’s shoulder. “Drop it, Yoongi,” he said, voice chiding in his ear. “She’s right. She’s our witness.”

“And she’s hiding something!” he said, throwing his accusing finger towards me.

Jimin sidled up beside me and leaned down towards my face, breath shifting my hair as he spoke. “Stop messing with him or he’ll really snap,” he said, voice terse.

I turned to look at him, brow furrowed. “Is this behavior okay from a law enforcement professional? Have I done anything to warrant that kind of aggression?” I asked.

“Nari,” said Namjoon carefully from behind me. I glanced at him and sighed. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but…really, if there’s anything you can tell us that can substantiate your claim…,” he said, eyes pleading as he stared down at me. I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to come clean, to tell Yoongi I’d been there for the whole night.

But how could I reveal something like that? How could I justify having seen something that was impossible for me to see?

Jimin stared down at me, expression soft and patient, but nonetheless…expectant. I looked at Jungkook who too wore a similar expression. If I told Yoongi about what truly happened, how one of the two boys stood up that night just when Jimin left and disappeared into the smoky darkness of the bar…

Jungkook would be implicated even further. And as I stared into his eyes from across the room, I became certain. This boy was not the culprit. He was terrified and lost and insecure, just like a child. He was just a boy. And he was a boy who’d done nothing but invite an old friend he admired out for drinks.

Even if I’d wanted to give Yoongi the answers he craved, looking at that innocent boy’s face…I knew I couldn’t.

That’s the problem with finding your morals.

Once you’ve started uncovering what you believe in, you lose the ability to choose logically.

My compass, which I was certain was missing from the start, began wildly pointing away from Jungkook, pointing someplace else entirely. Namjoon continued staring at me with a smile all too pleasant and Yoongi continued to brood beside the table, penetrating eyes focused on Jungkook who too stared at me. They all expected something from me. Every single one of them.

I turned to Jimin, watching as his gentle, compassionate eyes as they scanned over my face. And what did he expect from me? The longer he looked at me, the clearer it became. He expected me to do whatever I thought was right. In his soft expression I saw faith. Faith in me. And, wordlessly, I met his faithful gaze with a smile. I nodded my head and remembered what I’d learned in the hospital. The power of ignorance.

I returned my attention to Namjoon and shrugged my shoulders lightly. “I’m sorry, Namjoon,” I began, then smiled at him. “But I don’t know anything else.”

“Dammit!” shouted Yoongi, pounding the table once more to which Jungkook once again lurched slightly. Yoongi, visibly affected by my stubbornness, raked his fingers through his dark hair and turned to me. “You do realize that you could very well be the reason why a murderer gets out, right?”

I shook my head and peeked at Jungkook. “No,” I said as he blinked at me. “Because this boy is not your murderer.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Yoongi, laughing in a way that caused this strange body to shiver. He turned to me and, with a smile that looked almost wild, he shook his head. “If someone else dies, it’s on you.”

“Yoongi, please. Don’t say stuff like that to her. She’s just trying to help,” said Jimin from beside me with a sigh.

Yoongi turned his fiery eyes toward Jimin and nodded. “That’s right. Just keep playing the good guy then, like you always do. Nice Jimin. Friendly Jimin. The son every mother wishes they had, Park Jimin.”

Jimin’s breath hitched and I watched the muscles in his neck work as he struggled to remain calm. I had no idea what to do to mediate. As I learned more about myself, I learned that perhaps mediation wasn’t my strongest attribute…

“Min Yoongi, you have no right to talk to me like that,” said Jimin, jaw clenched.

“Like what? Just telling the truth,” said Yoongi with a scoff. “Tell me, Jimin, why don’t I have a right?”

Jimin shook his head. “Stop it now.”

“No, say it. Say what I did that took that right away,” said Yoongi, laughing once more and patting his chest. “Tell me!”

“That’s enough!” shouted Namjoon, grabbing Yoongi by the shoulder and walking roughly with him into the hallway, shoving him outside and shutting the door behind them, leaving us alone with Jungkook. I heard the distant, muffled sound of arguing.

I turned to look up at Jimin to find him staring into the middle ground, muscles tense and expression poor. “Th-thank you,” said a small voice from the opposite side of the room.

Jungkook approached quietly, hair mussed and loose shirt dingy from wear. He smiled at me softly. “Me?” I asked, pointing at my face.

He nodded, still grinning, and rubbed the back of his neck. “I didn’t expect you to stick up for me like that,” he said, chuckling as his eyes fell to the floor. “It was…kinda cool.”

I blinked at him, furrowing my brow. “I…did I stick up for him?” I asked, turning to Jimin and cocking my head to the side.

Jimin, having calmed slightly, nodded. “Kind of,” he said, forcing a smile.

I nodded. “Um…,” I said, filling the silence. “You’re welcome then.”

Jungkook’s head snapped up and he looked down at me with bright brown eyes. “Hey, let me treat you to dinner or something.”

I cringed away and offered a polite smile. “Ah…that’s not necessary.”

“Why not?” asked the boy, a pout on his lips. The longer I looked at him the more he resembled a child. “I wanna show my appreciation!”

“You’ve more than shown it,” I said, nodding my head vehemently.

He tilted his head and sighed. “No, but still I wanna say thanks properly, you know?”

“Live a long, healthy, law-abiding life. That will be a proper thank you,” I said, glancing up at Jimin who seemed to have relaxed.

Jungkook stared down at me for a long moment, then sighed. His shoulders fell as he watched me and his heavy brows began to knit. “Ah, what should I do? I think I like you.”

I coughed slightly and waved my hand, backing away. “Excuse me?” I asked.

Jungkook nodded. “Yeah. I think I like you. What was your name again?” he asked, mirroring my backwards step with a forwards one.

Jimin cleared his throat and smiled at the young boy. “Her name is Nari and she’s trying to recover her memory. She’s been through a lot lately, so maybe ask her out some other time.”

Jungkook rolled his eyes and approached me, leaning down at the waist to smile at me. “He’s pretty boring, right?” he asked. “He used to be more fun.”

I flushed and glanced away, taken aback by how keenly he stared at me. “I find him just fine the way he is.”

Jungkook sighed. “It’s no good if you like another guy,” he whined, then crossed his arms and backed away. “Anyway, I should thank you too, Jimin,” he said as he offered his large hand for Jimin to shake.

Jimin stared down at it for a while, brows furrowed, and shook his head. “Don’t thank me, Jungkook.”

He smiled and grabbed Jimin’s wrist with his free hand, shoving their palms together and clasping his fingers around Jimin’s in a tight shake. “I owe you a lot, alright?”

Jimin sighed. “I’m the reason you got taken here in the first place,” he said.

Jungkook waved his hand and laughed, lighthearted despite having been kept by the police for a day. “Hey! You just told the truth. Yoongi’s the one who’s got his panties all twisted, thinkin’ it was me,” said Jungkook with a scowl. “I would too.”

I narrowed my eyes at him and crossed my arms. “Why? Is there any reason why he’s so set on you as the suspect?” I asked.

Jungkook turned to me and smiled brightly, rubbing the back of his head. “Ah, well…something like that.”

“What is it?” I asked.

Jungkook’s face fell and he turned to me with downcast eyes. “I don’t want you to think I’m a suspicious person.”

“He’s the one who attempted to rob a supermarket owner a few weeks ago,” said Jimin, rubbing his forehead.

“How did you know?” asked Jungkook, eyes wide.

Jimin sighed. “Yoongi told me when he came to interview me at the hospital. The day he got me to admit you were there at the bar.”

Jungkook groaned. “I didn’t want you to know,” he said. “I didn’t want you to think I would ever try to hurt you because of something stupid like that.”

“Why did you do it?” I asked, thinking aloud.

Jungkook glanced at me and shook his head. “It was a dumb dare from the guys. We’re just…we just play around, you know? We’d never do anything scary like…murder or something.”

Jimin nodded. “I know, Kook.”

“Call me Jung!” interrupted the boy with a whine. “I told you a million times.”

Jimin chuckled and patting Jungkook’s shoulder with a nod. “Well, either way I’m glad you’re out soon.”

“Thanks to you,” he said, winking at him.

Thanks to him...

The bail?

Jimin rolled his eyes and opened his mouth as if to speak, but stopped at the door opened and Namjoon entered. The air became once again heavy with somberness as he walked into the room with eyes on the floor. I set my lips thin. I wondered if my resistance would negatively impact Namjoon…

The thing about truth is that, if you give it enough time, it always comes out.

I had to believe in Jimin’s words. I had to believe that the choices I made, however difficult they may be, were ultimately in the service of the truth. I inhaled sharply as Namjoon finally looked up and met each of our eyes respectively.

“I think it’s best for you two to go,” he said, voice low and tired.

I chewed on the inside of my cheek and met his eyes. “Namjoon, I’m-,”

He glanced at me before looking away. “We’ll call you if we need anything else.”

My stomach dropped, filling with lead. The heavy, dreadful feeling persisted as Jimin led me out into the hallway and towards the front doors. It persisted as we passed the sea of desks, the lonesome one in the corner occupied by a dark-haired man with his head down. It persisted even as we exited the building and stood out on the sidewalk. And as the door swung shut behind us, I could tell Jimin felt it too. I’d hurt someone I trusted. In saving one innocent person, I’d condemned another.

Was part of being human feeling like this?

“What do you say to getting some drinks? I know a good place.”

I glanced up at Jimin to find him smiling at me, tender. I raised my eyebrows. “Is that a good idea? Don’t you need to rest?” I asked.

He groaned and leaned his back against the facade of the building, screwing up his features in a show of theatrics. “All I’ve done is rest.”

At the sight of his pout, a few stray laughs escaped my lips despite my mood and I stretched my arms slightly. “Are you perhaps feeling stifled?”

He nodded, eyes shut, still pouting my way. “I wanna go have fun,” he whined.

I laughed again. “It is unusual for you to be so eager to go out,” I commented.

He sighed and opened one eye, peering down at me. “Maybe Jungkook got to me. I really did used to be fun, you know,” he said, tone playful. He gave a mischievous smirk. “And besides, I wanna see if you can outdrink me.”

I pursed my lips. If the night of his accident was anything to go by, Jimin was not someone difficult to outdrink. I peeked at him from below as I thought. “You’re sure it’s a good idea?” I asked.

He nodded eagerly. “Positive.”

I sighed and shrugged my shoulders. “Then let’s go.”

I stared at the amber drink before me, tea mixed with rum, and tilted my head this way and that. The thing looked okay enough, not a toxic green or a frightening murky white as I’d seen before. We sat together at a bar by the station, a nice place playing American music from the seventies. Plenty of people were idling about, but we were the only ones at the bar. Jimin was nursing his fourth beer, and his dopey smile was a clear tell. The entire evening he’d been pestering me between bites of bar food to give the drink a shot. I’d been hesitant, insisting that watching him drink was better than drinking myself. I wondered why he was so adamant about it, and longed to ask him more precisely if there was a special reason. But the way Jimin watched me eagerly, a beer in his own hand as he nudged my knee with his beneath the bar, spurred me to grab the tall glass with both hands and take the straw between my teeth. His eyes glittered in the soft, hazy light and the smile on his face danced in the picture of him reflected in fractals on his thick mug of beer.

I took a big sip, letting the drink slide down my throat, and coughed slightly as I’d taken too much at once. I clutched my chest and shook my head, but as I began to regain control over my lungs, another sensation emerged. Something vaguely hot, sitting just beneath my skin. I scratched at my neck slightly, trying to alleviate the odd feeling, but as I did I found no relief. The heat slipped further down into my chest before dissipating. I furrowed my brow at the sweet drink and crossed my arms.

Jimin’s laugh retrieved me from my confusion and I turned to him with wide eyes. “What?” I asked, rubbing my throat. “Something felt hot.”

He laughed once more and shook his head, taking another deep swig of beer. “Alcohol,” he began, “feels hot, doesn’t it?”

I nodded my head and played with the straw as it sat in my cup. I puzzled over it. “So it’s normal? That feeling?”

He nodded and inched closer, smelling sharply of booze as he exhaled in a laugh. “You’re so funny,” he said with a smile. He was intoxicated.

I pursed my lips and took another deep sip, this time prepared for the odd warmth. As I tasted the drink, I found it rather pleasant and stifled a smile as I stirred my straw through it.

“What is it?” asked Jimin, sitting close, his face looming near mine as he watched me carefully.

I turned only my eyes towards him but, upon seeing how striking he looked with a drunken flush on his high cheeks and a rosy hue to his parted lips, my gaze fled quickly back to the safety of my drink. “I’ve found something else that caught me off guard,” I said, smiling slightly.

He smiled and tilted his head to the side, caging me between his arms as one was resting on the bar and one was draped lazily over the back of my seat. Having all of his attention made me fidgety, the weight of his honeyed gaze heavy upon my fragile human heart. “What’s that?” he asked, voice low, eyes scanning my face.

I cleared my throat and inched away, trying to gain some distance between us. “I don’t find alcohol all that unpleasant,” I said, chuckling. But the sound emerged choppy, almost awkward. Was I perhaps feeling flustered?

He grinned. “That’s good,” he said, then thankfully leaned away. “Let’s drink together again someday.”

I took another sip, trying to keep my thoughts to myself, but like it usually did curiosity overpowered me. “Why did you want to drink today?” I asked.

He peeked at me over the rim of his beer, his hair teasingly out of place, his eyes heavy-lidded. “I told you. I wanted to have fun.”

I shook my head. Because, despite the playfulness in his eyes I could see something else there too. Something sadder. “I want to know the real reason,” I said, leaning forward slightly to get a better view of him.

He opened his mouth and shut it a few times, almost speaking now and then, before he sighed and slumped over his drink. “You caught me.”

“You’re obvious.”

He chuckled and sighed, letting his head loll backwards, hair falling off his forehead, exposing the skin there. His lips parted and I could see his Adam’s apple bob. Was it the alcohol making me so much more finely attuned to his body? I glanced away. “It’s that bastard Yoongi,” he said.

“Ah,” I said, nodding as I drank some more, desperate to wash the image of Jimin’s pillowy lips from my mind. “He bothers you?”

“Yoongi,” he began with a frown. “That bastard.”

I chuckled and turned to him again, but found that move to be a crucial mistake as he was pushing his hair from his forehead with his hand, eyes cast on the bar in front of us, lashes dusting across his cheeks. Again I looked away. “You said that already,” I said.

He sighed beside me. “He hates me.”

“Why?”

“Because I was there when he wasn’t.”

I furrowed my brow and chewed on my straw. “What does that mean?”

“That bastard, Yoongi. He’s punishing me,” said Jimin.

I rested my cheek in my hand and scanned the shelves of alcohol, backlight with a neon sign, sitting behind the bar on the wall. “You must do something wrong in order to be punished.”

“That’s exactly it!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands and pointing to me. “See, I didn’t do anything wrong.”

I nodded and smiled slightly as he mimicked my pose, only instead of staring at the shelves he was staring at me. My heart raced. “I believe you.”

He exhaled, long and slow, and his eyes fell from my eyes to my flushed cheeks. Eventually, they dipped lazily lower, landing on my lips before once again he met my eyes and smiled. “I’m glad.”

I cleared my throat and drank some more, my drink nearly empty. “Is my head supposed to feel this fuzzy?” I asked.

Jimin chuckled and scooted closer to me, gently taking my face between his hands. He examined my forehead, squinting at it for a moment, before backing away and nodding with a grin. “It’s the best part. Makes it hard to think,” he said, laughing.

I touched the spot on my hot cheek where he’d touched, feeling the trail of tingles he’d left behind. I could focus on nothing else. “I don’t like it,” I said, shaking my head. “I feel like I’m thinking more.”

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, voice soft below the music and smooth.

My stomach fluttered. Was that a side effect of the alcohol? I met his amber eyes and swallowed hard. “Things I shouldn’t be thinking about.”

His lips parted in a smile and his eyelids fell heavier. “Like what?”

“Like…,” I began, then shook my head. “Stupid things.”

He smiled and took my hand gently, his grip loose, his fingers playing with my own as he hummed with thought. He extended his hand, our fingertips touching, forcing my fingers to part, before letting them connect once again. “That’s too bad. I hoped we could both get our minds off of the things that were bothering us,” he said softly.

I felt faint and my face was burning hot. “Is that why you wanted to drink with me? Because you were worried I was upset?”

He nodded and met my eyes with a smile. “Bingo.”

I inhaled and, before I this stupid, feverish body could do something ridiculous, I pushed up from the barstool and stood to my feet. But as my shoes touched the ground, I found my balance unsteady and had to grip the side of the bar to stay upright. Jimin laughed and stood alongside me, replacing the bar I was clutching with his arm. He coaxed my hands around his bicep and the lightheadedness suddenly felt secondary to the flutters in my stomach and the heat in my face.

I avoided his eyes as he chuckled at me. “I want to leave.”

He laughed and patted my hand. “Sure.”

We walked quietly along the sand, having taken a detour to sober up before journeying all the way home. The ocean lapped at my bare feet as we wandered in an unsteady line down the shore. Overhead was the navy sky and a smattering of glittering stars, reflecting on the calm sea below. Jimin walked a pace behind me, laughing at me now and then as I stumbled walking or ran away from a wave I’d underestimated. I walked carefully, placing one foot exactly in front of the other with each step. And with Jimin behind me, I felt safer. I knew if I couldn’t see him, I couldn’t think about strange things.

“Hey, Nari?” he asked, voice nearly drowning in the waves.

I swallowed hard and extended my hands out on either side of me, desperate to keep my balance and desperate to give my mind something to focus on. Because, as soon as he spoke, my mind had wandered to how smooth and melodious his voice was. And as my mind wandered there, it wandered to the way his voice sounded in a whisper. And then it wandered to the way it sounded in a breathy laugh.

I shook my head. “Yes, Jimin?”

“You’re really familiar,” he said, chuckling as he mused. “I really feel like I know you from somewhere.”

I stiffened, my steps faltering slightly, and as I stumbled slightly into the water Jimin was quick to reach my side, wrapping a strong arm around my waist. He stared down at me with wide eyes. I blinked up at him, unable to do much else, and watched the moonlight run gently through his disheveled hair, touching his skin, featherlight. Why did I envy the moon as I looked at him that way, awash in its glow? Was I becoming too greedy?

He scanned me, supporting my body as I regained my footing. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Had he always been so handsome? Soft features, kind eyes, flushed cheeks. I took my lower lip between my teeth to keep from saying something I’d regret, but as his eyes fell there I quickly released it and cleared my throat. “I…I’m fine.”

But even though I’d stopped biting them, he continued staring at my lips. I wasn’t sure why my body felt so very hot. The alcohol, surely. Surely, surely. I felt his breath fan across my cheeks as he exhaled and watched his smoldering eyes as they worked over my face. What about this body had him so focused? This strange body.

“Say,” he said, his hand firm against my waist despite my restored balance. Carefully, he brushed his fingers against my cheek, smoothing the hair out of my face. “Do you think Jungkook is serious? About liking you?”

I cleared my throat and glanced away, down towards the endless sand beneath our feet. “I think he felt very grateful to me.”

“But do you think he likes you?” he repeated, wrapping his second arm around my waist, letting his hands settle lowly on my back. “Likes you likes you?”

I furrowed my brows and stared at his chest as it rose and fell before me. “I suppose not,” I said. “He’s very young. Those feelings tend to come and go quickly at that age.”

“You’re nearly the same age, aren’t you?” he asked.

I set my lips thin. Sure, nearly the same age. Give or take three-hundred years or so. “I…I suppose so.”

He sighed and softly pulled me closer by the hips, almost too close to breathe. “I don’t really like that.”

At this, I finally looked up at him and found him staring into my eyes already. He smiled slightly and tilted his head to the side. “E…excuse me?”

He nodded, and it was clear by the way his eyes went heavy that he was still intoxicated. “I know I don’t look like it, but I can be kinda scary when I’m mad, okay?” he asked, chuckling. The sound was enchanting in my ears, so soft.

“Why would you be mad?” I asked.

He swayed us back and forth slightly and smiled. “I dunno,” he said, then laughed and leaned down close to me. “Why does it make me feel kinda mad?”

I shook my head as he pressed his forehead against mine. “I don’t know either.”

He hummed and met my eyes with his hooded ones. He tilted his head slightly and leaned closer to me, still smiling just enough to confuse me. His face was so close I could see every detail on his skin. His hands moved slowly up and down my sides and, for a moment, I became lost in the sensation of it all. His touch, something which I never even dared to dream of feeling, the warmth of his eyes on me. Why had I let myself become this way? Weeks ago I’d have been perfectly content just watching him, invisible, unseen, unknown. But now…having him simply look at me didn’t feel like enough. I wasn’t sure what, but I craved something more.

I shut my eyes, a reflex I wasn’t familiar with, and rested my hands on the firm expanse of his chest. I could feel him close to me, feel the ghost of his lips lingering so close to mine, feel the puff of his breath on my scorching skin. And just as I felt I might find relief, a frigid, tall wave crashed against our calves and nearly knocked us down. Jimin caught me before I fell, but the bottoms of the pants I’d worn were chilly and heavy with ocean water. I gaped down at them, then turned my attention to him.

But as I looked up at him, I only saw his laughing face, eyes pressed into crescents with the force of his grin. As if nothing at all had happened, he released my waist and began walking back up the beach towards the street and the cliff and the town atop it. All I could do was watch his back retreat, left alone on the beach with wet pants and burning cheeks and a pounding heart and a new sensation I couldn’t quite name.

And he walked up ahead, his laugh echoing around the peaceful, navy-tinted beach.

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petri808 · 7 years ago

Text

It Was Always You

Happy Valentine’s Day! 🌹 @cosmicdragonwizard @fairytailvalentinesexchange I was really excited to be your valentine :)

A heart has two sides, so I wanted to give you a couple different stories to enjoy based on your feedback. Here’s Part 1 of your gift: Hope you like it!

It was like a pulse under the skin, an unnerving sensation constantly reminding the fire slayer there was something beneath his boyish and often jester-like façade. A much more precarious side biding its time, just waiting for another opportunity to present itself to the world.

Still, he paid it no mind, it was just a weird feeling that he chalked up to an increase in his powers. Nothing to worry about since it wasn’t causing him any issues, and besides, he had no idea what it was… although he had an inkling…

The Stella mission was the first time E.N.D. had fully appeared but when it happened there were only two people and an Exceed to witness it. A remarkable spectacle it was for Lucy to watch as her best friend began to transform into… well, a dragon.

Not that the celestial mage cared either way, to her it didn’t matter what form he took on, because he would always be the same person who brought her into a world of excitement, family, and maybe… one day… an adventure of a different kind…

Until the Alvarez incident occurred, and all hell broke loose. With the seed of E.N.D. having sprouted once, all it took was another spark for it grow, to escalate, and when DiMaria made the mistake of torturing Lucy, it was enough to send Natsu into a full-blown rage with all the trimmings.

But, thankfully for everyone around, she was able to soothe the beast back into remission and give Natsu a chance to recover his control long enough to continue the battle still raging in Fiore; and it wasn’t over by far.

This rollercoaster ride was pushing the pair to the breaking point, him dying, her bringing him back, only for him to disappear, battling an enemy on two fronts. From Hell to Heaven, they’d find a way to reach each other again.

And when it was all said and done, Lucy had her Natsu, and Natsu had his Lucy. Everything could go back to normal, right?

By the time the slayer arrived home after that exhausting battle, it had become perfectly clear to him that his demon side was no longer just a dormant bystander. Twice it had reared its head and both times triggered by one common denominator, Lucy.

But why? It wasn’t the first, second, or even third time this kind of dire situation had occurred in their years together, so what changed things so suddenly? As he laid in his bed pondering such questions, the answer had become painstakingly simple,

Because he loved her.

And not as a friend, teammate, or any other platonic relationship, no, as in settle down, let’s get married and start a family, till death-do-us-part and even then, I’ll follow you to the great beyond kind of love.

‘Baka! How had I not figured this out sooner?!’ Sneaking into her apartment all the time. He was always thinking about her, always wanting to be near her, to be stronger for her. Just her scent was enough to soothe him and damn the consequences, it made him smile to see her happy; remember the Rainbow tree? If someone made her sad his first thoughts were only to kick their ass!

Not to mention he didn’t like it when other guys flirted with her and that dated way back to the Galuna Island mission. Apparently, no one thought twice about his miffed response to Gray and her interaction, including him at the time. Or how about his scrutinizing reaction of Loke for giving Lucy tickets to Akane Resort?

Someone once told him only a soulmate could break the spell Bora had put on her, but he hadn’t believed them. Virgo always dressed them in matching celestial outfits because of what she read in their hearts, even Lisanna could clearly see they meant more to each other than they even realized.

How many other signs had just gone by unnoticed? Because, it was all there if he read between the lines. Whose smiling face brought him back from the brink in Stella, it was hers. His eyes pop open, ‘it was always Lucy…’

A twinge in his heart.

Natsu clutches to his chest as light explodes around him, ‘crap!’ He scrambles to a sitting position just to see his body morphing again into the creature. Scales all along his extremities, his hands, his feet transforming, claws! Sharp, menacing appendages… Reaching up to his face, oh Mavis, he can feel the roughened features…

‘No, No, No! I need to stop thinking about her like that, I-I don’t wanna be E.N.D.!’

But why now? There was no battle, she wasn’t in harm? All he was doing was thinking about her and… ‘That’s it,’ too many emotions are flooding his system and if she is the catalyst of his change…

So, he did the only thing he could think of at the time, bury his feelings for the blonde, lock it deep within his heart thinking if he didn’t give in to the urges, it would keep the beast at bay.

And for the most part, it worked for a couple more years…

Granted there were a few times when the demon came out in various stages, but they were always during a mission when he needed to protect his beloved Starisha. Easy enough to explain away, she was his best friend and all so of course he would do anything to protect her like he always had.

Unfortunately, with each transformation, it would take a little longer, and a little longer to revert to normal. Remember that pulse? Like a caged animal, the creature seemed desperate for freedom and desired the one thing he was working so hard to suppress.

But over time, Natsu started ignoring the warning signs.

Hiding his feelings was one thing, but there was no way he’d let it stop him from being around his best friend! And just once, the drunken Lucy at her book release almost did him in, but luckily, she passed out before discovering the few tell-tale signs that had begun to manifest…

Within a few months into their first 100-year mission it was obvious to the team that it was a complete waste of time, just some rogue wizards telling wild stories and convincing the locals it would be the third coming of Zeref.

Talk about a serious disappointment, especially for a boy brimming with excitement at his first SS-Class mission.

So, to take Natsu’s mind off being home so soon, Lucy proposes to drag her friend out for the night, figuring that filling his belly with some good food from one of his favorite restaurants, would make the slayer happy.

And once he agreed to go, she planned out everything, right down to the color of the dress she would wear; everything had to be perfect, so he’d forget all about the mission…

“What’s taking you so long Luce, just throw some clothes on and let’s go, I’m starving.” He parks himself on the couch to rest. “You’ll look fine in whatever.”

They had just got back yesterday from a quick mission, stupid easy, just one he had taken simply to get out the energy he didn’t get to release on the failed one. He was still tired and going out to dinner at some restaurant was the last thing he wanted to do, but of course, when she flashed those vixen eyes and batted her lashes, how could the slayer say no?

She calls out from behind the bathroom door, “I’m almost done Natsu, and no peeking, I wanna look special for tonight.”

‘Special?’ “Fine, I won’t…” he mumbles and starts pacing in front of the couch, ‘what’s so special about tonight?’ Now the young man is nervous, if she was dolling up just for him, something was up.

His pulse quickens as every scenario runs through his mind and he’s using every bit of willpower to keep the creature in check. The longer she was in that bathroom, the worse they became, especially the more, suggestive ones and why?

Because Lucy’s never just ‘dressed up’ for anyone…

As Natsu turns to the click of the handle, his fears became reality as the world stops and what his eyes behold just makes him wanna burst into flames right there.

“Do I look okay?” the divine goddess speaks with a wisp to her voice, but all the fallen demon wants to do is buckle. His mouth opens, but his throat has gone dry and constricted while the moisture on his palms double, sweat beads forming along his forehead; oh boy, the slayer was in trouble.

“L-Luce…” The blonde’s bangs are framed around her face and curls pinned up in the back, damn if the pulse in her neck wasn’t just calling out to him! … Soft voluptuous bosoms peeking out from the sweetheart neck line… and her long, creamy stems perfectly shown off when contrasted against the darker color of her dress…

But his emerald hues focus on the one feature making his blood drain south, a flirty blood orange dress barely covering her thighs. ‘Oh Shit!’ Special was an understatement when that color hit below the belt. “Wh-why…” he cringes.

“Excuse me? What do you mean why! I just wanted to do something to cheer you up,” she frowns from his reaction, “You don’t like it? And I even picked your favorite color.”

“N-no, I like it…” he clutches to his chest as that familiar pang hits, “…t-too much…” voice starting to strain.

“Natsu?” She’s seen him transform several times but not without physical provocation. “Natsu why are you changing now?!”

He starts to back-peddle towards the window, “I g-gotta go…”

“No way mister, you are not leaving,” she blocks his escape out the window, “until you tell me what is happening to you!”

“Lucy, move, I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“What are you talking about?” the blonde is both confused and irritated, “I’ve seen you plenty of times….”

“In fights, but…”

“Exactly,” she crosses her arms, “are you upset with me or something? I-I didn’t think this,” she motions to her outfit, “could make you so angry…”

“Luce please let me leave… I’m not mad at you, it’s just that, y-you…”

She tries to reach out to him, but he takes a step back out of her reach, Exhale, with tears threatening to spill, the sorrow in her voice is like a dagger aimed straight at his heart. “Natsu, please, I’m your best friend, you can tell me if something is bothering you…”

Sigh, It’s, too draining to keep up this charade, and seeing her upset… He slumps his head and shoulders, “it was never the fighting that,” exhale, “that caused me to change… it was always you.”

“M-me?” she blinks, “I don’t understand.”

“Think about all the times I’ve morphed into E.N.D. Luce, who was I protecting?” Her eyes growing wider as he reflects, “Stella, you and Happy. DiMaria, you…”

“During the missions…” she whispers…

“Yes,” he quietly responds, “it was always, for you.”

“B-But why just me? You’ve known me the shortest amount of time, I mean t-there’s Gray, and Erza, and all the others too, all your friends…” the moisture is starting to cloud her eyes again. “Why am I so special?”

Natsu finally looks back up at the blonde, blinking in total astonishment, “Do I really have to answer?” he reaches out to console her but when he remembers his hands are clawed now, he retracts them, sighing again, “how do you not know you are the most precious thing in my life?”

“I am?” the tears have breached their dam and trickle down her cheeks.

With a slight nod, he closes his eyes, exhale, “Every time I change my desire for you becomes so intense, E.N.D. covets you and I don’t know what’ll happen if he gets what he wants… I can’t risk…”

Feeling soft, warm hands cupping around his cheeks, Natsu opens his eyes to find Lucy face to face with him. “Do you…” with chocolate eyes probing emerald hues, begging for a specific answer. “…love me Natsu?”

Sigh, “Yes.” He rests his forehead against hers, “I just want us to always be together.”

Lucy giggles, “But we will, Natsu, because I love you too!” and tilts her head molding her soft lips to his, humming with sheer delight that their first kiss was no longer just a fanciful dream. Such adorable vibrations emanating from the blonde, soothe the pulse drumming in the slayers ears and melts away any lingering doubts he once held.

The world around them slows its cadence as Natsu embraces her tiny frame, mindful of his sharp claws against such delicate skin. He smiles against her lips, as her fingers thread behind and through his locks, even caressing the new horns that grace its crown, “finally, my dragon…” purring, “I really am Lucky Lucy…” through their kisses.

“I’m the lucky one…” he breaths back, “that such an angel would want this demon…”

As abruptly as his change had taken them earlier, the glowing around him returns. Slowly, while the pair are carried away by their newly amended synergy, Natsu’s body begins to transform back to its old self once more.

And as the last of his fears dwindle away along with the scales, he grins at the notion that their future will surely be the greatest 100-year mission they could ever take…

Pulling back to soak in the vision of his love in all her blushing glow. “I guess I worried for nothing,” he chuckles, smoothing over the skin of her cheek with his thumb and wiping away the last of her tears, “all he wanted was for me to confess.”

She smiles back, “He wasn’t the only one waiting…”

“Really?!”

“Duh!” Punching his chest with cheeks flushing, “Didn’t drunken Lucy make that clear to you?”

Exhale,” I’m still happy to be normal again.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I kinda like my dragon,” running her hands along his chest, “it’s sexy.”

The slayer blushes from her compliment, “Did you still, um wanna go out to dinner?”

“Not really, but if you’re hungry we can…”

“Yeah…” he runs his hand through his hair, “sorry but I missed lunch.”

“Mmm,” the blonde’s loins are not thrilled but what can she do? She sighs and caresses his cheek, “Well I can’t have a grumpy demon on my hands…”

All through dinner, Natsu’s insatiable appetite is only being superseded by a new one developing below the waist. Because, if she had to suffer a little longer, apparently, so did he.

Precocious hints the blonde is dropping only fuel the literal buildup, licking her fingers slowly instead of using a napkin, accidentally rubbing her feet against his thigh under the table.

How is he supposed to concentrate on his plate with her teasing him! But she just grins and plays coy, “finish your meal…” she whispers while stroking the stem of a wine glass between her fingers.

“Keep that up,” he whispers back, “You just wait till we get home and see what this dragon does to you.”

Lucy leans in closer and batts her lashes, “Is that a promise?”

His mouth drops, ‘Whoa?!’ “Waiter, check please!”

*Any idea what song may have inspired the closing scene? It’s MAGIC! Happy Valentine’s Day! <3

#fairytailvalentinesficexchange2018 #nalu #nalu fanfiction #valentines gift #love confession

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jugandbettsdetectiveagency · 8 years ago

Note

If you're still taking prompts, will you do bughead 9 months of pregnancy and then them with the newborn?

Here you go, one fresh batch of pregnant!bughead all served up for you! I really hope you enjoy it

“Morning, Betts,” Jughead mumbled, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he shuffled into the kitchen, following the wafting scent of pancakes and bacon. She flicked a glance at him over her shoulder, warmth filling her chest at his dishevelled state - he never was a morning person. Ever since they’d moved into their first apartment together, gotten a permanent home, Jughead always made the most of having a warm bed to sleep in that he wasn’t worried about getting kicked out of at first light. The fact that it was Betty who was next to him, warming it, was the best added bonus he could have asked for.

“Hey, sleepy head,” she cooed affectionately, turning back to the pan to flip the breakfast before it burnt. Betty was already up and ready for her work day, fresh faced and bright eyed, pencil skirt perfectly smooth and put together. Jughead didn’t know how she did it - he would be forever grateful that his job allowed him to work from home. “Did you sleep okay?” she asked pleasantly. Jughead hummed in contentment, coming up behind her to rest his chin on her shoulder, wrapping his warm arms around her waist.

“All the better for having you next to me,” he murmured, pressing a soft kiss against her temple. He couldn’t help it, he couldn’t a picture a time when he wouldn’t be as in love with Betty as he always had been. She made everything easier, even breathing. It was a high he wasn’t willing to give up. A soft pink blush tinged her cheeks, apples prominent due to the bashful smile that played across her lips. He loved that he could make her respond to his words like that. She twisted in his arms, breakfast momentarily forgotten, to gaze up into his slightly hooded eyes, resting her palms on his chest.

“Say what you like about yourself but you’re a charmer, Jughead Jones. Always will be,” she whispered against his smirk, leaning up on her tiptoes, still bare of her heels for the time being, to place a gentle kiss to his lips, hands moving to cup his cheeks. He sucked in a breath through his nose, tightening his arms around her frame and pulling her harder against his chest as he tilted his head to deepen the action.

“Ow!” Betty pulled back with an unexpected shriek, Jughead releasing her instantly, leaving his arms hovering just inches from her body. She moved her hands to cradle her chest gently, frown pinching at the space between her eyebrows.

“What’s wrong?” Jughead asked, concern lacing his tone as his eyes flicked over her every inch, checking for damages.

“Nothing, just… tender,” she said, gesturing to her boobs as she shook her head. “Guess it’s just coming up to that time of the month,” she shrugged dismissively. Jughead exhaled slightly in relief. She glanced up at him from beneath thick eyelashes, green eyes glinting with mirth. “So hands off, mister,” she teased. Jughead rolled his eyes, cupping the back of her neck as he dropped a chaste kiss to her forehead before moving to pick up her discarded spatula and continue making their breakfast.

***

Betty felt sick. And not just queasy sick, like ‘run to the bathroom puke your guts out’ sick. She tried to take deep breaths in through her mouth to quell the sudden, rising nausea that had settled in the pit of her stomach. All attempts were shot to hell when one of her coworkers walked past her desk, the smell of whatever lunch they were carrying drifting to her nose, making her throat constrict around a gag.

She flew out of her seat, dodging colleagues as she raced towards the bathroom, barely making it in front of the bowl before her pancakes and bacon made a repeat appearance.

Ugh, pancakes… she thought, the idea of any food causing her stomach to turn over once again. She sat back against the cubicle wall, wiping the damp sheen from her forehead with the back of her hand. She’d felt fine this morning. Actually… if she thought about it she really felt fine again now. She mentally prayed that she didn’t have some kind of weird stomach bug as she clambered to her feet, desperately in need of finding some gum.

***

She was absolutely starving. Seriously, her stomach was rumbling loud enough to inform the entire floor of her office about her current needs. Betty shifted in her seat, trying to find a way to stifle the next wave of gurgling that was brewing in her gut. It was entirely perplexing; one minute she was hunched over a porcelain bowl, the next she couldn’t stop thinking about what she could get her hands on to eat.

Sighing, she grabbed her phone, tapping on the message icon, Jughead’s name right at the top of her list. She knew he was supposed to be focused on writing today, but with the morning she’d had she just really felt like seeing her husband. A wave of unidentified emotions washed over her as she sat staring at the device in her hand. God, she just really missed him. Like, was it always this hard to spend the day away from him? Why hadn’t she noticed before?

Wanna meet me for lunch? x She typed quickly, already knowing his answer. The three little dots were gone as fast as they appeared.

On my way.

***

“Betty? Everything alright?” Jughead asked gingerly as he tapped on the panel of their bathroom door. There was a heavy pause. “Betts, you’ve been in there a while I just wanted to check-” He was cut off by the door swinging open suddenly, revealing a very dishevelled looking Betty. Her eyes were wide and glistening with tears that pooled along her waterline before following the already wet trails down her flushed cheeks. Loose tendrils of her golden hair fell about her face, some sticking up at amusing angles. Her lips were dark pink and full like she’d been chewing on them nervously. Jughead’s eyes went wide as he took in her state, hands instantly going to smooth her hair, thumbs brushing over her damp cheeks. “What is it? What’s wrong? Talk to me,” he rushed out, eyes scanning her face for any indication of what had upset her.

She opened her mouth, no sound escaping, before just shaking her head, trembling hand pointing to the bathroom counter. His gaze followed her finger until it landed on the little white stick that was resting on the smooth granite. He walked towards it with numb legs, picking it up with hands that were now shaking just as much as hers. The word stared back at him, clear as day.

Pregnant.

He turned to look at her, lips parted in silent shock. Her bottom lip with tucked between her teeth again, a nervous habit, fingers twisting with each other as she looked at him with apprehensive eyes. He could see something else simmering beneath the surface though, waiting for the right moment to burst free.

“Are you really…?” he trailed off, eyes shining, every inch of his body tingling with adrenaline, hope tinging his voice. Betty couldn’t stop the corners of her mouth tilting up slightly at his tone. She nodded, lips quivering as she took in a breath.

“Yeah,” she whispered, smile growing as a full blown grin spread across Jughead’s face. He rushed towards her, scooping her up in his arms and twirling her round as she giggled gleefully, arms coming up to wrap around his neck tightly. He placed her back on the ground, not moving to release her from his hold at all. She was positively glowing in his embrace. He couldn’t believe how lucky he had gotten. “You’re happy?” she asked timidly, fingers playing with the short hairs at the base of his neck. He let out a disbelieving laugh, shaking his head slightly.

“Betty, I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy in my life,” he gushed, slipping one hand round her waist to settle over her still flat abdomen. “You are the best gift that life has ever given me, and now you’re giving me another one. You’re incredible, this is incredible. I love you so much,” he whispered, leaning in to press a bruising kiss against her lips as a fresh wave of happy tears cascaded down her cheeks.

***

“Wait! Stop right there, the light is perfect,” he commanded, holding out a palm to pause her in her tracks. “I want to get a picture of the bump,” he smiled, raising the camera to his face as Betty rolled her eyes, complying with his wishes nonetheless. Once he’d actually had enough money to invest in the equipment, Jughead had discovered a newfound passion for photography. Just like with writing he could express himself through the images he captured, finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. And one of his favourite subjects of all time was definitely his beautiful wife.

“I’m barely showing still, Juggie. I just look like I’m bloated from eating a giant burrito!” she whined, bowing her back slightly to make the tiny swell stick out more in front of their bay window, resting her hands on her waist where she arched. She was only wearing some dark green shorts and a sports bra, makeupless, hair thrown up in a messy bun on top of her head. The countless fly-aways there caught the early evening sunset that was pouring into their living room, lighting her hair up in a halo of golds and pinks and oranges while leaving the rest of her frame in shadow, little bump popping against the overexposed sky as she stood side on to Jughead’s camera.

“I wanna capture all of it,” he said with a small smile, ignoring her protests as he took a couple of shots. He’d been obsessed with the bump ever since she’d popped about a week ago. He couldn’t keep himself from running his fingers over it while they laid in bed, resting his hands over it as they snuggled together on the couch watching a movie, placing gentle butterfly kisses on top of it first thing in the morning and last thing at night. He’d not told Betty yet but he’d already started talking to it, only after his wife had fallen asleep, tiny whispers into the darkness for his and the baby’s ears only. Promises of a wonderful life.

He lowered his camera to look at her, dazed smile still resting contentedly on his lips as he watched her watch something out on their street. It was never the life he would have written for himself, but he thanked whatever author that was out there who did.

“Are you done? I have to pee,” she said bluntly, pulling him abruptly from his romantic thoughts with a chuckle. He held up his palms in surrender, backing away, happy to go and upload them to his computer as soon as possible.

***

“Betts, what is it?” he asked in panic, quickly coming to her side as he saw the tears in her eyes. He rest one hand in her hair, fingers gripping the delicate silken strands, while the other went directly to her bump. Betty pressed her lips together, shaking her head where she stood in front of their kitchen sink.

“I’ve just gone to the store and we needed garbage bags and I forgot to get them and we’ve completely run out!” she wailed, gesturing viciously to the trash can like it was the enemy. Jughead blinked in shock, face like stone for a single moment, before he cracked. He burst out laughing, tears springing to his own eyes as he doubled over, clutching at the aching strain creeping into his sides. She glared at him disapprovingly.

“Is-is that all?” he wheezed, pretending to wipe away a drop of moisture from beneath his eye.

“It’s not funny, Forsythe Jones!” He sobered slightly at hearing her use his given name, amused smile still dancing around the edges of his mouth. “I’m so damn emotional all the time it’s driving me insane,” she moaned, eyes titled downwards at the corners in frustration. He pulled her close, planting a kiss to her forehead. She sighed, closing her eyes to enjoy the soothing sensation of having him close, sifting through every mixed feeling battling for attention in her head.

“I know, sunshine. I can’t even begin to imagine how hard this is for you. You’re incredible,” he murmured against her skin. Her sniffles signified she’d calmed down somewhat. “Would you like me to go out and get garbage bags?” he asked, tone soft. She stiffened slightly against him,

“No…” she said tentatively. He pulled back to look at her in question, one eyebrow raised. “I can see them under the counter, they must’ve rolled out of the bag,” she admitted in a small voice, cheeks red at her hormone induced outburst.

***

“Jughead? Jug? Jug, are you awake? Juggie?” The chorus of his name pulled him from the depths of his slumber, groaning as he blinked groggily into the darkness.

“Hmm,” he managed to get out incoherently. He turned his head to look at Betty, finding her sitting cross-legged next to him on her side of the bed. He rolled over, hand coming out automatically to run over the ever-growing swell of her stomach. “You okay?” he asked, voice still thick and gravelly with sleep.

“Uh-huh,” she replied, placing her tiny palm on top of his hand. There was a pause as he waited for her to continue.

“Was that all?” he asked, amusement clear in his voice underneath the frustration at having been woken at some ungodly hour.

“You know what sounds good right now?” she asked, completely bypassing his question. He was more awake now, leaning up on an elbow to look at her with teasing eyes, knowing exactly where this conversation was headed.

“What sounds good?” he questioned, indulging her. Betty bit her lip against an excited smile.

“Salt and vinegar chips covered in warm nutella,” she grinned, eyes sparkling even in the darkness. He huffed out a laugh, just about getting used to her cravings by now.

“Betty, would you like me to get you salt and vinegar chips covered in warm nutella?” he asked with a smirk. She looked away from his teasing eyes, shrugging gently.

“Well, if you’re up…” she replied cheekily. He laughed, throwing his head back slightly before rising up to capture her lips in a loving kiss, moving down to drop another to her stomach before throwing the covers off his legs and making his way downstairs.

***

Betty had her feet propped in Jughead’s lap, his magical hands rubbing her sore, swollen ankles. She tipped her head back, letting out an appreciative sigh, eyes sliding shut.

“Hey, Betts? What do you want for dinner later? I could make that pasta you like or-” His sentence was cut short as her hand flew out, grabbing his arm. “What?” he asked in confusion. Betty’s eyes were wide and unfocused.

“Say something?” she all but whispered, turning her gaze to focus on his face.

“What? What do you mean, Betts, what do you want me to say?” he asked, still entirely bewildered. Tears shone in her eyes, a look of complete wonderment lighting up her face. She grabbed his hand, placing it on her lower belly.

“Talk,” she commanded. Jughead finally understood her meaning, features rearranging themselves into one of apprehension, suddenly nervous at what to say.

“Are they moving because of-” He felt it. One swift quick beneath his palm. His throat closed up as he dropped lower, resting his cheek against the bump, Betty’s hands instantly going to his hair.

“They can hear you, Jug, they like your voice,” Betty whispered, glowing as she stared down at her husband. Jughead took a steadying breath.

“Hey, baby,” he whispered. “How’s it going in there? I’m your daddy…”

***

“I’m home!” Jughead called out into the house as he kicked off his shoes, throwing his jacket onto the rack. “Betts?” he asked when there’s no reply, wandering into the living room in search of her. Suddenly she was flying at him out of nowhere, his arms filling with a strawberry scented goddess. There was no preamble as she pulled his mouth to hers, running her tongue over the seam of his lips, begging him to open them for her. She used his resulting groan to gain access, swirling her tongue with his, pushing every curve of her body roughly against him. Her hands were in his hair, tugging gently at the roots, or gripping his bicep, or running over his back, everywhere all at once, surrounding him. He pulled back when they were breathless and panting, eyes slightly glazed and pupils blown. “Well, hello to you, too,” he gets out between pants. “What did I do to receive such a gracious welcome from my wonderful wife?”

“New pregnancy symptom,” she heaves, slightly exposed chest dancing enticingly before him from where her already low cut top had fallen askew. “I’ve been so ridiculously turned on all day and you haven’t been here,” she admitted almost accusingly, eyes trailing shamelessly over his body. All the blood rushed from his head, moving directly south as she bit her kiss-swollen lower lip, eyes darkening by the second.

“Well,” he began, throat thick. “We should definitely do something about this,” he said, nodding, face serious. “As husband and father of your unborn child it is my job, nay, my duty to take care of your every need during this pregnancy,” he finished formally. She giggled prettily, flush moving down to spread over her neck and chest. The next minute she let out a surprised squeal as he scooped her up into his arms, heading for the stairs.

***

“Okay… if we just… yep. There, do you see? It’s a girl,” the technician announced, offering the couple a small, pleased smile.

“A girl!” Betty murmured excitedly, gripping at Jughead’s hand tighter. He felt as if all the air had left the room, chest tightening.

“A girl,” he repeated, tears forming in his eyes.

Betty could tell there wasn’t something right on the way home, not voicing her concerns but still throwing him worried glances every so often during the drive, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the wheel.

She found him later in his office, folded in on himself, back against the wall, hands pulling at his dark, mussed waves.

“Juggie? What is it?” she whispered softly, trying to join him in his spot on the floor as slowly and gracefully as possible. He looked up at her, eyes rimmed red.

“We’re having a girl, Betts. A little girl, and she’s all ours. What if I mess her up? What if she ends up…” he choked on his own tears, pushing back the memories of his own youth. Betty pulled his head to rest against her chest, cradling it gently as she rubbed soothing circles against his back.

“Shh, Jug, it’s going to be okay. We’re not our parents,” she reminded him, repeating his famous words to her. It had become almost like a mantra for them over the years of their relationship. “You’re going to be the best dad ever, this little girl isn’t going to know what darkness looks like with you in her life. She’ll be safe, and loved, and it’ll be all thanks to you. To us,” she whispered into the top of his head. His shuddering shoulders began to calm as he sucked in large gulps of air, evening out his breathing until he could pull back to look her in the eyes.

“You’re right,” he mumbled. He knew she always was. “We can do this,” he affirmed, more to himself than to Betty. She reached up to wipe the tears from his cheeks.

“We can do this.”

***

“Ugh, why did Veronica have to set a dress code? Who wears smart-casual to a barbecue?!” Betty shouted as she tried to pull the zipper up her back, the fabric of her dress pulling tight over her giant, swollen belly. She’d certainly grown during her pregnancy. Jughead told her daily that he’d never seen her more beautiful. She didn’t believe him, usually telling him so as she wiped yet more sweat off her forehead, or relieved herself of more bodily gasses. She felt utterly gross. “I’m so huge!” she sulked, throwing herself onto the edge of their bed as quickly as she could manage.

“Beautiful, Betts, you’re beautiful!” Jughead reminded yet again, shouting from their bathroom.

“Yeah, yeah,” she grumbled, rubbing a motherly hand over their daughter. “Oh!” she called suddenly as she felt a clenching sensation in her lower abdomen. “Juggie?” she called tentatively, waiting for the sensation to hit again.

“It really doesn’t matter what you wear, Betts, it’s just Veronica and Archie’s barbecue, no one will mind,” he replied back, misinterpreting her call.

“Jughead, come in here,” she said, more firm this time. His head appeared in the doorway, brows raised at her sharp tone.

“Yeah?”

“I think I’m going into labour,” she told him, raising her eyebrows in return. She could see the moment the panic switch flicked on in his eyes. He dashed about the room, throwing things all over the place. “Juggie, calm down, we have time!” she tried to soothe, unable to stop herself from laughing at her overly concerned husband.

“Bag! Where’s the bag? Have you seen my keys? Babe, are you okay, you’re not gonna have her right now are you?” he fired off in a fluster. Betty just rolled her eyes, waddling slowly towards the front door, knowing he’d be close behind.

“Come on, Juggie,” she laughs, “Let’s go have a baby.”

***

He was in awe. Even a week later he couldn’t believe he’d made something so wonderful, so beautiful, so small. She was perfect. He ran a finger over her tiny, soft fist, other arm wrapped tightly around Betty’s shoulders as they both stared down at their daughter. Theirs. The life they made together.

“She has your eyes,” she mumbled as Juliet blinked up at them with her big blue gaze. Jughead smiled, happy to be any part of her. He could see Betty in her entirely, though, something he was sure he’d be eternally grateful for.

“She has your wisdom,” he whispered, grinning as her tiny flower petal lips opened in a perfect O while she yawned. “Thank you,” he whispered against Betty’s temple some time later, both of them still watching their daughter soundly sleeping in Betty’s arms now, releasing the occasional snuffle as she dreamed.

“Thank you, too,” Betty replied, turning her head to barely brush her lips against his. They had made a new life, not just in their daughter, but for each other, and that was something he’d never be able to stop saying thank you for.

#bughead #bughead fanfiction #bughead prompts #betty cooper #jughead jones #betty x jughead #riverdale #riverdale fanfiction #bughead fan fiction #jetty #writing

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